"Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life."-Prov. 4:23.
God's love rests upon all His own alike because they are all alike linked with Christ by one Spirit; all possessors of the same eternal life with and in Him; all alike washed from their sins by His blood.
But there is a vast difference in the pleasure which God may find in the different individuals of His people. "Greatly beloved " is not His message to many of them. It was to Daniel who, from his youth, had set his heart to please God. He had realized that the heart must be right if the issues of life were to be right. He had sought that diligently, through self-denial, and had found it.
Moses was another. He had discarded all personal advantage and ease, and, entering into God's heart about His people, had cast his lot with them. Viewing them with God's eye, in the light of God's purpose toward them at the end, he suffered at their very hands all manner of opposition and reproach, and fulfilled his service. He had a single eye, and the issues of life manifested it. Therefore "the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend."
The apostle Paul was another. He had sincerely believed Jesus to be an impostor, and he had accordingly pursued to the death His followers. But now all is changed. He knows who and what Jesus is, and he is at His feet. No reserve, no division of interests. Christ for that heart and that heart for Christ, henceforth Christ may do with him as He likes. The heart is right, and the issues of life, long and arduous as it may be, prove it. He will be honored therefore with marks of special favor, and the highest of all dispensations committed to him.
How God encourages us in these and many other instances of men like ourselves, to keep our heart with all diligence, knowing that out of it are the issues of life.
The circumstances of one life are never repeated in another. What God has committed to one is not I the same in another, even in the same dispensation. This frees God's men from being mere imitators of each other, save in the devotedness and moral qualities seen in the former ones. Mere imitation is but fanaticism. It is the heart God wants. '' My son give Me thy heart." When He has that, the defects in His servant will be overcome; the weakness of the vessel will but serve God's strength; in the anxiety to please the Lord in everything, the knowledge of His mind will be acquired in such a fashion as to give understanding to the simple, power to the weak, and wisdom to the foolish.