Through Baca’s Vale by J.C. Philpot
November 4
Love is of God. 1 John 4:7
Love is a gift which the risen Mediator has received that he may freely communicate it out of his fullness to his people. And we must be brought to feel that it is a gift. Could we produce or keep it alive in our own hearts, we would burn incense to our own skill or our own care. Some perhaps will scarcely believe that a child of God can feel enmity against Christ; but his carnal mind is unmitigated enmity against him. And oh, what a cutting feeling it is for a follower of the Lamb to have a principle in him which hates Christ; hates, bitterly hates his Person, hates his holiness and purity; which could join in the cry, “Crucify him, crucify him,” and push and strike him with the Roman soldiers and the Jewish rabble. Unless painful experience convinced us that there was such a dreadful principle within, we could not believe that there was this devilish enmity in our heart against him whom our souls desire to love and adore.
But what know we about love, if we have not all this enmity, carnality, and coldness to try it? When we have been exercised with all these wretched feelings, and the Lord begins to drop into our hearts a little mercy and grace, and to draw forth our affections unto him, we then begin to feel what a sweet thing love is. Love is the sweetest balm man can taste in this life. It is so naturally. There is a sweetness in love. When we love our wives, our children, our friends, there is a sweetness and tenderness in the very feeling, that is–as moralists say of virtue–its own reward. Coldness, dislike, envy, prejudice, jealousy, suspicion, peevishness, quarreling–these sparks of hell burn and torture every spot on which they fall. And so, if ever there is a hell in a man’s bosom, it is when full of hatred against God and his people. But if ever we feel a foretaste of heaven, it is when the Lord kindles some meltings of love, some drawings of affection toward Jesus and to those who are his. Then enmity and prejudice flee away; and we feel as if we could take all the people of God into our bosom, and say, “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
Taken from Grace Gems.
Greetings,
I have found JC Philpot’s messages to be very beneficial and encouraging. He, like no one else has a way of bringing to light what many a saint goes through. I, myself have been through a dark period of time where I have not sensed the presence of the Lord and have been made to see the utter blackness of my heart.
To hear of other men of God who have gone through these times and see how God used JC Philpot in regards to “experiential” workings of the heart are most uplifting.
Today, you do not see that type of preaching for the most part.