S. D. Gordon

“ It is sin that makes sacrifice. Sin did the carpenter work on the cross, our sin. Sin grew the thorns, and then served as weaver to make the mocking, cutting crown—our sin, yours and mine. Love yields to the sacrifice, His love for us, His love in us for the others. Sin is everywhere. Its finger-print is in nature, and its scar on human life. ”

“ All the weaver sees is the apparent tangle of many coloured threads and thread ends, while he thrusts in his needles according to the card of instructions. The more faithfully and skilfully he can follow the directions the better a piece of weaving work is done.
We simply obey. We use all the strength we have, and the skill we can acquire, in obeying. We are not to depend on what we can see or feel for inspiration, only on the Master Looms-man; on His word, written, and spoken in our hearts, and on His answering peace within. Obedience is the one key-note for all the music. ”

“ All the life grows out of that bit of kneeling-time, and all the life is carried to it. The hidden springs of the life are here.
And prayer becomes a mental attitude. You think of everything that comes up, opportunity, difficulty, emergency, crisis, plannings,—you instinctively come to think about each thing from the standpoint of the kneeling-time. And so prayer grows to be an atmosphere. You live your life in His presence to whom you kneel. He is always present. You come to recognize His presence, which means that His presence dominates all your life. ”

“ And only as the breast is bared to the cutting until a bit of your red life stains the knife, only so can there be any of the power of God in, or through, or out of, your life. But turn that sentence around, and smile in your heart as you remember this, as you do push quietly on past the cutting knife, and say never a word about the knife or the sharp pain—the best folks never talk about their sacrifices, they are too intent on the Man just ahead,—as a man so does, there come into his life a fire and a fragrance that burns and breathes out wherever he goes. ”

“ It keeps us in joint; then the power flows from Him, through that joint, out where our life touches.
Obedience is really a music word. It is the rhythmic swinging together of two wills, His and ours. Rhythm of action is power. Rhythm of colour is beauty. Rhythm of sound is music. But it's really all music. For power is music of action. Beauty is music to the eye. Rhythmic sound is music to the ear and heart. If there might be more of this music, He and we in perfect accord, how the crowds would be caught by its melody and come eagerly to listen. ”

“ If the knife holds your eyes, you'll never get past it. That knife is like the deadly serpent's glittering eye. If the cobra's eye can get your eye, you are held fast in that awful, deadly fascination.
If you'll lift your eyes, to the Master's face!--ah, that's the one thing, the only thing, that can hold our eyes with gaze steadier than any serpent eye. The face of Christ Jesus, torn by thorns, scarred by thongs, but with the wondrous beauty light shining out, and those great patient, pleading eyes! ”

“ Does the crowd get hold of your heart as you elbow your way through them, or look down into their faces? Is it just a crowd to you? Or is it a great company of hungry hearts, half-starved lives, so needy for what only this Lord Jesus can give? The dumb cry of the crowds, in crowds and one by one, comes up in our ears to-day. Do you hear it? I say "dumb," for they don't know themselves what it is they need. They feel the need. Restless and chafing, they feel without knowing just what it is they lack and need. ”

“ Across the valley, still looking west, lies the city, outside whose wall is the little knoll called Calvary, where Jesus gave His life out. Over here to the east and south lies little Bethany, which speaks of His resurrection power. And a bit farther off are the bare wilds sloping down,—that is the place of the sore temptation. Far away to the north, up in the clouds, lies the snow-clad mountain, beyond your outer vision, yet coming now to your inner vision, where the God within shined out through the Man. ”

“ This spirit of obedience is the one finger-post found oftenest along this road. So only can we be true to the vision. And obedience itself is not true obedience, nor true to the vision, save as it is a love-obedience. Real obedience breathes in the spirit of the One being obeyed. It breathes out the love-spirit of him who obeys.
The touchstone of the "Follow Me" life is not need, nor service, nor sacrifice. The need is felt to the paining point. The service is given joyously to the limit of strength. The sacrifice is yielded to to the bleeding point. ”

“ They all seemed to point, with other similar evidence, to the feeling deep down in human consciousness of the need of sacrifice. Is it a bit of an innate instinct in our common human nature, that only through sacrifice can the hurt of life be healed? However this be, it certainly is true, that the touch of Him who gave His life clear out for men, that touch is the thing, and the only thing, that can make music where there was only discord. It is only His pierced hand upon weaver and web that touches ugly threads into beauty as they are woven into the fabric of life. ”

“ So measured it becomes the longest road ever trod, from purity's heights to sin's depths; from love's mountain top to hate's deepest gulf. It makes a new record for roughness. For no one has ever suffered what our Lord Jesus did; and no one's suffering ever had the value and meaning for another that His had and has for all men and for us. Not one of us to-day realizes how He suffered, nor the intensity of meaning that suffering actually has for all the race, and for those of us who accept it for ourselves. ”

“ And men haven't changed, nor the diseases that hurt their life, nor the Master, nor the tender love of His heart. But there's more than knife; there's fulness of life following. He would have us get the life even though it means the knife. Most times—every time, shall I say?—the life comes only through the knife. Yet when the life has come, with its great tireless strength, and its deep breathing, and sheer delight of living, you are grateful for the knife that led the way to such life. ”

“ This invitation, "Follow Me," is the language of a road, the picture of one walking behind another in a road. And that will remain in our minds as the chief picture of this pleading call. But there's another bit of picture talking that will help. That is the picture of a weaver's loom, with the warp threads running lengthwise, the shuttle threads running crosswise, and the cross beam (or batten) driving each shuttle thread into place in the cloth with a sharp blow.
These three groups of experiences are like so many hanks of threads in the loom, in which the pattern of life is being woven. ”

“ Service isn't a pastime; it's a passion. That "must" sends you out on glad unheralded errands to help in any way you can, and in every way by which the Jesus message can get to them.
The "must" of His tender passion within keeps you steadily pushing ahead, regardless of not being understood by some, nor your efforts appreciated by others. The flame of that "must" takes hold of time and strength and possessions. It becomes the delight of your life to minister to the needs of men, even as He did. You see them through His eyes. You feel their need through His heart. ”

“ The man close in behind the Lord Jesus doesn't need to be concerned about power. In fact he isn't concerned about it, only concerned with keeping close in touch. All the rest comes without our being concerned. It comes from him, the Man ahead. There is far more power, the very power of God, softly flowing and flooding its way in and through and out, than you are ever conscious of. Others will know more of the power than you. You are thinking about the Man ahead, keeping in touch, pleasing Him. Obedience has become a new word to you. It's the music of keeping step, keeping step with Him. ”

“ It helps to remember what sacrifice means; not suffering merely, though it includes suffering; not privation simply, though it may include this, too. There is much suffering and privation where there is no sacrifice. Sacrifice means doing something to help some one else when it takes some of your life-blood, and when you don't have to, except the have-to of love.
Sacrifice was so woven into the very fabric of Jesus' life that wherever you cut in some of the red threads stick out. It was the never-absent undertone of His life, from earliest years until the tragic close. ”

“ When you are reading the wonderful works among the needy throngs, you are reading the biography of the Nazareth years, in their outer reach. The life you live is the thing that tells! This is the meaning of the thirty hidden years. The Father said, "My Son shall spend most of His years down there living, just living a true, simple Eden life; living with Me in the midst of home and carpenter shop and village." This is what the world needs so much to be taught, how to live. And the teaching must be by living, teaching by action. The message must be lived.
If we men might live Jesus! ”

“ Its alchemy transmutes possessions into lives, redeemed, sweetened, Jesus-touched, Christ-renewed lives, made like Himself. And the sweet music of their new lives comes up into His gladdened ears, and a few of the strains come to cheer you. One may have at first a strange feeling of bareness, for things that we've always clung to as essential have gone out from us to others. But with the outgoing of things has come an incoming of Himself, in greater abundance than we dreamed possible. ”

“ The presence of a man in need, of either body or spirit, took hold of His heart. Over and over we are told that He was "moved with compassion." What a life it was! What a heart He had!
Now our Lord Jesus calls us along this bit of the road. That is to say, the Holy Spirit within us will make our hearts tender and compassionate, even as our Lord Jesus was. The crowds always moved Him tremendously. He couldn't stand the great dumb cry that the mere presence of a multitude rang in His ears. The mere presence of some one in need, earnestly seeking, played upon the strings of His heart. ”

“ God never chooses sacrifice as His first choice for any one, not even for His Son. But sin is here, an abnormal, foreign thing. Life is shot through and through with its ugly markings. You can't go a foot's length down the pathway of obedience without finding the keen edge of a knife, freshly sharpened, held across the path with its cutting edge toward you, challenging your advance, doing its utmost to hold you back. ”

“ He longed to have us give all, yet only what our hearts couldn't hold back. His friendship has one thing peculiar to itself. He has no favourites, in our common thought of that word, among the countless numbers who have come to be included in His inner circle of friends. Yet He gives to each such a distinctive personal touch of His own heart that you feel yourself to be on closest terms. He is nearer and closer than any other, and your longing is to be as near and close to Him in life as He is to you in His heart. ”

“ Would any man have enjoyed home-life with all the rare home-joys, the sweetest of all natural joys, so much as He? And then the larger circle of congenial friends, the enjoyment of music, of exquisite art, the reverent study of the great questions of life, of the wonders of nature whose powers it was given man to study and cultivate and develop, [11] —it is surely no irreverence to think of Him both enjoying and gracing such a life, for such was the original plan of human life as thought out by a gracious Creator. ”

“ Now Jesus lived this commonplace round of life, and lived it under the ever-freshening touch of His Father's presence. It isn't the thing you do, nor the things that surround you, that make your life, but the spirit that breathes out of you in the midst of the things. It's the you in you that makes the life, regardless of surroundings. The outer things are the accidents, you, the spirit that breathes out of you,—this is the real thing. ”

“ Whether really from Greece, or Greek-speaking people from elsewhere, or simply non-Jewish people, they represented the outer, non-Jewish world coming to Jesus. The Jew door was slammed violently in His face, but here was the great outer-world door opening. And He had come to a world! But instantly, across the vision so attractive to His eyes, there came another vision, never absent from His spirit those last weeks, the vision black and forbidding, of a cross. And He knew that only through this vision of a cross could the vision of a world coming be realized. ”