One Thing I Know
I’m an avid reader of old Christian books. I love the feel of the well-worn covers, the dusty pages, and the beauty and challenge of the language. A friend of mine has been sharing a collection of books written by a lady named Marjorie Wilkinson. She isn’t anyone of renown. Her writing is simple. It is more of a collection of musings by a woman who loves the Lord and seeks to live her life in obedience. She splatters her writing with moments of history as she lives through the two Great Wars and speaks of a beautiful British culture mostly now lost.
In her book, One Thing I Know, she records a quote from what she calls a famous American minister named Phillips Brooks. I’ve never heard of him, but he made an impression on Marjorie as he wrote, “If you give your whole life to loving and serving Christ, one of the blessings of your consecration of yourself to Him will be that in Him there will be open to you a pattern of yourself. You will see your possible self as He sees it, and life will have but one wish and purpose for you, which will be that you may realize that idea of yourself which you have seen in Him.”
I have known times when the Lord seems to have placed before me a possible self, an idea of the future, an intangible goal, a vision clear but obscured. For a brief moment, I am excited at the possibility, long for the desire, and praise Him for the promise. Then, the image slips away, and I am faced with the tasks and hurdles required to reach that vision. I succumb to today.
But I am learning that reaching forth is necessary. To take each tiny step by faith with consistency moves me closer to the goal. As I do my part, surely, He will do His. He would not tantalize me with something impossible, for in Him all things are possible, even those vague visions are His calling to greater things done for Christ and a deeper level of usefulness and sanctification.
It brings me to the definition of faith – the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things unseen. And it reminds me of the promise of His completing the work in my life from Philippians 1:6. It also lands me square into the reaching forth part of Philippians 3:13 – “but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Reaching forth requires that type of faith. Oswald Chambers said, “When God gives a vision, transact business on that line, not matter what it costs.” To me, that is what it means to be reaching forth. To have that intangible vision of what God wants you to be or to do, and to keep striving consistently within that line by faith. Even the Apostle Paul admitted he had not already attained or was perfect, but that he was on a journey, reaching forth, that he might be all God wanted him to be.
I think that is what captured Marjorie’s imagination as well. It wasn’t about self-glory or praise, it was about becoming all God offered. To be His fully. To have peace and assurance that you are living within His will and being all you can be in Christ; to get that little taste of the heavenly and long for more.