Christ is all and in all. (Colossians
3:11)
I wonder, dear friends, what you covet and pray
for more than anything else. For my own part, my coveting, my praying is more
than for anything else, a fresh and mighty captivation of the Lord Jesus, a
captivation of Christ. Oh, it is quite true, and we know it, that He is
our Life, He is our Savior, He is so much to us and we are right when we
say that we could not live without Him. And yet, is there not some margin
between that and what I am calling an absolute captivation with Christ? That He
is a passion in our lives, that He is a dominating power in our
lives. Language fails... that He has just so captured us, so utterly captured
us, that not only is He our Life in the sense that we couldn't get on without
Him, but that He is a passion for living. This man who wrote these
words, just look at him in this way: somehow he had seen Christ at the
beginning and through his long years he had seen more and more of Christ, until
in prison – with all those terrible sufferings and afflictions and adversities
and sorrows and disappointments that had come upon him through those years, his
catalog of adversities right at the end; Christ is more than everything.
Christ is in the ascendant, it is “Christ will be All, and in all.” Now I say,
language fails, I cannot put into words what I mean, but oh, for the
positiveness of this passion of Christ....
Such a seeing, a grasping, an apprehending and
being mastered by the Greatness of the One to Whom, by the grace of God, we
have been united, called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ.
May it be more than a mental grasping of Christ; that we know
He is Great, we believe He is great, we have experienced something of His
Greatness. May our hearts, more than even our minds, be
mastered by this Man Jesus Christ and we be His abject slaves in
worship and adoration. He is so great!