Marisa’s Reviews > A Shepherd Looks at the Good Shepherd and His Sheep > Status Update

~ It is ever He who holds us in His hand, if we will allow ourselves to be so owned and loved. We do not have to "hold on to Him" as so many wrongly imagine. How much better to rest in the quiet assurance of knowing His hand is upon me rather than doubting my feeble efforts to hold onto Him.

~ This is the life of serene security. This is the relationship of quiet relaxation. This is the life of rest and repose; for the person willing to be led of the Lord there is endless enjoyment in His company.

~ The person who so lives in Christ's presence will never perish. He it is out of whose innermost being cascades clear streams of life-giving refreshment to those around him. This is the individual who is an inspiration and blessing to his generation, and to his God.

~ As long as my communion with Him continues, His life is imparted as a clear flowing stream from the foundation source of His own magnificent, inexhaustible self. He comes to me continuously in never-ending life to energize and invigorate me. I am His, to be the recipient of an ever-renewed life. He is mine to be the bestower of every good and perfect gift needed to sustain me through all eternity.

~ So there flows between His gracious Spirit and my spirit an interchange of life—His life. I am in Him; He is in me. There is an ongoing, continuing interrelationship whereby He imparts His life to me and takes up my little life into His.

~ I am said to have spiritual life only so long as there is being derived directly from God a measure of His life. It is He who in the realm of my conscience alerts me to absolute verities, ultimate truth. It is in this way I know what I ought to do, what I ought not to do. I am alive to what is appropriate and proper behavior before Him and what is not.

~ ...all moral, all soul life is derived from our Lord, for without the capacities of mind, emotion, and will bestowed upon us by Him, we would have no way of enjoying even this life.

~ [God] enables me thus to derive my physical life and well-being from His wondrous world around me. The moment I can no longer do this I am said to be physically dead.

Precisely the same principle operates in my soul. My mind, emotions, and will are stimulated and sustained by correspondence with the moral environment that surrounds me.

~ Life is correspondence between an organism and its environment. Life goes on only so long as the organism is deriving its sustenance from its surroundings. The instant it no longer draws its support from its environment, life ceases.

~ The eternal life inherent in Him, whereby they shall never perish, within which they can enjoy endless security under His hand, are benefits made possible only in constant communion with Him.