And that is the first lesson we need.  We need often to meditate on it, and to pray, and to think, and to wait before God, until our hearts open to the wonderful consciousness that the everlasting God has a divine life within us which can not exist but through Him.  I believe God has given His life, it roots in Him.  I shall feel it must be maintained by Him.  We often think that God has given us a life which is now our own, a spiritual life, and that we are to take charge; and then we complain that we can not keep it right.  No wonder.  We must learn to live, learn to live as Jesus did.  I have a God-given treasure in this earthen vessel.  I have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.  I have the life of God’s Son within me given me by God Himself, and it can only be maintained by God Himself as I live in fellowship with Him.  What does the Apostle Paul teach us in Romans VI.; there where he has just told us that we must reckon ourselves dead unto sin, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus?  He goes on at once to say:  “Therefore yield, present yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead.”  How often a Christian hears solemn words about his being alive to God, and his having to reckon himself dead indeed to sin, and alive to God in Christ!  He does not know what to do; he immediately casts about:  “How can I keep it, this death and this life?” Listen to what Paul says.  The moment that you reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to God, go with that life to God Himself, and present yourself as alive from the dead, and say to God:  “Lord, Thou hast given me this life.  Thou alone canst keep it.  I bring it to Thee.  I cannot understand all.  I hardly know what I have got, but I come to God to perfect what He has begun.”  To live like Christ, I must be conscious every moment that my life has come from God, and He alone can maintain it.

Then, secondly, how did Christ live out His life during the thirty-three years in which He walked here upon earth?  He lived it in dependence on God.  You know how continually He says:  “The Son can do nothing of Himself.  The words that I speak, I speak not of Myself.”  He waited unceasingly for the teaching, and the commands, and the guidance of the Father.  He prayed for power from the Father.  Whatever He did, He did in the name of the Father.  He, the Son of God, felt the need of much prayer, of persevering prayer, of bringing down from heaven and maintaining the life of fellowship with God in prayer.  We hear a great deal about trusting God.  Most blessed!  And we may say:  “Ah, that is what I want,” and we may forget what is the very secret of all,—­that God, in Christ, must work all in us.  I not only need God as an object of trust, but I must have Christ within as the power to trust; He must live His own life of trust in me.  Look at it in that wonderful story of Paul, the Apostle, the beloved servant of God.  He is in danger of self-confidence, and God in heaven