The Lifting Power of Love and Grace!

“Love Lifted Me!”

In my last blog, I shared about the magnetic drawing power of God.  That drawing power to lift us into the Higher Christian Life, into the heavenly place, to the throne of God, comes through the love and grace of God.  I am drawn again and again to the ancient writers because they in turn draw us into the very heights of God!

We Are Lifted by the Love of God. The 5^th century church father Chrysostom declared, “Love is the way that leads up to God.” He uses the Greek term anaphero, meaning “to carry up higher.” Love carries us when we cannot carry ourselves, when we cannot pull ourselves out of the pits of our lives. As the old hymn says, “When nothing else could help, love lifted me.” Puritan philosopher Thomas Traherne asserted that through the true love of God, “you are advanced to the Throne of God.”

We Are Lifted by God’s Grace. Higher Life writer Sarah Foulkes Moore, in her booklet Throne Rights, explains: “Through the grace of God, every believer is elevated with Him to the right hand of God and occupies potentially the Throne of the Lord. In the purposes of God this elevation took place at the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ through the believer’s identification with Him.”  Puritan Thomas Watson likens the lifting power of grace with three vivid images:

• Grace carries us like a heavenly chariot: “A godly Christian begins his heaven here, grace translates him into the paradise of God. Elijah left his mantle behind—but he was taken up in a fiery chariot. So it is with a saint, the mantle of the flesh is left behind—but his soul is carried up in a fiery chariot of love.”
• Grace carries us upward like fire: “Grace carries the soul up towards God. Grace is like fire. It is the nature of fire to ascend.”
• Grace mounts us up on wings like eagles: “You who lie groveling on the earth—feeding like the serpent, on dust—or like eels wrapping yourselves in the mud and slime of the world, had you that new and holy principle of grace infused, your souls would sparkle upwards—you would “mount up to heaven as eagles”( Isaiah 40:31). Had you the sharp eye of faith to see Christ, you would soon have the swift wing of desire to fly to him.”

Meditate on the meaning of this old hymn:

He has raised our human nature

On the clouds to God’s right hand;

There we sit in heavenly places,

There with Him in glory stand.

Jesus reigns, adored by angels;

Man with God is on the throne;

Mighty Lord, in Thine Ascension

We by faith behold our own.

Think of this—He has raised our human nature. We are still human, but He has raised us above mere human nature. Imagine this: Man with God on the throne! We are seated on the throne with God. It is only by faith we can conceive of this truth. By His grace and love He raises our understanding that He has indeed lifted us up.