To love Jesus is to long to be with Him. To love Jesus is to think about Him. To love Jesus is to obey Him, to obey Him readily and implicitly, not feebly and reluctantly. The certainty of heaven is assured when we keep Jesus in the center of our hearts, in the center of our lives. He is to be the author of impulse and desire, of effort and action. "Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." Will you get to heaven? What is Jesus to you? Does He charm you? Does He draw you heavenward? Is it to be with Him that you seek heaven? Is He the fairest flower in all its garden? Is He the rarest and most precious of all its jewels? Is He sweeter than all its songs? Does He beget the longings for its blissful abodes? Does the desire to see and be with Him stir the profoundest ambition of your soul? Jesus and heaven are bound up together.
To love Him with an untold passionate devotion is heaven begun, heaven continued, and heaven ended. Paul says: "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me that day: and not to me only, but unto all them that love his appearing."
The crown is not only personal to him, but universal, only limited "unto all them that love his appearing." Here it is not simply love for Jesus personally, but love for the great fact which is to culminate in the great glory of Jesus. To "love his appearing" there is the absolute necessity for loving His Person. The loving His coming is the test of loving His Person. We love the fact because we love the Person. We are not charged to love any theory or opinion about the manner of His coming, or the time, but the fact. Let Him come when He will, how He will, and for what purpose He will. We love his coming because we love Him. "Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus," and bring Thy heaven with Thee.
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E.M. Bounds (1835 - 1913)
Methodist minister and devotional writer, was born in Shelby County, Missouri. He spent the last 17 years of his life with his family in Washington, Georgia, writing his Spiritual Life Books. His burden was the neglect of prayer in the church and especially by ministers therefore his first book published was power through prayer which was originally published with the title: "The Pastor and Prayer."Practiced law for three years until he was called to preach the gospel. While serving as chaplain during the Civil War, he was captured and held prisoner in Nashville, Tennessee. After his release, he held several pastorates. His books on prayer have been continual best-sellers for over fifty years. Possibilities of Prayer.
Edward McKendree Bounds was a clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal Church South and author of eleven books, nine of which focused on the subject of prayer.
Although apprenticed as an attorney, Bounds felt called to Christian ministry in his early twenties during the Third Great Awakening. Following a brush arbor revival meeting led by Evangelist Smith Thomas, he closed his law office and moved to Palmyra, Missouri to enroll in the Centenary Seminary. Two years later, in 1859 at the age of 24, he was ordained by his denomination and was named pastor of the nearby Monticello, Missouri Methodist Church.
He became a chaplain in the Confederate States Army (3rd Missouri Infantry CSA) During the First Battle of Franklin, Bounds suffered a severe forehead injury from a Union saber, and he was taken prisoner. On June 28, 1865, Bounds was among Confederate prisoners who were released upon the taking of an oath of loyalty to the United States.
According to people who were constantly with him, in prayer and preaching, for eight years "Not a foolish word did we ever hear him utter. He was one of the most intense eagles of God that ever penetrated the spiritual ether."
"As breathing is a physical reality to us, so prayer was a reality for Bounds. He took the command, 'Pray without ceasing' (1 Thess. 5:17) almost as literally as nature takes the law that controls our breathing. He did not merely pray well that he might write well about prayer. He prayed because the needs of the world were upon him. He prayed for long years, upon subjects that the easy going Christian rarely gives a thought, and for objects that men of less thought and faith are always ready to call impossible. From his solitary prayer vigils, year by year, there arose teaching equaled to few men in modern Christian history. He wrote transcendently about prayer, because he was himself transcendent in its practice." - Reverend Claude L. Chilton, minister and friend.