There is a fathomless depth to all the words of Scripture which grows upon us in broad bright ranges of significance as our inner spirit becomes more and more united to God Himself. Many times in the Bible do we come across the expression, “Thou art my God.” What a revelation it is to us of the possibilities of union between the infinite Creator and His little creature! God gives Himself to us in the same proportion that we intelligently and believingly give ourselves up to Him, and in proportion to the room we make in our affections and thoughts for His occupancy. The secret of salvation and of all of the steps in spiritual life is in Divine appreciation, the receiving of Christ into ourselves, and through Christ receiving the three Persons of the blessed Godhead. We may arrange some thoughts on Divine appropriation in the following order:  

1. What we amount to on all lines of salvation and Christian character depends on what we take in from the blessed Lord Jesus. It is true there is work for us to do, a repentance and a consecration, a renunciation of all sin, an emptying of ourselves of our own life and disposition. But all this would avail us nothing if we did not trustingly and lovingly embrace the personal Jesus as a Savior, and in Him receive, by appropriating faith, His life, His graces and His holy character into our spirits. So then we are saved by what we take in from Jesus. We take His infinite merit to destroy our sins and sinfulness. We take His love to purify the cravings of our hearts. We take His authority as the rule of our lives. We take the interests of His Kingdom into our hearts, and make them our own personal interests, and thereby inflame our zeal in His service.  

There are many religious zealots in the world who are working arduously only to build up sectarian establishments, or are pouring themselves out in various religious ambitions, or are working some selfish enterprise of their own, the echoes of whose toils will never be heard in eternity, because it is all of the creature. The only true religious work that is recognized in Heaven is where the soul yields up its own plans and life to God, takes into itself God’s plan and the welfare of His kingdom and works directly for God Himself.  

Our usefulness depends on how clearly we apprehend the interests of God’s Kingdom. It depends on how closely we put ourselves in sympathy with God’s personal feelings, and how lovingly and perseveringly we seek to do His work, for His own sake and in the very way we apprehend He would do it were He in our stead. Hence in our conversion, in our sanctification and in our good works, everything depends on taking Christ in personal relationship with us, and appropriating His merit as our own, His life as our life, His interests and Kingdom as ours, so that through it all we can say, “Thou art my God.”  

2. In order to Divine appropriation, there must be a constant and clear perception of the personality of God, and also of the three Persons in the blessed unity of the Godhead. While the great mass of Christians believe that God is infinitely personal, yet to but very few is there a constant looking upon God as a real personality, with Whom they have to deal in every detail of life, and in every moment of duration.  

With the great mass of mankind God is only a neuter noun of power. In nearly all departments of modern literature there is hardly a recognition of God as an infinite personality; His operations are referred to under the word, “nature,” and the leading writers of the age speak of nature doing this or that, proving that the great bulk of so-called, civilized minds are living in the darkness of heathenism. This universal twilight respecting the close, intimate, personal relationship that God sustains to all men, extends its blighting influence to multitudes who deem themselves sincere Christians. It is only in the radiant shining of the indwelling Holy Ghost that the mind is delivered from this impersonal fog, and by which it comes to see that we are related to God by personal ties, more delicate and enduring than with all other beings in the universe put together. To say “Thou art my God,” and to mean it in the Scriptural sense, implies a cloudless apprehension of His adorable person.  

In the realm of astronomy, men seek to solve the silvery mist of the Milky Way, and reduce it to distinct orbs, and well-defined systems of worlds. In the study of chemistry, men search into the analysis of matter and seek to find the separate elements that compose the different forms of matter. Thus science travels from the vague to the well-defined, from confused star-dust to specific orbs. In like manner a soul that truly loves God and sets out seriously to be thoroughly acquainted with Him, is learning a supernatural science and with the keen vision of telescopic faith resolves what, to other minds, is only the glitter of impersonal attributes into a well-defined, ever-blessed individual God.  

Such a soul will not rest short of a personal rest in the love and communion of a personal God; and such a soul will always discern a Divine person under every form of law, or every word of Scripture, or every event of providence or every form of matter. When we thus appropriate God as our own, our love is not in a system of religion, and we are not under the coercive lash of a set of laws, but we are governed by a Divine Person. The whole of our worship is not to carry out certain rules of life, but to be conformed to that very Person Who is luminously and lovingly revealed to the eye of faith as the Man, Christ Jesus.  

3. As we take other advance steps in Divine appropriation, we see the utter weakness and insufficiency of all other persons but Himself. The bottom seems to drop out from all created fountains, and we readily see the end of all creature helps and consolations. In fact, these two truths are companions—the separate hemispheres of one truth, namely, as we are cut loose from all creatures, we more easily and deeply appropriate God; and vice versa, the more thoroughly we enter into oneness with the personal life of God, the more quietly and quickly we relinquish our hold upon all creatures.  

God allows some of His children to undergo heartrending experiences, or by mysterious chains of providence to suffer the desolation of all things, including temporal ease, earthly comforts, friends, worldly or churchly honors; and oftentimes to the utter disruption of everything in the outward life, there are added wild storms of inward troubles and sorrows, which resemble a terrific cyclone. Yet in multitudes of such cases God has made all these things the beautiful opportunities of coming into an unspeakable sweet union of personal relation and fellowship.  

St. John, banished to the Isle of Patmos, cut off from human society, surrounded by wild beasts, and the melancholy roar of the sea surf on the shore, was the occasion for the most glorious revelation of the Lord Jesus, the opening of the Heavenly world and the crowning revelations of Scripture truth. That experience of the apostle was a typical one, and has been repeated in varying degrees to thousands of souls.  

Sometimes God’s saints are islanded in a mysterious ocean of His dealings where no ships are allowed to stop, on purpose that He may draw them more deeply into Himself, and give them unfoldings so deep and still and powerful that the least intrusion of another would spoil them. Many times it is by the bitterness and injustice of others that the soul is led out into the inexpressible sweetness of the Divine nature. And so a real life of faith is full of paradoxes. The increase of all earthly loneliness increases and intensifies the society of God. The greater the depths of poverty, the more there is discovered the dazzling riches of the inner life of Jesus. The more daggers our fellowmen thrust at us, the more softly and tenderly do we feel the healing balm of the very heart of Christ.  

4. This personal appropriation of God leads us to find Him everywhere. Every form in creation from a wild flower to a towering mountain becomes a thin veil under which we detect the presence of that personal infinite Will, which we love more than life. The value of everything in life or creation depends on its facility of leading us to God by the shortest and swiftest route.  

The failure to see God everywhere, and to claim Him as our own at all times, is the reason why so many mismanage the sorrows and calamities of life. If we fail to receive God in every trouble and sorrow that comes to us, we don’t get out of it what God intended. The One Who loves us so infinitely is perpetually coming to our door in disguise, and because He does not wear the beautiful clothing in which we think God should dress, we miss our blessings. Nothing but faith, pure faith, can look through the variegated drapery of circumstances in which God clothes Himself. The more ardently we love anyone, the more swiftly can we detect his presence. And when we are aflame with love for God, we can hear His footfall, detect the stillness of His inward voice and descry the movement of His hand, when other persons think it is nothing but a whim, or the rustling of dry leaves by the wind.  

5. The highest form of Divine appropriation is that by which we receive Him so deeply into our thoughts and choices and desires, that we spontaneously imitate Him. We unconsciously repeat the movements of any thing or person at which we steadily gaze. When the soul truly makes God its own, it enters into a secret life with God. It gets an intuitive insight into God’s behavior and the movement of His mind and purposes. It continually gathers upon itself those traits of Christ’s character which are the very opposite of those of the men of this world, such as calmness, restfulness, insight into men and things, extreme simplicity of life and manners, impartiality, and limitless charity and a spontaneous humility that utterly ignores what the world calls great and fine. The soul seems to see God at work, and imitates Him more than it is aware of.  

Blessed are they who can open every part of their being without reserve to God, and appropriate Him through the channel of Christ’s humanity, in all His character and ever-blessed Person and say continually, “O God, Thou art my God.”