God's promise is "Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."
The whole heart must be yielded to God, or the change can never be wrought in us by which we are to be restored to his likeness. By nature we are alienated from God. The Holy Spirit describes our condition in such words as these: "Dead in trespasses and sins," "the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint," "no soundness in it." We are held fast in the snare of Satan; "taken captive by him at his will."* God desires to heal us, to set us free. But since this requires an entire transformation, a renewing of our whole nature, we must yield ourselves wholly to him.
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Many are the ways in which God is seeking to make himself known to us and to bring us into communion with him. Nature speaks to our senses without ceasing. The open heart will be impressed with the love and glory of God as revealed through the works of his hands. The listening ear can hear and understand the communications of God through the things of nature. The green fields, the lofty trees, the buds and flowers, the passing cloud, the falling rain, the babbling brook, the glories of the heavens, speak to our hearts, and invite us to become acquainted with him who made them all.
Our Saviour bound up his precious lessons with the things of nature. The trees, the birds, the flowers of the valley, the hills, the lake, and the beautiful heavens, as well as the incidents and surroundings of daily life, were all linked with the words of truth, that his lessons might thus be often recalled to mind, even amid the busy cares of man's life of toil.
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The change of heart by which we become children of God is in the Bible spoken of as birth. Again, it is compared to the germination of the good seed sown by the husbandman. In like manner those who are just converted to Christ are, as "new-born babes," to "grow up"* to the stature of men and women in Christ Jesus. Or like the good seed sown in the field, they are to grow up and bring forth fruit. Isaiah says that they shall "be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified."* So from natural life, illustrations are drawn, to help us better to understand the mysterious truths of spiritual life.
Not all the wisdom and skill of man can produce life in the smallest object in nature. It is only through the life which God himself has imparted, that either plant or animal can live. So it is only through the life from God that spiritual life is begotten in the hearts of men. Unless a man is "born from above,"* he cannot become a partaker of the life which Christ came to give.
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