What Kind of revival Do We Need?

By Andrew Murray

How is the church to be lifted up to the abundant life in Christ, which will fit her for the work that God is putting before Her? Nothing will help but a revival, nothing less than a tremendous spiritual revival. Great tides of spiritual energy must be put into motion if this work is to be accomplished. Now there may be great differences in what we understand by revival. Many will think of the work of evangelists like Moody and Torrey. We need a different and mightier revival than those were. In them the chief object was the conversion of sinners, and incidentally, the quickening of believers. But the revival that we need calls for a deeper and more entire upheaval of the Church. The great defect of those revivals was that the converts were received into a Church that was not living on the high level of consecration and holiness, and speedily sank down to the average standard of ordinary religious life. Even the believers who had been roused by it, also gradually returned to their former life of clouded fellowship and lack of power to testify for Christ.

      The revival we need is a revival of holiness, in which the consecration of the whole being is to the service of Christ, and that for the whole life shall be counted possible. And for this there will be needed a new style of preaching in which the promises of God to dwell in His people, and to sanctify them for Himself, will take a place which they do not now have. When our Lord Jesus gave the promise of the Holy Spirit, He spoke of the New Covenant blessing that would be experienced – God dwelling in His people. “If a man love Me, he will keep my words; and My Father will love him.” So Paul also writes: “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith . . . that you might be filled with all the fullness of God.” With the Reformation, the great truth of justification by faith was restored to its place. But the other great truth of sanctification has never yet taken its place in the preaching and practice of the Church which God’s Word claims for it. It is for this that we need a revival, that the Holy Spirit may so take possession of us that the Father and the Son can live in us, and that the fellowship with Them, and devotion to Their will and service shall be our chief joy. This will be in very deed a holiness revival.

      The Moravian community (at Herrnhut) owed its birth to a holiness revival. There were gathered together a number of Bohemian refugees, and along with them a number of Christian of different sects. It was not long before disputes arose, and Herrnhut became a scene of contention and divisions. Zinzendorf felt this so deeply that he went down to live among them. In the power of God’s Spirit he succeeded in restoring order and in binding them together in the power and devotion of Jesus Christ and of love to each other. More than once they had remarkable manifestations of the presence of the Spirit, and their whole life became one of worship and praise. After they had for a couple of years been having their nightly fellowship meetings, they were lead to the consecration of the whole body to the service of Christ’s kingdom. It was in this holiness revival that the Moravian missionary idea was born. When John Wesley visited them he wrote: “God has given me the desire of my heart. I am with a church whose conversation is in heaven, in whom is the mind that was in Christ, and who so walk as He walked. Here I continually met what I sought for – living proofs of the power of faith, persons saved from inward as well as outward sin, by the love of God shed abroad in their hearts. I was extremely comforted and strengthened by the conversation of this lovely people.”

      A holiness revival! What was the great evangelistic revival in England through Whitefield and Wesley but this? They had together at Oxford been members of the “Holy Club”. With their whole heart they had sought deliverance from the guilt of sin, but also from the power of sin. When their eyes were opened to see how faith can claim the whole Christ in all fullness, they found the key to the preaching which was so mightily effectual for the salvation of men. What John Wesley did for the Methodism, General Booth, and his disciple, did for the Salvation Army. Looking at the material on which he had to work, it was amazing how, with his teaching of the clean heart and full salvation, he was able to inspire tens of thousands with a true devotion to Christ and the lost. There may be great differences of doctrine, but no one can be blind to the seal God has set upon the intense desire to preach a full salvation and an entire consecration.

      A revival of holiness is what we need. Such preaching of the claim that Christ Has on us, shall lead us to live entirely for Him and His kingdom; such an attachment of love to Him as shall make His fellowship our highest joy; such faith in His freeing us from the dominion of sin as shall enable us to obey His commandments; such yielding to the Holy Spirit as to be led by Him in all our daily walk – these will be some of the elements of the revival of true holiness for which the Church must learn to seek as for the pearl of great price.

      And how is it to be found? It will cost much prayer. It will cost more than that – much sacrifice of self and of the world. It will need a surrender to Christ Jesus to follow Him as closely as God is able to lead us. We must learn to look upon a life like Christ’s, having the very same mind that was in Him, as the supreme object of daily life. It is only when a prayer such as Robert Murray McCheyne’s becomes ours, “Lord make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be,” and begins to be offered by an increasing number of ministers and believers, that the promise of the New Covenant will become a matter of experience.

Fear Not, Only Believe

By Andrew Murray

      Do we not know that throughout Scripture a chief element of faith in God is a sense of powerlessness and utter helplessness? I want to speak here on the place faith must have if we are to obtain that deep, intense, living vitality which we are longing for. If we are to appropriate the words, “Fear not, only believe,” as really spoken by our Lord to ourselves, we must note well the attitude of the man to whom they were first given.

      Jairus was in great trouble. His little daughter was at the point of death. He fell at Christ’s feet and begged Him to come and lay His hand on her. Jesus went with him. But all at once there was an interruption by a woman who touched the hem of Christ’s garment. Jairus began to fear that they might arrive too late. His worst fears were realized. A messenger met them, saying, “Your daughter is dead; why trouble the Master any further?” It was to such a man in his deep distress, now brought to utter hopelessness, that Christ spoke the words: “Fear not, only believe.” The soil had been broken deeply; the heart was prepared to believe. Christ’s precious words entered in and took possession. If we are bearing the burden of a dead or a dying church, if we are going to take part in the work of rousing her and lifting her up into abundant life in Christ, we need a word like this. It will bring us the joyous assurance, day by day, that Christ is with us, that He will work through us, and that we can count upon Him to give the blessing.

      But we must take the place that Jairus did, falling at Jesus’ feet, pleading with Him intensely, graciously, and mightily to do something. Even when the word comes, “There is no hope, death reigns, all our efforts are in vain,” we are still to be of good cheer and hold on to His word. “Fear not, only believe” must be our watchword. But only, I say it once again, only to the man who waits at Christ’s feet in prayer and looks to Him alone. There we shall learn that throughout all Scripture it is faith, in the midst of seeming impossibility, that waits and claims the fulfillment of the promise.

      Think of Abraham, “who waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, being fully assured that what He had promised, He was able also to perform.” It is as we persevere in prayer and take hold of definite promises, and beseech Him greatly to fulfill them, that we shall, in spite of every obstacle, hold fast our confidence to the end. We may find that as time goes on, as the insight into the deadly state of the Church grows deeper, and as experience teaches us how very hard it is to rouse Christians to the full meaning of, and full surrender to, the claims of Christ, our hearts will often fail us for fear and grow faint. But if we have made our covenant with Christ that we dare not go back, and are determined to hold on, we shall find that just one word from our Lord hidden in the heart, and lived on day by day, will give strength in time of greatest darkness.

      Just think of the Words of Christ in a situation that appeared to man, to be impossible. He had said of the young ruler, “How hard it is for the rich to enter heaven.” The disciples had said, “Who then can be saved?” Christ’s answer was, “With men it is impossible,” but, He added, “with God all things are possible.” And elsewhere He said, “All things are possible to him that believes.” These words are a threefold cord that cannot be broken.

      First, “With men it is impossible.” It seems easy to say, and yet how difficult to realize it and act it out. What is it that hinders the Church in this day from falling on its knees and beseeching God by His Holy Spirit to give revival? It is this: Men do not consider that the work they need to do is impossible with man. They consult and organize and labor, oh so diligently, and yet the members decline by the thousands. They cannot see that the work of winning men to become members of Christ and His Church is a work that God alone can do through men who have yielded themselves to the Holy Spirit. What a day that would be if the Church were to fall down before God and bow in the dust with the Cry: “Oh God, it is impossible with man.” We should then be prepared for the second lesson, “But not with God – all things are possible with God.” At first sight this word also appears easy to accept. We are so sure there is nothing impossible with such a God. And yet, when we ask whether God’s servants really believe it, and in the joyful confidence that He is going to do it wait upon Him and expect His working, we soon find out that it is not so. God is so little of a reality to us. How few men take time with God and secure His holy presence to fill their hearts and strengthen them in their work.

      Oh, all you who are beginning to take the state of the Church to heart and to bear it as a burden before the Lord, do not be surprised if you have found it a hard thing. Fully grasp the truth, “With God all things are possible.” Learn the lesson of bringing that truth into your daily prayer and your daily work. Let its light shine into your heart, on your sphere of labor, on the Church around you, on the weakest and most hopeless part of the Church, until all your thoughts have this as their keynote: “But not with God – all things are possible with God.” He is fully able and willing to rouse the Church out of her apathy and lift Christians into the abundant life.

      But now, comes the third and most difficult lesson: “All things are possible to him that believes.” It is something great to really believe that all things are possible with God. Yet we may be anxious as to how and when it may come to pass. This word of Christ throws the responsibility on us. It is to him who believes that God makes all things possible. When Christ spoke that word to the father of the epileptic, the man felt his responsibility so deeply, and feared that he might not qualify, that he cried out, “Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief.” And Christ heard that prayer. He is still waiting, even when our hearts shrink back from the thought, “Is it going to depend upon me whether this mighty God will do the impossible thing? I do not dare bear the heavy burden of such a responsibility.” He who helped the father of the epileptic boy, He who said to Peter, “I have prayed for you, that your faith will not fail,” Jesus Christ, who became man to bring us into fellowship with the omnipotent God, He will give us the confidence to believe that it is God’s will, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, then you shall ask what you will.” Let us live in fellowship with Christ who spoke these words. He will enable us to receive them until they become the joy and the strength of our heart.

    If I have not succeeded in giving a deep impression of the sore need of the Holy Spirit and His power that the state of the Church demands, I should feel that I had failed in my purpose. But I should be still more disappointed if I were to part with the reader without having helped him to the confident assurance that God is able and willing, in answer to prayer, to work revival. He is also willing to fill the hearts of many of His children with a measure of the Holy Spirit such as they have never known. As we look out upon a Church so weak and faithless, do let us listen to the voice of Jesus as He says. “Fear not, only believe.”

      What I have already said, I say again: The Church around you may be in a dying state, with no possibility of being reached by human effort. I beseech you, Look up to God. Wait before Him in prayer until stronger desire is stirred in you and your faith rises to link itself to His omnipotence. Believe in the power of our Lord Jesus, and in His tender relationship to you, watching over your faith. Believe in the power of the Holy Spirit, the promise of the Father, the birthright of the Church. He surrounds you on every side and longs to get possession of you and those for whom you are praying. So let the study of the state of the Church give you a knowledge of God and a trust in Him beyond what you have ever known or thought.

A Talk to Young Christians on the Nature of the Christian Life

 

By T. Austin-Sparks

I am going to talk to you very simply. I trust that the people who ‘know all about it’ will not think it is too simple! But I feel we want to be quite clear about our foundations, our beginnings, and so in what I have to say I shall risk being as simple as I possibly can.

      I am going to take as the foundation the eighth chapter of the letter to the Romans. Perhaps you immediately say: Well, we know that one! And yet, you know, we may know a lot about it, and still we may not know as it has to be known. You will know this, to begin with, that the last section of this chapter is something immensely comprehensive. It reaches right back, takes us back into the “before times eternal” and gives us just a glimpse into what was happening with God before this world was. And then in the same section we are taken right on beyond these ages, to the ‘ages of the ages’, and told what things will be like then so far as we are concerned. So this chapter has a very big context.

      And in saying that, I have enunciated a law, a principle, which you will do well to remember: namely that, in order to have a Christian life that is really full, you have got to have it in its full setting. I have always felt, and the longer I live, the more strongly do I feel it, that it is a mistake just to try to keep people to little fragments – what is called the ‘simple Gospel’ – even at the beginning. If you are to have a great Christian life, you need to see from the beginning what a great thing it is you have come into – what a tremendous context the Christian life has! Right at the beginning, indeed even before they have made a beginning, people need to be impressed with this; that it is no little thing to be a Christian. That gives them a very good starting-point. If they start on that, they will make better progress; and they will arrive at something much fuller, in a quicker way, than if things are just doled out to them in little fragments as they go along.

      So remember that, and if sometimes it seems too big for you, just say: That is a very good thing; I would not have it as small as I am; there needs to be something very big to get me anywhere! For the bigger it is, the mightier is the dynamic and the motive for the Christian life.

      The Gateway to the Christian Life

      This eighth chapter of Romans, then, in its last section particularly, represents a strategic point in the movement of the whole letter, as you will see. You know that the first seven chapters are what we might call the Gateway into the Christian life. I am not going to stay for an explanation of them, but that is what they represent: seven chapters on the gateway into the Christian life. The word that will be written on the portal of that gate is ‘Faith’ – you know that. And on the gate itself, ‘The Cross’. Faith in the Cross of the Lord Jesus is the way in, and seven chapters are taken up with the Way In. And then, when you come to chapter 8, you find what is inside: what kind of situation, what kind of a life, this is, that you have come into.

      Chapter 8 presents to us the real nature of the life into which we have come. And I suppose it is one of the most elementary things, which you have heard and noted many times, that in this chapter there is one word that stands out – one word. One of the first things I did in Bible study, as a young fellow, was to underline the words in different chapters, to see how many times particular words occurred. When I got to this chapter, and underlined one particular word, I found that the chapter was simply smothered with this word. You are familiar with it: it is the word ‘Spirit’. If you go through this chapter, you will see that there is really very little else left to talk about. It all springs from, centres in, and circles round this matter of the Spirit. It begins there: “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (v. 2). We are now in, through the door; you see; we are in; and what we find here is what we may call -

      The Life in the Spirit.

      We need to understand what kind of life that is, what it really means; because with it we come into the peculiar character of a dispensation that is altogether new. There have been other dispensations in the past – dispensations in the Old Testament – which we will not mention in particular.

      But now those dispensations are past; one has followed the other, and the Old Testament, with all its different phases and stages, is closed. With the New Testament, a completely new age has been introduced, with a character all of its own, a character that never was before. You and I live in a period of time, marked off by the coming of the Lord Jesus in the first place, and by the coming of the Lord Jesus again, which is a particular phase in the whole course of the ages, with its own peculiar aspect and character.

      Now, the peculiar characteristic of this time in which you and I live, is that it is the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. I am sure you will agree with me that we do need to know what is the order of things, from God’s standpoint, in the time in which we live. In the Old Testament, they had to learn that for themselves, as to their own times – what times they were living in. You and I have got to know this: what is the time we are living in? And the answer is that this is the age, or dispensation, of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has come; He has introduced a new order of things entirely; and, until we understand that order, we shall not make any progress in our Christian life. It is very necessary for us to understand that.

      “Joined to the Lord”

      In the first place, the effect of the Holy Spirit, simply but fundamentally, is that He joins us to Christ; He brings about a vital union with the Lord Jesus. “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” (1 Cor. 6:17); it is a spiritual and inward union with the Lord Jesus. The words and language are, I know, so simple, and perhaps so well-known, that they may not grip you very forcefully, but out of this everything comes. You and I, if we are truly born-again children of God, have got to know that, right inside of us, a union has been effected between Christ and ourselves, and ourselves and Christ; that we are joined to Christ. That union has been effected; we have been made one – one.

      Now, you see, if you are one, you are not two! That seems quite obvious, of course; but there is more to it than it sounds. Very often, you know, we are two: even in the Christian life, the Lord is ‘that’, and I am ‘this’! The Lord’s way of illustrating this, you remember, is the marriage bond. Paul says: “The twain shall become one flesh. This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church” (Eph. 5:31,32). ‘One flesh’. Now, if that union is what it ought to be, those two people are so one, that to separate them is to cut one person in two, and only leave two bits, two halves, and not a whole. That is the illustration of our union with Christ. We are not complete until we are united with Christ; our completeness is in union with Christ.

      If we haven’t got Christ with us, we are only half here. If we lose the Lord, we have torn our very person in two; we have torn ourselves asunder, or we have been torn asunder – that is the effect of it. You know that spiritually, although the division may not be ultimate and utter and final, we can – by disobedience, by playing with sin, by disobeying the Lord, by this or that – bring about such an effect, so that we feel: Well, something has happened; the Lord is there and I am here, and we are not together. It is as though we have been torn in two, are not complete.

      We could dwell much upon that. But, you see, that is the beginning of the Christian life; that is the very foundation and basis of the Christian life: We and Christ have been made one – one; not two – one! To divide, now, is not merely to walk away and have an independent life – it is to destroy your own identity, to tear your own spiritual personality in pieces; and that is how it is, if we get away from the Lord in any way.

      So here, the very first thing that we find about this life in the Spirit, is that there has come about between us and Christ, and between Christ and ourselves, a oneness, which is not in any outward sense, but in a vital, inward reality. And, in greater or lesser degree, I am sure you know that that is quite true.

      The Witness of the Spirit

      We must not stop with every part of this life in the Spirit, but the next that this chapter tells us is this: “The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God” (v. 16). The first thing is: “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (v. 2) – the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus – that is the union: union with Christ. Now, the Spirit in us bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. How does He do that? Again, forgive me if I seem to be talking to you as to the Kindergarten, as to little children; How does He do it? Well, the Holy Spirit does not constantly speak in our ear, and say: You know, you are a child of God; you are a child of God. He says what He does on the basis of our being children of God – that we know it. We know how others can do certain things that we cannot; we know that we cannot take even our cue from others; there is something that we have in our own heart which makes us aware that this is, or this is not, according to the Father’s mind. Putting it into language, giving it terms, that is how it works out; it is like that. The simple truth is this – we know: “the Spirit beareth witness”; we know.

      I have many times in my life fallen back on that quite deliberately. Coming to very real testings and trials, and going through dark times, and many adverse circumstances and conditions; being tempted to wonder, to wonder if after all you are the Lord’s – those questions that can come up because of many things, experiences, and so on: many times in my life I have just fallen back on this – ‘Yes, but what about this and that from the beginning?’ I can recall, again and again, occasions when the Lord Himself definitely held me, or spoke to me, and made me know that this was right, and this was wrong. It was something that I never received from outside; I never got advice, counsel, or anything; but I knew it in myself! I could tell you of instances like that, again and again, right back from the beginning of my Christian life, where I could not do something that I did before I was the Lord’s. Something said: ‘You just can’t – no, not now! You just cannot do it.’ It was as real as, or more real than, any audible voice. And that has gone on through life, again and again, in different connections.

      It sounds very simple, but I have had to say to myself: Yes, but what is that, coming right from the inside? That is the Spirit bearing witness with my spirit that I am a child of God. A child of God does not behave like that; a child of God does behave like this; a child of God does not do those things; a child of God does do these things. That is what it amounts to all the way along. The Spirit says: ‘Others can; you cannot; you are a child of God.’ Well, that is simple, but it is very real – the Spirit bearing witness. That is to be the basic law of our Christian life. And every one of you who is a child of God ought to know what I am talking about, and I am quite sure you do, at least to some extent. If you have not gone very far with the Lord, or if you are not even the Lord’s yet, let me say: This is what it means to be a Christian. It is something real on the inside.

      A Different Constitution

      Now we come to another thing in this chapter. As you look at it, you will find that this means that we are constituted in an altogether different way from all other people. The Holy Spirit, coming inside, has created and constituted a new kind of human being, a different kind of humanity from all the rest of humanity. That is saying a tremendous thing; and yet it is not something advanced in the Christian life – this is something fundamental to it, belonging to the very beginning. We use the word ‘species’: well, the Holy Spirit has created and constituted a new and different species of humanity. The fundamental reality about a true child of God is that he is different from all other people who are not children of God. The difference is not that they have decided to be religious, and to go to meetings, and company with Christian people; do this thing and that thing, and give up a lot of other things – that is not it at all. Their very being, their very constitution, has been changed; they are different people.

      You know how true this is. When you have really become the Lord’s, and this great change has taken place, this ‘something’ has happened inside, and you go back into the world, you know that there are two kinds of humanity in your office, in your workshop, in your factory, in your school, or wherever you are. You are one, and the others are another! Although, on the outside, in outward appearance and so on, there may be no visible difference, yet there is just the same difference as there was between the Lord Jesus, when He was here on this earth, and the other people in the world. While He could understand them, they could never understand Him. It was just as though they were living in two different worlds. As He said: ‘You are from beneath; I am from above’ (John 8:23). And that is exactly true of every child of God. We too can say: I am from above: this is no longer my place; this is no longer my home; I am no longer at rest here in this world. I have got a new nativity; I have got a new location; I have got a new country, a new land; here in this world I’m just an alien.

      That becomes a very real thing to the child of God. It is sometimes a very unpleasant thing to feel out of it, but it is something we have to accept. Never try to violate it – never try to be at home in this world. If you do, you will be doing damage to your new constitution – because it is that, you see, that is your testimony. It is not that you try to be different at all. Never try to be different; never put it on! Never try to create the impression that you are different. The difference is there, right enough! If you want any proof of that, you will find that, from the moment of your new birth, the Devil knows you! You are a marked person, just as Christ was a marked man when He was here.

      As far as this world was concerned, and those who were under the enemy’s control, Jesus could never do anything right: everything He said – that which in anybody else would have been accounted good – was wrong; everything that He did well, they found fault with it. I was reading about this only today; it is an amazing thing. As He was going about the country, up and down the length and breadth of that country, doing good, casting out demons, healing those who are sick – leaving behind Him a veritable trail of folk made whole and delivered, set free, blessed with a new life and a new outlook – here come along those other people: ‘By the prince of the demons he casts out demons!’ (Matt. 9:14. etc.). They put it all down to the Devil – He could not do right! And the Devil knows the children of God as he knew the Son of God. And, somehow or other, a lot of things come to us which would never come to us if we were not children of God. It is for that simple reason – that we are different, and we are known.

      And it is sensed: sometimes it is almost uncanny how men of this world sense it. They are not able to explain it; they are not able to say why they take these attitudes toward us; they just cannot tell us. In fact, if you ask, ‘Why do you look at me like that? Why do you feel like that about me?’, they say, ‘Well, I don’t know why, but somehow or other… somehow or other…!’ You see, that is just it; they can’t explain it, they don’t understand it at all. But – but – there it is: a fundamental difference of constitution. You might be people of different races altogether, who have no understanding of one another.

      Well, it is like that. The Spirit coming in makes us different, and it is just that difference that is the basis of everything for the future. Never try to modify or reduce that difference. But, at the same time, never make it artificial: never make people think you are a ‘goody-goody’, that you are ‘putting it on’ and trying to be different – none of that. You are different, right enough; you won’t have to ‘put on’ anything if you live in the Spirit. We are constituted differently, and we must understand that that is a fact. That is really what it means to be ‘born of the Spirit’.

      Led by the Spirit

      Now, we have been constituted by the Spirit according to a Divine and heavenly order, and the course of our Christian life should be one of getting further and further away from the old order. I believe that that is what is meant by the words here in this chapter: “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God”(v. 14). “Led by the Spirit of God”. Now you may take hold of that and apply it to ‘leading’ in many things. It may apply to being ‘led’ about things; this is what we call ‘guidance’. But, whatever it means for such guidance in particular matters, I believe the setting of these words demands a wider interpretation than that. You cannot lift these things out of their great context; and this is, as we have seen, a tremendous context – ‘from eternity to eternity’.

      You see, God started up something – that is the point that this chapter brings into view – He started up something, before this world was, where we are concerned. “Whom he foreknew, he… foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son” (v. 29). That is, right back there, God started up something, and swept down into the ages with that purpose, moving toward that great goal. And what was that goal? – conformity to the image of His Son.

      Now, what is being ‘led by the Spirit’? Well, take the illustration of Israel. God came down into Egypt, into the dark world of their bondage and tyranny in Egypt: He came down with His great purpose; He took possession of them; and then He gave them the symbol and figure of the Holy Spirit in the Pillar of Cloud and Fire. Paul says: ‘They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud’ (1 Cor. 10:2). What was the pillar of cloud and fire given for? Well, it is an illustration. It is a type of the Holy Spirit. It was given to lead them into the Land of Promise, where God had intended them to be. That was the purpose for which He had come down into Egypt, and got hold of them, and pulled them out, and brought them into the Wilderness. The Spirit was ever moving ahead of them, in the Pillar, to get them into the Land.

      That is being “led by the Spirit”. As the Lord said, speaking of His people: “Israel is my son… Let my son go…” (Ex. 4:22,23) – ‘Now these are the sons of God, who are led by the Spirit of God’. But what does it mean? It means that you are moving on, ever moving on in this way of the Spirit, in this leaving of the old order further and further behind, and getting nearer and nearer to the heavenly order. Now, if the Christian life is normal, this is true of the Christian life. This is not something abnormal; this is ‘the normal Christian life’! This is what is real about it – that the more you go on with the Lord, the less and less do you find it possible to accept this world and to settle down here, and the further you seem to get away from it. Or it seems to get away from you. The things of the Lord get nearer and nearer, and more and more engrossing, taking up more and more of your life. You find that, whereas at one time, you could divide your time, you could spread it out over things, now you are more and more being absorbed – not obsessed, but absorbed in the things of the Lord; you have not time for other things.

      Even your work – well, you go to work, you do your work, you give yourself to your work, you do it honestly… but – but -the thing that has got a grip of you inside, is the Lord’s interests – the Lord’s interests! ‘Being let go’, you go to your own people! (Acts 4:23); and they are the Lord’s people. Is that not true? If you are going on with the Lord, oh, what you want is more and more of that which belongs to your own constitution, the heavenly order of things. That is what it means to be “led by the Spirit of God”. Whatever ‘guidance by the Spirit’ means in things, in details, this is what it means here in this great context: it means that the Spirit is leading us on nearer and nearer to the fulness of Christ. We can, of course, test our lives by that.

      Spiritual Qualification

      The next thing, in the life of the Spirit, is that the Holy Spirit gifts us, and qualifies us for a place, a part, in this great purpose of God. This again is something that I want you to take to heart, because it means so much. In this realm, the matter of natural qualifications is not the argument at all. I remember – and you must forgive if I put in a word of testimony, because I want to keep this near to life, because it is real – I remember how, early in my Christian life, I was very conscious of many lacks and deficiencies and defectivenesses, and things that I wished I had had. There were ambitions that I was never able to realise; desires that I had in this life for learning, for becoming qualified in this or in that, and so on: many doors were closed to me when I came to the Lord, and so I had to face life pretty much without this background that I wanted.

      And then I came early to see that this matter of natural qualifications is not the argument with the Lord at all. I saw this from both sides. On the one side, there are many who have very great natural qualifications, or qualifications acquired through study, or through all manner of advantages, but they are not necessarily spiritual people. And it never does mean – and you can prove this – that, because you have got a tremendous background of scholarship, education, or qualification of that kind, you have a special aptitude for grasping spiritual things. I have been amazed, again and again, when meeting some quite ‘highbrow’ people – Christians – who have had all the advantages of academic training, to find that, when I have talked to them about the Lord, they just have not known what I was talking about. They can’t grasp it at all! And then I have met others, who have none of those qualifications and advantages, and you can go with them on spiritual things as far as you like, and they have got it – they see.

      That is a great thing to learn early in the Christian life: it is not what I have, or what I have not got, naturally – the Holy Spirit is qualification for what God wants! The New Testament speaks of ‘gifts of the Spirit’ – and, while we have some catalogues of those gifts, I am quite certain we have not got a full list of the ‘gifts of the Holy Spirit’; not all the gifts that the Holy Spirit will give are mentioned – qualifications, equipments, for a place in the whole range of Divine interests and values. Do take that to your heart. It may be that you are one of the least, and that you feel there is not much hope for you; but, if you have got the Holy Spirit, He can and will qualify you for something that is your particular part in the whole. And people can say: ‘You know, he, or she, – not very much naturally, perhaps; you would not think very much of them if you looked at them; but, but… he counts; she counts, you know; and this is the way in which they count.’ It is like that; the Holy Spirit has come to give us something we have not got naturally, and we cannot get naturally – it is the particular equipment of the Holy Spirit.

      Now, don’t think in terms of wonderful, public gifts; it may never be that. In some simple, quiet way, you may be an effective faculty in the whole body corporate. That is what this means, to have the Holy Spirit: that we are something more in accountability than we are or could be naturally, even at our best. It is something different. The Lord will not always tell you what your gift is, but other people will know – that is just where you count for the Lord; just how you, particularly, mean something for the Lord.

      Corporate Vocation

      I want to come to one more very important aspect of this whole matter of the Spirit. Supposing we take an illustration; perhaps we can get at it best that way. Let us go back to the Old Testament, to the last section of the book of Exodus, which, as you know, contains the whole account of the making of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness. And you will know that it was through the Holy Spirit that the whole thing was made, constructed; that the Spirit came upon certain men for that work, and then, under those Spirit-governed men, gathered all the people together. All the people came into action.

      While it does not definitely say so, it as good as says that the whole nation was in this business. They were all doing something about it; they all had something to give. Some had linen to give; some had other materials to give; but they all had something. I suppose you could see ‘sewing parties’ all over the camp, and men at work busy at this thing and that – some on wood, some on gold, some on silver, some on brass – all the different materials; everywhere they were occupied with the work, and it was all under the direction and instruction and counsel of Spirit-filled men. That is to say, they were all under the government of the Spirit. The Anointing, so to speak, spread itself all over the whole mighty host for work.

      Now my point is this: the Holy Spirit creates corporate vocation. (Is that too difficult in language?) Just think: here are some women making a curtain for the Tabernacle. Well, are they going to have their own little ‘tabernacle’ made of their one little curtain, all to themselves? Here are some men making a part – just a part – of wood, perhaps to be overlaid with gold: is that the Tabernacle? Are they going to have a special little tabernacle of that thing that they are making – a little church of their own? It is nonsense, you see. Now you see what I am getting at. All this, by the Spirit, is one thing – it is a corporate vocation: that is, they are not each living and working for their own little bit, they are living and working for the whole. They have got the vision of the whole, and their whole life is taken up with the whole – not with just their little bit as an end in itself. They are living and working for the Tabernacle in completeness. The Holy Spirit has brought them together, and bound them into a one-ness in corporate vocation. All the vocation is one, because they are under one Spirit.

      Well, that is an Old Testament illustration; but in the New Testament, what does that mean? What does that mean now? If you and I are really under the government of the Holy Spirit, under the anointing of the Spirit, as we should be, we shall not have any little private things of our own, any little ‘hole in a corner’ business of ours, any detached and unrelated thing to which we are giving ourselves. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of unity, and of unity in vocation. What it will amount to, dear friends, is this: we shall live for the whole. And if it is a matter of our local relationships – such as here – none of us is to be living other than for the whole: we ought to be living for the complete thing; the corporate vocation ought to have got a grip of us. Our position must be: ‘I am not living and working as an individual: I am living and working as a part of a whole. And, in the appointment of God, for the time being, my local ‘whole’ is here, and I am living for that; I work for that; that is my vocation.’

      Now, there is a tremendous amount bound up with that, if you realise it; and it is all in the Word of God. I am giving you in a few words the sum of so much. So many people are wondering about their service: wanting to be in the Lord’s work, or to do something for the Lord – some sort of ministry, some sort of work – and to know what their work is; and they are asking: What is my work? What is my ministry? What is my job? It is always ‘my’, ‘my’, ‘my’… The answer is: Your job is ‘they’, is ‘them’. Your vocation is a related thing. You will find the Holy Spirit coming in and using you when you link yourself on with all the rest, and become part of the whole. If you keep yourself in any detachment, He may not do anything at all with you; He will just leave you; you will be doing nothing, and be counting for nothing. We have to recognise this great law of Divine revelation, that the Spirit makes us one in a great vocation. The vocation is not our personal vocation at all; it is the vocation of the whole; it is the vocation of the Church.

      You see, we are really in “Ephesians”. “Walk worthily of the calling” (or ‘vocation’) “wherewith ye were called” (4:1); and the context all concerns the relatedness – our relationship one to another in vocation. This is not my vocation; this is not your vocation, as something personal, as something detached. It is the Church’s vocation; it is not yours: it is not mine. Whenever people go off on a personal, unrelated, line (and I am speaking after fifty years’ experience), they become an end in themselves; and when they go, that is the end. The thing started with them, and it finished with them; and now you have got to start all over again. I have seen this sort of thing happen again and again – people who were unrelated in their work, and when they went, that was the end of the work.

      But that is not God’s idea, and you will agree with me that we don’t want it to be like that. We are not living unto ourselves, and dying unto ourselves – not by any means. If we are going right on, and the Lord’s work is going on and on, we must recognise that the vocation is a corporate vocation; it is the vocation of the Church, and only of individuals as in a related way. This is a very important thing to recognise. And you come into blessing that way; you come right in – no detachment, no unrelatedness: the Lord can in some way let you contribute to the whole, and there is a real blessedness about it. Whereas, in a personal way, you make no contribution at all; in an unrelated way you would not mean anything – at any rate, the Lord is not putting His seal upon that – He will, if you come right into oneness with all the rest.

      And so we go back to our illustration from the Old Testament. The people found their inspiration, and the Lord’s blessing upon them, as they saw all the time the whole, lived for the whole, and regarded everything, every detail, as a part of the whole. And you live for the whole! If the local company is where the Lord has put you, live for it, work for it; not for yourself, but for it. But even so, as a local company, don’t just work for your own ends. Have the whole view of God’s Church, and you will find that the Lord’s blessing is there. There may be difficulties, but the Lord will stand by you; and there will be something that would not be there if you just became a little company by yourselves, in a corner, living for yourselves, turned in on yourselves. No! have this great vision of God’s purpose.

      Well, now, these are a few things about the Life of the Spirit – this Divine character of things in this dispensation. We started from within – the Spirit doing His work within, working out in relation to others; then the Spirit of unity, the Spirit of purpose, the Spirit of vocation, embracing the whole Church of God, the whole instrument of His eternal purpose.

      Now I suggest you go back to Romans 8, and read it once more, very carefully, fragment by fragment, and, as you ought to do in all your Bible reading, ask yourself: What has that said? What is it that that says? And what does that say to me? Not just, What does it say in the Bible? but, What does that say to me? How do I get involved in that? I think, if you will just read it again, you will find that that chapter will take on new meaning, new light, and new values: because, as I have said, it is the link – the link. You have come in now; you were out, but you have come in. Where are you going? Well, the end of that chapter is: conformity to the image of His Son. That is where you are going. How? By the Spirit within, and living in the Spirit.

First published in “A Witness and A Testimony” magazine, Sep-Oct 1958, Vol 36-5

Have We No Tears for Revival?

By Leonard Ravenhill

      “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” (Ps. 126:5). This is the divine edict. This is more than preaching with zeal. This is more than scholarly exposition. This is more than delivering sermons of exegetical exactitude and homiletical perfection. Such a man, whether preacher or pew dweller, is appalled at the shrinking authority of the Church in the present drama of cruelty in the world. And he cringes with sorrow that men turn a deaf ear to the Gospel and willingly risk eternal hell in the process. Under this complex burden, his heart is crushed to tears.

      The true man of God is heartsick, grieved at the worldliness of the Church, grieved at the blindness of the Church, grieved at the corruption in the Church, grieved at the toleration of sin in the Church, grieved at the prayerlessness in the Church. He is disturbed that the corporate prayer of the Church no longer pulls down the strongholds of the devil. He is embarrassed that the Church folks no longer cry in their despair before a devil-ridden, sin-mad society, “Why could we not cast him out?” (Matt. 17:19).

      Many of us have no heart-sickness for the former glory of the Church because we have never known what true revival is. We stagnate in the status quo and sleep easy at night while our generation moves swiftly to the eternal night of hell. Shame, shame on us! Jesus whipped some money changers out of the temple; but before He whipped them, He wept over them. He knew how near their judgment was The Apostle Paul sent a tear-stained letter to the Philippian saints, writing: “I have told you often and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ” (Phil. 3:18). Notice that he does not say they are enemies of Christ; they are, rather, the enemies of the cross of Christ. They deny or diminish the redemptive values of the cross. There are many like this today. The church of Rome does not stand as an enemy of Christ; it traces heavily on His holy name. Yet it denies the cross by saying that the Blessed Virgin is co-redemptive. If this is so, why was she not also crucified? The Mormons use the name of Christ, yet they are astray on the atonement. Have we tears for them? Shall we face them without a blush when they accuse us of inertia at the Judgment Seat saying that they were our neighbors and an offense to us, but not a burden because they were lost?

      The Salvationists can scarcely read their flaming evangelical history without tears. Has the glory of the evangelical revival under Wesley ever gripped the hearts of the Methodists of today? Have they read of the fire-baptized men in Wesley’s team? Men like John Nelson, Thomas Walsh, and a host of others whose names are written in the Book of Life; men persecuted and kicked in the streets when they held street meetings? Yet as their blood flowed from their wounds, their tears flowed from their eyes. Have the Holiness people set a guard at the door of the beauty parlors lest any sister should enter to get her hair curled, while a block away there is a string of prostitutes trying to sell their sin-wracked bodies with none to tell them of eternal love? Do the Pentecostals look back with shame as they remember when they dwelt across the theological tracks, but with the glory of the Lord in their midst? When they had a normal church life, which meant nights of prayers, followed by signs and wonders, and diverse miracles, and genuine gifts of the Holy Ghost? When they were not clock watchers, and their meetings lasted for hours, saturated with holy power? Have we no tears for these memories, or shame that our children know nothing of such power? Other denominations had their Glory Days of revival. Think of the mighty visitations to the Presbyterians in Korea. Remember the earth-shaking revival in Shantung. Are those days gone forever? Have we no tears for revival?

God Requires Only Himself

By Jessie Penn Lewis

“Be imitators of God, therefore as dearly beloved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God”. – Ephesians 5:1-2

 God can do such a work in us by His Spirit, that all that He commands us to do will come about naturally, and not because we feel we ought to do it. To make up our mind to praise God is good, but it is very much better to be so filled with the Holy Spirit that you cannot help praising! What God wants out of us He will first put in. The secret of power for living and service is to go to the Cross and get rid of the obstacles to the outflow of the spirit of God, and then ask God for the new life that will bring forth the new fruit. I often hear of things God’s children say and do which most grieve Him – and it seems hopeless to speak to them about it. The best thing is to ask God to put a new life and new spirit into them so that they will not do these things. If you have a little child and are constantly saying, ” You must not, you must not,” you will soon crush the personality of that child. You need to show him how to have a new life within, so that he will want to do what is right. God does not expect to get out of us one thing but what He has put into us! Do let us toil, dear fellow-workers, to lead His children into a life, and then let that Life manifest itself through their personalities. God does not want us to be all of the same pattern. He will express Himself through each individual in a different way. Just as there are not two faces alike, so He has not made two of us alike in any way, and we must take care that we do not try to mould ourselves or others after the pattern of any other human being.

Zeal: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Zeal: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

by Keith Green

“And [Jesus] found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the moneychangers seated. And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple… His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for Thy house will consume me.’” (John 2:14,15,17)

Imagine how the disciples felt watching their Master upsetting the lovely decorum of the temple. The noise, the dust, the shouting, the money spilling, the tables upturned – how dare He do such a thing! The disciples were probably shocked at first, then elated. That’s how I would have felt. “Good job, Jesus! Show everyone who’s boss!” When it was over, the disciples thought back to the Scripture that says, “Zeal for Thy house has consumed me.” (Psalm 69:9) They thought, Now we see what that means. Jesus loves His Father’s house so deeply that He won’t tolerate sin in it.

No doubt Jesus’ action that day excited everyone. The common people were thrilled to have a hero who could kick around all the religious windbags and money-grubbing scum. If it meant popularity – or flexing their muscles – the disciples were all for it. The only problem was, they didn’t understand one fundamental fact about human nature: our zeal lacks direction.

Right and Wrong Zeal

Zeal is simply earnestness or fervor in advancing a cause. But that cause can be good or bad, focused or misguided. And as we read throughout the Gospels, we see that the disciples’ zeal was often misguided.

The Pharisees were zealous, too – and often misguided. No one could say these guys didn’t have zeal. Everything they did involved religious duties and doctrines. But their zeal was founded on legalism, not on knowing God. They promoted a cause that was cold and lifeless – a cause that made their hearts proud and arrogant.

We love to poke fun at the Pharisees. We like to read the rebukes that Jesus used to level them. But we’re just as capable of misdirecting our zeal to useless religious activities. Things that are all for outward show – stuff that generates heat but not light.

That’s how I was when I first became a Christian – I had lots of zeal. I never gave too much thought about where my energy was directed, and I did a few things that were pointless, ungodly, and unproductive. They didn’t advance my relationship with the Lord, or the Kingdom of God here on earth. We can all misdirect our zeal at times.

But some of us, like the Pharisees, get trapped by our own zealousness. We replace our relationship with the Lord with our “righteous” activity, and end up trying to earn our salvation by proving how zealous we are.

There are four ways Christians commonly misuse their zeal. They are: fighting causes that aren’t God’s causes, judging others, arguing over the Bible, and seeking blessings more than the Giver of those blessings. I want to focus on these areas because they cause destructiveness and havoc in the body of Christ. Let’s take a look at each of these four areas and see what true zeal for God is not.

Zeal Of the Flesh

First, we can be zealous for God yet totally miss His big picture. If we’re not careful we can be zealous for causes that aren’t God’s at all.

Peter seemed to be the most zealous of the twelve disciples. Wherever there was trouble he was ready to jump in and save the day – at least in the flesh.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter provided us with a perfect example of misplaced zeal. As the soldiers came to take Jesus away, Peter pulled out his sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant.

Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matt. 26:52,53)

What did Peter think he was doing? The same thing many of us think we’re doing – protecting the Lord’s reputation with ungodly methods, and hurting innocent people in the process. Peter, like the other disciples, totally missed God’s big picture – His plan to send Jesus to the cross.

Peter had another plan. He still hoped Jesus would be the conquering hero. Sure, Peter had a lot of zeal for that. But he lacked the same zeal when it came to being a spiritual companion to Jesus. Peter, who was so courageous about swinging his sword in public, was the same guy who abandoned Jesus at the moment He took on His most difficult spiritual mission -humbling Himself and going to the cross.

How is it that we’re so zealous to put on outward, heroic shows of loyalty for our faith -and so reluctant to set aside our own agenda and do what Jesus wants us to do? Our zeal is misdirected. We need to transfer our zeal from outward things to inward spiritual things. We need to be less willing to cut off ears in Jesus’ name, and more willing to humble ourselves, go into our prayer closet alone with Him and get His agenda for our lives.

Paul reminds us: “The mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Rom. 8:7,8)

Much harm has been done to God’s name by so-called spiritual battles waged in the flesh. Look at all the religious wars that have been fought, the crusades that have been carried out. All the blood and destruction. How could zeal be so misdirected? How could people think they were committing such atrocities in the name of God? But before standing in judgment of anyone else, we’d better realize we’re all capable of pushing our own agenda ahead of God’s agenda.

Zeal In Judgment

Second, we Christians have to admit that we have a problem – a bad habit of judging each other. In Luke 9, it says, “[Jesus] sent messengers on ahead of Him. And they went, and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make arrangements for Him. And they did not receive Him, because He was journeying with His face toward Jerusalem. And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, ‘Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’ But He turned and rebuked them.” (vv. 52-55)

I doubt that James and John were expecting a rebuke. Here was a whole village of people who had rejected Jesus – they deserved to be fried. They’d blown their chance to welcome Jesus. As far as these zealous disciples were concerned, it was time for this village to see the power of God.

How many times have you acted like James and John? How often do you become a judge, and bring down the gavel on someone who’s obviously in the wrong? Some people have a lifelong preoccupation with sitting in judgment over every ministry, every elder, every pastor and every Bible study leader. They call down fire – bringing down the gavel of judgment hard and heavy. They say they’re trying to bring correction, but they crush, kill, and destroy.

When I was a new Christian I opened up my Bible, then set myself up as judge. I’d go into ministries and get loud about their need for correction. Worse than that, within six months of my conversion I was on stage performing. Thousands of people came to hear me, and I really got into letting them know what I thought – judging things publicly.

One day God grabbed me by the collar and showed me something: Judgment comes out of spiritual immaturity. Mature Christians will pray, discern, love, and counsel. If need be they’ll rebuke, but never in a critical, destructive spirit, and never publicly to shame and punish. That’s the godly way. Immature Christians can have a lot of zeal but little wisdom. They can put fire and noise into things that harm rather than help the cause of Christ. I fell into that trap and, like James and John, the Lord rebuked me for judging others.

You see, when we judge we step into the place of God. God alone is the judge of the motives of our hearts. If Jesus had wanted to call down fire on that Samaritan village, He could have done it Himself without the help of His disciples. These guys wanted to usurp Jesus’ authority, and so He had to set them straight.

I’ve come to see that my zeal as a disciple – as someone who knows God’s Word – has to be directed at me first. The inconsistencies and sin I see in the lives of others – and let’s face it, you can’t help noticing – should remind me to beware of the sin in my own life. Now, if I find myself having to deal with someone else’s sin or failure, I’d rather take Paul’s advice to heart: “Brethren, even if a man is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself lest you too be tempted.” (Gal. 6:1)

Paul knew the Lord’s correction is meant to bring restoration in relationship to the Lord and in ministry – not destruction. Restoration takes time, but it’s God’s goal.

Zeal For Words

There’s another way our critical spirits can harm the body of Christ – when we fight over fine interpretations of the Bible. I’ve heard people get really nasty with each other -Christian brothers and sisters! Paul says, “Remind them of these things, and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless, and leads to the ruin of the hearers.” (2 Tim. 2:14)

When I was a new Christian I spent many useless hours wrangling over words. Added together, those hours probably amount to weeks, even months. I’d argue over anything and everything: When was the rapture going to happen? Can a Christian be possessed by demons? Do you have to be sprinkled or immersed to be truly baptized? Should you be baptized in the name of Jesus only or in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? Some of the arguments produced a lot of heat that looked like zeal for the Lord – but I can’t remember any that produced much real light.

In some ways I set myself up for this. After concerts, people came up to me and said, “You know, I don’t agree with your position on this or that.” I loved it! I’d sit down on the edge of the stage, and a crowd would gather. I’d throw out scriptures, and the other person would lob different ones back at me. We’d have a great time, with our “flesh” exposed for all to see. I didn’t realize then that my arguing could cause the ruin of those who listened to me. I was just thinking I was a big shot, a spiritual authority, when really I was just a debater with a big ego. I was sharpening a human talent for debate, not a spiritual talent for being quiet, listening, and praying.

Paul also said in his warnings to Timothy, “Avoid worldly and empty chatter, for it will lead to further ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene.” (2 Tim. 2:16,17) What a vivid picture. People didn’t have the benefit of tetracycline or penicillin in Timothy’s day. If you saw a big blue streak going up your arm or leg, you ran to the surgeon and had the infected limb cut off. There was no anesthetic – other than getting drunk or having someone knock you out. Get the idea? This was a drastic and painful condition. So it was the most vivid imagery Paul could use to get his point across. A dispute over words brings out a spirit of contentiousness – and this will spread infection through the body of Christ like gangrene. The only way to remove it is by major and painful surgery.

Why is it important to stay in the right spirit? Because there’s a lot more at stake than who’s right or wrong – I’m talking about eternal souls.

“The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.” (2 Tim. 2:24-26 emphasis added)

Immature Christians mistake a contentious spirit for true zeal. They think they know all the right answers, and that everyone has to see things their way. Paul gave some more strong warnings about this in his letter to Titus: “Shun foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and disputes about the Law; for they are unprofitable and worthless. Reject a factious man after a first and second warning, knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned.” (Titus 3:9-11)

If we want to grow in Christ, we must ruthlessly evaluate our speech. There’s only one standard and one motive acceptable to God. Paul nailed it: “Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear.” (Eph.4:29)

Zeal For Power

The last thing I want to say about zeal is more than instruction, it’s God’s warning to all of us. In Acts 8:9 ff., we read the story of a man named Simon, who practiced magic and sorcery. Everyone in Samaria was astonished by the things he could do, and people called him the “Great Power of God.” Then Philip came to town preaching the good news. People began getting saved and baptized. A revival hit, and even Simon was converted. After his conversion he began following Philip around, and saw all the miracles that occurred. Word got back to the other apostles in Jerusalem about what was happening in Samaria, and Peter and John were sent to check things out. They discovered that the new converts had not received the baptism of the Spirit, so they began laying their hands on the people and praying for them. Sure enough, the people began receiving the Spirit.

“Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was bestowed through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, ‘Give this authority to me as well, so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.’ But Peter said to him, ‘May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!”‘ (Acts 8:18 20) Sure, Simon’s idea was misguided – but didn’t he give up his sorcery business to follow the Gospel? Wasn’t Peter being a bit harsh with him?

I don’t think so. Didn’t some of us come to the Lord for the wrong motives? We came because we were sick of our lifestyle. Or becausewe couldn’t find peace. Or we needed healing, or our marriage was on the rocks. We came for any number of reasons.

From the New Testament times until today, there have been people who preach the Gospel for the wrong reasons. They’re not following Jesus; they’re building their own kingdoms and their own egos. Some people get involved in Christianity simply because it is a market for their merchandise – they can make money. They don’t care if people become Christians, they just want to sell their books or records. Some people start with sincere motives but their appetite for money and fame overcomes them – they continue doing seemingly “good” things, but for all the wrong reasons. They’re just putting up a front. They’ve learned how to effectively fake all the right moves and the right language.

But God will not be mocked. He never lets someone continue in that place for long. They either burn out because it’s a work of the flesh, or they are publicly exposed and humiliated – and the name of the Lord gets tarnished in the process.

We always need to check our motives for doing something – even a good thing. And when we are successful in the things of the Lord, we must be careful not to look at the fruit and think it proves we’re right with God. Nothing can replace our personal relationship with Him – not even the fruit produced by our ministries.

True Zeal

God wants true disciples who will move beyond selfish motives to a pure motive – and that is to know God Himself and the reason He created us. You see, Simon never made that shift. He became interested in the Gospel because of what the disciples had to offer – their “tricks” were better than his. They upstaged him. Scripture says that he truly believed in the Gospel, but it appears that he never got beyond desiring power so he could have more influence than anyone else.

Simon had zeal all right. He was ready to do whatever it took to get the power he wanted. But his zeal was directed at self-promotion – not at knowing and sharing the love of God.

Working in the music industry, I see this confusion all the time. Today, we see “stars” who become Christians – but they never lay down their music on the altar. They just begin selling Christian versions of their songs. They have lots of zeal – but are they putting it into seeking God? Before I sound like I’m back to the old mode of judging again I have to tell you what I’ve witnessed. I’ve seen celebrities come to Christ and get pushed into the spotlight by publishers and record companies before they’re ready. When they hit a “pothole,” they fall away. Then they say, “Christianity is a joke. It doesn’t work.” While people looked on and said, “They have so much zeal for God,” they were actually using their misdirected zeal to pursue their own interests.

That’s what Simon did. The whole time he followed Philip around, he didn’t accept the lifestyle of discipleship. He had plenty of zeal to pursue miracles and signs and wonders, but not much interest in pursuing God Himself. He had his eyes on the gifts of God, rather than on the God of the gifts.

Paul saw the same kind of misdirected zeal among the Jews. He said, “For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.” (Rom. 10:2,3)

If Paul looked at your life, would he say the same thing about you? Would he say, “I’ve got to give you credit, you sure have a lot of zeal for God. You’re doing many things in the name of the Lord. But you don’t know His righteousness. Are you using your zeal to try to gain something from God, instead of using it as an expression of your gratitude to God for all that He’s already done for you?

We can be zealous at keeping rules. We can be zealous debaters and defenders of the truth. We can zealously pursue the gifts of the Spirit. We can even be zealously contentious and fight fleshly battles. But none of this is true zeal for God.

What is zeal for God then? It’s giving all our energy and enthusiasm to God’s cause. What does that mean? Jesus made it pretty clear: “the foremost [commandment] is, ‘H ear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)

We are supposed to direct all our zeal into our relationship with the Lord, and then into our relationship with our neighbor. God wants us to get our eyes on Him. Loving Him is to be our cause. He can take care of a lot of other causes without us, but He can’t make us love Him with all our heart. That’s the work we must do – pursue Him with all our heart and soul and strength.

As David said, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for Thee, 0 God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” (Psalm 42:1,2)

David was describing true zeal. He thirsted after God. Do you have that kind of desperation? Do you have within that holy fire to know God? God doesn’t want to be a casual acquaintance. He wants to be an intimate part of your life – alive and burning at the core of your being. The second part of the cause we are to advance is to love our neighbor as ourselves. Not correct our neighbor, debate with our neighbor, or judge our neighbor, but love our neighbor. And how do we love our neighbor? We love them by serving them and doing things that bless them.

“[Christ] gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.” (Titus 2:14) Are we zealous for good deeds? James says, “This is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father, to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (James 1:27)

Are you zealous for this pure and undefiled religion? Are you self-involved – or are you willing to serve others? The zeal that pleases God is strength and talent directed towards serving others. Jesus reminds His disciples that if we want to be great in the kingdom of God we have to be the servant of all. (Matt. 20:26)

Watch out! Our flesh doesn’t like the idea of serving others. An attitude of servanthood runs against our egos. Maybe that’s why God put so much importance on it. But God doesn’t take our flesh into account; He commands us to serve others. The disciple of Christ has no option but to do what He has told us.

I can hear what many of you are thinking: But we don’t need to prove ourselves to God, or to anybody else. He’s given us salvation as a gift. You’re right. But He needs to turn on our zeal to make salvation real in every area of our lives. He wants us to train ourselves to eagerly serve others in love and compassion.

This is true zeal for God – to know Him and love Him with a deep and consuming love, and to serve others in the same way we would serve Jesus. Anything else is an imitation.

Beware of it.

The Life that Wins

(This was an address delivered by Dr. Trumbull in 1911 before the National Convention of the Presbyterian Brotherhood of America meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. Later, The Life That Wins was published as a pamphlet by The Sunday School Times, of which Dr. Trumbull was at one time its editor. He was one of the founders of America’s Keswick.)

by Charles G. Trumbull

There is only one life that wins and that is the life of Jesus Christ. Every man may have that life; every man may live that life.

I do not mean that every man may be Christ-like; I mean something very much better than that. I do not mean that a man may always have Christ’s help. I mean something better than that. I do not mean that a man have power from Christ. I mean something very much better than power. And I do not mean that a man shall be merely saved from his sins and kept from sinning. I mean something better than even that victory.

To explain what I do mean, I must simply tell you a very personal and recent experience of my own. I think I am correct when I say that I have known more than most men know about failure, about betrayals and dishonoring of Christ, about disobedience to heavenly visions, about conscious falling short of that which I saw other men attaining, and which I knew Christ was expecting of me.

Not a great while ago I should have had to stop just there, and only say I hoped that some day I would be led out of all that into something better. If you had asked me how, I would have had to say I did not know. But, thanks to His long-suffering patience and infinite love and mercy, I do not have to stop there, but I can go on to speak of something more than a miserable story of personal failure and disappointment.

The conscious needs of my life, before there came the new experience of Christ of which I would tell you, were definite enough. Three stand out:

1. There were great fluctuations in my spiritual life, in my conscious closeness of fellowship with God. Sometimes I would be on the heights spiritually; sometimes I would be in the depths. A strong, arousing convention, a stirring, searching address from some consecrated, victorious Christian leader of men, a searching, Spirit-filled book, or the obligation to do a difficult piece of Christian service myself, with the preparation in prayer that it involved, would lift me up; and I would stay up — for a while — and God would seem very close and my spiritual life deep. But it wouldn’t last. Sometimes by some single failure before temptation, sometimes by a gradual downhill process, my best experiences would be lost, and I would find myself back on the lower levels. And a lower level is a perilous place for a Christian to be, as the devil showed me over and over again.

It seemed to me that it ought to be possible for me to live habitually on a high place of close fellowship with God, as I saw certain other men doing, and as I was not doing. Those men were exceptional, to be sure; they were in the minority among the Christians whom I knew. But I wanted to be in that minority. Why shouldn’t we all be, and turn it into a majority?

2. Another conscious lack of my life was in the matter of failure before besetting sins. I was not fighting a winning fight in certain lines. Yet if Christ was not equal to a winning fight, what were my Christian beliefs and professions good for? I did not look for perfection. But I did believe that I could be enabled to win in certain directions habitually. Yes, always, instead of uncertainly and interruptedly, the victories interspersed with crushing and humiliating defeats. Yet I had prayed, oh, so earnestly, for deliverance; and the habitual deliverance had not come.

3. A third conscious lack was in the matter of dynamic, convincing spiritual power that would work miracle changes in other men’s lives. I was doing a lot of Christian work — had been at it ever since I was a boy of fifteen. I was going through the motions — oh, yes. So can anybody. I was even doing personal work — the hardest kind of all; talking with people, one by one, about giving themselves to my Savior! But I wasn’t seeing results. Once in a great while I would see a little in the way of result, of course; but not much. I didn’t see lives made over by Christ, revolutionized, turned into firebrands for Christ themselves because of my work; and it seemed to me I ought to. Other men did, why not I? I comforted myself with the old assurance (so much used by the devil) that it wasn’t for me to see results; that I could safely leave that to the Lord if I did my part. But this didn’t satisfy me, and I was sometimes heartsick over the spiritual barrenness of my Christian service.

About a year before, I had begun, in various ways, to get intimations that certain men to whom I looked upon were conspicuously blessed in their Christian service and seemed to have a conception or consciousness of Christ that I did not have, that was beyond, bigger, deeper than any thought of Christ I had ever had. I rebelled at the suggestion when it first came to me. How could anyone have a better idea of Christ than I? (I am just laying bare to you the blind, self-satisfied workings of my sin-stunted mind and heart.)

Did I not believe in Christ and worship Him as the Son of God and one with God? Had I not accepted Him as my personal Saviour more than twenty years before? Did I not believe that in Him alone was eternal life, and was I not trying to live in His service, giving my whole life to Him? Did I not ask His help and guidance constantly, and believe that in Him was my only hope? Was I not championing the very cause of the highest possible conception of Christ, by conducting in the columns of The Sunday School Times a symposium on the Deity of Christ, in which the leading Bible scholars of the world were testifying to their personal belief in Christ as God’s Son?

All this I was doing; how could a higher or better conception of Christ than mine be possible? I knew that I needed to serve Him far better than I had ever done, but that I needed a new conception of Him I would not admit.

And yet it kept coming at me, from directions that I could not ignore, I heard from a preacher of power a sermon on Ephesians 4:12-13:

“Unto the building up of the body of Christ, till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;”

And as I followed it I was amazed, bewildered. I couldn’t follow him. He was beyond my depth. He was talking about Christ, unfolding Christ, in a way that I admitted was utterly unknown to me. Whether he was right or wrong I wasn’t quite ready to say that night, but if he was right, then I was wrong.

Later I read another sermon by this same man on “Paul’s Conception of the Lord Jesus Christ.” As I read it, I was conscious of the same uneasy realization that he and Paul were talking about a Christ whom I simply did not know. Could they be right? If they were right, how could I get their knowledge?

One day I came to know another minister whose work among men had been greatly blessed. I learned from him that what he counted his greatest spiritual asset was his habitual consciousness of the actual presence of Jesus. Nothing so bore him up, he said, as the realization that Jesus was always with him in actual presence, and that this was so, independent of his own feelings, independent of his deserts, and independent of his own notions as to how Jesus would manifest His Presence.

Moreover, he said that Christ was the home of his thoughts. Whenever his mind was free from other matters, it would turn to Christ and he would talk aloud to Christ when he was alone — on the street, anywhere — as easily and naturally as to a human friend. So real to him was Jesus’ actual presence.

Some months later I was in Edinburgh, attending the World Missionary Conference, and I saw that one whose writings had helped me greatly was to speak to men Sunday afternoon on “The Resources of the Christian Life.” I went eagerly to hear him. I expected him to give us a series of definite things that we could do to strengthen our Christian life; and I knew I needed them. But his opening words showed me my mistake, while they made my heart leap with a new joy. What he said was something like this:

“The resources of the Christian life, my friends, are just — Jesus Christ.”

That was all. But that was enough, I hadn’t grasped it yet; but it was what all these men had been trying to tell me. Later, as I talked with the speaker about my personal needs and difficulties he said, earnestly and simply, “Oh, Mr. Trumbull, if we would only step out upon Christ in a more daring faith, He could do so much more for us.”

Before leaving Great Britain I was confronted once more with the thought that was beyond me, a Christ whom I did not yet know, in a sermon that a friend of mine preached in his London church on a Sunday evening in June. His text was Philippians 1:21:

“To me to live is Christ,”

It was the same theme — the unfolding of “the life that is Christ,” Christ as the whole life and the only life. I did not understand all that he said, and I knew vaguely that I did not have as my own what he was telling us about. But I wanted to read the sermon again, and I brought the manuscript away with me when I left him.

It was about the middle of August that a crisis came with me, I was attending a young people’s Missionary conference, and was faced by a week of daily work there for which I knew I was miserably, hopelessly unfit and incompetent. For the few weeks previous had been one of my periods of spiritual let-down, not uplift, with all the loss and failure and defeat that such a time is sure to record.

The first evening that I was there a Missionary bishop spoke to us on the Water of Life. He told us that it was Christ’s wish and purpose that every follower of His should be a wellspring of living, gushing water of life all the time to others, not intermittently, not interruptedly, but with continuous and irresistible flow. We have Christ’s own word for it, he said, as he quoted, “He that believeth on me, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.”

He told how some have a little of the water of life, bringing it up in small bucketsful and at intervals, like the irrigating water-wheel of India, with a good deal of creaking and grinding, while from the lives of others it flows all the time in a life-bringing, abundant stream that nothing can stop. And he described a little old native woman in the East whose marvelous ministry in witnessing for Christ put to shame those of us who listened. Yet she had known Christ for only a year.

The next morning, Sunday, alone in my room, I prayed it out with God, as I asked Him to show me the way out. If there was a conception of Christ that I did not have, and that I needed because it was the secret of some of these other lives I had seen or heard of, a conception better than any I had yet had, and beyond me, I asked God to give it to me. I had with me the sermon I had heard, “To me to live is Christ,” and I rose from my knees and studied it. Then I prayed again. And God, in His long-suffering patience, forgiveness, and love, gave me what I asked for. He gave me a new Christ — wholly new in the conception and consciousness of Christ that now became mine.

Wherein was the change? It is hard to put it into words, and yet it is, oh, so new, and real, and wonderful, and miracle-working in both my own life and the lives of others.

To begin with, I realized for the first time that the many references throughout the New Testament to Christ in you, and you in Christ, Christ our life, and abiding in Christ, are literal, actual, blessed fact, and not figures of speech. How the 15th chapter of John thrilled with new life as I read it now! And the 3rd of Ephesians, 14 to 21. And Galatians 2:20. And Philippians 1:21.

["1 I am the True Vine, and My Father is the Husbandman. 2 Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. 3 Now ye are clean through the Word which I have spoken unto you. 4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the Vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me. 5 I am the Vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without Me ye can do nothing. 6 If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. 7 If ye abide in Me, and My Words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. 8 Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be My disciples. 9 As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you: continue ye in My love. 10 If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His love. 11 These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. 12 This is My commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. 13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. 14 Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. 15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you. 16 Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it you. 17 These things I command you, that ye love one another. 18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you. 19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. 20 Remember the Word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept My saying, they will keep yours also. 21 But all these things will they do unto you for My name's sake, because they know not Him that sent Me. 22 If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin. 23 He that hateth Me hateth My Father also. 24 If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both Me and My Father. 25 But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their Law, They hated Me without a cause. 26 But when the Comforter is come, Whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me: 27 And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with Me from the beginning" (John 15:1-27).]

["14 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our LORD Jesus Christ, 15 Of whom the whole family in Heaven and Earth is named, 16 That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; 17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 May be able to comprehend with all Saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; 19 And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. 20 Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, 21 Unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen" (Ephesians 3:14-21).

["I am crucified with Christ: neverthless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).]

["For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21).]

What I mean is this: I had always known that Christ was my Saviour; but I had looked upon Him as an external Saviour, one who did a saving work for me from outside, as it were; one who was ready to come close alongside and stay by me, helping me in all that I needed, giving me power and strength and salvation.

But now I know something better than that. At last I realized that Jesus Christ was actually and literally within me; and even more than that, that He had constituted Himself my very life, taking me into union with Himself — my body, mind, and spirit — while I still had my own identity and free will and full moral responsibility.

Was not this better than having Him as a helper, or even then having Him as an external Saviour, to have Him, Jesus Christ, the Son of God as my own very life?

It meant that I need never again ask Him to help me as though He were one and I another, but rather simply to do His work, His will, in me, and with me, and through me. My body was His, my mind His, my will His, my spirit His; and not merely His, but literally part of His; what He asked me to recognize was:

“I have been crucified with Christ and It Is no longer I that live, but Christ that liveth In me.”

Jesus Christ had constituted Himself my life — not as a figure of speech, remember, but as a literal, actual fact, as literal as the fact that a certain tree has been made into this desk on which my hand rests. For “your bodies are members of Christ,” and “ye are the body of Christ.”

Do you wonder that Paul could say with tingling joy and exultation, “to me to live is Christ”? He did not say, as I had mistakenly been supposing I must say, “To me to live is to be Christ-like,” nor, “to me to live is to have Christ’s help,” nor, “To me to live is to serve Christ.” No, he plunged through and beyond all that in the bold, glorious, mysterious claim:

“To me to live is Christ!”

I had never understood that verse before. Now, thanks to His gift of Himself, I am beginning to enter into a glimpse of its wonderful meaning.

And that is how I know for myself that there is a life that wins; that it is the life of Jesus Christ; and that it may be our life for the asking, if we let Him — in absolute, unconditional surrender of ourselves to Him, our wills to His will, making Him the Master of our lives as well as our Saviour — enter in, occupy us, overwhelm us with Himself, yea, fill us with Himself “unto all the fullness of God.”

What has the result been? Did this experience give me only a new intellectual conception of Christ, more interesting and satisfying than before? If it were only that, I should have little to tell you today. No, it meant a revolutionized, fundamentally changed life, within and without. If any man be in Christ, you know, there is a new creation.

Do not think that I am suggesting any mistaken, unbalanced theory that, when a man receives Christ as the fullness of his life, he cannot sin again. The ‘life that is Christ’ still leaves us our free will, with that free will we can resist Christ; and my life, since the new experience of which I speak, has recorded sins of such resistance.

But I have learned that the restoration after failure can be supernaturally blessed, instantaneous, and complete. I have learned that, as I trust Christ in surrender, there need be no fighting against sin, but complete freedom from the power and even the desire of sin. I have learned that this freedom, this more than conquering, is sustained in unbroken continuance as I simply recognize that Christ is my cleansing, reigning life.

The three great lacks of needs of which I spoke at the opening have been miraculously met.

1. There has been a fellowship with God utterly differing from and infinitely better than anything I had ever known in all my life before.

2. There has been an utterly new kind of victory, victory-by-freedom, over certain besetting sins — the old ones that used to throttle and wreck me — when I have trusted Christ for the freedom.

3. And, lastly the spiritual results in service have given me such a sharing of the joy of Heaven as I never knew was possible on earth. Six of my most intimate friends, most of them mature Christians, soon had their lives completely revolutionized by Christ, laying hold on Him in this new way and receiving Him unto all the fullness of God.

Two of these were a mother and a son — a young businessman twenty-five-years old. Another was the general manager of one of the large business houses in Philadelphia. Though consecrated and active as a Christian for years, he began letting Christ work out through him in a new way into the lives of his many associates, and of his salesmen all over the country. A white-haired man of over seventy found a peace in life and a joy in prayer that he had long ago given up as impossible for him. Life fairly teems with the miracle-evidences of what Christ is willing and able to do for other lives through anyone who just turns over the keys to his complete Indwelling.

Jesus Christ does not want to be our helper; He wants to be our life. He does not want us to work for Him. He wants us to let Him do His work through us, using us as we use a pencil to write with; better still, using us as one of the fingers on His hand.

When our life is not only Christ’s but Christ, our life will be a winning life, for He cannot fail.

And a winning life is a fruit-bearing life, a serving life. It is after all only a small part of life, and a wholly negative part, to overcome; we must also bear fruit in character and in service if Christ is our life. And we shall — because Christ is our life:

“He cannot deny himself”; He “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,”

An utterly new kind of service will be ours now, as we let Christ serve others through us, using us. And this fruit-bearing and service, habitual and constant, must all be by faith in Him; our works are the result of His Life in us; not the condition, or the secret, or the cause of that Life.

The conditions of thus receiving Christ as the fullness of the life are simply two — after, of course, our personal acceptance of Christ as our Saviour — through His shed blood and death as our Substitute and Sin-Bearer, from the guilt and consequences of our sin.

1. Surrender absolutely and unconditionally to Christ as Master of all that we are and all that we have, telling God that we are now ready to have His whole will done in our entire life, at every point, no matter what it costs.

2. Believe that God has set us wholly free from the law of sin (Romans 8:2) — not will do this, but has done it. ["For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2).]

Upon this second step, the quiet act of faith, all now depends. Faith must believe God in entire absence of any feeling or evidence. For God’s word is safer, better, and surer than any evidence of His word. We are to say, in blind, cold faith if need be, “Know that my Lord Jesus is meeting all my needs now (even my need of faith), because His grace is sufficient for me.”

And remember that Christ Himself is better then any of His blessings; better than the power, or the victory, or the service, that He grants.

Saving Life of Christ

By Major Ian Thomas . . . .

 ”Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” As the “good, acceptable, and perfect will of God” was implemented by the Son through dependence on the Father, so that “good, acceptable, and perfect will of God” may be implemented by you through dependence on the Son. This divine vocation into which you have been redeemed, as “His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has before ordained that you should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10) can only be fulfilled in the energy and power of the One who indwells you now by His Spirit, as He walked once only in the energy and power of the Father who indwelt Him through the Spirit. Of Himself He said, “I can of mine own self do nothing” (John 5:19), and of you He says, in John 15:5, “Without me you can do nothing.” How much can you do without Him? Nothing! So what is everything you do without Him? Nothing! It is amazing how busy you can be doing nothing! . . . “The flesh”–everything that you do apart from Him–”profiteth nothing” (John 6:63), and there is always the awful possibility, if you do not discover this principle, that you may spend a lifetime in the service of Jesus Christ doing nothing! . . . The life which you possess as a born-again Christian is of Him, and it is to Him, and every moment that you are here on earth it must be through Him–of Him, through Him, to Him, all things! “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1). The Lord Jesus Christ claims the use of your body, your whole being, your complete personality, so that as you give yourself to Him through the eternal Spirit, He may give Himself to you through the eternal Spirit, that all your activity as a human being on earth may be His activity in and through you; that every step you take, every word you speak, everything you do, everything you are, may be an expression of the Son of God, in you as man. If it is of Him and through Him and to Him, where do you come in? You do not! That is just where you go out! That is what Paul meant when he said, “For me to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21). The only Person whom God credits with the right to live in you is Jesus Christ; so reckon yourself to be dead to all that you are apart from what He is, and alive unto God only in all that you are because of what He is (Romans 6:11). When the world looked at Jesus Christ, they saw God! They heard Him speak and they saw Him act. And Jesus said, “As my Father has sent Me, even so send I you” (John 20:21). The world again will hear God speak and see God act! Is is for you to BE–it is for Him to DO! Restfully available to the Saving Life of Christ, enjoying “the richest measure of the divine Presence, a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself,” instantly obedient to the heavenly impulse–this is your vocation, and this is your victory!

Four attitudes to the Holy Spirit

By Roy Hession

      HAVING seen the place and function of the Holy Spirit among the people of God, we are in a position to ask ourselves what is our attitude to Him; are we allowing Him to do His work of conviction and revealing Jesus to us as all we need?

      The New Testament tells us that there are four possible attitudes that we may take up towards Him. The first is to grieve Him. ‘Grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice’ (Eph. 4. 30, 31). Sin is that which grieves Him, especially those sins which are mentioned here in the context; bitterness, anger, evil speaking of others, malice and unforgiveness. When we understand that the One whom He has come to reveal to us is called by that precious name of the Lamb, meek and lowly in heart, and that He Himself is likened to the gentle dove, we can see the sort of things that do grieve Him. Whenever we manifest a disposition other than that of the Lamb (sometimes it is far more like that of the lion!) especially in our relationships with others, we cause Him grief. Although we have been forgiven so much ourselves, we sometimes stand on our rights and refuse to forgive another. He cannot go further with us in His work of blessing, until we see these sins and repent of them. For that reason, He proceeds to convict us of them, and strive with us. But it is ever the work of love; our sins do not anger Him, but rather grieve Him.

      The second possible attitude that we can adopt towards Him is to resist Him. Stephen said to the Jews of his day, ‘Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye’ (Acts 7. 51). When He convicts us of sin, we can resist Him. We can refuse to call something sin which He calls sin. We sometimes work out a complete alibi for ourselves, which proves us guiltless. We do so because we know that to say ‘yes’ to the Spirit’s conviction would humble us, for we should have to repent and put the thing right. This is what the scriptures call being ‘stiff-necked’, and it is indeed a serious condition to be in, and may lead to solemn judgments upon us, if persisted in. ‘He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy’ (Prov. 29:1). Our resistance to the Holy Spirit’s conviction is seen so often in our refusal to accept the challenge of some brother or sister in Christ. We would not mind if His conviction were direct from Himself to our hearts, but very often He uses somebody else’s penetrating words to show us our sin. And that makes it doubly hard to receive, because of our pride. But we must receive it none the less, if we are to be blessed.

      The third possible attitude is that of quenching Him. Says Paul, ‘Quench not the Spirit. Despise not prophesyings’ (1 Thess. 5.19, 20).

      This is the word concerning the more corporate activities of the Holy Spirit in our midst, as is seen by the phrase that follows, that we are not to despise prophesyings. We quench a fire when we pour water upon it, and we can quench the fire of the Holy Spirit’s working in another, in a fellowship, or in a meeting, by ‘pouring cold water upon it’, by way of discouraging or actually forbidding it. The Holy Spirit demands to have right of way in the assemblies of God’s people and in their fellowship. But so often we have a mental picture of the way in which He must work and we forbid all forms of His working which do not conform exactly to our ideas-especially those forms that would seem to by-pass our own pet methods and would seem to make nothing of our own special position. How prone we are to think that, if revival is to come, it must come through the Minister or the Missionary or only through those who have a special training. The Spirit, however, often brings revival through the back door, through someone of no account at all and of little official position. How often has not the Lord Jesus come knocking at the door of a situation, a Church or a Mission Station but the door has been bolted against Him because He did not come through the proper channels or along normal lines, and thus He had sadly to turn away from a situation that needed Him so desperately.

      The fourth attitude that we can take to the Spirit’s working is to be filled with Him. The Epistle of the Ephesians tells us, ‘Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit’ (Eph. 5. 18). The One whom we were grieving, resisting and quenching is now filling us and possessing us. What a capitulation and what a reversal this implies on our part! We have at last consented to bow to His conviction and call sin, sin. He is now able without hindrance to give us continual sight of Jesus as all we need to our immense joy, release and empowering.

      When thinking of this matter of being filled with the Holy Spirit, it is important always to do so in the context of these three other attitudes to the Spirit. If we do not do so, we shall always be regarding the fullness of the Holy Spirit as a special blessing, extra to our inheritance in Christ, and that attitude will lead us only to striving and frustration. If we are not filled with the Spirit at any given moment, it is only because of one thing-sin. Through sin we have grieved Him, and are resisting Him where He has convicted us. Maybe we have been in a dry, unsatisfied condition for years, but it is all due to an accumulation of this same one thing, sin. But we have only to humble ourselves in repentance under the Holy Spirit’s conviction, and He will witness in our hearts to Jesus and His Blood, and enable us to believe that His Blood cleanses what we have confessed. Then where the Blood cleanses, the Holy Spirit fills, and that without further waiting on our part.

      This is clearly illustrated in the ceremonial cleansing of the leper in the book of Leviticus (Lev. 14). First of all, the blood of a sacrificial victim, a lamb, was placed upon his right ear, his right thumb and his right big toe. Then the holy anointing oil, picture to us of the Holy Spirit, was placed upon the blood in those same three places. First the blood, then the oil. And so it is in the experience of the believer. The Holy Spirit does not fill and empower the flesh, that is, unjudged self. He only comes where there has been repentance and where the Blood of Christ has been applied to sin by faith. Such is the value of the precious Blood to God, that, be a man never such a failure, if he has truly repented, that Blood gives him the title to expect the Holy Spirit immediately to fill his heart and life. He need go no further than the foot of the Cross. Right there, where sin is washed away, if his faith will receive it, the Holy Spirit will fill him and his cup will be running over.

      I remember when a fellow-worker and myself were taking part in a ministers’ conference in Brazil, a young American missionary flew in from his station in the mission aircraft. A great hunger of heart had brought him. In conversation he told us of the barrenness on their station and the defeat in his own life. There had been only one professed conversion in their area in the whole year. The missionaries had got so cold that if one of them would seek to talk seriously about the Lord, the others would jokingly say, ‘He’s talking like a missionary!’ He told us how recently the Lord had begun to work in his heart again and had shown him things of which he must repent to get right with God. In some matters it meant putting things right with his fellow missionaries. He told us how as a result a new fellowship had begun to grow up between the missionaries and there was a new touch of blessing on the work. We suggested he might give his testimony in the meeting that day. He did so, and as he concluded what was an impressive story of the Lord humbling him and bringing him back to the Cross, he said, ‘However I cannot say that I am filled with the Spirit yet, but I am seeking’.

      Afterwards I drew him aside and said, ‘While I praise God for your testimony I was disappointed to hear you say that you are not yet filled with the Spirit.’ As we talked further, he began to see that he did not need to go any further than the Cross to be filled with the Spirit. In that place of brokenness where the Blood was applied to his heart, Jesus was made to him all he needed. And in as much as he had come to the Cross, God did indeed fill him with the Spirit because of the Blood of Christ-if his faith would receive it. There he began to believe in the value of the Blood of Jesus on his behalf. In those days he could be seen in quiet corners under the trees and elsewhere, bowed in wonder and worship, believing it all-cleansed in the Blood, therefore filled with the Spirit, and Jesus made to him all he needed, his righteousness with God and his holiness within. He returned to his station radiant, emancipated. As he humbly gave his testimony there, the Lord began to use his testimony to make others hungry. Christians began to repent and others began to seek Christ for the first time. He wrote back. ‘It’s rivers of living water again.’

      How simple and how well within our reach is God’s way of being filled with His Spirit.

A New Creation

By T. Austin-Sparks

The all-inclusive rule of the new creation is that “all things are of (out from) God.” Concerning this fact the Apostle Paul uses the word “but” – “But all things are of God” – as though he would anticipate, intercept, or arrest an impulse to rush away and attempt life or service upon an old creation basis, or with old creation resource.

      The great question then is: What does it mean that all things in this new creation are out from God? What kind of a life will such a life be? To answer that question adequately would be a very comprehensive task and the most revolutionary thing conceivable.

      To begin with, we should have to be settled regarding the difference between the old and the new creations, and then as to how far-reaching that difference is. In addition, we should need to see that God has put these two creations asunder, utterly and forever, and however gracious and forbearing He may be with us in our ignorance and slowness of apprehension, He never accepts the overlapping or intertwining of the two. Then there would be the further need of an inward, intelligent judgment and power by which we are made aware of the Divine veto upon the one and energy toward the other.

      There are a few things which, precisely stated, sum up this matter.

      1.All things out from God means that all things, in the first place, are in God. A truism though it be, that fact is one of great significance. Whatever man may have, or think that he has, or knows, or can do in the realm of the old creation, nothing of the knowledge, ability, or power of the new creation originates with man. He has to begin as a helpless, ignorant, innocent infant. Everything for him is in God, he has nothing in himself.

      2.Whatever God may impart, of wisdom, knowledge, or ability in the new creation, He never does so outright. That is to say, He never gives the resource to be held apart from Himself. He never constitutes men gods, with independent Divine resources. He never allows man to become a possessor in himself, in such a way that man of himself is something. Everything must be held in abiding dependence upon God, both for receiving and using, and nothing can be absolute. It was the violation of this law or the attempt to have it set aside, that brought ruin in the first instance. Man had all by dependence, faith, obedience, and humility. He yielded to the suggestion to have it in himself, with freedom from this law – to “be as God.” God is not leaving that door open in the new creation, and nothing that savours of man will ever get through at last. Here is the importance for life and service of a life wholly in God.

      3.The larger the measure of what is of God the more utter will be the application by God of the law of dependence. This means that God will have no plenipotentiaries-at-large. The life and instrument related to God’s fullest thought will be kept on a basis of step-by-step guidance and strength. There will be no making over of plans, schemes, schedules; no seeing of the way from beginning to end; no resources to draw upon without Divine witness, or to endanger exactness as to the Divine intention; no making of men into authorities and courts-of-appeal by reason of their being a fountain of wisdom and knowledge: in a word, nothing that would infringe the law that for all things, at all times, and in all ways, “all things are out from God.”

      The only certainty is God. An apostle may be led to move in a particular direction, and then by reason of need and opportunity he may conclude that certain regions are the objective, but when he reaches a point he will be met by a double, Divine “No” to those thoughts, and be shown something unthought of. (Acts 16:6-10.)

      To the old creation such a life is most unsatisfactory and irregular. Yes, and in a thousand other things this life is utterly different from what man naturally wants and likes. But that does not mean that God is not more honoured, glorified, and satisfied. Let us read the New Testament with this one thought in mind, the Gospels as well as the rest, and see if it was not true in the case of Christ, the Apostles, and the teaching.

      4.If this is all true, then it is its own reflection upon those other major questions. The difference between the two creations, their extent, and the Divine attitude toward them, is clearly and forcefully revealed by such issues as we have pointed out. The difference is irreconcilable and cannot be bridged. The extent reaches to mind, heart, and will. It is a matter of mentality, capacity, and the very springs of life. We are not only confronted with the fact of limitation when we come to probe the question of the old creation, but with a state with which God can have nothing to do. Even though it appear in religious form, and that in the red-hot devoutness of Saul of Tarsus, its deeper nature will be proved inimical to God.

      5.There remains one thing to be referred to. In the divide between the two creations there is planted the Cross of Christ. The Cross has a death side and a life side; death to the old, life to the new. The recognition and acceptance of the Cross in this twofold meaning is God’s only way to the new creation. To the believer who receives Him by faith the Holy Spirit is given as the inward intelligent power for witnessing to the Cross against the one and for the other. Hence the immeasurably great importance of a life governed by the Holy Spirit at all points and in all things. Only that which, by the Spirit, is immediately out from God will survive or get through. All else must perish with the creation which God has placed under condemnation.

      It is not what is done for God that will last, but what is done by God.

      The measure of spiritual value is determined by the measure in which God promotes it, not the measure of human activities according to human judgments and energies in the name of God.

First published in “A Witness and A Testimony” magazine, Jan-Feb 1937, Vol 16-1

In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks’ wishes that what was freely received should be freely given, his writings are not copyrighted. Therefore, we ask if you choose to share them with others, please respect his wishes and offer them freely – free of changes, free of charge and free of copyright.