God Is In The Front Line

Deu 31:8  And the LORD, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.

In the presence of a great work or a great warfare, here is a text which should help us to buckle on our harness.

If Jehovah Himself goes before us, it must be safe to follow. 

Who can obstruct our progress if the LORD Himself is in the van? 

Come, brother soldiers, let us make a prompt advance! Why do we hesitate to pass on to victory? 

Nor is the LORD before us only; He is with us. Above, beneath, around, within is the omnipotent, omnipresent One. 

In all time, even to eternity, He will be with us even as He has been. How this should nerve our arm! 

Dash at it boldly, ye soldiers of the cross, for the LORD of hosts is with us! 

Being before us and with us, He will never withdraw His help. 

He cannot fail in Himself, and He will not fail toward us. He will continue to help us according to our need, even to the end. 

As He cannot fail us, so He will not forsake us. 

He will always be both able and willing to grant us strength and succor till fighting days are gone.

Let us not fear nor be dismayed; for the LORD of hosts will go down to the battle with us, will bear the brunt of the fight, and give us the victory. 

~Charles Spurgeon~

Two Old Women And MIGHTY Revival!!!

There are two things that I would like to say in speaking about the revival in the Hebrides. First, I would like to make it perfectly clear that I did not bring revival to the Hebrides. 

It has grieved me beyond words to hear people talk and write about the man who brought revival to the Hebrides. My dear people, I didn't do that. 

Revival was there before I ever set foot on the island. It began in a gracious awareness of God sweeping through the parish of Barvas. 

Then I would like to make it perfectly clear what I understand of revival. 

When I speak of revival, I am not thinking of high-pressure evangelism. I am not thinking of crusades or of special efforts convened and organized by man. That is not in my mind at all.
 
Revival is something altogether different from evangelism on its
highest level. Revival is a moving of God in the community and
suddenly the community becomes God conscious before a word
is said by any man representing any special effort.

Now I am sure that you will be interested to know how, in November 1949, this gracious movement began on the island of Lewis. 

Two old women, one of them 84 years of age and the other 82-one of them stone blind, were greatly burdened because of the appalling state of their own parish. 

And those two women were greatly concerned and they made it a special matter of prayer. 

A verse gripped them: "I will pour water on him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground." 

They were so burdened that both of them decided to spend so much time in prayer twice a week. On Tuesday they got on their knees at 10 o'clock in the evening and remained on their knees until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning--two old women in a very humble cottage.

One night, one of the sisters had a vision. Now remember, in revival, God works in wonderful ways. 

A vision came to one of them, and in the vision she saw the church of her fathers crowded with young people. Packed to the doors, and a strange minister standing in the pulpit. 

And she was so impressed by the vision that she sent for the parish minister. And of course he knowing the two sisters,
knowing that they were two women who knew God in a wonderful way, he responded to their invitation and called at the cottage. 

That morning, one of the sisters said to the minister, "You must
do something about it. And I would suggest that you call your
office bearers together and that you spend with us at least two
nights in prayer in the week... 

Well, that was what happened, the minister called his office bearers together and seven of them met in a barn to pray on Tuesday and on Friday. And the two old women got on their knees and prayed with them.

Well that continued for some weeks indeed, I believe almost a
month and a half. 

Until one night one young man, a deacon in the church, got up and read Psalm 24. "Who shall ascend the hill of God? Who shall stand in His holy place?  He that has clean hands and a pure heart who has not lifted up his soul unto vanity or sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing (not a blessing, but the blessing) of the Lord."

And then that young man closed his Bible. And looking down at the minister and the other office bearers, he said this- "It seems to me to be so much humbug to be praying as we are praying, to be waiting as we are waiting, if we ourselves are not rightly related to God."

And then he lifted his two hands and prayed, "God, are my hands clean? Is my heart pure? " But he got no further.

That young man fell to his knees and then fell into a trance. Now don't ask me to explain this because I can't. He fell into a trance and is now lying on the floor of the barn.

And in the words of the minister, at that moment, he and his other office bearers were gripped by the conviction that a God-sent revival must ever be related to holiness, must ever be related to Godliness. 

Are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?

When that happened in the barn, the power of God swept into the parish. And an awareness of God gripped the community such as hadn't been known for over 100 years. 

An awareness of God - that's revival, that's revival. 

And on the following day, the looms were silent, little work was done on the farms as men and women gave themselves to thinking on eternal things gripped by eternal realities.

~Duncan Campbell~

Mountains Turned To Plains

Zec 4:7  Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it.

At this hour a mountain of difficulty, distress, or necessity may be in our way, and natural reason sees no path over it, or through it, or round it.

Let faith come in, and straightway the mountain disappears and becomes a plain. 

But faith must first hear the word of the LORD--"Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the LORD of hosts." 

This grand truth is a prime necessity for meeting the insurmountable trials of life. 

I see that I can do nothing and that all reliance on man is vanity. "Not by might."

I see that no visible means can be relied on, but the force is in the invisible Spirit. 

God alone must work, and men and means must be nothing accounted of. 

If it be so that the Almighty God takes up the concerns of His people, then great mountains are nothing. 

He can remove worlds as boys toss balls about or drive them with their foot.

This power He can lend to me. If the LORD bids me move an Alp I can do it through His name.

It may be a great mountain, but even before my feebleness it shall become a plain; for the LORD hath said it. 

What can I be afraid of with God on my side?

~Charles Spurgeon~

A Tragic Answer To Prayer

Psa 106:15  And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul.  

What a sad 'but' that is! It represents God's frustration and disappointment. 

It means that God has so left the decision and choice with man that He will not force or coerce.

It points to the fact that God has a great intention where His people are concerned but they may miss it.

But when all that has been said, the reason for the tragedy was and can be persistent insistence on having what the people who pray want rather than what the Lord had so evidently shown to be His will.

It is therefore possible for God to yield to us, to answer our prayer, and for the result to be an everlasting regret and reproach.

What are the alternatives? 

The context of the verse in Psalm 106, and the reference to Numbers 6, shows that it all hinged upon the food question.

The Manna was too mysterious, too inscrutable, too delicate, too heavenly, too miraculous, too 'spiritual'. It contrasted with the tangible, certain (?), understandable, and naturally gratifying food of Egypt.

The fact is that their spiritual life had dropped to such a low level as to make them forget the tyranny, labour, heartbreak, and groanings in Egypt, and to be in an illusionary mentality about that terrible history. 

Get spiritually low and the world holds out false attraction. 

Granted that the life of faith and a supernatural basis of life has trials and difficulties for the flesh and the natural man, but it has a daily miracle of sustenance at its heart. 

The point of departure with them was whether their own souls were to be gratified or whether they were to be a testimony to the Lord.

The phrase "leanness into their souls" indicates that, firstly, thinness, scantiness, smallness, starvation, tenuity, weakness, and contraction in spiritual stature and measure are quite contrary to a God who is so full, abundant, and beneficent. 

Such contraction and limitation could never be a testimony to Him.

In the next place, the words indicate that the heavenly, the supernatural, the spiritual, and the way of faith is really the way of spiritual robustness and substance.

How lean-souled many of the Lord's people are! 

How little many of them and many churches have to give! 

How rare it is to find those - individually or collectively - who have much more than they need themselves and plenty for others!

Starvation conditions are all too common among the Lord's people. 

There are many reasons for this, but our verse says that it is the preference for the earthly to the heavenly, and an unwillingness to forego the natural for the spiritual. 

This whole matter is threshed out in the First Letter to the Corinthians, a church characterized by spiritual leanness, weakness, and smallness.

Spiritual leanness can be a judgment. "He sent leanness into their souls", while he gave them their request for natural fatness.

At any cost let us set the highest value and importance upon spiritual fulness, the fulness of Christ, and never by any means limit Him, or be instrumental in limiting Him in others! 

~T. Austin Sparks~

A Lurking Assassin

Envy is the basest of human passions. 

It might well be impersonated as a lurking assassin, dagger in hand, haunting the darkest chambers of the soul; disguised, too, with iron mask, to conceal, as best it may, its own vile features and malignant thoughts.
 
The Bible speaks of envy as one of a dastard, unlovely  triad..."envyings, murders, drunkenness." 

It is a miniature hell wherever the foul fiend of envy has been allowed to intrude.

Hence no nobler moral victory, yet no more difficult one can there be, than exorcizing this demon of the abyss, tortured and maddened by the sight of goodness it cannot reach, its impotence to tear the wreath honorably won from brows better and worthier than its own, and turn it into ashes.  

From envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, Lord, deliver us!

~John Macduff~

Threefold Disloyalty

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Matthew 6:21

I am chargeable, the Master says, with a threefold disloyalty.

For my purposes are low. I lay up for myself treasure on earth. 

I am worldly in aim, and I measure everything from the worldly point of view. 

My heart is an earthly disposition, which gives its tinge and tone to all my universe.

And my heart is divided. I seek to serve two masters...God and my own selfish interests. 

And that, of course, means that I am alienated from God, for He will not be content with a spasmodic and conventional allegiance. 

I must be His altogether, His without these miserable reservations.

And my trust is imperfect. I forget my Father's wisdom, my Father's power, my Father's love.

I do not learn the lesson of repose which wayside flowers and happy birds should teach my spirit.

I do not cast all my care on Him who cares for me. I am fretful, distracted, anxious, worried.

I have need that the Master should touch my hot hands, with healing from His own, that the fever may leave me and I may rest.

Ah, my Lord, so mighty and so merciful, rescue me from my besetting sins.

May the low purposes be sublimed and heavenly.

May the divided heart be united to fear Your name.

May the imperfect trust become full and perpetual.

~Alexander Smellie~

Weapons Doomed To Fail

 Isa 54:17  No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, saith the LORD.

There is great clatter in the forges and smithies of the enemy. They are making weapons wherewith to smite the saints.

They could not even do as much as this if the LORD of saints did not allow them; for He has created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire.

But see how busily they labor! How many swords and spears they fashion!

It matters nothing, for on the blade of every weapon you may read this inscription: It shall not Prosper.

But now listen to another noise: it is the strife of tongues. 

Tongues are more terrible instruments than can be made with hammers and anvils, and the evil which they inflict cuts deeper and spreads wider.

What will become of us now? Slander, falsehood, insinuation, ridicule-these are poisoned arrows; how can we meet them? 

The LORD God promises us that, if we cannot silence them, we shall, at least, escape from being ruined by them.

They condemn us for the moment, but we shall condemn them at last and forever.

The mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped, and their falsehoods shall be turned to the honor of those good men who suffered by them.

~Charles Spurgeon~

SAFE WALKING

Psalms 25:10 All the paths of the LORD are mercy and truth unto such as keep His covenant and His testimonies.

The paths of the Lord! My soul! never follow your own paths. 

If you do, you will be in danger often of following sight rather than faith--choosing the evil, and refusing the good.

But "commit your way unto the Lord and He shall bring it to pass."

Let this be your prayer, "Show me Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths."

Oh! for Caleb's spirit, "to wholly follow the Lord my God"--to follow Him when self must be sacrificed, and hardship must be borne, and trials await me. 

To "walk with God"--to ask in simple faith, What would You have me to do?

To have no will of my own but this, that God's will is to be my will. Here is safety here is happiness! 

Fearlessly follow the Guiding Pillar. He will lead you by a right way, though it may be by a way of hardship, and crosses, and losses, and privations--to the city of God. 

Oh! the blessedness of thus lying passive in the hands of God, saying "Undertake for me God!" 

Oh! the blessedness of dwelling with holy gratitude on past mercies and interpositions; trusting these as pledges of future faithfulness and love; and hearing His voice behind us, amid life's many perplexities, exclaiming, "This is the way walk in it!"

Happy, surely, are every people who are in such a case!

It will be for you, Reader, if you can form the resolve in a strength greater than your own: This God shall be my God forever and ever; He shall be my Guide even unto death! 

~John Macduff~

Do We Love A Taking God As Well As A Giving God?

By knocking upon a barrel, we see whether it is full or empty, cracked or sound. 

Just so, by the knocks of providence given us in affliction, we are revealed for what we really are.   

Not only does affliction thus try our characters but prosperity does the same.

When we are afflicted, it is wise to watch the result upon ourselves.
 
Can our faith bear trial or is it a mere counterfeit?
 
Do we love a taking God as well as a giving God?
 
Do we cleave to Christ when under a cloud or is our religion only a fair-weather amusement?

Heart-searching may thus be greatly helped, and we shall run less danger of self-deception.

It will be an awful thing to be mere empty barrels, and never know it until death deals a blow with his rod of iron, and we answer to it with hollow sounds of despair!

~Charles Spurgeon~

OBEY The VOICE Of The LORD!

1Sa 28:18  Because thou obeyedst not the voice of the LORD, nor executedst his fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore hath the LORD done this thing unto thee this day.  

Thus unforgiven sin comes back to a man. 

We cannot explain the mysteries that lie around this incident; but it is clear that in that supreme hour of Saul's fate, that early sin, which had never been confessed and put away, came surging back on the mind and heart of the terror stricken monarch. 

Because thou obeyedst not the voice of the Lord, and didst not execute his fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore hath the Lord done this thing unto thee This day. 

Moreover the Lord will deliver Israel also with thee into the hands of the Philistines

But Saul did not realize that even then the gates of God's love stood open to him, if only he would pass through them by humble penitence and faith. 

If instead of applying to the witch, he had sought God's mercy, light would have burst on his darkened path, and he had never perished by his own hand on Mount Gilboa.

In strong contrast with this, let us put the assurance of the new covenant: "Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." 

When God forgives, He blots out from the book of his remembrance. The sin is gone as a pebble in the ocean; as a cloud in the blue of a summer's sky.

Saul's was a sin of omission. The question was not what evil he had done, but the good be had failed to do. 

Let us remember that we need pardon for the sad lapses and failures of our lives, equally as for the positive transgressions. 

And if such things are not forgiven, they will lie heavy on our consciences when the shadows of death begin to gather around us. 

The New Testament especially judges those who knew and did not do, the slothful servant, the virgin without the oil, the priest that passed by on the other side.

~F. B. Meyer~

Sing Praise Unto The LORD!

2Ch 20:22  And when they began to sing and to praise, the LORD set ambushments against the children of Ammon, Moab, and mount Seir, which were come against Judah; and they were smitten.
 
Oh, that we could reason less about our troubles, and sing and praise more!

There are thousands of things that we wear as shackles which we might use as instruments with music in them, if we only knew how.

Those men that ponder, and meditate, and weigh the affairs of life, and study the mysterious developments of God's providence, and wonder why they should be burdened and thwarted and hampered....

How different and how much more joyful would be their lives, if, instead of forever indulging in self-revolving and inward thinking, they would take their experiences, day by day, and lift them up, and praise God for them.

We can sing our cares away easier than we can reason them away. 

Sing in the morning. The birds are the earliest to sing, and birds are more without care than anything else that I know of.

Sing at evening. Singing is the last thing that robins do. When they have done their daily work; when they have flown their last flight, and picked up their last morsel of food, then on a topmost twig, they sing one song of praise.

Oh, that we might sing morning and evening, and let song touch song all the way through.

~Selected~

Don't let the song go out of your life
Though it chance sometimes to flow
In a minor strain; it will blend again
With the major tone you know.

What though shadows rise to obscure life's skies,
And hide for a time the sun,
The sooner they'll lift and reveal the rift,
If you let the melody run.

Don't let the song go out of your life;
Though the voice may have lost its trill,
Though the tremulous note may die in your throat,
Let it sing in your spirit still.

Don't let the song go out of your life,
Let it ring in the soul while here;
And when you go hence, 'twill follow you thence,
And live on in another sphere."

Somewhere Outwardly Or Inwardly A Link To The World?

I was asking the question, why it is that the Church is so ineffective? which is only saying, why is it that so many Christians are so spiritually weak and unfruitful and ineffective?

Somewhere there is a link with the world; outwardly or inwardly, there is a link with the world - that is, the kingdom of darkness, the authority of darkness.

I am not talking about our being here on the earth and having to work here in this world. 

You know the difference between being in it and of it, between being here and having heart relationships, voluntary relationships, choices, interests, desires, ambitions and so on; to be a part of this world in its acceptance, its recognition, and many other things.

The way out and the way in is the way of death and that death, while it is all-inclusive in His own - for He has comprehended all that it means - He says for us it is a crisis and then a daily thing. 

"Take up his cross daily" (Luke 9:23), which means, I die daily to the call of this world, to the call of that kingdom where Satan has rights and authority, a call to my heart to be something here in this world as in itself.

Oh, how subtly Satan uses that with many, seeking to argue that the realization of an ambition would give even greater opportunity for the Lord. That is very nice to the flesh.

The Cross has to be brought to all those subtle arguments of the angel of light;

And while I would not say to anybody, Be careless, be slipshod, be second-rate in what you are and what you are doing on this earth, never let your Christianity make you less than the best amongst men and women and the most efficient in your job: 

At the same time, examine your motive, your object, your ambition. 

Examine your hearts in the light of the Cross, and see whether it is self-gratification, self-glory, or any form of self as the goal that is influencing the argument. 

It is a deep heart matter, this matter of the Cross daily, dying to much, perhaps, that the flesh would like, dying to the cravings of this natural life, and oh, they are so strong!

It is so difficult to let this self go altogether and be nothing as amongst men.

When we come to think of the deliverer of souls, we shall find that Moses and Christ started in this world with no place of acceptance. 

Moses came into the world and found that the door was shut to him in this world and he had to be hidden three months.

His life was a prey from his birth.

And Christ came into this world on exactly the same conditions. 

Herod's edict was at work and there was no place for Him, and it is very difficult to take up a life which is like that from the very inception. 

What you are as the Lord's, what you represent, you as a child of God, as a Christian man or woman, you are not wanted.

If you will only just compromise a bit, you will be accepted. 

If only you will hide it a bit, nothing will be said, the way will be open for you.

But if you are going to stand on that ground of Christ, then the door is shut to you, you are not wanted. 

This is what it means that the Cross stands there right at the beginning of this life. 

You remember Exodus 12 - "This month shall be unto you the beginning of months... they shall take to them every man a lamb". The beginning was with death, death to self, as to this kingdom.

Well now, we know that this is very practical in its application, and it does work out like this, that, inasmuch as there is anything that belongs to that realm in ourselves, inasmuch as it is here and we are actuated by it, influenced by it, governed in any way by it, spiritual weakness, spiritual defeat, spiritual paralysis, unfruitfulness is the result.

Somewhere there is a bridge, a link, a connection with the realm the Lord cannot have, His rights are not ceded.

Out of the authority, not only the realm, but the right of Satan, into the Kingdom of the Son of His love.

You notice the Mount of Transfiguration. "There are some of them that stand here, who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:27). 

Then eight days afterward a, significant number, resurrection, new ground, the old world gone, the Son of Man glorified 

Eight days afterward He taketh Peter, John and James up into the mountain, a heavenly position, and prayed. 

There came a voice out of the cloud, "This is my beloved Son; hear ye him". 

Peter, recounting it in his letter, says, "He received from the Father honor and glory, when there was borne such a voice to him by the Majestic Glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: and this voice we ourselves heard borne out of heaven, when we were with him in the holy mount" (2 Pet. 1:17-18). 

Into the kingdom of the son of his love. In whom I am well pleased. 

That very Kingdom of the Lord's pleasure, the Lord's delight, lies on the other side of the exodus. 

~T. Austin Sparks~

Satan's Rights Destroyed

Col 1:13  Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: 

"Who delivered". What a tremendous amount there is in that word, what a history!

We shall see that eighty years of the life of Moses were taken up by God with the formation of one who could deliver; deliverance is such a tremendous thing. 

"Who delivered us out of the authority" - the word 'power' is in our version, but it is that word which means authority or right, and here it has a double meaning. It refers to the person. 

You notice that it is translated in the plural in Eph. 6:12 - "Our wrestling is... against the principalities, against the powers..." - the same word, 'authorities'. These are personal things. 

They are entities in a certain position. The authority of darkness is firstly a person, of whom Pharaoh is but a faint type.

And then the authority is that power which is wielded and exercised by one in a position to exercise it, who has the right to exercise it in his own realm, and whose very strength is in his right;

From whom you cannot be delivered just in the direct way of snatching from his grasp, but you have to undo his right to hold, you have to take from him all ground of jurisdiction, to bring him to judgment and judge him clean out of court, so that he has not any more ground to stand upon, he has no case left.

Hath delivered us from the very case that the devil has against us' - that is a tremendous thing, that he has no more case against us.

He will forever be seeking to have a case against us, to find some ground on which he can bring up a case against us.

Hence he is called "the accuser of the brethren" (Rev. 12:10), but he has had his case spoiled, his ground destroyed, his rights nullified, and in this way we are delivered out of the authority of darkness.

The Cross of the Lord Jesus is that kind of exodus, that escape, that way out, that glorious achievement.

You see, this word 'authority' carries with it the idea of rights, and that great battle in Egypt, headed up to the Passover and consummated at the Red Sea, was all a question of rights.

In the Passover, the rights of Pharaoh were wound up.

If we understand the meaning of the virtue of the blood of the lamb, the dying of that lamb, the identification by faith of every believer with that lamb in death, and the appropriation by faith of the blood of the lamb, then we understand the meaning of Pharaoh's rights being wound up.

From that moment, he had no rights over them, and they began their exodus.

He sought to re-assert his rights and he met the authority of superior rights and his hosts were destroyed in the Red Sea.

He had no ground to stand upon, morally, spiritually and literally; his ground was gone.

All that is gathered into the Cross of the Lord Jesus. The work of the Lord Jesus in His Cross is all gathered into the Passover; and then, as He leads His people out through the offering of Himself, the shedding of His Blood, Satan's rights over them have been destroyed..

And they have a position which means that while Satan will be active afterward, he is only active against himself while they maintain their position in faith;

He is only bringing upon himself his own destruction while we hold to the ground that the Blood of the Lord Jesus has provided.

That mighty Passover can turn back upon Satan for his own undoing.

~T. Austin Sparks~