Isa 43:10 Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Born Out Of His Travail

                             
Isa 53:11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

Well, we know more than the Prophet Isaiah knew about that! We have been with Him in Gethsemane in the time of the travail of His soul, and we are with Him, on the other side of the travail.

How many are the seed of Christ since then! 

Dear friends, if ever you are tempted to think that Christians are few, and that we are only a very small people in the millions of this world – open the windows! Look into the book of the Revelation: “A great multitude, which no man could number… ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands.” The number cannot be expressed in human language – and they have been gathered since the travail of the Lord Jesus.

He is indeed seeing His seed!  

Gethsemane has been the most fruitful garden in all history – and you and I are of His seed! 

We are born out of His travail and are in the covenant made with the new Israel.

But do remember that the meaning and the value of the covenant depend upon our devotion to the Lord!

This is a thing which is so evident: the greatest fruitfulness has always come from the lives most devoted to the Lord, the people of the undivided heart.

This covenant has two sides.... The New Testament takes many warnings from the history of Israel, and we may fail of all that that covenant means if our hearts are divided and we try to live life in two worlds. 

We never lose anything when the Lord has everything, and that is what it means to have a circumcised heart.

May that be true of everyone!

~T. Austin Sparks~

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

God's Answer To Everything


1Ti 2:5  For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus

God's answer to everything, God's explanation of everything, and God's means of realizing everything is a Man, "the man Christ Jesus." 

When this world has run its evil course, this inhabited earth will be judged in a Man. Men will be judged by what their inward relationship is to that Man. 

The question at the judgment will never be of how much good or bad, right or wrong, more or less, is in a man; it will turn upon this one point, "Are you in Christ?" If not, more or less makes no difference. God's intention, God's proclamation is that all things are in His Son. 

Are you in Him? Why not? The basis of judgment is very simple. It is all gathered up in a Man, and what is in that Man of God for us. That is the basis of judgment. It all comes back to the very simple, and yet comprehensive and blessed truth, that it is what Christ is that satisfies God, reaches God's end, and meets all our need. It is all summed up in a Man, & quot;the man Christ Jesus."

~T. Austin Sparks~

Monday, February 25, 2013

Everything Is Going To Be Shaken!

Heb 12:26  Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.  

Everything is going to be shaken in earth and in heaven, with a view to finding out just how much there is of Christ living in it.  

These Jewish believers were going to see the temple and the whole temple system wrecked, and then they would discover just how much they had got of Christ, or how much of their life was bound up with earthly things.  
They would see what was left when that was all gone. 

God is not only going to shake Judaism, but this heavenly thing. 

He will shake heaven and earth, and we shall find out by that shaking what we have left when the earthly system passes, when even the representation of heavenly things in Christianity is tested for Christianity has developed a representation of heavenly things, just as Judaism has. 

Men have made an earthly representation of the New Testament revelation of the church, and ministry, and priesthood. It is all going to be tested. For many it is now in the melting pot. The issue is the shaking of heaven and earth. What have we got left? The issue is Christ. 

Whether you like all that we have said, or agree with it or not, does not worry me; but I am concerned that we have come to Christ, to show that Christ in heaven is our Life, Christ in heaven is our All, and appointed to be so by God, and nothing here can take the place of Christ. 

God will bring everything to an end that takes the place of Christ.  

He has determined from eternity that in all things Christ should have the preeminence, and have the fullness, and that nothing shall glory before Him or take His place.   

The Lord bring us into a larger measure of Christ, and a larger measure of Christ into us. 

~T. Austin Sparks~

Friday, February 22, 2013

Are You Holding A Grudge Against GOD?


I believe there is nothing more dangerous to a Christian than to carry around resentment against God.

I am shocked by the growing number of believers who hold some kind of grudge against Him.

Why? They are convinced He does not care because He hasn't answered a particular prayer or acted on their behalf.

Jonah had a missionary call from God and he went to Nineveh to preach the message of judgment he had received.


After delivering the message, Jonah sat on a hillside, waiting for God to begin the judgment.

But forty days passed and nothing had happened.

Why?

Because Nineveh had repented and God had changed His mind about destroying them!

Most rage against God begins with a disappointment.


God may call us, burden us and send us.

Then, when things do not go as we had planned, we may feel misled or betrayed.

God understands our cries of pain and confusion. After all, our cry is a human one.

And it is no different from Jesus' cry on the cross:"Father, why have You forsaken Me?"

If we continue nursing a peeved spirit, it will grow into rage.  


And God will ask us the same question He asked Jonah: "Doest thou well to be angry?" (Jonah 4:9).

In other words, "Do you think you have a right to be so angry?"

Jonah answered, "I do well to be angry, even unto death" (same verse).


This prophet was so full of rage at God, that he said, "I don't care whether I live or die. My ministry is a failure. I have every right to be angry with Him."

God's Word says there is hope. "Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord" (Jeremiah 31:16).


In other words, "Stop complaining. I'm going to reward your faithfulness."

"Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord" 

(1 Corinthians 15:58).

Beloved, your cries and prayers have not been in vain.


All your pain and tears have been for a purpose.

God is telling you, "You think it's all over. You see only your failure and ruin, with no results. So you say, ‘This is the end.’  

But I say it is the beginning. I see the reward that I am about to pour out on you.

I have good things in mind for you-wonderful things. So, stop your crying!


~David Wilkerson~


Wednesday, February 20, 2013

One Heart Beat Away From Eternity


We are only One Heartbeat away from Eternity. Make sure your heart is Right with God in This Hour! Cry Out To Him....Jesus Christ.....He is our Salvation and our Deliverance! Praise His Holy Name! 

Heb 9:27  And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: 




                                                                             

Saturday, February 16, 2013

In HIS Presence

                                                                             
No flesh should glory in His presence(1 Corinthians 1:29). This verse is not just a New Testament truth—it was true in Moses day, as well. Moses could not deliver God's people in his own strength. He had to be taught, once and for all, that God's work is done not through any human ability but by total trust and dependence on the Lord.

This is true for every Christian today. There has to be a putting off of all that the flesh tries to bring to God. Indeed, God says to us as He did to Moses, "There is only one ground upon which you can approach Me, and that is holy ground. You can have no confidence in your flesh because no flesh will stand in My presence!"

When talking to Moses, God put a focus on shoes (see Exodus 3:5) because our feet are two of the most tender parts of our body. And what are shoes, but a protection of our flesh? They protect us from the elements, from stones, from snakes, from filth and dust, from the hot pavement.

Do you see what God was saying to Moses here? He was using an everyday, ordinary thing to teach a spiritual lesson, just as Jesus later did when He used coins, pearls, camels and mustard seeds. God was saying, "Moses, you wear protective garb to keep your flesh from injury. But no amount of fleshly protection will be able to keep you when I send you into Egypt—that den of iniquity—to face a hardened dictator. You will be put into a situation that only I can deliver you from. So, unless you set aside all reliance on your flesh—your meekness, zeal and humility—you won't be able to do what I'm calling you to do. All your abilities will be worthless unless I sanctify them."

Indeed, Moses faced all kinds of tests and trials as he led some three million people into the desert. With no grocery stores, malls, or even a well of water, he had to depend wholly on God for everything.

Moses had already tried to act as a deliverer in the power of his flesh. Forty years earlier, he had taken sword in hand and killed a cruel Egyptian slave driver. And now God was saying, Moses, your zeal has to be sanctified or it will destroy you. Are you willing to put down your sword and place all your confidence in Me?


~David Wilkerson~

Thursday, February 14, 2013

The Opposition Of The Enemy

                                                    
When you come into the burden you find you are in a realm of opposition, and that you are really in a battle. That is another common feature in these books; every one of them represents a situation of terrific opposition and antagonism, all combining to stop the work. Ezra - "Now our enemies." And you are not far in Esther before you find you are in a realm of conflict. And what about Daniel? The den of lions was for praying!

Now this is a stile to be cleared at once. If we are going to stand with God, for that which wholly represents His mind, we have to meet the most fierce antagonism, conflict, and pressure, from every quarter; there is going to be no method overlooked by the enemy for frustrating the end in view.

Why so much antagonism?

Why so much pressure?

Each time when something is in view which is to count for God in relation to His End-time purpose, there it is, you meet it all the time.

Where does the Devil get his information from? 

He finds out when we have a message from God that is going to count, and we meet this pressure from within and without when we are in the thing that is counting for God.

When it comes you must recognize that it is related to something which is to count for God. 

It will come through people, and if we blame the people and focus our attention on them, we have missed the point; if we begin to fight people whilst all the time it is something deeper.

Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies
 
People get cross with one another, and that gets on top of us, and we begin to direct our attention to them, and we get out with them and there is a distressing situation, and we see afterwards how foolish we are to allow the Devil to swing us off into a human track when it is a spiritual issue.

It has not really been the fault of persons, or just inconsequential happenings; there has been a spiritual issue at stake, and all these other things were brought about and used by the enemy to occupy us with the lesser, and so blind us to the real issue, thus keeping us out of prayer, and preventing our standing with the Lord for His rights which were at some point or other being challenged.

It is the realm of unceasing conflict, and it would seem that we have come into that part of the age when the enemy takes no rest, and we find we can take no off-times

Anything you do must be done deliberately with God, and you must never act out of, or apart from, God; that exposed movement has been watched for by the enemy, and you have to pay for it.

~T. Austin Sparks~

Monday, February 11, 2013

Satan Buffeted

                                                                             

We similarly see God's wonder-working way in the matter of physical weakness. How many a worker who is tried in health feels that much more effective service could be rendered if only he were free from the malady! Here again the lesson of Paul's life had been recorded for our comfort. Doubtless he felt that his loved ministry was much impeded by his "thorn in the flesh." He besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from him. 

Though his request was not granted, the Lord saw to it, not only that he should be comforted, but that all that was needed by way of explanation should be made known to him. There was both the preventive side of the trouble and the empowering side. Not only did he learn that it was inflicted lest he should be exalted overmuch through the greatness of the revelations he had received, but he also learned gladly to glory in his weaknesses, that the power of Christ might rest upon him.

Let us note, too, the abiding effort which the gracious word of the Lord had upon him. He records it not as a mere historical incident, but as something the comfort of which he had felt ever since, and was still enjoying. "He hath said (not 'He said') unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee; for My strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:9). The consequence was that he could say, "When I am weak, then am I strong." That was the outcome of Satan's buffeting.

The hindrance became a help. Satan's messenger became the Lord's minister. Many and many a servant of God has been similarly tried. How blessed the comfort of this record of Paul's experience! And how wonderful will be the revelation, in the coming Day, of God's dealings with us in our service here below!

~T. Austin Sparks~

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Character Through Conflict


                                       
The building of the House of the Lord, therefore, is not only a gathering of people but it is a spiritual and a moral building up, and that side of things is only done through conflict.

The Divine economy has so ordered that although the Lord Jesus has in Himself secured a universal triumph over all His foes, the foes are still left for us to deal with.

The enemy has, although been defeated, still been left for the saints to have something to do with, and the Lord has not put out of the universe our foes, though in Himself He has triumphed. He has left them for us to deal with in His triumph, and it is in that that you and I get our spiritual and moral development.

It is by conflict, by battle, by grim and terrible warfare spiritually, that the moral excellencies of our triumphant Head are brought out in us.

We triumph in His victory, but we know that faith is so tested in a conflict, so deeply tried in a battle, that it is something more than just objectively holding on, or believing in something in Christ.

That very exercise of faith brings out from Him, into our own souls, the strength of His victory so that we are made morally one with Him in His triumph by a test of faith which is so grim and so terrible that nothing that is not of Him in us would be sufficient to carry us through.

It has to be wrought into the very substance of our being, and that is done through conflict in which faith is drawn out; and so we spiritually and morally build through conflict, through adversity, in the Divine and sovereign ordering of our lives.

The moral side of things is that which comes out in exercise, and exercise of faith in the value of Calvary's victory. 

It is one thing to have a theoretical appropriation of Calvary's victory and say in an hour of emergency: "I take the victory of Calvary." But very often nothing happens, and although you take a position like that you find yourself called upon to hold on, and hold on, and hold on, and during that time of being called upon by the Lord to hold on, faith is being tested.

Calvary's victory is becoming something not objectively taken hold of but inwardly established, and at last that victory is in us as it is in the Lord. But it has become a moral quality in our being and in the next time it is not a trying to get hold of something, it is there with its roots in us, something has been done in us which is a part of us.

~T. Austin Sparks~

Saturday, February 2, 2013

The Grace Of GOD And Money

                                                                                                        
If we have God's grace in us it will show itself in giving. If we want new grace, we must exercise what we have in giving. And in all we give we ought to do it in the consciousness of the grace of God that works it in us.

The Grace of God teaches to give liberally. "Their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality, for according to their power, yea, beyond their power, they gave of their own accord, beseeching us with much entreaty in regard of this grace." 2 Cor. 8:2. What a sight! And what a proof of the power of grace!  


These newly converted Gentiles in Macedonia hear of the need of their Jewish brethren in Jerusalem -- men unknown and despised -- and at once are ready to share with them what they have.
 

It is remarkable how much more liberality there is among the poor than the rich. 

It is as if they do not hold so fast what they have: they more easily part with all; the deceitfulness of riches has not hardened them; they have learned to trust God for tomorrow. 

Their liberality is not indeed what men count such; their gifts are but small. Men say it does not cost them much to give all; they are so accustomed to have little. And yet the very fact of their giving it more easily is what makes it precious to God; it shows the childlike disposition that has not yet learnt to accumulate and to hold fast.

God's way in His kingdom of grace on earth is ever from below, upwards. "Not many wise and not many noble are called. God has chosen the weak and the base things." And even so He has chosen the poor in this world, as they give out of their deep poverty, to teach the rich what liberality is.

Far beyond their power gave they of their own accord, beseeching us with much entreaty that we would receive the gift." If this spirit were to pervade our churches and men of moderate means and of large possessions were to combine with the poor in their standard of giving, and the Macedonian example became the law of Christian liberality, what means would not flow in for the service of the kingdom

The Grace of God makes our giving part of the Christlike life.

See that you abound in this grace also, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor." (8:9.)


Every branch and leaf and blossom of the mightiest oak derives its life from the same strong root that bears the stem. The life in the tiniest bud is the same as in the strongest branch.

We are branches in Christ the Living Vine; the very life that lived and worked in Him. Of what consequence that we should know well what His life is, that we may intelligently and willingly yield to it. 

Here we have one of its deepest roots laid open 

Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he become poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.

To enrich and bless us, He impoverished Himself. 

That was why the widow's mite pleased Him so; her gift was of the same measure as His: She cast in all she had. 

This is the life and grace that seeks to work in us; there is no other mold in which the Christ-life can be cast. 

See that you abound in this grace also; for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus, that he became poor.

How little did the Macedonian Christians know that they were, in their deep poverty, and in the riches of their liberality, giving beyond their power, just acting out what the Spirit and grace of Jesus was working in them. How little we would have expected that the simple gift of these poor people would become the text of such high and holy and heart-searching teaching.

How much we need to pray that the Holy Spirit may so master our purses and our possessions, that the grace of our giving will, in some truly recognizable degree, be the reflection of our Lord's.

And how we need to bring our giving to the cross, and to seek Christ's death to the world and its possessions as the power for ours.

So will we make others rich through our poverty, and our life be somewhat like St. Paul's: "poor, yet making many rich." 

~Andrew Murray~