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~
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