The Cure For A Fretful Spirit

                                     

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN PSALM 37 admonishes us to beware of irritation in our religious lives:

 

Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.

 

The word "fret" comes to us from the Anglo-Saxon and carries with it such a variety of meanings as bring a rather pained smile to our faces.

 

Notice how they expose us and locate us behind our disguises.

 

The primary meaning of the word is to eat, and from there it has been extended with rare honesty to cover most of the manifestations of an irritable disposition. "To eat away; to gnaw; to chafe; to gall; to vex; to worry; to agitate; to wear away"; so says Webster.

 

And all who have felt the exhausting, corrosive effects of fretfulness know how accurately the description fits the facts.

 

Now, the grace of God in the human heart works to calm the agitation that normally accompanies life in such a world as ours. The Holy Spirit acts as a lubricant to reduce the friction to a minimum and to stop the fretting and chafing in their grosser phases.

 

But for most of us the problem is not as simple as that.Fretfulness may be trimmed down to the ground and its roots remain alive deep within the soul, there growing and extending themselves all unsuspected, sending up their old poisonous shoots under other names and other appearances.

 

It was not to the unregenerate that the words "Fret not" were spoken, but to God-fearing persons capable of understanding spiritual things. 

 

We Christians need to watch and pray lest we fall into this temptation and spoil our Christian testimony by an irritable spirit under the stress and strain of life.

 

It requires great care and a true knowledge of ourselves to distinguish a spiritual burden from religious irritation.

 

We dare not rest at ease in Zion when the church is so desperately in need of spiritually sensitive men and women who can see her faults and try to call her back to the path of righteousness.

 

The prophets and apostles of Bible times carried in their hearts such crushing burdens for God's wayward people that they could say, Tears have been my meat day and night, and Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain. of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain daughter of my people!

 

These men were heavy with a true burden. What they felt was not vexation but acute concern for the honor of God and the souls of men.

 

By nature some persons fret easily. They have difficulty separating their personal antipathies from the burden of the Spirit. When they are grieved they can hardly say whether it is a pure and charitable thing or merely irritation set up by other Christians having opinions different from their own.

 

Of one thing we may be sure, we can never escape the external stimuli that cause vexation. The world is full of them and though we were to retreat to a cave and live the remainder of our days alone we still could not lose them. The rough floor of our cave would chafe us, the weather would irritate us and the very silence would cause us to fret.

 

Deliverance from a fretting spirit may be by blood and fire, by humility, self-abnegation and a patient carrying of the cross. There will always be "evildoers" and "workers of iniquity," and for the most part they will appear to succeed while the forces of righteousness will seem to fail.

 

The wicked will always have the money and the talent and the publicity and the numbers, while the righteous will be few and poor and unknown.

 

The prayerless Christian will surely misread the signs and fret against the circumstances. That is what the Spirit warns us against.

 

Let us look out calmly upon the world; or better yet, let us look down upon it from above where Christ is seated and we are seated in Him. 

 

Though the wicked spread himself like "a green bay tree" it is only for a moment. Soon he passes away and is not."

 

But the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord: he is their strength in the time of trouble. 

 

This knowledge should cure the fretting spirit.

 

~A. W. Tozer~

Singing In The Fire!

                                                    

At the close of a dark and gloomy day, I lay resting on my couch as the deeper night drew on; and though all was bright within my cozy room, some of the external darkness seemed to have entered into my soul and obscured its spiritual vision. Vainly I tried to see the hand which I knew held mine, and guided my fog-enveloped feet along a steep and slippery path of suffering. 

In sorrow of heart I asked, 'Why does my Lord thus deal with His child? Why does He so often send sharp and bitter pain to visit me? Why does He permit lingering weakness to hinder the sweet service I long to render to His poor servants?'

These fretful questions were quickly answered, and through a strange language; no interpreter was needed save the conscious whisper of my heart.

For a while silence reigned in the little room, broken only by the crackling of the oak log burning in the fireplace. Suddenly I heard a sweet, soft sound, a little, clear, musical note, like the tender trill of a robin beneath my window.

What can it be? Surely no bird can be singing out there at this time of the year and night.

Again came the faint, plaintive notes, so sweet, so melodious, yet mysterious enough to provoke our wonder. My friend exclaimed, 'It comes from the log on the fire!' The fire was letting loose the imprisoned music from the old oak's inmost heart!

Perchance he had garnered up this song in the days when all was well with him, when birds twittered merrily on his branches, and the soft sunlight flecked his tender leaves with gold. But he had grown old since then, and hardened; ring after ring of knotty growth had sealed up the long-forgotten melody, until the fierce tongues of the flames came to consume his callousness, and the vehement heat of the fire wrung from him at once a song and a sacrifice.

Ah, thought I, when the fire of affliction draws songs of praise from us, then indeed we are purified, and our God is glorified!

Perhaps some of us are like this old oak log, cold, hard, insensible; we should give forth no melodious sounds, were it not for the fire which kindles around us, and releases notes of trust in Him, and cheerful compliance with His will. 

As I mused the fire burned, and my soul found sweet comfort in the parable so strangely set forth before me.

Singing in the fire! Yes, God helping us, if that is the only way to get harmony out of these hard apathetic hearts, let the furnace be heated seven times hotter than before.

~Mrs Charles Spurgeon~

THE PAYDAY

                                                                     

I want to give you four tragic results that befall those who dethrone the Lord.

1. "Israel is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself" (Hosea 10:1).

Everyone in Israel was looking out for himself and the result was total emptiness. Hosea was speaking to believers, showing them a picture of what happens to all who dethrone the Lord in their lives. Such people become selfish and miserable and their every pursuit ends in emptiness.
 
2."Their heart is divided . . . he shall break down their altars, he shall spoil their images" (verse 2).

Our nation's heart is divided. Americans pay lip service to God and religion, but they do not worship the Lord in truth. That has led directly to the breakdown of all our hallowed institutions. 

When you lose faith in God and place your trust in something else, that thing becomes an idol. This is happening in our nation today. Our society no longer trusts God, turning instead to the government, the President, the educational system, Social Security—all to try to find some kind of stability. 

God is saying, "If you won't trust Me, I'll make all your trusted institutions fail."
 
3."Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity . . . because thou didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men" (verse 13).

Hosea is saying, "You stopped trusting in the Lord and now you're going to reap a harvest of iniquity!" 

Humankind today is sophisticated, educated, knowledgeable. We have dethroned God—rejecting the Bible and prayer—and enthroned science, psychology and education. Yet, I ask you: What has been the harvest? 

What has all our sophisticated learning brought us?    

4."We have no king, because we feared not the Lord" (verse 3).

Hosea was a prophet over Israel, but when Israel's backsliding began, he was powerless to stop the loss of faith. His words carried no authority. Whenever he spoke, the people merely shook their heads and said, "We have no leadership, no direction. We're drifting."
 
That is just what is happening in America right now and the same thing is happening in the church today. Many Christians mock their pastors, ridiculing their authority. Why? Because these men's words carry no power. People are saying, We no longer have any leadership in our church. We're lost, confused.  

That is the payday for dethroning the Lord!

~David Wilkerson~
 

An Unusual Word

                                                                               
Recently the Holy Spirit gave me an unusual word, one that I did not want to hear! He said, "You are bound to a very limited vision of the Lord’s ocean of tender, loving mercies. You have endured much guilt, condemnation and fear because you have not allowed the Holy Spirit to reveal the vastness of My forgiving, healing, reconciling mercies. You do not know Me for My tenderness!"

God showed me that this is a root cause for many giving up and falling away. When sin strikes when Satan comes in like a flood, when you fall into some old habit or sin—the devil creates a bondage. First, the guilt comes flooding in, then fear fills your heart. A sense of total failure and helplessness overwhelms your soul. At this point, most believers run out of grace because their view of God’s mercy is so limited.

Satan comes to you and says, You’ve reached your limit. You’ve confessed your sin time after time. There is no way God will forgive you now, because you’ve sinned against the light. If you return and confess once more, you’ll turn around and sin all over again. So quit now!

The devil does not want you to see God’s ocean of mercy; he wants you to see only a trickle! Because of our ignorance of the forgiving, restoring power of Christ’s love, we are destroyed. We run out of mercy for ourselves because we are horribly bound by a limited vision. Our eyes have not yet been opened to the endless mercies of our tender Father! We are so bound by a false, limited view of His mercies, we find it almost impossible to believe or accept what James said: "[We] have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful (full of compassion), and of tender mercy" (James 5:11).

This verse means, "God is easily crushed by our troubles and hurts. He feels our pain and our failures, and He is kind and compassionate to us. He loved us even when we were His enemy. Even when we offend Him, He is quick to help, restore and forgive us.”

The word mercy means "kind and compassionate treatment of an offender under one's power." God has the power to damn us to hell every time we sin; He has us under His control and can do with us as He pleases. And it pleases His tender heart to be compassionate, loving and kind toward those who have failed Him the most.

~David Wilkerson~

Better Than At Your Beginnings

                                               
I . . . will do better unto you than at your beginnings Ezekiel 36:11

This is a promise of a great work of God~ greater than Pentecost~that will occur in these last days.

Think back to your spiritual "beginnings," when you first got saved. You were so happy and excited about Jesus. 

Now God is saying to you, "I'm going to do better than that for you!" He is going to do better things in the church than ever before. Better than the Red Sea? Better than Elijah calling down fire from heaven and shutting down rain? Yes, God has something better.

What could be better? you ask. "Our very faith is built on these great examples." 

Beloved, we are going to see the fullest revelation of Jesus Christ in the history of mankind. And here is the greatness of such a miracle: God is going to take the filthiest, most perverse generation of all time~a generation with the stoniest hearts in history~and clean them up, give them loving hearts, and turn them into a holy flock "I will increase them with men like a flock. As the holy flock . . ." Ezekiel 36:37-38. 

God is going to save a "flock"~a great multitude of men and women. We will see sinners from every walk of life saved: Jews, Muslims, rich, poor, murderers, people of all backgrounds.

You say, "That's not a new thing. Wicked sinners have always been cleansed by Christ. God's been doing that since the cross." True, but remember, sin is increasing; wickedness is growing worse and worse. And where sin abounds, God's grace abounds much more.

At the Red Sea, the devil was advancing and threatening to pounce on God's people. The difference today is, he already has prevailed against the backslidden church, capturing and enslaving millions: "Because they have swallowed you up on every side, that ye might be a possession unto the residue of the heathen and are an infamy of the people" (Ezekiel 36:3).

But now, God is going to move in for this reason: "Because the enemy hath said against you, Aha, even the ancient high places are ours in possession" (verse2). 

Satan and his crowd have mocked and laughed, saying, "We have destroyed the work of Christ on earth!" But God says, For My name's sake, I'm going to do a mighty deliverance.

You will need faith to understand this miracle, because it is going to come at the neediest, most critical time in the history of the Church.

God will cause His flock to walk in righteousness. He will bring down such conviction that believers will literally loathe their past sins.

I will multiply men upon you... [you] will increase and bear fruit and [I] will do better unto you than at your beginnings (Ezekiel 36:10-11).

~David Wilkerson~

Testimony Of Christ

Rom 12:5  So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.

We are a part of a Body. Many of our sufferings are not on our own account at all.

Many of the sufferings of the children of God have nothing whatever to do with their own faults or their own failing. They are suffering in a related way, they are suffering for the Body’s sake, they are entering into the battle; the conflict of this one great testimony.

Sometimes it is almost uncanny when the Lord has something in view in relation to His testimony of Life, how for no reason whatever, on no account at all, we discover that we are involved and ours is not an isolated experience. 

All sorts of people all over the place are having the same kind of experience – a terrific sense of pressure, upset, annoyance, anything to frustrate – it is happening all round, testifying that in the spiritual realm, in the realm of the Spirit, there is a fine, sensitive oneness which matters to the Lord, and therefore matters to the enemy.

Do not always take your sufferings as some controversy that the Lord has with you. 

That is the twist the enemy often gives. Be open to the Lord to be checked up on anything, but do not always take it that the things which are happening to you and causing you trouble and suffering are due to your own failure or wrong. 

You are involved in something very much more than that.

~T. Austin Sparks~

The Mark Of A Life Governed By The Spirit

Eph 3:17  That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
 

Eph 3:18  May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
 

Eph 3:19  And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.

The mark of a life governed by the Holy Spirit is that such a life is continually and ever more and more occupied with Christ, that Christ is becoming greater and greater as time goes on. 

The effect of the Holy Spirit's work in us is to bring us to the shore of a mighty ocean which reaches far, far beyond our range, and concerning which we feel – Oh, the depths, the fullness, of Christ!

If we live as long as ever man lived, we shall still be only on the fringe of this vast fullness that Christ is.
Now, that at once becomes a challenge to us before we go any further. These are not just words. This is not just rhetoric; this is truth. Let us ask our hearts at once, Is this true in our case? Is this the kind of life that we know? Are we coming to despair on this matter?

That is to say, that we are glimpsing so much as signified by Christ that we know we are beaten, that we are out of our depth, and will never range all this. It is beyond us, far beyond us, and yet we are drawn on and ever on. Is that true in your experience? That is the mark of a life governed by the Holy Spirit. 

Christ becomes greater and greater as we go on. If that is true, well, that is the way of Life.

If ever you and I should come to a place where we think we know, we have it all, we have attained, and from that point things become static, we may take it that the Holy Spirit has ceased operations and that life has become stultified. 

~T. Austin Sparks~

Put OUT The FLAME

                                                                             
A close friend said something to me on the phone that took me by surprise. I felt it was cutting and I resented it deeply. I didn't hang up on him but I cut the conversation short and he knew I was truly provoked.

That conversation lit a fire under my flesh. I was disturbed, hurt, and agitated. Anger, indignation and grief began to pour out and, in short, I began to stew about it.

I paced around my study, trying to pray but I was so bothered and troubled I could hardly focus on the Lord. I prayed, "God, my close friend put me down and
there was no reason for it. It had to be the devil trying to provoke me. I don't have to listen to that!"

I allowed these thoughts to simmer for about an hour. Then, finally, I came to a boiling point and cried out, "Lord, I'm really steamed about this!"

That's when I heard God's still, small voice, saying, "David, put out that flame right now. You're stewing in your own juices of hurt, anger and hatred because you've been deeply hurt. But what you're doing is dangerous and you
dare not continue."

I learned long ago that when the Holy Spirit speaks, it pays to listen. I repented on the spot and asked His forgiveness. Then I sat down and began thinking: "What was it that so provoked me? And why did I keep simmering inside? I can't stay mad at this friend. We've been close for a long time and I know I'm going to forgive him. Why am I so upset?"

Suddenly, it hit me. The simmering inside me was not the result of that hurtful conversation. I was angry because I had allowed myself to be easily provoked again. I was troubled and agitated at myself because I had quickly fallen back into an old habit I thought I had conquered.

The fastest way to "put out the flame” is to trust in Christ's forgiveness.
 
And He is ready to forgive at all times. "For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee" (Psalm 86:5).


~David Wilkerson~

FIRE Always Finds Things Out!

Luk 12:49  I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?

Fire always finds things out. 

As it creeps and encroaches and overtakes, it makes one discrimination between things that it can devour and things over which it has no power.

It puts them into those categories; the finding out, the classifying, the deciding. 

Look at the context, Luke 12:51 – “Think ye that I am come to give peace in the earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division.” He goes on – “There shall be from henceforth five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. They shall be divided, father against son, and son against father; mother against daughter, and daughter against her mother; mother in law against her daughter in law, and daughter in law against her mother in law...” – discriminating, setting things in the category to which they belong.

One category is that which can go on and abide and endure because it is of God. The other will be licked up by the fire, and simply pass out of existence. 

The fire shall try every man’s work, said Paul (1 Cor. 3:13). The fire of unavoidable and unerring discrimination.

That has ever been the effect of a work of the Holy Spirit; to put us into the place to which we belong. It is a kind of dividing thing all the time. 

Are you for, or are you against? Are you with, or are you not with the Lord? 

Are you going on with the Lord, or are you not going on with the Lord? 

The Holy Spirit is pursuing that course all the time to find us out and to just classify us like this, so that when the Holy Spirit has worked we are in definite categories. 

Division has come, and it is unavoidable.

~T. Austin Sparks~