PRIDE

One of the strongest features of the self-will is pride. 

Lucifer said "I will be equal with the Most High" and the prophet is made to say, "Pride was found in thee". 

Pride takes many forms. Pride can be a most humble thing in its pose. Pride can be a very sorry-for-itself thing. Pride can be a very hurt thing, but it is still pride. 

We can be those who are feeling very broken, but it is not we who are broken, it is our pride which has been wounded. 

If we knew the history of every rupture of fellowship amongst God's people, of every dissemblance which has come into the things of God, of every advantage that the devil has gained, I believe we should find pride in some form or another someone having a personal interest, personally concerned, like or dislike, want or not want, a preference - somehow pride coming in through the "I". 

That is the thing the devil always uses to destroy; and it has to be smashed. 

Calvary sees the emptying right down to the last degree where there is nothing left of self and then there can be the lifting up, the exaltation into the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus.

The Lord has to break before He can elevate, empty before He can fill.  

The Cross must be applied to bring us to the absolute supremacy of the Lord Jesus.

What we need is the complete assurance that Jesus Christ is Lord.

We cannot serve in the gospel unless we are perfectly assured that the government is in His Hands. 

If we have any doubt about that, we are paralyzed and crippled in service and in life.  

We must strongly grasp the fact that all authority in heaven and in earth is in the hands of the Lord Jesus, not in the hands of Satan. 

If we do not rest in that, we shall be altogether spoilt, we shall not be able to go through. 

It is a fact. Oh, to come into spiritual enjoyment of that fact; we have now seen the way.

May the Lord make it very real to our hearts that the new creation, that which is born of the Spirit, is constituted now under the complete supremacy and sovereign Headship of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

He is to be Lord over us in every detail. 

He is Lord by the appointment of the Father, and when we are subject to Christ, there is nothing impossible. 

His sovereignty operates. May we know more of it for His Name's sake

~T. Austin Sparks~