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, June 29, 2017

And Your Ears Shall Hear A Word Behind You Saying This Is The Way Walk In It

Isa 30:21  And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.

When we have doubts or are facing difficulties, when others suggest courses of action that are conflicting, when caution dictates one approach but faith another, we should be still.


We should quiet each intruding person, calm ourselves in the sacred stillness of God’s presence, study His Word for guidance, and with true devotion focus our attention on Him.

We should lift our nature into the pure light radiating from His face, having an eagerness to know only what God our Lord will determine for us.

Soon He will reveal by His secret counsel a distinct and unmistakable sense of His direction.
 

It is unwise for a new believer to depend on this approach alone.

He should wait for circumstances to also confirm what God is revealing. 

Yet Christians who have had many experiences in their walk with Him know the great value of secret fellowship with the Lord as a means of discerning His will.
 

Are you uncertain about which direction you should go?
 

Take your question to God and receive guidance from either the light of His smile or the cloud of His refusal.

You must get alone with Him, where the lights and the darknesses of this world cannot interfere and where the opinions of others cannot reach you.

You must also have the courage to wait in silent expectation, even when everyone around you is insisting on an immediate decision or action.

If you will do these things, the will of God will become clear to you. 

And you will have a deeper concept of who He is, having more insight into His nature and His heart of love.

Saturday, June 24, 2017

THE SAINT Must WALK ALONE

Most of the world's great souls have been lonely.

Loneliness seems to be One Price the saint Must Pay for his saintliness.

In the morning of the world (or should we say, in that strange darkness that came soon after the dawn of man's creation), that pious soul, Enoch, walked with God and was not, for God took him...

And while it is not stated in so many words, a fair inference is that Enoch walked a path quite apart from his contemporaries.

Another lonely man was Noah who, of all the antediluvians, found grace in the sight of God; and every shred of evidence points to the aloneness of his life even while surrounded by his people.

Again, Abraham had Sarah and Lot, as well as many servants and herdsmen, but who can read his story and the apostolic comment upon it without sensing instantly that he was a man "whose soul was alike a star and dwelt apart"?

As far as we know not one word did God ever speak to him in the company of men.

Face down he communed with his God, and the innate dignity of the man forbade that he assume this posture in the presence of others.

How sweet and solemn was the scene that night of the sacrifice when he saw the lamps of fire moving between the pieces of offering.

There, alone with a horror of great darkness upon him, he heard the voice of God and knew that he was a man marked for divine favor.

Moses also was a man apart.

While yet attached to the court of Pharaoh he took long walks alone, and during one of these walks while far removed from the crowds he saw an Egyptian and a Hebrew fighting and came to the rescue of his countryman.

After the resultant break with Egypt he dwelt in almost complete seclusion in the desert.

There, while he watched his sheep alone, the wonder of the burning bush appeared to him, and later on the peak of Sinai he crouched alone to gaze in fascinated awe at the Presence, partly hidden, partly disclosed, within the cloud and fire.

The prophets of pre-Christian times differed widely from each other, but one mark they bore in common was their enforced loneliness.

They loved their people and gloried in the religion of the fathers, but their loyalty to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their zeal for the welfare of the nation of Israel drove them away from the crowd and into long periods of heaviness.

I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children,  cried one and unwittingly spoke for all the rest.

Most revealing of all is the sight of that One of whom Moses and all the prophets did write, treading His lonely way to the cross.

His deep loneliness was unrelieved by the presence of the multitudes.

Tis midnight, and on Olive's brow The star is dimmed that lately shone; Tis midnight; in the garden now, The suffering Savior prays alone.

Tis midnight, and from all removed The Savior wrestles lone with fears; Even the disciple whom He loved Heeds not his Master's grief and tears.

~William B. Tappan~

He died alone in the darkness hidden from the sight of mortal man and no one saw Him when He arose triumphant and walked out of the tomb, though many saw Him afterward and bore witness to what they saw.

There are some things too sacred for any eye but God's to look upon.

The curiosity, the clamor, the well-meant but blundering effort to help can only hinder the waiting soul and make unlikely if not impossible the communication of the secret message of God to the worshiping heart.

Sometimes we react by a kind of religious reflex and repeat dutifully the proper words and phrases even though they fail to express our real feelings and lack the authenticity of personal experience.

Right now is such a time. A certain conventional loyalty may lead some who hear this unfamiliar truth expressed for the first time to say brightly, "Oh, I am never lonely.

Christ said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you,' and 'Lo, I am with you always.' How can I be lonely when Jesus is with me?

Now I do not want to reflect on the sincerity of any Christian soul, but this stock testimony is too neat to be real.

It is obviously what the speaker thinks should be true rather than what he has proved to be true by the test of experience.

This cheerful denial of loneliness proves only that the speaker has never walked with God without the support and encouragement afforded him by society.

The sense of companionship which he mistakenly attributes to the presence of Christ may and probably does arise from the presence of friendly people.

Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company.

Though a man were surrounded by a vast crowd, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it marks him as a man apart.

Society has turned against him; otherwise he would have no cross.

No one is a friend to the man with a cross. 

They all forsook Him, and fled.

The pain of loneliness arises from the constitution of our nature.

God made us for each other.

The desire for human companionship is completely natural and right.

The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world.

His God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ...

And because within his circle of friends there are so few who share inner experiences, he is forced to walk alone.

The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way.

The man who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him.

A certain amount of social fellowship will of course be his as he mingles with religious persons in the regular activities of the church, but true spiritual fellowship will be hard to find.

But he should not expect things to be otherwise.

After all he is a stranger and a pilgrim, and the journey he takes is not on his feet but in his heart.

He walks with God in the garden of his own soul - and who but God can walk there with him?

He is of another spirit from the multitudes that tread the courts of the Lord's house.

He has seen that of which they have only heard, and he walks among them somewhat as Zacharias walked after his return from the altar when the people whispered, "He has seen a vision."

The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity.

He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another.

He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord.

He delights not to be honored but to see his Savior glorified in the eyes of men.

His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglected.

He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk.

For this he earns the reputation of being dull and over serious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens.

He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none, he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.

It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. 

When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.

His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else.

He learns in inner solitude what he could not have learned in the crowd - that Christ is All in All, that He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, that in Him we have and possess life's Highest Good.

Two things remain to be said...

One, that the lonely man of whom we speak is not a haughty man, nor is he the holier-than-thou, austere saint so bitterly satirized in popular literature. 

He is likely to feel that he is the least of all men and is sure to blame himself for his very loneliness. 

He wants to share his feelings with others and to open his heart to some like-minded soul who will understand him, but the spiritual climate around him does not encourage it, so he remains silent and tells his griefs to God alone.

The second thing is that the lonely saint is not the withdrawn man who hardens himself against human suffering and spends his days contemplating the heavens. 

Just the opposite is true. 

His loneliness makes him sympathetic to the approach of the brokenhearted and the fallen and the sin-bruised. 

Because he is detached from the world, he is all the more able to help it. 

Meister Eckhart taught his followers that if they should find themselves in prayer and happen to remember that a poor widow needed food, they should break off the prayer instantly and go care for the widow. 

God will not suffer you to lose anything by it,  he told them. 

You can take up again in prayer where you left off and the Lord will make it up to you.

This is typical of the great mystics and masters of the interior life from Paul to the present day.

The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world. 

In their effort to achieve restful "adjustment" to unregenerate society they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest. 

The world recognizes them and accepts them for what they are.

And this is the saddest thing that can be said about them. They are not lonely, but neither are they saints.

~A. W. Tozer~

Saturday, June 17, 2017

A Near-Sighted Vision

Then there were some people to whom Paul spoke: he told them that their look was much too near. 


He said, ‘You only see what is immediately before your eyes...

Your vision is merely of things near you...

These are the things that influence you. 

Too short a range of vision leads to your life becoming smaller than the Lord would have it; 

You become far too easily satisfied and contented in the realm of the things of the Lord; 

You have a small, narrow horizon...you are not looking right on. 

Things near – that may apply in different ways. 

The things that are near are always the things that are most likely to upset us, to limit us, to disconcert us.

We do become so occupied with the thing that is nearest. 

When we are right up against a situation and something is right up against us, we are in such danger of thinking that is all, that is everything, that we forget...

We have negotiated many such an obstacle before which we thought was going to be the end of everything for us. 

We Learn Our lesson So Slowly. 

Here is another thing right at hand, right before our eyes; another mountain, another hedge, another real difficulty; 

And again we think...‘This is going to spoil everything, this is going to be the end of everything’. 

All we see is the thing near at hand.
 
But to look right on means surely to say this...

Yes, this is a difficulty, but there is another side to it, it is not going to be the end. 

It is one of the things that is included in ‘laying aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset’.
 
What is “the sin which doth so easily beset”? 

It is this, that the big difficulty of today blots out tomorrow, seems to get right in the way of any future at all. 

That is the easily besetting sin. 

Do not have too near a view, do not have too small an horizon. 

Let thine eyes look right on. 

There is something very much more than the difficulty of the day, the very present thing, the near thing. 

The Lord will teach us as we go on that we can reckon on very much more than the things which are up against us now. 

We shall go on and leave them behind. 

Do not let us take them as the limit. 

Whatever they are, they are not the end.

~Charles Spurgeon~

Monday, June 12, 2017

Dwelling Safely Apart

Deu 33:28  Israel then shall dwell in safety alone: the fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine; also his heavens shall drop down dew.
 

The more we dwell alone, the more safe shall we be. 

God would have His people separate from sinners, His call to them is, "Come ye out from among them."

A worldly Christian is spiritually diseased. 

Those who compromise with Christ's enemies may be reckoned with them.

Our safety lies, not in making terms with the enemy, but in dwelling alone with our Best Friend.


If we do this, we shall dwell in safety despite the sarcasms, the slanders, and the sneers of the world. 

We shall be Safe from the baleful influence of its Unbelief, its Pride, its Vanity, its Filthiness.

God also will make us dwell in safety alone in that day when sin shall be visited on the nations by wars and famines. 


The LORD brought Abram from Ur of the Chaldees, but Abram stopped halfway.

He had no blessing till, having set out to go to the land of Canaan, to the land of Canaan he came, He was safe alone even in the midst of foes.

Lot was not safe in Sodom though in a circle of friends. 

Our safety is in dwelling apart with God. 

~Charles Spurgeon~

Friday, June 9, 2017

Have Faith Even In Dark Experiences


Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  

God does not tell us what He is doing when taking us through dark experiences.

If He did, it would be all right.

If He said, "I am going to lead you into a bad time, it is all going to be dark and strange and perplexing and bewildering and helpless, but it is all right, I am working a tremendous thing, this is what I am going to bring out of it,"

If He said that, the faith element would fade out. 

If only He would tell us He is doing something, and what He is doing, instead of leaving us in the dark and seeming to be so far away and without any interest in us!

If only! Ah yes, but He did not do that, and we know He does not do that, He does not explain. 

But here is the challenge.

This is what is meant by Hebrews 11 and the men of faith, that is what it means.

And thank God we have the heritage, we have a great heritage, we have more than they had. 

These men did not have a Bible, it was not written when they were going through it. 

We have their story and so many more. 

We see the issue, we have the sequel, but is it really helping us?

When you are having a bad, dark time and feel that all has gone wrong, read the story of Joseph again...starting on it you will not want to put it down.

Take its great lessons. 

The God of Joseph is our God and He is doing the same thing, and we know that that is true to life. 

What I have been saying is so true to life. 

We have that evidence. 

That, at any rate, is very much like my experience, and therefore I have reason to think and believe that the same thing is involved. 

The God of resurrection is working this to glory.

~Austin T. Sparks~

Monday, June 5, 2017

"The LORD Shut Him In"

Gen 7:16  And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.

Noah was shut in away from all the world by the hand of divine love.

The door of electing purpose interposes between us and the world which lieth in the wicked one. 

We are not of the world even as our Lord Jesus was not of the world. 

Into the sin, the gaiety, the pursuits of the multitude we cannot enter;

We cannot play in the streets of Vanity Fair with the children of darkness, for our heavenly Father has shut us in.

Noah was shut in with his God. “Come thou into the ark,” was the Lord’s invitation, by which he clearly showed that he himself intended to dwell in the ark with his servant and his family.

Thus all the chosen dwell in God and God in them.

Happy people to be enclosed in the same circle which contains God in the Trinity of his persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. 

Let us never be inattentive to that gracious call, “Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee, and hide thyself as it were for a little moment until the indignation be overpast.”

Noah was so shut in that no evil could reach him. 

Floods did but lift him heavenward, and winds did but waft him on his way. 

Outside of the ark all was ruin, but inside all was rest and peace.

Without Christ we perish, but in Christ Jesus there is perfect safety. 

Noah was so shut in that he could not even desire to come out, and those who are in Christ Jesus are in him forever.

They shall go no more out forever, for eternal faithfulness has shut them in, and infernal malice cannot drag them out. 

The Prince of the house of David shutteth and no man openeth; 

And when once in the last days as Master of the house he shall rise up and shut the door...

It will be in vain for mere professors to knock, and cry Lord, Lord open unto us...

For that same door which shuts in the wise virgins will shut out the foolish forever.

Lord, shut me in by thy grace.

~Charles Spurgeon~

Friday, June 2, 2017

Immediate Freedom


The Assyrian was allowed for a season to oppress the Lord's people...

But There Came A Time For His Power To Be Broken. 

So, many a heart is held in bondage by Satan and frets sorely under the yoke. 

Oh, that to such prisoners of hope the word of the Lord may come at once, according to the text, "Now will I break his yoke from off thee, and will burst thy bonds in sunder!"

See! The Lord promises a present deliverance. "Now will I break his yoke from off thee." 

Believe for immediate freedom, and according to thy faith so shall it be unto thee at this very hour. 

When God saith "now," let no man say "tomorrow."

See how complete the rescue is to be; for the yoke is not to be removed but broken; and the bonds are not to be untied but burst asunder. 

Here is a display of divine force which guarantees that the oppressor shall not return. 

His yoke is broken, we cannot again be bowed down by its weight. 

His bonds, are burst asunder, they can no longer hold us. 

Oh, to believe in Jesus for complete and everlasting emancipation! "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."

Come, Lord, and set free Thy captives, according to Thy Word. 

~Charles Spurgeon~