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~

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~

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~

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~

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~

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: 




                                                                             

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~

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~

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~

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~