What Are You Doing Here? - T. Austin-Sparks

What Are You Doing Here?

He came to a cave, where he spent the night. But the Lord said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah? (1 Kings 19:9 NLT) 

"You have no business to be here" - that is what it means. Yes, prophets and apostles could make mistakes, and they did; but there is this about it - because they had seen, and were utterly abandoned to that which they had seen of the Lord's mind, the Lord was abundantly able to come in on their mistakes and sovereignly overrule them and teach His servants something more of Himself and His ways. Now, you never find that with people who are indefinite. The indefinite people, those who are not meaning business, who are not abandoned, never do learn anything of the Lord. It is the people who commit themselves, who let go and go right out in the direction of whatever measure of light the Lord has given them, who, on the one hand, find their mistakes - the mistakes of their very zeal - taken hold of by Divine sovereignty and overruled; and, on the other hand, are taught by the Lord through their very mistakes what His thoughts are, how He does things, and how He does not do them. If we are going to wait in indefiniteness and uncertainty and do nothing until we know it all, we shall learn nothing.

Have you not noticed that it is the men and women whose hearts are aflame for God, who have seen something truly from the Lord and have been mightily gripped by what they have seen, who are the people that are learning? The Lord is teaching them; He does not allow their blunders and their mistakes to engulf them in destruction. He sovereignly overrules, and in the long run they are able to say, "Well, I made some awful blunders, but the Lord marvelously took hold of them and turned them to good account." To be like this, with vision which gathers up our whole being and masters us, provides the Lord with the ground for looking after us even when we make mistakes - because His interests are at stake, His interests and not our own are the concern of our heart. The prophets and the apostles learned to know the Lord in wonderful ways by their very mistakes, for they were the mistakes, not of their own stubborn self-will, but of a real passion for God and for what He had shown them as to His purpose.

By T. Austin-Sparks from: Prophetic Ministry - Chapter 3

Where Christendom Is Deceived - T. Austin-Sparks

What is Man?
by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 5 - Where Christendom is Deceived

 

Perhaps the greatest failure to make the great discrimination with which we are concerned is in relation to the difference between mysticism and spirituality. It is here that not only the world is mistaken but Christendom is deceived. Indeed, an overwhelmingly large proportion of those who would regard themselves as Christians are unable to distinguish between mysticism (pertaining to the sense of the beautiful) or asceticism (the practice of self-denial) on the one hand and spirituality on the other. The fact is that these belong to two entirely different realms, and the Word of God cuts clean in between them, dividing them asunder.

When we speak of Cain and "the way of Cain", we are accustomed to recall immediately his act of murder, born of jealousy and malice. We remember his peevish, querulous, petulant, ill-tempered or even insolent manner with God. But there is another side to remember, and we must be fair to Cain, or we miss the whole point. Cain did not exclude or ignore God. He was not in the usual sense of the word a godless man. He acknowledged God. Then he built an altar to God. Further, he no doubt selected the best of the products of his hard toil as worthy of God, and brought them. Here was devoutness in religion. Cain worshipped with his whole aesthetic sense, and Cain—murdered his brother! The Jews did the same in Christ's day. Christendom is largely constituted by this sense—its architecture, its ritual, its music, its adornment, its lighting (or lack of it), its tone, its atmosphere, its vestments and so forth. All are of the soul. But Cain did not get through to God! Neither did the Jews! Spiritual death marks that realm, and while there may be intense emotions which make for resolves, 'high' thoughts and desires, there is no genuine change in the nature of those concerned, and repeated doses of this must be taken to maintain any measure of soul-self-satisfaction which makes them feel good. All religions have this soulish feature in common, more or less, and it is here that the fatal blunder has been made by many religious people who contend that other religions, which are undoubtedly devout and sincere, should not be interfered with, but the good in them should be recognized and accepted. It is the confusing of religion with what the Bible means by being spiritual. Religion can rise to high levels and sink to terrible depths. It is the same thing which does both. But that thing never rises above the human level; it never really reaches God. Religion can be the greatest enemy of God's true thought, because it is Satan's best deception. Asceticism is no more truly spiritual than aestheticism. There is no more a brief with God for rigours, denials, fastings, puritanic iciness, etc., as such, than for the opposite. Simplicity may give God a chance, but it is not necessarily spiritual. It may be a matter of taste. What sublime thoughts and ideas, in poetry, music and art often can go hand in hand with moral degeneracy and profligacy!

How near to the truth in perception and interpretation can the mystical go! What wonderful things can the imagination see, even in the Bible! What thrills of awe, amazement, ecstasy, can be shot through an audience or congregation by a master soul! But it may all be a false world with no Divine and eternal issues. It may all go to make up this life here, and relieve it of its drabness, but it ends there. What an artificial world we live in! When the music is progressing and the romantic elements are in evidence—the dress and tinsel—and human personalities are parading, see how pride and rivalry assert themselves, and what a power of make believe enters the atmosphere! Yes, an artificial world. We have been in it and know the reactions afterward.

How hollow, how empty; Dead Sea fruit! The tragedy in this melodrama is that it is 'real life' to so many. This soul-world is the devil's imitation. It is all false, wherever we may find it, whether associated with religion or not.
Those of us who have tasted of this world's springs have recognized the kinship between what is there and what is in religion so far as that soul-nature is concerned. It is only a matter of difference of realm, not of nature. What the music and drama of the world produce in one way—the soul-stirring, rousing, craving: the pathos, tears, contempt, hatred, anger, melancholy, pleasure, etc.—are all the same, only under different auspices and in a different setting, and the fact is, that it passes and we are really no further on. A little better music, a change of preacher, a less familiar place, a few more thrills, will perhaps stimulate our souls, but where are we, after all? How Satan must laugh behind his mask! Oh, for reality, the reality of the eternal! Oh, that men might see that, while a highly cultured soul with a keen sense of the beautiful and sublime is immeasurably preferable to a sordid one so far as this world is concerned, it is not necessarily a criterion that such has a personal living knowledge of God—of God as a Person—and has really been born anew! Occultism—the power to see deeper than the average, to sense what most do not sense, to handle the abstruse, to touch unseen forces—is not spirituality in the Divine sense. The soul realm is a complex and dangerous one, and can take most people out of their depths, but then land them into moral, mental and physical ruin, with all hope gone.

When we pray for 'Revival' let us be careful as to what we are after and as to what means we use to promote it, or carry it on.

Having been more precise as to the functions of the soul, we must go a little further at this point, as to those of the spirit.

The Attributes of the Human Spirit 

As the soul is a trinity of reason, affection, and volition, so is the spirit a trinity. Its attributes are conscience, communion (worship) and intuition.

"The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord" (Prov 20:27).
"Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are the law unto themselves; in that they shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith, and their thoughts one with another accusing or else excusing" (Rom 2:14-15).
 
When Adam sinned, he did so as the result of what seemed to him a sound and right argument and reason, and a judgment of what was good and desirable. But immediately he had so acted he became aware of a faculty within, which rose up and condemned his judgment, reason and 'good (?) motive'. Henceforth he lived under a sense of condemnation. The conscience which accused him and caused him to excuse, could not restore him to God's favour, but for ever kept God in his consciousness. Thus it is that to live in and to be governed entirely by our souls is not to have rest and real life. It is possible to put our wills so strongly behind our reason and thought and desire, or so to surrender our wills to our emotions and affections, as to muffle the voice of conscience so that we have little or no conflict within. But should God come into "the garden in the cool of the day", or, in other words, should we at any time seek a living knowledge of God, we are in for a very bad time with regard to this former mentality, these former reasonings, and this former affectional life. But we are not saying that the human conscience is infallible and always right. Most certainly it is not. We can have a sense of right and wrong which is altogether misinformed and false, and Satan can play tricks with conscience. We are only pointing out what conscience is as an attribute of the spirit. For conscience to fulfil all of its Divinely intended purpose in relation to God—not merely to keep man aware of something beyond his own way—conscience must (as with the whole spirit) be renewed in God and united with the Holy Spirit. Christ is God's perfect standard for conscience, and union with Christ is the only ground of life in the spirit. "Christ... was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption" (1 Cor 1:30), and when Christ is received by faith, so that our standing before God rests upon what He is and not what we are, then we "find rest unto our souls" in this "yoke" (Matt 11:29), for we have our "hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience" (Heb 10:22). With the whole human spirit, conscience must be quickened from above, raised, enlightened, adjusted and related.

Having already spoken of worship in spirit and in truth, we can pass on to see the function of spirit by intuition. Here the difference between soul and spirit is very clear and definite. The spirit is the organ of spiritual knowledge, and spiritual knowledge is very different from natural or soul knowledge. How does God know things, and by what means does God come to His conclusions, decisions? On what basis of knowledge does He run the universe? Is it by reasoning inductively, deductively, philosophically, logically, comparatively? Surely all this laboriousness of brain is unknown to God. His knowledge and conclusions are intuitive. Intuition is that faculty of spiritual intelligence by which all spiritual beings work. Angels serve the will of God by intuitive discernment of that will, not by argued and reasoned conviction. The difference between these two is witnessed to by the whole monument of spiritual achievement. If human reason, the natural judgment and 'common sense' had been the ruling law, most, if not all, of the giant pieces of work inspired by God would never have been undertaken. Men who had a close walk with God and a living spirit-fellowship with Him, received intuitively a leading to such purposes, and their vindication came, not by the approval of natural reason, but usually with all such reason in opposition. 'Madness' was usually the verdict of this world's 'wisdom'. Whenever they, like Abraham, allowed the natural mind to take precedence over the spiritual mind, they became bewildered, paralysed, and looked round for some 'Egypt' way of the senses, along which to go for help. In all this we are "justified in the spirit", not in the flesh. The spirit and the soul act independently, and until the spiritual mind has established complete ascendency over the natural mind, they are constantly in conflict and contradiction. In all the things which are out from God and therefore spiritual, "the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the spirit is life and peace" (Rom 8:6). This, then, is the nature of spiritual knowledge.

The only knowledge of God which is of spiritual value for ourselves, or for others by our ministry, is that which we have by revelation of the Holy Spirit within our own spirits. God never—in the first instance—explains Himself to man's reason, and man can never know God—in the first instance—by reason. Christianity is a revelation or it is nothing, and it has to be that in the case of every new child of God; otherwise faith will be resting upon a foundation which will not stand in the day of the ordeal.

'The Christian Faith' embraced as a religion, a philosophy, or as a system of truth, a moral or ethical doctrine, may carry the temporary stimulus of a great ideal; but this will not result in the regeneration of the life, or the new birth of the spirit. There are multitudes of such 'Christians' in the world today, but their spiritual effectiveness is nil.

The Apostle Paul makes it very clear that the secret of everything in his life and service was the fact that he received his gospel "by revelation". We may even know the Bible most perfectly as a book, and yet be spiritually dead and ineffective. When the Scriptures say so much about the knowledge of God and of the truth as the basis of eternal life, resulting in being set free, doing exploits, etc., they also affirm that man cannot by searching find out God, and they make it abundantly clear that it is knowledge in the spirit, not in the natural mind.

Thus, a rich knowledge of the Scriptures, an accurate technical grasp of Christian doctrine, a doing of Christian work by all the resources of men's natural wisdom or ability, a clever manipulation and interesting presentation of Bible content and themes, may get not one whit beyond the natural life of men, and still remain within the realm of spiritual death. Men cannot be argued, reasoned, fascinated, interested, 'emotioned', willed, enthused, impassioned, into the kingdom of the heavens; they can only be born; and that is by spiritual quickening. The new birth brings with it new capacities of every kind; and amongst these, the most vital is a new and different faculty of Divine knowledge, understanding and apprehension. As we have said earlier, the human brain is not ruled out, but is secondary, not primary. The function of the human intellect is to give spiritual things intelligent form for ourselves and for others.

Paul's intellectual power was not that which gave him his knowledge of truth; but it was taken up by the spirit for passing that truth on to others. He may have used his intellect well, as he certainly did, to study and acquire knowledge of the Scriptures; but his spiritual understanding did not come that way. It was the extra thing, apart from which even his Bible (Old Testament) knowledge had not kept him from a most mistaken course. The spirit of man is that by which he reaches out into the eternal and unseen. Intuition, then, is the mental organ of the spirit. It is in this sense—that is, the deadness of the spirit in the matter of Divine union and the going on with religion in its manifold forms of expression merely from the natural mind—that God says, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways" (Isa 55:8); and the measure of the difference is as the height of the heavens from the earth, of the heavenly from the earthly.

One of the chief lessons that we have to learn, and which God takes pains to teach us, is that spiritual ends demand spiritual means. The breaking down of the natural life, its mind, its energies, so far as the things of God are concerned, in the bitterness of disappointment through futility, failure, ineffectiveness and deadlock in real spiritual fruitfulness, is a life work: but the truth mentioned above is the explanation and key to the matter.

How important it is that every fresh undertaking in work for God should come by revelation to those chosen for it. Because God has so spoken and given revelation to some chosen instrument and a truly spiritual work has been done, others have taken it as a model and have sought to imitate it in other places. The result has been, and is, that they are called upon to take responsibility for it—find the resources of workers, funds and general support. This, in turn, issues in many sad and pathetic, if not evil and worldly, methods and means being employed, and those concerned find themselves in a false position. Conception, not imitation, is the Divine law of reproduction. Anointing, not human selection, is the Divine law of succession. The fact is, that the work of God has become a sphere for so many natural elements to find expression and gratification. Man must do something, see something, have something. Ambition, acquisition, achievement, etc., have found their way over to Christian enterprise, and so, very often (let us be quite frank) things have become 'ours'—'our work', 'our mission', 'our field', 'our clientele'; and jealousies, rivalries, bitterness and many other things of the flesh abound.

It is a very difficult thing, a crucifixion indeed, for the natural man to do nothing and have nothing, and especially to know nothing. But in the case of His most greatly used instruments, God has made this a very real part of their training and preparation. The utter emptying of all self-resource is the only way to have "all things of (out from) God" (2 Cor 5:18). On this basis, even Christ elected to live. We need not remind you of Moses' "I am not eloquent" (Exo 4:10), and Jeremiah's "I am a child" (Jer 1:6), and Paul's "that we should not trust in ourselves" (2 Cor 1:9). These were of a school in which the great lesson of the difference between natural and spiritual was taught experimentally.

God's Special Concern 

This will help us to see that God's special concern is with the spirit in the believer.
Firstly, we must realize that His quest is for sons of His Spirit. The underlying and all-inclusive truth of what has come to be called the parable of the Prodigal Son is the transition from one kind of sonship, i.e. on the ground of law, to another, i.e. on the ground of grace; from the flesh to the spirit. There is a sonship of God by creation on the basis of law. In this sense, all men are the offspring of God, and Paul used this phrase in quite a general way to the Athenians (Acts 17:28,29). But by the Fall—the "going astray", or "deviating" (Gen 6:3)—all the Divine purposes and possibilities of that relationship have broken down, and that relationship is no longer of value. "He is flesh", hence he is separated from God—"alienated" (Eph 4:18), in a "far country", "lost", and "dead". Here grace enters and the Spirit through grace. The Spirit begins operations in that realm of death and distance, convicting of sin "against heaven" (Luke 15:21) (the only adequate conviction), compassing the end of the works of the flesh in despair and destruction, constraining, assuring, producing penitence and confession, and at length bringing to the place of forgiveness and acceptance: from death unto life, but not the same life as before. "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6). This man is the product of the travail and energizing of the Spirit, and everything in the relationship afterward is new; a "robe", the robe of Divine righteousness; "shoes", a walk and a way in the Spirit (Rom 8:2,4); "a ring", the symbol of authority, the right or jurisdiction of a son (John 1:12,13); "the fatted calf", food such as was not his before, the best of the father's house. Each of these points in the Scriptures has a whole system of teaching.
The spirit of man, being the place of the new birth and the seat of this only true sonship (Gal 4:5,6), is also therefore "the new man", for it is "in newness of the spirit" that we are to live (Rom 7:6, etc.). Here it is that all the operations of God in our education, fellowship and co-operation have their base.


The 'prodigal's' knowledge of the father after his 'new birth' was such as he had never possessed before. He really did not know his father until grace came in. His spirit had been brought from death, darkness, distance, desolation, chaos, and he then had not just an objective knowledge of one whom he had termed 'father', but a subjective and experimental understanding and appreciation of him, because the spirit of sonship had been born within him or given to him whereby he cried "Abba, Father". There is no saving relationship to, or knowledge of, God except through grace and by new birth.


So, then, those who by being born anew have become "little children" (Matt 18:3) or "babes" in spiritual things (1 Cor 3:1)—not wrong if we do not remain such—have to learn every thing afresh, because "all things have become new" (2 Cor 5:17,18). Such have to learn a new kind of knowledge, to live by a new kind of life, "newness of life" (Rom 6:4). Paul says that we are to act as those who are "alive from the dead" (Rom 6:13). We have to learn that our life, our natural life, cannot do God's will, live as God requires, or do God's work. Only by His risen life is this possible. An element of offence in this truth is that it demands a recognized and acknowledged weakness; it requires that we have to confess that, in ourselves, for all Divine purposes, we are powerless and worthless, and that of ourselves we can do nothing. The natural man's worship of strength, efficiency, fitness, ability, meets with a terrible rebuff when it is confronted with the declaration that the universal triumph of Christ, over hierarchies more mighty than those of flesh and blood, was because "he was crucified through weakness" (2 Cor 13:4); God reduced to a certain impotency! And "God chose the weak things... to confound the things that are mighty" (1 Cor 1:25-27). To glory in infirmity, that Christ's power may rest upon him, is a far cry from the original Saul of Tarsus; but what an extraordinary change in mentality! God has, however, always drawn a very broad line between natural "might" and "power" on the one hand, and "My Spirit" on the other (Zech 4:6), and for evermore that distinction abides. This 'new-born babe' has to learn a new walk, now in the Spirit as different from nature. There may be many slips and perhaps tumbles, but such are not altogether evil if they are marks of a stepping out in faith rather than sitting still in fleshly disobedience or fear. We have shown that the nature of this walk is that reason, feeling, and natural choice are no longer the directive laws or criteria of the spiritual man. For such an one there are frequent experiences of a collision and contradiction between soul and spirit. The reason would dictate a certain course, the affections would urge in a certain direction, the will would seek to fulfil these judgments and desires; but there is a catch somewhere within—a dull, leaden, lifeless, numbed something at the centre of us which upsets everything, contradicts us, and all the time in effect says No! Or it may be the other way round. An inward urge and constraint finds no encouragement from our natural judgment or reason, and is flatly contrary to our natural desires, inclinations, preferences or affections: while in the same natural realm we are not at all willing for such a course. In this case it is not the judgment against the desire, as is frequently the case in everybody's life, but judgment, desire and will are all joined against intuition. Now is the crisis! Now is to be seen who is to rule the life! Now the "natural" man, or the outer man of sense, and the "inner" man have to settle affairs.
To learn to walk in the Spirit is a life-lesson of the new man, and as he is vindicated—as he always will be in the long run—he will come to take the absolute ascendancy over the "natural" man and his mind; and so by the energizing of the Holy Spirit in the spirit of the new man, the Cross will be wrought out to the nullifying of the mind of the flesh (which, in spiritual things, always ends in death) and in the enthronement of the spiritual mind which is "life and peace" (Rom 8:6).

This, then, is the nature of the walk in the Spirit, and its application is many-sided.  But we must remember the law of this walk, which is faith.  We walk in the Spirit but "we walk by faith" (2 Cor 5:7).

To walk by faith there must, in the very nature of the case, be a stripping off of all that the outer man of the senses clings to, demands, craves as a security and an assurance.

When the spiritual life of God's people is in the ascendant, they are not overwhelmed by either the absence of human resources on the one hand, or by the presence of humanly overwhelming odds against them on the other hand.


This is patent in their history as recorded in the Scriptures.  But it is also true that when the spiritual life is weak, undeveloped, or at an ebb, they look round for some tangible, seen resource upon which to fasten.  Egypt is the alternative to God whenever and wherever spiritual life is low.  To believe in and trust to the intuitive leadings of the Holy Spirit in our spirit, even though all is so different from the ways of men, and even though such brings us to a Canaan which for the time being is full of idolatry and where a mighty famine reigns: where all is so contrary to what our outer man has decided must be in keeping with a leading and a promise of God; to leave our old, sphere of life in the "world", to break with our kindred, our father's house, for this—this! and then to have to wait through much continuous stripping off of those means, and methods, and habits, and judgments, which are the very constitution of the natural man—this is the law of the spiritual walk, but this is God's chosen and appointed way of the mightiest vindication. Spiritual children and riches, and fruitfulness, and service, permanence, and the friendship of God, are for such Abrahams of faith or such children of Abraham in the spirit. God has laid a faith-basis for His superstructure of spiritual glory, and only that which is built upon such a foundation can serve spiritual ends. Let this be the test of our walk in all personal, domestic, business and Church affairs. Here, again, we have a principle which, if applied, would be revolutionary, and would call for the abandonment of a tremendous amount of carnal, natural, worldly stuff in our resources and methods. "Faith apart from works is dead" (James 2:26). True, but the works of faith—of the spirit—are not those of the flesh; the two realms are not comparable. The walk in the flesh is one thing, but the walk in the Spirit is quite another. The things of the Spirit are foolishness to the flesh. Men of faith see what others do not, and act accordingly. This also being true of men who have lost their reason, the two are often confused, and the children of the flesh think the children of the spirit mad or insane. They are unable to discriminate between even the insanity of men and "the foolishness of God", which is "wiser than men" (1 Cor 1:25).

Abraham was fortified by his faith, but his walk by faith was intensely practical, though so different from the walk in the flesh. A writer has said that faith brings us into difficulties which are unknown to men who walk in the flesh, or who never go out in faith. But such difficulties place us beyond the power of the flesh to help, and make special Divine revelations necessary, and God always takes advantage of such times to give such needed education of the spirit. It is thus that the men of the spirit are taught and come to know God as no others know Him. Thus, faith is the law of the walk of the new man—the inner man—which brings him by successive stages into the very heart of God, Who crowns this progress with the matchless designation, "my friend"! (Isa 61:8).

One other thing in general has to be mentioned. The new man of the spirit has to learn a new speech. There is the language of the spirit, and he will have to realize increasingly that speech with "enticing words of man's wisdom", or what man calls "excellency of speech" (1 Cor 2:1,4), will avail nothing in spiritual service. If all the religious speech and preaching and talking about the gospel which goes on in one week were the utterance of the Holy Spirit, what a tremendous impact of God upon the world would be registered! But it is obviously not so and this impact is not felt. It is impossible to speak in and by the Holy Spirit without something happening which is related to eternity. But this capacity belongs only to the "born of the Spirit" ones, whose spirits have been joined to the Lord, and even they have to learn how to cease from their own words and speak as they are moved by the Holy Spirit. It is a part of the education of the inner man to have his outer man slain in the matter of speech, and to be brought to the state to which Jeremiah was brought—"I cannot speak; for I am a child" (Jer 1:6). Not only as sinners have we to be crucified with Christ, but as preachers, or speakers, or talkers. The circumcision of Christ, which Paul says is the cutting off of the whole body of the flesh, has to be applied to our lips, and our spirit has to be so much in dominion that, on all matters where God cannot be glorified, we "cannot speak". A natural facility of speech is no strength in itself to spiritual ministry; it may be a positive menace. It is a stage of real spiritual development when there is a genuine fear of speaking, unless it is in words "which the Holy Ghost teacheth" (1 Cor 2:13). On the other hand a natural inability to speak need be no handicap. To be present "in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling" (1 Cor 2:3), may be a state which befits an apostolic, nay, rather, a Holy Spirit ministry. The utterance of God is a very different thing in every way from that of man. How much is said in the Scriptures about "conversation", "the tongue", "words" etc., and ever with the emphasis that these are to be in charge of the spirit, and not merely expressions of the soul in any of its departments!

If it is true that only the quickened spirit can receive Divine revelation, it is equally true that such revelation requires a Divine gift of utterance in order to realize its spiritual end.  It is possible to preach truth without the preacher having any spiritual apprehension of it; that is, from a merely mental apprehension.  The preaching may be just natural ability; but the grievous fact may be that neither the one who preaches nor those to whom he preaches will be in the good of the living and working values of the truth.  The spiritual results are hardly worth the effort and expenditure.  The virtue of speech resulting in abiding fruit to the glory of God, whether that speech be preaching, teaching, conversation, prayer, is not in its lucidity, eloquence, subtlety, cleverness, wit, thoughtfulness, passion, earnestness, forcefulness, pathos, etc., but in that it is an utterance of the Holy Ghost.

"Thy speech betrayeth thee" may be applied in many ways, for whether we live in the flesh or in the spirit, in the natural man or in the spiritual man, will always be made manifest by how we speak and the spiritual effect of the fruit of our lips.

Oh, for crucified lips amongst God's people, and oh, for lips among God's prophets, touched with the blood-soaked, fire-charged coal from that one great altar of Calvary!

Christ Who Is Our Life - T. Austin-Sparks

"When Christ who is our Life, shall be manifested.,."

--Colossians 3:4

One of the main objects of the Holy Spirit is to get believers really identified with Christ as the risen and exalted Lord, and to make His risen life real in their experience. As the age moves toward its consummation (the manifestation of Christ) two features will become increasingly evident. On the one hand 'things', men movements, institutions, organizations, etc., will be predominate and draw multitudes after them, and will attach the crowds to themselves. On the other hand, with a growing disappointment and disillusionment over these, a minority will turn to the Lord Himself to find Him alone as their life.

Three elements will inhere in all this, One is the unmistakable development of the principle of Anti-Christ; that will definitely supplant Christ, or intend to do so. The second is the alternative to the whole Christ in man-made Christianity, an imitation life born and carried on by its own momentum The third, a deep and genuine quest for reality, truth, and inward knowledge of the Lord Himself. In the first case it will be the naked worship of man in human power: a tremendous overflow of humanism, the wonder and glory of man. The third will be Christ altogether as our life

If the Christian is attached to some thing, such as a teaching, a tradition, an institution, a movement, or person, the end will certainly be a limitation of life and eventually confusion and disappointment, perhaps worse. The New Testament makes it unmistakably clear and emphatic that the destiny of all is to be "Christ all and in all." We must learn that a true work of the Spirit of God is to attach everything to Christ Himself. He, Christ, must be the life of our spirit, the"inner man," so that we are strong in the Lord; not in ourselves, nor in others, nor in things. We shall have to survive adversity by His strength within alone.

Christ will have to be the life of our mind. Perplexity will find us without the power to explain and understand, but the Spirit will teach and lead.

Christ will need to be life for our bodies. There is such a thing as Divine life for the physical body. Not always does the Lord choose to heal the body, but He does always want to be its life, even in suffering, to fulfull His purpose.

It is the Lord Himself, and for this to be so, it often has to be against a backgrond of natural inability. The power of His resurrection is the law of union with Christ from beginning to end. Days of terrific pressure are upon the Lord's people. Their enemy is taking very little off time. The only sufficiency is in the Lord Himself as our life.

Barnabas exhorted the believers at the beginning that "with purpose of heart they should cleave unto the Lord" (Acts 11:23). There is an utterness about this that will be pressed upon us until the time "when Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested."

Personal Preferences - T. Austin-Sparks

Under the custody and charge of the sons of Merari shall be the boards of the tabernacle, and the bars. (Numbers 3:36)

I am glad the bars are mentioned as well as the boards. The bars are the things that unite the whole, and if those things are kept always under your eye you will not move in cliques, and you will not have personal preferences, and ones and twos moving off on their own because they get on together. We have to remember that in the body of Christ there is nothing clannish, nothing that is merely of human preference, but all the members are held together in oneness. That is a responsibility. How much damage has been done by preferences, by human affinities having a place among the Lord’s people! There must be a personal care, there must be a watching over the bars, all maintained together. It is what the apostle means when he says, “Give diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit.” We shall never keep the unity of the Spirit by taking sides with one against another. We may think that is care for the one. Oh, but what about the other? The bars will be a corrective, will keep the balance, and will give due regard to every member. Then there are the pillars. Here we have each one’s responsibility, for something hangs upon them, and we have to help one another in our responsibility before God, for each one is called to carry a responsibility, to carry a weight from God. It is bearing one another’s burdens.... There must be mutuality in this responsibility, each one carrying his own weight before the Lord, and yet all one.

The peril is that we should begin to make our ministry something that is watertight.... Draw in your mind’s eye three squares, separate, standing each alone, and you will have what represents a very great deal of the nature of work for the Lord in our day from time to time. “Oh, this is my work, this is my department, this is my line; I am called to be this, I am called to do that! You have your work, you have your particular line, and I have mine! You go on with yours, and I will get on with mine, and don’t let us get overlapping!” That is where the breakdown comes. “I am an evangelist, not a teacher! You get on with your teaching, and I will get on with my evangelism; don’t let us interfere with one another!” That is putting responsibility into watertight compartments. The result is always loss.... It is a blessed calling, but it is a responsible one, it is a solemn one. Oh, that today you and I might find adjustment to this. The test is as to whether it is the Lord Himself to whom we are devoted, or whether it is to some personal thing.

By T. Austin-Sparks from: The Church of the Firstborn - Chapter 5

Lord of All - T. Austin-Sparks

"Lord of All" 
by T. Austin-Sparks

Reading: Acts 10:36,44.

It is that little parenthesis in verse 36 which has been holding my attention today and I believe pressing itself upon me for a brief word this evening. Probably there is no greater parenthesis, or even direct statement, in the whole range of Scripture than that simple, precise statement: "He is Lord of all," and it is important to recognise, to take account of the text. It does not say He will be Lord of all, it says He is Lord of all, and as you will notice it is a parallel statement to that which occurred in the second chapter: "God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified." Chapter 2 and chapter 10 as most of you know, are companion chapters. The one is the counterpart of the other. One is the Jewish Pentecost and the other is the Gentile Pentecost; two halves of one thing. In the first it is Israel; but Israel only represented a half, a part of God's thought and intention: the Gentiles were included in the Divine thought; so that Pentecost of chapter 2 must necessarily be broadened out to include the Gentiles to make it complete. And in chapter 10 the same instrument, the same messenger, the same spokesman, Peter, is used to complete this Divine act of grace; and by wonderful activities and strategic movements of the Holy Spirit and angels in co-operation, Peter is found at length in the house of Cornelius, the Gentile. And having made a parallel declaration to the one which he made in Jerusalem to the Jews, the same result follows, the Holy Spirit fell upon the Gentiles as upon the Jews, and many were turned to the Lord.

Everything Begins with Christ as Lord

So that the commencement of everything in this dispensation, and the foundation of everything for this dispensation, is the Lordship of Jesus Christ, not only the Saviourhood of Jesus Christ, but before that and over that and encircling that, His Lordship. It is a wonderful statement: "He is Lord of all." To use the very words of Peter in the 2nd chapter: "Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost". Exalted by the right hand of God. "God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified... He is Lord of all."

Just to gather up a few thoughts as quickly and briefly as possible let us remind ourselves that that statement in the first place represents the act and the mind of God. God's act in relation to His Own mind and eternal intention, was in the setting of His Son Jesus Christ in the place of sovereign Lordship in this universe, and there He is now, and everything that is proceeding in the history of this world is proceeding in relation to that, not in spite of that, not contrary to that, not out of relation to that, but altogether in relation to the fact that He is Lord of all. Although to the human mind, and to all natural appearance there might seem to be one tremendous contradiction to that fact, one great denial of it, and it might be said — Well, if He is Lord of all why are things as they are? Where does His Lordship come in with things taking the course which they are taking; the awful state of this world? To look at it as it is and say, in spite of all this, He is Lord of all — yes, it may seem to be a contradiction, a denial and a mystery, but when you really look into it you find that the course of things is the explanation of His Lordship and not the contradiction of it. You will find that it is because the Lordship has not been recognized, accepted and established that things are as they are, and that the course which things are taking, which is so terrible, is the greatest proof that we could possibly have that the Lordship of Jesus Christ is being resisted and that His opposition to that course is making the very world reel and flounder.

When you look into those spheres, those realms, those lives where He is Lord, recognised, accepted and honoured, you find a change of such conditions, you find an entire revolution of situations, you find there that it is proved up to the hilt that in His Lordship Jesus Christ is capable of doing what no other power or force or combination of forces has ever been able to do, even when it has exhausted all its resources — He can do it. There have been ghastly situations in this world which men by force and by legislation and by every conceivable means at their command have tried to stamp out and they have utterly failed and had to draw back and survey their failure and acknowledge that they have not the key to the situation, they have not the power to deal with that thing, and even though they may, by sheer assertion of force, have managed up to a point to hold the thing in rebellious sway or subjection, they have not got rid of it. It is still there waiting to break out, and every now and again the thing makes its presence manifest, it shows that it is not dead. In such situations again and again that which is here stated: "The word which he sent unto the children of Israel, preaching good tidings of peace by Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all)" has solved the problem, has dealt with the thing, not only to suppress but to rule it out, to quench it; and what armies have failed to do, the gospel of peace by Jesus Christ preached, He being Lord of all, has met that situation and changed the entire face of things.

History's Witness

It is not for us tonight to stay to go over history and show how again and again that has proved true. We have said that there have been terrible things which no one could deal with in their root, but which have gone when Christ has come in. You think of some of those awful things in heathendom where little children, babes, being offered to idols have been on certain religious festivals placed in the red hot outstretched hands of mighty images, with their furnaces kindled inside, and the fire and smoke belching from nostrils, mouth, eyes, and then from a mother a babe is torn and placed in those red hot hands, and to drown the screams and shrieks of the tortured infant, men with their tom-toms made the most infernal noise. Armies tried to deal with that, legislation tried to deal with that, and found — as has always been proved — that these heathen superstitions are so deeply rooted that the heathen are prepared to fight for them and to lay down their lives, and although you may impose upon them some law, some restriction, you have not got to the heart of things. But such things are almost a thing of the past. The armies have not solved it, legislation has not solved it, the gospel of peace by Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all) has solved it, and those things are rarely heard of because of the gospel of peace by Jesus Christ. And I could give you a good many more illustrations of this thing.

We are making a declaration which has behind it a tremendous amount of evidence. "He is Lord of all." There is nothing too great for His Lordship. God has appointed Him and placed Him Lord of all, and that is a fact which has got to be reckoned with. Where His Lordship has been disowned and thrust away, there you have the most ghastly conditions in this world. Is not God demonstrating that before our eyes? Oh, if you have eyes to see, if you have intelligence to take in the situation, if you have true information and get behind the lies that are broadcast, you have evidence which is undeniable that in those parts of the world where Jesus Christ is ousted deliberately you have the most ghastly state of things conceivable; and how men can want and press propaganda to bring those conditions into this country is inconceivable, but there they are. We could stay, if it were wise and necessary to talk about it, and I would not be talking to you for ten minutes about conditions in Russia now but that you would be shuddering. What is it?It is God's proof, that to reject the Lordship of His Son and to throw it out is the most disastrous thing that ever comes to mankind. And therefore, it is the greatest proof that the recognition and acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord means to change the whole situation and to bring about an entirely different order of things. So it is; God is going to have His end.

Oh, let there be done all that man can do — they have tried it before! Their story now is the story of a nation or an empire that has been glorious and waned and gone to pieces, and you go round the world now looking at the relics of the empires which set themselves against the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to blot out that Name. God will have His end! This strong affirmation is necessary because we are not going to be able to reject the Lord Jesus with impunity. We may get through this life having rejected Him and come to no apparently disastrous end, but that is not the end. "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." We shall have to face God's eternal determination concerning His Son there at His throne. What God says by His Spirit and has recorded is, "He is Lord." Nothing can alter that, we have to face that. But that is the hard side. I do trust that pressing it that way is not necessary, and yet we always have to remember that we can never get away from God's facts, and to try to reject them, ignore them, set them aside only means that we come under those activities of Divine sovereignty sooner or later again, and have to reckon with them; and all the time we are doing this we are losing what God intended for us in making His Son both Lord and Christ.

The Universal Need

But recognizing the side of the severity of this thing, there is the other side. Not only is this God's appointment and determination, this is our need, our greatest need, that He, the Lord Jesus Christ shall be Lord of all. It is our need. It is the world's need. The world's greatest need today is the enthroning of the Lord Jesus. Of course, we can say that in a kind of general way and it makes no difference what we say in a little corner of the globe like this. You may say it where you like, you may proclaim it on housetops, but it does not make much difference. But all the same, it is true. The world's need is Jesus Christ as Lord, and God is heading up everything to that. Oh yes, He is heading it up. The world never was in such a state as it is now. We all recognise the seriousness of the outlook today. Did you ever know of the very institutions of this world whose whole business and ambition, is to have money to handle, to deal with, and to possess; did you ever know of such institutions dreading the thought of having any money, so that bankers today do not want money. They do not want your money, they do not know what to do with it; they will not accept the responsibility for handling it. That is an awful outlook, but it is only one phase of the situation today.

With this seething turmoil beneath the surface, we seem to be on the edge of a terrific volcano which may break at any moment and involve all the nations again in a most terrible upheaval; and the awful blindness and awful insensibility of so many is amazing. So recently the cry was "the war to end war," and today there is a headlong rush to something worse than anything that ever has been, and the last was the worst that ever was. There it is, and this is the state, and God is allowing this course to be followed. He is permitting this to head everything up — to what? To the acknowledgment of His Son as Lord, the bringing in of the kingdom of His Son, and not until the Lord Jesus reigns will there be a change. Here, again, the very world conditions show the greatest need that He should be Lord of all.

But we ourselves need that, the unsaved man and woman needs that. If you are unsaved you need the Lord Jesus to be Lord in and of your life. You need Him to be Saviour to save you, but oh, what you need above and beyond that is that He shall be Lord. That He shall be in charge, that He shall be in control, that He shall govern, that He should bring in His reign of peace and of power and of glory into your life. You need that He shall be Lord of all. And we who do know Him as Saviour, we who are His, we need to know Him as we have never known Him as Lord of all. What is the need of the believer, the greatest need of the believer? It is that the Lord Jesus should really ascend the throne and take the government and bring everything within the compass of our lives under His sway, under His government, under His direction, to bring our thoughts and our imagination, our reasons, under His sovereign sway. To bring our desires, and affections under His government; to bring our wills, our choosings, our determinations, our selections, all under His dominion; to bring us altogether into subjection to His reign of holiness of life, of victory, of joy, of peace.

Yes, the believer who is saved needs Him to be Lord of all, and I do believe that the trouble with so many of us who know the Lord but who are limited in our lives, limited in our usefulness, our service, limited in our joy, I do believe that the solution to the whole thing is a fresh expression of the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ in our hearts. If these chapters here, Acts 2 and 10 speak of anything at all, they do declare what a state of life is where He is Lord of all. Read them again. After all, the incoming of the Holy Spirit there, when the Holy Spirit came on those two occasions and took possession, it was only that heavenly fact, that Christ was Lord, having its counterpart by the Holy Spirit in those who believed. That is the meaning of the Holy Spirit filling the life. A life filled with the Holy Spirit is, in other words, a life filled with the lordship and sovereignty of Jesus Christ. You find a wonderful state of things here in these accounts when that takes place. You see the change in the men who are most in evidence. You remember them, the eleven disciples; you remember the story of the gospels, their constant failure, the long story of breaking down almost at every point. Oh, but what men they were afterwards, what a change. Defeated before — now in victory. Unreliable before, now as bold as lions, courageous, and you can count on them to go to death. Full of profession before, but when put to the test unable to stand up to their profession. One saying, "I will follow Thee to death," and in a few hours denying with oaths and curses that he knew Christ; but that man now in face of every opposition going right on to his death at last in the interests of his Lord.

What has happened to these men? Jesus Christ has been exalted to lordship, and the Holy Spirit has brought the meaning of that, the power, the good of all that into the lives of these men, and so His Lordship is not only something in heaven, it is something in them. That is our need. What do you need? What do I need? We need something far more spontaneous than we have. More spontaneous in testimony, in heart outflow. So much of what we have got in Christianity is doctrine, teaching, truth, things we believe and cherish about the Lord Jesus, for which we would lay down our lives, but there is that lack, limitation in the spontaneous heart-overflow. But I see the cure; the remedy is that He should be as never before, Lord of all. That is all, but it is a big "all," it is our need!

And so we might go on for a long time speaking round this great and wonderful reality, but oh, beloved friends, what I urged upon you, as I am urging upon myself, is that in the case of those who are unsaved, and in the case of those who are saved, this one great need, this one great solution to all our problems, this one great answer to all our requirements, this one great provision for the full realization of all God's purpose, it is the starting point of everything, that is, that we should receive, acknowledge, enthrone and surrender to the Lord Jesus as Lord of all. Not Lord of half or three-quarters or even nine-tenths, but Lord of ALL. Lord within. Lord without, Lord of our personal lives, Lord in bur homes in so far as it rests with us to make Him Lord; Lord in our businesses, Lord in all our relationships and in all our interests. He is going to be that in this universe one day. May we not be those who are abandoned from that sphere into the outer darkness because we rejected Him, but be there in the fullness of joy and glory of it, because here in the day which was appointed for our acceptance of it, we made Him Lord of all. "The word which he sent unto the children of Israel, preaching good tidings of peace by Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all)."

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, May-June 1933, Vol. 11-3

True Prayer - T. Austin-Sparks

Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. (James 5:16 NIV)

There are many ways in our Christian life where we have to get adjusted to the will of the Lord. The will of the Lord is not always an easy thing for our flesh; and so very often, we have to have a real battle to get adjusted to the will of the Lord on some particular matter; and prayer is the time in which that adjustment has to be done. It is just possible that some of us are having a battle over the will of God on something. Well, this is the time to get through with that issue. Our prayer times give us the great opportunity of getting right into line with the will of God on all matters....

True prayer is the prayer of confession and humiliation! True prayer is the time of absolute committal and surrender and submission to the Lord! True prayer is the time for getting right into line with the will of God on all matters! Now these three things, we could call negative things. Of course they are not negative when we have to face them, they are very positive matters. But when we come to the fourth thing, we move over a bit to another side; and I am sure that this first time of prayer in the case of Paul was a time of deep worship. What does worship come out from? What is it that leads us to worship? What is the true nature and spirit of worship? Is it not a deep unspeakable gratitude for the grace of God? We only worship in the measure in which we appreciate the grace of God.... You remember that a favorite way to Paul of opening his letters was with three words: "Grace, mercy, and peace, be unto you." That was the foundation of everything for Paul. Wonderful grace, grace that could never be explained; boundless mercy; and peace with God. That was surely the consciousness of this man during his prayer. It was the prayer of deep worship for the grace of God, and that must have a place in all true prayer.

By T. Austin-Sparks from: "That They May All Be One, Even As We Are One" - Meeting 41

Revealing The Mystery - B. Keith Chadwell

A four part series in PDF format on "Revealing The Mystery" by B. Keith Chadwell.

Part 1: A Time and Times and theDividing of Time

Part 2: Morning by Morning

Part 3: The Bright and Morning Star

Part 4: Full Daylight Comes

Link to - High Country Ministry – B. Keith Chadwell

Truth In The Inward Parts - T. Austin-Sparks

Truth In The Inward Parts – T. Austin-Sparks

Let our lives lovingly express truth in all things, speaking truly, dealing truly, living truly. Enfolded in love, let us grow up in every way and in all things into Him. (Ephesians 4:15 AMP)

Any system of religion that just puts on from the outside, and covers over the inner life by mere rite and ritual is false, it is not true. The work of God is to reconstitute human nature. And that, of course, involves two things. On the one side, it involves a breaking down. And if you know anything about God's dealings with lives who come into His hands, there is undoubtedly a large place for that - a progressive breaking down; a getting to the root of things, and undeceiving us. If we have any illusions about ourselves, they will all be gone when God has done with us. If we are governed by any kind of falsehood about ourselves, and our position, and our work, when God has done with us, that will all be gone. He is going to break us down until we see ourselves stark, as an unclean thing, with all our righteousnesses as filthy rags. So He will break us down, and He does. 

But there is the other side, of course, all the time, for God is not only, and always negative; there is the constructing, bringing up to the place where anything that is false, anything that is not absolutely transparent and true, straight, clear, is hateful to us. More and more our inner man revolts against our own falsehood. Any exaggerations come back on us at once with conviction of wrong; any false statement hits us hard, and we know that we have not spoken the truth. It is a tremendous thing to get into the hands of the Holy Spirit, until, like God, the one thing that we hate is anything that is false. "I hate", said David, "every false way." We must come there. But we must be lovers of the truth. And this is going to pursue us everywhere; it will pursue us into our own life within ourselves, that we are not deceiving ourselves at all. Before God we know exactly what God thinks about us, and we know where we stand in the light.... And the nearer we come to the Lord, the more meticulous the Holy Spirit is over this matter of truth; the closer are His dealings with us. It is very true, you see, "perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord" - perfecting. The nearer we get to the end, the more stringent will be the Lord's dealings with anything false in our lives. It is a time matter, but God is very faithful - He is very faithful; He does not let things pass. Do we want Him to be faithful? Well, it is not comfortable to say, "Yes," but it is good that He should be faithful with every inconsistency, every contradiction, every falsehood, in the inward parts.

By T. Austin-Sparks from: Truth in The Inward Parts

To Be Carnally Minded Is Death - Cathy Morris

To Be Carnally Minded Is Death

“For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” Romans 8:6.

Our carnal mind, our thoughts, are daily, hourly, moment by moment, being brought into subjection to HIS MIND. A part of us is ever trying to DO the work of the Spirit, (as if we knew how) by attempting to change ourselves. This always fails. We think if we try to dwell on only good things, we will be approved, and somehow speed up the process. Then something ugly and repugnant rises up before us (or within us) and we scramble for our weapons and engage in battle. We can only imagine what we 'should do' in any given situation, EXCEPT the Spirit of the Living God rise up within us. And HIS response (even through us) is often surprising and completely unexpected.

We can only see the outward actions of another; we can only interpret their words from our perspective, EXCEPT the Spirit illumine our understanding. HE alone sees their heart. O, that we might continue pressing in... that we might know HIM, even as we are known (that would be intimately). His greatest desire is to impart HIS LIFE into us; that we may be ONE.

Our eyes look toward being transformed, and we want it NOW. Yet, when the transforming starts we rebuke it, because it does not come in the manner we anticipated. Instead, we interpret it as an attack of the enemy. We want to bask in His presence; to feel His peace; to dwell on heavenly things. We do not understand when our words and actions are misconstrued and we find ourselves being attacked and rejected. When instead of peace we seem surrounded by chaos. When instead of joy, we suffer loss. When we wanted to be lifted up and instead seem to be cast down. It takes a while for us to learn that just as our Lord Christ before us; we too, are made perfect 'by the things which we suffer.' It takes suffering the loss of all things to come to the place where we can say with an honest heart... “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him:” and initially we, like Job, will add to that... “but I will maintain (argue, defend, justify) mine own ways before him.” The Lord listened then, (as He listens now), to all of our arguments and justifications. And today, He asks us the same question He put to Job.... “Will you also annul (set aside and render void) My judgment? Will you condemn Me [your God], that you may [appear] righteous and justified?” (Job 40:8).

By the end of the thing Job no longer defended himself, but rather said, “I had heard of You [only] by the hearing of the ear, but now my [spiritual] eye sees You. Therefore I loathe [my words] and abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6).

Would that... we were as spiritually mature as we imagine ourselves to be. What a difference in our lives there would be, to have our spiritual eyes opened, to see God as He IS, rather than through the filters of our religious concepts and ideologies. To see God, would necessitate seeing ourselves as well. What does the word tell us?.... 1 John 3:2 “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” Do we imagine that for this to happen, we have to physically die first? Or do we imagine that we have to 'see Him,' a physical Jesus, with our physical eyes?

“It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual” 1 Corinthians 15:44-46.

“Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” 1 Peter 2:5.

Did not Jesus tell us.... “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” John 4:24.

We all relate to others from our own perspective; our own personal experience; where we are in our relationship with God. It is by our interactions, how we treat others, that we continue to learn and to grow, to be transformed. The way of man is often to do as the monks do; shut yourself away from the world and put yourself through postures and meditations. Who does that touch? Who does that help? Or to form elite cliques and alliances with others who share our perspective. This is being religious; it is not entering into the LIFE of Christ.

Our hearts desire is unity, in the Spirit.

“For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread” 1 Co 10:17.

“But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy” 1 Pe 4:13. This partaking is what crucifies our flesh; (not a popular concept in today’s world).

“Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” 1 Co 1:10. We are not there yet. Consider if you will these excerpts from T. Austin-Sparks – The Universal Range of the Eternal Purpose, chapter 4:

“The heart of the whole thing is just that God shall have in us individually and collectively, wherever He may place us on this earth, vessels, an instrument in such a spiritual union with Himself in the heavenlies that the heavenly thing may be wrought out in the earth.”

“Not all the members of the Church which is His Body are there, or are going on there, but the Lord will from His people obtain a company which will be the vanguard of the whole, and which will go on with Him and take the heavenly place and be His instrument for the breaking through and leading a way for the others. That is the peculiar vessel upon which the heart of the Lord is set.”

“We must not forget that while the vessel in the thought and mind of God is a corporate thing, a Body, a collective thing, it is made up of living members, and every living member of that Body is in itself a vessel and has its peculiar responsibility to the whole.... what is true of the whole vessel has to be true of the individual vessel, and that the individual vessel has to be a representation of the whole.” [end quote]

We can be caught up in something of a conundrum between our individual walk and our corporate Body walk. If we are growing... conflicts will arise. We see ourselves as being wholly committed to following Christ; yet when someone says something that conflicts with our beliefs, or something that hurts our feelings, how do we respond? Do we react in the Spirit of Wisdom, or carnally? This is a battle that every believer will encounter over and over again. We can only become 'overcomers,' if there is something to overcome. And that something resides 'within us.' Thank God that He has made the way for us to be more than overcomers, through 'Christ in us.' Brother Sparks elaborated more on this process here:

“God places the lonely in families. (Psalm 68:6 NLT)

The higher position of "Ephesians" is this - that now, being quickened and raised together with Christ and seated in the heavenlies is a matter of relatedness to other believers, and in that relatedness, you are going to find your fullness. You are never going to find spiritual enlargement just as an isolated, separate individual, but in relation with other believers. "God setteth the solitary in families" (Ps. 68:6), and there is no doubt about it, whether or not you understand or accept the doctrine of it, you can prove very quickly in experience that our spiritual enlargement does come by way of true spiritual and heavenly relatedness with other believers. That is proved by the fact that it is not always easy for Christians to live together for very long. It sounds a terrible thing to say, but you have a lot of other factors to reckon with. If you were ordinary people in this world, you might get on very well, but being Christians you have to meet the whole force of Satan working upon any little bit of natural life he can find. So he makes for difficulty between Christians that they would not find if they were not in a heavenly position. They are meeting forces in the heavenlies. There are the rub and friction and all the cross currents that try to divide Christians but which do not try to divide other people, because there is so much bound up with true spiritual oneness amongst the Lord's people - so much for the Lord, and so much against Satan. Satan is going to break up that spiritual oneness if he can. He knows what that means for him, and the Lord knows what that means for Himself - and hence the special and extra difficulties when it is a case of Christians living together, especially for a long time.

Now what is the upshot? When these difficulties arise we must say, "It is evidently necessary for me to get a new spiritual position, to get on top of this. If I am not going to give it up and leave, I must come to some spiritual enlargement; I have to know the Lord in a new way, to have more grace, love and patience." That is spiritual enlargement, and it comes by relatedness. (Of course, that is only one way; there are many others by which spiritual enlargement comes by relatedness.) If only we can keep together in prayer, there is spiritual enlargement.

By T. Austin-Sparks from: A Way of Growth - Chapter 2 “ [end quote]


Jesus plainly told us that “in the world you will have tribulation (pressure, anguish, persecution, trouble), but I have overcome the world.”

Act 14:22 “Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.”

Jesus' persecution did not come from the Romans; it came from the religious. It is amazing how sensitive we can be to how we perceive others are treating us; while we are incredibly blind as to how we are treating others. For me, the hardest thing is breaking free of all the religious garbage I've accumulated over the years.  There are so many groups, small and large, scattered over the world.  God is revealing Himself to people.  It is hard when this happens not to think that we (individually or collectively) are the only ones.  We all tend to think like Elijah did, "I'm the only one"... not realizing that HE has 1000's of others who are undergoing the same exact processings.  Revelations, visions, manifestations; we are awed by them, but that is not why He gives them to us... It is to change us.  First we have to see a thing; then we have to undergo the processing required to bring us into conformity, within, till it becomes our reality.  And at every step along the way, our carnal, reasoning mind thinks that we are going completely crazy.  Our attacks do not come from the unsaved; the world is completely indifferent.  Our persecution comes from other believers; who do not see what we see; or who see us as a threat to what they have accepted as truth.  The Romans didn't crucify Jesus, the religious people did, and it is the same today.

Many of the ones that I was once close to, who have cut me off, have a different vision.  They may not be looking for the rapture, but neither are they looking for or accepting of letting go of their religious perceptions.  The religious is so powerful; so deeply engrained in our thinking.  It looks and sounds so good, and is so comforting to our flesh; it is like the last great stronghold that we must overcome.

It is just as Kriston's vision showed (previous blog post 'The Mountain & The City')....  “These places were built by those given my revelation and gifts to help men come to the top of my mountain,” He said. “Many of these like you also had revelation of the top of the mountain, and gathered men unto themselves to share that revelation. They have built their shanty towns of wood, hay, and stubble around the very revelation and gifts they were given to bring people here.”  I then noticed some of the enclaves had signs that read “The New Jerusalem” He continued speaking, “Many of these have had a revelatory vision of the New Jerusalem, but have settled for the praise of men, and have believed the delusion that they are building the Holy City.”  [end quote]

Works and Ministries - the very thing that we believe we are called to 'do'... can be our biggest stumblingblock.  We are called to 'BE'... not to 'Do.'  The difference is enormous.  And we soon learn that we can do NOTHING from our own understanding.  Whatever 'light' or 'revelation' we have received... there is so much more that we still do not see.  We have to decide, "will I revel and glory in this new revelation, building a tabernacle to it, or will I revel and glory in Christ alone, and continue to follow Him wherever He leads?"  Each one have this opportunity set before them.  When our vision becomes so enamored with the 'glory' of it all, we are in danger of trying to 'set up camp' where we are, which will stop all advancement; we will proceed no further.  It is very sobering and downright scary... which could very well be coming into the 'fear of the Lord.' 

My reasoning mind sneers at this; at where I am; at what I am doing/ or not doing; that others have disassociated themselves from me must show that my thinking is wrong...?; the 'who do you think you are?' raises up to condemn.   My husband used to share that many years ago, a prophet told him that there were those alive then who were able to walk through this, but the time was coming when those coming in would have to run!  We are there now.  You and I can look back over the span of our life, and see how the Lord moved us and brought us.  It was not a way of our choosing, and we did not always respond the first time; but HE never let go.  Once He told me... "It is hard to detach yourself from ME, once I have attached myself to you."  How thankful I am for that!  We are not satisfied or necessarily happy about our current life situation, and there is always that temptation to make a change on our own; but we cannot do that.  At least we have had enough of 'been there, done that' to know that we don't know what is good for us, or what the future holds.  We have learned to stop judging by outward appearances, or the prevailing popular opinion... we can wait as long as it takes.   By religious or worldly standards, we may not look like much, or seem to be doing much... but we are learning to REST in HIM, and simply BE.  What a blessed place that is to be in.

Our carnal minds can really feast on doctrines, ideologies, visions and spiritual manifestations. Not so much... when the path we are called to walk brings us face to face with rejection, separations, loneliness, uncertainty and sorrow. Our carnal mind can't really embrace that to be like Jesus, the firstborn of many brethren, means that to be like Him includes... “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not” Isa 53:3. He showed us the way, by example. There is no other way. May we continually guard our hearts, examining ourselves now that we be not judged and found wanting. To be carnally minded is spiritual death, regardless of what religious adornments it puts on.

“Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you” 1 Peter 1:22-25.

Have your perfect will O God, in the lives of your servants, bringing our every thought into conformity to your Holy Spirit. Amen & Amen.

Cathy Morris