The Cross of Christ

The Cross of Christ by Andrew Murray

For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God.  I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:19-20

        The cross of Christ is His greatest glory. Because He humbled Himself to the death of the cross, therefore God hath highly exalted Him. The cross was the power that conquered Satan and sin.

 

  The Christian shares with Christ in the cross. The crucified Christ lives in him through the Holy Spirit, and the spirit of the cross inspires him. He lives as one who has died with Christ. As he realizes the power of Christ's crucifixion, he lives as one who has died to the world and to sin, and the power becomes a reality in his life. It is as the crucified One that Christ lives in me.

 

Our Lord said to His disciples: "Take up your cross and follow me." Did they understand this? They had seen men carrying a cross, and knew what it meant, a painful death on the cross. And so all His life Christ bore His cross, the death sentence that He should die for the world. And each Christian must bear his cross, acknowledging that he is worthy of death, and believing that he is crucified with Christ, and that the crucified One lives in him. "Our old man is crucified with Christ." "He that is Christ's hath crucified the flesh with all the lusts thereof." When we have accepted this life of the cross, we will be able to say with Paul: "Far be it from me to glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

 

This is a deep spiritual truth. Think and pray over it, and the Holy Spirit will teach you. Let the disposition of Christ on the cross, His humility, His sacrifice of all worldly honour, His Spirit of self-denial, take possession of you. The power of His death will work in you, and you will become like Him in His death, and you will know Him and the power of His resurrection. Take time, O soul, that Christ through His Spirit, may reveal Himself as the Crucified One.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Make ROOM for God by Watchman Nee

Make ROOM for God by Watchman Nee

"If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king" Daniel 3:17

 How does the Church reach her goal?  Only by traveling the pathway from pressure to enlargement, from poverty to enrichment.  You ask: What do we mean by enlargement through pressure?  When three are shut into a furnace and the three become four that is enlargement through pressure.  Some find a furnace rather close quarters for three, so they seek a way of escape; others accept the limitation, and in accepting it, make room for a Fourth.  Not to let difficulties shut us out from God, but to let them shut us in to him, that is enlargement through pressure.  Some, through pressure, reach God's end; others come to an end in the pressure.  Some die in straitness; others, through straitness, find fullness of life.  Some murmur when trials befall, finding in them only restraint, limitation and death; others praise God for the trials, and in doing so discover the pathway to enlargement, liberation, and abundance of life.

Warfare Spirituality: The Weapons of Our Warfare part 12

Warfare Spirituality: The Weapons of Our Warfare part 12

"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction for fortresses" 2 Corinthians 10:3-4

"be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might" (Ephesians 6:10).

The Armor of God

Ephesians 6:10-18  Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.
 Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.  For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.  Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.  Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place,  and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.  In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.  Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.  And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

So far we looked at…

The Belt of Truth

The Breastplate of Righteousness

The Sandals of Peace

 

Now…

The Shield of Faith

Matthew 22:37  Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'
John 12:26  Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

The Helmet of Salvation

1 Thessalonians 5:8  But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.

The Sword of the Spirit

Psalm 119:11  I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
Psalm 119:105  Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.
Matthew 4:4  Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"
1 Peter 2:2  Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation,
1 John 4:6  We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

Prayer and Petition

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18  Be joyful always;  pray continually;  give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 6:18-19  And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.  Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel,

Other Resources  include Corporate Connectedness (being connected to other believers) and next time:  Proclamation of Truth and Demonstration of the Spirit’s Power

The Time is NOW (by TA Sparks)

The time is coming, yes, and has already come, when true worshippers will worship in spirit and in reality. Indeed, the Father looks for men who will worship Him like that. (John 4:23 Phillips)

Jesus said to the woman, "the hour cometh, and now is." Then He dismissed the whole system that had existed up to that time. It was the whole system of Judaism according to the Old Testament. In one sentence, He dismissed the whole dispensation. And He introduced an altogether new order of things.

What did He mean? Because when He said the hour cometh, and now is, He did not mean literally just an hour and so many minutes. He meant that it was the first hour of the new day. With this hour an altogether new day has come. What is the new day? If you would have asked Jesus to put it into a short sentence, He would have said, "Well, I am here." The hour is not just a matter of time but a matter of PERSON. The new dispensation is the dispensation of Jesus Christ. Christ is the new dispensation. "I am here," He said. You go through that Gospel of John. He is centering everything in Himself. "I am the Way; I am the Truth; I am the Life; I am the Shepherd; I am the Vine; I am the Resurrection." It is a Person. It is that which lies behind everything. Christianity is Christ. Christ is Christianity. That is where it all begins and it never departs from HIM. The development of the Christian life is only the development of Jesus Christ in the life.

Prayer & Fasting by Andrew Murray

“Jesus told them….’But this kind of demon won’t leave unless you have prayed and fasted.’” Matthew 17:21

Jesus teaches us that a life of faith requires both prayer and fasting. Prayer grasps the power of heaven, fasting loosens the hold on earthly pleasure.
Jesus Himself fasted to get strength to resist the devil. He taught His disciples that fasting should be in secret, and the Father would reward it openly [the results would be witnessed in the world]. Abstinence from food [and other earthly pleasures that we have been given liberty to either take or leave], or moderation in taking them [and grace for leaving them], helps to focus on communication with God.
Let’s remember that abstinence, moderation, and self-denial are a help to spiritual life. After having eaten a hearty meal, one does not feel much desire to pray. To willingly sacrifice our own pleasure or enjoyment will help to focus our minds more fully on God and His priorities. The very practice needed in overcoming our own desires will give us strength to take hold of God in prayer.
Our lack of discipline in prayer comes from our fleshly desire of comfort and ease.
“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to His cross and crucified them there” (Galatians 5:24).

Prayer is not easy work. For the real practice of prayer – taking hold of God and having communion and fellowship with Him – it is necessary that our selfish desires be sacrificed.
Isn’t it worth the trouble to deny ourselves daily in order to meet the holy God and receive His blessings?

Satan Would Bind Us in Our Own Grave Clothes by AW Tozer

… For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. 1 John 3:8

It is part of the devil’s business to keep the Christian’s spirit imprisoned. He knows that the believing and justified Christian has been raised up out of the grave of his sins and trespasses. From that point on, Satan works that much harder to keep us bound and gagged, actually imprisoned in our own grave clothes!

He knows that if we continue in this kind of bondage we will never be able to claim our rightful spiritual heritage. He knows also that while we continue bound in this kind of enslavement we are not much better off than when we were spiritually dead.

This is one reason why the Christians in today’s churches are behaving like a flock of frightened sheep—so intimidated by the devil that we can’t even say “Amen!”

I am sure that it is not glorifying to our God that Christians should be so intimidated and silenced in our day. It was Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, who came down and took our human body for Himself. He was a man, born of a woman, a man wearing our own nature—but He was also God!

He went out to the cross and they sacrificed Him there. The Father, God Almighty, accepted His sacrifice as the one, final fulfillment and consummation of all the sacrifices ever made on Jewish altars. After three days, He came out of the grave, then ascended as Victor over death and hell!

Believing this, we ought to be the most fearless, the happiest and most God-assured people in the whole world!

Learning to Listen

The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:2).

(by TA Sparks) We speak about natural laws. What are natural laws? Take the law of nourishment. Provided that law is complied with, honoured; and at the right time the body is given what it needs, not more, not less, the law of nourishment deals with that and quite spontaneously works out in development, growth, to express itself in various ways. It is the working of a natural law spontaneously. You do not sit down with the law, and watch it, and worry about it. What you do is to feed yourself, and leave all the rest to the law. If you violate the law you know all about it, but acting rightly in relation to the law you will not be fretting all day long about the law of nourishment, you will simply be taking your meals and getting on with your work. The result is that you are able to work, able to go on; you are nourished.
The law of the Spirit of Life in Christ is like that. It is a law of Life, and it works out in a practical way when respected and honoured. It works out spontaneously in certain directions. It has its own results quite naturally. The law of the Spirit of Life in Christ is that law by which we become aware. That is the simplest way of putting things. The Lord Jesus knew that at a certain time He could not act, could not speak; He had no movement of the Spirit in quickening, no Life so to do at that time; in His spirit there was no movement of Life; the law was not active in the positive way. But when the Father, Who knew what was required in speech or action, saw that the time had come, He did not bend down and speak with an audible voice into His ear, and say, Now is the time! Say this! Do that! He simply quickened Him inwardly. The law of Life became active in that direction, and He knew by an inward quickening what the mind of God was. That is what Paul means when he says, "The mind of the Spirit is Life."

The Saddest Verse

The Saddest Verse

I believe the saddest verse in God’s Word can be found in the words of Jesus:

You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, John 5:39

Nothing is as sad as someone who knows the Bible, but is not intimate with Jesus.  Consider the words of AW Tozer
Charles G. Finney believed that Bible teaching without moral application could be worse than no teaching at all, and could result in positive injury to the hearers. I used to feel that this might be an extreme position, but after years of observation I have come around to it, or to a view almost identical with it.

There is scarcely anything so dull and meaningless as Bible doctrine taught for its own sake. Truth divorced from life is not truth in its Biblical sense, but something else and something less. Theology is a set of facts concerning God, man and the world. These facts may be, and often are, set forth as values in themselves; and there lies the snare both for the teacher and for the hearer.

The Bible is among other things a book of revealed truth. That is, certain facts are revealed that could not be discovered by the most brilliant mind. These facts are of such a nature as to be past finding out. They were hidden behind a veil, and until certain men who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost took away that veil, no mortal man could know them. This lifting of the veil of unknowing from undiscoverable things we call divine revelation.

The Bible, however, is more than a volume of hitherto unknown facts about God, man and the universe. It is a book of exhortation based upon those facts. By far the greater portion of the book is devoted to an urgent effort to persuade people to alter their ways and bring their lives into harmony with the will of God, as set forth in its pages.

No man is better for knowing that God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth. The devil knows that, and so did Ahab and Judas Iscariot. No man is better for knowing that God so loved the world of men that He gave His only begotten Son to die for their redemption. In hell there are millions that know that. Theological truth is useless until it is obeyed. The purpose behind all doctrine is to secure moral action.

What is generally overlooked is that truth as set forth in the Christian Scriptures is a moral thing; it is not addressed to the intellect only, but to the will also. It addresses itself to the total man, and its obligations cannot be discharged by grasping it mentally. Truth engages the citadel of the human heart and is not satisfied until it has conquered everything there. The will must come forth and surrender its sword. It must stand at attention to receive orders, and those orders it must joyfully obey. Short of this any knowledge of Christian truth is inadequate and unavailing.

Bible exposition without moral application raises no opposition. It is only when the hearer is made to understand that truth is in conflict with his heart that resistance sets in. As long as people can bear orthodox truth, divorced from life, they will attend and support churches and institutions without objection. The truth is a lovely song, become sweet by long and tender association; and since It asks nothing but a few dollars, and offers good music, pleasant friendships and a comfortable sense of well-being, it meets with no resistance from the faithful. Much that passes for New Testament Christianity is little more than objective truth sweetened with song and made palatable by religious entertainment.

Do Not Mistake the True Meaning of the Cross by AW Tozer

Do Not Mistake the True Meaning of the Cross by AW Tozer

But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. Galatians 6:14
All unannounced and mostly undetected there has come in modern times a new cross into popular evangelical circles.
It is like the old cross, but different: the likenesses are superficial, the differences fundamental!
From this new cross has sprung a new philosophy of the Christian life with encouragement for a new and entirely different evangelistic approach. The evangelist tries to show that Christianity makes no unpleasant demands; rather, it offers the same thing the world does, only on a higher level. The modern view is that the new cross does not slay the sinner, it redirects him!
The philosophy back of this kind of thing may be sincere, but it is as false as it is blind. It misses completely the whole meaning of the cross.
The old cross is a symbol of death. It stands for the abrupt, violent end of a human being. In Roman times, the man who took up his cross and started down the road was not coming back. He was not going out to have his life redirected: he was going out to have it ended! The cross did not try to keep on good terms with its victim. It struck cruel and hard, and when it had finished its work, the man was no more!
The race of Adam is under death sentence. God cannot approve any of the fruits of sin. In coming to Christ we do not bring our old life up onto a higher plane; we leave it at the cross. Thus God salvages the individual by liquidating him and then raising him again to newness of life!

Living in Union is Living in Resurrection

Living in Union is Living in Resurrection by TA Sparks

I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection. (Philippians 3:10 NIV)

Resurrection always means that we are outside of the world. After His resurrection the Lord Jesus never again appeared to the world. He never manifested Himself personally to the world after His resurrection. The resurrection means that He had passed, in that sense, out from the world and stood apart, and His power over the world was His apartness from it. His ability to deal with the situation is because He is no longer involved in the situation. Resurrection Life means that we are outside of the world spiritually, and in a superior position....

We have to learn how to live by the power of Christ's resurrection, so that the death around us is not able so to impinge upon us as to bring us into its grip. Resurrection union with the Lord Jesus means that we are not involved in the death that is all around us. We can move in scenes of death and not be touched by death. This is a very important lesson to learn, how to be in Life in the midst of death.... In the resurrection of the Lord Jesus we are delivered from the curse – that is, from the death which works vanity – and we have been brought into the place where we can go right through to the Divine end, the full realization that vanity no longer rests upon us. We are no longer held up; no longer in the position that we live and come to a point and that is the end, and we can go no further. We can go right on now! The fruit of Life can come to perfection because the power of death in the curse has been canceled in the power of His resurrection. The condemnation has been removed.

The Alpha & Omega Who Makes All Things NEW

The Alpha & Omega Who Makes All Things NEW

He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."
 He said to me: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. Revelation 21:5-6

Jesus Christ is the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.  He has the 1^st and last words.  Think of it…. Man did not decide when he would be born and enter this world, and he will not decide when his life is over.

Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, Hebrews 9:27

But between his birth date and death date man has so much to say about himself, even in rebellion to the One who gives breadth.  But this is a mere passing illusion, the illusion that we are in control, can say and do what we want without reprisals or consequences.  Our only hope is to look to the One who has conquered death, gives new life and forgives sin.  He is the Alpha and Omega and He makes all things NEW.

Consider from Scripture  how He makes all things NEW… let Him give you a NEW year, trust Him.

Heavens & Earth Created – Genesis 1:1 / New Heaven & Earth – Revelation 21:1

Sun Created – Genesis 1:16 / No Need of the Sun – Revelation 21:23

Night Established – Genesis 1:5 / No Night Needed -  Revelation 22:5

Seas Established – Genesis 1:10 / No more Seas – Revelation 21:1

Paradise Given/Lost – Genesis 2:8 / Paradise to Come – Revelation 21:1

Satan Introduced – Gen 3:1-18 / Final Doom of Satan – Revelation 20:10

Introduction to Sin – Genesis 3&4 / The End of Sin – Revelation 21:4

The Curse Begins – Genesis 3:15-18 / The Curse Ends – Revelation 22:3

Death Enters History – Genesis 3:19 / No More Death – Revelation 21:4

Sorrow & Pain begin – Genesis 3:17 / Sorrow & Pain end – Revelation 21:4

Man driven from the tree – Genesis 3:24 / Man restored to paradise – Revelation 22:14

Tree of Life Removed – Genesis 3:22-24 / Tree of Life Restored – Revelation 22:2

Mankind driven out of God’s Presence – Genesis 3:24 / Believers are restored to God forever –  Revelation 22:4

"I make all things new"