Hear HIM! By TA Sparks

God in all His fullness was pleased to live in Christ. Colossians 1:19

Do not take these as just words. Do understand that in every fragment there is this truth: In the dispensation in which you and I are now living God has come to us in all His fullness. There is no more to be added. In His Son we have the absolute fullness of God, and it is out of that fullness that He speaks to us in His Son. God has only one Son in that sense – His only-begotten Son, which means that there is no one to come after Him. Therefore, God's last word is in His Son. The Son brings both the fullness and the finality of God. It is that which gives the solemnity to this whole Letter. It says: "If you fail to hear the voice of the Son there will never be another voice for you. God is never going to speak by another voice. God hath spoken in His Son, and He is never going to speak by any other means." Hence this Letter contains this word of warning and of exhortation: "Because this is the fullness and this is the end, be sure that you give heed...." To come into touch with the Lord Jesus is more than coming into touch with a teaching: it is coming into touch with a living, active Person. "It is God with whom we have to do." It is a glorious thing to come into touch with God in Christ – but it says here that "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31). No, it is not a book, a teaching, a philosophy: it is a living, positive, powerful Person....

Perhaps this is just like a window opened into heaven. If you get the right window you can see quite a lot. You can see great things and you can see far things. But the best that I can hope is that this has just opened a window, and that as you look through it you are seeing one thing – how superior is Jesus Christ to all else, and how superior is the dispensation into which we have come, and how superior are all the resources at our disposal to all that ever was before!

Life in Christ: by TA Sparks

You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Christ is your life. When He appears, then you, too, will appear with Him in glory. Colossians 3:3,4

We are very often inclined to think that the Life of the Lord in us needs in some way to be improved, to be added to, when really what is required is that we should discover what we have, and, discovering it by experience, live according to it. This Life is not something apart from the Lord Jesus, and we can never think of His standing in need of some improvement, nor of the possibility of something being added to Him to make Him complete, or more complete. We would never think like that. And this Life is one with Himself. As the Apostle says, it is Christ who is our Life, and our need is to discover what Christ is in us, and to live accordingly. So in a very real sense it is a matter of the Life getting more of us, rather than of our getting more of the Life. That, at any rate, is the way of its working.

This, in the ordering of God, has to be done in a world where death still rules and works; for in this world the destruction of death has not yet been made manifest. Death, like the devil, goes on, although Calvary still remains full victory. We are left in this world, and it is in this world where death reigns and works as a great energy that we, by this sovereign ordering of God, have to come to prove the values of the Life which has been deposited in us, and to discover its potentialities. This is an experimental discovery. It therefore resolves itself into battle between that which is in this world and the Life which is in the believer. It is the battle for Life, not as to the forfeiture of that Life – not as to whether death can take eternal Life away from us, for that is not the question at issue – but as to the triumphant expression and the full manifestation of the power of that Life. That is the issue.

Higher UP + Further IN! by TA Sparks

One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on. Philippians 3:13-14

The Lord desires us to go on. Sometimes going on means loneliness in going on where others cannot go with us. That means a price is bound up with obedience. It may mean a big break, a big change. It is the challenge of whether we are adjustable before the Lord. Our adjustability is the proof of our utterness for the Lord. That proof being there, the Lord is able to bring us on into all His thought. Let us remember always that we shall never get to a place while we are here where there is not some higher level and some greater fullness of Christ. There will always be yet another step, and perhaps another after that, higher on. Let us have our hearts set upon reaching all. The Lord will so graduate things as to make the challenge not too severe. He takes us a step at a time, and He does not want us to take six steps at a bound, or to contemplate six steps at a time. He shows us our next step, and that is all we have to be concerned about now. The other steps will come at the right time. Every step prepares us for the next.

Very often our lives are like mountain climbing. You see from below to a certain height, and that seems to be the top, and you make for it. And when you get to it, you see a little further on that there is another top. You think that must be the very top, and so you make for it, and when you get to it there is something still further. You never do seem to get to the top! But we shall arrive at last. The Lord hides the other things and says: "Now, that is your next step; obey that and fuller revelation will come after that." Those of us who look back and see how terrible a thing it would have been if the Lord had shown us at one time all that to which we have been brought, know that if we had seen it all at one time, we could not have gone on. We see that He brought us by stages, and today we are not ungrateful for the price paid, in view of the measure of Christ which we enjoy and the greater fullness of revelation. Let us ask the Lord to put into us the spirit of His servant: “Not that I have already obtained it... but one thing I do... I press on....”