Sinful Men May Now Become One with God: by AW Tozer

Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature….

2 Peter 1:4

Here is the whole final message of the New Testament: Through the atonement in Jesus’ blood sinful men may now become one with God!

Deity indwelling men! That is Christianity in its fullest effectuation, and even those greater glories of the world to come will be in essence but a greater and more perfect experience of the soul’s union with God.

Deity indwelling men! That, I say, is Christianity and no man has experienced rightly the power of Christian belief until he has known this for himself as a living reality.

Everything else is preliminary to this! Incarnation, atonement, justification, regeneration; what are these but acts of God preparatory to the work of invading and the act of indwelling the redeemed human soul? Man who moved out of the heart of God now moves back into the heart of God by redemption!

God who moved out of the heart of man because of sin now enters again His ancient dwelling to drive out His enemies and once more make the place of His feet glorious!

That visible fire on the day of Pentecost had for the Church a deep and tender significance, for it told to all ages that they upon whose heads it sat were men and women apart. The mark of the fire was the sign of divinity; they who received it were forever a peculiar people, sons and daughters of the Flame.

NOTHING WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE: by Henry Blackaby

For with God nothing will be impossible.     Luke 1:37

The angel Gabriel told Mary that God was planning to do something humanly impossible. All human logic would agree that a virgin could not give birth to a child. It was impossible. Yet this is exactly what was to happen. When God speaks of doing the impossible, it is no longer absurd. When was the last time God did the impossible in your life? When was the last time God spoke to you about what He wanted to do and you were scared to death by its magnitude?

God still does the impossible! Too often we acknowledge our belief that God can do whatever He wants, then we add a safety clause: “But I just don’t think God will do that with me!”  We become practical atheists, believing that God can perform miracles but never expecting a miracle in our own lives.

God wanted to bring salvation to all of humanity. It is critical that Mary not only believed God could perform a miracle but also adjusted her life to the awesome work He planned to do through her. The difference between a Christian and a moral person is the divine. The difference between a church and a social club is the miraculous. Some can duplicate the morality of a Christian, but no one can reproduce the miraculous that should be a part of the Christian experience.

Do you believe that nothing is impossible for God?

Preparing for the Presence of God: by Henry Blackaby

Prepare the way of the LORD; Make His paths straight…And all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Luke 3:4, 6

If we are to receive the powerful presence of God, we must prepare ourselves. John the Baptist was God’s messenger to help people prepare to receive the Savior of the world. John preached unwaveringly: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven at hand!” (Matt. 3:2). Those who heard John’s message and prepared their lives recognized Jesus when He came, and they left all to follow Him. This was especially true of the disciples, whose hearts God Himself prepared (Matt. 16:17). Preparation must precede God’s presence!

God’s instruction for preparation is specific: repentance! This involves a complete change of mind, heart, will, and behavior toward Him. He is Lord, and your life must be prepared to receive Him as your Lord. Anything less is inadequate. Some were obviously unprepared to follow Jesus and missed the opportunity (Luke 9:57-62). The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were largely unprepared for His arrival. They knew the Messiah was coming. They even knew where He would be born (Matt. 2:4-6). Yet when word came that the Savior had been born, they made no effort to join Him, preferring instead their religious ritual.

If you are unprepared, you, too, will miss the opportunity to experience Jesus. You may practice religion, but you will miss God. While others encounter the Lord personally in worship, your heart will remain unmoved. As others receive a fresh word from God, you will experience a painful silence. Religious activity can never substitute for a heart that is pure before Him. Purity comes only through repentance. Pray, as the Psalmist did, that God will examine your heart and reveal your need to repent of your sin (Ps. 139:23-24).

The Sleeping Church Cannot Resist Her Enemies: by AW Tozer

Knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep… let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Romans 13:11, 12

Some day the Church can relax her guard, call her watchmen down from the wall and live in safety and peace—but not yet, not yet!

All that is good in the world stands as a target for all that is evil and manages to stay alive only by constant watchfulness and the providential protection of Almighty God.

The Church lives in a hostile world. Within and around her are enemies that not only could destroy her, but are meant to and will unless she resists force with yet greater force. The Christian would collapse from sheer external pressure were there not within him a counterpressure sufficiently great to prevent it. The power of the Holy Spirit is, therefore, not optional but necessary. Without it the children of God simply cannot live the life of heaven on earth. The hindrances are too many and too effective!

A church is a living organism and is subject to attack from such enemies as prey on living things. The human body can fight its enemies even while it is asleep, but the Church cannot. She must be awake and determined—or she cannot win.

She must recognize her enemies for what they are and she must resist them: Unbelief, Complacency, Self-righteousness, Fear of Man, Love of Luxury, Secret Sympathy with the world, Self-confidence, Pride and Unholy thoughts. These we must resist with every power within us, looking unto Jesus, author and finisher of our faith!

GOD Is GREAT: by Andrew Murray

For you are great and perform great miracles. You alone are

God. PSALM 86:10

Men and women of science, in studying nature, require years of labor to grasp the magnitude of the universe. Isn't God more glorious and worthy? And shouldn't we take the time to know and adore His greatness?

Our knowledge of God's greatness is so superficial. We do not allow ourselves time to bow before Hin1.Therefore we do not con1e under the deep in1pression of His incomprehensible majesty and glory.

Meditate on the following text until you are filled with some sense of what a glorious being God is: "Great is the LORD! He is most worthy of praise! His greatness is beyond discovery!" (Psalm 145:3).

Take time for the meaning of these words to master  your heart. Then bow in speechless adoration before God and say,

" O Sovereign LORD!... Nothing is too hard for you!...

You are the great and powerful God, the LORD Aln1ighty. You have all wisdom and do great and mighty miracles"  (Jeremiah  32:17- 19). And hear God's answer: "I am the LORD, the God of all the peoples of the world. Is anything too  hard  for  me?"  (v. 27).

The true con1prehension of God's greatness will take time. But if our faith grows strong in the knowledge of  what a great and powerful God we have, we will be compelled to worship before this great and mighty God.

ENLARGE Your Tent: by Henry Blackaby

Enlarge the place of your tent, And let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; Do not spare; Lengthen your cords, And strengthen your stakes.            Isaiah 54:2

When God comes to a life in power, it is always a time of rejoicing and expectation for the future! Isaiah described this experience as similar to that of a child born to a previously barren woman. The child’s arrival changes everything! Life cannot continue as usual! Whereas the dwelling place might have been large enough for two, it must now be made bigger. The child’s presence causes the parents to completely rearrange the way they were living.

Isaiah proclaimed that when God comes, you must make room for Him in your life. You must “enlarge the place of your tent” because God’s presence will add new dimensions to your life, your family, and your church. You do not simply “add Christ on” to your busy life and carry on with business as usual. When Christ is your Lord, everything changes. Whereas before you may not have expected good things to come through you or in your life, now you should have a spirit of optimism. You ought to expect your life to become richer and fuller. You can anticipate God blessing others through your life. You can look for God to demonstrate His power through your life in increasing measure.

As a Christian, how do you make room for Christ in your life? You repent of your sin. You allow Christ the freedom to do what He wants in you. You watch eagerly for His activity in your life and in your family and in your church. You live your life with the expectancy that Christ will fill you with His power in the days to come and will “stretch” you to do things in His service that you have never done before.

The Opposition of the Natural: by Oswald Chambers

Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. —Galatians 5:24

The natural life itself is not sinful. But we must abandon sin, having nothing to do with it in any way whatsoever. Sin belongs to hell and to the devil. I, as a child of God, belong to heaven and to God. It is not a question of giving up sin, but of giving up my right to myself, my natural independence, and my self-will. This is where the battle has to be fought. The things that are right, noble, and good from the natural standpoint are the very things that keep us from being God’s best. Once we come to understand that natural moral excellence opposes or counteracts surrender to God, we bring our soul into the center of its greatest battle. Very few of us would debate over what is filthy, evil, and wrong, but we do debate over what is good. It is the good that opposes the best. The higher up the scale of moral excellence a person goes, the more intense the opposition to Jesus Christ. “Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh….” The cost to your natural life is not just one or two things, but everything. Jesus said, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself…” (Matthew 16:24). That is, he must deny his right to himself, and he must realize who Jesus Christ is before he will bring himself to do it. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence.

The natural life is not spiritual, and it can be made spiritual only through sacrifice. If we do not purposely sacrifice the natural, the supernatural can never become natural to us. There is no high or easy road. Each of us has the means to accomplish it entirely in his own hands. It is not a question of praying, but of sacrificing, and thereby performing His will.

The Impartial Power of God: by Oswald Chambers

y one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. —Hebrews 10:14

We trample the blood of the Son of God underfoot if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The only reason for the forgiveness of our sins by God, and the infinite depth of His promise to forget them, is the death of Jesus Christ. Our repentance is merely the result of our personal realization of the atonement by the Cross of Christ, which He has provided for us. “…Christ Jesus…became for us wisdom from God— and righteousness and sanctification and redemption…” (1 Corinthians 1:30). Once we realize that Christ has become all this for us, the limitless joy of God begins in us. And wherever the joy of God is not present, the death sentence is still in effect.

No matter who or what we are, God restores us to right standing with Himself only by means of the death of Jesus Christ. God does this, not because Jesus pleads with Him to do so but because He died. It cannot be earned, just accepted. All the pleading for salvation which deliberately ignores the Cross of Christ is useless. It is knocking at a door other than the one which Jesus has already opened. We protest by saying, “But I don’t want to come that way. It is too humiliating to be received as a sinner.” God’s response, through Peter, is, “… there is no other name…by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). What at first appears to be heartlessness on God’s part is actually the true expression of His heart. There is unlimited entrance His way. “In Him we have redemption through His blood…” (Ephesians 1:7). To identify with the death of Jesus Christ means that we must die to everything that was never a part of Him.

God is just in saving bad people only as He makes them good. Our Lord does not pretend we are all right when we are all wrong. The atonement by the Cross of Christ is the propitiation God uses to make unholy people holy.

Choose Now, Choose Well: by CS Lewis

 "Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.
 But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." Joshua 24:14-15

Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough? Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely. I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side. God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. What that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else—something it never entered your head to conceive—comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.

Hell's Doors by CS Lewis (from The Problem of Pain)

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Matthew 10:28

It is objected that the ultimate loss of a single soul means the defeat of omnipotence. And so it does. In creating beings with free will, omnipotence from the outset submits to the possibility of such defeat. What you call defeat, I call miracle: for to make things which are not Itself, and thus to become, in a sense, capable of being resisted by its own handiwork, is the most astonishing and unimaginable of all the feats we attribute to the Deity. I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. I do not mean that the ghosts may not wish to come out of hell, in the vague fashion wherein an envious man 'wishes' to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free.

TRUTH + LIES: by TA Sparks

Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the One who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him. John 7:18

You and I are going to face God sometime. We are going to come face to face with God literally in eternity and then the question is going to arise, has God at any point failed us? Shall we be able, on any detail, to say, "Lord, You failed me, You were not true to Your word"? Such a position is unthinkable, that ever any being should be able to lay a charge like that at God's door, to have any question as to God's truth, reality, and faithfulness. The Holy Spirit has been sent as the Spirit of truth to guide us into all the truth, so that there shall be no shadow whatever between God and ourselves as to His absolute faithfulness, His truth to Himself, and to all His word. The Holy Spirit has come for that. If that is true, then the Holy Spirit will deal with all disciples in the School of Christ to undercut everything that is not true, that is not genuine, to make every such disciple to stand upon a foundation which can abide before God in the day of His absolute and utter vindication. But in order that this may be so, you and I, under the Holy Spirit's teaching, have to be dealt with very faithfully, and have to come to the place where we are perfectly adjustable before God, where there is all responsiveness to the Holy Spirit, and nothing in us that resists or refuses the Holy Spirit, but where we are perfectly open and ready for the biggest consequence of the Holy Spirit putting His finger upon anything in our lives needing to be dealt with and adjusted. He is here for that.

The alternative to such a work of the Holy Spirit being allowed to be done in us is that we shall find ourselves in a false position, and it is far, far too costly to find ourselves in a false position, even though it only be on certain points. This is a false world we are living in, a world that is carried on upon lies. The whole constitution of this world is a lie, and it is in the very nature of man, though multitudes do not know it, but think they are true. They are trying to build the world on a false foundation. The Kingdom of God is altogether other. It is built upon Jesus Christ, the Truth.

Resurrection Life: by TA Sparks

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know... His incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength He exerted when He raised Christ from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 1:18-20

Resurrection is the paramount miracle. Death is the greatest power against God's work, God's likeness, God's purpose. Death is the greatest power in this universe against man; his labors, his hopes, his wellbeing. Death is the last word in the creation as it is. Outside of God there is no power in this universe as great as death. When it has intervened and done its work there is nothing that can reverse or destroy it. In the realm of evil there is no power that exceeds the power of death. This is why, in referring to the resurrection of Christ from the dead, the words are used: "the exceeding greatness of His power" (Eph. 1:19). When death has exceeded every other evil power – sin, suffering, sorrow, and destruction, then God's unique and exclusive answer is the only hope, and the one answer. More importance and glory is placed upon resurrection in the New Testament than upon any other matter. Indeed, everything else is declared to be in vain and worthless until resurrection is established. Resurrection is stated to give the value to every testimony and every work. Death, spiritual death (not cessation of being) – of which the physical is only one small aspect – is Satan's horizon. Resurrection is God's horizon in Christ.

Resurrection, we repeat, is the answer to death in all its forms and aspects: God's answer in His Son, Jesus Christ. Having said that, let us proceed to note that the next thing revealed in the New Testament is that this supreme truth in Jesus Christ is the birthright of every one born into God's spiritual family; the heritage of every truly born-again child of God. But the point for special realization is that we must not make the mistake that Martha of Bethany made, when she received such a revealing correction. She said, concerning her brother: "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection." It is not something in the future for believers, but for the moment when they believe on the Lord Jesus and receive Him. The order now is first the resurrection of the human spirit and at last the resurrection body. This, for any born-anew Christian needs no stating, although the meaning may take years to learn.

Not in Word but in Prayer: by Henry Blackaby

For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power. 1 Corinthians 4:20

Christianity is not moral platitudes, lofty intentions, and noble thoughts. The fundamental characteristic of God’s kingdom is power. Paul faced constant criticism about his work among the early churches. Some of his detractors would travel to cities such as Corinth and speak extensively about all that Paul was doing incorrectly. At times, people in the churches were enticed to believe the slanderous criticisms against the apostle.

Paul responded with a reminder that the test of a kingdom citizen’s authenticity was not the persuasiveness of his words, but the spiritual power of his life. Paul candidly acknowledged that some did not find him eloquent in speech (2 Cor. 10:10). Yet they could not question God’s power in his life. He had seen many people converted, and many churches were started through his ministry. He had been used to heal the sick and raise the dead through God’s power. Regardless of whether his words were eloquent, they carried spiritual power and authority that came from God.

You will encounter many people who seek to convince you of their opinions concerning the kingdom of God. They may speak passionately. They may even bring charts and graphs to prove their points! But the test of the validity of their words is the spiritual power of their lives. If a person speaks forcefully about a point of doctrine but is habitually sinning, his words are discredited by his life. If a person talks of the power of God but gives no evidence of victory in her life, her words are empty. It is much easier to talk about the victorious Christian life than it is to live it.

If you only have the appearance of godliness without any corresponding spiritual power (2 Tim. 3:5), ask God to cleanse you of your sin and to fill you with His Spirit so that your life is characterized by power.

Occupation: by TA Sparks

When one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 2 Corinthians 3:16,17

Liberty from what? Well, if we turn to the Lord, and are occupied with Him in the way we have indicated, the Holy Spirit sets us free. It may be you are struggling, striving, fighting, wrestling, praying, pleading, longing, yearning, asking the Lord to set you free from condemnation, free from fear, from those paralyzing bonds in which Israel was when the glory appeared. Do you want to be free from fear, from dread, from terror, from condemnation? What are you doing to get free? There is one simple, direct way, namely, to be occupied with the Lord, to turn to the Lord. Get Christ as God's satisfaction in your view, and cease trying to satisfy God yourself. Faith in Christ is all God's requirement. How deeply true were His words, "Apart from Me ye can do nothing." "Abide in Me. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me." That is only figurative language, which means be occupied with Him, set your mind on Him, dwell in Him, rest in Him, abide in Him; or, as Paul would say, "Gaze on Him, behold Him," let Him be the object of your occupation, and the Spirit will make you free.

More than that, this beholding of Christ means that the Holy Spirit changes you into God's likeness: "Beholding... we are changed." It is not said, "Beholding, we begin to change ourselves," and we embark upon self-transformation with all its struggle, and conflict, and battle. We are changed by the Lord the Spirit. Be occupied with Christ, and the Spirit takes up the matter of transforming into His image. Be occupied with yourself, and you will see that the law of conformity to type operates. If you are the type, then you will conform to that type. If Christ is the type, then the Holy Spirit will conform to His likeness. Then this being occupied with Christ means that the Holy Spirit makes us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant. I do not think that ministry is such an onerous thing after all. We need to come back to the simplicity and the spontaneity of ministry. Be occupied with Christ, and the Holy Spirit will show you more and more in Christ with which to be occupied, and as He makes that livingly real, you will have something to give to others.

Faith or Experience? by Oswald Chambers

…the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. —Galatians 2:20

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We should battle through our moods, feelings, and emotions into absolute devotion to the Lord Jesus. We must break out of our own little world of experience into abandoned devotion to Him. Think who the New Testament says Jesus Christ is, and then think of the despicable meagerness of the miserable faith we exhibit by saying, “I haven’t had this experience or that experience”! Think what faith in Jesus Christ claims and provides— He can present us faultless before the throne of God, inexpressibly pure, absolutely righteous, and profoundly justified. Stand in absolute adoring faith “in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God— and righteousness and sanctification and redemption…” (1 Corinthians 1:30). How dare we talk of making a sacrifice for the Son of God! We are saved from hell and total destruction, and then we talk about making sacrifices!

We must continually focus and firmly place our faith in Jesus Christ— not a “prayer meeting” Jesus Christ, or a “book” Jesus Christ, but the New Testament Jesus Christ, who is God Incarnate, and who ought to strike us dead at His feet. Our faith must be in the One from whom our salvation springs. Jesus Christ wants our absolute, unrestrained devotion to Himself. We can never experience Jesus Christ, or selfishly bind Him in the confines of our own hearts. Our faith must be built on strong determined confidence in Him.

It is because of our trusting in experience that we see the steadfast impatience of the Holy Spirit against unbelief. All of our fears are sinful, and we create our own fears by refusing to nourish ourselves in our faith. How can anyone who is identified with Jesus Christ suffer from doubt or fear! Our lives should be an absolute hymn of praise resulting from perfect, irrepressible, triumphant belief.

The Cross + the SELF-Life: by TA Sparks

The true Jew is one who belongs to God in heart, a man whose circumcision is not just an outward physical affair but is a God-made sign upon the heart and soul, and results in a life lived not for the approval of man, but for the approval of God. Romans 2:29

The Cross, as the instrument of spiritual circumcision, has to be applied to this self-life deeper and ever more deeply, because there seems to be no end to it. But that is the painful side, the dark side. What is happening on the other side? Is it not that room is being made for Christ? The real seed, the seed of Christ, is growing, becoming more and more manifest. The opposite of the characteristics which we have been considering – strength of intellect or emotion or will – is meekness. He said: “Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart” (Matt. 11:29). Pursue this right through, and you cannot fail to recognize that there was something radically different in the very depths of His being.

I have said that we cannot calculate the whole range of this self-principle, in its myriad forms of self-expression and self-occupation and self-attention and self-pity and self-consciousness and self-satisfaction. Even in our Christian life, in our devotion to the Lord, we are so happy that other people see how devoted we are, and how humble we are! And it is the self, the wretched – may I use the word? – the stinking self, coming up all the time. For a true child of God is oblivious of himself, has lost consciousness of himself in every way. If other people point out something good about them, they had not realized it, they were not aware of it. They are surprised that anyone could say anything good about them; they are not conscious of that. And on the other side, should people be critical and point out failings, well, they only say, “Yes, I know: I had that out with the Lord,” or “I have got that before the Lord right now. I am not deceiving myself about that.” This is the true child of Heaven.

Firm in Christ: by TA Sparks

Gone is the distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free man, male and female – you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28

In this dispensation God is not meeting Jews as Jews, and Gentiles as Gentiles, and a great many are making the mistake of thinking that He is. His Word to the Jew is: "You must leave your Jewish ground, and stand before God, not as a Jew, but as a man, and until you take that ground God has nothing to say to you; you will not have any light whilst you persist in coming before God on your own ground." The same has to be said to everyone else. We have to leave our own ground in every way. As that applies in these directions nationally, it applies in every other thing. Are you going to answer the Lord back: But I am this or that, or something else; or, But I am not this or that. It is not what you are, but what the Son is, that is of account. Come on to His ground. The Lord will not meet you on the ground of what you are, whether it be good or bad; He will meet you on the ground of the Heavenly Man. Do you answer back, "I am so weak!" The Lord is not going to meet you on that ground; He will meet you on the ground of His Son. That is what the Holy Spirit means by such words as He speaks through Paul: “...be strengthened in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 2:1). God hears us exclaim, "But I am so weak, Lord!" but He does not pay any heed to what we mean to indicate by that confession, which is: "Come down on to the ground of my weakness and pick me up!" He says, "You forsake that ground, and come on to the ground of My Son, and you will find strength there." "I am so foolish, Lord!" The Lord says: "You will remain foolish until you get on to the ground of My Son, Who is made unto you wisdom."

That applies all the way along. We take our own ground before the Lord and are surprised that the Lord does not lift us right out of our own ground and put us into a better position, but He never does. We shall stay there forever, if that is our attitude. The Lord’s word to us is: "Forsake your own ground and come on to My ground. I have provided a Heavenly Man Who is full of all that you need; now come on to that ground." It does not matter what you are, or what you are not. There everything is adjusted and made good.

From Dream to Waking: by CS Lewis (The Weight of Glory)

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.  If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 1 John 1:5-7

This is how I distinguish dreaming and waking. When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream. The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world. I know that there are such things as dreams; I know that I had eaten an indigestible dinner; I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons. But while in the nightmare I could not have fitted in my waking experience. The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world; the dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one. For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific points of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

A Bondservant of Jesus: by Oswald Chambers

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me… —Galatians 2:20

These words mean the breaking and collapse of my independence brought about by my own hands, and the surrendering of my life to the supremacy of the Lord Jesus. No one can do this for me, I must do it myself. God may bring me up to this point three hundred and sixty-five times a year, but He cannot push me through it. It means breaking the hard outer layer of my individual independence from God, and the liberating of myself and my nature into oneness with Him; not following my own ideas, but choosing absolute loyalty to Jesus. Once I am at that point, there is no possibility of misunderstanding. Very few of us know anything about loyalty to Christ or understand what He meant when He said, “…for My sake” (Matthew 5:11). That is what makes a strong saint.

Has that breaking of my independence come? All the rest is religious fraud. The one point to decide is— will I give up? Will I surrender to Jesus Christ, placing no conditions whatsoever as to how the brokenness will come? I must be broken from my own understanding of myself. When I reach that point, immediately the reality of the supernatural identification with Jesus Christ takes place. And the witness of the Spirit of God is unmistakable— “I have been crucified with Christ….”

The passion of Christianity comes from deliberately signing away my own rights and becoming a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Until I do that, I will not begin to be a saint.

One student a year who hears God’s call would be sufficient for God to have called the Bible Training College into existence. This college has no value as an organization, not even academically. Its sole value for existence is for God to help Himself to lives. Will we allow Him to help Himself to us, or are we more concerned with our own ideas of what we are going to be?

HE'S LIFE: by TA Sparks

Come out of her, My people, so that you don't participate in her sins and also suffer from her diseases. Revelation 18:4

What is the spiritual life in the matter of worship? Oh, it is not ecclesiastical architecture, it is not vestments, it is not ordinances, and it is not rites. They pass out with Calvary; the perpetuating of anything like that is a contradiction of Calvary. See where we are today. The maintenance of that sort of thing is because of a failure to perceive what the Lord Jesus has brought in.... Why, then, perpetuate a thing which God has dismissed in the Cross and, by keeping to the lower, fail to reach the higher? Do you see where things are astray today? I know how sweeping this is, but all this has to do with worship. Now note that when there is a failure to recognize the spiritual meaning of all this and to enter into it... and a maintaining of the old thing... you are still on a soul level, and you are open to deception; the whole thing may be a ghastly deception. And how does that deception work? In this way: that so many good Christian people are absolutely in bondage to a traditional system which is cutting clean across Divine revelation for them. It is their traditional system which is simply barring the way to spiritual revelation, whereas the Cross of the Lord Jesus represents the liberty in the spirit for God to lead into the fullness of His Life and Light.

That is the whole purpose of the Letter to the Hebrews. It was for that very purpose. Here were a people that had received light concerning the true nature of fellowship with God in Christ – that the Lord Jesus had taken the place of the Temple and the priesthood and the sacrifices and the ordinances... and even the Sabbath. Now it is no longer a matter of form, ceremony, external rites, buildings, priests, sacrifices; it is all Christ. They had seen that. The writer had called upon them to go outside the religious, formal, historic, traditional camp, and that brought persecution, ostracism, isolation, loneliness, and all manner of things. The official religious people made it very hard for them because of that. The price to be paid for what is truly spiritual and heavenly was... and is... great, and they were dangerously in peril of going back to the old thing. The Letter to the Hebrews was written just to save them from that peril and to tell them more fully about the great change that had come about in the Cross – the work of the Lord Jesus... to tell them that one system, the earthly representation, had passed and the other, the heavenly reality, had come in.... To know the Lord in Life, we must be free from the grave clothes of outward systems. Why, then, perpetuate a system? The Lord Jesus put all that away in His Cross; it is all gone.

His Word: by Henry Blackaby

For it is not a futile thing for you, because it is your life, and by this word you shall prolong your days in the land which you cross over the Jordan to possess. Deuteronomy 32:47

It’s puzzling that so many Christians try to live the Christian life without reading their Bible, except for sporadic perusals of God’s Word, seeking a pithy thought for the day. The Word of God is not merely a source of helpful suggestions, preventative warnings, or inspirational thoughts: It is life itself!

God gathered the children of Israel at the edge of the Promised Land to review their pilgrimage with Him. They had spent forty years in a desert because their parents had not trusted God’s word. Their parents died without seeing the Promised Land because they had not believed God’s word. Even the revered Moses was soon to leave them because he had not shown proper reverence for God’s word. Many of them knew those who had been put to death as a consequence of their disobedience to God’s word. Over the years God’s word had become the most important thing in the life of the Israelites.

God commanded His people to bind His words on their hearts, to teach them diligently to their children, and to regularly discuss them in their homes (Deut. 6:4-9). So essential was His word that it was to hold a prominent place in the daily lives of His people.

Our reverence for God’s Word is revealed not only by what we say but also by what we do. Spending more time reading and studying the words of people rather than the Word of God, reveals our hearts’ condition. To blatantly disregard God’s Word is to reject life itself. To obey God’s Word is the surest way to experience all that God has in store for us.

For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Hebrews 4:12-13

JESUS OUR GUIDE: from Jesus Always by Sarah Young

For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end. Psalm 48:14
 Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.
 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Psalm 73:23-24

I WILL BE YOUR GUIDE even to the end. Rejoice that the One who leads you through each day will never abandon you. I am the Constant you can always count on—the One who goes before you yet remains close beside you. I never let go of your hand. I guide you with My counsel, and afterward I will take you into Glory.

Many people are overly dependent on human leaders because they want someone to make their decisions for them. Unscrupulous people can manipulate their followers to do things they wouldn’t freely choose to do. But everyone who trusts Me as Savior has a Leader who is completely trustworthy and dependable.

I guide you with My truth and teach you My precepts so that you can make good decisions. I’ve provided you with a wonderfully reliable map: the Bible. My Word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path. Follow this Light, and follow Me—for I am the One who knows the best way for you to go.

guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long. Psalm 25:5

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. Psalm 119:105

Choose Holiness: by John Eldredge

 because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. Romans 8:14

The human soul is a place of profound mysteries. God is a person of infinite creativity. He can do this any way he wants. Sometimes he goes straight for the wound or the brokenness. Having had that healed, we find it far easier to resist the enemy and renounce our sins. Sometimes it requires binding the enemy first, simply so we can think clearly enough to do the repenting and find the healing we need. This is an outline to the process whereby we become holy in his name. Jesus will guide you. Ask him to guide you.

Do not be surprised or discouraged if you find that it takes more than one round of prayer. It didn’t take you a day to get into this mess. Sometimes you’ll have to pray again in a month, and then again in six months. Listen carefully: This doesn’t mean that “it didn’t work.” Quite often Christ comes back in our lives for a deeper work of healing. Even if you’re only eighteen, the sun has gone down a lot of times in your life; there’s a lot of past there. But if you’re fifty-eight, there’s a whole lot more past to your story. So be gracious, be patient; it doesn’t mean you’re blowing it if Christ brings it up again. It simply means it’s time for another round, and so you go back again through this exact process of repentance and deliverance and healing.

The beauty is that as you become more whole, you can become holier. And as you become holier, you can become more whole. Trying to choose one without the other I think has really brought people a great deal of distress, brought them to the conviction that no real change takes place in this life. It’s not true. It’s just that discipline is not enough. As my wife Stasi was saying just the other day, “You can’t repent your way out of brokenness.” It simply doesn’t work. We repent our sins; the brokenness must be healed. Furthermore, this isn’t simply about the sweet love of Jesus. You have an enemy, strongholds are real, and you must break those agreements and banish the enemy.

Stand in Christ: by TA Sparks

Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies. 2 Corinthians 4:10

There are values in Christ risen for our bodies now. His risen Life can now energize these bodies; not, for the present, to change them into the likeness of His glorious body, but to quicken them for service. There is risen Life for these mortal bodies now, but it has to be deliberately appropriated, chosen, drawn upon. It is useless for me when I am feeling ill and weak to sit down and say, "Oh, Lord, come and pick me up, and put me on my feet, and make me well!" The Lord never does so.

I know this: that in such times of desperate weakness and physical discount, utter inability, any kind of coming in of the Lord has always been introduced by the Lord making me take hold of Him. The Lord has never come in and made me suddenly to feel myself being filled, permeated with Life, and rising up. I have known the moment very often come when the Lord, not in an audible voice but in what is as good, a suggestion, a prompting, has said, "Lay hold of Life; lay hold of Me as your Life!" There were no spoken words, but the intimation was to this effect: The time has come to repudiate this state and lay hold of Christ for Life! And that has been unto a renewal for a further period of service. The Lord does not take us up like an automaton; He causes us to cooperate with Himself on the basis of His risen Life. All the values of Christ risen are found by our deliberate and definite taking hold of His risen Life. That is but to say, repudiate Adam, whether it be in body, soul or spirit, and stand in Christ for whatever the need may be. Is it for spirit? Is it for mind? Is it for heart? Is it for will? Is it for body? The one essential is to stand definitely in Christ for the situation.... The whole realm and range of Christ for experience is dependent upon His risen Life in us, and our laying hold of it, standing on it. The Lord show us more of what that means.

Everything is in the Son: by TA Sparks

LONG AGO,

at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son. Hebrews 1:1,2 ESV

It says that in times past God spoke "in many ways," not only in different portions, but in different manners. It would take too long for us to go back to the Old Testament to see all the manners in which God spoke. He spoke by a thousand different means: sometimes by words and sometimes by acts. The manners were indeed "diverse." However, the statement here is that at the end He speaks in one way, one all-inclusive way, and that is in His Son. God's Son is His one inclusive way of speaking at the end. On the one side, no one is going to get anything from God apart from Jesus Christ. God will absolutely refuse to speak other than in His Son. If you want to know what God wants to say to you, you have to come to His Son. On the other side, in Jesus Christ we have all that God ever wants to say....

Yes, we have far more of God's speaking in His Son than we have yet come to understand. We have nothing apart from Jesus Christ, and we need nothing apart from Him. You can read everything that has ever been written on Christian doctrine and still be the same man or woman. God's ways are very practical, and He teaches us by experience. That experience is sometimes very difficult and is called here "the training of sons." May the Lord Jesus just impress our hearts again with these things! God is still speaking in His Son, and His speaking is in order to get companions of His Son. Companions of this heavenly calling and of Christ will go into the hard school and have to learn many hard lessons, but in learning them they will come to understand how great is their inheritance in the Lord Jesus.

WHO REIGNS? By John Eldredge

We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him. Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. Romans 5:7-11

As the church has understood for more than 2,000 years, the Cross was not merely Jesus “entering into our suffering.” It was a sacrifice of incredible proportion, made necessary because of our sin. This is so important for us to name, because in our age the concept of sin has almost completely disappeared and what has replaced it are words like “brokenness” and “woundedness.” Just the other day a good man, a true disciple, was telling me a story of some egregious evil committed against him. In the next moment, he said, “They were just acting out of their brokenness.” This is the common spin, and it is partly true. But what is missing is the forthright naming of sin. If brokenness is all that we needed help with, Jesus certainly wouldn’t have had to go to the Cross. 

Now—you know we spend a good bit of time healing human brokenness here at Ransomed Heart. All the more reason for us to give some reflection to the fact that Jesus went to the Cross for our sins, or we will lose our gratitude for it. And there is so much more. 

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written:

“Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” Galatians 3:13

Here again we have the clear view of Atonement—Jesus is judged so we wouldn’t be. But another dynamic is being described here. The Cross breaks the power of all curses. This too is so important to name at this time when so much envy, hatred judgment and cursing is taking place in social arenas. When someone judges you, when they pronounce words of hatred or judgment against you, those words have real effect. Both Testaments take blessing and cursing very seriously.

“Life and death are in the power of the tongue” Prov 18:21.

So it is a great relief to bring the power of the Cross against those words and judgments spoken against us. Witchcraft is also on the rise in this pagan culture; many curses are being pronounced on Christians from the dark side. How wonderful that our God has provided the solution: we are able to bring the Cross of Christ against all curses and cancel them in Jesus name.

Can you feel your appreciation of the Cross deepening as we name these things?

 Paul explains later in Galatians, through the Cross of Christ we are crucified to the world and the world to us:

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Galatians 6:14

The Greek word used here for “world” includes the entire human family. The Cross of Christ changes every human relationship. In a world where so many relationships are unhealthy, where people try and control us or exert unholy authority over us, where people often attach their needs and longings to us, the Cross is our rescue. It is so helpful to pray the Cross of Christ into every relationship so that only what is holy and good can pass between us. 

And of course the Cross is what sets us free not only from the penalty of sin but from the very power of it:

We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?...In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Romans 5:2-3,11

Anyone trying to live a whole and holy life knows the grief that comes—regularly—when we cannot seem to live beyond our sin and addictions. You must understand: the unholy trinity Scripture names as the world, our flesh, and the evil one conspire to undermine your character. In that swirling mess, it can feel like you want to (fill in the blank…yell at your kids, look at porn, envy your friend’s success, indulge bitterness, etc.) but what we must, must cling to is that we have died with Christ in the Cross; sin no longer has to rule over us. We have a choice!

The Cross was not only then, it is now. Every day. We do have a choice to make, and the essential choice we face every day is whether we will let the “self” life reign in us, or will Christ reign in us? By the “self” life I simply mean that part of us that wants to reign as lord of our lives. The first issue is never sin; it is what we do with our internal, natural inclination to play lord of our life. All the hatred and envy you see in social media—that is the “offended self” lashing out. When Jesus invites us to take up our Cross daily, he is not saying we have to crucify our every hope and desire. He is saying we must choose not to let “self” reign—neither in our internal nor external world. Christ is Lord of both.

 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Matthew 16:24

Believing God’s Love: by Henry Blackaby

And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in Him. 1 John 4:16

The greatest truth in all of Scripture is this: God is love. Understanding this in its full dimensions will set you free to enjoy all that is yours as a Christian. But you must accept that God loves you. If you grew up experiencing unconditional love in your family, this may not be difficult for you. However, if your early years were void of love, this truth may be hard to accept. God loves you, not because you deserve His love, but because His nature is love. The only way He will ever relate to you is in love. His love for you gives you an inherent worth that nothing can diminish.

If you cannot accept the truth that God loves you, you will be limited in how you can relate to Him. When He disciplines you, you will not take it as an expression of His love. Rather, you may resent Him. When God says no to a request that is less than His best for you, you will conclude that He doesn’t care about you. Without a clear understanding and acceptance of God’s love for you, you will be disoriented to Him and to what He wants to do in your life. If you will accept God’s love, however, you will be able to return love to God as well as to others (1 John 4:19).

Are you experiencing the profound sense of joy and security that comes from knowing you are dearly loved by God? Being assured of God’s love for you sets you free to enjoy the numerous expressions of love He showers upon you each day.