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.