Spiritual Power: by TA Sparks

 

Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone. Romans 5:18

The whole subject of spiritual power is most important. So many Christians find themselves involved in a continual struggle to live up to what they know to be God's standard. For them Christianity is a manner of life composed of various rules and regulations. They know what ought to be and what ought not to be, and they therefore struggle to attain to this level of living. Their consciences play a large part in this constant effort, and for this reason they suffer many fears and fail to experience the promised joys. Life for them has become a strenuous business, fraught with much disappointment and many failures. They may from time to time have a sense of attainment and success, with much resultant gladness, but with the fluctuating emotions of the soul, things seem to collapse and go all wrong. So it is that people find the Christian life burdensome; they long to know real victory, true deliverance and the joy of the Lord, whereas they experience the ups and downs of a constant struggle. The Christian life depicted in the New Testament seems so different from their actual experience that the devil is never slow to pounce in with his suggestions that a life of constant victory is quite impossible, so that all their hopes are but unreal dreams. Satan wants God's people to despair of knowing His power.

But there is an altogether different life, different because it is based on the entering into something already completed in Christ; not something to be attained to but rather that which has already been accomplished. It is not a standard to be lived up to, but a Person to be lived with. It is impossible to measure the vast difference between these two kinds of life. The former is one of self effort and defeat, while the other consists in enjoying the reality of Christ the power of God.

Love the Sinner... by CS Lewis

 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  John 3:16

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." Mark 12:30-31

Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man?

But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life—namely myself.

However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again.

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 

Put Away Lying (LIVE NOT BY LIES) by Henry Blackaby

 

Therefore, putting away lying, “Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor,” for we are members of one another.      Ephesians 4:25

Because you are a Christian, your life ought to be permeated with truth. When you were born again, God put the Spirit of truth in you (John 16:13). The Spirit’s role is to guide you into all truth. The Spirit wants to fill your mind with whatever is true (Phil. 4:8). If you allow the Spirit to fill you with God’s truth, you will be truthful in your actions and in your relationships. According to Jesus, this means that your yes will always be yes, and your no will always mean no (Matt. 5:33-37).

The world considers truth optional. Deception permeates every corner of society because the prince of this world is the author and father of lies (John 8:44). From his first contact with people, Satan has been lying to them and persuading them to live in falsehood rather than in truth.

The world will tempt you to compromise the truth. You may be fooled into thinking that you can accomplish greater good by withholding the truth. That is a demonic deception. You cannot use deception to build the kingdom of God! God refuses to use sinful means to accomplish His holy purposes. You may be tempted to live a lie by projecting a false image of yourself. Jesus condemned this as hypocrisy (Luke 12:56). When you sin, you will be tempted to conceal the truth; yet only as you confess the truth will you be forgiven and set free (James 5:16).

What you say reflects what is in your heart (Matt. 12:34). If your heart is filled with deception, your mouth will speak falsehood. Ask God to permeate you with His truth so that you find falsehood, in any form, abhorrent.

The Christ Life: by Andrew Murray

 

"Christ lives in me."—Galatians 2: 20

"Christ is our life."—Colossians. 3:4

　　Christ’s life was more than His teaching, more than His work, more even than His death. It was His life in the sight of God and man that gave value to what He said and did and suffered. And it is this life, glorified in the resurrection, that He imparts to His people, and enables them to live out before men.
　　"Hereby shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye love one another." It was the life in the new brotherhood of the Holy Spirit that made both Jews and Greeks feel that there was some super-human power about Christ's disciples; they gave living proof of the truth of what they said, that God's love had come down and taken possession of them.
　　It has often been said of the missionary, that unless he lives out the Christ life on an entirely different level from that on which other men live, he misses the deepest secret of power and success in his work. When Christ sent His disciples forth, it was with the command: "Tarry till ye be endued with power from on high." "Wait, and ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost, and be My witnesses to the ends of the earth." Many a missionary has felt that it is not learning and not zeal, and not the willingness for self-sacrifice in Christ's service, but the secret experience of the life hid with Christ in God, that enables him to meet and overcome every difficulty.
　　Everything depends upon the life with God in Christ being right. It was so with Christ, with the disciples, with Paul. It is the simplicity and intensity of our life in Christ Jesus, and of the life of Christ Jesus in us, that sustains a man in the daily drudgery of work, that makes him conquer over self and everything that could hinder the Christ life, and gives the victory over the powers of evil, and over the hearts from which the evil spirits have to be cast out.
　　The life is everything. It was so in Christ Jesus. It must be so in His servants. It can be so, because Christ Himself will live in us. When He spoke the word, "Lo, I am with you always," He meant nothing less than this: "Every day and all the day I am with you, the secret of your life, your joy, and your strength."
　　Oh, to learn what hidden treasures are contained in the blessed words we love to repeat: "Lo, I am with you all the days."

Sanctification = The Life of Jesus: by Oswald Chambers

 

But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us…sanctification… —1 Corinthians 1:30

The Life Side. The mystery of sanctification is that the perfect qualities of Jesus Christ are imparted as a gift to me, not gradually, but instantly once I enter by faith into the realization that He “became for [me]…sanctification….” Sanctification means nothing less than the holiness of Jesus becoming mine and being exhibited in my life.

The most wonderful secret of living a holy life does not lie in imitating Jesus, but in letting the perfect qualities of Jesus exhibit themselves in my human flesh. Sanctification is “Christ in you…” (Colossians 1:27). It is His wonderful life that is imparted to me in sanctification— imparted by faith as a sovereign gift of God’s grace. Am I willing for God to make sanctification as real in me as it is in His Word?

Sanctification means the impartation of the holy qualities of Jesus Christ to me. It is the gift of His patience, love, holiness, faith, purity, and godliness that is exhibited in and through every sanctified soul. Sanctification is not drawing from Jesus the power to be holy— it is drawing from Jesus the very holiness that was exhibited in Him, and that He now exhibits in me. Sanctification is an impartation, not an imitation. Imitation is something altogether different. The perfection of everything is in Jesus Christ, and the mystery of sanctification is that all the perfect qualities of Jesus are at my disposal. Consequently, I slowly but surely begin to live a life of inexpressible order, soundness, and holiness— “…kept by the power of God…” (1 Peter 1:5).

The MYSTERY Revealed: by Andrew Murray

 

Continue in prayer…Withal praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ…that I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak.
—Colossians 4:2-4

The mystery which…now is made manifest to His saints: To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
—Colossians 1:26-27

To Paul, the very substance of his gospel was the indwelling Christ. He spoke of the “riches of the glory of this mystery…Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Though he had been a preach­er of this gospel for many years, he still asked for prayer, so that he might correctly make known the mystery of it.

I often hear complaints that, after a time, there appears to be no further growth in many churches, and very little of the joy and power for bearing witness to Christ Jesus. The question arises whether the home church is living in the experience of the indwelling Christ, so that the missionaries whom she sends out know the secret and make it the substance of their message.

Years ago, I knew a minister who went to the mission field. Before he left, there was a little gathering at which he asked what his message should be. The thought was expressed that it was desirable to present a message of a full salvation, so that people would be roused to believe in and accept an indwelling Christ. On his return, he told with what deep interest the presentation of this truth had been received, many saying that they had never before understood this.

Dr. Alexander Maclaren, a Baptist preacher, once said that it seemed that the church had lost the truth of the indwelling Christ. We speak of Paul’s methods, but is there not a greater need for Paul’s message, culminating in the words, “Christ in you, the hope of glory”? Are not all intercessors and missionaries called to make it a matter of first importance to lead Christians into the enjoyment of their rightful heritage? “If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him” (John 14:23). And it may be the home church that will also share in the restoration of this truth to its right place: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

Christian Experience: Encounter with God: by AW Tozer

 

Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father and Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. Exodus 3:6

TRUE CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE MUST ALWAYS INCLUDE a genuine encounter with God. Without this, religion is but a shadow, a reflection of reality, a cheap copy of the original once enjoyed by someone else of whom we have heard.

It cannot but be a major tragedy in the life of any man to live in a church from childhood to old age and know nothing more real than some synthetic god compounded of theology and logic, but having no eyes to see, nor ears to hear, and no heart to love.

The spiritual giants of old were men who at some time became acutely conscious of the real Presence of God and maintained that consciousness for the rest of their lives.

The first encounter may have been one of terror, as when a “horror of great darkness” fell upon Abram, or as when Moses at the bush hid his face because he was afraid to look upon God. Usually this fear soon lost its content of terror and changed after a while to delightsome awe, to level off finally into a reverent sense of complete nearness to God. The essential point is this: these were men who experienced God!

How otherwise can the saints and prophets be explained! How otherwise can we account for the amazing power for goo d they have exercised over countless generations? Is it not that they walked in conscious communion with the real Presence and addressed their prayers to God with the artless conviction that they were addressing Someone actually there!

Choose What is Best from Jesus Calling: by Sarah Young

 Luke 10:42

But one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.

Come away with Me for a while. The world, with its nonstop demands, can be put on hold. Most people put Me on hold, rationalizing that someday they will find time to focus on Me. But the longer people push Me into the background of their lives, the harder it is for them to find Me.
     You live among people who glorify busyness; they have made time a tyrant that controls their lives. Even those who know Me as Savior tend to march to the tempo of the world. They have bought into the illusion that more is always better: more meetings, more programs, more activity.
     I have called you to follow Me on a solitary path, making time alone with Me your highest priority and deepest Joy. It is a pathway largely unappreciated and often despised. However, you have chosen the better thing, which will never be taken away from you. Moreover, as you walk close to Me, I can bless others through you.

Song of Songs 2:13
The fig tree ripens its figs,
    and the vines are in blossom;
    they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
    and come away. 

The Real (NEW) Self: by CS Lewis

 

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2 Corinthians 5:17

There must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away 'blindly' so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also ours, and ours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

Say His Name: from Jesus Calling by Sarah Young

 Acts 4:12

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

Whenever you feel distant from Me, whisper My Name in loving trust. This simple prayer can restore your awareness of My Presence.
     My Name is constantly abused in the world, where people use it as a curse word. This verbal assault reaches all the way to heaven; every word is heard and recorded. When you trustingly whisper My Name, My aching ears are soothed. The grating rancor of the world's blasphemies cannot compete with a trusting child's utterance: "Jesus." The power of My Name to bless both you and Me is beyond your understanding. 

John 16:24
Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
Ephesians 4:29
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

Self Does Not Die without Our Full Consent: by AW Tozer

 

For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. Galatians 5:17

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE FALLEN HUMAN SELF are diametrically opposed to each other, for, as the Apostle Paul wrote to the Roman church, “because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”

Before the Spirit of God can work creatively in our hearts, He must condemn and slay the “flesh” within us; that is, He must have our full consent to displace our natural self with the Person of Christ! This displacement is carefully explained in Romans 6, 7 and 8. When the seeking Christian has gone through the crucifying experience described in chapters 6 and 7 he enters into the broad, free regions of chapter 8. There self is dethroned and Christ is enthroned forever!

In the light of this it is not hard to see why the Christian’s attitude toward self is such an excellent test of the validity of his religious experiences. Most of the great masters of the deeper life, such as Fennel, Molinos, John of the Cross, Madame Guyana and a host of others, have warned against pseudo religious experiences that provide much carnal enjoyment but feed the flesh and puff up the heart with self-love.

A good rule is this: Nothing that comes from God will minister to my pride or self-congratulation. If I am tempted to be complacent and to feel superior because of an advanced spiritual experience, I should go at once to my knees and repent of the whole thing. I have fallen a victim to the enemy!

That's LIFE: By TA Sparks

 

This is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. (1 John 5:11)

Christ is never proved to be alive from the dead, nor to be Lord, by doctrinal statements. Your statement of faith may include the fact that you believe Jesus died and rose again, ascended to heaven, and is at the right hand of the Majesty on High, but how are you going to prove your statement? What has God given as the evidence of that? You may believe it; you may be willing to lay down your life for that faith; you may state it with tremendous emphasis, and yet you are not thereby proving it. You will never prove anything by saying: "I believe with all my might that this is the case!" You will never prove a thing by standing up and declaring it as something which you believe. You will never prove a thing by saying: "I believe in all the fundamentals of the Christian faith!" and calling yourself by some name which indicates that you believe in the inspiration of the Bible. Nothing is ever proved in that way. Reducing the whole matter to these two points – that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, and is Lord of all – you have still to prove your statement after you have made it. If you have appealed to the fact that the Word of God says so, even then you have proved nothing. Your proof can never be by argument, because what argument can build up, argument can pull down, and what logic can construct, logic can destroy.

How, then, are you going to prove that this is so? By the expression and manifestation of His risen Life, that is all – but it is a mighty "all!" That signifies that you are the embodiment of the thing which you declare – that besides the doctrinal statement there is the living expression. Thus the resurrection and the lordship of Jesus are bound up with this expression which is called the "testimony." The testimony is not a system of truth. It is that extra factor to the statement and presentation of truth which is the power of a Life which conquers death. How, then, will you prove that Jesus has conquered death? The proof of it will be a death-conquering Life that expresses itself in you.

A HIGHWAY OF HOLINESS: by Henry Blackaby

 

A highway shall be there, and a road,

And it shall be called the HIGHWAY OF HOLINESS.

The unclean shall not pass over it, But it shall be for others.

Whoever walks the road, although a fool, Shall not go astray.      

Isaiah 35:8

The nation of Israel was designed to have a place where other nations of the world could come to worship the true God. The temple in Jerusalem was to be the center from which the good news of God’s salvation would spread to every corner of the world. But those who were supposed to be God’s people forsook Him and practiced every kind of sin. Rather than being ambassadors for God, they disgraced His holy name. Rather than attracting the nations of the earth to God, they became stumbling blocks to those who were seeking the true God. The Israelites fell so far from God’s original intent that God judged them and sent them into exile. Yet God promised that one day His people would be an avenue by which others could find salvation.

It is God’s desire that anywhere there is a Christian, God has a way for people to learn of His salvation (Rom. 10:14-15). Whenever an unbeliever meets a Christian, the unbeliever ought to be face to face with everything he needs to know in order to follow Christ.

Sadly, however, Christians can be like the Israelites of Isaiah’s day. We can be so involved in our sin that we are completely disoriented to God, ill-equipped to direct others to Him. If our lives are filled with hypocrisy, we may turn people away from God, rather than helping them come to Him. If our lives are filled with doubt or anger, we will impede others from coming to Christ. Our lives ought to be a highway of holiness, providing easy access to God for anyone around us who seeks Him. Ask God to remove any obstacle in your life that hinders others from coming to know Jesus.

God Never Violates Our Freedom: by AW Tozer

 

And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. Revelation 22:17

IT IS INHERENT IN THE NATURE OF MAN that his will must be free. Made in the image of God who is completely free, man must enjoy a measure of freedom.

This enables him to select his companions for this world and the next; it enables him to yield his soul to whom he will, to give allegiance to God or the devil, to remain a sinner or become a saint. And God respects this freedom. God once saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. To find fault with the smallest thing God has made is to find fault with its Maker. It is a false humility that would lament that God wrought but imperfectly when He made man in His own image. Sin excepted, there is nothing in human nature to apologize for.

This was confirmed forever when the Eternal Son became permanently incarnated in human flesh! So highly does God regard His handiwork that He will not for any reason violate it. He will take nine steps toward us but He will not take the tenth. He will incline us to repent, but He cannot do our repenting for us. It is of the essence of repentance that it can only be done by the one who committed the act to be repented of. God can wait on the sinning man, He can withhold judgment, He can exercise long-suffering to the point where He appears lax in His judicial administration —but He cannot force a man to repent.

To do this would be to violate the man’s freedom and void the gift of God origin ally bestowed upon him. The believer knows he is free to choose—and with that knowledge he chooses forever the blessed will of God!

Strongholds: by Henry Blackaby

 “And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.” But you have not obeyed My voice. Why have you done this? Therefore I also said, “I will not drive them out before you; but they shall be thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare to you.”      Judges 2:2-3

God gave the Israelites specific instructions: Drive the Canaanites out of every corner of the land, and obliterate any vestige of their abominable idol worship. This assignment was challenging! Their enemies had formidable chariots. The Canaanites had seemingly impregnable fortresses that were dangerous and difficult to overcome. The Israelites failed to drive all the Canaanites from the land. Much about the Canaanite lifestyle and religion appealed to the Israelites’ sinful nature. Rather than destroying them and their idolatry, Israel compromised. The Canaanites would prove to be a troublesome distraction to the Israelites. Their idol worship would present a constant temptation.

When you became a Christian, God declared war on sin’s strongholds in your life. Sinful behaviors and attitudes were firmly entrenched in your character, but God commanded you to tear them down. The Holy Spirit pointed out areas of your life that were resistant to God’s will. Were you tempted to merely establish a truce rather than obliterating every sin? Is anger one of sin’s strongholds? If so, it will rise up against you in moments of weakness. Is there a stronghold of lust in your life? If so, you will succumb to it when caught off guard. In careless moments, these strongholds will still tempt you to continue your past sinful behaviors.

Do not underestimate the destructive power of sin. If there are strongholds in your life that you have never defeated, the Holy Spirit is still prepared to bring you complete victory.

2 Corinthians 10:5-7
 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
 And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.