and the answer is… JESUS: by TA Sparks

The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. Dear children, this is the last hour. 1 John 2:17,18

Over wide stretches of the earth the people of God are being driven, scattered, having everything outward taken. The question is: Why does the Lord allow it? Why is it so, if the Lord is wise, and almighty, and gracious? It is to discover how much the Heavenly Christ is to His people, and how much they depend upon the earthly order of things, even the Christian order.

“That which was from the beginning.... Little children, it is the last hour... the one who does the will of God lives for ever”. Do you see the link? If at the end, at the last hour, it is as it was from the beginning, then it will abide for ever, but if it has become something else, it will go. This whole question of heavenly relationship with the Lord is a tremendously searching one, the fact that Christ has transferred everything to heaven and that nothing less than a life in heavenly union with Him will stand the test at any time. We will ask the Lord that He will take this – if it really is the truth – and search us. It may be that some of us will find comfort, because we shall see this is exactly what the Lord is doing with us. Why isolation? Why the testings? Why the loneliness in spiritual life? To save us from things unto Himself, even Christian things, so that God’s end that Christ may be all and in all shall be reached; not things, but Christ; not Christianity, but Christ; not Christian work, but Christ.

The Indwelling Christ: by Andrew Murray

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love…that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Ephesians 3:14, 16-17, 19

The great privilege that separated Israel from other nations was this: they had God dwelling in their midst; His home was in “the Holiest of All” (Hebrews 9:3).

The New Testament is the dispensation of the indwelling God in the hearts of His people. Christ said, “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). This is what Paul referred to as “the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). How few experience this! Let us study Paul’s teaching on the way to experience this crowning blessing of the Christian life.

       1. “I bow my knees to the Father.” The blessing must come from the Father. It is to be found in much prayer.

       2. “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory”—­something very special and divine—“to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man.” God gives us the strength to be separate from sin and the world, to yield to Christ as Lord and Master, and to live the life of love for Christ and keeping His commandments to which the promise has been given: “We will come unto Him, and make Our abode with Him” (John 14:23).

       3. “That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” Christ longs for hearts to dwell in. As a believer sees this by faith, bows his knee, and asks God for this great blessing, he receives grace to believe that the prayer is answered. And through that faith, he accepts the wonderful gift—Christ dwelling in the heart by faith.

       4. “That you, being rooted and grounded in love…may be filled with all the fullness of God,” as far as it is possible for man to experience it.

Feed on the words the Holy Spirit has given here, and hold fast to the assurance that God will do “abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20).

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.

"The last thing the Christian comes to believe is that God loves him." -JI Packer

The Disciple’s Master: by Oswald Chambers

You call me Master and Lord: and rightly so, for that is what I am. John 13:13

To have a master and to be mastered aren’t the same thing. To have Jesus as a master means that there is someone who knows me better than I know myself, someone who is closer than a friend, who is able to satisfy the deepest longing of my heart. It’s to belong to someone who gives me the secure sense that he has met and solved every perplexity and problem of my mind. To have Jesus as my master is all this and nothing less.

To be mastered is different; it implies coercion or force. Jesus Christ never enforces obedience. At certain times, I wish he would, but he doesn’t. At other times, I wish he’d leave me alone, but he won’t.

“Ye call me Master and Lord.” We call Jesus our Lord and Master, but is he? “Master” and “Lord” have little place in today’s vocabulary. We prefer “Savior,” “Teacher,” and “Healer.” The only word to describe the experience of having Jesus as master is love, and many of us know very little about love as God reveals it. This is proved by the way we use the word obey. We use it to mean the submission of a weaker person to a more powerful person. In the Bible, obedience is based on a relationship of equals: the relationship of the Father and the Son. Our Lord wasn’t God’s servant; he was God’s Son. Jesus obeyed his Father because he loved him.

Our relationship to Jesus is to be the same as his relationship to the Father. If instead we think we are being mastered, it is proof that we have no master. To take this attitude toward Jesus is to be far from the relationship he wants. He wants us in a relationship in which he is easily and effortlessly Master, so much so that we aren’t even conscious of it. All we know is that we love him, and that we are his to rule.

In Union with Christ: from Jesus Calling by Sarah Young

2 Corinthians 3:17-18 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Mark 8:36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

I designed you to live in union with Me. This union does not negate who you are; it actually makes you more fully yourself. When you try to live independently of Me, you experience emptiness and dissatisfaction. You may gain the whole world and yet lose everything that really counts.
     Find fulfillment through living close to Me, yielding to Me purposes for you. Through I may lead you along paths that feel alien to you, trust that I know what I am doing. If you follow Me wholeheartedly, you will discover facets of yourself that were previously hidden. I know you intimately--far better than you know yourself. In union with Me, you are complete. In closeness to Me, you are transformed more and more into the one I designed you to be. 

Psalm 139:13-16 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

The Faith Life: by Andrew Murray

The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me. Galatians 2:20

If we were able to ask Paul, “What is your part in living life, if you no longer live but Christ lives in you?” he would answer, “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” His whole life, day by day and all day long, was one of unceasing faith in the wonderful Love that had given itself for him. Faith was the power that possessed and permeated Paul’s whole being and his every action.

Here we have the simple but full statement of the secret of the true Christian life. It is not faith that rests only in certain promises of God or in certain blessings that we receive from Christ. It is a faith that sees how entirely Christ gives Himself to the soul to be his entire life and all that that implies for every moment of the day. Just as continuous breathing is essential to the support of our physical life, so is the unceasing faith in which the soul trusts Christ and depends on Him to maintain the life of the Spirit within us. Faith always rests on the infinite love in which Christ gave Himself wholly for us to be entirely ours and to live His life over again in us. By virtue of His divine omnipresence, by which He “fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:23), He can be to each what He is to all—a complete and perfect Savior, an abiding Guest, taking charge and maintaining our life in us and for us—as if each of us were the only one in whom He lives. Just as truly as the Father lived in Him and worked in Him all that He was to work out, so will Christ live and work in each one of us.

When our faith is led and taught by God’s Holy Spirit, we obtain such a confidence in the omnipotence and omnipresence of Christ that we carry all day in the depths of our hearts this unbroken assurance: “He who loved me and gave Himself for me, He lives in me; He is my life and my all.” “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). May God reveal to us the inseparable union between Christ and us, in which the consciousness of Christ’s presence may become as natural to us as the consciousness of our existence.

Crucified With Christ: by Andrew Murray

I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me. Galatians 2:20

As in Adam we died and went out of the life and will of God into sin and corruption, so in Christ we are made partakers of a new spiritual death—a death out of sin and into the will and life of God. Such was the death Christ died; such is the death we are made partakers of in Him. To Paul, this was such a reality that he was able to say, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” Dying with Christ had had such power that he no longer lived his own life; instead, Christ lived His life in him. He had indeed died to the old nature and to sin and had been raised up into the power of the living Christ dwelling in him.

It was the crucified Christ who lived in Paul and made him a partaker of all that the cross had meant to Christ Himself. The very mind that was in Christ—who emptied Himself and took “the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7) and who “humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death” (verse 8)—was at work in him because the crucified Christ lived in him. He lived as a crucified man.

Christ’s death on the cross was His highest display of holiness and victory over sin. The believer who receives Christ is made a partaker of all the power and blessing that the crucified Lord has won. As the believer learns to accept this by faith, he yields himself as crucified to the world and dead to its pleasure and pride, its lusts and self‑pleasing. He learns that the mystery of the cross, as the crucified Lord reveals its power in him, opens the door into the fullest fellowship with Christ and the conformity to His sufferings. And so he learns, in the full depth of its meaning, what the Word has said: “Christ crucified…the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:23–24). He grows into a fuller understanding of the blessedness of daring to say, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” Oh, the blessedness and power of the God‑given faith that enables a man to live all day yielding himself to God and considering himself as “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ” (Romans 6:11).