Learning: by TA Sparks

We were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead. 2 Corinthians 1:8,9

It is a part of the nature of things that we never learn in a vital way by information. We really only come into the good of things by being "pressed out of measure." So the Lord has to take much time to make spiritual history. When at length our eyes are open, we cry, "Oh, why did I not see it before!" But everything else had to prove insufficient before we could really be shown, and that takes time. Thus it was that we were turned in that dark hour to Romans chapter six, and, almost as though He spoke in audible language, the Lord said: "When I died, you died. When I went to the Cross I not only took your sins, but I took you. When I took you, I not only took you as the sinner that you might regard yourself to be, but I took you as being all that you are by nature; your good (?) as your bad; your abilities as well as your disabilities; yes, every resource of yours. I took you as a 'worker,' a 'preacher,' an organizer! My Cross means that not even for Me can you be or do anything out from yourself, but if there is to be anything at all it must be out from Me, and that means a life of absolute dependence and faith."

At this point, therefore, we awoke to the fundamental principle of our Lord's own life while here, and it became the law of everything for us from that time. That principle was: "nothing of (out from) Himself", but "all things of (out from) God." "The Son can do nothing of (out from) Himself, but what He sees the Father doing: for what things so ever He does, then the Son also does in like manner" (John 5:19). Such a revelation, if it is to be a staggering and breaking thing, so that there is no strength left in us, requires a background of much vain effort. But then, it carries with it a great implication. While an end is written large in the Cross, and while that end is to be accepted as our end indeed, so that there can be no more of anything so far as we are concerned, Jesus lives! And that means boundless possibilities.

Prayer's Wholehearted Determination: by Andrew Murray

Daniel... prayed three times a day, just as he had always done. Daniel 6:10

As we seek to have unbroken fellowship with God in Christ throughout the day, we will realize that only a definite meeting time with Christ will secure His presence for the day. The essential thing to having a daily quiet time is wholehearted determination, whatever effort or self-denial it may cost. In academic study or athletics, every student needs determined purpose to succeed. Christianity requires, and indeed deserves, not less but more intense devotion. If anything surely the love of Christ needs the whole heart.

When we make this decision to secure Christ's presence, we will overcome every temptation to be superficial in the keeping of our pledges. Our determination will make the morning watch itself a mighty force in strengthening our character and giving us boldness to resist self-indulgence. It will enable us to enter the inner chamber and shut the door for our communion with Christ. From the morning watch on, this firm resolution will become the keynote of our daily life.

Often we hear the statement that great things are possible to those who know what they want and will it with all their heart. If we have made personal devotion to Christ our goal, we will find the morning hour the place where daily insight into our holy calling is renewed. During this quiet time, we are fortified to walk worthy of His calling. Faith is rewarded by the presence of Christ who is waiting to meet us and take charge of.us for the day. We are more than conquerors through Him who loves us, Christ waits to meet us.

After God’s Silence, What? by Oswald Chambers

When he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days. — John 11:6

Has God trusted you with a silence, one that is full of meaning? God’s silences are his answers. Think of those days of absolute silence in the home at Bethany, as Lazarus lay sick and dying, tended by Mary and Martha (John 11). Is there anything similar to those days in your life? Can God trust you as he trusted Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, or are you still asking for a visible answer? If you refuse to go on without certain blessings, God will give them to you. But his silence is the sign that he is bringing you into a marvelous understanding of himself. Are you mourning before God because you have not had an audible response? You will find that God has trusted you in the most intimate way possible—with a silence that is not of despair but of pleasure, because he saw that you could handle a bigger revelation.

If God has given you a silence, praise him. He is bringing you into the great flow of his purpose. Precisely when the answer will manifest itself is a matter of God’s sovereign choice. Time is nothing to God. Perhaps you’ve grown impatient and you think, “I asked God to give me bread, and he gave me a stone.” He did not. Soon you will find he gave you the bread of life.

A wonderful thing about God’s silence is that the contagion of his stillness gets into you and you become perfectly confident: “I know God has heard me.” His silence is the proof that he has. As long as you have the idea that God will bless you in answer to a prayer, he will do it. But he will never give you the grace of silence. When Jesus Christ is bringing you into the understanding that prayer isn’t for blessings but for the glorifying of the Father, he will give you the first sign of his intimacy—silence.

Faith in Training: by CS Lewis

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11: 6

Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods 'where they get off', you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.

The first step is to recognise the fact that your moods change. The next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious readings and churchgoing are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed. And as a matter of fact, if you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?

Come and Eat: by TA Sparks

Though we are many, we all eat from one loaf of bread, showing that we are one body. 1 Corinthians 10:17

We do feed upon Christ in prayer. To put that in another way, there is an imparting of Himself to His Own in prayer. We may go to prayer in weariness, and rise in freshness; we may go to prayer exhausted, and rise renewed. Is it that we have simply uttered some form of prayer, prayed some prayer? We know quite well if that is so we do not get up very much invigorated. Formal praying does not bring very much Life. Going through a form of prayers sometimes only ministers death. But really seeking the Lord, reaching out, taking hold of the Lord, giving ourselves up to the Lord in prayer, never fails to have renewing, uplifting, strengthening results. You say prayer may wear you out? Yes, but there is a wonderful strength that comes by wearing out prayer. There is vitality given to the spiritual life even in prayer that tires us physically, and we go in the strength of it. Yes, prayer is a way in which Christ is ministered to us by the Holy Spirit. Prayer is a way in which we feed upon Christ; He becomes our Life....

We feed upon the Lord, and He becomes our Life when we recognize the Divine order of spiritual fellowship. That is a Divine order. You have it brought in with Acts: "And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayers." There is a tremendous means of grace, a tremendous enrichment of Christ in the fellowship of the Lord's people. I believe the enemy will get believers, when they are together, to talk about anything under the sun rather than about the Lord. It is easy when you meet together with the Lord's people to be carried off with all kinds of matters of interest, and not to begin to talk about the Lord; but if you do there is always an enrichment, always a strengthening, always a building up; it is the Divine way. Fellowship is a means of imparting Christ to the believer. And wherever spiritual fellowship is possible, you and I ought to seek it, look after it, and cherish it. There are all too many of the Lord's children today, who have no chance of spiritual fellowship, and who would give anything to have it. The Lord would have us at least two together. That is His order, and there is something in ministering Christ to one another. There will be something lost unless that is so. These are ways in which we feed upon the Lord.

THE ANTICHRIST: by ML Jones

He is antichrist. 1 John 2:22

The antichrist is the one who, in one sense, stands instead of Christ, taking the Christian name and yet opposing the very kingdom of truth that the name implies. John says, “As you have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists. . . . They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us” (verses 18-19). So when we think of the antichrist, we have to bear that in mind. “These antichrists who have arisen,” says John, “belonged to us, but they were not of us.” In other words, they took up the Christian position, they claimed they were Christians, they professed to be teachers of the Christian Church, and yet they have been separated from the Christians in order that it would be clear to all that they were not of them. In other words, they claimed to delight in the true religion and yet they destroyed it.

The antichrist was already at work in the days of Paul and of John. Further, it is abundantly clear that although there have been many imitations of him, he will reach his maximum power just before the end of this age. I think it is equally clear that Daniel pictures the political aspect of this power, whereas Paul emphasizes the ecclesiastical aspect, and in Revelation 13 you get both—the beast from the sea (the political) and the beast from the earth (the ecclesiastical). And the last point, I think, of which we can be certain is that this power will ultimately be concentrated in one particular person. John says there were many antichrists, and yet the teaching is clear that there is going to be an ultimate antichrist, one person, a person having terrible power, able to work miracles and do such wonders that he almost deceives the elect themselves.

A Secret Place: by E.M. Bounds

 

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. Matthew 6:6

“Here, let it be said, that no two things are more essential to a Spirit-filled life than Bible reading and secret prayer; no two things more helpful to growth in grace; to getting the largest joy out of a Christian life; toward establishing one in the ways of eternal peace.

The neglect of these all-important duties, presages leanness of soul, loss of joy, absence of peace, dryness of spirit, decay in all things that pertain to spiritual life. Neglecting these things paves the way for apostasy, and gives the evil one an advantage such as he is not likely to ignore.

Reading God’s Word regularly, and praying habitually in the secret place of the Most High puts one where he is absolutely safe from the attacks of the enemy of souls, and guarantees him salvation and final victory, through the overcoming power of the Lamb.”