The Christian Message: Prophetic, Not Diplomatic: by AW Tozer

For Christ sent me… to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should he made of none effect. 1 Corinthians 1:17

We who witness and proclaim the gospel must not think of ourselves as public relations agents sent to establish good will between Christ and the world.

We must not imagine ourselves commissioned to make Christ acceptable to big business, the press, modern education, or the world of sports.

We are not diplomats but prophets, and our message is not a compromise but an ultimatum!

God offers life, but not an improved old life. The life He offers is life out of death. It stands always on the far side of the cross. Whoever would possess it must pass under the rod. He must repudiate himself and concur in God’s just sentence against him.

What does this mean to the individual, the condemned man who would find life in Christ Jesus? How can this theology be translated into life?

Simply, he must repent and believe. He must forsake his sins and then go on to forsake himself.

Let him cover nothing, defend nothing, excuse nothing.

Let him not seek to make terms with God, but let him bow his head before the stroke of God’s stern displeasure and acknowledge himself worthy to die.

Having done this, let him gaze with simple trust upon the risen Saviour, and from Him will come life and rebirth and cleansing and power. The cross that ended the earthly life of Jesus now puts an end to the sinner; and the power that raised Christ from the dead now raises him to a new life along with Christ!

A Matter of LIFE: by TA Sparks

You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Christ is your life. When He appears, then you, too, will appear with Him in glory. Colossians 3:3,4

We are very often inclined to think that the Life of the Lord in us needs in some way to be improved, to be added to, when really what is required is that we should discover what we have, and, discovering it by experience, live according to it. This Life is not something apart from the Lord Jesus, and we can never think of His standing in need of some improvement, nor of the possibility of something being added to Him to make Him complete, or more complete. We would never think like that. And this Life is one with Himself. As the Apostle says, it is Christ who is our Life, and our need is to discover what Christ is in us, and to live accordingly. So in a very real sense it is a matter of the Life getting more of us, rather than of our getting more of the Life. That, at any rate, is the way of its working.

This, in the ordering of God, has to be done in a world where death still rules and works; for in this world the destruction of death has not yet been made manifest. Death, like the devil, goes on, although Calvary still remains full victory. We are left in this world, and it is in this world where death reigns and works as a great energy that we, by this sovereign ordering of God, have to come to prove the values of the Life which has been deposited in us, and to discover its potentialities. This is an experimental discovery. It therefore resolves itself into battle between that which is in this world and the Life which is in the believer. It is the battle for Life, not as to the forfeiture of that Life – not as to whether death can take eternal Life away from us, for that is not the question at issue – but as to the triumphant expression and the full manifestation of the power of that Life. That is the issue.

Obedience: by Andrew Murray

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, John 14:15-16

We have learned to know the disciples in their preparation for the baptism of the Spirit, and we have seen what was needed for their continuing "with one accord" (Acts 1:14) in prayer for the power of the Spirit. Christ was everything to them. Even before the cross, He was literally their life, their one thought, their only desire. But He was much more so after the cross, and with the resurrection.

Was such devotion to Christ something particular to the disciples, not to be expected of everyone? Or was it indeed something that the Lord asked from all who desired to be filled with the Spirit?  God expects it of all His children. The Lord needs such individuals now, as much as He did then, to receive His Spirit and His power, to show them forth here on earth, and, as intercessors, to link the world to the throne of God.

Is Christ nothing, something, or everything to us? For the unconverted, Christ is nothing. For the half-converted, the average Christian, Christ is something. But for the true Christian, Christ is everything. Each one who prays for the power of the Spirit must be ready to say, "Today I yield myself with mv whole heart to the leading of the Spirit.” A full surrender is the question of life or death, an absolute necessity.

My brother or sister in Christ, you have read the words of John 14:15: "If you love me, keep my commandments."  The surrender to live every day, all day long, abiding in Christ and keeping His commandments, is to be the one sign of your discipleship. Only when the heart longs in everything to do God's will can the Father's love and Spirit rest upon the child of God. This was the disposition in which the disciples continued with one accord in prayer, and this will be the secret of power in our intercession as we plead for the church and the world.

Obedience: By Oswald Chambers

You are slaves of the one you obey. Romans 6:16

The first thing to do when confronting a habit or mindset that controls me is to face an unwelcome fact: I am responsible for being controlled, because at some point I gave in. If I am a slave to myself—to my habits and urges, my egotisms and selfishness—I am to blame, because I gave in to myself. Likewise, if I obey God, it’s because I’ve yielded myself to him.

We learn the truth of this in the most ridiculously small things. “I can give up that habit whenever I want,” you say. You cannot. Try it, and you will find that the habit absolutely dominates you. Give in to selfishness in childhood, and you will find it the most binding tyranny on earth. Yield for one second to any form of lust—to the thought “I must have this thing at once”—and you will be chained to that thing, even if you hate yourself for it.

No human power can break the bondage of a character that has been shaped by giving in. Only the power of the redemption is sufficient. You must yield yourself in utter humiliation to the only one who can set you free, the Lord Jesus Christ: “He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and … to set the oppressed free” (Luke 4:18). It is easy to sing “He can break every fetter” and still be living a life of obvious slavery to yourself. Only Jesus can break the chains, and only when you let him. Yield yourself to the Lord, and he will set you free.

Is The Lord Jesus Christ Central? by Martyn Lloyd Jones

In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. Ephesians 1:7

If the Lord Jesus Christ is not crucial, central, vital, and occupying the very center of our meditation and our living, thinking, and praying, we have no right to look for revival. And yet, if you go and talk to many people, even in the church, about religion, you will find that they will talk to you at great length without ever mentioning the Lord Jesus Christ. I am never tired of putting it like this, because it is something that I am so familiar with in my experience as a pastor. People come and talk to me about these things, and I put my question to them. I say, “If you had to die tonight, how would you feel?”

“Oh,” they say, “I believe in God.”

“All right,” I reply, “what will you say when you stand in the presence of God? What are you relying on?”

“Well,” they say, “I have always tried to live a good life, I have done my best, I have tried to do good.”

“But nevertheless you have sinned, haven’t you?”

“Oh yes, I have sinned.”

“So,” I ask, “what do you do about your sin? What will you say to God, in the presence of God, about your sin?”

“Well,” they say, “I believe God is a God of love.”

“And how does that help you?”

“Well,” they say, “I believe that if I acknowledge my sin to God and then ask Him to forgive me, He does forgive me, and I am relying upon that.”

The point I am making is that they do not even mention the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. They seem to think that they can go to God directly without the Lord Jesus Christ at all. There is a great deal of so-called Christianity that is quite Christ-less.

Wild Rumors: by CS Lewis

John 3:3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

What man, in his natural condition, has not got, is Spiritual life—the higher and different sort of life that exists in God. We use the same word life for both: but if you thought that both must therefore be the same sort of thing, that would be like thinking that the 'greatness' of space and the 'greatness' of God were the same sort of greatness. In reality, the difference between Biological life and Spiritual life is so important that I am going to give them two distinct names. The Biological sort which comes to us through Nature, and which (like everything else in Nature) is always tending to run down and decay so that it can only be kept up by incessant subsidies from Nature in the form of air, water, food, etc., is Bios. The Spiritual life which is in God from all eternity, and which made the whole natural universe, is Zoe. Bios has, to be sure, a certain shadowy or symbolic resemblance to Zoe: but only the sort of resemblance there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man.

And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.

The Principle of the Cross: by TA Sparks

The Son can do nothing by Himself. John 5:19

That is the principle of the Cross. He accepted that position of being able to do nothing out from Himself. It must all come out from God. There is no way through otherwise.... There was a revolution in my life thirty years ago when that principle of the Cross came flat up against ministry – ministry that for years I had been producing – against all my study, reading and late nights, to get up the stuff for ministry, till the whole thing became an intolerable burden in myself. Others perhaps thought it to be pretty good, but the crisis when – listen to me, men and women who are in ministry, or contemplating it – the whole turn came upon the recognition of this principle, this principle of the Cross when, with the door closed, I said to the Lord ‘I am finished in all ministry, I am never going to preach again unless You do something now. I have been doing it all these years; I have been producing this, now I am finished. You have got to do it.’ But I saw that principle, you see, as the principle of the Cross and I meant it.

Forgive me speaking of myself, but I must bring this home in some way. The next week would have seen my resignation in with my church officers, and I would have gone out from ministry if the Lord had not done it. But the Lord was true to His own principle. It was an utter end of anything that I could produce for ministry, and I meant it to be like that, because I recognized that God meant that. That was the principle of the Cross – nothing out from ourselves. No fruit that labor and study of the mind and heart could produce has a way through in the work and service of God. God was true to His own principle – He always is. From that day to this, there has been no trouble about ministry. It is easy to let ministry go, and much more easy than to accept it. This clamoring for ministry – it is uncrucified flesh. Well, there has been an open heaven since then. Again I beg your forgiveness for making this personal reference, but this is a true thing. It is a principle which covers all the ground.