Pretense Becomes Reality: by CS Lewis

Colossians 1:26-27 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

You see what is happening. The Christ Himself, the Son of God who is man (just like you) and God (just like His Father) is actually at your side and is already at that moment beginning to turn your pretense into a reality. This is not merely a fancy way of saying that your conscience is telling you what to do. If you simply ask your conscience, you get one result; if you remember that you are dressing up as Christ, you get a different one. There are lots of things which your conscience might not call definitely wrong (especially things in your mind) but which you will see at once you cannot go on doing if you are seriously trying to be like Christ. For you are no longer thinking simply about right and wrong; you are trying to catch the good infection from a Person. It is more like painting a portrait than like obeying a set of rules. And the odd thing is that while in one way it is much harder than keeping rules, in another way it is far easier.

The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself. He is beginning, so to speak, to 'inject' His kind of life and thought, His Zoe, into you; beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man. The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin.

Spiritual Intelligence: by TA Sparks

God… was pleased to reveal His Son in me. Galatians 1:15,16

Spiritual discernment, perception, understanding and intelligence are all too rare. The causes are many. The engrossment with the work and its multifarious concerns; the rush and hurry of life; the restless spirit of the age; these, with an exhaustive provision of external religious facilities, all tend to render the inner place of Divine speaking inoperative or impossible of functioning. Perhaps we have forgotten that the Bible is not only a revelation, but also contains a revelation, and that that deeper spiritual content is only possible of recognition and realization by such as have had their eyes and ears opened; in other words – who have been awakened. Some of the Lord's most faithful servants are still only occupied with the letter of the Word, the contents of books, topics, themes, subjects, outlines, analyses, etc., and in the deepest sense are not in "revelation." (This is not meant as a criticism). The difference too often is that of a ministry to the mind or head, and not one to the heart or spirit. The former will sooner or later tire and weary both the minister and those ministered to. The latter is a ministry of Life to both, and is inexhaustible in freshness.

Whether it comes at the beginning or later, it is the greatest day in our history of which we can say: "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me." "I received it, not from men but by revelation." That is the beginning of an inwardness of things which may have many crisic issues. One of these is the one of which we are particularly thinking now, namely, the awakening to see what is the thought and desire of God at given and specific times. Such a revelation – through the Scriptures – is nothing less than revolutionary, though usually costly.

Make it a Good Day: from Sarah Young, Jesus Calling

Psalm 118:24 This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

     This is the day that I have made. Rejoice and be glad in it. Begin the day with open hands of faith, ready to receive all that I am pouring into this brief portion of your life. Be careful not to complain about anything, even the weather, since I am the Author of your circumstances. The way to handle unwanted situations is to thank Me for them. This act of faith frees you from resentment and frees Me to work My ways into the situation, so that good emerges from it.

     To find Joy in this day, you must live within its boundaries. I knew what I was doing when I divided time into twenty-four-hour segments. I understand human frailty, and I know that you can bear the weight of only one day at a time. Do not worry about tomorrow or get stuck in the past. There is abundant Life in My Presence today. 

Philippians 3:13-14 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Living Water: by Henry Blackaby

For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns–broken cisterns that can hold no water.  Jeremiah 2:13

There should never be “dry spells” in the Christian life. God said that He would be like an artesian well in the life of a believer. Artesian wells bubbled forth with a cold, fresh, never-ending supply of water from the depths of the earth, quenching any thirst and always satisfying. This is the picture of the spiritual refreshment that belongs to the person in whom the Holy Spirit resides.

Have you ever heard people say they are experiencing a dry spell in their Christian life? What are they saying? Are they saying that the Lord ran out of water? It should never cross your mind that the fountain of living waters residing within you should ever be reduced to a trickle. You don’t need to run all over the country trying to find sources of spiritual refreshment. Conferences, retreats, and books can all bring encouragement, but if you are a Christian, the source of living water already resides within you.

Have you exchanged the living fountain for man-made cisterns that cannot hold water? Why would you exchange an artesian well for a broken water tank? Artesian wells do not dry up. Broken cisterns do. If you are experiencing spiritual dryness right now, is it because you have been attempting to find your source of spiritual refreshment from man-made sources, which will fail you every time? Jesus extended an invitation to you when He said: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink” (John 7:37). Have you been refreshed by the living water only Jesus can provide?

The Initiative Against Despair: by Oswald Chambers

Rise! Let us go! — Matthew 26:46

In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus’s disciples fell asleep when they were supposed to be keeping watch. When they awoke and realized that Jesus was about to be taken, they were filled with despair.

We might imagine that this kind of despair is unusual; in fact, it’s a very common human experience. Whenever we realize that we’ve done something we can’t undo, whenever we let a magnificent opportunity pass us by, despair is the natural response. Sometimes, our feeling of despair is so deep we can’t lift ourselves out of it. At these moments, we need Jesus Christ to come to us and say, “Rise! Let us go!”

When our Lord comes to us in this way, he tells us to accept the reality of our situation. “That opportunity is lost forever,” he says. “You can’t change what has happened. But rise now, and go on.” In Gethsemane, the disciples had done something they felt was unforgivable. Jesus came with his spiritual initiative against despair, telling them to move on to the next thing. What is the next thing? If we are inspired by God, the next thing is always to trust him absolutely and to pray on the ground of his redemption.

Never let a sense of failure alter your new plans and actions. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep with Christ. Step out into the irresistible future with him.

The Light of the Resurrection: by Martyn Lloyd-Jones

. . . who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. Romans 4:25

It is only in the light of the resurrection that I finally have an assurance of my sins forgiven. It is only in the light of the resurrection that I ultimately know that I stand in the presence of God absolved from guilt and shame and every condemnation. I can now say with Paul, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1) because I look at the fact of the resurrection. It is there that I know it.

You notice how Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 15:17 when he says, “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; you are yet in your sins.” If it is not a fact that Christ literally rose from the grave, then you are still guilty before God. Your punishment has not been borne, your sins have not been dealt with, you are yet in your sins. It matters that much: Without the resurrection you have no standing at all; you are still uncertain as to whether you are forgiven and whether you are a child of God. And when one day you come to your deathbed you will not know, you will be uncertain as to where you are going and what is going to happen to you. “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Romans 4:25). It is in the resurrection that I stand before God free and absolved and without fear and know that I am indeed a child of God.

So you see the importance of holding on to this doctrine and why we must insist upon the details of doctrine, and not be content with some vague general belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. If you are concerned about your life in this world and the fight against the world, the first thing to do, says the apostle Paul, is to take an overall look at the great doctrine of the resurrection of our Lord.

God Is Always First—and Will Surely Be Last: by AW Tozer

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord. Revelation 1:8

God Is Always First, and God Will Surely Be Last!

In the plan of God, man is never permitted to utter the first word nor the last. That is the prerogative of the Deity, and one which He will never surrender to His creatures.

Man has no say about the time or the place of his birth; God determines that without consulting the man himself. One day the little man finds himself in consciousness and accepts the fact that he is. There his volitional life begins.

Before that he had nothing to say about anything.

After that he struts and boasts, and encouraged by the sound of his own voice he may declare his independence of God.

Have your fun, little man; you are only chattering in the interim between first and last. You had no voice at the first and you will have none at the last!

God reserves the right to take up at the last where He began at the first, and you are in the hands of God whether you will or not.

Adam became a living soul but that becoming was not of his own volition. It was God who willed it and who executed His will in making Adam a living soul. God was there first!

And when Adam sinned and wrecked his whole life, God was there still. Adam’s whole future peace lay in this—that God was still there after he had sinned.

It would be great wisdom for us to begin to live in the light of this wonderful and terrible truth: God is the first and the last!

The Everyday Expression of Jesus: by TA Sparks

To you who believe, He is precious. 1 Peter 2:7

If you or I claim to have more light, more revelation – God forbid that we should ever make claims like that! – but if we should think that it is so, the proof and the value is – do people see more of Christ in us than others? For God never moves beyond His Son, He never moves to theories or teachings or doctrines or things that we call revelations. He only keeps within the compass of His living Son in manifestation.... Let us ask the Lord to create in us a passionate ambition to express the Lord Jesus more than anything else. Not to preach great truths, to be preachers, teachers, or anything like that as such, but to express the Lord Jesus, that out of Himself, His own presence, His own measure, His own nature, our opportunities for preaching, if we are going to preach at all, will come, not because we can talk, but because it is known that we have something of the Lord.

Do not let us live too much in the upper stories of the house of God. The house of God is one, and it has a basement and it has a kitchen. We do not want to always live up on the top flat, so heavenly, so spiritual, so abstract, so high up in truth that the practical things of the kitchen are left unattended to. What would you say if you went into a house and were taken upstairs and shown a very glorious, wonderfully adorned upper flat, and then somehow you managed to get down to the kitchen and found the most awful filthy mess, out of all consistency with what you found upstairs? You’d say, “There is something wrong here, this does not tally.” There is the kitchen aspect of the spiritual life: all those practical, everyday, humdrum things where the beauty of the Lord must be seen, just as much as up there in the heavenlies in Christ. Do not let us live exclusively up there. We must live down here. That is what the Word of God does. That is what Paul did in his Ephesian letter. He wrote half of it about the heavenlies, then, without breaking it into chapters, he went straight on with his letter: “I... beseech you to walk worthy of the calling which you were called,” and then – husbands, wives, children, parents, masters, mistresses, servants – that is coming down to the kitchen, bringing the glory of heaven with you. It is a very important side of things. Preciousness must be found down here. “As in heaven, so on earth.”

Rats in the Cellar: by CS Lewis

Psalm 139:23-24 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

We begin to notice, besides our particular sinful acts, our sinfulness; begin to be alarmed not only about what we do, but about what we are. This may sound rather difficult, so I will try to make it clear from my own case. When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected; I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.

Knowing Christ: by Henry Blackaby

You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life. John 5:39-40

Bible study will not give you eternal life. You could memorize the entire Bible and be able to discuss minute issues of biblical scholarship and yet fail to experience the truths found in its pages. It is a subtle temptation to prefer the book to the Author. A book will not confront you about your sin, the Author will. Books can be ignored; it is much harder to avoid the Author when He is seeking a relationship with you.

The Pharisees in Jesus’ day thought God would be pleased with their knowledge of His Word. They could quote long, complicated passages of Scripture. They loved to recite and study God’s Law for hours on end. Yet Jesus condemned them because, although they knew the Scriptures, they did not know God. They were proud of their Bible knowledge, but they rejected the invitation to know God’s Son.

Can you imagine yourself knowing all that God has promised to do in your life but then turning to something else instead? You may be tempted to turn to substitutes. These substitutes aren’t necessarily bad things. They might include serving in the church, doing good deeds, or reading Christian books. No amount of Christian activity will ever replace your relationship with Jesus. The apostle Paul considered every “good” thing he had ever done to be “rubbish” when compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ (Phil. 3:8). Never become satisfied with religious activity rather than a personal, vibrant, and growing relationship with Jesus Christ.

One with Him: by Oswald Chambers

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. 1 Thessalonians 5:23

When we pray to be sanctified, are we praying for the standard Paul sets here—the “through and through”? We take the term sanctification much too superficially. Sanctification means an intense narrowing of our earthly interests and an immense broadening of our interests in God. It means an intense concentration on God’s point of view—every power of body, soul, and spirit bound and kept for him. Are we prepared to let God do his work in us? And when his work is done, are we prepared to set ourselves apart, as Jesus set himself apart?

God wants us to be sanctified entirely. The reason some of us haven’t entered into the experience of entire sanctification is that we haven’t understood the meaning of it from God’s viewpoint: “For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified” (John 17:19). Sanctification means being made one with Jesus, so that the mindset which ruled him will also rule us. Are we prepared for what that will cost? It will cost everything that is not of God in us.

To be caught up in the swing of Paul’s prayer, the “through and through,” means asking God to make us as holy as he can make sinners saved by grace. Jesus prayed that we might be one with him as he is one with the Father (v. 21). The sanctified soul has one defining characteristic: a strong family resemblance to Jesus, a freedom from everything that doesn’t resemble him. Are we prepared to embrace this freedom by setting ourselves apart? Will we agree to let Jesus make us one with him, as he is one with the Father?

Do Not Let Your Heart be Troubled: from Jesus Calling

Mark 4:39 Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace, be still!” And the wind ceased and there was a great calm.
Deuteronomy 31:6 Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”

     Do not be afraid, for I am with you. Hear Me saying Peace, be still to your restless heart. No matter what happens, I will never leave you or forsake you. Let this assurance soak into your mind and heart, until you overflow with Joy. Though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, you need not fear!
     The media relentlessly proclaim bad news: for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A steady diet of their fare will sicken you. Instead of focusing on fickle, ever-changing news broadcasts, tune in to the living Word--the One who is always the same. Let Scripture saturate your mind and heart, and you will walk steadily along the path of Life. Even though you don't know what will happen tomorrow, you can be absolutely sure of your ultimate destination. I hold you by your right hand, and afterward I will take you into Glory.

Psalm 46:2 Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
Psalm 73:23-24 Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory.

The Purpose of the Cross: by Martyn Lloyd-Jones

 

The LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:6

In the Old Testament the Israelites transferred their guilt to a lamb, and then the lamb was killed, and his blood was offered. Why did Jesus Christ, the Son of God, come? John the Baptist, who went around before Him, gave the answer. John the Baptist had only one sermon, and he kept repeating it, and this was it: “Behold,” he says in essence, “I am not He. I am unworthy to undo the laces of His shoes. Behold, behold, behold, ‘the lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world.’” All the others were types and shadows, indications and adumbrations. The Lamb of God has come.

God has provided His own sacrifice; it is His own Son—the Lamb of God. This is what happened on Calvary’s tree. God took your sins and mine, and He put them on the head of His own Son, and then He smote Him, He punished Him, He struck Him, He killed Him. The wages of sin is death.

So what was happening on the cross was that God Himself was laying your sins and mine upon His own dearly beloved Son, and Christ paid the penalty of our guilt and our transgressions. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

“The LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).

That is what the Father did. What did the Son do? He was passive as a lamb. He did not grumble; He did not complain. He took it all upon Himself. He allowed it to happen. He surrendered Himself deliberately and freely. As the apostle Paul puts it: “Who gave himself for [on behalf of] our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father” (Galatians 1:4).