He Is King + He Is Good: by CS Lewis

 

Psalm 10:16

"The LORD is king forever and ever; the nations perish from his land."

2 Chronicles 20:6

"O Lord, God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations

In C. S. Lewis's novel The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, of The Chronicles of Narnia series, four children, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, pass through the wardrobe's portal to find the kingdom of Narnia imprisoned under the spell of the White Witch. Aslan the lion, who is the king of Narnia, is nowhere to be found. Although rumor has it "He is on the move," he appears to have abandoned his kingdom to the White Witch, who spends her leisure time turning the inhabitants into lawn statuary.

The four children set out to explore this strange and somewhat frightening new country that is locked under evil's spell. They come upon Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, a husband and wife still faithful to Aslan. The Beavers assure the children that Aslan is about to return to set things right and that prophecy suggests that they have a very important, even central part to play in the drama about to unfold. Indeed, they learn they are to actually rule with Aslan from Cair Paravel itself, Aslan's royal city.

Faced with all this fearful yet exciting news, Lucy and Susan's thoughts go to what Aslan is actually like. If he is a king who is safe, they reason, that will certainly be of great comfort in light of the battle being all but lost.

"Is—is he a man?" asked Lucy.

"Aslan a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion—the lion, the great Lion."

"Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."

"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver; "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

Make ROOM for God: by Watchman Nee

 

"If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king" Daniel 3:17

 How does the Church reach her goal?  Only by traveling the pathway from pressure to enlargement, from poverty to enrichment.  You ask: What do we mean by enlargement through pressure?  When three are shut into a furnace and the three become four that is enlargement through pressure.  Some find a furnace rather close quarters for three, so they seek a way of escape; others accept the limitation, and in accepting it, make room for a Fourth.  Not to let difficulties shut us out from God, but to let them shut us in to him, that is enlargement through pressure.  Some, through pressure, reach God's end; others come to an end in the pressure.  Some die in straitness; others, through straitness, find fullness of life.  Some murmur when trials befall, finding in them only restraint, limitation and death; others praise God for the trials, and in doing so discover the pathway to enlargement, liberation, and abundance of life.

The Nature of Reconciliation: by Oswald Chambers

 

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. —2 Corinthians 5:21

Sin is a fundamental relationship— it is not wrong doing, but wrong being— it is deliberate and determined independence from God. The Christian faith bases everything on the extreme, self-confident nature of sin. Other faiths deal with sins— the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ confronted in people was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the gospel that the message of the gospel has lost its sting and its explosive power.

The revealed truth of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took on Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took on Himself the heredity of sin that no man can even touch. God made His own Son “to be sin” that He might make the sinner into a saint. It is revealed throughout the Bible that our Lord took on Himself the sin of the world through identification with us, not through sympathy for us. He deliberately took on His own shoulders, and endured in His own body, the complete, cumulative sin of the human race. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us…” and by so doing He placed salvation for the entire human race solely on the basis of redemption. Jesus Christ reconciled the human race, putting it back to where God designed it to be. And now anyone can experience that reconciliation, being brought into oneness with God, on the basis of what our Lord has done on the cross.

A man cannot redeem himself— redemption is the work of God, and is absolutely finished and complete. And its application to individual people is a matter of their own individual action or response to it. A distinction must always be made between the revealed truth of redemption and the actual conscious experience of salvation in a person’s life.

Crucified with Him: by Andrew Murray

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me…But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. Galatians 2:20, 6:14

While the Lord was still on His way to the cross, the expression—taking up the cross—was the most appropriate to indicate the conformity to Him to which the disciple was called. But now that He has been crucified, the Holy Spirit gives another expression: to be crucified with Christ. One of the chief elements of likeness to Christ consists of being crucified with Him. Whoever wishes to be like Him must seek to understand the secret of fellowship with His cross.

Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” Through faith in Christ we become partakers of Christ’s life that has passed through the death of the cross, and in which the power of that victorious death is always working. When I receive that life, I receive the full power of the death on the cross working in me in its never ceasing energy. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” The life I now live is not my own life. The life of the Crucified One is the life of the cross. Being crucified is a thing past.

I have been crucified with Christ; I have crucified the flesh. If I am crucified and dead with Him, then I am a partner in His victory. There is still a great work for me to do. But that work is not to crucify myself. I, the old man, was crucified. But what I have to do is to always treat it as crucified, and not to allow it to come down from the cross. I must keep the flesh in the place of crucifixion.

I gave myself to my crucified Savior, sin and flesh and all. But here a separation took place. In fellowship with Him, I was freed from the life of the flesh. In the innermost center of my being, I received new life: Christ lives in me. But the flesh, in which I remain condemned to death, is not yet dead. It is now my calling to see that the old nature is kept nailed to the cross. All its desires and affections cry out, “Come down from the cross. Save yourself and us.” It is my duty to glory in the cross, to maintain the dominion of the cross with my whole heart, to make every uprising of sin dead, and not allow sin to have dominion.

God's Communication: The WORD: by TA Sparks

 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son. Hebrews 1:1,2

It says that in times past God spoke "in many ways," not only in different portions, but in different manners. It would take too long for us to go back to the Old Testament to see all the manners in which God spoke. He spoke by a thousand different means: sometimes by words and sometimes by acts. The manners were indeed "diverse." However, the statement here is that at the end He speaks in one way, one all-inclusive way, and that is in His Son. God's Son is His one inclusive way of speaking at the end. On the one side, no one is going to get anything from God apart from Jesus Christ. God will absolutely refuse to speak other than in His Son. If you want to know what God wants to say to you, you have to come to His Son. On the other side, in Jesus Christ we have all that God ever wants to say....

Yes, we have far more of God's speaking in His Son than we have yet come to understand. We have nothing apart from Jesus Christ, and we need nothing apart from Him. You can read everything that has ever been written on Christian doctrine and still be the same man or woman. God's ways are very practical, and He teaches us by experience. That experience is sometimes very difficult and is called here "the training of sons." May the Lord Jesus just impress our hearts again with these things! God is still speaking in His Son, and His speaking is in order to get companions of His Son. Companions of this heavenly calling and of Christ will go into the hard school and have to learn many hard lessons, but in learning them they will come to understand how great is their inheritance in the Lord Jesus.

Right Concept of Jesus—Savior and Judge: by AW Tozer

 In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel. Romans 2:16

What is your concept of Jesus Christ as Savior and Judge?

If the “ten-cent-store Jesus” that is being preached by a lot of men, the plastic, painted Christ who has no spine and no justice and is pictured as a soft and pliable friend to everybody—if He is the only Christ there is, then we might as well close our books and bar our doors, and make a bakery or garage out of the church!

But that Christ that is being preached and pictured is not the Christ of God, nor the Christ of the Bible, nor the Christ we must deal with.

The Christ we must deal with will be the judge of mankind—and this is one of the neglected Bible doctrines in our day!

The Father judges no man. When the Lord, the Son of Man, shall come in the clouds of glory, then shall be gathered unto Him the nations, and He shall separate them.

God has given Him judgment, authority to judge mankind, so that He is both the Judge and Savior of men.

That makes me both love Him and fear Him! I love Him because He is my Savior and I fear Him because He is my Judge.

God Almighty is never going to judge the race of mankind and allow a mistake to enter. The judge must be one who has all wisdom. Therefore, I appeal away from St. Paul; I appeal away from Moses and Elijah; I appeal away from all men because no man knows me well enough to judge me, finally! Only Jesus Christ qualifies as one who is able to be the judge of all mankind.

Abiding in Christ: by Andrew Murray

 1 John 2:6

Whoever claims to abide in him must walk as Jesus did.

Abiding in Christ and walking like Christ are two blessings of the new life presented here in their essential unity. The fruit of a life in Christ is a life like Christ.

To the first of these expressions, “abiding in Christ, ”we are no strangers. The wondrous parable of the vine and the branches, with the accompanying command, “Abide in Me, and I in you” (John 15:4), has often been a source of rich instruction and comfort. And though we feel as if we have only imperfectly learned the lesson of abiding in Him, yet we have tasted something of the joy that comes when the soul can say, “Lord, You know all things. You know that I do abide in You.” He also knows how often this fervent prayer still arises, “Blessed Lord, grant to me complete, unbroken abiding.”

The second expression, “walking like Christ,” is no less significant than the first. It is the promise of the wonderful power that abiding in Him will exert. As the fruit of our surrender to live wholly in Him, His life works so mightily in us that our walk—the outward expression of the inner life—becomes like His. The two are inseparably connected. The abiding in always precedes the walking like Him. Yet the desire to walk like Him must equally precede any large amount of abiding. Only then is the need for a close union fully realized. The heavenly Giver is free to bestow the fullness of His grace, because He sees that the soul is prepared to use it according to His design. When the Savior said, “If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love” (John 15:10), He meant this: the surrender to walk like Me is the path to the full abiding in Me. Many will discover that this is the secret of their failure in abiding in Christ: they did not seek it with the idea of walking like Christ. The words of John invite us to look at the two truths in their vital connection and dependence on each other.