A Time of Testing

 

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A Time of Testing the Foundations of Faith

 

We are fast entering into the period of this world’s history when the foundations of faith are to be subjected to the ultimate test. God’s great emphasis today is being brought to bear upon the state of His own people. He is centering His attention upon His people. There have been great periods when His whole attention was directed through His people upon the multitudes of unsaved; they were great days of ingathering through the evangel. There may yet come, in the ordering of God’s purposes, still further emphasis of that kind, when again He will reach out in a special way to gather in lost sheep. He is not entirely ignoring that work today, and He will not have us ignore it.

 

But anyone who knows the present situation will see that God’s main work today, for which He is giving Himself, is not for the ingathering of multitudes of unsaved souls; but you do find that everywhere there is a growing movement of God in stirring the hearts of His own people, deepening the hunger, making manifest weakness and need, and putting Christians everywhere to the test.

 

Are you facing times of spiritual trial and testing? Are you finding it easier today than it used to be to live the life of the saint? If we are honest in our hearts, we will say: “No, it is certainly more difficult; our spiritual lives are very rarely out of the fire. We seem to be brought back constantly to the place of testing, and every testing seems to be a deeper one than that which preceded it.”

 

The Lord is centering upon His people, and the effect of it all is to get down to foundations; and in a day when God is focusing upon foundations, the devil is particularly concerned to get people to be without foundations. That explains great movements of today which have no foundations.

 

We are passing swiftly into a time of the ultimate test of our foundation. The question for every one of us will be as to whether we really have God’s foundation adequately, sufficiently laid as the basis of our faith. Superficiality of spiritual life will not last long; it will go. The winds of God are going to blow, and then we shall discover how deep our roots are. Therein, then, is the need for considering the question of foundations.

Poineers 01

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FOR PILGRIMS THE CENTRE OF GRAVITY IS IN HEAVEN

 

Let us look at one or two of the features of this pioneering vocation. First of all, those who are called from heaven, apprehended by heaven, to serve the heavenly purpose, find that their centre of gravity has been inwardly and spiritually changed and transferred from this world to heaven. Inside there is a deep-seated sense that we do not belong here, that this world is not our resting-place, that this is not our home and this is not our centre of gravity; we are not drawn to it inwardly. Within the spirit of the pioneer there is this sense of conflict with what is here, of being at variance with it and unable to accept it. I repeat: inwardly and spiritually, the centre of gravity has been transferred from this world to heaven. It is an inborn consciousness, and it is the first thing in this heavenly calling, the first effect, the first result of our calling from on high. We are going to come back to that again later on.

 

And we can test by this. Of course, it is true of the simplest child of God. The first consciousness of one born, truly born, from above, is that the centre of gravity has changed. Somehow or other, inwardly, we have moved from one world to another. Somehow or other, that to which we have hitherto been related by nature no longer holds us: it is no longer our world. Put it how we will, that is the consciousness, and unless it is so there is something very doubtful about any profession of faith in the Lord Jesus. And this inborn sense of a new centre of gravity has to grow and grow and grow and make it more and more impossible for us to accept this world in any way. Again I say, it is a test of our spiritual progress, of our pilgrimage and our advance in it. But that is elementary after all.

 

From:

Pioneers of the Heavenly Way

Vision and Vocation 02

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Vision and Vocation

Brief Messages at Sundry Times

by T. Austin-Sparks

 

Who are this little company, and what is their secret? ”But the people that do know their God…” These are they who know their God, and that is the secret. Would that it were possible for us to have the depth of that declaration, that we could realize all that is summarised in that statement, ”Do know their God.” There is something infinitely more in knowing the Lord than we have yet recognised. ”The people that do know their God” – you want to know what that means. It is a knowledge of God in His power as Sovereign, in His executive authority, in His supremacy.

 

But the knowledge goes deeper than that, it is not merely knowing God as Sovereign, it is knowing God in that way that releases that sovereignty and causes it to function through the people that so know Him. It is knowing God in a vital relationship and union and oneness which makes the exercise and execution of the power possible in this world through such as possess this knowledge. God is on the Throne, and He has all power and all the resources necessary for dealing with the world situation, but He has so chosen and ordained, that the exercise and the demonstration of His fulness of power and might and glory, should be through those who have been brought into a vital union with Him on the basis of a personal knowledge of Him in His fulness.

 

The New Testament is a marvelous revelation of that victory. After the Cross, all the fulness of the Divine power was released upon the world through those who had been brought into absolute oneness with the Lord by that Cross. That is the peculiar kind of knowledge which means the release of such forces and such powers upon the world situation as are unknown by the great world systems.

 

First, let us remember that this knowledge of God is by revelation. We can never get this knowledge of God merely by reading, by listening, by attending meetings. As one looks out over gatherings of the Lord’s people one wonders just how many of those we see at every meeting and every Conference have got this thing by personal revelation, and how many are only standing in that which they have heard the speakers say. If this thing is not given to you by the Holy Spirit’s working it into your very being, and making it a part of you in a personal revelation and an inward birth, then you may hear all the truth possible and it will prove ineffective. How many of you who know this thing as a theory, a teaching, from A to Z, are really the via media of that transcendant power of God for the working of it out?

 

You may understand it all by mental apprehension, know the terms and the verses, and use them – but what about the dynamic of this thing? What does our personal presence in a situation mean? Does it mean that there is the going out of a power which cannot be accounted for on any human basis whatever, but which is a greater force than the forces that are represented by world organizations, world methods, world resources? It is a most important question. Is this thing alive, or have we merely got a little more mental apprehension of it through conferences? Do we know God in this thing by reason of a personal inward revelation on the subject. Paul makes a point of this. ”It pleased the Lord to reveal His Son in me” ”By revelation, not from man.” ’I went not up to Jerusalem to consult the Apostles, I went into Arabia, and this thing was wrought out in me.’

Centrality of Christ # 07

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We now come to the familiar words of Gal. 2:20. “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.”

 

The first is the revelation of Christ within the heart; the second is the life of Christ within. It is important for us to recognize that this is not just the fact that Christ lives within, not merely that Christ is within us, living in us, but this carries with it something more than that; that Christ is the believer’s life. Christ within is the very life of the believer; He must be central and supreme as our life, and He is our life just in the measure in which He is central and supreme, no more, no less. But we want to understand in what way Christ within is the life of the believer, and this whole letter to the Galatians helps us to that understanding. I do not want to be too doctrinal or theological in a technical sense, but I do feel that the Lord’s people should be clear on the great doctrines of grace. Hence, I would ask for a brief consideration of the background of the statement before us.

 

We often speak about Christ being our life, we often say things to that effect, that He is our very life. We use another fragment of Scripture which is not in the same realm as this passage exactly, although linked with it: “When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in glory.” The principle of Christ being our life is the same, but here there is a background to that. It is not just that Christ is to us the vital energy which we call life. Of course He is that, He is the life; the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of life in us, but here that is explained by the context and given a deeper meaning.

 

If you look at the immediately surrounding words you will see that this statement of the Apostle represents a change. This letter, as you know, is dealing with the legalism into which the Galatian believers had fallen, by which they had been overcome, overtaken or ensnared. You notice how chapter 3 begins: “O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you…?” literally, “Who did cast the witch’s spell over you?” They had come under a witch’s spell, and it was the spell of a false legalism. Now what Paul is saying here in verse 20 represents a change. Paul had lived, in the old days, by holding on to the law. His position as a Jew was that under the law man must live by the law. The law was: “Thou shalt,” and “Thou shalt not.”

 

When the “shalts” were complied with, and the “shalt nots” were observed and avoided, then a man’s life was preserved by God. If a man wanted to live and prolong his days upon the earth, then he must keep the law, and so he lived by holding fast to the law, the law of commandments. And we know, even from one like Saul of Tarsus who rigidly kept the law, that it was a tremendously burdensome thing, and it represented always condemnation and death. It was like the sword of Damocles always hanging over the head. Deviate one hair’s breadth and you die, you come under condemnation, judgment and death.

 

And the observances associated with purification and right relationship to God never for one moment touched the conscience, never touched the heart, they were merely, shall we say, expediences for the moment; they were purely outward, and there was always the inward sense of something wanting, something lacking. But Saul had lived by holding on to the law, he maintained his life by holding on to the law with all its burdensomeness, all its wearisomeness, all its threat, judgment, condemnation, and its shadow of death which it always kept in view. That was his past life.

 

Now, no man had ever been found, as Paul makes perfectly clear in the first chapters of his Roman letter, who in his own nature could perfectly satisfy God on every point and requirement of His Divine law. All had broken down, all had failed, and in no man was the root of righteousness found. God could never be satisfied with mere external righteousness which was not in man himself; a sort of theoretical righteousness and not a practical one; and there had never been found a man in whom there was righteousness as in himself, and the whole race is gathered up in Paul’s own declaration about himself with all his ceremonial righteousness: “For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.”

 

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Vision and Vocation

Brief Messages at Sundry Times

by T. Austin-Sparks

 

 

The People That Do Exploits

“But the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits.” – Dan. 11:32.

 

That word “but” marks the climax. It is preceded by visions of the rise and fall of great world powers. Up to this point we see men and their individual influence, armies and their conquests, kings and empires in their far-reaching sway. There is a veritable pageant of the dominions of the world as they proceed and recede. They come in splendour upon the stage, and then pass altogether out of the great world drama. Then finally it reaches this point, and you get a ”BUT,” and from that onward, the whole scene changes. The outlook is entirely different, the scale of values is revolutionized. From this point it is no longer a question of numbers and wealth or human importance, or any of the things which the world calls great.

 

There appears now upon the scene a comparatively small company, a group of men and women whom the world will despise and reject, and relegate to the category of the unfit, the inefficient; whom the world will not count among its mighty, its valiant. They will be overlooked when the world is in search of such as it requires to do its big things. On the human side they will be altogether at a discount. There is nothing whatever as a basis upon which they can hope for any success here, nothing whatever which gives them – judged from the human standpoint – any confidence or assurance or hope of success here, and yet, in the unfolding of things, these are the people which count, and it is before these that all the glory and power and might of the world breaks down. This small, despised company move out with some secret vital mystic force at their centre, and they go forth conquering and to conquer. Before them the great systems of the world give way and go down in defeat. There is a mighty change in the picture, swinging upon one word. How often, in the Divine unfolding of the Scriptures, it is that one little word ”but,” that changes things. ”BUT GOD,” and then everything changes. Said Joseph to his brethren, ”Ye meant it unto me for evil – but God meant it unto good.”

 

Centrality of Christ # 06

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It is the Son of God’s love, and what is bound up with this whole thing is the satisfaction of the heart of God in relation to that eternal heart secret of His.

 

That lies beneath what we are and all that we do. We are believers on the ground of “Christ in you.” Yes, but Christ in you represents the realization of God’s heart purposes, that is the way in which He is going to realize it, that is His manner of coming to the end that was in His heart in eternity past: “Christ in you.”

 

We can say that God can never realize that heart desire of His concerning His Son, save as there are believers who receive Christ into their hearts. Therefore, it is not converting people to Christianity, or getting them to be followers of a movement; it is receiving Christ, God’s satisfaction.

 

Then when we have received Christ, everything with which we have to do in relation to Him, anything in which we have a voice or an influence, any part that we can take in the Lord’s interests, must be wholly, utterly and always for the expression of Christ, the revelation of Jesus Christ, the bringing into view of Christ.

 

No assembly, no church, no movement, no testimony, no fellowship, is justified in its existence from God’s standpoint except insofar as Christ is expressed by it.

The Path of True Ministry

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There is no royal road to the ministry. The ministry is not a professional thing – not a matter of a set, a class. Ministry is born out of that anguish and suffering in which Christ is known as He can be known in no other way.

 

True ministry springs from the discovery of Christ in deep places. This ministry which is the manifestation of Christ – the many-sidedness of Christ, the deep secrets of Christ, the wonders and the glories of Christ – is born of a necessary experience in which Christ and Christ only, is sufficient.

 

“We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power should be of God and not of ourselves.” There is little doubt that, in writing of believers in these terms, Paul had in mind Gideon’s mighty army… reduced to three hundred lest Israel should vaunt themselves, that the power should be of God and not of them. What is the treasure? “The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ… in our hearts.” What were the vessels in the hands of Gideon’s three hundred? Earthen pitchers and a torch within! They were the means of a mighty conquest. Weakness over against all the power of the enemy!

 

What a power it was! The Holy Spirit does not hesitate to give us the measure of the power of the Midianites and the Amalekites, and all the children of the East. They were like the sand of the sea. Three hundred men triumphed by treasures in earthen vessels. It is the intimation that Christ is the energy of a new kind of conquest over all the power of the enemy.

 

For this ministry in greater power – in greater fullness – Paul had discovered God in Christ in a new way through suffering. All this suffering issued in a new apprehension of God in Christ as the power, and glory, and fullness of ministry. That is ministry.

 

If we aspire to ministry, that is Holy Ghost ministry. It is something more than standing up to preach, and to give addresses – to produce that which has occupied us in the study. This kind of ministry is the personal manifestation of Christ resulting from an apprehension of Him in deep and dark places. If we aspire to true ministry, the Holy Spirit will see to it that by experience we are kept abreast of everything we say. The truth will become a thing inwrought and wrought out.

 

Is it necessary to say again that this has not to do with a class of people called ministers? We are all called to this ministry. It is not merely preaching – it is a personal manifestation of Christ. To that we are all called.

May the Lord strengthen us unto our ministry.

Centrality of Christ # 05

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If Christ the Son of God’s love is central and supreme in the heart of the believer so much else goes down, it must go down.

Dividing things will go, insofar as they are things which are not controversies with the Lord. Controversies with God will divide, but those artificial things, those things resultant from man’s activity and his projecting of himself, insinuating of himself into the interests of God, those things cannot abide where there is an adequate inward revelation of the Lord Jesus; they cannot be.

These two things are before us: one, because of the revelation of Jesus Christ in our heart we have a passion for Him; on the other hand, because of the absence of a sufficient revelation of Christ in our hearts we are out for other things which we would say were in His interests, and for Him, but which can never, never satisfy God’s heart. It is the satisfaction of the heart of the Father which is in view.

Enlargement Through Conflict

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Reading: Eph. 6:10-20

 

I think it is well known to you that the Letter to the Ephesians in the New Testament corresponds to the Book of Joshua in the Old. As to the Book of Joshua, the Lord told His people, before ever they went into the land, that He had given the land to them; that every place that the sole of their foot should rest upon was already theirs by gift; that already the land was their possession, and the enemies were subdued. In Him it was already a concluded matter. Yet when they actually came into the land, they found that they had to fight for every inch of it.

 

There was no contradiction really in that, because they were fighting in something that the Lord had already done. We have often put it this way – they were fighting in a victory rather than for a victory. It was a case of faith’s possessing rather than of faith’s receiving. Now there, of course, it was the matter of the inheritance and the enlargement of their possessions; and they did not come to possess any part, to extend and spread themselves out over the land, except by meeting a challenge all the way along and overcoming that challenge.

 

That is exactly the position here with the Church in the heavenlies. The heavenlies in “Ephesians” corresponds to the land in the Book of Joshua – that is, the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. It is the Lord in all the fulness of His ascended life and position, and that fulness is for the Church. It is to be His fulness, but the possession by the Church of any measure of Christ, the possession of any fragment of spiritual fulness and enlargement, comes along the line of spiritual conflict.

 

The Lord left the enemy in the land; even when He said that He had given it to His people and would subdue their enemies under them, He did not go ahead and drive the enemy out. He left them to do that. Although in the Cross the enemy is defeated and everything is secured to the Church, the Lord has left the enemy in order that the Church may come, not to a mechanical or theoretical position of fulness, but to an actual, spiritual position. The enemy therefore is the Lord’s instrument of bringing the Church to its place along the line of conflict.

 

The inheritance, of course, has its two sides in this letter. The Lord has an inheritance in the saints; that is, the Lord’s people are His inheritance. There is the other side, where the inheritance of the saints is the Lord Himself; and these two in realization – the Lord getting what He has set His heart upon having, and our coming into that to which the Lord has called us – is a matter of spiritual enlargement day by day by means of spiritual conflict.

 

The Need For Strength Of Spirit

What does this amount to? In a word, it is a matter of strength of spirit. Our spiritual measure is a matter of how strong we are spiritually. Therefore this section begins with, “Finally, be strong in the Lord (or, from henceforth be made powerful in the Lord) and in the strength of His might”; that is your measure, and spiritual strength is decided in spiritual conflict. If we go down easily under opposition and pressure, soon give up and fade out because things begin to get difficult, that determines just our measure of spiritual strength, our measure of Christ.

 

From one standpoint, you have to measure Christ by His contact with the enemy. Go back to His life on the earth, and see how far the enemy was able to gain advantage, to bring Him down, and you discover that he was not able at all, at any point, in any circumstances. The Lord proved His spiritual measure against the whole force of spiritual opposition. Satan and all his kingdom is matched against the one Man – and the one Man overcomes, casts out the prince of this world, subdues his kingdom and takes his authority. The measure of Christ is seen as over against the enemy; and our spiritual measure is determined in this combat with the enemy. Simply, then, our spiritual measure is a matter of spiritual strength.

 

That is seen here in these two ways. As the rest of the passage shows, there are many forms in which the enemy comes to break in, to get vantage ground. We cannot here pursue all the things represented by the armour, but each of these parts of the whole armour mentioned points to some form of enemy assault. The helmet suggests a blow at the head, that is, a spiritual assault upon the mind. How far is the mind impregnable to assaults? We know the terrific assaults of the enemy upon our minds, to capture them, to dominate our thinking, our reasoning. Another time he will make a terrific assault upon our hearts – our feelings, emotions, affections, desires. The breastplate suggests this form of spiritual attack.

 

Another time the very vitals, the loins, are assailed, as suggested by the girdle of truth. The enemy will, as we say, ‘hit us below the belt’ if he can. There is a suggestion here of a form of spiritual assault at a place where we shall be thoroughly wounded if we are not careful, if we have not provision made. So you go through the whole armour in each part, and you find every part signifies some form of spiritual conflict, the point at which the conflict is being concentrated at a given time. Today it will be at one point, tomorrow at another. Am I able to meet the enemy in strength? Can I spiritually meet him in the mind? Can I spiritually meet him in the heart, where all the feelings are centred? That determines what my spiritual measure is. So, to begin with, it is strength in that sense, which is our need.

 

The Need For Intelligence

But then it is also a matter of intelligence. The two things which mark spiritual degree are strength and intelligence. You find that all the way through the New Testament. It is a matter of understanding as well as of being strong. There is a sense in which we may be strong, but not accomplish very much by our strength because it is not accompanied by intelligence. On the other hand, we may have a sort of intelligence and know all about things, and yet not stand up to them. These two factors must go together. So the word here is “the wiles of the devil.”

 

It is not only his fierce onslaught in strength that has to be reckoned with, but also his wiliness. He knows where to attack at a given time, and just when it is the best time to make a particular kind of assault; and very often he works up a situation that is very suitable to his purpose. He will get us moving very much in our minds, thinking, scheming, reasoning, and then he will make a terrific blow to bring us down through our minds. Sometimes he is moving altogether in the realm of our feelings, stirring these up, bringing about situations that touch our hearts very deeply. At that moment it is the emotional life that is the danger point, and then he makes a terrific onslaught upon that. He is very wily, very intelligent, very knowing.

 

To counter that, we need to have spiritual intelligence to see his intention and to be alive to his tactics. Spiritual intelligence is a matter of spiritual measure. How often someone has gone down under an assault of the enemy, completely knocked out; and someone else comes along and says, ‘Did you not see so-and-so – how the enemy has been working up to this, and getting you in the end in a position for which he has been manoeuvering?’ They reply, ‘If only I had seen that, I should not have given way!’ If we have intelligence to meet the wiles, we have spiritual measure. The need is not only of being strong in the sense of digging our heels in and clenching our fists, but of having intelligent strength, A very strong man can be, after all, thoroughly overcome by a little cleverness; beaten, not because of counter-strength, but by a wile.

 

Christ An Adequate Defence In Every Assault

Paul himself was an outstanding example of strength combined with intelligence. Think of his position when he was writing these very things. “I am an ambassador in chains” (Eph. 6:20). What a contradiction! How absurd! Paul, in that chain, in his imprisonment, had a very great deal of reason to give up, to weaken, to take the hopeless attitude; but in actual fact he was very strong. He might also have despaired of coping with the whole situation which confronted him, not only personally, but in the churches – he could have been completely defeated by the whole complex of the situation. But he is displaying a wonderful wisdom.

 

This armour, as Paul picks it up and transfers it to the spiritual life, indicates a great deal of wisdom on his part. Think it through, piece by piece. For the assault upon the mind – the helmet of salvation. How apt, how suited to the situation it is! The assault upon the heart – what is that? What is it that gets us down more than anything else from the enemy? It is a spirit of accusation, of condemnation, bringing home to our hearts a sense of our own wickedness and unworthiness and unprofitableness, to cause our hearts to sink in despair. Paul so wisely says, ‘The remedy for that is to put on the breastplate of righteousness – but not your own righteousness. Meet the enemy with the righteousness of Another; it is the only way to meet this assault.’ Go through each part, and you find it is so wise a provision, so understanding.

 

 At every point, Paul is exhibiting this wonderful understanding, and showing his measure: for Paul could have gone down under these things as easily as any other man if he had taken another attitude. He could have argued, ‘All these churches have turned against me, all these brethren have forsaken me; here I am in prison, shut up: the Lord must have something against me, there must be something very wrong with me.’ If he had taken that on, it would not have been long before he would have been a prisoner in the inner dungeon of the castle of Giant Despair. But he had taken up the helmet of salvation and the breastplate of righteousness and the rest of the armour, and he showed his measure. We cannot stand as equals with him, but he does indicate for us what spiritual enlargement really means; it is being strong and wise in conflict. So spiritual degree resolves itself into a matter of spiritual strength and spiritual understanding in the time of conflict.