Sustenance by Fellowship
Then 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, cherish it. There are all too many of the Lord's children today, who have no chance of spiritual fellowship, and 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.
Enrichment by Worship
There is one other way. It is worship. There is a wonderful enrichment in worship. What is worship? Strangely enough worship in the Old Testament, by which the person or persons were themselves enriched, was by bringing something to the Lord, for Him. Yes, there is some enrichment, building up, enlargement, impartation of Christ, when we take account of what He is, and speak to Him of what He is to us. I do not think we have yet learned all the value of worship as a factor in our spiritual upbuilding.
When all is said about the way of feeding upon Christ, what is the all inclusive effect? What should it all lead to? What does it mean to appropriate the Lord Jesus? Well, you see He is everything that God ever wants us to have spiritually and morally, and there is all he difference between our struggling to be like Jesus and our taking Him to be His own likeness in us. I think that struggling to be like Him is a starvation way; we shall finish up as skeletons. Most people do, who try to be like the lord by an effort; but when we begin to recognize this, that on the one hand I am insufficient, I never can be anything; on the other hand, He is all, and He is God's provision in that very respect to meet my deficiency, if that I by faith can take Him for that, then there is victory whatever it may be. The way of victory is not struggling to overcome, it is taking Christ as the Victor. Is it a spiritual matter? A moral matter? Or a physical matter? He is what we need. I mean by physical, do we need physical strength? Well, nature will not give us what we need for spiritual purposes. The Lord has taught us strange lessons in this way. Sometimes we have thought that what we needed for spiritual purposes was physical renewal along ordinary natural lines of a holiday, and we have made that our objective, and, of! what a poor holiday it has been; and the Lord has shut us up to something else and showed us that spiritual purposes required spiritual resources, and there are spiritual resources for physical needs for spiritual ends. I do not mean the Lord deprives us of holidays. The Lord gives some people good holidays! The Lord lets us go out for a good day. That is not wrong, but I am saying there is a law which is deeper than that, and unless you recognize that law, the other will not work. The law is, that being tired, exhausted, thoroughly played out, yet if the Lord wants you to do something, He can make you able to do it without giving you a holiday. When you have settled that, and recognized that, and do not make the natural course the essential, the indispensable, well, the Lord may give you the other, and doubtless He will. That is the Testimony. Where is the Testimony of life triumphant over death in the physical if you go away and have a good holiday and thorough rest, and come back and work for the Lord on that basis alone? What is the Testimony? There is something behind that, and the Lord would hold us don to that basic principle, and then: "...no good thing will be withheld from them that walk uprightly," and: "... seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." When we are settled on that, the Lord is free to give the other; but if we think that this natural course is the only way to a spiritual Testimony, it is a contradiction. The Lord is life for us physically for all that He requires. He has triumphed morally, and on every moral question that victory is for us. The Lord is life for us spiritually. We must take Him by prayer, by the Word, by obedience, by fellowship, by worship; take the Lord! There is the truth, life triumphant over death, a present and continuous Testimony. There is the law; feeding upon, appropriating the Lord as our life. The Testimony requires the law. You cannot maintain the Testimony without observing the law. Fail on any one point of that spiritual law and the Testimony breaks down. You will never live in victory, if you do not pray, and pray every day. You will never live in victory, if you do not feed every day upon the Lord in His Word. You will never live in victory, unless you come to use all spiritual fellowship for spiritual ends, if it is available. If it is not available, the Lord will have to be extra to you, and He can be in other ways. But we must recognize what He is made unto us of God, and take Him as that.
~T. Austin-Sparks
(continued with # 29 -"A New Day Foreshadowed")
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