The Parchment, the Pen and the Purpose (continued)
The Testimony of Jesus (continued)
We sing:
"Thine be the glory, risen, conqu'ring Son!"
and we put everything on that! He is the risen, glorious Son of God, reliving His life, by the Holy Spirit, in us.
Perhaps that is not very encouraging to us, but that is because we are trying to get it all at once. No, this is a whole lifework of the Holy Spirit, and then, after this life, there is that wonderful parenthesis, that interval between this life and the next when we shall all be changed. So we are back at the beginning: "Foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son," and we are being "changed into His likeness" (2 Corinthians 3:18). That is going on through this life - or, it ought to be! - and then there comes the interval when we leave this world and we awake in His likeness.
So the testimony of Jesus in this world is not only that Jesus is alive, but He is alive in us.
Now let me repeat: The life of the believer is intended to be the history of Jesus Christ rewritten. "Ye are an epistle" - or a biography.
The School of the Holy Spirit
That leaves us with two things. It brings us into the school of the Holy Spirit, where we are learning our lessons, but we are not learning them from a book. We are learning them by what the Holy Spirit is doing in us, which means that when we are in His hands everything that comes into our spiritual history has in it a lesson about Jesus Christ.
So the second thing is that we have to look at our experiences and ask: 'What have I to learn about Christ in this? In what way does this experience provide the Holy Spirit with an opportunity of teaching me something about Jesus Christ?' Sometimes we cannot see the meaning of an experience, but if we are really in the hands of the Holy Spirit, our experiences are going to lead us on to know the Lord better. Therefore we must not reject our experiences; we must not think of them as unnecessary; we must not rebel against them; we must not think that they have no meaning; but we must take every experience into the presence of the Lord and say: 'Now, Lord, You must teach me what You mean by letting me have this experience.' That is the foundation of this ministry: learning Christ, but not just in our heads. You may have your heads and your notebooks full of information this week, but it has to go down deeper. The New Testament speaks about "the eyes of your heart" (Ephesians 1:18).
So often at the beginning of a conference people come to us with a lot of problems and questions, and they would like to take all our time getting answers to their problems and questions. They are not always very pleased when we say: 'Wait until the end of the conference, and perhaps you will have no more questions to ask!' If the Holy Spirit is with us He is going to enlighten the eyes of our hearts, and we are going to see with our hearts. That is the best way to see, and the only way.
You know, a mother sees in one way, and a woman who has had no children sees in another. When our eldest daughter was a little baby she was in her carriage, crying very loudly, and a lady came along and said: 'What is the matter with her?' She had not got a wedding ring on. My wife said: 'Oh, she is just tired,' and the good lady said: 'Well, why does she not go to sleep, then?' The mother understands what someone who has not the heart relationship cannot understand.
The best knowledge is heart knowledge. That word: "The eyes of your heart" is sometimes translated: "The eyes of your understanding," and understanding is the best knowledge.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 4)
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