Words of Wisdom and Revelation # 1

Words of Wisdom and Revelation # 1

Divine Discontent

While "the Word of the Lord" may have come to Patriarchs, Prophets, Judges, Apostles, resulting in a commission and a mandate, it is very easy to discern that, either before or by that word, there was found in them an unrest, a dissatisfaction, a sense that there was something more in the intention of God. Inwardly they were not settled and satisfied. Maybe they could not define or explain it. They did not know what they wanted. It was not just a discontented disposition or nature. It was not just criticism, or querulousness, or disgruntledness, a spirit of being "agin the government", as of a malcontent. God was not satisfied, and He was on the move. There sensitive spirits, like Abraham, and Moses, and Samuel, and Daniel, and Nehemiah, and a host of others in every age - Old Testament, New Testament, and since - have been God's pioneers, because of the inward link with His Divine discontent.

Of course, this is one aspect of all spiritual progress, but it is very true of every new thing of God. If this discontent is a truly Divine activity, it will not be a matter of mere human frustration. It will have nothing to do with natural ambition or aggressiveness. It will resolve into a sheer issue of spiritual life or death. It will become a soul-travail.

Do you see that "churches" should not be just congregations, preaching places for religious observances? They should be, in their inception, constitution, and continuation, the answer to God's dissatisfaction; that which provides Him with the answer to His age-long quest in the hearts of all concerned.

~T. Austin-Sparks~
_____________________________

The Balance of Knowledge and Achievement

To recognize and grasp...one thing is to stand possessed of one of the most vital factors in endurance and attainment. It is this, under the hand of God there is always maintained the balance of inward education or knowledge with any outward achievement. The real value of any true pioneer is not that he, by sheer force of will, got somewhere, but that at every stage and every phase he gathered knowledge, by which knowledge he learned the very laws of life, of survival, of salvation; of effectiveness, conservation, and wisdom. He was not merely a doer, he was a learner in his doing, and a doer by his learning.

Paul, Simpson, Taylor were doers, but their whole course was one of spiritual learning. God held them very rigidly to this. There were times when they could go no further, do no more, unless they had some new and fresh knowledge resulted in a new phase of practical progress. It is of great educative value to see in such lives how each step in the work was the result of some new spiritual lesson learned in an inner walk with God.

If we try just to imitate the outward aspects and copy the resultant framework of such work, without the same inward history, we are in danger of being saddled with a corpse without life; a machine without power; a body without personality. All the reproductive works of God begin with an inward organic life, not with an outward form. Jesus has once and for all defined the law of that life in saying: "This is life eternal, that they may know Thee...and Him Whom Thou didst send." The law of life is spiritual knowledge of God, and there is really no other true knowledge of God.

~T. Austin-Sparks~
________________________

God's Ultimate Objective

In relation to His full purpose, God is ever found seeking and taking up a people in whom that purpose has been revealed, and whose life is constituted according to it. God's conforming work, are governed by a purpose, which is centered in His Son. Nothing that God does is, in His mind and intention, something in itself, or an end in itself, all is related to His clear and definite purpose. The Bible throughout shows us that God is ever in quest of a people who have sen what that purpose is, and who are under His hand to be constituted according to that purpose, to serve Him in it.

Such an instrument, related to the purpose, is brought into experience that definitely bear upon that purpose:P that is, they are constituted according to the purpose of God. The purpose of God, in relation to His Son, is that Christ shall ultimately fill all things, and all things shall be summed up in Him. He is to be the universal Lord, and what is true of Him, characteristically, is to become true of the Church: it is to take its character from Him, in order that, so doing, it may be the very vessel and instrument of His government in all the coming ages. If that is so, then a very great deal has got to be done in us to make it possible!

For this is not just an official thing: it is not that God just takes us up and puts us into an official position, willy-nilly, as though it didn't matter what sort of people we were. Oh no - a lot has get to be done to bring a people there. And so we find that in such instruments, as we have them in the Word of God (and they are only indicative of God's abiding methods and principles), the thing in which they were called was wrought into their very being.

And God is seeking to make a constitution in a people. Any instrument that He is to use must have that constitution, and it has got to come right out of what God has done in us. That explains a very great deal.

~T. Austin-Sparks~
____________________________

The Kind of Man God is After

The point is that God has put right down into this world, into the midst of mankind, a new kind of man, who is not just better, more or less, than other men, but different altogether from other men; and has, in effect, said, "That is the Man that I have in view, and eternally it has been My purpose to conform to that image."

~T. Austin-Sparks~