Words of Wisdom and Revelation # 3

Words of Wisdom and Revelation # 3

The Cost of Ministering Real Food

The Lord, Who wants the most and Whose heart is set upon "bread" for His people - that over the whole earth His people should receive strength, sustenance, building up, through your ministry, individually or collectively - if it is going to be like that, to satisfy that desire of His heart, you are going to have a difficult time, you are going through the "threshing-floor"; you are going to know the "bruising".

If the Lord is not able to do that, and He has to keep us on the elementary, easy-going basis, where we are all having a happy time, and the Lord very rarely does anything corrective and stringent, it is not a compliment to our spiritual life. It may just mean that He is not able to do all that He would do if He could in this great need of bread.

The idea has been very common in Christianity that it is a great and wonderful thing to be "mightily used of the Lord!" Oh, to be a great evangelist! Oh, to be a great teacher! Oh, to be a great Christian worker! Let me tell you, that is an entirely false conception. The truth is that those who serve the Lord most truly go through the deepest suffering. The balances are truly kept by God - extra suffering, extra usefulness, little suffering, little usefulness. That is how God keeps His balances. You may be having a more or less easy time. I do not want to dishearten you by saying it may not always be so, but if you really want to be of greater use to the Lord, remember it may be by a deeper discipline of the Lord. And if you are having a particularly difficult time, most likely it is because the Lord is going to meet needs more fully through you.

~T. Austin-Sparks~
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Spiritual Knowledge

An essential result of the Spirit's government and work is spiritual knowledge. Paul laid much emphasis upon this in both of his letters to Corinth.

Where the Holy Spirit has the ground of Christ to work upon, there will be much light and intelligence among the saints. The tragedy of the average believer, and of many companies of believers, is their spiritual ignorance, their little understanding, the smallness of their apprehension of Christ.

~T. Austin-Sparks~
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The Importance of Seeing

The Watchman in the Prophets was a man depicted or described as a man with a "burden" - "the burden of the word of the Lord".

So great are the issues of Purpose, so vital to life and work is the meaning of the Church's eternal vocation, that anyone who enters into it in reality will be one who has a deep sense of heavy responsibility. What he says is what he has seen!  But it is unto the seeing that God would bring all His people, for only as they see can they fulfill their heavenly calling. The Church itself is meant to be a Body with eyes wide open. The quest of the great Church-Apostle must be the quest of the Church itself - "a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the (full) knowledge of Him" (Ephesians 1:17).

~T. Austin-Sparks~
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God's Total Concentration

The one object is Christ. God has, all-inclusively, committed Himself to fill His Son with all things, and to fill all things with His Son. To bring Christ in, and to increase the measure of Christ, both extensively and intensively, is God's sole object, and cooperation with Him in this is the only true service of God. Conversions are not ends and objects in themselves. Every new believer is a vessel of Christ. The fact in every "new birth" is that Christ has come in. But the Scriptures do not leave it there. The greatest part of the New Testament is occupied with the increase of Christ in believers. That is the personal aspect. Beyond this the Church as a whole is brought into view as that which is to be "the fullness of Him". Then local churches are represented as vessels and vehicles of Christ beyond individual possibility and capacity. The whole idea of the Holy  Spirit is to make the fullness of Christ a reality. The test of all Christian work will be its effectiveness in really enlarging the measure of Christ in this universe.

~T. Austin-Sparks~
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Spirituality the Top Priority

If the work of God is essentially spiritual, then it demands spiritual people for its doing; and the measure of their spirituality will determine the measure of their value to the Lord. Because this is so, in God's mind the servant is more than the work. If we are going to come truly into the hands of God for His purpose, then we shall be dealt with by Him in such a way as to continually increase our spiritual measure. Not our interest in Christian work; our enthusiasms, ambitions, energies, or abilities; not our academic qualifications, or anything that we are in ourselves, but simply our spiritual life is the basis of the beginning and growth of our service to God. Even the work, when we are in it, is used by Him to increase our spiritual measure. Any Christian work which does not have the effect of adding to the measure of Christ in the worker is either not the true Divine service, or is itself working to his or her condemnation and injury.

The Apostle's word, "not a novice" (1 Timothy 3 6), as to "overseers" would - if applied to all taking responsibility in the things of God - correct must that is weak and painful in organized Christian work. The lack of an essential measure of maturity has resulted in tragedy in many lives under strain, and many defeats in the work. Too often the devil has either weakened or destroyed the work and the worker by making the activities too heavy and exacting for the spiritual life to measure up. It is not truths stated, ideas set forth, doctrines preached, etc.' but the spiritual life, power, and measure behind it all that settles its real value and fruitfulness.

Again, because this is true, there is no end to spiritual growth in this life. We are really only getting to a position to be of some value, because of experience and understanding, when we are taken away. This would make life an enigma and something of a mockery were it not that the greater measure and nature of our service was to be afterward when and where "His servants shall serve Him. And they shall see His face."

The training must be above all things that which will produce spiritual men and women. Lectures on the Bible, and analysis of its books, will never make a true servant of Christ. The need is for a spiritual knowledge of the Word of God; it must be spiritually taught and apprehended. That which lies behind the letter as to the Divine mind must be seen. The teaching and study of the Scriptures must have immediate spiritual effect in the life of those concerned. The Word of God will only profit in so far as it comes to us in spiritual power.

There must be life as in a spiritual family, so that all the lessons of forbearance, patience and cooperation are learned. The Cross must be known in the numerous and frequent occasions when the flesh in ourselves and in others rises because of human failures and faults. The great value of fellowship has to be learned in the testing conditions of life at close quarters over a sufficient period.

The training of workers should be in close relationship with church life as constituted and formed on the true organic basis of the Body of Christ. Not just a preaching place, or one where meetings are held and attended; but where there is true corporate life and mutuality in building up. In such, and out from such corporate life, ministry and service should be developed; not just technicians from an institute. No one should really be allowed to go out into whole time Christian service who has not had a true church training and learned the meaning and value of corporate life.

~T. Austin-Sparks~