Something More Than Bible Study (and more)

Something More Than Bible Study (and more)

I expect the experience of many of you has been similar to my own. You see, for some years at the beginning of my ministry, I was occupied with Bible teaching. I took all the books of the Bible, analyzed them, and put the outline on a blackboard. By that method I got to know what was written in the Bible. Well, of course, that is of some value, for it is a good thing to know what is in the Bible,but after some years of doing that kind of work, God took me personally in hand and through deep, deep experience, He brought me to know the meaning of the Bible. Well,I could tell you that the Gospel by John has mainly to do with life, and I took my colored pencil and put a colored line under every occurrence of the word "life." This matter of eternal life was a wonderful thing - in the Gospel of John. Then the Lord began to work in my life in such a way that the only thing I needed was divine life. Spiritually I came into a situation of death. In my ministry I came into a situation of death, and physically, too, and it was then that this whole question of life became a very serious matter for me. My whole future, spiritually, physically, and in ministry, depended upon whether God gave me new spiritual life. And through that deep experience the Gospel to John was no longer in a book. It got inside me. Divine life moved from the position of teaching in the Bible to become a reality in myself. If that were not true, I should not be talking to you now.

And so I could go on. I could have given quite a good analysis and outline of the Letter to the Ephesians,and could tell you on a blackboard all that that Letter has to say. It is the great Letter about the Church as the Body of Christ. Well, I thought. I know about that. And then God took me in hand, and through a very deep experience He brought me to see the real heavenly nature of the Body of Christ, and all this other idea of the Church seemed to me to be like nonsense. Putting up buildings and calling them "The Church"; going to services and saying, "I am going to Church." That whole system became empty. I had come to see that the Church is, after all, only an earthly expression of the heavenly Lord Jesus.

Now, I did not start out to speak about the Church, but I am just emphasizing one thing: We only come into spiritual reality through spiritual experience, and it is in experience that we come to know what Christ is.

~T. Austin-Sparks~
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Maintaining the Testimony of Jesus

We are here as the Lord's vessel - a part of it - that is left here on this earth while our Lord is away, in order to maintain His testimony, or that He may maintain His testimony, here in this world until He returns. That is our wonderful calling, but that is our great responsibility. This ought to come upon us with great force. You and I, taking it individually, are entrusted with no lesser thing than the maintaining of the testimony of Jesus on this earth in His absence. That is our calling, that is our business, that is our responsibility; but, blessed be God! that is provided for abundantly by Him in the gift of the Holy Spirit.

~T. Austin-Sparks~
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Turning Difficulties to Account

The completing of the House of God will be no less fraught with difficulty and obstruction than the commencement, but where the Holy Spirit is absolute Lord, these difficulties will be proved rather complementary than otherwise. The "many adversaries" will only be sovereignly used to further rather than arrest the consummation of "the eternal purpose."

~T. Austin-Sparks~