He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
(Galatians 3:5).
Paul says that God measures out the Holy Ghost to us and He does so Not according to our Works, But according to our Faith in Him.
Jesus is the only person who ever had the Holy Spirit without measure. Yet
there have been many men and women throughout history who were given a great measure of the Spirit. Such believers have always known they do not have to strive to weep over a lost, broken world, because the Holy Ghost does the
weeping in them.
Our part is to pray: "Holy Ghost, You know everyone in my circle of influence
who is under conviction because You are the one who convicts them. You see every tear that falls in the quiet of the night and You know everyone who is desperate and crying for help. I am Your instrument. Fill me with Your burden and LEAD ME to Those YOU have Prepared."
God wants to EMPOWER US for One Reason — to get us into the streets, filled
with His Word and led by His Spirit. He wants us to be able to speak a piercing, convicting word that has the unmistakable Fire of the Spirit!
Does something stir in your soul over the lost? Are you burdened for those in your circle of influence? Or Do YOU Focus Endlessly on Your OWN Needs?
If you don't know Christ's heart and have His burden, you can never expect to be used of Him.
For many Christians, the work of eternity may not be in a faraway land but will
center on family, friends and coworkers. The requirements, however, are just the same. To reach the lost we must ask the Lord to move on them with conviction and to prepare our hearts with a timely word.
Fast and pray and then ask the Holy Spirit to lead you to those He has
convicted and prepared to hear His Word. Then trust in His guidance and power to do the miraculous!
~David Wilkerson~
Now take Jonathan. Even
he can be involved at last in the awful tragedy of
compromise. It is one of the saddest stories. We all want
to shed tears when we read David's lament over Jonathan.
We remember the beginnings of the relationship between
David and Jonathan, how their souls were knit together.
Their story is always being taken as a kind of classic
and model of friendship
And yet even there...there were
divided loyalties in the case of Jonathan - loyalty to
the realm of nature, to his father after the flesh,
straining against his loyalty to David, and causing him
to be a divided personality.
When he is with his father,
his heart is with David. When he is with David, he feels
the pull of duty to his father. He is a divided man.
What
a problem divided loyalties present!
Jonathan must have
known all about that Amalek episode and what Samuel did;
that in the Divine intent the kingdom was then taken from
Saul and passed to David; that the Lord forsook Saul and
was no longer with him.
He may have known of the
consultation with the witch, the touching of that realm
forbidden so strongly by the Lord. And yet, on natural
grounds of some kind, Jonathan did not break with that
whole system of things.
What a different story might have
been told if he had taken sides wholly with David and
been David's right hand man for the kingdom! But this
divided loyalty involved him in the ultimate tragedy.
And
even good people who have been blessed of the Lord, to
whom He has shown His favour and whom He has used very
greatly, may in the end be involved in spiritual tragedy
if for some reason compromise has entered in.
It may have
come in because of policy. What a snare policy is! We
tell ourselves we must be very careful that we do not do
this or that because it may have such and such a result.
It is all policy and diplomacy. 'We must be careful to
avoid...what?
Just what we seek to avoid betrays the
whole case. Are we afraid of losing prestige with men,
support, friends, position, opportunity? Do these things
weigh with us as over against implicit obedience to the
Lord?
If so, there is divided loyalty; and if we allow
it, we may at the end pass into terrible tragedy; the
tragedy that always follows compromise.
~T. Austin Sparks~
