Called Chosen Faithful

                                                                       

Gen 12:1  Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee:

Gen 12:2  And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:

The call of God contains both grace and truth. 

Truth is the separating instrument. "Get thee out." Grace is the promise. "I will bless and make a blessing." Man often grasps at the grace, the "I will bless" of God, and fails to comply with the demand thereof - "Get thee out."

Now this does not only apply in the matter of our salvation in its first steps, but it comes in new revelations and calls at different times in the Christian life. The call of God to some fuller and higher acceptance of truth and ministry; of testimony and witness; of surrender and experience, will undoubtedly come by one or another of the Divine forms of visitation to such as the Lord wishes to lead in grace. This will be timed, definite, and challenging.

A messenger may come as out from nowhere; the nowhere of reputation, recognition, worldly fame or honor. He will deliver a message, only staying long enough to leave its essential implications with those who hear. Then, having passed on, things can never be the same for them again.

The "call" has sounded. The crisis has been precipitated.

The issue is between the life which has been with its limitations known or unrecognized, and that which God offers. But, as usually is the case, this truth is going to call for a "getting out."

Getting out, it may be, of a certain popularity, a comparative easy going. There may be a risking of reputation, a loss of prestige, a disfavor among men, a being labeled "singular," "peculiar," "extreme," "unsafe."

It may mean a head-on impact of all the prejudice, tradition, and disfavor of the religious world. It may involve exclusion, ostracism, and suspicion.

These are the accompaniments of all calls of God to advance with Him beyond accepted standards.

This is the cost of path-finding for souls.

This is the price to be paid for the higher serviceableness to God and men.

~T. Austin Sparks~

Abandoned

                                                     

Utterly abandoned to the Holy Ghost!
Seeking all His fullness, whatever the cost;
 
Cutting all the moorings, launching in the deep
Of His mighty power—strong to save and keep.
Utterly abandoned to the Holy Ghost!
 
Oh! The sinking, sinking, until self is lost! Until the emptied vessel lies broken at His feet; Waiting till His filling shall make the work complete.

Utterly abandoned to the will of God; Seeking for no other path than my Master trod; Leaving ease and pleasure, making Him my choice, Waiting choice,Waiting for His guidance, listening for His voice.
 
Utterly abandoned! No will of my own; For time and for eternity, His, and His alone; All my plans and purposes lost in His sweet will, Having nothing, yet in Him all things possessing still.
 
Utterly abandoned! It’s so sweet to be Captive in His bonds of love, yet wondrously free; Free from sin’s entanglements, free from doubt and fear, Free from every worry, burden, grief, or care.
 
Utterly abandoned! Oh, the rest is sweet, As I tarry, waiting, at His blessed feet; Waiting for the coming of the Guest divine, Who my inmost being will perfectly refine.
 
Lo! He comes and fills me, Holy Spirit sweet!
I, in Him, am satisfied! I, in Him, complete!
 
And the light within my soul will nevermore grow dim While I keep my covenant abandoned unto Him! 

~Unknown~

The TERROR Of THE LORD

I used to say, "Don't come forward to be saved just because you are afraid of hell. Just come in simple faith." But I was wrong. The apostle Paul said, "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men"(2 Corinthians 5:11). There is a godly fear that leads to repentance.

It is true that hell was prepared for the devil and his angels. It is also true that Christians are saved by unmerited grace, and that faith in Christ is the believer's security.

With God’s help, I have once and for all dropped out of the fatal race of carnality and worldly-mindedness. I have quit the competition race! I no longer run in flesh-motivated, ego-tripping, man-pleasing races.

I want to do more than simply give up mental attachment to things, houses, cars, lands, possessions. I want the power and grace to curb my appetites, to lay aside all the junk, to sell what I don't need, to quit buying and building and acquiring unneeded things, and to get my eyes so focused on Christ and eternity, the things of this world will lose their hold on me, and materialism will no longer be my master.

Beloved, if this message does not sit well with you, if it angers or upsets you even in the slightest, perhaps you should do what I have been doing lately. Get shut in with God, day after day, and ask the Holy Spirit to turn God's holy searchlight on your soul. Get deadly honest with God. You will soon discover, as I have, how much time you have wasted, how many foolish lusts and wants have crippled you, and you will fall on your face before holy God and confess the coldness and emptiness in your heart.

If you do this with an honest heart, you will begin to thank God for pricking your conscience and stirring you to run a different race.

Saints of God, very soon our Lord is coming in clouds of glory to catch up His bride—a bride without spot or wrinkle. A bride purged of covetousness, pride and worldly ambition.

Shall we spend our final hours on earth putting money in bags with holes in them? No thanks! I'm just passing through. I want no more roots to hold me down. Thank God for the good things He has given me—my family, a nice house, modern transportation—but daily I now prepare my heart to walk away from it all to be embraced in the Savior's arms!

~David Wilkerson~
 

GOD Has His Time

Yet it is true that God has His time. 

There is a fullness of the time in respect of every Divine movement, and we cannot take things out of God's time. 

Perhaps we have learned that.

We cannot precipitate things, we cannot hurry God, we cannot bring things about for which the time is not ripe.

This knowledge is with the Lord, and He would bring us in spirit into oneness with Him on that point, to be one with Him in His time, that when His time does come He has us ready to His hand as those through whom He can move.

Whatever be the purpose that is bound up with His time, the Lord must have an instrument through which He may move to its accomplishment. 

And when the Lord's time comes how we know it in our hearts! 

I think we all know something about this. Oh, how we have cried, and groaned, and agonized, and striven, and done all that we could do to get God to do certain things; but His time had not come.

We have been tested in faith, and we have come at length to the place where we definitely and strongly stand with God for that thing and hold on, and then God's time comes, and we know in our hearts that the time has come, and in a wonderful way it just happens.

All that it has cost of prayer and anguish would perhaps lead us to expect that, when it happens, the world will know all about it; but it just happens, and you hardly recognize from the outward indications that the thing has come about.

God's time came, and it was so easy; it just transpired.  

But we can never say - we are forbidden to say that our holding on to the Lord, our prayer, our standing with Him, our getting through on that matter was unnecessary; that it would have happened in the appointment of God at His time, whether we agonized or not.

You dare not take that position over anything in the way of God. 

Isaac may have been pre-determined before ever there was a world, and yet Abram's faith was the essential factor to the bringing in of Isaac.

The whole Word of God bears down upon that, that God Himself demands the co-operating faith of His own people, even to bring through the works which were foreordained.

~T. Austin Sparks~

A Question of Measure

If it is a question of the value of 'bread', then those who are going to be 'bread', that is, food, for the people of God, are going to have very drastic handling by the Lord.

If you feel the Lord is handling you in that way, bruising, hammering, using the flail on you, I say it to you emphatically, that is a hopeful sign. 

The Lord is meaning something more of value in your life for others. 

It is 'bread' corn that is bruised.

Many young Christians do not understand when we speak to the Lord's more mature people about the difficulties and the sufferings of the Christian life.

They think that we are a bit morbid, and making the Christian life something complicated and hard.

To any such young Christians I would say: If you are the Lord's, the Lord will deal with you appropriately to where you are spiritually. 

He will not be too hard on you; He may be very gentle with you, He may just correct you with the rod, quite lightly, because so far you are just in that category of the 'fitches' and the 'cummin'.

But remember, it may not always be like that.

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.

So, if He really does turn His cart-wheel upon us, if the hoofs of the horses stamp upon us, if the flail gets to work, it is because He is looking upon us as bread-corn, something by which He is going to serve Himself in the interest of others. 

~T. Austin Sparks~

Dealing With Doubt

If you do not deal with your doubts, you will be given over to a spirit of murmuring and complaining. You will live that way and die that way. Your doubts cannot simply be suppressed, they must be pulled out by the roots.

Look at Israel just three days after their deliverance from Egypt. They had been singing, shaking their tambourines and testifying to the power and strength of a mighty God, boasting that He was leading and protecting them. Then they arrived at Marah, which means "waters of bitterness." This was to be testing place for them.

God just keeps allowing crisis after crisis until we finally get the lesson. If we keep refusing to learn it, a time comes when He gives us over to our own bitterness and murmuring. "And they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water. . . . And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?" (Exodus 15:22, 24).

On Sunday, the Israelites were having a great time—singing, dancing and praising. Then Wednesday came and they were in trouble. Another crisis—and they were falling apart!

How could a people lose their confidence so quickly? Because they never had any. They never had that foundation built under them. So again they failed the test. They had learned absolutely nothing from their previous crisis and again they missed an opportunity to shine forth the greatness of their God.

From that day on, Israel was beyond learning anything from God. They even began to take His goodness for granted. They had no food, so He sent them manna from heaven. He dropped quails out of the sky, piling them three feet high outside the camp. But not a word of thanksgiving was heard! Instead, the people turned to greed, hoarding all that God gave them. Israel became stiff-necked!

Oh, what a shame it is to go from crisis to crisis and learn nothing in the process. It carries with it a curse that you will be given over to a spirit of murmuring.

~David Wilkerson~

Call On His Name And He Will Deliver!

Joel 2:32  And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the LORD hath said, and in the remnant whom the LORD shall call.
 
So why don’t I call on His name?

Why do I run to this person or that person, when God is so near and will hear my faintest call?

Why do I sit down to plot my own course and make my own plans? 

Why don’t I immediately place myself and my burden on the Lord?
 
Straight ahead is the best way to run, so why don’t I run directly to the living God?

Instead, I look in vain for deliverance everywhere else, but with God I will find it.

With Him I have His royal promise:“ [I] will be saved.”

And with Him I never need to ask if I may call on Him or not, for the word “everyone” is all encompassing. It includes me and means anybody and everybody who calls upon His name.   

Therefore I will trust in this verse and will immediately call on the glorious Lord who has made such a great promise.
 
My situation is urgent, and I cannot see how I will ever be delivered.

Yet this is not my concern, for He who made the promise will find a way to keep it. 

My part is simply to obey His commands,not to direct His ways.

I am His servant, not His advisor.
 
I call upon Him and He will deliver me. 

Charles H. Spurgeon

Nature Of Light~As To Character~Disinfection

                                                                                

Another thing about light is that it combats disease. 

We know that physically, do we not? We send people with certain diseases to the country, where all is sunny and light.

We have learned to expose our wounds to the sun for their healing.

The light is healing; light is purifying; disease cannot abide the light.

Now, come back again to the City. It is said: the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations (Rev. 22:2c). Disease cannot abide this light that is in the City.  

The light deals with everything that is working corruption: it destroys it, and repairs the damage.

I am thinking especially now of the more recent discoveries and uses of light in healing. I remember how it began.

In the first world war, I had a great deal to do with wounded soldiers - thousands of terribly mangled bodies, torn by shell; and it was in that war, when it was so difficult to cope with this terrible situation, that the method of healing, and even of making good the loss of flesh, repairing the destroyed tissues - the method was adopted of just putting the wounded out in the sun, exposing them to the sun.

It was marvellous what the sun did.  
It built up the bodies; it made good the destroyed tissues, it healed in a wonderful way. 

That was the introduction of a new technique which has now, of course, been resolved into the various kinds of ray for healing.

Light does it: it heals; it repairs; it destroys disease.
~T. Austin Sparks~