Eze 36:25 Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.
What an exceeding joy is this!
He who has purified us with the blood of Jesus
will also cleanse us by the water of the Holy Spirit.
God hath said it,
and so it must be, "Ye shall be clean."
LORD, we feel and mourn our
uncleanness, and it is cheering to be assured by Thine own mouth that we
shall be clean.
Oh, that Thou wouldst make a speedy work of it!
He will
deliver us from our worst sins...
The uprisings of unbelief and the
deceitful lusts which war against the soul, the vile thoughts of pride,
and the suggestions of Satan to blaspheme the sacred name-all these
shall be so purged away as never to return.
He will also cleanse us from
all our idols, whether of gold or of clay...
Our impure loves and our
excessive love of that which in itself is pure.
That which we have
idolized shall either be broken from us or we shall be broken off from
it.
It is God who speaks of what He Himself will do.
Therefore is this
word established and sure, and we may boldly look for that which it
guarantees to us.
Cleansing is a covenant blessing, and the covenant is
ordered in all things and sure.~Charles
~Charles Spurgeon~
Eph 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
Eph 2:5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
Eph 2:6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
This is our rightful place...“seated with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,” yet seated and still.
But how few of us actually experience this!
In fact, most of us believe it is impossible to sit still “in the heavenly realms” while living our
everyday life in a world so full of turmoil.
Oh, we believe it may be possible to visit these “heavenly realms”on Sundays or now and then during times of great spiritual emphasis and praise,but to actually be “seated” there all day, every day, is a completely different matter.
Yet it is clear from the Scriptures that it is meant not only for Sundays but for weekdays as well.
A quiet spirit is of priceless value when performing outward activities.
Nothing so greatly hinders the work of God’s unseen spiritual forces, upon which our success in everything truly depends, as the spirit of unrest and anxiety.
There is tremendous power in stillness.
A great believer once said,“All things come to him who knows how to trust and to be silent.”
This fact is rich with meaning, and a true understanding of it would greatly change our ways of working.
Instead of continuing our restless striving,we would “sit down”inwardly before the Lord, allowing the divine forces of His Spirit to silently work out the means to accomplish our goals and aspirations.
You may not see or feel the inner workings of His silent power, but rest assured it is always mightily at work.
And it will work for you, if you will only quiet your spirit enough to be carried along by the current of its power.
~Hannah Whitall Smith~
There is a point of rest At the great center of the cyclone’s force, A silence at its secret source;
A little child might slumber undisturbed, Without the ruffle of one fair curl, In that strange, central calm, amid the mighty whirl.
Make it your business to learn to be peaceful and safe in God through every situation.
Righteousness is often costly to the man who keeps to it at all
hazards, but in the end it will bear its own expenses and return an
infinite profit.
A holy life is like sowing seed: much is going out, and
apparently it is buried in the soil, never to be gathered up again.
We
are mistaken when we look for an immediate harvest; but the error is
very natural, for it seems impossible to bury light.
Yet light is
"sown," says the text.
It lies latent: none can see it; it is sown.
We
are quite sure that it must one day manifest itself.
Full sure are we
that the LORD has set a harvest for the sower of light, and they shall
reap it, each man for himself.
Then shall come their gladness.
Sheaves
of joy for seeds of light.
Their heart was upright before the LORD,
though men gave them no credit for it, but even censured them...
They were
righteous, though those about them denounced them as censorious.
They
had to wait, as husbandmen wait for the precious fruits of the earth:...
But the light was sown for them, and gladness was being prepared on
their behalf by the LORD of the harvest.
Courage, brothers!
We need not be in a hurry.
Let us in patience possess our souls, for soon shall our
souls possess light and gladness.
~Charles Spurgeon~
When, therefore, there
is the purest testimony, the fullest expression of what
is of God, the heavenly over against the earthly, the
spiritual over against the carnal or the natural, the
enemy gives a turn to things, a twist to things, and lays
the responsibility at the door of a spiritual and a
heavenly ministry.
He says: 'You are the cause of all the
trouble - you are the troubler!'
But no. The trouble lies
deeper than that, and in another realm.
The truth is,
there is something here that, in its very nature, MUST
create trouble, MUST be a source of trouble, so
long as God's known will, His revealed mind, is being
violated; while the full expression of God's purpose is
being withstood.
To bring in something that stands for
that, there is going to be trouble.
It is a costly thing to
have seen God's full purpose and thought concerning His
people.
It is always a costly thing.
The Lord Jesus set a
very vivid example and object lesson of this truth right
in the foreground, in the incident of the man born blind
(John 9).
There is no doubt that the Lord intended that
man to represent Israel and Israel's condition at the
time.
He gave that man sight - and what happened to the
man?
They cast him out, that is all; they
cast him out, they excommunicated him (v. 34).
That is an
object lesson, an instance of this very thing.
If eyes have been
opened; if, in any sense - not officially - you have
become a 'seer' - one who sees: it is going to cost you a
lot, it will involve you in a lot of trouble.
This matter
of 'seeing' does that.
It was Elijah the SEER, over
against the BLINDNESS of Israel.
It is a costly
thing to be a spiritual man or a spiritual woman in this
universe.
It is a costly thing, yes, very costly, to hold
to a heavenly and spiritual position.
It is a costly
thing to hold for Christ's full place; it involves you in
trouble.
It is a costly thing to have light - if it is
true light, God-given light.
It is a costly thing to have
life.
But remember, it is
here, in this, that the power is resident.
It is with
this that God is found ultimately to be committed.
You
know the story again.
God will have no compromise with
the thing that lies behind.
Take the prophets of Baal!
They were all slain.
There is no compromise with that
spiritual thing.
But God is shown as to where He stands,
to what He is committed, and where the power is.
For I suppose that, if
Elijah represents one thing more than another, he does
represent spiritual power.
When we think of spiritual
power we always refer to Elijah - 'in the power of
Elijah'.
It is proverbial. Why?
Not because of anything
that he was in himself; no, not because of the man.
He
was a man in touch with the Throne; he was a man who had
seen; a man who was committed, of whom it was true that
he was "very jealous for the Lord".
God was
with Elijah.
John came 'in the power
of Elijah' (Luke 1:17); he was the Elijah of his time.
The Lord Jesus said of him: "If ye are willing to
receive it, this is Elijah" (Matt. 11:14), though
John himself denied this (John 1:21).
Elijah is a sort of
phantom in a certain realm.
Poor Herod was scared of his
life - he began to see things, to get strange ideas -
when he heard about Jesus: some suggested to him that
this was Elijah returned to life, but he thought it was
John the Baptist risen from the dead (Matt. 14:2; Mark
6:14-16).
The fellow just lost his mental grasp of
things.
This Elijah man counts for something.
Power is
with him; the verdict is with him.
And - let there be no
mistake about it - in the end it will be found that God IS
committed to that which is utterly committed to Him for
His full purposes.
It is costly; it causes much trouble; BUT
- the issue is with Him, and He will look after His own
interests.
~T. Austin Sparks~
Heb 12:7 If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
Affliction comes to us all...
Not to make us sad-but sober;
Not to make us sorry-but to make us wise;
Not to impoverish us-but to enrich us!
We are always in the forge-or on the anvil.
By trials, God is shaping us for nobler things.
No physician ever weighed out medicine to his patients with half so
much care and exactness, as God weighs out every trial to us.
Not one grain too much, does He
ever permit to be put in the scale!
The troubles and worries of life may be as stumbling blocks in our
way-or we may make them stepping-stones to a nobler character and
to Heaven.
Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for
better things!
Heb 12:10 For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.
Heb 12:11 Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
~Henry
Ward Beecher, 1813-1887~
