Part 4
From: The On-High Calling - Chapter 6 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/000984.html
April 11
The fire will test the quality of each person‟s work.
(1 Corinthians 3:13 NIV)
I have no doubt that you love the Lord. I am not raising any question about that. But, I do say again, we are involved in a great system which is a very complicated thing, and a great deal of it is not of the Lord. It is something that man has brought in. Man has put his hand upon the things of the Lord, and man has made things according to his own mind, and therefore a great deal has come in which is of man and not of the Lord. And when we say that, we are not only thinking of Christianity in general, we are thinking of ourselves. This is true of ourselves. We have all come into something called Christianity, and we have all taken on something of Christianity, and there may be a great deal that we have to get rid of, and come back to the simple fundamental reality. And the fundamental reality of all realities is the presence of the Lord. We have got to know that the Lord is with us, and that the Lord is with us in all that we do, that this did not originate in our mind. It did not originate in our will, it did not
originate in our emotion. It did not come from our soul, this thing has come from the Lord in every detail, like the tabernacle. Just like Jesus Christ, in every detail it has to come to us from God.
That ought to send us back to our knees – to go through all our work. It may be necessary for us, from time to time, to stand back and ask the Lord about all that we are doing. "Is this out from God, or is it something out from ourselves? Is this way of doing things the mind of God, or is it our mind? Is the Lord in this, or have we come into it?" You see, that is a great deciding matter. Make no mistake about it! Everything that is only of man is going to perish. Sooner or later it will be shaken. Every man‟s work shall be tried in the fire, says the Word of God.
From: "That They May All Be One, Even As We Are One" - Meeting 15 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/001082.html
April 12
When He... was pleased to reveal His Son to me... I did not immediately consult with anyone. (Galatians 1:15,16 ESV)
I do not know what the apostles might have said if Paul had gone to see them, but seeing that they had not had the revelation that he had had and they had not the call that he had (theirs was not an apostleship to the Gentiles), they might have counseled moderation and cautiousness. They might have told Paul to consider whether he had been deceived or misled, because nothing like this had happened before....
Now, while fellowship is always a good thing, and experience should always be used as far as available, when it is a matter of the Lord speaking to our hearts and making it perfectly clear what His way is for us, we must be very careful that we do not submit that to influences that would in any way limit our response and interfere with our obedience. There must be a detachment from all rule that would injure a heavenly revelation. If others are really under the government of the Spirit they will help, but we must be careful that consultation with flesh is not made in the presence of a heavenly vision. We may consult with tradition and ask what the common acceptance is.
Common acceptance will hold you back. The Lord is against mere freelancers in every way, His order is fellowship in the Body; nevertheless if we submit to any kind of natural influence concerning what the Lord has been saying to us, and take counsel or take our direction from governing elements of man or things, we shall come under arrest and probably be disobedient to the heavenly vision. We know of lives that have been marred in this way. If there is fellowship in the things of the Lord, let us use it, but let us be quite sure that we do not take things outside and submit them to those influences which are not in the Light, not in the Life, and not
in the good of heavenly things, and take our direction from something less than that which is wholly under the government of the Holy Spirit.
From: That Which Was From The Beginning - Chapter 3 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002955.html
April 13
The Lord disciplines the one He loves, and He chastens everyone He
accepts as His son. (Hebrews 12:6 NIV)
What is the purpose of sonship? It is to bring us into a place of spiritual responsibility. God never puts responsibilities upon "official people," but upon sons. Therefore He has to train us as children in order to develop sonship in us, to bring us there where we can take responsibilities for God. He seeks to bring us to a state of spiritual maturity, to full growth. This cannot be done in some Bible school, or by putting people "into the ministry." God never works on an official side. Oh yes, God does take us into His school. He can also take us into His school in some training institute. And it is a blessed thing if He does it.
But God‟s school is something very different from mere scholarly activity. His Word says: "My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art reproved of Him; for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives." Note this word "whom He receives." The exact meaning in the Greek is not "receives," but "whom He positions" or places. It is a matter of position. God is seeking to develop a state in us where He can trust us. When God is dealing with us, there is behind it a wonderful assurance that He is going to put His trust in us. He is bringing us into a position of trust. We do not just want to be servants, bits of a machine, but sons who have become one with the Father, and in whose hands He can put spiritual responsibilities. When we truly recognize this, we begin to understand why God is dealing with us as He does. But because God is in it we know that the end is sure. He will bring His children through.
From: Christ Our All - Chapter 9 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002941.html
April 14
My God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in
glory in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19 ESV)
God has assumed the responsibility of a Father, and has taken up those responsibilities to meet them in and through His Son. The
enlargement of that in Christian utterance is found in Philippians 4:19. This means Christ recognized, Christ known, God in Christ, and that on the ground of our utter separation unto Him. But note: it is God‟s gift. He says that it was not Moses that gave the manna in the wilderness, but His Father. Then it is not the result of man‟s labors, it is the issue of God‟s grace. Are you laboring for spiritual growth? How we have striven and strained to increase our spiritual measure and our spiritual stature. What a burden we have taken upon us in relation to the maintenance of our own spiritual life! We have almost assumed the whole responsibility for our spiritual life, and made it as though it depended upon our labors in prayer, our labors in the Word of God, our labors in the Lord‟s service, our effort, our stress.
No one will think that we have made little of prayer or the Word. No one will think that we have said you must have no care whatever for your spiritual life, but there is such a difference between assuming responsibility for ourselves and recognizing that God has assumed that responsibility. And because God has assumed the responsibility we should co-operate with God. There is all the difference between trying to work for our justification, and working because we are justified; between trying to work for our perfection, and working because our perfection is secured in Christ. The difference is not merely technical, it is practical, and of immense value.
Sometimes it is necessary for the Lord to say to us: "Look here, you are making far too much of your own praying, far too much of your own business in the Scriptures, you are unconsciously coming to think that everything depends upon how much and how fervently you pray." And then you go out and talk to other people about your prayer life as a kind of setting up against their own. You do not mean it, but the implication is that this is what accounts for your growth, and it is going to count for other people‟s growth. That must not be a cause but a result. "The cause, the secret, the spring of everything is Myself, and sometimes you will just have to cease straining, and rest back in Me, in loving trust. Learn to do that a little more, and then you will pray better, and I shall be able to do something more!"
From: Knowing God in Christ - Chapter 2 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/003118.html
April 15
Our sufficiency is from God. (2 Corinthians 3:5)
We go through times of trial and test under the hand of God, and it is so easy to get into that frame of mind which says in effect, "The Lord does not want us, He need not have us!" We let everything go, we do not care about anything; we have gone down under our trials and we are rendered useless. I do not believe the Lord ever comes to a person like that to take
them up. Elijah, dispirited, fled to the wilderness, and to a cave in the mountains; but he had to get somewhere else before the Lord could do anything with him. "What doest thou here, Elijah?" (1 Kings 19:9). The Lord never comes to a man and recommissions him when he is in despair. "God shall forgive thee all but thy despair" (F. W. H. Myers, "St. Paul") – because despair is lost faith in God, and God can never do anything with one who has lost faith.... A great deal is made of the natural side of many of the Lord‟s servants, and usually with tragic results. A lot is made of Paul. "What a great man Paul was naturally, what intellect he had, what training, what tremendous abilities!" That may all be true, but ask Paul what value it was to him when he was right up against a spiritual situation. He will cry, "Who is sufficient for these things?" "Our sufficiency is from God" (2 Cor. 2:16; 3:5). Paul was taken through experiences where he, like Moses, despaired of life. He said, "We... had the sentence of death within ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead" (2 Cor. 1:9).
From: Prophetic Ministry - Chapter 2 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/001004.html
April 16
The Spirit alone gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing.
(John 6:63 NLT)
It is one thing to have a conception or apprehension of the purpose of God, and to be given up to it, but it is an extra thing to know how God would realize His purpose. It is still another thing to know the means He would employ. There are many who have a true conception of what God‟s purpose is, but the means which they employ are not God‟s means, the way in which they go to work is not His way, and therefore they find that the Lord does not support them. They may be in a true direction, but being out of fellowship with the method or means they are compelled to take responsibility for the work themselves, and to find the resources. Thus they find themselves ofttimes exhausted, brought to a standstill, and having to resort to all kinds of methods and means to raise the resource to carry on God‟s work, because they are not in the real enjoyment of His Own support. The work of God becomes a burden upon their shoulders, and the Lord cannot order it otherwise because there is not the fullest fellowship and sympathy between them and His ways, His methods, His means, His times, and the details of His purpose.
Now, in the case of the Lord Jesus it was quite the contrary. In the details He was in secret fellowship with the Father. With Him this represented a detailed obedience unto one comprehensive purpose. The only explanation needed by Him in any given matter was simply that of knowing that the Father willed it, and without any further word He did it.
That was the basis of His relationship. Never do we trace in Him a sign of waiting to question why a thing should be done in a certain way, or at a certain time and not another, or why certain means should be employed and not others. It was enough that the Father willed it. The explanation came in the justification and vindication that followed. The doing of the will of God was a matter of that obedience which never moves out from self but always out from the Father. As that held good in His case the spiritual resources of sustenance, maintenance, strength, and energy were supplied.
From: The Risen Lord and the Things Which Cannot be Shaken - Chapter 7 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002222.html
April 17
He opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.
(Luke 24:45 NIV)
As we contemplate the state of things in the world today, we are very deeply impressed and oppressed with the prevailing malady of spiritual blindness. It is the root malady of the time. We should not be far wrong if we said that most, if not all, of the troubles from which the world is suffering, are traceable to that root, namely, blindness. The masses are blind; there is no doubt about that. In a day which is supposed to be a day of unequaled enlightenment, the masses are blind.... The leaders are blind, blind leaders of the blind. But in a very large measure, the same is true of the Lord‟s people. Speaking quite generally, Christians are today very blind. Every bit of new seeing is a work from heaven. It is not something done fully once for all.
It is possible for us to go on seeing and seeing, and yet more fully seeing, but with every fresh fragment of truth, this work, which is not in our power to do, has to be done. Spiritual Life is not only a miracle in its inception; it is a continuous miracle in this matter right on to the last.... We do not seek for new revelation, and we do not say or suggest or hint that you may have anything extra to the Word of God, but we do claim that there is a vast amount in the Word of God that we have never seen, which we may see. Surely everybody agrees with that: and it is just that – to see, and the more you see, really see, the more overwhelmed you feel about the whole thing, because you know that you have come to the borders of the land of far distances, lying far beyond a short lifetime‟s power of experience. The Lord make us all to be of those who have eyes opened.
From: Spiritual Sight - Chapter 1 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/001059.html
April 18
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons.
(Hebrews 12:7 NIV)
The Lord may get you off activities and shut you up to inactivity, and you go through an awful time and say the Lord has forsaken you, all has gone wrong. What really is it? Why, it is growing pains! Has it not proved to be growing pains? In the long run it was not all wrong, it was all right. You came to know the Lord whereas before your whole life was taken up with things. You have been shut up and you came to know the Lord inwardly and you have come to a state of spiritual efficiency which is so much greater that you can now meet the external situation. He has been misunderstood, but He was working unto your efficiency, exercising us unto efficiency. These, the growing pains, are terrible. You cannot help anyone who is suffering from growing pains, and you must stand aside and see them going through.
So through numerous and various directions this growth takes place by the painful exercise produced by the way the Lord is dealing with you. Chastening – a poor English word. It is child-training or discipline. Take the word disciple; one who comes into association with someone in order to learn, and the Disciples were chosen that they might be with Him in order to learn. That is discipline, learning. We do learn through suffering. Even the Lord Jesus was made "full grown" in this sense, complete, through suffering. We take the same way unto full growth. It is child training, discipline, learning by way of experience. That is chastening. Making us sons out of children, full grown men out of infants. I feel that we want to have more faith in the dealings of God with us along this line.
From: Maturity – The Lord's Desire For His People www.austin-sparks.net/english/003680.html
April 19
After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now
trying to become perfect by your own human effort?
(Galatians 3:3 NLT)
You know all that the Letter to the Galatians is about, and you know the two prominent words – Liberty – "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage" (Galatians 4:1 – A.V.) – and sonship. Not servanthood, nor slavery, but sonship; the liberty of sons. They are the two great words of that Letter, but what are the grave bands there in Galatia? They are the grave bands of tradition, of legalism, and all such things. You know, dear friends, it is very easy to get tied up with these grave clothes! The
persistent peril through the ages of Christianity is to crystallize itself into something set, something fixed. You have some light, some revelation, something of the immensity of truth, just a fragment of it, and it is not long before you begin to form that into a set system and make it the limit, saying that this is what people must believe, they must come within this horizon, and they must behave like this. It becomes a system again: "You must... you must not!" and there is no difference between that and the Old Testament "Thou shalt... thou shalt not!"
Christianity has fallen into that peril, and is continually doing it, circumscribing the great revelation, making Christ smaller than He is, crystallizing truth into something fixed and set: "This is how..." and the meaning of that is: "This is the ultimate." Now you notice that when the Spirit did come, as we have the record in the Book of the Acts, the one thing that these old Jewish disciples experienced was a marvelous emancipation from that bondage of Judaism; and how the Holy Spirit was working all along against any fixed barriers!
From: "Loose Him, and Let Him Go" www.austin-sparks.net/english/000522.html
April 20
I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink His blood, you cannot have eternal life within you.
(John 6:53 NLT)
Let us remember that this way is a way that is a constant offence to the flesh, to the natural man. The Jews strove with one another, saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?" But not only did Jews, the religious people in their religious self-satisfaction, strive together, but it is also written, "Many therefore of His disciples, when they heard this, said, This is a hard saying; who can hear it?"
Even disciples could not go on sometimes. When they came face to face with the implications of such a saying, they were no longer willing to be associated with Him on a basis of that kind. The flesh loves to have it in itself to be doing, to be laying the plans, arranging the programs, organizing the work, superintending it, and getting it going. The flesh revels in that, and when you come and say to that whole order of things, "The way of God is the way of utter dependence and faith, with the Holy Spirit in entire charge, and you must keep your hands off and be willing to do only what the Lord tells you and no more," (that which is meant by the declaration, "I can do nothing out from Myself") it is an offence to the natural man, even in religious matters.
We come up against that constantly, do we not? It is the difference between meeting together as they did at Antioch to pray things out and get
the Lord‟s witness as to His will, and having a committee meeting to discuss a proposal and make plans. If the natural man is not doing the whole thing, and arranging it, and ordering it, and running it all, he cannot think that progress can be made at all. Unless you come out with your plans, and announce your programs, and declare what you are doing, and present your statistics, the naturally minded Christian thinks that nothing is being done. It is possible to have wonderful things done without any of that kind of activity.
We cite such a thing purely as an illustration. Application can be extended in many directions, but this is just to help out the thought. The whole accomplishment of God in Christ is on the basis of Divine Life mediated through faith. That is another way of saying that Christ has to be the basis of everything in a spiritual way. This is an offence to the flesh, but a satisfaction to the Spirit.
From: The Risen Lord and the Things Which Cannot be Shaken - Chapter 7 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002222.html
April 21
You desire truth in the inner being. (Psalm 51:6)
In the course of our spiritual history God deals with us in everdeepening ways. Down, down, down, He goes, until He touches bottom to have things true at our very depth. He undercuts all our professions, doctrines, assumptions, pretensions, illusions, and customs.... There is no mere formalism about this; no mere Jewish ritual in this; no mere outward observance of rites and ceremonies in this! No! This has got to go right into the inmost being, in the inward parts. God works toward that. God is ever working toward the most inward parts. Do you recognize that? Do you understand what He is doing with us? Oh, He will meet us with blessing on a certain level, as we walk before Him, like the man in Psalm 1.
He will meet us with His gracious provision when we transgress and trespass and fail, and do wrong – He will meet us there in grace. But God is going to pursue this matter to the most inward place of our being, and register there His work of grace and redemption. The Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are characterized by this one feature – truth! And God desires and has set His heart upon having people who are partakers of the Divine nature, and so He is working ever more deeply toward this end: what is true of Himself shall be true of His children – those begotten of Him – that they should be true sons of God in this sense.
From: Truth In the Inward Parts www.austin-sparks.net/english/000496.html
April 22
Blessed is the one who is not offended by Me. (Matthew 11:6 ESV)
The Word of God does take account of the possibility of our being offended with Him. It does not say anywhere that that possibility should never arise and will never arise. The Lord has nowhere said that we shall never have any occasion for being offended with Him. He HAS indicated that there will be PLENTY of opportunity for so stumbling at Him, falling over Him, coming down because of Him – if you like: crashing because of Him. There will be plenty of occasion or opportunity for so doing. He has never said that it will never be so. It is as well for us to recognize that.
The Lord sent no word of rebuke to poor John the Baptist in the prison when he was perilously near to being offended with the Lord because of his situation. The Lord was not hard on John because of his question. He might, had He been another, have said, "But John, did you not point Me out as the Lamb of God? Did you not proclaim Me as the One, the Messiah? Haven‟t you preached about Me to multitudes? Have you not made the strongest declarations and affirmations as to what you believed about Me? And here you‟re asking a fundamental question about Me. John, what‟s gone wrong with you?" No, nothing like that. The Lord knows our frame, that we are dust. And the Lord, I‟m saying, takes account of this ever present possibility, in our weakness, of being offended with Him. But he does attach to this matter a particular blessedness if we don‟t crash over the Stumbling Block of His ways with us, "AND blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in Me."
From: Blessedness of the Unoffended www.austin-sparks.net/english/001230.html
April 23
Although He was weak when He was nailed to the cross, He now lives by the power of God. We are weak, just as Christ was. But you will see
that we will live by the power of God, just as Christ does.
(2 Corinthians 13:4 CEV)
One of the most damaging things in the realm of God‟s work, a thing which eventually leads to shame and confusion and much sorrow, is Natural Soul Force projected by strong-willed, determined, aggressive Christians who have not come to a spiritual state where they are able to discriminate between stubborn indomitableness, personal determination and resolution, and that which is altogether another thing: spiritual grace in endurance, perseverance, and Divine in-strengthening. The Lord has often to break the former to make place for the latter. Do not talk about Paul‟s
wonderful will to go through. Let Paul talk to you about the Lord‟s wonderful grace to continue.
Whenever a man or a woman really recognizing the truth that Calvary means the end of "I" commits himself or herself to the Lord to work it out, the flame of the sword will come round to the point where that "flesh" would seek to enter into the realm where the first Adam no longer has any standing. The features of a personal strength of will are hardness, coldness, death, resentment of interference, suspicion of rivals, intolerance of obstructers, detachment, independence, secretiveness, heat, etc. While spiritual strength is always marked by love, warmth, life, fellowship, openness, confidence, and trust in the Lord.... At the end, in the Revelation, the dragon, the whole power of Satan is overthrown by the Lamb. The Lamb is the synonym for weakness and yieldingness. Paul says of Christ that "He was crucified through weakness," and, he adds, "we also are weak with Him." Yes, but he also says, "by the Cross He triumphed." Triumphed through weakness!
From: "The Flame of a Sword" www.austin-sparks.net/english/002919.html
April 24
I don‟t have any silver or gold for you. But I‟ll give you what I have.
In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!
(Acts 3:6 NLT)
The members of the new heavenly Israel are people who have been delivered from self-interest into God‟s interest, who have been put on their spiritual feet by Jesus Christ and are walking in strength in the way of the Lord. Do you not think it is a very significant thing that the first miracle after the Day of Pentecost was the raising of an impotent man at the gate of the temple in Jerusalem? These are not just pretty stories put together to make an interesting book. God knows what He is doing, and when He makes the first miracle of the Christian era the raising of an impotent cripple, He is saying that the people of this new Israel are people who have been delivered from this impotence and put on their feet spiritually. There are a lot of Christian cripples about! They cannot get on their own feet, nor can other people put them there. You try to pick them up! They may take a step or two, and then down they go again. There are many like that, and you can spend your life trying to get them up on their feet. What is it that is eating the very life out of them? What is it that is making them such helpless cripples that they cannot walk? It is self-centeredness. Make no mistake about it, it is self in some form. It is self that wants to be taken notice of. It is self in the form of pride. This poor man was delivered because he knew his own helplessness and he believed what Jesus said. He believed on to Jesus Christ, which means that he believed out of himself.
Yes, that is the secret – that we shall turn from our miserable selves and cease to be occupied with them, saying once and for all: "I am done with you, wretched self. I throw myself on to Jesus Christ. I take the one great step of committal." Jesus never lets such a person down.
From: The On-High Calling - Chapter 2 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/000980.html
April 25
We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him. (1 John 5:20 ESV)
It is of the greatest importance for the Lord‟s children to recognize fully that, above all other things, His object is that they should know Him. This is the all-governing end of all His dealings with us. This is the greatest of all our needs.... Our minds are so often occupied with service and work; we think that doing things for the Lord is the chief object of life. We are concerned about our lifework, our ministry. We think of equipment for it in terms of study and knowledge of things. Soul-winning, or teaching believers, or setting people to work, are so much in the foreground. Bible study and knowledge of the Scriptures, with efficiency in the matter of leading in Christian service as the end in view, are matters of pressing importance with all. All well and good, for these are important matters; but, back of everything the Lord is more concerned about our knowing Him than about anything else. It is very possible to have a wonderful grasp of the Scriptures, a comprehensive and intimate familiarity with doctrine; to stand for cardinal verities of the faith; to be an unceasing worker in Christian service; to have a great devotion to the salvation of men, and yet, alas, to have a very inadequate and limited personal knowledge of God within. So often the Lord has to take away our work that we may discover Him. The ultimate value of everything is not the information which we give, not the soundness of our doctrine, not the amount of work that we do, not the measure of truth that we possess, but just the fact that we know the Lord in a deep and mighty way.
From: On Knowing The Lord www.austin-sparks.net/english/000415.html
April 26
There still exists, therefore, a full and complete rest
for the people of God. (Hebrews 4:9 Phillips)
I am sure it will sound to many of you like going a long way back and going out into a very broad realm when I say that we Christians are being
constantly confronted with and challenged by our Christianity. Many of us have not really entered into Christianity yet. What do I mean? Well, for one thing, the very door into true Christianity is the door of rest, the rest of faith. The very simple way in which the Lord put it in His appeal was – "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28). That was to a multitude, and those words are usually employed in Gospel messages to the unsaved. The meaning of the Lord in using those words is given to us here in the letter to the Hebrews, a very much deeper and fuller meaning than is generally recognized in the usage of the simple invitation "Come unto Me... and I will give you rest." There is something that we have to hear, to detect, in the statement – "There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God" (Heb. 4:9; A.S.V.).
You will not think me too elementary, for you know in your heart, as well as I do in mine, that this matter of heart rest, the rest of faith, is a live question continually, it is coming up all the time. One of the things which is lacking in so many of us is this rest, or, to put it the other way, the things which characterize us so much are fret, anxiety, uncertainty, and all those things which are just the opposite of calm assurance, quiet confidence, the spirit and attitude and atmosphere which says all the time, "Don‟t worry, don‟t fret, it is all right." One thing our great enemy is always trying to do is to disturb that, destroy that, rob us of that, churn us up, fret us, drive us, harass us, anything to rob us of our rest or to prevent us from entering into rest. It is the rest of faith, not just the rest of passivity, indifference, and carelessness. There is all the difference between carelessness and carefreeness. There remaineth, there is still to be had, there still obtains, there still exists, there is still preserved a rest for the people of God – for the people of God.
From: The Rest and the Courage of Faith www.austin-sparks.net/english/000451.html
April 27
I have refined you, but not like silver. I have tested you in the furnace
of suffering. (Isaiah 48:10 GW)
The furnace of affliction is for those who by faith are in Christ. What happens in the furnace of affliction? What is it that is dealt with in the fire? Is it you, and is it I, that are refined in the fire? Are you refined in the fire? Am I refined in the furnace of affliction? I say, No! emphatically NO!! If we say, "Yes!" well, let us look at the furnace of affliction, the fire with the metal in the crucible. What are you doing with that metal? Well, you say, you heat the fire intensely and all the uncleanness, the corruption, comes to the surface; this is skimmed off, and when that process has been carried through to its end, there is left pure gold! Then if you say that is you or that
is me you will have to abandon your doctrine of total depravity, and you will have to come back to the place where you say there is good in us, after all! You will have to say there is good and bad in us, and the furnace of affliction is to get the badness out of us and leave the goodness! Is that true doctrine? No!
The furnace of affliction is not for the removal of the bad out of us so as to leave the good that is in us, and secure it! Then what is its purpose? Is it to refine Christ in us? We need not discuss that! Christ needs no refining! What is it for? It is to divide between what is us in fallen nature, and what is Christ, and to get rid of the one in order to give full place to the other! The furnace of affliction is the application of the Cross to the getting rid of you and me, in order to leave the whole place for Christ. It is the measure of Christ that God is after, not to cut in between the good and bad in us, but to cut in between what is Christ, and what is ourselves. That is what the Lord is doing. He is after increasing Christ, and in order to do that He has to displace self, the old creation. It is all the measure of Christ in this realm. The realm of God is not going to be refined self, reformed self, or any kind of patching up of self. It is going to be none of self, and all of Christ.
From: The Essential Newness of the New Creation - Chapter 2 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002210.html
April 28
The people who know their God shall stand firm and take action.
(Daniel 11:32 ESV)
How much do you depend upon conferences and teachers to keep you going? Must you attend meetings just because you feel that the last lot you got has been used up and you must get a fresh supply? Or have you been emancipated from all human props and put into a place of glorious independence, because you KNOW YOUR GOD? It doesn‟t matter if you are plunged into the middle of the Sahara, you know your God and can stand independently of all natural helps – this thing has become YOU! That is the kind of knowledge that means power. That is the kind of experience which overcomes the world. That is the kind of thing that makes all the other systems go down, and you rise triumphantly above them. That was the secret of the apostolic church. Let kings do what they like, let the people rage – it goes on, and it is the Roman Empire that goes to pieces before this thing, and not this thing that goes down before the Roman Empire. It is an independent personal knowledge of God, resultant from an inward birth, that lives. Not only an objective truth, but a subjective power, and it is a great day when the slightest fragment of known truth becomes a vital personal experience in its working ability. That is what we want. First-hand knowledge, not second-hand truth. May God work this into our very beings until it becomes us. Take it in
fragments if you like, and ask the Lord to work it out in you and make it live in you.
From: The People That Do Exploits www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/001535.html
April 29
There is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and
through whom we live. (1 Corinthians 8:6 NIV)
Salvation is not just to get a soul saved, but to start that soul on the way to the fullness of Christ. Every ministry in the Word and in the Spirit is governed by that end. And to be just saved and stay there is to fail of the purpose of the Word and to fall short of the energy of the Holy Spirit. To go to any part of this world in what we call "the work of the Lord" must mean that we are governed by this thing: that in that place there shall be nothing less than the fullness of Christ; as far as it is possible, that Christ shall be everything and in all there. That is final, utter, and ultimate. There can be no division and no sharing with Christ. It must be Christ as everything and in all. When we recognize that that is the aim and object of the Holy Spirit, we have life and ministry defined. It applies to all.
If you are the Lord‟s, your life should be governed by the Word of the Lord and by the Holy Spirit. If it is not, there is something wrong with your relationship to the Lord. Whatever your work is – it may be in the home as a parent, it may be in household duties, it may be in business – if you are there in relation to the Lord, so far as you personally are concerned, your life has got to represent Christ; and that is the ministry. If we carried that into every sphere of life, things would be very different. That must challenge every motive, that must govern every consideration, that must settle every quarrel, every conflict, everything that arises which causes us disturbance, annoyance, and throws us into the vortex of some battle. The thing has to be tested on this point only – Christ as everything and Christ in all.
From: Filled Unto All the Fullness of God - Chapter 3 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002859.html
April 30
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
(Philippians 4:13)
What is abiding? Abiding in Christ, as we have often said, is the opposite of abiding in ourselves. To abide in ourselves is simply to try to
do this living, and this working for the Lord, of ourselves; asking the Lord to help us to do it, instead of recognizing that a Life wholly pleasing to God has been lived and that faith appropriates that accomplishment in Christ. Abiding in Christ is simply doing everything, meeting everything as out from Christ. It is a sure ground. There is no need for question and reasoning: "Can it be done? Can I do it?" Or, "I am not sure about it." It is done. The Lord Jesus has met everything that you or I will meet, and in all things has done what is needful. That is available to faith, and faith says, "Well, in myself the thing would be absurd, and to attempt the thing would be ridiculous; as to myself it would be folly to contemplate it. But it can be done, because it is done; I can meet this demand, and I can stand up to that one; I can go through with this, and I can do that – „I can do all things ("all" is a big word) through Christ, which strengtheneth me.‟" It is what Christ is as our secret source of strength, of sustenance, of nourishment. This is a school, and we learn this lesson in a progressive way....
We have to learn how to come back to His fullness and we learn progressively, step by step, like little children, first of all learning to walk and to talk. Like them we are confronted with things which we have never done or even attempted before, things which are all new and strange; a new world, sometimes a very terrible world. The contemplation of taking his first step to a little child is a most terrifying proposition. You and I are brought into this realm of faith, wherein the simplest thing at the beginning, the taking of a first step, is sometimes fraught with horror for us. But there are arms stretched out, and those arms now represent for us the accomplishment of what is required of us, the thing is done. The strength is there, available for the matter in hand, a strength which has been proved. Recognizing those arms and trusting, taking the step, we learn to walk by Christ, to live by Christ; and the next time we shall be able to go a bit further. Each time capacity is being enlarged and we are coming to a fuller measure of maturity.
From: The Risen Lord and the Things Which Cannot be Shaken - Chapter 7 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002222.html
May 1
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you
may know.... (Ephesians 1:18 NIV)
The Holy Spirit‟s illumination concerning the church is a thing so difficult to explain to any who may not have experienced it. But to those who have seen it, it needs no explanation. It makes such a difference on all these matters. You will be able to preach Ephesians, Colossians, Romans; preach all about the church as the Body of Christ; you may read it all in books, and still there may be no real expression of it. Then one day it is as though the heavens opened and the thing broke upon your spirit, and you
saw it; and all kinds of adjustments became necessary in life. You can say – I saw that the church was no denominational or national thing; I believed in the oneness of all believers. Yes, you can say all that! And yet there is something more. That something can only come by revelation. You can have the other, and it will just take you so far. But get that something more, and it will take you a long way ahead. It brings you into the realm of the conflict and cost, but you are out in an altogether new realm. It is necessary to God‟s end.
It is one thing to say these things and point them out and emphasize them; you say: "How do you get it? We see what you mean, it is all quite clear, but we have not got it!" Well, if you really are of the undivided heart, if your heart is wholly set upon the Lord and you see as far as you can see these things, and have very definite dealings with the Lord about it; (it may not be in a day, it may be slowly, steadily, quietly) you begin to move into a new realm of understanding. And you find that your point of view changes; your standard of values changes; your insight changes. It may take months, but at the end of the time you say: "I am changed! Something has happened to me. I can no longer accept what I used to accept!" It may be like that, or it may come in a flash. How it comes does not matter very much, the fact is the importance of this thing – spiritual illumination. The apostle prayed that these to whom he wrote might have it. Let us pray that we might have it, and that all the Lord‟s people might come into that.
From: Filled Unto All the Fullness of God - Chapter 2 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002858.html
May 2
May your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless.... (1
Thessalonians 5:23 NLT)
You see that God never takes our will away, nor our mind, nor our heart. Some people expect God to come and do all their choosing for them, and all their desiring for them, and all their deciding for them, while they are simply to be poor things picked up by God and put into things which He desires and wills. God never does that. He is developing a humanity. Were we spirits I do not know how we might act; we might act spontaneously. But we are not. God has created a kind of being with a rational mind. The three-fold element of spirit, soul and body is still to be found, yet not now in Adam, but in Christ. God is developing the Christ mind; how He thinks, judges, understands, and when we see the Lord‟s mind we see how very different it is from our own natural mind; and our own natural mind is beside the mark altogether, and we must repudiate it. This is spiritual understanding, the mind of the Spirit. The same thing applies to our feelings and our desires. They may lead us all astray. There is a new outfit in Christ for our hearts, but there is always the necessity for
our standing with the Lord in what is of Himself. Passivity may be a most ruinous thing. In all the values of Christ risen there has to be a taking of that risen Life for the equivalent need of mind, heart, will; of spirit, soul, and body.
From: The Risen Lord and the Things Which Cannot be Shaken - Chapter 3 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002218.html
May 3
God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)
Light is transparency; light is clearness; light is absolute purity; light is honesty; light is openness of character. Light hides nothing; its whole action and nature is contrary to hiding anything. It has nothing to hide; it shows everything; it shows all: in other words, it is not deceitful. It does not want to cover anything, or to pretend or make believe that something is other than what it is. Light is single; it is not double; there is no duplicity about light. And light is just – light! There is "no darkness at all" where there is light.... How many shades and aspects of darkness there are! – a whole vocabulary of words. The Spirit has come to bring all that to an end by applying the Cross, in which it was all brought to an end in the Person of the Lord Jesus; to work out the meaning of the Cross in our lives, so that everything that belongs to that kingdom of darkness is removed: so that in the end, with us too, there is no darkness at all. Is that really what we think of, when we think of having, receiving, and being filled with the Holy Spirit? Here again, perhaps, a little re-shaping of our ideas is called for.
It is true that He is many other things, as well as light: He is the Spirit of Power, He is the Spirit of Wisdom; yes, He is many other things; but, with them all, He is this. And we must not make more of those "demonstration" aspects of the Spirit, in power, in gifts and capacities, in works, than we do of His character side. If He really does His work in you and in me, He will make us to be people who can bear to be "looked into" without any fear, without any drawing of the blinds. Our lives and our motives will bear looking into.
From: The Holy Spirit, the Church, and the Nations - Chapter 5 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/001585.html
May 4
Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27)
We feel the importance of saying a word with regard to Christ in heaven and Christ within the believer, that is, what is objective and what is
subjective. It is tremendously important that we should keep a proper balance of truth. A very great deal of our trouble is because of there being an unbalanced emphasis upon some aspect of truth. It is good to know the truth, and it is good to rejoice in it, but it is just possible that even truth may get us into trouble. There are many perils lying in the direction of truth, even spiritual truth; and there are not a few of the Lord‟s people who have fallen into those perils. It is not that they suffer from want of light, but they are suffering very much because they have not got their light properly adjusted and balanced. Thus it becomes very necessary for us to get things in their right perspective and proportion. Preponderance on any one side will always lead to spiritual injury, and very often to disaster.
The history of many instrumentalities which have been raised up and used by the Lord is eventually the sad story of a loss of power and effectiveness because of striking an unbalanced emphasis, of putting some side of truth in a place out of proportion to that which is complementary to it.... If we over-emphasize the subjective we take something from the glory of Christ. If we over-emphasize the objective we take something from God‟s purpose. It is a matter of the work of God in Christ, and the purpose of God in Christ: and these two things must both have their place. May the Lord give us understanding, so that we come into a place of rest and are delivered from the perils which lurk in the vicinity of every Divine blessing.
From: Christ in Heaven and Christ Within www.austin-sparks.net/english/000631.html
May 5
Of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. (John 1:16)
It is a grand thing and a source of tremendous strength to come to the same position as that of Christ as Man, where we know that boundless heavenly resources are available. I think we only come there progressively, and not all at once. We only come there by the way of discipline – discipline which takes the form of bringing us to an utter dependence, but which is yet not an emptying and a breaking down as an end in itself, but one which is accompanied by that grace of God – that graciousness of God – which, when we are empty, makes His fullness to abound.
There is a positive as well as a negative side. God is no believer in negatives as being the ultimate goal; but when He breaks and when He empties, He does something on the positive side which ever causes us to marvel, and we have to say every time: "Well, that was the Lord, not ourselves." We come progressively by that way of discipline to know that there are heavenly resources which far outstrip all human possibilities, and these resources are operative. This is what constitutes spirituality – this is
what makes a life or service spiritual: it is the drawing upon heavenly resources, living the life as out from heaven. That is spirituality. That constitutes a spiritual life and a spiritual walk.
The resources are not drawn from self or from the world; they are all drawn from above. The government is not that here of men or of the world, but that which is from above. Everything is so utterly from above – and so utterly not from man – that the life or work becomes spiritual as a consequence.
From: Boundless Heavenly Resources www.austin-sparks.net/english/001521.html
May 6
"My thoughts are not your thoughts, and My ways are not your ways,"
declares the Lord. "Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts are higher than
your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8,9 GW)
God‟s thoughts about things are very different from ours. We would often allow what God would never allow. He has an altogether different point of view about things. We judge in one way about things, and God judges in another. It is necessary for us to come to God‟s standpoint. "Oh," we would say, "There is no harm in such-and-such a thing. Oh, there is no wrong in that; look at So-and-so and So-and-so," and we take our standard, perhaps, from other people. We have known people to do that; point to some outstanding figure in the work of God, in whose life was a certain thing – that one has been taken as the model, to be copied, and so the thing has been taken on. "Oh, there is no harm in it; look at So-and-so." And I have known lives and ministries to be ruined on that very excuse.
The question is: what does the Lord say about it? God says, "Walk before Me!" Not before any human model; not before any human standard; "There is no harm in it; So-and-so does it; it is quite a common practice." No, no! "Walk before Me," says the Lord. We have got to get this in the spirit, in the inward man. It is deeper than our best moral standards. Otherwise there is no point in it being in the Bible at all, if our moral standards can rise to God‟s satisfaction – why must we be so handled and reconstituted? It is deeper than our intellect, than our reason. You cannot, by reason or intellect, arrive at God‟s standard at all. Not at all! Oh, do not think that by any method of reasoning, you are ever going to reach God‟s standard. You never will. Here, it is only by revelation of the Holy Spirit. Christ has got to be revealed in our hearts by the Spirit.
There is no point in Jesus saying: "When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth," if we could get there by our own intelligence. Not at all. It must come by the revelation of Christ in our
hearts, in the inward parts. This is something spiritual. "God is Spirit; they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth" – spirit and truth go together. Only what is spiritual, what is of God, is truth – only that!
From: Truth in the Inward Parts www.austin-sparks.net/english/000496.html
May 7
The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.
(Luke 18:27)
All hangs upon this one thing (as simple as it may seem) that if Christ is present (which means nothing else than that God is present) anything is possible at any moment. Are you waiting for some day when things will be better? It is not a matter of time at all, it is a matter of Him. He says, "I am time and eternity all in a moment, and you need not accept anything in the matter of time; you accept Me, and you may be well-nigh dead in the morning and be very much alive before the day is over. „I am the resurrection and the life.‟" Mary said, "I know that He will rise again in the last day." For her resurrection was a matter of time. Oh no. Resurrection was right there....
As long as it takes to break a loaf you have gone from seed-time to harvest. "„Do you not say, There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest?‟ (John 4:35). I am here, and there can be harvest at any moment when I am here." It is not a matter of time, of circumstance. We are dealing with God, and He is not bound by anything that is known to our human life at all. Eternity dwells in any moment when He is present. All things are bound up with any moment when He is present.
The centurion said, "Just say the word and my servant will be healed." "You need not come. Distance does not matter, time does not matter, just speak the word and it will be done." The Lord said, "I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel." The word was uttered, and when the enquiry was made as to when it happened it was found to synchronize with the moment when He spoke. He takes everything into His hands, and says "My hour..." and when that comes, there is no postponement. Oh, that we should lay hold of that more, live on that, never surrender to conditions, never surrender to the inevitable from the standpoint of the human, but say, "We have Him; He is our future, He is our circumstance." Anything can be at any moment with the Lord present.
From: Knowing God in Christ - Chapter 9 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/003125.html
May 8
I am the Lord, I do not change. (Malachi 3:6)
The authority of darkness is a very real thing to us. We have experiences, and if we were to capitulate to them, that would be the end of us. He tries to bring upon us that impingement of the authority of darkness, and if we surrender to it, capitulate to it, accept it, we are beaten.
If we are the Lord‟s, Christ is within, and Christ is supreme and we must go on even if we have no feeling, or if we have a very bad feeling; when it seems to be the last thing we ought to be saying, we say it because it is God‟s fact, and when we begin to affirm God‟s fact we win through.
Believers know what it is for the enemy to try to make them accept the authority of darkness. Stand upon the truth of God. God does not change with our feelings. God does not alter with our consciousness. This whole life of ours is subject to variation more swift than the variation of weather, but He rules, unalterable, unchangeable. He is "the same yesterday, and today, and forever." And if He is there within, He has come to stay, and victory is in faith; believing that, standing on that, holding to that; and we must carry that through to its final and full issue, that He is Lord of all, "Head of all principality and power." Satan will sometimes try to make us believe that he is in the place of ascendancy, the place of supremacy, but since Calvary he is not, we stand there.
From: The Centrality and Supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ - Chapter 4 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/000732.html
May 9
The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged
sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and
marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
(Hebrews 4:12 NIV)
The whole thought of God, running right through this letter, is spiritual fullness; and any religion – even Christianity – mixing and confusing soul and spirit, the sentient and the spiritual (as did the Christian-Judaism and as does organized Christianity) is doomed to the destiny of Judaism. If we draw upon the soul resources of people to build up Christianity, instead of recognizing that "all things are out from God" – that all must first come from Him and have its first point of contact with man in his spirit, which, being renewed (made anew) becomes the vessel and vehicle of all Divine things for ever after – no matter how immense may be our structure, it is going to crash when the great "shaking" comes. Christianity now is very largely a built up thing with many Jewish features
in it; i.e., outward orders, forms, vestments, titles, buildings and rigidly fixed boundaries of apprehension of truth. Viewed from a heavenly standpoint, it is all so much nonsense, child's play; albeit so seriously regarded by its children.
It is important to recognize that this letter was addressed to a people who – for a long period – had held the position nationally of a people whom God had taken out of the world unto Himself. It seeks to explain their nature and history in the light of Christ and true spiritual Christianity. It shows that even such a people may make their separation earthly and earthbound, and that for so doing they have been "overthrown," and will – even as Christians – be overthrown again if they repeat in Christianity what their fathers did in Judaism. There is something here much more than typology interpreted and the interpretation accepted as to salvation from sin and judgment; it is the essential and indispensable heavenly relatedness and life of the Lord's people as inwardly detached from the natural life even in a religious sense.
From: "God Hath Spoken" - Chapter 1 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/000821.html
May 10
You are in Him, made full and having come to fullness of life.
(Colossians 2:10 AMP)
The Cross is a full and final principle, although it has many aspects. It is a full and final principle. We are going to see that the Cross in its fullness and finality was right there at the beginning of the Bible. As a principle, it was absolute then. It is just in so far as you and I bring our lives at this time of the day back to God‟s fullness in the Cross that we are going to know this progressive development and increase of Life – so far and no more.
The Cross is a great divide. It divides people into three categories. Firstly, it makes a broad division between those who never get into Life, and those who do. Whether men and women get into Life at all depends entirely upon their acceptance of the Cross. But it divides further. It divides between those who do get into Life, and those who go right through to fullness of Life, and there is quite a real division there. Whether you like the theory or not, it is a fact. There are many Christians who are in the way of Life, that is, who have entered the way of Life, but are not going right on to fullness of Life. That is really what the New Testament is about – trying to get Christians who have entered into Life to go on to fullness of Life. The Cross divides between those, because, while we come into the way of Life by the Cross, we also only come into the fullness of Life by the Cross, and that is another thing – a fuller, deeper application of the Cross.
So the Cross makes three categories, those not in Life, those in Life, and those in Life going on to fullness of Life.
From: The Cross and the Way of Life - Chapter 2 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002846.html
May 11
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and
humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
(Matthew 11:29 NIV)
The great business of Christians is to learn Christ. This is not just a subject to study. I want to ask you: What is the greatest desire in your life? I wonder if it is the same as mine! The greatest desire in my heart – and the longer I live the stronger it grows – is to understand the Lord Jesus. There is so much that I do not understand about Him. I am always coming up against problems about Him, and they are not intellectual problems at all, but spiritual ones: problems of the heart. Why did the Lord Jesus say and do certain things? Why is He dealing with me as He is? He is always too deep for me, and I want to understand Him. It is the most important thing in life to understand the Lord Jesus. Well, we are here that He may bring us to some better understanding of Himself. The material of the Word will not be new – it will be old and well-known Scripture. Perhaps we think that we know the Gospel by John very well. Well, you may, but I do not. I am discovering that this Gospel contains deeper truth and value than I know anything about....
The one business of disciples is to know Him, and to do what He called His disciples to do: "Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me" (Matthew 11:29). Jesus came to bring heavenly knowledge in His own person, and in His person we come into heavenly knowledge. It is not just what He says: it is what He says He is. Every true teacher is not one who says a lot of things, but one who, when he says things, gives something of himself.
From: Discipleship In The School Of Christ - Chapter 1 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/001448.html
May 12
You must learn to endure everything, so that you will be completely
mature and not lacking in anything. (James 1:4 CEV)
We can take one of two attitudes toward the ways of God with us; we can get bitter, sour, hard; or we can have the enlargement by exercise,
development by exercise, to develop capacity, to bring us into the large place that we may be intelligently His instrument for governing under His Headship in ages to come. Things that enter into our history we cannot always fathom, but the explanation which we can give is that, whatever there may be as second causes, the Lord is Sovereign and He thinks it worthwhile sometimes to allow what the world would call the most terrible thing to overtake for the time being, and it would seem that His Name and interests suffer through that thing, but through that thing He brings His people to a place of maturity and they get to know the Lord for themselves. Through these terrible things we find the Lord produces something that is very much more worthy of Himself in the life of His children. That is His justification, His vindication; if He could do it in any other way He would.
In the long run He does get spiritual maturity among His people, where they know Him. He would get us to a place where we know the Lord and we have our senses exercised to know. The Lord give us grace to accept all His dealings with us in the light of His great purpose.
From: Maturity – The Lord's Desire For His People www.austin-sparks.net/english/003680.html
May 13
Do not call anyone on earth „father,‟ for you have one Father, and He
is in heaven. (Matthew 23:9 NIV)
Perhaps one of the things which you and I and the Lord‟s people everywhere need to recognize more than anything else at an end time is the fact of our heavenliness. There is going to be a testing of everything which bears the Lord‟s name by the law of the beginning governing the end. In the beginning they were a heavenly people, with everything for them in heaven, in Christ, and being drawn from Christ in heaven. All their government, direction, resource came from Him and was in Him as in heaven. The Lord comes back again and again to test things by that beginning, and in the end the test is going to be applied very stringently. We are going to see the outward form of things, which is earthly, manmade, man-constituted, an imitation or a representation of spiritual things, breaking down, shaking at its very foundations. All the organizations of our work are going to be shattered. In the nations all that framework will be broken up. That which alone will be left will be the people themselves, and they will probably be scattered. Then the test will be as to how much of this is Christ here. If there has been dependence upon orders, churches, systems, even meetings and conferences, the many things which in themselves are looked to as the means of support of the Christian life, when they are gone, broken, the question will be, How much of Christ is here? What is the measure of Christ, the heavenly Christ?
You see how that was the crisis for the disciples. They had three years with Him, but there was an outward detachment, an outward dependence, a physical, sentient association. In those days they could say some very bold things, they could make great confessions and professions, they could declare themselves as to Him, Who He was, what they thought of Him, what they believed concerning Him, what they would do for Him. Then He was taken from them, and what was left? No Christ, no Life, nothing to live for, everything gone! When the life of senses ceased, the outward order came to an end, they had nothing left, they were in despair, and their faith was shattered. There is much of that today. We do not know how much there is until the break comes, until we are no longer able to do anything for the Lord, until we are no longer able even to pray and read the Word of God, and carry on the usual devotional exercises, until we are no longer able to meet with the Lord‟s people. Multitudes of the Lord‟s people are coming there now.