Part 5
From: That Which Was From The Beginning - Chapter 1 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002953.html
May 14
When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son.
(Galatians 4:4 ESV)
When the fullness of time came! It is not difficult for us to see in the case of Abraham how his faith was brought into relation to God‟s time. The time factor with Abraham was a very real one and was perhaps one of the keenest and most acute factors for his faith. Again and again we come upon a test of Abraham‟s faith along the line of the timing of God. Indeed, from one standpoint, we may summarize the whole of his life and say that it headed up at last to the triumph of faith upon that particular factor. In the full Divine sense he never received the promises in his lifetime. At the end of his life he was still looking for the fulfillment of the promise. If his faith had given way he would naturally have taken the attitude that, since the thing had not been fulfilled in so long a time and in his lifetime, it all represented perhaps a big mistake on his part, a false expectation, some misguidance, and so on. But right at the end, if the letter to the Hebrews is to be taken as revealing the actual position, he still believed. He believed, therefore, that God had His time for fulfilling His purpose... and that, although it might not come in his own lifetime, it nevertheless would come. But during his lifetime – within the compass of the whole range of Divine purpose – there were instances of testing on the time factor; and, having been tested on that factor, the promise was fulfilled.
From: Waiting God's Time www.austin-sparks.net/english/001503.html
May 15
Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
(John 1:29 NIV)
What is the sin of the world? It is pride. You may not think so; you may not see it: but I would ask you to consider again and see if all that is called sin cannot be traced to this, if it is not this in some form of expression. For what is the root of pride? What is pride? It is selfhood come to life, risen up, active – that is the root of pride; and the branches and the fruit – how many they are! – jealousy, covetousness, wrath, and all the rest. How is wrath pride? Well, wrath, if it is not holy, purified, bloodpurged wrath like the wrath of the Lamb, if it is wrath which is actuated by ourselves and our interests, is the wrath of selfhood. So often our anger is our self-preservation, our reaction to some threat to our interests or our likes. Rebellion, stubbornness, prejudice, and much of our fear, are all traceable to pride. What are we afraid of? What are we fearing? If we examined our fears, why are we afraid? If we were utterly severed from the personal interest – that is, if we could hand entirely over to the Lord and get out of the picture ourselves – would not a lot of our fear go? And so we might go on: but we do not want to indulge in a wholesale analysis of human nature or of pride. We have mentioned enough to show that pride is the root and that there are countless fruits traceable to that root....
So may this be a word of interpretation as to why the Lord is dealing with us as He has and does – on the one hand, overcoming this evil thing, breaking, emptying, grinding to powder, until there is nothing of us left in the matter of self-sufficiency; on the other hand, giving Himself, increasing Himself. Now this is not a word, perhaps, of great inspiration, but I feel it to be a word of very great importance. This must be true of us individually. There must also be a corporate humility. This is the way along which the Lord will commit Himself. He will never give us anything to feed our flesh, to enlarge and strengthen our natural life. He will hold us to the way that keeps us safe where that is concerned. How wonderfully the Bible becomes alive when you look at it in this way!
From: Pride and Its Undoing www.austin-sparks.net/english/002033.html
May 16
The Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by
joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.
(Colossians 2:19)
What is the believer? In God‟s sight the believer is one in whom Christ is implanted, and God never looks at Christ in a limited way. He
always looks at Him in an absolute way, and when Christ is implanted at the beginning of our life it is not as though God implanted Him in a fragmentary way. God‟s thought was that the end should be bound up with the beginning, and that Christ should be All and in all. That is why conversion is never an end in itself. It is only the first step toward the full end of God. It defines the nature of the believer in God‟s sight, that it is of Christ. You cannot make that. No decision cards can accomplish that. You can never make men and women Christians by inviting them to make certain decisions, to assent mentally to certain propositions of Christian doctrine, though perfectly true as to the Person and work of the Lord Jesus.
There has to be something which constitutes in that individual, right at the very center of the being, a living union with Christ, and a deposit of Christ. Anything other than that is a false conversion. It is the depositing of Christ at the very center of the being, with a view to His spreading to the very circumference, that is the nature of a believer....
You see the pathetic hopelessness of trying to propagate anything by organized means and methods which really is all of God. It simply has to grow, it simply has to be. Ah, but when it is so it is mighty, it is indestructible, it is incorruptible. Nothing can stand in the way of Christ. It is that which rouses hell and the energies of the devil. He does not mind all the other: doctrine, work, profession. That may often serve his ends as a great deception and misrepresentation; but bring Christ in, bring Christ through, realize Christ, and then you meet every force in this universe which is antagonistic to Christ.
From: The Essential Newness of the New Creation - Chapter 2 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002210.html
May 17
The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by
no one. (1 Corinthians 2:15 ESV)
We have to continually ask the question: "Is Christ everything in this matter, or am I wanting my own way? Am I allowing my own feelings, desires and likes to dominate or is Christ everything? Is Christ in all here, so far as it is within my power, in the energy of the Holy Spirit, for it to be so?" That has to be reduced to the minutia of daily life. We have to get away when we are upset, annoyed, provoked, irritated, and fight that battle out and say: "Lord, You have to be everything in this matter: it does not matter how my interests are affected." And from those details of everyday life and experience out to the wider ranges, and up to the place where we may be the Lord‟s responsible servant, the Word and the Spirit have to govern; and the Word and the Spirit have one object: Christ – everything
and in all. Recognizing that, we see that this further thing is necessary, that we are a truly spiritual people.
It is very often difficult to define what is meant by spirituality, or a spiritual people. It is one of those things better experienced than explained. But for the moment it can be put quite simply and quite safely and soundly in this way, that a spiritual people is a people who are governed by the Word and the Holy Spirit to this end: that in everything within and without, Christ is All and in all. That is true spirituality.
From: Filled Unto All the Fullness of God - Chapter 3 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002859.html
May 18
O Lord, You are our Father. We are the clay, and You are the potter.
We all are formed by Your hand. (Isaiah 64:8 NLT)
We are in the Lord‟s hands, and being in His hands we are in the hands of a Potter Who knows what He is after... first of all, the vessel is in the potter, and then eventually the potter is in the vessel. What we mean is this, that before ever the potter starts, the vessel is in his mind, in his heart very clearly. The pattern is not something objective, the vessel is already a complete thing in him; and then he gets to work upon it and when he is finished, he is in the vessel he has wrought. What was in Him has come out in it.
We say of people‟s work: "I can see who made that, it is just like them." "That is just like So-and-so to make a thing like that." Yes, He is in His work, He is in the vessel that He makes, and that is just what He is doing. Sometimes that clay has to be pressed down to a shapeless mass, broken. It is not showing all that He intended it to show, there are defects and flaws, and so He crushes it down to shapelessness. A mass without shape. But it is to start again to get something more perfect than has been before, in which He Himself is.
May He give us grace to endure whatever the trial may be, along whatever line of metaphor, the wind, the blaze, supreme heat, or pressure of His hand, all of which is to get us into a place where we cannot be moved, where hell cannot shake us, where His power is made manifest as triumphant over all the power of the enemy.
From: Rooted and Grounded www.austin-sparks.net/english/002932.html
May 19
That in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather
together in one all things in Christ. (Ephesians 1:10)
There is one comprehensive and all-embodying truth which, if it really gained the complete mastery of our hearts and dominated our whole consciousness, capturing our will, our hearts, and our minds, would really revolutionize everything, just as the new covenant represents a revolution from the old covenant.
The great truth which embodies everything is this: that God has determined that nothing which is not Christ shall remain, and He is working toward that end, on the one hand to rid this universe of everything that is not Christ; on the other hand to fill this universe with that which is Christ. That means that God does not accept or recognize anything whatever that is not Christ. Then again, it means that God puts His seal upon what is Christ, and it is all a matter of the measure of Christ. It is a tremendous thing when that really does come to our hearts with the force and the power which it really does represent. It explains everything of God‟s dealings with us. It gives us the key to our problems. It sets us at once upon the highway of God‟s own purpose.
From: Christ in You www.austin-sparks.net/english/001617.html
May 20
You are an offense to Me, because you are not thinking God‟s thoughts
but human thoughts! (Matthew 16:23 ISV)
I think that does say to us that a position has to be taken inclusively and over many things where the will of God is concerned. We have to come very definitely and positively to such a position, and then realize that from time to time there will be, by one means or another, an effort of the enemy to change our minds, to weaken us in that course, to make other suggestions, to get us to reconsider it in the light of various issues and interests. We shall meet this offending, this stumbling, this hindering thing and have to be very ruthless with it.
The way the Lord dealt with Peter was, in a sense, ruthless. Really there was no weakness in His attitude over that. Discerning its true nature, He saw clearly that, if He yielded to this suggestion, then He would go neither to Jerusalem nor to the Cross. It is a question of whether we have settled that such and such is the way of the will of God, and then, will this or that arising mean in the long run that we never get there, never do that will? If so, it has to be handled very ruthlessly and put out of the way and
put behind us. The Cross comes to us in many connections and different terms.
Then, if we are really going to come through to the place of spiritual power as did Peter, that ground of the enemy must continually be forsaken and refused. The enemy has to be robbed of that which will destroy us and give him power to destroy us, and we have to be very ruthless with anything that arises to give him that position and defeat God‟s intention where we are concerned. This battle of heaven and hell, God and Satan, goes on in our souls, but there is for us this consolation, that we have a High Priest ever living to make intercession. We have a great asset in the continual intercession of the Lord Jesus for us.
From: The Battleground of the Soul www.austin-sparks.net/english/000476.html
May 21
My determined purpose is that I may know Him.
(Philippians 3:10 AMP)
There are few words in his writings which reveal how committed to the Lord Jesus this man was. The whole context is one consummate outpouring of his heart to the One whom he said had "apprehended" him, and he focuses all in a brief half sentence: "That I may know Him." The impressive thing about this expressed ambition is the time at which it is made. Here is a man who has had a revelation and knowledge of Jesus Christ greater than any other man up to that time. That knowledge commenced whence as he said, "it pleased God to reveal His Son in me." That beginning devastated him, and sent him into the desert to try to grasp its implications.
Later he had been "caught up into the third heaven and shown unspeakable things, which (he said) were not lawful to be uttered." Between, and around those two experiences, there is evidence of an ever growing knowledge of Christ. Here, after all that, near the end of his life, he is crying passionately: "That I may know Him." The very least that we can say about this is that the Christ in view was a very great Christ indeed, who outstrips the greatest capacity and comprehension of man. This stands in such tremendous contrast to the limited Christ of our recognition and apprehension! How very much more there is in Christ than we have ever seen!
From: An Apostle's Supreme Ambition www.austin-sparks.net/english/000688.html
May 22
It pleased God to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him.
(Galatians 1:15,16)
Since Paul‟s day so very much of Christian activity has been the furthering of a movement, the propagating of a teaching, and the furthering of the interests of an institution. It is not a movement, nor to establish a movement in the Earth and to get followers, adherents, members, support. It is not an institution, even though we might call that institution the church. The church has no existence in the thought of God apart from the revelation of Jesus Christ, and it is judged according to the measure in which Christ the Son of God‟s love is in evidence by its existence. It is not a testimony, if by that you mean a specific form of teaching, a systematized doctrine. No, it is not a testimony. Let us be careful what we mean when we speak about "the testimony."
We may have in our minds some arrangement of truth, and that truth couched in certain phraseology, form of words, and thus speak about "the testimony"; it is not the testimony in that sense. It is not a denomination, and it is not a "non-denomination," and it is not an "inter-denomination." It is not Christianity. It is not "the work" – oh, we are always talking about "the work": "How is the work getting on?" – we are giving ourselves to the work, we are interested in the work, we are out in the work. It is not a mission. It is Christ! "…That I might preach Him." If that had remained central and preeminent all these horrible disintegrating jealousies would never have had a chance. All the wretched mess that exists in the organization of Christianity today would never have come about. It is because something specific in itself, a movement, a mission, a teaching, a testimony, a fellowship, has taken the place of Christ. People have gone out to further that, to project that, to establish that. It would not be confessed; nevertheless it is true, that today it is not so much Christ that is our work. Now beloved, an inward revelation is the cure of all that. Am I saying too hard a thing, too sweeping a thing? The existence of all that represents the absence of an adequate inward revelation of Christ.
From: The Centrality and Supremacy of Christ www.austin-sparks.net/english/000420.html
May 23
Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in My Name, claiming I am the Christ, and will deceive many. (Matthew 24:4,5 NIV)
In a somewhat extended life and ministry, again and again I have seen dear people of God who were out in the open going on with the Lord in the liberty of the Spirit with great promise and then they‟ve been caught in
some "ism." They simply are helpless to escape themselves from the tenets of that "ism." Again and again I‟ve seen it! Tragedy.... There‟s a great ism sweeping right over America and over Europe in these last years. I can dare to mention this one, well I‟m going to at any rate: Universalism. It‟s an "ism" which has captured multitudes! And you just can‟t get anywhere with these people once they‟ve got it. But I have known them, oh so promising... so promising and then this thing has come subtly along their way, attractive and fascinating.... So appealing: everybody, ultimately, including the devil himself, will be saved. What are you going to do with that? Willy-nilly they‟ll be saved... undercutting so many of the very vitals of the Gospel.
You may call these things gross errors, but there are things that are not such errors. Not such errors, indeed in themselves they‟re quite true, but they have become the beginning of all and the end of all to the people who have taken them on. You can get no further, no further. They have lost the great ground, the vast ground of God‟s full purpose for this dispensation and become stuck on some thing that is only partial at best. Arrested... like Judaism; come to a standstill, or going round and round in a circle, the circle of this particular thing. It should be a warning to us because, you see, this is the thing that has been the enemy of the fullness of Christ all through the centuries – this sort of thing….
There are many antichrists in the world and an antichrist is not a spurious, fearful creature, you know, with a tail and a pitchfork. No, an antichrist is something that assumes the place of Christ…. And with the natural judgment, natural powers, you are not able to distinguish between the true and the false. The Christ and the antichrist seem to be so much alike. You can‟t discern the difference, but the Anointing will tell you! The Anointing which you have received, when you come into touch with something false, will tell you if the Anointing is really governing, saying, "Be careful," not in words, but inside. You have a feeling there‟s something not quite clear here, not transparent here, not safe here... "I don‟t feel happy about this, I can‟t tell you why, but I just don‟t feel quite happy about this... there‟s something in me that says: beware." I am convinced that in a day like this of deceptions and misleadings and all that, the great need is our spiritual discernment; of knowing the Holy Spirit in this way, that He‟s able to warn you.
From: The Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ - Chapter 5 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002144.html
May 24
In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us
by His Son. (Hebrews 1:1,2 NIV)
What was the tragedy of the old Israel? Of course, the tragedy of the old Israel, finally, is their dismissal. Their dismissal: "The kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." That happened! And it stands today. The kingdom of heaven taken away – not for that Israel, but for another! The tragedy of Israel is that they are dismissed from the dispensation, or the dispensational movement of God. This has lasted for two thousand years. How many more years we do not know, probably, not so long, but you leave that alone.
Here I am going to upset a lot of you: you leave Israel alone for the time being. You will only get into terrible confusion if you get down on this earth with an earth touch in these things.... You see, you go on like that and it leads to confusion if you come down onto this earth. Leave it alone and see what God is doing, and God is doing a spiritual thing, not a temporal thing. I could take an hour to enlarge upon that last phrase, "not a temporal thing." Do you see, in the sovereign activities of God, that now He is confounding and confusing and breaking down all temporal representations of His heavenly kingdom?! Men are trying to set up local churches after New Testament order. You have never had more confusion in local churches than you have today. They are trying to set up things, constitute things, Christian movements, Christian institutions, Christian organizations, and they are all in confusion and do not know what to do with one another. You may think that is an exaggeration, but you see what I mean? – God is breathing upon every temporal representation in order to have a spiritual expression of Christ! That is the heart of what we are saying, and that is what is here....
This new Israel is so much greater than the old because Christ, this Messiah, is so much greater than their conception of a Messiah.... I am talking about the greatness of this One Who is introduced in Hebrews: "God, ...hath at the end of these days spoken in His Son, Whom He appointed Heir of..." an exclusive party? – No, "of all things." That is Paul‟s great word all the way through: "all things, ...all things, ...all things," and in the end, "to sum up all things in Christ." And if I need to safeguard, I am not talking about universalism. I am talking about God‟s ultimate realm and sphere where it will be nothing but Christ.
From: But Ye are Come Unto Mount Zion - Chapter 2 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/001417.html
May 25
Be strong in the Lord, relying on His mighty strength.
(Ephesians 6:10 ISV)
The Lord does not put us in glass houses to grow us, to be His trees; the Lord does not protect us from the storms, the adversities; He exposes us to the bitter winds and the scorching suns of adversity and trial. The Lord is working in us that which is according to His own Nature – eternity, the enduring, the everlasting God – that which will not be easily or hardly carried away. He is putting substance in you. Oh, today we fear that the appeal to become Christians is so often in terms of having an easy or a good time; being happy and enjoying yourself; well, thank God for ALL Divine joy, but this is true to the House, to the City, that the first thing the Lord is working toward and seeking to work into His people is that substantial, steadfast, enduring faithfulness that is according to His own nature. Substantial! Oh for substantial Christians that don‟t need coddling and nursing and running after all the time; being pandered to to get them to go on or stand up. Men and women like cedars of Lebanon; like the hewn stones – weighty, accountable, and responsible to carry weight – and all that is meant by strength.
I can only remind you again of what a large place that has in the Word of God: be strong, be strong in the Lord in the strength of His might, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Think again. Want to understand why the winds are allowed to blow so fiercely... the storms? To get us away from that natural, easy-going-ness or cheapness, lightness, frivolousness and to make us people of weight. Strength – through testing, through adversity – strength... to endure throughout all ages. There is much which is going to be carried away in the last great testing, and if, therefore, trial and adversity is the only way to deepen us, to put caliber into us, I suppose we must expect more of it as the time shortens.
From: Aspects of the City www.austin-sparks.net/english/001413.html
May 26
They shall be Mine, says the Lord of hosts, in that day when I publicly
recognize and openly declare them to be My jewels.
(Malachi 3:17 AMP)
If we have committed ourselves to God thoroughly and really meant with the Lord that we want His full will and we do not want our own, and by His grace we will go the way that He leads and shows, whatever it costs, if we have done that and then situations have arisen which look terribly complicated and seem to contradict the faithfulness of God, what am I to
conclude? What are we going to conclude? We have to conclude one of two things – that God cares nothing for all our devotion and consecration, and just lets us get into any mess, or else this is all under His eye. That is ultimate. We have either to believe God or not to believe Him. You have all this here in the Word, and it all bears down upon this, that people who are related in Divine foreknowledge and Divine sovereign action come into situations like that, but in the end that sovereignty has been shown to relate to something unusually precious to the Lord, "and they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of hosts, even Mine own possession, in the day that I do make" (Malachi 3:17).
The Lord is after something more than ordinary and He needs a people for it, but such a people will have unusual experiences, inside and out. It will not be the ordinary, normal course where everything goes well and straightforwardly. It will not be like that for these people. They go through ways that are tortuous and exceedingly difficult, but there is a sovereignty at work. That is my way of analyzing and summing up the situation as I see it in the Word, and I can only say to you that it is not foreign and strange to God‟s special purposes to have experiences like that. Whether it be the remnant of Israel, whether it be the reactions of God in this Christian dispensation, in the book of the Revelation, the messages to the churches which are just on this ground, it is all like this. Nothing seems normal with a people like that, because God is not going to have anything that is just normal, as we call the normal. It is something more, something extraordinary, and our experience therefore is extraordinary.
From: Attaining to God's Full Thought www.austin-sparks.net/english/001593.html
May 27
They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb. (Revelation 12:11)
There are so many of the Lord‟s people today over whom Satan is lording it; lording it along the line of accusation, bringing them under a sense of condemnation and judgment, robbing them of their peace, of their assurance, rest, hope; and you will find these people are everlastingly talking about their own short-comings, their sinfulness; they are forever circling round themselves, all that they are that they would not be, all that they are not that they would be. Their deliverance from Satan is that they should have a fresh apprehension of the absolute satisfaction of the Father in His Son on their behalf, and that they find their standing before the Father in acceptance. That is the way of deliverance, the way of the Adversary‟s casting out. This is the way of overcoming him as the Accuser. Yes, the ground of the Blood is sufficient for this full-orbed, many-sided, all-round victory. "They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb," and the first and supreme factor in the virtue of that Blood in all these
directions, is its untainted sinlessness, the nature of the Lord Jesus. There has never been another who was such.
Oh, I am so glad that it was God that came in Christ, GOD that came in Christ. Can you charge God with sin? Can you lay sin to God‟s charge, to God‟s account? It was God in Christ, the absolutely and altogether holy One in whom there was no sin, who came in incarnation; and in virtue of that Divine nature in its perfection Satan in his authority is defeated – on that ground. Blessed be God! We receive by faith the virtue of that precious Blood; that is, the perfection of the Lord Jesus can be put to our account. That is grace – the wonder of the Gospel. If we were to begin to analyze ourselves and take stock of ourselves, that would be a terrible business, a wretched business, and it would be endless – think of it, beloved, with all that we know of ourselves, all that God knows about us – "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart. I try the reins...." Though all that be a fact, you and I can stand now in the presence of God as sinlessly perfect, not in ourselves, but in Christ, as having absolute sinless perfection put to our account by God.
From: "Because of the Blood of the Lamb" www.austin-sparks.net/english/000477.html
May 28
The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and
they are not for you to know. (Acts 1:7 NLT)
We are apt to think that if and when the circumstances and conditions of our lives are changed and we are in another position than the one we now occupy, then something will happen, the purpose of God will begin to be fulfilled. The Lord would say, "No; it is not circumstances, not conditions, at all; it is you." Some think that it is a matter of graduation and ordination and office, and that when they get into an official position, and have recognition there, then they will begin to fulfill the purpose of their lives. So they are waiting until they are either ordained or appointed to their work. The Lord says, "No, it is not office, it is not ordination, it is not placing; it is you; you are the key." And alongside that, many are looking to the organization, the society, the mission, the church connection to which they are related, and expecting a new day for themselves to originate there, and that when the institution, whatever it may be, takes action, then the work of their life will begin. And the Lord says, "It is not the church, the mission, the organization, the society, the institution; it is you." These men in Acts 1 were waiting for something to happen outside of themselves. They called it the restoring of the kingdom, the setting up of an order which would be a national – perhaps an international – movement: a new order outside of themselves in which they would find their place and
probably be allocated, appointed or ordained to it. And the Lord simply swept the board of all those ideas and said, "No, it is not that, it is you." That is how it proved, how it worked out. We individually may be the key to everything in the purpose of God.
From: "But Ye..." www.austin-sparks.net/english/001738.html
May 29
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised
is faithful. (Hebrews 10:23 NIV)
Faith is going to determine which of two things is going to characterize us. This is the real point. It is either going to be that we are living under a terrible paralysis, as altogether petrified through confusion, perplexity, inability to understand, being unable to disentangle, to sort things out, to see straight and see clearly, to know what is meant by happenings. That means utter paralysis, simply standing with our hands on our hips, helpless and hopeless. That is the effect of the absence of a positive faith.
The only way of Life and deliverance from such a paralysis is a deliberate faith in God which causes us to take the attitude that we are going on with God, understanding or not understanding, explaining or not explaining, having light or having no light; we are going right on with God on the basis of what God has done in us, made real in us, of what God Himself is to us by what He has effected in us. We are going on! We, beloved, shall come there and may come there more than once in the course of our life; we shall come to the place where we realize we are going right out into outer darkness and despair and paralysis, to be ruled completely out of any effectiveness, fruitfulness, or value whatever, unless we pull ourselves together and say to ourselves, "The whole thing is an inexplicable, bewildering confusion, a tangle from our standpoint or the standpoint of man; but God is, God is faithful. That is what He Himself says He is." Thus without questioning God we go on believing God. We have even to believe God to the point of putting over on to Him the responsibility for failures, for mistakes, in so far as we have really and honestly put our lives at His disposal and have become utter for God and are free from personal interests and worldly interests and are here only for God. We have to make over to the Lord‟s account things which may have been mistakes or failures, and trust Him with these and go on.
From: "By Faith..." www.austin-sparks.net/english/001750.html
May 30
Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the
work begin. (Zechariah 4:10 NLT)
It is no small thing to be involved in the testimony of God‟s glory. We should not make a virtue of smallness, as though there were something important about being despised by others, but at the same time we shall find that whenever God has called people to display His glory, He has chosen those who have no glory in themselves.
God has always been obliged to strip His instruments of their own glory. A Moses, full of Egypt‟s sufficiency, must go for forty years to the backside of the desert to be emptied out and made to confess his complete inadequacy before he can become an instrument for the display of the glory of God. There were times when some of the Israelites did try to despise this now humble Moses, and he made no attempt to stand up for himself, but God soon made it manifest to all concerned how wrong it was to despise him. The glory of God appeared at the gate of the tabernacle and took up the challenge. Sometimes it takes the Lord years to get us sufficiently emptied, weak and small, so that we can bear His glory in our lives, a fact which may well explain some of His dealings with us. When He has got us small enough and empty enough, then there is a chance for the working of His Spirit in glory.
From: "By My Spirit" www.austin-sparks.net/english/000478.html
May 31
Get out of your country… to a land that I will show you.
I will bless you. (Genesis 12:1,2)
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 pathfinding for souls. This is the price to be paid for the higher serviceableness to God and men.
From: "Called. Chosen. Faithful." www.austin-sparks.net/english/002783.html
June 1
God, who… made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of
the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
(2 Corinthians 4:6 NIV)
We stand by revelation, "God who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." "God... called me through grace to reveal His Son in me." – Gal. 1:16. How are we going to be made to stand, to be established? How is this endurance going to be put in us? By knowing the Lord Jesus in this inward way, by revelation. The people who are going to stand are those in whom this thing has become a living revelation; "God hath shined in our hearts," this is one side. The other is, "pressed on every side, perplexed, pursued, smitten down... yet not unto despair" – 2 Cor. 4:6-10. We are troubled and pressed down... why? "That the LIFE of JESUS might be made manifest in our mortal bodies" – 2 Cor. 4:11. Is not that endurance? Pressed on every side yet not strangled! "In pressure Thou hast enlarged me" – Ps. 4:1 (Darby). What was meant to be "pressed down," God has made for enlargement. Cast down, yet a wonderful rising up. Why? How? It is "God who hath shined in our hearts... in the face of Jesus Christ," therefore you can go through and survive. Nothing can carry us through but the revelation of the Lord Jesus by the Holy Spirit in our hearts; an inside knowledge of Him – not mental assent to a creed or a doctrine, but a living, vital reality in our very being.
From: The Cross and the City of God - Chapter 4 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002924.html
June 2
Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God.
(2 Timothy 1:8 ESV)
That which represents the testimony in its fullest and closest approximation to the ultimate purpose of God, then has to be shorn of much that has been good, necessary, and of God in a preparatory way, and must be shut up to what is ultimate. The captivity is not to a conceived truth or a superimposed doctrinal acceptance. It is wrought into the very fiber of the being by experience following revelation, and revelation interpreting experience. It is not the championing of some espoused interpretation: it is that it is the very Life of instruments and the instrument is that in its very being. It is not a matter of wanting to be or not wanting to be, but cannot be other, a prisoner, the sovereignty of God has done it.
This applied both to Paul and to those who were brought into touch with him. For the Apostle the settling in to the sovereign ordering of God in his imprisonment issued in increasing illumination leading to spiritual emancipation. No one can fail to recognize the tremendous enrichment of ministry as contained in what are called "the Prison Epistles". If he had been restive, piqued, rebellious, or bitter, there would have been no open heaven, and a spirit of controversy with the Lord would have closed and bolted the door to the fuller Divine unveilings and clarifyings. When all was accepted according to the mind of the Lord, then "the heavenly places" became the eternal expanses of his walking about, and earthly bondage gave place to heavenly freedom. So it must be with every instrument set apart in relation to the higher interests of the Lord‟s testimony.
From: Captivity In The Lord www.austin-sparks.net/english/000689.html
June 3
Called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28)
The chosen vessel becomes the instrument of a Divine wisdom which surprises the vessel itself. Sooner or later that chosen vessel is full of one question: "Why did God choose me? Why did He call me to this work? He ought to have chosen anyone but me! I am the most unsuited for this kind of life and this kind of work." That was true of Moses. When God would send him to Egypt, he said: "Oh, if you can send by anybody, do so, but not by me." When God chose Jeremiah, the latter said: "I cannot speak: for I am a child" (Jeremiah 1:6). A prophet, whose one business it was to speak, felt that it was the one thing he could not do. Divine choice is a very
extraordinary thing, and it is not always the thing that we would like or would choose that God calls us to.
When we are young we have perhaps a great idea of being in the Lord‟s work, and we leap to it very eagerly as though we can do it, but when we get older we feel more acutely our dependence. It is then that we discover that naturally we are not fit for it, and many of God‟s chosen vessels have had to be kept in the work by the very power of God itself. You see, it is God‟s own sovereignty in His choice, and the point is this: It is not the vessel, but the purpose for which the vessel has been chosen. What is it that unites us as Christians? Now listen to this: It is not salvation, nor redemption, but it is God‟s power in salvation and redemption that unites us. It is the common consciousness of all believers that they exist for a purpose and that God has saved them with a great purpose in view. This is a very important thing to remember. We may all be saved, and yet we may all be divided. We may all be redeemed by the precious Blood of Jesus and yet remain just individual units. But see what a uniting power there is in everybody feeling that they are called to a purpose! They are united by one common vision.
From: Into The Mind of God - Chapter 2 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/001635.html
June 4
My little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth
until Christ is formed in you. (Galatians 4:19 ESV)
The profaning of the Lord‟s Name, and the taking away of His glory, is the inveterate habit and course of the old creation nature. Should you see any of the old creation getting into the realm of the things of God, what is the result sooner or later? That man takes the glory, and dishonors God. Is not that the tragic, dark story of "the Church"; man in his old creation powers and life pressing into the things of God, and making a name for himself? The Church has been the happy hunting ground of men for reputation, position, influence and all such things. The flesh always does that. It takes God‟s glory away, it profanes God‟s Name. In order that that might not be so there must be a new creation, where all things are of God....
I see the appalling state of things today amongst the Lord‟s people everywhere; death, weakness, limitation, defeat, failure, inability to stand up, to go on; and, without being critical, censorious or judging, you have to come to the conclusion as you speak with so many, that the measure of Christ is pathetically small. Sometimes when you speak about the Lord to people, who have borne the name of Christian for many years, they gape at you as though you were talking a strange language. Let us ask the Lord that, so far as we are concerned, there may be an increase of Christ in every way.
Let us seek grace for any fiery furnace in the light of the explanation, that it is neither what is of Christ that is being tested in us, nor any good within ourselves, but that what is not Christ should disappear, that it should be Christ, only Christ. At last this universe will know nothing but Christ. He will fill all things, and that will be a great day! May He be fully formed in us.
From: The Essential Newness of the New Creation - Chapter 2 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002210.html
June 5
Whenever two or three of you come together in My name,
I am there with you. (Matthew 18:20 CEV)
We must be completely clear as to what it is that God is particularly concerned with at this time in the world‟s history, and, therefore, what it is that we who are the Lord‟s children are called unto. The thing that God is doing in this dispensation is the formation of a spiritual and heavenly Israel. In doing that He is repeating the laws of the old Israel in a spiritual way. He is following along the lines of His ways with the old Israel, but now on a heavenly and not an earthly basis, because, while God‟s methods may change, His principles are changeless. He has left the earthly basis of the Old Testament and has moved on to a heavenly basis in the New Testament. He has moved from the temporal to the spiritual, and the spiritual is far greater than the temporal....
And that leads us to that wonderful revelation which we have in the New Testament – the revelation of Christ and all His members being made one Temple for God. Christ is our Temple, and in Him we find all that a temple was ever intended to be. Oh, how people have gone astray over this! We go to many places that are called "churches" and the word is applied to the building. When people pray in those places they usually say something like this: "We have come into Thy house today. We are in this house of God." They are really talking about a building. But we don‟t need a building to give God a temple! "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:20). People gathered into Jesus Christ constitute the Temple of God. It is not a special building, but people who are in Christ Jesus. This is what God is doing in this dispensation.
From: The On-High Calling - Chapter 1 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/000979.html
June 6
To whom was God speaking when He took an oath that they would
never enter His rest? Wasn‟t it the people who disobeyed Him?
(Hebrews 3:18 NLT)
We have no right to go to the unsaved and bid them come to Christ and find rest until and unless we ourselves know that rest. Our testimony and our ministry is jeopardized, weakened, limited and discredited if we are not ourselves in rest; and this is the object of the enemy‟s activity in this matter – to discredit us by taking from us that very birthright of our union with Him Who is never perturbed, never anxious, never in doubt as to the issue, the One Who reigns. You see, rest is the practical outworking of our belief that He is Lord, and the very Lordship of Christ is struck at by the unrest of the people of God....
Do not think that it is necessarily such-and-such things that account for our condition. These may be contributing factors, they may be very testing, may bear upon us very heavily. Physical matters – yes, they do press, they do make the situation exceedingly difficult, they do make a difference. Circumstances in which we have to live our lives, they do make a lot of difference, they make the situation exceedingly difficult. We say, "If only the Lord would deal with this physical matter or these circumstances or this something else! It is all due to that, that is the cause of it, the reason for it." That is our way of reasoning, but it is not the Lord‟s thought at all. The thing is deeper down than that, and it is simply a matter of believing God; resolute faith, confidence in God. The Lord is trying to get us out of our variable and varying soul life where we are at the mercy of all our feelings, thoughts and reasonings and all that kind of thing, into a realm where, in spirit, we are steadfast. That is the point upon which it is all fixed in the Psalm. "Their heart was not steadfast with Him" (Ps. 78:37), and around that the whole of their forty years is gathered. The key to this is spiritual; tested by every other line, every other means, it is a spiritual matter ultimately. To be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inward man (Eph. 3:16) is the answer to it all.
From: The Rest and the Courage of Faith www.austin-sparks.net/english/000451.html
June 7
The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (2 Corinthians 3:6)
If you want to know the mind of the Spirit about anything, you will know it by quickening, by Life in that direction. If you want to know what the Spirit is against, you will know it because there is death in that direction in your spirit, you have no Life, you say, in that direction. All
right, that means you know the Lord, you know the Spirit, you know what it is to move on the basis of the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ. The Father governed Him by that law. He governs us by exactly the same law when we are joined to the Lord, one spirit. Guidance, direction, is a matter of Life in the Spirit, Life by the Spirit. The Lord Jesus had His life ordered, governed, conducted, arranged in every detail by the quickening Spirit; the Spirit of Life in Christ.
These Jews came along and said: "Here is the Scripture, and the Scripture says You ought not to do certain things, and You are doing them; You are all wrong because the Scripture says this!" When Christ so acted was He violating the Scripture? Or was He giving God‟s meaning to the Scripture? When God gave that law, did He not have a fuller meaning than what men see just on the surface? Was there not a spiritual interpretation? Was it not pointing on to something, which when it came was to supersede – I do not mean break, but transcend – simply because higher, fuller, deeper meaning was reached? Christ is God‟s Sabbath. It is in Christ that God comes to rest in all His works; His new creation. But they said, "You must abide by the letter!" We put it in that way to show the difference between taking the letter and having the Holy Spirit‟s illumination of the letter. Life and the letter are often contrasted in the Word. The letter killeth, the Spirit maketh alive.
From: The Risen Lord and the Things Which Cannot be Shaken - Chapter 6 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002221.html
June 8
He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it.
(1 Thessalonians 5:24 ESV)
I believe we need a new understanding of the spiritual pilgrimage of the Lord Jesus. We think that because He was God‟s Son, and because of what He was, His way was less difficult than ours. He had certain powers that we have not. He had a nature that we have not. We cannot understand the mystery of One such as He being subjected to trials and difficulties and adversities, and being tested to breaking-point, where it called for the intervention of heaven to get Him through. He was brought there; He was brought to the point more than once where even He would not have gone through, had not heaven intervened and angels ministered to Him. You say: "I have never had that experience." Ah, but you have. You may never have actually seen angels coming to minister to you, but there is no believer who has gone this way, who has gone any distance, but knows in his heart, "But for God and Heaven, I would not be here today." My own testimony is that it has required the intervention of heaven, more than once, to save me from succumbing. But what is true of ourselves was far more true of Him. We do not understand this mystery, but He had a spiritual pilgrimage, with far
deeper testings and tryings than ever you or I need, have, or will have. Yes, "in all points like as we" it is true; but, for Him, with greater acuteness than for us. Through it all He has been perfected – "made perfect." "Though He was a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered; and having been made perfect (having been made complete) He became... the author of eternal salvation" (Heb. 5:8,9), "eternal redemption" (Heb. 9:12). He has reached the end of the road of perfection for us. And He is the guarantee that God can do it in us! That is the point. He is there like the "title deeds" for faith; the guarantee and the certainty that God, having got Him there, can get anybody there. He can get you and me there at the end. He can make perfect His work in us.
From: God's Purpose in All - Chapter 2 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002969.html
June 9
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)
God does not tell us what He is doing when taking us through dark experiences. If He did, it would be all right. If He said, "I am going to lead you into a bad time, it is all going to be dark and strange and perplexing and bewildering and helpless, but it is all right, I am working a tremendous thing, this is what I am going to bring out of it," if He said that, the faith element would fade out. If only He would tell us He is doing something, and what He is doing, instead of leaving us in the dark and seeming to be so far away and without any interest in us! If only! Ah yes, but He did not do that, and we know He does not do that, He does not explain. But here is the challenge. This is what is meant by Heb. 11 and the men of faith, that is what it means. And thank God we have the heritage, we have a great heritage, we have more than they had. These men did not have a Bible; it was not written when they were going through it. We have their story and so many more. We see the issue, we have the sequel, but is it really helping us? When you are having a bad, dark time and feel that all has gone wrong, read the story of Joseph again... starting on it you will not want to put it down. Take its great lessons. The God of Joseph is our God and He is doing the same thing, and we know that that is true to life. What I have been saying is so true to life. We have that evidence. That, at any rate, is very much like my experience, and therefore I have reason to think and believe that the same thing is involved. The God of resurrection is working this to glory.
From: The Testimony of the Christ - Chapter 6 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002985.html
June 10
This is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ.
(Philippians 1:9,10 NIV)
Personal, inward, spiritual intelligence is a very rare thing. No wonder that the enemy has such a successful line in delusions, counterfeits, and false representations. Our greatest safeguard against such will be a deep knowledge of the Lord through discipline. To know the Lord in a real way means steadfastness when others are being carried away – steadfastness through times of fiery trial. Those who know the Lord do not put forth their own hand and try to bring things about. Such are full of love and patience, and do not lose their poise when everything seems to be going to pieces. Confidence is an essential and inevitable fruit of this knowledge, and in those who know Him there is a quiet restful strength which speaks of a great depth of Life.
Let me point out that in Christ "are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden," and the Lord‟s will for us is to come to an evergrowing realization and personal appreciation of Him in Whom all the fullness dwells. We have only stated facts as to the Lord‟s will for all His own, and their greatest need. The absence of this real knowledge of the Lord has proved to be the most tragic factor in the Church‟s history.
Every fresh uprising of an abnormal condition has disclosed the appalling weakness amongst Christian people because of this lack. Waves of error; the swing of the pendulum to some fresh popular acceptance; a great war with its horrors and many-sided tests of faith; all these have swept away multitudes and left them in spiritual ruin. These things are ever near at hand, and we have written this message to urge upon the Lord‟s people to have very definite dealings with Him that He will take every measure with them that they might know Him.
From: On Knowing the Lord www.austin-sparks.net/english/000415.html
June 11
Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit! (Luke 23:46)
"Why hast Thou forsaken Me?" I am so glad that the story of the Cross does not end there. The cry, the awful cry, is "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" but the last words from the Cross are not such. "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit" (Luke 23:46). He is back on the ground of perfect fellowship with the Father and absolute trust.
The victory is gained, the work is done, the enemy is defeated, and the ground is secured. Whatever Satan says, as he does in our deep hours of spiritual experience, about the Lord having given us up, departed from us – all that sort of thing; whatever he says, it is not true. It may be that you do not feel the full weight of that; but if ever you come, as perhaps some of you have come, to a time, such as many of the most faithful and devoted and greatly-used servants of God have known, when the dark forces spread themselves over, gather around in their hordes, and seek to come between you and your Lord and then begin their whisperings – "The Lord has given you up, handed you over," or something to that effect – when you come to that place, then I trust you will know that this word is no light word, no unimportant word: for the last depths of Calvary were fathomed in the moment when our Lord cried that bitter cry and gained the answer and came out victorious and into rest. "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." That was not for Himself, that was for us – for you, for me.... Never, never is it necessary for anyone to know that desolation of Godforsakenness while they put their trust, their faith, upon His taking up this age-long issue as Man for man – the issue of "the light of Thy countenance."
So let us rejoice that we have an open heaven secured for us by our blessed Lord. We have but stated the truth, the fact, of this thing. There is much more bound up with it, which the Lord may show us as we go on, as to what kind of man it is who enjoys that opened heaven, but that is with the Lord. Let us thank Him for the fact that we may have the heaven opened to us. He has done it. But to a Nathanael He will say, "Ye shall see the heaven opened." God grant that we may all be in that blessed position.
From: The Significance of Christ - Chapter 1 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/000838.html
June 12
I tell you the truth, you will all see heaven open and the angels of God
going up and down on the Son of Man, the One who is the stairway
between heaven and earth. (John 1:51 NLT)
We have seen Christ as the true spiritual fulfillment of Jacob‟s ladder, which was set up on the earth, and the top of which reached into heaven. Of this the Lord later said to Nathanael: "Hereafter thou shalt see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." Now if the Lord Jesus is the same, in effect, as the ladder of Jacob, then He is both in heaven and on earth. He is on earth, and He is at the same time in heaven. In Him heaven and earth are united, brought together, and whilst He is here on this earth for purposes of expression and action, He is also in heaven. The point is that His Life, and all His resources, were drawn from above. He was in touch with inexhaustible resources, and
resources which could never die, because they were not of this earth, and could never be subject to the touch of corruption which is characteristic of everything on this earth....
So then, to gather that up in one word, it means that for our lives and for our service, our ministry, our heavenly vocation, there are, in union with Christ, resources at our disposal which are heavenly, inexhaustible, and incorruptible. This is the great secret of strength. We have seen something of what those resources are, and of how they operate; of their value for spirit, soul, and body; mind, heart, and will. Not on our own charges are we commissioned of the Lord, but He Who commissions places His own resources behind His commissioned and His commission.
From: The Risen Lord & the Things Which Cannot be Shaken - Chapter 10 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002225.html
June 13
I correct and discipline everyone I love. Take this seriously, and
change the way you think and act. (Revelation 3:19 GWT)
There is the big question which is always confronting us as to why is it that some leap into the light and go on, and others do not, but always lag behind, and never seem to see any more? Is it that there is a selectiveness on the part of God, a kind of elect of the elect that He has, is it that He has favorites? I do not think so. I think a great part of the answer lies here, namely, in what God finds He has to deal with, whether people mean business with Him or not, whether He has a clear way or not, whether the ground is occupied or not already by that which is an obstruction to Him. I do not think anybody will fail to get all the light the Lord wants them to have if they really do mean business with God. The Holy Spirit knows us. He looks right deep down into our hearts and knows whether we mean business. He sees exactly what there is to hinder Him and how far He can go; for the Lord is not going to coerce anyone.
If we are taken up with ourselves, occupied with ourselves, circling round ourselves, centering in ourselves, then the Holy Spirit has not a chance. We have to come to an end of ourselves. That is the trouble with so many. They have got a self-complex set up, and all the time it is a continuous going round in a circle and coming back to the same point at which they started, and it is all round themselves, and they are wearing themselves out. Before long they are going to have an awful crash that involves all that for which they are supposed to stand and represent for the Lord, and it will come down with them. The Holy Spirit has not a clear way. We have to get out of the way, so far as this self-occupation is concerned, if we are going to move straight on, and to go on. He knows exactly where we are, whether we are so tied up in them that we are not
open to the Lord to consider any further light at all. "We have got it all, or our people with whom we are associated have got it all, and we are a part of that!" You know what I mean. The Holy Spirit cannot do much with folk who are in a position like that; and He knows. His attitude is, "It is no use, I cannot do much there, they are too tied up." But, if we are prepared to put everything into the water, then the Lord can go on and get a clear way.
From: Spiritual Sight - Chapter 4 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/001062.html
June 14
From now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though
we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him
thus no longer. (2 Corinthians 5:16)
The word "flesh" as used here is comprehensive and general. Not knowing Him after the flesh, and not knowing one another after the flesh means really what we should think if we were to say we do not know one another naturally, in the natural realm. Whatever that might be, that is allembracing. We know one another as we know Christ, spiritually. The context here sets forth that our relationship with Christ in the new creation is purely a spiritual thing, and therefore our relationships with one another as being in Christ are spiritual relationships. The whole new creation is a spiritual matter, because it is Christ.
That leads us to this specific point, which goes right to the heart of things. In this realm the thing which dominates is the measure of Christ. Everything here is determined and governed by the measure of Christ. Christ fills this whole realm; Christ dominates this whole realm in a spiritual way; from this realm of the new creation everything which is not Christ is excluded: all things are out from God. We might say that God‟s world is Christ, so far as we are concerned. The entire sphere of God for us is Christ. For us as believers there is nothing else whatever in relation to God, but Christ. Nothing is accepted by Him, but Christ. Nothing is blessed by Him, but Christ. Nothing is used by Him, but Christ. Nothing is seen or considered by Him, but Christ. Here, filling God‟s entire realm so far as we are concerned, is Christ, only Christ.
From: The Essential Newness of the New Creation - Chapter 3 www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002211.html
June 15
Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up
their cross and follow Me. (Mark 8:34 NIV)
In the end it will be the End that judges our Christian life. And so it is the Holy Spirit‟s work, His interest, concern, energy and activity; not only to bring people to the door and to get them inside the door, but to make them know that that door is but the opening of a Way, on the other side of the door everything lies. It is not the door alone, but it is what lies beyond the door, and that is this renewal, this making anew after the image of Him that created. The End governs: it is Christ in all that He signifies and means and stands for. It is that vast All that He is. "Christ is All, and in all" is the last clause. It is Christ in that fullness, which is more than our salvation, more than our initial salvation. The door is essential, but it is what it leads to that justifies going in it at all.
Christ Himself, when He was here, never failed to let people know that when they entered that door, or that straight and narrow way, they were in for trouble.... Now that may sound like a very terrible thing to say, especially to you young Christians who are not far inside the door, but be perfectly clear about it; the Lord Jesus never deceived anybody about this, never at all. He let people know that to "follow Him," as He put it at that time, involved them in difficulty and suffering and persecution and trial and a lifelong thing. There is a cost here, a great cost. And we shall discover that while there are the compensations, for there are undoubtedly the compensations in this life, and the mighty compensations for eternity, this is a way which is not easy for the natural man by any means. This work of the Holy Spirit is drastic, exacting, and very trying to the flesh. Make no mistake about it; it will take all the energy that the Holy Spirit Himself has to accomplish this work. It really will. So the Lord Jesus has not left us in any doubt about this.