God has indeed said "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated" (Rom 9:13) - Jacob was of the promise, Esau was of the flesh - and whom He loves He blesses. This is a very solemn matter. David failed God and Abraham made mistakes; Isaac was weak and Jacob crafty; yet the blessing of God was on all of them!
Today in the Church as the body of Christ, you may be a much better fellow than Jacob; but without the divine blessing on your life, where are you? You are dead in the water and going nowhere. Learn to set high priority on the blessing of God and to view with suspicion anything that would cause you to forfeit it. Maybe you have been tempted to despise some brother less endowed with gifts than you; and yet God blesses him! And you? Again and again you have done the right thing; but His blessing has been withheld.
Dare you say God has erred? Beware of taking offence at His choices. Jealousy of another mans calling or spiritual state can work and reek havoc in your own. Our fruitfulness for God depends upon His blessing, but it is all too possible, by our attitude, by our self conceived opinions, by our speech etc. to arrest and to staunch it's flow. Should that prove to be the case in your Christian life at this time, may I suggest you fall prostrate before God, humble yourself, turn from your wicked ways and cry out to Him for His way. Let us trust God to so deal with us that, without His blessing on our lives and on our work for Him, we can neither live today nor face tomorrow!
Am I afraid to stand and speak without the consciousness that what I utter has come to me here and now direct from God? Must I be so painfully concerned as to whether or not it is the Holy Spirit who is moving me to say this or that? In demanding to be so self conscious of that what I say is from God, am I not merely displaying how self centred and spiritually poor I am?
A wealthy Christian speaks out of the abundance of grace that is in his heart. Waking early morning after morning to be taught in God's word, he builds up spiritual riches on which to draw. Instead of eking out a hand to mouth existence on special dispensations of grace, he is laying up over the years a permanent surplus, out of which to bring forth things of God that are both new and old. From such experience he can if need be, speak the mind of the spirit without the self-conceited consciousness of being God's special oracle!
Today in the Church as the body of Christ, our traditional leaders lack spiritual riches. Most think that what their minds have accumulated mentally from Bible studies, or Bible learning over the years is their huge vault of spiritual knowledge. But real spiritual knowledge is not from the mind but from the content of the heart from a new born spirit! The mind has its place in reasoning and understanding but it is not the vehicle with which to transport spiritual life. Those who try to transfer what is in their brain to the brain of others, do so without imparting life.
The words that the Lord Jesus spoke were the words of life. "It is the Spirit that gives you life; the flesh does not profit anyone. The words that I speak to you are spirit; they are life" John 6:63 God's way is for the heart to transmit heart to heart, spirit to spirit. It is never the substance of what is said that is of prime importance but where it comes from; the source of where it is spoken from! May all that are called by His name, speak out of a tongue that knows the Lord Jesus Christ!
That which called forth Paul's lifelong consecration of himself to Christ was that heavenly vision he had of Jesus. The obedience of his will sprang from the vision. For while it remains true that all self-committal to God is precious to Him, blind self-committal will not serve Him very far, it will falter and it will fail. There is, I think, a difference between the initial, pure, but un-instructed consecration that follows our spiritual salvation, and the further giving of ourselves in the area of our mind, emotion and will, that springs out of this seeing or vision of the plan and purpose God has for our lives.
Upon the one, based as it is on our instant spiritual salvation, He may not at once make any demands upon us. But when He opens His heart and enlarges ours to reveal His Son to us and what He wants done; when having asked for our willing co-operation, He receives from us our response, then it is that His demands upon our giving of ourselves and our self-life intensifies. We have pledged our word on the basis of a new understanding that we have received by such a heavenly vision, which is revelation to us by His Holy Spirit. He then takes us afresh at our word and at our response to that heavenly revelation of Jesus Christ. Hereafter all that we have and all that we are must go into it all the way! This is what it is to be lead to the cross of Jesus Christ!
Today in the Church as Christ's own body, we have two classes of Christians, the many and the few. Those who are the many constitute "the called", and those who are the "the few" constitute the "chosen". "Many" are the "called", but "few" are the "chosen." The "many" are all the Born again Christians everywhere who are saved in the first salvation which is spiritual, instant and by faith. In the second salvation, which is the salvation of the soul (the outworking of the first), they are a few of the many who have chosen the life of Christ in preference to the life of self as the practical and practicing Lord of their lives.
This second salvation experience is not instant, it is by growth, it demands patience and it will not be completely finished until we actually go to be with the Lord. It all has to do with the saving of the will to the extent that what is on the inside of us spiritually, progressively permeates our will to the transforming of the exterior; thus giving us a renewed mind, renewed emotion and His desires in our heart. A renewed mind expresses Christ as does a new emotion which serves our spirit by magnifying the Lord Jesus in all that we do. There is no such thing as Holiness Perfection to be had on this earth at this time but we can allow Him to express His life out in us and be changed more into His likeness by exchange.
The chosen are they who are experiencing this second salvation of the soul. They are those who have been broken by God. They have come to deny their self-life by willingly choosing to loose their self life in preference to gaining the life of Christ as the Lord of life everyday and this in a very practical experience in real life, not just another theory to be believed and followed. These are they who have received that 'heavenly vision' of Jesus Christ as He is today in the spirit. Real Christianity is today still in the day of receiving individual personal revelation of Jesus Christ. If you have that revelation of Jesus then you have that heavenly vision. Those who don't have that revelation of Jesus have no reality in their Christian lives.
When the Galilean boy brought his bread to Jesus, what did Jesus do with it? He broke it. God will always break what is offered to Him, but then He blesses it and uses it to meet man's need. Is not this true of your experience and mine? You give yourself to the Lord, and all at once everything invariably goes so wrong that you are tempted to find fault with His ways and pull out! To persist in such an attitude is to be broken, yes indeed, but to what purpose? You have gone too far for the world to use you, but you have not gone quite far enough for God to use you. This is the tragedy of many Christian's. Do we want him to use us? Then day by day, let us go on giving to Him, praising Him and not finding fault with his methods or His ways, but alternately accepting His handling and dealing with us with great praise and expectation.
Today in the Church as the body of Christ, many there are that grumble or moan deep in their hearts. These should realise and know that it is God who is the one that is metering out to them all that comes to them in their life environment. It is God who has ordered their circumstances! The things that are 'not good' have been ordered and allowed by God to draw us into a closer dependency on Him. Other things are ordered by God to break us of our 'love of self' and our stubborn independence. No one really likes to be going through dealings from the hands of the Living God, but this is necessary as it is God's only way for us to grow in Christ and to be transformed into His likeness. Much dross or rubbish may yet need to be purged from our lives. May we rejoice in the God of our salvation and praise Him, knowing that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
At the start of this new year and in an hour when men are blaspheming the Lord's name all around the world, the psalmist can only exclaim it's greatness. Though himself a poet, he is at loss to express it's value and worth. All he can do is cry "how excellent!" And this unspeakable excellence is "in all of the earth." Here, surely, is an echo of Genesis 1, where God beheld all and that it "was very good." But having begun in this manner, the writer concludes his psalm with an identical tribute to that excellent name, and this without so much as a mention of the terrible fall of man. Had we been writing this, we would have felt bound to bring in the sin factor and the failure of man.
But God is unchanging; and to the Psalmist, even Adam's sin could not reverse God's intention that in the end man should "have dominion over all the earth." It is at this point that the Lord Jesus comes on the scene. It is Hebrew's 2 that illuminates Psalm 8: "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man" ...Heb.2:9 The Lord Jesus is now the new man that represents all humanity in all of the earth, and He has already dealt with every sin problem by dying to pay the price of all the sins of all humanity forever! In Jesus Christ, all of God's desire is fully realised and Jesus is now related to all of us in all of this earth, even though there are many that have not as yet accepted Him. There is no deviation in the ways of God: they go straight ahead forward. "Oh Lord Jesus, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth!"
There is a wonderful plan and purpose of God for us in that Jesus Christ was born on Christmas day. One small step for God, one gigantic leap for mankind! This is the day that God Himself appeared on the earth dressed as a man. Jesus was not born to just grow up and die for our sins and to prove that He was God. Jesus was born onto the earth to be tried, tested and proved as a man! Do you fully understand this? He came to do for us all that which we had no hope of doing for ourselves. Under the old testament law we were all judged dead in trespasses and sins!
Picture that miraculous event once again today that took place in Bethlehem 2000 years ago! See not just the Saviour here but see also the new life that the Holy Spirit of God was forming in the soul of this God-Man Jesus Christ who is the second Adam. This life is to be for us as our new spiritual life! All of mankind has the availability of a new life in Jesus because He died for the whole world to release His life to the whole world, not just for the select few! Now that includes both you and me together with the whole of humanity! Therefore, it was necessary also for Jesus to die, not just to pay the price of all our sins and deliver us, but also to release onto the earth this new life that was formed in His own fleshly body. We were formed in the resurrection body of this same Jesus that today stands on earth as the body of Christ.
Oh! ... how I wish we could all see this more clearly! This baby Jesus grew up into the full stature of a man and developed a life within Himself that He shed at the cross for us, to be our new life the instant we are born again. (Romans 8:9 "If any man does not have the spirit of Christ then he is none of His.")
Today, if you are born again with this life of Christ in you, then you love this man from Galilee who was born in that manger at Bethlehem on Christmas day! We are not debating the Calender issue here; we are just saying that the day Jesus was born (whenever it was) is our Christmas day, celebrated on December 25th. This is that day that we choose to celebrate with such joy and thanksgiving! ...but please, not just for His birth, but for all that He is to us as the life of the body and for all that He has accomplished for us through His birth, death, resurrection and Glorification.
We Love You Lord Jesus. Happy Birthday!
Along with the gold in both Eden and Paradise, we find precious stones (Genesis 2:12; Revelation 21:19). Precious stones are jewels; and jewels are not produced in one day. Precious Christians are not formed overnight! Time is a vital factor both in their transformation and completion. Precious stones are wrought by a long process in the fires of the earth and their beauty is displayed by skilful cutting and polishing. In spiritual terms this implies values that are inwardly wrought by God's patience in you and me. Such values are indeed very costly. Those who are unwilling to pay the price of self will never come by them. Grace is free but only a high price buys precious stones. Many a time we shall want to cry out, "This is costing me too much!" Yet the lessons we learn as we pass through dealings and sufferings with Him - "through fire and water" - these are the really treasured and worthwhile things. Let me tell you something: if you really mean business with God regarding your own life, then to go all the way with God at the cross will cost you everything there is of independent self!
Today in the Church as the body of Jesus Christ on earth, we need to know as born again Christians that in the light of God some things perish by themselves. God's revealed truth (His light in us) consumes much. There is no need to wait for the fire. It is in what has withstood the test of tempest, fire and time and yet remains, that the true worth of any Christian is manifested. The new 'resurrected life' of Jesus Christ within us withstands all such tests and for all time! He lives His life out in us continually (in the person of His Holy Spirit) doing all that we cannot possibly do for ourselves. He alone is the author and finisher of our Christian lives!
Be encouraged to know that God is at work in us cutting away all that there is of 'the old self' - ie, that which restricts Him - and He is fine polishing us in all that frustrates Him by allowing us to rub (be in contact with) shoulders with others, especially other difficult abrasive Christians! (They tell me that when you place precious gems together in a rotating barrel over an extended period of time; they rub together against one another, so that all their sharp points and rough edges are eventually worn away by abrasion!)
We call this the sand-paper ministry! Let that which can be consumed be consumed (self in us) and let that which remains be expressed from us (Jesus in us). This is that which constitutes a precious stone of great price in God's eyes. Do not avoid the opportunity to be linked closely with other other Christians of like spirit when such opportunity comes your way. It is the intensity and exposure of ourselves to the life of Christ in others that allows God to remove the dross and cause us to be polished and transparent! Do not fear this type of exposure.
When John first announced Jesus as the Lamb of God, he added "which taketh away the sin of the world" (verse 29) thus emphasising his redeeming work. The second time he did so, however, he simply said "Behold the Lamb of God!" Here the accent was not so much on the work as on the Person. Real appreciation means that people are precious to us for their own sakes. We come to love them more for what they are than for what they have done for us. So it should be with our appreciation of the Lord Jesus. We thank the Lord Jesus for His gifts, but we praise Him more for His own worth. Christ on the Cross calls forth from us our eternal thanksgiving. Christ on the throne calls forth our everlasting praise! We look at what He has done for us and we are profoundly grateful; we behold who He is and we can do none other than just adore Him!
Today in the Church, we talk much about faith, but how many of us really recognise that in this business of real Christianity, there is nothing we can do of ourselves other than to enter into all that Jesus has already achieved for us by simple acceptance. The out-working of this is to thank Him for what He has done for us and to praise Him for all that He is to us. This then is the fruit of faith but not faith itself. To really know what He has done at the cross, and to really know who He is to us now, is faith itself! Those that walk this way do not have to try to make an effort to thank and to praise Him because it is virtually automatic, meaning that it is the spontaneous outworking from their mouths out of an inner happening in their hearts. The reason why we confess with our mouths is because we believe in our hearts!
When I was younger Christian, I sought to attain to a perfect standard of presenting God's truth, determined to leave nothing that could possibly be misunderstood by those who heard me. I took great care to run no risks in my preaching, but I must confess there was very little spiritual value in it. I soon discovered that God uses the weak things of this world as his messengers. He does not demand from us foolproof explanations but uses fragments: a word here or a sentence there brings His revealed truth as light to mankind.
Today in the Church as the body of Christ, God is not looking for perfect understanding or for faultless teaching. Indeed our very desire for perfection in these matters may of itself hinder Him if it stands in the way of His prime objective. God's prime objective is to bring life to dead souls and heavenly food to hungry hearts. Jesus said, "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." (John 6:63)
Note that Jesus did not say 'The words I speak unto you are the commandments of God's law and therefore words of Judgement, condemnation and death.' We are not goaded by the principle of right or wrong philosophy anymore. Seeing that we are now in Christ, His life within us has become our new basic principle of right or wrong! Therefore we are now more inclined to be motivated by the principle of God's grace in our hearts where the question is always one of Life, not right or wrong! Right or wrong is of the Law and delivers nothing but death. God's grace in Jesus gives us life!
God has made us to be His ministers of the spirit of Life, not the ministers of 'the law of sin and death'. Romans 8:2 states, "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made us free from the law of sin and death." There you have it! Those who are bound by the law can never please God; all they ever seem to want to do is to argue. They don't really know the Lord Jesus at all, at best they only know about Him!
These words describe the beginning of everything in the 'New Life' experience of God's children. Dew-fall is altogether vital to the life and growth of trees and flowers. It is the very nourishment that sustains their life; and to us also, the Lord Himself promises to be as the dew to all His people, whether they recognise it or not! Everything in our Christian life as Christians comes to us from the life of the Lord Jesus as our source. He is made by God to be unto us our wisdom, our reality of truth, our righteousness, our holiness - yes, our everything! There is no human need that we shall not find met as we receive Him fresh daily into our lives as our all; but note also, that neither indeed will anything else be given to us as a separate gift apart from Him.
"I will be as the dew," He affirms; and in the next half of the verse Hosea shows how our life, with this as it's foundation, takes on a mysterious dual character. In it the delicate blossom of the lily is wonderfully linked with the powerful roots of the cedar tree. Frail beauty and massive strength united in a single plant. Such miracles are wrought by heaven's dew-fall alone.
Today in the Church as the earthly body of Christ, it is the Life of the Lord Jesus that is our miracle working dew! He is our new Life!
Many of our inner problems today stem from the fact that we are content with a merely objective acceptance of scriptural theory and doctrine. We seek an outward, mental light on the Scriptures, but stop short of their inward application of experience. We encounter many intellectual difficulties in the Bible; and "light," to us, is the solving of these arguments. For many of us it is a case of feeling all is well if we are conservative or orthodox in our doctrine and give mental assent to this and mental dissent to that. It is by reasoning that fundamentalists consider themselves on a so much higher plane than modernists. Yet surely it must be obvious to us that we all measure up spiritually in God's eyes only in so far as we possess a true inward 'heart knowing' of His Son Jesus and no further. We may be perfectly right, but unless we possess the life of Christ and live by Him, we lack the supreme basic fundamental essential to even start to begin with!
Today in the Church as the body of Christ, many Christians suffer from an over-developed mind at the expense of an un-developed heart! We have put the cart before the horse! Our 'soul life' is too big and our 'heart life' is too small. We need to pray that the Lord Jesus will expand our hearts by enlarging Himself in us and at the same time cause our 'self esteem' to decrease. We need more of His life to be active and expressed in us and through us in place of 'self'. Running the way of His commandments is not grievous to us when the Christ-life is a spontaneous desire in our heart. Someone better and bigger in life than us is carrying us through each day and meeting every challenging need that confronts us. God is still the lawgiver on the throne; but now, by His own principle of Grace, He is also the keeper of His law in our hearts! When we trust Him and depend upon Him as such, then is our heart enlarged!
Foolishness or wisdom? The question hinges simply on procrastination or prompt obedience. Some of us are parents and have children. How greatly those children can differ in temperament! One will obey at once; another will think that by putting it off he can avoid the issue and the need to do so. If that is indeed the case, and your word and your will are weak enough to allow him a loophole for escape, then the one who procrastinates is in fact the wise one! For he succeeds in doing nothing for you at all, other than his own will. But if your word holds good to your will and ultimately must be obeyed, then he is certainly the wiser one who faces the issue squarely and obeys at once.
Today in the Church as the body of Christ, let us get clear about the will of God. If God's words can be discounted, then you might not be considered foolish in trying to escape their implications; but if God is an unchanging God with an unchanging word and an unchanging will, then be wise; act now and redeem your time, don't waste it! Obey His word today, co-operate with His will and move your willingness into agreement with Him!
There are times when we put forth tremendous effort in our prayers without getting any answer from God, yet how seldom do we seek God to discover as to why? For how can we expect Godt to answer prayers that are out of harmony with His mind? In all our praying we must first find the key. It was this that David sought to do at the time of prolonged famine as this chapter describes.
David did not simply cry out to God... "This famine has lasted three years. Have mercy on us now and grant us a rich harvest this year." No, he sought the face of the Lord. In other words, David questioned whether God had something to say about it all? To his direct question God gave him a direct reply; and with it the key to all answered prayer. Saul, it appears, by slaying some of the Gibeonites, had violated God's understanding with Israel to spare them. True, he had done so out of zeal for God; but he had sinned. God will not permit the breaking of a solemn vow. So there was something to be set right. "And after that," we read in verse 14, "God was entreated for the land." David had found the key.
So also is it today in the Church as Christ's body and in our own personal Christian lives. Many there are that zealously pray but few inquire of God as to why this situation is the way it is. In other words, "What is the root cause of this problem?" Were we to approach God from this point of view, then we have found the key; and no doubt the direction of much of our prayer will change course accordingly, as God shows us the real cause of many problems and situations. We also would do well if we would just seek God's face before we pray according to our feelings and our thoughts.
Jesus came to give man life! Look through Johns writings with this thought in mind. Whosoever believes in Him may have eternal life. He is that water of life and that bread of life, come to give us life "more abundantly". Moreover, because He was first willing to die for us, He is also the resurrection and the life for us!
In a time of crisis and calamity, it is life you cling to, because it is life that matters above all else. In the Japanese air raids on Nanking the death and destruction seemed appalling. Where before had stood pleasant homes, now all at once there was only heaps of rubble. "Is anyone in them?" was the question in every mind. Suddenly one heap of rubble began to move. A beam was thrown aside and a man scrambled out shaking off dust and broken tiles. He could do it, because he had life!
Today in the denominational structures all over the earth there is a crises going on. Many of these previously blessed 'confines of Christianity' have become at best, 'heaps of rubble' or at worst pure 'Rubbish tips' - but wherever there is movement then there is life! Jesus is now on the outside of many of them, still knocking to gain access. Yet there are many sincere believers trapped in these piles of rubble and mountains of rubbish; and they are in all sorts of bondage's, but going nowhere because of the absence of life, suffocating under the dominion of some form of counterfeit from the enemy doing little else but bringing death into their hearts. Many are constrained by 'beams' of blindness too... so called Pastors who use the psychic to keep hold of their flock by crafty and subtle means and fear. May the ones who have a live spirit, who are thirsty for Life, do a "come out of her my people!" and Christ will give you that abundant life.
It is by the life of Jesus that we live, not by the life of any denominational church thing! The Lord Jesus has a life that has been tried and tested by death. "I am the living one... I have the keys of death and Hell," He proclaims. Is it not the safest bet for your life, "to put all your confidence, trust and dependence on a God who raises the dead and gives 'eternal life' to all who accept Jesus Christ for what He has done and for who He is"? Jesus is not only the way and the truth, He is also the life!
To His servants God gives the gift of prophecy and to the Church He gives prophets. A prophet is one who has a history with God, one who has experienced in his own life the formative work of the Holy Spirit. We are sometimes asked by would-be preachers how many days should be spent in preparation of a sermon. The answer is at least ten years, and probably nearer twenty! In this matter at least, the proverb is usually true that "the old is better." For the preacher matters to God at least as much as the thing preached. God chooses as His prophets those in whom He has already worked out in their life the thing that He intends to use as His message for today.
Today in the Church as the body of Christ, it is not how good or how doctrinally right that you are that counts: it is always who you are! Because it is the 'who you are' that God looks at. We might have a vast wealth of bible knowledge in our minds but all of that never ever impresses God! God is not impressed with what you say you have but who you are. Those that have the Son have the Life and those that do not have the Son preach death, no matter how informative and beautiful their messages. Today we see an absence of the preaching of the cross of Christ and right here the text we have chosen comes into full view. The Lord's message is the cross and the Lord's messenger needs to be in possession of the crucified life before he can preach it or teach it. It is that which gives hope and life to those who hear it!
Was not Jesus judged as a man in place of us? Was He not judged as man instead of us? Did He not die our death in place of us? Has He not taken all of our sins upon Himself and been judged the greatest sinner of all time? (bearer of sins that is). He did not die for His own personal sin because He had none. That was our sin that He died for, not His own! He was judged by God for all our sin and therefore He had to bear all our punishment and to die and shed His blood; yet it was found upon examination that His precious blood had no physical effects of sin! Therefore He had no sin of His own.
He took upon Himself all that we had done and all that we were! He died not just for our behaviour but for our natural character as well - all that we were by natural birth. He died to put an end to the nature of sin in us that was our heritage! He was judged not just for all that we have done but for all that we are. By knowing this, we can now choose to live without the guilt and stigma of our sins and failures. In fact, this also covers everywhere we fall short of God's expectation for us! We are freed forever from the penalty of sin and from all judgment from God! You cannot try a criminal for the same crime twice, especially when he has been executed! You cannot have Christ judged for us in the past, then expect God to judge us again today or tomorrow! Our judgment is not future but past! ...it's history! There is no present or future judgement from God for the Born again Christian. Jesus came onto the earth as a man in the first place to die on the earth as man and to pay the wages of all sin!
Seeing that God has achieved all that in Jesus Christ for us, then there is no condemnation for all who have accepted what Christ has achieved! No more accusation means no more judgment! God is now no longer our Judge but our Justifier, our defender. He approves of all that we are in Christ because He justifies and approves all that is of Christ in us. The life of Christ is now our life and His Life does not sin! We are constituted righteous by His Life that is within us!
Watchman Nee: Since I first saw Jesus the Saviour as the friend of sinners, I have seen many unusual and difficult people brought to Him. I remember once a young woman came and attacked me, saying that she did not want to be saved. She said she was young and intended to have a good time and had no wish to leave her ways of sin, nor the least desire for salvation. After she had more or less raved at me for a while, I said, "shall we pray?" "What on earth should I pray?" she replied scornfully. I said, "I can't be responsible for your prayer, but I will pray first; and then you can tell the Lord Jesus all that you have been saying to me." "Oh, I couldn't do that!" she said, somewhat taken aback. "Yes, you can," I replied. "Don't you know He is the friend of sinners?" This touched her. She did pray - a very unorthodox prayer - but from that hour the Lord began to work in her heart and within a few days time she was gloriously saved!
Today in the Church as the body of Christ, it is the same! Jesus is the friend of all sinners everywhere and what we cannot do to save ourselves, He can! Because the Lord Jesus is now our friend is only made possible by the fact that He loved us and gave Himself for us while we were separated from God due to our sin. It is so true that the Lord Jesus is the friend of the sinner before He becomes the sinners friend!
It is wearisome and a bore to me to talk with people who aim at some form of perfect outward correctness while caring little for what is internal, vital and spiritual. "Denominational methods," as such, do not interest me at all. In fact, it is grievous to meet Christians who know practically nothing of the hatefulness of a life lived in the energy of the natural man and have little or no experience of the Lordship of Jesus Christ within, yet who are all the time being scrupulously careful to arrive at absolute correctness of method in God's service! God Himself has provided for His wine with a wineskin which will best contain and mature it. It is a great loss to have the wine without the wineskin but it is worse than loss, it is death, to have a wineskin without the wine!
Today in the Church as the body of Christ we also have the structured denominational church. In it we have three types of believers: true-believers, un-believers and make-believers. Of these three the make-believers constitute themselves to be God's worst enemies and they are not just in the Church but most times found to be running it! These are they who remind me of a pen without ink: they just scratch the paper. Unless we have come to the cross of Christ and have had the energy of our natural man terminated and received the life of Christ to be our life in its place, then we too could well be one of these! The Lord Jesus died on that cross not just to pay the price of our sins, but to also crucify our soul life so as to give us His life in return for our self life. It is His life, that He lay down at the cross that becomes the wineskin to hold the new wine which is the Holy Spirit of God Himself. We need both the pen and the ink before we can express the spirit of Life and help others.
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