How good it is to have the consciousness that we belong to the Lord and are not our own! There is nothing more precious in the world. It is that which brings the awareness of His continual presence.
"For we walk by faith, not by sight." (2 Corinthians 5:7) All temptation is primarily to look within; to take our eyes off the Lord and to take account of appearances. Faith is always meeting a mountain, a mountain of evidence that seems to contradict God’s Word, a mountain of apparent contradiction in the realm of tangible fact—of failures in deed, as well as in the realm of feeling and suggestion—and either faith or the mountain has to go. They cannot both stand. but the trouble is that many a time the mountain stays and faith goes. That must not be. If we resort to our senses to discover the truth, we shall find Satan’s lies are often enough true to our experience; but if we refuse to accept as binding anything that contradicts God’s Word and maintain an attitude of faith in Him alone, we shall find instead that Satan’s lies begin to dissolve and that our experience is coming progressively to tally with that Word.
My giving of myself to the Lord must be an initial fundamental act. Then day by day I must go on giving to Him, not finding fault with His use of me, but accepting with praise even what the flesh finds hard. That way lies true enrichment.
"Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, 'I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.'" John 8:12 Many people mistake knowledge, doctrine, theology and teaching as the light of life. The real light is not mere knowledge. It is none other than the Lord Himself. May the Lord be merciful to us that by His light He may take away our self-reliance, so that we no longer dare to trust in our own knowledge and judgment. Oh that we may come to Him saying, "Lord, You are the light. In seeing You, I now realize that what I have seen in the past have been but things". If doctrine is what we preach, doctrine will be received by people; but this is a dead object, not the light of life. If the light of life is what we dispense, it will not only enlighten people's life, it will also be shone through them.
How many of us know that, because Christ is risen, we are therefore alive “unto God” and not unto ourselves? How many of us dare not use our time or money or talents as we would, because we realize they are the Lord’s not ours? How many of us have such a strong sense that we belong to Another that we dare not squander a shilling of our money, or an hour of our time, or any of our mental or physical powers?
You probably know the illustration of Fact, Faith and Experience walking along the top of a wall. Fact walked steadily on, turning neither to right nor left and never looking behind. Faith followed and all went well so long as he kept his eyes focused upon Fact; but as soon as he became concerned about Experience and turned to see how he was getting on, he lost his balance and tumbled off the wall, and poor old Experience fell down after him.
Plenty of experiences confirm to us that many who are skillful in creating hot atmosphere know very little of the Lord, many excitable persons are quite lacking in the knowledge of the Lord. Only Christ is life, the rest is not. For life depends not on how enthusiastic is our emotion or on how manifold is our thought; it rests exclusively on whether the Lord has manifested His own self. There is therefore nothing more important than to know the Lord. If we know the Lord as our life, we realize the utter futility of all natural efforts in spiritual matters. Hence we look to Him alone.
This mystery of union is God's work by which the unsearchable riches of Christ become ours. Do we believe this? All that is Christ's is ours. Do we believe that God has given us His holiness, perfection, life, power and riches? God has joined us to Christ causing Him to be our head, our trunk and our food. Do we believe that Christ is now our righteousness and sanctification and redemption? Do we believe He is presently living out His life in us? God has indeed invited us, nay, He has commanded us to believe. Our union with Christ is patterned after the union of Christ with God; therefore, His patience, gentleness, purity and goodness are all ours. Just as in initial salvation we previously believed Him to be our righteousness, so today let us likewise believe Him to be our holiness. Yet how many fail in this respect. They know God's way of victory, but they do not have the faith. They know their inability, but they do not know Christ's ability. They see the total corruption of their flesh, but they do not see the riches of Christ as God's gift to them.
If we give ourselves unreservedly to God, many adjustments may have to be made: in family, or business, or church relationships, or in the matter of our personal views. God will not let anything of ourselves remain. His finger will touch, point by point, everything that is not of Him, and He will say: 'This must go.' Are you willing?
We are to live the life of the cross experientially. In going through to the place where we are made "conformable to His death," His Cross must become our cross. Then, what others see and hear of us bears the mark of the Cross which crucifies all manifestations of the fleshly life. All those who are progressing in the pursuit of the Lord and who live in the world should have no other compelling purpose but to receive constantly the power of resurrection life and to live out before men the life of the Cross. This is what gives the Lord full satisfaction and is so well-pleasing to Him.
Before we were saved, worldly objects and affairs usurped the place of Christ; but after being saved, spiritual objects and affairs now tend to occupy Christ’s place. Hence God must show us one day that “Christ is my world.” Earlier He took from us the things of this world; presently He is taking away our spiritual thing or things. He removes our personal patience, love, power, gentleness, humility. Indeed, He removes all, that we may not live by these good things but live by a Person instead. We are patient not because we have received a power to be so, but because we have got a Person. So is it with humility and the rest: not a power but a Person. It is for this very reason that God engages in a destroying work daily in the lives of His children that He may also do the work of a daily building up. Daily destroy things and daily build up Christ. Brethren, God will take away all things in order to give you one Person who is to be simultaneously your humility, your patience, your gentleness, and your love. For Christ is all. And this is what Christianity actually is.
We have before us three things: a fact—“our old man was crucified with him”; a consequence—“that the body of sin might be done away”; and a design—“that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin.” (Romans 6:6) Nevertheless, even after we take the action and maintain the attitude of reckoning our old man to be dead, the sinful nature in us does not henceforth become annihilated and disappear. For as long as we live in this mortal body, the sinful nature will co-exist with us. To say that our sinful nature can be annihilated in this life is a great heresy. We can deliver the old man to death by the power of the cross of Calvary and render it powerless and withered as though dead, but we cannot annihilate it. Whenever we are careless and unwatchful, whenever we do not stand on the death ground of Calvary, our old man will renew its activities and resume its office. Satan is always looking for an opportunity to reactivate the old man. And as soon as there is a loophole, the old man will recover its original position.
Though in fact I am in Christ, yet if I live in the flesh—that is, in my own strength and under my own direction—then in experience I find to my dismay that it is what is in Adam that manifests itself in me. If I would know in experience all that is in Christ, then I must learn to live in the Spirit.
"When Christ our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory." Colossians 3:4 Suddenly one day we see that Christ is our life. That day everything is changed. There is a day when we see ourselves in Christ. After that, nothing can make us see ourselves outside of Him. It alters everything. Then also there is a day when we see that Christ within us is our life. That too alters our whole outlook. They may be different days with an interval between, or both may come together. But we must have both; and when we do, then we begin to know Christ’s fullness, and to marvel that we have been so stupid hitherto as to remain poor in God’s storehouse.
I was greatly impressed by something a great national leader wrote in his autobiography: "I want nothing for myself; I want everything for my country." If a man can be willing that his country should have everything and he himself nothing, cannot we say to our God: "Lord, I want nothing for myself; I want all for Thee. I will what Thou willest, and I want to have nothing outside Thy will."
The life we live is the life of Christ alone. We think of the Christian life as a changed life, but it is not that. God offers us an exchanged life, a substituted life, and Christ is our substitute within. 'I live, and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me'.
God will not give me humility or patience or holiness or love as separate gifts of His grace. He's not a retailer dispensing grace to us in doses, measuring our some patience to the impatient, some love to the unloving, some meekness to the proud, in quantities that we take and work on as a kind of capital. He has given only one Gift to meet all our need — His Son, Christ Jesus. When I look to Him to live out His life in me, He will be humble and patient and loving and everything else I need in my stead. Remember the word in the first epistle of John, 'God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the life, and that hath not the Son of God hath not the life'.
God's end is Christ, so also God's means is Christ. It is through Christ to Christ. He says He is the bread of life—He does not say He will give us the bread of life. He says He is the way—He does not say He will guide us to walk in the way. He says He is the truth—He does not say He will teach us a truth. He says He is true life—He dos not say He will give us a life. Whatever Christ gives us is His very own self... Christianity is Christ... Christianity is not any one thing which Christ gives to me; Christianity is Christ giving Himself to me. (see John 6:48, 11:25, 14:6)