God’s Mysterious DealingsIf God were dealing with us as sinners, that is, if He were dealing with us because of certain personal sins and personal faults, we could quite clearly understand that; but when He is dealing with us in relation to Divine purpose, as His servants, His dealings with us go far beyond our understanding.We are taken out into a realm where we do not understand what the Lord is doing with us, and why the Lord takes certain courses with us. We are out of our depth; we are altogether baffled; and we are compelled - that is, if we are going on with God - to believe that God knows what He is doing: we have just to move with Him according to whatever light we may have, and believe that these dealings with us, so far beyond our understanding are somehow related to that purpose with which we are called, and that the explanation waits some distance ahead, and we will find it when we get there. God does not explain Himself when He takes a step with us. - The Ministry of Elijah
Cuts and quotes
The Holy Spirit’s Objective . . . the Holy Spirit has one object in view, and all His activities are toward that one object, namely, the establishment of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That is what He is after, and if you want the Holy Spirit to operate, to work in your life and through you, remember it is to that He will work, and it is not always the Holy Spirit’s way to give us lovely sensations and beautiful experiences which would bring us into prominence, and make something of us.The Holy Spirit may take us into deep depths in order to get the Lordship of Jesus Christ established, and He will do it in the way which will reach His end best. He will dethrone, He will break down all our strength, our glory, and our kingdom. His end is the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost prayer is, "Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever." November, 1941
Reaching Divine Fulness Divine fulness is only going to be reached by a progressive and ever-increasing revelation of Christ and His significance. Such a revelation - unless we misunderstand the record of God’s ways from of old - comes firstly to an apprehended instrument which is taken into the deeps with God; then it is given forth as His truth for His people; and then it becomes the inwrought experience and knowledge of such as really mean business with God - not as to their blessing, but as to His purpose and inheritance in them. July, 1942
URGENTLY NEEDED!Men (and women) of stature – (Isaiah 45:14; Ephesians 4:13)In whom the Cross has done a deep work as to self-interest. Who are not so concerned to preach, or to try and influence others to a doctrine or theory, but whose main influence will be one of LIFE. Who have come to know the Lord in a way of proving. Whose reaction to every situation, circumstance, and proposition is: Does it glorify God? and whose touchstone by which all things are tested and determined is: Can it work out to an increase of Christ?For such there is a pressing need, in the Church, in the Lord’s work, and in all the nations. Enquire in The Secret Place.
Christ Only and FullyWhenever and wherever, by a new revealing of Himself, His purpose and method, the Lord has secured those who have moved out on to the ground of Christ only and in fulness, they have always had to meet a great and painful cost. Usually it has been their own brethren in Christ who have exacted it. . . The truth is that - in many cases - they have only taken the ground which everybody knows is the ground of spiritual fullness; where questions of “church connection” and orders, etc., are never raised; where such things as joining something, or conforming to a special teaching or practice are never mentioned, but “Christ is all and in all”; and the one concern has been that He should have what is His ground and way of continuous increase. July, 1945
The Way of Fruitfulness If you are going to be an Overcomer. . . if you are going with the Lord wholly and utterly, to persecute in (a) thoroughgoing way God’s full end, to pursue it . . . and pay the price. . . there is undoubtedly going to be tremendous enrichment of others, and the fact is, and it is a settled law, that the enrichment of others can only come in this way. Those who will not pay the price forfeit the fruitfulness. The real values of Christ have come all the way through the centuries through men after this sort, men of this mind. . . Your greatness and your value and your fruitfulness will be according to the utterness of your abandonment to God’s full thought. He will see to the rest, and many will thank God that you paid the price, that you suffered for an utter way for the Lord, that you counted not the cost too great. January, 1946
Holding the Ground We do not know why we are in the place that we are in. Everything seems so difficult, so contrary, and then we see things begin to break up. It looks like calamity, and in the end there is something secured for God. But it necessitates our being there pronouncedly the Lord’s to secure it. This does not just happen. . .He may hold us in a place and not let us go until that testimony is there established, and then perhaps He will give the situation, or those there, into our hands. September, 1946
Accredited Ministry Truly accredited ministry is through suffering. Accredited ministry represents a tremendous victory, set in a background of great conflict. A determined effort is made through the age to discredit spiritual ministry, and to do so through the one engaged in that ministry. . .One who counts for the Lord, is a joint of supply, who can be of value in any way to the Lord’s people, and stand in His testimony, will know the enemy’s effort to render those spiritual values nil by discrediting. . . All ministry that is to be accredited will be bound up with suffering; a decision we have to make is as to the object of our ministry. A good many things can be taken into consideration, but there comes a point where all other things have to be ranged on one side, and one thing on the other side - the real spiritual value, without alloy: that which is wholly of God and not at all of man. In the measure in which that is true there will be suffering. To stand utterly for what is spiritual is a costly thing. There must be a willingness to be dealt with by the Lord, in such a way as to keep the ministry living and pure. All ministry which issues from such suffering is going to count. It may not be welcomed or desired by the mass, but where there is need and a call for that which we have gained through suffering, there will be response. But the treasure is in vessels of fragile clay; the vessel is being broken day by day.September, 1946
Holding the GroundWe do not know why we are in the place that we are in. Everything seems so difficult, so contrary, and then we see things begin to break up. It looks like calamity, and in the end there is something secured for God. But it necessitates our being there pronouncedly the Lord’s to secure it. This does not just happen. . . He may hold us in a place and not let us go until that testimony is there established, and then perhaps He will give the situation, or those there, into our hands. September, 1946
Enlargement through PerplexityThe facts are that there is often a larger service through a certain curtailment, a fuller life through a deeper death, a richer gain by a keener loss; and we have to look for the impact of the operation of God in us in a realm where the eye of man cannot trace. . .Supposing the deepest purposes of God can only be realized by His hiding from our flesh all that that flesh craves for its life, and – more - supposing His work in us, whereby triumphant faith and obedience reach their highest form, necessitates His concealing Himself and accepting the risk of being considered to have been unfaithful? There is no doubt that most of those who have been called into some of the most vital expressions of “the eternal purpose” have been trained in the school of apparent Divine contradiction, delay, withdrawal, and darkness. November, 1946
The Deeper Meaning of Pentecost 1. Pentecost in its outworking - or the presence of the Holy Spirit here - will mean that those in whom the Spirit operates and has His way will never be able to rest short of God’s full thought for themselves or for others. They will be deeply exercised and burdened and will be drawn into the travail of Christ, to fill up that which is lacking of His sufferings for His Body’s sake which is the Church. This man in Christ is a marked man, he is marked from heaven as one whose whole heart is taken up with this great concern that what is there should be found here: that what is true of Christ, the Man in the glory, should be more fully expressed here in this new man, the Church, the Body.
The Deeper Meaning of Pentecost 2. That is an operation of the Holy Spirit; and if you tell me that the Holy Spirit is having His way, and yet there is complacency with things that are not according to Christ, I say that is a contradiction; it cannot be. If you are perfectly satisfied with things as they are in yourself or in other believers, and have no real concern that there should be a full conformity to the image of Christ and that the whole Body should be brought to the measure of the stature of a man in Christ, the Spirit of God is not doing His work in you. Pentecost in its deeper meaning will produce that. The very fact that so soon after His advent the Church moved out as by Divine urge to seek the members of the Body and then to bring them into full conformity is proof positive that the Spirit of God is seeking to perfect a Body, a manhood, according to that Man Who has been revealed as in the glory. . .
3. The Lord is very greatly concerned about spiritual measure, although His people are not so concerned; and. . . Christ, the Man in fulness, is coming down to be like a measuring rod beside His Church, and to say, This is where you are not true, and you must adjust; this is where you have excesses, and they must go; this is where you have deficiencies, and they must be made good. It is the Spirit of God at work all the time to see to it that in all details we are according to Christ, the Spirit of God working in relation to that perfect measure that is in heaven, the measure for this Body, for this collective man, in all its parts. . .The Man in the glory, being at God’s right hand exalted, established, settled, is the assured realization of God’s end. . . The Spirit of sonship has come, not to try and do something, not with a hope that it may be; He has come in all the sovereignty of that One there, and it is going to be. . . There is a Man in the glory; the Spirit of God has come and has entered into us with just one object-to make all things abound toward the reproducing of that Man in us, in measure individually, and in the collective measure of the individuals in one glorified Body, Christ corporate. September, 1947
The God Who Raises the DeadDeath is the thing which pronounces an end. Whenever you and I say, This is the end, we are finished!-we have succumbed to death. That is the verdict of death, for death always says that.The Church should never believe in ends - that is to capitulate to death. Although a thousand times in ourselves we might feel the end has come, in the very experience which brings us to that place God has invested a new realization that in Him that finality is cancelled out. We should never expect an end until God says That is the end! . . . God is trying to bring us to the place where we stop expecting what the Devil is constantly offering through circumstances - death, an end, limitation. God is all the time thinking of increase, enlargement. . . God allows very deep and hard and painful things - things which bring us in ourselves really to the point of giving up, where we pass the verdict of death upon ourselves. He allows them with this object, that - however much we may have known and proved the truth in our earlier experience - He may bring us yet a stage further into the power and good of it, that God raiseth the dead.If He does that, then there is hope for anybody and for anything.Again and again in the course of our history, we shall be at the place where there is no hope but in “God Who raiseth the dead” (2 Cor. 1:9) if there is to be any future at all. We shall come there in our own soul life - that we are at an end of our resources, mind, heart, and will. We may come ofttimes in our very physical life to the place where, if God does not do something, it is an end.We shall come there in the work of God - where everything seems to declare that this is the finish of the work, there is nothing more possible; but now is the occasion for the God Who raises the dead, the God of promise, the God of Isaac, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.December, 1947
The Cost of Enlightenment We know that the book of Joshua is the book of the inheritance. The people are going in to possess, to occupy, to exploit, to inherit. But what was the very first move, when Israel had come to the borders of the land, forty years previously? The setting up of Intelligence. Spies were sent to spy out the land. Joshua sent over intelligence officers, his Intelligence Corps. Intelligence was a tremendously important thing here. We might say that Joshua and Caleb were themselves the very embodiment of the principle of Intelligence. It was they who brought the report which, in the long run, resulted in a people going in and possessing. But note at this point an interesting and impressive and significant thing. The people thought to stone them! You see, the enemy is not only over there in the land - he is entrenched in the very hearts of the people themselves, he has got a footing there. How true that is to principle and to history! Let any of the people of God begin to get some new light, and, as the Lord’s instrument, they will become the object of Satan’s hatred: He will stir up forces to stone that Instrument. He hates Instruments of spiritual enlightenment.
The Need to Press On There is a vast amount in the Kingdom that we have never suspected - do believe that. There is more for all of us to know than anybody on this earth knows - far more than the very greatest saints, the most advanced Christians, know of the purpose of God. Paul intimates that. In his Philippian letter he makes it clear that even at the end of his life, he has yet to apprehend, he needs still to know. “That I may know. . . ” (Phil. 3:10). There is far more to know. . . . Are you going to allow your life simply to be boxed up within the measure that you know, or within the measure of other people? No - it is the measure of Christ that is God’s end. . . “till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). No movement, no society, no evangelical organization, no church on this earth has come to that yet, but that is the objective in view. March, 1949
The Testimony Before the Work . . . The Lord is more concerned for a testimony than for a work. We need to get clear on that. A good deal of confusion comes in when you begin to think of things in the light of a work. When you get a lot of people leaving their employment to go into “the work,” all kinds of complications arise; and really the Lord is not, in the first place, after the work. I am not saying you are not to work for the Lord, but in the first place it is not the work the Lord is after, it is a testimony, it is a light, a living flame. January, 1950
Reaching a Place of Strategic ValueJob’s was a tremendous climb out of a miry condition, up and out into that place of vindication where the Lord could point to him in a new way and say to others, “This man is the key to the answer to your prayers and you will not get any answer to prayer unless he stands in the breach: your spiritual interests and destiny hang Upon him.” That is tremendous: that a man should have reached some specific point where the destiny of many others hangs upon him, and God has determined it and said it in so many words - “Your spiritual good is bound up with this man; I have had to bring him to this position for your sake.” November, 1950
Standing for God’s Full Thought God’ has set His heart upon having His whole counsel represented. . . God must have that whole counsel found in representation or He is defeated, and so He sets to work to bring those who will come, who will pay the price, into this position which, in the first place, satisfies Him, and in the second place, serves Him in that purpose; and a basic essential is a passion in our hearts for God’s fullest thought. If He is going to lead us into it, He must have that response in us for His own satisfaction. January, 1951
God’s Wise Providences The operations of the Holy Spirit, and the providential ways of God - strange, mysterious providences - these are all designed to keep us on the stretch. Any life that is really under the government of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, will never be allowed to settle down, will always be kept on the move - oh, yes, by strange means. The Lord knows how to deal with you and me. He knows the tendencies of our makeup, our constitution, our natures. He knows us exactly, everyone of us, and (oh, that we could believe it, really believe it always!) the way in which we are going is the way that the infinite, inscrutable wisdom of God knows to be the only way by which we shall come to a greater measure of the Lord. He vetoes much in order to economize, to ensure that we shall not be spreading ourselves too widely but be directed into the essential channels. July, 1951
The Hiddenness of God’s Workings We are so often found looking for, praying for, expecting, some mighty, shattering intervention of God in our situation, something that is evidence and proof that God is with us, something we can lay hold of, to which we can point and on which we can report; and such does not happen. Again and again when we have passed most critical points in our history and turned most serious corners, we have had to say, “How did we do it, how did it come to pass?” Well, it just happened. It undoubtedly involved very great power on the part of God, and there is no doubt that, if God had not done it, that there would have been disaster; yet it is done. But how? We thought the Lord must come this way and that, and we were telling Him what He must do; but He never came by our way, never did it like that at all. It, so to speak, just happened. We are going on like that. It may be from time to time the Lord will show His hand. He is the God of the sudden leap as much as He is the God of the long process, but normally the way of faith is this way. Silently, almost imperceptibly, without any power to detect that He is doing it, the needed thing is being done. November, 1951
Qualification for Serving the Lord’s Purposes The Lord does really need men and women to serve His ends. . . His need may be very great, and yet He may not be able now to open the way for you to come in to serve Him in meeting it. . .The Lord is waiting until your heart is broken over this whole situation, and it is such a heart-matter that you come to the place where you say, “Lord, the only justification of my life is that your interests are served.” It must be a matter of heart-love for the Lord and for what is His, and not for the work, the ministry; not for anything but for your Lord and what is His. When you get there, and you are found upon your face before the Lord breaking your heart because you see He is not getting what He ought to have, when this becomes the travail of your soul, you will find the Lord will begin to do something. This is the necessary basis for the Lord to bring out His servants. May, 1952
Essentials for Fulness of Life There are three things which are essential to an adequate life with God, to a fulness of the Christian life. Firstly, the realization that God is concerned with the accomplishment of something worthy of Himself. We shall not get very far toward a full Christian life, or a life with God, until it breaks upon us and takes hold of us that God is really concerned with the accomplishment of something worthy of Himself. The second thing is that people shall become aware of what that great something in the heart of God is, what it is that God is so concerned with, and then that they shall be moved to cooperate with Him in it. . . And then, in the third place, that we recognize that this object in the heart of God and this cooperation with Him by His people involves very real conflict and cost, and that His people must face that and be ready to accept it. September, 1953
The Essence of Ministry We have thought of the service of God as a matter of preaching and teaching and doing a multitude of things for the Lord. They may only be the framework; they may only be the outer casing, like the bark of a tree. The Lord may pour His life through such methods and means, or He may not let us do any preaching or teaching. In the case of some, He may have the greatest measure of fruit without ever any preaching being done at all. Fruit is the spontaneous expression of a deep-rooted oneness with Christ, and there may be very much satisfaction and glory to God through people who are never allowed to preach or teach or do any of those things which we call Christian work. But to express Christ, to live Christ, to manifest Christ, to let everything around feel Christ and be touched by Christ through our presence-that certainly is to the glory of God and the satisfaction of His heart, and that is service. For what is this fruit? It is the life of Christ manifested, and God help both the preachers and the teachers and the workers, and those to whom they preach, if there is not a manifestation of Christ coming through what they are saying and doing. The real heart of it is this deep union of life with the Lord, and it is this kind of service which satisfies God.July, 1954
Essentials for Fulness of Life "There are three things which are essential to an adequate life with God, to a fulness of the Christian life. Firstly, the realization that God is concerned with the accomplishment of something worthy of Himself. We shall not get very far toward a full Christian life, or a life with God, until it breaks upon us and takes hold of us that God is really concerned with the accomplishment of something worthy of Himself. The second thing is that people shall become aware of what that great something in the heart of God is, what it is that God is so concerned with, and then that they shall be moved to cooperate with Him in it. . . And then, in the third place, that we recognize that this object in the heart of God and this cooperation with Him by His people involves very real conflict and cost, and that His people must face that and be ready to accept it."September, 1953 Yes, this is a repeat, worth repeating.Thanks Lars
Giving the Word of God Its PlaceA spiritual person is first of all one who seeks to know the revealed will of God in His Word. You cannot be a spiritual person, after the kind of which we are speaking, and neglect or be careless about the Word of God.You will be one who is really diligent in reading and searching the Word of God, with one object - to know what God wants where you are concerned. If there were more of that, there would be a different kind of Christian, stronger, purer, and far more satisfying to the Lord. . . The Holy Spirit knows the Bible, He knows what He has written; and if the Spirit is in us, and we are seeking to live in the Spirit, we shall live in the Word. The Word is a living thing when that is so. Spiritual people are people of the Word, and consciously or unconsciously they are checked up by it. March, 1956
Truth Alive in Us You see, we can be governed by objective truth. It can be ”the truth” - orthodox, sound, Bible truth. We can be governed by that simply because it is taught; we do it objectively. But, there is something more than that. There is such a thing as the Holy Spirit taking hold of the truth of God and making it something that lives in us. . .Many Christians are just Christians: that is, after they are saved, after they are born again, their Christian life consists in doing as they are told by the minister or the Christian leader or the Bible class teacher, because it is presented to them as the thing they should do. It is what is in the Bible, and they do it so. But there is a very much higher level of life than that. The thing is right, but it is altogether transformed when the Holy Spirit brings it home to us in an inward way, and adjusts us to it. We no longer do it just because it has got to be done; we do it because the Lord has done something in us, and shown us that that is the thing He wants done. March, 1956
Divine DiscontentWhile ”the Word of the Lord” may have come to Patriarchs, Prophets, Judges, Apostles, resulting in a commission and a mandate, it is very easy to discern that, either before or by that word, there was found in them an unrest, a dissatisfaction, a sense that there was something more in the intention of God. Inwardly they were not settled and satisfied. Maybe they could not define or explain it. They did not know what they wanted. It was not just a discontented disposition or nature. It was not just criticism, or querulousness, or ”disgruntledness,” a spirit of being ”agin the government,” as of a malcontent. God was not satisfied, and He was on the move. These sensitive spirits, like Abraham, and Moses, and Samuel, and Daniel, and Nehemiah, and a host of others in every age - Old Testament, New Testament, and since - have been God’s pioneers, because of an inward link with His Divine discontent. Of course, this is one aspect of all spiritual progress, but it is very true of every new thing of God. . . If this discontent is a truly Divine activity, it will not be a matter of mere human frustration. It will have nothing to do with natural ambition or aggressiveness. It will resolve into a sheer issue of spiritual life or death. It will become a soul-travail. . . .Do you see that ”churches” should not be just congregations, preaching places, or places for religious observances? They should be, in their inception, constitution, and continuation, the answer to God’s dissatisfaction; that which provides Him with the answer to His age-long quest in the hearts of all concerned. TASJanuary, 1959
They did not know what they wantedIf this discontent is a truly Divine activity, it will not be a matter of mere human frustration. It will have nothing to do with natural ambition or aggressiveness. It will resolve into a sheer issue of spiritual life or death. It will become a soul-travail. . . .Your timing Lars...
Something More Than EvangelicalWe can be passionately evangelical or "fundamentalist"; we can be fastidiously jealous for correct doctrine and order, and yet - with all this - still not be spiritual men. There can be as wide a gap between a rabid funamentalist and a spiritual man as there is between a conservative and a liberal theologian. Failure to understand this difference results in a very great deal of confusion. . .Good motive and intention may be quite right, but with that there must be spiritual understanding. Zeal, yes, indeed; but not zeal that is not according to knowledge. Let there be a desire to do God's will, but let the doing and the way of doing be governed by the Spirit of God, and not just by human judgment. God's way is as important as God's end. January, 1963
The Money Trap The writer of these messages, over a long period of years, has travelled in many parts of the world with one object: that is, the increase and strengthening of the spiritual life of the people of God. He has been repeatedly impressed with the fact that where the greater concern for, and engrossment with, business life to make money dominates, there it is so much more difficult to speak about the things of the Spirit. This impression has been confirmed by the equally evident fact that where life is simpler or even difficult, there the outreach of heart to the fuller knowledge of the Lord is stronger and purer. This. . . “ism” has strongly invaded Christianity, namely, “commercialism”, and is sapping and draining the spiritual life. Indeed, it is a definite menace to spirituality.November, 1965
The Sole Motive for Movement How many spiritual tragedies we have known brought about by human selectiveness apart from the first and supreme interest of Christ. It might be the choice of residence, location, for instance, for reasons of convenience, pleasure, escape, or seeming necessity, as in the case of Abraham. . .No less a question than having the Lord with us is bound up with such choices and decisions. We cannot move off the Lord's ground without the consequence of spiritual disaster. How costly it was in the case of Elimelech!If Christ is the Way, the Directive, then He is the Example. How meticulously careful He was not to move, or be moved, by w any consideration but the directive of the Father! Ii Many motives were put to Him for action and movement, but t He abode in the Father, and, often at great cost, refused other considerations. We must seek to know that we are where we are because God has put us there in the interests of His Son, and then it must be God Who just as definitely moves us when the time to move has come. July, 1964
The Possibility of Spiritual Tragedy If the Cross and the nature of Resurrection-life do not go more than halfway into our natural constitution, while our "Fundamentalism" or "Evangelicalism," our personal faith and devotion to the Lord Jesus may be unquestionable, we may yet be a spiritual tragedy. March, 1963
We are taken out into a realm where we do not understand what the Lord is doing with us, and why the Lord takes certain courses with us. We are out of our depth; we are altogether baffled; and we are compelled - that is, if we are going on with God - to believe that God knows what He is doing: we have just to move with Him according to whatever light we may have, and believe that these dealings with us, so far beyond our understanding are somehow related to that purpose with which we are called, and that the explanation waits some distance ahead, and we will find it when we get there