March 3
I came to send fire on the earth (Luke
12:49).
Fire always finds things out. As it creeps and
encroaches and overtakes, it makes one discrimination between things that it
can devour and things over which it has no power. It puts them into those categories;
the finding out, the classifying, the deciding. Look at the context, Luke 12:51
– “Think ye that I am come to give peace in the earth? I tell you, Nay; but
rather division.” He goes on – “There shall be from henceforth five in
one house divided, three against two, and two against three. They shall be
divided, father against son, and son against father; mother against daughter,
and daughter against her mother; mother in law against her daughter in law, and
daughter in law against her mother in law...” – discriminating, setting
things in the category to which they belong.
One category is that which can go on and abide
and endure because it is of God. The other will be licked up by the fire, and
simply pass out of existence. “The fire shall try every man’s work,”
said Paul (1 Cor. 3:13). It is the fire of unavoidable and unerring
discrimination. That has ever been the effect of a work of the Holy Spirit; to
put us into the place to which we belong. It is a kind of dividing thing all
the time. Are you for, or are you against? Are you with, or are you not with
the Lord? Are you going on with the Lord, or are you not going on with the
Lord? The Holy Spirit is pursuing that course all the time to find us out and
to just classify us like this, so that when the Holy Spirit has worked, we are
in definite categories. Division has come, and it is unavoidable.
By T. Austin-Sparks from: The Cross and
Way of Life - Chapter 1
This photograph is by Charlie Burnell.
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