April 14
My God will supply every
need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus (Philippians
4:19 ESV).
God has assumed the
responsibility of a Father, and has taken up those responsibilities to meet
them in and through His Son. The enlargement of that in Christian utterance is
found in Philippians 4:19. This means Christ recognized, Christ known, God in
Christ, and that on the ground of our utter separation unto Him. But note: it
is God’s gift. He says that it was not Moses that gave the manna in the
wilderness, but His Father. Then it is not the result of man’s labors, it is
the issue of God’s grace. Are you laboring for spiritual growth? How we have
striven and strained to increase our spiritual measure and our spiritual
stature. What a burden we have taken upon us in relation to the maintenance of
our own spiritual life! We have almost assumed the whole responsibility for our
spiritual life, and made it as though it depended upon our labors in prayer,
our labors in the Word of God, our labors in the Lord’s service, our effort,
our stress.
No one will think that
we have made little of prayer or the Word. No one will think that we have said
you must have no care whatever for your spiritual life, but there is such a
difference between assuming responsibility for ourselves and recognizing that
God has assumed that responsibility. And because God has assumed the
responsibility we should cooperate with God. There is all the difference
between trying to work for our justification, and working because we are
justified; between trying to work for our perfection, and working because our
perfection is secured in Christ. The difference is not merely technical, it is
practical, and of immense value. Sometimes it is necessary for the Lord to say
to us: "Look here, you are making far too much of your own praying, far
too much of your own business in the Scriptures, you are unconsciously coming
to think that everything depends upon how much and how fervently you
pray." And then you go out and talk to other people about your prayer life
as a kind of setting up against their own. You do not mean it, but the
implication is that this is what accounts for your growth, and it is going to
count for other people’s growth. That must not be a cause but a result.
'The cause, the secret, the spring of everything is Myself, and sometimes you
will just have to cease straining, and rest back in Me, in loving trust. Learn
to do that a little more, and then you will pray better, and I shall be able to
do something more!'
By T. Austin-Sparks from: Knowing God in
Christ - Chapter 2
This photograph is by Kristofer Rowe.
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