April
2
Looking unto Jesus, the
author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him
endured the cross, despising the shame (Hebrews 12:2).
The passion of the Cross
is the way of our release, and if you consider your own spiritual experience,
those of you who have any experience of a walk with God, you know quite well
that it has been through times of deep and acute suffering that you have found
fresh releases; fresh releases in your spiritual life. Is it not true? Yes, we
pass into a time of excruciating spiritual and soul suffering. We do not know
what the Lord is doing, what He means by this, what He is after, but we know
the features of our experience and know what it is that we are suffering, and
it goes on. We, of course, ask the Lord to stop it, to bring it to a quick end,
to deliver us from it. He takes no notice of us, and it is only those people
who get out the other end who say, ‘Thank God, He did not take any notice.’ In
the meantime, we think He is anything but kind and good and doing the right
thing, but as we get on under His hand, we begin to see and to sense that He is
dealing with something. Maybe He is dealing with our pride, our independence,
or our irresponsibility, for example. That is the issue that comes up, and we
are faced all the time with something about ourselves that is almost
devastating. We would not have believed that that was so strong in us.
Oh, of course we were
always ready to believe that that is in mankind and in us as a part of mankind
in a general way. Yes, we would never have resented being told that there was
pride or something like that about us, but we would never have believed how
deeply rooted and terribly strong that thing is until it was put to a fiery
test and everything was held up, and we saw that everything in our life and
work for God was held up on that point.... And we know quite well that what the
Lord was after was not the pulverizing of us, as we thought, the winding up of
us, but to bring about enlargement, to bring about release, and release always
lies along the line of the Cross, the passion. Enlargement always lies in that
direction.
By T. Austin-Sparks
from: The Cross and
the Way of Life - Chapter 1
This photograph is by Charlie Burnell.
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