June 10
This is my prayer: that your love may
abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be
able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of
Christ (Philippians 1:9,10 NIV).
Personal, inward, spiritual intelligence is a
very rare thing. No wonder that the enemy has such a successful line in
delusions, counterfeits, and false representations. Our greatest safeguard
against such will be a deep knowledge of the Lord through discipline. To know
the Lord in a real way means steadfastness when others are being carried away -
steadfastness through times of fiery trial. Those who know the Lord do not put
forth their own hand and try to bring things about. Such are full of love and
patience, and do not lose their poise when everything seems to be going to
pieces. Confidence is an essential and inevitable fruit of this knowledge, and
in those who know Him there is a quiet restful strength which speaks of a great
depth of Life.
Let me point out that in Christ "are all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden," and the Lord's will for us is
to come to an ever-growing realization and personal appreciation of Him in Whom
all the fullness dwells. We have only stated facts as to the Lord's will for
all His own, and their greatest need. The absence of this real knowledge of the
Lord has proved to be the most tragic factor in the Church's history. Every
fresh uprising of an abnormal condition has disclosed the appalling weakness
amongst Christian people because of this lack. Waves of error; the swing of the
pendulum to some fresh popular acceptance; a great war with its horrors and
many-sided tests of faith; all these have swept away multitudes and left them
in spiritual ruin. These things are ever near at hand, and we have written this
message to urge upon the Lord's people to have very definite dealings with Him
that He will take every measure with them that they might know Him.
By T. Austin-Sparks from: On Knowing the Lord
This photograph is by Liz Burnell.
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