An Open Heaven

John 1:51  And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.

Christ risen means an open heaven. 

The Spirit of the Anointing comes upon us because the crucified One is risen. 

He comes to us out of an open heaven which the Son of God has opened for us....

The Lord Jesus said: “When He, the Spirit is come, He shall guide you into all the truth.” 

And John confirms this in saying: “The anointing which ye received teaches you concerning all things.” 

That is represented by the angels ascending and descending. 

The Holy Spirit is communicating with us, but Christ is the ladder, reaching from earth to heaven. 

Where is that ladder?

It is not in the world. 

The ladder is set up in our hearts.

It is Christ in our hearts.

There is an open way from heaven in our hearts, Christ Himself, leading us into the very presence of God.

The Holy Spirit moves in relation to Christ to bring us into communion with Christ, just as Christ is in communion with His Father.

The all-sufficiency of Christ is secured for us on that basis. 

We are in the heavenlies, because Christ is in us.

If joined to His person the limitations are gone.

There is a direct and immediate communion with God, and the Holy Spirit can reveal to us heavenly things.

Thus we understand what it means to receive everything directly from God in Christ. 

Christ in us means an inward knowledge of God, a heart-relationship with Him. 

It is an inward life from God, an inward power of God. 

But that is a mystery which the world does not and cannot know. 

It cannot understand that our Lord Jesus was willing to accept exactly the same basis of life with its limitation in which we live, although without sin. 

Yet, in fellowship with His Father, He continually broke through these limitations, and overcame them in drawing all His provision, all the fullness from His Father alone. 

His sufficiency was in His Father.

So we are called to live, by the Spirit, a life triumphant over all our weaknesses, a life where Christ is everything, and where His victory is our victory. 

The work of the Cross is finished. 

The veil is rent. 

The way is open. 

Thus Christ risen in heaven means for us an open heaven where everything is possible for us in Christ, that we may glorify Him!

~T. Austin Sparks~

His Kindness And Covenant

Isa 54:10  For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee.

One of the most delightful qualities of divine love is its abiding character. 

The pillars of the earth may be moved out of their places, but the kindness and the covenant of our merciful Jehovah will never depart from His people.

How happy my soul feels in a firm belief of this inspired December Declaration! 

The year is almost over, and the years of my life are growing few, but time does not change my LORD. 

New lamps are taking the place of the old; perpetual change is on all things, but our LORD is the same. 

Force over turns the hills, but no conceivable power can affect the eternal God. 

Nothing in the past, the present, or the future can cause Jehovah to be unkind to me.

My soul, rest in the eternal kindness of the LORD, who treats thee as one near of kin. 

Remember also the everlasting covenant.

God is ever mindful of it-see that thou art mindful of it too. 

In Christ Jesus the glorious God has pledged Himself to thee to be thy God and to hold thee as one of His people. 

Kindness and covenant...dwell on these words as sure and lasting things which eternity itself shall not take from thee.

~Charles Spurgeon~

Missing The Joy

Perhaps the most miserable people in the world are the very careful ones.

You that are so anxious about what shall happen to morrow that you cannot enjoy the pleasures of today...

You who have such a peculiar cast of mind that you suspect every star to be a comet...

And imagine that there must be a volcano in every grassy mead...

You that are more attracted by the spots in the sun than by the sun itself...

And more amazed by one dry leaf on the tree than by all the verdure of the woods...

You that make more of your troubles than you could do of your jobs...

I say, I think you belong to the most miserable of men.

~Charles Spurgeon~

God's Children Run Home When The Storm Comes On!

Job 23:3  Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat!

In Job's uttermost extremity he cried after the Lord. 

The longing desire of an afflicted child of God is once more to see his Father's face! 

His first prayer is not, "O that I might be healed of the disease which now festers in every part of my body!"

Nor even "O that I might see my children restored from the jaws of the grave, and my property once more brought from the hand of the spoiler!"

But the first and uppermost cry is, "O that I knew where I might find HIM who is my God!

O that I might come even to His presence!

God's children run home when the storm comes on!  

It is the Heaven-born instinct of a gracious soul to seek shelter from all troubles, beneath the wings of Jehovah.

He who has made God his refuge, might serve as the title of a true believer.

A hypocrite, when afflicted by God, resents the infliction and, like a slave, would run from the Master who has scourged him! 

But not so with the true heir of Heaven...he kisses the hand which smote him and seeks shelter from the rod in the bosom of the God who frowned upon him!

Job's desire to commune with God was intensified, by the failure of all other sources of consolation.

The patriarch turned away from his sorry friends, and looked up to the celestial throne...just as a traveler turns from his empty water bottle, and betakes himself with all speed to the well. 

He bids farewell to earth-born hopes, and cries, O that I knew where I might find my God!

Nothing teaches us so much the preciousness of the Creator, as when we learn the emptiness of all other things. 

Turning away with bitter scorn from earth's hives, where we find no honey but many sharp stings...

We rejoice to turn to Him whose faithful Word is sweeter than honey or the honeycomb.

In every trouble, we should first seek God's presence with us. 

Only let us enjoy His smile and we can bear our daily cross with a willing heart, for His dear sake!

~Charles Spurgeon~

Hypocrisy

Every now and then we turn over fair looking stone which lies upon the green grass of the professing church, surrounded with the growth of apparent goodness...

And to our astonishment we find beneath all kinds of filthy insects and loathsome reptiles...

And in our disgust at such hypocrisy, we are driven to exclaim, All men are liars; there are none in whom we can put any trust at all.

It is not fair to say so of all...

But really, the discoveries which are made of the insincerity of our fellow creatures are enough to make us despise our kind...

Because they can go so far in appearances, and yet have so little soundness of heart.

~Charles Spurgeon~

Fellowship Is A Costly Thing

If that fellowship is disturbed between two people in the house of God...

It is not an easy thing for one to go and confess that they are wrong...

Not an easy thing to apologize for doing that harm.

It is not easy to humble ourselves before one another...

We will do anything rather than humble ourselves to another brother or sister. 

No...fellowship is a costly thing. 

It costs humiliation and confession. 

What is true between two is often true between a number. 

If we are going to keep the fellowship in the house of God, it's got to cost us something to do that.

There is a price attached to it.

And if we are not prepared to pay the price of fellowship, it is because we hold fellowship cheaply. 

You see, if a thing to us is of little value, we are not prepared to pay very much for it.

If we really do love the house of God, that is, the fellowship of the Lord's people, we will be prepared to pay any price to keep that fellowship.

A thing which is of value to us is a thing for which we will pay the price.

It is the same in our service to the Lord. 

~T. Austin Sparks~

Covered And Protected

Psa 91:4  He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. 

A condescending simile indeed!

Just as a hen protects her brood and allows them to nestle under her wings, so will the LORD defend His people and permit them to hide away in Him. 

Have we not seen the little chicks peeping out from under the mother's feathers?

Have we not heard their little cry of contented joy?

In this way let us shelter ourselves in our God and feel overflowing peace in knowing that He is guarding us. 

While the LORD covers us, we trust. 

It would be strange if we did not. 

How can we distrust when Jehovah Himself becomes house and home, refuge and rest to us?

This done, we go out to war in His name and enjoy the same guardian care. 

We need shield and buckler...

And when we implicitly trust God, even as the chick trusts the hen, we find His truth arming us from head to foot. 

The LORD cannot lie...

He must be faithful to His people...

His promise must stand.

This sure truth is all the shield we need. 

Behind it we defy the fiery darts of the enemy.

Come, my soul, hide under those great wings, lose thyself among those soft feathers!

How happy thou art!

~Charles Spurgeon~

Where Have All My Children Gone?

                                       
Where have all my children gone?

Look back to Isaiah 49:21, and you see that is made more precise: Then shalt thou say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children, and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro? and who hath brought up these? Behold, I was left alone; these, where had they been?

To this remnant that came back the Lord is saying, "You have lost all your children, but I am giving you a new family and a great family. 

Thy seed shall possess the nations.

He promises a great expanse in restoration, in resurrection from the dead a great expanse and increase. 

In the first place, that evidently was to apply to Israel literally: cast off for a small moment, forsaken, suffering overflowing wrath, yet gathered again.

Historically that applied to Israel.

But Paul, using that in connection with the church, gives it a second meaning and makes it perfectly clear that it had a double application, and it applies here.

There is a little company of the spiritual, and if you stand truly for God you will lose (it cannot be otherwise; it is inevitable) you will lose a great multitude of merely carnal Christians...

You will lose their fellowship.

They will be cut off; God will have to set them aside.

The true ones will be but a small remnant, and they will feel that they are shorn and bereft, brought down to something very small, and they wonder whether it is worth it...

But the Lord comes in at that point.

This not only works out in the general dispensational application, but it works out in our lives individually and as companies of the Lord's people.

We lose the sympathy, the fellowship of the great mass of those who are merely carnal Christians...

And sometimes we are tempted to wonder what is the real profit and value of being true to the Lord when there are so few who are that.

The Lord says in that connection that He is going to realize through the spiritual a great spiritual purpose.

There is going to be an expanding family of the spiritual.

He is not going to leave it like that.

Thy Maker is thy husband.

The Lord is going to get a spiritual company, an ever-growing company of those who are according to His mind.

The Lord believes in increase, in fulness.

The Lord is not in the end going to have a little insignificant thing as the result of all His labours and His sufferings.

The Lord is going to have a great company who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

The end is not going to be just a little thing; it is going to be a mighty thing.

Here His word says that while there may necessarily have to be reduction, He is only reducing in order to increase...

He is only removing that which does not answer to His thought...

And cutting it off...

And setting it aside really to make way for something more according to His mind.

That is a principle that the Lord is always putting into operation:

Getting rid of the thing which stands in the way of the truly spiritual in order to increase the spiritual.

There is quite a lot of stuff that really does not serve the highest ends of the Lord.

It is going on in us.

Sometimes we feel we are reduced to nothing, and all that is left is a mere germ of spiritual life.

The Lord is making room for the expansion of that germ in us.

Sometimes it is outward, the Lord has to cut off.

As John says, "They went out from us, but they were not of us" (1 John 2:19).

1Jn 2:19  They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.

The Lord has cut off that which is not going His way in order to make room for something that is.

This extends right from the inward life of the individual through the smaller companies to the whole church.

The day comes when God comes right down as to the whole thing and spews the mass out of His mouth, but it is only to make room for increase.

These words of Isaiah 54 have a double application, not only to Israel, but to the church.

I will lay thy foundations with sapphires.

Thy seed shall possess the nations.

The Lord makes room for spiritual increase by getting rid of the carnal that is in the way wherever it is and whatever it is.

That is what the apostle is saying here in Galatians. (Galations 4:21-31)

It must go, and he could only see with the Galatians that, if they were returning to a carnal basis, it was the way of being set aside,

You are fallen from grace, you are separated from Christ, you will have to be set aside.

So his appeal is to go on...on the basis of that which is spiritual and wholly according to God's mind...

For that is the way of real increase.

~T. Austin Sparks~