Spiritual Education

I was reading the book "The Ultimate Issue of the Universe" from T. Austin Sparks and there were a couple paragraphs that really stood out to me. The first one is as follows; 

"What lies behind spiritual education? Look at every fragment and phase of your spiritual education, the way the Lord deals with you, and leads you; the history that there is with God lying behind. What is the outcome of it all? Suffering, trial, perplexity, adversity, and all that which goes to make up our Christian experience - and there is so much of it - what is the outcome of it all - God has His way? Let us look at ourselves, the way we have with God, the way He has taken us through the depths; through suffering, affliction, trial and difficulty, sometimes to the point almost of despair, like Paul, despairing of life, having the sentence of death. But what is the result? If the Lord has His way, is it not that He has a larger place, and the enemy a much smaller place through it all? That is the marvel of it all. Sometimes when you are going through it, you come to a rock-bottom experience, as you think, and you feel the devil is going to gain, the Lord is losing. But when you come up out of it, the Lord has much more ground, He has something more that He can work upon. What He has done is to get rid of a lot that was in His way. Suffering is a great purger. Christian experience is all with one object in view, where the Lord is concerned, in His dealing with us as He does. It is worship, worship in this sense, that God is coming into His own and Satan is losing ground. We have often feared that it would be just the opposite, while we were going through it, but God is faithful and it does work out to a larger measure of the Lord."

The whole book can be read HERE.

Hope that you are encouraged by this. 

The world

...is corrupt, it is deceitful and it is desirous of nothing less than your death. Spiritually. I have been very blessed with some things that the Lord has been teaching me but they are not at a point that I can share them fully as they are not worked through my heart yet however, I can share a little bit about some of the things that He has made clear to me.

In my previous post I commented about my experience in Seattle and I have had some other things that have added to this idea of being blind and not seeing. I am in the middle of reading a book to my family called "Henry and the Great Society". If you have never read it, you should, matter of fact I will send you my copy when I am complete if you are interested. The story is about a man, Henry, who lives a very quiet and peaceable life that in their understanding is that which is mentioned in 1 Timothy 6:6 "But godliness with contentment is great gain". The first part of the story is about this simple life that they lived but it rapidly turns as "progress" comes to their community. The picture that is painted by the changes that come in is very scary and really makes you start to think. The book is something that everyone should read, just to have a mirror held up to the ways and things of this world.

I am by no means promoting the ultra-simple lifestyle but I can say that we need to be very careful about the affects that things and goings to and fro have on our time and more importantly on our relationships. Most importantly we need to be careful about that one relationship with our Saviour which is, after all, most important. It is in that relationship where we are changed, it is in that relationship that we can learn of our Lord Jesus (take His yoke upon you and learn of Him...). Isn't that the desire that we should have, to become more like Him, Jesus? That can come through no other means than time with Him and I will say that all of hell stands against that. Everything in this world is meant to do all that it can to pull you away from Him. Much more on this at a later time but, to provide a quick thought, the very testimony of Jesus Christ, the Church, is what hangs in the balance. It can only be represented in fulness when it is represented by those that are truly being changed into His image. That can't happen unless there is a rich relationship where we are beholding Him.

Take some time today and weigh all things in the balance of that relationship with Jesus Christ and ask whether this thing, event, etc is something that is going to draw you closer to Him, to behold Him more clearly or is it going to pull you away. There really is nothing neutral. Don't believe the lie.

David