Christian Fellowship Community Group
A safe place for Christians who Love Jesus Christ to meet and ask for prayer and share scriptures from the bible. We value the posting of Christian music, poems, stories and also personal testimonies. Please let us know your needs, concerns and have some fun getting to know each other. We treat each other with respect.
The wisdom of the fathers
A DARK NIGHT-A RESURRECTION MORN
So we come back to the almond rod, which was brought into the sanctuary for a night, a dark night in which there was nothing to be seen, and then in the morning it budded. There you have set forth the death and resurrection, the life yielded up and the life gained, and there you have the ministry attested. But how does this work out in practice? How do I recognize that God is dealing with me in this way?
First we must be clear about one thing: the soul with its fund of natural energy and resource will continue with us until our death. Till then there will be an unending, day- by-day need for the Cross to operate in us, dredging deeply that well-spring of nature. This is the life-long condition of service that is laid down in the words: " Let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Mark 8. 34). We never get past that. He who evades it " is not worthy of me " (Matt. 10. 38); he " cannot be my disciple " (Luke 14. 27). Death and resurrection must remain an abiding principle of our lives for the losing of the soul and the uprising of the Spirit.
Yet here too there may be a crisis that, once reached and passed, can transform our whole life and service for God. It is a wicket gate by which we may enter upon an entirely new pathway. Such a crisis occurred in the life of Jacob at Peniel. It was the ' natural man ' in Jacob that was seeking to serve God and to attain His end. Jacob knew well that God had said: " The elder shall serve the younger", but he was trying to compass that end through his own ingenuity and resource. God had to cripple that strength of nature in Jacob, and that He did when He touched the sinew of Jacob's thigh. Jacob continued to walk thereafter, but he continued to be lame. He was a different Jacob, as his change of name implies. He had his feet and he could use them, but the strength had been touched, and he limped from an injury from which he would never quite recover
God must bring us to a point, I cannot tell you how it will be, but He will do it, where, through a deep and dark experience, our natural power is touched and fundamentally weakened, so that we no longer dare trust ourselves. He has had to deal with some of us very harshly, and take us through difficult and painful ways, in order to get us there. At length there comes a time when we no longer ' like ' to do Christian work, indeed we almost dread to do things in the Lord's Name. But then at last it is that He can begin to use us.
I can tell you this, that for a year after I was converted I had a lust to preach. Preaching had become my very life. The Lord may graciously allow you to go on a long while like that, and not only so but with a fair measure of blessing, until one day that natural force impelling you is touched, and from then on you no longer do it because you want to do it but because the Lord wants it.
...When emotionally you are set on His way you go ahead at full speed, but when your emotions are directed the other way you are reluctant to move at all, even when duty calls. You are not pliable in the Lord's hands. He has therefore to weaken that strength of preference, of like and dislike, in you, until you will do a thing because He wants it and not because you like it. You may enjoy it or you may not, but you will do it just the same. It is not that you can derive a certain satisfaction from preaching or from doing this or that work for God, and therefore you do it. No, you do it now because it is the will of God, and regardless of whether or not it gives you conscious joy. The true joy you know in doing His will lies deeper than your variable emotions.
( by Watchman Nee)
A DARK NIGHT-A RESURRECTION MORN
So we come back to the almond rod, which was brought into the sanctuary for a night, a dark night in which there was nothing to be seen, and then in the morning it budded. There you have set forth the death and resurrection, the life yielded up and the life gained, and there you have the ministry attested. But how does this work out in practice? How do I recognize that God is dealing with me in this way?
First we must be clear about one thing: the soul with its fund of natural energy and resource will continue with us until our death. Till then there will be an unending, day- by-day need for the Cross to operate in us, dredging deeply that well-spring of nature. This is the life-long condition of service that is laid down in the words: " Let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Mark 8. 34). We never get past that. He who evades it " is not worthy of me " (Matt. 10. 38); he " cannot be my disciple " (Luke 14. 27). Death and resurrection must remain an abiding principle of our lives for the losing of the soul and the uprising of the Spirit.
Yet here too there may be a crisis that, once reached and passed, can transform our whole life and service for God. It is a wicket gate by which we may enter upon an entirely new pathway. Such a crisis occurred in the life of Jacob at Peniel. It was the ' natural man ' in Jacob that was seeking to serve God and to attain His end. Jacob knew well that God had said: " The elder shall serve the younger", but he was trying to compass that end through his own ingenuity and resource. God had to cripple that strength of nature in Jacob, and that He did when He touched the sinew of Jacob's thigh. Jacob continued to walk thereafter, but he continued to be lame. He was a different Jacob, as his change of name implies. He had his feet and he could use them, but the strength had been touched, and he limped from an injury from which he would never quite recover
God must bring us to a point, I cannot tell you how it will be, but He will do it, where, through a deep and dark experience, our natural power is touched and fundamentally weakened, so that we no longer dare trust ourselves. He has had to deal with some of us very harshly, and take us through difficult and painful ways, in order to get us there. At length there comes a time when we no longer ' like ' to do Christian work, indeed we almost dread to do things in the Lord's Name. But then at last it is that He can begin to use us.
I can tell you this, that for a year after I was converted I had a lust to preach. Preaching had become my very life. The Lord may graciously allow you to go on a long while like that, and not only so but with a fair measure of blessing, until one day that natural force impelling you is touched, and from then on you no longer do it because you want to do it but because the Lord wants it.
...When emotionally you are set on His way you go ahead at full speed, but when your emotions are directed the other way you are reluctant to move at all, even when duty calls. You are not pliable in the Lord's hands. He has therefore to weaken that strength of preference, of like and dislike, in you, until you will do a thing because He wants it and not because you like it. You may enjoy it or you may not, but you will do it just the same. It is not that you can derive a certain satisfaction from preaching or from doing this or that work for God, and therefore you do it. No, you do it now because it is the will of God, and regardless of whether or not it gives you conscious joy. The true joy you know in doing His will lies deeper than your variable emotions.
( by Watchman Nee)
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