Thursday, October 6, 2016

The drastic work of the cross in us.


The Spiritual Man- Watchman Nee

Excerpt- 'Many Christians are unaware how drastically the cross must work so that ultimately their natural power for living may be denied. They do not know the reality of the indwelling Holy Spirit nor that His authority must extend to gathering under His control the thoughts, desires and feelings of the entire being. Without their having an inner appreciation of this, the Holy Spirit is unable to accomplish everything He wishes to do. The greatest temptation for an earnest and zealous saint is to engage his own strength in God’s service rather than to wait humbly for the Holy Spirit to will and to perform.'

Imagine, no, I don't think we really do need to imagine because we know, we really know how powerful our natural self is. We know the strength of self over spirit, of soul-self over spiritual-self. All around us we are consumed by so much geared to promote our natural self- NOT our spiritual self. We are at war and the enemy will use every day, common scenarios to attack us.  What seems perfectly fine to the world without any consequences involved will be appalling to the Spirit.  To learn things we do every day are things contrary to God will test us. Do we choose the Spirit, do we choose God, or do we choose SELF. God forgive me, all too often I choose self.

The cross has an extreme work to do in us!

The Holy Spirit must be a REALITY in us.  The POWER of the Holy Spirit must CONSUME us- our thoughts, our desires, our feelings- all of us!

And…. we must wait HUMBLY for the Holy Spirit, truly something that our natural self wants to rebel against as it seeks to have some sort of control over us, loathed to give up the power it so desperately wants to keep.

Please, Lord, help us to humbly wait, help us, teach us!

In the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ our King now and forever!

Amen.

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