Ephesians 4:4-6, One Spirit who helps us in prayer when we are humble, part 3.

Thursday November 12, 2020

 

Reminding us where we are:

 

The Holy Spirit intercedes for us in prayer because of our weakness, not knowing how to pray. Keep praying. God is transforming us and we need to always know He is working.

 

Remember that God wants most of all to give us Himself. All things and events and circumstances in life are being used by the Father to do just that.

 

The superficial self, the old self, is not the true self. It is just a mask that we must learn to take off and throw away.

 

C.S. Lewis: “He wants you to know Him; wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble - delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for one got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life. He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible: trying to take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are. … getting rid of the false self, with all its “Look at me” and “Aren’t I a good boy?” and all its posing and posturing. To get even near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert.”

 

The war of discovery will continue our whole lives since the depth of truth and reality of God’s life is bottomless. As we discover Christ, the graven images in the temple of our own soul will be found and cast away as dead, one by one. Often enough our discovery of Christ will make us uneasy within, but I have found that these are the times of greatest learning.

 

Let us remember and bear in mind that many of the gifts we are in the habit of asking are such qualities of soul as can be produced only by long and painful processes. Humility will only come through humiliation, failure of the independent superficial self, crushed vanity, and disappointed hopes.

 

God must show us that we have no self and no home without Him, and when we see, we will rejoice in Him.

 

JOH 14:12-14

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father. 13 And whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.”

 

Christ healed people, but every one of them eventually got sick and died a physical death. Every miracle pointed to a greater miracle that could be. Healing a blind man was a type that showed Christ could take away the deeper blindness or darkness that was within a man. And now He expressly announces to His disciples that these works which He had been doing were not of the highest kind; that miracles of the highest kind were works of healing and renewal wrought not on the bodies but on the souls of men, works whose effects would not be deleted by disease and death, but would be permanent, works which should not be confined to Palestine, but should be coextensive with the human race. This He would do through His disciples after He had left them (“because I go to the Father”). On the day of Pentecost this would begin with the disciples who had already believed in Him, being filled with the Holy Spirit, and three-thousand more on that one day - millions who would be healed permanently would follow. He continues to do this work on us and through us.

 

JOH 14:15-24

“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; 17 that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you, and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 After a little while the world will behold Me no more; but you will behold Me; because I live, you shall live also. 20 In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. 21 He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I will love him, and will disclose Myself to him.”  22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us, and not to the world?” 23 Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him. 24 He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me.”

 

How happy and comfortable and tranquil we will be when we know that the Father and the Son have made their home with us. Can we imagine what the home of the Father and Son looks like - a life lived in that home?

 

C.S. Lewis: “The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he likes them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes - including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning. The same spiritual law works terribly in the opposite direction. The Germans, perhaps, at first ill-treated the Jews because they hated them: afterwards they hated them much more because they had ill-treated them. The more cruel you are, the more you will hate; the more you hate, the more cruel you will become - and so on in a vicious circle forever. Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.”

 

Every day our decisions are making us more like Christ or less, and none of them are trivial. It doesn’t matter if anyone sees what it is, the smallest decisions are molding us into the type of person we’re going to be in the future. Keep learning God’s word, keep living God’s word in every opportunity, and keep praying knowing that the HS intercedes for you.

 

Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these seeds are unnoticed, perish and are lost because men are not prepared to receive them. This is the parable of the sower. Fruit only grows from good soils; those who hear the word and understand it.

 

If we have to keep looking every day and notice the seeds that God is sending our way, designed to plant spiritual vitality and further understanding in us, then we have to be sober and alert every day.

 

1TH 5:4-8

But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day should overtake you like a thief; 5 for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness; 6 so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober. 7 For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night. 8 But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation.

 

1PE 1:13

Therefore, gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

 

1PE 4:7

The end of all things is at hand; therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer.

 

1PE 5:6-11

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, 7 casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you. 8 Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. 10 And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. 11 To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.