Boundless Heavenly Resources
by T. Austin-Sparks
by T. Austin-Sparks
For our lives and for our service, our ministry, our heavenly vocation, there are, in union with Christ, resources at our disposal which are heavenly, inexhaustible, and incorruptible. This is the great secret of strength. We have seen something of what those resources are, and of how they operate; of their value for spirit, soul, and body; mind, heart, and will. Not on our own charges are we commissioned of the Lord, but He Who commissions places His own resources behind His commissioned and His commission.
It means, then, that we also must abide in heaven as He abode in heaven. That can be expressed in many different words of Scripture; as for example, Walking in the Spirit and not in the flesh; warring after the Spirit and not after the flesh; or again, that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but spiritual. These are only ways of defining what it means to abide in heaven and not to live as of the earth; to allow no dependence on earthly means, no worldly methods, and never to take ourselves as we are naturally as the final word. For Christ in a very real and full way the heavens did rule, and so it must be in our case. The rule of the heavens must decide whether a thing shall be undertaken, and whether we can go through. What is seen, what appears, what is felt must never be the ground of our decisions. It is a grand thing and a source of tremendous strength to come to the same position as that of Christ as Man, where we know that boundless heavenly resources are available. I think we only come there progressively, and not all at once. We only come there by the way of discipline, discipline which takes the form of bringing us to an utter dependence, but which is yet not an emptying and a breaking down as an end in itself, but one which is accompanied by that grace of God, that graciousness of God, which, when we are empty, makes His fulness to abound. There is a positive as well as a negative side. God is no believer in negatives as being the ultimate goal, but when He breaks, and when He empties, He does something on the positive side which ever causes us to marvel, and we have to say every time: Well, that was the Lord, not ourselves. We come progressively by that way of discipline to know that there are heavenly resources which far outstrip all human possibilities, and these resources are operative. The Lord leads us so far in making that real and manifest to us actively and then perhaps brings us to the place where we have to take up a position upon it, lest we begin to take it for granted.
It is possible, and perhaps true of us sometimes, that after an experience of the Lord's goodness in this way we sit down, so to speak, in the arm chair and say: He will be gracious again like that! We need not bother; we need not worry; the Lord will come in! We are quite empty, we cannot of ourselves meet the demand; the Lord must do it! So we become passive. If the Lord has acted thus with us, He has not done so in order to put us aside, and He does not pick us out of an arm chair and work through us as mere automatons! He has dealt with us thus in order to teach us a lesson, and then He calls for a definite exercise of faith in relation to it. So that, while the truth holds good that it is no longer I but Christ, that is only half of the statement. We have to bear in mind what follows: "the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God..." That is the other half of the statement. "...I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live... I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God..." That is the active side of living by His life. Paul adds the latter half to safeguard his utterance. Although we might not knowingly fall into the error against which he was guarding, that is, we might not fall into the formulated error, yet we might fall into the error itself. Paul was guarding against pantheism. You know that these Greeks were all too open to the pantheistic idea, and the pantheists would seize upon that word, "...it is no longer I but Christ...", and say: Well, then, it is a case of our being merged into the great Divine, and losing our personality, losing our identity, losing ourselves in a great All, so that any distinctiveness of feature about us is lost to sight. Such is pantheism. Now these Greeks might have received what Paul was saying in the light of pantheism, and said: Oh, well, that supports our idea. Thus Paul immediately covered his statement, protected it, and rescued it from that false conception. "I live by faith in the Son of God". I still retain my identity! I still retain my personality! This life of union with Christ is a faith union, not a merging of substance.
We might not ourselves fall into the known error, but we might well fall into the principle and become more or less passive, thinking it is the Lord who is to do it all, and that we have little or no place in it. We have a place, and that place is the definite exercise of faith in relation to Christ and the heavenly resources.
This then is what constitutes spirituality. This is what makes a life or service spiritual. It is the drawing upon heavenly resources, living the life in this way in heaven, living as out from heaven. That is spirituality. That constitutes a spiritual life and a spiritual walk. The resources are not drawn from self or from the world, they are all drawn from above. The government is not that here of men or of the world, but that which is from above. Everything is so utterly from above, and so utterly not from man, that the life or work becomes spiritual as a consequence. Some people seem to think that spirituality is a kind of mystical or mythical "something"; that spirituality is something remote from reality, a kind of frame of mind. Well, spirituality is certainly not a frame of mind in the first place. We speak of a calm and heavenly frame, and there may be something of this kind as a fruit of it, but spirituality is not a nebulous, mythical, or abstract thing. Spirituality is the most practical thing. When men or women are called by God into some piece of Divine ministry, and in face of the demand are conscious to the last degree that they have no ability, no resource, no power to fulfil that ministry; that in themselves the thing is utterly impossible; that for them to essay to do it would be the utmost folly and absurdity; when in such circumstances they recognise that they have a living Christ in Whom are resources more than enough to meet that demand, and by faith lay hold of Him, and go forward into the ministry with that consciousness, that is spirituality: and that is practical, tremendously practical. The issues prove that it is practical. It is in that way heavenly things are done, and these are the things which cannot be shaken.
Christ's spirituality was not that He was remote from what was practical in every day life. It was that He was bringing heavenly forces and resources to bear upon the practical matters of every day life. You can wash doors, or clothes, or floors, or do any of these ordinary domestic things, in spirituality. People seem to think that spiritual work and ordinary work, household work for example, are two different things. They talk about the spiritual work and the other work. Now, you can bring heavenly resources in to do anything that is legitimate, and the doing of those things may be a testimony. The majority of people have no occasion to draw upon heavenly resources for a platform ministry. For the most part their work is of some regular, daily kind, and very often they feel utterly unable for it, and they are tempted to think that if they had some spiritual ministry to fulfil, if they had to go and take a meeting, or speak to some souls about spiritual matters, they could make a claim upon the Lord for help and He would carry them through. For the trivial round and common task such a thought is all too often wholly absent from the mind. Now, exactly the same resources have to come into the ordinary work as into what we call spiritual work. It has all to be done on a spiritual basis, and therefore to be a testimony. To get through an ordinary day's work often requires something more than ordinary human resources. Spirituality consists in our doing everything as out from heaven. Let us be careful how we draw a line, lest we make a distinction between the spiritual and "the rest".
Christ never took things for granted. That is to say He never took these heavenly resources for granted. He never allowed the thought that they would operate mechanically, irrespective of certain conditions on His side. His was a life of exercise in relation to them. Before He chose His disciples He spent a night in prayer. I think we are right in saying that the two things were in some way related. Of the occasion He said later, "I know whom I have chosen". That was said in connection with His having deliberately chosen His betrayer, Judas. To do that surely demanded Divine government, Divine help, Divine assurance, as well as His choice of the rest. In the light of the repeated breakdown and failure of those men, in the light of the final scene before the Cross where they all forsook Him and fled and everything seemed lost, did Christ make a mistake? Is there indeed room for our remonstrance: Well, Lord, You would have done better had You chosen a different set of men; You made a mistake in Your men! His reply to that would be: "I know whom I have chosen".
This choosing was governed by a night of prayer. He evidently found prayer to be a necessity. I do not think we are right in saying that prayer to Him was just a case of getting away and having a quiet talk with the Father for fellowship's sake. I think it was a necessity; I think He required it. I think prayer was an avenue for the communication of resources, and if so, His prayer life, rich and strong as it was, makes it perfectly clear that He took nothing for granted as to Divine resources. Only on certain grounds could He take His Father's help for granted, namely, on the ground of His own maintained exercise in relation to those resources. You and I must be careful lest we fall into a snare in this very thing. While these same resources are at our disposal, are ours in Christ, and are intended to be expressed in our lives; while it is true that the sovereignty of God secures them for us, yet these resources will not be ministered to us irrespective of the conditions that obtain on our side. We cannot presume upon them. We cannot take them for granted. We cannot neglect prayer. If we do, we shall find that the resources are not forthcoming, but that weakness, loss, and need supervene. The Lord Jesus must be our pattern in this matter. That, then, is a brief summary of the question concerning His resources and ours, when joined to Him in resurrection life.
I want to add a further word with reference to the fact that all this lay behind the purpose of His life. There are two things to be said in this connection. One is that there was a secret strength for Him which lay in the fact of a Divine purpose, a heavenly vocation. He knew that He was on this earth for a purpose of tremendous significance, and from the fact that He had come for a purpose, and that a purpose was bound up with His being here, He drew a great deal of strength. The other point is that these resources of which we have been speaking were definitely related to the purpose, and that the strength of those resources would have immediately failed if He were found at any time not in the line of that purpose. Those are two things which we want to follow out a little more fully for a few moments. They touch us very deeply in our own experience, in our own lives.
Firstly then,
The Blessedness of an Inescapable Necessity
It is possible, and perhaps true of us sometimes, that after an experience of the Lord's goodness in this way we sit down, so to speak, in the arm chair and say: He will be gracious again like that! We need not bother; we need not worry; the Lord will come in! We are quite empty, we cannot of ourselves meet the demand; the Lord must do it! So we become passive. If the Lord has acted thus with us, He has not done so in order to put us aside, and He does not pick us out of an arm chair and work through us as mere automatons! He has dealt with us thus in order to teach us a lesson, and then He calls for a definite exercise of faith in relation to it. So that, while the truth holds good that it is no longer I but Christ, that is only half of the statement. We have to bear in mind what follows: "the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God..." That is the other half of the statement. "...I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live... I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God..." That is the active side of living by His life. Paul adds the latter half to safeguard his utterance. Although we might not knowingly fall into the error against which he was guarding, that is, we might not fall into the formulated error, yet we might fall into the error itself. Paul was guarding against pantheism. You know that these Greeks were all too open to the pantheistic idea, and the pantheists would seize upon that word, "...it is no longer I but Christ...", and say: Well, then, it is a case of our being merged into the great Divine, and losing our personality, losing our identity, losing ourselves in a great All, so that any distinctiveness of feature about us is lost to sight. Such is pantheism. Now these Greeks might have received what Paul was saying in the light of pantheism, and said: Oh, well, that supports our idea. Thus Paul immediately covered his statement, protected it, and rescued it from that false conception. "I live by faith in the Son of God". I still retain my identity! I still retain my personality! This life of union with Christ is a faith union, not a merging of substance.
We might not ourselves fall into the known error, but we might well fall into the principle and become more or less passive, thinking it is the Lord who is to do it all, and that we have little or no place in it. We have a place, and that place is the definite exercise of faith in relation to Christ and the heavenly resources.
This then is what constitutes spirituality. This is what makes a life or service spiritual. It is the drawing upon heavenly resources, living the life in this way in heaven, living as out from heaven. That is spirituality. That constitutes a spiritual life and a spiritual walk. The resources are not drawn from self or from the world, they are all drawn from above. The government is not that here of men or of the world, but that which is from above. Everything is so utterly from above, and so utterly not from man, that the life or work becomes spiritual as a consequence. Some people seem to think that spirituality is a kind of mystical or mythical "something"; that spirituality is something remote from reality, a kind of frame of mind. Well, spirituality is certainly not a frame of mind in the first place. We speak of a calm and heavenly frame, and there may be something of this kind as a fruit of it, but spirituality is not a nebulous, mythical, or abstract thing. Spirituality is the most practical thing. When men or women are called by God into some piece of Divine ministry, and in face of the demand are conscious to the last degree that they have no ability, no resource, no power to fulfil that ministry; that in themselves the thing is utterly impossible; that for them to essay to do it would be the utmost folly and absurdity; when in such circumstances they recognise that they have a living Christ in Whom are resources more than enough to meet that demand, and by faith lay hold of Him, and go forward into the ministry with that consciousness, that is spirituality: and that is practical, tremendously practical. The issues prove that it is practical. It is in that way heavenly things are done, and these are the things which cannot be shaken.
Spirituality is not Remoteness
The Divine Resources are for the Divine Purpose
This choosing was governed by a night of prayer. He evidently found prayer to be a necessity. I do not think we are right in saying that prayer to Him was just a case of getting away and having a quiet talk with the Father for fellowship's sake. I think it was a necessity; I think He required it. I think prayer was an avenue for the communication of resources, and if so, His prayer life, rich and strong as it was, makes it perfectly clear that He took nothing for granted as to Divine resources. Only on certain grounds could He take His Father's help for granted, namely, on the ground of His own maintained exercise in relation to those resources. You and I must be careful lest we fall into a snare in this very thing. While these same resources are at our disposal, are ours in Christ, and are intended to be expressed in our lives; while it is true that the sovereignty of God secures them for us, yet these resources will not be ministered to us irrespective of the conditions that obtain on our side. We cannot presume upon them. We cannot take them for granted. We cannot neglect prayer. If we do, we shall find that the resources are not forthcoming, but that weakness, loss, and need supervene. The Lord Jesus must be our pattern in this matter. That, then, is a brief summary of the question concerning His resources and ours, when joined to Him in resurrection life.
I want to add a further word with reference to the fact that all this lay behind the purpose of His life. There are two things to be said in this connection. One is that there was a secret strength for Him which lay in the fact of a Divine purpose, a heavenly vocation. He knew that He was on this earth for a purpose of tremendous significance, and from the fact that He had come for a purpose, and that a purpose was bound up with His being here, He drew a great deal of strength. The other point is that these resources of which we have been speaking were definitely related to the purpose, and that the strength of those resources would have immediately failed if He were found at any time not in the line of that purpose. Those are two things which we want to follow out a little more fully for a few moments. They touch us very deeply in our own experience, in our own lives.
Firstly then,
