By T. Austin-Sparks
Reading: 1 Cor. 3; Heb. 5:11-6:3.
"We desire each one of you to show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope.... that ye be not sluggish, but... through faith and patience inherit the promises."
"Walk worthily of the Lord... increasing in the knowledge of God." - Col. 1:10.
"Holding fast the Head from whom all the body being supplied... increaseth with the increase of God." - Col. 2:19.
"The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another." - 1 Thess. 3:12.
"We exhort you brethren that ye abound more and more." - 1 Thess. 4:10.
"Speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into HIM, who is the Head, even Christ; from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love." - Eph. 4:15-16, A.R.V.
The Lord's thought for His children is fulness; and in connection with all the works of God there is always the thought of fulness; that which the Lord desires for His children is fulness, increase, abundance, growth, development. When the Lord was on earth, He met the need found in the multitudes of people with an abundance and fulness, although having very little naturally with which to meet it. We see His thought is abundance - "and they all ate and were filled and they took up that which remained over of the broken pieces twelve baskets full." (Matt. 14:20).
His utterances likewise are full of this thought, "Give and it shall be given you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over," Luke 6:38. There is fulness and abundance.
If we but realised the possibilities of the Holy Spirit resident within us in correspondence to the energy that He energises in us, how different things would be; "Having the eyes of your heart enlightened that ye may KNOW... what the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to that 'energising' of the strength of His might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenlies far above all." (Eph. 1:18-21. A.R.V.).
"I was made a minister according to that gift of the grace of God which was given unto me, according to the working [energising] of His power. (Eph 3:7).
"The Lord Jesus who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory according to the working [energising] whereby He is able even to subject all things unto HIMSELF" (Phil. 3:21).
"I labour also striving according to His working who worketh in me in power " (Col. 1:29, A.R.V.)
"There are diversities of workings [energisings] but God who worketh [energiseth] all things in all... but all these [energiseth] the one and the same Spirit dividing to each one severally as He will" (1 Cor. 12:6-11).
"It is God who energiseth in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13).
The Lord's thought is to add, to give increase, to bring into fulness.
But there is a side of responsibility where we are concerned, and we need to ask whether the measure of power working in us has to do with ourselves; as to how much we limit those powers, energising, working in us?
The Holy Spirit in the power of the Lord Jesus is capable of realising "far above all that we can ask or think," but so often we limit the work by getting in His way. There is a tremendous stress in the New Testament to our going on to the fullness; 1 Cor. 3, and Heb. 5 lay special emphasis on our responsibility to go on.
