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Utter Dependence Upon Him

He said, y grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. (2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV)

What is your idea of power? What is your mentality concerning power? Are you clamoring for power, wanting power? Well, it all works out this way. True power from God's standpoint is Calvary power. Christ crucified is the power of God. What is Calvary power? Well, it is emptiness of self, you and I being emptied of self and truly, that is easier said than endured! Oh, how very much there is of this self about us still! How we hate how we suffer being emptied of ourselves! What a terrible thing it is to feel our inability to know that we do not count in ourselves. Oh, to be ABLE! And yet have we not proved, again and again, that our times of greatest emptiness and weakness have been the times when God has done most, and got glory by what He has done? Yes, it has been true. We have learnt it along various lines and different ways, but God has been working right into the very inside of us, so that the thing is done it becomes a part of us. He does not have to maintain it by external conditions. But He frequently uses such very often physical conditions, to bring us to that place of utter dependence upon Himself. It is really not good enough, is it, to be forced to it, compelled to it? That is God's way of education, but it would be very much better for us to be fit and well and as dependent upon God as ever.

So it all resolves itself into the need, in the first place, for what is meant by being born from above: an entirely new nature and disposition, to begin with, and then a letting God do His work of conforming us to the image of His Son. I am not saying that works and words do not come in, but it is a heartbreaking business to be working and speaking with no power, and no registration of heaven. The Lord give us light as to what He means by this.

Revive us, and we will call upon Your name.

It is the Spirit who gives life. § The Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. § [Pray] always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance.

I will never forget Your precepts, for by them You have given me life. § The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. § The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. § If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. § This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.

No one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.

Ps. 80:18;  John 6:63;  Rom. 8:26,27;  Eph. 6:18;  Ps. 119:93;  John 6:63;  2 Cor. 3:6;  John 15:7;  1 John 5:14;  1 Cor. 12:3

Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.

Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits.”

Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? There- fore purge out the old leaven … I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person. § Become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.

In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor.

Eph. 5:11;  1 Cor. 15:33;  1 Cor. 5:6;   1 Cor. 5:7;  1 Cor. 5:9;  1 Cor. 5:10;  1 Cor. 5:11;  Phil. 2:15;  2 Tim. 2:20

Be, To Do

The Spirit of truth takes of what is Mine and will make it known to you" (John 16:15, Wey.).

Fruitful service results from growth, not works. All sharing must be motivated and governed by life: "the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:2).

"The Holy Spirit came to reproduce the Lord Jesus in the lives of men and women. The Church is that or it is nothing; the teaching relates to that, or it has no meaning. Any movement of the Spirit is in that direction, or we have entirely misunderstood. He came to conform us to the image of the Son; everything has to be tested by that.

"All our activities and efforts and energies and expenditures; all our sacrifices, our movements and our teaching: everything that has become a part of Christianity' has to be measured by the one rule - is it resulting in the reproduction of the Lord Jesus Christ in the lives of men and women, so that it is demonstrated from heaven that He is as truly here in this world now as ever He was in history?" -T. A-S.

"It is a mistake to measure spiritual maturity merely by the presence of gifts. They may be present and they may be valuable, but the Spirit's object is something far greater - to form the Lord Jesus Christ in us through the work of the Cross. It is not merely that a man does certain things or speaks certain words, but that he is a certain kind of man. In the long run it is what we are, and not simply what we say or do - and the difference lies in the formation of the Lord Jesus within."

"The Father first uses the active talents of His servants; then He polishes the other side of the stone, making the passive graces shine - patience, meekness, etc."

"My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you" (Gal. 4:19).

Picture Message From God

Made Complete in Christ