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The All-Round Christian Life

To you who believe, He is precious. (1 Peter 2:7)

If you or I claim to have more light, more revelation God forbid that we should ever make claims like that! but if we should think that it is so, the proof and the value is do people see more of Christ in us than others? For God never moves beyond His Son, He never moves to theories or teachings or doctrines or things that we call revelations. He only keeps within the compass of His living Son in manifestation.... Let us ask the Lord to create in us a passionate ambition to express the Lord Jesus more than anything else. Not to preach great truths, to be preachers, teachers, or anything like that as such, but to express the Lord Jesus, that out of Himself, His own presence, His own measure, His own nature, our opportunities for preaching, if we are going to preach at all, will come, not because we can talk, but because it is known that we have something of the Lord.

Do not let us live too much in the upper stories of the house of God. The house of God is one, and it has a basement and it has a kitchen. We do not want to always live up on the top flat, so heavenly, so spiritual, so abstract, so high up in truth that the practical things of the kitchen are left unattended to. What would you say if you went into a house and were taken upstairs and shown a very glorious, wonderfully adorned upper flat, and then somehow you managed to get down to the kitchen and found the most awful filthy mess, out of all consistency with what you found upstairs? You say, here is something wrong here, this does not tally.There is the kitchen aspect of the spiritual life: all those practical, everyday, humdrum things where the beauty of the Lord must be seen, just as much as up there in the heavenlies in Christ. Do not let us live exclusively up there. We must live down here. That is what the Word of God does. That is what Paul did in his Ephesian letter. He wrote half of it about the heavenlies, then, without breaking it into chapters, he went straight on with his letter: ... beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called,and then husbands, wives, children, parents, masters, mistresses, servants that is coming down to the kitchen, bringing the glory of heaven with you. It is a very important side of things. Preciousness must be found down here. s in heaven, so on earth.

Oh … that You would keep me from evil.

Why do you sleep? Rise and pray, lest you enter into temptation. § The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Two things I request of You (deprive me not before I die): remove falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches– feed me with the food allotted to me; lest I be full and deny You, and say, “Who is the Lord?” Or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God.

The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul. § I will deliver you from the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem you from the grip of the terrible. § He who has been born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him.

Because you have kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth. § The Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations.

1 Chron. 4:10;  Luke 22:46;  Matt. 26:41;  Prov. 30:7;   Prov. 30:8;   Prov. 30:9;  Ps. 121:7;  Jer. 15:21;  1 John 5:18;  Rev. 3:10;  2 Peter 2:9

One star differs from another star in glory.

They had disputed among themselves who would be the greatest. And He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.” § Be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who … made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men … Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.

Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever.

1 Cor. 15:41;  Mark 9:34,35;  1 Peter 5:5,6;  Phil. 2:5,6,  Phil. 2:7;  Phil 2:9,10;  Dan. 12:3

Fact Finding

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord" (2 Pet. 1:2).

We cannot too highly value and appreciate heart-hunger for the Word. It is of the Spirit of Truth. We may have been born again without knowing much of the Bible, but we certainly are not going to grow to any extent apart from a careful and persistent study of the Word of God. Yes, the maturing believer is a Spirit-dependent student of the Scriptures, "whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises; that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1.4).

"Christian progress is not a question of attaining to some abstract standard, or of pressing through to some far-off goal. It is wholly a question of seeing God's standard in God's Word. You advance spiritually by finding out what you really are (in Christ), not by trying to become what you hope to be. That goal you will never reach, however earnestly you may strive.

"It is when you see you are dead unto sin that you die to it (daily); it is when you see you are risen that you arise; it is when you see you are a new creation' in Him that you (progressively) grow. Seeing the accomplished fact in the Word determines the pathway to the realizing of that fact. The end is reached by seeing, not by desiring or working. The only possibility of spiritual progress lies in our discovering the truth as God sees it; the truth concerning Christ, the truth concerning ourselves in Christ." -W.N.

"Come and see the works of God" (Ps. 66:5).

Your Uncut Diamond (JOB-study 12)

Mount Up With Wings