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The Body of Christ

We, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. (Romans 12:5)

We are a part of a Body. Many of our sufferings are not on our own account at all. Many of the sufferings of the children of God have nothing whatever to do with their own faults or their own failing. They are suffering in a related way, they are suffering for the Body sake, they are entering into the battle; the conflict of this one great testimony. Sometimes it is almost uncanny when the Lord has something in view in relation to His testimony of Life, how for no reason whatever, on no account at all, we discover that we are involved and ours is not an isolated experience. All sorts of people all over the place are having the same kind of experience a terrific sense of pressure, upset, annoyance, anything to frustrate it is happening all round, testifying that in the spiritual realm, in the realm of the Spirit, there is a fine, sensitive oneness which matters to the Lord, and therefore matters to the enemy.

Do not always take your sufferings as some controversy that the Lord has with you. That is the twist the enemy often gives. Be open to the Lord to be checked up on anything, but do not always take it that the things which are happening to you and causing you trouble and suffering are due to your own failure or wrong. You are involved in something very much more than that.

There is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.

Inasmuch … as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same.

Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.

We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. § In Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace. § With His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption… And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. § He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.

1 Tim. 2:5;  Heb. 2:14;  Isa. 45:22;  1 John 2:1;  Eph. 2:13,14;  Heb. 9:12,13;  Heb. 9:14,15;  Heb. 7:25

O my God, my soul is cast down within me.

You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. Trust in the Lord forever, for in YAH, the Lord, is everlasting strength.

Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you. § He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; nor has He hidden His face from Him; but when He cried to Him, He heard. § Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray.

Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. § Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on… Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? § Do not be unbelieving, but believing. § Lo, I am with you always.

Ps. 42:6;  Isa. 26:3,4;  Ps. 55:22;   Ps.22:24;  James 5:13;  John 14:27;  Matt. 6:25,26;  John 20:27;  Matt. 28:20

Not Influence, But Life

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free" (Rom. 8:2).

The more fully the Lord Jesus controls within, the less we will be influenced by externals. The more we are affected by externals, the less freedom He will have within.

"The Lord Jesus' miracles did not have a character changing effect upon the people who saw them or participated in them. They were but for a testimony to who He was. With all His miracles, in the end the principle of unbelief has not been rooted out of a single individual! Though they saw all that He did, the deep-rooted unbelief was untouched. The amazing thing - even with the disciples themselves - was that they were still capable of deep-seated unbelief. O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe....' He upbraided them with their unbelief....' With all they saw, it did not touch character, it did not touch their nature." -T. A-S.

"As in the apostolic days so now the desire exists for the manifestation of the Spirit in marvelous ways; but a life sober, righteous, holy, lived in the hope of the glory to come, is the more excellent way of the Spirit's manifestation and undeniable proof of His indwelling. The prayer should not be so much for this or that gift, or this or that result, as for Christ Himself to be made manifest to us and through us. The Apostle who was most filled with the Spirit sums all up in that one great word, For to me to live is Christ.'" -W.F.E.

"It is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20).

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