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A Common Vision

Called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28)

The chosen vessel becomes the instrument of a Divine wisdom which surprises the vessel itself. Sooner or later that chosen vessel is full of one question: "Why did God choose me? Why did He call me to this work? He ought to have chosen anyone but me! I am the most unsuited for this kind of life and this kind of work." That was true of Moses. When God would send him to Egypt, he said: "Oh, if you can send by anybody, do so, but not by me." When God chose Jeremiah, the latter said: "I cannot speak: for I am a child" (Jeremiah 1:6). A prophet, whose one business it was to speak, felt that it was the one thing he could not do. Divine choice is a very extraordinary thing, and it is not always the thing that we would like or would choose that God calls us to. When we are young we have perhaps a great idea of being in the Lord's work, and we leap to it very eagerly as though we can do it, but when we get older we feel more acutely our dependence. It is then that we discover that naturally we are not fit for it, and many of God's chosen vessels have had to be kept in the work by the very power of God itself.

You see, it is God's own sovereignty in His choice, and the point is this: It is not the vessel, but the purpose for which the vessel has been chosen. What is it that unites us as Christians? Now listen to this: It is not salvation, nor redemption, but it is God's power in salvation and redemption that unites us. It is the common consciousness of all believers that they exist for a purpose and that God has saved them with a great purpose in view. This is a very important thing to remember. We may all be saved, and yet we may all be divided. We may all be redeemed by the precious Blood of Jesus and yet remain just individual units. But see what a uniting power there is in everybody feeling that they are called to a purpose! They are united by one common vision.

Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.

Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighted down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.

The day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober.

Matt. 25:13;  Luke 21:34;  Luke 21:35;  Luke 21:36;  1 Thess. 5:2,3;  1 Thess. 5:4,5;  1 Thess. 5:6

I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless.

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected … I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.

Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

§ We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Jesus spoke these words: . . . “I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one.”

Gen. 17:1;  Phil. 3:12;  Phil. 3:13   Phil. 3:14;  Gen. 5:24;  2 Peter 3:18;  2 Cor. 3:18;  John 17:1,15;  John 17:23

Nothing But A Nothing

Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts" (1 Pet. 3:15).

Many sincere believers are apt to put up an insincere front in order to "protect the Gospel," so as not to "let the Lord down." But He will increase, if we but decrease. There is nothing like being nothing!

"It is true that there is the hunger to be devoted, and to be like the Lord Jesus, long before one's acts and manner corroborate the hunger, and make it a fact; but the more the hungers which grace has generated in your heart are given a place, the sooner will they become experiential facts; and the more the Lord Jesus has His throne within you, the more you will rejoice in Him, and have no confidence in the flesh'" (Phil. 3:3).

"I know so little of the Lord Jesus,' one may say, and this may be true; but every grace that is in Him is in every saint, though not developed. If I am a babe in Christ, where there is true lowliness of heart, I display God, as a babe manifesting Him; but if, as a babe, I am attempting to manifest Him as a man, there will be frustration and failure.

"My wisdom will be, not to set myself up above that which I really am. If walking in true lowliness and manifesting that measure of the Lord Jesus in which we have grown, there will be certain progress." -W.K.

"Perhaps there is nothing so hard as not to appear anything but what you are. If you do so to your advantage, you will be some day found out, but if to your disadvantage, there is no doubt that He who searcheth the heart and trieth the reins will one day vindicate you."

"But now I forbear, lest any man should think of me above that which he seeth me to be, or that he heareth of me" (2 Cor. 12:6).

Why Faith ? - Man’s Nature and Destiny (28)

Solitude, Silence, Submission