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Believing Our Beliefs

I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief! (Mark 9:24 NLT)

Here is something that you and I must dwell upon. Personally, I am constantly brought to this: I have not yet learnt thoroughly to believe what I believe in! I believe in the finished work of Christ, yet sometimes I am just as miserable about myself as any man could be. I am often almost at the point of giving up because of what a wretched kind of thing I am. If there is anything in this world that would cause me to give up the Christian ministry, it is myself. Do you understand what I mean? Oh, how we are discouraged by what we find in ourselves! And so, we don't believe what we believe in. We believe in the finished work of Christ, and that God puts all that finished work to our account. God does not see us in ourselves He sees us in Christ. He does not see us, He sees Christ in us. We don't believe that! If we really did we would be delivered from ourselves and would indeed be triumphant Christians.

Of course, that does not mean that we can just behave anyhow. We may speak and act wrongly, but for every Christian there is a refuge a mercy seat. It has not to be made; it is there with the precious Blood. That has not to be shed; it is shed. There is a High Priest making intercession for us. There is everything that we need. The work is finished, completed. Oh, we Christians must believe our beliefs! We must take hold, with both hands, of the things which are of our Christian faith.

We have known and believed the love that God has for us.

God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. § He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? § The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works.

We love Him because He first loved us.

Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord.

1 John 4:16;  Eph. 2:4,7;  John 3:16;  Rom. 8:32;  Ps. 145:9;  1 John 4:19;  Luke 1:45

Do not set your mind on high things,but associate with the humble.

My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality … Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?

Let no one seek his own, but each one the other’s well-being. § Having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition.

God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence.

Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor my eyes lofty.

Rom. 12:16;  James 2:1,5;  1 Cor. 10:24;  1 Tim. 6:8,9;  1 Cor. 1:27;  1 Cor. 1:28  1 Cor. 1:29;  Ps. 131:1

His Cross - Our Cross

He said to them all, If any man will come after Me, let him. . . take up his Cross daily" (Luke 9:23).

We go all the way to Calvary in faith and there find ourselves identified with the Lord Jesus in His death and resurrection. And Calvary comes all the way to us in experience as the Holy Spirit applies that finished work to our lives.

"In the Reformation there was, through grace, a great deliverance. The groundwork of Christianity was recovered; namely, justification by faith. But though this was recovered, it was not maintained that the old man was crucified on the Cross, and hence they only refused the exactions of popery, but recognized the flesh as still before God. Refusing the exaction was right; but the retention of that in which the exaction could be made, the old man, was the weakness of the Reformation."

"I do not see the Cross truly if I only see it as opening a way of escape for me, and yet allowing that in me to escape which has incurred the judgment of the Cross."

"In the present day (1867) the truth is lowered to the measure of man's need; hence if the need is met, which grace does, the convert makes little or no advance; he rests in the satisfaction of his need, instead of being directed to the scope of God's thought, which only begins with his need.

"Where would souls be put if they were simply and definitely instructed in Christ Jesus and Him crucified and risen; connected by faith with the living One, who was crucified, and whose death terminated man in the flesh?" -J.B.S.

"Whosoever doth not bear his Cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14:27).

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