We are not working as slaves at a task, but as partners in a blessed fellowship in which we share all the plans and thoughts of our Lord respecting His work. We are not required to go in blind obedience and do simply what we are told, but we are entrusted with His resources and guided by His wisdom. He has unfolded to us he mystery of His kingdom and the great purpose of His providence respecting Israel, the Church and His Second Coming.
We are trusted and confidential friends and fellow workers, and counted true yoke-workers with Him in in all His cherished thoughts and purposes. Let this inspire us to more loyal service, and fill us with a love that casts out all fear, to know that in all that is dearest to His heart, we share. His fullest confidence, and as He is so we are in this world.
We Have God's Fullness
In the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we have God's fullness. He has given us the very same Spirit that dwelt in Him. On the banks of the Jordan, He first received the Holy Spirit in fullness, for His ministry, and as he was leaving the world He breathed upon them and communicated to them with the sweetness of His own life and love the same Spirit in which He had wrought all His miracles and spoken all His words. Peter says in connection with the gift of Pentecost that Christ "has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear" (Acts. 2:33). The Holy Spirit called the Spirit of Christ and sometimes even Christ, because He brings to us the presence of Jesus and enables us to realize our oneness with Him.
The secret of the love that casts out fear is being filled with the Spirit of Jesus until we are lost in the consciousness of our union with our beloved Lord. "To him God gives the Spirit without limit" (John 3:34). If we have Him we have the Spirit that dwelt in Him without measure.
Have we? Then, indeed, we are filled with all the fullness of God and have received "... immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us" (Ephesians 3:20).
In His Physical Life we Know Health
"For we are members of his body" (Ephesians 5:30) and "his life [is] revealed in our mortal body" (2 Corinthians 4:11). This is the secret of divine healing, to be so united with Christ in our body that we will share in these vessels of clay the life and strength of our risen Head.
Even in our physical frames we may be in this world as He is also. This was the secret of Paul's endurance. He could be buffeted by every blast, exposed to every hardship, yet not crushed by any pressure. Sorrowful yet always rejoicing, cast down but not destroyed, shouting mid all the extremes of life's vicissitudes. "I can do everything through him who gives me strength" (Philippians 4:13).
How this experience deepens our love as we look back and remember how often He has relieved our physical sufferings! How many aches and infirmities He has healed or hindered and how tenderly He has cherished our mortal frames, even as a mother does the babe she loves! How our heart swells with the love that casts out fear! How sweet it is to lean our whole weight on Him, knowing that as He is so are we also in this world.
We Are Remembered
In His ministry of prayer, we are remembered.
There is no place where Christ more fully identifies Himself with us than at the mercy seat, where He bids us pray in His name. This means in His very personality, taking the very same place as He Himself and asking all that He is entitled to claim.
Also, He gives us His own Spirit to pray in us, impresses us with His own desires and wishes, and so enables us to pray that it shall be His own very prayer. This is the secret of all true prayer, to pray in the Lord Jesus, asking what He would ask and as He would ask it.
To such prayer the promise is absolute.
"My Father will give you whatever yo ask in my name" (John 16:23).
"If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you" (John 15:7)
"Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess" (Hebrews 4;14)
"Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need" (4:16)
In our service for Christ, we are in partnership with God. "As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world" (John 17:18) is His commission. We are sent into the world as directly as the Lord Jesus Himself was. This was not His home, but He came into it to do a special work for the Father and the world, lived in it as a stranger, and left it when His work was done.
True service for God is not only to do our work as Christ did it, but to do it in the very life and strength of Christ. This is the meaning of the promise, "anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing" (John 14:12), that is, He will work in partnership with me, we doing the same works together. This is the same thought as Paul expresses in Ephesians. "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do". Our very works are prepared for us, and inspired in us by the indwelling Christ.
~A. B. Simpson~
(continued with # 26)
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