The Recovery of the Lord's Name in His People # 13

Called According to Purpose (continued)

We must be very careful that we bring everything, every part, every aspect of the Lord's movement toward His ultimate full purpose into line with the great end. The point of that, the importance of that, is this: that God has again and again raised up instruments, individual and collective, in relation to his ultimate purpose. And by them done something in their day which was quite definite and distinctive and positive. But the thing has become bound up with them and they have become the beginning and the end of it. And when they have gone, well, there has been a carrying on of the work that they started, but that distinctive and specific thing has not gone on, it is something now being carried on. And the responsibility is lying upon men to carry it on. And then there is a reverting again to this other way of getting support to carry on this thing. Now my point is this: all succession, all continuation, has got to be as definitely by Divine call as initiation. Therefore succession is not official, it is by anointing, it is by anointing.

You see the Church does not belong to any one time, any one age, it is an eternal thing. It is the eternally elect vessel of the full purpose of God, but the Church is the Anointed Vessel. You cannot carry on the Church with an organization, you cannot carry on the Church by any human means at all. The Church is instituted at the beginning by the anointing and it has got to go on right to the end by the anointing. So that this continuation of Divine purpose requires fresh and ever fresh anointing where specific vessels and instrumentalities are concerned. You cannot get a conception of the Divine purpose and then say, now we will have a committee and we will have a board, and we will have an organization and we will have this and that in order to do this thing that God wants done. You just cannot do it. You can have them if you like, but you will find that you have got to take responsibility for them and for everything. You see every vessel has got to be God-chosen and God-anointed in relation to something that is eternal and not of time at all and not of this earth. And in our place, in our relationship to what God may be doing at any given time in our own time we have got to come really under the anointing of the Holy Spirit for that. Just as much as those who went before who were the chosen instruments of God to bring that instrumentality into being. Jesus as much as they were anointed in their calling, we have got to be anointed if that thing is to go on. Heaven has got to come in and carry it to the next stage, we cannot.

Nothing dear friends is an end in itself. Everything is related to these so much more of God's intention, God's purpose. Your salvation is no end in itself, any dealings of God with you are not just for the time, they are not an end. Anything that God has raised up and brought into being must not become an end in itself, a crystallized, rounded-off piece of work with a hedge round it, and that's something inclusive and exclusive. Oh, everything has got to be in line with and open to the ultimate fullness of God's purpose; therefore, therefore we must be open to the Lord for something more and something fresh all the time. That went so far, but God intended more.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 14)