The Recovery of the Lord's Name In His People # 25

A Peculiar Vessel for a Peculiar People (continued)

But the Lord does not do it like that, friends. He has never done it with any of you like that. He has never done it with me. He has applied just as serious a test in very simple ways. I said, I think it was last night, that a gesture is a very, very, indicative and significant thing, just a gesture. Here is the gesture: there is one man, he flops down at the riverside and has a good going of  the water. The other man, he stands by the river and takes that in hand and laps on all alert. Well, why not? Ah, yes, but you see, bound up with that, that simple test, is what? Oh, it is not just a sign, not just a sign, that is, the Lord has not ordained that some lap and some go down on their knees and so you separate them, it is a sign of the heart, it is a revelation of the disposition. This larger crowd, they are the people who want a good time, even in the Lord's word, a good time. These others, they are not thinking of the good time at all, they are putting first things first, the first thing is this Battle, is this work of God. It comes first and everything else takes the last place, or the second place. This is the thing that is on hand, the revelation of a disposition.

And you know we are showing our dispositions in all sorts of simple ways, just as simple as that, as we go about our daily life, our daily work. Yes, the Lord's eye is upon us there, in the office, in the workshop, in the shop, in the study, wherever we are, the Lord's eye is upon us and our hearts are being revealed in just the way in which we go to work ... the ordinary things of lie. Oh, we separate these things, you see, the sacred and the secular, in a church it is one thing, of course in business it is another. But it isn't, it isn't. Our qualification is in our "disposition," you see, not in our consciousness of being under the eye of God, but when we are not conscious of that at all, and the disposition we are showing, that's the test, that is the test. And oh, how many and how simple are the ways in which we show our disposition, just our inclination.

Now of course that does apply, it does apply to every stage of the Christian life. I said that there are saved people of all kinds, but if you are going to have a really thorough going salvation and not one of those poor things, those inadequate things, those experiences of Christ which are anything but what He would have you have. If you are going to have that, you have got to show that you mean business, that you really do mean business, that this thing is a very serious things with you. You will get as much as your heart is set upon and no more and no less and the Lord is looking at your heart. You know those passages, David to his son Solomon, and God searcheth all hearts. Serve the Lord with all your heart. And the Lord searcheth all hearts. Those words of Jeremiah, "The Lord trieth the heart, the heart, the heart."

And what is true of your salvation is true of your usefulness to the Lord. None of us will ever be used of the Lord in any very real way unless, unless our hearts are wholly set upon the Lord and His interests. Not to have a good time, that is, as men speak, not to have every picnic that is going, not to have every diversion from the strain that is available, not to have every escape from responsibility and obligation that can be found. Not a disposition like that at all. But the disposition that recognizes how great is the matter in which we are involved and we are people wholly committed to that, and our own gratification and satisfaction is not allowed to affect or influence us at all; it is a heart wholly for the Lord. Now I said that the Lord has many ways of finding that out, I could not compass all the ways in which He does it, but what I want to say is this, that the Lord will present a test, He will present a test. It will not always be as to whether the things is  right and wrong, but it may more often be as to whether it is the good or the better. If you are of the disposition of the great majority you will be always asking questions like, well may I not? Is there any harm in it? What is wrong with that? You see! And there was nothing wrong with drinking the water, it is not a case of whether it is wrong or whether you may, whether you are obliged to.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 26)