True Bethanies # 9

The Power of His Resurrection (continued)

Now, I know, when things like that are said, so often there is that vacant feeling that remains: "Yes, we know it ought to be so, just as we ought to be crucified with Christ: we know we ought to be risen with Christ, and it is quite true that we ought to know the power of His resurrection, and His resurrection life". That is said again and again, but we leave it there. The point is how is it to be?

Now, we have to recognize that the Lord has brought His Church into being for the specific purpose of displaying the power of His resurrection, and we should dedicate ourselves unto the Lord for that very end. That is the way: in recognizing that the object, the very object of our being in that Church, of that Body, is that He might display in us His resurrection power and life. We, recognizing that, have a definite understanding with the Lord that we are consecrated to Him; now our responsibility ends there, if it is from our hearts, and the Lord will begin His work.

We shall not be able to raise ourselves any more than we can crucify ourselves, but we must recognize that the Lord's dealings with us are with that in view. In order to display the power of His resurrection, He will very often have to take the attitude toward us of letting things get well beyond all human power to remedy or save, of allowing things to go so far that there is no other power in all the universe that can do anything whatever to save the situation. He will allow death, disintegration, to work, so that nothing, nothing in the universe is of any avail, except the power of His resurrection.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 10)