Men Whose Eyes Have Seen the King # 27

Beholding ... Changed ... Transformed (continued)

The Impact of the Glory

But this is something that involves the glory - that is the point. There is such a thing as the power of the Holy Spirit in the glory. We spoke as the power of the Holy Spirit in the glory. We spoke of it on a previous occasion as the "impact" - the impact of the transfiguration upon those men; and the impact of a seeing of the Lord by anyone afterward - what it registered of power. Now, you and I perhaps covet and crave as much as anything that there should be impact in our lives, that there should be power, that our lives should register, that our presence should not just leave things as they were. We long that, as we go on, and when we have passed on, something may have been left of an impress, at least through our presence, and perhaps through our ministry - something that shall remain. Yes, impact is a very good word.

That is bound up with the glory - that is the glory. It registers; it is something that remains.Things may come in, and for a time the glory may be veiled, but there is something there that will come up again. I confess that I have had difficulty in understanding - and yet there is some understanding, because we are all made alike - how three men, and one of them in particular, could be on the mount of transfiguration, yet in His hour of need they all could forsake Him and flee for their very lives. Or how one among them, who by a revelation of the Father had declared that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God - how that man could yet, when it came to it, deny Him with oaths and curses. And yet all this was only a veiling for the time being; the glory came up afterward. It came up with Peter at the end. Many years afterward he remembered: "We were with Him in the holy mount." It remained. There was a temporary eclipse, but it was something that they did not forget. God forbid that sch an eclipse should ever be true of us; perhaps we shall never have to go quite the same way as they went. But there is a permanence abut this matter - and abiding effect of really having Christ revealed in the heart; and, by that inward revelation of Him, there is a manifestation of His character, something that remains.

Now it is clear that we cannot say this of all that is called "ministry." It is a sermon, an address, something given, and it passes. And it goes on like that in a routine, week after week, week after week. But, of course, we do not want it like that; we really do not want that we should come and go, should be just passing things, and not leave any abiding mark. No, there is an impact bound up with this. So, it is not a matter of what we call the "ministry" - something external. The "ministry" with Paul is nothing less than, nothing other than, what is true of Christ coming out of the life of His servants, of His people; being there and coming out.

"Therefore seeing we have this ministry, even as we obtained mercy ... we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by the manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God" (2 Corinthians 4:1, 2).

~T. Austin-Sparks~

continued with # 28 - "Born of God")