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On Knowing the Lord
by
T. Austin-Sparks
"That I may know....." - Phil. 3:10.
"Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou
not know Me." - John 14:9; (A.S.V.).
Phil. 1:10; Heb. 8:11; I John 2:20, 27.
It is of the
greatest importance for the Lord's children to recognize
fully that, above all other things, His object is that
they should know Him. This is the all-governing end of
all His dealings with us. This is the greatest of all our
needs.
It is the secret of
strength, steadfastness, and service. It determines the
measure of our usefulness to Him. It was the one passion
of the life of the apostle Paul for himself. It was the
cause of his unceasing striving for the saints. It is the
heart and pivot of the whole letter to the Hebrews. It
was the secret of the life, service, endurance,
confidence of the Lord Jesus as Son of Man.
All these facts need
looking at more closely. We begin always with the Lord
Jesus as God's representative, the Man after His own
mind. In His life on earth there was no part or aspect
which did not have its strength and ability rooted in,
and drawn from, His inward knowledge of His Father, God.
We must never forget that His was a life of utter
dependence upon God, voluntarily accepted. He attributed
everything to the Father: word, wisdom, and works. The
miracles were made just as possible through His apostles
as through Himself. This does not put the apostles on the
same personal level as Himself. His Deity remains. He is
God manifest in the flesh; but He has accepted from the
human and manward standpoint the limitations and
dependence of man so that God might be God
manifested. There is a subjection here because of which
He is able to do nothing of Himself (John 5:19, etc.). The principle of His entire life in every
phase and detail was His knowledge of God. He knows the
Father in the matter of the words He speaks, the works He
does, the men and women with whom He has to do; with
regard to the times of speaking, acting, going,
staying, surrendering, refusing, silence; with regard to
the motives, pretensions, professions, enquiries,
suggestions, of men and of Satan. He knows when He may
not, and when He may, give His life. Yes, everything here
is governed by that inward knowledge of God. There are
numerous evidences in the "Acts" as the
practical, and in the Epistles as the doctrinal,
revelation of God's mind, that this principle is intended
by God to be maintained as the basic law of the life of
the Lord's people through this age. This knowledge in the
case of the Lord Jesus was the secret of His complete
ascendancy and of His absolute authority.
Masters in Israel
will seek Him out and the issue which will precipitate
their seeking will be that of knowing. "Art thou the
teacher of Israel, and understandest not these
things?" (John
3:10). Nicodemus has
come to One Who knows, and Whose authority is superior to
that of the scribes, not merely in degree but in kind.
Toward the end of
the Gospel of John, which especially brings into view
this very matter, "to know" occurs some
fifty-five times. Our Lord makes the statement that
"this is life eternal, that they should know Thee
the only true God, and Him, Whom Thou didst send, even
Jesus Christ." (John
17:3). This does not
mean merely that eternal life is given on the basis of
this knowledge. There can be life with very limited
knowledge. But life in fulness is closely related
to that knowledge, and the increasing knowledge of Him
manifests itself in increasing life. It works both ways;
knowledge unto life and life unto knowledge.
Seeing, then, that
the Lord Jesus Himself, as Man, represents man according
to God, we are well prepared to see that
The
Dominating Objective Of The Divine Dealings With Us
is that we may know the
Lord.
This explains all
our experiences, trials, sufferings, perplexities,
weakness, predicaments, tight corners, bafflings,
pressures. While the refining of spirit, the development
of the graces, the removing of the dross, are all
purposes of the fires, yet above and through all is the
one object - that we may know the Lord. There is only one
way of really getting to know the Lord, and that is
experimentally.
Our minds are so
often occupied with service and work; we think that doing
things for the Lord is the chief object of life. We are
concerned about our lifework, our ministry. We think of
equipment for it in terms of
study and knowledge of things.
Soul-winning, or teaching believers, or setting
people to work, are so much in the foreground.
Bible study and knowledge of the Scriptures, with
efficiency in the matter of leading in Christian service
as the end in view, are matters of pressing importance
with all. All well and good, for these are important
matters; but, back of everything the Lord is more
concerned about our knowing Him than about anything else.
It is very possible to have a wonderful grasp of the
Scriptures, a comprehensive and intimate familiarity with
doctrine; to stand for cardinal verities of the faith; to
be an unceasing worker in Christian service; to have a
great devotion to the salvation of men, and yet, alas, to
have a very inadequate and limited personal knowledge of
God within. So often the Lord has to take away our work
that we may discover Him. The ultimate value of
everything is not the information which we give, not the
soundness of our doctrine, not the amount of work that we
do, not the measure of truth that we possess, but just
the fact that we know the Lord in a deep and mighty way.
This is the one
thing that will remain when all else passes. It is this
that will make for the permanence of our ministry after
we are gone. While we may help others in many ways and by
many means so far as their earthly life is concerned, our
real service to them is based upon our knowledge
of the Lord.
The greatest of the
problems of the Christian life is
The
Problem Of Guidance
How much has been said
and written upon this subject! The last word for so many
is, "Pray about it, commit it to God, do the thing
that seems right, and trust God to see that it turns out
all right." This to us seems weak and inadequate. We
make no claim to ability to lay down the comprehensive
and conclusive basis of guidance, but we are strongly of
the conviction that it is one thing to get direction for
the events, incidents, and contingencies of life, and
quite another thing to have an abiding, personal, inward
knowledge of the Lord. It is one thing to call upon a
friend in emergency or at special times for advice as to
a course to be taken; it is another thing to live with
that friend so that there is derived a sense of his mind
in general that will govern in particular matters.
We want
instructions and commands, the Lord wants us to
have a 'mind.' "Have this mind in you,"
"We have the mind of Christ." Christ has
a consciousness, and by the Holy Spirit He would give and
develop in us that consciousness. The inspired statement
is that "His anointing teacheth you concerning all
things." We are not servants, we are sons. Commands
- as such - are for servants, a mind is for sons.
There is an
appalling state of things amongst the Lord's people
to-day. So many of them have their life
almost entirely in that which is external to
themselves - in their counsel and guidance, their
sustenance and support, their knowledge, their means of
grace. Personal, inward, spiritual intelligence is a very
rare thing. No wonder that the enemy has such a
successful line in delusions, counterfeits, and false
representations. Our greatest safeguard against such will
be a deep knowledge of the Lord through discipline.
To know the Lord in
a real way means steadfastness when others are being
carried away - steadfastness through times of fiery
trial. Those who know the Lord do not put forth their own
hand and try to bring things about. Such are full of love
and patience, and do not lose their poise when everything
seems to be going to pieces. Confidence is an essential
and inevitable fruit of this knowledge, and in those who
know Him there is a quiet restful strength which speaks
of a great depth of life.
To close let me
point out that in Christ "are all the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge hidden," and the Lord's will
for us is to come to an ever-growing realization and
personal appreciation of Him in Whom all the fulness
dwells.
We have only stated
facts as to the Lord's will for all His own, and their
greatest need.
The absence of this
real knowledge of the Lord has proved to be the most
tragic factor in the Church's history.
Every fresh uprising
of an abnormal condition has disclosed the appalling
weakness amongst Christian people because of this lack.
Waves of error; the swing of the pendulum to some fresh
popular acceptance; a great war with its horrors and
many-sided tests of faith; all these have swept away
multitudes and left them in spiritual ruin.
These things are
ever near at hand, and we have written this message to
urge upon the Lord's people to have very definite
dealings with Him that He will take every measure with
them that they might know Him.
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