Category Archives: The Mind of Christ Within

Can These Two Walk Together?

by Michael

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Can two walk together, except they are agreed? (Amos 3:3, KJ2000)

Do not keep company with those who have not faith: for what is there in common between righteousness and evil, or between light and dark? …for we are a house of the living God; even as God has said, I will be living among them, and walking with them; and I will be their God, and they will be my people. (2Cor 6:14-16, BBE)

God has always hated a mixture. According to the law wool could not be woven with linen, meat and dairy products could not be cooked together, they could not intermarry with foreigners and in the New Testament we read that believers are not to be unequally yoke with unbelievers. Oh, the misery that has been caused in the Church and marriages by that!

God feels the same way about the work of the Spirit and the work of the flesh. The work will either be instigated by Him and done by His Spirit as it was with Christ or He will withdraw until we figure out that our flesh profits nothing! As Paul said said, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” We can struggle by our own strength to be righteous, but He backs away until we figure out that apart from Him, we can do nothing. Paul wrote,

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. (Gal 5:16-17, ESV2011)

Watchmen Nee and some other Christian men were swimming in a river when one of the men got a cramp in his leg and began struggling and was sinking. Mr. Nee motioned to one of the other men, who was an excellent swimmer, about the drowning man. To his astonishment, however, the man did not move. He just stood there and watched the man fight to keep his head above water.

Mr. Nee was angry to say the least, but the swimmer was calm and collected. Meanwhile, the voice of the drowning man grew fainter and more desperate. Mr. Nee hated the good swimmer who just stood and watched him suffer from the shore when he could have jumped into the river and rescued the drowning man. As the drowning man went under for what looked like the last time, the swimmer dove in and was there in a moment, and both were soon safely on shore.

After the rescue, Mr. Nee accused the man of loving his own life too much and being selfish. The response of the swimmer revealed, however, that he knew what he was doing. He told Watchman that if he had gone too soon, the drowning man would have put a death grip on him and they would have both drowned in the river, and he was right. He told Mr. Nee that a drowning man cannot be saved until he is utterly exhausted and ceases to make the slightest effort to save himself.

Such is the case with our salvation. When we stop trying to save ourselves, then the Lord can step in and save us as we fully surrender to Him. The same is true about our efforts to be righteous. He will allow a temptation to beset us that is beyond our strength to resist unless we cry out to Him to deliver us. He leads us not into temptation for as James says, we are drawn away by our own lusts. But God DOES deliver us from evil if we cry out to Him, though we may have to become totally exhausted in the process to reach the level of desperation that He is looking for. You see one of the desired outcomes is to get us to have mercy on all sinners and KNOW that “except for the grace of God, there go I,” by first hand experience.

And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. (Gal 5:24-25, KJ2000)

Thank you to Susanne Schuberth for her encouragement and inspiration. See her latest blog: https://enteringthepromisedland.wordpress.com/2016/09/10/death-and-resurrection-or-i-need-a-savior/

Let this Mind Be in You

by Michael

The Mind of Christ

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5, NRS)

What is the nature of the mind of Christ? I think we can safely say that it is a mind that is totally open and obedient to the voice of the Father. There is an old saying, “Some people’s minds are like concrete… all mixed up and permanently set.” Thank God that He knows how to use a jackhammer on those of us that have become fixed in our confusion about Himself and His kingdom. The key to our continuing growth in Christ is found in this verse:

Keep on asking and it will be given you; keep on seeking and you will find; keep on knocking [reverently] and [the door] will be opened to you. For everyone who keeps on asking receives; and he who keeps on seeking finds; and to him who keeps on knocking, [the door] will be opened. (Matt 7:7-8, AMP)

The biggest obstacle to finding God’s truth and His leading in our lives is pride. Many of us become satisfied with our knowledge of God, His kingdom and the Bible (becoming proud of the knowledge we have) and forget the verse that says that the Word of God is LIVING (Hebrews 4:12). It is living and fluid, not static and dead. The Amplified Version rightly translates the above passage by saying, “KEEP ON asking… KEEP ON seeking… and KEEP ON knocking!” God’s word keeps getting deeper and sheds ever greater light if we keep seeking Him and listening to the Spirit!

Austin-Sparks wrote,

One of the most common causes of spiritual stultification is fixedness. It is peculiarly common in the realm where Christian truth has been reduced to a fixed form, order, system, and creed. The doctrines of Christianity are such and such; so many. The accepted and established ideas of Christian service and methods are so-and-so. Peter had his fixed position as to Jews and Gentiles, and, because of it, came perilously near missing the larger purpose of God, and presented the Lord with a real battleground in his Christianity. It has so very largely resolved itself into a finality of position, which results in a closed door to fuller revelation as to what God means by His Word. The fact is, that God only gives us enough light to get us to take the next step, but when that step has been taken, we are in the way of being shown that much more was meant by the Lord than He showed then. The first expectations of many servants of the Lord in the Bible, expectations resultant from something said by the Lord to them, were later seen to have been not all that He really meant, but there was something more, and perhaps other than they thought. [1]

When I was younger in the Lord, He gave me many meaningful dreams. In one of them I found myself standing on a darkened stage in a theater. I was afraid to move until a spot light lit up a small round circle on the floor in front of me. Instinctively I stepped into that spot and then the light went out. As I waited another spot lit up in front of me once again and I stepped into it. This process of light and darkness went on as long as I stepped into the next spot that was lit up before me. After being led all over that stage the light shown on a flight of stairs at the back left corner of the platform and I stepped down to find that there was a door awaiting me that led out into a bright sunny day outside. Upon stepping out into daylight, the dream ended. So you see, these words by Sparks have much meaning to me, “The fact is, that God only gives us enough light to get us to take the next step, but when that step has been taken, we are in the way of being shown that much more was meant by the Lord than He showed [back] then.”

Sparks continues:

Can anyone really dispute that full light very often means a shedding of things and ideas that we thought were of God? Is it not true that, as we go on, we find that certain leadings of the Lord were tactical, intended to get us to a certain place where alone we could learn of a greater necessity? There is very much of this kind of thing in relation to both doctrine, practice, and service—its nature and ways, and while Divine principles will never change to all eternity, the clothing of those principles may vary and change with both dispensations and generations and stages of our own lives.

In all this—while Truth remains unalterable—the only way to grow is to be adjustable and not static and fixed. Do your religious traditions bind you in such a way that you are not free to move with God? If He sees this to be so, He may not give you the light necessary to [for] enlargement. But if He sees that, although you may be in a comparatively false position, your heart is really set on His fulness at any cost, He may present you with light which will test your adjustableness severely. See the case of the disciples of John the Baptist transferring their discipleship to Christ. See the case of Peter and what happened in the home of Cornelius. See also the case of Apollos in Acts 18:24–28; as also the disciples mentioned earlier in that chapter. [1]

We make the commandments of the Spirit of no effect as He tries to lead us into new light by hanging on to our current understanding of an old familiar Bible verse or the rigid dogma of a church statute (see Matt. 15:3-6). Like Peter, we can be so blind that we tell God, “Not so!” when He commands us to kill and eat, while we blindly call Him “Lord” (See Acts 10:9-16). We should always be aware that God can sanctify what we once saw as unclean, especially when it comes to pouring out His life changing grace on the lives of others we have judged as being terrible sinners.

After reading this article by Sparks, it was as if God wanted to drive this point about His expanding revelation.  I got a flash of new revelation from an old familiar passage, the very thing that Sparks was pointing out about being open to fresh life changing insight from the Lord. In Romans Paul wrote:

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Rom 12:1-2, ESV2011)

This term “living sacrifice” is what jumped into my mind with new meaning as I read the above quote from Sparks. The light of the Lord cleanses us of all darkness, but first we must allow the cross of Christ to kill that thing within that still clings to spiritual darkness (see John 3:19). This is a process. We wish we could die to that old Adam in us once and for all, but like Peter and the others named above in the TAS article, the dying we must go through is a continuing and progressive process as the Lord shines His light into us. In this process we literally are LIVING SACRIFICES! We must continually present ourselves to Him as He kills our adamic flesh (our strongholds) in stages and brings forth the Light of Jesus Christ within. This is true worship! David wrote:

”For you will not delight in [animal] sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering [our religious service to Him]. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Ps 51:16-17, ESV2011)

We worship God as we make our lives a living sacrifice, letting Him put the knife to everything in us that resists His leading. This is done when we fall down before Him with a broken and contrite heart as He shows us what must go. Our old natures find it easy to be conformed to this world system that is lorded over by the prince of this world. The flesh (soulish-ness of man) is his breeding ground for rebellion against God. We must be transformed into God’s NEW creation and be given the mind of Christ if we are to prove that His will for us is good and acceptable, no matter what our old contrary natures try to convince us of. I thank God that we can be God’s living sacrifices, always coming into greater revelations of His riches in glory IN Christ Jesus.  We must die daily until we can say with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. (Proverbs 4:18, NRS)

[1] http://www.austin-sparks.net/english/001606.html

A special thanks to Susanne Schuberth who read my comment on her blog and encouraged me to seek God about making it into an article on AWV. She also found this article by T. Austin-Sparks and wrote about it on her blog at https://enteringthepromisedland.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/is-spiritual-growth-a-miracle/