My upmost for His Highest

Direction By Impulse

October 21st

There was nothing either of the nature of impulse or of cold-bloodedness about Our Lord, but only a calm strength that never got into panic. Most of us develop our Christianity along the line of our temperament, not along the line of God. Impulse is a trait in natural life, but Our Lord always ignores it, because it hinders development of the life of a disciple. Watch how the Spirit of God checks impuse, His checks bring a rush of self-concious foolishness which makes us instantly want to vindicate ourselves. Impulse is all right in a child, but it is disastrous in a man or woman; an impulsive man is always a petted man. Impulse has to be trained into intuition by discipline. Discipleship is built entirely on the supernatural grace of God. Walking on the water is easy to impulsive pluck, but walking on dry land as disciple of Jesus Christ is a different thing. Peter walked on water to go to Jesus, but he followed Him afar off of the land. We do not need the grace of God to stand crises, human nature and pride are sufficient, we can face the strain magnificently; but it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours in every day as a saint, to go through drudgery as a disciple, to live an ordinary, unobserved, ignored existence as a disciple or Jesus. It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God; but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes.

My upmost for His Highest

The witness of the Spirit

October 22nd

We are in danger of getting the barter spirit when we come to God, we want the witness before we have done what God tells us to do. Why does not God reveal Himself to me? He cannot, it is that He will not, but He cannot, because you are in the road as long as you won't abandon absolutely to Him. Immediately you do

My upmost for His Highest

Not a bit of it!

October 23rd

Our Lord never nuses our prejuices, He moritifies them, runs clean athwart them. We imagine that God has a special interest in our particular prejudices; we are quite sure that God will never deal with us as He has to deal with other people. God must deal with other people in a very strengt way, but of course He knows that my prejudices are all right. We have to learn--Not a bit of it! Instead of God being on the side of our prejudices, He is deliberately wiping them out. It is part of our moral education to have our prejudices run straight across by His providence, and to watch how He does it. God pays no respect to anything we bring to Him. There is only one thing God wants of us, and that is our unconditional surrender. When we are born again, the Holy Spirit begins to work His new creation in us, and there will come a time when there is not a bit of the old order left, the old solemnity goes, the old attitude to things goes, and all things are of God. How are we going to get the life that has no lust, no self-interest, no sensitiveness to pokes, the love that is not prov- oked, that thinketh no evil, that is always kind? The only way is by allowing not a bit of the old life to be left; but only simple perfect trust in God, such trust that we no longer want God's blessings, but only want Himself. Have we come to the place where God can withdraw His blessings and it does not affect our trust in Him? When once we see God at work, we will never bother our heads about things that happen, because we are actually trusting in our Father in Heaven Whom the world cannot see.

My upmost for His Highest

The viewpoint

October 24th

The viewpoint of a worker for God must not be the highest. Be careful to maintain streneously God's point of view, it has to be done every day, bit by bit; don't think on the finite. No outside power can touch the viewpoint. The viewpoint to maintain is that we are here for one purpose only, viz., to be captives in the train of Christ's triumphs. We are not in God's showroom, we are here to exhibit one thing--the absolute captivity of our lives to Jesus Christ. How small the other points of view are--I am standing alone battling for Jesus; I have to maintain the cause of Christ and hold this fort for Him. Paul says--I am in the train of a conqueror, and it does not matter what the difficulties are, I am always led in triumph. Is this idea being worked out practically in us? Paul's secret joy was that God took him, a red-handed rebel against Jesus Christ, and mad him a captive, and now that is all he is here for. Paul's joy was to be a captive of the Lord, he had no interest in heaven or in earth. It is a shameful thing for a Christian to talk about getting the victory. The Victor ought to have got us so completely that it is His victory all the time, and we are more than conqueror's through Him. For we are unto God a sweet saviour of Christ. We are enwheeled with the odour of Jesus, and to God.

My upmost for His Highest

The eternal crush of things

October 25th

A Christian worker has to learn how to be God's noble man or woman amid a crowd of ignoble things. Never make this plea --If only I were somewhere else! All God's men are ordinary men made extraordinary by the matter He has given them. Unless we have the right matter in our minds intellectually and in our hearts affectionately, we will be hustled out of usefulness to God. We are not workers for God by choice. Many people deliberately choose to be workers, but they have no matter in them of God's almighty grace, no matter of His mighty word. Paul's whole heart and mind and soul were taken up with the great matter of what Jesus Christ came to do, he never lost sight of that one thing. We have to face ourselves with the one central fact --Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I have chosen you. Keep that note of greatness in your creed. It is not that you have got God but that He has got you. Here, in this College, God is at work, bending, breaking, moulding, doing just as He chooses. Why He is doing it, we do not know; He is doint it for one purpose only --that He may be able to say, This is My man, My woman. We have to be i God's hand so that He can plant men on the Rock as He has planted us. Never chose to be a worker, but when God has put His call on you, woe be to you if you turn to the right hand or to the left. He will do with you what He never did with you before the call came; He will do with you what He is not doing with other people. Let Him have His way.

My upmost for His Highest

What is a missionary?

October 26th

A missionary is one sent by Jesus Christ as He was sent by God. The great dominant note is not the needs of men, but the command of Jesus. The source of our inspiration in work for God is behind, not before. The tendency to-day is to put the inspiration ahead, to sweep everything in front of us and bring it all out to our conception of success. In the New Testament the inspiration is put behind us, the Lord Jesus. The ideal is to be true to Him, to carry out His enterprises. Personal attachment to the Lord Jesus and His point of view is the one thing that must not be overlooked. In missionary enterprise the great danger is that God's call is effaced by the needs of the people until human sympathy absolutely overwhelms the meaning of being sent by Jesus. The needs are so enourmous, the condition: so perplexing, that every power of mind falters and fails. We forget that the one great mission underneath all missionary enterprise is not first the elevation of the people, nor the education of the people, nor their needs but first and foremost the command of Jesus Christ-- Go ye therefore, and teach all nations. When looking back on lives of men and women of God the tendecy is to say -- what wonderfully astute wisdom they had! How perfectly they understood all God wanted! The astute mind behind is the Mind of God, not human wisdom at all. We give credit to human wisdom when we should give credit to the Divine guidance of God through childlike people who were foolish enough to trust God's wisdom and the supernatural equipment of God.

My upmost for His Highest

The method of missions

October 27th

Jesus Christ did not say -- Go and save souls (the salvation of souls is the supernatural work of God), but --Go and teach, i.e. disciple, all nations, and you cannot make disciples unless you are a disciple yourself. When the disciples came back from their first mission they were filled with joy because the devils were subject to them, and Jesus said--Don't rejoice in successful service; the great secret of joy is that you are rightly related to Me. The great essential of the missionary is that he remains true to the call of God, and realizes that his one purpose is to disciple men and women to Jesus. There is a passion for souls that does not spring from God, but from the desire to make converts to our point of view. The challenge of the missionary does not come on the line that people are difficult to get saved, that backsliders are difficult to reclaim, that there is a wadge of callous indifference; but along the line of his own personal relationship to Jesus Christ. Believe ye that I am able to do this? Our Lord puts that question steadily, it faces us in every individual case we meet. The one great challenge is-- Do I know my Risen Lord? Do I know the power of His indwelling Spirit? Am I wise enough in God's sight, and foolish enough according to the world, to bank on what Jesus Christ has said, or am I abandoning the great supernatural position, which is the only call for a missionary, viz., boundless confidence in Christ Jesus? If I take up any other method I depart altogether from the methods laid down by Our Lord--All power is given unto Me..., therefore go ye.

My upmost for His Highest

Justification by Faith

October 28th

I am not saved by believing; I realize I am saved by believing. It is not repentance that saves me, repentance is the sign that I realize what God has done in Christ Jesus. The danger is to put the emphasis on the effect instead of on the cause. It is my obedience that puts me right with God, my consecration. Never! I am put right with God because prior to all, Christ died. When I turn go God and by belief accept what God reveals I can accept, instantly the stupendous Atonement of Jesus Christ rushes me into a right relationship with God; and by the supernatural miracle of God's grace I stand justified, not because I am sorry for my sin, not because I have repented, but because of what Jesus has done. The Spirit of God brings it with a breaking, all-over light, and I know, though I do not know how, that I am saved. The salvation of God does not stand on human logic, it stands on the sacrificial Death of Jesus. We can be born again because of the Atonement of Our Lord. Sinful men and women can be changed into new creatures, not by their repentance or their belief, but by the marvellous work of God in Christ Jesus which is prior to all experience. The impregnable safety of Justification and sanctification is God Himself. We have not to wourk out these things ourselves; they have been worked out by the Atonement. The supernatural becomes natural by the miracle of god; there is the realization of what Jesus Christ has already done--It is finished.

My upmost for His Highest

Substitution

October 29th

The modern view of the death of Jesus is that He died for our sins out of sympathy. The New Testament view is that He bore our sin not by sympathy, but bu identification. He was made to be sin. Our sins are removed because of the death of Jesus, and the explanation of His death is His obedience this His Father, not His sympathy with us. We are acceptable with God not because we have obeyed, or because we have promised to give up things, but because of the death of Christ, and in no other way. We say that Jesus Christ came to reveal the Fatherhood of God, the loving-kind-ness of God; the New Testament says that He came to bear away the sin of the world. The revelation of His Father is to those to whom He has been introduced as Sviour. Jesus Christ never spoke of Himself to the world as on Who revealeved the Father, but as a stumbling block(see John xv. 22-24). John xiv. 9 was spoken to His disciples. That Christ died for me, therefore I go scot free, is never taught in the New Testament. What is taught in the New Testament is that He died for all (not --He died my death), and that by identification with His death I can be freed from sin, and have imparted to me His very righteousness. The substitution taught in the New Testament is twofold: He hath made Him to be sin for us , who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. It is not Christ for me unless I am determined to have Christ formed in me.

My upmost for His Highest

The witness of the Spirit

October 30th

Faith in antagonism to common sense is fanaticism, and sommon sense in antagonism to faith is rationalism. The life of faith brings the two into a right relation. Common sense is not faith, and faith is not common sense; they stand in the relation of the natural and the spiritual; of impulse and inspiration. Nothing Jesus Christ ever said is common sense, it is revelation sense, and it reaches the shores where common sense fails. Faith must be tried before the reality of faith is actual. We know that all things work together for good, then no matter what happens, the alchemy of God's providence transfigures the ideal faith into actual reality. Faith always works on the personal line, the whole purpose of God being to see that the ideal faith is made real in His children. For every detail of the common-sense life, there is a revelation fact of God whereby we can prove in practical experience what we believe God to be. Faith is a tremendously active principle which always puts Jesus Christ first --Lord, Thou hast said so and so (e.g, Matthew vi. 33), it looks mad, but I am going to venture on Thy word. To turn head faith into a personal possession is a fight always, not sometimes. God brings us into circumstances in order to educate our faith, because the nature of faith in Him; but immediately we hear Jesus say--He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father, we have something that is real, and faith is boundless. Faith is the whole man rightly related to God by the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

My upmost for His Highest

Discernment of Faith

October 31st

My upmost for His Highest

Discernment of Faith

November 1st