Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
5/18/2022
How does waiting on God give us the victory?
Would you say it’s interesting that God worked six days and then rested on the seventh? Adam began his life with the Sabbath – the seventh day! : I think it shows that God works before he rest, while man must first enter into God‘s rest, and then can he work. And here is the gospel: that we need to do nothing whatsoever to merit it, but we can enter by faith directly into the values of his finished work.
It is finished! Christianity indeed means that God has done everything in Christ and that we simply step by faith into the enjoyment of that fact. In the text that we have been studying a command to "sit down" but it is imperativeness that we see ourselves as "seated in Christ" And so I pray as Paul did, "that the eyes of our heart may be enlightened" Eph 1:18
That God has by his mighty power "made him to sit"
and then by Grace "made us to sit with him".
The first lesson we must learn is this; that the work is not initially ours at all, but his!
It is not that we work for God, but that he works for us.
God gives us our position of rest. He brings his son's finished work and presents it to us, then he says, "please sit". His offer to us cannot be better expressed, than in the words of the invitation to the great banquet: "come for all things are now ready" Luke 14:17 our Christian life begins with the discovery of what God has provided. We must dwell hard and often here so we do not lose this truth.
Every new spiritual experience begins with an acceptance by faith of what God has done – with a "new sitting down" – a new entering into God's rest…literally knowing what He has done for us and receiving what He has luxuriously bestowed upon his children through Christ Jesus.
For example, how can I receive the power of the spirit for service? Must I labor for it? Must I plead with God for it? Must I inflict my soul by fastings and self-denials to merit it? Never! Paul tells us that we receive the forgiveness of our sins, "according to the riches of his grace" and that this was "freely bestowed on us in the beloved" (Eph 1:6,7) again we did nothing to merit it!. We have our redemption through his blood.
What then, is God's basis for the outpouring of the spirit? "It is the exaltation of the Lord Jesus" Acts 2:33 this gift is no more dependent than the other upon what I am or what I do. I did not merit forgiveness, and neither do I merit the gift of the spirit. I receive everything not by walking but by sitting down, not by doing but by resting in the Lord. But I ask you, who can sit before the almighty without being humbled by the purity of his presence? How can one sit before God without His spirit shining the light on our sins and fostering this uncontrollable urge to repent and turn away from that old man and draw closer to Christ? (Luke 24:44-47)
Let me assure you that you do not need to plead with God for this gift, nor agonize. It is yours not because of your doing but because of "the exaltation of Christ, in whom having also believed you were sealed
with the Holy Spirit of promise" Eph1:13
It is the same as becoming members of Christ. What fits us to be part of that body which Paul speaks of as, "the fullness of him"? Certainly, we never arrive there by walking. We are not going to him by effort. "There is one body and one spirit even as also you were called in one hope of your calling" Eph 4:4
Because… it starts with Jesus Christ, and with the fact that God chose us in him before the foundation of the world Eph 1:4 when the Holy Spirit shows us Christ and we believe on him, and we repent, then at once, with no further action on our part, there will begin for us a life in union with him.
Tomorrow let’s talk about this very urgent and practical matter of our sanctification. How can we know deliverance from sin’s reign?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP2kZCigZKE
Steve Green Broken and Poured Out
Excerpts taken from Watchman Nee's book Sit Walk Stand 1957
