By His Spirit, Zech 4.6

You don’t have to push with all your strength.
Without Him, you can do nothing.
You don’t have to worry so much.
It is not by might, nor by power, but by His Spirit.

It is not by our wisdom, nor by our strength.
It is by His Spirit.

Be led by His Spirit.
Wait for the leading of the Spirit.
Be still. Let the peace of God keep your heart and mind.
Keep trusting in Him.
He will do it.
By His Spirit.

Four Compromises in a Believer's Life

Difficulties in the Exit from Egypt

The book of Exodus is the book of redemption or deliverance. The children of Israel were delivered out of Egypt through the hand of Moses, the servant of God. They were delivered by wonders and miracles, as God poured out ten terrible plagues upon Egypt, the last being death to the firstborn in every house in Egypt. Death would have struck the Israelites also, but for the blood of the Passover Lamb applied to the lintels and doorposts of their homes. The Passover Lamb speaks of Christ, and therefore the spiritual parallel becomes clear to us -- that our deliverance from this wicked and soon-perishing world [symbolized by Egypt] is by the Blood of the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. We are saved by the blood of Jesus Christ shed on Calvary -- that same blood applied by faith to our spirit and sprinkled upon our heart.

Now Moses made it very clear to Pharaoh that he had been sent by the LORD [Jehovah] [YHWH] to deliver his people, Israel, out of Egypt. And the reason given is that the Israelites should make a three-day journey into the wilderness, so that they might offer a sacrifice acceptable to the LORD. [The spiritual implication being: We are saved in order to serve the Lord.] So the book of Exodus gives us an elaborate picture of the tabernacle and the arrangements for serving and worshipping God.

After three terrible plagues, viz. turning the water in the Nile into blood; sending frogs to cover the land; and striking the dust of the earth to bring forth gnats – the magicians of Pharaoh admit defeat and declare, ‘This is the finger of God.’ But Pharaoh hardens his heart, and does not let the people of Israel depart from Egypt. [Pharaoh, we know, stands for Satan, the ruler of this world.] The fourth plague brings great swarms of insects into the houses of Pharaoh and his servants and these insects lay waste to the land.

First Compromise
It is then that Pharaoh makes a concession. He says, and this first suggestion is, ‘Go, sacrifice to your God, but do so within the land.’ [Exod 8.25] You may worship God, but only within Egypt. Now the Bible makes it very clear that true worship cannot be done within Egypt [i.e., the world]. The Satanic suggestion is: “Be a worldly Christian; conform to the world.” There are Christians who say they believe, but they lack testimony. They cannot stand up for Jesus; they have never confessed Christ; they love the world; and there is no life of separation unto God. A true Christian is one follows Christ. He is one who is crucified to the world. This is what God says to you and me, “Come out and be separate and do not touch what is unclean and I will welcome you and be a father to you and you shall be sons and daughters to Me”, 2 Cor 6.17, 18. We cannot be bound together with unbelievers; we have no association with them.

Our Lord emphatically stated that a disciple [or true believer] will be hated by the world, Jn 15.19, 17.14. So Moses says, “Our sacrifice [or worship] will be an abomination to the Egyptians.” In other words, the world will hate true worshippers who worship the Lord in spirit and in truth. Traditional Christianity with its vast network of denominations is accepted by most of the world. Lack of separation affects our testimony, and we become insipid and powerless Christians, unable to impact the world. All our religion, all our denominations, are in vain. We have not come in touch with the living God. We are still in bondage to Satan, and still rooted in the world.

Moses makes it very clear that ‘We must go a 3 days journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the LORD as He commands us.’ It is an obligation; a divine directive. We cannot do otherwise.

Second Compromise
Pharaoh then comes up with his next sinister suggestion. ‘I will let you go…only you shall not go very far away [from Egypt].’ He is saying in effect: ‘Stay close to Egypt.’ The problem with modern evangelical believers is simply this: They are staying too close to the world. They enjoy the best of the world in what is called the ‘prosperity gospel’ and they also claim to follow Christ. Unfortunately, there is no self-denial, no cross, no clean-cut separation from the world. This kind of ‘TV gospel’ has infected most Christians; it is mass-entertainment and lacks the missionary spirit. The missionaries in the days of old left their homes and comforts to visit dark and distant lands with the gospel of Christ.

So often we face this criticism: ‘Yes, be a Christian, but be practical also.’ ‘Don’t be too other-worldly.’ ‘Be rooted to the earth, be worldly-wise.’ ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ ‘We cannot be ‘fools for Christ.’ ‘How can we be the ‘off-scouring of the world?’ ‘We must live respectably and with dignity.’ ‘Don’t carry the cross too far in your life.’

This leads to a very common compromise, seen in the life of so many believers. They follow worldly customs and traditions, enjoy worldly entertainments and pleasures, and keep so-called Christian festivals which were never kept by the early church. They live one kind of life in the church and another kind of life at home. They are not whole-hearted for the Lord. They may have faith to some extent, but they lack surrender.

What was the fate of the Israelites in the wilderness? Though their bodies were delivered from bondage in Egypt, their hearts were held captive by Egypt. The missing dimension in popular evangelical Christianity is this ‘inward separation’ - unto the Lord. That entire generation of Israelites – 600,000 men [barring two] – perished in the wilderness.

Third Compromise
Pharaoh’s third compromise [or rather, Satanic threat] is seen in Exod 10.10. Seven plagues have almost destroyed Egypt. Pharaoh’s servants plead with Pharaoh, saying, ‘Let these people go that they may serve their God!’ But Satan is very stubborn. He says, ‘You may go and worship God in the wilderness, but I will not let your children go.’ That is why so often it is such a battle to get our children saved by the Lord. The fault lies with us. We have a first-hand experience of the Lord; we have experienced redemption in our life; we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. But, as regards our children, we want them to live cosy, comfortable lives; we seek prosperity and worldly position for them. We are satisfied if they have a superficial, second-hand experience of the Lord. We want them to go abroad, earn money, live a contented life, without worries, without pains. We want them to come up in the world, and have name and fame. How many parents have ruined their children by such worldly desires! Seek ye first the kingdom of God, Matt 6.33. In all things, Christ must have the pre-eminence, Col 1.18. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, Josh 24.15. There is no greater joy for us [as parents] than to see that our children walk in the truth, 3 John 4. Do our children delight in the Lord, or is their worship merely perfunctory? Hence, so often revival is limited to the first generation [parents]; the second generation [children] soon becomes cold, and worship declines into a routine Sunday service, displeasing to God and dissatisfying to the spirit.

Fourth Compromise
Even after the ninth plague of thick darkness, Pharaoh is still not willing to let the Israelites go. His fourth restriction – how Satan hinders our exit from his kingdom! – is, ‘You and your children may go and worship the LORD; but you must leave your flocks and herds behind.’

Our hearts may be with the Lord, our homes may be for the Lord, but our wealth remains in the world. This fourth compromise in the life of believers - even in those who are spiritual and ardent for the Lord - is: ‘We really love the Lord, we know that He lives in our hearts, but we are unable to accept His Lordship over our lives.’ Is He really the Lord of all that I own? Is my worship in words only? Where is the sacrifice that is involved in worship? Abraham used the word ‘worship’ when he went up the mountain to give up his most beloved possession to the Lord. Are we willing to give everything over to the Lord? What are we doing about tithes and offerings? How much are we prepared to give to the Lord? In the Old Testament, worship had to be with a sacrifice, either from flock or herd, and it had to be without blemish. Moreover, every offering to the Lord had to come from a willing heart. We are willing to give our heart to the Lord, we are willing to give our time and energy to the Lord – but our wealth is our own. Our security is in our property and riches. We have never abandoned ourselves to the Lord. The Bible says, You cannot serve [worship] God and mammon. It is on this point that most believers are tested. We must realise that whatever we have or own is given by the Lord. Nothing is really attained or earned by us. It is entirely by His grace. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord, Job 1.21. That is the heart of true worship.

In the next message we will talk about the 3 days journey into the wilderness required for a worship & sacrifice that is acceptable to God.

The Fuller Meaning Of The Cross

[Certain extracts from a message of T Austin Sparks on the Cross]

The Cross (or its type - the Altar) was ever God's new starting-point in the realization of His full thought...Calvary is not an end in itself, but the beginning of everything...The great values of the Lamb slain, as related to the first stage or phase of Christian experience, [i.e.] deliverance from the judgment resting upon the world; deliverance from condemnation and death; deliverance from the tyranny or the bondage of an evil conscience - all in virtue of the righteousness which is by faith in that Righteous One who offered Himself without spot to God for us...What Christ by His Cross was and is for us was our anchor-ground...

Yes, the objective meaning of Calvary - Christ crucified - is of unspeakable importance in the matter of a believer's standing...But, when we have taken account of this and have it well settled, it may only relate to deliverance from "Egypt". It was a mighty thing that happened in Egypt, in virtue of the slain Lamb and shed and sprinkled blood...While an outward bondage was destroyed, there still remained an inward bondage. Israel in the wilderness represents the dominion of the natural life, the self-life, the "flesh"...This wilderness life represented much expenditure of energy, much laborious effort, much longing and aspiration, much service and much religious devotion and activity, but it never got through, and it was one big circle, coming back, in effect, to where they were before...

We really only come into the good of things by being "pressed out of measure"...Thus it was that we were turned in [a] dark hour to Romans chapter six, and, almost as though He spoke in audible language, the Lord said: ‘When I died, you died. When I went to the Cross I not only took your sins, but I took you. When I took you, I not only took you as the sinner that you might regard yourself to be, but I took you as being all that you are by nature; your good (?) as your bad; your abilities as well as your disabilities; yes, every resource of yours. I took you as a "worker", a "preacher", an "organizer"! My Cross means that not even for Me can you be or do anything out from yourself, but if there is to be anything at all it must be out from Me, and that means a life of absolute dependence and faith.’

At this point, therefore, we awoke to the fundamental principle of our Lord's own life..."nothing of (out from) Himself", but "all things of (out from) God"...This is the whole meaning of life in the Spirit, and that it is an altogether different life from the natural ways of men, even of Christian men...While an end is written large in the Cross, and while that end is to be accepted as our end indeed, so that there can be no more of anything so far as we are concerned, Jesus Lives! and that means boundless possibilities...

Thus we came to see that the Red Sea and the Jordan are but two sides to the one Cross. Both symbolize the spiritual death and resurrection of the believer, but the latter carries it into another realm. Jordan sees the deliverance from judgment, death, and doom, carried on to deliverance from self; it is the practical disconnection of what is dead from what is risen. In the first it is my sins; in the second it is my self. At the crossing of the Jordan a monument of twelve stones, a type of the Israelites themselves, was left buried in the bed of the river, as if to signify that the self-life of the wilderness was to be henceforth reckoned as judged and ended as absolutely as was the bondage to Pharaoh. And then another memorial of twelve stones was taken from the bed of the river and placed on the Canaan shore, as a type of themselves, as risen not only to newness of life, but also to a perpetual and practical separation from their dead and buried selves. All this is as by union with Christ crucified and risen...

Israel after the flesh in the wilderness, and Israel after the Spirit in Canaan, while both having known the blessing of salvation from judgment, are like two different peoples. So it was with us. The difference is unspeakably great...There is one phrase that puts so much of it all into expression - ‘an open heaven'. How the life of nature blocks the way to the life of the Spirit! How doing, or attempting to do, work for God in our own natural energy closes the way to the energies of the Spirit! How our mental strivings and intellectual labours to apprehend spiritual truth lock the door to illumination by the Spirit!

There is a double tragedy that may be associated with this subjective or experimental meaning of the Cross. On the one side, there is the tragedy of the ignorance of so many of the Lord's people, leading to or resulting in a wilderness history in life and service. A tremendous amount of energy, expenditure, effort, and strain, with spiritual results so incommensurate. The wilderness is ever a bounded place; limited by the horizons of sense; never characterized by the realization of the limitless fulnesses of the heavenly emancipation from nature.

If the "natural" man (not the unregenerate man, necessarily) still exerts an influence in the realm of Divine things, there is bound to ensue a static system of teaching, a fixed horizon of vision, a legal bondage to tradition, a fear of man, a deadening domination of the "letter" as separated from the "spirit", and many other unhappy situations of spiritual death, endless divisions, and spiritual pride. Paul's remedy for traditionalism and legalism in relation to Christians, was Christ Crucified, as see ‘Romans’ and ‘Galatians’. The same remedy was resorted to for all the painful fruits of carnality amongst believers, as see ‘Corinthians’...

Israel in Canaan did not represent introspective self-occupation and morbid engagement with how much more they personally had to be crucified. They were free, and free to do the Lord's business. The 'Jordan' meaning of the Cross, carrying, as it does, the ‘Red Sea’ aspect into the realm of self-life, means freedom from self...

The crisis is like the touch upon the sinew of Jacob's thigh. The strength of nature is definitely and permanently crippled, so that "Jacob" will carry that veto to his last day, when he will still be "leaning upon the top of his staff". The progressive outworking will be in the discovery of how much there is that we cannot do - are not allowed to do - of ourselves, because of that basic forbidding of the Cross.We have said that this 'Jordan' experience of the Cross is a crisis - and what a crisis it is! It is not only the end of one realm, it is the opening up of and entering upon a new one. So it proved to be with us, as with Israel. Through this experience we entered into a great expanse of spiritual life, light, and liberty.

From Explanation of the Nature and History of "This Ministry" by T Austin Sparks

Darjeeling view

Darjeeling view
Originally uploaded by remus9x.

Early morning view from the Circuit House in Darjeeling. This is the summer of 2004. A pretty sight, with the hills fading in the distance. Brings memories of Darjeeling tea and biscuits.

10. Morning view Darjeeling

Morning view Darjeeling
Originally uploaded by remus9x.

That house with the blue dome is the mansion of an old rajah of Burdwan. And beyond you can see the blue hills of Darjeeling district. And if you keep on looking intently you can see the mountains behind the line of clouds. Hope you like this picture.

Darjeeling St Josephs School

Darjeeling St Josephs School
Originally uploaded by remus9x.

A cold windy day in May 2004. The school is empty. The boys have gone on holiday. I was struck by the impressive Gothic facade of this school. Hope you like it.