glory to GOD FOR TRUTH Amen ! by GOD and J. Preston Eby How little we recognize our own plans and desires, which are as suckers in our spiritual lives. How little we appreciate the place we give the flesh and our own interests, our likes and dislikes, our experiences and self-absorption, our religious activities and multiplied works, which eat the strength and life out of our relationship with God. When God sends the Holy Spirit as the north wind, He comes and uncovers our nakedness, exposing the fleshliness of our thoughts, acts and position. With a blast of conviction, He blows upon those suckers, and like a mighty wind He sweeps down upon them to try them. As they fall off, we are left apparently stripped and bare; but, in reality, we are in a better condition to bring forth blossoms and fruit to His glory than we have been before. Can we look into His face with confidence and say: Awake, O North Wind, and blow upon my garden? Lord, send the testings and processings that you see I need; send the hard things that are needed to try every blossom. Blow upon the blossoms in my life that are so beautiful and look as if they would bear luscious fruit for Thy glory; blow upon my gifts, and ministries, and works, and doctrines, and plans, and hopes, and ambitions, and doings and prove them whether they will abide, or whether they have no beginning of fruit in them. How many of Gods dealings and revelations have been rejoiced in, how many of His callings to higher places in Him have made much show before our eyes, how we have revelled in the knowledge of His High calling, of Sonship, of the Glory to be revealed in us, of the great and powerful ministry to come with His Fullness, of the throne to be shared in His Kingdom, but how often we have not yielded that God might make these things FRUITFUL, and they remained only dealings and revelations, head-knowledge and dreams, and never became possessions in some measure for the todays. God also sends the Spirit, as the north wind, to blow upon every relationship in our lives; upon those relations we deem harmless, but which come between God and us, sapping the spiritual life out of us, and robbing God. Upon every relationship that is not of His choosing and to His glory, He sends the wind. He separates us from every one and everything that is harming our vineyards; He blows upon our human affections, both in us and in those who have a place in our lives; and before His north wind human love withers up. Not one thing of eternal value that has been inworked in our lives can be harmed by the north wind of Gods dealing, which only blasts and withers the superficial and unfruitful; and the sooner these fall off the better. The sooner we see ourselves stripped of our self-confidence and blindness, our false hopes and delusions that we are far beyond the place to which we have really attained before God, the better. He blows upon our involvements with religious systems, our feverish Church activity, our running hither and thither doing the so-called work of the Lord, our trotting from meeting to meeting, from preacher to preacher, from revival to revival, and before His north wind the anointing upon these avenues of service lifts and we are left with a bare branch from which the superficial beauty and fragrance has been stripped. It is the strong blasts of the north wind that drive our roots down deeper and deeper into the soil of HIS LIFE, until that which has gone down and is out of sight, is greater and stronger than that which appears above the surface. We are astonished and disheartened as we behold some of the most beautiful blossoms in our lives drop off; those in which we had placed much confidence. But the very blasts of sharp conviction and dealing that destroy the fruitless blossoms, also cause the roots of the spiritual life to go down deeper INTO CHRIST; and they become firmly rooted and grounded IN HIM. Thus striped and with our roots going deeper and deeper, we learn to take the time to wait on God long enough for HIS LIFE TO ARISE WITHIN US, long enough to hear HIM SPEAK and have Him divulge HIS WILL to our seeking hearts.
Posted on: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 16:04:06 +0000
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