The Spiritual Meaning of Service # 4

The Belovedness of Christ (continued)

1. Life

Well, it is always with this twofold characteristic. First of all, life is being ministered all the time. Look at the whole history of the work of the Levites. We shall perhaps say more about that later. Their whole ministry was one of maintaining life, keeping open the way f life, ministering life. But for them, death would have set in: they were the bulwarks against death. They were the channel of life from Heaven to the people of God, and I suggest again that the real test of the service that is precious to the Lord is not "size", not many things that men think to be the marks of success, but whether there is a ministration of life: is life being ministered, is life being poured out? Is the one thing of which you are conscious in that ministry the presence of life? It is not just a matter of our understanding the terms and the phrases and the language and the teaching, but our recognition of life.

And what do we want apart from that, and what do we want more than that? Is it not that that the people of God need, after all? Oh, for life! It is life we want, we must have life - give us life! We cannot live without life! And the Levites were the ministers of life. Christ, the great Levite, was the Minister of life; and real service to the Lord is that we minister life - not that people come necessarily into a great range of truth, a vast amount of knowledge and information that is purely intellectual or mental, but that they have life ministered to them. That is the seal of the real service of God.

But when you come to think about it, that, after all, is the whole matter. It is summed up in that, and - because of the preciousness of this kind of service into which you and I are called - in the "belovedness" of Christ. Oh, what a wonderful thing! That is something that we cannot talk about; we can only feel and sense it. If it might be that the Lord should be able to look toward us with deep appreciation and say "beloved," in recognition that there is something in our lives, in our service, in our ministry, of very, very great account to Himself, that there might be transferred to us something of the belovedness of His own Son.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 5 - (2. Peace)