"The Rights of God" # 15

Prophetic Service

1 Kings 18: 17-21

In the previous chapters, we have seen the trouble to which the Lord goes to produce things the way He wants them to be. God needs such a testimony. His plan from eternity is connected to it. This plan cannot be achieved until God's people have entered into His thought, until they stand experientially in everything that God has given them in Christ. That is, God wants to be ruling in the life of His people. His people should be the living realization of His thoughts. Only in this way does God have what He wishes to have. But if this were to happen, then firstly, everything has to be given to us by God; that which is in God has to have full and undivided importance in our life, so that that which came from God can return to Him.

If only we could grasp the thoughts of God better! There is such a lack of spiritual receptivity. This is because there is a lack of spiritual life; we can only understand the thoughts of God to the degree we walk in them. Where there is a lack of walking in the Spirit, there is also a lack of understanding of God's thoughts.

How can we forget that we stand in a battle? satan has tried from the start to bring other thoughts than the thoughts of God into this world, namely his own. As a result of their disobedience, human beings became subject to this other spirit; man lost his ability to grasp God's thoughts; the thoughts of the flesh took possession of him. Therefore we see from the beginning two directions of thoughts in battle with each other: the thoughts of God and the thoughts of the flesh. In regard to the latter we could also say: the thoughts of the devil. This is not just the case in undisputed sinners, but the thoughts of religious flesh are also thoughts against God. We have to admit that in Christianity today something pagan coexists, yes, that in the midst of service for God, and the salvation of souls, methods are used that have nothing in common with the thoughts of God, that are not from His Spirit. What do we mean by this? We think here of the vast area of psychology. Modern psychology in its spiritual content is completely heathen! It goes back to men who knew only of the difference between soul and body, who were not conscious of the human spirit. This pagan psychology has been taken over by the theology of our time, so that today evangelization is widely practiced on a pagan basis. When I studied theology, we were told that a sermon was successful and had achieved its goal, when the following three points had been considered:

1. To win the intellect of man through facts or evidence.

2. To take into account the feelings of man.

3. To persuade the will of man.

When that was achieved, we would have won the intellect, the emotions and the will of man. But that is nothing else than what we call in psychology the "soul". Mental activity, emotional life and the will is exactly that which the New Testament calls the "natural" man, who as a "soulish" man is incapable of accepting what comes from the Spirit of God.

Nearly all so-called revivals have happened on this basis. They were mighty movements for the shaking of emotions: mighty persuasions and argumentations were used to influence the understanding and will. What was the result? The natural man has been manoeuvred into Christianity and been made a Christian. We cannot however recognize the thoughts of God in this and it has nothing to do with being born again!

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 16)