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In my latest article I quoted some statements from T. Austin Sparks regarding a life here on earth without being touched by the death all around us, something he called ‘a deathless life’. If that might be an amazing experience for us already, there is more God has had in mind He wants to share with us. It is even His own resurrection power! Again, here are some quotes from TAS.

To him who overcomes I will give the privilege of sitting down with Me on My throne, as I also have overcome and have sat down with My Father on His throne. (Revelation 3:21 WNT)

We all have resurrection Life if we are joined to Christ as Resurrection, but there is something more than that; there is resurrection power, which carries us eventually (if it has its full outworking) to the Throne, and not all will come to the Throne. It is: “to him that overcomes.” Caleb, like Paul, and Paul, like Caleb, stood against the more general course of things amongst the Lord’s people. The majority were content with going so far as to the inheritance, possessing so much, and there staying and settling down. An unfinished course, a curtailed spiritual advance, an accepting of something less than what God had appointed and intended. The majority took that course, but Caleb was never content and he stood against the majority just as he had always stood against a majority that did not represent God’s full mind….

Spiritual leadership always involves loneliness. That is the cost of it. The overcomers will always be, so far as the larger Christian world is concerned, a lonely company, having to go on, with few able to follow. Caleb could not accept the popular voice, his heart was too set upon the Lord. He wholly followed the Lord, not the popular and general standard of Christian life. We may say that Caleb was the very embodiment of all that God meant the whole people to be. When you see Caleb you see what God wished all Israel to be, but all Israel did not come to the standard of Caleb. But the Lord gets in a Caleb the satisfaction of His heart. The Lord realizes His full thought in a Caleb, in the same way as He does in a Paul.

He is calling us, has called us, to share His Throne. It must be upon the same basis, that in virtue of His conquest, His victory, and by reason of the energy of the Holy Spirit, we also overcome.

To gain Christ, to gain that place with Christ, is not possible by mere appointment, office, being put there; it is only possible by spiritual and moral conquest in the energy of the Holy Ghost. Thank God we are not left to do it in our own strength, but there is the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven to be the energy in us of spiritual ascendancy, spiritual conquest, and it is the changing of our being into the very moral and spiritual likeness of the Lord Jesus which is behind every bit of conflict which comes into our life.

That is the inclusive objective. Within that there are all the details, the things which have got to be overcome, within and without. We and we only, know what those things are. You know in your own make-up what has got to be overcome, and I know what is true in my case. We differ, the conflict is many-sided, the gains are to be in various directions. (1)

(1) https://www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/002870.html

“In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks’ wishes that what was freely received should be freely given and not sold for profit, and that his messages be reproduced word for word, we ask if you choose to share these messages with others, to please respect his wishes and offer them freely – free of any changes, free of any charge (except necessary distribution costs) and with this statment included.”

All images by Susanne Schuberth 2019, 2020