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abiding in Christ, death, discerning the spirits, eternal life, experience, joy, Lily, our cat, rest, resurrection power, soul, Soul Rest, T. Austin-Sparks, The Holy Spirit, the whole armour of God, walking by the spirit
This title I chose seems to be self-explaining because we could also say that our soul finds its rest in Christ alone. Does not sound like a secret, does it? But if we, after decades of believing in the Lord, have not entered His rest yet although we always wanted to, maybe, it is not that easy to get there? Perhaps there is ‘something’ that continually keeps us from entering God’s rest. But what could this ‘something’ be? 🙄 Before expounding a bit more on what I just hinted to, I want to share another experience with you.
On that day when I took these three similar pictures I posted on here, I had some strange experiences. It was last Thursday when I was riding my bike just before sunset. Behind these five trees which cover the sundown there was a scenic little village I had just left behind me. I really love to leave our city and to ride through the countryside, to see and hear the cows mooing in the half-opened sheds, and to listen to some clucking chickens together with a few crowing roosters behind the fences.
Basically, I do not like fences that much, but sometimes they make sense. The street I had been riding on was the main road leading through this village. Both the cows and the poultry were thus protected from the through traffic. In another village before this one I had already stopped my bike right beside an insistently meowing gray striped cat. When she crossed the street, she suddenly stood there still in the middle, continously meowing toward me. Having concerns about her being run over by an approaching car, I told here to leave the street quickly. Hesitatingly she finally did.
Reaching the other village I wrote about before, I had almost forgotten about that cat. As I was riding on the main road uphill, a big tractor suddenly left a shed to my right and rushed down this road on my left. ‘Yikes!’ I thought, ‘If I lived here, I would never want to have a cat of my own. It is too dangerous here.’ I had not even thought this right through to the end, as I glimpsed a peculiar scenery. On the sidewalk to my right side, about 200 meters uphill before me, there were two women and a girl standing. I could not hear what they were talking about, but I had an immediate impression of deep spiritual peace. On their right side under a maple tree (as far as I remember) there was a darker spot lying on many colorful leaves. Even before I saw what was lying there, I ‘knew’ what it was.
I stopped my bike and told these women how sorry I was, seeing this beautiful young but deceased cat. She was colored white, red and black, lying there as if she was sleeping peacefully. As I heard that this cat did not belong to any of these persons, I shared my impression of peace regarding the cat. Yet one of these women shook her head, telling me that it had been anything but peaceful when this cat was killed. I knew what she was talking about as our soul is always shocked when we hear sudden cries of anguish.
However, that is only one side of the coin. On the spiritual side, which is eternal life and resurrection power in Christ, there can be instead peace and joy. I experienced the same thing when our beloved cat Lily died on 3rd September this year. She had suffered for six days and nights (and we as a family as well) until we saw her very last breath. As much as we have missed her, we were relieved her suffering was eventually over. And as a particular spiritual blessing from God, He let me bathe in the joy of His Resurrection for one whole day afterwards! Indeed, it was like walking on cloud nine… 🕊️🙏🏼🤍
Back to my original story. Shortly after I had said goodbye to these women and the girl, I turned around a corner where the last few houses of this village were located. Still pondering on what had just happened, I got aware of a huge gray cat sculpture in one of the gardens to my right. That stony cat was sitting up straight, staring into nirvana like an exclamation mark as it seemed to me. ‘Not that inviting’, I thought, wondering about the message God wanted to tell me here… 🙄 It was only on Monday when I felt nudged to repeat this specific bike route. And then I detected a smaller cat sculpture of the same kind in another garden of the same village…
I had to wait on the interpretation of this message from God for another 20 hours. On Tuesday I was so exhausted after a long day and had no inspiration to keep writing this post. I even deleted a lot. But then I felt I needed to spend some personal time with the Lord in prayer and left the computer. The inspiration came effortlessly as He had promised before as soon as my soul had found its rest in Him again. So, here we are.
Fences around a garden or another area represent at least two things. At first a fence symbolizes a sign that says, “Do not trespass. This is not your property unless you are the owner.” This is the meaning for everyone who is standing on the outside, looking into such a ‘guarded’ territory. But if you are on the other side of the fence, you enjoy a sort of protection against unwelcome intruders.
This is exactly what I have experienced lately so often. If I stay close to Christ and follow His leading, I am somehow protected by the whole armor of God which is available to me through His permanent guidance. I do not see what He sees, specifically, I do not know from where and when I am being attacked. But if I abode in Him, all spiritual resources were at my disposal and He warned me when there was danger ahead of me. However, whenever I was not that sure about His leading and kept doing or saying things from my old soulish habits, I did not have to wait for a long time until I was attacked severely, painfully, and without any premonition by the Holy Spirit.
You could easily compare our spiritual situation with that of protected animals in sheds or behind fences. The lively cat was killed outside of a protected garden or area. In contrast, those stony cats would not even need any protection through a fence as they are already ‘dead’. They look like cats but they never breathe, they never move, and they will never grow. You cannot have a relationship with them, either, as they neither have a spirit nor a living soul. You can only look at them and tell whether you like their appearance or not. Regarding these lifeless cats, the Lord just reminded me of the following Scripture.
“And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: ‘The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. “I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.
Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God.
Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.” (Rev 3:1-3)
God’s leading is never predictable and so I was really astonished about these Bible verses above. They reminded me of Jesus when He blamed the Pharisees who were merely looking good on the outside. But alas, they did all their religious works in order to be seen by others, to be praised, and to be admired. Yet internally they were dead as they did not seek a living relationship with God in Christ who alone is our Life and rest. Therefore, our Lord gave us the following promise.
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:28-30 ESV)
Below I offer you another excerpt by T. Austin-Sparks which even begins with a personal confession. His words here also emphasize the importance of our closeness to the Lord’s heart.
“I used to attend conferences, and always did so with my congregation in view, to get my notebook full of things that I could take back to my own people. So all the while I had my responsibility with me, I had my congregation in view, my ministry, my work, I never got away from it. Every book I read, and every address I listened to, and everything in life was to pass on to others, for my work’s sake, and my own heart was starved. I was not growing in a knowledge of the Lord Himself. That sort of thing is all wrong.
“That is why we said at the beginning that the first thing is our spiritual relationship with the Lord. Everything else comes out of that. Do we want light? Do we want revelation? What do we want it for? Do we want it for ministry, for public purposes? Or do we want it that the Lord may be able to have His testimony in us as well as in others through us, that the Lord may be glorified? That kind of light and revelation comes out of our own heart fellowship with the Lord, out of a spiritual position, our personal communion with the Lord, our own enjoyment of the Lord. It must come out of our walk with the Lord, otherwise it is simply something that we are using. We might just as well go to a shop and get something to read to other people. It is not ours, it never came to us, it does not belong to us. All the light that others receive through us must come by our own walk with the Lord, out of our own spiritual lives. The same relates to everything else; our ministry, our service, our work for the Lord. It must not be some system of activity into which we have come. It must be proceeding from our walk with the Lord.
[…]
“Everything must come out of our knowledge of the Lord, everything must come out of our walk with the Lord, but if we have entered into rest, if we have come into Christ as God’s fulness, for us things will be different, much more can be done, and it will be done without the strain and burden, the care and the anxiety that work costs when it is done as out from ourselves. This glorious, full, blessed Christ, with all knowledge, strength, wisdom and grace is in us. We are in Him, but faith must hold fast to Him, must abide in Him, must take Him and draw upon Him every moment, and there must be no coming out to draw upon ourselves, to put forth our own energies of any kind, to assert ourselves in mind, heart, or will, spirit, soul or body. It must be Christ, and we must abide in Christ.“
https://www.austin-sparks.net/english/005316.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 2021
Entering the Promised Land 
Susanne, as I read your blog a couple of things hit me. First the picture of your dead kitty and the story of that other dead one in the country you found saddened me. I still remember hearing Lily purring in my ear as we talked on the phone. She was special. You wrote,
“You could easily compare our spiritual situation with that of protected animals in sheds or behind fences. The lively cat was killed outside of a protected garden or area. In contrast, those stony cats would not even need any protection through a fence as they are already ‘dead’. They look like cats but they never breathe, they never move, and they will never grow. You cannot have a relationship with them, either, as they neither have a spirit nor a living soul. You can only look at them and tell whether you like their appearance or not.”
One time I was walking on a beach and there was a large crab in the sand at the edge of the surf. As I walked toward it I thought, “I wonder how close I can get to it before it scrambles back into the water?” But it never moved! I finally walked right up to it and gave it a nudge with my foot and it fell into pieces. It was only the outer shell of a crab that had once been alive.
Speaking of Jesus, Paul said to some Greeks in Athens after observing their many statues to their pantheon of idols,
“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’” (Acts 17:24-28, ESV2011)
The second thing that hit me as I read your blog was a very a thought that filled me with joy. It was that we have an alternative to the death that presses in all around us, “In HIM we live and move and have our being.”
“IN HIM we live and move and have our being.” How sad God must be to see the status of Christianity today. Like Jesus said to the church at Sardis, “You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.” To have a successful church these days it is all about appealing to the masses… all about reputation. In our area we have lots of churches. Some of the largest ones have names like “New Life” and “Real Life.” But what makes them dead in the sight of God? “I know your works…” Unless our lives are IN CHRIST we are dead in the eyes of God. We can pool our resources and raise up huge buildings and fill them with all the latest electronic sound systems and special effects, but the “Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything…” It is we that are the ones IN NEED! If we do not have lives enlivened by Christ and are living IN HIM with our whole beings, if His Spirit does not enliven and move us to do the will of the Father, we are no different than an empty crab shell on the beach or the church at Sardis, we have a reputation that we are alive (in the eyes of the world), but we are dead in the eyes of God. In the spiritual world we are no different than those stone felines you saw in the fenced gardens.
Dear Jesus, draw our hearts ever closer to you that we might be totally ONE IN You and the Father and walk only by your Life and light on this earth. Amen.
“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1John 1:7, ESV2011)
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Amen to your prayer, Michael. Also, thank you so much for these excellent comments! ⭐
I was touched to hear about your reminiscience of Lily who talked with you on the phone often in the past, i.e., purr purr on the cat’s side vs. whistle whistle on Michael’s. 😉
Your story of the empty crab shell was very telling and could surely serve as another lesson from God, too. He not only spoke through parables and pictures in the Bible, He still does the same thing every day if we have eyes to see and ears to hear what the Spirit wants to reveal to us TODAY.
I agree with your interpration of Christianity and churches nowadays, my brother.
Whenever I recall these verses in Acts where Paul was taken to the Areopagus in Athens and see how loving and charitable he afterwards dealt with his idolatrous audience, I am immediately reminded of another verse before where we clearly see how Paul reacted in his spirit that was indwelt by the Holy Spirit Who abhors idolatry. What a difference!
“Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was greatly angered when he saw that the city was full of idols.” (Acts 17:16 Amplified Bible)
It appears to me that God had a goal in mind by leading him that way as Paul revealed here,
For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them.
To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law.
To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law.
To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.” (1 Cor 9:19-22 ESV)
I was glad to read you found some joy IN HIM again! 🙂
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“Do we want light? Do we want revelation? What do we want it for? Do we want it for ministry, for public purposes? Or do we want it that the Lord may be able to have His testimony in us as well as in others through us, that the Lord may be glorified?”
Those questions are central to the Christian experience, as you say, Susanne. Are we focused on Christ and the work He wants to do in us, or focused on ourselves and the goals we have set for our lives w/o His input?
You point us always toward Him, Susanne.
With love,
Your friend A. ❤
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That has been my hope all along, dear Anna, that I increasingly point to Christ, not to myself. Thank you for these encouraging words!
With love,
Your friend,
Susanne ❤
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