The Secret of Power and Ascendancy by T. Austin Sparks

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ambition, Ananias and Sapphira, ascendancy, aspiration, Baptism in the Holy Spirit, following Jesus, God's guidance, Holiness, joy, Judgment, Life and Death, Light and Darkness, Overcoming, overcoming the world, peace, Pentecost, rest, Satan, self, spiritual power, T.A. Sparks, the cross, the devil, The Holy Spirit, the Kingdom of God, The Kingdom of Heaven, unholy, walking by the spirit

Today I want to offer you some food for thought by T. Austin Sparks, a man of God of whom I am certain that he really knew what he was talking about from his own experiences in the kingdom of God. Regarding spiritual ascendancy and power Sparks meant that we should follow God’s “inward and upward call” (my words) to overcome, in particular the devil. TAS said that Satan cannot tempt anyone whom he finds poor in spirit. Indeed, if we are fully dependent on our Lord in all things, the enemy is helpless while we are being drawn higher and higher on this spiritual mountain called “Zion”. In that which follows you will find two excerpts from two different articles by TAS.

The Cost of Discipleship

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blessings, comfort, experience, following Jesus, Jesus Christ, joy, miracles, peace, spiritual power, suffering, T.A. Sparks, the cross

I need to admit that I am not gladly writing this new blog article. Nonetheless, it seems to be a recurring lesson in our life (with God) that we need to let go of so many things. In fact, we are not only to let go of ‘things’, but also of good or bad people, of opinions once dearly held, of our good old habits, of our bodily constitution, of what we ourselves would have called good health etc. I put ‘with God’ in parentheses as I think that all mankind has to go through similar trials whether they believe in God or not. However, if we see ourselves as followers of Jesus Christ, is there a particular reward, a blessing of sorts if we have become (partly) acquainted with grief and sorrow as our Lord had been?  🙄

“Deceived by religiousness” by T. Austin Sparks

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deception, discerning the spirits, exhortation, experience, fellowship, Fellowship with God, other religions, salvation, T.A. Sparks, the cross

Just reading yesterday’s daily devotional by T. Austin Sparks, the introducing Bible verse somehow hit me. It says,

“And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” (Rev 18:4 KJV)

I read the related article (partly, at least) and then went back to a chapter before which deals with “The Cross and Deception”. Even yesterday I had a talk with one woman who is still church bound, a fact that turns out to be a burden for her at times, and another woman who seems to love Jesus, too, yet who is still seeking for a place or a group where she feels spiritually at home. The only thing I can do for these two women is to pray that God gives them a hideaway where they cannot only rest before Him, but together with fellow believers IN Him also since it is so important that we “[b]ear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (Gal 6:2 KJV). On our own, it is so much harder to keep walking uprightly before God, isn’t it? So, here is TAS with his apposite deliberations on the dangers of a mere outward religious life.

Deceived by religiousness. What more can be expected than the recognition of the fact of God and the giving to God of reverence, acknowledgment, and recognition: of taking active interest in things which relate to God, attending religious services, and being very busy in religious activities and interests, and finding your chief interest in religious things and the religious realm? What more can be expected? What is the matter with that? Be patient, bear with me if I say with very great emphasis: that may be one colossal delusion. So often that very thing obscures one fundamental thing, a true and living relationship with God. “Ye must be born again”, and religion very often obscures that issue. Oh, religion is no argument for salvation. Religion can be found in the darkest places of the earth. Universally there is religion; depraved and very low in many places, but universally there is the consciousness of standing in relationship to some supreme object of worship, demanding worship; and then men’s minds or imaginations get to work to give some kind of expression to that consciousness, of that supreme object of worship, and the imagination produces that sometimes out of a tree, a stone, or in the heavenly bodies; somehow it is expressed, but it is the thing that is there, behind all the forms of expression which is universal. All the highly civilised forms of that brought into the realm of Christendom are only the same thing developed. It does not say that Christendom’s more intelligent, civilised, educated interpretation of God, even though it gets its ideas from the Bible, is salvation. It may be a mighty delusion and very often is.

Through Whom Does God speak Today?

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angels, ears of the heart, eternal life, experience, eyes of the heart, following Jesus, God's voice, God's wrath, Joseph Benson, Satan, the body of Christ, the cross, the flesh, The World

Like me you might know a few gracious people with whom it is always easy to have dealings with. At other times, we might be confronted with some rude persons who unexpectedly utter words of truth.  🙄 Nonetheless, neither the gracious nor the veracious person must necessarily be a Christian. There are pleasant-natured people who are able to enjoy life and to be thankful for that, too. However, if you start to wonder whom they might owe their blessings in life, they remain silent or they evade the issue. Maybe, they tell you they were thankful toward life itself, toward Mother Nature, toward the universe or they believe in angels, instead.

Under A Foreign Yoke

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darkness, deception, discerning the spirits, dying to self, experience, God's goodness, heart, light, mind, prayer, Satan, sin, spiritual attacks, temptations, the, the cross, thoughts

Have you ever felt an increasing uneasiness as you pondered on the possibility to cave in to somebody’s pleading because you knew in your heart it would be the wrong thing to do? I do not know whether this is only a people pleaser problem, but I assume I am not the only one who is struggling with these thoughts and temptations.

When time stands still

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distractions, Endurance, experience, following Jesus, hecticness, joy, pain, peace, prayer, rest, separation from the world, suffering, the cross

The other day I found a German saying on my Catholic kitchen calendar I did not throw away immediately because it prompted me several times to stop and read it again. Indeed, whenever I reread these words, I feel the confirmation of its truth at once.

“Sit back and do nothing. There is a time when silence heals.” (Gerhard Engelsberger)

Since I do not want to write another entry about the importance of (accepted) suffering for our transformation into the image of Christ, I want to simply tell you something about the prerequisites and the effects of withdrawing from this world’s hectic fussing and ramblings. Actually, it is not only necessary to find a quiet place (which is more difficult in a big city), we need to also nun ourselves from being occupied with everything that does NOT point us to God. Easier said than done, dear brothers and sisters! Whoever tried that before might know how difficult it is.  🙄

It’s a Matter of Faith

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admonition, church, discerning the spirits, divine inspiration, doctrine, encouragement, exhortation, false spirits, Flesh vs. Spirit, God's voice, good works, inspiration, knowing God, prophecy, prophetic function, prophets, revelation, Revival, T.A. Sparks, teaching, The Bride of Christ, The Burden of the Valley of Vision, the cross, true faith, warning

A misty morning, sitting at the hairdresser. Looking out the window, I see people hurrying to and fro around the main station area in Fürth. As I had asked the Lord whether I should begin to write a new blog article here or not, He answered, “If you like.” I responded, “Only if YOU like!” since I have had no clue, until now, what to write about. 🤔

However, that’s IT, indeed! 😊 I do not want to write about the BIG things God might be inclined to do through us because that would not be the truth. How many Christians still tend to believe that God’s main interests were in revival, in teaching proper doctrine, in healing the sick and helping the needy, or in evangelism aka preaching the gospel to save the lost? “Hey, wait a moment…” I hear someone say, “The Bible tells us that some of these things you mentioned will follow those who believe.” Yeah, that is right. But do we really believe just as Jesus believed His Father? Do we think that our Lord cared and worried about these issues as we do today? Or did He not, rather, care about what His tender loving Daddy in heaven had on His mind at any given moment?

When and why the Holy Spirit moves or… Transfiguration Through Trials (T.A. Sparks)

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deception, discerning the spirits, exhortation, false spirits, Fellowship of His Sufferings, God's love, resisting temptation, spiritual power, spiritual transformation, suffering, T.A. Sparks, testing, the cross, the devil, trials, wilderness

I colori dell’infinito (The colors of infinity): Green standing for new life (through FAITH), white for purity (in HOPE), and red for God’s LOVE – freely adapted from John of the Cross
(Photo by Susanne Schuberth)

Today I want to make clear that being filled with the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with what we find as a common belief in some religious circles (Pentecostal and Charismatic in particular). When we receive the Holy Spirit through spiritual baptism, it is not primarily about getting power to preach the gospel, it is not about having some great spiritual gifts with which we could impress others, either, nor is it about beginning to shine like a radiant light bulb nobody could resist to look at. 😉 Just think about Jesus’ example we find described in the Bible. What happened after our Lord had been baptized with the Holy Spirit?

Preaching the Cross without letting it kill us or… on Plagiarism, once again

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blogging, discerning the spirits, disobedience, dying to self, experience, honesty, inspiration, killing sin, plagiarism, resisting temptation, sin, the cross, writing

Walking in the Light as He is in the Light…
(Photo by Susanne Schuberth)

It was not my intention to write a new blog post today and I hoped this would turn out a short one, but I thought I should share my recent experiences on the internet with you. In fact, I was simply searching for ANY other blog that deals with the cross of Christ on a personal basis. I truly wondered whether there might be a handful of such blogs nowadays. Here’s what I found out.

Before the thunderstorm…

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circumcision of the heart, discerning the spirits, dying to self, experience, following Jesus, Michael Clark, pain, resurrection, Satan, the cross, the new self, the old self

Yesterday, before the thunderstorm…
(Photo by Susanne Schuberth)

Let me provoke you here a bit. I argue that Satan has ruled the Institutional Church (IC) from her early beginnings and I also believe he did not stop there. The devil even goes so far to draw those into his spider web of lies again who once would leave the institutional church system because they saw its serious shortcomings. And it does not seem to me that he has had great difficulties in doing so. Whoever does not preach the true gospel of Christ, but a mixed version that is more pleasing to the listener’s ear, has become deceived whether they know it or not. But alas, they do not know it. If they did, they would not be deceived, right? They could repent if God gave them eyes to see the truth. It is so saddening to observe when they are confronted with the truth, instead of repentance, false spirits rise up and manifest the spirit of antichrist aka the ‘instead-of-Christ-spirit’ as Michael Clark told me several times in the past. There is our old self’s nature, our fallen human nature, the flesh that always wants to be like God without obeying Him and His Spirit’s leading (cf. Gal 5:14). In his recent recent article Michael wrote,

Man loves to try to do the works of God, accumulate knowledge, know with his own mind, and imitate God instead of knowing God intimately with his heart and allowing God to conform him into the image of Christ by the plan and design of the Father. The fleshly state of fallen man still loves to eat the fruit of that same forbidden tree instead of Jesus, the Tree of Life (See John 6:51).

Religious man loves to collect Bible knowledge and knowledge of doctrines so he can decide for himself what is good and what is evil. He loves to heap to himself teachers that tickle his religious ears and to garner to himself degrees in theology. Yet, when the New Testament speaks of “knowing the Lord,” it speaks of an intimate knowing that goes much deeper than a mere accumulation of facts.