/The Jewish leaders began harassing
Jesus for breaking the Sabbath
rules. But Jesus replied, “My Father is
always working, and so am
I.” (John 5:16-17 NLT)/
A true knowledge of the Lord Jesus
will reverse a good many of our
ideas, and a good many of our
procedures. A true knowledge of
Christ
and union with Christ, with all that that
means, will make us go to
work in entirely the opposite way from
that in which we have been
accustomed to go. We shall come to
be governed by this one
consideration, that it is not what we
would do for the Lord, but what
the Lord would do through us, that is
alone to rule. It is a very
testing way. You can hardly believe,
unless you have been the same
way, how often and intensely and
bitterly the enemy fights and tempts
you to come down on to a lower
position, and to take up things again
for God and launch big schemes,
enter upon big undertakings, set up
some thing on the earth that can be
seen, because all those who are
governed by that standard of things
seen have said: "You see, you are
doing nothing! Show us what you are
doing! You cannot show us anything
for it all!" Satan does work on that
line. To the flesh that is not
easy. To go on with God and have
nothing to show for it, never to be
able to have the work written up in
the papers, to publish no reports,
nor statistics, and yet to know in your
heart of hearts that, although
it is hidden, something is going on,
and that you cannot do otherwise
than you are doing, is far from being a
path of ease to the flesh.
It is a testing way, but, blessed be
God, if we do endure the testing
and go on patiently with Him, in His
time, when that flesh has been
finally laid low; when the voice of
natural ambition is no longer
sounding and having influence, and
we are now utterly at the place
where if things are not going to be of
the Lord then there is not
going to be anything at all, the Lord
has a free way, and He is able
to indicate that all the time something
has been going on. He shows
how He has been at work, and how
that in
time there will be manifested
a work of God, a work that shall have
such a large percentage of
spiritual value and meaning in it that
you are very glad, after all,
that you walked with God and not with
men in the work of God.