...with some quotes from Miles J Stanford's Principles of Spiritual Growth, recommended on this forum in a different thread under the title Green Letters. I downloaded and printed off this book and have found great comfort in it. I highly recommend it to everyone.
I wonder if we have a tendency to try to live our Christianity as we tend to live our lives these days - in the fast lane. This book was written in the 1950s and has a very comfortable slow pace to it, full of spiritual wisdom, in my humble opinion. Faith needs stillness to take root.
"Norman Douty writes: 'If I am to be like Him, then God in His grace must do it, and the sooner I come to recognise it the sooner I will be delivered from another form of bondage. Throw down every endeavour and say, I cannot do it, the more I try the farther I get from His likeness. What shall I do? Ah, the Holy Spirit says, You cannot do it; just withdraw; come out of it. You have been in the arena, you have been endeavouring, you are a failure, come out and sit down, and as you sit there behold Him, look at Him. Don't try to be like Him, just look at Him. Just be occupied with Him. Forget about trying to be like Him. Instead of letting that fill your mind and heart, let Him fill it. Just behold Him, look upon Him through the Word.'"
"Yes, there is going to be deep, thorough and long preparation if there is to be reality - if our life is to be Christ-centred, our walk controlled by the Holy Spirit and our service glorifying to God. Sooner or later the Holy Spirit begins to make us aware of our basic problem as believers - the infinite difference between self and Christ."
"The value of both the struggle to free ourselves from the old Adam-life and the equally fruitless efforts to experience the new Adam-life, the Christ-life, is to finally realise that it is utterly futile. Our personal, heart-breaking failure in ever phase of our Christian life is our Father's preparation for His success on our behalf."
"Charles Trumbull said, 'The effortless life is not the will-less life. We use our will to believe, to receive, but not to exert effort in trying to accomplish what only God can do. Our hope for victory over sin in not "Christ plus my efforts," but "Christ plus my receiving." To receive victory from Him is to believe His Word that solely by His grace He is, this moment, freeing us from the dominion of sin. And to believe on Him in this way is to recognise that He is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.'"
"'When you fight to get victory, then you have lost the battle at the very outset. Suppose the Enemy assaults you in your home or in your business. He creates a situation with which you cannot possibly deal. What do you do? Your first instinct is to prepare yourself for a big battle and then pray to God to give you the victory in it. But if you do so defeat is sure, for you have given up the ground that is yours in Christ. By the attitude you have taken you have relinquished it to the Enemy. What then should you do when he attacks? You should simply look up and praise the Lord. "Lord, I am faced with a situation that I cannot possibly meet. Thine enemy the Devil has brought it about to compass my downfall, but I praise Thee that Thy victory is an all-inclusive victory. It covers this situation, too. I praise Thee that I have already full victory in this matter."' (Watchman Nee)."
"Many, especially those who are young in the Lord, have been victimised time and time again in this matter of surrender, or commitment. The bludgeon most commonly used is: 'The Lord Jesus gave His all for you, now the least you can do is give your all for Him!' The believer is exhorted and pressured to consecrate, surrender, commit his life to Christ on the basis of his love and gratitude for what has been done on his behalf at Calvary... Why is it that after awhile the believer comes to dread such meetings and messages?... Our consecration, surrender or commitment will never hold up if it is our responding to Him from any other motivation than the response of His life in us. Yielding to Him on any different basis will simply amount to our trying to live for Him in the self-life. And even if that were possible, He could never accept it, since in that realm there dwells no good thing (Rom 7:18)."
"The believer who is going through struggle and failure is the Christian who is being carefully and lovingly handled by his Lord in a very personal way."
"It was on the cross of Calvary that God, in Christ, dealt fully and finally with self, the nature from which all our sins flow... The reason there is no other way for self to be denied is that God has done the work in this way: our identification with Christ Jesus in His death and resurrection! It is done; now it is ours to believe."
"As we learn to stand on the finished work of Calvary, the Holy Spirit will begin to faithfully and effectively apply that finished work of the cross to the self-life, thereby holding it in the place of death - inactive - resulting in the 'not I, but Christ' life (Gal 2:20)."
In a nutshell, to use a very modern phrase, "Let go and let God!" I pray that God's will be done in all our lives.
