Wednesday, December 7, 2011

The Strong Man's Way to God

John G. Lake was a missionary to South Africa and an instrument of divine healing there and in the United States. The following portion is taken from the thought-provoking message recorded in John G. Lake: The Complete Collection of His Life Teachings compiled by Roberts Liardon:

". . . Christianity is a strong man's Gospel. Christianity, by the grace of God, is calculated to take the weak and fallen and erring and suffering and dying, and by applying the grace and power of God through the soul of man to the need of the individual, lift them up to the 'Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world' [John 1:29]. Blessed be God.

Down in the human heart,
Crushed by the tempter,
Feelings lie buried that grace can restore,
Touched by a loving heart,
Wakened by kindness,
Chords that were broken
Will vibrate once more.

"I care not how crushed the soul, how bestialized the nature; I care not how sensual, if touched by the Spirit of the living God, he will shed off that which is earthly and sensual and give forth once again the pure note of the living God, heaven's high message, heaven's triumphant song, heaven's high note of living praise to the living God. Blessed be His name.

"God is endeavoring by His Spirit in these days, to exalt the souls of men into that high place, that holy life, that heavenly state whereby men walk day by day, hour by hour in the heavenly consciousness of the presence of Christ in the heart of man--all the time.

"And the presence of Christ in the souls of men can only produce first, the purity that is in Him. For the 'Wisdom that cometh from above, is first pure' [James 3:17], bless God. Purity is of God. Purity is of the nature of Christ. Purity is heaven's highborn instinct, filling the soul of man, making him in His nature like the Son of God. Upon that purified soul there comes from God that blessed measure of the Holy Spirit, not only purifying the nature, but empowering him by the Spirit so that the activities of God, the gift of His mind, the power of His Spirit is evident by the grace of God in that man's soul, in that man's life, lifting him by the grace of God into that place of holy and heavenly dominion in the consciousness of which Jesus lived and moved and accomplished the will of God always. Not the earth-consciousness, born of the earth and earthy; but the heaven-consciousness, that high consciousness, that holy consciousness, the consciousness of the living God, of His union with Him, which caused the Christ to walk as a prince indeed. Bless God.

"He was not bowed and overcome by conditions and circumstances about Him, but realized that the soul of man was a creative power, that it was within his soul and common to his nature and the nature of every other man, to protect, accumulate, and possess as sons of God, that through the creative faculty of his soul the desires of his heart might be brought to pass. Blessed by His name.

"That is the reason God dared to talk as He did to Moses. That is the reason God dared to rebuke a man when he stopped to pray. That is the reason God said, 'Why standest thou here and criest unto me? Lift up the rod that is in thy hand, and divide the waters' [Exodus 14:15-16].

"Beloved, your soul will never demonstrate the power of God in any appreciable degree until your soul conceives and understands the real vision of the Christ of God, whereby He knew that through His union with the living God His soul became the creative power through which He took possession of the power of God and applied it to the needs of His own soul and the needs of other lives.

". . . When a boy, I received my religious training in a little Methodist class meeting. I wish there were some old time Methodist class meetings in these modern days, the kind that had the power of God, and the needs of men's souls were met in them, where people could open their hearts and tell of their temptations and their trials and victories and receive counsel from one who guided the class. In such a class meeting, and to such a class meeting, I owe a great deal of the development which God has brought forth in my life.

"In one of these class meetings one day, as I sat listening to the testimonies, I observed that there was a kind of weakening trend. People were saying, 'I am having such a hard time. I am feeling the temptations of the world so much.' etc. I was not able at that time to tell people what was the difficulty. I was only a young Christian. But when they got through, I observed the old class leader, a gray headed man. He said something like this, 'Brethren, the reason we are feeling the temptations so much, the reason there is a lack of the sense of victory, is because we are too far away from the Son of God. Our souls have descended. They are not in the high place where Christ is. Let our souls ascend, and when they ascend into the realm of the Christ, we will have a new note, it will be the note of victory.'

"Beloved, that is the difficulty with us all. We have come down out of the heavenlies into the natural, and we are trying to live a heavenly life in the natural state, overburdened by the weights and cares of the flesh and life all about us. Bless God, there is deliverance. There is victory. There is a place in God where the flesh no longer becomes a bondage. Where, by the grace of God, every sensuous state of the human nature is brought into subjection to the living God, where Christ reigns in and glorifies the very activities of a man's nature, making him sweet and pure and clean and good and true. Bless His holy name.

"I call you today, beloved, by the grace of God, to that high life, to that holy walk, to that heavenly atmosphere, to that life in God where the grace and Spirit and power of God permeates your whole being. More, where not only your whole being is in subjection, but it flows from your nature as a holy stream of heavenly life to bless other souls everywhere by the grace of God.

". . . I have been a student all my life. Not just a student of letters, but of the things of the soul. God helped me by His grace to take note of and analyze the conditions of my own soul. I noted that when that high consciousness of heavenly dominion rested upon my life, there was one thing that stood uppermost in all my consciousness. That was the vision of the triumphant Christ, the Son of God, as pictured by John in the first chapter of Revelation, where He stands forth in the mighty dignity of an overcomer, declaring,

I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death [Revelation 1:18].


"Beloved, I want to tell you that the soul joined to Christ, who exercises the power of God, ascends into the high consciousness of heavenly dominion as it is in the heart of Jesus Christ today, for He is the overcomer, the only overcomer. But yet, when my soul is joined to His soul, when His Spirit flows like a heavenly stream through my spirit, when my whole nature is infilled and inspired by the life from God, I too, being joined with Him, become an overcomer in deed and in truth. Glory to God.

"I am glad that God has permitted man, even at intervals, to rise into that place of high dominion in God, for it demonstrates the purpose of God. It demonstrates that He purposes we should not only rise into the high place at intervals, but that this should be the normal life of the Christian who is joined to God every day and all the time.

"Christianity is not a thing to be apologized for. Christianity was the living, conscious life and power of the living God, transmitted into the nature of man until, bless God, man's nature is transformed by the living touch and the very spirit, soul, and being is energized and filled by His life. Thus you become indeed, as Christ intended, a veritable Christ.

"That startles some people. But the ultimate of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the ultimate of the redemption of the Son of God, is to reproduce and make every man who is bound by sin and held by sensuousness and enslaved by the flesh, like Himself in deed and in truth--sons of God. Not sons of God on a lower order, but sons of God as Jesus was.

"Paul declares, 'He gave some apostles, some evangelists and some pastors and teachers.' What for? 'Till we all come into the likeness of the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ' [Ephesians 4:11, 13, paraphrased]. Bless God. Not a limited life, but an unlimited life. The idea of Christ, the idea of God was that every man, through Jesus Christ, through being joined to Him by the Holy Spirit, should be transformed into Christ's perfect image. Glory be to God. Christ within and Christ without. Christ in your spirit, Christ in your soul, and Christ in your body. Not only living His life, but performing His works by the grace of God. That is the Gospel of the Son of God. That is the thing that Paul was not ashamed of. He said,

I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek' [Romans 1:16].


". . . If anyone wants to analyze the development that has come into Christian consciousness during the last two hundred years, all they have to do is to begin and follow the preaching of the great evangelists who have moved the world. Think of Jonathan Edwards, who thundered the terrors of God and what hell was like until men grasped their seats and hung on to them, fearing they were falling into hell itself. Men were moved by fear to escape damnation. That was believed to be Christianity. Why, any coward wanted to keep out of hell. He might not have one idea in his soul of what was the real true earmark of Christianity.

"After awhile, others went a step further, and you can note the ascending consciousness. They said, 'No, saving yourself from hell and punishment is not the ideal of the Gospel. The ideal is to get saved, so as to go to heaven.' And so men were saved in order to get to heaven when they died. I have always had a feeling in my soul of wanting to weep when I hear men pleading with others to become Christians so that they will go up to heaven when they die. My God, is there no appeal outside of something absolutely selfish?

"Beloved, don't you see that Christianity was unselfishness itself? It had no consideration for the selfish individual. The thing held up above everything else in the world, and the only ideal worthy of a Christian, was that you and I and He Himself might demonstrate to mankind one holy, high beauteous thing of which the world was deficient--a knowledge of God. So Jesus said, 'Unto all righteousness' [Matthew 3:15, paraphrased] and he [sic] wrote it on the souls of men and branded it on their conscience and stamped it on their heart until the world began to realize the ideal that was in the soul of Jesus.

"'Unto all righteousness,' becoming like Christ Himself, a demonstration of the righteousness of the living God. That is Christianity, and that only is Christianity, for that was the consecration of the Christ Himself.

". . . So he whose soul is joined to Christ may now, today, this hour, shed forth as a benediction upon the world the glory and blessing and peace and power of God, even as Jesus shed it forth to all men to the praise of God."

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