So, are you still with me? This chapter can challenge our thinking. This suggestion of moving from asking to appropriation seems to run a little counterintuitive, just like not asking for blessings until we come to fully own what we already possess, every spiritual blessing in Christ (Eph. 1:3). But this is an issue of faith in the facts, and we need to acquire both in this thing we call the Christian Life:
Lord, I believe, HELP my unbelief – Mark 9:24
OUR author correctly stated in the previous posting where the problem resides, it is “Immaturity [that] considers the Lord Jesus a helper. Maturity [that] knows Him to be life itself!” Another way of saying this is the principle of “the already, but not yet.” We own it all in Christ, although we have not yet fully realized it.
GOING back over last weeks comments, I’m struck by the recurring theme written between the lines found in one of my favorite verses, Col 2:6, As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. I like to repeat this verse and truth it commends to weary hearts, reminding them that as we have received Christ by faith at the beginning of their Christian journey, their daily walk does not change one whit. It started out based on faith and continues going forward based on faith; an outworking of faith in what Christ has done, is doing, and will do for those who are complete in Christ. Rest in that fact.
OF course, Paul’s statement doesn’t end at verse 6 of Col. 2. He goes on to say in verse 7: rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. The problem many have is not in the doing, but in being established, not being thoroughly “rooted and established” in the facts of the faith, and thus never able to come to that place of “abounding thanksgiving” in all things (Phil 4:6). So, when our author addresses us in this 16th chapter of our study in Principles of Spiritual Growth, titled Help, we should not find it strange when he says, just as God could never answer a prayer for help in the matter of justification. The same principle holds true for the Christian life.
WHAT might be helpful at this point is to think again in terms of appropriation of what is already possessed rather than acquisition of more of what is needed. Appropriation is the key. Think back to my previous comment and the story of that preacher’s sermon long ago where he used the bank analogy of withdrawing from an account, being unaware that some benevolent patron had deposited unlimited funds that cannot be exhausted. We live as paupers, thinking we are always in need, maybe even ask for a loan to get us through a tough time, until one day the banker quizzically asks us why we keep living this way? Then he opens our account to shows us the truth, the astonishing and up to that moment unrealized reality of unlimited funds! Of course, that analogy would be a little different in today’s on-line banking and electronic ATM machines that gives us that information instantaneously. But the point is, why do we keep asking, when all is already ours?
WELL, maybe our author can shed a little more light on that question with today’s consideration.
In the inexorable riches of Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10, Isa 30:15, Jas. 1:2
****************************
Chapter 16—Help, continued
Sooner or later we must face up to what F. J. Huegel declares: “When a Christian’s prayer life springs from a right position (a thorough adjustment to Christ in His death and resurrection), a vast change in procedure follows. Much of the mere begging type (though of course asking is always in order, for the Lord says, ‘Ask, and ye shall receive’ [John 16:24]) gives away to a positive and unspeakably joyous appropriation. Much of our begging fails to register in heaven because it fails to spring from right relations with the Father in union with Christ in death and resurrection: in which position one simply appropriates what is already his. “‘All things,’ says the Apostle Paul, ‘are yours. And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s’ (I Cor. 3:21, 23).”
Since “without faith it is impossible to please him” (Heb. 11:6), we might consider several more strong but true statements to further clarify the attitude of faith that does please His heart.
“In our private prayers and in our public services,” Dr. A. W. Tozer writes, “we are forever asking God to do things that He either has already done or cannot do because of our unbelief. We plead for Him to speak when He has already spoken and is at that very moment speaking. We ask Him to come when He is already present and waiting for us to recognize Him. We beg the Holy Spirit to fill us while all the time we are preventing Him by our doubts.”
Dr. S. D. Gordon admonished: “When you are in the thick of the fight, when you are the object of attack, plead less and claim more, on the ground of the blood of the Lord Jesus. I do not mean ask God to give you victory, but claim His victory, to overshadow you.” …to be continued
