The Process of Time
OUR author commented in our last consideration that we ought not to discount a Spirit-fostered experience, blessing, or even a crisis; going on to say, but it is to be remembered that these simply contribute to the overall, and all-important, process. His point is as he writes that: It takes time to get to know ourselves; it takes time and eternity to get to know our infinite Lord Jesus Christ. This is the principle of time, and one of the Spirit fostered fruits is patience (Gal 5:22ff) as God works in us both to will and do his good please pleasure (Phil 2:13).
BUT our author does bring up the issue of experiences which test us to both see how far we have come and need to go in our spiritual growth; providing faith strengthening exercise in learning reliance upon God’s faithfulness. Even as strong winds from violent storms buffet a tree causing it’s roots to go deeper or be uprooted, and remove weakened branches or life sapping diseased limbs, so our heavenly vinedresser cares for His own, pruning away the unnecessary for future growth and new fruit (John 15). In this He strengthens His tender plants to withstand all trials in the end, so that the things which cannot be shaken may remain (Heb. 12:27). Time and experience work together in our growing in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior. But again, the key element is time.
WELL, I’m rambling again. Let us get to today’s consideration, and the authors closing comments in this chapter dealing with the Principle of time.
In the wondrous blessings of Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10, Isa. 30:15 & Job 2:10
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Chapter 2—TIME …..continued
It takes time to get to know ourselves; it takes time and eternity to get to know our infinite Lord Jesus Christ. Today is the day to put our hand to the plow and to irrevocably set our heart on His goal for us—that we “may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death” (v. 10).
“So often in the battle,” says Austin-Sparks, “we go to the Lord, and pray, and plead, and appeal for victory, for ascendancy, for mastery over the forces of evil and death, and our thought is that in some way the Lord is going to come in with a mighty exercise of power and put us into a place of victory and spiritual ascendancy as in an act. We must have this mentality corrected. What the Lord does is to enlarge us to possess. He puts us through some exercise, through some experience, takes us by some way which means our spiritual expansion, and exercise of spirituality so we occupy the larger place spontaneously. ‘I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee. By little and little I will drive them out before thee, until thou be increased’ (Ex. 23:29, 30).
“One day in the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Disraeli made a brilliant speech on the spur of the moment. That night a friend said to him, ‘I must tell you how much I enjoyed your extemporaneous talk. It’s been on my mind all day.’ ‘Madam,’ confessed Disraeli, ‘that extemporaneous talk has been on my mind for twenty years!’
