by A.B. Simpson
To him that overcometh, will I give—Revelation 2:17
A precious secret of Christian life is to have Jesus dwelling within the heart and conquering things that we never could overcome. it is the only secret of power in our lives. Men cannot understand it nor will the world believe it, but it is true that God will come to dwell within us and be the power, the purity, the victory and the joy of our lives. Our attitudes will no longer be, "What is the best that I can do?" but we will ask, "What is the best that Christ can do?" it enables us to say with Paul in that beautiful passage in Philippians,
I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to stiffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me (4:12-13).
With this knowledge I go forth to meet my testings, and this knowledge enables me to stand. I could never keep myself, but because Christ has met the adversary and defeated him for me I am kept pure and clean. Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (I Corinthians 15:57).
by A.B. Simpson
by A.B. Simpson
I press toward the mark—Philippians 3:14
We have thought much about what we have received. Let us think of the things we have not received, of some of the vessels that have not yet been filled, of some of the places in our lives that the Holy Spirit has not yet possessed for God and signalized by His glory and His presence.
Shall the coming months be marked by a diligent, heart-searching application of the rest of the oil (see Leviticus 14:17-20) to the yet unoccupied possibilities of our life and service?
Have we known His fullness of grace in our spiritual lives? Have we tasted a little of His glory? Have we believed His promise for the mind, the soul, the spirit? Have we known all His possibilities for the body? Have we tested Him in His power to control the events of nature and to move the hearts of men and nations? Has He opened to us the treasure house of God and met our financial needs as He might? Have we begun to understand the ministry of prayer, as God would have us exercise it? God give us the rest of the oil!
by A.B. Simpson
by A.B. Simpson
But God—Luke 12:20
What else do we really need? What else is He trying to make us understand? The religion of the Bible is wholly supernatural. The one resource of faith has always been the living God, and Him alone. The children of Israel were utterly dependent upon Jehovah as they marched through the wilderness. The one reason their foes feared them and hastened to submit themselves was that they recognized among them the shout of a King and the presence of One compared with whom all their strength was vain.
Wherein, asked Moses, shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? Is it not in that thou goest with us? (Exodus 33:16). A church relying on human wisdom, wealth or resources ceases to be the body of Christ and becomes an earthly society. When we dare to depend entirely upon God and do not doubt, the humblest and feeblest agencies will become mighty through God, to the pulling down of strongholds (2 Corinthians 10:4).
May the Holy Spirit give to us at all times His own conception of these two great words, But God!
by A.B. Simpson
by A.B. Simpson
Abide in me—John 15:4
Christianity may mean nothing more than a religious system. The Christian life may mean nothing more than an earnest and honest attempt to follow and imitate Christ.
The Christ life is more than these and expresses our actual union with the Lord Jesus Christ. He is actually in us as the life and source of all our experience and work.
This conception of the highest Christian life is at once simpler and more sublime than any other. We do not teach that the purpose of Christ’s redemption is to restore us to Adamic perfection, for if we had it we should lose it tomorrow. Rather, it is to unite us with the second Adam, and to lift us up to a higher plane than our first parents ever knew.
Continue Reading »
by A.B. Simpson
Tell me . . . where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon—Song of Solomon 1:7
Beloved, do you not long for God’s quiet, the inner chambers, the shadow of the Almighty, the secret of His presence? Your life has been, perhaps, all driving and doing; or perhaps straining, struggling, longing and not obtaining. You long for rest! you long to lie down close to His heart and know that you have all in Him, that every question is answered, every doubt settled, every interest safe, every prayer answered, every desire satisfied. Lift up the cry, Tell me, 0 thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon!
Blessed be His name! He has for us His exclusive love-a love which each individual feels is all for himself, one in which he can lie alone upon His breast and have a place which no other can dispute. And yet His heart is so great that He can hold a thousand millions just as near, and each heart seems to possess Him as exclusively for his own as the thousand little pools of water upon the beach can reflect the sun, and each little pool appears to have the whole sun captured in its beautiful depths. Christ can teach us this secret of His inmost love.
by A.B. Simpson
by A.B. Simpson
I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you—Galatians 4:19
It is a blessed moment when we are born again and a new heart is created in us after the image of God. It is a more blessed moment when, in this new heart, Christ Himself is born and Christmas time is reproduced in us as we, in some real sense, become incarnations of the living Christ. This is the deepest and holiest meaning of Christianity. It is expressed in Paul’s prayer for the Galatians. My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.
There will yet be a more glorious era when we, like Him, shall be transformed and transfigured into His glory, and in the resurrection shall be, in spirit, soul and body, even as He.
Let us be, under the power of the inspiring thought, incarnations of Christ, not living our life, but the Christ life, and showing forth the excellencies, not of ourselves, but of Him who hath called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. As a result our lives shall be to all the reliving of the Christ life, as He would have lived it had He been here.
by A.B. Simpson
by A.B. Simpson
Reckon ye also yourselves to be . . . alive unto God—Romans 6:11
Death is but for a moment; life is forever. Let us live, then, as children of the resurrection, finding His glorious life more and more abundant, and the fullness of this life will repel the intrusion of self and sin and overcome evil with good. Then our existence will not be the dreary repression of our own struggling, but the springing tide of Christ’s spontaneous overcoming life.
Once in a religious meeting a dear pastor gave us a most exhilarating talk on the risen life. Then another minister got up and talked for a long time on the necessity of self-crucifixion. A cold feeling came over us all and we could scarcely understand why. But after he had finished, one of the women clarified the whole situation by saying, "Pastor S. took us all out of the grave, and then Pastor P. put us back again. "
Continue Reading »
by A.B. Simpson
