Trials, Endurance, and Spiritual Maturity

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AbideinHim May 12, 2017

By T. Austin Sparks:

You must learn to endure everything, so that you will be completely mature and not lacking in anything. (James 1:4 CEV)

We can take one of two attitudes toward the ways of God with us; we can get bitter, sour, hard; or we can have the enlargement by exercise, development by exercise, to develop capacity, to bring us into the large place that we may be intelligently His instrument for governing under His Headship in ages to come. Things that enter into our history we cannot always fathom, but the explanation which we can give is that, whatever there may be as second causes, the Lord is Sovereign and He thinks it worthwhile sometimes to allow what the world would call the most terrible thing to overtake for the time being, and it would seem that His Name and interests suffer through that thing, but through that thing He brings His people to a place of maturity and they get to know the Lord for themselves. Through these terrible things we find the Lord produces something that is very much more worthy of Himself in the life of His children. That is His justification, His vindication; if He could do it in any other way He would.

In the long run He does get spiritual maturity among His people, where they know Him. He would get us to a place where we know the Lord and we have our senses exercised to know. The Lord give us grace to accept all His dealings with us in the light of His great purpose.

sermonindex May 12, 2017

Good word from brother Sparks. Thank you for sharing Mike.

Breaux Blaine

J

JFW May 12, 2017

Amen!

sermonindex May 12, 2017

Embracing your circumstances is not surrender, it is overcoming. The battle within almost every human being is the battle of circumstances. It is the source of almost all fear and all anxiety. Your life is a journey. How will you journey? Will the majority of your journey be taken up with the fear of what is going to happen? If you get caught up in the swamp of despair and anxiety then you have lost your ability to live an abundant life.

But Frank, I have cancer and I only have six months left to live. Question, will you spend your last six months on this earth in the swamp of despair? Will it change your circumstances? I have a theory. There is life in surrender. But Frank, you said that embracing your circumstances is not surrender but that it is overcoming. Yes indeed, but there is two kinds of surrender. The first surrender is the surrender of the world and it could also be known as the swamp of despair and hopelessness. In this place there is only death.

The second kind of surrender is the surrender to God. Oh brothers and sisters this could not be more different from the surrender of the world. This surrender is the entrance to His rest. A place where you have laid down your burdens. A place where you walk in peace, a peace that surpasses all understanding. In this place circumstances are merely vehicles to draw you even closer to God. In the other place circumstances are vehicles for drawing you away from God.

What world do you live in brothers and sisters? Remember, you cannot have a foot in one world and a foot in the other, if you do you will love one and reject the other. I believe God is calling you to step from one world, this world, with all of its cares and anxieties and circumstances, into the other world where those very circumstances are robbed of all of their death and are infused with the light of life. There is no escaping the circumstances of this life, there is only surrender. Which surrender will you choose? The one that leads to despair and hopelessness or the one that leads to life and that more abundantly..........bro Frank