It Is An Understanding of What We Have Come Into When We Have Come Into Christ (continued)
A Spirit of Rebelliousness
A spirit of rebelliousness: That is something more than acting in a rebellious way. It is a spirit of rebelliousness. And it was that spirit which was injected into man, when man opened himself by doubting God, by entertaining a question about God. Do not forget, dear friends, that you have only got to open yourself to a question for something to be injected, which is not easy to get rid of. Part of the Christian life is to keep yourself closed to lots of things. You will not let that suggestion get in. You will not entertain it. You will not discuss it or argue with it. You will have nothing to do with it. You shut up your being to any suggestions that come from the enemy. That is the real nature of spiritual warfare with evil forces, it is to close yourself and keep yourself closed. If you do not, he will make awful ruin of you and rob you of the Glory. Ask God to teach you how to say "no" to things that the enemy seeks to get into your mind and into your heart, because the working of this thing will be a spirit of rebelliousness - A spirit.
Well he got it into the race, and we know it is in us, we know it is in us by nature, and it will always be there in measure to the end. I know how that contradicts some theories, but I still hold to it that there will never be a time when it will be impossible in this life for any of us not to feel some question, some resentment, some rebellion, in the presence of God's dealings with us. There will always be that there, which is ground, if we give it to the enemy. That is putting it mildly, mildly! "In me," said Paul, "that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing" (Romans 7:18). That is putting it negatively, if he had put it positively he would have said, 'There are lots of very bad things in my flesh, and one of them is that I am constantly having to fight for my faith.' He says, "You fight the good fight of the faith" (1 Timothy 6:12). Rebelliousness is in the race, like it or not, it was in the constitution of humanity from that day onward.
Pride: Pride was back of it, and the refusal or the dislike to have second place. That was satan. That was his angels. That is what he injected into man, and into the race through the first man. And tell me, do you like having what we call second place? I mean, being set at naught, walked over, ignored, thought little of, put aside? Is not there something all the time that is working, even in our inferiority complex, which is saying, we want to be something more than we are? We want to be. And there is something about us, let us be quite honest - although some of you dear people, I know are too good to have anything like this, but I am not one of you. And I think the majority will go with me on this matter; that there is a lot of pride about us and we can suffer from hurt pride and we can feel it badly if we are slighted. That is human nature we say, 'but it is there, it is there. But where did it come from?' Well, this serpent bit us in Adam, and the poison ran into our veins. That is where we are - Pride.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 13)
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