It Is An Understanding of What We Have Come Into When We Have Come Into Christ (continued)
A Spirit of Rebelliousness (continued)
You see, there is all the difference between our possessiveness, "our" possessiveness, and having what the Lord wants, and having it with all our hearts; what a difference! Now you see, the rift, the rift came that way: possessiveness to have. Adam was told by this evil one, that he could have, he could have it. He could have it if he liked to act independently on his own, out from himself. In his own right and by his own initiative, he could have it in himself and not have it by dependence upon God. That is the suggestion: 'You can have it.' 'You can be as God,' said satan; that is, 'you can be self-sufficient, self-inclusive, you can have it.'
Adam fell to it, and we fell in him, and that is in us. More or less in everyone there is that thing, that evil thing: possessiveness to have, to govern, to control, to master, to be on top of a thing, to make it serve us. It is as great a peril and temptation in Christian work as it is anywhere. And it can be found in any relationship. I dare not analyze this, but if I were to, you would see it. You would see it: how there is in this human nature that which must control things, manipulate things, somehow or other work round to get what is wanted - anything. And this is possessiveness, to get it into our power. That is devilish and satanic, if it is motivated by "self". You see the difference?
Taking Israel as an illustration, rather anticipating things, Israel was called to possess the land of promise, but they could never possess the land of promise until they had gone through the Jordan. And the Jordan was the type of the Cross where the possessiveness of satan was slain, and now it was the possessiveness of God. You see, it was so. Have I not made that clear? It was not whether I want this, whether I am going to have this; that does not come into the picture at all. It is, does the Lord want this? Whatever it costs me, the Lord fills the picture! That is the only ground of real possession, if the Lord wants it! The Lord: the right kind of laying hold, if the Lord wants it.
Well, I have spent a lot of time on that, but it is something to be taken account of. It is a very serious thing, but the Lord deals with us faithfully. Oh, that He might show us the meaning of delays, of unnecessary delays; of the loss that we suffer and His work suffers, simply because we would take it into our own hands and make it ours. No, dear friends, everything that we have in Christ has got to be His. It is the Lord's; not ours.
So we wee in all this rift its nature, a basic perversion: A basic perversion of mind, of mentality, of mindedness. A basic perversion of will to have, to possess, to decide - all perverted. And when that happened the Glory departed from man. The Glory was withdrawn and put into reserve until such time as that was dealt with and the Glory could come back. That introduces, of course, the whole meaning of the Cross; to get rid of the thing which destroys and sets aside the Glory; all the thing which put the Glory away, to deal with them, and to make way for the return of the Glory. Well, that is anticipating things, but that is the meaning.
And now this is a statement of facts. From that point, we come on to the Divine reaction to this situation which has arisen, this that we have called the rift. The Divine reaction, and although I would like to go on for another hour with this, I am not going further than to just intimate it and leave it. What I have called the forward thrust of the Will. It is a new idea that has come into my head and I like it: the forward thrust of the Will. The Will, the big Will, the capital Will, the forward thrust; at that point God said "No" to this rift and God took action to see that the Will was not frustrated, that the Will was not set aside. That the Will, "the mystery of His Will" (Ephesians 1:9), should not be defeated. He took action. The Will thrust forward.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 15)
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