Sit, Walk, Stand: The Process of Christian Maturity (7 page)

In Paul’s generation every believer had specific relation to the eternal purpose of God (see especially Eph. 4:11–16). That should be no less true of us today. The eyes of God are turning toward His coming kingdom. What we know as organized Christianity will shortly have to make way for something else—the sovereign rule of Christ. But as with the kingdom of Solomon, so now there is first a period of spiritual warfare represented by the reign of David. God is seeking those who will cooperate with Him today in that preparatory warfare.

It is a question of the identification of my purpose with the eternal purpose of God. All Christian work that is not so identified is fragmentary and unrelated, and it does not ultimately get anywhere. We have to seek from God a revelation to our hearts by His Holy Spirit of “the counsel of his will” (see 1:9–12) and then to ask ourselves concerning the work to which we are going back after reading this: “Is it directly related to that?” When that is settled, all the small questions of daily guidance will solve themselves.

Secondly, all work that is going to be effective in the divine purpose must be conceived by God. If we plan work and then ask God to bless it, we need not expect God to commit Himself to it. God’s name can never be a “rubber stamp” to authorize work that is ours in conception. True, there may be blessing upon such work,
but it will be partial and not full. There can be no “in His name” there; only, alas, our name!

“The Son can do nothing of himself” (John 5:19). How often in the book of Acts we find the Holy Spirit’s prohibitions! We read in chapter 16 how Paul and those with him were “forbidden of the Holy Ghost to speak the word in Asia” (16:6). And again, “The Spirit of Jesus suffered them not” (16:7). Yet this book is the book of the
acts
of the Holy Spirit, not of His “inactivities.” Too often we think that the actual doing is what matters. We have to learn the lesson of not doing—of keeping quiet for Him. We have to learn that if God does not move, we dare not move. When we have learned this, then it is that He can safely send us forth to speak for Him.

I must have, therefore, a knowledge of God’s will in my particular sphere of work. Out of that knowledge only should the work be initiated. The abiding principle of all true Christian work is, “In the beginning God . . .” (Gen. 1:1).

Thirdly, all work, to be effective, must depend for its continuance upon the power of God alone. What is power? We often use the word loosely. We say of a man, “He is a very powerful speaker,” but we have to ask ourselves the question: What power is he using? Is it spiritual power, or is it natural power? There is today all too much place given to the power of nature in the service of God. We have got to learn that even where God has initiated a work, if we are trying to accomplish it in our own power, God will never commit Himself to it.

You ask me what I mean by natural power. Put very simply, it is what we can do without the help of God. We give a man the task of organizing something—of planning a gospel campaign or some other Christian activity—because he is naturally a good organizer. But if that is so, how hard will he pray? If he is accustomed to depend on his natural gifts, he may feel no need to cry to God. The trouble with us all is that there are so many things we can do without relying upon God. We must be brought to the place where, naturally gifted though we may be, we dare not speak except in conscious and continual dependence on Him.

Stephen described Moses, after his Egyptian education, as a man “mighty in his words and works” (Acts 7:22). Yet, after God had dealt with him, Moses had to say, “Oh Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant; for I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue” (Exod. 4:10). When a born orator comes to the place of saying, “I can’t speak,” then he has learned a fundamental lesson and is on the road to real usefulness for God. That discovery involves a crisis and then a lifelong process, both of them implied, surely, in Luke’s expression “baptized into the name” (Acts 8:16, 19:5).

That expression points every new believer to the necessity for a fundamental knowledge of the death and resurrection of Christ in its relation to his entire natural man. Somehow, in our history with God, we must experience that initial crippling touch of His
hand to weaken our natural strength, so that we stand forth on the ground of resurrection life in Christ alone where death has no longer any claim. After that the circle goes on widening, as fresh areas of our own self-energy are brought under the working of the cross. The way is a costly one, but it is God’s sure way to fruitfulness of life and ministry, for it provides Him with the ground He requires in order that He may give His backing to what we do in the name of His Son.

In the work of God today, things are often so constituted that we have no need to rely upon God. But the Lord’s verdict upon all such work is uncompromising: “Apart from me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5). Such work as man can do apart from God is wood, hay, stubble—and the test of fire will prove it so. For divine work can only be done with divine power, and that power is to be found in the Lord Jesus alone. It is made available to us in Him on the resurrection side of the cross. That is to say, it is when we have reached the point where in all honesty we cry, “I cannot speak,” that we discover God
is
speaking. When we come to an end of our works, His work begins. Thus, the fire in the days to come and the cross today effect the same thing. What cannot stand the cross today will not survive the fire later. If
my
work, which is done in
my
power, is brought to death, how much comes out of the grave? Nothing! Nothing ever survives the cross but what is wholly of God in Christ.

God never asks us to do anything we
can
do. He asks us to live a life which we can never live and to do a work which we can never do. Yet, by His grace, we
are
living it and doing it. The life we live is the life of Christ lived in the power of God, and the work we do is the work of Christ carried on through us by His Spirit whom we obey. Self is the only obstruction to that life and to that work. May we each one pray from our hearts, “O Lord, deal with
me
!”

Finally, the end and object of all work to which God can commit Himself must be His glory. This means that we get nothing out of it for ourselves. It is a divine principle that the less we get of personal gratification out of such a work, the greater is its true value to God. There is no room for glory to man in the work of God. True, there is a deep, precious joy in any service that brings Him pleasure and that opens the door to His working, but the ground of that joy is His glory and not man’s. Everything is “to the praise of the glory of his grace” (Eph. 1:6, 12, 14).

It is when these questions are truly settled between us and God that God will commit Himself—and indeed I believe He will allow us to say then that He
has
to do so. Experience in China has taught us this, that if there is ground for doubt whether our work is of God, then sure enough we find God is reluctant to answer prayer in relation to it. But when it is wholly of Him, He will commit Himself in wonderful ways. Then it is that, in utter obedience to Him, you can use His name, and all
hell will have to recognize your authority to do so. When God commits Himself to a thing, then He comes out in power to prove that He is in it and is Himself its Author.

Let me give you in closing an experience of my own. A few years after the beginning of our work, we entered upon a period of severe testing. They were days of disappointment and near despair. We had come in for a great deal of criticism and discredit on account of the stand we were taking, resulting in coolness and estrangement, even on the part of the Lord’s true people. We had honestly faced and examined the charges made against us, for it is essential always to take criticism seriously and examine it, and not to pass it off with “Oh! He’s just
criticizing
me!” Yet we had reason to believe that the Lord was with us, for as a particularly difficult year drew to its close, we were able to reckon that within that period He had given us several hundreds of real conversions. Then, at the year’s end, it seemed that a climax was reached.

Annually for several years it had been our custom at the New Year public holiday to hold a convention in the city for believers of different connections from throughout the province. This year the sponsors of the convention asked me not to attend. The request came as a shock to us. It was, I now realize, an attempt by the Evil One to draw me and my brethren off our ground of
rest in Christ. The question was, How would we react?

The New Year holiday is a long one, lasting fully fifteen days; and besides being a suitable period for a convention, it is also the best time for gospel preaching. After seeking the Lord’s will, it became clear that He would have us use it for the latter purpose. So I planned to take with me five brothers for a fifteen-day preaching visit to an island off the South China coast. At the last moment another young brother whom I shall call “brother Wu” joined the party. He was only sixteen years of age and had been expelled from school, but he had just lately been born again and there was a marked change in his life. Moreover, he was very eager to come, so after some hesitation I agreed to take him. This made us seven in all.

The island was a fairly large one with a big main village of “six thousand stoves.” An old schoolmate of mine was there as headmaster of the village school, and I wrote to him in advance asking for a room in which we might lodge during our stay from January 1 to 15. When, however, we arrived late and in darkness, and when he discovered we had come for gospel preaching, he refused us accommodation. So we sought through the village for somewhere to lodge, until eventually a Chinese herbalist had pity on us and took us in, making us quite comfortable on planks and straw in his attic.

It was not long before the herbalist became our first convert. But though we labored systematically and hard, and though we found the people of the village most
courteous, we had very little fruit from the island, and we began to wonder why this was.

On January 9 we were outside preaching. Brother Wu with some others was in one part of the village and suddenly asked publicly, “Why will none of you believe?”

Someone in the crowd replied at once, “We have a god—
one
god—Ta-wang,
²
and he has never failed us. He is an effective god.”

“How do you know that you can trust him?” asked Wu.

“We have held his festival procession every January for 286 years. The chosen day is revealed by divination beforehand, and every year without fail his day is a perfect one without rain or cloud,” was the reply.

“When is the procession this year?”

“It is fixed for January 11 at eight in the morning.”

“Then,” said brother Wu impetuously, “I promise you that it will certainly rain on the eleventh.”

At once there was an outburst of cries from the crowd. “That is enough! We don’t want to hear any more preaching. If there is rain on the eleventh, then your God is God!”

I was elsewhere in the village when this occurred. As soon as I heard of it, I saw that it was most serious. The news had spread like wildfire, and before long over twenty thousand people would know about it. What were we to do? We stopped our preaching at once and gave ourselves to prayer. We asked the Lord to forgive
us if we had overstepped ourselves. I tell you, we were in deadly earnest. What had we done? Had we made a terrible mistake, or dare we ask God for a miracle?

The more you want an answer to prayer from God, the more you desire to be clear with Him. There must be no doubt about fellowship—no shadow between. If your faith were in coincidence, you could afford to have a controversy with Him, but not otherwise. We did not mind being thrown out if we had done something wrong. After all, you can’t drag God into a thing against His will! But, we reflected, this would mean an end to the gospel testimony in the island, and Ta-wang would reign supreme forever. What should we do? Should we leave now?

Up to this point we had feared to pray for rain. Then, like a flash, there came the word to me, “Where is the God of Elijah?” It came with such clarity and power that I knew it was from God. Confidently I announced to the brothers, “I have the answer. The Lord will send rain on the eleventh.” Together we thanked Him, and then full of praise, we went out—all seven of us—and told everyone. We could accept the devil’s challenge in the name of the Lord, and we would broadcast our acceptance.

That evening the herbalist made two very pointed observations. Undoubtedly, he said, Ta-wang
was
an effective god. The devil was with that image. Their faith in him was not groundless. Alternatively, if you preferred a rationalistic explanation, here was a whole village of
fishermen. For two or three months on end the men were at sea, and on the fifteenth they would be out again. They, of all people, should know by long experience when it would not rain for two or three days ahead.

This disturbed us. As we went to our evening prayer, we all began once more to pray for rain—
now
! Then it was that there came to us a stern rebuke from the Lord: “Where is the God of Elijah?” Were we going to fight our way through this battle, or were we going to rest in the finished victory of Christ? What had Elisha done when he spoke those words? He had laid claim in his own personal experience to the very miracle that his lord Elijah, now in the glory, had himself performed. In New Testament terms, he had taken his stand by faith on the ground of a finished work.

We confessed our sins again. “Lord,” we said, “we don’t need rain until the eleventh morning.” We went to bed, and next morning (the tenth) we set off for a neighboring island for a day’s preaching. The Lord was very gracious, and that day three families turned to Him, confessing Him publicly and burning their idols. We returned late, tired out but rejoicing. We could afford to sleep late tomorrow.