Voice of a Prophet: The Climb Toward Deep Spiritual Satisfaction
Voice of a Prophet
The Climb Toward Deep Spiritual Satisfaction
What is the Holy Spirit trying to tell us here?
Let me offer you a ladder upon which you can climb into the kingdom of power.
I want to offer you the secret that will bring you riches and inward experiences such as you have never had before.
This is the secret that will bring you to deep spiritual satisfaction for your total nature, usefulness, fruitfulness and growth such as you have never known before. In addition, it will bring you the ravishing knowledge of the only true God.
To begin with, I believe in personal communion with God to the point of incandescence. I believe that we should fellowship with God until, like Moses, some of the glow of God is upon our faces.
David understood the secret, which is to exalt God over ourselves, at any cost to us, and always put God first.
We are to put God where He belongs.
God always keeps safe everything you give to Him, and you always jeopardize everything you hold on to.
You need to exalt God above your friendships. Give up your friend that you might have the Friend; but we hang on to our friends and we know the Friend only very poorly and inadequately.
“Be thou exalted, O God,” over my comforts and over my pleasures.
Some people spend so much time taking vacations that they call it recreation. They say they are taking a vacation, and I say, a vacation from what?
Mostly it is a vacation from nothing more strenuous than loafing, but it is supposed to be re-creating something or other. We put our pleasures and our comforts first and then God takes what’s left.
Be thou exalted above my ambitions.
I like to see ambitious Christians, but I want to know whose ambition is interesting them.
I appreciate the old German preacher, the medieval theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart. While others may find him shocking, I like him. He once preached a sermon on Jesus and the moneychangers. At the root of his sermon was the thought that these men were serving God for a profit, which is what got the anger of Jesus against them, and He drove them from the place. They were doing religious work that should have been done, but they were doing it for a profit. There are those who would not open the door in the house of God except for profit. I count any man who serves God for profit to be a huckster and a moneychanger. I fully concur with the old German preacher.
The profit I am talking about here is not necessarily financial profit. Most of us do not have much to worry about in that regard, but there is another kind of profit we like to get.
We serve God on commission. It is a very low commission, and the more spiritual we are the lower the commission we are willing to take for the work we do.
We want to serve God, but we want a commission. “Oh God, we will give Thee 95 percent of the glory, but could we have 5 percent?”
Then we get blessed at some revival meeting, and say to God, “Oh Lord, let it be 3 percent.”
But God says, “I am Jehovah. That is My name, and My glory will I not give to another.”
God will not give His glory to anybody.
A day will come when He will allow us to share all of His glory with Him, but that day is not now.
Now we are to bear crosses, to do without, to lose our goods, to be frowned upon.
Now we are called to be a minority group, a despised minority group.
This idea that you can make the cross of Christ sociably acceptable is a heresy of our generation. Many evangelical groups are trying to prove to the world that we are not so dumb after all. We amount to something. We are somebody now in our own right, and we believe in Jesus, too.
You might as well quit. As soon as the disgrace of the cross is out of your life, the power goes out of your life. Just as soon as you are no longer a despised minority group, you are not a powerful people.
We like to keep our reputation elevated, and I always have to try to die to my reputation.
It is odd, that which you do not have is what you have to die to. I have to go to God constantly and die to my reputation.
I like what Vance Havner said: “Don’t imagine you’re a big wheel just because you have a shiny hubcap.” We are always finding some fellow with a shiny hubcap and we push him up. Even we Protestants have to have our saints to venerate.
John the Baptist had it right when he said,
“He must increase and I must decrease” (John 3:30).
God can always use a man if He knows His glory is safe in that man’s hands.
When doing research for my biography of A. B. Simpson, I talked to William T. MacArthur, who was a personal friend and coworker with him. He told me many things about Dr. Simpson that I had not known before. Finally, I asked MacArthur, “If this man was so imperfect, why did God bless him as He did?”
MacArthur straightened up, stroked his beard and said, “God knew that His glory was safe in the hands of Albert Simpson.”
God will bless any man when He knows His glory is safe in his hands; but He will hold back His blessing and give it only in measure when He has reason to believe that that man wants a percentage of the glory.
When that man has not settled that God is above all, he limits what God can do for him.
It is hard to comprehend this since we are living in the age of religious Adam.
You can see him everywhere; just scratch him and he gets mad. As long as you do not oppose him, he can be as religious as you can imagine. We are living in a very breezy, self-contained Christianity.
Look at the roster of the spiritually successful. I do not need to list them here; you know who they are.
This was their secret:
“Be thou exalted, O God, over me.
Have first place in my life and let me take what is left.
Be Thou above me, O God.
Exalt Thyself at my expense; at any cost be Thou exalted, O God.”
Somebody said it this way: “‘My kingdom go’ is a necessary correlator of ‘Thy kingdom come.’ ” Until your kingdom goes, His kingdom cannot come. We will never be where we ought to be until this happens.
The King has to be first; and the assistant kings and junior kings and little kings reigning down, but there can only be one King in any one kingdom. If the kingdom in your heart can have only one King, it is either you or Jesus Christ. Has He been the King, or have you been the king over the past day?
Some people will object and say, “Oh, I pray daily that God will help me.”
Yes, help you to be a good king.
But have you ever stopped to think that you need to get down off that throne and ask God Almighty to forgive you for ever sitting on it?
Have you ever thought about just changing your prayer and saying,
“Take it, Lord. Exalt Thyself.
Take thy throne and reign.”
Lord Jesus, Thou art exalted above all.
Help us at any cost to ourselves to put the crown on Thy forehead and give Thee the scepter.
I ask this in Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.
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