Five Operations of the Holy Spirit Part 37

If we will turn toward the Lord we will discover that the Holy Spirit is presenting us with a challenge today. If we will allow the Spirit to bring us successfully through this new challenge we will move a bit closer to the fullness of the knowledge of Christ our Lord. We will die a bit more, and in place of our old nature will be the new resurrection life that cannot die again but is alive eternally in the Presence of the Lord God.

We have started on the quest for eternal life. " Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth to life, and few there be that find it" (Matthew 7:14). Will we be one of those who find the way to life?

"For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting" (Galatians 6:8). Will we be one of those Christians who are living in the appetites of the flesh and therefore losing our eternal life? Or will we be as Paul who pressed forward toward eternal life every day of his pilgrimage? The choice is ours each day.

We will be glad eternally if we choose to take up our cross and plod on patiently toward the fullness of the life that is in Christ our Lord.

. . . but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, (Philippians 3:13)

Here is the correct Christian viewpoint. We are to forget yesterday. The Holy Spirit has pressed certain lessons into our personality, and these we shall retain. Yesterday's manna already is breeding worms. Our religious experience of yesterday will not satisfy God today. Today is the new day that the Lord has made. We are to be glad and rejoice in it. We also are to take up our cross and press on, press on, press on toward the fullness of Christ.

We are looking forward with anticipation to the return of our King. The fact that God has left us on the earth one more day is an indication that our lessons and service have not been completed as yet. There are more lessons to be learned, more burdens to be carried, higher heights to be climbed, other people to be influenced and taught. We are to be "reaching forth to those things which are before" as though our life depended on it—and it does! I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ. (Philippians 3:14)

There is a mark. There is a prize. There is a high (on high) calling of God in Christ. The on-high calling of God in Christ is not to ascension into Heaven. The on-high calling of God is that we may lay hold of the righteousness that is of God through faith instead of through the Law of Moses or our own religious striving. It is that we may grasp the full knowledge of Christ, the power of the resurrection of Christ, and the fellowship of the weakness of the humbling and rejection of Christ.

God will work in us to the extent we are willing to be pressed out of measure. We must become as a worm. The Lord knows how to teach us obedience and humility at the deepest level.

We have found that the Holy Spirit is in charge of our gifts and ministries, that He works to destroy every trace of Satan in us, that He creates the Nature of Christ in us, that He gives us comfort and guidance in every detail of discipleship, and finally that it is He who inspires us each day to keep on pressing toward Christ. We are drawn again each morning toward the Lord Jesus Christ.

Draw me, we will run after thee: . . . . (Song of Solomon 1:4)

The Holy Spirit, if we will allow Him to do so, creates in us a drawing that causes us to give up everything else so we may pursue Christ with our full attention. It is the Lord's will that we love Him above all else. Each day of our life should find us arising in the morning with a word of thanksgiving to the Father, praising Him for making the coming day the most intense pursuit of Christ we yet have known.

The world is filled with attractions and problems of every kind. The Holy Spirit is ready to create such a longing in our heart for more of Christ that we turn away from every other attraction and focus on Him as the first desire of our heart.

Discipleship is possible only when we possess single-minded devotion to the Master. When our eye is single our whole body is filled with light. Double-mindedness causes us to be unstable in all our ways. The Apostle Paul was consumed with the intense pursuit of Christ, and he counsels us to be " thus minded" (Philippians 3:15).

It is the Holy Spirit who creates in our heart the strong yearning for more of Christ. If the things of the present age are appealing to us to such a degree that we are weakening in our pursuit of Christ, we need to petition the Lord for an increased amount of the Holy Spirit so we may attend to Christ without distraction.

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