Christ Magnified In My Body # 4

Christ Magnified In My Body # 4

You can have a blast from hell and not be moved, if you're in the will of God. They'll hurt. How can you get victory if there's there no battle? He said, "We are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. What are you conquering?

Charles Wesley has a hymn in which he says,

Should all the hosts of death, and powers of hell unknown,
Put their most dreadful forms of rage and malice on,
I shall be safe; for Christ displays
Superior power and boundless grace.

Paul touched the powers of the world to come. To us, that's theology. It's something we're grasping after, almost in blindness. We're so happy to get rid of a lot of rotten sins, and thank God for where we are. But look at the territory there is yet for us to reach!

God's problem with Israel was getting them to leave Egypt behind. He could have got them out of Egypt and into Canaan in 11 days. But they didn't even make it 40 years (most of them.) We've got people now who have been saved 20 or 30 years, and they're not a day older in their spiritual life. They're no more mature. They've no more spiritual strength. They've no more spiritual understanding. They've no more spiritual revelation. Why? Because so often they've "lived on meetings" instead of "living on Christ."

I don't care where you go, what school you go to, and I thank God for schools. Remember: What do you do when the school is pulled away from you? You see, so many people get happy and blessed when they're in an association or fellowship. But then go, and stick them up in the jungle, or somewhere and they go to pieces!

Can you imagine a man going to pieces here in Romans 8:9 who says, "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you?" And verse 10, "...if Christ is in you." And in verse 11, "...the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead."

The Holy Spirit of God is totally incapable of doing anything that is small. The world in which we live is beautiful, carpeted with flowers and everything. It was a ball of mud shut up in the womb of the universe. The Holy Spirit brooded over it. Out of chaos, He brought cosmos. Out of wildness, He brought this marvelous system of the worlds. He brooded over death and brought forth life.

He brooded over the virgin, a little girl that hardly anyone noticed, going up the street. I've often thought of the little virgin Mary going up the street pregnant. People were suspicious. "Did you know about her?" Do you know with whom she's keep company? Do you know how far along she is?" They didn't think that they were passing the Creator of the Universe in that little woman! So near to her, and yet they never recognized it. They never knew it. That's like a lot of people who go to church. They get within touching distance of Jesus and they never touch Him. They just go year after year, week after week, and never touch Him.

The Holy Spirit came and did that miracle in Mary. He brooded over her and brought forth the most amazing Creature that this world will ever know. Wesley says, "God was contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man." Here is the One that the heaven of heavens cannot contain, and He's shut up in a little womb of a woman. He made all the food in the world, and yet He has to sustain His life from His mother's breasts. He own the world. He made it. Yet He never owned a stick in it. He owns all things, and yet He never had a dime.

But after He brooded over the universe, after He brooded over the virgin, He brooded over a bunch of men in an upper room. They weren't all geniuses by a long way. A lot of them were cowards. Yet now they went streaming forth in the power of the Holy Spirit.

I've puzzled over this again today. We're supposed to have about 50 million people in America today filled with the Holy Spirit, manifesting gifts. Yet nobody knows we're here!  There were only 120 in the upper room, and they turned a nation upside down! What's the difference between their baptism and ours? Tell me!

But then after the creation, after the miracle of the birth of Jesus, after the men in the upper room, then you have this wonderful Word of God, "Holy men of God wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit."

I heard a local preacher saying not too long ago that the story of Jonah is a fish story. Well, sure it is! It isn't about a donkey, is it? But he meant that there's something a bit fishy about it. That's not true! Does he deny the word of Jesus? A man that denies scripture should renounce his job and go sell hamburgers! If he came in as a fundamental believer and becomes a literal, he should get out through the back door! I'd fire him if I had any power over that guy.

But here we have the Holy Spirit of God creating through all kinds of men. A man that climbs trees and gathers up sycamore fruit. A man with colossal intellect, like Paul, at the other end of the time. A shepherd like David. A wise man like Solomon. And yet the wonder of this Book is that it is so indestructible. Men have burned it, banned it, blamed it. I believe it's Tennyson who has a poem that says, "Men may come. Men may go. But I go on forever." Well, the Word of God is like that.

~Leonard Ravenhill~

(continued with # 5)

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