The Time in Which We Live

For this message, I leave it to the reader to search the writings under the New Testament.  We find there many references to days and times and seasons.  I am not taking the time to go through them here.  As is my desire, I want you to search for yourself.  As you search, the Lord Himself will begin to open His heart to yours and in turn, yours will be opened more to His.  I have found that itself to be a worthy goal of all ministry.  That men might know Him, the One who is worthy of our very lives, and the source of our very existence.  May you be continually hungry for more of Christ.  He, by His Spirit, is the bread and the wine, the daily bread and water of life.  May these words stir you to seek Him in a fresh, deep way.

I have borrowed this title from a booklet I read years ago by a man T. Austin-Sparks.  He was part of a teaching ministry called a “A Witness and A Testimony.”  Their goal and desire was that the Lord Jesus would have a true witness in the earth.  I have been built up in my inner man by that ministry.  The Lord has worked among humanity since the beginning to raise up a people who truly represent Him in the earth, and so that through His body, the church, He might put all things under His feet.  The Lord works through His church to displace principalities and powers and put them to an open shame.  The very gates of Hell shall not stand against His church.  So that is still the Lord’s purpose that in this time in which we are living, He is building His church into a dwelling place that He will fill and be welcomed in and remain.

While I may have written this before, a wonderful disciple and true servant of God has said that when Jesus Christ was raised from the dead that time ended and eternity began.  That servant is Smith Wigglesworth.  We can begin to live a heavenly life now.  Some believers have missed this and fallen into a passive state of waiting for their physical death, or the end of this age and the Lord’s full appearing.  Many of these live godly lives and have the righteousness of Christ working in them but they have missed the calling to press in to know Him as Paul wrote to the Philippians.  We often do not overtly resist the Holy Spirit but, by fear and doubt and self-centeredness, not yield full control.

I mentioned above the New Testament.  The writings under that heading are precious records of the lives of true disciples of Christ.  But those writings are not the new covenant.  The new covenant was brought in by Christ Himself.  The old failed because it was based on man following an outward law of behavior.  That law could not change a man.  Some of us need to read Paul’s letter to the Romans again.  The Lord Himself, the Living God, spoke through Jeremiah that He would make a new covenant.  I purposely did not capitalize those words.  This is about Christ Jesus and what He has accomplished.  He is the author and finisher of the covenant.  I think again of the blood of the eternal covenant and the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.  We need to maintain this heavenly perspective of His kingdom and His continued present working.

These thoughts elevate Christ to His rightful place as the source and finish of the work of God in the earth.  So Paul writes that we are dead and our lives are hidden with Christ in God.  It is no longer we that live but Christ lives in us.  That life is eternal; it can no longer die.  He spoke to John on Patmos and said, “I AM He that was dead and behold I am alive forevermore.”  His resurrected life is our only life.  That life is the life that overcomes sin, the world, and the devil.  It is the life that has authority and can dismiss demons with a word and likewise heal the sick, and raise the dead.

So what is the time in which we life?  Nothing truly new is under the sun.  For us Christ is our life and is new and fresh every morning.  It is time always to seek the Lord, to run after Him.  It is time to awake from our spiritual slumber.  It is not time for lethargy and lukewarm living.  The wonder of His grace says, if we find ourselves so, we can simply say Lord, give me eye salve, gold refined in the fire, and robes to cover the shame of our nakedness.  Read Revelation 2 and let His eyes search you and know you.  He loves you and wants to draw you closer than you have ever thought you could be.