"Work out your own Salvation with fear and trembling," Writes Paul to the Philippians, "for it is God that worketh in both to will and to work, for His good pleasure."
God is working it in; work it out!! That is the secret. But until we are willing for God to work in it, it is useless for us to try to work it out.
Often we try to be meek and gentle without knowing what it means to let God work in us the meekness and gentleness of Christ. We try to show love, and finding we have none, we ask the Lord for love. Then we are surprised that He does not seem to give it to us.
Let me give an example; Perhaps there is a certain brother whom you find very trying, nobody can relate to that right?!! smile, and with whom you are constantly getting into difficulties. Whenever you meet him he says or does something calculated to arouse in you resentment. This troubles you. You say: "I am a Christian and ought to love him! I want to love him; indeed I am determined to love him!"
Then, taking a firm grip on yourself and summoning all your will power, you set out with a genuine desire to display to him that love for which you have prayed. But alas, when you get into his presence something happens to bring all your good intentions to nought. His response to you is not in the least encouraging but rather the reverse, and immediately your old resentment flares up; and once again the utmost you can do is be polite to him. ...Why is this?
You were surely not wrong in seeking that love from God. No, but you were wrong in seeking that love as something in itself, a kind of package commodity, when what God desires is to express thru you the love of His Son.
God Has given us Christ. There is nothing now for us to receive outside of Him. The Holy Spirit has been sent to produce what is of Christ in us; not to produce anything that is apart from or outside of Him. We are ..."strengthened with power thru His Spirit in the inward man;...to know the love of Christ." [Eph. 3:16, 19].
What we show outwardly is what God has first put within.
God is working it in; work it out!! That is the secret. But until we are willing for God to work in it, it is useless for us to try to work it out.
Often we try to be meek and gentle without knowing what it means to let God work in us the meekness and gentleness of Christ. We try to show love, and finding we have none, we ask the Lord for love. Then we are surprised that He does not seem to give it to us.
Let me give an example; Perhaps there is a certain brother whom you find very trying, nobody can relate to that right?!! smile, and with whom you are constantly getting into difficulties. Whenever you meet him he says or does something calculated to arouse in you resentment. This troubles you. You say: "I am a Christian and ought to love him! I want to love him; indeed I am determined to love him!"
Then, taking a firm grip on yourself and summoning all your will power, you set out with a genuine desire to display to him that love for which you have prayed. But alas, when you get into his presence something happens to bring all your good intentions to nought. His response to you is not in the least encouraging but rather the reverse, and immediately your old resentment flares up; and once again the utmost you can do is be polite to him. ...Why is this?
You were surely not wrong in seeking that love from God. No, but you were wrong in seeking that love as something in itself, a kind of package commodity, when what God desires is to express thru you the love of His Son.
God Has given us Christ. There is nothing now for us to receive outside of Him. The Holy Spirit has been sent to produce what is of Christ in us; not to produce anything that is apart from or outside of Him. We are ..."strengthened with power thru His Spirit in the inward man;...to know the love of Christ." [Eph. 3:16, 19].
What we show outwardly is what God has first put within.