Question: What is the cause of poverty in the life of a Christian?
Answer: In Revelation 3 the Lord said, "I know ... thou art ... poor." These words were addressed by Him to the church in Laodicea. The poverty here referred to implied that nothing had been laid up in store. It implied not merely a momentary lack, but a continuous lack.
Many Christians eke out a hand-to-mouth existence. This is a serious problem. They are dependent on temporary supplies of grace; they have no permanent supply. God's work in our lives is wholly a work of grace, and if He removed His grace from us our lives would be an utter void. This is a fact which we need to recognize. Nevertheless, it is also a fact that God's grace should be ever increasingly stored up in our lives; otherwise we shall be dependent on special gracious interventions in order to be kept in His will. It is not well-pleasing to Him if His children live from hand to mouth. He desires us to have a rich store of grace in our lives.
Many people have no such store, and for that reason the Lord has told us to fast and pray. When on a certain occasion the disciples asked Him why they were unable to cast out the demon that tormented a child, He told them that their impotence could only be overcome by prayer and fasting. Unless we discipline ourselves strictly we shall become dependent on special dispensations of grace. If we have just newly come to the Lord, that is not an abnormal condition; but if after we have been His for a year or two we are still dependent on such experiences, it indicates a state of poverty and sickness.
Wealth is the reverse of poverty. To be spiritually wealthy is to have a reserve of grace. There is no poverty in a life in which the grace of God has been stored up over the years. Poverty is banished by an overplus of grace.
The other day a few of us talked together about Paul's epistles to the Corinthians. For my part I believe that in those epistles more than anywhere else in the entire New Testament we get a revelation of the life of a Christian. Here the man, Paul, is set before us. In his letter to the Romans he unfolds the depths of saving grace, and in his letter to the Ephesians he brings forth the profoundest revelation; but when he writes to the Corinthians we are able to make his personal acquaintance, for he opens up his heart and speaks intimately about himself.
Many people cannot minister the Word of God apart from special revelation. If at any given time they have no fresh revelation, then their ministry comes to a standstill, because revelation is the source of all their utterance. That we need revelation if we are to have uttered ministry is a fact; but please bear this fact also in mind that revelation is not given us in unbroken continuity. It was not so in the case of the twelve apostles. And it was not so even in the case of such a man as Paul. In a certain instance he himself said, "I have no commandment of the Lord," yet despite that fact he continued to minister. He dared to utter what he himself believed without having any fresh word from the Lord. This is an amazing thing. He himself explains the ground on which he dared to minister at that time: "I give my judgment as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful." Paul distinctly says that he was expressing his own judgment. He was not uttering what had been given him at that specific time, but was simply giving his own opinion on the matter which was then brought before him. What a terrific thing to do! Over the centuries theologians have questioned these utterances of Paul's, but Paul knew what he was saying. He dared at times to express himself on spiritual matters without immediate revelation. To speak under such circumstances would have been presumption on the part of others, but there was no presumption on Paul's part. Christians who have only received grace enough to meet the immediate need have to refrain from utterance till they receive some definite word from the Lord. But in Paul's case it was not so. The secret is this, that over the years there had been a ceaseless increase of the grace of God in his life.
In Paul we meet a man who affirms, and repeatedly affirms, that he has received no commandment from the Lord to speak (1 Cor. 7:6, 12, 25), and still he speaks. And finally, when he has said all he has to say on the matter under consideration, he still states that he is expressing his own judgment. But he concludes with this remark "I think that I also have the Spirit of God," (1 Cor. 7:40).
The most precious thing here is that though Paul was not consciously speaking the Word of God, he was all the while under the control of the Holy Spirit and was spontaneously expressing the mind of God. Some Christians are so ready to affirm that the Spirit is moving them to say this or that. They are so conscious that what they are uttering is God's Word. I fear such Christians betray their poverty. A wealthy Christian, out of the abundance of grace in his life, can speak the mind of God without the overweening consciousness of being God's mouthpiece. A wealthy Christian does not necessarily wait for something new and then, aware of having received it, speak as an oracle. But a Christian who has amassed no wealth over the years is afraid of speaking without the consciousness that what he is uttering has come to him then and there from God.
Paul was a man who had divine revelation, but when we meet him we touch something in a human life that was not imparted by revelation alone. For years he had followed the Lord, and for years he had not given way to sin nor even countenanced defeat; and over all those years his spiritual wealth was being continuously increased. So in the course of time it came to pass that when he was faced with a need he could immediately speak the word that met the need. What an unveiling we get of the spiritual development of a human life as Paul opens his heart in the letters to the Corinthians! He tells us that he is only expressing his own judgment without specific revelation from the Lord, and yet we discover that what he has uttered is actually divine revelation to the Church. Here is a man who is speaking his own words, and they are recorded in the Bible as the Word of God. Here we see the lofty heights to which, under the new covenant, the grace of God can bring a man. Here is a human life that has been wrought upon by God over the years. God has been ceaselessly molding this life and purifying it till at length something has been wrought into the man's very constitution.
This is wealth. And this is the result of unremitting divine activity in a human life over long years of time. This did not come about by gifts of special grace on special occasions.
It is a great grief to me that I frequently meet brothers and sisters who are so dependent on special spiritual experiences that between the periodic help such experiences bring they lapse into a life like that of a non-Christian. What a poverty-stricken state this reveals! I acknowledge that if God's grace were removed from us we should all be utterly destitute; but while that is true, it is also true that there is a ceaseless operation of His grace which, if responded to, works something into our very being. Apart from inwrought grace in the life you will give way under trial. If you are spiritually poor you are found out when your prayers seem to go unheeded, when the heavens above are as brass and when everything seems to prove that God has forsaken you; and though you can get a temporary lift from church gatherings or other means of grace, you live a life of defeat in between such seasons. If, on the other hand, you have day by day gathered a store of wealth over the years, you are sustained under trial, however protracted.
Question: How can we become wealthy?
Answer: This is a question of fundamental importance.
Permit me to say a very straight word to you younger brothers. You may think you are already rich, but none of you are really wealthy. Formerly we were of the opinion that some of the young people were ahead of the older ones spiritually; but recently in Foochow when we touched on deeper matters we discovered that many of the finest young folk had little experimental knowledge. May I appeal to you younger fellow-workers to remember that as yet you have not laid in store any great riches? Do not therefore be proud. To be proud is sheerest folly. You must realize that a long stretch of road has still to be covered before you reach that goal. And the goal will only be reached as you allow the Holy Spirit day by day to perform a work in your lives that will reconstitute and establish you. Time is a matter of primary importance here.
There are many people who, despite the passage of years, have accumulated no riches because they have not passed through trials under the government of the Holy Spirit. Some Christians can go on day by day for years on end without coming in any definite way under the Spirit's control. They seem to go through life so easily. But other Christians are taken in hand and not let off, and all their circumstances are strongly governed by the Spirit of God. Some Christians gain little with the passage of time because they meet comparatively few difficulties. Even though there has been sufficient lapse of time to learn spiritual lessons, there has not been sufficient discipline in the life to produce spiritual wealth. Let us prize every circumstance into which we are brought, and let us not be dismayed by whatever difficulties we meet, for they are all ordered for our enrichment. The more trouble we encounter the more opportunity there is for spiritual increase in the life; and only thus shall we be able to bring the Word of Life to others. Wealth of ministry in the Word will be in proportion to the trials through which we have passed. We can only dispense to the children of God what we have gained by experience. We can only impart to them what we have actually learned from God Himself. This can never be acquired through doctrinal knowledge; but it can be acquired as we are led by the Holy Spirit through circumstances divinely ordered for our instruction.
Therefore I hope that we who are learning to follow the Lord will not be slack in our daily life. In all the disappointments and disillusionments we meet, let us recognize the Lord's dealings with us and bow before Him in gratitude and worship, acknowledging that His purpose in all these things is to enrich our lives.
A certain brother thought himself to be quite strong in faith till he fell ill. That trial disclosed to him how weak his faith was, but in the acceptance of the trial he began to learn what it really means to trust the Lord. Unless we meet difficulties we do not discover our need and do not learn simple dependence on Him and simple obedience to Him. Each time you meet a new difficulty just bow before the Lord and thank Him for the preciousness of the opportunity to learn something more of Him. Every outward frustration is an opportunity for inward gain. And as you receive all these God-given opportunities, His grace will abound more and more toward you till you have a wealth of ministry for His Church. Oh, do not be deceived into thinking that by dint of much study you will be able to minister the Word richly. You may enrich your utterance thereby; but wealth of words can never be a substitute for spiritual wealth, and spiritual wealth can never be acquired from books. Much study may add to your intellectual knowledge, and you can think you are rich, but your very wealth of words will betray your poverty of spirit. Spiritual wealth comes only in God's appointed way. We must pass through much suffering to gain it.
It is not only essential that we pass through many trials over many days; it is equally essential that there be a clear issue in our lives. We must come through our trials to a place of finality. The Bible makes it abundantly plain that God deals with a life and will not let it go till He has brought it through to an issue. In His dealings with Job He allowed all his oxen and asses to be carried off, but that did not bring Job through to God's goal. Thereafter the sheep and the shepherds were all consumed by fire, and Job was still not through; nor even when all his sons and daughters died. He did not even emerge from his trials when he was covered with "sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown." But a day came when his lips were silenced in utter subjection to God, and Job's trials issued in final triumph. James in his epistle refers to this as "the end of the Lord." Here we see that the question is not one of the number of our trials, but of the Lord reaching His end through them.
There is a solemn fact to be borne in mind here. We cannot pass through limitless trials. There is the possibility of wasted time and wasted suffering while God seeks to gain His end in our lives. It is tragically possible that all His dealings with us will fail to secure a vessel suited to His use. The clay may be molded and remolded in the Potter's hands and may pass through the fire again and again; and in the end there may be nothing but useless fragments. But our hope is that the time factor being provided by God, and the trials being appointed by Him, the issue will be "a vessel unto honour, sanctified, meet for the master's use."
Job not only passed through many trials, but a day came when there was a new activity of God in his life, and that divine activity wrought a fundamental change in the man. God's object in all His dealings with us is not merely to dispense His life to us to meet the emergency of the hour; He wants to remake us by His indwelling life. It is a fact that the old creation cannot be changed and has therefore been consigned to the Cross, and it is also a fact that we now have the new creation life within us. But this further fact is taught by the Word of God that, by putting this new life within man, God has made it possible for man to be transformed. Man can be changed, changed constitutionally. There is a difference between Christian and non-Christian not only in this respect that the Christian possesses the divine life and the non-Christian does not, but in this further respect that, because of the activity of the divine life within the Christian, his very being is altered. A change takes place when one human being lives for a time with another human being. Since that is so, it would be an astonishing thing for anyone to live with God and no change to take place in his life with the passing of time.
It is this fundamental change that we long to see in all who have received the divine life. We hope that day by day through the indwelling Spirit of God a ceaseless transformation will be taking place so that we may become of use to Him and have something to impart to others. We are not just looking for increased knowledge of the Word of God. And now that we have considered the life of Paul, we trust we shall not only know more about Paul, but that like him we shall learn to follow the Lord Himself and shall thus be enabled to serve Him and to serve others by ministering His Word to them.
And now, finally, let us consider the matter of inward illumination. A Christian who is spiritually rich is one who is greatly enlightened in spirit. What has been learned day by day over a period of time has taken clear shape in the life and can be expressed in words that bring enrichment to other lives. It is in this way that we become competent ministers of the Word of God. Often when we are under His hand we are too bewildered to understand what is happening to us, but when He has brought His dealings with us to an issue there is inward clarity. By the acceptance of His dealings with us we have been matured in faith and obedience, and so that needful thing has taken place in our lives of which Revelation 3 speaks: "I counsel thee to buy of me eye-salve that thou mayest see."
Question: Is this enlightenment of which you speak different from revelation?
Answer: Yes, it is different. This light comes through revelation, but it is not just external light, it is inward light. What hinders the breaking of light within is failure to obey.
Question: Swift obedience is a matter of receiving swiftly from the hands of the Lord whatever He sends, is it not?
Answer: Yes, that is true. But here I think it is necessary for us to understand the government of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit not only operates in the believer making His demands within the life; He operates in outward circumstances too, suiting the circumstances of the believer to the goal He has in view. Even if there be resistance in the life, the Spirit of God will order circumstances in such a way as to attain His own goal in the life, and by His sovereign ordering of circumstances will bring that life to unswerving obedience. He will work until a point is reached in the life when, without any determination on the part of the believer to obey, he instinctively obeys. If some of you who have been the Lord's for a long time cast a glance over your past history, you will be able to recall occasions when He spoke and you obeyed instantly. But you can recall other occasions when He spoke and you failed to respond; yet strangely, after a time you just found yourself in a way of obedience. At certain times you may have put up a resistance to the Lord's will and may have persisted in this resistance; then somehow - quite unaccountably - you found the resistance had gone. Such is the fruit of the Holy Spirit's government of our lives. Praise God, if His Spirit is handling these lives of ours, even if we seem totally unable to obey and cannot even exercise faith, a day comes when the resistance has vanished and we are trusting the Lord in simplicity of heart. It is the tireless energy of the Holy Spirit that has accomplished this. He has resource to work in us the obedience we lack.
There are two aspects of the Spirit's government. The one is, to order our affairs in such a way that through His circumstantial dealings with us we come to a point where we offer our willing obedience. The other is that, even when we have no intention to obey, His activity in our lives makes good what we lack so that, despite our unwillingness, we become obedient.
A certain brother was bound by the love of money. The Spirit of God dealt with him again and again, but he only chafed under the trials that befell him and gripped his money as tightly as ever. But the fact is, his love of money is gone. How this happened even he himself does not know. One day he asked me: "Which do you think is better, to be obedient and lose your love of money, or to be disobedient and lose it?" I answered, "That money has lost its attraction for you is the thing that matters. How that came about is of little account." Nevertheless, let us seek grace of God to be swiftly obedient. That will obviate needless chastisement and bring us speedily through. In either case, the activity of the Holy Spirit is exceedingly precious.
Question: How can we obey swiftly?
Answer: When the Holy Spirit of God moves within us, obedience is instant, when He works by outward means, it takes time to achieve His end. In the latter case He deals with the unwillingness that hinders His work till the necessary inner change takes place and resistance gives way.
How can we, being what we are, ever reach God's goal? How can we ever attain so lofty a standard as that set before us in chapters 4 and 5 of the Ephesian epistle? What hope is there that we shall ever "attain unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ"? What hope is there that the Church will ever become "a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing"? There is this hope - the Holy Spirit is ceaselessly active to bring us to God's goal, and He is not only moving within the life of the believer; He is ordering the outward affairs of the believer making all conducive to the one end.
The government of the Holy Spirit is a great reality. There are many things in our lives that militate against the purpose of God, some of which we seem totally unable to throw off; and yet a day comes when we find they are gone. The providential ordering of our ways has brought this about. What a gospel this is! What a marvelous thing it is that the Christian can reckon with the government of God's Holy Spirit to make good what he lacks!
This work was originally published without copyright by The Stream Publishers.
