Much More

The Christian life is an event followed by a process. It is an experience followed by a relationship. It is a step followed by a walk. It is an act followed by an appropriation. Many a believer has stopped with the event, the experience, the step, the act, and has never gone on to maturity. He has lived a life of spiritual poverty and spiritual defeat, always under the suspicion that there was MORE.

Now, it seems, that around the world there is a contagion of desperate searching, of ravenous hunger, and of intense investigation. The waters are troubled and thousands scramble to be the first to be made whole. Many report new lives, new homes, new churches in the wake of the stirrings of the Holy Spirit. That the Spirit of God is at work is a declaration which cannot be refuted. Something is going on! In the midst of it the theologians theorize, the historians analyze, the complacent rationalize. and the suspicious criticize.

The controversy rages! Issues develop. Terminology separates. "Extremism and wildfire'" contends one school. "Deficiency and deadness" replies another. The devil delights to divide. If we are not careful our differences in approach will cause a disturbance which will dull the point of the whole matter, namely, that any person can be BORN OF THE SPIRIT, FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT, and WALK IN THE SPIRIT!

Yielding to His Lordship is like standing at the entrance of a gigantic treasure house, overwhelmed at the MUCH MORE of it all. Knowing the fullness of the Spirit is akin to the experience of standing on the shore of a boundless ocean with its waves licking at our feet. On beyond, there's more!

I am not now content to believe (nor have I ever been) that it was the plan of God that the church should begin in a flame of fire and end up in a fizzle of faithlessness. Jesus Christ is the same today! Only His earthly body has changed. It is now made up of the saved everywhere. Let that body discover the fullness of Him Who is the Head and you have the MUCH MORE of the New Testament church throbbing with the Life of her Lord.

I am delightfully aware that after the last word said and after a thousand others are written, we can still say, "Ah, but on beyond there's more ... MUCH MORE!"

The Reliable Word

Pick up a Bible. Any Bible will do. Now hold it up before your eyes. You are holding in your hand a miracle Book! Three miracles distinguish it from all the books of the world and defend it against ordinariness.

There is, first, the miracle of INSPIRATION: that work of the Spirit of God in the hearts and minds of the Scripture writers, which made their writings a record of divine revelation. That book is God-breathed! From its inception it was divine. In it is the mind of God, the way of salvation, and the revealed plan of God for man for time and eternity. It is divine in its initiation.

There is, second, the miracle of PRESERVATION: that work of the Spirit of God upon the hearts, minds, and hands of the Scripture translators, as well as upon the Scripture text itself, which guaranteed the perpetuation and protection of the original message of the Bible. Through the perils of translation and retranslation, changing times and cultures, the same Holy Spirit who breathed the original message to the first writer’s has been present to protect the text against deceit and error. So miraculously did the Holy Spirit work that the Bible has retained its impact and intent through hundreds of perilous years of translation. God did not leave the care of his Word to the hands of men alone. It is divine in its continuation.

There is, finally, the miracle of ILLUMINATION: that work of the Spirit of God upon the heart, mind, and life of the preacher, the teacher, and the student of the Word which discloses the inner meaning of the message of the Bible. No little miracle this! The same Holy Spirit which breathed the Word into the hearts of the writers and presided over its perpetuation now moves upon the preacher, teacher, and student to reveal its life-changing truths. It is divine in its communication.

Thus, you have physical, tangible, visible proof of the existence of miracles. You are holding a miracle in your hand! The Bible is miraculous in its initiation, in its continuation, and in its illumination. The Holy Spirit still guards his Word! If you doubt its miraculous nature, I challenge you to give the Holy Spirit an opportunity to speak to your heart through its contents as you read it. God’s eternal disposition regarding his Word is revealed in Jeremiah 1:12: “I will hasten my word to perform it!”

In this Book, the mind and plan of God are disclosed. It contains the plan of life for all men and all seasons and is eternal, unchanging, and complete…from eternity to eternity. The systems of man are collapsing and passing into antiquity. This should be no surprise to us. We have read the divine utterance which says, “And the world is passing away with its desires; but he that does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17).

The Bible presents the rules of eternal life. Its principles dare to cut clean across the lines of modern reason, defy the best of our system’s experts, and extol values long since claimed obsolete by this world’s intelligentsia. The Bible claims things to be precious that the world abhors and abhors things which this world holds precious.

And the remarkable thing about all this is that the world’s claims make so much sense to the reasoning mind and the Bible seems to make so little. In the thinking of the world, the Bible seems preposterous and absurd…its claims far-out! I cannot argue this. But with as much sense as the deductions of the world seem to be making, they are not working! The world is falling apart, and its systems are failing! Man is scrambling to patch up his plans but they are passing away, despite it all. They simply are not working.

But I can tell you this…I affirm that the claims of the Bible are working! Right at this moment they are working! In the lives of men and women who dare to demonstrate their faith in the trustworthiness of the Word of God, heaven is happening! It is working! Its claims, as absurd as they sound, are standing. So I give you this Book, the Bible…laughed at, challenged, doubted, scoffed at, opposed, and refused…but whose principles stand!

The Key to Triumphant Living

… The KEY, in a statement, is CHRIST IN YOU…THE HOPE OF GLORY. It is by the Holy Spirit that Christ comes to live in the human spirit, abides to master the human spirit, and continues to minister through the human spirit to a world in desperate need.

There is much emphasis today on the need of a new dynamic. A trumpet sounds out a new possibility or a new power and thousands are ready and eager to listen. There are uncertain sounds in the area of renewal which bypass or disregard the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

These sounds are destined to die out among the howling winds of human need.

“Honor the Holy Ghost!” was the plea of an old man to Dwight L. Moody in the beginning days of his evangelistic ministry. He never forgot the admonition. That movement or person which does not honor the Spirit cannot succeed. Those who honestly, scripturally, and sanely honor the Holy Spirit as He magnifies Christ cannot fail… HE IS THE KEY…LIVING IN ME…BY THE HOLY SPIRIT!

There are many ways to say it:

Hannah W. Smith calls it THE CHRISTIAN’S SECRET TO A HAPPY LIFE;

Charles Trumbull, VICTORY IN CHRIST;

Ian Thomas, THE SAVING LIFE OF CHRIST;

Stuart Briscoe, THE FULNESS OF CHRIST;

A. B. Simpson, THE LARGER LIFE;

Harold Wildish, THE GLORIOUS SECRET;

F. B. Meyer, THE EXCHANGED LIFE;

G. B. Duncan titles it THE LIFE OF CONTINUAL REJOICING:

Watchman Nee, THE NORMAL CHRISTIAN LIFE;

Ruth Paxson, LIFE ON THE HIGHEST PLANE;

and still others such as Huegel, Barbour, Maxwell, McConkey, Redpath, Hunter, Tryon, Murray, Finney, and Letgers have varying terms for what Jesus simply called LIFE MORE ABUNDANT!

This quality of life has been appropriately called the Spirit-controlled Life, the Christ-filled Life, the Overcoming Life, Life in the Heavenlies, and the Key to Everything.

Whatever it is called, it is nothing less than all of Christ…RESIDENT IN…REIGNING OVER…AND RELEASED THROUGH the human life. This is the master key. This is the KEY TO TRIUMPHANT LIVING. I do not know of a lock it doesn’t fit.

JRT

from the Introduction to The Key to Triumphant Living