Open Windows

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. (Hebrews 12:7 NIV)

The Lord may get you off activities and shut you up to inactivity, and you go through an awful time and say the Lord has forsaken you, all has gone wrong. What really is it? Why, it is growing pains! Has it not proved to be growing pains? In the long run it was not all wrong, it was all right. You came to know the Lord whereas...

He opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. (Luke 24:45 NIV)

As we contemplate the state of things in the world today, we are very deeply impressed and oppressed with the prevailing malady of spiritual blindness. It is the root malady of the time. We should not be far wrong if we said that most, if not all, of the troubles from which the world is suffering, are traceable to that root, namely,...

The Spirit alone gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing. (John 6:63 NLT)

It is one thing to have aconception or apprehension of the purpose of God, and to be givenup to it, but it is an extra thing to know how God would realizeHis purpose. It is still another thing to know the means He wouldemploy. There are many who have a true conception of what God'spurpose is, but the means which they employ are not...

Our sufficiency is from God. (2 Corinthians 3:5)

We go through times of trial and test under the hand of God, and it is so easy to get into that frame of mind which says in effect, 'The Lord does not want us, He need not have us!' We let everything go, we do not care about anything; we have gone down under our trials and we are rendered useless. I do not believe the Lord ever comes to a person like that to take them...

My God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19 ESV)

God has assumed the responsibility of a Father, and has taken up those responsibilities to meet them in and through His Son. The enlargement of that in Christian utterance is found in Philippians 4:19. This means Christ recognized, Christ known, God in Christ, and that on the ground of our utter separation...

The Lord disciplines the one He loves, and He chastens everyone He accepts as His son. (Hebrews 12:6 NIV)

What is the purpose of sonship? It is to bring us into a place of spiritual responsibility. God never puts responsibilities upon ‘official people,’ but upon sons. Therefore He has to train us as children in order to develop sonship in us, to bring us there where we can take responsibilities for God. He seeks to...

When He... was pleased to reveal His Son to me... I did not immediately consult with anyone. (Galatians 1:15,16 ESV)

I do not know what the apostles might have said if Paul had gone to see them, but seeing that they had not had the revelation that he had had and they had not the call that he had (theirs was not an apostleship to the Gentiles), they might have counseled moderation and cautiousness. They might have told...

The fire will test the quality of each person’s work. (1 Corinthians 3:13 NIV)

I have no doubt that you love the Lord. I am not raising any question about that. But, I do say again, we are involved in a great system which is a very complicated thing, and a great deal of it is not of the Lord. It is something that man has brought in. Man has put his hand upon the things of the Lord, and man has made ...

We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. (2 Corinthians 1:8 ESV)

The Lord Jesus said "I am the true Vine," and it was prophesied of Him that He would tread the winepress alone. The Cross was His winepress. How He was pressed in the Cross! He was crushed and broken, but out of that breaking has come the Life which you and I have, and which so many in all the nations have...

But the natural (soulical) man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. (1 Corinthians 2:14)

When you look at 1 Corinthians what a lot of soulicalism there is: this wisdom of words, this wisdom of the world, these likes and these dislikes and preferences and partialities and antipathies, and then their jealousies. That is no good on this foundation. Do not bring your own soul-life into relationship with...

We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

The word 'beholding' is a strong word; it is not just taking a look, it is 'fixing our gaze.' That is what the New Testament means by beholding, behold. We all, fixing our gaze upon Christ, as He mirrors in His own Person the glory of God, the...

I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:12)

The certainty and the assurance that was right at the root of his Christian life and service came because of this one thing: he'd seen everything in Jesus. Everything... in Jesus. What liberation that brought to him! What emancipation! We have often said here that there was no power...

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1 NIV)

There is another word, which just means that which has escaped from slavery and is breathing free air. That is a fine picture, a fine portrait for Overcomers – that which has escaped from slavery and is breathing free air. I dare not stay to interpret...

Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. (Zechariah 4:6)

Does it not strike you assignificant, and very impressive, that when the veil was rentIsrael was set aside? Israel had been called in to maintain atestimony in types. Christ had come and fulfilled all the types,and being the center of all the types, the veil, all that keptGod shut off from man, was now dealt with, and the way was...