“People want to know how I discovered the will of God.
The first thing was to settle once and for all the supremacy of Christ in my
life, I tell them. I put myself utterly and forever at His disposal which means
turning over all the rights: to myself, my body, my self-image, my notions of
how I am to serve my Master. Oswald Chambers calls it ‘breaking the husk of my
individual independence of God.’ Until that break comes, all the rest is ‘pious
fraud.’ But there will be deaths to die. That is the price of following the way
of the cross.” – Elisabeth Elliot.
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| "Death is the gate of life" by Lilias Trotter |
“The cross is offered to us every day in some form, at
times comparatively trivial, at other times real suffering, but it is always
something which slashes straight across our human nature, for the cross was an
instrument of torture.” – Elisabeth Elliot.
When we take up the cross, however, we discover the
abundant life – the blessed life. It is in dying to self we find our freedom in
Christ. When the husk of our independence has been loosed and broken, we are
free to serve in whatever way the Lord desires.
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| "Irises" by Lilias Trotter |
“See in these wild iris-pods how the last tiny threads
must be broken, and with that loosing, all that they have is free for God’s use
in His world around. All reluctance, all calculating, all holding in is gone;
the husks are opened wide, the seeds can shed themselves unhindered. Again and
again has a breaking come: – the seed
broke to let go the shoot – the leaf-bud broke to let go the leaf, and the
flower-bud to let go the flower – but all to no practical avail, if there is a
holding back now. ‘Love is the fulfilling of the law,’ and sacrifice is the
very life-breath of love. May God show us every withholding thread of self that
needs breaking still, and may His own touch shrivel it to death.
“Are we following His steps; are we? How the dark places
of the earth are crying out for all the powers of giving and living and loving
that are locked up in hearts at home!
“Shall we not free it all gladly? It is not grudgingly or
of necessity that the little caskets break up and scatter the seed, but with
the cheerful giving that God loves.
“It is when the sun goes out from our horizon to light up
the dayspring in far-away lands, that the glory of the day comes on: it is in
the autumn, when the harvest is gathered and the fruit is stored for the use of
man, that the glow of red and gold touches and transfigures bush and tree with
a beauty that the summer days never knew.
“So with us – The clear pure dawn of cleansing through
the Blood – the sunrise gladness of resurrection life; the mid-day light and
warmth of growth and service, all are good in their own order: but he who stops
short there misses the crown of glory, before which the brightness of former
days grows poor and cold. It is when the glow and radiance of a life delivered
up to death begins to gather: a life poured forth to Jesus and for His to
others – it is then that even the commonest things put on a new beauty, as in
the sunset, for His life becomes ‘manifest in our mortal flesh;’ a bloom comes
on the soul like the bloom on the fruit as its hour of sacrifice arrives.
“Oh, that we may learn to die to all that is of self with
this royal joyfulness that swallows up death in victory in God’s world around!
He can make every step of the path full of the triumph of gladness that glows
in the gold leaves. Glory be to His name!
“And the outcome, like the outcome of the autumn, is
this: there is, a new power set free; a power of multiplying life around. The
promise to Christ was that because He poured forth His soul unto death, He
should see His seed: and He leads His children in their little measure by the
same road. Over and over the promise of seed is linked with sacrifice, as with
Abraham and Rebecca and Ruth; those who at His bidding have forsaken all
receive an hundred-fold more now in this time, for sacrifice is God’s factor in
His work of multiplying. ‘Except a corn of wheat fall to into the ground and
die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’
“It is the poured-out life that God blesses – the life
that heeds not itself, if only other souls may be won. The reason is this: –
that into the being that is ready to let the self-life go, God the Holy Ghost
can come and dwell and work unfettered; and by that indwelling He will manifest
within us His wonderful Divine power of communicating vitality – of reproducing
the image of Jesus in souls around.” – Lilias Trotter, Parables of the Cross
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| Lilias Trotter |
“Perfect sanctification is as fully included in the word
‘salvation’ as is ‘wisdom, righteousness, or redemption.’ [Man] did not get
Christ by effort, but by faith: and when he laid hold on Christ he received all
that is in Christ. Hence, therefore, he has only to look to Jesus by faith, for
the subjugation of his lusts, passions, tempers, habits, circumstances, and
influences. He must look to Jesus for all. He can no more subdue a single lust
than he could cancel the entire catalogue of his sins, work out a perfect
righteousness, or raise the dead. ‘Christ is all and in all.’ Salvation is a
golden chain which stretches from everlasting to everlasting, and every link of
that chain is Christ. It is all Christ from first to last.” – C.H. Mackintosh
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