Christianity Oasis Forum

[Netchaplain]

With this article I have included the link to a new site (August 1) which contains the material I believe is central for the learning of the antiquated Christian writers whom I believe are well within the Biblical dispensational ideology. As many are aware, their teachings are applicable within the spiritual growth category and many are finding these teachings instructional, which is also encouraging to the believer.

It’s the “None But the Hungry Heart” daily devotional anthology from Miles J. Stanford which some are familiar with. It is also (in my opinion) the center of dispensational thought, as it contains compilations of numerous authors (circa 1700-late 1800’s), which I also believe (since studying them for the last 15 years) is a very useful avenue the Lord is using to teach His Word.

http://www.abideabove.com/hungry-heart/

God’s blessings to our Families and God be blessed above all!

--NC

Our God and Father

The love of God and the love of the Father are from the same blessed One. The love of God comes down to us in all our ruin, but the love of the Father connects us with Himself in all His own divine perfection. Let us see this difference.

In the Old Testament the name of the Father was not revealed. He was known as God Almighty and as Jehovah. Still, His love as God for His people was unbounded. He says, “He that touches you touches the apple of His eye” (Zech 2:8). Then the love of God came down to man in his lost estate while man was under trial, and the judgment of death which was on him had not been removed. There was nothing then about drawing the believer to Himself as a son to a father.

But when the Lord Jesus came, “God commended His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). He came down to us in our lost estate, and removed in the Cross the judgment that lay upon us; and until we know what the love of God has effected, and that He can receive us in love and righteousness—as the parable of the prodigal prefigures—there can be no knowledge of the Father’s love. It is only when we know Him as sons, as brought to the Father in the Lord Jesus that we can enjoy the Father’s love.

We must learn fully the love of God as come down to us, before we can rise to Him. The prodigal had not entered into the greatness of the reconciliation until he was fitted to enjoy his new relationship to his father—as in Romans 5:11, “we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation.” We get no allusion to the Father in Romans (as referring to the believer’s son-ship—NC) till we come to chapter 8; then all distance has been removed; all that descending love could accomplish we enjoy; then we come to the great fact, that led by the Spirit of God we are the sons of God; we are now in a new relationship to Him and it is in the Spirit of the Son we cry, “Abba, Father.”

Our blessed Lord’s great work was to declare the Father, not only to relieve man according to his own sense of want, but according to the fullness of the Father’s heart. My need was not the measure of His grace; in all things His love super-abounded, therefore His love is properly the measure of grace. Until you know where His grace has set you, you cannot enjoy your new relationship, nor ascend to the love of the Father.

You learn from Hebrews that the Lord Jesus’ own were drawn away from the earth, to be in association with Himself in the Holiest of All, outside of everything here; and there we know that by Him we have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Unless “His love is perfected in us,” and we know that “as He is, so are we in this world,” we cannot be consciously as the Lord Jesus before the Father, nor can we know the Father’s love as the Lord Jesus says, “The Father Himself loves you, because He loves Me.”

None can enjoy love but in the place where the loved one is. It is a great cheer and solace to the heart, when in company with the Lord Jesus, we are brought into such nearness to the Father that we can know and enjoy His love. When we are in nearness, we are not thinking of anything down here; our hearts are drawn away in the blessedness of being loved by our Father.

—J B Stoney