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The God Who Is Enough
Published in the GOLDEN GRAIN - Volume 31  - Number 4  -  September, 1956

Charles S. Price 

 THE WORD needs revelation! It needs the unfolding of the Spirit! No man can rightly read the Word of the Lord unless the Author of that Word interprets its meaning to his heart. It certainly cannot be grasped intellectually; nor can it be understood by the finite mind, even though we use all the powers of our reason and apply to it all our human judgment. The spirit of man cannot assimilate and under stand the things which pertain to God, but it is the God within us Who unfolds and unveils, Who reveals according to the measure of our surrender and our willingness to receive. In adding to our head knowledge some of the truth of Biblical statement, we do not have the Truth which makes us free!

 How many of us try to come. to the Lord along paths in which He is not to be found. We try to bargain with Him. We attempt to make deals with Him and tell Him that we will do this if He will do that. We can sit at a desk and study. We can apply ourselves to reading the Word in much the same spirit as we used to sit at our school desks, grappling with algebra or memorizing dates in history, but it is the ministry of the Holy Spirit to take the things of Christ and reveal them unto us! "The Spirit  Himself bears witness with our spirit" and without this we have nothing of spiritual value.

 We should learn to walk in the "NOW" of God! We need not look back at yesterday for a pattern by which to shape our conduct today. Was it not yesterday that we were babes in Christ and would we not continue to remain babes as long as we attempted to pattern our lives after the experiences of the past! Maturity demands that we put aside the playthings of yesterday and enter into that holy relationship in which we receive power to become SONS OF GOD! 

The Nature of God

 It is only as the nature of God is within us that the Lord will express Himself. Involuntarily we try to force God to approach us through the avenues of our reason. Has not everything else come to us that way! Why then, think we, should not this be the mode of entrance for spiritual things? Is it any wonder we so often fail!

 Can we not see that we, ourselves, are in the way when we attempt to bring in the things which pertain to our Heavenly Father through the channels which have been so cluttered up with the filthiness of flesh and the depravity of human thinking? Spiritual light and  understanding do not and will not come that way! It is only along the paths of a yielded and surrendered spirit, down the highway of a life which leans not to its own understanding but in all its ways acknowledges HIM, that His Presence is manifest and the loveliness of His grace makes glad the heart!

 There are two realms. There is the natural and the spiritual, the human and the divine, a realm of reason and the Kingdom of God. Bringing it down to ourselves, we can say that one is flesh and the other is spirit. We read in Weymouth's translation of a portion of the eighth chapter of Romans:

 "Our lives are regulated not by our earthly, but by our spiritual natures. For if men are controlled by their earthly natures, they give their minds to earthly things. If they are controlled by their spiritual natures, they give their minds to spiritual things. Because for the mind to be given up to earthly things means death; but for it to be given up to spiritual things means Life and peace. Abandonment to earthly things is a state of enmity to God. Such a mind does not submit to God's Law, and indeed cannot do so. And those whose hearts are absorbed in earthly things can not please God . . . Therefore, brethren, it is not to our lowest natures that we are under obligation that we should live by their rule. For if you so live, death is near; but if through being under the sway of the Spirit, you are putting your old bodily habits to death, you will live! "For those who are led by God's Spirit are, all of them, God's Sons. You have not for the second time acquired the consciousness of being slaves, a consciousness which fills you with terror. But you have acquired a deep, inward conviction of having been adopted as sons, a conviction which prompts us to cry aloud, "Abba! our Father!" Romans 8:4-16 Weymouth.

 We may look at the Cross and acknowledge God's love for us; but all too few of us know the power of God's love in us! Wonderful, indeed, it is to contemplate His love for us; but it is joy beyond compare to know the power of His love revealed within us. To know of it is one thing, but to possess it is another! How well I remember a man who was a prolific writer in theological realms. He was an acknowledged student and his books were received both far and near. One day he stood in my presence with tears coursing down his cheeks, crying from the depths of his innermost being, "0, that I might know HIM and the power of His Resurrection!"
 

To Live in Us

 Jesus did not come to give us a system by which we could live. HE CAME TO LIVE IN OUR SYSTEM! He came to be our LIFE! He did not come to touch our minds and "make us capable of understanding" the truth of God. He came to incarnate HIMSELF as the embodiment of Truth within us! Living within us, with the passing of the days, the unfolding of the Person, the Presence and the Power of the Heavenly Father would become so real and vital that we would know Truth w as too vast to be clothed with verbiage and circumscribed by our definitions!

 We can know Truth that we cannot define! To reveal Himself to us, there must be a oneness of nature (SPIRIT) and therein is found a mutual speech! He does not confer with "the language of this world." The Cross was only the beginning! Our regeneration was only the start! We do not "grow" in Salvation; nor does Salvation grow in us! Only as we yield to HIM is Salvation manifested, as He walks in us! When that is done, we find that HE IS ENOUGH! Enough for every testing! Enough for every problem and every question! We do not have to go any farther. HE IS ENOUGH!

The Revelation

 In the early hours of the morning, how sweetly Jesus was revealed to my heart as I was led to look into the Concordant version. There in the Greek I found the words: "Enough" and "enoughness" and suddenly they burned in my spirit like a holy flame! Then I read again, "not that we are enough of ourselves to think anything of ourselves, but our enoughness is of God!" That is sufficient. He is enough. Dare I put my poor, human wisdom against His "enoughness" and try to grapple with it, refusing to allow Him to live His Life in me on the ground that I cannot understand? Is He not His own interpreter? Will He not prove Himself in multitudinous ways as He walks in us over the paths toward the House of many mansions! It was for this He redeemed us; not primarily to make us Christian men, but to make us HABITATIONS FOR CHRIST! To so indwell us that we become the TEMPLES OF THE LIVING GOD!

 In the last analysis, if the world was to be reached, it was not to be through our ministry for Him, but through HIS MINIS TRY IN US! That has been our mistake. We have tried to do it! We have become enthusiastic and sincerely prayed, "Lord bless our efforts!" We have planned and then asked the Lord to bless our plan! We have made our decisions and then asked the Lord to let His Spirit rest upon them. 'Would it not be sweeter to let HIM make the decision (let Him be the author of our thoughts) and then we shall not have to get down and "pray all night" for Him to bless and to energize the decision. Instead, His blessing would flow unhindered and unhampered through our yielded, surrendered spirit, making "the wilderness" rejoice and blossom as the rose, and the desert places sing for joy!

Lord, Thou Remains

When from my life the old-time joys have vanished,
Treasures once mine I may no longer claim,
This truth may feed my hungry heart, and famished;
Lord, Thou remains! Thou art still the same!
 

When strength has failed and feet now worn and weary, 
On glad some errands may no longer go;
Why should I sigh or let the days be dreary?
Lord, Thou remains! Could Thou more bestow?
 

Thus, through life's days, who'ere or what may fail me, 
Friends, friendships, joys in small or great degree;
Songs may be mine, no sadness need assail me,
Lord, Thou remains! Still my heart has THEE!
 

 On the day of Pentecost, the disciples did not seek power. They did not go there to receive gifts from God. They did not wait before the Lord to have an ordination of authority. They were not waiting for some diploma of power or prestige! What happened on the day of Pentecost was that GOD CLOTHED HIMSELF WITH THE DISCIPLES! They surrendered and He was enthroned! They yielded and HE ASSUMED AUTHORITY! He clothed Himself with them!

 From that moment it was HIS MINISTRY not theirs. When Peter and John went into the temple to pray, it was the CHRIST IN THEM Who spoke to thc lame man at the Beautiful Gate. When the theologians, full of good works and zealous of their knowledge, looked at the miracle they could not deny, they immediately began to attribute the power to Peter and John; but how quickly did those Spirit-filled men repudiate that! "Why look ye on us as though by our power we have done this?" They knew the secret! They knew the truth that made the world stagger on its very foundation!

 The world thought that Jesus was crucified, dead and buried. The disciples knew that He was dwelling in them! They were not merely doing the will of God. They WERE the will of God! They had not merely received something from Him. They were experiencing the power that was in HIM! 0, sweet, sublime, and glorious truth! Wonder of wonders! Marvel of grace and infinite depth of redeeming love! They came across a needy man at the Beautiful Gate and found that GOD WAS ENOUGH! It was not their power; it was the ENOUGHNESS OF GOD which brought deliverance to the man at the gate.

His Rest

 They stopped struggling in the Upper Room and started LETTING! People sometimes ask, "How can I accomplish this?" You can't! That is the beauty of it and the glory of it. It is not accomplishment; it is a matter of surrender. It is not you doing for HIM. It is HE doing in you! How wonderful it is to come to the place where we say, "I can't," and hear Him say, "I can!"

 What a deliverance it is, at the end of our struggling, when we have found nothing but failure and disillusionment, to come to the place where we can say, "I have no faith!" It is then He becomes the answer when He says to us, "But I have!" And is it not HIS FAITH that He manifests in us! It is not faith IN Him; but the faith OF Him that moves mountains! The first is struggle and endeavor. The second is peace!

 HE is ENOUGH! Certainly we are not enough in ourselves, nor could we ever be, though we were to live ten million lives! Into what a sorry plight our intellectualism has led us. Whether the world knows it or not, this is the END OF THE REIGN OF MAN! He has had the government for six thousand years; but now he is through. Our Heavenly Father is taking over, and this is the hour of preparation before the fullness of the manifestation!

 No longer should any of us be praying, "Oh, Lord, give me the power!" Instead we should be praying "OH LORD, HERE IS MYSELF!" We should not be struggling, trying to take the wicked ways out of our hearts and the wicked thoughts out of our minds. We cannot! We are not enough. BUT HE IS! He will drive the money-changers out of the temple, which we are. And the thing which we have tried to do for ourselves, HE WILL PERFECT IN US!

 HE is our wisdom! There is no wisdom on earth comparable to the wisdom that is BORN from ABOVE. His is the wisdom that never fails! Have we not been putting the cart before the horse; when, in our praying for things, we should have been opening our lives to HIM! Hundreds of people have said, "I wonder why He does not answer. Do you think it is anything in my life?" But the deepest bewilderment's are those that are never uttered; and the most profound perplexities are the ones which we never let out of our hearts. If we opened our hearts a little more and ADMITTED HIM, we would find the Answer!

 Many are willing to seek "power" but only a few, it seems, are willing to RECEIVE HIM! I do not mean nominally. I mean as the KING of the Kingdom Within, as LORD of their lives; as the GUIDE and ADMINISTRATOR, the SOURCE of all we are and shall be!

 "Lift up your heads, 0 ye gates; and be ye lifted up, ye ever lasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.

 Lift up your heads, 0 ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in!"

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Friday February 10, 2023 05:03 PM -0500