Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate.  Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach.  For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.

 
 
 

Going to Jesus

Daily Thoughts

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Thought for the Evening
11-06

TOO COMFORTED

From a testimony by Uncle Joe in a meeting at Grandma’s house, 1970
Taken from Gary’s Reel #9, CD #28b, Track 5

The night before his execution at the hands of the Romans, Jesus tried to console his disciples by telling them that, even though he was going away, he would send them “another Comforter”. He knew how alone and afraid they would feel when he was gone. He knew that they would receive the Comforter because they would be so distressed that nothing of earth would be able to comfort them. When our hearts are bruised to a certain extent, when our brokenness reaches a certain point, there is nothing anybody can do to help and there is no pleasure or possession on earth that can relieve the burden.

People who partook of the great outpouring of the holy Ghost in America in the early part of the last century used to speak of the spiritual labor of “praying through” to the blessing of God. They knew what it meant to be overcome with a desire for righteousness that consumed them until God poured out relief from heaven. I have heard modern “name-it-and-claim-it” ministers mock the notion of “praying through” to anything in Christ, telling congregations to simply lay claim on what they want from God and that laboring in prayer for anything was unbelief, not faith. One such fool, a world-renowned Christian teacher, even condemned the apostle Paul for asking God three times to remove his “thorn in the flesh” (2Cor. 12:8), saying that Paul was wrong to ask more than once, that he should have merely claimed that the thorn was gone.

The only people who follow after such foolish ministers as that are they whose desire for the God of all truth is so low that they can be comforted by lies. Their thirst for righteousness has not yet reached the level where only the holy Ghost can quench it.

In that little home prayer meeting, so long ago now, Uncle Joe summarized the situation by saying it this way: “People are too satisfied [comforted by earthly things] to pray through to the holy Ghost.”

If there is anything you need from God that you know you do not have, pray that He will make your condition so bad that you finally “pray through” to your answer. There is a real experience of deliverance from every affliction, spiritual and physical, that you can have if you hunger and thirst for it so much that nothing on earth can comfort you.

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