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Growing God's Way

By Elizabeth V. Baker
    There are two great principles upon which rest all advance in the divine life. First, our utter sinfulness and helplessness, either to save
ourselves, or transform ourselves into the divine likeness. And second, the perfect ability and willingness of God to do both for every one
who will commit all into His hands and trust Him.
    First, let us look at the human side, our lost estate, and inability to recover ourselves. Sin has so blinded our eyes that sinners do not
know how far from God or righteousness they are. They do not think they deserve much condemnation, for they are so very respectable
that religion could make but little improvement.
    Of course, there are those who know they are very bad, who commit sins that even the world pronounces against, yet even then do not
know how hideous sin is in God's sight. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to bring a sense of lostness.
    In true revivals the Spirit brings a great sense of the awfulness of sin. In non-Christian lands there is a lack of moral sense. While
missionaries find it hard to impress the people with their sinfulness, in revivals the Holy Spirit in a few moments, brings it to them and
they cry out to God in desperation over their sins.
    A sinner comes to Christ and now thinks he can serve God easily and at once attempts to do it. He does not know how helpless he is,
or how unlike Christ. I had been a Christian but a short time before I had a sense I was not at all like the Lord. My nature was not the least
bit like His. If you will stop to think, you will see yours is not. Everything about us is unlike God. Nature has so turned to self from God,
and we have become so used to selfishness, we do not realize how deep it is. We often want God's blessing for our advancement, and
the Holy Spirit for our own satisfaction. We do not understand how little like Jesus Christ we are.
    I have an idea that the incarnation was in part to show us how different from ours His life was as He worked and lived among men. He
was so easy to be entreated. The woman from the street could go to Him and wash His feet with her tears. He never turned from any one
but hypocrites.
    His was such a wonderful life of gentleness and dependence upon the Father. People are so independent, they do not like to take
advice from another. This is in every human soul. Jesus Christ did not seem to be like that at all. He had no independent spirit. He
recognized what God wants us to recognize:  I can do nothing of my own self (John 5:19, 30).
    God has to burn that into us by letting us try and struggle, and then to see how far short we come. There are things in our nature we
would be glad to overcome. We undertake it and expect to get it out of the way, but somehow He will let it get worse and worse. You try
to govern your temper and you find that you are worse than ever. Everything you are trying to suppress seems to grow worse under the
process. It is because you are trying to work and you will never get on till you see you cannot do the first thing, but only hinder God.
    Every movement we make toward self-control, self-betterment, Christ-likeness, is nothing but failure until sometimes the failure is
agonizing – until we learn this lesson as Paul tells us, "In me...dwelleth no good thing" (Rom. 7:18). What God wants us to see is that there
can be no improvement by any effort of our own.
 God's Willingness to Help
    Next, the lesson has to be learned of the willingness of God to help. If we had learned the first lesson, it would be easier to learn this.
Until we come to the place where we cease looking to ourselves, we are not looking to God. We find in ourselves what God found in
Israel. He brought them out of Egypt. He made a way for them through the Red Sea. He caused water to flow from the rock. Yet, when
they came to every place of need they said, "Can God?"
    The psalmist said: "They tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their lust. Yea, they spake against God; they said, Can God furnish
a table in the wilderness?" (Psa. 78:18-19).
    They could say, "We know He can open the sea, for we have seen Him do it. We know He can bring water from the rock; we have seen
Him do it. But can He do this which is beyond our experience?"
    We say the same thing. "I know He can save sinners; He has saved me. But can He give victory over self? Can He fill me with the Holy
Spirit? He can do these things for some people, but I am so and so constituted. He can do for this amiable person, but can He do for
me?" You are saying "Can He, can He? Can He heal this disease for me which was inherited from my father? Can He take this temper
away?" They reasoned like that, and so do we. We try to believe God up to our experience, but think it impossible for Him to bring us
where we may know the fullness of the Spirit and be led by Him. You believe He can do that for some people, but are you not saying in
your heart:  Can He do this for me? Can He, can He?
    What God wants us to do is to see that we are helpless, that we cannot change ourselves. You blame yourself because you are thus
and so, because you are this or that. You have lamented and said, "Oh, wretched man that I am!" You condemn yourself, but God does not
in the sense you do. Yet He does condemn you because the way has been provided, a deliverance from this, and you do not come in
God's way.
    Jesus Christ has come to save us from these things, as He saved us in the beginning. What He wants us to see is that we are thus and
cannot help it, but He can. I used to go weeks and months at a time under condemnation, because I saw I was not like the Lord and was
such a failure. Why be blamed for not doing what we could not do. It shows we expected to do it. If you are not expecting to accomplish
anything, why blame yourself? We seem to think that somehow we will get wise enough to accomplish it after a while.
    What does God want? He wants you to come to Him after the worst break you have ever made, and look up in His face with the utmost
confidence and say, "I can never do any different. I commit it to You. You are the Saviour. I am not."
    Look at this word in Micah 7:7, "Therefore I will look unto the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me," He will
hear me, He will hear me. We can come to Him with the deepest sense of failure and say, "I know deliverance is mine, You will save me
from this."
God Will Keep His Word
    There was a lady who in simple faith, would commit something that was besetting her to the Lord and say, "I thank Thee for the
deliverance now," and she did not bother herself any more about it. She believed He would do what He said. It is not at all remarkable for
God to keep His word, and she acted upon the basis that He would do as He said. She did not wait to see the thing subdued in her, but
her whole life was lived out in that present taking and thanking the Lord for it.
    After her husband's death – they were very united in the natural and also in the spiritual – the Lord promised her she should never
know widowhood. But she tells of coming into the house, feeling her loss so keenly and saying to the Lord, "I thank Thee now for Thy
presence, which is so comforting. Thou art all I need," and the whole sense of loss would flee away. She said this when she felt nothing,
but it became a fact the next moment. I believe we pray and pray while God is saying, just believe Me. I am here to keep My Word. I am
here to give present grace.
    "This is the confidence that we have in Him" (1 John 5:14), but we do not have it. He is more anxious to transform us than we are to
have Him do it. You say, "Why does He not do it? I am praying and praying." Yes, but you have never committed it to Him and let go. You
can commit it to Him and go on praising Him and it will come. God is asking you to treat Him as if He meant what He said.
    This is faith and trust, always counting that God will do as He says. Every morning as you open your eyes, say to Him, "You are here,
working in me, and I praise You." If you will turn your prayers into praise, you will go on faster. Say, "I take the grace now which You offer."
You do not have to beg Him. The child might as well come down in the morning and tease the mother for her breakfast, tease and weep
that the mother would give her something to eat.
    It is His desire to work every moment in us. He stands ready every moment to bless. Your constant praying instead of taking or
accepting, hinders.
    There is a place for prayers. We may well ask Him to look into our lives. Expect that He will. Let Him go deeply into your thought, your
motive, into everything that concerns you, but there will come a time when God will be done with that. He will have shown you this and
that, and you will get it out of the way. Then what? Believe Him! Receive from Him. Accept grace for each moment and praise Him for it
as if you believed He meant to give.
    "This is the confidence that we have in Him," that He will give everything we need for that hour. "Lord, Thou knowest that I can do
nothing. I will only make that worse if I touch it, so I will just praise You. I know You are working now, Lord."
    We toil and spin, but we do not believe He can array us more gloriously than Solomon without our working. We do not let Him give us
"beauty for ashes," or the "oil of joy for mourning," or "the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."
    Oh, how He longs to give these things to His children. Just go to your Father, and believe He will do what He says, and believe even if
you do not feel anything. His withholding may simply be to strengthen your faith in Him. Suppose you go through one day not asking for
a thing, but just taking. Oh, how we would spare ourselves the burden and fruitless toil, and make real progress!
    There is a word in Isaiah, "In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength" (Isa. 30:15). Do you
not know that looking at yourself keeps you from looking to God? What you do may be all right. Yet your whole gaze is at yourself. You
are condemning yourself and fussing over yourself, but it is all self. Tell Him that in you dwelleth no good thing, but that He can work in
you. "I trust You will work in me today. You will have to do it all." In quietness and confidence shall be your strength, without your doing
the least bit of hard work.
    If we had the confidence we ought to have in Him, we would know that He takes charge of everything. God is in everything. Receive
that hard thing as from His hand, and you learn to trust Him. Oh, that we could see that He is working every moment. Therefore nothing
can go amiss. You must accept the Holy Ghost to work in you, accept all you need, and it will not take God long to work.
    If you take a sick man who cannot walk and put him out in the sunshine, he does not have to beseech the sun to shine upon him. All he
has to do is to sit in the sunshine till it warms him through and through. If we would come to God and whether we feel anything or not,
say, "You are shining upon me, oh, shine on, shine on," and tell Him you believe Him with all your heart, how He could work!
Trust His Love for You
    The devil makes you believe when you get very, very good, God will love you. Say to Him, "I just take Your love, I need it so now." You do
not know how it would encourage your heart to say it, "God loves me, loves me now, loves me too well to let anything go wrong, loves me
too well not to give me the Holy Spirit."
    Satan would keep you under the hammer all the time, under condemnation. God loves you infinitely more tenderly than mothers love
their children. Accept it. He says so, "Continue ye in My love" (John 15:9). He says it; believe it, and you will find the darkness going out
and the light coming in, and the love you have not dared to appropriate will become consciously yours.
    Jesus is your perfect Saviour. Then let Him save you.  "I praise You that You are going to do a perfect work in me, because You are a
perfect Saviour." Tell Him you know He will heal your body and you now accept it. Tell Him you know He is caring for everything that has
to do with you, and you are trusting Him. I know of nothing more uplifting. Your dark days will be over. He can never love you any more
than He loves you now, because He loves us with an everlasting love always.
    You remember how the prodigal son said, "I perish with hunger," but when he went back home, he did not have to beg that father to give
him something to eat. No, the father provided a robe and a feast. The son's ideas were small. He did not expect a robe and a feast. His
thought was, if I may be as one of the "hired servants." But his father made him a great feast; he put a ring on his hand and shoes on his
feet and kissed him and said, "This my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found," and he poured out his love over him.
What did the prodigal have to do? Accept it all.
    What are you going to expect from the Lord today? Expect Him to supply all your need. Tell the Spirit in you that you know He will lead
you on, you know He will give the victory over that besetting thing, you know you will be healed of that disease, tell him you know it. Let
Him pour His love over you while you stand and believe and praise Him.
    Say, "I will trust You, You will not fail me. I trust You to meet me in the morning. I will trust You all day and all the rest of my life." You
will find that you have ceased from your own works, as God did from His. You will have entered into your Sabbath, and from your heart
there will be ever going up praise and He will ever be working out His wonderful salvation.
    – From Chronicles Of A Faith Life.

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