My God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19 ESV)
God has assumed the
responsibility of a Father, and has taken up those responsibilities to meet them
in and through His Son. The enlargement of that in Christian utterance is found
in Philippians 4:19. This means Christ recognized, Christ known, God in Christ,
and that on the ground of our utter separation unto Him. But note: it is God’s
gift. He says that it was not Moses that gave the manna in the wilderness, but
His Father. Then it is not the result of man’s labors, it is the issue of God’s
grace. Are you laboring for spiritual growth? How we have striven and strained
to increase our spiritual measure and our spiritual stature. What a burden we
have taken upon us in relation to the maintenance of our own spiritual life! We
have almost assumed the whole responsibility for our spiritual life, and made it
as though it depended upon our labors in prayer, our labors in the Word of
God, our labors in the Lord’s service, our effort, our stress.
No one will think that we have
made little of prayer or the Word. No one will think that we have said you must
have no care whatever for your spiritual life, but there is such a difference
between assuming responsibility for ourselves and recognizing that God has
assumed that responsibility. And because God has assumed the responsibility we
should cooperate with God. There is all the difference between trying to work
for our justification, and working because we are justified; between trying to
work for our perfection, and working because our perfection is secured in
Christ. The difference is not merely technical, it is practical, and of immense
value. Sometimes it is necessary for the Lord to say to us: "Look here, you are
making far too much of your own praying, far too much of your own business in
the Scriptures, you are unconsciously coming to think that everything depends
upon how much and how fervently you pray." And then you go out and talk to other
people about your prayer life as a kind of setting up against their own. You do
not mean it, but the implication is that this is what accounts for your growth,
and it is going to count for other people’s growth. That must not be a cause but
a result. 'The cause, the secret, the spring of everything is Myself, and
sometimes you will just have to cease straining, and rest back in Me, in loving
trust. Learn to do that a little more, and then you will pray better, and I
shall be able to do something more!'