[Sons to Glory!]

This is from the T. Austin Sparks devotional, "Daily Open Windows." Sparks pulls no punches in this one and I think it may have even been written with WL and the Local Churches in mind! However, it also cuts the way of organized Christianity, with all its systems and forms/practices.

Just this morning in our weekly brothers' breakfast, several were commenting about how man puts all kinds of props and practices in place, when there isn't the fresh experience and active knowing of the living Christ. Lord save us!

March 15
God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him.
(Colossians 1:19 NJV)

The next thing I am going to say may be difficult to accept, just as it
is difficult to say, and yet faithfulness demands that things like this should
be said. There is going to be a tremendous surprise one day over this matter.
There is a tremendous amount of energy, and activity, and machinery, and
zeal and devotion in the work of the Lord, in the service of the Lord, which
seems to be producing something quite big, and carrying on something
quite extensive. It is not for us to judge, but it is for us to lay down laws
and recognize those laws, or, rather, recognize laws that are laid down by
God. When eventually all work, all service, all activity, is weighed in the
balances, which will determine what abides forever or passes away forever,
all that which was merely human energy for God will go; all that which
was merely man's enterprise for the Lord will go; all that which was in any
way out from man himself, even though in devotion to God, will go. Only
that which was the energy of Christ, the wisdom of Christ, the. power of
Christ, will remain. God is not using your energies and my energies. He is
calling upon us to use the energies of Christ. God cannot set His seal upon
anything that is of man.

God's seal only rests upon that which is of His Son, and we must not
say that because a thing is big, extensive, and seems to be a great work for
God, that it necessarily is such. What we have got to be quite sure about is
that that thing is not being carried on by the momentum of man, or the
momentum of organization, the momentum of machinery, the momentum
of human zeal and energy for God, nor by the momentum of a program,
but that it is being energized by the Holy Ghost, that it is Christ Himself
who is the Life and the power of that thing. In so far as human
personalities, energies and all that kind of thing are the mainspring, we
may be sure that at the end there is going to be a good deal that goes. That
can be seen as you look back over the history of things which claimed to
represent God. The object of saying this is not for one moment to cast a
cloud of suspicion or doubt over anything, but it is to emphasize this truth,
this basic truth. It is along the line of jealousy for Christ. Nothing will
remain in this universe eventually but what is Christ, and we must
recognize that everything for God's ultimate purpose is bound up with and
in Christ, and it IS Christ.