The message about the cross is nonsense to those who are being destroyed, but it is God's power to us who are
being saved. (1 Corinthians 1:18 ISV)
Have you got a
Cross in your history? Have you got a grave in your history? If you have not
then you are dwelling in the shadows. You may get flashes and touches, but they
will be fleeting, transient, coming and going. If you have a Cross and a grave
in your experience, in your history, the Holy Spirit has got what He requires,
and it is blessedly possible for you to have the abiding of this risen Life in
which all these values are made good, and growingly good. What is the new
creation? With it there comes first of all a new consciousness. You are
conscious that things are new, and things are different. It is a new
consciousness as to the Lord. You are alive to that to which you were never
alive before; in every realm things are the same, yet entirely different.
Somehow or other you move in the same surroundings, and touch the same people,
but there is something new. There is a new consciousness. Things have become
different....
Not only do we
have a new consciousness, but we have a new capacity. The Holy Spirit gives
capacities that none of us have by nature. We may by nature be very limited in
our capabilities. By the anointing of the Holy Spirit we may have capabilities
that the best men and women of this world without the Holy Spirit have not got.
A truly Spirit-indwelt child of God has capabilities and capacities that no one
else has. This very breathing carries with it capacity. Until Adam was breathed
into he had no capacities for all that he was intended to do; but when he became
a living soul by the breath of God he had capacities for knowing, for doing, for
understanding. The new creation is like that, with new capacities, capabilities
for knowing, for understanding, for doing, that we never had before. No child of
God ought ever to settle down and finally accept the position that they "cannot"
in any particular. We should never say in any matter that is presented to us in
the will of God, "I cannot." The presence of the Holy Spirit means capability and
capacity for doing things which we could never do before. We ought to prove the
Lord in that way.
