The Need for Christ-Consciousness

1/12/1964

1964

We will ask one question. What is the dominant necessity? The answer is twofold. The dominant necessity is a Christ-consciousness! To experience the realization of God’s desire—the bringing in of His House in its beauty, in its love, in its grace, in its fellowship, in its peace, in its order, in its divine manifestation—we MUST have an ever-present, all-encompassing Christ-consciousness! Perhaps that does not convey much as it is stated. But what you and I need perhaps more than anything else is more of this Christ-consciousness. Are we not ever and always challenged in our hearts when we hear Paul say, “The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died...that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him... Wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh...” (2Cor. 5:14-16)?

Are we not always challenged in a wonderful way by that? Do we not in most places know one another primarily after the flesh? When you see another that is truly a Child of God, their life given to Him to do as He wills—do we See Christ in them? Do we make conscious effort to See what God says is supernaturally Real? Or do we primarily focus and see that which is yet unchanged in them? Discernment—to help another grow—is essential, but do we see what God has supernaturally planted within them, as well as that which is still being refined? Do we see the Miracle there, and embrace it, and act as if it is so, when we look at and interact with one another? Do we honor what God says is so, for those who have taken up their cross daily, and have fallen upon His?

Oh, for this Christ-consciousness—that we might give ourselves more to this laying hold of what there is of Christ, however small, and making the most of that. If we would do that, the House would be built, God would find His House and commit Himself all the more fully. As He circulates amongst those that are truly Lampstands, truly Churches—those that are glorying and living daily together in His Son, and Christ-conscious in their daily work-a-day lives, and as they relate to one another—He will inhabit us and manifest Himself all the more. God help us! And Christ-consciousness means House-consciousness, fellowship-consciousness, relatedness-consciousness, that we are members one of another, so that the hand cannot say to the foot, ‘I don’t need you, I can do without you!’ It is this corporate consciousness that is so needed today to destroy all that is disintegrating, divisive, weak, shallow and worldly.

God grant that something of the impact of this may come upon our hearts, and lift us out of our all-too-small conceptions of the House of God. May it govern our attitudes in relation to all—all who rest upon the love of God, all who rest upon the grace of God, all who have come to see and to acknowledge that it is only by the wisdom of God, in solving all the human problems, their own and others...

...that God will at last find what He is seeking—a place in which to dwell.

T. Sparks

•  Seeing Christ in Each Other