Page 22: clipping (The Main Steps to the Higher Life of Faith, Victory and Blessing)

Page 22: clipping

Like the other clippings I don’t really need to transcribe page 22 as it is typed. You may need to click on the image to make it more zoomed and easier to read. There are a lot of blank pages where clippings have fallen out. This clipping appears to be some sort of theological discussion, and I really like it and wholeheartedly agree with it.
I wish the other clippings hadn’t fallen out because some of these are very interesting.




Transcribed:

The Main Steps to the Higher Life of Faith, Victory and Blessing

Without intimating or implying that there is any mechanical and uniform order in human experience, or that a human soul can be run like an engine, along an iron track, from station to station, there are six or seven successive stages of experience through which believers generally pass who enter into this higher life of faith, victory and blessing.

We venture to indicate what the steps in such advance are.

1. The prompt renunciation of whatever is known or even suspected to be contrary to the will of God. Conscience must first of all be clean, and clear of conscious disobedience or neglect of duty. Hindrance to holy living must be abandoned.

2. The acceptance of the Lord Jesus Christ not only as Saviour but as Lord. A new surrender to the will of God, which practically enthrones Him as Sovereign. The self-life sacrificed, with its self –indulgence and self-dependence.

3. Obedience now becomes the watchword of the soul. The will of God being voluntarily enthroned, compliance with it becomes habitual and natural, and service to God the supreme end of one's being.

4. This prepares for close and constant fellowship with God. Communion ceases to be occasional and clouded, and the great premise of John xiv. 23. becomes increasingly real in actual experience.

5. The sense of Divine possession of one's entire being - spirit, soul and body - is the natural outcome of such conditions. When there is no longer any conscious reservation because the whole being joyfully yielded up to Him, we become consciously His own.

6. There is now a new joy and peace which passeth understanding, a new revelation of Christ as an indwelling presence, and a true infilling of the Holy Ghost.

7. All this fits the largest possible service to God and man. God gives to all truly consecrated believers the scepter of holy influence. The Living Water, which was at first a draught to quench thirst, and then a well or spring of life within, now becomes a stream, flowing out and multiplying into rivers of blessing. This is the last stage of the Victorious Life - the stage of triumphant power over sin, prevailing power in prayer, and witnessing power among men. Whatever is done primarily to please one’s self puts at risk pleasing God, and hence a high standard of holy living always and in everything involves obedience to two simple, practical rules:
(A) I will seek to please Christ as my Master and Lord, the Sovereign of my life; (B) I will seek to please my neighbour for his good unto edification.

Dr. A.T. Pierson