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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 023. The True Aim
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The True Aim
There is another mirror that this Word of God holds up to our eyes. It is the character of our Lord Jesus. I speak of Him because He and Satan are the two great claimants for our allegiance. They are the two great rivals. Our Lord's character here is revealed no better than in some words He spoke about Himself. And all men have agreed that what He said about Himself here is true. He said "I came... not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent me."
That was the undercurrent of his life throughout; in the commonplace Nazareth village, and home, and carpenter shop, through the years of tireless ministering to the hungry crowds, in the bitterness of the Gethsemane suffering, in the untold agony of the Cross. Like an undercurrent of music it runs through all His life. Sacrifice was gladly yielded to, pain was cheerfully suffered, even while the knife cut in deep—service was a delight, because in these He was carrying out His Father's plan.
The purpose of His life was to do His Father's will; the passion, the Father Himself. The gripping, controlling aim was the Father's plan; the burning ambition underneath, the Father—a tender love-passion for the Father.
This is the contrasting mirror held up to our faces. We might shrink from saying that this finds a reflection in us. And yet down in the inner purpose of the heart, that can be the one gripping, dominant thing. It has been the gripping, purpose-passion that has swayed His true followers in every age; and it is all by His wondrous grace. Wherever His Spirit is allowed to dominate this will be the gripping passion and purpose.
Please mark very keenly this, that one of these two characteristics dominates every man's life, either the Satan-characteristic or the Jesus-characteristic. The absence of the one tells of the presence of the other. By so much as our Lord's own purpose and passion do not control, by just that much is Satan in, and making use of us. This is simply the very old question of consecration or surrender from another standpoint—the Satan standpoint.