Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter: 027. Opening a Way for God

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Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter: 027. Opening a Way for God



TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 027. Opening a Way for God

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Opening a Way for God

We have the great advantage of fighting a defeated foe. All the stinging sense of defeat, the disappointment and disheartening that defeat makes he knows. And all the swing and spirit, the joyousness and elasticity of action, that comes from an assured victory already gotten, we have in our Lord Jesus. We ought to sing as we fight.

There is a fine, free reading of a verse in the Fiftieth Psalm that helps greatly in the thick of the fight. It runs like this, "whoso offereth the offering of thanksgiving glorifieth Me; and openeth a way that I may show him the victory of God." (Psa_50:23.) That victory is already accomplished. Our spirit of thanksgiving (which is faith at its best) enables God to reveal all afresh in our lives the victory already won for us!

Sing as you fight. Pull out the organ stops and loosen the swells, and let the cheeriest, most joyous music of heart and voice out. For our enemy is defeated. Our Lord, our Friend, is Victor. And our resisting shall make his defeat more marked, and make it a more real thing in our own lives, and in our service among others.

It seems just a bit strange to be talking about fighting when the foe has been decidedly defeated. A decisive, overwhelming defeat of the chief of forces usually settles a conflict. There is a reason, and we will talk together about that in our next talk. Just now the fact we want to mark down big is that our tempter is fighting us against the heavy odds of a stinging defeat.

We can understand that defeat better if we will note the difference between the Satan-spirit and the Jesus-spirit.

The core of the Satan-spirit is this,—self, pride,—which is the assertion of self, the sense of inner satisfaction with yourself; conceit and egotism, the undue sense of one's own importance, and with that always, independence of God. The feeling of one's own sufficiency always makes us feel independent of God, that we do not need Him, and can get along well enough by ourselves, by depending upon ourselves.

The selfish spirit not only ignores God, but it ignores the needs of others. Luxury is a direct outcome of the Satan—the selfish spirit. Whatever adds to our strength is properly classed as a necessity. All beyond that is luxury. The self-spirit always breeds luxury. Yet luxury always spells out somebody else's need unsupplied. Every bit that is being kept for ourselves, beyond the line of what will make us stronger in body and mind, speaks out the crying need of the great crowds who make up the majority of our race. We hold for ourselves what we do not need, while two-thirds of our brothers of the race are perishing in their need of the Bread of Life. This is essentially the self-spirit, it is the very core of the Satan-spirit.