Ruin and the Presence of the Lord

 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 8
Listen from:
• BibleTruthPublishers.com
What I felt from the beginning and began with was this: The Holy Spirit remains, and therefore the essential principle of unity with His presence, for “where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:2020For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20)). When this is really sought, there will certainly be blessing by His presence. However, whenever there is an attempt at displaying the position and the unity, there will always be a mess and a failure. God will not take such a place with us. We must get into the place of His mind to get His strength, and that is now the recognition of the failure of the church. But there He will be with us. We do not limit what the blessed Spirit can do for us in this low estate, but we must take the place where He can do it.
Where two or three are gathered in His name, Christ will be. The Spirit of God is necessarily the only source of power, and what He does will be blessing through the lordship of Christ. But there is a most important point that comes in — we cannot supply the lack by human arrangement or wisdom; we must be dependent. The Holy Spirit is always competent to act in the circumstances in which God’s people are. The secret is not to pretend to get beyond it. Life and divine power are always there, but we must confess that we are in an imperfect state. But then the unity of the body necessarily continues, whatever its scattered condition, because it depends on the existence of the Head and its union with it. In this the Holy Spirit is necessarily supreme.
J. N. Darby, adapted