7 JUN – The Making of God’s Representatives
What the Holy Spirit does is to make people. He constitutes representatives, He deals with individuals. He does not give them, in the first place, something to say, He does something in them out of which all their saying comes. He does not tell them what to do; He so works in them that they go and do it, it comes out, it is spontaneous as the result of something done in them. Quite a lot of young men and women are ready to throw up business and go out and be a missionary. There is something romantic about it. They could serve the Lord so much better if you put them down in the heart of Timbuktu. But here they are in the heart of a tremendous crying need, and they are not serving the Lord at all. That is false and artificial. The Holy Spirit does not do that. The Holy Spirit makes witnesses or representatives — the same thing — and if you are not a representative where you are, do not think that by changing to some foreign land where they are dark heathen that you are going to be a representative there.
When we are constituted to be God’s representatives, then the Holy Spirit disposes of us and puts us here or there, where He will. In His sovereignty … He does not appoint officials, He appoints people. A mere official may cut no ice at all, and the Lord knows that Gehazi may be the official servant of the prophet and he may get hold of the prophet’s rod and go in his official capacity with the insignia of office into the death chamber where that boy lies, but nothing happens. The woman saw through Gehazi and said, I am not going with you, I am going to stay with the prophet! When the prophet came as the man anointed of God, he spread himself upon the lad, identified himself with the lad in a vital way, and he was literally dragged back from death into life. That is not official, that is vital; that is a person (2 Kings 4:17-37).
“Why could not we cast him out?” said the disciples after that ignominious failure at the foot of the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:19). Perhaps they had tried officially thinking that they were the disciples of Christ! They had evidently made an attempt at casting out the demon. The Lord said, in effect, ‘This thing is done vitally not officially. You cannot do this by merely bearing the name of a disciple. You have to be a divine representation!’
Day by Day with T. Austin-Sparks (Mid-Europe) 