We Would See Jesus by Roy Hession
“We are now
in a position to understand the reasons for many of the frustrations in the
spiritual life. We have sought peace, holiness, victory, revival, as blessings
apart from and additional to the Lord Jesus, and they have for this reason
eluded us. We have prayed and struggled for them and sought to fulfill all
sorts of conditions, but in vain. We have even been willing to walk the
humbling Way of the Blood of Jesus, and to let Him convict us and bring us to
repentance; but even so, the great baptism of love and power is looked upon as
something yet to be received. Romans 10:4 ‘Christ is the end of the law for
righteousness to every one that believeth.’
He is our peace; He is our power; He is our
victory; He is our revival. There is nothing beyond Him.”
Seeing
Jesus-For Others, the last chapter, is very rich in describing John 15 and
Isaiah 5. “I am the Vine, ye are the branches.”
“This was
the way in which He walked in His relationship with the Father, and it is the
way in which we must walk in our relationship with Him. Said He, ‘The Son can
do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do; for what things soever
He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise’ (John 5:19). And we, to, can do
nothing but what we see the Lord Jesus doing. Until we see that, we are
helpless, and our service is nothing more than self-initiated striving. But if
we will first seek to see what the Lord Jesus is doing in a situation, then we
can move with Him, even as the Son moved with the Father; and in that
cooperation between man and God the true works of God are produced. It is not
ours to originate anything, but simply to yield ourselves to Him to be the
channel of what He initiates and caries through-and to trust Him to do so
through us…Let us state the truth simply and boldly: the Lord Jesus is for
others. Just as the vine does not bear its grapes for its own refreshment
but for the refreshment of others, so has this Divine Vine chosen to be and to
act only and always for others…this determines what His purpose is. It
is to recover these others to God and Himself through the redemption of His
Cross, by the mighty working of His Holy Spirit among them…
Jesus is
the Vine so our reason for failure is simply that we are trying to be the vine;
we have been trying to find a holiness and a love for others in ourselves and
from ourselves which Scripture never encourages us to expect to find there…The
responsibility for producing fruit is no longer ours. God has His own true
Vine, the risen Lord Jesus, who is well able to produce all the fruit that God
requires for others, and to fulfill all the purposes of His grace for men…But
we-where do we come in? Simply as branches in Him, the Vine. We do not produce
the fruit, but simply bear what He produces as we permit Him to live in us.
It is
possible for any of us at any time to assume the position, often unconsciously,
of the vine. We start the day as if it were our day and we make our plans for
our day and fully intend to do our best for the Lord. The responsibility and
government is really on our shoulders, and we have subtly become the vine. But
just because it is our day and we are the vine, things soon go wrong. People
and circumstances upset our schedule and interfere with what we wanted to do, and
there is a reaction of hardness, irritation and resentment in our hearts, and
often a sharp retort on our lips. The very responsibility of trying to be the
vine makes us tense, and tenseness always predisposes us to further sin. If we
are charged with the responsibility of some special piece of Christian service,
our tenseness and reactions are often far worse, and we can go into that piece
of service without calling them sin. It is little wonder that we return abashed
and defeated. ..The way of repentance, however, is always open to us…He invites
us to return to Him in repentance and to confess the source of these things as
being our attempt to be ourselves the vine, and to receive from His
hands forgiveness and cleansing. Immediately He becomes the Vine to us again
and we become the branch that rests in Him…We must be continually seeing by
faith Jesus to be the Vine…There must be the willingness to be broken and
become available to Him as a branch.
We must be seeing Jesus as
the Vine and ourselves as part of Him, and be willing to be His branches for
others.
