Living Waters, by Charles S. Price
After the heat and toil of the day, we find rest and repose in sleep. It is out of that sleep we awaken with renewed strength for the tasks that lie ahead. It is out of death also that we awaken! It was said of our glorious Lord, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” (John 12:24).
It was out of His death that the glorious harvest of Eternal Life blossomed! He Himself became the FIRST-FRUITS of them that slept. Without death, there can be no Resurrection. He does not impart His resurrection life to us because we live for Him; but because, for His sake, we are willing to die and allow Him to live His Resurrection life in us.
God saw that the human race could not be Divinely indwelt in its fallen state; lest in eating of the Tree of Life man would live forever in his fallen condition. Death had to come. The royal edict had gone forth, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” It was only in the new creation that Christ could indwell His people, or the Spirit of God take up His abode again within the confines of the entity called “man.” So the typical sacrifices of the Old Testament, and the antitypical Sacrifice offered, once and for all, of the New Testament took us not only into death—but through death— to the power of His Resurrection!
It was vicariously that He suffered for us on the Cross of Calvary. It was substitutionally that He died upon the accursed Tree. He took us with Him to the Cross and then He took us from the Cross into His grave; and, through the grave, we went with Him to the dawning of the first Easter morning, and the warm, eternal glow of His Resurrection Life. Positionally, we are now seated with Him in heavenly places, for we are in Him, even as He is in us, the Christ!
At the time of His first advent, there was no room for Him in the inn. His pre-incarnate glory had filled the heavens; and yet, when he was to take upon Himself the form of man and, through the Miracle of the Incarnation, be born of a virgin mother, there was found no room for Him in the inn. You see, there was no room, because the rooms were already occupied! Even so, in these days, at the time of His advent as the Indwelling Christ, who will make our bodies His temples and will Himself tabernacle within these vessels of clay; if the rooms are occupied, He will find no place within to take up His abiding!
If only we could realize that His coming will bring life, light and health, we would not be so preoccupied with giving place to our selfish, fleshly desires and purposes so that He is crowded out. He who bore our sicknesses and our sorrows would come to give us His peace, rest and joy.
When He comes, will He find faith in the earth? One step further—will He find faith in the “earth” which we are? If we would become less concerned about what we do, forget our petty bickerings about Biblical interpretations, and open wide the gates of our beings to let the King of Glory in, we would start once again the music of joy by the angel choirs of the glory-world. All heaven would rejoice in such a surrender as that! Do you believe Him enough to make room for Him?
FROM THE INSIDE OUT
He does not come as a postman, bringing gifts from the Father, leaving them at our door, and then walking away! Some people would use the Bible like a mail-order catalog. They ask the Father to give them what they want, and then expect the angelic messengers to bring them this, or to bring them that; in order that their own desires might be gratified, and their needs met in the way they want them to be. The light, which Christ brings, does not shine from the outside in; but it radiates from the INSIDE OUT! The gifts He imparts, He administers and operates. He does not literally “give” light. He is the Light! He does not impart health. He is the Health. It is the constant acknowledgment of His indwelling—the recognition that the life we now live in the flesh, we live by the faith of the Son of God, who gave Himself for us, and who now dwelleth within us—that brings us into vital union with Him.
Room is made within us, BY THE SPIRIT, for the Incoming Christ! Commensurate with our surrender and our death to self, His light, His life, and His love permeate every department of our being! Perhaps the transformation, at first, is spiritual only. Possibly the transformation is brought about by the operation of the Spirit within our spirit, bringing us light, understanding, and the deep settled peace which always floods the life when He dwells within.
Following this experience of His grace, manifested within our lives, the cup of His mercy overflows and the physical body begins to feel His Resurrection Life! Instead of struggle, it is REST. Instead of agonizing, it is PEACE. The consciousness that Christ is dwelling within, and that He has taken the government upon His own shoulders, brings us into a blessed quietness before the Lord. How many times, if only we could hear His Voice, upon our ears in gentlest tones would fall: “Be still and know that I am God.”
One might say, “Yes, I believe that!” It is not enough to believe “that.” Our troubles in days gone by has been just “that.” We have accepted the doctrine as truth, when He is calling upon us to accept HIM as the TRUTH. It is not enough merely to “know” that in Christ is health, virtue, and saving power. We needs must be INDWELT BY HIM! He does not impart virtue, separate from Himself. The miracle of healing is never separate from the Healer.
When our poor, diseased bodies and lives are transformed, it is only that our darkness is SWALLOWED UP IN HIS LIGHT! He—as our Health—overcomes our sickness. He—as our Strength—absorbs all our weakness. We are STRONG IN HIM for He does not, in the final analysis, make us strong, but He gives us His Strength. His Presence does it. We don’t. There is LIFE in Jesus and in none other! Christ and Adam will not be joint tenants. Before the Second Adam will move in, the first Adam must move out. When the Light comes, the darkness is dispelled.
THE GREAT PHYSICIAN
When sickness visits homes, many call for a physician who comes to the house and diagnoses the case. The first thing the doctor does is to find out, if he can, what the difficulty is. When he arrives at his conclusion, he prescribes the remedy. It is the remedy for which the patient waits. The doctor is only a means to the remedy. He takes out a little pad of blanks, writes down a prescription, and someone goes to the drugstore to return with some little, black pills,—or whatever the prescribed remedy might be. The confidence of the patient is in the remedy. The sufferer looks for the efficacy to be in the pills. The faith and trust the patient places in the doctor goes only so far as to hope that he knows the remedy; and that he knows what he is doing when he writes the prescription. When the little pill is taken, however, the patient settles back and waits for the pill to do its work.
How different it is with the Lord Jesus! The virtue is not in what He prescribes; it is not in doing this, or in doing that. It is not even in knowing “how to receive healing,” but it is the PERSON of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He sees us in our sick and sinful state of impurity. He knows the only remedy is holiness. We have read that, too, and have made the mistake of struggling to become holy. There is no such thing as holiness apart from Him. He does not leave holiness at the door of our hearts, and then move away and ask us to utilize it in the living of our lives!
We go to the altar and pray for sanctification and sometimes jump to our feet and say, “Praise the Lord, the work is done.” However, He does not give sanctification to anyone. HE IS OUR SANCTIFICATION. When His sanctification overflows our lives, we are truly sanctified in Him! “But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:30-31).
Even so in Divine Healing, we do not take a “pill.” We do not prescribe to the patient: “Now you must do this, and you must do that, and then the Lord will touch you with healing power.” It is not a question of being made right in our own righteousness, or ready with our own readiness, for in James 5:15 we read, “and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” What the poor, broken sufferers need, in all their unworthiness—and even in their sin, is to come in absolute surrender to the Lord—to LET JESUS IN!
It is not what He gives—but what He is! He is Resurrection Life! He is Wisdom! He is Righteousness! He is Healing! As He once led captivity captive, He will do it again in you and in me! As, in the days of old, virtue flowed from Him into the woman who had an issue of blood—so once again—we too can feel the healing warmth of that glorious flow. The virtue is not in what we do for Him. It does not go from us to Him. IT FLOWS FROM HIM THROUGH US!
OUR VICTORY
This is the reason then that there must, of necessity, be death to self. There must be the acknowledgment of His Lordship and Headship. In Adam—before the Fall—there was Eternal Life. God created him—a Living Soul! When Adam severed his connection with the Author of Life, he fell under the sentence of death; and the Supreme Sacrifice became necessary to pay the penalty for sin and death. Our Blessed Lord chose to take upon Himself the form of man and to take the whole of humanity, which lay under the Adamic Curse, with Him into death—even the death of the Cross. Down He went into Hell; but then He ascended up on high—into glorious Resurrection Life.
Having consummated this tremendous Redemptive work, the cry went ringing through the islands and continents for men to turn from their sinful ways and to BELIEVE INTO THE LORD JESUS CHRIST! Accepting Him as their Savior, they were saved! Acknowledging Him as their Redeemer, they enter into Redemption. He took their death into His grave with Him and, coming forth triumphant from the darkened tomb, His voice rang forth—echoing down the corridors of time—“I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE: HE THAT BELIEVETH IN ME, THOUGH HE WERE DEAD, YET SHALL HE LIVE: AND WHOSOEVER LIVETH AND BELIEVETH IN ME SHALL NEVER DIE.”
To obtain Resurrection Life, we must “believe” in order to receive HIM. We cannot have Resurrection Life apart from Him! Obedience to New Testament precepts will no more avail than obedience to the Law of Moses. Neither will wearing out our shoe leather, doing this or doing that, prevail! It is only by RECEIVING CHRIST!
That is the great fundamental! It is the eternal essential! There is no other way. We must receive Him! If we receive Him, the self-life has to go, for there cannot be two headships in the one body. A two-headed creature is always a monstrosity; and there would be endless confusion, and ultimate despair, with two contradictory governments. When the surrender of self is made, and we enthrone Christ as the Captain of our Salvation, no longer does the Child of Redemption cry, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry;” but rather, “For me to live is Christ!” and “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by THE FAITH OF THE SON OF GOD, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Then comes the flow and surge of that glorious Life Divine. It is not a struggle. It is Rest. It is Strength. It is Healing, as well as Power. Not the power of destructive explosive—but the irresistible power of His Life and Joy and Peace.
People foolishly imagine that they have to strive and strain, groan and importune, to measure up to a life in the high-calling of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Does a river struggle to roll down hill? Does its water strive and strain as it gently flows on to where the great arms of the sea are opened wide to receive it? We are merely the riverbed, and His Life is the river. He flows through us, constantly giving, imparting, radiating, and infusing; until our very lives are HID WITH CHRIST IN GOD! Our natures are transformed by His glorious Nature Divine! Our sicknesses, our sufferings, and our pain—can they maintain their grip and hold in the warm flow of His Love Divine?
In God’s deliverance, we find that He can be severe, as well as loving; but in His severity there is always love! He will not allow us to take short-cuts; but His command is: “SLAY UTTERLY!” There is no other way. The surrender must not be partial; it must be UNCONDITIONAL! In ALL—ALL—our ways, would we acknowledge Him, that He may direct our paths! If we do it just for convenience, or to receive healing, is it any wonder that the thing for which we pray is so many times withheld?
Doctors do not delight in cutting into “proud flesh,” but must remove it entirely before healing virtue will come to any wound in the body. In dealing with the woman who came from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, superficial thinking might declare that Jesus dealt rather cruelly with her! His words must have pierced her deeply, and one would naturally expect she would be wounded in her spirit because of what He said. But when we look further into what He did, we find that His seeming severity was baptized in love and impregnated with His loving kindness and tender mercy! We find that there are no shortcuts in ridding ourselves of the Adamic nature, in order that the Divine nature might come forth!
THE WAY TO VICTORY
Beneath the outstretched arms of the trees in the Garden, our Lord cried, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me.” And then, in complete abandonment of Himself to God and to the purpose and will of His Father, He finished, “Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done.” The only way to the Resurrection was through the Garden. The only way to His victory over the tomb was by the way of the Cross; and He has to bring us to that place! “Because I live,” said He, “Ye too shall live;” but we know full well that His resurrection life in us must be preceded by our death!
Even the seemingly good side of our Adamic nature has to be sacrificed with the acknowledged bad. Isaac was the son of promise, yet he had to be “sacrificed” in obedience to God’s command. Can you not hear the heart-cry of that adoring father—wrung from the very depths of his being? Was not Isaac his child of promise? And yet, the Lord had said, “Slay him upon the altar of sacrifice.” Slay his “good” Isaac! Slay even the child of promise! But here was the man who believed God, and IT WAS ACCOUNTED UNTO HIM FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS, for he took that good, living sacrifice and climbed with him to the top of the mountain. It was in, and through, his obedience that the revelation came! The RAM IN THE THICKET was revealed! It was the revelation of a SUBSTITUTE, provided by God and therefore acceptable unto Him. It opened wide the door to an experience which is so stupendous that only the Holy Spirit can reveal it to us, individually, with all its eternal implications
The redemptive plan of our Blessed Lord, to cleanse humanity for His indwelling, is not by some “get-well-quick” system! Even as there are “quack doctors” who advertise their potions in magazines and papers and who promise recovery for stipulated amounts, within a specified time; so there are also pseudo-religious leaders who have devout ways and systems of divine healing so called, devised in other than God’s way, but promising to bring relief. There is only one way! That way is CHRIST! Many times in history we have found confusion of tongues and the babble of voices as demagogues have cried this and proclaimed that! The Tower of Babel is not the only place where such confusion reigned!
THE LIVING WAY
In the days of Jesus’ earthly walk, the Pharisees cried, “Lo, here is truth!” and the Sadducees, in contradiction said, “No, it is here.” Grecian philosophers had long proclaimed that they had the truth. However, our Blessed Lord silenced them all in His declaration, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me.” There is no difference today. He is our Way. He is our Truth. He is our Life! There is no other way! There is no other Life! There is no other Truth! It is all very well to sing, “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun doth his successive journeys run.”
That is true to a degree, and the day is not far away when it will be gloriously fulfilled! But above and beyond that, our hearts should be continuously singing:
“Christ liveth in me. Christ liveth in me.! Oh! What a Salvation this—that Christ liveth in me!” Flesh dies; and the Adamic nature must be crucified. It may hurt a bit to come to complete surrender, but that is where our Lord would bring us in Spirit and in Truth before He Himself can condescend to indwell this vessel of clay.
One under testing has been heard to cry, “I cannot bear this cross!” The Voice Divine responded, “Do you want Me to take this cross away?” Understanding, supernaturally quickened, revealed that if it were removed a harder cross, and perhaps one to which she was not accustomed, might be substituted; so she did not ask for its removal. In a short time, however, there came the same, sweet Voice, “NOW, COMMIT IT UNTO ME.” Then, with the committing, the light broke!—the glorious light of revelation that God Himself was RISING TO TAKE ACTION! Underneath, the Everlasting Arms were lifting—lifting—lifting; and with the surge of that Resurrection Life, the Cross became a CROWN!
What a privilege it is to surrender! How blessed it is to be invited to lay our all at the Master’s feet! How poor our understanding—in comparison with His! How faulty our Adamic wills are in the light of the Divine Will which was fulfilled in Christ Himself. Beloved, there can be no short-cuts! The inspired Word declares that if any man try to climb up any other way, the same is a thief and a robber; for the Lord Jesus Christ is the only door to God! No man can come to the Father but by Him! How sweet it is to reminisce as well as testify,
“I’ve found a Friend, Oh, such a Friend!
He loved me e’er I knew Him!
He drew me with the chords of love,
And thus He bound me to Him!”
We love to speak—doctrinally—about the Father seeing us in Christ; but to my heart is whispered the truth that He would first see Christ in us.
Charles S. Price is considered one of the best Pentecostal preachers from the early twentieth-century. His works have always been among our most popular with our readers, and he was the first author that we took to print. His books have been a blessing to many for generations, and when we post excerpts to our blog, they are among the most well-received.
To read more about Charles Price, might we suggest visiting his author page? We’ve got links to all of his available books there, a brief bio, and more.
This post is from his book The Real Faith, which is available at the following retailers: