A Man Sent from God for a Testimony

Not much information about T. Austin-Sparks’ life is available. However, in the July-August 1971 issue of the magazine, A Witness and A Testimony, an article by H. Foster commemorated Brother Sparks:

After forty years of active association with Brother Austin-Sparks in the things of God, it fell to me to lead the praiseful funeral service on April nineteenth, when a large number gathered at Honor Oak to magnify the Lord for our brother’s long life and fruitful service….His discipleship began when, at seventeen years of age, he walked dejectedly down a Glasgow street on a Sunday afternoon and stopped to listen to some young people witnessing in the open air. That very night he committed his life to the Savior, and the next Sunday found himself standing with the same eager young Christians in their open-air meeting. He continued with them and before long opened his mouth to speak some simple words of testimony, so entering on a life of preaching the Gospel which lasted for sixty-five years.

Those years were filled with many activities for God, but preaching was his greatest gift and his chief joy. He read widely in his desire for spiritual understanding, and above all he studied his Bible,

Above all he studied his Bible, always in an eager quest for the treasures new and old.

always in an eager quest for the treasures new and old which can be found there by those who are instructed in the kingdom of heaven. One of his first choices for the supplementary hymn book which he prepared for use at the Honor Oak Christian Fellowship Center was the hymn which carries as its refrain Pastor John Robinson’s famous reminder to the Mayflower pilgrims that “the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from His Word.” How often we sang those inspiring words at the beginning of an Honor Oak Conference! And how often they proved true to the appreciative listeners!…

(top)

Especially in his earlier years, Brother Sparks used to lay great emphasis on the need for the inward application of the Cross to the life of the believer. He preached a Gospel of full salvation by simple faith in Christ’s sacrifice, but he further stressed that the man who knows cleansing by the blood of Jesus should also allow the same Cross to work in the depths of his soul in order to release him from himself and lead him into a less carnal and more spiritual walk with God.

He himself had gone through a crisis of self-undoing by his acceptance of the Cross’s verdict on his old nature.

He himself had gone through a crisis of self-undoing by his acceptance of the Cross’s verdict on his old nature, and he had found this crisis to be the introduction into an altogether new enjoyment of Christ’s life so great that he could only describe it as “an open heaven.”…

The Cross is always painful, so we can appreciate that Brother Sparks often found God’s dealings with him hard to bear. Until 1950 he was frequently prostrate with pain and unable to continue his work; yet again and again he was raised up, sometimes literally from a sick bed, and no one could fail to recognize the added spiritual impact which came from such a background. We prayed much for him during those years, but with no lasting relief, until he was able to have the surgical treatment which proved to be God’s gracious means of answering our prayers, so that from then on he had a further twenty years of activity in many lands, and until his last illness was a remarkable example of how divine life can energize the mortal body.

If, however, the Cross involves suffering, it is also the secret of abundant grace, as he certainly proved.

For various reasons many other sufferings came into his life, but this was consistent with his own teaching that in the school of Christ one learns more by suffering than by study or listening to messages. If, however, the Cross involves suffering, it is also the secret of abundant grace, as he certainly proved. His last annual motto, prepared for this year of 1971, was devoted to the theme of the sufficiency of God’s grace. In November he wrote an editorial in this paper, recording the fact that for him 1970 had been a year of unusual pressure and difficulty. Perhaps as an onlooker I may be permitted to comment that in the eyes of those nearest to him it was also a year of new and fuller evidence of the grace of God….

(top)

To Brother Sparks prayer had many aspects, as is shown by his book In Touch with the Throne. He set us an example of the prayer which is adoration, not requesting or interceding, but just offering to God the worship and love which are His due; he constantly stressed the importance of what he called “executive prayer,” by which he meant not just wishful thinking with the tag of “Amen” at its end, but the bold claiming of God’s promises in the name of the Lord; he introduced many of us to the reality of “prayer warfare,” for he knew that only by getting to grips with the unseen enemies of God’s will can the Church apply Christ’s victory to actual situations.

It became noticeable in his closing years that he lost interest in subjects and concentrated his attention on the person of Christ.

Perhaps one of the earliest of his books can best give us a real clue to his whole life and ministry. It is called The Centrality and Supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ. This was where he began, and this was where he ended, for it became noticeable in his closing years that he lost interest in subjects and concentrated his attention on the person of Christ. Christ is central!…It was his life’s objective and the aim of all his preaching and teaching to recognize that centrality and bow to that supremacy. At his funeral service there were hundreds who responded wholeheartedly to the suggestion that Brother Sparks had helped them to get to know Christ in fuller and more satisfying ways.

(top)

Copyrights © 2003. Christian Websites. All Rights Reserved.