From “Christ Our Revelation” by Jean Guyon

Rev. 7:11,12: And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures; and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, "Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might, be to our God forever and ever. Amen."

Men have an advantage over angels; they can suffer for God. But elect angels have an advantage over men: They do not sin. This advantage comes from their constant nothingness, and the fact that they come not out from this nothingness. If man reaches this state of being in a continuous nothingness, he shares the happiness of the angel. When John said, "they fell on their faces," he meant they remain in a continuous nothingness, "before the throne" of God. Few men, and that by grace, share the angels' happiness.  Such ones are on their faces because they are nothing.

Some angels once stepped out of their state of nothingness, rising against God; this made them sin and brought them in hell. The angel Lucifer came out of his nothingness without any means of entering again. Man, on the contrary, may re-enter this state, by the grace of God's salvation. Saul is like Lucifer. He sinned and remained in his rebellion. David sinned, but humbled himself and entered again into his relationship with God.

"Verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity" (Ps. 39:5).

Nothingness is all that is left for us, therefore. A man in nothingness does not oppose God's will. If there is opposition in you to God's will you are not dead and you come out of nothingness.

Jesus Christ Who is the model for all prayers fell on His face to worship, not so much to teach us an outward posture as to show us the attitude in which our soul must be as we pray and worship. In this inward state of nothingness the soul gives God all the glory that can be given to the Creator by one of His creatures.

Therefore, the angels say that blessing, glory, wisdom, thanksgiving, honor, power and might belong to our God here! Their state of nothingness accomplishes all these acts of gratefulness and homage to the sovereignty of God; only this state can do this with absolute purity. He who is nothing, before Him, acknowledges Him as the only Sovereign Being. The believer ceases to be all that he is so that God alone will be. With all the words of honor and gratefulness we use to God, we honor Him as a creature and not as God, since we do towards Him what we do in behalf of our sovereigns and benefactors; therefore honoring Him through nothingness, we honor Him as God.

How did Jesus Christ teach us to honor God as God? He became nothing, taking the form of a servant. In this way, He gave God such a high honor, though being God Himself, that a greater honor cannot be found. In this nothingness of His, He accomplishes His wonderful works! So, too, we do His will as it is done in heaven, for that is what nothingness always does.

Remember, God created all things with nothing. By using nothingness

He does His greatest things. Till man has reached this state of nothingness, God may hardly have a way to use him because the man is always stealing His glory.

To Live We Must Die

"For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." - (Matthew 16:25 NKJV)

If Christ is the kind of Savior He claims to be, He can obviously save His people from the bondage of sin. This is not to support the man-made doctrine of “sinless perfection”; it is rather to declare the God inspired doctrine that it is possible to “walk in the Spirit” and so “not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” (Gal. 5: 16 NKJV) The Spirit has the power to enable us to walk in all the light that we have received and to no longer walk in willful sin. God has made provision in the cross of Christ for His children to be delivered from the yoke of sin.

John 12:24 KJV - [24] Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

  

There is no other way to this Life in Christ except by the cross of denying ourselves daily, as Jesus said in Luke 9:23, “…If any [man] will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.”

Many insist that this is beyond our ability. Our real trouble, however, is in our unwillingness to die to our own will and ways. The Cross touches self and exposes the old willful nature. Here is the inbred sin that everyone receives from Adam. But we must go into our own Garden of Gethsemane and choose to take His way of the cross. Only then can He begin to work in the supernatural, which includes His scourging work, to bring about the end of the old flesh-life.

When we have a hunger or thirst for something from this world, when we are being tempted by the devil, there are two ways of quenching those desires. It will either be by giving into them by taking the easy road that the Lord called the “wide road” that leads to destruction, or by fighting the good fight of faith and submitting to the cross of Christ in a willingness to suffer with Him by denying those fleshy evil desires and desiring only His will to be done.  This is the “narrow way” that leads to Life. Only after being approved by continuing to choose the harder path, i.e. the “narrow way”, will the Lord impart a new life in us and begin to display His nature through us.

James 4:7: Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

1 Peter 5:10 KJV - [10] But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle [you].

Every downward step, every dying to self, every embracing of the cross—whether in the form of denial or degradation, of suffering or separation, of false accusation or humiliation— all these and a hundred other things that might be mentioned, are not a descent into misery but actually an ascent to life and power on the throne. Our call to embrace the Cross is a call to reign with Christ.

Have you truly become a follower of Christ? There is no other way to find His life. If you are attempting to find a way into the heavenly realms other than through the cross, you are deceiving yourself. Listen to Jesus: “You will indeed drink the cup that I drink, and with the baptism I am baptized with you will be baptized.” (Mark 10:39)

L.E. Maxwell said:  “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” (1 Cor. 6:17) Listen fellow believer. The promises of the Lord are sure. “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.” (Rev. 3:21) It was only by overcoming the self-seeking and self-exalting ways of this world that He gained this eternal position. The only way up is down.