The Eternal Reward

Daily Devotional for July 12, 2025

I wrote to you out of great sorrow and anguish of heart – along with many tears – not to make you sad but to let you know how much love I have for you. (2 Corinthians 2:4 ISV)

There is nothing that is precious to the Lord, and which He would make the property of His people, but there will be suffering for it. It will only become their property – in that sense – as they suffer for it, and then woe betide who criticizes that! If you are detached from a thing, if you are detached from a testimony, from a work of God, you can do all the criticizing you like. You have no inward heart-relationship to it, and so you pass your judgments upon it. But if you are in it and you have suffered, if it has been a costly thing where you are concerned, then you are seeing more than all the failings, more than all those faults. The people who can criticize like that and judge and point out faults are the people who have not suffered.

On the other side, we may know all the terms, all the phraseology, all the doctrine, all the truth, and it may be just objective, something we have heard; we have lived in the midst of it, it is familiar to us. But what the Lord will do if that is to become ours is to take us into travail over the matter. He will relate that thing to our hearts in a deep, inward way, so that none of us will be able to say, "I know all about that, I have heard all about that, I could tell you all that you could tell me about that." The Lord would so work in a costly, deep and painful way in relation to that, to make it ours through travail, that we are brought into a new position. We are not spectators, looking on, criticizing; we are on the inside, looking out, defending. We are jealous over it. Suffering is a great purifying thing. It destroys selfishness. It destroys that self-interest that is the cause of so much of the trouble. It makes us in a disinterested way jealous for what is of God. Yes, suffering purifies, and suffering makes this deep, inward link. It gives an extra feature to things. That extra feature where we cannot just be occupied with faults and be people of a criticizing attitude, the extra feature with a love which covers a multitude of sins. We have suffered together. When we suffer together, what a lot we get over!

Bible Verses: 2 Corinthians 2:4

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Open Windows messages have been selected and compiled by Austin-Sparks.Net from the works of T. Austin-Sparks. In some cases they appear in abridged form. The introductory verse and its associated Bible version have been selected by the editor and did not always appear within the original message. In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks' wishes that what was freely received should be freely given and not sold for profit, and that his messages be reproduced word for word, we ask if you choose to share these messages with others, to please respect his wishes and offer them freely - free of any changes, free of any charge (except necessary distribution costs) and with this statement included.

Editor's Note

Through the years of our publishing books and articles on Austin-Sparks.Net, we have talked of wanting to compile a series of excerpts similar to Watchman Nee's "A Table in the Wilderness," published by Mr Sparks' son-in-law, Angus Kinnear. We felt that not only would shorter daily excerpts be easy to digest, but they might also inspire readers to read a complete message or book that they may not have read before. This project began in January 2010 when we began to send out daily messages to the Daily Open Windows email list. These continue to be sent daily in email form from Austin-Sparks.Net.

As many of you will be aware, Mr Sparks was from Scotland. He, therefore, used British spelling in his writings; however, many transcripts of his spoken messages have since been published using American English. The website reflects a mixture of both British and American spelling, but for the sake of consistency, all excerpts in this book conform to American spelling and punctuation.

Due to these daily messages being excerpts, they are abbreviated and some have had unnecessary words removed, such as "here this evening...." Also, some daily messages are a compilation of several excerpts from one original message. This is usually indicated with a pause in the text: .... and a reference to the complete source document is always provided. You will also notice that different versions of the Bible have been selected for verses that precede each daily message. Sometimes these Scripture references appeared within the context of the original message, but mostly these have been chosen by the editor with, we trust, the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

As you look through these "open windows" we pray that you will not only look out and see Christ, but you will also hear Him and open the door of your heart so that He can "eat with you daily" (Rev. 3:20). Our desire is that these messages will not simply be "inspiring," as daily devotional messages often set out to achieve, but also challenge you; lifting your vision, opening your eyes, revealing Truth, bringing Life and Light, and enabling you to let go of misconceptions. Light is not always welcome when it first shines into the darkness that our eyes are accustomed to. However, Light is absolutely necessary in order to see. And so we pray that through these messages your eyes will be opened (Eph. 1:18) and we will together "see one thing – how superior is Jesus Christ to all else!"

Austin-Sparks.Net
Wellington, NZ

Open Windows by T. Austin-Sparks

This devotional contains short daily portions from a selection of Mr. Austin-Sparks' messages. In his own words, “Perhaps this is just like a window opened into heaven. If you get the right window you can see quite a lot. You can see great things and you can see far things. But the best that I can hope is that this has just opened a window, and that as you look through it you are seeing one thing - how superior is Jesus Christ to all else, and how superior is the dispensation into which we have come, and how superior are all the resources at our disposal to all that ever was before!”

Theodore Austin-Sparks (1888–1971), often known as "Mr. Sparks" or "TAS", was a British Christian evangelist and author.

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