We have been speaking about the imperatives that issue out of knowing the Lord. We started the first evening, for those of you who have joined us since, with a couple of verses in Ephesians that you know so well:
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.
In other words, the more we get to know Him, the more our heart is attuned to His own heart, to His mind, to His Spirit. The very thing that throbs within Him becomes the throbbing thing within us. It is inescapable.
You have been with an individual, maybe for a while, and after you have left, you sense that you have caught something of their spirit, something of their mind, their burden. Oh, how wonderful it is when we come to know Him. There are certain imperative things that get hold of us.
Now, wanting to deal with another of those this morning, as we get to look at Him and know Him, it is something that I believe is very, very necessary in the hour in which we are living.
It is very easy for us, as we said yesterday, to stand here in the outer court, or even to press in little ways, and with all our reasoning to figure out what is wrong. We have all done it. We are so quick to figure out what is wrong.
The only trouble is, after all our figuring, it is still wrong. We have not helped matters; we have just added to the confusion. We said yesterday that this is why we are to stand with Him in His own heart, His own standpoint, to see things as He sees things. And I tell you, it is a different place. He does not see what we see, and for that reason, He does not move as we move.
I want to make a very drastic statement to get your attention this morning, but that seems to be the best way of the Lord. I sometimes feel that one of the great problems with the folk who are wanting to build the church in various areas, wanting to consummate and realize this thing that we have come to get hold of and to see, is that our consecration gets in the way.
You say, “Brother, that is terrible.” But I repeat it: it is our consecration, our consecration, that gets in the way. Having seen, we are motivated by certain things to try to get the job done.
Well, we will have to move away from that for a little bit and go back and get hold of His consecration. Look at Him and see the difference.
I have to take you this morning, first of all, back into the very heart of God, as I like to picture it, and consider from the very beginning. As you know Him more intimately, you come to recognize that in Him, in His life, and in all that He is, there are certain qualities, certain principles, certain operating issues that are inescapable.
I dislike having to use diagrams, but here we go. You look in the heart of God, if you can. You look in the face of Jesus Christ. You get close to that which throbs in His heart, and you will find something that, way back in eternity, has always been there because it is Him. It is who He is.
The best way I know to explain it is to use another diagram, or another symbol, so to speak. But I like to picture a cross in His heart.
Our problem, you see, is that the cross we look at—these two sticks of wood that have been put together—is more of a historical thing with us. We have oftentimes imagined that because man did fall, and because of the awful debacle of sin and rebellion, it was necessary for God to effect some stopgap remedy to take care of this awful situation, lest it all fall.
No. There has always been, there has always been in God, looking way back—whether it is this direction or that direction—you will find this quality, this something: the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. And even more than that, foreordained before the casting down of a world system.
Now, the reason we have to get the root of our consecration, or His consecration, is that we go back and say that this giving quality, this pouring-out aspect, this something that has always existed in God, in the Godhead, is the root of His consecration, and it has to be the root of ours.
God was going to give—not because man sinned and fell, not because he turned to go his own way. It has been in the program and the straight-line working of God from the very beginning. He has been planning to give, not only Himself. “For God so loved, that He gave.”
Now, I know that when we get down here into the scope of history, and we find Adam here in the garden, standing, as it were, at a gateway of choice, would he go God’s way? Would Adam enter into this same working principle and give himself unto that which God was after, to realize the thing He wanted?
Well, we know Adam chose to go his own way. We have the awful fall. We have God’s reaching down in and through His Son to lift man by what we call the work of the cross.
The work of the cross makes possible man being lifted out of his fallen condition. And I like to think of two things in this we call the work of the cross. There is the blood, by which I have forgiveness. Then there is the delivering work in His death, which cuts me loose from all that I am in Adam and makes available His own life.
Delivered from all of this that I might receive His life. Now, the problem is that so often we confuse this work of the cross with what I like to call the more eternal principle: the way in which God does everything—sacrificially, consecrated, given, pouring out, sharing. The way in which He does it.
I know no better term than just to say: the way of God’s doing, or the way of this working principle in His heart—the way of the cross.
Did you ever consider, when Jesus walked among the disciples, how often He used this term, “Take up your cross,” and, “Go the way I am going”? What did that mean to them? Now remember where they are. You forget that we are sitting on this side of the historical enactment of Calvary.
What did it mean when He said, “Take up your cross,” before He died on the cross? What was involved in that? I believe that takes us back to the whole way in which God the Son was accomplishing the thing that God was after: the way, the heart attitude, this operating principle that was in the heart of God, and now here He was expressing it—total, utter giving.
Well, we will have to start where we are and then move to that.
This morning, as we have said through the days we have been together, we must consider that there are certain things that accrue to our benefit through what He did on the cross. What did you and I receive because His blood was shed? On the basis of His blood, we have forgiveness. Who got the forgiveness? Who gets the forgiveness? Through the work that He accomplished on the cross, I have forgiveness. Wonderful, is it not?
You can go on and name many of the things that accrue or issue to us because of what He did on the cross. He delivers us from the dominion and power of sin, and all that the old life represents—everything that negatively needed to be dealt with. And then He opens up once again the tree of life.
Adam had been shut out of the garden, not allowed to take of the tree of life, by which this very life that he could have had, that he would have gotten hold of, would have been working in him. And this life, strange as it may seem, has this quality of the killing work of the cross in it. If you can understand that, the Lord has helped you.
Last year we spoke of the life, the law of life, the law of the Spirit of life. We tried to take that rope apart and look individually at the strands of what was in that life. We saw many things, many strands that were in that life.
One of the strands that is in this life, in coming to know Him and desiring to be in union with Him in His life—to know that is to have that life working in us—is that it will always produce a consecration, a way of the cross within us.
I used to be bothered tremendously for at least three or four years when I first began to consider the messages of Mrs. Penn-Lewis—what we call the message of the cross and all that is involved. I used to be tremendously concerned because there is a reckoning on the cross that brings us to a finality as far as our old past and all that we are in Adam.
Whether we like it or not, we have to keep our tenses straight. He says, “We have been crucified.” When I look to Calvary and I see what God sees as He looks at His Son, and He sees me wrapped up in His death, nailed to the cross, buried in the tomb, risen and ascended, I reckon on something of the finality of the work of the cross.
We get awfully fuzzy in certain circles, and people are all the time talking about, “Well, I have got to die daily.” Now we are getting down into the realm of the subjective and experience. But our reckoning, our position, the finality with which we speak, is that we have looked to the cross and God says, in His Son, that aspect of the work of the cross is finished.
By faith, I have forgiveness through His blood; deliverance from the dominion, the power, and all that this involved. The finished finality—I reckon on it. If I am understanding, my testimony will be the same thing as the apostle Paul’s in Galatians 2:20:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me.
Now, I have to reckon on that and its finality. You say, “But, Brother Frank, that is my big problem. I sense the finality of what God sees, and the basis of reckoning and all that it involves, but every morning I wake up and look in the mirror.”
There are wrinkles and a few other old proud traits. Every time the Spirit of God unveils and quickens something to you, you rush back to your reckoning and you say, “Lord, that has been on the cross, and that belongs in the tomb,” and I pull the shade on the mirror.
That does not mean that I begin to ignore and become blind. It is just that I take a heart attitude. I take a heart attitude that in Jesus Christ I what? Died. I what? Died. What tense is that? That is tense. Paul says in Galatians, “I have been crucified.”
But then I read, when he wrote six years later in Philippians, the third chapter, and he comes to this statement: “That I may know Him.” Now, that is what we are getting at these days: that I may know Him. Oh, I have met Him, been identified with Him on the cross, that I may know Him, the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings. What is that next phrase?
Being made conformable unto His death.
Paul, you have always been a problem to me. Six years ago in Galatians, you said, “I have been crucified.” When a man is dead, a man is what? Are there degrees of being dead? Well, we will all know someday. No.
This that Paul is talking about in Philippians, when there is a deeper entering into knowing, I do not believe he is dealing with what we call right here—the work that has been accomplished for me on the cross. I died in Him.
Paul, where are you when you are speaking in Philippians 3? He is saying, “I am on the way toward realizing the thing that has gripped my heart, and the more I know Him, the more I want to share, or have operating within me, all that this way of the cross means.”
The roots of His consecration—the Lord’s giving Himself—we are back there in eternity, in the Father’s heart. As the Father gave, I believe He was so one with the Father that the Son could do nothing other than that which the Father did. He gave the Son.
Brother, sister, the dangerous thing is to know Him and get too close. You will start giving too. You see? “That I may know Him, in the power of His resurrection.”
Now, this death, or this working of that of which we are speaking here in the full knowing of Him, it is very wonderful. You see, in this thing right here, where we appropriate the work of the cross in its finality, in its finished aspect, that it might bring forgiveness and deliverance and all that takes place, we have been resurrected and come to this life position. Then it is that we have something to consecrate.
Anything previously that you want to consecrate to Him—this is where we get our consecration so mixed up. We want to give Him something, and He just says, “Well, you poor dear child, I have to leave that down in the grave with you.” The only thing that can be consecrated is the new life, that which has come out of the grave and stands on resurrection ground.
This new life that is given to Him, alive to Him, will only work in one way. The thing that I saw, as the Lord takes me on, is to realize that there are qualities, there are aspects of the law of the Spirit of life, of that which was in Him and now is working in us—it will only work one way. The cherry tree will not grow peaches.
This new life that is working within me will not be able to reach out and grasp to get. My consecration has its roots in the very same as His own roots.
It is in this way now that we begin to make a distinction between that which really happened on the cross, from which we do benefit—forgiveness, deliverance, and so forth—and that which concerns the realizing of what God wants.
Turn to 2 Corinthians 4, if you will please. Verse 7:
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves.
As he is moving along in the fulfilling of the thing that God is after, he says:
We are pressed on every side, yet not straitened; perplexed, yet not unto despair;
Pursued, yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not destroyed;
Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body.
Now here is a dead man who is resurrected, and listen to what he is saying:
For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
So then death working in us, but life in you.
We are delivered unto death for our forgiveness, our victory, our blessedness? No. This aspect in which there is a consecration, in which we are moving along this line, we do not get a thing out of it.
The work of the cross that He did, I appropriate, and I have that which comes to me. But when I move in this sphere, it is for who? Better read it. Some of you do not have your Bible with you.
“We are delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us”—so that we might be overcomers? No.
So then death worketh in us. “All things work together for good”—even death, for my good? No, that is not real. There comes a time when we become alive unto God, and the cry of the heart is, “Lord, what do You get out of it?” For Jesus’ sake. You see what we are trying to say?
Strangely, I hate to say it, but our consecration has been pretty largely laid in this little sphere: if I am more consecrated, my work will grow, and I will be a good example. If I live sacrificially, then others will, and the offerings will be bigger. Of course, it is for the work of the Lord.
I wonder how much so-called consecration has its roots no further, no deeper, than the hidden hand under the table—what we hope to get in return.
Well, just in case we are overpressing one burden, turn back to the glorious, victorious eighth chapter of Romans. I want you to see the privilege that is ours. Romans 8, beginning with verse 35. You know how many folks are trying to get into Romans 8, where this law of life works.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Even as it is written,
For Thy sake we are killed all the day long;
We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Where would you put this? Remember now, only His dying, only His death, has any aspect of being satisfying to God. It is vicarious; it is substitutionary. It performs that which is necessary. Ours is to always reckon on a total death, a death with Him.
But here he is saying, “We are killed all the day long.” You see the difference between that which has finality in it and that which has further purpose. Do you mean that is all that you have to offer? Well, I am not offering anything, but that is what the Lord is calling us to: “For Thy sake, for His sake, we are killed all the day long.”
You would think that a man who was announcing that would drop his chin and be in abysmal despair. But from that springboard, he starts the glory song:
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come,
Nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now, I do not want us to become technical in our testimony, but it is quite discerning when you hear someone speak. You can sense pretty well how clear they really are.
I know there is a sense in which the Lord is always putting the mirror before us, and we recognize new aspects, new things, that we come to take a stand with and hate, just like He hates. But I always hold my reckoning solid: back there, I died in Him, and that belongs in the tomb. The finality.
Any daily dying is the new man sharing the glorious privilege of giving himself even as the Lord did. That is sharing, filling up the cup of His suffering, getting so close in His own heart, His own burden, His own concern, so that we do the same.
For the joy that was set before Him, He literally reached out and grabbed the cross, and that became the way by which it should be accomplished. Did He die for His sin? No. His has been the way of the cross all the way through.
What is your cross? It seems to me that any individual who has seen, been gripped, and laid hold of that which God has called him to, in the giving of himself to the fulfilling of that, the cross becomes operative.
That unique, distinct, special thing that God is going to fulfill and realize through you, which others—even your closest—may not understand, it will work a cross.
It may seem like your wife or your husband, or children, or relatives, or close friends. They are merely the outward aspect by which all this misunderstanding accumulates. But if your face is set to give—
We have shared this in the book. Some of you have read it, at least seven or eight years ago. I always felt like maybe it was pretty [unclear] until I picked up Watchman Nee’s book The Glorious Church. I had a glorious time one night when I read just one little paragraph in which he said that in the death of Christ there are two aspects.
We went back to say that in Romans it says Christ died for our sins. That is an aspect of the death work that is for our sins. But it thrilled me when I read—he said it was just an echo and a confirmation—there was an aspect in His death that was not for sin or redemptive.
He so loved that He gave Himself for the church. And I hope we see that. The church that God is after has never been down in this little box. The whole issue has been in His mind, been in His heart; but it only has its beginning on the resurrection side, and He gave Himself.
In this way, He gave Himself for the realizing of that. Lord, make that real.
You see, we stand on this side, and the redemptive scope of things has been so overshadowing. Do not let anyone think I am minimizing the centrality of the cross in His redemptive work. But there is a scope of consecration that has its roots in the heart of God.
The scope of His consecration and His giving is unto something more than just getting you out of the grave, getting you to heaven, getting you into victory. The scope of His giving: He gave Himself for what? For the church.
Now, this would be a drastic statement, and I do not ask for a Scripture verse. But you see, He was going to do this if man never sinned. Why do we let sin and the fall become our touchstone and our governing point? Why do we not start in the heart of God and His purpose and what He planned to do, and see the whole scope?
Yet is it not wonderful that when this awful debacle—the fall and sin and the need for redemption—came, He did not have to suddenly start a crash program?
We have so many crash programs going on in our country. The church just does not know how to become relevant. All of these wild people running around, and we are trying to become relevant to meet them.
The only thing, you see, is that we have never caught a glance of God’s way. What did He do? What did He do when man sinned and there came the fall? I believe He just opened up His breast and said, “Look what has been here all the time.” The capacity, the power, the source, the root, the consecration—it has been there all the time.
Out of His bosom stepped the One who was going to demonstrate, unveiled. This became operative in His life. He came to give Himself, and it found this extremity even in giving Himself.
Did He take up His cross? Why do we take up our cross? Now, here is our tragedy in our consecration.
I got a little book from a friend of mine the other day, a dear brother. I read a paragraph to you. It thrilled me. He says:
Too many Christians today are seeking to live for the Lord on the basis of the principle of love. Their thinking is, “He loves me and gave Himself for me; therefore, the least I can do is to love Him and give myself for Him.”
Oh, that sounds good—almost. Such a motive is good and high and altruistic, and I would like to add, purely human. Our love is far too weak and vacillating for such a tremendous undertaking.
“For to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not.” You know the rest. “I will be consecrated. Oh, Lord, You died for me and You gave Yourself. In all that I see, how can I do less? I will give myself. I will consecrate.”
The soul stands to get a new shot in the arm every meeting: more enthusiasm, more dedication, more life. “I will struggle a little harder to be consecrated.”
There is only one true and adequate motivating power for living, or for consecration in the Christian life, and that is the very life of the Lord Jesus ministered within by the Spirit of Life Himself. This is not a motivation of love, but the empowerment of life.
Did I lose you along the way? We have just been saying—I want to repeat it again—you see, our problem is that we can try to motivate people. We can try to get hold of them and show them the whole thing, and then we enter into consecration. I call it our consecration.
It is the motivation: “You ought to love the Lord.” Oh, nobody has been more guilty than I have of looking over a crowd of young people and using the stories that pull at the heartstrings and saying, “Look, how can you do less than give yourself? How can you do less?” You can touch the soul.
The only problem is, you see, we have to do this every Sunday. That is right. We have to redo it every Sunday. Why? Because we touched this realm. The roots of it are not in our union with Him.
We said yesterday that life flows out of life. Life flows out of what? Life. And love itself has its source.
All right, well, maybe we can prove that. Now we get close to what we are really after. Remember the rich young ruler who came to Jesus? “Good Master, what shall I do?”
Jesus turns right in very close quarters to this man who has come, and He says, “Sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor.” My, we have had trouble with that. “If thou wouldest be perfect, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor.”
You know what we have done with it—what I have done with it? Watered it down. Tried to put it in different content. “If thou wilt have a perfect heart attitude towards Me, sell all that thou hast and give to the poor.”
Now, the point of tragedy is this: the rich young ruler went away sorrowful, very sorrowful. Why? Why did he go away sorrowful? Because it was impossible for him to do it.
I have got real good news for you. The Lord is, I believe, working in the lives of people. And if there is a missing note in Christendom today—plush America, materialistic, soft, easy, security-conscious America—it is right at this point.
He expects nothing less than a full-giving consecration. I know your heart because I know mine. You say, “Brother Vern, look what that will do all over. Brother Vern, those are two hard words to follow carefully.”
The glorious, liberating secret comes right at this point. They came to Jesus: “Lord, do You really mean that, to follow You? Do You really mean to demand selling all?” No watering it down. No. You know what He says?
With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
I have touched a chord in your heart right now. I can see it on your face. “Brother Frank, you mean the building, the thing that God—you mean the consecration that God asks is just that?” I am afraid it is.
The problem is that we face these impossibilities, and we always go away sorrowful. Why? Because we are depending, we are relying, we are turned in on ourselves. The liberating secret is at this point.
This is what He wanted the rich young ruler to do: just to fall down, a broken thing, and say, “Lord, I do not love You that much. I cannot do that. I might as well be honest, Lord.”
I used to preach this like a house of fire before I owned the thing. But the principle we have to get hold of is the impossibility. In that impossibility, the complete honesty, the brokenness that cries out, “Lord, I cannot, but I give You permission. You start working, because I want nothing else.”
Cheer up, brother. It is going to get a lot worse. You know what I mean by that, do you not? I mean a lot better. The liberating secret.
You see, what this says is that in our whole approach to consecration, whatever it is, we have always arrived at a point where we see the impossible, and we go away sorrowful because it is impossible.
Some of you come to me and say, “Brother Frank, you say you have a hope that God is going to—that God is going to—” And I say, “Yes, I have to face that direction. If I do not face that direction, I am facing the other.”
“Easy, but Brother Vern, you do not know our situation. You do not know the impossibilities of it. You do not.” You know what I have to say? Glory! It has got to get worse. It is not impossible yet.
You think, here we sit. We want to see the church. We want to see God bring something to birth. But we sit out here in our natural reasoning trying to figure out. We discovered that when the brothers, eight or ten, would gather together to talk about our problems, two hours later we had ten instead of five problems.
The surest way to get things more impossible is to talk a little bit more. God has to bring us to this place: it is impossible.
But you still have the sliver of a hope that you can. Some folk are going to go away from this conference and say, “I believe I got hold of a new secret.” We go back and sit down and talk it over, try once again to implement it and put it into a thing. What works? Impossible.
This thing that God is bringing to birth is out of real death, and there just has not been sufficient of that yet. It is total. It is total. Around where lives have come into an embracing of this—bless the Lord—I have not expected anything else.
I tell you, you cannot be disappointed when you do not have expectations of anything else. It is quite a wonderful thing—not, I mean, just to lose your expectations of anything that you can do or hope to do.
Brother, sister, when I speak with a great sense of the sword cutting back this way, if there is any building work or any accomplishing work, anything that God is going to do, it will be when we have come to embrace that same thing that was in the heart of the Lord Jesus.
He gave Himself not for a cause or not for a danger, but for that which was going to be a part of the Bride. He gave Himself for the church. Now that is the scope of His consecration, and we are invited to share in it.
Do not get too close to Him. Do not get to know Him too much, or this thing rubs off. The recklessness of, “Praise the Lord, I begin to consecrate—” Well, I had better skip that phrase. “Lord, that is impossible.”
A perfect heart. He does not ask or expect the perfection of our performance, but I believe there is the perfect heart of consecration that we are working toward. I know that is a bad word in church circles today, but if I do not face that direction, and I keep saying, “You cannot be perfect, you cannot hope for it,” the first thing I know, I have turned my back on that. In which direction am I facing? I am going to magnify the impossibility.
It is a matter of which direction I face. You say, “Well, Brother Vern, you are the last one who will ever have a perfect heart attitude.” I know it, but I am still facing that direction. God is able. Praise the Lord.
There came a day when God had brought Israel out of Egypt. Here they were, camped at the foot of Sinai. He had said that He wanted the whole nation to be a kingdom of priests. He wanted the whole company of people to be this unto Him, standing in this life, living unto giving, being the means by which God could speak to the nations of the world.
While Moses was up on the mount, the people came to Aaron, you know, and said, “Aaron, we do not know about this man Moses. He has gotten us into something. He led us out here.” They prevailed, and Aaron went off, and they made the golden calf and worshiped.
They began to eat and to drink and make merry and play. They enjoyed getting out of Egypt, but they had missed the vision.
You know that Moses comes down from the mount. He meets Joshua at the foot of the mount, and they head toward the camp. He has a discerning ear. Joshua says, “Oh my, some people are singing and shouting.” So Moses says, “It is not the voice of those who have come back from winning a battle.”
“Let me listen. It is not the sound of those who have been defeated. There is not the sound of victory; there is not the sound of defeat. It is just the sound of a lot of people enjoying themselves, sitting down to eat and to drink.”
Their idolatry? Yes. They substituted and turned the whole thing, but a sensitive ear heard just people settling down to enjoy what they had.
It was that day that God spoke in the midst of the congregation through Moses. He stood at the gate of the camp and said, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Come over and stand by me.” A picture of consecration. All of them could have been, should have been.
But that day, you remember, the Levites came over and stood by the Lord. Brother, sister, God would have in every local fellowship that we would all enjoy this privilege. But there are those who have their rivals.
As we heard earlier this morning, it seems to be a pattern all the way through. He called out the Levites. You know, there came a time when even the Levites lost the full aspect of their consecration, and they had idols in their hearts. He separated out from the Levites the sons of Zadok, that they might minister unto Him.
I hate to think of it, but I know that all of history teaches me, and all through the New Testament we see the very same historical thing taking place. There are those whose consecration is mostly getting out and enjoying what I have received. They have never quite been caught by His consecration, the roots of which are in God’s eternity, and the scope of which brings them to the total giving of themselves for the place that He wants.
This gets awfully close, because I look back over what has been a couple of years of wonderful teaching in Indianapolis, and I can only see the number-one failure. I have been too busy and too preoccupied with things for the Lord that did not have the sharpness of the thing that He is after.
It was a consecration that gets in the way of the real consecration: our goal, our program, our objective.
I would that the Lord would say to us this morning, if there is a need in various areas, I do not expect anything of any shocking, earth-moving, awakening thing to happen around until God can get from Levi those who turn their back on the idolatry of the hour—our job.
Oh, brother, sister, there is the most subtle thing. I have seen eight or nine pastors move to a city, no longer professional as such, but begin to get into livelihood, making a living, and allow the making of a living and the need for supplying that to overshadow and encompass the soul. It is happening all over our country.
Men who get out of professionalism, but they do not get into God’s consecration. It is a real snare. Can I spell it any more plainly? Out of professionalism, but not into—and we settle down.
Oh, I tell you, brother, sister, you cannot get close to His heart without the way of the cross, the consecration that is involved, the giving all, the giving all, the giving up, the giving up.
We are so afraid of a professional ministry, but in most places we do not have any. We do not have any. It takes some Levites who are set apart unto the thing that God likes. They are talking about getting back into professionalism, but we do not have any.
Well, I leave it with you. Our motivation, then, is not that we try to warm our hearts and get all enthused because of what He did. That will peter out. I mean, it will last about a week.
Oh, I have such a confidence this morning that all He asks in the liberating way is just this simple honesty that says, “Look, rich young ruler, of course you cannot. It is impossible with man. But I can. Your roots are in Me.”
Out of Me there flows the empowerment of life. The wonderful thing about it is, when God gets control in that way, it saves you from all of our impetuous, brash moves, but He gets the job done.
There is a missing note today. We are so afraid of doing anything ridiculous or any wildfire, anything of that nature. Well, we have been through it. But, brother, sister, God has a desperate need for some Levites who hold everything else as [unclear].
Then it is—and I must close with it—then it is we begin to get a little glimpse of what Paul was saying when he wrote to the Corinthians:
The word of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us who are saved it is the power of God.
What would he be referring to? I think you think: the preaching of the cross. What was it? The vocal expressing of it in words, of what the Lord Jesus had done right in this framework. Paul was very careful to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
But pretty soon, the vocal becomes so wrought within us that people do not hear the message; they see it. Then this Logos, this word of the cross, takes on flesh.
The way of the cross becomes operative, and that is really foolishness to the natural reasoning mind. But out of it, this dying daily, this operation of death, out of it flows what? A dunamis of life.
Well, we started by saying there is an imperative in His own heart—this giving. And I have a hope that God is going to shatter every last thing we can do, and out of the rubble and out of the death, He is going to get rid of our consecration and substitute His: a new root, a new root of consecration.
You see what we are trying to say? You do not have any consecration that is good for anything except to be buried in the tomb. But the new man that comes out on resurrection side, this new man for which He really gave Himself—the church—He gave Himself for that.
Oh, Lord, let this become operative within us. I have got a hope, and you do too. You see, it cannot fail. A new root of consecration, a new scope, and sure results. He is going to do it.
Let us have a bonfire. You ever been to one when all the young people march by and throw their faggot in the fire? They give up things, consecrate themselves to the Lord. It is usually after a great stirring of the soul.
But this time, let us jump into the fire. Do not throw the stuff in; just really jump in. You say, “It is impossible.” I know, but Lord, all things are possible with You.
Father, cover our brashness, our extreme statements that sometimes are misunderstood. But keep them all in the context of what we believe You are trying to say.
Oh, dear Lord, dear Lord, we thank You that You are working. The new humanity, the new consecration that we have in Him, is not advice. We have a new root. We have a new scope. We give ourselves in Him and with Him, through Him, to the very thing that will please His own heart. This is the expanding of our vision.
Oh Lord, Lord, meet us right at this point where we always cry out, “Impossible.” Do not let us go away sorrowful. Do not let us run off and pout someplace and try to reinterpret those difficult words. Do not let us find some little shelter to nurse our wounds and say, “It is too much.”
Of course we cannot. You know it. We cannot. It is impossible with man. But hallelujah, You can. You will. You are doing it.
You are doing it. And we sing the glory song: nothing can separate us from this root. We have been united, and nothing can take us loose from Him. We are killed all the day long for Him.
Oh Lord, we thank You. We thank You. We praise You. It is getting more wonderful every day since we quit and You started, since we found the source: that everything is in the supply of life.
We quit trying to love, trying to love. Just let You be the source, the supply. In Jesus’ name, we ask this with thanksgiving. Amen.