We are gathered again, Lord, that we might see Thy face. And in seeing Thee, there might be the help of Thy countenance. In enjoying Thee, there may be the strength to come.
We would this morning claim a word from Thee. Help us, in the midst of our listening this morning, to be able to grasp the meat, not just the husk, but that truly which Thou wouldst impart to our spirit.
We do sense, before Thee, the awareness and the confidence that Thou art here. Thou art working. We praise Thee, Father.
We commit this time now into Thy direction. Do not let us run our own way. Help us to know the real sovereignty, the authority of Thy Spirit over our spirit, over our minds, over all that will be shared. We ask in the name of the Lord Jesus, with thanksgiving. Amen.
Would you turn to 2 Corinthians 11, please? Second Corinthians, chapter 11.
We have been speaking on the imperatives that issue out of a real knowing of the Lord Himself. That is, to get close to His heart, to become occupied with Him, is to sense those things that are imperative in His heart.
I want to start this morning with a simple diagram that I found on the last page of one of Oswald Chambers’ books. We are going to consider the imperative of relationship, or relatedness.
I think it is very wonderful when you begin to recognize how everything in God’s working has a glorious relatedness. We see parts, as we have been saying; we see this started thing from the outside. But there is a wonderful divine relatedness, that we get, as we will see, the harmony of all of God’s working.
The little thing I borrowed from Mr. Chambers’ book is just this: he says that there is a glorious threefold harmony.
When there is a harmony, or a proper relatedness, of our spirit with God’s Spirit, there in the inner spirit, there is holiness. That is a byproduct—a byproduct of a right relationship with God.
Out here in the realm of the soul, when the soul has a right relatedness, a harmony with God, there is the byproduct of happiness.
I have been hunting for better words than that, but that is what he says, and we will use it for now.
In the realm of the body, when this inward harmony brings about this soul harmony, it issues in the body realm in the byproduct of the harmony there, which he calls health.
Holiness, happiness, health. Which do you really want this morning?
What have you put your emphasis on? You say, “Oh, you do not know my body. It surely needs some help.” And the Lord is going to get to that. You give Him some time.
You say, “I am depressed, and I have had all the pressures upon my soul. I could use a little happiness.” And that byproduct will come.
But we must see the divine relatedness. I would like to keep us focused on the difference between what we call man’s usual approach, as over against God’s divine approach, for meeting needs.
Now, we had you turn to 2 Corinthians 11. Let me share just these verses, beginning with verse 1:
Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me.
For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy:
for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety,
so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached,
or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received,
or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.
And so on. Let me read that just for a little more freshness from Phillips:
I wish you could put up with a little of my foolishness. Please try.
My jealousy over you is the right sort of jealousy.
For in my eyes, you are like a fresh, unspoiled girl whom I am presenting as fiancée to your true husband, Christ Himself.
I am afraid that your minds may be seduced from a single-hearted devotion to Him by the same subtle means that the serpent used toward Eve.Or apparently you cheerfully accept a man who comes to you preaching a different Jesus from the one we told you about. And you readily receive a spirit and a gospel quite different from the ones you originally accepted.
I do not believe that any servant of the Lord who desires to see God’s people come into the full thought—the full thing that the Lord is after—can have anything but jealousy, the right kind of jealousy, over those to whom he is ministering. There is a tremendous longing that they might be spared from the seducing things.
There are so many of these seducing things that would take us away from the simplicity, the real simplicity, that there is in Christ.
“What do you mean by seducing?” you say.
I guess, once again, I must confess to being more guilty than perhaps anyone else here. As I look back over the Lord’s patience, and the patience of many of God’s servants, I realize how many times in my intense zeal and desire there has been that seducing—something that has kept me from what we are calling just the simplicity.
There is just a love affair, a glorious singleness and oneness of heart with Him. Let me illustrate this this way.
I look back over various stages of growth and going on and pressing to know. I remember, when I had graduated from college, I had been a philosophy major. And all of the emphasis of philosophy, with its emptiness—finally, I met the Lord.
Just met Him. And all the ways of knowing God—the ontological, the cosmological, the teleological, and the other logicals that were not theological—they all passed away. And I said, “Oh, praise the Lord. No more philosophy.”
Philosophy never really brings you to a knowledge of the Lord. I knew Him. I came, at least, to something of a simple acquaintance.
Yet strangely, all the while I was preaching against philosophy and its dead-end, utter emptiness in knowing God, there were the most subtle tendencies in all of us to get into the spirit of philosophy while we are crying out against it.
“What do you mean?”
Well, you cannot help but survey the religious situation. You see people without meaning in life, without goal, without purpose. You see the church so often emphasizing, as we have been saying, what we get through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
The whole thing centers in, as this little box we have been talking about, what God has done for us. It does not somehow give the largeness of meaning, the largeness of purpose, the largeness of scope.
So the tragedy is that you can get hold of, and see, something of God’s goal—something of the eternal purpose toward which He is working. Then you turn with this longing to give people a goal, to give them a purpose, to give them something of meaning.
But suddenly, without realizing it, we all begin to strive to reach the what—the goal.
It is a real snare. It can become a real pitfall right out here. Those who have known in the initial stage just the simplicity of acquaintance with Him—“Lord, You are all that I need”—can get stalled right out here.
Not with what we call raw philosophy of the world, but the spirit—the subtle, deceiving, seducing spirit—of philosophy. We attempt, as it were, to give people goals.
May I say something to you? God reserved for Himself the right to give goals, to unveil that which is of His own purpose. The tragedy is that the more we see of goal, there is something driving within us that wants to reach, attain, or live unto it—and the frustration of it.
Can you imagine old Abraham, to whom God had whispered the words, “I am going to make thee a father, with a family that shall number the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore”? There is something of goal.
We must recognize that there is woven into the fabric of our being something of a philosophical capacity. We are always asking why.
One of the verses says that He has dropped within us the inquiry, or the desire, to know the things of eternity and the things of the world. But, brother, sister, this can be a snare. It can become a little whirlpool.
There is a great attack, even in religious circles today, to try to give meaning and purpose and value and significance to life. But I am afraid it is a seductive whirlpool.
I hope we can see, before we get through, a little of why.
Well, maybe we will clarify it a little bit by saying that here is another little whirlpool that is very, very seductive. It is what we call the psychological.
You know, it is quite a wonderful thing when one day God begins to open up to you the fact that you are spirit, soul, and body. You can go the whole rounds and the whole routine of what I call an inward search, coming to know more and more of your parts and your makeup.
Do not get me wrong. It is a very wonderful thing when God, in His own way, begins to help us understand the difference between spirit, soul, and body.
But the psychological approach, again, is from the outside pressing in to know. You can turn in so many places in the Scripture where you find the emptiness—the emptiness—of such an approach.
I got a good example of it one day in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We were invited to go up to a certain ward on a certain floor of the hospital, where a young man who had been in the fellowship of the Lord’s people there was now having great mental problems.
I sat down with him for a couple of hours, and I never had a more engineering, devious kind of approach in which a man took his whole soul all apart and put it back together. All the intricate movings of his mind, his emotions, his will, and the inability of the whole.
Then he looked at me, and I will never forget the haunting look, as he said, “Brother, I know all that is wrong with me. And the doctor agrees that it is absolutely according to his diagnosis. But I cannot seem to do a thing about it.”
“What are you trying to say, Brother Byrne?” Just this: it is a matter of approach.
We have said it before, and I think it deserves to be said again: we can take our dim little candle and try to search out all the inward parts, the intricate working of our whole spirit, our soul, all of our inner parts.
After we have come up with the evaluation, we know some more—but not enough to really get us through.
There is such an onslaught in our day. Oh, the approach of religious literature. I am amazed every time I hear on radio or television how many of God’s servants—fundamental people—are getting into what I simply have to call the psychological approach to meeting man’s needs.
Yet the wards are getting more filled up. It is not really God’s way.
I must say, however, there is help. There is a difference between the spiritual approach by which God works and man’s either philosophical or psychological approach to meet needs.
Well, let us pick up another. Let us take the physical approach, out here in the realm of the body.
There is a desperate cry, a desperate need throughout all of Christendom this morning for individuals in their physical condition.
But I honestly know that God’s way, if He can work from what we call the long-range spiritual approach, is from the inside: working through a harmony of spirit, through a harmony in the realm of a renewed soul, to finally touch us in the physical.
I thank the Lord that there is coming an increasing awareness among God’s children—and I sense it here, and I am grateful for it—that we must not be unsympathetic toward those who have physical, psychological, or philosophical needs.
Sometimes the urgency of the emergency will cause us to reach out and immediately claim what I call an emergency approach. But it is only because of the extreme emergency, until God can get His base to work in that which is the spiritual approach.
Now, I have good background, because the Lord Jesus did it. All around Him there were those in desperate need.
Out of compassion, and out of understanding God’s way, He sometimes would reach out a hand and He would heal. The emergency of the moment, the urgency of the moment.
But you know what He did almost immediately? He left. Now, notice.
Word would get out very far, and He would be overwhelmed by people who had only concern for the emergency touch of the moment. The whole of His purpose and ministry and approach would somehow be swallowed up and taken over.
You know what He always did? Well, let us read. Matthew, Mark, Luke. Let us just see it in a couple of places.
Luke 4. This is the healing of Peter’s wife’s mother. Luke 4, beginning with verse 38.
And He arose out of the synagogue, and entered into Simon’s house.
And Simon’s wife’s mother was taken with a great fever; and they besought Him for her.
And He stood over her, and rebuked the fever; and it left her: and immediately she arose and ministered unto them.Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto Him; and He laid His hands on every one of them, and healed them.
And devils also came out of many, crying out, and saying, Thou art Christ the Son of God.
And He rebuking them suffered them not to speak: for they knew that He was Christ.
And when it was day, He rushed out into the street to find more that He could heal.
Excuse me. Verse 42—read it again:
And when it was day, He departed and went into a desert place:
and the people sought Him, and came unto Him, and stayed Him, that He should not depart from them.
Why? I used to read and say, “Lord, where is Your compassion? You, who could just touch and heal—you could do this. Lord, how could You depart and go out into the wilderness? How could You again and again run away from them?”
We can only appreciate what He is doing if we see that He understands the difference between what I call the urgency of emergency, in a moment, to do awakening, to get some little basis of contact to awaken—and then immediately withdraw.
Why? He did not want His whole approach, as it were, to be swallowed up and merely made into this emergency approach.
Whatever He did, it was always that God’s larger, long-range purpose might be accomplished. He was going to move in and bring about that which would start from here and would work and bring all of these areas into total harmony with Himself.
This is the war that has been raging. People are all the time saying, “How can you, in the midst of such need, ignore?” It is not ignoring the need. It is not being unconcerned with the various needs.
It is knowing that the real need can only be met from the inner harmony working out.
When my little boy gets irritable about the house, I sense immediately that he does not have anything to do. Everything out here loses its significance, you see, and it is simply because there is something deep within his breast—in all of ours—that is wanting to find its fulfillment and realization.
So I said the other day, when I saw him getting into this, “Son, why do not you go down and make a trap, and see if you cannot catch some of those little animals running around in the woods outside the house?”
Immediately, something of a goal got hold of him. From irritability and purposelessness and an empty summer day and all the rest, he got all involved.
Now, that was an emergency situation. You know how long it lasted?
They got the trap done and actually caught a squirrel. What was the other? A chipmunk. Really a thrill. But two days later, after that had all worn off, all the philosophical fulfillment of that emergency had been satisfied. He needed something else, you see.
Men have learned some of these laws. Religious leaders have learned these laws. They have learned that there have to be new goals and new things set before people.
I heard a pastor say, after they had moved into a tremendous new sanctuary and a great building, the day they dedicated it, “We are in for decay and decline”—this was his dedication sermon—“unless we can have a new goal. I propose tomorrow we start on an educational unit.”
That is the law of human nature: giving people new goals to give new meaning, a new purpose. It satisfies that philosophical emptiness within, you see.
But here we go. After you build wings in every direction, and fill two blocks, where do you go?
Nobody guilty here, is there? Where do you go after you have conquered all the worlds that are before you? Where do you go?
Well, the psychologist comes along and says, “This outer world is pretty small. There is a whole inner world.” So we get into the entanglement of all the inner world, the inner goals, the things. Round and round we go, but there is an emptiness in it all.
There is an emptiness in it all.
Somehow, as I have been fellowshipping with some of my brothers—you were here last night—there has been such a tremendous groaning with them: “Lord, it is so easy for pastors, it is so easy for the servants of the Lord, to get all wrapped up in the theological approach.”
This is simply going into all of the knowledge about God—about Him—knowing more and more about Him. It satisfies the mind for a while, and you get into all of the approaches of the different theologies.
But I have never seen one of them fully satisfy, to fully really meet the need. It is just another little whirlpool, a deceptiveness, seducing things that keep us from the simplicity.
If there is a devastating word going on in the minds of some who are trying to take what we are saying and put it in a little theological framework here, you cannot—I hope. Yet you can. This is quite far. It is not quite any of them, I hope.
Oh, without realizing it, there is that seducing us, keeping us away, keeping us in these realms.
Now, you say, “It is the spiritual approach we are after,” and that is right. In it, we will see in a moment, what I mean is not just something of the soul realm.
About that moment, something else happens, and individuals get involved in what we call mysticism.
It seems spiritual because you take all of the terms, all of the phrases that are so precious, and you lift them out of their hard, cold lettering framework. You lift them over, and the mind seems to get some real life out of it, and you seem to make them spiritual.
But it is just the rampant running of an undisciplined mind. I am afraid it is not spiritual; it is just mysticism.
We had a wonderful example of it back years ago in Missouri, where we were living. We had a very precious group of people the Lord had been gathering together for a number of years.
But, you know, people have ways of falling into certain temperamental pigeonholes. We had one brother who, constitutionally, by his temperament and makeup, was always like flypaper to a fly—always latching onto that which was mysticism. And to him, it was spiritual.
I will never forget one night in the midweek fellowship. He said rather hesitantly, “You know, some of us have been getting a paper that comes from the West in which a teacher has been giving some real wonderful spiritual truths.”
He said, “I wrote to him a few weeks ago, and he just happens to be headed back East. He is going to stop by, and we are going to have a meeting. I have invited him to stop Thursday night.” Then he looked over and said, “No, I did not ask Brother Vernon. I do not think he will go along with it, but anyway, I am announcing it.”
Well, he did not have to ask me. Yes, there was a strange sense that he ought to. Is that something?
I mean, I had been gone for months, and the brothers would carry on. There was no reason, except that there was an inward sense. Everybody was quiet. It was kind of a jarring thing to the group.
Finally, having prayed, I said, “You know, I have read some of the things this man is telling us, and I think that we should all be here Thursday night. Let us not have anyone stay home. If there is something really good, let us all get on the ground floor.”
“But I would like to tell you what this man is going to do, because I know that his is an over-spiritualization approach. Everything that I have read takes away what we call anything of reality. It is just an over-spiritualization.”
“So now you watch. Before he gets through, nothing that we have ever believed will be real. There will not be any real devil. The only devil there will be will be the carnal mind that is warring within you.”
“There will not be any heaven, because the only heaven there is, as such, will be the bliss of a spiritual enjoyment.” Well, I will not go on.
The man came, and everybody was there. I was just a couple of minutes late, so I slipped in the side room toward the back. I was glad I could.
Sure enough, I have never seen a man with more zeal. He kept looking at the group. They had been through so many things, they were unshockable.
It will be a good day when you can get to that place. I have been the guilty one—totally unshockable.
They were quiet, sort of sitting and listening. He said a couple of times, “This is the first time I ever met a group that are not mad by this time. A new group. Do you agree with me?”
Everybody just sat there. That man went the full gamut—what I think might have taken him normally three weeks. He went the full gamut, and he finally, after an hour and a half, sat down.
You know what he went through? I will give you a little example of this kind of over-spiritualization that gets into mysticism.
He said, “You know, I used to believe that there was a God who sat on the throne in the universe someplace. But one day I discovered that God was not a spirit. God was just spirit.”
“Since God is spirit, He is the controlling elemental force of the whole universe. Now, you are not going to like this, but the only God there is, really—the only God there is—is spirit. All the God you will ever see and ever know is what you see in one another.”
“Because God is not a spirit, but spirit.” With one mighty wave, he said, “Is not that a wonderful release, to know that you can see God right in one another? That is all the God there is.”
He went on, saying, “You know, I used to think when Jesus went into the wilderness that somehow He went out among the sand and the stones. But I know now that He was right in the middle of Jerusalem, with all the crowds thronging around Him. The wilderness was in His own mind.”
“The wilderness of a mind that was in quest of reality. And, of course, when He was out there, the Father spoke to Him.” Where? “In the wilderness of His life.” And the stones and all the rest of it.
No, he went on with the very things we had said. He said, “Of course, you people do not believe there is a real, literal hell that burns. The only hell there is is your own carnal nature. That is hell enough.”
Well, he finally concluded. I will never forget. The folk all sat there, and he waited for some response. “Well, do you agree with me or do you not?” Nobody said a word.
One of the dear brothers, whom we watched grow in a very gracious way, finally said, “Well, I guess if there is anything to say, maybe I should say just a word.”
I cannot remember all the way he put it, but he said simply, “You know, someplace it says in the Book, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.’”
That fellow’s face flushed. He got so angry. Everyone in the group was spontaneous. I will never forget it.
You know something? Not one of the group, to my knowledge, ever mentioned that to me or anyone else. We all just got up and walked out. That is at least twelve or thirteen years ago.
Mysticism that sounded so spiritual.
I tell you, there is something wonderful about giving the letter new life and taking the letter and giving it some spiritual meaning. But the rampant mystical mind can sure get into an awful tailspin and turmoil.
How we need to know what it is to have the Spirit of God within our spirit, bringing our minds under discipline and control.
Every now and then, when I get through, I sense something of an inward check in my spirit that says there is an awful fine line between that which is truly of the Spirit and that which is the rampant running in the realm of mysticism. Only God can say this.
Well, here we are. These things seduce. The enemy is absolutely set to keep us from what I like to call the inward abiding, the inward simplicity.
We will never understand what we are saying until the Lord Himself keeps us preoccupied right here with Himself at the heart, the very center.
Let me just show you what happens. Let us take a look at Psalm 42 for just a moment. Here is one who is explaining this turmoil that goes on.
Psalm 42. We know it well:
As the hart panteth after the water brooks,
so panteth my soul after Thee, O God.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God:
when shall I come and appear before God?
There is a quest of our soul for the satisfying fountain. But it will get stalled out here, and the enemy of deception will come in. The first thing we know, our soul finds not the fresh stream of the Lord Himself, but a little murky whirlpool.
The longer you stay in it, the muddier it gets. It is a little pool. It seems to refresh for a moment. The soul is in quest.
My tears have been my meat day and night,
while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me:
for I had gone with the multitude,
I went with them to the house of God,
with the voice of joy and praise,
with a multitude that kept holy day.
Here is the quest of one whose soul is reaching out. The religious world is filled with those going to the house of God, getting more and more knowledge about these things, about God, and yet remaining unsatisfied until we come to something else.
O my God, my soul is cast down within me.
He seems to know a lot about his soul, seems to recognize what his soul is. Then, in verse 7, he is talking about something else: the deep within.
Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy waterspouts.
I believe this is speaking of the inner spirit. The deep within my spirit is reaching out to the deep within God. The deep within Him is always reaching for the deep within me. Deep calleth unto deep.
At the noise of the fountainhead—I think your version here says “waterspouts,” but the fountainhead is the Lord Himself—God Himself, who initiates the calling of His Spirit toward our spirit because He made this empty room for Himself.
Incomplete, as it were, in its house, He made it for Himself. It can only find its full, complete rest and satisfaction in Him. So there is a reaching, the calling, both directions.
Yet the Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime,
and in the night His song shall be with me,
even a prayer unto the God of my life.
I will say unto God my rock, Why hast Thou forgotten me?
Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me;
while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?
Why art thou cast down, O my soul?
and why art thou disquieted within me?
Hope thou in God:
for I shall yet praise Him,
who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
Now, this may not mean anything to you. As many times as I have read this, suddenly two little phrases jumped out.
The first phrase, which I take quite out of context, is simply this. He says in verse 5, “I praise Him for the help of His countenance.”
It is quite wonderful, even though we stand down here, wherever we stand, and every now and then we get a glimpse of His countenance. There is the smile of approval. Did you ever have someone smile—the help of their countenance?
My mother was quite an authoritarian in our home. I remember through the years when that stern face would look upon us. You did not have to say too much.
But I also remember times when I was so cast down, then suddenly there would come just a little smile of approval. Oh, the help of her countenance.
It is like a package that I got. Notice now: a package that I got, sent to me from there to here—the help of her countenance. You have all had it, have you not? That is where we live most of the time.
Every now and then, the Lord seems to send the package and says, “Brother so-and-so is so down in his soul. I will send a package to him.” The help of His countenance. That is wonderful.
The only trouble is, it is not what God really wants. He says, “I want to get away from sending packages. I want to get away from just giving you a little help from My countenance.”
Then this—I do not know, is it not wonderful how you can read things and suddenly see? Verse 11 suddenly jumped, and I saw: “The health of my countenance.”
Why art thou cast down, O my soul?
and why art thou disquieted within me?
Hope thou in God:
for I shall yet praise Him,
who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
Who is the what? Are you following? He is the health of my countenance.
How do you get help as compared to health? If you are standing out here, you get a package of help every now and then. But when you have discovered the fountain and the source, when the deep is calling unto the deep, He is the health of your countenance.
There is a harmony here that brings harmony here. The soul is finding harmony that brings the health of the outward countenance.
This is an awfully ugly way of putting it, but let me say to you this morning, dear friends, that you should not be content with a milkman when God offers you your own cow.
Half of you got it. Let me repeat it.
You know who the milkman is? You know what we mean by the delivery system? Everybody says, “Oh, I can hardly wait to get to Wabana. I can hardly wait to get to such-and-such a conference. I get so much help there.”
I get so much help there. The fellowship is wonderful, and the Spirit of the Lord seems to give the help of His countenance.
I would like to get rid of the need for Wabana. You see what I am saying? Why have to have somebody merely bring you a package of help when God can give you your own source?
That is so crude to say it, but I think you get it. Instead of every day somebody coming by with the help of their countenance, suddenly you have found the source yourself.
He is the health of my countenance. He is my support. How? Where? What do you mean? Now we must move to Psalm 27.
Do not misunderstand now. We are saying that, creatures as we are, if we get away from the source, the Lord will get help and He will send packages. He will say, “Emergency down on Fourth Avenue. Send a package.”
Sometimes we get in such desperate straits, such a desperate condition, that the urgency of the emergency calls for a touch, a package.
But here is what God is pressing us to: Himself, the simplicity of it. Oh, how have we missed it so long? Here it is. Psalm 27.
The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
He did not send me a package. He is that. He is the strength of my life.
Then David gets to the things that we want to focus in on, verse 4:
One thing have I desired of the Lord,
that will I seek after;
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
and to inquire in His temple.
Three words. If you go home with these and they really strike a gusher within you, you will need to be back again. Would that not be wonderful? Well, I do not mean it quite the way it sounds.
First of all, it says to dwell. Where? Dwell where?
“Oh, I went to a place, and I found out all about myself—spirit, soul, and body. I never could distinguish these things before.” A refreshing little pool, a little puddle.
It reminds me of some boys who had just gotten down to the seashore for the very first time. As they rushed onto the sand, the first one found a little pool of water. He said, “Oh, we found it. Here is the ocean.”
Another one, you know how boys are, ran a little further and said, “No, I found a bigger one. This is the ocean.” There it was, about four feet around.
They kept going until one of them lifted up and said, “No, none of us found it. Here is the ocean.”
What I am trying to say is our contentedness, momentarily—the seductiveness of the enemy. All the time we have said, “Oh no, it is not the psychological, or the philosophical, or the theological,” and yet somehow the seductiveness of it gets us involved in it.
Do we miss the simplicity of what? Dwelling where? Beholding whom?
All the inquiring that comes from here will give meaning. The psychological gets in place, and all the goals and the meaning and the purpose, those things that you have set and tried to realize, the drives that you have tried to chase, the Lord simply seems to say, “You just forget all about that. I am your goal.”
“I will unveil all you need, and I will keep all the ultimate before you instead of just little pools.”
To dwell. To behold. To inquire. That is all you need to do. Now, is that not simple?
Is that not simple?
The reason we have our difficulty is that we try to dwell. We try to dwell. But God is a holy God.
All the time we are coming in, we are saying, “Lord, I want to be occupied with You. I want to just behold Your lovely face.” Five minutes gets awfully long.
Did you ever try to pray an hour? I remember one of my friends—you would know him if I mentioned his name—who determined he was going to spend the night in prayer.
I will never forget him saying, “It was the longest night I had ever been through. I had been telling people for years how wonderful it was to just be in the presence of the Lord.”
He said, “The first time I looked up, thinking it must be three o’clock, it was only a quarter after ten.”
Well, I am not talking just about prayer, but the dwelling and what is really involved: dwelling, beholding, inquiry.
I am more sure than I have ever been that God is calling His people to just minister unto Him. This is our first calling: to be alive to Him.
Acts 13 says, “As they ministered unto the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.”
Then on down it says, “They, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost.” We get our calling and our sending mixed up. Called? Yes. But sent out.
We have come to inquire and to know some of the ways of the Lord.
I wanted to emphasize, beloved, that our problem then is that when there is a right relatedness with the Lord, it brings a right relatedness in our inner being. This brings us into a right relatedness with those around us.
All the driving of our soul begins to be dealt with. God’s work, then, is from the inner. We are learning of Him.
Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
My spirit finds its initial rest in Him. My initial rest: born from above, ceased from all my struggling to save myself, born from above, and I come to my first acquaintance.
But the next phrase goes on to say:
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me;
for I am meek and lowly in heart:
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
There is another rest. I thought I got rest in the verse before: “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden.” Laden with what? Sin, bondage. “And I will give you rest.”
Now the next is, “Learn of Me.” There is the dwelling, beholding, and inquiring. There is the learning of Him, and we find rest unto our souls.
Now that is the simplicity, the way of the Lord.
I think our problem is that the majority of us talk about finding rest. We have been out in religious activity so much, and with all of the breathless zeal and soul work, we have discovered the emptiness of that kind of working.
So we say, “Praise the Lord. I have learned a little. I found rest.” But you know what happens about that time?
We forget that it is the soul that has come into rest and come into submission to the spirit, but our spirit begins to become passive.
Our spirit becomes passive. Our spirit begins not just to dwell, but to fall asleep, to become inactive.
You see, folk, in the longing to have body ministry and functioning within the fellowship of a church, we all come in from our breathless activity out here and say, “Oh, praise the Lord. No more soulish activity. I found rest for my soul.”
We all put our chairs in a circle and call it a New Testament function, a New Testament church. “Now we are going to minister.” But our spirits are all asleep.
As dead a meeting as you can have is a meeting with a whole bunch of people who have left soul activity, because once that is all they had. That kept the meeting; it kept things going.
But now we gather together to wait on the Lord, to dwell. And in our dwelling, we what? Go to sleep—our spirit.
Why? In our spirit there is, as we have said so many times, the conscience, the intuitional. If I do not operate in the soul, and I am trying to operate and know God’s resource and supply to my spirit, but if my conscience gets fouled up and I do not know how to maintain a good conscience, I can come in and not only be a dud in the service.
This is my concern: there is a certain amount of spiritual development and strength that is necessary before this which is of the Lord can ever possibly work.
If we do not have this exercising, this sensitivity, this developing of a good conscience, and through the hours of the week there has not come this dwelling, beholding, inquiring, aliveness in spirit, then when we gather on the Lord’s Day, or whatever meeting it is, there is emptiness.
I do not wonder that people get into what they do. They have to go the other way. This other is God’s way in the spirit, and without coming to this, the other has to be.
Oh, may the Lord help us. Let us see what we are trying to say.
We live from these reservoirs instead of this fountain.
Oh, would that all that the harmony of His Spirit and my spirit really means, all that holiness really involves, could press in upon us.
Brother, sister, it is going to take a lot more of the real divine awareness of the holiness of God in our meetings before there can come the health out here in the body realm—the health of our countenance.
A lot more carefulness in our fellowship.
I shared this in January, when it began to dawn on me as we were coming up the coast. I never realized why it says, “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship.”
Here are the functionings, the working in our spirit: our conscience, our capacity to fellowship, our intuitional—the way we directly receive.
John is saying there, if we want fellowship—how? With our body? No. With our minds? No. If we walk in the light.
What light? The inner light, first of all, to my intuition. I walk in the light, the light of the holiness that I behold as I see Him.
Just to see Him. It happened to Isaiah. It happened all down through the centuries: to behold Him, and to always cry out:
Woe is me! for I am undone;
because I am a man of unclean lips,
and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.
But thank God, while the seeing of Him and the realizing of our uncleanness, our unholiness, causes us to say, “Thank You for the cleansing of the blood,” we walk in the light.
The inward intuitional light, because He is in the light. We have fellowship, and the blood of Jesus Christ keeps right on cleansing us from all sin. Here is the activity in our spirit: conscience cleansed, boldness.
Well, I wanted to get into this portion over in 2 Corinthians 10, where Paul is dealing with all the imaginations and all the struggle that is going on, and that which finally brings him to say in 2 Corinthians 11:
My jealousy over you is the right sort of jealousy.
For in my eyes, you are like a fresh, unspoiled girl,
whom I am presenting as fiancée to your true husband, Christ Himself.
You get a little glimpse of the longing of your Papa Paul. Oh, the believer, the young believer that has just for the first time come to see Him and say, “Oh, Lord Jesus, You are so wonderful.” That is first love. That is something—the simplicity.
I cannot forget those first days, when I was unspoiled by doctrines, whirlpools, and other things.
An unspoiled fiancée, an unspoiled virgin—not finding satisfaction in other things.
I am afraid that your minds may be seduced from a single-hearted devotion to Him by the same subtle means that the serpent used toward Eve.
We are not saying our minds get detached. We are not saying we do not have any function of the soul. We are simply saying that there is something very simple about just dwelling, beholding, inquiring, and allowing Him to transform all of the soul realms.
Then outwardly there is reflected health. How does that help me? All of that helps me because there is total harmony.
Well, I used to say in my dogmatism that if you really have inward harmony in spirit, you will never be sick. You will never have anything out here but a healthy countenance.
Well, if I were only responsible, and could only depend on this generation—what I am now—I think that might be true. But then I reckon that I have an inheritance unto the third and fourth generation.
I am not making an excuse. I am just saying that I suddenly discovered there is more from Adam than I realized.
But I am determined before God that I am going to reverse this order, and whatever there is that is passed on—the physical and so forth—that somehow down the road they will be able to look back and say, “My inheritance was a little better.”
There is a reversing on the basis of the cross.
I lost you. Well, the Lord help you. You can reverse the order of it.
I look at some lives and say, “My, my, they really got a wretched patch of equipment when they got born. My, I wonder what happened back there some generations back that passed on a wretchedness like that.”
I mean weaknesses, deficiencies, and all the rest. Nobody has been more eager than I have somehow to be able to undo it.
Yet it is a very wonderful thing when God has permission to start, on the basis of Calvary, on a new ground.
Somebody says every seven years your whole physical body—all the cells and all the rest—takes on newness. I am sure that is true.
I have seen some people seven years in the Lord, seven years old, who absolutely have a new, healthy countenance—all the wretchedness of the past.
Remember what Abraham Lincoln said: “After forty, you are responsible for your own face.”
I am not preaching—I am not preaching what it sounds like. I am simply saying that somehow I believe there is a total relatedness to the Lord, an inward harmony, that begins to manifest itself outwardly.
While I know that there is a need for emergency, every now and then the only thing you can do is to touch somebody, pray right here, as it were—an emergency situation.
But too often, what happens if God heals or does something this week? If there is not the full harmony working from within, they will probably be back in a week, having undone or started the same processes of degradation all over again.
Let us be careful now. When we meet people in emergency, let us not be so long-range that we fail to meet whatever need there is, even though the Lord Jesus was set on that larger purpose.
Even though He was set on that, He always withdrew. You can find it over and over again. He went away, but they turned His whole ministry, His whole address, into something of just meeting emergencies.
You never really get the job done, because while you are helping one emergency, a thousand more are developing.
This deals with the priorities in our life. I used to ponder, “Lord, how could You ever lay Your head down on a pillow with all the emergencies around?”
All the while, I lived in that little emergency box, with my only realization that it was a shame if I was not in zeal, on fire, constantly—burning out.
Well, I trust the Lord to help us get this in His proper framework. God works—it seems so slowly—but He works in a permanent way, from the inside. It is so simple.
Dear Lord. Dear Lord, in our stumbling, in our feeble attempts to convey what only You can convey, we pray Thou wilt somehow shut us up to Him.
We have loved our working. We have loved so many things, and exhausted all these little whirlpools in these various approaches. Our approach has been one or the other, and You have all the time been drying them up to shut us up today to find the fountain.
We pray today, Thou wilt help us.
Do not let us systematize, make a little method out of this. But help us, in walking with Thee, to know when in an emergency to meet whatever need there is, while all the time we are alive to the way You really work: from the inside out.
The glorious harmony. We need—our spirit needs—the sense, the inward holiness, that comes because we face Him who is holy.
The world needs to see in us the real joy and the happiness of the Lord, the health of a countenance that has found the source.
Thank You, Lord, for what You are doing. In Jesus’ name we pray with thanksgiving. Amen. Amen.