May we bow our hearts together for a moment?
We do not rush into Thy presence, or into this meeting, but we wait before Thee and open our hearts toward Thee. We realize that we must have a word from Thee—not the voice of a man, not the mere letters from this blessed Book we love so much—but we must have Thy Word: living, quickening, fresh.
Oh, dear Lord, make this to be Thy hour. Let it be Thy time for Thy glory, Thy satisfaction, the pleasure of Thy own heart. And we shall be sure, dear Lord, to walk softly and quietly, knowing how easy it is to go our own way. We ask this in Jesus’ name with thanksgiving. Amen.
Many of you joined us since we started last Monday, and therefore I must be careful in some of the things we allude to, that we can all be on the same ground of understanding. But let me say in preliminary this morning: we have been trying all week to say just one thing.
It is simply compounded in the little diagram we used the first evening. There is such a vast majority of the Lord’s people who are most concerned for what God can do for them, what He can be to them, and the enjoyment they can receive from Him for themselves.
However elemental, and however necessary that might be as a first stage, so to speak, we have been saying that God wants to move us out of our little box and into the larger framework, or the more expansive horizon, until the undertone, the overtone, the throb of our life is, “O God, just that You might be satisfied. Just that You might realize from my life what You want, whether I ever get another thing or not—just so You do.”
Now, I realize the danger of drawing pictures. I do. I realize the danger of anything that takes on hard, cold lines and form. With that in mind, I realize how easy it is for us to get hold of the teaching, the framework of a thing, and miss the reality—the essence of it.
Let me once again turn us to that which I believe is, from God’s own standpoint, the throb of His heart as He looks upon Israel. Turn to just a few verses in Isaiah first, if you will please.
Isaiah 5:1: the parable of the Lord’s vineyard. You know, of course, that in many places in the Old Testament, the Lord has referred to His people, His own heritage, as His vineyard. He uses this simile to describe that which He wants from them.
Listen to these lovely verses as we get a short synopsis of what I have been trying to say:
Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching His vineyard.
My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill:
And He digged it, and gathered out the stones thereof,
And planted it with the choicest vine,
And built a tower in the midst of it,
And also hewed out a winepress therein:
And He looked that it should bring forth grapes,
And it brought forth wild grapes.And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah,
Judge, I pray you, betwixt Me and My vineyard.
What could have been done more to My vineyard,
That I have not done in it?
Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes,
Brought it forth wild grapes?
He looked that it should bring forth grapes—a real harvest for His own satisfaction—and it brought forth wild grapes. All the disappointment of His heart, so to speak. What more could He have done?
Turn to Hosea, chapter 10. The same simile, the same thing before us.
The prophet says:
Israel is a luxuriant vine, that bringeth forth his fruit:
According to the multitude of his fruit he hath multiplied his altars;
According to the goodness of their land they have made goodly pillars.
Their heart is divided; now shall they be found guilty:
He will break down their altars; He will destroy their pillars.
For now they shall say, We have no king; for we fear not the Lord:
And the king, what can he do for us?
Isaiah said it was fruit, but it was so wild nobody could eat it—wild grapes. Hosea comes along and says of this vine, this vineyard, so to speak, that it always has a hand reaching around to grab the fruit for itself.
“Israel is an empty vine; he bringeth forth fruit unto himself.” According to the multitude of his fruit, he hath increased the altars. Their heart is divided.
Sit with the Lord for just a moment, as we have been trying to say in these readings. His heritage is not really bringing forth that which will satisfy Him, at least at that given moment.
Turn over to Hosea 7. We add this parenthetically, and then get to our burden this morning.
Ephraim, he mixeth himself among the peoples;
Ephraim is a cake not turned.
Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not:
Yea, gray hairs are here and there upon him, and he knoweth it not.
And the pride of Israel doth testify to his face:
Yet they have not returned unto the Lord their God,
Nor sought Him, for all this.
Here again He is speaking, and He seems to say, “All that I have done for My people, and yet how they have missed that which I want for that which will bring satisfaction.”
Ephraim: too much mixture. You know what Ephraim did, getting involved with the other nations—too much mixture. Ephraim is a cake not turned: burned on one side and raw on the other. Do you know anybody like that? Lopsided and blind as a bat—brilliant in one area of truth, completely ignorant in another whole area. A cake not turned.
“Strangers have devoured his strength.” Oh, the dissipation that comes if there is not this holding of something very clear. I have seen brothers and sisters in their zeal, their longing to do, their activity, and all the siphoning off—strangers who come along and know how to dissipate and use up energy and strength. They do not know it. Why? We are so busy for the Lord, getting things done.
But there has not been an eye to the glory, the satisfaction, the purpose, the realizing of the thing the Lord wants.
And then finally—though I hate to mention this—“gray hairs are here and there upon him.” But I can spiritualize that, if you will allow me to, simply by saying that if God is speaking through it, He is saying: it is oldness. Rehashing the same old things over and over. Just going through week after week, Sunday after Sunday—all that represents oldness. Nothing fresh.
Only God can give the freshness. Only God can keep a life tuned to that which He wants, and out of it comes continual livingness.
Hold that all in the background now as we pick up what my burden really is for the morning. Beloved, if there is any one thing that seems to have grown within me, it is to watch the Lord’s people in their desire and in their zeal. Somehow, it is so easy to usurp the prerogatives of God—the prerogatives of God the Holy Spirit.
We are all thrilled in these days of fellowship here, and our proneness in desiring to share and desiring to help others requires a great sense of God helping us, and God’s authority over us as we do it.
I hesitate to say this, but I know how many times we go from a conference with the knowledge of things. A dear, sweet lady who has already gone came yesterday and said, “Oh, brother, I have been exploded. I have been nailed into a little box for so long, I can hardly wait to get back to my church.”
And I held my breath. I wanted to say, “Sister, be sure that you understand the prerogative of the Holy Spirit in His work.”
Only God can really expand. Only God can really enlarge. Only the Lord.
Now, let me see if I can illustrate what I mean. This is a concern because I do long that we will realize that life within us must be shared; it must be expressed.
You follow the course of the Lord’s working in and through your life, and you will realize how impetuous and how zealous we have been. Consider first when we have attempted to win someone to the Lord.
The first prerogative we have to recognize is that the Holy Spirit alone can show someone their need, their lostness, their bondage. Only He can do that.
I look back at the days when I was director in a youth service center during the war. I had such desire to win young fellows who were headed for the battlefield, and I had learned the methods and the techniques of trapping them.
I would take my Bible and go down and sit on the mezzanine, or down on the floor where they would come in, and slip up on their blind side, so to speak. The first thing we knew, I would start with my verses: “You know, God says all have sinned.”
Then I would proceed a little further to fence them in by saying that “all” includes you. After a while, I shut them up—no place to run, nothing they could do but say, “Well, what do I do?”
In the process of it, I would get their name on the little page of the Gideon Bible: “I hereby confess Jesus Christ as my Lord,” and so on.
Well, I meant well. But I did not know that the prerogative of that which is God’s work is to unfold to the sinner that he is a sinner—how lost he really is, how totally helpless he really is.
Now and then I would meet someone who was just right. The Lord had already been preparing. But I got confused, and it is very easy to get confused. I thought that my duty and obligation was to bring the world to Christ.
Notice the phrase: to bring the world to Christ. No. You will go down under the heap if you do not get it straightened out. We are to present Christ to the world. There is a big difference.
Our efforts to bring the world to Him will surely fail, but ours is the privilege of presenting Christ to the world.
This helps us to see the distinction between the privilege that is ours of witnessing and soul winning. “Ye are My witnesses.” They go out in the most simple way to declare what God has wrought, what is done. That is the simpleness of witnessing.
Only the Lord knows the time for soul winning—that is, when the rightness is coming. It is within His prerogative, you see. Remember now: God wants to use us, but we must know how to cooperate, not usurp. We get so anxious.
The next thing that came to thrill me in realizing God’s way and cooperating with Him was to realize that He works along certain lines. Whenever I have held out to people their need for peace, their need for joy, their need to go to heaven—their need along certain lines—I strangely was left all alone.
It is the work of the Holy Spirit to cooperate when there is the unveiling that the individual has missed that which God really was.
Maybe I can illustrate that. It came with great joy to my heart a number of years ago when I began to realize the difference between standing with a lost individual and trying somehow to get him through to see God, or standing with God, with the word of reconciliation and the ministry of reconciliation, standing with the Lord in His behalf—sharing.
I discovered that when our appeal is to their selfishness, the Holy Spirit does not cooperate. We can live in the larger framework where it is God’s glory, God’s satisfaction, that which He wants, and hold that before lives; then it is the Holy Spirit’s delight to cooperate.
I remember years ago, when this thing first began to unfold—the working with God, cooperating with Him in His appeal to a heart—I was leaving Missouri and heading for the West Coast, San Diego.
Having loaded the car early in the morning, I sat at the wheel for a moment and said, “Lord, three hard days of driving. How I dread it. But somehow You come in and take over. If You can get something out of these days, go ahead.”
I got a couple hundred miles out on the bypass around Oklahoma City, and I was lost. It was a new road, and I saw a fellow standing at a junction. I thought I would ask him if he knew how to get onto the main highway.
As I stopped, he opened the door, put his suitcase in, and sat down.
I said, “Where are you going? I am lost.”
He said, “Where do you want to go?” I explained, and he told me which way to go. I asked, “Is that where you are going?” He said, “I am going wherever you are going.”
He had been without a job for a couple of weeks and had heard there was no possibility of jobs around there because they were laying all the oil men off. He said, “If you do not mind, I will go to the West Coast with you.”
Well, I confess, for a moment inwardly, I was not sure I wanted his company for three days. Just about that moment, the Holy Spirit said, “I put him here.” I said, “All right.”
He put his suitcase in the back, and we drove on. I kept breathing, “Lord, what do You want to do in this? What do You want to do in this?”
It did not take long before I discovered he was a professional bum, had been on the road for many years. Then I found out he was a Catholic. Then I found out that he had been in missions practically every night for years to get a bowl of soup. You know what I mean—to get a bowl of soup.
But the Lord kept me quiet. We drove along that first day. When we stopped to get the first meal, I discovered he did not have any money.
The Lord said, “Now, you have been preaching that you just have one pocket. It is My pocket. I want to use it. Can I use it?”
I must shorten the story. That night I got tired, and we were heading into Amarillo, so I asked him if he would drive. He did.
As we were meeting headlights, I began to sense that maybe we ought to trust the Lord to open a way. He said, “You know, did you ever notice when cars are coming and the people are here, wonder where they are going? Wonder why we are all here?”
It struck a chord. He said, “Yes, you know, I wonder why we are here.”
In the most innocent way, we began to talk about why God had made man—why God had made him.
We went to bed that night. I admit, I really prayed, “Lord, he could hit me over the head and go off with the car and my billfold, keys, and everything. But I am in Your hand.”
The next morning we got out and drove the whole day. It was he who started the subject after breakfast, saying, “You know, you were talking about why we are here. Why are we here? Why are we here?”
All day long he kept probing: “Why are we here? What is it all about?”
We got out into the middle of almost nowhere and were stopped by a line of traffic. The flagman informed me that they were putting in a new bridge, and we would be there for three hours.
But the Lord was in it, because just a few minutes before that he had been asking so many questions. I said, “You know, I have discovered that both the Protestants and the Catholics are wrong.”
“You have?”
“Yes. I do not belong to either group. I have been making a private study, going way back to get things from God.”
I said, “You know, I think someplace, if you hunt around in the back there, you could find a Bible. I think I brought one along.”
And he found it. He had been sitting there, and I said, “Look, you must use this. It is really marked up.”
The three hours we sat there, just talking about why God has made man, how man has missed God’s purpose and was coming short of the wonderful plan that God had—tears coursing down his cheeks.
Finally, we went through the bridge and drove on several hours. I will never forget, as long as I live, seeing that man finally look around at me and say, “You know, I do not know why, but I just begin to feel so sinful and so guilty.”
I had never mentioned sin. I had never mentioned his smoking or some of the things in his life—not at all. We had only spoken of missing the glory of God, the purpose God had for creating him.
He turned right around in the front seat, all on his own, made a little altar there, and wept his heart out. He kept saying, “O God, for years I have been a runaway. I did not know what was wrong. Lord, I want to give myself to Your purpose.”
He never talked about getting saved, because I did not. But he said, “I want to give myself to Your purpose.”
It is the prerogative of the Holy Spirit to show men that they are sinners. And it is the prerogative of the Holy Spirit to tell them when they are accepted.
I will never forget when he looked at me and said, “You know, I feel so different. I feel so good. I have given myself to the Lord.”
I said, “You know what that is? It says someplace in the Book there that when we do this, the Spirit of God testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.”
Nobody has a right to tell you, but you just know because you know. That is the prerogative of God.
You see, we thought all the time in our evangelistic preaching that if you preach sin, you preach judgment. There is a place and a time—do not misunderstand me. You can preach for a hundred years on all those things. But the Scripture says, “When He is come, He will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.”
We went to bed that night, and I tell you, I had a new partner. I do not know how to explain him. He was alive. He kept talking.
The third day, he asked me where I was going. I told him I was going first to visit for a day with an uncle in Pasadena, and then I was going on up the coast a little way.
He said, “You know, we have been together for three days now. You know I am just a professional bum. What do you do? What do you do? What do you do?”
I reached my arm over and said, “That is a good question. I have been traveling across this country no less than seventy times, hunting for fellows just like you.”
“Is that the truth?”
“I hope it is.”
“Is that what you do?”
I said, “Yes, in different ways. That is exactly what I do.”
As we drove along that day, I will never forget him looking back at me and saying, “You know, if you do not mind, I would like to travel with you and do the same thing. Would you let me go along?”
I am only trying to say something to us this morning. It is the prerogative of the Holy Spirit to do certain things that so often we try to do out of eagerness, zeal, and ambition.
There are some shortcuts when the Holy Spirit is in the business, I believe.
I could give you story after story, illustration after illustration, where we have started out with folk: “Do you know why you are here? What life is all about?” Now, to be a solid, established Christian, of course, there are other things.
I used to live just across from the tuberculosis sanitarium in Missouri. For a number of years, it was my privilege morning after day to slip up among the wards, move from room to room, often taking my Testament hidden in my coat, with a pencil and piece of paper.
I had an illustration that we often used to explain to people the full purpose, the full scope, the whole thing that God was after. I wish it were possible to tell you of the various lives I watched the Holy Spirit suddenly lay hold of, as you stand with God to unveil His claims, His desire, and how man has missed.
I have had so many say, “My, I have been in church for years. I did not know that.”
We wonder why the world is hard, and we wonder why religious circles are so numbed and indifferent. The Holy Spirit is still here. He is just as eager and jealous for God’s claims and God’s glory.
But we have had an innovation for a number of years of an approach that is always appealing to man: “Poor man, you need peace. What you need is joy. What you need is—” And we are appealing to selfishness, and wonder why the Holy Spirit does not cooperate.
I repeat: we usurp the prerogatives that are His. He alone can really awaken an individual to his lostness, to his sinfulness. And, of course, He does this in His own timing and His own way.
He alone can witness. How many times through the years have I tried to give people an assurance that ended up with just a legal hanging system of verses, but they had never really come to grips with God? Now, I believe in the Word. I know that through the Word He speaks. But He alone can tell you when you are accepted in the Beloved, and witness when there is peace with God through the Lord Jesus. It is His prerogative.
Let us go on a little bit further. The one who is accepted, the one who has come to know by a witness in his own spirit, through the Word or whatever, that he belongs to God—it is quite something wonderful when that individual begins to go on his way.
But the Holy Spirit once again begins to move in, and it is His peculiar way to begin to expose the enmity in our life.
While we have come to know Him as our Saviour, He exposes the enmities—enmity in areas of our life.
I have rushed many individuals in whom I recognized some of these symptoms. I have rushed them to Romans 6 because they were about to throw up the ship and say, “I wonder if I am saved.”
And I know that it is God taking them on to the exposure of what they are. He wants to bring them to see their death with Christ on the cross.
I have to say once again: all the attempts to bring individuals to see their co-crucifixion, their burial, their resurrection, are for naught until the Holy Spirit comes and brings the personal unveiling and the exposure.
Somehow, as I prayed and talked last night, there was great concern lest in these days some people be able to slip away with just some more knowledge.
The Lord has kept shutting me up to this, and I share it again with us this morning. Beloved, we need to know what it is for Him to unveil the enmities of our flesh, the enmities of the mind, the enmities of the spheres—the high and proud places.
Oh, when God puts His finger there before His child and begins to expose. I have tried to do it so many times in places, but I am convinced the Lord keeps shutting me back to the fact that years ago, when for at least five years there was nothing but the emphasis of the cross, I believe we got a healthier band of God’s children awakened.
I do not know how to say it. He keeps shutting me back, and I say to us this morning, “Oh, dear Lord, do not let us escape the fact that only You can really expose us. Help us to see what we really are in the enmity of our flesh, of ourselves.”
It is so easy to prune ourselves outwardly and take on some conformity. But only the Holy Spirit can really, really tell us what we are and make real to us that we died with Christ and were raised with Him.
This is a deep groaning in my heart. I look back through some years in which I have seen individuals who have gone along so long, and then one day the Holy Spirit brought a mirror.
I remember a particular church in the West. God had moved and worked in that Oregon city for a number of weeks. If anyone had asked me, I would have said the pastor’s wife was really going on with God.
They moved after four or five years to a place up in Washington, and we were invited to have ministry there.
I remember one morning at Bible time when we gathered. She stood up just before I could speak and said, “For eight long years, I have listened to what Brother Verne has been talking about: the death work of the cross, the burial, the resurrection to newness of life.”
She said, “I know it. My life has been going pretty well outwardly.” Tears were gushing from her. “Last night, for ten long hours, the Holy Spirit was at work.”
“I no more have a doctrine about it. I saw why I led the Ladies’ Missionary Society, why I had done this my whole life. It was so miserable. My husband snored, and I got so irritated with him. How could he sleep when I was having a funeral?”
“I wanted to go to your room, knock, and get some help, and the Lord said, ‘This is a private affair.’”
I do not know how to say it this morning, but I am greatly concerned that we get swept along with just good fellowship—and it is wonderful—and a little bit larger vision of what God is doing. But if we miss a bedrock, basic work that God has to do, we are missing it.
It is the prerogative and the work of the Holy Spirit to really expose and lay us there. And I believe you can tell there is something of an overtone in a life that has been through it.
There is such a light way of talking these days about “my flesh,” “my indulgent habits,” “my aspects of the old Adam.” There is such a lightness about it, and that always speaks to me of people who have the knowledge and can glibly quote Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified.”
Brother, sister, when we see what God sees, and the stench that it is to His nostrils—how it gets right in the way of bringing glory to Him—I tell you, I do not believe anyone can ever really see what God sees, what He nailed to the cross and said is so bad it has to be buried in the tomb, and talk lightly about it.
We take our stand with God again.
Well, you see, we talk about our death with Christ. You say, “Brother Verne, I do not know if that has happened to me. I know the knowledge of it. I know identification. I know the theories of it.”
Would you get alone today? Would you, in the quiet of your heart, just this morning, if you really, really have been crying out to the Lord, say, “Lord, I do open myself before Thee. You make the exposure.”
“You make real to me by the Spirit what You see.” And I do not want to put it in a little framework of what to expect, because I have noticed God’s peculiar way—His own way. But there are certain symptoms; there are certain things that you have always said.
We need it in this country. We need it here.
The thing that so thrills me is that at this point, when a life really comes through—and it is the prerogative of the Holy Spirit, yet He seems to answer something of the groaning heart with Him—He brings this into an aliveness.
You can reckon from now till millenniums are over and never be one bit more alive. But having really seen, really seen, by a Spirit unveiling, it seems that there comes a new aliveness in the lives of individuals—a new aliveness, alive to God, alive to God, alive with God.
We can have the doctrine of it again, but the essence and the reality of it is something within the prerogative of the Holy Spirit. When He has wrought a real death, there is a life wholly alive to Him, bringing forth fruit, married unto Him, that we might bring forth fruit unto God.
We were saying of Israel that all the way through she was alive to God as her deliverer when she needed to get out of Egypt. She was alive to Him as the One who provided some of her needs. She was alive and using Him.
But He looks and says, “An empty vine, so far as I am concerned. Wild grapes.” What was it?
It is very wonderful that just as soon as an individual begins in aliveness, that aliveness has within it all the desire to be used, to do something for the Lord.
Once again, if we are not careful, we put people to work. That is the Lord’s job.
Notice how Paul put it. All those years he had been so zealous in working for the Lord, but he finally comes to say that the Lord put me into the ministry—putting me into the ministry.
It is misunderstood so often when I say it, but oh, there is something of a blessed day when we resign—when we really resign—all of our religious activity for the Lord. It is the prerogative of the Spirit of God to put us into that kind, or that phase, of reality that He wants.
It is the Lord’s way to bring in this next phase: all the emptiness, finally, of our own working.
I am amazed how Christendom this morning is filled—literally filled—with organizations that are doing jobs for the Lord. Every day, it seems someone writes with a newly established organization: “Brother, we wonder, this is our objective, this is our goal. How much discount can we have on books?”
Oh, the desire of people to do something for the Lord.
You see, it is right at this point, once again, that we get into this great difficulty of the prerogative of the Holy Spirit—the prerogative of God—and our zeal to do things.
We have been hearing, and if there has been something going on in the hearts of those who have a ministry, do not turn a deaf ear. This devastating work—and I like the word because it seems to so speak of what is taking place when some of our little pools, our little organizations, our little efforts to do something for the Lord, suddenly the Lord begins to allow them to wither up and dry up.
Even things that we call by the right name—simply because we have been the builder, or we have been the starter.
But the prerogative is with Him. It is with Him.
The reason I am saying it is because we must hold one thing clear: the Lord Himself must have in it all of the satisfaction and the glory. Our proneness is that there is something private in it for ourselves.
I think we can talk just a little bit openly with you. So many people misunderstand why, about three years ago, we came through a crisis in which the Lord just said, “You stop publishing your journal.”
We prepared for a great funeral, so far as all the ministry of Sure Foundation and all that it represented.
You say, “Why?” Well, when you come to see something in a little clearer way, you realize the subtleness of carving out a little kingdom as a means by which you can do something for the Lord.
I began to see down the road that it might be something I would have to protect, or something that would become other than that which the Lord really wanted—just for Himself.
I believe in the sharpening of our vision, the sharpening of what we see. We come finally to realize that it is the prerogative of the Holy Spirit in devastating and bringing to naught all the kingdoms and things that men have carved out, and bringing us into the focus of what He is really wanting to do.
But we are so prone to just restart it on a little higher level, with a little bit more purity for the glory of God, only to find it is going to have to have another devastation. Why?
As long as there is within the desire to build something, there might be some fruit. Israel is an empty vine; she bringeth forth fruit unto herself. According to the multitude of her altars—oh, that was the day of building, lots of religious activity, the multitude of the altars—but her heart is divided.
I do not want my intensity or my own desire to press unduly, but I pray that in the midst of what we are wanting to say to you this morning, we will go back to wherever our place of fellowship is, wherever the Lord sends us, with a new inward confidence that the Holy Spirit is working.
If we know how to cooperate with Him and His prerogative, God will bring forth some fruit. God will do something in and through our lives.
But it is His prerogative to hold it in the place where there is more and more purifying, instead of so much of the mixture that He talks about with Ephraim.
Lord, make that real to us.
And not only that, but instead of our lopsidedness, may He allow us to get the other side turned and the raw side developed. Let me illustrate what I mean.
There is such an emphasis on the Holy Spirit today. You walk among the Lord’s people, and everyone is alive to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. That is wonderful, because God must have His way through the ministry of the Spirit of God.
But we get wrapped up in terms: the baptism, the filling, the various experiences. Let me just pull away our terminology and ask: what does the Holy Spirit really want the prerogative to do?
What really is the prerogative of the Holy Spirit? What does He want to do?
I like to use some new terms until they get worn out. The best way I know to explain it is a term that dear old Brother Bach used with my dear wife when she was headed for the mission field a number of years ago.
He had talked to all the candidates. He met her in the path one day and said, in his gracious way, “Girlie, I know you have got your outfit, but what about the infit?”
You can see she never forgot it, because she has shared it with me. “I know about your outfit, but what about your infit?”
If we will hold the essence of what the Spirit of God really wants to do in our lives, there is the outfit—the clothing of the Spirit of God, that which gives anointing in service.
It is just that simple. You can call it anything you like, but do not get wrapped up in all the mechanics and scaffolding of it. You must receive; you will have this clothing. The byproduct of it is power, but do not get your eyes on the power. Just the need for the outfit.
Everybody is interested in outfits, even as my wife likes the outfit. But what is the infit?
It is His work within us—in the life, nature within us—dealing with all that is necessary to bring character, inward reality. You can call it the term you have always used: the filling. But it is all the infit, the infit.
I do not want to be misunderstood, but you can talk to me about all the experiences you have had; I do not know the outfit and the infit.
The outfit and the infit: the prerogative of the Holy Spirit. He has His own way of accomplishing it.
We are all the time saying, “If you just do this, and just do that.” We develop the technique of a thing and miss the reality.
Ephraim, you are so strong in something, but you are lopsided. Outfit, but no infit.
Then we have so many of our precious friends who are all infitters. I am after you too. Much of the infit, but never known any clothing, never known any glorious anointing and liberty. Get the other side of your cake over now—not half turned.
I lose all my friends at this point because people are either infitters or outfitters. Well, I am starting a new denomination where they are both.
God must give both sides of the cake. Just because of our prejudice, He must have both outfit and infit. You see what I am trying to say? It is the reality of the thing we have been seeking all week long, and I pray that this will lay hold.
“Strangers have devoured his strength.” Oh, how much activity there is, and how much we can give ourselves to. Brother, sister, the Holy Spirit has a peculiar way of developing priorities and sharpening our focus.
“Strangers have devoured his strength.” What does it mean? When people sense the empowering of God and the full measure of the infit within, there is great desire to be used.
But it is at that time, it is at that time, that God has to put the greatest bridle on it, if He is going to focus this car for the thing that He really wants.
This is where I have to once again plead: “Lord, let us be shut up to know the Holy Spirit’s sharpening of the priority in our life—what we really give ourselves to.”
If we do not, there will be some strangers that will come along and devour our strength, get us all wrapped up in good things, better things, important things, wonderful things.
Brothers, I do pray that the Holy Spirit may have His own prerogative in our lives. The sharpness is so sharp that there will be that intense desire within that says, “Lord, let me give myself to that which is really on Your heart, and not let others capture me according to their vision or their project.”
It is really interesting these days to see somebody come alive. I tell you, there are people ready there to latch you and capture you for their cause and their program.
But I meet some people who never get captured by anybody. They never commit themselves to anything. We have friends who have come to see us now for I do not know how many years. They have been on the road at least eight or ten years—two months here, three months there—looking in on this, looking in on that.
They almost came to this conference, but they have been there once. They will never settle on anything. They are not capturable at the present because they are looking for some new thing.
And the Holy Spirit reserves the priority—I mean, the prerogative.
Do not let anyone think we are trying to capture you for anything around here. I am not. God’s work is much bigger than we have any idea, and He is flowing in a much broader and larger scope.
But, oh, I do pray that the Holy Spirit may capture this, my burden, the inner undertone in your life—the throb that says, “O God, that You might have this. Not wild grapes, but fruit. Take away the dissipation of my energies and my strength.”
It says Ephraim does not know it. Does not know it.
We sum it all up this morning: all the blessedness of a life under the authority of the Holy Spirit, recognizing His prerogative in all that we do.
Do not let my sense of over-caution get you. Remember, when God makes contact, it is very much like a current of electricity. It takes both the ground wire and the hot wire.
I do make contact on the ground. When I know how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, how wonderfully He is always there cooperating. He is the hot wire; He is the power. I am just the ground, but it takes the ground. It takes contact.
This is the Lord’s right. So, as we go out knowing how to cooperate with an intense desire, let us expect Him to help us to be the ground by which He will come.
We were referring earlier this morning to Paul and Silas. There they were at Philippi. I always thrill when I think of their imprisonment.
I have heard men for years preach about what they did to capture the Philippian jailer. But if I stay with just what I read, I do not find them doing much more than just being alive to the Lord.
The dark night, the prison, circumstances so unconducive—but they were alive to the Lord. They were singing. They were praising the Lord. They were the ground contact.
Out of it, the Holy Spirit had a way of getting hold, and the jailer comes running. I wonder how he knew where to go.
Somebody had been representing some reality. Somebody had been witnessing, sort of unconsciously.
Remember, it says in the book of Acts, “Of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach.” They were the embodiment of a life alive to the Lord, to His purpose. The jailer knew where to turn.
Our doing is the way in which things are spelled out so clearly in teaching: to do. People have a way of coming around and saying, “Why did you do that? Why do you do it that way?”
Then we have the opportunity to teach. You see the difference? Why? God has made the thing so livingly real, we just cannot do anything else. We cannot do it any other way.
It is so much easier when people come and say, “Why do you do that?” Then the teaching begins.
But we are always out teaching what others ought to do, having not really done it ourselves. Oh, to learn to cooperate with Him. Wonderful way.
Lord, how we thank Thee this morning that our heart is fixed. We believe we can say with so many of those who have gone on before, even the words of the Apostle Paul, “For to me to live is Christ.”
Oh, it is not the Christ that I get. It is not what it means to me. It is that which Christ represents to the Father—the glory that the Father realized through Christ, the joy in His own heart because He found One who was so alive, so sensitive, so devoted.
We pray this morning that there will be a new sense within every one of us that it is in the Lord Jesus, not in our struggling or our crying, that we can ever be fruitful. It is in our abiding. It is in our being occupied with Him. It is in our being alive to Him.
Oh, we may be like Paul and Silas, locked up in the jail, and the darkness of the night comes. Lord, You are so wonderful. You get the doing; You do it. You have Your peculiar way, Your prerogative, Your initiative.
Send us out now to work with Thee. Do not let us just fall into passivity and get hold of the wrong aspect of what we say. But in our going, dear Lord, in our going out, let us learn the glory of cooperation we have with Thee.
We are ground wires. You are the One who works. You will. I know You will, because You have wrought some things in the lives of my brothers and sisters.
Help us not to be preoccupied with the byproducts of what men can get: the joy, the peace, the blessings, heavenly salvation. All of these things come when we are in right standing with Thee. All of these things come when You can have Your way. They are automatic.
We want Thee to be glorified. We want Thee to be satisfied.
In Jesus’ name, we ask it with thanksgiving. Amen.