Lord, we thank Thee now that we are not standing in the arm of the flesh, or going on in our own strength and sufficiency. We say the same words, but oh, may the reality of it come in a new way this morning: our total helplessness, our utter helplessness.
We are but a stone, and higher from the oil without its supply. Just make this very real, and we shall be sure to give Thee the praise and glory. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Amen.
For those who may have dropped in today, let me just say we have been thinking about the man after God’s own heart, David. We said—and I think I must re-emphasize this again—that as you look at the various lives, the men whom God raised up, you find something of uniqueness expressed in their calling and ministry.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were founding fathers. Moses was the deliverer. Of course, there are other aspects involved, but maybe that delivering aspect out of Egypt tends to overshadow. Joshua was a possessor: the taking of the land and attempting to lead the people on into the fullness. Then came the period of the judges, and Samuel, the voice of the Lord. We are centering in these days on David.
Now, I think I have intimated it, but we are going to hit strong and hard, I trust, coming to the end, on the calling—the focus—of David fulfilling the will of God as the unifier of a motley bunch of tribes, a group of people that needed to be unified.
I would that I had the power to strengthen this: I am still aware all the time that when we are speaking of David, he is the shadow. He is verily a dim representation of the greater David.
I so rejoice when Brother Kong starts and moves along because—and it is true with our brother’s father—there is always something that focuses in on the Lord Jesus. You want to pray for me? Pray that somehow I always begin and end with the concentration on exalting and lifting up Him.
Now, I say it is incipient, it is implicit, but I want to be explicit. You know what I mean? So I want us to keep this in mind: David, in any of the phases through which we take him as the man after God’s own heart, is but a dim shadow.
The Lord Jesus Himself, whom the Father surely looked upon and said, “He is the One after My heart, altogether satisfying; and in Him I find great delight.”
So we have been speaking about him: raised up, anointed. Yesterday we saw the failure and then the effectiveness of pain, that he was finding the priority. But this morning I want us to go on and pick that up, in essence, again.
What was the priority in David’s life? Now, I think we have to realize that this is something of a longing. How much he moved into the fullness of this priority, this that became very central, I do not know. But I tell you, his heart, too, goes for it, and that is what I like.
What was it? Well, turn with me to a psalm of David, Psalm 27.
I want to read just a verse that, I believe, indicates something of this intense desire, this sharpened focus. There are so many good things, I would hear David say. There are so many profitable things. There are so many desirable things. But he says, Psalm 27 and 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.
You hear any other man talk like that? I think it is a mark of those who are pressing in—pressing in for fullness, pressing in for the things that count.
I hear it in Paul in Philippians when he says, “One thing I do.” I sense it in the dear Lord Jesus when He is counseling with Martha and Mary in the home. He finally says Mary has chosen this better thing, this one thing.
Well, here we are: “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.”
Do you want to hear that same cry again? Turn over to Psalm 84.
How amiable are Thy tabernacles,
O Lord of hosts!
My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth
For the courts of the Lord;
My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.Yea, the sparrow hath found a house,
And the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young,
Even Thine altars, O Lord of hosts,
My King, and my God.Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house:
They will be still praising Thee. Selah.Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee;
In whose heart are the highways to Zion.
Passing through the valley of Weeping they make it a place of springs;
Yea, the early rain covereth it with blessings.
They go from strength to strength;
Every one of them appeareth before God in Zion.O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer;
Give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah.
Behold, O God our shield,
And look upon the face of Thine anointed.For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand.
I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God,
Than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.
For the Lord God is a sun and shield:
The Lord will give grace and glory;
No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.
O Lord of hosts,
Blessed is the man that trusteth in Thee.
All right. We said one thing, then. If there is something of priority in the heart, something of focus in the life of David, it is to dwell—to dwell, to dwell in the presence, to dwell in the house of the Lord.
We have been using, sort of, as a progression and a key—you remember in Psalm 52, which we read the other day—turn just for a moment. We pick it up in Psalm 52 and verse 8:
But as for me, I am like a green olive-tree in the house of God:
I trust in the lovingkindness of God for ever and ever.
Here he is saying he is there, and he makes quite a statement: “I am like a green olive tree in the house of God.” Remember, we have been talking about biology, but now he says, “In the house of God.”
All right, we are agreed on this. But we get down to the question, and it is this: How do you dwell?
I look out over the Lord’s people week after week, and I am painfully conscious, it seems all the time, of their desire to press in to dwell. But the question is: How do you dwell when there are so many things that hinder the dwelling, that hinder our real dwelling?
How do you dwell? How do you keep your mind stayed? We read and quote:
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace,
Whose mind is stayed on Thee,
Because he trusteth in Thee.
How do you dwell?
I think I would have to honestly say that in the last two years, since we have begun to make this something of a deep, intense priority, there has never—never, and I do not want to give any ground or opportunity for the enemy—but I would have to say there has never been a greater bombardment or attack to hinder this dwelling.
And but for having the key, or the secret, who could stand? Well, let us see if we can get into it in this way this morning. It would not be right if I did not scribble something on the board with it.
So here we start. I do believe that central to understanding this thing of dwelling is to know how we are constituted, how we are designed, and how God has made us for His dwelling and for our dwelling, because they are both very necessary.
The Scriptures say that man is spirit, soul, and body. Sometimes I am really pressed when I start to draw the picture—spirit, soul, and body—I am pressed to draw it the way it is in most religious situations. I would like to draw a little shriveled-up spirit and a great big, overdeveloped soul.
Because while so much of the time we think of ourselves as being spiritual, so much, as our brother said last night, that is pawned off as spirituality—and we mean well. No one has been more sincere in intent and desire than I think I have been. But, oh, what an hour it is, what a revelation, when one day God pulls down the mirror and says, “Look. This is what you call spirituality.” And in utter dismay, you discover what it is.
Well, I will not draw our picture. I will draw what ought to be: body, soul, spirit.
We know, of course, that in God’s unique design in making man, He was wanting a home—not just the home of the universe or the home of the throne up there—but God, in being able to express Himself and, as it were, fill the universe with Himself, uniquely designed man with a place deep within that He might make home, that He might dwell.
I think we should stop, and it will come out in our reading in a little bit. I am wanting to emphasize the word dwell, because there is a difference between occupying and dwelling. A chair might occupy a place, but a chair can never dwell. Only living things can dwell.
I think maybe we do more occupying than we realize, but God wants us to dwell—to dwell.
Of course, I know no better way than to say that when He made our human spirit, I believe He made it as a vessel that could receive. It is quite a bit like an empty room, as it were: complete, and yet quite incomplete in some ways, because it was made for His occupancy, that He might come and dwell there.
But I think it is a law in the functioning of God that He does not force Himself, especially in the realm of the moral. He does not force without invitation. So man, in the beginning, has an empty room. He has a spirit waiting to be occupied.
You know the story. In the garden, Adam’s choice—instead of receiving the Lord, receiving the tree of life, receiving the Spirit of God, and becoming one with Him in union—he turned to his own way. By taking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he set a course, a pattern ever after, that there would be dependence upon the sufficiency in the soul itself.
And so the soul has become the dominant, controlling, overshadowing force—the governmental agent, basically, within man.
Now, for the sake of younger folk who maybe have not gone through this ground, let us just see what the soul is. We think of three primary functioning factors within the soul:
These constitute the activity of the soul realm. We see how man, from that beginning hour, when there came the deception, “Ye shall be as God,” moved into no dependence, no life source—something more or less self-contained and having within it its sufficiency.
Of course, there is the need to reach up and get another apple occasionally from the tree—to feed the mind, to excite the emotion, to encourage the will.
But what I am after this morning is basically this: when people try to dwell, or they set their longing toward dwelling, we get confused so often in what is involved in real dwelling.
How often through the years have I attempted to bring my soul around into the place where I could dwell—stay, stay, keep occupied. But the harder I tried to get quiet, the louder the screaming came. Oh, I do not mean that there was anybody out here screaming, but it was my soul. There was awful turmoil; there was awful bombardment.
I wonder if maybe there are those these days who have been sensing the Lord planting something of the tree within, or bringing forth the new activity of the tree in your spirit, and yet immediately there comes a conflict of concepts, the way of knowing.
I would say you are quite an unusual person if there have not come new shafts of light and some new things, and lo and behold, here is the arguing. There is a renewed area, and yet the old concept stands, and all the war that goes on.
Anybody know what I am talking about? I tell you, I have gone home. I have gone to my room at times feeling as though somebody had had a meat tenderizer and just flayed and flayed me. And the strangest thing about it: it was not the old type of preaching that had in it all of the harshness, but it was done in such gentle, quiet, loving ways. It gets you.
That is the Spirit of God.
And I would say this morning that there will be no dwelling until we learn to recognize that dwelling—the dwelling that David, I believe, is pointing to here, the dwelling that we have to get hold of—is not our dwelling in mere mental concepts, so we get straightened out.
It is not a dwelling where my emotion, my will, and my mind have come to rest; but the dwelling is to move beyond into the inner part. It is in the spirit. It is in the spirit. This is dwelling.
It seems that the very man who cries out the most to say, “Oh, one thing that I desire,” and you turn and read, every other verse—maybe not quite, but it seems that way—he is saying, “The wicked, even mine enemies and my foes.”
Yet all of that is the means by which he is being driven to the real dwelling. I do not think—or maybe that is an overstatement—it would seem, anyway, that we do not learn to dwell apart from literally being driven.
I believe Paul is getting at something of this when he says:
Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
Here are these strongholds. I do not know, but to look out upon lives as you are ministering, or seeking, or counseling, or fellowshipping, and all of a sudden in the course of your conversation, you see something of a flicker. Uh-oh, there is a stronghold. There is a contact point, a collision course. You know what I mean?
The stronghold: something pretty well developed right here in the realm of the soul. Oh, what a day it is when the Spirit of God begins this bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Jesus Christ—the destroying of these strongholds.
There are strongholds out in the realm of the body, out in the outer man, that literally dominate and hold and control. There are stronghold concepts that have found deep, deep root in our minds.
I think the only way that we can be very sure this morning that we are practicing dwelling is just to say, “Cheer up, brother, sister. You will never get a harmonious marriage or contact. You will never get the answers. You will never, as long as you live in the realm of the mentality or the soul, find rest.”
I do not care how many books you read—especially mine. I do not care how long and diligently you study this Book with the mental glasses of harmonizing. You will always lay your head on your pillow with the tossing and turmoil.
I used to think only the wicked are like the troubled sea, which cannot rest. Lord, there is a lot of wickedness that has been in me. Oh, I do not mean this unrest out here, but that of the soul.
I am so mindful of the Lord Jesus. I never used to understand this thing of the salvation of the soul. I hear a man say, as a brother said last night, “The word of the cross is the power to them which are being saved.” Oh, that would wave a red flag before me, because I had a stronghold, a certain conception, you see, that when you are saved, you are saved.
Well, you are—in the spirit. Your spirit has been born; the life, the union, has taken place. But it was a wonderful day of unveiling when I began to see that there is the saving process of the soul.
You say, “The saving process of the soul?” Lord, that is quite a process. One thing is to change; one thing is to come into union with the Spirit, you think.
So cheer up, brother. Through all this warring that goes on here in the realm of the mind, God, in His own time and way, has a way of renewing, until you begin to see that it does fit together, related to the whole. The phases may not be complete, but God has a life.
So this morning we are focusing in on the fact that there will always be this warring that goes on in the realm of concepts, as long as there is something merely flowing out here in the natural. But I do believe that when God teaches us to dwell, to come into the spirit, we begin to say, “Dear Lord, I am shut in. I am so glad You have not asked me to understand all of this.”
It is so easy to get ourselves mixed up with God—trying to answer the questions and the problems of a lot of people. I do reserve that for Yourself.
I think the most comforting words I have learned in the last couple of years are, “Lord, Thou knowest.” Thou knowest. I used to be awfully hard because I did have everything pretty well organized, every answer to the table of contents, I would say.
What does it mean to dwell? Oh, the blessedness of moving out of this realm where the mentality, the soul, reigns supreme, where there is a shriveled-up spirit needing to know that operation of the mingling and joining work of the Spirit of God within.
Then the spirit may begin to take over and use the soul as a hand uses a glove: the renewing of my mind, the renewing of my emotions, the renewing and strengthening of the will. Then you have something of a complete change. The function of the soul takes on its proper order and function.
Well, let us get into this by turning this morning to the book of Romans, chapter 7.
Before we read, take out a few of the verses, let us lay a little more background in getting hold of how God has designed us to function. We are going to discover that there are several laws mentioned here in this chapter.
First of all, we are introduced to the law of God. Then we are introduced to the law of the mind. Then we are introduced to the law of sin which is within our members. And then we are going to see the law of the Spirit of life.
I think we have to understand a little better what this term law really is, what it is meant to reveal to us. If I understand the use of the term here, the law is the way a thing is made to function—the primary essence which governs or controls its nature and character.
Let me see if I can illustrate. We say, for example, of a dog that a dog is so constituted, a dog is so made, that at certain times a dog barks. Did you ever see a barking chicken? No. Well, you say, why? Because the law of the chicken is different. The chicken crows, like the roosters do anyway.
You say the dog, out of the nature that issues and surrounds it, the law of the dog is to bark. The law of the duck is to quack. The law of the chicken is to crow.
Now, this may be something of a limitation of the term law, but let us take this over into the realm which we are going to consider. The law of the mind is a very wonderful thing. The mind is so constituted as to function in a certain way. The mind is built by God to acknowledge that which is good and right.
That is why we have a moral universe. You never teach children, but there is something in the law of the mind that functions. Here a plate of apples goes down the aisle. Mary, Johnny, Susan, they all take an apple, but Billy ends up last in line and gets the smallest. He says, “That is not right. You were selfish.” Who taught him that?
It is something of the law, or the function, of our mind. It is the way the mind works and operates. The law, the work, and the function of the mind—it just barks because the dog barks; it quacks because the duck quacks. Your mind, in its function, begins—it has to be moral, until other invasions come in that upset that.
It always says, “This is right. Follow this order.” So that is the law of the mind. The mind, in its natural functioning, the law that is working is to look out and say, “That is life. That is moral. That is good,” and so forth.
All right. By the same token, we say the law of God is that essence, or that quality, that which issues out of Him and gives us wonderful awareness of the fact that God is love. You cannot conceive of Him in any other way, can you? Your mind acknowledges that.
It is the expression of what He is, that which is the outflow of His function, His nature, and His character in all that He does. Now, Paul is going to say—we will read the verse in a moment—“For the inward man, I delight in the law of God.”
Something in my inner being cries out, “Lord, that is right. That is right. Lord, that is right.” All that is in harmony and synonymous with God Himself.
But then we have to go on a little bit and discover that there is another law he is going to mention, and he calls it “the law of sin in my members.” Remember that there has been an invasion by then: a power, something of a life force, that has come out here to capture the members and to set up strongholds, to take one into captivity.
We will notice now in reading here, beginning in Romans 7:17:
So now it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me.
For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing:
For to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not.
For the good which I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
But if what I would not, that I do, it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me.
I find then the law, that, to me who would do good, evil is present.
For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:
But I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind,
And bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members.
Well, he uses a strange word regarding sin, does he not? It is something that dwells. I think it is something of a living thing, a spirit of some kind—something that has made an invasion. Sin that dwelleth. Not something that has just come in to occupy, but something that has come in as a very living thing. It dwells; it is something that is living there.
“Sin that dwelleth in me.” “For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.” “For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.”
“For I delight in the law of God after the inward man.” Here is something of the human spirit, I think we can say. There is something of the structure and the acknowledging of the spirit of the man within that reaches out to the light.
Something of God being Spirit—here is spirit. There is something of a harmony that would reach out. I think I could even see this in some manifest ways in an unsaved, unborn-again person. I sometimes wonder if they do not confuse that with this natural function of the spirit. It is quite dead, often quite insensitive to God, yet there are some manifestations, very often, of an inner spirit that is reaching out for its completeness.
But I think we do well to remember that the real delighting is God’s Spirit within our spirit reaching out in harmony toward God, the law of God.
So, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind.” You see, that which is the delight of my spirit, and then my mind takes cooperation with it, joined with my spirit, and says, “Oh, God, I give acknowledgment.”
For delight, acknowledging according to the law of the mind, it reaches out. But, oh, it has an alien area to go through here before it can reach out to God—this alien area where sin dwelleth, this that has come to create this awful antagonism and struggle.
Now, what is the law saying? What is that essential feature about sin that we see in its primary character? Well, sin is antagonistic. Sin is total rebellion. The law of sin, or that essential feature which always stands out about sin, is that it is always saying, “No.”
You see that in your little boy. He does not know very much, but somehow—or your little girl—somehow that contrary something, quite a living thing, just says, “No.” Uh-oh.
And it quite often manifests in big boys and big girls—not in the same way, but there it is: “No. No.” Ever sense it in yourself? Oh, I think I write in my bedside so often, “Lord, what is this contrary thing in me? I would, but that no, that no.”
My mind acknowledges, or maybe my inner spirit has its antenna becoming sensitive, and it says, “Yes.” Yet all of this cloud out here says, “No. No.” It is a living thing that dwells in the members.
So he says, verse 23, “But I see another law, another actively functioning thing in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.”
Very simply, we have a fellow who is having great difficulty. He wants to dwell. Everything of spirit would say, “Yes, Lord.” Here is a mind, at least, that acknowledges and says, “I ought to dwell. I want to be occupied with You, dear Lord.”
But the awful war, the awful bombardment that comes in—the stronghold here in the members rising up to say, “No. No.” This is the argument, the struggle, the reasonings that go on.
I think we get a glimpse of that in David. Here is this intense desire to dwell. So what do we do? Pressed in by the circumstances, seeming to be controlled by things external all the time—things out here—instead of a spirit that is strong, a spirit that is sensing the inner help of the Lord.
Well, if the spirit does not know how to draw from the olive tree, if the spirit is on its own, or even if there in the mind we are trying to keep our minds stayed, and the mind is independently doing it: “I am going to keep my mind stayed. Mind, you are going to be stayed. Now, mind, you are going to be stayed.”
I have met some people who are pretty strong in will. They are pretty well developed in the power of their will. Religious people can be very well developed in emotion. Why, they can make a whole audience cry when they do.
You see, these things of the soul. I used to be diverted a little bit. I used to be quite alarmed when I would move around among the Lord’s people. Occasionally I would run into a home situation where the wife would say, and I believe in sincerity, “Oh, thank God, get my husband to take his place. But he is so weak, and he does not pray, it does not seem. He does not seem to know how, and I have to keep prodding him to take the lead, you know, and to help him along.”
I think maybe we have been able to sit down and help many dear sisters see that what she may have called spirituality—or what they may have assumed to be spirituality—is a strong or well-developed soul.
I was out in California four years ago, ministering and staying in a very precious Christian home, a Christian brother and sister. He had his mechanic shop just to the side and worked out there day by day. I would go out, sit down, and fellowship as he was working.
Oh, his spirit—my, there was a blending. There was a crying out for reality. There was quite an attunement, and I kept thinking, “Dear Lord, I enjoy it.” Something of an echo—spirit to spirit.
But almost always we would end up by his saying, “Oh, if I could just be what I ought to be, if I could be spiritual like my wife, then I could take my position.”
And I would sit down with the precious sister, who had moved quite a little way with the Lord. She was all the time saying, “Oh, if I could just get Bert—if you will never know who they are—if I could touch dear Bert to be the head, to rise up and take his place.”
One day, in the groaning and the concern, I said, “Well, sister, I would like to just talk to both of you, if I may.” You see, he kept saying all the time, “She gets so many answers to prayer, and the Lord speaks to her.” She had a lot of the earmarks of what so often we call spirituality.
But I sat down one afternoon, and surely the Lord helped us. I will never forget looking at him and saying, “Brother, you are using a wrong yardstick for measuring some of the things that we call spirituality. My humble evaluation is that God has been working in your life, and there is faith and strength of character. There is far more of an enlarged spirit. You can tell it when we pray.”
I said, “I think if you could see what God sees, you would be encouraged. I believe that you are ready more for the headship, the position that you really long for.”
Then I had to, you know, at least lower the boom. I did not do it—I know the Lord did it—but I had to look at the sister and say, “Sister, you have developed a strange, mystical something that, without realizing it, keeps your husband under in a peculiar way.”
I think that God has made woman, in her temperament and makeup, naturally speaking, with a temperament that is naturally more mystical. The man, in his natural makeup, is far more calculating. I am not speaking universally, but we get temperament and the natural confused with that which is the grace of God.
Well, let the Lord help us. That is it this morning. It was quite something wonderful when that dear Christian sister said, “I see that. What I thought was spiritual was more of the soul. I have been a victim of the overwhelming and dominating and overshadowing of the soul, spiritually, in quite a dead way.”
And dear old Bert, I will never forget, it was just like his shoulders going back, standing more circumspectly, saying, “Dear Lord. Dear Lord.” The man whom God wanted to be kingly began to look more kingly, and the sister whom God wanted to be more queenly looked more queenly in her place.
Now, it took several times to reaffirm, and we just sort of went back and reminded them a couple of times, but it has been something of real growth and development.
Could you believe what I am trying to share this morning, dear sister? Because out of just one desire, that can help us. I believe that God has been growing many, many of His children. Oh, dear Lord, to get the right order.
But it hinges right here: something a brother was saying last night, a proper distinction between that which is of the spirit and that which is of the soul. Beyond that, I cannot go over it. God has to make the thing real.
But let us claim now that God will help us—help us learn what it is to dwell. We are not dwelling when, in the soul, we get hold of a principle and go home with the principle, trying to get the principle to function in our home.
Let me show you. You have never read this or heard this verse, but for those of you who have not, let me just say: did you ever read that verse, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands”? You see, you take that as a principle, and you go home and say, “All right, Lord. In my soul realm, in my mind out here, I have got hold of it. I will go home and submit.”
You strengthen your will. “I will go home to submit.” You get home with a renewed determination. That is what consecration is to most people: a renewed determination in the will to fulfill the concept you have learned in the mind.
And so you move about the house with that strange and wonderful religious soul being stronger and stronger: “I submit.” Did you ever live in that kind of home? Oh, the strain. Oh, the tension—and submitting, submitting, and submitting.
Behind it all the time is the worry that you are going to come into a situation in which you cannot do it. The law of your mind says, “I cannot go out and buy—I should not, anyway—I do not think I should go and buy a bottle of liquor.” Oh, your reasoning can conjure all the situations you are going to get into. You have got worry back here. You have got a concept.
And I do not wonder that too many unsaved husbands look on and say, “Whoa, is that what it does for you to be a Christian? Is that what it does to you? Deliver me from it.” And I do not blame them.
Can I say to you this morning? I know how I have been guilty for years. Instead of bringing people into the glorious liberty of the sons of God, the children of God, I have been so guilty of giving people a yoke—a principle, something that develops in the realm of the soul.
And God wants to take away the strain. You are not dwelling when you are strained. You are in the soul; that is its dominance. But go home with an olive tree instead of a basket of apples.
Of course, the principles are there. That is all right. When God really, in the spirit, can begin to use them, the renewed mind will bring them into real operation. He brings them to your remembrance, and He makes them operative. You go home relaxed. Oh, bless the Lord.
Do not worry: “Lord, in that hour when I need it, You will give a word. In that situation, when it comes, the tree will give the knowledge.” I do not have to hunt around for the basket. I may have misplaced it. Which page was that in my notebook?
I do not think I am—thank God for whatever help there is—that extreme. But you see the principle? Relax. I guess I say over and over again, “Lord, so relax. This is not so terrible. It is wonderful. Relax.”
But, you see, so often it is a shriveled-up spirit that does not really know its union, does not really know its connection, has not learned to continually dwell. I do not have that other law working—the law of the Spirit.
What is it? Life. Life. Life. The law of the Spirit is life, the law of the Spirit of life.
I have seen wives go home—we will get around to husbands in a minute—I have seen wives go home with a kind of relaxation. You think I am giving you some antinomianism and lawlessness? No. There is another law: the law of the Spirit of life.
A new captivity that is actually quite lovely. He led captivity captive—those who were captive in the soul into the captivity of the Spirit. He led captivity into a new captivity.
And just relax. Why, those homes, with something of the anointing, manifest joy, quietness. The husband, after a few days, begins to look on and says, “I am going to send her back there again.”
Now be careful. You do not push anything. Do not go home and sit down and say, “Now, I am going to tell you all that I learned. One, two, three, four, five.” He does not have any appetite, no hunger, no discernment. You are feeding out of season.
But after a few days he has been watching: the joy of the Lord, relaxation, rest, dwelling. “Sweetheart, what did they speak about? Tell me a little.” And do not start pushing. Do not give him all twelve messages in an hour.
Oh, to get the push out of it. Oh, to get the striving out of us. Oh, to get this helping God out of us, and to relax. Sense the dwelling: “Dear Lord, in Your time, You have a way.” It makes a difference.
This is going to apply not only when some wives go home, but when we go back to the place where we are fellowshipping. You can go back and create quite a stir if you go back to that church or fellowship and say, “Boy, you should have been there. I got all my concepts rearranged. Everything is wrong here. Nothing is right. We are going to start all over.”
No, you would not do that, but I have done it. Then you start to push and start to rearrange, start to reorganize the whole thing. Oh, that is not the way.
But the olive tree goes home, and somebody begins to see the overflow and the newness that comes out of dwelling. The bombardments of life, all the arguing, and the impossible problems—I used to think that after a while I would get all of the principles and the concepts that would help me know what to do in every situation.
But to my utter confession this morning, I have to say it only gets worse. The problems become more impossible. They are hard, they are hard. We are just wanting to get shut up again.
The answer—I think we have got it over and over again—the answer is: we must learn the life source, the anointing that God puts within.
Here we get a picture now: “O wretched man that I am.” I do not think this fellow was struggling too much with some habits, some bad physical things. I do not think that was the primary thing here. “O wretched man that I am.” But there was the arguing in the realm of the soul.
And that is worth suffering, really. You are going to suffer. That mental suffering is far worse than anything else.
Some of you think, “But how am I going to—? I have got to go home. We have got to have a fellowship. I have got to go home and get something started. I am alive; I am caught and captured. How am I going to do it?”
By dwelling. By dwelling. By dwelling.
Set your mind on the Spirit. I am not wanting us to turn in merely to our spirit, though we have to know where God dwells. There is something of a communion in our spirit, but I want to keep this in balance now.
You cannot move on very long in the dwelling before there is poise. In the dwelling, there is an insulation against the things that would bombard. But I like to picture it this way: Lord Jesus, You who are seated at the right hand of the Father, and in this way become quite objective, yet, sensing that He is a heavenly Intercessor, He has sent the indwelling Intercessor to represent Him.
In spirit, you know there is a oneness. That is why I know how to say, “It is like a long cord. I am here, and all the way up there at the same time.” Never just here, closed in; but when in spirit there is that communing, I am also always up there.
Lord, make that real. Some people are just, I mean in their localization, just trying to get up there. No. And I think some get kind of closed in on stuff being in here. Well, the sense we have of the unity in the Trinity, and yet the localization—He is at the right hand, and I am all the way from there to here.
Somebody explain that better when you get a chance. I cannot. You can see why: it is not explainable. Only God can reveal it. That is what David is talking about in the dwelling.
So we move, then, beyond all of this that we call reacting. How many times, when a situation has come up, out of the impetuous spur of the moment, I have reacted. Reaction is something of the soul. Deliberate poise is something of the action out of the spirit.
My friend Lorne Sanny, you know, of the Navigators, says, “You reveal what you are not only by how you act, but by how you react.” If you pass the reaction test—reaction to providence, to people, to possessions, to pressure—then you may add one more P for having attained the stature of a perfect man, a man after God’s own heart.
How do I react down here to people? It is in the soul. There is a conflict of mind. I react. Here my possessions are being taken away, being misused, or something. The soul says, “That is mine.” Yet I quickly set my mind: “That is not mine anyway, really.”
You see, there are things you have to pass before you have got two pockets—the Lord’s pocket and your pocket. It is all the Lord’s. The Lord can take away.
Reaction? Dwelling comes, then, when the soul has come to recognize its reacting power, but you move in to dwell.
All these things that we are going through are ways by which God is working an insulation, developing a stronger insulating quality here, so that no longer, when these pressures, people, providences, circumstances—these things—come, you do not react the same way.
You who have gone on do not react to the same things today, do you? No. The bombardment comes in a little different way, at a different level. God is developing a greater insulating quality, as it were, that there might be a dwelling.
Remember, the Reader’s Digest, back I think in 1950, told how a brother was walking home with a Quaker friend one day who stopped at a newsstand to buy a paper. He thanked the newsman politely, but the old fellow did not even acknowledge it. In a sullen way, he did not respond.
The friend turned to the Quaker and said, “He is a sullen fellow, not too agreeable, not very kind, is he?”
The Quaker turned and said, “Oh, he is that way every night when I buy a paper.”
“Well then, why do you continue to be so polite to him,” he asked, “when he is that way?”
And he responded, “Why should I let him decide how I am going to act?”
Why should I let him decide? Oh, I am doing that. Yeah, yeah. See the reaction?
I do not know what that does to you, what it has done to me when I read it. The important word here is how I act, not react.
Reaction. Oh, Amy Carmichael says, “The cup that is filled with sweet water, when it is accidentally jarred, can only spill sweet water.”
But I see a brother coming, and I know I am going to get a tongue-lashing. So I brace myself and fill my cup with nice, sweet humility, all ready for it. You see, my soul can get pretty well developed.
Then someone slips in ten minutes later at the door—not the one I was expecting, but somebody else—and something else spills out.
Well, I wanted to go back once again just to remember now that there is a law of the Spirit of life. The functioning, the way, the law of the Spirit of life will work deep within to be the source that can center poise in this dwelling.
Are you catching why I am saying this has to be the priority? It has to become a life priority, because the bombardments that come in: “What about this group? What about this? What about that? Who is right? How do you fit it all together?” Lord, Thou knowest.
For two years we have been trying to build something for the Lord in Indianapolis. Even though over and over again I have whispered back and said, “Lord, You keep saying, ‘I will build.’” I get into such a strain because it is so slow, and all the noes keep rising up: “No, no, no, no.” Contrary spirit.
Lord, Thou dost know. Choose to dwell—to dwell.
Well, I must go on in the next couple of minutes back to Psalm 27, lest we get our dwelling kind of confused a little bit.
Psalm 27. I love this way David starts it. Verse 1:
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?
I used to think He gave me light. I used to think it was something He would give, you know, like a package. No. The only thing you get detached like that is from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
But the thing about this is that He is never detached from Himself. He is my light. And, bless the Lord, He is the salvation of my soul. It does not seem like much is happening, but I say He is my salvation.
He is. He does not merely give it; He is. He is the tree. He is the source. The law of the Spirit of life is in Christ Jesus. The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
Do not look out in the soul. Do not let the bombardment come. When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell. Though a host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war should rise against me, even then will I be confident.
Do you think this fellow’s desire to dwell has any more meaning now? Is he pressing in to dwell?
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.
Now, let us just focus in on this dwelling. Just as surely as a person who has been so active in the realm of the soul and active in the realm of the body begins to think of dwelling, they think of passivity.
I would that we would get, first of all, this: dwelling is coming in a very living way to take an abiding, to have a resource, to have a source. Then, to behold—to behold, to behold.
Someone says, “Oh, Brother, I am sure a long ways from the inner place. I have hardly gone into the outer court, or the second court, this room, before I move into the real dwelling.” May I say this morning that there is a difference between the direction that you are facing.
Here is a principle that has been so helpful. Someone comes up to me and says, “You believe in perfection?” You know how that is waving a red flag, and we will circle: “Do you believe in perfection?” I know all that is involved. You know, you have been through a little of it.
But there is a principle I want you to get hold of this morning. I come so often and just say, “My face is set toward perfection,” because if it is not set that direction, then it is set the other direction.
By the very token of the way my face is set, I am either going to—with all the longing—now hold steady a minute, I will get out of this. If my face is set the other way, I am going to make excuses all the time for failures. My face is set the other way. I am turned the other way. I am headed toward the rim of the wheel.
You say, “It is the way I face. It is the way I think.” But if I am faced toward the hub, I may be standing way out here at the rim itself, but I am faced this way. I am faced this way.
“Dear Lord, You delight in the perfection of the universe. I can have no other delight.”
You see the difference? I may be further away—and that is surely the truth—further away from it. But it is the way you are facing. You are trying to come as near as you can to the precipice without falling over, or you are heading inward, just as far away as you can. It is the way you are facing.
No, do not be alarmed. I know I will never be perfect. Yet I find faith in a certain direction. I have great hope.
You see, there are so many areas, so many things in life, when a man or woman reveals the direction of faith. This is the thing when one comes to dwell. You begin to behold.
Someone says, “Do you really, really believe, Brother Fountain, that in this closing hour God is going to raise up a pure testimony, a people who are one, and in locality there can be the transcending of personality difficulties and all that is involved through the years and conflicts and so on?”
I can only have one answer: my faith is saying, “Lord, I believe You are.” If I turn my face around to behold something else, I am a man totally without hope.
All right, go ahead, shoot. But I cannot face Him, I cannot see His face, I cannot dwell and behold, if there is anything that turns my face. You see, I can be in the room, and that is dwelling, but I have got to face this.
You see what I am trying to say? This is quite a radical adjustment. In your mind, you will go through a thousand turmoils if you try to explain. I know all the perfection problems. I know all the unity—I mean, I know some of the unity problems—and all these things. You know what is involved a little bit.
But I have got to behold. And the dwelling, you see, is to behold the beauty of the Lord. Oh, Lord, this is quite something wonderful to move in—quite something wonderful to move in—and the face is set toward the hub instead of toward the rim.
“How far can I go and still be safe?” Ever hear people talk that way? The face is wrong. “How far can you go and still be filled with the Spirit?” The face is wrong. The face is wrong.
“Does the Lord want me to give my tenth before I take out deductions or after?” You see, my face is set one way. “Well, the face is set: Lord, how much can I—Lord, can I buy this? It is all Yours, all Yours. A taste of that? It is all Yours. Do You mind if I buy this, Father? Is this what You think?” My face is set.
You can tell. Do you have to fellowship with an individual very long before you can tell what he is beholding? What direction he is headed? He is either headed toward the house or toward the rim. He is facing; he is beholding. There is something of a glorious aroma about the life.
But you will not dwell very long until you have got a taste that says, “What do You think?”
Now, we said a little while ago that if you are in the strain of things, the strain has to go. Somebody said, “Ah, then we become passive.” No.
I read this next. He says, “To behold, to inquire.” This inquiring is not the inquiring of the mind; that is not of the soul. But there is the delightful inquiring of the spirit. Here my spirit takes on some real prayer. My spirit becomes active.
This is the thing, see? It is not a passivity. We get passive in the wrong area and always active in the wrong area—usually passive in spirit and active in soul. But here is the difference: I am passive in soul and active in spirit.
You ever run into a burdened experience? Somebody with a burden—you get burdened. Ever run into somebody with a pressing spirit? Not striving in the soul, not writhing, but a pressing spirit. “I press.” Here is this one thing that Paul is talking about: “I press for the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Oh, bless the Lord, your spirit becomes more active: the exercise of the spirit.
You have a Teacher. You turn this wonderful privilege of dwelling to Him. You know, I do not know how He does this, but He knows the time when, in the midst of your pressing in spirit, all the soul rises up with nothing but darkness and negatives: “No, no, it cannot be.”
But you are beholding His countenance. The other day, as we were worshiping the Lord in the assembly, a phrase I have read so many times came to me: “The help of His countenance. The help of His countenance.”
And I thought, “Oh, in the beholding, taking His face.” Sometimes it does not seem that you get to see it, but your face is set. Just when you need it, He pulls back the veil. He has a nod; it is approval: “Son, I understand.” The help of His countenance.
That came about as I was ministering to some folks in the group, you know, in the morning. I guess they were overshadowed and clouded with some heavy burdens and problems, and they were pressing in. I was sort of murmuring a little: “Lord, this is not a very receptive group, I do not think so. Give me the face of their countenance at all—not in any of them.”
And then He said, “It is the help of His countenance.” You know what He said? “Son, this is the way you are too often. You could help somebody along by your countenance. If there was the overflow and the joy, and you looked at that brother when he was struggling, you could give him some help. You can go home and help your preacher.”
Not by, “Lord, how long do I endure this?” You would be surprised what your countenance reveals.
You can squelch your service. You can squelch your speaker. You can squelch. I just thank God every time I go home from the service, “Lord, the help of a countenance is here. Anybody could speak.” The help of the countenance.
You see, the face is set toward Him. It seemed as He was saying that morning, “Just set your face. It matters the direction your face is set.” You do not understand it all. “But I will never be perfect.” Yes, but my face is set.
Anything else, anything less, and I face the other direction, and I will never have the help of it. You will never help me when I am all the time excusing, all the time setting my face on failures, all the time emphasizing what I have been sort of pondering.
You see, we are presenting a David. You run into a lot of things. Maybe you feel like you are setting forth the ideal David instead of the real David. But if you set anything less, your face has turned the wrong direction.
His longing, is it not? The priority of life is to dwell. How about your face this morning? Set. Behold. In spirit, you learn what it is to be active in spirit—the exercise of the spirit.
We are going to go on tomorrow. This is enough for now. Shall we pray?
Lord, we can know all about our need to act, poised in the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life, that law can only work in one way: relief, joy, peace. These are the characteristics. This is the way the Spirit can work.
Lord, there are so often Your children who claim to be filled with the Spirit, yet there is not the true function of the law of the Spirit of life: striving, pushing, outward reacting again to people, against providence, under pressure.
Oh, how strong we have been in the soul. How we have captured people with our conceptions of faith. Our minds have organized and developed things so often until the reasonableness of a demand is that another accept it, when all we had was a mental concept.
Oh, we pray during these days that Thou wilt shut Thy people up to a real and a proper dwelling—the dwelling, dear Lord, in the house.
May they say, as David said, “I am a fresh olive tree in the house of the Lord.” Lord, we are so glad this is Your word. You are bringing some lives to the place where, in the turmoil of trying to get it all straightened out in the mind, they gladly throw it up and say, “Dear Lord, I dwell.”
And in the valley, You become the light. You become the salvation. You become the strength. Oh, how it is that we need Thee this morning. In Jesus’ name, amen.