Yesterday, I talked about Today. Today, we want to learn about being discipled and being discipled by life. And so, that is what we are going to look at: not discipled to life, but by life.
There are a few verses we want to read to begin with.
Our first passage is our theme verse, Luke 9:23:
Then He said to them, “If anyone desires to come after Me,
let him deny himself,
and take up his cross daily,
and follow Me.”
Then, in Galatians 1:14-16—really, Galatians 1 is kind of Paul’s testimony to the Galatians—he says:
And I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation,
being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.
But when it pleased God, Who separated me from my mother’s womb
and called me through His grace,
to reveal His Son in me,
that I might preach Him among the Gentiles,
I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood.
And then Mark 1:16-18:
And as He walked by the Sea of Galilee,
He saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea;
for they were fishermen.
Then Jesus said to them, “Follow Me,
and I will make you become fishers of men.”
They immediately left their nets and followed Him.
Heavenly Father, it is an awesome thing to stand here right now in Your presence, because heaven has been opened to us. We could tell that just by the praises and the prayers that were offered up this morning.
How we thank You that You are being glorified, and how we thank You that we are joining with all the angels in the heavens right now who are praising You. It is just like we stepped in and joined them. How marvelous it is.
And it is all because of what You have done for us through Jesus Christ. There is no way we could have entered into something like this on our own, but You made a way for us, and how we thank You and praise You.
Lord, we do not want to stop here. I mean, I would like to continue on, just praise and worship You, but we do not want to stop from being in Your presence. We do not want to stop from sensing that You are with us.
We are asking You that You will take Your Word and speak to us, and continue on the vein that we have been going, giving glory to Your Son, Who is everything to us because You have made Him everything to us.
He is, Lord, our justification, our sanctification. He is our full redemption. He is everything. We worship Him.
Lord, we want You to show us more of Jesus this morning. You have to show Him to us. You have to reveal Your Son to us.
We want to be like Peter, who, when he said, “You are the Christ,” You said, “Flesh and blood did not show you this, but My Father Who is in heaven.”
Lord, this is what we are asking for today: that our Father Who is in heaven would show us His Son in such a way that we would be enraptured by Him and be the ones that yoke up to Him and follow Him.
Lord, we thank You for Him. We thank You for our Savior. We thank You for Your Holy Spirit, now able to break the bread of life to us. We commit ourselves to You for this, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Yesterday, I ended up reading a verse from 1 Peter. In 1 Peter, it talked about being born again to a living hope.
Last night, I went out on the streets and asked people about this. Believe me, I will show you. I talked to this guy right here, and I said, “Hey, are you born again to a living hope?”
He said, “What?”
I said, “Are you born again?”
He said, “I do not know what you mean.”
So I said, “Have you seen how Romans 3 in the Bible shows us that all men have sinned and fall short of the glory of God? And all men does not mean just people you do not like, but all men. It is a race of people, and it is even individuals—even you—that have fallen short of the glory of God.”
He said, “You mean I am not really bright, and I do not shine like Him?”
I said, “No, no, no, no, no. Sin means you have missed the mark.”
“Well, what was I aiming at?”
“Well, you wanted to be the one that God created you to be, and you missed it. Do you not think?”
“Yeah, I think you are right. I think I have missed the mark. What do I do?”
I said, “Do you know Who Jesus Christ is? Do you believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, that He was made man, that God sent Him to earth as a man, and that He died on the cross to pay the penalty for your sin and for the sin of the whole world—which is death?
“And by this act, God has once and forever reconciled you and redeemed you back to Himself.
“Do you believe that after Jesus Christ was crucified and died, God raised Him from the dead as proof that His death did indeed—did indeed—pay the full penalty for your sin, and that God has indeed reconciled and redeemed you back to Himself forever?
“If you have seen that you are a sinner, and if you have seen Who Christ is, and if you confess that to God—if you confess, ‘Look, I am a sinner,’ and confess, ‘I see Who Your Son is, and I believe that You sent Him to take my sin. I believe that You raised Him from the dead, and that through Him I am reconciled to You’—then you will be born again.”
And he did.
When you know that—and I do not know; that is the question—I do not know. Are you born again? You only know that. I cannot tell.
Now, I might be able to tell by the fruit of some of the things walking in, but for yourselves, if you are not born again, you need to think about that. This is what you need to be born again.
Once you are born again, once you have made this confession, you have confessed about yourself and confessed that you have seen Christ in this way. You have made a transaction with God. You have transacted something with Him.
What you have transacted is that you are saying, “You are now my Savior, my Lord.” As a result, He finishes the transaction. You have given it to Him now; you have given Him your life. Then He gives you His life in return.
Now, if you are born again, like all born-again believers, you have the life of Christ in you. That is what we want to talk about this morning: the life of Christ.
We are talking about being discipled by life—not by rules, not by regulations, not by something like that—but by life. We need to understand what this is. We need to see it.
We do not need to understand it in an intellectual way, because that is just learning. It is like learning a history lesson. It is not really understanding. It is, “I memorized it by rote. I know it. I know the facts of it.” But we want to know the reality of it, and only God can reveal that to us.
There is a man who is very interesting to read. He lived in the 1940s and 1950s, and I think he died in the 1960s. That is him right there: A. W. Tozer.
A. W. Tozer wrote a book called The Incredible Christian. It is out of print now. It is too bad, because it is a very good book.
This is one of the quotes from it:
The doctrine of divine indwelling is one of the most important in the New Testament, and its meaning for the individual Christian is precious beyond description. To neglect it is to suffer serious loss.
That is pretty heavy, is it not? That is how important it is. When you think of the important teachings about Who Jesus Christ is and what God has done for us, this goes hand in hand with Christ dying for our sins.
You have to understand this too: if Christ only died for our sins and was never raised from the dead, we would still be in our sins.
It is precious that He died, but He rose again, which makes His death even more precious.
When He rose from the dead—when Dan was showing that little film on people being baptized—incidentally, when I got baptized, I got baptized in the ocean. The guy who dunked me was about as tall as Albert.
But it was a wonderful thing, because I had backslidden and I was coming back to the Lord. He asked me what I had to say for myself. I said, “I have not been walking with the Lord,” and confessed those things. He prayed, and he dunked me.
He did not keep me under thirty seconds—he dunked me. How the Lord got him to get me up, because he was such a small guy! But he brought me up, and he said—this is the wonderful thing he said, this is what I remember the most—“Rise up now and walk in newness of life.”
It was a wonderful thing to say to a backslidden person: “Get up now, and now walk in the newness of life that you have.”
When you go down and you die with Christ, like we talked about yesterday, He has taken you down into the grave with Him. But He did not leave you there. He brought you back up with Him—not only so you could sit in the heavenlies with Him, but also so that while you are here on earth, you would know the newness of His life.
This resurrection life, this new life that is the life that pleases God, is in us. That is a wonderful thing to think about, a wonderful thing to know.
The Christian life, then, as we fight—because our old nature is still with us, and it is always going to be with us until the Lord comes back—we also have the new life in us.
Our Christian life is really like 1 Samuel: King Saul and King David. Okay, LeBron and Russell Wilson. There you go.
We have a struggle in our life between these two kings. We all know what Romans 7 is like: “I want to do some things, and I do not do them; and the things that I do not want to do, I do.” That is the struggle that we have.
But it is because we have these two kings. In 1 Samuel, you had Saul and David. Saul is representative of our natural life.
I will tell you something about Saul: I do not like him because of this. He was tall. When you think of Saul being tall, and he ends up pretty bad, and I am tall, I kind of relate with Saul—and it is not good.
Saul became king, and as he began to rule, his life just did not do the things that God wanted. He did not wait on the Lord. He rushed things and did his own thing first, kind of like Peter—always rushing into things and getting ahead of stuff.
The Lord rejected him as king, saying, “You cannot accomplish what I want to accomplish. You just cannot do it.”
But Saul said, “You know something? I am still going to try. I am not going to relinquish my throne.”
All through 1 Samuel, you have him trying to hang on to his throne. That is all he is doing: “I am hanging on to it. I am not letting go.” Even when he gets convicted about certain things, he says, “Yeah, You are right, but I am not letting go. I have got to be in control.”
Some of us are like that. It is hard for me to have other people drive because I want to be in control. “Turn here. Take the way I know. This is the way you should go.”
I had a friend, Jerry Leinberger, and we were driving somewhere. I was saying, “You should turn here. You should get in the other lane.” He would just look at me. He knew this was trouble for me.
One time, my wife just stopped the car and said, “You drive.”
David was God’s chosen king because he was a man after God’s own heart. David is symbolic of the Christ-life in us. He is the man after God’s heart.
David was a hidden man. They did not even know he was around, just like we did not know Christ was around until somebody told us about Jesus. Then David was anointed king by Samuel.
David would not take the throne by force. You read that in 1 Samuel. He had opportunities to take it. He had opportunities to slay Saul, but he never did it.
David said, “I cannot do it. The throne is going to be mine; it is going to be given to me.”
You have to give Him the throne.
Even though David was the rightful king, brothers and sisters, once we become Christians and we are born again, Christ is the rightful King. But He will not take that throne from you.
It is like my wife: “You want to drive? Be my guest.” He will let you go. He will let you go the way you want, with the hope that you will turn to Him.
David would not take the throne by force. There was a time—one or two times, I think—when David could have killed Saul. He was in a cave, and Saul was taking care of business, and David cut off a little piece of his garment.
When Saul got out of the cave, David said, “I could have killed you, but I did not.”
Saul said, “Is that you, David, my son?” He said, “You are more righteous than I.”
I want to use this to jump off on Paul’s experience of being a Christian. When Paul started out, he had different ideas about righteousness, salvation, and everything. It was just different.
There was a battle between Saul—actually, he was called Saul at first, and later he was called Paul—and Christians. Saul had a problem with Christians.
When we read in Galatians 1, he said, “I am so zealous. I am more zealous than all the Jews in Israel put together. I am so zealous for the traditions of my fathers.”
Then he wrote in Romans 10. This is Saul’s view. In Romans 10:2-3, he says about the Jews—but when you think about it, this was his own experience:
For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God,
but not according to knowledge.
For they, being ignorant of God’s righteousness,
and seeking to establish their own righteousness,
have not submitted to the righteousness of God.
Have you ever wondered why Paul had to be knocked off his horse on his way to Damascus by Christ? Why did Jesus have to knock him off his horse?
It is because Paul had to see Someone Who was more righteous than him.
Paul thought he was the end. You read Philippians 3: “Hey, look at me. You have something to brag about? Look at me. Hebrew of Hebrews. You cannot be that by birth. I am of Israel’s stock, of the tribe of Benjamin.” Incidentally, the tribe of Benjamin was King Saul’s tribe.
Not only that, but according to the law: blameless. That is really good.
But did you see any glory in Paul’s life? In other words, did you see the satisfaction of God? Did God have His amen on Saul?
Jesus appeared to him, and Paul saw for the first time Someone Who was more righteous than him. He fell to his knees, and he called Him Lord. He needed to see that.
As a result, Paul’s whole idea of righteousness, salvation, and everything had to change. It was new because he saw something he had never seen before.
All of a sudden, he had this question: “What do I do about this? If this is more righteous, how do I attain to these things? How do I get there? How do I serve Him Who is so glorious?”
He had to find out that the machinery in him was bad. That is what Romans 7 is all about. In Romans 7, Paul is saying, “I want to do these things, but I do not. I do not want to do these things, but I do. I have got a bad machine. This machine just does not put out what it is supposed to put out.”
“I do not know what to do with it.”
That is the same idea we have when we think about pleasing the Lord: “How can I attain? How can I get there? What can I do?”
We look into ourselves and try to manufacture something, but our machine does not manufacture the product that God wants.
Paul comes to the end of Romans 7 and says, “Wretched man that I am! What hope do I have?” That is where Romans 7:25 says:
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
As a young Christian growing up, this verse really bothered me, because to me, it was not an answer. “Who is going to deliver me? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ.” What do You mean? What is this? Why did he not say, “Do this. This will deliver you from the body of this death. Step one, two, three”?
That would be great, would it not?
That is basically what we want. When I taught in California, I had a kid—bless his heart—who said, “Mr. B., just tell me what is on the test. That is all I want to know. Just tell me what is on the test.”
All the stories you have to make history really alive and everything: “Just tell me what is on the test.” It took all the joy out of teaching.
But that is the way a lot of us are: “Lord, just tell me what to do.”
It is not about telling us what to do, because even if He tells us what to do, the machine is broken. So it is not going to help us.
The answer is Jesus. “Oh, does He not have the answer to every Bible question?” The answer is Jesus. But it is. The answer is Jesus, because Jesus is God’s salvation.
The whole Jesus is our salvation. I was in California giving a talk on the life of Christ. When we looked at all those seven or eight things yesterday, and when we looked at Jesus as a man, you cannot take something of that.
When you say, “I want to be like Christ,” you cannot say, “Today I am going to work on virtue. Tomorrow I will work on patience.” No, no, no. You cannot tear apart Christ.
He is one. He is the whole thing altogether. You cannot just have parts of Him. You cannot make parts of Him yourself. You cannot have a patched suit to wear. It is the whole thing.
It is like when Jesus was crucified. They took off His garment, and they did not want to rip it up because it was a seamless garment. That is Who He is. He is seamless. He is the whole thing.
He is the whole of our salvation. There are not parts of Him that are our salvation. It is the whole thing. The whole Man is our salvation.
He has been given to us, not just on the cross, but as the life of God in us. He has been given to us in that way.
When Paul talks about Galatians 1:16, he says that God was pleased not merely to reveal Christ to him, but “to reveal His Son in me.”
In other words, “I did not know He was there.” Maybe I knew it as a teaching, but as a reality: Christ is in me, and He is the hope of glory.
Then, in Galatians 2:20, we read these verses all the time:
I live; yet not I,
but Christ liveth in me.
To Paul, this was not just something that seemed like a cool thing to say. It was a reality to him. It was something he found out for himself because God had shown him.
God showed him, “My Son is in you. My Son is able to please Me. Follow Him.”
“How do I follow Him?” That is the big question, is it not?
Paul’s example was that he followed this Christ Who was in him. Paul never saw Jesus when He walked the earth as a man. He never saw Him in that way.
It is wonderful for us to think that the apostles who saw Jesus did not have a corner on the market of being transformed into the image of Christ. Paul never saw Him. He never followed Him as a disciple in that outward way.
He had to be just like us. He had to find Christ in him.
That is the whole thing about this teaching: Christ is in us, and God would reveal Him to us. As He reveals Him to us, we can be discipled by that life.
I want to give you an example in the natural world, and then an example of the Christ-life spiritually. We want to look at life—life that disciples us.
The natural example is parenthood. That is my oldest daughter. Is she not sweet?
Let me tell you something about parenthood. Parenthood is not like marriage. In marriage, you still have your own life, so to speak. You still have your own separate time.
“Honey, I am going to go watch the game. Why do you not do something with your friends? I will be okay here.” We can still do our own thing. On certain things, we have to agree, but other than that, we can still live our own life. We still have our same old friends and stuff like that.
Parenthood? You cannot say to this kid, “Yeah, you go run off. I am going to watch the game. Do not get hurt. I hope you come back.”
Or maybe I do not hope she comes back—I am wrong. Depends on the day, right?
The difference between marriage and parenthood is that you become aware—really aware—of another life, and that other life takes precedence over yours. It takes first place.
I have told people before, when they ask me about marriage and say they are thinking about having kids, “Wait five years. You need to get to know each other first, because once you have kids, that is it. You are a slave.”
Those of us who have kids know that, do we not? You are a slave. Your life is bound up with that life, because you are trying to serve that life in a way that it grows up and flourishes. That is what you do as a parent. That is what you want for your kids.
Even from conception, this starts to have an effect on a person’s life. For example, there are warnings now that if you smoke or drink alcohol, that can affect the fetus. So women who smoke or drink often stop as soon as they get pregnant.
This life has had an effect on them. What has happened? It has made them deny themselves something they used to do and maybe liked to do, for the sake of this life—that this life will be healthy and will not be injured by anything they do.
It is an amazing thing, right? A lot of them, after they have kids, continue not smoking or drinking and say, “You know, I really did not miss it that much.”
A lot of things we are asked to give up are inconsequential to our happiness and fulfillment. It is just that we like being boss. We like to drive the car.
I remember going to watch my daughter at cheerleading practice. Here I am, a big guy, going to watch my daughter at cheerleading practice. One of my highlights.
You have all these little eight-year-old girls doing their things. What does the guy do? Bring a book? Do something?
It might have taken me away from watching a game, goofing around, or playing a computer game. But a lot of times, the things we give up are inconsequential to our happiness and fulfillment.
Even when the kids get older, you are still aware of their lives. I remember when my younger daughter went to college. She was twelve hours away, so you could not just say, “Oh, come home, dear. You are having a bad time; come home.” You could not. She was away at school, alone, and going through a hard time.
What do you do? You pray. You begin to pray. Why? Because you are concerned with a life. You lay aside whatever else is going on and say, “I just need to pray for my daughter and get her through this time.”
Naturally speaking, we are being discipled by a life. It is the life of the child that is making me into a parent. It is changing me into a parent. It is changing the way I look at the world, the things I do, the things I say, and how I treat people.
“Daddy, will you read with me?” All of a sudden, you are reading with them.
I hate fiction. I really do not like it. I read history. I like history. I like real stuff.
I remember my oldest daughter, when she was in high school, saying, “Hey, Dad, do you want to read a book with me?”
“Oh, what is it?”
“Jurassic Park.”
Dinosaurs. So I read it with her. It was wonderful.
The wonderful thing was that we were enjoying something together. “Read it with me,” not “Read it to me.” Read it with me.
Your life is changed by another life.
It is not changed like this: “Okay, now you are a parent. These are the rules.” Then you get a little book—Dr. Spock or something like that—and you read, “Step one, two, three, four,” and get a perfect child.
It does not happen that way.
A lot of times, our children do not come out perfect, but that does not necessarily make us bad parents, because our children are their own souls. They are going to go the way they go.
But if you have been that nurturer, they have something. My kids have told me, “You do not even have to worry about that, Dad. We have been around you guys so much, and we have talked about stuff so much, that it is not even a problem.”
The parent is changed by the life of the child, even though we are supposed to be the head of that child. Who is really being changed?
It is almost like Moses. Moses is leading Israel, but who is the guy being changed more than anyone else? Moses. Moses is always on his knees before the Lord because of those people, and he is being changed and changed and changed.
Peter is the same thing. He is being changed and changed and changed as he becomes a shepherd of God’s people.
That is an example from the natural side. Now let us look at it spiritually: the Christ-life in us.
How can you follow Someone you cannot see? That is a good question, do you not think? How can you follow Someone you do not see?
The disciples could at least see Jesus walking around with them. But even in that relationship, that did not fix their machine.
How many times did those disciples argue, “Who is the greatest?” Look at Peter. He walked with the Lord. He was close to the Lord. At the end, when the Lord was going to the cross, what did Peter do? He denied Him three times.
Just being with that physical Man does not mean anything.
But Peter, when you look at the book of Acts, is a whole different person. You read his two letters, and he is changed. He is not that impetuous Peter that he is in the Gospels.
What changed him? It was the life of Christ in him. That is what changed him.
You cannot have an outward thing change you. It does not work. You have to be changed from the inside. You have to be changed by a life, not a teaching.
The disciples heard a lot of teaching, even from the Lord Himself. But what really changed them was after Pentecost, when the Lord came and dwelt in them and lived in them.
So how do we follow One we do not see?
We search the Scriptures, because in the Scriptures, that is where He is.
Jesus said to the Pharisees:
Ye search the Scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life;
and these are they which bear witness of Me;
and ye will not come to Me, that ye may have life.
They talk of Me. They point to Me, and you will not turn to Me.
This is the idea of Christ in us. This is the stone that the builders reject. We are trying to build our Christian life, and usually the part we reject—or I will not say we reject it; I think most of it is because we do not know—is the Christ-life.
We do not reject the Christ-life; we do not know it. Then, when we begin to know it, there is a fight in our natural man trying to overcome.
If we want to see Christ, we open the Scriptures. When Paul opened the Scriptures, he did not have the New Testament. All he had was the Old Testament. That just shows you that He is everywhere in the Bible. He is in types.
You may be reading the Law, or a Psalm, and all of a sudden you say, “That is Christ. I just saw Christ.”
When you see Christ, then He has got you. The more you recognize Him and see Christ in the Scriptures, the more you will be able to discern His life in you.
If you are not reading the Scriptures, you are not going to be able to discern His life, because His life is revealed in the Scriptures.
When you are going around, you have that sense in you of Christ’s life because you have seen it in the Scripture. “This is Christ. This thing that I am feeling right now—that I should go do this—this is Christ, because I saw Christ doing this.”
Is that not what Jesus Himself said? “I see the Father doing things.”
Where did Jesus see the Father doing things? We want to think He was having visions: “Oh, I see a paralytic over there, and I am going to go.” No. He saw His Father doing things in the Scriptures.
In Luke 4, when Jesus came to Nazareth and entered the synagogue, they handed Him the book of the prophet Isaiah. When He opened the book, He found the place where it was written:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
because He hath anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor:
He hath sent Me to proclaim release to the captives,
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty them that are bruised,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
He read the Scriptures. That is how He knew. That is how He could see what God was doing.
It is the same with us. We can discern the life of Christ in us by knowing Him in the Scriptures. As we see Him in the Scriptures, it resonates with that life in us. Then that life urges us, nudges us, to be about God’s business.
We search the Scriptures, and when we search the Scriptures, it says in John, “We beheld His glory.”
I do not know how you do your quiet times, but a lot of us are pressed for time. “Get a quiet time done right now.” But beholding is like going to an art museum.
I like art museums. If you look at a piece of art—here is a nice piece of art. Dana has those little box people, but I have the classics. I have the classics. No box people here.
This is the Pietà, by Michelangelo. This was his first masterpiece. It took him two years to carve this, and he carved it all out of stone.
But if you look at it, does it look like stone? It does not. Why not? Look at the fluidity in it. It is as if you see a real human being, a real human corpse, laid there on the lap of that woman.
Look at the detail in it. If you look really close, you can see the little pads on the knuckles. Look at the detail in the ankle. It is incredible.
Look at the way He is relaxed. Since there is no life, He is relaxed, but you can see that. On His face, there is peace, because He committed His spirit to the Lord.
Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.
You see the sorrow of His mother. When you look at that and behold it, you can behold so much. You can look at the folds of the garment and everything.
You could look at this time after time and see something new in it. It is the same thing with the Scriptures. You can read the same Scriptures again and again and again and get something new.
Like the brother David who shared from Judges: I bet he had read that chapter over and over throughout his life. As you go through a daily routine, maybe trying to read the Bible through in a year, all of a sudden you see something new. You see something of Christ. You see a man denying himself.
You behold. You look at it carefully.
Christ beholds you. He knows you in all your weakness. That is the wonderful thing about having a High Priest like Christ: He knows all your weakness, and He is moved by it.
So we behold Him in His Word.
As we are acquainted with Christ’s life and begin to discern the life of Christ in us, we begin to see that we are aligned with that life. Our life comes in step with Him. He leads us.
We find out that Christ is holy, and because He is holy, He says, “I do not want to go here.” Then we find our lives saying, “You know, I do not want to go there. If You do not want to go there, I do not want to go there.”
You notice those oxen: they are in step. They are yoked to one another. The one who is stronger and more experienced leads the way; the other one falls into step. That was the wisdom of the farmers.
This life begins to influence us.
We are discipled by life. We see Christ. We discern Christ. Because of that, we come into alignment with Him.
We become like those two oxen, yoked to one another. We are walking in righteousness, walking in holiness, walking in sanctification. He is leading us to do the works of God.
We do not just decide, “Christ says we should feed the poor, so I am going to go out and start all these soup kitchens.”
The Lord may say, “That is a great thing to do, but that is not what I want you to do.”
Are you in step with Him? He will show you. That is the wonderful thing about it. You will know. You can bank on it, because He is in you.
In 1 John 2:27, it says:
But the anointing which ye received of Him abideth in you,
and ye need not that any one teach you;
but as His anointing teacheth you concerning all things,
and is true, and is no lie,
and even as it taught you,
ye abide in Him.
That is a whole mouthful, but what we want to say is that there is an anointing.
That anointing is the life of Christ itself. Really, it is the sense of His amen.
When you go to do something, you have that sense: “Amen, this is right. This is what I should be doing.”
If you do not sense that amen and you go out and do something, you are going on your own.
My favorite book, Mimosa, gives an example. Here you have a girl who is maybe six or eight years old. She hears the gospel for the first time, and then she has to go home into a pagan society. She is illiterate and everything, but she has had a real conversion experience. She is really born again. The life of Christ is in her.
How can you tell?
When her village got together and all the girls were supposed to take the mark of Shiva, the god of death, who was her village god, she said, “I cannot take the ashes.”
Her dad beat her for it. “You need to take the ashes.”
“I cannot.”
“Why not?”
It was the life of Christ in her witnessing to her: “I do not do this. I do not bow down to other gods.”
It was just like when Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness and said, “If You bow down to me, I will give You all these other things.”
Jesus said:
Begone, Satan:
for it is written,
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,
and Him only shalt thou serve.
That same Spirit was in her. Is that not the Christ-life in her? That is Christ in her doing that. That is not this little eight-year-old girl who probably knows nothing else. That is the life of Christ in her.
Even though she could not read anything, that life was still there. There was an anointing there, and it was going to take care of her and bring her through. He begins to reveal Himself.
I remember one time I went on a basketball tour. I remember praying, “Lord, should I do this? Lord, should I do this?” I never got the anointing. In other words, I never got the amen from God.
But I went on the tour anyway. It was a tough time.
The Lord met me there, just like you guys were saying about going back to the boat. We go back to the boat a lot because we do not listen to the anointing. We do not get that amen on things we do.
But does that mean Christ has nothing else to do with you? No. He is so gracious. He is full of grace, and He loves us.
You might say, “Father, why do You ever come back to me?”
He says, “I love you so much that I had My Son pay your debt. My Son is worth so much to Me. How can I let His value to Me go for nothing? I cannot.”
There is a wonderful hymn by Wesley:
Five bleeding wounds He bears,
received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers,
they strongly plead for me.
Another verse says that the Father hears His cry, and He cannot turn away from it, because He sees those wounds. They have such value to God.
Because He has such value to God, how much more value do we have? Because He is in us.
As we see that He begins to reveal Himself in us, and as we become more and more aware of Him in us, He begins to reveal Christ in us to others.
That is the whole thing about fishing:
Follow Me,
and I will make you fishers of men.
Do you think the Lord is only out to say, “I just want this one person to follow Me”? No. The life of Christ is for everyone.
For God so loved the world,
that He gave His only begotten Son.
God causes the rain to fall on the righteous as well as the unrighteous.
We become witnesses unto Him—maybe not by our words, but by who we are, like this little girl. Someone asks, “What are you doing this for?” All of a sudden, you have an opportunity to give an account for the hope that is in you. A door has been opened.
Brothers and sisters, I am going to close with this. I know so many of you want to please the Lord with all your hearts. So many of you are saying, “I just do not do it. I am so upset with myself. I just cannot do it. I fail so many times.”
You are sincere in your desires.
So I want to give you a word from God. God knows. God knows your heart. He looks into your heart and He sees these things. We do not see a lot of things, but He sees everything.
I think this is from the Lord to you. It is in Matthew 11.
This is after Jesus had been talking to the Pharisees, and they were rejecting Him. The people had rejected Him. Then He says in Matthew 11:25-30:
I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding,
and didst reveal them unto babes:
yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in Thy sight.All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father:
and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father;
neither doth any know the Father, save the Son,
and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him.Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.
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.
For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.
Is it not a wonderful thing to know that you do not have to be gifted to have revelation? “You have revealed them to babes.” Out of the mouth of babes, He has perfected praise. It is a wonderful thing.
The Lord is saying, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you. Learn from Me, or of Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
Remember, it is your souls that He is saving. Your souls are the ones that are King Saul. “I will give rest to your soul, for My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.”
If the Lord opens your eyes to see, He has not put something on you—although we may look at it as difficult—and said, “Okay, you are slogging now.”
He is saying, “I am with you on this. I am in the yoke with you. It is My life. If you get in the yoke with Me, My life will lead you.”
“I will lead you all the way. I will save you to the uttermost. I will give you all that I am. All I want you to do is go step by step with Me.”
He is not asking you to put the whole burnt offering on right now. Some of us just cannot do that.
F. B. Meyer had a statement. He was talking to C. T. Studd and said, “Why do you have such power in your life?”
He said, “Because I have given everything to God.”
F. B. Meyer had a hard time sleeping because the Lord wanted things in his life. It was as if he gave Him the keys but held back one key: wine. “I cannot give You that key, Lord.”
The Lord did not just grab it and say, “Yeah, you will. Take it.”
But he said, “Lord, I know I need to give it to You. Help me be willing.”
The Lord is gentle, lowly in heart, meek. His life is the one that will disciple you to His glory and to our salvation.
Heavenly Father, we just want to thank You. First of all, we want to thank You for what an open door we had into heaven this morning. We ask, Lord, that we will walk in the good of this open door all day.
How wonderful it is to know Your smile upon us as we came here to meet with You. How wonderful it is to know that You have touched our hearts, even to the place where we will shout out and say that we are the redeemed.
Lord, thank You for that. Thank You, Lord, that You sent Your Son to die for us. He did. He came and died for us, and He carried all our sins away. He died for our sins. He became our sin, and You judged that sin.
Thank You, Lord, that You raised Him from the dead, and now He resides in us.
Oh Lord, I ask that You would reveal that to us, just like You revealed it to Paul: “When it pleased God to reveal His Son in me.”
Lord, may it please You to reveal Yourself and Your Son in us, so that we might be like Your Son, to the praise of Your glory, to Your satisfaction forever.
How we thank You that we have been saved forever, that nothing can undo this. Now we ask, Lord, that we be saved to the uttermost. Disciple us.
Oh Jesus, we pray in Thy name. Amen.