The Son of God Lives in You!

The Son of God Lives in You

John 17:28

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Last Sunday we had talked, you remember, about the purpose of our lives, I mean, “Why we’re here.” And we all are used to all the answers that we give, as Christians, to one another for that. But it is really quite startling if you face it. It’s John 17:23. “I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.” So that’s the usual bit that we see, “So that the world may know…” “That we’re here so that the world may know that God has sent Jesus…” “And has loved them da-da-da.”

But it’s interesting that Jesus says the basic purpose is, “I in them and thou in me.” So it really is not what your dad and your mum said, “Now, Moshe…” Now, Joanne…” “Now Ernest…” “Now, you must be a good boy. You must be all that I hoped you’d be.” “You must be what God wants you to be,” as you grow up a little more. And then as we came to know Jesus, “So that I will become like Jesus, that’s why I am alive.” No! No! No! So that Jesus might live instead of you. That’s it. That’s the whole deal.

And it’s just we have trained each other to step back from that, and to water that down, and say, “Well, yes, yes I know. I mean, he’s kind of in me, but it’s me. I mean, it’s him, but it’s me. I mean it’s… I know. I know. His principles abide in me. That’s what you mean, don’t you? ‘I in them and thou in me’; we kind of abide in Jesus’ principles and his principles kind of abide in us.” Or, we extend it a little, and we say, “Oh his Spirit… We abide in his Spirit and his Spirit abides in us.” And we kind of interpret that as, “I have the same Spirit as Jesus. I mean, I…, I…– there’ll be the same spirit about my life.”

And we keep on watering it down, watering it down. But God doesn’t. He says, “Look, you lot are rotten; you’re finished; you’re done with. There’s nothing I can do with you. You have so much in you that you’ve inherited from not only your own parents, from your grandparents, your great grandparents, all of the people back down to Adam — you’ve inherited so much that you’re an absolute mess. You’re so bound up with this ‘fallen world’ that there’s nothing I can do with you. I have to treat you the way I treated often the people in Canaan. I have to destroy them all, sheep, goats, the lot! That’s what I had to do with you. I destroyed you! You’re finished!”

Of course it’s very hard for us, because there’s Sadie; we all admire Sadie’s paintings! Here’s Ernest! We all admire his poetry! And Greg! We all admire his… So we keep on reinforcing the idea in each of us that, “You’re still alive! You’re still very much alive!”

God has no doubt about it, “No, you’re dead! And my Son — my Son is going to live — not the life that he lived in Galilee.” See, that’s where we often make the mistake. I mean, we read the bit in John where it says, “If we were to write all of the things that this man did, all the books in the world couldn’t contain it.” And we read that and we believe it, but we don’t believe it. And so we think the bits – even though in our study of the New Testament we say, “Well, I mean, this isn’t the life of Christ.” It is the life of Christ! Obvious there are things that are in Mark that aren’t in Matthew, and things in Luke that aren’t in John. This isn’t the life of Christ. It is Christ as seen from different viewpoints: from the Jewish view point, from the Gentile view point, from our view point today. And we believe all that, but we still keep the idea, “No, no, all that

Jesus would do on earth, he has done here in this book. This is it. He healed the leper and da-da-da-da. And here they are. If we added up all the miracles, and all the things he said, that’s about it. That’s pretty accurate. That’s exactly what Jesus would do on this earth. That’s all he would do.”

As an old writer said, “God has said, ‘No, no, no, there are thousands of things Jesus did that aren’t in this book.’” And there are thousands, and millions of things that my Son has planned to do… under the name Peggy Coleman, under the name of Ada, under the name of Myron. Christ has a life to live that he has not had a chance to live yet, because you and I still feel, “This is our life! This is our life!” And in reality, the purpose for our creation was so that Jesus, God’s only Son, were to live another original life here on earth dressed in our clothes, with our bodies.

Now, many of us at that point say, “Oh, so I can live; I’m passive. I kind of let the Lord do it.” So I don’t show the dynamic, and activity of a Maxwell [Robert Maxwell, (1923 – 1991) Czechoslovakian-born British media proprietor and Member of Parliament] — whatever mess it gets a Maxwell into. We don’t show that dynamic an activity, and that aliveness, and that initiative. We kind of lie back in a half-life, kind of — somewhere between eastern religion passivity and transcendental meditation — and Christ somehow exudes from us without our willing it.

God does some things like that. I mean, he does make his rain fall on the just and the unjust whether they will it or not. You agree with that. The Bible says that, that there are many things that God does do without our voluntary willing. I mean, the sun rises whether you will it or not. The sun sets whether you or I will it or not. The blood circulates whether you will it or not. I’m not standing here saying, “Lord, make my heart beat, make my heart beat. Lord, be it unto me according to your will.” No.

So, God through what we call ‘common grace’ does many things without man’s willing it. It has nothing to do with man’s will. In other words, you might say, with man completely passive those things will go on. The world will keep turning; it will keep rotating on its axis; it will keep circling around the sun. There are all kinds of things, our eyes will keep seeing even without us willing it. I mean, if you saw all the ‘windshield wipers’ that are going at this moment… If we had a camera here we’d see them all. Your eyes are blinking, blinking, blinking, I don’t know how many times a second. But all of that is happening involuntarily. So, God through common grace, through the action of his Holy Spirit, brings many things about without our willing it.

But this he will not bring about without our willing it. He will not deal with us as the eastern religionists say he does. They say, “Be passive.” Buddhism says, “Be passive, be passive. Cease from desire, and somehow you will enter into Nirvana.” God does not deal with us that way. He will not reproduce Jesus independent of you. If you make all your senses, and your mind and emotions passive, he will not then, produce Jesus through you. If you sit in your seat now and say, “I’m waiting Lord. I’m waiting. You pray for me; pray through me.” Jesus will not pray through you.

Why? Because God wants ‘Jesus’ to live. He wants ‘Jesus’ to live. ‘He’ doesn’t want to live. Isn’t that interesting? ‘God’ doesn’t want to live. God is alive, he has his existence. He does not want to live; he wants his Son to live, and his Son never lived involuntarily. His Son was not the passive instrument in his Father’s hands. I’ll show you how you can tell that. It’s Mark 14:36. “And he said, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt.’” And that’s it.

I mean, Jesus was alive and willing things. That’s plain. I mean, he was there in Gethsemane and he said, “Lord, will you remove this cup from me? But if you don’t want to, alright, I will drink it.” So that’s very significant isn’t it? We know it isn’t Jesus arguing with his Father; it isn’t Jesus afraid, but it’s Jesus, with a will that was separate from his Father’s, showing us, “I live this life, because I choose to will with my Father, to agree with my Father, because my Father does not want a “robot” Son here. He wants someone whom he can love and who can love him.”

Now, you are here on earth so that Christ can live another life through you, but it has to be him. That means it has to be a ‘whole’, ‘willing’ person. That means God would not ‘steam roller’ his Son, and his Son will not ‘steam roller’ you. That’s the miracle of it. When you speak, Jesus speaks. If you don’t speak, Jesus does not speak. I mean, it’s a miracle; it’s a miracle. And it delivers us from all that dreadful passivity, of Buddhism, and Islam, and Hinduism. It means that the only way Jesus is going to live in you is if you ‘will’ with your whole being, what he wants.

That’s why the Bible verse is important, “Be it unto you according to your faith.” If you do not believe and do a thing, Jesus is not able to do it. Jesus will not act with you passive. He will only act with you active. Nee [Watchman Nee, 1903 – 1972), Chinese church leader and Christian teacher] put it this way, you remember, “God ‘cannot’ act against his own will and ‘will’ not act apart from ‘your’ will.” God cannot act against his own will and will not apart from your will. So, Jesus will not live here – I mean, it’s ironic; it’s a paradox that the language cannot tackle. Jesus will not live in you unless you ‘will’ Jesus to live. Unless you ‘will’, Jesus cannot will.

Now, how do you will? Because you remember, there is another verse that I think I could find easily in John. Another verse that is important in this whole truth is John 15:15. “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” So Jesus says, “I don’t treat you as a robot servant,” so that you come in, you sit down, and think, “Lord will you pray through me?” And Jesus just prays through you as if you were a robot servant. He says, “No, I have called you friends, because a servant doesn’t know what a master is doing, doesn’t understand it. But I have called you friends because all that I have heard from my Father I have told you. And when you understand that, then I will live in you and you will live in me.”

In other words, you have to understand what God is after for the whole thing to become real. Is Jesus in Joanne? Yes. Is Jesus in Peggy? Yes, but believe it or not — I know this sounds terrible, I know this sounds heresy — but Jesus was in Robert Maxwell even as he did, whatever he did. Whether he committed suicide or whether he fell by accident, Jesus was in him. Jesus is the light that lightens every man that cometh into the world. A man will not die and go to hell because Jesus is not in him. A man will die and go to hell because the man did not accept that and believe it.

So Jesus is in each of us but the only way that he will actually be able to live that life out in this world and bring glory to his Father is if you understand what he’s about. But you have to understand what he’s about. And that’s the whole problem; our minds are filled with the newspapers, filled with magazines, filled with the television, filled with the radio, filled with what my friend thinks, filled with what the other friend thinks, filled with what I am doing. Our minds work in an earthly way; they work in a worldly way; they’re always seeing things from the world’s angle.

The problem with taking an aspirin is not taking an aspirin. The problem with taking an aspirin is, that’s the only thing we think of doing. Normally, I mean natural, that’s the only thing we think

of doing. The problem is we think all the time in the ‘fallen world’s’ ways. So the Father has all kinds of things going up here [Pastor indicates above his head] that are impinging upon the world, and we can’t be used to take part in it, because we don’t understand it. And we keep thinking, “Oh yeah, but I can’t possibly understand what God is after; he’d have to just do it. He’ll just have to do it through me.” He won’t! He won’t! He won’t, because then all he’d get is a bunch of robots that will not be able to love him forever, and he will not be able to love.

So God will not operate that way. He requires you to understand what he’s at. I’ll give you a couple of instances that are very clear. If you look at Acts 5:39 — and look at verse 38 and you’ll get the continuity of the sentence. “So in the present case I tell you…” You remember, they had been arrested, and this was Gamaliel, you remember in Verse 34, “But a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, held in honor by all the people, stood up and ordered the men to be put outside.” And then he talked about these men that they had taken prisoner. And he said in Verse 38, “So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this plan or this undertaking is of men, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!”

Why did they ever get themselves into that position? Why did Gamaliel and the Pharisees, and the Jewish people ever get themselves into that position where of course, we know, they were opposing God? How did they ever get themselves into that position? They never believed Isaiah 53. I mean, they had it in the books; they read it and they studied it, but they never believed it. Isaiah 53:3, “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”

And they didn’t believe that. They said, “No, the Messiah will come and he will deliver us from the Roman yoke and he will lead us on to victory that will be external, and national, and obvious to all the world.” They did not understand the way God worked. And when they came to the moment when Jesus himself appeared, they didn’t understand, “This is Jesus.”

Now, it’s the same with us. You’re stamping your old jewelry; you’re stamping day, after day, after day, with the old numbers: the codes. Jesus has something to do through you. I don’t know what it is. It might be just the thought of love to his Father. That’s all it might be. It might be in the middle of stamping those enamel jewelry; it might just be the thought of love to his Father. That, of course, he’s not going to think unless you think it. But he’s yearning to think it up to his Father. That’s why he made you. That’s why he made you. That day, he made you to think that thought up to his Father. But your mind is filled with all kinds of things. Your mind is not filled with the way God is operating, with the way God is thinking; it’s not filled with all God’s thoughts and God’s ways, so you don’t feel that love. That’s why.

We all know that God does not necessarily want every sickness to be removed. I mean there were many sicknesses that he did not remove when Jesus was on earth. Jesus often turned away, actually while the crowd was still around him. So God does not want every sickness to be healed. There are all kinds of reasons for that, but he does not in fact do that. So that’s so, but many of our sicknesses would be healed, if we were moving in the right realm in our faith. Because you see, “Be it unto you according to your faith,” is not simply, “Do you believe? Do you believe?” “Yes, I believe it; I believe it. I believe that I’ll be healed. I’ll be healed. I’ll be healed.” That’s ‘power of positive thinking’. That’s not faith. That’s not what, “Be it unto you according to your faith, is. ”Be it unto you according to your faith,” is faith is your whole full understanding and absolute conviction of the reality in this chapel, at this moment. And the reality of this chapel

is that there are angels all around us, and that Jesus is in each of us, and that the whole thing is filled with God’s reconciling Spirit, and healing power, and wholeness. That’s reality.

But when your mind, and your emotions, and your will do not grasp all that, then you cannot ‘will’ what God is doing in this chapel at this moment, and therefore he cannot do it. Because, God cannot act against his own will and he will not act apart from your own will. And so it requires that our minds and our whole understandings be moving all the day, every day, in God’s way.

I’ll give you another instance of it but there are many in the Bible. But if you look at John 1:46, you’ll see it quite clearly there. “Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’” But Nathanael said, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Now, all he had to do — and he knew it. Look at Matthew 2:23. I mean, Nathanael knew this. “And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets,” whom Nathanael had read, “Might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.”

So Nathanael did actually have the books in which he could have read, “Jesus is going to be a Nazarene.” So that, when it turned out that Jesus was of Nazareth, Nathanael would not have said, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” He would have said, “That’s it, that’s Jesus.” So he would have known that immediately and welcomed him. Now, that’s the same with us.

Now what’s the practical application? Oh, very down to earth! For any of you who have not established a ‘quiet time’ each day when you begin to live in God’s world — because that’s what we’re talking about, living in God’s world, in your thoughts; beginning to understand God’s ways — for any of you who have not even once started that, and especially for Ada, and for Pauline, and for Sue who I know are just starting here among us: “Search the Scriptures”. It’s a daily devotional, just a daily devotion. And it takes a few verses; go through the whole Bible in three years, I think. It gives a few verses and then there’s some questions that make you think. And all you need is a common place book, or a journal, or a diary with a pen or a pencil, and you just put down the date.

I happen to do it in my little computer, because I have it always with me, and it means I can keep my spiritual diaries for years. But you can keep them, and I did it in books before — but a little notebook and the date. And then you can put the answers to some of the questions they give you, certainly. But then the important work comes. Bend down in prayer, “Father, if you have something to say to me through this, I am listening, Lord.” Then just think about it. Don’t then go passive saying, “My mind is blank; just write on it.” You have to think about the thing.

But think about it with ‘God looking down upon you’ and your own situation, and say to yourself, “Father, is there any way this thing just applies to me?” And some days you won’t seem to get anything from God. That’s okay. That’s okay. I don’t write anything those days, nor did Wesley, nor did the other guys that wrote diaries; they didn’t write every day. So you don’t need to feel all upset with that, or make it a burden for yourself or a slavery; or feel you’re not close to God, because you don’t feel his presence. Don’t get into all that silliness. Then that’s okay, if that’s how the day feels. But on some days God will light up the thing to you, you see. And you’ll have a whole flow of understanding, and you’ll write, maybe a page on it.

If you begin to do that your mind and your will, will begin to be prepared to understand what God is doing, and Jesus will be able to do through you what he wants, because your mind will think with his mind. You will think God’s thoughts after him; you will ‘will’ what Jesus is willing. But it won’t

happen if your mind, and the way you think, and the way you work internally, is all the time dominated by the way the world thinks, which is utterly different.

I mean, we listen avidly to radio when we’re here [in the UK] because radio here of course is so much better than the States; and apart from that we listen to all the songs that we’ve known are the ‘only songs worth listening to’ [said with tongue in cheek], because in England you play the same songs again, and again, and again. And then we’re silly; we play the newest songs. So we listen to radio avidly, but we can see how if you listen to radio and television all the time, that’s the way your mind works. Your mind works that way. It’s not that it’s evil. Yeah, there are a lot of evil things on it, but it’s not that it’s evil. It’s not that it’s full of sex, and full of crime although that isn’t too good, that stuff. But it’s not that! It’s just a way of thinking! It’s a whole way of thinking. You’re not thinking with the Father. You’re not thinking from where he sees.

And that’s why it’s so important to do this. When you finish that, after three years [“Search the Scriptures”] — and by the way this handbook is good, it’s a handbook that goes along with that and helps you. But when you finish with that, then the commentaries are wonderful; they’re magnificent up there [indicates the CCI Library in another building].

The error that we make is we say, “Oh well, a commentary; it’s full of Hebrew and Greek, and intellectual stuff, and I want it straight from the Lord.” Well, the Lord is going to give it to you through your understanding. He’s certainly going to put revelation in your spirit. But how is your spirit ever going to get that out, even to you yourself to put on a page; or, most importantly, to express in your life? Only if your mind is attuned with that! Only if you are “not conformed to the image of this world, but are being renewed in your mind” by the ‘transformation’ that comes through your mind! Only then will God be able to reveal his own will for you, day-by-day. So this is a dear book, Lightfoot, this is a treasure [“The Works of the Reverend & Learned John Lightfoot D.D.”]. For those of us who thought they were theologians, Bishop Lightfoot [John Lightfoot, 1602-1675, English churchman, rabbinical scholar, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and Master of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge]; it’s a treasure. And you can see it’s one of the old leather books. I mean, check it out of the library. And all I’d plead is – at first I was going to suggest, really what I do. I have a copy of “Keil – Delitzsch”. And “Keil – Delitzsch” you remember, is the old – the two guys, the Germans who have done those massive volumes on the Old Testament [“Commentary on the Old Testament” by C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch]. And I just plow through them; I’m maybe halfway through the Pentateuch [the first 5 books of the Old Testament]. I’ve been going for eight or 10 years, so you can go that way.

And I bought them so I write the date in the margin. I have, “In 1983 believing God for the sale of Garden Court.” And I happened to put that down in the margin and so part of my diary is there in the margin. If you buy some of these, then you can do that. I think that you shouldn’t write in it here because we’re hoping to reproduce these by photographic methods. But, you can use your notebook, and you can write down the page you’re at, the verse you’re at, and read the commentary, a few verse in the Bible. In fact they usually divide it up in their own way. And read it carefully; don’t skim over it. These guys have the precious jewels hidden away in footnotes. Take time; take time to read it, and study it, and think about it. And then look up to the Father and say, “Father, I grasp this now, with my mind, what this person got from this and what is the real explanation of this verse. Lord, what do you want to say to me? Is there anything you want to show me?” And then think about it in relationship to your life, and think, “Are there any ways in which this touches the way my life is going?”

And some days again, God will light it all up to you. Other days he won’t. Don’t get worried about the days he won’t. But the days he does, then write the stuff down, because God will use that. And meanwhile your mind is beginning to move in the heavenlies. Your mind is beginning to move in heaven. There isn’t one of us here who does not understand — it was Stanley Matthews in our day; he was a great dribbler, a wing in soccer. And he was just wonderful! He just mesmerized people! He could see openings where there was no opening. We have certain rugby players that are – the ones we remember Jack Kyle [John Wilson Kyle, b. 1926, Belfast, former rugby union player during the 1940s and 1950s] in Ireland. He could see openings where nobody else could see an opening. We all know that. A musician can sing things that the rest of us can’t sing. That’s the key. As your mind begins to move in heaven and begins to think as Jesus thinks, you will see things that God is doing.

So it just goes on; you can see [Pastor starts to show a stack of books] what I’ve brought here. I got Marty to carry only some of them, but you can see. There’s “Ephesians”, by Lloyd-Jones, David Lloyd-Jones [David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, 1899-1981, Welsh Protestant minister, preacher and medical doctor]. Please do not say, “I don’t understand every Hebrew word.” Many of them don’t talk about Hebrew or Greek at all; there’s no Greek. I think in the very odd moment Lloyd-Jones might put a Greek word in, and he always gives an English transliteration and certainly an English translation. But please don’t be putting off even the ones that have Hebrew and Greek in them. You don’t need to understand the Hebrew or the Greek, they usually explain them fully.

But walk with these men and walk through the days with them. If you don’t, I’ll tell you: you sink into transcendental meditation. That’s what you do. You sink into absolute passivity. You sink into boredom in your ‘quiet times’, because you’ll read a few verses that you’ve read before, and you don’t see anything new in them. And then you just go to sleep, or go into a kind of séance, and you don’t get anything from the Father. Why? Because you’re asking him to do what you are not willing to do yourself. You are not willing to live Jesus, but you’re asking God to live Jesus for you. And God doesn’t even live Jesus for Jesus, so he’s not going to live him for you.

But that’s what you sink into when you don’t undertake some continuous study in your ‘quiet time’ of scripture. And of course, Satan has done a great job with us evangelicals, because we’re all utterly convinced, “the more ignorant you are the better you’ll be able to serve the Lord,” almost. “Let’s not study the scholars because they’re just scholars; we’re really saintly saints.” Well, these dear men are saints. These are dear men who have spent lots of time in the Father’s word.

So, it’s the same, John Calvin: are we Calvinists? No, we’re not Calvinists, but John Calvin is a dear fellow, and will be in heaven right beside John Wesley. And we all are arguing with each other. And John Calvin has great things in his commentaries. And if you say to me, “Oh, I don’t want to receive any heresy,” well, there’s an awful lot of truth, with maybe a little bit of what you call heresy. And I’d be lucky to call any of it heresy.

2014-10-26 To Here 33:25 p.8

Finally, when you get into these dear fellows, it’s the Father’s word. Graham Scroggie’s “A Guide to the Psalms” [William Graham Scroggie, 1877-1958, born in England, pastor and author]. So you can choose any of them. The whole first shelves in the library there; all you have to do is check it out. We have cards inside them so that we know who has it, and after five years we may come and ask you, “Can we have it back?” But you’ll be able to use it. And all I’d ask is that you don’t write in it; that you use your notebook.

But this, this itself could be used by God to transform the life that Jesus is living in you, because you begin to move in God’s atmosphere, and you begin to think the way God thinks. You begin to see the openings that Jesus sees. And, you stop living artificially. Sometimes a tract works; sometimes a tract is right, just that thing to read, but often the tract is way out, and there’s something else. “It’s a beautiful day isn’t it?” And, said when Jesus would say it, it is glory, and light, and life to another person! So that is what it’s all about, loved ones.

“A Guide to the Gospels” by Scroggie, all kinds of older books: Matthew Pope — and some of them you see, some of them do one book, some of them do a book on just one book. This is Matthew Pope on the Holy Bible and this is volume 1; this is Genesis to Job; it covers all those. You need to read it. It doesn’t matter two-pence how much you get done in a day; it doesn’t matter. Sometimes I get a paragraph done. Sometimes you can get a page done. Sometimes you get a whole footnote down. It doesn’t matter. What you want to do is understand the Father, and begin to prepare your mind and your emotions to understand God. There’s old Adam Clark from Londonderry, Wesley’s — not right hand man but certainly near his hand. And again, you can see it’s an old book, but it’s great truth.

So Jesus is not going to live through you by osmosis. He is not going to live through you as you lie back in transcendental meditation. He is not going to live through you and use you. He is not actually going to use you. You may as well get used to it; he is not going to use you. He is not going to use you! He is going to speak as you speak, if you move in the realm that he moves in. He’s in your spirit. He’s in your spirit. You’re not creating Jesus. You cannot create Jesus. You by your words cannot achieve anything. All you can do is live in consistency with what Jesus himself is doing. So that when he comes from Nazareth you’re not found asking, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” So that when he is despised and rejected of men you’re not found opposing him.

At the moment, the Savior has something in mind for this afternoon; you haven’t a clue. You don’t care! I mean, that’s the horrible truth. You don’t care, because you planned for coffee at Louie’s. If Jesus happens to come for coffee at Louie’s, good, he can join you. But that’s the way – that, you have to admit is the way our so called ‘holy minds’ work. Whereas fellows like Oswald Chambers [Oswald Chambers, 1874 – 1917, holiness teacher and author of books like “My Utmost for His Highest”], and the other fellows, they weren’t kind of “all saintly” types. They were just men who moved with God; who moved in his thoughts; who lived in the world of heaven, and the world of the

Bible. And so they caught the signals. They caught them right; they understood. They were Jesus’ friends; they understood what their Lord was doing.

Let us pray. Dear Lord Jesus, we thank you for such a practical way in which we can begin to live in you and you live in us. We see Lord, that it is not the mental impact of the commentaries’ explanations that make our minds think the way yours does. It is always because your mind is in ours through the impartation of the Holy Spirit. It is only because we have the mind of Christ implanted in us by our Father that we can at all think your thoughts. But Lord, we do see that the only way those thoughts can be understood by us, or expressed in our outward lives is if they pass from our spirits through our souls and out through our bodies; only if we possess our souls patiently; only if we take possession of our souls in patience; only if we allow our souls to be fully redeemed; only if we allow our spirit, soul, and body to be sanctified and made holy; only then are we able to know what you want done each second.

Lord Jesus, thank you. Thank you for the dear Word of your Father that you have left us with, and then thank you for these dear men and women who have studied this Word and have given us excuses for thinking your thoughts after you each day. Lord, now as we move towards the new year, we would each lay out this coming week a mode of Bible study that we will follow day-by-day, at the same time each day, so that we may be able to understand what you have done in the past, and then may listen to you as you explain to us how you’re going to live that life in the present in us.

Lord, thank you; thank you for purpose. Thank you for a daily way of life that works. Thank you Lord, for your goodness to us. Lord Jesus, come; come Lord, we do not want to miss your way any longer. Lord Jesus, we want to understand what you are doing. Father, we want to see the whole thing before us every second so that we can move in your realm by your light and your life for Jesus’ sake. Amen.