Living in the Spirit II

The Holy Spirit Brings Purity

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

We have often talked together here in the past years about mankind’s biggest problem. You all know
what it is without me even going over it again. It’s moral impotence — moral impotence. The real
meaning of impotence from the Latin word ‘impotens’ is ‘not able, inability’. The greatest problem
that all of us know fine well in our personal lives is that moral inability. That inability to do
consistently what we know we should do. That feeling that is expressed in those timeless words in
Roman 7:15. It doesn’t matter how often you and I hear them does it. We still feel yes, I can
identify with those words. They may be old and they may be worn and they may seem boring at times
but I can certainly agree with Paul, “The good that I would I cannot do.” That’s my experience so
often. “And the evil that I hate that’s the very thing I do.” I think all of us know that.

That’s our experience because up from deep down within us somewhere rise urges and drives and
passions and feelings that we cannot control. And it’s as is if deep, deep down somewhere in our
personalities there is a heart of darkness that we have never ever fully explored. Outwardly we try
to be reasonably unselfish, moderately respectable members of the human family — attempting to live
day by day in peaceful coexistence with the other three and a half billion people in the world. But
there do come moments when that entire civilized exterior is shattered and there is a savage rising
up with in us that shows there is a deep conviction inside that we really believe we are the
important people in this world and that all the rest of you are here for our convenience.

That savagery rises up so violently and vehemently that many of us wonder, is it us at all? Probably
that’s why the Iran situation is so frightening to us. We feel that what we see there, the
shattering of the little tenuous framework of international law and understanding that holds us all
together in diplomatic immunity, that same framework is very, very tenuous in us here.

That’s what shatters us and scares us in a ‘Son of Sam’ situation or a ‘Jack the Ripper’ situation.
Suddenly that very tenuous, thin ice of sophistication and civilization and peaceful coexistence is
broken and we see placarded in a news media, that savage heart of darkness that we know fine well
resides deep down inside us. So probably there isn’t one of us who doesn’t understand that story of
Dr. Jekyll and how he used to suddenly become a different person entirely and Mr. Hyde who could do
all kinds of murderous things. Yet during the day he would be the quite, thoughtful, philanthropic
doctor trying to help people. I think many of us know that there lie deep down within us, in an area
that we have never been able completely to plumb, attitudes and desires that we cannot control. No
one else knows about these attitudes and desires but we know about them.

That area of our lives is often called the self-life. It’s easily the most impure part of us; it’s
easily the most unclean part of us. It’s the part that we don’t want anybody to see, even our
dearest friends. That self-life seems to hold within it all kinds of savage anti-social attitudes
that we manage to suppress or we come to repress them after a long period of time. Someone has
written down some of them and I will read some of them to you. Maybe it will help you to realize
that there are others who have this kind of feeling. I think one reason many of us have never been
able to do anything about it is, we felt we alone feel this way and so we’ve decided to live with
it.

Here’s the description of some of what is down there in that heart of darkness. There is a secret
spirit of pride, an exulted feeling in view of your success or position, because of your good

training or appearance, because of your natural gifts and abilities, an important independent
spirit. There is a love of human praise, a secret fondness to be noticed, a love of supremacy, a
drawing attention to self in conversation, a swelling out of self when you have had a free time in
speaking or praying. There are the stirrings of anger or impatience which worst of all you call
nervousness or holy indignation. There is a touchy, sensitive spirit, a disposition to resent and
retaliate when disapproved of or contradicted, a desire to throw sharp heated flings at another.
There is self-will, a stubborn un-teachable spirit, an arguing talkative spirit, harsh sarcastic
expressions, an unyielding headstrong disposition, and a driving commanding spirit. There is a
disposition to criticize and pick flaws when set aside and unnoticed, a peevish, fretful spirit, a
disposition that loves to be coaxed and humored.

There is carnal fear, a man fearing spirit, a shrinking from reproach and duty, reasoning around
your cross, a shrinking from doing your whole duty by those of wealth or position, a fearfulness
that will someone will offend and drive some prominent person away, a compromising spirit. There is
a jealous disposition, a secret spirit of envy shut up in your heart, an unpleasant sensation in
view of the great prosperity and success of another, a disposition to speak of the faults and
failings rather than the gifts and virtues of those more talented and appreciated then yourself.
There is a dishonest, deceitful disposition, the evading and covering of the truth, the covering up
of your real faults, leaving a better impression of yourself than is strictly true, false humility,
exaggeration, straining the truth. There is unbelief and a spirit of discouragement in times of
pressure and opposition, lack of quietness and confidence in God, lack of faith and trust in God.
There is a disposition to worry and complain in the midst of pain and poverty, an overanxious
feeling whether everything will come out all right. There is formality and deadness, dryness and
indifference, selfishness, love of ease, and love of money.

Those are not God’s normal plan for our lives. They aren’t. I agree with all of you that probably
the great majority of us here can say part of that describes part of me. But despite that loved
ones, that is not God’s normal plan. That is not normal humanity, it isn’t. Normal humanity is the
kind of heart that we saw in that dear man of Nazareth. That’s normal humanity. Everything else is
parapsychology. Everything else is sub-normal. Now we have taken different attitudes to that stuff.
Most of us in the church have said, “No one is perfect.” So we have concentrated on an external
conformity to certain behavior norms. You don’t drink too much, you don’t swear too much, you attend
church on Sunday, you try to be fairly honest in your business and you try to be a good family
person. But our attitude to all that other stuff is, “Nobody is perfect, we are all the same.” The
price of that hands off attitude to inner impurity is that we have thousands of churches that are
absolutely torn apart by conflict, that are spoiled by sarcasm, that are fouled up by criticism.

We have churches all over the place that spend more time fighting than they do loving. The other
price of ignoring this internal impurity is our family lives. How many loved ones are outwardly so
wonderful on Sundays and their family life is a mess. I remember when my mom first said to me,
“Ernest, if your friends at church could see you now!” How many of us are in that situation? How
many of us are big men and great women and very noble Christians on Sunday but our family lives are
in bits and pieces? The people who know us best could not give our testimony. Why? Because they
don’t see the outward conformity to certain behavior norms, they see the self-life. It’s in the
home; it’s in the family that the self-life manifests itself. You can even cover it up pretty well
at the office. But at home they see you, day in day out, night in night out and it comes out. Yet
loved ones, you must admit that the great majority of us in churches have that attitude. We say, “Oh
well, nobody is perfect”, as if internal impurity is the norm for God’s people and is the norm for
God’s plan. It isn’t.

Now some of us do some other things. There are some religious counselors, healthy minded religious
counselors and some psychologists who say, “The trouble is simply with the mind and emotions. You
have certain habits of thinking and feeling, that you outlined, that are wrong. All you have to do
is retrain those. You have to reroute them. You have to renew your mind. You have to think good
thoughts as the lady says on television. You have to rewrite and re-stimulate the right emotional
responses. That’s all you need.”

The problem that psychologists and healthy minded religious counselors, who take that attitude, the
trouble they run up against is regression. It is incredible how regression takes place every time
the external stimulus of either the counselor or the group is removed. In other words it’s
unbelievable how quickly the mind that has been retrained falls back into the old pattern of
thoughts, or how quickly the emotions that have been renewed and re-stimulated fall back into their
old habits. There is a regression there that no one seems able to understand. Most of Christendom
just continues to try to keep reprogramming itself.

That’s why they are such wrong emphasis on fellowship. Fellowship is not for our sake, it’s so that
we can minister to the world. But so often there is an attitude to fellowship that you need the
group reinforcement. That’s why so many loved ones are so skeptical of Christianity. They think we
are nothing but a bunch of psychological reinforcement people who exists just by help of their herd
instinct. That’s so often the case because of our attitude to internal impurity. We think it’s just
a matter of renewing the mind, thinking the good thoughts, renewing the emotions, feeling the right
things and then get a group together that will keep you doing that. Well there comes a time when
eventually you are on your own at night, or you are on your own at the end of this life. Then there
is nobody to keep reprogramming the mind and emotions.

There are other psychologists, who are not very popular in these days, who have been so concerned
with this tendency to regression after you have reprogrammed the mind and emotions that they have
posited another level underneath that is the subconscious or the unconscious. They say, “This
regression, this tendency to fall back into the old patterns is so strong that we don’t believe the
mind and emotions are simply a neutral thing. We don’t believe they are just a slate on which you
write things. We believe that what they are is just a receptacle for some things that are coming
from deeper down. All we are seeing in this sense of pride or this jealous attitude or this critical
spirit or this sarcastic feeling — all we are seeing is that there are symptoms of a disease that
actually exists deeper down.”

You remember those psychologists said that our job is to get to the bottom of that subconscious, the
bottom of that unconscious area and to clean that out. Well, of course part of the reason they are
not in vogue at the moment is that time and ability were just not there to do that. Human beings do
not have the time to be able to get to the bottom of that heart of darkness. They don’t even have
the ability to do it and so we are left back on that other level.

Now loved ones, Jesus has explained to us the problem and strangely enough it has some similarities
to the beliefs of those psychoanalysts. Jesus says, “Underneath your mind and emotions is a spirit
and it’s out of your spirit that these things come. It’s out of your spirit that all the trouble
comes. When your spirit is wrong then you begin to experience these feelings of jealousy and anger
in your emotions. You begin to manipulate other people with your mind and you begin to criticize
other people to try to build yourself up. When your spirit is wrongly related to my Father that’s
the kind of stuff that fills your mind and emotions. Some of it comes from your body’s desire for

other people just to applaud you, acknowledge you or recognize you and some of that filters into
your soul. Some of the anger and irritability that you feel in your soul at times is because there
is a general attitude of that in the office. Some of us experience that. You go into the office
where there is a whole critical attitude and it’s not long before you’re beginning to feel it too.

But Jesus said that a lot of the other emotions, feelings and thoughts that are wrong that come into
your soul come from your spirit — a spirit that is not clean, a spirit that is alienated from your
Maker. He said in that passage we read in the New Testament, “It’s not what comes into a man’s mouth
that defiles him, it’s what comes out of a man’s heart.” Jesus meant by “heart” the innermost part
of our beings. He said, out of the heart come adultery and anger and jealousy and hostility. That
was Jesus’ diagnosis. The reason the power of positive thinking books don’t work, the reason the
group reinforcement stuff doesn’t work is because there is a power underneath your mind and emotions
that sends up twice as much volcanic eruption as you can ever handle in any group psychology
experience. As soon as you get rid of some of the stuff the spirit sends up more. Have you not found
that out?

Have you not discovered that you can take an attitude to jealousy and say, “I am going to master
jealousy, and this is jealousy week”? You start to pray about jealousy. You start to read books
about ‘How Not To Be Jealous’ and you concentrate on jealousy. So you are in good shape regarding
jealousy. You’ve got that under control; no jealousy. You have no jealousy for a week or two and
then you decide, “I did so well with that I’ll have a shot at anger.” So you make a big deal on
anger. You campaign against anger, you pray about anger and you read books about ‘How Not To Be
Angry’, and practice self-control and you get anger under control. You are just beginning to get on
your feet and jealousy pops up. Isn’t that it? You hold it down, and you hold it down and you hold
it down and you hold it down and then you run out of hands, because they are bouncing up all over
the place.

And Jesus said, “Do you see it’s not those individual things that are the problem, those aren’t the
problem. It’s the spirit inside you that is not clean. Of course that’s the frustration of
psychologists who aren’t Christians. They can’t get out the spirit, they can’t. By their own terms
of reference they can’t accept that there is a spirit outside a Christian faith. And by their own
ability, with mind and emotions, they cannot get at the spirit even if they believed in it.

That’s why Jesus gave us a precious gift. I’d like you to look at the verse where it is mentioned.
It’s Acts 15:9. Beginning at verse 8, Peter is speaking and he says, “And God who knows the heart
bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us; and he made no distinction
between us and them, but cleansed their hearts by faith.” Loved ones, God cleanses your heart or
your spirit through your faith by the power of His Holy Spirit. That’s the only way, honestly.
That’s the only way.

We are all exactly the same. We are little, selfish children who want our own way and are angry when
we don’t get it. And that’s why we get irritable. That’s why we get jealous. That’s why we
experience all these symptoms of inward sin. The victory we talk about that many of us have which is
just an outward victory managed by continual suppression of all the stuff inside is a shallow
victory. It isn’t the victory that God has for us at all. God’s plan is that we should be pure
through and through. That’s true. God’s plan is that we can be cleansed inside. Our spirits that are
unclean can be cleansed by His Holy Spirit, so that you would not feel anger rising within you.

Now that’s very important to make clear to you because you have heard me share this before. You have

thought all He means is that the Holy Spirit gives you a power to suppress anger, gives you power to
keep it down, gives you power to keep jealousy under control when it rises up from within. Loved
ones, that’s not the meaning of that verse. The meaning of the verse is that the Holy Spirit
cleanses our hearts and the fruit of the spirit — love, joy, peace, longsuffering, (which is
directly opposed to irritability and impatience), gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance,
begin to rise up from within us. In other words, where you once experienced anger rising up from
within you, you now experience patience, positive patience rising up within you or positive love.
That’s what it is loved ones. That’s what victory is, that’s what being saved is all about or being
filled with the Holy Spirit is all about. It isn’t a toe-to-toe battle with Satan and with inner
feelings that are constantly rising up and trying to prevent you doing what you would. It is an
experience of cleanness inside you, positive dynamic cleanness.

I remember one friend putting it: where it was natural for him to sin, now it’s natural for him to
obey. Where it was as natural before for him to hate and to criticize, now it’s natural for him to
love and to build others up. Now loved ones that’s the meaning of that verse — that the Holy Spirit
is able to cleanse your heart by faith. He is able to make you pure inside. That’s what Christianity
is about. I sympathize will all of you who think that it isn’t that, no it can’t be exactly that. It
is. That’s what being filled with the Holy Spirit is about — where you feel right inside. And of
course you can see the benefits of that. You can see that.

If I asked you, what I have asked you before — would you let me take a picture of your heart, of
your self life, where all those secret things are, all the things that you alone know — would you
let me take a picture of your heart? Then we’d have Bob show it as a slide on the projector and we’d
all look at it there. Would you? Well do you see that’s why so many of us feel furtive? That’s why
we aren’t great witnesses. That’s why there isn’t much joy in our lives. Do you see that? We know
that deep down we are carrying a can of gasoline and as soon as a fiery dart from the wicked one
hits it, it will blow up. And then everybody will see what we are really like. That’s why we walk
pretty tight. We are a Christian, yes, but just managing it on a razor’s edge. And that’s why other
loved ones aren’t seeing the joy of God’s children and the joy of God’s people. But you have seen so
often that the chief mark of the old saints is joy. It’s because at last they don’t need to hold
things in. They don’t need to hold things down. They don’t need to pretend. Isn’t that the heart of
it? I think that’s really the heart of it. I know that’s what got to me from my mom, when she said
you are a hypocrite. That what really gets to you, doesn’t that? When you feel, yes you are
hypocrite. You remember the Greek actors who wore masks. That’s what a hypocrite is, a person who
wears a mask.

Isn’t that what spoils everything in the office? When the person gets the promotion and you put out
your hand and say congratulations but you don’t mean it? Or you mean a lot of it but deep down there
is a jealousy. Or someone enters into some good fortune and you say, “Oh! I am really glad for you.”
But inside there is a little voice that says, “But I am sorry for me or I wish it were me.” Isn’t it
interesting that we always think that’s a very human thing to say, I wish it were me, isn’t it? We
think we are very justified in saying that. We say that’s a very human thing to say, I wish it were
me.

The deepest love that we ever experienced from our dad or mom was when we were sick, do you
remember? Your dad said, “Oh! I wish I could be sick instead of you.” Isn’t that right? We thought
that’s the deepest expression of love and indeed that’s what we sense in Jesus. We sense here’s a
man who would rather bear the thing instead of us. And so many of what we call human feelings – “I
wish it were me”, are just downright carnal. They are evil. What’s the problem, loved ones?

Well the problem is that outwardly we all recognize God but inwardly we ourselves want to be God.
That’s it. We have never settled that and that’s the problem with most of us. We have never finally
settled that. We have never dealt with that heart of darkness. That’s why Joseph Conrad wrote that
book, you remember? He likened the heart of darkness to a journey into a dark, dark jungle where
unbelievably savage and uncivilized things took place. That’s why he wrote the book because there
are many of us here in this life who have never made that journey because we are afraid of what we
will find in there.

Loved ones, that’s what the Holy Spirit can do for us. The Holy Spirit is able to lead us to the
deepest part of that heart of darkness. And then when we are really willing, He is able to cleanse
that and to fill it with Himself. And that’s why Peter said, “God made no distinction between them
and us but He gave them the Holy Spirit and He cleansed their hearts by faith.” Loved ones, that’s
what every one of us need. And that’s what this Holy Spirit is able to do in your life. He is able
to cleanse your heart by faith.

I think the first step is you recognizing the problem down there and then beginning to talk to Him
about it. He alone can do it. No psychologist, none of us counselors can ever take you to that inner
heart of darkness within you. There is only one that can take you there and that’s the Counselor
that Jesus has sent.

Our time is up and I think we all need to talk about this just one more Sunday. I need to share with
you how God worked in our different lives and revealed to different ones of us how to be free, but
you loved ones can begin yourselves, the Holy Spirit will listen to you.

Let us pray.

Dear Holy Spirit, we certainly know the reality of what we have discussed this morning and our dear
friends and relatives, we are sorry to say they know it too because they have seen the savage under
the civilized exterior. Holy Spirit, we would ask you to begin — begin and show us. However
difficult it may be, will You begin to take us into this inner part of our lives that we have never
touched before, that is dominating our life and is making our life so partial in its fulfillment.
Holy Spirit, we ask you, will you begin to give us a revelation of why we are like this deep down?
And reveal to us what we have to do so that you can cleanse us from this. Holy Spirit we do believe
that you are able to cleanse us and we would give ourselves to you for that purpose, for Jesus’
Glory. Amen.

The Holy Spirit Brings A Clean Heart

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

If you ask a little child who has been at Sunday school what the purpose of life is, every little
child will answer, “Well, the purpose of life is to live according to God’s will.” That appeals to
common sense. It is just common sense that the creator of the world, who made it and made us, knows
how best we will be fulfilled. So it appeals to common sense to say that we should live our lives
according to God’s will. It appeals also to the truth revealed in this book, the Bible, which
contains the clearest expression of our creator that we have in our earth. This book from the very
first chapter to the very last chapter urges us to obey God. That’s right. From the very first
chapter to the very last chapter you will find that we are urged to obey God, to live according to
His will. Indeed, that is the mark and the great privilege of any of us who are born again — any of
us who claim to have a real relationship that is personal with our God through the experience of the
new birth.

Our great privilege is that described in 1 John 3:9, “Whosoever — anybody –born of God does not
commit sin.” Of course sin is explained and defined clearly in James 4:17 where it says, “Anybody
who knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” So outward sin is conscious
disobedience to God’s will. The great mark and privilege for those of us who are born of God is that
we do not commit sin. The emphasis here from the Greek word is ‘do’. We do not do any act or speak
any word that is disobedient to God’s will and that we know is disobedient to Him. Many of us who
are born of God have experienced that. When we first met Jesus we saw that certain things we did
were wrong. We stopped swearing, we stopped having adulterous thoughts and we stopped being
sarcastic. We stopped boasting, we stopped drinking, we stopped gambling, and we stopped certain
outward actions that we knew displeased God. Many of us who have been born of God have come to that
place.

We have been freed from outward sin. However, great numbers of us have been troubled, not so much by
outward sin, which we managed to keep away from for the first few months or years of our
relationship with God. Most of us are troubled by the subject we talked about last Sunday. We are
troubled about inward sin, about stuff that nobody sees, and indeed, few people know about but
ourselves. That, loved ones, is what I would like us to talk about together this morning, because
inward sin is what causes many of us heartache and defeat. Many of us, in other words, are really
not unlike good Jews. Many of us are not very unlike good humanists. We outwardly conform to what we
know is true. That is not surprising, because even the Greek and Roman philosophers did that. They
expected in themselves outward conformity to known precepts. So many of us who are born of God are
in that position. Outwardly we conform our lives to the things that people expect and that the Bible
describes of children of God. In that way we are like all good Jews and all good humanists and all
pagan philosophers and all noble pagans.

Many of us are like them in another way, that we do that at the expense of an unbelievable inner
conflict. We do what is right outwardly but we do it only because we manage to keep down incredibly
monstrous and savage urges inside us that want to break out and that are constantly contradicting
what we are doing outwardly. In other words, many of us have been in the position where a friend has
got a good job or been promoted instead of us or has come into a lot of money. We have stuck out our
hand and said, “Congratulations,” and inside in our hearts is rising envy and jealousy of their good
fortune. Indeed, a creeping sort of suspicion is rising that really we ought to have experienced

that because we deserve it as much as they do!

Many of us in job situations have been in the position where in the midst of some duty that we have
been doing, we have suddenly had adulterous and unclean thoughts that are so utterly removed from
the outward expression of what we are doing that we cannot believe that it is coming from us. Of
course, it utterly spoils the particular interaction with the person or the colleague that we are
working with at that moment. Or in the midst of some philanthropic action or some religious service
where we are wholly taken up apparently with helping somebody else or with loving God, we suddenly
find within us a desire for self glory and prominence and praise that almost bursts out of us. We
see that we are actually vying for attention from people with the very Godhead himself.

So that is the realm where many of us have our troubles. It is really the realm of the motive life.
It isn’t normally the realm of the outward actions or the outward words. It is the area of motives,
the area of responses and reactions. It is those responses that come up from within us when our
conscious guard is down. Of course, what troubles many of us is the sneaking suspicion that if this
stuff seems to come up so naturally from within us and seems to come so freely and spontaneously as
a reaction to what people do to us, which is the real us? Is the real us the calm, civilized,
self-controlled exterior that everybody sees, or is the real us this savage lion inside that seems
to want to paw and beat everybody down in order that it should be prominent and pre-eminent? That’s
what troubles us, I think. Isn’t it?

The Mr. Hyde used to break out just a little and spoil the Dr. Jekyll civilized exterior. But it
seems the longer we have gone on with God, or the longer we have gone on coming to religious
services, the more that Mr. Hyde seems to be breaking out and the stronger he seems to be becoming.
That is what concerns us. We are troubled because we see resentment coming up inside us more than it
seemed to when we were younger. We see jealousy occupying more of our internal thinking than it used
to. We see irritability spoiling our relationship with more people because that’s what is happening.
The inward sin isn’t staying in now. It is beginning to break out at times and we can’t keep it
down. At the beginning it was a kind of schizophrenia. We thought, there is part of me that just
wants to do this and there is part of me that just wants to do that. But now it seems to be sheer
hypocrisy. More and more the people that we live with see our irritability and they see our
impatience, however much we try to hold it down. More and more the people at work are realizing the
kind of people we are deep down as we lose our temper, or as we get angry over something. More and
more we can only witness far from home and far from work where nobody really knows us.

Loved ones, there are thousands of us who live that kind of defeated, carnal life. Many of us have
come to that place where we just use the words of that old hymn, “Where is the blessedness I knew
when first I saw the Lord? Where is that soul-refreshing view of Jesus and His word?” You begin to
wonder, “Is this all there is?” Of course we have taken various methods of trying to live with it.
Some of us try to justify it. There are great numbers of silly people; just silly ostriches that try
to justify sinning Christianity. All of the dear, happy, sensible, non-Christians outside don’t
dream of justifying sinning Christianity. They have no doubt in their minds that Christians are
supposed to be people like Jesus. But there are huge numbers of us inside Christendom who try to
justify sin in Christianity. We say, “Remember Jesus? He really lost His temper there in the temple.
That is what I do, I just lose my temper a few times.” We try to compare His unselfish, controlled
expression of God’s wrath against hypocrisy in the temple, with our selfish, uncontrolled bursts of
temper which we let out when somebody is not opposing God but opposing us.

So thousands of us try to justify sinning Christianity. We say, “That is what it’s about. Whoever is

born of God doesn’t commit sin? Well, the Greek probably means something else.” So we try to justify
ourselves sinning and being disobedient. There are others of us who try to rationalize our sins. We
say, “Oh, all artistic types are fairly highly strung and I am artistic. I lose my temper at any
moment. There is the possibility of great evil, and the possibility of great good. So it is just my
temperament.” So we try to rationalize this stuff and make it, not traits of the self-life, but
traits of our “artistic temperament.”

Loved ones, is this all that is possible? Is this what God has called us to, to try to force our
rebellious heart to obey precepts that do not come naturally to it, to try to constantly get a
rebellious heart by sheer willpower to obey certain things that it is utterly opposed to? Loved
ones, the whole Bible says that is not true. Right from the days of Jeremiah God said, “Look, I am
going to make a new covenant with you. It’s not like the covenant I made with your fathers. I am
going to make a new covenant with you, and I am going to write my laws, not on tablets of stone. I
am going to write my laws on your heart so you will have no need for anyone to tell you to do this
or do that, but you will all do it naturally from within.” In other words, God said, “I will do a
work in you that will make it more natural for you to obey than to sin.” I think that is what
concerns many of us. We feel it has become more natural to lose our temper than to keep it. It has
become more natural to criticize than to love. It has become more natural to be sarcastic than to
praise. What God promised us back in the time of Jeremiah was that He would write His laws on our
inward hearts. In other words, our hearts would want to do what was right.

It is not natural to be angry. It is carnal to be angry. It is natural to be kind. It is not natural
to hate. It is carnal to hate. It’s natural to love. It’s not natural to be selfish. It is carnal to
be selfish, it is natural to be unselfish. That’s right, loved ones, it really is. What God has done
for us in Jesus makes it natural for us to obey Him. That is what Ezekiel said. Ezekiel said, “God
is going to take away your heart of stone and He is going to give you a new heart, a soft heart and
He is going to put a new spirit within you. He is going to take away from you this evil spirit.”
That is the whole purpose of the New Covenant, loved ones.

I don’t know if you have ever wondered what is the difference between the Old Testament and the New
Testament, or the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. It is not just Jesus. It
is that the old covenant could simply offer forgiveness; the new covenant offers a deliverance from
sin. That is what Jesus did on Calvary. That is what happened. That is what Romans 6:6 means, “Our
old self was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be destroyed and we might no longer
be enslaved to sin.” It is a change inside in our hearts. That is what Peter said in Acts 15:9, “God
made no distinction between the Gentiles and us, but He gave them the Holy Spirit and He cleansed
their hearts by faith.”

Loved ones, it is possible to have your heart cleansed. It is, honestly. Indeed it is not only
possible but it is the whole purpose of Jesus coming to earth and it is the whole purpose of the
coming of the Holy Spirit. That is why they call Him a “Holy” Spirit. It’s not to make Him spooky or
make us afraid of Him. It’s to make us realize this is a dear, “Holy” Spirit. He makes you, not holy
in the sense of different and far out, but holy in the sense of like Jesus — kind, loving, pure,
understanding, gentle, tender. The Holy Spirit has come to this earth to make us like that. Now He
can do that in you. He can do that in you. There are thousands of us that will testify to the fact
that years after we were born of God, we became aware of a need for a deeper work in our hearts, and
we began to seek it.

I would like simply to tell you how to do it, and then it is really up to you what you do. The first

step is to acknowledge the Holy Spirit in your life. That is the first thing. The reason for that,
loved ones, is that you, with all your introspection, and me, with all my self-examination, cannot
get to the heart of our evil being. We can’t. You have tried it and you go as deep as doesn’t matter
and so do I. In the process we all get depressed and discouraged. Jesus said the Holy Spirit is a
Counselor. He knows you. In other words, why you are surprised at the anger that pops up inside you,
why you are surprised about the irritability and the bad temper is, you don’t know yourself. You
don’t. You don’t know yourself. At least in this span of life you should at least get to know
yourself. The only way you will get to know yourself is if you have this dear counselor beginning to
reveal yourself to you. Honestly, you need Him because you don’t want to look at certain things. You
don’t. You are in the grip of a selfish heart, and you don’t want to look at certain things inside
yourself. You don’t. Some of us have even tried counseling and tried the analyst’s office but there
are certain things we don’t want to see. Only the Holy Spirit can take you to the depth of your
heart.

Loved ones, if you are not prepared to see that depth, God can never save you from it. Do you see
that? He cannot save you by default. He will not put you on an operating table and put you to sleep
and do the operation without you knowing. He won’t. You have to know what you are, and the first
step is to acknowledge the Holy Spirit as your counselor. I am not going to argue about whether you
pray to Him or not. I talk to Him, but I think He is the Spirit of Jesus. I think He is a dear
person of the trinity. I don’t exalt the Holy Spirit. He always glorifies Jesus. That is what Jesus
said, “The Holy Spirit will not bear witness to Himself, and He will always bear witness to me.” So
you are safe in the hands of the Holy Spirit.

So the first thing is, believe that the Holy Spirit is a person in your life. Ask Him, “Holy Spirit,
will you begin to counsel me about this? Will you begin to take me down to the depths of my inner
self so that I, at last, know myself?” Loved ones, it will take a long time, because do you know
what you have done? (We have all done the same thing.) We have come to a time when we knew we should
do something and we didn’t do it. We quietly disobeyed God, that piece of ice bedded down in our
hearts. That resistance to God’s will hardened inside our hearts.

A few weeks later it came to another little thing, a dirty joke told in the office. We snigger so
that we will be thought of like the rest. We know we disobeyed Him and sidestepped the issue. That
beds down in our hearts and another piece of ice hardens. Now loved ones, you have layers and layers
of that past resistances to God’s will that have built up a hard, hard heart. It is from that mess
that all this stuff comes. So it takes a while. You will often think you have gotten to the bottom
of your heart when the Holy Spirit will show you the next day, no, there is something more.

So the first step is, acknowledge the Holy Spirit as your counselor. The second step is, see how
sinful that old self of yours is. Here is the way the Bible talks about it. The Bible says in Romans
8:7, “The mind of the flesh is enmity against God. It is not subject to God’s law, neither indeed
can it be.” Now, loved ones, you need to see that.

I don’t know if you know this, but in many countries when loved ones find out they have a sickness,
they don’t go back to the hospital because they are afraid. They are afraid especially if it is an
incurable sickness. They just pretend it is not there. Now do you see, you and I haven’t that
excuse. We have been crucified with Christ. Our forgiveness is assured because of God’s attitude to
us. We don’t need to hide this evil self, we don’t need to defend it and think that unless we prove
that we haven’t this inside us we won’t get into Heaven. We will get into Heaven because of what God
has done for us in Jesus and what God has done to us in Jesus. The antidote for this disease is

present in Jesus’ death. So look at self and see the sinfulness of self.

Here is the mistake we make. We see a little bit of impatience — the person doesn’t get into the
car fast enough, so we say, “Hurry up. Get in.” We bluff ourselves and say, “Just a little bit of
impatience, I must pray about that sometime.” Or we say, “Well, they deserve that.” But we say just
a little impatience and we don’t realize that it is just like an iceberg. Do you know what you see
of an iceberg? You see a tenth of the iceberg above the water. Then if you go down underneath you
find the iceberg goes out like that. That is what it is with your impatience. That is what it is
with your irritability or with your bad temper.

You and I need to see that that old self wants to be God and that is why it gets impatient. “I know
exactly the number of seconds it should take to close that car door. I know exactly the number of
minutes it should take you to get ready for us to go out shopping. I know it. I have it built in my
heart deep down. I am God! I know the way these things should happen.” But we think, “Oh no, it is
just a little impatience.” It is not, loved ones. Underneath that little iceberg tip, there is a
self that wants to be God, and it is determined to have its own way, and determined to stand up for
its own rights and it is that carnal heart that spews up those raging tempers. You must admit you
are amazed at times how strong they are. We are amazed. We almost think it is an evil spirit or
something in me. It can’t be me. But loved ones, it is you.

The second step is to see the sinfulness of that old self and to see that there is no possibility of
improving it or taming it or training it or autosuggesting to it that it ought to be a better self.
There is only one thing to do, and that’s the remedy that God wrought on Calvary. He destroyed that
self. But you need to see how sinful that self is. I know we are all fighting this healthy-minded
stuff. I know that. I know we are all having whispers given to us, “Oh, you are really good. You are
really good.”

You are really bad but you can be good. God has done a work in Jesus that will make you good, but
first of all you have to see how bad you are. Don’t be afraid of that, don’t pretend, and don’t
think that it is something you can get rid of by a little autosuggestion. It isn’t, loved ones. See
the sinfulness of self. See that it is enmity with God, that it is not subject to God’s law and
indeed it cannot be, whatever you do with it. That is the second step.

The third step is to see that our old self was crucified with Christ, to see that you actually have
been crucified with Jesus. That all that internal personality that depends on people and gets
irritable with them when they don’t give you what you want; all that internal self that depends on
things for its security and therefore gets worried when the things aren’t there; all that internal
self that depends on other people’s opinions and other people’s fellowship and friendship for its
enjoyment and gets mad when it doesn’t get the enjoyment it wants: that has been crucified with
Christ. That is a fact. Don’t get caught in this business, “Oh, but that is not my experience.”
Don’t look at the experience of this case — look at the fact. There is a time to look at your inner
self, but then there is a time to look at the fact that your old self was crucified with Christ and
to hold onto that fact. That has happened whatever you feel like or whatever you have experienced.
The Bible says we are crucified with Christ. If Christ died for all, then all died. Colossians says,
“You are dead with Christ.” We have been crucified with Jesus, and there is a resurrected you that
is new and clean and pure and perfect. See that.

The fourth and last step is consecration. Are you willing for whatever the Holy Spirit asks you to
do in your life? If the Holy Spirit asked you to be crucified with Jesus are you willing for that?

If the Holy Spirit asked you to have the only friends in your life jeer at you and jibe at you or
turn away in disappointment, as happened with Jesus, are you ready for that? If the Holy Spirit
asked you to have only one friend, and that one friend was God only, with no other friends that you
could depend on, would you be willing for that? If the Holy Spirit asked you to be a failure in your
life or career, as Jesus appeared to be a failure to everybody, would you be willing to do that?
(Forget about arguing whether He would or not. Obviously He is kind and He wants the best for you.)
Would you be willing to do whatever the Holy Spirit asks you to do in this life?

Now loved ones, when at last you come to the ground of your heart and you say, “I would,” you will
have no trouble with believing for the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Faith will spring up in your
heart to receive the Holy Spirit in to cleanse your heart by faith and to fill you with the fruit of
the Spirit — with love and joy and peace. But that can only happen in a person who is willing to be
Jesus. That’s it. The Holy Spirit will only come in and cleanse your heart if you are willing to
face the things that Jesus faced. You can see how it works out. You can see so many instances. You
get irritable because you want that thing finished to give to the boss. What if you were willing for
the boss to think you a useless fool? You can see how the Holy Spirit then could bear in you
patience with the loved one that had to give you the paper. But the Holy Spirit cannot do that. He
cannot express the beauty and the love of Jesus through you unless you are willing to face the same
consequences as He Himself faced. That is the secret, loved ones. Are you willing to consecrate
yourself fully to Jesus for His glory only and to die with Him to all that people and things can
give you? When that moment comes, you will know it.

Many of you have said, “How will I know? How will I know I have come to the place where He can
cleanse my heart? How will I know when I have come to the place where I can be baptized with the
Holy Spirit?” The Holy Spirit will witness it. You will know. A dozen times I thought I was there
but the Holy Spirit is good. The next day there was something in my life that showed me very plainly
I was not there. The Holy Spirit will witness when you’ve come to the ground of your heart, when
you’ve totted up all that you’re worth and you’ve given it to God for whatever He wants.

Loved ones, the Holy Spirit then will cleanse your heart and your heart will become a delight to
you. It will be a garden of spices and of fragrant smells. It will be a place of beauty and of love.
It will be a heart that you are glad to look at, and it will take away all fear of responding the
wrong way to somebody or reacting the wrong way. Suddenly you’ll be a child of God because you feel
like a child of God. You will smile outwardly because you are smiling inwardly. You’ll love because
you are loving right from the inside right out the whole way. That is God’s plan. That is the way we
were meant to live. That is the way we were meant to live and that is what the Holy Spirit can do
for you. I should say to the loved ones on television that He can do that for you, too. Let’s pray.

Dear Father, I would pray that You would help my brothers and sisters who want to come to the grace
of a clean heart, whatever the cost. I pray, Father, that you will enable them to begin this
pilgrimage this very day with you, dear Holy Spirit, as their guide. Lead them through to the place
where they are prepared to side with You against self, where they see step-by-step the things that
they are to be willing for in their life if You are going to give them this great grace. Holy
Spirit, I trust you to make saints among us in these days, men and women who will be consistent the
whole way through. If we cut each other open at any place, we will see exactly the same beauty and
the same love the whole way through.

Father, we know that is what heaven will be like, and we know that is what you want for us here on
earth and for our loved ones. We give ourselves to you, Holy Spirit, for this definite work of grace

for Jesus’ glory. Now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the
Holy Spirit be with each one of us, now and evermore. Amen.

Spiritual Life #49

Carnality

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Okay, let’s pray. Lord Jesus we thank you for what you have done on Calvary: changed the whole
thing around and made it possible for us to live, as you lived, in victory over the world and over
circumstances, and to live in joy in your Father. And we thank you that that is our will for us
this night, and by your Holy Spirit we would trust you to give each one of us a revelation as to new
ways in which we can enter into you and live above the world yet in it for your glory. Amen.

Loved ones, if you would be patient with me I’d just mention to you again, for the sake especially
of those who might be new this evening, that we’re talking in these Sunday evenings about the
spiritual life. And by the spiritual life we mean a life that is lived guided by God’s Spirit
within. And we have in this quarter, this past quarter, been talking particularly of the spirit.
And for those of you who have not seen our miserable diagrams, one way of looking at the personality
is that way, to see it as really three levels of activity. [Draws diagram of 3 concentric
rectangles, and labels innermost ‘Spirit’, the next level out is ‘Soul’, and the outer level is
‘body’. Then under that he writes ‘world’, and above it is the ‘Holy Spirit’.] The body outwardly,
and the soul next, and then the spirit, and God intends us of course, to live out that way really,
all the time, by dint of his Holy Spirit coming into us. [On the diagram he shows movement from the
Holy Spirit into our spirit, out to the soul, out from the soul to the body and from the body to the
world.]

And of course, what we’ve often shared is that in fact we, as people, don’t live that way but we
live the other way. [He shows diagram again, and shows arrows coming in from the world to the body
and in to the soul and in to the spirit.] We live in that way and we try to get from really, people,
and circumstances, and things the love, and the security, and the happiness — and as somebody said,
you remember, at communion, “The other one whatever it is,” but ‘security’, ‘happiness’ –and I had
almost forgotten too — ‘significance’ that really God intended us to get from himself. And so most
of us live ‘sponge like’ lives. We’re soaking in from other people.

Now, what happens when we’re born of God’s spirit is we see that we’re meant to live by the power of
God’s Spirit and we receive his Spirit into us. That’s what we call receiving Jesus. We give our
lives to God and we receive Jesus’ Spirit into us. And of course his Spirit is faithful and begins
to work out and try to get out. [On diagram he shows arrows from God and the Holy Spirit above down
into our spirits and from there to the soul and from there to the body and out to the world.] And
that’s where you feel urgings to love other people, you know, or to help other people, or to draw
other people to God, or you feel a desire to read the Bible, or to pray. That’s the beginning of
Jesus’ Spirit moving in you.

The tragedy is, for so many of us, we find that that just gets to about that level [On the diagram
he shows the life from the Holy Spirit stops at the soul.] And then it hits this massive inward life
which we call a carnal life. And that carnal life is depending still on those things. [He shows
‘security’, ‘significance’ and ‘happiness’.] And this life of Jesus is trying to give us those
things from within, but he cannot because we’re still depending on people outside. And of course,
there’s no move forward until that [He indicates the life that is depending on the world.] is
crucified, until we finally stop that kind of inward moving life. And you remember, we looked at it

in the line of that diagram and we suggested that really God intended us to live like that. [On
diagram he adds overlay that shows arrows from God and the Holy Spirit above down into our spirits
and from there to the soul and from there to the body and out to the world.] But in fact, we have
started to live that way, [He shows direction in from the world] trying to get security,
significance, and happiness from the world and from other people.

Now loved ones, that’s called carnality. And the fullness of the Holy Spirit comes to cleanse that
from us. And I sense from what a number of you have said to me, that that really is where a lot of
us are living. We’re living in carnality; we’re living in the midst of carnality. And we’re living
— maybe we are having some trouble with soulishness, and that kind of thing, but most of all we’re
having trouble with carnality. And could I point out to you that carnality is when you are worried
because somebody has criticized you. That’s carnality, you see.

So don’t pretend that you haven’t got that. That’s silly stuff. The thing is, admit that you have
that and see that there is an answer to it. So I would put it to you this evening, do you get all
paranoid when somebody talks about you or criticizes you? Would you say that you do care about what
people think of you? Would you say that? Well, may I share with you that Jesus didn’t, you see.
Jesus didn’t; he was absolutely at peace. Even when they criticized him, even when the Pharisees
talked like that behind their hands, even when the disciples themselves were beginning to wonder
about certain things, Jesus was in absolute peace. And that was because he cared only about what
God thought of him.

Now loved ones, he didn’t come to that by osmosis. And that’s what I want you to see. He comes to
that in a certain instance in his life, a certain instant. It’s an instantaneous moment. He might
have been a long time coming to it, but he came to it. There was a time when he cared only for what
his Father thought, and what his Father thought of him. And it’s the same with us. You can come to
it in a moment. Now, I think a lot of us think, “Oh no, that’s something you work out of. You work
out of what people think of you. Or, you get over that gradually.” You don’t. You experience that
in a moment of time through being crucified with Christ. And the fact is that all of us have been
crucified. And you can experience that in a moment, if you are at last are willing to face whatever
people think of you, and to die to it.

And loved ones, that’s what it means to be freed from carnality. That is why being freed from
carnality is such a simple down-to-earth thing. I mean, you can do what I did. I just took those
things. Frankly, I just looked at the sins in my life. And there was lust; and there was ambition,
selfish ambition; and there was pride. And I just took those things, and I started to go down in my
own heart and ask myself why had I selfish ambition. And I asked the Holy Spirit to begin to show
me why I had selfish ambition in the center of my life. And I just kept on examining, and
examining. Every time that miserable stuff came up, I just examined, and examined, and asked the
Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, show me, show me why.”

And of course, you come to the superficial answers, “Oh well, you have selfish ambition because you
want to succeed. You want to be successful. You want to be approved of by your friends. You want
your mother and your father to think you’ve done well. You want people to think you’re a success.”
And then the Holy Spirit took me on, and on, and showed me that that was really just a little point
of the iceberg, that actually, even though on the outside I was a servant of God, deep down I was
really a servant of myself. And deep down there was a huge ‘self’ there that wanted always its own
way.

And loved ones, I know that you who have trouble with carnality, you that still lose your temper, or
get angry, or get impatient, or get irritable, I know that’s your problem. You think you’re good.
And you think you’re nice. And you think you’re a real servant of Jesus. But you’re not, you know.
You’re only outwardly a servant of Jesus. Inwardly you’re filled with self. And you want to have
your own way. And what puts us off, I think, at times, is we think that the carnal heart wouldn’t
like to do any good. But it does.

The carnal heart loves religion. And it just loves to do things for other people, as long as it can
keep itself upper most, as long as it can control things. And the chief mark of a carnal heart is
that desire to control. And so many of us here, you see, will make all kinds of sacrifices. That’s
why Paul says, “If I give my body to be burned.” There are many of us who will give our body to be
burned. We will give away all our things. We’ll do everything as long as in the final instance we
can choose how far we go in that sacrifice.

But coming into crucifixion with Christ, and allowing your old self to be completely switched
around, means coming to the place where you no longer set the limits on your sacrifice. You no
longer say, “I will sacrifice thus far.” But you say to Jesus, “Lord Jesus, I give up even my right
to determine how far I will sacrifice, or how much I will endure from the insults of other people.
And Lord, I accept whatever you accept.”

And that’s really what it is, loved ones. It’s a complete identification with Jesus and the cross.
It’s saying, “Lord Jesus, whatever you’re willing to suffer in my life, I’m willing to suffer.” Now
of course, you can see that when you come to that, there comes a great rest inside you. There comes
a great peace. At last, your life and where it goes, and your future, is not your responsibility;
it’s his responsibility. It’s as much as he wants you to bear that you bear. And you no longer
have to guard and defend yourself against other people. And that’s why there’s such peace.

That’s why that hymn was written by a man who was delivered from carnality. “There is a place of
quiet rest near to the heart of God, a place where sin cannot molest.” See, and that’s what I think
some of you don’t realize, that it’s a place where sin “cannot molest.” And it’s interesting that
there’s a piece of scripture that says, “You cannot commit sin.” You cannot. You can come to a
place where the stuff does not rise within you, where there is rest, total rest with God’s will for
you.

Now, may I ask you tonight, would you like to die tonight? See, would you like to die? Now, I’m
not talking metaphorically. No. I’m not talking about “die by faith.” I mean, would you like to
die tonight and go to heaven?

Well it is interesting, isn’t it? I mean, we’ve various kinds of responses to that, because we know
we’re supposed to say, “Yeah, yeah I would. I’d rather — to be with Christ is far better but I’ll
stay around for the sake of all you people.” And we kind of know that we should say that. And we
feel, “Yeah, yeah, I would; I would.” But you see, that’s a good guide, because the next question
is obvious. “Why would you not like to die? Just what would keep you here? What would keep you
here tonight? Why would you not like to die?” And then it’s good to see when it’s simple things
like, “Well, there’s a parcel under the Christmas tree that I’d like to open before I go.” Well
then it’s good to say, “Oh yes! You get a little kick out of that parcel, do you?” Or, “Well, I’d
like to have a good marriage first. Then I’d be willing to die.” Well, it’s good to ask yourself,
“What are you after in that? What would you like out of the marriage?” or, “What are you hoping out
of your future?” Because in a way, being ready to die with Christ is exactly the issue that you

face when you ask yourself, “Would you like to die tonight?” Do you really feel, “Yeah, boy, I’d
rather be with Jesus tonight than any other thing, far rather?”

Now, if you wouldn’t, then why wouldn’t you? And honestly, whatever your answer to that is probably
a little clue as to where Satan has his hooks in you. Really! Something that you would rather have
tonight, rather than Jesus’ company and his presence, that probably indicates where Satan has his
hooks a little into you, and where self is still ruling in your life. And being ‘free from
carnality’ is simply dealing with that. But, it is as down to earth as that.

Now, if you say to me, “Oh well, do you mean we have to die to enjoyment?” No, God gives you all
kinds of enjoyment. But Jesus on the cross wanted to be nowhere but that place. That was his
Father’s will for him. And that was not enjoyable in our sense of the word. His body experienced
pain. His emotions were strained. His mind was thinking of all the things around him and all the
problem of eternity. And his spirit was bearing all the sinfulness of ourselves. And yet, that was
the place he wanted to be more than any other place in the whole world. So he had died to having
the kind of enjoyment that he chose to have whenever he wanted it. And that’s what it means to die
to happiness, you see.

It doesn’t mean that you’ll never get happiness. But it means dying to having the happiness that
you want. And of course, you know that that, in a way, is what spoils you loving other people,
isn’t it? I mean, after a service like tonight we all know you have the whole tendency to go off
and do what you enjoy doing, or go and speak to the people that you enjoy talking with; or there’s
somebody here tonight that you’d just like to get to know. So you think primarily, “What would I
enjoy doing tonight? Would I enjoy going down to the restaurant and having a hot chocolate? Would
I enjoy doing something else? Going to Brigdemans [ice cream stores in Minnesota] and having ice
cream? Would I enjoy going home and watching television?” But do you see, there are a mass of
things like that that automatically spring up in our little hearts? And we like to say we’re not
slaves to enjoyment. But actually, usually we never think of anything else but that. We normally
just think, “What would I enjoy tonight?”

Now, dying with Jesus is dying to your right for the happiness, and enjoyment that you think you
should have and that you ought to have. And of course, when you come to that place, there comes a
great rest. Do you see that? It comes to the point, where after a service like this, there’s a
real peace in your heart, of course a real openness, a real openness. “Lord Jesus, what would you
like me to do tonight?” And so you see somebody across the aisle, and you’re open to Jesus’ spirit
prompting you to speak to them.

But until you die to your own happiness and your own enjoyment and what you ought to have tonight,
you couldn’t hear his voice. You couldn’t hear it, however loud he spoke. You’re not even thinking
of that. But when you die to your right to happiness, suddenly you become available to the Lord.
It’s interesting, we all think, “O well, we are available to the Lord. Here I am! I’m here to
serve God and to worship him, and I’m ready to do…” But at this moment are you really available
to the Lord Jesus? Are you really free, and easy, and lose? Are you really in a position where,
“Lord whatever you want me to do tonight.”

Well loved ones, that’s what being freed from carnality is. And it’s the same with the whole
security thing, you see. I mean, you should really look at it. It’s good to be hard on yourself,
because it gives you a clue. That’s why I ran towards sin that I saw in my life, because I knew
that’s the symptom that will help me, with the Holy Spirit, to track down the disease, and to see

the particular ‘slavery to self’ that I have to die to on the cross. And so track it down. Do you
worry? You know, I’d just ask you, “Do you worry?” And what kind of things do you worry about?
And do you worry when the car gets dented? Or, do you worry when the finances are tight? Do you
worry?

You know what worry is. It’s thinking over the thing again, and again, unable to do anything —
just spinning your wheels like mad. You go over the thing again, and again, and you can find no
solution. And the emotions get more and more tense. It’s because, of course, you’re not engaged in
any action at all. And you’re just torturing yourself. But, you’re just grinding away at it. And
you waken up in the middle of the night, and you’re thinking of the same thing, “What am I going to
do about that?”

Now, do you worry? Now, worry is what gods alone do. Only gods have to worry. People like us
don’t have to worry. And that’s true you see. You see, the reason you worry is because you think
you’re alone in charge. And you think you have to ensure that this thing goes a certain way, and if
you don’t ensure it you’re lost. Now, that’s the attitude of a god. Only a god worries. Now, our
dear God doesn’t worry. But you see, only a god has the right to worry. Creatures like us, who are
limited in what we can do, and who can depend on him to love us and take care of us, there’s no
point in us worrying. So the only people who worry are people who think they’re God, and who think
they have, not only the responsibility of making sure their life goes right, but they want that
responsibility, because they believe that their idea of right is the only right.

And so we don’t really worry about getting married. We don’t really worry about finding the girl or
the guy that God wants. We worry because we’re afraid that the guy or girl that he wants will not
be the guy or girl that we want. So we worry, not just to find whether we’ll find the right girl or
the right guy, but whether we’ll find ‘our’ right girl or ‘our’ right guy. And so we worry because
we’re afraid that things won’t go the way we want them to go. And loved ones, that’s at the heart
of all of our tension.

That’s another way you can find out where carnality has a grip on your life. Where do you ever feel
strained? Where do you ever feel strain? Is it up here when you’re in front of people? Do you
feel strain then? Or, where in your life is there strain? Is there strain in your relationship
with your mum, or strain in your relationship with your roommate, or with you loved one? Now,
that’s a clue. Wherever there’s strain there’s carnality at work. Strain comes from a little fly
on this world wanting something that God does not want for them at that moment. That’s where strain
comes. A little fly wanting something different from what God wants for him.

And so, wherever you have strain in your life, that’s where ‘self’ wants something to go the way you
want it to go. But do you see, that tonight, your God is at peace? He’s at peace. I mean, you
can’t imagine our Father being all worked up and popping the old pills like mad. I mean you feel,
“Sure he’s at peace. He and Jesus are just in love with each other, and are calm and at rest.” And
yet everything in your life isn’t perfect; sure it isn’t! And yet he loves you. Now, if he’s at
peace, and things in your life are not yet perfect, then can you not be at peace, too? Is he not at
peace because he knows what his plans are? He knows he’s going to work the thing out. And can you
not be at peace also, even if there are a half dozen things that are unfinished, and still aren’t
absolutely right? Can you not be at peace, if the great God who loves you and who sees the future,
is at peace this moment?

Loved ones, where there’s strain in your life, you’re wanting something that God doesn’t want for

you. And that’s self will! And that’s carnality! And I’d encourage you to track it down, and not
be afraid of it. Don’t try to look away from those things. Those are blessed symptoms that God
allows to come. Wouldn’t it be terrible if there were no symptoms of diseases — physical
sicknesses and diseases? We’d never know what to do to correct sickness, if we couldn’t see the
symptoms. So it is in our own lives, the Father lovingly gives us first of all outward symptoms —
things that are wrong: stealing, swearing, gambling, adultery, fornication. Those are plan outwards
symptoms that we’re not right with him. Then he lovingly gives us these symptoms of worry, and
anxiety, and strain, and selfishness, and anger to show us that there is a place in our lives where
there isn’t absolute peace, where we’re at ‘dis-ease’ with our maker — where there is a ‘dis-ease’
between us and our maker.

And really, carnality is just that. It’s the will wanting something that God doesn’t want. It’s
the will wanting to get things from other people and circumstances that God will give us, if we are
prepared to trust him only. And of course, the Father is delighted when you will trust him for all
the enjoyment that you need, and when you will trust him for all the happiness that you need. It
delights his heart. That’s why he put you here. It delights him when he sees you trusting him for
all the security that you need, and when there is no sign of worry and anxiety in you to indicate
that you don’t. And he delights when he sees you trusting him for your importance, and your
approval, or your position and sense of identity in the world. It delights him when he sees you
trust him for that. Then there comes a great peace in your heart.

I was talking to a friend who had done some snorkeling and he was telling a funny story, of course,
where he almost drowned himself because he went down too deep. And he was saying – I’m sorry, scuba
diving, because there’s only so far you can snorkel. But he went down maybe twelve or fifteen feet.
And you know the way on the top of the water, when there’s a storm — well it’s chaotic there. But
even — it’s interesting, twelve or fifteen feet deep, if it’s very rough, the water, you still have
a lot of turbulence down there. And that’s as far as he could go, and of course he eventually got
sick with the turbulence. But the other bright guys are down about thirty feet. And there it’s
beautiful. There is absolute peace. Everything just goes like that, very slowly, and very quiet
and restful. And you have no idea of the chaos up above on the surface.

That’s it. If you would be buried with Jesus, if you would be willing to die with him to all this
surface stuff, to what people think of you in the office, to what people think of you here in this
body, if you’d be willing to die to your ability to scrounge enough dollars to ensure your own
financial and physical security, if you’d only be willing to die to those things and fade out of
that world, and be willing to sink into this deep world where God alone is the source of your life,
you’d experience a peace and a rest that you cannot believe possible. And loved ones, that’s what
it is. You know, I’m not a Baptist and I’m not pushing emersion. But it is interesting isn’t it?
It is interesting when a person goes under the water, they lose contact with the life sources above
the water. They no longer can breathe the air of the rest of the world up there. They’re no longer
in contact with the people up there who made them feel good, or made them feel bad. They no longer
can grab up for their dollars or their checkbook. They’re under the water. They’re in a different
world. They’re cut off as we were cut off in the flood. They’re cut off from that external world.

And that’s what being baptized into Christ Jesus means. And any of us here who suffer a lack of
rest in our lives, or suffer strain, or anxiety, or worry, or anger, or sarcasm, or critical spirit,
it’s because, really, we have not accepted that full baptism into Jesus’ death. And it’s as if some
of us – well we have a hand up on the cross, but the rest of us is squirming down here, trying to
get that hand off. Or some of us have maybe two hands up, but we’ve got our feet on the floor

because we “Couldn’t trust everything to this cross here. No, it might pull me apart.” So we keep
our feet on the ground in some area of our lives. And wherever you’re keeping your own feet in
control of things, that’s where the strain will be. That’s where the disease will be. That’s where
the carnality is.

But when you at last say, “Lord Jesus, I’m willing to hang with you. And whatever comes to you, I’m
willing for it to come with me.” When you come to that place, there’s rest and peace. There’s a
oneness between your will and Jesus’ will. And the Holy Spirit is, of course, able then to flood in
the resources of the Father. Because, do you see, the Father isn’t going to flood in his resources
if you’re worshiping some other God? And that’s it. So you may say, “Well, you know brother, I’ve
tried. I’ve tried to trust God for things. But I just find he doesn’t come through with me the way
he comes through with other people!” Well, that’s because you haven’t put everything into his
hands. That’s because you’re still trusting other things. You’re still depending on yourself in
some way. Only when you come into dependence on him only will he release all the powers of his Holy
Spirit into you.

But loved ones, that is God’s will for us. So I would really encourage you over this Christmas
time, don’t fly away from those little signs you see in your own life of carnality. Let us be a
group of brothers and sisters who are determined to be saints. And let us be a group of brothers
and sisters who will help each other to go on into perfection. And don’t let’s cover things up.
Don’t cover things up. Don’t pretend you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit, if you’re not baptized
with Holy Spirit. Don’t pretend you’re delivered from carnality, if you’re not.

Let us be then a group of seekers. Let us be honest seekers who love each other, and love Jesus,
and know we’re going to heaven because of what he did for us on Calvary, but knowing that there is a
fuller experience of his death and his resurrection that will make him like us here on earth. And
let us go together in that direction. And I would encourage you to do that. I see no reason — I
was so glad when I heard that there was an answer, when I heard that you could be delivered. I was
so glad! I didn’t care – and I was a Methodist minister. You’re supposed to be kind of holy at
that point, but I didn’t care who knew or what they thought of me. I was determined I would get
through to this. And I would encourage you to do that.

Old Finney [Charles Finney, 1792-1875, American Presbyterian minister] you remember whom we’re
studying in family group says, “It is a great step forward when a man or a woman admits, ‘I do not
have this blessing. I am not baptized with the Holy Spirit in this way. I may have experienced
some tongues, or some other things, but I have not been cleansed in my heart like this. I am not
filled with the Holy Spirit. I am not delivered from self or carnality the way you described.’”
That’s a great step forward, loved ones, when you declare that, and declare yourself to be a seeker.

And one of the things that I’m suggesting that we might do in the New Year, is have times up in the
lounge, when we could just go after the evening service and seek God for whatever each of us needs.
But over this Christmas time I would encourage you, don’t be all cut up. It is right: anger is
wrong. And it is a sin. And it is a declaration of your godhead! It is! It is your rebellion
against God. It is you, challenging the very position that God has in the universe. It undoubtedly
is. Any carnality is just that. It’s you challenging God’s position. So it’s sinful, exceedingly
sinful, beyond anything that we can describe.

But really see it as something that God is using to show you what you have to track down in your own

life. And track down, and track down, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, until you come to the heart
of self. And you know, if you’re like me, you’ll be sick when you see the sight, because you have
an idea — maybe you’re pretty fed up with yourself in different ways — but when you see yourself
as the Holy Spirit shows you, with judgment day honesty, you’ll be amazed at the monster that has
been hiding inside this apparently Christian exterior. And then you’ll see that the only thing is
for that to be slain. And of course, it’s only when you see that that’s the only answer that you’re
at last willing to enter into it, because up until the last moment, we’re hoping that we’ll somehow
manage it a nicer way, or an easier way. If there were an easier way, God would have found it. But
Calvary is the only way loved ones.

Now, are there any questions loved ones?

Question from Audience:

But didn’t Jesus get angry?

Response from Pastor O’Neill:

Well, I tried to mention that you know, this morning, that some of us I think, take Jesus wrath
against the money lenders and the temple, and we say, “Yeah, yeah, that’s just what I get like when
somebody tramps on my toes.” But I think there are some distinctions. I think it’s good to see
that Jesus was first of all expressing God’s hatred of the hypocrisy that was in the temple, and he
was reacting against what these men were doing to God’s temple. It wasn’t against something that
they were doing to him himself. So in that way I think it was an unselfish reaction.

Then the other thing was, it wasn’t just madness! It was a controlled – in fact, it fitted into the
prophecies of the Old Testament that he would do this. And so it was a controlled reaction against
wrong that was being done to God. And I think that’s the distinction. I think when we show anger,
it’s usually selfish, and it’s usually utterly uncontrolled. It’s usually just on behalf of
ourselves.

But you’re right, the Bible does say, “Be angry and sin not.” So there is an anger, there is a
wrath against wrong being done to God, that is controlled. And that is possible. I’ve just – I’ve
always taken the attitude that maybe when I’m a 90 year old saint I’ll be able to show that kind of
anger. Until then I’ll steer clear.

I have that little tract, “Free to Live”, that guides you how you could pray through loved ones.
“Free to Live”. It’s down in the bookstore. But there are books by Andrew Murray. “Absolute
Surrender” is good. “The Normal Christian Life” by Watchman Nee is good. Those books give you a
hunger for this. And of course, that’s what we need because society has gotten used to such a low
level of Christianity that it’s hard to get a hunger now, because everybody is busy rationalizing
their sin. And what I found I needed was a whole new standard of Christianity! I had such a low
standard of it.

So I would encourage you loved ones, to seek God and not be satisfied with anything less than a
clean heart, because that’s what makes the saints, the communion of saints, a fragrant experience
that is health giving and that is beautiful. And it is what of course, will transform your own
witnessing life and your own home life. And I believe it will transform this dear world.

Let us pray. Dear Lord, we would begin to look straight at the failures of our lives instead of
always turning away from them, as if that would make them better. Lord, we intend to look at those
symptoms squarely in the face. So Lord, we would ask you to make us aware by your Holy Spirit, when
we are irritable, or when we get angry. And begin to encourage us to be reflective people who will
reflect on our own behavior, and examine why we did that, and look at our motives, and begin to see
in what ways we are really subtle running our own lives. Even though we call you our God, and even
though we say we are bought with a price, and we are not our own, help us to see that there are ways
in which we regard ourselves as our own, and in which we’re refusing to be bought with the price,
and therefore refusing to be totally redeemed.

So Lord, we would pray that you would make us a group of humble seekers after clean hearts, and that
you would enable us to be a help to each other and an encouragement to each other, knowing that the
work has been done and is all available to us the moment we are willing, and able, and ready to
enter into it.

And Lord we look forward to this Christmas time. Thank you for the opportunities it will give us to
face our relatives and our friends. Lord, we realize they often bring the worst out in us. But we
know it’s because the worst is there to be brought out. And it’s just that we cover it over with
our friends. So Lord, we look forward even to being with our relatives, and our families this
Christmas time. We pray that by your Holy Spirit, you’ll make us a blessing to them; that you’ll
keep us in victory.

But Lord, wherever there is a taint of strain, wherever there is a touch of irritability, will you
enable us to face it honestly, and to pray about it, and to ask you Holy Spirit, to bring us to that
blessed place where there’s absolute peace and rest in our hearts with what our Father has for us?

Father we thank you for that. We thank you that you do love us; that you have placed us here in
this world and we are not at the mercy of husband, or wife, or son, or daughter, or father, or
mother, or professor, or boss, or employer. Lord, we’re in your hands, and you do all things well.
And so Father we can afford to be at peace this night and every moment of our lives. Father, we
long and look forward to that rest, the ‘second rest’ reserved for the people of God, where we cease
from our laboring, and we rest in your strength and power through the Holy Spirit.

Now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with
each one of us now and ever more. Amen.

Spiritual Life #50

The Laws of the Spirit No. 1

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

What I’d like to share, or begin to share with you about tonight is our ‘spirits’. And your spirit
is the ‘real you’. That’s probably the best way to put it. Your spirit is where you really are
yourself. And it is really important to know what your spirit is like, because that’s what governs
what you do to other people. It’s interesting, but the ‘real you’ determines what effect your life
has on other people. And it just came home to me again today. You remember how God said, “Let
there be light,” and there was light. You remember how it said in the Bible that he created us
out of nothing, and he took the things that were not and made them things that are. Well, really,
you will only be able to do that when that is your spirit attitude to other people.

And I think most of us here would admit that the difficulties we find in other people, whether it’s
our colleagues, or the people we meet at work, or the people we meet at school, or the people here,
our difficulty is they aren’t what we think they should be. And usually, we do nothing to help
them. Usually, our spirits are standing off from them with a whip in our hands, whipping them for
not being what we want them to be. Usually, that is the attitude of our spirits — for all kinds of
reasons: sometimes we’re afraid of them, sometimes we’re disappointed and depressed about ourselves,
and it feels good to be able to whip somebody else and to persuade yourself that you’re a little
better than them. But for whatever reason, often, whether it’s our loved ones, or our friends, or
our colleagues, our inner spirits, the inner man inside us, is actually standing back and whipping
the people we work with, the people we live with, even the people we worship with. And nothing will
ever come about in their lives while you and I have spirits that are doing that.

And you must admit, nothing is going to happen in their lives unless some miraculous work of
creation takes place, unless God is able to somehow create in them something that isn’t there at
all: an insight into him, or a love for other people, or the steadiness and stability in their
emotions. Unless that happens, they’re going to be forever people that will be a blot in the world
and will be a problem for us to get along with.

And yet, loved ones, nothing is ever going to happen in the lives of your friends, or your
relatives, or my friends, or my colleagues, unless our spirits want the very best for them. Unless
our spirits are filled with that love that Jesus has for us. Because, you must admit, you and I
would be nowhere if it hadn’t been for this dear Savior that kept believing the best about us, and
that would not put his eyes on our failures, and would not whip us for our disappointments. But he
kept on believing the best about us, and having faith in us when nobody else had faith. And our
spirits will be used by God to create life in others when our spirits are like that towards other
people.

And so I’d just share with you that it really isn’t at the level of our mind and emotions; it’s at
the level of our spirits. It’s deep down in our innermost being, the part of us that is called our
inner man in the Bible. It’s there that love dwells. It’s there where you are used by God to
affect other people. And, I’d ask you to see it as being as deep and pure as that. In a way, it’s
nice to say to other people I love you, but that’s just an outward physical expression. In a way,
it’s nice at times to feel an affection for certain people, or a sympathy with certain people, or a
sorrow for certain people. But all that lacks any spirit power to create anything in them. Only

when you and I love them and want the best for them from the very depths of our being, only then
will ‘spirit life’ be created in them.

And of course, what I saw again today, was the tragedy with you and me is we don’t see the disaster
in our friends’ lives. We don’t see the disaster! We don’t see that there’s nothing there! We’re
so busy comparing it with the great things we have in our life, or we’re so busy persuading
ourselves that we’re superior to them that we don’t see the terrible, deadly disaster that is taking
place in their lives. And often it is because they’re managing quite well. They seem to be
traveling along quite well. They seem to be managing their jobs, and managing their relationships.
But if we could only see the death that is at the center of their lives, if we could only see the
desperation that is at the center of their lives, if we could only see the hopelessness that is at
the center of their lives, we would see that it requires every good wish that we can have for them
to get any life in them at all.

So loved ones, it is important what your spirit is like and what my spirit is like. And, sure, it’s
important the words that we say and the actions we do. But actually those physical actions and
physical words, all they do is glorify God. They don’t, of themselves, actually affect anything in
a person. And it is good to say the right words, and point them to the right books, and say
comforting things to them, and things that will help them understand. That’s good, but actually all
that does is glorify God by your personality working together in unity. It’s nice similarly, to
weep with them at times, and to laugh with them at times. It’s nice to sympathize with them and be
sorry for them. It’s good to be emotional in that way with them. But all that does is glorify God
by another personality and another soul being possessed by the spirit. But what really changes
them, what really does something in the spirits of your friends and my friends is our spirit deep
down in purity, loving them, wanting the very best for them — even if it should mean our own death
— wanting the very best for them. And really, when you begin to want that, God will answer your
prayers.

And here is the tragedy, we get our prayers answered. We do! I know; I agree with you; they have
free wills. I agree with you that we could do the very best for them and they could still turn
against God. But many of our colleagues, many of our friends, many of the people we work with and
study with, are as they are, because the deepest prayers of our spirits have been answered. That’s
right. And I think it’s a psychologist that once said to a group of parents, “You get the children
you deserve and you have the children that you want.” And maybe that has only something of truth in
it. Maybe that’s only a partial truth.

But loved ones, in the spiritual realm that is really true; God answers prayer. His spirit brings
about in our friends what our spirits want. And really, if you find yourselves surrounded with dear
colleagues and friends who are alive, and are moving in God, and are moving more into his sweetness
and his fragrance, that is, possibly, a reflection of what your spirit is doing for them. But if
you find yourself with deadheads all around you — they just don’t move. They don’t see anything of
God. They aren’t moving towards him at all. It is possible that there is no creation of life in
them, because your own spirit doesn’t want the very best for them. Deep down where the ‘real you’
dwells, there isn’t Jesus’ love for them.

And oh it’ll be so good, if we at our age — at the age that most of us are at with a lot of years
still ahead of us, it would be so good if we could see that. It’s so easy, you know, for a father
when he’s 65 or 70, to look at his son whose liver is destroyed by the alcoholism, and the wreck of
his marriage is lying there in children living away from home and a wife that is far away — it’s so

easy for a father of 65 or 70, to look at that situation and to want so badly that it would be
different, and to have so much love that wants to create life in that son. It’s so easy to see it
then! But it’s usually too late to see it then. And oh! It would be so good, if we here would
begin to get that kind of love and purity in our spirits where we wanted the very best for our
friends — the very best for our colleagues, where — even if it meant that they got on better than
we did, even if it meant they took our job from us — we wanted that more than anything else.

Loved ones, I honestly do think that if we could – if suddenly, by a miracle, we could light up this
air, and undoubtedly God is able to do it — if we could light up this air so that the emanation of
all our spirits could be seen clearly, it would just be interesting to see what the emanation of
your spirit and my spirit is. It would be interesting to see how many of our spirits are wanting
what Jesus wants for our friends and for our dear ones.

And so, I just mentioned to you that this question of what our spirits are like is very important
because that’s where the real power is. And so, that’s what we’ll be talking about over these next
weeks, our spirits. And those of you, who maybe are here for the first time, have gathered, by what
I said, that obviously, your spirit is the innermost part. It’s the real you and the ‘soul’ is just
an expression of that. ‘Soul’ is the mind and emotions. It’s just an expression of what is in our
spirit. And then, of course, our body with the hands, and the face, and the eyes, and the tongue,
simply expresses what is in our soul. So the heart of the whole matter is our spirits.

As some of you may remember, one of the things we shared was the real difficulty we have of
affecting our spirits. Do you remember that? We likened our spirits to the ‘Holy of Holies’ in the
temple. And do you remember, we said that in the outer court of the temple there was daylight? And
there all the people came and brought their sacrifices and everything could be seen. And that we
likened, you remember, to our bodies. And so if you have a cut in your finger, if there something
happens in the outer court, you can put a bandage round it and you can cure it. You can see what is
wrong with your body, and you can fix it. So, obviously, there’s no problem with affecting your
body.

[Shows diagram here]

Similarly, to a certain extent, in the holy place you can see. There is candlelight, you remember,
in the holy place — in the old temple that Solomon built. There is the light of the candles. It
isn’t as clear as daylight, but it is light. So you can see where the showbread is, and you can see
where the candles are, and where the laver is. So with our minds and emotions — with our souls —
you can see a little there — not as clearly as with your body, but you can. You can think, “What
is my mind thinking? What are my emotions feeling? What is my will willing?” And when you see
your mind beginning to go in the wrong direction, you can change it. When you see your emotions
feeling a resentment that is wrong, you can change it. So, even in the soul, you can in some way
affect it.

Do you remember what we said? Everything in the old temple, in the ‘outer court’ and in the ‘holy
place’, was carried on in response to what went on in the ‘Holy of Holies’. And the Holy of Holies
was absolutely dark, because God himself was there. And there was no light needed because of his
presence. And he was working there by the faith of the people in the outer court and the holy
place. And what went on there, went on by God’s activity, or the activity of the Spirit of God in
response to the faith that was exercised by the people out in the outer court and in the holy place.

Now loved ones, you remember, we said it was same with our spirits. You can’t actually affect your
spirit, because the soul is a lower form of life than your spirit. Your spirit is a higher form of
life; it’s deep; it’s more inward. And your soul can’t affect your spirit. That’s why, when we try
to affect our spiritual health by the activity of our mind and emotions, we’re trying something that
is absolutely impossible. It’s a lower form of life trying to affect a higher form. And you know,
we’ve joked about it: It’s like asking a little dog, “Would you psychoanalyze me, and tell me
what’s wrong with me?” Well, the little fellow looks at you, and looks, and really wants to help
you. But he can’t, because he doesn’t understand your mind. He doesn’t understand your emotions.
You’re a higher form of life to him. So it is with our spirits. We can’t actually affect our
spirits.

So, how then, do we in fact deal with them? — Because we must deal with them. You remember the
Bible says, “The spirit of a prophet is subject to the prophet.” So that means that our spirits
are, in some way, subject to us. See, some of us say, “Oh, that’s good. I can’t do anything about
my spirit. Okay, it’s just the Lord. It’s whatever the Lord wants to do my spirit, that’s what
happens. I have no control over my spirit. I hate you. I have no control over it, it’s just my
spirit. There, my spirit may feel differently tomorrow, but at the moment I hate you.” Obviously,
God’s word says, “The spirit of a prophet is subject to the prophet himself.” And so loved ones,
our spirits are subject to us, and yet we can’t affect them directly.

How do we affect them? In the same way as the people affected what went on in the Holy of Holies.
The only person who can affect our spirits is the Holy Spirit. That’s why, you remember, we read
things like, “The spirit himself,” that’s the Holy Spirit, “bears witness with our spirit that we
are the children of God.” And it’s the Holy Spirit that makes our spirit alive. And it’s the Holy
Spirit that keeps our spirit clean.
Now, how then do we get the Holy Spirit to do those things? Through our faith! Through our faith!
You can affect your spirit within you by exercising your faith in the Holy Spirit doing certain
things with your spirit. Now, that’s true loved ones. You can actually affect your spirit by
exercising faith in the Holy Spirit, by believing him to do certain things to your spirit, and by
submitting to him in whatever way he requires you to do — Because faith is always belief plus
obedience. It’s always a promise plus a condition. You believe the Holy Spirit to do something for
you, and the Holy Spirit requires you — in order that he can do that — to submit to him in some
new way. And that’s the way your spirit is affected.

And so it will be important, right at the beginning, that you understand that, because a lot of what
we’re going to talk about, concerns you having the right attitude to your own spirit, and knowing
what your spirit is to be like. Because, you see, you can’t exercise faith unless you have an
object for that faith — unless you have a purpose for that faith. You remember, Jesus said, “Be it
unto you according to your faith.” Now, if you just pray, “Oh Holy Spirit, I believe that you’ll
make all things well with my spirit,” well, the Holy Spirit can’t do anything with that kind of a
vague belief — because the belief has to be tied up with a submission and an obedience. So it’s
vital for us to know what we are to believe about our spirits.

And what we’re going to talk during these evenings is the ‘laws of our spirit’ — the way our
spirits are meant to be, so that we can actually exercise faith in the Holy Spirit at the right
moment, when we sense our spirits are not like that. So loved ones, do you see the way our spirits
operate? — That you can’t affect your spirit directly by using your mind or your emotions. You
understand what happens when people do that? You get that happy-go-lucky, “Heavenly sunshine,

heavenly sunshine, flooding my soul with glory divine.” That’s – I used to do that to try to get my
spirit up. Well you see, what you’re doing is you’re just raising your emotions. You’re just
raising your soul. You’re not affecting your spirit at all! And if loved ones don’t understand
that only the Holy Spirit can affect their spirit, and if they don’t understand how to get the Holy
Spirit to do that through exercising their faith, then what they do is they end up with these
“rah-rah” kind of fests that they run with their own souls, where they try to buoy themselves up
emotionally and mentally.

Now loved ones, the answer is, the Holy Spirit can affect the depths of your being in response to
your faith. But therefore, you need to know the kind of life that your spirit is meant to have.
And so one of the first facts I’d like to bring before you about your spirit is one that you’ll
find, if you’d like to look at it, in Hebrews 12:1. And we may be able only to deal with this one
tonight, loved ones, because of the time we had to spend on introducing. “Therefore, since we are
surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which
clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” And you see
the words, “Let us also lay aside every weight.”

Now often, Satan will inflict, and God will allow him to inflict — because one thing we need to
realize is Satan has no power to do anything that God will not allow him to do. But often Satan
will inflict and God will allow him to inflict, weights on our spirits, weights on our spirits. And
there are many of us that think, “Oh, well, that’s a natural thing.” And so many of us will sense a
weight on our spirits, and we’ll think to ourselves, “Well, it’s a burden from the Lord. I should
just bear it.” Or we’ll think, “Well, this is possibly the ‘dark night of the soul’ that St. John
of the Cross talked about, which proves that I am a very deep saint, and that’s why I’m experiencing
this.” Or some will say, “Well, your spirit does receive weights at times. You can’t help it, but
sooner or later the weight will lift, and I’ll be all right.”

Now loved ones, the truth is a weight on your spirit is not God’s will for you.
God’s will for you is the attitude of the spirit that is expressed so often in those psalms of
praise, “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord,
O my soul, and forget not all its benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your
diseases.” That’s the normal attitude of the spirit. That’s what Jesus’ Spirit is doing at this
very moment. Praising God! Loving him! Expressing joy to him! Delighting in his presence!
Delighting in the all power that he has over every other power in the universe! And you and I are
in Jesus, and the normal activity of our spirit is one of praise, and rejoicing, and gladness.

And, loved ones, if you ever lose that, your whole spirit loses its sense of discernment. And
that’s why many of us get into real problems at times. Suddenly, we lose all sense of discernment
of what is good and evil in the spiritual life. We lose all sense of our direction, because there’s
a weight on our spirits so that our spirit is not doing what it normally does when it’s dwelling in
the presence of Jesus at the right hand of God. And so often we get up in the morning and there’ll
be just a heaviness on our spirits. And this is, of course, different from the heaviness that comes
through false accusation. The heaviness that comes from false accusation is dealt with very simply,
you simply confess any sins that you see, and you accept God’s forgiveness. Then, if there’s still
a weight, you know it’s false accusation; you simply answer Satan with the blood of Jesus. And you
look to God, and see what the blood of Jesus means to him and you thank him for accepting you. So
it’s different from the heaviness that comes through false accusation, which is dealt with by simple
confession of sin, and then taking our position behind the blood of Jesus offered to God on our
behalf.

But these weights of the spirit are inexplicable heavinesses that come upon us. Now loved ones, if
you get up in the morning with that kind of heaviness, and you regard it as natural, the tragedy is
that you will not be fit for what God has for you to do that day. And, indeed, you yourself will be
very vulnerable to other temptations. So it is God’s will for you never to go out with a heaviness
of spirit. If you do, really the day will be just miserable for you, but worse than that, you will
miss many, many things that God has planned for you to minister to others that day.

So it’s important, first of all, for you to see weights on your spirit are to be laid aside. That’s
what God’s word says, “Let us lay aside every weight.” You’re to lay aside weights from your
spirit, and you’re to go out with a spirit that is light, and that is flying high, and that is
glorifying God. And that is the normal, healthy spirit of a person who dwells in Jesus.

Now loved ones, you can see how far we often are from that. But loved ones, honestly that’s God’s
will for us, and we should never be satisfied with anything less. We should immediately go to the
Holy Spirit and say, “Holy Spirit, will you reveal to me if I’ve done anything that has yielded
ground to Satan here? And will you show me if there’s any ground that I have yielded that I need to
take back? And then, Holy Spirit, I trust you now to lift my spirit into God’s presence and to make
it light.” And then loved ones, it’s vital to bring your will, and your mind, and your emotions
into line with what you’re believing the Holy Spirit to do in your spirit. You see that? That’s
the difference between the old emotional rah-rah stuff and really bringing your soul into line with
what you’re believing the Holy Spirit is doing in your spirit. But you need to do that.

That’s why there is a place for praising God outwardly with your lips, because you’re bringing your
soul and your lips into line with what you’re believing the Holy Spirit to do in your spirit. And
at times it is vital to do that. You know, at times, you’ll find it’s necessary to even speak
openly against Satan and to speak in Jesus’ name. At times you’ll have to praise him aloud, because
the faith that you’re exercising for the Holy Spirit to operate requires expression in your soul.
And so, it is important when that comes upon you, that you deal with it, and certainly not that you
lie down under it and let it burden you.

And you can see how often you and I do that. How often we go out with spirits that are heavy,
spirits that are dead and dark. And you know what happens: you go to the office and there’s just no
rising of life within you. You don’t sense any rising of life. And, in fact, there are times when
you wonder, “Am I a child of God at all? I don’t feel any desire to help this person.” Well,
that’s because you’ve allowed your spirit to be burdened like that and to be weighted down. But,
loved ones, you need to resist it, and to resist it with all your being.

Now, here’s the way old Watchmen Nee talks about it in regard to the battle that you have to engage
in at that time. And it’s just good, I think, to use his words, because often God can use him to
speak to you in a way that my words mightn’t. “It is also indispensable to deal with the cause of
such heaviness, because the oppressive load shall remain as long as the cause goes unresolved.” And
usually you see, the heaviness that comes upon your spirit comes because you’ve yielded some ground
to Satan. Sometimes it is because God has wanted you to cooperate with him in some way, and you
have stepped back from it. And so of course, he allows that heaviness to come upon you to make you
aware that you have missed something of his best for you.

So it is important not simply to stand against Satan, not simply to believe the Holy Spirit to raise
your spirit but also to ask the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, is there any way in which I have failed

to cooperate with God today, or last night, or earlier yesterday afternoon? Is there any way in
which I have not cooperated with you and your movements in my life?” And often the Holy Spirit will
be able to explain to you something fine and sensitive that, none of the rest of us would know
about. But you’ll recognize it immediately he tells you. And so it is important, loved ones, to
ask the Holy Spirit to uncover the cause or the ground that you’ve yielded.

And then, of course, what you do is take your position again, in Ephesians 2:6 at the right hand of
God. You take that position by faith. And you need to learn that verse off, so that you can
exercise your faith for it — that God has raised us up and made us sit with him in the heavenly
places in Christ Jesus. And then thank the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, thank you that I am at God’s
right hand and I’m in Jesus there above any rule, and authority, and dominion, and power, and
certainly above any weight that Satan can put on my spirit. So Holy Spirit, will you make my
spirit’s condition meet and match that position that I have now? And if there’s any way in which
I’m not dwelling there in my own will, will you reveal it to me?”

So loved ones, if I could just maybe, leave it there with you tonight, that one of the laws of your
spirit is that it is as happy as the seagulls. That’s right. When you look at the seagulls soaring
in the sky, when you look at the birds and listen to them on a spring morning, when you even look at
a happy little puppy running around on the grass, when you look at a little baby laughing, that’s
the Spirit of God. And that’s the way the Spirit of God is moving in you. And if your spirit is
not moving like that, it’s because in some way Satan has put a weight upon it. And it’s up to you
to find out what way you’ve yielded ground to him so that he’s been able to do that, by asking the
Holy Spirit to show that to you, and then by taking your position by faith at God’s right hand.

Now loved ones, are there any questions anyone has? Because I think, maybe we should not cover too
much on these things because they are kind of heavy, and that’s not meant to be funny.

Question from Audience:

Is it possible that when you go to bed everything’s okay and you waken up with that heaviness?

Response from Pastor O’Neill:

I think it is, because the thing we all know happens when we go to sleep is that you — your will is
often not exercising itself. At times it can actually, but usually it isn’t. And your will of
course, is the gate that bars the way to Satan touching your spirit. And often with the spiritual
world being so active and so evil in the world, and often with many of us catching a little ‘dirt on
our feet’ as we pass through the day’s business, we can have something down there that we aren’t
even aware we’ve absorbed from someone else. And so of course, often Satan can use the obvious –
it’s virtually passivity of our wills at that moment to bring things into us during the night.

I think, in ways we can guard against it, loved ones, because you can and you ought always, I think
it’s just good sense — our dear mums and dads were so good, with saying the Lord’s Prayer and then
saying, “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” and a few other little prayers at our bedside before we went
to bed, because that’s good. It’s good practice that you should always pray before you go to sleep.
And you should usually have some verse of scripture that you’ve just taken from your Bible at the
bedside, and just memorize it as you go to sleep because that is true that, “Thy word have I hid in
my heart that I may not sin against thee.” There is a sense in which you can hide God’s word in
your mind. So the last thing that you sense when you go to sleep is, Jesus blessing the children,

or the words of one of the verses of scripture in your heart and your head. And that can often
guard you through the night. But it is possible even so, despite that to have Satan do things.

And of course, there are – we still have these old personalities that have been used for years to
wrong habits. And so you have all that working against you at times through the night. So yes, it
is, it is possible that it would come upon you through the night.

But I think often, we just don’t help ourselves, loved ones. I just think you’re asking — I enjoy
the late night shows as much as any of you. But I think you’re just dumb. I think you’re just
asking for trouble if you watch the ‘World at War’ or something, and then you hit the pillow
immediately after the World at War, or the ‘Streets of San Francisco’, or something else, and then
you hit the pillow. Then you actually expect that mind to suddenly stop. Now, it doesn’t. The poor
mind is just careering madly on. And you’ve programmed it and brainwashed it by images that are
very vivid — both visual images and oral images that are very vivid and are stirring up your soul.
They, of course, leave your spirit an almost insurmountable task to begin to pacify the soul,
because usually after that is — your soul goes absolutely dead. And really, it has no more action
except what has been imprinted upon it. So your spirit hasn’t affected it any way. So it carries
that into the subconscious sleep-life. And I would advise you to be wise about the – if you watch
those shows, okay, then have a break. Then have 15 minutes break and then seek God in prayer, or
read a verse of scripture. But in some way quieten your heart, and prepare yourself for a good
night’s sleep.

I think we bring sleeplessness upon ourselves, you know. I think we’re just stupid: we go out of an
argument or a battle, and we go right to bed. That’s silly. And that’s why — God’s word is so
good, “Let not the sun go down on your wrath.” But many of us go to bed with things unsettled, with
apologies not made, with things not fixed between ourselves and another person. And of course,
we’re just asking for Satan’s activity in us.

So it is important when you go to bed to quieten your mind and your spirit by using a verse of
scripture or reading. I have “My Utmost for His Highest” at my bedside, and every night I read
something from that. And you need to have some book that prepares your mind for a quiet rest.

Question from Audience:

I want to understand more clearly how my spirit affects other people’s spirits.

Response from Pastor O’Neill:

So would I. But God has just shown me that boy, we need – we need to realize that this is – this
spiritual ministry is carried on by faith, and we do not understand everything about it. It does
seem to me that the Holy Spirit not only affects our spirit but is affected and enabled to do
certain things through our spirits. It does seem to me too, that the Holy Spirit — you remember,
we said, “When the Holy Spirit comes he will convict the world of sin.” He in fact, convicts the
world of sin, not so much directly from heaven, striking down and saying to someone, “You’re doing
that wrong,” so much as he creates in each of us a beauty of Jesus. That, then speaks to a person in
our office, or our home and exposes to them themselves, without our knowing it, their own ugliness
and their own un-Christlikeness.

It seems to me, that that’s part of it, that the Holy Spirit deals with other people through our

spirits. And that there’s a deep sense in which – that’s true, you know, the myth that we talk
about, that Jesus went back to heaven, and of course, Gabriel asked him, “What arrangements have you
made for carrying on your work?” And he said, “I have chosen 12 men.” And Gabriel said, “What if
they fail?” and Jesus said, “I have made no other arrangements.” And it does seem that the Holy
Spirit, and the Lord Jesus, and our Father have committed to us, here, the gospel. And unless we
are faithful, he cannot do any more than what he has done. Otherwise he overrules the free will of
mankind.

So loved ones, will you begin – I would say begin to live like this. That’s it. Begin to live like
this. And for Jesus’ sake and for your own sake, this is not something to get down about. You
know, don’t say, “Oh, I have to do this and if I don’t do it, I’m lost forever.” We’ve dealt with
salvation: salvation is wrought for us with Jesus’ death for us on the cross. God has nothing more
against us. He’s worked out the wrath against our sin upon Jesus. He doesn’t want to kill us! So
let’s accept that and accept that we’re God’s children.

Let’s not twist these things up with salvation. These things concern the walk that God’s children
carry on in order to please their Father, and to be used by the Father. So please, don’t start
beating yourself over the head about these things. These are great privileges that are offered to
us. These are not demands that God is putting upon us. These are privileges of warfare, and
successful warfare that we can enter into. This is service that we can do our Lord. So, don’t get
back into that thing, “Oh, I’m not living this way every day so I’m not saved.” We’re not talking
about salvation here. We’re talking about what willing hearts are able to do in order to be used by
Jesus in ministry. So it’s the motive of love that governs all that we do.

So I would say to you, if you really love Jesus, and if you really the love the brothers and sisters
that you work with, and you live with, and you study with, then it is important for you to go out of
your house every day with a spirit that is living, and buoyant, and light, and glorifying God, and
praising him. And you’ll see of course, in your own life, that temptations will be easy to deal
with if your spirits are in that state.

Let us pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for the things that you’ve set down in your word. And we
thank you for the Holy Spirit, who is able to make all these things real to us. And so Holy Spirit,
we thank you for the good and the buoyant message that we are meant to have spirits that will be
light and lively. And that we are not meant to lie under weights that Satan may put upon our
spirits, and that it is not normal to live in darkness and heaviness of spirit.

And we thank you most of all, Holy Spirit, that we are able to do something about that — that we
are able to exercise faith in you, and that we can ask you to show us where we have yielded ground
to Satan. And then we are able to stand against that satanic power. And we are able to take our
position at God’s right hand, the position he has given us. And we are able to dwell there by our
belief and by our obedience to you. And then you, out of your great grace, will lift our spirits up
and make them light, and airy, and praising God.

We thank you, Holy Spirit. Thank you that that’s your will for us and that we can live in that this
day and every day of our lives. We trust you, Holy Spirit, to be able to be the ‘joyful Jesus’ in
us tomorrow morning and throughout the days of this week.

And now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be
with each one of us now and throughout this week. Amen.

Spiritual Life #51

Have You Overcome the Evil One?

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

1 John 2:12, “I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his sake. I
am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you,
young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the
Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you
young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil
one.” And it is very clear that there are different levels of people who know Jesus.

And you can see it there. John says first, “I am writing to you, little children, because your sins
are forgiven for his sake.” And that’s the first step for most of us, that we know our sins are
forgiven. And what I’d just like to share with you again is you can know your sins are forgiven.
So, don’t think you can just hope that your sins are forgiven. You can know that your sins are
forgiven. There can be a witness in your spirit with the Holy Spirit that you are a child of God.

And I would encourage those of you who tonight are maybe doubtful about that, to settle that this
very evening. If you are in some vague doubt about that, if you’re not sure that you are going to
go to heaven, if you’re not sure that Jesus knows you and you’re not sure that you know that he
knows you, if you’re not sure that you have peace with God, if you’re not sure that if you died this
very moment that you’d go to heaven, then I would encourage you to see that you can know that, loved
ones. And this life with our dear Father is not built on vagueness and on shades of grey. It is
very certain. “I write to you, little children, because you know your sins are forgiven.”

And that’s the first step in the Christian life. And the other step that he talks about is probably
the most advanced one, “I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the
beginning.” And I suppose those are the dear old saints who have begun to transcend time and have
begun to see the eternal cross working right down through the centuries and to know the eternal
cross, and to know God in the infinite, beyond time. But a very reasonable stage is the one
between, “I am writing to you young men, because you have overcome the evil one.”

And I’d like to address us on that level, “I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome
the evil one.” When we talk about Russia, or Iran, or Africa, or India, or China, we’re talking
about the need for young men and young women — spiritually — young men and young women, young men
and young women who have overcome the evil one. We’re not talking about the little children who are
still preoccupied with the first principles of Christ: still preoccupied with falling into sin,
confessing it, falling into sin again, confessing it — battling their own inner problems with the
evil one. Those dear ones have no time for anybody else. And they have certainly no time to begin
to stand against the enemy in places like India, or the dark, dark enemy in places like Russia, or
the bewildering chaotic enemy in places like Africa or the Middle East. They are so preoccupied
with themselves that it’s all they can do to get through to the end of the day.

Now loved ones, do you see that you have to take a definite step from being a little child who knows
your sins are forgiven into the position where you’re a young man or a young woman spiritually
because you have overcome the evil one? In other words, you have to step into victory over sin in
your own life. And until you do that, you have no pouring forth of Jesus’ Spirit from your own

heart, because the pouring forth of Jesus’ Spirit to others comes from a heart that is glad, and
joyful, and light, and victorious. And you know if you want to argue over, “Oh, do you mean there’s
no sin in your life; there’s no sin in your life?” I’m sure there are all kinds of sin. But there
is no conscious sin! And that is the sin that brings the guilt to our dear consciences. And that’s
the sin that prevents us seeing answers to our prayers.

That’s what God said, “It is not that my hand is short, or my arm is short, but your inequities
stand between me and you. So that you cry to me in prayer and I cannot answer you.” And so the
only way we can be powerful for God in China, or India, or Africa, or Australia, or South America is
when we’ve come to that place where we’re free from this endless battle with the evil one.

Now, why I share it with you like that is we have to stop, as a body, seeing that as the great
height we might reach, if we’re fortunate, at the end of this life. Loved ones, if you wait for
that moment, you’ll be able to do nothing for Jesus in this present life. The Father wants us to
hunger and thirst after this righteousness so that we will come to the place where we have been
crucified with Christ, and we have been raised with him to the right hand of God.

Part of why I share this is I sensed as Marny was singing, and I sensed as others of you are
committing yourselves to the whole ministry abroad, I sensed that the body is beginning to look
something like a sleeping giant that is beginning slowly to stir. And perhaps it is that many of
you are coming up to that ‘magic 30’ age. Or maybe it’s just that we, as a body, are coming into
some maturity. But I sense that many of you are beginning to count the costs, and beginning to
settle: “Am I going for Jesus, irrespective of whether I get married, irrespective of whether I am
happy, irrespective of whether I have the car I want, irrespective of whether people remember me or
not?”

And loved ones, it is that kind of consecration that is needed to come through the cross to the
resurrection side of Calvary. And I would encourage you this evening to see that it is a definite
step. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an old miserable Wesleyan Arminian as I was. It doesn’t
matter if you’re a happy old Calvinist. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Baptist, or a Catholic.
Throughout all our traditions loved ones, there have come two clear stages in all men and women’s
life. The first stage was when they were preoccupied with their own salvation. And they were
concerned about whether they could get into heaven or not. And the second stage was when they began
to be concerned about serving God and they begin to be concerned with what God’s will was for their
lives.

And everyone — it doesn’t matter in what terms they talk of it; it doesn’t matter if they don’t
believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit; it doesn’t matter if they don’t even use the words full
surrender or consecration, or ‘death with Christ’, or ‘victorious life’, or any of those terms; in
every tradition you see that men and women first had to make their peace with God through confessing
their sins, and repenting of their sins, and receiving Jesus’ Spirit into their life. Then as that
little candle came into their life and started to move around the corners of their life, they began
to see the real darkness that was there. And sooner or later, it varied in time, some at 20, some
at 15, some at 25, some at 30, some at 35, some at 50, some at 60 or 70, but sooner or later like
Moses, they came to the place on a backside of a mountain where they saw that they were either going
for God, whatever it meant for their own lives, or they were going to live the rest of their lives
for themselves.

And I would encourage you to see that it is as clear as that. There is no vagueness about it loved

ones. There comes “a day when, I, George Mueller, died to self and died to sin.” There comes a day
when you pass from being a child who is always coming, “Lord, forgive me for my sin; forgive me for
my sin;” to a time where you become a ‘young man’ or a ‘young woman’, because you’ve at last
overcome the evil one in your life. And I would encourage you to see that that can be loved ones.

And I would ask you, if you’re in any doubt this evening, especially after this service — we’re
going to have a ‘Seeker’s Meeting’ after the service, and we’re going to try to have a ‘Seeker’s
Meeting’ up in the lounge every month — a time when we’ll be able to just kneel down in different
parts of the lounge up there and just pray through to whatever is our need. And there will be some
of us elders who are there and some of the rest of us who will be available to help you. But, if
you are in any doubt about whether you are ‘born of God’, that is, if I were to ask you the
question, “When did you meet Jesus?” And you would answer me, “Well, it’s been a kind of gradual
thing, you know. ‘So and so’ kept at me and I’ve just gradually come into it,” well, I agree with
you. I don’t think you need to know the date. I frankly, do know the date. And I think many of us
do know the date. I don’t think you need to know the date, but you need to know a definite time
when you established a friendship relationship with Jesus personally, a time when you confessed your
sins, one-by-one, to him — those things that you know are wrong in your life. You confessed them
to him. And you confessed them plainly, in words even, but certainly, in a definite prayer. You
confessed your sins to him. You need to know a definite time when you repented of those sins, when
you said, “Lord Jesus, these sins that I have been committing in my past life and I’m committing
this very moment, these sins are spears into your side. I see that I caused your death. ‘Against
thee and thee only have I sin and done this wrong.’ And Lord, I personally am sorry to you for the
personal pain and agony that I have caused you. And I turn from these sins. And I am going to have
done with them this moment.”

Then loved ones, you turned to Jesus and you asked him to come into your heart. And you remember
that he said, “Behold that I stand on the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and open the
door, I will come in to him and sup with him, and he with me.” And you said, “Lord Jesus, come into
my heart. I turn from all the things in it that are wrong and that are keeping you out, and I ask
you to come in and abide with me. And I will obey you from this day forward.” And then you
committed yourself to daily prayer and Bible study. And certainly there were other sins that came
into your life but you confessed them and you kept up to date with God.

Now, I would ask you, have you ever done that? And if you’re vague about it loved ones, I would say
honestly, it’s possible that you’re building on a shaky foundation. It’s possible that you have not
put your hand in the hand of God definitely. Now, if you say to me, “Well, do you have to do it as
definitely?” Well, there’s no doubt every man or woman that made a move with God in the Bible put a
stake in the ground. At some time or other they put a stake in the ground, and at a definite time
they made a covenant with God.

It seems that that is God’s way. And if you say to me, “Well, can you not grow into it gradually?”
well, loved ones, it seems that all of us who do it gradually are always in doubt. We’re almost
always in doubt. We’re uncertain whether anything really happened, we’re unsure where we stand with
God and Satan can get at us and say, “Oh, you never did anything.” So it seems that those of us who
have come to a place of stability with God have at some point in our lives made a definite
commitment to him, and not just, in our minds, or thinking it through, but a definite time when we
made our transaction with Jesus. And I’d ask you, have you ever done that?

And then I’d ask you are you a backslider? Are you a backslider? A backslider is not one just who

has sinned, but one who has never kept their account up to date with God about their sinning. That
is, they have allowed outward sins to come into their lives and they have not continued to confess
and repent of them. They have begun to get used to those outward sins. And now they’ve
rationalized them, and now they have a sinning Christian life. And they have real difficulty
feeling the old desire to witness. They have real difficulty actually even feeling the desire to
come to church, let alone come to a prayer meeting. And they are in a backslidden state. They are
cold inside in their hearts. They don’t like prayer meetings, they don’t like Bible study, they
have great difficulty coming to any religious service that has not some entertainment value to it,
and they themselves are living really a secular life.

Now, I’d ask you are you a backslider? And if you are, you are in the same position as I found
myself in. I found myself living a sinning Christian life — in the ministry, in the Methodist
ministry, but living a sinning Christian life. And the first thing I had to do was to get back to
Jesus. Not as anything great, not as any great over comer, just as a child who had their sins
forgiven. I had to get back to the Savior. And I remember, I’ve told you before. I read a Billy
Graham pamphlet on how to come through as a new convert to God, and that’s what I did. I came back
to him again as I had come before when I was 17. And I confessed my sins one-by-one. And I turned
from those sins one-by-one, and committed myself to turning from those forever if I had to, but
keeping up to date day-by-day with my sins with God. And then I received Jesus into my heart again
as my Savior. And no, it wasn’t as great as it was the first time. God often asks us to walk in
faith when we come back to him, but it was a definite act.

Now, I would say to you, if you’re a backslider, don’t somehow hope that being filled with the Holy
Spirit will cure your backsliding. First, you have to get back to God as a child of his. You have
to cease to be a child of the devil. And you have to come to God, and be one of those who does not
commit sin, who abstains from outward sin. And where you do fall into any sin, you confess it, and
you keep up to date with God. Because, of course, the great truth with the Father is that even
though he wants all of us to come to a place of absolute victory, a place where we’re free from the
power of sin, yet he says, “A broken and a contrite heart, I will not despise.” And so it is
beautiful that our salvation is built on Gods ever being ready to forgive and to deal with a
contrite heart.

It’s the impenitent heart of a backslider that God cannot deal with. And that’s why it’s so
important for you to keep up to date with your sins. In a way, I often share with you, we shouldn’t
have a long list of sins every day. But if that’s the only way you can stay in relationship with
God, then that’s what you’ve to do. You have to be honest about your sins. You have to continue to
call sin sin.

So I would ask you first of all, have you ever given your life really to Jesus? Have you ever been
born of God? Then, if you have been a backslider, have you ever come back to God? And then of
course, the one that lifts us from the child that is forgiven into the realm of the young man or
young woman that has overcome the evil one, is this dealing with inward sin. And oh, loved ones, I
just know it so well in my own life. It’s as if God witnesses to your heart as the years go by. If
you make room for sin in your heart, eventually that sin will out. Eventually that sin will eat
away at any salvation that you’re experiencing with God. And whatever you think. Maybe you can
never be lost — maybe not. But at least, as Nee says, “You’ll live as a dead man. If you’re born
of God you’ll live as a dead person.” But sin will eat away your place with God.

Now loved ones, that’s as sure as day is day and night is night. If you regard sin in your heart

God cannot continue a close relationship with you. It’s wrought right through scripture, “If we
walk in the light, as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and with God.”
But, “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, then we lie.” And if you
regard sin in your heart and continue to allow it to dwell there, it will eventually take over your
whole life. So when you’re a child of God the Holy Spirit begins to show you what we have learned
in ‘Churchianity’ and in Christendom to call the little sins. And they are the little acts, the
little feelings of irritability, the little feelings of anger, the little risings up, the little
rebellions against Bible study, the little feelings that we don’t want to go to the prayer meeting,
the little bits of development that show that the original warmth of your love for Jesus is
beginning to cool, and you begin to sense that you are becoming lukewarm, and you haven’t the same
desire to witness to other people that you used to have. And it’s just tendencies inside you of
inward sin that you begin first to experience. Actually, it’s probably that they were there all
along. But just now the Holy Spirit is sufficiently alive in you to begin to point them out in your
heart.

Now, I would say this to you, don’t settle for anything but the best. God has said, “Blessed are
the pure in heart for they shall see God.” His servant Paul said, “God gave the Holy Spirit and
cleansed our hearts by faith.” Go for a clean heart. See that there’s a delight and a joy in being
able to come into a group like this tonight without a critical feeling, or a critical attitude
towards anybody. See that it’s possible to come into a fellowship like this tonight with your heart
bounding with praise to God and with love for him, and love for all of us here. See that that’s a
beautiful and a normal pattern of life and that it is possible to live without irritability, and
selfishness, and critical spirit rising in your heart. It’s possible to live above continual
uncleanness inside.

And loved ones, once you begin to see and admit that that is God’s will for you, you’re a great way
on the journey to coming into the position of a young man, or a young woman where you’ve overcome
the evil one, because Finney [Charles Finney, 1792 – 1875, American Presbyterian minister] is right.
He said, “The first great step towards coming into the fullness of the spirit, coming into full
consecration, coming into a place where you can serve God and not just be his child, is when you
realize you are not in that position.” He puts it this way, “When you realize you have not this
blessing and you need that blessing, you need the fullness of the Holy Spirit, you need a clean
heart. That’s a great step.”

So some of you, actually, maybe you need to come to the lounge tonight, because you need to just
simply acknowledge to God, “Lord, I’m not putting up any pretenses here in this body. I’m going to
declare to you, ‘I need to come into the victory that is described in your word. I need to come
into the place where I have a clean heart.’” And that’s a great step forward loved ones, when you
admit that and when you stop defending yourself in regard to what people think of you. That’s a
first step. And you know, the next step is to see the depth of that self and to come into – it’s
really a new conviction of sin. That’s it. It’s a new and a deeper conviction of sin.

And if you say to me, “Why can’t this come upon you when you’re born of God?” I don’t know. It
seems that some people came into it very soon after they were born of God. It’s very difficult to
find anybody who came into the fullness of the Spirit at the moment they were born of God. It seems
almost as if our own unregenerate heart is so evil that we have no light at all within us. And it’s
only when the little candle of the Holy Spirit comes in that we begin to then see that the room is
really pretty dark. And the candle of the Holy Spirit begins to go around the corners of the self
life and reveal to us what we’re really like. It seems that it’s something to do with us,

certainly, because undoubtedly God can do everything in a moment.

But that’s the first step; see the depth of that self life. And if you loved ones keep on thinking
that you’re risking your own salvation or your assurance of salvation when you do that, well Satan
will get a hold on you. But don’t you see that our salvation is because we were included in Jesus’
death? That’s it. God has included us in Jesus’ death. He’s destroyed us there and remade us.
God isn’t looking for something more from us. He isn’t trying to squeeze some other thing out of us.
God isn’t looking for anything but our realization and our acceptance that we were crucified with
Christ. And he’s asking us to believe that in our heads, and to submit our wills to the truth of it
as we’re able. That’s the basis of our salvation.

But when we come into this new conviction of sin, we’re not so much talking about salvation as we’re
talking about dear children who love their father and who want to please him. They want to come to
a place where their lives are pleasing to him, where prayer can be made real and can be answered,
because Jesus said, “If you abide in me and my words abide in you then ask whatever you will and it
will be done for you.” So these children are children of the Father. That’s what Paul called even
the old carnal ones in 1 Corinthians 3. He said, “You’re children! You’re just little children of
Christ.”

Well, you are children. You’re carnal. You’re not spiritual, but you are children of the Father.
And it’s important to see there’s a distinction between our salvation which is based on Jesus’ blood
that has been presented to God, and this further work of conviction that the Holy Spirit wants to do
in us in order to make us a channel for the Spirit of Jesus. And so it’s important for you to go
with a whole heart to that.

And I think honestly, if you yield to the Spirit of Jesus within you, you’ll feel what I felt. I
just – I wanted to please my Father. I wanted to be clean; I wanted to be a delight to him. I
didn’t want this battle with this self within. I didn’t want this enemy of God dwelling in my
heart, pulling me at times his way, and then Jesus pulling me the other way. I said to God, “Lord,
this is no glory to you. It’s really a stain on your name.”

And loved ones, when you come that way, and ask him for a new conviction of sin, the Holy Spirit
will be faithful. And he will give you just a terrible time, just disastrous. If you’re hard to
live with now, you’ll just be impossible to live with. And the Holy Spirit is faithful, he convicts
of sin. He begins to show you what sin is — real sin, that independence, that stiff necked self
that wants its own way. And he’ll begin to show you that all sin can be traced back to that, that
you are just really a little puppet god, that that’s exactly what you are. You are always
proclaiming you want to serve Jesus, but you’re a little puppet god that wants to serve Jesus in
your way, as long as you get the things that you want, as long as you get the respect that you want.
And the Holy Spirit will come down into your dear heart and will show you the many ways in which
you would not touch that Man on the cross, many ways in which you wouldn’t dwell with him for a
second. You would not be insulted as he was insulted. You would not suffer the discomfort that he
suffered. You are not prepared to be looked down upon as he was looked down upon. You are not
prepared to be put out as he was put out.

And the Holy Spirit will show you that loved ones, and will expose to you the horror of that massive
“I” that lives inside you. And as he shows you that, of course, I know you’ll come to the same
place as all of us have done, where you will see, “Well, listen, this is massive! This is too huge
and too monstrous for me to hope to tame this thing! This is too big for me to train! This is

something that only God can deal with.” And of course, it’s like the forgiveness of our sins. I
don’t know if you remember, but I remember when I saw my sins, I realized there’s no one who can
remove them.

There’s no one that can remove the barrier that my sin put between me and God unless God himself
does it. Unless God does something through Jesus on the cross there’s no way in which I can ever
make myself right with God. And that’s what comes to you, about this new conviction of inward sin.
You begin to see this self is unmanageable. It is sure enmity against God. “It is not subject to
God’s law, indeed, it can’t be subject to his law.” It will not yield to all blandishments of the
Holy Spirit. It won’t yield to all the books that I’ve been reading. This self has to be dealt
with by God.

And you begin at last to glimpse the radical nature of the remedy. And that of course — we have to
be driven to that. Nobody here will touch death unless there’s no other way. And I know you’ll
find it hard to believe but that’s what keeps you from dying. You’re hoping still that there’s
another way through. You’re hoping that there’s another way over self besides death. And of course
God’s dear word is so clear, “If a seed falls into the ground and dies, then it will bear fruit.
But if it refuses, it will abide by itself and eventually die forever.” And God’s word is full of
Jesus saying, “Whosoever saves his life will lose it. But whosoever loses his life for my sake will
save it.”

And of course, that’s a hard thing to come to. It’s a hard thing to go to your own funeral, because
that’s what it is. That’s what dying with Jesus is really about. And it’s only when you see that
there’s no other way, that you’re at last able to even consider it. I remember, I was horrified,
horrified because, as a good theologian, I had learned all about Jesus dying for me. And I thought
the whole plan was that he would die for me so that I wouldn’t have to die. And then suddenly I saw
this business, “If Christ has died for all then all have died,” and, “I live, yet not I, but Christ
lives within me.” “I was crucified with Christ.” And it was then that I began to see that that was
going to mean me, and I was going to have to face it. Was I, Ernest O’Neill, willing to accept the
fact that God had destroyed me in Jesus and therefore this life was not my own? And that is hard,
because we all have little hopes, haven’t we? All have little hopes that all our teachers have
nourished in us, and all our parents have nourished in us. And we hope to be something for God, or
we hope to achieve something, or it would be nice to have this kind of a wife, or these kinds of
children, or have this kind of future. And of course, the issue is not that you’ll never have
those. But the issue is, are you prepared — to be prepared to do without all those, if God asks
you? That’s what dying means. It means having none of those things but having only God, himself.

And that loved ones, that place of full consecration is a high and holy place to come to where you
at last come to the ground of your heart, and you at last settle, “Lord God, I’m willing to have you
only.” And then you think you’re through and the Holy Spirit says, “Yes, but why this? Why this in
your life? Do you still care about what they think of you? Do you still want your own way? Do you
still even want the right to say no?”

It’s interesting, that’s one of the ones that’s a problem to us. We like to follow Jesus as long as
we feel we still have the right not to follow him. But to die to the right to say no, that’s hard.
To die absolutely to the right of your own will to choose or not to choose, that is hard. And when
you come into that realm, usually it’s just you and Jesus. Usually, it’s not even your dear wife,
or your dearest friend, or the person who’s helping you pray through. Usually, it’s just you and
the Savior. You’re into realms there that no other man knows about, no other woman knows about.

Only the Holy Spirit can take you into the heart of your particular darkness, because it’s only you
can see it.

But when the Holy Spirit brings you there, and puts the question to you, then that is the moment of
truth in your life. And it depends of course, on how you respond to that question whether you
really do accept your place with Jesus on the cross and therefore begin to receive all of the
benefits of his resurrection. And the Holy Spirit knows what you do when you’re at that point. And
of course, it’s there that you’re raised from the dead. It’s there that the Holy Spirit fills you
and frees you and completely delivers you from self, and delivers you from the power of sin. Then
at last, you’re free not to sin. Then at last you can say, “Well, if I sin, it’s my own fault,
because I chose to do it.” But now, at last, you’re freed not to sin, and you can decide not to
sin.

And that’s why of course, Paul then gives those commands, “Put to death,” or, “Have put to death
within you the deeds of the body.” And you remember he says, “Forsake this and forsake that.” And
we so often listen to him and say, “Oh, I can’t, I can’t.” Well, he’s talking to people who have
taken their place on the cross with Jesus, and they are people who can. They are at last free not
to sin. They’re free to obey and to walk free from sin.

And of course, that’s the place where you have become a young man, because you have overcome the
evil one in your own life and you’re then able to begin to take your place at the right hand of God,
in Ephesians 2:6, and to overcome the evil one in the lives of your friends, your relatives, the
lives of your colleagues at work and at school, and then most of all, those loved ones in the world
that are waiting for such men and women.

Loved ones, I would ask you have you entered into that? And I would point out to you that it is
entered into by faith. And anything that is entered into by faith can be entered into in a moment.
And it depends on your readiness to submit. And then faith springs up in your heart. Could I point
that out to you again? It is not mighty faith that is needed. There is a verse in Galatians, you
remember, that says, “This life I live by the faith ‘of’ the Son of God.” And the incredible thing
is that there’s a sense in which you can have faith. You can believe that we were crucified with
Christ, on the basis of God’s word. You can mentally believe. In that sense, you can have faith.
But there is a deep faith that only Jesus can exercise for you. And of course, he can only exercise
it in a person who is willing to enter into what that faith is held for.

And so, if you’re not willing to be crucified with him and to be raised with him, the faith of Jesus
cannot be exercised, because he will not force anybody. So there’s a sense in which faith springs
up from a fully consecrated heart. And I would remind you of that both in the new birth and in the
fullness of the Spirit. The problem is never faith unless you mean the volitional factor in faith.
Faith is belief plus obedience. Well the problem is always in the obedience level. But the faith,
the belief part of faith, rises up as Jesus gloriously exercises his faith for your death and
resurrection with him, in you.

So loved ones, the issue is always, “Are you willing? Are you willing?” And you know, I can’t
stress to you how absolutely fool proof coming through to either the new birth or the fullness of
the Spirit is, because some of you, I think, are vague about it. But it’s fool proof. That dear
old conscience is faithful. It will keep objecting as long as you keep resisting it. So you can
try all kinds of things. You can try to feel the presence of Jesus.
You can try to pretend that Jesus approves of you. You can try to believe you’re filled with the

Holy Spirit. But there’ll be nothing real inside you until that old conscience is at last
satisfied.

And we need to thank God for that. You need to thank God that the conscience within our spirits
knows what God wants, knows whether we’re in conformity to that or not, and is aware and able to
examine us. And that conscience is what you must satisfy. And the Holy Spirit, of course,
enlightens the conscience. And he’s the Holy Spirit of truth. And he lets you know if you really
mean what you’re saying.

But that’s what’s needed, men and women who have at last counted the cost, who have counted up what
they are worth and then have settled on the cross with Jesus. And then there is nothing — the
gates of hell cannot prevail against one who has died and risen with Christ.

And then that’s what becomes a mighty army. That becomes a mighty army of saints who begin to move
into the world and triumph over the chaos in the kitchen in London, or triumph over the opposing
darkness in a situation like Afghanistan, or triumph over the noise and bustle of a wholesale sales
convention, or triumph over the sickness that hits their home. Those are the saints that walk above
and in victory, and are able, therefore to express the spirit of that victorious Nazarene. And
that’s, of course, why we’re here.

What people want to see is Jesus. They want to see Jesus in victory. They want to see Jesus
walking down the streets of their city. And the demons are exposed as he walks by because of his
purity. Not because he’s going through all kinds of machinations, but because of his clean, holy,
purity, the demons expose themselves. And those who are disobedient are convicted. And those who
need healing from their sickness are healed. The world wants to see Jesus. And Jesus has offered
himself to you and me so that he’ll become manifest in us. And that’s, you remember, what Paul
says. He says, “Death is at work in us, but life in you, so that the life of Jesus may be
manifested in us.” And that’s what we’re here for.

And loved ones, the only way Jesus can drive the car of your life is if you get into the passenger
seat and out from behind that steering wheel. And only then can he take you where he wants to take
you. And until you do that, you’ll always be pulling at that wheel, and he’ll be saying, “Turn it
this way.” And you’ll be saying, “No, no, I’ll go this way.” And of course, the most important
time is when he sees a way that you cannot see. And yet you’re behind the wheel so you can only see
what you can see. And you can’t see that that lake and that water will bear the weight of your
automobile, and so you’re going to avoid it. But, he knows. He knows that it will bear it. And so
you’ll continue to miss countless ways in your life, because ‘you’ are still in control — going by
sight instead of by his faith.

So loved ones, there is a vast difference. And there are many little churches, little Baptist
churches, and little Salvation Army halls, and little Lutheran churches all throughout this great
country, where little souls are coming through to this same thing that we’re talking about tonight.
So there are all kinds of loved ones, in traditions that believe these things and traditions that
don’t believe them, who want Jesus so badly that they’re coming through. But there are still far
too few of us. And that’s what I share with you. Not that we’re the only ones. There are plenty
of others. But there are too few of us.

There is a great mass of Christendom that lives in defeat, and is no testimony to the world at all.
And there are very few of us that have got out of our lives, and let Jesus take over and be Lord.

And there are plenty of us who are calling him, “Savior,” but very few of us, proportionately, who
are calling him, “Lord.” And it’s something that we have to settle with individually. And I would
really encourage you to do it, because the things that we talk about in these Sunday evenings, and
the thing that I should be talking about tonight, is his Spirit coming through. But I just realize
again, that until you’re filled with his Spirit, his Spirit can’t come through. And it’s vital for
you to see that. And nothing short of full consecration will do that.

Now, if you say to me, “Well, can we carry on living a carnal life?” Well, you can. I am sure
there are lots of loved ones that have gone into heaven living carnal lives. I am sure there are
lots of loved ones who went into heaven living carnal lives, because, first of all, they really
didn’t know there was deliverance. I think there are many loved ones who have never heard that you
can be delivered from carnality, or you can be filled with the Holy Spirit. I think there are many
other loved ones that hungered after it with all their hearts, but came to Jesus so late, that they
didn’t come through. I think similarly there are many loved ones that have lost everything, because
they have tried to live with carnality.

But, I would bring you to reality, “Are we going to try to get into heaven with the least possible
consecration? Is that the level of our love of our Savior? Is that the level of our gratitude to
him that we’re going to try to see how cheaply we can get into heaven?” Or, “Do we really believe
that this Jesus has come into our hearts and that his love burns for his Father in us, and that he
has the same attitude in us that he had in himself when he said, ‘My meat is to do the will of him
that sent me’?”

And isn’t it such a different concept? My meat, my every day food, is to do God’s will. That’s
what I’m here for, not to try to get my own way as often as possible and yet somehow get into heaven
by the skin of my teeth, but to do God’s will moment-by-moment and to live in victory. I think
that’s undoubtedly what he’s called us to. And that’s why Jesus has died. And I would encourage
you tonight to see that you can come through to something definite.

Now, if you say to me, “Well, what about this praying through? You know, what if I go up to the
lounge and I pray, and pray, and I get nowhere?” That’s all right. You keep on doing that for
years. You keep on doing it because that is a declaration to God that you are serious, that you are
hungering and thirsting after righteousness. And so you don’t go up to the lounge thinking, “Well,
this is the big one. This is the big moment.” You go there and you go as far as you can with God
until eventually there will come some night when you say, “Lord, I cannot stand this any longer. I
am prepared for any sacrifice, any surrender, to come into what you have for me.” And of course,
undoubtedly that is when God is able to be with you.

I remember that it was only when I came to the place where I was desperate and could bear it no
longer that the Holy Spirit was able to deal with me. But, I would encourage you not to think
anything about seekers meetings. What really what we need to do — unless you have seekers
meetings, unless there’s a situation where loved ones can deal with God at length, really there’s
little chance of any great work being done among us. So I would encourage you to think about it
sensibly, and think about it unemotionally, and see that maybe it’ll be the 10th seekers meeting in
this 1980, that you’ll come through. But God will honor you. He will honor you if you begin to
make this a priority in your life.

So, I would encourage you to try to establish, “Where do you stand tonight?” And then, “What does
God want you to do as the next step in your life? And then, I would say, “Do it.” And if you want,

by all means to pray in this prayer room, then do that. If you want to stay here and pray do that.
It’s up to you. But, I would make a move, loved ones. I would remind you that the easiest thing in
this life is to drift, just to drift, year-after-year, to drift.

Margie Vest was saying to me this morning that it just does not seem eight years since she graduated
from college and became a teacher. And of course, I think many of us would say it doesn’t seem like
10 years — and this is our 10th year together as a family of God — and it doesn’t seem like 10
years. And it’s amazing how many of us are 30 that were young 20s. And it’s amazing how many of us
are 40, and how many of us are 50, that seemed so young 10 years ago. And life is moving on. And
it will move on whether we do anything about it or not. And I would encourage you about those
words, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” And how long can you go on
saying? “Well, I know my life isn’t victorious but I’m better than I was, and I’m going to plug
along at it.” How long can you keep on doing that before you have to start rationalizing sin in
your life, and admit that you’re drifting hopelessly, not really moving forward at all?

So loved ones, I’d ask you just to deal with God honestly in your own minds and in your own hearts.
And then it’s just about 8:12 now and it seems to me it would be good, if those of us who want can
go up to the lounge and spend, maybe until nine o’clock, at least, seeking God. And we don’t all
need to go. It’s only if God has laid it on your heart. But I do think many of us need to begin
taking a definite step with God.

And I’d say to you this, “Look upon these” – we’ll have a Seeker’s meeting every month, maybe it
will be this Sunday in a month, maybe it will be the communion Sunday, but we’ll put it in the
bulletin. And I would say to you, “You keep going to those things until you get through.” You just
determine, “Lord, I am going to hold to it. And I will come to my Peniel [Genesis 32:23-31], and I
will come to the place where I say, as Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, Lord, until you bless
me.’” And that kind of grasping faith, of course, is what God answers.

So will you do what you think is best. And I mean, I’ll be up there and there’ll be others of us.
And let’s go to it, and get ourselves sorted out, those of us who need to.

Let us pray. Dear Father, we thank you that things are plain and straight, that the way is plain to
a wayfaring man. A man, who is on his way, a woman who is on her way, will see the way plain before
her. And we thank you for that, Lord. We thank you that it is only as we move forward that the way
does become plain, but we thank you that it does become plain. And so Lord, we know that you, by
your Holy Spirit are able to lead each one of us into a place of settlement and peace with you. And
Lord we would pray for each other, pray for those of us who feel we should go home tonight and seek
you. We’d pray for us, or pray as we’re in our bedrooms, or in our living rooms, or our studies,
that you Holy Spirit, will give us a real sense that we’re dealing with you, not just with our own
thoughts. And then those of us who will seek you in other parts of this building tonight, or will
seek you in the frat houses, or in the Christian houses, Lord, we pray that you will give us a real
sense that we are doing business with God and that the angels, and archangels, and all the company
of heaven are watching.

And Lord, those of us who go up to the lounge, we pray that you will show us the way through, each
one of us individually, and you will counsel us and deal with us. And Father, we thank you for your
word that shows that there are children that know their sins are forgiven. And there are fathers
who know you from the beginning in eternity. And there are young men, young women, who have
overcome the evil one. And Lord we see that that’s certainly where we should be today, and where

you want us — first of all, for your own glory, then for our sakes, then for the sakes of those
millions who want to see Jesus alive in flesh and blood again.

Now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with
each one of us now and ever more. Amen.

??

??

??

??

Spiritual Life #52

Laws of the Spirit 2 – Blockage & Poisoning

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Loved ones, the center of most of our beings probably looks like that. [On graphic draws a circle
with the word “life” inside but makes the “I” in “life’ large.] Before God’s Spirit deals with us
there is a great “I” there that governs everything we do. And when God sends his Spirit into our
spirits the Holy Spirit begins to renew our spirits and we sense for the first time something
beautiful inside us.

And that’s really what the new birth is. It is something different coming inside us and we sense
something that wasn’t there before, wanting to love other people and wanting to do things that we
never wanted to do before. And where there was a deadness that was kind of dominated by us being
god, and wanting everything our way, suddenly there seems to be something new inside us that is
driving us out to other people. But of course, for some time it has to fight this great “I” that
still remains there. And that’s why we often talk about the need to have that “I” crucified so that
it is finally reduced to normal size and then only the Spirit of Jesus moves inside us.

It is interesting that that finds several expressions in the Bible, but one of them is in a verse in
Revelation if you’d like to look at it. Revelation 3:20, a verse that we often use in connection
with receiving Jesus as our Savior. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my
voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” And it helped me
a lot when someone pointed out that the first part of the promise is the new birth, “If any one
hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him.” That’s usually what
happens.

Jesus comes in and eats with the great “I” here. The “I” still governs our life and we welcome
Jesus in as a guest. He eats with us and he wants to move some of the furniture around and change
the house but we are the hosts and we insist on the furniture remaining as it is. And we accept
advice from him and suggestions but still, we are the principals in the whole covenant and we do
only what we really want to do. And then of course, the last part of the verse is when we allow him
to become the host, “I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” And eventually then
he becomes the host and I just eat with him. And Jesus is the chief person in the house and he can
do whatever he will.

And that is the free Christian life. And I don’t know where you all stand in your own lives, but it
is a very free thing when you at last forget yourself. And that is the real life that is planned
for us by God. When Jesus’ Spirit governs everything we do, then you get true unselfishness. Until
that happens you get a kind of imitation of unselfishness. You get people doing unselfish acts.
But when Jesus’ Spirit takes you over completely there’s a freedom, and joy, and unselfishness. And
I wonder if you’re at that place? And I would encourage you to see that it is possible to come to
it. It’s possible to come to the place where you’re not always wondering how much this is going to
cost you not only financially but in reputation and in comfort.

And there comes a time when you fly high above the earth’s atmosphere out there in the stratosphere
somewhere, and you’re able to be governed by this free generous spirit of Jesus that has no thought
for itself. Now, it is possible loved ones, to live that kind of life. I agree with you, it’s only

possible if there is a dear God to take care of us, because who would be looking after the store if
we just leave the store ourselves? And that’s normally most of our problems. We say, “If we leave
the store,” that is if we leave the business of our bank account and getting it built up, and if we
leave the business of looking after our marriages, and our homes, and our careers — “If we leave
the store, who’s going to look after the store?”

And of course, if there’s no God then you’re mad to leave the store. But, if there is a dear God
who has promised that, “If you seek first my kingdom, all the other things I’ll add unto you; I’ll
look after the store,” then it is possible, finally, to burn your bridges behind you and to live for
this Jesus. Then it is possible to say, “Lord Jesus, whatever you want to do that’s what I want to
do. You’re me from this moment on. I live; yet not I, but Christ lives within me: and this life
that I live, I live not by faith ‘in’ the son of God, but I live this life by the faith ‘of’ the son
of God,” because, it’s Jesus taking the initiative.

So that’s why people were called “Christ-ians”, because they were people who were born along by
Christ and therefore they were just “Christ-ian” people. They were people who were possessed by
Christ. Now, loved ones, that’s a great, and the eventual plan that God has for our lives. So when
you have that kind of spirit moving inside you, you find that that Spirit is always trying to do the
same thing of course, as it was in Jesus, always trying to get out — always trying to get out to
other people.

Now, it is interesting, that if that Spirit doesn’t get out then that Spirit will be grieved. So
maybe it’s good for you to see that, that it’s never a case of the Spirit dwelling there. The
Spirit actually doesn’t dwell. That’s part of what Jesus meant when he said, “The Spirit is like
the wind.” The wind doesn’t dwell in one place. The remarkable thing about the wind is that it’s
always moving. If the wind isn’t moving there is no wind. And it is interesting, if you think for
a moment that the word for wind in Hebrew is ‘ru’ach’. And that is the word that means spirit —
wind, or spirit, or breath.

And so there is a great emphasis on the Holy Spirit being always a moving power. And actually,
there’s no such thing as the Spirit dwelling in you. We talk about the Spirit dwelling in you, but
the only way the Spirit dwells in you is that he’s always passing through you. And so there’s
always some Spirit in you because once you get rid of some of his Spirit there’s more Spirit that
comes in to take his place. So that’s how you talk about the Spirit dwelling in you. But it’s
really just like a windy corner and windy city in Chicago. Really, there’s wind on that corner just
because the wind is always passing by that corner. And so it’s the same with us, the Spirit of
Jesus is always moving outward.

Now, if ever that Spirit becomes blocked then the Spirit is grieved. And so one of the things that
we talked about in previous years — and many of us were such immature little souls that we really
didn’t know what we were talking about — but it is the blockage of the spirit. And of course,
we’re talking about the laws of the spirit. And one of the laws of the Spirit is that he’s always
moving. And if the Spirit is blocked in any way, then he’s grieved. And actually you sense that
grieving.

The Holy Spirit is so good you see, because he will always witness that grieving and he will witness
it right there in your conscience. [He indicates the conscience in the center of our being on a
graphic of the personality.] And the Holy Spirit will witness there that he is grieved. So you’ll
often sense a pang there in your conscience. And the Spirit will witness that he’s grieved not only

by sin, but actually by this kind of action that we’re talking about — which is really sin, just
it’s unconscious sin often. And so we tend to call it the things that are inexpedient.

So loved ones, what we want to share just a little about at the beginning of this evening’s study,
is the ways in which the spirit can be blocked. And maybe it’s good to look at one of the obvious
ways in Mark 14:38. And it’s that situation in the Garden of Gethsemane. And you remember, Jesus
had left the disciples while he went to pray, and he told them to pray there. “’Watch and pray that
you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is week.’ And again
he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And again he came and found them sleeping, for
their eyes were very heavy; and they did not know what to answer him.”

Now it’s perhaps good for all of us to see that, in that Verse 38, the meaning of ‘flesh’ there is
the body itself, or the soul. So ‘the flesh’ in the New Testament means not only the selfish will
that will not obey, but even when that selfish will is at last placed on the cross, then there is
the inexpedient ‘soul’, or the undisciplined ‘soul’ — and of course, often the weak body. And so
when you are dealing with the movement of the Holy Spirit, after you’ve dealt with that massive “I”
that is in the center of your being and the Spirit has free flow, then he begins to find that this
dear old ‘soul’ here, [He points to it on the graphic of the personality.] is not actually a
submissive servant of the Spirit at all, and that it has many habits, and many practices that are
not the habits and practices of the Holy Spirit himself.

And of course, if you don’t allow the Holy Spirit to make new ruts, or new channels in your soul —
in the habits of your mind, the habits of your emotions, the habits of your body — then the Spirit
will find himself blocked. That’s where many of us get into real difficulty if we have formed
patterns of behavior that are very strong in us, even if they’re habits of, “Well, I must get to
sleep at this hour. Then, I must rise at this hour.” And we won’t allow the Holy Spirit either to
extend those hours or to lessen them, or to bring a flexibility into them.

It’s the same with many of us in regard to our whole exercise life. Many of us, after leaving
school or graduating, knew very little of exercise, and we just decided, “Well, we are no longer in
a team of any kind and so you just don’t exercise. Once you get to ordinary work there isn’t time
for that. Sometimes there’s time; sometimes there isn’t.” And so gradually our bodies become
heavier and heavier burdens. And they actually become very unwilling, and indeed, eventually they
become utterly recalcitrant servants of the spirit. And so our bodies lie heavily upon us.

And I would just remind you of that verse. You remember it’s in 1 Timothy 4:8. And it might be
good just to look at it, because many of us use it as a reason for ignoring the body. And yet
really, it has implicit in it God’s commendation. 1 Timothy 4:8, “For while bodily training is of
some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also
for the life to come.” But it is very interesting that Paul is saying to Timothy, “Bodily training
is of some value.” And it seems that many of us grieve the Holy Spirit through incredible
weariness, and tiredness that comes upon us just somewhere between usually 2:30 and 4:30 in the
afternoon. And so we’re listening to someone as they’re talking to us sharing their own hearts with
us, and we’re saying, “Yeah, yeah, yes…” [At that point he inhales with a sleepy, almost a snore,
breath.] And that’s what happens when actually our bodies are not in good shape.

I used to take the attitude, “Oh no, I’m tired because I’m getting far too much exertion.” But
actually the opposite is true; we’re tired because our bodies are not getting exercise. And the
blood flows slowly through them, and the circulation seems to become more, and more sluggish, and

our brain gets less and less blood, and so we generally slow up in our whole thinking processes. And
then we go home and have a sizeable meal. And then we sit down to rest because we don’t know how
we’ll manage through the evening and all the television until we get to bed. And of course, it is a
hideous life. It is just a life that is serving Satan, because the body, which is a very resilient
gift that God has given us, is getting no workout at all. And so the body lies heavily upon us.

And I would just — without going to the length that we really should go this evening — I would
just ask you, “What shape is your body in and what is the state of your own physical fitness at this
present time?” And if it isn’t good, I know you’re having troubles, because the mind itself depends
on a healthy body. And those dear Greeks were right, that the secret was a healthy mind and a
healthy body. And if the body is not healthy, of course, the mind itself is sluggish in its
working.

And so many of us are not at all facing Satan, you know. And there we are ‘casting him out’ with
great ‘castings’. And it’s not Satan at all that is the trouble. It’s just our bodies lie heavily
upon us. And therefore our minds are sluggish. Of course, you know how connected your emotions are
to your body. You realize that if I get embarrassed, I blush. So you can see emotions tie right up
with the secretion of fluid and the circulation of blood in your body. And if you get nervous then
your mouth goes dry. And you can see that as the emotions produce immediate results in the body, so
of course, the body is tightly connected with the emotions. And many of us share all kinds of
depression that isn’t spiritual at all in origin. It’s simply physical in origin.

So I would encourage you. I don’t know what kind of exercise format you have, but I would point out
to you that often you will block the Holy Spirit. That is, often the Holy Spirit will want you to
go to a prayer time, and to be active, and vibrant in the prayer time. And you’ll get your old head
down there. [Again he inhales with a sleepy, snore breath.] And you’ll be half sleeping and half
praying. And then of course all kinds of problems come in, because the will is not controlling the
mind, so Satan throws other thoughts into the mind. Then you’re fighting wandering thoughts. Then
you feel guilty. Then you start casting away your faith. And then of course you lose everything.

So it is amazing how if the body is not in shape, it affects the ability of the mind and emotions to
obey the Spirit. Indeed, the interesting thing is this that, if the body isn’t in shape the body
dominates the spirit. That’s true. If the body is in shape then the Spirit is able to continue to
have his way in your life. But if the body is heavy, then it leans in upon the soul and it begins
to crush the spirit. And so many of us have all kinds of problems and we say, “Oh, I’m fighting
Satan in my prayer times.” And it’s not Satan we’re fighting. I suppose originally it’s Satan
we’re fighting, but it’s a body that is not in shape at all.

So I would ask you, do you exercise daily? And you don’t need to join the European Health Spa to do
that. And you don’t need to expend all kinds of money. There are lots of exercises that a person
can do in their own bedroom in very little space every day. There are all kinds of breathing
exercises that can enhance your whole health and the ability of your body to be a good servant to
your spirit. And I would encourage you to do it. And when the good weather comes, you ought –
everybody doesn’t have to run, you can walk. And you can go out and spend time in God’s world
getting the kind of body that he can use, and that his Spirit can use.

So I would ask you to remember that, both ladies and gentlemen. And it seems to me that where Satan
catches us is when we get old, or when we get older. I was absolutely convinced that I had given up
team sports and that this was not the time to spend time exercising, until I found old Stanley Jones

— a dear fellow he was – 87 years old. And he still did his pushups – where ever he was. It
didn’t matter where he was traveling, which hotel he was in, and he was continually on the move. He
was six months in India and six months touring around the States, and speaking every night. And he
was far more alive, and vibrant, than many, many people who were 60 years younger than him. And he
kept on with the old exercises right until – I think he died about 90.

And so God can keep us fit physically, if we commit ourselves to it. And I would encourage you to
think of it. And I would encourage you not to get into all kinds of complicated explanations of the
great warfare you’re engaged in, when the only problem you have is the same as the disciples. The
body is just not in shape and so “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”

Now loved ones, the same is true of our minds. Our minds can become actually a block and a burden
to the Spirit. And this can happen in all kinds of ways. It is important to allow the Holy Spirit
to govern your mind. Now, he will do that in the same way exactly as he tells you when your body is
becoming a block. He will speak in your conscience. And your mind will be going off on some book.
Maybe you’re reading fiction, or you’re reading some argumentative book on politics. And for a
while maybe the Holy Spirit will allow you to do it, and maybe it will allow you to finish it. But,
there comes a time when the Spirit will check you on it and will say, “Okay, enough is enough.”

And maybe he’ll let you finish it the next day, or two days later, or a week later, or a month
later. But the Holy Spirit will check you when your mind is becoming over exercised in the wrong
way. Or often some of us — it seems to me especially in politics — some of us can get over
enthusiastic. And we’re determined to think through where Carter [US president at the time of this
talk] is right, or where he is wrong. And we’re determined to think through this whole Iranian
situation. [American Embassy taken over and staff taken hostage by the new Iranian government.
President Carter authorized a failed mission to free them.] And often the Holy Spirit will see that
the mind is becoming far too engrossed in this, to the point that if the Spirit wants to direct you
in your mind to think something, or explain something to someone else, the mind will not be free.

And so the Holy Spirit will check you and say, “That’s enough. You’ve thought enough along those
lines.” Or, on the other hand, the Holy Spirit will direct you to certain books that maybe you do
not normally read. And many of us do not find people like Andrew Murray, or even Watchman Nee, or
many of us do not find [Charles] Finney or [Louis] Berkoff [author of “Systematic Theology” text
book] — depending on what our background is — certain books we don’t feel come naturally to us.
And the Holy Spirit will direct us to those books in order to begin to balance our mind, because our
mind in some way is not fit to be used by him.

I think many of us have not disciplined our minds in conceptual thought. That’s true. I think many
of us have not balanced, or trained our minds in conceptual thinking. Some of us are far too good
at it. Some of us are philosophizing all the time and arguing this argument, and this belief, and
this theory against that theory. But some of us have not trained our minds in conceptual thinking,
and the Holy Spirit directs us to do that. Yield to him, because the Holy Spirit will all the time
be working through your conscience to direct your mind into the kind of exercise that will make your
mind a good servant of your spirit.

Now loved ones, it’s the same with your emotions, because the emotions are the other part of the
soul. And often your emotions can, through over exercise, or through under exercise, end up being
absolutely useless to your spirit. And do you remember that Jesus was so good. He could weep with
those that weep, and he could rejoice with those that rejoiced. You remember that verse in

scripture — the shortest one we always learned at Sunday school — “Jesus wept.” And it somehow
brings home to you that Jesus could sympathize with Mary and Martha. And he had a spirit that was
settled on God but was very sensitive to other loved ones.

Now, many of us of course, find that we have emotions that are very, very uptight. Very hard! Very
dry! And they are unable at times, to express freely what Jesus’ Spirit wants us to express. Now,
it’s interesting but even if it’s just because you’re an old Swede or Norwegian, [known for their
lack of emotion] or because, if it were the other case, if you were too wild in your emotions, an
old Italian or Spaniard, whatever it is, if your emotions are not really submissive to the Spirit of
Jesus, you will sense a kind of blockage. And you’ll sense, “Well, I’m not involved in sin here.
But, boy! There’s some way in which I’m not really expressing the Spirit of Jesus’ life to this
person.”

And so the Holy Spirit, through your conscience again, will often check you in your emotional life.
And I don’t mind too much crying up here. I feel a bit stupid, a guy crying. But you have to – if
you do it, you do it — but it seems that you do need to make sure that your emotions are truly
governed by the Spirit. So you can cry and cry. Sometimes you can cry for all kinds of corny
reasons that nobody else knows about. It’s good if you cry, or you weep, with the Holy Spirit
guiding you.

Sometimes we can cry for ourselves. Sometimes we can cry because of some sentimentality. So
there’s a very important level and balance in our emotions that needs to be there for the Holy
Spirit to use our emotions. Similarly, some of us think, “Oh, unlimited and unrestricted sympathy
with someone who is in trouble is obviously Jesus’ will.” Well, no! Jesus’ sympathy with a person
is always controlled by the Holy Spirit. Because there is a weeping, you remember, “That is unto
death,” and “there is a weeping that is not unto death.”

And often in funeral situations you get there, a weeping, and a sorrow that is of Satan. There is
no hope in it! There is just despair and depression! And if you go into a home of mourning at the
time of a death, and you just open yourself to that kind of sinful emotion, then of course your
emotions will be weighted with that and will be blocked, so that the Holy Spirit will not be able to
express that grief that has joy in it and hope in it.

And similarly, I think it’s true – I suppose I always think of it as you ladies that do it, but I
think many of us men do it, too, and maybe even more so. Maybe you ladies have often far more
control through your mind than we men have. But often we will allow our emotions to be absolutely
caught up with some dear friend that has had a tragedy in their life, or has come into deep trouble
in their marriage, or has come into deep trouble in their business life. And we will allow ourselves
to go absolutely head over heels in sympathy and empathy. And before we know it, we’ll be
absolutely lying on the ground, absolutely dominated by our emotions, and with the Spirit of Jesus
completely grieved, so that he isn’t able to minister in that situation at all.

Similarly, I think — you could take all sides of it but it is – I know this sounds funny — but it
is important even at a [Minnesota] Twins [baseball] game, or at a [Minnesota] Vikings [American
football] game to realize that you can open yourself to a kind of emotionalism that brings in
something of Satan. And that can unsteady you, so that if God maybe brings you together with some
person that needs the life of Jesus, immediately after the game finishes, you’re in no state at all,
or no shape of balance to express that life to them. So not only extreme depression and despair can
unfit your emotions to express the Spirit of Jesus but really unrestricted happiness and

unrestricted exhilaration can do the same thing.

So loved ones, it is important, I think, to see that you can often get yourself into real difficulty
in the spirit simply because your soul, or your body, in some way is blocking the Spirit coming out.
Now, maybe I should just pause for a minute and ask, does anyone want to ask anything about that?
Or, often the Holy Spirit will have to apply it to all of us, because you can’t make rules about it.
You can’t make rules about the length of smile you should have if you’re spiritual.

I’d like to share a little loved ones, I know I’m moving a little faster this evening, but there are
deep things that I think we should touch on. And I would like to share them. So I’d like to talk
just a little then about another way in which Satan affects your spirit. And that is in connection
with the poisoning of your spirit. Now of course, you can see, how important this area is because
this is the source of all the life of Jesus in you. [On the graphic of the personality he circles
the spirit.] So of course, if you can affect this at the very well spring and source of your
spiritual life then everything else is useless.

And this is what therefore, we’re talking about. Satan at times blocks the spirit through soul and
body that are not fitted for expressing the Spirit of Jesus. And at times he – in fact, you can see
the actual picture that is used in Ephesians 6:16. It’s really very graphic. And you’ll recognize
it immediately you see it. “Besides all these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench
all the flaming darts of the evil one.” So that’s what he does, shoots flaming darts into your
spirit.

Now many of us you see, have the feeling, “Oh well no, he can’t touch your spirit.” But Satan does
move in the spiritual world, and he cannot touch your spirit as long as your mind holds to your
position in Christ Jesus. And you remember, the position of victory is Ephesians 2:6, “And God has
raised us up and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” And that position
you remember, is described in Ephesians 1 as being, “far above every rule and authority and power
and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but in that which is to
come.”

And that is the position of power, and while your mind is fixed on that, and your will is submitted
to the Holy Spirit, and while you yield no ground to Satan he cannot get fiery darts into your
spirit. But if you yield any ground to him, Satan can shoot fiery darts into your spirit. And he
can bring a poisoning into your spirit. And of course, without that there’s nothing but Jesus in
your spirit. Do you see that? That’s the beautiful thing, when you’ve at last let the old self go
to the cross and you live only for Jesus, and that’s it, “Lord, whatever you want to do here we are,
let’s go.” Where you have that kind of an attitude, your spirit is absolutely filled with the sweet
and fragrant spirit of Jesus.

So the only way in which anything dirty can occur from that spirit and can come out from it to the
rest of your life is if Satan fires darts into it and poisons the spirit. Now loved ones, at times
he can do that. He can only do it if you fail to hold your position at the right hand of God, or if
you fail to submit your will to the Spirit in some area of your life. So if a fiery dart comes into
your spirit and you sense, “Boy, there’s something unclean or something poisoned coming up from in
me. There is something other than the sweet love of Jesus coming up from me. There’s something
other than his joy, and his peace.” Then you ought to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you where
you’ve given ground to Satan. Then you ought to deal with that ground. And then you ought to resist
Satan in Jesus’ name, because you remember, James 4:7 says, “Resist the devil and he will flee from

you.” Actually, that’s all you need to do. No big wrestling, no big fighting and all that kind of
stuff, just resist him in Jesus’ name and he will flee from you. And then, bring your will back
under the control of the Holy Spirit.

But what we might talk about a little, is some of the poisons that he can bring into your spirit.
And really, they’re just examples loved ones. So I’ll just mention some of them that others have
found happen inside them. Ephesians 4:15, is sometimes the way – often Satan uses scripture and
tries to justify certain poisons by scripture and this is one of the famous ones. “Rather, speaking
the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” And often
we find our spirits becoming stiff and unyielding, or we find them becoming selfish, and we find
that we are abandoning our love and our tender feeling for our neighbors. And often Satan uses that
verse, “Well you know, we have to speak the truth in love. I mean, you have to love them but, boy!
they need some of the truth from time-to-time.”

And that’s good if you’re speaking the truth freely directed by Jesus’ Spirit. But it’s very
interesting how Satan can often rationalize and persuade us, “Well, you know you have your faith but
you have to have your faith, discipline, and all kinds of other things. And we have to see them as
they really are. And we have to size up the thing as it is, and speak right to the point.” And
often we can allow Satan’s harshness to come into our spirits. And we lose that tenderhearted
feeling for our friends, or for our loved ones. And we find our spirits becoming rather selfish,
and rather stiff and unyielding. And we will often say, “Well, you know we’re just standing our
ground. We have to stand our ground. You can’t move with every wind that blows.”

But actually there comes into us a kind of unyielding attitude and instead of being flexible under
the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we become stiff and unyielding. And we plead of course, that it’s
in order to hold our own ground. But often it’s because we’ve yielded some other ground to Satan,
often in some obvious disobedience. And so we’ve allowed a fiery dart from the wicked one to come
in and actually make our spirits stiff and unyielding. And then of course, he uses scripture to
kind of reinforce that and back us up in being that way.

Now loved ones, the Holy Spirit usually doesn’t leave you without some guidance, usually through
your conscience. He gives you little pangs of conscience. You’ll maybe say something to someone
and you’ll realize, “Oh, there was a hardness in that.” Or, someone will ask you to do something
and, “Oh no, no, I haven’t time. I mean, I have my life laid out.” And the Holy Spirit will
question you, “Would Jesus be as stiff, and scheduled, and inflexible as that?” And so usually, the
Holy Spirit is so good, usually he will cause you to question if your spirit is in some way being
poisoned.

And when that happens, I’d say again to you, what you need to do is thank the Holy Spirit and then
go to him, and go into deep counseling with him. And ask him, “Holy Spirit, where did I yield
ground?” And be open to the fact that you might have yielded ground in some other area of your life
completely, because Satan often wants to put us off track by actually taking advantage of some
ground we’ve yielded over here, but manifesting his poisoning in some area over here. So the first
thing is to ask the Holy Spirit to show you.

And then when he shows you loved ones, then resist Satan right there. Often you will have to do it
audibly: “In Jesus’ name, I resist you in Jesus’ name. I know you have been destroyed and have no
power over me.” And then find out where your will has to be yielded and submitted to the Holy
Spirit to take back that ground. And then you simply walk in praise of God, because that’s the only

safe place where there is the movement of the Holy Spirit through you, in loving God and praising.
That’s of course, another reason why, you see, it’s important for your soul and body to be flexible,
because if they cannot express freely what the spirit wants, then you won’t have health inside you.

So it’s important, immediately you’ve determined where the poison came from, then it’s important
that you begin to praise God, and to love again, and to live in an outgoing way. Many of us when,
either our spirits are blocked, or when they’re poisoned, we withdraw into ourselves. We think,
“Ah, I’m coming into a deeper place with Christ and with the Holy Spirit. I’m discovering something
new of myself.” And we find we’re a little shier with other people, and we’re drawing back from
other people. And often, Satan bluffs us and says, “Ah, you’re discovering something deeper in
yourself.” Now often, that simply is deception. And we’re not in fact discovering something
deeper; we’re just withdrawing back into self.

Now, that’s different from the times when Jesus does begin to deepen us, and asks us to go deeper
with him, and maybe to be quiet for a while, and to seek him. But that has a healthiness about it.
But this other drawing back has an unhealthiness and a kind of introspective quality about it that
immediately ceases to let us be used by Jesus’ Spirit to bless other people. And often our friends
and our colleagues who were formerly blessed by our witness actually miss us. And that’s how you
know that in some way it’s an unhealthy thing, when the Spirit of Jesus is no longer moving through
you.

It may be good for us to see again, that the Spirit of Jesus and the Spirit filled person is — and
I have to use the word, I know it’s a no-no, but it’s a good English word and they’re destroying it
— is a gay person. He is a person who is happy and joyous, and delighted, and spontaneous, and
exhilarating. And he is an outgoing person, and a person that is engrossed and involved in other
people. That is the Spirit filled person. The spirit filled person is not ‘blinkers on’ and ‘eyes
to the ground’ praising the Lord in private. No, the Spirit of Jesus is always going out. So it’s
good to see that loved ones.

Now, what happens of course, Satan is always trying to poison that spirit. Another way in which he
poisons it, he justifies by John 16:8. And it’s a famous verse that we all know so well. But we
often feel the Holy Spirit is not up to this, and we ought to help him a little. “And when he
comes,” that is the Holy Spirit, “He will convince the world,” or convict the world you remember,
“Concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” And often Satan entices us to harbor unforgiving
and bitter feelings in our spirits — to harbor a kind of ‘fault finding’ and hostile spirit in
here. [He indicates the spirit on the graphic of the personality.]

Now, that can happen over all kinds of things. I mean, we can have disagreements with our loved
ones at home. We can have disagreements with somebody in business. And Satan works up in you —
because it’s all filling the office, or filling the school in which you are — works up in you a
kind of fault finding spirit towards this person. And you don’t realize that, though the dart came
from Satan and not from yourself, once you embrace and acquiesce in that dart, then that dart begins
to become a work of the flesh in you. And so you find yourself with a spirit that is hostile or
fault finding, a spirit that is kind of criticizing the other person.

And then of course, Satan says, “Well, well, when the Spirit comes he will convince the world of
sin. Maybe he’s doing it through you.” And you begin to think, “Oh yeah, yeah, it’s important for
me to see that person as he really is. And it’s important for me to tell him what’s wrong with
him.” And of course we find ourselves usurping the position of the Holy Spirit, because of course,

the Holy Spirit will convict others through us. But he will convict others through the “Christ
likeness” of our lives. They will be amazed at the love that continues to come from us despite
their attitude to us. And then the Holy Spirit will use that to convict them of their own ugliness.
But that’s the way it works, but it doesn’t work through us pointing the finger.

So if you find that there’s coming out from you, a spirit that finds fault with other people, or a
spirit that criticizes other people, or if you find your spirit inside filled with bitterness, and
filled with an antagonism and hostility towards others, loved ones realize immediately that Satan
has shot one of his fiery darts into your spirits. And you need immediately to go to the Holy
Spirit and say, “Holy Spirit, I have even a fair idea where this dart came in, but I don’t really
know where I yielded ground to Satan, so will you show me?”

And it is interesting, unless the Holy Spirit is your boss, of course you won’t take that attitude
to him. You’ll go to it with the psychological books — which are okay. But you’ll go to it with
your own psychology and your introspection and you’ll start trying to find the ground. Well, only
the Holy Spirit can give you the ground, because the fact about yielding ground to Satan is it’s
yielded in deception. And you yielded it because you didn’t know, and so only the Holy Spirit can
show you what that ground was. So it’s vital to go then to the Holy Spirit and ask him, “Where did
I yield ground to Satan?” And when he shows you, then you resist Satan in Jesus’ name, and then
submit your will to the Holy Spirit.

And then the important thing is — it doesn’t matter how you do it, and it doesn’t matter if you go
and kiss that guy, or kiss that girl — but somehow you immediately get the spirit flowing the right
way again. And whether you write a letter to them and express your regard for them, or your
friendship, or you apologize for the feeling you’ve had towards them, but you get the spirit going
in the right direction immediately. Because, that’s the way the spirit will heal you and cleanse
you.

So loved ones, it is you can see, important to deal with these poisonings that come into your
spirit. And it is important to see, too, that the only place of victory is in your position at
God’s right hand. And it might be good, you know, for me to write maybe those two verses down
because it’s Ephesians 2:6. That’s the position of victory. And I suppose you could say Romans
6:11 is the condition that results from that, which is a condition of submitting your will to the
Holy Spirit. And that is the place of victory in life, and is the only position where your spirit
can continually remain healthy and clean for Jesus to use.

To Here 45:43 p. 12 21-02-2013

And I think I should stop there. There are other things I should share but the time is going. Are
there any questions loved ones? You can see the importance of sin. If there’s sin in your life, of
course, you won’t want to do any of this. I mean, you’ll be the child of the devil, and you’ll be
his servant, and so you’ll be expressing sin. But I’m assuming that we’ve received Jesus’ Spirit
into us and that good Spirit is wanting to express himself through us.

There are a thousand verses here which maybe I can share some other evening, which of course, show
you how active the Christian life is. So always – you don’t lie under these things; you don’t lie
under them. You don’t experience them for one hour and let them dwell in you. The only way of
victory is resist them and fight against them.

Question from Audience: (inaudible)

Response from Pastor O’Neill:

It would be in this way that the Spirit of Jesus is just always going out. And anything that
directs in upon yourself — you just know it is Satan’s approach. So I’m sure you’re right that an
attitude that becomes overwhelmed with criticizing yourself is part of the spirit of Satan.
Whereas, it seems to me, the Holy Spirit’s conviction says, “You are not tithing. You are being
dishonest in your business in this area. You have a wrong attitude towards your brother or your
sister.” The Holy Spirit points out a definite thing. You either accept that conviction and repent
of the sin and have done with it, and go to Jesus, or of course, you continue in it, in which case
you begin eventually to lose all voice of the Holy Spirit.

So you are right, that when the Holy Spirit convicts, he convicts particular sin. And it’s
something you can deal with, and repent of, and go on your way. But the self critical stuff is
something that just beats you over the head. It’s a kind of masochism that the self enjoys, really.

But what would be good for us all to grasp is, that the normal state of our spirits is Jesus.
That’s it. The normal state of our spirits is that dear Savior. And if it will make it clearer to
some of you who have difficulty understanding the Spirit of Jesus, it’s the Spirit of Hawaii with
the breakers rolling in upon the shore. That’s it, clean and fresh, and glittering, and shinning,
and bright. It’s the Spirit of seagulls and swallows, soaring in the heavens. It’s the Spirit of
little animals chasing each other on a spring morning. It’s that Spirit. The Spirit of Jesus is
not hard to find because it’s plain in everything he’s made. It’s a joyous, clean, outgoing Spirit
that expresses peace and joy all around. It’s a Spirit that is not preoccupied with itself and is
not sad and depressed.

So it’s not hard to tell the Spirit of Jesus. The Spirit of Jesus is a joyous happy Spirit that is
always going out to lift others into that same place. So really it is — oh it is — it’s a
continual vacation to really be governed by Jesus’ Spirit. That’s why you grow younger every day,
that’s why – oh yeah, that “the power that raised Jesus from the dead gives life unto our mortal
bodies” so that “they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” “They shall run, and not
be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” And “their youth will be renewed like the eagles.”

So it is, it’s a life that is more alive, and more rejoicing at the end of a hard day than it was at
the beginning. Of course, you ask, “Why?” Well, because through the whole day this healthy Spirit
of Jesus has been blasting through you, and making you healthier all the time, as he went through.
So it is, it’s a beautiful life, really.

Let us pray. Dear Lord, we thank you for your own clear example. Every time we look at you Savior,
the Lord of earth passing by. Every time we look at you, we see joy, and life, and uplift and
peace, and kindliness, and tenderheartedness. Lord, we see a love that is always eager to believe
the best, that is always believing the best, that is not looking at what is dark and sinful but at

what is light and what is beautiful. Lord, we thank you for that.

Thank you that we need never doubt whether it’s your spirit or Satan’s spirit, whether it’s your
Spirit or our own selves. The difference is the difference between night and day, the difference
between life and death. And oh we thank you for that. Thank you that the new birth, that being
filled with the Holy Spirit, are so plain and so obvious that even the wayfaring man can perceive
it. And oh we thank you for that Lord.

We pray for our dear friends, pray for our colleagues that we’ll meet at work this week. We pray
for our loved ones that live with us. We would look to you, Lord Jesus, and praise you and glorify
you each day. We would spend not a moment in the midst of self, not a moment in the midst of our
own despair. Lord, we would live in you by faith in your fullness, so that our loved ones and our
dear colleagues will be lifted up by us each time they meet us. So we look forward to this week.

And we thank you Lord, for communion next Sunday. Thank you for a time of sharing your life with
each other and then receiving new orders from you for the coming month. And Lord, we thank you for
your own goodness, and your own good truth, and for the dear saints of old that have preserved it in
their lives and in their writings.

And now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be
with each one of us now and throughout this coming week. Amen.
??

??

??

??

Spiritual Life #53

Laws of the Spirit 3 – Sinking of the Spirit

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

To explain to you the heart of reality as it exists this very moment, and the heart of reality there
is just that. [He is writing God with an arrow to Jesus and an arrow from Jesus back to God.] It is
our God who has made us and his Son, Jesus, in eternity loving each other and enjoying each other.
All the spring mornings that you see, and all the beautiful lakes with the sun shimmering off the
water, and all the little dogs that you see running around, and the birds singing are a reflection
of the joy that exists between those two dear beings, the God who has made us and his Son, Jesus.
And, really, that’s part of what the – even people like Wordsworth, who I suppose were in some way
mixed in pantheism, were getting at when they said, “The child is father of the man.” They were
getting at the fact that often little children enjoy naturally the delight and the light life that
exists between God and his Son.

And I would point that out to you that there’s an awful lot in this dear world of ours that is
filled with joy, and lightness, and delight, and brightness. And yes, there are earthquakes and
there are other things that have come from our own fall from God’s fellowship, but there is an awful
lot in this world that is filled with delight and joy. And all of that reflects the delightful love
and the joy that exists between the God who has made us and his dear Son, Jesus.

And actually, what they did was they decided to share that with others and that’s why they put a
world here with a solar system and with all kinds of planets and space around it. [He draws a
circle.] And on that world they put you, and that is you. [He draws a stick man standing on the
circle] And then so that you could enjoy what they enjoyed, they just changed the direction of
their love so that it comes down to you, through you, and then back up to God. [He draws an arrow
from Jesus to the stick man and then from the stick man up to God.] And then God himself gives it
back to his Son Jesus, a great love that gives Jesus the sense of stability that he has, knowing
that his Father will never leave him or forsake him, knowing that his Father thinks the world of
him, knowing that his Father has him in his hands, and then Jesus imparts that same sense of
security and that same sense of love to us, and then we give it back up to God. And really, that
all happens through the dear Holy Spirit. And that is the normal life that God has called us to.

And so the normal life for you and me is the kind of thing that Ron talked about during the worship
time. It’s a life where there is a spirit of joy and of love that is continually passing through us
like electricity and rising back up to our God. And that is normal life. Normal life is the
movement of the Spirit of God’s love from Jesus through us and back up to God and then across
eternity to Jesus and back down again. That’s normal life. And it’s the normal pattern of our
lives. And so there is something within you, deep within you, that connects up with this Holy
Spirit.

And it is spirit itself, because if you magnify your personality, you’ll find that underneath the
old body here that is so obvious, there is a dear soul with a mind, and emotions, and then within
that, there is a spirit. Because you have a human spirit that the Spirit of Jesus touches as he
comes down from Jesus and goes through your spirit and then goes back up to God. And that’s the
normal pattern and the normal flow of a person’s life. And oh! There’s a saying by one of the old
classical authors like Seneca that goes, “As a man is — or a woman — as a man or a woman is when

they are alone, that is what they are.” That’s what they are. What they are when they’re alone, in
a dark room, with nobody else present, that’s what they are.

And loved ones, the truth is that God’s plan is for us to be so taking part in that flow of his life
that when we’re on our own in a room, we’re smiling our silly little heads off. That’s right. I
mean, that is God’s will, that when we’re alone on our own, there is delight, and joy, and a sense
of movement in our hearts. And that is his will! And that is the normal flow of the Spirit! And
what we’re trying to talk about in these Sunday evenings, which is why I introduce it this way,
we’re trying to talk about the laws of our spirit, the laws of this spirit within us that is the
real you.

And actually, the basic law of that spirit is it is always moving in delight and joy back up to God
— not of its own power but, because of the life that it’s receiving from Jesus, because it is part
of that ‘trinity family’ life that is simply circulating, and circulating, round, and round forever.
And your spirit, you see, is the inside part of you that is the real you. I suppose, maybe a
psychologist would call it ego, I don’t know, but it’s the real us, the inside of us — not the ego
in the sense of egotism or self centeredness, but it’s the real you. Your spirit is the real
essence of you. It’s you, yourself. If you stripped away your body and you ‘checked in’ your mind
and emotions into the ‘where ever’ we’ll check them in, then what you have left is the real you.
That’s the real you, that’s your spirit.

And God’s plan is that the real you, your spirit, would be continually rising like that. [He
gestures rising with both hands.] And that’s why Jesus said those words, if you’d like to look at
them, in John 7:38. “He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow
rivers of living water.'” And the Bible often talks about the real you, the very being of your
spirit as ‘your heart’, you see. It’s the real heart of your being. And out of your deepest heart
will flow rivers of living water. And so, that is God’s plan.

Now of course, many of us do not experience that. Many of us don’t experience that at all. Many of
us go crazy if we have to turn the TV off. We go crazy if we find ourselves in a room without a
book to read. We go crazy if there’s not somebody else to talk to. And many of us are in that
situation. We’re far from finding ourselves laughing our happy old heads off when we’re on our own.
We find ourselves deep, deep down in depression and in nothingness! That’s probably the best way
we could explain it, if we’re away from external stimulation or stimuli, we find that there’s no
movement within us. None at all! Even when we try to think thoughts, we find we can’t think
thoughts that are even interesting enough for us to continue thinking them. We just feel bored.
And we feel static. And we feel a nothing! And loved ones, that’s what happens when we step out of
this trinity family, you see. [Shows again the triangle from God to Jesus, from Jesus to the stick
man and then from the stick man up to God.] That’s what happens when you cut yourself off from that.
[He draws a thick line cutting the stick man out of the triangle.] You find that you’re on your own
and you were never made to be an independent being with life of your own. You were made to be a
dependent being that plugged into the trinity family, because that’s why God made you in the first
place. And so when you unplug yourself from that, and you step out of that trinity family, you find
there’s nothingness inside.

And of course, you know what you do when you’re in that situation. Well, you turn the TV on, and it
doesn’t matter if it’s Johnny Carson and you’ve seen him a thousand times and you’re bored with the
same old jokes again and again. [John William “Johnny” Carson, 1925-2005, was an American television
host and comedian, known for thirty years as host of The Tonight Show.] You will do anything;

you’ll turn the TV on; you’ll read a book that you’ve read before; you’ll grab a newspaper that you
don’t even enjoy. You’ll go out and talk to somebody, and you’ll do something. But you’ll do
something to persuade yourself that you’re not dead.

Truth is, you actually are dead, but you won’t face it. And you’re determined, “I’m going to shake
myself! I’m going to pinch myself! I’ll do something! I’ll paint the walls of my kitchen! I’ll
cook something! I’ll go out and see a movie! I’ll go out and visit somebody! But I’ll do anything
to prove to myself that I’m alive.” And of course, that’s what many of us do. We begin to go to
other people to get some kind of stimuli from them. And we say something to them, and they say
something back to us. And it goes like that, and we get stimulus from other people. Or, we go and
we get a new motorbike. Or we buy a new car because at least it’s fun to drive it, and to feel what
it’s like, and to smell the leather, and see how nice it smells new, and how fast it goes. And it
gives you something to do. It gives you something interesting.

And so you begin to find yourself gathering people and things. And then you find, “Well, I can go a
little faster in the car so it’s more fun. Boy, it’s kind of exciting. Well, I nearly missed that
corner. That was a little excitement!” And so it’s not long before you’ve gathered people, and
things, and little experiences that kind of give you a feeling you’re alive. And of course, then
it’s not long before you’re a puppet on a string, because those things are actually worse than
simply being inanimate, because they, actually through a power of a spirit being that rebelled
against God, those things give the appearance of a life of their own. But most of all, those things
are being used by this spirit being to try to get you more and more dependent upon them.

And so actually, what happens is as you cut yourself off from that life, you begin to tie yourself
to this old thing here. [He removes the lines that connect the stick man to God and Jesus, and draws
another circle around the world.] And you begin to tie yourself to the things, and the people, and
the events, and experiences that at least give you some movement inside. And of course, eventually
that becomes not a free life at all. But it becomes an enslaved life, because it’s not long before
your life is that of a machine. Why do you get up in the morning? Because 3M [Minnesota Mining and
Manufacturing company based in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota] expects you to be there at 8 AM
or at 7 AM. And you have to be there. And so you’d go to 3M, and why do you smile at the boss as
he comes through the door? Because your very job depends on his approving of you and being pleased
with you.

So it’s not long before your little smiling mechanisms are tied by strings, to all kinds of other
people that you have to please. And it’s not long before your little leg mechanisms are tied to the
corporation that you work for. And then, of course, it’s not long before they’re tied to the people
that you go home to. So you go to work because you’re drawn by it, and you go home because you’re
drawn and you have obligations to them. And it’s not long before this glorious, liberated being
[indicates the stick man] that was the crown of creation, becomes a miserable, poor little pygmy
slave, who is more like a machine than a free being; and who rarely originates or initiates any life
within himself or herself at all, but whose life is absolutely and utterly dominated by other
people, other things, other experiences.

And of course, it’s not long before you find yourself never initiating a thought, or a feeling.
Never producing original life of your own from within yourself! But you find your life utterly
scheduled, utterly dominated. You find yourself more like a machine that is governed by external
stimuli, than a free being.

Now loved ones, that probably describes the bulk of mankind. And that’s the situation you end up in
when you’ve cut yourself off from this trinity family life. [He shows his drawing again.] And of
course, for anybody in that position, I would just sympathize with you that when I was in that spot
and I started to try to get free of it, I found I could not. I found my little mouth was so tied to
the teachers that I was used to pleasing, so tied to the heads of department that I felt my job
depended on, that I could not separate my smiling from these people that I got so used to pleasing,
and whose approval I so sought. I found, myself, that I couldn’t, I couldn’t do anything. When I
got the bank statement that showed that I was overdrawn and that I did not have my checkbook kept
right in the addition, I could not do anything. I found my heart missing a beat. I found that I
was being governed by powers that I couldn’t any longer control. And I found it impossible to get
clear of these bonds that tied me to this world and this society.

And loved ones, of course, that’s why Jesus’ death is such a miraculous thing, you see. That’s why
it’s such a miracle. Because the whole meaning of Jesus’ death is that God took you and me, with
our little personalities that are so tied to these things, and these people, and put that, what he
calls the old self, into Jesus, his Son, and destroyed those connections. Destroyed them!
Actually, he had to destroy the personality because the whole personality had got enslaved. That’s
why the Bible says, “Our old self was crucified with Christ.” And that’s what God did in Jesus. He
destroyed that so that he cut these things. [He draws heavy lines across the stick man’s connection
to the world.]

And actually, tonight, if you’re in that position, those bonds are actually cut. They are cut.
They’ve been cut by what God did to you in Jesus. And you can actually be free this very night if
you are willing to enter again, into this dear person here. [He indicates Jesus.] And that means
entering into his death to dependence in this world, and resolutely turning, that’s what it means,
repentance. It means turning instead of facing this way, [He indicates all those connections to the
world.] it means turning completely and facing the other way, [He indicates reestablishing the
connection to Jesus.] and turning round to Jesus and giving the heart of your life to him. And if
you’re willing to do that, and you’re willing to live independent of the people, and the things, and
the circumstances that hit your life, if you are willing to depend on Jesus, his Spirit will again,
begin to flow through you — a very gentle stream at the beginning, a little trickle. You’ll just
begin to feel a little surging tonight, a little bubbling of water within. But as you respond to
that, as that little bubbling of water begins to give you a desire to do something tonight that is
different, something new, some new love that you want to express to somebody else as you respond
that that, that bubbling of water will begin to flow a little more within you. And beginning out of
your heart shall flow rivers of living water, until more and more, the more you respond to it, and
the more you do what the spirit of Jesus wants you to do, the more that will grow into a mighty
torrent in your life, until you are taking part again, in this trinity family.

And that can happen tonight. That’s what is called being born of the spirit. And that can happen
to you tonight, if you simply are willing to see that that’s what’s needed, to turn from all this
stuff here and to come back into that.

Now loved ones, the fact is that once you do that, you will find that your spirit — its normal
activity is that of rising to God. Its normal activity is rising to God. Its normal activity is
joy, love of God, and praise of God. That’s the normal activity and movement of your spirit within
you. And what I’d just like to mention tonight is an experience that many of us have which is
abnormal, subnormal. And you can call it the sinking of the spirit [He writes on the display,

“Sinking of the spirit”.] — small ‘s’ because it’s our human spirit as opposed really, to the Holy
Spirit, who is a person. Many of us experience a ‘sinking of our spirit’ at times. Instead of our
spirit rising up to God, we find it kind of sinking down.

Now, what’s important for you to realize is that if your spirit is sinking, you really are pretty
useless to God for anything. You are. I mean, you may try to grind out some stoical determination
to obey the Lord, but if your spirit is sinking down within you, it will be very difficult to obey
God’s voice to you with any grace, or any light, or blessing for anybody else. So of course,
immediately you sense a sinking of your spirit, you ought to begin to resist that in Jesus’ name.
And you ought immediately to ask the Holy Spirit — because, of course, he is so precious, he
doesn’t leave you at that moment. He continues to be trying to flow through you and lifting your
spirit. He’s trying to lift your spirit up. You ask him, “Holy Spirit, will you reveal to me why
this is taking place?”

There are different reasons. And I can’t – I don’t know them all tonight, but the Holy Spirit can
show you. But one reason, often, is that you get preoccupied with your own spiritual life. That
often brings about a sinking of your spirit — a little like the sinking of Peter when he was
walking on the lake towards Jesus. Everything was well while his eyes were on Jesus, and he was
buoyant and rose over the waters. But when he began to look down at his own feet, he began to sink
in the waters. Now, that’s what happens when you begin to get a little possessive of maybe your own
spiritual experiences.

And I don’t know if you do any of that ‘looking in the driving mirror’, but I think that’s what
often brings a sinking of our spirits. We look in the driving mirror to see what kind of experience
we’re having with Jesus. Or, we begin to treasure some special experiences of exhilaration, or joy,
or delight that he has been giving us. And it has the same effect as it would have in a love
relationship. So you kiss your dear one, and then you say, “Oh, that was a good kiss.” And
immediately you say that, of course, you’re preoccupied with the kiss and no longer preoccupied with
your loved one. And so of course, you immediately become concerned with yourself, and selfish. And
there’s a sinking of your spirit that takes place. And that happens if you get possessive of your
own spiritual experiences.

And it’s good to remember the words, you remember, in the Bible, “You are not your own. Your body
is the temple of the Holy Spirit.” Your body belongs to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the
one who’s in control. You just have the loan of this body, but it belongs to the Holy Spirit. And
anything that goes on in that body is the Holy Spirit’s right, and the Holy Spirit’s possessions,
and you have no right either to be concerned about the bad things that are going on it or the good
things. And if you begin to take them to yourself, you begin to take to yourself something that
isn’t yours.

Have you ever caught the wind? But you can’t, because it goes! And you can’t catch the wind! And
the Holy Spirit is the wind of God’s life. And immediately you try to catch it and say, “I’ve got
it,” then you’ve got something that isn’t the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit can’t be caught.
He’s always in motion! He’s the love, and the life that is moving from Jesus to God the Father.
And immediately you catch something, and you try to trap it, it becomes a dead butterfly that you’re
sticking onto your book as a memento of some great experience you’ve had. And immediately you do
that, all you’ve got is a dead butterfly. You haven’t got a living, beautiful thing.

So it is with the wind. Immediately you catch an experience and you begin to almost lick round that

experience, and treasure it and think, “Oh, how good that was and how that shows me what a position
of grace I have with God,” — immediately you do that, you’ve caught something that doesn’t exist!
And you’ve caught something that is an idol. And so when you get preoccupied with your own
experiences, your spirit will often sink — simply because, of course, you’ve taken your eyes off
Jesus. And so the Holy Spirit is no longer able to lift your own spirit. You’re beginning to pull
your own spirit out of the power, and the lifting, and the buoyancy, and the rising, and the
elevation of the Holy Spirit himself.

And so it is, even with some of the ways in which Satan tries to get you to do that. Satan will
often, in connection with your prayer times, or your fellowship with God, will give you sensuous
experiences, emotional experiences which in some sense express the joy and delight of your spirit.
But actually, they are independent of the joy and delight of your spirit. And the joy and delight
of your spirit is there whether the emotion is there or not. But often Satan will give you sensuous
physical or emotional experiences in order to preoccupy you with — you see again [He indicates
inside the stick man on his graphic.] — your soul or your body, above all, to get you to look into
the driving mirror, to look inside and to see, in fact, what is happening in here [inside the stick
man] instead of this grand preoccupation with Jesus and with God.

And so you begin to look inside to see, “Oh! That was a nice tingling feeling I had. Oh, yeah!
That must have been the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Boy, I’ll look for that again.” And it’s not
long before you’re looking for that in every prayer time. Or, “That was a great warm glow I felt
there.” And it’s not long before you’re looking for that warm glow all the time. Until bit-by-bit,
you get to the point where you kneel down to pray, and you wait for the warm glow. And you don’t
look at God at all! And you don’t praise him at all! And you’re not operating in faith anymore
about this beautiful plan that God has! But you’re immediately looking into yourself, and you’re
involved in a mystical experience with your own personality. And your spirit, in that case, will
again sink down. And so, loved ones, be careful! Don’t allow Satan to draw you out on emotional
experiences.

Actually, the truth is the little train, isn’t it? I don’t know if it’s spelled right but, it’s
Campus Crusade and the little train. [He draws 3 railroad cars or carriages.] I’m away out on this
limb, and I don’t know if I can explain it. [He writes ‘Fact’ on the first, ‘Faith’ on the second,
and ‘Feeling’ on the last.] But I think it’s fact, isn’t it, and faith, and feeling. And that’s
the order they go in. And this little caboose here at the back [‘Feeling’] may be there and it may
not be there. But the big thing is that these two [‘Fact’ and ‘Faith’] are the important ones. The
‘Fact’ is, the fact of this beautiful plan that God has, and the beautiful fact of Calvary, and what
he has done on the cross for you. And it’s your ‘Faith’ in that that maintains your relationship
with God. The ‘Feeling’ may be there or it may not be there. But it’s very dangerous if you let
Satan draw attention to your ‘feeling’. And then suddenly you say, “Oh, the feeling isn’t there!
I’ve lost my feeling! That means I’ve lost my faith!” And then, sooner or later you’ve lost any
affect that the ‘fact’ has in your life.

So don’t bother yourself with feelings. They come and go. The feelings can be influenced so much
by your body, so much by external circumstances, so much by other people that the feelings aren’t
important. Don’t let Satan drag you out into those. If you’re baptized with the Spirit, you may
have a warm glow; you may not have a warm glow. You may have a tingly feeling; you may not have a
tingly feeling. You may have great waves of warmth coming across you or through you, or may not
have. But that is irrelevant, because Satan’s aim is often to preoccupy you with those things, so
that you will again begin to turn your eyes in on yourself. And he knows once you do that, you’ve

ceased to exercise faith, because faith is always an outgoing thing to Jesus. And the rising of the
spirit is always moving you towards God and Christ.

And so it is, with that illustration that C. S. Lewis gives, you remember, of how he would kneel
down to pray. And he would pray a prayer. And then he would ask himself, “Did I really pray that
sincerely?” And then he would have another shot at the prayer, and try to pray it better. And then
he would say, “Now, did I really mean that? Did I really feel sincere when I prayed that?” And
then he would reckon, “Well, not as sincere as two weeks ago.” So he would go back to it again and
try to pray the prayer better. And of course, he points out that what he was involved in is some
kind of magic, some kind of ‘works righteousness’. And then he makes that important statement, you
remember, that the moment he turned his eyes in to look at the prayer, that moment any prayer
relationship with God ceased. And all he was doing was examining the track of the worship that was
left in his mind and emotions. But the worship itself had ceased the moment he looked in, because
the truth is you can’t see your own worship. The beauty of worship is, Thomas standing before
Jesus, transfigured by the beauty of his Lord, and saying, “My Lord and my God!” And any of us who
know a love relationship realize that the beauty of a love relationship is at its height when you’ve
forgotten yourself completely, when you’re utterly taken up with the other person, and it seems as
if you, yourself, don’t exist.

Loved ones, that’s God’s will for us in this relationship that he has planned between us and his
Son. And that’s his will for our spirits. And so if you ever sense in yourself, a sinking of your
spirit, realize that that is subnormal. That isn’t God’s will for you. It isn’t God’s will. His
will is that your spirit will be continually rising up to him, continually taking part in what is a
movement that is going on all the time, you see. It’s not something that you have to initiate.
That movement is going on with or without you. That beautiful trinity family triangle is going on
all the time throughout eternity, and it’s simply a matter of whether you will plug into that
movement, or will take yourself out of it. And you plug into it simply by faith and simply by
saying, “Lord, that is reality and that’s what I want.”

And you know, if you feel yourself, “Well, brother, I don’t know what you mean. My spirit is
normally sunk, really, most of the time.” Then I would say, ask the Holy Spirit! Ask him, “Holy
Spirit, why is this? In what way is my soul or my body overactive?” because, that’s what happens.
The body becomes preoccupied with food, or preoccupied with sex, or preoccupied with comfort, or
preoccupied with the experiences it can have. And the body becomes heavy, and sinks, or sinks down
on the spirit, and presses the spirit down, and causes a sinking of the spirit. Or, the soul
becomes overactive and you have soulish experiences. You’re watching — it’s strange, if you watch
too many wild, exciting movies, your emotions become utterly, utterly excessively exercised to the
point where your emotional life is out of all moderation and balance. And your emotional life,
then, becomes over exercised, and overdeveloped, and it sinks down upon your spirit, and presses
your spirit down until it is virtually nothing.

And so it is with your mind, if your mind becomes preoccupied — that’s what happens when you have a
fixation about a problem, when you have something that isn’t going right in your life and you begin
to worry about it, like a little terrier [dog]. You worry it to death with your mind going round,
and round, and round. You don’t commit it to the Lord. “Commit your way unto to the Lord; trust in
him and he will act.” You don’t do that. You keep on saying, “Yeah, but I have to think this
through.” And you think it through, and then you think it through again. You think it through
again, and round, and round, and round. And your mind becomes absolutely over exercised so that
your mental life becomes so fat and heavy, that it sinks down and squashes your spirit to death.

And that causes the sinking of your spirit.

So it is interesting, loved ones, that the truth is, that in order to be balanced, and in order to
take part in the life that God has given us, it’s your spirit that needs to be exercised up to Jesus
and up to God. And the way to do that is simply to ask the dear Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, will you
show me? Show me! My spirit does seem more sunk than swimming, or than buoyant. Show me why that
is.” And the Holy Spirit will be good. He will show you the ways in which you are still tied to
this world too much, or the ways in which you are still depending on your own experiences and
getting satisfaction from those.

So loved ones, will you not just think about that, but will you act on that? And perhaps, the most
important thing for me to finish with, is to say that the normal life of your spirit is one of
rising, and one of joy, and one of delight! And never back off from that! Never back off into that
old cynicism. None of us are middle aged in Jesus! All of us are young! Some reason why Jesus was
33, isn’t there? Because everybody in Jesus is young. There is no middle age, or old age in Jesus.
There is youthful life of his spirit. So don’t get into that old cynical, middle age, or old age
attitude, “Oh well, you can’t be up all the time.” That’s the only place you can be if you’re with
God! And I’m not talking about emotional ‘up-ness’. But I’m talking about when you’re there on
your own, in your own room, on your own with nobody near you, then your spirit is meant to be rising
within you. There’s meant to be a quiet joy, and a peace, and a delight, and sense of activity
within you. That is God’s will for us.

And I just pray that that’ll be your experience, not only tonight but the days of this week, because
the poor wee souls who are our friends, and our colleagues, they know nothing of this. And the poor
wee souls, most of us are walking like that [He slouches and walks with a bent back.] through life.
And most of the loved ones that we meet at eight o’clock in the morning, they’re broken before
they’ve started the day. Or, they have a kind of a little go, because they’ve had a little caffeine
there. And they go for a little while, and then the boss hits them the wrong way and that’s the end
of it. So there is a desperate need loved ones, for ‘life givers’! And that’s what God has called
for us to be!

Let us pray. Dear Father, we thank you for the plain signs of the world around us. Thank you that
the snow itself is so beautiful. Thank you Lord, for birds that we see even in the middle of
winter. But we thank you Father, for the normal things we see in springtime, for little animals
that enjoy hopping around and eating. And Father, for children, little children who more naturally
smile than frown. Father, we see the waterfalls, and the rivers, and the oceans, and we see that
there is in all that you have made — and that has been untouched, and unspoiled by us men and women
— there is a delightful joy and a rising up. And Lord, it witnesses to us that that’s the norm for
our own inside, interior life.

And Father, we thank you that that is your will for us, and that the dear Holy Spirit, who is
continually moving from Jesus to you dear God, and back from you to Jesus, that dear Spirit is
willing to move through us, if we will give him passageway, and give him room in our hearts. And
oh, Holy Spirit, we would do that. We see Holy Spirit, that when you are moving through us, we’re
enjoying the delight and joy that our Father has. And Holy Spirit, we give you free way in our
hearts. And Holy Spirit, if you see any tendency in us that is preventing you moving through us, at
your speed and your pace, then show us that, and we’ll part from it.

We tell you Holy Spirit, we want you, dear Spirit of Jesus, we want you to be the wind that blows

through us, the breeze that freshens our life, and that gives life to the loved ones that we meet at
work, and at home. Holy Spirit, we would give ourselves to you, and we would hold by faith to the
position that we have been given at God’s right hand. We thank you that those of us “who were dead
in our trespasses and sins, God has raised up and made to sit with him in the heavenly places.” And
we thank you that that’s the fact of the matter, that we have been crucified and raised and elevated
to God. And that’s where we are Father, above the clouds, up there way above the sun, in your
presence. And the norm for those in your presence is to cast our crowns before you, and delight,
and rejoice in your company, and your friendship.

We would commit ourselves to that Holy Spirit. And the moment that ceases to be the way in our
lives, we would ask you to show us immediately so that we can resist whatever spirit it is that is
preventing you having your way, and then exercise our faith, and our obedience to you again. Thank
you, Holy Spirit. Thank you that that’s your will for us this night and throughout the days of this
week. And we pray that the loved ones that we go home to tonight will sense that and will begin to
touch it for themselves.

And now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be
with each one of us now and throughout this coming week. Amen.
??

??

??

??

Spiritual Life #54

Freedom and Burdens of the Spirit

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

If you have been in love you know how enjoyable it is and how freeing it is. Maybe it’s good to
make a distinction between the old infatuation thing and real love, because I am sure many of you
have been like me who were infatuated and tried to make a relationship go that wouldn’t really go
because it was one sided. And that’s so different from love where both of you love each other and
there’s a freedom, a fragrance, and a liberty about it that makes nothing work. There’s nothing
that seems work or labor, everything seems easy and light when two people are in love.

I’m sure that’s what all of us who are married want to preserve in our relationships. Because of
course, the battle is against all the burdens that you take upon yourselves as you begin to mature.
And the battle is to keep the freedom, and I have to use the word again, because it’s such a good
word, the gayety of the original love. So a love relationship is a beautiful thing whether it’s
between a man or a woman, or two dear friends who are men, or two dear friends who are women. There
is a beauty and a freedom about love.

And of course, that love makes everything beautiful. If you see two people who are happily married
you’ll notice that actually they begin to look more beautiful as the days pass by. It’s very
noticeable at the beginning of a marriage a girl seems to look more beautiful when she’s happily
married, because love makes everything beautiful. It’s a magical power and the beauty in our world
comes from a great love affair. All the beautiful things that we see around us come from a great
love affair that has been going on from before any of us were made, before the world was made.

The truth is that our Creator has a son called Jesus, and they are eternally in love with each
other. All the things around us have been produced from that love. We shared a little last Sunday
about the great privilege that we have because they resolved that they would share that love, and
that’s the arrangement they made for you and me. They made us so that we could share in their love.
That’s the whole purpose of our creation.

You remember how in my little diagram I drew God and Jesus, and then drew a little figure to
represent you here on earth, and instead of Jesus loving his Father, directly through the Holy
Spirit who comes through our spirits, he loves his Father through us. We take part in an eternal
triangle that is the trinity family. So you remember, just to remind you of it again, how God gives
to his son Jesus his great love, and his great care, and concern. Then Jesus gives it to you
through the Holy Spirit and then you give it through the Holy Spirit, back up to God.

That is God’s plan for us. You remember too, we shared that many of us have not liked to be at the
disposal of God’s Holy Spirit. We have not wanted out spirits to be ruled by him, and we have cut
ourselves off from that trinity family love and of course, it leaves a great emptiness in your
heart, a terrible sense of nothingness, a terrible sense of having no purpose, a terrible sense of
having no meaning, or no position in the world.

Then you remember, how we shared, we try to marry ourselves to this dear old earth here. We try to
marry ourselves to all the people, and all the things, and all the experiences, and circumstances in
it to try to get from them the joy and the light that we have through God’s love. Of course, it

doesn’t happen, our spirits get all poisoned, and our spirits get caught up with what are people
thinking of us, and our spirits get caught up with trying to get more things to make ourselves happy
and secure, and our spirits get caught up with trying to have more happy experiences to give
ourselves a sense of exhilaration.

Loved ones really, your spirit is the inside part of you and it is the real you and what your spirit
is, that’s what your heart is and that’s what you are. Of course, many of us instead of having
spirits that are eternally in love, and that’s why I mentioned a love relationship at the beginning,
instead of having spirits that are eternally in love, and eternally clean, and joyous, and pure, and
happy, many of us have little miserable shrunken spirits. That’s why so many of us have real
trouble in living the way we know we’re supposed to live, because our spirits are all shrunk, and
poisoned.

If you looked into your spirit at all, you’d see it’s a miserable petty little thing all caught out
with the bank balances, and all caught up with whether the car is going alright or not, and all
caught up with what so and so is thinking of us at work. Many of us have little shriveled spirits
that are not worth anything and they’re dried, they’re like dry raisins, there’s no fruit, or juice,
or life that flows from them. That’s why many of us have real trouble producing any good thoughts
or good feelings. That’s so why many of us just try to imitate other people from our soul out we
try to imitate other people. We try to dress like other people, try to feel like other people, we
try to think the way we’re supposed to think, but it’s all because in here there’s no life, there’s
no juice, there’s no beauty, and there’s no fragrance.

Now, what I’d share with you is, it is possible to have within you a spirit that is filled with
fragrance and life. It is loved ones. It’s possible to be eternally in love. You know the way we
make fun of somebody who is love, because this guy who is a steel worker starts writing poetry, and
this girl who is a very efficient typist starts looking dreamy eyed. All of us have a funny feeling
that that’s really the way it was meant to be. When we sing, or say, “all the world loves a lover”
we really know that there’s some truth in that, that when we see two people in love, they seem to be
living the way we were meant to live.

Loved ones, that’s the way we were meant to live, and that’s the way you are meant to live, and
that’s the way you’re meant to sense inside your spirit. You’re meant to have a spirit that is
taking part in this beautiful flow of love in the trinity family. If it’s not, you know, it’s just
because you have cut the connections here and you’ve welded artificial connections here. If your
spirit is shrunk, and kind of stale, and stodgy, and lacks that sense of lightness and liveliness
that you know, isn’t it a beautiful thing about God that he has made us so we all know what we’re
talking about tonight? We’re all in different stages but we all know what we’re talking about. We
know the difference between being heavy inside in your spirit, and born down by all kinds of worries
and anxieties, and being light the way you were when you were five or six years old and your mum and
dad looked after everything for you. We know the difference between those things. Loved ones, if
your spirit is stale, and heavy, and stodgy, and shrunken, and petty, it’s because you really have
cut these things and you’ve soldered these connections so they’re massive chains that are shackling
you.

Really if you find your spirit heavy, and compressed by the other people in the office so that you
go into the office and you’re suddenly you’re all concerned about whether they approve of you, or
whether they love you, it’s because you’re too dependent upon them. You are. You’re just far too
dependent upon them. You’re just far too preoccupied with what they think of you, and actually it’s

just foolishness because they have no power over you at all. They’ll die probably before you will,
and after this life is over they’ll have no ability to say anything about your eternal destiny and
you’re just a fool for paying any attention to what they think of you at this time.

Bosses come and go, and workers come and go, and really in a week or two, or a month or two, or a
year or twos times, it won’t matter what they think of you so there’s a great unreality in it. But
loved ones, until you determine that you will once and for all take your place with our dear savior
on that cross, and die to what those people think of you, you will not experience that liveliness of
spirit that is God’s will for you. So it is very important to come into one thing that Mark
mentioned and a thing that Laurie sang about, it’s very important to come into the Savior, because
of course that’s the only way this whole thing can be changed you see.

What Jesus did on the cross was he took that little personality of yours that is so bound to these
things, and so incapable of experiencing the Holy Spirit of Jesus coming through you, he took that
and he put it into himself and he destroyed it on the cross and our old self was crucified with
Christ. When you’re willing not only to believe that but to allow it to happen in you, then of
course a great cross experience takes place in you and you find yourself raised above the world and
separated by the cross from the world so that you’re preoccupied with this trinity family
experience.

Of course, all other things then are added unto you because the beauty of it is God does not leave
you, he takes care of the things in your life that you are utterly preoccupied with at this present
time. He takes care of your relationships with people, takes care of what they think of you and
what they don’t think of you. He takes care of the things that you need for your life, the clothes,
and the cars, and the houses. He takes care of that. He provides that as a natural outcome of your
doing his will in the world, whatever that job or that will may be. And he takes care of your
circumstances, gives you enough good circumstances and enough bad circumstances to keep you two feet
above the world.

That’s where we’re to be, just about two feet above the earth all the time. And it’s such a
difference you know, to walk out in the morning two feet above the ground. It really is. It’s so
different when you come to the office and you’re two feet higher than everybody else, and you’re two
feet higher than all the problems, and all the difficulties, and all the preoccupations, and the
worries that everybody else is concerned about. And loved ones, that’s the way we are meant to be.

I know it’s put funnily when you say it that way, but that is really the effect of it. Inside,
underneath your mind and emotions, that’s your soul your mind and emotions, underneath your mind,
and your emotions, and your will there’s a spirit and your spirit can live two feet above the
ground. And your spirit can share eternally in that love affair. Now that’s really true loved ones
and if you’re sitting there tonight and you’re thinking, “Well you’re being a little poetic.” Loved
ones, that’s the way we’re meant to be.

We’re meant to be in this love relationship with God, and with Jesus his son. There’s meant to be
that flow of Jesus’ love coming through us and of course that brings a sweetness to life. I don’t
know how many of you have real trouble dealing with criticism from other people. I don’t know if
you have trouble dealing with some comment that you hear someone has made about you. And somebody
says to you, “Oh yes, so and so said that about you.”

And I don’t know how you deal with that, but some of us have real trouble dealing with that and we
try all kinds of little techniques for dealing with that criticism, but we’re not really in victory
over it. We’re actually down here slogging it out with that thing even. We’re not really in
victory over it, we say, “Oh well, well, he has his opinion you know.” Or, “Well, he often says
that kind of thing ha-ha.” And you know we whistle a merry tune and walk away two feet under the
ground really.

Loved ones, that’s because our spirits are not in good shape you see. Because, when your spirit is
taking part in this kind of love with the Father and the Son, you’ll blow right over the top of it.
You don’t even think of it, it’s no big deal at all in your heart, and you continue to walk in
lightness. You really do loved ones. There’s a difference, you see between this victory and the
kind of victory that we can work out ourselves by agony.

It’s the same you see with worries. You know when we have worries we worry about the exam, or we
worry about our career the way it’s going, or we worry about our money troubles. And then we try to
deal with the worry, and we try all the techniques. Carnegie (an American philanthropist) “Let’s
imagine the worst thing that could happen to me. I could die. Could I face that? Yes, I could face
that.” We try all the little tricky techniques, or we try rearranging the checkbook stubs, or we
try to think differently about the thing. “Let me think of the good things that will happen to me.
Let me think of vacation, let me think of happy times.”

Well loved ones, it’s not really victory it’s just down there slogging it out even. But do you see
when your spirit is light, filled with Jesus’ Spirit taking part in the love relationship with God
the Father and the Son, you fly right over the top of those things, you do, you just lift above
them. It’s just as if it’s a mountain and the wind, the air the hot air comes along and just rises
over the top of the mountain. That’s what happens when your spirit is in good shape. So it is
important loved ones, to really know that your spirit, the real you inside is in its right position
in relationship to Jesus and God the Father.

And if you say, “Well, how do I make sure that that’s so?” Well, note where there is staleness,
note where there’s heaviness and then ask the Holy Spirit. You see, he’s the one that connects your
spirit up with God and Jesus. Ask the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, show me, show me if there’s any
way in which I am not living as if God is my Father and Jesus is my dearest friend and savior. Show
me if there’s any way in which I’m depending more on the world than I am on them. Show me.” And the
Holy Spirit will show you that.

Often, it’s things like resentment. We have all kinds of deception in our lives, those of us who
are born of God, even those of us who are filled with the Holy Spirit. We have all kinds of
resentments, all kinds of things that we think should be our right, all kinds of things that we
think our wives should do for us, or our friends should do for us, or our sons or our daughters
should do for us. All kinds of things that we think our colleagues should do for us. And we have
sneaking resentments that develop in our hearts.

And of course, those lift us right out of this trinity family because the trinity family has no time
for that stuff. The trinity family has constant love, and openness, and delight, and joy. So when
you get a resentment, or you take something into your heart, and you begin to resent some thing, or
some body, or even some circumstance you’re in, I think many of us get into that, “Well, I wish I
hadn’t been left to look after my mother.” “Well, I wish I hadn’t been left in this situation.”
“Well, I wish I had had the opportunity so and so had.” We begin to live with a resentment inside

us that forms a hard knot in our stomach and of course begins to defile our spirit. And immediately
we begin to acquiesce in that, we’re pulling ourselves out of this light spot that we have in the
trinity family and we sink to earth with a thud like that. And we immediately begin to be incased
again in the earthiness of the earth.

So if you find that your spirit is not fragrant, that it is not sweet, that it is not fresh, that it
is kind of heavy, and petty, and down, ask the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, show me why I’m like this.
Show me what weight there is here.” See, it is like a hydrogen balloon, you know, or a hot air
balloon, all that’s necessary to lift the thing is there and the spirit will lift loved ones. God
has put you into Jesus and has crucified you, destroyed you completely and raised you up with him,
and is sitting now at the right hand of God. That’s where you are with Jesus, that’s reality.

And so in order not to experience that reality, you actually have to be like a hot air balloon that
has anchors in the ground and large ropes tied to them holding it down to the earth. Because, the
natural tendency of your human spirit in the light of what God has done to you in Jesus is to rise
up and to take part in this love family. And so if you’re not doing that it’s because you have
ropes of some kind tying you to the earth. So ask the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, is there any way
in which I’m tying myself to this old earth?”

Of course, it’s almost always loved ones, connected up with this great trio here. It’s almost
always connected up with people, or things, or circumstances. Always you’re expecting too much of
people. You’re expecting too much of them or you’re too dependent upon them and they’re not coming
up with what you think they should and so it’s not long before you begin to resent them. Or it’s
things, you’re too tied to things, you’re too preoccupied with what you own, or you’re too
preoccupied with what you don’t own and what you’d like to own. Or, you’re too preoccupied with
accumulating more things, or when something happens to your things you get all upset.

You’ve tied yourself like a little machine to your car, or to your clothes, and so when anything
happens to them you immediately are affected too. Or, you’re too wrought up with circumstances,
you’re too caught up with, “Well, if I had a better situation at work, if I had a nicer office to
work in, or if I had a nicer living situation.” Your eyes are too taken up with the outward
circumstances in which you live. But loved ones, usually it’s that famous trio there that pulls you
out of the more famous trinity trio that wants to have you as part of their family.

So it is important to be real about that. I would encourage you not to stop anywhere short of a
pure clean spirit. Really, I wouldn’t put up with the stuff loved ones. And I know why many of us
do. Many of us do because the Christendom has devised a low level of Christianity. And the level
is, as long as you’re doing outwardly what seems Christ like, you can’t expect everything to be
absolutely pure and clean from within. Well loved ones, that’s hypocrisy, it’s not Christianity,
it’s just hypocrisy.

In actual fact, we are meant to be pure and clean inside. And every time you find anything less
than that, any critical spirit coming out to another loved one, any resentment coming out to another
loved one, see that that is not God’s will for you and that you will never, never come into victory
over life unless you get clear of that defilement, so do loved ones, put up with none of it.

Brothers you know, from the cleanliness that we’re to have in our hearts, to sisters the cleanliness
that we’re to have in our love for each other, right the whole way through. Don’t put up with
anything don’t let a hard heart grown inside you. Your heart is your spirit, that’s the very heart

of you and that’s what is to feel good, to smell sweet, and to be sweet, and fresh, and fragrant.
That’s God’s will for us.

Now loved ones, when we’re like that it is interesting but God is able at last to begin to do
something through us. When our spirits are like that he’s able to do something through us, because
here’s what’s happening. God is involved in trying to rescue not just you up here, but actually
three and a half, and I think it’s now four billion of us miserable little insects from that same
slavery. And God is involved in trying to get us all to experience what he has done to us on the
cross in Jesus.

So he is working towards that end. But, he has a definite play for it with your mum and dad, with
your sons and daughters, with your colleagues, with our friends. God has a definite plan for doing
it. So he has brought about the miracle on the cross but he also is in charge of applying that
miracle to all our friends, and all our colleagues, and to the whole world. And so God has a great
salvation campaign a foot and he is directing it.

Now, the way he does it is he requires someone here on earth to want what he wants. He requires
someone here on earth to want what he wants. In other words, having sent Jesus to earth, that’s all
God is able to do from the point of view of exerting his will here on the earth. Now that Jesus has
risen to be with him, God depends on miserable little creatures here on earth wanting the same thing
as he wants so God can have a definite plan for Jim’s dad, or for Vern’s colleague at work. Or, God
can have a definite plan for my brother, or for Jim’s mother in Pennsylvania.

God can have a definite plan for each of those loved ones in order to bring them on to the cross
with Christ. But the only way he can bring that about is if Jim, or Vern, or Jim, or me hear from
God what he is intending to do and ask him to do it. Now that’s right. God is only able to touch
another one’s life if one of us whose spirits are free, and who are therefore able to hear from him
what he’s intending to do, ask him to do that thing.

Now that’s enshrined you remember, in that verse we’ve often looked up together and I’d just ask you
to look at it, Ezekiel 36:37. “Thus says the Lord God: This also I will let the house of Israel ask
me to do for them: to increase their men like a flock.” It just is so strange to put it that way.
You feel like saying to God, “Well, if you know that they need to be increased now after this
experience, why don’t you just increase their number?” But God puts it clearly this way, he says,
“This also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them.” And so God knows what he wants to
do for the house of Israel but until somebody here on earth asks him to do it he is not free to do
it.

Now loved ones, I’m sure we’ll understand the whole mystery of that when we get to heaven but I’m
sure that part of it is the whole protection of our free will that God wants to continue to exercise
so that he does not just intervene in our affairs here on earth overwhelming our free will and doing
whatever he wants, but so that redemption and redemption grace can only be experienced when we ask
him for a certain thing.

Now loved ones that’s the way God works and you remember, Jesus stressed the same thing when he said
in Matthew 7:7, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be
opened to you.” God knows what is needed because there’s another verse in scripture you remember,
that says, “God knows already what you need.” So God knows it but he can only act when you yourself
realize what he wants to do and that is called a burden of the spirit.

That’s what I’d just like to share a few minutes about, burdens of the spirit. That’s a burden of
the spirit that God is putting on your heart. Now, do you notice that it’s very different from
weights that Satan puts upon you? When your spirit is heavy with weights that Satan puts upon it,
then when you resist those weights, they’re lifted and they go away. Moreover, Satan’s weights tend
to throttle your mind and throttle your whole personality so that you are unable to act, or pray, or
speak.

But burdens of the spirit that God puts upon you are joyous things. That’s why Jesus said, “Take my
burden upon you for my yolk is easy and my burden is light.” Burdens of the spirit are joyous
things, they’re delightful things. And as you pray the burden is released. And so a burden of the
spirit is given to move you to pray, or to speak, or to act. Whereas, a weight that Satan puts upon
you is given to throttle you and prevent you from any action, or any speaking, or any praying.

So loved ones, the way that God works is Jesus himself, do you know what he’s doing in Hebrews 7:25
at this moment? Maybe it’s good to be clear what Jesus is doing at this moment. Hebrews 7:25,
“Consequently he is able,” Jesus, “For all time to save those who draw near to God through him,
since he always lives to make intercession for them.” So Jesus at this moment is interceding to the
Father for us and for the plan that the Father has for applying the resurrection of Christ to the
world. But do you see how he intercedes? He does not intercede to the Father directly. He’s
living ever to intercede for us but he intercedes through us.

So if you say, “Do you mean that Jesus’ intercession is limited in its power by the fact that he has
to find one of us who will receive his burden and will pray it up to the Father?” Yes loved ones,
that’s it. Jesus intercedes through us to the Father. Now you see how different that whole way of
praying is to sympathetic prayer. You see how far we are from that kind of – that’s called a prayer
of faith. A prayer of faith is one that Jesus puts in you through his Holy Spirit. It’s a burden
that he gives you, a thing that he knows God intends to do but he knows he cannot do it until you
ask him to do it so he gives you that request.

That is so different from the praying that we pray when we’re two feet under the ground, or when
we’re slogging along overwhelmed, “Oh my finances, they’re coming part.” “Oh, that person she’s
never going to marry me.” “Oh, my career is coming apart.” “Oh Lord, what will I do?” Loved ones,
when you’re in that situation the one thing you have no time to listen for is what Jesus is saying
to you. The one thing that you have no time to be concerned with is what God is intending to do in
your situation.

You’re so utterly preoccupied with yourself, and so utterly taken up with your own troubles that you
cannot hear anything that Jesus is giving to your spirit. Indeed, you’re spirit is not light, it’s
not free, it’s not liberated, it’s heavy. And loved ones, that’s why we have so many unanswered
prayers, you know. Because, they’re not prayers at all, they’re just those old foxhole cries for
help and they bear little relationship, most of them, to anything that God intends to do in our
lives or in the lives of our friends.

And really, the only way to come into the kind of victorious prayer that you read about in George
Mueller, you remember, with all the answers to prayer by which he built those homes for children and
for orphans, and people like the Welshman Rees Howells , the only way to come into that kind of
victorious prayer is to come into a freedom of your spirit where you commit unto God the things that
you normally are supposed to be concerned with in your own life and you enter into this love

relationship with the trinity family, and then at last God is able to lay on your spirit what he
intends to do in the lives of your friends, and your relatives, and your colleagues, and in the life
of the loved ones in China, and Africa, and India.

Now, that’s God’s plan for us, that we should receive burdens of the spirit from him. And I’d just
remind you of that illustration that we’ve used before that Nee gives, you remember, of the little
guy who was out in the garden digging away and his dad says to him, “John, will you come over and
help me here?” And John says, “Well wait Dad, I have something in my hands at the moment.” And he
hasn’t freedom to go and do what his father wants him to do because he’s got something in his hands
that he’s preoccupied with.

And loved ones, you see what – really what a mess it is. All us little moles poking around with our
noses in the earth trying to get enough little nuts to keep ourselves alive until the winter is
ended, and trying to get enough little clothes on to keep ourselves warm, we haven’t a moment to
listen to that person up there. We don’t. We’re so taken up with what we’re doing.

So you see, before we can enter into any real burdens of the spirit, we ourselves have to come free
of this preoccupation with ourselves, preoccupation with our lives, preoccupation with getting them
going right. We have to actually live as if we’re dead, we really do. We have to come to a death
to all that stuff and say, “Lord, you’re our Father. You take good care of this world and the whole
universe; you can certainly take care of me. Lord, I want to love you and to trust you. Lord
Jesus, thank you that you both are the meaning of life and I want to love you, and praise you, and
be with you, and I’ll take care of my things as you guide me to, but will you add all other things
unto me that I need? And now Lord Jesus, what are we about here? What do you want to do? You know
what your Father intends to do in India, what do you want me to do to enable him to do that?”

Loved ones, that’s God’s plan. There’s a lot more to say, you can guess. I’d just share one more
thing that you need to ask the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, what is this burden for?” Because
sometimes it’s a burden for prayer. As Paul said in Galatians you remember, “I am in travail that
Christ may be fully formed in you.” Sometimes it’s a burden for prayer. Sometimes it’s a burden
such as Jeremiah had for speaking to someone, saying something, voicing something, in your office,
or to a friend. Sometimes it’s a burden for action. It’s a burden that you have to do something
and you need to act.

Now, it is important to know the difference there, you see. So that you don’t lay on the rest of us
some burden that you should actually be involved in. It’s good to know, “Holy Spirit, what do you
want me to do? Do you want me to act here in this situation, or do you want me to pray through on
this? Or, do you want me to speak to someone?” And then of course to do that thing.

And I think, you know, most of you have had a little experience of burdens loved ones. Even though
your spirits may have been very weighed down and very impure, most of us have experience, at least
in the human realm of some problem. You know, you feel there’s something that I haven’t settled.
There’s something that I haven’t settled. And you may think it’s with a relationship at work.
There’s something I need to settle at the office. I need to make that thing right. And you know
you can’t really feel at rest inside until you make that thing right.

Or, you feel there’s something I need to write, and I need to put it on paper, and I need to write a
letter and that will settle it. And some business problem, and you feel, “I have to solve it. I
have to take action.” And then at last you take the action, you write the letter, and then you go

and sleep the sleep of a little child. Now, that’s the kind of thing a burden is in the spirit, you
see. Those happen to be burdens that are put upon us often by our own human spirits and often by
other spirits, and often they’re just burdens of the soul, but that’s the kind of thing that a
burden of the spirit is.

And so when you receive a burden and you sense, “Father, you do want me to go out in prayer for my
grandmother.” Then it is important that you do that. It’s important that you set everything aside
first of all, and you ferret out through the Holy Spirit’s light what the burden is and then it’s
important that you bear that burden. And if it’s a prayer burden it’s important that you pray
through on the burden. And many of us, of course, go astray there because, we don’t pray through on
the burden. We keep praying while we’re still in the middle of the burden instead of praying out
the other side of it.

Now, it might be good loved ones to look at just a few examples in Psalms of people praying through.
And Psalm 54 is one of them. “Save me, O God, by thy name, and vindicate me by thy might. Hear my
prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth. For insolent men have risen against me, ruthless
men seek my life; they do not set God before them.” So many of us stop there in our prayer and so
we hear of somebody that’s talking against us in the office and we’re all borne down by it. And we
know we shouldn’t be borne down, and we know we should be rising above it and we go to God and we
pray, “Well, Lord forgive them. Well, give me strength to rise above this. Well, help me Lord.”
And we go to bed at that level of prayer instead of going on through. “Behold, God is my helper;
the Lord is the upholder of my life. He will requite my enemies with evil; in thy faithfulness put
an end to them. With a freewill offering I will sacrifice to thee; I will give thanks to thy name,
O Lord, for it is good. For thou hast delivered me from every trouble, and my eye has looked in
triumph on my enemies.”

Loved ones, unless you pray through on a burden, God may as well not have given you the burden at
all. You have to stay with it and if you say, “Well, now do you mean all our prayers should be like
that?” No, often your prayer times will be praise times, and worship times, and during that praise
and worship time God will lay a burden upon you. So sometimes they’ll come from the midst of your
praise and worship, but sometimes they’ll come from a real burden out of your ordinary every day
life. But the important thing is to pray right through and out the other end of the burden. And
really do. Don’t be concerned about making sure you get all your other prayers in, pray through on
that burden and pray through to lightness and life. And that’s why God gave you it.

And then when you come out the other end, and you see – usually it is, see what we’re doing, we’re
usually doing what Jesus did on the cross. Do you see that? He took all of us, with all our dirt,
and all our sin, and all our rottenness, and our selfishness, and he lifted us back up into the
relationship that he had with his Father. That’s what he did. So when you’re bearing a prayer
burden, that’s really what you’re doing. You’re with that Father in joy, and delight, and glory,
and you’re down here and you’re getting some dirt on your feet as you walk along the road of life
and you see a burden. And he gives it to you and you’re lifting it up into the relationship that
you have with him.

Do you see it’s not enough to leave that light place that you have with God and get down there and
start heaving the stuff up like that. You can’t do it. And it’s not enough to do one of those
gestures you know, “Well Lord here. Yeah, well.” No, you go right through with it, you lift it
right up and that’s what it is. It’s drawing the world up into God’s love and God’s faithfulness.
It’s you in your heart triumphing over the apparent impossibility or the intractability of the

problem. That’s it.

It’s one little person here on earth seeing the solid massive obstacle, the massive sin, and seeing
God more clearly right through it. And that’s how the thing is lifted, and that’s what enables
God’s Spirit to touch it. So you see, prayer burdens are very real things. See, it’s not that
heavily minded stuff you know, “Well, that’s the burden but Lord I’m glad I can preoccupy myself
with you.” No, it’s looking the burden straight in the face, seeing it solidly, and then getting
back into your relationship with the Father so that you can see this thing lifted up into his
presence.

Just a very little example, it was very easy at the beginning of our businesses to feel that you
walk by faith not by sight. The best way to walk by faith is to not look at your bank balance
because the sight of it would just steal any faith from you. And it’s very easy in the early days
to think, “Oh, that’s the way to do it.” And it’s very easy to carry it on into your own personal
finances, “No, I don’t want to know how bad it is. No, I could never have faith if I knew how bad
it was. What I’ve to do is to preoccupy myself with God’s power, and God’s strength, and God’s
manifold provision.”

Well of course loved ones, that’s not bearing a burden at all. The only ones who can bear burdens
are those who can look at the finances, know the balances, know what the assets are, know what the
liabilities are, know what the cost of goods are, and know what you’re facing, and know what the
interest rates are, and know fully every detail of the earthly situation. And then lift that up
into God’s light and power until you can see, “Yes Lord, you are going to lift every bit of that.
You are going to triumph over every piece of it.”

In other words, it’s putting God’s power and might against all our weakness and inadequacy on earth
and it’s seeing that God’s power is greater. And it comes of course, partly through his promises,
partly through seeing him as the Holy Spirit is showing him to you until he becomes so real that you
see, “This God can lift anything even this detailed burden that I know so well.” And then when you
see it, when one little person here on earth sees that God not only can but will do it, then the
thing is done. Then the answer is made real and the thing is settled.

And it may be three weeks later before the person’s healed. It may be tomorrow when the money comes
in, but it’s done. The moment a person sees that God is able, and is willing, and has now down it,
that moment it’s done. But loved ones, that’s the way God plans for us to operate, you know. So it
is vital that we do it, especially since he has called us to get 10,000 of us into this world. And
since we look around the world and see how it’s falling apart in all directions, you can see the
only way we’re ever going to get into places like Russia, or even into the Middle East, or places
like China, is if all of us here this evening, can begin to pray according to the burdens that God
puts on our spirits instead of just offering up the little wishes that we have for ourselves and for
our loved ones.

So it is important you know, to see that God has something definite for you to pray for this
evening, something definite. And it will be something that is a natural preoccupation of your whole
heart, something that you’re very concerned about. It won’t be hard, it will be very obvious. So I
pray that you’ll begin to move that way in your prayer life. And of course, immediately you do,
immediately things will begin to happen around you, miracles will begin to take place.

Let us pray. Dear Father, dear Lord Jesus, dear Holy Spirit, we thank you for the holiness of this

evening, and we thank you for the holiness of our position. We cannot believe that you great beings
have destined us to share in your family. Oh, we thank you, thank you. And Lord Jesus, we are just
overwhelmed to think that your intercession is tied to our reading your heart and your mind.

Lord, we see what a privileged position we have. We see how we can crucify you afresh within us,
bind you again, and put you into a tomb, or how we can release you and take those binding clothes
off you so that you’re free to wander through the earth, and to work miracles. We thank you that we
have that great privilege. And we thank you Lord Jesus, that we are co-workers together with you,
co-workers of God the Father. And that you have definite things that you plan to do in our lives
this coming week, and in the lives of our friends, and our colleagues, and our relatives. And that
you can begin to bring them about as we begin to bear our burdens in prayer, and bear our burdens in
speaking and in doing.

And we thank you Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that these are ordered lives with direction
and guidance that you have given us. Thank you Lord. We would give ourselves together to you, for
your plans for this world during these next 20 years. And we ask you three dear beings: the Father;
Son; and Holy Spirit, to use us to bring about your plans for your glory.

And now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be
with each one of us now and throughout these coming weeks. Amen.

Spiritual Life #55

Maturing Through Trials – Testimony

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

I think loved ones, we’ll just take it where it goes this evening if that’s okay. I suppose I’d
like to say to you how much you mean to me. And maybe all of us feel that after we’ve been on
vacation or been away, but I think this time it’s especially true. I suppose when I heard some of
the things that were happening, it’s you I thought about you know.

We’ve already talked enough about being on the cross to be happy that it doesn’t matter what people
say about us but I suppose I thought of you a lot. Of course, I being the shepherd, keep thinking
of you, “Well, they’re just young, they’re just young.” And of course, to come back and find a
rock, you know just a rock, and the love of – oh you know, I hate to really mention names but I feel
the love of Jim, and Clyde, and Colleen, and Mike, and all of you out there.

And it was like coming back to a rock, it really was. I came back on Friday and just came by on
Saturday because I was looking for the notes of those old sermons which I never did find, I’ve lost
them somewhere. But I met some of you, and then coming this morning and sensing that it was just a
ship that hadn’t even wobbled and it was just so good. And I’d like to thank God for each of you
and for your trust in Him, and your love, and your faithfulness, and for putting in your lives a lot
of the things we’ve shared. And it just has meant more than I could express tonight and what I have
to watch is that I just keep it under control and keep expressing what I really think deep down.

And I think there are some things that Jesus gave me there, that’s why I think it will be a bit
rough tonight, because I just got it there, a moment or two ago, what I should say. But, I think
some of the things are under the heading of “God and trouble”. And I think that one of the good
things, when we run up against trouble as a body, or when you run up against it individually, is it
throws you out of any sense that you can control it all, doesn’t it? Part of what baffles you about
this stuff is that it’s way out, you just don’t expect it, it’s so dumb that you can hardly conceive
that anybody would think of it. And it’s so totally unexpected that you feel, “What can you do?
They’re insane. They’re mad.” And it does tend to throw you absolutely out of any sense that you
can control this thing.

And I think it’s the same in our own personal lives, isn’t it? When you hit trouble that just
bewilders you and that is beyond what you expect, it is good, it throws you into the right
relationship with God again. And I think that’s good, you know. That when you find the job may
just be going down the drain, or you find something at home falling completely apart, or you find
some friends taking an attitude to you that you cannot understand at all, in a way that throws us
into reality. Because really, that is truth, isn’t it? That we are not the Gods in control of
things; that actually any semblance of order in our lives is only because of God’s dear grace and we
can’t control a fly let alone the whole direction of our lives. And so it’s good when trouble hits
us, you know.

And I think it’s maybe good for us to see that: that trouble is a good thing. That it is right what
our dear Father said, “Greet it as pure joy when you enter into various trials.” We all like to
think, “No, no trouble is a bad thing. Trouble throws us into chaos.” No, it throws us out of the
bluff sense of order that we have tried to create by our own power and it throws us back into the

hands of God realizing that if he does not save us, nobody will save us.

And that’s the first thing that the Father showed me just a few minutes ago, that I should share
with you about God and trouble; trouble is usually a good thing because it throws us out of
controlling our own lives and into the hands of God. And I think Jack, I think of you and I think
of your loved one and others of us that have just gone through hard things. And it’s probably a
blessing, it’s a blessing to us. And that’s I think the first thing that came to me when I was down
there, you know, sailing in that old boat, I thought, “Oh Lord, I ought to be back with my loved
ones helping and sorting it out.” And he showed me, “This is a good thing.”

I don’t know what they meant fully by “the greening of America” but I thought it was the maturing,
and in a way this is the greening of the body, it’s the maturing of the body. It’s you coming into
your own fullness and certainly I for one feel that I’m not any longer with little undergraduates
that I met at the University of Minnesota 10 years ago but that this is a strong body that will take
all the beating that we will have to face, loved ones, in the coming years. We will. There will be
a lot worse than these things to come in our own personal lives and as a group.

The second thing that the Father showed me was that the trouble that you face personally in your own
life and that we face together as a body is not actually due to our own stupidity. It isn’t. I
suppose that’s the thing that always comes to me. In Ireland we were brought up, “You’re
responsible for your actions. You’re responsible to make sure you don’t say things that can be
misunderstood.” And so I always, as any kind of person who is interested in the old intellect does,
I think, “Could you have said it differently? Could you have done it differently?” Then the Father
came straight through me and showed me, “Look, when any of you say that in times of trouble you’re
seeing the thing completely wrongly. You’re blaming yourself for something that has happened. Do
you know who has brought this or who has allowed it to come? I have allowed it to come.”

It suddenly hit me that if you think of it, think of all the mistakes you have made in your life,
think of all the mistakes I have made in my life, think of all the mistakes we have made together
and how many times God has saved us from the consequences that should have followed those things.
And so any time he allows trouble to come to our door, it’s because he is allowing it to come. And
I saw again the meaning of that verse, you know, that you should in all circumstances give thanks to
God for all things.

And then the next clause I saw in a new way because it goes, “For this is the will of God for you in
Christ Jesus.” And I thought, up to really recently, in fact, this past week and particularly this
evening, I thought, “Oh yeah that’s the will of God for you to give thanks to him in all
circumstances for all things. That’s what that means.” And then suddenly I saw, “No, that’s not
what it means.” You’ve to give thanks to God for all things in all circumstances because that very
thing, the very circumstances that you’re in, the very things that you’re experiencing, those are
the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.

And so when trouble hits you or hits us, we need to see that that is God’s permissive will for us in
Christ Jesus. It’s not something that is due to our own mistakes, or our own foolishness, it’s not
something we could have avoided by doing things better. It’s something that God has allowed to come
to us at this present time. And then suddenly I saw that the Father knows exactly what we need as a
body. He does, he knows exactly what we need and he knows that this is the next step for us. And
he is allowing us to touch a little of the opposition and the little of the unpopularity, and a
little of the hard things that all of us loved ones, are going to have to live with for the rest of

our lives if we’re going to be in that dear Savior who walked that Calvary road.

And so I don’t know about you, I don’t know what you’re experiencing, I know what some of you are
experiencing and some of you have experienced. But I think it’s really vital for us when trouble
comes to our door to give thanks to God for all things, and all circumstances because that very
trouble is not God’s ideal will but it’s his permissive will for us. It’s his best for us at this
time. It’s the next thing that we need to make us more like Jesus.

And it was just interesting because I thought, “Give thanks for those happy souls that have been
tearing us apart.” And then God said, “Yes, because I am going to use those dear ones to do
something in you individually and as a body.” And suddenly it’s in a whole new light. Suddenly
you’re not gritting your teeth and trying to say, “Oh I thank you Lord for that relative that has
just torn me apart.” Or, “I thank you for that employer that has just thrown me out of my job.”

It’s no longer that gritting your teeth and trying to work yourself up to it but it’s seeing that
the Father who loves you is working something beautiful through this; that he has everything under
control. And these wee souls don’t know it, they may mean evil as Joseph’s brothers meant evil to
him when they sold him into slavery, but the Lord meant it for good to them. And that’s the
situation with us.

And every situation loved ones, whether it’s the flat tire on the freeway at a wind chill of minus
60 or whether it’s the finances falling apart, or whether it’s some friend stabbing you in the back,
the same situation pertains for all of us: give thanks to God with joy for it because this that
looks like a messenger of Satan is actually an angel in disguise and God is doing something in you
through this. It just cleared things for me. I don’t know any of the dear clergymen that have
taken action against us, but it was so good to be able to thank God for them with joy and delight in
my heart because, he was using this for something in us as a group.

And then that’s the last thing I saw: that all things do work together for good to them that love
God. You remember the verse runs, “God is working together for good in them that love him.” And I
suddenly saw that things such as we’ve experienced as a body, the trouble that we experience as
individuals, they are God’s beautiful plan for us. He is working good out of those things. There
is nothing that can happen to us, however bad or terrible, that God is not using to make us more
like his son Jesus. And you remember, that’s what that verse goes on to say, “That they may be
conformed to the image of his son.”

And then I’d just share with you one more verse that God made real to me years ago but he brought it
back to me at this time. I don’t know the reference, “And I will bring the blind by a way that they
knew not and I will lead them in paths that they have not known. I will make the darkness light
before them and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them and not forsake them.”
And when God made that real to me, oh years ago, what hit me was, WHO will he bring? “I will bring
THE BLIND by a way that they knew not.”

And suddenly I saw, it was only if I was blind and could not see the way forward for myself. It was
only if I was like that, that the Lord would bring me along a path that they had not known. And it
was only then that he would make the darkness light before me and crooked things straight. And that
he would do these things and not leave me or forsake me. And loved ones, it’s the same with us
individually and as a body.

I used to think, “Oh sure I know what Pat Anderson or Ron Rusnak needs. I know what Martha needs.”
Or, “I know what Ted needs to become Jesus’ man.” Well, the truth is we don’t. We don’t know what
each other needs. We don’t even know what we ourselves need. But, the Lord knows and he is going
to bring the blind by a way that they knew not and the path ahead, even the path that I’ve mapped
out as God has guided me, that may not be the path. God may lead us in paths that we have not known
but he will be with us all the way.

And we need to see the delight and the joy of that. This isn’t some stereotype organization that
has set its path internationally and set up its school, and set up its businesses, and is going to
mow right down that road. It’s a dynamic, living, changing, developing body of Jesus that is
looking forward to what he has around the next corner. And I would ask you who are beginning to
move together as a body, will you look at it that way? Especially, maybe you who are sitting here
tonight and who have come maybe often and thought, “Well, I do like the body, and I do like the
teaching. But, I don’t know that I’m going to go abroad. I don’t know that I’m going to give up my
job and live somewhere else.”

Loved ones, maybe you shouldn’t say that too fast. I had a friend who was an ex-marine, just a
tough guy who became a pastor and he belonged to the Methodist church. And he said, “I will never
leave the Methodist church.” And of course, he left and joined the Evangelical United Brethren
Church. And then he said, “I will never leave the Evangelical.” And then he left. He used to say,
“As soon as you say, ‘I will never do that’ , repent brother, because you’ll do that.”

So be careful yourselves, be open in your hearts. Don’t say, “Well, yes I’m part of this body but I
probably will never go abroad.” Don’t say that — because God’s promise to us is, “And I will
bring the blind by a way that they knew not. I will lead them on paths that they have not known. I
will make the darkness light before them and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto
them and not forsake them.”

And loved ones, one other thing that is good about going on vacation and being away from all you
dear, dear people is that you see how bored the world is and how miserable and empty most of the
loved ones are. And it’s so good to realize that whatever else happens we won’t be bored. We’ll
have exciting things around every corner. And I know that’s short but I really have to say what
Jesus gave me to say and then shut my mouth.

And I’d just encourage you to see that the Father has put us through our first little test together
and we have a glorious future ahead, just glorious. And we are in his hands. And what God is
working among us, thank God is not a man’s work. That was a good thing for me to come back and
sense, “This is not something that Ernest O’Neill has produced and that he alone can take care of.”
Suddenly I saw you are your own men and women, you are Jesus and he will take care of each of us.
And this is a strong body, a creation of God and not of man.

And I think we just need to see the glory of it, need to thank him for it, and need to walk humbly
with our God and he will take us all the way. Will we get 10,000 of us abroad by the year 2000?
Who cares if we get 10,000? If we get around that number that’s okay. But, let’s go, let’s go for
as near to that 10,000 abroad as we can for Jesus. And we’ve got the next 20 years or so and if it
takes a little of what we’ve gone through, well if the blessing is as great as its been this time,
boy we’ll be blessed right out of our socks.

So loved ones, I thank God for you and next Sunday I will preach about the laws of the spirit. Let

us pray. Dear Father we thank you for the family that you’ve brought us into. Thank you for peace.
Thank you for loved ones who love each other and accept each other. Lord we pray for even greater
closeness. Lord I’d pray for Ted at this minute, and think of other loved ones who love you.
Father I’d pray that you’d draw us all into a close knowledge of each other, a dear acceptance of
each other, a warmth of love for each other.

Lord I’d pray that every loved one here this evening, and the dear souls that come on Sunday
morning, would all begin to feel a real closeness to each other and to you. A real acceptance, a
real feeling that we’re known and yet we’re loved even though we are known. Father we would pray
that you would draw us nearer together and that you would enable us to understand each other even
better and to be used to bring each other into the glory of that position you have given us at your
right hand in Christ Jesus.

Lord, we’d thank you for that. That we who are dead and are trespassers in sin, you have raised us
up and made us sit with you in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And Father we would pray that
you by your Holy Spirit, would so enable us to minister to each other in these coming days, that we
will all be lifted in reality into that position and we’ll experience the victory, and the triumph
of that position in all the troubles that come our way.

And Father we would just thank you for trouble, and thank you for difficulties, and thank you Lord
that you know exactly what we need to keep us low before you and to keep us in the hollow of your
hand. Father we now pray for all the loved ones who are still trying to sort things out in the Twin
Cities. We pray Holy Spirit that you would lay your hand on the dear ones who will write about
things and who will talk about things and that you will bring a great peace and a great sense of
understanding and love so that your work may prosper.

And Lord Jesus we would pray that many young men and woman would be stirred even by these things and
that many would be drawn to some body of yours that will be moving forward for your glory. So we
pray our Father, that you will do what you have said, you will work all things together for good to
us because we love you. And we thank you Lord Jesus for your love and for your dear example of
triumph, and victory, and joy in the midst of the cross. Thank you Lord.

We look forward to the day when we will sit around your throne and talk about the way the Lord our
God has led us. Thank you Lord. The grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of God and the fellowship
of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us now and ever more. Amen.

Spiritual Life #56

The Laws of the Spirit Summary

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

What we’re studying loved ones, especially for those of you who might be here for the first time
this evening, in these evening sermons, and what we’ve been studying for probably 10 and some of us
13 years here in the evenings, is the deeper Christian life, the life of the spirit, the inner
life. And we have been following a series that we go through every three years usually. And we’ve
been so long on this particular one that I don’t know which year we’re in now, but we’re trying to
deal at this time, with our spirit.

I could illustrate to you what your spirit is or something of what it is, if I ask you to think for
a moment, of what happens in your personality when you sing, maybe a little more on tune that I
sing, but you sing, “Amazing grace how sweet the sound.” Sarah, I was on tune. Your tongue is
singing, your voice, your body, so your body is involved. Your mind is involved too because you’re
thinking of the words, and it’s your mind, or your intellect that thinks and remembers, and judges,
and reasons. And I think you’d agree that your emotions are involved too, because you can think of
the old bagpipers, if you think of nothing else, you can think of that old Scottish bagpipe music in
the background and all the influence, and the emotion of the tune.

But you can also think of many old saints that have sung that down through the years. You can think
perhaps of moments in your own life when you say, “Through many dangers toils and snares I have
already come.” And so your emotions can be involved. Now, that’s your body, and your mind, and
emotions are what the Bible calls your soul. But deep, deep down loved ones, there’s the real you
and that’s your spirit. Now, the real test is after you’ve stopped singing that song, and after
your home in your own bed tonight, what is your spirit doing?

That’s the real test. Is your spirit filled with that same elation, and that same sense of
thanksgiving to God? In fact, could you almost burst out singing that tonight in bed? Or, is your
spirit kind of blah? Now, that’s that real you loved ones. That’s what you’re really like. That’s
why that dear guy, you remember he’s involved in Gospel Light publications and he wrote the book
“Sometimes I feel Like a Blob”. Because, I think a lot of us at certain times at home on our own,
or in the middle of the day in our office, we feel like a blob because inside, deep down where the
real us is, there’s nothingness. There’s just often emptiness.

Now, that’s your spirit. Your spirit is the real you. And it’s your spirit that people really
eventually touch. You can do a whole lot of things with your face, you can do a whole lot of
smiles, a whole lot of sunny faces and everything, a whole lot of handshaking, a whole lot of
backslapping, and loving, and embracing. You can do a whole lot of things with your mind, saying a
whole lot of clever little things, all of the good, intelligent, diplomatic little things. With
your emotions you can show a whole lot of love, a whole lot of excitement, but a person is really
looking for what is at the center of you, the real you.

As a man or a woman is when they’re alone, that they are and nothing more. That’s your spirit. And
of course, that’s why Jesus, you remember, once took a little child and maybe you’d look at the
situation, its Matthew 18:2. He took a little child and put him in the middle of the crowd you
remember, so I’m sure he was holding his hand tight so that he’d feel okay. Matthew 18:2, “And

calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them, and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you
turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.””

And Jesus said that because, most of us remember, what our spirits were like when we were little
children. And most of us remember the freedom and the liberty that we sensed inside. We didn’t
have to be told to laugh, and to enjoy ourselves. We did laugh and we did enjoy ourselves. We just
had a great sense that our fathers loved us, our mums loved us, that the people who cared for us
were taking care of things, and all we had to do was delight in this dear world around us. And
that’s what Jesus meant when he said, “We’ve to be as little children.”

Our spirits are meant to be like that, light, and joyful, and airy, and free. And when your spirit
is like that, of course, you can be a blessing to everybody around you. And of course you can meet
all the problems of life with ease. You hardly pause in your stride. That isn’t the case with most
human beings in the world. Most human beings in the world, soon after they’re seven, eight, or nine
years of age begin to get concerned about who cares for them. And that’s because they lack the
sense that there’s a great Father who cares for them and they begin to wonder does anybody care for
them?

And they begin to be concerned about their own welfare. And most human beings from nine or 10 on
begin to try to find love, and find the attributes, and the qualities that love gives you. Love
gives you a great sense, we’ve shared before, of security, and it’s not long before all of us become
little gibbering neurotics as far as security are concerned, really. After we miss our first lunch
at school we begin to be concerned, “How do you make sure you don’t miss your lunch?” And after we
find ourselves without enough money to buy the ice cream that we want, we begin to wonder, “How do
you make sure you have enough money?” And after we begin to feel that we would like the clothes
that somebody else has, we begin to work out, “How could we? Maybe a paper route, we could do that
and we could get the clothes.”

And it’s not long before we begin go to be concerned with getting the things that love used to give
us, and that we felt we could depend on love for. So it’s not long before we begin to be little
snatchers after our security. And it really isn’t long before, oh this old world begins to find
that this is you, believe it or not, and me. And it begins to find that it’s got ties. We put a
peg in there and we tie ourselves to the world for our security. We tie ourselves to the paper
route, and then we tie ourselves to our first job, and then we tie ourselves to our first employer.
Then we tie ourselves to the stocks and shares that we buy. It’s not long before in order to get
the love that we need we find we’re tying ourselves to this world.

It’s the same with the sense of identity and we’ve shared that before. It used to be, did a little
child care about his identity? No, his dad thought the world of him that was okay for him. He
didn’t care, as long as his dad smiled that was everything. That’s the way God wanted us to live in
his regard and in his love. But it wasn’t long before we forgot him and we wanted other people’s
love, and other people’s approval. And we tied ourselves to our friends. One friend praised us, we
accepted the praise and then we found we were addicts to the praise. Then, we had to praise them
back, and then they praised us. And they scratched our backs and we scratched theirs.

It wasn’t long before we found ourselves with a tent peg in the world as far as our significance and
our identity is concerned. It was the same with emotion; God meant that we should enjoy the world.
Walk through it and enjoy the trees, and the sunshine, and the rivers with the Father in our hand
right beside us, walking through his world. That was joy and delight, that’s all we needed. But it

wasn’t long before we weren’t satisfied with that and we wanted the excitement, and the thrill of
other things, the exhilaration of certain relationships, the excitement of certain experiences. And
it wasn’t long before we tied ourselves.

It’s strange, really the inside started to dry up. The spirit inside started to dry up. The body
was pretty active, the soul was pretty active, but the spirit was dried up inside and we depended on
these crude things, and we found ourselves bound to the world. That’s the situation with most of
us. That’s why the Bibles says “We’re dead, we’re dead. Our spirits are dead towards God.” That’s
why many of us say that we feel like a blob, because we are governed by all these outside things for
the real love that we’re meant to get from God.

Now loved ones, what is the problem? The problem is that our personalities are now so enslaved to
these things that we can’t get clear of them. How many of you feel that? How many of you want to
be free but you think, “How’s the economy doing?” You think, “They’re taking away my MasterCard.”
You think, “They’re putting up the interest rates.” You think, “I want to be free, I want to be
happy as you say, but my job. What about my job?” “I want to be joyful about the future but what
about my future?” “ I want to be happy whether I have anybody or nobody except God, but what about
my marriage?” Isn’t it true that we find our dear old personalities make it impossible for us to
live with a light spirit?

Our personalities seem tied to these things. And isn’t it true that often many of us go out on a
Monday morning with heavy hearts. And many of us live through the week with heavy hearts, worried
about this, anxious about that. And the truth is that the world is our God. We may say we’re
Christians, you know, I understand that and we have our words that we use with each other, and we
say we’re children of God. But really, the world is our God. Not in that we’re gambling, or
drinking, or running out with prostitutes, or all kinds of big worldly things that we think are
worldly things, but just the world itself. The security that the world gives us, the recognition
that the world gives us, the happiness and enjoyment that the world gives us the world is our God.
Loved ones that’s why we’re so heavy in our spirits. That’s why our spirits are so dead. That’s
why they don’t rise with joy and with lightness.

Now, there’s only one person that can change that. There’s only one person that can cut those
bonds, and that person is God. And that’s what he did in Jesus. And that’s the basis of any
victory that we can have, that God took you, alive to the world and bound to the world, and he
crucified you with his Son Jesus. He crucified you with Christ. And that’s the basis, Romans 6:6,
our old self was crucified with Christ. If that hasn’t happened, if you weren’t separated from the
world by God, if he has not been able to change your personality in a mighty eternal act in Christ,
there’s nothing you can do.

But loved ones that has happened, that’s a fact. That’s what the Bible says, when Jesus died you
and I died. Our old self that is bound to the world was crucified with Christ. Loved ones, you’ll
never get free from that worrying about the Master charge, you’ll never get free from being anxious
about your marriage and your future, you’ll never get free from being concerned about your security,
unless God has done something to cut that dear old bound personality off from the world. That’s
what the Bible means when it says, “We were crucified to the world and the world was crucified to
us.”

Loved ones that has happened; that has happened. And not only that has happened but Ephesians 2:6
has happened. God has raised us up who were dead in our trespasses and sins and has made us sit with

him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That’s the truth, that’s reality. Look at it, if you
would, it’s Ephesians 2:6, and you can see the past tense in the Greek. Ephesians 2:6, “And raised
us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” God has done that
in eternity, beyond time and space, God has severed the chains that attach you to your boss. That’s
right.

There are unseen spiritual chains that attach you to your boss. That’s true. So that he comes into
the room and your wee eyes go up to see if he’s smiling at you. God in Jesus has severed the
spiritual chains that bind you to your bank account. That’s right you’re bound to your bank
account. If it’s up, you’re free and light. If it’s down, you’re depressed and insecure. God has
severed in Jesus those chains. Loved ones believe it, believe it. It’s not your bank account,
that’s the strange thing it’s not your bank account. It’s not the boss, it’s not the experiences
either of vacation, or of sadness, or of death, or of loneliness. It’s not.

It’s a whole spiritual shackle system that binds you to those things. Those things have no power
actually. Those things will die in a moment. But there’s a whole spiritual imprisonment that
you’re evolved in and that’s what God destroyed in Jesus. That’s why you’ve such trouble getting
rid of those things. You know, with the books on the power of positive thinking, “Oh well, don’t
think about your bank account.” “Okay, I won’t think about my bank account. I won’t think about my
bank account.” And you think about your bank account. Or, “No I won’t care what people think of
me. I won’t care what people think of me.” And you care what people think of you.

You keep trying to overcome those things but do you see it’s a whole spiritual imprisonment. It’s
not the things that are the problem, it’s not the people, it’s not the experiences, it’s the
spiritual enslavement that your personality has become involved in, and that’s what God destroyed in
Jesus. He did it. It’s done. Oh, a dear guy came up here four or five weeks ago and said, “You
know what I suddenly realized? I have been crucified in Christ whether I feel it or not. I don’t
have to get crucified with Christ, I have been. It has been done. God has raised me up and made me
sit with him in the heavenly places.” And loved ones, that’s the basis of victory, believing that
and submitting to the Holy Spirit is the basis of victory.

Believing that you have been raised with Jesus and that you sit at the moment with God in the
heavenly places far above every rule, and authority, and dominion, and power not only in this world
but in that which is to come, that’s the basis of victory. And that’s how your spirit can be
maintained light, and joyous, and victorious. But loved ones, first of all it is believe, believe
Ephesians 2:6, that you have been raised up and made to sit with God in the heavenly places. Then
second one is, James 4:7, submit to God you remember. In fact, you might want to look at it, it’s
James 4:7. Because, the basis of all victory is trust and obey and the first part of trusting is
the believing Ephesians 2:6, and the second part is the obeying which is James 4:7, “Submit
yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” “Submit yourselves
therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” Loved ones that’s the basis of a
light spirit.

Now, what we’re talking about in these evening services is the laws of the spirit. And loved ones,
as long as you will hold to that position your spirit will remain that of a little child. But as
you go along, you remember, we shared in these past Sundays that Satan is able and other people are
able to put weights on your spirit. So you waken up in the morning, and your spirit is not light,
and it is not rising up to God in joy and delight. And many of us accept those weights and we say,
“Well, that’s normal.” No, that isn’t normal.

The normal life of a spirit, of a man or a woman under control of the Holy Spirit, is that that
spirit is lifting with the trinity. That’s where the Holy Spirit is. The Holy Spirit is with God
the Father and God the Son, and believe me they are having a ball in heaven. Really, that’s what
the teaching is, that God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are rejoicing at this
moment. The beautiful things we see in the world, the birds singing, the sun shining, the breezes
in the springtime, those are just little signs of the rejoicing, and the delight that is in heaven
and we are in heaven by faith. And we are able to experience the joy of heaven; our condition can
be made to match our position by the Holy Spirit, if we believe that we have been raised with God,
and with Jesus, and if we submit ourselves to God.

Loved ones, when you get up in the morning and there are weights on your spirit, resist them. Ask
the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, why is this? I know it’s not normal, why is it? Show me why there
are heavy weights on my spirit.” Often, it’s a matter of resisting Satan. Sometimes it’s a matter
of submitting to God. Sometimes, you have resisted God in some area of your life and that’s why
Satan has been able to put a weight on your spirit. But loved ones weight on your spirit that is
not normal. That’s one of the things, you remember, that we dealt with. We’ve been dealing with
some other things. You remember we dealt with the whole truth of blockage of the spirit. Pointed
out, you remember, oh it’s the verse in John 7:38 and you might want to look at that. John 7:38,
some people think that it’s a matter of the spirit being present in you and of course, that’s not
true. John 7:38 is the truth. Jesus, you remember, speaks about the Holy Spirit. John 7:38, “He
who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living
water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive.”

And you see what Jesus says, “Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.” And you remember
we shared how it’s the flow of the spirit that enables us to experience God’s presence. In other
words, God is there and Jesus is there at his right hand, and Jesus – here are you, here and me, and
Jesus instead of loving God directly loves God through the Holy Spirit, through us. And we take
part in the flow of love that goes in the trinity family and God gives back the glory to Jesus.

You remember we shared how you experience the joy and the delight of God’s love by the spirit
flowing through you. That of course stays you from the whole idea of getting something for
yourself. It’s the flow of Jesus love through the Father that you experience. And some of us at
times experience blockage; that is our minds or emotions are out of sorts, or our body is sick, and
the Holy Spirit within us wants to show joy or delight to somebody, but our body is kind of heavy
and we can’t do it. Or, our emotions are out of sorts and we know we sense within us the Spirit
wants to express something to somebody else, but we don’t do it. Or, the Spirit wants to express
delight to God in song and we don’t do it, and we block the Spirit.

Now what you do you see, is when you block the spirit coming out of you, you block the spirit coming
into you. So loved ones it is important to be sure that there is no blockage taking place inside
you. That’s why you remember, we shared that your body should be in good shape. Often, many of us
let our bodies get badly out of shape and the physical body presses down upon our spirits and
suppresses or spirits. It’s important for our bodies, and our minds. That’s why you should
exercise your mind, do you see that? That’s why you should come to classes, and you should read,
and stimulate your mind so that it is a lively, submissive servant to your spirit. Otherwise,
you’ll begin to block your spirit.

And I do think a lot of us find deadness coming into our lives because we block our spirits, really.

There is a deep way in which the spirit of a prophet is subject to the prophet. In other words,
there’s a deep way in which you can control your spirit but there is also a deep way in which the
spirit possesses you and if you don’t allow him to posses you, and you don’t allow him to do freely
in you what he wants, you’ll in fact grieve him and you’ll block him in your life. So you remember
we talked blockage.

And then loved ones, you remember, we talked about the truth, that the Holy Spirit brings you close
to God. That’s of course, what he does. Takes the things of Jesus and he imparts them to you. He
reveals to you the mind of God. You remember, who knows the mind of God but the spirit, and the
spirit reveals to you the mind of God, and he enables you to see things as God sees them. He
enables you to see your father, and your mother, and your relatives, and your colleagues at work,
and at school, as he sees them. And then gradually he shows you what he wants for them.

And you remember we shared that those are called burdens of the spirit. They are delightful things
because they are given often to provoke you to pray for a person, sometimes, to provoke you to speak
to a person, sometimes to provoke you to do something for a person. But the burdens of the spirit
are the reflections of God’s care and concern. And you remember we shared how that was the way our
lives were meant to be lived. Our lives are not meant to be lived looking out with our binochs to
see, “Who should we help? Ah, there is somebody caught in a thicket. I will help them.” No,
that’s not the way God’s children work, they are preoccupied with their father, and with his dear
son. They’re talking things over and they sense what the concern of the Father is. So the Father
says, “I’m concerned about that person.” And it just rises up in your heart.

And it’s vital you remember to pray according to the burdens that God puts on your heart. Usually,
a natural thing, usually not a sensational thunder striking thing but a natural concern that comes
up in your heart because you care about the same things as your Father. So you remember, we talked
about burdens and then loved ones, you remember after that we talked about a miserable experience
that many of us have when we allow a false spirit of Satan to come into us. And you remember, we
shared how some of us become concerned about, “Well, we must be honest you know. We must be honest
with this person. I must speak the truth in love.”

And somehow we let come in to our tender yielding spirits, a spirit of judgmentalism and criticism.
And we begin to concentrate on putting everybody right. And we let a satanic spirit begin to poison
our spirits. It’s important loved ones, to know where you’re receiving spirits from. A loved one
shared with me, oh a few Sundays ago I think, that she found that in certain situations she went
into her spirit became tainted with the spirit of those with whom she was present. And she was
asking me, “Well, should I keep clear of them?” And I said, “Well, really if you find you can’t
retain your position in Jesus above that poison, yes you should keep clear of them.”

And you should watch that you don’t let your spirit become poisoned with other spirits. The way to
do it of course is always to be in touch with the Holy Spirit. “Holy Spirit, am I what you want me
to be? Am I doing what you want me to be? Am I praising God and loving him the way you want me
to?” So we talked loved ones about the poisoning of the spirit. And then you remember, we shared
also about the thinking of the spirit, how many of us by beginning to concentrate on our own
personal experience, found that our spirits instead of rising up to God in joy and delight, began to
sink down.

And usually, that comes when we begin to do what you remember, C.S. Lewis talked about, we begin to
try to examine our own prayers. See, are we praying right? Are we praising right? Are we loving

God right? Are we experiencing victory right? And C. S. Lewis points out that the moment you turn
your eyes in upon yourself, that moment you’re no longer experiencing a spiritual reality of
worship. The worship has now ceased and all you’re examining is the mental track left in your own
mind and emotions of the worship that was formerly going on.

And so, when you begin to look into yourself, and feel, “Do I feel Jesus presence? Do I feel like
Jesus? Do I feel the love I should feel for these people?” That moment you’ve ceased to feel that
love because you’ve become preoccupied with yourself and your spirit will sink. And really, the
truth is, the Holy Spirit moves your spirit up. He is a good friend; he is a good protector of your
spirit. If you concentrate on believing Ephesians 2:6, and submitting to God and resisting the
devil, the Holy Spirit will take care of your spirit.

Your spirit is the lamp of the Lord, and the Holy Spirit will keep that lamp bright and shining if
you preoccupy yourself with God. But loved ones, as soon as you look into yourself, the spirit
begins to sink. And then you remember, we talked a little, well in fact we didn’t touch much upon
it, but we talked about how many of us experience not a sudden depression which is sheer
emotionalism. You know things that happen sudden like that, that’s just emotion and that’s
something to be simply ignored. So sudden changes are just emotion, but some of us don’t experience
sudden changes, we experience the fullness of the Holy Spirit and then we experience a gradual
withdrawal of the full fervor and enthusiasm of our first love.

And then we meet somebody and we tell them that and they say, “Oh, yeah that’s just the ebbing of
the spirit. That’s natural.” No, I mean, I’ll show you that it’s unnatural if you look at James
1:17, because you can be sure that heaven is constant. In heaven they’re not up and down. James
1:17, “Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of
lights,” then these great words, “With whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” God has
no variation. The sunlight that comes from God does not shine periodically, or off and on, or
inconstantly, it shines continually.

The flow of Jesus’ Spirit is continuous. There is no ebbing of the spirit. And loved ones resist
that belief that Satan would thrust upon you that, “Oh, it’s very natural to experience an ebbing of
the spirit.” No it isn’t. The spirit continues to flow all the time. So if ever you sense an
ebbing of the spirit, ask the Holy Spirit to show you, “Holy Spirit am I failing to submit to God in
some way? Am I failing to cooperate with him in some way? Or, have I yielded ground to Satan
through some deception?” And the Holy Spirit will show you. You don’t need to get all caught up in
yourself, just ask him and he is your counselor and he will lead you into all truth.

And the last thing loved ones, that really we need to just mention, is irresponsibility of the
spirit. Where some of us find our spirit acting outside the control of the Holy Spirit, and acting
without really the constancy and the sense of discipline of the Holy Spirit. And here’s the way Nee
puts it. He says, “Now these phenomena cause the spirit to fail in its responsibility of
cooperating with the Holy Spirit. As long as it is irresponsible, victory remains impossible.”

Suppose a person rising in the morning feels as though he has lost his spirit. The enemy will
perhaps induce him to think it is due to physical weariness lingering from yesterday’s overwork.
Sometimes we do that, waken up, we don’t sense the spirit within us rising to glorify God and we
think, “Oh yes, yes, it’s due to purely a natural cause, and of course, by doing that we accept it.
If he takes the enemy’s suggestion without question, and allows his spirit to become irresponsible,
he shall be stripped of all his strength to repel that day’s temptations as well as to accomplish

that day’s work. He should search right away for the real cause for the spirit ought to be active
and powerful enough to regulate the body and not be adversely affected by it. He should acknowledge
that the spirit, having been assaulted by the enemy has become irresponsible. He must seek
immediate recovery or else he shall be defeated the moment he meets anyone. Never permit the early
irresponsible state of this spirit to continue until mid day for this is a sure way to defeat.”

And you know it’s just good, it’s good to see that God’s word teaches us that we are at the right
hand of God and there is constancy. And if our spirits are in cooperation with the Holy Spirit we
are experiencing the constancy of heaven. And if we ever fail to experience it don’t let’s get all
worried, don’t let’s start charging and accusing ourselves, that’s what Satan wants us to do. Let’s
simply go to the Holy Spirit and say, “Holy Spirit, have I failed either to believe my position at
the right hand of God? Am I in some way not doing that? Is there some way in which I have not
allowed myself to be crucified with Christ? Is there something of Christ’s death and resurrection
that I’m not willing for? Show me that. Or, am I not believing this? Am I taken up with my own
experience and not believing the fact of my crucifixion and resurrection and ascension with Jesus?
Or, Holy Spirit is there some way in which I’m not cooperating with God, not submitting to God? Is
there some way in which I have yielded ground to Satan, and deception, or lies?” And the Holy
Spirit will show you loved ones. It is possible to have victory, it really is.

Now, questions loved ones because what I wanted to do was try to summarize what we’ve been talking
about for maybe five or six weeks and then give you an opportunity to ask questions. You cannot
change your spirit, only the Holy Spirit can, but you can fulfill the conditions for him to change
it which is belief and obedience.

Question from the audience:
When you are with another person, and you sense Jesus’ Spirit moving within you in love, or even in
words to the other person, but they are not willing to receive, their spirit is resisting what do
you do?

Response from Pastor O’Neill:
Well, it seems to me you do what Jesus himself did in different situations, you minister what is
appropriate to the person at that time and you minister what they are able to receive. Sometimes,
we bring in an overdrive over the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit often, in a situation like that,
just wants to express love to the other person, wants to ask them how their job is going, or how
their family are, wants to be interested in them. But, we often let our mind come in with an
overdrive thinking we ought to witness to them in some way and so sometimes what we’re feeling is
the pressure of our mind, or our soulishness on top of the spirit of Jesus. Jesus’ Spirit himself
is always as Jesus was in physical body. He came to the woman, “Do you want water?” That’s what
you want. He talked to her about water and then he went on to deeper things.

So usually Jesus’ spirit within us guides us to minister, to minister what we’re able to receive.
Now, you are right, I think there are times when the spirit of Jesus will meet the repelling and the
withdrawal that his own spirit met in the Pharisees and in others. And that is part of what we have
to do, and that is part of what the spirit is able to bear in us. But I would say loved ones, more
often than not we are not free enough about witnessing, we’re not free enough. We don’t see that
often it’s enough just to be with another person. Often it’s enough just to be with them in joy and
delight.

And many times we’re so burdened with what are we going to say to them, that our spirit is

suppressed under the worry, and the anxiety that we feel. And so the very thing that we would
witness to them, a joyous, liberated spirit is suppressed under a heavy, anxious soulishness. So
really, there’s a lot to be said for being free and seeing, “Even if I never mention Jesus to them,
if I am at this moment in the flow of God’s Spirit, if I’m loving God, if I’m conscious of my
position in him, probably some of that is getting through.” And of course it is. That’s what loved
ones want to see.

Question from the audience:
Often we have a something in our own spirit that doesn’t allow any freedom when we are with others.

Response from Pastor O’Neill:
Because you remember, he said, “I notice you have a statute to an unknown God.” And then he went in
on that issue. Often in our offices, if we were just abiding in Jesus, if we were just enjoying
him, often the loved ones in our offices that’s what they want to see. They cannot believe that
happiness is possible. The dear souls can’t, not constant happiness. They can believe that there
are periodic moments, but they cannot believe that peace, and rest is possible. And there nothing
witnesses like a person at peace and rest, really.

There’s a great line in a poem by Rupert Brooke and he says, “And gentleness in hearts at peace
under an English heaven.” And gentleness in hearts at peace, there’s no witness like that, you
know. People are so anxious for rest and peace, yeah. Anything else loved ones?

Question from the audience:
How do we prevent the heaviness of other people’s spirits from affecting us?
Response from Pastor O’Neill:
Well it seems brother that, you remember, the teaching of Jesus wiping the disciples feet, washing
the disciples feet? The teaching there is not that he was washing them from sin, but he was washing
them from some of the dirt, and some of the taint of the world that they got as they walked along
the world’s roads. And it seems we can do that, as we walk through the day in the office, or we
walk through the day at school we’re meeting all kinds of spirits, and often the heaviness in
another person’s spirit can come in. Because we have an empathy and a love for people, it can come
in and we can let it in upon us and that’s why you often have to guard your spirit actually, because
it’s good to empathize with people but there’s a sense in which you can empathize with them
soulishly and then in that case you open what should be a check valve, or a one way valve which
allows your spirit to come out but doesn’t allow other spirits to come in.

But at times we are not at that place of discipline, or of wisdom and we allow something to come in
from another person and so we come home and we wonder what this weight is. And it’s interesting
sorrow can often be like that. It’s very important when you go to a funeral to go to it filled with
Jesus, to go to it with a high pressure system inside not a low pressure system. If your spirit is
at a low pressure, the high pressure from the other people’s grieving unto death will come in upon
you and you can often walk away from your funeral with a sinful heaviness in your heart.

But, oh you know, what we all need to see is it is possible, victory is possible. It is possible to
live in peace and joy. And of course, one of Satan’s tricks that I’ve noticed him playing upon us
is, when some of you hear that you take it as a burden and you say, “Oh, oh, I’m not living that
way.” Well, that is not meant for that. If you’re not then see that it’s possible, see that the
Holy Spirit can bring you into it but don’t get all uptight about it. Just go to him and say, “Holy
Spirit, I’m glad that there’s joy and delight there for me and oh, I want it. I want you to show me

how to live in it day-by-day.” And he will. He wants you to be in it, and that’s what heaven is.
Let us pray.

Dear Father, we thank you for the position you have given us at your right hand. Lord, we thank you
that it’s in your word, solid, solidly in your word in black and white, then welded into history in
the death of Jesus and his resurrection. That those of us who are dead in our trespasses and sins
have been raised up and made to sit with you in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Thank you
Lord. And thank you, dear Holy Spirit, that you are able to make us live in the reality and the
actuality of that day-by-day as we submit to you, and we resist this devil. Thank you, thank you
Lord.

Pray for each other Lord, pray for tonight down in restaurant, there’ll be a good time. Pray for the
musicians, that there’ll be cleanliness in the air, delight, and joy that is coming from your
presence. Pray that you’ll use us to give somebody else delight and joy, and touching you through
our lives tonight. And then pray for those who are going home tonight. Pray Lord, that we’ll be a
delight and a blessing to our loved ones, and that we’ll live above the world tomorrow morning.
That we’ll go out a foot off the ground, because of our position in you and throughout this week
that we’ll meet Satan in you far above every rule, and authority, and dominion, and power. Lord,
that you’ll use us this week to reveal to others what heaven is like. And we ask this, because
you’ve put us there. That’s where we are at this moment. We only appear to be here on earth. This
appears to be the truth, but real truth is we are in heaven with you at your right hand. Thank you
Lord. Now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
be with each us now and throughout this coming week. Amen.

Spiritual Life #57

The Mind Aiding the Spirit

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Now does anybody want to ask any questions about the baptism of the Holy Spirit? I’ll just mention
again, what it is. That’s you, believe it or not, or me, and that’s God, and that’s the world. And
God’s will is that your friendship with him, just your friendship, your knowing him and loving him,
knowing what he wants to do in your work, knowing what he wants to do in your home, just that
friendship that you would act from that. That you would do things, and say things, just because you
knew God wanted you to say them.

That’s what it is loved ones; it’s as sweet and as clear as that. It’s just your friendship with
God, knowing what he wants you to say and he gives that to you and you say it. And really, you know
we’ve said it a thousand times, but it’s just gone all the wrong way. We’ve just put a big barrier
between ourselves and him, and that’s the way it goes. We’re just playthings of the world. We’re
playthings of what our friends want us to do, we’re playthings of what our employers want us to do,
we’re playthings of what the commercials on TV want us to do. But, we’re just governed and
dominated by that dear world.

What happens when we begin to realize that this was God’s plan up here? Really, many of us attempt
to get in touch with God, and we at last tell him that we need him in our lives. The killer is many
of us do it for all kinds of strange reasons. Some of us do it just because we’re in real trouble
and so it’s just a kind of cry from agony and helplessness, “Lord help me, I’m losing touch with
reality.” Some of us that. Some of us because we have no purpose in our lives and we say, “Lord I
want to have some purpose in my life.” Some of us are just lonely and we just say, “Lord, I’m
lonely. Will you come into my life?” Some of us have just heard that all you have to do is ask
Jesus into your lives, so we don’t know anything else, we just ask Jesus, “Lord come into my life.”

Some of us go up to the front with some friends in a church and we have a great feeling of warmth
and we don’t know what happened, but we sense that we’re different in some way. Many of us do, at
least, begin to get that going you know. We begin to get a little life going from God to us. But
the tragedy is that we’re still getting it from the world as well. That’s a position of a person
who isn’t baptized with the spirit. They get some friendship from God, and they’re trying to serve
him, and they’re trying to do things for him but they are very dependent on the world’s opinions,
and they’re still very dependent on the comfort they can get from the world, and they’re very
dependent on the things that they can get from the world, and the happiness they can get from the
world, and the security.

So they really live a double life and that’s what Jesus meant, that a double minded man can get
nothing from the Lord. That’s what most people are like who aren’t baptized with the Holy Spirit.
The only way to be baptized with the spirit, that is the only way to have that, the only power and
the only life in your life, is to have that crucified. You remember, Paul says in Galatians 6:14
that I was crucified to the world and the world was crucified to me. Loved ones, honestly until you
come to that place, God cannot trust you with the fullness of his spirit. See he can’t.

You brothers, you know how ambitious we men are, and how we want to achieve things. Do you see that
God can’t trust us with the mighty power of the spirit that is able to raise the dead, and is able

to heal people, unless we have ground into the dust any desire we might have to be something, or to
be important? You can see what we would do with a mighty power like the Holy Spirit if we were
still in this business of getting the applause from the world. We would just be demons let loose
with a supernatural power in our lives.

So loved ones, there’s no way until we have that crucified. But ladies, it’s the same with you, you
know, while you still have a desire for the worship that only God deserves, he cannot give you his
Holy Spirit, because you would simply draw all of us in admiration, and adulation, towards you. And
until you die to the right even to be appreciated, until you die to what anybody thinks of you, the
Father cannot give you the fullness of his spirit.

So loved ones, it’s vital to come to that place and for most of us it does require some time. For
most of us we have to get before God and we have to say, “Holy Spirit, will you show me in what way
I am not crucified to the world, and in what way the world is not crucified to me? In what way am I
still a prisoner to the world?” There are a thousand ways in which we all are. We all have rights
that we will not die to, and that dear man from Nazareth died to every right he had. Of course,
with him we died also. The moment we accept that, the moment we are content with what he was
content with, that moment we’re free, really.

Oh, I just saw, you know, another thing coming. God is so good because he gives you light then when
you enter into this relationship with him. Life is exciting because it doesn’t matter whether
you’re a preacher or not, he’s preaching at you all the time. So it’s good, and it’s growing, and I
just saw you know, on the way tonight, are you willing to die to the right to have efficiency? Are
you willing to die to the right to have efficiency around you and have things done efficiently?

We love, you know, and we love to pride ourselves, “Well, I don’t know if I’m willing to die to
efficiency or not.” But really, it’s die to having things done the way we want them done, you know.
That’s really what it is. God asks you that “Are you willing to die to the right to have things
done as efficiently as you think they should be done?” Of course, you see we’re mighty Gods, we
require everybody to do it the way we want them to. That’s where our irritability comes from,
that’s where our impatience comes from. That’s why we can’t pour out up building life to somebody
who lets us down. That’s it.

You think what happens when somebody lets you down. Think of it, when somebody isn’t there on time
and you meet them and there’s that rising up inside you that thinks “What right have they to keep me
waiting?” And you try to gather yourself together to love them, but they see the irritability
seething underneath. Of course, there’s nothing of life that comes to them at all. Now loved ones,
that’s part of what it is to be baptized into Jesus’ death in order to be baptized with the spirit,
means a real crucifixion of the world to you.

Now, when that happens loved ones, what then begins to take place is, God of course, has free way
with your life. And then there begins to take place the movement of his life through you to the
world. Of course, the tragedy is that this poor little soul here, while he’s been operating that
way, and then when he’s been operating as a kind of schizophrenic, his whole personality has
undergone all kinds of twists and perversions. Oh you know the way we described it in that diagram.
We said that that’s the way our soul was meant to work, you remember. Our soul was meant to work
that way with our will obeying our conscience, and our mind understanding what God was expressing,
and then expressing the joy that God has given us in friendship.

But really, when we begin to get our security, significance, and happiness from the world, our soul
becomes all perverted. Our mind, instead of simply understanding what God is saying to us about
what we should do in our job, our mind manipulates like mad. And we’re great manipulators, our mind
is always manipulating. That’s what you get – that was the problem you remember with Ananias and
Sapphira, if you look at it in Acts 5. It really wasn’t simply that they didn’t give all the money
to God that they got for the property, but they pretended.

They wanted the Holy Spirit, though that seems so silly, they wanted the Holy Spirit and they wanted
Peter, and the rest of the church leaders to think that they had given everything. You see in what
Peter says in Acts 5:4, “While it remained unsold,” the land, “Did it not remain your own? And
after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?” So all you have to say to me was, “Look, we’ve
sold this land and we’re giving you part of it.” But, “How is that you have contrived this deed in
your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.” And you find that, that your mind which should
work with great clarity simply understanding what God guides you to do through the day, your mind
has become a manipulating instrument.

It tries to manipulate the things, and the people, and the circumstances in the world so that you
can get from the world what you were meant to get from God. The tragedy is that even though you
have gone back to the place where you’ve been baptized with the spirit, and you’re beginning to
operate the right way, yet that dear old soul has got used to this kind of activity. Your mind
still tends to manipulate. Actually, that’s why some of us still have soul distress. That’s why
any of us who are baptized with the Spirit would ever think we needed psychological care, because
often our soul has become so twisted that it’s still operating in the old perverted fashion, and it
often takes a while for, you remember what God says through Paul, “For the mind to be renewed.”

That’s what, you remember, God means there, “Do not be conformed to the image of this world,” which
of course you are when your spirit is dead and you’re being governed by the world. But, don’t be
conformed to the image of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that your
mind will cease to manipulate and will begin to understand.

Now loved ones, do you see the distinction then between a mind that was once a mind of the flesh,
you see. A mind that was governed by your body, and governed by the world, and governed by trying
to get from the world what you should get from God. That mind is a manipulating mind, it’s a mind
of the flesh, and that mind is enmity against God. Now maybe you should see that in Romans 8:7.
It’s necessary to understand this in order to really understand the subject that we’re studying this
evening. Romans 8:7, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit
to God’s law, indeed it cannot.”

Now, that mind you see, that was set on the flesh, that was set on getting from the body, which got
from the world, security, significance, and happiness. That mind was absolutely perverted and it’s
hostile to God. Actually it’s interesting, you find that is a problem to you, because God often –
you face a problem at work. There’s a problem crops up with relationships in the office and you
pray about the thing. And before you started to pray you’ve been working out, “How will I get this
person to think this, and that person to think that? And then how will I clear myself out of the
mess and defend myself if they come at me?”

So your mind is contorted with all the manipulating. And then you pray about the thing, and you
spend time before God, and he gives you peace about the thing. And he prompts your mind simply to
understand how he sees it all, and to see how he’s going to work in it. Isn’t it interesting, that

at that point, you feel, “But I’m supposed to do more than this? I’m not just supposed to
understand and have faith.” The mind wants to get some manipulating done. You find that you’ve
prayed about the thing and you see how God is going to move, and you see you’ve to exercise faith
and simply understand what he’s going to do, but you still feel there’s something left undone.

It’s so hard to go into the office the next day and keep your mouth closed. It’s so hard to go into
the office the next day and not try to get your own hands into the mess and try to fix it. Now
loved ones, that’s what happens, your mind continues to work in the old way and that’s why many of
us are skeptical of using our minds in our spiritual lives. That’s it. Many of us, when we see the
title of this evening which is the mind and really the principle of the mind aiding the spirit, we
think to ourselves, “No, no that can’t be. The mind is an enemy of God and the mind cannot aid our
spirits.”

But loved ones, though the old manipulating mind, the old mind of the flesh cannot, the mind that is
being renewed in God’s image is able to be an ally to you. Actually, God wants it to be. I don’t
know if you realize, but the whole purpose of God’s action is that through his spirit coming through
your spirit, your soul will be redeemed. That’s his will. God is not content simply that your
spirit should be renewed, or regenerated, or be filled. But it’s God’s will that your whole
personality, that soul that is so perverted and this body that is so weakened, will be wholly
redeemed by his spirit. That’s his will.

He doesn’t want a crowd of spirits in heaven who have broken old bodies, and who have perverted
souls. He wants a redeemed people for himself. So God is always trying to bring about the
redemption of your total personality. That’s why you’ll often find you’ll often wish he would leave
the bad things alone. But he won’t, he keeps on working on the bad things, because those things
can’t come into heaven without spoiling heaven. So God is always working to, in some way, redeem
this soul completely.

That’s the meaning of that verse, you remember, that is translated slightly different in the RSV,
“In patience possess your souls.” Or, “In patience you shall possess your souls.” It’s God’s
intention that we should possess our souls, not that they should run away from us but that we should
possess them. And for that purpose, God at times, will withdraw some life or liveliness from your
spirit. That’s right.

So loved ones, let’s look into the areas where this happens. First of all, that’s quiet time, your
quiet time, your time of devotions which you have each day with God, a time when you pray to him and
when you read the Bible. At times, the Holy Spirit will give you a great liveliness. You’ll get up
in a bright morning and your heart will just be singing out to God, and your spirit will be rising,
and you’ll have no problem praising. Or, you’ll get out the Bible study and it’ll just be great,
and you’ll enjoy it, and you’ll go to prayer with a sense of joy, and thankfulness. And you’ll pray
about all kinds of people that you’re burdened for.

Often, that’s the way God will work with you, and probably that is even the normal, that there’ll be
a rising up from your spirit of life. But gradually, God will at times, withdraw that liveliness
from you. He’ll withdraw it for a specific reason; he’ll want you to exercise your mind, and to
exercise your mind in conjunction with the way his Spirit normally works through you. Now, if you
don’t realize that, when there’s no liveliness in your spirit and you get down on your knees to
pray, you’ll go into TM. You will. That’s what loved ones do. They think, “Well, there’s nothing
rising up from inside. I don’t feel or sense any praise of God.” And so they go into

transcendental meditation. They do.

They just go passive, and they think to themselves, “Well, I don’t use my mind because my mind is
enmity against God.” And that’s just Satan’s deception and trick to trick you into thinking of it
that way rather than seeing that the renewed mind is a good servant of God. But you say, “No, the
mind I dare not use. I have to do this prayer in the spirit.” So you stay passive and you keep
everything quiet waiting or God’s spirit to lift you. Of course, the moment you do that, you
release the exercise of your will over your mind and emotions and actually, over your spirit. And
you leave the gateway open for elemental spirits of the universe to come in and disturb your spirit
with all kinds of experiences, and feelings. Or, allows those spirits to come in and make your own
spirit absolutely dead and heavy.

Now loved ones don’t do that. When that happens, when in the mornings or the evenings you sense no
liveliness in your spirit, see that God is allowing that to happen and expects you to use your mind
to begin to get out your Bible, to read the passage, to study it, to use your intellect to analyze
it. And as you do that, the mind begins to prime the pump of the spirit and the Holy Spirit begins
to give light and revelation to your spirit. But that’s why God does that at times.

So don’t be cast down in the mornings when you find no liveliness in your spirit, no use your mind,
“Thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thy heart, and with all they soul, and with all thy
strength, and with all thy mind.” It means you have to exercise your will over your mind. Don’t be
backward about it, or think you’re doing something that is unspiritual or something that is soulish.
As you do that, as you begin to give your mind to God’s word, so the Spirit will begin to give life
to your own spirit.

Now loved ones, that’s the matter of the quiet time, but it also takes place in the matter of
warfare and witnessing. I’d just remind you of the position that we have in our warfare. The
position from which we war against Satan is that stated in Ephesians 2:6 and you might look at it.
Ephesians 2:6 and this is the fact, the eternal fact of our present position. Even though we all
look physically to be down here in this room, we are in fact in this position spiritually.
Ephesians 2:6, “And raised us up with him, and made us sit with him,” that is God, God, “Raised us
up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

Of course, the position, the importance of that position in warfare is given back there in verse 21
of the previous chapter, Ephesians 1:21. Where is that position? Oh well, “Far above all rule and
authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also
in that which is to come.” So that position is above Satan and above all his powers. Now, that is
the position of power for warfare when you’re fighting all kinds of opposition at home. There’s a
sneaking, seeping irritability and resentment filling the house, that’s the position of power that
you take in warfare. You take that position in the heavenly places and you dwell in that position.

Now the Holy Spirit normally gives you a sense of that. I remember when I first came into the
reality of that, I remember I had a great sense that I was sitting at God’s right hand far above
everything. And these poor little souls down here were like little insects fighting it out and
struggling. Really, I was in a position above it all, in a position of power where I could speak to
the mountain “Be cast into the sea.” Normally, the Holy Spirit gives you that sense of being
ascended with Jesus at God’s right hand. If you’re living free from sin and you’re living in trust
and obedience, he’ll give you that sense. But there are times, when the Holy Spirit withdraws that
from you.

Now loved ones, when that happens, do not cast away your faith and do not back down and say, “Well,
I’m no longer in that position.” God is doing that, because he wants you to use your mind to settle
strongly and firmly on his dear word. And that’s what I’ve done a thousand times. I’ve said, “Lord
I thank you that according to your word you’ve raised me up who were dead in my trespasses and sins,
and you’ve made me sit with you in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus far above every rule, and
authority, and dominion, and power. Lord I thank you for that and I fix thy mind on that.”

Loved ones, that’s what God wants you to do so that the mind, you can see what happens, the mind
begins to be strong and it begins to be strong enough to be a help mate to your spirit, and begins
to be a friend to your spirit and a kind of handmaiden to your spirit so that your spirit begins to
have really, strength, and reinforcement from the whole area of the soul. Instead of the spirit
trying to work against a soul that is sick, the soul itself becomes an ally to the spirit and they
become dear friends because the mind has learned and remembered certain things that the spirit
taught it years ago. And it remembers those things, and it practices them.

Now it is important to do that. I don’t know how many of you do, I think I’ve used the expression
before, but I know it’s an Irish expression you never catch it, but we would talk about – when we
first learned to ride bicycles, it was great to be able to ride your bicycle with no hands. Do you
use that expression? It doesn’t mean that you cut your hands off, it just means you don’t hold on
to the handlebars. So you thought you were really clever when you were riding your bike with no
hands. But it wasn’t as easy to do it. Obviously, if you were coming into some bendy spots in the
road then, you used your hands. That was the way to ride the bike.

Now I think sometimes, we think, “Well we ought to ride the bike with no hands. Yeah, yeah I walk
this way just in my spirit; just bare spirit, raw spirit. I won’t use my mind I won’t use anything,
just the spirit. That’s the way to do it.” Well, don’t be dumb you know, use everything. Love God
with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. If you can’t beat Satan with the spirit beat him
with the mind. If you can’t beat him with the mind, beat him with the emotion. Beat him some way,
but use everything but don’t back off into this kind of – it’s really a false kind of spirituality
where we think, “No, we ought not to use our minds.”

Do, your mind is a precious little computer that can remember truths that God has made real to you
before in your spirit. If you say to me, “Oh but isn’t it God’s will that they should be vividly
real to me? Isn’t that the difference between a Holy Spirit memory and a mental memory?” Yes, yes,
it is God’s will that you should have a Holy Spirit memory that the whole thing should be as vivid
as when you first saw it. But, there are times when it isn’t and at those times be content to let
your mind aid your spirit in this business of warfare.

Now, it’s the same in witness. I don’t know how many of you have had to lead Bible studies or have
had to speak a little from the Bible. There are the great times when the Holy Spirit just lifts you
up, you go to it and it’s easy. Especially, at the beginning when you’re first witnessing, the Holy
Spirit just seems to lift you along and you know what to do, you know what to say, you know which
verses of scripture to use, you know how to prepare the thing. In fact, it’s as if the spirit
prepares it. But do you see that in a way it’s a kind of honeymoon, because God wants your mind to
come into an understanding of these things.

So the Holy Spirit will at times withdraw from you in connection with witness, and in connection
with preparing speaking, or preparing little sermons for groups. The Holy Spirit will withdraw that

and will require you to use your mind. To just use the old mind, to get down to studying God’s word
and to preparing as if only your mind was available. Now as you do that, you’ll find that your
spirit will begin to stir within you and revelation will come.

So it is important loved ones, to be prepared to do it. It’s true also in the area of intercession.
Many of us kneel down to pray to God and we have no trouble with intercession. The spirit does
groan within us with groanings that cannot be uttered. And the spirit intercedes according to the
will of God for the saints. And there are times where we just sense the rising of our spirits on
behalf of our friends, or our relatives, or our colleagues at work and there’s no difficulty. There
are other times when it’s just dead.

Now, at those times be sensible. God has told you all kinds of people to pray for through his word.
You’ve to pray for those in authority over you. You’ve to pray that others will be fully formed in
Jesus. You’ve to pray for the mum and dad he has given you. You’ve to be faithful for the wife and
the children he has given you. God tells us in his word many, many things to pray for. We have to
pray that he will thrust forth laborers into the harvest field. You can hardly look at any part of
God’s word but there aren’t commands there what you should pray for.

Now when that time comes, when you seem to have no idea what to pray for or to intercede for, then
go to his word and pray for those things. Do, and don’t be all concerned because it’s not just all
living, and all bubbling up inside you. Be faithful and as you pray over certain things, the Holy
Spirit will give life to certain of those prayers and he will begin to intercede with groanings that
cannot be uttered. But first, God will require you to use your mind. So do that and don’t think
it’s something less than the best. That’s the Holy Spirit beginning to bring your mind into
obedience.

It is interesting love ones, it’s easy to do things when you feel like it. It’s easy to do things
when the spirit is bubbling up inside you and it just carries you along. But it’s a much greater
test of obedience and faith in God, if you do the thing cold turkey, just absolutely cold. And God
looks down, and he sees a will commanding a mind to do certain things. That brings a delight and
glory in heaven such as no amount of tongues will bring, really.

God delights in nothing so much as pure, raw obedience. That is the greatest proof of love to him.
And it’s the same you know, in other things that we come upon in our Christian life because the
whole business of guidance is involved in this business of the mind aiding spirit. Do you know the
normal way God guides? Maybe you’d like to look at it, it’s Psalm 32:8. Psalm 32:8, “I will
instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.” And the
King James Version says, you remember, “I will guide you with my eye.” That’s the normal way God
guides.

You have your eyes on him all the time and he just that way, and that way, and you see. And as long
as you have your eyes on him, there’s no problem you just move and you move through life in order
and with peace. But there do come times when he just looks straight ahead. And he does that so you
will, at that moment, go on to the general guidance that he has given to all of us, and that general
guidance is endless, “Go and preach the gospel to every nation baptizing them in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and the of Holy Spirit. Be my witnesses. Pray without ceasing. Love.”

God’s word is full of clear commandments that are the general purpose that he has for our lives.
When you don’t have specific guidance then use your mind to do the things that God has commanded us

to do in his word. Do those things with your whole heart. It is true loved ones, as you follow out
the general purposes that God has for all of us men and woman, the Holy Spirit then will make the
specific purpose that God has for you, in that situation, clear to you. But often there are times
of guidance when there seems to be no guidance and you just don’t know which way to turn, then go to
his dear word and ask him, “Lord, what are the things that I should be involved in daily? What are
your general purposes for my life?” And then be content to do those with all your heart or with all
your being.

Use your mind to do them, because as you do it your mind is beginning to soak into this dear word.
Of course, you see what’s happening, really you’re beginning to develop not just a mind that is a
servant of your spirit, but you’re developing a mind that is a sheet anchor to your spirit. Do you
see that? Because the mind is able to get from his word what is his normal will for us so that if
your spirit is ever under attack from elemental spirits of the universe or if your spirit is ever
going through a time of darkness, your mind is able to hold your spirit right in the middle of the
road.

That’s why God wants us loved ones, to develop our minds along the lines of his dear word. The mind
is God’s method of studying this word. As the mind grasps this word and understands it, so the
spirit is able to take the life in this word and give it to our spirits. So the mind is always the
handmaiden or the nurse if you like, of the spirit. The mind nurses your spirit along, keeps it in
the main line of God’s word. Now, it’s always your spirit that actually does the work and produces
the life. And the mind can never produce life in another person, only the Holy Spirit working
through your spirit can do that. But, your mind can be a real friend to your spirit. So when these
times comes loved ones, see that the mind can actually aid the spirit and that it is God’s will that
you should use it, and you should exercise it.

Now would you like to ask any questions loved ones about that? The real problem of course, with so
many of us who have had holiday camps for high schools, that’s a problem because our minds have gone
to sleep. And so you’re fighting the old passivity of mind that we’ll try to talk about next year.
But the only way, in a way, to begin with that is to exercise your mind and to determine to exercise
it and bring it into activity and action.
Question from the audience:

Does God teach you to use your will more over your mind?

Reply from Pastor O’Neill:

Well, you can see loved ones, that that is the terrible tragedy of course, that has taken place.
The will has given up its normal position of kingship in the soul. Normally, the will is the link,
between the spirit and your soul. But, the will has given up that kingship and the will is a pour
little slave usually, of our minds and emotions. So Cindy, usually the problem is not just that the
will needs strength but the will needs to be exercised along the lines of the function that God
originally had for it. I think the answer is that by practicing, by exercising the will, by the
will telling the mind to think certain thoughts, the will comes into a right relationship with the
mind.

Always you have to be trusting the Holy Spirit to be strengthening, but really it’s a matter of
exercising it in your soul, exercising the will’s control over the mind. This is the great lie that
Satan has persuaded us all, “Oh, I can’t. Free association is the name of the game. Any thought

that comes into my mind I must just think it. I must follow it out. Maybe there’s something deep,
and mysterious, and truthful about it.” So we’ve got this idea that any thought that comes into our
minds from wherever, we ought to follow it out and so this way that God has for us is totally
opposite to that.

It’s the will very much exercising iron discipline over the mind and so it is important to direct
our mind what we think. Oh loved ones, if you think of it for a moment, your poor mind, it’s more
just like a vacuum cleaner that sucks up everything in its path. Isn’t it? I mean it is. It just
sucks up all the time, all the things you hear. All the things that come over television and it’s a
lie that Satan has laid on us, “That you ought to absorb everything. Absorb everything you can.
Don’t miss a thing.” Well really, God’s plan is that we should be very selective and that the will
should govern our minds and should govern what comes into our heads.

Oh I think many of us would have less trouble with dreams if we just turned the mind off when
Frankenstein came along in the early days. I think a lot of us just opened ourselves to all kinds
of ridiculous things because we have this false idea that we can handle anything. No, you can’t,
there are a lot of things you can’t handle. And the will is given to us to guard our minds from
those things.

The beauty of course, as Schaefer (a Christian philosopher and author) would say, “The beauty of it
is we’re made in the image of God so we’re made to operate this way.” So actually, we have a lot
going for us. The personality was originally made to operate like this and it will if you exercise
it that way.

Question from the audience:

Can you do anything else except memorizing Bible verses?
Reply from Pastor O’Neill:

I think memorizing the Bible verses is a great help when you come to the beginnings of prayer times.
Indeed, “Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee”, obviously its great
strength as Jesus used it in times of temptation. It seems to me, that the pray reading is
something that is very valuable, where you take a Psalm, or a piece of praise in the Bible, and you
don’t so much memorize it but you read it, “Blessed the Lord, oh my soul.” And then you close your
eyes and you pray that up to God, “Bless the Lord, oh my soul.” And you let your mind think on the
very words that God himself originated.

And it seems that as you do that, those words that came from God himself, give your mind such a
sense of being in the right way that they are a great help to beginning praise. So I think that
that’s an important way too. I think of course, books are great because the mind can get all kinds
of sense of God’s order from the inside stuff of writers and saints.

Question from the audience:

The Bible says, “As a man thinketh so is he.”

Reply from Pastor O’Neill:

It seems loved ones that it is true that we’ve often said, “The spirit cannot get directly to the

body.” It can’t. The spirit – the only way the spirit can get to the body and get to the world is
through the soul. So unless the mind begins to reflect and express the truth that God has put in
our spirits through intuition, really that truth will never get through to our bodies and through to
the world. So not only as a man is in his spirit so is he, but as a man as in his mind as he thinks
and as his soul is, so that he is. That’s what his outward life is.

So it is true brother, that you can’t have your mind – that’s why the baptism of the spirit is so
important. It’s so important to get everything going the right way because if the mind is still at
the old manipulating game, then that’s what comes over. And if you remember, that’s what Paul said,
“Are you not of the flesh and behaving like ordinary men?” And a carnal person who is not baptized
with the spirit tends to be still in the manipulating game, the still getting the joy game. So he’s
still thinking as an unregenerate person actually.

I think that’s what the word means, “As a man thinketh so is he.” If he’s still thinking in the old
unregenerate way, that’s what he is to the world. That’s what the world sees him as, a Jacob that
is involved in sending presents to his brother to try to pacify him. But when he then, gets
baptized with the spirit and the soul begins to experience the spirit coming through, then the mind
begins to express itself. You can see loved ones, how vital it is to settle this thing of
crucifixion to the world. It just is, really.

Question from the audience:

I was wondering how much you should open yourself to the spiritual world.

Reply from Pastor O’Neill:

Brother, early on, I was kind of a free thinker or liberal in Britain and kind of thought, “Oh, you
ought to have experienced everything.” I was a poet, enthusiastic about experiencing everything I
could in Paris, and Rome, and all that stuff. And so I thought, “Oh, that’s the way to go.” But
soon after I dealt with Jesus on the cross I saw, no, you have to be a slave of Jesus Christ.

[Question inaudible 44:08]

Okay, okay. Well, I think I would hold to my ground brother, because I saw that God wanted me to
learn according to his program. And it seems to me the Holy Spirit is our teacher and he leads, you
know.

I could give you an example. Soon after I came into the Holy Spirit, ran into some demon
possession. And the Holy Spirit just told me, “You’re a little baby, you can’t do a thing. You
just keep clear.” And it was good that I had settled that issue that I am nobody, and I’m nothing,
and I don’t know anything. It was good that I had settled that because then I could say, “Yes,
Lord.” And later on as he prepared me and strengthened me then I was able to deal with it.

So that’s what I mean, it’s important to be lead by the Holy Spirit even in the spiritual world,
otherwise you can bite off more than you can chew brother. Well loved ones, shall we pray?

Spiritual Life #58

The Normal State of the Spirit No. 1

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

I don’t know if you’ve thought ever about how alike we all become in our society, and we really do.
I mean, the old commercials don’t help the matter much, but our schools probably don’t help the
matter much either. We learn to recognize the kind of behavior, and the kind of character that is
appreciated, and we learn it seems to me, even in circles like our own circle here tonight, we learn
the kinds of things that other people approve of. And it’s not long before we’re really not only a
‘mutual adulation society’ but we’re a ‘mutual please each other society’.

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought in some clear moments what little actors we can all become. And
I wonder have you ever sat back at certain moments of clarity and realized, “Really I’m not being
myself at all in this situation. I’m kind of reacting as they expect me to react,” or, “I’m even
responding the way people I respect expect me to respond.” And I think that’s a very subtle danger
too, isn’t it? It’s easy for us all to love each other a lot here, but to get the idea that
therefore what somebody that we love praises, or the way that somebody else is, that’s exactly the
way we are to be.

I don’t think any of us would quarrel that imitation is a very vital principle in education and
without imitation none of us would be here. We wouldn’t have been able to learn to ride bicycles or
drive cars if we hadn’t followed through that principle of imitation. But it does seem loved ones,
that there comes a time in your life when imitation becomes a real bind and really brings about
almost your own death. And sometimes I think many of us here talk so enthusiastically about
spiritual regeneration, and about coming alive and being born again, and sometimes I think we
haven’t a clue what we’re talking about. Because often we’re talking about being born again in
that we start doing the things that a whole group of supposedly born again people do. And we start
reading our Bible, and we start praying, and we start going to meetings, and we start talking the
way they talk, and we tend to call that at times, being born again. All it really is is joining
another club whose character we begin to take on.

Really, the truth is to be born again is to discover yourself as you really are in God for the first
time ever. I wonder how many of you see it as that. How many of you see it as a release into what
you really are rather than an enslavement into certain patterns of behavior that other people
praise, and laud, and even preach? Loved ones, yet that’s what it is really. Being born again is
you being what you really are in God. And I think some of you even now, think, “Oh yeah, that’s the
out for me, in God. Yes, you mean, yes I’m going to be a praying kind of animal, and I’m going to
be a praising kind of animal, and a Bible reading kind of animal. That’s what you mean in God.”
No, I just said in God because it’s only in his Spirit that we can escape from the conformity that
we fall into here in society. Truly, it is.

If you try to get out of brushing your teeth with sex appeal, or if you try to get rid of the
shakiness by drinking a certain kind of brand of non-caffeine coffee, if you live in that kind of
conformed world and you try to get out of that by your own effort, well it was the kind of thing,
you remember, we found in the days of the hippie movement. You remember, we all decided we’d be
different so we all grew beards, and we all wore jeans, and all the girls wore certain kinds of
gypsy dresses, but we all did the same thing and we all grew our hair long. And really, we all just

continued to look the same just different from what we used to be.

That’s what happens when you try to burst into what you really are under your own steam and by your
own power. It seems impossible for us to discover who we really are, or to discover the original
people that we are made by our own power. It does loved ones. All the attempts that you and I have
made of it are usually pretty ugly. I remember one dear soul, he became unbearable to live with but
he was being his real self you see, he was just letting it all hang out. When you let all hang out
that is in there instead of having it transformed, and changed, and renewed, and rearranged as it
was meant to be by God’s Spirit then you just let hang out all your ugliness, and all your
selfishness.

But loved ones, in God through his Spirit, through the free Spirit of his dear son who is alive in
this world and is alive here in this room, it is possible for you to discover the real person that
you are. It is. It’s possible for you to be yourself at last, and to be the fresh, new, free
person that you are. And I would pray that all of us in this room would realize that that’s what
we’re talking about when we’re talking about any of those terms: being born of the Spirit, or being
filled with the Spirit, or being renewed, or regenerated, or being released, or being baptized with
the Spirit, honestly loved ones, what we’re talking about is you as you really are inside your very
heart at last being able to show yourself. That’s what it is, that’s why God talks about your
spirit because that’s the real you.

Inside all of us, everyone, the person sitting next to you, the person sitting behind you, me,
everyone of us are interesting, original persons full of life, and full of new ideas, and full of
creative life. That’s true, you are. Really it’s just that we don’t grasp that in our hearts but
we’ve been dominated by trying to please everybody else in the outside world that has made all our
minds so boring. Really, if you look at all our little souls, our psychological parts, our minds,
and emotions, and our wills, they’ve all been triggered to react to certain reflex responses like
old Pavlov’s dogs.

Really, inside us there is a real person that is different from everybody else in this room, but our
souls have been trained by our bodies so that all our minds are brainwashed to think the same thing.
All people who believe the Bible think this way about politics. All people who believe the Bible
think this way about art. All the people who claim to be filled with the Spirit worship this way.
Really, I think, the angel’s go to sleep with boredom. Really, because heaven itself is not at all
like that but I think many of us have failed to realize how freeing the new birth is in our whole
lives and our personalities.

Loved ones, that’s our whole purpose here in Jesus. It’s for you, and for me, to be our real selves
in God, the people that we were made to be. I know I’ve often shared with you that when I came into
the place where I was at last ready to die to all the things that I thought I had to have, and where
I was ready to join my dear Savior on the cross, I at last became myself. I really did. And I know
a lot of you wonder, “Oh will you lose your personality?” You gain it. You lose your life and you
find your life. You at last find out the real personality you are.

I know with me, I was brought up in Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland I don’t know why it is
whether it’s the siege mentality or what it is, but we are very, very, in turned reserved people,
more so, much more so than the English, or the Scotts, or the Welsh. We’re just quiet little mice
that don’t want to be seen by anybody, we really are. My wife and I were in Dublin, oh I think four
or five years ago, but we went into a restaurant and she tapped me on the shoulder to look across

and there I saw (I had a brother who was two years younger than me) and there we saw two little
fellows 11 and 9, little Irish guys with their mum and dad in the restaurant, and really they were
just like I was. They were like little mice just – they didn’t want to do anything wrong that would
offend anybody else and they didn’t want anybody to look at them. And that’s really the way we were
brought up.

And you can see what a change comes over you in Jesus, because I could never imagine being what I am
now in the light of my upbringing. And I think that many of us are like that, many of us have
personalities that are filled with life and filled with creativity that God has planned will come
forth and will delight and enrich his world. But, we ourselves are still held down by all kinds of
things that we think other people want from us.

Oh I would encourage you with all my heart, just as I saw John here playing, I would encourage you
when I think of the early days when we first started as a body, I would encourage you to see that
Jesus’ Spirit is a free spirit and that his desire is that we burst out in all the newness, and in
all the difference, and in all the many faceted characters that we have. I would encourage you to
do that. One of the beautiful things about a strong body is don’t be afraid you won’t wreck the
place, you won’t. You won’t wreck it, you won’t pull the place down, and you won’t disturb
everybody but you can have the confidence that there’s a strong enough body of lovers of Jesus here
who are themselves so that you can afford to be yourself.

It’s so good I suppose, to know that you have people who will love you and who will not take
advantage of you when you fall on your face trying to be yourself. And you have loved ones that
will encourage you and not hold you back. Loved ones, I would encourage you to do that, to see that
the new birth and the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a glorious pilgrimage into what you yourself
really are. And oh, if you’re sitting there tonight with all kinds of feelings, “Well yes, but I
don’t – I’m afraid to do this. And I know that you expect us to do that, and my friend sitting
beside me hopes I’ll be this way.” Forget it! Blow it out of the water. I’d just ignore it.
Really, I’d just say to it, “Get thee behind me Satan.” I would. I would just treat it as Satan
because that’s a lot of stupid lies and deception and I would instead start dealing with your dear
Father and start saying to him, “Dear Father, I want to know the real person I am, and I want to
know the person you’ve made me to be. And I know I’m starting back a bit now, I have 15, 20, 30, 40
years over me and it will take a bit of doing, but Father I want to before I die, find out what it’s
like to be me, and to be my real self as you made me to be.”

Loved ones; honestly if you say that to your dear Father he will help you by his Holy Spirit, He
will begin to deal with you and will begin to guide you and move in you. And I would encourage you
to respond to it. I would. Even when he prompts you to do things that are very unusual for you, I
would do them. And so what if you fall on your face, you get up again and you go again. But I
would encourage you to move out as God’s Spirit guides you. I want you to understand I’m not just
talking about doing things because not all of us are singers, not all of us are artists, not all of
us are writers, but just in your ordinary everyday life to start breathing deep breaths in the
morning when you get out into that dear world and start enjoying that world, and seeing that you’re
a unique person in it and that the Father has made it for you and that he has unique things for you
to do in it each day.

Oh loved ones, there’ll come just a depth of freedom and liberty in you that will begin honestly, to
make your relationship with your Father the dearest one. Because actually, here’s the interesting
thing, there isn’t one of us in this room however kind we are, or however much we want for you,

there isn’t one of us who can release you. And there isn’t one of you that can release us. We
can’t. We can’t release each other. It’s such a fine thing that only the dear original Father that
made us can actually release us. In fact, he’s the only one who knows what we are to be.

So I would ask you to spend time with him. Really, some of it should be on our knees but a lot of
it can be just walking along talking with him. A lot of it is in those moments of reality when we
suddenly realize he’s there. Something like what Scott was talking about earlier on, there comes
moments, maybe in a prayer time, maybe on a bus, maybe just before you’re going to have supper,
there become moments you know, moments of revelation, moments of reality, moments of truth when
suddenly you realize, “He’s there.” Well, that’s a good moment. The supper might get a bit cold,
but wait for a minute and have a little talk with him at that moment. But don’t rush on, don’t
become a little machine that has to brush its teeth at a certain time, get its supper at a certain
time, and get up to bed at a certain time. No, don’t be that.

But when those moments of reality or truth come, then spend time with your dear Creator and listen
to him, and think through what he is saying, and be brave. Begin to move out on those things. Do,
be brave, and begin to move out on them. And it doesn’t matter if you tumble, and it doesn’t matter
if at times you’re awkward in it, but at least you’re beginning to be yourself as God really made
you. And that’s part of what it means to walk after the Spirit. It really does. That’s what it
is. It’s walking according to that part of you inside that is the real you, that’s your spirit.
What God wants you to discover is what your real spirit is like, and he wants that spirit to come
out and to change your soul, and your mind, and your emotions, and to start touching your friends.

I don’t know how many husbands and wives here get bored with each other. I think we get bored with
each other or roommates, or colleagues at work, I think we get bored with each other because we
don’t do this. We’re not being renewed day-by-day in this dear Spirit of God but we’re getting old,
and worn. I don’t know if you feel that at times, but if you feel, “Ah it’s the same old day, the
same person, the same office, the same job, the same thing.” Loved ones, see that unless we’re
being renewed every day, unless we’re discovering new bits of ourselves every day, it’s going to be
like that and you’re going to get middle aged before you’re 30, and you’ll be worn out before you’re
40, and you’ll be ready for the grave before you’re 45.

Really, that’s how people die, do you know that? Do you know how people die? People die before
they die, did you know that? They do. People die long before they die. Oh, there are countless
older loved ones that I know that have lived way beyond what they should have been living physically
because they wanted to live, and life was exciting, and there was plenty to be done. But I’ve seen
other loved ones, who weren’t nearly as ill at all die before they were 60 because they was nothing
more that they much wanted to do. And to tell you the truth they were just – well, it’s
interesting, George Sanders was a well known film actor if you remember him, fairly smooth, suave
Englishman. I always like to tell my wife that’s what I’m like, but I’m not I’m afraid so we joke
about being George Sanders.

But George Sanders was that kind of suave sophisticated Englishman and yet his death was tragic. Do
you know why? Somebody asked him what he was thinking and he said, “I’m just terribly bored with it
all.” That’s what kills people, when life ceases to have any interest. And I think that happens
loved ones when you bury the real person that you are. That’s true. You bury the real person that
you are under all kinds of conformities that you have learned from your very earliest school teacher
who dear love her, or dear love him, was trying to give you guidelines but all he meant was it would
be a guideline. But what we became was little stereotype robots that did nothing but fit into the

guidelines.

That’s why, I think, many of us find our daily jobs and our daily lives very boring and very
uninteresting. Actually, do you know that no job is interesting? Do you know that? Do you know
that it doesn’t matter what job you are in, there is no capacity inherent in any job to keep us
interested, there isn’t. It doesn’t matter how interesting the job is, eventually the job itself is
just a job, and it’s just actions that you go through. The interest in life is coming from within
you. If you are becoming the person that God made you to be, which is infinitely varied and
infinitely interesting, if you’re becoming that person your job is interesting.

I don’t know if many of you have met happy old comedians that do the most miserably boring jobs day
after day, and you meet them there and they’re putting on the same old tires, and the same old
wheels, but they’re full of life, and full of joking, and full of activity and interest in their own
mental life. Now loved ones, that’s what God wants us to be and that’s what you can be. I think,
often what happens with many of us is we get so used to conforming to what everybody thinks we
should do, and we get so caught up with what everybody thinks we ought to do, that we actually lose
the sense that we have come from the same hand as Jerry Lewis (American comedian). That we have
come from the same hand as Schweitzer (French missionary doctor), that we have come from the same
hand as Jesus and we begin to get the idea, “Well, I’m just not a very interesting person. I’m kind
of boring really. That’s about how you’d describe my character, I’m kind of a boring character.”
We kind of get that idea and we feel, “Oh yeah, well if I was interesting, I mean, I could see this
happening but I’m just not. I mean, there are some people who are interesting and some people who
aren’t.”

But loved ones, it’s not true. You came from the same dear Father and he hadn’t a down on you. He
made you with the same capabilities and the same interest as he made his own son Jesus, but it is a
matter of beginning to be acquainted with your dear Father, really, being acquainted with him. I
don’t know how many of you say your prayers. Maybe that’s what you do, you say your prayers, but
you don’t really ever touch the heart of God. You don’t ever really converse with your Father. You
don’t ever get any new thoughts from your Father.

Could I ask you that? Your new ideas that you get, the new little inspirations that you get, do you
usually find they come from books like Oswald Chambers, or from sermons, or from somebody else? Or,
do you find that they’re coming from somewhere else? And do you know that you can get new thoughts,
and new ideas, and new lights from your Father from conversing with him? I think a lot of us make a
mistake here. I understand what we all mean when we say that certain ones of us have gift of
prophecy or gift of preaching God’s word. I see that, I understand that God gives to some of us
sufficient light to do it every Sunday for instance, or to do it every day; I see that.

But loved ones, do you not think you’re pushing that rather far when you imply that those are the
only people that get new light directly from God? Do you not think that they are just the men or
the women that are appointed by God to maybe preach in a body, or to maybe teach? But that all of
us are meant to experience, to some extent, the gift of prophecy, that is the gift of being able to
speak God’s word, or the gift of knowledge, the gift of knowing what God is saying in his heart to
us. Is that not the normal life of a Christian?

Loved ones, I think it is true that if you’re getting your new ideas only from the books, or only
from other people, it’s possible that all you’re doing is saying your prayers. It is. It’s
possible that all you’re doing is not very different from the little guy with his prayer wheel just

whipping it around and then jumping into bed, instead of beginning to get to know the heart of your
Father. And I would encourage you to do that. I don’t know it’s interesting that Scott shared that
earlier on because that is what God wants for us. God wants us to receive revelation in our own
hearts so that we see ourselves more clearly, so that we see things in which we can be freer than we
are, and we respond to them and move into new territory of liberty. That’s God’s will for us. And
that’s his plan for the normal prayer life of a child of his. And I would encourage you to do that,
really.

Now, your spirit, your spirit is the part of you that will bring that renewal. Your spirit is the
part of you that will bring that renewal. And all I’d like to share with you is the Holy Spirit
will keep your spirit bubbling if you simply believe that you have been buried with Christ and have
been raised with him and sit at the right hand of the Father. You fix your mind on that. You
submit your will to the things that God reveals to you are normal in that position. And as you walk
in belief and obedience or trust and obey, or you walk in faith, the Holy Spirit will keep your
spirit inside you being renewed day-by-day, and being freshened, and being changed. And he’ll keep
your personality growing, and he’ll keep revealing to you more and more things about yourself that
you never knew. That’s true.

If you do those things, if you walk in faith, and I just want you to see clearly that faith is not
just the believing you have been crucified with Christ and raised together with him and sit at the
right hand of God but, it is also the will submitting to what he shows you is normal behavior for a
person in that position. So if you believe and you obey, or your trust and obey, then the Holy
Spirit will work on your spirit. Now you see, that’s what makes it different from the sensitivity
group approach, or the psychoanalytical approach, or the manage yourself kind of approach. See,
many people today know that they should try to be individuals so we fall into that trap of all
growing beards, all wearing certain kinds of clothes. That’s what happens when you try a do it
yourself job because, in fact, all you can do is change your mind, and emotions, and your will, and
make them follow certain habits but you can’t actually change and freshen the inner spirit. Only
the Holy Spirit can do that so you have to trust him to do that, you see. You have to have faith
that the Holy Spirit will begin to renew your spirit.

So you know, maybe you’re sitting here tonight and you’re saying, “Well, yeah I see some of it and I
think it sounds good, and I would like to go into it a bit but I don’t really see – I feel so dead
inside and I feel so bound inside the prison that I am that I can’t really see how I’ll get out of
it.” Well loved ones, you don’t really need to work out how to get out of it, you simply have to
believe and obey, and the Holy Spirit will begin to stir up your spirit within you, and he’ll begin
to renew it, and he’ll begin to give you light about it.

Don’t be afraid if you say, “Oh well, how do I know I’m not just way out there in left field?”
Because of course it is true that there are evil spirits and there are all kinds of deceptive
spirits that can get in and say, “Oh yes, this is what you should do to be your real self.” And
that’s what that loved one did, you remember, that I told you about. I mean, it was unbearable to
live with him but he was letting everything hang out. You know, if he thought of a thing he’d just
say it whether it tore a person apart or not.

Now, how can you be sure that you’re not involving yourself in that kind of thing? Well, basically
by faith. Basically, by the belief in obedience that’s the first thing. Basically, by believing
and being willing to be in Jesus and be raised with him to God’s right hand and basically, by
submitting your will to what God shows you is normal for a person in that position. But, it’s also

true loved ones that the Bible does tell us what a normal spirit will be like.

Now, what’s very important for you to remember as we begin just a few of these studies tonight is
don’t read these things and say, “That’s what I would be if I were a good boy and a good girl.”
Don’t do that, that’s killing you every time, you know. Stop that stuff where you take the free
dear word of God and you beat yourself over the head with it as a kind of how to be good book.
Don’t do that, just listen to these things that his dear word says and commit them to the Holy
Spirit. You can commit them to your memory, the actual verses, but then just look to the Holy
Spirit and say, “Holy Spirit, as I walk through this week will you just reveal these things to me?
If this is something that has something to do with me then will you bring it to my mind at the right
moment so that I can see it, and I can know that it’s from you, and I can begin to submit my will to
you in this area?”

So do that loved ones, please. Don’t take these dear words of God and make them a law unto
yourself. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, that’s the only law we live under. The
law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus means the act of the spirit that is in Jesus bringing life
to us as we dwell in him by faith. That’s the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. But,
there is no other law needed. Indeed, if you abide in that law you’ll be free and able to fulfill
all other law without effort.

So loved ones, let’s look just at a few. We’ll only be able to look at a few of these, but maybe
you’d look at Isaiah 57:15. The normal state of a spirit that is healthy in God, or of a person you
could say who is healthy in God. Isaiah 57:15, “For thus says the high and lofty One who inhabits
eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a
contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the
contrite.’” Normal healthy spirit is contrite.

I don’t know if you’ve got the clear distinction between conscious sin and unconscious sin. God
frees us through our crucifixion with Christ from the need to disobey him consciously. Now, I’m not
laying that on you as a law, I’m saying that’s a great privilege. We can come to the point in Jesus
where we are free from conscious knowing sin. That is we can come to the place in our crucifixion
or our resurrection in Jesus where we see and know that we should not lose our temper and we don’t
lose our temper. That’s it. We’re able to avoid sins that we know are sins and that’s what we mean
by conscious sin.

Now, that doesn’t mean that we don’t at times do things involuntary and the moment after they’re
done, oh we know we’ve done it. “I’m sorry.” And you didn’t determine to do them, it wasn’t
through bad temper, it wasn’t through lack of control, the thing was done almost in a moment almost
by an oversight and you know, “Well it’s an involuntary sin it’s not something that I willed. I
didn’t rebel against God and determine, ‘No, if I’m going to lose comfort by not doing this thing
then I’m going to do it.’” It’s not that kind of thing, it’s something you’ve done it, it’s done,
it’s an involuntary thing.

There are also things that you do that you don’t know are sins. You do them – there was a brother
this morning was asking me about something which I felt God had shown me to be a sin in my life but
he hadn’t shown it to him and so he did this thing, he didn’t see it as a sin. It was, you could
say, an unconscious sin because it was still a lack of conformity to God’s perfect standard but it
wasn’t something that he regarded or knew to be a sin. So your life will have involuntary things
that you do, that you’ve done them and as soon as you realize you’re sorry, you have no sense of

guilt from God, it’s just, “Lord, I’m sorry I really apologize.” That’s it. But there are these
other things, unconscious sins that you do, you don’t know about them. When God shows it then you
have to take action.

There are also loved ones, inexpedient acts in our lives. There are times when we really talk
harshly to someone. We don’t hate them, we don’t despise them, we don’t intend to hurt them but we
talk harshly. Or, we say something to someone that just at that moment is like a dagger in their
dear heart, they don’t need that, they can’t bear that at that moment. It’s not something that you
know is wrong; indeed in certain context it wouldn’t be wrong. It’s a raising of the voice at the
wrong moment, or it’s the making a joke at the wrong moment, it’s something that isn’t appropriate
and brings pain to them, those inexpediencies. Now, do you see that certainly we should not require
to be in continual contrition for known sins? But you can see there’s a fair volume of other things
that we can be in contrition about daily.

I would encourage you to see that it is consistent with victory in your life to walk with a contrite
spirit. To walk with a spirit that is not caught up in a, “I’m going to prove that I’m in victory.
Can you show me where I’ve sinned? No, not that wasn’t a sin that was an inexpediency.” Don’t get
yourself into that kind of defensive stuff. God has said to us that there’s victory for us but he’s
said to us plainly that he dwells with people who are of a contrite spirit. Walk with a contrite
and a soft spirit before God and be always open and willing to be sorry for anything that you did
sin or not, who cares. If it hurt somebody else be sorry for it, apologize for it. But, walk with
a contrite spirit don’t walk with a proud spirit. Don’t walk with a spirit that is always trying to
prove its right. Don’t walk with a spirit that is carrying its theology on its back and has to
defend it at every moment. No, walk with a contrite spirit that is soft towards God that is very
ready to repent of sin as soon as you see it. And walk with a humble spirit. God dwells with a
humble spirit, a person who is continually humble before him.

You remember, it’s said that Moses was a meek man. Above every man that was upon the earth he was
meek. And of course, you have to think, “Well meek? Meek? The guy who threw the tablets of stone
down and who rebuked the children of Israel? That man was meek?” And of course, the Bible makes it
clear that it was meek towards God. He walked with a meekness towards his Maker and a humility
before his Maker that was able to be humility before men when it was necessary but, at the same
time, was able to be confident, and stable, and righteous before men when it was needed.

So loved ones, a contrite and a humble spirit is not inconsistent with a life that on the whole
walks above sin, and I think we need to see that. And boy we need to see it’s more important to be
contrite in spirit than to be trying to hold on to some doctrine of victory over sin that prevents
you being real and honest in your own life with God. So, the Father says, “He dwells with a
contrite and a humble spirit.”

Just one more loved ones, that we could look at tonight because the time is going, Psalms 51:17.
“The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt
not despise.” I could tell you what put me off evangelical Christianity in Ireland and put me off
it here in America too. I’m sure the loved ones are doing it their way, but it was that kind of
Bible thumping evangelical that had everything set out, you know. It was all hard, “I believe this
about Jimmy Carter (former president of the United States); I believe this about Goldwater (American
politician); I believe this about the homosexuals; I believe this about abortion;” that hard, hard
spirit that came forth from them. I was more conscious of what they were believing than of any
lightness to the gentle spirit of Jesus.

I don’t know what your spirit is like, but I think it’s very easy for us in our tradition, even
though our tradition is slightly different it’s very easy for us to have a hard spirit in our
tradition. I remember the first time one guy giving a testimony in one of our fellowships on a
Wednesday night said, “Oh yeah, yeah, this girl came up to me with that plastic Christian smile.”
And that was the first time I thought, “Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s true we can put on a plastic
smile.” And it ties up a wee bit again, in fact, with what you were talking about earlier in the
service because unless your spirit is being broken and is in a state of brokenness, that is unless
you are coming into more and more revelation day-by-day before God which stuns you, shatters you,
and shows you that you have little of God in your life, unless you are shattered by him pretty
continuously so that you have to grab for him and you have to just throw yourself before him and
say, “Lord Jesus, if you don’t live your life in me nobody will ever see your life.” Unless you
have that kind of attitude loved ones, in fact, your spirit however soft it may appear compared with
that old Bible belt thing that I instanced, your spirit will be just as hard and it will be just as
difficult for people to touch you.

I don’t know how many conversations you’ve had at work, or how many conversations you’ve had here
even where you feel well, the person hasn’t really touched you and you really haven’t touched them,
you’ve just passed some small talk, or you’ve passed on some neat little gold nuggets from Oswald
Chambers or Watchman Nee, but you haven’t really touched each other. You haven’t really, if you’ll
excuse me saying, you haven’t really had intercourse with each other, your spirits have not really
meshed. And really the reason is, because your spirit is hard it’s not a broken spirit. It’s a
hard spirit that is kind of confident in itself and that thinks it is everything organized. And so
you don’t walk around among your colleagues and your friends at work as an approachable person, or
as a person who perhaps could think some new thoughts, or as a person who could possibly understand
where they’re coming from. You rather strike them as somebody who has got it all together and just
is pretty compact and low to the ground. That’s it.

A broken spirit is not like that. A broken spirit means that a person has magnificent and as
perfect as Jesus can make a tax gatherer like Zacchaeus feel at home talking with him, can enable a
woman who is caught in adultery to actually look into his eyes. A broken spirit enables you to be
that approachable to others and of course, it’s the only thing that enables you to transmit anything
to other people. You probably realize that.

I don’t know how long it is since you led somebody to Jesus. How long is it since you led somebody
to Jesus? Well actually, it’s connected up not with your witnessing technique which is probably
pretty good but it’s connected up with the brokenness of your spirit. When you’ve a broken spirit
that is always before God, always moving into new light, always being shattered again by the
revelation of his truth so that you cry with Paul, “I am the greatest of sinners,” and you grab for
that person who came to save sinners, and you grab in the process some of the fresh life of his
spirit, when you do that then your spirit speaks to other people. It’s incredible, but actually if
you could see the spiritual world you would see a big sign right up, “Come, I can help you,” that
sticks up from broken spirits.

Most spirits you would see are like steel tanks that are absolutely unapproachable and look
unapproachable, and are unapproachable, and when anybody touches them they kind of ring hard and
solid and nobody can get into them. So loved ones, it’s perhaps just good to see that it’s all
connected up with how really you are you. That’s it. How really you are being you in Jesus. How
really you are you with God. And that’s what it’s all about, you know. It’s not all about this

conformity and all of us wearing the right badges, and saying the right things, and shaking hands
the right way. It’s not that stuff at all. It’s a beautiful new freshness that is deep down.

“There’s the greatest freshness deep down things.” Gerard Manley Hopkins said. He was an English
priest who wrote poetry, “There’s the dearest freshness deep down things.” And it was his
abbreviated language that he invented in those years to express how fresh things are underneath
God’s good soil. “There’s the dearest freshness deep down things. “ That’s what there is in you.
There is. There is. You’re not the hard old dried up shell that you think you are. There’s the
dearest freshness deep down in you if you will just open yourself to your dear God and say, “Lord,
it’s time I found out who Bill is,” or, “Who Romaine is,” or, “Who Ernest is.” “It’s time I found
how who John is,” or, “Who Sarah is.” “It’s time I found out who Becky is. It’s time I found out
who I am Lord. Will you help me to start being myself in you as you made me?” And boy, I’ll tell
you this will be an exciting place really. Let us pray.

Dear Father, we sense that you would not make all the daffodils different, all the beach trees
different, and all the little flies different in some way without making us all different. We’re
the crown of creation, the dearest thing your heart conceived so Father, we know full well that all
of us are beautifully different and that there’s a beauty and an interest that you put into each one
of us that is to come forth to enliven others and make them aware of what individual life can be.

Oh Father, I would pray for my brothers and sisters and we would pray for each other, and we would
love each other and encourage each other to come out and be the real selves that you’ve made us. We
ask that this would happen, because we know that then Jesus will be glorified. Not by a lot of
people bowing down before him in conformity to a pattern, but by his coming alive in thousands of
different beautiful personalities.

Lord, we know that that is the real glory that will delight your heart. And oh we pray that you
will see the beauty of your son in each one of us, not just this coming week, but throughout the
rest of our lives.

And now the grace of our Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with
each one of us now and ever more. Amen.

Spiritual Life #59

The Normal State of the Spirit No. 2

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

I’d just remind you, loved ones, of the things we’ve been talking about the past few weeks. And
maybe a good place to begin is with the ‘me generation’ which we are all known as. We’re the ‘me
generation’. And you have the magazine, you remember, called “Self”, that was seen on the
newsstands. And yet it’s amazing and ironic that this generation that is known as the ‘me
generation’, has the greatest trouble finding it’s ‘me’. And isn’t that — I think that’s right,
that all of us probably feel the same way. We probably feel, “Yeah, that’s right. Call it the ‘me
generation’. I’m sure we are terrible, and we are selfish, and all that stuff.” And yet deep, deep
down in our dear little hearts we can’t find ‘me’. Because we seem to be so stereotyped, and we seem
to be so regulated by all the things that everybody else thinks we should be. And that’s a little
what we talked about last Sunday.

It is interesting if you read the magazine called “Self”, it is amazing how it tries to regulate us
all into certain ways to develop ourselves. And that’s what happens every time we human beings try
to free ourselves. We seem to actually end up imprisoned in still more laws, or more habits, or
more standards, or more external obligations that somehow prevent us being ourselves. And what
we’ve shared the past few weeks is, you really are different from me. And I am different from you.
And you’re different from the person beside you. And you’re different from the people behind you.
And you’re actually different from everybody else in the world. There is just not any other person
like you.

And the truth is that you’re probably miserable at times, because you aren’t being what God made you
to be. And some of the reason you feel — you remember, I told you about that title of a book,
“Sometimes I Feel Like a Blob”. Well the reason you feel like a blob at times is because, you
yourself, as you really are, are almost dead. I know it sounds strange to you, loved ones, but that
is the truth. And that’s really the truth that lies behind the things that we’ve shared for years.
It’s just to some of you it sounds odd. It sounds strange, but it’s always been a liberating
message if we could see it in its true light.

But honestly there is your great big body [Draws a big round circle on the display and labels it
‘Body’.] that does all that all the others do, uses the right toothpaste, and uses the right talcum,
and shampoo, and everything, and is like everybody else’s body. And there is your great soul [Draws
inside the ‘Body’ circle another smaller circle labeled ‘Soul’, and writes ‘Mind’, Emotions’, and
‘Will’ inside the ‘Soul’ circle.] with its mind, and its emotions, and its will. And they fall into
the same patterns as all the other minds, and emotions, and wills that are in the world. And
they’re all manipulating like mad, and getting as much fun as possible, and trying to dominate other
people and get them to do what you want them. So they’re doing — the body and soul is all the same
as all the other little bodies and souls all around. And that’s why you feel sometimes that there’s
a space in there, [Points with his pen to the center of the ‘Soul’.] that there’s a blob in the
middle that should be there because inside is a little tiny shrunken spirit. [He draws a very small
circle in the center of the ‘Soul’ circle.] And that’s the real you. And that spirit is almost
dead.

And it’s almost dead because you probably, ever from you were a little baby, have exercised it very

little. Very soon after you were born you began to receive messages from outside, from other human
beings, “This is what you should do if you want me to approve of you.” “This is what you should do
if you want to be happy.” “This is what all the other people in your little class are doing.”
“This is what all the people are doing in your high school.” “This is what you should do to be
popular and to be successful.” And really we were fed with all that stuff from outside, [Draws
arrows into the ‘Body’ circle] and we just fell into it. We didn’t – – we had little twinges in
here [indicates the spirit] at times. We felt at times, “Ah, but wouldn’t it be good to do what I
really think I should do?” But we didn’t respond to that.

And so the spirit remained shrunken inside us. And we never really realized it because we were
deceived by all the things that Satan told us, “Don’t bother about your spirit. That’s what the old
boring Sunday school teachers talk about, or the ministers talk about, or the Bible talks about.”
And we didn’t really realize that the spirit was us, it was the real ‘us’, and it was God’s desire
that that should grow, and it should begin to govern our whole lives. But we just ignored that.

And we continued to operate from the pressures outside, [Shows arrows into the Body] a little like
— as I shared this morning — until the time came when we were 18, 19. And we were just the
puppets of all these pressures outside. I mean, we just immediately got worried when somebody
called us, immediately got elated if somebody else smiled at us, immediately got sad if somebody
else told us something else. We became just the play thing of the outside world.

And that I honestly would ask you to look again at yourself and see to what extent you even still
are that. Have you ever thought — sometimes I wakened up in past years and I thought, “Waken up,
are you just a play thing? Are you just in the hands of these people who tell you, ‘Do you know
what so and so is staying about you?'” And of course it would set your whole stomach going in
knots. And I began to think at times, “Am I just a play thing of what anybody wants to feed me from
outside?”

And loved ones, I think that’s the way the majority of us have lived for years. And of course, when
we start trying to get free it’s almost impossible. And usually we end up really rebelling against
everything and trying to be ourselves. And we end up being huge monsters, grotesque monsters that
just don’t want to do anything with anybody. And of course, therefore we can’t get on with anybody.
And then it’s not long before we fall flat on our faces and say, “Well that was dumb. That isn’t
the way.” So we get back to this kind of life here. [Shows drawing with all the arrows coming in
from outside.]

Except that many of us do it, by coming into what we think is a kind of religious group. And then
we come into this religious group and we do all the things they do. Okay, so we sing that way, so
we’ll sing that way. And we smile this way, smile! And we laugh this way, and we speak this way.
And we do the things this religious group wants us to do. And so many of us end up so called
Christians, but really we’re no more Christian than the man in the moon, because we’re just doing
again what external pressures prompt us to do. And most of us have little tiny spirits that are
still shrunken. And that’s why many of us find little satisfaction in the Christian life, because
our spirits haven’t come really alive; they haven’t really grown; we’re not really acting from
within; we’re still acting from without.

And you know how often I shared with you that you cannot do anything about that, and that God knows
you can’t. And that’s why Calvary. And there’s no other way, loved ones. Calvary was the death of
the race. It was. Calvary was the death of the human race, the death of the old, fallen, human

race. And I can’t explain it any more than Einstein could explain that timelessness is the final
reality. But it is true that God was able to foresee the way your life would develop, was able to
foresee the way you’d be — you remember, like Gulliver? You remember, Gulliver in “Gulliver’s
Travels” where he lay down, I think, to sleep. And then all the little men, you remember, tied him
to the earth with great stakes. And you remember, he wakened up and he was tied, and all these
little dwarfs were crawling all over him.

God foresaw that you would be like that. You’d be tied to the earth in half a dozen or a thousand
different ways. God knew that. And he put you into his son, Jesus, and he broke those ties. He
broke the powers, the elemental spirits that control you, and bind you, and fetter you, and chain
you. He broke all those things. And he lifted you in his son, Jesus, as Jesus rose from the dead.
And he raised you up with Jesus, and he made you new, able at last to move from absolute rest, to
move from a peaceful closeness to him as a person, that would give you at last a sense of direction
and a sense of stability in your life.

And loved ones, you can enter into that, actually this very moment as I am speaking. You can enter
into it by believing, by coming to a point where you say, “Yes, I believe that. I believe that,
‘That we who were dead in our trespasses and sins, God has raised up, and made to sit with him in
the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, far above every rule, and authority, and dominion, and power.’
And that means me. I believe that. I believe that by faith.” And faith loved ones, comes in a
moment like that. It is an instantaneous thing. And the moment you grasp that, you at that time
have entered into reality. And then, it is possible for this dear little spirit to begin to grow
and grow. [He indicates that little center circle on his diagram.] And do you know how it grows?
It’s what you prayed in the prayer, Bill. It grows by at last regarding Jesus as a person,
regarding him as a dear person, yearning for him, and wanting him, and talking with him, and
treating him as a person. Loved ones, that’s it! That’s it!

I said to one brother coming up the stairs — I met him on the stairs this evening, and I said, “You
know, it does seem to me that everything that God has given us and promised, comes in Jesus, that
you actually don’t need to worry a lot about the baptism of the spirit, or sanctification, or
victory over sin, or this thing or that thing. Everything comes with Jesus. You actually don’t need
to propel yourself into the position at the right hand of God. You simply take Jesus for real. You
receive him into your life by faith. You treat him for real, and he lifts you up into that
position. He brings all those things with him.”

It is a miracle loved ones. And you don’t need to strive for it. It is by faith. You believe,
“Lord Jesus, I believe you’re real. I’m going to start talking to you, and loving you, and
listening to you, however long.” And that’s Bill, why you — what you prayed was good. It’s
waiting on you, “I’m going to wait until I hear you. I’m going to wait in this bedroom until I hear
you. I’m not going to say my prayers and turn my little prayer wheel, and then get going. I’m
going to wait until you speak to me.” Loved ones, honestly that’s it. It’s Jesus as a person.
It’s him that brings all that reality with him.

And then you remember, we shared that your spirit begins to be the dominating feature in your life.
And you begin to have direction. And you see, I think that’s the problem. If you sit in your room
on your own, it’s not long before you feel like a blob, because you feel nothing. There’s just
nothing. “Well, do I feel a little twitch? No, nothing!” And many of us just go into depression
because there’s nothing. And very often that’s why we start the old wheel all over again. We say,
“Well we can’t feel anything. Well there must be nothing. Well I’ll turn on the TV.” And I turn

on the TV, and then we see something on TV that stimulates the mind, and the mind responds. And
we’re off again on the old business of being governed by the things that come from outside. Well
the reason you sit at times in your room and feel nothing is because Jesus is in reality, in there
if you would look to him, and respect him, and acknowledge him. But you insist on not believing
that. You insist on sitting in your room quiet and thinking, “Well there’s nobody but me and the
dog, or me and the book, or me and the room.” And that’s it.

That’s not faith. Faith is believing that Jesus is where God put him, around you, and inside you,
and all about you. And the moment you begin to exercise faith in that, the moment you begin to
treat him for real — it takes a little while and it may take a waiting upon him — but loved ones,
you’ll begin to sense there is a spirit there beginning to act upon you. And that, of course,
transforms everything, because at last you sense a direction coming from inside. You sense there
are some things that you should do. There are some things that Jesus wants to do in you, and then
once you begin to respond to that your spirit grows and grows. But loved ones, that’s the key.

And that’s why I had emphasized to you, religious people — religion doesn’t do anything for us. It
just puts us to hell in a more respectable kind of way. But it really doesn’t do anything for us,
that is religion that is a practice of external laws, and regulations, and standards which we think
will endear us to some group of people or some dear parents. It doesn’t. The only thing that frees
you and liberates you is Jesus as a real person that you respect, that you acknowledge, and that you
walk with and you respond to. And loved ones, that’s the way we’re meant to walk until we get to
heaven.

Now you may say, “Well, can you trust that Spirit?” Yes, you can. And you remember — I shared
with you last Sunday — that you can tell the kind of life that Jesus within you will produce. In
other words, you can be safe from the fear that is an evil spirit, or the elemental spirits of the
universe, because the Bible outlines a certain description of the normal state of the spirit.

And we shared you remember, a little of that last day. And I’d just like to go a little further
today, if you would, because I think there is some truth in them. Proverbs 16:19, the normal state
of our own spirits: “It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor than to divide the spoil
with the proud.” And some of us, I think, feel that if Jesus is within us, then our spirit is
always strong, and stable, and steady, and just absolutely confident.

Well yes, Jesus is confident. But his Spirit is confident in a quiet way, in a lowly way. Not that
you look down on yourself, but really that you don’t look on yourself at all. And that’s the secret
of walking in a balanced place with God and in life itself. Not looking upon yourself, but keeping
your eyes on your Savior, being filled with his thoughts, keeping your eyes on his face so that you
don’t even think of yourself at all. And you remember, I shared with you before, I learned a little
how to be a model. Not that I could be a model or I want to be a model. But when those dear girls
are walking down that elevated platform with the Christian Dior dresses on, and everybody is looking
up to them, often they have real trouble being steady or stable, especially in those high heels that
they wear, with everybody watching. And it’s very easy to think, “Oh, everybody’s watching me!”
And this girl — oh years ago I read it — she said, “What they teach us to do is the moment we step
onto that platform, with everybody looking at us, we fix our eyes on some person in the back of the
room and we just look at that person. And then we can walk without any nervousness or any trouble
at all, because we’re preoccupied with them rather than with ourselves.” Now that’s what it is.

The normal state of our spirits is lowly, not because we’re looking down on ourselves and think

we’re rotten and pitiful, but because our eyes are on Jesus. And then, you see, his lowly spirit
imparts that lowliness to our spirits. And of course it’s that too, that keeps us from being
arrogant or willful. A lowly spirit is one that is easily changed and that is easily entreated.
And don’t you agree, that there are many people who call themselves Christians who really would put
you off, because of their unapproachability? I think we shared it before. They aren’t approachable
and they cannot be questioned. And if you dream of suggesting that they are wrong at all, they
almost shout louder in order to prove that they’re right.

And oh we used to — I think I told you — we used to preach in the open air when we were at
seminary. And we used to joke each other, “Shout loud! Your argument is weak. And I think that’s
what you feel with many loved ones, who say they’re Christian. They almost are — there’s some
uncertainty inside, so if you ever question them, they almost become more violent and more vehement.

Now when your eyes are on Jesus, you’re at ease. You’re at peace. You don’t need to defend
yourself. You don’t need to defend your opinions. You don’t need to defend your position or your
state. Your eyes are on Jesus, you know that if you’re going to be saved it’s because of this dear
Lord that has his arms around about you. You know your eyes are on him and that’s the secret of
your salvation. And so his Spirit fills you with a lowliness of spirit that is willing to question
itself and is willing to think it might be wrong.

I don’t know if you’ve found it, but some of you have said to me, “Well, what about guidance? Are
you always sure?” And you remember, I’ve responded to you the only way I could that, “It seems to
me now, I’m surer than ever of what God wants me to do.” And yet I’m more willing — when I see the
thing happen — I’m more willing to admit, “Yeah, I was completely wrong.” It’s interesting. It’s
ironic, but as you walk with Jesus he gives you more certainty of what you’re to do. But if you
ever miss the way, somehow you’re more ready than ever before to say, “Sure, I was wrong. I was
wrong.”

And loved ones, that’s because our confidence is not in ourselves, but in our Lord. And our
confidence is in our eyes being on Jesus. And I would remind you again, don’t say to yourself,
“Good, lowliness! Okay, I’m going to be lowly, lowly, lowly!” Don’t! Don’t, because that —
you’re going to get into the legalism all over again. Look to Jesus. You’re in Jesus! God has
placed you there. He has broken the bonds that bind you to the pride of the world, and the false
certainty of the world. And he has freed you in himself at the right hand of God, and you are his.
And you belong to him, and he is yours. And he will go to heaven and you will go with him. And
that’s the basis of all our peace. So it’s ‘eyes on Jesus’. That’s one of the marks.

Loved ones, another one is in Matthew 5:3, in the Beatitudes, you remember. “Blessed are the poor in
spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” And we normally think, “Oh no! If you’re filled with
the Spirit you’re rich in spirit.” But do you see that we’re always empty, that we’re always empty.
There is only one who has the fullness of the Spirit, and where he dwells the fullness of the
Spirit dwells. But we ourselves possess nothing. In fact, that’s what the Bible says, “We live
possessing actually nothing inside.” And somebody who is poor in spirit is always one who goes to
God saying, “Lord, I don’t have what you have. You have to give it to me.”

In fact, it was one of the old saints that said that, “Those who are in Jesus are beggars who expect
to live off the wealth of God.” They are beggars who expect to live off the wealth of God. And oh,
one brother shared with me maybe two weeks ago. He said, “No, I don’t want to be able to prove that
I have the gift of knowledge, or that I can discern spirits, or that I have this gift or that gift,

or that I have this understanding, or I can explain this difficult point of the Bible. No, I have
many things lacking in my life, but God has all this wisdom. And he will give to me what he wants
me to have. And if he wants me to admit to someone, ‘I don’t know,’ it can only be for my good and
for my up-building in Jesus. So, no! I don’t want to be a great mover in spiritual affairs. I
don’t want to be in the position where I have to be proving myself to somebody else that I have this
depth of spirituality. No, I have nothing. Jesus has everything.”

I don’t know if that hits you. But it hit me that many of us who think of ourselves as alive
spiritually are always trying to grab on to any little thing that looks vaguely like a gift of a
spirit and to claim it. “Yeah! Oh, yeah! Yeah I’ve moved in the gifts, you know, yeah, yeah.
Every day I’m moving in the gifts.” But it’s so opposite to the spirit of the saints, and so
opposite to the Spirit of Jesus who always said that he could do nothing of himself, that everything
he had came from the Father. And of course as Jesus is to the Father, we are to Jesus. We’re poor
in spirit.

You remember, it was the very opposite of that, that Jesus found as the Holy Spirit — in the
churches in Revelation, if you look at it. Revelation 3:14, “And to the angel of the church in
Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s
creation. I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So,
because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.’” And then
here was why they were lukewarm, “For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.”
And then Jesus points out the reality, “Not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind,
and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich, and
white garments to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to
anoint your eyes, that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and chasten; so be zealous and
repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will
come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”

And it is so different, isn’t it, to what we’re taught? We’re taught to be big in our profession
even if we’re small in our possession. And Jesus seems to show the opposite. He says, “Be content
to admit that you’re poor, that you’re wretched, you’re blind, you’re pitiable.” And many of us,
you see, think, “Oh, but if we do that we won’t have any part in ministry!” Yes, you will. That’s
when you have part in ministry. Every time you see a new poverty in yourself and you grab out for
Jesus, as you grab for him, he comes in in fullness and overflows to some other people. That’s the
way it works. But when you think you have everything, then you don’t grab for him, and so you pass
on to somebody what you think is rich, but what is actually poor because it’s yourself.

And loved ones, that carries on. And I’d just like to mention this last thing. It’s in Galatians
6:1. But you’ll see a wholeness about the normal state of the spirit, because all of these
descriptions are linked together. “Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are
spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.” And Jesus brings to you a spirit of
gentleness. And the Greek word is “praus”, and it really has the meaning of a spirit that is easily
turned in God’s hand, that easily moves this way and that. Phillip is found on a certain road. The
Spirit catches him up and moves him elsewhere. He finishes that work –sometimes just half finishes
it — the Spirit catches him up and moves him elsewhere.

But a spirit that grieves the gentle Spirit of Jesus, is one that is moved to work and then says, “I
have to finish that work. No, no, I’m not moving. I’m not moving until I finish this.” But a
spirit that is Jesus’ spirit of gentleness is willing to be moved this way and that, whether the

work seems half finished or not, he does as much as God wants him to do and then he yields, and he
moves on. In other words, Jesus is ever the lamb! Jesus is ever the lamb!

And you remember, in that dear book of Hession’s, Roy Hession — “The Calvary Road”, it’s called.
And you remember, how he says that, “Only something as gentle as a lamb will allow something as
light and as fragile as a dove to light upon it.” And you remember, of course, the dove lit upon
Jesus’ head at the baptism. And the Holy Spirit was in the shape of a dove. And of course Hession
says that that’s the only kind of spirit that the dove of the Holy Spirit will dwell upon and abide
upon, the gentle spirit of a lamb.

If you’d just be patient, I just think the words are so good. He says, “Look at Jesus for a moment
as the lamb. He was the simple lamb. A lamb is the simplest of God’s creatures. It has no schemes
or plans for helping itself. It exists in helplessness and simplicity. Jesus made himself as
nothing for us and became the simple lamb. He had no strength of his own or wisdom of his own. No
schemes to get himself out of difficulties, just simple dependence on the Father all the time. ‘The
Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do.’”

So good if we would say, “I can do nothing of myself, but what I see Jesus doing.”

[Reads from “The Calvary Road”] “What schemes we have had of helping ourselves and of getting
ourselves out of difficulties? What efforts of our own we have resorted to, to live the Christian
life and to do God’s works, as if we were something and could do something? The dove had to take
its flight, at least as far as the conscious blessing of his presence was concerned, because we were
not willing to be simple lambs.”

I don’t know if you can see that, but that’s why we lose liveliness at times, because we drive away
the dove. That’s it, loved ones. Most of the ways we drive him away are not all these outward
things, though they certainly are symptoms that we’ve already driven him away. But we drive him
away by our ‘inside independence’ of the Savior who is within us, wanting to show us and guide us
what to say or do. That’s it. And we become coarse and insensitive to his voice, and we start
getting used to trying to follow him on our own by our own efforts. And that’s how we drive the
dove of the Holy Spirit away.

And really the truth is that Jesus is in you. And you are in him. God has done that work. He has
done that for all of us, so the only thing that you have to do is either exercise your faith that
that is so and accept it, or not exercise it and reject it, but you don’t have to bring it about.
You don’t have to put yourself into Jesus. You don’t have to bring Jesus into you. God says he has
already done that. He has put us all into his Son, and crucified us all there, and buried us all
there, and resurrected it all to his right hand. And we simply have to have faith that that is so
and then begin to talk with our dear Lord, or we have to simply reject that and ignore him. And
that’s why the dove of the Holy Spirit is driven away, loved ones.

And Hession — oh I just share with you, [Reads from “The Calvary Road”] “He was the silent lamb,
‘As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.’ Facing the calumnies of men,
we read, ‘He answered nothing.’ He never defended himself, nor explained himself.”

We’re always at it. We’re always explaining ourselves. Sometimes we should probably ask, “Are we
explaining ourselves so that they really understand Jesus, or are we thrusting ourselves forward as
people who make sense?”

[Reads from “The Calvary Road”] “Our voices have been loud in self-defense and self-vindication, and
there has been anger in our voices. We have excused ourselves when we should have admitted frankly
our wrong. On every such occasion the dove had to take his flight and withdraw his peace and
blessing from our hearts because we were not willing to be the silent lamb.”

Well that’s it. There is only one dear being that will go into heaven, only one. There is only one
person that will go into heaven. Do you realize that? There is only one. And only the people who
are in him will go in with him. And God has put you in him. And you have him in your heart, in the
center of your spirit. And he will surely guide you in this life if you’ll acknowledge him.

Now I would encourage you tonight, when you go up to your bedroom, I’d encourage you not to say your
prayers. Not to say your prayers, but to say, “Lord Jesus, are you here? Lord, are you here? Are
you here Lord? Lord, are you alive? Lord, are you somehow so big that you can be at the Father’s
right hand, and yet you can be right here, and that I am in you?” That’s it, loved ones. That’s
it. Ask any husband or wife what’s the dearest thing as the years pass by. Well at the beginning
they have nothing but each other. At the end they have all kinds of things, all kinds of things.
They have sons and daughters; they have houses; they have cars; they have money. And a real husband
and wife will answer you at the end, “What have we?” “Each other!” That’s what we have, Jesus,
only Jesus. However many years we walk with him, however many things he may do through us, at the
end we only have Jesus. And you have him. And he is pleading with you to look to him and to let him
be your Lord, your present Lord, and your friend now. I pray that you will.

Let us pray. Dear Lord Jesus, we get so coarse. We’re so anxious to be good Christians. And Lord
we see that that’s not what you’re asking, but you’re asking us to acknowledge you, believe in you,
and treat you for real, and listen to you, and let you tell us things, and love you. And to
continue to do that until you start speaking back to us, and you begin to give us that sense of
direction that is personal, so that we are at last the individuals that our Father made us to be.

Lord Jesus, thank you, that you have a life to live in each one of us that is different from what
you live in anybody else. And oh Lord, we wouldn’t miss that for the worlds. Thank you Lord.

Dear Lord, thank you.

Now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with
us and abide with us throughout this week. Amen.

Spiritual Life #60

The Normal State of the Spirit No. 3

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

There is a statement that you would use. I think I first met it in Benilde High School [Catholic
high school in St. Louis Park, Minnesota], when I was teaching there. And some of — it was very
popular. The Christian brothers were beginning to turn to psychology. There was that period in the
Catholic Church after Pope John when we were kind of modernizing everything. And that’s when I
first heard the statement, “Who am I?” I mean I thought it was dumb because in Ireland, during the
war, all the children were given identity disks with your name and address on. And so identity
disks were very familiar to us, and I thought, “Well, you just look at your identity disk and see
who you are.” And I’m Ernest O’Neill, 68 Banbury, Belfast.

So, I could not understand what you were all at when you were saying this, “Who am I?” Or, when all
these sensitivity groups came in with, “I’m trying to get in touch with myself,” it just seemed so
strange to me. I thought, “Oh, these poor souls. I don’t know what’s wrong with them that they
can’t get in touch with themselves.” And it’s only – honestly, it’s really only now that I’m
realizing something of what you loved ones, in our mass society, here in America, were fighting.
It’s only now that I’m really beginning to see how many of you were so overwhelmed by what your
parents wanted you to do, or it seems to me, even more, by what your peers expected of you, or by
what your friends expected of you. And it seems to me, you were so brainwashed with the old TV
encouragement to be like everybody else, that I’m just beginning to grasp that many of you lost a
sense of yourselves as individuals at all.

Now, it was harder for me to realize that because in Ireland, we’re very much individuals. And we
are ourselves. We may be ugly and miserable, but we’re very much ourselves. And we’re very used to
standing up and being ourselves. In fact, we love that. We love a battle. We like to fight to be
ourselves. But I can see a little in our mass society, here in America, especially where not only
the media, but everybody spreads from mind-to-mind what everybody else thinks of everybody else. I
can see a little of the pressure that many of you came under from your early school days. And so,
I’m beginning to grasp a little of what you mean when you say, “I’m trying to find out who I am,”
that many of us, perhaps, have fallen into patterns of behavior that were just expected of us.

Now, with due respect to you, I think you were scared, and fearful, and you were miserable old
cards, that you did that. But probably, I would have done the same thing, had I been so
brainwashed. But however it happened, I think many of us lost touch with who, we ourselves, really
were. Indeed, I can see that many of you, maybe from you were wee babies, began to develop into
what somebody else thought you should be. And I certainly, can sense the pressure that was upon you
in school days, especially when high school was so empty of content. Because I think that’s what I
discovered in teaching high school here in America, often it was empty of content. And your
preoccupation was what the other guys, or the other girls thought of you, or what everybody else on
the team thought of you, or what all the other parents thought of you, or what the teachers thought
of you. And I can see that it was very easy for you to become just a little robot that was
governed, and trained, and molded by what everybody else expected.

And I can see, too, how many of us tried to break out of that, and in the process became ugly
monstrosities really. I think that many of us thought, “Yeah, yeah. I don’t know who I am, but I’m

fed up trying to please everybody else, and I’m trying – I’m fed up trying to be what everybody else
wants me to be. I’m going to be myself.” And so, we confuse being yourself with doing exactly what
you wanted when you wanted. And saying exactly what you thought when you thought it, and holding
nothing back and that’s how many of us got into this ‘honest’ kind of syndrome, “Oh, let me be real.
Let me be really honest. Let me really say what I think.”

And then, it wasn’t far until we got into a preoccupation with ourselves. And I think many of you
maybe, are at times, somewhere between those. You’re trying to be what somebody else wants you to
be, and yet you’re trying to be yourself. And I think many of us come into a fellowship and a
spiritual family like this, really aware that things are not right inside, but not terribly sure
what’s wrong. And I think many of you do actually make the error of receding back into what you
were in school. I think many of you realize, “Well, I’m ugly as I am. I shouldn’t be wanting my
own way. I shouldn’t be saying just what I think when I want to say it. Maybe, I should be
becoming what Pastor says we should all be, or maybe I should be becoming what the others, who
obviously are respected in this group, are like.” And so, I think the tragedy is that many of you
slip back into the old pattern of trying to conform yourself, not this time to the school world, or
to the world of your peers, or you neighbors, but to the Christian world or the religious world.
And you end up becoming little robots, except that you’re little religious robots this time.

And that’s what we’ve been sharing about these evenings, that being born again, really means
becoming what God made you to be. And that the problem that you have in ever finding your own
individuality is because your own individuality is actually dead. [He starts to draw on the display
a large circle, the ‘Body’, and inside that a smaller circle. the ‘Soul’, then inside that a very
small circle.] And what you’ve got is a very live body, and a very live soul with mind, and
emotions, and will that work the way everybody else’s does, but in here you’re dead. [He writes
‘Spirit’ in the very small circle.] Your spirit, that’s where your spirit is. That’s where the
real you is. That’s actually dead.

And do you see that you can never find that by this business of, “Well, I’ll try to be my real self,
and I’ll just speak out, and I’ll say what I think, and I’ll be myself,” because the incredible
thing is, there is no self to be! There is only a ‘you’ in connection with your Father, your Maker.
But if you’re not connected with your Maker, your spirit has died: there is no real you! And so,
there’s no way in which you can find a self there, because the self is dead.

And actually, the only way you can find that self is by coming to the One Person who is himself, and
who is alive, and who moves from within a real character and a real personality. And that is the
only way you’ll ever find yourself, loved ones. It is! I didn’t realize that this was what a lot of
you struggle with. But that’s the meaning of being born again. The only person who can bring you,
as you were really made to be by God, alive — in other words, the only one who can make you alive
inside, in your ‘real you’, is the one who, himself, is the only one that is truly alive. And
that’s Jesus. And that’s the only way to come alive. It is. You’ll never do it, loved ones, by
this kind of robust taking the self into your own hands, and: “I’m going to be my real self. And
I’m going to find myself, and get in touch with myself. And I’m going to be no longer afraid of
what people think of me.” No, you’ll create some monstrosity that isn’t the real you at all.

There’s only one way to find you as you really are, and that is to begin to communicate with the
dear person who is the only free person in this whole world. And really there only is one who is
free from the external pressures of other people’s opinions, and the external pressures of
circumstances. And that is Jesus, loved ones. And what each of us here in this room most need is

Jesus. And you have to first of all believe that he’s alive. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to
contact him. You have to first, believe that he’s alive. And then, you do need to begin to speak
in faith to him. And it does mean long periods of time on your own. It does. There’s no other way
loved ones. There’s just no other way, but long periods of time alone with Jesus.

Now honestly, it doesn’t matter whether you’re kneeling on your knees or whether you’re apparently
praying, or whether you’re lying back on a lawn with the sunshine. It really doesn’t matter. Or
whether you’re sitting in a chair with the lights out in a room, or whether you’ve just stopped the
car by a lake and you’re just sitting there. And your eyes maybe are open, and yet they’re not
seeing anything. But you’re murmuring deep down in your heart to Jesus. That’s what’s needed,
loved ones. It doesn’t matter what the format is. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in here or
outside, but you need to be on your own talking to the one person who can begin to bring you alive
inside. And that’s the only way to do it.

So, you’re never going to do it unless you will spend some time alone. And if you say, “Brother,
I’m afraid to be alone,” loved ones, you have to be alone. You have to sometime stop the mad
scramble always to be with other people. You have to stop this mad scramble always to be reading
books, or always to be taking things in from television, or taking things in from other people.
Sometime, you have to “Be still and know that I am God.” You have to quiet things inside and calm
that dear old mind that is churning away, and those emotions that are churning with desires, and you
have to say, “Lord, Jesus, I don’t even — it’s a voice speaking, but I don’t even know what this
voice is meant to say. I don’t even know the kind of person I am. Lord, I’m a conglomeration of
things. I’m a mess of trying to please this person, and afraid of that person. I’m a mixture of a
robot that is prompted by these circumstances, and a selfish drive inside me that isn’t even me,
that is driving me in some other direction. Lord Jesus, you’ll have to come and calm this lake
inside me.” But loved ones, it needs to be that. That’s what it is to come alive inside.

And I don’t know what you thought being born again is. Sometimes, I shudder when I think of all the
things that you maybe think it is. But it’s communicating with Jesus. It’s talking with Jesus.
It’s beginning to treat Jesus as a real person. It’s loving him and allowing him gradually, to
speak to you.

Now honestly, it will be a while, loved ones. And you’d better just face that. You’re going to
have to spend some time, some considerable time, like that, or times, before you will be quiet
enough to hear his voice. That’s true. The fact is you’re not being quiet. Your mind is churning,
or there’s a desire inside you to really answer for Him. But in some way, there isn’t absolute
faith. And you see, absolute faith is when you really do believe he’s real, and you really do
believe that he does love you, and that he will speak to you, and that he will make you alive
inside.

And until you come to that, you’ll be trying to do the ventriloquist! You will. You’ll be trying
to do a little speaking for Jesus to you. You’ll think you have to run both sides of the
conversation until you come into absolute quietness. And if you say to me, “Is it meditation or
passivity?” It isn’t! It isn’t! It’s a yearning. It’s an act of yearning for Jesus to speak to
you. It’s an act of conviction within you that unless he speaks to you, you will not come alive.
He must speak you alive! He must do for you what he did with the widow’s son at Nain. He must touch
you into life. That’s it loved ones. And he will! There is a person inside you that is real, and
that can be alive, and that has the desires, and the plans that God has planned, and has in his
heart for you. He has.

I mean, you are different. You are different. You’re different from every one of us in this room.
And you have something to do in your life that none of the rest of us can do. Really, that’s true.
You have something in your life that none of the rest of us have. And the world will be a poorer
place, immeasurably poorer. And your Maker who made you, will miss something beautiful in his plan,
and will have a tear in his heart forever, if you do not come alive, if you do not get together with
your Savior, and receive liveliness and life from him. And loved ones, that’s what it is to be born
of God. And that’s what it means to say that your spirit comes alive.

It was interesting for me, because I love literature and poetry, and have great respect for the old
educators that used to be in America and in England. It was interesting — I read from time-to-time
poetry, but I read also old Cambridge lectures. And these lectures were given by a man who was
knighted in Cambridge for his work in English literature, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. [1863 – 1944]
And he has lectures that were delivered over a period of maybe actually two years all together, on
the art of reading. And they were delivered in 1916. And there’s just you a sanity and balance
that comes through them.

Now, what I’m going to ask you to do is suffer me — just suffer me because you love me — because
one of the things he does is he quotes a poet called Robert Browning. Robert Browning writes this
poem in which he talks about the death of St. John the Evangelist at Patmos. And by the way, I’d
just mention to you, oh we need to pray that God would send us lecturers and professors like this
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, because they had a balance about them, and a godliness about them which
they never expressed outwardly in their lectures, that brought sanity and balance into education.

However, I’ll go on. Robert Browning writes like this – now, I’ll go slowly and explain it because
the language is a little different. He says of St. John the Evangelist, “This is the doctrine he
was want to teach, how diverse persons witness in each man,” different persons in each of us, three
souls, he calls them. He didn’t know our diagram, but he called them three souls. “Three souls
which make up one soul. First, a soul of each and all the bodily parts, seated therein, which works
and is ‘what does’.” And so, he says “First of all, you have a soul,” he calls it, that is the body
— made up of the body. “And it is ‘what does’, and has the use of earth, and ends the man
downward.” It’s the part of man that connects it with the earth downward. “But tending upward for
advice, grows into and again is grown into by the next soul, which seated in the brain useth the
first with its collected use, and feeleth, thinketh, willeth.”

And it just — it was just—oh, it was just so good for me to realize, “Oh, these dear guys, they
knew it all long before we had our little discoveries.” And then he says, “Is ‘what knows’,” and
boy, that came home to me that — that the soul inside us, the mind, emotions, and will, that’s so
often ‘what knows’. And it’s interesting, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch says — his lecture is funny —
but he says later on, “One of the greatest blessings that ever came to the world was when the
Barbarians burned the library in Alexandria six different times.” Because, they burned up a whole
lot of books that otherwise would have filled us up with all that the world knows.

And it’s very interesting, then, he goes on – I’ll tell you what he says is the purpose of
education. He says then, “Which duly tending upward in its turn grows into and again is grown into
by the last soul. That uses both the first, subsisting, whether they assist or no, and constituting
man’s self…” And of course, what he means is the spirit, the inner most part. “Constituting man’s
self is ‘what is’.” And what is, is what our spirits are.

And really, in a way loved ones, I think, we in our educational system, and even in the explosion of
knowledge, and in the power of the media, we are little people who are all over developed in our
bodies, and we’re over developed in our souls, in our knowledge. We’re absolutely full up to here
up the tree of knowledge. And that’s why I even hesitate to share the books with you, because it
seems as though we read, and read, and read. And we’re filled up with ‘what knows’. And we’re –
our lives are preoccupied with ‘what does’. But there’s very little of ‘what is’ inside us.

And it’s interesting, old Quiller-Couch then talks about the elementary schools, even though he’s
lecturing at Cambridge. And he says, “This is the task, and the area, in which education moves. It
has to do with ‘what is’.”
It’s interesting. He says that school teachers and professors should not be dealing with ‘what
knows’, but they should be dealing with ‘what is’. And he goes on to say they should be drawing out
the kingdom of God that is within each child.

And loved ones, it’s interesting that, in a way we’re all a victims of our society. So little of
that has been drawn out. I don’t know if you know, that education is “educo” – ‘to lead out’,
“duco” begets the word, the English word ‘duke’. And “duco” is ‘to lead’. “Caesar exercitum duxit
ponte,” “Caesar led his army across the bridge.” “Duxit,” “Duco”, ‘to lead.’ And “educo” is ‘to
lead out’ from inside you. And that really was the original purpose of education, ‘to lead out’
from inside you the real person that God had made you to be.

Now, what I’m sharing with you is our educational system has failed miserably and is utterly
preoccupied with ‘what knows’. But do you see that we, in the body of Christ, we run the risk also,
of being preoccupied with ‘what knows’, instead of ‘what is’? And I would ask you to really
approach Jesus, and ask him to bring alive the you that is inside there, because loved ones, if you
don’t, if you don’t come alive inside, if you aren’t born again inside, really I think, a fellow
like me, or men like me, or women who do this same kind of thing, they’ll just intensify hell for
you. They will. You’ll just go nearer and nearer into hell, unless somehow the real you inside
begins to pop up just a little shoot of life, and begins to allow Jesus to develop you. Now it will
have to be him, loved ones. It will. It will have to be him.

And if you say to me, “Has it anything of self?” Nothing of self! Nothing of self! When you get
preoccupied with developing yourself and you hear a message like this, and you say, “Well, that’s
good, what pastor said. I’m going to be the real me.” You will become a monster! You won’t become
the real person at all. You have to look to Jesus. You have to fall in love with him, be
preoccupied with him. And you will spontaneously find yourself beginning to develop as it was really
meant to. In other words, when you’re prepared to lose your life for Jesus’ sake, when you’re
prepared to say, “Lord, all I want is to know you. I just want to know you, Lord. I want to know
what you’re thinking. I want to know what you’re feeling today.” As you’re prepared to lose your
life for his sake, so you’re going to find your life. You’re going to come alive inside.

Now, it is a paradox. So, you need to see that it’s concentration on Jesus, and find out what he’s
saying and thinking. Here’s you see the mystery of it. Jesus himself, is the one who made all the
universe. That’s what the Bible says, “The world was made by him and without him was not anything
made that was made.” And it was by Jesus that God made all of us. Now Jesus himself, we think of as
one person. But that’s almost foolishness, because Jesus is just such a rich, many faceted
personality, that he has all the beauty, and all the life, and all the wisdom, and all the laughter,
and all the humor, and all the love to fill up a 1,000 million universes like ours. But the only
way all that wisdom, and beauty, and love, and individuality, and happiness, and liveliness can be

seen is by a little bit being seen in me, a little bit being seen in you, a little bit being seen in
you, a little bit being seen in you. That’s it.

That’s why the key is for you to get to know Jesus. And you know, if you say to me, “Well, then
will we not become robots?” Well, that’s the beauty – that’s what it means, he became broken bread
and poured out wine. That’s why we eat the bread and drink the wine at communion. This Jesus has
given himself so that a little bit of him could be in you, and could enliven you with the
individuality that God planned for you to have. No, it doesn’t mean you become a robot at all. It
does mean that you are preoccupied with your lover, with your dearest friend and Savior. But you
yourself become very much alive and very much your own self. And yet the beauty of it is, that it
is a speck of Jesus in you that is being seen. And so the whole world begins to be filled with him.
And then God looks down and sees his own Son in many lives and he’s glorified by that.

So loved ones really, you’re precious. You’re precious. It’s something — you remember, somebody
put it this way, that you yourself are a picture frame. [He draws a double rectangle as a picture
frame.] Your life is a picture frame within which God intends to paint a portrait of his Son.
[Inside the frame begins to draw brush strokes as if painting.] But your portrait of Jesus is going
to be different from all the rest. And it’s probably not going to be any more religious a portrait
as Jesus himself was.

So, loved ones, that is important. When we talk in these evenings about the spirit, your spirit
inside of you, that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the real you inside. It’s the
real you. And the reason why many of you have problems, “Oh, where’s my spirit? Where’s my
spirit?” is, many of you have not really come alive. And so, you’re very fearful people, and
you’re very preoccupied with maybe, what I would like you to do, or what somebody else would like
you to do. And you’re very preoccupied with becoming what you think you should become, instead of
finding a moving life within you, that you sense is real, and is authentic, and is original, and is
creative.

And I think you would say that wouldn’t you? You would say — many of you are fearful at times.
You’re fearful. You think, “Oh, well, I want to make sure I do the right thing.” And you feel that
even about guidance in your lives. You feel, “Well, I want make sure. Oh, I’m not sure if I’m
doing the right thing.” Well, it’s because there’s an emptiness inside. There is no movement
inside you. All you are is a mirror that is mirroring what all the other people think you should
do. But it is possible to come alive inside so that there is a movement within you. It is,
honestly! It really is! It’s possible for you to have an authentic, original life and movement
within you that is really you, that is the ‘real’ you.

And you’ll find that that gives you, of course, a great sense of stability, a great sense of
satisfaction that you’re alive, and that you really exist, that you don’t have to pinch yourself to
see if you’re there. Or you don’t have to do something wild to authenticate yourself, as old Sartre
[Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905 – 1980, French philosopher, playwright] would say. But you are real inside.

And it brings a rest, too. It brings a rest inside you. No longer do you have to prove yourself,
no longer do you have to win arguments, no longer do you have to do something to show everybody that
you’re there. You know you’re here. And you just know it. You know you’re alive. You know that
you’re here for a purpose that God has for you. And there’s a great stability and steadiness comes
inside. But loved ones, it only comes when your spirit comes alive.

Now, all I’d like to share is just a few of the qualities of your spirit when that happens. I think
some of you think, “Well, that’s a pretty, pretty quiet feeling, then, yeah? Yeah?” Well, it is.
But some of you have the idea, “Well, it’s kind of – it’s kind of passive.” Well, no, no it isn’t.
A spirit that is alive in Jesus, is anything but passive. And you’ll find that in a verse in Romans
12:11. “Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord.” And here the RSV translates,
“Be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord.” The King James’ version says, “Be fervent in spirit.”
And fervent means burning, and eager, and full of enthusiasm, and full of zeal.

Now, could I just make clear the distinctions? Transcendental meditation, Buddhism, Zen Buddhism,
all Eastern religions that encourage sinking into yourself, end up with you growing fat like Buddha,
just sitting there, really. All those approaches to discovering yourself end up in passivity, and
end up in a sense of deadness inside until you can stand it no longer. Or eventually, you just
split off your religious life from the active life that you have to live outside. And so, they’re
no use to each other. So, that’s one distinction.

Another distinction is fervency of soul. Fervency of soul is often what happens in religious
circles. Everybody says, “Let’s go out witnessing.” “Okay, go out witnessing.” First, we sing a
chorus to get ourselves riled up and roused. Then we read a lesson in the Bible. Then I preach a
good sermon to you, and then we all hit it — hit the fraternity houses one after another. Now,
that, that’s a kind of fervency of soul where it has the same life as any of our cheerleader days
had, or any of the days when we were rah-rahing our team in order to win at school. It’s that kind
of thing. Or it’s even the kind of soulish oneness we feel over the Iran crisis. It’s very much a
soul thing, an emotional thing, a mind thing.

Now, loved ones, fervency of spirit is not that. Fervency of spirit is Jesus maintaining deep down
within you, a deep enthusiasm and desire to do what, he himself, is wanting to do in you. In other
words, it’s a knowing, it’s a preoccupation with Jesus, and with his life, and his activity. And
that imparts to you an activity, and a fervency. And actually, the way it is maintained by the Holy
Spirit, is by you continuing to do what God tells you to do. That’s it. When you at last discover
yourself and realize this life within you, when that life begins to prompt you to do something, do
it. Do it at once! Do it at once!
You dare not reject or resist that life. Don’t loved ones. If you resist it, you’ll grieve the
Spirit of Jesus. And you’ll notice a deadness coming inside yourself. And then, you’ll fall back
into soulish enthusiasm to try to prove to yourself that you’re alive.

So, when you sense a moving within you, when you’re in quietness with Jesus, and you sense, “I
should do that,” do it, whatever it is. Whether it’s write a letter, whether it’s go and see
somebody, whether it’s commit yourself to a certain course of study, or do something, or speak to
somebody, do it. Because, it’s that commitment to his will that he expresses inside you, that will
enable his Spirit to make your spirit continually fervent.

And you see, what a fervent spirit will achieve in you, is it will give you life when you come into
deadness in the office, or when you come into a deadness in the momentum of your own family life,
your own church life, your own friendship life. You know there are certain moments when your lives
– your life just stops up. It is kind of a gridlock. There’s a gridlock takes place, and it just
comes up dead. And there’s no movement. You’re involved in some spiritual ministry and suddenly
the whole thing goes dead, and cold. And you just can’t move it. Or your family life just jars to a
stop, and there’s no opening, there’s no way through. Or your life at the office, or at work, just
all dies. That’s when a fervent spirit enables you to keep on, little-by-little, edging forward.

It’s as if you’re in a boat, and you’re frozen in with ice. And yet there’s this little motor still
churning inside, and turning the propeller round and you’re edging forward through the ice. Now,
that’s what a fervent spirit enables you to do.

Whereas loved ones, if you haven’t that liveliness inside you, then you’ll find the outside
circumstances make you die too. And many of us come to that. We come to a place where everything
goes dead in the family relationships. Everything goes dead in the personal friendships.
Everything goes dead at home, or everything goes dead in the spiritual work in which we’re engaged.
And there’s no movement anywhere, and we just don’t know what to do. Now loved ones, a fervency of
spirit keeps you moving whatever the outside situation is like. And you can obviously see in what
we’re involved in how that vital that is. But you can see it too, in your own situations.

In other words, a fervency of spirit, even though the thing – even though Jericho is walled up
tight, and there isn’t a chink, a fervency of spirit keeps tapping along to find if there’s a brick
loose. Really, just keeps at it, keeps tapping along until it finds the little brick. And the
fervency of spirit produces a little more life. And before you know it, the walls are down. But
that fervency of spirit is something that will continue inside you, if you really come alive in
Jesus.

Just one more, loved ones because the time is moving. Maybe you’d just like to look at Proverbs
17:27. It’s something that we have shared before at times, the normal state of your spirit. Very
much, 20th century language, “He who restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit
is a man of understanding.” Real cool! And that’s what happens when you’re preoccupied with Jesus.
When it’s Jesus and you alive, there’s always a quiet coolness, whatever the situation. When
everybody around is losing their head, you have a coolness inside in your spirit, just a quiet
coolness that enables you to be at peace.

Now loved ones, that comes from realizing that in a way — here’s a strange thing, in a way, you’re
only your true self when you’re with Jesus you. In a way, that’s true. In a way, you’re only your
true self, at least until you mature and grow strong. It’s amazing how quickly you cease to be your
true self when you just have to speak to one other human being. It’s incredible how quickly you
start playing the little actor again to act up for the audience. And so in a deep way, especially
in the beginning of the new birth, you’re only your real self when you’re with Jesus, alone. And
that’s why you have to be often with Jesus, especially in the early days. But actually, you have to
be – that’s why Martin Luther said, “I’m so busy that I cannot afford to spend less than three hours
a day in prayer,” because when you get very busy, or when God gives you more things to do then it is
very important to be often with Jesus, because really, you’re only your true self with him.

Now, when you’re with Jesus, all is quiet and cool. And if you’re often enough with Jesus, you
carry that coolness into all kinds of ridiculous situations. And what is important, of course, for
all of us here is, never to move apart from that coolness. Never move in the ardor of desire.
Never move in the strength of emotions, “I feel I should do that.” Don’t! Don’t! You’re dumb.
The emotions come and go. The emotions can be influenced by all kinds of things apart from the real
you inside. Always move in coolness of spirit, when there’s quietness and calmness.

And you remember, the illustration I’ve used because it was surreal to me the first time I ever
snorkeled. I had never snorkeled at all. And then this time I went under. And really, the amazing
thing is you don’t have to scuba dive way down deep. Snorkeling just with your face in a mask,
under the water is enough. But it was incredible to me! Up on the surface of the water, the waves

were really rough. And it was dangerously rough. And everything was moving fast, and furiously.
And then you looked underneath the water, and everything was moving like that. [Waves his hand
slowly back and forth] Just so calm and so quiet! And then of course, the deeper you went, the
more still it became. Until when you get low enough, it’s ‘real cool’ [Says it in the vernacular
tone of voice]. And that’s it with you! See, that’s it with you!

There is a place in you, inside you, where Jesus dwells, where all is peace, and all is quiet, and
where there is real coolness, and where there is peace and quiet, however chaotic things are
outside. And actually, I think you can see it in all kinds of controversies. I mean, if you look
at this controversy — that I hope is over now. But if you look at it, you can see how dear human
beings are the victims of each other’s movements. One moves this way, and that knocks a little
domino down, and that little domino knocks another little domino down, and that knocks a whole pile
of dominos down. And before you know it, they’re all back and forward like that. And what is
desperately needed in times that human beings begin to collide with one another, is some human
beings who will dwell in a place of coolness and just act calmly, and quietly, and consistently.

And you think of a family—we called them ‘rows’ [rouse] in Ireland. I don’t know if you’d call them
‘row’. Think of a family ‘row’ or a family fight. Think of any situation in the office where
things get heated up. And you know the greatest need is for just one, if there were just one little
calm person, who had a cool spirit, and who could just speak without rancor, and without responding
or reacting to the situation, but could initiate from within them, a different life, there would be
hope.

Now do you see, that you’re going to come into situations tomorrow to which you can produce 25,000
programmed responses that you know? You just know them. They’re just built in to you. You’ve come
into situations and you can produce 25,000 different responses. The tragedy is that many of them
appear to have some effect on the situation. The real tragedy is, of course, none of them have life
from God, in them. None of them have ‘life giving’ life and energy. And what you will need is to
have that life moving within, you so that you can act, not in response or reaction against, but act
from within, initiating a life that is totally different. And that’s why often what is needed in
situations, is what no one in the situation thinks of. Often, what is needed, is some other comment
completely from a different world! But there’s no one there to voice it!

Now loved ones, that’s why you and I were put on the earth. Really! Every one of us here was put
on the earth to initiate that kind of life and energy. And our world is dying for it! And you have
it within you! Really! And if you only knew what a unique person you are! Really! And I’m not –
boy, I think you’re miserable. I think I’m miserable apart from Jesus. But I think with Jesus, we
are unique people, who are just what this world needs. And that’s part of your value. And that’s
why you’re invaluable to God tonight. If you only realized it! If you only knew how much he looks
at you as you go to sleep tonight, how precious you are, how dear you are to him! Really, you have
no idea! You have no idea how precious and valuable you are to the One who made you.

And oh I pray, that you will find out who he has made you to be, and will begin to act. Because I
tell you, that’s why the world was virtually evangelized by 12 or 70 people. And oh, this is more
than enough. There are more than enough of us here, to do it in the world, if we began to act that
way.

Let us pray. Dear Lord, we do sense that we’re treading on holy ground that is real and is your
plan, and your will for us. Lord, we – Lord Jesus, we want to come alive. We want to come into

life. We realize that in very real ways we’ve been dead corpses. The Bible says dead in our sins,
but Lord, we just sense that we’ve been dead in living patterned lives, and lives of habit, instead
of lives of liveliness, and life, and energy, and originality from you.

Now Savior, we’d ask you for forgiveness for our own stupid attempts at it that have ended up so
ugly and monstrous. Lord, we realize that they’re just another version of patterned, habit formed
lives. But Lord Jesus, we believe that you, in the quietness of prayer, and conversation, and
communion are able to bring us to life, and to enable us to find out who we really are. Lord, we
would begin to talk with you, begin to spend hours with you during the day, and at night, where you
can begin to give us light and give us life, and reveal to us the beautiful people that you have
made us to be.

Thank you, Lord for your patience with us. Thank you for your goodness to us in explaining these
things to us. We give ourselves to you for their fulfillment, for your glory.

The grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with
each one of us now and ever more. Amen.

Spiritual Life #61

The Baptism with the Holy Spirit

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

We’ve been talking the past few weeks about how many of us suddenly discover that our lives are
almost dictated by other people and by other things, and often by the standards that other people
have set before us. That’s why I think so many of us talk about being “under the law” at times,
because we enter into all kinds of silly laws. Laws that people think we should follow if we’re
going to be spiritual people. Laws that people think we should follow if we’re going to become good
children of our parents. Laws that other people think we should follow if we’re going to become
good husbands and wives. And laws yet again that other people think we should follow if we’re going
to be balanced, psychologically right people.

And we’ve shared how many of us get so under this kind of law governed life that we hardly know who
we are. And that there is only one way to find out who we are; and that is to go back to the one
who has made us, and to begin to relate to him, and communicate with him, and to begin to allow him
to tell us why he put us here, and to begin to show us what we are to do in our lives. We talked
about how that was really the new birth — and you can see what a farce we have made of the new
birth. We’ve turned in into some kind of religious magic spell to take away all fear from our lives
when really the new birth is a beautiful coming into fullness of the person that God originally made
but that has been covered for so long by all kinds of demands that our society, and we ourselves,
put upon it.

There is a beautiful spontaneous “you” inside that Jesus can make alive if you will establish a
relationship with him. But if you don’t, and you try to make that “you” come alive, it will grow
into a monstrous self that is so ugly that you will be sick of it yourself and everybody else will
be sick of it, and you’ll have to fall back into the old, law governed life, just in order to exist
in this world with other people.

So loved ones, the only way to really find yourself is to deal with Jesus honestly in your own times
of quietness at home and I would encourage you to do that — that’s what an alter call is all about,
you know. We’ve lost the meaning of alter call, and we’ve lost, so often, the meaning of
confirmation and coming into church membership. All of those things are concerned with us finding
out what our Maker put us here to do and at last beginning to say, “Thank you; yes Lord, I know
that. That feels right to me. Yes, it’s different from what everybody else is doing, it’s
different from what my brother, or my sister is doing, or my parents, but it feels — that’s what
you made me for. And now Lord, what do I do in this situation? What’s the next step for me?” And
you begin to walk a life of direction and a life of certainty. That’s what coming alive in your
spirit is. Your spirit is the real you.

Now what happens with many of us is we’re delighted when we find that experience and we sense that
it is what life was meant to be, and we are happy every day in suddenly following this Lord inside.
Because the amazing thing is he doesn’t dictate to you, he doesn’t dominate you, he doesn’t make you
a slave; he works with you through his love and he woos you as a dear friend so you are willing —
you’re a willing slave, if you like. You find that it’s a joyful thing. You find that it fulfills
you. You don’t feel that you’re following some Master who is dominating you and forcing you; it is
a labor of love and a service of love and suddenly you feel at last free.

Many of us walk that way and then sometimes we look at other people and we begin to think, “Well,
that would be quite nice to do that. And actually they’re not bad things. I haven’t got them
particularly from the voice within, but they’re not bad things and I think I’ll do them.” And we
ease out a little without that slavish, loving servant- relationship to the Master within. We just
move out a little on our own after something that somebody else is doing. And then the next step is
easier because there’s a voice within us that says, “Now the Master told you to get up at this time
every morning for prayer.” And the voice says, “Yes, but it isn’t essential to walk under that kind
of legalism. I can vary it a little.”

And as soon as you begin to listen with your outer ear to other people, other things, other
circumstances, your inner ear of your spirit that has come alive begins to get dull and you get hard
of hearing inside so the way becomes a little vague to you where before, when you were first born of
God, it was clear and clean. Now as you begin to listen to other voices, the way is harder to find
and it’s so subtle because you think you’re finding greater freedom and you think you’re coming into
greater maturity; “Ah yes, at last I’m not just like that simple little babe that was just born of
God yesterday. Now I’m able to discern a little — well, there’s that voice inside that led me and
then there’s this other voice to be considered and then there are the other things I’m reading in
books.”

And it all sounds very reasonable and plausible and that’s the way Satan is; very plausible, very
reasonable. You begin to find that you think you’re entering into a new maturity and you begin to
walk that way and then the other calls come very easily. “Well that’s true; I couldn’t walk that
other way throughout my life that’s obvious — it would just destroy you. There are sensible
arrangements to be made for your own physical health, your own wellbeing, your own comfort.” In my
case, I looked at the others in my church in Ireland and I saw they weren’t giving everything to
that voice within, so what was I doing it for? Nobody else was doing it.

I began to feel, “Well, I ought to get on with my life and get into my career, and get into line
with my plans for my married life, and get into line with plans for my family life, and my financial
life.” And loved ones the tragedy is that so many of us begin to slip out of the aliveness and the
individuality that we’ve come into in the new birth, and we begin to fall back under the guidance
that comes from outside.

We begin to look around at other people and decide, “Well, they’re doing it this way. They’re
praying that length of time. They’re reading the Bible this way. They’re going by those books.
They’re going into this kind of business, or into this kind of finance. They’re doing this kind of
thing with their money. They don’t put themselves out for Jesus’ gospel the way we’re doing.” And
we begin to become a little more sensible; in other words — we fall back into slavery to the world.

And the strange thing is, it isn’t a world the way we all painted it; great drunkenness, and
gambling, and terrible sexual immorality it isn’t — it’s just we come back under the world of
events and circumstances, the things in the world, the people in the world. We begin to listen to
them, and it’s not long before we’ve sunk back into a stereotype life again, a life that is governed
from the outside; but this time our situation is worse than it was before because we think we’re
Christians. We’re with religious people, we’re in a good church, and we’re looked upon by everybody
as an enthusiastic follower of Jesus — but we’ve lost our own individuality.

Indeed we have real trouble when we have to give a testimony or we have to give a teaching. We go
to the books and we get an insight that Nee had, or that Andrew Murray had, or somebody else had and
we deliver that. And we begin to find that our prayer lives are pretty dead, pretty cold, we don’t
get much out of them. And actually if this kind of service has not life in itself, we don’t get
much life from it because there’s nothing alive inside us — something has died inside us.

Now we all play the same game; we say, “Well, it couldn’t last forever — there’s a honeymoon time
in everything; it lasts for a while and you’re full of enthusiasm and zeal but you have to get back
down to ordinary life.” Loved ones, that’s where most carnal Christians are. I know it may sound
discouraging to you, but that’s where most of this great spiritual revival — it’s hardly a revival
— this great spiritual moment that is taking place in our nation is; it’s already peaked and
they’re beginning to slide back down into carnality. And the majority will slide right back down,
except that the last state will be worse than the first because they’ll keep using the language of
Zion and they’ll keep talking as if they know the experience, but they’ll have the form of Godliness
without the power of it.

Now loved ones, that’s why you are in danger unless you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit. Unless
you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit you will assuredly fall back into that domination of other
people and other things in your life, because the baptism with the Holy Spirit is going fully and
completely into the Lordship and leadership of that inner voice of the Holy Spirit within you.
That’s what it is.

You’re in your car, you’re going along, you stop and you invite Jesus in. He comes in and sits in
the passenger seat and that’s the new birth. And he tells you, “Drive straight on, drive at this
speed, turn right at this corner.” You turn. “Turn left at this corner.” You turn. “Go up this
hill.” And you look at it and you think, “But Lord, that’s a steep hill.” And he says, “But go.”
You go this time, but then you get over the hill and you go down into a muddy, muddy lane and you
say, “No Lord, I’m not taking my life through that.”

And some of us do that: Jesus says, “Go” and we say, “No,” and we turn the car around and we go the
other way. And we say, “I can’t hear you — what did you say? I can’t hear you” because he’s not
there any longer. But we keep on, “I can’t hear you.” The only way, loved ones, is when you come
to the muddy lane you say, “Lord, if I have to go through this, I obviously have to do whatever you
tell me if you’re going to stay in this life of mine. So Lord Jesus, I’m getting out and you walk
around and get in behind this steering wheel and you take my life wherever you want to.”

Now loved ones, that’s the baptism with the Holy Spirit — that’s the heart of it; it’s giving up
your right to do anything but what that precious voice of the Holy Spirit tells you to do. What it
is, is giving up your right even to debate, that’s what Jesus getting in behind the steering wheel
means; it’s giving up your right even to debate — that’s where the freedom comes. You actually
lose your own life; you actually step out of it. But suddenly you find it — because suddenly you
find that this Savior knows you because he made you. He knows you intimately, knows what freedom is
and what liberty is — for you. Do you see; he’s the only one who can live your life better than
you can because he made you — he knows everything about you.

That’s why you feel things are so natural when he’s guiding you, that’s why you feel such an
individual. That’s why it feels so right; because he’s guiding something that he has designed with
great care, and with great detail. And that’s what the baptism with the Holy Spirit is.

If you’d like to look at just a couple of versus loved ones. There’s John 21, where Jesus
prophesied Peter’s death, or the kind of death he would suffer: John 21:18, “Truly, truly, I say to
you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you
will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.
(This he said to show by what death he was to glorify God.)”

And you remember, Peter died by crucifixion. But do you see the words, “and another will gird you
and carry you where you do not wish to go” — that’s what it is to be baptized with the Holy Spirit.
That “another” is the Holy Spirit and it’s to allow him to gird you and carry you, even where you
do not wish to go. It is totally giving up your own right to do what you want when you want to. It
is. It is absolute obedience to the Holy Spirit.

But do you see that anything less than that gets you back into the old, world dominated and society
dominated life? There is only one way to stay in Jesus and that is to cast yourself upon the Holy
Spirit and say, “Whatever you want to do with my life I’m willing for that. Whatever you want, I’ll
do it.” And loved ones, that’s the way it’s worked out.

Acts 16 is one of the examples of the way it’s worked out. Acts 16:6, “And they went through the
region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.
And when they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus
did not allow them.” And that’s the way their lives went; they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to
speak the word in Asia so they didn’t go there. They attempted to go into Bithynia but the Spirit
of Jesus did not allow them, so they didn’t go. So their lives were lived in absolute submission to
the Holy Spirit and you see — he’s inside you.

In a way, the baptism with the Holy Spirit is as much yielding fully to the one who is within you
now at this moment, as it is receiving something new of him. It’s really allowing him, as the Bible
says, to fill you completely; to have his full way in your life; instead of regarding him as an
advisor and consultant, regarding him as your absolute Lord so that you obey him more and more each
day. And as you obey him more and more each day, he leads you into exciting, difficult situations
that you cannot handle yourself, and he provides the gifts of knowledge, and discernment of spirit,
and words of prophecy, and power to heal, and power to praise. That’s it.

There’s no mystery loved ones; no mystery in the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Talk to any of us
who have had the joy of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and we’ll all say the same thing, “The Holy
Spirit overflows your life if you submit absolutely to his directions.” You don’t have trouble with
faith, you don’t have trouble with tongues, you don’t have trouble with gifts of healing, you don’t
have trouble with discernment of spirits; those are all his gifts that he gives when you need them,
to those who submit completely to him.

And it runs throughout this dear book (the Bible), you know. If you look at Acts 8 you’ll see
Philip’s experience and it’s the same experience exactly as the other apostles – the Holy Spirit was
his Lord. It’s Acts 8:26, “But an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Rise and go toward the south
to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’” This was the time when the Holy Spirit
dispensation was just beginning, so you get the angel of the Lord, at times, speaking, and then of
course it’s obvious that he is the Holy Spirit. “This is a desert road. And he rose and went. And
behold, an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a minster of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of all
her treasure, had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning; seated in his chariot, he was
reading the prophet Isaiah.”

And then you see, not the angel, but, “and the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go up and join this chariot.’
So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and asked, ‘Do you understand what
you are reading?’ And he said, ‘How can I, unless some one guides me?’” And the Holy Spirit of
course knew that and had brought Philip there. And then you see what happens in Verse 38, “And he
commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he
baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught up Philip; and
the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip was found at Azotus, and
passing on he preached the gospel to all the towns till he came to Caesarea.”

That’s the way a man or a woman lives who is baptized with the Holy Spirit; they are guided every
moment by the Holy Spirit and they do what he tells them to do. Loved ones, that’s what it is.
Really in a way the best expression of it is Jesus’ expression to Peter, “Another will gird you and
carry you where you even may not want to go.” And it is like that — it is like laying yourself on
Jesus’ cross and saying, “Wherever you want to take me there I will go.” And the more you yield and
submit to the Holy Spirit in that inner life, the more he fills you, the more gifts he gives you,
the more graces he gives you, the more wisdom and maturity comes into your life, and the more that
Spirit of Jesus shows through your soul and your body to others. It’s an ever increasing fullness
as you yield more and more to the Holy Spirit.

And of course, the great reason for that is in Jesus’ explanation in John 16:12, “I have yet many
things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide
you into all the truth.” Now there’s no one can guide you into the truth but the Holy Spirit; there
isn’t loved ones. You may think, “But you could pastor, or some other writers could.” No loved
ones, they cannot give you eyes to see the truth. When you hear the truth from my lips, or you read
the truth in a book you just read the framework of the truth, the intellectual expression of the
truth. But unless the Holy Spirit guides you into the truth, you never receive it.

That’s why so many of us can listen to the same things and we aren’t liberated by them at all.
Indeed, they come as burdens and heavy weights to us whereas to others they seem to liberate them,
because they are being guided into the truth by the Holy Spirit. Now, he can only guide those who
obey, those who submit completely. “For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he
hears he will speak.” God whispers to the Holy Spirit, “Tell Bob that’s what he’s to do. Tell Jeff
that’s what he’s to do. Tell Sue and John, that’s what they’ve to do. Tell Clyde, that’s what he’s
to do. Tell Ernest O’Neil that’s what he’s to do.” That’s the beauty of it.

It’s amazing, but that’s the way it works so that you can actually know what your Maker wants you to
do at the actual moment he wants you to do it so that your life changes from a life of “betters and
less bad” to the best. It changes from a life of guessing, and “I feel that’s what I should do” and
“I think that’s what I should do” and “that’s what appears to me to be the right thing to do” to a
guided life; a life of certainty, a life of confidence. Loved ones, that’s the way it works. The
Holy Spirit doesn’t speak on his own authority; he speaks within you what the Maker wants you to
know at each moment so that you don’t depend on some body like this (indicating the church
congregation) for stability.

You remember I shared that with you that we’re not together to help each other; we’re together for
ministry. But suddenly you are stable as a rock yourself. Why — because you’re hearing the voice
of the rock. The Holy Spirit does not speak on his own authority but, “Whatever he hears he will
speak, and he will declare to you the things that are come.” That’s why your life suddenly becomes

a life of rest. That’s why before you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit you’re repeatedly in panic-
stricken situations and worried anxious situations. But now the Holy Spirit tells you the things
that are to come ahead of time, warns you of the temptations, gives you a sense of where you are,
and so you walk with quiet certainty. There is no panic, and no anxiety in your life and he tells
you the things that are to come ahead.

How does he do it — beautifully. Not always by giving you the worry of having to think of
tomorrow, but he knows what’s coming tomorrow and he gives you certain commandments for today that
prepare you for tomorrow so that your life becomes a magic life. Your life becomes a life of quiet
peace and confidence. You suddenly find things falling into place and at last you begin to realize,
“This is the normal way.” The abnormal way is finding yourself tripping up over things, or being in
the wrong place at the wrong time, or not being at the place at the right time.

The normal is this charmed life where the Holy Spirit knows what’s coming and he prepares you today
for it. But do you see he can only do it if you submit to him, really in a way, with a fear of ever
missing his voice. It’s not a terrifying fear but it’s, “I don’t want to miss him; this is the
right way and I wouldn’t dream of missing it. I’m afraid not to fulfill exactly what you tell me to
do.” That’s what it is loved ones.

“He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” And that’s how your
character becomes more like Jesus, because the Holy Spirit takes what belongs to Jesus and declares
it to you. Now that word “declare” in Greek has the same meaning as the word in Genesis where God
said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. It’s that kind of thing; the Holy Spirit declares
it to you by making it real in you. He says it, and the love of Jesus is in your heart. He says
it, and the long suffering of Jesus is in your heart at the moment you need it. He says it, and the
patience of Jesus is in your heart at that moment.

The Greek word is better translated “shares with you all that Jesus has” and your life becomes
increasingly like Jesus — not through a lot of tired effort full of straining and trying, but
through the Holy Spirit automatically making these things effortlessly real in you. And that’s what
it is to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. And loved ones, the only need is an absolute dying to
what you yourself want to do. That’s it. But it does mean that. There’s no one who’ll be baptized
with the Holy Spirit while you’re still looking for something for yourself.

You’ll notice that the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, “When he comes he will glorify me.” He will glorify
Jesus and that’s who he’s come to glorify. He hasn’t come to glorify you and if you’re still after
some glory, or some gratification for yourself, the Holy Spirit cannot abide in your heart and dwell
there and you will not hear his voice. That’s why I push you so hard on the marriage thing and on
the success thing and your career thing and on having your friends like you, and on having
circumstances the way you want them; because you can’t get anything for yourself and have the Holy
Spirit as well. You can only be baptized with the Holy Spirit if you are willing to live for Jesus
and for his purpose in the world and that only.

As long as you keep caviling; arguing and protesting “My wife will suffer”, or “my husband will
suffer,” or “my child will suffer,” or “my friends will suffer,” you’re still on the wrong side of
Calvary — you’re only protecting yourself. Because do you really think God is going to give
directions to the Holy Spirit for you that will harm your loved one, or will harm your husband or
your child or your friends or your mother or your father? Does he not love them all far more than
we do?

In other words, its absolute trust that the Holy Spirit, the boss inside, the Master that is alive
within you, has the right to tell you whatever you’re to do in your life. And when you do that, the
Holy Spirit anoints you with the power that is needed to live the life that God has for you. But it
does mean everything. And unless you settle that, you’ll be like the Christians that we talked
about; the cares of this world and the anxieties of society will absolutely overcome you, they’re
bound to. You will have nothing left, nothing worth calling real salvation, unless you go all the
way with the Holy Spirit.

Now could I bring to your mind a serious verse in Psalms 127:1-2? And this applies particularly to
those of you who are in this body here, but loved ones, it’s to all of us who are in living churches
that have a ministry. “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless
the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up
early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.”
Some of you might realize that this is near the end of 10 years of us sharing together,
continuously, about this very subject.

For 10 years loved ones, many of you here have listened to me preach to you, encourage you, testify,
recommend books to you, outline in diagrams to you, tell you of the benefits of the baptism of the
Holy Spirit. Now do you know that we in our body, I believe, are at a new stage of development?
The house is pretty well set up — it is; we have a church here that is known throughout the Twin
Cities for various reasons, but it’s known. We have large numbers of loved ones such as are here
tonight who love what God has done among us. So the church is established.

We have family groups, we have seminars on Sunday morning, we have prayer time on Sunday morning, we
have prayer time on Sunday evening, we have prayer time on Friday nights, and we have fellowships in
our houses on Wednesdays. We have an eldership, we have all the money that God wants us to have;
the church is established.

And incredible though it is, we have businesses here in this building that minster virtually 24
hours a day. A great advantage that we have over loved ones here that are from other churches, we
have a ministry going on in this building to the public through 80 or 90 of us everyday of the week
and the businesses are solvent and are alive financially.

We have the beginnings of a missionary outreach abroad. We have a station in London, and we will be
moving into Mexico next month. The world missionary movement has begun. But, on top of all that,
we have a seminary offering more subjects than many of the established seminaries in these cities.
And on top of that, we have probably the most striking and the most powerful witness on the
university campus in the midst of fraternity row with the Colony Inn Cafeteria, and with the whole
connection with the frats that we have through Colony Inn.

So the whole thing is set up except that, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it
labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in
vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to
his beloved sleep.” In other words, the only way any of all of this will count for Jesus, the only
way any of it will bring one person into the kingdom, the only way any of it will avoid being burned
up on the day of judgment, the only way any of it will be used for eternal benefit is if you operate
by faith.

That is if you do all the things that we’re doing, then realize at the end you are unprofitable
servants because serving the meals in the restaurant, producing the plaques in the basement,
teaching the classes, running the fellowships, leading the services produce nothing; they are human
actions — unless you do them by faith that the Lord will add his blessing. Without the blessing
of the Lord, all of this is foolishness.

And here’s the interesting time we’ve come to. From ages 33 to 36 I was on the campuses — that’s
where I was. I took my amplifier on to the mall and I spoke there at lunch times. I witnessed on
the campus, I walked through the halls and I talked to people. I did that until I was 36 and then I
started to do it with all of you. So for 10 years I’ve done it but I’m 46 now, and apart from the
color of my hair which is turning gray, it’s not my time any longer to do that. There are other
things that I’ve to do. But the mantel is falling on your shoulders. You’re in your 30s; you’re
where I was 10 years ago — it’s now your responsibility.

God has opened out to us the campuses of these Twin Cities and we are called, by Jesus’ guidance,
“Campus Church” because that is our ministry. And the Father has given us an incredible opportunity
in those campuses, but unless you begin to labor by faith you’ll eat the bread of anxious toil and
you’ll rise up early and you’ll go late to rest, and the Lord will not give to his beloved sleep,
unless you begin to be mighty men and woman of faith. And faith, working faith, is a gift of the
Holy Spirit whom he gives to those who are baptized with himself.

Loved ones, you can’t go on without being baptized with the Holy Spirit, you can’t. Because, I’ll
tell you — my ministry changed after I was baptized with the Holy Spirit and you’re not going to do
anything with all this that is handed over to you. It’s going to be an empty shell that will become
the kind of byword that you remember, that God talks about in 2Chronicles 7:20-21 when he says,
“(cid:160)and this house, which I have consecrated for my name,(cid:160)I will cast out of my sight, and will make
it a proverb and a byword (cid:160)among all peoples. And at this house, which is exalted, every one passing
by will be astonished, and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this to land and to this house?’”

Loved ones, that’s it; unless you are baptized with the Holy Spirit, unless you are prepared to
give your whole life and everything you’ve got to doing what Jesus came here to do, unless you’re
willing to put that first, and to get up at five in the morning if he tells you to get up at five in
the morning, or whenever, and unless you’re prepared to go when he tells you to go, you will become
boring old miserable stereotype carnal Christians who are absolutely paralyzed. And I’ll tell you;
the only kind of people that will make a difference to these Twin City campuses is mercurial people
— people who move with the speed and agility of mercury, and who are willing to move to this
person, and that person, call at this person’s house, go to this person’s apartment, check on this
person’s frat house, speak to this person on campus; go when you’re told to go. But if you’re going
to become a group of goose stepping, militaristic, communist, stereotype soldiers nothing will be
done by God through you. That’s true.

So you can all think, “Oh this is a great thing we’ve got.” Some of us here remember those days in
the dance theater on Cedar Avenue and the excitement of those days because if the Holy Spirit said,
“Go” we went. And now that God has given us such advantages and such seeming power — but the only
real power is in the heart that is submitted to the Holy Spirit — but God has given us such
advantages now — are we too rich? That is, do we have too many advantages now? Are we preoccupied
with the institution that we’ve now become? Are we preoccupied with the power of being on
television and trusting it to do this or that, or the power of a preacher to influence this way or
that way? If you are, you’ll never be baptized with the Holy Spirit because you’re depending on

(cid:9)
other powers rather than the one power that God has given to you and that is the Holy Spirit.

I am not a power in your life. I am not a power for your life. This body is not a power for your
life. All the rest of us will not enable you to do one thing for Jesus. But you have a greater
being within you than all of those things; you have the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity
within you. And if you will begin to yield to him completely, he will make you the kind of
mercurial, flexible, anointed person who can begin to bring hundreds into his kingdom.

Now loved ones, I do believe that you are facing what I faced 10, 15 years ago; it’s being handed
into your hands. I’ll be preaching here, I’ll be trying to guide the writing and the production of
video, and the international work, and try to continue to open new stations but it’s up to you, now,
to begin to fill this house with the loved ones from the Twin Cities campuses. Because those are
the ones that will primarily be the 10,000 who will go abroad for Jesus.

And of course you loved ones who are from other bodies, the same applies; you simply substitute your
own church because it all is the same — the only power that you will ever be in this world, the
only hope you have of living an individual life that when you come to the end of you can say, “I
have fought a good fight. I have finished the race that was set before me,” the only hope you have
of doing that is if you will yield completely and utterly to the control and the leadership and the
commandership of the Holy Spirit.

Its easy where you start; you deal immediately with the things that come to your mind as we share
tonight. And loved ones, if you’re going to argue, “Well I can’t, I can’t” God knows you won’t.
God knows it’s not you “can’t”, God knows it is you won’t. We can bluff each other and we can talk
each other into sympathizing with each other — but I know you can if you but will. You can if you
will in Jesus — just on the basis of the promise alone, “I can do all things through Christ who
strengthen me.” That is both true and right and applies in every situation, or it’s wrong and it’s
just a false promise. But you can stop doing whatever the Holy Spirit has begun to check you about
in your life, and you can start doing whatever he has told you to do. You can.

Here’s the tragedy; that hell is filled with people who saw what they should do and said, “I can’t,”
but really meant, “I won’t because I’d rather do the other and I’d rather have the kind of
comfortable and safe life that I can control myself.” Loved ones, hell is full of people who have
come this far and have not gone on with Jesus, so it is serious. And there is no easy way, there
isn’t. If you ask me how I came into the baptism of the Holy Spirit — by violence. The kingdom of
God is taken by violence; there is no easy way.

It was never any easier to stop the sins that he had shown me in my life. It wasn’t. It was just
as hard at that moment as it was before. Indeed, it was harder because I had persisted in them so
long. But there has to come a time when you are willing to sell all the pearls that you posses to
buy the one pearl of great price. There has to come a time when you are willing to deal with Jesus’
command to the rich young ruler, “Sell all that thou hast and give it to the poor.” When Jesus
speaks to you about your most precious possession, what you most want to hold on to, then you will
have to decide whether you’re ready to do that or not.

Could I remind you of those melancholy words, “The harvest is passed, the summer is ended and we are
not yet saved.” Now this is 1980, many of us came together in 1970 and some of us even before that.
Another winter of evening services is coming to an end. Now I haven’t talked this way to you
before because I felt we’re all young and we have years to live. Except that now we’re beginning to

realize that it isn’t going to go on forever and unless you enter into the baptism of the Holy
Spirit it’s going to be one or two of us baptized with the Spirit with a lot of grown up children
following behind.

Loved ones, the summer is past and the harvest is ended and we are not yet saved. How long are you
going to wait? When are you going to be baptized with the Holy Spirit? If you’re ready at the
moment to surrender all, then go by faith and receive the Holy Spirit by faith tonight and go out a
slave of the Holy Spirit, obeying him in everything that he wants. And if you miss it once get back
to him and say, “I’m back, I’m with you, you’re my Lord and my commander.”

If you’ve come to the place where you’ve examined your life and you’ve dealt with the sins and
you’re ready to surrender all, then simply come up at the end of this service and receive the
baptism with the Holy Spirit by faith to anoint you with the gifts, as he wants you to have them,
and to cleanse your heart, and to keep it clean by your absolute obedience to him. And then walk
out of here in that faith, which is simply believing that he is with you, and obeying everything he,
tells you to do. Then walk on higher and higher through the rest of this week and through all the
coming weeks.

And those of you to whom this has come home for the first time, deal tonight. There are plenty of
people who have been baptized with the Holy Spirit on the same night that they heard of the baptism
with the Holy Spirit. But many of you have already been seeking for many months, if not years.

Loved ones, there has to come a time when you’re so desperate that you cannot do without him. And
actually, I’ll tell you, that’s the secret. That’s why I came. That’s why I came. It wasn’t
because the thing was suitable; it wasn’t even a service like this. It was at my own parsonage in
North Minneapolis, in my own bedroom, on a Saturday morning. I had nobody by me and I hadn’t read
as many books as most of you have on the subject. I certainly hadn’t had a fraction of the
preaching that you have had. Loved ones, you don’t need lots of knowledge, you don’t need all kinds
of people around you slapping you on the back and praying for you, you simply need to be so
desperate that you cannot take another step in this self dominated life that you’re living, in this
half life that you have. That’s all it takes. The Holy Spirit meets, graciously, anyone who is
willing to surrender all. And that’s – there is no other way to go actually.

When you’ve come as far as you’ve come, you’re spoiled for the world and there is actually no other
way to go. In your heart you know that, and yet loved ones, do you realize that you can
procrastinate and procrastinate and procrastinate until you begin to be able to face this kind of
message with no trouble at all? Until eventually you begin to so grieve the Holy Spirit that you
don’t even any longer believe he is the Holy Spirit. You can get yourself into a place where there’s
nothing that you can hear anymore.

I do think you have a great responsibility. I don’t think there’s any need for me to do a lot of
counseling with you. I think it would be good if the elders would stay and pray, and put a shelter
of protection around those of you who seek the fullness of the Holy Spirit. But unless you’re very
anxious for somebody to counsel you, I think the counseling can be an excuse for not yearning your
way through in desperation to God the Spirit.

And I would suggest to you that if you know your Savior, and you know what he’s done for you, and
you know that it’s the only meaning of life that there is, and you know that there’s nothing else
worth giving your life to, then I would suggest to you that you settle things with your Lord

face-to-face, and you settle things with his dear other self and counselor, the Holy Spirit, and you
bind yourself together with him in a solid covenant from this day forward to obey him absolutely
whatever it costs.

Whether it cost you money, or comfort, or sleep, or pain, or failure in other people’s eyes, whether
it costs you a lost reputation or criticism or opposition, whatever it costs; make a solemn covenant
with him that you will obey him absolutely from this moment on. And then a new life opens before
you, just a new life; a life of liberty, a life of freedom, a life of power, a life that is
endlessly interesting because you’re no longer in those old stereotype habits that you find your
days filled with now, because you’re at last ready to go. He tells you to go to McAllister, you go
to McAllister, you don’t know who you’re going to meet there, but you go and you trust him to tell
you. He tells you to go to the mall and you go to the mall. You don’t know who you’ll meet but
you’ll go.

Suddenly your life is freed from the boredom of the stereotyped existence where you go home every
night and have your supper and then you watch TV or you read and then you go to bed. What a half
life, not worthy to be called a life loved ones, but that’s what the life filled with the Holy
Spirit would mean; it would mean that kind of flexible anointed life that is ready to move when the
Spirit within you tells you to move — and oh, that’s liberty. That is liberty.

Suddenly when you’re on your own, you’re not on your own; there’s this Master within you and you’re
at his beck and call. Uncomfortable in many ways, but livelier! Not the death of self simply
getting what it wants, but the aliveness of a Master within you who knows the whole of the universe
and knows what you’ve to do in it. Loved ones, that’s real life, and it can be yours — it can be
yours tonight.

If you feel you shouldn’t stay any longer tonight, it’s very important then to go down to the
restaurant and join in what everybody is doing down there, or to go home. But if you sense you
should seek the Holy Spirit and mark this: don’t seek the Holy Spirit because you think I would
like you to seek the Holy Spirit. Don’t get into that, because if you get into that sort of stuff
right off, there’s no chance of coming to the baptism with the Holy Spirit. You have to at least
begin seeking him because he’s moving you to; not because you’re wondering what everybody else will
think.

To help you, I myself am going home, because I think the Holy Spirit is able to bring you through.
I would ask the elders to stay to provide that shelter, but I want to be out of this thing
completely because we don’t need more people who are following somebody else, we need more people
who are following the Holy Spirit and we need soldiers by our side who will stand when we fall, not
soldiers who will fall when we fall.

So loved ones, it’s really up to you. Be wise; maybe the Holy Spirit is telling some of you to go
home and do this — that’s okay. Let’s have real freedom, a real freedom to go or stay as we want.
You can pray where you are at your chair, or you can come up and pray here. You can go up to the
lounge as well, you can go anywhere in the building, and you can seek the Holy Spirit.

I have often sought the Holy Spirit with loved ones until one or two o’clock in the morning. You
can seek him as long as you want. And those of us who have to close up the building, we can just
come in late tomorrow morning. But do what has to be done. Some time you’re going to have to make
a stand, do you realize that? Some time you’re going to have to put yourself out if you want God’s

best.

So I would suggest loved ones, that after the closing song that those of us go who are to go. And I
would ask the elders if they wouldn’t mind staying to help those who need help and then the rest of
us do what we need to do. The important thing is; do what you know in your heart you should do. Not
what I think you should do, but what you think you should do.

And loved ones, I will pray that hundreds of you would actually come through, because the world is
fast going the wrong way and unless there are people in power like the apostles, there will be no
turning it back. Now, what I would suggest is we sing the last hymn “Dear Jesus, Thou art
everything to me” and then I’ll pronounce the benediction. after that loved ones, and then just do
what you want at that point.

Baptized with the Holy Spirit

John 21:18

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

I’d love to just talk this morning, loved ones, and forget the sermon that I prepared. We’ll let the
Holy Spirit guide us. I’d like to ask you as your friend, each one of you, where you yourself stand
in regard to God? Where do you stand in regard to God this morning?

I think it’s easy for a lot of us here to say, “Well, we’re all right. We stand okay in regard to
God. We know that Jesus died for us. We believe that part of the reason we come to Campus Church is
because we know you all believe that and these are the things that are most sure in our hearts.
Jesus has died for us, our God has forgiven us and we believe this book that you so often preach
from. We believe the Bible is His Word, we believe all the things that you’re saying, and we believe
the things that we’re trying to do in Campus Church.

We believe in the whole attempt to get people abroad because we see that that really is the only way
of making any contribution to the increasing chaos in the world. The only hope is that somehow
ordinary people will catch a little of the peace that is in Jesus and we see that.” Many of you who
are older will say, “Yes, and we ourselves feel there is nothing else worth living for. We love to
see young people here in church. We love to see the students. We believe in the ministry of the
campuses and it rejoices our hearts to be part of this. We see we’ve lived long enough to see that
there isn’t very much else worth living for.”

Now, loved ones, I think it’s very near to a fair portraiture of all of us here this morning, if I
were to say those words. I think you might agree. That’s not a bad description of us here this
morning, allowing for the fact that some of us are away because it’s Memorial Day and we go to our
parents’ churches, some of us are here because it’s Memorial Day and we’ve come here for a change.
But those of us who have come Sunday after Sunday, I think you could say that that’s where we stand,
except that we might find ourselves in rather a static position in regard to God. Indeed the very
words that we use to describe ourselves had a lot of static quality about them.

We believe this is God’s Word. We believe our sins are forgiven. We believe the only answer to the
world’s chaos is the peace of Christ. All those things we believe. But could it be true to say that
many of your lives have settled down in Zion and aren’t moving very much spiritually? Could I ask
you whom you led to Jesus last? Or could I ask you when you last spoke to somebody at work even
vaguely about God? I understand and agree with you that you can’t just out and say, “Are you saved
brother?” You’re just asking for trouble. You’re just dumb if you do it. But when did you last speak
to anybody about God?

Then, if I could push you a little — when did you last have a prayer answered? I mean a real
prayer answered — not a prayer that you prayed with a thousand other people so that maybe they were
the lucky ones and you weren’t. But when did you last have a prayer answered? Then I would push you
a little and say — to what extent is this a cafeteria on Sunday that you are glad to get to so you
can grab a bite to eat on the way through? Really you come Sunday after Sunday pretty hungry.

Now, it is one thing to come and get food and rejoice together in the food. But it’s another thing

if Sunday after Sunday you just manage to get here with the last gallon of spiritual gas. You get in
and get filled up and then back you go. Of course, God’s will is that you would come filled
yourself. Then could I push you just a little? Are you filled with the joy of God through the week?
If I were to meet you Monday through Friday, how would you be? Would you have to work yourself up to
be able to relate to me in the level of joy that we are on this morning? What if I saw you when you
got up in the morning? How are you? And what are you like on Monday at the end of the day?

In other words, through the week, do you find yourself filled with God, filled with the joy of God,
filled with the delight of God and able to tackle the things and the problems of the week with rest
and peace? Now you see, I think what many of us can do when we come here Sunday after Sunday is we
can hear me preaching this beautiful life that God has for us and we can keep on saying, “Yes, I
know pastor. Sometimes I think you exaggerate a little but I know that basically it’s true because
it keeps coming from that Word. I see that. You seem kind of high too and I don’t know if that’s
because you’re Irish. I think that maybe it’s real and I do see others here that seem to have more
joy and delight then I have. But, I am getting there. I am getting there.”

Do you see that there’s a difference between the lower kind of Christian life where you know your
sins are forgiven but then through the week it’s a miserable long drawn out struggle against
yourself? Do you see the difference between the lower kind of life and the higher kind of life where
the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness
and temperance?

The difference between that high kind of life and the kind of life that has the works of the flesh
in it: anger, jealousy, envy, bad temper, depression, anxiety, worry — the difference between those
two kinds of life is an instantaneous experience called the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. It isn’t
something you climb up to over years and years and years of trying. It isn’t something that you get
up to after years and years of coming to the right church or reading the right books or studying the
Bible or trying hard. It is an instantaneous experience.

Now, let me show you in the scripture. It’s Luke 22. This is Peter whom we always think of as being
a very big man physically and very courageous and bold. It’s Luke 22:54-62.

“Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest’s house. Peter followed at
a distance; and when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together,
Peter sat among them. Then a maid, seeing him as he sat in the light and gazing at him, said, ‘This
man also was with him.’ But he denied it, saying, ‘Woman, I do not know him.’ And a little later
some one else saw him and said, ‘You also are one of them.’ But Peter said, ‘Man, I am not.’ And
after an interval of about an hour still another insisted, saying, ‘Certainly this man also was with
him; for he is a Galilean.’ But Peter said, ‘Man, I do not know what you are saying.’ And
immediately, while he was still speaking, the cock crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter.
And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, ‘Before the cock crows today, you
will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly. ”

Now that was Peter before the Baptism with the Holy Spirit. That was Peter — big, courageous,
physically strong, yet scared of a little maid in the courtyard, unwilling to be counted for what he
believed in. Loved ones, so often it is inconvenient to oppose the dirty joke. I agree with you.
It’s just not appropriate. Often it’s just better to ignore the thing. But there are times when it’s
certainly right not to snigger with the rest. And there are other times when it’s right to speak out
and say what you believe.

There are times in business where it isn’t terribly appropriate. You haven’t the right to tell the
boss that he’s being dishonest in the income tax returns, that isn’t your prerogative. There are
times when you just have to bear it. But there are other times when you know fine well you should be
counted whatever it costs you. There are other moments in our lives when it’s not a case of what
people think of us, it’s a case of doing something that is actually inconvenient for us. This was
inconvenient for Peter. He didn’t want to mess up his life with his own trial following quickly on
Jesus. He didn’t want to continue but instead to work it out his own way. There are often situations
like that that you and I face.

It’s inconvenient or it’s not the comfortable thing to do and yet the voice inside us says you
should do. But we are scared or afraid either for ourselves or for our reputation and we keep quiet.
That’s what Peter did before the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. A mighty change took place. Just turn
to Acts 2:14 and you’ll find the mighty change.

You remember Peter wouldn’t admit it before the little maid — now he’s standing before the crowd
that crucified Jesus. “But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them,
‘Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words.
For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.'”

And then do you see in Acts 2:22: “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man
attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your
midst, as you yourselves know – this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and
foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. But God raised him up,
having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.”

Now that’s a complete change – a complete transformation. No fear, no timidity, no discomfort, no
fear of the consequences, no concern for himself, absolute freedom, absolute liberty to say what was
true and to be real. Now the difference loved ones is there in Acts 1. You remember Jesus is
speaking to the apostles and He says in verse 8.

“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses
in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.” And the fulfillment was you
remember in Acts 2:1. “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And
suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where
they were sitting.” Now that’s what makes the difference.

If you say to me, “Well, where do I stand? I do believe my sins are forgiven. I believe this is a
good place for me to be and I believe all the things that you’re saying here. I believe all those
things and I believe I am going to heaven. Well, where do I stand? Am I not baptized with the Holy
Spirit?”

Loved ones, the situation I found in my life was that the Holy Spirit seemed to come into the
darkness of my own heart like a little candle. Until He came into my heart, I didn’t even know the
heart was very dark. I said to God, “Lord, I want that candle to burn in my heart, I want to let it
burn.” I received an assurance from God that He was pleased with me, that He had forgiven my sins
and that He would receive me into heaven. Then that candle started to burn brighter.

I think many of you are in that situation. The Holy Spirit is in you. That’s how you have been born

of God. That’s why you’re even here this morning. He is in you. Now the flame is beginning to burn
brighter and you’re beginning to see some of the darkness in the corners of your heart (which you
couldn’t see until the Holy Spirit came in). Then loved ones, there came a time in my life when God
said, “Now are we going to deal with those dark corners or are you going to try to keep this candle
alight in your heart and maintain the darkness there?”

In other words, “Are you willing to let me take this candle and take it into every corner of your
life until your whole life is filled with this light?” That’s why this Book often talks about the
baptism of the Holy Spirit as being filled with the Spirit. Loved ones, that’s the difference.
That’s the difference between a person who is baptized with the Spirit and a person who is born of
the Spirit.

A person who is baptized with the Spirit is filled with the Holy Spirit inside and therefore
anointed with the Holy Spirit outside so that they have the fruit of the Spirit in their life and
they have the gifts of the Spirit available for ministry. Those are power-filled lives. Those lives
begin to walk in the power of the apostles. Those lives begin to be used by Jesus to transform the
places where they work to bring people to Jesus week-by-week, month-by-month. Those lives, loved
ones, are the lives of abundant livers. Those are the lives that God has planned for us. Loved ones,
that’s what we’re called to and that’s what you’re called to.

It’s a life where you are filled with the Holy Spirit. It’s not a life where the Holy Spirit is
someone whom you control. You must admit, isn’t that a tendency of many of us here in this room? We
know the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. Even those of us who may not be Christians, may not be
children of God this morning, even we know the working of the Holy Spirit within us. But we hold Him
within a box. We keep Him contained. We keep Him limited. But we do not let Him become the Lord of
our lives. That’s why many of us here will testify to Jesus being our Savior and will testify to
being saved really “in” our sins.

We’ll testify to having been forgiven our sins but we’re not saved “from” our sins. And we don’t
know Jesus as our Lord. Because of course Jesus is not Lord at all unless He is Lord of all. You
know that so well, don’t you? We knew it as children in class at school. If we were willing to obey
the teacher just on certain issues but there were even two issues that we would not obey him, then
he was not really master of that classroom. He wasn’t. It didn’t matter. When it came to those two
issues, we would do what we wanted. So he wasn’t master. We were just letting him play master.

Do you see it’s the same with Jesus? We’re just letting Him play Lord until He is Lord of all in our
lives. What does being filled with the Holy Spirit mean? I’ll share a verse with you that I shared
last Sunday evening. A dear verse in John, towards the end of John 21 loved ones. Jesus was
explaining to Peter how he was going to die and it’s reckoned you know that Peter died by
crucifixion and Jesus was explaining this to him.

John 21:18 — “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where
you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and
carry you where you do not wish to go.” That’s the difference. When you’re born of the Spirit, know
Jesus as your Savior, know the forgiveness of your sins but are not yet baptized with the Holy
Spirit, then you’re young. You go where you want.

The Holy Spirit says, “I want you to call on that person. I’d like you to pray about this person.
I’d like you to do this with your career. I’d like you to spend the afternoon speaking to that

person. I’d like you to read this book.” You say, “Well, I certainly will think about that. Now it’s
a sunny day. I do have things to do for the wife. I do have things to do for the children. I have
the garden to get done. I have several other things. I’ll certainly try to work that in.” That’s
what you do when you’re born of the spirit and not baptized with the spirit.

You’re like a little child. You go where you wish but then Jesus says, “There’ll come a time when
you grow old when another will gird you and you will be carried even where you do not want to go.”
That’s what it’s like when you’re baptized with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit at last is Lord and
Master of your life. You’re at last giving up the control of your own life to Jesus and to His
Spirit and you begin to live that exciting life that has the glory of the unpredictable in it and
you find yourself delivered out of your old static ways.

Have you ever felt old? Have you ever been 20 and felt old? Then you’re 25 and you feel old — then
30 and 40 and 80. You shouldn’t feel old at 80! I know there’s a dear brother here who is 70 who
doesn’t feel old at all. You shouldn’t feel old. But have you ever felt old? Have you ever felt “I
am into a rut? Life goes this way; I go to church on Sunday morning, I have lunch, then I go out and
do some gardening. Then in the evening I watch a little TV. On Monday I hit the office.” Life is
utterly predictable.

Loved ones, that’s not the way with the wind. It’s not the way with the breezes in the springtime or
the summer. They blow wherever they will and you don’t know where they come from and you don’t know
where they go. You see a bird flying in the air (it hasn’t filed its flight plan with some control
tower)and it just joyfully goes where it wants. There’s a delight in all of nature that is God’s
will for you and me. But it can only be if you will come to the place in your life where you will
allow the Holy Spirit to be the Lord of your life.

Loved ones, He has a completely new person to make out of you, utterly different. Do you know you’re
a robot? You’re a stuffed robot at the moment, you really are. Compared with the way you would walk
in the Holy Spirit, you walk like that. You’re like a puppet compared with what God wants to make
you filled with the Holy Spirit. And the key to it all is what the Bible says in Acts 5:32.
“God gives the Holy Spirit to them that ask.” If those of you who were here last Sunday evening
would bear with me, I’ll just tell it quickly.

You’re driving along. It’s your life. Jesus stops you. Some preacher, some Sunday school teacher,
some dad or mom, a Billy Graham crusade, a little tract somebody gives you, something in your life
like a death causes you to stop. You stop. You see that Jesus is God’s son, that he has died for you
and that he wants to come into your life. You pray to receive Jesus and you receive Him in. He sits
beside you and then you drive on and He says, “Turn left.” And you turn left. He says, “Turn right.”
And you turn right. Then He says, “Go up that hill.” But you say, “Well, it’s very steep Lord.
There’s an easier way around. We do not need to go that way.”

Some of us keep on saying that. We come to the next hill and we say the same thing. We come to the
next sharp turn and we say the same thing. We come to the next place where we have to give somebody
a ride in the back because Jesus tells us and we say the same thing. We keep saying, “No, no, no.”
Eventually we can’t hear anything coming from the person beside us at all. That’s one way to go.

If you go that way, your life gets more and more boring and more and more static and more and more
dead. There’s another way to go. You’re driving along. Jesus says, “Go up that hill”, you say, “I’ll
go Lord.” He says, “Now go down, see that muddy road there, go right down through that. It doesn’t

matter about how the car will look or what people will think of you. Go down through it.” You go
down it. He says, “Turn left” and you turn left.

Then you say, “Lord, I don’t need to be doing this. I am going to get out.” And so you get out and
say, “Lord, will you come around?” Then you come around and sit in the passenger seat. You put Jesus
in the driver’s seat and you say, “Lord, wherever you want to go, that’s where I want to go.
Whatever you want to do, that’s what I want to do. Whatever you would like to do with my life this
afternoon, that’s what I want to do.” And you give Him the right and the freedom to carry you where
He will.

Now, loved ones that’s the life baptized with the Holy Spirit. That’s a life that begins to have a
power of purity from within that lifts you and carries you on wings. Loved ones, that’s for every
one of us. It’s for you. You’re meant to have a fertile life. You’re meant to have a life that
begets and produces more and more children. You’re meant to be a father and mother in Christ, to
hundreds of people. Your life is meant to be prosperous and producing and creative. That’s God’s
will for you, and for each one of us.

Now loved ones, I don’t care if you’re sitting there and saying, “Brother, that’s for you. You’re a
speaker or a preacher and I can understand that.” That’s silliness, that’s foolishness because the
preaching is nothing and the speaking is nothing. Each one of us will stand before Jesus on the last
day and He will say, “What have I done with your life?” And we’ll say, “Well, we lived a good life.
We were happy. We left things for our children and we set a good example.” And Jesus will say, “I
didn’t do that with your life. Everywhere where I have come, I have begotten children for myself.
Every body that I have lived in has produced others. Look around me. Here’s Peter. Here are the sons
and daughters that he had. Here’s John, here are the sons and daughters that he had. Then you see
here’s a dear little lady whom nobody knew. Here are the thousands that she begot in Jesus. Here is
a guy who worked at a bench all day — at machinery. Here are the thousands that he begot.” That’s
what it will be like loved ones. We’re all in the same boat.

Can you tell me any other way to spend this life? I mean it is going quickly, isn’t it? It’s going
fast. There’s less and less sense to it. Every piece of news that comes from abroad makes less and
less sense. “There is only one thing that matters in this passing world of sin — that our lives
should tell for Jesus and be of some account for Him. Let us then be up in doing, strong in faith
and scorning fear, trusting Him to keep us faithful in His service here.” Are you baptized with the
Holy Spirit? Oh, I pray that you’ll seek that. That’s God’s will for you. Let us pray.

Dear Father, we don’t want to be among those who are lukewarm. We don’t want, our Father, to be
those who are lords of their own lives but still proclaim that You are their Savior. Father, we want
Jesus to be our Savior and our Lord. Oh Father, we do not want Jesus to have died in vain. We do not
want to give Him half the price of what He has paid for by His own life.

We believe that we are not our own, we are bought with a price. Father we want to give you that
total gift of our lives. Lord Jesus, will you reveal to each one of us what it means to be carried
where we would not even want to go by your Spirit. And Lord, will you bring us now to the place
where we say “yes”. We allow you to baptize us with the Holy Spirit that our lives may be rescued
out of the death of self-rule and lifted into the life and delight of Christ’s rule. We ask this for
your glory and for the benefit of untold hundreds who are waiting for us to speak and to come. Amen.

Spiritual Life #62

You Shall be My Witnesses

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Loved ones, I’d like to share some things about what we’ll be doing during the summer, but I’d like
to share them through Acts 1 if you would look at it. It’s the promise that we read before, that
Jesus gave to the disciples, and it’s the promise that has assured us that he will give us the same
gift as he gave to them. Acts 1:8, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon
you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the
earth.”

I was in the Methodist Ministry when Jesus baptized me with the Holy Spirit, so I already had been,
for maybe nine years, a minister of Christ. At least, I was concerned with bringing other people to
Jesus, so that was a help in some ways because when I began to seek the fullness of the Holy Spirit,
it was in the context of already being involved in his ministry. Except that I’ve shared before
with you, how that doesn’t matter too much, because you can easily pervert his ministry to your own
purposes. I was as caught up with myself in the ministry as I could have been raking in the money
at a Vegas casino. But it did mean that when I began to seek the fullness of the Holy Spirit, I was
very clear in my own mind that it wasn’t so that I could have a happier life. Do you see that? I
was very clear in my mind; it wasn’t so that I could have a happier life, even though I wanted a
happier life; it was essentially so that I would have power and would be his witness.

I thought I’d share that with all of you tonight, because I know you’re concerned about the fullness
of the Holy Spirit and I think it’s very easy to fall into the trap of saying, “Oh, I want to be
filled with the Holy Spirit so that I don’t have so much trouble with myself, or so that my wife
doesn’t have so much trouble with me, or so that I don’t let myself down so much, or have to
struggle so much with anger and unclean thoughts.” Now loved ones, that isn’t the purpose of the
fullness of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is given freely; God fills us with the life that fills
nature, and fills birds, and fills little dogs, and fills all the beautiful things in the world.
God gives us that when we are willing to live for him and to spend our lives reflecting his beauty.

Now you can’t get the Holy Spirit if you just want it for yourself. If you just want it for thrills
and party games kind of excitement you won’t enter into the fullness of the Holy Spirit; you’ll
enter some emotional deal that you’ll call the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but it really won’t be
the fullness of the Holy Spirit. So it is pretty important to get that clear in your heart; that
it’s when you align yourself with God’s purpose that he gives you the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
That’s why it’s so clearly linked to witnessing in Jesus promise; but you shall receive power when
the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And what will you be — you’ll be rich, you’ll be happy, you’ll
be joyous every day? No, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem — where you live, your own
hometown, in Judea — the area around about, maybe the place where you work, and then in Samaria —
the place where people don’t like you, the other side of the tracks; the people that you don’t
understand, the people that don’t understand you; and then unto the utter most parts of the earth.

So it is in those concentric circles, and that’s a good way to find out how real your life with God
is. If you’re doing very well sending money to the missionaries on the other side of the world but
your wife thinks you are the worst example of a child of God that she has ever met, then you can be

sure that you’re not involved in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. It has to be in the concentric
circles, it has to be in that order. I knew God had really changed my life when he changed it so
that my wife could see it. That’s the real test: if it’s changed so that your loved one that you
live with can see the change, then it’s real. But loved ones, it is connected with the fullness of
the Holy Spirit.

Now it might be good to see that that isn’t where the disciples started. They started where all of
us started. Mark 1:16-17 tells the story of Jesus going along the beach and speaking to the
disciples. “And passing along by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon
casting a net in the sea; for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will
make you become fishers of men.’ And immediately they left their nets and followed him.”

Now I’m with you; they did some more fishing during the rest of their lifetime. At times they had
to fish to get food and they had to sell their fish in order to exist and to live. But that was the
last time they ever fished as the main purpose of their life here on earth, because the Bible says,
“They left their nets.” They got hold of the idea that there was only one reason for being alive in
this world, and that was to be fishers of men and so they left their nets. Now loved ones, I think
America is a tricky place to grow up, because we not only have it pretty well hammered into us by
our parents that our job is to get a good education, and get a good job, and not be a burden on
society; but the school and the work place actually intensifies that for most of us.

The sheer competition of the whole society encourages you to get absolutely caught up in getting a
good job that can enable you to support the size of a mortgage that you need, to buy the kind of
house that you absolutely must have, in order that you’ll enjoy life as any good red blooded
American must enjoy it. We’re kind of brainwashed with that stuff so it is impressed upon us that
any son or daughter worthy of the name, will give their whole life to their job and to getting a
good job, and to being faithful in that job, and to earning money through that job so that they can
bring up their children. And then their children will go out and get an education and they’ll get a
good job, too. And they’ll get more and it’ll go on until the “mushroom cloud” (nuclear bomb)
catches up with some group of little children who are trying to do the same thing as we are doing.

But it is true isn’t it, that we are desperately caught up with earning our livelihood? And indeed,
we’ve grown used to seeing our dad’s move from place-to-place according to the demands of the
company, so many of us ourselves have moved from place-to-place throughout the United States.
Indeed, many of us have seen our home life fall apart because of the pressures of their jobs on our
dad or our mum. And so you and I are absolutely committed to the idea that maybe God’s first, but
next comes your job.

Now loved ones, I know it sounds bad, but you can’t be filled with the Holy Spirit if you continue
to live like that. Sooner or later you have to come to see that the biggest thing in this world is
not putting band aids on it to keep it going a little longer. And that’s really what most of us are
doing in our work, you know. Most of us, whether we’re in engineering drilling oil wells, whether
we’re teachers, or lawyers, or nurses, whatever we are, most of us are involved in expressing the
preserving grace of God keeping this world together somehow, so that his redeeming grace can get
going. But do you see that that is not our primary task? You only have look at Mount Washington to
see that the place is beginning to shake. And you’d hate to live in the San Andreas Fault at the
moment, wouldn’t you? We’re all beginning to feel, “Yeah it’s not looking as steady or stable a
world as it was 40 years ago.”

Loved ones, you cannot get caught up in the job of preserving the world for another few years. When
Jesus comes along to you, he says, “But there’s only one thing worth doing. I’ll tell you; this
world is going fairly fast, and the only thing worth doing is bringing people to know me and to know
my Father, so that you can begin to enjoy the new world that we are preparing for you. But your
main task in this world is not to keep it in existence, your main task in this world is not first
and foremost to enjoy yourself, your main task in this world is to get to know me and to introduce
others to me, you’ll enjoy yourself as you do that. And then in the new world that I have prepared
where there are no volcanoes, where there are no earthquakes, there is no disease, where there is no
war, where there are no fights or battles, in that place, then you and I can get going onto
developing the rest of this universe the way I had planned.”

But loved ones, the first necessity is that you leave your nets. It’s interesting that it’s put
that way, “They left their nets.” I don’t know if you’ve done any fishing, a guy started to show me
how to cast a net. Well, I mean I ended up lying on the ground with the net all around me, but no
fish anywhere near! And I began to realize it’s easy to get entangled in nets. I wonder how many
of us get entangled in our nets? I wonder how many of us have so got entangled with our jobs, and
our businesses that that has become everything to us?

Now loved ones, do you see what I’m saying; I’m not saying pack it in – that is, quit — that’s
dumb. I was like you, I taught school for eight years, and I give my whole heart to Jesus. The
school teaching was not the be all and end all of my life; it was Jesus and bringing others to him,
even though I did that part-time for five or six years. So I’m not saying you have to pack in your
full-time job, but you have to pack in your full-time heart attitude to your job and you have to
adopt a full-time heart attitude to bringing people into Jesus’ friendship and into a relationship
with God.

Loved ones, anything else is just a waste of time. It’s the dumbest thing: why slog it out for 30
years to get a gold watch, and then see the whole company falling apart anyway after all your work?
I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but I’ve seen my Father do that. I’ve seen my Father go down to the
place that he had spent years trying to build up and the German bombs just destroyed it absolutely.
I think many of us have come to situations where we’ve seen our dad’s or our mum’s spend years and
years trying to build something and the thing falls. It just isn’t worth it.

We do have to work to earn our living, but do you see that Jesus is making it plain when he came
along by the side of the disciples in the Sea of Galilee, he’s making it plain, “Look, I want you by
all means, to fish if you need to, to teach if you need to, to engineer if you need to, to
administer finances if you need to, but actually I want you to come and do what I am not only living
my life for, but what I’m dying for; to bring people to my Father, and to get to know me and know
him so that we will be able to live together forever in peace, and in love, and in joy.”

Now loved ones, until you adopt that attitude, you can’t be baptized with the Holy Spirit. You do
have to settle; what is going to be the main purpose of your life? You can see then, Jesus clinches
it in the Great Commission which he gives to the disciples in Mark 16:15, “And he said to them, ‘Go
into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized
will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those
who believe; in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up
serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on
the sick, and they will recover.”

I think we’re pretty dumb because we want to stay here and do a little picking up of demons, a
little laying hands on the sick, a little bit of excitement of the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Do
you see how silly it is? Do you think that all those things only come to someone who is like that?
No, they come to someone who is moving; someone who is on their way. Jesus will baptize with the
Holy Spirit anybody who is on their way; anybody who is moving out after the purpose that he has
died for and that he has given us our lives to fulfill, that’s it loved ones. Jesus won’t give you
the Holy Spirit for parlor games, or for a little bit of excitement, or a little nth degree of TM
(transcendental meditation), he won’t. He will only baptize you with the Holy Spirit, he will only
lead you into those things, when you are moving, when you’re on your way.

Do you know that China in 1890 had 1,300 missionaries throughout the Provinces of China, and they
had 3,000 full-time Chinese Christian Evangelists? You find that in the book about Hudson Taylor
and that was in 1900. Do you see it has to be done in every generation — do you see that? It has
to be done again, and again. It was done in 1870 then 1900, now it has to be done again. That’s
why you and I are alive today — nobody living today is going to hear from the people that will take
over after we die because this generation will have died by then. But you and I are committed to
doing that all over again in China — and India is the same. We think “Evangelize the world in our
generation” is a new thing — well, the guys and girls have always been doing that in the
universities. They’ve always seen that it has to be done again in our generation.

And may I point out to you; that’s the exciting life that God has for us. Can I point out to you
that the deadliest, most boring thing in the world is to stay here in the States going to church
every Sunday, and singing your hymns, and trying to keep a little bit of liveliness inside your
heart? That’s the dullest thing in the world. I know America needs saving, I know that. But
really, it has a fair chance! It’s hard to turn on that car radio without hearing that old gospel
stuff — we’re so swamped with it, but loved ones, the rest of the world is empty, and there’s an
exciting world out there that is waiting for people like you and me.

And if you ask me, “To do what –to go and preach on street corners?” No, they don’t need that;
they’ve had enough of that hypocrisy. But the people in India do need some dear guys and girls like
ourselves, who don’t think we’re anything great, who don’t think we’re coming as the great white
missionaries to bestow something on the poor natives, but have come along side them as ordinary
friends to go in with a drilling rig and begin to drill wells for water. And as we’re doing that,
they sense there’s a beauty about these people, there’s a love about them, there’s a gentleness
about them that they’d like to find out about.

That’s what’s needed in Africa. They don’t need more of us building churches, they don’t even need
more of us giving out literature, though that would be good. But they need to see people like
ourselves, going in on the same level as them, into schools teaching alongside them, working in
their hospitals, working in villages, doing the kind of thing that Jesus did; helping people. If
they needed water, he gave them water. If they needed bread, he gave them bread. Doing the things
that God wants done and that he has committed us to do to develop his world in terms of his own
will.

Loved ones, that’s what’s needed. And oh, really, you’re missing the fun of life, I can tell you.
I left Ireland, and it’s far more fun leaving home, far more. It’s far more exciting, and it takes
you way beyond yourself. I know if I’d stay in Ireland I would’ve been a shrunken little creature.
I know that God can expand you beyond anything that you think possible, if you will commit yourself
to the Great Commission. Not to thumping them and saying, “Are you saved? You have to believe in

Jesus.” Not that stuff, but loving them, loving people, being kind, being alongside them, and having
a real relationship with Jesus, yourself, in your prayer times, so that the Holy Spirit is able to
touch them in his good time.

Loved ones, that’s why God gives the fullness of the Holy Spirit to us. When he said, “Don’t get
drunk with wine, but be filled with Holy Spirit,” he knew drunk with wine, that’s nothing. You
think it’s great — it’s nothing compared with fullness of the Holy Spirit. No hangover, its
continual, and it doesn’t cost any money! There’s nothing like it! When God combined those two
that’s what he was saying: “The fullness of the Holy Spirit is what you need and it’s the
counterfeit of that that you’re trying to satisfy yourself with. But I can only fill you with the
Holy Spirit, I can only fill you with the liberty and the freedom of birds, and dogs, and fish; I
can only fill you with the freedom of the sunshine and the breezes and the springtime; I can only
fill you with that transcendent life that will lift you above the miserable pedestrian boredom of
this ordinary every day life if you’ll come and be what I am. I’m bringing people to myself, will
you join me in that? Will you make that the chief purpose of your life?”

Loved ones, that’s what this life is for, honestly. It’s not for our little attempts to keep
ourselves alive — don’t you feel we were made for something more than that; that we were made for
something more than trying to balance that miserable checkbook? Don’t you feel you were made for
something greater than that? But loved ones, it takes risk — it does take risk, but the fullness
of the Holy Spirit is for that, you see. So if you’re sitting here tonight and you’re thinking,
“Well, I want to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, and I want to live above the miserable pedestrian
boredom of this world, I do. But I want to hold onto what I’ve got. I want to hold onto my little
job at the bank, I want to keep my little hopes to marry John, or Tom, or Gerald, or Peter, or Jane,
and I want to have little babies, and I want to have a nice house in Bloomington.”

Loved ones, why get into a prison? Why get into a prison? If God gives you that to do, if he
commands you to do that, then it will be joy, and the babies will be great, and the house in
Bloomington will be a palace. But if you press yourself into that and say, “That is what I’m going
to do; I’m going to prison whether you want me to or not.” If you have that attitude, God has to
let you go to prison. And you see — it will be prison unless it’s where Jesus wants you. But
loved ones, it does not take a lot of logic, or a lot of common sense to see that we’re in
remarkable shape here in America. You know the statistics: 75% of the world’s Christian workers are
here in America among 200 million people — I forget what that is but something like 7% of the
world’s population. It just is obvious that God wants the greater majority of us here in this room
abroad unless he tells us to stay here.

Now, you have to start somewhere. This summer what we’re going to do is have the evening services
down in Colony Inn on the university campus. We’re probably going to put the chairs and tables back
and have an informal setting there around that fountain. And we’re probably going to center the
evening service around the whole experience of all of us in our day-to-day lives with Jesus. But
the really big change is, after morning service, instead of going to the same park that we used to
go to on the river every Sunday; we’re going to go to different places every Sunday afternoon. Some
Sundays we’ll be at Lake Calhoun, another Sunday we’ll be at a different park, another time we’ll be
down by the riverside. But we’ll go wherever people gather, wherever college people and school
people gather. All of us will go there, and have our picnic, and just mix as Jesus guides us. Some
of us will presumably play volleyball with each other, and some of us will sit and read, and some of
us will do what we began to do in London 10 years ago; trust Jesus to lead us as we wander around to
strike up conversations with people. And we’ll begin to trust the Holy Spirit to use those Sunday

afternoons, and use us in those Sunday afternoons. And then to begin to bring not only ourselves to
Colony Inn on Sunday evening, but also bring loved ones that we will have met. Knowing that it
won’t be a kind of gospel preaching service, but it will be a loving time of enjoyable fellowship,
with somebody telling a little of what God is in their life.

But loved ones, that’s what we’re going to do from the following Sunday on. I would say this to
you; what are you going to do with your summer? There’s no point in saying, “I agree with you. I
do see that my life should be more outgoing. I do see that my life should have some cosmic purpose.
I do see that I ought to be concerned with something other than my own little squirrel existence.
I do see that and I’m going to do that sometime. When I get married, or when I get my job settled,
or when I get my education over or when, when, when…..I’ll do it.” You know you’re just saying you
won’t do it. Because actually, it doesn’t begin when you get to Africa, it begins now. You decide
to begin to live your life for God now.

So I would ask you: what are you going to do with your summer? Do you know that most of us believe
the Devil goes on holiday in summertime? We do. We think he goes on holidays, “Oh, we can lie back
and just let it roll.” And that’s what we do and we come to September and we’re worn out, worn out
spiritually because it’s a bluff thing. The summertime is often the worst time for passivity and
lethargy. I would encourage you to join us in a whole outgoing attitude here in Minneapolis in the
parks and the lakes.

Loved ones, it’s a great time — you know, it is; it’s one of the most beautiful times. It was one
of the exciting things for us when we came to Minnesota, to see how everybody is anxious to get out
in the summertime. You really want to make the most of June, July, August, September. And they
have been great months for us, in going out and beginning to open out our lives to others, and above
all beginning to open our lives out to God giving us power and giving us ability. I see Dennis and
others here, who were probably shyer than anyone else in this room, honestly. There were many of us
were very, very shy in-turned people who were afraid to speak to any stranger, in case they would
say something that we wouldn’t know how to answer.

So it was a big step for many of us to begin to say, “Holy Spirit, I’m going to take the first step;
I’m going to put myself into the spot and then I’ll trust you to give me the right words.” That,
for many of us, was the first experience of the fullness of the Holy Spirit. But it takes you to be
willing to move out.

So loved ones, I would ask you really to think of it; would you think seriously about the way you’re
going to spend Sunday afternoons? Because most of us have got fed up with the siestas, you know!
It’s just deadly — you don’t sleep so well at night, or you have to watch the late, late show, in
order to be sleepy, because you slept on Sunday afternoon. Don’t do that. Don’t sleep the sleep of
the dead, oh don’t. God has given us daylight, and beautiful weather, and there are thousands of
loved ones out by the lakes, and the parks on these Sundays. And you say to me, “What’s the
importance in this?” Oh, it’s probably for many of you, the most important step in receiving the
fullness of the Holy Spirit.

I know you think, “Oh, no, Pastor, there are all kinds of other problems I have. I mean, I have
real problems with sex, real problems with my motive life, real problems with greed.” Loved ones,
really probably the greatest problem is that you disobey the greatest commandment, “Thou shall love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself.” Probably your failure is, to fail
to obey the whole purpose that Jesus said you’re here on earth for; to go and preach the gospel to

all nations. That’s probably it; that’s probably the greatest failure that is preventing you being
filled with the Holy Spirit.

So I would encourage you to come. You may say, “Oh, you’re going to draft us all in, and we all
have to go around with the little Four Spiritual Laws booklet.” No, we’re not saying that, no.
Just be yourself. Let’s go to the parks and the lakes and be ourselves that’s it. If all we can do
is play volleyball with somebody or Frisbee, then let’s do that. If all we can do is walk the dog,
let’s do that. Let’s do what we’re able to do. Let’s be ourselves, because Jesus wants to show
forth his infinite variety through us, really. So I’d ask you to think about it.

And then why I asked John to stay here, is that he is one of us who is going to go out in about two
weeks time — he and Linda? They’re going to go and it’ll be saying goodbye to them for as long as
God wants — perhaps forever, but it’ll be for as long as the Father wants. But John is one of us
who has been with the rest of us for 10 years, and we feel like family together. I remember meeting
him when he was first at Bethel (College) when he was seeking the fullness of the Holy Spirit. So
it seems like a lifetime we’ve been together. But now he knows it’s time for him, as it was for
many of us who went to London, to begin to make a move.

And oh, I’d ask you — as you listen to his few words about what he’s going to do, would you begin
to think which way is your life going to go? Which way is it going to go? I’ll tell you; it’ll go
the way you, under God, decide to make it go. And if you decide to let it drift, that’s what it’ll
do, it’ll just drift, drift, drift steadily down. But if you decide to do something with it,
something will take place and there will be hundreds who will know God because of you.

Baptism With The Spirit

Romans 7:15

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

We’ve been talking the past two Sundays about the biggest problem that each one of us faces in our
everyday life and I think you’ll agree when I tell you what it is. It’s the problem expressed by
Paul in that verse that we read. “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want
but I do the very thing I hate.” I would bet that it doesn’t matter whether you are sitting beside
your wife at this moment or whether you are sitting beside a roommate or whether you are sitting
beside a friend or a stranger. I would bet that every one of you has felt that as I have felt it.
You’ve been in situations where you knew your mother was desperately wanting your love or you’ve
been with a friend and you knew what that friend needed desperately was your understanding or your
kindly patience and you’ve had to say after the event was over, “I don’t understand my own actions
for I do not do what I want but I do the very thing I hate.”

Many of us remember when we were little guys or girls at home, we remember well enough throwing a
tantrum because somebody took our toy or we didn’t get the cookie that we wanted — but the tragedy
for most of us is it hasn’t changed one bit. We just cover over the tantrum a little better or we
express it a little differently to our employees or we express it as criticism if it is about our
employer because you can’t throw a tantrum with him so you criticize him underneath by kind of
whispering stuff. Now, you know in your heart it is still the same problem. I do not understand my
own actions because I don’t do what I want to do. There is something in me that wants to do the
right thing. I really don’t want to hurt my mother like that. I really don’t want to hurt my friend
like that. Actually, even that professor, even though he isn’t particularly kindly, I don’t even
want to do him the way I’m doing with this criticism talk and this backbiting. I really don’t want
to even hurt that woman in the office but I don’t understand my actions. I don’t do what I want to
do, I do the very thing I hate and I have to admit that often these are the very actions and
attitudes that I am criticizing in other people and I find that I am doing them myself. Maybe I see
the well-known figures like Carter or Reagan or somebody else do these things and I take it out on
them but I know that I’m doing the same things, just in smaller ways.

So loved ones, that’s the central problem, I think, of mankind. I don’t think the central problem is
knowing what we ought to do. I think we all have enough information on that. I think we know what we
ought to do. The problem is we can’t do it. Then of course the tragedy we were talking about is that
though the whole world feels that, many of us who think that we’ve been born of God, many of us who
think we have received His Spirit, we do know that Jesus has died for us, many of us are in that
position. Many of us who say we believe in God and who say we believe Jesus is our Savior and who
say we believe Jesus died for us and the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sins — many of us are
in that same spot.

You see, I don’t know about you, if you are not what they call a Christian or whatever that word now
means or whatever being born again means, if you are not that, well, in a way you can hope that
there is something that can help you. Those of us who do claim to be born of God and who do claim to
know Jesus as our Savior and believe in God and all that stuff, we are in a hideous position because
we’ve kind of taken the step that everybody says is the solution and we find ourselves still in this

spot. I’d just like to remind those of you who were here last Sunday that it is not a business of
actions. Actually that is the problem with most of us who are so-called Christians. Most of us who
are so-called Christians feel we ought to have at least the outward control over our actions and
words that people like Socrates and Plato had, who were just noble pagans. So we believe that we
ought to be able to do that because of the Holy Spirit that has made us alive to God. Of course what
gets to us is that even though on the outside we seem to live by all the Christian virtues, inside
there is a seething, miserable, perverse strain of irrationalism that makes us feel utterly
different from the way we are behaving outside and that is, I think, what gets to us. On the outside
we are churchgoers, on the outside we are being patient like Jesus, we are being honest and
generous, but on the inside often, often, often we are smiling, sticking out the old hand saying,
“How are you and how’s the family?” and, “Oh, I thought about you,” and inside we are thinking,
“What a creep you are!” Or somebody sings and they sing beautifully and we go up and say, “Oh, that
was a beautiful song. You have a great voice,” and inside, “Really I have a better voice it is just
that people don’t know it.”

Loved ones, that is the problem. That is the agony of it. It’s simple little things. You’re going
out to shop and she is not right there so you want to close the door, you know, because you don’t
want the dog to get into the car but you close it a little firmly. “Are you ready, Dear?” That’s it.
There isn’t peace; there isn’t peace in your heart towards your loved one. There isn’t real love.
There is kind of irritability seething underneath. We come home at night and you’re supposed to be
nice to each other but you don’t feel nice inside. You feel irritable and impatient and of course
from time to time that breaks out into the light.

So that is the problem, loved ones. That is the central problem of mankind that even if some of us
seem to gain some control outwardly of our actions, whether because we’re involved in Christianity
or because we’re involved in Zen Buddhism or because we are involved in the power of positive
thinking, though some of us gain some control outwardly over our actions and our words, yet most of
us have incredible problems with inward sin. This attitude of self that we ought to get things our
way and we have a right to have them our way and if they don’t go our way we are impatient, we’re
irritable, we’re resentful, we’re critical, we’re angry, we’re jealous, we’re selfish, we’re
self-pitying, we’re resentful. Even though we keep all that stuff under wraps, it is inside us and
that’s of course what creates the ulcers, the adrenalin, that is what makes us old before our time.
You know that? That is why at times we can’t sleep at night. There is a strain in our life. That’s
what disease is, you see, it’s a lack of ease. It’s a lack of ease.

You know the way a swallow soars into the sky on the wind, effortlessly? That is the way we are
meant to live, but because so many of us are hiding this garbage inside we’re always on guard, we
are always uptight. We’re always afraid of things. Of course, what we shared last Sunday was so many
us who call ourselves Christians are resorting to the same hopeless, pointless, powerless techniques
and weapons that the world resorts to, to try and overcome this. That’s the stupid part.

Loved ones, I say this lovingly and knowing there are some psychologists and psychiatrists in the
body. I think psychologists and psychiatrists are primarily of value for showing the person who
doesn’t believe in God, who doesn’t believe in Jesus, what life is meant to be like and easing them
along towards it. In their way, expressing to them what the whole life is in Jesus. In certain
situations they can help if they know the centrality of the cross, they can help a Christian. Loved
ones, on the whole, Christians today are resorting to psychiatrists and psychologists, to the power
of positive thinking, to how to improve your temperament, to how to win by intimidation, to
sensitivity groups, to all kinds of methods and techniques which are the world’s poor substitute for