Summary of Romans 1-8

Summary of Romans 1-8

If you watch “Chico and the Man” (an American sitcom on television) you probably know who Freddy Prince is and perhaps most of us saw the irony of one of our foremost comics committing suicide because of despair and despondency. And you remember, that he kept on asking his manager “Is this all it is? Even my friends depend on my ratings and change as my ratings change. Is this all that life is?” And he kept on asking questions like, “What is it really for? Why am I really here at all and what’s the point of life?” And it was to answer that kind of question loved ones, that we really began the study of Romans about 10 years ago on campus when probably our society was in as much chaos as it had been for several decades. And I felt that in discussing what reality was together, it was very important that we didn’t discuss reality as you who were Baptist maybe thought of it, or we didn’t discuss reality as you who were Catholic thought about it, or we didn’t discuss reality as I as a Methodist thought of it, but that we did have some objective account that we could study and that’s why we chose the book of Romans which really is the best statement of the reason behind Jesus coming to earth that we have in the Bible.


It’s regarded as being as near to a theological treatise as the Bible contains. And you remember that every great movement of God’s Spirit here in our world has begun with a new discovery of the meaning of Romans and so that’s why we began to study Romans. And that’s the purpose of it loved ones, to find out what reality is, why we’re all here. And what we have been discovering of course is that we’re here so that we can treat God as our loving Father and so that we can bring his world under his control. And we’ve come now to the end of Chapter 8 of Romans and I think many of you have perhaps just joined us over the past year, or maybe the past two or three years and that it would be good for you to see the panorama of what Roman’s says about reality just very briefly.


So my wife always groans when I’m going to do these summaries, but I promise that I will really make it short and hope it will be sweet and clear. Loved ones, Romans 1, if you have your Bible, Romans 1 really makes that statement there. Really the whole purpose of Romans 1 is to say that obviously God exists. And you get that in Romans 1:19-20, obviously, God exists. And you see it there in Verse 19, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” So really what God says to us in Romans is, you who say, ‘Oh I don’t know whether there’s a God or not.” You’re really not being very fair to the evidence. It’s very difficult to give as reasonable explanation of the order and design in our universe unless you believe there’s an intelligent mind behind it. And that’s the first point that Romans make in regard to reality.


Then the second step in Romans 2 is that all of us know how we’re meant to treat him. We really do. It’s there, even those who have no law or no Old or New Testament. Romans 2:14-15, “When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them.” And God says, “Really, all of you know how you should treat me. You really do. Even if you don’t have a law to refer to your conscience inside you keeps telling you, ‘You should do this,’ or, ‘You shouldn’t do that.’” And so you really do know how you should treat God.


And then Romans 3:9-11 says that none of us in fact treat him that way. None of us do treat God the way we’re meant to treat him. And that’s in Verse 9, “What then? Are we Jews,” who have a law you see as opposed to Gentiles who haven’t, ‘Are we Jews any better off?” Are we Americans who know these things as opposed perhaps to the Buddhist, or the Hindus, “Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all; for I have already charged that all men, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God.’” And so God, through Romans, says, “Obviously, I exist. All of you know how you’re meant to treat me, yet none of you do treat me that way.”


And then Romans 4 states the way we’re meant to treat God. Romans 4:19-22, you remember, it takes an example like having one of our relatives in the cancer ward, or having one of our relatives about to die, that was the same kind of situation. Abraham was told by God he would have a child and of course his wife was very, very old and he was faced with is he going to believe this or not? Verse 19, “He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead because he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was ‘reckoned to him as righteousness.’” And that’s really the way we’re meant to live with God loved ones. We really are.


I mean, I know it seems strange to say that because we have developed such an independent life ourselves and this is so abnormal but we are meant to treat our Creator as our dear Father and to obey him and to trust him as our dear Father and that’s God’s plan and that’s what faith is. Faith is walking through the world with absolute peace and calmness of heart whether you get cancer one day or whether your child dies the next day, or whether you lost your job the next day, walking in absolute peace and confidence because you know the Father who made you sees it all and has it all organized and has prepared a way of escape for you. And that’s really what faith is.


Chapter 5 says that only Jesus’ death can change the independent personalities we’ve inherited and that’s 5:1-2, “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” In other words, probably all of you know you should treat God like that but you find that you have a personality that has been trained for years to depend on everybody else and to depend most of all on yourself, and you’ve had a personality that worries and frets just at the drop of a hat. And the only way to change that personality is in Jesus’ death. That’s the only way to change it. It’s only in Jesus’ death that your personality that has been trained to depend on people, and things, and experiences instead of on God as your loving Father, the only way to change that personality is in Jesus’ death.


I’d like to come back to that at the end after we’ve got to the end of Romans 8, and that’s what God says in Romans 9. And then in Romans 6, in Jesus our perverted world dominated personalities were destroyed. And that’s Romans 6:6-7, those verses that we know so well. We know that our old self, that’s that old self that loses temper, that gets worried, that frets, that gets anxious, that depends on the praise of our peers, the approval of our professors, that is cast down when somebody criticizes, that personality that has been used to receiving from outside. “Our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body,” a sinful body is one that is independent of God, “Might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin,” sin is just independence of God, “For he who has died is freed from sin.”


And then in Romans 7 loved ones, only by identification with Jesus in his death and resurrection can we obey and depend on God as our Father. Only by identification with Jesus in his death, in his death to what people think, in his death to what people can provide in the way of material possessions, and in his resurrection can we obey and depend on God as our Father. And it’s Romans 7:15, that famous verse you remember, that is the cry of so many of our hearts, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want,” and many of us have listened here on Sunday mornings have gone to practice it during the week and we say, “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” And then in verse 24, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” This body that is so dominated by other people, and other events, and outside circumstances, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind.” In other words, of myself, on my own independence I end up serving, “The law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” So I have to be delivered from that so that with both my flesh and my mind I can serve God. And that’s Romans 7 loved ones.


And then Romans 8 is the last chapter that we’ve just finished. When we do identify ourselves with Jesus in his death and resurrection our Father’s Holy Spirit gives us the nature of his children and it’s Romans 8:12, “So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”


Now loved ones, what I’d really like to share specifically this morning and then ask you if you have any questions is this, many of you I think, come here on Sundays and are part of the very cerebral group that we probably form. Really, you probably would be surprised at how many – I think there are others of us who aren’t attorneys, and doctors, and teachers, and college students, but you’d be surprised how many of those there are among us and we are a miserably cerebral kind of group. And there’s always the great temptation for people like ourselves to come here Sunday after Sunday and to grasp the obviously attractive truth that we are meant to live outward. We’re meant to love. We’re not meant to be demanding love all the time, we’re meant to love other people. And many of us I think grasp the truth that we’re meant to receive our security, and our significance, and our happiness from God our Father so that we as a result, can give security, and significance, and happiness to other people. And I think many of us come Sunday after Sunday and we say, “Yeah that is good. I can see that. Even the psychology books back up that kind of life.” And I think there’s a great danger of many of you thinking, “I’m going to try it.”


Now do you see you miss the whole point of it if you think you can try it by your own effort and by your own will power because the center of the truth is that your personality has become so twisted and so perverted that it cannot live like that and that’s why God destroyed it in Jesus. And only when you believe that it has been destroyed in Jesus and involve yourself in an intimate loving embrace with him as your Savior, only then will your personality be transformed and changed, and only then will you be able to receive the Holy Spirit of God which brings you all of the love and joy and peace of your own Creator.


But loved ones, you can’t do it yourselves. In other words, in this world there are broadly speaking two kinds of life. There’s natural life such as animals have and there is spiritual life. Now, my happy little dog has natural life and he lives every moment of his day concerned with food. Food is a big moment in his life and he really enjoys food. If I change the little bed that we have in the garage he gets all upset until he gets used to it. Shelter, that’s another big thing, he’s all concerned with shelter. He’s a little Yorkshire so he feels the cold so he needs a coat when he goes out in the cold. So he’s all concerned with food, and shelter, and clothing. That’s him. Now happiness to him is getting more food, getting more food, getting more shelter, really. I’ve tried him with Beethoven he just does not dig Beethoven at all. He understands more food, more shelter and clothing that brings happiness. If I pat him a lot, make a whole fuss of him, then he feels he’s significant. But that’s animal life.


Now loved ones, I can maybe teach him to walk on his hind legs so that he might vaguely resemble a man or a human being but he is still a miserable little animal because that’s the only kind of life he has coming through him. Now do you see that when you try to be an outgoing child of God by your own efforts, you’re like the little dog walking on its hind legs, you see that? You’re trying to imitate with your little animal independent personality that has been enslaved to people’s opinions for years, that has been enslaved to the emotionally satisfying experiences that you have through the week, that has been enslaved to other people giving you their attention and their recognition. You’re trying to use that miserable animal like personality and you’re trying to produce the outgoing life that Jesus alone can provide. And so loved ones, it’s vital not to come here Sunday-by-Sunday and listen and say, “I’m going to try that this week,” because you’ll drive yourself crazy. Or, you might become an approximation to the kind of person that God wants you to be but always deep down there’ll be that sense that you’re a self-made man or a self-made woman. And most of all, you will utterly lack the Holy Spirit.


Now being a child of God is experiencing the life of God’s Spirit in you. It’s a life loved ones, it is not a legal obligation. It is a burdensome thing when it becomes a series of legal obligations. That is not what Christianity is about, it’s not what being a child of God is about. Being a child of God is allowing the old human carnal animal self to be destroyed in Jesus, embracing him because he’s the only one that can bring that about through the cosmic miracle that God did in Calvary, and then reaching out for the gift of the Holy Spirit and receiving that Holy Spirit as a real person whom you obey and submit to day-by-day.


In other words loved ones, it is vital to see that the center of everything is fine. Only Jesus’ death can change the independent personalities we’ve inherited. You know every dear husband and every dear wife here, every dear roommate knows that that’s so. You’ve tried to love her day-by-day-by-day, you’ve tried to be patient with him day-by-day-by-day, you’ve tried to want his happiness more than your own, you know that. You know as a roommate you’ve tried to keep it up. You keep it up for a few days and then you fall because the independent personality has not been changed, you’re still a little dog trying to walk on its hind legs, trying to imitate the life of a spiritual man or woman. But loved ones, you can’t.


The thing to do is to identify yourself with Jesus, “Lord Jesus, I must admit that I have been depending on what my bosses think of me for my sense of importance. I’ve been depending on what my wife says about me when I come home at night. I’ve been depending on what my peers think of me for my sense of success. Lord Jesus, I want to die with you to that. I want to identify myself with you in your death and I want to be willing to endure what you endured. To have everybody insult me, everybody treat me as a criminal, everybody look upon me as nothing. Lord Jesus, I am willing for that and for anything else that you show me I need to be willing to accept. And then Lord Jesus, I ask you to give me your Holy Spirit.”


In other words loved ones, if Jesus is not your Savior you will never live as God meant you to live, you see. And I’m just a little afraid that some of you might listen on Sundays and see him as your example, and try to follow him so that anyone who reads any kind of decent psychology, they’re trying to live an outgoing life. But what none of us will accept is that we are radically perverted and twisted ourselves. That we will not accept. We will not accept that we’re sinners. We’re willing to be anything, maybe unenlightened, or maybe unsophisticated, or maybe uneducated, but we’re not willing to be sinners. And loved ones, that’s what God says we are.


Sinners are people who have lived so independent of God and so dependent on society that their personalities have become radically twisted, perverted, and put out of joint and the only way for those to be healed is for them to be destroyed in Jesus and recreated as new creatures completely through the power of his Holy Spirit. So do you see that there’s a miracle at the heart of all we’re talking about? And that’s what it means to be a child of God.


Now loved ones, it’s just exactly Noon so are there any questions that anyone would like to ask preferably concerning this. I’m not too good on calculus or analytical geometry.


Question from the audience:


Do you say that being part of God is not being of the body of God?


Reply from Pastor :


No, I would say the opposite, that being part of God is being part of the body of Christ.


Question from the audience:


What is the difference between trying to imitate and trying to identify?


Reply from Pastor :


Trying to imitate loved ones is a self-directed operation. You choose what you’re going to imitate in Jesus so you are still really god of your own life. It’s just that now you’re directing your own reformation. But identifying yourself with Jesus is looking to the Holy Spirit and asking him in what way he wants you to identify with Jesus. In other words, it’s giving the Holy Spirit the initiative and the right to direct. So many of us here have all kinds of shortcomings and the Holy Spirit knows which one God wants you to deal with today. And if you resist that you’re resisting his will and in that sense you’re a sinner and an independent person and you’re remaining so.


Now if the Holy Spirit points to that one thing but you are involved in imitation, so you’re working on some other area of your life that is a little more convenient for you to work on and just a little less hard on your ego, then you’ll be concentrating on imitating whereas the Holy Spirit is trying to bring you into identification. And I suppose that’s the whole difference between becoming a child of God and being a good man. A good man is trying to do what the serpent said to Eve, “You shall be like God.” A good man is trying to be like God not only by his own efforts but by his own judging of priorities and so in fact, you can work on many areas of your life that don’t touch the heart of your resistance to God at all.


I think I would like to learn how to play Handel’s Largo. Now I’m going to improve myself. It’s going to take a little bit of practice on the piano but it’s not really going to deal with the ego problem at all so you can carry on through 70, 80 years of your life improving yourself and never dealing with the central issue that God is putting his finger on that expresses your rebellion against him. So loved ones, it is a good question and very important to see that imitating Christ is a self-directed and therefore still a self-made treat yourself as God kind of attitude whereas identification is saying, “Holy Spirit in what way am I not identified with Jesus in his death to self? Show me that and I will enter in.”


Question from the audience:


In the eastern religions there’s a tendency for instance, maybe in Buddhism, to say, “Negate the self,” and they also mean negate the whole personality and so in what sense is the personality destroyed in Jesus and in what sense is it not?


Reply from Pastor :


I think it’s very important to see that in no sense is the personality destroyed. I think any of us who meet people who seem to be freed by the Holy Spirit are very aware that they are as unlike the negative passive Buddha as you could possibly get therefore, very free. They seem to have come into a new richness of personality. So in no sense is the personality destroyed but the independent personality, the self-directed personality, it’s that selfish will that is destroyed in Jesus and that whole in turned direction of the personality is completely destroyed and replaced by an outgoing one.


So you might say it’s the whole direction of the personality that is destroyed. But now at last the personality comes into fullness. And certainly loved ones, that’s why I always try to emphasize it’s our independent personalities not our personalities. God gave us our personalities, he gave smiles, and laughter, and jokes, and he gave little idiosyncrasies of all kinds but it’s when those are directed by the Spirit of Jesus they are beautiful. When they are directed by ourselves they are ugly and tend to put other people down and build ourselves up.


Question from the audience:


How do you separate serving God with your mind and with your flesh as Romans 7 talks about?


Reply from Pastor :


So Jack is pointing to Romans 7 where he says towards the end, “Wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death,” and then he says, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” and then he continues you remember and the first two Greek words, those of you who know Greek will know that the sentence goes on, “Of myself. I end up serving the law of God with my mind and with my flesh the law of sin if I’m left to myself.” But his whole emphasis in Romans 6 is that the old self is done away with and therefore when he acts not out of himself but out of Jesus he is able to serve the law of God both with his mind and both with his flesh. And Jack, what happened I believe, is that he came to the place here he was willing to be crucified with Christ. He was willing to die to himself and to die to people’s approval of him, or people’s rejection of him. He was willing to die to what his peers thought of him. He was willing to die to his particular judgment of how much shelter, food and clothing he would have and willing to commit that all to God. He was willing to stop demanding from his wife, his friends, happiness. He was willing to die to his right to being happy, happy, happy, all the time and willing to die to the right to have experiences that would make him enjoy himself. He was willing in every way to die to everything but to God.


I’d encourage those of you who are still hesitating, don’t torture your loved ones anymore because that’s what you’re doing. Don’t torture your loved ones, and your colleagues, and yourself, but most of all stop torturing God because that’s really what you’re doing. As long as you keep setting yourself up as a little god. That’s really what we’re doing when we’re living for ourselves to get our own way and insist on our own lives.


So I’d encourage you if you haven’t ever taken seriously the need to enter into Jesus, into his death, will you even tonight, when you go home tonight at the end of the day will you kneel down and pray and say, “God, I don’t know really exactly what Pastor means by saying that but would you begin to show me what it means for my life?” And loved ones, that’s the first little step you know. So those of you who are sitting there thinking, “Well, I’ll think my way into it.” You’ll never, you’ll never think your way into it. You won’t. Only if you go before God yourself and declare to him, “I can’t come into this myself, will you show me the way in?”


Loved ones, that’s the first sign to God that you really can’t make it on your own and it’s the first sign that enables him to begin to give you the Holy Spirit, really. So I’d encourage you, especially all you old cerebral types that think you’re going to think your way into it. You won’t, you’ll think yourself into the little dog standing up on his hind legs but you won’t think your way into God’s family. That comes only by new birth. Only by new birth through the Holy Spirit and to be born anew, you have to have the old destroyed and that’s as old Hamlet says, “There’s the rub.” There’s the rub, the destruction of the old creation that’s what we’re all fighting. And we’re all fighting, “Yeah but maybe I’ll get it destroyed and will there be something new?” Well somewhere or other you have to start trusting the dear one who keeps this globe flying through space with no visible means of support. So someday you have to trust that that same mighty and faithful Father will keep you in the same way. Let us pray.

Principalities & Powers Disarmed

Principalities & Powers Disarmed

Loved ones, I think it’s important to realize that the subject that we’re dealing with these evenings is very much for a work party. That is, a group of Christians who are very much ready to get down to business -- because it is kind of dangerous stuff if you’re not really in the position spiritually to deal with it, or if you’re not really interested in putting it into action but just interested in the theory. So, we ought to remember that as we talk.

I’d just summarize for you what God’s plan was. His plan was that we would be transmitters of his life. That’s why at the very beginning he said, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.” His plan was that he would pour into us the life of his Holy Spirit, and that life would contain the blessedness of God and the liberty of God. That life would contain all of God himself, and his plan was that we should then willingly transmit that to the whole world in all kinds of ways.

The spiritual mind of God would be expressed in building damns in certain places on rivers that would have been exactly the right places to build them. His mind would have expressed itself in protecting trees in certain parks so that the whole world would reflect the beauty of God. His mind would have built certain houses in certain places, and certain schools in certain areas. So that was the Father’s will.

Now you know that God was going to do that through the life of his Holy Spirit, and that life of his Holy Spirit was going to come into our spirits, and then down into our souls, and out to the whole world. That was the plan, that it would be an outgoing experience right from the Holy Spirit at the right hand of the Father, right down through our spirits and then down through our souls and our bodies, and out to the whole world -- to be fruitful, and to multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it.

Now you remember that we rejected that whole plan and we determined that we would not obey God. Our attitude was expressed really in Genesis 3, where Satan said, “If you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil -- if you decide what is good and evil for yourself instead of concentrating on this plan that the Father has for you -- then you know that the food is good, the fruit of the tree is good for food, and it is a delight to the eye, and it is to be desired to make one wise.”

So you remember that instead of working the way we earlier described, we began to empty the world, to eat of the world, and take all of it that we could and take it back into ourselves. So it became all an inward-working operation. So if the world is like that {pointing to a diagram}, and it is God’s plan that we should give out so that the world could be filled with his life, then what in fact happened was we began to take back in. So we began to empty the world and empty each other -- which of course is why we have a world today so filled with discontent and emptiness.

Now it is important to see that the dynamism, the energy, and the power that we have is not our own. We are not made to be independent self-determining beings. We are made to be dependent beings. So when we rejected God, we actually put ourselves under the control of Satan himself. So all the dynamic that you have -- drawing from the world and emptying other people and emptying the world itself -- comes from Satan himself. There is, in fact, a wild spiritual power consisting of many angels and many demons that give us the dynamic that makes us empty the world.

You’ll notice the reality of that dynamic when you consider that evil is not just an absence of good. Sure it’s not. It seems the lust with which we build the oil wells out there on the Santa Barbara coast, or the lust with which we mine the coal and strip the earth, or the lust with which we empty each other of our own physical health -- seems to have a powerful power about it that is not just the absence of good. That is, of course, because you’re either under God or you are under Satan. You are either under one or the other. So that’s the situation at the present time.

That’s why Jesus talked about Satan as the prince of this world, because he controls most of the economy of the world today -- most of the social relationships of the world today. Most of the international relationships of the world today are controlled by Satan, and they’re controlled because we willingly submitted ourselves to him. It’s important to realize that you cannot come under Satan unless you want to come under Satan. Satan cannot take possession of you unless you’re willing to do that.

If you remember here {pointing to a diagram}, your soul consists of your mind, your emotions, and your will. Now your will is the key to what your spirit does. So your will is what determines whether your spirit goes under the Holy Spirit or whether it goes under the spirit of Satan. And once you have submitted your will to Satan or taken your will out from under God’s will, then you open yourself to the power of Satan, and his power begins to get you to empty the world in that way {pointing to the diagram}.

Now the tragedy is that most of us have found that once Satan got a hold of our wills, he would not let go. God is not like that. God does not force your will to do anything. But Satan forces your will to do what he wants it to do.

Most of us, of course, when we began to try and free ourselves of this selfish, inturned will, found that we could not. We cried with Paul, “The good that I would I cannot do! It’s as if some power has got a hold of my will and chained it and enslaved it.” And you remember, we would use those very words, “We cannot break the bondage of this will, this selfish bondage of the will.” The reason was that Satan himself was in control.

Now a part of Satan’s control was this: he said to God, “Your own words stand against them. Your own word has said that when they sin, they’ll die. Your own word has said that you’ll have nothing to do with unrighteous people. Therefore they’re mine.” So God was caught by his own word, and Satan had us held by that legal bond that stood against us.

Now you remember what in fact God did. He took the selfish will that just would not be freed. He took this selfish will and he put it into Jesus. We cannot understand the cosmic miracle that was involved in putting the selfish will of all of us into Jesus. But that was presumably part of the pain that Jesus felt on the cross when he cried, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” He was experiencing all of our wills rejecting and reacting against God.

God put them all into Jesus and he crucified them there. And in doing that he destroyed the one power that held us connected with Satan. Of course, in doing that he also freed himself to allow us to approach him. When Satan said, “You cannot have anything to do with them because they deserve to die,” God said, “I have killed them. I have destroyed them in Jesus.” So the legal bond was nailed to the cross, and therefore at that same time God disarmed the powers and principalities of Satan -- because he gave them no reason to be able to justify their hold on us as human beings.

That’s what those verses mean in Colossians 2:12-15. It really just states what I’ve stated in connection with the legal bond. Remember that the legal bond was God’s own word that, “These people have to die because they’ve rebelled against me.”

You see it there in Colossians 2:12: “And you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” The result of that was (v 15), “He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him.”

Now that’s the basis of spiritual warfare -- that God has disarmed the principalities and powers. The principalities and powers of Satan had one justification for having any control of us. We were submitting our selfish will to Satan, and God himself had said we should die. Now when God destroyed that selfish will in Jesus on the cross, that was one of the obstacles removed to him taking over our lives, and one of the chains broken between us and Satan. And when God destroyed us in Jesus, that was the other legal bond that Satan had against us, and it broke the other part of the chain. So there is no reason at all why any of us here in this world should suffer anything from Satan.

If you say to me, “Why then, Pastor, do people suffer?” They suffer because they believe the lie that that has not happened. They believe the lie that God has not destroyed us in Jesus, that he has not raised us together with him and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And they will not believe that they do not have to die for their sins. So Satan’s control over people today is lying and deception.

Now while they submit their wills in the light of that lying and deception, they produce rebellion in their wills and their hearts. But his real control is one of lying and deception -- and there is absolutely no reason why we should put up with anything that Satan produces. And remember that Jesus called sickness the works of the devil. There is no reason why we should put up with sickness, or whether we should endure the sarcastic atmosphere that so often works in our offices, or whether we should endure the bickering and the back-biting that goes on in our homes.

Those are all works of Satan. God has destroyed them and disarmed them. The only reason they exist at all is because people still believe the lie about Satan and they still act as if that lie is true -- that they’re on their own, that God is not their loving Father, that they have no one to fight for them except themselves, and that there is no power but themselves to achieve what they want.

Now that is what you’re up against in spiritual warfare. Now it would be important just to mention that while you are fighting sins in your own lives, you have probably little experience of spiritual warfare. I mentioned that last day. While you’re simply fighting sins, while you’re still uncrucified, you’re probably not experiencing any kind of spiritual warfare at all. You’re just fighting sin, disobedience, and your own selfish will that you have not allowed to be crucified yet with Christ.

When you go another step, you begin to deal with your independent soul life -- the independent personality that wants to laugh loudly because it’s been laughing loudly for years, and hasn’t allowed the Holy Spirit to begin to soften that loud laughing. You begin to deal with how every time an opportunity for witness comes up, it begins to spew out a whole lot of intellectual stuff -- because it hasn’t allowed the mind to be renewed in the Holy Spirit. You begin to deal with how you talk a lot in order to persuade people to receive Jesus -- while the independent personality is still operating against Jesus. Until you deal with those things -- it’s probably true that you still actually do not have much spiritual warfare.

In other words, while you’re still going into an office and trying to calm them by the force of your own personality, you’re probably not doing much spiritual warfare. While you’re trying to get your wife, or your children, or your brothers, or your sisters to get them to stop arguing by the sheer force of your personality, you’re probably not engaged in much spiritual warfare.

Spiritual warfare only begins when you begin to come clear of that selfish will, and when you begin to allow the Holy Spirit to deal with those independent parts of your personality that are just human traits. They aren’t evil in themselves -- but they’re just human traits that are inexpedient for God to work with. When you have come clear of those two things, then you begin to come into spiritual warfare against Satan. That’s really what we talk about when we talk about spiritual warfare.

So maybe I could just mention again that one of Satan’s tactics in spiritual warfare is to cause as much chaos in your own soul as possible. There’s an example of that in Luke 10:40. In that verse Jesus came to Bethany on his way home really -- his way home to his father -- his way to Jerusalem and the cross. Luke 10:40: “But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.’”

It is Satan’s delight to so upset and preoccupy our emotions or our minds in the midst of a great deal of activity, that we become utterly preoccupied with, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” It is Satan’s delight to upset your emotions and your mind to such an extent that you become utterly preoccupied with self. And you remember, that’s one of the ways in which it’s necessary to take your position in Jesus at the right hand of the Father, above all the frenzy and the furor, and simply stand against Satan, and don’t allow yourself to be dragged out of your position at the right hand of the Father.

Now you remember another way that Satan works is to block spiritual works. You can see that part of his job here, is to work from his position, through the wills of people -- to block spiritual works. Once your selfish will is crucified, the only way he can work to block a work of God is by deception -- and often he’ll do it. So, he’ll come to us in connection with the work permits, and you apply for the work permits in Britain {that were earlier needed for people in CCI from other countries to stay in Britain}, and he puts some kind of obstacle in the way of God’s work.

Now if at the first sight of obstacles you begin to shake, or withdraw, or say, “Maybe God doesn’t want us to go there,” -- that’s all Satan wants. It’s vital in any work that God gives you to do in his kingdom that you keep on keeping on. And I agree with you, there’ll come a time when the Holy Spirit works in your own intuition and uses the outward circumstances and makes you question and makes you hesitate. But even in the Methodist Church we had that. You remember, we began to find, “Well, we wanted more money.” Then we found that we couldn’t get a quorum together to make a decision. Yet it seemed right, “Alright Lord. We just press on gently in that direction -- but not forcing it through to the final step.”

Nevertheless, it is God’s will that you keep moving in the general direction that he has given you. Otherwise, you can risk being put off by obstacles that Satan brings in the way. Then of course you know that it isn’t God’s will, because God gives you a confidence within that it is not his will after you meet the 25th obstacle. But I think you should be willing in God’s work to be prepared to meet many obstacles.

Now, if I could just say a word in defense of – I don’t want to defend Norman Vincent Peale, but I want to defend the principle that he was pointing at -- if he had believed in what we’re saying here tonight about our position in Jesus. It is true that there is no place for negativism in God’s work. There is just no place. Negativism comes from Satan. It comes from Satan suggesting that you are not at the right hand of the Father -- that you cannot do what God has given you to do. There is no place for negativism in God’s work. And it has been a joy, in CCI and in the body to learn to go God’s way.

It has been a joy to find that your brothers and sisters built you up in the Fatherdom -- rather than saying, “Oh no. We can’t do it. We can’t do it.” God’s way is always a positive way. It’s always a believing way -- because you can see where Jesus is at this moment. He’s at the right hand of the Father. Now, couldn’t he destroy this church in a moment? No question. Could he destroy the whole world in a moment? Of course. Could he lift us up and put us in LA? Certainly. Jesus could do anything in the position he’s in at this moment.

Now we are in that position. We can do anything that God tells us to do. And it is necessary to realize that Satan will work to block the work that God has given us to do, and it is vital for us to take our position. I’d just point you to it again -- until you’re sick and sore, tired of looking it up, and then you give up and you memorize it!

Ephesians 2:6: and God, “Raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” And where is that position? Back in the previous Chapter, 1:21: “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; and he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

Now I do agree with you that it is necessary in order to dwell in that position, to be willing to be crucified with Christ, to be buried with him, and to be raised. But if you are willing for that, then it’s simply a matter of exercising your faith. And I would have to testify, loved ones, to just the sheer fact of incredible victory through standing in that position. And I would have to say that I must admit I’m surprised a bit at myself -- that it seems to be a spirit that is from somewhere else that continually is able to believe that the thing can be done. And I know that a number of you have experienced the same thing -- because God has begun to plant it in different hearts here.

But loved ones, it is true that there is nothing that can oppose God’s work if his people are willing to be crucified with Christ, buried with Christ, and therefore be raised by the Holy Spirit through revelation to the right hand of the Father. From that position there are no impossibilities. That is the position that God wants us to hold.

Now, I would kind of caution you again: you cannot get into that position by any method but by dying. There is no shortcut to it. You cannot sing, “Only believe, only believe, all things are possible.” You cannot sing your way into that position. You cannot say, “Think big and you’ll be big.” You cannot believe yourself into that position, or autosuggest yourself into that position, or positively think yourself into that position. You can only die into that position.

But once you’ve come into that position by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, there is nothing that can oppose any work that God gives you to do, or any will that he has for you in your own life. Of course, that is the position of power in spiritual warfare.

Now I would like to next day talk about how to strengthen our spirits, and deal specifically with the difficulty of passivity that many of us enter into. But maybe I should keep my word and ask for questions now. Are there any questions?

And brother, I do think I got it but I’d just like to repeat it so I’m sure that I got it. I thought that you were ending up saying that it was good that we pressed on in the face of the difficulties with the work permits, but I thought that in the beginning you said you always felt God guided through circumstances.

[Question inaudible]

Okay, I can speak to that, brother. I think it is wrong to believe that God guides primarily through circumstances -- because if you look through scripture, you find that often men and often women moved against incredible odds. An example is Moses, who at a very old age moved into Egypt to lead out the people of God. It seemed to me repeatedly God’s men and women were moving against insuperable odds, and therefore were moving against circumstances. It seems also that very often the Holy Spirit, you remember, would work against circumstances -- as with Philip in Samaria. When he was in the middle of revival the Spirit said, “Go to a desert road that leads to Gaza” -- when circumstances would have argued for him staying in the midst of revival and ministering to the converts.

So I find that God moves first of all through our minds becoming one with his. So that’s the importance of praising God in prayer -- so that you come to the place where you’re more interested in what God is thinking and what he plans than what you are thinking or what you need. So there begins to dawn upon you the impression of God’s own mind within. That is the intuition of the Spirit. I would say that that’s the first way that God guides, through the intuition of the Spirit.

Now I do think that he can confirm that, secondly, by other brothers and sisters in Christ. And you can confirm it by going to the brothers and sisters, or going to the elders, or going to the pastor. I think you can confirm the guidance of the intuition in your spirit by other people’s opinions who know Jesus. Thirdly, I think it can be confirmed by circumstances.

Now you might want to point out, “But can circumstances not give you some kind of idea of what is needed?” It seems to me it’s dangerous to go on circumstances -- because I think you would agree that circumstances can often be interpreted in different ways. So it seems vital that if you’re going to give any weight to circumstances at all, you make very sure that your own mind that is interpreting the circumstances is aligned with God’s mind, and that you’re very willing to go that way.

Brother, I think that it is a common, perhaps, heresy that we have all used in the past -- that circumstances is a very reliable guide. I’d point you to this fact: who is in charge of most of the circumstances in the world? I think you’d have to answer that, because the main part of the world is under the thrall of Satan, the main control of circumstances is by Satan. So often circumstances will argue against God’s will.

[Question inaudible]

Sister points out the very important fact that once we take our wills from under the control of Satan, and put our wills under the will of God, then he begins to work everything according to the counsel of his will. So he begins to bring about his plan, and lead us through the wilderness of circumstances that Satan controls in the world. Yes. I’m saying that Satan controls the great majority of the circumstances -- simply because the great majority of people have submitted their wills to him.

You can see what a power it is for mums and dads to come under the will of God. It’s just incredible the change that that makes in the children’s lives whenever you get that. It’s the same with running our business. It’s incredible the difference you see when your business is governed by people who are under the control of God. Then it isn’t just luck that you don’t have as many accidents. It isn’t just luck that you’re still making money when we should be losing money. It’s the power of God governing the circumstances.

Now loved ones, I’d just point you back to the position in Ephesians 2:6, and ask you to memorize it, and I’ll ask you it next day. But I’d ask you to remember that verse and stand in that position, because that is the power.

You can see even as I talk how easy it would be for you to almost be inspired by the firmness in my voice. You could do that. Norman Vincent Peale’s message was: “You can do it.” No loved ones -- that’s not it. You are in Jesus at the right hand of the Father, and the Holy Spirit, if you believe that, is released to work upon the things that are opposing God’s will in your life. That’s the power. It’s our faith that is the victory, not the power of our own thinking.

But praise God that there is no reason why you should fail. None at all.

Obstacles to Spiritual Warfare

Obstacles to Spiritual Warfare


I’d like to talk for a short time slowly, and kind of thoughtfully about spiritual warfare.  And I’d like to mention five obstacles that there are to us entering into spiritual warfare.  I think that the first three we did mention briefly last evening, so I can move through them fairly quickly. 

The first one -- and I know it sounds almost humorous -- is that we are not born of the Spirit.  I know it sounds wild to suggest that, because one would take it for granted.  But I think many of us have not experienced what Jesus mentions in John 3:6. It’s good to look at God’s word even if you know the verse by heart -- because the Holy Spirit can make it real to you through eye-gate. 

John 3:6: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”  But I do think that many of us get into the position where we are in fact not born of the Spirit.  We can come and be stimulated intellectually by the kind of teaching that we share on a Sunday evening -- just because our minds are curious minds, want to see things whole, and are not satisfied with some of the explanations that we have received. 

So I think it is possible to come to services even like this on Sunday evenings and not be born of the Spirit, and treat it as almost a mind contortionist experience.  In that case, that’s what spiritual warfare becomes.  It becomes a tricking of yourself with your mind, playing around with ideas, a throwing of one idea -- over ascension with Jesus -- against another idea of Satan somewhere in the background trying to make our life difficult.  So it is possible not to be born of the Spirit, and yet to think that you’re engaging in spiritual warfare. 

Now spiritual warfare is not fighting Satan within us.  You remember it was Jesus who said, “The evil one has nothing in me.”  And it’s pretty important to be clear of what you have to deal with in the new birth – a guilty conscience.  Spiritual warfare is not fighting a guilty conscience. 

It is not trying to repress or suppress guilt within you. It may be fighting false condemnation, but false condemnation is readily distinguishable, as you know, from real guilty conscience -- because it’s normally a vague sense of guilt -- whereas a guilty conscience comes from the Holy Spirit convicting you of a definite sin.  Moreover, false condemnation does not disappear after you have done something.  It continues -- whereas a guilty conscience disappears once you turn from the sin that the Holy Spirit is convicting you of. 

So spiritual warfare is not fighting a guilty conscience.  A guilty conscience is dealt with by Jesus’ death.  It’s dealt with by seeing that God has put us into Jesus, destroyed us in him, and therefore is able to remain a just God and a holy God and yet accept us to himself.  And it’s dealt with by belief and repentance.  It is important to see that spiritual warfare is not fighting a guilty conscience. 

Spiritual warfare is made very difficult and impossible, I would say, by not being baptized in the Spirit, or you could say not living by the Spirit.  So many of us are born of the Spirit, but we do not really live by the Spirit.  The importance of not only being born of the spirit, but living by it, is mentioned in Galatians 5:25a: “If we live by the Spirit.” 

In other words, many of us fail to engage in spiritual warfare because we aren’t in fact living by the Spirit.  We are living by our body.  We’re living by the desire of our body to get things, the desire of body to enjoy things, and the desire of our body to rule over our own life and dominate our own life. 

Now spiritual warfare is not fighting the flesh.  It is not fighting your own desire to get, and enjoy, and dominate.  That’s not spiritual warfare.  That is something within you that is dealt with, you remember, by our death with Jesus.  It is not dealt with by spiritual warfare. 

So you don’t rebuke anger, and envy, and jealousy.  Instead you enter into the death of the old self with Jesus, and the Holy Spirit fills you, or baptizes you and cleanses you.  It’s experienced, you remember, by belief that we were crucified with Christ (mentioned in Romans 6:6), and submission to the Holy Spirit.  Now you can’t engage in spiritual warfare if you’re not living by the Spirit.  If you’re still living by these things, then you can’t really involve yourself in spiritual warfare -- because Satan has still part of your life. 

One of the other things, and the third one that I’d like to deal with quickly that prevents us entering into spiritual warfare, is not walking by the Spirit.  That’s mentioned in that same verse, Galatians 5:25.  Galatians 5:25 runs, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” 

Many of us do not walk by the Spirit.  What do we walk by?  We walk not by our body, but by the power of our own souls.  That is, we try to do Gods work.  We are clear in our motive life, which we weren’t when we weren’t born of God. The problem then was motive.  We lived for self instead of for God.  But when we’re born of God but not walking by the Spirit -- we’re living for God but trying to do his work by the power of our mind and our emotions. It’s good to say we’re living by our own willfulness.  If we’re involved in that, we can’t engage in spiritual warfare. 

Some instances of that are using our own abilities to try to achieve what God wants to achieve.  A good example of this is Christian Science. Christian Science attempts to fight sin and to fight sickness by the power of the mind -- not by the power of Holy Spirit coming down from Jesus. 

In Christian Science, the mind says, “There is no such thing as sickness.  There is no such thing as sin.”  So, many people in Christian Science experience a very complete degree at times, of victory over sin and over sickness.  Because there is a latent power in the soul that remains there even from creation, and it’s possible to live by that power and to do certain things by it.  Telepathy obviously is that power.  Extrasensory perception is that power.  Mind reading is that same power. 

Another example is the experience of The Children of God, whom many of us I think had great love for in the early days of Christian Corps.  I remember Bruce in London going and spending an afternoon with them when we were there the first year, and coming back terribly impressed and miserably condemned -- because he felt that they were living with more self denial than we were. 

Of course, The Children of God went right overboard on that very fact.  They emphasized self-denial, self-denial.  I remember a dear girl called Faith, whom we met in Hyde Park {in London} that first year.  She was sharing Jesus, but they were emphasizing, “You must give away all your possessions.  You must sell all that you have.”  And that seemed almost more important to them at that time than Jesus.  So they made a God out of self denial, out of willfulness. 

You can try to serve God with willfulness.  If you do that, you begin to put yourself under the power of Satan -- because Satan is the only one who will attempt to do good works by the power of the soul.  You can get willfulness in the emotions too.  There are many eastern religions that believe that the way into peace is to negate the emotions, so they attempt to annihilate them by passivity.  And again, they come under the power of evil spirits -- because they’re in fact trying to walk by the power of the soul. 

At the beginning we talked about the problem being a selfish will.  Now you cannot war against the selfish will.  You simply have to allow it to be dealt with by the cross.  We just talked about the problem of an independent soul.  The only way to allow it to be dealt with is by the daily cross -- the daily application of Jesus’ cross to your old soul life every time God reveals that you’re using the power of the soul.  So brothers and sisters, those were the three that we mentioned last day, and correspond more or less to many of the kinds of stages of the Christian life that some of us have passed through. 

You may look at them and say, “I have to pass through those three exactly.”  No -- you listen to the Holy Spirit.  You don’t get under condemnation on these stages.  But it may help some of us who have experienced some of these things, to understand a little where we’re going. 

Loved ones, I’d like to get on really to the main issue we’ll talk about tonight.  Some of us are not able to engage in spiritual warfare because of a weak spirit.  In other words, after you begin to walk by the Spirit in some sense, it is very important to obey what Paul says by God’s inspiration in Ephesians 6:10: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.”  You remember he prays in another place that we will be strengthened in the inner man. 

Now many of us have weak spirits -- that is, we are born of the Spirit, we are baptized with the Spirit, and we are beginning to walk by the Spirit and not by our souls.  But our spirits are still very weak.  Our bodies are strong because that’s what we’ve used for years.  Our minds and emotions are very strong, because those we have used for years.  But our spirits are very weak, and really are baby spirits -- but we are beginning to walk by them. 

Now loved ones, the important thing is to begin to strengthen our spirits.  Now all I can do with you tonight is it share some of the ways that I have found God strengthened my spirit.  But you really have to go to the Holy Spirit yourself and say, “Holy Spirit, none of what another human being shares with me can enable me to strengthen my spirit.  Only you can strengthen my spirit.”  It’s very important to go to him and trust him to do it. 

These are some of the ways that the Holy Spirit has used with me, and the first one would be there in 2 Corinthians 4:18: “Because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”  That’s one way the Holy Spirit has used with me -- to teach me to look at the things that were unseen in different situations. 

I think I’ve shared with you how in the first year of the body here, we used to say, “Summer time.  We may as well close down because the University will be closed and some of us will be out abroad, and there’ll be nobody here.”  And the Holy Spirit just baffled us by bringing more and more people.  So we carried on during summertime. 

But I said, “Yeah, but Christmas -- we’ll all be away and at our homes at Christmas.  There’ll be nobody here.”  So the first Christmas there were 200 people in the theater {where the services were held}, and gradually the Holy Spirit got it through our thick heads -- that we were to look at him, and look to him, and to stop looking at circumstances and calculating what was reasonable in the light of other people’s experiences. 

Repeatedly the Holy Spirit has done that with me.  In my life, he’s got me to look at the things that are unseen in situations, and to refuse to look at the things that are seen.  So really it’s something that you almost have to get used to doing. 

I remember following the Watergate Senate hearings play-by-play, so that I think my wife and I could have told each other exactly what Senator Ervin said, and exactly what John Ehrlichman {an aide to President Nixon} said, and exactly what everybody else said.  We followed it for a while, until we began to see that our minds were being drawn out to calculate the chances from a human point of view. 

We were beginning to say, “Do you think Ehrlichman sold them on that?  Do you think Ehrlichman was right when he said that?”  And we began to calculate the chances humanly speaking.  Moreover, we began to lose some peace, as we began to feel some justice was not being established here, or was not truly being explained or expressed here.  And the Holy Spirit said, “Draw back.  Stop looking at the things that are seen.”

Now loved ones, you can see that it is a question of your will – you can choose what you set your mind on.  It’s no miracle.  You may be sitting there tonight and think, “Ah, walking by the Spirit, or strengthening my spirit -- how can I do that?”  Well, that’s simple to do.  When the Holy Spirit prompts you, and tells you you’re being drawn out too much after the things that are seen, or the things that you’re hearing around you -- then it’s the time to look to God. 

It’s the time to look to the one position in which God has placed you -- which is that position in Ephesians 2:6 {seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus}.  And if God really has raised us to that position, then we should be able to get from the Holy Spirit some understanding of what all the angels and archangels are doing up there -- because we’re up there also.  So it should be possible for us, in some real spiritual sense, to dwell in that place, and be more concerned with what’s going on in heaven, than with what’s going on down here.  So that’s one way the Holy Spirit can often do it -- by driving you away from the things that are seen. 

I think sometimes the Holy Spirit allows an excess of feelings to come to you, so that, for instance, you can get utterly sick of really reveling in either feelings of excessive depression, or feelings of excessive exhilaration.  Sometimes it’s possible to do that. 

I think all of us had experience of almost that animal kind of exhilaration that we used to feel at times.  I know I used to come down in the morning, and sing to my mother, and tell jokes, and back and forward, and it can go for a while, or you can do it at a party, or with a group of people.  But by the end of it you get pretty worn out and exhausted, and sometimes it’s kind of flat afterwards.  And the Holy Spirit I think will allow you at times to fall into that.  It’s really just a human exhilaration, to really tire you and sicken you and exhaust you off of yourself.  Or, in the middle of it, finding yourself so displaying the ego, and it just shames you beyond measure. 

Now at times the Holy Spirit will allow you to come into that excess of feelings, to drive you into the Spirit -- or the same with depression.  I think at times we can just revel or wallow in depression and in self pity.  The Holy Spirit will allow us at times to come into that to show us, “Look!  There is nothing in the feeling life that is worthwhile.” 

I think many of us will revel in the past.  We will look back to when we were children.  We will think about that and think about it, and think of the good times.  We kind of think, “Well that’s a good thing to do.”  Well of course, Jesus’ word is always: you don’t look to the things that are behind -- even the good things.  You look to him at this moment.  So the Holy Spirit will allow us at times to come into that, so as to drive us into our spirits. 

I think at times the Holy Spirit will do the opposite thing, dear ones.  He will withdraw feelings from us, in order to drive us into our spirits.  I’ve mentioned this before, that many of us have experienced a burning sense of Jesus’ presence, a great sense of joy as we approach the throne of God -- and suddenly the Holy Spirit in a certain time of our life will withdraw those feelings from us in prayer -- in order to drive us into walking by the will in the spirit.  That phrase is so important that I pray that the Holy Spirit will make it real in your life and not just real to your mind -- to walk by the will in the spirit.  The Holy Spirit will often withdraw feelings of God’s presence from you, so that you’ll believe that God is there on the strength of his word alone, and of your own obedience to the Holy Spirit. 

I think another way is that God can allow you to come into problems, so that you see that every problem has only one answer.  That answer is a corresponding facet of God’s nature that brings the answer to that problem.  Often the Holy Spirit will bring you into those situations so that you will have no one to go to and you will have no power yourself -- but you will be driven to the spirit alone, and driven actually to fight with the one weapon that Paul mentions in Ephesians 6:17: “And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

So, often the Holy Spirit will bring you into difficult situations where there is no answer, and you have to go to the great Psalms that have just been a tremendous blessing to all of us at different times.  Psalm 121:3 is just one of them that God made real to my heart.  There are situations when either you’re working very hard, or you’re involved in difficulties in your job, or you have certain problems in family life or in the home.

It’s so good then when the Holy Spirit shows you there is no answer but God, and he drives you into the Spirit in a verse like Psalm 121:3: “He will not let your foot be moved, he who keeps you will not slumber.”  And everything seems to be slipping away, but the Holy Spirit will drive you into the spirit – and show you that God will not let your foot be moved.  And the Holy Spirit drives you to God and to some facet of his nature.  

The same is true, if you look at Psalm 125:1: “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides for ever.”  And it came to me one morning, “Yeah, Mount Zion would be pretty hard to move even with a couple bulldozers.”  Then I realized that God was saying that if I trusted in the Lord, I would be like Mount Zion, and I would not be moved, and cannot be moved, but abide forever. 

Now often the Holy Spirit will allow incredible problems to come to you in order to drive you to the corresponding facet of God’s nature.  So problems really are a blessing to the person who is beginning to enter into strengthening of their own spirit. 

I think another thing that God will do is often to let Satan attack you in various ways, so that you have to resist him.  That’s James 4:7: “Submit yourselves therefore to God.  Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”  So the Father will often lovingly let Satan attack you, so that you have to resist him or go under.  At that moment, the vital thing is to refuse to let your spirit be repressed.  Whenever things are at the most difficult, that is the greatest moment for your spirit to rise up. 

There are gurus that you may have read about in the New York Times Magazine last Sunday.  They want to suppress the flesh by the strength of their own souls.  So there are some of them that stand on one leg for months, without ever sleeping, just dosing slightly, but stand on one leg.  There’s another one who has held his hand out so many years that it is completely atrophied, and will not move, and all the muscles are limp, and it can do nothing. 

Now that’s what happens to your spirit, if you allow it to be suppressed by difficulties.  It will atrophy, so that your spirit will grow weaker and weaker.  So God often will lovingly allow an attack to come to you, so that you will be forced to exercise your spirit against Satan, and to stand against him and resist him.  The only way to really strengthen your spirit is to stand firmly against Satan and to attack, attack, attack at all times.  Never allow your spirit to be suppressed. 

There have been moments I think for all of us when everything seems to have broken loose.  The house seems to be falling down on top of you, and everything seems to be breaking loose.  That’s the glorious moment for a person who is able to stand against Satan for no reason at all.  “I can’t see any reason, Lord, how I’ll get through this.  But you’ve told me to stand, and I will stand in Jesus’ name.”  And you stand there, and the wind howls and the rain blows, and your clothes are almost ripped off and you’re almost utterly overcome.  But you stand there against Satan, and you resist him, and your spirit begins to grow strong. 

Those are some of the ways in which the Holy Spirit strengthens your spirit.  Of course, you could take the weak attitude to it and fall down into self-pity, or say, “Ah, how poorly, and how unfairly the Lord is treating me.”  Then your spirit will just crumble and will in fact atrophy. 

The last thing I’d like to mention, one of the greatest obstacles in spiritual warfare, is not only a weak spirit, but just a wrong spirit.  There are many brothers and sisters who have been baptized with a spirit -- but it has not been the Spirit of God.  And often they’ve entered partially in the Spirit of God, but because they have not obeyed God day-by-day, gradually they have entered into another spirit -- in fact the spirit of Satan or the spirit of the world. 

That’s mentioned in 1 Corinthians 2:12.  So it is very important to realize that there is a warfare that can be waged by counterfeit work of the elemental spirits of Satan.  1 Corinthians 2:12: “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.” 

There are spirits of the world.  I think it’s very naive of us to think that everything that seems spiritual or supernatural comes from God.  There are many counterfeit experiences that the elemental spirits of Satan can bring. 

How do you distinguish between the Spirit of God and the spirit of Satan?  It seems that there are two great plain signs to help you distinguish between the Spirit of God and the spirit of Satan.  One is the Spirit of God always works from within you.  The Spirit of God always directs you and constrains you from within.  The spirit of Satan works from outside.   Works through circumstances, or through the experiences of your body, or through the experiences of your mind and emotions coming into you. 

That’s why I’ve often shared with some of you brothers and sisters that bodily experiences need to be treated very cautiously.  Those warm waves that come over you -- you need to be wise about them.  It’s very easy for Satan to roll in upon you, by moving you into bodily experiences, or by moving you by circumstances.  The Spirit of God always moves from within, in quietness, and in peace. 

In other words, the Spirit of God moves when your mind and emotions are in a state of recollection, peace, and quiet.  If your emotions are aroused or your mind is in confusion, the Spirit of God cannot work, and will not work.  He works from within when those parts of your personality are in peace and quiet, and your mind is stayed on God.  That’s one way to distinguish the Spirit of God from the spirit of Satan.  The spirit of Satan normally works from without.  The Spirit of God usually works from within.

I think there is really another clear sign: the Spirit of God always requires your active cooperation.  The spirit of Satan encourages you to be passive.  So there are many brothers and sisters who think that the Spirit of God will take over the activity of their minds.  So they make their minds passive, and they say, “I’m waiting for God’s Spirit to tell me what to do.” 

The Holy Spirit is there to give us direction in the way we use our minds and use our emotions.  He will not substitute himself for the mind and the emotions -- but the spirit of Satan will.  And if the spirit of Satan can get human beings to give up active cooperation of their minds, their emotions, and their wills with God’s Spirit, then he can move in and he can bring all kinds of counterfeit spiritual experiences. 

I think many of us think, “Oh the spirit of Satan within us will always move us to do something dreadful, will always fill us with terrible and evil thoughts.”  No, the spirits are very capable of moving into what is thought to be a believers’ meeting, and move them into all kinds of spiritist experiences -- so that they become preoccupied with this gift or that gift, or the way that gift was ministered last night, or the way that person gave me a reading of my mind the previous week.  It’s possible for the spirit of Satan to move in and give many apparent supernatural experiences, and give us great senses of being in a direct presence of Christ. 

So it’s a very short step from that to people saying, “Oh well, I’ll let the word of God come to me.  I’ll just read through the Bible and wait for a word of God to direct me what to do.”  So they come into a situation where they want to know what to do in a certain problem, and they just open the word of God and they expect the Holy Spirit to speak that word out to them. 

Loved ones, when we were children in Jesus, often God was gracious to us like that.  But as we learn more and more that he wants us to cooperate actively through our minds with the Holy Spirit, then he will cease to work that way.  But Satan will work that way.  And many dear ones have got into hideous situations because they’ve said, “Oh I’m waiting for a word of the Lord,” -- instead of getting down before the Father, and worshiping him, glorifying him, and then letting their minds and emotions work naturally in the situation.  They try to make their minds and emotions passive, and hope that the Spirit of God will speak through and override the gifts of mind and emotions that God has given them.

So of course it’s not long before they begin to disregard their conscience.  As soon as they do that, the spirit of Satan really has got hold of them.  Then soon you come up against them and you say, “Why are you doing that?” 

It’s important not to knock certain groups, but it seems to me obvious now that those dear Children of God are way out, and far from what Jesus meant them to be.  But you know that their prophet is now encouraging nudity in certain situations, and you know that they have written the most hideous things about what is just a Muslim leader.  He is their hero because he serves Allah, their God. Now that came about through disregarding conscience. 

Of course, it’s very easy to go out after those apparently supernatural experiences, which are so like the experiences the Holy Spirit brings -- and then begin to do what this spirit seems to be saying. 1 Timothy 4:1 talks about this: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, through the pretensions of liars whose consciences are seared.”  And they’ll excuse this apparent disregard for God’s law by saying, “We’re living by a higher principal.  We’re not using our intuition or conscience -- we’re listening to a higher principal -- a supernatural external voice that is speaking to us.” 

Now brothers and sisters it’s very important you see that you can end up in an impossible position regarding spiritual warfare, if you once begin to disregard the directions of the word of God itself, and begin to be governed by a wrong spirit.  Now if you say, “How do you avoid that?”  The word of God -- that’s it.  You walk by his word, and you walk in obedience to it.  That’s why I tend to emphasize so strongly obedience to God’s word.  It’s what will keep us free from deceitful spirits, and keep us trusting in the Holy Spirit himself.  Because these deceitful spirits or wrong spirits are simply part of the spirit of antichrist that you remember John said is already in the world.

Now loved ones, those are some of the obstacles to entering into real spiritual warfare.  The way to enter in is what we outlined there in regard to a weak spirit -- to really strengthen our spirit as God has told us to, and to strengthen them in these ways: through beginning to look at the things that are unseen; through beginning to withdraw from just a life of feeling; through looking at every problem as an opportunity to see some element of God’s nature, and through resisting Satan when God allows him to come against us.

Loved ones, I’ll just stop and ask you if you have any questions, and I’ll try to answer them.

Scott asked: would not the test of time help to expose a wrong spirit?  It would -- and I was talking here primarily in relationship to the person himself or herself, because after time has passed it’s not much good for them.  But certainly I agree with you, Scott.  It seems to me that would be what God is pointing to when he says, “Be careful that you build on the foundation of Jesus -- whether wood, hay, or stubble, or gems, or precious stones.  It seems to be that the work is tested as by fire. So you can see whether it’s real fruit that has been born, or whether it’s just counterfeit work.

Question: In connection with the problem of letting your mind go passive -- can you then explain what waiting on God is?  And, show how that differ from a passive mind?

Re. : It seems that waiting on God is clearly explained by the verse, “Thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.”  It seems to me that when you’re waiting on God, you stay your mind clearly upon God, and you perhaps use words of scripture that describe God, such as, “The Lord is my refuge and my fortress, a very present help in time of trouble.”  You think of those things in your own mind, and you dwell upon God actively in your thought life.  In other words, you make your thought life consistent with what you believe would be the state of your spirit if you were right before God, and so your mind is in that sense active.  Now passivity, it seems to me, was what certainly I experienced in the days when I didn’t know any better, and was in mysticism -- where you would simply let your mind go limp and you would get beautiful shades of blue at times and beautiful shades of yellow.  And then you would begin to just let the mind go, and let it follow almost the law of free association.  Where you let the mind just get drawn out from one thought to another. 

Now it seems that that’s it.  The one is definite exercising of your will over your mind to dwell upon God.  The other is no exercise of the will --letting the mind go wherever it wants.  That is what I think that the yogis and the spiritualists attempt.

[Question is not audible]

Rev. : What I’m mentioning when I talk about a passive mind sounds like daydreaming.  I think many of us do not realize that half the trouble we get into in our prayer life with wandering thoughts, is because we actually practice daydreaming.  We practice it.  We know we’re doing it, but we keep believing, “Well, that’s an innocent thing that my mom used to laugh at, when she saw me sitting in the sun just looking at the ground or looking up into the sky.”  And we kind of think, “Oh it’s nothing very bad.”  It is.  Daydreaming is mind passivity, and it is Satan working on you.  He is subtle, and has used the most harmless things.

But loved ones, there’s never a time for daydreaming.  When you’re daydreaming you’re beginning to exercise yourself after Satan.  You’re beginning to prepare your mind for his indwelling, because he will come into the mind.  I have often quoted that verse of Wordsworth: “And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man.”  Wordsworth, in the Lake District of England, used to go out skating on the lake, and he would describe the sky reeling above him, and the black shadows of the hills, and he would enter into some kind of communion with nature.  It’s daydreaming.  It’s mind passivity.  It’s entering into experience of the elemental spirits of the universe.  

Question: When things seemed to be falling down all around you, is it a good test to check on your mind and see is it in depression, and see if you’re therefore in the right place?  Or, could that depression not be put upon you by Satan? 

Rev. : I wouldn’t for a moment check it out.  If there’s depression there I would stand against it.  I would reject it as from Satan.  Satan wants you to accept the depression as part of yourself, and once you accept it as something natural -- that’s half his battle over.  No, our place is to say, “Father, I know I’m in Jesus.  I know there’s no depression there.  Therefore I know whatever depression I’m experiencing is from Satan.  So I resist you Satan, in Jesus’ name.  And Holy Spirit, I trust you to show me if there’s any attitude in my mind, or my spirit, or in my emotions that is giving this ground to Satan so that I’m experiencing this depression.”  So it’s always resisting Satan, taking our place in Jesus, and listening to the Holy Spirit so that he can show us where we’ve given the ground.

Question: Often, I have been interceding for a person, but Satan has so beaten the person into a state of passivity that I hardly knew what kind of prayer to pray in order to get them to use their wills.

Loved ones, I think it’s very important for us as we share these things, to see that finally only the Holy Spirit can bring us into what I’m talking about.  Because if you all go home and say, “Well I’ll try Pastor’s trick - see if it works,” -- then obviously that’s all it becomes.  It just becomes a soulish trick, and you’re putting yourself in the same position as Christian Scientists or anybody who is manipulating the spirit world. 

So it’s very important to see that only the Holy Spirit can bring you into this and you need to pray to him, “Holy Spirit, will you bring me into what I should be in here?”  So finally I’m sure the answer has to be from the Holy Spirit, Gary, but it is true that there are principles that God has laid down.  If you think about it, what got us out of our deadness of our wills was the conviction the Holy Spirit brought to our consciences.  I think what one does is to pray that the Holy Spirit will begin to disturb the person’s conscience and will to bring God’s absolutes before them somehow or another.  Either by bringing little things that their mothers taught them to not do when they were young, and that they’re now doing, or by bringing home God’s word to them, or by bringing home something that they’ve seen in your life to them.  But at all costs to begin to disturb their conscience.  God’s method always is that the conscience is the most alive part of our spirits.  Our spirits are dead but our conscience is the most alive part.  It’s the remaining part of God’s image that’s still there.  So that’s what the Holy Spirit can deal with.  The will is often, as you say, just in bondage. 

Question: What is the place of the imagination?

It seems very close to daydreaming.  It seems to me that imagination is an activity of the mind, and therefore of the soul, and therefore is something that has to be under the direction of the Holy Spirit.  Again, I say under the direction, because you by your will govern your mind and your imagination.  You get into difficult areas if you say, “Holy Spirit, you govern my imagination,” -- because that’s kind of psyching your will out of it again, and going into passivity.  But it is important, it seems to me, Marlene, to trust the Holy Spirit to guide you in your mind so that with your will you can govern what your imagination does.  Frankly, I think that it has to be very, very, carefully limited and disciplined. 

Leslie Weatherhead is a Methodist minister in England, who is also a psychologist.  He wrote a book called Transforming Friendship.  It struck me very forcibly when I read it, because I was searching after reality in my own personal relationship with Jesus.

He talked about the importance of imagining Jesus right there with you in your room.  So for many years I did that, and in fact, preached that as a good thing to do.  I think in many ways it was a crutch that maybe did some good, but eventually it became a real problem to me, because there came a time when I could no longer imagine Jesus present.  And indeed, the imagined presence of Jesus did not seem powerful enough to constrain obedience from my will.  I began to see that I was playing a soul game, a mental game.  So it seems that even using the imagination for good has to be something that’s very carefully governed and disciplined by the Holy Spirit.  Certainly letting the imagination go loose is just the same as daydreaming.

Why I say all that is: it seems to me many of us in interceding for other people have thought, “We are to try to imagine ourselves into their position.” But we are not to go beyond what the Holy Spirit tells you to do.  Because, if you do it as far as you want to, before you know it you’ll be in the depths of their depression and their despair also.  So it seems very important to allow the Holy Spirit to direct us in the use of our imagination and to be very careful about it.  Otherwise it can be just a soul power.  In place of the burden of the Holy Spirit, it can just be our own soulish power.

[Question inaudible]

I agree. As Flip Wilson {comedian from the 70's} says, "the devil made me do it."  Isn’t that it?  Where they’re blaming something on the devil that is really just the old carnal self.  It seems to me the Holy Spirit is able to show us that Satan cannot make you do anything that you don’t want to do.  I think we should never blame Satan.  You may say, “I see what you may be meaning: if depression comes upon us, can we tell whether that depression is a result of our own refusal to turn from some sin, or whether it is an oppression that Satan is throwing upon us?”  That was what you were asking by your question.  I think John, you’d ask the Holy Spirit to show you if you had done anything wrong.  That’s simply it.  You’d ask the Holy Spirit to convict you if you had disobeyed God in any way, and then he would show you, and you would turn from it.  And if he didn’t show you, then you would resist Satan in Jesus’ name. 

It seems to me it’s the same with condemnation, John.  It seems to me if we’re unsure if it’s false condemnation, we simply ask the Holy Spirit to show us, “Holy Spirit show us plainly -- point out the thing we’re doing wrong.  We’ll turn from it.”  Now if we turn from it, John, and there’s still condemnation, then it’s from Satan.  It’s a false condemnation.  It seems turning to Jesus is the answer to Satan’s accusations of the brethren.  It’s always, “The Father accepts me because of Jesus’ blood, and I’m walking in the light, and if I’m not, Holy Spirit, then show me.” So the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sins.

[Question inaudible]

Brother is sharing how Agnes Sanford -- a well-known minister of Jesus in healing – in her book suggests that you picture the person whole for which you are praying.  It seems to me, brother, that is often one of the mistakes that many of us make to whom God has shown something.  We often perhaps write it down to share with others in shorthand version.  I think that Agnes Sanford, if she were pressed, would say that the Holy Spirit will lay a person upon her heart, and will give her a burden for that person’s sickness, and the Holy Spirit will virtually draw her mind to see the person as whole in Jesus, and it will be a revelation of the Holy Spirit.  And often the way she shares it with us, it seems as if it’s something we ought to simply do by the exercise of our own minds.   

But, brother, from my own little experience of healing, I would think that she would say that a prayer of faith is what heals, and the prayer of faith is when the Holy Spirit plainly shows you that Jesus has borne that person’s sickness.  Then it’s natural to see the person as whole. 

Now in kind of attempting to bridge the gap there, I suspect that she might have put the thing in a shorthand version.  I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that anybody could see more deeply than she can.  But I think often those of us who have talked about spiritual things have not foreseen all the misinterpretations that people can cast upon those things.  And I think if she were pressed, she would say, “Yes, when the Holy Spirit shows me and reveals to me that this person is already healed in Jesus, I picture them healed.  That just comes naturally.”  So it’s a case of whether you’re doing it by the exercise of your will over your mind without any revelation in your spirit, or whether you’re doing it as a result of revelation in your spirit -- because you’ve sat before the Father and know his mind about that person.  I believe, I dare to say, that’s God’s answer. 

Question: Is it good to pray for any spiritual or physical healing if you haven’t been specifically told to do it? 

I think it’s just always dangerous, sister, and I don’t know how much value it has before the Father {to pray for someone’s healing if God hasn’t shown you to do so}, because he has given Jesus to remove all work of Satan and sin and sickness in the world.  And he has the right to explain to us in what order he wants the sin and sickness removed from the world.  And he knows the way to remove it, and in what order to remove it, to give him glory.  It seems we should always look to the mind of God, and receive from him direction about what we should pray for and whom we should pray for.  It seems it should always be that.    

What happens to most of us, is that out of human sympathy for the person, or because somebody else has asked us to pray for them, we do pray for them.  Then no answer comes because it isn’t a prayer of faith that has come from God’s own will, but is wishful thinking coming from our wills. All we bring is disrepute to God’s name because they say, “There you prayed and the person wasn’t healed.”  So it seems there should always be direction from God’s Spirit.