Spiritual Life #24 The Spiritual Man #2

The Spiritual Man #2

I would like to try to talk tonight about the spiritual man. And you get that phrase, loved ones, if you want to look at 1 Corinthians 2:15. “The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.” So it is the spiritual man or spiritual woman that we’ll be talking about. Don’t you think there are many of us that have come to Jesus because we needed help? It seems very popular today, doesn’t it, to encourage people like ourselves to come to Jesus or to come to God because we need help. And I am sure you’ve heard that and I’ve certainly heard a lot of it and indeed you might hear it in our prayers at time. You know, we often pray as if the main reason we’ve come to Jesus is because we need help. We’re lonely and we need friendship, or we feel weak and we need strength, or we’re in trouble and we need saving out of the trouble.

And I’m sure it’s a legitimate way to come first of all to an awareness that we need God. But, do you see loved ones that if we remain at that stage we are really not being the kind of people that God has made us to be. In that the Father doesn’t want a bunch of mercenaries. Do you see that? God does not want a bunch of mercenaries around him in heaven who are with him just because he gives them what they need.

You can see that if that’s why we’re all going to be in heaven we’re all going to be there for selfish reasons and in reality it’s going to be hell because there will be a whole lot of people there who are there for selfish motives and who no doubt will continue to live just for selfish motives. So it’s vital that sooner or later in your life with God, your life is turned around. And by all means maybe you’re like the leper, or maybe I’m like the blind man, or maybe you’re like the person who was dead and you came for life, or I came for sight, or you came for healing. And that was the reason we came to Jesus at the beginning, perhaps that’s fair.

But, if we stay at that stage we will never be at home in heaven because heaven is filled with people who have been freed from all selfish motives. Heaven is filled with people who love Jesus above themselves and who are prepared to die for Jesus rather than have him die for them. So part of the reason for these evening services is to try to encourage one another and help one another to get out of that lamentably selfish carnal so called Christian life that such a great part of Christendom is living in and to get into the victorious New Testament apostolic life that will change the world.

And I don’t think you need any persuading about that because you know how many of us in America are evangelical Christians, and yet you also know how many of us are still in America and how few of the two and a half billion people who don’t know Jesus are hearing about him in these days. And that in itself of course, is some comment on our Christianity.

So loved ones, I would encourage you to see that God will say new things to you in these evening services. And I pray that you will see the truths that we share as not a higher way while there is a lower way to get to heaven. There isn’t, there is only one way to get to heaven and that’s the way we’ll talk about in these evening services. There is not a lower way; if you stay on the lower way you’ll stay with the Corinthians to whom Paul said, “I see you are still in the flesh for you behave like ordinary men. Because while there is strife and jealousy among you, are you not behaving like ordinary men?”

Well loved ones, I would encourage you not to hold on to your sins. You cannot drag your sins into heaven, you can’t. It is just true that whosoever is born of God does not commit sin and anyone who commits sin is of the devil. And so there may be a transition stage between when you are sinning and when you come free from sin. And during that transition stage we should love each other and encourage each other but we need to see that you cannot stay in your sins. You cannot take self into heaven.

And that is the heart of what a spiritual man or a spiritual woman is. A spiritual man or a spiritual woman is a person who runs their life from their spirits. Who is governed by their spirits. Now, the other way to be governed is in Romans 8, if you want to look at it, and some of you will know the verse. Romans 8:4, “In order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” So a spiritual man or woman is one who walks according to the spirit and the opposite kind of person is a person who walks according to the flesh.

And a crude meaning of the flesh is certainly the Greek “soma”, the body. And we shared several weeks ago how the great bulk of the people in the world live governed by their bodily needs. The most important thing to them is the kind of food they eat and if they don’t get a meal at the right time they will be very irritable and very discontent. If they don’t have the right clothes they will be discontented. If they get the clothes that make them look good they’ll feel happy, and if everybody likes them and is admiring them they’ll be pleased, much as a little dog is pleased when he’s groomed and his master praises him.

And so the great bulk of the people in the world live – I know this is hard -- but they live like little animals. And I’m not saying that to be offensive. They just live like little animals. When they look nice in their bodies and they have nice coats, and nice shoes on, they feel happy and people praise them and they feel important. And if they get the right kind of food they feel happy, if they get the wrong kind of food they feel unhappy. If they don’t get any food they can’t stand anything. And they are governed mostly by what comes into their body.

Or, you can expand it a little, they’re governed by the things that they see through their body, through their eyes. They see things, they see a nice girl and that gives them a thrill and gives them a sense of exhilaration and they’re emotionally stirred. Or, they see a nice motorbike and they’re emotionally stirred. But, they’re governed by what they see. They get up in the morning, it’s a sun shiny day, they see it and they feel happy. So of course they’re utterly at the mercy of either their body itself -- what they eat, or what they put on, or what they drink -- or the things that they see, or the things that they hear.

If they are walking by a room and two friends are in that room and they make some critical comment about them and that comes through their ears it spoils their day. Their whole day is rotten. They just think, “Ah, they don’t like me. They don’t like me and they were criticizing me. I can never love them. Well, they’re not so good either.” And criticism rises up in their hearts and so it’s either what they see or what they hear that makes them happy or makes them sad. And so that’s a person walking after the flesh.

And loved ones, that’s the way the great bulk of the people of the world walk; they walk after the flesh. And that’s because they have determined that they are the most important people in the world and what they try to do is gather friends around them that will make them feel important. What they try to do is do things that they can do successfully so that other people will praise them so that they’ll feel exalted and happy. And most people live that way. They live for themselves and they do it by the power of their own souls. That is, they use their emotions to make them happy, they use their will to exert power over other people and make them do what they want and make them like them. They use their minds to manipulate things and to manipulate people so that others regard them as important and make them feel good. And the great bulk of the population live like that. That’s living after the flesh.

Now, God’s plan was that we would live according to the Spirit. That is, that we would not live for ourselves at all. That we would be absolutely free from ourselves and that we would come here to work, some of us sent to be plumbers, some of us sent to be poets, some of us sent to be painters, some of us sent to be gardeners. But all of us sent to enjoy our dear Father’s friendship and to enjoy the sense of his approval on our lives and to enjoy fellowship with him. And as we did that, he would give us in our spirits a great sense of his love. Our spirit is inside us, loved ones. You have your body and then you have your soul -- that is the psychological part of you, your mind, and emotions, and your will -- and then inside that again you have your spirit that is able to communicate with your Maker.

And God intended that we would receive through our spirits a great sense of his love. A great sense of his approval in our lives, a great sense of his friendship, a constant sense of his presence. And so we would receive all that through our spirits. You can see that’s the other end of us. One end of us is the body and the other end is the spirit and God intended that we would live from our spirits inside and then our spirits would pass on that joy to our emotions, and to our minds, and through our wills and that would govern our bodies and we would give that out to our world. That’s what a spiritual man or a spiritual woman is and that is what real peace is.

If you would just suffer my old diagram, I’ll just show it to you very simply. You remember, we’ve talked often about the fact that we are a spirit, a soul, and a body. The body you can see. The soul -- the mind, the emotions, the will -- is the psychological part of us. That’s the part that we think and judge with and reason with, that part that we feel with, the part that we decide and make decisions with. And the spirit is the inner part of us that is able to communicate with the Holy Spirit that God has. And his plan you see, was that we would operate like that.

That we would receive all the love that we needed from him -- not from the world, not from each other, but all the love we needed from him. That that would come through our spirits, our conscience would be obeyed by our will and our will would direct our mind which would understand what God was saying to us and our emotions would express the joy of a relationship with God. That was the Father’s plan. What in fact we did was, we said, “No, we don’t want to live like that. We want to live for ourselves, we want to be gods. We want to get what we want from the world when we want it, not what you give us Lord.” And so we began to operate the other way.

So you can see we operated in the wrong direction and we began to operate by the wrong power. We were meant to get everything in our spirits but we began to get things by soulish power. We used our emotions to get joy from each other, and from adventures, and excitement. We used our mind to manipulate things to that we’d be secure -- and we used our will to exercise power over other people. And so loved ones, we began to operate in the wrong direction and we began to operate by the wrong power. That’s why we so often cry “the good that I would I cannot do”. That’s why you feel so helpless at times when you lose your temper. That’s why you feel so helpless when you find a critical spirit springing up inside you towards another person.

Loved ones, it’s not just because you have a little failing, it isn’t. It’s not just because you have a little weakness. Some of it is because you’ve inherited a certain kind of soul from your mum and dad but it isn’t just one little thing, you see. It’s because the whole personality is perverted. The whole personality is running the wrong way. So actually, if you do any good it’s almost chance, it’s almost luck. And in fact, the little good that you do is so dominated by self that really there’s very little purity in it.

Now loved ones, what needs to be done is for that whole thing to be completely reversed and completely changed. Now, oh I pray that you’ll get this truth. That’s what happened to you in Jesus. That’s what happened to you in Jesus. Not that’s what HAS TO HAPPEN to you, that’s WHAT HAPPENED to you. You know when you try to get up in the morning and it’s a rainy cloudy day and you try to whistle a little tune, “Zippity do-dah, zippity ay.” And you make yourself feel happy. Do you see you have to try to make yourself feel happy because it isn’t natural. It isn’t natural to you because you look out at a cloudy gloomy day and your whole personality is used to working that way.

You know when you pass that room and two people are making a critical comment about you? You see, you have a tendency to think, “Oh, I shouldn’t be worried about that kind of thing.” And you know the way we try it, “I mean, they’re not worth worrying about.” So we don’t do it in a virtuous way, we try to use a trick of some kind to make ourselves feel, “We shouldn’t be bothered about that.” But yet, we are bothered about it and you see you’re bothered about it not because that’s a little flaw in your personality but because you’re used to living from the outside in and your whole soul, and your whole mind, and emotions, and will are perverted, they’re in a rut.

That’s why the books are so popular that concentrate on trying to change your soul --because we are subtle enough to know, “The problem is somewhere in my mind. It’s somewhere with the way my mind is working. I have to get my mind working positively. It’s something to do with my erroneous zones. If I could deal with my erroneous zones I’d be okay.” That’s why those books are so popular but actually they’re doing the devil’s work. I don’t know if you realize it, but they are, they’re doing the devil’s work because they give an appearance of turning the personality around but no man can turn the personality around. The remedy has to be as radical as the perversion and the remedy is in Jesus. And the truth is that all of us were placed by God into Jesus and were destroyed and remade.

Now, I know you have a tendency at this moment as I had, to say, “You mean that can happen to us?” No, that HAS happened to you. You say, “But I’m not living that way.” “Yes, but that’s not because it hasn’t happened to you, it’s because you don’t believe it has happened to you.” Until you believe it and you live like that, it cannot be real in you. So I can sit here paralyzed for years and Jesus can come and say, “Be healed.” And he can say to me, “You’re healed.” And I say, “But I’m still sitting here.” And he says, “Yes, but you’re healed.” And the moment you stand up you find out that you’re healed. And it’s so with all of us. It is not that you have to be crucified with Christ, it is not that you have to somehow get yourself into Jesus, God has put us all into Jesus. It has been done.

Now loved ones, I’d just point you to one of the many verses that state it very clearly because some of us are sitting here and saying, “Well yeah, all you people who have at least been born of God, it’s happened to you.” No, it’s happened to more of us than that. It’s 2 Corinthians 5, and I really do wish you’d learn this verse off and memorize it. 2 Corinthians 5:14, “For the love of Christ controls us, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore,” Paul says, “All have died.” That’s all. That means even Brezhnev [Soviet Leader from 1964-1982]. Brezhnev will not miss heaven because his personality has not been reversed and turned around and completely renewed in Jesus. Brezhnev will miss heaven because he doesn’t believe that and therefore, he does not let the Holy Spirit make that real in his life.

Loved ones, do you see it? It’s not something you have to get into. You don’t have to run after Noah’s Ark and jump into the Ark. God has put us all into the Ark. He has already turned you around. There is a reverse personality of yours that now operates the right way and is able to be free from people’s criticism and free from being irritated by people who gossip about you. There is a new personality available to you at this moment and it is available this very night if you will simply believe and are willing to be a spiritual man or a spiritual woman. That is, willing to work from the inside out and to live for God alone and no longer for yourself. But, it has already happened.

Now loved ones, it’s all over the Bible but I’ll point you again to Ephesians. And it’s so plain to all of us who know anything about English grammar and recognize a past tense. Ephesians 2:1, “And you he made alive, when you were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.” You he made alive. And then in Verse 6, “And raised us up,” raised in the past tense. “Raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” And that in God’s eyes is where all of us are at this moment.

We have already been crucified with Jesus and have been raised and made to sit with God in the heavenly places and Jesus is in you at this moment. And all that he has is yours and his great power of love, and his great power of confidence and assurance of his Father’s approval is yours this very moment if you will simply believe it. And the moment you believe it, that moment the Spirit of Jesus rises up inside you and begins to give you the same attitude towards his Father and towards everything else in this world that Jesus himself has.

Loved ones, it’s not something you have to bring about yourselves. It has already happened. You have been crucified with Christ. That’s why that verse says in Romans 6:6, “Our old self CAN be crucified with Christ?” No, “Our old self WAS crucified with Christ.” And if you say, “Well, why do I still have trouble with my temper and have trouble with being preoccupied with the things that I see?” You choose that. You choose to live that way and you live a lie. You live as if you have not been changed in Jesus. So do you see it as vital first of all to take your position in Christ?

Loved ones, there is no possibility of becoming a spiritual man or a spiritual woman if you will not first of all learn those verses off by heart and believe them. And you know if you say to me, “Oh brother, do you mean auto suggestion?” No, no. But first of all you have to set your mind on the truth. The Holy Spirit can only make real in you the truth that you believe. It will be unto you according to your faith. And the first step is to establish that you are in Christ.

Loved ones, all things that come to us from God come to us in Christ. If you say tonight, “Well, I’m trying to get into Christ. I’m trying to get into him. I’m trying to pray more, I’m trying to read the Bible more. That’s why I’m coming to these services, I’m trying to get into Christ. I know that somehow I can feel it, somehow I’ll be able to make myself feel that I’m crucified. I know it can be done. I’m trying to do it.” If you say that you’ll never come in. You have to believe God’s dear word that you have been changed. You have been crucified in Jesus and been raised and completely renewed in him and you have a personality that works the right way. Jesus’ death has become your death and his resurrection has become your resurrection and his life is in you and his attitude to his Father is in you and all you have to do is let that come through and let that express itself.

First you establish your position. Unless you stand on the work of the cross nothing will happen in your life. Loved ones if you keep on trying to crucify yourself, if you keep on reading these silly books about erroneous zones and reading these books about how to get your mind into positive thinking, you’re just turning your back on the work that God has already done in your personality on the cross of Christ. You must stand on the work of the cross.

Secondly, there is only one dear Person who can reveal to you all the miraculous changes that have come about on that cross, and all the changes that have been made in you. Notice, HAVE BEEN made in you. There is only one dear Person who can reveal that to you and that is no man, or no woman, no preacher, no writer of books, there is only one dear Person. That Person is mentioned, you remember, in John 16:13. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth,” the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. “For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

Now “declare” is a Greek word that means “share”. Not just in the sense of a verbal sharing but he will make the things real in you. So you see, Jesus is saying, “When the Holy Spirit comes he will take of the things that are mine and he will share them with you. And of course, the agony that I suffered on the cross was not just my fear of death, it wasn’t the pain that the Roman soldiers inflicted upon me, it wasn’t the fear that my Father would reject me; it was the sense of pain as my Father’s Holy Spirit burned out in me all of the self and the reverse personality of you that was in me. And God, through the Holy Spirit, will take all that that is in me, all that is mine, that completely destroyed personality and renewed personality, and he will share it with you.”

The Holy Spirit, loved ones. The Holy Spirit alone is able to make real in you the complete turning around of your personality that has taken place in Jesus. And only he can do it. So do you see that we who are children of God have to know first of all the position of the cross and then the Holy Spirit makes our condition match our position? So at the moment you may say, “Oh, but Pastor my condition is not what my position is.” No, but you don’t give up your position therefore, you keep your position on the basis of God’s word. “Lord if you have not done anything with this miserable, jealous, envious, angry, proud personality of mine, if you have not done anything with it on the cross of Christ then I can never be free of it because I’ve tried, I’ve tried, I’ve tried until I’m sick. Lord, only if you have in fact destroyed it in Jesus can it ever be changed in me. And now Holy Spirit will you reveal to me today what changes God has made in me in Christ. And Holy Spirit I’ll listen to you, I’ll submit to you.”

But loved ones, those are the twin facts upon which a spiritual life is based. A spiritual man or spiritual woman can only become such if they stand on their position in the cross and then if they submit to the Holy Spirit. And really it takes a sensitive leaning upon that dear Holy Spirit and he has many things to show you. There are two great changes that have to come about in your life in order to be a spiritual man or spiritual woman. First of all, to stop living for yourself and that comes from the moment you at last see, “I was crucified with Christ. There is no good in me and the only thing God could do with me is to destroy me. Thank you Lord that I have been destroyed. Thank you that there is no longer a self to be exalted or to be praised. There is no longer an Ernest O’Neill or a Leighton Carlson or a Diane or a John. There is no longer a Bob to be praised or glorified. That was crucified with Christ. Thank you Lord.”

And that is the crisis experience of the cross. And then do you see you have a whole personality that has been operating the wrong way for years and that the Holy Spirit has to work upon gradually and that is what he does with the daily cross. He begins to make real in you the death of Jesus day-by-day. And there are several things that have to happen. For one thing, your soul operates the wrong way. You often use the powers of your soul to try to do God’s work.

You remember, Peter did it himself. The men were attacking Jesus and he swept right around and cut off the ear of one of them. And often that’s what we do, we use our soulish powers to try to bring about the work of God and that’s why we have so little satisfaction and so little fruit in our ministry. And what the Holy Spirit has to do is to break those great soulish powers of ours.

In other words, there are two clear symptoms of a person who is not spiritual. One is a carnal symptom; the other is a soulish symptom. Somebody at home says something to you that’s critical and caustic to burn into you and hurt you. If you’re a carnal Christian and have not accepted your death in Christ you’re right back at them and criticize them too. And that’s what a carnal Christian does; they care for themselves so much that they cannot hold themselves back from striking out when they’re struck at. But, if they’ve been delivered from carnality a soulish Christian will often respond, “Well, now you shouldn’t speak that way, you know, that isn’t good.” Of course it does no good at all because the person is controlled so by the earthquake, and the thunder, and the fire they don’t care what you think. But a soulish Christian tends to say that. A spiritual Christian looks up immediately to God and says, “Lord thank you. I trust you for this loved one that you have changed in Jesus. Lord, I trust you to rise up in her, rise up in them and give them a sense of your approval at this moment and your love for them.”

So loved ones, there are two things that have to be dealt with in our lives in order to become spiritual men and spiritual woman. The carnality which wants to raise self up and exalt it -- and the soulishness that wants to use the old powers of mind, and emotion, and will to do the work of God. And you can see that one is dealt with in a crisis revelation that we have been crucified in Christ -- and the other is brought about gradually by the power of the Holy Spirit into our souls.

Another thing that has to be changed is the situation that happens in a person who does not know God at all; their soul becomes inextricably mixed with their spirit. And so what has to happen is their soul has to be divided from their spirit because of course when your soul is not divided from your spirit whatever disturbance comes into your emotions goes right through into your spirit and you lose peace completely. And what the Holy Spirit begins to do, you remember, it says in Hebrew 4:12, “The word of God is sharper than a two edge sword piercing to the division of soul and spirit.”

And what the Holy Spirit does is to reveal to you the times when your soul is passing on to your spirit immediately the disturbance that comes from the outside world. And bit-by-bit the Holy Spirit works on that -- divides your soul from your spirit -- and then begins to get it going the right way so that whatever comes in from the outside, the life is always going outwards from the inside of your life.

So loved ones, that’s part of what it means to be a spiritual man or spiritual woman. And really you can see the kinds of princes and princesses of God that we were meant to be. It is God’s will that we should be able to bless when we are persecuted. Not in some pitiful down at the mouth paranoid way, but to bless with a full, and a clean, and a pure heart and a confident and joyful attitude. It is God’s will that we should be able to do that. And not because we try hard, not because we’ve read all the books, not because we discipline ourselves strongly, but because we have stood in our position in the cross of Christ and we have accepted that God has already changed us and we said, “Lord I believe that. I believe that I have been changed. I believe that I have been turned around. And Holy Spirit, I know that you are able to bring about Jesus’ reaction in me at this very moment.”

It’s all by faith loved ones, do you see it? It’s not by striving and trying, and by reading books, and by practicing. It’s by faith and it is possible to come to that place. I’d just finish on this word: it is only possible if you are really willing at last to give up self. It is loved ones, I’ve seen that in my own life. It’s only possible to be a spiritual man or spiritual woman, to move from the inside of your life out, if you have really given up self. It really does require an extermination of selfishness.

Now, don’t fiddle around, don’t play with words about it. I don’t mean a destruction in the personality, you see that, I mean the renewing of the personality. I don’t mean that you are killed and made passive and annihilated. But selfishness, living for yourself, self centeredness, living for self exaltation, self gratification, self pleasure -- only if you’re willing to die to that, only if you’re willing not to live for self but to live for God who sent you here to earth -- only then is all this possible.

And loved ones, do you see there is no other sensible way to live? Why do you think you were sent here to earth? And do you think you were honestly sent here so that all of us could bow down and worship you? And yet really that’s the way we live, isn’t it? But you know your mind is made in the image of God and your mind tells you that’s not so. Your mind actually tells you that you were sent here by your dear Father to do something in his world, to bring it under his will and that’s why he sent you here. And that is the only way to live.

But do you see the first thing that is required is that we accept our place with Jesus on the cross and we accept the extermination of that selfishness? There’s one brother here that it really helped me a lot when he said, “Are you looking for something for yourself?” That’s it. That’s what destroys the work of the cross in you. That’s what prevents the Holy Spirit bringing life to you, if you’re looking for something for yourself. That’s it.

And I’d ask you that tonight. Whatever you’re doing in your life, in your job, or in your home, or in this place here, or in the body, or in God’s work, are you looking for something for yourself? And I’d hammer it home even to those of us who are unmarried and think, “Oh well, he doesn’t mean that.” Oh yeah, yeah I do, yeah. I mean, that spoils it as much as anything does, you know it. You know if we have the old telescope out looking for the good looking girl, or looking for the nice guy, we’re looking for something for ourselves just the same, and it just spoils everything. It narrows our vision -- it narrows our whole life. We haven’t time for other people -- we’re so busy trying to get married. Yes, it applies to that as well as our jobs, as well as people approving us and liking us.

It means loved ones, are you looking for something for yourself? Well, do you see the blessed Savior was not? Do you see that? And if God has placed you into him then you cannot either and so to believe that you are in him you have to be willing to stop looking for things for yourself. I know, at first it seems just terrible. You think, “Oh, I can’t live. Life will be so empty. If I don’t live to get something for myself it’s going to be so boring. I live for the little bit of excitement that I’m going to get tonight when I watch my favorite TV program, I live for tomorrow for the person I’m going to see and get a little happiness from them. Life would be empty without it.”

It’s amazing, life suddenly fills, life at last begins to be full when you at last face what you think is the unthinkable, the unimaginable -- living without yourself in mind. But it’s incredible, when you at last take your place with Jesus and say, “Lord Jesus thank you that this miserable inturned personality you turned around in yourself on the cross and Lord I embrace you. I take my place with you and I’m glad to forget myself forever and to live for you only.” Suddenly you feel a fullness in your life, it is miraculous loved ones.

It’s as if when you create the vacuum God pours the Spirit of his son into that vacuum and suddenly you begin to have direction from within. So it works, but first of all you have to really settle no to self. And do you know what brings the Savior pain? It’s as if he is here on this stage every day we’re together and he’s on this dear cross and looking down upon us and some of us are looking up at him with all our hearts and all our love is towards him. And some of us are looking up and then looking at a girl across the aisle, or looking at a job in the newspaper, or looking at our bank book. And some of us have no time for him at all, we’re just here because we want a little insurance policy and we want to be with the right kind of people and we’re utterly preoccupied with our bank book and our car, and our girl, and our guy, and our home. That’s what causes the Savior pain. That’s what causes him to bleed in you.

So do you see loved ones, if you have any part in Jesus it must be everything. It must be all or nothing and only that way will you come into the place of being a spiritual man or spiritual woman. And the important thing is not being a spiritual man or spiritual woman but living the way God intended you to. At last living from the inside out, at last going to work each morning filled. Filled whether anybody says anything nice to you or not, whether the day goes well or not, you’re filled with a joy that bubbles over and that goes out to other people. You’re filled with a peace, you sense Jesus inside you loving others through you and living with his Father through you. You sense a fullness and a completeness in your life whatever way people treat you. That’s the way God intends us to live.

And of course, I needn’t say it’s imminently possible for every one of us in this room at this moment because when one died for all, all of us here died. And the only thing that divides you from the person that is living that way at the moment is they believe it and you believe a lie that you still are the old reversed personality depending on the world and people. You can choose to believe the truth at this moment, you can. You can choose to believe the truth at this moment and that’s the first step towards becoming what God wants you to be. Take your position on the cross and then begin to submit to the dear Holy Spirit that will make your condition match your position.

So loved ones, if you’ve heard God speaking tonight, will you take a definite stand at this moment? Just a quiet definite stand, just on the basis of Romans 6:6, 2 Corinthians 5:4, any of them, there are so many verses, just choose one. One has died for all therefore all died. “Lord, that means I died, that means I have been changed. That means I’m a fool. I’ve been living a lie up to this moment. Lord, I accept the new personality that you’ve given me. Holy Spirit, bring Jesus to me now and make him real in my life.” You can do that now. I’d encourage you to. I wouldn’t wait, I wouldn’t wait.

Satan will say to you, “Maybe you should read a few more books.” Or, “Check up, did he really mean that?” No, no, if God has got something to you, you go on that. Don’t expect him to give you more. I think some of us say, “Well, should I not wait for it to hit me?” No, no, no, God doesn’t hit you -- evil spirits hit you. But God has done all in Jesus that is needed.

Let us pray. Lord Jesus thank you, thank you that all of us have been put in you, crucified with you, resurrected with you, completely reversed and changed and made new. Thank you Lord that there isn’t any need at all for us to suffer the agonies of jealousy and pride, there isn’t any need for us to be hurt when people criticize us. There isn’t any need for us to be under the dominance of what comes from outside from people, and things, and events. Lord, we’ve been completely changed and renewed in you.

Lord Jesus, all that is yours is ours and your present attitude to your Father is ours. Lord, thank you. Thank you that we are saved because we’re part of you. We don’t get into you once we get saved; we get into you and we are saved. We’re in you now. Thank you Lord that you have placed us into your son Jesus and you have destroyed us all there and you have renewed us all there. Thank you that you have done it, that’s what your word says. Thank you that we don’t need to do it. You have done it Lord, you have put us into your Son and all that you have done to him you have done to us and all that you are giving to him now you are giving to us. And that includes the blessed Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, will you come now and bring about in us the responses and the attitude of Jesus who is in us and in whom we are? Thank you, Lord. Thank you. I trust you to live out through us tomorrow Lord Jesus. Be yourself in us and through us 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 evermore. Amen.