Spiritual Life #53 Laws of the Spirit 3 – Sinking of the Spirit

Laws of the Spirit 3 – Sinking of the Spirit

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

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

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

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

And it is spirit itself, because if you magnify your personality, you’ll find that underneath the old body here that is so obvious, there is a dear soul with a mind, and emotions, and then within that, there is a spirit. Because you have a human spirit that the Spirit of Jesus touches as he comes down from Jesus and goes through your spirit and then goes back up to God. And that’s the normal pattern and the normal flow of a person’s life. And oh! There’s a saying by one of the old classical authors like Seneca that goes, “As a man is -- or a woman -- as a man or a woman is when they are alone, that is what they are.” That’s what they are. What they are when they’re alone, in a dark room, with nobody else present, that’s what they are.

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

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

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

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

And of course, you know what you do when you’re in that situation. Well, you turn the TV on, and it doesn’t matter if it’s Johnny Carson and you’ve seen him a thousand times and you’re bored with the same old jokes again and again. [John William "Johnny" Carson, 1925-2005, was an American television host and comedian, known for thirty years as host of The Tonight Show.] You will do anything; you’ll turn the TV on; you’ll read a book that you’ve read before; you’ll grab a newspaper that you don’t even enjoy. You’ll go out and talk to somebody, and you’ll do something. But you’ll do something to persuade yourself that you’re not dead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now loved ones, the fact is that once you do that, you will find that your spirit -- its normal activity is that of rising to God. Its normal activity is rising to God. Its normal activity is joy, love of God, and praise of God. That’s the normal activity and movement of your spirit within you. And what I’d just like to mention tonight is an experience that many of us have which is abnormal, subnormal. And you can call it the sinking of the spirit [He writes on the display, "Sinking of the spirit".] -- small 's' because it’s our human spirit as opposed really, to the Holy Spirit, who is a person. Many of us experience a 'sinking of our spirit' at times. Instead of our spirit rising up to God, we find it kind of sinking down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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