Winona Conference Part 4 – The Secret of the Christian Life | Christ Living in You

Now, I want to go to the first Christian and ask him how he lives the Christian life. And what is His secret to living the Christian life? So, let us go to the Father, and without meaning any irreverence, can you see Him reading the Bible?  Huh? The Father is reading the Bible. God the Father. He is praying… He is tithing? He’s going to church. Listen, He’s not even. He leaves that to his Spirit. His Holy Spirit, who does it by means of the Father’s Life.

Jesus Christ existed long before He came to this planet, and He lived in the fellowship of the Godhead. And there within the Godhead, He fellowshipped with His Father, and there is where He lived, or learned to live, the Christian life. Long before He got this planet. Can you see how long He had practiced at living the Christian life before He got here? Can you understand that your Father is the first Christian? Do you know how your Father lives the Christian life? By existing. What He does, whatever He does, that’s Christian. If He doesn’t do it, it’s not Christian. But it’s by His very existence, nature, and life.

I want you to look at the Son and watch what He does in order to live a Christian life. Can I go through this real quickly and hope you’ll remember this when I get back to you for six or eight weeks? What does the Son do there, an eternity past? Way over here. What does He do? He beholds His Father? That’s number one. Write it down if you have a pen.

Number two: He receives the Father’s life into Himself and lives by means of the Father. Number three: He loves the Father, but not with His own love. He loves His Father with the love which the Father loves Him, and He takes the Father’s love and returns it to the Father. Without the Father, I can do nothing. He loves the Father, but He loves the Father by means of the love the Father bestows upon Him. He takes the love of the Father and returns it to the Father. It is the Father’s love by which He Himself loves the Father.

I want you to listen to Galatians 2:22. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet it is not I who lives but Christ lives in me, and the life I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God. Not by faith in the Son of God, but by the faith of the Son of God. Well, that’s exactly how Jesus Christ lives the Christian life. He lives the Christian life by the love of the Father and by the faith of the Father. Except the Father has no faith, He only has reality. And the Son lives by the reality of the Father, and that is the origin of faith.

Now, I hope you’re not drowning, and I hope you are listening, because if you are listening, you could walk out of here a totally changed person in the way you see the Christian life. I’ll tell you this, the next time somebody gets up in the pulpit and starts laying down on you, what you ought to do, and this and this and this to be a good Christian, you might do what my mother did once. My mother was crazy. She was in a class all her own. She lived in West Texas, and she came to see me once. It was Sunday morning, and she was driving down the road, and it was 11 a.m., and she decided to do something she almost never did. My mother loved the Lord. She stopped and got out of her car, in some unknown town, and saw the sign that said ‘Church’ on it. She got out, walked into the meeting, and turned out she was in the Carmelite church of Christ. And this preacher got out of the pulpit, and he started running down Billy Graham. And it was, Billy Graham does this, Billy Graham shouldn’t do that, and the problem with Billy Graham is this, the problem with Billy Graham is that. He didn’t know who was in his audience. Right in the middle of his sermon, my mother stood up, cupped her hands, and said, Hooray for Billy Graham! Marched right down that pew and out the aisle. I come by it honest. You might try that the next time somebody tries to lay the law on you. Hooray for the only Christian, God, our father.

Now, if you take everything I just gave you and put it together, you can give it a title, and that is He fellowships with His Father. This is the fellowship of the son with a father. Now, I’m going to do something here, and I want you to see what the Christian life is like. Does anybody in this room know what this is a symbol of? Infinity. This is God the All, and there’s not anything else. We’re back before creation. Are you following me? The Christian life is alive and well within the God head. Are you following?

There is the Christian life. What is going on? The Son is beholding the Father. The Father is pouring glory upon the Son. The Son is living by the life of the Father. The Son is loving the Father with the life and the love that the Father gives Him. And the Son is, did I have anything else on that list? Most of all, He is living by the Father’s life. He is beholding the Father. And He is loving the Father with the Father’s love. Put all that together. He is receiving. That’s what He’s doing. He’s receiving. He’s receiving all that the Father is into Himself. Now, put all that together. And you have what is going on inside the All of God.

Ready? Got it? Did you get it? Brothers and sisters, behold the Christian life, the fellowship of the Godhead. That is the Christian life. And I’ll tell you something else. The church is in there. It’s the fellowship of divinity, the Father, Son, and the Spirit – and a great mystery. Do you understand that the embryo of church life is in there? The Father, the Son, and the Spirit, fellowshipping with one another, is the embryo of the spiritual community of the believer, the colony from heaven. And this is also the Christian life. And it’s very ancient. And it was, long before He got here to earth, it was going on in heaven.

Well, then one day Christ came to earth, born of a virgin, grew up. And the Father said to Him, and I’m sure you remember this: the Father said to Him, My son, you lived the Christian life within Me for all eternity past by means of our fellowship with one another, and that’s what went on forever and forever and forever passed. But now, my son, you are a human being, and that won’t work anymore. Now, son, you have to pray and read your Bible and fast and tithe and go to the synagogue. You remember when He said that? You don’t remember that? Then are you saying to me that Jesus Christ, when He got to earth, did not change the secret to the Christian life? It didn’t change for Him? You don’t think it did? I think you’re right. I think you’re right. Hey, I need you folks to wake up a little bit here. I don’t know if you are getting this.  I know you haven’t been exposed to a lot of this. Am I wrong? You heard this last Sunday in Sunday school? Alright. Okay, fine. That’s how far the Christian life has gotten, all the way to the cross, the resurrection.

The Lord Jesus now put His life in Simon Peter. He puts…hey saints…He puts this whole experience inside of Simon Peter. He is indwelled by a living Lord. Where is Christ in Simon Peter on the day of Pentecost? He’s in him. Say it. He’s in him. Is the Father in him? You sure? Romans 8 says, if you will read it, The Father is in us, the Son is in us, and the Spirit us. Simon Peter, you are one incredible creature.

The fellowship of the Godhead is going on inside of Simon Peter on the day of Pentecost, but I’m sure you remember this, that the Lord pulled Simon Peter aside there at the Sea of Galilee, and he said to Simon Peter, I live the Christian life by means of my Father in eternity past and here on earth, and I’m going to come in and live in you, and my Father will live in you. And the Spirit will live in you. But that’s not going to help you a bit. What you’re going to have to do is read the Bible, pray, fast, and go to church. Of course, you’re going to have to found the church before you can get to it. And tithe. Simon Peter looked at Him and said, Lord, I can handle all that. I can tithe. I can pray, and I can go to church, but Lord, I’ve got a real problem with this bible study business. Have you forgotten, I can’t read. Did you know he can’t read? Did you know that the apostles were illiterate? I mean, it is emphatically stated in the new statement. The word used to describe them meant literally they could not recognize and identify a letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and that was most people; consider that.