The Cost of the Deeper Christian Life

I can think of some of the really devout, pious, holy men in the Roman Catholic Church who really knew the Lord well who got into particular positions and, because they were in positions of authority, used that authority to persecute believers, people not in the Catholic church. That’s happened on a few occasions. The thing that is almost always referred to is…this is proof…this is it…this is what’s going to happen to you for sure, is the Munster rebellion. Have you ever heard of it? A bunch of people just went crazy. There was nothing of the deeper Christian life in that day. That was mostly a matter of lust and two or three leaders going crazy. Polygamy broke out. I want to say to the intellect and to the Bible student, Martin Luther rejected a deeper experience of the Christian faith. He believed in an intellectual approach to it. He was Bible-centered, and man, he caused the deaths of thousands of people. The Catholics who defended the doctrines and traditions of the Catholic Church have been responsible for the deaths of millions, and we who are Bible-centered in America today fight with one another like cats and dogs over doctrines, and hundreds and thousands of people are injured.

I do not see that coming from the lives of people who want to get to know the Lord better, in a real, deep way. I think the intellectual…I think he dispositionally wants everything to be set in nice little categories, and he really is mental. That’s why he gets interested in the Bible. He’s first mental, and he hears someone say, “I feel like the Lord is telling me.” And he goes, “Don’t trust your feelings.” He is just afraid of someone trusting their feelings.

If you trust your feelings, that’s not the deeper Christian life; if you trust your mind, that’s not the deeper Christian life either. But my point is, you’re going to catch it from the intellectual. They, in turn, will cause you to catch a lot of guff and problems from everywhere. I think people who get interested in the deeper Christian life are more subject to rumors and misunderstanding than anyone else in the Christian family, and labels, and I want you to know that most brothers and sisters simply cannot handle it at all. They cannot handle persecution.

I think I want to say something at that point. I think whenever I hear it said or I say you could get persecuted, I’m almost afraid to bring the subject up, because I know that somewhere out there is someone who really wants to get persecuted. He is really wanting to be persecuted. He has a persecution complex, and he’s looking for it. He wants it, and that has to go to the cross. You shouldn’t want to be persecuted. There is the other Christian…there are three kinds of people in the face of persecution. Those who want to be, those who absolutely cannot handle it, and they are not going to be persecuted, and just, you know, give me some idea how, and I will get out of this, and I will, and then there is one other group, and there are just these three, and that is the Christian who is utterly unprepared for it. Those who want it, those who can’t handle it, and those who are utterly unprepared for it, and they’re not any others. This is something you never get used to. You never get used to it. You never understand it, and you never get used to it.

If you want to know the Lord in the depths, you might as well understand it’s going to happen to you. I hope all you people who enjoy getting persecuted will run quickly to the TV set and turn it off. I don’t want you to hear anything from me, because I don’t even want you to, I mean, could you go get some psychiatric help before you read anything else or do anything else? We should not wish to be persecuted. That has nothing to do with the Lord Jesus Christ. That has to do with a stinky personality and a twisted disposition. That’s from the outside. That’s from the outside. But there are also things from the inside, and this is where it really begins to hurt.

Let me tell you something. I have the most marvelous product in the whole world to sell: the Lord. And not only is the Lord a wonderful product to sell…I hope you’ll understand me because I’m making a point. He, when you get interested in knowing Him, He seems to come off His throne and make Himself so real to you, and He will love you, and He will draw you, and He will make you feel so good, and I don’t know any other way to put it. You know the feeling when you pick up a warm puppy? It’s a warm puppy feeling. The Lord is tricky. He is tricky. He will make Himself so available to you. He will make Himself so known. He will love you, and you will love Him, and it will be like paradise, and you will feel like you have died and gone to heaven, and finally your searching is over, and the hunger is passed, and you found the reality of Christ, and it is glorious. It is wonderful, and you thank God for those who told you and showed you how to know Him better, and this is the only way in the world, and He is so near and so dear and so wonderful and so beautiful. This is so glorious, and no one’s ever had it any better. And this is the greatest thing on earth.

And then He walks off and leaves you. Just walks off and leaves you high and dry or low and alone. This is why you should not be interested in the deep things of Christ. This is a guaranteed experience. Be clear, all of you. This is true, and it can become…and be…an extremely bitter experience to the believer and very destructive. Hear me: this will happen to you. You have been forewarned, and it’ll happen to you. Why does it happen? Well, before we talk about why it happens, let’s talk about what it does to you.

First of all, most Christians are not prepared to separate from the Lord, the loss of this wonderful love relationship. They cannot separate it from the feeling of guilt. I must have done something wrong, and the Lord is displeased, or the Lord is punishing me. It is almost impossible for a Christian not to feel that way. You have to go through that, it seems, and most Christians just can’t handle it; they don’t want it, so they figure out something else to do. By the way, I want to tell you, and this is just an observation. I don’t even know if it’s accurate. It seems as though when we end our forward plunge into Christ and stop, the hard things also stop; the blessings return. It’s almost like the Lord said, “Okay, if that’s as far as you’re going to go, I’m going to give you what you want, and I’ll give you the desires of your heart. You want the warm puppy? You got him.” But if the plunge continues, things get more difficult, and more difficult, and more difficult, and more difficult. You will regret your hunger for the Lord Jesus Christ. You will live to regret it.

Now, this is not the Christ that is getting preached a lot these days. It is nonetheless the absolute truth. You know, you could end up losing your health. I remember a day in my life. I remember a week in my life when, if I’d been somewhere else, I remember a summer in my life. If I had been somewhere else doing something else instead of chasing the Lord in this church, I wouldn’t have lost my health. My Lord is responsible for my having lost my health, and as far as I can tell, it’s permanent. It’s been going on for 22 years. I could get very angry about that. So, you want the deep things of Christ, huh? Are you sure you want them enough to live a large part of your life in poor health? It could happen. It could happen to you on a level besides physical, too. It could happen to you in the areas of your soul.

I don’t know how to describe to you how lonely it can become when you make Christ Jesus the center of your life. To find people who are interested in this is often very difficult. Every once in a while, I meet an old saint, and I’m speaking of the psychological here, who has followed the Lord through all of those downward plunges and just kept on, and that person seems to be marked by a sense when you meet them that you feel devastation, that somewhere in their life they were just virtually destroyed. Sometimes the pain will even show a little bit, but usually the enthusiasm, you know what enthusiasm for Christ is like, you really get excited about Him; that’s not there. In its place is almost a holy sorrow, a brokenness, a shatteredness of nature of their own basic nature, and that’s what’s holding them together. That’s their strength, that one day everything was so whipped apart in their life that that’s what you see when you meet them, it is devastation. They’re not tied to particular needs.

The Lord would like to establish a relationship with you, brother. He would like for you to have a relationship with Him, very much like the relationship He has with you. You have all heard, have you not, the term “unconditional love,” and someone has said to you, “Oh, brother, don’t feel guilty. You reek, but don’t worry about it. The Lord loves you unconditionally.” Now, that’s encouraging. No matter what you do, He loves you. You’re backslidden. He loves you. He didn’t care. He really doesn’t care. Get this through your head. He’s not impressed with your goodness. He is not really impressed with the days when you really get it together. Today I prayed. Today I witnessed. Today I loved. Today I forgave. Oh, yesterday I cussed, yesterday I stole, yesterday I cheated, yesterday I got resentful. And the Lord in His eyes cannot tell the difference between those two days in you. That’s unconditional love. He is not affected by what you are, what you do, what you say, what you believe, or how you feel about how the Lord feels about you. I’ll repeat that. He is not affected by how you feel that He feels about you. I feel today He feels very badly toward me. I feel today that He feels very goodly toward me, but the Lord is saying, “The day I saved you proved I’d put up with anything.”

Now, that’s unconditional love from the Lord’s viewpoint, but turn that around. This is the part no one ever talks about. He is seeking to establish in you an unconditional love toward Him. He took your help; love goes on. Oh, I was in love with the Lord, and the Lord was so good to me. Then I began to see His church, and I joined this wonderful group of Christians. We were having such a glorious time, then this fellow came in and split it, and I’m mad. I have never known the presence of the Lord since that horrible, hideous split. I’m just sitting here and pouting till I die.