The Absolute DANGER Of Being Alone

Now, then, there are the doers. Hot dog. I can tell you who the doers are. That’s my people. That’s the Southern Baptist. Well, we’re going to save the world. If the Southern Baptists had been following Moses, they would have never even stopped to consider the Red Sea as a stopping point. Those dear brothers and sisters would all grab the bucket, and they would have drained that thing dry, and they would have gone over on dry land. They don’t need the Lord; they can do it without him. The Baptists are doers. Now there are within the Baptist thinkers and feelers, but we are basically doers, and I don’t have to tell you who the feelers are. We have Pentecostals for the feelers. But I will tell you this: ultimately, the thinkers will win out in all of those movements. It’s just a matter of time because eventually they will gain control of the seminaries and the seminaries will gain control of the minds of the young ministers, and the young ministers, given 100 or 200 years, will ultimately change the disposition of the people, and that’s happening right now in the older charismatic movement. You can see a move towards scholarship, maybe even an effort to become more orthodox and the thinkers always win, because they get hired to teach, and they love to study, and they are the ones who tell us, you know, eventually evangelism dies in most groups because, in some way, it gets theologically laid aside, because there’s just so much more fun in studying things and the zeal. The seminaries no longer have the power and the zeal.

By the way, I consider myself very fortunate. I went to what I think is the finest seminary in the world, and I caught it at a perfect time when so much of what it was was in really good balance. It had been started by a doer, and it had fire in its belly, and there was coming just enough scholarship in about the time I was there to give balance and to keep from freezing to death. I joined the warm-hearted Baptist church in that town, which was just great, but you could go to the music school over there, and you could see the Handel coming to the front. Handel and Bach are on their way up. John, who wrote Amazing Grace. Isaac Watts, John Newton…John Newton and some of the other names I won’t bother to name. They’re going out. Handel and Bach are coming in, and McKenna and Fanny Crosby, all those folks are going out, and who is …? That was the name I was trying to think of, going out.

Well, now then, I want you to know that this is one of the major problems of the Christian faith: we are expressing our faith mostly first through the avenue of our soul, and it’s coming out as thinker, feeler, doer. Where is Jesus Christ in all of this? Well, then, you have to ask, was the Lord a thinker, a feeler, or a doer? And the answer is no. Maybe the answer is yes. Maybe He was all three in His soul, but He was none of those first. I just wish I could stay here and just talk to you about this for a year. He was on a different plane from that.

We will not do a great deal of logical study of theology, the Bible, and scripture in the other realm. We will not be great doers in the other realm. We might do a little feeling. I’m not so sure that we’ll have that left out. We are not going to be Pentecostals running around heaven like chickens with their heads cut off. Now, let me be fair. Have I been fair here? I have attacked the entire spectrum. I have left nobody. If the evangelists feel insulted, remember, so do the feelers. If theologians and Bible scholars feel insulted, so do evangelists. I’ve really been fair. No, He did not live first on this plane, and I’m going to come back again. In the other realm, and that’s where He lived most of the time. My thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways are not your ways. And as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than yours.

Now I am not trying to start a big revolution, just a little one. I would say it is time that we put the Spirit and the Life of God within us, and this higher form of Life first in our experience, and let that pull that thinking, feeling, doing train, and that fact, faith, feeling stuff, and all those other things that come with it. And I think, I really think, I am quite certain, that if we spent a little time in other realms, we would not come back the big thinkers, the big feelers, and the big doers that we are inclined to be. Now I want you to know something. I respect the fact that a man is naturally a doer, a feeler, or a thinker. I am a little hesitant when he begins to push the idea that that is the only way to be. I am dispositionally what I am. Frankly, I don’t know what I am. I seem to be able to fight on all fronts, which is not the nicest thing to be. I’d rather be one of the three. Sometimes you begin to wonder just what you are when you can move from one of those areas to the other so easily, but we have to begin in some other place besides those three places. There’d be a lot more peace in the body of Christ if we did.

But I want to tell the feeler that you have a right to your feelings. I will also say to you, your feelings are not necessarily the Spirit, and I would say to the thinker, your thoughts are not necessarily the Spirit. Now, to the doer, you don’t have to say that. All you have to say to the doer is it may be that just going out winning people the Lord all the time is not particularly the center of God’s will, because I don’t think the doer ever thinks that the doing is God’s Spirit; for him, it is obedience that causes him to go out and do these things. But the thinker can think that his thinking is the Spirit, and the feeler very often believes his feelings are the Spirit. I’ll tell you something, and we’re going to get into this more. There is a similarity. The spirit and the soul are similar. That’s why I began this talk with you by saying we left the fun part, and here’s where the complexities come in. The spirit and the soul are quite similar, and feelings are somewhat similar to intuitiveness, and perception is close to thinking. To really be able to discern the difference between the spirit and the soul…hold steady…is virtually impossible. Very complex, very difficult. Young Christians should never think that this is something they can do, but I will tell you this: we ought to get started. We ought to get started.

I think we can cut out a lot of the difficulties and problems by watching, again, the fellowship of the Father with the Son, rather than jumping in the middle of this and saying, “I feel led. God spoke to me,” but to behold Him in His relationship to His Father, to stay away from the teachings, to stay away from the feelings, and go into the business of beholding…beholding as a mirror, beholds what it sees, the scripture says. Beholding Him, beholding Him, eyes cast somewhere else. We will begin in our closet to understand this other form of Life. In our closet, we will begin to learn to live by a life not our own. In our closet, we will see our “feeling” dominance just smoothed off a little bit; our thinking dominance just smoothed off a little bit. Our dominance just smoothed off a bit and come under another form of light that doesn’t work on those three planes. Maybe similar but different. My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts. As the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways above yours. It is life on another biological plane. It’s almost a puppy dog exploring the ways of man. Wouldn’t a puppy dog be fascinated with apprehending the way a man apprehends?

To lay hold of God’s way of apprehension. I didn’t use the word “thinking”; I said that how God lays hold of what He lays hold of is different. We move from up here gradually, slowly, to the passing of the years, very slowly. This is called transformation. We move from here to here by the growth of our spirit. That’s one thing, the growth of our spirit. The other is the normalizing of our soul. I would almost use the word shrinking. The normalizing of the soul.

Audience: You feel this is what Paul is saying in Ephesians 4 when he says you did not … in Christ, about the renewing of your mind, and all that. Is this what he’s saying?

Yes. Yeah. When we renew our minds, we make it new again. Audience: Soul.

Yes. The mind within the soul. Oh yes. Absolutely. The spirit can renew some aspects of the soul. I’m going to be very cautious here. I don’t want to oversell the power of the spirit upon the soul; that’s been oversold. I’m not going to oversell it. By the way, I have a lot more to say on this subject. Right now, I’d like you to look at yourself and know that you have, deep within you, a spirit in about the same shape as the Lord’s spirit. The Father dwells within His Spirit. The Lord Jesus dwells within your spirit. That’s wonderful. Take heart, find that realm and start going there, and you will discover that it’s not typically the way you are. There’s something else going on down there.

We have four basic temperaments, 16 basic dispositions. These are things that have been scientifically proven. They are not conjectures, and there are several other aspects about us. Well, I have a notion that the Lord, if you met Him, you would find all four of those temperaments in Him and all 16 dispositions, whereas I only get one or two or three. I have a little sprinkling of each of them, but one or two or three of them dominate me. The Lord’s manhood on this earth and the Life that He puts in you now, that He incarnates, that he puts into your spirit, is so much better developed and so much more whole than we are. When we go to that place, and we go to that realm, if we do it a great deal, it will affect the soul. Anyway, I’m telling you to look at yourself now and see a spirit that’s in pretty good shape. Very little has ever been lodged against the regenerated spirit. You just can’t find any criticism of that in the New Testament.