The Absolute DANGER Of Being Alone

The soul is, and now I’m coming to the next point, although I’ve been on it for quite some time. The soul of man is not like the soul of His Lord, who lived in Galilee and Judea. His soul had never sinned, had never fallen, had never been damaged. That damage and that fallenness can be seen in the last three or four seconds on the cross. He experienced what we experienced, but it happened in the flesh. But we see wholeness in Galilee and in Judea. There is no sin there, and His soul is whole, and His soul is normal, and it is in complete submission to the other form of Life within Him, the nature of God within Him; the human is subject to the divine. In you and in me, that’s just not true. The soul, being damaged, cannot lay hold of that Spirit the way His soul could lay hold of that realm, that form of Life. I am damaged, and I am limited.

Now my Lord has great plans for me. He wishes to see my spirit, my divine nature…I am a partaker of the divine nature…is that correct? Does the scripture say that we have been made partakers of the divine nature? He wishes to see this element of me grow and to be fed, for there is food for the spirit, and to get healthy and robust and grow and affect the soul. Ah, but He also, wholly and apart from the spirit, wishes to work on the damaged soul. Sorry, I wish I could tell you, He wishes just to work on your soul through the outworking of the Spirit. But that’s not true. I’m going to make a declaration here that perhaps has never been made before. It really needs to be made. Your soul cannot be wholly changed by the spirit within you. Sorry, there has to be something else. It’s called the cross. I’m so…I apologize. You’ve come all these miles, and you’ve come here just panting for water, and you’ve just been, “Oh, it’s been so glorious up to now. Why would you do this to me?” Sorry. There is also the cross that works upon our souls.

The circumstances of God in our lives alter the soul, bringing it to normality. So, there is a work without and a work within. I am here to declare to you that no matter how spiritual you get in your glorious, wonderful experiences, that alone cannot normalize your soul. Did you get that? Are you clear? Because I think we often leave the impression that if we can just live in our spirits, and learn all the glorious things of the spirit, and take our position in Christ, then somehow that will make us normal. It is not so. There’s a lot that has to be done for and with the soul.

Our test, to some small degree or to some degree, is how willing we are to turn and go and live in this other place. But the greater test of how much we really love the Lord and how serious we are with Him is in our willingness to put up with all He’s going to do to you, to change, to normalize your soul. I wish I didn’t have to tell you this. I wish I could have just called this whole thing to an end a few minutes ago and let you go home without ever knowing this.

Now, I want to tell you something, and this is the big point. You cannot imagine how deeply damaged your soul is. How much the spirit can do, but oh, how much the cross must do. I must say it again. You, no matter who you are, you are a deeply damaged human being. I just…a thought comes across my mind. The folly of taking a young 20-year-old kid who’s just been saved and loves the Lord in his youthful enthusiasm, putting him through four years of seminary, and turning him loose upon the face of the earth and calling him a preacher or a Christian worker with a soul as damaged as he’s got. The best thing to do is to put him behind bars, keep him in a cage for at least 10 years. That man’s dangerous to society. Where is the transformation? Where is the spiritual? The very fact that we would do that is evidence that we don’t understand spiritual things.

The progress of the Lord is from within to without, and the progress of the Lord from without to within is a slow progress. Slow progress. And it must be kept in concert with our human growth. Are you growing as a human being solely apart from the Lord? Are you? I believe you are. I understand more at 50 than I did at 40. I understood more at 40 than I did at 30. There is a spirit maturing, and there is a soul maturing. Even lost men and women often gain some smarts as they go along in life, and our spirit works very similarly to that. There is a spiritual growth that goes on and on.

I want to come back and just make it really simple. We need, first of all, to find this place. Second of all, we need to learn what this wonderful place is, and the thing is, this life within us, and that there is a realm in there, and we need to go there. Beyond that, the spirit within us needs to grow and be fed and nourished, and the Lord needs to just, you know, we need to give Him a little space and do those things that really encourage the growth of the inner man. At the same time, the soul needs to become more and more normal.

Now, brothers and sisters, the next point is that all this is supposed to happen in the church. That’s all supposed to happen in the church. Now I’m going to wrap this up in a word. I am three parts, but I am whole. I am not three parts. I am one. I am not spirit, soul, and body. I am Gene Edwards. Yes, I have a spirit. Yes, I have a soul. Yes, I have a body, but I am also just whole. I now have to touch on the body for just a moment. The body has been damaged. It has been deeply touched by sin. It’s got a lot of bad habits; it has instincts all its own, totally its own. Love has become lust is an illustration. That which was once pure love now is unbridled lust, broken loose, and has gone past love and is inordinate lust that dwells in my body. I have my body to contend with.

I’m going to talk to you all about this a little bit more in the next meeting, but I find this fascinating. I have three parts. My spirit, my soul, my body. I am a Christian, and by nature, as a Christian, by the very Life form within me, as geese fly in flocks, as cattle go in herds, and as fish swim in schools, and as lost man comes together in civilizations, so Christians gather in the body of Christ and the church. I have these three elements about men: the spirit, the soul, and the body, and I look at the church of the Lord Jesus Christ today, and I say there are three things the church knows nothing about. It doesn’t know beans about the spirit, doesn’t know anything about the soul, and knows nothing about the body. What in the toot is it doing?

The church of the Lord Jesus Christ will not touch the needs of the human soul. It does not mess with the body. Oh, come over here and pray. Pray for this guy. Be healed. Dropped dead five minutes later. Well, I’ll say too bad about him. He didn’t have any faith, did he? Spoke to the brothers and sisters here a few days ago, and I said, “Any man or woman who claims to have the gift of healing and holds his healing gift to pray for the sick is a hypocrite of the first order. There is nothing to the healing gift if it is not first compassion…compassion, and yes, we pray for the sick, but do we leave them there if divine intervention does not do any good?

The church of the Lord Jesus Christ has a responsibility to the human body. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ has responsibility for the human soul, and the church of the Lord Jesus Christ has responsibility for the spirit and the realm of the spirit. Well, we don’t know beans about the spirit. I believe I can say most of you have learned more about the spirit in the last three days than you did in the rest of your Christian life put together. Is that a fair assessment? Not all of you, but some of you. Can any of you say that? Anybody here who would say that? I’ve got one head. Have we got any more? Got two heads. Three. Three. Do I see four? Four. Five. Six. Alright, great, six people, and yet you’ve been Christians for years. You don’t know anything about the spirit. Wouldn’t touch the soul for anything in the world. That’s for the devil. You don’t know what I’m talking about. I can tell by the look on your face. Alright.

I’m getting into the next message, but we have a brother here who told me the other day that he talked to a very, very famous minister in America. He’s a minister who is known nationally, very well known, very, very well known, maybe in the top five or six. He talked to him about this business of Christians needing so much help because they’re so messed up, and the man said, “Oh brother, we don’t need psychologists. We don’t need counselors. What we need are preachers who stand in the pulpit and preach the word. If you will preach the scripture, and if you’ll preach the Bible, and if you’ll preach the word of God, that’s all your people need. Let them hear the word of God,” and they will not need these things. I’d like to tell you that I think that man is out-and-out stupid.