The Silent Danger of an Empty Christian Life- How to Stay Filled With Christ (DCLC1984)

I’d like for you to consider that for a moment. Here is the story of cleaning up our inward parts and making them proper. Concentration on putting in order empty inward portions of our being, but that which was cast out came back and saw that the house never looked that clean before. There’s nice furniture there now. A few nice antiques, maybe some French provincial furniture, a lovely refrigerator, well-made beds, a lot of food in the refrigerator. There’s plenty of room for me here. We used to be a cluttered-up mess with some of my friends; he went back and got a complete number, a complete set of fellow demons. He brought seven of them, and seven is complete. And eight is even more complete than complete. So we now have the man having eight demons within him. What in the world is going on?

The story is very simple. Some men had had contact with God. There had been a moment of something precious in their life that drew them to the living God. They concentrated on cleaning up their lives. They paid attention to keeping an empty internal being in proper order. At some point in their concentration on keeping clean and in order their internal parts, the very thing they threw out slipped back in, and something began to grow in them more wicked than the state that they were in when they touched their god and took the vow of Pharisaism. What do we mean by seven demons and the final state being worse than the beginning? It’s really very simple. Although they were in Galilee, there is no question in my mind that those very men stood one day in Jerusalem and cried out, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” and their latter state was worse than their first.

Do you understand? This story is very simple. Good men, religious men who have gone to the living God, have been touched, and something wonderful has happened. The years roll on. They have concentrated on the wrong thing; then something totally different begins to seep in, and in the end, they crucify the very God they pledge themselves to. They crucify Him. That’s eight demons. They only cast out one, but eight came to crucify the very Lord whom they had given their hearts and lives to. Well, of course, that’s Jewish days. This is the modern day, and that’s why I’m a little concerned, and I want to talk to some of you.

Drop all that and let’s talk because the principle remains the same, and it remains the same for all of us. It remains the same for you, and for me, for everyone here. Without getting into any theology, the principle here is still the same. You remember when you got saved. You remember how much you loved the Lord. You remember how joyful it was, and it rained every day the blessings of God, and you loved Him, did you not? And you began to respond; maybe you have gone through one of the most wonderful Christian experiences anyone has ever had. The old days are gone far, far away, and you have known glory…and now has come a dry spell, and that dry spell has been going on for a long, long time.

You’re sitting up here in Podunk, Illinois, or Ohio, or Iowa, or Florida, or Texas, or Pennsylvania, or New York, or Massachusetts. Oh, forbid, maybe even Maine. You are still a Christian. You still love the Lord. You have not gone back into sin. You have kept your house in order. You have kept your house in order, but I think the Lord would like for us to know something. You should never, never, never, never keep a well-ordered house. You should not ever, ever, ever care for and keep a beautiful empty home. The home that you care for is a very dangerous place when you care for it and keep it up, and it’s empty. Is that clear?

Then you need to live a long, long time. You need to watch people love the Lord, give their hearts to Him, totally saturated in Him—wonderful, glorious times. Then a bitter thing happens; a bad thing happens. They have a testimony of the demon that was thrown out by Christ. The former life you lived, the things the Lord helped you in. Then there comes…either somebody threw you out, excommunicated you, the church you were in collapsed, you moved away, you started backsliding, you lost interest, your enthusiasm died – whatever it was – but you know you’re still a Christian. You’re just…the things that He did for you and made you while you were rich in Him. You have kept the outward results intact, but there’s nothing going on inside.

Leave the place empty long enough, and unwittingly you, the believer, are going to find yourself in a state different from, but as bad as, before you ever met the Lord. Let another 10 years go, and it’ll never show because the house will probably stay in order, but if you have eyes to see, 10, 15 years later, in spiritual comparison, you are worse off than you were before you became a Christian.

This was what the Lord was telling those Pharisees: Yes, you met Me. Yes, you changed, and then you put everything in order. But there was nothing internal. The years have rolled by, and instead of being filled inside, you simply have kept the order of redemption. You have kept the results of redemption intact. The house is empty. Well, believe it or not, I’m finished. If you don’t have enough sense to apply that to your life, then I can’t help you. Brothers and sisters, it’s dangerous to have an empty house. No matter how well-ordered it is, the very well-ordered part of it becomes dangerous. I am still a Christian. I still show I am a Christian. But the internal home is empty. Eventually, in spiritual principles, every house gets filled with something, no matter how well-ordered it is.

Now listen to me. I know some of you are deeply hurt and you’re bleeding. I know you’re hurt and bleeding. A few of you have lost the function of your spirit, or at least it appears that way. And there’s no way you can put anything inside that spirit, it seems. I’m very reluctant to use personal illustrations. There have been one or two times in my life when things are pretty rough. Just pretty rough. I think that nothing that I know of steals from our spirit, not even sin, that steals from our spirit, its life, like the injury of other Christians. It seems that Christians have the capacity to inflict upon us the very death of our spirit. Do you understand what I’m saying? That hasn’t happened to everybody, but at least we all know wounds. Alright, I think you agree with me, and I agree with you, and I want to stop and say to you that’s not possible. That’s not possible.

In the last few weeks, I’ve heard two people say to me, “Gene, you really make me feel guilty.” One brother said to me, “You really make me feel…” and he just used a really low term. I’m sorry to tell you something, but I am incapable of making you feel guilty. I have no needle and syringe with a fluid called guilt that I can inject into you that gives you a sense of guilt. You alone can make yourself feel guilty. No one can make me feel guilty. Nobody can make me feel guilty. You really made me feel like I was at the bottom of the ocean. You really made me feel like I was nothing. The man doesn’t breathe who can make me feel like that. The only person who can make me feel like that is me.

Did anybody take a hot poker to you? I need to tell you, dear brother and dear sister, as hard as it happened, the very fact that it happened to you, somehow, you had to play a part in that internal destruction. I have been so destroyed by other Christians when I was much, much younger. I don’t think that’s possible anymore. It may be. I can’t tell. I don’t know. But I was flat laid out. I remember what I had to do for spiritual sustenance to keep the room full.

I could have heard every great sermon ever preached, and it would not have turned my Richter scale. It would not have moved. The Bible might as well have been printed on blank pages. Nothing moved, and that went on for weeks, months, and years—no spiritual registration. But I found something. You know what it was? It was music. That’s right. It was music. My wife will tell you that I have about a half-dozen records. I’d play one side, turn it over, and play the other. Turn them over and play the other side. Turn them over and let them fall one after another, play them on the other side. 18 hours a day, I listened to that music and the same songs over and over, and every time they played, I cried, and I cried as much the last time I ever heard them as I did the first time. I just sat and cried.