Experiencing the Highest Life – Part 2

Now then, there is in me a life that is the life of man, the life of the soul, the life of the knowledge of good and evil.  It is life that wishes to do good. It is the life that wants to do and perform good, but it is canceled out by a higher life form. It is canceled out by the life of sin in my members, and I cannot do good. I can only do evil. I’m checkmated. I’m cut off on every hand. I cannot go any further. A life higher than my mind stops. Oh, how many tears have you shed? Oh, God! We look around for some sort of experience that will satisfy us. Maybe we’ll go speak in tongues, and we’ll be able to, you know, be at peace in this matter of doing something good, of really serving God and really obeying God. Maybe I can learn the Bible, and I can really serve God and love God. Checkmated. A higher life form. Only a higher life form can do it. A higher life form. Checkmate: you can’t do it. Oh, wretched man that I am! Who can deliver me from the body of death? Thank God. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord. There’s a higher Life form, brothers. There is the Life of the triune God, and brother, there’s not only a Life of God, but there is also the power of that Life, the principle of that Life, and the law of that Life. And that Life and the law of that Life has set me free from the law of sin. Hallelujah! Praise your Lord! Say hallelujah. Thank God. There’s a higher Life form, and it’s in me, and that Life form…listen…that life form of Satan may look down on my little life form and say, you aren’t going anyplace. And the Life form of God looks down on that life form and says, ” You’ve had it.” Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Praise God.

Alright? Brothers, when you sense the desire to do good, who is that? Me, that’s my principle. When there is the sense of lust, evil, flesh, gratifying the flesh, who is that? It’s Satanic life, it’s sin, it’s a living thing in me. Brothers, we have been here on Friday and Saturday. This is Saturday night, and until this minute, I have not told you anything about how to live in the Spirit. I haven’t. I’ve only been telling you about this foundation. We want to build a…praise the Lord…we want to build a foundation in Santa Barbara. A real foundation.

Now, then, we want to… tonight… take one little step – one little step – toward living by the higher Life form. Now, brother, when you sense what, what do you sense with this third Life? What’s the sense of this Life? Let’s read. For the law of the spirit of the life in Christ has made me free from the law of sin and death. And what the law could not do in that it was weak to the flesh, God sending His only Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do what? Who walks not after the flesh, but after the spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, and they that are after the spirit, the things of the spirit. And we’re going to come back to that verse. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is Life. That verse should say, “To have the mind of the flesh is death, but to have the mind of the spirit is life and peace.” And if you have an RSV, that’s what it says. To have the mind of the flesh is what? Death. But to have the mind of the spirit is life and peace.

Now, brothers, here is the first principle in walking by the Spirit, by living in the Spirit, by having a higher Life form, the highest Life in the universe. And here it is. I want you to listen very carefully. Well, that was verse 6, I believe. Romans 8:6. To have the mind on the flesh is death; to have the mind on the spirit is what? Life and peace.

Okay, now here’s tomorrow, kids. I want to talk to you not as a brother or as a sister; I want to talk to you as a corporate man. I want to talk to you as a body of believers. I want to talk to you as a brother, and I want to talk to you as a sister, but I also want to talk to you as a group meeting together. And you must learn to really meet together. Tomorrow, tomorrow in a real sense, brothers, you’re in the garden all day long. The mind set on the flesh is what? And the mind set on the spirit is what?

What do we have here? We’ve got three life forms. The life of sin, the life of the spirit, and what’s right in the middle of it? My life. I’m back in the garden. I got over here the tree of knowledge: I can eat off of it all the time, all day long. And I’ve got the Tree of Life. Who’s in the middle? The mind. The mind is right here. How do you live by that life? Brother, I’ll tell you the first thing you do is you don’t live by this tree. You don’t eat of this tree. Here’s the battlefield: you are the battlefield. I said when we started this little talk that man is literally the battlefield of the universe. And you have the initiative. Tomorrow morning, when you wake up, you can set your mind on the flesh, or you can set your mind on the spirit.

Brothers, it’s wherever you set your mind that you walk. The mind is the key. The mind literally is the soul. The mind is you, and if tomorrow you get up and set your mind on the flesh, you will walk in flesh, and you have the sense of death, right? Do you walk with a sense of death? Sometimes, you have to admit you do, right? There are times when you walk with a sense of what? Brother, there is within your being another Life, the highest Life in the universe, and whenever you sense life and peace, put your mind there, your mind on the Spirit. When you have life and peace, you’re in the Spirit. When you have death, you’re in the flesh. This is the first step in walking in the Spirit, and it’s all in my soul to decide.

Brothers and sisters, listen. The first conscious waking thought you have every morning is about it. You know, when you kind of roll over in bed, even before you open your eyes, your mind’s going to go one or two ways. Brother, you ought to come out of your sleep every morning saying, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord, that the mind might be set on the Spirit. There is a Life in you that you can set your mind on. Brothers, when the temptation comes early in the morning to set the mind on the flesh, don’t do it. Reject it. Deny it. Deny the mind that privilege. Deny the soul that privilege and set the mind on the spirit.

Now what can I say? In verse 6, it says, For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Now the best way to translate that is: to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. I’d like for you to write that out in the margin of your scripture and memorize it that way. To learn it that way. To know it that way. Don’t memorize it; just learn it that way.

Alright, now, brothers, how do you know Life? How do you live by this Life? Alright, several of you, you know, have come and said, “I’m not clear about something, Gene. What do I do about this and this?” Brothers and sisters, it’s a matter of whether it’s going to be here or here. You come to a sense of something. I mean, you come to a situation where you have to do something. All you have to do is pay attention to your inmost being. What do you have? Do you have a sense of death? That’s the flesh. Do you have a sense of life and peace? That’s the spirit. And I’ve got to decide one way or the other. All through the day, I live by one of these lines. I set myself somewhere each day. Set my mind on the flesh and set my mind on the spirit.

Listen, I would not have you bound by this. I want you to know that God doesn’t care how many times you set your mind on the flesh; I mean, he does care, but let me just say for a moment, and may the Lord be merciful in what I’m saying. It doesn’t matter about the flesh to God. It doesn’t matter about you being foolish, about having a great mind, and being always in the emotions, and being very strong in the will. The thing God cares about is turning to the spirit, because God knows that the very moment you walk in the Spirit, just a little bit…just a little bit…the Lord is there and the door opens, and He’s there. Because, brothers, this is the highest Life form, and he’s there all day long, just waiting for an opportunity to just pull a little bit in you. To get in through the door, just a little bit. To get out into the Spirit; to transform the soul. He’s there just waiting.