The Most Beautiful Girl in the World Part 3 – Freedom in Christ

I cannot give you a revelation of Him, but I’ll tell you, she can. And you put a group of people together who are touching the Lord Jesus Christ weekly, they will have a revelation of Him. And Paul’s prayer is answered in the church, and only in her. You will not have a revelation of Him outside of her. That is continuing.

You have the choice to be a beggar. And I’ll tell you, you have the choice of whether or not you want to stay enslaved. All you have to do is open a blood vessel in a jugular vein. Take the biggest gamble of your life and throw yourselves in with other brothers and sisters who are experiencing the Lord Jesus Christ within her. It’s all you have to do.

React. Talk to me.

By the way, I don’t know if you know it, but I’ve been hard at my job all this weekend. I’ve been getting you to talk. Did you notice? Or did that slip by you? You know how I made you talk? I got you to write it down because you don’t know how to function. You’ve been in a, what is that, they freeze you and store you away. What is that thing? You’ve been in a cryogenic deep freeze for the last 1,700 years, and it takes that to thaw you out. Did I see a hand? Yes. Back here.

Audience Member: I just want to say we had two brothers go to Atlanta. I got a call one night at my house, we have seen a love between the brothers and sisters in Atlanta. Do you want to know something? It makes you ….

And by this you shall know that they are my disciples:  they’re going to be crazy about one another. And there is no other evidence of a church: a long continuing zealous, almost fanatical, passionate love for each other that cannot be broken over periods of years or crisis. Does anybody want to say anything here?

Audience Member: I don’t know what you mean by freedom, dealing with this freedom, often in reference to bondage to the law, to rules, to regulation. I don’t know what that means, what you are meaning by freedom; you’re not meaning lawlessness, you said that plainly.

I don’t even worry about it, don’t even think about it, I don’t know, all I can tell you is that we Christians are in bondage, we are in bondage most of all to the way we think, little schematic that’s going on in our head. You watch a Christian who just lived a typical Protestant life and try to speak to him about things that he’s just totally lost, and he’s only comfortable when he’s back over in his little way of thinking, and it is very narrow, and you can exhaust it in a year or two. But I do not know how you can hold any church in this world together without law, legalism, or rules. I’m going to tell you something else, and this is strange, and I think it’s part of our calling. Ministers are generally more moral and more interested in morality than the rest of the world. Have you ever thought about that? And that’s true of me. It was true of me when I was a young man growing up. I was indignant about things going on. And it is our nature, our fallen nature, to put you under some kind of bondage, and we as ministers get so frustrated that nothing has happened. We’ll get up and holler and scream at you on Sunday morning, and you, because the word God is getting thrown around all over the place, and the Bible and Jesus are getting thrown. You walk out of there with your tail between your legs, thinking you’re some horrible person. Well, you’re not.

You are the most wonderful thing that has ever happened in this creation. You’re the most beautiful thing this creation will ever know outside of the face of God. And that’s not all, you can take care of yourself, and you make a perfectly beautiful church, and you can meet all the needs of the church, and really and truly, the truth of the matter is, after a little help, you don’t need us. But we will preach you under the table, and you are somewhere in this room in bondage. And brother, I don’t know how to tell you what freedom is, and I couldn’t illustrate it if I had to, but I know it. And I know it when I see other brothers and sisters taste it, they go hog wild. And it always, always, always, always causes them to move toward the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, I have stood up in front of people and said the following. I don’t like to pray. This is Gene Edwards, the great Gene Edwards. You know, my books are in all the bookstores in America, Christian bookstores. I don’t like praying. I can’t stand going to church, and sometimes I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in reading the Bible. And I am terrified at winning people to Christ. And I don’t like to, and I don’t like anybody telling me I’m supposed to. And I have said that to people and watch them just go hog wild. Clap, praise the Lord, get up, shout, and scream because they are finally being liberated from things that they should have never been put under the bondage of. And I want you to know something. I don’t pray. But I will tell you this. I do something that doesn’t fall in the category of what is understood as prayer. And I just get really bored with prayer. And so are you.

And I tell you, you can’t drag me to church on Sunday morning. Not the way they have made it. Even circus horses couldn’t do it. I am not because I get deathly physically ill, and I don’t even read my Bible, but we have some kind of a relationship. And if you don’t understand what that relationship is, then there’s a book coming out in January or February called The Triumph. And it’s about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that book is deep, and that book takes place in other realms. It tells of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in other realms, and I didn’t get that from reading the Sears and Roebuck catalog.

Sometimes I pray. You ought to hear my prayers. You ought to hear my prayers. ‘Alright, Lord, do something about this.’ My favorite prayer, and I pray it lots. I really do, and this prayer means a lot to me. ‘Lord, I have got nothing to say.’ Now, I mean, I come into the throne room, I stand before Him, and I say, ‘Lord, I’ve got nothing to say.’ And He understands what I mean. That is a prayer of desperation. And I say, “Lord, take care of our trip.” That sure beats, ‘Now, Father, we’re here in Dallas today and we’re taking a long trip to Russia.’ He didn’t know that. ‘And we’re flying on American Airlines, flight number 137. Lord, we’re going to be in the air for 13 hours, and we’re praying, Lord, that you’ll take care of all these souls that are on this plane. Give us your mercies and so forth.’ ‘Lord, we’re going on, Lord, you know, we’re going on a trip. Send the angels. Sure does cut down on the work. But Gene, this is terrible. No, it’s freedom, I know how my Lord feels toward me, and I know how I feel toward Him. Give it up for Lent, brother, it’s just not worth it.