Introduction to the Deeper Christian Life Part 2 (July 1988)

Oh, we’re not going to get into this theologically, but brother, I want you to know something. I am really coming from a different place. I wouldn’t overcome…I know there are the overcomers…believe me, I really know, but I don’t want to concentrate on that. Margaret, hush (laughter). You are in a fellowship, are you not?

Audience: I realize that I agree completely that I gain my life as a result of, but I’m also trying to identify with what you’re saying. Gene – And yet you are an individual with problems, individual problems. I have weaknesses; I am hit with attacks that go for those weaknesses. Okay, so now I, as an individual, have to do something about that.

I really want to honor what you’re saying and immediately agree with it. And yet I also want to say to you, brother, I hope the day comes in your life when you don’t think that way, because it’s a lonely battle out there. I don’t think in terms of myself being tempted. I don’t even think in terms of myself sinning. I think in terms of the body I belong to. And if I am sinning, I have my Lord and I have the church, and that’s where I go. I am not going to hang around here with this problem. Well, I don’t want to hang around. Yeah. I’m not going to hang around. I’m not going to let it hang around me very long. It’s either going to the Lord or it’s going to the church. One of the two. It’s not going to stay here; it’s going to one of two places. It’s going to the Lord or to the church, and it may go to both, and that’s about the only thing I really know to say to you. And I’m fully in sympathy, brother. I am a sinner, and I am tempted just as anybody else is. I know that something has broken in me in my relationship to temptation towards sin that is not true of the way I handled this problem as a younger person. I have a body of believers who know me too well, and I know them too well. And then I have a Lord that I don’t struggle with, and if I don’t have anything else, I’ve got a door, and I can open the door and run like a coward, and I really, literally mean that, run somewhere else.

May I put it this way? Let’s talk theoretically. Theoretically, I ought to be a member of the body of Christ, where all my problems, needs, and temptations belong as much to the church as they do to me constantly. Now, I know that most of us have never had that. Therefore, we have to fight this out individually. Now, I’m going to say something else to you: this is postgraduate, and you’ll understand it someday. Hold that. Just hold it, would you? There was a day in my life, and it was a crisis, a big crisis. I wasn’t going to make it, you know. And God, in His mercy, just happened to put into my life that day the most holy human being I’ve ever known, and probably one of God’s choicest jewels in all church history.

Now, my problem was the church. And I mean, she was about to nail me to the wall, scalp me, draw me, quarter me, and hang me, and then burn me, and then scatter my ashes, and then do some sort of a dance over that. It was a dark day. Some of you have been there. There’s nothing on a darker day than when you lose the church. Now, this is a long time ago, brother. That dear woman, whose name was Beta Sheirick, sat down with me in my living room that day, and it was hopeless for me. She had been a missionary in China; she was the only intercessor I’ve ever known. She was in her 70s, and she adopted me, and I laid my heart out to her, and I said to her; Now, Beta, I don’t want to just destroy your life with this story, and she laughed at me. I really was afraid that if I told her everything that was going on, it was going to kill the woman. And her words to me were, “Look at this old hoary head and tell me you think you could say anything to me that could destroy me.” And when I finished, she said, “Gene, take me to the church.”

And I didn’t understand that. And she knew I didn’t understand that. I didn’t have a church. I don’t know what she said after that. I know that I struggle for clarification, and I know she didn’t say this, but she was saying to me, “Gene, there’s still the church. There’s still a church. There’s still the body. You still have a place to go. You may have to go in your spirit there, but you still have church as well as the Lord. You got the church.” I’m not trying to be mystical, brother. I’m not trying to avoid your question. I have been without the church on occasions since then, and I will again, but as surely as I will never be without Christ, I’m never going to be without the church. If I have to bring it to the church in Galatia, I’ll bring it to the church in Galatia. If I can’t bring it there, I’ll take it to the New Jerusalem, but somehow or other, I’ll find the body of Christ.

Brother, I really know your anxiety. I know how hard it feels to be an individual tempted to some gross sin and not know where to turn. I’m telling you, there is a body practically, there is Christ within you, there’s a place to run, and there is that spiritual body of Christ, the church without spot or blemish, perfect and unblameable, to whom I can go and fellowship with her and have my need at least heard out. I’m sorry it’s not an adequate answer, and I know it’s not, but get there, brother. Be where you are now, but don’t stay where you are now; get there. Go get there. It’ll take a little time, but the Lord will be with you, and He will preserve you. What is your name? The Lord will preserve you, because He has already met you at the end of time. And I’m growing more and more as I get older to believe in the preserving power of God in the worst people I have ever had and the worst situations I’ve ever seen, because I knew them at 19 when I wouldn’t give you a plug nickel for them. I knew them at 30 when they were just messed up completely, and I knew them at 40 when it got worse.  Now I’m knowing Him at 50, 55, and 60, and by George, He’s faithful. It isn’t over till the fat lady sings; it isn’t over till Gabriel blows His horn; it isn’t over till it’s over. I’m sorry, I got completely off the subject here, but I do know the emotion. Yes?

Audience: I want to follow up because my question before was, I don’t have a body, a church to go back to, but am I understanding that in the spirit, I can reach because I need…

I’m going to interrupt you and I’m going to talk to you. See, I was just talking to him. You don’t have that right. What right he has, I’m not giving to you. See, he has a body of people he’s with that is sometimes inadequate, but you have the ability to move where there is one. And until you move there, you don’t have his right. Now they may excommunicate you, then you have his right, but no, you do not have access. You do not have access to the spiritual body or whatever it was I just talked about, never put a name on it, until you have, sister, shown your desperation to know that girl here on this earth practically. I won’t let you have an easy way out.

Okay, did I get away with that? And I’ll say that to all of us. The church experiential has rarely ever existed anywhere. She’s gone over many, she’s many faces, flown many flags, believed many things, but she never was big. And some of us, with our hearts, have to just get up and go there.

Audience: The Lord may have two or three. You already have that body. Many times, He separates you for a time of cleansing, for a time of renewal, for a time of regression. For years and there are times like that. He does that, but he heard it’s just wonderful when you go there in this thing. They were so hungry and so beautiful there, and it’s just wonderful. You know, and in the same way, I’m in Burlington now, our man moves away there for a specific three hours on my every other weekend. It’s not always easy to drive out there. But the thing about it is that God knows where two or three are coming to that relationship and the things that he…

As I have listened to you, I realize that this is really, well, hopefully you never know for sure when you try to follow the Lord what you’re doing. I’m going to stab at this as what I should do. This is Ephesians 5:21. I’m going to read through 32. And be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Wives to your husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, He Himself the Savior of the body. But as the church is not should be but is subject to Christ, so also the wives to her husband or to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wife, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. And I’m going to stop and comment on verse 27. That He might present to Himself…and I know of no other piece of literature that ever spoke of someone preparing, creating, preparing a bride, and then to Himself being the presenter and presenting to Himself. No one else could do it. And presenting to Himself the church in all her glory, or presenting to Himself the church glorious. She’s glorious. She is glorious. She has no spot nor wrinkle.