Romans – The Play Part 9, Ep 2

Alright. Dirk, come here, and we will use Brother Dirk here for just some, oh, now, I will tell you. Joni, help is on the way. Alright, Brother Dirk, if you simply, this is anti-climactic, you all know. No, two hands, Brother Dirk. Okay, to the host of you who are listening to the recording, we have Joni, a rather average-sized person, here. Vicki’s very small over here. Dirk is about ten feet tall. Alright, the Spirit of God has come into her, and she is in the Lord’s Spirit, but I want you to look at this. Here is illustrated for us: this is the difference between divine life and sin – angelic fallen life in your flesh.

You see, a human being is two life forms removed from God, not one. That’s right. It’s not like a fish becoming a bird, but a fish becoming a lion, and he passes the bird. Or it’s not like the bird becoming a dog, but the bird becoming a human. It’s not like a human becoming an angel, but a human skips over and goes yet to the higher and the highest, in this case, life form.

Now, Joni, you have the engine of the Christian life within you. Joni, you’re not going to be able to do any better than you did the day before you were saved. But, Joni, look over there to the law of God, would you? Okay. Joni, do you love the law of God? You’re never going to live up to it. You’re never going to perform it. Brother Dirk, would you please move her in that direction? Vicki, resist. Oh, that is beautiful. Praise the Lord. Amen. Now you may all sit down. Wonderful. I hope you got that on camera, brother.

You know, now then, I just want you all to understand that there has been a realm put in you, in your spirit—a life put in you, another form of life, and I know what everyone of you is asking: How do I get Christ to live the Christian life instead of me? Because I want to do that. And that in itself must go to the cross. I don’t know any more than that, I really don’t. I admit my inadequacy here. I don’t know how to tell you any more than that, but you can’t walk out of here tonight saying, “Hot dog, now I know how to live by the life of God. Now I know how to live by a higher life form. Now I know how to live in Spirit.” Some of the brothers and sisters who originally heard me speak many years ago, and this is my gospel, that you cannot live the Christian life; only Christ can live the Christian life. You can live by a higher life form than your own. And yet, brothers and sisters have come to me and said, “Gene, does your experience live up to that? What you preached to us – did we really begin living by a higher life?”

I have given a lot of thought to that. Did I oversell? Did you get the impression that you were going to go out here and life was going to be one great big hallelujah for all the rest of your life, and there would be no more problems? Brothers and sisters, I’m not sure that after this night, if you have dealt with the deeds of the flesh, which even the world says is wrong, when you have dealt with those, they will come back to you at times but I believe from this day on, if you will take these things to the Lord and admit you believe them, and put away the deeds of the flesh, which even the Gentiles say are wrong, then it will be between your mind and the Lord’s Spirit. Did we learn to live by a life not our own? Gene, did we live by a higher life?

If you are saying, “Did we from that day on have one great big hallelujah?” the answer is no, we did not. Did we learn the cross? And did we encounter the cross? Yes, but so did the highest life meet that cross. When I say that you will, and can, and you must – and you will -learn how to live by a life not your own, I want you to know that more than anything else, I am speaking about learning the ways, the intuitive ways, of the nature of God, as over against following your human nature, that you will learn to live by the ways of God, the intuitive nature of God in you, as over against following your natural human inclinations. And to me, that is a vast thing, for I see Christians going by human knowledge, if you please, by Bible verses and by what Christians tell them to do, rather than a deep, instinctive following of Christ as He walks around inside of you. That’s one thing I mean by living by a life not your own. That is, living by the ways that are higher than your ways.

And secondly, to learn to fellowship with Him apart from and outside your human nature, as He learned to fellowship and live with His Father apart from and outside His human nature. To engage in a fellowship with Him that’s not prayer, that’s not thinking—that is something deep internally in you, that also, in the clutch, when everything is down and all human capacities have come to an end, to retreat and find Him. Find Him. I’m not even going to say, “and rely on Him,” and “rely on His strength.” Friend, you find Him, and all else falls into place. You don’t have to then trust Him. You don’t have to then find His grace or receive His grace or get His strength or His power. When you get Him, when you’ve laid hold of Him, that settles it right there.

I needed peace, but you got Christ. I needed money, but you got Christ. To be able, when in the clutch, to find Him and touch Him, but there’s something else. And I’m going to say this: to live by a life not your own. When one of the saints asked me that, I said, “Just answer this question to me. Is there something different between you and people in the world?” Yes. “Is there something different between you and the typical Christian?” And you know, without boasting, that believer answered me, “Yes.” “What is it?” “I don’t know.” And I want you to know that I don’t know either. I couldn’t answer that question any better than that dear believer could, but there was something different. A homing, a higher place to stand and see things. An inner sense, when you know you’ve got to have an inner sense. A set of values that this world doesn’t have, and no man taught you. A knowledge of knowing when you can understand it’s your wanting this, not God.

Even knowing that you’re playing tricks with God and yourself, and not really knowing what you’re doing. You don’t know why or how you’re playing tricks with yourself and God, but you know it. These are all things that have to do with an indwelling Lord. There is, for that Christian who gets to know the Lord, an element of rest in the face of hell, and angels, fallen angels, and the devil himself. There is something intangible down in there. And praise the Lord for some Christians who have an adventurous heart; there are deeper things than that. There is the adventure of constantly getting to know Him better. Pity those people, for they seem to know more suffering, and more heartache, and more cross, and more circumstantial messes than all the rest of us put together, but boy, when they get old, are they beautiful. Are they beautiful, and are they needed in the house of God.

Yeah, I won’t back up one bit. The first thing I would say to you is that there is a Christ in you, and you can get to know Him. He is the engine to your Christian life. And the thing that burdens me the most is that you learn the intuitive things about His nature and learn to recognize them, that first. More than anything, that first. That’s why I preach every summer; those of you listening now, you’re going to find out. I preach every summer at the Conference on the Deeper Christian Life. I speak on one subject, and that is: how Jesus Christ lived the Christian life by means of an indwelling Father. And I seek to show how that One listened to someone inside Him: how He heard, and how He spoke. And these are the things that I will share with you in the weeks and months ahead.

And when I ask you to get up in the morning with someone else or alone, I am burdened that you do it, because it will introduce you to getting up alone before the Lord in the morning, or sometimes during the day, it will introduce you to spiritual realms. And you’ve got to know that, and you’ve got to touch that realm. You’ve got to start in the spirituals.

That’s also, secondly, why we have brothers and sisters around here who are in agony, learning themselves the needs of the soul. And you can go to them, because the soul is tricky. The one greatest single characteristic of the soul is this: do you know what it is, Joe? It’s really simple. Do you know what it is? Outstanding characteristic of the soul? Even the unfallen soul. Even the unfallen soul, the soul that has never sinned, what is the number one characteristic of any soul? Survival. Or to put it another way, its greatest characteristic is to turn from the cross. And that includes the soul of the Lord Jesus Christ. His will, His personal will, was not to go to the cross. Challenge that. The personal will of the human life of Jesus Christ was to get out of the cross. Honor that, saints. It is not an ugly thing. It’s not a deceitful thing. It’s not a little thing to wish to get out of the cross. “Not My will.” My will is to survive. “But Thine be done.” Now, how in the world did He manage that?