Using Scripture in the Deeper Christian Life (July 1988)

It really becomes richer, doesn’t it? When you share it with someone else. Have I got anybody else? I got one little sister here out of those nine. Is that all I’m going to get? All these people are not going to believe a word I say. Well, then I’m going to testify for myself. If I can’t get any of these other people to testify, just rain on every one of you. The difference, and probably most of my time is alone, but the difference of my being alone and with someone else is at least tenfold difference. And some of the things that happen, and in my insight of the Lord, when I go to be with the Lord…

Let me just tell you something. A meeting. Would you like to hear about a meeting? Try one this way. When you have learned to go to your Lord in this rich way, those of you who are in little groups, when this is nailed down in your life, do this. Have everyone arise on Monday morning alone with a particular passage of scripture. On Tuesday morning, have everybody get together in twos. Same thing, same passage of scripture. On Wednesday, make it fours. Thursdays, make it in eights. And Friday, make it sixteens. And then have a meeting Saturday night, and watch the roof blow up with so much to be shared by the Lord’s people.

Brothers and sisters, the Christian life was never made for you as an individual. It was made for the body of Christ. Never forget it, and like Abraham, pursue it the rest of your life. You’ll never know Him as well alone as you will know Him within the context of the body of Christ. Now, I have given you all something to do tomorrow morning. We’re going to meet back here tomorrow morning at 9:30; this is going to be a workshop meeting. I hope I can get you out of here by 11:00. To a certain degree, this depends on you. I think I’d like to pray.

What shall we say to You? That we have met brothers and sisters, that we have fallen in love with part of You, with part of You. Lord. We have been amazed again at Your infinite grace. We have joyed spontaneously. We have loved spontaneously. We’ve been at home. We’ve been at home, Lord. And for that we know….

I don’t know who started the simple matter of taking scripture and turning it to prayer, but whoever it is, we owe them a debt of gratitude. Jeanne Guyon wrote a book that flew into the face of Roman Catholic teachings. I’ve already told you that they taught that it took a lifetime to go into meditation, contemplation, and what they call union, and that would only happen a few times in a person’s life, and only to a very rare group. She had the audacity to produce a book entitled A Short and Simple Method of Prayer, and this was outrageous, and what she presented, by the way, I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book, and it’s a classic. There’s never been a better book written practically. I hope there will be AGD (After Gene’s Death). By the way, this is one of those AGD messages. It’s not being taped. He is doing it, but I own that tape. I’ll take that home with me, and I’ll put it in the AGD file.

She just took this idea of opening the scripture and turning it to prayer. Now, that’s as far as her book went. I have been told that there’s something that she’s written, and I probably read it, but I didn’t even notice it, that she talked about a deeper experience that she had with the Lord than what she has recorded there in the use of the Scripture. I have never verified that that’s the truth. I think Frank Laubach probably touched something too that most of the people who’ve read his little book miss. By the way, I don’t know if you know this or not, but I met Dr. Laubach when I was a kid and his son taught me to write, taught me to write for illiterates, and semi-literates, one summer in Nashville, Tennessee at a seminar and he was young and we were young and when Helen and I were about to get married, we asked Dr. Laubach to perform our wedding, and so he united us, and it was not too long after that he passed away.

Actually, I can’t tell you of anything else in print today that is going to benefit you beyond her little book, Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ, a short and simple method of prayer. It was and has been for me years of great spiritual help to open the scripture and turn it to prayer. Now, let me just stop there and move over to somewhere else. I have sought from the covenant within me to never preach what I have not experienced. And one of the things that you never hear anybody preaching about at all, in fact, a lot of people live and die and never hear the subject, including many ministers, and that is this business of oneness with Christ. What are some other terms that have been used to describe that? Union with Christ, a term that is getting a little bit under derision, I’m afraid, these days because of the Union Life people, and I cannot figure out what those people believe, and I don’t think, and if you’re a member of them, I don’t think you know either. I don’t think anybody knows. I don’t think they know.

Anyway, there is union. There’s oneness. There’s being in Christ, abiding in Christ. I don’t know any other terms than that, do you? Rarely touched on because it’s never, it’s almost never reported as an experience. And I wondered about that. I just wondered and wondered and wondered about that: the business of knowing experientially.

In Santa Barbara, California. I asked a group of Christians, young people to go with me to a large, beautiful place called Ellen Cantal, which means the song, I believe. And they had these apartments out in this beautiful 10, 15, 20-acre place, and we spent the weekend there. Something was in me, something had already been touched by me, either in my spirit, I don’t know exactly where, but I knew there was something. I knew there was something. And I sat down with these young people, out on the lawn, and I said, “I’ve got to go to a meeting, but I want you to do something.” And I gave them a little assignment. And I told them to pair off. Now, all of these people were well-versed for years in getting up with the Lord early in the morning, turning passages of scripture into prayer very quietly…very, very quietly. We were an unusual group of people in this way. We were very quiet in our praying and very robust and verbose in our worship. We had some Pentecostals come in once and spend the weekend with us. They were very verbose in their praying, very quiet in their worship. We couldn’t get together. We were like ships passing in the night. They were terrified of our meetings, and we were terrified of their praying.

I left those young people there; they were probably in their early 20s, most of them, with this simple little assignment, and I went back and was speaking to the rest of the church. And at the close of the meeting, the brothers and sisters who had been up there at that retreat walked in, and they all looked like they had seen a ghost. They just came in and sat down, and they didn’t have much to say. And I shall never forget that young girl named Christy Thollander; in fact, I don’t even know if she was Christy Thollander yet, as she might have been Christy Porsche. She came up, her eyes were as big as saucers, and she said, “You can’t imagine what happened to us.” Later, I divided the church into three groups, and we all went up with the next group and the next group. We all got into this, and a young lady named Sandy Emery summed it up when she said – and this was way back in the beginning – she said, “There’s a whole realm out there for us to explore.” And I remember that very first time for me; I’ll tell you exactly how I felt. I felt like I had stuck my head up through a cloud, looked around, and found a universe I did not know existed. That’s the way I felt. It is quite an incredible first encounter.

Now, I remember one young lady was really sullen and sulky in all of this. Nothing in the world got to her. She didn’t have the foggiest idea what anybody was talking about; it missed her completely. Oh, she was really angry. She didn’t know what was going on. About a year later, she came to my home one night and told me the most remarkable, goosebump-producing, spine-tingling, thrilling, awesome story imaginable. And she was radiant and dumbfounded. And you know why I told you that? So that you will not be discouraged.