What If Your Worship Is Pushing You AWAY From God? Grand Prairie DCLC #1

About the fifth week, something began to happen. I left there to start this trip in about the 10th, 11th, or 12th week. I want to take just a moment to try to describe what those meetings are like or were like when I left. We got maybe 30 people, about 20 one night and 15 the other night. It shifts back and forth. Probably 25 to 30 people. No more than 30 people. I’m trying to tell you what they’re not. One night, forgive me, I usually pick on Baptists. Tonight, I’m picking on Pentecostals. I don’t know why. I never pick on a fundamentalist; they kill. Baptists and Pentecostals will take almost anything. They really will. God love them, they really will take almost anything. A group of Pentecostals came into the meeting one night. They were from Great Britain. They came in with, excuse me, with their little song and dance. May I say it? They came in and they told us about this vision they’ve had and about this prophecy they had and about these miracles they were having and the call they had and the thing that they were doing and why God was doing it and sort of a big broad hint they’d love to pass the offering plate, and wouldn’t we like to join and help them in this great thing God was doing.

And by the way, we did that. We were not sectarian; we just sat there and did everything they wanted us to do, and we helped them. But finally, they sat down in this great spiritual thing. Now I want you to know that I am proud to tell you the rest of this. I am boasting. Forgive me. I am boasting. We had our meeting. Our guest went home to be with the people they were spending the night with. They had sat through that meeting, listened, and gone home. Now they were starting a Bible school. They were Bible teachers. These people are supposed to know everything. They got back to the home where they were spending the night, and they said, “What on earth were those people talking about?” They did not understand one thing they heard. Praise the Lord.

Have you ever been troubled by New Testament vocabulary that you never hear in our day? Has that ever bugged you? Has it ever entered your mind? Do you know what I’m talking about? How they throw around terms like being in God, and being in Christ, and being in Spirit, and walking in Spirit, and living in Spirit, and have what? The Baptist does that. Oh, is it just Baptists who do that? Oh, I never heard any Baptist talk about being in God. Have you? Jack wrote a book on it. I have a friend over in Fort Worth who is a very well-known minister, whom I’m making fun of right now. We’re very close friends. We can insult one another.

There is a New Testament vocabulary that we never seem to hear. If you don’t understand what I mean, go home and read Ephesians 1 and Colossians 1 and ask yourself, can you experientially identify with those chapters? They are so far out into other places. Here was a group of brothers and sisters sitting in a room. I don’t know how to describe what’s going on in that room, but these kinds of words come to my mind as I sit there and listen to brothers and sisters come back and report in, and one word is “awe”. Just plain “awe”. Another one is a profound sense of the holy, not that I need to be whole, I don’t mean that kind, but that something awesome, something holy has been seen and known and experienced. I sit there and listen to them, and I try to hear anybody say, ‘I, me, my’ or even the Lord showed ‘me’ or what ‘I learned’ was; it’s not there. The only thing that I hear is Jesus Christ. I’m not talking about something learned. I’m talking about something seen, deep within, known, laid hold of Him. And I’ve learned a lesson. I have seen something happen that I’ve never seen happen before. I have never…in the business of seeing people’s lives changed…I have never seen anything this radical happen before.

Now listen to those saints when they first came into the meeting. It was “Lord, we thank you Lord, that you Lord are so good Lord, to us Lord to be with us Lord tonight, Lord, and we thank you Lord that we can be together Lord in Your name Lord. Amen, Lord.” Do you understand what I’m saying? And vegetables all over the place. “Let us, Lord, let us, Lord, let us, Lord. And help us, Lord. Help us, Lord. Help us, Lord.” And so centered on themselves and praying a mile a minute, afraid somebody’s going to catch them or something. Now, to listen to those brothers and sisters speak as though they were temporary visitors in this realm. That their heritage, their experience, their knowledge, their knowing, their conversation is in another realm. I hear that ancient Christian vocabulary is naturally used to express an experience.

Brother Joe, Brother Jim, I’m going to tell you what I’m doing, and this is why I’d like for you to come back. We get into a rut. You know, as an evangelist, we came into town and preached and got out. We have a week-long conference, and everybody goes home. Or a church gets together, and you have to move all the way to Portland, Maine, for a foundation. I want to do what I’ve just done. I want to do it again. I want to meet one night a week for 10 weeks with some Christians whose tongues are hanging out to know the Lord. I want to move from the abstract to the concrete. I want to get out of the ectoplasm and into this real, practical reality. One night a week with some heart-hungry people. I have no doctrines to promulgate. I have no interest in you. I’m too old and too puny to be trying to start anything. I’m like Charles de Gaulle. He said, he said, “I am too old for any of the things that you’re afraid I might do.” I am too old. I want to do this again. I want to watch it happen again.

I want to meet with some heart-hungry Christians one night a week who will rise with the dawn, one morning alone, and one morning with someone else, and then report in one night a week. I want to meet with those Christians, gutsy, brave Christians. As I said, with your tongues hanging out to know Him and know Him better and to know Him as well as He can be known. There is a knowing Him as well as He can be known. It is beyond all other knowledge, and that’s when you are in Him. I want to meet with 15 or 20 people one night a week for 10 weeks. I want to do that about five nights a week. I’m like the Marines. I’m looking for a few good men or women. I want to sit down without singing, without worship, without praise, without Bible study, nothing but to come together to know Him and see how far you can go in 10 weeks.

I spoke in Houston. I told people exactly what I’m telling you. I didn’t bring this message, but I told them this at some point. I did this with some brothers in Belmont, now I’m in Grand Prairie, and I’m headed for Paris, Texas. I’m prepared to come back to this state when it’s snowing. I’m dead serious. I couldn’t possibly do this in the summer. I’m looking for a few good men and women who want to know the Lord. I want to do this again and leave something hopefully deposited in you that will stay with you forever. We’ll take you to a place in Christ you’ve never been, and hope and pray that it will become your very life, and that after I’m dead and gone, out of the riches of Christ, you’ll pass it on. But I will not do it except in a community of believers. I’m not going to do it for any individual. I want to see you together become like those spokes on the wheel who come closer and closer and closer to one another as you come to Him.

Now you have every right to ask questions about anything. Doesn’t matter. Come on. Yes, brother. Oh, you had a question way back when. Yes, sir. That’s the word (ecclesia) I’ve heard. I don’t like it. Don’t think that’s what its meaning was to the Christians. That’s etymology. That’s how that word began. But I don’t believe that’s what it meant to the first-century Christians. That word began five 600 years before the Christians ever came around: the called-out into a square; baloney. 500 years later, it couldn’t have possibly meant that; that meant the gathering. Yes, ma’am.

Audience: I missed one little thing you said.  Maybe more, but this particular one, you said you asked the group to get up one morning early, the second morning with another person, and then you said to come together, then you said you asked them to get up again, then come in and report to ask them to do something, but I didn’t…

Okay, sometimes I ask them to get all together early in the morning, not often, but we always get together one night a week and share, and then I tell them what to do the next week.

Audience: That’s what I do not understand. What did you ask them to do? What do I tell them to do? Nathaniel, come and see. (smile)