The True Secret of the Christian Life

May we quit? Alright. I’m on overload. I’m on overload. Okay, now then, without shocking you, I’m sure you’re ready to hear me say this. None of those. None of those, and that’s true. We have to start somewhere else entirely. With the exception of one or two in there, and I have to say one or two of them are really, really great, but I’m going to hit them, just for the…there are a couple in there we could take, but I’m going to put them all down for the sake of clarity here. We have to start somewhere else.

As a young Christian, I can remember when I opened a book, and it said to me, Now you are a new Christian, and you’re supposed to do such and such, and I can remember the verse references. There’s Galatians, Romans, and Philippians, and as a new Christian, I started my mind looking at things required of me in Galatians…Philippians. These were the Christian life for me. Now that, without my realizing it, put something really deep inside of me, that there were verses that told me what I should do or be, and most of them in the epistles.

Alright, I want to start by saying this to all of you, and I hope you don’t throw something at me. For you and for me, there is no secret to the Christian life. There never has been a formula, and there never will be a formula. What helps you fails me. What helps me fails you. Now, will you allow me to please be radical for a few minutes and say some really outlandish things? Most of it, I don’t even believe myself, but in order to shake your tree, to shake your thinking.

If we say prayer, you’re talking to the wrong person. I find prayer to be about the most boring thing in the world. Prayer only leads one place for me, and that’s sleep. Now don’t look so shocked. If you say witnessing to me, and I am a former evangelist, I can only think of one thing. Holy terror. Say amen. So now I’ve got sleep and terror. The Bible? Brothers and sisters, don’t throw me out of here, but it will not hold up. It will not hold up to historical fact.

I’m headed for high ground here. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not going to stand up here and defend my belief in the Word of God. Just let me rattle your cage a minute, would you? Please? The Bible began to be printed plentifully around 1720. That leaves us from the year 30 AD to 1720, when Scripture was almost unattainable for most people. In the first century, if you wanted a copy of the Old Testament, you probably couldn’t get a whole copy anywhere, anywhere on earth, maybe one or two or three in Jerusalem. Most of the synagogues had at most five or six books of the Old Testament during the first century.

If you and I believed everything we heard about being obedient to the Bible in the first century, we would have the distinct impression that everybody in the first century had a large wheelbarrow full of scrolls going around everywhere they were being obedient to the New Testament and reading it prolifically. It won’t hold up to historical facts. It takes years to hand duplicate Scripture. That’s about all anybody would be doing, would be copying passages of Scripture or whole books of Scripture. The way they were built, any one of them, any one book of the Old Testament would have been a very heavy thing, an arduous thing to carry around with you very much. Well, you say, well, yeah, but they did exist. Sure, they existed in the synagogue, but the synagogues weren’t going to open their doors to Christians to come read, and that was the only place they were available.

Now, I don’t mean to shake the tree, but this is a historical fact. What was the first piece of Christian literature ever penned? Will you tell me? Talk to me. Do you have any idea what it was? The very first piece of Christian literature ever penned. Probably. You can’t be more than one or two, three different books. New Testament. First Thessalonians. Okay, we have First Thessalonians down here. Mark, I doubt that. Okay, it’s either James, First Thessalonians, or Galatians. That’s it. I think it’s Galatians. The book of Galatians was written to a group of churches in an area where illiteracy ran somewhere between 97 and 98 percent. The Christians in Galatia were mostly Phrygian slaves who were totally illiterate. Illiteracy was running 100% among the Phrygians.

Now listen, that may devastate your belief, but it is glorious to me. Paul and Barnabas were dealing with a situation in which they had to give those people something that, because they could not read, they had to be given something. Do you know what they were given? They were given something glorious. They were given an indwelling Lord. And they were shown how to relate to Him.

I wonder if you’re still out there, and I would just go on to say that dispositionally, many Christians love Scripture. But you have to know that dispositionally, some people don’t like the Scripture. We cannot say to a Christian world that reaches around the earth, the only way you can be a victorious Christian is to be literate. We cannot make that demand. Three-fifths of the world cannot read or write. We cannot say to someone, You have to have the Bible in order to be victorious. Therefore, literacy becomes a foundational part of the Christian faith. We have left out three-fifths of the world’s population.

Alright, Gene, that’s just terrible. I never heard anything like this in my life. Okay, do you want to argue with me? I’ll give you the chance. Does that shake your cage too much? Do you want to say something? This was the situation in the first century. Illiteracy was running well over 90% throughout the entire Roman Empire. Hey, isn’t it wonderful that an illiterate, some snaggletooth, blood-drinking pagan in Iconium or Lystra or Derbe could get saved? And not know anything about anything and have the Lord come live in him. We look back on him, and we’re jealous, because he was a first-century New Testament believer. He had something going for him, and it was internal. Praise the Lord.

Okay, if you believe I can do this with the Bible and prayer and witnessing, believe you me, I can devastate all the others that you just brought up, and if you will, let me just run away from them. I’m going to tell you I cheated this morning. No, I’m not going to tell you that yet. When I told you I was going to speak on the secret to the Christian’s life, and I said to you a minute ago, “There is no one secret for all of us,” I’d like to talk to you for just a moment from a life of experience, and I hope you’ll listen.

I have been dealing with things of the Spirit for years now. My ministry is on things internal: an indwelling Lord. That’s my ministry. That’s my call. That’s half of my call. The other half is the church, but I’m going to tell you something. That’s not enough, because I am not a totally spirit being. One third of me is spirit. Spirit. So, no matter how much I minister on this subject, it takes care of one-third of me. Another one-third of me is my soul. Now, what you’re about to hear come from my lips is unprecedented. Sometime in the next year, there will hopefully be born a fellowship of believers in New England, and we’re making a lot of preparation for that right now. And at this moment, we have one brother, a unique, Christ-centered brother, who is a counselor of the soul.