What Did You Receive When You Were Converted to Christ

Blessed is the man who has a hard time finding God. Blessed is the hungry man. Blessed is the guy who’s a psychological mess. Blessed is the fellow who is very weak and very poor. If you’re a strong man, you’re never gonna make it to the kingdom. The only people who are going to go into the kingdom are those who stagger in, claw in, kick in, scream in, and pull one another in. Drag one another in, helping one another. The lame, the halt, the blind, the half dead, the thirsty, the staggering. Blessed are those who can’t make it. There’s only one way you can get into the kingdom, and that’s to not be qualified. There’s only one way. You’ve got to know you’re wounded, down, and defeated, and the chances are just zero. Then there’s a chance. Blessed is the man who knows he just doesn’t have anything on the ball.

That is the attitude of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ toward one another. Don’t expect anything out of your brother in the church but sin. Don’t expect anything out of your brother in the church but failure. And I promise you, if you expect only sin and only failure, you won’t be disappointed. If you expect a brother to do anything but sin and fail, you’ve expected too much. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom. Let your brother go. Just let him go. Let him go. Just let him go. If he doesn’t want to get up in the morning, let him go.

I am a failing sinner. That’s all I am. I need the Lord Jesus Christ. I, I can’t pray, I can’t witness, I can’t make it in the church, I can’t do anything. I can’t do anything but fail, and that’s gonna be my credential into the kingdom. I do want you to know one thing: I’m gonna set the highest record for the most amount of failures of any man who’s ever lived. I’m gonna fail and fail and fail and fail again. There’s one thing I’m not gonna do: I’m not gonna stop failing. I’m gonna fail today, and praise the Lord, I won’t get up and fail again tomorrow. Don’t you stop me from failing, brother, and then I’m just going to stagger into the kingdom. The Lord’s gonna lift me up and say, “This one failed.” 73,921 times. He made it, hallelujah!

You give everybody else the same credentials. God gave us a new heart; keep it soft. God gave us a spirit; keep it poor. Keep it poor. Don’t ever feel like you’re making it as a Christian, or that you can really– you ought to get some other brothers. Don’t correct one another, is what I’m trying to say, and don’t get proud; realize that your turn’s gonna be up next, and you’re gonna be the biggest looking mess around. I tell you, I know many of you, I know perhaps most of you fairly well. And I know, I know…brother, you just aren’t qualified to be a spiritual Christian. You don’t have what it takes. Why do you keep trying to help us, Jean? Why don’t you give up? If I give up, I can’t fail anymore. You want me to stop failing? My only hope is to keep failing, brother. Brother, your only hope is to keep on failing.

You really blew it, didn’t you? Didn’t you? Now what are you gonna do? Go blow it again, bro. I’m trying to balance something out. Okay, how am I doing? That’s my next failure. My next failure was not keeping a soft heart. I got a hard one. And I finally got to the point I said, “Lord, I am absolutely, totally through with you. All I’ve been able to do is fail, and I can’t get any further.” Brother and sister, you are approaching the kingdom.

I don’t know how to describe this, but you read the biographies of Christians, and they struggle, and they struggle, and they struggle with the Lord until finally they come to a moment of desperation, and they say, “Lord, I’m through with you and Christians and everything else.” And they fall on their face in bitter weeping, and then in that moment the Lord speaks in their spirit, “I’ve been trying to get your attention, brother…for 30 years. You can’t do it. Now, why don’t you just sit back and relax, forget the whole thing, and let me work myself into you as I can.”

Then the first thing you do is get up and say to somebody, “I got it, I got it, I’ve come to peace and rest with the Lord. Why didn’t you tell me this thirty years ago? Twenty years ago? Ten years? Two years ago?”

It doesn’t matter what finally brings us to the Lord; everything we did before doesn’t make sense. Well, was all of that wasted back there? No, I suppose it was absolutely necessary, because in all of our failings and strivings with the Lord, He gained a little territory, or at least He broke us. Oh, I can tell you the whole secret to the Christian life, brother, in one nutshell. You can’t do anything. No matter how hard you pursue the Lord, you’re never gonna find Him. Give up the whole idea and just let the Lord do it in you. Just come to rest. Then go try doing that. You can’t do it, brother, because if you say, “Gee, that’s neat,” and then you just go home and sit down and do nothing, next week you’ll be down at a movie. The next week you’ll be out…

Well, Gene, what are you trying to tell me? I’m trying to tell you this. I don’t have the vaguest idea how to become a Christian. I don’t have the vaguest idea what the formula is for growing in Jesus Christ. All I can tell you is this: pursue Him till He finds you. I have not made any effort to be a Christian since nineteen sixty-two. I resigned from the Christian family in nineteen sixty-two. I stopped trying to do anything. But I thank God for all my striving up till then, and I quit. I just sat down and said, “Lord, I am through,” and I mean it, brothers. In the sight of the Lord, I have not served the Lord one day since then. I haven’t witnessed, and I haven’t prayed since that day. What on earth have you been doing? I’m not sure. All I can tell you is this: sometimes I get up in the morning, and I just really love the Lord, and I just let Him come into me.

But there’s something in me that is at peace with my Lord. He’s taken me the way I am, and I’m taking Him the way He is. All I can tell you is since the day I gave up trying to reach Him, He’s sure found it easy to reach me. Now that comes down to the simple matter: you can’t live a Christian life; only Jesus Christ can. Well, Gene, I feel like you handed me a bucket without a handle on it. You really just handed me a bucket with no handle. Well, I guess that’s because there’s not. Just lay it on the ground and drink out of it.

You go to the Lord Jesus, you go to the Lord Jesus and say, “Lord, I want to clear this up. I want You with all my heart. I really want You with all my heart. I want to know all I can about You so I can understand You better. But Lord, I just want You to know that no matter how hard I try, I can’t make it. I get You on a temporary basis, and that’s about it.” Then you can say to the Lord, “Lord, I just lay it down. I’m gonna quit trying. I’m not going to…I’m not going to try anymore. Lord, if it’s gonna be done, You do it.” Then just give up the whole idea of being a Christian.

Well then what do you do, Gene? Go to the world? Just sit there. Just sit there. Don’t run off, don’t leave, don’t go away. Just wait. Rest. Let the Lord become the aggressor. If you see a brother in church who’s getting up at four o’clock in the morning, let him go. He’s pursuing the Lord too, and he’s finding Him. The next year he may not get up at four. The next year he may even be opposed to people getting up at all. That’s fine, but don’t, don’t oppose it to the next guy who’s getting up at four. Next year we’re gonna have a whole bunch of new Christians in here. You just try to tell them to sit around and never do anything. They’ll go somewhere else. They have got to pursue the Lord. There’s no need to sit down and talk to them a whole lot about the cross because they’re not in the cross, and every one of us is at a different place in our Christian experience.