Why Most Christians Never Experience a Deeper Life in Christ

I’ve given this illustration; I’ll give it the rest of my life. You’re walking down Fifth Avenue, all those beautiful glass windows. You look in and see sable and mink coats. You come to one window that says, “Do not throw a brick through this window.” Now, Fifth Avenue is five blocks long; there are several hundred window panes. Which one’s the most apt to get a brick thrown through the door?

Brothers and sisters, the longer you learn the things you ought to do as a Christian, that you must do, the more miserable you will be. If you have not learned that, then you have not learned the first step in Christian humility. The very thought that you could live the Christian life — that’s divine territory, my dear friend. His alone. Then what shall we do? We shall fall in love with Him, and we shall be free. That’s Romans 7. It’s I, I, I, and if you would, tonight or tomorrow, sit down and reread that whole thing. Every time it says law, say Christian standard, and you will discover why you’re having some of the struggles you have.

I have just covered two passages, two chapters. We’ll cover chapter 8 tomorrow. You may not know it, but we just covered two of the three chapters we talked about. If there’s anything on earth I would have you understand, it is this: You might as well bail out of being a Christian if you think that doing it this way is the way we do it in the 21st century. Gosh, dog, another whole century to mess up.

Sit in that pew, and every time the pastor says to love somebody or to pray or to read your Bible or whatever, you sit there and say, “I can’t do that. My Lord can do that. I am free from that.” “But Gene, then it won’t get done.” Oh yeah. You have no idea what it’s like when you end up with an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ; what that man can do. And another thing is, you will also lower your standards of what you are and how great you are and who you are in the body of Christ because of all these other pitiful Christian infidels you’re running around with.

The most beautiful thing in this world is being able to go (deep sigh), and it comes back to these simple things: we love one another… but the responsibility of loving one another does not exist. It is a spontaneous result of having fallen in love with Christ. You can’t help but hug everybody and care for each other within the body of Christ. All of this other stuff is a tensile, artificial contraption to fulfill some verses. Brothers and sisters, we find fulfillment only within the body of Christ. We find fulfillment within the body of Christ. We find relevance to the Christian life…it isn’t anywhere else.

In a few days, I’m going to start doing something that, until you get to book number four of the First Century Diaries, you won’t understand. I’m about to do something Paul did in Ephesus. I’ve waited this long to resolve the greatest riddle of the problems we face as Christians. You may not understand it, but I’ll tell you anyway. When I was 30, it became very evident to me; I didn’t say the Lord showed that; I said it became very relevant to me that we’re not going to have church life on this earth until we have workers. And we cannot have workers until they grow up in church life.

Now you’ve got a chicken-and-egg situation here that’s unbreakable. I just decided that, by George, that’s got to be broken. Someday there’s got to be some men trained to be workers who grew up in church life just like everybody else did. That means they’re exposed. They’re known; not like the ministry – they’re known. It means they’ve bitten the bullet; they knew the cross; they’ve been crucified. They’ve been screaming. They’ve dragged up that hill many times. It means they know church life, that what they’re preaching is not a theory. Not a theory, nor a revelation they got yesterday, but a lifelong experience.

Paul of Tarsus went to Ephesus and took with him eight men, all of whom had grown up in church life. He lived with them three years, exactly like Jesus Christ lived with the twelve for three years. He trained them and sent them out as Gentile church planters, just as Jesus sent out the twelve Jewish church planters. There has never been much church life on this earth. Never. And we’re not going to spin our wheels going to your little town. Yes, you have three choices. The choices were mentioned in the other question here.

What can you do? Well, you can start your own group if you want to. I’m going to tell you what I think about you. I think you’re an arrogant, conceited screwball to think that you are going to start a group of people. I think, brother, all you want to do is make life miserable for about 20 or 30 people meeting in your hall now and teach them the Bible and teach them the Christian law and bang them over the head with a verse if they don’t do what you think they ought to do. If you succeed, which I hope you don’t, all you’ll do is wreck about 20 or 30 adult Christian lives.

We need men who have grown up in the church. Trust me, those are stomped people. They’ve lived in reality. They know there’s not a whole lot they can do when they’ve worked all day and come to a meeting. They probably won’t make many demands, though; that’s my point. A verse in Acts indicates that many Christians in the church of Jerusalem came from other towns to be with the twelve. I hate to tell you this, but we’re not going to have many workers on this earth. Not the kind that are safe.

You want church life? All it costs you is an arm and a leg and the rest of your life. All it will cost you is about four nails through your feet and hands, and a crown of thorns pressed down on your brow. All it takes is your funeral…and your resurrection. It only takes exposure that will cause you to run down the street screaming, “I didn’t want anybody to know this about me.” And yes, you’ll be a little screwy if you actually get with a group of Christians to do such a crazy thing, but if church life beats in your heart, then you will have done nothing noble to have moved.

You have these choices. You got the same choices as the people in the wilderness. You can go back to the flesh pots of Egypt. You can stay in the wilderness and die and let the bones bleach your body. I guess you’ve got another one: you can join some religious group, where you will be very active and excited for four years, but it won’t help you for the long haul. They don’t have it to give.