Winona Conference Part 4 – Here’s the Truth of You in Christ

Wait, wait, Kelly. Kelly has two interpreters back there. Oh, I got it now. Alright, that which she thought was Christ turned out not to be Christ, and so she’s afraid to go back and find out something else that it’s not Christ.  I bring you glad tidings of great joy which shall be to you, Kelly. I think that I can say to you without fear that every one of these things should vanish. Totally!  We are going to go to another mountain and another place. Now I’ve got three brothers here who are going to witness for me or get me in trouble.

Roy, you heard all this. What do you have to say to it? Every one of them has been a problem for you. Alright, I’m asking you about what’s been going on in the group that meets over in Holly’s house? I give up. Mark, Mark, can you help me here? All right, we’ve got… Did you hear that? Now, there’s the honesty that only single brothers can give. Most of them have vanished. You’re still having problems with wandering, but you’re the slowest person in my class, Mark. Okay, now where’s Tim? We’ll get volumes and volumes of silence out of Tim. Did you hear that? No, you didn’t. Well, he said, said better than Mark. I’m not going to ask him to repeat; that’s the most I have ever heard Tim say in his life. He said, “I’m at peace.” I know where these three brothers were a few weeks ago. They were at least having the problem you just listed.

Roy, you want to try again? He’s going to kill me someday. He shook his head. I’m going to stop you now if you still don’t know what I’m asking. (Roy shares) Not bad, Roy, not bad. I have three brothers who have witnessed something here. You may not know exactly what, but I think you heard reality there.  Whatever else you heard, you’re not going to get these brothers to exaggerate; I haven’t sold them anything, I haven’t convinced them of anything. Yes, those things should reasonably vanish. I guess we don’t reach a point of total perfection of anything, but they should reasonably vanish or recede. And you ought to be extremely interested. Now, are you?

I want to take, now, another moment of introduction to talk about the secret to the Christian life: Have we overlooked the main point? So, I think the best way that I could do this is to say to you, in your life…those of you who heard this message, and I have brought this message three times, and it’s on video, and I’m not going to repeat it tonight…but if you have heard it, just don’t say anything and let me do this with people who haven’t heard it.

What have you been taught that you ought to do to be able to live the Christian life? What have you been taught is the secret to the Christian life, or the secret to the victorious Christian life, or whatever it was taught to you? The overcoming life, the rest life, the faith life, the exchange life, the abiding life. It doesn’t matter. The Christian life. And if no one told you those things, what are your general impressions of what you ought to do to live a Christian life? Would you talk to me for a minute?

Alright, we got a hand back here, brother. Stop it. Stop everything and pray. Alright, we’ve got prayer. How to pray? They didn’t know what to tell you, that’s right. Did I see a hand back there? Brother, really loudly. To believe. To pray. To read the Bible, okay? Have faith, read the Bible, and pray. We’re getting right down the line. Yes sir? You have to memorize scripture so that we may meditate upon the word of God. Alright, great. That’s wonderful. I hope that everybody in the world can read and write, because if they can’t, they’re in trouble. Think about it. 3/5 of the world cannot live the Christian life because it is illiterate. Think about it. That’s something nobody ever talks about.

I have a question to ask every theologian on earth. Are you telling me that the Christian life is relegated only to the literate? And that it is not for the illiterate? If so, then you have probably cut off the Christian life to at least 95% of all the people in church history who have been saved.  Because illiteracy, up until the last century, was kicking around 97 – 98% throughout the last 2,000 years. We’ve got a problem here. We have forgotten an indwelling Lord. Have you got some more? Let’s hear some more. You got some more. Yes, sir, cut off the flesh. Whatever that meant. Alright. Yes, sister. Get under authority. Absolutely. Of course. We all know that’s the secret. There’s more. Be sure to witness every day, just as Dwight L. Moody did. And like Billy Sunday did. Alright.

Go to church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. And don’t forget that little envelope. Alright. Yes, ma’am. We have another one. Huh? 100% commitment. Boy, now we’re moving fast toward Mount Sinai. Okay. That should pretty well wrap it up. There may be…yes, okay, experience of sanctification of the baptism of the holy spirit or speaking in tongues, and we must include that one. We have to. Yes, you get sin out of your life. Alright,

Well, you see, all this is me-centered. Me going to live a Christian life. Here’s what “me” got to do. So, I have to ask the question: Is this what the first Christians did to live a Christian life? Is this what the first Christian did to live a Christian life? Well, he read the Bible, didn’t He? No, he wrote it. He prayed, didn’t he? Actually, he said, Father, I’m praying out loud just for these people here. He went alone. Nobody knows what he did out there, but I tell you this. Whatever it was, it was inside. And I’ll tell you something else, it was based on a relationship that was older than the hills he prayed on. Are you following? I think you understand that, okay.  Older than the hills he was praying on. He was repeating and living within a relationship that was very ancient.

What else did he do? Did he evangelize? Yes, he evangelized, but the only problem is: He was not the first Christian. Now we gotta come to understand something: that the Christian, that being a Christian, a Christian, is something new to our planet, recently arrived here, just 2,000 years ago from another place. The Christian life is older than the Christian faith. The Christian life is older than creation.  And Jesus Christ was not the first Christian. I’ll go back a little further and say to you, there has never been but one Christian. There is, right now, only one Christian. There is only one person who has ever lived the Christian life. One person and one person only. And that was not the Lord Jesus Christ.

I am telling you that Jesus Christ had the same problem you had. He could not live the Christian life. Now, before you absolutely die and have apoplexy and head for the door, I will quote you his own words: Without the Father, I can do nothing.  There is only one Christian, and He is the Father, and the Christian life is lived by His life alone. And if you seek to live the Christian life by any life other than His, you will fail. And that’s why you’re not a very good Christian – you are the wrong species. For me to preach to you to live the Christian life would be something like filling them up with pigs and preaching to them that they should live the Christian life; they’re not going to make it because they’re the wrong species. And if I even preach to them that they should be human, or even tell them they should have table manners, and sit them up at a table, and give them a fork and a knife and a napkin, they’re not going to make it. They’ll do about the same and be as successful as you at living life, the Christian life.

Now, brothers and sisters, this may be far afield from anything you’ve ever heard, but I am telling you that the Christian life does not belong to the human species. And every time we climb up into a pulpit and assume that point, we are putting God’s people under the law. The Christian life is as far removed from Homo sapiens, from man, as it is not a human species activity. It is a divine activity carried out only by divine life.