It's always a joy for me to be
here with you.
And I think it was six years ago
that I came here first.
And I'm personally thankful for the growing fellowship
that I have found with GFA in India
and here.
There are very few organizations that I minister
in, mostly because most of them don't want
me, or they allow me to speak once
and that's about it.
But there are certain things I look for
in a ministry and in those who work
in a ministry, which on the basis of
which I decide whether I want to continue
to associate with it.
One is the quality of the families.
Now, that's not given much importance in our
day, but for me, that's primary.
If a man's brought up his children well,
I don't mean necessarily to be in the
ministry, but to be spiritually minded, then you
know how he lives at home.
Otherwise, we only see how he lives in
public.
And the second thing is the type of
co-workers that God gives to a servant
of His indicates to me the measure of
backing that God is giving a man.
And that's another thing I've noticed here right
from the beginning.
I'm not the greatest discerner of people, but
I feel that I have some measure of
discernment having been a Christian for 44 years
and in full-time work for about 36
years.
And I've seen that God's really given among
those whom I have known here through the
years some really fine, godly people.
And that's another indication to me of God
being with a movement.
The other thing that I look for when
I fellowship with those who are in the
ministry is whether they talk more about their
work or about the Lord.
And that's another thing I've personally found in
my fellowship with Brother K.P. Though, of
course, we do talk about the work of
G.F.Faith, the Lord is more important.
You know, there are Marys and there are
Marthas.
And if you get together with the Marys,
they tell you what the Lord's been telling
them.
And if you get together with the Marthas,
they tell you how many chapatis they made
in the kitchen, etc.
Well, I know we need to make chapatis
in the kitchen, but if that becomes primary,
I think something is wrong.
So these are some of the things that
have drawn me.
I'd say one more thing, it's very important,
and that is financial integrity.
There are only two masters in the world,
and they're not God and Satan.
Jesus said in Luke 16, it's God and
mammon.
And mammon refers to the entire material world
of money and possessions and property.
And a person's attitude to these things is
a pretty good indication whether that is his
God or whether that is his servant.
Mammon's a very good servant, but a terrible
thing to have as God.
And the world is full of people who
have made mammon their God.
The Christian world is full of people who
have made mammon their God.
To find financial integrity is rare, and certainly
in a country like India, where I've lived
all my life, and I know pretty much
about a lot of Christian work.
And that's another reason why I have deeply
appreciated my fellowship with GFA, because of these
reasons.
I thought I'd mention that for many of
you who may be coming in new and
wondering what this is, whether this is just
another Christian organization.
So I want to share something from 1
Thessalonians 5, verse 23.
Our work is dependent on our relationship with
God.
The closer our relationship with him, the better
our work is going to be.
God is more interested in the quality of
our work than quantity.
It's very important for us to bear in
mind at all times, because when we see
the need around us, it's very easy.
Certainly I see that constantly in India.
I have to battle it all the time.
When you see the need in a country
like India, it's very easy to sacrifice quality
because the need is so great.
It can be a very good desire to
reach people, but we have to resist that
temptation.
If the price we pay is sacrificing quality
in our work, a lot of Christian groups,
churches, organizations in India have done that.
And the effect of it, the results of
it are often not seen for many years.
It's like, you know, a child can develop
rickets because of years of not eating proper
food.
The effect is not seen immediately.
But over a period of time, you discover
whether the child is being given proper diet
or not.
It's the same with Christian work.
Sometimes the results of a sacrifice of quality
are seen years later, and then it can
be too late to rectify it.
So that's why I personally decided many years
ago that even if my work was going
to be very little, I would never sacrifice
quality.
In fact, the Bible says, if you're familiar
with that passage where it speaks about gold,
silver and precious stones and wood, hay and
stubble in 1 Corinthians 3, the word quality
comes there.
The fire will test the quality of each
man's work, not quantity.
And so here it speaks about sanctification.
Verse 23 speaks about entire sanctification.
So that's what I want to speak about,
entire sanctification, without getting into all the controversies
of the theology of entire sanctification.
May the God of peace himself sanctify you
entirely.
And may your spirit and soul and body
be preserved complete without blame at the coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Faithful is he who calls you, and he
also will bring it to pass.
There's a verse in the earlier chapter, chapter
4, verse 3, which says, this is the
will of God.
There are many areas where we don't know
God's word, but there are one or two
areas where we know it very clearly.
And here's one of them.
This is the will of God, your sanctification.
So that's one area where we certainly know
God's will.
1 Thessalonians 5.18 is another area.
In everything give thanks, for this is God's
will for you.
So, sanctification is God's will for us.
But the thing I want you to notice
here is that it's not something we are
to produce.
It says here, may God, 5.23, sanctify
you entirely.
So that's the first thing to be noticed,
that this is God's work and not my
work.
My work is to submit.
And again, it's repeated in verse 24.
Faithful is he who calls you, he will
bring it to pass.
To me, the great difference in a very
simple way between law and grace is that
law is man trying to produce something that
pleases God.
And grace is God producing in us that
which pleases him.
It's a very simplistic, perhaps, explanation, but I
find that sort of sums it up in
a nutshell.
Law is man trying to do something, produce
something that will satisfy God.
We never achieve it.
Now, 1500 years Israel tried to achieve that
standard, never achieved it.
But it seems as though many Christians haven't
understood that.
That you can never produce something that will
please God.
You've got to allow God to work in
you.
And then it comes forth.
The first words of scripture are, in the
beginning, God.
And any work that doesn't start like that
is doomed to failure.
In the beginning, God.
A sanctification that does not begin with God
doing something in me.
It's not the genuine thing.
There are a lot of non-Christians who,
you know, live good moral lives.
And we can even say some of them
appear to be better than believers.
But the question is, did God begin that
work or was it man?
You know, we can be fooled a lot
by what we see on the outside.
And that's why we don't want to judge
others.
But we can certainly know in our own
life whether we have understood this principle in
all of our life and our ministry.
That everything must begin with God.
There's a verse in Matthew 15 where Jesus
said, Every plant which my heavenly Father has
not planted will be rooted out.
And the question is not whether it's a
good plant or not.
The question is who planted it.
I mean, you may have watered it.
You may have nurtured it.
You may have done a lot of things
to it, but who planted it?
That's the question.
That work of sanctification is, did it begin
with God doing something in your heart?
Or did it begin with your gritting your
teeth and deciding to be holy?
Any amount of discipline and gritting our teeth
and denying ourselves is not going to make
a sinful heart holy.
All that is necessary.
We need discipline.
We need determination.
We need endurance.
But the work has to begin with God.
And that's why God sent His Holy Spirit.
The purpose of the Holy Spirit is to
work within us to make our spirit pure.
He speaks about spirit, soul, and body.
So I want to share concerning these three
things.
First of all, a pure spirit.
God wants us to have a pure spirit.
Jesus spoke in John chapter 4 and verse
24.
God is a spirit.
And those who worship Him must worship Him
in spirit and in truth.
So I just want to say a few
words, first of all, about worshiping God in
the spirit.
Now, under the old covenant, first of all,
notice in 1 Thessalonians 5, 23, we saw
the threefold nature of man, spirit, soul, and
body.
Man is a trinity.
It's made in the image of God who
is a trinity.
Spirit, soul, and body.
A lot of people confuse spirit and soul.
I think there are some Christians who probably
think they are the same.
But they are not.
Hebrews 4.12 speaks about the word of
God dividing between soul and spirit.
So it's not the same.
And speaks here about entire sanctification involving spirit,
soul, and body.
Now, in the Old Testament tabernacle, which is
a picture of God's dwelling place.
In fact, God told Moses, tell them to
make a sanctuary for me, a dwelling place
where I can dwell.
God dwelt in that tabernacle.
And the literal translation of John 1.14
is that the word was made flesh and
tabernacled among us.
Dwelt among us means tabernacle.
So the tabernacle in the Old Testament is
a picture of a human being.
The way God made man in the tabernacle
had three parts.
The most holy place, the holy place, and
the outer court.
The outer court was the only one that
was visible to everybody.
There was one visible part, the outer court.
And there were two parts that were covered
with curtains, with a tent.
The holy place, the most holy place, exactly
like man.
Our body is the only visible part, corresponding
to the outer court.
And the holy place, the most holy place,
are the soul and spirit, covered.
And between the soul and spirit, between the
holy place, the most holy place, was this
thick veil, which was rent when Jesus died.
And until Jesus died, there was this veil
indicating that no one could come into God's
immediate presence.
God didn't dwell in the outer court.
God didn't dwell in the holy place.
God dwelt in the most holy place of
that tabernacle.
And nobody could go there.
Nobody could get into that life in the
spirit in the Old Testament.
They could worship God only in the body
and in the soul.
In the outer court and the holy place.
There was a lot of activity in the
outer court.
A lot of activity in the holy place
too.
They were always burning the incense and making
sure the lamp stand was burning, etc.
But when you came to the most holy
place, of course they couldn't come there.
The high priest could go there just once
a year.
There wasn't activity.
It was worship.
And the mark of a spiritual man is,
one mark, that he's comfortable in the most
holy place.
He's comfortable when he's worshiping God.
If our service for God and our activity
means more to us than worshiping God, I
would say we put the cart before the
horse.
I'm not saying we don't need the cart.
I'm just saying put the cart before the
horse.
You remember the words of Jesus in Matthew
4, I think it's verse 10, where he
told Satan in answer to one of the
temptations, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,
and Him only shalt thou serve.
You see the order there?
You've got to worship before you serve.
And here Jesus said that the Father, verse
23, seeks those who will worship Him, the
true worshipers, will worship the Father in spirit
and truth.
Jesus was explaining to the Samaritan woman, when
she was asking him, do we worship in
this mountain or Jerusalem?
And Jesus said, the place is not the
thing.
It doesn't matter where you worship, but our
is coming, verse 23.
So, in other words, it wasn't possible until
this time.
But now, a new age is dawning.
It has now come, verse 23, John 4,
23.
When the true worshipers shall worship the Father
in spirit.
Till now, they could only worship in the
body and the soul.
But now, they're going to worship in the
spirit.
Now they're going to enter right into the
presence of God.
In the Old Testament, it's amazing what all
they could do without entering into God's presence.
We know very clearly that there was this
veil indicating that no man could enter into
God's presence.
Until Jesus died and rose again, the veil
was not rent.
In Hebrews 10, it's called a new and
living way that Jesus opened up through the
veil.
So, it's very clear that all Old Testament
worship was not in the immediate presence of
God.
And without being in the immediate presence of
God, people could clap and shout and dance
and play instruments and make such resounding noises
of praise.
We read in 1 Samuel 4 that Israel
shouted so loud once when the ark came
into the midst that the earth began to
shake.
Their worship was very impressive, very noisy, very
musical.
But it wasn't in the spirit.
It's possible today.
And we need to discern that.
We live in a day when Christians don't
have much discernment of what is spiritual and
what is human.
And that's the reason for a lot of
confusion in a lot of things that go
by the name of being spirit-filled.
A lot of it is just soul-filled,
not spirit-filled.
It's not in the spirit at all.
And we can learn that when we go
to the Psalms and see what tremendous forms
of worship they had there, David and all
the others.
And yet, the hour had not yet come
in those days for man to worship God
in the spirit.
The veil was not rent.
But now the veil has been rent, and
Jesus said, the hour is coming.
Now is when the true worshipers, and God
desires each of us to be in that
number, dear brothers and sisters, true worshipers, who
will worship Him in spirit and truth.
And it says the Father seeks for such
worshipers.
Imagine the longing of God as He looks
down upon the earth where there are so
many whom He has redeemed and He is
seeking for worshipers.
The question is whether He finds them in
us.
It's more exciting to serve, and that's why
carnal people prefer that.
Worship is more something personal between us and
God.
And I'm not talking about praise.
There's thanksgiving.
There's praise.
There's worship.
There are three different things.
Thanksgiving relates to many gifts God has given
us.
We can thank God for food.
We can thank God for health.
We can thank God for gifts and other
things that He has given us in many
ways.
We praise God for the fact that He
is sovereign and He is almighty and He
is holy and all those things.
But when it comes to worship, worship is
something so completely centered in God.
It's got nothing to do with me.
It's got nothing to do with what God
has done for me.
It's got to do with God Himself, with
the person of God.
It's very difficult to define.
It's the thing that brings intimacy between man
and God, between God and man.
Intimacy.
It's the thing that can preserve us from
backsliding from many, many things.
So, I would encourage all of you, if
you are not already one, be a worshipper.
It doesn't matter if you don't serve so
much if you are a worshipper because your
service will be so much better quality that
there will be a lot more gold, silver
and precious stones when Christ comes back.
You won't have any regret in your life
if you worship.
A worshipper is not this monastic type of
thing I'm talking about where you lock yourself
up in a cell and keep on meditating.
A lot of people are not worshipping there.
Worship is an attitude which never goes away
from our life.
It's a life of very close, intimate walk
with Jesus.
The type of relationship described in Song of
Solomon between the bride and the bridegroom.
That's the type of worship I'm talking about.
Worshipping in the Spirit.
Jesus spoke in Matthew chapter 5 about being
poor in spirit, verse 3.
In fact, that's the first of the Beatitudes.
And he said that those who are poor
in spirit could possess all of God's kingdom.
So, I've seen poverty of spirit as a
master key with which we can open every
room in the kingdom of heaven.
There are tremendous riches available in God's kingdom.
But here is the master key that opens
every door.
And we can open the first door of
forgiveness of sins.
And we know how we got that.
By acknowledging our need.
And poverty of spirit basically means that.
It means to be constantly aware of our
need.
Why is it the Pharisees could not even
open that first door?
Because they wouldn't even acknowledge their need there.
And it's very easy for us, having received
from God forgiveness of sins or maybe some
go beyond that and be filled with the
Holy Spirit, to suddenly feel that we don't
really have any need now.
And we have lost the master key.
And that's going to put an end to
all further possessing of the riches of God's
kingdom.
So, poverty of spirit.
It's again speaking about the deepest part of
me.
Poverty of spirit.
A sense of nothingness before God.
This is true humility.
And this is what brings real worship.
God, I want you to be everything in
my life.
I want to be nothing.
And such a man is a spiritual man.
And he will accomplish the most.
If you think in terms of statistics, Jesus'
ministry was very unimpressive.
He worked only three and a half years.
He traveled a very limited distance in his
ministry.
Such a small little area in Israel.
And at the end of his ministry, he
had only 11 people to show for all
that work that he had done.
It's not at all very impressive.
But look at the quality of those 11
men.
They turned the world upside down and started
something that's been going for 2,000 years.
Boy, if you can produce one man like
that, it will be something.
It's quality that matters.
And Jesus' life is the perfect demonstration of
that.
He was a worshiper.
We read of times when he would slip
away from the midst of people.
Luke 5.16 He would slip away into
the wilderness to be alone with the Father.
That was the greatest thing for him in
his life.
Here was a world lying in need.
He would slip away to be alone with
his Father.
He was a worshiper.
And a worshiper, because he worshipped, you know,
when the devil offered him all the things
of the world, they didn't have any attraction.
A worshiper is not even tempted by those
things.
He didn't have to think about it.
If we find the honor of men, you
know, attractive, or the honor of Christian leaders
attractive, or if we find money attractive, a
comfortable life attractive, or all the things that
the world offers, you know, the devil offered
all of that to Jesus in the third
temptation.
If we find it attractive, it's because in
that measure we're not worshippers.
When a man has got through the veil
into the most holy place and seen God
face to face and is a worshiper, it's
actually true like Paul said.
He finds everything else to be rubbish.
Garbage.
That's the word he used in Philippians 3.
Garbage.
And I thought of it.
I've asked myself this question.
Can I honestly say that when the attractive
things of the world are presented to me
by the devil, that they are in fact
no more attractive to me than what I
see in a garbage bin?
I mean, I'm not tempted by anything in
a garbage bin.
Nothing.
I'm not even tempted to look to see
if there's possibly something I could find.
Imagine living in this world and having that
attitude to the honor of men, to the
praise and approval of people, to money, a
comfortable life, everything that the devil can offer.
We really be free.
That's the result of worship.
That's the result of getting to know God.
That's the thing that can preserve us from
the many snares and temptations that the devil's
got lined up for anyone who's seeking to
serve God wholeheartedly.
So, be a worshipper.
The second thing I want to say in
relation to spirit is a verse in 2
Corinthians 7 verse 1 to have a pure
spirit.
It says here in 2 Corinthians 7 verse
1, let us cleanse ourselves, middle of that
verse, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse
ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit.
Our spirit can variously be defiled.
There's a defilement of the flesh which I
would say refers to outward sin and defilement
of the spirit which refers to inward motives,
attitudes, etc.
which we can cover up very easily.
But if I want to inherit God's promises,
it says here in verse 1 that I
have to cleanse myself not only from the
defilement of the flesh but the defilement of
the spirit.
And if I'm not careful to keep my
spirit pure, I may miss out on the
promises of God.
And certainly, there is no question of perfecting
holiness like the rest of that verse says,
perfecting holiness in the fear of God if
I'm not careful about my spirit.
The mark of an Old Testament person is
of a good Old Testament person is that
he's very careful to avoid all defilement of
the flesh.
The Ten Commandments basically dealt with defilement of
the flesh.
Anyway, nine of them.
The tenth, thou shalt not covet, went a
little deeper.
But nine of those commandments dealt with defilement
of the flesh on the outside.
And I believe God put that tenth one
in there just to see how many would
be honest enough to acknowledge we can't keep
it.
Thou shalt not lust, thou shalt not covet.
But that was sort of a little thing
put in there to show that there was
more to it than just these external things.
And that's the one commandment that Paul says
in Romans 7 he had a constant problem
with.
He says, I could keep all the other
nine.
But when it came to the tenth, he
says, I found all types of lusting and
coveting in my spirit.
And he says, how would I be free
from this?
And that's in Romans 7 and Romans 8
he says, what the law could not do,
God has done.
The law of the spirit of life in
Christ Jesus set me free from the law
of sin and death.
See, the law of Moses was written laws.
You know, thou shalt do this and thou
shalt not do that and thou shalt do
this and thou shalt not do that.
But the law of the spirit mentioned in
Romans 8 too is not laws.
It's not written things.
The law of the spirit is fundamentally different
from the law of Moses.
The law of Moses was a number of
rules.
And a lot of Christians who if they
really examine their life they'll discover they're living
by rules.
Many, many Christians perhaps you may discover if
you were honest with yourself you've got certain
unwritten rules to preserve your testimony in an
organization or in a church or in the
midst of other Christians.
You say, I shouldn't do this because that'll
spoil my testimony or I shouldn't do this
because that I won't be useful for God
or, you know, various reasons but unwritten rules
by which we try to live our life.
It's good.
It's a good Old Testament life.
But that's not New Testament at all.
The New Testament law of the spirit is
described in Romans 8 too as a life.
Life in Christ Jesus.
It's the difference between the two trees in
the garden.
One was the knowledge of good and evil.
That's laws.
This is bad, that is good.
This movie is good and that one is
bad.
Etc.
But life in Christ Jesus is something completely
different.
You see, it's like my tongue.
If I put bad food into my tongue,
I don't need a rule book to tell
me whether it's good or bad.
If I've got life, I spit it out
immediately.
It just tastes bad.
But if you put it on a dead
man's tongue, he doesn't feel anything.
So, the law of the spirit is life.
A life which can taste.
You don't need rules.
You don't need a list of bad movies
and good movies or bad books or good
books, bad websites, good websites.
You don't need them.
It's life.
And the rejection of something which doesn't have
the life of God in it, which doesn't
have the approval of God is immediate.
Just like bad food comes on my tongue
and I don't even take a second to
spit it out.
So, this is the law of the spirit.
And this is the law we must live
by.
And the Holy Spirit speaks to our spirit
and tells us things concerning defilement in our
spirit which we can very easily ignore and
still keep a good testimony before men.
You can live years, all your life with
a good testimony before men and completely ignore
the voice of the spirit telling us about
filthiness in the spirit.
It's a fearful thing when I read about
David.
You know, there's a beautiful passage in 2
Samuel 15 or 16 where there's this guy
called Shimei who curses David when David's running
away from Absalom.
And one of David's soldiers says, let me
go and chop off this fellow's head who's
cursing you and calling you all types of
names.
And David says some amazing words.
It's an indication of how much he understood
of God's sovereignty.
He says, if God has told Shimei, curse
David, who am I to fight against God?
Think of having that attitude to somebody who
treats you badly.
I mean, we would put it slightly more
accurately that if God has allowed this man
to curse me or to treat me badly
or tell a lie about me or tell
stories about me, well, God's allowed it.
Okay?
I'm not going to fight against God.
But we read that David, who behaved so
magnanimously at that time, just before he died
in 1 Kings, one of the first two
or three chapters there, just before he died,
in fact, those are the last words recorded
of David before he died, he told Solomon,
don't spare this fellow Shimei.
He cursed me some years ago.
Don't let him have a natural death.
Kill him.
I promised not to kill him, so I
can't do it.
But Solomon, you never made any such promise.
He was going according to the law.
He would keep his word, all right.
So, you get a hired killer to do
the job.
You know, the thing that brings a fear
into my heart there is, if you don't
cleanse your spirit, when you become old and
senile, what's inside is going to come out.
You better cleanse yourself immediately.
Now, we're fooling ourselves.
If we think we're clean, we're not clean
inside.
We're only cleansed from filthiness of the flesh
and not filthiness of the spirit.
Now, I don't blame David.
He lived under the old covenant.
The veil was not rent.
He could not penetrate those inner beings that
we can.
He perhaps didn't hear the voice of the
Spirit like we can.
The Holy Spirit was not given in the
way He's given now.
But I see that possibility.
I see Christians who old, they've been believers
many years, and as they grow old, they
are sour and grumpy and bitter.
God save me from ever being like that
when I grow old.
I want to be a cheerful, happy person,
happier and more cheerful as I grow older.
And the only way to do that is
to keep our spirit clean, to keep our
conscience absolutely clean.
And the best way to keep our conscience
clean is to cleanse it as soon as
you're aware that there's something wrong.
It's like if a thorn or a nail
got into your foot.
I mean, how long would you keep it
there?
How long?
If you didn't know, that's another thing.
You know, people who have leprosy get things
into their feet and they don't feel it
because they've lost sensation.
But we're not like that.
As soon as you know, you pull it
out immediately.
Why should it be there?
Why should I have something within me which
I know very well is contrary to the
Spirit of Christ?
Why should I retain an attitude towards a
human being, leave alone a brother, to a
human being which I know very well is
not the attitude Jesus would have?
Why should I keep that even for one
second?
Why should I keep a nail in my
foot for one second if I know it's
got in?
Okay, accidentally I tramped on something and I
got it under my foot.
I was careless.
Okay, well, the next best is pull it
out immediately.
Wash it off.
We do that with our bodies.
None of us would ever keep anything on
our body.
I mean, we flick off a mosquito, leave
alone a nail.
A mosquito.
Imagine if we lived like that in relation
to filthiness of the Spirit.
Where we would have been today if we
had lived like that from the day we
were converted.
Well, we can't do anything about our past
life, but we can do something about the
future to ensure that we keep our spirit
pure.
We worship in the Spirit and keep our
spirit pure.
It says in Matthew chapter 5, I believe
that the words heart and spirit are often
used interchangeably in the New Testament.
Verse 8 refers to what I've just been
speaking.
Blessed are the pure in heart, or we
could say pure in spirit, for they shall
see God.
Look at the privilege.
If I keep my spirit pure, I shall
live with the constant vision of God in
my spirit.
Which is more than even being a prophet.
Once God told, we read in Numbers chapter
12 when Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses.
God said, you fellas don't realize what a
great man Moses is.
To other prophets He says, I speak by
visions and dreams.
Nowadays people think that visions and dreams are
great things.
But God said there, that's sort of second
best.
With Moses I speak face to face.
And that's our privilege in the new covenant.
To enter into the most holy place.
I'm not interested in dreams and visions.
Well, if God gives them, I receive them.
But face to face is my privilege.
Because the veil has been rent.
Dreams and visions are second best.
Face to face is the best.
It's very clear from Numbers 12.
Blessed are the pure in spirit, those who
keep their, those who are very careful to
keep their conscience absolutely clear.
I remember about 40 years ago, soon after
I was baptized, when I had to make
some restitution in my life concerning money to
the government and etc.
And I was debating, calculating how much to
give back and working out the figure and
I was in a bit of a doubt
about two figures.
Should I give this much or a little
more?
And while I was debating like that, I
read a verse in the book of Numbers
which said that when you make restitution, give
20% more than what was taken.
And that was exactly the two figures I
was debating.
And you know how we always tend to
choose the lesser amount.
And that showed me a principle there.
When you're in doubt making restitution, give more
rather than less.
Because money is not everything.
To see God is everything.
And to miss seeing God, because I was
debating about that 20% is absolutely stupid.
We'll discover that in eternity.
A lot of people are missing out on
the greatest thing for some silly little thing
there which they don't set right.
We're so foolish.
Blessed are the pure in spirit, the hard
they shall see God.
And I believe that also applies in another
way that when my spirit is pure, I
see God everywhere.
In my circumstances, I don't see people.
I see God.
Like in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Peter saw the Roman soldiers.
Jesus saw the Father.
There's a lot of difference between the two.
Your reaction becomes different when you see God.
Jesus saw the Father.
He said, well, the cup the Father has
given me, I'll drink it.
Because it doesn't matter if the mailman is
Judas or the Roman soldiers.
The one who sent this cup was the
Father.
So he could see the Father there.
Whereas Peter, who did not pray like Jesus
did in Gethsemane, Jesus had warned him, listen,
you fellas, if you don't pray, you're going
to fall in temptation.
And he didn't tell them, but of course,
I'm different from you.
I don't need to pray.
He was like us.
He had to pray, too.
Because he made himself like us.
And that's why, in the moment of temptation,
he could see the Father.
And Peter couldn't.
Peter saw the soldiers.
And that's why he took out his sword.
Blessed are the pure in spirit, for they
shall see God everywhere.
They have no complaints against anyone, not even
against Judas Iscariot, who betrays them.
Their spirit is clear, and they see God.
And one last thing is I want to
speak about discernment in our spirit.
Great need of it in our day.
To be a worshipper in our spirit, to
keep our spirit pure, and to discern in
our spirit.
1 John 2.
Verse 27.
When it speaks here about the anointing, you
know it's the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
And as for you, the anointing which you
received from Him abides in you.
And you have no need for anyone to
teach you.
But as His anointing teaches you about all
things, and it's true, it's not a lie.
It's taught you.
You abide in Him.
Now, that doesn't mean we don't need anyone
to teach us the Scriptures, in which case,
we wouldn't need any meetings at all.
God has appointed teachers in the church to
teach us His Word.
But here He is speaking about discernment.
Even if you are a young believer, a
new believer, you can be filled with the
Holy Spirit.
And the Holy Spirit will give you a
sense in your spirit when something is wrong.
We tend to go very often by our
mind, what our mind or our reason tells
us.
But through the years, I've discovered that it's
far safer to go by what our spirit
tells us.
For example, in dealing with other Christians, Christian
workers, people who want to join our church
or work with us, and you check the
person out and everything appears to be right.
His doctrines are right.
He's got all the right answers.
And yet, you feel a bit uneasy in
your spirit.
I say, go by that witness.
And you'll never regret it.
You'll find the witness of your spirit is
right.
And vice versa too.
Sometimes you find a person who may be
very rough and abrasive in his ways.
You feel, well, it's not a very good
Christian testimony, okay, but in your spirit, you
see the guy is genuine.
He's got no guile in him.
Go by the witness of your spirit.
It's a very important thing, and that's possible
only if we have cleansed our spirit.
Otherwise, our discernment can be faulty.
The Bible says that those who know their
God, Daniel 11.32 says, those who know
their God will be strong.
The way to strength is to know God
in our spirit, to know Him.
I want to share more about that in
the next session.
But this is so important to recognize that
in this new covenant, we have the privilege
to get right into God's presence in the
most holy place and know Him and worship
Him.
And thus, our spirit becomes more sensitive to
what is of God and what is not.
This is the essential difference between the two
trees in the Garden of Eden.
What God was telling Adam, there are two
ways you can live.
One is by having in your mind, this
is right, this is wrong.
That's the way all human beings live.
We've all descended from Adam.
We know what's right, what's wrong.
And some people have a higher degree of
what's right and what's wrong.
We call them more moral than others.
But it's still by rules.
But the other is by life.
May God Himself, through our knowledge of God,
we can discern in a way which goes
beyond our mind.
It's not contrary to our mind.
I always say, faith is not contrary to
reason, but it's beyond reason.
The Bible says, trust in the Lord, not
with your mind, but with all your heart.
And do not lean upon your understanding.
Proverbs 3, verse 5 and 6.
And He will direct your paths.
So, if I want God to direct my
paths, I must not lean on my understanding.
I must go beyond that and trust in
the Lord with my heart.
And my heart tells me, if I'm walking
with God, if I'm a worshipper, if I'm
keeping my spirit pure, my heart tells me
things which my mind can never tell me.
And that's the way to live.
That's the way Jesus lived.
And that's the way He calls us to
live.
By the life of God springing up and
telling me to avoid certain parts or certain
people, I can protect myself from many, many
dangers.
Let's pray.
We pray, Father, that You'll make our spirit
more sensitive to Your voice.
And make us worshippers.
Help us to understand that intimacy with You
that You desire to have with all of
Your children in the new covenant.
And to go further in this realm of
living in the Spirit, keeping our spirit pure
than we have ever gone so far.
We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.