In two weeks' time, I'd like to talk
about the Patriarchs, but God gave me something
else to talk about this morning, so that's
what I'd like to say.
Do you know which book is a perennial
bestseller, or which kind of book?
Brooks has its day, Jonathan Segal has its
day, Blind Ambition has its day, but there
is a kind of book that hooks generation
after generation of readers.
Do you know what kind?
It's the how-to book.
It is really.
It's the how-to.
There are millions of books year after year
that do nothing but tell people how to
do things.
Alec Comfort makes a fortune out of how
to enjoy sex, and then as the years
pass, he makes another fortune out of how
to grow old gracefully.
And the whole population seems to have an
insatiable thirst and hunger for reading books that
tell you how to do things.
And so the magazines are filled with articles
on how to decorate your home, how to
enlarge your garden storage, how to raise your
children, how to keep your baby from crying
during service, how to water ski, how to
build your own closets.
All the publishing world lives off these books
and articles that tell you how to do
things.
And really, a lot of it is very
valid, because God did give us these minds
to work out how to harness the solar
energy, how to turn the deserts into fertile
fields by irrigation.
He did give us our minds to work
out the hows of this life.
But where that do-it-yourself mania was
meant to stop was when it came to
our relationship with our Creator.
That's where the do-it-yourself mania had
to stop, because that was the heart of
our forefathers' rejection of our Creator.
Really.
The do-it-yourself attitude, the working out
how to bring this about, was the heart
of the fall.
It was what caused us to fall out
of God's fellowship.
Now, you'll see that, loved ones, if you
look at Genesis 3 and verse 5.
Genesis 3 and verse 5.
And you remember, these words are regarded by
Jesus as historical, and as spoken by Satan.
Genesis 3 and 5.
For God knows that when you eat of
it, your eyes will be opened, and you
will be like God, knowing good and evil.
In other words, our rejection of God, our
losing the sense of God's reality in our
life, did not come because of a determination
in us to be bad.
Do you see that?
It wasn't because we were determined to be
bad that God was cut off from us.
It was because of a determination to be
good.
You will be like God.
After you've eaten of this tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, you'll be like
God, knowing the difference between good and evil.
And that's what separated us from God.
Why?
Because we deliberately misunderstood God's purpose.
We interpreted Him as wanting us to be
good at all costs by any method.
And so we determined we will be good
by studying the good things that He and
the people who trust Him have done, and
studying the bad things that He condemns, and
that the people who hate Him do, and
then we'll avoid the one and we'll do
the other.
So we'll work out how to be like
God by a method of our own.
By studying the standards of goodness and the
standards of badness and avoiding the one and
hitting the other, we will be like God.
God wanted us to be like Him.
But He wanted us to be like Him
by receiving the spirit of His own life.
But we determined we will be like Him
by our own independent power and by the
exercise of our own wills and by our
own knowledge.
One of the marks of a good marriage
is that they just think like that.
After several years together, they just think like
that.
Just look at each other, they know.
You want to go there?
Sure.
You don't need to say anything.
I know.
You don't like it?
I know.
You don't even need to say anything.
I see it.
So the people who are well married just
operate like that.
Now, what we did to God was like
the husband saying, Okay, wife, I know all
the things you like, all the things you
don't like.
Now, I know all the things you want
me to do and all the things you
don't want me to do.
Now, let's just separate.
Now, I'll remember all those things.
Now, I'll avoid the bad things and I'll
hit the good things.
Okay, and we'll have a good marriage.
We'll just separate, but I'll be like that.
The whole purpose of the marriage is not
to do primarily what the other one wants,
but to have fellowship with the other.
To be close to them.
To think together.
To feel together.
And that was the purpose of God creating
us.
But what we did was stand back from
them and say, Alright, alright, we'll do what
you want us to do and we'll avoid
what you don't want us to do, and
you'll be satisfied, won't you?
And all the time the father was saying,
No, no, no.
I'm not concerned with you primarily being good
and not being bad.
I'm concerned with you being close to me.
Feeling what I feel.
Saying what I want you to say.
Doing what I want you to do.
That's something you can't note down in a
set of laws.
You can only do it as you have
a dynamic, intimate relationship with me.
And so, loved ones, the heart of the
fall was our deliberate claim that God's purpose
in putting us here was to avoid the
bad and do the good.
And all the time the whole purpose of
God putting us here was to be closely
related to Him in love and to be
governed by the closeness of His mind and
His spirit.
And so, really, the greatest sin or the
greatest independence is to try to achieve what
God wanted us to achieve by our own
methods.
By our ways of doing it.
By devising our own system.
And that is where you carry do-it
-yourself to an extreme.
When you begin to try to achieve what
God wanted us to achieve by our own
methods and by our own ways and our
own efforts.
How do you relate to God?
How do you make God real in your
life?
I think we on campus are in danger
of trying to answer that question.
That's what God brought home to me that
I should share with you.
I think we're in great danger here.
Those of us who live on campus think
in campus ways.
Because, after all, there are many of us
here who aren't at college, but we think
in college ways.
And, loved ones, one great danger of those
of us who think as college people is
that we will try to answer those how
questions.
That is, we will try to work out
by our own methods how to make God
real in our lives, how to live above
sin, how to make real in our lives
the mighty work that God did in Jesus.
Now, it's good to study some of those
things.
Do you see that?
It's good to study what God actually did
in Jesus.
How He took our perverse, irrational, stubborn self
-centeredness, put it into Jesus and crucified it
there.
As long as we don't start working out
ways of making that real in our own
lives.
That's when we begin to engage in the
kind of activity that brought all the fall
and the consequences of the fall into our
world.
Do you see that?
It's good to study what God has done
for us in Jesus.
But as soon as you and I begin
to be preoccupied with methods and techniques of
making that real in our own lives, we
fall into the deepest sin of pride in
trying to do in our own lives what
God only can do.
In trying to establish our own self-righteousness
or work out our own salvation.
And you may say, well, yeah, but how
do you do those things?
How do you make God real?
You see, first of all, what I'm saying
is if we become an introverted bunch of
little studious people who are all the time
trying to answer how do you pray?
How do you read the Bible?
How do you make God real?
How do you overcome sin?
How do you live victoriously?
If we're doing that continually and that is
our main concern, we will eventually become a
frustrated, closed little universe that will just chase
its own tail.
Instead of being God's liberated, relaxed family who
depend on Him.
But how do you do those things?
Because that keeps on coming back to our
minds.
Yeah, alright, I agree with you, but how
do you make God real in your life?
How do you make real in your life
what has happened to us in Jesus on
the cross?
Loved ones, the answer that God gives is
not some gnostic, esoteric method or technique.
The answer God gives is a person.
A person.
A dear person that I got to know
14 years ago.
And ever from then, I was delivered from
the how-to questions.
I'll show you who he is.
Mary, you remember, received a promise that she
would bear a unique son.
And you find her response in Luke 1
and verse 34.
Luke 1 and verse 34.
It's page 888, 888.
And Luke 1 and verse 34.
And Mary said to the angel, How can
this be, since I have no husband?
That's a how question.
And the answer that God gave her to
that question is the answer he gives to
all the how questions.
And the angel said to her, The Holy
Spirit will come upon you, and the power
of the Most High will overshadow you.
The answer to every how question is the
Holy Spirit.
And that's why when you and I, brothers
and sisters, are preoccupied with how do I
pray, how do I stop sinning, how do
I make Jesus' death rail in me, the
answer that God gives is a person, the
dear person of the Holy Spirit.
And every time you and I think we
can devise an answer to those questions apart
from the Holy Spirit, we are again rejecting
our God.
And we're again falling into a do-it
-yourself salvation by works that brought us into
our present predicament.
This dear Holy Spirit was the gift that
was promised to all of us who recognized
Jesus to be God's Son and who believed
what he had done on the cross.
Really.
The Holy Spirit was the first precious gift
that was offered to the first converts after
the first Christian sermon that was ever preached
once Jesus had left the earth.
Now, you can see that in Acts 2
and 38.
Acts 2 and verse 38.
Peter preached, you remember, and explained to the
people that they had crucified the Son of
the Creator of the universe.
And they came to him and said, What
will we do then?
And Acts 2 and verse 38.
And Peter said to them, Repent and be
baptized, every one of you, in the name
of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your
sins.
And you shall receive the gift of the
Holy Spirit.
Now, the Holy Spirit, dear ones, was looked
upon as the whole purpose and point of
believing in Jesus.
Jesus himself gave direct commands that the disciples
were not to leave Jerusalem until they had
received the Holy Spirit.
That's right.
He made a strong point of it.
If you look at it, it's in Acts
1.
Just back one page.
Acts 1 and verse 4.
He had just risen from the dead, you
remember, and was staying with them in Jerusalem.
And in verse 4, And while staying with
them, he charged them not to depart from
Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of
the Father, which he said you heard from
me.
For John baptized with water, but before many
days you shall be baptized with the Holy
Spirit.
The Holy Spirit, brothers and sisters, will make
God rail in your life.
You can't do it yourself.
Honestly, you can't.
I read all the books and prayed the
way they said I should pray and meditated
the way they said I should meditate, and
all I got myself into was a kind
of passivity such as all meditation brings you
to.
Do you see that all religions, all spiritualist
practices are just attempts to bring God into
our lives without the person of the Holy
Spirit who alone can bring God into our
lives.
Brothers and sisters, honestly, it doesn't matter how
often you listen to me or listen to
any man or any woman, they cannot tell
you how to do a thing.
You know, close one eye and wink the
other quickly and say the Lord's Prayer backwards.
No.
It doesn't matter whether it's as dumb as
that or whether it's the most appealing, intellectually
rational method or technique that you've ever heard.
There is no method or technique that will
make real in your life the mighty destruction
of self that took place in Jesus on
Calvary.
There isn't.
It doesn't matter what you try to do,
you can't make it real.
Now, brothers and sisters, really, I'd preach a
good sermon if all I did was keep
repeating that to you for the next half
hour.
Because I know you think you've got it,
but you haven't.
There are some of you sitting there and
say, oh yeah, the Holy Spirit, that's right.
Well, how do I pray better than I'm
doing?
And you fall back into methods and techniques.
Do you see there is something wriggling and
wriggling inside us that wants to do it
on our own?
That thinks, yes, but.
I say to you, only the Holy Spirit
can answer the how questions in your life.
And you say, yes, yes, I respect you
and I agree with you, but I can
do something, surely, to help them a little.
Loved ones, you can't perform any work or
follow any method or practice any technique that
will make the mighty work of Calvary real
in your life.
Only the Holy Spirit can.
The Holy Spirit.
That's why God gave us the Holy Spirit.
Now, maybe you're like me.
I used to think, but is there not
a danger of making the Holy Spirit more
important than Jesus?
If you lay emphasis on Him like this.
Well, brothers and sisters, you have to follow
Jesus' own advice to us.
And He advised us this way.
That's incredible, you know.
He advised us.
He said, look, don't look to me.
Look to the Holy Spirit.
It's for this very purpose that I'm leaving
the earth.
You think it's bad that I'm leaving the
earth, but the only reason I'm leaving the
earth is so that this dear person can
come to you.
I want you to look to Him.
He is the key to everything that I
have done for you in my life and
in my death becoming real in you.
Now, loved ones, you'll see that if you
look at John 16.
John 16 and verse 7.
It's page 940.
940.
John 16 and verse 7.
Nevertheless, I tell you the truth.
It is to your advantage that I go
away.
For if I do not go away, the
Counselor will not come to you.
But if I go, I will send Him
to you.
Now, those are the words that a person
uses about someone who is to be his
successor.
And that's what the Holy Spirit is.
The Holy Spirit is Jesus' successor here on
earth.
Jesus has achieved certain things for you.
That anger that boils up inside you, that
bad temper that you cannot control, that irritability,
all comes from the old self that wants
its own way and wants to establish its
own security and its own significance and its
own happiness.
All that was crucified in Jesus.
But only the Holy Spirit can make that
rail in your life.
You cannot make it rail by all the
prayers and all the self-effort that you
ever produce.
Only the Holy Spirit can make that rail.
That's His job.
That's why Jesus sent Him.
In other words, He's like the executor of
Jesus' last will and testament.
Jesus, in His last will and testament, has
left to us His life, the power of
His life, the ways of His own character.
But the Holy Spirit is the only one
who can make that rail in all of
us.
He is the executor of Jesus' will and
testament.
So it doesn't matter.
All that Jesus has done for us, loved
ones, is useless if the Holy Spirit were
not here to make it rail.
It's like filling this whole room with the
masterpieces that you could find in the Louvre
in Paris and in all the great museums
and art galleries and then switching out all
the lights and bringing you all in here
and me saying to you, aren't they beautiful
paintings?
And you say, they may be here, but
I can see nothing.
And then I switch the light on and
you see the magnificence of the paintings around
you.
Now it's so with the Holy Spirit.
Jesus has wrought mighty things for you.
Things that can change your life completely.
Things that can make you an entirely different
person.
But only the Holy Spirit can reveal all
that to you and make it all alive
and rail in your own life.
And loved ones, that's why the Holy Spirit
came.
You see, some of us have a tendency
to say, oh, but won't we end up
worshipping the Holy Spirit?
Won't we end up with all our eyes
upon Him?
Well, it's interesting.
Jesus said, don't be afraid of that.
The Holy Spirit is the third person of
the Trinity.
He is part of my family.
Don't worry.
You can never fear.
You do not need to stand back and
self-righteously think of doling out a little
bit of love to Jesus the Son, a
little bit of love to the Holy Spirit,
a little bit of love to God.
Jesus is saying, no, don't you see, you're
still involved in managing your own life, in
managing your own salvation.
You can trust the Holy Spirit.
And here's where He says it.
It's that same...
Matthew 12.
I'm sorry, it's John 16.
It's that same chapter.
John 16 and verse 13.
Just over the page a little from where
we were reading.
Jesus describes what the Holy Spirit will do.
John 16 and verse 13.
When the Spirit of truth comes, He will
guide you into all the truth.
For He will not speak on His own
authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak.
And He will declare to you the things
that are to come.
He will glorify Me, for He will take
what is Mine and declare it to you.
Jesus says, the Holy Spirit can be trusted.
He won't glorify Himself.
He won't draw your eyes to Himself.
He will glorify Me.
He will not bear witness to Himself, but
He will bear witness to Me.
Brothers and sisters, you can trust this dear
Holy Spirit.
You can treat Him as a real person.
Just as the disciples walked cautiously and carefully
with Jesus while He was on earth, so
Jesus intends you and me to walk carefully
and cautiously with the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is a dear person.
You see, Jesus is at the right hand
of God at the moment.
He's not here.
Do you know that?
The only sense in which Jesus is here
in this room at the moment is insofar
as the Holy Spirit is taking the things
of Jesus and making them real to us.
He's making Jesus' presence real to us.
But it's the Holy Spirit who does that.
He beams the presence of Jesus from the
right hand of God down into our lives
and down into this room at this moment.
But it's the Holy Spirit who does that.
And you can trust Him.
You can lean on Him.
To show you how important attention to Him
is, Jesus said, that is the only sin.
It's the only independence that cannot be forgiven.
Ignorance and indifference and neglect of the Holy
Spirit is the only sin that cannot be
forgiven.
Now, that's in Matthew 12.
Matthew 12 and verse 31.
It's page 846.
Therefore, I tell you, every sin and blasphemy
will be forgiven then.
But the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit or
against the Spirit will not be forgiven.
And whoever says a word against the Son
of Man will be forgiven.
But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will
not be forgiven.
Either in this age or in the age
to come.
See, all of you have heard the Holy
Spirit.
You may sit there and say, Oh, I
don't know what you're talking about.
But all of you have.
Every one of us here has heard the
Holy Spirit speak in our consciences.
At some point in our lives, we've heard
the voice of the Holy Spirit.
And, loved ones, Jesus says that if you
resolutely and deliberately turn your back on that
voice of the Holy Spirit within you and
keep turning your back and keep neglecting Him,
you will come to the point where you
will not be able to repent.
Because the Holy Spirit is the one who
creates real repentance in us.
And He can only create real repentance in
a will that submits to Him.
So if you keep on neglecting the voice
of the Holy Spirit, even listening to other
men and other women, or reading other books,
but not listening to the voice of the
Holy Spirit within you, then you will eventually
come to the point where your conscience will
be so hardened against Him that you will
no longer be able to hear that voice.
And therefore, you will never be able to
be brought to repentance.
And unless you repent, then God is not
able to make real His forgiveness.
So the Holy Spirit is important.
And you've heard His voice.
Really, even those of us who may be
here and don't believe anything about God or
anything about Jesus, you've heard His voice.
The Spirit that speaks in your conscience is
the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes He can only speak very faintly because
of the way we've manipulated His commands in
the past.
But He has spoken to all of us.
And loved ones, listening to that dear Holy
Spirit is the secret of having God real
in your life.
Because you see, He's a gentleman.
He does not blast in.
He will not come where He is not
welcomed.
So if you keep shrugging Him off, just
gently manipulating whatever command you sense in your
conscience, He speaks to you now.
You know your mind is not clean.
You know it's not clean.
It's not clean.
And keeps on saying that to you.
You know you are being harsh with that
person at home.
You know you are.
You're being unkind.
Keep saying it.
If you keep neglecting, neglecting, or start rationalizing
it, or diluting it, or watering it down,
eventually you will no longer be able to
hear the voice of the Holy Spirit.
And you will live out in your own
life an apparently good life, but not the
life of God.
Loved ones, the Holy Spirit is a gentleman.
You find it in Revelation 3 and 20.
Revelation 3 and 20.
It's page 1074.
1074.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
If anyone hears my voice and opens the
door, I will come in to him and
eat with him and he with me.
And see verse 22.
It's not Jesus who is speaking there, but
he who has an ear.
Let him hear what the Spirit says to
the churches.
The Holy Spirit will not obtrude upon your
conscience.
He will not obtrude into your consciousness.
He will wait for you to ask him
in and to listen to him and to
be interested in what he has to say.
Really.
I know it sounds strange, loved ones, but
do you see, he's a person.
That's why in Ephesians, God says, don't grieve
the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit can feel sorrow and pain.
He can feel a person being indifferent to
him.
He can feel a person's anger and irritability.
The Holy Spirit is a real person.
And unless you treat him gently and kindly
and treat him as a real person, you're
actually blaspheming against him.
You see how gross and crass is the
emphasis in so many of our religious circles.
I mean, it's not talking about a person
at all.
I know it's just a phrase.
I've found it.
I've lost it.
But we carry it on.
Have you got the baptism?
Ah, it's so crass.
It's so gross.
It's so inappropriate to the blessed person that
has taken such time with each one of
us and shown such patience to us.
And he's so gentle.
It's a caricature.
Have you got the baptism?
Can you speak in tongues?
Don't you see what a pain it must
be to him?
As we're all preoccupied with has he given
you tongues?
Has he given you this gift?
Or has he given you that gift?
It's just using a person.
These endless arguments about whether tongues is the
initial evidence of the baptism of the Holy
Spirit and the blessed Holy Spirit must often
stand outside the door in the midst of
those arguments and realize one thing they're not
interested in and that is me.
They may be interested in the spiritual parlor
games they can have.
They may be interested in the great miracles
that bring fame to themselves.
But me, they obviously aren't interested in.
Loved ones, the Holy Spirit is more precious
than all the gifts He gives.
He is more precious than all the fruit
that He bears in our lives.
And the strange thing is He'll give those
gifts and He'll bear those fruit as we
need them.
If we will be preoccupied with Him Himself,
if we will get to know the Holy
Spirit, Jesus' special counselor, to whom will God
give the Holy Spirit?
It's the last verse I'll ask you to
look up but I want you to look
it up because it's so clean and clear.
Acts 5 and 32.
Page 952.
952.
And Acts 5 and 32.
And we are witnesses to these things and
so is the Holy Spirit whom God has
given to those who obey Him.
And I know some of you are just
wriggling in your seats and saying, no, no,
no!
God gives the Holy Spirit to help us
obey.
Well, loved ones, you have to find a
manuscript that says that.
You have to get one of the 4
,000 Greek manuscripts that says that.
But the 4,000 that back up this
reading says, and so is the Holy Spirit
whom God has given to those who obey
Him.
God gives the Holy Spirit to those who
obey.
That's it.
You see, we're always saying, no, no, no!
Obedience is the final height and the final
peak of fellowship with God.
No.
Obedience is the minimal condition that enables God
to give the Holy Spirit to a person
so that they'll no longer have to be
preoccupied with techniques for making God real in
their lives.
Christendom is divided into skiers and snow bunnies.
That's right.
The skiers obey and they ski and they
receive the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit
makes God gloriously real in their lives, makes
the victory in Jesus' death real in them,
and they are just bubbling over with God's
life.
They're the skiers.
The snow bunnies look beautiful and they're at
all the meetings and they're at all the
churches and they study.
Oh boy, do they study.
Because they don't have the Holy Spirit.
Because they don't obey.
And so there's an emptiness in their life.
But they agree with all the skiing activity.
They like it.
They like to be around it.
They like to be on the slopes.
They like the whole atmosphere that's on the
slopes.
And they read all the books and they
study the kind of gear you should wear.
They never ski themselves.
They just study how to ski.
And they wonder why they don't have the
exhilaration of skiing.
Because they're always trying to think, how do
I do it?
How do I do it?
Now it's funny, I don't feel the excitement
of going down the slopes.
Now why?
Why?
And it's easy.
It's because they never ski.
They never obey.
They pretend to ski.
They maybe slide down a tiny little baby
slope now and again.
But they don't ever commit themselves wholly and
completely to the activity.
Now really, that's it.
Christendom is divided into those who obey and
those who study how.
That's it.
Into those who obey and those who try.
Into those who obey and those who have
endless counseling how to make God real in
their lives.
Now really, loved ones, honestly, the body of
Jesus consists of some people who have finally
got down to the point where they are
so desperate for God that they at last
obey.
They obey.
They cannot make themselves like Jesus.
Only the Holy Spirit can do that.
But they do obey.
They stop doing the things that God has
told them to stop doing and they do
the things that He has told them to
do.
And then the Holy Spirit comes in and
brings in a whole lot of other blessed
virtues that they cannot create in themselves, a
whole lot of supernatural qualities that they cannot
make themselves.
But the ones that they can do, they
do.
And then over here in the body of
Christ is a great group of camp followers
that like to be around the kind of
aura that is created by these people.
And they want it.
They honestly do.
Really, they do.
They really want God to be real in
their lives.
And they want to find out how to
do it without obeying and without ever having
to have their life governed moment by moment
by a person called the Holy Spirit.
Because deep down they feel they lose their
freedom if they ever come into that kind
of slavery.
And they don't realize that that slavery is
the only frail freedom.
That the Holy Spirit will never treat them
as a robot but will always treat them
as a dear friend.
Now, brothers and sisters, that's it, honestly.
And you'll find it true, honestly.
I know this is from God.
You'll find it true throughout your lives.
Whatever groups of religious people you ever get
into, you'll find those two great groups.
The group that obey and have actually received
the Holy Spirit into their lives and therefore
have a dynamic source of God's reality in
them so that they don't have to be
always preoccupied with the religious happenings that are
going on around them.
They don't always have to be fed by
new preachers or new speakers or new books.
And you have the other group who don't
want to obey and don't want to submit
themselves to the Holy Spirit and are repeating
the fall that took place in the Garden
of Eden daily.
That is, they're always preoccupied with methods and
techniques for making God real in them.
What I know the Father wanted me to
say this morning was the Holy Spirit, the
Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit,
the Holy Spirit.
He's real.
He's a dear person that changed my life
14 years ago and changed me from one
of those triers and one of those studiers
how into a person who knew God as
real in my own life.
The loved ones, the Holy Spirit.
Pay attention to Him.
You don't need me.
You don't need anybody.
You don't need any book.
You only need the dear Holy Spirit.
Pay attention to Him.
He'll lead you into the place Himself where
He can make Jesus' victory on Calvary real
to you.
So, do you understand?
Really, just in your own room, today when
you go home, make the acquaintance of the
Holy Spirit by faith, by believing that Jesus
has kept His promise and He sent Him
to you, and by obeying Him.
And the Holy Spirit's voice will grow louder
and louder as the days pass, and you'll
find what I found, that miraculously God became
real in my own life.
And I stopped the eternal counseling and the
eternal questioning to find out how, because I
found the only answer to the how is
the Holy Spirit.
Let us pray.
Dear Holy Spirit, I thank You that You
are real.
I thank You that You led me out
of my endless, vicious circles.
And I trust You, Holy Spirit, to do
the same for my brothers and sisters.
I ask You now to break through all
our misunderstandings, even of this message this morning.
And I ask You, Holy Spirit, to convince
us all that You are real.
And that we can actually treat You as
a dear friend.
And if we obey You, even when we
don't understand what You're telling us to do,
when we don't understand why You're telling us
to do it, if we obey You, You
will make real in us the particular victory
of Jesus that we need at this time.
Thank You.
Thank You that You alone have the right
to distribute the benefits of the atonement on
Calvary.
And we cannot grab them for ourselves or
make them real by any method or technique,
but only by honoring You and respecting You
and walking softly and carefully with You.
Thank You.
Thank You, Blessed Spirit.
Amen.