It's a pleasure to be with you again,
and by means of the miracle of electronics,
to be with some who will not be
present on the auditorium tonight.
I approach my subject tonight with fear and
trembling, different from what you have heard perhaps
before.
I spoke on the subject recently, and I
said that the subject was elementary, and a
brother said to me after the meeting, that
it was not quite so elementary and simple
as it sounded.
But I think I should attempt it, nevertheless,
for the help of the Lord, because I
think it's something that we all need to
know.
And if I may give a subject to
what I have to say tonight, the subject
would be the need for continuous quickening.
I know that we believe here in the
doctrine of eternal security, and what I'm going
to say tonight does not militate against the
doctrine of eternal security.
But I'm afraid there's an attitude among some
Christians that the Christian life is analogous to,
or can be compared at least, with the
orbiting of a satellite.
There's a great big blast off that comes
at the time that we're saved and we're
placed in orbit, and we sail in orbit
without any resistance, without any weight, for the
rest of our Christian experience.
That's not true.
That satellite sails in orbit indefinitely because there's
no resistance.
But the Christian meets with continual resistance all
through his life, and we need to be
quickened continually.
Now, we'll talk about that and make that
a little plainer, because we do have some
younger people here tonight.
But I want them to understand it, and
they'll be able to understand some of it
at least.
But the psalmist felt the need of continuous
quickening.
Now, I mean by that the continual life
-giving power of the Lord.
Now, I know the moment that we believe
in the Lord Jesus, we have everlasting life.
It's imparted to us that that life is
not self-sustaining, and the Lord must sustain
it.
And we can cut ourselves off from the
Lord just as effectively after we're saved as
before we were saved.
And to be cut off from the Lord
is spiritual death.
And we need quickening.
It's the same thought that the psalmist expresses
in the 21st Psalm.
He restoreth my soul.
It's a continuous process, and we need it.
Now, the psalmist, in the 119th Psalm, expressed
his need for quickening.
And I want to deal with the subject
tonight.
The need for continuous quickening under three headings.
First of all, the absence of it.
And then the means of it.
And then the results of it.
Here we have the absence of it tonight.
He says in the 25th verse of the
119th Psalm, My soul cleaveth unto the dust.
Quicken thou me according to thy word.
My soul cleaveth unto the dust.
That is, the dust of death.
The Scriptures tell us plainly, the Lord tells
us, Dust thou art, and the dust thou
shalt return.
And the psalmist says, My soul cleaveth unto
the dust.
Oh, it's so hard to get rid of
the dust.
And then he pleads, Quicken thou me according
to thy word.
I need to be quickened.
I need to be given life.
Now, what does he mean?
Well, we're going to seek to find out
what he means.
Because he indeed realizes, as we've all realized,
that we've reversed.
Even after God saves our souls, we've reversed
continually back to that state of death in
which we were before God saved our souls.
What do we mean by death, anyway?
Death is not annihilation.
Death is separation.
When we speak of physical death, we speak
of the separation of the body and the
soul, or rather the soul and the spirit
from the body.
The two are separated.
I know we think of death as an
annihilation because of the results of the body.
But God is going to raise that dust
someday.
And that body, though it seems to disintegrate
and carries with it our thoughts of death,
it's not a picture of death at all.
It's simply separation.
Now, spiritual death is separation from God.
That's what it is.
It's a separation from God, and when I'm
separated from him, by whatever means the separation
takes place, I am reverting to that state
that I was in before God saved my
soul.
The psalmist puts it another way, and this
time it's David.
I suppose that perhaps Daniel is the writer
of the 119th Psalm.
It's not attributed to David, and there are
some who feel that Daniel is the author.
But David has exactly the same feeling.
Psalm 28, please.
He says in the first verse of the
28th Psalm, "'Unto thee will I cry, O
Lord, my wrath.
Be not silent to me, resteth all.
Be silent to me, I become like them
that go down into the pit.'" There is
the result of the absence of continuous quickness.
"'I become like them that go down into
the pit.'" He reverts.
And a child of God can revert right
back to where he was before God saved
him.
He can get back into that state, and
I don't think we recognize it, and I
don't think we take the proper means of
preventing it.
We need to be continually quickened.
And if we're not in touch with God,
we revert.
I think that this would be a good
time right now to just simply consider this
a little more in detail.
Psalm chapter 17, if you please.
And then we'll know what we're talking about.
There the Lord, in his prayer of intercession,
says in verse 3, And this is like
eternal, that they might know thee, the only
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast
sent.
This is like eternal, that they might know
thee, even as the sun hath light.
And when we get saved, sometimes we're saved
as we receive eternal life.
I wonder sometimes if that might not be
more accurately stated if we say we enter
in upon eternal life.
We come in contact with the Lord in
a living contact with the Lord Jesus Christ,
and with God our Father, and that is
life.
Spiritual death is separation from the Lord, and
life is contact with the Lord to have
him within the focus of the vision of
our souls.
That's eternal life, to behold him.
And the Lord says, this is like eternal,
that they might know thee, the only true
God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
Now, for the opposite of this, let's notice
1 Timothy chapter 4.
Chapter 5, I'm sorry.
Chapter 5, verse
3, let's take a time.
Honor widows that are widows indeed.
But if any widow hath children or nephews,
let them learn first to show piety at
home and to requite their parents.
For that is good and acceptable before God.
Now, she that is a widow indeed and
desolate fasteth in God, and continueth in supplications
and prayers night and day.
But she that liveth in pleasure is dead
whilst she liveth.
What does that mean?
God is not in the focus of her
soul.
God is not before her.
And she is dead.
Does that mean she's lost her salvation?
Oh, no.
Because it says she's dead whilst she liveth.
Yes, she liveth.
But she is dead whilst she liveth.
God is not before her.
Her eyes, her thoughts have turned to pleasure.
The Lord is not her slave.
Now, the widow, in verse 5, is paid
upon the Lord.
She is passed upon the Lord, and she's
living.
This widow is not passed upon the Lord.
She's living in pleasure, and she's dead whilst
she liveth.
Now, she needs to be quickened.
And you and I need to be quickened.
Our life, indeed, is a life that needs
to be sustained by the God who gave
it to us.
It needs to be quickened by the God
who gave it to us.
Notice Psalm 143, if you please.
Now, I think before the meeting is over,
you're going to find out that this is
your experience.
I know there's such a deal, perhaps, that
you don't understand of what I'm driving at
right now.
But I trust with the help of the
Lord that we will understand what we're talking
about, and we will recognize it in our
own experience.
The psalmist says in verse 6 of the
143rd Psalm, I stretch forth my hands unto
thee, my soul thirsteth after thee.
As a thirsty land, felah.
A thirsty land is a place of death.
A desert.
Now, this man, in his experience, he says,
My soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty
land.
Therein, in this much cold, David could say,
My moisture is turned into the drowsiness from
it.
And the psalmist feels, and the psalmist is
Simon David, the psalmist feels that long for
the Lord.
And then he goes on to say, Hear
me speedily, O Lord.
My spirit sailors.
He's threatening.
My spirit sailors, hide not thy face from
me, lest I be like unto them that
go down into the pit.
He reversed that.
I have heard some sad things on this
trip eastward.
Not about you people here, particularly, at all.
But I have heard of some grave disappointments
in some people who have professed to be
the children of God.
And I felt the need to dismiss them,
because those who are truly saved by getting
away from God and getting them out of
their focus, can go right back to where
they were before God reached them.
The flesh is never saved.
The flesh in you and me is not
even modified.
It's not even inhibited.
It's irritated.
And it's there, and it will claim us
if it can.
We need continuous quickening.
Now, here are two, and the absence of
continuous quickening will cause the soul to revert
to death, and it will cause the life
to resemble a heathen.
Now, something else it will do.
It will fill our souls with bitterness.
In the 73rd Psalm, we see an example
of this.
Let's see what the man in the 73rd
Psalm has his eye upon.
Some of you know it so well.
Apostle says, Truly God is good to Israel,
even to such as are of a keen
heart.
But as for me, my feet were almost
gone, my depth had well-nigh split, for
I was envious of the foolish when I
saw the prosperity of the wicked.
For there are no bands in their depth,
but their strength is firm.
Apostle has his eyes in the wrong place.
He has his eyes upon the weakest, and
their prosperity and his eyes are not on
the Lord.
And his soul becomes filled with bitterness.
And he even hesitates to talk about it
in his admiration for the unsaved, or his
envy of the unsaved, perhaps we'd better say.
And he doesn't dare talk about it because
he has enough conscience that he doesn't want
to offend or stumble any other child of
God.
And he says in verse 15, Well, verse
14, For all the day long have I
been plagued and chastened every morning, in contrast
to the ease of the life of the
prosperous wicked.
Then he says in verse 15, If I
say I will speak thus, behold, I should
offend against the generation of thy children.
When I thought to know this, it was
too painful for me until I went into
the sanctuary of God.
Then understood I their end.
Now, that forsaken child, he says in verse
21, Thus my heart was grieved and I
was put in my reign so foolish was
I and ignorant I was as a thief
before thee.
Nevertheless, I am continually with thee.
Thou hast told of me by my right
hand.
Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel and
afterwards receive me to glory.
Whom have I in heaven but thee?
And there is none that I desire, there
is none upon earth that I desire besides
thee.
My flesh and my heart, faileth, but God
is the strength of my heart and my
fortune forever.
Abel kept his eyes on the Lord and
the bitterness ended.
Now, these are the results of the lack
of continuous prudence and quantity to the unsaved
about us reverting back to the old ways
of death, or how we need to be
refined, how we need to be quickened The
life that we have within us appreciates the
things of God, but that life must be
fed, it must be sustained.
Now, let's talk about the means of quickening.
Certainly it is to apprehend God and to
have him before us.
Now, we apprehend things in this life by
means of our five senses, and here's something
that the boys and girls will be interested
in, too.
We apprehend and we have consciousness in this
life through five senses, that is, the sense
of sight, the sense of hearing, we're using
both of those senses right now, the sense
of taste, the sense of smelling, and the
sense of touch.
Now, through the exercise of those five senses
we have what we call consciousness.
Now, take away those senses.
What have we got?
Well, if we take away those five senses,
we're either unconscious or dead.
Now, if we take away one of those
senses, we've lost something.
But God, in all his wisdom, has made
it so that if one sense disappears, say,
for instance, the sense of sight, then the
other senses compensate and they become more acute
and more sensitive so that we can get
along quite well.
Now, it would be a terrible thing to
lose our sight and to lose our hearing,
both.
That would be awful.
It happened once to a little girl by
the name of Helen Keller.
She's long since now passed away.
But that little girl was totally blind and
totally deaf.
How would you reach a person like that?
They would be away from you.
How would you reach them?
You can't speak a word into their ears.
They can't see you.
Totally isolated, as if at the bottom of
a...
a chaff of a mine, or back in
a dungeon with nobody around.
Have you ever tried to contemplate what that
would mean?
And I think of the wonder of that
instructor that brought that little girl out of
that oblivion into consciousness with other people so
that Helen Keller became, indeed, an uneducated woman,
yet even a lecturer.
Through the patience of that instructor.
Now, that's what happens when we lose our
senses.
Now, just as we have physical senses, we
have spiritual senses, which are the counterpart of
our physical senses.
Now, through those senses, spiritual senses, we have
contact with God, and we live.
We have consciousness.
God-consciousness.
I think I told the boys and girls
here once about an experience that I had
when I was trying to illustrate the fact
of how we can know whether we're saved
or not to a group of boys and
girls.
And some people actually have to say, Well,
I just don't know whether I'm saved or
not.
I wonder about a statement like that.
Well, I was trying to show some boys
and girls the foolishness of making a statement
like that.
Now, maybe I'm talking to somebody here tonight.
I don't know.
But if I am, good.
Have you ever wondered whether or not you're
really saved or not?
Well, chances are, if you've wondered whether or
not you're really saved, you may well not
be saved.
Do I have to wonder whether or not
I'm alive?
I said to one of the little boys
in the audience, I said, Philip, are you
alive?
Or he looked up and he said, Yes.
I said, can you prove it?
Well, he looked at me and his mouth
kind of came open.
Well, how do you go about proving you're
still alive?
I said, are you alive?
Yes.
I said, well, prove it.
Well, he thought and he thought, and well,
how was he going to prove that he
was alive?
And he couldn't answer me.
He was sure he was alive, but he
couldn't prove it.
Well, a little girl spoke up and she
raised her hand and I said, what do
you have to say about this?
And she says, well, I can see.
And oh, it caught on then.
And another little child says, well, I can
hear.
And another child says, I can feel.
Well, you know what they did.
They went through the five senses.
They knew they were alive because they had
those senses.
Now, you and I have spiritual senses and
I can't quite understand the person who says
they don't know whether or not they're safe.
I can't quite understand that.
I know whether I've got physical life or
not and I'm very dogmatic about it.
I'm sure I have.
Now, should it be any harder to determine
whether or not I have spiritual life?
Couldn't be.
Because I've got spiritual senses.
If you talk about them, notice, if you
will please, in Hebrews chapter 5, these things
are basic, but after all, we'd better find
out whether we have got spiritual life or
not.
It's a good thing.
Hebrews chapter 5 and verse 14.
Just for sake of time, we'll read, and
that's only the one verse, but, "...strongly belongs
to them that are of full age, even
those who by reason of youth have their
senses exercised to discern both good and evil."
Now, our senses, our physical senses, can be
exercised to discern both good and evil.
For instance, if you go to the stove
and you forget that you've just turned off
the burner and you touch that burner, your
senses are exercised right now.
And you've decided that you've discovered something very
evil and you get your finger out of
there in a hurry.
Now, we have spiritual senses, and they combinate
in the functioning of the...
Oh, that's a big word, isn't it?
I'm used to using big words like that.
Well, boys and girls, yeah, but I'm not
going to have to do that yet.
I'll use one word for the adults.
The functioning of those spiritual senses gives us
consciousness of God.
We know we're saved.
We know we're saved, just exactly as we
know we have physical life.
Now, the working of our spiritual senses gives
us contact with God, and we know he's
there, and we know he's listening.
Now, let's look at some of them.
Let's look at Ephesians chapter 1, verse
15, the prayer of the apostle, Therefore I
also, after I have heard of your faith
in the Lord Jesus and love unto all
the saints, teach not to give thanks for
you, making mention of you in my prayers,
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of glory, may give unto you
the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the
knowledge of him.
The eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that
ye may know what is the hope of
his calling, and what the richness of the
glory of his inheritance in his kingdom, and
what is the exceeding greatness of his power
to those who believe.
Now, the spiritual eyes are enlightened to see
some of these things.
We have spiritual eyes.
Spiritual eyes that see.
Now, look for a moment at 2 Corinthians
chapter 4.
Chapter 4, verse 16, For which cause we
faint not, I'm going to break in to
the text, For which cause we faint not,
but rather though our outward man perish, yet
the inward man is removed day by day.
For our light affliction, which is but for
a moment, worketh for us a far more
exceeding and eternal way to glory, while we
look not at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are not seen.
For the things which are seen are temporal,
but the things which are not seen are
eternal.
Now, here we have that famous paradox.
While we look not at the things which
are seen, but at the things which are
not seen.
We look at the things that are not
seen.
How do you do that?
Through spiritual eyesight, believe me.
Now, the things that we can see are
not real.
Now, don't judge me too quickly on this,
until you follow me through.
I'm not a mystic, but what I mean
is this.
If you can see it, it's temporal.
Anything that you can see, this picture, this
pulpit, anything that you can see, it's temporal.
It's not going to last.
In the end, actually, it's going to be
burned up.
Peter talks about that coming day.
If you can see it, it's temporal.
But the things which you cannot see are
eternal and they're real.
I'm talking about the soul.
I'm talking about the spirit.
That's the real thing.
We talk about real estate.
There's no such thing as real estate under
the meaning of the term that we use
it for.
That's very unrealistic.
It's heresy.
Now, the immediate context is the body.
The subject here is introduced in verse 16.
The apostle says, For which cause we faint
not, but though our outward man perish.
Yet the inward man is renewed day by
day.
It's the outward man that's perishing.
Now, this body, I can see it, I
can feel it.
Therefore, it's temporal.
It isn't going to last.
The soul I can't feel, see, and feel
with it.
The spirit I can't see, it's eternal.
It's going to last forever.
Notice the context.
It goes right on in chapter five.
We've got a chapter division there.
For we know that if our earthly house
of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a
building of God.
And a house not made with hands.
Eternal in the heavens.
Immediate context.
Context is the body.
We can see it there for a second.
But ah, there's a body coming for us.
That's eternal.
We can't see it.
It's made without hands.
Now, it's amazing what spiritual life can do.
Let's turn to Hebrews.
Hebrews chapter 11.
We read of Moses, verse 24, "...by faith
Moses, when he was come to Europe, refused
to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter,
choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people
of God than to enjoy the pleasures of
sin for a season, receiving the reproach of
Christ's greater riches than the treasures in Egypt,
for he had respect unto the recompense of
the reward.
By faith he proceeded, not fearing the wrath
of the king, for he endured as seeing
him who was invisible."
Moses saw him who was invisible.
The Lord says of Abraham, "...Abraham rejoiced to
see my day in Zion."
He had good spiritual eyesight.
He could see a long way spiritually.
Moses endured as seeing him who was invisible.
You and I are encouraged to use our
spiritual eyesight, too.
We read, for instance, in chapter 12, where
foreseeing we also are compassed about what so
great a cloud of witness is.
Let us lay aside every weight in the
sin which doth so easily beset us, and
let us run with patience the race that
is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the
author and painter of our faith, who for
the joy that was set before him endured
the cross, despising the shame, and is set
down at the right hand of the throne
of God.
Looking unto Jesus.
Yes, God wants him to be within the
focus of our spiritual eyesight.
How is that sense working, incidentally?
Is it working good?
Do we have good spiritual eyesight?
You know, we have spiritual hearing, too.
We have a sense, spiritually speaking, in our
souls that corresponds with a physical sense of
hearing.
The Lord Jesus says, "...My sheep hear my
voice, and I know them, and they fall
in me, and I give unto them eternal
life, and they shall never perish, neither shall
any man pluck them out of my hand."
My sheep, the Lord might have put the
emphasis this way, my sheep hear my voice.
Do we hear his voice?
Does the Lord speak to you and me?
Do we know he's speaking to us?
Now, really now, what do we know about
that?
Is that just an expression?
Or do we know, on occasion, do these
spiritual ears of ours hear the voice of
the Lord speaking to us?
Not an audible voice.
Do we know that the Lord is speaking
to us?
I think we do.
The Lord Jesus says, at the end of
the Laodicean letter, he says, "...Behold, I stand
at the door, and knock.
If any man hear my voice, and open
the door, I will come in to him,
and talk with him, and he will hear
me."
Can we hear his voice?
Yes.
Still, small voice has said to me on
many occasions, you've read that newspaper long enough.
Just be sure that you read your Bible
just as much as you do the newspaper.
And you've read the newspaper long enough.
You should read your Bible.
I have heard that it is.
Do you have that experience?
The Lord Jesus knocks on our heart's door,
and we're convicted immediately.
I ought to be praised.
I ought to be reading my Bible.
The Lord wants entrance.
He wants to speak with me.
He wants to have fellowship with me.
"...If any man hear my voice, and open
the door, I will come in to him,
and talk with him, and he will hear
me."
What do we know of him?
Does he speak to us?
Do we hear his voice?
Do we have the experience of when we
have problems, of going to the Lord, this
old problem, and asking him for help.
We sit down and we open up the
Word of God, and right there on the
written page is the solution for our problem.
As if the Lord were telling us what
to do.
Do we hear his voice?
Does he speak to us out of this
Word?
Do you hear the voice of the Lord
speaking to you?
If you don't, you may not have life.
If you can't see the Lord, but here's
a lifeline if you can.
Here is voice speaking to you.
If this Bible doesn't speak to your heart,
then you don't have life.
Then you don't have life.
Is it a dry book to you?
Come on now.
Is it a dry book?
Do you ever hear his voice?
Then you know.
I think there's such a thing as spiritual
taste.
Jeremiah spoke about eating his Word, and it
was delicious to his taste.
Some of these times I'm going to sit
down and learn this verse like a Sunday
school, in personal energy.
I have done that, but I'll teach it
again.
He says, Thy words were found, and I
did eat them, and thy word was unto
me the joy and the blessing of my
heart.
For I call, for I am called by
thy name, O Lord, of God of hosts.
And then he speaks of food in the
Bible, but there's the milk of the Word.
I don't do that.
It tastes good.
Milk tastes good.
I love it.
Then there's the strong meat of the Word
of God.
The milk, Christ, in his humility.
And the meat, Christ, in his invocation, in
his glory.
Spiritual food.
Did you taste it?
How about it?
You know, we're so anxious to get our
free meal today, and I don't miss one
either.
I'm right there.
I'm right there when the dinner call is
given.
I don't miss any of my meals.
Perfectly.
And how about this book?
Have you tasted the good words of God?
Has it strengthened us?
What about the milk of the Word?
When he said of Jeremiah, it was sweet
in my taste.
Now that is the exercise of a spiritual
faith.
We have more than that.
We have the sense of spiritual touch.
I think I can probably get at this
better in a negative sort of way.
Turn with me to 1 Timothy chapter 4,
please.
Now the Spirit speaketh, especially that in the
latter times some shall depart from the faith,
giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of
devils, seeking lives in hypocrisy, having their conscience
sheared with a hot iron.
Now I think if you permit me my
views on this, and I don't know what
else you can do, but permit me to
have my views.
You can question them, but you must let
me have my opinion on this.
I think that the spiritual sense of touch
is our conscience.
We need to have a tender conscience.
Now the apostle speaks here of those who
have a seared conscience with a hot iron.
You know what happens when you touch, you
ladies, if you touch your finger to a
hot iron, or you men, perhaps you pick
up a spool of cloth for the hold
of a welding iron or something like that.
You know what happens.
Your skin gets smooth and shiny and seared,
and it gets stiff as a board, and
you can hardly feel anything.
You see, that's just like conscience.
Conscience can be used so much that it
becomes calloused, it becomes seared.
And I think that the Christian has a
sense of touch in a sort of way.
His conscience is his sensitivity.
It is our conscience's sensitivity toward the Lord.
Do we have a sense of touch?
Are we in touch with God?
Do we see real action?
Does our conscience indeed have that point of
contact with the Lord?
Now the spiritual sense of smell is a
little bit harder to come by, but I
think you've seen it.
2 Corinthians chapter 3, if you see.
Chapter 2, I'm sorry.
2 Corinthians chapter 2.
Verse 14.
Now, thanks be unto God, which always hosts
us to triumph in Christ, making manifest the
favor of his knowledge by us in every
place.
For we are unto God a each favor
of Christ, in them that are saved and
in them that perish.
To the one we are the favor of
death unto death, to the other the favor
of life unto life.
Now, three people, or three persons, smell the
Christian.
There's the smell of God, we hope, about
him.
God smells him, first of all, and he
smells Christ.
The unsaved smell us, and the saved smell
us.
Now, I'm borrowing.
This is figurative language, but I think...
Let's talk about the sense of smelling a
little bit, before we go any farther than
this.
I think it's one of the most remarkable
senses that we've got.
The sense of smelling is so keen that
the sense of a...
Skunk, pardon me for mentioning it, is what
it recalls to your mind.
It's so...the sense of smell is so keen
that I have forgotten my exact figure, but
one part in something like a million or
a hundred million, I have forgotten what it
is, is discernible in a note.
Mr. Skunk has just walked across the scene
a mile down there, Mr. Skunk.
And you go into animals, and it's even
more remarkable in animals.
You can walk along here, and the red
-tongued dogs can follow you hours after you've
gone by.
Smelling is that.
It's a remarkable sense.
And you know we have a spiritual sense
of smell.
You can smell a person.
There's a smell of Christ about him.
And you can tell him off to every
person, too.
The spiritual sense of smell.
Others are acquainted.
They're aware of the fact that we belong
to God.
We hope they are.
We hope there's a smell of Christ about
him.
Now, the exercise of all these spiritual senses
gives us God's consciousness.
And he is in the focus of these
spiritual senses.
These are in connection with a life.
Now, first of all, you've got to have
a life to appeal to.
I've got to have physical life in my
body for my senses to appeal to that
life.
And I've got to have a spiritual life
that comes to me when I'm born again.
The Spirit of God puts the life of
Christ within me.
And that life feels after God and knows
God.
And moves in a spiritual sphere through its
spiritual senses.
The counterpart of our physical senses.
All right, now.
We've gone a long way to get to
this one.
What do you see about a person?
You neither see, nor hear, nor smell, nor
taste, nor feel.
You neither see, nor hear, nor smell, nor
taste, nor feel.
What about him?
Too far gone, isn't he?
He's either unconscious or dead.
Now, what do you hear?
What do you see about a Christian that
never sees the Lord?
He's not in the focus of the eyes
of our understanding.
He doesn't hear his voice.
He doesn't taste his good words.
He didn't sense his Christ.
And he's not so before.
His conscience is not disturbed about his taste
before God.
What do you say about him?
Well, I'll tell you what.
He needs strickening.
This life, thank God, can be appealed to.
But we need to have strength before.
We need to be in contact with him.
Now, when we are in contact with Christ,
and let's get down to the results of
continuous strickening.
We've talked about the means of it.
And the different senses that God has given
us to give us contact with him, and
how anybody can see, and that they're not
sure whether or not they're saved, is a
kind of a puzzle to me.
With five good spiritual senses to apprehend God,
we ought to be able to make up
our minds whether or not we're saved.
Are we?
Let's taste it.
Are we?
All right.
Now, here's what happens.
Here's what happens when we do get in
contact with God.
Everybody around us knows it.
You know, when a child, when a physical
child is born into this world, everybody around
him knows it.
At least we knew when Arthur was born
into this world.
They let you know about it.
And when a person is born into the
family of God, I think the same thing
is true, too, in another race.
They let you know about it, too.
You can tell when a child has really
been born into the family of God.
Now, can others tell when we have been
stricken?
Can others tell when we have been in
the presence of the Lord this person has
been?
I think of Moses, who was on the
mount when the presence of God for forty
days and forty nights.
And when he came down from that mountain,
his face was shining.
He'd been in the presence of the Lord.
Now, Moses didn't realize it until he came
into the camp, and they were afraid of
him.
And when they backed off from Moses, they
were afraid of him, because his face was
shining.
And you know, it's possible even for Christians
to be afraid of you, because your face
is shining.
You may not be conscious of it being
shining, but when you're in the presence of
the God who is light, your face is
shining.
When we've been in his presence, and some
who marvel at the wisdom and the addressedness
of the apostles in the early days acknowledge
that they have been with Jesus.
You can tell when they've been with Jesus.
And others can tell, as well, when we
have been stricken.
Now, I don't mean that we become dynamic,
that we become leaders by it.
I think that people can tell when you've
been in the presence of the Lord.
And they seek your presence, and they enjoy
the sweet smell, because they can smell something
that's very sweet.
You need to be in the presence of
the Lord.
You need to behold him.
You need to be put in.
Now, if spiritual death really is, if we
will admit to that definition of spiritual death,
that it's separation from God, we may very
effectively separate ourselves from him in our lives.
As a matter of fact, haven't you had
the experience at the end of the day,
when you pull the Lord on your knees,
Lord, I don't want tomorrow to be like
today.
I don't want tomorrow to be like today.
I want to get in your presence.
And I'm just glad this day's over with.
And I'm just glad that I can close
the day, and Lord, don't let tomorrow be
like today.
And we get into the, oh, we long
for the presence of the Lord.
May that be our experience, more and more.
To feel out for him, and I'm satisfied
to be away from him.
I've cut myself off from him, and I've
said to myself, and all of you have
said this to yourself tonight, I've said to
the Lord at the end of the day,
Lord, I've been nothing different today than a
heathen.
No contact.
Lost.
I've been separated from him by one means
or another.
Now, that doesn't mean that I'm lost in
my spiritual life.
That doesn't mean that.
But it means that my spiritual senses have
not been officiating, not been feeling out for
him.
I need to be present.
And this is a continuous process in your
life and mine.
Others will be blessed when we get into
the presence of the Lord.
We could talk about the Holy Spirit and
the Royal Spirit.
We have to go in before we come
out.
Others will be blessed, and our lives will
be a blessing for the Lord.
May God help us to learn these things
experimentally.
And in the will of the Lord, tomorrow
night, we won't try to be harnessed to
Him as perhaps we were tonight.
These things have been basic, but I think
that they are things that we recognize in
our own personal experience.
Oh, if there ever was a day when
it was harder to concentrate upon the Lord
and keep him within the focus of the
vision of our souls.
This is the day.
But if that keeps up, continually, day after
day after day, we're going to reverse.