Eternal life gives to the believer an unknown element the world had never before had. It is a thing that Peter called “joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8).
We understand that happiness comes from environment, but joy comes from within and is a product of the new creation.
We found that the martyrs had joy unspeakable even when dying in physical agony. That stirred the multitudes that thronged about, but it startled the thinking portion of the crowds. How could they be so full of joy when they knew that death was near?
Others have witnessed joy in the midst of deepest sorrow.
It is an unquenchable something.
Evangelists have discovered that joy is the secret of real evangelism. The joyful Christians are a good advertisement.
In John 15:11, Jesus says these strange words, “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.”
In giving the great charter promise in regard to the use of His name, Jesus said, “Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:24).
That is a thought-arresting phrase: “that your joy may be full.”
In John 17:13, Jesus speaks these words, “And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.”
This is the very climax of this divine life.
We are going to find something in the name of Jesus that will give us joy in a measure that we have never known before.
I know the thrill that came to me years ago when I saw one of my teachers at Bethel Bible Institute come back from the jaws of death because of the power in that name.
I saw a dead arm that had been useless for years become perfectly well and normal instantly at that almighty name.
When I saw broken bones instantly made whole, a strange joy, an unspeakable thing, filled me.
When Brother Fredericks of Seattle was healed, his dead paralyzed hands instantly became normal. The body that was ninety-five percent dead, according to the hospital authorities, became a new body. The cancer of the colon stopped being. The neuralgia of the heart stopped. The stomach that could not digest food was instantly perfect. The legs that were almost useless became strong and normal in a moment.
It was the power and authority enwrapped in the name of Jesus.
I have seen people with arthritis perfectly delivered in that name.
I have noticed in evangelistic meetings that it is the joyful, living testimony that stirs the people.
It is the person who is so full of joy that he can hardly speak as the tears stream down his face who moves the people.
In other words, it is the joyful confession that touches hearts.
The reluctant, hesitant confession shows that the one who is speaking is not certain that the Word will make good, or has made good.
Faith’s Confession
Faith’s confession is always a joyful confession. It confesses that we have the money before it has arrived. It confesses perfect healing while the pain is still in the body. It confesses victory while defeat still holds it captive.
Your confession is based upon the living Word. You say, “I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded that He is not only able to make good, but He is making good now in my case.”
I prayed for one who was very ill. After I had finished praying, the person said, “I know I am going to get well.”
I knew that we were defeated, and I said to her, “When are you going to get well?”
She said, “I do not know when, but I know I will, for the Word cannot fail me.”
I said, “No, but you have failed the Word. The Word is now. Faith is now. Is the Word true in your case?”
She said, “Yes, indeed it is true.
I said, “Then by His stripes, what?”
She saw it. “Why, by His stripes I am healed,” she said.
“When?”
She said, “Now.”
I said, “You had better get up and dress then.”
I remember an aged man in Fredericton, New Brunswick, a deacon in the Baptist church there, who came down with double pneumonia. Several of the local pastors and I went up to pray for him. I anointed him and we prayed. After we prayed, he said with a strong voice, “Wife, get my clothes, I am getting up.” That was joy acting on the Word.
When we confess the Word with joy, it brings conviction to the listeners.
Romans 10:10 says, “For with the heart man believeth.” I like to put it like this: “For with the heart, man acts on the Word.”
The heart acts, which drives the lips to confession.
A doubting heart is a sense-ruled heart.
A fearless confession comes from a Word-ruled heart. The Word dominates their heart life and they speak as did Paul, “I know whom I have believed” (2 Timothy 1:12).
In Acts 27, as Paul stood on the deck of that ship in the midst of the awful storm, he said to the shipmen and the soldiers, “Sirs, be of good cheer: for I believe God” (verse 25). He had told those wondering men that they would all get to shore safely but the ship would be lost. (See verse 22.)
He encouraged them to eat breakfast, broke bread, and gave thanks in the midst of them. He gave them more than bread; he gave them courage.
Paul had a faith-filled, joyous confession.
Only a heart that is nourished on the Word can stand in these hard places.
When we know that the Word is God speaking to us now, it is not difficult to act upon it,
Psalm 119:89 declares that the Word “is settled in heaven.” When I read that, I saw that it must be settled in my heart. I would no longer try to settle it. I knew that no Word from God was void of fulfillment. I was no longer afraid to act upon it.
The Word became more real to me than any word man had ever spoken. My lips were filled with laughter, my heart was filled with joy, and I had a victorious confession.
How many times have I seen the hesitant confession be a forerunner of failure and the joyful confession be a forerunner of victory?
When we fearlessly act upon the Word and joyfully cast our every care on Him, victory is as sure as the rising of the sun.
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The Relation of Confession to Wisdom and Success
One does not enjoy more of the reality of spiritual truth than he confesses. Man’s faith is measured by his confession. His joy is measured by his confession.
We receive wisdom only in the measure that we confess that Christ is our wisdom.
We should make this confession continually:
I thank You, Father, that You made Jesus wisdom unto me. I know that today, as I walk in fellowship with the Word, His wisdom will be mine at every crisis.
This continual confession of Christ as your wisdom will transform your entire conduct. You will find that your conversation will take on a loftier aspect; your thinking will swing out of the old groove that your inferiority complex has given you into a new realm of positive action. There will be the consciousness of cooperation with Him.
This is not psychology or metaphysics. This is absolute fact: God becomes a part of our very consciousness.
This continual confession will eventually give our spirit control of our reasoning faculties.
We must continually reiterate this truth, for wisdom is not of the intellect. It cannot be imparted to us by man. This kind of wisdom comes down from above and comes in response to our acting on the Word.
It will be well to pause a moment in our activities and let Him take us over in our spirit consciousness.
God only responds to us as we act upon His Word.
The electricity is in your room. It is wired and everything is in perfect condition. All you need to do is touch the button or flip the switch.
So it is in this divine life. The ability of God is at your disposal. It is there with you. The fact is, in a very large measure, it is in you, but it lies dormant until you act upon the Word.
In other words, until you place your utter dependence in Him and expect Him to cooperate with you, God’s ability lies dormant in you.
There must grow in you the sense of His presence in you, learning to depend on Him and expecting Him to respond to you moment by moment as you need Him. This will develop in you a spiritual sensitivity to His Spirit. You will discover His ability gaining the ascendancy over your faculties, until after a while, you will live in the realm of the superman.
What We Need to Put Us Over
I am conscious that you who are reading this book are hungry for success, whether it be in the financial, political, social, or spiritual realm. You are not content with yourself as you are.
My part in the drama is to awaken in you the hidden forces that you already possess and begin to draw them out.
The word educate means to draw out. We have thought that it meant to cram and load our minds with facts. That is not education. That is accumulation of knowledge that may be of no value whatsoever.
I remember when 80 percent of the theological course was nonusable knowledge in actual ministry. That showed a lack of wisdom on the part of the instructors. It should have been 80 percent usable knowledge and 20 percent nonusable.
It is a known fact that 80 percent of the knowledge that is accumulated in schools, colleges, reading, and observation is not used by the average person. We are not using more than 10 percent of our abilities and knowledge.
Here is a man who knows it is not good to smoke, but he smokes just the same. He knows it is not good for his body to stay up half the night carousing and dancing. He knows that he is not living up to his knowledge. He knows he should not make a glutton of himself, he should not eat certain things and drink certain things. He is not using his knowledge. He lacks wisdom. If that man were wise, he would cut out the drinking and smoking at once.
If that woman were wise, she would not smoke another cigarette.
You know you should spend more time in study. You know you should stop wasting your time in foolish conversation and talk, and begin to utilize the forces in you and the opportunities that you can make for study and mental improvement.
You know that you could have an increase in salary where you work if you applied yourself, but you are living to gratify your senses. The thing you need is wisdom.
Wisdom is crying at the gate; her voice is heard at the portal of every business, and men are heedless of her warning. They are not using the gifts that God has given to them. They are not acting on the knowledge that will make them successful and happy.
Wisdom’s cry is ignored.
Do you want to go over the top? Are you unsatisfied with your salary? All right then, let us take inventory. What have you in you that is worthwhile?
Two things are necessary: first, find the gift; second, drive yourself to develop that gift until it is of commercial value.
Maybe you have a good voice, but it is of no value to you. If it were developed and trained, it would bring a splendid income.
You are saying, “I have a good voice; I have natural ability.” It has a thrill in it when you are about eighteen or twenty years of age, but if that gift is not developed when you are thirty, you are ashamed, and you take the position that your inferiority complex is forcing upon you. You are getting the spirit of a conquered, whipped person, rather than that of a dominant one.
Perhaps you have some other ability. It lies there dormant like gold in the stream, where a thousand boats have passed over it, and thousands of men and women have bathed in the waters. Beneath their feet was a fortune, but they did not know it.
You have seen all this ability in yourself; you have played with it as carelessly as those swimmers, or as those men and women who are riding over that gold.
Wisdom is crying today. She has made her feast; she is inviting you to come and join her, but you persist in rejecting her solicitations and ignoring her warnings.
I wonder if you ever read the first chapter of Proverbs?
Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: she crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying, How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you. Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me. (Proverbs 1:20–28)
Why? Because you hated wisdom. You would not let God give to you what belonged to you.
All over the land, men and women are suffering the penalty of turning down wisdom. Every city has its rendezvous of broken lives, wrecked manhood or womanhood. Every large city has its skid row. Go down there any warm night and see the streets literally jammed with men and women. Every one of them are failures. The majority show by their faces that they had talent and ability. Many of them are college men. What is the trouble? It is lack of wisdom.
Yet, wisdom is available to every man. No man needs to be a failure.
Here are some facts on which you can base your legal rights to wisdom.
I am going to prove to you that the ability of God is at your disposal, that the mind of God can be absorbed by your mind, the will of God can be incorporated into your will, and the health and vigor of God can become a part of your body, so that you will have the strength of God, the ability of God, and the wisdom of God.
If this is not a challenge, then what can challenge the ambitious?
You may have His wisdom in your daily life. Not only is that a promise, but it is absolute certainty. You may have cooperation with the source of all wisdom.
It is a wonderful thing to have a lawyer on whom you can call for his opinion in doubtful problems, but here is something infinitely beyond any lawyer that money can employ. Here is the ability of God at your disposal.
Colossians 1:12 says, “Giving thanks to the Father, who has made us fit for sharing the portion of the saints in light” (DBY).
He has given to you the ability. It is in you. When you were born again, you received His nature, His substance, and His life; along with that, new birth was offered to you, the Holy Spirit continually in your body.
When Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would come and lead us into all truth, He meant exactly what He said.
God’s ability is freely offered to every one of us.
Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:13–14)
He has delivered us out of the authority of darkness.
Turn to 2 Corinthians 4:3–4 and see the condition of the average mind:
If also our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in those that are lost; in whom the god of this world has blinded the thoughts of the unbelieving, so that the radiancy of the glad tidings of the glory of the Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine forth for them. (DBY)
That is a serious thing. The minds of the unbelieving are blinded.
And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting. (Romans 1:28 ASV)
They refused to have God’s knowledge, God’s wisdom and ability, so He withdrew and left them alone.
Satan came in and filled their minds with darkness.
Look at the heathen nations; look at the nations that are without God and the nations devastated by war. Do you see the darkness of the human mind?
This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness [or hardening] of their heart. (Ephesians 4:17–18)
This is the natural mind that God has redeemed out of this darkness, yet so few take advantage of this redemption.
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:17–18)
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This darkened mind, this mind held in subjection by ignorance, now comes in contact with God. The spirit is recreated, receives the nature and life of God, and the mind now becomes renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.
The moment that the spirit is recreated, the mind may be renewed and brought into perfect harmony with the recreated spirit by the study of the Word. It may take a little time, but it is worth the effort.
When this mind is renewed and brought into fellowship with the recreated spirit, then we are able to receive the wisdom from God.
Wisdom is in the Word of God. The Spirit will illuminate the Scripture and you will understand the mind of the Father.
I have been amazed, in my own searching after these mighty truths, to see how real they become to the human consciousness.
The basic law of wisdom is found in love. Wisdom never acts out of love. Wisdom always follows after love. God is all wise, but God is love. All of God’s activities are in the realm of love. God never acts outside of love. If justice is demanded, it is demanded by love.
When this mighty truth really gains the ascendancy, then this new kind of love will dominate your thinking and conduct. You understand, it is the nature of the Father manifesting itself in the lives of His children.
The man who walks in this new kind of love never makes a mistake, never does wrong. There is no sin in love. There is sin in the old love, the natural love of the human heart, but in the love of the recreated spirit, there is no sin.
There is no law in the realm of love except love itself. It makes its own law. Its law is above the law of the senses.
To walk in love is to walk in God, and to walk in God is to walk in wisdom, and to walk in wisdom is success. Then you will have arrived at the highest order of spiritual perception. You will walk in the realm of success; you will walk where Jesus would have walked were He in your place. You cannot conceive of Jesus being a failure, of a Jesus man or woman with a Jesus-directed mind being a failure.
Success grows out of wisdom, and wisdom grows out of love.
The Relation of Eternal Life to Wisdom
and Success
One of the most significant sentences uttered by the Master is found in John 10:10: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
Our theological friends have ignored this, but this is the objective of Christ’s coming. This is the reason for the incarnation, the reason for Calvary and the suffering of the man of Galilee.
He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. (John 6:47)
Verily, verily, I say unto you, that he that hears my word, and believes him that has sent me, has life eternal, and does not come into judgment, but is passed out of death into life. (John 5:24 DBY)
The new creation man has passed out of the realm of Satan and into the realm of God. That is an amazing thing!
What is this eternal life, and what effect will it have upon us when we receive it?
Here are the facts: no nation has ever needed a copyright or a patent law until this eternal life came to them. When this eternal life comes into a man’s spirit, especially a young man, it increases his ability and efficiency from 10 percent to 100 percent.
Can you imagine what it would mean to have your spirit not only dominated by this life, but made alive with this life, filled with this life?
Just as the tree is made alive with the sap that comes to it from the ground through the roots, so your spirit would be made alive with the new life pouring in from God’s heart.
Can you see how that would revolutionize lives?
I am convinced that not one percent of the down and out, men who are continually out of employment, have ever received eternal life.
I question if you can find one percent of the boys and girls in reformatories who have ever received eternal life. If they had received eternal life, they would not be there.
Eternal life is the nature of God, and it absolutely destroys the pleasure that one would find in criminality. There is no pleasure for the man or woman to live in sin after they have received eternal life.
Did you ever notice or consider the fact that following every real spiritual awakening, where multitudes of young men and women are born again, there is an exodus to schools and colleges?
Just as soon as a man receives eternal life, he wants an education.
At the time I was born again, I was working in a factory. I had no education whatsoever. The third night when I came home from the service, my mother asked me where I had been and I told her.
My brother, a witty fellow older than I, said, “Mother, that fool will be preaching next.”
I ran upstairs to get away from him, for I dreaded his wit, but as I went, I said, “Eddie, you are right; I am going to have an education and I am going to preach.”
Eternal life had come into my spirit and my old life dropped away from me. At once, I became a student.
Eternal life promises wisdom.
John said, “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).
The Christian can bank on eternal life just as you can reckon on the money you have in the bank.
Now I say to myself, “I have the nature of God in me. I cannot be conquered. I cannot be whipped. No matter what the appearances may be, I am a victor. I am an overcomer. The world’s forces may dominate for the time being, but I am bound to come out on top.” Why? Because greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world. (See 1 John 4:4.)
The He in me is God. It is the great Holy Spirit that Jesus promised before He went away. He told His disciples that they were to tarry in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came upon them, after which they would receive power from on high. (See Luke 24:49.)
The word power comes from the Greek word dunamis, which means ability. Ability means wisdom.
He said, “I want you to stay in Jerusalem until the ability of God, the wisdom of God, has come to you.”
The thing that characterized the speakers of the early church was their profound wisdom. They were able to meet the fearful opposition and the dangerous crises that seemed to confront them daily—and win.
They were more than masters over all their enemies. They dominated Jerusalem and soon dominated the whole Roman Empire. The ability of God had come to them.
Jesus said, “How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:13).
He is talking to His sons and daughters. You have access to the ability of God, to the wisdom of God. You are not left stranded, not knowing which way to go.
You are starting out today with the Comforter living in you. You would get lost if you tried to walk alone, and I know that you would fail.
When men try to scale a lofty mountain, they have a guide. You are climbing something more dangerous than the Alps or Mount Everest, and you need a guide.
“When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). This Spirit guide is offering His services to every one of us. They are free. They are love given.
Can’t you see that the source of wisdom lies in this mighty person who comes into your life?
Can’t you see that if you are tied up with God, you at once become a superman?
Our Christian leaders have told us that we must be humble and self-effacing, always talking about our weaknesses, but what does the Word tell us? God says, “Ye are of God…and have overcome them” (1 John 4:4). There is no inferiority complex in that!
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors. (Romans 8:37)
Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ. (2 Corinthians 2:14)
Does that harmonize with the false teachings of an assumed humility? Not a bit of it! That is the voice of a victor, the voice of triumph.
You have God’s nature, God’s ability. You are God’s child. God is the strength of your life. He is made unto us wisdom, sanctification, redemption, and righteousness. If He was made this unto us, this is what we are.
Jesus, who knew no sin, was made sin so that you, who knew no righteousness, might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.
We are the triumphant, victorious ones. This is ours. This mighty thing is ours!
You are not a slave; you are a free man.
This New Testament is the good news of our emancipation and of God’s participation in our earth walk.
We Have Lost the Sense of Inferiority
It is useless to give a paralyzed man instruction in boxing and running. The thing to do is to cure his paralysis.
As long as we are dominated by an inferiority complex, all the sense knowledge instruction in the way of victory and success is folly. Most of our teachers who have been trying to tell us how to win in life’s fight have had nothing to give us beyond sense knowledge.
We have passed out of the realm of the senses into the realm of revelation knowledge, into the realm of the spirit.
We know that it is the spirit of man that conquers.
When we link that spirit up with God’s Spirit, and you have a spirit dominated by God, you can conquer all the forces opposed to you.
Our Conversation
Few of us realize the effect that our conversations have upon our own spirits.
When you pretend to be what you are not and you talk glibly about it, it builds a weakness into your spirit. It is like a piece of rot in the beam of a building.
Or your conversation may be full of discouragement. You talk of your failures, disappointments, and hard luck until you build into your spirit consciousness a sense of failure and inferiority. Eventually, it will rob you of initiative. You will find it difficult to rise above that mental attitude.
On the other hand, you can speak the truth about what you are in Christ. You confess to your friends or your enemies what God is to you, your union with Him, and that you are actually partners with Him, that He is the One who backs you up and furnishes the capital to put the thing over. You give Him credit for His ability and His wisdom, and you dare to make your bold confession of your confidence in your success by His grace.
Remember this always: you rise or fall to the level of your confession!
Called into Fellowship with His Son
What a thrill would come to the heart if the Master should call us suddenly into counsel with Himself and the Father. That is really what He has done. He had turned the work of redeeming the world over into our hands and now He is asking us to fellowship Him in this work.
The instant that these facts become realities, failure is an impossibility. At once, you have the consciousness of being taken out of the realm where failure dominates your life and you come up into another realm, where success is the only thing that you can think about.
You become a conqueror, a victor, an overcomer, immediately in your own mind.
God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:9)
Every one of us has the call to participate with Him in this realm of life.
Success in the business world is a relative term, but in the spiritual realm, there is only one meaning.
It has taken some of us a long time to know that knowledge alone cannot put one over. Simple knowledge is not enough. You must know how to use your knowledge to make it pay dividends. You must have knowledge; but more importantly, you must have wisdom to use that knowledge.
Multitudes have knowledge and yet are failures.
Above all your striving for knowledge, remember this fact: unless you learn how to use what you know, that knowledge simply clutters the mind. It is the ability to transform that knowledge into something that has commercial value.
The other day, I was talking with someone who has several degrees from different schools and universities, but he has no ability to use his knowledge.
Experience is very valuable, but unless one has wisdom to use the knowledge that is accumulated in his experience, it has no value.
We should be very thankful for all the knowledge that we have and can get, but we must have the ability to utilize that knowledge.
The Secret of Wisdom
I am speaking to the believer.
God made Jesus to be our wisdom, just as He made Him to be our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Then, if Jesus is our wisdom, how are we to use that wisdom?
The entire redemptive program is based upon faith, and faith comes through the Word.
This revelation that God has given us, called the Bible, is the Word of faith.
Faith is the product of our acting intelligently upon that Word.
Jesus has been made wisdom unto us; we claim it and enjoy it by faith.
E. W. Kenyon, The Hidden Man: The Secret to Living in the Spirit Realm (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2025).