We can become agitated over many little things and find it difficult to submit to them if our spirit isn’t right. But when our spirit is right, it’s not so difficult for us to submit to anything the Lord requires of us.
When we cry to the Lord in intercession it must be out of a submissive heart. “Submit yourself, therefore, to the Lord. Resist the devil and he’ll flee from you” (James 4:7). We will not make any headway until submission to the Lord is absolute! Everything of rebellion, everything that wars against that absolute submission to the Lord must be exposed so the Lord can deal with it. It has to go. We must see the significance of being bond servants and handmaidens of the Lord, ready to do His will in this critical hour in the history of the world.
You will never get any place as long as you bury a sin. The Word says, “He that covereth his sin shall not prosper” (Proverbs 28:13); but it says also, “Blessed is he whose transgression is covered” (Romans 4:7). Let God cover it with the precious blood of His Son, but don’t you cover it over. When Christians become rebellious over a problem, not wanting to honestly face the fact that it’s their rebellion against something they don’t like, they will try to hide the sin or rise up to justify themselves. In the end, the truth is revealed and they are in real trouble.
Proverbs 29:1 tells us He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy. We have so much light and it is difficult for us to understand that we will be judged according to the light we have received. If anything is festering in your heart, if you have any sin in your life, the best thing for you to do is come and say, “I’ve sinned. God forgive me.” And it should not make you feel like you’re a third-rate citizen around here, either.
We know when something is wrong, and you know when something is wrong. The quickest way to get rid of a problem is for you to know that God will forgive you. When you confess, He’s faithful and just to forgive you and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. I’ve seen some difficult problems, but when there is an openness and honesty of heart and the individual confesses and says, “I want to be delivered,” God delivers him. Otherwise if he messes around with the problem, even trying to pull himself out of it, the conditioning and response of deceitfulness is worked in his spirit, and the next time he finds it easy to deceive himself again. It doesn’t pay. Humble yourself before the Lord and He will lift you up.
Specific problems and sins vary from individual to individual—sins of arrogance, disobedience, lust, selfishness, rebelliousness, criticism, murmuring, complaining, unbelief, doubt; and the biggest sin of all, the difficulty that some have of facing the fact that they have sin, or that they are wrong in their spirit. Whatever it is that you want to get rid of, be determined, that irrevocably it has to go, that you are not going to pet it or love it or go back to it, but you’re going to forsake it completely. We have to do this. We’re going to be the Bride that made herself ready, adorned with fine linen, clean and white, which is the righteousness of the saints. God must loose us from the tendency to justify ourselves, and give us faith for His justification. It’s God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? We’re not going to excuse ourselves before anyone, especially to our own hearts. We’re going to walk before the Lord in honesty and humility. Be a quick repenter. The minute something is wrong, be on your knees crying, “Forgive me, Lord. Cleanse me, Lord. I confess it, Lord; now get rid of it.” This is the key of righteousness.
Sometimes you can point to a sin, not as an act or a commission, but as a state of heart, something in your very nature. You haven’t shot anyone or committed any terrible crime, but it’s there, in your flesh, in your old nature. You have to get rid of it. Abhor it. Crucify it. Reckon it dead. Jesus died to loose you, not only from the act, but from the nature of sin.
When there is a hunger after righteousness, God will fill you! We have the pattern of righteousness in the Word. It doesn’t matter what anyone says against it; we have to believe that this is right. It has to be right. We have to love righteousness, and hate evil. Even if nudism and immorality around about us gets to be so bad that we’re literally living again in Sodom and Gomorrah, we’ll have to be like Lot “whose righteous soul was vexed from day to day by their wicked deeds.” We have to come to the place where we live with that continuous rejection; we’re vexed with the wickedness; we hate it. Instead of condoning it or being a part of it, we have to put it away from us. And God will help us to do it.
This is a time that the Lord can bless us with new natures, new desires, new life, new drives, new interests. You can be so busy with this walk, working for the Lord, doing the things of God, that you are completely engrossed with things greater than yourself. You don’t have to be overtaken with lust. Believe the Lord, that no matter what you are exposed to, He will help you so you are not moved by the sexual stimuli round about us.
Don’t worry when you are convicted over something. The time to start worrying is when you become just a little calloused and your conscience isn’t jabbing you right down to your spirit. Then you know you’re in trouble. The thing that should drive you to prayer quicker than anything else is the sudden realization that you are indifferent to prayer, indifferent to waiting on the Lord. If I find that there is a diminishing of those activities, I become frightened, and I wonder, “Why isn’t the Holy Spirit prodding me? What have I done to grieve or quench the Spirit?”
We don’t dare become calloused with an it-doesn’t-matter attitude. Maintain a special anointed conscience that the Holy Spirit can deal with, and be quick to respond to it. Break down and weep and begin to repent the moment He puts His hand on you. Stay with it until everything in your old nature that is perverse and argumentative, that would justify itself, dies at the feet of the Lord. This keeps the flow of anointing clean. You have to be ready to respond immediately to the dealings of the Lord. Maintain an honesty of heart, for you and the Lord must be very sensitive to each other.