This period of the age we are in is very serious, and as we read the Scriptures, we find that they are also very serious. In fact, if the Lord had not given me a sense of humor, I would be completely overwhelmed with the apparent seriousness and heaviness of almost everything I read in the Scriptures. I know that the Scriptures were written for all generations, but they were born at a time when there was very little laughter, for people did not have much to laugh about. We are facing the same thing today. We don’t have much to laugh about either. But in the midst of all this heaviness, there has to be something we can impart to people. We have to learn how to live with this age. We must learn how to live with an absolute respect and acceptance of the Word of God with all of its serious aspects, but at the same time, we must not take the weight of the heavens upon our shoulders, trying to hold them up because we don’t know how to walk away from a problem before it destroys us.
A Scripture in I Peter will help us. Both of Peter’s epistles are quite serious. He speaks about final events, telling how the heavens are going to pass away with a fervent heat and when he finishes, it’s all gone! He also tells about the people who are suffering, going through persecutions or being killed. So when you read the epistles of Peter, you expect to find something really heavy; and yet in Peter’s writings you discover something else—the joy unspeakable and full of glory. Why would he bring this joy into the picture? Because in the midst of the heaviness, you must have some outlet of joy and release or you will crack under the pressures. They are too much for you to carry all the time.
Some of our young people must find this joy and a release in God because this age, with the tenseness of the times and the urgency of the hour, can overwhelm them. It’s a little too heavy. They will have to learn to live with this age, because they are going to go right on through it, into the Kingdom. There will be no other way. If you are not expecting a rapture (and we do not), you will have to walk right on through it.
To find one ray of hope in this epistle of Peter may seem like looking for a needle in a haystack because the Word is so serious. We want the whole impact of it, but also a little ray of light which will help us so we are not crushed under the load, so we do not find ourselves at the end of our spiritual reserves. There must be some way to prevent us from being self-expended, from drawing on all our reserves and nerves, until we find ourselves wiped out.
We find the answer in I Peter 5:1–11. Therefore, I exhort the elders among you (this is basically to elders, but anything that is written for elders in the Word of God will apply to the rest of the Body also), as your fellow-elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you, not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness; nor yet as lording it over those alloted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.
You younger men, likewise, be subject to your elders; and all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you. Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.
And after you have suffered for a little, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen. I Peter 5:1–11.
He is saying, “Let’s get at everything. Take care of the flock of God, watch over them, and don’t fail to be submissive where you are supposed to be. Be alert, for the devil is ready to devour you just like a lion. But in the midst of it, he gives one little word of advice that makes the difference: casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you.
When you are as uptight as you can possibly be—persecuted, harassed, with an utter sense of failure—and don’t know which way to turn, that’s the time to take all your cares and make snowballs of them and throw them at God. And that is not being sacrilegious. Say, “This is Your business, Lord. Today we are separating what I am to worry about from what You are to worry about, and we end up with a big pile of worries for You. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6, 7.
Peter has been trying to establish the fact that God allows many things to come at you—the devil as a roaring lion, the cares, the problems—and he charges these elders to take the oversight over the people, not for money or any kind of gain, but simply in a thankless job of watching over their souls. After a while, in the light of this wonderful partnership between you and the Lord, you may come to the conclusion that He is not doing much, and you are doing it all. But He didn’t intend it to be that way. What He intended was for you to take all the work on your desk, to look it over very carefully and seriously, then put it in a nice, neat, orderly pile and walk over to God’s desk and say, “It is all Yours!”
The Lord’s prayer concludes with the statement, “For Thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever.” That isn’t just some nice little phrase. You are asking for all kinds of things—your daily bread, deliverance from temptation, and the Kingdom of God to come—in this fantastic prayer, and then you conclude by saying, “Yours is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever anyway. It’s not my Kingdom, it’s not my power, it’s not my glory—it’s all Yours!” Reverently look up into His face and say, “Father, let’s keep this straight, as to who is the Father and who is the little boy.” I am not being sacreligious; I am trying to get at the thing that makes people crack under the pressure that is so unrelenting.
Don’t take too much of God’s responsibility on your shoulders. Don’t take it so seriously that you think it is all up to you. I admit that God throws it all on you, not for you to accomplish in your strength, but to accomplish in His perfect provision. You must look at it in this way, or you will become exhausted spiritually, and find yourselves in a kind of limbo, marking time for two or three months before you come out of it. You don’t have to go into a spiritual slump like that; I believe you can stay on top most of the time.
The Lord wants me to pray over many things, but if I spent all the time praying over everything that is thrown upon my shoulders, I would never get anything else done. When the burden is there, I must have that unique capacity to pray until I have emptied it all out and it is all in His lap. I transfer the problem to Him. Large corporations handle this the opposite way. The president delegates the work. When a big problem comes up that he doesn’t know how to handle, he calls in a man who may be only a filing clerk. He promotes him to an office upstairs, raises his salary, and gives him the responsibility of solving the problem. The poor clerk sweats over it for months and when he finally has it solved, the company has a big banquet, and the president takes all the credit for having solved the problem.
In the Kingdom of God it should work just the opposite way. These problems come to us as we are serving the Lord, and either we meet them in our own strength or we meet them with a faith and a decisive action which lays them into the hands of the Lord, saying, “Lord, You said we are to be anxious for nothing, so here I am, casting all my cares on You. Every anxiety I am giving to You!” Are we not to be concerned? Yes, but we are not to be anxious or fearful. It is not to get to your spirit. Pray over every problem you face until you are on top of it, have cast it wholly upon the Lord, and until it is no longer a source of anxiety of fear or defeat to your spirit.
In old order we used to call this “praying through.” Pray over it until you break through, and once you have touched God, leave it in His hands. You should never stop praying until you have touched the Lord regarding it and you feel that you not only have a promise, but you have the witness of the answer in your spirit.
Sometimes many things trouble me because God lets them trouble me, until I say, “All right, I get the message. You have a problem and You want me to do something about it. Show me the answer; don’t just take my sleep away from me all night. You have the wisdom, and it isn’t necessary for me to lie here and worry about something that You already know about, so give me the answer.” You put it back upon Him and He lets you have the answer.
You don’t think this is going to work? It will have to work because we are coming to a new spiritual level where the pressure is continual and unrelenting. We live with it. It doesn’t mean that you walk away from the burden; I am telling you how you can live with the burden. When the pressures of anxiety come, pray and find an answer. Cast the care upon the Lord. Get what God has for you, but don’t continue to hold it too long. Intercession and the burdens of intercession come to you, but not for you to go off in a corner and pray until you collapse. God doesn’t intend for you to expend yourself completely and to be self-consumed.
In the second chapter of Revelation, the King James version says that the Lord is walking up and down among the seven golden candlesticks. I don’t think they had candles in that day; they had little oil lamps. Candles become self-consumed. A better translation says that He walks among the seven golden lampstands, which represent the Church. The Church is like a lamp, but the lamp doesn’t burn up; just the oil in the lamp burns. When it gets a little low you open it up, pour some more oil in it, light the wick, and let it continue to burn. Lamps last a long time because they are fed by a supply of oil within.
This is a picture of what God would like you to move into. This is a good illustration because in the parable, the Kingdom of heaven is likened to ten virgins. The wise had oil in their lamps and also in the vessels they carried with a strap over their shoulder. They had a double portion of oil to take them through the night, so they didn’t have to worry. Soon the five foolish virgins said, “Our lamps are going out. What are we going to do? Give us some of your oil.”
“We can’t do it; we won’t have enough.”
“Okay, we’ll go and try to buy some.”
While they were gone, the door was shut. You see, there is a set schedule, and it is not a time to be anxious, but it is a time to be prepared—prepared with all the anointing of the Lord working in your life. This keeps you from the pressures. Satan’s effort is to wear out the saints of the Most High. And he will do it if you take the whole burden upon yourself until you are crushed under it.
Would you like to know how to intercede for something? You may pray for me until midnight and go to bed exhausted, and get up next morning and pray some more, determined to pray until God opens the door for the apostolic company. Fine, but it is not to be something you carry in the flesh. There must be a way in which you cast it on the Lord, even if tomorrow morning He says, “Son, did you have good night’s sleep? Are you ready to go at it again? Then stand still and I’ll lay on you all the service you are to give to the Lord today.”
“Okay, we’ll take it on.” Maybe that burden you prayed for until midnight comes back because something more of that battle has to be fought today. Tomorrow we’ll face the problems of tomorrow. If we live in this way, one day at a time, with a complete commitment to the Lord of all our anxieties and fears, we will make it through to the end. If we don’t do this, we will start to fret over things and take too much on ourselves. Be faithful to what He tells you. Carry the load, but cast the anxiety upon Him.
I have had to learn to do that. I take the load that God lays upon me as seriously as any man could, but I have learned that when I have done as much as I can and committed it to the Lord, I must also irrevocably and completely commit the anxiety and concern to Him. If I didn’t do this, I would crack; I’d be broken and destroyed in six months’ time.
No doubt many of you have gone through something that made you so anxious, so worried, so fearful over the problem that you blew the whole scene. This you don’t want to do. We are the Lord’s emissaries and the responsibility of ministry is very seriously laid upon us, but it is in His strength that we prevail, casting all our cares upon Him because He cares for us. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. Then the peace of God will keep your mind and heart. I am not talking about a sense of humor that enables you to laugh it off. I am talking about the way we can live with the commitment and the burdens which the Lord has laid upon our hearts.
Your problems are like fly paper, you can’t seem to let them go. You do your best, but you can’t get rid of them. Your troubles are like a boomerang. You try to throw them away, but they always come back. You must have enough faith to cast them upon the Lord. It’s not enough to say, “I’m believing not to be anxious.” Believe that you have touched God and that you have voiced the prayer of faith God was looking for from you. Then you have done your part and thereby you have released God’s power, for He has committed Himself to work through the channels of faith and intercession and prayer, and you have given Him the channel He wanted. Then really believe, because you have touched the Lord! In this way you live without fear and anxiety. This is a big key to help you get rid of one of those sticky problems that are so persistent.
Then there are memories. Do they ever bug you? Do you ever get yourself in some kind of a mess and then think about it all night? You can’t sleep. What do you do about it? The best thing is to proclaim, “That thing is under the blood!” It is either forgiven or it is someone else’s problem completely, but you have to say, “Lord, I commit that to You. Let the Holy Spirit bring a release to my mind.” Keep praying that way, even if you have to do it a dozen times. It will go away, and that will be the end of it and you will be released. You have to apply this to every situation. There are some things that will wear you out and eat upon your spirit like an acid unless you commit them to the Lord and get released from the anxiety and fears.
Self-condemnation will do the same thing. Let me speak very frankly. Young men are faced with the fact (according to statistics) that at the time they are seventeen years old, they are at the peak of their sex drive. Yet they may not be married until they are twenty-five or older, so they are going to live with the greatest portion of their sex drive completely frustrated and unfulfilled, constantly having to take cold showers and pray to the Lord to help them because their very nature is generating an absorption with an idea that will have to be taken care of. How are they going to handle it? In the same way: committing it to the Lord and breaking through to find victory over it. It can be done.
You wonder why God sometimes calls people to preach, calls them to serve Him, and then throws several mountains in their way and says, “Go ahead, crawl over them, get them out of the way, or make a tunnel through them; but do something!” Whatever your problem, pray and seek the Lord until He gives you victory over it. When you fail to do that, you live with this awful self-condemnation over it. There is a better way to live than that. Commit it to the Lord and say, “Lord, we are going to find another answer to this,” and seek Him with all your heart. It may take you a few weeks or a few months, but you will come into a victory that you will live with. It just works, I know. Have faith to believe God that you are going to walk with Him.
We speak rather frankly about many things to our young people, but they must face the fact that they are in the flesh and in the flesh they are facing all kinds of stimuli. Every time you turn around, there is some form of nudity or other suggestive situation facing you because all of society is geared to this. Regardless of what the reports on pornography reveal, the fact remains that our country leads the world in perverse sex crimes. Although we are only a few generations removed from the puritanical influence, we have recently had all kinds of stimuli and a wrong approach to these things, so that everyone becomes hung up about it. It’s no wonder then, that Christians have a bit of a problem coming out from under that influence of the world and learning from God how to think and react in the purity that springs from the heart. It takes a while to learn it. That’s why our young people come to the Bless-In on Saturday night instead of going to the show. They do not want to stimulate the flesh; they want to be stimulated by the Holy Spirit so they can overcome the flesh.
Those who have ever been in that scene (and some of our young people have been deeply involved in it) want to be out of that life. They see it for what it is and they are through with it; they want to walk in the purity of the Lord. Though there may be a problem once in a while, learn how to take care of it and how to live without self-condemnation, without anxiety, and without fear. Learn to live with a trust in God, and even when you are in the midst of something you cannot accept, you must still learn to live with a faith that anticipates an absolute, perfect victory in your life. Live with that faith, constantly voicing your purpose of heart to walk in perfect victory.
Now we will consider some questions:
“You once said that the reason we walk in self—condemnation is because there is not enough repentance. Will you explain this?”
When the repentance is only a shallow expression of being sorry, you don’t really get to the root of the problem. It’s like clipping off a few branches from a weed, yet leaving it in the ground, though not showing as much as before. After a while it starts growing again or else a seed from it begins to grow. It wasn’t completely removed, so it starts to grow again. And even if it doesn’t grow in an outward manifestation as before, it grows in an unconscious manifestation.
I’ll use an illustration. We’ll say that your sin involved immorality and afterwards you were sorry, but not very sorry. Your sorrow could take a rather perverse form. You may only be sorry that you were caught. You may be sorry because you really did want to walk with the Lord, but you realize that you blew it and so you are sorry about it, but the repentance didn’t go down deep to a godly abhorrence of that sin so that you just hate it and repent of it with everything that’s within you. Consequently the seeds are still there. So you go along and pretty soon you have a horrible dream. “Oh, thank God it was only a dream! I better repent of that dream.” You may have to repent of many dreams because the seed of that lust is still in your heart. You need to repent deeper until you get rid of the root. That’s what John the Baptist was talking about, “Now the axe is laid to the root of the tree” (Matthew 3:10). God says, “Let’s get right down to the root!” Let’s not just trim it off and say, “We have the thing under control. We can handle this old instinctive pressure of the flesh, because after all we’re all human and everyone sins a little bit every day.” Forget that. That kind of thinking leaves a person with self-condemnation. He will stand before the Lord and say, “What happened to me? I feel like a sinner!” Self-condemnation always comes because the repentance has not reached the depth God wanted. Self-condemnation will end when you repent to the depth that you should. When the thing has been taken out, there can be nothing on the unconscious level plaguing you that there is still something unclean in your life.
“Before you can really repent deep enough to get the thing out of your life, isn’t it first of all necessary to have a true revelation that it is wrong and that you must get it out of your life?”
I think everything comes progressively. As long as there is a question in your mind whether something is wrong, start seeking God; just lay it out before the Lord. Read the Scriptures and seek the face of the Lord. Every once in a while the Lord will pin something down that really hurts as the Holy Spirit finds a sensitive spot. Then just stay with it, as the chiropractor does when he locates the sore spot and bears down on it. At that particular point there’s no use playing around. It’s time to get at the sore spot.
We all have those tender spots. I don’t think I ever preach a sermon without your feeling a little twinge once in a while. Take notice of your twinges: “I twinged right here at this point, I definitely jerked at this one, when he said that, I flinched, and at this one I twitched.” Then take your list of “twitchables” and start seeking the face of the Lord until God shows you what is wrong, because the heart is deep and desperately wicked, and who can know it. You can never know until God lays something on your heart and it bothers you just a little, and you say, “Well, let’s follow this raveling and see where it goes.” And God will make it a revelation to you! If you have a tender conscience before the Lord and you really want Him to show you, He will show you.
“In one of your sermons you said, ‘If somebody commits fornication, right away it enters into the whole Body.’ Could you expound on that?”
The Body has such a oneness because of the oneness of the spirit, that anything which affects the spirit of an individual in the Body will travel through the Body. A rattlesnake may bite you on the foot, but the poison will travel through your whole body as the bloodstream carries it. A little leaven will leaven the whole lump, as you read in I Corinthians 5, where Paul speaks about one sin in the Body. That’s why every one of us should be concerned, not only about our own welfare, but the effect that our sin would have on the rest of the Body. One case of adultery in the church, even though it has been repented of and God has forgiven the sin, can still affect the whole church because of the spirit of lust which comes to defile. The minute you repent, ask God to stop the thing right there, lest it infect the whole Body. You must take very seriously a conscience for the Body.
This applies on the positive side, too. Every time you receive a blessing that is really anointed, reach out and send it through the Body, so that all will share it. If one member rejoices, they are all to rejoice with it.
Those who are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak. Just as in the natural, where the body has certain organs which can dissipate poisons, so there must constantly be the exercise of certain members of the Body who constantly work for the purification of the Body. The constant flow of the Living Word has a cleansing quality. Jesus said, “Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth” (John 17:17). “Now ye are clean through the Word which I have spoken unto you” (John 15:3). When the Word of Christ comes to us richly, it has a cleansing effect, constantly renewing and cleansing the Body of its impurities. So while the infection may run through the Body, it doesn’t mean that it will be destroyed, for there are also many counteragents that work for the purification of the Body.
People out in the world think they are just as good as those in the church. Some good, fairly upstanding person on the outside of the church may say, “Why should I go to that church? I live just as good a life as they do; in fact I may live a better life than some.” Yes, but there is one difference. The fellow on the outside isn’t repenting of his sins, no matter how small they may be; but the man on the inside, if he’s walking on with the Lord, is constantly repenting of his wrong doing. It may be a process, and it may be a while before he is able to throw it all off, but as long as God keeps picking him up, dusting him off, and setting him on the way, he will make it. But he had better be a good repenter above everything else. If he’s a good repenter, watch his path; it will shine more and more until the perfect day.
It has been said regarding riding a horse, that if you are thrown or tumble, get right back on. If you have an automobile accident and you wait too long before you drive again, you may develop a permanent complex about it. Get back in and drive, perhaps not the same car, for it may have been wrecked. The same is true with a motorcycle. Straighten out the handle bars, get back on and ride it again.
Be determined to follow this pattern spiritually also. When you blow it, when you make a mistake, repent and seek God about it. In the meantime, get right back in the house of the Lord because that is where you will be helped.