Let’s pray for God to go completely through the Church and purge it, and let the Holy Spirit deal with each one of us, so that purity and holiness will be something we will guard with our very lives. Lord, search our hearts, for this is not the time to point fingers at others but to say, “Lord, is it I?”
We can have a pure word which we reverence, and we will walk in it. But we cannot handle it deceitfully, nor can we evade it; neither can we misuse it, for this is a word God has given us.
None of us is infallible: that is why two or three speaking in confirmation is the rule. God knew that one man could make many mistakes. Very few words in all these years have not come to pass. Time has a way of vindicating words that come from the Lord, so even when something goes amiss the Lord will still give us a word that shows us what to do.
Lord, keep this with with the Lord pure. Let it remain beautiful, uncontaminated, and uncorrupted by our thoughts. How God will move and what He will do for us in this purity! The word will begin to move in miracle power.
When I started out in this walk with God, I did not realize all that it would mean; none of us did. But now I feel a carefulness in my heart toward every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
In Deuteronomy He says, “I led you in the wilderness for forty years, I tried you and proved you to make you to know that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Deuteronomy 8:3). Taking only some of the words can minister death to yourself, but when you take every word that proceeds out of His mouth, the whole counsel of God, then it is life to you.
In II Corinthians 6:11 it says, Our mouth has spoken freely to you, O Corinthians, our heart is opened wide. You are not restrained by us, but you are restrained in your own affections. The apostolic company does not slow you down; you do it yourself. That is what Paul said to the Corinthians. I am not saying that because I do not know where the full restraints are found now. It is time that we humble ourselves a great deal before the Lord. I have been doing it constantly, but I want to do it even more, to be abased in the sight of the Lord. All of our leaders, and all of our people too, should do this. But I am not saying that this is true as it was in Paul’s time. Paul said, “You are not restrained by us; if you are hung up it is in you.” Now in a like exchange—I speak as to children,—open wide to us also II Corinthians 6:13. “We have opened up to you, and you have opened up to us.”
Make room for us in your hearts (see how he picks up the same thought; it is never broken); we wronged no one, we corrupted no one, we took advantage of no one. I do not speak to condemn you; for I have said before that you are in our hearts to die together and to live together. Great is my confidence in you, great is my boasting on your behalf; I am filled with comfort. I am overflowing with joy in all our affliction. II Corinthians 7:2–4. He is talking here about the heart reaching out.
One of the greatest passages on holiness in the New Testament occurs in the verses that are sandwiched in between those that speak about the heart being opened. Everyone’s heart must be open: “Just like our hearts are open, you must also open your hearts.” It is a beautiful truth. He said that if you restrain, you are the ones who shut your own hearts up. “We have not shut up our hearts to you; open up to us too.” The verses that are sandwiched in between this thought are in II Corinthians 6:14: Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness (he is talking about what restrains a person), or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, “I will dwell in them and walk among them; And I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore, come out from their midst… II Corinthians 6:14–17. The restraining comes from the unbelievers. Come out from their midst. This is where your heart becomes shut up and causes you to be too bound to get the blessing and walk with the Lord: it is that contact and association with the ungodly, opening up your spirit to them, being unequally yoked together with unbelievers.
When the young people become careless in their associations with the ungodly, they return with bonds that have to be broken, because it puts a restraint on them and they cannot break through in their worship; they cannot praise God as they should. The word tells us what we are to do: “Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord. And do not touch what is unclean; and I will welcome you. And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me, says the Lord Almighty.” II Corinthians 6:17–18. That is all we have to do; just come out. Oh, what God will be to us; what He promises will be manifest, but we cannot be restrained by wrong contacts. He says, Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. II Corinthians 7:1.
There is such a close relationship between impurity and restraints. Something in your life which is unclean puts a restraint on you. You might wonder sometimes how the elders and pastors know something about a person. They can tell a great deal by the kind and nature of a restraint that is on him. You do not know what weights you put upon yourself and how you cloud yourself over. You can have a wrong idea of the grace of God. It is wonderful, yet there is a close relationship between purity and perception, and you are going to stumble right over the precipice unless you love purity. You have to have holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Matthew 5:8. Your perception is regulated by the purity of your heart. When you are clean and right before the Lord you are open to receive help. The Pharisees could not understand Jesus Christ, even though they knew the Scriptures, because they were hypocrites. They were like whitened sepulchres, polished on the outside, but the inside was filled with dead men’s bones. This rottenness on the inside blinded them. Jesus called them blind leaders of the blind because the motivation of their hearts was not pure.
Daniel tells us that many are going to be purified and made white. They that do know their God will be strong and do exploits; the wicked will do wickedly and none of the wicked will understand (Daniel 12:10). None of the wicked will understand, because closely associated with wickedness and impurity of heart is blindness of heart. You cannot sin without immediately being thrown into a period of deception in which your perception is clouded over. You cannot see what to do; you do not know how to make decisions. How carefully we ought to walk in this day.
Concerning this relationship between holiness and perception. I John 3:3 says, And every man that hath this hope in him (the hope of His appearing) purifieth himself, even as he is pure. Also the time of the coming of the Lord is prophesied in I Thessalonians, the fifth chapter. It says, “… I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. I Thessalonians 5:23–24. The Lord will sanctify you completely, the whole man, spirit, soul, and body, which is very necessary. This point is going to be an issue of the Walk that we walk loving holiness and purity. It is one thing to be legalistic, constantly picking, picking, picking. It is another thing to really believe the grace of God to cleanse us and make us holy and clean before God, to bring us into it. I think it is a matter of approach. This is not a legalistic, bitter thing that you throw at people. It is something glorious, because we are going to be like Him; we are going to see Him. And we ought to embrace that with all of our heart.
Malachi 3 talks about the Lord’s coming, from the first verse: Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant… Who is the messenger of the covenant? Wasn’t He the One who came to bring the new covenant of His blood? It is the Old Testament manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ.… in whom you delight, behold, He is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. And He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness. Malachi 3:1–3. In that righteousness, they will become the holy priesthood, a holy priesthood to offer up praise and worship to the Lord. Our worship is going to be sweeter and better the more we prepare for it, the more that we let the Lord do this.
God does something every time you sit under the Word. He puts the fire to you and a little more of the impurity comes out. You are made clean through a word that He has spoken to you. He purges you, and you must stay with it. This is the surest means of transformation that we could ever know, that the Lord constantly sits like a smelter and a refiner. As long as He keeps refining us, we will be that priesthood offering up sacrifices in righteousness. This is what the Lord wants. We have to love it.
I want to be faithful to the Lord in every respect, and I am constantly crying unto the Lord to help me. I am going to change my thinking very much. I am not going to be drawn into being an administrator. I am not going to think of myself as a leader or the one who calls the shots, but rather as a servant of the Lord. I am going to walk humbly before the Lord, and whenever anything happens in the Body that is wrong, I am going to go before the Lord and cry out in repentance. I will be slow to straighten anything up unless God says it is wrong and to go ahead with it. Then I will do it as His servant. I do not want any human sense of indignation or righteousness; I want to walk very softly and simply be a servant of God. When a problem comes up I want the Lord to show me how to minister to it in His grace, ministering the word that He wants. No matter how difficult it is, I know I must speak the word God says to speak. I must be as faithful with the grace of God as I know how.
The Lord has really been searching my heart out in this matter, and I hope that He does the same with you. This Walk is not any picnic; He means business. He intends for this to be the last move of this age, and I want it to be that. I want to be a real disciple. We may not have bargained for all this when we started in this Walk, but God did. He knew what He was after. And as we have followed the Lord, we have grown up into Him so that we now perceive what He expects of us, which is more than just a little revelation of the Lordship of Christ. He is becoming totally Lord over us; we are becoming totally submissive to Him. He is bringing real righteousness to be the golden objective. We are going to watch how we speak and what we do, but it will not be out of an old order legalism. I keep emphasizing that because we are going to reverence and honor and respect the very word that God gives.
Every day I cry out to the Lord that I want to follow every word He has spoken to my heart. I know He is longsuffering with me, but I have the fear of the Lord in me. If He gives me a word and I do not work at it and do not cry out to the Lord to walk into it, He will judge me and deal with me drastically. I also know that if it is something that I have not been able to walk in yet, and I keep crying unto the Lord, then He will help me by His grace, and He will not judge me.
I believe in the grace of God, but I do not think we ought to excuse ourselves when we are not walking exactly in what God wants us to walk in. If something is wrong in your life, do not make excuses; do not stall, and do not let your pride get in the way. Just humble your heart before the Lord, and pray about it every day. Seek God’s face, and He will help you to walk in it. It will not be very long before you will be walking fully in that which he is dealing with you about.
You should also take on the burden to pray for your brethren, because at this particular point in your carefulness you could also become critical. I am going to see my own need, and if I see my brother’s need I am going to have enough love to really pray for him. Right now God is putting the finger on everyone, and it would be easy for us to start putting the finger on everyone too. But I am not going to do it. We ought to have compassion for one another and really pray for one another.