One of the greatest keys toward the future is in this message, which deals basically with Romans 8:14: For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. All who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.
The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Romans 8:16–21. There is a freedom and a liberty that is to come. Right now decay and ruin are everywhere, but that is to be broken.
For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. Romans 8:22–23. In each church I have been reviewing all of the basic passages of the Walk, truths which for the past twenty years have been very important in the Holy Spirit. I think it is important that we reiterate the basic passages frequently, especially since many of you haven’t been here twenty years and you should have the foundation at least reviewed to your hearts. One of them is the manifestation of the sons of God. This message is very basic to what we are facing now and has been an underlying theme in much of the teaching and preaching.
I am concerned with the emphasis upon the growing necessity of being led by the Spirit of the Lord. We have had a measure of the leading of the Holy Spirit in the this walk with God, or we would not be where we are now, and we have revelation that comes to us, for which we glorify the Lord. The Walk is based first of all upon a revelation of His Lordship to your heart, but beyond that there is something else that you should consider very carefully: we are coming into deeper and deeper problems and needs in which we must have a very clear-cut leading of the Holy Spirit. We don’t dare lean on our own understanding at this present time. Proverbs 3:5 and 6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.”
I believe it is important that we get into that perfect leading of the Lord Jesus Christ in the path that we are to take. The leading of the Lord has lent itself to positive witnesses, and through confirmation they have been quite safe. Also, the hindrances and checks come when you do not have a positive leading; you get that little check in the Spirit that you should not go a certain direction. But there must be more of a dedication to the wisdom of the Lord. There is still too much of an arrogant dependence upon human wisdom, human decision, and human attitudes.
We still respond too much to prejudices, old attitudes, old responses, old condemnations; things dwell in our spirit that we need to be rid of. As one brother worded it, “We are programmed too much to the flesh and the soul life. We need to be transformed into the realm of spirit.” That is the truth, we are programmed to the flesh. The deep ruts of our minds and our spirits are used to responding in certain ways. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Lord could rewire us and reprogram us, so that we could get into the flow of the Spirit and be led by the Spirit of the Lord more than we are? But we see other things still coming in.
I recall the story of an old ship that continually got off course. Every time that the navigator shot their position by the sun, he found that they were off course, that they were not going in the right direction. But as it turned out, someone had driven a nail close to the compass in that old wooden ship. It was just enough to deflect the compass and cause them to get off course. It took only one little nail to constantly throw them off course.
I wonder how many conditionings there are within us which force us constantly to come back to the Lord, to pull ourselves back on course, because there are one or two little things in our response, in the conditioning of our minds, so that we are not led by the Spirit of the Lord? That one point is a sermon in itself. We should respond to it and say, “Lord, if I have something deep in my heart that is constantly distracting me from the Lord, pulling me away from the worship, pulling me away from the perfect will of God, I want You to deal with it.” Usually it is something in the soul life or in the flesh life of an individual, some old-nature response.
If we are led by the Spirit of the Lord, if we walk in the Spirit, we are not going to fulfill the lust of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). We want more than a check on it though; we do not even want those subtle deviations or distractions to pull us away from being a perfectly led group of people in the name of the Lord. Above everything else, the revelation of the Lord was that we were to be a prophetic community, led by the Spirit of the Lord. I don’t think we have missed it too much as a congregation, but I do think we miss it as individuals. When it comes to the individual level of living, we do not know how to find the perfect guidance and the perfect will of the Lord in our relationships and in the projects we do.
Those who are going to come into sonship are those who will have to place a premium on the leading of the Spirit of the Lord. It will have to be more important to them than anything else. There comes, at times, a dependence that is natural; it is a carryover in our minds—“I have been in a situation like this, and I responded in a certain way; therefore, I will respond this way again.” It is a conditioned response. We automatically assume, “Because God led me to do it this way before, He is leading me to do it this way again.”
There must be a carefulness at this particular point when everything is changing and new levels come. There cannot be a particular response that would lead us to change our tactics and get into something else. An illustration from the Scriptures of this goes back to the time that Paul had Timothy circumcised. Timothy was half Jewish and half Gentile (his father was Greek), and Paul took him to be circumcised because of the Jews (Acts 16:3). We wouldn’t bother with that today because we are not coming out of a Jewish dispensation into a Christian dispensation; we are coming from the Christian dispensation into the Kingdom dispensation. Now we are not at all concerned about requiring circumcision of anyone who wants to take part in the services. We wouldn’t even dream of it. But Paul had a wisdom from God. However, there still was a riot when the word got out, “They took a Gentile into the temple and defiled it.” and actually they had not done this. In fact, we read in Acts 21 that they shaved their heads to show their vows to keep the Law. They were really trying to please those Jews; but they still couldn’t please them. They tried to respond as they always had and it still didn’t get them anywhere.
Today we wouldn’t think of shaving anyone’s head who would say, “I want to make a vow.” There are things now that we would not do because we are at the conjunction of another age; they were at a conjunction of an ending age and they were trying to respond. Just the same, we have to realize that many of us have responses to the church age which we will have to lose and begin to respond to the Kingdom age. We have as many carry-overs as they had in the book of Acts. Running back to have Timothy circumcised was conformity in a sense to what the Jews wanted. Here was a little half Jewish boy who wasn’t circumcised, although he was to become an apostle of the Lord. Paul himself says that circumcision itself doesn’t avail anything; and if you are circumcised then Christ profits you nothing (Galatians 5:2–6). Yet, to conform to the prejudices and responses, he had done that.
We have to unlearn so many things. We look back and can understand a lot of things that were wrong; our hindsight is awfully good. To come to the place where a whole new field is laid before and say, “We are not going to respond by past conditionings, past responses,” we have to be led by the Spirit of the Lord. There has to be a leading of the Holy Spirit now that is going to project us into the Kingdom responses; into the Kingdom reactions; into what we are to do as sons of God. It is not going to be the same.
But Paul himself had said, We are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. Philippians 3:3. No confidence in the flesh. That statement disturbed people in those days. We think it’s ridiculous that a man who would want to be in the church in Galatia had to be circumcised in order to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. Today we would think circumcision to be the most foolish rule that could be laid upon anyone. And yet a whole book is dedicated to the fact that they were trying to bring believers back under circumcision as a whole mark of divine approval.
Right now they are trying to do the same thing in the churches. And we are just far enough away from the prejudices and traditions that have been built up in a whole age that we break through. Many churches would walk away from our services, saying, “We’ve never seen such confusion in our lives.” There is nothing confused about it at all; God is directing us.
Pray over this idea of being led by the Spirit of the Lord. We live too much of our lives yet with automatic reactions, responses, decisions and conditionings. Everything has to be laid out before the Lord. Go back and analyze everything you are doing. This may be a way of shutting the door on areas of oppression that have swept over you. If you have been in this Walk very long, yet are constantly defeated and harassed, you should look for the Lord to lead you and show what is happening. Don’t look at it as an area of great self-condemnation, but find out what is causing all the difficulty, all the problems that you are facing.
“What causes my defeat when I come before the Lord and I find myself wiped out? Do I live with a pattern of defeat, or is there some way that as a son of God I can be led by the Spirit of the Lord and overcome the things of the flesh, I can overcome the past responses, and I can get into what God has for me?”
In all the Scriptures I have never found God to condemn a man because he wasn’t very bright. I see where God has given people over to their foolishness, but the Word says also that He gives wisdom to all men liberally, and He upbraids not (James 1:5). That means He doesn’t come to condemn you because you are not very bright. I know that the truths that come in this Walk are so profound that the deepest mind has difficulty comprehending all of them. But they are so fantastic in God that the way is made so plain that a fool need not err therein (Isaiah 35:8). It is not basic intelligence that determines whether or not we make it in this Walk. The whole thing comes down to the arrogance of the human spirit; you either seek the leading of the Lord or you rely upon your own understanding. You may think you know all of the answers, but in this hour no one really knows the way to go; no one really fully understands the path to take.
I have had a wisdom that the Lord has given me, yet lately I have been praying for God to give His leading more than at any other time, standing before the Lord and saying “Lord, lead! Lord, lead.” I know there is no other course except for us to become more and more dependent on the leading of the Holy Spirit. Don’t be so quick to say, “Well, I’m stupid.” If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not. James 1:5. He is not going to rebuke you because you are stupid. If you come and ask for wisdom He will give it to you, if you ask in faith, believing (verse 6).
I would like to see everyone enter into a real purpose of heart to seek the will of the Lord and ask the Lord to give them a leading and a guidance. I marvel that we have been in the Walk so long and so few people have clear-cut leadings of the Holy Spirit. I marvel that we still come to the elders for the leading of the Lord to be initiated, rather than for confirmation for a leading that we have been able to receive. We should be further along, we should be able to pray and seek the Lord and have it all from God. Then, because it is right to be submissive and right to look for confirmation, we come and submit our leading and say, “I want the witness of the elders and the ministries over me if this is right.” This should be the case about ninety-nine times out of a hundred. We should have greater initiative ourselves in being led by the Spirit of the Lord. It is the mark of sonship, and we will never come into the mature sonship until we are wholly led by the Spirit of the Lord.
Give top priority to being led by the Spirit of the Lord. Seek His guidance and seek His leading above everything else. The Lord will help us. The greatest problem you have now is to hear the voice of the Lord and get the leading of the Lord, where you yourself are communing with the Lord and receiving answers.
Lord Jesus, we come asking You, “Show us how.” We want to appropriate the greater guidance of the Holy Spirit. We want a greater sensitivity to that guidance to be given to us. We don’t want to lean on our own understanding. We want to acknowledge You, Lord, in all of our ways. We want to be continually in tune and say, “Lord, what do You want?” And Lord, there are some of us who rarely ask for counsel. But for those who don’t know their right hand from their left in spiritual things, we pray that You will give them ears to hear and let the Spirit of the Lord speak to them. O Lord, give them a heart to perceive. Let it begin right now with their dedication to really walk with the Lord, because some deafness is willful; we don’t want to hear because we are afraid of what we are going to hear. But Lord, give us a desire to know, a desire to hear. We are not going to draw back or be conditioned by our own willfulness until we are deaf to the Spirit of the Lord. Lord, let us hear even if it be a difficult way. Let there not be a rebellious heart in us like Jonah that we refuse to do what God wants and therefore we shut our ears to it. But give us a heart to say, “Yes, Lord, I want Your will.”
Let the word haunt us, Lord; everytime we start to move in our own wisdom, let it really disturb us. If these old ideas are creating a heaviness in our spirits, they have to go. If we are not joyful in our walk with You there is something wrong. Lord, show us what is wrong, show us. We ought to be able to rejoice in the Lord, to believe the Lord to be so led and so inspired that we will blast out of the old ruts.
We must be delivered from an independent spirit, independent action, independent living. If we’re to be members of the Body, we will have to learn to move as a Body, not as individuals. That is a big step to take because people are very independent. But the Lord is helping us to think in terms of the Body and of the Kingdom, to be one Body, led by the Spirit of the Lord.