In this sermon, the preacher discusses the different laws mentioned in Romans chapter 7. He introduces the laws of God, the mind, sin, and the spirit of life. The preacher explains that these laws govern our control and reveal our nature and character. He emphasizes the importance of reacting in a godly manner to various situations and challenges in life. The sermon concludes with a call to dwell in the spirit and allow the law of the spirit of life to bring joy and peace.

Lord, we thank thee now that we are not as though standing in the arm of the flesh or on the ground of our own strength or sufficiency. We say this in words, but oh may the reality of it grip us in a new way this morning. Our total helplessness, our utter helplessness. We are but a stone apart from the oil without a supply. Just, just make this to be very real. We shall be sure to give thee praise and glory. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. For those who may have slipped in today, let me just say we have been speaking about the man after God's own heart, David. We said, and I think I must reemphasize this again, that as you look at the various lives, the men whom God raised up, you find something of uniqueness expressed in their calling and ministry. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, founding fathers. Moses, the deliverer. Of course, there are other aspects that are involved, but maybe that delivering aspect out of Egypt stands to overshadow. Joshua, the possessor, the taking of the land, and attempting to lead the people on into the fullness, the Judges period, and then Samuel, the voice of the Lord. And we're sort of centering in these days on David. Now, I think I've intimated, but we're going to hit strong and hard. I fuss coming to the near end on the, the calling, the, the focus of David fulfilling the will of God, the unifier of a motley bunch of tribes, a group of people that needed to be unified. Now, I would that I had the power, the strength. I'm keenly aware all the time that when we're speaking of David as the shadow, the one who walks, he's merely a dim representation of the greater David. I so rejoice when Brother Kong starts and moves along because, and it's true with our Brother Sparks, there's always something that focuses in on the Lord Jesus. You want to pray for me, pray that somehow I always begin and end with the concentration on the exalting, the lifting up of him. Now, I say it's incipient, it's implicit, but I want to be explicit. You know what I mean? And so I want us to keep this in mind, that David in any of the, any of the phases we're taking him through as the man after God's heart, is but a dim shadow of the Lord Jesus himself, whom the Father surely looked upon and said, he is the one after my heart. All together satisfied with him, in him I find great delight. So we've been speaking about him raised up, anointed. Yesterday we saw the failure and then the effectiveness that came as he was finding the priority, but this morning I want us to go on and pick up that in essence again. What, what was the priority in David's life? Now, I think we have to realize that this is something of the longing, how much he moved into the fullness of this priority, this that became very central. I do not know, but I tell you, his heart sure groaned for it, and that's what I like. What was it? Well, turn with me to a Psalm of David, Psalm 27, and I want to read just the verse that I believe indicates something of this intense desire, this sharpening of focus. There are so many good things, I would hear David say. There are so many profitable things, there's so many desirable things, but he says, Psalm 27 and verse 4, one thing have I desired of the Lord. You hear any other man talk like that? I think it's a mark to those who are pressing in, pressing in for fullness, pressing in for the things that count. I hear it in Paul in Philippians when he says, this one thing I do. I sense it in the spirit of the Lord Jesus when he's counseling with Martha and Mary in the home, you know, and he finally says, Mary has chosen this better thing, this one thing. Well, here we are. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. You want to hear that same cry again? Turn over to Psalm 84. How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts, my soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God, yea, the sparrow hath found in house, and the swallower nests for herself, for she may lay her young, even thine alters, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house. They will be still praising thee, Silla. Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee, in whose heart are the ways of them, who, passing through the valley of Bacchus, make it a well. The rain also filleth the pool. They go from strength to strength, every one of them in thine appeareth before God. O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob, Silla. Behold, O God, our shield, and look upon the face of thine anointed, for a day in thy court is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is the sun and shield. The Lord will give grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee. All right, we've said one thing then. If there's something of priority in the heart, something of a focus in the life of David, it is to dwell, to dwell, to dwell in the presence, to dwell in the house of the Lord. We've been using sort of as a progression and a key. You remember in Psalm 52, we read the other day, turn just for a moment, we pick it up. Psalm 52 and verse 8, David said, I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. Here he's saying he's there, and he makes quite a statement. I am, you remember we've been talking about the olive tree, but now he says, in the house of God. All right, we're agreed on this, but we get down to the question, and it is this. How do you dwell? I look out over the Lord's people week after week, and I'm strangely conscious, it seems all the time, of their desire to press in to dwell. But the question is, how do you dwell when there are so many things that hinder the dwelling, that hinder our real dwelling? How do you dwell? How do you keep your mind staid? We read and we quote, thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is staid on thee because he trusts in thee. How do you dwell? I think I would have to honestly say that the last two years, since we've begun to make this something of a deep, intense priority, there has never, never, and I don't want to give any ground or any opportunity for the enemy, but I would have to say there has never been a greater bombardment or attack to hinder this dwelling. And but for having the key or the secret, who could stand it? Who could stand it? Well, let's see if we can get into it in this way this morning. Wouldn't be right if I didn't scribble something on the board, would it? So here we start. I do believe that central to understanding this thing of dwelling is to know how we are constituted, how we are designed, and how God has made us for his dwelling and for our dwelling because they are both very necessary. The scripture says that man is spirit, soul, and body. Sometimes I'm really pressed when I start to draw the picture of spirit, soul, and body, to draw, I'm pressed to draw it the way it is in most religious situations. I'd like to draw a little shriveled up spirit and a great big overdeveloped soul because while so much of the time we think of ourselves as being spiritual, so much, as our brother said last night, that is pawned off and we mean well. No one has been more sincere and intense in desire than I think I have. But oh, what an hour it is. What a revelation when one day God pulls down the mirror and says, look, this is this. This is what you call spirituality. And in utter dismay you discover what it is. Well, I won't draw our picture. I'll draw what it is. Body, soul, spirit. We know, of course, that in God's unique design in making man, he was wanting a home, not just the home of the universe or the home of the throne up there, but God in being able to express himself and, as it were, fill the universe with himself, is uniquely designed, uniquely made man with a place deep within that he might make home or dwell, that he might dwell. I think we should stop and it'll come out in our reading in a little bit. I am wanting to emphasize the word dwell because there is a difference between occupying and dwelling. A chair might occupy a place, but a chair can never dwell. Only living things can dwell. I think maybe we do more occupying than we realize, but God wants us to dwell. And, of course, I know no better way than to say that when he made our human spirit, I believe he made it as a vessel that could receive, quite a bit like an empty room, as it were, incomplete, complete and yet quite incomplete in some ways, because it was made for his occupancy, made that he might come and dwell therein. But I think it's a law of the functioning of God that he does not intrude, especially in the realm of the moral. He does not intrude without invitation. And so man, in the beginning, has an empty room. He has a spirit waiting to be occupied. And you know the story how, in the garden, Adam's choice, instead of receiving the Lord, receiving the tree of life, receiving the Spirit of God to come within and make a union, he turned to his own way, and by taking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he set a course and a pattern, ever after, that there would be the dependence, the sufficiency in the soul itself. And so the soul has become the dominant, controlling, overshadowing force, the governmental agent, basically, within man. Now someone says, for the sake of younger folk, and you maybe who have not gone through this round, let's just see what the soul is. We think of three primary functioning factors within the soul, the mind, the emotion, and the will. These constituting the activity of the soul realm. We see how man, from that beginning hour, when there has come the sufficiency in himself, if you eat of this tree, you can be as God. No dependence, no union, no life course, something more or less self-contained and having within it, having within it, its sufficiency. All of course, there's the need to reach up and get another apple occasionally from the tree, to feed the mind, to excite the emotion, to encourage the will. But what I'm after this morning is basically this. When people try to dwell, or they set the longing of their inner being towards dwelling, we get confused so often in what is involved in really dwelling. How often through the years have I attempted to bring my soul realm into the place where I could dwell, stay, keep stay, keep occupied, but the harder I tried to get quiet, the louder the screaming came. Oh, I don't mean that there was anybody out here screaming, but it was my soul. This awful turmoil, this awful bombardment. I wonder if maybe there are those these days who have been sensing the Lord planting something of the tree within, or bringing forth some new activity of the tree in your spirit. And yet immediately there comes the conflict of concepts that we have known. I'd say you're quite an unusual person if there haven't come some new shafts of light, and some new things, and lo and behold, here's the arguing, that which is a renewed area, and yet the old concept stands, and all the war that goes on. Anybody know what I'm talking about? I tell you, I've gone home, I've gone to my room at times feeling as though somebody had had a meat cutter and just slayed and slayed me. And the strangest thing about it, it wasn't the old type of preaching that had in it all of the, but it was done in such gentle, quiet, neat, loving, it gets you. That's the Spirit of God. And I would say this morning that there will be no dwelling until we learn to recognize that dwelling, the dwelling that David, I believe, is pointing to here, the dwelling that we have to get hold of, is not our dwelling in mere mental concepts that we get straightened out. It is not a dwelling in soul where my emotion, my will, and my mind has come to rest, but the dwelling is to move beyond into the innermost parts. It's in spirit. It's in spirit. This is a dwelling. This is a dwelling. It seems that the very man who cries out the most to say, oh, one thing of my desires, and you turn and read, and every other verse, maybe not quite, but it seems that way, every other verse he's saying, the wicked, even mine enemies, and my foes, and yet all of it is the means by which he is being driven to the real dwelling. I don't think, oh, maybe that's an overstatement. It would seem anyway that we don't learn to dwell apart from literally being driven. I believe Paul is getting at something of this when he says, casting down imagination, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Here are these strongholds. I don't know, but you look out upon lives as you're ministering, or speaking, or counseling, or fellowshipping, and all of a sudden in the course of your conversation you see something of a flicker. Uh-oh, there's a stronghold. There's a concept. Collision course. You know what I mean? A stronghold. Something pretty well developed right here in the realm of the soul. And oh, what a day it is when the Spirit of the Lord begins this bringing every thought into captivity to be obedient to Jesus Christ. The destroying of these strongholds. There are strongholds out in the realm of the body. We'll get into some of that. Out in the outer that literally dominate and hold and control. There are stronghold concepts that have found such deep, deep roots in our minds. And I think the only way that we can be very sure this morning is that we're practicing a dwelling is just to say, cheer up brothers, sisters. You will never get a harmonious marriage of concepts. You will never get the answers. You will never, as long as you live in the realm of the mentality of the soul, you will never find rest. I don't care how many books you read, especially mine. I don't care how long and diligently you study this book. With the mental glasses of harmonizing, you'll always lay your head on your pillow with a tossing seat. Used to think only the wicked. It says the wicked are like the tossing seat. Cannot rest. Lord, there's a lot of wickedness. Been a lot of wickedness in me. Oh, I don't mean this unrest out here, but that of the soul. And I'm so mindful of the Lord Jesus. I never used to understand this thing of the salvation of the soul. I hear a man say, as a brother said last night, the word of the cross is the power to them which are, you remember, being safe. Oh, that would wave a red flag before me. If I had a strong old certain conception, you see, that when you're saved, you're safe. Well, you are. In the spirit. Your spirit has been born. New life, the union has taken place. But it was a wonderful day of unveiling when I began to see that there's the saving process of the soul. You see, the saving process of the soul. Lord, that is quite a process. One thing is to change. One thing, the realm of the spirit, you see. So, cheer up, brother, sister. All this warring that goes on here in the realm of the mental. God, in his own time and way, has a way of renewing, you see, until you begin to see that you're just held apart, unrelated to the whole. Phases, not in complete blending. And God has a way. So, this morning we're focusing in on the fact that there'll always be this warring that goes on in the realm of context. As long as they are something merely flowing out here in the natural. But I do believe that when God teaches us to just dwell, focus in spirit and begin to say, dear Lord, I'm shut in. I'm so glad you've not asked me to understand all of this. It's so easy to get ourselves mixed up with God. That's right. Trying to answer the questions and the problems of a lot of people. Why do you reserve that for yourself? And I think the most blessed words I've learned the last couple of years is, I don't know. Lord, thou knowest. Thou knowest. And that used to be awfully hard because I did have everything pretty well organized. Every answer that came along, I'd say the same. What does it mean to dwell? Oh, the blessedness. Moving out of this realm where the mentality, the soul, reigns supreme as it were, rides in the shriveled up spirit. Needing, needing to know that operation of the mingle and the joining, the work of the Spirit of God within, in order that the spirit may begin to take over and use the soul as the hand uses the glove. The renewing of my mind. The renewing of my emotion. The renewing, the strengthening of the will. And then you have something of a complete change, you see. The character, that is the function of the soul takes on its proper, its proper order and function. Well, let's get into this by turning this morning to the book of Romans, chapter 7. Before we read, take up a few of the verses, let's lay a little more background in getting a hold of how God has designed the function. We're going to discover that there are several laws mentioned here in this chapter. Before we go to them, let me just list them before us. First of all, we are introduced to the law of God. Then we're introduced to the law of the mind. Then we're introduced to the law of sin, which is within our members. And then we're going to see the law of the spirit of life. I think we have to understand a little better what this term law really is, what it's meant to reveal to us. If I understand the use of the term here, it is that the law is the way a thing is made to function. The primary essence which governs or controls its nature or character. Let me see if I can illustrate. We say, for example, of a dog, that a dog is so constituted, a dog is so made that at certain times a dog barks. Did you ever see a barking chicken? How many? No. Well, you say, why? Because the law of a chicken is different. The chicken crows, as roosters do anyway. You see, the dog out of the nature, that which issues and surrounds, the law of the dog is to bark. The law of the duck is to quack. The law of the chicken is to... Now, this may be something of a limitation of the term law, but let us just take this over into the realm of which we're going to consider. The law of the mind is a very wonderful thing. The mind is so constituted as to function in a certain way that the mind is built by God to acknowledge that which is good and right. That's why we have a moral universe. You never teach children, but there's something that the law of the mind functions. And here a plate of apples goes down the aisle. Mary, Johnny, Susan, Billy, they all take apples. But Billy ends up the last in the line and gets the smallest. And he says, that isn't right. You were selfish. Who taught him that? It's something of the law or the function of our mind. It's the way the mind works and operates. The law, the work, and the function of the mind. It just barks because a dog barks. It quacks because a duck quacks. Your mind, in its function, it has to be moral. Until other invasions will come in that will upset that, it always says, this is right. Follow this order. So that's the law of the mind. The mind, in its natural functioning, the law that's working is there to look up and say, that's right. That's moral. That's good. All right. By the same token, we say the law of God. Is that essence or that quality that is that which issues out of and gives us a wonderful awareness of the fact that God is love? You can't conceive of it in any other way, can you? Your mind has to acknowledge that. And so it's the expression of what he is, that which is the outflow of his function, his nature, his character, and all that he does. Now, Paul is going to say, as we read the verse in a moment, for the inward man, I delight in the law of God. Something in my inner being cries out, love, that's right. Peace, that's right. Joy, that's right. You see, all that is in harmony or synonymous with God himself. Well, we have to go on a little bit and discover that there's another law that he's going to mention, and he calls it the law of sin in my members. I'd like to have us, as we notice now, remember that there has been an invasion by sin, a power, something of a life force that has come in out here to capture the members and to set up strongholds, to take one into captivity. And we'll notice now in reading here, beginning in chapter 7 and verse 18, verse 17, I think, he says, verse 17, now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. Well, he uses a strange word regarding sin, doesn't he? It's something that dwells. I think it's something of a living thing, a spirit of some kind, something that has made an invasion. Sin that dwelleth. It isn't something that's just come in to occupy, but something that has come in as a very living thing. It's something that's dwelling there. Sin that dwelleth in me, for I know that in my flesh, that is in, for I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. For the will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good, I find not. For the good that I would, I do not, but the evil, which I would not, that I do. Now, if I do that, I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man. Here is something, the human spirit, I think we can say, there's something of the structure and the acknowledging of the spirit of a man within that reaches out to the light. Something of God being spirit, here's spirit, there's something of a harmony that would reach out. I think I could even see this in some manifest ways in an unsaved, unborn again person. And I sometimes wonder if they don't confuse that with this natural function of the spirit. It's quite dead, often quite insensitive to God, and yet there are some manifestations, very often, of an inner spirit that's reaching out for its completeness. But I think we do well to remember that the real delighting is God's spirit within our spirit reaching out in harmony towards God, the law of God. So I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind. So you see, that which is the delight of my spirit, and then my mind here takes cooperation with it, joins with my spirit and says, oh God, I give acknowledgement. The delight, the acknowledging according to the law of the mind, it reaches out, but oh, it's got an alien area to go through here before it can reach out to God. This alien area where sin dwelleth, this that has come to create such awful antagonism and struggle. Now what is the law of sin? What is that essential feature about sin that we see in its primary character? Well, sin is antagonistic. Sin is a total rebellion. And the law of sin or that essential feature that always stands out about sin is it's always saying no. You see that in your little boy. He doesn't know very much, but somehow, or your little girl, somehow that contrary something, quite a living thing, it just says no. Uh-oh. And it's quite often manifestations in big boys and big girls. Not in the same way, but there it is. No, no. Ever sensed it in yourself? Oh, I think I've wept in my bedside so often. Lord, what is this contrary thing in me? I would, but that no, that no. My mind acknowledges, or maybe my inner spirit has its antennae begin to be sensitive, and it says yes. Yet all of this cloud out here rises up. No, no. It's a living thing that dwells in the members. So he says, verse 23, but I see another power, another law, another actively functioning thing in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into the captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. So very simply, we have a fellow who's having great difficulty. He wants to dwell. Everything of spirit would say, yes, Lord. And let's, let's say here, here is a mind at least that acknowledges and says, I ought to dwell. I want to be occupied with you, dear Lord. But the awful war, the awful bombardment that comes in, the stronghold here in the members that are rising up to say no, no. This is the argument, the struggle, the reasonings that go on. And I think we get a glimpse of that in David. You read the psalm, intense desire to dwell. So what do we do? Pressed in by the circumstances, seem to be controlled by things external, all the time things out here instead of a spirit that is strong, a spirit that is sensing the inner health of the Lord. Well, if the spirit does not know how to draw from the olive tree, if the spirit on its own, or even if in the mind we're trying to keep our mind safe, in the mind independently doing it, I'm going to keep my mind safe. Mind, you're going to be safe. Now, mind, mind, you're going to be safe. I've met some people who are pretty strong in will. They've been, they get pretty well developed in the power of their will. Religious people, very well developed in emotion, till they can make a whole audience cry when they choose. You see, these things that develop. I, I used to be, I'll divert a little bit, I used to be quite alarmed that I would move around among the large people. Occasionally I'd run up, run into a home, a situation where the dear wife would say, and I believe in some purity, oh, if I could just get my husband to take his place. But he's so weak, and he doesn't seem to, he doesn't seem to, he doesn't seem to know how, and I have to keep plotting him to take the lead, you know, and to help him along. And under the Lord, I think maybe we've been able to sit down, help many a dear sister to see that what she may have called spirituality, or what they may have assumed to be spirituality, is a strong, a well-developed soul. I was out in California, three, four years ago, into ministry, staying in a very precious home with Christian brother and sister. He had his mechanic shop just to the side. Worked out there day by day. I'd go out and sit down and fellowship as he was working. Oh, his spirit and mine, there's a blending. There's a crying out for reality. There was a something that, quite an attunement, and I kept sensing, dear Lord, I enjoy this. Something of an echo, spirit to spirit. But almost always we'd end up by his saying, oh, if I could just be what I ought to be, I could be spiritual like my wife, then I could take my position. And I'd sit down with a precious sister. She'd move five little ways with the Lord. And she was all the time saying, oh, if I could just get birthed, if you'll never know who they are, if I could just get birthed, to be the head, to rise up and take. One day, in the groaning and the concern, I said, well, sister, I'd like to just talk with both of you, if I may. You see, he kept saying all the time, she gets so many answers to prayers, and the Lord speaks to her, and she had a lot of the earmarks of what so often we call spirituality. But I sat down one afternoon, and surely the Lord helped us. And I'll never forget looking at him and saying, brother, you are using a wrong yardstick for measuring some of the things that we call spirituality. And my humble evaluation is that God has been working in your life, and there's far, in the strength of character, there was far more of an enlarged spirit, you could tell it when we prayed. I said, I think if you could see what God sees, you'd be encouraged to believe that you are ready more for the headship, the position that you really long for. And then I had to, you know what we say, lower the boom? I didn't do it, I know the Lord did. But I had to look at the sister and say, sister, you've developed a strange, peculiar kind of a soulish, mystical something, that without realizing it, you keep your husband under, in a peculiar activity. I think that God has made the woman in her temperament and makeup, naturally speaking, with a temperament she's naturally more mystical. The man, in his natural makeup, is far more calculating. I'm speaking naturally. And we get temperament and natural confused with that which is the grace of God. Well, I trust the Lord to help us with that this morning. It was quite something wonderful to that dear sister, and she said, I see that. What I thought was spiritual was more of the soul. And I've been a victim, sort of overwhelming and dominating and overshadowing spiritually, and in quite a gentle way. And dear old Bert, I'll never forget, it was just like his shoulders going back and standing circumspectly and saying, dear Lord, dear Lord, the man whom God wanted to be king sort of looked more kingly when we got through, and the sister whom God wanted to be more queenly looked more queenly in her place. Now, it took several times to reaffirm, and I just sort of went back and reminded a couple times, but there's been something of real growth and development. Could you believe what I'm trying to share this morning, dear sister? It's out of just one desire, and that's to help us. I believe there have been growing many, many of God's children, oh dear Lord, to get the right order. But it hinges right here as something a brother was saying last night, a proper distinction between that which is of the spirit and that which is of the soul. Beyond that, I can go no further. God has to make the ending. But let us learn, let us claim now that God will help us learn what it is to dwell. We're not dwelling when in the soul we get a hold of a principle. We go home with the principle and try to get the principle to function in our home. Let me show you. You've never read this or heard this verse, but for those of you who haven't, let me just say, did you ever read that verse? Why? Submit yourself, your husband, you see. And you take that as a principle, and you go home and you say, all right Lord, in my soul realm, in my mind out here, I've got a hold of it, and I will go home. You strengthen your will. I will go home to submit. And you get home with a renewed determination. That's what consecration is to most people, a renewed determination in the will to fulfill the concept you've learned in the mind. And so you move about the house with that strange and wonderful religious soul being stronger and stronger and submit. Did you ever live in that kind of a home? Oh, the strain. Oh, the tension. I'm submitting. I'm submitting. I'm submitting. And get hidden behind it all the time the worry that you're going to come into a situation in which you can't submit. I mean, because the law of your mind says I can't go out and buy, well I shouldn't anyway, I don't think, go out and buy a bottle of liquor, you see. Your reasoning can conjure up all of the situations you're going to get into. You've got worry back here, you've got a concept, and I don't wonder that so many unsaved husbands look on and they say, whoa, is that what it does to you to be a Christian? Is that what it does to you? Deliver me from it. And I don't blame them. Strain. Can I say to you this morning, I know how easy, I've been guilty for years. Instead of bringing people into the glorious liberty of the sons of God, the children of God, I've been so guilty of giving people a yoke, a principle, something that's developed in the realm of the soul. And God wants to take away the strain. You're not dwelling when you're straining. You're in the soul. That is its dominance. But you go home with an olive tree instead of a basket of apples. No more dust. Of course the principles are there, that's all right, and when God really in the spirit can begin to use them, the renewed mind will bring them into real operation. And he brings your remembrance. And he makes operating, and you go home relaxed. Oh, bless the Lord. No worry. Lord, in that hour when I leave, you'll give a word. In that situation, when it comes, the tree will give me an olive. But I don't have, it's quite a thing to hunt around for the basket. You may have misplaced it. Which page was that in my notebook? Now don't think I'm, thank God for whatever help there are that, I'm not that extreme, but you see the principle? Relax. I guess I say over and over again to God, relax. This is not so terrible. It's wonderful. Relax. But you see, so often with a shriveled up spirit that doesn't really know its union, doesn't really know its connection, has not learned to continually dwell, I do not have that other law working, the law of the spirit. What is it? Life? Life. Life. The law of the spirit of life. I have seen wives go home. We'll get around to husbands in a minute. I've seen wives go home with a kind of relaxation. And you think I'm giving you some antinomianism and lawlessness. No, there's another law, the law of the spirit of life. A new captivity that's actually quite lovely. He led captivity, those who were captive in the soul, into the captivity in spirit. He led the captivity into a new captivity. So just relax. Wife goes home with something of the anointing manifest, joy, peace, quietness. Husband after a few days begins to look on and says, I'm going to send her back there again. And you haven't, now be careful, you don't push anything. Don't go home and sit down. Now I'm going to tell you, you've just got to know all that I learned. Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. He doesn't have any appetite, no hunger, no discernment, meat out of season. But after a few days, he's been watching. My, the joy of the Lord. Relax, rest, dwelling. Sweetheart, what did they speak about? Tell me a little. Don't start pushing. Don't give him all 12 messages in an hour. Oh, to get the push out of us. Oh, to get the striving out of us. Oh, to get this helping God out of us. And the relaxed sense of the dwelling, dear Lord, in your time, you have a way. Makes a difference. This is going to apply not only when some wives go home, but when we go back to the place we're fellowshipping. You can go back and create quite a cure if you go back to that church or fellowship and say, boy, you should have been there. I got all my concepts rearranged, everything's wrong here, nothing's right, going to start all over. No, you wouldn't do that, but I've done it. And then it starts to push and start to rearrange and start to reorganize the whole thing. Oh, that's not God's way. But the olive tree goes home and somebody begins to see the overflow and the new scent and what comes out of dwelling. The bombardments of life and all the arguings and the impossible problems. I used to think that after a while I'd get all of the principles and the concepts that would help me to know in every situation what to do. But to my utter confession this morning, I have to say it only gets worse. The problems become more impossible. I think I'll be at this stage. Well, that's enough. Dear heart, dear heart, we're just wanting to get shut up again. The answer, I think we've said it over and over again, the answer is we must learn the life source, the anointing that God puts within. And here we get a picture now. Oh, wretched man that I am. I don't think this fellow was struggling so much with some habits, some bad physical things. I don't think that was the primary thing here. Oh, wretched man that I am. But there was the arguing in the realm of the soul. And that's worth suffering, really. You're going to suffer. That mental suffering is far worse than anything else. And some of you are saying, but how am I going to... I've got to go home. We've got to have a fellowship. I've got to go home and get something started. I'm alive and caught and captured. How am I going to do it? By dwelling, by dwelling, by dwelling. Set your mind on the spirit. I'm not wanting us to turn in necessarily just to our spirit, though we have to know where God dwells. There's something of a communing in our spirit, but I want us to keep this in balance now. You cannot move on very long in the dwelling before you're set when there's ploys. The dwelling, there's an insulation against the things that would bombard. But I like to picture it this way. Lord Jesus, you who are seated at the right hand of the Father, and in this way become quite objective. And yet, sensing that he was the heavenly intercessor, has sent the indwelling intercessor to represent him. And in spirit, you know, there's a one that I... that's why I know how to say this. It's like a long tube. I'm here and all the way up there all the time. Never just here closed in, but when in spirit there's that communing, I'm also always up there. Lord, make that real. Some people are just, I mean, in their localization just trying to get up there. No. And I think some get kind of closed in on just being in here. No. The sense we have of the unity in the tri-unity, and yet the localization. He's at the right hand, and I all the way from there to here. Somebody explain that better when you get a chance. I can't. You can see why. It's not explainable. Only God can reveal. But this is what David's talking about in the dwelling. And so we move then beyond all of this that we call reacting. How many times when a situation has come up, and out of the impetuous spur of the moment, I've reacted. The reaction is something of the soul. Deliberate, poised, something is the action out of the spirit. My friend Lorne Fanny, you know, the navigator says, you reveal what you are not only by how you act, but how you react. If you pass the reaction test, reaction to providence, to people, to possession, to pressure, then you may add one more P for having attained to the stature of a perfect man, a man after God's own heart. How do I react out here to people? It's in the soul. There's a conflict of mind, I react. Here my possessions are being taken away, being misused or something, the soul reacts. But I quickly set the mind, quickly move in. Lord, that isn't mine anyway, really. You see, the things you have to pass before you've got two pockets, the Lord's pocket and your pocket. It's all the Lord. The Lord has given, the Lord can take away. Reaction, dwelling comes then when the soul has come to recognize its reacting power, but you move in to dwell. All these things that we're going through are ways by which God is working in insulation. He's just developing a stronger insulating quality here, so that no longer when these pressures, people, providences, circumstances, these things come. You don't react to the same things today, do you? You who've gone on? No. The bombardment's in a little different way, it's at a different level. God's developing a greater insulating quality, as it were, that there might be a dwelling. Remember in the Reader's Digest, back I think 1960, Brother tells of how he was walking home with a Quaker friend one day who stopped at a newsstand to buy a paper. And he thanked the newsie politely, but the old fellow didn't even acknowledge it in a sullen way. He responded, didn't respond. The friend turned to the Quaker and he said, he's a sullen fellow, not too agreeable, not very kind, is he? And the Quaker turned and he said, oh, he's that way every night when I buy a paper. Well then, why do you continue to be so polite to him, he asked, when he's that way? And he responded, why should I let him decide how I'm going to act? Why should I let him decide how I'm going to react? See the reaction? I don't know what that does to you, what it has done to me when I read it. The important word here is how I act, not react. Reaction. Oh, Amy Carmichael says, the cup that is filled with sweet water when it is accidentally charged can only spill sweet water. But I see a brother coming and I know I'm going to get a tongue lashing. So I brace myself and fill my cup with nice, sweet humility. I'm all ready for him. You see, my soul can get pretty well developed. Then someone flips in 10 minutes later back to the door and I spilled something else. Well, I want us to go back once again, just to remember now, that there's a law of the spirit of life. So the functioning, the way, the law of the spirit of life will work deep within to be the source, to keep me centered, poised in this dwelling. Are you catching why I'm saying that this has to be the priority? It has to be. It becomes the life force. Because the bombardments that come in, what about this group? What about this? What about that? Who's right? How do you fit it all together? Lord, thou knowest. Two years we've been trying to build something for the Lord in Indianapolis. Even though over and over again I've whispered back and said, Lord, you keep saying I will build. And I get out of this, get into such a strain because it's so slow and it's so, you know, all the no's that keep rising up. No, no, no, no. Contrary spirit. Lord, thou didst know. You choose to dwell. Well, I must go on in the next couple minutes back to Psalm 27, lest we get our dwelling kind of confused a little bit. Psalm 27. I love this way David starts this. Verse one, the Lord is my light. I used to think he gave me light. I used to think it was something he would give, you know, like a package. No, only thing you get detached like that is from the tree of knowledge, good and evil. But the thing about this is that he is it. Never detached from himself. He is it. He is my light. And bless the Lord, he is the salvation of my soul. It doesn't seem like much is happening, but I say he is my salvation. Oh, he is it. He is it. He is it. He doesn't give it. He is it. He is the truth. He is the source. The spirit of life in Christ Jesus. The law of the spirit of life. The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? I don't look out in the soul. I don't let the bombardment. When the wicked even mine enemies and my foes came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell. Though one host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. The war should rise against me. In this will I be confident. Think this fellow, does it have any more meaning? Is he pressing in to dwell? One thing have I desired of the Lord. That will I seek after that it may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. To behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. Now, let's just focus in on this dwelling. Just as surely as the person who has been so active in the realm of the soul and active in the realm of the body begins to think of dwelling, they think of passivity. And I would that we would get first of all this. Dwelling. Coming in a very living way to take and abiding. Have a resource. Have a source. Then to behold. To behold. To behold. Someone says, oh, Brother Verne, I'm sure a long ways from the inner place. I've hardly gone in to the outer court or the second court, this room, before I move in to the real dwelling. May I say this morning that there's a difference between the direction with your faith. Here's a principle that's been so helpful. Someone comes up to me and says, do you believe in perfection? You know how that's waving a red flag in most circles. Do you believe in perfection? And I know all that's involved. You know, you've been through a little of it. But there's a principle I want you to get a hold of this morning. And I come to so often just say, my faith is set toward perfection. Because if it isn't set that direction, then it's set the other direction. And by the very token of the way my faith is set, I'm either going to, with all the longing, now hold steady a minute. I'll get out of this jam. If my faith is set, I'm going to make excuses all the time for failure. My faith is set the other way. I'm turned the other way. I'm headed toward the rim of the wheel. You see, it's the way I face. It's the way I face. But if I'm faced toward the hub, I may be standing way out here at the rim itself. But I'm faced this way. I'm faced this way. Dear Lord, you delight in the perfection of the universe. I can have no other delight. You see the difference? I may be further away, and that's surely the truth. Further away from it. It's the way you're faced. Either trying to come as near as you can to the precipice without falling over. Or you're hugging the inside just as far away as you can. It's the way you're faced. Now, don't be alarmed. I know I'll never be perfect. And yet if I'm faced in a certain direction, I have great hope. You see, there's so many areas, there's so many things in life when a man or woman reveals the direction they're faced. This is the thing when one comes to dwell. You begin to behold. And I don't know, but I see in beholding something that has to do with this principle of, somebody says, you really, really believe, Brother Thompson, that in this closing hour, God is going to raise up a pure testimony of people who are one. And in locality, there can be the transcending of personality difficulties and all that's involved through the years and conflicts and so on. I can only have one answer. My faith is sound. Lord, I believe you are and can. If I turn my face around to behold something else, I'm a man totally without hope. All right, go ahead, shoot. But I can't face him. I can't see his face. I can't dwell and behold. If there's anything that turns my, you see, I can be in the room and not behold him. I've got to face this one. You see what I'm trying to say? You see, this is, this is quite radical adjustment. And your mind will go through a thousand turmoils if you try to explain. I know all the perfection problems. I know all the unity, I mean, I know some of the unity problems. I know all these things. I know what's involved, a little bit. But I've got to face, I've got to behold. In the dwelling, you see, in the dwelling, to behold the beauty of the Lord. Oh, Lord, this is quite something wonderful to move in. Quite something wonderful to move in. And the face is set toward the hub instead of toward the rim. How far can I go and still be faith? Ever hear people talk that way? The face draws. How far can you go and still be filled with the Spirit? The face draws. The face draws. Does the Lord, does the Lord want me to give my 10% before I take out deductions or after? You see, you see, my face is set one way. When the face is set, Lord, how much can I, Lord, can I buy this? It's all yours. It's all yours. My face is set. It's all yours. Lord, do you mind if I buy this pair of shoes? This, you see, my face is set. You can tell. You don't have to fellowship with an individual very long before you can tell what he's beholding, the direction. He's either headed toward the hub or toward the rim. He's facing. He's beholding. There's something of a glorious aroma about the life. But you'll not dwell very long until you've got a face that's set. Now we said a little bit ago that if you're in the strain of things, the strain of things, the strain has to go. Somebody said, ah, wonderful. We become passive. No. I read this next. He says to behold, to inquire, and to seek. And this inquiring is not the inquiring of the mind. That's not of the soul. But there's the delightful inquiring of the spirit. And here my spirit takes on some real press. My spirit becomes active. This is the thing. It's not a passivity. We get passive in the wrong area and always active in the wrong area. Usually passive in spirit and active in soul. But here's the difference. I am passive in spirit. I mean in soul. And active where? You ever run into a burning spirit? Somebody with a burn, you get burned. Ever run into somebody with a pressing spirit? Not pushing in the soul. Not driving, but a pressing spirit. I press. Here's this one thing that Paul's talking about. I press toward the mind, for the pride, for the high calling of God in Christ. Oh, bless the Lord, your spirit becomes more active. It is the exercise of the spirit. Well, you have a teacher to turn to this wonderful privilege of dwelling. You know, I don't know how he does it, but he knows the time when in the midst of your pressing in spirit, and all the soul rises up with nothing but darkness and negative, no, no, it can't be, can't be. But you beholding his countenance. The other day we were worshipping the Lord in the assembly. A verse I guess I've read so many times came to me. The health of his countenance. The health of his countenance. And I thought, oh, in the beholding, the seeking his face. Sometimes it doesn't seem that you get to see it, but your face is set. And just when you need it, he pulls back the veil. And he has a nod at his approval. He says, son, I understand. The health of his countenance. That came about. I was ministering to some of the folk in the group, you know, in the morning. I guess they were overshadowed and clouded with some heavy burdens and problems, and they were pressing in. And I was sort of murmuring a little bit, you know, Lord, this is not a very receptive group to speak to. They don't give me their face or their countenance at all. Not many of them. And then he said, it's the health of his countenance. And you know what he said? Son, this is the way you are too often. You could help somebody along by your countenance, if there was the overflow and the joy, and you looked at that brother when he was struggling to give him some help. You can go home and help your preacher. Not by, Lord, how long do I endure this? You'd be surprised what your countenance reveals. You can squelch. You can squelch a service. You can squelch a speaker. You can squelch, I just thank God every time I go home from the service, Lord, the health of the countenance is here. Anybody could speak. The health of the countenance. You see? The face is set toward him, and it seemed as he was saying that morning. You set your face. The amount of the direction your face is set. You don't understand it all. But I'll never be perfect, I guess. But my face is set. Anything else? Anything less? And my face is the other direction, and I've never had the health of it. You'll never help me when I'm all the time just excusing, and all the time setting my face on failures, and all the time just emphasizing what I've been sort of pondering. You see, we're presenting a David. You run into a lot of things that maybe you feel like you're setting the ideal David instead of the real David. But if you set anything less, your face has turned the wrong direction. He's groaning, isn't he? The priority of his life is to dwell. How about your face this morning? Set, beholding, in spirit, you learn what it is to be active in spirit. Exercising of the spirit. We're going to go on tomorrow. This is enough for now, shall we pray? Lord, we can know all about our need to act, poised in the spirit, by the law of the spirit of life. That law can only work in one way. Relief, joy, peace, these are the characteristics. This is the way the spirit can work. Dear Lord, we've seen so often your children. Though there's the claim to be filled with the spirit, yet there's not the true function of the law of the spirit of life. Striving, pushing, now there's no outreacting, against people, against Providence. Pressured. Oh, how strong we've been in the soul. How we've captured people with our conceptions of things. Our mind is organized in developing so often, until the reasonableness of a demand is at another acceptance. Oh, we pray that during these days, thou will shut thy people out to a real and a proper dwelling. The dwelling, dear Lord, in the house. And they can say, David, I am a fresh olive tree in the house of the Lord. Lord, I'm so glad this is your work. And you're bringing some lives to the place where in the turmoil of trying in the mind to get all of it straightened out, we gladly throw it out and we say, dear Lord, I just want to dwell. And in the dwelling, you'll become the light. You'll become the life. You'll become the salvation. You'll become the strength. They've got a tree. In a tree. Oh, hallelujah. Praise the name we thank you this morning. In Jesus' name we ask you. Amen.