In this sermon, the speaker discusses the concept of being a Christian and how it is a revolutionary experience. He emphasizes that being a Christian means being a vessel through which Christ can live and express His love in the world. The speaker also highlights the importance of being detached from worldly attachments and being solely attached to God. He uses the analogy of the woman breaking the alabaster bottle and pouring perfume on Jesus' feet to illustrate the idea of surrendering everything for the sake of Christ. Overall, the sermon encourages listeners to live a life where Christ's love is expressed through them.

Nine, program one. This is David Ord with today's Union Life broadcast. We're interviewing Norman Grubb and talking with him about who we are in Christ. And we've come now to the place where we say, well, once we understand that Christ is our life, how do we operate in life? And we're getting into the whole question of the part that faith plays in living the Christian life on what we might call the third level. We look first to the cross, where we see that Jesus died for us to forgive our sins. And then the second level is that we see ourselves as on the cross, dead in him, and now alive in the sense that he in union with us is our life. Now, that's not where we stop because God wants to move out into this world through us. He wants to operate in this world with us as his agents. And Norman is getting into this whole subject with us now of how that comes about through faith. We move into the whole meaning of being a person because the revelation of the Bible is the person universe is love. God is love. And the whole universe is a reproduction of him in love action. So God is a person who moves out from himself in continual forms of love creation, love salvation, love fulfillment, all in our expressions of a love which is just to perfect all those whom he's brought into being. So he is outgoing love. Now, we've had so far have had to see him rather as incoming love to us. Now, of course, that was his outgoing love. But to us, it came as an incoming love. I mean, we understood that it's been he who's been in his song, reconciling the world as himself. He's been fulfilling his love salvation purposes in us by his love action through his song. God inquires, reconciling the world to himself. And we've been receiving the benefits of his love action, which is found its fulfillment in that he always had before the foundation of the world this fixed purpose, to have multitudes of sons by whom he could freely be himself again in the paradox of them being themselves, yet themselves really being expressions of himself. That's the paradox we're talking about, of union. And he's the outgoing lover. But so far, we've only seen him expressing that love by the means by which he's restored us to be whom he, from eternity, purposed us to be. Humans in eternal union relationship with him. And as we say, functioning as humans, it's really his functioning by us. And his functioning is the love functioning. So now we really move on to a whole new range of understanding. We've seen to some extent who we are if we moved into this recognition and realization of our union with him, to why we are. We have, in a sense, been too occupied in having settled for us who we are and being settled in that love union, to be occupied in the outcome of why we are. What we're now talking about is why we are. It's presented to us in a scripture in the form of three grades or three levels, showing, therefore, that in the minds of the spirit expressed through the scriptures, that humanity would enter into the recognition and realization of who they are in those three grades, on three levels. I hesitate to use those words because it may give the impression of a kind of gradualness. It really is entering into the larger recognition of who the person is who now re-expresses himself by us. And therefore, it's moving into his fullest expression of himself by us. The simplest illustration used, most commonly used, is the one in John's letter when he says he compares us to little children, young men, and fathers. And he explains in a few words the difference between the three phases. The point of a little child is he's practically unconscious. He's helpless. He knows nothing but dependence. He totally depends on his parents. So John says, spiritually speaking, a new-birth child, a little child, is one who, knowing that he's a sinner, has moved into a wholehearted reliance on the redemption through Christ, which has brought him back to the Father. The terms used, he says, you watch out, little children, because their sins are forgiven for his name's sake. They know they're sinners. They know through the cross of Calvary they're forgiven. And therefore, they know the Father. They've entered into a relationship with the Father. A relationship, not a consciousness of themselves, but of the grace they've received through the Father and the Son, by the Spirit. He then likens us to young men. And the point he makes for the young men is they're father themselves. A little child doesn't know himself, or he knows his parents, but who he's relying. A young man has to pull away from his parents to find himself. So the description of a young man, which is equivalent to what we've been talking about, entering into the consciousness of the union, is he finds inward strength. He meets the opposite of life. So he meets the contrary of life, which is the wrong way of life, which is evil. And he knows how he's become, how he's entered into the conquest of evil. And it speaks of the Word of God abiding in him. Now we've moved into an inner relationship. When we first come to God, the Word of God comes to us. Of course, the Word of God ultimately is the Word which manifests to us. The Word is the living person. The outer word reveals to us the living Word, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. So we come to him in outer form. Now in the second form, the Word of God abides in you, we've moved into now, what we've been talking about all these times, the new consciousness of the person who is the real one in our lives is Jesus Christ, living in us. And then we know our strength, because we found that the strength of humanity is in the spirit, not our human spirit at all, in the spirit who manifests itself by us, expresses itself by us. And the false use of power by Satan has been replaced by the right use of power, by Jesus Christ. And so we know the strength. And therefore we know in that strength how, of course, we overcome the wicked one, because we are abiding in him who has overcome the wicked one. So we've moved on the second level, the young man's level to a graduation, to a child who's passed from being a dependent child to becoming a self-sufficient person. That's what we say we are. We've found our resources in life, in our union consciousness in Christ. Therefore, that has solved the problems that concern our own selfhood, who we are, and how we find out, and how we are who we are. Therefore, our personal problems are solved. And we've moved in among those whom Jesus said, when you have come into the living relationship inwardly conscious of the living relationship with me, you'd either thirst or hunger again, because he in us is our permanent living breath, and he in us is our permanent living water. So we live a life which has an inward sufficiency. That releases us for our attention now to be turned outside ourselves to God's love purposes in the world by his sons. That's the third level. That's the father level. We see, we've read that as he deaths in us, to be co-heirs with Christ, heirs of all things, the day is coming when he'll minister his own love purposes and love fulfillment by us in the whole universe, which will be his total agents of his outgoing activities. Not his incoming establishment in us, but his outgoing activity from us. And that's what John talks about as being the righteousness of fathers. Because when a little child and a young man, their concerns are about their own development and their own maturity, a father's occupied in his outer ministry, to his family, to his world, taking his place in the world. So the description given by John of the father is one who, it says he knows him as he was in the beginning. That doesn't seem to mean much by its stand, but to understand, knowing, and the father always being mixed with the thing. It's not knowing in the head, it's being part of something, like your profession. You know your profession, it's a know-how. So it says now you're in a union consciousness with the father, as what? He isn't even called a father. I know him just from the beginning, John says. Why? Because he's beyond the fatherhood. He's the person whose eternal purposes are being fulfilled in the universe, not at the beginning, from the beginning. So we're now in the conscious union relationship which he was fulfilling his perfecting purposes in the universe. Now this really is where the Christian life begins to get into gear, because everything we've been talking about so far is to prepare us for Christ to go out and live that life through us as his agents. Now if you'd like to understand this more thoroughly, write for the booklet The Key to Everything to 4606 Lamar Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, 38118. Or call area code 901-795-0121. Be sure to tune in next time. We're on the station daily at the same time. Until then, this is David Ord. Program two. This is David Ord welcoming you to another Union Life broadcast with Norman Grubb. Norman has been talking to us about who we are in Christ and now moving into the subject of why we are in Christ and what God wants to accomplish through us. Now in 1 John, the second chapter, John talks about three levels of experiencing the Christian life. The first of them he calls little children. The second is young men, and then he talks about fathers. And we're beginning to talk about what it is to be a father. Norman, what does John mean when he says to us that we become fathers? A father is a reproducer. A father's interests don't center around himself, but center around those for whom he's responsible, those who are in his realm of living. And therefore we're saying, the Bible says, on the father level, we're linking with God in his outgoing purposes. We're mingled with, mixed with him from the beginning who from eternity to eternity is in the process of fulfilling his eternal purposes. And we are therefore expressions and agents of him who is fulfilling his love purposes in the world, outgoing from us, as from him not coming into us. This is the third level. When we have become linked to Jesus, not as our savior, but in his saviorhood rather. It involves a radical change, another radical change in our understanding. Just as we had to have the earlier changes in passing from our sin condition to our justified condition, from our justified condition to our unified condition, so we move another one. And the importance of this is, we're ceasing to be those who are dependent on God and becoming those who cooperate with God. And we're becoming cooperators, co-laborers, co-saviors. As the Bible says in John, even co-gods. God in outgoing love actions. It's spoken of in other terms of the Bible. It's spoken of in terms of our union relationship with Christ in his crucifixion and his resurrection and ascension. And the Paul gives three letters about it. His Galatian letter, it concerns our relationship to Christ in his death. And Colossians, our relationship to him in his resurrection. And Ephesians, our relationship to him in his ascension. And from his ascension, ascension means the first to have finished. In ascension, it says Ephesus was seated with him in the heavenly places. Seated means something's finished. What's been finished is the redemptive purposes which brought us into this unified relationship to him where we can be expressors of him. And so the processes of redemption are completed. And when a man sits down to complete one job, to pick up another one. And so from the, Jesus said, when I ascend, the Holy Spirit, I'll ask the Father, he'll send the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the outgoer. He'll now take the reality of redemption out to the world and gather in the millions of the elect that are saved. And as we find ourselves as members of his body in the ascension, we become agencies of his gathering of the company of the redeemed. So its basis is another profound change of our inner consciousness. That's why Jesus says, and in very drastic terms, that you can't be the commissioned purpose, purpose of person, which is God's set purpose to all of us. Means on which he fulfills his purpose as a commissioned person. We can't be a commissioned purpose unless we've been first a part of our discipleship training. We have to move from being a disciple to being an apostle. Apostle is one who's sent out. A disciple is one who's been trained to send out. Now Jesus said that training consists in our being detached from anything human. So we become people of one love, one occupation. Everything fits into that one love. And of course the one love is we are centered in God, Father, Son, and Spirit. And we are operating as expressions of him. And that's why Jesus said a disciple has to be cut off from his human love and uses those strong terms in Luke 11, Luke 14, where he says unless a person hates, hates his father and mother, wife and children, houses and lands, he hates his own life also, he can't be my disciple. Unless a man hates all that he has, he can't be my disciple. Disciple is a learner until he's completed his learning and then he can go out to fulfill his purpose in life. And so Jesus says we have to go through this discipleship period. And he says in doing so we have to count the cost. The meaning is the actual fact that none of us have anything except ourselves or we ever have in life is ourselves. Depends what kind of self we are. We have nothing in life. All we really have is what life means to us. It's the us we have, not the life. Therefore when it says, when Jesus used drastic terms like if a man hate not, father, mother, wife, and children. In our own faith it isn't our father, mother we have, it's ourselves. It's the our, it's my father, my mother. What I really have is my self-love. Oh that's my father, that's my wife, my children. It's the my, my, my I have. Interpreted to me it's certainly my father, my mother, my wife, my possessions. But they're only really outer forms, outer symbols of the real which is me. And I'm then a me for me. That's the old life. Now redemption changes that. Because redemption means I hate being a me for me. I find the self-same. This is the character Satan should see as me. Now when I receive Jesus Christ, the me for me exchanged to be a me for others. Because as Christ comes into my life, he is the self for others. And on that level, our attitude towards our loved ones changes because now it isn't they for us but we for them. In the new life, it isn't my father's for me, my wife's for me, it's I'm for them. How can I help be what I can be for them to fulfill with their lives? Above all, of course, if they find that same sense of Christ that I have. Now that's a radical change there. But the foundation of the radical change is that I don't get that others, I get that God and others in God. That's why it's radical. Because the new life is he, he in the whole universe, and I joined him as such. And all I have is he. When I have him, I have back for love services who I'm attached, but in a certain detached form. No longer are the first phase of my life, my father, my wife, my children, my possessions, my health, my life, anything. I have no claims. I've been wrapped up in one person who possesses me and I possess him. As the bride says in the Song of Solomon, I am my beloved, he desires of all of me. I am my beloved and he is mine. Now this is the radicalness of discipleship. That the Holy Spirit has a cutting off work in us in which we are detached from a direct relationship to anything on earth, or any person on earth. It's replaced by an attached relationship only to him. And God is our all in all. That's what discipleship is. When God is my all in all, then of course God can be what he is by me. And if any of you have read the life of Reese Howells, his assessor, he takes you through his striking experiences. When the Holy Ghost said, I have nobody else in my body except you. I have a total ownership. You have no affection, no possession, you have nothing. You have only me and then only what I give you in my life. I have no rivals. And he went through an agonizing week until this became established. That was his discipleship. That to him then God became all in all. When God is all in all, in God you get back as those to whom we are linked. In a secondary sense, we're back to serve and fulfill them. And the main way in which you can fulfill them is that they may certainly, they themselves might find that they find him in them as the meaning of life as we have. And so our relationship to other people it's become loosened from being the primary, the primary home in our lives. And then Paul says, when you're Christ, you have all. He says, all things are yours. All things, even convective, the world is yours. And life and present in 2nd Corinthians says everything, in 1st Corinthians, everything is yours. All things are yours because you're Christ. And Christ is God. When we're Christ, in Christ we get back, but on another level, the whole world. We have to bless and serve and fulfill the world. We don't live for the world, we don't even live for our loved ones. They're part of our Christ's heritage, they're Christ's loved ones. And we're loving them in the sense that they're part of the way in which Christ can express his love and love accepted by me. And Norman, we're really grateful for the message you've given us here because I think this is what most of us as Christians are really wanting to move into, is how we can live this life whereby Christ is expressing his love through us, as us in this world, as his agents. Now we're on the same station, five days a week at the same time. Be sure to tune in for the programs in this series on Who Am I? And write to the booklet, The Key to Everything in the Meantime, published by Moody Press. There's no charge for it, we want to send it to you. Just ask for The Key to Everything and write to 4606 Lamar Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, 38118. Or call area code 901-795-0121. Until next time, this is David Ord. Program three. This is David Ord with today's Union Life broadcast. We're considering together how God expresses his life in this world through us. How we are his intercessors, his commissioned vessels to express the life of Christ in the world we live in. Now, Norman Grubb is a man who has been on the mission field for many years. He was the General Secretary of the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade. And Norman has had a tremendous wealth of experience in living as a commissioned intercessor and catching God's purposes in his life. Norman, I want to ask you if you'll tell us more now about how this life has worked out for yourself and you've come to see this top level of living as a father. Well, we are considering the totally revolutionary effect of being what we commonly call a Christian, which means we're a human agent through whom Christ is reliving his life. It's revolutionary because God is a total outgoer. He is nothing but outgoing love. There's nothing in God except his one eternal purpose, which is the perfection of his whole universe. So everything in the universe is in his perfect harmony, his perfect happiness, perfect fulfillment of his being, right from persons down to the mere things of life. So he's a total outgoer. Therefore, whether I am in a true sense what we call a Christian, I'm an expression of him as a total outgoer. Now, that's not been what has occupied us up to the present because we had to move first into a condition in which it was a subtle fact in us that life is Christ of Enos, that we are in this union relationship in which we are the agents in which he is himself Enos. It's only then we really begin to be confronted with the face that means he's, it's not Christ Enos, it's Christ by us and by us as us, that we therefore the outgoers, which is he being an outgoing person by us. So not Christ for us or Christ Enos, but Christ by us. Actually, that's been the beginning of this treatment since we're born again. As we said earlier on, the first evidence of born again is the birth of an other lovingness. When revelation first comes to us as soon as Christ died for us and took away our sins and given us eternal life, made us members of the family of God, we begin to love, not us at all. It really is the spirit of love now has begun to be his love self in us, a coitus to love the son who died for us and love the father and love people. We've begun to be changed over from being geared to self loving self, which is Satan's spirit in us, to self giving self, which is Christ's spirit in us. So from the very beginning of our new birth, the trickle, the trickle of outgoing love and outgoing life has flowed through us. Evidence is our desire and concern that other people may know they have the secret of eternal life and peace that we have. We begin to be those who seek to reach other people with the good news of salvation. So there's a trickle of the outgoing reality moving with us up into a stream in us from the days of our new birth. But we're now at the point where that's all there is about us. Now that's something different. It hasn't been our total concern up to present because we first had to be concerned to find out what it does mean to be in consciousness of the person who's not I, but Christ spontaneously living his life by me and I spontaneously living and that being he living it. We've gone into the radical basis of the new consciousness through faith into which we have to be brought into this new reality. So our main line of consciousness has not been Christ outgoing through us so much as Christ being complete, his complete self in us. As Paul said, that Christ be formed in us, fully formed. Now we've left that behind. Now we move in and therefore the seriousness of it is to begin to be defined as the only meaning of life. In each case, it's the only meaning of life. The only meaning of life is a lost person must be saved. And then the only meaning of life is salvation means that Christ really lives his life by me. Not just rescues me from hell but makes me an expression of himself. In each case, it's the only meaning of life. Now the final only meaning of life is I'm an expression of God whose only meaning in life is other love. Of course, that's proved with the fact that when the final issue is made, he himself goes to hell on our behalf to save us going to hell. Because the ultimate living of self-giving, I mean laying down his own life in the person of his son to go through what would be our eternal destiny but for him, that's outgoing love. So we know the kind of person he is, therefore that's the kind of person I am. Now that confronts me with something. For me to say that's the only kind of person I am. And that's why we began to say that the background to apostleship is the thought machine. Apostle means you're a sent one. Now all of us, when we know who we really are, we're sent because the sent person is the sending person, it's Christ in us who's moving out by us in some form without going, laying down of our lives for others. In the level of the epistles of Romans, which is the great planetary epistle, that's the third area where we present our bodies as living sacrifice. We've had to go through periods where we've had to be justified and unified in the Romans 1 to 3, in Romans 6 to 8 and so on. In the 12th chapter, we begin to talk about Christ going out to us through the world. So a potential body is living sacrifices. Lay down your bodies, rather your bodies, others may have life. Now we're moving. Not talking about the body as he's dwelling in place. The body is laid down in an outpour of life and others may have life. Now we were saying the background to this is that God himself, in his wonderful faithful ways, has fulfilled a further operation in us. The operation of loosing us from our attachment to people and things of this life, even to our nearest and dearest. That's a very radical fact. And to go so loosened that our attachment has downed in us that it is only to him. I say it's very, very radical. One of the great writers of years ago made a phrase, used a phrase he's always talked to me. He said, in a million letters, the flight of the alone to the alone. Basically, I'm a lone person in myself. I'm myself. The alone person in the universe is he. The self in the universe. The flight of the alone to the alone. So there is in our center an area where we've come into just this this inner union. You get it again in the Solomon. The bride and bridegroom. The marriage up of the lamb, where we're all, we're joined two as a one. And in fire, it says, he's the only one that matters. Now, as I say again, that's radical. But nobody else really matters. Our whole being, it says, is one perfect person who is the all in all, and he's the all in all to us. And we don't talk about princes going to heaven. I'm going to meet my relatives, or I'm going to a place. I'm just a person. Because eternity is a person. Life is a person. The universe is a person. One person who's come out in all these forms. Our privilege isn't just to be a form. We are persons too. We are derivative persons. That's our privilege. We're co-gods. That's different. But everything in the universe, it's only our expression of this one person. And we in a particular way are that. But therefore, all the universe is a person in different forms of marvellous expression of themselves. Therefore, we only are in the heart universe when we are part of that one person. And we, as persons, are conscious of being expressions of one with the person. The fact of the alone to the alone. Now, where we have to be careful about this is we've seen all along the illusion we've lived into is that we should better ourselves. Because this false lie we got from Satan, which is what he is, a self, supposed to be self-acting self. And we caught up, as we said again and again, caught up by that lie. So we tend to go back to say, well, I should become something. No, I don't become something. I am what he is in me. I'm only saying it because he's my saviour. I'm only saying it because he's the one living his life in me, not I. And I haven't changed. I've just been the deeper expression, the full expression of what he is, as a saviour and as my all-in-all, and so on. Now, I'm saying that because, therefore, it isn't that I get about cutting myself off to anything. The best thing is cutting yourself off to nothing. But if he is your heartbeat, if he is living inside of you, as he is, if you're unified with him now, his purposes, his beautiful purposes, to cut you off from any kind of claims which in any sense are rather his own. And that's very drastic. And he does it in his own way. But as we move through discipleship, father, son speaking, you will know what I mean, God's done something in us, which somehow we become detached. We have a precious wife, maybe, a precious husband, precious children, parents, we have possessions, we have securities, we have valuable things in our homes, we have our own physical lives, but somehow we detach. We don't care. We do care, we don't care. Our main care isn't them, because we sense that they're in higher hands than ours. My wife isn't my wife. She's God's precious person. And we begin to see everything as part of God's precious property. Only in the second sense are they loaned to me. So I've become, in a strange way, which is very offensive to the world, and maybe very offensive to your partners in life, if they don't know what you know, there may be a cost of sacrifice to pay for it. Because you become kind of attached, you get a new quality of love. See, in the old quality of love, a good deal of it is what I get from them. I like my wife and my husband because they give in to me. I like because there's a basis, a self-element in it. I don't recognize that. I may make out I'm for them. It really is a very large delay for me. Now, in this detached love, both totally for them, on another level, they may have the best they should have. And the best they should have isn't you. The best they should have is that God dwells in them eternally, and they become re-expressions of God for eternity. So the best you can do is to be a means of which your loved ones themselves become again Christ-expressions as you are. So you have a new detached operation, and you lay down your life for them. You won't do less, you'll do more for them, on a new level. They won't like it so much. Because you don't have perhaps the same sentimental attachment you used to have. There's a difference. Because you become detached. Now, I'm saying to you, don't try and get detached. The Spirit is a detacher. If you are one in whom Christ does live, and your whole purpose is that he should be holding himself by you now, not for you, you say, God, by faith I take it you're doing the detaching job. Maybe he's done some already. I take it by faith you're doing the detaching job, so somehow I come to say, well, I love you, you're my total love. And all other love is supposed to take a secondary place there. Really, a primary place. Because my new love calls me to serve them. It's really a higher love. It will appear secondary. Because my total love is first of all my God, now it is in God I get back my world. On another level. This is discipleship. This is a tremendous message that we want to share with you not only on this radio broadcast but also in print. I want to invite you to write for the booklet The Key to Everything. It's published by Moody Press. There's no charge for it. We want to send it to you. And when you do, we'll also send you a copy of Union Life. It's a bi-monthly magazine. 36 pages. And it's a magazine that is going to show you what this life of Christ really means in practical terms. Now, you can have these things, The Key to Everything, and Union Life magazine. You won't be asked for money. If you'll write to 4606 Lamar Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, 38118 or call area code 901-795-0121. That's 901-795-0121. The address again in just a moment. Until next time, this is David Ord. Program 4. This is David Ord welcoming you to another Union Life broadcast. We've been talking with Norman Grubb who wrote the book Reese Howell's Intercessor. And many of you have read or heard of that book. It's a book which has had tremendous wide circulation all over the world. And Reese Howells was a man who Norman Grubb knew personally and he tells how Reese was led into a life of intercession. Now, we are in the series of programs which we've entitled Who Am I? And we're considering why we are. Why have we been called as Christians? What's the purpose of it all? Why is Christ manifesting His life in us? What is He trying to accomplish? And we're dealing with this question of how He commissions us and He moves out through us into the world that we become joint with Him in His saviourhood for the world. That He is moving the message of salvation and of who people are in Him out through us. He's loving through us. He's reaching people through us. Now, Norman, I'm going to ask you if you'll just pick up with this whole thing now of the intercessory life and take it from here. We shan't get very far yet into actually into intercession. We can approach it. Of course, intercession really may be a queer term. It's merely the means of reproduction. meaning of life is we reproduce. That's why we're fathers. Now, we're saying that seeking to lay the foundation for this, which is the final meaning of being a person. The person is the outgoer in the world as we call the living God the reproducer. He's reproduced Himself in marvellous ways which are only known for fullness of eternity in the perfection of the whole being of eternity. The outgoer. And we've understood that His eternal purpose has been to operate His outgoing in person forms first in His son and then through His son His sons. We are the outgoers which is really He being Himself by us. And so we've begun to confront this this only total meaning of what it means to be a person. That I'm an outgoer that He's going out in outgoing love and fulfilment of purpose and power by me. And we're facing the fact that that its basis is an acceptance of the the total detachment of ourselves as a basis to our being attached by Him in the fulfilment of His fruitful purposes in life. We had to be detached and become attached attached to outer callings of intercession reproduction. We had to be detached first and we had to face the fact that to us negative humans who have such negative ideas even of God Himself it may even seem fearful but the actual fact is I never find myself until I only have Him. I've never found my true self until I'm an expression of the One. I am the One in expression of the One which we said before has been the flight of me the alone to Him the alone and we found our perfect fulfilment a perfect marvel in fact we humans are actually expressions of this One perfect person in His outgoing operations in the universe and that's where this detachment to which we give the name of the Bible of discipleship where the Holy Spirit has by His own ways cut us off from human detachments human attachments I mean that we can move into inner consciousness of Him alone and I would express again it's the Holy Spirit does it now on that paragraph it's a great passage in the Bible on this subject which is Luke 14 about the last ten verses of Luke 14 when Jesus discusses if you hate not so and so you can't be my disciple it says you count the cost alright you count the cost it's really count the gain not the cost but it looks like a cost to you the cost is it appears to you as if God has to take away from you what appear to be your dependent loves loves of people, loves of family, loves of possessions loves of health, loves of security it seems rather awful because we have those narrowing views of the magnificence of the perfection and performance of this person to whom we are attached so what really has been attached from scraps to be attached to the whole and when you are attached to the whole you are there you are attached to Him who is the whole and you begin to operate as an agent of the whole an expression of the whole, you are a whole person but you can't be attached to the whole unless you become detached from the parts so Jesus to convenience uses the word count the cost as I say again it's not count the cost but count the gain but the point to remember when it looks like a cost to you the Holy Spirit is a very wonderful person he may look at that level as pretty fierce he is very gentle he may say pretty fierce how can he cut me off I am detached from those persons and things who are most real to me he will do it very nicely and you find that he very quietly just weans us into something oh that's it and then the strange thing is you find yourself detached from all and in being attached to Him only you get back the all, our new level I mean even on finances he had to detach us we depend on a salary or depend on future securities or pensions and so on it doesn't mean we don't have them it means he had to do something which says yes thank God I got a pension coming thank God I got a normal salary but that's all I'd count on he takes a lot away he's my pension, he's my salary so I gladly use what I've got if I've got a good salary I'll use it use it for other people got a good pension I'll use it but ok God, I'll use it but if you take it I've got you so inside you as a detached person you say God you're my salary so if you do take me in that way that's what you fulfil I always remember that great wealthy German lady I never remember her name who loved God, was very wealthy was in God's service and then came the German crash after World War I when the mark went to pieces and one mark was meaningless and she said thank God I've lost everything at last I can trust God that's one way of putting it that's the spirit behind it so I'm saying in this detachment don't touch it, don't touch it but count the cost me if you say God although I'm a trembling human I might fear this I know you're beautiful I only want you and all your eternal purposes around me put me through Lord, put me through that's counting the cost you take it from God and he puts you through he may have put some of you through I don't know at least how he did it with me he did it with me somehow our very marriage we had an attachment we'd been married 60 years last year we'd gone on pretty well together it's been a detached marriage we've loved each other, loved our family but basically Jesus' love occupies us and our life's been occupied in the ways he'd called us to express the love of Jesus through our family life so it's not been the main attachment our main attachment has been Jesus Christ and God inner side attachment has been our cooperating together so here we are when marriage doesn't always work out these days here we are enjoying 60 years of it see what I mean so don't touch it but you can enter into that transaction my purpose is to understand what I am as you without goer through me and that means a detachment from anything which is holding me something from me, my mind and you do it so nicely that you detach me from that and yet I can't get everything back again in a new level I love to serve them but not because I must have this and that my beauty there is a means which they can have this or that so you can take that line which is to move into apostleship apostleship sounds a big term apostleship really means I'm a sent one we're all sent by women God sent his son so we're sons he sends we're the sent ones by whom he reproduced himself in saving action in the world in the saving of billions through the Lord Jesus Christ through that saving action billions are redeemed we're the redeemed we're sent ones that's what apostle means you can't be an apostle unless you're a first disciple he has detached you don't try and get it you just find and say yes I understand I do understand, I love folks but I have only one real love zeal of my heart eats me up zeal of God's heart eats me up now then you move into that so that's the background now the foreground effect of that is that I begin to accept the fact that life has no meaning to me except God's purposes through me that God is fulfilling purposes through me and everything that happens to me now is something to do with God's outgoing purposes now that's radical I tend to think what God means to me why am I sick, why am I alone asking why am I, why am I a business what happens to me you don't ask those questions you say I'm now part of God in his outgoing purposes everything that happens to me is part of that purpose so whether I like it or not I can say ok God this is your perfect way not because of its effect on me that's not the point I move out of the area of its effect on me I move now into the area of this is part of the way you are for other people I had a missionary very close to me he was lonely he went out with me to Africa his mother was a widow I never knew her husband at home she rejoiced in giving her only son then she went blind alone oh you must go back and be with your mother you know what she said that's what will kill me if my son comes back that will kill me my life is the fact that he is living for Christ in Africa giving himself a soul I'm giving myself to my son don't you let him come home he never did, he did or did it she died like that why am I blind it gives me just further chance of being detached through me my son instead of being claimed back by me can be fulfilled today there are thousands of precious Africans Jack Scholes his mother was Mrs. Scholes who laid down his life in Africa on the basis of her self giving that's what we mean we're getting here into the whole thing of what God is doing in our lives as he moves out through us into his creation redeeming it and we want to send you some of the material that will help you to know this life of an intercessor this commissioned life of God fulfilling his purposes through you if you will write to 4606 Lamar Avenue Memphis, Tennessee 38118 or call area code 904 795-0121 and request the booklet The Key to Everything that's The Key to Everything now again the address is 4606 Lamar Avenue Memphis, Tennessee 38118 or area code 901-795-0121 request the booklet The Key to Everything published by Moody Press we want to send it to you without charge we want to share more of this fulfilled life of Christ living his life by us and if you'll request that booklet I know you're going to enjoy it now at the same time we're going to send you when you write a copy of Union Life Magazine there's no charge for this magazine it's 36 pages it's a quality magazine you're going to find articles which will tell you more about Christ your reality, Christ your total life Union Life Magazine is sent out bi-monthly without price, it's paid for by those who have given to make it possible just write to the address again in just a moment until next time, this is David Ord Program 5 this is David Ord welcoming you to another Union Life broadcast my life must be as that of the woman breaking the alabaster bottle and pouring forth sweet smelling perfume over the feet of Jesus said C.T. Studd let any young man but smell that odor and see that it really has been brought about by the breaking of the alabaster and he says then I will break mine too, I must have that smell it is life to me C.T. Studd was a famous cricketer in Great Britain and a pioneer on the mission field and Norman Grubb is his son-in-law Norman has been with us in a series of programs on Who Am I when we're learning who we are in Christ and we're talking about why we have been called to be Christians and how Christ is expressing his life through us, we're talking about how once we know who we are he then begins to break us and use us to reach out to other people and to be himself through us in this world Norman is going to pick right up where we left off in the last program we've been moving into what the Bible presents as the full perfected and final level of the meaning of being a person that a human person is a spontaneous re-manifestation of the divine person who has made him his dwelling place and the divine person is the outgoing person he gives himself up that the world through him may be saved might have life and therefore as we are brought along by the spirit we consciously recognize our position on this third level as outgoing persons and that means that it has become a settled consciousness to us first of all we discovered we described how the spirit has to take us through detached experiences where we're loosened by him from our normal attachments to people and things of time and sense and become attached to one alone so that him himself is our meat and drink our all in all, our passion our occupation and with that, this understanding of this person, his whole fullness is for others he is a stream of outgoing life all his joy, presence, reality wisdom, our expressions are expressing his outgoing life for others and therefore we're moving into this same level of consciousness not what he is, what we are that as it was at the start Christ Christ for us, saving us from our sins then Christ in us replacing the spirit of error with the spirit of truth in us and now it's Christ by us, Christ for us in us by us and by us means therefore it's he re-expressing himself by us so we've discussed that at some length and I would still say it does mean a conscious recognition of a third stage a third grade we entered the first grade of faith when we received Jesus Christ as personal saviour from our sins we entered the second grade of faith when we realized that the real meaning was that we were his dwelling place, that humanity exists to be spontaneous expressions of the deity by us, in us now the third stage is the recognition that's why I should say in us the third stage is a consciousness that we are only meaning in us, we are persons by whom he moves out by us that we're involved in whatever are his purposes to us by which the world may know something more of the gospel therefore I'm saying that just as he said about discipleship you sit down and count the cost there is a counting of the cost here an acceptance of this reality there's a one letter, one epistle which shows that we redeemed can be held up or hold ourselves up there, that's the hebrews letter where he speaks to the redeemed people who he writes, the hebrews has written he likens Jesus Christ then to those hebrews he said like Moses Moses got you out of the land of Egypt where Jesus Christ got you out from the world himself like Joshua, Joshua got out of the wilderness into the land of fullness and rest and sufficiency which is what we say Christ dwelling in us, so Christ is the one who takes us into life where he dwells in us and he's living his life by us, then he says I'd like to liken you to Christ Melchizedek, Melchizedek was the high priest who laid his life down and gained the intercession by which millions could be saved to the uttermost, he became the high priest by whom millions are redeemed now he doesn't say to the the hebrews that we are to be expressions of that priesthood, the reason is that he had to wrestle with him over an area of self protection self pity which he got hold of although they were redeemed people that's probably why as we did mention in a previous broadcast that our relationship to the cross of Christ are to come to the cross of salvation, we're on the cross in identification, we take up the cross as a certain ambition, we take it up you have to come to the cross of salvation, you have to recognize we're on the cross, identify with him in death and resurrection we take up the cross as a certain ambition, we voluntarily take up the cross because the cross is for others, that will be when we go through experiences of laying our life down, others may live now it appears that there's a point there which we can hold back at that that may be why Jesus said you cut the cost so I'm saying to us here if we're those who has become the wonder of life I'm not I but the living Jesus Christ is living his life in me and the whole deity that is he dwells me, I'm expression means by which he expresses himself if that's wonderful to me then I do move into the third level by my choice in which I accept the fact against my usual outlook on life it no longer has meaning in what life means to me why am I like this, why am I like that I'm part of a God fulfilling his outgoing purposes, everything that happens to me is part of his outgoing purposes so I don't question my life condition because it's part of what he's taking me through as for others and therefore I'm suggesting that this is a third level of faith recognition that it is, I'm now on the priesthood level the Bible says a priest is one who's taken from among men sent back to men to relate them to God so priest is one who's taken from among like we're taken out from a lost condition, we're sent back among men to relate them to God so we're sent back now that we may be the agency and the spirit of God for others so I'm suggesting what's the meaning of my young days there comes a place when we're ready for it when we make this as it were third third faith recognition our first faith recognition was by his tribes who were healed who his precious blood was saved our second faith recognition is he's replaced Satan in me he's the one who now has the permanent identity in me the third recognition is I'm now part of him for others and I accept that as the third level from which I don't go back just as I don't go from the other two I've moved in by grace except this is a fact, although in my humanity I may wrinkle and squirm when things happen, just hopefully like we do under temptation, but I say no, no my privileges are to be part of an outgoing living God, fulfilling his eternal purposes of salvation and grace in the world, and I'm part of that agency of fulfillment so I suggest it is a third level, a third almost crisis of faith a recognition of faith for whom I don't go back in each case I'm not talking about just some partial temporary attitude of faith, when you got saved that was vital you passed from death unto life through faith in Jesus Christ when you entered into consciousness of union that was a vital thing, you passed, you crucified with Christ he no longer lived, he lived in you and you moved into the consciousness of the spirit and he lived in you it's a crisis, an outstanding crisis, I suggest it is an outstanding crisis I thank God and my youth Pauline and I did that as young people God tested us out out on that, because we were against being married, to go to Africa as young people after World War I and then I had a foolishly not a concern whether actually I was loving her more than Jesus, I wasn't really but I had a little test put on me I had an opportunity of a vocation of a month I could have taken it, going around helping to spread the gospel with some of my companions of that day so then I chose the opportunity of going to be a father with her and her mother and on the way up I read a dangerous book that was finished, Revivals of Religion, as I read that book it spoke to me, you're loving her more than me otherwise you'd be back there with that British group it wasn't really so, but I had to learn those things, that deeply disturbed me so I said to her when I got up there that maybe I loved her too much the effect was, after two days she gave me back the ring and broke the thing up now we'd had an engagement we understood it was of the Lord, this really did something because we'd settled to go, now she broke it up, I didn't give any reason except I'd finished it, I went through six bad months over that, during those months I had my core infested I could have gone to another field but I was going out to Congo where her father was, a little tiny group of us, only six months, six missionaries out there, little family group and here I go to that field meanwhile a friend of mine, knowing our engagement was broken he was beginning to approach her to whether she might become against him, so I faced the fact that if I went to Africa, I might be living in a hut in lonely Africa, next door to one who wants to be my bride, somebody has got her now and I had to live there meanwhile a friend of mine came and said, I can give you another commission, you needn't go to Africa I'll give you a nice opportunity to go to India now that was my test and I had to say, well the Lord told me we've got to go to Africa, so I went to Africa now when that news came back to her, her brother-in-law said don't you see he's still going to Africa, he hasn't run away, in other words his core is meant more to him than his engagement with you, his sacrificed engagement with two remaining in his core consequently she came back to me, I said she proposed to me a second time over, but what she said to me afterwards, she said it was like this she said, the reason why I turned you down was this, I said to myself if I marry that man he said I'll only be number three in his life and I'll be number three in no man's life she said, God will be first, God's work will be second, I'll be third, she said I'll be third in no man's life, she still is third because we've settled our lives always, God will be first, God's work section that we fit in, there's where we settle this commission matter for us this is the commission, the intercessory life that we're getting into now in this series of programs on Who Am I with Norman Grubb, now we want to invite you to write for Union Life magazine in which we have articles each issue it's a bi-monthly magazine, there's no charge, and we have articles each issue which deal with this kind of life, the life that is the spontaneous outflow of Christ Himself by us for others, Union Life magazine is without charge, we want to send it to you if you will write to 4606 Lamar Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee 38118 that's 4606 Lamar Avenue Memphis, Tennessee 38118 or call area code 901-795-0121 901-795-0121 795-0121 We're heard on this station five days a week at the same time be sure to tune in for the programs each week, five days a week at the same time, and we'll be continuing with Norman Grubb in this series of broadcasts on Who Am I, now don't forget to write for Union Life magazine no charge, no request for money 4606 Lamar Avenue Memphis, Tennessee 38118 the address again in just a moment, until next time this is David Ord