In this sermon, the speaker discusses the human desire for goals and purpose in life. He mentions how God has the right to give goals and reveals his purpose to individuals. The speaker highlights the danger of becoming consumed with reaching goals and the temptation to rely on philosophy rather than a genuine relationship with God. He also mentions how religious leaders often try to give people new goals to fill the emptiness within, but ultimately, these goals can lead to decay and decline.

We are gathered again, Lord, that we might see Thy face, and in seeing Thee, there might be the help of Thy countenance. In enjoying Thee, there may be the strength that comes. We would this morning claim a word from Thee. Help us, in the midst of our listening this morning, to be able to grasp the meat, not just the husk, but that truly which Thou wouldst impart to our spirit. We do thank Thee for the awareness, the confidence we have that Thou art here, and You are working, and we praise Thee for this. We commit this time now into Thy direction. Don't let us run our own way. Help us to know the real sovereignty, the authority of Thy Spirit over our spirit, over our minds, over all that will be shared. We ask, in the name of the Lord Jesus, with thanksgiving, Amen. Would you turn to 2 Corinthians, chapter 11, please. 2 Corinthians, chapter 11. We have been speaking on the imperatives that issue out of a real knowing of the Lord Himself. That is, to get close to His heart, to become occupied with Him, is to sense those things that are imperative in His heart. I want to start this morning with a simple diagram that I found in the last page of one of Oswald Chambers' books. And we're going to consider the imperative of relationship or relatedness. I think it is very wonderful when you begin to recognize how everything in God's working has a glorious relatedness. We see parts, as we've been saying, we see distorted things from the outside. But there's a wonderful divine relatedness that we get as we will see the harmony of all of God's working. The little thing I borrowed from Oswald Chambers, he says that there's a glorious threefold harmony. When there is a harmony or a byproduct, out here in the realm of the soul, a right relationship, there's the byproduct of harmony. I've been hunting for better words than that. But in the realm of the body out here, when this inward harmony brings about this soul harmony, it issues in the body realm, in the byproduct of harmony there, which he calls health. Holiness, happiness, health. Which do you really want this morning? What have you put your emphasis on? You say, oh, you don't know my body. It surely needs some health. And the Lord's going to get to that if you give Him some time. You say, I'm depressed and I've had all the pressures upon my soul. I could use a little happiness. And that byproduct will come. But we must see the divine relatedness. And I would like to keep us focused on the difference between what we call man's usual approach as over against God's divine approach for meeting the needs. Now, we had you turn to 2 Corinthians 11 and let me share just these verses. Beginning with verse 1. Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly, and indeed bear with me, for I am jealous over you with godly jealousy. For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preaches another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, whom ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. And so on. Let me read that just for a little more freshness. A little verses from Phillips. He says, I wish you could put up with a little of my foolishness. Please try. My jealousy over you is the right sort of jealousy. For in my eyes you are like a fresh, unspoiled girl, whom I am presenting as fiance to your true husband, Christ himself. I am afraid that your minds may be seduced from a single-hearted devotion to him by the same subtle means that the serpent used toward Eve. For apparently you cheerfully accept a man who comes to you preaching a different Jesus from the one we told you about. And you readily receive a spirit and a gospel quite different from the ones you originally accepted. I don't believe that any servant of the Lord who desires to see God's people come into the full thought, the full thing that the Lord is after, can have anything but jealousy, the right kind of jealousy, over those he is ministering to. A tremendous longing that they might be spared from the seducing things. There are so many of these seducing things that would take us away from the simplicity, the real simplicity that there is in Christ. What do you mean by seducing, you say? I guess once again I must confess to being more guilty than perhaps anyone else here. As I look back over the Lord's patience and the patience of many of God's servants, I realize how many times in my intense zeal and desire there has been that seducing, that something that has kept me from what we are calling just the simplicity there is of just a love affair, glorious singleness and oneness of heart with Him. Let me illustrate it this way. I look back at various stages of growth and going on and pressing to know, and I remember when having graduated from college, had been a philosophy major, and all of the emphasis of philosophy with its emptiness, finally I met the Lord. I just met Him. And all the ways of knowing God, the ontological, the cosmological, the teleological and the other logicals that weren't so logical, they all passed away and I said, Oh, praise the Lord, no more philosophy. Philosophy never really brings you to a knowledge of the Lord. I knew Him. I came at least to something of a simple acquaintance. And yet strangely, all the while I was preaching against philosophy and its dead end, utter emptiness in knowing God, there is the most subtle, the most subtle tendencies in all of us to get into the spirit of philosophy while we're crying out against it. What do you mean? Well, you can't help but survey the religious situation and you see people without meaning in life, without goal, without purpose. You see, the church has so often emphasized, as we've been saying, what we get through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. The whole thing centers in as this little box we've been talking about, what God has done for us. And it doesn't somehow give the largeness of meaning, the largeness of purpose, the largeness of scope. And so, the tragedy is that you can get a hold and you can see something of God's goal and something of the purpose, the eternal purpose, toward which He's working. And then you turn with this longing to give people a goal, to give them a purpose, to give them something of meaning. But suddenly, without realizing it, we all begin to strive to reach the what? And it's a real snare. It pitfalls right out here. Those who have known in the initial stage, just the simplicity of, Lord, you're wonderful. You're all that I need. And yet, get stalled right out here, not with what we call raw philosophy of the world, but the spirit, the subtle, deceiving, seducing spirit of philosophy. And we attempt, as it were, to give people goals. May I say something to you? God reserves for Himself the right to give goals, to unveil that which is of His own purpose. And the tragedy is that the more we see a goal, there's something, the driving within us that wants to reach or to attain or to live unto it, and the frustration of it. Can you imagine dear old Abraham, whom God had whispered the words, I'm going to make you a father with a family that shall numbers the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore. There's something of goal. We must recognize that there is woven into the fabric of our being something of a philosophical capacity. We're always asking why. We're asking, one of the verses says that He has dropped within us the inquiry or the desire to know the things of eternity and the things of the world. But brother, sister, this can be a snare. It can become a little whirlpool. There's a great attach, even in religious circles today, to try to give meaning and purpose and value and significance to life. But I'm afraid it's a seductive whirlpool. I hope we can see before we get through why. Well, maybe we'll clarify it a little bit by saying that here is another little whirlpool that is very, very seductive. It is what we call the psychological. And you know, it's quite a wonderful thing when one day God begins to open up to you the fact that you are spirit, soul, and body. You can go the whole rounds and the whole routine of, I call it an inward search, coming to know more and more of your parts and your makeup. Don't get me wrong. It's a very wonderful thing when God, in His own way, begins to help us understand the difference between spirit, soul, and body. But the psychologist's approach, again, is from the outside, pressing in to know. You can turn in so many places in the Scripture where you find the emptiness, the emptiness of such an approach. I got a good example of it one day in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We were invited to go up to a certain ward on a certain floor of the hospital where a young man who had been in the fellowship of the Lord's people there, now he was having great mental problems. And I sat down with him for a couple hours, and I never had a more engineering, devious kind of an approach in which a man took his whole soul all apart and put it back together. All the intricate movings of his mind and his emotion and his will and the inability of the whole. And then he looked to me, and I will never forget the haunting look as he said, Brother, I know all what's wrong with me. And the doctor agrees that it's absolutely according to his diagnosis. He said, but I can't seem to do a thing about it. What are you trying to say, Brother Byrne? Just this. It's a matter of approach. We've said it before, and I think it deserves to be said again, that we can take our dim little candle and try to search out all the inward parts and the intricate working of our whole spirit, our soul, all of our inner parts. And after we've come up with the evaluation, we know some more, but not enough to really get us through. And there's such an onslaught in our day, all the approach of religious literature. I'm amazed every time I hear on radio or TV how many of God's servants, fundamental people, are getting into what I simply have to call the psychological approach to meeting man's needs. And yet, the wards are getting more filled up. It isn't really God's way. I must say that however there is help, there's a difference between the spiritual approach by which God works, and man's either philosophical or psychological approach to meet needs. Let's pick up another. Let's take the physical approach. Out here in the realm of the body, there's a desperate cry, there's a desperate need throughout all of Christendom this morning for individuals in their physical condition. But I honestly know that God's way, if He can work from what we call the long-range spiritual approach, is from the inside, working through a harmony of spirit, through a harmony in the realm of a renewed soul, to finally touch us in the physical. Now I thank the Lord that there is coming an increasing awareness among God's children, and I sense it here and I'm grateful for it, that we must not be unsympathetic toward those who have physical or psychological or philosophical needs. And sometimes the urgency of the emergency will cause us to reach out and immediately claim what I call an emergency approach. But it is only because of the extreme emergency until God can get His base to work in that which is the spiritual approach. Now I have good background because the Lord Jesus did it. All around Him there were those in desperate need. And out of compassion and out of understanding God's real way, He sometimes would reach out a hand and He would heal the emergency of the moment, the urgency of the moment. But you know what He did almost immediately? Lest, now notice, lest word get out very far and He be overwhelmed and people who have only the concern for the emergency touch of the moment and the whole of His purpose and ministry and approach would somehow be swallowed up and taken over. You know what He always did? Well, let's read. Matthew, Mark, Luke. Let's just see it in a couple of places. Luke 6. This is the healing of Peter's wife, mother. Luke chapter 4, beginning with verse 38. All right. Beginning with verse 38, we have the story before us. And he rose out of the synagogue and entered into Simon's house. And Simon's wife's mother was taken with a great fever. And they besought him for her. And he stood over her and rebuked the fever and had left her. And immediately she arose and ministered unto them. Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers' diseases brought them unto him. And he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And devils also came out of many, crying out and saying, Thou art Christ, the Son of God. And he rebuked them. And he rebuking them suffered them not to speak, for they knew that he was Christ. And when it was day, he rushed out into the street to find more that he could heal. Verse 42. Read it again. And when it was day, he departed and went into a desert place. And the people sought him and came unto him and stayed him, that he should not depart from them. Why? You who could just touch and heal. You who could do it. Lord, how could you depart and go out into the wilderness? How could you again and again run away from them? We can only appreciate what he's doing if we see that he understands the difference between, I don't know how to put it, that which I call the urgency of emergency in a moment to do awakening, to give some little basis of contact to awaken, but immediately withdraw. Why? He did not want his whole approach, as it were, that is for them to swallow over and merely make it this approach. Whatever he did, whatever he did, it was always that God's larger long range might be accomplished. He was going to move into and bring about that which would start from here and would work and bring all of these. This is the war that's been raging. People are all the time saying, how can, how can you, in the midst of such need, ignore? It's not ignoring the need. It's not being unconcerned with the various needs. It's knowing that the real need can only be met from the inner harmony working out. When my little boy gets irritable about the house, I sense immediately that, that he's, doesn't have anything to do. Everything out here loses its significance, you see, and it's simply because there's something deep within his breast and all of ours that's wanting to find its fulfillment and realization. So I said the other day, when I saw him getting into, I said, son, why don't you go down and make a trap and see if you can't catch some of those little animals running around in the woods outside the house. And immediately, something of a goal got a hold of him. And from irritability and purposelessness and an empty summer day and all of that, he got all involved. Now that was an emergency situation. You know how long it lasted? Until he got the trap done and actually caught a squirrel and, what was the other, chipmunk. Really a thrill. But two days later after that all worn off, all the philosophical fulfillment of that emergency had been satisfied. He needed something else. And you see, men have learned some of these laws. Religious leaders have learned these laws. They have learned that there has to be new goals and new things set before people. I heard a pastor say after they had moved into a tremendous new sanctuary in a great building the day they dedicated, he said, we're in for decay and decline. This is his dedication sermon. Unless we can have a new goal, I propose tomorrow we start on an educational unit. That's the laws of human nature. Giving people new goals, to give new meaning and new purpose. It's satisfying that philosophical emptiness within. You see? And after you've built wings every direction and filled two blocks, where do you go? Nobody guilty here, is there? Where do you go? After you've conquered all the worlds that are before you, where do you go? Well, the psychologist comes along and says, this outer world is pretty small. There's a whole inner world. And so we get into the inner tangle of all the inner world, the inner goals, the things. And round and round we go. But there's an emptiness in it all. There's an emptiness in it all. Somehow, as I've been fellowshipping with some of my brothers, there's been such a tremendous growing within. Lord, it's so easy for pastors, it's so easy for the servants of the Lord to get all wrapped up in the theological approach. And this is simply the going into all of the knowledge about God, about Him, knowing more and more about Him. And it satisfies the mind for a while and you get into all of the approaches of the different theologies. But I've never seen one of them fully satisfying, to fully really meet the need, just another little whirlpool, a deceptiveness, seducing thing that keeps us from the simplicity. And if there's a devastating work going on in the minds of some who are trying to take what we're saying and put it in a little theological framework here, you can't, I hope. And yet you can. It isn't quite Barth. It isn't quite... Well, I won't go on. It's not quite any of them, I hope. Oh, without realizing, without realizing it, there is that seducing us, keeping us away, keeping us in these realms. Now, you say, it's the spiritual approach we're after. And that's right. And we'll see in a moment what I mean. It's not just something of the soul realm. Until about that moment, something else happens. And individuals get involved in what we call mysticism. And it seems spiritual because you take all of the terms, all of the phrases that are so precious to us, and you lift them out of their hard, cold, letterish framework. You lift them over and you see the mind seems to get some real life out of it, and you seem to make them spiritual. But it is just the rampant running of an undisciplined mind. I'm afraid it's not spiritual. It's just mysticism. We had a wonderful example of it back years ago in Missouri where we were living. We had a very precious group of people. The Lord had been gathering together for a number of years. But you know people have ways of falling into certain temperamental pigeon holes. We had one brother who constitutionally, by his temperament and makeup, was always like flypaper to a fly. He was always latching on to that which was mysticism. And to him it was spiritual. I'll never forget one night in the midweek fellowship, he said rather hesitantly, he said, you know, some of us have been getting a paper that comes from the West in which a teacher, this was eight or nine years ago now, has been giving some real wonderful spiritual truths. And he said, I wrote to him a few weeks ago and he just happens to be headed back east and he's going to stop by and we're going to have a meeting. I've invited him to stop Thursday night and he looked over and he said, no, I didn't ask Brother Vernon. I don't think he'll go along with it. But anyway, I'm announcing it. Well, he didn't have to ask me. Yet there was a strange sense that he ought to. Isn't that something? I mean, I'd been gone for months and the brothers would carry on. There was no reason except that there was an inward sense. Everybody was quiet. There was kind of a jarring thing, you know, to the group. Everyone was so quiet for a minute. Finally, having prayed, I said, you know, I've read some of the things this man is telling us. And I think that we should all be here Thursday night. Let's not let anyone stay home. If there's something really good, let's all get down on the ground floor. But I'd like to tell you what this man's going to do. Because I know that his is an over-spiritualization approach. Everything that I've read takes away what we call anything of reality. It's just an over-spiritualization. So now you watch. Before he gets through, nothing that we have ever believed will be real. There won't be any real devil. The only devil there will be will be the carnal mind that's warring within you. There won't be any heaven because the only heaven there is, as such, will be the bliss of a spiritual enjoyment. Well, I won't go on. The man came, and everybody was there. I was just a couple minutes late, so I slipped in the side room toward the back. I was glad I could. And sure enough, I have never seen a man with more zeal, and he kept looking at the group they'd been through so many things. They were unshockable. It'll be a good day when you can get to that place. I've been the guilty one. Totally unshockable. And there, quiet, sort of sitting, listening, and he said a couple times, this is the first time I ever met a group that aren't mad by this time. A new group. Do you agree with me? Everybody just sat there. That man went the full gamut. What I think might have taken him normally three weeks, he went the full gamut. And he finally, after an hour and a half, sat down. You know what he went through? I'll give you a little example of over this kind of spiritualization that gets into mysticism. He said, you know, I used to believe that there was a God who sat on the throne in the universe someplace. But one day I discovered that God was not a spirit. God was just spirit. And since God is spirit, He is the controlling, elemental force of the whole universe. And he said, now you're not going to like this, but the only God there is, really, the only God there is, is spirit. And all the gods you'll ever see and ever know is what you see in one another. Because God is not a spirit, but spirit. And with one mighty wave, he said, isn't that a wonderful relief to know that you can see God right in one another? That's all the God there is. He went on to say, and you know, I used to think when Jesus went into the wilderness that somehow He went out among the sand and the stone. But he said, I know now that He was right in the middle of Jerusalem with all the crowds strongly around Him and the wilderness was in His own mind. The wilderness of a mind that was in quest of reality. And, of course, when He was out there, the Father spoke to Him. Where? In the wilderness of His mind. And the stones and all the rest of it. He went on, the very things that we've said. He said, of course, you people don't believe there's a real literal hell that burns. He said, the only hell there is is your own carnal nature. And that's hell enough. Well, He finally concluded, I'll never forget. And the folk all sat there. And He waited for some response. Well, do you agree with me or don't you? One of the dear brothers who we've watched grow in a very gracious way finally said, well, He said, I guess if there's anything to say, maybe I should say just a word. And I can't remember all the way He put it, but He said simply, you know, someplace it says in the book that they have taken away my Lord and I don't know where they've laid Him. And that fellow's face flushed. He got so angry. And everyone in the group with a spontaneous, Amen. I'll never forget it. Do you know something? Not one of the group, to my knowledge, ever mentioned that to me or anyone else. We just all got up and walked out. And that is at least what? It's at least 12 or 13 years ago. Mysticism that sounded so spiritual. I tell you, there's something wonderful about giving new life and lift and taking the letter and giving it some spiritual meaning. But, I'll tell you, the rampant mystical mind can sure get into an awful tailspin and turmoil and tell it how we need. How we need to know what it is to have the Spirit of God within our spirit bringing our mind under discipline. And I, every now and then, when I get through, I sense something of an inward check in my spirit that says an awful fine line between that which is truly of the Spirit and that which is the rampant running in the realm of mysticism. Only God can save us from that. Well, here we are, being seduced. The enemy is absolutely set to keep us from what I like to call the inward abiding, the inward simplicity. And we'll never understand what we're saying until the Lord Himself keeps us preoccupied right here with Himself at the heart, the very center. Let me just show you what happens. Let's take a look at Psalm 42 for just a moment. Here is one who is explaining this turmoil that goes on. Psalm 42. We know it so well. As the heart, the little deer, if they panteth after the water brook, so panteth my soul after God. There's a quest of our soul for the satisfying fortune, but it will get stalled out here. And the enemy of deception will our soul find not the fresh stream of the Lord Himself, but it finds... The soul is in quest. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before Him? My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in Me. For I had gone with the multitude. I went with them to the house of God with the voice of joy and praise with the multitude that kept holy day. Here is the quest of one whose soul is reaching out and the religious world is filled. Going to the house of God, getting more and more knowledge just about these things, about God, and yet the unsatisfying until we come to something else. Oh my God, verse 6, my soul is cast down within me. He seems to know a lot about his soul. He seems to recognize what his soul is. Therefore will I remember, and so on. Verse 7, now he's talking about something else, the deep within. The deep calleth unto deep. I believe this is speaking of the inner spirit. The deep within my spirit. The deep is reaching out to the deep within God. And the deep within Him is always reaching for the deep within me. Deep calleth unto deep. At the noise of the fountainhead, I think your version here says the water spouts. But the fountainhead is the Lord Himself. God Himself who initiates that calling of His spirit toward our spirit. Because He made this empty room for Himself. Incomplete as it were, in itself. He made it for Himself. And it can only find its full, complete rest and satisfaction in Him. So there's the reaching, the calling, both directions. Yet the Lord will command His loving kindness in the daytime, and of the night His song shall be with me in my prayer unto the God of my life. I will say unto God, my rock, why hast thou forgotten me? Why go I murmuring because of the oppression of the enemy? As were the sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me while they say daily unto me, where is thy God? Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance and my God. Now this may not mean anything to you. As many times as I've read this suddenly, two little phrases jumped out. The first phrase, which I take quite out of context, is just simply this. He says, in verse 5, I praise Him for the health of His countenance. It's quite wonderful, even though we stand out here, or wherever we stand, and every now and then we get a glimpse of His countenance. There's the smile of approval. Did you ever have someone smile the health of their countenance? My mother was quite an authoritarian in our home. And I remember through the years when that stern face would look upon us. She didn't have to say too much. But I also remember at times when I was so cast down and suddenly there would come just a little smile of approval. Oh, the health of her countenance. It's like a package that I got, notice now, a package that I got sent to me from there to here. The health of her countenance. You've all had it, haven't you? That's where we live most of the time. Every now and then the Lord seems to send a package and says, Brother so-and-so is so down in his soul. I'll send a package to him. The health of his countenance. That's wonderful! Only trouble is it's not what God really wants. He says, I want to get away from sending packages. I want to get away from just giving you a little help from my countenance. And then this, I don't know, isn't it wonderful how you can read things and suddenly you see? Verse 11, suddenly jumped, and I saw where my health, the health of my countenance. Notice what it says, verse 11. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance? Who is the what? Are you following? Do something. Are you following? All right. Who is the, He is the health of my countenance. How do you get health as compared to health? You're standing out here, you get a package of health every now and then. But when you have discovered the fountain and the source, the deep, it's called the deep, the health of His countenance, you say He is. There's a harmony here that brings a harmony here of the outward countenance. This is an awfully ugly way of putting it. But let me say to you this morning, dear friends, that you shouldn't be content with a milkman when God offers you your own cow. Half of you got it. Let me repeat it. You know who the milkman is? You know what we mean by the delivery system? Everybody says, oh, I can hardly wait to get to such and such a conference. I get so much health there. I get so much health there. The fellowship is wonderful. And the Spirit of the Lord seems to the health of His countenance. I'd like to get rid of the need for Wabana. Do you see what I'm saying? Why have to have somebody merely bring you a package of health when God can give you your own? But I think you get it. Instead of every day somebody coming by and the help of their countenance, suddenly you've found the source yourself. He is the health of my... He is my support. How? Where? What do you mean? Now we must move to Psalm 27. You see, don't misunderstand now. We're saying that creatures as we are, when He will send packages, He'll say, emergency down on 4th Avenue. Send a package. And sometimes we get in such desperate straits, such a desperate condition, that the urgency of the emergency. A touch. A package. But here is what God is pressing us to. The simplicity of it. Oh, how did we... How have we missed it so long? Here it is. Chapter...Psalm 27. The Lord is my light and my salvation. He didn't send me a package. He is that. So on. He is the strength of my life. And then David gets to the thing that we want to focus in on. Verse 4. 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. Three words. You go home with these and they really strike a gusher within you. Well, I don't mean it quite the way it sounds. First of all, it says to dwell. Where? To dwell where? Oh, I went to a place and I found out all about myself. Spirit, soul, and body. I never could... And the refreshing little pool, little puddle, reminds me of some boys who just got down to the seashore for the very first time. And as they rushed on to the sand, the first one found the little pool of water. And he says, Oh, we found it. Here's the ocean. Another one, you know how boys are, running on a little bit. No, none of us found it. Here's the ocean. Well, what I'm trying to say is our contentedness momentarily, the seductiveness of the enemy. And all the time we've said, Oh no, it's not the psychological or the philosophical or the theological. And yet somehow the seductiveness of it gets us involved in it. Do we miss the simplicity of what? Dwelling where? Beholding who? And all the inquiring that comes from here will give meaning and the psychological gets in place. And all the goals and the meaning and the purpose, those things that you set, that you've tried to realize and the drive within you tried to achieve. The Lord just simply seems to say, You just forget all about that. And I'll unveil all you need and I'll keep all that's ultimate before you instead of just little pools to dwell, to behold, to inquire. Now, isn't that simple? Isn't that simple? Well, the reason we have our difficulty is that we try to dwell. We try to dwell. But God is a holy God. And all the time we're coming in, we're saying, Lord, I want to be occupied with you. I want to just behold your lovely face. And five minutes gets awfully long. Have you ever tried to pray an hour? I remember one of my friends, you'd know him if I mentioned his name, who determined he was going to spend the night in prayer. Well, in short, I'll never forget his saying. It was the longest, longest, longest, longest night I'd ever been through. And he was a preacher saying, I've been telling people for years how wonderful it was to just be in the presence of the Lord. He said, the first time I looked up thinking it must be three o'clock, and it was only a quarter after ten. Well, I'm not talking just about prayer, but the dwelling and what's really involved. Dwelling, beholding, inquiring. And I'm more sure than I've ever been that God is calling His people to just minister unto Him. This is our first calling, to be alive to Him. Acts 12 says, As they ministered unto the Lord, the Holy Spirit said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. Then on down it says, and the Holy Spirit, they being sent forth by the Spirit. We get our calling and our sending mixed up. Called, yes, but sent out. We have come to inquire and to know some of the ways of the Lord. I wanted to just emphasize, beloved, that our problem then is that when there's a right relatedness, a right relatedness with the Lord, it brings a right relatedness in our inner being. And this brings us into a right relatedness with those around us. All the driving begins to be done. God's work then from the inner, we are learning of Him. Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you. And my spirit finds its initial rest in Him. My initial rest. Born from above. Seized from all my struggling to save myself. Born from above. And I come to my first acquaintance. But the next phrase goes on to say, take my yoke upon you and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly, and ye shall find. Isn't it? Well, I thought I got rest the verse before. Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden. Laden with what? Sin, the bondage, and I will give you. Now the next is, and as I behold. Now that's the simplicity. I think our problem is that the majority of us talk about finding rest. Finding rest. We've been out in religious activity so much, and with all of the breathless, zeal and so forth, we've discovered the emptiness of that kind of service, and that kind of working. So we say, praise the Lord, I have learned. But do you know what happens about that time? We forget that it's the soul that's to come into rest and come into submission to the spirit, but our spirit begins to become passive. Our spirit becomes passive. Our spirit begins to not just dwell, but fall asleep. Become inactive. You see, folk in the longing to have body ministry and functioning within the fellowship of a church. We all come in from our breathless activity out here and we say, no more soulish activity. I found rest for my soul. We all put our chairs in a circle and call it a New Testament function, New Testament church. Now we're going to minister. But our spirits are all asleep. And the deadest meeting you can have is a meeting where there is a whole bunch of people who've left soul activity. Because once that's all we had. And that kept the meeting, it kept things going. But now we gather together to wait on the Lord, to dwell, and in our dwelling we what? Go to sleep. Our spirit. Why? In our spirit, there is, as we've said so many times, the conscience, the fellowshipping function, the intuitional. And if I don't operate in the soul and I'm trying to operate and know God's resource and supply to my spirit, but if my conscience gets fouled up and I don't know how to maintain a good conscience, I can come in and not only be a dud in the service. This is my concern. There is a certain amount of spiritual development and strength that's necessary before this which is of the Lord can ever possibly work. If we don't have this exercising, this sensitivity, this developing of a good conscience, and through the hours of the week there's come this dwelling, beholding, inquiring, aliveness in spirit when we gather on Lord's Day or whatever meeting it is, emptiness. I don't wonder that people get into what they do. They have to go the other way. This other is God's way in the spirit and without coming to this, the other has to be. Oh, may the Lord help us We live from these reservoirs instead of this fountain. Oh, I would that all that the harmony of His spirit and my spirit really means, all that that which is holiness really involves could press in upon us. Brother, sister, it's going to take a lot more of the real divine awareness of the holiness of God in our meetings before there can come the health out here in the body realm, the health of our continent. A lot more carefulness in our fellowship. And I shared this in January when it began to dawn on me as we were coming up the coast. But you know, I never realized why He says, if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship. Here are the functioning, the working in our spirit, our conscience, our capacity to fellowship, our intuitional, the way we directly receive. John is saying there, if we walk, how? With our body? No. With our mind? No. If we walk in the light, what light? The inner light that's bursting into my intuition. If I walk in the light, the light of the holiness that I behold as I see. Just to see Him, it happened to Isaiah. It's happened all down through the centuries. To behold Him is to always cry out, Woe is me, I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. Woe is me. But thank God, while the seeing of Him and the realizing of our uncleanness, our unholiness, it just caused us to say, thank you for the cleansing of the blood. We walk in the light, the inward, intuitional light. As He is in the light, we have what? Fellowship in the blood of Jesus Christ keeps right on cleansing us from all sin. Here is the activity in our spirit. Conscience cleansed. Boldness. Well, I wanted to get into this portion over in the 10th chapter of 2 Corinthians, where Paul's dealing with all the imaginations and all the struggle that's going on. And that which finally brings him to say in the 11th chapter, My jealousy over you is the right sort of jealousy. For in my eyes, you are like a fresh, unspoiled girl whom I am presenting as fiancee to your true husband, Christ Himself. Oh, the believer, the young believer that is just first time come to see Him and say, Oh, Lord Jesus, you're so wonderful. That first love, that something, the simplicity. I cannot forget those first days when I was unspoiled by doctrines, whirlpools, and other things. An unspoiled fiancee, an unspoiled virgin. Not finding satisfaction in other things. I'm afraid that your minds may be seduced from a single-hearted devotion to Him by the same subtle means that the serpent used toward Eve. We're not saying our minds get detached. We're not saying we don't have any function of the soul. We're simply saying that there is something very simple about just dwelling, beholding, inquiring, and allowing Him to transform all of the soul realm, and then outwardly to reflect health and all that that health means. All that that health means because there's total harmony. Well, I used to say in my dogmatism that if you really have inward harmony in spirit, you'll never be sick. Well, never have anything out here but the healthy countenance. Well, if I were only responsible and I could only depend on this generation, what I am now, I think that might be true. But then I reckon that I have an inheritance under the third and fourth generation. I'm not making an excuse. I'm just saying that I've suddenly discovered there's more from Adam than I realized. But I'm determined before God that I'm going to reverse this order and whatever there is that's passed on, the physical and so forth, that somehow down the road they'll be able to look back and say my inheritance was a little better. There is a reversing on the basis of the cross. I lost you. You can reverse the order of it. I've looked at some lives and I say, my, my, they really got a wretched patch of equipment when they got born. My, I wonder what happened back there some generations back that passed on a wretchedness like that. I mean, weaknesses, deficiencies and all the rest. And nobody's been more eager than I have to somehow be able to undo it. And yet it's a very wonderful thing when God has permission to start on the basis of Calvary on a new ground. Somebody says every seven years you're a whole physical all the cells and all the rest takes on new, newness. I'm sure that's true. I've seen some people seven years in the Lord, seven years old who absolutely have a new healthy countenance. All the wretchedness of the past. Remember what Abraham Lincoln said, after 40 you're responsible for your own faith. I'm not preaching, I'm not preaching what it sounds like. I'm just simply saying that somehow I believe there's a total relatedness to the Lord, an inward harmony that begins to manifest itself outwardly. And while I know that there's a need for emergency, every now and then the only thing you can do is to touch somebody, pray right here as it were. An emergency situation. But too often what happens if God heals or does something this week, if there is not the full harmony that's working from within, they'll probably be back in a week, having undone or started the same processes of degradation all over again. Let us be careful now when we meet people in emergency that we don't be so long range. Even though the Lord Jesus was set on that, even though He was set on that, and He always withdrew, you can find it over and over again. He went away, but they turned His whole ministry, His whole ministry into something just meeting emergency. And you never really get the job done. Because while you're helping one emergency, a thousand more are developed. So, this deals with the priorities in our life. I used to ponder, Lord, how could you ever lay your head down on a pillow with all the emergencies around? And all the while I lived in that little emergency box, with my only realization that it was a shame if I wasn't on zeal, on fire, constantly burning out. Well, I trust the Lord to help us get this in its proper framework. God works, it seems, so slowly, but He works in a permanent way, from the inside, and it's so simple. Dear Lord, Dear Lord, in our stumbling and our feeble attempts to convey what only You can convey, we pray, Thou will somehow shut us up to Him. We've loved our working. We've loved so many things and exhausted all these little whirlpools and these various approaches. Our approach has been one or the other, and You've all the time been drying them up to shut us up to Thee, to find the fountain. We pray today, Thou will help us. Don't let us systematize, make a little method out of this, but help us in walking with Thee to know when, in an emergency, to meet whatever need there is. While all the time, we're alive to the way You really work from the inside out. The glory is harmony. We need, our spirit needs, to sense the inward holiness that comes because we've faced Him who is holy. The world has needed to see it, the real joy and the happiness of the Lord and the health of a countenance that has found the source. Thank You, Lord, for what You're doing. In Jesus' name we pray with thanksgiving. Amen. Amen.