In this sermon, the speaker reflects on their mission and the challenges they face in their faith journey. They discuss the importance of having faith and trusting in God's provision, even in difficult times. The speaker emphasizes the need to replace fear with God's courage and hate with God's love. They also explore the concept of life and how it is manifested through the interrelation of opposites. The speaker concludes by highlighting the role of God in sending both good and evil into our lives for His purposes, using the example of Calvary.

A moment to stay in quietness, and the consciousness of you in that quietness is still a small voice. So we continue, by your grace, in the inner quietness, which is always there, where you and we are, so thank you. And in that quietness again, let that voice say what you want to say, to each or any of us. Thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name. Well, I've been imposed on you this morning, take my fault, instead of Tommy or Louise. I'm sorry for those of you who don't come in the afternoon because you can't understand good English. You've got to put up with it. You've got to put up with it this hour. As this is the last time I'm having of being with you, I would just like to say how tremendously I've enjoyed this conference. I've so much sensed the presence of God in us, among us, through us, all the time. It's been a great occasion for me. I'm taking away a record or two with me, and when I meet the queer people who say, what's that queer movement? I would say, listen to this and shut up. I have been pursuing a line through these sessions that have been given me, which means, of course, that some of you have been along with me in the pursuit, and others will have to come panting behind this morning. We've come to the end, as far as we're able to come to an end this morning. What we've come up to is the fixed awareness of the unity. We're discussing that no more. We're proceeding from that. That the original purpose of God is that this one person should have persons with whom he can be in such a fixed, spontaneous, automatic relationship that their living, they living, is he living. And we discuss the way in which that fact becomes a fixed awareness to us, which has been necessary through the fall and through the necessary redemption. So we're leaving it behind. In this last session, we're looking a little at the outcome of a life which is, thank God for so many of us already, has this basis in this fixed awareness, this God and I, one person, and it isn't really I, it's he and it is I, the paradox. The first thing we're saying is this, that the whole point is to release a man to be a man. That includes women, of course. In other words, the end of this is God in the background, man in the foreground. It's not God in the foreground and man in the background. It's man coming out as a real man, as man lives. And actually this is a book, the Bible is a book of man. Man's creation, man's digression, man's restoration, man's activities, man's destinies. So we only have come out in this, when we've come out into understanding what it is to be a release, man and woman, to be a real man and woman. You can only do that when the unity is fixed. Because unity, when you've come through this process into unity, means you're conscious, deeply conscious, it isn't really you. As I said yesterday, you almost live, they kind of wink inside you, it isn't I all the time, no, it looks like me. You can laugh at it. You're not laughing at God, you're laughing at the funny choices God makes. Which is you. And you can't live this, you can't be free without, because as I said yesterday, you're afraid. We've had to go through processes, quite right processes, of self-discovery, which is necessary. Because God wants to have people who know their potential. And then God can come through that potential. But self-discovery is so dangerous, as we said yesterday, we find so many tigers in our tanks, that we have to keep a few laws around us to keep them inside the tank. So you're not free, you're busy keeping the laws working to keep the tigers in the tank. Those things will burst out of us. Until this great reversal has taken place, and you're no longer surrounded by laws to keep you in order, because the person who is the law himself is the keeper in order inside. He's living the life by us. He who is love is expressing all forms of self-giving love by us. Then you're free, you don't care, you dare to trust him. In other words, an evidence of this settlement in, you've settled in from holding on to being held on. When your life is, I'm holding on to him, I must abide, I must hold on. When, oh it's all right, I'm held on, I can't escape, poor me, I wish I could but I can't. Then you're there. So we have to leave that behind. This is where we can liberate ourselves to be real selves. So we therefore start now on this new level by self-acceptance as well as God-acceptance. Thank God, I know that's familiar to many here, but to many in the Church of Jesus Christ it's not familiar. Many in the Church of Jesus Christ have a God-acceptance and a self-rejection. Life isn't a God-acceptance and a self-rejection, it's a God-acceptance and a self-acceptance. Why can I accept myself? Because God accepted me. As Louis prayed this morning in prayer up here. He chose me, not I chose him. Well, as I always say, it's pretty poor taste, but it's up to him. It is up to him. Why should I change? He chose, all right, you choose what he chose. He chose you, choose yourself. That's very important. We actually, I suggest, have to go through three phases to get there. But we've gone through those three phases, I trust. The first phase is the false self-appreciation. That's the false way which in our unredeemed age we try to build ourselves up as if we are all self-sufficient ignorant. We have built ourselves up. A false self-appreciation, building up our own righteousness. That crashes when we discover we're lost sinners and need a saviour. Now we've lost false self-appreciation, we move into temporary self-depreciation. Because we have to go through that lesson I learned yesterday, when you're more miserable as a Christian than a non-Christian. Where you've got to discover this life isn't formed of self-effort with God assisting me. And so we've got to go through a period which isn't, I can't do it, why can't I do it, and so on. You come out to a right self-appreciation. You pass from a false self-appreciation, through a temporary self-depreciation, to a right self-appreciation. Because, as I said, the basis of this is unity, it is He, and yet He's chosen me, and so am I. As I said about Paul's sacred, he doesn't stop in the middle and say, nevertheless I live. No, no, no, it's not I, but Christ lives. He goes on to say, I now live. I live, a great big dangling Paul comes back, and God wants great big cells, cat ones, living ones, expressive ones. Because of a hidden joke, which isn't I at all, it's He. You can usually tell whether a person is in this or out of it by the way they speak of themselves. I meet, and have been that myself, lots of people who say, oh, God does things in spite of me. I know, God does things because of me. When you say God does things in spite of me, you know, that's not very right. No, God does things because of me and because of your funny self. It's a funniness He particularly uses. That's great, because He likes idiosyncrasies. So probably what to you is the sharpest elbows in the other person is the very thing God uses most. So there's self-acceptance. I suppose perhaps in a sense the one battle I fight through life is not to allow the devil to condemn me. As if I ought to be diffed, I ought to be changed. No, no, not at all. I say, you're in me. If I'm not changed, you better get me changed. I'm not going to change myself. I'm not going to do a thing. I won't do it. People say to me, I'm not willing. Well, I say, remain unwilling until God makes you willing. Tell Him you won't budge an inch until He makes you. That's a great line. I've always picked up that word, the apostle Ezekiel, who saw a thing or two. Ezekiel saw a new spirit when I gave him. A new heart. He saw a thing or two in the spirit. And he said, I will cause you to walk in my ways. Isn't that a beautiful phrase? Not, oh, I must work and work at it. I'll be forced to walk. This is his new life. Now, I'm suggesting to you that this life, which is we humans in free action, spontaneous action, on this basis, falls into two categories, you might say. I'm not speaking any official terms. I don't know how to. But I put it in two categories. I would call one the unconscious level and the other the conscious level. Now, I'm not using those words officially. I don't know about them. I'm just using as far as I understand. What I mean is this. There's a whole area of our lives where you're not conscious of God or conscious of yourself. You're just conscious. You're just living. An unconscious level. That's spontaneous living. There's a whole area of our lives which is meant to be that. Let's say there is this sense in which when this unit has taken place, you forget God and live. Because you living is he living. So there's, as I say, a whole area of life where we enter into conversation and interest and fun and involvement. And we're not thinking of God or ourselves. We're just living. We just are. This is living. And through those areas, or during them, you don't come back and say to God, Oh God, I've been so busy on my job today, I haven't had time to think of you. Of course, I didn't ask you to think of me. You and I were co-thinkers. What did you think of me for? I was co-thinking along with you. I was mending this and that and minding the kids and washing this and doing this with you. I'm you. You're I. That's the spontaneous level. That's the level, I think, which is meant when Jesus said, Ye are the light of the world. I mentioned that before. Not you have the light, but you are the light. Have is immediate sense of separation. If you have a thing, it isn't you. I have this thing. Here's the thing, here's I. Separation. He didn't say you have the light, I'm light, you're darkness, and you have me. He said you are light. That's unity, that's fusion. And that is, you're just living, you're just yourself. That's selfish Christ-shining. I'm sure we're going to get some big surprises when we do meet him one day. Because all through our lives there's been a Christ shining through us without us knowing it. The devil tells us he isn't there, of course. And through our looks and thoughts and actions, he's been reading himself. I always think we got the concept of that coming judgment seat or judgment day wrong, because we always regard God as kind of bitter up. No, God's a patter on the back, not a bitter up. And the Bible says so. Paul says, don't judge things before the time. He says this in 1 Corinthians. Don't judge things before the time until the Lord come, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and then shall everyone have a smack over the head from God? No, praise from God. God's going to be busy praising his people. My God, you did a good job down there. You made a few mistakes, I'll see about that. You did a good job down there. I'm for you. I believe you've got a God force, not a Guinness. And even if judgment's only mercy, I want him to be faithful to me. Oh, my. Because he's merciful. I want him to say, now, on this spot, you can do a little improvement. Come on, boys, we'll do a little here. I don't mind that kind of judgment. So I'm saying, and I suggest it's very important, there is a whole area which is the outcome of this union life in which I'm just a free person, and I forget God and live. And that's God living. And that is the area when you're not brought up against something which is conscious of yourself or God. You're just living. You're eating, you're enjoying, you're talking, you're working, you're meant to be free. Because if you know unity, that is you and he. And that is he by you. So as Thomas says, we are the will of God. Well, just be yourself. We are the will of God. We don't have to find the will of God. We've been the fixed will from the foundation of the world. Works before our day that we should walk in. So just be yourself. If God wants to change his will, he's pretty good at that. You needn't do it for him. He'll switch you around, all right. Leave him to his own business. And you're his business, and you're getting away. When I signed up in my mission on this sort of, as they're calling it, kind of walk of faith we have, I used to, when there were only a few in the early days, a few in number in the early days, I used to have a week in and a week out. In the week in I could believe anything, in the week out I could believe nothing. And they were bad weeks. I went down, down into the deep, dark jail. And the Lord spoke to me one day and said, who lives in your body? I said, you do, Lord. And who lives in the body of your wife and children? You do, Lord. Who lives in the body of these people with you? You do, Lord. Well, he says, you mind me, leave me to mind my business, you go mind yours. He says, if I gave Moses 2 million people to feed for 40 years, and I fed them for Moses, all right, he said, when you're feeding 2 million, I'll give you a chance to worry, so then stop worrying. So I'll give you a chance to worry. So that is a wonderful basis of being yourself. Forget God and live. I told you all along, we've had to come up through a God consciousness to this being place. We had to become because we got round. We had to put right to Christ and come up and get into this relationship with God. Just the same as a foundation. You build a foundation, but you forget a foundation. You forget it. We aren't looking around what's underneath us, we're enjoying what's on top. And so, as I said, this marvelous fact is the foundation. It's indissoluble, unchangeable. God forever has made himself the real you. John you to him and him to you. Forget him and live. It isn't you at all, it's he. Coming through. The very face, the look, the thought, the statement, everything. Now that's what I would call the unconscious level. And there's lots of it. And life's fun. There's then the conscious level. Now the conscious level I mean by the conscious level, I mean by the conscious level, that all through life, every day, and very often, things arise which cause us to be conscious of ourselves. Now, something's happening. Somebody says, Oh, what should I do with that now? I'm conscious of myself. So you're not just talking easily, or enjoying something, or plunged into something. You become conscious, Oh my. What might I do with that? I don't like that. This is very awkward. Oh, this might happen. And you're amazingly conscious, you become self-conscious, you're up against something. All life consists of lots of those things. Now actually, they're the special values of life. Why? Because the whole point of life is that we might be the God-united humans by whom he can reach humans. Humans reach to humans. So therefore, for God to reach humans to us, there must be a relationship. Now the moment you're conscious of something, you're related to it. The moment you have a reaction, you're related to it. I mean by that, there are thousands and thousands, well, thousands of things in this world of which we know nothing, and we can contribute nothing, because we know that we're not related to them. The moment I become related to a person, supposing I suddenly dislike a person, supposing somebody does something to me, which causes me, I don't like that, I don't like that person, I'm related to them, I dislike them. Now there's a relation, a communication to which God can come. And so, all the reason for the pressures and problems and challenges of life is to bring us into conscious relationships and situations, because that's where God will come through. God can't come through, you're unrelated. So he has to bring us to a place where we're related. And then, through that relationship, God can come. Now, God can only come through that relationship because we're united people. I mean united himself. Through this unity, we've begun to have the habit of saying, oh, it isn't really I, it's he. Now, because you've begun that habit, when something comes, I don't like that person, I couldn't possibly do that, this is thoroughly wrong, what should I do with this? And you become a stirred human. Because you've begun to get the habit of the unity relationship, you say, wait a minute, God, that's quite so, but this is your show, really. And you don't happen to hate people, you happen to love them. And so, well, if you love that person and you're in them there, I'd better get loving him too. Now then, your stirred up hatred, the stirring up of your emotions in hatred, condition you for the springboard of hatred, which says, all right, Lord, with your love I love. And through those stirred emotions, God's love comes, where your hate was. This is how it functions. When we get that, we begin to learn that the problems of life are our blessings and our adventures. This is the various places by which God comes through. We may say God comes through everything, as I say, in the unconscious level, well, God's coming through, but in a sort of lighter way, he's just generally coming through. But every challenge, there's a particular situation there. And the relationship we form through that relationship, God will come. That's the poor, desperate world. The world has the negative relationship without knowing how to replace it by the positive. And the world has its hate that has nothing to do with it. And it has its fears and its oppositions and its covetousness that has nothing to do with them. And that's how hell is. But we who learn the secret of the unity, we know, therefore, how by the springboard of faith to replace, in other words, your pressures are your springboards. Like when you die, you press down to go up. And so your pressure's down with every kind of, everything which stirs up is a springboard. And you replace fear with God's courage. You replace hatred with God's love. And so on all the way through. This is how it works. It works because, I don't know, Glenn could talk about this better in the next session than I can, because all we can understand of the manifestation of life is by interrelation of opposites. We understand, as far as we understand life, there can be no relationship on any other level. There has to be a positive and a negative, and this positive swallows up negative. A negative cannot be manifested unless it has a negative, and the positive cannot be manifested unless it has a negative which it can swallow up and then express itself. For instance, light. We shouldn't know there was light shining out next to the dead moon. Moon's non-light. All right? The light shines out, the moon hits the moon, and the moon swallows it up. You don't see the moon, you see light. You see the display of light because it has a non-light which it swallows up and it reveals itself. Or down here, we only see light because there's a non-light atmosphere, a non-light Earth, and the stream pours down, it breaks out, and here we get all the colors of the spectrum, whatever you call it, or the rainbow, all this. It's a marvelous out-breaking of light, isn't it? So you see the principle. You take any, the whole of life, if you want to go, look at it, the whole of life can be divided into positive and negative. A simple positive and negative is soft and hard. Well, you can't have a soft settee unless it has a hard framework, but you need to have, you need to have the softness conquering the hardness or you're in for a bad settee. You can't have a soft bed unless the soft mattress conquers the framework, but it must have a framework, but the mattress must conquer the framework or you're in for a bad night. In other words, the soft must swallow up the hard. The positive must swallow up the negative. We are God's negative. We are God's negative. Because God is the only one there is. He is the Iser. He is the I Am. He is the only one there is. And he is the All. He is the positive. But he couldn't manifest himself unless he had the negative. But negative is not wrong. It means the other end, the positive. Now, this is where so many of us get wrong. We accuse ourselves when we fear. We accuse ourselves when we get, when we're disturbed by a thing or impatient or resentful. No, no. We ought to be. You can't have faith without doubt because you only have faith where you're sparked up into something. Therefore, there are lots of things I haven't got particular faith in. A lot of books I'm not particularly interested in them. But the moment something challenges me, oh, my, that's awful. Well, that couldn't be. What couldn't be? Oh, I couldn't have it changed there. Now I've got doubt. That doubt sparks more faith. I say, wait a minute, God. You're the kind of person who does things I can't do. Come on, God. Get on to it. And you replace, you replace doubt by faith. You cannot have faith without doubt. And I say, it's always healthy for young people to go, it's always healthy if you've been an atheist before you're an atheist. If you haven't been an atheist, start now and be one. See where you get. See, it's healthy. This is the negative which is necessary for the manifestation of the positive. But the important point is to learn, therefore, that my reaction to things are not wrong. They're negative reactions but they're not wrong. It's not wrong that I fear. It's not wrong that I dislike. It's not wrong that I resent. It's not wrong that I question. It's not wrong that I have any of the drives of life. They're the thing which relate me to a situation Because of the unity, the union, because of this, God can come through me. This is the whole point. God can come through that situation. And then, it's God's love comes through. God's courage comes through. If I may use a silly little illustration. I hate speaking. I speak too well. And, speak too quickly, and a few other things. You never comment on your slow hearing. It's always a comment on my slow hearing. So, I hate speaking. In 45 years, I've never got up to like to speak. I love the preacher. I love preaching. I envy you. I don't mind having a pen because no one can ask for my pen back. But it's a little different here. Now, as a silly little thing, therefore, I never get up to speak because I'm not wanting to. Never once do I speak and want to speak. I'm a negative. I don't want to speak. Well, fortunately, I know the way through which I didn't sometimes. I say, well, God, you told me to do it. Well, all right, I'll do it. And, it'll be you doing the speaking. If there may be any mistakes, they're your mistakes. Come on, God. Off we go. There you come through. The supreme example, of course, and this is my foundation, what I'm saying, of the negative necessary to positive. You couldn't have had a crucified Jesus bearing the sins of the world unless you had a negative Jesus. The cross came out of an unwilling Jesus, not a willing Jesus. And the unwilling Jesus meant the arousal of the whole emotion that was in him. Such a passion that to get into the clear caused him bloody sweat or whatever that means. In other words, he was in his own sweat and blood. In other words, he was in all that was in him was a human Jesus. I can't take it and I'm unwilling to take it. Now, is that wrong? No. This is a right human reaction. I can't take it. If it be possible, let this come forth from me. Not as I will. I am in it. It had to be because God must have aroused related human emotions to get his emotions through. And have you got to the last pinnacle, the last degree of arousal, the greatest arousing in the whole history, the arousing of Jesus Christ like this. In Gethsemane, because he knew the unity, as it were, God, he settled into God and God said, God's will will be done. And so he came out saying, the cup which my father had given me, the devil gave it to him. The cup which my father had given me, shall I drink it? And he went like a king through Calvary. But you see, God had to have a fully aroused negative will to put his positive will through. Now, when you get that, you don't betray your negative will. You don't change your negative will, you just stand going on being unwilling until you make me willing. I'll be disobedient until you make me obedient. It's a great life. I like a lazy life. Do nothing until God makes me. But the unfortunate part is, he does make you because God's active apparently, he's not passive. So, you can't get off by it. But, to a great many, it's a great help to accept yourself and your negative reactions. You say, sure, I must have them, thank God. I'm in a tough spot, thank God. Now, it's from the springboard. Now, we don't always take the springboard, sometimes we dive in without it, the wrong way. And then, you go back, you can turn your resentment into anger, wrong kind of temper. Same thing, you can turn your fear into flight. You can move the wrong way. Whatever the various human arousals may be, we may turn, go the wrong way, into temperous, temperous self-expression. That's sin. Now, we never, the whole basis of this being forever is our freedom. And freedom is expressed in honesty. Freedom is expressed in honest recognition of fact. So, there's no fooling the sin. Where there is sin, it's necessary that I admit it. Now, I don't always like to admit it. James calls sin adultery, because adultery is falling in love with somebody you shouldn't fall in love with you, and you like to stick to your love. So, when we go away of sin, we sometimes want to stick to it a bit. We say, God, give me two minutes to have a real bad temp out, and I'll come back after two minutes or longer. We like a little, well, but you've got to come back. But the point I get here is this. There's another bondage. The real bondage of sin is guilt, not sin. The real bondage of sin is you remain feeling smeared and feeling wrong, feeling, oh, I've done it once, I'll do it again. And there you are bound down there. Now, of course, the way through, just as the way through negative reactions is, all right, God, you come through here. Where there's fear, you come through with courage, and hate, you come through with love, and so on. So here, the remedy, the answer for the many times we do, the many times we do go in, is if there's quick sinning, there's quick cleansing, if there's honesty in between. If there's quick sinning, there's quick cleansing, if there's honesty in between. Why quick cleansing? Because, thank God, 2,000 years ago he wiped all the sins of all the world out. You can't see them. They all disappeared in Jesus Christ. They're not there. They're not there actually from the foundation of the world, but of course didn't come out in history until Christ. You can't see those things. So, the moment, you should see your sins, so should I. When I'm good, I should, as I preview, I should see, I've done the thing I shouldn't do, and I should feel it. And there is a time when I may want to stick on it a bit, that's so, but when the moment comes, and thank God, usually we hope it comes quickly, I say, I shouldn't have done it. The moment I say I've done it, don't sin the second sin. The second sin is not to believe the blood of Jesus Christ. Not to believe what God has provided for us is the worst sin in the thing to do. Unbelief is the worst sin. Therefore, I add sin to sin. If, having lost my temper or something, I cool it up, I put it up to say, well, I did do it and shouldn't have done it. Now, I'm on the level of omission of my sin, confession. The moment I do that, God says, quite so. As a free person, you have to be free and honest and admit it. As for that thing, it disappeared two thousand years ago. I've forgotten it, you forget it. Now, the second sin is to go on stewing in it. So, the answer there is to replace the guilt by the praise. And say, never mind, Lord, I feel it. I feel a worm, but alright, you accept worms, it's alright. Praise the Lord, the sin is not there. And they go on. And you leave the future with God. You don't conquer habits by stewing on, by regretting the past or fearing the future. The Africans taught me that, I lived with the Africans for many years. And they said this, they're very pragmatic people, they're not philosophers, but they live on earth, they're people. And they said, now brother, it's like this. This is how to walk with God. Walk is just every step. New Testament is very fond of the word walk. It continually comes. Now, walk is a very significant word because you only do one step at a time. In other words, you just live now, now, now, that's all. Now they say this, that's how you live. Therefore they say, brother, leave the past out of the blood, leave the future with God and get walking. Leave the past out of the blood, leave the future with God, get walking. In other words, you don't answer saying, shall I do it again by saying, shall I do it again? There isn't a kind of patent tenancy you take. You walk with a person. You simply say, well Lord, thank you, that's brought it out now and thank you, you're with me. That's the future, that's your business, I'll carry on. And you carry on free. Leave it to God to hold you up. If you fall down, pick up again and say, it's still your business to hold me up. Go on. In other words, you keep on. You do not get through the problem of the repetition of sin by sort of saying, oh, I've died so many times, oh, I should do it in the future. No. We live now that past or future. We live in present with the person. Oh, you're forgiven now, thank God. He's yours now, thank God. Well, go on free. Dare to trust him. If he does arise again, do it again. You'll find that way will do less than the other. Now, I want to bring up what I'm saying as it were to a final heading. Pretty obvious. Pretty important, I suggest. I did originally say that we might look at the question, what is life? We found it out to be this one person to whom we join as his means of manifestation. How do we live it? Well, we discussed a little about this level of spontaneous living and then the conscious relationships and so on. We discussed that. Why do we live it? We said, we discussed that. What is life? How do we live it? Why do we live it? What's the meaning? Well, we know. I want to say to me that life has two ultimates in it, two absolutes. And those are the two feet on which we walk. The one first ultimate is you are not you, you are he. And the other is you are not you, you are he. That's the basis of it. You are not you, The second is you are not you and he, you are others. That's the second one. The first is you are not you, you are he. The second is you are not you and he, you are others. Because God is others. In other words, the ultimate is God is others. The only life we need bother about with God is the life God lives in others and for others. What he's doing up there, I'll find out when I get up there, when I get to the galaxy and I'll have a look until then, I haven't got there. So I'm down here at present. And so, we, you, so well understand this. So you see, we brought out, pardon me, I think yesterday again, we brought out that, that, those analogies Jesus lived. The first time we talked, which to me was so illuminating, when he was God on earth. He was there for love. What is love? Bread and water he likened it to, bread and water. He said, bread is a living bread, living water. What's bread? Bread is something by which somebody else eats and lives. It gives up its own life. Its real life is to be your life. You eat it and live. What's water? Starts in streams and so on, ends in us. And we saw how the whole universe is like that because it's the forms of God. This is for a sage who wants a tree. Its real meaning is to be a desk for me. So that everything arises something which has individual life is giving it up and there's too many lives which somebody runs. Now that's what we are. That's what God only is. God is others. Jesus said, if you don't visit the prisoner, you don't visit me. If you don't feed the hungry, you don't feed me. And so on. Now what I am meaning, what's the meaning of this? This is what the eternal love is. Therefore this is what we are in this unity. So we are really others. The only meaning of our life now is its involvement in others. Of course you get the great scripture love your neighbour as being yourself. Paul, I made all things to all men and by all means I am my safe son. Now we live if ye stand fast. I'm quoting Paul. Perhaps the most human illustration given in the scriptures along that line is when Paul likened his concern to a mother for children. He said, my little children for whom I travel in birth until Christ is formed in you. Now the nearest human level by which one person is another is a mother and children. As I said, to which parents live their life again in their children. That's about as near an analogy as we can get. Moses was the supreme example. One of the supreme besides Jesus Christ himself on earth was when he was taken to an abyssal through the wilderness. And God was judging them because they threw God out and worshipped these golden calves and so on. And Moses, God kind of gave Moses a chance. It's in the scriptures. He said, Moses, I'll destroy this nation and make a new nation out of you. Well if you've got a simple little bit of self ambition and you jump at that, ooh, I'll be the progenitor of God's nation in the earth. I'll take Abraham's place. Get out, Abraham. I'll take your place. Chance for self. The significant thing is Moses never even answered that question. Wasn't interested. What did he say? He went to plead with God for mercy on these people. He said, God, if, forgive them. If you don't, if you block them out, block me out. In other words, I'm there. I'm there. My real life is those people. If you touch them, you touch me. That's it. Now I'm asking, I'm saying to you, how does that work out in practical life? To me, it's meant, I veer from it plenty, but it's meant basically, again, a reorientation of my understanding. As I say, the first reorientation of my understanding had to be, it's not really I. It looks like it and I laugh at it. It's not I. It's this other person here. Same with you. As I say, the first ultimate is not you, it's he. What's the second foundation? It's this. Every single incident of life from now on is not for me, it's for others. Now, that's a reorientation of my whole outlook on life. The Bible presents us in many ways, actually the Bible does present, all the way through, if you get at it, kind of three stages in our apprehension of our relationship with God. The simplest, put in simplest terms, is when John says, speaks about his little children, young men and fathers, in the first John letter. I tell you, little children, young men and fathers, infants, adolescents, adults. Now, there's a big gulp between adolescents and adults. Put in simple terms, as it's explained in the Bible, an infancy, infant relationship is the first relationship you have to an apparent external God. It says, your sins are forgiven by his name since you know the Father. You come to God through Christ and he's somewhere out here to whom you're related and to whom you're reconciled through Jesus Christ and you have the peace of God in your heart. Now you move on. That's the infant. The infant's helpless. It just depends on something we should have done for it. Now, adolescence has to find its own inner resources. That's the problem with teenagers, isn't it? He has to get rid of his parents and find his inner resources. So an adolescent has to find his inner resources physically and it's supposed to be psychologically and intellectually, but conditioned to go out into life. We adolescents find our own resources when we find an inner Christ. They try to find an inner self, poor self, and that doesn't work too well, poor things. We find our inner resources when we find not an external Christ who died for us, an inner Christ who's in us. Now that's adolescence. Now what's the difference between adolescence and adulthood? The big jump between giving and receiving. Up to adolescence everything is done for the child. Infancy, adolescence is all done for his development, for his preparation, for his education. The big leap comes over after what we call graduation when he becomes a reproducer instead of being reproduced. He becomes a giver rather than a getter. He passes from the receiving end to the giving end of life. And the whole meaning of life there is he has his family, he has his civic responsibilities, he has his job, he's making his contribution to the world. That's the gap from in to ourselves from out to ourselves. Now we have no business to say we're adolescents. We're not. We're adults. Adolescence is when you're conscious that this has become an amazing fact. It's been a fact always has been a fact for every redeemed person that you and God are one person. That's your graduation. You're finished. You've got your infancy, adolescence. Now you move into a life and you're part of a saving Christ. You pass from being a save to a saviour. Now there's often a great snare with this even in the mission because I'm a missionary. For instance, our snare is in a sense if we don't look out we go out to build up ego. Build up self. For instance, now I've worked on lepers. Now, I'm not doing my job if I go out to heal a leper. I'm going out if I make a leper a healer. That's quite a different thing. You see, the whole being is the whole purpose is God's an outgoer who is living other people's lives. This is the meaning of humanity. So we only come into focusing on humanity when we're people living other people's lives. Contributing to other people's lives. Therefore, the point to go to lepers is not just to get their bodies healed but how they can find this relation to the living person and find their way back into Christ so they make other people living. So whether they're healed or not is in general. What does matter is they become healers. This is where the mission period goes wrong. We don't go out to educate people, improve them which can only be filling up the ego. We go out to make them improvers, educators, not educated. Not, for instance, in early illiterate days. I mean, for instance, illiteracy is the first thing. The knowledge of God and to be able to reproduce Christ in life is the first thing. And in primitive days as I was in Africa we had people who never learned to read but my the glory of God took a lot of them and they were giving a true education to other people though they couldn't read a word. Now I don't mean we shouldn't teach them to read but that's secondary. Our primary job isn't to teach people to read which only builds up the ego or get people's bodies healed which only builds up the ego. We're there to make people healers not healed. Educators, not educated. Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the peacemakers. Not those who get peace, those who make peace. Not those who have mercy, those who give mercy. This is the gospel. That's what God is. He's the mercy giver. He's the peacemaker. Now we are co-saviors. We've passed adolescence is being saved, being redeemed, whatever term you like to use. Infancy, adolescence, becoming what we're meant to become. The end of adolescence is what you become. The better becoming is this unity. Now, you've passed now from being the redeemed to the redeemers, to the saviors. And you're part of a contributing God. Now I say to you that changes your outlook on life because our tendency is, and we're meant to, being humans, we start life by saying Oh dear, why is this happening to me? Why have I suddenly got afflicted with this? Why have I suddenly lost a loved one? Why has my marriage broken up? Why has this happened to my business? And I'm hurt. I'm meant to be hurt because I'm meant to be a person. I'm meant to be a true person so I'm meant to have my hurts. What do I do with my hurts? Now the point is this. When I catch hold of this I say, wait a minute. Not one thing happens to me now but has a purpose for others. Never again does a thing happen to me. I've passed that road where things happen for me. It's pitiful to hear Christians saying Oh, I suppose this has come to try me or sanctify me, which is a horrible word anyhow, or something like that. As if, oh, I must be a bit, forget your wretched self. We're part of a Saviour. That's our glory. Do you see the point? Now, that's never going to be easy because we're meant to be human so we always start by being hurt. It's what you do with your hurt. See, of course, in the earlier ways a self-sentence can prevent us from finding Christ but we've passed through that. But even though we've passed through and are now, as I hope we all are here, into Christ, our hurt self can still interfere with the true purpose of life coming out through us. While you relate life to yourself you can't see it. A hurt self blocks. This is what's called the other form of the cross. For those of us who are following the Bible, this portion was raised a day or two ago, there's one way in which Christ was crucified, as Tommy and I were talking to you the day before. We were there. And we participated in that cross which cut us off from this old false dominion by the wrong spirit. And then we're identified with the resurrection which unites us with the spirit of Christ. Now that's never repeated. That's a fact of every one of us who are redeemed. You have become a person crucified so far as that old life is concerned and renewed as far as the new. That's not repeated. But then the Bible talks about this always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake. Now, always. Or there's a quotation which is often misquoted I die daily. It can be taken for the same thing. Now, that's nothing to do with my relationship with God. My relationship with God is fixed, finished, forget it. That's the foundation. Forget it, except to be thankful for it. But this other is for others. Christ's cross wasn't for himself, it's for others. Now, I would suggest you can put a clear division in the life of Christ in this way. You can see Christ being developed up to his baptism and the Mount of Temptation. The Bible says so. He was glowing in wisdom and salvation. Now, I'm at the stage when he became an adult. Now, I'm saying this. From the moment that the Spirit of God revealed to him at his baptism you're the anointed one. You're the one the prophets spoke about. You're to heal the... to unloose the prison and bind the brokenhearted and preach the gospel to the poor and so on. He said he was. From that moment on, every single thing which happened in Christ's life was for others. Not just Calvary, everything. Now, every single thing in your life is for others. You're to say you're... Not to say, you're to remain adolescent because you don't find your adolescence, God found it for you. God put you into himself. God united himself to seek you to find it. He's found you. And so you dare say, I'm finished with that business. The graduation is what Jesus Christ has done for me and has made real to me. That's finished. Now I'm an adult, therefore everything that happens to me is for others. Now that puts a big change in life. It changes life basically from frustration to adventure. When you're a hurt self and can't see quite why you're hurt, you're frustrated. When you say, every single thing which has come to me is some reason by which God will manifest himself to others. That's adventure. You say, come on Lord, this is fun now. Let's see where it comes out. That's what Jesus said, for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame. Of course, there are certain areas we haven't time to go into. I'm stopping in a moment to connect you with that. One is, it's perfectly clear to me that whether you accept this, I think most of you will, that God sends everything that comes into our life, good and evil. God's not responsible for it, but God utilizes evil as well as good. Everything that comes to us comes from God. He's utilizing evil for his own purposes. The supreme example of that, of course, was Calvary. Peter, in the first speech after Pentecost, the first official talk of the early church, the foundation of the church, openly says this. He said, you crucify Jesus Christ with your wicked hands through the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God. Isn't that strange? He said, you crucify Christ with your wicked hands through the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God. God picks you up to do that because he wanted a savior killed for the world's sake. So God is utilizing evil for good. One of the other famous examples, of course, is Joseph, where every mortal thing that happened bad to a person happened to Joseph, sold by his own brethren into a foreign country, never to be seen again. And then when the one man who did have the purity in the nation and refused the solicitations of Potiphar's wife, she turned around and said, you're the adulterer, I've got you beaten up by your husband, and put in prison. You may be sure he gave you a good beating too, you may be sure of that one. Everything happened to him. And then when he revealed the dream to the butler and baker and said, we'll go back to Pharaoh and Peter, the one who was delivered, the butler forgot about it. And then God's time came. And he came up to be prime minister. And we should meet many Christians from Egypt. Joseph gathered in the prayer groups and the CFO groups in Egypt. We got there, I'm sure of that. And then the brethren came. And now, of course, they rightly were frightened. You meant it for evil. The brethren told him when they came back for food, you know. You meant it for evil. God meant it for good. God did send me before you to preserve life. Sending isn't passive, it's active. So, God, use your wickedness. He sent me. Now, that's what they come. It means I dare to say, things come into my life I can't take. They come through mistake. They come through wrong acts. They come through something that shouldn't have been. And to be able to say, all right, Lord, you sent it. And the point isn't what to have the effect on me. The point is that somewhere through this you're going to show yourself. Now, you turn that very thing into an adventure. It's on that basis we find the strategies of Christian warfare, if you like. That's what these prayer groups are. They come on here in this way, strategies. The highest term I know in the Bible, which we're called is royal priests. It's a wonderful phrase. We're a royal priesthood. A priest, again, is one of those words that has a queer connotation to it. You think of a person with a long gown and a long face. But it isn't necessarily so to be a priest. A priest, the wonderful description of a priest given in Hebrews is this. It's told us. It's told us of the high priest. The high priest is this person inside us. We're priests because he expresses his priesthood through us. That's what it is. What does it say of him? A priest is a person taken from among men, ordained for men, to relate them to God. That's a beautiful expression. In other words, we are people taken from among humanity, related to God, to go back to humanity, taken from among men, ordained for men, to relate humanity to God. It's therefore a word full of rich activity. A royal priesthood means we have the authority to do it. And the wherewithal to do it in God, of course. And it's at this level you get, every one of us, I suggest, probably many of us do, should be conscious of commission in our life. The word used of a priest, the great word in the Bible, is intercessor. And if you follow the intercessor through in the Bible, you'll find there are three phases given for intercessor. He's commissioned, he's involved, and he's authoritative. In other words, someone quoted this earlier thing, God wondered if there was no intercessor. An intercessor isn't just a praying person. An intercessor is involved. An intercessor is where you feel, uh-huh, that's my show, I'm in for that one. You see, you can't see that if you're blocked by your own self-reactions. If, oh, why am I hurt? Why did this happen? You can't see. So this hurt self, that's where the dying comes. The dying of the Lord Jesus means that Jesus accepted his death at Gethsemane, not Calvary. He had to die to his reactions. I don't want to do this. He died there. And that freed him for God's strategic will to come through. You see? So now, we have to die inwardly. In other words, we have to say, no, all right, I accept this. I don't like it, never have liked it. I've stuck with this thing for 20 years and it's still horrible. Probably a husband if you're a wife. But, all right, God. You see, I die, I accept. Now, when you accept your dying to your self-reactions. Now, when you die to your self-reactions, it says that the life of Jesus may manifest in your mortal body. What's that mean? The next time that you've released this thing and taken it from God, you begin to quicken yourself. And other people see it. You may get a bit of a quickening. You get, you know, there's a release. There's something about you which the world doesn't have in its problems. The world's under its problems. We're on top of its problems. The world sinks in the way as we walk on it with Jesus. So, you yourself become a person whose quality of life has something about it. There's a quickening in your mortal body, which is both physical and the meaning of the whole thing with the body. There's a quickening. That itself is an expression of God. But, you see, at that point you become a strategist. By a strategist, I mean free from your own self-hurts. You say, what's God after? Now. Now you're interested in what's God after? And I believe every one of us, many of us have, of course, our prayer group and so on, should have a consciousness of a commission. Every life is a commission. You don't hide the commission. You are commissioned. Every single redeemed person is a priest. A priest is you've been taken from among, sent back to relate people. And so there is a priesthood in every life. And I suggest there is that place that many of you have in which we are conscious. Ah, this is where I'm in. It may be your own home. It may be this prayer service which you can reach over the world. It may be anything. But you've got a sense of a commission. That puts something into you. Now with a commission is involvement. It's you are there. You're their bread. All right. They're going to eat you. When they eat you, they find it isn't you at all. It's Jesus Christ. They eat Jesus Christ. They drink you and they drink Jesus Christ. But there's this involvement. That involvement may be time, prayer, money, going, and all that. God shows you. This life isn't effort. It's being driven. Don't receive Jesus Christ by grace and then work for him by law. No, service is not effort. He'll make you. So don't you try and do a thing. But get the principle. Say, God, this is what it means. I'm somewhere. I'm commissioned. I've got an interest. I say, you better make me see where it is and put me into it. He'll do that. He's pretty active. And then you go along with him. And then there's involvement. But there's joy in the involvement. You don't use the word sacrifice. Love belongs to need. You're privileged to meet the need. And so you don't call it sacrifice. You call it joy. Involvement. And authority. You're on the go. God, it's going to happen. It's in your sight. It's happened. You're using authority. You know so much about the authority of faith. This is the full life. So that's the end. There is no higher. We found the end when we found love, which means it exists for others. We belong to others. This is the meaning of God, meaning of us. Therefore, it's the fun of life, the gaiety of life, the fulfillment of life, the purpose of life. It's the all. Great. Life with a kick in it. God bless the CFO.