Secrets of the Secret Place - Part 8

Welcome back, this is session 8 of our Secrets of the Secret Place class. Delighted to have you back with us tonight. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we love you so much. Thank you for your grace that is with us in this course and may that grace be richly flowing tonight as a river. We ask in Jesus' name. Well, we're going to talk about something very dear to my heart right now, abiding in Christ. I'm wondering if you have a favorite book of the Bible. If somebody was to say, we're going to lock you up for a year or two years, three years, we're going to lock you away and you can only take one book with you, which one would you take? I'd be in so much pain over that to say, and I've got like 65 other books that I can't do without. But if you're going to force me to take only one book into that cell for a year, I think I might have to go with the Gospel of John because I've got to take Jesus with me into that cell. I love the life of Christ. And if you said only one chapter, oh, now I'm really in pain. Don't take John 14 from me. Don't take John 3 and don't take John 17. I've got about 21 chapters I can't do without. But if you said I have to take only one chapter, oh, this would be painful. I think a contender for me would be John 15. Reason being, well, one of the reasons at least, John 15 has the master key to the Christian life. Now, if I said to you, I could give you the master key to living the Christian life, how many would be interested in knowing what that is? I'm about to tell you. It's right there in John 15, verse 9, four simple words, abide in my love. I believe that's the key to the Christian life. You can go after that verse from now till the day they bury you and never exhaust the depths, the riches, the potential of what's in those four words, abide in my love. I am hanging my entire existence on one single premise, that an intimate, abiding relationship with Christ in his love is the womb that transforms human history. I'm putting all my eggs on that basket. I'm loving my life as though that is the key to transforming my life, my generation, my world, an intimate, burning, fiery love relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the reason I want that so desperately is because that's where we connect with the life of God, and I've got so much death working in me. I am desperate to connect to the life of God. He said, I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly. John 1, verse 4 says, In him was life, and the life was the light of men. John says this about Christ. He said, the guy was so alive, there was life just coming out of him. And when people saw the life in him, they gather from all over because people are drawn. The light that draws people to Christ is the life that's in Christ. They don't gather around Christ so much because of truth. It wasn't the truth that was the light. It was the life in him that was the light. And our hearts long for this life. Every person on the planet, what every one of us longs for, we want to live. We want real life flowing into us. And the key to getting that life into you is abiding in Christ and in his love. There's so much life in God, he can't contain it. It's like a river that flows out of him. Revelation 22, verse 1, God is so full of life, it just exudes out of him as a gushing, rushing river. And we are desperate to receive that life. John 4, when John was caught up, excuse me, Revelation chapter 4, when John the Apostle was caught up to the throne and he saw four creatures at the throne of God, he called them living creatures. Because when John saw these creatures around the throne of God, the thing that struck him was how alive they were. They were so alive in the presence of the glory of God that all John could call them was living creatures. And beloved, you and I, through the cross, have a destiny in God. I'm convinced of what I'm about to say. You and I have a destiny in God that is actually closer to the heart of God than the living creatures around the throne of God. What I'm saying is, you are headed for life and life more abundantly, eternal life. This is our inheritance in Christ. This is what we long for. And we can touch it now in the secret place, abiding in his love. See, John 15 contains the great quest of my life. So that's why I've got you in this chapter tonight. Verse 7, this is one of my life verses. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you. Now that verse, my heart is after. How do I get this verse, Lord Jesus? If I abide in you, I'm coming in to you, Lord, in the secret place, in intimacy, in love, abiding in your love. I'm pressing into that. If I abide in you and your words abide in me, okay, that's where I take your word into me and I pray your word. I meditate in your word. I absorb it. I hold on to it. I value it. Get that word living in me. And Lord, I want my life to support your word so that every atom of my being becomes like the word incarnate, that your word dwells in me and abides in me. This, beloved, I am after John 15, 7. This is one of the greatest quests of my life for this word to become reality for me. And I'm pressing into it with all my heart. Now, I've heard Will Engle use a term that I love. I don't know if it's originally his, but he's the first one I've heard use it. He talks about a life-dominating prayer. Zacharias had a life-dominating prayer. When Gabriel, the angel, came to Zacharias, he says to Zacharias, your prayer is heard. Zacharias had one prayer. He wanted a baby. He wanted a son. It was a life-dominating prayer. Jesus had a life-dominating prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. Three times over, he went aside saying the same words over and over and over. Because when you're in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the cross is the next thing on the agenda for your life, you have a life-dominating prayer. Oh, God, Abba, if this cup can pass from me. Abraham had a life-dominating prayer, Genesis 15. After these things, we're reading now Genesis 15 verse 1. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward. So God is offering to, I mean, this is one of the biggest promises of the entire Bible. God is saying to Abraham, Abraham, don't be afraid. I'm going to protect you. No one will be able to touch you. And you get me. Well, God says, Abraham, you get me. Now look at verse 2. Abram said, Lord God, what will you give me? I just told you, you get me. And Abram comes back with this, it's like, Abram, did you connect the dots on that? Because he says, Lord God, what will you give me? See, I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. Abram, he's like, he is on one track. Okay, I appreciate what you're going to protect me, and I get you. Oh, that sounds real good right now. But what will you give me? I want an heir. I want a son. Abram had this life-dominating prayer, something that consumed his mind. His whole horizon was consumed with this cry that filled his heart. Because I can imagine Abram saying to the Lord, you know, Lord, I appreciate that I get you. And I love the warmth, the intimacy of that. That's just, that's awesome. But is it real? Is our intimacy real enough that you will hear the cry of my heart and answer my prayer? And you kind of wonder, was God upset by that? And I think when we look at the next verses, we realize, actually, the Lord is pleased with Abram. Verse three, Abram said, he's going to do it one more time. You, look, you have given me no offspring. Indeed, one born in my house is my heir, that is his servant Eliezer. And so Abram's not letting this thing go. God responds. Verse four, behold, the word of the Lord came to him saying, This one, Eliezer, shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir. Then he brought Abram outside and said, Look now toward heaven and count the stars if you are able to number them. And he said to him, So shall your descendants be. And Abram believed in the Lord and he accounted it to him for righteousness. When you have this kind of a life-dominating prayer, when there's one thing that fills your screen, God, you have to hear the cry of my heart. When you have a life-dominating prayer, go after John 15, 7. Go after an abiding relationship in Christ where you abide in his love, his words abide in you, and then you ask what you desire and it shall be done for you. The great question of the age is how do I do this? How do I abide in Christ? It's the question of the millennia. All the greatest saints have asked this question. So if you've ever asked that, let me hear if you've ever asked that question, How do I abide in Christ? You're asking the right question. It is the question to ask. Now let me ask you this. How many here are frustrated in their pursuit of it? Well, if it comforts you, we all are. Every saint of God is frustrated in their pursuit of this thing. Another word for it, if you don't like the word frustrated, let's give it a Bible word, we're lovesick. Lovesickness is this sublime blend of exhilarated delight and distressed desire. It's at the same time, it's the sense of being fulfilled in his love and yet having this unrequited desire that just consumes you. I'm satisfied, but I'm unsatisfied. You delight my heart, but I'm in pain. And that's what lovesickness is. It's this thing. Oh, we desire this abiding relationship with the Lord. And yet there's something about it that seems elusive and difficult to find. But we're not discouraged. We're not deterred. We're actually, we're more determined than ever. We're going to go after this and we're not going to relent until we attain this abiding in Christ. When you have a goal this glorious, it's worth whatever price you have to pay. Great accomplishments are never attained easily. The loftier the goal, the greater the price tag it'll take. But we are willing to do whatever it takes to find it. Now, in your pursuit of an abiding relationship with Christ, you have a helper. Jesus called the Holy Spirit, the helper in John 14, verse 16. So let me use a little bit of contemporary vernacular, some computer lingo. You have, the Holy Spirit is a divine search engine. When you want to know something, any more of what we do, when we want to know something, we just get on our computer and Google. The Holy Spirit is a better search engine than Google. He searches the mind of God, the will of God. And all you have to do if you want help with this abiding relationship, is to go to the Holy Spirit and receive his help. Does anybody here have a computer? All right, you got a computer. Anybody here, you have a computer and you have a help program in your computer. You got a help program? Okay. Have you used your help program? Okay, here's my next question. Anybody here that's ever called the manufacturer of your computer and asked for help with the help program? You probably wouldn't do that because it's a little redundant. Why would I ask for help with the help program, when the help program by definition helps? Same thing is true with the Holy Spirit. Somebody says, well, how do you connect with the Holy Spirit? You just go to the Holy Spirit and ask for help. You don't need help with the helper. You don't need a book. You don't need a counselor. You don't need a mentor. You don't need somebody else interpreting. The Holy Spirit is all the help you need. So if you're needing a divine search engine into the heart of God, if you need to know how do I do this thing called abiding in Christ, get in the secret place, shut your door and go like this. Help. That's what you do. You just ask for help. And the Holy Spirit has been given to you as a divine helper. He is so willing and ready to help the bride of Christ to find this love relationship with Christ. Paul called the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit of promise. And so the Holy Spirit's always doing. He's always promising things. And if you'll listen, he'll say to you, I'll help you. Promise. I will. I'm going to empower you. Promise. I will. I'm going to put might in your inner man. Promise. I'm going to enlarge your heart with my, with the word of God. I'm going to give you understanding. I promise. And if you'll listen to the Holy Spirit, he's going to give you promise after promise as he assures you of his help. Now we're in John 15 tonight, and I want to direct your attention in these closing minutes. To the first part of the chapter, John 15. Let's look at verse one and two. I'm the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit. He takes away and every branch that bears fruit. He prunes that it may bear more fruit. The whole point of this parable, likening us to branches attached to the vine. The whole point of it is to help us connect to the life of God. That's what the Lord wants. He wants us like a, like a branch attached to the vine, linked to the life flow that's in the vine. And when the life that's in the vine, who is Christ, comes into me, then I will bear fruit. Point number two, a fruitful branch doesn't work at being fruitful. If you see a fruitful branch, it's not like, okay, bear fruit, bear fruit, I gotta bear fruit, I gotta bear fruit. All that branch does is just link up to the vine and feed off the life that's in the vine. That branch basically needs two things. It needs life coming out of the vine and it needs some sunlight. You get that thing connected to the vine with some sun and it bears fruit. Same is true for you. You get connected to Christ in the secret place, abiding in his love. Get the life of God flowing into you through the word and get the light of his countenance on your life and you will bear fruit. Now, let me just make a couple comments about pruning. Verse here, verse two talks about how he prunes us that we may bear more fruit. In a growing season, a vine will produce about 50 new canes, bam, bam, all 50 directions. And if those 50 canes are left over to the following season, the fruit will be small and sour because there's too many branches for this root to support. So what the vine dresser does, he comes in the winter and he trims back 50 canes back to five. And we have a constant temptation, a constant tendency to grow too many branches. God blesses in our lives. There's a life that flows from us and there go the branches. And sometimes the Lord has to come to our branches and prune back. Lord says, you know, I just want some time with you. Let's just you and me get together. And you get up your day timer and say, Lord, do you have next Wednesday available? And the Lord says, too many branches. And he's got to sometimes come back in our lives in order for us to get back to finding the richness of an abiding relationship with him. Now, when you've been pruned, you don't look good. I saw some prune trees one time. I was traveling across the country and I saw these apple trees. They were the ugliest looking apple trees I'd ever seen. I thought, man, what did the farm, what kind of a hack job did that farmer do? But I took a second look. There were these huge apples on that, on those trees. And I realized God's not interested in me looking good. He's interested in me being fruitful. Something else I learned about looking at vines is I was looking at a vineyard one time and it struck me. Every vine, because it was the wintertime and they'd been pruned, every vine was the same size. They'd all been cut back to whatever kind of a radius each vine was about, you know. And I was looking at that and it just struck me. You know what God does with us. We have a growing season. And then after we've had a season of harvest and growth and fruitfulness, he'll come back and he'll cut you back to your former size. And I'm like, you know, Lord, I think the fruitfulness that I just evidenced in this last season would be proof that you can now entrust me with an international ministry. And the Lord says, I don't think so. I think we're just going to cut you right back to where you were before. And he comes back and he cuts us back to our former size so that the orb of our lives basically stays the same. And the thing, the only thing that changes from year to year is the size of the stem. Every year that stem is getting larger, larger, larger so that there is more life flow to those branches so that every year that vine is producing sweeter and richer fruit because the enlargement of the connection to the vine. And that's what God's doing with us every season of our lives. He takes us through a season, enlarges our capacity to draw on the life of God, cuts us back to size. But now the fruit from our lives is sweeter than it's ever been. Next point in your outline here, according to verse two, it's fruitful branches that get pruned. When you've been pruned, your first question is, God, what's going on? What did I do wrong? And we start looking for sin in our lives, introspection. I must have done something to bring this on. And we're checking every compartment of our hearts. What can I repent of? What do I need to do business with? And sometimes the answer of the Lord is, here's what you did wrong. You were being fruitful. And I'm so pleased with the fruit of your life that I'm coming to say congratulations. And he prunes back in our lives because of his pleasure in our lives, and because he wants more fruit. I love the fruit of your life. I'm so pleased with it. I want more. And the whole point of the process is to enlarge our connection to the vine, so that through the seasons of life, more and more of the life of God is flowing into our lives. Let me close this evening with one illustration of this. Little gal in the Bible that, if I can use the analogy, she got pruned. Her name was Anna. She was married for seven years. And then God comes and just cuts off her husband's life. And she's left in her 20s. This young gal, no husband, no children. And I imagine her thinking, Lord, the only thing I can do, I can be a mother. And you have stripped from me the one thing. I think I could be a good wife and a good mom. And you've taken it from me. And in the midst of her pain, Anna has a choice. Do I get bitter and angry? Or do I come after God with a zeal and a fire? And she decides to turn her angst into intercession. And she starts coming after God. God, I don't understand you. You've just taken away everything I've ever longed for, lived for, dreamed of. You've stripped me of everything. God, I've just been loving you. I've been serving you. My whole life has been yours. Why has this happened? God, what are you doing in my life? And she starts coming after God with a passion and a fire. And I believe there came a day when Anna heard the voice. Okay, intercession, prayer, okay. Night and day, ooh, that's intense. Fasting, ooh, wow. Okay, she says yes to it. She starts turning up the fire seven times hotter night and day in the temple, fasting and prayer, giving her heart to God. Oh, God, and there she is over on the side. And I imagine someone new to the temple, they come and they say, Anna, who's the lady over there? Somebody, oh, you don't know that. Well, that's Anna. Well, let me tell you about Anna. It's actually a very sad story. Yeah, well, you see, she lost her husband. Oh, wow, when did that happen? Well, that's the sad part. It's been years now. She lost her husband and she never recovered. And it's a waste of a life, really. She's just there in the corner and, you know, she kind of does like this every once in a while. And it's very sad. She could just never get over the grief. And Anna, in intercession with the Lord, obeying the voice of God, I believe the days turn into weeks, turn into months, turn into years. And I believe there came a time when Anna heard the voice again. Lord, Messiah, Messiah, oh, Messiah. And she starts to pray like she's never prayed. Oh, she says, I've never given birth to a child, but this feels like I'm giving birth to something. You are giving birth to something, sweetheart. Anna, you are giving birth to the Messiah through your prayers. And a gal who thought that her life was history, who thought that her fruitfulness had been cut off through her obedience and intercession, actually gives birth through her prayers to the Messiah. And the day comes when she holds in her hand the fruit of her intercessions, the answer to her prayers. And Anna, you're not just a mother of one or two children. You are a mother to every generation that believes in the Messiah, the Son of God. And God turned a gal who thought she'd been cut off, abandoned, forsaken. It's over. And because she turned her heart into her God and started drawing on the life of God, abiding in the vine, getting the life of God into her spirit, God turned her barrenness into the most powerful fruitfulness. And I want to close this session by speaking over your life. I don't care how cut off you feel. I don't care how pruned you feel. If you will abide in His love and get the life of God flowing into you, you shall bear fruit again. I'm asking that you would put your grace upon every heart hearing this message, that you would teach us, Holy Spirit, help us teach us an abiding love relationship with Christ, that the life of God would come into us, and that we would bear