Fellowship July 2, 2011

Fellowship in the Household of Faith

July 2, 2011

BELIEVER 1: (Sharing from 365 Kid’s Confessions)  “The Lord  is my Shepherd, I am His little Sheep.”  (BELIEVER 4: BELIEVER 1 is a wandering sheep).  “He takes care of me and all I need He provides”  (BELIEVER 4:  Are you sure BELIEVER 1?) 

BELIEVER 4:  Oh, Lord Jesus, Jesus we pray in agreement for BELIEVER 1.

BELIEVER 3: (frustrated) Cast fire down to the earth Lord!!! … Forgive me Lord, this is me and not You.

BELIEVER 6:  (Sharing from the Church and the Work by Watchman Nee)  “If someone’s interpretation of the bible does not agree with our own, it is hard for the flesh.”  (BELIEVER 4 responds:  This is what happened right now BELIEVER 3).  “But it is good for the Spirit, God doesn’t use these divisions to solve these problems; He uses the cross.”  (BELIEVER 4 responds: This is for you BELIEVER 5.) This is for everyone, there is nobody righteous in this world.  (BELIEVER 4 responds: But BELIEVER 6 feels he has some goodness in his flesh.)   “if the work is of God it will be spiritual.  And if the work is spiritual, the supply will also be spiritual.”

BELIEVER 4 responds:  This is a problem for us because we all have our own concepts.  Our big problem is that we see with the natural eyes.  Why is this a problem?  Because in the moment you don’t use your faith for believe, for us everything is over.

BELIEVER 6:  “If the work of God is spiritual, and the word of God is spiritual, the way of supply is spiritual.  If the supply is not on a spiritual plane, the work will speedily drift down to the plain of secular business.”     

BELIEVER 4 continues:  This is what happened right now with us, for example.  Everything that has happened with BELIEVER 2, has happened in the plane of the spirit.  But he doesn’t want to abide in the plane of the Spirit.  Why?  Because it is very easy  (for us) to see and chose in our circumstance, (rather) than to believe.  Because we believe we (in ourselves) can do the things; this is not this way.  It says the things that are not in the way of the spirit it are in the natural way.  We don’t want to die.  We say “this, this, this” but we don’t die.  Why don’t we die?  Because we believe we can do our will.  We need to understand that in us, nothing good dwells.  We are not going to learn (divine truths) by good reasons. When we know (in the head) something of God (by the scriptures), we depend on the scriptures (head knowledge).  Satan is not going to attack us with many things of this world (evil things), unless we are fighting a spiritual battle; Satan is going to attack us with the word of God.  We are going to go with what BELIEVER 6 shared.  BELIEVER 6 is touching points that he himself is involved in.  Here it says something that is going to help us.  “all the teaching in Adam needs to be put away.  All distinctions of race, gender, age, etc. has no recognition in the word of God.”  We do not understand this.  We want to be doctors, engineers; we want to be somebody.  We know that these things before God don’t matter, but in this world these things matter.  “…in the church…”  What is the church?  Is it a building?  Is it us, the saints?  No.  The church is the divine nature.  The church is from above.  It is not of earth. It doesn’t have anything natural.  Here it says, “in the church all are one in Christ.”  In other words, we are one in the spirit.  But many times we don’t want to be one in the spirit.  “If the work of God is spiritual…”  “If it is not spiritual…” “we put it in the secular business.”  We have discussed these things with BELIEVER 3 for a year and a half.  We say to the Lord, “Lord everything belongs to you.”  But in the moment the Lord asks us for a single thing, we cannot give it.  Why?  Because we have a god of our mind (God is Spirit).  When we see God in reality, there are no more arguments.  Sometimes we resist(what He shows us), but there are no arguments.  In His light we see light; the scripture does not say that if we read this book or that book we will see light.  His words are spirit.  Our mind wants the good (Romans 7).  It wants the good part of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  This next part kills us. 

BELIEVER 6:  “in the word of God, we don’t read of one servant asking people for money.”

BELIEVER 4  continues:  If I ask you, BELIEVER 6, to preach the gospel to the whole world and live only by faith, do you know what you are going to do? (BELIEVER 6 responds:  I am not going to do it.)  He cannot do it.  This is his truth.  But this is not the truth of God.  (BELIEVER 6: God puts the willing and the working to do).  Yes God puts this, but how?

BELIEVER 6:  The mysteries of divinity are subject to popular imaginations.  This is why so few….

BELIEVER 4   continues:  BELIEVER 6, if you want to go to a discussion to a forum, you can pick up one point and never leave the arguments over one point.  Let us go to the first point, and then we will go to the second point; that is very hard to deal with.  How does it happen, that God puts the willing and the working?   Right now this is the problem that we all have.  (BELIEVER 5 says:  God does this.)  Hold on a minute BELIEVER 5, I’m going to begin with you.  We were invited to go to some brother’s house this weekend for three days.  BELIEVER 5 has some conditions to do this and the three days are not part of the condition.  She says, “God didn’t put it in my heart to do it.”  Do you believe this?  (BELIEVER 3:  it’s possible, but probably not)  I tell you no.  I will tell you why.  Because she visits God, many times, visits.  But one thing is to visit, and another thing is to abide.  (BELIEVER 5:  I know)

BELIEVER 3:  (Explaining visiting the Lord) The word says that Jesus stands at the door and knocks.  But visiting Jesus, is like, we don’t let Him in the door, we just stand on the other side and talk to Him. 

BELIEVER 4:  What BELIEVER 3 says is true.  This is you BELIEVER 5.  You go to the church and you see the people in a bad condition.  You say, “Lord Jesus, these people need You.  I know I am in a bad state, but these people are worse.  Use me Lord.”  (BELIEVER 6:  can we get back to what I were sharing)  No we can’t.  It is not that God doesn’t put the ‘to will and to do’, it is that we don’t allow Him to enter and hear what He has to say to us.  We don’t go to the spirit.  This is what has happened in this time with Brother Paul.  The things we have lived have been glorious in one side, but it is a shame on the other side.  Why?  Because when God shows us our condition; we can have two reactions.  One is that we can humble ourselves, and the other is that we can brush the dirt under the rug.  I am going to go to the other side of God putting the ‘to will and to do’.  It is true what BELIEVER 6 shared.  He said, “in the majority of the time we are in the soul.  We have many reasons”  But if God is working with one, He begins to say “come here.”  And we say, “what a minute, I will go later.”  Why?  Because we know mentally what He is going to say to us.  So we prepare our verse and say, “but here it says this, here it says this.”  He doesn’t answer us.  He just looks at us.  And He allows us to follow the scripture (and not Him).  He doesn’t fight with us; we don’t not allow Him to enter in order to receive the ‘to will and to do’.  We have to put ourselves in that position. It says that He is the rock that the builders stumbled over. But there is another rock that we stumble on.  It is our heart of stone.  Do you know where this heart of stone is?  It is in our self.  There is the heart of stone. It is not that God doesn’t put the willing and the working.  I am going to share two things.  The one is concerning what we prayed yesterday for BELIEVER 2.  We said, “Lord, may BELIEVER 2 see that we used the heart to do the things (for him), whether he goes on the trip or doesn’t go.”  When BELIEVER 3 heard BELIEVER 4 in his human nature, he was not in agreement with God’s will (couldn’t handle the pressure and ungratefulness of BELIEVER 2).  God is never going to put the ‘to do and to will’ unless we submit to the Spirit.  You are never going to complete the purpose of God if you don’t do this.  The Spirit goes against the natural life, and the natural life goes against the Spirit.  So when BELIEVER 6 shared, “until God puts it in me, (I cannot).”  God is not going to put it in us (drop it in us without our desiring it and surrendering to it; we have to put ourselves before Him).  Do you think that I don’t still love the things that BELIEVER 6 taught me in the natural life (fancy things)?  I still love these things in myself.  But, I have to think of the price.  God has allowed (some things) in His grace, that until now BELIEVER 4 handles the things (the majority of the burden), but BELIEVER 4 for this has a sentence of death (2 Corinthians).  Why?  Because how I move, none of you want to move.  Why?  Because the soul says, “in nothing this is going to happen to you” (we don’t want to lose control).  BELIEVER 3 said something precious a few weeks ago, “I believed that I was different than the other young people.  But I know now, that without Christ, I am the same as the rest.”  It is the same with me.  If I don’t have Christ, I am going to have the same problems as the others.  For this, the cross is what resolves all the problems of our existence.  But, we, our natural being, do not see the cross resolving anything.  What do you see with your eyes?  More problems all the time.  God does not have these eyes.  God sees the past, present, and future at the same time.  Our problem is to deal with God over what we are.  This is terrible because I don’t want to.  BELIEVER 3 doesn’t want to.  (BELIEVER 6 says: “Nobody wants to)  But there exists a difference form some between “nobody wants to”.  Some people let Jesus in the door.  I don’t believe BELIEVER 6 doesn’t allow the Lord in, sometimes the Lord gets inside and brokenness comes to him.  The problems return when he leaves and goes into the world.  Until now he has believed that this (the humility) applies in this area, but not outside.  This is a lie.  Why?  Because the Spirit that is here, is also outside (In us).  The problem is that it is costly to follow the Spirit.  The Spirit is God!  We don’t have a chance to say to the Spirit, “return later, I don’t have a chance right now.”  If you need the power (in the later), He doesn’t come.  A father was telling his son not to do this certain thing.  The son didn’t listen and fell down and broke his nose.  In the side of man (today’s culture), you don’t need to trust even in your dad.  But in the spiritual world, the Lord allowed the son to fall down and break his nose because he didn’t obey, and he needs to learn in one way or another. 

BELIEVER 6:  “In the word of God we don’t find any servant of God asking for a salary for his service.” (BELIEVER 4:  The human beings cannot live by faith unless God orders this, unless God chooses this.  A true servant.)

BELIEVER 6:  “A steady income does not foster a trust in God.” (BELIEVER 4:  This is the problem of the human beings.  Nobody wants to live by faith, not even one.)  “Unfortunately it is often impossible to please both God and man at the same time.”  How is this going to work?

BELIEVER 4:  before you continue… I am going to touch a point and then allow BELIEVER 5 to flow.  Look BELIEVER 6.  What the Lord wants you and me to understand is that we are dealing with two completely different worlds.  You need to know that in your strength, you do not have anything to live what God wants (asks of us).  To judge the rest, is to put yourself in problems.  Why?  Because the Lord said, “I am the One who judges.”  Only  to those who die to self does the Lord allows to judge.  Why?  Because God doesn’t trust in the living, but in the dead.  We cannot swallow this.  The dead that are under the power of the cross.  You are dead, but you are still alive by faith in the Son of God.  God is the one who controls all of this.  In other words, the same words you said I am going to repeat, “Judge in the way God wants.”  Do not look what is happening with the others. 

BELIEVER 5: (Sharing from Holy Word for Morning Revival)  God responded to Moses, “I am who I am.”  This is what you need to tell the children on Israel.  Jesus said, “Truly, Truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”  The most wonderful title for the Lord is I AM.  This is contains the verb “to be”.  We are nothing.  Only He is “to be”.  That is why He called Himself “I AM”.  Only He exists in Himself.  We do not exist for ourselves.   It is necessary for one to believe “God is”, if we come to Him.  This implies a lot.  “I am the bread of life.”  The Lord Jesus is the great I AM.  When the soldiers listened to His name, they fell to the ground. 

BELIEVER 4:  We are going to go over some of these things.  The spiritual can put the things in the right place according to the spirit.  When I give you a book, I give it so that you can separate the doctrine from the living word.  The living word is the only things that abides.  The living word is sharper than any double-edged sword.  You cannot make this separation.  The only way you cannot be confused, is that the Spirit judge all things, not you.  If you judge, you fall (BELIEVER 3: you fall into your brain).  This is true, and we start to swim in the brain.  How do we get out?

BELIEVER 5:  It says here that we need to have only one version of the bible.

BELIEVER 4:  To say this is the work of man.  There are over two thousand translations of the bible.  Which one is correct?  The Recovery Version is not the correct version, it is the best version, but it is not the correct version.  The correct version is a Living Person that lives in the heart of man! He knows everything.  This is the correct one.   The problem is not in the interpretations of the bible.  The problem is in the heart of man. (BELIEVER 3:  Even though I read Romans chapter 7 in twenty different version, including the best, the Recovery, I still don’t want, I have a hard time to swallow this chapter.)  The second point of BELIEVER 5 is that the scripture is not about the private interpretation.  Only the Spirit of God can show us what it means.  (BELIEVER 5:  Yes, this is a dead book if God doesn’t show the things.) 

BELIEVER 3:  (Sharing from “The Believer Free from the Law”  By C.O. Rosenius)  Thank you Lord, we need Your Spirit.  We can touch any of these things if you don’t help.  Help us not to think, but receive Your word.  I’m first going to give a little background.  Chapter 1 is titled, “The Importance of the Believer’s Freedom from the Law.”  Chapter 2 is, “the Meaning of this Freedom.”  Chapter 3 is, “Who Enjoys this freedom”.  “This freedom does not belong to anyone and everyone.  May no on deceive himself and appropriate what doesn’t belong to him.”  In other words, do apply what doesn’t truly belong to you.  I can’t say, “I am an heir of Christ and His coming kingdom.”  I have the seed of this, but if the seed doesn’t mature, we are not going to inherit this.  “Mark the words, made ‘dead’, and ‘died’.  We have been “made dead” to the law, having “died” to that which we were held in.  What does it mean to have been made dead?  “The experienced know it, others don’t believe it.”  (BELIEVER 4: You need to have the experience brother).  I am starting to have it.  It says that you are made dead, it is a process.  “The Law is what makes us dead.  The searching of the eyes of God.”  “The more the man struggles, the more we are made dead.”  The law contributes to exhaust and slay the old man.  Our old strength will keep popping up more and more, even in a subtle way, similar to the good side of the tree of knowledge.  It may look like we are doing things for God outwardly, but it is still we who are doing the things, not Christ. 

BELIEVER 4:  what you are saying BELIEVER 3 and this brother is true.  This is a process, a terrible process of what it is that the Lord allows you to know what you are in your natural constitution, the old man.  For the self to be defeated completely, this is not easy.

BELIEVER 3:   “I again become exhausted and made dead, until I again must fall down at the feet of my Savior, and let Him become my all.  From this you can understand who are not under grace, but under law; those who have not been made dead through the law… and have not become so lost in despair that they must surrender.  If during this process, we began to despair of ourselves, we are very near to the kingdom of God.”  (BELIEVER 4: this is your life). “it is possible that our faith and confession of Christ be part of our own righteousness.”  In other words, we have a chance to were a Christian badge as our own merit.  “Our faith needs to be the refuge of a distressed and lost sinner.”  There are some terrible things here.  You know that in the book of Revelation it says, “and they sang the song of Moses and the Song of the Lamb.”  It is possible that we don’t not sing the song of the Lamb, but the song of our own righteousness, holiness, and ought to be and live.  “this shows that our flesh has not yet been put to shame and found our only glorying in Christ.”  “Experience tells us that the more free grace comes into our heart, the mores the desire comes for that which is good and holy.”  The only motive should be love of Christ constraining us.  Basically to sum this up, I see the complete difference between what many of us are living and what God wants.  God wants something similar to the slave of Abraham, Eliezer.  That was completely heart.  This is the kind of following that God wants.  This killed me when he wrote about the Song of the Lamb, how outwardly we can sing the song of the Lamb.  I have sang this song many times, but the Song of the Lamb is a reality, not lyrics.  I can only be sung by those who trust the Lamb for all things.  This song only comes as we don’t glory in ourselves any more.  The only way we can be free from the law is to die to it.  The law needs to slay us.  Not in a tormenting was, but in a humble way say, “there is a stronger man that has bond me.”  I feel this law working in me all the time.  By God’s grace I feel more of what the heart is.  I feel that the Lord doesn’t want us to think too much. One servant of the Lord said concerning those with many imaginations, “they need to stop thinking and starting obeying.” 

BELIEVER 5:  God has given me the authority to not imagine anything.

BELIEVER 4:  IF BELIEVER 5 is casting out all imaginations, she would not be hear right now. She would be in Central America, she would be in China ministering God.  (In reality) she has too many imaginations.  She sings the Song of Moses and the Lamb with her mind.

BELIEVER 3:  I feel the best way is to stop our mind.  When our mind wants to rebel, and it is not easy because sometimes it travels a lot.  The Lord has to show us more an more that all of our thoughts are terrible.  We feel this when we have truly terrible thoughts, but I don’t always feel like forsaking all of my own thoughts.  Sometimes I feel, “do I have to get rid of these thoughts, I like these thoughts.  I don’t want to get rid of these.  Two hours ago I felt like rejecting my thoughts, but right now no.”  This is when you lose the realm God wants.  We have to learn what Jeanne Guyon calls the prayer of the heart. It is not the prayer of the mind, but of the heart.  It is truly something different. (BELIEVER 4: the flavor is different).  I am terrible at it right now, sometimes the Lord gives me some grace to get out of my mind a little bit. 

BELIEVER 4:  I feel that what BELIEVER 3 shared is good.  (BELIEVER 6: it is very deep).  Okay.  If one doesn’t want to be free from the law and from the thoughts, one is going to say that this is too deep. If one wants what God wants, what this brother said is true.  To arrive to the point, that the mind doesn’t control us, but the Spirit controls all our being.  We need to be ready to be dead to self.  If we are there, our own righteousness is never going to deliver us from the law.  Because the law exalts those who have their own righteousness.  For this, the Pharisees could not deal with Jesus.  Jesus went to another kind of party. 

BELIEVER 4: the life of faith is by the desert, the cloud, and the column of fire.  In the moment we arrive to the Promised Land, these disappear.  In other words,  we cannot make rules about the thing we read. We don’t have a chance to say we have a corporate life if you only meet 2 or 3 days a week.  The Life of the Body is inter-related, and mingled.  It is by the Spirit that we live in the Body, not by education.  We don’t want to understand. The problem is that we don’t want to accept what God wants. 

BELIEVER 6:  why did God put these commandments on the fallen creation of Adam?

BELIEVER 3:  I am going to share something from brother Austin-Sparks, “the old man dies hard.” 

BELIEVER 4:  We need to say to God crying, “Lord, I don’t want to surrender.”  You can say this smiling.  If you say this angrily it is worse.  If we are angry about these things, He is going to show us the misery that we are.  BELIEVER 3 said, “the old man dies hard.”  We in our political-ness (BELIEVER 6: I am not political, never in my life.  The philosophers yes, but the political no).  (BELIEVER 3:  it is in our blood).  Okay BELIEVER 6, if you are truly healed of this, you need to ask the Lord to try this.  It would be better to say to the Lord, “Lord, do you know what you ask to me?”  IF we say this, and use the heart, the Lord is going to help us.