You Collapse Twice, as a Guilty Sinner and as a Helpless Christian

We have known your holy breath, Lord, as we sung together of Jesus, and realized his presence, you're here. And now, as you've spoken to our hearts through song, you speak to us through your word. Thank you.

Amen. Well, I don't know if you can cool down after all that. All right.

Is this working? Because I've got a soft voice. It's all right? Can you hear? Can't hear. All right.

Well, those of us who are here this morning were greatly touched by the Lord as Norman, again, underlined to us, who we are, where we are in God, in Christ, summit presentation. My heart went out and was blessed along with what he said. As I said before, we kind of fit together in the sense that I'm talking about how we discover ourselves to be what we are.

He is telling us what we are, how we discover ourselves to be what we are. So in a sense, we're in the climbing process. But of course, the real fact is he climbed down to us, not we climbed up to him.

He picks us up and takes us up. It looks like that. Now, as I said before, we're talking in the form of continuity from talk to talk as far as I've had a share.

And I also said, I'm very glad if anybody wishes to make comments as we go along. We're a fellowship being spoken to by the Spirit. To what? One another.

So I'm very glad if anybody, like we did in the previous session, wants to raise a point as we go on, get us onto a more right track. Now, we started, we have to proceed on from there very simply, recognizing, according to God's word, that there is only one person in the universe who is love, and the whole universe is his means of manifestation. Literally, the universe is the negative to the positive through which the positive manifests himself.

And in order to manifest himself as a person, he has persons. That's we. But a person's a free person, because we're only developed by freedom.

Freedom means the capacity of choice between alternatives, the necessity of choice between alternatives. And God, he made a choice between alternatives. That's why he says he cannot lie and can only love.

The alternatives between being a liar as a self-seeker, self-gratifier, and lover as a self-giver. And when he says God cannot lie, it means that alternative has taken God over. He is only love.

So a person is a person who is free to choose between alternatives. The alternative he takes, takes him over. This is the law of faith.

Faith is that. Relating myself to something available. What you relate yourself to takes you over, and you become that.

So we saw how there's been a created creature with a created creature in the other way around. The one who was originally called Lucifer to bear light. Negative, to reflect light.

But because he's a free person, he says, I don't wish to wear the light of God. I don't want to be a manifestation of God who is love. I'm a self of my own.

I'd be myself and run myself for my own ends. And so this satanic person created the kingdom of darkness. He's called a God because he's originated.

Beginning of it. And we went further to see how the human race has been caught up by this one and became a vessel who contained him. So the human race has fallen into the condition of being containers of the God of self-centeredness.

That's why we all spontaneously, naturally, compulsively express self-love, self-gratification, self-seeking in our unredeemed days. We saw that there's a purpose in it because God must have, as we saw before, the ultimate of the human race is to be sons, co-heirs with Christ. Christ is heir of all things.

So the sons inherit the universe. And an heir merges his inheritance. So our ultimate destiny is to merge the universe.

Therefore, we have to be trained to be those who can do that. And therefore, the training starts at the bottom because you never know a right thing until you know a wrong thing. You're never quite sure what is right.

You're not quite sure what is wrong. You start there and then come up there. So there's been a real purpose, I believe, in God taking the human race to the place where we got caught up in the wrong way because what we call sin or evil is just a misuse of self.

The right use of self is God, whose self is self-giving. The wrong use of self is a self exactly like God, who's self-loving. The wrong use of evil is just the misuse of the self.

And so we've been caught up under the dominion of this God of self-certainness as misusers of ourselves, which we call evil, which we call sin, which produces the products of sin, chaos, hate, all the rest, ending in eternal darkness. But by that reason means we found ourselves and the whole purpose is God must have selves who really know themselves and know how to operate what they are to operate. You can't be a carpenter or be an electronics person or be a lawyer or be a teacher unless you really know your stuff.

You've got to be careful of running what you're there to run. So we have to know how we can be the ones who can fulfill God's purposes by us emerging his universe on the basis of the expression of his own character, which is self-giving love. So we become permanently expressions of self-giving love and nothing else.

So we start at the bottom. We've started with distortion, wrong uses, and discovered they are wrong. That conditions us to exchange for right if there is a right.

So we get this first stage in human history, a thorough draft of how a self can be misused. I can go into self-centeredness, self-seeking, self-gratifying and all these products, which is our chaos in which we live. Thank God, because as Dormant pointed out to us, our being is of God, Satan simply stole us.

Satan didn't make us. Our being is God. Because our being is God, we come out of a person who's loved.

Therefore we know what we ought to be. Therefore thank God there's a heart crying in the world. Thank God there's a ferment.

Thank God there's a disturbance. Thank God there's a dissatisfaction because deep underneath when we're in our fault and misusing condition, we're not what we know we ought to be. So thank God for every product of ferment, everything which can cause people to seek a better way.

Now we found, we went on, we went over this before, that a human race are caught, we're enslaved. We're vessels, what the Bible calls vessels of wrath. Vessels which contain the God to whom wrath comes.

Wrath is the consequence of that wrong way of life that produces wrath in us now and reduces wrath in us in eternity. And we become containers of this God, we're caught. Or by other analogies, we're slaves of whom he's a master.

Or we're the false vine. Jesus said, I'm the true vine, therefore there's a false vine. And the false vine is the satanic life expressed to us.

And so we're caught up, how can we get delivered? Only if there's somebody who can deliver humanity. One human can't deliver, one slave can't redeem another. That's the glory and wonder of the revelation of, the summit revelation of God's love, that he exists only to meet need.

And if that need costs his own life, his own son, all right, then he dies in the person of his son, that's all. Love must meet need. Where there's need, need has a claim.

Need has a claim, needs a claim, is accredited to loves a debtor. So those of us who are, where God's eternal debtors, our riches is to pay the debt of meeting need. This is our eternal character.

God pays the debt of meeting need. That is delight, that is joy, that is fulfillment. And he's satisfied when the need is met.

And so we get the perfect, the fall gave us the only possible way in which we could know, the ultimate of love, that love exists for his enemies, because your enemy is the person who hurt you outwardly, whereas the enemy is the person who's hurt inwardly. If I hate you, I'm inwardly hurt, but my evil, hating spirit, I hurt you outwardly. If your love, it isn't your hurt that matters, it's my hurt that matters, because it's greater than yours.

And so it exists to meet my need, you turn the other cheek. And so God, and therefore the only way we could be redeemed is if there's somebody who could represent humanity, who could do something to remove from this human vessel, the false God, and replace in the human vessel, the true God, the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus Christ. So the whole purpose of redemption, what we call all it is, is change of gods, change of gods.

The vessel doesn't change, but the vessel contains a God, which God? And the gospel is to exchange the wrong God with the right God. And this has been done by the author of creation becoming one of us. That's the miracle of the incarnation, the leap of faith in accepting Christ in the incarnation as God in the flesh.

This is the author of creation, the beginner of the human family becoming a member of the human family. He could represent the whole human family. So again, very rapidly, we went through that, how, because he never became a vessel of Satan, he refused that.

He refused to allow Satan to enter him. He remained a vessel of his father. And so he had eternal life, because death follows sin.

Therefore he needn't die. So he specifically said, no man takes my life from me. I lay it down to myself.

But he came to die in our place, to go through a death which we have to go through. If we go through it, we're eternally joined to the one who indwells us when we go through it. And the one who indwells us in our unsaved age is the satanic spirit.

So if we die with the satanic God in us, we go to the place of the satanic God. We go into the region of the satanic God, the region of self-centeredness and so on. No escape.

So if we die, we're that. But this one died representing us. He could, because he represented the whole family.

And representing the whole family, that's why the Bible uses this specific, strange statement, he was made sin. He bore our sins, which means that he took away the guilt and the wrath and the judgment in the giving of his precious blood and the raising from the dead means our justification so that we're in God's sight and we never sin at all. But even more than that, he was made sin.

The made sin means he was in God's sight like a whole human family. Sin is a character of the sin spirit in us. And so his made sin means he was a whole human family who has a spirit.

Sin is the spirit of self-centeredness, the misused personality. He had this person, he represented the human family with this indwelling person of the character of self-centeredness in him. Then he died, he died to sin.

Now he died to sin because he could rise again because death couldn't hold him. So when he died, there came a cutoff between the him, his body, and the Bible says that body represented us. This body and the spirit in the body, this false spirit which he represented, the sin spirit.

So the Bible says he died to sin, Romans 6, 10. Not only died for our sins, taking away the guilt and wrath, he died to sin, he died to this indwelling satanic spirit which had captured the human race. And because he was eternal life, he could rise again.

And so he was a dead body, specifically his predation was a dead body, his whole body was a dead body, it had no spirit in it. And the Bible says we are that body because the Bible says we were buried with him. So we are that body, represents this human family.

How could that dead body rise again? By a new spirit. And so the resurrection was his own spirit, the eternal spirit, the spirit of God, God himself, whose love entering in and joining himself to this body which represented us. Now this is how there can be possible and that there is an exchange of union, an exchange of unity, an exchange of gods out with that God which once dominated us.

You live spontaneously but the person dominates you. So it wasn't very hard for us to be self-centered, wasn't very hard for us to live that kind of life, it was normal living. And the other life's normal living too and the Holy Spirit's got you.

It's an exchange of the one to whom we become joined. Now how, now that covers the whole world. Yes, but humans can only operate by freedom.

God must have three agents who love to be his agents, who love to be the God manifestors to eternity, who love to be the operators of God's universe on the basis of self-giving love. So of course if it be free, love to do it. You can't have, we know what compulsion means when you look around at politics in the world today and so on, what compulsion can mean is horrors in where there are those systems of government.

So it be free. Now freedom means freedom of choice. So actually this change can only take place from us being vessels of pertaining to the wrong God to being vessels of pertaining to the right God, it has free choice.

And therefore by the mercies of God, he operates on us in our unredeemed days. As I said, deep down, there's deep down in all of us, the sense we're wrong, thank God there is, because we are beings in God. Everyone has a being in God, not those redeemed.

Every human, because there's only one being in the universe. The devil's being is in God. He's merely misusing himself.

And therefore there's, deep in all men, the discomfort. See, I'm wrong, where's the right way? A lot of these fermenting movements today have been that. People, what's the right way? Well, we're on the wrong way, thank God.

So there's been the inner ferment. Then there's been the preaching of the word. There's been the work of the Holy Spirit.

A different means by which all of us who are redeemed, I trust all of us, I trust the vast majority of us here, redeemed people, we came to a point of a change of choice. You see, all I can do basically is attach myself inwardly. I'm an inner person, ultimately follows the inner.

I'm an inner person, spirit. Attach myself inwardly to that which is available to me. And what I attach myself to, attach yourself to me.

And I become that. Like in a silly little instance, you, out of many chairs, you attach yourself to a chair. You start, don't attach yourself to a chair with your body.

You attach yourself to a chair with the spirit. Inwardly, you choose the chair inwardly before you deal outwardly. And your body merely follows your spirit, and then the chair takes you over.

And you're proximately held up by a chair. I don't see you bitterly sweating at it, keeping a new chair, because it's holding you up. It's got you, it's got you.

Faith, the faith is the taker's token, that gets us gotten. Faith isn't taking, it's being gotten, being taken. And you're taken.

Now, this is our capacity, our free capacity. Now then, if by the grace of God, as it is so, we've been disturbed with our former choice, we've been disturbed with being related to self-centeredness, self-seeking and our sins and our guilt and our consciousness that we're wrong with God and out with God and in the power of sin and whatnot, whatever special way this disturbing revelation has come to us. It has to be revelation.

I'm wrong, I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Now, if I've discovered I'm wrong in my choice, if I'm a free person, if there is an alternative, I'll take it. The alternative is Jesus.

And that's the preaching of the gospel. That's why I go to Africa. That's why I go to take Jesus to people.

Jesus is the alternative. A Jesus who by his death and resurrection cut us off from being vessels containing the old God and replaces him by us being vessels of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit. So there's an alternative.

Now we move in and take. Now, every single redeemed person here, somewhere or other along the line in your freedom, you have said Jesus Christ is my savior. Most of us, as a crisis moment, usually it's a crisis moment, not always, not always, but somewhere along the line, you at least could say, yes, I affirm Jesus Christ is my savior, which means I can't save myself.

By saying that, you mean you needed a savior. You mean you needed forgiveness. You mean you were lost.

You mean you were under judgment, under wrath, on the route to hell and in whatever form it took. And so the crisis moment is whether, in most of our cases, a sudden crisis, or it may not have been, at least I can say, no, Jesus is my savior. Now, when you did that, you, with your freedom of choice, you took someone available.

Now, on this level, you're beginning to move into the true realm, which is the realm of the spirit. Our problem is we've fallen into the realm of matter. So things, material, have become real to us because we became grabbers.

The fall made us grabbers of things. So instead of the world just being a temporary form of God's universal resources, it became a little thing I must hold onto. Hold onto this, hold onto that.

That's what happens. So we relate our life to things around us. We become grabbers.

It's a consequence of the fall. So the material appears real to us. Of course, the material is not a shadow.

Material is only a pattern. The reality is the universal person of whom this material is just a temporary form. Now, we begin to move.

Now, when you take Jesus, you've got to move because Jesus isn't matter. You have to move beyond matter to find Jesus. You have one mediating factor, which is the Bible.

That's the help given us through the Bible. We can say, well, he says in his blood, our sins are forgiven. He does accept us.

He does make us children of God. He does give eternal life. And so on the basis of this mediation of the Bible, we don't get saved by the Bible.

We get saved by the Bible bringing us to the point, all right, Jesus, all right, in my inner self, I can't, I don't, I just take you. I just take you. I just take you.

Because I need you. I need forgiveness. I need deliverance.

I need to be right with God. I need to get out of the guilt of my sins and the wrath and judgment, yes? You're too clever for me. I don't know those things.

You must talk down to earth sense for me. We have resurrected bodies that are coming. We haven't got resurrected bodies.

You shall have, yes, yes, yes. But they're different kinds of bodies, what we have now. Yes, we shall have.

That's right. Oh, I didn't say matter is evil. I said shadow.

Shadow isn't evil. It's only out of form. Oh no, it isn't evil.

It's very nice. All is wrong with matter. It's use.

Matter's lovely. Matter's things. That's the whole point.

The point we've got to learn is how to handle matter as only outer appearance of an inner reality. Now we've made it the reality. That's the whole training.

We've hung out the bits of things as if they're the reality. And we've got to relearn. Oh no, they're in little bits of things.

That's how Jesus handled it. As I said before, when Jesus had to feed 5,000, he didn't see five loaves. He saw through to 5,000 loaves.

The appearance was five loaves. The reality in God, oh Father, come on. Thanks very much.

And as you break the bread, turns out to be for 5,000 loaves. And for 5,000 people there are five loaves. He knew how to bring into realization more and more of a materialized God as need arises.

He wasn't bound to matter. We're bound to matter. So you see, we live on the need level while he lives on the supply level.

We live on the death level, he lives on the life level. Oh, we've got to learn to do it now. We've got to learn to live on the supply level and the forest level.

That's what we're here for. You're quite right. This is our training.

Our training was to go to the bottom and have a wrong attitude of matter to find out wrong, then you can find the right. Fine, thank you. They all help.

As long as you keep me within modern philosophy or something. That's all right. But, well now, I'm saying that this, I want you to watch the importance of this fact.

All right, now, in our freedom, we receive Jesus. Now, the law of reception is actually, it's the way you experience it. What you take, takes you.

I told you. You take food, food takes you. You take profession, profession takes you.

What you take is a means by which you take something which takes you over and you become part of it. For instance, before, you've chosen to come here tonight. The alternative was not to come here tonight.

All right, between alternatives, you choose. All right, you take coming here. Now you're taking over.

If you get up and make a noise, I'll make you sit down again. You've got to behave yourself for two hours or three hours, as the case may be. See, we're taken over by an experience.

This is what takes us. Therefore, the point is this. When we took Jesus, oh no, Jesus took you.

When you took Jesus, oh no, Jesus took you. And the proof he took you was there came into you a witness that you are forgiven and are accepted and are loved and are a child of God. Somewhere this came into you.

This was the evidence that, not that you take me, but he had taken you on. So the first evidence we have, when we're just little children, take our first step into Christ, is what the Bible uses, people call it like that song we sang, peace, peace. The Bible's word in Romans 5, 1 is being justified by the faith we have, peace with God.

But watch this. See, we're so self-centered that our first approach to God is self-interest. Even though it's to God, it's for self-interest.

And love is so great, it's love will meet people on their level. Now we can't yet see why it's to be occupied but for other interests. We only see self-interest.

So our first steps towards God is I want peace. I want forgiveness. I want eternal life.

I want God as my father, all selfish. I want just to be what I like to have out of God, all right? And God's so loving, he meets us on the level. Here's peace, here's eternal life, here's forgiveness, here's Jesus.

But there are always nice little tricks wrapped up in what God gives us. He has to wrap it up as a trick because you couldn't take it. If you saw it, you'd run away from it.

So he hides it and exposes it afterwards. And the trick is this. The law of choice, of acceptance of faith is that what you take takes you.

You took Jesus, Jesus took you. Jesus isn't a you lover. Jesus is a world lover.

He doesn't cover, it doesn't matter how fiddly little you. That's only incidental. In fact, he's gonna take you and throw your life away for other people.

What's he gonna do with you? He's gonna be a you killer for other people. What's he gonna do? So poor you. But you couldn't take that when you first took Jesus, so he hides it in a packet, but he's there.

And I'm just saying this, this interesting fact. The evidence that you're a new person, in other words, the evidence that Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit has come into you is not that you've been loved. You've become a lover.

It isn't that you've become healed. You've become a healer. What do I mean? A very interesting fact.

You can't help it. The effect of you saving Jesus, the effect of recognizing he's forgiven you, loved you, you can't help it. You begin to love him.

You begin to have a great place. You can't help it. It isn't something you build up.

It didn't come to you. This is the first form of God who is self-giving love to you. So the whole point we're gonna talk about is a vessel doesn't become something.

A vessel contains. And we're here to contain a God of self-giving love. Now, I'm a self-loving love.

And I even want Jesus for my own aims, for my eternal life and my peace and my forgiveness. But Jesus isn't like that. He's not for poor me.

He's for the world. And if I can be bread that can give my life for the world, all right, go on. See what I mean? So what happens when I take him is he begins to express through me his love.

And the first form he takes is causing me to love him who died for me, causing me to love the God that I gave him, the Father who loves me. And he begins to cause me to love. And my first causing to love is I love Jesus and I love God.

And then I've got such a fear I want other people to know. I've begun to be a lover. See the tremendous importance? In other words, beauty isn't to become love.

That's incidental. It's to become a lover. It isn't to become healed.

It's to become a healer. You want to heal other people. There's a new want in you.

And that want isn't you. Now, as I explained to you in a moment, we've been so caught up in self-expression, self-reliance, we think it's we love him. No, it isn't.

Read the Bible. Romans 5, verse 5 says this. Romans 5, verse 1 says, we are justified by faith if we are justified with peace with God.

That's this personal thing for my benefit, clear away the blocks between me and God, my sins and wrath and judgment and so on. Thank God they've gone in the blood of Jesus. But then five verses down.

For God's love is shed abroad in my heart by those feet. That's not my love for God. That's God's love.

God who is love, God as love, is shed abroad in my heart by those feet. I begin to love. And so this is the evidence that this new relationship means you've begun to be a manifestation of God.

So the purpose of the universe is people who spontaneously love. Not a love, but love. Now, we've begun to be that when we're redeemed, not by our efforts, that's the whole point, not by our efforts, because this person in us who is love has begun to express a love through us for himself, for the father, for others, and we've begun to be lovers as well as loved, healers as well as healed, saviors as well as saved.

This is the real evidence of redemption. And that's actually what knocks out the basis for other religions and other philosophies. At bottom, they have the upbuilding of the self.

Even our psychology is the upbuilding of the human self. It's the self becomes something. Now, this is, the self goes out to be given out for others.

The purpose of the self is to be a means by which other people can have their needs met. That the self becomes not a self-lover, but another lover. That's what the truth is when Christ comes into our lives.

We begin to be other lovers. Now, in a sense, that's elementary. But I want now to concentrate our attention for this remaining part of the time on a specific second step, a specific second step, which is subsequent to receiving Jesus Christ.

I'm not now talking about people who haven't received Jesus Christ. I'm not talking about those who have not redeemed, not saved, whatever terms you use. I'm talking about those who have a witness that Christ has them.

They are his, and so on, as he lives in them, and so on. You've got conscious that Christ has come into your life. In other words, there's been a change of gods.

There's been a change of gods. Christ has begun to manifest his quality of self-giving love through you, where you were manifesting the quality of self-loving love, which was the satanic quality. A change has taken place.

But I'm saying to you, there's a specific second step, which means a definite second problem, which alone can bring us into what Norman's talking about, the spontaneous recognition of who we really are in this unity relationship as God, expressions of God. Only by this step can we come there. Now, you always notice in the Bible that all the dedicated men of God, tell them that picture the second time.

They were dedicated, consecrated, devoted, but they couldn't make it work. I can't stop the course of the gospel biography. The famous one is Moses.

Tremendous dedication. Left all the parrots on the steps of the throne. Left, as he said, the pleasures of sin for a season.

Left the pleasures of Egypt, because he caught the glory of being God's servant in fulfilling God's eternal purpose through rescuing his people. He caught the glory. He was dedicated.

One of the greatest standard dedications presented in the whole of history. But he hadn't got where he took. He fell flat on his face and couldn't make it work.

There was something missing. And you know how he went out, because he thought he was learning the wisdom of Egyptians. They had no use for him to be their deliverer.

Went out to deliver them, and there was one of the Egyptian overseers beating up an Israelite, and the boat had boiled over. He was a good boiler over. I like boilers over.

He boiled over, so he killed the Egyptian. Next thing was, Paris police were after him. Now, what did he do? Where's the power? Where's the power? He had a couple of good legs, so he used them and ran for his life, and hid for 40 years in the wilderness.

Now, other agonizing things. You've got to have an agony as a believer. I always say, if you don't have a period when you're more miserable as a Christian than a non-Christian, you're not a good Christian, because a non-Christian pretends he isn't miserable when he is.

A Christian comes honest to his misery. Oh, you get it. You've got to come somewhere where you're utterly frustrated.

Job had to come to the end of it. What on earth is God doing with me? Moses had to. What did Moses feel like? He knew through his mother he was called.

He knew his calling. He stepped out everything to fulfill his calling, and God swam on dust heap, because the most humiliating thing an Egyptian prince could be would be a shepherd, and for 40 years, he looked after sheep in the wilderness. So he went to, where's God? But deep underneath, when you've got God, God doesn't let you go.

You try and let him go, he won't let you go. He's got a good grabber. He's got good hands.

When he gets you, he keeps you. So he holds you when you feel hopelessly wounded, deep underneath your head. Well, and then Moses came through, and so I don't want to tell any more of the story of Moses, but you'll find Elijah was desperate.

Elijah was eight years. He gave up a wealthy farm. They were plowing with 27 yoke of oxen or something, servants and whatnot, a wealthy farmer.

So everything to follow Elijah, he caught the vision of this man who had the spirit. He couldn't catch what Elijah got for anything. For eight years, he poured water on the hands of Elijah.

Pretty tough to wash that old dirty old man's hands, I expect to. He had to be humble for eight years. He hadn't got the secret.

There's something missing. He couldn't operate. He had to follow Elijah.

He hadn't got what Elijah got. He said, I've got to have a double portion of your spirit somewhere. And this was Pentecost.

Pentecost is desperate. There's desperation behind that. 40 days getting unified and waiting.

There's desperation. 40 days of purpose. Because they hadn't got what he took.

They loved Jesus. Never downgraded a disciple. I hate to hear people preaching pastor on Sabbath as if those poor things did this and that.

Get you be what they were. You risk your life like they did. I'd like to see you do it.

Why they went through the clouds with Jesus. There were great men. There was 12 men.

Never downgraded. Never downgraded these great men in the Bible. You haven't begun to do what they've forgotten.

I know. And those are great men, but they hadn't got what he took. When the issue came, oh, we'll die with you.

They couldn't do it. Couldn't do it. And they all ran.

Even the beloved John, they all ran. Something missing. Now, we've all got to go through that.

I want to say to you, I want to try and put it to you. Well, if I understand it right, if I understand according to the scriptures, well, we've got the thing wrong. The thing, what we've got wrong is we've carried over into our redeemed life a misconception of how the human self operates, how the human self operates.

The problem is the human self. We know about Christ now, but it's how we relate to Christ is the point. It's our relationship is the problem.

And we carry over into our redeemed life a misconception of the human self. And until that misconception is removed, we can't get this thing into the clear. The misconception is very simply this.

Satan was created to be a vessel to contain God, Lucifer, that's the Latin for bearing light. He was to bear light, manifest the light and love of God. Instead of that, he turned around and said, I'll fill my own vessel with myself.

He was to be a negative vessel to manifest a positive God through the vessel. Instead of being just a negative vessel, he made himself a phony positive inside the vessel. Says, I'll be my own God.

I'll run my own show at my own end. So he filled himself with the concept of self-sufficiency, self-development, self-activity, which can take good forms, of course, as well as bad forms, but it means all on the basis of self. Now that's what infected the human race.

We don't even know we're being motivated by the spirit inside us. So our natural outlook is self-development, self-sufficiency, do best I can, become best I can, do what I can. I've got to run my home, got to run my family, got to get on with things.

Therefore, when I get redeemed, I've got rid so far that I've been a wrong person. I've got that. I sinned and guilty of the judgment.

I thank God for the precious blood. I'm forgiven. I've got my guilt remedied in the blood of Christ and justified in his sight.

But I've come over to the Christian, I think, oh, now God will make me better. Here I am. I want to be a better kind of person.

Now God will make me better. And here I am. Now I begin to love God as I ought.

Now I begin to love a brother as I ought. And I begin to conquer my anxieties and my fears and my impatiences. And I'll never be fearful.

I'll never be depressed. And I'll never be defeated by my lusts. And I don't do anything.

I've got an idea somehow. God will make me an improved kind of person. And you've got to fall flat on your face and find you never improve.

So until you fall the second time flat on your face, you haven't got there. You have to have two collapses. You have to have a collapse as a guilty sinner.

And you have to have a collapse as a helpless Christian. It's more difficult to find your helpless Christian than it is to find a guilty sinner. Or if you like, you collapse as a guilty sinner and got to collapse again as a helpless saint.

What if they have three? Hmm? Who's three? What if you have three clutches? Three? You don't get three clutches unless you're a boob. Oh. It's all right.

Thank you. Two is good enough. But I want to tell you the subtlety of this thing.

And there's a deep subtlety in it. I'll give you the reason why. You see, you may get so far.

You may say, well, I can't, but I ought to. That's the trouble. You ought not to.

Self isn't meant to be any better. Self's meant to be just itself. Now that needs to change.

When you've got that, when you can accept yourself, then you can accept the unity relationship. Well, if I use the first step as a personal illustration. Now, I found this in Africa.

I went to Africa as a dedicated young man. I certainly was. I loved to go.

It didn't cost me a thing to go to Africa. It was a joy and privilege to be able to take Jesus Christ and then become real to me. So that didn't cost me anything.

And I was dedicated and consecrated. And every morning I was there a couple hours with God and the Bible and prayer and so on. Then in those days, we aren't bothered by ridiculous things like automobiles.

Because we had two legs and we were much better evangelists. And we walked through the villages and met the people and loved them and got to meet with them. And I'd given over to meeting the people and loving them and introducing them to God, the Father, and Jesus, the Son, and so on.

But inside, I was all stewed up inside. Because the more I was with them, the more I felt, I haven't got what it takes to do my job. For one thing, I haven't got the love.

You can have a kind of superior love for people 6,000 miles away. I haven't got that identifying love. I must get some more love from somewhere.

And I must get some more faith. You know, we're so ridiculous. We're all tough enough.

We don't see how tough we are. We see how tough other people are. And they look so tough, so impossible.

Of course, in those days, there was no written language entirely. It was 50 years ago. Primitive, you'd be primitive and all that, you know.

Oh, how could this thing work? So I'd spent, I hadn't got the faith, hadn't got the power, hadn't got what it took to do a job. And then, of course, when you're not going to well yourself, when you've got a wife to criticize and you've got fellow missionaries to criticize still more. So I was a wonderful critic.

So I was all right outside, devoted to Jesus, but inside, no. Now, you see, my problem was a misconception. My problem was this.

I thought, you see, I'd written the Bible. There's love, there's faith, there's power, there's vision. Oh, sure, God'll give me love.

God'll give me faith. God'll give me power. And I'll be a lover.

And I'll be a person with power. And I'll be a person with faith. I'm still waiting, can't happen.

Because vessels never change. I haven't got that. You see, I thought something would happen to me.

And I'd become a new kind of person. Negatives don't change. Negatives reflect positives.

That's all they do. Now, suddenly God spoke to me. When I say spoke, I've never had mystical, God bless those who have.

I've never had those things. God just pictured me by inner witness, maybe through the Bible. It's not always through the Bible, but somewhere.

Oh, that's it. And suddenly that little scripture stood out to me. God is love.

I wrote about that little key thing, some of you read. Well, the word that stood out to me wasn't the important word God allows, the word is. I suddenly saw something.

It didn't say God has love. It says God is love. I said, that's a big difference.

If you have a thing that isn't you, you have it like in your pocket, you can give it to somebody. I thought love was some power of God, some power God had, something he put into me and I'd love. When I saw it says God is love, I stopped short.

I said, if God is love, love's a person. If God is this love, love's a person. I couldn't make that fit.

You always go, your only way to carry it is through confusion and I was in the confusion era then. And it was as if God stood in front of me. I said, love isn't a thing I give you.

I am that love. My name always was I am, never was I have. Of course, the fact is, God's the most exclusive person in the universe.

He's all he is is himself. All he ever gives you is himself. A pretty good gift, of course, to give himself.

That's all he gives. Doesn't give bits of himself, so he can't. Well, I didn't understand that then.

Now, it was as if God stood in front of me and said, love isn't a thing I give you. I am that love. I said, how does that help me? Then I found power.

In a verse in 1 Corinthians, Christ is the power of God. Christ is the power. Now, there again, it isn't has the power.

I thought power in atoms and people and stuff was something that emanated from God. Well, it says Christ is the power, I said, the only power is a person. Atoms are only a form of Christ.

It's only an atomic form of Christ. Everything is a form of... If Christ is the power, power is a person. Power is a person.

I told you all along, the whole universe is one person. You never get your universe into focus or yourself until you're related to a person. As if Christ stood in front of me and said, power isn't a thing I give you.

I am that power. I said, how does that fit me? How does it help me? I even got life. Well, we say we have eternal life.

The Bible, I find, never says, Jesus never said, I have eternal life. He said, I am life. Life's a person.

Life isn't a thing I have. Never shall have it. It's what he is.

So again, as if he stood in front of me and says, life isn't a thing I give you. I am that life. How does it relate to me? Well, you can see the obvious answer.

I suddenly saw it in a little scripture, which is the main fundamental to me ever since, it's in Colossians 3, 11, where it says this. Now, Christ is all, ooh, is all, and in all. I'd begun to get the is all.

When I got the in all, oh, I said, that's it. I see, it's the person who is the all, in all who contain him. In other words, the container doesn't become something.

It contains someone. Now, my problem is I've become nothing. I'm the vessel.

That's when I got the word vessel. It comes half a dozen times in the scriptures. It's a most complete word.

Why? Because a vessel only has one function. A vessel only exists to contain and can do nothing else. A cup or pot or pan only has one function.

It exists to contain. You and I have got to come somewhere to a place where basically we discover we're just vessels that contain, we don't become what we contain. You get a cup of coffee.

The coffee doesn't become the cup, and the cup doesn't become the coffee. The cup remains the cup, and the coffee remains the coffee. It's a means of offering a person coffee.

It's a container, and the container doesn't mix with what it contains. Now, you see, I thought I ought to be mixed. I thought I ought to become loving.

I ought to become powerful. I ought to have faith. I ought to be, I, I, I, I, I, as if my self changes, the self never changes.

The human self never changes. The human self is a container of a divine self, and the divine self expresses itself through the human self. Previously, we expressed the satanic self, the spirit of error.

In Christ, we begin to express the Christ self. Now, this then began to be terrified to me, that this was a relationship, and then I began to understand a little clearer how a human operates in relation to deity, God. I must take it a little farther.

Now, first of all, we are pots. Now, of course, we're more than pots, we're persons, but you've got to have a pot mentality before you can be safe as a person. Otherwise, it's got to think, by some analogy or other, it's got to think of you, somehow it's got to sink into you.

The answer isn't you becoming something, you doing something, so-and-so. The answer is, I'm a container, and the means by which the container can fulfill its purpose and so on. Now, to take that a little farther, we are more than pots, and we're persons in this sense.

Everything manifests God, a tree manifests God, but it's just a static entity called a tree, it can't develop into anything else. Now, the whole point of humans is, we can develop. We enlarge, of course we do, we expand and so on.

Now, this is what God wants. Now, the point I'm getting at is, our human expansions are negative in this negative world. What I mean is this, for instance, we have fear.

Now, we may say, a tree doesn't have fear, we do have fear. So in that sense, we're more than vessels. Now, watch, if I fear, now, if I've got the idea, I ought not to fear, see, the word you've got to cut out of your vocabulary forever is the word ought to, or the word meant to.

Humans aren't meant to be this and this and that, they're meant to be human, and that's all, and they ought not to be anything different. Now, if I fear something, and I think I ought not to fear, then I'm in trouble. The more I try not to fear, the more I fear.

But if I say, oh yes, I'm a human, I fear that. Now, what happens is, it's made a human channel, you come into a relationship with the thing you fear. Inwardly, you're in a relationship, of course you are, if you fear that, you're in a relationship, you're in a negative believing relationship with that thing you're fearing.

Now, that's a channel. Now, supposing it says something which, somewhere, say you want to go somewhere, and you don't want to go, or it says night, you're afraid to go, you say, well, I'm afraid. But you know God told you to go.

Now, negatively, you're fearful, and you don't want to go. Now, you don't say you ought not to be afraid, you don't say that, you don't try and conquer your fears, you say, I'm just fearful, that's why I can't go. Wait a minute, you then reverse say, ah, but I'm a vessel that contains Christ.

I'm just a vessel, my outer human's a vessel. And I contain God, whose courage, Christ, whose courage. Now, I say, Christ, you're in me, you told me to go there, all right, God, with your courage, I'll go.

Now, your fear doesn't change. But in the place of your fear, there'll be sufficient courage to do the job. And Christ's strength is made perfect in your weakness.

Now, this is how it operates all the way through. See, a positive must have a negative to operate through. Whatever illustration you use by, you've got a bed tonight, you've got a bed on a positive-negative bed, which is a unity.

The negative is the bedstead. Before you had a bed, someone had to make a good old iron bedstead. That's you, with a good old negative.

Not wrong, with just a negative end. You've got to have a good old iron bedstead. When you've got a good old iron bedstead, you can put the mattress on top.

And the mattresses, I hope, conquer the bedstead. So you feel more softness than you do a hard iron. But the two together make a firm entity called a bed.

It's positive-negative in unity. And so it expresses itself as a bed. Now, this is humanity and deity.

The deity, the humanity, is my negative, my reactions down here, my human reactions, which don't change. And in this fallen world, they remain mainly negative. Now, you see, if I think I ought to be different, I'm always being condemned.

And that's what tears us up. I ought not to, I ought to love God more. No, you wouldn't.

Yes, I don't love God, but God, you're in me, you're love. See, you learn to accept yourself with, accept your normal reactions. I don't love this.

I don't, if you don't like a person, don't have time to pretend you do like him, just say, I don't like him. But then your outer self doesn't like him, but in you is a God who loves. And through the very fact of you having an alive negative channel of dislike, as you recognize Christ there, Christ will come with his love and he'll do some of his loving through you.

And there's Christ loving through you. I was in a businessman's home a little time ago, well, first time about a year ago in Indiana. He's a nice home.

He's one of Colonel Sanders' fried chicken men. And they all eat fried chicken there, because he has about 10 stores and they all prosper. And he loves the Lord.

And am I going too long? I'm an awful fellow. I probably am, but some people are going, all right. Well, I want to tell you this one, because I want to get this clear.

Now, he loves the Lord and he seeks the witness of Christ. He has a nice home where we have meetings and he seeks in his different business. I suppose he puts traps for people to accept and so on there.

And he got about 40 or 50 people together in his home to talk to them. And I got this far in what I was saying to them on this very point. And I said, this lesson, to learn this lesson, that we've got to destroy that the human becomes different.

Human, they all become different. The human just remains a bundle of normal humanity and doesn't change. And you accept your humanity.

And normally it's reactions are negative. And those negative reactions produce negative channels through which God can put his positive self. And now I insist dislike.

I said, for good. I said, we have likes and dislikes. God love everybody.

We have likes and dislikes. Now, if there's somebody you like, somebody you dislike, don't, for goodness sake, try and kid yourself rather than pretend you like him. Just say, I don't like him.

The more you say you do like him, the less you will like him. Anyhow, you know that. So I said, just say, I can't stand that person.

Can't hear the noise. Get to my nerves. Don't try and change it.

But remember, there's a catch in this. The catch is you're an outer vessel that contains Christ. Now you turn in and say, Christ, you're here.

I know where you put me here. You've got to express some of your love for this person through me, because you love that person. Now, somehow you get along now.

You show some of your love through me, to this person. Well, I just say that, threw it out. I went to that same place about six months later and with my same host, a man named Chuck.

He got up at the beginning of the meeting. He said, I want to tell you folks something. He said, you know, I seek to be a witness in various businesses I have here, but I have to have a central office to run my businesses.

I have to have an official secretary to run the office. Now for about two years, he said, I've had a trouble. He said, I have a secretary so efficient, I can't fire her.

And so unpleasant, I can't possibly like her. And so he says, I've always been condemned. I ought to like her.

And the more I said I ought to like her, the less I liked her. And I'm sure she knew it. So I had, there was nothing of the love of Christ coming out to me was her, that's all.

I thought, this is a shame. Here I am witnessing all around the pace of my businesses and right in my center, there's this unloved attitude. Until I heard this fellow, it was me, six months ago.

And he said, oh, if you don't like a person, you don't like him. Oh, I said, I like that gospel, that's a good one because that fits me. I said, I sure don't like him.

So I don't like him. But he said, remember there's a catch in it. You got in you, the person who loves, and he's put you in that position and caused you to have this negative reaction because he's going to put some of his love through you.

So I caught on to that. And this little thing he said, which I liked. He said, so I made a kind of bargain with God.

I said, all right, God, I got it. You love her and you want to express some of your love through me. All right, with your love, I'll begin somehow to have a new attitude of consideration.

Something can show your love towards her. Then he said this, folks, he said, it worked pretty well these six months. But he said, left to myself, I should still dislike her.

You see, he got a real point. The human, he wasn't condemned because the human doesn't change. Sometimes it might change, but this isn't the point.

See, he wasn't looking for the human to change. His point was that God should express his love through his humanity, which normally wouldn't like that kind of person. Now, I tell you, and I can't say more, this is a tremendous deliverance factor.

Because you see, I say, all you have is yourself and your reactions. All you have in life, you have yourself and your reactions. That's all we have.

Now, we redeem people. But if we continue to think our reactions ought to be different, I ought to have more power. I ought to have more victory.

I ought to have more peace. I ought to be less depressed. I oughtn't to be so impatient.

I ought to love God more. It ought to, ought to, ought to business. And you hear people, look how, look at the power they've got.

Why haven't I got a power like that? Look at the way they love God. Why don't I love God like that? Look at the way they praise God. Why don't I praise God like that? Always coming under self-condemnation, as if you ought to be different, cut it out.

And the way you cut it out is to learn to say, no, no, I don't change. I just, I'm not a praising person. I'm just not a loving person.

I just don't love God a bit. His Bible's a boredom to me. Say what you like.

I can't pray for nuts. I always go to sleep. Well, tell him so.

I haven't power to it. Don't pretend to be anything. Just say I haven't got it.

I haven't got it. But there's a catch in it. You're the only outer form of the inner Christ.

And the whole, you're the vessel. The whole point is now, that as your outer form shows negative reactions, that is a channel by which the positive Christ can come through with his love, with his power, with his release, and so on. Well, you see, we're so used to thinking we can become something.

It's the product of the fall. The fall has made us self-sufficient, self-serving. We're so used to thinking we can become something.

It's a long time for us to give up thinking we ought to become something, being a little ashamed we're not better. It takes a long time to accept yourself. God needs you to be a negative.

He's through your negativity comes. And when you feel dullest and hardest and coldest, you say, yeah, I feel like, but join me, Lord. It's up to you to show yourself through me.

And you're released at once. You will find the catch is this. The moment you feel a tightening in you, the moment you feel, uh-uh, watch.

It means you're taking something as if you ought to be different. As if you're a bit condemning yourself. Don't condemn, you see? You're tightening.

Why am I like that? What's that? See, that means you're turning away from the Christ in you to you. And you learn to be, oh no, no, that's all I am. Now I say, you better get on revealing your way through you, through me.

I think I mentioned, I think I've forgotten. I think I told you perhaps a day or two ago, I met this businessman in Columbus, Ohio, in Columbus, Georgia. He owns a furniture deal, a furniture store.

Forgive me if I told you a day or two ago, it's quite fresh in my mind. And he came to a little breakfast a few men of us had, Christian men. And I took it for granted, of course, he's Christian.

He said in the course of breakfast, I'm such a sinner. Well, he spoke as if he never had Christ. So in the evening session, I got him again.

I said to him, I'd like to have a little word with you. I don't think you could have meant this, but you've criticized this. You mean you've never had Christ when you said I'm such a sinner.

Oh no, he says. I've had the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal savior and I've been a witness for him for some years. But he says, I have a problem.

He says, I'm not sure I'm willing for everything God, for all God's will in my business. Oh, I said, I'm so glad. I congratulate you.

I'm so glad you're not willing. Excellent, you've learned a lesson. You're not meant to be willing.

You're meant to be just an unwilling person to tell God you're thoroughly unwilling to have any change made in your business. And then you say, you get on with it, God. You get on with it.

God has clever ways in which he turns you around and makes you willing to do his good pleasure and you enjoy it. Turns you around. Now, yes.

You're talking about the Holy Spirit. I have heard of him, yes. That's right.

He happens to be the same person. He happens to be the same person. Thank you.

You're keeping me very well alive tonight. Thank you, I like this. Well, I'm just stopping you in a moment.

But I must go on just to say this. I must pick it up again. I have to inflict myself on you tomorrow morning.

So I have to go on with it. This is the stepping stone to the second actual step. So the actual step is when the unity between the living God and myself, the living Christ himself can become so realized to me that it becomes spontaneous.

I live on a spontaneous basis of a unity and my life is expressing him in this unity. I'm Paul's level. Nevertheless, I live, if not I, Christ is in me.

Now, what I've said so far is this. I'm suggesting this was in my case. I couldn't clearly affirm this unity when I've got to say we're walking Christ.

We're Christ in a human form. We could talk about that tomorrow morning. Of course, Norman Salk talks about this in the clearer way he puts it.

Christ. Now, if I think I ought to be different, you see my point? Why I think I ought to be a different kind of person. How on earth can I say Christ is living in this kind of mess? If I think the mess ought to be something I change.

You see, I think I ought to be more loving, I ought to be more patient, ought to be less depressed, and ought to be kinder, and ought to be more loving, ought to be all this stuff. How on earth can I say it's Christ living here? Can I look at myself and say, look, how can I say Christ's living here? But you see, when I accept it, I'm meant to be a normal human with normal human reactions. I don't change my reactions.

If I'm impatient, I'm impatient. If I'm hurt, I'm hurt. If I'm fearful, I'm fearful.

If I don't love, I don't love. The basis is the human, just normal human reactions. Now I say, well, God chose that.

Christ chose that. You've not chosen me. I've chosen you.

Christ chose that because a positive would have a negative to spread through. As I said, light has to have non-light. I've told you that.

Or you reflect yourself through. You've got to have the reflector. Now, with a reflector.

Now, when I'm able to say, well, I accept myself just as I am. And whatever my reaction, that's my reaction. This is the negative factor.

That's my reaction. Then I can say, well, yes, you've chosen me. You've joined yourself to me because it isn't that I change.

It's you need your means of manifesting yourself. And the deity that manifests itself through the humanity. And so the two make the one, like the mattress and the hard iron make the one bed.

Everything you look at, you'll find there's a positive and negative. And the negative is the means of manifesting the positive. I don't like your abominable bitter coffee.

Well, I can tell you it's bitter because I can swallow it up with sweet. I can taste the sweet, because the positive conquers the negative. All life is like that.

Simple. Well, then I'm only saying so far tonight that puts us in a position in which I can daringly move in from this tremendous fact that Norma's talking to us about. I'll talk a little more tomorrow.

It's a tremendous fact of a unity, which is an eternal fact. So it never is I again. It's really he.

And I'm the agent. There's a paradox we discuss in it. The human and the humanity is making the one.

And he is the one expressing himself through me. And I can accept that fact. When I accept, he means me to be like that.

To me, it's always a permanent laugh. That God could live in a funny thing like this or a funnier thing than that, like that. To me, this is a permanent joke.

I say, well, Lord, if you've got bad taste, it's up to you. You sure have. So God bless you.

That's all. Does a person have to express the negative before the positive can come in? No, we need to discuss it a little more carefully tomorrow. Yes, in crises.

Things are always arising in life. Always with me. I'm always seeing negatively.

The moment I see negative, I must express the positive. I become negatively conscious. Oh, this worries me or something.

Now, wait a minute. This is God's handling this thing. Now, I replace my, I don't condemn.

I say, I'm just worried by that. No, no, wait a minute. God's handling that.

I replace, transfer my believing, I'll talk about that tomorrow, in the thing which is worrying me, to believing in Christ. On those many, many occasions in life, you do have to have a conscious transference. But there's a whole area of life where you don't have a conscious transference.

You're just yourself. You're just a fact. You live your own life.

And that is Christ coming through. I'll talk a little more clearly tomorrow. So there, there's two levels.

So, God bless you. I hear people getting more and more confused. May you get more and more confused.

God bless you.