Your Pressures Are Your Springboards

I have been pursuing a line through these sessions that have been given me, which means, of course, that some of you have been along with me in the pursuit, and others will have to come panting behind this morning. We come to the end as far as we're able to come to an end this morning. What we've come up to is the fixed awareness of the unity.

We're discussing that no more. We're proceeding from that, that the original purpose of God is that this one person should have persons with whom he can be in such a fixed, spontaneous, automatic relationship, that they're living as he's living. And we discuss the way in which that fact becomes a fixed awareness to us, which has been necessary through the fall and through the necessary of redemption.

So we're leaving it behind. In this last session, we're looking a little at the outcome of a life, which is, thank God for so many of us already, has this basis in this fixed awareness, this God and I, one person, and it isn't really I, it's he, it is I, the paradox. The first thing we're saying is this, that the whole point is to release a man to be a man.

That includes women, of course. In other words, the end of this is God in the background, man in the foreground. It's not God in the foreground and man in the background.

It's man coming out as a real man, as man lives. And actually this is a book, the Bible is a book of man, man's creation, man's digression, man's restoration, man's activities, man's destinies. So we only have come out in this when we've come out into understanding what it is to be a released man and woman, to be a real man and woman.

You can only do that when the unity is fixed, because unity, when you've come through this process into unity, means you're conscious, deep because it isn't really you. As I said yesterday, you almost live with a kind of wink inside you, which isn't I all the time, it looks like me. You can laugh at it, you're not laughing at God, you're laughing at the funny choices God makes, which is you.

And you can't live this, you can't be free without, because I said yesterday, you're afraid. We've had to go through processes, quite rightly, right processes of self-discovery, which is necessary, because God wants to have people who know their potential, and then God can come through that potential. But self-discovery is so dangerous, as I said yesterday, we find so many tigers in our tanks, that we have to keep a few laws around us to keep them inside the tank.

So you're not free, you're busy keeping the laws working to keep the tigers in the tank. Those things will burst out of us, until this great reversal has taken place, and you're no longer surrounded by laws to keep you in order, because the person who is the law himself is the keeper in order inside, and is living the life by us. He who is love is expressing all forms of self-giving love by us.

Then you're free, you don't care, you dare to trust him. In other words, an evidence of this settlement in, you've settled in from holding on to being held on. When your life is, I'm holding on to him, I must abide, I must hold on.

When, oh it's all right, I'm held on, I can't escape, poor me, I wish I could, but I can't. Then you're there. So we have to leave that behind.

This is where we can liberate ourselves to be real selves. So we therefore start now on this new level by self-acceptance as well as God-acceptance. Thank God, I know that's familiar to many here, but to many in the Church of Christ it's not familiar.

Many in the Church of Christ have a God-acceptance and a self-rejection. Life isn't a God-acceptance and a self-rejection, it's a God-acceptance and a self-acceptance. Why can I accept myself? Because God accepted me.

As Louis prayed this morning in prayer up here, he chose me, not I chose him. Well, I always say he has pretty bad, pretty poor taste, but it's up to him. It is up to him.

Why should I change it? He chose, all right, you choose what he chose. He chose you, you choose yourself. That's very important.

We actually, I suggest, have to go through three phases to get there. But we've gone through those three phases, I trust. The first phase is the false self-appreciation.

That's the false way which in our unredeemed age we try to build ourselves up as if we are all self-sufficient ignorance. We have to build ourselves up. A false self-appreciation, building up our own righteousness.

That crashes when we discover we're lost sinners and need a saviour. Now, we've lost false self-appreciation, we move into temporary self-depreciation, because we have to go through that lesson I learned yesterday, when you're more miserable as a Christian than a non-Christian, where you've got to discover this life isn't forms of self-effort with God assisting me. And so we've got to go through a period which isn't, I can't do it, why can't I do it, and so on.

You come out to a right self-appreciation. You pass from a false self-appreciation, through a temporary self-depreciation, to a right self-appreciation. Because, as I said, the basis of this is unity, it is He, and yet He's chosen me, and so am I. As I said about Paul's statement, he doesn't stop in the middle and say, nevertheless I live, no, no, no, it's not I, but Christ lives.

He goes on to say, the life I now live, I live, a great big banging Paul comes back, and God wants great big cells, fat ones, living ones, expressive ones, because of the hidden joke, which isn't I at all, it's He. You can usually tell whether a person is in this or out of it by the way they speak of themselves. I meet, and have been that myself, lots of people who say, God does things in spite of me.

I know, God does things because of me. When you say God does things in spite of me, you don't get it right. No, God does things because of me and because of your funny self.

It's the funniness He particularly uses. That's great, because He likes idiosyncrasies. So probably what to you is the sharpest elbows in the other person, the very thing God uses most.

So this is self-acceptance. I suppose perhaps in a sense the one battle I fight through life is not to allow the devil to condemn me, as if I ought to be diff'd, I ought to be changed. No, no, not at all.

I say, you're in me, if I'm not changed, you better get me changed. I'm not going to change myself. I'm not going to do a thing.

I wouldn't do it. People say to me, I'm not willing. Well, I say, remain unwilling until God makes you willing.

Tell Him you won't budge an inch until He makes you. That's a great life. I've always picked up that word, Ezekiel, who saw a thing or two.

Ezekiel saw a new spirit when I give you, a new heart. He saw a thing or two in the Spirit. He said, I'll cause you to walk in my ways.

I think that's a beautiful phrase. Not, oh, I must walk and work at it. I'd be forced to walk.

This is new life. Now, I'm suggesting to you that, um, uh, this, uh, uh, this life, uh, which is, uh, we humans in free action, spontaneous action, uh, on this basis, uh, falls into two categories, you might say. I'm not speaking any official terms.

I don't know how to, but I put it in two categories. Uh, I would call one the unconscious level and the other the conscious level. Now, I'm not using those words officially.

I don't, I don't know about them. I'm just using as far as I understand it. What I mean is this, uh, there's a whole area of our lives when you're not conscious of God or conscious of yourself, you're just, you're just conscious, you're just living.

An unconscious self, that's spontaneous living. There's a whole area of our lives which is meant to be that. Let's say there is this sense in which, um, when this unity is taking place, you forget God and live because you living is he living.

So there's, as I say, whole areas, life when we enter into conversation and interest and fun and involvement, and we're not thinking of God or ourselves, we're just living, we just are. This is living. And through those areas, uh, or during them, you don't come back, uh, and say to God, oh God, I've been so busy on my job today, I haven't had time to think of you.

Of course, I didn't ask you to think of me. You and I were co-thinkers. What do you think, what do you think of me for? I was co-thinking along with you.

I was mending this and that, minding the kids and washing this, doing with you. I'm you, you're I. That's the spontaneous level. That's the level, I think, which is meant, uh, when Jesus said, ye are the light of the world.

I mentioned that before. Not you have the light, but you are the light. Uh, have is immediate conscious, is immediate sense of separation.

If you have a thing, it isn't you. I have this thing, here's the thing, here's I. Separation. He didn't say you have the light, I'm light, you're darkness, and you have me.

He said you are light. That's unity, that's fusion. And that is, you're just living, you're just yourself, that self is Christ shining.

I'm sure we're going to get some big surprises if we do meet him one day. Because I've been, uh, all through our lives, there's been a Christ shining through us without us knowing it. The devil tells us he isn't there, of course.

Uh, and through our looks and thoughts and actions, he's been revealing himself. I always think we got that, we got the concept of that coming judgment seat, or judgment day wrong, because we always regard God as a kind of beater up. No, God's a patter on the back, not a beater up.

And the Bible says so. Paul says that, uh, um, uh, don't judge things before the time. He says this in 1 Corinthians.

Don't judge things before the time until the Lord come who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and then shall everyone have a smack over the head from God? No, praise from God. God's going to be busy praising his people, saying, my God, you did a good job down there. You made a few mistakes, I don't know how I see about that, but you did a good job down there, I'm for you.

I believe we've got a God for us, not a Guinness. And even if judgment's only mercy, I want him, I want him to be faithful to me. Oh my, because he's merciful.

I want him to say, now on this spot, you can do a little improvement. Come on, boys, we'll do a little here. I don't mind that kind of judgment.

So I'm saying, and I suggest it's very important, there is no, there's a whole area, uh, which is the outcome of this, uh, um, union life, uh, in which I'm just a free person, and I forget God and live, and that's God living. And that is the area when you're, when you're not brought up against something which consciously makes you conscious of yourself or God. You're just living, you're eating, you're enjoying, you're talking, you're working, you're, you're meant to be free.

Because if you know the unity, that is you and he, and that is he, that is you. So as Tommy says, we are the will of God, we're just be yourself. We are the will of God, we don't have to find the will of God.

We've been the fixed will from the foundation of the world. Works before are ordained that we should walk in. So just be yourself.

If God wants to change his will, he's pretty good at that, you needn't do it for him. He'll switch you around, all right, leave him to his own business. And you're his own business, and you're getting away.

When I signed up in my mission on this sort of, as a calling, a kind of walk of faith we have, I used to, when we were only a few in the days, a few in number in the early days, I used to have a week in and a week out. In the week in, I could believe anything, in the week out, I could believe nothing. And they were bad weeks, I went down, down in a deep, dark dell.

And the Lord spoke to me one day, he said, who lives in your body? I said, you do, Lord. And who lives in the body of your wife and children? You do, Lord. Who lives in the body of these people with you? You do, Lord.

Well, he says, you mind me to be, leave me to mind my business, you've got to mind yours. He says, if I gave Moses two million people to feed for 40 years, and I fed them for Moses, all right, he said, when you're feeding two million, I'll give you a chance to worry, so don't stop worrying. So I didn't give a chance to worry.

So there is this wonderful basis of being yourself, forget God and live. I told you all along, we've had to come up through a God consciousness to this being place, we had to become because we got wrong. We had to put right to Christ and come up and get into this relationship with God.

Just the same as a foundation, you build a foundation, you forget a foundation, you forget it. We aren't looking around what's underneath us, we're enjoying what's on top. And so, as I said, this marvellous fact is a foundation, it's indissoluble, unchangeable, God forever has made himself the real you, join you to him and him to you, forget him and live.

And it isn't you at all, it's he, coming through, the very face, the looks, the thought, the shape and everything. Now that's what I would call the unconscious level, and there's lots of it, and life's fun. There's then the conscious level.

Now the conscious level I mean by conscious level, I mean by the conscious level that all through life, every day and very often, things arise which cause us to be conscious of ourselves. Now, something's happening. Somebody says, oh what should I do with that now, I'm conscious of myself.

You're not just talking easily or enjoying something or plunging into something, you become conscious, oh my, what might I do with that, I don't like that, this is very awkward, oh this might happen. And you're amazingly conscious, you become self-conscious, you're up against something, all life consists of lots of those things. Now actually, they're the special values of life.

Why? Because the whole point of life is that we might be the God-united humans by whom he can reach humans, through humans reach to humans. So therefore, for God to reach humans to us, there must be a relation, a relationship. Now the moment you're conscious of something, you're related to it.

The moment you have a reaction, you're related to it. I mean by that, there are thousands and thousands, well, thousands of things in this world of which we know nothing, and we can contribute nothing, because we know that we're not related to them. The moment I become related to a person, supposing I suddenly dislike a person, supposing somebody does something to me which causes me, I don't like that, I don't like that person, I'm related to them by my dislike.

Now there's a relation, a communication to which God can come. And so all the reason for the pressures and problems and the challenges of life is to bring us in a conscious relationship with situations, because that's where God will come through. God can't come through, you're unrelated, so he has to bring us to a place where we're related, and then through that relationship, God can come.

Now, God can only come through that relationship because we're united people. I mean united himself. Through this unity, we've begun to have the habit of saying, oh, it didn't really, I, it's he.

Now because you've begun that habit, when something comes, I don't like that person, I couldn't possibly do that, this is thoroughly wrong, what should I do with this? And you're, you become a stirred human, because you've got, you've begun to get the habit of the unity relationship, but you say, wait a minute, God, that's quite so, but this is your show really, and you don't happen to hate people, you happen to love them. And so, well, if you love that person and you're in them there, I'd better get loving them too. Now then, your stirred up hatred, your, the stirring up of your emotions in hatred condition you for the springboard of hatred, which says, all right, Lord, with your love, I love.

And through those stirred emotions, God's love comes where your hate was. This is how you function. When we get that, we begin to learn the problems of life are our blessings and our adventures.

This is our, this is the very places by which God comes through. We may say God comes through everything, as I say, in the unconscious level, well, God's coming through, but in a sort of lighter way, it's just generally coming through. But every challenge, that's a, that's a particular situation there.

And the relationship, and through that relationship, God will come. That's the poor, desperate world. The world has a negative relationship without knowing how to replace it by the positive.

And the world has his hate and doesn't know what to do with it. And has his fears and his oppositions and his covetousness and doesn't know what to do with them. And that's what hell is.

But we who learn the things of the unity, we know therefore how by the springboard of faith to replace. In other words, your pressures are your springboards. Like when you die, if you press down, you go up.

And so your, your, your pressure's down with every kind of, everything which tears itself is a springboard. And you replace fear with God's courage. You replace hate with God's love.

And so on, all the way through. This is how it works. It works because, I don't know, Glenn could talk about this better next session than I can, because all we can understand of the manifestation of life is by interrelation of opposites.

We understand, as far as we understand life, there can be no relationship on any other level. There has to be a positive and a negative, and this positive swallows up the negative. A negative cannot be manifested unless it has a negative, which it can swallow up and then express itself.

For instance, light. We shouldn't know there was light shining out unless there was a dead moon. Moon's non-light.

All right? The light shines out to the moon, hits the moon, swallows it up. You don't see the moon, you see light. You see the display of light because it has a non-light which is swallowed up and it reveals itself.

Or down here, we only see light because there's a non-light atmosphere, a non-light earth, and the stream pours down, it breaks out, and here we get all the colours of the spectrum, whatever you call it, or the rainbow. All this is a marvellous outbreaking of light, isn't it? So you see the principle, you take any, the whole of life can, if you want to go, look at it, can be divided into positive and negative. A simple positive and negative is soft and hard.

Well you can't have a soft settee unless it has a hard framework, but you need to have a, you need to have the softness conquering the hardness or you're in for a bad settee. You can't have a soft bed unless the soft mattress conquers the framework, but it must have a framework, but the mattress must conquer the framework or you're in for a bad night. In other words, the soft will swallow up the hard, the positive will swallow up the negative.

We're God's negative, because God's the only one there is. He is the iser, he's the I am, he's the only one there is, and he is the all, he is the positive, but he couldn't manifest himself unless he had the negative, but negative is not wrong, it's me at the other end of the positive. Now this is where so many of us get wrong.

We accuse ourselves when we fear, we accuse ourselves when we get, when we, when we're disturbed by a thing, or impatient or resentful. No, no, we've got to be. Uh, you can't have faith without doubt, uh, because you only have faith where you're sparked up into something.

Therefore, there are lots of things I haven't got particular faith about, because I'm not particularly interested in them. But the moment something comes to me, oh my, that's awful, but that couldn't be, what couldn't be? Oh, I couldn't have a change there. Now I've got doubt, that doubt sparks all faith.

I say, wait a minute, God, you're the kind of person who does things I can't do. Come on God, get on to it. And you replace, you replace doubt by faith.

You cannot have faith without doubt. It's always healthy for young people to go on, it's always healthy if you've been an atheist before you're a theist. If you haven't been an atheist, start now and be one, and see where you get.

So it's healthy. This is the negative, uh, which is necessary for the manifestation of the positive. But the important point is to learn, therefore, that my reactions to things are not wrong.

They're negative reactions, but they're not wrong. It's not wrong that I fear. It's not wrong that I dislike.

It's not wrong that I resent. It's not wrong that I question. It's not wrong that I have any of the drives of life.

They're the thing which relate me to a situation. This is, because of the unity, the union, this is what God, because of this, God can come through me. This is the whole point.

God can come through a situation. And then it's God's love comes through, God's courage comes through. If I may use a silly little illustration, um, I, I hate speaking.

I speak too well. And, uh, um, uh, speak too quickly, and a few other things. Uh, you never comment on your slow hearing.

It's always a comment on my hearing. Uh, so I, I, I hate speaking. I, in 45 years, I've never got up to like to speak.

I love the preacher. I was here, so I love preaching. Ah, I envy you.

I don't mind having a pen, because no one can ask for my pen back. But, uh, it's a little different here. Now, so what I, it's a silly little thing, that if I never get up to speak, I don't want you to.

Never once do I speak I want to speak. I, I'm a negative. I don't want to speak.

Well, unfortunately, I know the way through which I didn't sometimes. I say, well, God, you told me to do it. Well, all right, I'll do it.

And, uh, it'll be you do the speaking. If any mistakes are your mistakes, come on. There you come through.

The supreme example, of course, and this is my foundation, what I'm saying of the negative nested positive, you couldn't have had a, a, a, a crucified Jesus bearing the sins of the world, except unless you had a negative Jesus. We, uh, the cross came out of an unwilling Jesus, not a willing Jesus. And the unwilling Jesus meant the arousal of the whole emotion that was in him.

Such a passion that to get it, to get it to the clear, caused him bloody sweat, or whatever that means. Now, it was your sweat blood. In other words, all that was in him was a human Jesus.

I can't take it, and I don't want, I'm unwilling to take it. Now, is that wrong? No, this is a, this is a right human reaction. I can't take it.

If it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Not as I will, I am agin it. It had to be, because God must have aroused related human emotions to get his emotions through.

And having got to the last pinnacle, last, last, uh, uh, degree of, of, of arousal, the greatest arousing in the whole history, the arousing of Jesus Christ like this. Uh, in Gethsemane, uh, uh, because he knew the unity, uh, as it were, God could, God, uh, he, he, he comes settled into God, and God into him, God's will will be done. And so he came out saying, the cup which my father has given me, the devil gave it to him.

The cup which my father has given me shall not drink it. And he, and he went like a king, king through Calvary. But you see, uh, God had to have a, a, a fully aroused negative will to put his positive will through.

Now, when you get that, you don't be fed your negative will. You don't change your negative will, you just stand going on being unwilling until you make me willing. I'll be disobedient until you make me obedient.

It's a great life. I like a lazy life, doing nothing, until God makes me. But the, the unfortunate part is he does make you, because God's active, apparently, he's not passive.

So you can't get off by it. But, uh, to, to a great many, it's a great help to accept yourself and your negative reactions and say, sure, I must have them, thank God. I'm in a tough spot, thank God.

Now it's time for the springboard. Now, we don't always take the springboard. Sometimes we, sometimes we dive in without it the wrong way.

And then we, we, you go back, you can turn your resentment into anger, wrong kind of temper. Uh, you can return the same thing. I mean, you can, you can, you can turn your fear into flight.

Uh, you can move the wrong way. You, your, whatever the various human arousals may be, we may turn them, go the wrong way into temperance, temperance of expression. That's sin.

Now, we never, the whole basis of this being forever is our freedom. And freedom, freedom is expressed in honesty. Freedom is expressed in honest recognition of fact.

So there's no fooling with sin. Where there is sin, it's necessary that I admit it, and I don't always like to admit it. Um, James calls sin adultery, because adultery is falling in love with somebody you shouldn't fall in love with, and you, and you like to stick to your love.

So when we, when we, when we go away, away of sin, we, we sometimes want to stick to it a bit. We say, God, give me two minutes to have a real bad temper out, and then I'll come back after two minutes or longer. Uh, we like a little, well, some, but you've got to come back.

But the point I get here is this, um, there's, there's, there's another bondage. The real bondage of sin is guilt, not sin. The bondage of sin is you remain feeling smeared and feeling wrong, feeling, oh, I've done it once, I'll do it again.

And there you are, bound down there. Now, of course, the, the, the way through, just as the way through for our negative reactions is, all right, God, you come through here. Where there's fear, you come through with courage, hate, you come through with love, and so on.

Uh, so, so here, the, the, the, the, um, um, remedy, uh, answer for the many times we do, the many times we do go in, is if there's quick sinning, there's quick cleansing. If there's honesty in between. If there's quick sinning, there's quick cleansing, there's honesty in between.

Why quick cleansing? Because Frank, praise God, two thousand years ago, he wiped all the sins of all the world out. He can't see them. They all disappeared in Jesus Christ.

They're not there. They're not there, actually, from the foundation of the world, but, of course, didn't come out in history until Christ. He didn't see those things.

So, the moment, the, you, you should see your sin, so should I. When I'm guilty, I should, as a human being, I should see, I've done the thing I shouldn't do, and I should feel it. And as there is a time when I may, may, may, may want to stick on it a bit, that's so. But when the moment comes, and thank God, usually, we hope it comes quickly, I say, I shouldn't have done it.

The moment I say I've done it, I don't see the second sin. The second sin is not to believe the blood of Jesus Christ. Not to believe what God has provided for us is the worst sin in the thing to do.

Unbelief is the worst sin. Therefore, I add sin to sin. If, having lost my temper or something, I cooled it up, I'd have to say, well, I did do it and should have done it.

I, now, I'm on the level of omission of my sin, confession. The moment I do that, God says, quite so. As a free person, you had to be free and honest and admit it.

As for that thing, it, it disappeared two thousand years ago. I've forgotten it, you forget it. Now, the second sin is to go on stewing in it.

So, the answer, then, is to replace the guilt by the praise. And say, never mind, Lord, I feel, I feel a worm, but, uh, all right, you, you accept worms, it's all right. Praise the Lord, the sin's not there.

Uh, and they go on. And you leave the future with God. You don't conquer habits by stewing on, on, on, by regretting the past or, or, or fearing the future.

The Africans I live with the Africans, of course, many years. And they said this, they're very pragmatic people, they're not philosophers, but they, they live on earth, they're, they're people. And they said, now, brother, it's like this.

This is how to walk with God. Walk is every step. The New Testament's very fond of the word walk, continually comes.

Now, walks are very significant works, you only do one step at a time. In other words, you just live now, now, now, that's all. Now, they say this, that's how you live.

Therefore, they say, brother, uh, leave the past out of the blood, leave the future with God, get walking. In other words, you don't answer saying, shall I do it again by saying, shall I do it again? There isn't the kind of patent panacea you take. You walk with a person.

You say, well, Lord, thank you, that's brought it out now. And thank you, you're with me. That's the future, that's your business, I'll carry on.

And you carry on free, leave it to God to keep, to hold you up. If you, if you, if you fall down, pick up again and say, it's still your business to hold me up. Go on.

That's all, you keep on. You do not get through the problem of the repetition of sin by sort of saying, oh, I've died so many times, oh, I should do it in the future. No.

We live either past or future. We live in present with the person. Well, you're forgiven now, thank God.

He's yours now, thank God. Well, go on free and dare to trust him. If it does arise again, do it again.

You'll find that way will do less. Now, um, I want to bring up what I'm saying as it were to a final heading, pretty obvious, pretty important, I suggest. I did originally say that we might look at the question of what is life.

We found that out to be this one person to whom we joined as his means of manifestation. How do we live it? Well, we discussed a little about this level of, uh, uh, spontaneous living, uh, and, uh, then the conscious, uh, relationships and so on. We discussed that.

Why do we live it? We simply discussed that. What is life? How do we live it? Why do we live it? What's the meaning? Well, we know. I want to make a, I want to say to me this life has two ultimates in it, two absolutes, and those are two feet in which we walk.

The one first ultimate is you are not you, you're he. That's the basis of it. You are not you, you're he.

That's the basis of it. Uh, the second is, uh, you are not you and he, you're others. That's the second one.

The first is you are not you, you're he. The second is you are not you and he, you're others. Because God is others.

In other words, the ultimate is God is others. The only life we need bother about with God is the life God lives in others and for others. What he, what he's doing up there, I'll find out when I get up there, when I get to the galaxies, I'll have a look, but till then I haven't got there.

So I'm down here at present. And, uh, and so, um, we, we, you so well understand this. Um, so you see, we, we, we brought out, I think yesterday again, we, we brought out that, that, uh, there was analogies Jesus lived.

The first time we talked, which to me was so illuminating when he was God on earth, he was there for love. What is love? Bread and water. He likened it to bread and water.

He said he's a living bread, living water. What's bread? Bread is something by which somebody else eats and lives. It gives up his own life.

His real life is to be your life. You eat it and live. What's water? Starts in streams and so on, ends in us.

And we saw how the whole universe is like that because it's the forms of God. This is who saves once a tree. It's real me is to be this for me.

So everything arises, something which has individual life has given it up. There's too many lives to be something for others. Now that's what we are.

That's what God only is. Uh, God is others. Jesus said, if you don't visit the prisoner, you don't visit me.

If you don't feed the hungry, you don't feed me. And so on. Now what I'm meaning, what's the meaning of love? This is what the eternal love is.

Therefore, this is what we are in this unity. So we are really others. The only meaning of our lives now is, uh, uh, uh, it's involvement in others.

Of course, you get the great scripture, love your neighbor as being yourself. Paul, I made all things to all men that by all means I might save some. Now we live if ye stand fast.

I'm quoting Paul. Perhaps the, the most human illustration given in the scriptures along that line is when Paul, uh, likened his concern to a mother for children. He said, my little children whom I travel in birth until Christ is formerly new.

Now the nearest human level by which one person is another is a mother and children. As I said, which parents live their life again in their children. That's about as near analogy as we can get.

Moses was a Supreme example. One of the Supreme besides Jesus Christ himself on earth was, uh, when he was taking the children of Israel through the wilderness and God was judging them because they, they threw God out and worship these George Joe, these golden calves and so on. And Moses, God kind of gave Moses a chance.

He said, it's in scriptures. He said, Moses, I'll destroy this nation, make a new nation out of you. Well, if you've got a simple little bit of self, self ambition and you jump at that, I'll be the, I'll be the bridger to God's nation in earth.

I'll take Abraham's place. Get out, Abraham. I'll take your place.

Chance for, chance for self. The significant thing is Moses never even answered that question. Wasn't interested.

What did he say? He went to plead with God for mercy on these people. He said, God, if forgive them, uh, if you don't, if you blot them out, blot me out. Otherwise I'm there.

I'm there. My real life is those people. If you touch them, you touch me.

That's it. Now I'm asking, I'm saying to you, how does that work out in practical life? Uh, to me it's meant, I, I, I, I veer from it plenty, but it's meant basically again, a reorientation of my understanding. As I say, the first reorientation of my understanding had to be, it's not really I, it looks like it, and I laugh at it.

It's not, it's this other person here. Same with you. As I say, the first ultimate is not you, it's he.

What's the second, what's the second, um, uh, foundation? Uh, it's this, uh, every single incident of life from now onwards is not for me, it's for others. Now that's a reorientation of my whole outlook on life. The Bible presents us in many ways of, uh, uh, actually the Bible does present all the way through, if you get into it, um, kind of three stages in our apprehension of our, our relationship with God.

Uh, the simplest, put in simplest terms, is when John says, speaks about his little children, young men and fathers, and writes certain statements to them in second John, in first John letter. I tell you, little children, young men and fathers, infants, adolescents, adults. Now there's a big gulp between adolescent and adult.

Uh, put in simple terms by, as it's explained in the Bible, an infancy, infant relationship is the first relationship you have to an apparent external God. Your, it says your sins are forgiven for his name's sake, you know the Father. You come to, you come to God through Christ and he's somewhere out here to whom you're related, and to whom you're reconciled through Jesus Christ.

You have the peace of God in your heart. Now you move on. That's the infant.

The infant's helpless. It just depends on something we should have done for him. Now an adolescent has to find his own inner resources.

That's the problem with teenagers, isn't it? Has to get rid of his parents and find inner resources. So an adolescent has to, has to find inner resources physically, and supposed to be psychologically and intellectually, but comes, uh, conditioned to go out into life. Uh, we adolescents find our own resources when we find an inner Christ.

They try to find an inner self, poor self, and that doesn't work too well, poor things. We find our, uh, our inner resources when we found not an external Christ who died for us, an inner Christ who's in us. Now that's adolescence.

Now what's the difference between adolescence and adulthood? The big jump between giving and receiving. Up to adolescence, everything is done for the child. Infancy, adolescence is all done for his development, for his preparation, for his education.

The big leap comes over after what we call graduation, when he becomes a, a reproducer instead of being reproduced. Uh, he becomes a, a giver rather than a getter. He passes from the receiving end to the giving end of life.

And the whole meaning of life, that is, he has his family, he has his civic responsibilities, he has his job, he's a, he's, he's, he's, uh, uh, making his contribution to the world. That's the gap, from into ourselves, from out to ourselves. Now we have no business to say we're adolescents, we're not.

We're adults. Uh, adolescence is when, when you're conscious, this has become an amazing fact, it's been a fact, always has been a fact for every redeemed person, that you and God are one person. That's, that's, that's your graduation.

You're finished. You've got your infancy, adolescence. Now you move into a life, and you're, you're part of a saving Christ.

You pass from being a saved to a saviour. Now there's often a great snare over this, even the mission, I'm a missionary. For instance, uh, our, our snare is, in a sense, we, if we don't look out, we go out to build up, uh, ego, build up self, save, uh, self, um, self.

For instance, now I've worked on lepers. Now, I'm not doing my job if I go out to heal a leper. I'm going out if I make a leper a healer.

That's quite a different thing. You see, the, the whole being is, the whole purpose is, God's an outgoer who is living other people's lives. This is the meaning of humanity.

So we've only come into, into focusing humanity when we're people living other people's lives, contributing to other people's lives. Therefore, the point to go to lepers is not just to get their bodies healed, but how they can find this relation to the, the living person, uh, and find their way back to Him through Christ, so they make other people living. So whether they're healed or not is incidental.

What does matter is they become healers. This is where the mission field goes wrong. We don't go out to educate people, improve them, which can only be filling up the ego.

We go out to make them improvers, educators, not educated. Thus, for instance, in early illiterate days, I mean, for instance, illiteracy is the first thing. The, the knowledge of God and, and to be able to reproduce Christ in light is the first thing.

And in, in, in primitive days, as I was in Africa, we had people who never learned to read, but my, the glory of God shone out on them. And they were giving the true education to other people, though they couldn't read a word. Now, I don't mean we shouldn't teach them to read, that's secondary.

Our primary job isn't to teach people to read, we should only build up the ego, or teach, or get people's bodies healed, we should only build up the ego. We're there to make, make people healers, not healed. Educators, not educated.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the peacemakers, not those who get peace, those who make peace. Not those who have mercy, those who give mercy.

This is the gospel. That's what God is. He's the mercy giver.

He's the peacemaker. Now, we're co-saviors. We've passed adolescence as being saved, being redeemed, whatever term you like to use.

Infancy, adolescence, being, becoming what we're meant to become. The end of adolescence is what you become. The very becoming is this unity.

Now, you pass now from being the redeemed to the redeemers. The saviors to the saviors. And you're part of, you're part of a contributing God.

Now, I say to you, that changes your outlook on life. Because our tendency is, and we're meant to be humans, we start life by saying, oh dear, why is this happening to me? Why have I suddenly got afflicted with this? Why have I suddenly lost a loved one? Why has my marriage broken up? Why has this happened to my business? And I'm hurt. I'm meant to be hurt because I'm meant to be a person.

I'm meant to be a true person, so I'm meant to have my hurts. What do I do with my hurts? Now, the point is this. When I catch hold of this, I say, wait a minute.

Not one thing happens to me now but has a purpose for others. Never again does a thing happen to me. I'm past that road when things happen for me.

It's pitiful to hear Christians saying, oh, I suppose this has come to try me, or sanctify me, which is a horrible word anyhow, or something like that, as if, oh, I must be a bit of a forget-your-rich-itself. And we're part of a savior. That's our glory.

You see the point? Now, that's never going to be easy because we're meant to be human, so we always start by being hurt. It's what you do with your hurt. You see, of course, in the earlier ways, a self-sentiment, this can prevent us from finding Christ, but we've passed through that.

But even though we've passed through, and are now, as I hope we all are here, into Christ, our hurt self can still interfere with the true purpose of life coming out through us. While you relate life to yourself, you can't see it. A hurt self blocks.

This is what's called the other form of the cross. For those of us who follow the Bible, this portion was raised a day or two ago. There's one way in which Christ was crucified, as Tommy and I were talking to you the day before.

We were there, and we participated in that cross, which cut us off from this old false dominion by the wrong spirit. And then we're identified in the resurrection, which unites us to the spirit of Christ. Now, that's never repeated.

That's a fact of every one of us who are redeemed. You have become a person crucified, so far as that old life's concerned, and renewed as far as the new. That's not repeated.

But then the Bible talks about this, always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake. Now, always.

Or there's a quotation which is often misquoted, I die daily. It can be taken the same thing. Now, that's nothing to do with my relationship with God.

My relationship with God is fixed, finished, forget it. That's the foundation, forget it, except to be thankful for it. But this other is for others.

Christ's cross wasn't for himself, it's for others. Now, I would suggest you can put a clear division in the life of Christ in this way. You can see Christ being developed up to his baptism and the Mount of Temptation.

The Bible said so. He was growing in wisdom and stature. I did discuss that a little at a previous meeting.

Christ was developing, adolescent as he were, developing up to the stage when he became an adult. Now, I'm saying this from the moment that the Spirit of God revealed to him at his baptism, you're the anointed one. You're the one the prophet spoke about.

You're to heal, to unloose the prison, and bind the brokenhearted, and preach the gospel to the poor, and so on. He said he was. From that moment onwards, every single thing which happened in Christ's life was for others.

Not just Calvary, everything. Now, every single thing in your life is for others. You're to say you're... Not to say, you're to remain adolescent, because you don't find your adolescence, God found it for you.

God put you into himself. God united himself to continue to find it. He found you.

And so you dare say, I'm finished with that business. The graduations, what Jesus Christ has done for me and has made real to me, that's finished. Now, I'm an adult, therefore everything that happens to me is for others.

Now, that puts a big change in life. It changes life basically from frustration to adventure. When you're a hurt self and can't see quite why you're hurt, you're frustrated.

When you say, every single thing which has come to me is something by which God will manifest himself to others, that's adventure. You say, come on, Lord, this is fun now. Let's see where it comes out.

That's what Jesus said. For the joy set before him enjoyed the cross, despising the shame. Of course, there are certain areas we haven't time to go into.

I'm stopping in a moment to connect you with that. One is, it's perfectly clear to me that, whether you accept this, I think most of you will, that God sends everything that comes into our life, good and evil. God's not responsible for it, but God utilises evil as well as good.

Everything that comes to us comes from God. He's utilising evil for his own purposes. The supreme example of that, of course, was Calvary.

Peter, in the first speech after Pentecost, the first official talk of the early church, the foundation of the church, openly says to him, he said, you crucify Jesus Christ with your wicked hands through the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God. Isn't that strange? He said, you crucify the cross with your wicked hands through the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God. God picks you up to do that because he wanted a saviour killed for the world's sake.

So God is utilising evil for good. One of the other famous examples, of course, is Joseph, where every mortal thing that happened to a person happened to Joseph, sold by his own brethren into a foreign country, never to be seen again. And then when the one man who did stand for purity in the nation and refused the solicitations of Potiphar's wife, she turned around and said, you're the adulterer.

I've got him beaten up by her husband and put in prison. You may be sure he gave you a good beating too, you may be sure of that one. Everything happened to him.

And then when he revealed the dream to the butler and baker and said, we'll go back to Pharaoh and plead for him, the one who was delivered, the butler forgot about it. And then God's time came, and he came up to be prime minister. And we should meet many Christians from Egypt, Joseph gathered in the prayer groups and the CFO groups in Egypt.

We've got there, I'm sure of that. And then the brethren came, and now, of course, they rightly were frightened. You meant it for evil, the brethren who sold him, when they came back for food, you know.

You meant it for evil, God meant it for good. God did send me before you to preserve life. Sending isn't passive, it's active.

So God used your wick here, he sent me. Now that's a great help. It means I dare to say things come into my life I can't take.

They come through mistakes, they come through wrong acts, they come through something it shouldn't be. And to be able to say, all right, Lord, you sent it. And the point isn't what the effect on me, the point is now somewhere through this you're going to show yourself.

Now then, you turn that very thing into an adventure. It's on that basis we find the strategies of Christian warfare, if you like. That's what these prayer groups are.

They come on here in this way, strategies. The highest term I know in the Bible, which we're called, is royal priests. It's a wonderful phrase.

We're a royal priesthood. A priest, again, is one of those words that has a queer connotation. You think of a person with a long gown and a long face, but it isn't necessary to be a priest.

A priest, the wonderful description of a priest given in Hebrews is this. It's told us, it's told us of the high priest. The high priest is this person inside us.

We're priests because he expresses his priesthood to us. That's what it is. What does it say of him? A priest is a person taken from among men, ordained for men, to relate them to God.

That's a beautiful expression. In other words, we are people taken from among humanity, related to God, to go back to humanity, taken from among men, ordained for men, to relate humanity to God. It's therefore a word full of rich activity.

A royal priesthood means we have the authority to do it. And we're with all to do it in God, of course. And it's at this level you get it.

Every one of us, I suggest, probably many of us do, should be conscious of commission in our life. The word used of a priest, the great word in the Bible, is intercessor. And if you follow the intercessor through in the Bible, you'll find there are three phases given for intercessor.

He's commissioned, he's involved, and he's authoritative. In other words, someone quoted this earlier thing, God wondered if there's no intercessor. An intercessor isn't just a praying person.

An intercessor is involved. An intercessor is where you feel, uh-huh, that's my show, I'm in for that one. You see, you can't see that if you're blocked by your own self-reactions.

If, oh, why am I hurt? Why did this happen? You can't see. So this hurt self, that's where the dying comes. The dying of the Lord Jesus means that Jesus accepted his death at Gethsemane, not Calvary.

He had to die to his reactions. I don't want to do this. He died there.

And that freed him for God's strategic will to come through. You see? So now, we have to die inwardly. In other words, we have to say, no, all right, I accept this.

I don't like it, never have liked it. I've stuck with this thing for 20 years, and it's still horrible. Probably a husband if you're a wife.

But all right, God, see, I die, I accept. Now, when you accept, you're dying to your self-reactions. Now, when you die to your self-reactions, it says that the life of Jesus may manifest in your mortal body.

What's that mean? The next time that you've released this thing, a technique of God, you begin quickening yourself, and other people see it. You may get physical quickening. You get, you know, there's a release.

There's something about you which the world doesn't have in its problems. The world's under its problems. We're on top of its problems.

The world sinks in the way as we walk on it with Jesus. So you yourself become a person whose quality of life has something about it. There's quickening in your mortal body, which is both physical and the meaning of the whole thing with the body.

There's a quickening. That itself is an expression of God. And then, but you see, at that point, you become a strategist.

By a strategist, it means free from your own self-hurts. You say, what's God after now? Now you're the intercessor. What's God after? And I believe every one of us, many of us have, of course, our prayer group and so on, should have a consciousness of a commission.

Every life is a commission. You don't find a commission. You are commissioned.

Every single redeemed person is a priest. A priest is you've been taken from among, sent back to relate people. And so there is a priesthood in every life.

And I suggest, well, there is that place that many of you have in which we are conscious, huh? This is my army. It may be your own home. It may be this prayer service which you can reach over the world.

It may be anything, but you've got a sense of a commission. That puts something into you. Now, with a commission, it's involvement.

It's you are they. You're their bread. All right.

They're going to eat you. When they eat you, they find it isn't you at all. It's Jesus Christ.

They'll eat Jesus Christ. They drink you and they drink Jesus Christ. But there's involvement.

That involvement may be time, prayer, money, going, and all right. God shows you. This life isn't effort.

It's being driven. Don't receive Jesus Christ by grace and then work for him by law. No, service is not effort.

He'll make you. So don't you try and do a thing, but get the principle. Say, God, this is what it means.

I'm somewhere. I'm commissioned. I'm an intercessor.

You better make me show it, see where it is, and put me into it. He'll do that. He's pretty active.

And then you go along with him. And then there's involvement, but there's joy in the involvement. You don't use the word sacrifice.

Your love belongs to need. You're privileged to meet the need. So you don't call it sacrifice.

You call it joy. Involvement. And authority.

You're on the go, God. It's going to happen. In your sight, it's happened.

You're using authority. You know so much about the authority of faith. This is the full life.

So that's the end. There is no higher. We found the end when we found love, which means we exist for others.

We belong to others. This is the meaning of God, meaning of us. Therefore, it's the fun of life, the gaiety of life, the fulfillment of life, the purpose of life.

It's the all. Great. Life with a kick in it.

God bless the CFO.