***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Dallas: And it wasn’t going to go together yet, but at least I got to pray. Let’s go back to last Sunday’s lesson thus for a moment because there’s some things I want to stress. It’s very deeply about prayer that I didn’t get to last Sunday. Because I find that people are stymied in their attempts to pray very often by these two assumptions. One is, there are two assumptions about God, and it’s so important to have them clear. It’s clear that they’re wrong, because if you don’t, you just don’t pray for yourself.
One of them is the assumption that God already knows everything and you can’t tell him his thing. Now if you believe that, it’s going to be mighty hard for yourself to pray. That assumption, false assumption, that God already knows everything and constantly you can’t tell him his thing. Now, many people make that assumption because they assume that God is omniscient and he is. But what does that mean? Omniscience refers to the capability of God to know anything whatsoever that he wishes to. If he wished to pry your mind and mine open and find out every little detail in there, it would be no problem for God. Not whatsoever. He can do that. He’s not limited like us very often. For example, we’d like perhaps to just pry someone’s mind open and tinker a little bit. We’d like to be able to figure out what in the world is going on in our kids’ heads, for example. But thank God we can’t do that. We would make an awful mess of it.
God has that power. And his restraint is not a lack of power, but a respect for the freedom and the dignity of the creature which he has made. He waits for the invitation to come in. And prayer is a way of opening the mind to God and saying, Come in. This is what I want. This is what I’m concerned about, what I’m hurting. It’s a way of opening the mind and saying, Come in.
Now, I really believe that if you will fix that in your mind and operate on that Prince, that itself may very well make prayer and delight to you. Something that is just a joy to do, whereas before it may have been almost impossible. If you understand the invitation of God into yourself and into your mind, and ultimately, you know many people go through their lives, even very devout Christian ministers who are watching, and they keep these little doors closed in their self. They in effect say, God, I’ll give something to this, I’ll give you that. I’ll invite you into the living room and maybe into the kitchen, but there’s this room over here that I don’t want you in. I keep the keys to that. And that’s probably good, for a while it’s good that we move towards God in statements, but still, behind the fellowship with God, that’s with others, is in that openness of everything. Openness of everything. That’s all we do in prayer. We open ourselves in time to God, but we assume that He is waiting for the invitation.
When we learn that openness to God, our fellowship becomes something else. Do you recall that in the first chapter of the Little Pistol, John, it says, when we walk in the light as He is in the light, then we have the fellowship of one or the other. We can’t have fellowship one or the other in us, we’re walking in the light. That means unless we’re open, that means unless we can let others know our thoughts, our actions, our intentions. We can sing loud, loudly, and we can do all kinds of things but whip up a little fellowship, but there is nothing that brings fellowship walking in the light of one another, which means openness, openness opens, which allows us to be free, no matter what anyone says about us, no matter what anyone knows about us, free and open. And we have to learn that in the same way we’ve done. When we have fellowship with God, it’s because we open ourselves in prayer to Him. He respects us as His free creations, and then He comes in.
Now there’s another assumption that is equally important, and that is the second one I have listed here, number five on the last Sunday’s sheet, if you don’t have that, check it when you get home. That is the assumption that God has everything settled, everything’s already fixed, everything’s already settled. You can’t, in other words, change God’s mind about something. God is, as the theologians say, immutable, is He not? What does immutable mean? It’s unchanging. It means that He’s got His mind set on something you’re trying to take away. Immutable, unchanged. And unchanging, so my friend, if you know someone’s got their mind already made up, this is not an aggravating thing. If you go to someone and they’ve already got their mind made up, and they may even play a little game with you about, well, ask me for things. And as you go through the routine of asking and communicating with them, you begin to find out that they’ve already hit the scene. They already have decided how they’re going to deal with you. This often happens when you’re dealing with bureaucracy, not once ordered in business or in government or even in churches. You will find someone who will listen to you and act like they’re thinking about what you’re saying, and you’ll find out later that they have already made their decision.
Now the feeling that people often have about God, that He already has His mind made up, totally defeats prayer. And we must come to understand, if we’re going to pray, that we are co-workers with God. We work together with Him. He works together with us. We are co-laborers with God, as Paul says. That is, we are actually co-operating with Him to determine how things come about. I hope you will take that in. At least think about it. We are co-operating with Him to determine how things come about. That’s why we don’t ask. Of course we don’t just ask, we also do other things besides ask. But when we’re co-laboring with someone, when we’re working with someone, and ask something, it is important that we both work and communicate, that we have an understanding of where we are and where we’re going, how we relate to them and how they do us, what they’re doing and what we’re doing, and how we can help them, how they can help us. And the same thing is true for others to come.
Now the teaching of Jesus in prayer is exactly in accord with these two assumptions, as I’ve revised them lately, that when we pray, we inform God about things. And when we ask, we co-operate with Him in determining what the future will be like. Why does God do certain things? The answer. Because someone of His friends asked Him. Isn’t that right? His friends asked Him to do that. See, that’s the way things work. Even God is a personal thing. It is a personal relationship between a set of personals. And personals do things. Why? Because other people ask.
Now when you get to thinking about prayer, you have to be careful and not be too profound. You have to be very careful about that. Don’t be too profound. Because the basic reason why God asks is prayer is simply because someone asks. Someone asks. And believes. And believes. Right. Otherwise, it would matter. Because asking is different from sort of running a show or a word or something. Like when a little child comes and asks. That asking flows out of believing. Or responding.
This is why very often they run, in the New Testament, these are run together. This says ask. Now, see, the assumption is that if you do that, you believe. And I think this is true. I think that a lot of things called prayer really are attempts of people to do something because they don’t believe. Attempts to manage or manipulate God or show that they are righteous or wrong. But the prayer that comes simple, straightforward, asking, out of a fairly childlike confidence in God. That’s what Jesus has in mind. He says ask and it shall be given. Not it shall be overseen and it shall be done. It’s just that simple.
And this is why it’s important to realize the dangers of becoming too profound. It is so simple. And the main reason why people don’t perceive anxious prayers is because they don’t pray. It isn’t because they do pray and something else is praying. It’s just basically because they don’t go at it and stay at it.
This again is Jesus’ teaching. Persistence. You know the story in the 18th chapter of Luke about the unjust judge and the woman who came and said to him, Avenge me of my immunity. He spake a parable unto them that men ought always to pray and not think, that is, not give up. Saying there was in the city a judge which feared not God, neither regarded man, but there was a widow in that city. Now the widow was taken because the widow was the most insignificant of people in that city. And she came unto him saying, Avenge me of my adversary. And he would not for a while, but afterwards he said unto himself, though I fear not God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubled me, I will avenge her, lest her continual coming weary with me. Isn’t that beautiful?
Jesus is, again, don’t be over profound about prayer. He’s talking about the personal heart of the universe and he’s saying to us that it is a person who gives in to people who come and ask, who come and ask. People who don’t go up like a pouty child and say, well, I’m going to go out in the garden and eat worms because I asked once and I didn’t get an answer. Your children don’t just ask once, do they? If they just ask once, pretty soon you begin to think, my kid dressed me. What’s wrong with my kid? They just ask once. They don’t even take no for an answer, do they? I trust yours don’t mind, sir. They don’t take no for an answer. I’ll tell my kids something. They’ll say, da, da, da, da, da, da. I’ll say no and five minutes later I will find out that they’re making provisions to do it. Really? What your kids do then? Sure.
Jesus does not mind taking something as simple and beautiful as that and saying that’s what God responds to prayer. We’re going to spend one session, sometime this month before we quit, just on children in the kingdom of heaven. They have so much to teach us and this is one of them. Children know how to have it. And again, it’s why Jesus said, if you then be equal, honor it, know how to give good gifts unto your children. How much more will the heavenly Father give to the Holy Spirit? The best of all gifts. Isn’t that what the Bible says?
Now, just one further observation about prayer. I put down the fifth point on the last machine for the last Sunday. The unimportance of feelings of prayer. And I’m sort of tempted to spend a lot of time on that, but perhaps simplicity is the best thing here too. Feelings make a difference. I mean, look, if you don’t feel like praying, that’s no reason for not praying. If you feel like praying, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to do especially well. I think people tend to suppose that in order to pray you’ve got to really be spiritually flat, for example. Or you’ve got to be so desperate that you try anything. And if you don’t meet one of those two conditions, you might as well just sort of sit down and go to sleep and forget it.
Well, that’s one of the worst mistakes in the prayer life. I mean, you never find anyone counseling you to pray when you feel like it. I mean, just think, the Bible and of all the spiritual literature you’ve ever read. If you ever found anyone who really had much to say about the spiritual life, you said, not when you feel like it, pray. And when you don’t feel like it, don’t pray. Just say, when you feel like it. It’s about like saying, when you feel like it, pray your best. When you feel like it, do all the other important things. There are things which need to be done at certain times, and that’s it.
Now Paul says, pray without ceasing. Just pray all the time. Pray when you feel like it, pray when you don’t feel like it. You know, Negro spirits of Paul, every time I feel this spirit moving in my heart, I will pray. That’s one reason why there’s so little praying done. Now anyone who knows anything at all knows that if you don’t feel like praying, if you go ahead and pray very often, you get to feel more like praying. Very often I don’t feel like singing, but if I start singing, I’ll feel like singing. I don’t feel like dancing, but if I start dancing, I’ll feel like dancing. I don’t feel like working sometimes. When I start working, get up a sweat. Boy, I feel like working.
Our minds and our bodies are tied together in a certain way, which we have to learn, that if we put our bodies in certain positions, through certain actions, then our feelings begin to pop. This is true also in the naked side, because we have to watch where our bodies are and what they are doing, or our feelings are going to go the wrong direction. We have to watch them very carefully.
Be very careful now. This Paul says, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies. Right, bodies. He said, present your mind. Now we have that in mind, that he knew that if the body was presented, the mind saw. Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is the rational thing for you to do. And be not conformed to the Word, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, the renewing of the mind upon us.
So let’s remember that in prayer, the important thing to do is pray, whether you feel like it or whether you don’t. In regards to prayer, pray, pray, pray. Remember that prayer is a simple coming and speaking to God, asking for things. Very definitely. Expressing the attitudes of love, or sometimes even non-distrust and concern towards God. If we have what we might regard as wrong beings towards God, the best place to put those are on God, so he can take care of them. We open our heart entirely to God. Invite him in. He does the house cleaning. We don’t clean the house up. You know. And then invite him in. Invite him in. And he puts things in order.
In fact, when I watch myself and others, I show up and remind them of the story, of the real story of the person that housed downtown in the downtown area. And he fixed it all up, you know, to sell it, made it, repaired. He said, I’m looking real asleep. So, he came by two days later, saw the bulldozer running through. And he was angry, you know. He had fixed that house up. All they wanted for was to tear it down, build a skyscraper. And very often, that’s the way we are in our own hearts. We just have to understand that we give it to God. We open our hearts in prayer to God. He comes in, and if he wants to build a skyscraper, or whatever, he builds it. Amen.
Okay. Well, you can’t exhaust the subject of prayer, but the important thing is to do it. And we’ve been working on this in the evenings here. We’ve been doing it, and with some good results, I think. And I want to move on now to the lesson for today. You have the sheet before you. This is a very important lesson, I think.
Because it gets into a change in the ministry of Jesus that was absolutely crucial. If you want to understand the incarnation, if you want to understand the work of God in Christ, you have to remember that Jesus was a real flesh and blood human being. He did not know everything. He had not learned everything. He knew a lot, but he himself says that he didn’t know everything. And when he came through his experience as a child, as a young man, then as a full grown man, he was going through a process of learning. And as the consciousness of his Messiahship dawned upon him, he was then faced with the problem of working out his program for instituting his cause upon the earth.
The first years of his open and public ministry were greeted with just all the acclamation and joy and acceptance that he imagined. The multitude’s thought was everywhere. Later on, he had to run some of that multitude off, actually. He never saw the multitudes. He never tried to get anyone to follow him. He told some people to follow him. But he never tried to get crowds to follow him. These were all his individuals. The multitudes were his problem. He had to have time to train a small group. That was his name. He had to train a small group to do his work. So that when he was dead, there would be a group to spread across the basin here. He realized that he wasn’t working by any kind of mass psychology, but rather by the power of God and souls within his people.
Now during the early years of his ministry, let’s say the first year and a half just to speak very loosely, he largely carried on the ministry by himself. And this is what we see up to the end of the ninth chapter of Matthew. He’s carrying on a ministry of two sorts, of teaching and loosely of healing. Let’s include all kinds of deviations from health, which we might find in a human being and understand those things. This is what was called the evil section in those days. And whatever else, he healed people. And this was a major part of his work.
If you look at the eighth chapter of Matthew, you can see that this is given almost entirely to stories of healings, which he’s accomplished. When he comes down from the office or wherever he was, whatever it was he was teaching on, he may have been poor. When he comes down there, the first thing that he meets is a leper, who comes to him and says, Lord, if you will, you can make me. Jesus put forth his hand and touched him, saying, I will be not clean. Now, it’s important to see that what Jesus is doing here is not a ministry of prayer. You know, he doesn’t go off and say, well, I’ll pray for you. Right? He doesn’t say, I’ll pray for you. He says, I will. And he touches you. He doesn’t pour oil on his hand. He doesn’t go through the rigmarole. He touches you just like that.
Later on, he goes into Peter’s house, finds his mother-in-law sick, takes her by the hand and gets up. Just like that. And she’s well. That’s not a ministry of prayer. It is a ministry of something which was in Jesus himself. A kind of power which was transmitted from hell.
But one of the loveliest stories here is the one that shows up later on in the ninth chapter. I wonder if that word is used here. Let’s read this one. The twentieth verse of the ninth chapter. Behold a woman which was diseased with an issue of blood. Twelve years. She had been sick for twelve years. And in the other parallel passage, I believe this one where it says, She had spent her living practicing on doctors. Isn’t that the one? Spent her living and hadn’t done a video for twelve years. Just thinking of being sick for thirty. Yeah, that’s right. I mean, that’s right. But it says she got worse. Which isn’t an uncommon story.
Jesus. And then she came and touched him and his garment. Now, I’m not really sure how she managed that. I’m not sure what him was talking about. Whether she got down and touched the lower him or what it was. She touched it and touched the garment. She said within herself. You see, here’s that beneath, that faith. Now, obviously when these people come to Jesus, these are people who had been watching him. It wasn’t that they’d just seen him for the first time. They had been watching him. You see, he had had a public ministry for quite some time. He was a famous man. You mustn’t forget that, okay? I mean, he was more famous, probably, in that whole area north of Jerusalem up to the, well, let’s say, Syria, Syria and the other, across the place. Probably more famous than any minister that we know of in the United States today. People from that whole area would walk and bring their families, carry their sick, and come to him. That’s what it said.
So she came to him and touched his garment. And Jesus turned about and said, daughter, be of good comfort. Thy faith has made me whole. And the woman was made whole from that area.
Now, in one of the parallel passages, you have this beautiful statement. Jesus said, it says in Jesus, perceiving in himself that virtue hath gone out of him. Now, virtue is a terrible word there. Because, in the Greek word, it’s duns. It’s the same one which is translated that the gospel is the power of God and the salvation of the duns. It’s power. And he felt drained, felt drained, knew that someone had touched him and drawn power from him. And he turned around and said, who touched me? And the disciples laughed at him and said, what do you mean who touched you Jesus? People pushing you and jaw-sleeking, everybody was touching him. Everyone was touching him. But one who touched him, touched him with a definite need in faith. And all the rest of them just jostled him around. They didn’t get anything out. But this woman did.
That’s an interesting point too, isn’t it? Because there are many people jostling along with Jesus and getting nothing from him. It’s the touch of faith that brings. That faith is often mixed with desperation. There is a peculiar openness, a touch of faith, which brings the power of God into life. Brought it into this woman which you see. There was something in Jesus that went out. What matter can pray were it to come from heaven or somewhere else. It was something which was placed in him.
Now that’s important because Jesus was thronged in this ministry. He couldn’t do all of the work. And this is where the verses come in which I ask you to memorize today if you’d look at the end of the 9th chapter of Matthew. The 35th verse thumbs up Jesus’ work. And Jesus went about all of their cities and villages, teaching in their sin. One thing he did, he taught us. Preaching the gospel of the kingdom. That’s different from teaching, you know. That’s proclaiming a fact. And healing every sickness and every disease among the people. Those three things he did.
But when he saw the multitude, he was moved with compassion upon them. The word there is a very strong word. Which is used for a wild animal tearing the insides out of its prey. He was torn. He was just torn. Like something had just reached in and grabbed his heart and pulled it out. You know that feeling? He was looking at the multitude. His heart was moved with compassion upon him because they had fainted. Fainted. Fainted. This is a word which some of the Greek Virginians used to flay dead fish. Like if you have a body before you, it’s just being flayed like that, you know. They fainted. They were flayed by the circumstances of life. Have you ever seen one flayed by the circumstances of life? That often happens, doesn’t it? The circumstances of life just flay us. Just tear us. They fainted. And were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.
A sheep without a shepherd are the pitiful things you can imagine. If you’ve ever had an occasion to observe sheep, especially in the mountains, the pasture of a sheep without a shepherd is pitiful. They get lost. They get wandered off. They can’t find their way home. You go out at night and you hear all these digital things hollering. This thicket and that mountain. They can’t do anything but sort of wait there and shiver until the wolf comes and gets them. And that’s the way he saw it. To all these people, fainted, scattered abroad, sheep having no shepherd.
Now then he said to the disciples, truly the harvest is plenty. They give some peculiar advice, but this advice is the heart of the mass. Pray. He doesn’t say get up there and get them in, does he? Get out there and get that work done. No, he doesn’t say that. He says, pray ye the Lord of hearts. Pray. Now why do you suppose he said that? Well, the reason is very simple. Before people can work in this harvest, they have to be equipped. They have to have in them what Jesus had in them. And so he says to those around him, pray ye the Lord of the harvest that he will send forth labors into his hearts.
Now the next chapter is a picture of how this works. He gave them what went out of him when that poor woman touched him. He gave them something. Power against unclean spirits to catch them out, and to heal all manner of sickness, all manner of disease. Now the names of the twelve, and then he lists the twelve apostles.
See, Jesus realized that the word was too large for him personally to do. It couldn’t be done by one man, no matter how powerful that man was. It was necessary that he delegate power to others. Now why doesn’t he just go get some poor person walking along the street and dump a little power on him? He started putting down the street, just screwing that power everywhere, and all this good. Well, we don’t know by now, have we not? That power is for a prepared people. Power is going to be an awful responsibility, and power is developed to hurt people as well as to help them. Many times the power of God is used to hurt people. You may be surprised to hear anyone say that, but it is often used to hurt people. God gives power to men, and they choose to misuse it. So when Jesus goes to find some laborers to send forth into his harvest, he picks on people that he’s been preparing for some time, and he gives that power to them.
And he says to them, I love this, this by the way, I don’t know what kind of commission you want to call it, but it’s the first commission which Jesus gave to his disciples. It begins in the fifth verse, and it would be a good one for you to memorize all of it. These twelve Jesus sent forth and commanded them, saying, go not into the way of the Gentiles and into any city of the Samaritan. Why do you say that? Was it there were no sick people in Samaria? None of the Gentiles needed to know about the kingdom of God? No, it isn’t that at all. It was that the people that had been prepared to receive the ministry of the people whom he had prepared were mainly in the nation of Israel. The Gentiles and the Samaritans were on his agenda, were they not? They just came later. They came later. Don’t go to those, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
As you go preach, say, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Now here’s the commission, as you go, preach. Preach what? Preach the presence of God’s kingdom, the presence of God’s community. Preach that, proclaim it. What does preach mean to you? Proclaim is what it means. It means just announce, announce. Don’t argue for it. Don’t kill yourself explaining it. Announce it.
Now the word for preach in the New Testament, or evangelizing, is the word announce, and it’s associated with the word which is used to describe a man who runs before the king, you know. Announcing, the king is coming down the road. Announce it, just announce it. What’s that? How do you do that? You know, anyone can do that. We have got so screwed up over this business of soul, that many people don’t even know that the primary responsibility is to announce something. And just let people fly in any direction they want. The task is to announce the kingdom of God. Just go and announce it. Walk into a place and say, the kingdom of God is available. It’s here. Walk into it. We don’t even have to tell them to walk into it. It’s the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is available. It’s right there. It’s not about to come. It has come. It’s here. Just announce it. Preach, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Now then, as you preach it, show it. By taking the power of that kingdom to heal the sick, to cleanse the lepers, to raise the dead, to cast out devils, freely ye have received, freely here. That is, just indiscriminately let that power flow. Indiscriminately. Don’t try to chant with it. Don’t try to bargain with it. Sell it. Manipulate it. Do anything. Just let it go. Not your kingdom, anyway.
Now, I only have a few moments. I’d love to go into the remaining part of this 10th chapter with you. I want to ask you, however, to be sure and study Rome and Moprium here, because a lot of misconstruction about what we’re to do today has come, because people have taken the rest of the 10th chapter as eternal directions as to how we’re to live. And, for example, they read, provide neither gold nor silver nor brass in your purses, nor script for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet stage, for the work that is worthy is me. And so, they say, well, we’re supposed to get up, walk out the door, and just suppose that it’s all going to fall on us as we go along.
Jesus himself explicitly revoked these instructions. These instructions were given at the time when Jesus was at the height of his popularity. Everyone knew him, and to be a disciple of his was to have provision anywhere you knocked on the door. He knocked on the door almost. He had made provision for them by his popularity, by his acceptance on all hands. But later, when the tide turns against them, he says, get some money, go get a sword. Prepare yourself for that, because you’re not going to have it like this anymore. That’s the 10th chapter of Luke. I’m sorry, not 10th chapter of Luke. The 10th chapter of Luke is where he gives the parable. What is it, the 21st? The 22nd chapter of Luke, 35 through 38.
So please study that. And also, look at the fourth point on the outline. Jesus is joyful at the results of this. Now Jesus found out something. He found out that he could give power to men, and that they could go and do the work of the kingdom of God without him being there. Now you remember that Jesus learned things as he went along. If you forget that, much that’s in the Gospels will not make any sense, and you will gradually dehumanize Jesus. And to dehumanize Jesus is as great a heresy, I don’t like that word, that’s a bad word. It’s as great a mistake, it’s as great a personal disaster, I should say. Forget about the heresy. As it is to just make it into a mere human being. He wasn’t the one or the other. He wasn’t merely God, and he wasn’t merely his man. He was both. He was both.
You must remember that he had a problem of working out if you wish the administrative details of his kingdom. And this was a major step forward, and the word that is used here in Luke 10 is very strong. Jesus was ecstatic with joy. He was jumping for joy, just really fine, because he was exalting, exalting in his joy because he realized that he had the key to the success of his cause upon this earth. He realized that it worked, and he realized that now the cause was independent of his personal faith of death and transmission into an unseen world of spiritual presence. He realized now that that power would rest in the hearts of men and would be triumphant, and as he put it elsewhere, the gates of death would not prevail against that. The gates of death would not prevail against that.
All right, now I want to turn away from discussion of the passage here directly to a discussion of our own situation. Because the question arises now, what are we doing here? There’s a place called Wood Lake Avenue Friends Church. So, do we? Well, a lot of people think it is. There’s a group of people there. What does that group of people do? Is it our mission? What’s our mission? What is our mission? Is it our mission to make sure that the doors are open at 9.30 on Sunday morning and the floor goes at 12.30? A little bit of activity of some sort goes on in here during those, what, three hours out of the entire week? Is it our business to run services? What is it?
I hope you will really ask yourself that question. Do you notice the mission that Jesus put his people on is very different? Go, preach, heal. That’s very different. Now the multitude which Jesus saw is still here. Have you ever looked at the multitude? Have you ever just looked at people? There’s a multitude of people here and they are still being played like dead fish. They are still scattered and they are without a shadow. What’s our mission? What is our mission? I’d like to get perfectly specific about it.
What? Alright, but how do we get specific? Yes, but how do you do that? What do we do as a group? We, some of us, I’m sure have found that kingdom. Now then we go out from that kingdom to the multitude. What do we do with the multitude? Jesus had preached the kingdom of God, proclaimed it, and healed it. Proclaimed the kingdom of God and bring the resources of that kingdom to bear upon the need for more. What is our mission?
Now I find that in most churches where I go and say that kind of thing, there really isn’t a ready answer. Some churches do have this. A definite answer. But most churches I think don’t. And I think that this is something that you should be asking. What are we doing here? There are all kinds of needs around us. What are we doing about things?
I think that one thing that defeats us here is that one wish well we read isn’t so well. One is what is to be done. To be done. Preach, I don’t preach. To you, I don’t eat. So what shall I do? We must not despise what the Old Testament calls the day of small things. Rather than despising things, we must find out what those are and do. What are the small things to which we should give ourselves?
I mean this church has obvious, obvious things that it could be doing. One is it could be educating itself and its children. There is an educational mission of the church. What are we doing about that? There is an educational mission of the church. Not only for those who are in it, but for those who are outside. What are we doing about that? We tend to think of, well what do you do besides you can have Billy Graham in? Or you can go around and knock on the doors and leave pieces of paper in the door? Or you can do other things like that and that’s it.
But you know, the Lord ought to be able to liberalize our imagination a little bit beyond that. If we put our minds to it, if we decided we wanted to, do something. With educating the people who come here and the people who don’t come here. I mean, why should anyone suppose that our mission to people should depend upon them coming here? Do you ever think about that? What did Jesus do to his people? Did he say, okay, you go sit down in a place and everyone who comes to you, do you do something for them? No. He said, go. He sent them out. And after these twelve, he said, now he sent out another seventy also, two by two. They went out through all of the cities of Israel where he was going to come.
How do we go out today? Obviously we can’t go out exactly the same way they would have. Well, we can do something in that direction, but I suspect we can find a lot better way. How do we go out? Are we even thinking about this sort of thing? What about the elderly people in our society? What about those who have criminal records? What about children who can’t live with their parents? What about all of these people who are being played like that bitch? You mean we are to just sit and wait until occasionally someone feels the Spirit and decides to preach the Gospel? Or go out and heal somebody?
No. We are to find within our fellowship those ways of working to which the people in this group can give themselves. They don’t all have to give themselves the same thing. And do it. Now one of the reasons why our lives get so drab and so dreary is for the lack of any sensible, magnificent sort of enterprise to give ourselves to. When this happens, lacking a thing gives to give ourselves purpose and joy, and we start to worry about our health, or our sex life, or why the neighbor doesn’t treat his kids just right. We drive ourselves with nothing over what people think about us. We take all these little trivial things and just give ourselves, literally give ourselves, health. Mainly because we don’t have anything to integrate our lives into that give those lives some sense.
And the spreading wave of sickness and difficulty which is going across even our little valley here and the rest of the so-called civilized world is largely due to the fact that people lack permission. They lack permission. We as a church, if we have anything to preach, anything to teach, anything to give, it must include a mission.
That’s right. But he didn’t empower them when he first met them, did he? That’s exactly right. Whether you don’t get that until you take the steps to prepare yourself for it. These people, as I said a moment ago, they didn’t get the power the first time you met them. He didn’t walk out in indiscriminately and put it on people. He prepared them for it. And that’s where we are today and the question comes, what are we going to do to bring ourselves and others to the point of preparation where that power is going to be given to us.
We want to thank God that power isn’t given. We want to thank God that power isn’t given. Because if we had it, it would be used destructively. Because most of us don’t have our egos enough in subjection to God to do His will. And we would lower the boom on people probably if we had it to do with it.
The point of the good is not the point of empowerment. It is the point of saying, what discipline will I undertake as a mission to prepare myself to live profitably through the day of small things so that I may come to the point of accomplishment.
Well, we better quit. The bell has already gone off. Well, there’s so much more I’d like to say on this, but I’m going to have to leave it between you and the Lord as your imagination so that we can discuss it privately. And I hope that it will begin some reflection on the part of all of us as to exactly what it is that our mission might be. That’s where we must begin. We must begin there. And I hope that individually you may do some reflection on this even today and this evening. Then let’s try to talk about this with one another. Let’s decide what it is. Okay, let’s break.
Well, I have that. Did you update the mic? You know that helping another person is one of those difficult things in the world. And that so often when we go to help a person we actually hurt them. You know that? We actually hurt them. Being able to help another person. And actually I think one of the reasons why we get all mouthed up and just trying to help others very often is because we have a sense of our intelligence to really help others. And things when we try have turned out bad so many times that we don’t feel like going to the person and saying, Here, let me stick my thumb in your eye. We just fade away.
So the gifts are harnessed separately to different people. Now let me just show you how that increases the interdependence. We have one in common. We have the fruit of the Spirit in common. That makes us one. But the gifts also make us common. Because you see, in order for me to function rightly, I need to be pastoring. I need to be taught. I need to be here. So the gifts of the Spirit unify us, not because we’re having a problem, but precisely because we don’t have an income. And consequently we need one another.
You have the unification of the body. Now let me point out how beautifully that illustration of the body works. And as you go away, and he’s all impeached, and he’s rolling along, what has to happen? His ears have to start to function rather than his mouth and his hand. They have to start functioning rather than what happens if they do. Gradually, you get the being which comes into mature powers, and you get the unity of fantastic and extremely varied proportions. But it’s all impeached, and it’s functioning beautifully.
What happens if they don’t? What happens if the ears don’t work? The legs don’t work. What happens to them? Well, it hangs around, but it doesn’t at all, does it? You don’t have the kind of unity that you will have in a mature, well-developed human being, where the members are ministering to one another. Right? He can’t brush his teeth. He can’t feel his body. He can see what’s that going to mean to his other members? That time, right? It’s not just that those who work right, what’s that going to mean?
So you see, all the members ministering to one another enhances and completes the unity which is given by the fruit of spirit. The fruit of the spirit is important, that’s the basis. That’s what Paul means when he speaks of a more excellent way in the last verse of the 12th chapter of 1st Corinthians. He says, “…the best gifts, and yet I show you a more excellent way.” Many people said, here’s the greatest gift of all that’s coming, love. That is a terrible conclusion. Love is not a gift. It isn’t in the same category. And most importantly, it will not replace the gifts. It will not replace them.
And so many people have just fallen all over themselves, and for the lack of a simple reading, they have hurt themselves so bad. They just said, well, let’s just sit down, we’ve got love. We’ve got love. All you need is love. That’s just like the little baby saying, I don’t need to learn how to walk. I don’t need to learn how to do these things. I don’t need to develop my power, I’m all in one piece. That’s good enough, let’s sit down and do them.
It’s the same sort of thing. If you go into many church houses where people meet together today, that’s what you find. And what you find is that, in fact, you cannot maintain love just like the little baby will gradually die, I mean, just as soon. You can’t maintain love. You maintain a kind of outward uniformity, a show of love, nothing or other. But you cannot maintain love without the gifts of the Spirit. I’m just pointing out to you how the gifts function.