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This is a conversational podcast that brings powerful moments from the Inspirational Media sermon library into fresh, engaging dialogue. Hosted by voices who care deeply about sharing timeless biblical truth, each episode unpacks key ideas from sermons, devotionals, and real-life stories — helping listeners reflect, relate, and rediscover hope in today’s world.
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2537-John-and-Paula-Sandford-Mental-Rest_128k
00:00:00 Speaker: Now. In the beginning, Adam and Eve knew mental rest with God. The Bible says that God would walk and talk as it was his custom, in the cool of the evening with them, and you can almost picture how God comes down and has fellowship with Adam, and talks with him and laughs with him and jokes with him, and says, hey, you've been tending the garden beautifully, and here's this suggestion, and here's this. And how beautiful a time they are having together. And you can understand this, uh, you who are married, have you had that kind of experience with your wife or your husband or with your children or with your parents, where some days the Lord has just put you so much in tune with each other. Your hearts and your minds are open so much to each other that you can say anything and they understand it. Mm. You can tease, you can insult, you can say you bum and they don't take it wrong. They get it the right way. And some days you're bound to be dirty dog no matter what you say or do, because you're just off and they aren't reading you right. And you want to go back out and come back in the door again, and maybe it all will change. Adam and Eve had that kind of relationship with God, I'm sure, where there was no unease, no dis ease disease, no dis ease between God and man. But then the very first thing, as we read yesterday, if you open your Bibles to Genesis three, the very first thing that happened was that there was unease, dis ease between God and man. And so God came down and he said, where are you? And you remember he tested him and he tried to give Adam a chance to confess. But now what I want you to see is what was going on between them now before, When God walked into the garden, Adam wouldn't have hid himself. He would have just come walking into his presence with delight, trusting God. But now Adam's mind is filled with guilt and fear, and therefore he hides himself. And when God says, where art thou? Adam doesn't receive the vibrations of love that say, this is an invitation to restoration. Adam receives it like thunder. Ooh, I'm hurt, I'm afraid. Where are you? He's going to get me. I've done wrong. How many of you kids have done something wrong? And you come in the house and dad says, how are you? I didn't do it. You know, because you've got it in you, you know, you've got that guilt in you. And so Adam doesn't just understand God's approach, and he tries three different times, and you have to picture time between those spaces of time between those questions and the love of the father God flowing over Adam and Adam's fear mounting and Adam's confusion. Because now his spirit is no longer reading God's Spirit and his mind is interpreting the signals wrongly. And so he makes confusing, lying answers. And then turn your Bible to John, chapter three twenty two, verse twenty two. And the Lord God said, behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil. The the man is become as one of us. Now, let me ask you a sharp question. Adam has just sinned by disobedience. Do you become like God by sinning? Okay. Didn't become like the father then, did he? Didn't become like Jesus. Didn't become like the Holy Spirit. Then what does God mean when he says, behold, the man has become like one of us. Which one? I thought you'd all answer that. Satan. See, Satan is still walking among the sons of God. He hasn't fallen out of heaven yet. The man has become like one of us. He's tested him and found that his mind no longer trusts God. Satan's mind no longer trusts God. Satan's mind is filled with all kinds of confusion, and he's become a liar. And he's become a braggart and he's become a buck pastor. And so God says, the man has become like one of us, that one. And now, lest he put forth and touch the tree of life, put him out. See, we can't make that eternal. That way of life can't become eternal. That kind of a way has to die. And so he puts him out from the garden. And then what happens is that all over the world, the descendants of Adam and Eve become less and less able to apprehend God. They can't receive him when he approaches. When the Holy Spirit comes upon man, they get only a part of him. He came to them in India and they got the idea that he's three, but the third one was a destroyer. They got the idea of Trinity, but they didn't see God for who he is. He came on them in China and they got the idea of his wisdom, but they failed to see the Redeemer, that he came on them in among the Aztecs in America. And they didn't receive him for who he is. They received that blood sacrifice was to be done human sacrifice, but it would be that of Jesus. They didn't know that. So all over the world, wherever God's Holy Spirit came on mankind, they didn't know him. They couldn't receive him. Why? Because the whole world had become mentally ill. Are you aware that the whole world is mentally ill? The definition of mental illness is that you do not perceive reality as it is. And the whole world is mentally ill. Now, let me clarify for you the difference between the terms and this may bring some rest to you just to have these terms clarified. The terms Earth and world, body and flesh. The world is not the things that you have. We know that we're not supposed to love the world. Whoever loves the world, hatred hates the father. The Scripture says the world is man's ideas, man's belongings, man's motivations, man's yearnings, man's ambitions built up as a thing, an idea, a way of living. That's the world. And that's what we are not to be a part of. It's not wrong to love your car. It's not wrong to love your house. It's not wrong to love your job. What is wrong is when we love those so much that we become caught up in them, and then we are caught in the world and away from God. Do you understand the difference between the world and the earth? The earth is good and to be loved. The earth is not the world. The world is our ideas and philosophies and belongings and associations that are not the Word of God. The flesh is that way of acting, which is the world built into our body, responses built into us. That's the flesh. But there's nothing wrong with your body. Saint Paul says a man loves his wife as his own body. We are commanded to love ourselves. See? Does that clarify some confusion for you? To understand that you are to love the earth and love your body. But the world and the flesh are the result of sin. Okay. Is that clarify? Some of you look like you sleep even as heavy or something. Wake up. Okay. I'm glad that some of you got that. All right. Now. God then moved upon his earth. God knew from the beginning that mankind would fall away from him and not understand him anymore, and get lost from him. He knew from the beginning, and so from the beginning he planned to come to his people. And so he came upon the Hebrew people, and he chose them as a peculiar and distinct people. And he said to these people, I will reveal myself. Now he knew when he chose them that they would not receive him all the way, but they would be that place in which he would prepare the mental ground for the coming of his son. And so he came among them, and he revealed more and more of his nature to him all the way through the Bible. In the Old Testament, you can see the development as he reveals his nature. Just for instance, mercy and justice. In the beginning, Elijah justice kills the eight hundred and fifty prophets. Samuel hacked Agag in pieces before the Lord. And then, as they progress and the Lord reveals more and more of his nature, you come through with more and more of mercy, until with Hosea he marries a harlot, showing the mercy of the Lord not to reject us. And so with Ezekiel he lays the burdens of sin upon Ezekiel, and then the coming of Jesus. So when he came in Jesus, all of this was to prepare so that he might come in Jesus to reveal to man who he is. John one eighteen. Remember, no one has ever seen God at any time. The only son who is in the bosom of the father, he hath made him known. He wanted to come in Jesus Christ to reveal himself. And now I have a question for you. Since mankind had lost the knowledge of God, and what mankind really needed was the true knowledge of God, why didn't God speak the true words of knowledge into a massive tape recorder? Turn it up full volume over the earth and play it for all of us. That would have got the right knowledge to us. You're shaking your heads. Why? Why didn't he do it? Had rock music on and couldn't hear it. Do you know why? Because he made man to be his habitation, right? The word had to become flesh. But let me show you a deeper reason why he had to come in Jesus Christ. There is a difference between Greek knowledge and Hebrew Christian knowledge. And I want you to understand that the Greek thinks and the Greek philosophers built their whole way on this, that, you know, truth with the mind. And when the mind has that logic in it, you are right. You are straight. That's not the Hebrew concept of knowledge. In the Hebrew concept of knowledge. You meet, apprehend, become, experience, become involved with, know with more than your mind. You know with your whole being. I can make this very simple to you. You who are married, would you rather know about your wife or your husband and talk all about your wife and your husband all the time? Or would you rather be with your wife or your husband? Which one did you rather you'd rather be with? And when you are with your wife or your husband? You know your wife or your husband in a deeper, fuller way than the mind could ever describe. Right? It's that kind of knowing. Whenever the Bible in the New Testament particularly uses the word to know, it's talking about that kind of knowing. And we need to have that kind of knowledge. And the reason I shared this with you is so that when Rivera and I talk about getting a new mind in Christ and renewing the mind, we do not mean that. Therefore you should go to seminary. We do not mean that. Therefore you should read a lot of books, although that would help. We do not mean that you listen to a lot of our teachings, though that might help, because those things only affect the surface mind. And God says, I will put my law in their minds and I will write it on their hearts. And so the only way that you can know the Lord is not by teaching or reading, but by prayer and experiencing and apprehending. Until every part of you knows what your mind knows. I'll make a diagram with my own person. Suppose that right here in the center is a circle. Here's another circle. Here's a bigger circle. Okay, inside of your spirit, inside of you, at the inmost level is the spirit. Next level out is the soul. And that soul is where your mind and heart has built into it all kinds of practices. So we'll represent those by swirly Quigley's. Mm. Squirrels. And now when you receive Jesus into your body, into your soul, into your spirit, your spirit is washed clean. And the Lord inhabits you in your spirit. His Holy Spirit inhabits you in all of your being. But your spirit is washed clean. There at the inmost level is love, and everything that ever says about you already have it. You are already complete. It's so true. The Holy Spirit is already inhabiting you, and God in his fullness is already there, inhabiting you. Now what blocks you? She said, why don't you act it out? What blocks you is that? There is undead flesh there. There is flesh that is not dealt with. There are practices of the old nature in Colossians three he says, you have been born anew. Put off the old nature with its practices. So there are practices in that soul life. And then if you were to diagram it, you see, you'd say, here's the Holy Spirit and here's this soul all around it. And when the Holy Spirit wants to express love, it ought to come out straight from heart to heart, spirit to spirit to the other person. But it has to come out through that warped nature. And so instead of coming out straight, heart to heart, spirit to spirit, it comes out like that, you know? And then we wonder, you know, I set out to love that guy and all came out backwards. You know, you've had that. I went over there to do good to him and everything went wrong. What's wrong? Because there was that thing in us that was undealt with. Now, I want you to show. I want you to see how that mental unrest gets built in us. So it happens like this When we are born. And we have to learn how to walk and talk. Right? Right. When you learn how to walk, you have to concentrate as a little baby. And you have to think, put this foot forward, keep your balance and God bless you so you can go plop, you know, and it doesn't hurt you because you're going to fumble and stumble many times. And once you've learned to walk, that becomes what is technically called an autonomous complex. It's an independent, complex way of operating in you. And all you have to do is think, walk, and your body takes over and you walk. Do you see that? If every time you wanted to walk, you had to think how to walk, you'd wear yourself out, right? So it's an economy to have those automatic things in you. If you had learned to walk in the South in Texas, you would automatically walk with a loping step. And if you had been raised in Japan, you walk with little mincing steps. See. And you don't think I'm going to walk that way? It's automatic. It's built in the same way about talking. Wherever we grew up, we learn to talk. We had to think p m and we had to learn how to do it. Once we learned, it falls into the unconscious. It's an automatic thing. Now all we do is think, talk, and our lips and tongue just go. And if we had been raised in the South where I came from, around Joplin, Missouri and Oklahoma, you we would say, y'all come back now, you hear, hear. You know, you're all deaf. You all come back now. Here, here. Or I'll coach you on. You know what that is? I'll quote you on that. See. What's that? That I'll tote, carry, take you, carry you, take you home own. Well you see that's on. That's the way they say it back there. I'll see. I'll take you on home. And it's built in. Now, understand, as we grow up, experience and our sinful reactions to our experiences builds automatic ways of responding into us the way we relate. If the father gives us affection and the mother, the heart learns to open and give back, the spirit learns to flow back and forth. If the heart doesn't, we build in an automatic defensive mechanism. So we want to hug people, but that automatic thing takes over. That's a practice in us that needs to be put off. That's the old nature. You understand that now. If people always criticized us, that builds in a defensive expectation that we're going to be criticized. And it's an automatic thing. It's a thing built right into it. It has a life of its own. We don't want to have it. but the next time we are triggered, what comes out that defensive way? Automatic slips right out of us. We say, I don't know where that came from. That isn't me, but it is because it's that automatic practice built in the old nature. I have a friend who talks about he's a doctor, he's a pediatrician, and he talks about the mind. He says it's a computer. And he says once you have programmed the computer, it will always work that way. And so it's just like building a railroad with train tracks. And once you've laid the tracks, then you put that train on and start it. It's not going to go anywhere else but right to that destiny. And so you build a habit of temper, and that computer is built right in. And next time you're triggered, what temper do you blow up? See, that's the old nature with its practices. Now, what Paula and I want to show you is that in many, many ways we as little children accepted into our being and programmed into our computer a practice of lies. Come on up now, Paula. We're just going to share back and forth, each of us telling stories as quickly as we can. First one I'll tell is about me. Now, you might find it hard to believe, but as a little kid, I was the original ninety seven pound weakling. I was very small, very weak, and with a great big, wide mouth and great big teeth. And I hadn't grown the frame to encompass those yet, and so ugly as sin. In fact, when my dad. I was very skinny and long fingers, you know, and and when dad came back from looking at me with his great big mouth, always open, hungry, and the great big long fingers and long bony things, he said, it's not a it's not a boy. It's a bird. Now I accepted that lie into me, see? And I built that in that I am weak and that nobody will like me. And especially girls won't like me. That was built in as a lie into me. And once that thing got built in, that was the pattern on which I operated, you see, because it was built right in as a practice in the old nature. And it didn't matter that in high school and in I worked hard and then I became a weightlifter, and I developed a powerful body, and I began to be not so ugly. And it didn't matter that I became somewhat popular, I still thought of myself as weak. See? And acted on that. And that nobody would like to be with me. And that no girl would choose me. I didn't know until after college, and Paula had me safely hooked that girls wanted to date me and she then told me she didn't tell me before. I'm not stupid. Now you see, it wasn't enough to know mentally the truth that I have a strong frame and a powerful body. It wasn't enough to know mentally, or for Paula to tell me that I'm good looking. Or at least likable. Yeah. And so that meant that there had to have something happen in my heart. See, it wasn't a mental thing. The heart, the mind of the heart had to be changed. And that could only be done by the Lord coming and speaking in my deep mind. His love for me. You see, it's not objective fact that gets us changed. It's the love of the Lord Jesus Christ whispering in our ear, you're okay. I love you. You're beautiful. I hope someday that you get to meet our son, Mark, who is twenty now, because I think you'd really appreciate him. And I'm telling you who I'm talking about. Because Mark wouldn't mind. He knows the Lord hasn't been processed, and he's really accepting a healing and a new image of himself. Our first two children were just seventeen months apart, and then there was a space of several years. And so when Mark first arrived in the world, he was little. He was the littlest one. And then after Mark, there was a space of five years. And so when Johnny came along, Mark really would have liked to have been the little one. And so he decided that he would think of himself as the little one. The thing that really reinforced his idea that he was little was that he was one of these slow matures. One of these oak trees and Mark really is an oak tree. He's very strong now, but he grew slowly physically and he matured slowly emotionally. And so he always thought of himself as being small. He couldn't compete in basketball because the ball always went way over his head. He couldn't jump high enough to get it. He couldn't play football because he didn't weigh enough. So he always felt out of it. I am small and this went to the extent of his. Even after he got his growth, after he was maybe a head taller than most of his friends, he still thought of himself as being small and he was afraid to compete. And when he'd go to the store, sometimes he would even buy a shirt that was a size too small for him. And all of this unconsciously, right. There was another thing that Mark had going. He accepted this lie that he was small. Tomorrow. Uh, God created Mark a very artistic nature, a very creative kind of person. When he was in the first grade, when they were teaching them how to make letters, Mark would draw the letter, okay, just as he was taught. But then he would make these little squiggly, swirly things, these little vines, and he'd make little elves and little fairies on them, because to him, that was the way he wanted to be. That was more exciting. And his teacher was sensitive enough to him for a time to go along with it, thinking, well, she could lead him out of it into something more practical. But then the other kids began to notice what Mark was doing, and that was more interesting to them than what they were doing. And so they started to draw little vines on theirs. So all of a sudden it wasn't all right to be creative. He was told, this is wrong. You have to stop that. You're doing something that's teaching the other children bad things. And so he accepted this lie that he was not to be created, that he shouldn't share what he was feeling on the inside. Mark is a he's an artist now. No matter. You know that he has turned out beautiful paintings that people want to buy right away. He would still be rather embarrassed and apologetic to share them because he'd accepted this kind of a lie. Well, Mark did get to know the Lord, and he he was hurting because we were always telling him, you know, think, Mark, before you say something, because he had a kind of a naivete that came out of this slow maturation, and he was always blurting out something in the wrong place. And we'd say, think, Mark, think, don't say that dumb thing. You know, we kept telling him this all the time out of our concern for him and our love for him. But what it caused him to do was to accept another lie about himself, that what he would say would be dumb. And so he started thinking of himself as dumb. And never mind that in college he'd come home with a four point. He still thought of himself as having a slow mind. Dumb dumb dumb. But when Mark asked the Lord to come into his life and take charge of him, the Lord began to give him new experiences. And last summer, when we went up to B.C. CFO, the first night that we were there, Barbara Chase, some of you know her, she she just felt like the Holy Spirit was asking her to call Mark up to the front to pray for people who were coming forward for prayer. Mark had never done this before. You know, he was the guy who was so dumb and insensitive and everything that he couldn't minister to anybody. But he trotted up obediently and he stood up there, and he prayed so beautifully for For people that they wept. And then something went wrong with the youth program. Part of the youth program. And they said, Mark, will you take that group of seventeen boys? And Mark took it. And to get them out of the rock pile in the throwing of garbage at each other and everything, he had to come out of his old self-image, and he had to assert himself to take charge and to say, okay, boys, you know, let's let's get this group going. He had to be a part of them, and they responded just fantastically to him. The Lord was giving him a new experience to rewrite on his heart, to teach him something new about himself. And he's going up there again in August now. But the final thing about Mark was that even though the Lord was giving him these new experiences to retrain his thinking, to give him a new nature and a way of thinking of himself, he had to come to the point of saying, Lord, I repent for accepting these lies about myself. I want you to forgive me for letting life put this over on me, and for hiding myself and my talents. And then he had to come forth with a strong I choose life. Amen. Amen. And that's where he is now. He's choosing life. Amen. Praise the Lord. Now I want to tell you a story which is a composite, because it's happened to so many people who've come to me. And it's not just one person, it's many. The man who comes to me, who has been criticized by his father or his mother every time he did something, criticized to the point where he has accepted the idea that he can't do anything, and further accepted the idea that he has no right to try and further accepted the idea that he's worthless and that he doesn't have any talent, and he doesn't have any power, and he doesn't have any right to do anything. And this kind of self-pitying, self burying stance is taught into many of us. Just as a little, you know, I had my earlier humiliation time and confession time. How many of you are honest enough to admit you've got that same self-pitying lie in you to one degree or another? That lie is dealt with as we let Jesus love us out of it begins with Jesus coming and giving you the grace of love. When he gives you that grace of love, you have the power to become honest. It's not in us to be honest. That has to be a gift from God. And when you let God love you, then you can admit honestly, Naturally. That's a lie. That's where I've been. God forgive me. I hate that thing. I will not bury my talent until you. You're a hard taskmaster anymore. I will get out there and I will try something. I will fall on my face and say, Hallelujah, Lord, I'm going to pick me up and I'm going to do it again. Hallelujah! They begin with letting love Jesus love you. And then admitting, I've got that self-pitying thing, I hate it, I don't want it anymore. Then the mind begins to come to rest. We have a friend who was raised in a home where there was quite a bit of conflict, and I think we've ever. John, somebody said that peace is not the absence of conflict, but she learned in her home that the only kind of peace that she could have would be if she removed herself from conflict, because the parents exercised such a stern, authoritative hand over her that she wasn't allowed to say no. She wasn't allowed to say. Maybe she wasn't allowed to say, but she wasn't allowed to express any kind of an opinion. And there was a lot of quarreling there in the home also. So she learned either that she would be sent to her bedroom to keep her from causing any conflict, or she learned to run to her bedroom in order to avoid the conflict. And this smoothed things over. It also kept her from growing up. She remained a child because she never really internalized any of the things that her parents were telling her to do. She just simply got out and thought her own thoughts very, very privately. But she never really met struggle. She never worked it through with her parents. She never really communicated with them. So when she got into a marriage, she had already accepted the lie that she did not have a right to express herself. She did not have a right to be herself. And so instead of being a wife to her husband, she was in a parent child relationship. What he said was law. And she mistakenly, when she heard about this business of submission, she thought, well, I'm submissive to my husband. You know, I just simply obey him like a little child. But there was something very much missing. What the Lord did was to cause a disruption or to allow a disruption to happen in her family in terms of the daughter and the daughter's marriage, because the daughter, in the process of meeting this young man, entered into such strong rebellion that this lady could see her own unexpressed, unfulfilled self in that daughter, and it caused a holy kind of turmoil, so that she came to the Lord. And she said, Lord, I'm sorry that I accepted this lie, that I should just be a little child forever and ever. That it wasn't within me to grow up. That I'm not really a person. I don't have worthwhile thoughts. Lord, forgive me for lying down and being a doormat and letting people walk over me. And so the Lord is setting her free, and for the first time in her life, she can be a wife to her husband. And she's laughing at herself, saying, you know, this, this is really ridiculous that my teenage daughter and I are going through the same thing at the same time. But she considers it a blessing because we can't grow up into all the fullness of God until we quit being that kind of a little child. We come into the kingdom as a little child, but not with all of those. Emotions. Not with all of that deadness, that unborn quality within us. I want to tell a story which is a true story. I've asked permission of the person, one of the people involved, and because it tells the man's side of the same kind of story. And this is a couple I love very much, and I visited in their home every once in a while. And one time when I came to visit, they took me upstairs in their new home to show me the bedroom. And the husband said, I don't like the bedroom. I said, how come? He said, I don't know. I said, I took a look at it and then the Holy Spirit gave me a clue. And I said, who designed and decorated this bedroom? He said, I did. I said, that's your problem. The woman is the nest builder. Let her decorate it. Let her decorate it, and she decorated it beautifully. And then he loved it. He just thought it was beautiful. Well, then I came. I told you that story as a parable. I came again later on, and this couple had gotten into some teaching. I'm not saying anything against the teaching itself. I don't know whether it was off balance, but they went off balance with it. And the teaching was all about submission, how the woman should be submissive and become everything that the husband wants her to be. It even and I believe this is off balance and even went to the place where they believed that if they went out to eat, the husband should order the dinner without consulting the wife what she wants. It wouldn't go over that. And so she dutifully became that. She became tried to be everything he wanted. And again, he had made the bedroom. Now he didn't like her. He had accepted the idea that rulership or headship meant he should dominate completely and dictate what everything should be. Therefore, by accepting that lie into his being and programming himself to become that he did away with her voice and her uniqueness as her own person, and became vulnerable to a woman who knew who she was. And so when I came, I had to reveal that to him and get him to be back with her and get her to get rid of the lie that she was not supposed to be herself. The other portion of himself, wasn't he denying the other portion of himself? He surely was. You see our relationship if I Dictate to Paula so that she ceases to be what God wants her to be and becomes what I want her to be. I have lost the other half of me. A lot of people interpreted my original teaching that way. You know, anytime we begin to revive something like man's headship and authority, people tend to take it and run off balance with it, whether we intended that or not. Paula and I, as far as I know, never had that kind of. Well, she's too strong for that anyway. There's just one one area where really I started to slip into this. It used to be that when John would ask me to give a part of a talk, my first thought was, now what shall I say that will please, John. You know, how shall I say this? And I would just stumble and fumble, and I'd be anxious and uptight and it wouldn't come out right at all. And then I learned, no, the question should always be, what does God want me to say? And it was only when I asked that question and listened for what God wanted me to say, that anything I had to say would dovetail with what John had to say. Paul prayed on that statement. It isn't germane to our original talk, but are you interested in that? Yes. When we become one flesh, it means that we become a oneness of understanding and spirit together. But it does not mean that one of us is obliterated for the other, or assumed into the other. The only way that we can become one whole being is for Paula to become everything God intended Paula to be me and me to become everything he intends me to be. And there is. There are some roles which God has given, in which he expects the man to assume a role of strength and protection and cover for the woman, but not so as to say to her that she's totally weak. Mm. Not so as to dominate or overdo. There is a stopping place and a balance in all things, but the man takes up that kind of a cover so that the woman can become what the woman is. There's no way that we can be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ, unless we understand that the nature of Christ is invitational. It's nurturing, it's warming. It's always inviting. Love never insists on its own way. I see what the Lord is doing here and causing you to ask the question and us to teach on this. You see, what has tended to happen is again, that we have accepted a kind of the world's definition of authority. And that's a lie for Christians, right? We have accepted the world's picture of the way the family ought to run. But in Christ Saint Paul says, be subject one to another out of reverence for Christ. Ephesians five twenty one following what is the word that God made male made he them co-equal? Right? Uh, Jesus is submitted to the father, but he is co-equal with the father. Paula is submitted to me, but co-equal with me. Praise the Lord. Uh, where are we? Performance. Orientation. We just do that. How about the invisible woman? Yeah. Invisible. Okay, I want to tell you about an invisible woman. Because this was a woman who had so completely lost touch with herself that she'd accepted the lie, that she was so nothing, that nobody would see her. And it started in her family, where a father didn't appreciate her, didn't affirm her, didn't compliment an upbuild her, didn't make her feel feminine and lovely. And the life of his life. But she was just simply there, and he couldn't be bothered. And that was her entire upbringing. So here we had her in the church playing the organ, and nobody was ever sure whether she'd played the organ that Sunday or whether somebody else had. She could come to a woman's meeting and they'd take attendance, but nobody could remember whether she was there or not. And it climaxed when we went to a meeting in another town. There were six or seven of us in a car and somebody said, Where's Chris? And there she was, right in the middle of us. We really, you know, when we're expecting not to be seen, not to be noticed. That's what we get. We get very much what we expect when we accept a lie about ourselves. Other people will believe that lie, too. Right now, I want to deal with just one more lie that we have accepted into our culture. We have accepted into our culture and thus into us. The lie that the body is here and the spirit is over here, so that we have accepted the lie that you can do anything with your bodies. And it's fun, but it doesn't affect your spirit. And that's a lie. And I want to rip and tear that lie out of our hearts. Oh, forgive me, Lord, for being angry. I want to get it out. I'll tell you why I'm so angry about that. Because I want every one of you to have what Paula and I have been given by the Lord. What we have been given is that neither of us has ever known any other one than the other one. And that to us is holy and beautiful and glorious. Why? Because in union you meet spirit to spirit, heart to heart, mind to mind, body to body, thought to thought, memory to memory, gratitude to gratitude, whole being, to whole being. And Paula is the only one who can tell me the truth of who I am. No other one can tell me the truth. If I enter into the wrong kind of relation with any other woman, that woman is telling me a lie. Because she's telling me who I am, and she has no right to tell me who I am. That's why the scripture says do that. When a man and a woman lie together in adultery, they have created confusion in Israel. That's why the marriage ceremony. Young people, will you please hear this? Please do not give away the glory that you are. Do not give away the glory that you are. God has created the marriage law and the marriage ceremony, because your spirits need to be tuned to each other by him, that you may complete each other. There is a holiness and a wholeness, and a beauty and a love that exists between Paula and me. And that's so beautiful. I never want to see it given away anywhere it belongs there. I hadn't planned that little part of the talk. But praise the Lord he had. Yeah, we have that. First, for those of you who have given it away and you've entered into a wrong relationship. That's why God gave the confessional. That's why Jesus came. That's why he died on the cross. That's why there's forgiveness. And you need to go to some person and confess your sin. And that person needs to know his authority, and he needs to take up that authority and say, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I pronounce that you are forgiven. Hallelujah. Now I want to add one more detail. That person and I'm teaching you this needs to know that you have the authority to separate those two spirits, because when they united sexually, they united where they should not. And you need to say, by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, I loose these spirits from each other. I set them free to be to their own mates only. Hallelujah. The whole bit. Okay. They know that they have the authority that you know. Well, do you believe the word of God? Okay. Then he said, he who sins you retain, they are retained. He who sins, you loose, they are loosed. He said, whatsoever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven. Whatsoever you bind on earth is bound in heaven. You, as a Christian, in the priesthood of all believers, have authority to pronounce in God's name of forgiveness. Do you know what a plenipotentiary ambassador is? That's a person who has given full authority to commit a whole nation behind him to action. If the authority if the ambassador says we're going to war, the whole nation goes to war, the whole nation backs him up. You are ambassadors for Christ. And when somebody gives a confession to you and you say, In Jesus name, I forgive you, all of heaven backs you up and it's done. Hallelujah. Now to return to our lesson, we're still about separating spirits. Okay. When people have joined themselves in adultery. When they ought not to have, or in fornication, which is sex before marriage, then you have authority and should use it to separate their spirits. And you just say, by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, I separate these two people. I command that their spirits be loosed from each other, and they be free to go back to their own mates, or to be free to be in themselves only. And I declare that they are washed clean in the blood of the lamb, even God, to remember thy sin no more. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed thy transgression from thee. It's done. I have to have an acknowledgement of the situation, or a desire the Holy Spirit has to bring to them a conviction. Yes, but once that conviction is there, it's done. Part number one you're dealing with. You can do it better for both. Yes. Give words of counsel. We're, uh, let's have a discussion time tomorrow afternoon, and you can ask me questions and I'll answer, but we'll get too far into this, and, uh, so strike that from that. Okay. I believe it's necessary to have the question and answer time, and I look forward to it. Now let's return to in the teaching because it's getting a bit late, and I do want to give the last part of the teaching. How does the mind get free of these lies? How does the mind accept the new truth? Now here's the stunning thing I want to blow your mind. I want to tell you that the carnal mind does not. The carnal mind cannot accept the new truth. The Scripture says in Romans seven eight, I believe it is that the carnal mind is enmity. Or is it eight? Seven anyway, the carnal mind is at enmity with the spirit. The carnal mind does not the mind your carnal mind, the one that was built in all your life apart from God? That carnal mind has a life of its own, and that carnal mind. The thing Chester makes makes Chester. That carnal mind doesn't want to die. That carnal mind is Herod sitting in the temple of your being. And if your carnal mind could find out where faith is being born in you, it would kill it. Is that clear? The carnal mind is at enmity. For example, when we get the gift of tongues, how many of you, when you got the gift of tongues? And I hope you did. And if you didn't, let's talk about that later. When you got the gift of tongues, your mind said, hey, cut this out. You're making it up. Right. Okay, let me tell you something. Your carnal mind didn't care two hoots whether you were making it up or not. What it really was after was to get itself back on center stage and not let the spirit rule in you. It didn't care two hoots about truth. It just wanted to rule. We've used our mind to make all the decisions and to rule in the carnal mind. Doesn't want to get off the throne of God in you and let the spirit rule. How about when you first accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior, and you went forward at an altar, or you did something in prayer. And then a little later on, the mind said, it's all imagination, huh? Don't say that was the devil. That was your own mind. It was your own mind, because your own mind doesn't want the Holy Spirit to rule. Your own carnal mind wants to rule you and dominate you and block the Holy Spirit out. What is the first function of the mind? Huh? What's the most important function of the mind? Do you know what it is? Make decisions. Memory. Huh? I got this from a medical journal. The first most important function of the mind is to block out. Right now, coming at you are signals of all kinds. You're tired, so you get signals from your rear end that says I'm tired. Your body is saying I'm tired. Your eyes are saying, go to sleep. Noises from outside are coming. All light impression. My movements, everything coming at you and your mind has to block out all except a few signals. And the mind does a function of overweening its task, and it wants to block the Holy Spirit out. Believe it. So God's only answer for your mind is death, your carnal mind. Death. And I want to speak right at you intellectuals now. So I didn't want to quit this talk. I want to speak right at you guys that have been priding yourselves on your intellectual honesty, and you're just not going to believe anything unless you can be sure that you believe it, and you're going to be honest and you're going to be true. What in the world gave you the idea that you could trust your mind? To be honest? Huh? Your mind doesn't care two hoots whether it's honest or not. All it does want is not to let you believe, and it can think up and your mind will think up. Problem after problem, intellectual debate after intellectual debate, question after question, problem after problem. And it doesn't care two hoots about the answers. All it wants to do is find something so you don't believe and it dies. I'm challenging you intellectuals tonight. You want to match with with somebody. You can match wits with me and I'll tell you. But until the mind dies, he that seeks to lose his life will find it. And when the mind dies, it'll come back to life. But this time it'll be the Holy Spirit quickening the mind. It must die to its dominance and control of you. And Agnes Sanford was the one that taught me this. And she prayed this kind of a prayer over me. And I just kind of suggest that you do something like it. Don't make it a magic formula, but you try this with somebody that you perceive this in. If they're willing and you've talked it over. But she prayed over me, was, Lord, I thank you for giving John a good, analytical, logical mind. I thank you that mind has brought him this far. But now, Lord, the mind is doing too much. And so I speak to that mind, and I say, peace, be still. Now, Lord, I just ask you to turn down John's mind for a while. We're not going to rob it of any of its powers. We're just going to turn it down a while and let it rest a while. And then when the Holy Spirit quickens it, it can have all its power back again. How about that? Does that sound like wisdom? She did that for me. And then the next thing that happened was that. That my mind staged a revolt right after the prayer. And we're in Whitinsville, Massachusetts, and my mind is going like sixty. It won't stop. Did you ever get in that? You go to bed at night and the mind won't stop thinking, huh? And so my mind is going on and I'm thinking, stop thinking. And then I start thinking about how to stop thinking. About how to stop thinking. And then I start thinking about how to stop thinking about that. You know, and the mind just kept on going and going and going. And finally I said, Lord, I gave you my mind. You have my mind. Therefore, I'm going to let it go. If it thinks blasphemous thoughts commits the unforgivable sin, whatever it wants to do, I'm going to let it go. If it thinks lustful thoughts. You're the Lord. You have it. And I'm not going to put any energy into it. I'm not going to do what it says to do. I'm just going to let it ramble. So I just lay back and let my mind ramble. Whatever it thought, it thought. And, you know, it was just like a bully teasing a girl. And when the bully finds out that he can't bother her anymore. He tires of the game and my mind. Tired of the game. And I just went to sleep in peace. So what I'm saying to you is that the mind comes to rest. Mental rest comes when we have given it to the Lord, and we know he has it. And we just let go in him and let it die. And when it dies, then he gives us a new mind in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we do this daily. I die. You only need to do it really once. But then the mind just, you know, I die daily, Saint Paul said. And we just let this happen and we give him back our mind and just let it die. So the mind blowing thing I'm saying to you is, huh? Mind blowing is die to your mind. We who are in Christ Jesus have crucified the old self with its desires, so that it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And when you do that death of your mind, and that means what went along with it? People, I want you to hear this one. What went along with it? That death was not a gimmick. What it meant was I said, Lord, I don't want any of the philosophies you taught me in college. I don't want any of that eastern mysticism. I don't want to think anything that isn't right in your word. Saint Paul said, taking every thought captive to obey Jesus. I want my mind not to think anything. You don't want it to think any of my pet ideas, any of my speculations. I want them to die. Any of my imaginations. I don't want them. I want the mind of Christ. And that's the only mind I want. And I prayed that again and again, and Paula and I, every night for a year and a half, two years, we prayed the same prayer, and it's not a ritual, but you might cherish the same prayer. Lord, we give you our heart, our mind, our body, our soul, our strength, our presence, our past, our future. Everything that we are, we give it to you. Well, it's. Well, that seemed like a ritual, a a rite. Are you ready for it? Let's just do it. Stand. Want to be at rest in you? We confess that our minds have cherished lies. Cherished lies, and we have cherished our own minds and our minds in opposition to your way. Your way. We ask now. That you bring our mind. Indeed. Our whole self to death with you on the cross. We reject our old ideas. Fill us with the Word of God. The Word of God. Bring us to rest. Bring us rest. We cherish our new life. In the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus Christ, we confess that we have the mind of Christ. Christ. And we shall have more. And more of life in him as you teach us your way. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Amen. Amen. Praise the Lord.