Acts America

Church Life or Christ Life

Psalms 42:1-6

Listen to these words and don’t take them for granted that you've just read them before, but allow the Holy Spirit to speak to your heart as we read these scriptures.

“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar."

This is obviously someone that is crying out to God. Their heart pants after the water brooks. They are thirsty for God, for the living God. They're not just in church. They're not just going through the motions and form. There's a true hunger and panting in their heart after God. It's not a surface relationship. It is not words, or songs, or sermons, or Bible study. Its a panting after God, a searching for the Lord, a desire, a thirst, a hunger to know this man in an intimate way. That is what this is saying to us. It is challenging us to ask ourselves, are we panting after the Lord like the water brooks? Are we truly thirsty for God? Are we thirsty just for God, or are we thirsty for God with motives, for Him to do certain things? Are we those that are truly thirsty for God, hungry to touch that place in His heart, to minister to Him, to be that Zadok priesthood that ministers unto the person of the Lord Jesus Christ? Not just on the outside, but those that minister to the person of Jesus Christ; those He can look to that has a true heart for Him. Once again, they don't come to church, they are the church. They are the Body of Christ. They are that Bride being developed, molded and made into the image of Jesus Christ. Those are challenging words, but the Holy Ghost is the one that can make those evident in our lives through a work of grace, through a work of God as He finds the yielded heart. Absolutely, without fail, if you are truly born again, saved, washed in the blood of Jesus Christ, and especially have gone on and got baptized in the Holy Ghost, that Holy Ghost will stir a hunger and a thirst for the person of Jesus Christ. He will stir a hatred for evil, and can I add this: He will also stir a hatred for a form, for religion, for shallowness. He will stir a cry in your heart for the person of Jesus. That's why in verse seven, the verse you know very well, the psalmist said “deep calleth to deep at the noise of thy water spouts, all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.” Deep calleth unto deep.

So much to be said about the verses I just read. If you don’t have a cry, or you don’t have a hunger and a thirst, we just read where deep is calling to deep. There is a depth in the heart of God that is trying to call out to you, and He is not limited except by us. God, calling out to man, man calling out to God, grace upon grace, that meeting place where man calls and God calls, where man apprehends and God apprehends, that meeting place. It doesn't matter how low, or high, or in-between when man meets God with a penitent heart, with a humble heart, with a broken heart. With an obedient heart, God almighty is not limited to anything that you desire to be done in your heart. Nothing. So the Psalmist said deep calleth unto deep. Not just our calling unto God, but God calling to us, having a longing in His heart to be satisfied. The deep places of God crying out to be satisfied, only by us. Not by angels, but by us. God, in His heart, has a place He desires for us to touch, and He cries out, He calls out. He is crying out for us to come to Him, to surrender our lives that we might minister to Him in that place in His heart.

Deuteronomy 32:9 tells us why.

“For the Lords portion is His people. Jacob is the lot of His inheritance. He found him in a desert land in the waste howling wilderness, He led him about, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye.”

Now once again I know that we as Americans can quote that scripture, we sing it and have it in our devotional books that we are His portion. His people are the Lords portion. We are to become the apple of His eye. We are reminded where He found us at in the howling wilderness of sin. He found us there, but He brought us out and He instructed us that we might be the apple of His eye, His portion. That is His heart cry, that we might be His portion.

Philippians 1:9... Paul here is praying for the church.

“And this I pray that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment.” (He's praying for the church that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment) “that ye may approve things that are excellent that you may be sincere and without offense until the day of Christ. Being filled with the fruits of righteousness.”

Notice Paul's terms. Being filled with the fruits of righteousness. Fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God. I'm going to read these verses in the amplified.

“This I pray that your love may abound yet more and more and extend to its fullest development in knowledge, in all keen insight, that your love may display itself in greater depth of acquaintance and more comprehensive discernment.”

Paul is praying for the church, that their love will enter into a depth that they've never experienced. That their love for God will go deeper and deeper and deeper is Paul's prayer for the church, meaning the Holy Ghost is inspiring this prayer, meaning that God the Holy Ghost will have all of the necessary resources for every one of God's children to bring that love into greater depths, depths of acquaintance and more comprehensive discernment. I've shared before how God is speaking about a river. He is speaking about a river that grows, not over its banks, but deeper and deeper. It's a picture of a river flowing and God endeavoring to cut the channel of that river deeper and deeper. Many times you see a river overflow, and we think that river is powerful because it's overflowing. In the church there's emotions and all these things that seem to overflow to the outside that looks good to man. It looks like that river is great and powerful as it overflows its banks. Yet anytime a river overflows its banks you'll find that that river will pick up all the trash and debris that is over that bank. And as you see that river running down, all of that debris and trash and the limbs and all the things that are not suppose to be in the river will be in that course of the river. God never intended for the church to overflow to the point that it picks up the habits of the world and the habit of going to church and all the trashy things of the world. What God desires is those that take their river deeper and deeper. And He even tells us the two banks of that river, on one side, will be acquaintance, and on the other will be discernment. And God will take that acquaintance (that experiential knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ) deeper and deeper. As deep as you allow, God will go, the depths of that bank will go deep in the heart of your life and soul. A bank of discernment that you'll understand the right from the wrong, the good from the bad, the evil from the holy, and the light from the darkness. God will cut a channel right through the depths of your heart. Where evil abounds, God will come in and unearth that evil tendency and flow that river of the Holy Ghost deep and deeper in your heart. That is the deep calling to the deep. God designed that river to go deeper and deeper.

We are so prone to want that bank to overflow; it makes us look good and powerful, and acceptable. We come to the House of God and we overflow many times in all the wrong places. Man has entered in with humanism to try to organize the church. God doesn't need my help to organize the church. He needs my surrender. He needs my will to be broken that He might come in, not on the outside, but the depths and the crevices and all the places in my heart, He may go deeper and deeper and deeper that I may know this man Jesus! All I just said is so simple. It's no new revelation. There is nothing about it new under the sun, but it's Christianity, the heart of God. It's everything Satan fights tooth and nail. It's everything Satan desires to bring into the House of God to keep us from going deeper into the heart of God that we might touch His heart. God needs us we say. He needs us to do this and that and look at how awesome the church is and how big we've grown. We're rich and increased with goods and we've built this and done that and God sits back with a heart that says “I just wanted you. I just wanted your heart. I just wanted your life.”

God had a place in the heart of man like a bush that He would have burned with the fire of God forever and ever and ever, but sin has forfeited that place. So Jesus stands at the door of mans heart and knocks. He says if you open that door I'll come in and live in that place. You can't find in this Word where Jesus Christ says I stand on the outside and I'll come to your church, I'll do a work from the outside. I'll make you better; I'll make you look good in the sight of man. He says, “Oh no, open up the door, get out of the way, let me come in! Let me live this life! Let me live this life thorough you.” Man forfeited that in the garden, but God's divine nature enters back into man when he's born again. I said God's divine nature enters back into man when he gets born again. And then God, with that born again creature, that child of God that has been truly saved, washed in the blood, name written in the Lambs Book of Life, goes on and gets baptized in the Holy Ghost, loves the Lord with all their heart, soul, mind and body, gets up some days and its not always good, its bad sometimes and things don’t look like it ought to, but God the Holy Ghost is right there to open your eyes to look on Jesus Christ. You see things in your life and you don’t have to look hard or deep and God the Holy Ghost begins to unearth some things in your life that aren't like Christ, but you're so glad. I said, you're so glad. The true child of God is so glad because there are things there that have hindered the life of Jesus from coming forth! The true child of God is thankful for love that exposes any and everything that isn't like Jesus, because that person realizes the incarnation, the impregnation that has taken place in their life. They realize there was a day when deep called unto deep and there was nothing in their heart, but they opened up and the divine nature entered in and now that divine nature is looking room. It's looking elbow room. It wants to move and have its being in our hearts and our lives. That's a child of God. He heard the call, opened his heart, and Jesus enters in and you'll welcome any and everything God has for you to make more room for Him that loved you, because in that love for you, a love for Him begins to be developed. It begins to be spread abroad in your heart by the Holy Ghost. And the one thing you desire above all things, above just being in the house or in His presence, you want Him honored, glorified, you want His name exalted. You want mankind to see Him. And you realize you are so fallible, you realize you're so insignificant. You realize you're so weak. You don’t have the ability to show the world Jesus in your works and efforts. You can't get good enough. You can't pray long enough, you can't sing loud enough, you can't preach good enough or look good enough. In the sight of man you may have a wonderful house and I'm doing great and all these outward things we do, but those that are truly saved realize that all that is of nothing. What I must do is get out of the way that He might live through me! And you welcome, you welcome the Word of God. You don’t receive any condemnation. The devil can whisper in your ear all he wants to but there's another voice that has already spoken to your heart. You'll welcome the Word of God, that deep calling to deep, that thirst, that panting after God. You're longing to be God's portion and His inheritance.

Multitudes upon multitudes have believed the lie of Satan. Satan hates God, he hates good. They say, “Oh but I'm not going to go too far, just satisfy some longings in my heart,” but sin has no boundaries. He would willingly keep you where you're at or if he needs to take you a few more degrees, it matters not to him. He doesn't care how bound up you are, as long as your not truly a sanctuary; a temple where Christ can be glorified. You can sit in church and speak in tongues and cast out devils, you can sit in the bar, it matters not to him where or what you do as long as your heart is not yielded to the power of the Holy Ghost. Satan knows that once the most weak, sinful, hideous, wicked human heart turns to God and opens itself up, there is nothing impossible with the Holy Ghost, nothing. See, God finds that Christian, that born again one and deep calls to deep. In the deep recesses of God there is a cry, a cry from heaven that desires fellowship and intimacy and our communion, and it calls out. And God, to those that are saved, will bring a word within the confines of a congregation or a sanctuary or He might speak to you in your Bible study. Not just your Bible reading but your Bible study, that Bible study where you're looking for the Lord. I said where you're looking for Jesus, not where you read this book like any other book. For this book is not like any other book. Therefore the word that's preached from this book is not like anything else you hear preached. When it comes from the heart of God, from the mind of Christ, from the Holy Ghost it's not like anything else you've heard. Man wants to read this book and understand it. Lost man wants to take up that book and read it and understand it. Those that come to church want to have a limited surface knowledge of its writings, of what it says, and convince themselves that they understand the contents of this book. So they read the letter. They come to church, they hear the preacher preach and they get knowledge and some understanding of God and the trinity and all God did and some element of what God wants to do. And they go to church! They hear a word addressed to everybody and read a Bible addressed to everybody, feeling the lost or saved can read its pages and gain some knowledge and insight, but this book was not written for everybody! This book was written to those that would give their hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ, that would get born again. This is an instruction manual, not for the carnal, not for the fleshly, not for the world, but for the child of Almighty God, this is your manual, your instructions, to know how you ought to walk. Some believe and some don’t. Some are receptive and some are not. Those who are not and do not receive will read this in vain and will never understand it.

Now I know you understand this, but that has entered into the church. That has walked right into the church. Because Christianity, the Christian life today, not the Christ life, but the Christian life, the church life today is man centered and not God centered. Satan, with his deceit, has come to the church and now we can read the Bible that is man centered and not God centered. God is made out like He has to wait patiently. We're told today by the spirit of man that God must wait patiently and respectfully on the whims of man. That God must sit back and they paint Him like a struggling father, a distracted father. They have painted God like some distracted father that is struggling in heartbroken desperation to try to convince some people to allow his son to be their savior. And we have so sold God! We have become salesmen of God that God is looking for any means He can, any vehicle He can to try to convince lost man, “Please let my son be your savior”. And that spirit is brought to the House of God where God understands us and God will put up with our sin and God will put up with our backslidings and God will put up with our indifference and our coldness, after all he's a loving heavenly father. He'll just have to wait on us. He'll just have to wait on all our whims. He may be distracted and crying out “Please, oh please, please fill that place in my heart!” God's struggling… in desperation… to persuade the self sufficient to come to God. To persuade the self sufficient that they need to surrender to God.

Ministers of the gospel today are put in corners where we dare not preach a “Thus saith the Lord”. Where we are expected to indulge mankind. We have to walk very softly to make sure we don’t tread on ground that man don’t want us to tread upon. All that has been brought about by the Spirit of Antichrist, the spirit of Satan that hates Jesus Christ. And we're to persuade the self-sufficient, that God generously offers Himself to them. That He'll do almost anything to get them in, and then once He gets them in, He'll sit them on a pew somewhere and make sure He puts somebody in front of them that understands their problems, that will walk in the cool of the day with them, that will pat them on the back, that will understand their sin, that will teach them that its alright, God understands. God understands your culture, God understands the 21st century, God was just hoping in the sweet by and by to still have a people that will say “we love the Lord and will go to church and we'll hear your word”. They've made man the star of the show. Man is at the center and you dare not tread down that field too far. You dare not bother man too much because man has become the center, the star that we work everything around. We put man in the center and God has to answer to man. God has to maneuver to convince that man, to coerce that man, to coddle that man to make sure everything is fine. Man gets in the pulpit now with our illustrative sermons directed to the tares, the goats, the lost and we're going to make sure that we explain and illustrate this Bible and give them stories. We go out and buy all these books and writings to make sure that the world and lost man can understand this book and be enlightened to the things of God. That is not God's heart. Man stands in pulpits and street corners with his heart saying, "let me tell you this story, and maybe if I say it this way you'll understand it better". And you're talking to a self-sufficient, satisfied sinner that doesn’t want Jesus as Lord of their lives. You might say, “you don’t believe we ought to illustrate things?” Jesus said, “I will not cast my pearls before the swine”. He left the Holy Ghost here to convict men of their sin and draw them to Jesus! Now we have theatrics, theaters, we'll preach a while, sing a while, and it's all under the guise that we are reaching out to mankind; trying to show them God, but when Jesus Himself, the great teacher taught He said it plainly, “They don’t want me. They don’t desire me except for the loaves and the fishes.”

The secrets of the Lord, the Bible says, are with those that fear Him. You draw nigh to God and God will draw nigh to you. The impenitent heart will not receive the things of God. I don’t care if they're in a night club, sitting on a street corner or they're in the House of God and just spoke in tongues, the impenitent heart will not understand the things of this Bible. It will hear it and maybe shout and say amen. It may come to the alter and lift their hands, but the hard heart can and will not receive by the Spirit what God is saying when the deep is calling to the deep, when He's looking for that place in your heart that He might fill. But penitence and humility, faith and obedience will give you a right understanding of the Word of God. It will open up your heart to have a right understanding of the Word of God. You will know exactly what God is saying. If you are truly born again by the Spirit of God and you have entered into a place in your life where you are surrendered to the will God, where you are penitent, humble, and faith is stirring your heart and you're walking in obedience, God Almighty will do a quick work in your life. From day to day to day the Holy Ghost will do an effectual work. You'll grow deep in the things of God! You say "what are you driving at, where are you going with this?"

A missionary stated one time that the Chinese had learned to differentiate between nominal Christians and true disciples. At that point in time everyone in Europe was a “Christian”. But they realized that there was a difference in church life and the Christ life. Church life and the Christ life are totally different. When you start preaching the Word of God and there are those in the congregation that have church life, the "Christian life" but they don’t really have the Christ life, you will sense that rising up, that flesh that doesn't like that word. You see Christian life, or the church life may be nothing more than the acceptance of certain ideas, principals, the observance of certain forms and rituals. This is not just for the Baptist or Methodist or all those that we as Pentecostals have a tendency to point a finger at and say “Well, they're not Spirit-filled. They don’t have life and excitement.” Oh no, even in the Pentecostal church we have so learned Pentecost and the Holy Ghost; we have all the phrases and rhetoric and jumps and shouts. We know when and where and how to be in front of man. So the Christian life, the church life is nothing more, for the most part, than prayer, being in church, tapes, sermons, music. All those things become a part of the church or Christian life, but the Christ life is a union with Jesus. It's the union of the soul with the living Jesus, Hallelujah! It's getting born again and there's a union that takes place. That place had been vacated by sin, there's a hole in the heart of man that God had ordained for Himself but man forfeited that with sin. But then God comes back to humanity, to individuals. He knocks on your door, when you open your door and let Him in He comes into the deep recesses of your heart. When that happens, the divine nature enters in. There becomes a union with God and with man, the incarnation as it was. A living, vital experience of union with the man called Jesus Christ. It is not church life. Man made an honest attempt trying to imitate Christ. They tried to follow His teachings and commandments. A man will do that in earnestness only to fail miserably. Only to sit in church when the truth begins to really come and start to deal with that inner part of your heart. When the truth starts to really come and deal with the secret places of your life, then is when the real you stands up. When your church life is challenged, the flesh screams. You may do better and more than others, but when that church life gets challenged you can sense that hardness.

Church life is exposed as having no life. It's just people doing their best in their own strength and might and emotions and they've not surrendered their wills to God to allow Him to live through them. That is why the opposition is sensed. You can never accomplish Christ life in your own strength. You'll come up dry. It's surface and shallow. When it's questioned and challenged and confronted through the preached word it gets bothered. That heart says "look at what we've done" but God bears witness with none of it. The deep only calls to the deep when we have a union with Christ. That's why when the deep starts to cry out, they don’t understand it. It seems like a foreign language and the words intimacy, union and fellowship are surface. They don’t touch anything in those people's hearts because its been an outward emotion and work instead of real penitence, real humility, real faith, real obedience that opens up that word to the rankest of sinners and changes his life. I'm saved 26 years; this is good news to me. I want to be the bride of Christ, there's still too much of me hanging around. But Jesus is telling me that He wants to live in me. He wants to be glorified in my life. That lets me know that the deep is going to call to the deep. That there are things that are in my life that are not like Him that He isn’t going to wink at. He's not going to say, "you preached good and I think that's going to be enough today." NO! He wants his son glorified! To those that are bothered by that, you have church life and no Christ life. The opposite of that is this: When you preach to the child of God that has the Christ life, they have a real union with Jesus Christ. Their heart is panting after God, after the water brook. They may be up to their eyeballs in problems, but they're real. I said they're real. They're not surface, they're not shallow. You can preach to them and they'll sit there like sponges soaking up the word of God. You never sense an obstacle or hardness. Some even talk in tongues and walk the floor, but there is no Christ life, no resurrection life, so the Word bothers them. Then they have to get over the word. They've got to get over that word because it's digging deep, so they have to paint a picture that everything is fine. But all they are doing is getting their heart harder and harder when God is just saying "get real." But they are afraid of what man thinks, of their reputation. I am offering you, this Bible is offering you to be a receptacle, a sanctuary, a temple. I am offering you, sir to lay it down, give it up, stop it all, throw it to the side, and let Jesus live through you! Our deeper life only comes through our union with Jesus. Not because we read a book on the deeper life, that is dangerous if you don’t know what you're reading because you'll go off on a tangent of some spirituality. Your deeper life doesn’t come because you read a book or learn steps or some sermon or change the way you do things. The deeper life comes from more of a union of Jesus. The more of a union with Christ, the deeper He goes in your life. The more union, the deeper He goes. That's why Paul said

“I'm crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Paul says it's not me, it's not me. God is not trying to make me better; He's trying to bring death to all of me that He can live. You see, when you only have church life you hear the word as a letter. It will be a letter that bothers you (do's and don’ts.) You will always sense the word telling you to do something else and it bothers you because you want to be acknowledged that you are doing good things. You hear the word as a letter, as just a word from man. But those that have a union with Christ know what the word is. The word was made flesh and dwelt among us, a living person. It's not a letter. It’s a person. When you hear the word, a person is speaking to you, Hallelujah! That's the deep calling to the deep. You don’t hear a sermon, you don’t look at a preacher and point your finger at the messenger, you hear a man, Jesus, calling out to the Jesus on the inside of you! When you sit and hear the word from a church life stand point it bothers you, but Jesus, the Word, not the letter, but the Word of Life is trying to come and speak to the deep places in your heart.

The psalmist said there are water spouts. He said "deep calleth to deep at the noise of thy water spouts." He said there's a call from the water spouts. What was he saying? A water spout takes the water and it goes up and up. It takes volumes of water and when it goes up it creates a vacuum in the middle of that water spout and then the wind comes and fills up that vacuum. Water and wind are types of the Holy Ghost, Praise God! God is saying “I'll put you in places and I'll let the water spouts rise up. I'll stir the water up, I'll create a vacuum and then I will let my Holy Ghost go deep in that vacuum.” Church life is not interested in that. It already knows that stuff. It's got the knowledge of all that, it just wants to come to church and not go to hell. It wants to be recognized for its work and humanism. God said, “Nobody created that place in My heart, I Just Am, but your place was created by Me and I'm the only one that can fill it. So I will create a water spout in your life to create a void and then I'll hear a cry from the depth of your heart and I'll send the wind of the Holy Ghost down.” You know what that wind is? That wind is the Holy Ghost interceding. It is the intercession of the Holy Ghost. Who knoweth the things of man? Who searcheth out the things of man? The Holy Ghost! Do you know that the Holy Ghost will pray you through? The Holy Ghost will pray you through. Those that have a real union with Christ, when He knocked on your door you opened it. You were lost, and He came in to inhabit that place that He deserved and desired and made for Himself. But over and over and over He'll come as a water spout and He'll create that vacuum in your heart to show you that there are places in your life that aren’t like Him. There are places in your heart that He wants to live in. There are depths in your heart that He wants to abide in, so He brings that water spout and He hears a cry way down deep. It might be faint, but there is a cry. You say "God, I need you in the recesses of my heart!" You know what the Holy Ghost does then? He comes in to that water spout. He begins to intercede. He goes down deep into the bottom of that heart and He finds the problem. He finds the obstacle and He grabs a hold of it and takes it to the Father and He prays you through, praise God! The man with church life doesn't want others to see what they are. That they are dead man's bones with no life. They have a reputation to preserve. But deep is calling to deep. It's not just our deep; it’s the depths of God's heart crying out.

Who among us, young or old, man or woman will allow God to cry out to our heart? Who among us will open our hearts up to the depths of God? You have a privilege today to do something angels can't do. God didn’t turn to the angelic host. He didn’t look out to all the glory He created. He said no, what I desire can only be found in the heart of mankind. My portion is my people. I want them to be the apple of my eye. So He brings a word. He brings His word, a word of life, Jesus. Jesus is speaking to the Jesus in your heart, crying out "I want more room. I want to make more room!" So the Holy Ghost comes and makes more room for Jesus. Anytime there is a real union with Jesus, that type of incarnation takes place, where that seed of Christ is dropped into man. Where there is an impregnation of the life of Christ. We're going to tell the world that the Holy Ghost can't come to that impregnated life and make more room for Jesus? I don’t think so. What do you have saints? Do you have church life, or the life of Christ? Church life or Christ life? When you pray, is it church life or is it Christ life? Is it what we're supposed to do or all that we've studied and all that we've found? We've been to our bank of knowledge and we get up and have words of elegance. We know how to say it, where and when to say it. Or is it from the gut of an experience that we've had from a union that is going deeper and deeper and deeper? Why? Is it because we just cry out? No, but there is a cry from the depth of God to the depths of the heart of man. What do you have church? If you have Christ life, your prayer has turned into a cry. I said your prayer has turned into a cry. "Oh God you know me. You know my laying downs and getting ups. You know the thoughts that run through my mind God. You know what I really am, God. I know what man thinks I am. Man thinks I pray and go to church, but God you know me, you know my short comings. You know my indifferences and backslidings. You know the depths of my wicked heart.

"Who is able to search this wicked heart?" Jeremiah said, Oh God you are! You are God! But He doesn't search it to condemn you. He doesn’t search the heart of the child of God to condemn you. He searches the depths of your heart because He's trying to make more room for Himself. And Paul prayed that His glory would be both manifested and recognized in the church. How will it be manifested and recognized? By giving Jesus more room, praise God. We let our banks overflow and we look good in the sight of man. We make all the prayer services and we've convinced ourselves and man that we're doing alright and that river is overflowing. When that river overflows it picks up trash. It picks up the debris that is lying by the highway that man has thrown out. It picks up all that paper and trash and it's now in the river. When that river overflows it picks up bad habits, church habits. You can habitually go to church; you know when to be there, exactly what to do. You've got it all down. You've picked up habits and the river is just overflowing and to men you look good. But God is not about it overflowing, He's about cutting a channel deep in the heart of man where you were once lost, where you were void, where you were dark, God says "I'll enter in, I'll turn on my light, I'll bring my presence" praise God. And to those that will allow me to cut deep, He said your love will abound more and more. It will extend to the fullest development in knowledge and all keen insight that your love display itself in greater depths of acquaintance and more comprehensive discernment, brought into the banks of acquaintance and discernment, Hallelujah. God bringing the church back into its banks, back into it's beginnings, back into the acquaintance and discernment that we no longer talk about God, sing about God, preach about God, but we know God. We know Him, in intimacy and communion, where we have discernment. When we know what is morally wrong or morally right. We discern the good from the evil. We're checked by the Holy Ghost. We're led by the Holy Ghost. We're not only filled but we're led by the Holy Ghost of God. He leads us down a path of righteousness for His names sake.

Where are you at today? Does the preaching bother your church life? The preaching is the time when those that have union with Christ blossom. They like the worship and prayer, that’s good, we need it, amen. But there is something about that preached word. There is something about it, Hallelujah. Everything God builds in the church, everything God does in the church is built around the preached word of God. Everything God does is around this word. It's around frail, flawed earthen clay pots getting in the pulpit with a thus saith the Lord and preaching that word to a hard heart that surrenders to God and God comes in and says "nothing is impossible with me!" The Bible says you will know them by the fruit, and He will bring fruit to that one that has Christ life. Where are you at today? How much Christ life do you have? How much real union with Jesus do you have? The Chinese knew the difference. They call that first group Jesus people. They call the other ones Christians. They said the Jesus people are those that are after Him. The Christians just go to church. I've been saved a few years and I can honestly say this: I love to come to church and hear the songs and the worship service. I love to come and pray. But there is nothing like, for 26 years, even after being called to be a Pastor, there is nothing like sitting and hearing that word preached. When I first got saved I couldn’t wait for that man of God to get in that pulpit and say "take out your Bibles." Hallelujah, oh Hallelujah just something about it. It stirred my soul. I sat in a Baptist church before I got the Holy Ghost. My Baptist preacher was Holy Ghost filled. My Lord, he would get in that pulpit and preach the word. He was a country preacher, saved from hell and back. My God, he had a call of God on his life. God filled him with the Holy Ghost in Raleigh, North Carolina. He came out of a convention one night and God baptized him in the Holy Ghost on the sidewalk in Raleigh. He was laying flat on his back with both hands in the air speaking in tongues. You knew you would go to church and hear one thing: They may not sing worth anything, that’s fine, but you knew one thing, that when that man of God got in the pulpit and said get out your Bible, you were going to hear from heaven. God was going to speak to your heart! I loved it. Oh, I sat there with things in my life that weren't right. There were things in my heart that were dark, but that word was like a light. It was a lamp under my feet. I didn’t sit and harden up against it.

If you've got church life why don’t you just let it flow on down the river and let God give you Christ life with Jesus. Just one good time get real before God. Don't just lift your hands and smile, but get real and God the Holy Ghost will hear the faintest of cries. He will say "come on boys, I see a water spout. There's a vacuum, a hole, a cry. That one has some problems; they've been there a long time. We've just been waiting to hear a cry from their heart. They sing well and smile even better. They look the part. They know when to cry and when to shout, but they've never cried out to me, but I hear them now. I hear the cry now." Oh, the Holy Ghost may say "He's always been here, he's committed, but he's hard and bitter; I've never heard a real cry. But boys, I hear him now. There is a water spout going up. There is a vacuum, I hear a cry." And the intercessions of God will go in the depths of that heart and grab a hold of that mess in your life and pray your soul through. Not you shouting it through, crying it through. Let God the Holy Ghost break you through and break you out. Deep is calling to deep. He's crying out. The people are His portion. Jacob, I said Jacob is His inheritance. The old black footed lying scoundrel is His inheritance. He said, but I brought him out, I instructed him, Praise God. He knew what He got. Why do you want to paint some other picture? It's because you go to church and sing your songs and preach your sermons and talk in tongues. Why do you want to paint some other picture when the life is just not there? Open up your heart to the power of the Holy Ghost. When there is a cry for that Holy Ghost to come, the dove comes into the depths of your heart and He is looking for a place for Jesus. For that dove only has eyes for Jesus. And he'll make more room for Him. That is your portion. God is calling out if you can hear by the Spirit "I want some room for My Son. I've got a world out here that is lost and dying." God would have to say that most of the "church" is rich and increased with goods and they don’t think that they really have need of a whole lot. But He said "I'm looking for a few that would make some room for My Son, Jesus. There is a world out here that is lost and dying but if I could just bring to reality a glimpse of His glory just one last time I will pour out a double portion through those vessels and then the end will come." Who's going to be accountable here? Who is going to get real enough to let the intercessor come in? Who is going to get real enough to really cry out from the depth of your heart "God I need you?" "I have played the game long enough, I need you." Who will humble themselves in these last days so the Life of Christ can flow though them like “Rivers of Living Waters”. The Holy Ghost will hear your cry and will suddenly come to the Temple. He will make more room in your heart for Jesus to live His Life, The Christ Life, not church life! Cry out and allow the banks of the River of Life to be cut deeper and deeper.