— Brother Phil Enlow: Praise God! Good to see everybody this morning. I appreciate the Lord’s mercy and His presence today, and I’m just trusting Him. It seems like, many times, He’ll bring me to a place where I feel my weakness in an extra special way, and I certainly do this morning, but that’s good. Paul gloried in his weakness. He said, thank God I’m weak! We…that’s kind of contrary to the way we tend to think, but the reality is it has to be the Lord’s strength, doesn’t it?
I’ve had a lot of thoughts and I’ve tried to organize them and that hasn’t really worked so, I’m not gonna worry about it. But you know, there was an interesting question posed on Wednesday night. I don’t remember the exact words, but it had to do with prayer and faith, and essentially the underlying question is, how does that work? How do have faith? How do we pray? How do we know what to pray for? Do we say, God if it’s your will, or do we say, yes, Lord, do it? There are so many things that I doubt any of us really knows about prayer like the Lord wants us to.
And you know, the more I’ve thought about it, the reality is, the underlying issue has to do with everything in the Christian life. It isn’t just prayer. The reality is the Christian life is meant to be entirely a supernatural life. You think of the things that the Lord has, basically, told us to do as Christians. I mean, we’re full of instructions…they’re full of instructions, in the New Testament.
I mean, you can go through and see things like…familiar scriptures like Romans 12, where we’re told to, “…present your bodies a living sacrifice…” (KJV). And, I’m just gonna refer to some of these scriptures. I don’t know that I’m gonna spend a lot of time in each one. But, he talks about the reality of how we, as individuals, are to present our bodies, but yet it’s to be a corporate sacrifice.
Totally contrary to human nature, we are to become one people, our lives are to be given to Him to work in, to change us so that we can be the kind of people He wants us to be. And, he talks about the various gifts and abilities and how focused they are on everybody else. And that’s human nature, isn’t it!? That we’re meant to put others first, others ahead of ourselves and, basically, the purpose of our lives becomes not about me, not about what pleases me, not about just satisfying my natural desires, but becoming a means by which other people can be blessed and helped.
That is…I mean, how contrary to human nature is that? Anybody here that…naturally you’ve got the ability to do that? No! We have no ability. In fact, if something originates in me, or in you, it has no power to do anything that will last beyond this world. At best, it will not last beyond this world.
You know, I guess I probably jumped ahead a little bit. But, I’m gonna go to the scripture that came to me as, the more I thought about what we talked about Wednesday night, the more my mind went to a scripture that we’re familiar with. And I don’t think we even need to turn there, necessarily, but it’s John 15, where Jesus is introducing to the disciples what their life is gonna be about.
It’s not about, here are My instructions, go do it. It’s an organic life. It is a life which we literally get from God and it is expressed through us. And so, He uses the vine and the branches as a picture of this.
And He says, just as a vine without the branches cannot bear fruit, “… no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine…” He said, “…ye are the branches….” The Father is the One who does the planting. In other words, there’s a source of supernatural life in Him, that if we are connected to it, we can bear fruit that will actually last beyond this world.
Wouldn’t that be nice? Praise God! How many of you want to actually have something happen as a result of your life and God working in and through you that lasts beyond this world into eternity? That’s what we’re called to, folks! This isn’t religion. We’re called to something that is supernatural and I believe…I sense, in my own spirit, God wanting to get us into a deeper place in Him, where we actually learn how to be vessels in His hands so that we can do something.
And of course, the scripture, I guess, that brought my mind to that passage in John 15 was, “…apart from me you can do nothing.” (NIV). That’s a sobering thing. But you think about the issue that was brought up the other night about prayer. And think about it in this context. Apart from Me, you can’t pray.
Yeah! Think about that. I mean, we can mouth words. We can do all kinds of things and call it prayer. The Pharisees did that. But if we’re gonna do what God is talking about when He says to pray, it’s got to have something more behind it than just human thoughts and wisdom and desires and energy and all of that. It’s got to have God behind it!
( congregational amens ).
But the reality, as I began to say, is everything in the Christian life is that way! There’s not one of us who can be what God wants us to be unless it is supernatural. And that’s what I believe God seeks to teach us.
And again, I’ll go back to this. It mentions…in Romans 12, it mentions all the different gifts and abilities that God gives, and they vary. But now it comes down to verse 9 and you begin to get the character that God seeks from us. It says, “Love must be sincere.”
Oh, we’re good at, you know, putting on a front, but God wants something that, absolutely, is genuine, that comes from the heart. If we’re going to represent Him, if we’re going to be an expression of Him, not an imitation, but if we are literally going to be an expression of His love in the world, man, it’s got to come from Him!
( congregational amens ).
It’s got to have a supernatural source. But yet, here is what God tells us to do. “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” As God defines those things, by the way. Okay? “Be devoted to one another in love.” Oh, how we…how many human corruptions do we have of that? How much pretense is there? God wants to eliminate that. And, I’m so thankful…I mean, this is a theme that seems to come up all the time, but I see God wanting to teach us, in a deeper way, than perhaps we’ve gotten.
( congregational response ).
Yeah. This has got to come from the heart! It’s got to be a divine work of the Spirit of God, in the heart. We cannot manufacture this. This Word is full of scripture and full of instructions that we have no power, under heaven, to carry out, unless we come to a place where God does it in us. All right?
“Honor one another….” Oh, here’s a good one! “Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.” Oh, we go up and down and all over the place, don’t we?
“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” So, there’s where prayer comes into it. You see, it’s all part of the same package. You can’t just say, oh, prayer is a separate subject over here. Prayer is an integral part of every aspect of the Christian life, in this world, that God seeks to give us. And oh, I’m confident God wants to take us to a deeper place than we have known. Okay? All right?
“Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” Oh, it gets really into some deep territory here. “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.” I won’t ask how many people have sort of imagined in your mind a situation where you’re done really, really wrong and, man, there’s something that rises up in you and you want to just pronounce a curse on somebody. Okay, I won’t make you raise your hands.
( laughter ).
But I mean, that’s human nature. That is what naturally comes out of our lives. Folks, when we are…you take a person that’s genuinely saved, they’ve got a new heart down in here. That does not automatically eliminate the possibility of our living too much in the old nature.
See, that’s what the Christian life is about is learning to live by the new nature and not the old, and it does not happen automatically. It’s something God works in us and we have to grow in it. And, oh, far too often we are operating in the energy of the flesh. All right?
“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” Again, what’s the focus? It’s not selfish, is it? It’s with somebody else. “Live in harmony with one another.” Okay, if they’ll get along with me and do what I think they ought to do, we’ll be just fine, thank you. Is that what it’s talking about?
No, you see there’s got to be a quality in here that’s willing to put up with each other in our imperfections, willing to love, willing to seek for peace. That’s the object, is to have peace. I don’t know if it’s in this passage or another one.
Well, yeah, it says, “Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” That’s the scripture I was thinking of.
“Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: It is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord. On the contrary: If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
How many of you think God wants to bring us to a place where these are the characteristics of our lives? Yeah. Anybody here got room to grow?
( congregational amens ).
Yeah, we do. And you know, he does get into gifts of the Spirit. You can read passages that go into that. I’ll go back and read some of this. I guess that was the question in my mind…how much to get into all of this. But, Paul writes, back in verse 3, “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.” Where does faith come from?
( congregational response ).
Aah! So, if we’re gonna have what he calls faith, in the scriptures, we’re gonna have to get it from Him. Now, that takes a lot of the burden off of me to try to manufacture faith. How many of you have ever tried to do that? See, that’s where some of these questions arise. What is faith? How am I supposed to feel when I have it? Where do I get it? Do I work it up? Do I just decide…you know, all these natural questions.
We are absolutely wanting to bring these things down into the human realm and into the realm of human ability and think of it in terms of behavior, and activity and what we do. But oh, if God could help us to see what He’s so ready to help us with! Praise God! All right?
“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”
Do you know you don’t belong to yourself; you belong to everybody else? Do you know our purpose as individuals is not just to live for us and have this wonderful, private relationship with God and that’s good enough? My purpose is to become a vessel through which God can help you.
But your purpose is also to have…to be a vessel, that in whatever way God has equipped you, you are meant to be a vessel that transmits divine life to others in the Body of Christ. There’s no human being that can manufacture that, folks. We need the Lord! You see how this goes beyond just prayer? You see that God wants us to live a supernatural life. All right?
“We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith….” And you know, you have to say this because religious culture out there…prophesying is not saying, “yea, I say unto you, thus sayeth,” you know, it’s not this showboat kind of thing. I mean, God could speak like that, I guess, if He wanted to, but that’s not the point.
Prophesying is simply giving out words that come from God! They could be for instruction, for teaching, for exhortation, for all these things. It’s simply speech that doesn’t originate with a human being, but is inspired by God and actually transmits His life.
Isn’t that what Jesus said? And wasn’t that the difference between His words and everybody else’s? They could expound scripture, at least they thought they were doing it. But Jesus spoke words that His Father told Him to speak.
You see the relationship there. He wasn’t coming up with this. It wasn’t like the Father gave Him a plan and said, here’s what You’re supposed to do, go do it. There was a hand-in-glove relationship with His Father. It was organic. It was life, and so, He literally was being a vessel through which the Father was actually doing the works.
He said, “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” (KJV). That was the way that Jesus did what He did. Do you think it’s meant to be different for us?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. Anybody here got something they need to learn? Yeah. Anybody got room to grow? Yeah. “Prophesying…if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement.” (NIV).
You know, encouragement could be done on a human level, but again…I’ll say again, this is not something…we’re not talking about just something that happens in the human family, where you say, hang in there, you’ll get it.
You know, we can do that on a totally carnal level. It just originates in human energy and it has no power to do anything beyond this world. But I’ll tell you, when God comes with a word in season to somebody in need, that has the power to penetrate the heart, to energize the spirit and to actually produce fruit that will last forever.
Isn’t that what Jesus was talking about in John 15? I’ve called you, I’ve ordained you, He said, “…that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.” (KJV). Folks, I want more of that—I want more of that.
You know, it’s tiring trying to “do religion” in human energy. Man, that’s exhausting. And it’s fruitless. We need God! We need Him as we’ve never needed Him before.
“…If it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.” (NIV). And then he goes into the part that we’ve already read. God means to put us together in an organic, living relationship to give us power. Individually, we’re different. We can’t all be the same, but everybody is necessary to the health and the welfare of the whole.
God has called you, as much as He’s called anybody who ever stands up here that’s actually called of God. He has called you to be a part of the Body of Christ, and you matter! And He wants you to come into a place of greater freedom and effectiveness.
