Ken: A lot of times we think that we have to do something in order to gain the favor of God and to come into the realities of all that He’s talking about and speaking to us about. But here He says that it’s God — it’s Jesus Christ who is the one doing the doing. He’s the one that’s baptizing us with the Holy Spirit and fire.
And the fire is something that really burns against the old nature — or we can call it the chaff — because there is something there that we cannot take off. It must be the Lord who does the work. Our job is simply to submit to the Lord with all of our heart. The minute you think you can do something more about this, that’s when you fail.
Mike: There’s nothing we can do to obtain righteousness other than, like Abraham, believe the Lord, and He accounts our faith and belief as righteousness. But then we also have the ability to appropriate from the Lord His righteousness.
Ron: It’s your hunger and thirst. It takes great effort to hunger and thirst — the hunger and thirst. Then the Lord will come and rain righteousness on you. So there is something we do. It’s not like we can sit back in our chair and go, “Lord, You’re gonna pour Your righteousness on me.” No, not necessarily. If you are sitting passive and you’re not hungering and thirsting after it, the Holy Spirit doesn’t come and fill you.
That’s been played out many times through all the revivals and stuff. You always find that people get together and they’re crying out to God, hungering and thirsting — and then the Holy Spirit comes and fills them. We do put out effort to hunger and thirst, to produce a hungering and thirsting in our hearts — then that’s about it, because then the Lord comes and He fills us.
Ken: Because you stay in the place where you’re seeking the Lord with all your heart. It’s all you can do. Really trying to work it up — that’s what doesn’t work.
Debbie: It’s a positioning of ourselves before Him, in humility, with a hunger and a thirst after Him — after His righteousness — and then the Lord does the rest of it.
He does the removing, but we do the submitting. We submit to the Lord. We just give ourselves to the Lord.
Ken: Of course, out there in Christianity, people are told that they have to do works in order to reach into God. “Do this, do that. Don’t do this, don’t do that.” That is not seeking the Lord out of a heart that’s crying for righteousness from God.
That comes directly from the Lord. It comes from Him. You cannot attain to that in yourself. The only thing you can do is hunger and thirst for it.
Debbie: This thing of working towards righteousness — working up to a place where you can get points, you gain points with the Lord because you do certain things —
Mike: Yeah. The whole thing of penance, crawing upstairs, and all this other — it’s like the old adage, “You can’t steer a parked car.” You’ve got to be moving. And that moving has to be our faith that draws it out from the Lord.
Ken: Without faith, it’s impossible to please God. And that’s what He’s after. He wants us to believe what He says we can receive.
Lois: “Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your name?” “Didn’t we do all—”
“—these wonderful things?” And He said, “I didn’t know you.”
Ken: “Did not know you.” And there are many—
Lois: Yeah—
Ken: —of God’s people that are in those places that I think do hunger and thirst after righteousness. There will come a time when God will present something to them to enable them to break loose from that whole concept of what they’re in and accept the Lord.
We’ve been into this whole thing of repentance, which is simply turning to the Lord. And if people can hear a word from God and humble their hearts and seek the Lord and really turn to Him, the Lord can convey the truth that they need to break free.
Paul the Apostle had a phrase — he was all things to all men — that by some means he might win some. There’s a subtle way that the Lord approached a lot of people in the New Testament. He would come, like this woman at the well: “If you knew who I was, you would ask of Me for water.”
Out of our spirits, we can minister that without even opening our mouths and saying anything — just by being who we are.
And I think there is a carefulness, because the minute you put up something that they object to, they put up a wall. That’s what people do. People are looking for something real. And the reality of God in your life is the greatest reality you’re ever going to come to.
Debbie: But people could decide, make a decision to stay where they’re at and still love God and have a relationship — a “quote” relationship — with Him.
Or they can choose to become a son. If you choose to become a son, then you have to go the way of the example of the first Son — to be a son, to be righteous before Him, to have our ways made perfect so that we can stand in His presence continually.
But some people don’t want to do that. They don’t want to go on beyond a certain point.
Lois: In love, He predestined us before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before Him.
Ken: This is important. If people really want to have a walk with God — a relationship with the Lord — this is the path.
