Spiritual Performance

I'd like to say hello to everybody there over in the evening and I trust that everybody is feeling all right. I visited around with the Brethren some over in the late afternoon and been talking about the things of God. And after I came home tonight Rob had called me. We've been visiting with Brother Len. We have Brother Len down visiting with us from Pope and as far as I know he's probably in service tonight. But Rod, he called right after I came home and he was pretty much enthused about everything on his end in the Carolina's and said everything's going real well and is also enthused about Washington for Jesus. They're leaving pretty directly to go to Washington. He said our fellows came by early this morning. And as a matter of fact, they got there just about the time they were going to have service and they had gone on into Washington. But we were just talking about the good things of God and the wonderful way that God was working and how everything is so beautiful, you know, right at this time. Trying to pinpoint a little bit more the things of God, the activities of God and trying to bring out a little better the pivot point Lucifer. You know, there is a pivot point in life and sometimes we fail to see it, but there is. And there is one way that you serve God and that way is with your mind. Most people, they don't stop to think that serving God is with the mind. They think about physical ambitions, things that they do and don't do, what they should have done, or maybe left undone, and they get all misconstrued in their mind over the situation. As Jesus reproved them in His administration he said, Your life consists not of the abundance of the things that one possesses. And sometime we misconstrue things to the extent, you know, we think about cars, houses, or land, and all of the things of life, the monetary values of life, but your life doesn't consist of that. Your life consists not of the abundance of the things you possess, for there is no inspiration, as to quickening of life in those things. Life is within the spirit. It's a quickening. It's a vibration, and that quickening is like an electrical quickening. Where there is no electrical quickening there is no light, even in the molecular world. So then, where there is no quickening in God there is no quickening, as to life and you're completely void of life. So then, when you have life the thing that you have to have is the spirit. And perhaps you never have stopped to think, and perhaps you have. You say, Jesus, always, when He was preaching He would come upon a subject and He would say, What is your need? And they would tell Him. One would say, Lord, that I might receive my sight, or whatever it was, as the little woman wanted to touch Him, as to the hem of His garment, or the man that sent to Him for the servant that had the palsy, and Jesus would say, Well, according to your faith so be it unto you. And that was how simple it was, just according to their believing. It was not an intellectual believing. It was a heartfelt conviction of real genuine faith, not a derivative from the five senses of humanity but something deep within the heart where man was convicted as to having done the very best that he could toward God and pleasing God with humility. And because of that there was a confidence that arose in the heart toward God believing that what he ask of God that God heard him. And knowing that God heard him then he knew that he had the petition that he desired of God. So, he did the things that pleased God to confident the heart. Those people therefore received great benefits of reward because of these things. And, you know, you wonder a lot of times and you think, Well, why did God always, through the Lord Jesus, by His power and majesty say, according to your faith? See? According to your faith. We know that people who believed was healed and saved and that people were raised from the dead by faith. Even though dead people cannot believe but people who died in the faith it was still accredited to them if someone else came with the faith to raise them from the dead. And so it is with us today. But when you say according to your faith, why did the Lord say, according to your faith, when we know that faith is not what heals a person. For the Bible said it is not by power. It is not by might, but by My spirit, saith the Lord. So it isn't the faith that heals somebody. It is the spirit of God that heals somebody. Why did then Jesus say according to your faith? The simple reason was because where there is no believing, as to faith, there is no sanctification and where there is no sanctification there is no abiding of the spirit. There is no allowance of the spirit. The spirit will not come into an area that is not sanctified and God sanctifies our heart by faith. So then, it was according to their faith because according to the measure of believing so was the Spirit, as to it's measure, come into their heart and they would be rewarded accordingly. So then, it is still today the same yesterday, today and forever, according to your faith. If you can believe, whatever you can believe, then that measure of the spirit of God will come through the sanctification of that believing, come into your heart and He will work a work in your life and do something great for you. You know, it is very important, as to our mind and our thoughts because our faith is a constitution of our thoughts. And I go away back to the garden in my mind. I think of Adam and Eve and I remember how they had their problem in the garden when everything was so beautiful, everything was illuminated with the springtime of the presence of God's Shekinah glory and there they were with the desire of their heart. All of a sudden they got into an entanglement simply by leaning to their own understanding. For the Lord had said there is a tree of knowledge in this garden and thou shalt not eat thereof, for the day that thou eatest thereof, though shalt surely die. There's a tree of life in this garden and you're welcome to eat of it. But if you should eat of the tree of knowledge then the day that you eat of the tree of knowledge then you will die. And so then, when Satan, through the beast got to the weakness of Adam, which was through his flesh, the woman, she being out from under the rule of Adam, to the extent of his constraint, all of a sudden in her admiration of what she saw with her natural eye, was enticed then drawn away from her steadfastness in God. And then all of a sudden lust conceived, sin came and death followed. So, He said, The day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. You know, I remind you again that when God came to see about Adam and Eve it was over in the evening time and when He found them He said, Adam, where art thou? They seemed to have gotten lost off. And He said, Where art thou? And Adam said, We hid ourselves, Lord. He said, Why did you hide yourself? He said, Lord, because we were naked and we were ashamed. And He said, Adam, who told thee that thou wast naked? It was obvious that God had not told them that, and that they did not know enough to tell one another that because they had not recognized any nakedness. They had been naked all the time, as to natural coverings. But then it was because that they had lost their Shekinah covering and they had lost the glory of God. And now they were in shame. And what it was, it was a guilty complex. He said, You cover with a covering but not of me, for their covering was now gone. And later on in years the prophet speaks of it. They cover with a covering but it's an intellectual glory of the world and the vain jangles of the world. It is the glory of Lucifer and the lust of the flesh. So God put them on skins and abased them to the level of a beast. But I said those things to say this: that when they listen to the voice that enticed them to the tree of knowledge, when they were enticed to the tree of knowledge they began to conceive of another mind, of other thoughts. Their thoughts had been virtuous, pure and lovely. Their environment had been without spot, without blemish. There was no sickness. There was no sorrow. There was no disease. Everything was a paradise. But when they took on this other mind and began to exercise different thoughts. They awoke their human senses to an invigoration that caused them to look at one another in a different way. Before then they had never had a male and female attraction as to a baseness, as to lust and desire through an infiltration of causing them to be degraded in their thinking. They had never known that before. The only invigoration they had was as to the gendering of one another, as to reproduction, to replenish the earth in all purity. But now there had come another form of mind and thinking and now these thoughts were beginning to lodge in their heart and these thoughts began to build condemnation and it began to bring in another world and this world began to crowd out the world of light because it's a world of darkness and the world of light began to be crowded out of their heart, because God has placed the world within the heart because it is a mind of the tree of knowledge which is a Satanic thing. And before that they were illuminated with the mind of Christ, which was the paradise of God. And today, we which are born again, we have this replaced in our heart. The world is thus put out, as to the mind of the world and the things of the world, and then comes the mind of Christ, which is the Kingdom of God. And we find ourself with the right kind of thinking that we might have this light and might have the Kingdom of God. You know, when you say Kingdom that is a big word. That is a word that means riches and power and splendor and magnificence and glory. All of these things belong to a kingdom. So then, we now have the Kingdom of Almighty God, the Kingdom of Heaven within us, which is the Spirit of Christ and all things within Christ, because all things emanate from Christ. And Christ within you is that hope of glory because He alone is made heir to the glory. And Christ within you intercedes within you, as to your spirit, that you might have Him as a present help in the time of need. And if any man deny that Christ is come in the flesh that man is Antichrist. So then, we see what a beautiful thing it is to have the mind of Christ. And Satan is always warring against this mind of Christ. He never ceases to war against this mind of Christ. And the reason is because through the mind of Lucifer, through the tree of knowledge, as to that mind, he has, as an angelic being, through the weakness of the beast he has come down and he has stolen the human body from God. The human body was made to be furbished and refurbished by the mind of Christ, which is the spirit of life, that the body might have life and that more abundantly. And when Satan took that body he had brought contamination, and because of the iniquity it has become a middle wall of partition between man's spirit and God's spirit and God cannot fellowship iniquity so man was lost in the darkness of the intellectual wondering and continued to be so until Calvary, until a price could be paid for his iniquity, as to his fall. And that one might travail, as priceless jewel, as a spotless lamb, as a human form to restore the perfect form that had been lost and bring back a blood cell. This time a new one, that the life being in the blood, there might be a new image to start a new beginning, as to Jesus Christ being the beginning of the creation of God. And so in the garden we see this thing take place that the mind that was there and the mind of God pushed out, and God could not get back until this middle wall of partition of iniquity was completely eradicated. So, the Lord Himself had to come, God in a human body, and had to break down the middle wall of partition, which is the body, not because He was contrary to the body, or that the body was His enemy for the body was made for His glory, but to break it down. And the sentence of death being in it, in that He had to cause the body to die because of sin and infiltration. So, He had to make Himself a human body. And in so doing then that broke down the middle wall of partition to take out the infiltration that had gotten into the human body. And then, after that then that caused us to have the new body and the mind of Christ, which was made for the body to begin with. Even the spirit and words of life can now reside in the body, take the body back from Satan, move it back to it's originality and have the wonderful promises of God and the fullness of the abundance of life that God intended for it to have. And not only that but at the same time, eradicating the curse, doing away with the curse, and doing away with iniquity and doing away with transgression of the law and doing away with sin and doing away with death, making us a new creature in God, letting us pass from death unto life and getting away from the curse that we might be a new creature dwelling in the heavenlies and dwelling in the new world with God. And now, old things having passed away, there is no remembrance of former things and we now are alive forever more, having passed from death unto life. These wonderful things God has done for us simply by believing in the finished works of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it's so beautiful to know that there is nothing but faith that we have to offer in the finished works of God. Reckon yourselves then to be dead indeed unto sin and alive unto God. And these things that are in the body that have wrought, Satan hath wrought all manner of concupiscence and trying to overthrow your mind, to trouble it with this continual warfare. Paul said, For these things allow not. I do not allow these things. I consider my body to be dead by the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember, had Adam and Eve never known anything else there would never been anything else required of them, but when they came to know then they were no longer innocent. They were chargeable. And to be innocent they had to perform, and to perform they could not, because only God's spirit can perform righteousness. Just to be religious is not sufficient. You must have the knowledge of God and you must have Christ's spirit to perform righteousness for there is none holy but Him. You know, Paul said, I was alive without the law but when the law came sin revived and I died and that which I thought was unto life I found to be unto death. Or, that is to say, Adam and Eve was alive without the knowledge of the tree which told them about good and evil and then when they came to know that they died. They were innocent at first and they were alive, and there was nothing required of them, and the Shekinah could be there with them. But when they learned they had to perform and they couldn't perform, therefore they died. Now, there had to be an atonement for their sins, or someone that could perform the works of righteousness who was spotless without blemish and could restore them back to their originality. And this, of course, was what the Lord Jesus Christ did in His travail of sorrow for you and I. So we see the Lord went a long way around to be able to reach us and to be able to bring us back in the resurrection. And today we are now in the church ages and we have been restored from the fall and we're not in the beast lineage anymore. And the curse has stopped at Calvary and the blood life has been taken out at Calvary and now the new blood life has been changed to a quickening spirit and they that are born of God, now the second man Adam, are quickening spirits. The first man Adam was a living soul and all of his descendants were living souls, but now we are a quickening spirit, having passed from dead unto life. And now we're down here through the church ages almost to the end of the church ages where this wonderful revelation of life is given. For now is brought to light, beginning at Calvary, immortality. Never before, I tell you, was immortality ever brought to light. There's never been a teaching, from the foundation of the world, where one taught immortality, because there was no immortality. There never has been any immortality brought to understand, which means light, until Calvary came. But when Calvary came Jesus had triumphed, and now He had brought to light, through this heavenly treasure that you have in your earthen vessels, immortality. Which means not only eternal life but means that your body should never die and be put in a grave. He wants to come to a generation to where they will fully absorb the revelation and that way they will never die and be put in a grave but they will be changed into immortality. For there is a mortal body and there is an immortal body and we will be changed from a mortal to an immortal. And so then, we're moving on toward immortality down to the end of the church ages. Everyone isn't going to make this because everyone is not going to conceive of the Word of God and the knowledge of God. Everyone is not going to have a hunger and thirst for the things of God. Their thirst is for the world and the things of the world and the ambition of the flesh and all the exuberance, is toward doing something in their intellectual thinking and to be carnally minded is death. For Satan savors the things that be of the human senses of the body and of the flesh. But there are a few (He calls it the little flock) that is looking for this wonderful depths of great understanding that is in God, that they might receive the eternal life of God and the immortality of God and that they might live forever. Well, I can see the sparks are going out and we've fanned them just enough to keep it alive to reach the ones that are hungering and thirsting after the things of God. You will never be filled until you do. But may the Lord bless you and we'll see you next time.

By Rev. George Leon Pike Sr.

Founder and first President of Jesus Christ’s Eternal Kingdom of Abundant Life, Inc.

Holiness Unto The Lord