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This is called the tribulation. What is happening to us is this: we are all carnal, sold under sin. This is heaven up here which is Christ. I should not really say that, let me get this straight. Praise God.
We will call this the spiritual realm, it is heaven, but it is not Christ. It is the spiritual realm of the Father. This line here typifies our carnal mind, the earth realm, the earth of our carnal mind. Our whole existence is down here under the earth. The Scripture describes us as earth worms. We are like caterpillars. We have the potential to turn into butterflies.
Right now we are dwelling underneath the earth, and those of us who are blessed enough to have this experience, have Christ being formed, and Christ is being formed not up in the spiritual realm of the Father, but he is being formed down in the bowels of the earth.
Does anybody remember how He got in there? How did He get in there? No, in you, how did Christ get underneath your carnal mind? The dead human spirit is being raised from the dead. How is she being raised from the dead?
There was a contact from the outside, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came down from the spiritual realm of God where no man can ascend to, and He shot His seed underneath the earth of our carnal mind which is our fallen heart. It connected with our human spirit and, Lord willing, you are pregnant, and I am pregnant with Christ. Christ is in the belly of the earth.
Our Christ mind is the life within us, the God, the Savior in the midst of us which is going to break us out of hell. Another name for this line here is hell. This is the borderline between hell and heaven. It is our carnal mind.
Christ is down here, and He has instructions from His Father to rule from His position underneath the earth which the world would call, I believe, a handicap. He has got an arm tied behind Him. He has got the carnal mind layering totally over Him, and the instruction of the Father is that He should be our mind in all things, under all circumstances, despite the fact that the carnal mind is layering over Him.
Our natural example is a wrestling match. You know that when you are down on the mat with a big bruiser that has your shoulders pinned to the mat, it is much harder for you to overcome that big bruiser than if you are both standing on your feet facing one another.
Christ is starting out from a position of a handicap. The carnal mind is layering over Him. The carnal mind is also seated on our soul, as I said the other night.
In case anybody was not here, I will repeat this. I have been teaching you that the reason the carnal mind has more strength than the Christ in us is that he is in full stature, and the Lord has corrected me on that. The carnal mind is not in full stature in humanity. If the carnal mind were in full stature in humanity, we would be pure evil. The carnal mind is not in full stature; nevertheless, he has possession of us.
Any of you that know anything about the law will know that possession is nine tenths of the law. He has got us; we are his. Even though all power in heaven and earth has been given unto the Lord Jesus Christ, now the Lord Jesus Christ has to take us back.
The carnal mind is the sitting queen. She sits on our soul and she rules. She is the queen of heaven. She is the queen of Babylon, and she is in full possession of us. She is the sitting queen; she is not the lawful heir.
The lawful heir is the King, the Lord Jesus Christ, but this wicked queen is in possession of this soul. She has authority over our whole life when we do not stop to think, except with those of us who are already in the transition now. When we do not stop to think, our automatic reaction is the carnal mind, because she is the sitting queen.
For us to respond out of Christ, we must access Christ. We must deny our automatic reaction, we must deny our automatic feelings, we must cry out to God and say "Lord Jesus Christ, what is the Godly, righteous, holy response to this situation in my mind and in my emotions?"
This is our situation. We are pushing against the tide, we are pushing against the wall, we are pushing out against all the power of hell that is pushing us back. We are, by the power of Christ, the Lord and Savior in the midst of us, breaking out of hell.
The pride of man which is in the Church has been teaching for years, that we are breaking into hell to get all the captives out, indicating that we are not captivated by hell, that we are free because we have said the words "I receive Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior."
Christ is dwelling underneath the earth of our carnal mind, He is trying to pierce His way out, and the carnal mind is pressing on Him. Remember the wrestler that has got both of your shoulders pinned to the ground, and the major weapon of the carnal mind at this point is pressure, pressure.
We have discussed two measures of that pressure as it falls on human beings already. Does anybody remember the carnal mind's major weapons he uses against us? If you are immature, he uses pleasure and pain. Most of us here are past the pleasure; he gets us with pain, although you never know. There might be something that gives you pleasure that you have not even thought about in years, and he can drag that up out of your unconscious mind and use it against you.
The pain comes in several categories. Pain comes as physical pain, emotional pain, and spiritual pain. If it can produce pain in your body, it is a weapon.
All of these three categories of pain will take your concentration off of Christ. Remember, the way I say it is, "We default to the carnal mind." The carnal mind is the sitting queen. Our automatic reactions are carnal. Therefore, it is an act of our will which enables us to do something to react in a way, to say, to think, in a way other than carnal. It takes an act of our will. It takes a mental strength.
If there is pain in your body, if there is emotional pain in your emotions, or if there is spiritual pain, all of your strength is not going to be directed towards laying hold of the mind of Christ and accessing it. Why? Because if you had a big hole in your leg, and it is hurting you, all of your mind's energy is going to close up that wound, because in some way in the back of your mind you know if you do not take care of it you could die. Eventually you could get gangrene, and your blood could be poisoned and you could die.
It is our human nature, our automatic reflex reaction that when you have physical pain your mental energies are directed or drawn to it, are forced to a solution or to dealing with this pain. You no longer have a hundred percent of your energies, of your mental faculties, going towards accessing Christ, because Christ is not your state of being. Carnality is your state of being.
Emotional pain is a tremendous weapon of the carnal mind, because so many of us, if not all of us, are in denial on some level. If the carnal mind can get to you in your emotions, especially in an area wherein you are in denial, she has really got you. Why?
Because when you are being hurt in an area where you are in denial, you are blind to where the pain is coming from. You are blind to where the pain is coming from. You do not know where it is coming from. That means your carnal mind can put a lie in your mind and say that the pain is coming from over there. This one is your enemy. This one hates you. All you know is that you have got a blinding pain. It may not even be registering as pain; it is just registering as distress. Most people that are in emotional distress, that are in denial, do not even know that they are in distress.
Does anybody know what the secular doctors call emotional pain that is not recognized by the patient? What does it become? It is a common word? Depression! "I am depressed. What is the matter? I do not know, I am depressed. What is the matter? Ran out of orange juice, did not have any orange juice in the house today, it depressed me." People that are depressed will come up with a million excuses.
That is really not the right word. They do not know what is bothering them. Something is bothering them, and because they do not know what it is, their carnal mind fills in the answer about what is bothering them. "It must be that so and so disappointed me. It must be that so and so did not give me what I wanted. It must be that I lost the job. It must be that my husband does not love me. It must be that my child messed up at school."
Depression comes from repressed anger, and anger comes from pain.
The soul is an area where the carnal mind really has a heyday with human beings. One of the major weapons a Christian can obtain is to get in touch with their emotions, to get in touch with their soul. Not only Christians, any human being in the world will tell you this.
If your body is hurt you just have to look at your body, and you know where the pain is coming from. As a matter of fact, you not only have to look at your body, but the area of the pain will call your eyes to it.
If you are blinded, you will know the pain is in your arm. If you are blinded, you will know the pain is in your leg. You may not know where the pain is coming from if it is inside. You will not know whether it is in your lung or whether it is in your kidney or whether it is in your intestines. Even in the flesh there is an area of blindness, but when we get into our emotions it is very difficult to learn or to perceive where the pain is.
If you cannot see where the pain is, how can you treat it? We are working in a blind area, and there is a big move all across the country today to get in touch with your emotions, to find out what you are really feeling, to find out what your pain is.
Do you know that it is a common carnal reaction for someone who is not trained with these skills, that when somebody hurts them, justified or unjustified, that their automatic reaction is to lash out at that person. Some people's automatic reaction is to drink or to take drugs. Some people lash out at an innocent party, because they are not in touch with their emotions and cannot see with their spiritual eyes.
This behavior, the world calls "acting out," and is being acted out by me because something has hurt me in my emotions. I did not see it go in, did not see anyone standing there with a gun, did not see anyone standing there with a bow and arrow. I did not see it go in, cannot tell you exactly what part of my emotions it went into, not even sure it went into my emotions. All I know is that I am mad at you. "Why are you mad?" "I do not know." "Are you sure that you are mad?" "You opened the window last night and I got cold." You do not know why you are mad, you do not know why you are drinking, and you do not know why you are yelling.
It is an asset of great price to be able to be in touch with your own emotions, to know what you are feeling, to know what you are thinking, to know when somebody hurts you, to know when somebody annoyed you, to know whether that hurt was justified, or to know whether that hurt was not justified.
Sometimes people do not mean to hurt you. Sometimes they do something that is good for you, and what is good for you wounds you.
Therefore, all you can expect from that person is to say, "I am sorry I hurt you, but I had to do it and if I had to do it again, I would do it again. I am sorry."
Some people wound you, and you have a right to an apology because it was cruel and it was sin. You need to be able to tell the difference. If you have these skills, you will be a person who is acting out according to whoever you are. How do you act out? Do you drink? Do you chain smoke? Do you take drugs? Are you compulsive sexually? Do you blame the wrong person? Do you pick on your wife? Do you quit your job? Do you go and spend all your money on clothes? Do you gamble? Do you take it out on your children?
Every time you are hurt, brethren, there must be a reaction. The law of physics says every action has a reaction. If we are denying that we are hurt, we are at a great disadvantage, because that hurt is going to go way down, and it may not be that day, that week, that month, but it could be a year later when that reaction happens.
What happens in many cases with people who are in denial is that when that reaction finally blows up or comes out or acts out, we have completely forgotten what got us mad. We were never aware of it in the first place, and we find ourselves in arguments or discussions with people that are unproductive.
Brethren, every argument, every discussion, every conflict you have with anybody should be productive. We have to have conflict, and arguments, and discussions. We are all fallen. These things must be, because we are all fallen. The key is that they should be productive, that the people involved should have an opportunity to express their feelings, their hurts, their disappointments, their resentments, and that reconciliation should come forth. Then Godly concessions, if they are called for, should be made. Godly changes of position, if they are called for, should be made and a compromise solution that is Godly and righteous should be made.
You cannot do this if you do not know what you are feeling. If you cannot know what you are feeling and communicate it to the other person, you are at a severe disadvantage. God wants His people to develop these skills. It is one of the things we do in this ministry. You must have these skills, for your whole life experience, not just for here. You definitely need them to be a son of God, but it will be an asset to you as a human being who is not a son of God. It is a great asset to have these skills.
People go to school spending thousands of dollars to try and learn these skills that we teach here.
Getting back to our main subject, the carnal mind is putting pressure on the Christ mind within you, if you are living in any measure out of Christ. You are striving to live out of Christ, and it is taking a daily minute-by- minute act of your will to live out of Christ instead of the carnal mind.
The carnal mind comes along and first tries to hurt your body. It is not necessarily in this order. Then it tries to give you emotional pain, and one of the weapons of the carnal mind is confusion. She then can hurt you where you cannot identify the pain. That is what she is going to do first. If you can identify the pain, then you can identify the source, then you can deal with it in Christ, and you can knock this thing out and go back to manifesting Christ.
One of her major weapons is to blind you and to confuse you as to where this pain is coming from, as to who was causing this pain, as to the nature of the pain, and as to our involvement, to what extent we may be guilty and need to repent in this situation.
Then we have spiritual pain; spiritual pain, witchcraft, spiritual pain coming out of the spirit. Hate, hatred from other people, hatred from our self. If you are in a spiritual condition where hatred freely flows out of you, you have an open wound. You have an open wound, and you are failing to live your life at that moment in a Godly manner.
Sin must be dealt with in Christ. It must be confessed, and repented, and rebuked, and cast down.
If you have an open wound of hatred flowing out, resentment, bitterness, envy, if you think you have been wronged; the carnal mind is ruled by Satan and has your mind.
Brethren, if you are putting your energy, your life force into declaring your innocence, into declaring how you have been wronged, I declare unto you, you have taken away spiritual strength that you need to lay hold of to access the Christ mind. I am telling you, the Scripture says to lay every weight aside. "He who wareth entangles himself not in the troubles of this world."
Make peace quickly! With one exception, if it is an issue of righteousness. If it is an issue of righteousness, and you are standing in Christ, He will give you the victory. As far as worldly bickering, Jesus said to make peace immediately unless someone takes you to the judge. I cannot quote you the Scripture, and I know that it was one of Peter's favorite scriptures. If he takes you to the magistrate, he is going to pronounce you guilty and lock you up.
Does anyone know what scripture I am talking about? "Agree with your adversary." What does that mean? It means that if you are bickering in a carnal dispute, if you are both carnal, it does not matter how right you are. If you are coming at the problem with your carnal mind, watch out, because your adversary, who is Satan, is going to have legal ground to execute judgment upon you.
It does not matter if you are right. You have to deal with the problem out of the Spirit of Christ. It does not mean that you have to be abused, but you have to deal with the problem in Christ, or Satan has got as much legal ground to bomb you as he has to bomb the guy that wronged you. That is a great mystery, you have to know this.
There is no excuse for coming out of your carnal mind. There is no excuse. Your carnal mind is sin. Because we are fallen, God says to us, "If it happens to you, I have a provision for you. Make it right, make it right because you are fallen." There is no way you could make an excuse. There is no way you can justify carnal behavior, it is sin. Do not condemn yourself, do not let anyone condemn you.
Go on, but you need to know that you cannot react out of your carnal mind, because Satan has legal ground to go after you if you do it. I tell you the truth.
Most of us are trying our best here. Everybody has a different level of best. That is why you should not ever look at your neighbor, because there could be someone who is living out of Christ ninety-five percent of the time, but God knows they are capable of living out of Him ninety- nine percent of the time, and they are not doing their best. There could be someone who is capable of living out of Him forty-five percent of the time, and they are doing it. Christ will favor the guy that is living out of his Christ mind forty-five percent of the time, better or faster than He is favoring the guy who is living out of Christ ninety-five percent of the time, but who is capable of ninety-seven percent. Do you hear me? Do your best, God requires your best.
Spiritual pain can come out of our own mind sapping the energy that we need to continuously access Christ, and it also comes from other people's minds, other people's hatred, other people's envy, other people's manipulation, other people's sin directed towards us for whatever their ungodly reason is.
Mind control, Jezebel, all forms of evil dwell in the soul realm, and the more of your life you spend accessing Christ, the more spiritually sensitive you are, the more carnal minds of men will try to bring you down. Why? Because the unconscious mind of man is connected in everybody. You do not know it, I may not know it, every area in which he is connected, but there is one carnal mind who is typified as the salt sea.
I want to tell you, if he sees somebody succeeding and accessing Christ more and more, you do not even have to be accessing Christ ninety-five percent of the time. If Satan sees that today you are accessing Christ five-percent of the time, and next month you are accessing Him ten- percent of the time, and the month after that, you are accessing Him twenty-percent of the time, he draws himself a little graph and he says, "Wow, this guy is going to be trouble for me a year down the road." He is growing at a steady, increasing rate of success. He is more dangerous than the guy who is accessing Christ at forty-five percent and not doing anything more about it to increase, because he is satisfied with what he has got. He will stay at forty-five percent. The guy that is at ten percent today could be up to a hundred percent next year.
Satan will go around and stir up the unconscious areas of the carnal minds of whoever will yield to his wickedness. Some people will hate you consciously, some people will hate you unconsciously, some people will be envious of you, some people will try to manipulate you. However it comes out, it is all one name, Satan and it is sin.
Its purpose is to destroy, not even you, but the Christ, the Christ who is fully intending to appear in you. You are one of the kingdoms that He is intending to appear in. Satan is out to stop the appearance of Christ. You are just a worm. The problem is that Christ intends to appear in these worms that we are. That is why Satan is after us. There is no reason why He would want to kill us, except that Christ is coming forth in us.
We see the carnal mind pressing down on the Christ, doing everything he can to make you let go of Him, because you are reaching up and you are pulling Christ down. You are making Him your mind, you are accessing Him, and the carnal mind is bombing you. Physical distress, emotional distress, spiritual distress, dealing with your own sin, confessing it, repenting of it, and casting it down and as if that is not enough trouble, someone else's mind is pounding on your door.
Sometimes they know about it, sometimes they do not, and sometimes it is ten people. That is okay because this is all resistance. The carnal mind is exerting resistance upon or against your ability to access Christ. The more resistance He exerts on you, the harder you fight and eventually, eventually, my Bible tells me I will reach a point that there is no resistance that the carnal mind can exert against me that would be strong enough to separate me from the mind of Christ.
It is an up and down thing. The stronger you are in Christ, the more pressure the carnal mind puts upon you. It is not even fair to say to somebody, "I have been through this, and you have not been through that." That is not fair because pressure is relative. Everything is relative. You might be at your max. What is max to you might be a piece of cake to me.
The only thing that is important for you to know is that the people who are actively waging this war with such strength, that Satan has got his graph up to monitor you. He knows by next year that this guy who has got ten percent access to Christ is going to be up to ninety-five percent.
Of course, I am making fantasy figures. You need to know that the person that is pushing in, that is pressing into the kingdom, Satan is throwing everything he has got at them, on any or all of these three levels.
Remember that the spiritual pressure is on two levels; your own sin and your enemy's sin.
There are really four areas by which Satan presses down, trying to make you let go of the Christ that you are holding on to. I want to tell you, brethren, that if you cannot see what is happening to you, if you cannot recognize that the circumstances or a particular circumstance in your life is specifically designed to make you let go of Christ, there is no way you are going to overcome it. There is no way you are going to overcome it.
You have got to see it. You have got to see what is happening, and then you have to stop dead in your tracks and say, "No, I am not going to do it, you are not going to do this to me." Then after you make a resolve in your mind that he is not going to do this to you, then you have to lay hold of Christ and find out what the right thing to do is.
When this pressure comes on you, when you let go of Christ, you do all the wrong things. I did the wrong thing this morning. I did not communicate clearly. First of all, I lost my cool. The pressure got to me, and I let go of Christ, and I lost my cool, so I was like a roaring lion. Second of all, I did not communicate adequately, and you probably did not really understand what I wanted. Third of all, I should have gone to the right person in charge and I did not. I was just out of order completely.
I let go of Christ. Satan pressured me, and pressured me, and pressured me and I let go. I did everything wrong, but that is just for today. Now everything is in order. We recovered ourselves.
This is what is happening to all of us, everyday of our life. The stronger you are in Christ, the more pressure you can bear. The more pressure you can bear, the more pressure God lets come upon you. The more pressure comes upon you, the stronger you get.
The more you resist, the more pressure comes upon you. It just keeps on going until that day comes that there is no pressure, not even hanging on the cross with nails driven through you that is going to make you fall down into your carnal mind.
That is the promise of the scripture.
That is why there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus for those who are called according to His purposes. What does that mean? It means there is now no more condemnation for those who are sinning, because they are doing everything they can to lay hold of Christ, and Satan has stepped on their fingers so hard that they let go. There is no condemnation because God knows as soon as you get recovered, He is going to stand you up, and you are going to get your carnal mind back under control, and you are going to go on to the next stage of strength.
What point would there be in God condemning you? You are in the battle. For those who are not in the battle, I tell you, brethren, they abide in their sin. The Scripture says it a different way. The scripture says that if Christ is not risen, ye are yet in your sins. My Bible does not say, "If the Holy Spirit is not in you speaking in tongues, you are yet in your sins."
Let me back up, I jumped ahead. Let me make this clear. The Scripture says, "If Christ is not risen, ye are yet in your sins." The reverse inference is, "If Christ is risen, ye are no longer in your sins, or if Christ is risen, you are no longer subjected to or under the dominion of or receiving a sowing and reaping judgment because of your sins, if Christ is risen in you."
My Bible does not say if the Holy Ghost is in you speaking in tongues, you are no longer accountable for your sins. Does your Bible say that? I never read that anywhere. Does your Bible say that?
Let me point out to you, if Christ is risen. If Christ is risen, two stages. Before Christ can rise, He has to be in you. The word "rise" implies "manifestation." I suggest to you that Christ can be in you, and if He is in you, He is under the heart of the earth of the carnal mind. He can be there, but He is not risen unless He is ascended above the authority of the carnal mind. He has to manifest. He has to be formed in you, and then He has to manifest.
If He is in you, and He is tread down under the feet of the god of this world which we know can happen, because we are told that it can in Hebrews 6, then He is not risen. I know what a miserable man are we if Christ has not risen. You could have Him. and He could not be risen.
All you people out there, all you Pharisees, that have received your talent of silver typifying salvation, and you have buried it under the earth of your carnal mind, and you have done nothing with it, what a miserable man are you for you are still in your sins, and for you, Christ is not risen.
That is just another way of saying what I have been saying. If you are not fighting the war, if you do not have Christ, or if you have Him and you are not using Him to break free of this big bruiser that has got you pinned to the wrestling mat, it is as good as if you do not have Him and you are still in your sins.
I do not care if you spend twenty hours a day pronouncing with your mouth that Jesus is my Savior. I hear all the pharisees yelling, but the Scripture says, "If you confess it with your mouth." If you confess it with your mouth. Brethren, the only way you can confess it with your mouth is by having the Spirit of Christ speak through you.
Confessing it with your mouth does not mean your carnal mind using your mouth to say "Jesus is Lord." That is not what it means. It means that the words which come out of your mouth must be out of the Spirit of Christ. It must be evident to people who have the ability to recognize Christ, that those words that you are speaking are of Christ. It is called discerning of spirits. That is how you confess it with your mouth, that by the words you speak, it is evident what spirit is speaking through you.
James says a man who could harness his tongue or bridle his tongue is a perfect man. A couple of verses down, he clearly states that no man can do it. No man, no MAN can bridle his tongue, but Christ can do it. Ye, even the Lion of the Tribe of Judah can do it. He has got to be inside of you. The Lion of the Tribe of Judah, inside of me, cannot bridle your tongue! All that can happen, if Christ is not bridling your tongue, and I have a mature Christ in me, brethren, all I could do is execute the law upon you. I can rebuke you, I can correct you. If I have the secular law behind me, I could put you in jail. I might be able to execute you, but your tongue will not be bridled, and you cannot be a perfect man unless the very Christ is growing and living inside of you.
We see that this is the condition of the believer who is in the war. I have an exciting message for you this morning, but I could not get it printed out. I believe the Lord is telling me to just go with the spirit this morning, and we will preach the message tonight.
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