Abide Above

OK. How many of you know what the Keswick Convention is? How do you know? How many of you know even how to pronounce Keswick? It looks like Keswick, but it's pronounced Keswick. How many of you have ever heard of Keswick? What's what I thought. If you read the first part of the chapter, you'll. Keswick was a conference that started in the mid 1800s, late mid to late 1800s. And it was started most started originally by, I think, the Brethren. And it was designed to to have people come together for five days and to learn positional and identification truths. and it was primarily focused on the issue of spiritual growth.

From a content standpoint, I don't think it's ever had any peer. I think there are still some Keswick conventions around. It started in England, found its way here, but nobody's ever heard of it recently. The reason I thought that I didn't skip over these chapters was several.

I think it sets a good outline for any of us who hear about or find out about some sort of spiritual conference. There are these kinds of things around today. Usually they try to restrict them to pastors. We haven't had one here, but I know something like Duluth Bible Chapel and some of these other places, and Ron Merriman and people like that. have these conferences at different churches at different times.

And so the study here would hopefully equip us to decide whether we'd ever want to attend one of these, and if we did, what we'd expect, and what we wouldn't expect. Because I think that's really why Miles addresses it, is because there are some pitfalls in it that probably can be avoided if you sort of understand Why am I going there? What am I going there to learn? And am I going to come home this super spiritual person or not?

And so I think it's important. To start with, I think that the lineup of the Keswick Convention was a good one. And that was my first question. What were the daily themes of the conferences? I think there is, but it's... Well, on the East Coast, you know, they're in Pennsylvania and around in there where there are, you know, some strong brethren environments. I think they still put these things on and call them Keswick conventions, but I don't think they're anything like they were like 1960s and before then, because they were really a big deal then. I'm trying to think back at what they go through and whether that's... I bet it's very similar to this. I think it might be now that you think about it. I think it is. But it was never called the Keswick Convention, right? Right. And like Miles said in his book, there are a lot of conferences or meetings that have come into being that follow this format, and that the format itself is really a good one. So, what do you learn? What do you learn the first day?

Sin. That's exactly right. Sin and the life of the believer. And done from the Word of God, faithfully done from the Word of God, to focus upon indwelling sin. Now notice something. I'm not talking about sins here. Right away, this conference gets busy on talking about the sin nature. Not the sins. It's the nature that produces them. They get moving on spiritual growth right away, or the issues of it. So, second day.

Deliverance from what? The domination of sin and self in the life of, he says, a defeated Christian. But you can see now, this conference is not for the recently saved. This is not a conference for someone who's dealing with S-I-N-S, sins in their life.

These people immediately get into the issue of sin and what to do about it. Third day, they deal with the issue of consecration. And the fourth day, the fullness of the Spirit. And the final day is what? Christian service. So, with the emphasis on missionary outreach. So, my next question was, do you think that the conference covered the right material? Think they did? Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, they did.

I think maybe it's too compact though. It's just too, it's everything at once. I could see people doing it and trying to get through the first few days real quick and then working on the last week. If you were going to run the conference, would you add or take anything away? It's one of those questions that you can't answer unless you read the chapter. Would you change anything in terms of the curriculum? I think it might be the last one. Emphasis on service? Emphasis on service, and you might say, you know, if you're letting the Spirit live through you and you're abiding above, it's just going to happen normally.

So I focus on the Bible. I don't know. I've not read the chapter. Okay. And also, you know, if we talk time, the time element. The knowledge that what you're getting in this five days, you aren't going to be there at the end of the week. I agree with you. I think you gave that one example, the pastor after he was 60 years old or something finally figured it out and he felt like he was letting down now that he's finally getting somewhere. That should take 5 years instead of 5 days.

I would. That's the one thing I would add to the conference. I would add at least somewhere around the second day, at least an hour's discussion on time. Because I think it's critical that the believer understand that there is no such thing as a quick fix. You know, this isn't take two pills and call me in the morning. It would be better.

On the positive side, though, I think without these deeper life conferences, the spread of the growth truths would not have been as rapid as it was during the time of these conferences. Of course, now it's few and far between. It's hard to find anybody, you know. What were the arguments that the author listed as the main reasons why the individual made little progress at these meetings? He started out by saying that it lies mainly with the individual. Isn't that interesting? Why? He learned how to live a better life.

He says they really don't mean business concerning the growth truths in the Lord Jesus Christ. So, the problem with a conference like this is that if you're coming, let me put it this way, if you're coming to grow spiritually and you're coming just to get the information to grow spiritually, Miles says isn't enough. Now, that's not to discount the desire to grow spiritually. The criticism that Miles makes about these conferences is the lack of the emphasis of the cross. And what does the cross mean to good old self?

That's right. And so you have to mean business. I don't say that from the standpoint that you better go outside and say I really mean business so I'm going back in the room. This is the work of the Spirit. And so when you're involved in a situation like this, it's like being involved at Holly Hills. If you're going to grow spiritually, you have to mean business.

You don't grow cursorily or with a bunch of facts crammed in your head. It just doesn't happen. And if you look around as we get to know each other, you find in every family and every person, the Lord is at work. Doing what? Making sure that you mean business. He's doing that. There's always issues, there's always circumstances where the Spirit is applying the cross to good old self.

We're not liking it a bit, but we mean business, so we're moving on. And it isn't that we want to live a better life. What do we want? What are we after? That we might know Him, that we might be conformed to His very image, which, as we come to understand, in and of itself or incorporated in that is the crucifixion of good old Adam. And that's hard.

He also said the disappointment and failure that many others finds much of its cause in the conference method. What was the problem with that? We're going to talk about why was the method faulty. Timing, yeah. The believer wasn't able to keep up with the pace of the truths that were presented. And the key phrase there is clear comprehension requires time. And appropriation must be based on comprehension. to discover the difference between sins and sin, and at the same time be able to read Romans 6 and say, you know, I think what God is telling me there is that I got crucified, and what does all of that mean? With that initial information, it's, you know, unless you're a lot quicker than I am, it's years before you begin to enter into the fullness of what that means.

We've been meeting here and studying growth truths for a year, right? And it's way too fast what we've been doing in a year. It's way too fast. We could have spent the whole year just on identification truths and then the next year on what your position is. And we just, we've been sailing right through it like it was, you know.

You pick up a little book. Most books on spiritual growth are little. You ever notice that? There are 100 pages, 125, but there are not any more than that. Spiritual growth books are not this thick, because you get right to the issue, crucifixion, of good old me. in growth in Christ, it's not I but Christ and what all that entails, which doesn't take a lot of verbiage.

The Holy Spirit through Paul lays it out in one verse. One verse, my old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be put out of business, that I should henceforth no longer serve sin. There it is. Or Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ. The phraseology is simple, but to have that work into your life, that's what takes the time and takes comprehension. I'm convinced that growing believers arrive at a point in their life where they say to the Father, you know what?

You did the right thing with me. You crucified me. That was the right thing to do. All this time I'm hoping you were going to make me better and you never intended to do that. You really intended to replace me with the life of your son and that's the right thing to do. That's comprehension. Understanding that what God's method and His purpose for you was the right thing.

That your old self was irreconcilably broken, couldn't be fixed. You agree with that? I think that, well, that's my opinion. Most churches are self-help conferences or meetings. I think this would at least introduce people, more people to this kind of conference. Whereas, like you said, I took years before I realized that there's more than justification. It took years. I didn't know about Holly Hills. I didn't know where to go.

It's interesting that the focus... Why would self-help be so important in most churches? Why would that be the focus? They're focused on their sins. They also don't have any education in the identification process. That's exactly the point. If you don't know you died, that your old man was crucified, then what are you going to do? You're going to work on the old man. Isn't that appropriate? I mean, what else would you do? What else would you do? And then some idiot comes in and shows you Romans 6 and says, Oh yeah, all that work you've been doing on that guy you've been working on?

Oh, no. All this wasted time. All this effort. But, you know, the time factor. I mean, that little phraseology. You know, that's five, ten. I mean, what does that mean? And how does that, at yourself, fight so far? You know, doubt, create, you know, fix me up, help me. You know, that is such an overwhelming fight inside to get to that point.

Dying in bed. I'm alive. What do you mean I'm dead? I've got more of me than I need. But it just takes a long, long, long time to start making that a reality and going against the old nature who is kicking and screaming to the cross. That's right. How long does it take to learn just this little aspect that I didn't die. and it didn't die.

What death really means is separation. I got separated and what does it mean positionally or judicially? What does that mean? It takes a long time to learn that because you read that and you... I mean, I asked God for years, if I'm dead, how come every time the music starts playing my feet are moving?

What is the deal here? Either this is a bunch of pious rhetoric Or it isn't. Which is it? Do you understand? And I mean, the understanding of two natures, still. You know, when we say that's the other thing, the crucifixion, or the crucifying of all nature, it is not that.

It is nailing us to the cross. That's a good one. When they take him away, the captain, they don't kill him. No, they tie him in a mask. And he's screaming at the crew members still, you know, he's still alive. Let me give you a great contemporary political example.

The Republican Party has been in charge of Congress for 10 years. Yet the Democrats still act like they're in charge and the Republicans act like they're the minority. Don't they? Don't they, really? That's what the Sin Nature's like. It never says, oh, okay, you found me out, so I guess I'll quit. No, no. It moves right along as though nothing changed.

One point about time. For us who are learning these truths and growing in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, It teaches us the time involvement that we're in, in our own life, is the very thing that teaches us how to deal with others. Because we see and we know from experience how patient God was with us, how long-suffering he was, how careful he was, so it affords us the opportunity when God brings somebody in our life to deal with them the same way. That's how we learn how to do it. That we're patient. But, you know, if you're like me, I went around telling the right thing to the wrong people. There are legions of people in Denver that I've been laying identification truths on and it's had no effect on them.

You know, that's because the guy with the message wasn't prepared. I agree and disagree with that. Five years later somebody may go, you know, We may not have immediate response. God's Word doesn't come back after you. I think people may 5, 10 years ago, after hitting their head on the wall 20 times, they go, maybe it is wrong.

The other is, with the dedication and all those things, we had a discussion when I was teaching that time, I want to jam it down everybody's throat. Absolutely. I have this gift and you want to give it away. What do you mean you can't understand? Yeah. You know, and the tendency is to give it to everybody. Oh, and give them the whole shot at once. You know, you know, not a five day conference, a five minute. Yeah. That's right. What do you mean you don't understand? Yeah. These Keziks were pikers compared to me, right?

And the reason I think that you get so excited about these truths is you see the freedom in them. And you see that it is God's desire that I would behold His Son while I'm here and I can fellowship with Him and rest and walk in Him. Wow, I want everybody I love to know this. The problem is, they don't want to know it. It's like evangelism. You're evangelizing the growth truths. So what do you do? You find out, through your own study and your own life, that God's greatest tool is need. So you wait for God to create a need in a believer's life. And then you sort of sniff around, sneak up and see how bad the need is. Are they ready to begin to hear? The real significance of what's going on.

I think along what you were saying, I know that it's not just the identification truths, but it's the intimacy with the people teaching me as well. That's right. Here's what the Bible says here. I found that in my life and in the lives of my family, the greatest growth is coming because of the people who are teaching us and the love that they have for us as a family.

I don't think I would have seen what that looks like. It's interesting. I would have not have thought that somebody young like my son could pick up on this. But he is picking up on this. Because at 13, You've got a lot going on, starting to go on in your life, lots of unanswered questions, and if you can discuss them from this viewpoint, they make a lot more sense in terms of his ability to deal with them. Not that he has terrific comprehension, but the viewpoint is different. It isn't a self-help program in any sense.

So, to make the point that not only are we growing in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, but one of the things that, you know how the body of Christ grows, it grows interdependent and every sinew and everybody joined together and growing into the fullness of Christ. So, we come alongside other believers and walk with them.

When it comes to time, to the time principle, what made for success and what made for failure? We've already talked about the failure. How about the success? Of the conference? Of the conference. I mean, obviously, we can be critical of the time issue, but was there things to be talked about that were successful?

Anytime you have a conference like that that just shows the truth, some people are just going to be, people that haven't heard of it or people that haven't thought about it for a while, awakened. Or a believer who the Lord has created need in their life goes to a conference like this and for the first time sees the answer.

I remember thinking one day, coming out of Catholicism, the issue there is go to confession and try to make it to Sunday. And with lots of believers it's confess, sin and confess, sin and confess, and that gets to be, oh boy, there's got to be something more to the Christian life than this.

And when you begin to enter into the identification truths, it dawns on you, wait a minute, God has made it possible here that I would not have to live in sin. Is it really possible that I would sin less? Yeah, it is. If I walk in the Spirit, I'm not sinning. Now that's a self-thought, but it's a good one, I think, because you have a defeated Christian is so focused on their sinfulness that they want freedom from that sin nature. And when it dawns on them that this is the pathway to freedom and rest, it's a very exciting discovery, I think.

For true and abiding progress, what does the Holy Spirit always establish the individual in? One step at a time. And what's the first step? We've talked about conviction of sin and the need in the hungry heart before the identification of truths can be understood.

The Holy Spirit is at work in every believer's heart. Let me put it this way. You take all the churches we just talked about that have self-help programs. We have a tendency to think, well, gee, the Holy Spirit isn't working in those souls, because they're going off in their own... No, He is working in their souls. And the way He works is exactly this way.

He deals with the issue of sin. Their sins, yeah, but then they begin to discover there's a source for my sinning. And I can't find anything that's dealt with that source. God didn't just leave me with this confession deal. There's got to be more than that. Am I right about that?

The Holy Spirit is at work creating the hunger in the believer's life, and usually it's created by the beginning to understand sin. It usually takes them back to the cross. Well, once you have the understanding, it's to the cross. That's where you go. And not the cross in the work in terms of forgiveness, but the work of the cross in terms of identification.

After about 50 years or so, the Keswick Movement made a fatal error. What was it? That's right. One of the things that they did that was really critical to their success was that they were very careful about who spoke at these things. And they had to be mature believers, not only with an intellectual understanding of the issues, but had entered into them. And what happened was is that they either began to incorporate speakers who were popular or ones that just weren't quite qualified in terms of their apprehension of these truths. And so the next question I ask, what's the difference between sharing and preaching?

Yeah, that's really right. It's a difference between just having the knowledge about something and having the experience of it. There are plenty of people that can preach. Like Paul said, we've got a lot of teachers but not a lot of fathers. So to have a preacher at one of these conferences is not what you're looking for. You're looking for someone who can share these truths. What's the difference between teach and exhort? A teacher is someone who can encourage somebody in these truths, but what does an exhorter do?

More than that. I mean, pushing people to take part in those troops? I don't know. Is encouraging toward the truth? Go ahead. It has to do with the person himself. When I think of your story, I think of somebody calling people, like a captain, encouraging his troops to go forward. That's not quite right, but there's that sense of Yeah, that's pretty close. Here's the way I view it.

You can't lead anybody any farther than you've been yourself. So if you're an exhorter, what you're exhorting people to do is to enter into the life that you already live. And they can tell. They know by your life that you're not just telling them, well, you need to do this.

Really, Christianity is the call to come out of self to Christ, which means to leave all that you were and come to Him. Christianity is not an aspirin or a fix for your headache. It's the actual leaving of the earth and going to heaven is really what it is. And so an exhorter is someone who from his heavenly or her heavenly position invites you to come. You see that?

They are what they teach, is another way to put it. Yeah, they wanted teachers rather than... Now, having said that, I'm not talking about someone who has the gift of teaching and understands and teaches these truths. But you only can teach, I think, as a teacher as far as you are. You can't go beyond that. You can say the words, but it's apparent pretty quickly that you don't understand what you're teaching.

I mean, I think he says he would say teachers rather than exhorters. Right. Does he say that? Yeah, I think. Oh, I see. I see what he's saying. Yeah. You know, what Lawson did teach in the room was who were able to share, not just preachers, to teach and not simply to exhort. Oh, I see what he says. Yeah. You know, you're saying the exhorters are the ones who are there and lead you to that position. Yeah. And he was saying that that's what was their downfall. Well, yeah, he's, yeah, okay, I agree.

What's the difference between a gifted preacher and a Keswick speaker? I think they're Keswick speakers. used to know what they're talking about. What are you saying? One who, the preacher is one who verbalizes God's word versus one who systematically presents the same issue, defecation of fruits and growth in Christ.

That's pretty good. Just present the word. The Catholic was more kind of the Kind of the whole package with the other parts that he said. Able to share. Understand those. Share those truths. Not just exhort the word or just present the word. Do you have something? Oh, I mean I agree. Today we see lots of dynamic preachers. Polished. Yeah.

What I find interesting is in the study of God's Word, and you read, especially in Corinthians, when Paul describes how he came to the Corinthians. He preached Christ and Him crucified, put the period after crucified, and not in flowery speech, Trust me, I think Paul was an orator and a brilliant man, but he understands about the gospel and so he presents it, not ashamedly, but just presents it and he lets the Holy Spirit do the work. Again, I think as God grows each one of us up in these truths, we become qualified to teach Him as we grow. I think as you said, the Holy Spirit systematically goes through. Paul does too in his epistles. He starts out with the issues and then the logical imperatives afterwards. So he systematically goes through it too. as Holy Spirit, you build on it, and then the logical is this.

Right. Easy answer. What did the average speaker at a Keswick conference forget as regards to his own spiritual growth? One word. Time. How long it took God to deal with him. Why is a speaker who does not emphasize the centrality of the cross a hindrance to the spiritual growth of a hungry believer. Why is the cross so key?

Yeah. And I think that's a key point. And you'll find, I think, in discussions and even with your own Study and reading, you know, there's little parts of Adam you don't want to let go. And as there's death in you, there's life in others. And the Spirit is always working to apply the cross to Adam, to put him out of business, to make him of no effect. That's how I would say to take him offline. Well, the equation is death and then life. So the degree to which Adam is put out of business is the degree to which the life of Christ can come forward.

Do you see that? So the focus or the emphasis on the cross is critical in dealing with spiritual growth of a believer and for yourself too. Because if you don't, if it isn't that way, then you end up working on the old stuff. That's what you do. Realistically, as you grow spiritually, don't you really have in the back of your mind that there's a whole bunch of bad stuff that, yeah, I'm glad that God got rid of that, but there's some good stuff. It's the good stuff that's the problem with most Christians. It's the goodness of the old man that we're not willing to let go. And so, as the Holy Spirit teaches you that you're a dirty dog from top to bottom and left to right, then you're willing to let Him apply the cross. You buy that? What do you think? You guys are pretty accomplished people. Not only that, you're good looking. I mean, it's tougher if you look good. Or you went to college.

Yeah, there's a book I have in my library that talks about 100 pages on the biggest problem with growing Christians is their goodness. Divine good works versus human good works? Or just as bad as bad. There's a badness. Yeah, we think that we have two sides to us. We have a good side and a bad side. And yeah, the bad side is the cross and Christ. But the good side we're working on to make better.

It's the whole Adam that gets the axe. The whole man. I read Garvey the other day. He said, Morality will make you fit for the world, but not for heaven. That's right. There's a big difference. When Adam ate of the tree, what was the tree called? We have this sense in which, Oh, I'm saved now, so I can leave the evil branches and move over to the good ones. No, no. There's a different and a whole new tree in the garden. You've got to come down out of the tree, go across the garden and get in the tree of life. and life and goodness aren't the same thing.

Explain the problem when the emphasis shifts from the cross to the filling of the Spirit. And by the way, did you pick up on that issue when you were reading, a shift in emphasis? Here's what he said, if the believer fails to gain access, to the truths of the cross during the conference, he will have little or nothing, no matter what decisions or commitments he is brought to. All will eventually come down, inevitably come down, and great will be the fall thereof. The point is this, that the focus on the conferences began to go away from the cross to the filling of the Spirit. Why is that a problem? We understand the cross, the Spirit will fill us instead of us trying to fill ourselves.

Next week's class is going to be very interesting because we're going to talk a lot next week about the prerequisites for filling. if there are any. And all of the exhortations that we even contemporarily get today, that you have to do this, this, and this, and this, and this before there's a filling. Okay? And what's interesting is that we have this mentality today, and probably the Kazakhs had the same thing, that if I can get the filling of the Spirit, then I can manifest this life.

So if the emphasis goes off the cross to that, what's the problem with that? Yeah, the focus subtly becomes a filling of the old man. And so the old man doesn't get filled, and the Holy Spirit isn't. What's the Holy Spirit's viewpoint of the old man? How does he view the old man? Useless. Useless? What else? More than that. Okay, I'm just talking now. Okay, so I always just talk.

If the Holy Spirit's ministry is to reveal Christ, and He knows that the old man is on a death row, is His focus going to be on that, except to create a need for you to see death? Well, the Holy Spirit works from your position. in Christ, which is old man crucified, new man resurrected. From a conditional standpoint, though, one, you may be ignorant, two, you may understand, but you're not serious, or you're just not mature enough yet to reckon on the truths that you know in your mind. The Holy Spirit always works from the position And he never does anything other than apply the cross to Adam, conditionally. And so, in other words, he won't give any quarter to Adam because as far as he's concerned, Adam has been dealt with from a positional standpoint.

It's like, God has finished with my sin, how come I'm not? He's done. But he always works from a completed work. He always functions from something he's already accomplished. He isn't working spiritual growth or the life of Christ in you so that it can come into reality. He works from the fact that it already is reality And he's working it into you.

You see that? Does that help? When you become a believer, you are already filled with the Spirit. You don't ever need, right? Well, you're filled with the Spirit in the sense that you're in Christ, and Christ is in you. But the filling of the Spirit for service, probably not. Probably not.

I think the issue here is that if the focus goes off the cross and starts to go on the filling of the Spirit for you to be of service, without the cross having the proper place, then the focus becomes more on getting you to act in a manner that's spiritual, when in fact the Holy Spirit has no intention of making Adam function in any capacity at all. And he's thorough about the cross, put it that way. He's very thorough about the cross. He keeps us at the issue of the cross and the old man until that issue is really learned.

And then we realize that the filling of the Spirit is really not him enabling me to do anything. It's just him living his life. And my focus isn't on the filling of the Spirit, my focus is on beholding the glory of the Lord. And He carries out His life through me, but I have no sense in which, oh, I'm filled with the Spirit, I've got to go, do something.

Well, the way most of the world or other churches portray it, it's almost like you don't have much of anything, you've got to go back, like a gas station, you've got to go back to the gas station. Get four gallons, yeah. No, that's right. That's exactly right. You have the life, and it's the life of the resurrected and glorified Christ. Yes, you do. And you have everything, positionally, that's required to live the life. The problem is that you can't live it.

We're going to talk next week about the fact that you can't do anything about extinguishing sin in your life. Do you believe that? How many think that's right? How many aren't so sure? I mean, that's a tough one. It's the Spirit of God Himself who deals with the sin issue in your life, and He's the only one that can do it. And so next week when we start talking about prerequisites to filling, that's one of them. That's the big one.

You've got to confess all known sins. and down the line you go, and if you get all of these requirements done, then you get filled with the Spirit, and boy, you're rocking now. I think there's a skipping this understanding of the cross. We try to make ourselves feel filled with the Holy Spirit. I think that's where people come up with the idea of worship as being music, you know, and raise your hands and feel good and you're filled with the Holy Spirit.

Yeah. You get filled up for the week instead of worship as being your life. Worship is your whole life. Yeah. Where the Holy Spirit is. Yeah. I think all of us have an improper understanding of what the soul is and the spirit. I agree with that, Mike. Because God isn't soulish. He doesn't have a soul. Well, Jesus does. But no, you're absolutely right, and I think therein lies the problem. We think that soulish, warm fuzzies are spiritual when they're not. I think a lot of young Christians get really messed up and go on for years like that without having the understanding.

Well, I mean, you think about it. If you are halfway smart and you study the Word of God and you read books and stuff, you start finding out, oh, there's filling of the Spirit and worship and all these words and things. What does that look like? So you start looking around to find out what it does look like. And so somebody presents, you know, well, let me put it to you this way. I can remember sitting in a Sunday school class in this church with two guys in the class that were over 75, right?

And their contention was that classical music is spiritual and if it isn't classical it isn't spiritual. We can't have any of that guitar stuff. Because that's not spiritual. Well, they're both wrong. You understand? Not that there's anything wrong with music. That's not the point. The point is that classical music isn't any more spiritual than some other kind of music. See that?

On Thursday night we're studying John, and we're in chapter 12, is that where we started? And it's interesting that right before the Lord goes to the cross, and just before Palm Sunday, He has a dinner. They have a dinner for Him, and there's Mary and Martha and Lazarus. And it says that Martha was serving the dinner, Lazarus was sitting at the table, And Mary was anointing the Lord Jesus with this spikenard. And they represent three things. They represent service, fellowship, and worship.

And what's interesting about that is that nobody had to tell Mary that this is how you worship. She was anointing the Lord for His death. The most valuable thing to her, she was pouring out for Him because she knew Him and loved Him. She worshipped Him. I'm here to tell you, you cannot worship the Lord Jesus if you don't know him. And when you do know him, the worship just comes out. Because of who he is. Your response is just to worship him. There's no law involved? No, it's a life response. Let's see, we've got a couple of minutes.

Before attending a conference, what should a believer look for in the speakers? Evidence of the identification? That's right. He says, watch for the cross. See where it is in the conference. The other thing he recommends is that in looking for the Lord Jesus, you look for a heavenly perspective rather than an earthly one. Do you understand what I mean by that?

Or anything that Positional truth places us in the heavenlies, right? In Christ. And that's where our life is, and the source of our life is. And that's where the focus of the believer is. If a conference focuses you on anything on the earth, it's missing the point. Purpose driven. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Is there another offshoot that uses position and condition? What do you mean offshoot? Well, she went through a retreat. She can speak for herself. And they were using position and condition. And just barely touched on that. Is there an offshoot that uses those terms in an incorrect way? Well, yeah.

We'll talk more about that next week, because even the best of some of these teachers, even guys like Lewis Barry Chafer, would put requirements on a believer to be filled. And so, it's subtle. It's subtle because If you're given one of those conferences, they're involved in it, and you look around the room and it dawns on you on day five, they're not getting it. Then you have a tendency to say, well, they've got to leave here with something, and so we'll give them some conditions, give them something to do. You just laid the law on them.

And the last question I asked, and we'll close on this, and I asked it because, and I didn't even put an answer down, but I wanted you to think about it. It says, why wouldn't we settle for God's very best that's in Christ Jesus? Why wouldn't we? We should.

Let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you. not only for the position that you've placed us in in your dear Son, but also that you are actively and aggressively working through your Spirit to have us enter unconditionally into all that we are in your Son, that we can behold Him, be heavenly minded, and be glorifying to you, Father. We thank you. We pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.