Looking IN

To be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with the Word and have your thinking and actions controlled by the Word of God. Jordan says I Thess. 2:13 is one of his favorite verses: “There’s a lot of things to get from that verse. It’s the Word of God that effectually works in people that believe. When you by faith take the Word of God and step out upon what God says, God the Holy Spirit takes His Word . . .

“God the Holy Spirit today works indirectly in your life through the instrumentality of the Word of God as you by faith rest upon it. I don’t know how to say that any clearer than that. If I did, I’d say it another way.

The way God’s going to work in your life, it isn’t you sitting down and saying, ‘Lord, I want you to take away this problem out of my life,’ and God’s just going to zap you and it’s going to be gone. That isn’t how that happens.

“As you objectively take your thinking processes, your actions and your attitude and bring them under the control and authority of the Word of God . . . As you begin to think in your own heart and mind the way God says He thinks in His Word, that is God the Holy Spirit working in you both to will and to do His good pleasure.

“So rather than looking out there, we look in here. Rather than asking God to move and do out there, it’s His Word that WORKS and He’s in us, living His life out through our mortal bodies as we walk by faith in what He says in His Word.

“If something is effectual that means it WORKS. It’s effective; it gets the job done. It’s not a misfire. It works effectually IN you. That’s where God’s working starts. It’s in you that believe! That’s the catalyst of it.

“Col. 1:9. There’s that word again! Let the Word of Christ DWELL in you! Let it come and fill up your life and be at home in you and live there! I pray that you might be filled with the knowledge of His will.

“What should be the result of you having a daily and a weekly intake of sound doctrine into your life? That you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing.

“The first thing God is interested in you understanding about Jesus Christ is not His earthly life and ministry. That’s what religion wants you to know about.

“When you look back to Calvary and watch all the things that happen there, then the Lord speaks seven times. Now, you can only see into the heart of a person when the words come out of their mouth. You can’t watch the actions of a person and tell exactly what’s inside of them. They can be fooling you.

“But you listen to the words that come out a person’s mouth and the Lord says that’s where the Spirit’s revealed. That’s where your inner man comes out.”