Most people would like to have the power and the peace of the Spirit with a lot of other qualities, and gifts and benefits the Holy Spirit may bring. Now the question is: can we afford to walk with the Spirit? And, are we going to walk with Him? And the answer is: we cannot walk with Him until or unless we are in agreement with Him.
Taking it out of the realm of the Spiritual for just a little bit, and thinking about two people, which is what is meant here; “Can two people walk together except they be agreed?”
That takes us back to the old days when men made long journeys on foot. One man said, “I’m going to a certain town.” The other one said, “I am too. When are you going?” “I’m going tomorrow.”
Then the question, would they go together, or would each one go off by himself. Now if they were going to go walk together as the disciples at Emmaus, there were a few things they are going to have to agree upon.
One is their direction and the other is their destination, of course. “You’re going to such a town?” “Yes.” “Well I am not.” Therefore, they would have to shake hands and depart because two men cannot walk together when one man is going to one city and the other to another. At least they cannot for very long.
Then they would have to agree on which path to take if there were several paths. They would have to agree on the rate of speed. One man said, “I am a very fast walker,” and the other man said, “I just clump along; I hardly make it at all.” They would say, “Well there’s no use for us to walk together, because I am so slow I would bore you.” The other man would say, “No, I’m so fast that I would trouble you.” So, they would not go together.
Then, they would have to agree they wanted to walk together; did they want to walk together. There are some people that, if I was going to walk from here to Hamilton, I would just as soon walk by myself. I love them all right, and I pray for them, but I do not find them edifying companions. You have to decide whether you want to walk together or not. Whether it is advantageous to both parties concerned. Whether there is incompatibility that might render the trip unpleasant.
For two to walk together voluntarily, they must be one. They must agree on the things that matter if they are going to walk together. Now that bears upon the subject I want to talk about, and you will quickly see how it bares. How to cultivate the Spirit’s companionship; how to walk with the Holy Ghost.
Some people are just not ready to hear what I have to say, and of that I am convinced. Some are not willing to give up all to obtain all. They are not willing to turn toward God and walk with Him. They are facing both ways. John Bunyan talked about Mr. Facing Both Ways. A great many Christians, even gospel Christians, are facing two directions at once and they are not willing to go along one way. They want some of the world and some of Christ. They allow the Lord to disturb their way, but they also disturb the Lord’s way. And they do not get together on this. And there is no use of us talking about being filled with the Spirit and walking in the Spirit unless we are willing to give up all to obtain all.
Then there are Christians, and a lot of them in our gospel churches, that want Christianity for its insurance value. That is they want the care and protection that God gives them now. They want avoidance of hell at the time of death. They want the guarantee of heaven at last. To get this, they are willing to support the church, and missions, and other religious projects financially. And, who would not be willing to pay his insurance, if he knew it would help him in the hospital if he got sick; or got into an accident, it would pay his widow a lot of money if he died. Who wouldn’t be willing to pay and support that kind of insurance? Christianity, to some people, is simply there for its insurance value. They want its protection and what it has to offer and guarantee of heaven at last. Now I say, they are willing to support it, and they are willing to abstain from certain gross or pleasures. I do not think you will have much difficulty getting the average person to quit gambling if he has been a gambler. I don’t think you’ll have much trouble getting the average man separated from a lot of the fleshly things, because you know there are a lot of sinners that don’t do certain sins; there’s a lot of sinners.
My father used tobacco, both smoking and chewing for, I guess, fifty years. One day he looked at the stuff and had a sudden revulsion of feeling. He said what a dirty mess that is after-all, and he turned his back on it, and never touched it again, even until he died. He was not converted for many years after that. Between the time he gave it up and the time he was converted, a period of perhaps eight to ten years, he just did not like the stuff anymore.
Not every sinner is dirty, not every sinner is a rascal; not every sinner cheats on his wife; not every sinner refuses to pay his debts. There are honorable men and good men and honest men, who will tell the truth if it hurts, right out in the world, that have no hope of eternal life nor heaven to come, that are not followers of the Lord; they’re just decent people. The idea that everybody is a wicked rascal and a scoundrel is all wrong. I have known some of the finest men who are not Christians.
I know a man in Chicago who is so good that everybody wants to make a Christian out of him, but he steadfastly refuses, and says, I am not a Christian, I am not a Christian. But he is so good that he puts to shame many Christians. He does not claim that he is winning his way to heaven; it is not a question of the old morality that the evangelists talk about. He does not believe in that. He just knows he is lost, but he is also a man of incorruptible character; he is a good man. And of course, many Christians are willing to give up the grosser things and live in a reasonably decent way.
Some people are not ready for this message. Their conception of religion is social and not spiritual. They water down the strong wine of the New Testament until it has no tang in it anymore. They water it down with their easygoing opinion. They are very broad minded, they imagine, but the fact is they are so broad minded, they cannot walk on the narrow way. And many Christians now are more influenced by Hollywood than they are Jerusalem. That is just as sure as you live, that is their spirit; their mood is more like Hollywood than it is Jerusalem. If you were to sit them down in Jerusalem, they would wonder around, even as in the days of Christ, and would not feel at home. Take them out to that nest of iniquity in California, and they would say I wonder who she is. I wonder if she is one of the stars. They would be quite at home there, because their mood, the texture of their mind, has been created for them by twentieth century entertainment and not by the things of God.
Some people would like to be filled with the Spirit for the thrill of it. They want to be thrilled and they would pay almost any price to get the thrill. However, they will not die to themselves, to the world, or to the flesh. Hence, for these, what I have to say now will have no sympathetic meaning whatsoever. You just cannot have any meaning, because they have not come over into the region where God can get to them. Thank God, there are always some. And I do not know who they are. It is impossible for me to know. Among the things God has not done for me is to give me the ability to put my finger on a man and say, thou art the man or thou art not the man. God keeps His mysteries and His secrets from me to some extent, so I cannot tell you who they are. But I know there are some who have said, “Jesus, I my cross have taken all to leave and follow thee.” And from somewhere has come a longing, a blessed aspiration; a deep longing, a yearning after God that is so real and so wonderful and so pain filled that they know what I am talking about sympathetically.
You see, there is a difference between knowing doctrine intellectually and knowing it sympathetically. Anybody can learn the catechism and know the doctrine intellectually. And we have Bible Conferences all over the United States and all over Canada, all over England, all over Scotland and Wales and all over the world. Wherever Christianity is heard, we have Bible Conferences, and we take a week to ten days to study the Word. And its good and you can get a hold of the Word of God intellectually. It is quite another thing to let the Word of God reach you sympathetically; that is, your heart goes out sympathetically to the Word of God and it reaches you sympathetically.
I think there are some here like that and maybe more than I think, for I will break down and tell you something. I am not an optimist except in the long-range eschatological sense. If you do not know what eschatological means ask me. I do not know whether I do, but I am thinking now about the long-range future event. I am an optimist in that, but not too much of an optimist when it comes to things of now. I am likely to underrate than overrate. You will find that out now if I stay around here much longer. But maybe there are more people hungry for God than I know. Maybe so, and I sincerely hope so; and if there are and if there is even, one then I want to give this second half of my talk now.
If you are a hungry person and Christ is more to you than an insurance against hell, and Christianity is to you more than an opportunity to mingle socially with good people; If God is real to you and Christ is real, and your heart is longing after God and you want the best God has and your heart is open to the Holy Spirit’s incoming, then I want to give you a few thoughts now.
First, the Holy Spirit is a living person. That is, He can be known in increasing degrees of intimacy. This is the second time I have said, this but I want to emphasize it tonight that since the Holy Spirit is a personality, He is never fully known in one encounter. One of the biggest mistakes we can possibly make is to imagine that, by coming to know God in the new birth and receiving the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba Father, we know all we can know about God. And people of our persuasion make the second mistake, which is being filled with the Holy Ghost after conversion.
Some think they know all there is to know about the Holy Spirit. Oh, my friend, you have just started. For God’s personality is so infinitely rich and manifold, that it will take a thousand years of close search and intimate communion even to begin to know the outer edges of the glorious nature of God. So that when we talk about communion with God and fellowship with the Holy Spirit, we are talking about that which begins now, but which grows and increases while life lasts. Everything else being equal, if you are a seeker after God. as I hope you are, and you go on in obedience, you will know God much better five years from now than you know Him now.
And if you do not know Him better now than you did five years ago, then you have pretty much wasted five years of your life. You know it is possible to do that. Jacob wasted twenty years of his life and then went back to the altar, had his second experience by the river Jaboc, had his name changed from Jacob to Israel and went on from there. However, twenty years was taken out of his life. And I find Christian people that have wasted their lives. They have been converted to Christ, but they have not gone on to know the Lord increasingly. They have accepted the cold level of things round about them being normal. Well, there is untold loss and failure. This idea that was current a few years ago. People are a little more modest about that now.
I think Mussolini, the Roman Empire and a few other things rather blew up in our faces, and we are not quite as sure of ourselves as we used to be when it comes to prophecy. I used to hear young fellows, you know, who weren’t dry behind their ears yet get up and talk about reigning over five cities, how many crowns they were going to wear and all that sort of thing. They were not going to wear any crowns nor reign over any city, but they thought they were. They had it all worked out theologically. But they were not getting on to know God. They were just opening the Word, as they call it, and teaching the Word about five crowns of the Christian and that sort of thing.
Well, they are suffering loss nevertheless; suffering loss because they are bogged down in their teachings and have not gone on to know God for Himself.
So the Holy Spirit is a living person. And as He is a living Person, you can know Him and fellowship with Him; whisper to Him and have His voice whisper back to you in some love text that you know, or some love hymn, and whisper back to you, so that walking with the Spirit can become a habit with you. Something you can do so that you can be in His presence, conscious of His presence, so you will not always have to talk. I think I mentioned before that there are two kinds of friendship. There is the tentative and uncertain kind of friendship that does not allow you to sit down and look at a magazine when you come to their house, or just sit down and snooze. They have to be entertaining you, because they do not know you well enough and you do not know them well enough to relax. Nobody relaxes. You are company; they are entertaining you and somebody must be talking every minute in order for you to know you are welcome.
After you know these people, and you grow in the knowledge of each other and your friendship becomes bigger, sweeter, and broader, you can go to their house or they to yours and not say anything for ten minutes at a time and nobody will think you are mad. Then your friendship has passed by the place where it has to be kept up by chatter. And I believe it is possible to get to a place where we can know God so intimately that we do not always have to be chattering to God. We can pray and inwardly we do pray, but we do not have to all the time.
I remember once riding with a preacher, and we had to make a certain engagement where I was to preach. We were riding along in the rain some years ago, and in those days the cars were not closed up much underneath, and when it splashed, it got water in the points, and the car would stop. This poor fellow was driving, and I was sitting beside him, and it was raining hard. The car would sputter, and he would pray to beat the band: “Oh, God, keep it going, keep it going, God.” Then, when it would stop sputtering, he would talk a little; and then it would sputter some more, he would pray a little more, and he was just so worried there; he and God had not had any understanding about that at all. Apparently, they were not closely enough acquainted so they could relax, or at least he could relax. I think God was relaxed about the whole thing, but my preacher friend was not.
It is possible to know Him in increasing intimacy. I want to ask you, do you know God better now than you knew him a year ago? I want to ask you, do you know God more intimately, warmly, than you knew Him a year ago? Are you growing in grace? I do not say has it been an even motion upward, like a flight of a plane, gaining altitude. Because it has been my experience and experience of Bible Christians, and I find the same thing true in Biography, that we do not take off from a ramp, mount straight up toward God and continue to mount. We zigzag up, and zigzag up. But the point is, when the zigs and the zags have been ironed out, are you nearer to God now than you were a year ago? Are you closer to the heart of God now? Allowing for the bumps that you had during the time, allowing for the times of coldness, are you closer now than you were a year ago. If you are not, something is seriously wrong, and you should consider doing something about it no later than tonight.
Now, how can I cultivate that holy fellowship?
I will tell you; be engrossed with Christ. Honor Christ and the Holy Ghost will honor you. You remember that Jesus, on that last day of the feast, lifted up His voice and cried and said “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)” (John 7:38-39 KJV). The pouring out of the Holy Ghost depended upon and waited upon, the glorification of Jesus Christ the Lord.
When Pentecost was fully come, Peter got up to preach a sermon and reflected back to that same passage and said, “Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole.” (Acts 4:10 KJV)
Always remember that you will know the Spirit more intimately as you make more of Jesus Christ the Lord. For Jesus said the Holy Spirit would take the things of His and show them unto us.
We walk with the Holy Ghost when we walk with Christ. For Christ will always be where He is honored. The Holy Ghost will always honor the one who honors the Savior Jesus Christ the Lord. Let us honor Him by giving Him His right title. Let us call Him Lord, let us believe He is Lord, let us call Him Christ. Let us believe He is Christ, and let us get away from this cheap Jesus dear kind of stuff that pulls Christianity down to the world of erotica and makes it half-sexy.
Let’s get rid of that whole silly business and remember, “God has made this Jesus, whom ye crucified, Lord and Christ; and set Him at His own right hand and put all things under His feet and made Him to be head over all things of the church; and He shall reign from the river to the ends of the earth.” This is the Christ we adore and let us be careful to honor Christ; always honor Christ. Honor Him by obedience, honor Him by witness, honor Him by testimony; and as we all honor Christ, then we will fellowship with the Holy Ghost.
Again, to know the Holy Spirit in increasing intimacy of companionship, walk in righteousness. Walk in righteousness, because we might as well face up to it my brethren; God cannot possibly have fellowship with a man or woman that is not living right or not walking right. We have magnified grace all out of proportions to the Bible. Paul says, with weeping, that men had turned the grace of God into lasciviousness, and we have done the same thing now. We are so afraid that we will reflect upon the all sufficiency of grace that we dare tell Christians that we have to live right. But remember, Paul in the Holy Ghost wrote his epistles and in those epistles, he laid down holy inward ethics; moral rules for the inward Christian. Read it in Romans and Corinthians and Ephesians, and Colossians and Galatians, and see whether it does not all add to the same thing. Read the Sermon on the Mount and the other teachings of Jesus, and see if He does not expect His people to be clean and right.
I wrote an editorial for the Alliance Witness, and at the same time, it was printed in London in a magazine, “The Life of Faith.” I was rather amused when I discovered they were taking me to task. I was over here having a nice time; over there they were writing hot letters back and forth to each other about me. One fellow said, “Tozer does not distinguish between discipleship and salvation; to be a disciple and to be a Christian.” Another responded by saying, “He said you could be a Christian without being a disciple.”
Whoever said you could be a Christian without being a disciple? You cannot be a Christian without being a disciple. The idea that I can come to the Lord by grace, and have all my sins forgiven, and have my name written in heaven, have the carpenter go to work on a mansion in my Father’s house and at the same time I can raise hell on my way to heaven. I say it is impossible. It is unscriptural, it is not found in the Bible at all. You are not saved by your good works, no never are we saved by our good works, but we are not saved apart from good works. We are saved by faith in Jesus Christ alone, but out of that, springs immediately goodness and righteousness.
Flowers do not bring spring, but you cannot have spring without flowers. It is not the birds that bring the summer, but you have no summer without birds. It is not righteousness that saves me but salvation brings righteousness. The man who is not ready to live right, he is not saved; he will not be saved, and he will be deceived in that great day.
I spent some thirty-one years in a town that is, or was for a good many years, the Mecca of evangelical Christianity. It is pretty hard to preach this there without getting into trouble. But I preached it all right and kept on preaching it; and before I left, I was being heard by everybody. And the very persons who before had held another view were listening to me, and I am preaching it to you now, that we must walk in righteousness. I cannot for the life of me see how it is possible that we can support the doctrine that Christians ought to be good people. Christians ought to be the best people in the world. And I could not believe a man is on his way to heaven when he’s performing such deeds as indicate that, logically he ought to be on his way to hell.
So walk in righteousness and see to it that you do. And make your thoughts a clean sanctuary; to God our thoughts are part of us. The Spirit is all seeing and all hearing and all loving and pure, and He cannot endure thoughts of malice. Can you imagine a man with malicious thoughts in his heart having companionship with the loving Holy Ghost? No, it is impossible that he should. Can you imagine a man bloated with egotism knowing the Holy Spirit with anything like intimacy? No, he could not possibly do it.
Can you imagine a man who is a deceiver ever having any fellowship with the Spirit? Never. Can you imagine it? It is folly to believe it my friend. If you have habitually given over to thinking dirty thoughts, you are habitually without the communion of the Holy Ghost, let me tell you that. Keep your mind pure.
This gossip business; God deliver us from it. But its here, we have it to deal with and if we do not deal with it, it will deal with us. I have even found that prayer groups are gossipers. Some sister will get up and say in a high, shocked voice, “Now I would not mention this except I want you to pray.” The old hypocrite, that is not it at all. She is just gossiping and she wants to do it publicly. And she says now, “I want you to pray for Mrs. Jones. I looked in the window as I went by and Mr. Jones and Mrs. Jones were arguing, and I’m sure there’s a fight in that home.” And the old sister would love to have had a bug in there, a microphone, and just heard the whole thing. She would not smoke a cigarette, and she sneers down her holy nose at any woman who would smoke, but she loves a bit of dirty gossip.
Then she says, “I was filled with the Holy Ghost at such and such a Camp Meeting.” Well she’s never gone on from there. In fact, she has gone back from there, because one of the things the Spirit of God will do for a person is to make them so they don’t want to gossip about people. They may be driven; it may be necessary for them to talk about things that are not good and they may have to sometimes if they’re on committee’s, or they’re choosing a teacher or anything else. They may be compelled. I have been many a time compelled to deal frankly with people’s characters, but that is one thing. It is quite another thing to love to hear gossip about people.
Make your thoughts a clean sanctuary. Clean out the sanctuary the way old Hezekiah did back there. They had dirtied up that sanctuary, and when Hezekiah took over, he got all his priests together and it took them several days and they carried out all the filth and burned it. Threw it over the bank and got rid of it and went back and sanctified the temple, and then the blessed God came and they had their worship again. Well then, I would also suggest that you seek to know Him in His Word.
Now remember that He inspired the Word and He will be revealed in the Word. I have no place in my sympathies for Christians who neglect the Word, ignore the Word or get any revelations apart from the Word. This is the book, after all, my friends, “Oh Word of God incarnate, Oh wisdom from on high, Oh Word unchanged, unchanging, Oh light of our dark sky.” This is the book; and if we know the book, well enough we will have an answer to every problem in the world that touches us. But some people get far off the track. I stay by the Word; I want to preach the Word and love the Word and make the Word everything. Read it much, read it often, brood over it, think over it, meditate over it, meditate on the Word of God day and night. When you wake at night, think of a verse. When you get up in the morning, no matter how you feel, think of a verse and make the Word of God everything.
Because the Holy Ghost wrote the Word, and if you will make a lot of the Word, He will make a lot of you. He will make a lot of the Word and He will make a lot of Himself to you. For it is through the Word that God reveals Himself. This is not a dead book between covers; this is a living book. God wrote it and it is still alive. This book is still alive; it is a living, vibrant book. God is in this book. The Holy Ghost is in this book. And if you want to find Him go into the book. If you want to find the Shepherd, you know where to look, find His sheep and you will find the Shepherd. And if you want to find the Holy Ghost, go where the Holy Ghost inspires in the book itself and you will find Him there. I know it is possible to know doctrine without the Spirit, and I have said that a while ago. It is possible to know the doctrine intellectually, not know it sympathetically, and still not find the Holy Ghost there.
But do not try to cultivate the Spirit without the Word. There is an awful lot of that now. A lot of humanism over-larded with a lot of paganism over-larded again with a bit of esoteric religion, nature, poetry and philosophy of sweet old ladies and all that. Now that will not do friends, it is not enough, it is not enough. I believe in great hymns but all these cute little things that people write when they should have been looking after the baby, and then they get them into print and want me to place them in my Bible and read them. I will not do it. I would rather pass them over, forget them, go to the Word itself.
Then I would say, cultivate the art of recognizing the presence of the Spirit, everyplace, all the time. The Spirit of the Lord fills the world. The blessed Holy Spirit is here and you cannot walk out away from where He is. You cannot hide away from Him; David tried it in 139th Psalm. He said, “I found that I could not do it. I went up into heaven and you were there, if I go down to hell, you are there and if I go to the uttermost parts of the sea, you are there, and if I say darkness hides me I find God shines even in the darkness.” He said, “I could not get away from God.” If you are interested in Him, you will find Him where you are. The presence all about you.
I would recommend that you find out what it is that has been hindering you. Nobody wants to be asked that question. But find out what it is that has been hindering your life. You have not progressed; you do not know God as well as you did or at least any better than you did. What is the trouble? Well the Lord’s people do many borderline things. Let me give you an example.
A friend of mine who is now in heaven, H.W. were his initials. He used to write me a letter and say, “Dear A.W.” and sign it, “H.W.” A dead soul, a dear man of God.
He came in one time from a missionary convention where he had been the preacher and he told me this.
“Brother Tozer, we are in desperate need of revival out in a certain section in the Alliance.”
And I said, “Is that so. What lead you to that conclusion?”
“Well,” he said, “here is an example. We were having our missionary convention throughout the week, and it went along all right until Friday night. Friday night the pastor came to me and said, ‘Now tonight, we are going to shorten the meeting a little bit. You’ll be on last, and I want you to quit so that we can be out of the building with the lights out by ten minutes of nine.’
“He told me, ‘the missionary will talk, and we cannot always tell how long the missionary will go, and there will be singing and some announcements and an offering and then you will preach. I do not care how long you preach, only one thing, remember tonight, we must be out of the building at ten minutes of nine.’
“I said all right, and I got through about a quarter of nine and they sang a verse and prayed and went home. The building was empty ten minutes of nine. Later on, I found out why this pastor was shortening the meeting and rushing us out of the church. Friday night was the night the fights came on television and the pastor could not give up his Friday night fights.”
Two bruisers knocking each other’s brains out up there, if they ever had any to start with, and he had to see that. It had so hooked him, it had so hooked him that he closed a missionary convention even though Jesus said to “tarry until ye be endued with power from on high, and then go and preach the gospel to every creature.” And these missionaries were there, giving up everything to go, but this pastor had to shorten the meeting to see the fights.
In a hotel room in New York City, I set one time with nothing in the wild world to do and I watched a fight. I am not saying it is a deeply sinful thing to do, but in the context, it was deeply sinful and iniquitous for a pastor to be so caught up in a thing that he grieved the Holy Ghost and quenched the Spirit and insulted God.
Now brethren, find out what it is; it may not be that with you. And the rule is, does this hide the face of Jesus a little bit from me? Does this chill my heart a little? Does this take the joy out of my Spirit? Does this make the Word of God a little less sweet? Does this make earth a little more desirable?
If you answer yes to those questions, then you’re going to have to do some repenting, and some cleaning up before the blessed Holy Ghost will come to your heart and warm it and refresh it and make it fragrant with His presence. This is how we cultivate the Spirits friendship.
Somebody said, “That kind of living, Mr. Tozer, is narrow and old fashioned, and I would be deprived of so many things.” Now is not that just terrible that you would be deprived of a few cheap trinkets if you followed God.
What would you think of a woman who would balk at going down the aisle to marry the man she is supposed to love if she said to him, “listen, at home I’ve got a big house, my father looks after me; I don’t have to work and I just can’t give up these comforts to marry anybody.” That is exactly what we are telling the Lord. We are saying, “Lord, these are things that I have always enjoyed doing and I am not going to make any changes for Thy sake.”
You will never hear any talk back from God, never. As the Welsh preacher said, “God is a gentleman and He always knocks at the door; He has never pushes it open and He never barges in. He waits to be wanted, He waits to be invited and He waits to be loved.” And if you would rather have the cheap trinkets of the world than to walk with the King of Glory, you can have it dear friend. You will get no argument from me; you will get none from God.
Remember, He is a Person and can be cultivated just as you cultivate a friend. Remember, you must be engrossed with the Person of Christ for He glorifies Christ. Remember, you must walk in righteousness, for God will not fellowship anyone who deliberately lives in sin. Make your thoughts a clean sanctuary; be clean inside as well as out. Seek to know Him in the Word. Live in the Word so the Holy Ghost can live in you. And cultivate the art of recognizing the presence of the Lord and of the Holy Spirit everywhere, at all times.
Then find out what is hindering you and put it out of your life. Well that is simple enough is not it, nothing fanatical about it. Only I wonder if we are going to pay the price.