What We Need To Put Us Over

What We Need To Put Us Over

I am conscious that you who are reading this book are hungry for success, whether it be in the financial, political, social or spiritual realm. You are not content with yourself as you are. My part in the drama is to awaken in you the hidden forces that you already possess, and begin to draw them out. You remember that the word "educate" means "to draw out." We have thought that it meant to cram and load our minds with facts. That is not education. That is accumulation of knowledge that may be of no value whatever.

I remember when 80% of the theological course was non-usable knowledge in actual ministry. That showed a lack of wisdom on the part of the instructors. It should have been 80% usable knowledge and 20% non-usable. It is a known fact that 80% of the knowledge that is accumulated in schools, colleges, reading and observation, is not used by the average person. We are not using more than 10% of our abilities and knowledge.

Here is a man who knows it is not good to smoke, but he smokes just the same. He knows it is not good for his body to stay up half the night carousing and dancing. He knows that he is not living up to his knowledge. He knows he should not make a glutton of himself, he should not eat certain things and drink certain things. He is not using his knowledge. He lacks wisdom. if that man were wise, he would cut out the drinking and smoking at once. If that woman were wise, she would not smoke another cigarette.

You know you should spend more time in study. You know you should stop wasting your time in foolish conversation and talk, and begin to utilize the forces in you and the opportunities that you can make for study and mental improvement.

You know that you could have an increase in salary where you work if you applied yourself, but you are living to gratify your senses. The thing you need is wisdom.

Wisdom is crying at the gate; her voice is heard at the portal of every business house, and men are heedless of her warning. They are not using the gifts that God has given to them. They are not acting on the knowledge that will make them successful and happy.

Wisdom's cry is ignored. Do you want to go over the top? Are you unsatisfied with your salary? All right, then, let us take inventory. What have you in you that is worthwhile?

Two things are necessary: first, find the gift; second, drive yourself to develop that gift until it is of commercial value.

Maybe you have a good voice, but it is of no value to you. If it were developed and trained, it' would bring a splendid income. You are saying, "I have a good voice, I have natural ability." It has a thrill in it when you are about eighteen or twenty years of age, but if that gift is not developed when you are thirty, you are ashamed, and you take the position that your inferiority complex is forcing upon you. You are getting the spirit of a conquered, whipped person, rather than that of a dominant one. Perhaps you have some other ability. It lies there dormant like gold in the stream where a thousand boats have passed over it, and thousands of men and women have bathed in the waters. Beneath their feet was a fortune, but they did not know it.

You have seen all this ability in yourself; you have played with it as carelessly as those swimmers, or as those men and women who are riding over that gold. Wisdom is crying today. She has made her feast; she is inviting you to come and join her, but you persist in rejecting her solicitations and ignoring her warnings.

I wonder if you ever read the first chapter of Proverbs? "Wisdom crieth aloud in the street; she uttereth her voice in the broad places; she crieth in the chief place of concourse; at the entrance of the gates, in the city, she uttereth her words: How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? And scoffers delight them in scoffing, and fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof: Behold, I will pour out my spirit upon you; I will make known my words unto you. Because I have called, and ye have refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man hath regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh in the day of your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as a storm, and your calamity cometh on as a whirlwind: when distress and anguish come upon you.

Then will you seek for me, but you cannot find me. You will search for me and cry loudly, but I will not be there." Why? You hated wisdom. You would not let God give to you what belonged to you. All over the land, men and women are suffering the penalty of turning down wisdom. Every city has its rendezvous of broken lives, of wrecked manhood and womanhood. Every large city has its "skid road." Go down there any warm night and see the streets literally jammed with men and women. Every one of them are failures. The majority show by their faces that they had talent and ability. Many of them are college men. What is the trouble? It is lack of wisdom.

Yet, wisdom is available to every man. No man needs to be a failure. Here are some facts on which you can base your legal rights to wisdom. I am going to prove to you that the ability of God is at your disposal, that the mind of God can be absorbed by your mind, the will of God can be incorporated into your will, and the health and vigor of God can become a part of your body, so you will have the strength of God, the ability of God, and the wisdom of God. If this is not a challenge, then what can challenge the ambitious?

You may have His wisdom in your daily life. Not only is that a promise, but it is an absolute certainty. You may have cooperation with the source of all wisdom.

It is a wonderful thing to have a lawyer on whom you can call for his opinion in doubtful problems, but here is something infinitely beyond any lawyer that money can employ. Here is the ability of God at your disposal. Col. 1:12 (notice this translation), "Giving thanks unto the Father who has given us the ability to enjoy our share of the inheritance of the saints in light." He has given to you the ability. It is in you. When you were Born Again, you received His nature, His substance, His life, and along with that New Birth was offered to you the Holy Spirit to be continually in your body.

When Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would come and lead us into all truth, He meant exactly what He said. God's ability is freely offered to every one of us.

Note these facts, "Who delivered us out of the authority of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love; in whom we have our redemption, the remission of our sins." He has delivered us out of the authority of darkness. Turn back to 2 Cor. 4:4 and see the condition of the average mind: "If our good news is veiled, it is veiled in them that are perishing, in whom the God of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving." That is a serious thing. The minds of the unbelieving are blinded.

Romans 1:28 "And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those thins which are not fitting." They refused to have God's knowledge, God's wisdom and ability, so He withdrew and left them alone.

Satan came in and filled their minds with darkness. Look at the heathen nations; look at the nations that are without God; look at the nations devastated by war. Do you see the darkness of the human mind? Eph. 4:17 "This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart."

This is the natural mind that God has redeemed out of this darkness, yet so few take advantage of this Redemption. 2 Cor. 5:17 "Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new. But all things are of God; who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation." This darkened mind, this mind held in subjection by ignorance, now comes in contact with God. The spirit is recreated, receives the nature and life of God, and the mind now becomes renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.

The moment that the spirit is recreated, the mind may be renewed and brought into perfect harmony with the recreated spirit by the study of the Word. It may take a little time, but it is worth the effort. When this mind is renewed and brought into fellowship with the recreated spirit, then we are able to receive the wisdom from God. Wisdom is in the Word of God. The Spirit will illuminate the scripture and you will understand the mind of the Father. I have been amazed in my own searching after these mighty truths, to see how real they become to the human consciousness. The basic law of wisdom is found in love. Wisdom never acts out of love. Wisdom always follows after love. God is all wise, but God is love. All of God's activities are in the realm of love. God never acts outside of Love. If justice is demanded, it is demanded by love.

When this mighty truth really gains the ascendancy, then this new kind of love will dominate your thinking and conduct. You understand, it is the nature of the Father manifesting itself in the lives of His children. The man who walks in this new kind of love never makes a mistake, never does wrong. There is no sin in love. There is sin in the old love, the natural love of the human heart, but in the love of the recreated spirit there is no sin. There is no law in the realm of love except love itself. It makes its own law. Its law is above the law of the Senses.

To walk in love is to walk in God, and to walk in God is to walk in wisdom, and to walk in wisdom is success. Then you will have arrived at the highest order of spiritual perception. You will walk in the realm of success; you will walk where Jesus would have walked were He in your place. You cannot conceive of Jesus being a failure, of a Jesus man or woman with a Jesus-directed mind being a failure. Success grows out of wisdom, and wisdom grows out of love.

The Hidden Man