Opening the Word of God - Part 1 — John Follette

Redemption, Consecration, and Spiritual Formation

When the Lord leads me, and speaks, and misterates me like another person, and just as soon as I try that, I lose everything in God, and I'm a total wreck. He came along, and he said, now listen to me, did I just redeem your spirit, redeem your soul, so that someday I could come along and pull your soul out of him, and put it over in a place called paradise?

If your body is consecrated to use your body any way I please, and any of you have ever heard about it, and you're on your head, and that's my business and not yours. How many deaths sometimes you have to die to get through?

We've lived so long there, that now we know they even control our thinking. This morning, I'm not dealing with you just because you're a piece of flesh. I'm dealing with you because you are an intelligent spirit, resting in a temple of clay.

I've seen good to redeem you, as he has to redeem me. Not merely to take my soul out of my body, and put it in heaven, and say, here, bled at the heart. If you're going to play around on that plane, I can't do anything with you, including if you were children.

I'm dealing with you as intelligent, grown people. And more than that, all my teaching is from the premise that you are already saved, sanctified, filled with the Holy Ghost, and have all six visions.

That God has made upon my heart, my whole being, into another creature from anything that I ever was. All the time, to get that truth forward to God's people. I'm not an evangelist trying to win some souls.

He gives me the souls anyway. He gives me souls anyway. I'm not an evangelist anymore, and I had to deal with the Africans through an interpreter. And he gave me some just plain, raw, heathen people to a message, and were marvelously saved.

Well, now, he's not an evangelist. He gets me to fill that pattern, play that role. No, I want to already come into at least some initial movings of God's, which I have made in this field. It's not something that I have original with anybody.

Rejecting Shortcuts in Spiritual Understanding

After morning, you don't have to teach anything. ...some little concept of truth, like a thought or two, and I may be six months to a year working under the power of that one thing. Now, I read other things, of course, but that is the thing that's making an impact upon me.

You can't get things in a minute. There's no shortcuts. There are no gadgets in the things of God. We live in the gadget age of humanity. You can't do that in God's time. ...trained along that line. If you're not careful, you try to take that technique and apparatus over into the realm of the spirit and make it function there, and it just ruins it.

It depends, because it is not geared to it. Its laws do not relate to that realm. The natural man receiveth not the things of God, neither can he. He just can't. Why? Because he's wicked? No. He's a sinner, but that's it.

He can't. Because he is still moving on the plane of that which is purely natural. Not vile, but natural. I mean, you know, some natural things are pleasing and beautiful. They should be. They should be.

So, it's not anymore just teaching from a doctrinal standpoint. Now we will drag out this doctrine like the old person who has had that dragged out for 30, 40, 50 years. Please put it in the closet. Let's come into this world now, and by the Spirit, as we said yesterday, allow him to open the world.

Not regioning it, as we found yesterday. Don't read it perfunctorily, because you have to. Now, I'm a Christian. I'm saved, baptized, and I must read the word of God. Now I must read. Why? Well, because why don't the roof not fall in?

Well, I know. How many know all that kind of thing? Don't you know they are, they're not really for anyone. Don't you know folks live like that? They are under a strange or funny, which is good. Now, I don't depreciate it.

Now, don't go out and say, I don't agree to read the Bible. I do. I read it every once in a while. I read it. Why? Get away from just a perfunctory idea of, this is my Christian duty, and if I do it, I mean it.

Go down that backslide, and what will happen? Say, Lord, smash this thing. What's the matter with me anyway? Well, he says, do you really want to know? Well, I think I do. Well, he says, most people don't.

They think they do, but they don't. He says, that's the reason I can't deal with it. Oh Lord, do you know? He says, yes, I know all about it. And we found that not to read it traditionally, that's another poor way.

But to approach it as no other word in the world. I've had college training, seminary training. I've had all that backfield. I was never really satisfied. Because I knew that there must be something in God, more than just my, there must be something here.

Approaching the Bible as the Living Word

Is there? No, for that time I've never been. The Word of God is like a picture in the world. Because it isn't of this world. It's of God. God made it. God put it together. Approach it in the Spirit. A very slow reader.

I've told you those very empty articles. What did you get? They come out just as well often. But take God into the Word. Take the Holy Spirit into the Word. He wrote the Word. Therefore, He has a right to give you life.

Life may seem sometimes very elementary. But there's nothing really elementary in the things of God. I had that 40 years ago. I said, wonderful, dear. Just love it. There wasn't anything ever due to you.

I had nothing to do with you either. I would take a very old story and open it and open it. Until we'd say, well I never knew that was in there. Of course, none of us did. But how many of us always did?

It brings me back to the first truth I gave you when I came here the other day. You must remember in your Bible work. You read the Bible. I want you to read it. I want you to study it. It takes such various forms.

How many of you, when you read the Bible today, feel almost as if you were not reading the same book you read 20 years ago? Have you ever had that experience? Isn't it the same? Yes, dear, it's the same.

Now don't cry. I hope you get these strange reactions from the Word of God. Don't be filled with amazement. Don't wonder about it. Perhaps you can't get exactly the same thrill and emotional stir that you got when you read such a passage 20 years ago.

It just melts you like that. Well, that's all right. Because you have come through all that it had to minister to you at that time. I told you the other day to remember this. If you don't remember anything, let's set down this camp meeting.

Remember this, so that you can take it home in your hunger and thirst and desire for God and truth and reality. Remember this. I found it. And so when I find the thing, and it's workable, and it does the thing in me, then I have a right to share it willingly, away from the many issues.

Progressive Unfolding of Spiritual Truth

Isn't it remarkable? I suggested that I have square feet. However, that too, is purely a progressive matter. It is not attained in a moment. It is not acquired in three weeks of Bible study. You don't finish it in a course.

It is an eternal, lovely, beautiful, to me it's a mystical thing. That lovely, vibrant truth that I touched years ago that began to vibrate and live and move. There is no exhausting in it. There is no finishing about it.

It is just a continual progressive unfolding. Unfolding. Unfolding. Well, now get that, put that down. That's very essential. This thing isn't something you learn. It is something that you continually discover.

God is the definition. God is what you experience. How many of you know you experience God? You can't define it. How many of you experience God? How many of you can get up and define it? You can't define it.

But it is our privilege in God by the power of His Spirit to experience Him in our very life. We experience how that after years that this isn't something that's true. It's one of the most profound things I've ever touched.

It's the revelation of truth. I've had to sit at the feet of great scholars and profound leaders and thinkers, but not one of them could have the truth. I have a bit of truth. I have a little bit of truth.

Well, who wants to work with the realities of a little truth? No, I don't. The very part that I'm in that contact with Him, in our desire to know Him better. I want to know Him better. Do you? Oh, yes.

That's a good desire. Just rest there. That's just the beginning of a little flickering desire that you have. And sometimes that is burdensome, something that's quite different from what is real truth.

This whole idea of God, of truth, of spiritual reality, of this, I call it the realm of spiritual reality in which God has brought us. That is purely progressive. Now, what's your next point? Listen. I'll get it.

Then you won't be disturbed. Continually be conditioned for it's result. Now, you get it. That's good philosophy. That's good philosophy. In fact, it is wonderful. It's inexhaustible. Now, I want some more.

And, oh, God, open the word to me. Lord, Lord, I'm so sorry. You have to be conditioned continually in heart and spirit for the reception of that which you now hope for. It's so disturbing. It's so sweet to have that urge of the Spirit stirring in for more of God.

How can you know the thrill of it? How delightful. Sometimes that's all we have. Sometimes to live by is that earnest urge and desire when all of our emotional life is silenced and God hasn't been able to deal with us about it so that it's fullness.

Get revelations and see them come into you and into your heart of life. And if you would dare to let me have my way with you, if you would dare to do it. Oh, I've got a way, Lord. I've got a way. I've got a way.

See, you don't want to talk about it. Never mind. I'll bet you anyway. Don't you know that's like God? Or don't you know God's like that? How do you know He has to be with you? It's just like children.

He says, You have the slightest idea of what you're talking about, but I think your heart means you want me. So here's something quickly. What is it? Oh, sugar plums. Lord, that level at all. You can approach that same old truth again.

You'll come to the presence of the same lovely, wonderful Lord, but your reaction will be exactly like this. How many of you have ever had an intensified revelation of the Lord that weeks and months after you say, Oh, I never knew.

How many of you feel like that? How many of you know what I mean? And then sit down and listen. Are we going to get the power? I don't know. I'm not public or out of the public. I'm a realist. You have to take up with me.

I'm a realist. And yet I am spiritual. And I have discovered some very profound and wonderful things in God by being simply honest with it. But we don't bring that out. He has given us a whole basket full of masks to wear.

Spiritual Honesty and Divine Discipline

Don't you know He has? Certainly He has. People have often said to me, How do you get things from God? How do you get I said, Listen, dear, you wouldn't want to go through. You couldn't do it. I come out here and I say, Isn't the Lord wonderful?

He says, Yes. And He is wonderful. And how did you find this? Well, I said, It's in the Bible. Oh, you must have a wonderful time just walking around with sweet Jesus. Oh, I do have a wonderful time. We live together.

I have a little home. I'm a bachelor and live alone. And I have the Lord. It's His home He built for me. And so we live in it. What do you have to do? Sit down, say presto, one, two, three, humble me.

I will have a vision all for me. And I read the Bible and He just fills me with spirit and I see something. Then I go to the camp meeting and say, Look, it's the truth. Now, if you've got that kind of a pussycat idea, you're just off the beat.

No, you don't get that. Well, what do you mean by bound and how moving and how marvelous that experience is? The experience in itself never matures you. It never does. It is in Christ the Lord by His Spirit has been sent to bring you to face certain issues.

It isn't your business. How many know it's yours and the Lord's business? How many are glad He ever makes it public business? How many ever have seen it? Do you ever have it? Just say, Lord, it's all I can do to know it.

And I know you told it to me. Lord, don't let anybody else be like that. How do you feel to be an angel this morning? Because after you take me sometimes through some very terrifying things, I said I would wish I was a little yellow dog.

I'm the dog of the darkness. I say, Lord, how many know that you are the angel? How many know the Lord is hallelujah? How many know the Lord is wonderful? Well, is it a mask, an unreality for me to say that?

No, I'm saying the truth. I'm not telling you all the things that happened inside before I could say the Lord is wonderful. How many get that? Behind the scenes, you see. So they say, well, how? I said, you couldn't follow you in your discipline either.

Every heart has its own individual feelings with God and God with you. Now, that's not public, but the result of those feelings, if they are in God and in the Spirit, and you actually come through, how many know you have a freshness?

There will be something of God there. There will be a fruit. There will be bread. There will be something for you. And you get it. Purely progressive in all forms. And under the impact of that truth, we start to receive, and we go about our doings.

Drink, and wear clothes, and eat, and have friends, and go business doings. While he is accomplishing this invisible, spiritual Today, there's been developed a complex about these miracles, and healings, and all this.

Spiritual Growth Within the Body of Christ

How many know, in a body, then has the measles, and then gets the whooping cough. How many of all those are a body of Christ? It is. It's an epidemic. And members in the body of Christ are very young, together, and there they are.

And it's actually, it's the truth. It's a kind of an epidemic that strikes. But if you're not schooled in the ways of the Spirit, you're liable to catch it, you know. And go through. How many of you know, if those of you who haven't caught it, I've had to help them catch the last thing.

Why in the heavens did you ever get into that thing? Oh, where's the food at? Oh, I said, don't bother me so. It was this way. I mean, you know, all the tale and all. Don't do that. That's purely an epidemic that is moving about.

And it strikes certain parts of the body. Do you know what will never heal it? Now, very often with a disease, even in the body, how many of you know, if you were just, be quiet, in nature, the power of the light within will push off.

Do you get me? The light within will finally push off that external intense vitality to resist. Don't you know that? How many of you know it? Christ today is wounded and sick and sore and can't hold up reading this chapter.

The Prodigal Son and the Hidden Depths of Scripture

And it's so full. We're dealing with this fifth chapter of Luke. He was talking, he was very conscious of something, which is suggestive. It took me four months. I'm just three or four little, four little guys.

And I can do it by now. I've made these slow readers. I'm just preaching on it now. Do you know how I had, I had a retreat about three weeks ago up in northern Wisconsin. Delightful times. There were 30 children.

They had that. They're all finished with that. And they sit down. They say, now, let's get in here. How many know I have a, just a beautiful time. Do you know what I preached on, I think, for two days?

Well, you say, I'm seeking my discoveries. I can't find the words in the Bible. You get it. Well, you got it in a singing book. And you got it in a picture. In the Sunday school chart. And you got it in a lot of funny places.

But how many know the word prodigal son isn't in the Bible? And you begin to make discoveries like that. And then on top of it, how many know you kind of sit up with your ears this way and say, yes sir, the three days, just those little stories.

Little stories. Most profound teaching that you would ever want on earth. Teaching that we will be at the eternal ages discovering. We read the story, and we say, see, he got lost. Then he got convicted.

Then he got out of the pig pen. And then he went home. And his father went to a public school. He got reinstated. Hallelujah. All these other stuff has now come forth. Amazing, I get it. It's just sort of amazing.

That's all I said will come out. But it is not these stories. Now, we were reading this chapter. Because we got in there, and there was so much. When we started off, will you let me speak a little bit?

Will you let me do that? A few little thoughts. I don't want to go too far into detail with it. But just little thoughts which strike this word of God. Every conversation is a dramatic picture, highly charred with most profound and wonderful spiritual under the surface picture.

You get enamored and so pleased with the technical setup of those instances we talked about. You're talking about, oh, how he got in the pig pen, and how many pigs might have been in the pen. We don't know what it is.

And of all kinds of things he did, he was a prodigal son. And you just get all wiggly wiggly about a lot of externality. Many of them, they would like to portray. And some of those very actors will refuse to stage that thing.

Now, you get me. The people become absorbed with the arts. I said, yes, I have emotions. They have the most ornate and marvelous and wonderful, thick, thick jugs of water, and the Jesus, and Mary, and the wonderful picture frame, and they've lost the picture.

Years ago, the Lord showed it to me. He says, do you see it? I said, I see now. Well, he says, try to look past the picture frame. Try to look past. Don't be too absorbed with that. Always remember that the truth is an invisible abstract bit of reality.

Reading Beyond the Surface of Biblical Narratives

How do you know? Because he said, let me tell you something. I have been, I have been for years absorbing this word from the deeper spiritual sense of revelation and opening. I was reading, I came to this passage where Jesus told what his word really was.

He stood before me, and he had been pouring out truth. He's been pouring out the message of God. He's been pouring that out for days. The word. He's been pouring that out. He has been working miracles as a little sign of action here.

As a symbol lesson to prove, to show, to explain somehow. And he said, the word, the message, the message that I, this wonderful truth. Now, you get the point here, don't you? Is that what he held up?

And he said, this is my word. No, he didn't. What did he do? He says, the word, the message of it, the truth. This eternal, everlasting truth, the light, radiates and moves through me. That radiates and moves through me to this dark, this word.

He didn't hold up the truth that I have come to spread over the face of this earth to dispel, it offers in order to make this reality of spirit and life real to you. That way, he'd say, spirit and life, every word is harmonized, even their conversations.

Sometimes they blur it. If you don't understand the words or the arranging, then please let it alone. Now, let it alone. Even the words in their conversations. We were talking about the marriage supper, for instance, I was related to a town field a minute ago where most people had the actors and how they spoke when the emergency is on.

For a town teaching that's going to last for 2 ,000 years. Why not start stories? And Jesus came forth. No, no. Since always. Well, I thought he said this and she said that and then they made some wine and they had a miracle.

Long into God they had a miracle. How do you get that? This old world hears the word. It was through it to you. While I'm here, I'd like to talk to you about that parable in Luke about that prodigal son and all the rest of that business.

Which is something it's still on my heart Before we go, I'll just take one of the stories. It got lost. He was standing up in the lake of Nazareth and the multitude pressed upon him to hear the words of God.

Hearing the Word Instead of Seeking Miracles

Now, wait a minute. Now, yesterday that there is such a thing as a field of motivation to the heart that will either close God. Either one. You close or you open. And the multitude pressed upon him to hear the words of God.

No, it didn't say as they pressed upon him. He'll give them a miracle. The priest let it happen. A miracle of the foundation. Got a terrible big load of it. How good would it be to not have to have a miracle tied down the tail end of it.

Perceiver worked and you didn't say a word. I've never been near the Lord when his perceiver worked and you didn't have to say anything at all. He perceived that they would like to channel this power.

He could reign and rule and they could get this Messiah. Messiah that they never Messiah worth two cents for. If they could only channel him to be king. Wouldn't it be wonderful? I've heard that before.

Get the Lord to do a few things you want him to do. Put it down. That's all been tried out before. Instead of getting the thing going. Put it down. Now, don't say to yourself that in the coming days, obviously, they would, by force, make him that king.

Turn his back on them and let them and went into the mountain alone and they sat there eating their miracles. Chow, chow, chow, chow. How many get it or don't you? How many know he didn't stand up once and no ears?

Real genuine one too. But it says he went alone. Now, there you have two fields of motivation. How many get it? One is motivated. ...to him to hear and that multitude he just sat down and opened his heart and talked and making it do things that nothing say to him.

He says, well, take one and make it one. But that isn't the... He released him and he sat down. He saw him in the ground washing their necks. You heard me yesterday. Your neck is the method by which you catch fish.

In Jerusalem with all the fishnets that the people are using today to catch fish. Then I'd like to have the son of righteousness in his glory. How many know the necks are still clattering among the very needy people, heartbroken people.

They have been blasted with an interpreter. And I never was any happier about that program. I said, no. Don't deliver me. I said, I just walk along with the Lord. I don't walk anymore. In this, nothing but refugees.

Many of them are finer musicians than these people have ever thought. Sitting in this table to have somebody to entertain us. On the shipboard with a bunch of them. And even to tell what they were doing.

And here they were going over to evangelize Russia. And they had all kinds of instruments you've ever heard of. Some I've never heard of. You play twice at the same time or do some kind of lyrical with the hand jumper.

And he had this type of hand. And they were going into Germany with all that terrible darkness. I don't want this thing enacted. Let me get into this little boat and we will talk. Before he is able to deal with them, even in the message of truth, there has to be the initial separation from.

That he will begin, even the primary elementary truth from the old creation. Deal with me and we'll push out just enough to teach you at least that isn't yet out in the deep. It's a creation, it's a ministry, it's a work.

But that's just, that's your first little separation. That isn't out here yet. That's not yet. When he begins that process of separation, it is initial. It is to introduce us into a new field where he's going to begin to talk.

And so it says he sat down and talked to the masters of the body again. We had that yesterday. How many of you liked some of that? It's like that story about the potty in there, but it's too long. It would take about an evening, maybe an evening and a morning to tell you about that.

Because this is, in my life, did you ever hear such a thing as that? No you didn't. That he is paving the way. Means I teach every bit of our adventure in the spiritual movie from our little separation from flesh and nature.

Before we can venture out even to a deep place or anything concerning the miracle of this thing in the word of God. Grounding in the word of truth. I say this is going to develop them in faith, spiritual intuition so that when he gets them out here they will be able to move.

He's going to make another demand upon them in which they will have to meet it. Go to the altar and cry and pound on the chair and say, now Lord I want faith. I see what faith can do. These disciples have faith.

Now Lord I will take several pounds of faith. You know you don't get that. With that sweet, with this much you know people do that. I mean that's foolish. And hearing it was hard to be able to move with it.

From Initial Separation to Deeper Faith

If you were able to maybe see it he said they followed him. He constrained them to go. I know that this is going to come along. He will be able to take them through. And we didn't get through yet this morning.

But how many of you got something this morning? Did you? And we never got these people even have got the fish caught yet in this boat in a minute. And we will do that. I said, would you really like a little more of this tomorrow?

No, no fooling. Would you? Would you? Well, it's going to be different because every verse is different. Some of my new sheep are in this morning. They didn't get in before and I didn't want them trailing along without food.

Now how many of you know you have to have your little backs out. Now we're going to get these people out in this boat and they'll be chasing. He'll have quite a little time maneuvering them around to get them there.

He has a miracle up his sleeve which he doesn't tell them. He doesn't say move out into the deep and I'll work a miracle for you. He says you go out there and get us the power just now. Send us a revival.

Send us a miracle. Oh my dear lord let everything loose. I keep praying in the back room. Nobody knows it. Keep it up there. They don't know what to talk about. Keep it up there. Let me teach you about this.

What would you do with all that? If God today should pour out the Holy Spirit in some tremendous way beautiful, lovely way do you know what would happen within six months? It would be all channeled and named and labeled and that thing that God always talks has to get rid of it and wiggle it around in some kind of a funny thing that nobody knows what hours to do with it.

Receiving Correction, Admonition, and Strength from the Word

Let's say limited, lovely, purity and simplicity. I mean nice broken bread again and we pray in the name of Jesus that you will cause each one to take a portion which is adequate. If it is a portion of correction help us to be able to be corrected.

If it is something for our admonition, help us to take that. If it's for our strengthening, help us to be strengthened under the power of the word and truth. If it is something to entice us on in God, help us to follow because thou art saying this is the way, this is the way, this is the way and we will walk along with thee therefore we commit the word to thee and ask the power of blessing in every heart and mind but you know the miracle happened incidental affair.

How do you know that he actually made Jesus? God bless you.