Imperatives - a Right Standpoint — Devern Fromke

So we bow together. Lord, we are gathered. We turn our faces to Thee. We pray that there will be Thy own voice speaking to us, not the voice of a man, but Thy voice that uncovers, that unveils, that gets at our deepest need.

We ask Thee now that we might see Him who alone is worthy, for in seeing Him all our real problems are answered, all the light that we need comes. We thank Thee in Your precious name. Amen. We have been speaking on those things that are really imperative.

The Imperative of Enlarged Vision and Capacity

I know it sounds like an overstatement, but there are really just a very few things that matter in life. There are many things that are necessary, but very few are imperative. It has been a real pressing in my spirit since we have come that somehow we might press into the simplicity of those few things that are really imperative for going on to the full thought of the Lord.

We said the first evening in our sharing that it is imperative that God give us an enlarged vision and an enlarged inner being or capacity, the inward reality to live in that vision. We were saying yesterday that it is very imperative that we learn to recognize the voice of the Lord.

I do not know about you, but I must confess I have been an oversensitive person through the years. In my oversensitivity, I have been mauled and taken things that folk have said. It has hurt, and I have spent an awful lot of time nursing wounds and feeling sorry for myself.

I look back on how many occasions I have sat under the ministry of someone who I so dearly loved, and they somehow almost became the voice of God to me. Before they got through with a particular service, I was utterly mauled because I took every word that they said as though the whole thing was the voice of God to me.

It was a long time before somehow the Lord began to break in and say, this is one of your great needs to be able to sense and discern what I am really saying to you. Well, that is a dangerous thing for me to say to you.

In fact, we always come to these imperatives and these things that we're wanting to deal with, and they're always so dangerous that I'm prone to always back off and say, let someone else. But we have to handle things at these crucial points because it's right there that we either go on with God or we accept a substitute.

It's right there that we either come into the measure of what God wants or we really miss. This thing of becoming sensitive to the voice of the Lord, the voice of the Lord. Well, we're going on this morning to another imperative and carry the others along with us as we will.

A Right Standpoint Rather Than Mere Practicality

But I want to deal with the imperative of a right standpoint. I could almost say a right standing, but I won't borrow any words, but that's what I'd like to do. Wonderful how we've come right to this point, the right standing or coming to a right standpoint.

May I gather you all up this morning and just. Well, I know by this time in a conference what's going on in some of the arguing of our soul. The tendency right about this point is for us to say, my, we really have some desperate needs walking around the campus.

What we ought to do is be more practical and really get right down to touching some of these needs. I know that, but I know that there's God's way of doing it. In my earlier days, a longing somehow to really get out and touch this brother's need and this sister's need and this individual's.

It's so easy. It's so easy to become all encumbered with the needs of man and somehow miss God's way by which he begins to get at our real need, the deeper, the larger need. The average pastor that I know spends his time running around to a hundred problems that are all the time existing in his congregation because he's being impelled.

He's being pulled by all of this, but he's not really getting any of it done. That is the real need, the real need. You see, it's a matter of our standpoint. It's a matter of really coming to grips with that which God himself is working toward.

The Hoover Dam and the Limits of Subjective Perspectives

How can I illustrate it? A number of times as we've gone to the West, I've stopped at the great Boulder or the great Hoover Dam, as they call it, and I've always been amazed that the visitors, the guests who are taken through the tour of this tremendous place, the guides tell us that it's very interesting, the comments that people make as various ones are taken through the tour.

When a farmer comes and he looks at that great body of water that's being held by out of his own subjectivity and out of his own experience and out of his pair of glasses, he begins to ask questions. How many acres would this water irrigate?

He sees it through a farmer's eyes. When the electrician gets down in the depth where the dynamos are working, his question invariably is, how many kilowatt hours does this produce? He sees it from that standpoint.

When the artist gets there, he wonders where he can set up his easel to paint and get the best perspective of the whole thing. He sees it through an artist's eye. And I know when a preacher gets there, he always asks, how can I use this in my next sermon as an illustration?

We're merely living out here in our standpoint. We're living out here in our standpoint. And I'll promise if we're not careful to come into a conference like this and to say, oh, how many young people are running around here that need to be saved?

Brother, you ought to preach the gospel and give an invitation. Yes? There are those who come in, I know you better than you think. And the proneness, the proneness of our glasses, the proneness of our approach to which stand is to say, oh, how some people need release.

They're all locked up in their personality. How they need the release of the spirit. What we ought to have is a chair up here and invite the needy people to come and be delivered and lay hands on them that they might know an impartation of the spirit of God.

We could do that. Would I dare this morning to say that as long as man stands in a certain place, trying somehow to interpret and put all things into proper perspective, his natural reasoning will always leave him with mere parts.

And he will only see, he will only see things in their separateness, in their parts. But God has a way of unifying things. He has a way of bringing us into his own viewpoint to help us see what he's really doing and how he's doing it.

Charismatic Renewal and the Need for a Proper Vessel

I'll go one step further. I think in the United States today, there are two general courses of movement. There is one group that is very alive to the restoration of gifts, the operation of the spirit.

It is often called the charismatic renewal in the historic church. They're very concerned for life flowing among the Lord's people. Now, you may be surprised if I say this, but I have far more sympathy for them than you might realize, because I believe that God is working as much as he can in everybody and in every situation.

And there is quite an awakening and quite a moving. There are many people who have never come into any measure of reality, and suddenly they've come through a gateway and they've entered into some light.

I've met them. I know it's so. And I have brothers who write to me continually and they love me and they are praying for me. And the groan of their heart is, oh, Brother Vern, get out where the life is flowing.

Out where you can find some people who are really eager and hungry and really ready to move on with God. Don't stay around with the dried up fundamentalist or people with a narrower vision, people who don't know the full tide of the flow that's going on in this day.

Well, what they don't know is I was with them and in that long before they got into it. But there's another there's another trend. There's another moving of God today, and it is that the life that God is pouring for must have a proper vessel or vehicle for its containment and expression.

It must have that. We can talk all we want about life and its flow and the measure of it, and I say, thank God for what he's doing. But after a while, those who've been flowing around in the breadth of this river, this flood tide, so to speak, they begin to cry out, isn't there a channel?

There's such looseness everywhere. Isn't there some way in which God has designed and planned for this life to not be lost, but to continually reproduce the proper vessel in which it's to be expressed?

Well, that's why I'm here this morning, because I believe that God has burdened my own heart and some who in the last three or four years have been gathering here have been sensing that God wants to gather in lives that have been in the life flow or the life measure, but now they're crying out, oh God, how is this to find its continuance and how are you going to express what kind of a vessel or a vehicle?

What kind of a container? And that's the burden with which we approach what we're wanting to say this morning. It's a matter of where you stand. Would you turn to the Psalm, Psalm 73. Psalm 73. I want to pick up the groaning of a man in Israel who looked out at the desperate condition, the situation of things around him, and he knows some things, but there are some things he doesn't know.

And he's crying out for some answers in his perplexity. I want to use, before we read this, I want to use a picture that we use so often in explaining this. I say that actually a man can stand in one of three positions, so to speak, and drawing the outer court of the tabernacle.

There is a knowledge that an individual can have. He stands in the outer court and he surveys all of the universe, all of the created handiwork of God. He can come to know certain things by what we call observation.

The heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night it keeps speaking to us of certain things. We see God in his handiwork. We can know many things as we stand out here.

This is the place where the one who is speaking is standing as we approach this Psalm. But we're going to press in a little bit further, and we're going to notice what is called the sanctuary within. Before we go into it, let me say that there is a knowledge that is pictured by the outer court, but there is a light, there is a knowledge that is pictured by this first room called the holy place.

All the light in this outer court came from the sun. It was natural light. This sanctuary was covered over with heavy skins, we remember, and the only light that existed in this first room was the light from the candelabra, the candlestick.

It was an illumination, an illumination. I like to picture the one who is pressing in and speak of that insight and knowledge that we get through illumination. It is much like when the Spirit of God allows the light to shine upon verses.

Things that you may have known for a long time, that is, verses you've known, and yet suddenly, by a shaft of illumination, you see into a part you've never seen before. Wonderful. A breath of light, light.

It is a knowledge then that comes by illumination. You press beyond this veil into the innermost room. There was no candlestick there. The only light of that room was the Shekinah glory of God's own presence.

Very wonderful. This room, if it represents something of the soul and its function, this room we always speak of as the human spirit. So there is a knowledge that comes in this room by revelation. It is an inner knowledge that is imparted directly to our spirit.

Dr. Tozer, again I quote him, has said in giving us this little outline, he said it's back in this room where God happens to you. His spirit witnesses to your spirit. God happens to you. The something of direct impartation of seeing, understanding, knowledge directly to your own inner spirit.

It was quoted earlier this morning, and I repeat it again. The songwriter seems to sense that there are so many people in their movement, in their progress, stand out and they see God, all of his handiwork, by observation.

What they know is by the natural reasoning. There are those then who press in and by the illumination, through the word, the written word, they come to another knowledge. But I love this phrase, he says, beyond the sacred page I see thee, Lord.

And a lot of our problem now, a lot of our difficulty today is the very thing that Jesus was confronted with when the Jewish people were, the leaders were coming and with their scriptures they were trying somehow to make him fit into what they saw.

There was a great warfare and he finally told them, he said, ye search the scriptures, for in them ye think that ye have eternal life, but ye will not come until getting stalled merely in what we call bits of illumination or merely in the letter of the thing.

Now my concern is this this morning. The great majority of us in our fullness are approaching and we are interested in moving back into the more intimate knowing of the Lord himself in a spiritual way.

Well, let's see how the psalmist puts it here. Psalm 73. Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. Now that's mostly knowledge and it's just sort of something he's mouthing at the moment.

He says, but. I know that's true, but. As for me, my feet were almost gone, my steps had well nigh slipped, for I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. Here's a man who knows he belongs to God's people.

He's separated under the thing that God is after, as far as he knows. And yet he stands out here in the outer looking at all of the course of circumstances and the people who seem to prosper. They are getting along in abundance.

And then he looks at his own poor condition, but as for and the envy of his heart. For there are no bands in their death, but their strength is firm. They notice what he's saying from the outer court.

They are not in trouble. As other men. Neither are they played like other men. So it seems. Their pride comes to them about his chain. Violence covered them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness.

They have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt and speak wickedly concerning oppression. All they speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens and their tongue walketh through the earth.

Therefore, his people return hither and waters of a full cup are rung out to them. Well, we'll read on. And they say, How is it, brother? You love the Lord. Why are you going through so much trouble? Does God know what you're going through?

Why doesn't your God step in and solve some of this for you? The taunting. And they say, How does God know? And is there knowledge? Is there knowledge in the Most High? Is there knowledge in the Most High?

Behold, these who talk thus, they are the ungodly. They live as though there's no God, we said yesterday. They go on the whole of life, wrapped up and revolving around themselves, who prosper in the world.

They increase in riches. Now he's saying, Lord, I cannot understand all of this. Why don't you bless your people more? Why don't you allow us to prosper? Why, why, why? The natural reasoning. He says, There must be something wrong in me.

So he starts to look in. Verily, I have cleansed my heart in vain. Lord, what have I done that this is all happening? What have I done? And washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long have I been plagued and chastened every morning.

If I say, I will speak thus, behold, I should offend against the generation of thy children. When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me. I've been trying to say up to this point that all of our standing out here as individuals attempting to interpret the world situation, the religion situation, the mess in the church situation, all of our attempt to evaluate it from natural reasoning will only leave us more convinced with the part that we're going to emphasize.

Searching for Formulas in the Outer Court

Isn't it interesting how we go through phases and we get a hold of the thing that we feel is just the answer? Just the thing? Great hope rises. I hate to refer back, but I look through 23 or 24 years now of grabbing hold of formulas that will meet the need of the hour.

And I had back in those days of growing up a very godly and patient understanding father in the faith who kept inviting me back all those years to a conference that he had. I thought I was going to help the people, but he knew every day, every time I came, invited to be a speaker that I needed the help.

And I traveled the country all over. It got so that every time I'd come to this particular group, somebody would slip up and whisper, what are you emphasizing this year? I could go through the long list of things that I felt were so utterly imperative.

I will never forget the patience with which they dealt. One year it was healing. I had, well, been raised off from a death bed. Who wouldn't get excited about healing? After all, you look closely enough, you can see it in every page.

And really now, if people could just see some more healing, they'd be more alive to God and God could get more done. Good reasoning in the outer court. The next year I came back, I was absolutely convinced that everybody needed to get into their ministry.

Problem is, we don't have a body ministry. The reason they can't minister is because they don't know what their gift is. And I just learned to prophesy and to lay hands on and indicate their gifts and encourage them to get into their own ministry.

Surely this will bring the body into function. This will bring the thing that God really wants. All before that, it had been bringing everybody into the fullness of the filling of the baptism of the Spirit.

Well, I go through all of the emphasis. I'm saying this morning because I know the arguing to the soul. And I know after four years of gathering all from various backgrounds and places, the proneness with which we come and say, what this conference needs, what these people really need.

Well, let us see. And then I got into a whole period of church proof. The right construction by which God would bring the church into its proper function. Need this, needed this, needed this, needed this.

And it's amazing how when you are standing in all of this natural outward observation, and I call it the part. It's amazing how you can argue with your brother. Ever hear two men? Well, you'd have to be in Indianapolis to appreciate this.

But it's quite something when the 500 season comes. You know, that's the race, the city. It's quite something to hear men argue about spark plugs. I tell you, they can get so heated about whether it's this spark plug or that spark plug.

And others will argue whether it's this kind of gas or that kind of gas. And the Firestone and the Goodyear people have had a feud for at least 40 years. Now we laugh at them, but we get right into the midst of our internal observations.

And we say, you're baptized this way, face forward, backward, downward, upward, three times, this name, that name. Those things are all very important. But I begin to ask, when we get right down to it, what do all of these little incidentals amount to?

Sometimes they seem so important. And whole groups will hive off and gather round a particular emphasis, whatever it is. But there comes a time when God begins to overwhelm you with the purpose of the car, the purpose of the car.

And those who are so power conscious or so mechanic conscious, somehow God takes them in and He begins to give them a little larger picture of what He's really working toward. And I'm amazed, I've been thrilled and amazed through the years to find brothers who were so strong in the illumination or the little bit of insight they had had, suddenly laying aside, as we stand out here, laying aside these little things.

And we begin to see from the inside what God is really after. And then things begin to take on new perspective. We started by saying there's the necessity, imperative necessity of a right standpoint. He says, verse 16, When I thought to know this, to answer why the wicked prosper, why all of these things take place, reasoning out here in the natural, when I thought to know this, it was too painful for me until I went into the sanctuary of God.

Then understood I therein. I don't know, but brothers, I just believe, sisters, I believe that as long as we're approaching and we're interpreting hearts and as it were looking out here, and we even get a hold of fragments of illumination, it'll become empathy, things that we gather out, things that seem so important.

But God is more interested in bringing us into the light of himself. Well, let me start with something else. To a real union with his own light. And it is here from the inside that we begin to look out and we see the unity of things.

I do believe that as long as a man is standing out here, he will say that as individuals we have a spirit, a soul, and a body. Why? Because he sees the functioning of the body. He stands out here and he sees some functioning of the soul.

And we say from this approach, man has a spirit, a soul, and a body. But you move in spirit to stand where the Lord looks out and there's something of a unifying. You don't say man has a spirit, a soul, and a body.

You say man is spirit, soul, and body. There's something of a unity that comes when you see from this viewpoint, this standpoint. Now that's important. There's such diversity. There's such prominence standing, as it were, in our own life or what little shafts of light have come.

And we see parts and we deal with parts. But brother, sister, I cannot get away from the fact that once we have really come to know him, and God happens to you in the way I'm trying to express it this morning, you see how the spirit has to have the soul for its vehicle of expression.

And you see how the spirit and the soul have to have a body. There's something very different about it. It's a matter of where we stand in seeing the unity of a thing, the unifying of a thing. I stand out here and I can get over-impressed, merely observing, I can get over-impressed with the life, the inner aspects of things.

And it's knowledge to me. I see the need. But there comes a time when somehow God makes real this standpoint, where in his knowledge, with him, I begin to see the unity of things, the unifying factor.

Now, maybe we can say this. You see, when I stand in life and it's full flow, it's full measure, and I know that the spirit of God is sharing certain things to my inner spirit. If I have just that, I have no adequate way for the soul to find its proper function.

I know our soul has been independent, acting apart from the spirit. And our promise is to so degrade as to almost get rid of our soul as though it were not necessary. No. God made us, spirit, soul, and body, to function in a proper way.

And our soul must come into its proper dependency, its proper function. Just as surely as we stand out here, as it were, and we see the importance of life, the value of life, and the function of life, we see parts.

We see something wonderful. But, oh, there's something still more wonderful about standing the standpoint that one has in and with the Lord, in union with him, in which you see that life begets light.

In him was light, and the light became the light of man. But it's a unifying light. It's a light that has in it different qualities than just parts of illumination as I'm standing out, putting verses together.

There's something quite wonderful about the Lord's unveiling of a portion as from the inside out. Let me see if we can take two words. I hesitate to bring up the Greek, but years ago, I ran into these two words that began to make a very wonderful distinction for me.

Logos and Rhema: General Scripture and Personal Application

In the New Testament, the Greek word, or word, word, W-O-R-D, is denoted or it's translated from two different Greek words. The one is the word logos. We know that quite well. In the beginning was the word, the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God.

It's used throughout Scripture continually to picture God's general word, that which he is expressing in a more general, objective way. Then I began to read other portions, and I found that you get into some difficulty if you do not recognize that there's another word that's much more subjective, and this word is in the Greek, rhema, R-H-E-M-A.

Wherever it is used, it gives you the picture of that which is spoken more specifically and personally to the individual. I would read in John 15, 7, for example, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, and I think, oh, it's hopeless.

I'll never be able to ask what I want because the whole of the word has to abide in me. But he didn't use the word logos there. It's not just a general accumulation of all the word of God as such. The word there is, if you abide in me and my rhema abide in you.

It's a very personal word to use. We said yesterday when we closed, I believe it was, this dear sister who had been in the accident with us. And there she lay and cast 17 fractures. And the very precious brother and sister walked into her hospital room and read some verses to her about healing, and then commanded her in the name of the Lord to get up and walk.

I didn't at that time know the difference between what we call the word, the logos, which is God's general, and that which is his rhema, which is his specific word to you. But I only knew as I said that God had somehow before spoken to me and saying, there are many things that are my truth and that are my word, but they only become personally alive when I speak them to you.

How many of you know John 3 .16? For years, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That was logos. That was a general what? You knew it. You quoted it. But whosoever, one day something happens.

The Holy Spirit took that which was very objective, right out here, and began to make it very personally that it burned from he believed he shall be. You can turn to John for a moment. We'll just look at a couple other places where in near proximity we have the very same.

Turn to John 17. Verse 17. John 17. Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy words is truth. Thy logos is truth. Oh, how I've appreciated that through the years. But I know I went through a period when I thought if I could just get the Bible read to people, if I could just, how will I put it, crown them with all the truth that I, somehow they'd get sanctified.

They'd be cleansed by the washing of the water of the Word. Only to discover that there are plenty of people who have known the logos. But there's been no sanctifying effect. Why? Why? He says in verse 8.

The Written Word and the Spirit’s Quickening

For I have given unto them the word. This word here is the rhema, which thou gavest me. There's something very wonderful about the Lord speaking the rhema, as it were, to your own spirit. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.

Not the logos that I speak to you. The rhema that I speak to you. They are spirit and they are life. Well, we've got a problem on our hands at this point. We're at one of those imperatives again where it's so important that we realize that all this book is the Word of God.

I'm not near orthodox. All this book is the Word of God. Not just that which speaks to me. Now that's the difference. It's all the what? The logos. But when the Spirit of God quickens and makes it livingly, personally real, then it becomes a spoken, a subjective thing to me.

Now you see, we've had a real bumper crop throughout the whole of our fundamental world today of people who take the logos and use it like an ax over people's heads and try to get the logos to sanctify, as it were.

Try to get the logos to heal somebody. Try to get the logos like an ax to lay the ax at the root of the tree. And when the objective aspect of it doesn't accomplish it, then we've got to add some elbow grease to it.

Some of the flesh, some of our own striving, some of our own activity to it to help the Lord get the job done. No? And the liberal world looks on and says, oh my, these Bible lovers, bibliologists, these people who, you see, only know the objective knowledge of the thing.

They only stand in the outer court and try to use it in that way. I don't wonder they're reacting. I don't wonder that they're reacting to Lord Folkwood trying to use the letter, the logos as such, as an ax to accomplish its work.

But God, in the midst of it, is, I believe, raising up those who sin. At this important point, the imperative, the need to distinguish between not react, not throw away the letter, not throw away anything, just make sure that it's used rightly.

This is our problem. All the reaction that goes on. You see it in every fellowship, in every assembly. We're always in this stage of reacting and overreacting, mostly overreacting. We get into something and for the present it's, we've arrived.

Our hope is fulfilled. It's something very wonderful. It's just, and then you meet somebody six months later and something's happened. There's a peculiar reaction. God has a very wonderful way of verifying.

I say that when you stand out here, it looks like you can make things almost different because you've got them in layers or you've got them in parts. You look at the created words, all these things, and it looks like one thing.

You can look at the written word and from your little partial illumination, it looks like something else. Then you can look full into his face, the living word, and he looks a little different and you get all three separate.

They have something of a partial aspect to it. But when you stand with him at the right standpoint, there is no discrepancy nor is there any separateness. You see that the living word is fulfilled, has its perfect shadow in the written word and likewise in all that he has created.

Where do we stand? Where do we stand? It's quite wonderful when the Lord begins to speak and you get a hold of something in an inward way. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. You stand. You know something.

Then you begin to wait for God's verification of it in the outward or in the word. Most of the time we are approaching from the outside going in. We get some illumination. Then we come in and we get to know something more directly in spirit.

The Anchor of the Soul

But I think that God delights to happen to us and then the verification, not only in the realm of my soul, but also in the upper. I need it. This thrilled me the other day when I was reading over in Hebrews.

If you turn to the sixth chapter for a moment, verse 13, for when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he swear by himself, saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee.

And so after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men verily swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath that by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.

Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul. I've heard men for years speak of the anchor of the soul, but it never meant anything to me until last week. The anchor of the soul. We've been wanting to say this morning, first of all, that we too often try to feed our soul.

Our soul doesn't need any more food as such. We speak of soul food. Perish the thought. It's our spirit that needs the food. It's the inner spirit that needs the food. And you know when there's been the imparting, the feeding, that which God has shared to your spirit.

Very wonderful. What does your soul need? If it doesn't need food, what does it need? Well, I just read it. What does it need? Your soul needs an anchor. Your soul needs an anchor. You may get a drag on your hands.

I'm not talking about that now. If you're approaching from the outside, you get a hold of some doctrine or verses as such, it'll be a drag. That's not what I'm talking about. But I think from the inside, we can say, that when the spirit of God has the privilege of taking and renewing all of this and putting it in its proper perspective, as I see from the inside, it becomes a glorious anchor.

There's an awful lot of folk who have entered the new charismatic approach today, who have gone on to the place where God happens. They've begun to see some things, but they're without anchor. I thank God for something of the caution we've sent through the years.

We've shared it with you before. Maybe we're over-cautious, but there are many things that you sense and you know in spirit. But I do not believe in sharing them until you can share them through the page.

It's the only safe way. Otherwise, the abundance of revelations, the abundance of this and that, you will have ships all over this country without an anchor, without any guideline, without anything. And I can look back and see certain things, why the timing wasn't there.

The Lord's way is from the inside to work out. You know Him, and the more you know Him in an intimate way of fellowship, the more you'll know what? You really know what He's saying. But all our partiality is to only try, as it were, from the outside to approach Him.