Dedication According to Renewed Knowledge — Devern Fromke

Praise the Lord. We began yesterday by speaking about dedication, and our concern was, what is dedication? And I believe that it's the Lord's mind for us to continue this morning. I'd like to speak to you.

Dedication According to Knowledge

If you'd like a title for it, let me put it down up above here. Dedication, dedication according to knowledge. I don't know, but there's something about me that loves a dedicated person. When I see someone who is all out, and there's an intensity about their being, there's a sort of a person that throws himself wholeheartedly into something, it just echoes back and I say, that's my sort of person.

But I have to admit, they're the most difficult ones to get along with. So you're always in a quandary, you have a little bit of a problem. And that's why I think I appreciate all of you this morning, because I sense in us, in each of you, in varying degrees of course, a real longing for the fullness and to really go on into the things that God wants.

We were saying yesterday now that once the Lord has brought us back from our place of rebellion, our lost, hopeless condition, and through His mercy, He's redeemed us, He's brought us into a place where we stand in freedom as it were.

The question is, what is my freedom for? The tragedy today is so many people think that freedom is from something, and that's only one part of it. I'm free from something, but my freedom must always be for something or unto something.

This is why, as we said yesterday, once we come into this place where He has redeemed, He's loosed us, He's set us free, we then have the glad heart choice of presenting, giving ourselves unto the Lord.

This is where dedication comes in. Maybe I should just ask, how many are here this morning who were not here yesterday? Would you raise your hand? One, two, three, four, five, six. All right, thank you.

We'll just make that kind of background and maybe not go on anymore. Now, one of the difficulties, as we were saying a moment ago, is that in our real longing to be all that God wants us to be, in the zeal and in the dedication of our heart, we come into collision.

We come into problems with others who are equally as dedicated. I think I'll just have you turn to the book of Acts. If you think we've got problems today, I'd like to have you see a real problem. I'm glad I wasn't there.

Conflict Between Zeal and Spiritual Knowledge

Acts chapter 21, I think we'll read. Let us pick it up in chapter 21 with verse 14. And when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, The will of the Lord be done. And after those days we took up our carriages and went up to Jerusalem.

There went with us also certain of the disciples of Caesarea, and brought with them one mason of Cyprus, an old disciple, with whom we should lodge. And when we were come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly.

And the day following Paul went in with us unto James, and all the elders were present. And when he had saluted them, Paul declared particularly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry.

And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord, and said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe, and they are all zealous of the law. Paul, you remember, has been well schooled at the feet of Gamaliel.

He has been of the strictest of the Pharisaical sect. And when God reached down on the Damascus road and plucked this man, caught this fish for himself, so to speak, Paul was the zenith of zeal and dedication in the knowledge that he had.

And it was quite a thing when God, in the midst of Paul's zeal to rid the Jewish religion of this awful sect, it's quite a thing when God reached down and touched this man who was so schooled and was so convinced in his ways, the Lord began to open his mind, began to give him some understanding.

And of course, now that God has been sending him out among all the heathen, among the Gentiles, those who are outside of the law, outside of Israel, he's come back with a glowing testimony of what God has wrought through him.

How wonderful. And of course, it takes a little bit of stretching here among these Jewish believers to imagine that God could do all this out there. Lord, I never thought you could do that any other place, but with us, with we who are Jews, and we who are the privileged and the elect according to God.

But God's wrought something in their hearts, and so they glorify the Lord because who can deny miracles? Who can deny all of this that has been done? But they've got a problem. This fellow who God's using out here is teaching some rather strange and peculiar things.

And here he comes back, and the immediate elders and the brethren here in Jerusalem, they just, well, they don't quite know what to do about it all. What Paul is telling them is wonderful, but he's not fulfilling all of their mosaic economy.

He's not fulfilling all the little interpretations that are so very real and precious, all they've been schooled in. I wonder if you can begin to see a little bit of the strain and the stress and the conflict in it, you see.

Read it again with me. Verse 20, And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord and said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe, and they are all zealous of the law.

Now, somehow for years, I don't know how to picture this, but for a number of years, I just sort of felt like everybody in Jewry out here, there was a darkness and blindness and all that. That represented one group, and these who came to believe in the Messiah, they came to believe in Christ, they just sort of became another whole independent group out here.

It isn't quite that way. These believing Jews are going back. They're still a part of what? The temple and all the rest of it. You see, you who have come into a new measure of life and some insight, and you're wondering what to do, where to go, it's quite a thing when all you have is the temple.

You'll leave this. What do you have? You follow? What do you have? All down through this period, there's transition. There's a change going about, and it was not easy. So, he says they are all zealous of the law.

They're believing Jews, but they've come out of a matrix. They've come out of a cradle, and everything about their awareness and consciousness has been molded for these hundreds of years. And these elders, these who are the leading brothers here at Jerusalem, I don't want to say it too boldly, but they don't see things too clearly yet either.

You see, we live way over here on this side of the cross, and with our new glasses, we say, oh, praise God. We've had all the Pauline interpretation and instruction, and they didn't have it yet. We forget that it took quite some time before the revelation and some of the unfolding that came through Paul was to be presented.

And here's this awful struggle now going on. Well, let's see what else they say. Verse 21, And they are informed of thee, Paul, that thou teachest all the Jews, which are among the Gentiles, to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs.

What is it therefore? The multitude must needs come together, for they will hear that thou art come. Paul, I wish you hadn't come. If you just hadn't come, we wouldn't be in this problem. I don't know how to explain this this morning, and I don't want to, this is just sort of to paint a little background, to say that the last year has been a wonderful, blessed year of walking with the Lord.

But it's been a year of being thrown into stress and places of difficulty and conflict, as I've never known it in my own soul before. I have determined before God that I must walk in truth and in all the light that I have, and dare to believe that God is doing something for this hour, for this generation, something that we hardly conceive and can hardly grasp, but I believe it's a lot bigger than we realize.

And it would be so much easier. I cried out, I said, Lord, just let me go to Richmond and Norfolk and Washington and places that I sort of fit a little better. They appreciate. Lord, let me stay in Indianapolis, even though it's got a lot of problems too.

And yet the Lord keeps opening doors, and I sense something of a compelling trusting as He says, I'm doing something a lot bigger than you realize. It's not confined and it's not narrowed down to some with just little interpretations.

I'm doing a bigger thing. And I don't want to overwork that this morning, but I do sense last week, a week ago, we were in Detroit. It wasn't a bigger group, but 1 ,200 people gathering, meeting after meeting, and my heart was torn.

You begin to look out over all of these various groups that come in, and your heart says, Lord, how can you ever, how can you ever minister in the midst of it all? Only God can do it. But we have to believe that God is going to take some hearts that have a dedication, and He's going to help us in this dedication to really move according to, I would like to get to the place where we call it a renewed knowledge, after the image of the Lord Jesus, a renewed knowledge.

You see, you finally get to the place where you know that it just shatters every last conception we've had. I don't care which group we've come from, but God's doing a stretching work. You feel the stretch?

Lord, I've been asking since yesterday, don't let any of us go without getting enlarged. And that starts with me. Really stretch, really enlarge us. We need it. We really need it to be able to receive what God is doing.

Well, I don't want to get involved in this, but can you see a little bit of their problem? Paul has been out among the Gentiles. Now he comes back to this Jewish group that are, but they're so set. They, and it's very difficult.

I can well understand why God really started from Antioch as the springboard for the New Testament church. He just, well, he just can't get some things done in an old framework. And so we're going to see that what's happened to Jerusalem begins to wane and wane and wane, and Antioch becomes a new springboard for God sending out to the whole Gentile world.

It's that that we need to realize this morning. God allows one thing. He uses it as long as he can, but it begins to wane. And while it's waning, another thing is becoming. It's coming into the horizon.

Israel’s Zeal Without Knowledge

Well, that brings us to the verse that I'd like for us to turn in Romans now. Chapter 10 and verse 1. Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. Oh, can you sense the groaning of Paul in this?

He looks out at these in their blindness, their inability to see and to grasp. Some within Israel have come to know the Lord, come into a living relationship, but the great majority in their dedication and their zeal, so he says, for I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.

A zeal, a dedication. Now there's a difference between dedication and zeal, but I'm not sure what it is. I see zeal. I see dedication. I'd like to make one spiritual and the other natural, but you really can't.

Anyway, I'm using them much the same. They have a dedication to God, a dedication, but not according to what? Knowledge. All right. We were saying yesterday that once God brings us back and we experience the mercy of the Lord and then we come into the crisis of dedication, which is the presenting of ourselves.

I feel that it is wonderful then for us to begin to see how God takes us along this new way, this new walk, a crisis beginning, but he begins to take us along the new way in which now there's going to be the renewing of our mind, the transforming of our understanding, the renewing of our mind, that there'll be an outward transforming of all our ways.

Scripture as the Safeguard for Dedicated Living

And I want us to turn now to 2 Timothy. We're going to see a little bit of what is involved. I believe this will help us. 2 Timothy chapter 3. What really is involved now is God takes us in this way of dedication.

There's only one safe way. There's only one safe way and that is for us to realize that God has given us his word as the safeguard. One thing I rejoice in, wherever we go today, there is a renewed sense that we must stay carefully with the word of God.

You can't have folk get into life and into freedom and liberty in the spirit and all that this involves. But what there are those who are wanting to go off, there's a tendency to say, well, I don't need the word, I found the spirit.

I've been liberated from any hindrances or any of these old bondages. And I want us to see this morning why God has given us the word as the safeguard. Oh, I thank God that all the teachers that I've been with in the last year, every one of them with a new cry has been saying the word of God must be our safeguard.

I don't know one of them. So I thank God for what he's doing. Verse 16 of chapter 3 says, All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect, truly furnished unto all good works.

Let me read it for you in the Phillips translation. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching the faith and correcting error, for resetting the direction of a man's life and training him in good living.

The scriptures are the comprehensive equipment of the man of God and fit him fully for all branches of his work. Well, that's a pretty loose rendering, but I like some of it. Let me deal for a little bit this morning with these four words.

It is profitable, the scripture is profitable for doctrine. When I think of doctrine, as we will see it now, I think on the highway here that we're moving, I think of the guardrails along the way. Here are the guardrails to keep one from getting off from God's road.

When we know the teaching of the scripture, and this is why we need to be saturated, we need to be dwelling in the Word, we need to be rich in it. I know that people have taken God's Word and misinterpreted it.

They've become legalistic, they've used and misused, but that doesn't mean that it isn't His Word that I need as a guide in this teaching. Just because someone misuses it, I must not overreact. You see, our problem all the way through is that we are like a pendulum.

We're over here and then we swing way over to the other side. Almost all the time we are prone either to move from no place for a thing to give it the place, and when God brings the pendulum back, He brings it into what we call His place.

One of the most difficult things is to get an individual into a sense of what is God's place for a thing. How many of you have gone through an experience? There was a time you gave no place to a thing, and then suddenly you entered into some reality and you didn't see anything else.

It was the whole place, you couldn't see anything else. But in due time, God was able to bring you back to show you His proper place in a thing. This is true regarding almost every truth we get a hold of, regarding almost every experience that people enter into, and I'm wanting us to see, it may sound strange, but there was a day when we had really no place for God's Word.

Oh, of course, it was the Word of God and we revered it and we honored it, but it had no place, really. And then we became hungry, we began to see that the Word of God was the only safeguard, and so we gave it, well, how I put it, a wrong place.

We began to set up doctrinal barriers and hedges all along the way to keep people in our approach, our understanding. And we used the guardrails most of the time on people. You know what I'm trying to say?

Being very hard when this is the approach. Well, without getting into that any further, let me say, as we move along, God has a wonderful way of setting up reproofs. If an individual begins to get off the way and he bumps his head on a verse, he says, well, praise the Lord, it becomes a reproof to him.

We're going to see that the Word of God becomes reproofs if I will use the teaching of it in the right way. So here's the reproof. What about the individual who doesn't use the Word as a reproof to stop him?

He gets way off and he bumps his head on something else down here. It's the reproofs, the reproofs. Sometimes I like to call it retribution. You sow and you get a harvest, you see. But the Word of God is intended to be the doctrine and to be the reproof.

And if I jump over the guardrail and I get way beyond, not even heeding, there are other reproofs we're going to read about. But the Word of God is also a correction to bring me right back once again.

It's profitable for what? For doctrine, for reproof, for correction. And as Philip says, to lead me and to bring me on in the full way, not just back and forth all the time, but forward movement, you see, instruction, that a man's whole life will be progressively moving along.

I believe that there's nothing more tragic than to find folk who started out with dedication, but they never get very far because they get stalled with various legal conceptions. They run into reproofs, they faint, they give up, they do not realize that there must be a forward motion all along the way.

Reproof, Correction, and the Consequences of Rebellion

Now, just for a little bit while we're considering, let's look at some of the reproofs that we have in the Scripture. The book of Hebrews gives us a very, very interesting picture. What did I say? I mean Proverbs.

Proverbs chapter 1, 22. How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity, and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof. Verse 23. Turn you at my reproof.

Behold, I will pour out my Spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you, because I have called and ye refused, I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded, but ye have said it not, all my counsel, and would none of my reproof.

Here we are. We're moving along. We're dedicated. We want to go on to the full thing God is after. And we have the teaching of the Scripture. But one of the problems that comes up, someone says, well, one man teaches this, another man teaches this.

How do I know which is the guardrail? How do I know I'm interpreting the guardrail right, you see? And so we get confused sometimes in our teaching or the doctrine. We get confused. For that reason, sometimes people jump way over and do not accept the reproofs.

All right? Look again at chapter 5 in Proverbs. I think we'll read from the first verse. My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding, that thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.

For the lips of a strange woman drop as in honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil, but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold on hell, lest thou shouldst ponder the path of life.

Her ways are movable, that thou canst not know them. Hear me now, therefore, all ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth. Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house, lest thou give thine honor unto others, and thy years unto the cruel.

Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth, and thy labors be in the house of a stranger, and thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, and say, How have I hated instruction? And my heart despised reproofs.

Let me just stop for a moment in these verses and draw to your attention what kind of retribution comes when we fail to accept the reproof. I notice several things here. First of all, in Proverbs 5, he says in verse 9, Lest thou give thine honor unto others, and thy years unto the cruel.

The individual who gets retribution because he fails to accept the reproof that comes from God's Word will lose all, how shall I put it, honor, all standing. He becomes, in society, one who is just utterly cast down, looked upon with disdain.

Sometimes God uses individuals along the way here when they see one. And the Scripture pictures of the individual who comes with a word of reproof and says, Don't go that way, I tried it. This is the end.

Then there are the sad circumstances that develop. And in verse 10 we read, Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth. In other words, you don't accept reproof, others are going to take all that you have.

You've seen this. People end up getting what you have. You've labored, you've labored, but someone else benefits from it. Strangers. And thy labors be in the house of a stranger. Here was the prodigal son.

He didn't listen to the reproof of a father. He went into the far country. And oh, what a tragic thing when one day a Jew finds himself taking care of pigs. I mean, you just can't imagine that. You just can't appreciate what that would be, of all things.

He refused any reproof. And so it says, His labors, his slavery, his bondage, in the house of a stranger. I believe I've seen individuals who've rejected corrections and reproofs and anything that God uses others to bring.

And you find them in slavery, serving, bondage, when God has called His people to be a free people. And it's true of Israel as a whole corporate nation. All right? You see what happens when reproofs are not.

And finally, in verse 11,. And they mourn at the last when thy flesh and thy body are consumed. What else can happen? You sow to the flesh, and the flesh will bring corruption and death. Oh, how wonderful then, that God has given us the guardrails.

He's given us His Word. He's built the law into things in nature. And so when we disregard them, we get retribution. I cannot help but just pause for a moment and say, if there's any one thing God seems to want me to encourage young people today, it's that God desires an ordered life in all of us.

The Discipline of an Ordered Life

A God-ordered life. If He set the sun and all the planets to move in their order, and there's wonderful precision about it, I believe that He has set in the metabolism of my body that which requires a certain order.

I don't always get to follow it, but I believe that the life that learns discipline and order and a certain punctuality, that life is going to be blessed. And I get awful practical at this moment. We have young people with us from time to time at the farm who have great difficulty with any sense of time, any sense of order and arrangement of their life.

And I see them come in at 3 .30 in the morning because they've been out to a meeting. And then when we meet at 8 o 'clock for fellowship, they have an awful time. How many of you know that you might do that occasionally as an emergency?

And we make room for emergency. But if you do that continually, you're going to be irritable during the day. Huh? And you can pray all day long, Lord, don't let me be irritable. But your whole body and system is crying out for regularity.

Oh, how did I get off on this? Brothers, sisters, the disciplined life, the ordered life, God's way in taking us through. And I appreciate that emergencies come. But when I see people always living in the edge of emergency, I know something's really wrong in that life.

You ever see anybody just always moving from one emergency to the other? And the last emergency will be death itself. They've been sowing of a certain kind. This is why I just like to say to us, when we really come into the dedication of the Lord, there's a discipline that goes along with it.

And I believe this is why God says, early to bed, early to rise. Did He say that? Put it in the margin anyway. It's a good verse. It ought to be there. I'm sure I can find something like it anyway. You get my point, don't you?

Or do you? Do you really? All the people that get reproofs, they get retribution simply because they have failed to accept. So we not only have reproofs, but every time you get some retribution, you get sick or something comes up or takes place, God's way is not to run to the healing line again or to run to somebody who has a ministry of deliverance.

We're not against those things. What is God's way? Lord, what was that you were saying about taking care of my body? Lord, I'm looking for correction. I'm sure you've got some. I tell you, it's the individual who keeps abusing, disabusing, who's open for correction.

Lord, teach me thy way. Teach me thy way. Now, this probably doesn't fit us this morning, but it fits most of the places where I go because I wonder if there is the discipline and the order of living there ought to be.

So God's word is for correction. The prodigal came to himself. What am I doing here when I could be back home with my father? And he goes back. Now, all instruction then is for moving along in a proper way.

The difficulty that we've all had, you see, is that we don't like the guardrails here. We don't like this called narrow way. We like the freedom. And you see, the tendency, it's true among younger people and it's true in those who are coming into life in the spirit today.

Hallelujah, I'm free. And the tendency then to assume is I'm not under law, I'm under grace, so that there are no guardrails. Now, I'd just like to pause for a little bit and say that when God in the Old Testament gave them the law as a method of divine dealing, there was grace even back during the period of law.

Do you realize that? God was gracious even when it was called the period of law and His method of divine dealing was according to the law. How many of you can realize today that even under grace during what we call this period in which God's divine method of dealing is that of grace, that there is law?

Our tendency is to assume once we get on this new way, praise the Lord, no guardrails. No. It's a method of divine dealing. There's always been grace. There's always been law. I like to think of law as God expressing Himself out of His own nature, what He is in His own being.

And when men want to follow, they want to please, they want to walk according to that which is in God's own nature and heart, there's no problem. Lord, I want to please your heart. I want to walk and be one with you in nature.

But when men don't want that, then he says, well, I'll just take what's on my heart and I'll put it on some signposts along the way, 35 miles an hour. Slow down the curve. Stop the red light intersection, you see.

These things are really just God taking what's in His heart and putting them outwardly. That's all the Ten Commandments were basically. God took what was in His heart and with His finger He engraved, Thou shalt have no other God.

He engraved it on stone. So, we realize then why it says, Paul says, that the law or the guardrails are only for who? For the lawless. I mean, those who don't basically want to say, it's for their good, it's for their health.

But God's real way is to take that which is outward and write the law on my heart. Oh, blessed is the life when it's not just an outward sign along the way that keeps me from hitting the rails, but that God has written it so within my heart that the longing and the desire is there.

I remember my dear friend Bill Cady. Some of you have read his book, My Glory's Discovery. I remember Bill telling, after he'd gone through a very crisis experience, how for years he'd come up to a sign that said, children playing slow.

But he never really paid much attention, but he saw the sign. Sometimes he'd slow, sometimes he wouldn't. And then one day in the afternoon, someone came knocking on his door and said, Brother, we think you ought to come over a few blocks down the road.

We think maybe your boy's been hurt. And he hastened over, walked to the side of the road, pulled back the white sheet, and it was his oldest son, hit by a truck. I'll never forget as long as I live hearing Bill, tears coursing down his cheeks, say the speed signs along the road are not important.

They're not necessary to me anymore. God's written it on my heart. I see children playing. I don't need signs. You see what he does? He writes the thing on our heart. This is what the Lord is doing. And so, when we begin in the new way of dedication now, it is true for help and for guidance.

God has given His Word and He puts some teaching. He puts some guardrails. But more and more, what is He doing? He's taking that which is external, that which is out here, and He is writing it upon our heart until the longing is, Lord, I want to know what it is to be led by Your Spirit.

Grace, Law, and Being Led by the Spirit

Now, I meet individuals every now and then who say, Praise the Lord. I'm not under law. I'm under grace. And they assume that that means no guardrails, no teaching, as it were. I'm just free to enjoy.

I heard a brother say the other day in explaining this, when he found the liberty that he had in Christ and he saw how many guardrails that men had built and how many things he had misinterpreted, he just ran off into the pasture here and had a real good time for a while, enjoying his so-called liberty.

And then one day, the Lord came and said, Son, come here. Come here. Come here. But Lord, I'm free. Oh, yes, he said, you're free. And in the process of it, the Lord brought him back and He said, Now, I want you to know something.

I've had these guardrails. They're gone. Let me put it over here. They're gone. Now, I want you to walk this white line down the middle. No guardrails. I just want you to walk this white line. You'd be surprised if I told you who this brother was.

I don't give his testimony. You know him. You've heard him probably. Very blessed thing. But Lord, Lord, this is freedom in the Spirit. You see, what the Lord does is to take away all the bridle of law and He puts a new bridle in our heart.

This is why it says, If ye be led of the Spirit, let me put it in my own translation. If you be led of the Spirit, that's walking the white line down the middle, you don't need any guardrails. Boy, that's dangerous.

Or is it dangerous? Are you following me? What's he doing? Putting the want-to in? Creating the desire within? Isn't it interesting? I suppose you've all faced this. You're trying to bring your son or your daughter at a certain age to a place of responsibility and develop within them a sense of fellowship with you and you start by saying, Well, Johnny, tonight you come in.

You know what will please Daddy. Come in about the time you think we want you to be here. And I know what Johnny says, But Daddy, tell me, please, 10 o 'clock or 10 .30. Well, just come in when you think it will please me.

He doesn't want that responsibility. You know what he wants? How many of you know? I want a guardrail. Then I can get in 29 minutes after 10 and still please you. You see? This is the whole thing. I don't want to go into it, but you can go back into God's dealing with Israel.

And I think when he brought them out and he was going to bring them in, the whole focus of his plan was, You're peculiar people unto me. I want you to walk with me. I want you to be. Just please me. All the bondage of just pleasing you, Lord.

The love slavery of just pleasing you. And what did they say? Lord, give us some laws. Give us a guardrail. Give us something here. Do you follow what I'm trying to say? Then you see, it reveals the double-mindedness.

We really want to please the Lord, but we still want to stay out until 20 minutes after 10. We still want to enjoy all we can for ourselves and still. So in the way of dedication, God is crowding us sooner or later to the place where the Holy Spirit begins to perform an effect within us.

This real longing in pleasing the Lord, fulfilling all his desires and delights. And the law out here, the guardrail, only those things, when we start to begin to commence to please ourselves. All right.

I'll leave that with you now. Just wanting us to see this morning that as we begin the life of dedication, our conflict comes, first of all, inwardly, as to whether we are knowing what it is to please the Lord, be led by his Spirit, and God becomes the inward strength that's written in our heart, or whether we want this.

The New and Living Way

I'd like to say that there comes a day, I didn't get this pictured right, when the new way becomes a living way. How many of you, after you got saved and you started the way of dedication to the Lord, it was a new way?

I mean, it was very new, but it hadn't become a living way. Scripture speaks of it as a new and living way. And the livingness of it, the livingness of it, is when we turn, as it were, from just our legal approach, and we begin to realize the blessedness of God by his Spirit, putting his own bridle within.

Oh, the livingness of it. The joy of it. I get into a dangerous point here because I think every now and then I see folk who begin to discover the new liberty that is ours in the Lord. And they take some trips, and they get some reproof, and they get a little bit of retribution, and they come back and say, Lord, I thought that would satisfy, but it doesn't.