Where the Spirit Is — Norman Meeten

The Corinthian Church and Encouragement in Christ

As you have your New Testament with you tonight, I'd like you to turn with me into the second letter of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians. And I'm going to read chapter three, but not confine myself to it.

To Corinthians, chapter three. One of a number of letters that Paul wrote to the Corinthian church because he had such a concern for them. He desired that they should grow and develop and mature. They had their fair share of problems, but he never despaired of them and never came down heavy upon them.

We tend to measure on the fact that they had defects, that they had problems, that they fell short of the mark. If you read the first chapter of the first letter of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, you will find that everything that he has to say to them is encouraging.

He praises God for who they are and what they are and tells them that they are things that they could hardly believe were true. He spoke to them in faith. The way Jesus looked at people, it's the way Jesus spoke to people.

And he looked at the woman whom he met at the well. He didn't look at her as the harlot of Zica and he didn't talk to her like that either. He saw her as the bride of Christ and spoke to her from that position.

And because he ministered positively into her heart, she was plucked up out of the filth and squalor and degradation that had been her lot for so long. And God was able to effect a miracle in her heart and make her another woman because at last she had met someone who wasn't down on her, who did not despise her or reject her.

And grind her into the mire one degree further, but loved her out of a pure heart servicely and ministered that spirit of love to her that lifted her up out of what she was and what she was in and made her another person.

And how all of us need to be encouraged, do we not? The devil's a past master for condemning us and grinding us into the mire. But God isn't. God loves us. Amen. He speaks comfortably to the heart of each one of us.

It says at the end of the third chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, He sent Jesus to bless you. It's very easy to say God bless you and not realise what you're saying. It's trite on the lips of many, but never on the lips of Jesus.

God sent Jesus to bless you. My great fear in these days is that God will come amongst us and bless us and lift us up and get us out of a doldrums if that's where we've sunk into. And deal with those things that crush us and frustrate us and hinder us.

Hallelujah. You come with a heart that's all open, full of expectation and anticipation that God is going to speak to you, minister into your heart and love you right up into himself. Amen. Let's read, shall we?

The New Covenant and the Ministry of the Spirit

Chapter 3 of 2 Corinthians, verse 1. Do we begin again to commend ourselves or need we as some others epistles of commendation to you or letters of commendation from you? You are our epistles, written in our hearts, known and read of all men, for as much as you are manifestly declared to be the epistles of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but with the spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone but in the fleshy tables of the heart.

And such trust as we, through Christ, to God, were not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who also has made us able ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the spirit, for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.

But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stone, was glorious so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses, for the glory of his countenance, which glory was to be done away, how shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?

For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelled it.

For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious, seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech. And not as Moses which put a veil over his face that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished, but their minds were blinded, for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament, which veil is done away in Christ.

But even unto this day when Moses is read, the veil is upon their hearts. Nevertheless, when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away. Now the Lord is that spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

But we all, with open faith, beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord. A little phrase that has captivated my heart in these days, as I've waited upon the Lord and looked to him for his word tonight, is this little phrase, the spirit of the Lord is, where the spirit of the Lord is, praise God.

The one great thing that we need to know, as we gather together in the presence of the Lord in these days, is that the spirit of the Lord is here. Regardless of what our experience is or isn't, that is the thing that we need to know over and above everything else, that the spirit of the Lord is here.

Now praise God, many of us know that by the grace of God the spirit has come and made his abode in our hearts as a permanent residence. Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost. There was a moment in time when that transpired and we knew that it was true.

There are others in this meeting tonight, I am sure, who don't know that, and who are in that great realm of what the old Puritans called the prevenient activity of God. That is the spirit of God working upon and in our life, preparatory to that sacred moment when the spirit of God comes and makes himself real and glorifies Jesus within our hearts.

There are others who know and, by the grace of God, live in the good of the present reality of the spirit of God in their heart, but for some reason or another has lost something of the wonder and the glory and the charm, the awareness.

The New Testament does warn us that we should not quench the spirit, we should not grieve the spirit, which is indicative that that is possible, and that for one reason or another people do lose out. There are many people who say to me, we are not what we were in some time ago.

Now you can say that, make that as a general statement, or that can be the confession of your own personal position, that you are not enjoying the reality, the fullness, the liberty, the wonder, the glory of the realization of the presence of the spirit of God in your heart at this moment in time.

There may be people who have come to this conference having once enjoyed, yet have come with a heavy heart. Things have transpired, things have happened that have dulled, tarnished, and caused that original wonder and glory.

It's not that we can live on the mountaintop all the time. Jesus took them down into the valley, but that wasn't with the thought that the presence and reality of his spirit should diminish. In fact, you need it more in the valley than you do on the mountaintop.

But there are people who, for one reason or another, are not living and enjoying the good and the wonder and the glory of that original encounter with the spirit of God, not where you were once upon a time.

I believe that one of the purposes of gathering together like this is that you and I should come to a new realization, for some an entry in, for others a consolidation and realization of the wonder and glory of what it means to have him within, and for others a renewal, a refreshment.

I don't mind what you call it. We can be very accurate, very precise, doctrinally correct in our terminology, but fail to live in the reality of the things that we speak of. The important thing is that we know that the spirit of the Lord is here.

Receiving the Holy Spirit in Ephesus

Where the spirit of the Lord is. Amen. That's where things will happen. That's the urgency that we discover in the heart of the apostle when he went to a place called Ephesus. You'll read it in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, where there was gathered a company of people together, twelve men, whether there were women there or not, we are not told, but assessing modern meetings, I should imagine there were more women than there were men, but we're told that there were twelve men.

And the first question that he asked them was, have you, or did you, receive the Holy Ghost when you believed? To him that was the most important question. To him that was the fundamental thing that they needed to know and be living in the reality of.

Did you receive the Holy Ghost when you believed? Or, if you want to take the authorised rendering on it, have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed? The accurate translation is when you believed.

And, of course, they said, we do not know whether there be any Holy Ghost. And then he goes on to ask them, then, what were you baptised into? And they said, into John's baptism. They were Jews. They had not yet become Christians.

They were seekers. They were disciples. They were living in anticipation and expectation that there was more to have and know and live in the reality of. But they had not come into that personal experience and relationship with the Spirit of God.

He was still outside. Did you receive the Holy Ghost when you believed? To the Apostle that was absolutely fundamental, and for you and me it is fundamental, unless we receive the Holy Ghost, unless we know the presence of the Holy Ghost, unless the Holy Ghost come amongst us in these days, beloved, even our gathering together is in vain.

Where the Spirit of the Lord is. Amen. That's my great desire in these days, that the Spirit of God shall come amongst us, that he might come into us, that he might make his abode with us, that he might pour out himself upon us, that he might work works of grace within our lives, that he might meet the needs of human hearts, that he might solve the problems that have dogged the feet of men and women for years who come to conferences like this again and again and again and again and never find their answer or their solution.

We need the Holy Ghost to come amongst us. We need the power of the Spirit to come upon us. We need the Spirit of God to flood us through and through and meet us and swallow up and solve those needs that are present amongst us.

Amen. That's why I come to you. Praise God. I confess, beloved, there came a day in my life when God baptized me in the Holy Ghost and filled me so full of himself I didn't know whether I was on earth or whether I was in heaven.

And I praise God for over years he has maintained and sustained that by the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ and graced me with grace and caused me to enjoy him and know him and love him and serve him and follow him.

And I rejoice in him tonight. I'm satisfied, but I'm not. The paradox I know, satisfied, fulfilled, knowing the reality of the Spirit of God within and yet knowing that there is so much more to have. Glory be to God, where the Spirit of the Lord is.

Amen. Is he here, beloved? Well, if you've got the Spirit of God living within you then he should be here. But are you consciously aware that he's here? Are you living in the expectation and anticipation that he's going to come and demonstrate, manifest himself amongst us in these days to meet our needs, whatever those needs are?

And God alone knows what they are. Many of us have not even the ability to articulate our needs. I often say to people, how long have you had this or that problem? And they said, I don't know. As far as I'm aware, it's always been there.

No explanation. We can analyze, we can question, but often we're beggared for explanations and answers. We need the Holy Ghost to come. Glory to his name. That's my desire on this first night of the conference, that you and I should know that the Holy Ghost is here.

We're the Holy Ghost here. Amen. Now, there's some tremendous things in the early chapters of this lovely epistle that are associated with this tremendous talk, where the Spirit of the Lord is. First of all, in chapter 1, verse 18,.

The Promise of God in Christ

But as God is true, our word towards you was not yea and nay. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay. For all the promise but in Him was yea.

For all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him are men, unto the glory of God by us. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, beloved, the promise of God finds its fulfillment. Glory to his name. And God is a God of promise.

That's why we read at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, in the first chapter, Wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, you have heard of me. Acts chapter 1, verse 4,. And being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, you have heard of me.

And there he is speaking of the promise of promises. I don't know how many promises there are in the book, amen, but I know that all the promises of God in Him are yes, and are men, unto the glory of God by us.

That God does not speak, God does not promise, was he sung in his teaching. When God makes a promise, it was with the commitment of his heart to fulfill it and outwork it in the lives of the men and women who will believe it and receive it and come into the good of it.

Turn into the Hebrew epistle, chapter 6, where the writer speaks of this great truth. It's in relationship to Abraham. He was a man who staggered not at the promises of God to one belief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God.

You'll read that in the Roman epistle. He staggered not at the promises of God, and the odds against him, bloody, were formidable. Especially when you think of a hundred years old and still waiting, of course, there are those who argue with the apostle Peter and said, God's gone to sleep, and Peter said, God is not snatched and soon in his promises some men come snatched, but is long suffering to us were not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

God is not snatched concerning his promise. What God says God will do, what God promises, he will fulfill. Amen. And where the spirit of the Lord is beloved, God ratifies his promise. Listen to it in Hebrews, chapter 6, verse 12, that he be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he swore by himself, saying, Surely, blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. So after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.

For men verily swear by the greater, and the oath for confirmation is to them the end of all strife. Wherein God willingly, more abundantly, to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by note, 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, both sure and steadfast, which enters into that who is in the veil, whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made and high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

It is impossible for God to lie. You will read the same lovely truth in the first chapter of Christus. It is impossible for God to lie. God is the God of promise. His promise is immutable, it's irrefutable, it's incontestable.

What God has promised, he will fulfill. Glory be to his name. Peter talks about the precious promises, doesn't he, in his second lesson. He talks about the precious promises whereby we are made partakers of the divine nature.

That's probably the most magnificent truth that the Apostle Peter ever penned. You and I are made partakers of the divine nature, based upon the integrity of God's promise to men and women. Glory to his name.

I wish I had time this evening to illustrate to you from my own personal experience and knowledge the integrity of God and his ability to do exactly what he says he will do. God does not mock us. God does not taunt us.

What he says he will do. And when Peter says we are made partakers of the divine nature, he is talking about the promise of promises. That promise for which they were told to wait. Wait for the promise of the Father.

And then in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, he says the promise is unto you. I love that. When I read a statement like that, I'd love to go round to every single person in the room and look them in the eye and say, brother, the promise is for you.

Sister, the promise is for you. It's this personal application, this tremendous ability that God has of addressing his word to men and women individually and personally. And that's why we need the Spirit of God to come to illuminate.

Amen. And cause us to personally understand that he is a God of promise to you and me and that we can enter into that promise of promises that will open up the floodgates, beloved, for us to begin to appreciate all the other promises.

The promise is unto you and to your children and to all that are far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall cause. Praise God, beloved, if you have appropriated the promise and made it your own. Amen.

What about your children? What about all those who are far off? What about all those who have come to our conference this year, who have not entered in, who do not know? Have you faith, beloved, to align yourself with the word of God and facilitate, I used this expression yesterday morning, lubricate the way for the Spirit of God to come amongst us and find entrance and access into the hearts and lives of men and women that they too shall enjoy the wonder of the promise.

It was that promise, beloved, for which Jesus died. Glory to His name. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, it's there that the promise of God is ratified and fulfilled in the hearts and lives of men and women.

It's no longer a statement in a book. It's no longer the experience of someone else that you admire, but that which has become your own. Blessed be His name. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, the promise is ratified.

Amen. Jesus put it like this, didn't He, when He was talking in the terms of New Birth, He said, The wind bloweth where it misteth, thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh.

So is everyone that is born of the Spirit of God. We cannot manipulate it. We cannot engineer it. Amen. But we can align ourselves with the word of God and the promise that comes from His precious heart.

Amen. And resolve, beloved, within our heart, if that is what God did, if that is what God has promised me, then I will enter into it and have it, and I will not give up the disposition of Jacob, beloved, when he wrestled with God.

I will not let you go unless you bless me. Unless God finds that in you and in these days, God, related to the things that He's going to say to us, they'll never become our own. There are some things that only God can do, beloved, sovereignly.

Only God can do. Only God can regenerate you. Only God, beloved, can rid you of your sin. Only God can baptize you within the Holy Ghost. But there are some things, beloved, that even God can't do for you.

Only you can do them. Amen. God has promised, behind God's promise, behind God's word, beloved, is God's person. It's God's nature. It's God's power. It's God's ability. It's God's integrity. It's God's faith.

And it's all behind what He says. He has the ability to perform it. But He can't receive it for you. You've got to be of the disposition of Jacob that wrestles with God as needs be and say, I will not let you go unless you bless me.

That's the position I came to, beloved. That's how I got baptized in the Spirit. I had no one to teach me. I didn't know anyone to teach me. I'd gone to all my evangelical friends and shared with them the burden, the agony, the despair of my heart.

Shared my problems. And they told me it was normal Christianity, that I'd have to learn to live with myself. I said, if that is so, then Christianity is a great hoax and I don't want it. And I was a minister of the gospel by this time.

And I came to a place, beloved, where I resolved that unless God met me, unless He made what His words said, what I believed in my head, what I preached with my lips, real in my life, then I was through.

There was no point to live. My time has come to find out whether that spirit of desperation has left. I will not let thee go unless thou bless me. God is a God of promise. And the promise of promises, beloved, is that He will baptize men and women in the Holy Ghost so that you will know where the Spirit of the Lord is.

Not up there in the ethereal blue, beloved. Not remote and distant somewhere along the way. Not encastrated in a building or a book, beloved, or confined to the limitations of the comforts, beloved, that has become a reality in the depth of your own being.

Amen. If you come, beloved, with a heart like that, I tell you, God will fulfill His promise. Amen. Are you desperate? God has to work on some of it a long time. He did on Jacob. Amen. Amen. Bless the Lord.

The Holy Spirit as Seal and Guarantee

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, the promise will find its fulfillment and ratification in the hearts and lives of men and women like you and me. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, verse 22 of chapter 1, He who hath also healed us, and given us the earnestness of the Spirit in our hearts.

Now that's what happens when God comes and baptises us in the Holy Ghost. This is how Paul talks about the baptism of the Spirit. He doesn't use the terminology of the Acts of the Apostles. He uses this wonderful descriptive picture of feeling.

You'll find it again in the Ephesian epistle, where we have this lovely cameo of the Gospel in chapter 1, verse 12, that we should be to the praise of His glory. That's a repetitive statement in the first chapter.

He keeps on saying that, that you should be to the praise of His glory. That you should be to the praise of His glory. I was preaching at a wedding this afternoon and told them that the ultimate in the heart of God concerning every marriage was that the glory of Jesus should be manifested.

Amen. You should be to the praise of His glory. He keeps on saying it in this first chapter. And here in verse 12, that we should be to the praise of His glory, who first hoped, your version probably has trusted, but in fact the word is hoped, first hoped in Christ, in whom also, after that you heard the word of God, the word trusted is not in the thirteenth verse, it's in italics if you have a good Bible, in whom you also, after that you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, after that you believed, you were filled with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance, unto the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of His glory.

First we hope, then we hear, then we believe, and then we are sealed. Now that's the gospel, beloved, in a nutshell. That would be with this lovely phrase that we should be to the praise of His glory.

First we hope, then we hear, then we believe, and then we are sealed for the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest, the down payment, the introduction to this great life of personal relationship with the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

Amen. We are sealed. Now the modern translation of the word sealed is signature. We don't use sealed these days except in legal circles. It's a signature. God writes His name. We sing about it. We read a book about it in the book of the Revelation that God gives us a new name.

He writes His name upon us. Glory to His name. Now when God seals you and me, when the Spirit of the Lord comes, Amen, and brings you and me into the good of that glorious promise, the Scripture says, then He seals us.

And the seal, first of all, is the declaration of His approval that what God has done totally and completely for you and me, He approves of. Amen. Bless the Lord. That's what the Spirit of God comes to do.

He comes to do in you and me, or reproduce in you and me, what He did in the person of His Son, bringing it to perfection at Calvary. Amen. He comes to bring it into the good and value of the precious blood.

He comes to bring it into the good of the power of God unto salvation, which is God. He comes to bring it into the good of the glory and wonder of resurrection living. And when God sees that by His Spirit we have responded to that promise and received that divine nature, God puts His seal of approval.

He says, I approve, I'm satisfied. Then God saw the perfection of the sacrifice of Jesus at the throne of grace. It reads in the Scripture, He was satisfied. I want to say tonight, beloved, if God is satisfied with what Jesus has done, you have every reason to be satisfied as well.

We cannot add to it, we cannot take away from it. What God has done for you and me and Jesus is sufficient, it's adequate to meet all of our needs. The reason why many of us, beloved, go on with our problems and difficulties is because we haven't fully appreciated and understood the provision that God has made for us in Jesus.

And therefore we end up by bringing additions and appendages, beloved, as if we could add something to what God has done. I want to tell you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ tonight that what God did for you and me in the person of His Son through death and resurrection unto glorification is sufficient and adequate to meet every single need within this tent tonight.

Glory be to God. We don't need anything added to it, we dare not take anything away from it. When the Spirit of God comes, beloved, where the Spirit of God is, this is what He comes to do, to make real in you and me what He's accomplished for us in Jesus.

Amen. And when He sees you and me responding to that glorious work, beloved, then He will put His seal upon it and say, I'm satisfied. Amen. Amen. The other great meaning to the word seal, beloved, is guarantee.

Amen. Not only does He approve of what's been accomplished through His Son, the Lord Jesus, but He guarantees the reality, the power, the ongoing working of it. He guarantees it. When you buy a good watch, beloved, it has a guarantee, usually maximum five years.

And you think that you've got a very valuable watch, they guarantee it for five years. And if it breaks within the course of five years, beloved, you can send it back and they will renew it or they will give you a new one.

I've got a nice watch, I didn't buy it, I couldn't have afforded it. It was given to me because I have a friend in Sicily who has a clock shop. He said to me, it's half yours. Amen, I'd like to own half the shop.

He has the finest clocks and watches produced in Switzerland and Germany and all the famous places where they make the most beautiful clocks. He said, it's half yours, beloved, choose what you like. Take any watch in the place.

Amen, and he gave me a lovely watch. And I know that it had a guarantee of five years and I thought, marvellous. But what is five years to be compared with eternity, beloved? God guarantees that what Jesus has done for you and me is not just a temporary thing to alleviate a problem here and a problem there, but for the soul, and not only soul, but to maintain you and me in liberty and freedom.

Glory to His name. We devaluate, we underestimate, beloved, what God has provided for us in Jesus and often we don't enter into it or understand it because we don't appreciate, beloved, the reality of the presence of the Spirit of God.

That's why Paul wrote to the princes, he said, I have not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of men, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him, that God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit, where the Spirit of the Lord is.

God will open our inward understanding and cause us to have revelation and appreciation, beloved, of what He has really done for us in Jesus. I dare not underestimate Him, but we do. That's why people lose out, beloved.

That's why people sly. That's why we're so wonderful once upon a time. Loses, its lustre loses, its glitter loses its reality. You may fall into that context. I know many people, beloved, who once seemed to be in the seventh heaven, or should I say the third heaven, that's more scriptural, and no longer are, for one reason or another.

God's not here to condemn us, beloved, and hit us over the head, but He's here to encourage us and to tell us and to remind us that where the Spirit of the Lord is, beloved, the promises of God, the promise that all the accompanying promises, He is prepared to ratify and make real that all that He's done for us in Jesus, He's prepared, beloved, to come, to seal, to burn, and guarantee.

Did you receive the Holy Ghost when you believed? Have you been baptised in the Holy Ghost? It's very easy, beloved, to slide into a fellowship context or a church context and enjoy the benefits on the periphery without entering into the reality and having an inward conviction and assurance that you know where the Spirit of the Lord is within, lest it be His name.

The glorious truth of sealing, beloved, is repetitive in the writings of the Apostles. Sealed with the Holy Ghost, breathe not the Holy Spirit of God whereby you are sealed under the day of redemption, he writes in the Ephesian Epistle.

And he writes that in the context, beloved, of the way we use our tongue. You'll read it in the fourth chapter. I read it for the people who gathered together to pray yesterday morning. And one of the things that quenches the Spirit of God and causes people to go into an avalanche of despair is perhaps an inadvertent word, a critical statement, a bitter, judgmental word that comes from your lips.

Read the context. If you weren't there yesterday morning, read the context where it says quench not the Spirit of God whereby you are sealed under the day of redemption. James has a lot to say about the tongue, beloved.

It is a little member. It's like the rubber of a chip. It controls the whole. And often it can be just a word. Beloved, in these days as we live together, as we fellowship together, let us make sure that our conversation, that our talking, is edifying, is life-giving, is up-building rather than being critical and judgmental.

You know, so often we make judgments about situations of which we really know nothing about. We've heard one side of the story, here or there, and it all sounds so plausible and wonderful until you hear the other side of the story and then you don't know who is right and who is wrong and find how helpless you are so often even to make an assessment unless God gives you revelation and insight into it.

Beloved, we can quench the Spirit with a single word. I remember the day that the Lord spoke that word to me that you one day, every idle word, you will have to answer for every idle word that you speak.

So I put a clamp on my mouth. There is a scripture in the Old Testament which says set a watch before my mouth that I may not sin against you. You shouldn't have to pray that, beloved, if you know where the Spirit of the Lord is.

If the Spirit of the Lord is in you, watching your heart, Jesus said, will come out of your mouth. You shouldn't have to be constantly going around putting your hand over your mouth, thinking, living on the knife edge of so-called Christian experience.

Blessed be his name. But so often we do give occasion for the wicked one and the devil, beloved, doesn't need much scope to take advantage of the situation to grieve the Spirit of God. That doesn't mean to say that God's quick.

I often refer to Hanson as God's delinquent, God's juvenile delinquent. He had all the problems that modern young people had today. He had parent problems, had girlfriend problems, had hair problems. You name it, beloved, he had it, didn't he?

You've only got to read the Bible, beloved. It's the most contemporary book that you'll ever pick up. Bless God, he had all the problems. And he quenched, he grieved the Spirit, beloved, but at the moment he was deadly, he knew the reality of God's power greater than in the moments of his life.