Christ wants me not just to be like Him, but to allow Him to live His life in me. We in the Christian church preach that Jesus is alive. Well, how do you know He's alive? I'm talking about from your own experience, how do you know He's alive? Oh, the Bible says He's alive, and some of your friends say He's alive, but how do you know He's alive? You can say my wife is alive. Well, how do you know she's alive? And I hope you know she's alive besides just being able to say, well, I saw her 40 minutes ago. If that's the only way you know she's alive, she's not very alive to you. Because when you don't see her, you don't even know she's around, that she even exists. Now, a lot of people treat Christ that way. But what I'm saying is, if Christ is alive and Christ is living today, and Christ can change your life by living in it, is he doing it? And if not, what's wrong? What's wrong? So this morning I want to continue on the theme that I started out with. There has to be something different in the Christian life whereby it gets beyond just faith. And when we say we walk with Christ, the walk becomes real. There has to come an experience in our life where we begin to see the living Christ, and I'll use this phrase, cropping out of my life. Now I pretty well know many of my faults. But if I begin to see a life coming out of me that's not me, and it's far superior to me, and it's the life of Christ, then I can say, yes, the life of Christ is real. I can't produce it. Does the Christ life live in you? Is it alive in you? And I said last week, this church, If you want to get a lost person saved, you've got a lost relative, and you want to at least let them have the knowledge of how to get saved, I'll guarantee this church can do it for you, if that's what you want to give them. And most of our people know how to become a Christian. And most of our people know how to get to heaven, but between the time we get to be a Christian and the time we get to heaven, we're in a total loss. What goes on now? Yes, I'm a child of God, and yes, someday I'm going to be with Jesus, but In the meantime, what am I going to do? What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to live? And when you get answers to those questions, you're talking about discipleship. Jesus took the disciples, spent three years with them, and the word disciple means train them to be Christ's followers. I find most Christians have no conception of training to be a disciple. Most churches don't do it because it takes too much time and too much work and too much involvement on the people's part. Most of us want discipleship by correspondence. That is, when the Holy Spirit can catch us, we take our first lesson. In the meantime, we're not interested. Discipleship means going to school. That's right. That's the bad part about it. The disciples went to school for three years. And then they continued in school for the rest of their life. You never get out of school in the discipleship realm of life. That's learning how to live and walk with Christ. Most people know nothing about this. And sad to say, few of us care much about this. But I think ignorance is the first problem and the greatest hindrance to our becoming disciples. Ignorance is probably the reason we don't know what it is to allow Christ to live in us. Ignorance. We know he's alive. because the Bible says so. But we don't know how to get that life in us to work. Just knowing what to do and when to do and how to do and where to do, that's discipleship. But most of us are all blank when it comes to those kinds of decisions in our life. Our life has little spiritual direction to it because we do not have a compass. and encompasses the knowledge whereby we are guided. I have about decided there is a pattern There is a blueprint, there is a map by which if we will follow it step by step, then we can become disciples. And if we do not care about the blueprint or the pattern, then we never will be a disciple, but we will always be a spiritual dropout and failure. Always. I guess making up your mind that there is a pattern is the first step for improvement. But what is the pattern? At this step, I will admit with you, I have no conception. I honestly don't know. What is the pattern of a disciple? I can give you some general principles, but I have no conception as to how to build a disciple. That's all I know. Someone has said, when everything else fails, follow instructions. That's about the truth in the Christian life. Everything else has failed to produce within you a proof of the living Christ Well, maybe the trouble is we have never started following instructions. But what are the instructions? I don't know. You say, Preacher, you don't know? No, I don't know. Do you know? I have a whole room full of books. I'm fine. They don't know. Nobody cares to sit down and plan out for us what makes one a disciple. Now, I can say one thing about the pattern. I know for sure. It's Romans 8, 29. I can guarantee you this about the pattern. Romans 8, 29, we can't get away from this pattern. This is the building, this is the structure that God is going to build. If He can, you know, if He can. Let's look and see what He's going to build. God did predestinate that we be conformed to the image of His Son. Now there's the blueprint. All I'm saying is that the blueprint is to let Christ live his life in me to the point that my life is radically, drastically changed to the point that I live like Christ. To put it more simply, I cease to live at all. And all I see living is Christ in me. And my life becomes an experience where all I do is look at Jesus doing everything. Typing, driving nails, driving cars. I watch Christ at work in my life 24 hours a day. Now I don't know how many of you have that kind of life. But that's what God is trying to build out of everyone that calls himself a child of God. We say, I'm a child of God. What's the pattern for a child of God? There is the only begotten Son of God, and if you are a child of God, His Son is the pattern. We are to be reproductions of the original. How are you going to do that? Let Christ live in us. How do you do that? Ah, well, I don't know. That's the blueprint. Now, there has to be a way. There has to be a plan. It just doesn't say, well, go ahead and do it. No, there has to be something. that you have first and second, you don't start building a house with the chimney. And I think a lot of people do. They try to build their spiritual life in sections. They start with the roof or with the kitchen and they never do get their house together. It's just a bunch of pieces and things never just seem to fit. Now, What I'm going to preach on this morning came to me in a strange way and this doesn't make it super tremendous. It just came to me in a... I've never in my life been able to write a sermon until Saturday night and Sunday morning. Now that's a real tight schedule. I'm talking about the sermon you're going to preach for the Sunday morning you're still writing it on. I'm not talking about the week before. And I guess I'm the only man that has that kind of weird schedule. So if anything goes wrong on a Saturday night or Sunday morning, I've had it. Right down to the deadline. Well, last Tuesday morning, I got up early, and that is unusual. You know, it really is. I didn't get up, I woke up. And I couldn't go back to sleep, and the Lord began He's been working on me on this subject for the last three years. And he never has gotten anything through my head yet. I can't figure out what's going on. But my mind has been open. I'll guarantee you that. I haven't been Methodist or Baptist or anything else. I have just tried to be open. And boy, that's a mess when you sometimes get all that traffic jam up there with all these ideas floating around. It's a big confusion. And the Lord has, I hope, began to put things together for me. And I'm just getting the first part of the puzzle. I think I'm working on the foundation. Now Christ is the foundation, but I think I'm just beginning to lay the seals around the wall, and I'm starting to write sparks. And so the Lord began to say some things to me and the more I lay there the more thoughts came to me and I felt like I better get up and down being as absent minded as I am I wouldn't remember 20 minutes from then. And so I went to my study and I said I'm not going to get any books. Man I've read enough books to choke a horse. And I'm just going to sit down with a Bible, a concordance and a typewriter. Now concordance is nothing but a reference where you can find any verse in the Bible if you can think of one word in that verse. So I just started typing, and writing, and thinking, and writing, and thinking, and typing. This went on from 8 o'clock in the morning until 6 o'clock at night. Now I did have a break in there. I ate and I went downtown and I came back. And I finished. And that was my sermon this morning. Way back there in Tuesday. I didn't know what to do with myself all week. This just wasn't real for me. Now I'm going to tell you the thoughts that came to me, and I'm not going to finish them this morning, and they've still been coming all last week. And I've raised some really deep questions with the Lord, and I haven't got a lot of answers, but I'll tell you I have raised some questions that I feel like have to be raised. I'm the kind of guy, when somebody says two and two is four, I say prove it. Now, I just don't believe everything that comes along. I won't prove. And that's been probably one of the great problems in my life. I'm not a skeptic, but I won't prove. When I stand up and say something, I want to be sure it's right. And not ten days from now, I change my mind. I want to be right. Now, what I'm saying this morning, as far as I'm concerned, has become concrete to me. This is it. And I'm not going to vary from this. I've zeroed in on what I believe. And this is mirror, mirror on the wall number two. Now I've finished number one, whatever you want to say about it. I'm talking a lot about my life. And everybody knows what it is now to go down and buy a car. And as you're looking over, you're handed a list which says options, options. And it seems like everything you want on that car is an option. And we even make the joke, well, is the motor an option too? Or the tires come with it. You know, now you have to buy the spare of a lot of cars. I guess the jack. You wonder if the steering wheel comes with it. So they have a long list of options. Now when it comes to salvation with Christ, from Christ, is there anything standard and is there anything an accessory? You follow me. Are there add-ons in the Christian life that are available following salvation. In other words, we're told about guidance, we're told about forgiveness, we're told about answered prayer, we're told about provisions, we're told about grace, we're told about mercy. We have a long list of things. Well now, are these standards that you get at salvation, are these add-ons that you must get later on in life? What is standard and what is an add-on? I would say of all the things I've mentioned to you, they're standards. All these things come with salvation. Now the Paul tells the Christians in the city of Ephesus that they need to do a new thing. Look at Ephesians 4.24. I hope you have your Bible because I'm doing my best to base everything I say on the scriptures that I got this week that were called to my mind. You may not agree with what I say, this is perfectly alright, but I'll say this, you're going to have to do something with the Bible verses I give you. I'll at least be fair enough to look at any Bible verse, but don't dump the ones that I give you and throw them in the garbage can. Ephesians 4.24, Paul says to the Ephesians, a command, put on the new man. Now that's what I've been talking about. What's the new man? Well all I know anything about is the old man. And if it's going to be a new man, it has to be Christ Jesus. That's the only new man I know anything about. Put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Now there is the direction that my new man will take. I have a real question for you. Is that a standard or is that an option? Is that a standard thing that I begin my salvation with or is that an add-on that I can get later on following salvation? Look at 2 Corinthians 5.17. See what that says. If any man be in Christ, he is... That makes a standard. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. That's standard. That's standard equipment. All things are passed away. Behold, all things have become new. I believe I am fair in saying that we come from the Salvation Assembly line equipped already to be a new man. We have the necessary equipment made available at conversion, which makes it standard equipment. We all have We have the new engine, we have the new carburetor, we have the new transmission, we have the new steering mechanism, we have everything born into us, made into us at the time of conversion. He is a new creature. So we come from the assembly line ready to become a new man. So putting on the new man, as Paul told the Ephesians, who is, by the way, no other one than Christ, requires no accessory, no add-on, for me to put on Christ is possible from my conversion experience. For three years I've asked the question, from time to time and time to time, I have read and read and re-read and re-examined and read and read and re-read. You wouldn't know how much I have read. Trying to examine the blueprint fix on a born-again believer. Every time I do this, I come away more and more convinced that each of us comes from the assembly line full of all the power and necessities that we have to have to put on the new man, to walk with Christ, to let Christ live in our heart. Now, some people speak as though the newborn saint has a J.C. Hood ornament, that is, with a Jesus Christ make. Is that all? Some say we have received a remodeling change under the hood, under the sheet metal, let's put it that way. There's been a change in our spirit and soul, what kind of change nobody ever seems to tell us. But I hear this said that installed in us is a very small engine, say a hundred horsepower. Now our life is to obey the Lord's commands and we have found in our own experience that some of the holy hills are too hard for us to climb. And some of the downward grades are too steep for us to stop. And some of the commands are too demanding for us to keep up with. Because you see our little engine just can't pull it. It just can't make it. And what a Christian needs is an accessory, an add-on for his engine which will equip it and make it 1,000 horsepower. The 100 horsepower engine is standard, and the 1,000 horsepower engine is an add-on, is an accessory. Now I have made the illustration almost childish and very simple, but that is the basic idea many hold about salvation. In modern day terms it's put like this, the hundred horsepower engine comes when you're born of the spirit and the thousand horsepower engine comes when you're baptized of the spirit. That's pretty well simplified. Now as I consider in my own life And in your life, the desired changes that must be made, and the desired life that Christ wants to live within me, and the desired new man that I am to be, I ask the question in all honesty, do I have standard from my new birth, the equipment to enable me to be the new man, or must I seek an accessory? And I have been as honest as I know how. Can I perform for Christ as equipped from the factory, or must I seek an add-on power supply that I would consider to be an accessory? Not too long ago, I went to a meeting, and I heard there a man talking to about 900 people on this very subject. That's why I induced my sermon. I said, it seems that everybody can talk about this subject, but most folks don't want me talking about it. I can't understand this, what I'm talking about. Now he was telling about his experience, which I take to be authentic and true and real and good and spiritual and uplifting and fine for him. He was talking about his spirit. He said something I had never heard on this subject. Number one, he said, I was born of the spirit. I identified with that. He said, I have been filled with the spirit. And thirdly, he said, I have received the power of the Spirit. Now that was his experience. And around that experience, he sought to build a doctrine, which I think is the first mistake anybody can ever make. You don't build a biblical doctrine around experience. You build a doctrine around the Bible. You take your experience to the Bible and check it out. I want to illustrate to you the danger of building a doctrine around an experience. When I was called to the ministry, it was a strange experience for me. I was getting ready to go to school, which at that time was the University of Houston. My mother called me to breakfast, which she was preparing, and I was sitting on the side of the bed, getting ready to get up and get dressed. At that moment, Christ entered the room. Vividly, literally, not spiritually, He was there. I saw Him. With my real eyes I saw him. That was my experience. At that moment I was called into the ministry. Now that's my experience. It was thrilling, it was delightful, it was wonderful, it was joy, you've never had anything like it. Now, I take my experience and I say, you know, I'm going to build a doctrine around that experience. And it's my belief that no one can be qualified to be a minister unless he has been called by a vision of Jesus. Now that's my doctrine. That's my experience. So I go to the Bible to back up my doctrine. Not to prove it, but to back it up. I find there a man named Paul, and I find that he was called to the ministry also in Galatians 1, 15 through 16. I won't read, but you can write it down. Galatians 1, 15 through 16, he was called. I get excited. Oh, there's a man who called to the ministry. Let me look at his call. So I turn back and find in 1 Corinthians 9, 1, Lo and behold, Paul saw Jesus. So that puts me and Paul on the same footing in Acts 9 and 1, 3 through 8 and 17, we sign the same thing. Paul had a vision of Jesus and he was called to the ministry. I have me an experience, I have me a doctrine, and I have me a proof text. Now I meet other preachers and I say, have you had my vision? I have no vision. You're not called. They say, what are you talking about? I said, no sir, my experience says you have to have a vision. Let me show you in the Bible what the Bible says. And I told Paul. They said, well John wouldn't call it that way. I said, I don't care about John. Who cares about John? You don't know whether John had a vision or not. But I know Paul had one, and I had one, and that's enough. You can't prove that other disciples didn't have visions. Can you? Of course they can. I got them trapped. They didn't say they did. They didn't say they didn't. But I can say they did. Who's going to prove me wrong? Now I have me a new doctrine which enables me to cut down just about 99% of the preachers and say you're a false prophet, you're a false prophet, you're a false prophet and probably I could get a bunch of people to follow me. and think I was telling the truth. And maybe some of you right now think I'm real convincing, maybe that's right. No, it's not right. No, it's not right. If I've convinced you I've done injustice, that's not true. But you see, I can take an experience and build around it a doctrine and proof text it with some parts of the Bible But it's not true. My experience was true. That's right. But my doctrine is false. Now, this did not mean that I was or am something special, that I was or that I am gifted. And that I was or am qualified. Why God did it that way, I have no idea. I'm glad he did, but I cannot say what happened to me again. It never has, it probably never will. And it's not a qualification for a call to ministry. It didn't make me a super anything or a super anybody. Now back to the speaker I heard that day speaking to those people. He told it like he saw it. He told it like he felt it, he told it like he believed it, but it was not what the Bible pictured. He built the belief around his experience and then tried to find some text to prove it. Now let me draw you a picture of what I gathered him to be saying or trying to get across to the people. Number one, a lost person encounters Christ at new birth and that new birth is produced, now follow me logically, that new birth is produced by the Holy Spirit's power. He agrees with that. But somehow he gets confused here, I think, and immediately the Holy Spirit power vanishes, disappears, and floats back to heaven. Leaving the Holy Spirit without his power, and leaving the Christian with a hundred power engine. The thousand power engine has been shipped back to heaven. He was filled with the Holy Spirit. His meaning was, the Holy Spirit, though he shipped his power off, remained, thus thereby filling him with his presence, and there was fellowship and communion between him and the Christian, or the man. He later on found the baptism or the power of the Spirit and somehow the power that had been shipped up to heaven was shipped back from heaven and now he had the power of the Holy Spirit and he was operating on that power. It's logical, it sounds alright, but it's not biblical. That seemed to be his experience. I say his experience was real, it was honest, it was legitimate, it was real. But it's not biblical when he began to place it into a doctrine. He came up with three sides. There is a new birth of the Spirit, there is a filling of the Spirit, and there is a baptism of the Spirit. There is a conversion, a fellowship, and a power. I seem to get this general consensus that a Christian, unless he gets the add-on, does not have power. That's my next Sunday morning sermon, about the power. He said in his life, once he received what he thought to be a baptism of spirit, he got his power. Before then there was no power in his life. That's as he experienced it. I don't deny his experience, I just say it's not doctrinal correct. His doctrinal understanding of it. I take nothing from the man's experience, but the fact remains he's not biblically correct. And he couldn't be more wrong regarding the power of the Holy Spirit. And if you'll come back next Sunday, I'll show you how he couldn't be more wrong. Now we're right back to our two-engine theory. You're born with a little engine, and that's why you as a Christian are weak, and you cannot have the victorious life, and you're sluggish, and you can't do anything for the Lord successfully. But there is on the shelf in glory awaiting for you the thousand horsepower engine kit that you can get as an add-on if you'd like to have it. Now our time is about gone, and I don't know whether to go on or not. This is one of the freest churches I've ever been in. But I'm glad it's a free church. I really am. All right, we shall continue on. Now, the Lord understands these things, and that was important to Him, and it would be to me too. All right, here we go now. One of the real problems in talking about the Bible to people who are interested in the Bible is everybody has a different interpretation for the Bible terms. That really gets to be a problem. In other words, it would be like this. I go into a drug store and I order a chocolate malt. The clerk makes one and sets it before me and I begin to drink it and I say, hey you made a mistake clerk, this is not a chocolate malt. The first malt I ever drank was a chocolate and it tasted like strawberry. She said, I don't care what you had the first time, that's a chocolate malt. He says, no it's not. My experience was it was tasted like strawberry, this is not chocolate. Another guy walks in and says, I want a chocolate malt. She makes him a malt and gives it to him and he tastes it and it's not chocolate malt. This is a vanilla malt. She says, no, that's chocolate. No, the first malt I ever had was the vanilla malt, but I called it chocolate. And she said, well, somebody made a mistake in the first. That's not a vanilla malt. He said, it is too. Now we have in the church words, and we get all in this malt mix up. And a lot of people use the same word to mean different things. And therefore, there could be a lot of confusion. And so I think we have a lot of difficulty today just in misunderstanding each other's terms. We're saying the same thing. But we're not using the same terms. And when you begin to talk about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, man, you talk about different definitions, you've never seen so many definitions. I read in some books I got at home that there is a baptism from the Holy Spirit, there's a baptism of the Holy Spirit, there's a baptism in the Holy Spirit, there's a baptism by the Holy Spirit. Then there's four of them. Everybody got one different. And your mind gets in a buzz in the world. Who knows what about this sentence? Again, it's the malted milk mix-up. It makes you wonder about all these baptisms. Now I'm going to close. with one thing for you, and I want you to listen to me. Think about it and pray about it. There is in the Bible a statement by Paul, and most churches, I think, never look at it, but it mentions the seven unifying marks of all, underlying all, Christians. There are seven common denominator spiritual facts about all Christians, and we must have all seven things in common, the seven must of the Christian life. Now in this list of seven common denominators, all Christians must have no option to it. In Ephesians 4 and 5, one of them says there is one One, one, one, do you hear that word? One baptism. Not two, nor three, nor four, one, one, one. And I don't care what else you want to say about the teaching of this subject, there has to be one baptism. No more and no less and you cannot have two. I will not allow you to have two when Paul says emphatically there is but one baptism, a common denominator to all Christians. Now that's emphatic. Ephesians 4, 4-6 lists all seven common denominators. And these are found in every single solitary Christian. Anyone who teaches that there is more than one baptism is biblically incorrect. That's all you can say about it. I don't care what the experience is, Paul says there's one. Now either Paul is wrong and you are right, or you're going to have to do some serious thinking. What is the one baptism? I don't have time this morning, we're already way over and that makes people unhappy. Well it seems that there's one unifying thing that is not in the church, it's baptism. That's about the one thing that splits more churches than any one subject on the face of this earth. Paul said there's one. Well, some say it's water baptism. Does that mean it's sprinkling, pouring, or immersion? Well, if you ever settle that, then who's going to get to do it? What denomination has the right to do it? Then some say it's not water baptism, but it's spiritual baptism. Today we have two spoken loud and clear. One is the feeling that one is spirit baptized into the body of Christ. The other is that Christ baptized one into the spirit of power. Now Paul says there's not two, there's one. That's all. And I keep saying that, there's one. Because people won't come up with two. And there's no need to play a guessing game. This is my last statement, I promise. What is the one baptism? Not from experience, from the scriptures. What is the one unifying, essential, common denominator baptism that every Christian will have? Well, Paul tells you what it is. In 1 Corinthians 12, 13. And there's absolutely no doubt what Paul means, none whatsoever. I've never found anyone disagree on this one verse. 1 Corinthians 12, 13. For by one spirit, I might add that's one more of the common denominators is one spirit. For by one spirit, now notice this, are we all, A-L-L. Are we all, past tense, fully equipped by one Spirit, or are we all baptized? Now there the Spirit does the baptizing. Well what kind of baptism is it? For by one spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be free or bond. We have all, A-L-L, we have all been made to drink into the one spirit. Now I will settle with Paul, there is one Baptism. And that one is the baptism whereby the Holy Spirit makes you a part of the body of Christ, or in simple terms, makes you a child of God by new birth. Now the Bible speaks of only one baptism. And if there is one common denominator baptism among all Christian believers, this has to be it. Now what about the power? That I'll talk about next week. If a person asks you if you've been baptized of the Spirit, and you say no, according to the biblical teaching, you are saying, I am not a child of God. I am not a Christian. So every Christian, the common denominator is, every Christian, we are in union with Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, I don't care who they are, we are in oneness with every Christian person who has been born again, and that takes place when a person is baptized of the Holy Spirit. Now there's the scriptures. If you don't agree with it, I give you that privilege. But dear brethren, you're going to have to do something with those scriptures. Now you can scratch them out, cut them out, and throw them away, but they're there and you're going to have to deal with them. Father, we give thee thanks this morning for the Word. For it was not for the clear teaching of the Bible we could go astray with all of our experiences and all of our doctrines. And so we ask this morning that as we begin the study of this, the main purpose is not to prove or disprove anything, but Father, if there is a pattern, there is a plan, there are those within this church that want the Christ's life in them to come alive. And Father, if there is anything within us that will stop this, reveal it. If there is a pattern for us to fulfill, reveal it, no matter what that pattern is. May we be open and receptive to it, may we be honest as we look at this subject, for our heart's desire is but one thing, that Christ's image might be reproduced in us, and no one can find fault with that wish. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.