More Than Conquerors # 3

More Than Conquerors # 3

All right. Let's come down a bit further in the chapter. Look at verse 22. "We know that the whole creation groaneth and travileth in pain together..." Do you think it is doing that tonight? Men have dreamed of Utopia, from Augustine's City of God. Moore had his Utopia. Francis Bacon had his Utopia. And I'm going to tell you how many more. Hitler said you could dominate the world by a pure race. The Marxists say the only way to clean the world up is to get rid of the fluff and bourgeois folk we have heard around here and rule by revolution. The creation groaneth.

The whole creation groaneth! I've asked you more than once. Did it cost you a tear when you heard that fifty million people were signed off in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia? Fifty million people went into captivity! Did it cost you a tear? Millions of people behind the Iron Curtain. Has it cost you a tear? - or are you still rehearsing your choir number for Sunday? Yes, I believe every earthquake we have, is a sign of the whole groaning creation. Creation groans.

Will you notice what Paul says a little further down? In the next verse, verse 23: that we, not only creation, but we ourselves also have the first fruits of the Spirit. If you have the first fruits of the Spirit, here's the proof that you have it. That you groan within yourself. Do you? After the Holy Spirit comes in - and He knows the mind of God, and nobody does but the Spirit - the Spirit whispers the secret of God to you. Some nights you're like the woman who wants to get delivered of something. It isn't time, and you groan within yourself.

I'll tell you the secret of getting revival in the church. Find half a dozen people who know how to groan. You won't have the same church in a year.

You can't learn groaning except by the Holy Spirit. It's the school of the Holy Spirit.

If you think that's unusual, then look at verse 26 in which he says, "Likewise the Spirit helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with GROANINGS that cannot be uttered." And verse 27, "the Spirit...because maketh intercession...according to the will of God."

Now, I've heard people say that to pray "with groanings," means praying in tongues. It's nothing of the kind. Because if it was, God would say so. It's beyond that.

The greatest language of prayer has no vocabulary.

The greatest prayers in the Bible have no words.

Do you remember Hannah? How she prayed? Even the man of God, the priest, thought she was drunk. She groaned. She travailed. She was barren.

I suggest to you that with all the pretty little conferences we have going on now about the Holy Spirit and all the rest, we're a barren people before God. We have no revival in the land. But I'll tell you this, when the Holy Spirit comes and begins to burden people, it's a pretty, pretty rough thing to learn the true language of intercession. But the Spirit helpeth our infirmity.

Let's come to this verse right here for a minute or two. "In all these things..." He mentions them. Sort them out when you go home, will you? Tribulation, distress, famine, peril, nakedness, sword, perils of the deep, and so forth and so on. Sort them out. You'll find that some are the things that attack the body. Some attack the mind. Some attack the spirit. And he says, "in all these things..." There is no area in your life where, as a Christian, you are expected to be defeated.

You say, "I can't be perfect." Can't you? Are you sure? Jesus said in one Sermon on the Mount, "Be ye therefore perfect." He said of Job to the devil, "Hast thou considered my servant Job? He's perfect and upright." He set a path for Abraham before the Holy Spirit was given as we know. He said, "Walk before Me and be thou perfect." You can't have Adamic perfection in your body. You can't have mental perfection. You can't have perfection, but you CAN have perfect obedience!

We sing the song, "Perfect Submission. All is at rest." The only way you can have rest is by perfect submission - to know there's no rebellion in your spirit in any area at all.

"In all these things we are more than conquerors. "You know, very often we get so discouraged. We get so earthbound. We lose sight of the majesty of God. We forget this: that God has branded you as a child of God. He lives in you. His Spirit lives in you. Christ lives in you. And we let little rubbish around us upset us?

~Leonard Ravenhill~

(continued with # 4)

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