"It’s a privilege just to know God. It’s the greatest privilege that one shall ever experience in all of their life. Gold and silver and riches and wisdom and understanding and health and happiness and strength and youth and fame and popularity, all of the things of the world are not to be compared with just knowing Him, and Him knowing you, or being able to have fellowship with Him. Though you should gain all the world and lose your soul, you don’t have any profit. And there’s nothing that you can give in exchange for your soul. Your soul is your most precious possession. The precious Holy Ghost is the most precious thing that you’ll ever come to know. He’s the great invisible One, the great holy pure Spirit, the virtuous one. The only clean, godly and upright thing that there is. And only in Him can you be holy and godly and clean.
He is the Word. He never deviates from the Word. He’s always the Word of God, every jot and every tittle. He is the Word. He never changes the Word. The Word is settled in heaven forever. He’s always the same. The Bible says He sent His Word and healed them. By His Word He cast out the unclean spirits. By His Word He raised the dead. By His Word He opened the blind eyes, unstopped the deaf ears. And in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. The Word still is God, the same to a thousand generations. His Word is never altered and never changed. He said, “I’ll never leave you, I’ll never forsake you, but, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” So, the Bible teaches that we can very boldly state that God is our present help in the time of need. He is always here whenever we need Him. He never leaves us. We may wander away from Him and we may leave Him, but He never leaves us. He never forsakes us. He never alters His Word. He never breaks His Word.
So then, God being the precious, wonderful, eternal Spirit, the Life, the very source of Life. Jesus said, “I am come that you might have life, that you might have it more abundant,” which means filled up and overflowing. So it’s God’s will for you to be healthy and happy and to have life. The three-fold blessing of God that we make mention of so many times is that: I would above all things that you prosper, even in the natural to have the natural things that you need for your life. Houses and cars and homes, monetary value. And I would above all things that you be in health, that you might enjoy all of those natural prosperities, that you have good eyesight and good hearing, good health and good strength, and that your youth remains with you. The Bible says that they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings of eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They’ll walk and they’ll not faint.
And then above all things He said I would that you have soul prosperity. “For I would above all things that you prosper and be in health even as your soul prospereth,” as to an eternal security so that you never lose the blessings of the great heavenly Holy Spirit, which is Christ and the atonement, or the benefits of Calvary. It is God’s will that you know this. This is His Word. And it is God’s will that you believe this with all of your heart, to love Him with all of your mind, with all of your strength, with all of your heart. Never, never deviate from that, never. at any time but to love the Lord.
Never put anything before God. Always keep God before your eyes. Never set any unrighteous thing before your eyes. Never allow your ears to hear any evil thing. Never do anything that would displease God.
When you walk in the light of His wonderful Spirit and understanding then you have fellowship one with another. You know that you’re walking in the light because He is the Light and we have fellowship one with another, and we love one another. Therefore, we know that we have passed from death unto life because we do love the brothers and sisters in Christ.
And evil communications corrupt good manners. And we withdraw ourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly. Everyone to whom we perceive there is no understanding, we go from them and we don’t fellowship them. We don’t frequent the places that are wrong. We don’t fellowship with the people that are derogatory in their thinking and their talking, that do the wrong things and say the wrong things. We don’t fellowship them because if anything has any virtue in them, anything be Holy, anything be godly, then we think upon these things.
For it is again as we have said so many times in our little sermonettes, the Bible says as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. So you always want to read the Word, think on the Word, keep the mind of the Word, discuss the Word, fellowship in the Word. Let your conversation be in heaven. Let it be in the Word. Don’t dwell in the carnal mind, don’t live in the flesh. Live in the Spirit. If you live after the flesh, you’ll die. But if your desire is in the Spirit, you shall live.
And there’s a continual warfare between the body and the Spirit. And Satan savors the things that be of the flesh and of the world and of the body. But God savors the things that be of the Spirit and of the strength of His mind, and of His Word. Always strive to do your best in diligence to keep your heart, for out of it comes forth the issues of life. And as you think in your heart, so you are.
Always feed the heart on the Word. Think the Word. Confess the Word. Whatever the Word says, then that’s what you are. Confess that in Christ with all purity of heart. Confess that. If the Word says that you’re Sons of God, “Now, beloved, are ye the Sons of God,” then in your heart acknowledge that, believe that, confess that. Don’t accept any other thought, any other feeling, any other accusation, any other thing. If the Word says now are you clean by my Words, now are you holy because of the works of Calvary, then acknowledge that and confess that. And let that be your life, let that be your hope. Let that be your acknowledgement. Let that be the thoughts of your heart for as you think in your heart, so ye are.
God feeds a man the fruits of his thoughts. Whatever your thoughts are, if you think yourself to be in all holy godliness, pure and undefiled and without fault before the throne, through the finished works of the Lord Jesus Christ, so then you are. And you don’t seek this as thought it was by works. It is strictly by the grace of the Son of God. It is by the great loving Holy Spirit. It is by His works. It is not by our works, though we maintain good works. And we must continue in His goodness, and we must do that which perfects holiness in the fear of God.
Perfecting holiness, that is to make holiness manifest in our mortal genes, this heavenly treasure within our earthen vessels, manifest in our mortal genes.We are supposed to do this as to change the body into the eternal body of that blessed Son of God.
See, but we do not work our way unto Calvary. We do not work our way unto God. We seek it by faith, faith of His works, His finished works of Calvary. For the righteousness of God is by faith of Jesus Christ. For by faith of Jesus Christ, which is by faith of that which He Himself gave an effort to accomplish the things that were needed for the purpose of salvation. By His faith are ye sanctified once and for all. And the Bible teaches that ye are sanctified by the offering up of His body once and for all, and by this faith, it is His faith that is the righteousness of God. So then we claim His faith, His faith in God that did not waiver. His faith in God that did not fail. His faith in God that did not question God’s judgments. His faith that always said, “Thy will be done, Father.” That is our righteousness.
We confess His faith. We confess what He did for us at Calvary. We seek it by faith and grace of God that we might be a testimony, that our light might shine throughout the entire world, and that we might be a blessing to others. It is so necessary for us to understand these things.
You have to remember that you have all power over the powers of enemy. When God gave you His Spirit, He gave you all power over the powers of the enemy, that nothing should ever hurt you. So, you are sealed on the inside and the Bible teaches that he that is born of God, he keepeth himself and the evil one toucheth him not. So, you don’t have to worry about those kinds of things.
Offer your faith to God for people around the world today, and to remember the hungry, the poor. I ask you to take the potentialities of Little Bethlehem, and of your place of dwelling, and of your home, wherever you dwell, and of your life, of your body, of your substance, and honor the Lord with it. And utilize all your ability, your mind, your strength, utilize your effort in everything, your testimony, for the glory of God. Utilize it. Don’t just let the time use you up. Utilize your life for God because it’s a great, mighty thing to have a life, and that, to be utilized for Christ. And God will reimburse you to where you’ll never lose it. He’ll make it eternal. He promised. He won’t break it. He won’t alter. He won’t change that promise."
- This is the complete transcription of a message preached on 4-30-1995. It is about 16 minutes long, and can be found on Transology.info. The message has been edited, only removing the prayers, preliminaries and places where Brother Pike was dealing with church members personally. For this sermon Brother Pike telephoned into the church from his home on the grounds of Little Bethlehem (probably due to not feeling well). We would like of show our appreciation to Brother Doyle Lightfoot. The Lord placed on his heart to carefully transcribe this sermon, and we are eternally grateful -