Ah Ooh, ooh, ooh. Ooh, la la la la la la la la la Hallelujah. God ruler of the universe, you are. There is There's no one like you, God giver of the deepest dreams you are. There is no one like you.
God think of what tremendous thoughts you are Thinking for God Royal, holy, true you are. And there is no one like you. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah. Welcome to Love Never Fails. In these last days, revival will come.
but begins with our individual walk and personal relationship with Jesus. Let's join Brother John now. Angels proclaim. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. You are listening to Love.
Love never fails. I don't know about you, but I believe today's gonna be a great day. And that's a choice that I have made, and I hope that you will make the same choice with us today. This is Brother John. Going to be a great day.
I'm very excited this morning, and I want to share something with you today. We're going to get off the beaten track just a little bit. Love never fails Is our heart and our desire is to see revival, to teach on walking in love, so that you as an individual and those around you. Will come to know and understand exactly what Jesus meant when he said, By this the world will know you're my disciples. By the love that you have for one another, we have talked about some of this, and we've also been talking about revival.
I believe the two of these are hand in hand. If you want to see revival, sustained revival, I believe we have to be able to walk in love on a consistent basis. And as we set ourselves on fire for the passion of God, for the love of God, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14, verse 1, make it your greatest quest, your pursuit in life. Follow after love. As we do this, we will begin to see great changes in our life and in everything around us and even the people we encounter.
Many of us, we know revival is coming. We know something is on the horizon. We talked about in the last episode, it's like a great storm out in the plains of Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas coming at you. And you see that wall cloud approaching, and ahead of it is the wind. And the wind carries with it little raindrops of the Spirit, and they're hitting, they're landing, they're beginning to take shape.
And we can see that there's a storm coming, a good storm. We talked about Zachariah chapter 10, verse 1, where he said, I'll give bright clouds unto you.
Well, that's men, men with the lightnings, men and women with the lightnings of God. And so we believe from the word that we can see that happen. And we're going to continue to talk about that all year. We're going to focus on that for this year. I believe we will actually begin to see the manifest presence of God, the manifest revival.
I woke up this morning with just Man, I was already in school. I was already in class, if you know what I mean. And, you know, people might say, well, you know, Brother John, you're ordained. It ain't got nothing to do with that. I still, just like everyone else, we still have to get up in the morning, put our pants on, put our shoes, you know, brush our teeth, do all that stuff.
But God speaks to me very often in the morning. And I want to share with you what He dealt with me on this morning and begin to talk to you about it. And you might say, well, I don't see how this fits into revival. I don't see how this fits into love. But I believe by the end of the show, you will see it.
And what I want to talk to you about this morning is. Your inner monologue. It's your inner voice or your internal speech. It's the verbal stream of consciousness in thinking in the words. It's also referred to as a semi-constant internal monologue that you have with yourself on a conscious or semi-conscious level.
And for most of us, we're aware of that when we first wake up in the morning. or when we're alone, uh by ourselves No, nothing coming in the ear gate, nothing coming in the eye gate, just it's you and you alone. And Um I remember after I became a Christian, there were a lot of things I didn't understand, but I was in college and I was a theater major. I was studying acting and. I up to that point in my life, you know, um, I said, I want to make people laugh.
I want to make people happy. And in high school I wasn't able to play sports like I wanted to 'cause I was sickly. And and I found out that, well, I could make people happy and make people laugh through theater. And I specifically remember being on a stage in high school in the middle of a play, and the people laughed. Oh, and the euphoria, the feeling that comes over you goes, yeah, this is it.
This is what I want to do. And I remember thinking, I just want to make people happy. I want to make people laugh. I don't. 15, 16 years old, and that was what was coming up out of my heart.
And so I went into the military and then went into college. And when I was in college, I was older than most of the other students, and I began to serve the Lord there. And struggled a lot, but I remember the first day I realized my inner monologue had changed. And you might say, well, John, what on earth are you talking about? I wonder.
You know. There is a battle. that is going on in your life. You may not realize it, maybe you've never heard it taught. The Bible speaks about it quite a bit, and we're going to go over a number of scriptures today that you can write down, you can listen, or you can go and follow the link for this show and listen to it later.
But there is a battle going on in your life, the battlefield is in the mind. You have to come to know and understand that you are created in the image of God. And like God, you are a three-part being. Yeah. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, created in His image, you are a three-part being.
You are an eternal creature, an eternal being. Your spirit will spend an eternity somewhere. It's going to happen. There's no way around it. You cannot change that.
You are an eternal being.
So you have what we call your spirit. Then you have your soul, which most of the time is taught that it's made up of your mind, your intellect, your character, and your memory. And then you have your flesh or your carnal nature, this earth suit that you live in, that you interact with this physical world in.
So you're a three-part being: body, soul, and spirit. Adam started out as spirit, soul, and body. When he ate of the apple, it switched, it reversed. His physical body became in control of his mind, his intellect, and emotions, and his spirit. And God is the only one through the process of the redemptive process of sanctification, consecration, and renewing of the mind, is the only one who can bring about within you that spiritual change so that your spirit man dictates what happens in your life.
When you cooperate with God, when you allow God to change you. And work within you the changes that need to happen. And how does he do that?
Well, he changes your character, he changes your spirit, and that happens with the born-again experience. You became a new man, reborn, as Jesus put it, or born again, not in a physical sense, in the inner man. And oftentimes, as Christians, we get our physical outward man confused with the inner man. Good example, the government does everything it can to control men outwardly through laws and regulations. As a drill instructor, I would try to correct soldiers and teach them to be soldiers with outward rules and instruction.
It is a conditioning of the outward fleshly man. The government tries to do it by rules and regulations and all their different programs, but all they're really doing is Forcing the outward man to conform to an outward appearance. And we know that's not what Christianity is about. We have been given liberty in our inner man, and when we change on the inside, something on the inside, working on the outside, you've probably heard that sung that, that's a song. When the inner man changes.
So that He then dictates, he or she, your inner spirit, dictates what happens in your. physical man.
Now, that's What I want to talk about today. How do you win that battle so that the issues of your heart, the spirit man, control the outward man? You know, when you're, you know, we could call it the fruit of the spirit versus the fruit of flesh or the works of the flesh. And what I want to do is talk about that this morning because. I'm not exactly sure who this is for or why we're doing this, but I woke up this morning and I want to share with you in a practical sense how you can fix this, correct it, or edify it or build it up, and how you can identify it.
What good is Christian teaching or any kind of teaching if you can't apply it? And so, what I want to do is show you how you can apply. The Word of God to your life. to change who you are. Inside Until it becomes manifest on the outside.
I am convinced that every condition of your life, first and foremost, begins in your inner man, in your spirit man. When you correct that. The outward man will begin to do what it's supposed to do in line with and keeping with the word of God. When we just try to change it through religion and works and rules and regulations, we call that works. We call that religious tradition.
What we want to do is change the inward man so that you become sanctified and consecrated because of what's going on in the inside, not because what you're imposing on the outside. And there's a difference: is it faith or is it works? Faith comes from the inside and will cause you to do things differently. That is the process of sanctification and consecration. When we come into it and say, well, you have to do this, you have to do that, you have to be this way, you have to be that way, that's works, that's religious works that does not change the inside man.
So that's what we're going to talk about this morning. And I hope and pray that whoever this is for, this really begins to help you to understand maybe why you're dealing with over and over and over again some of the things you're dealing with. Because maybe you've tried to deal with them outwardly instead of inwardly. Everything about the Christian life begins with the inner man, with the spirit man. And what goes on in your daily life, your reactions, your assumptions, your interactions with other people is guided by either your carnal nature or your spiritual nature.
We don't want to be carnal Christians. We want to be spiritual Christians. We want to walk in the truth and in the love that is shed abroad in your heart and your inner man.
Well, Brother John, how do I get that love to come out? How do I get that love to manifest in the physical world?
Well, that's what we want to talk about today is how can you change on the inside?
so that you can be on the outside what you know you're supposed to be. It's not about rules and regulations. We have been given liberty. That liberty comes from the inside. I could take.
As a drill instructor or as a former coach, and I could tell you: do this, do that, do this, do that. And we give you rules and regulations which change your outer. Man. They're imposed upon your outer man. By the end of that eight weeks, or by the end of the season as a coach, or whatever it may be, you may be able to change some of the outer man things.
You've created a habit in your physical body. We call it muscle memory, all these different things. But those are rules that are imposed. from the outside. And By the end of that season, I don't know anything more about your character.
By the end of boot camp, I don't know anything more about your character. All I know is that you're able to follow rules.
Okay, but that doesn't change your character, it doesn't change your inner man. Does it? What we want to do is change your inner man. When we change your inner man, You take the liberty, then it's liberty on the inside of you choosing. To change and becoming that change that you want.
And so, what I want to do is, I want to talk to you this morning about this and talk to you about how I first discovered this in my life because there were many things I hear taught, heard taught for years and years and years, and I did not understand it. I would walk away and go, What on earth does he mean? The battlefield of the mind? What is he talking about? The mind, the mind, the mind.
I don't understand that.
Well, Let's go back to the beginning. You are three-part being eternal spirit. Which is going to go somewhere. Your mind, your intellect, your emotions, we call that your soul, and your physical body. And what we want to do is get two-thirds of your being in control so that the other third, your physical body, begins to obey and participate in what the spirit and the soul want it to participate in.
Your mind is trapped between your eternal spirit and your physical body. We could say that in one sense. And as an actor, and this is one of the best examples I know out of my own life to help you understand this. The best actors, we always learned and we were taught, the best character actors. Are people who study the character so well and consume it so well that down on the inside they become that person?
They change their internal monologue or their inner voice and inner speech to match the character that they want to be. And when you begin to do that, we call those actors character actors. You might be able to think of some men who have done that, and there's a danger there because there are actors who have done that. They so took in the nature and the character of the Person they were trying to portray, it stuck with them. And it causes problems.
It can literally cause problems. You feel double-minded, the double personality, you could say. And I'm sure you could think of actors who portrayed a character in a movie, and the next thing you know, they're either dead or they're living like that person that they portrayed. It's a very fine, balanced line to walk on. And sometimes people don't even realize they've changed in that manner.
And it entraps them. And I could think of a number of actors. I'm not going to say their names. I'm sure you know of some of them. And if you really think about it, you go, hmm, that guy portrayed that.
And then look what happened. And oftentimes, when you start digging into that inner monologue, you find out things that come along with those natures, those personalities that you don't want. You don't want to deal with. And so for an actor, A character actor, they do have to be very careful because you're right there on the edge of the spiritual realm changing things because you're changing your character, your spirit man, down on the inside to become something else.
Well, that's really the same process that happens as a Christian. You went from being, your spirit went from being a dead, worldly, ghastly, evil thing to becoming born again. God renewed it. You're born again. Your spirit, in a sense, uh.
gets a second chance. I guess I could say it that way. And you have to then, by feeding on the word and studying, just like an actor does, he studies that character, the traits, the personalities, all the different things to bring about a different result. And we have to do the same thing as Christians. I did a play one time.
And I wanted to be different. I wanted to come across as a totally different character. I purposely lost weight, and I'm right-handed. But what I said is, I'm going to do everything in this play from the left hand.
Now, I was imposing outward things on my body, which really, because of the amount of concentration and the amount of difference of how I would write with my left hand. And instead of leading off with my right foot, I would lead off with my left foot. I would always make sure my left side led. You may not realize it, but every one of us, we have a side of our body that leads us.
Well, I purposely flipped it so that I would produce a different type of result on the stage. And people were like, wow, that was so different than how we know you. Because many times. actors are are typecast because they tend their personality and their outward appearance and and the way they do things leads them or lends to them to a different kind of uh a particular type of character that and oftentimes that's why char actors are always typecast. Tom Cruise.
Did a couple of great movies, but he's always the same guy in every movie. He's not a character actor. He's basically what we would just call a star. There's other actors that are just the same way. They're not really actors, they're just stars.
And within the Thespian community, there is a big difference. There are stars and then there are actors. Actors are highly appreciated and highly sought after. Morton Downey Jr., I would consider him a character actor. He's able to be somewhat different from movie to movie to movie.
Robert De Niro used to be that way. But you take Jack Nicholson or Jack Nicholas. He's always basically the same guy. He's Jack. He's always Jack in every movie he does.
And the difference between one type of actor and another kind of actor is: are they just a personality based on who they already are?
So they look good, they have great physical bodies, they have a good voice, so therefore they're always going to get a role that works with that. Or can they portray different kinds of people? And that all comes down to those who are able to control their inner monologue, their inner conscious or their inner man, versus those who do not. And that's really the difference in actors.
Well, it's really the same way with Christians. You have confidence. Their eternal spirit is recreated. They're going to go to heaven. They're going to go participate in eternal life with God.
Great. Have nothing against them. They're still born-again Christians. Then you have other born-again Christians who say, I don't just want to live here in the outer court. I don't want to just be a.
Outward Christian. Who is born again, and yes, Jesus is my Lord, but I want to go deeper. I want to go further. I want to go. into that secret place with God.
And become what God wants me to be. And that's the journey that we as Christians are on. You can stay in the outer court. You've got your salvation. You're going to heaven.
You know, we might even refer to say, well, those people have their fire insurance. You know what I mean? Then you have people who say, I want to go into the Holy of Holies. I want to go into the inner court and holy of holies. That requires something different.
It's not religious outward things. It's a sanctification and a consecration that begins with the inner man. And that's what I want to help you get towards. Because love is not something you impose from the outside. It's something that rises up and overflows out of the inner man.
Out of the heart the mouth speaketh. For out of the heart flow the issues of life. That word heart really is referring to what? The inner man, the spiritual man, the eternal being. that was reborn when you became born again.
Have I lost you? Does this make sense?
So, what I want to do is, I want to talk this morning about that because. And give you a couple of examples. I talked about when I was first, when I became a Christian, actually, not when I confessed Jesus, Lord, but when I actually began to turn and really began to live the Christian life, I can remember the day. And where I was, and how I was walking from the performing arts building to another class, another building on campus at Oklahoma State. And I'm walking on that sidewalk, and I remember going, And without even realizing everything was quiet, I'm just walking, there was a song.
that came up out of my heart. It was a worship song. And I was like, wow. And I realized something. My inner monologue has changed.
I was walking down the street. At Oklahoma State, by myself, not talking to anyone, it was just quiet. and I was worshiping God in my inner man. My inner monologue, my inner voice, my internal speech, My verbal stream of consciousness that's always there. was worshiping God.
And I remember thinking right then and there, and it was one of the first revelations I ever had. My inner. Monologue. My inner man. is doing something different.
than what I was used to. And that began really within me a change in my eternal spirit.
Now, I didn't realize now, I couldn't have explained it to you back then, but I remember it exactly the way I just told you.
Something has changed. I refer to it as theatrical terms, the inner monologue, the inner voice. And I did not realize at that time that that was my spirit man. That was the real me, the real John Foy, the one that I wake up with, the one that I go to sleep with, the one who I have to be alone with. that only I can change.
Great. And and and that is where Really, we get to the core of who we are. That's who you're going. To be for eternity as you change that. And what I And now You know, throughout my life, as I've grown and I've continued to feed on the Word and I study the Word, I've gotten to that place where I found that the Word of God is the only thing that can change that.
The Word and the Spirit are the only two things that can change that. And I think what you'll find out is we study this, you'll really begin to understand what Jesus said: those who worship me must worship me in spirit and in truth. You must worship me in your inner man and in truth. Do you see how that makes sense? It's not just an outward thing.
There are plenty of people doing outward things. That doesn't make them strong, healthy Christians. It just means that they're able to obey outward rules and regulations or traditions and doctrines. What we want to do is become the kind of man or woman that, because of the change on the inside, we become different on the outside. I could say to you, hey.
You need to fast and pray. You need to spend this many days fasting and praying. And you might say, Well, that you know, you may not be comfortable with that. You may not be able to do that. Because really Down on the inside, your spirit man's not ready for that.
Your inner man is not ready for that. I did a series of fastings, and you know, one of the things I just kept doing is I spent a lot of time studying it, I spent a lot of time researching it, and then I spent a lot of time praying about it and speaking to the Lord about whether I even needed to do this. And it started out with a three-day, then maybe a five-day, and I went back to a three-day, and then I stretched it to seven days, and I went back to one day, and then I did a ten-day. And over a period of months, I got to where I was doing a series of fasts until after about five months, I did a 28, somewhere around 28-day fast. out of that fast.
incredible things happen. Then I broke that fast and I started over. One day, three day, five day, three day, one day. You know, there's no pattern, no rule, just trying to be led by the spirit, trying to do what my inner man wanted me to do. What the spirit on the inside was saying, do it this way, do this, do this.
Not impose from the outside. I didn't fast because I wanted to impose something on the outside. I fasted because my spirit was saying, do this, do this. And when I fasted, there were certain things I stayed away from, not just food. I stayed away from television.
I didn't watch any movies. I didn't listen to anything but worship. And I fed on the word. I spent hours every day praying and fasting on the word. And then it eventually got to the point.
I said, should I do a 40-day fast? I allowed the Spirit of God to confirm with my spirit that that was something I could do, I needed to do, and I got a release to do it, and I did it, and I didn't get hungry. I made it through. I mean, I will tell you this, the last days in the 30s, there was a mental battle that went on that was incredible, but I never physically got hungry. Food didn't tempt me.
I still cooked for my family. I still many times sat down and watched my family ate. I wasn't hungry. Why? It was coming from the inside.
It was being led by the Spirit. The Spirit man or the Spirit of God on the inside of me was producing this. And it so it was not something I imposed on myself. It was awesome. It was incredible.
But I've done fasting before that was so torturous and treacherous. I was like, oh my goodness. You know why? Because I was doing. What other people were telling me to do.
in an effort to get the results. that maybe I necessarily didn't want. When we Try to do things based on an outward, we're setting ourselves up for failure because the flesh is not going to yield to that until we change it on the inside. When we change it on the inside, then the outside will follow. Everything I believe begins in the spirit and comes into the physical realm.
We always want to start with the inward man, move to the outward. And so when I learned in college, wow. That's My inner monologue has changed. Throughout my life, I can sit here and tell you, I remember times and I heard all kinds of teachings that confused me, and I had to work through all that. And you know, we go through all these different paths and journeys.
You go, What on earth is he talking about? And we fall into all these little different traps. But really, what it boils down to, and this is what I had to learn 20 plus years later. Your inner man Is what you want to be led by, your inner man or the Spirit of God. Romans 8:14 says, For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God.
And you might say, Well, John, what's the difference between the Holy Spirit and the Spirit Man?
Well, if you're born-again Christian, Whether you're led by the Spirit or your inner man, your spiritual man, I don't think there's a huge difference because your spiritual man. If you're in contact with God, you're living for God, then you're receiving directly from the Spirit of God the things that concern the Spirit. And so, what I would tell you, as long as that leading, whether it's a voice that you might hear, because some people do hear voices sometimes, whether it be a dream, whether it be just a leading and a knowing, or for me, oftentimes I wake up early in the morning and immediately my heart, my spirit man, is sharing things with me in my inner stream, my inner monologue, that I go, I've got to study that, or I need to share that, or I need to go tell that person that. I know things when I wake up. Why?
Because I fed my spirit man. I stay in vital living contact with the spirit of God. That's what John chapter 13, 14, 15 is all about. If you abide in me and I abide in you, he's not talking about your physical body, he's talking about your spirit man. How do you abide in him?
You walk in love, you endeavor to walk in the spirit day by day. You have to feed on the spirit, you have to pray in this in the spirit. Spirit, it's not just going out and doing external things, but you have to get alone and private and develop this in you. You have to develop the spirit man. The only way you're going to develop the spirit man is with spiritual food.
That comes from prayer and that comes from studying the word. And as you study and read the word and you develop this personal relationship with God, what happens is your spiritual man, your inner man, begins to grow. You day by day remain in vital living contact with the vine, with the branch. And that sap that flows down from heaven through Jesus, because Jesus is the vine and you are the branch, the same sap that flows from him will flow through you if you stay connected on a day-by-day basis. If you'll do that then you can trust the voice of your spiritual man.
And the spiritual voice is always a voice of love and truth. It will always line up with the word. And maybe you may not know enough of the word, but if it's a spirit of love, because that's what the spirit of God is, a spirit of love, you can probably follow after it and be okay.
Now, you may not know enough of the word to go, well, I don't know.
Well, Do the research, figure it out, dig, study. If you wake up in the morning or you're walking down the street or whatever, and something comes up from down on the inside, research it, check it out, prove it out to see if it lines up with the word and it lines up with love. Does it line up with the spirit? Does it line up with truth? You see how that works?
So what happens Is as we feed on the word and we maintain a vital living contact on a day-by-day basis with. The Word, Jesus Himself, with the Spirit of God, then what happens is is we grow And we become more like. Him, we begin to take on the nature of God, the character of God. And what is that nature? It's the nature of love.
It's the character of love. And as we begin to meditate on that and feed on that, literally the expression, you are what you eat, is very, very true. When you eat the word, when you eat love, when you eat of the spirit, you develop and feed the spiritual man on the inside of you, which is who you really are: your inner man, your inner monologue. And so, what happens is you can check yourself. When you're quiet, when you're all alone.
How do you Begin to know that you're growing.
Well, something happened to me this morning that really launched me into this whole train of thought this morning. I was like, I need to do this. Most mornings I wake up, I'm either got a worship song or the word is coming up out of me and I'm meditating on the word. And so through that, I develop teachings. Through that, I develop what I'm going to teach for the day, what I'm going to preach on.
I take time all week long when I'm, well, I take time during the week and I pray and I study. And I study just all kinds of stuff. I don't just study one thing, but I focus on love and I focus on revival right now. That's where God has me. But I also study about the temple.
I study about the, you know, I do extracurricular reading about the feasts and the duties of the high priests and all these things and the Jewish history. And I study all of that because I want to be completely well-rounded. And I know that by studying that, I learn more about God and how he operates.
So most of the time what happens, because I spend so much time in the Word and so much time in prayer, what comes up out of me when I wake up in the morning or as I'm having like that last-minute dream, it's the Word. It's something related to the Word.
Something, maybe I've been warned about things this way. I have received messages for people this way. But most of the time, I wake up, I'm meditating on things, or things will come up that I hadn't even thought of, and I'll go study that thing.
Well, that hap something happened to me this morning. That's why we're talking about this. It is so important. I woke up this morning, early in the morning, and there was a song. And it bothered me.
Because I don't even remember when I heard the song, but I know I heard it. I just did a. 20-some-hour drive across the country, and we listened to the radio a lot. And there weren't Christian stations, so we listened to some country. We listened to some all, you know, 80s, and 70s, and 60s rock and roll.
And my wife and I were just singing and having a good time, and it kept me awake. I drove all night. And that's how I stayed awake all night, that eating MMs. And so this morning, now almost five days later, I wake up, and one of those songs. is being played back in my inner monologue.
And it upset me. And I went, ugh. And I went, Oh my goodness. And I thought about it. I said, What is that song doing there?
Well, I put it in there. I put it in there. And I went, oh. And your inner monologue, I could say it to you like this: your inner man is almost like a VCR tape or an old tape, you know, the cassette tapes or even a computer. You know, you can record.
You can't necessarily erase, but you can record over. And I had recorded over.
Something with some of that music that I'd been listening to.
So this morning, when I woke up, it was playing back. And that was not good as far as I'm concerned. Hey, nothing against it, but. That's not what I want going on. I don't want that.
Why? Because I've gotten to that place where I want my inner man. I want to hear from God early in the morning when I'm praying and I'm waking up. I want to be fresh and awake and alive to the things of God, not to the things of the world. And as I laid there and I thought, what on earth?
Where did that song come from? Not even a bad song, but as it's coming out and I'm hearing it, I'm going, that's not right.
Something's wrong. Alarms begin to go off in me. I said, Oh, you know what? I know. I know.
I've recorded. that song in my memory, in my heart, And that's why it's coming up. You see, When you put the word in, when you put prayer in, when you put All of that in when you put God in, that's what comes up. But we come to a place, and this is where the process of sanctification and consecration comes to pass. When we come to a place where we don't want any more of that, we don't want any more of that worldly stuff in there.
We want the word, we want the presence, the nature, and the truth, and the word about God coming out. We want love stuff coming out.
So, in a way, this morning, it was almost like I got a warning saying, hey. You're putting some stuff in there that doesn't need to be in there. You're putting stuff in, you're eating stuff you don't necessarily need to eat of.
Now, for most people, there's nothing wrong with that. For a long time, I was able to live that way. But I've been on a journey personally in my personal walk where I'm pursuing the deeper things of God, the deeper. Presence of God, the deeper character of God in my life, because I want to see revival. And I know that that means, listen, outwardly, there's not a whole lot you could go, well, you need to correct this, you need to correct that, John Foy.
No, it's the carnal nature that I'm dealing with. And so here, life presented an opportunity. I took advantage of it. I used it to stay awake and it recorded something in my life that now this morning I wish wasn't there. Nothing bad, it's PG.
But That's not something I want coming out of me. I'll give you another example. Right after I finished that 40-day fast, I was starting to eat again, and some students came over to the house. It was after class. I cooked them breakfast.
They tend to show up early in the morning, sometimes unannounced, and they kind of just do this assumption thing where they'll call you and go, Oh, brother, I'm just right there. And to them, right there means I'll be right there in 10, 15. And in this case, it was 30 minutes. I'm going, okay, I'll just stay. And I knew he was coming.
It was 6:30 in the morning. I'm going, okay, I'll just go ahead and cook some breakfast. People operating on a different clock down there. And he showed up. And, you know, there was another student already there who I was mentoring and had spent the night there.
And so, you know, we get up that morning, or I'm already up, but we cook breakfast, we sit down, we fellowship a little bit. And Just something, I was like, oh, I'm not going to do what I plan to do. It changed my plans.
So I just like, and I put a movie on Netflix. A PG movie. No big deal. We watched a movie. It rained.
We didn't go out to do what we wanted to do that day. you know, made it through the day, the next day. I'm in prayer. I'm in the closet. And I'm trying to get alone with God.
I'm trying to get quiet. I'm trying to still my beating heart. And as I lay there praying, the images going through my mind's eye and the thoughts that were coming up were based around that movie. And I went. Oh my goodness.
And I repented. I said, God, I'm so sorry. This is not what I want to be seeing and hearing when I'm in your presence. But I put it in. I had put it in.
I ate of it, and it came back up. And so we have to be, the Bible tells us to guard our hearts. And so we have to be very careful about what we put in and what we allow in, because it will come back up. And in order to win the battlefield of the mind, which is stuck between the fleshly, carnal nature and your spiritual eternal man, you have got to feed your eternal man. If you feed your worldly man on worldly things, then that's what's going to come up.
And you can check your inner man, your spirit man, by what comes up when you're quiet, when you're alone, when you're at just you and nobody else. What comes up? What song, what thing was coming through your heart this morning? Was it about that situation yesterday?
Well, that tells me that you're carrying your worries and the cares of the world into the next day with you. You're not dealing with them from day to day the way you should. Are you thinking about that fight or that party or whatever it was you went to last night? Or maybe if you're single, that girl or that boy or whatever it is, well, that's what's motivating you that day. That's what's carrying you through that day.
And you're carrying it from one day to the next. But see, the things of God are renewed day by day. And so we have to, on a day-by-day basis, renew those things. If you, you know, you might be born-again Christian, and you wake up in the morning, all you can think about is how you've been done wrong, or how somebody's done this to you, or how somebody, well, you're a carnal Christian. That's really what that is: you're waking up thinking about all the things that have been done wrong to you and what all your problems are.
You're really a carnal Christian. And the Bible tells you not to think about those things, not to worry about those things, not to care about those things. But you can't because you don't feed on the Word of God the way that you should.
So, therefore, you're carnal Christians and your circumstances and your environment are what come up when you're alone. By yourself, and it's just you. and nobody else, and God. And so you can check your heart. You can check your spiritual man to see where you're at.
Take a spiritual thermometer. And I can give you some exercises to help you with that, but most of us wake up with some song or something that we put in the day before.
Something that went into our eye gate and our ear gate, went in, and as faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the word of God, you've developed faith. In that thing that you fed on, whether it be worldly or whether it be godly, you've developed faith. You must renew your mind. You must re-record over that with the word of God. And the more words you feed on, the more that will grow.
Your spirit man will grow, the light within you will get stronger. You know, it's often said that you give attention. What you give your attention to is what you will become. You maybe have heard the expression that I can tell you who you'll be a few years from now by the books you read and the company you keep. Because good company Builds good company or good character, bad character builds, or bad company builds bad character.
Because what are you doing? You're becoming a disciple of the things that you allow. You're becoming a disciple of the things that you hang around. You're recording within your spirit, man, a character and a nature on a day-by-day basis that will produce fruit. Do you want to produce fruit keeping with the world, or do you want to produce fruit keeping with the Word of God?
To win this battle. which occurs In you, whether it be the battle between the flesh and the battle between the spirit, you've got to renew your mind. You've got to feed on it. And the only way you're going to renew your mind is by renewing your character. Your man on the inside.
I shouldn't say that. By renewing your eternal man, your spiritual man, who, as you're reprogramming your mind, because that's the access into either world, as you renew your mind, you're either going to renew it towards things of the world or things of the spiritual nature. An addict has renewed his mind and programmed his character according to. that thing that he's addicted to. I want to be addicted to the love of God.
So if I become addicted to the love of God and I feed on that, feed on that, feed on that, what's going to come out of me? The love of God. And so when I wake up in the morning, I'm going to be meditating, thinking upon the love of God. When I go out and sin freely or do whatever I want, that puts a disconnect between me and God. Which is why we need repentance.
That puts a disconnect between me and my vital living contact with God, and now the world and the carnival nature has free sway over that battlefield. You see what it see how that works? But if I repent and I stay repentant. Vitally con in vital living contact with God, then the Spirit is able to speak and minister through me and help edify and help me win that battlefield in the mind until the change takes place in the physical realm. I want to win in this physical realm.
I want to be a conqueror in this physical realm. I want to be abundantly supplied in every way in this physical realm. It starts in my spirit. It starts in my spirit man.
So I have to feed on the things that will feed my spirit, which is the Word of God and the Spirit of God, which is love and truth. And so as you feed on the Word and speak the Word, why? You want to speak the Word because faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. You change your recording or you re-record what's written on the heart, the tablet of your heart, by feeding on the Word, and then what God says. You'll do it probably without even thinking about it, but it will produce within you and manifest something in you in your outward man.
Now, I want to share with you a couple of scriptures here. Ephesians chapter 3, verse 14. It says, For this cause, I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant unto you, according to the rich of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man.
So he's praying that you would be strengthened by God's might in your inner man. That's a spiritual thing. His spirit strengthens your inner man, your spirit. You have to remain in vital living contact for that to happen. In verse 17, that Christ may dwell in your hearts.
How will Christ dwell in your hearts?
Well, day by day, you feed on him, you feed on the word, you feed on love, you develop within you this Christ's nature. It's a faith walk. It's a faith process. And it says that you're being rooted and grounded in love. Start there.
If you don't know anything else, if you can't understand anything else about the Word of God, just go through and study everything about love that you can, and you will succeed. Why? Because love cannot fail. And he says that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, the length, and the depth, and the height, and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you might be filled to the fullness of God.
Now, think of that. He says, Now, unto him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us. See, this is how you get the power that is already there, the latent power, the born-again spirit that's there that you received when you confessed Jesus, the Lord, and you repented and turned from your old worldly ways, which is a day-by-day struggle. We don't all get it figured out perfectly. For most of us, it is a progressive revelation, a day-by-day journey that we grow in.
And I like what one man said: it says, Smith Wiggles said, the more of him, Less of me. John the Baptist said, I must decrease so that he can increase. And so day by day, we decrease what we allow in from the world and increase him. And what happens? The world nature in us goes down.
The God nature in us goes up. The physical nature becomes subdued by the God nature that lives in us. That's what he's looking for. That's what we want. When we get to that place, we begin to walk as true spiritual Christians because we feed on the Word, we've renewed our mind, and our inner monologue is in agreement with the Word of God.
I'm telling you, brothers and sisters, you'll see incredible things happen. He says in Ephesians chapter 3, verse 16, well, I'll go to verse 20, he says, But you have not learned so with Christ, so that if you have heard from him, been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, that you put off the former conversation of the old man. That's your inner monologue. That's your inner man. You put off the former, which is corrupt according to the deceitful natures.
Before you were born again, your inner man was corrupt by what? The world and the deceitful natures and lusts. And it says in verse 23, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, that you may put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and holiness.
So you see, righteousness and true holiness, we could also say sanctification and consecration does not come from an outward thing, it comes from the inner man. That's what he's saying: put on the new man, the inward man, renewed in the spirit. Folks, everything you want, everything you desire, it starts in your inner man. But if you don't feed on it, you're not going to participate in it. 2 Corinthians 4:16, it says, For this cause we faint not, but though our outer man perishes, listen, this flesh is going to turn back into dust.
Yet the inner man is renewed day by day. Re-record your inner monologue, your inner voice, your inner stream of consciousness with what? The Word of God. It's spiritual food. Yeah.
Says, for our light of fiction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us far exceedingly an eternal weight of glory. While we look at things which are seen, but are the things which are not seen. We're working on the eternal thing that is not seen. That's your spirit man. I love this scripture.
If you remember the story about David in 1 Samuel 16, verse 7, and the Lord said unto Samuel, look not on his countenance, or the height of his stature. Don't look at a man's physical outward appearance, because I refused him.
So God will refuse men according to their outward appearance. For the Lord seeth not as a man sees. For the man looketh on the outward appearance, but the God looketh on the heart or the inner man. God is looking at your spirit, not your physical body, your spirit. That's why your eternal spirit must be born again.
That's what he cares about. That's who God fellowships with. That's who God interacts with. That's who God. Is going to spend an eternity with.
Your flesh is going to stay right here, decay, and be gone. In Proverbs 20, verse 27, the spirit of the man is the candle Lord of searching all inward parts of the belly or the man. Think of that. the spirit of man. That's your eternal spirit.
It's your inner man. You have to change your eternal spirit on the inside. How do you do that? By the renewing of the mind. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God.
As you study and. Mm-hmm. pursue the word of God in your life on a day-to-day basis, what you will find is things you used to do years ago that you can get away with. One day you'll go, I can't do that anymore. I can't participate in that anymore.
For me, I've gotten to that place where I don't need to be listening to country music. I don't need to be listening or watching these movies. Why? Because I've gotten to that place where it's almost like you just put a drop of that leaven in there and it just explodes in your being. I don't spend hours doing that stuff anymore.
I spend more time meditating on the word and talking to God and studying his word, but I put a little bit of that leaven in there and it explodes. And then I wake up like I did this morning, going, where did that song come from?
Well, five days later, it popped up, it blossomed, it bore fruit in my life, in my inner man. I'm going to fix that.
So it says, Colossians 3:14: Above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of pertness. Perfectness, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which you're also called in the one body. And be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching, and admonishment one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to God. He's talking right there about the inner man.
This is the inner man stuff, guys. Christianity is not a physical religion like every other religion in the world, is completely of the spirit realm. It is completely supernatural. And what we're talking about here is renewing your spirit man, a supernatural man that exists, that is eternal. That's what you are.
You are a supernatural being. Whether anybody else believes it or not, you and I are born again of God. We are supernatural beings. We have to feed it with supernatural food.
So, good morning to my wife, who just walked by with a cup of coffee as I take a sip here. Radio show, right? We're not supposed to do that.
Well, okay. Oh, that's good coffee.
So let's get through a few more scriptures here because we're wrapping up. Psalms 51:6 Behold, what thou desireth, that thou desireth truth in your inner parts. In the hidden part, thou shalt make me known wisdom. Listen, folks. Yeah.
In your inner part is where you want to know truth. In your inner man. If you know truth in your inner man, Jesus, remember, Jesus said, my disciples or my followers, or the day will come when you will worship me in spirit and in truth. What is the spirit? The spirit is love.
The truth is rooted and grounded in love, always. You cannot separate love and truth. And so, but that is a supernatural, eternal thing that takes place in you when you feed on supernatural, eternal food called the Word of God. When you do that, you will begin to grow by leaps and bounds. And people go, wow, where did you come from?
Where did you launch out of? Been here all along. I just finally tapped into it. Psalms 19:14: Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. Think of that.
God's saying to you through the Psalms, the meditation of your heart. When you woke up this morning, what was the meditation of your heart? Mine was. this worldly song that I heard the other day. I've got to change that.
I've got to fix that. What is the meditation of your heart? Is it your problems? Is it your mountain? Is it the things that have gone on around you?
If the meditation of your heart is not on God and His Word, then you need to reprogram it. You need to change it. And you will begin to see the battle being won in your mind and in the physical realm. And it says in Romans 2, verse 15, which show the works of the law written on their hearts. Oh, see, I want that law written on my heart.
Why? Because it's written on my spirit man. My spirit man, my supernatural man, the one that's created in the image of God, knows this. And it says their conscious also bears witness. Uh-oh, they're conscious.
Your stream of consciousness also bears witness. See, that's what happened to me this morning. My stream of consciousness bore witness to what I had put in there.
Something's wrong. Something has to be taken out.
Something has to be re-recorded over, renewing my mind. You see how that works?
So this morning the Spirit of God, or my spirit man, allowed me to see John. you ate something that wasn't healthy. Here it is. Burp. and it was that song.
Can't be that way. You see what I'm saying? If we want to succeed and become all that God wants us to be, we have to change our stream of consciousness and our inner man, the meditations of our hearts. How do we do that? We renew our mind.
We put it in through the physical body, through our eyes and our ears, and we can even speak it. And as we speak it, why? Because faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. We are the only creatures that God ever created. And we're not even creatures.
We are human beings, totally different than any other animal creature that God created. We have authority over them. Men don't have authority over one another in that sense or dominion. But we're the only only beings that God ever created. And in all of the physical realm, in this earthly realm, we know we are the only ones who can speak, hear.
and coach ourselves And just renew our mind. You are the greatest coach that you have. And how you treat yourself and how you feed yourself determines your outcome and where you will go in life. Other people can treat you wrong, other people can treat you bad, but if you don't accept it, you don't receive it, you don't participate in it, it won't affect you. You have to just walk away.
Why? Your confidence is not in others. Your confidence is in God. Your confidence is in your spirit that is being fed by God day by day. That is the reason we must remain in vital living contact with Him day by day by day.
And Genesis chapter 6, verse 5. And God saw the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination and the thoughts of his heart were only evil.
Well, we know that that leads up to the story of Noah. And it says Matthew 15, verse 18 and 19, For those things which proceedeth out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and it defile the man. For out of the heart proceedeth every evil thought, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man. But to eat with unwashing hands defiles not a man.
He's telling you right there, listen, guys, it is not about what you do on the outside, it is about what you do on the inside. What do you feed your inner man? If you're feeding your inner man things of love, peace, joy, things of the. Grace and or the nature of God, um. then you will develop You will develop that in your life.
And that's what we want. As we develop that in our lives. on a day-by-day basis, we become Meal. Like what the world wants, what the world is looking for, what you and I want, truthfully. I believe there are many of you out there who are listening.
You say, I want to go to the next level with God. I want to go deeper with God. I want to go into the inner court in the Holy of Holies and find out what it's like to meet with God in that place, to lay before the altar, to see the manifest presence, the Shekinah glory of God.
Well, that's a spiritual thing. And if you want that to happen, then you have to develop your spiritual. Being, your supernatural being. Listen, my friends, we go from one side of the Bible to the other, but everything in this Bible is supernatural. And I hope that this has helped you today, that you understand how important it is to renew your mind and become all that God wants you to be.
I'm at the end of my time here and uh we crammed a lot in right there, but I ho I know they're supposed to help. Thank you for listening to Love Never Fails as we pursue revival. Remember, Jesus loves people and love never fails. For more information on Love Never Fails and ministry events, please email us at love neverfails with brojohn at gmail.com. That's love never fails with B-R-O-J-O-H-N at gmail.com.
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