“For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:3)
When you come into church and the Spirit of God moves on you, it quickens the whole church. You can tell what the person is doing at home by what happens when they come into church. If a man comes into church and he is dead and gives a dead word, then nobody needs to query what happened. There is sin in their life. However, it can be removed by repentance.
If somebody comes to you and tells you that they believe you are sinful, that there is something wrong with you, you get upset. Instead, you should thank the person! “I didn’t know I was sinful. I thought I was doing well. But if you saw me being sinful, then I am going to God with it. I am going to pray.” If you do that, the devil will never send anybody to tell you that you are sinful, because he would be defeating himself. It would be counterproductive. Can you see how easily we can beat Satan at this game? If somebody says something wrong about you, then instead of, “She doesn’t like me or he is against me,” run off and thank the person. “Thank you very much, I hear you say I am a dog. I don’t want to be a dog. I want to be like Jesus. So, if you think I am a dog, I am going to pray about it.” If you could ever get that kind of attitude, it would mean that the self in you has suffered a deathblow. The way to kill self in your own life is to not count yourself as something great and wonderful. “I am such a wonderful person, but if anybody says anything wrong about me, I’m really mad at them. I get really upset about it, because you know, I’m not bad. I’m all right and wonderful.” Unfortunately, this is the condition of the hearts of most of the people of God.
If you are dead in Christ, you will react differently. A dead man will not do anything. Although, once I had an experience with a dead man who wept. I had never seen a dead man weep before. I really don’t know why God let him weep. He was supposed to be dead. We buried him afterwards for he was really dead. This brother and I would argue for hours about the Word of God. All his arguments were about the seventh day. He would say that if you didn’t worship the Lord on the seventh day, you could not go to heaven. I argued with him and showed him scripture, but we would go on and on and on.
One day he had a stroke and died. Oh, when I heard that he had died I went there and was grieved in my soul! I stood over the dead man; he was lying in this coffin with ice packed around him. In the country in Jamaica you have to pack ice around the dead, because there are no morgues there or anything like that. So I stood over him and said, “Oh, brother, if you had spent half the time serving God as you spent talking about the seventh day, you would have been right with God at this moment.” Suddenly I saw his eyelid move. Long tears began to flow out of his eyes. I called everybody, “The dead man is weeping!” I think that it was a sign before God.
But if you are dead in Christ, you won’t weep. If you are dead, you won’t get upset. I wish we could learn this lesson. For if you find that you get upset, then you must know you are wrong before God. I don’t care what someone does to you. If you get upset over anything, you are wrong before God. Let me just stretch this idea a little bit. Suppose you were the devil and you knew that if you hit certain individual, he would be upset and could not function in God. What would you do? You would hit him everyday! You would keep him off balance. And he would never serve God. It means that if you can be hurt by the outside world, by your environment, you can be kept from serving God. And you could lose your call before God.
“But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.” (Hebrews 6:9)
Sonlight Devotional 