I started this post a few weeks back and have now competed transcribing Frank Hunting's tape from the 1970's.
See the link below to about Frank Hunting.
http://geoffthompsonsblog.blogspot.com.au/2009/08/about-fank-hunting.html
If it hadn't been for Frank's counsel and teaching I doubt that I would still be a committed Christian today.
God brought him into our lives at just the right time.
My prayer is that some of what's on this blog may be for you at just the right time.
The New Man Tape 2 F C Hunting
"Therefore if any man is in Christ,he is a new creation.
The old has passed away.
Behold the new has come."
If you were to read that in the JB Phillips translation,this would be the translation.
"For if any man be in Christ, he becomes a new person altogether.
The past is finished and gone,everything has become fresh and new. '
For thousands of Christians that is simply not true!
Very little, for them, has become new!
During the week I read that it is estimated that nearly 90% of all Christians never experience the abundant or victorious life.
And that includes (I've finished the quote, this is me)
Ministers!
leaders in our Churches!
teachers!
Elders!
Deacons!
whoever!
We shall never begin to understand why this unhappy state of affairs exists until we begin to ask the right questions and come up with the right answers..
Why are Christians not becoming new people?
New persons altogether as the scriptures say they will?
If they are in Christ!
Now there are various reasons for this.
There are scores of thousands of Christians who do not even know that they can become new people in Christ.
They simply have never heard of it!
Certainly vast numbers of Christians,if they have happened to have been told that they may
able to become a new person altogether,
have not been told how to become a new person in Christ.
By and large, we have prided ourselves as being Bible teaching Churches.
Yet there are people who have been 30,40, 50 years regularly coming to Church to worship,
every sunday morning,
and they have never been shown, how to become a new person in Jesus Christ.
Some of them have been told that they ought to be new people,in Christ,
indeed some of them,
some of us,
really need to become new people in Christ, but haven't been told.
Nobody has spelled it out.
Just how does a person become a new person in the Lord Jesus Christ?
So the first thing to notice is the most obvious, but it's strange how blind we can be to the obvious!
And it's this.
That if you and I are going to become new persons in Jesus Christ,
then the most obvious thing is,
that if that is going to happen,
we must bring to Jesus what we are!
We must bring to Him,
each one of us ,
the things to Him that need changing!
If we have been, or are badly relating to someone,
If we have or are , being hard in our attitudes to someone,
If we have or are being critical,-it may never be spoken,
but if that;s the attitude that we've got in
our minds, that is the way that we think about people or someone!
If we have fears!
If we have envy, or jealousy or guilt, these are the things that are wrong in us!
And these are the things that we ought to be taking to Jesus!
But right at this point we do something,so often, that effectively, prevents us from taking what we
are to Him,
He who is able to make people new.
And this is how we do it.
When we become conscious that we have some of those things I've just listed,
when we realise that that is a part of me, what am I prone to do?
I'm prone to justify that feeling!
I'm prone to justify that hard attitude!
prone to find some reason so I can excuse me from being that kind of a person!
Oh, I can always find a very good reason, why I am entitled to have that attitude!
To have that feeling!
to think that way!
about that person!
or about those people!
or about that situation!
So if I pretend it doesn't matter,
or I blame somebody else,
or something,
there's no chance of Jesus ever making me new!
And so we stay exactly as we've always been!
If we are a worrier, we stay a worrier!
If we are harsh in our criticisms, we stay harsh in our criticisms!
If we are an extrovert and we are dominating in our attitudes to people, we stay that way!
If we are full of fears, we stay crippled by our fears!
The reason being
we don't get them to Jesus!
If we are weak and wobbly as people, we stay weak and wobbly as Christians.
Nothing changes.
Why?
Because we are not getting the thing that needs to be changed to our Saviour.
So that leads me to say the next thing.
Often we are strangely blind to the very thing that most needs to be changed in our makeup.
We are strangely blind to that need.
And we are strangely blind to our need to get that to Jesus.
For instance if we happen to be a worrier we say "I am a worrier by nature!"
"I can't help it,
it's my nature to worry!"
"I always do it!
I'm stuck with it!"
Now doing this, we never see two things about our worrying.
Both of them totally wrong.
NO 1. Worry is one of the worst sins because it doubts God!
Oh, we wont face that one will we?
It says God is dead!
It says God is powerless!
It says God is useless!
The second thing that's wrong about worry is that it says that Jesus has no answer
to my worrying,
and that isn't true!
We may for instance be given to criticising.
Now we do it so often, it has in fact, over the years,become a deeply entrenched habit!
Indeed we are often doing it and we are not aware of it.
Again there are two things wrong with this.
It too is one of the worst sins.
Now you listen, I am talking to you good people and you and I are Christians!
That true?
And I'll tell you why this is one of the worst sins.
It's a terrible sin against Love.
And God is Love.
And we are sinning against Him.
When we have this in our lives.
In the 2nd place because we justify our criticising in various ways,
we never take it to Jesus so we stay stuck with it!
and we really become and are, unlovely people.
albeit we are Christians.
The same is true of fear, fear makes pygmies of us.
It makes us mice instead of men.
But fears can be very powerful, they may also become very frightening.
And it;s very easy
because of those two things
to think or feel that you can do nothing about them!
But Jesus has the answer to all our fears!
To every single one of them He has the answer!
If we learn, how to take them to Him.
Now at this point we run into another obstacle of getting g free from these things that prevent us
from becoming new people,new persons altogether! in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I know, I know, you know that this to become a new person, is for most Christians ,deep down, the one thing they most want.
Well, what's this other thing that prevents us from becoming a new person altogether.
We often pretend not to be afflicted by the thing that is really bugging us.
We often pretend that it isn't the thing that is the matter with us.
Now this is one of the biggest barriers that I had to break through.
I worried.
I had big fears.
Crippling fears.
And I was critical, judgemental.
And I leaned as you have this morning that these things are grave sins.
They put us right out of joint we our God no matter whatever our protests may be.
Now I didn't want to admit those things.
Why?
Well I can tell you quite easily.
I could hear people saying "but you are a minister! you shouldn't worry! "
"You're a Minister, you shouldn't be critical! "
"You're a Minister, you shouldn't have any fears!"
And that brought me, and it brings all of us when we start this business of really getting
ourselves to Jesus, slap bang up against another big sin, Pride!
You wouldn't believe how much pride keeps Christian men and women away from all that He can be and do in them.
Pride is probably the biggest reason why we don't face the things we need to take to Jesus.
We are afraid someone might know what really bugs us,
what really torments us.
we are afraid of then saying to us,
"But you are a Christian,you've been a Christian for 40 years, you've been a Christian for 20 years,and you still have that thing in your life?"
So we pretend, and we cover up, and we stay stuck.
The same old person all the way through life.
Now let me show you another way we rationalise what we are doing.
And so we never change, never become the new creations that Jesus longs to make us, sometimes we long to be.
I'l just give you one illustration , but we do this in many ways , and you might be able to see for yourself how you are doing it, if you do.
Dad comes home from work, somethings gone wrong with the kids, they're having a real good old set to.
Squabbling and arguing, yelling and screaming at each other,
Mum meets dad at the door, and in an hysterical voice says,
"Oh you don't know what I've had today!
"oh you don't know what those kids--I could have choked them!"
And Dad goes in , and with a heavy hand, he whacks into them, and he over does it,
and their's crying and shouting and yelling,
followed by an all round family sulk.
Every body out of joint, sick sore and sorry with each other.
And that night Dad goes to bed.
And he begins to review the whole situation.
He thinks how the night before he was in that long protracted meeting,where every thing went wrong.
And as a result of it, he hardly sleep a wink the previous night, and he woke up in the morning with a head like a pumpkin.
And he stayed that way all day,
and he felt as lousy as a human being could,
and at work they were coming at him from all angles.
He was pressured and he had had a dog of a day at work.
and when he landed home, and the door was opened,
he walked into the same thing he had just left at work.
and of course he went over board.
what else could you expect.
Now everything that Dad looked at was true, every bit of it was true.
But if he began to excuse his over reacting to the children,because of all that had happened to him,
you know, and I know, that he'll stay stuck with it.
He'll never change.
And that problem will grow and increase in that home.
Because deep in here Dad has to get something to Jesus.
So that when these things do come, he is able in a strength,
and because of attitudes that he's got,
he will handle them as a Christian should.
There are deeper, now there are the many ways that we do that sort of thing,
I've just illustrated one,
There are deeper an rather more serious things than the ones I have hinted at this morning.
I'll mention them and next time I have the privilege of talking to you I'll tell you how Jesus is the answer to these deeper problems..
More serious ones.
For these things are serious.
They cause all kinds of neurotic conditions , all kinds of Psychotic conditions and all sorts of odd and difficult behaviour patterns.
They send millions of people to Doctors and Psychiatrists, and Psychologists.
Often to receive no help.
Many, only to be patched up.
Does it ever seem to you, a rather wonderful thing, how great crowds of people, going to doctors,find valium cures almost, or is supposed to, but it doesn't, does n't come within coo-ee of healing.
All kinds of nervous disorders--
doesn't matter what you present to the doctor you get the same prescription.
Well, there is no drug, and no treatment that comes out of a syringe, that can heal the conditions I am going to name to you.
The problem of inferiority!
That deep feeling of being an inferior person that you take around with you wherever you go.
That tragic attitude and feeling you may have to yourself, of insecurity!
That's a real handicap.
And it produces all kinds of odd behaviour in people.
It makes people very difficult to get along with sometimes.
And what about anxiety?
That number one producer of mental illness.
And this constant feeling that thousands of people in our world have ,
the feeling of being rejected.
How neurotic that can make you.
Now these feelings are serious ones, these are the deep ones.
These are the disturbing ones.
These are the ones that produce all sorts of behaviour patterns that none of us feel very happy about.
They can produce schizophrenia or paranoia.
Or fantasy.
They can produce seriously neurotic conditions and do.
There are plenty of people around suffering from these things.
They lie deep within us and if we are afflicted by them, we can and do have real problems.
And most or all of us at some time or other have had one or more of them.
Sometimes a combination of them.
Now if we are afflicted in this way there is no way in the world if we allow them to continue that we can become a new person in Jesus.
No way in the world!
No way that He can bring to us His abundant life, His victorious life!
Now I am meeting Christians crippled by these things and I want to say this very kindly and quietly, and I hope you will think about it.
Many of them are afraid to accept the only help they will ever get.
They are afraid to accept the only help they will really ever get.
Many of them are afraid of you if they think you can read what is the matter with them.
And when they are at the depths disturbed and we think a person can really see what our need
is we become afraid of that person.
And we steer clear.
Even though that person may be the only one that can help them to the answer!
Many of these folk feel so threatened that they back off entirely from the person who can help them.
Now I am not going to talk to you about the answer to this in this talk. I am going to take that up in my next because you know I've got so much that you need to think about, that if I hurl too much at you in one sermon, or one talk, you will be overwhelmed.
And you won't be able to take it all in.
But you are meeting people who have these needs that I've discussed and we in this Church and other churches if we only knew it, we have the answer.
So this morning in closing I want to say this.
For all of the things I have talked about,
Jesus does have the answer.
He can and does heal.
Indeed I'd go further,
He is the only one who has the answer!
So what I have been saying to you this morning is this.
If we want the answer that Jesus alone can give,
the first thing that we are to do is to stop pretending,
stop covering up,
stop rationalising,
break through the barrier of pride,
look fearlessly at what is wrong,
and begin to believe that our wonderful Saviour,
is the answer.
Foot note.There are many tapes in my possession and Bible studies by Frank Hunting. I would welcome any enquiries from those who believe they might be helped by such. Geoff Thompson
email geoff@geoffthompson.com.au It is my intention to post transcripts of tapes 1 and 3 in the New Man Series
