<TITLE>07. Par 23-24</TITLE>L-23 Now, we take a grain of corn, put it in the ground. It may be a pretty grain of corn, all polished up, looks real nice. But as long as it remains in that condition, that's all it'll ever be, a pretty grain of corn.
Sometimes we join church, lot of pretty things in it, and so forth. Maybe we try to pretty ourself up to go to church, get a new something another to wear to church. Is that all church means to you? Then I'm persuaded you need a new birth. It's exactly right. That grain of corn will never produce any new life until the old grain rots away from it.
And a person at the altar can't get down there, and kneel down, and get up, and say, "Well, I've got new birth." You have to stay there until all of your thoughts of your own self and all your worldly things has rottened away from you: dead, and rotten, and gone from you. Then new birth takes place. Oh, you might slobber and jabber, and slobber like a horse eating clover. But you'll come up from there in a new condition with a new birth, and something in you that's alive, and made you something different than what you was.
When new birth comes in, it cannot come until there's a death first. And people don't want to die. They won't--don't want the simple leadings of the Holy Spirit. They want to take their own thinking of it. You can't think your thoughts. You got to think His thoughts. "Let the mind that was in Christ be in you." Amen. He thinks God's thoughts, brings God's blessings, God's power to you. And it'll make a mess out of you, as far as the world is concerned, but it'll bring new life. It'll bring resurrecting life. It'll bring new thoughts. It'll bring a new person. It'll bring a new faith. It'll bring you from death unto life.

L-24 The new birth, don't matter how messy it looks, how much you have to bawl and squall, and carry on at the altar, or whatever you have to do, all the unnecessary things that you think you wouldn't do, it'll make you do it. Uhm... Your all's pride and don't want to wash the lipstick off your face, some tears might do that for you. That's right. But it'll make a mess looky out of you, but you'll come up from there a different person, borned of the Spirit of God, a new creature in Christ Jesus. It'll do something to you. Men, it'll make you forsake that old cigar, make you forsake that cigarette, that bottle. It'll clean you up.
You say, "Well, there's no harm in that."
Stay there long enough. And come up and find out if there's any harm in it. Let new life take a hold, see what the old life... You'll rot to those things. Them cigarettes, and tobaccos, and whiskey, and stuff of the world will rot out of you.
You just don't stay long enough. Stay there until you're thoroughly dead. Then after your dead, stay there till you rot. There's no chance of a rejuvenation again. That's an awful word, but it's the truth. You don't have to get Webster's Dictionary to hunt that up, because it's just plain old sassafras preaching. And... But it'll save you, brother; I'm telling you. It did for me. And I know that it will for anybody that'll accept it on those basis and hold on to God and say, "I believe it." Stay there. There'll be something happen in your life. A change will come over you, that everybody that knows you will know something happened to you. You won't have to tell them; they'll see it in you. Your wife will see it in you. Your children will see it in you. Your neighbors will see it in you. Your boss will see it in you. Everybody will see it in you, because you'll be sealed, marked. You don't live after your own lust any more; you're dead. You're buried. You're a new creature in Christ.


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