Gutting the House From the Inside Out

Gutting the House From the Inside Out

by Evelyn Carter Spencer

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

Giving all lordship and honor to the Godhead: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. I don’t know what you came for, but I came to praise the Lord. I’m so full. And I couldn’t eat, so I can’t put it on the food. I went up after fellowshipping and all this afternoon, and my day started early this morning. And I thought, well, if I’m going to be spiritual, since I’m going to go and talk to a bunch of people, I guess I ought to go and act a little spiritual. So I went up in my room to act spiritual. You know how you act spiritual. You know, you get out the Bible, and you begin to peruse it, you know, and you try to get quiet, and you try to get still. But you see, there was only one problem. It was a little bit after six, see. And every day of my life, when I’m home, I have something I do that is not very spiritual. And it might turn some of you off. But I’m going to tell you what I do, and maybe you might not even want to hear me when I get through saying what I do. And at home, there is a special TV program that comes on at 5 o’clock.

And so the Reverend Dr. Evelyn Carter at 5 o’clock sits down in front of the boob tube. And everybody at home knows that you don’t call her at that time of day because you don’t get too much sense. You know? And there’s a program that comes on, and it’s called Star Trek.

You see, the youth are very well represented here this evening. I know that some of you business people, you know, are fighting to train at 5, you know, or 6. Well, here I found out today that it comes on at 6. So while I was trying to be spiritual and get ready for you all and read my Bible and pray, I slipped on the boob tube.

And I began to watch Star Trek. And I had preached, been to a Bible study. Can you hear me? And I had done a message on Tuesday night, and I was saying to the Lord all week, “Now, is this what You really want for the people in Rye this weekend?” And, you know, He wasn’t saying nothing. I don’t know if you ever had that experience that you talked to Him and nothing happened. You know, and, no, I never had that experience. Hang in there. Just stick around, you know, and it will happen to you. So I said, “No, Lord, is this really what You want me to do?” And nothing. So I kind of relaxed and came on to New York and had a good time today and decided I’d go prepare myself. And as I went to prepare myself and opened up my Bible, and one eye on Star Trek, do you know I found the most fantastic thing? They both were saying the same thing today. Believe it or not, God can use the boob tube. And He’ll use Star Trek if that’s what’s got your attention. And it was amazing. Absolutely fantastic that I was reading the scriptures and I was really into what I was doing. And then I’d hear like an echo coming from the TV saying almost the same thing.

And I decided, well, I couldn’t win, so I just closed up the Bible. And I didn’t watch all of it. I proceeded to get dressed to come here to share with you. I ain’t going to tell you what Star Trek was about, but I’m going to tell you what scripture said, okay? The Lord has been doing something, I think, actually fantastic. How many of you want to be more spiritual?

Let me see your hands again. Want to be more spiritual? Well, I got news for you. Can’t be no more spiritual than what you already are. If you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, you got the whole ball of wax. You got it all. Okay? I tried for a long time to be very spiritual and to imitate Jesus and do all the things that I read that I thought I ought to do and followed all the things that church fathers told me. And I found out that I was full of churchianity and didn’t know a thing about Christianity. So I decided to take off the dressings and go to the Lord and find out what I was supposed to do. And I’ve been in the process of finding out this last year of how I ought to be. And you know, the simplest thing that He’s told me is to be what you were meant to be.

And He said, “What did I make you first of all?” Anybody got any ideas what He made me first of all? A woman. He just made me a woman. And He said, “Evelyn, you cannot be the cause and the effect.”

He said, “You can be the effect, but you can’t be the cause.” He said, “And that’s something that Jesus found out very early in His relationship with Me. He never tried to become the cause of anything. He didn’t mind being the effect, but He refused to be the cause.”

That’s real chewable if you chew on it. A lot of us will pray our prayers and get up off our knees and immediately try to figure out how I can go about bringing about the effect that I want. Or we begin to try to help God do what only He can do. And we end up so screwed up and so messed up and we end up blaming God for our mistakes. And we end up getting depressed and repressed and oppressed and down and flat. So He said, “Evelyn, you’re Mine. And since I’m the cause, why don’t you allow Me to be the cause?”

And I began to study the scriptures to really try to find out what the Lord was saying to me. And I began to look at my favorite person in the scripture. I like Paul, but I can’t seem to get Jesus out of the way to get Paul there. And I find that some people are more Pauline than they are Jesus people. And I found out that I had to start going back to Jesus and seeing how Jesus did things. And there’s one thing that I found out that Jesus never did. He never panicked. He wasn’t panic-stricken at no time under any circumstance or situation. And I discovered something else. That Jesus was fully God and fully man.

And He didn’t have a problem trying to be God because He behaved like a man all the time. Now that was very exciting to me. That Jesus being God and having the nature of God never tried to behave like God. He was just a man full of the Spirit named Jesus that was willing to be a man in the world, knowing that He was the Son of God with the very nature of God, but He never tried to be any more than what He was.

Well, I thought that was kind of heavy. I thought somebody would get excited about it, you know. And I thought, “Lord, I have been struggling and striving to be an imitator of Jesus.” And He said, “Ev, you be Ev and I’ll be Myself in you. And all that I ever ask you to do in any given situation is get Me on the scene and I guarantee you I’ll take care of business.”

And do you know that that has been so exciting that all I have to do is go, or whenever something comes up, that I have the blessed privilege, and you have the blessed privilege, of holding that situation up before God and exposing that situation to Him and then stepping back out of the way and letting God work through you to be Himself. Hallelujah. You know what they call that in the scriptures? Resting. And you know, the word of God says strive, struggle, strain, labor, work at getting in the rest. But once you get there, stop. He said, because he that has entered into the rest of God has ceased from his own labors. Don’t get excited. It ain’t that you ain’t gonna work no more. You just won’t do your own thing anymore.

And I thought, wow. He said, “I made you.” The word of God says that we are God’s habitation salvation. And man was made fully for God. To be absolutely, totally possessed by God. Paul put it very beautifully, until Christ filleth all in all in you. But that’s what our original purpose was. That we would be the habitation of the Most High God. And He told David and a few of the others that He wasn’t going to live in a temple made by hands, but that He was going to live in a building of which Jesus Christ was the chief cornerstone. And when we become born again and let Jesus live in our lives, He becomes the chief cornerstone of our lives. And then every brick in the building has to be just like the cornerstone.

So what He does with the house that He purchased with, that He leaves the outside as it is and guts the inside and starts from the inside out to replenish the house. And everybody gets hung up because the outside still looks the same.

But they don’t know that business is going on on the inside. And I thank God that His way is so different than ours. You know, we run around with those little signs, you know, that have all the initials on it: “Please be patient with me. God isn’t finished with me yet.” But we don’t act like that’s truth. You know, we wear the sign and act like it’s done. You know, and then people look at us and say, “My God, what a mess that is. And if that’s what Christianity is all about, who needs it?” You know, and when I look back at some of the things that I’ve done in the name of the Lord, working with zeal and no knowledge, I thank God for redemption. You know, because He redeems messes. Did you know that? God redeems messes or none of us can be here. Yeah.

The Lord was saying to me the other day, you know, “Ev,” not to get on speaking terms, but He’ll call you by your first name if you get on speaking terms with Him, because He knows it. And He called me Ev first before anybody else did. That’s why I kind of like it when they call me Rev Ev, you know, because that’s an endearment term. And He said, “Ev, you know, man has been brought up with, when he does something that is considered wrong, then he gets guilty.”

And with guilt comes the idea, Ev, that you got to be punished. So when you go to God and the Spirit of God has convicted you that something you have done is not just right, the first thing you want to do is get guilty. And then you start looking for the blows and the punishment, which negates the word that says there’s no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus. And some of us have gotten so foolish that if God ain’t got sense enough to punish us, we’ll become the cause to get the effect.

So we work very hard at finding legitimate reasons and disciplines and all like that in order to get rid of the guilt. And He said, “But you know, when you come to Me and conviction stands over here, there’s something that balances the conviction.”

And that’s My grace. I know you ought to be punished, but nevertheless, the blood of Jesus stands between you and there’s My grace. And you’re standing there trying for 10, 15, 20 years to be punished for something that God has forgotten, forgiven you for and forgotten, and you can’t go nowhere and He can’t use you because you’re scared to hear the word of God or to even get in His presence for fear He’ll remember that thing that you did way back there.

Sad, ain’t it? But we believe the word of God, don’t we? Anybody want to say, anybody feel like they’re guilty of what I’m talking about? You know, just simply not resting and trusting that He’s done what He said He would do. There’s a story that I love in the scriptures, Old Testament story, and it’s a story about a man that prayed a prayer one day, and the answer didn’t come.

So the man decided that he’d help the answer to get on the way. So he decided to fast. So he fasted three days and none happened. So he fasted three more days and none happened. Week went by and still no words from heaven. Ten days went by and no words from heaven. Fourteen days went by and no words from heaven. And he kept on fasting. And he kept on fasting. And waiting for an answer. And three weeks went by and he was sick. And he went to bed. And the messenger of the Lord, the angel of the Lord, came and said to that man, “The day that you prayed, God sent the answer. But a messenger from Satan came up to withstand the answer, the messenger. And he was a little much for me. And I fought and I fought and I fought with him. And he almost got the best of me. So I had to send back some help. And I had to find one that was stronger than me. So the Lord sent Michael. And Michael stood up and never got in battle with the messenger of Satan. He just stood up and said, ‘The Lord rebuked you.’ And I was free to come on my way. To give you the message.” But by that time, the man was sick. Because he had tried to become the cause of the effect.

And he had begun to look at the circumstances and the situation that he was in. Rather than trust the word of God who said, before you call Me, I’ll answer. Instead of just standing there on the word and saying, “Lord, I don’t care what the circumstances are. And I don’t care what the situation is. Lord, You said, I believe. And that settles it.”

That was too simple. And so I like that story. And it’s especially meaningful to me because I spent a number of years of my life fasting. And praying and seeking God for days and months at a time. And months and a half at one time. In absolute abstinence. But I wasn’t asking for answers. Because I was just following the leading of the Lord. But you see, the Lord didn’t tell this man to fast.

But the man had been in a habit of fasting. And that didn’t do it for that particular time. And then I move on to Jesus. And I said to you earlier that He was never panic-stricken. Nothing ever alarmed Him. Nothing, when He walked the earth, took Him by surprise. And I want to serve notice on you tonight. He still, today, is not panic-stricken. Nothing upsets Him. And He never feels that He can’t handle the situation. It’s us that get around to thinking that He ain’t capable.

But where I see this so strongly at, what I’m trying to share with you, is that when it came to Lazarus, and they came and sent word to Him and said, “Lazarus is sick. He’s dying.” And you know how we do when someone we love, we get the word that they’re dying or they’re sick or something like that. Right away we start packing bags and start getting reservations and getting in a hurry to get there. But the Bible said Jesus tarried a few more days in the same place.

And when He got there, en route, Martha came out, and she said, you know, she began to rebuke Him and fuss, you know, and she said, “If You’d have been here, he wouldn’t have died.” And Jesus said, you know, like he’s just asleep. And the disciples said, well, if you don’t sleep, you know, he’s going to wake up after a while. And Jesus perceived that they didn’t even know what He was talking about. And Jesus said to Martha, “If you can believe, you’ll see your brother alive. If you can believe in Me. Because I am the resurrection and life.” Jesus said, well, I know in the last day my brother will be raised up. You sung it tonight, you know, the whole bit. And He said, “No, if you just believe in Me, you’ll see this.”

And He went on. And she left Jesus. Martha did. And maybe y’all don’t read the scriptures like I do. And she went to find her sister, you know, who had sat at the feet of Jesus. And He had recommended, commended her because she chose the better way. And the first thing she did when she saw Mary was to tell a lie.

Because the first thing she said is, “The Master’s calling for you.” Jesus never said a word to her about Mary. So, of course, she went. And when she got up, you know, all the people were sitting around and her. And so they thought that she was going out to the grave, you know, and pour out her grief at the grave. Because, you know, they had professional mourners in that day, you know, where they would go from funeral to funeral and just wail and cry. You know, in the scriptures, it’s saying, call for the mourning women. That’s all they did. They just went around and mourned and had a great big hoop and a holler behind, you know. And so they went out with her. They were going to help her to wail and holler over Lazarus. You know. And she got out there and there was Jesus. And the first thing that Jesus did was not to become the cause of the effect that He wanted brought him back. He moved out of the way.

And He said, “Father, I’m not praying for me because I know You hear me. I have that assurance that You hear me and whatsoever I ask You, You’re going to do. But I’m praying on account of these people so that they will know that You sent me,” thanks, and moved over. And He exposed that whole situation to God and willingly became the vessel for God to use so that God became the cause that brought about the effect. And then, of course, you know, He called Lazarus Lazarus. And Lazarus got up.

And the Bible said that he came out of the grave. But there was something wrong with Lazarus. He’s standing out there because he’s in the presence of the Lord. Sun was on him. The heat of the day. And, you know, of course, they had said, you know, like he’s been in there four days and he’s got to stink.

And, you know, Jesus didn’t even get uptight about how putrid he would be after four days. He just said, roll stone away, Lazarus, come on. You’ve heard me say before, I’m a firm believer that if Jesus hadn’t called Lazarus by name, every dead person in the grave would have got up because the author of life was calling life back into a being. But when he came out there, out in the light, out in the presence of the Lord, there was something radically wrong with him. He was bound. He had on the linen strips.

He was free. He had been delivered from death like a whole lot of born-again believers. Delivered from death. But yet, he had on his grave clothes. And Jesus said, “Loose the man and set him free.” Many of us have come out of the grave. We’ve come out of sin and degradation. But we still got on grave clothes. We’ve become new creatures in Christ with old emotions, old passions, old fears. And we are just as convinced of our inadequacy with Christ as we were convinced that we were inadequate without Him.

I’ll ask a question. How many of you feel as inadequate and are convinced that you are inadequate with Jesus just like you were without Him? Hallelujah. One man raised his hand. Do you understand that statement? And that belies our testimony. Okay? And we feel inadequate in Christ because we are bound in grave clothes. Okay? And most of our grave clothes are emotions or either mental.

We bring our inferiorities from the past through the blood and stand as a born-again believer, spirit-filled, just as inferior in Christ as we were out of Christ. And we’ve got to muster up, “Well, I’m a Christian and I’m a born-again believer and I’m spirit-filled, so I ain’t supposed to be like that.” So we’re gonna try like the devil not to be inferior.

And we run a pretty good game. You know? For months, for weeks, and for years maybe, then all of a sudden something pops up and there we are stripped, naked, and just as inferior as we was before we ever named the name of Jesus. Because we have never allowed Him to take off the grave clothes. Because every time the Holy Spirit began to work in that area of our lives, we were so inadequate and so ashamed and so inferior that we wouldn’t allow Him to strip us. So we went and played our little game. Whether it was quoting the scriptures or whether it was becoming more churchified or singing louder than we sung before or praying more prayers or learning more Bible scriptures or going to every meeting or whatever and never really getting around to dealing with what was at a gut level hurtness.

Because after all, I’m a born-again believer and I ain’t supposed to have no hang-ups. Oh, and then we coined little phrases like, “Jesus was hung up for my hang-ups.” You know, that sounds real good, don’t it? Did you hear that? Jesus was hung up for my hang-ups. You know, and that sounds good, but does it get the hurt out of huh? It’s not until I allow Jesus Christ into my humanity and I begin to identify with Jesus in my humanness and stop reaching for the spiritual and the divine, because only God can make human divine.

And so things have got to be done God’s way in God’s time and not in ours. And He’s the one that took the vessels that were used in the temple, which were nothing but wood, which is symbolic of our humanity, and overlaid it with the gold. He, and He alone, can do it. And He said, “You’re not your own. You’ve been bought with a price.” And that shed price was the shed blood of Jesus Christ on Calvary. God, and you see, God couldn’t be seen in the form that He was, so He took on human form and became human so that man could see Him. And it said that Jesus Christ became the visible representation of the invisible God, and He chose to become a human being in order for man to see Him. And we don’t want to be what God wants us to be, purely human, divinely possessed and inspired by God Himself. We want to become supernaturally natural. And He said, “Hey, be what you are and allow Me to be what I am in you.” Christ in me, the hope of glory.

I can’t do it. And you can’t do it. And as long as you struggle to become something that you’re not, you’re going to live a defeated life in Jesus. But the moment that you allow Jesus to be Jesus and expose Him to every situation and be the instrument and the arm and the leg of the Lord, then the works of Him will be made manifest in us and seen in the land of the living. Praise God. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you. Thank you. And you know, that’s so freeing, that I don’t have to be anything but what I am. And as I expose myself to Him, He’ll show me how together I am, because He’ll show me the real me. And He strips off all the phonism. He strips off all the facade. And He gets down to where I really am. And He brought me to the place one day that I had to say to God, “Hey, God, I want to be the woman that You ordain me to be. And I don’t want the world’s concept of what a woman is. I don’t want the world’s concept of what a preacher is. I don’t want the world’s concept of what a mother or a grandmother or a sister or an aunt or a friend is.

“Lord, I want to know what You had in mind when You made me what I am.” And so I willingly put down everything that I have learned. And, “Hey, God, I’m naked and I’m scared. But I’m entrusting myself in Your hands and I know that the end product is going to be far superior than my wildest imagination. Because You’re going to make something that’s going to bring You glory. Not that the world sees Evelyn Carter or Steve Waite or Dave Gow or Drew Dushel or Ed or Jackie Blanchard. But that the world can see the reality of a living Christ. Made manifest in the land of the living.”

Oh, that I might know Him. How? In the power of His resurrection. So in order to know Him in the power of His resurrection, I have to find my own death warrant. And say, “Okay, God, I’m willing to die out to everything that I hold secure.” And I can’t even get mad at myself when I make a boo-boo. Or I stumble, because that ain’t my problem.

You know. But He said, “Ev,” and I’m saying to you, allow the Lord to be the cause of the effect in your life. Stop struggling to be what you think a born-again, spirit-filled Christian ought to be. And say, “Lord, what would You have me to do?” And if Jesus tarries and the crick don’t rise, and God does not say otherwise, tomorrow I’ll share with you about some gentleman that misinterpreted what God was saying to them.

And made some pretty fat boo-boos. But when we look at their lives, He said He wrote this, that it would be for instruction and for enlightenment and that we can grow. And in the world, they say, we benefit by our mistakes. You know why? Because we examine mistakes and not successes. Because if I succeed, I can do that again. But if I made a mistake, I don’t want to do it that way again. So I’ll examine that. So I throw it out a little bit for you to chew on, and I hope I haven’t disturbed your sleep.

And all… And as I said before, I’m excited about what the Lord’s going to do this weekend. And I challenge you, in the name of Christ, that if you haven’t liked what I said, hang around and stick with me for the next two. It might come out okay.

Praise God. Shall we pray? Father, in the name of Jesus, I thank You. I thank You for the exposure, and I praise You for the end result. And Lord, You said Your word would not come back to Your void, because it doesn’t go out the void of power. Lord, and I thank You that You’re going to accomplish in the hearts and the minds and the spirits and the emotions and passions and desires of Your people what You desire, that which will bring You to the most glory. So I ask You, Father, in the name of Jesus, to not let one word fall to the ground without giving You a hundredfold return. And I ask Your guardian angels to stand at the minds and the hearts and the spirits of these, Your people, and ward back the evil one from stealing the word out of their heart so that it can have its perfect work. Thank you, Jesus. And we give You glory. And Father, don’t let anybody get hung up in my terminology or my actions, that You get the glory out of everything that I am. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.