Galatians chapter 4.
We begin at verse 16, but I'm going
further down.
Verse 16, Galatians 4, 16.
And Paul asks a question of these people,
am I become your enemy because I tell
you the truth?
I find these days that one way to
become unpopular is to tell truth and speak
truth, and have the truth.
And I'm recurringly coming to that part of
Psalm 51 that talks about truth from the
inward part.
And that's my struggle, that's my desire continuously.
Truth from the inward part, not on the
surface, but the depths.
The verse I want us to think about
is verse 19.
My little children, of whom I travel in
birth again, until Christ be formed in you.
I never fail to, I think anytime, anywhere,
be staggered by the enormity of the apostle
Paul.
Again, I reminded you he was born in
the ancient capital of the world, which was
Tarsus.
He finished up in the military capital of
the world, which was Rome.
He went to the intellectual capital, which was
Athens.
You remember there in Acts of the Apostles,
it says he reasoned with philosophers and stoics
and epicureans and poets and all the great
men of the day.
And they found he had all the answers,
but he came up with something that staggered
them.
When he said that these shrines, these temples
you have to unknown gods, him I declare
to you.
As I say again, I think it's Philip's
translation says that when Paul went down Main
Street in Athens, he was exasperated.
I'm still exasperated when I think of these
men with colossal intellect.
Men that can put some bits of wire
and tin together and shoot a man on
the moon, and yet they have no place
for God.
They're totally independent of God, of his mercy,
of the fact that he's there.
They're totally fooled by materialism.
They think they've got the world beneath their
feet because they've once got the moon beneath
their feet.
And they think only to the end of
the journey.
To them death is the end of the
whole trip.
It is the end, it's the beginning end.
It's not the final end.
And Paul, I say again, was staggered when
he saw these people so given up, so
disciplined to false gods, so sacrificing to false
gods.
There were two Augustines, I don't know which
it was, but one of them said if
God would grant him three petitions, the first
would be he said that I could see
Jesus Christ in the flesh.
The second would be to see one of
the Caesars coming down the Appian Way with
his slaves.
You know what they used to do?
They used to get the crop, the best
of the crop.
When they went into a nation they'd get
the kings and the lords and the wealthy
and the outstanding people.
And they'd put chains on them and fasten
them to the axle of their chariots.
And they came sweeping through the city while
people screamed and roared and did everything else.
I would like to have seen Jesus Christ
in the flesh, number one.
I would like to have seen Caesar come
down the Appian Way with his slaves tied
to his chariot, number two.
And number three he said I would like
to have heard the Apostle Paul preach.
Dr. Paul Rees, when I first came to
America in 1950, was considered maybe the greatest
expository preacher in America, if not the world.
I talked with him once, I remember him
when he was just a young fellow coming
to England.
And he'd been on a tour around the
world.
And I knew he took an extensive tour
of Palestine.
And I said to him, well, at what
point did you feel the greatest inspiration and
thrill?
I was sure he'd say Gethsemane or somewhere
like that, and he didn't.
He said, Brother Leonard, I stood right on
the...
Because obviously, you know, when people say, I
went on a tour of Israel.
I walked today where Jesus walked.
That won't get you into trouble at all.
You walked today where Jesus walked?
Thousands of people have thought that.
What will get you into trouble if you
say I walked today as Jesus walked?
I walked with victory over sin.
I walked with refusing to let the devil
get any grip on my life in any
shape or form.
But he said, when I stood there, the
path he'd known is still there.
It's a wreck, obviously.
But to stand on that spot where Paul
preached that tremendous message to the intellectuals of
the day and left them all confounded.
They reasoned with him of so many things.
But then finally, he snatched the trumpet of
the resurrection.
He blew a blast on it, scared them
to death.
You see, they'd only thought to the boundaries
of time.
They'd been lost in philosophies and speculations and
arguments.
And here comes a man.
I'm almost ashamed to say this.
It brings tears to my eyes anyhow.
But I'm not ashamed to say it.
A man with an experience is never at
the mercy of a man with an argument.
If you've been through a trial and experience,
all the devils in hell won't persuade you
that thing isn't real.
You know it is.
Even with the grace of God.
And you see, Paul has such a firm
conviction he knew from whence he came.
People tease me because I say he had
a colossal intellect.
I think he still had the greatest intellect
the world's ever known outside of Jesus Christ.
And yet when I see this man, I
can understand why Augustine said he'd like to
hear him preach.
I would too.
Where did he get this incredible courage?
Where did he get his unshakable faith?
Where did he get his unbreakable love?
That's an awful lot, isn't it?
The stamina to go through all he went
through?
By his testimony, he was in deaths oft.
It was a daily experience for something or
somebody or somehow death to assail him.
He's left in mouldy prisons.
He's persecuted.
He's perils of the deep, perils of his
own country.
And yet he doesn't waver.
I want that stamina.
I want that incredible courage.
I want that unshakable faith.
I want that love that can bear all
things.
And listen, some are hard to bear.
Don't fool yourself.
There are some things that suddenly come up
like that, you feel you've been hit with
a mack truck almost, in your spirit, in
your feelings.
And again, you can't live by feelings.
They're nice when you have them, but they're
not so nice when they're the other way,
are they?
And we're all prone to have them, I
know that.
But listen, Paul says, My little children whom
I travel in birth again.
In 1 Corinthians 4 and 15, he said,
you've got 10,000 instructors, but I'm your
father.
I get people now calling me and saying,
I came to Christ in your meeting at
so and so.
And I get a great lift out of
that.
Just a man came in yesterday that was,
what's it been, about 20 years in Brazil.
And he was telling us about the time
we were up at Bethany and the times
we had there.
And it's good you don't, you know, we
take some statements.
Things like Paul said, Forgetting those things which
are behind.
And we think that means sweeping everything under
the rug, you don't want to remember.
I don't think he means that at all.
Forgetting all those things.
I quoted to a man in my office
today.
I said, I don't know where I got
this, but it stuck in my mind last
year.
That we Christians are in grave danger when
we let our accomplishments become the ground of
our assurance.
I've written so many books.
I've put out so many records.
I've preached so many sermons.
And I'm building on my own confidence.
I'm building on my own faith, not on
him, and he's a jealous God.
I recognize every day I have nothing.
A man in my office, a world famous
man, this afternoon he said, Well, you've a
lot to be grateful for.
Your books will live.
People keep telling me, my books will live
when I'm gone.
I don't know whether they want to get
rid of me, but anyhow.
I say, well, that's all right.
I trust they will.
If they bless somebody, that's all I care
about.
But that doesn't matter.
It's my personal living relationship with Jesus Christ
every day that matters.
I can't live on this and that and
the other thing.
And that's exactly where Paul is.
He says, my little children whom I travel
in birth again.
In 1 Corinthians 4.15 he says, I
have begotten you again.
He had begotten them.
He was their father.
He traveled for them.
But now he's going further than that.
He says, I travel again.
Well, something that happens again has happened before.
But he traveled for their justification.
Now he travels for their sanctification.
He talks about this very epistle.
When he had been into Arabia, I don't
know how long he was there.
Some scholars say three years.
The context seems to say that.
The other context says he was there 14
years.
But he says, it pleased God to reveal
himself to me on the Damascus road.
Then it pleased God to reveal himself in
me.
Now he's writing to these people and there's
no question about it that they're justified.
They're children.
But as yet he says, Christ is not
formed in you.
Justification brings me into the family of Jesus
Christ.
Sanctification brings Christ into me.
Justification is going to the cross.
Sanctification is getting on the cross.
Now here's a man who's the most sensitive
man or the most sensible man as far
as I'm concerned in the Christian faith.
He says, I travel that Christ may be
formed in you.
The most famous passage I guess in this
epistle of Paul to the Galatians is in
chapter 2.
And you know it so well I'm sure.
Galatians 2 and verse 20.
I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live,
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
And the life which I now live in
the flesh, I live by the faith of
the Son of God who gave himself for
me, who loved me and gave himself for
me.
Why is he traveling birth for them?
Well I believe for this reason that he's
coming to such an experience of God that
nothing moves him.
Remember he said, none of these things move
me.
Now get that very clear because people say
you know, if you're really filled with the
Spirit nothing will hurt you.
He didn't say that.
The only thing you can't hurt is a
stone.
Things did hurt him.
You've got to remember this man's pace is
so quick.
He goes so fast.
He's so deeply rooted in God that even
men that were filled with the Holy Spirit
forsook him.
They left him.
He says, all men forsook me and fled.
Nevertheless the Lord stood by me.
I don't believe God takes everybody the same
way.
He had been going and seeing super revivals
and manifestations of God and then the team
falls apart.
But he says when God, when all that
bunch of people went, the Lord stood by
me.
It's like taking the scaffolding away from the
building and suddenly, I remember being in India
and out there their scaffolding is mostly big
bamboo rods and they put a lot of
them in because they're not strong like steel.
And they fasten the things together with raffia,
with grass.
Were you in India?
There?
No.
But you know, when you see the building
with all the scaffolding it looks like a
I don't know, a rag and bone yard
or something.
But when they take the scaffolding away you
suddenly see the thing in its beauty.
You know the Lord has to do that
sometimes.
He has to take the scaffolding away that
we can see him in his beauty, him
in his glory.
But I believe what Paul is praying for
here that Christ may be formed in you.
It's the same thing that he's saying in
Galatians 2.20 I am crucified with Christ
nevertheless I live yet, yet not I, but
Christ liveth in me.
And the life which I now live in
the flesh I live by the faith of
the Son of God who loved me and
gave himself for me.
You see this man is in the place
where I think he wants him to come
into that place that he came into here
but he's talking about dying to sin there
and dying to self there.
Paul doesn't believe in dying to sin every
day.
He says you die to sin once.
But then remember further on in the epistle
he says I die daily.
Well how can you die daily?
You die to sin once.
You die to choices every day.
You die to temptations every day.
You die to circumstances every day.
They either get on top of you or
you get on top of them and you
can only do it not by mental resolution
but again by the power of the risen
Christ of God inside of us.
I die daily and he expected to die
daily.
Satan is never going to be retarded.
He's going to try some new manipulation.
He's going to try some new discouragement.
He's going to try some new roadblock.
And yet he says again in Romans 8
we can be more than conquerors through him
that loved us.
You see he interlaces all this teaching with
experience and you can't fault him on any
one of them.
Try as you will.
Doesn't he talk about being in death's aft
and I die daily and yet in every
one of them he knows the resurrection power
of God will lift him above those situations.
And this is why I was praying that
Christ may be formed in you.
I don't want to see sickly Christians.
I don't want to see weak Christians.
I don't want to see nervous Christians.
I'm not talking about physically I'm talking about
spiritually.
And having that inward fortitude by the Holy
Spirit of God that he writes the devil
offers a failure.
I can do all things through Christ but
isn't that saying devil you're wasting your time
on me?
None of these things move me.
Isn't he saying the same thing again?
You can try it.
Remember he comes at the end of Romans
8 he runs down the list there where
he said in verse 28 all things work
together for good.
But as he comes down he says what
shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Tribulation, distress, famine, peril, nakedness, sword.
And then he goes on and he says
neither things present nor things to come.
He wants to say devil go work out
another plan.
Make some new weapon in hell if you
like.
But neither things present nor things to come.
Nor height nor depth nor any other creature.
For he's just about settled everything the devil
has that he can throw against him.
And he says I'm sure so sure of
my strength in Jesus Christ that I'm steadfast
unremovable and always abounding.
I say I want that stamina.
I want that joy unspeakable.
I want that faith unshakable.
I want that love that's unbreakable.
I want God to see me triumph in
every situation because he didn't die for anything
less in my life.
It's not spasmodic.
It's not erratic.
I've got to fix my goals and by
the grace of God climb the highest mountain
go the most difficult way.
None of these things move me he says.
I mentioned this to someone today and they
said well there's not many people there.
I said I don't suppose there are.
But I think what Paul is saying when
he gives us his testament is listen I'm
not some speciality.
What we call abnormal I believe he was
saying this is a normal Christian life for
you to be more than conquered over everything
over every situation.
I don't know what the devil will do
to me in the next two days he
may want to prove that.
But again we're rooted and grounded in him.
There isn't a person anywhere in the scripture
that's more Christ centered than the apostle Paul.
You can't give him any credit he said
it's not I but it's Christ that lives
within me.
He's gone through the whole gamut I say
of testing and trial and he wants these
people to come into that maturity.
Now let's remember this as long as we're
on earth there is no finality to the
Christian life.
I've gone through some situations I thought phew
I know I'm glad I'm through that I'm
sure there'll be nothing come up like that
in the next ten years and boy it's
come up in the next ten days.
I thought well that's it and the Lord
says no that's just a sample.
You know we seem sometimes to have good
experiences oh what a foretaste of glory divine
but don't you think you get a foretaste
of some of the other things as well?
And all he's seeking is my dross to
consume and my gold to refine.
God is never capricious.
It sounds selfish maybe.
Do you ever think of the investment God
has in you?
That he did without the company of his
son in heaven for thirty years in order
to plan your redemption?
That Jesus took the full blast of human
iniquity?
The Lord hath laid on him.
I've been turning that over in my mind
very much the last two days.
How Christ centred that fifty-third chapter of
Isaiah.
He was wounded for our transgressions.
He, he, he.
It's him all the way through.
There are no shareholders in redemption.
To hell with the theory of the Roman
Catholics that the Virgin Mary is co-identics.
It says very clearly in Hebrews chapter one
that Jesus when he had by himself purged
our sins.
I told him Paul is home, he'll be
here next week, God willing, he may be
here.
I think he'll speak.
We were having a cup of tea this
afternoon, Adi and I, and when they set
off from, when they set off from Jerusalem
on a sunshine, they rerouted the plane, they
loaded the plane with medicines and things to
take to Bogota where that big mess was
last, last week.
And it was either in Bogota or when
they got to Miami.
But the little fellow saw his daddy and
mummy sit down, I think, how old was
he, two?
Two years old.
Pretty smart.
Of course you'd expect that, but anyhow.
Excuse me.
He saw his folks put their things down
and he sat down and he dodged away.
And suddenly, hey, what's his name?
Andy, Andy J, Andy Jason, what a title.
Andy Jason Ravenhill, what a name.
Anyhow, the little guy ran away so Paul
set off this way and the little fellow
ran that way and Paul nearly got him
and he slipped past him and went somewhere
else and Paul was going round some people
and the little fellow ran back to his
mother.
He said, mummy, daddy's bothering me.
I thought, well, isn't that like us, you
know, when the Lord starts coming in here,
Lord, you're bothering me.
I mean, everything isn't going as smooth, you
suddenly stop me, you're bothering me.
And he says, all I'm doing is your
dross to consume and your gold to refine.
Aren't you glad you can't choose your own
way?
There's a hymn that says, I cannot choose
my lot, I would not if I might.
And I say, I'd rather walk in the
dark with God than walk alone in the
light.
I'd rather walk by faith with him than
go alone by sight.
It's lovely, I sang it for years, didn't
know a thing it meant.
But boy, when I tell you what, I
put my tongue in my cheeks sometimes, in
fact, I don't sing it sometimes.
We sing such vast things to God.
Supposing God gave you the next five years,
you could walk in darkness or light, come
on, which would you choose?
In the next five years you can lose
your dearest friends.
But I reveal, would you choose him, would
I choose him?
I could do it, I have a lot
of friends, a lot, not all, by a
long way.
One or two who are as precious as
life to me.
You see, God is not working everything to
the way of my thinking.
You know, if you can unveil eternity and
see the rewards that are going to be
given out for this very commonplace day, as
I said to somebody, I think it was
yesterday, the day before, something of this effect.
I wonder how much God has enjoyed this
day.
How much has he enjoyed in my life,
in my conversation?
Jesus died to everything.
An old hymn says, He was poor to
give me treasure.
He was slave to make me king.
He was hated, not Gabriel, not Michael, not
an angel, the Son of God was hated
without measure.
I woke up in the last night, or
the night before, and that verse hit me
so hard, I haven't written down the word,
I guess.
It pleased the Lord to bruise him.
What did God see in bruising his son?
I don't know.
But he was bruised almost from his infancy
until his death.
He was rejected, rejected.
Rejection is hard to take.
And yet Paul is in that place where
when everything collapses round about him, he's triumphant,
he says, In all these things I am
more than conqueror.
So Satan invents some new hellish thing if
you like.
But now the tribulation or distress or famine
or tribulation is external.
Distress is internal.
Famine is physical.
Work all those things out.
They're not just one kind of big mess.
And if you can get through that chapter
and say triumphant, I want to live there.
I want to be there.
Now when I say to people, you know,
we're going to be as mature a billion
years inside of heaven as we are now.
I believe our maturity ends with death.
Not our revelation of God.
Why should God make me more spiritual after
I die than I am now?
I need that spirituality now.
I'm convinced that most people want minimum spirituality
with maximum blessings in eternity.
And it won't work.
I want Paul to tell you next week,
and I guess he will.
Some of you know, a few years ago,
about 15 years ago, a man by the
name of Tommy Hicks went down to Argentina.
He wasn't known.
God said go to Argentina.
He went.
He got crowds of 120,000 a night
without any publicity on TV or anything.
He would just put his hands up and
declare deliverance to people up on the street.
When they finished the meeting every night, they
took trucks all around the stadium.
People had taken off irons they had on
their legs or body braces and things.
And every night they took truckloads of things
out.
Tehran was the president then and he was
sick.
And Tommy Hicks went and prayed for him.
He had a skin disease and Tommy Hicks
prayed for him.
He got healed.
Why, I don't know.
God showed his mercy.
There's another man down there now.
He's been selling nuts and bolts until a
few months I think.
I'm not just sure.
But he's getting crowds.
Paul went down there.
It's a thousand miles.
I'd have gone to a thousand.
And one little period Irene had to go
see her mother who was very sick.
And she went to a meeting.
She said, the man hardly says it.
She said, the music, it was chaos.
It was loud and banging and the little
man comes on, he's no experience.
Every miracle in the New Testament has been
performed in that man's ministry.
No financial backing.
He just said, be healed.
And one of Irene's friends went home.
He'd had a lot of trouble with his
teeth.
Terrible cavities.
When he got home he said, they felt
different.
Every tooth was filled.
And the doctor doesn't know what they're filled
with.
He said, let me look in your mouth.
Ah, he said, my mouth is so he
could really see, really see his tonsils.
And he said, he shone a light and
he says, who engraved that cross on that
filling?
What, what filling?
Well, you know, you've got to think, yeah,
yeah, I can feel my tongue doesn't go
in.
But there's a cross engraved.
Somebody stamped a cross in.
Sure they did.
Gabriel did it.
Nobody engineered it down there.
And the little guy's going on getting crowds
of twenty, thirty thousand or whatever it is
a night.
But the amazing thing is, of course, he's
getting opposition, but the young people who have
been raised Catholics from being the height of
a duck, they're going and saying, well, this
God is different.
They're taking people, oh the doctor gives twelve
hours to live, and lay them there and
he speaks and they get up and walk
away.
I like what dear Irene said, she said,
well, let me know it's wonderful that God's
been there.
They've been working there twenty-two years, slaving,
praying, agonizing, fifteen years in, I'm going to
say San Antonio, Argentina.
And she said, isn't it wonderful when God
comes in like that?
They slave, Paul plants, not our Paul, yes
our Paul did some, God gives the increase.
I'm rejoicing in what God's doing.
And it's stirring in the country.
I had another very well-known man I
met this week, and he said, I've just
had a man in my office from Singapore,
and there's a man that's been out there
a few years with Team Challenge, and in
the last few years there's been a kind
of an explosion there, and they have fifty
-one outreaches out of that one Team Challenge
place.
And God's doing great things there.
Somebody else told me about a prayer meeting
that's awakened in that area.
Now I can build, paint the pictures back
as hell almost as to what's happening in
the world, and I believe time is running
away very rapidly on us, but God's working.
You see, we're not hungry enough for God,
we're not concerned enough for God.
This man told my friend, he said, you
know, I asked my people, the kind of
middle-class people there in the Philippines, in
the Singapore, he said, I declared a fast,
and would you believe it, forty days afterwards
some of them were saying, look, we've been
living for the last forty days on a
plate of rice and a couple of glasses
of water.
They mean business with God.
We're going to see God come down here.
You can't get that in America anywhere.
Maybe some of us will have to pioneer
in it.
You see, this man has a quenchless thirst
for souls.
Isn't going to let God alone, isn't going
to let the devil alone, isn't going to
let men alone.
I looked for my St. Paul and couldn't
find him.
I read some of F.
W.
H.
Myers' St. Paul.
If you ever see that, buy it.
It's worth anything you have to pay for
it.
But he says about Paul, then with a
rush, the intolerable craving shivers throughout me like
a thunder roll.
Oh to save these, to perish for their
saving.
See, this man is so determined, he'll drive
demons out of people.
He stands before a king, and here's a
king that can put him to death, and
he goes to work on the king like
that, he's not afraid of kings, he's not
afraid of demons, he's not afraid of men,
he's not afraid of principalities and powers.
I asked him in God's name, what would
happen if we had ten people like that
in the entire district?
He said, I'm not a bit concerned anymore,
I'm going to see God work.
I've got some men on my heart that
nearly crush me.
And a world-famous preacher mouth yesterday said,
Brother, I could die now, I'd be happy
to die.
I've lived a long life, I've lived eight
years over the allotted period, I've been faithful
as far as I know, but there's some
things I want.
I don't want a name, I don't want
fame.
I do not want to go to heaven
with American in this mess.
I don't want to go to heaven when
I can't see a breath of life, spiritual,
in a tiny district.
We say sometimes, you know, five minutes inside
of heaven, we'll all be amazed at how
little we've done for God, how little we've
seen, we'll be amazed how much we conceded
to the devil, because we weren't smart enough.
I'm not smart enough, I'm not alert enough.
If you don't have to pray for yourself,
pray for me.
I want to see an awakening.
Somebody talked to me today about prayer.
I said, well, God is talking to me
about bits of prayer I've never read.
He said, Raymond, you've written books, the world
has been blessed through your books, you ought
to go deeper.
I said, sure, I think you're as deep
as He was going to say you're as
deep as you can go.
I'm not.
There's another dimension, and I don't know much
about it.
I believe if we really love God with
all our heart, we'll hate the devil comparatively
as much as we love God.
I'm not concerned about a man's station in
life, his bank balance, or whether he owns
a bank, or whether he owns the best
car in the town, or what he's got.
The devil's having too much with his way,
and I'm determined to stand in his way
as much as I can anyhow.
And then when in Acts, Paul stands before
King Agrippa, one of the most cruel of
all the Agrippas, and he says to King
Agrippa, when he doubted with him, he said,
I wish you were as I am.
Isn't that a snubbing?
You're a king, you rule an empire, you
can command servants, you can command armies.
He said, I wish you were as I
am, except for these bonds.
There he is chained, and he's talking to
a man who's free, and yet the man
who's free is bound, and the man who's
bound is free.
He's talking to a man who thinks he's
on top of the world, and here's a
man who's on top of the world.
When I heard about this little man in
South America, he's unknown, and yet I thought
about that word of the apostle, when he
said, having nothing, and yet possessing all things.
It's difficult for God to get us to
the place where we have nothing and mean
it.
No confidence in the flesh, no confidence in
our knowledge, no confidence in our long experience,
which some of us happen to have.
I'm pretty mad at the devil tonight.
I'm pretty mad at myself, to tell you
the truth.
Not just here tonight, I'm pretty when we
leave.
Let's ask God to show us what is
the secret to a breakthrough in Tyler, because
he says, beginning at Jerusalem, I'd like to
live without sleep if I could, I'd like
to live with less food.
Tyler's dominion in every area of his body,
he can put his body under, his appetite,
whatever they are, whether it's eating, the Greeks
used to say, didn't they?
I'll eat by myself.
Paul is not going to do that.
If you know God, you'll soon know yourself.
He'll show you the weakness, he'll show you
the failure, he'll show you the obstructions.
So he's praying, he's saying, I'm going to
travel.
He traveled once and they were born, but
now he's traveling again, not that they'll be
born again, but instead of them being born
into Christ, they'll be, Christ will be born
in them.
Does he say, first of all, I in
them, and thou in me.
Then he says, if you abide in me,
first of all, and then my words abide
in you.
You know, that's the union every one of
us ought to want more than anything in
life.
You know, some people say, I come down
to a heavy job with you on Friday
nights.
Well, I'm sorry, and yet I'm not sorry.
I'd like to think I'd like to teach
you, I would like to have heard at
your age, I would like to have somebody
who taught me this, not that it's the
best teaching in the world, but it's not
the worst either.
But I'd like to have sat in a
chair and somebody taught me, but I couldn't
find anybody.
You see, there's such a complacency, there's such
a satisfaction.
We, the Church of Jesus Christ will not
move.
You won't move until you get persecution in
your life, and it will come from a
source you never expect.
It will hurt.
But this man didn't care.
They whip him, they lash him, he's 195
lashes, a night and a day in the
deep, 36 hours, clinging onto a piece of
wood, in wilderness, in fastings, in perils of
mine own countrymen, in perils of robbers, in
perils of...
stack it all up.
And at the bottom line, he says, I'm
more than conqueror.
You think the devil didn't get a headache
over this fellow?
I think he did.
As I've told you before, I've told you
I've run ambition, that's to be known in
hell.
It doesn't mean I have to run around
the country doing signs and wonders and getting
10,000 people.
I want to damage the devil's kingdom out
of my own bedroom when I pray out
of my office.
I've told you before, I say again, I
think that the Church today is an embarrassment
to Jesus Christ.
He didn't die for a Church that's moving
like a snail.
He didn't die for people who want to
be holy on the cross.
Sunday and Carmel on Monday.
They want the approbation of men and women
and don't care too much about God.
I like people.
Sure I do.
At one time I was concerned that people
liked me.
But that popularity thing passed.
I want to live as near as I
can to God.
He was a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief.
Do we want to live less than that?
Do we want spiritual blessing and not spiritual
travail?
As I cook with the preachers often there
are more travelling preachers than travailing preachers.
That's pretty obvious.
I'm going to suggest one thing only tonight
to pray about.
Dear Brother Spencer here has been on my
mind night and day for weeks.
And as most of you know he's the
fellow with that nice white sweater whatever it
is there.
Are you full blooded Indian Spencer?
Yes.
What tribe?
Cairo.
Well you heard that.
And yeah pray for Spencer.
I want us tonight to really pray there
will be a breakthrough amongst the Indians.
There are two million Indians in America.
Why is it so exciting to go to
the Amazons with the Indians?
What about the Indians in our doorstep?
Many of the Indians up there are better
off than the fellows around here.
All we've done with Indians is introduce them
to the white man's sins.
How to drink.
How to be lustful.
Well they've got a few benefits but not
what they should have.
And there are two million of them now
without God and without hope in this country.
I don't know how many in Canada.
I know somebody a friend of mine went
to Western Canada and he said that when
he got to the Indian settlements there you
would think it was a hundred years back.
And most of them were staggering around drunken.
The biggest drunkard in the whole shebang was
a Catholic priest.
There's such wildness that sometimes the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police don't go in.
I think they're set in one section.
They haven't been in for six months.
I hope you have a good Thanksgiving.
I thank God for many things yesterday.
Not just for meals.
Not just for the country.
But for other things.
I don't know how long they're going to
be ours.
You see unless Christ is formed in me
I can't pray like Christ.
I can't think like Christ.
I can't have the love of Christ.
I can't have the peace of Christ.
I can't have the union with the Father
that he had unless he's formed in me.
The very nature of Christ himself doesn't Wesley
say in one of his hymns, Thy nature
gracious Lord impart.
Come quickly from above.
Write thy new name upon my heart.
Thy new best name of love.
If I get near to God he's going
to put blessings on me.
And he's going to put burdens on me.
Because his first invitation was, My yoke is
easy and my burden is light.
And he'll put burdens on us that we'll
curse us.
The only way out is to go to
him.
In brokenness, in humiliation.
I'm going to ask you to sing a
verse before we pray.
We haven't sung this often but it's very
beautiful.
Don't sing it if you don't mean it.
It's a very, very testy kind of hymn.