Now, this morning again, I want to talk
on deeper life, what it is, and how
we may enter into it.
And this will be the fourth in a
series.
And I have for a kind of text
the first two verses of the sixth chapter
of Hebrews.
Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of
Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not
laying again the foundation of repentance from dead
works and of faith toward God, of the
doctrine of baptisms and the laying on of
hands and the resurrection of the dead and
of eternal judgment.
That excitation, let us go on unto perfection.
Now, I have wanted to and have been,
wanted to talk and have been talking about
the deeper life, but I find that the
expression is used to cover almost anything and
everything.
And I want it to be understood that
by the words I do not mean a
life deeper than the scripture indicates.
I have said many times and repeat that
I do not want anything that cannot be
found within the framework of the revelation, the
Christian revelation.
I do not want anything that's added.
I don't need it.
I do not want it.
I'm not interested in it.
That is why I never buy books nor
go listen to lectures on how to wake
up your solar plexus and tune in to
the cosmic process.
All that is extra-scriptural, and any of
it that's good is found in the word
of God, and any that isn't in the
word of God isn't good.
So I let those fellows talk to people
who don't know the word, and I stay
by their word.
I have said in conversations with people, in
private conversations, that I am a Bible Christian,
and that if an archangel with wings spread
as broad as a constellation were to come
and, shining like the sun, offer me some
new truth, I'd ask him for a reference.
And if he couldn't give it to me
and couldn't show me where it's found in
the Bible, I would bow him out and
say, I'm awfully sorry, I don't bring any
references with you.
So what I'm talking about is not a
life deeper than the scriptures indicate, but merely
one that is in fact what it professes
to be in name.
Now, a Christian isn't one who has been
baptized, necessarily, though a Christian is likely to
be baptized.
A Christian is not one who receives the
communion, either one or both, of the elements.
A Christian may receive communion, and if he's
been properly taught, will.
But that is not a Christian, necessarily.
A Christian is not one who has been
born into a Christian home, though the chances
are more likely that he will be a
Christian if he has a good Christian background.
A Christian is not one who has memorized
the New Testament, or who is a great
lover of Christian songs, or who goes to
hear the Apollo Club sing the Messiah every
year.
Now, a Christian may do all of those
things, and I think it might be fine
if he did.
But that doesn't make a Christian.
A Christian is one who sustains a right
relation to Jesus Christ.
Now, we enjoy, Christians enjoy, a kind of
union with Jesus Christ, a right kind of
union.
Everybody sustains some relationship to Jesus Christ.
Just the same as everybody in America sustains
some relation to Bulganin and Khrushchev.
We all sustain some relation.
My personal relation is one of active hostility,
so far as it can be within the
framework of Christian possibility.
We can't hate people, but we can hate
everything they stand for, and I want to
know that I do, for those two bald
-headed gentlemen.
But everybody has a relationship to everybody else,
and everybody has a relation to Jesus Christ.
It's either a relation he sustains, it may
be one of adoring faith and love, it
may be one of admiration, it may be
one of hostility, it may be one of
complete carelessness, but it's an attitude of some
sort.
A relationship of some sort exists between every
human being and Jesus Christ.
That is, every human being that ever heard
of Jesus Christ.
But a Christian is one who sustains a
right and proper relation to Jesus Christ, a
biblical relation to Christ, one that is right.
And that Christian sustains two kinds of relationship,
or rather, the union is two kinds.
It's judicial and vital.
I'll explain those two words.
In Romans, the fifth chapter, we have the
judicial relationship everybody sustains toward Christ.
Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace
with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by
whom we have access by faith into this
grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope
of the glory of God.
Then in the book of Ephesians, the first
chapter, that very oft-quoted passage, he has
blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places in Christ, according as he hath chosen
us in him before the foundation of the
world, and so on.
Now, I only quote those not to give
them exposition, but only to point up the
fact that we sustain toward God in Christ
a certain judicial relationship.
Just as your son in the home has
toward you a certain legal, judicial relationship, being
born into your family of your wife, you
have legal obligations.
And you can get in trouble with the
law if you deny them.
The law recognizes a certain right, the courts
recognize that right, a relationship that is there
between you and your son.
It is not only the relationship of father
to son biologically, it is a judicial relationship.
You are accountable before the law not to
neglect him, abuse him, starve him, or run
away and leave him.
You've got to look after him as your
son.
Now, there is a relationship which we sustain
toward God in Christ.
It is the relationship of son, children, to
the father.
We are children of God.
There are so many verses that deal with
that that I don't need to quote any
one of them.
You as Bible students know that.
Then there is a vital relationship which is
another matter altogether.
It is possible for a man to adopt
a son.
The husband and wife have no children.
And after a lot of waiting around, they
decide that they are going to adopt a
boy.
So they adopt that boy.
Now, under law, he has exactly the same
relationship to that man as if he were
his own son.
As the legal father before the law, he
has the judicial relationship that makes him responsible
for the care of that boy.
He is responsible to feed and educate and
bring up and shelter and care for that
boy until he comes of a certain age.
So that the relationship is judicial, that of
father and son.
But he has no vital relationship with that
boy.
He did not come from the long age
old life stream of that father.
He came from some other life stream and
was adopted into the family.
So, he has a judicial but not a
vital relationship to that son.
But a Christian has a vital relationship to
God and to Christ.
He said, as I shall show tonight again,
I am the vine and he are the
branches.
And the branch is a branch because it
sustains a vital relationship.
The life of the vine is in the
branch and the life of the branch comes
from the vine.
And the two are united.
That is a vital relationship.
So that a Christian is one who has
been judicially, legally, made a brother of Jesus
Christ and a child of God.
But he is more than that.
He is one who has been vitally united
to Jesus Christ by the power and motions
of life so that he is vitally, livingly
related to Jesus Christ.
Now, that's where we begin, and my brothers
and sisters, that's where almost everybody ends in
our circle.
That's where almost everybody ends.
And so Bible schools and Bible conferences and
books and printing houses and all are dedicated
to the constant repetition of the fact that
we are judicially and vitally related to Christ
in salvation.
And that's as far as we go.
But there are other relationships which we can
also bear toward Christ, and that's what the
writer meant in the Hebrews when he said,
Let us go on unto perfection.
And that's what it was meant in the
1 Corinthians 3, when the man of God
told them that they were carnal and that
they ought to move on out of that
carnal state into a spiritual state.
There are at least three other relationships that
everybody ought to bear toward Jesus Christ.
Not only the one that you entered into
when you believed on Christ and were born
again judicially, and not only the volitional one
which you entered when you were born again,
for that's how you entered, but there are
three others, volitional, intellectual, and emotional.
And I want to talk about these relationships,
this kind of union with Christ.
Now, I say that our union is judicial
and vital.
It's that by virtue of our faith in
Christ.
But there is a volitional relationship, too.
And what do I mean by that?
Well, it's not as bad as it sounds.
I know we preachers have a way of
making things awful, and then it takes ten
minutes to get the people's minds back again.
By volitional, I mean that relationship of our
will to God, so that every known will
of God should be mine, every known will
of God, everything that God wills, I should
will, so that I will not only be
judicially, legally related to him, not only vitally
related to him in life, but that I
will in my mind, in my volitional life,
be united to him by doing and knowing
and willing exactly as he does.
Now, that's what I mean by let us
go on.
Most Christians do not go on to make
all the will of God their will.
They sing very tenderly, that rather lugubrious and
pretty little ditty, O sweet will of God,
still bind me closer.
I like that, too, don't get me wrong.
I like to hear it once every year
or so.
But, O will of God, still bind me
closer.
We can sing that and have moist eyes
and yet be selfish and self-willed and
not make the will of God our own.
The will of God must be known and
then must be adopted as my will.
And then I begin to sustain a relationship
of will, a volitional relationship toward Jesus Christ.
How do I know the will of God?
By listening to stories told by preachers?
No.
How do I know the will of God?
I know by prayer, by the Bible study
and by experience.
I go to the scriptures and I read
it regularly.
And I go to prayer and I ask
God for grace to help me to understand
it.
You know that song, Break Thou the Bread
of Life?
We have it in three stanzas in our
book.
But I read it in the Baptist hymn
book this morning.
I had it propped up while I was
eating my gruel and looking at it.
And I find there's another verse in there.
I do not recall the verbatim wording of
it, but that third or fourth stanza of
that hymn prays that the Holy Ghost might
enlighten the Word so we can understand it.
That's the part we don't sing.
I don't think there was any sinister in
that.
They just had to make room so they
chopped verses.
Or stanzas, and they chopped that one.
Well, my brethren, I believe that the writer
Break Thou the Bread of Life knew what
she was writing about when she said, Give
thou the Spirit, Lord, dear Lord, to me,
that the Lord might give the Holy Ghost
as a light upon the scriptures.
So if we pray and have the Spirit
of God give us illumination, and we read
the Word of God with avidity and relish,
and then we watch our spiritual experiences, they'll
soon begin to crystallize within us a will
that is God's will.
I wonder if that's what Jesus meant when
he said, But ye have the mind of
Christ.
There is a mind.
There is an infinite number of attitudes and
relationships within the heart.
And these are all wrong to start with.
And they don't all get corrected when we
get converted, either.
And they don't all get corrected after we've
been to Bible school.
They get corrected only by working on them,
by prayer, by study, by spiritual experience, by
the illumination of the Holy Ghost, whose attitudes
begin to become spiritual instead of carnal.
They begin to get right, straightened out.
Then there is a second relationship that I
would mention to go on to, and that
is an intellectual relationship to Jesus Christ.
Now, of course, there is a sense in
which the volition and the intellectual come as
soon as we're converted, but there is another
one, a sense in which they do not,
but wait development and growth.
So by the intellectual, I mean that we
should have, that we should think the way
Jesus Christ thinks, that we should think scripturally,
that we should see things the way the
Lord Jesus sees them, that we should learn
to feel the way the Lord Jesus feels
about anything or anybody, that we should love
what he loves and hate what he hates.
Now, some of your hackles will get up
here and you will say, Mr. Tozer, do
you think God hates anything?
Sure, I do.
He says so.
Now, I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity.
Therefore, though God thy God hath anointed thee
with the oil of gladness above thy pellets,
it is a psychological impossibility to love anything
without hating its opposite.
If I love holiness, I hate sin.
If I love truth, I hate lies.
If I love honesty, I hate dishonesty.
If I love purity, I hate filth.
Can't help that.
Don't think that's bad.
Hate is only bad when it's aimed against
people, made in the image of God, or
when it springs out of some unworthy or
low-motive like jealousy or envy or anger.
But we should learn to hate what Jesus
hates.
And I'm sure that if we had the
mind of Christ intellectually, so that we judged
things the way he judges them, that there
would be less need for preaching separation from
the world than there is today among the
Christians.
Talking about getting the mind of Christ and
having the intellect sanctified, I would talk again
about two men.
I think I gave this either on the
air or here at the church within recent
months.
But you can open a window any time
to get light, and this is a window,
an illustration.
They tell me that there were in England
two men, both of them, of course, Englishmen,
Keats and Milton.
In my earlier Christian life, I read them
a great deal.
Then I got away from Keats.
I still admire him very greatly for the
marvelous music of his poetry, but there's nothing
of God in it, nothing of Christ.
So I don't find it very helpful anymore.
Milton, of course, will be all right.
I think we'll read Milton in heaven.
But here's what the critics said about these
two men.
They said Keats was an Englishman born of
English stock, reared in England, and I think
never left England, and died when he was
in his twenties, an Englishman of the Englishmen.
But that Keats had read Greek literature so
much that he had developed a Greek mind,
and that his mind was not an English
mind.
It had nothing of the restrictions and strengths
and weaknesses of the British mind at all.
It was a Greek mind.
He thought like the Greeks.
Then they said of Milton, Milton was an
Englishman born English of the English, lived in
England all his life for perhaps a few
trips abroad, but not many.
He lived and died in England and is
one of the second of all the great
English poets.
Yet they said Milton read the Bible so
much, memorized it so much, and lived in
it so much that he was a Hebrew
in his heart, and that Milton had a
Bible mind and that it got into everything
he wrote.
He couldn't knock off a common sonnet, the
fourteen lines, but what somewhere in it would
be the lilting rhythm of the Hebrew melody.
Older New Testament.
Because I understand the New Testament was written
in Greek, I also understand that it's Hebrew
in its thought pattern.
Now, there we have two minds, both of
them English, living in the same country and
eating the same kind of food and seeing
the same scenery and having the same kind
of basic education, and yet one of them
became a Greek in everything but nationality because
he loved Greeks so much.
The other became Hebrew, Bible, rather than Hebrew
because he loved the Bible so much.
That's what I mean.
That illustrates it at any rate.
You can have a Christian mind, a Bible
mind.
You can be Bible-minded in the sense
that it is not George Washington or even
Abraham Lincoln, incidentally, we bow to the fact
he was born in this state, nor Benjamin
Franklin or any of the rest of them,
not Longfellow, nor Whittier, nor Byron, certainly not
Whitman, but the New Testament.
Even though you're an American, you're a New
Testament, you have a New Testament mind.
I believe that that's what the Holy Ghost
wants to do for us.
I believe that he wants our intellectual relationship
to Jesus Christ to become so close, so
intimate, so all-embracing, that we'll think, as
Jesus thought, I say, and love as he
loved, and hate what he hated, and value
what he valued, and have the mind of
Christ in us.
And that doesn't come by believing on Jesus
Christ, buying a Schofield Bible, and singing choruses.
Brother, you've got to go beyond.
Let us go on.
Those things are all basically sound and right,
and good, and I have no objection.
Stick by your Schofield Bible.
It's good.
And it did in the early part of
this century wonderful yeoman service in helping us
stand against liberalism and modernism.
But it has its limitations.
Its limitations consist of an excessive emphasis upon
the judicial relationship to Jesus Christ, and very
little about going on under perfection.
But that's the same criticism that I bring
against most of evangelicalism today.
So I say, there's a volitional and an
intellectual relationship to Jesus Christ, which we Christians
should go on to cultivate.
Then thirdly, there's an emotional relationship, that is,
a love attachment to Christ.
Do you love the Lord Jesus Christ really?
Do you really love him now?
Now, I know we sing that we do,
and we sing things that aren't very true
sometimes.
Do you really love Christ?
A half-comical answer given to Moody one
time, when he inquired of a man on
the street, do you love Jesus?
He answered, I have nothing against him.
And I think that is about as far
as a lot of people go.
We have nothing against Jesus.
But to say we love him, ask the
young mother with a three-month-old baby,
just maybe howling with its first little tooth,
and able to smile all over its face
when it looks up at its parents.
Ask the mother, do you love your baby?
You know what'll happen.
She'll break out, and every inch of her
face will wrinkle up into a smile.
Do you love your baby?
Sure.
Ask the sick, weary boy sitting in a
foxhole somewhere, cold and hungry and tired and
weary of life, do you love your country?
He won't give you any cynical answer like
some of our present politicians.
I think he'll break down and say, oh,
my God, if I only could go back
home.
Could I tell you again of our alliance
missionary who'd been in China a long, long
time.
And his name was Jacobson.
He's retired now.
But he'd been in China, oh, I don't
know how long, years ago.
And there, while in China, children were born
to them.
Then they just were sent home.
They came home by way of the west
coast to San Francisco.
And at every port of call, the children
would say, is this America, Daddy, is this
America?
No, he'd say, this isn't America.
This isn't America.
And after three or four such disappointing incidents,
he said, instead of son, the boat came
in to the harbor of San Francisco.
And there they saw the golden gate.
Some of you have seen the golden gates
of San Francisco.
And he said, way there was the shoreline
and two peaks with the sun shining down
bright on them.
He stood on the deck and looked, and
the little children said, Daddy, is this America?
He said, suddenly, he went all to pieces.
And let himself go in a welter of
homesickness and patriotism and love and memories and
said, through his sobs, yes, yes, children, this
is America.
He didn't know how much he loved her.
He didn't know how dear her rocks and
rills, her woods and temple hills had been
to his American heart until he'd been shut
away there so long and his first sight
of his homeland broke him all up so
he cried like a child that he was
for a moment.
Ask that man, do you love America?
He'll grin at you sheepishly and tell you
that story.
Yes, he loves America.
Do you love Jesus, really?
Well, I think it's possible to be a
Christian, that is, to have faith in his
power and his work and his atonement.
I think it's possible even to have a
vital relation to him in the new birth
and yet not have cultivated his fellowship to
a point where we love him very much.
We're not done yet.
We're not finished until the love attachment to
Christ has become so strong that it burns
and glows and consumes.
When I read the writings of the old
mystics and the old devotional writings and hymn
writers of the Middle Ages and later, I
get sick in my heart and I tell
God, I tell him, I tell him, God,
I'm sorry, I apologize, and I'm ashamed.
I don't love thee the way these love
thee.
Read the writings, read the letters of Samuel
Rutherford.
If you haven't, you should.
Read those letters and then see how sick
it will make you.
If you pull that book shut and get
down on your knees very lightly and say,
Lord Jesus, do I love thee at all?
Consider him.
If this was love, then what have I?
What have I got?
No, there should be an emotional relationship to
Jesus Christ, a relationship of love.
Thou hast left thy first love, said the
Lord Jesus, and maybe that's what it means,
that you've allowed things to cool you off.
So like the young husband who really loves
his bride, but he's so busy making a
living for her that he neglects her.
And I wonder if Jesus might not have
had something like that in mind.
You're busy for me, you're dashing here and
there in my service, but oh, you've left
your first love.
Now, right here I ought to break this
off, but I won't, because I'll not be
preaching next Sunday here.
Now, what is this Christian, then, who has
gone on until he sustains toward our Lord
a right, a scriptural, a spirit-inspired, volitional
and intellectual and emotional attitude toward the Savior?
Well, he is one who has been freed
from earthly loves and fears.
I want you to put that down.
He is one who has been released from
earthly loves and fears.
What do I mean by earthly love?
I mean any love out of the will
of God, any love that we would not
allow God to take away.
If you have anything in this world, or
any body in this world, that you would
not let God take away from you, then
you don't love him as you should, and
you don't know anything about the deeper life
and experience.
For the deeper, spirit-filled Christian life means
that I am delivered from earthly loves to
a point where there is no love that
I would not allow Jesus Christ to take
away, be it money, be it reputation, be
it my home, be it my friends, be
it my family, whatever it may be.
There is nothing.
The love of Jesus Christ has come in
and swallowed up all other loves and sanctified
them, purified them, made them holy, and put
them in their right relationship to that all
-consuming love of God so that they are
secondary and never primary.
If there is anything, now think with me
a little bit.
You believe you will attend the Alliance Church,
and you believe you know something about the
deeper things of God.
I want to ask you this question.
Is there anything or body on earth that
you love so much that you would fight
God if God wanted to take it?
Then you are not where you should be,
and we might as well face up to
it and not pretend to be something we
are not.
Complete freedom means that I want the will
of God only, and if it is the
will of God for me to have these
things, then I love them for his sake.
But I love them with a tentative and
relative love, not with an all-poured-out
love that binds me as slave.
It means that I love nothing outside the
will of God, and that I love only
what and who he wills that I should
love.
And you can love everybody.
I think Paul loved Timothy and Silas and
Titus and the rest of them with a
love that glowed like a furnace.
But he didn't love them to a point
where he couldn't separate from them or where
he would fight God for them.
No.
He only loved them in the margin of
his heart.
He loved God at the center, and he
loved them for God's dear sake.
This is Christianity.
You say, You mean to tell me that
I am not to love my baby?
No.
I mean to tell you that you are
to love God so much that you love
your baby in its right context.
You mean to say I am not to
love my husband?
No.
You are to love him, but you are
to love him in right context, in right
relationship.
There was a lady once who lay, a
very intelligent, brilliant woman, and a writer of
notes.
She lay beside her baby.
The baby was very sick.
She was trying to get a little sleep
and trying to care for and nurse the
baby, too.
And the little thing was suffering.
It had a high fever and was really
suffering, and she knew it.
She said she watched that little suffering face
and after having done everything she could do
to assuage its pains and sufferings, she turned
away to think it over.
She said, When I turned away, I saw
the strain and the pain and the flesh
on the baby's face and the two bright
eyes, and I knew that baby was suffering.
And she said, I turned and said, God,
I am through with you.
You let my baby suffer like that.
I am through.
I can't love a God who let my
baby suffer.
And she went out to become a rationalist,
an unbeliever.
Well, she was a poor fool and she
didn't understand.
And unless she changed her mind, I don't
think she did.
She knows more now than she did then,
for that's been a century ago.
What happened there, just this happened there, she
loved her baby more than she loved the
God who created her.
And if the God who created her would
let her baby run a fever, she'd have
nothing to do with it.
That kind of love isn't love.
That's supreme selfishness.
It's the extension of her personality, the projection
of her personality into that baby in its
sheer, pure selfishness.
My old mother-in-law had a baby
that died and she was going through fire
and water and blood and tears and toil,
I tell you.
And coming through to a wonderful spiritual experience,
she had to sit up in bed, weak
and weary as she was, and make the
baby's coffin.
The husband made it out of wood.
She made, not silk, but whatever she could
get ahold of to line it.
So great was the, not poverty maybe, but
at least they weren't rich.
And when the funeral was held, she stood
by the grave with the rest.
And when everybody was expecting her to break
down, she said, Shall we sing together?
And she led off in the doxology.
Some people went away and said, Mrs. Fouts
is insane.
Others went away with moist eyes and said,
There's faith and love.
There's faith and love that can give her
newborn to their grave and sing praise, and
praise God for whom all blessings flow beside
that grave.
If you love anything enough that there's any
question about whether God can have it or
not, you know nothing about the deeper life.
You're a slave.
You're a slave to that love, whatever it
is.
If we've been freed from every earthly love,
then we have no unsatisfied longings, and we
have no wishes and no dreams.
I never used the word wish, never.
Years ago I quit it.
And if it ever breaks out in my
speech or preaching, it's only a colloquialism.
I never mean it.
Wish is something I never use.
If God wants me to have it, I'll
pray for it.
And if he doesn't want me to have
it, I don't want it.
Now, earthly fears.
The Christian who goes on gets freed from
earthly fears.
I was thinking of this the other day.
I still think a little at times.
And I was thinking, you know, those two
chains bind the whole human race, loves and
fears.
We love something and can't get it, or
we love something and we're afraid we're going
to lose it.
So we're bound with that chain.
Or we're afraid we'll get something we don't
want.
We're afraid we'll lose something we have.
We're bound with that chain.
Fear and love binds humanity in two golden
chains.
And the gospel of Jesus Christ never is
finished until it goes on to set us
free from loves and fears.
We'll love our family more than we ever
loved them before, we'll love our country with
cheerful devotion.
We'll love every good thing there is in
the world, but we'll love it in its
right context, and we'll love it for Jesus'
sake.
And we'll love it and hold it this
way so we can let go of it
any second for the Lord's sake.
That's to be free from earthly loves.
Free from earthly fears means that I choose
the will of God now and forever.
It's my treasure.
It's my whole beatitude.
And the only fear I have is to
fear to get out of the will of
God.
And that won't bother me any.
It won't bother me.
Outside of the will of God, there's nothing
I want.
In the will of God, there's nothing I
fear.
For God has sworn to keep me in
his will.
If I'm out of his will, that's another
matter.
But if I'm in his will, he's sworn
to keep me.
And he's able to do it, he's wise
enough to know how to do it, and
he's kind enough to want to do it.
So really, there's nothing to fear.
I get kidded around with my family and
friends, and Brother McAfee especially likes to do
it.
But I don't really think I'm afraid of
anything.
Somebody says, Eh, but you'll die of cancer.
Maybe so.
Going to have to hurry up, though, or
I'll die of old age first.
But I'm not too badly worried because a
man who dies of cancer in the will
of God, he isn't injured.
He's just dead.
He isn't injured.
You can't harm a man in the will
of God.
If old Socrates, a heathen stoic, could die
saying, No harm can come to a good
man in this world or the next.
If he could see it, a pagan, why
should I tremble and walk softly through this
world looking over my shoulder furtively?
Rather, should I, by the grace of God,
say, Lord, I believe at least as much
as a pagan.
I believe no harm can come to a
good man in this world or the next.
If I lose my job, well, you lose
your job then.
You won't lose your head.
But if I lose my head, well, if
you lose your head, you won't lose your
Savior.
You can't harm a good man.
So a man gets free from fear.
I pity the preacher that's afraid of his
congregation or afraid of his superiors and his
denomination.
Maybe I'm a little abnormal on that, but
I never, never knew up to now, so
help me God, one single twinge of fear
of my superiors.
And only rarely do I ever get self
-conscious before a congregation.
If there's somebody who really is a great
preacher present, and I know that my poor
little sermon will sound rather amateurish by comparison,
I feel, well, I like singing before John
Charles Combs.
I wouldn't want to do it.
And I sometimes don't care to preach before
great preachers, but I'm not afraid of them.
I'm just, what would you say, shy.
But nothing can harm you if you're in
the will of God.
So that if you'll do these two things,
let the love of God burn and burn
within you until it consumes everything, then you'll
never be a slave to any earthly yearning.
You'll have them and you'll have earthly loves
and you'll have people you love and care
for and would weep to part with.
Jesus wept beside the grave of his loved
friend Lazarus.
There's no harm in weeping when we must
say goodbye.
Our son Wendell said goodbye last evening, flying
throughout South America, flying out of this blizzard.
I didn't like it too well.
He was breezy.
Tried to pretend he didn't care.
You can have your own personal loving feelings,
but you're not a slave to them.
You're a boss of them.
And you can have your dislikes.
I'd run a mile to keep from having
a needle put in my arm.
A fellow came clear out the house one
time from somewhere around over the city.
I don't know where.
Somebody sent for him.
I don't know who.
McAfee, I guess.
He said, Come out and see me.
Well, he came out.
And he came up the terrace to my
room and sat down beside my bed.
It was a heart space.
And when he came in, he had this
huge rocket in his hand with a long
sucker affair.
And I saw it.
Brother, did I argue him down?
And he said, Now I'll give you this
and you'll sleep and you'll be all right.
It'll just be a sedative.
And I said, You won't give me that.
And he said, Well, if you're going to
make so much of it, probably you'll be
worse off if you took it.
So he said, Goodbye and left.
And I go, All right.
So I don't say that the deeper life,
the spiritual life, means that you won't be
normally human.
If the lightning strikes near you, you'll jump.
And if somebody comes at you with a
needle, you'll shrink.
You're human.
But that's one thing.
It's quite another thing to walk around chained
by human fears, chained by the fears of
death and the fear of sickness and the
fear of poverty and the fear of friends
and the fear of enemies.
God never means that his children should thus
be afraid.
Well, all that I've preached to you now
isn't a dream.
It isn't a misty ideal that nobody can
reach.
It's the normal Christian life.
And anything short of it is abnormal or
subnormal.
Shall we not obey God and go on
to perfection?
I believe you'll want to, or I wouldn't
be preaching to you.
May God grant that together we may press
on out into the deep waters, yea waters
to swim.