Well, good morning.
Did you pray for me before you came?
If you did, would you raise your hand?
Okay.
Some people prayed.
Thank you.
Just a word of advice, perhaps, here.
Don't ever go to any church meeting, any
Christian meeting, without first praying.
Because you know, you often get out of
it what you put into it.
And so, it's not like a circus where
you go to notice what's happening and then
walk home.
It's different.
And we need, as it says in 2
Corinthians chapter 1, you also helping by prayer.
By prayer.
That's a tremendous ministry, just a ministry of
prayer.
Remember Anna, she served God with fastings and
prayers night and day.
And she never even left the temple.
I don't know how she survived.
I guess she could get food and so
on in the temple.
But she never left the temple, apparently, for
years.
And, of course, people would criticize her for
that.
Now, yesterday, I must say, I apologize a
little bit.
I had some problem when I was preaching.
You see, I have a small upper plate.
And it kept coming down on me.
And I had a terrible time.
This has never happened to me before in
preaching.
So, I think I'm going to have to
add a new chapter to my book, you
know.
I'll read John chapter 16, and then we're
going to turn to Ephesians chapter 3.
John 16, 22.
He's talking to the disciples just before His
crucifixion.
And you now, therefore, have sorrow.
But I will see you again.
And your heart will rejoice.
And your joy no man can take from
you.
And in that day...
Now, he's talking about the day of His
resurrection.
You shall ask Me nothing.
In truth, in truth, I say to you,
whatever you ask the Father in My name,
He will give it you.
Up until now have you asked nothing in
My name.
Ask, and you shall receive that your joy
may be full.
These things I have spoken to you in
parables.
But the time is coming when I will
no more speak to you in parables.
But I will show you plainly of the
Father at that day.
You shall ask in My name.
Now, I do not say to you that
I will pray the Father for you.
For the Father Himself loves you.
Because you have loved Me and have believed
that I came out from God.
And in that day, remember, in that day
you shall ask Me nothing.
Whatever you ask the Father in My name,
He will give it to you.
Then in Ephesians chapter 3.
Just go back to Ephesians 2 for a
moment.
Verse 12, he's talking of us as Gentiles.
You see, there was a time, as he
says here, we were without Christ, being aliens
from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the
covenants of promise, having no hope, and without
God in the world.
That's how it was for Gentile people before
Christ came.
But now, in Christ Jesus, you who sometimes
were far off, are made near by the
blood of Christ.
For He is our peace, who has made
both, that is, both Jew and Gentile believing
in Christ, has made both one, and has
broken down the middle wall of partition between
us, having abolished in His flesh the enmity,
even the law of commandments, contained in ordinance
for to make in Himself of two one
new man, so making peace.
And that He might reconcile both unto God
in one body by the cross, having slain
the enmity thereby.
And came and preached peace to you who
are far off, Gentiles.
For through Him we both, Jew and Gentile,
have access to one Spirit by one Spirit
unto the Father.
Now, therefore, you are no more strangers and
foreigners, but fellow citizens of the saints and
of the household of God, and are built
upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone in
whom all the building, fitly framed together, Jew
and Gentile, that is, believing in Christ, grows
unto a holy temple in the Lord, in
whom you also are builded together for a
habitation, a dwelling place that is, through the
Spirit.
And Paul says in verse one of chapter
three, For this cause I, Paul, the prisoner
of Jesus Christ, for you Gentiles, and then
he digresses for thirteen verses and comes back
to it again, yet for this cause, in
verse fourteen.
For what cause?
For what God is doing by saving Jews
and Gentiles, making them into one body, a
place, a dwelling place, eternally for Himself.
For this cause I bow my knees, and
let's just stop there for a moment.
Is there some physical posture we should assume
when we preach, when we pray?
Not really.
Sometimes, some people might take it when it
says, Oh, come, let us worship and bow
down, let us kneel before the Lord our
Maker, that we should always kneel when we're
praying.
Well, sometimes when you get a lot of
arthritis, you can't kneel when you pray.
Anyway, I noted something.
Christ said, when you stand praying, oh, it's
okay to stand praying.
David went into a temple and sat before
the Lord and prayed.
It's okay to pray sitting, right?
Okay.
Jehoshaphat was in a chariot on a battlefield,
and he was surrounded by the enemy that
were going to kill him, and he cried
out to God.
So, okay to pray when you're driving your
car, right?
And Jonah, I'm sure, was horizontal when he
prayed in the fish's belly.
So, it's okay to pray in bed, okay?
For this cause, I bow my knees unto
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
To whom should we pray?
Well, we know there's no jealousy in the
Godhead, and we can pray to God the
Father, Christ the Son, the Holy Spirit.
If we can't, we'll have to get rid
of a lot of the hymns we sing.
However, I think, basically, we should be praying
to God the Father, as we saw in
John 17, praying to God.
He said, in that day you'll ask me
nothing, whatever you ask the Father in my
name.
And basically, I think, that's the way we
should pray.
Now, in some Christian circles, they pray always
to Jesus, to Christ Jesus.
And I don't think that's really right, in
spite of what I said a moment ago,
that there's no jealousy in the Godhead.
Paul here said, I bow my knees unto
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, I may be wrong here, but I
can't think of any place after Pentecost where
people prayed directly to Jesus Christ, except Stephen
when he was dying, and he cried, Lord
Jesus, receive my spirit.
And I think you'll agree, that's something different
again.
I bow my knees, of whom the whole
family in heaven and earth is named.
He'd been talking about that, remember, in chapter
2.
The whole family of God, Jews and Gentiles
together now.
The differences are gone in Christ.
We're no longer Jew nor Gentile, we're part
of the church of God.
We're believers in Christ.
And all those differences are gone.
And I don't agree too much with the
idea of having messianic fellowships for Jews alone,
where Jews meet by themselves as Christian believers.
I don't think that's really right.
That's not how it was back in the
early days.
We know that because of Antioch, when Paul
had to straighten Peter, the first pope, up.
The first pope was not infallible, you know.
And we know from what is said there
about the church at Antioch, that there were
Jews and Gentiles that were meeting and fellowshipping
together.
And I think that's the right thing.
The whole family.
God only has, God only has one family.
He doesn't have an Old Testament family and
a New Testament family.
He has one family.
This is not understood in some Christian circles.
It should be.
So Paul said, there is no difference between
the Jew and the Gentile.
No difference in the mind and eyes of
God.
You know, we're all the same.
There's none that seeks after God.
What?
Not even one?
No, not even one.
It started in the Garden of Eden.
Adam and Eve were not looking for God.
They were hiding from God.
We've all been hiding.
I hid from God for years.
And one day He found me.
I wasn't seeking God.
He was seeking me.
And He found me.
And I can't, when I think of the
way I felt shortly before I was converted,
I was in a meeting and a guy
preached the gospel.
I got so angry at him, I could
have spit at him.
I'm no kidding.
I was that, I hated what I heard,
you know.
I couldn't get out of there fast enough.
Now, a few days later, I'm on my
knees in the basement of our home in
Winnipeg, crying to God, took Him into my
heart.
How did that happen?
You know, people talk about free will.
They're talking about a will of the wisp.
It isn't really there.
Did you choose your parents?
No, you didn't choose your parents.
Did you choose the country you should be
born in?
No, you had nothing to do with that.
Did you choose the time in history when
you would be born?
No, you had nothing to do with that.
When you get talking about free will, people,
it operates in a very narrow sphere, I
think.
You can say amen if you want.
The whole family in heaven and earth.
And someday, you know, we're going to see
the results of His death on the cross.
Did you know this?
That God's going to sing to us?
And if God sings to us, it'll be
a trio?
Won't it?
It tells us that, you know.
The Lord thy God in the midst of
thee is mighty.
And it goes on to say He will
sing.
He'll sing.
And we'll be there.
There won't be any other soloists or singers
in that sense.
We'll all be singing together at times, I'm
sure.
But He's going to sing to us, and
I don't know what kind of a song
it'll be, but I imagine it'll be a
love song.
Because God so loved the world, and He'll
have all His family there with Him.
And it'll be a most glorious time, I
believe, of whom the whole family in heaven
and earth is named.
But He would grant you, and somebody put
it this way, if God doesn't do it,
it'll never get done.
And there's another verse that says, Whatsoever God
does, it shall be forever.
Nothing can be put to it, nor anything
taken from it.
And God does it that men should fear
before Him.
So we want to make sure that what
we're doing is what God is doing.
Workers, fellow workers with Him.
Letting Him be the Chief, the King.
And let me be the channel through which
He works.
That He would grant you according to the
riches of His glory.
I love to tell people, God never has
a problem.
God never finds something He can't handle.
The riches of His glory.
And if everybody prayed once in the entire
world, this would not bother God.
He'd have no problem with that.
His riches, it says here, the riches of
His glory, they are like Himself, infinite.
Infinite.
I heard of a place, a large city,
and there's a section in the city where
you could build a house, providing you were
a millionaire.
There was another area in the same city
where you could build a house, providing you
were a multimillionaire.
And then, there was an area in the
same city where you could build, providing you
were a billionaire.
And I thought to myself, what nonsense is
this?
You know, you couldn't buy an ice cream
cone in heaven with a billion dollar bill
because it's not current over there.
Our money is not current in heaven, you
know.
If a man with nothing at all prays,
God hears him.
The rich and the poor, the Bible says,
they meet together on the same level.
Don't ever forget that.
James had something to say about people who,
when strangers came in, if he's a nice
looking guy, well off, you give him a
good seat.
If he's poor, you tell him, well, stand
here under my stool, you know.
They were doing that.
They didn't know, apparently, that the rich and
the poor with God, they meet on exactly
the same level.
Your money doesn't make you more acceptable to
God, and it never can.
And one of Moody's meetings, they were in
a big hall, and people were gathering chairs,
the crowd was getting to be big, and
Moody was down there helping them put more
chairs up, and somebody came running and said,
Mr. Moody, Senator, I don't know what the
name was, Senator, let's say Smith.
Senator, Smith is here tonight.
Where is he?
And so he went over to him and
said, Mr. Smith, would you help me grab
some of these chairs and help us put
them out?
Yeah, people, we have to keep that in
mind.
We're so impressed, you know, by people that
have lots of money.
How eternal is money?
What is it?
What did God say to Abraham?
Fear not, Abraham, I am your shield, and
your exceeding great reward.
You don't have a nickel in the bank,
that's fine, you've got God.
He's our reward.
He's everything and all we'll ever need.
When my wife and I were married, there
were two things we promised God.
There were more than two, but there were
two.
We promised God, although we were on a
tiny salary of $30 a month, that was
64 years ago, we promised God we'd give
Him a tithe and offering, off the top,
always, no matter what.
And we've always done that, I can say,
by the grace of God.
The other thing was this.
We decided together, we promised, we would never,
ever let anybody know what our financial needs
were.
We would just let God know.
I didn't know this, and I don't know
where this phrase came from later on.
And it was this.
If God knows what the need is, then
whosoever needs to know.
So we've operated by that principle.
I'm not saying everybody should.
But we've operated from that principle ever since.
And it's been incredible at times the kind
of answers to prayer you get when you're
looking to God alone.
I'll not go further into that.
That He would grant you to be strengthened
with might, with power, by His Spirit in
the inner man.
And I'm sure we'd all love to have
this happen, to have Him strengthening us by
His Spirit in the inner man.
We all need that, to be stronger as
believers than we are.
And God listens to us as we pray
along these particular biblical lines.
He goes on further then with the same
thought in his heart, that Christ may dwell
in your hearts by faith.
I remember years ago, as a young Christian
reading this and staring at it, I thought
to myself, what in the world is he
talking about?
He's praying for Christians that they may come
to know what it means to have Christ
dwelling in their hearts by faith.
I thought, this doesn't make any sense, you
know.
I didn't know how to interpret it.
I didn't know what to do with it.
But I'd read something Moody said.
He said, I read the Bible the same
way that I eat fish.
If I come to a bone, I don't
stop eating fish.
I just lay the bones on the side
of my plate.
He said, that's how I read the Bible.
If I come to something I don't understand,
I put it to one side, ask God
to show me what it means, and somewhere
down the road, He's going to show me.
And here's what happened to me.
Kenneth Weiss, a well-known Greek scholar, did
a New Testament from the Greek.
And here's how he interpreted that part of
the Word of God.
That Christ may settle down and feel at
home in your hearts by faith.
I've traveled a lot.
I've sometimes been in a room in a
hotel or motel or something that was right
over the beer parlor.
And you know, Saturday night, when you'd like
it to be quiet for Sunday, there's a
big roar going on down below.
Guys arguing, pounding the table and all this
kind of stuff, you know.
Do you think I felt at home up
above?
I never felt at home.
I was in one place.
People, it was so evil.
All the walls were just clapboards.
You could hear what was going on in
this room and this room and this room,
you know.
And it was just a veritable Sodom.
And I prayed and I said, Lord God,
this is a Sodom and Gomorrah.
I think you ought to burn it down.
But make sure nobody gets hurt.
And a week later, it burned.
Now, nobody told the insurance company how I
prayed.
Or I might have been in trouble.
But that's how I felt.
It was just horrid, you know.
Christ cannot feel at home in a heart
this full of lust.
And sometimes even as Christian believers, we watch
some program perhaps on TV, and something lustful
comes.
You know how easy it is to get
it in?
You know how hard it is to get
rid of it?
It stays sometimes for days on end.
And maybe six months later, it comes back
to you again.
Or two years later.
Christ cannot feel at home in a heart.
It's got lust in it.
In Ecclesiastes 7, there's a verse that says,
The Lord has made man upright, but they
have sought out many inventions.
I looked up this word, invention.
And it means mental fabrications.
A fabrication is a lie.
A mental fabrication is something you do in
your mind.
You think that maybe you're having sex with
some person you're not married to.
That's a mental fabrication.
Or you're living in a $3 million house.
That's a mental fabrication.
God made man upright, but they have sought
out many of these mental fabrications.
It says about the world before the flood,
that every imagination of their heart was only
evil continually.
And then it says the earth was corrupt.
He meant morally corrupt.
The earth was corrupt.
And the earth was filled with violence.
And corruption, moral corruption, and violent people, they
go hand in hand.
And we see it today in your country,
in my country.
Moral corruption everywhere.
Violence everywhere.
Convening conferences, as they're doing in Canada now,
to find out why there's so much violence
against women.
But it's not just violence against women.
It's just plain, simple violence in society.
So, I might be thinking ill in my
mind against some other person.
Christ will not feel at home.
It isn't that he leaves, but he doesn't
feel at home in a situation like that.
And we may think of some person, have
bad thoughts about them.
Maybe they did something bad to us sometime
before.
And we can't shake this.
You can, but we don't.
Been thinking bad about this person.
It's a mental fabrication, you know.
It brings you into trouble with Christ.
He doesn't feel at home.
You're hoping maybe something will happen to some
person.
You can't do that.
Love one another fervently, being born again.
In 1 Peter chapter 1.
Seeing you have purified your souls and obeying
the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love
of the brethren, see that you love one
another with a pure heart fervently.
Then 1 Peter 4.8. Have fervent love
among yourselves, for love shall cover the multitude
of sins.
No matter what they've said.
No matter what they've done.
No matter what they fail to do.
You still have to love with a pure
heart fervently.
So that Christ may settle down and feel
at home in your heart.
You know, we waste hours sometimes just sitting,
thinking.
About what?
Well, sometimes just about nothing.
We should be thinking about our Savior and
His Word, His promises.
There are, listen carefully, 7,487 promises in
the Bible.
Did you know that?
Herbert Locke, he wrote a book on it.
He's got them all indexed in catalog.
I haven't counted them myself.
I didn't have to.
He did all that hard work.
7,487 promises.
Why do we live, dear people, at such
a low level?
When we have, oh, people say, oh yeah,
but wait a minute, Bill.
All those promises are not for us.
Many are for Israel.
Yes, okay.
Let's take a hold of that.
Let's cut it down to 2,000 promises.
So now you've got 2,000 promises.
Isn't that going to get you through?
How many more do you need?
Here's one.
Cast all your care on Him, for He
cares for you.
Isn't that enough almost by itself?
And that's only one?
And you've got 2,000?
People, listen.
You'll never run into a problem in life
that isn't covered somewhere in the Word of
God.
You just have to get to know it
well.
When I was first converted, I had an
advantage because it was the end of what
we called in Canada the dirty 30s, just
before the war.
And you couldn't buy a job.
And I couldn't get a job anywhere.
And so, I had just been converted.
I got into the Bible.
And I used to read 6 and 8
and 10 and sometimes 12 hours a day.
I never ever got any training in an
institution for the Bible, you know.
Just, I read the Bible a lot.
And so, I went on and on, and
I was so happy when I finally finished
the Bible, I started all over again.
And I came across this phrase in Mark's
gospel, have faith in God.
I don't know why it spoke to me
so strongly.
I wrote it at the top of every
page I read.
I just wrote it, have faith in God.
I had that Bible at home somewhere.
I had a great time.
Just, I didn't have any books.
Then somebody gave me a book on the
story of George Muir, the famous man of
faith and prayer.
And that got me going right.
I thought it was a faith thing.
It was a tremendous help to me.
Then George or Harry Ironside's book on holiness,
the false and the true.
Beyond those two, I didn't have books.
I had the Bible.
And people, to this hour, I try to
read, I try to study about 12, 14
chapters of the Bible every day.
And some days, it goes on, I just
can't quit.
I might go on to 24 or 30
chapters of the Bible.
I love it.
I thank God for it.
It speaks to my heart.
We need to know it better.
Most, you know, Muslim children, many of them,
by the time they're 10 years old, they
know the whole Quran off by heart.
The Quran is about the size of the
New Testament.
You know, as Christian believers, I often hear
people say things like this.
You know, I read the Bible an hour
every day.
I can't remember a word of what I
read.
Is that how it should be?
What did Christ say?
He said, the Holy Spirit will bring to
your mind the things which I have spoken
to you.
Ask the Holy Spirit to keep the things
of God in your mind.
He'll do that for you.
We need to remember so we can talk
to other people.
Because people often tell me this also.
The reason they don't witness is because they
don't know the Bible.
They don't know where to find these verses
in the Bible.
Well, brother, sister, you better find out.
You can't serve God well if you don't
know the Bible well.
But I started when I knew nothing about
it.
I had a bad start, a poor start.
But I got off, and God began to
touch people's lives.
So, anyway, that Christ may settle down and
feel at home in your hearts by faith.
And maybe right now, God is speaking to
some of your hearts.
There's things that should not be there.
And you need to ask His forgiveness and
pray for the Spirit of God to strengthen
you so that you'll not continue this kind
of a way of living.
All our thoughts, we're told in Psalm 139,
are known to God.
Keep that in mind, too.
Christ may dwell, may settle down, feel at
home.
And then He goes on to say that
you being rooted and grounded in love.
When we get a sinner converted, we usually
think in terms of getting him well grounded
in doctrine.
Well, it's important to get to know doctrine
well, yes.
But also, they need to be rooted and
grounded in the love of God.
See, Moody had great crusades.
They assumed, perhaps, a million people found Christ
as their Savior through His labors over the
years.
But then he began to hear stories from
pastors in areas where he'd been, where there'd
been hundreds or maybe thousands of people converted.
They were complaining about the problems they had
in their churches.
People squabbling and all this kind of thing.
It became so important to Moody, before he
died, speaking to a group of 400 pastors.
Among other things, he said this.
He said, brethren, hold the churches to love.
This is where we've gone wrong.
Above all things, the Bible says.
It says that twice.
It uses the phrase, above all things, have
love.
In Colossians 3 and 1 Peter 4, above
all things, love.
In one of our churches, we had a
fellow who was a mink rancher and a
Christian.
He knew his Bible pretty well, but he
loved to argue.
And he loved to get on to certain
doctrines and argue.
And he had a reputation, don't get involved
with John, he'll snow you under.
Had a lot of Bible verses and stuff,
you know.
He never witnessed for Christ, as far as
I know.
He was dead in that area.
But he came into the meetings we had
in Winnipeg, right after the meetings in Saskatoon.
And God was working powerfully.
God began to work on John.
And one night he phoned me and he
said, Brother Bill, he said, you know, the
Lord has torn me apart.
And I'm lying in pieces on the floor.
Do you think God could put me together
again?
Well, I knew what he meant.
He was under deep conviction.
And God was showing him these areas of
his life.
And he was fighting against God.
You fight against God, you can never win.
Well, he came forward in five different meetings.
The meetings went on for five weeks, it
turned out.
God did a great thing there.
Years later, we heard of about 30 people
that went into full-time service as a
result of those five weeks of meetings in
Winnipeg, Canada.
Anyway, one night, about the fourth week, he
came running up in the sharing time onto
the platform.
I can see him in my mind so
clearly right now, as he ran up the
stairs with a shining face.
And he got there, and here's what he
said.
Five trips to the altar later, and four
weeks later, I can now say, I am
wholly his.
And then he started witnessing.
God gave him a tremendous ministry in witnessing.
So much so that the church he attended,
they asked him to become director of evangelism,
and he did a tremendous job at that.
I was in that church a while ago,
and if I asked somebody, how did you
find Christ?
They'd point to John.
How did you find John?
John Sparks.
I heard this over and over again.
He never even tried before he met with
God.
But God took care of all this wicked
pride he had, you know, and got him
shriveled down to the size of a New
Testament Christian.
Things were so different, you know.
I should say this too, you know.
He loved to argue about predestination.
I believe in predestination as much as you
do.
But he didn't, it wasn't that.
He just loved to hit people with it,
you know, as hard as he could, and
knock them under the chair and everything, you
know.
He knew every verse dealing with this in
the Bible, but he just had it wrong,
that's all, you know.
We're to walk in love, we're told.
Walk in love.
The servant of the Lord must not strive,
but be gentle unto all men, apt to
teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose
themselves, if God perhaps will give them repentance
to the acknowledging of the truth.
So we have to be gentle when we're
talking with people, not try to beat them
on an argument.
Just present Christ and His loveliness and His
love.
That's what's needed.
That you, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be able to comprehend with all saints
what is the breadth and length and depth
and height.
He's talking here, I think, about the love
of God.
There's a verse in Job 11, I think
it is, it says something about who can
understand God.
He says it's higher than heaven, deeper than
hell, broader than the sea.
I think he was talking about the same
thing.
Possibly this is connected here.
He goes on to say, And to know
the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that
you might be filled with all the fullness
of God.
Some of you have read about Moody walking
down the street in Chicago one day, and
the Spirit of God came on him in
a new and powerful way.
He ran to a friend's house, asked for
a room where he could be alone for
some hours, and during those hours he was
immense in the love of God.
He said he thought at one point he
was going to die.
The experience was so overwhelming and powerful, and
he cried to God.
But you know, he said this afterwards, after
this had happened.
I preached the same sermons I had preached
before.
And whereas before ones and twos came to
Christ, now they came to Christ by the
thousands.
It was obvious a great work of the
Spirit of God and infilling, something he'd never
seen or known before.
He was called to do a specific work,
so he had a specific calling and mantle
of power given him.
J.B. Earle, that was something different.
He'd had many crusades in eastern Canada and
in the States, and then he gave up
on God.
Nothing was happening.
Preached sermon after sermon, nobody responded.
Nobody found Christ.
And finally, here's what he did.
He decided he was going to preach in
a harsh way, to get these people to
stir, you know.
So one of the barbers said, here's what
he did.
He filled his sermons with salt, saltpeter, cactus,
barbed wire, everything you could think of he
put in his sermons, and then he hurled
it at the people, you know, see.
And nothing happened.
He preached for nine nights in the church,
and nobody stirred.
So he took the last sermon he had
and reworked it, putting in more, you know,
broken concrete and stuff, everything you could think
of to hit these people over the head,
you know.
And you know what happened?
Nobody stirred.
So that night, J.B. Earle got alone
in his room, and he cried to God,
and he said, God, what's wrong with these
people?
And God said, nothing, but there's much wrong
with you.
Me?
Well, God, you know I cry when I
preach sometimes.
Yes, God said, it's water off an iceberg.
And J.B. Earle tells how he just
collapsed on the floor, and he spent hours
crying to God for mercy.
It would have been nice if we had
the prayer and we could listen to what
he said, but we don't know that, but
we know this.
After that night, before he died, 150,000
people found Christ as their Savior through his
labors.
He said, though, this one thing.
That night, he said, I was filled with
the love of Jesus Christ.
That's what he's talking about here.
To know the love of Christ, which passes
knowledge.
If we don't know the love of Christ,
we can't very well show love to other
people in the measure that we should.
I think I was telling some people here
one time, I don't know if I told
it from the pulpit, I don't think so,
but I was in a home, a bunch
of people there, and I'd gone out to
get a drink of water, and a lady
followed me out, and she filled a dipper
with water and threw it in my face.
Have you ever had that happen?
Anybody?
Now, if that had been my old days,
I'd have grabbed her and struck her head
under the tap and turned her down, you
know.
But I gave her a nice smile and
said, well, thanks for the water.
Do you think you'd find a towel?
She looked at me, went and got a
towel and threw it at me.
Then she said, I suppose you're wondering why
I didn't.
Yeah, I said, it's never happened before.
Well, she said, I wanted to hear what
you would say if I caught you off
your guard.
You see, she knew I'd worked in logging
camps, and she knew the kind, her husband
was a logger, too, and she knew the
kind of people who had to curse all
the time.
She really expected I wasn't going to give
her a cursing, but thank God, I just
gave her a smile, you know, because Christ
was in control.
It was just a pail of water and
the faith, what does that mean?
That's not forever, it's just for a few
minutes, so.
Anyway, to know the love of Christ, which
passes knowledge that you might be filled with
all the fullness of God.
And I'd like to say this, too.
There's no such thing, dear people, as being
filled with the Spirit of God if you're
not filled with the love of God.
Why do I say that?
I say that for this reason.
The Bible has a phrase, Romans 15, 30,
the love of the Spirit.
The love of the Spirit, then Colossians 1,
it says, your love in the Spirit.
And Romans 5, 5 says, that the love
of God is poured out in our hearts
by the Holy Spirit.
So if I'm filled with the Spirit, I
must be filled with the love of God.
And if I'm not, I'm not filled with
the Spirit.
It's as simple as that.
As you know, in many Christian circles, certain
things, if you speak in tongues, you're filled
with the Spirit.
In one of our meetings, you know, a
lady, at the end of the meeting, she
came down the aisle, dragging her husband by
the hand, you know, and he was a
very unwilling captive.
She got him to the front and she
says to me, here's a backslider, talk to
him.
And so he said to me, preacher, I'm
not ready for this.
She made me come.
If I hadn't come, she'd be drawing at
me for the rest of the day.
And he said, I'm not ready for this.
So I turned to her and said, are
you a Christian?
Absolutely.
Do you know what it means to be
filled?
Oh yes, filled with the Spirit.
She said, I speak in tongues 30 minutes
every day.
I said, I didn't ask you about speaking
in tongues, I asked you if you're filled
with the Spirit.
Oh, she said, it's the same thing.
I said, no, it's not the same thing.
You may have been taught that, but it's
not the same thing.
Oh.
I said, are you walking in love?
She had to be careful because he was
standing listening, you know.
Well, she said, sometimes.
Well, she said, I have a few little
problems.
I said, tell me about your little problems.
She said, I'm insanely jealous of my husband.
He was going like this.
And then she said, you know, sometimes I
curse.
And sometimes, she said, I've even cursed God.
And I said, sister, you're not filled with
the Spirit, you're filled with self.
And she just fell on her knees and
began to pray.
And dear people, she had a meeting with
God, you know.
Got her life straightened.
I don't know what happened to his life.
Nothing happened then.
But I wouldn't be surprised if later on,
maybe very soon later on, he got straightened
out with God, too.
She wasn't filled with the Spirit, but the
teaching she had made her think she was.
And so, to know the love of Christ,
which passes knowledge that you might be what?
Filled, filled with all the fullness of God.
There's always doubters.
Maybe there's some doubters here today.
So it goes on to say, Now unto
him that is able to do exceeding abundantly
above all that we ask or think.
What a statement that is.
Now unto him that is able to do
exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or
even think.
Unto him be glory in the church by
Christ Jesus throughout all ages.
Amen.
And that's my amen, too.
Bless you all.