Our great burden is to give people training
in spiritual life, is to get what they
have in their heads, many of them, down
into their feet, into their life, so that
they can eventually make an impact in their
own hometown.
One of the young men from Cambridge who
went with us to India two years ago,
not far from here, is an executive in
a large company.
These large companies need missionaries as well, don't
they?
But he learned what it was to relate
to people, what it was to see enemy
strongholds torn down through prayer, what it was
to really witness effectively and appropriate the promises
of God, so that he can use that
now in his practical life.
One of the most important things we have
to learn as a Christian is how to
appropriate God's promises.
They're all there.
I don't have any more than you.
The Apostle Paul had even less than you.
Yet we have to learn how to appropriate
the promises of God.
That's one of the challenges.
The scripture I want to read tonight, based
on the subject that we're considering, about service
and serving Christ, and whether this is freedom
or is it a form of bondage, I
want you to turn to the book of
Galatians.
Somewhere along the line there will be some
other people coming in.
Let's not allow that to bother us, but
just concentrate on the Word of God.
Oh, here they are.
They disappeared.
Galatians 5.
Difficult to know.
I'd love to read the whole chapter, but
I think we'll start at verse 13.
For you were called to freedom, brethren, only
do not use your freedom as an opportunity
for the flesh, but through love be servants
of one another.
For the whole law is fulfilled in one
word.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
But if you bite and devour one another,
take heed that you are not consumed one
by another.
But I say walk in the Spirit, and
do not gratify the desires of the flesh.
For the desires of the flesh are against
the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit
are against the flesh.
For these are opposed to each other, to
prevent you from doing what you would.
But if you are led by the Spirit,
you are not under the law.
Now the works of the flesh are plain,
immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife,
jealousies, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness,
carousing, and the like.
I warn you, as I've warned you before,
that those who do such things shall not
inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love
and joy and peace, long-suffering, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Against such there is no law.
And those who belong to Christ Jesus have
crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
If we live by the Spirit, let us
also walk by the Spirit.
Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking
of one another, no envy of one another.
May God add a spirit of obedience to
the reading of His Word.
I'd like to begin by sharing a little
of my own testimony for several reasons.
One, it'll help you understand what I'm trying
to say.
And communication is not easy.
When you're talking to a person and trying
to communicate with someone, one of the most
important things is to try to understand his
background.
I believe the greatest problem in the Church
of Jesus Christ is lack of love for
one another.
Churches split, the best of friends split, families
split.
It's unbelievable even what I've seen on the
mission field these past 23 years.
And I believe that one of the greatest
challenges you have even at your age is
the challenge of learning to love.
The challenge of learning to give love and
to receive love.
The challenge of learning to relate to people.
The challenge of learning how to love people.
My little daughter came home from school.
She's not so little anymore, 13.
She came home from school very upset because
she comes home with her very close friend.
Her very close friend is a Pakistani girl.
The Pakistani mother has sort of a deep,
inburned hatred for the British.
Of course, because they think, though my daughter
spent almost her whole life in Britain, they
think because she's American background that they can
un-pour, she can release some of her
venom.
And my daughter just can't understand it.
She just lays cursing at people and screaming
in her car as she's trying to drive.
And I'm trying to explain, you know, that
we shouldn't be too surprised when people are
like this, especially if they don't know Christ.
This is the way the world is.
Sometimes we live in a nation, think our
nation is filled with prejudice.
I've lived in 20 nations.
I've traveled to 50 nations.
I've yet to go to a nation where
there's not major racial prejudice.
I once went to a place in South
India.
I didn't think there was any racial prejudice
there.
And I discovered there were two types of
Christians among the nominal Christians.
There were the scheduled caste Christians who were
converted out of low caste backgrounds.
And then there were the higher caste Christians
who traced their ancestry to St. Thomas.
And these two people would not even sit
in the same church.
Just like in the southern part of the
United States, years ago, and it still goes
on to some degree, they constructed some old
crummy old church building down the road and
let all the people down there.
So they had the scheduled caste Christians in
one place and the regular Christians in another
place.
They wondered why they had a political revolution
over this minor one not so long ago.
And I think that if we could only
get to understand why people are the way
they are.
You may end up rooming with someone or
staying in the same room who is incredibly
untidy and it really gets on your nerves.
You may end up marrying someone like that.
Not only get on your nerves, it can
make you short your circuits out permanently and
end in a divorce court.
But I believe, and of course one of
our greatest tasks is we live together on
a ship.
We now have a second ship.
The first ship was only 140 people living
together from 25 nationalities.
We estimate the second ship will be 250
people except when we have residence conferences which
is most of the time.
There will be 400 people living together from
40 nationalities on one ship.
From every religious denomination almost you can think
of and some you probably never thought of.
So you can imagine some of the interesting
situations that we're going to experience.
So I want to share a little of
my background.
Thank you.
To enable perhaps you to understand what I
want to say.
Secondly, I want to share a little of
my background because there may be someone here
who doesn't know the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I want to tell you how I
came to know Christ because that's still the
greatest thing that ever happened to me.
I wasn't from a Christian background.
In fact, my grandfather from the Netherlands on
my father's side was an atheist.
My other grandfather was from Glasgow.
He was a drunk.
My parents, my father immigrated over to near
New York City.
He didn't know Christ.
He was just sort of a nice guy
type.
Good father but lost.
Started to become religious but still lost.
And I think it's important for me just
to share a little bit of that.
So let me do that very quickly.
A lady began to pray for me.
She prayed for me for three years.
She'd been praying for the grammar school that
I was attending just before going to university
for 15 years.
She not only prayed that people would be
converted in that school but she prayed that
people would be saved and sent.
Saved to serve.
Serving Christ is as basic to salvation as
oxygen is to breathing.
For a man to say that he's saved
and he knows Christ personally and not to
be serving, not to be living for others,
helping others, loving others, ministering to others is
a contradiction and it may be a fatal
one.
In other words, it may prove that he's
never been saved at all.
It says so clearly in James that we
demonstrate our faith by our works.
We're not saved by works.
If there's anyone who thinks that, you're on
the number one side road to keep you
from real salvation.
It's not by works.
That's man's idea.
I'm going to earn my way to heaven
and I'm going to be moral.
This is how we've produced generations of Pharisees
and hypocrites, especially within the church.
We know that's true because man often has
tried to save himself by pulling himself up
by his own bootstraps.
The word of God says, not me, the
word of God says, not by works of
righteousness which we have done, but according to
his mercy he saved us.
That was a little difficult for me to
accept because I had become the president of
the young people's group in my good church
and the pastor, he wasn't converted either.
He thought I was so wonderful, so versatile,
was teaching everybody how to dance on one
side and reading the Bible on the other
side.
This is what he thought was real religion.
When I wanted to bring revival, I didn't
know what revival meant, but life into the
church, I taught the young people how to
rock and roll and got the jukebox, whatever
you call it, into the church.
We really started to go places.
Such was my view of life within the
church.
Anyway, this lady kept praying for me.
She prayed for me for three years.
She sent me a gospel of John through
the post.
I began to read this.
It began to break down some of the
prejudice in my heart.
Then Billy Graham came to New York City.
He came just for one night at that
time, just as a guest of some other
evangelist.
I went in mainly out of curiosity, partly
because when I went to buy some pornography,
I picked up a magazine about Billy Graham
instead.
That's where I guess the Christian literature together
with that gospel started to play a role
in my life.
I went that night, and I heard Billy
Graham preach the gospel and share the message
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He asked people to repent and to come
to Christ, and I did that night.
I went back to my high school.
Of course, you can imagine what people thought.
It's just an emotional trip.
This doesn't last, but it has lasted.
Every day for 23 years, Jesus Christ has
been real to me.
If you don't yet know Christ, we don't
need to send for Billy Graham.
We've got the Holy Spirit.
You've got the Word of God.
You can come to Christ right here.
Last week, I was speaking at Exeter University
on Friday and Cardiff on Saturday, but on
Friday at Exeter University, I was speaking mainly
to people who already were believers.
They already knew Christ.
Yet the first person to come up to
me afterward was someone that wanted to accept
Christ and take Christ into his life, and
he prayed for salvation right there, and the
joy of God came into his life.
It's a thrilling thing what God is doing
in the universities here in Britain.
Of all the places in the world I've
gone to, different colleges, I think one of
the great works of God is taking place
right now here in the British universities, and
it's through prayer.
The Bible says that the weapons of our
warfare are not carnal, but mighty unto God,
to the pulling down of strongholds.
And I believe as we pray, as we
learn to pray, we're going to see even
greater things take place.
I went back to that high school with
a burden to pray.
I realized that I had come to know
Christ because of the prayers of that elderly
lady.
As I studied Billy Graham and I read
his book, Peace with God, and began to
see a little of his ministry, I realized
it wasn't Billy Graham.
He was just a human vessel.
He wasn't a great orator.
It wasn't that emotional, but he was a
man who believed in prayer.
His staff believed in prayer, and he had
a whole band of these elderly ladies praying
for him, thousands of them praying.
And of course God was almost obligated to
work.
The Bible says that this treasure is in
earthen vessels.
Earthen vessels.
I'm just a weak earthen vessel.
Sometimes we have the idea if a man's
a Christian leader or he's a minister, why,
he must be some kind of a super
saint, some Concord-type evangelical, high-flying, free
-from-all-problems character, and this is false.
Or if we hear that he's a missionary,
I'm supposed to be a missionary.
I mean, who?
A missionary.
Of course, one look at me, people don't
know what to believe anymore.
It used to be that people, whenever I
went to a meeting, they always wondered who
I was.
They were waiting for my father, who was
an electrician, actually.
But I believe with all my heart that
even as we have come here tonight, it's
not just for a message, it's not just
to have another Christian Union meeting, it's because
the Spirit of God wants to speak to
us.
The Spirit of God wants to urge us
into a deeper walk with Christ.
When I went back to that high school
and we began to pray, a few others
came together to pray, only a few Christians
in the whole school.
Within a year and a half, 200 students,
this was an ungodly high school where one
third of the students were drunk most weekends.
200 of them gave their lives to Jesus
Christ.
That lady's prayers were directly fulfilled.
Different people went to different parts of the
world.
I soon found myself in Mexico, then in
Spain, then in Britain, then in India, then
in Bangkok, then in Nepal, and other countries.
It was just a band of us.
When we first went to Mexico, three of
us, about 20 years ago.
Today there are 1,000 people full time
with Operation Mobilization.
Despite the fact that our main burden is
just to get people for a summer or
a year or two and get them to
join some other mission, some other group.
I sent another letter two days ago, another
girl that had training with us on the
way to Indonesia with OMF, the Overseas Missionary
Fellowship.
Many others have joined WAC or CLC or
the International Christian Mission and literally 100 other
different groups and agencies.
One lady prayed.
One Gospel of John was given out and
the Lord worked.
One of the reasons I take meetings like
this is I don't have to take these
meetings.
This isn't my job.
No one will ever bother me if I
don't take any Christian Union meetings.
One of the reasons I take these meetings
is I know that God is working in
the universities and I know one of the
aspects of God's work is to take people
into a deeper commitment to Christ that is
going to last them the rest of their
life.
And another great work of the Holy Spirit
is to send some out from Britain to
many different parts of the world to be
his witness.
Now to help with sharing this message we
brought along some literature and I'd like to
mention a few items.
After the meeting we'll probably just clear this
table and display a few of these books
that fit in with what I'm trying to
share tonight.
One of the books we've been emphasizing the
most is J.I. Packer's book On Knowing
God.
There's a need to understand who God is.
What is God like?
And this has been considered one of the
really great books published in Britain over the
past few years.
Oswald Sanders was the leader of the OMF
formerly the China Inland Mission for many, many
years.
And he has written what I consider the
best book on spiritual leadership ever put in
print.
It's a book we try to require our
leaders to read.
They go through one of our leadership training
programs.
We ask them to read this and it's
just a book that you will want to
get if you possibly can.
One of the most unique new books on
prayer that have ever been written.
I'm getting more people writing me commenting on
this than any book this year.
Paul Billheimer's book Destined for the Throne.
It shows that our highest calling is prayer
and worship and praise and that we are
called to a very high position with Jesus
Christ and that this time here on this
planet with all of its struggles, with all
of its suffering, with all of its mystery,
with all of the problems and prayer doesn't
always get answered just like that.
This is preparation for the day when we
shall reign with Jesus Christ.
And this man after 60 years, 70 years
on this earth has written one of the
most in-depth studies on prayer that you
could ever read.
Destined for the Throne.
Michael Griffiths, the present leader of the China
Inland Mission.
Give up your small ambitions.
I always presume most people have already read
this but believe me, it is a book
that's very, very worth reading.
I noticed they just put the price up
from 95 pence to 110 pence.
So what we're going to do to help
compensate for that because we can't control that
is whatever book you buy, we're going to
give you one free.
Now this doesn't look like a book but
originally it was printed just like this.
In fact, a new edition of it has
come out in this form.
I don't have it.
It costs 60 pence.
This exact same book is done on a
high-speed offset newspaper press like your daily
mirror and we publish it for 2 pence.
Every single word is there.
This is what we're doing to try to
get the Word of God out to third
world countries for producing hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds of thousands of books, millions actually, in
this form.
So you can have that free with any
other book that you take.
Just today, after waiting a long time, more
copies of Josh McDowell's book have arrived in
my hands.
This has proven to be one of the
most in-depth books on Christian evidence ever
written.
We hardly can keep it in stock.
We had a lot.
It all sold out.
The ship took thousands.
The books were all sold out.
This young man has led thousands to Jesus
Christ on the universities, mainly in North America.
I would just recommend, anyone especially, has intellectual
questions about the Christian faith.
No one should be held back from becoming
a follower of Jesus Christ on intellectual grounds
because there are plenty of intellectual reasons.
Now it's true, ultimately, you have to take
a step of faith.
That's the way God's ordained you.
Just like almost everything else you do in
life.
Eventually, no matter how much you get in
your head, you have to take a step
of faith.
Some of you are real scientific type.
You want to think everything through.
You want to analyze everything.
You want to spy it out, check it
out.
Someday you're going to get married.
I'll take the boys part.
You're going to find a girl.
You're going to check her out.
You're going to analyze her.
You're going to check her mother out and
have her psychoanalyze her.
You're going to check her father out.
You're going to read her history.
You're going to read the history of her
mother to make sure there's no diseases back
there somewhere.
You're going to pop up again.
But eventually, if you're going to get married,
you're going to have to take a step
of faith.
You can call it the leap experience.
You can call it the unity in the
dark experience.
Actually, that was a book on ecumenicalism.
Someone got confused about it.
But you have to take a step of
faith.
Here's a whole book of facts.
If after you read this you want more
facts, he's just published number two book, just
as thick, for more evidence that demands a
verdict.
And I think he's working on the third
book that's called Even More Evidence That Demands
a Verdict.
And if you don't like American authors, you
can read Better Books by F.F. Bruce.
You can read John Stott.
You can read Michael Green.
Books like Runaway World.
There are so many books that answer the
intellectual questions that we may have about the
resurrection.
There are men that went out to disprove
the resurrection, a man named Morrison.
Morrison did that in the process of disproving
the resurrection.
He was converted.
So he wrote a book called Who Rolled
the Stone?
and accepted Christ as his personal savior.
A man named Lou Wallace did a similar
thing.
He was a friend of the famous atheist
Ingersoll.
And Ingersoll said to Wallace, well look, you
need to write a book and prove this
Jesus thing is a hoax.
That he never lived in history.
At least, you know, as we read about
it.
So Lou Wallace took up this challenge from
atheist Ingersoll.
Started to write this book.
He went to the libraries.
I think he went to the Holy Land.
He did a lot of research.
In the midst of his research, he got
down on his knees on the side of
his bed and took Jesus Christ as his
personal Lord and Savior.
What a challenge that is.
We very much like the writings of Roy
Hesham.
He's a man, by the way.
I'm sure you could get down here to
speak.
He lives up in Beckham.
His biography or autobiography is just being published
by Hodder and Stotten called My Calvary Road.
Some of you have read his book Calvary
Road.
It's now in more than 40 languages.
This is his recent book called Forgotten Factors.
A very unpleasant but a very beautiful book
on the subject of morality.
He says, An Aid to Deeper Repentance on
the Forgotten Factors of Sexual Misbehavior.
There's a great chapter here on multiplied duplicities.
A chapter on homosexuality.
A chapter on dishonoring the body.
Then a chapter, Amazing Grace, The Mess Unmessed.
That's typical Roy Hesham terminology.
Deeper repentance.
Forgiveness.
The Divorce Court or the Cross.
This book is destined to be another great
book that God is going to use.
One of the reasons I mention books is
not just that you can buy some or
get some tonight but that you can make
use of these books.
If we had an extra hour perhaps we'd
take you on one of our world tours.
Not to tell you about O.M. but
to point out some of the needy nations
in the world that are represented on this
prayer map we just printed.
Pray the Lord of the Harvest that he'll
send forth labors into the harvest.
And if you're going to be serious about
your faith in Christ then you're going to
be serious about the commands of Jesus to
go into all the world and preach the
gospel to every creature.
And one of the ways that you can
begin praying for these places is to get
a map.
We've been challenging people all over Britain to
get one of these maps and hang it
in their house.
If they ask us where we say we'll
hang it right over the front of your
television set.
It's the best possible place for it.
And we've printed some little cards to go
with this map of 52 of the most
needy nations in the world for people to
carry in their pocket.
We're trying to mobilize tens of thousands of
people who will pray systematically.
Redeem the time on the train waiting here
and there.
I had to change the train three times
just to come from Bromley to Canterbury.
Lots of time to pray.
Lots of time to read.
And this is a great way to redeem
the time.
And I recommend strongly you get a package
of these cards.
Well with that in the way of background
let us consider these words for you have
been called to freedom brethren only do not
use your freedom as an opportunity for the
flesh.
John Stock's written a very good book on
balanced Christianity.
I've written a book myself, it's not very
good called Revolution of Balance because I am
so convinced that one of Satan's main targets
is to polarize and therefore paralyze the church
of Jesus Christ.
Get us into different camps.
The devil is very clever and it says
in Corinthians be not ignorant of Satan's devices.
Be not ignorant of Satan's devices.
It says in Ephesians chapter 6 that we
wrestle not against flesh and blood but against
principalities against powers.
It says in that same chapter that we
should hold high the shield of faith wherewith
we can stop the fiery darts of the
evil one.
There are many areas in which Christians are
polarizing separating not fellowshipping with one another criticizing
one another and one of them is in
the area of freedom.
There's an emphasis on freedom that goes to
extreme and begins to give us the idea
if not stated openly that discipline any form
of discipline is bondage.
This type of message creates a very undisciplined
person and ultimately a very dangerous person because
I believe an undisciplined person is a dangerous
person.
I don't believe an undisciplined man will ever
make a good father.
He'll never make a good husband.
I don't know whatever he will do.
I don't know how he'll get through university
without any discipline.
If you can just study whenever you feel
like it go to classes whenever you feel
like it wake up at any time you
want go to bed at any time you
want and of course if you get out
into the world of course Christians supposedly don't
believe this way but the people in the
world they carry it to the extreme.
If you feel like having sex well go
have sex.
Who ever heard of restraining these normal desires?
Now they're telling us and I'm not telling
stories if you feel like having sex with
someone of your own sex well of course
don't restrain that.
Why?
You'll get mentally ill if you restrain that
desire.
If you think that's the end of the
line as far as perversion then you haven't
been around very long because the big thing
now is sex as well with animals and
you can go up to London and you
can sit for a pound or two in
a night club I've been told and you
can watch people have sex with animals.
People say wow where's the world going to?
It's nothing new.
Some of these people like you have and
others they think they're just so intellectual they're
so modern they're so 20th century.
Over two to three thousand years ago in
the book of Leviticus it talked about sex
with animals.
It talks about homosexuality Leviticus chapter 18 19
and 20.
There are 300 verses in this book on
the subject of sex and yet for a
while the church stuck in the mud of
their own mentality felt we certainly can't speak
about sex in the church.
No wonder we got an invasion of perversion
and an invasion of all kinds of repressed
emotions which eventually pop out and when they
pop out that way they're even more weird
than you can get in the Soho.
That's exactly what's happened to the children of
God.
I predicted what has happened to the children
of God five years ago when they were
in Bromley.
I knew they were going to go into
immoral way out weird practices.
This past week the headlines on the sun
which I never buy but when they're standing
in front of you on the train and
every other compartment reading the sun page three
or otherwise you can't help miss it and
the headlines were about the children of God
the whole inside feature of the children of
God and how the main teaching now is
that the girls must give their bodies in
sex to win men into the cult if
we think this is new.
Do you know what the message of the
children of God was?
We're free.
There was a freedom message.
I once confronted one in Bromley I said
what was everybody hugging and kissing?
They say they're kissing and hugging in the
spirit.
Oh yes.
And I said don't you think a little
dangerous all the boys and girls all hugging
each other so much?
Oh no.
He said we're learning that in Jesus Christ
there is neither male nor female.
Keep in mind that all the false cults
have scripture verses.
That's why I prefer to study the whole
Bible and I've been taking a survey around
the Christian unions and have discovered less than
ten percent of the students have ever read
the Bible through.
Isn't that interesting?
I won't take a survey here.
It's too small a group we can see
each other.
Less than ten percent have read the Bible
through and yet they claim to believe the
Bible is the word of God.
Christians claim to believe the Bible is the
word of God and spend more time watching
television and more time reading the paper than
they do reading God's word.
They haven't even got through it once yet.
You know, if they read it once at
least they could say, well, I've already read
that.
They can't say that because they've never read
it through once.
And so I believe that freedom without discipline,
freedom without service, freedom without the other balancing
factors is deadly.
And it's not a biblical freedom.
It's a licentiousness.
It's something that the devil really wants to
get us into.
We are called into freedom but in the
very same verse we're told that we must
take this freedom not as an occasion for
the flesh but to love one another and
to be servants of one another.
The word balance, I think, is one of
the most important words in the English language.
We will see in the word of God
certain strong truths.
For example, Luke 14, 33.
You know that verse?
Except you forsake all that you have, you
can't be my disciple.
Wow!
Children of God preached that verse.
Now, I preached that verse as well.
They heard that and thought I was going
to join them.
And they had me over there and boy,
they were really going after me because they
knew that I preached this strong message.
But I didn't just preach except you forsake
all that you have, you can't be my
disciple.
I had to preach all the rest of
the New Testament.
And there are many other verses like Philippians
4, verse 19.
My God will supply all of your needs
according to His riches and glory by Christ
Jesus.
And I could give you a hundred different
areas where we must get the whole counsel
of God.
We must not just get one aspect of
the truth, we must get the different aspects
of the truth.
Without which, we become lopsided Christians or we
become extremists or even worse, get ourselves into
a false cult or even start one.
Every ego trip in one sense is the
beginning of a false cult.
So stay away from ego trips.
They're very, very dangerous.
The Apostle Paul, for example, he wrote many
of the verses about liberty.
He wrote the book of Christian liberty.
What is that?
The book of Galatians showing what freedom the
Christian has, free from the curse of the
law.
And yet the Apostle Paul said in 1
Corinthians chapter 9, in very interesting verses, I
buffet my body and bring it into subjection
lest after preaching to others I become a
reprobate.
Billy Graham preaching at the Urbana InterVarsity Convention
many years ago said to a group of
students, I think 9,000 were there, he
said, look, if you're not willing and ready
to live a disciplined life, forget it, you'll
never live for Christ.
Whether it's the area of sex or the
area of money or the area of self
-control.
For example, just think of the tongue.
Now this has always been a major problem
in my life, the tongue.
A.W. Tozer in one of his books
says keep your chimney cool.
Well, that's difficult for me.
I don't know whether it's my Dutch background
or the Irish Scott background or what, but
I found it very easy to lose my
temper, sting people with my tongue before I
was converted to Catholicism.
stinging with my fists.
I can remember fighting from almost the age
of four, even fought with girls once.
A terrible experience, this girl beat me up.
She was converted some years ago, so that's
encouraging.
But as we think of the challenge of
the gospel, we realize it's got to be
practical, it's got to work.
When Christ came into me, I knew that
he had to change my temper.
Billy Graham has a very strong message about
temper, about the tongue.
You see, my tongue went faster than my
brain.
I don't know if any of you have
that problem.
You're at university now, you're intellectual, your brain
is functioning full speed, so you should get
your brain going faster than your tongue.
Well, my tongue went faster than my brain,
so I would always say things to this
day.
There's no sense pretending that I'm totally deliberate.
My tongue would say something, hurt someone, and
then my brain would come along just seconds
later, hey, well, you shouldn't have said that.
That was unkind.
That was stupid.
That wasn't Christlike, now that I'm a Christian.
But it's too late, I already said it.
And I went into the word of God,
especially after times of failure when I used
to hurt people and hurt my own parents.
And I went into God's word, is there
any solution for this hothead?
I used to give people a piece of
my mind just that quick.
You know, that could be dangerous.
You go around for many years giving away
pieces of your mind, you could run out
eventually.
Some of you are afraid of that.
Self-control is a fruit of the Holy
Spirit, but we make a mistake if we
think, well, all I need is a great
experience with the Holy Spirit.
I've had many experiences with the Holy Spirit
for 23 years.
I'm sometimes afraid to tell about them because
people, they like to copy.
But I'll tell you who copies some of
the experiences I had.
But I know one thing, any crisis that's
not followed by a process will become an
abscess and that's what some of you will
be if you don't get serious about God's
program of discipline, God's program of meditating on
the word, God's program of prayer, God's program
of dealing with the weak areas in your
life, dealing desperately, seriously.
It's not a game.
We are in a Christian warfare.
Some people have the idea, well, we're just
young people.
We're just in training as if the devil
says, now that you're saved, you go get
training so you can come and destroy me.
The Bible says, be not ignorant of his
devices.
And I can assure you that the devil
is not encouraging training of believers so that
they can destroy his strongholds.
Satan begins his attack the moment you're converted
and some of you have experienced that.
Some people give a glowing gospel message, you
know, when you accept Christ through your peace
and joy, everything will be wonderful.
I've talked to people, you know, they told
me they were doing fine until they got
converted.
They were feeling fine, they had friends, and
when they got converted, they really started to
get problems.
Now, that's not everybody's testimony.
Others have, you know, the joy, peace, wonderful,
everybody's different.
Last year ago, some time ago, I was
at a breakfast with a number of government
leaders in the states.
I'm hardly ever in the states.
I was over there and one of the
men at the table was former Senator Harold
Hughes, and he was sharing very honestly that
his problems really started when he came to
know Jesus Christ.
Before that, he had money, doing well in
politics, good constituency, all the rest, and his
problems really started, humanly speaking, when he came
to Jesus Christ.
And the same is true when we're filled
with God's Spirit, baptized in God's Spirit, whatever
term you want to use, God uses different
terminology in different books, so I don't know
why we as Christians get so worried about
the terminology, but I know this, that when
you're filled with God's Spirit, it doesn't mean
that automatically you have all these other areas
in your life, because living for Christ is
a cooperative program.
You have to yield your members to righteousness.
That's what the Bible says.
You have to die to self, or at
least appropriate that which you have through Jesus
Christ on the cross.
One of the things that helps me is
to realize that when I come to Christ
and then I'm filled with God's Spirit, even
when I have a great quiet time in
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They were digging their graves spiritually before they
knew what happened.
I believe that pride is one of the
things that short-circuit what the Holy Spirit
wants to do in our lives.
If God has done a great thing in
your life, you should be more humble because
of it.
You should be more willing to listen to
someone else because you know God is great
and maybe he's done a great thing in
their life.
Even though they don't go to your group
or cross their T in the same place
you cross your T, or speak with the
same evangelical accent, or have the same sanctification
vocabulary, or read the same books, or float
in the same crowd, or go to the
same conference in the summer.
This is where we polarize as well.
Certain types go to Kennecke, other types go
to Filey, and then others go to the
Dales Bible Conference, and some go to Southport,
and some go all the way up.
And the devil gets three cheers in hell
if when we come back from our various
places we don't love one another, esteem one
another, pray for one another, honor one another,
and try to see on the basis of
dozens of verses in God's Word how the
Lord works in different people in different ways.
This is one of the reasons I love
fellowship meetings like this, whatever you call them,
the Christian Union or whatever else, because it
brings people together who might not ordinarily be
together.
And you begin to learn, and you even
let character play a part.