Let's pray together.
Father, just minister in the different tents.
Minister to those who don't feel they should
be in other meetings that are doing other
things.
We thank you for this time together.
Some may be tired from journeys.
Lord, quicken our mind.
Show us what the true nature of the
spiritual warfare is.
What it is to really fit in to
your will.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Now there's a little confusion as to whether
I'm to repeat what I said this morning
or to move on.
It would help me to know how many
of you were here this morning or do
we have all new people.
So I think it's obvious that I should
move on.
And I want to get into some of
the real basics about spiritual balance.
As we see God's commands and as we
understand God's Word, we see that the Christian
who perseveres 10, 20, 30, 40, or how
many years, is the Christian who has learned
spiritual balance.
He is a committed man.
He is a Spirit-filled man.
He loves Christ.
He's not afraid to speak.
In some ways he may seem to be
extreme, but in fact he is a balanced
man.
He's a man that can take things that
seem to be extreme, like liberty and discipline,
freedom and authority, evangelism in the regions beyond
and the local church, and he can put
them together.
And he doesn't come out torn apart or
jumping from one group to the next or
from one theological extreme to the next, but
he goes on from victory to victory.
Now I've noticed how some, for example, go
from an extreme Arminian position, and I'm very
happy with people who are Arminian or moderately
Calvinistic in their theology.
I'm sure you realize we have both kinds
here.
We have both kinds in our work, and
we've been working together 20 years.
People with a moderate view and love can
work together even though they may not agree
on certain issues.
But I've noticed how some people go from
an extreme Arminian position with perhaps an over
-emphasis on emotion and free will, flip out
and go into an extreme Calvinistic position, which
is very much on the increase right now
in North America.
You know, rarely now on the other end,
in which of course they cut off fellowship
with almost everybody, apart from Calvin, he's dead,
and they really do get caught up in
extremes, saying of course if God is going
to save the heathen, he will save the
heathen in his good time.
And I've noticed the way people so quickly
go from one extreme to the other, and
I have this great burden to see God's
people understanding one another better.
And we need to be careful even here
in these three days of immediately categorizing people.
We as Christians tend to categorize people.
Oh, he's this type, and she's this type.
Instead of getting to know people, a majority
of Christians seem to get to know very
few people in an in-depth way.
It takes time.
It takes fellowship.
Let's look now at the Word of God
again.
We were in Ephesians chapter 6 this morning,
and I want us to go back there
again.
Some of you are new to this session,
and this morning we saw the reality of
the spiritual warfare.
We saw how clever Satan can be.
We were exhorted and saw from the Word
of God that we must not be ignorant
of Satan's devices, his ability to get people
into extremes like the children of God, his
ability to polarize and therefore paralyze Christians, and
we realized afresh God's grace.
You know, one of my favorite quotations from
A.
W.
Tozer, my favorite author, is that God knows
all about us, and he loves us still.
That's what keeps me going.
Ultimately, it's not rules and regulations, challenges, or
any of that keeps us going.
It's the grace of God, the mercy of
God, and this is what we want to
even draw on as we hear the Word
of God this afternoon.
I'm not going to read the whole passage
again in Ephesians 6, but I want us
to look at verse 16 because we've got
to talk about faith.
You cannot live for Jesus without faith.
Faith turns on what we're talking about.
It says in Hebrews, the word preached was
of no value because it was not mixed
with faith, and the challenge as you hear
the Word of God in these days is
to mix it with faith.
It's to say, Lord, I believe.
Maybe someone is speaking about bitterness, and God
begins to convict you about bitterness toward a
loved one, toward a friend, toward an enemy,
toward a pastor who manipulated you, something else.
And as you hear the message of bitterness,
it's of no value unless you mix it
with faith.
So we're going to talk about faith.
We're going to look at two men, one
Caleb and the other Joshua, and we're going
to see what faith can do.
Verse 16, above all, taking the shield of
faith with which ye shall be able to
quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
Boy, that's one of the greatest promises in
the Word of God.
You probably have heard the story of the
man who went to the store.
He was a millionaire.
He had three checkbooks in his pocket.
He owned two banks.
He was making several million a day.
He went into a Woolworth's, and he saw
a water pistol he wanted to buy for
his son.
It was 59 cents.
He reached into his pocket.
He only had 50 cents.
He became very, very upset that he didn't
have the money.
He had 14 credit cards.
He walked out of the shop very sad
because he didn't have the money to buy
the water pistol.
It may sound like a stupid story.
It is.
This is the way a lot of Christians
are.
They've got God's checkbook.
They've got hundreds of promises, and yet again
and again they come up against things in
life, and they say, well, we can't do
this.
We can't do that.
I can't become a missionary.
I can't go here or do this, and
they fail to learn how to draw upon
the promises of God, upon the promises of
God.
The Lord told us about 12 years ago
in our work that we were to buy
an ocean-going ship, not a little boat,
but two and a half thousand ton liner
that would have room for 100 or 200
people.
We didn't have anybody in our work who
knew anything about ships.
We didn't have any engineers.
We didn't have any deck men.
All we had was God's Word and a
vision and a burden.
Now our work had already existed for 10
years before that ship burden came, and without
those men, hundreds of men that God had
trained and discipled around the world who were
faithfully locked together, one heart of one mind,
of course there wouldn't have been any ship.
Often the Church looks for better machinery, but
God looks for better men, men of prayer,
men who know Him.
We wonder why some of the great projects
launched in North America over the past 10
years haven't exactly had the success that the
people thought they originally would have.
And I believe one of the reasons is
a lack of understanding of how God works.
He works through people, not just one man
who has an idea, but through a fellowship
of people who love one another and who
are willing to give themselves to one another.
Faith is the victory that overcomes the world,
it says in 1 John.
When we leave this great time together, there
will be fiery darts.
What are some of the fiery darts you
can expect that are going to come against
your shield?
The fiery dart of discouragement is going to
come.
I don't believe you can be in the
work of God without getting attacked by discouragement.
We have been committed to evangelizing the Muslim
world for the last almost 20 years.
We have had discouragement upon discouragement.
Sure, some have been converted, some churches have
been planted, but in the light of the
original burden and vision, in the light of
our prayers, we meet for prayer and our
half nights of prayer every week.
Some of us have been doing that for
20 years, even though sometimes the last thing
we want to do is pray.
You can pick up a free pamphlet, which
is a copy of an article I wrote
for a Christian magazine, called, What Happened to
the Prayer Meeting?
I hope you'll get that.
It's free.
Because I am convinced that Satan has a
subtle plan to undermine the Church of Jesus
Christ in North America, and that plan includes
deceiving people concerning the importance of the prayer
meeting, and the very fact that many of
our churches no longer have a real prayer
meeting.
I'm not talking about a Bible study with
five minutes of prayer.
That is not a prayer meeting.
I'm not talking about a prayer breakfast, which
everyone eats for an hour and prays for
three minutes.
That is not a prayer breakfast.
That is a food breakfast.
I'm talking about a time when people pray.
It may only be a half an hour,
but they pray.
And the Spirit of God moves through people,
and they pray.
And you'll find this on almost every other
chapter in the book of Acts.
The trouble is, we don't know the book
of Acts.
If I had about 10 hours, we'd go
through the book of Acts.
No, you need 100.
People are ignorant of this book, even people
who claim to be book of Acts Christians,
and New Testament Christians, and whatever other high
-sounding phrase they may have.
I've been in churches, and I've said, we're
going to talk about the book of Acts.
Please turn to Acts chapter 29.
And 80% of the congregation, including the
pastor, they're flicking through for Acts 29.
They want to get in on the study.
There is no Acts 29.
It ended in chapter 28.
Of course, you all knew that.
You are Acts 29.
We, well, probably Acts 5,682.
But the Holy Spirit has been moving every
year, every decade since the coming of the
Holy Spirit upon the church.
And we all know Pentecost, and the reality
of Pentecost.
But it's interesting that some of the same
people who were at Pentecost were there in
that prayer meeting in Acts 4.31. Do
you know that prayer meeting?
Have you been in any prayer meetings like
that?
When they prayed, the place where they were
gathered together shook.
And they were filled with the Holy Spirit,
went forth, and spoke the Word of God
with fullness.
And you know what happened?
People started to sell their possessions.
Wow, that must have been an embarrassment.
People started to love one another.
They were of one heart.
They went out, and they preached the resurrection
of Jesus Christ.
That's the kind of prayer meetings we need
today.
A.W. Tozer said, we are professionals at
the game of words.
We get all the words, beloved.
We get all the hymns.
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war.
Is that a picture of your life?
May God grip us with the reality of
the life of faith.
If you want to see God make something
of your life, if you want to be
something more than another evangelical statistic, if you
want to be something more than another evangelical
fish floating downstream with the tide of pleasant,
easy believism, then you will learn to hold
high the shield of faith.
And you will learn how to stand against
the fiery darts, whether they're discouragement, or depression,
or lust, or bitterness, or cynicism.
You know, as you go on in the
Christian world, and you get to know a
little that's happening, there's a danger that you
can become cynical.
And Tozer says, the cynic is often right,
and yet frightfully wrong.
And he recommends as a cure for cynicism,
thanksgiving and praise.
And when things seem to be a little
black after you've looked at the morning newspaper,
or after you've heard about another church splitting
in two, or after you've heard about another
Christian leader who's gone off in adultery, and
things look a bit black, that's the time
to get on your face and just start
thanking God.
Because most people are not going that way.
And because Jesus Christ is working in a
mighty way in the world today.
Well, let's look at Caleb and Joshua.
Let's go back into the Old Testament.
I hope you have your Bible with you.
I know some of you are tired from
the journey, and Bibles are heavy, but it's
good if you can bring them.
Let's look at Numbers, chapter 13.
How many have your Bible?
Let's hold up the Word of God, even
a New Testament.
Hey, praise the Lord.
Get that from out under the blanket.
That's encouraging.
That's great.
I want to again mention, because some of
you are, many of you are new, I
want to again mention, my burden is to
have some personal interaction with some of you.
Can only do that with a limited number
here, people running from tent to tent.
But I hope you will engage in Operation
Feedback.
How do you do that?
You take a piece of paper, you write
my name on it, George Verwer, don't worry
about the spelling, and anything you want to
ask, anything you want to say, exhortation, question,
put it there.
Sometimes I get carried away and I offer
a free book, catch a chance, bang.
I was very busy for a long time
after the Jesus 77, sending out different materials,
because I got some carried away, people started
praying, and I get more carried away.
But we really want to be able to
correspond with some of you in the coming
year.
So keep that in mind.
I ask you to keep that feedback until
tomorrow, give it at the book table or
to me.
You know, George Whitfield used to preach to
20,000 people in the open air.
And when he was preaching, he would ask
people to send feedback up as he was
preaching.
They'd hand notes up to him, I'd just
been saved, praise God, he'd probably preach with
greater fervency.
I'd ask people always to keep their notes
to the end, because I had a note
once when I was preaching and said, your
time's up, would you please sit down.
Numbers, chapter 13, the spies came out of
the promised land.
Most of them came out with a shaky
knee disease.
This is a common disease among Christians, the
shaky knee disease.
They're all right in the meeting, they're all
right at church, they're all right when they
invite in the latest Christian group, they're all
right when there's a Christian film going on,
they're all right when there's a Christian puppet
show going on, they're all right when somebody's
doing a gospel handstand.
But you say to them, we're going to
go door to door for Jesus on Monday,
and they get Operation Shaky Knee.
Say we're going to go out witnessing the
streets, and they get a case of the
excuse, or the argues disease, or some other
major evangelical blight.
That's what happened to most of the spies.
Verse 28, nevertheless, the people are strong.
They got their eyes on the enemy.
You ever do that in your life?
Dwell in the land, cities are walled, very
great, wow.
Moreover, we saw the children of Anak there,
the Amalekites dwell in the land of the
Negev, the Hittites and the Jebusites, the Amorites
dwell in the mountains.
The Canaanites dwell by the sea and by
the edge of Jordan.
I believe, so often in history, the majority
of God's people proved to be wrong.
Now you got to be careful of that,
because you can get into a dangerous extreme,
just reacting from other people.
And that's not the way of love.
But in this case, the majority of people
were wrong.
There are only two men, there are only
two men that were right in this situation.
One was Caleb, they were the only two
to ever get in the Promised Land.
If you know your Bible, you know that
these people perished in the wilderness.
They never got in the Promised Land.
Caleb, despite all the enemies and all the
problems, he stilled the people, verse 30, before
Moses, and he said, let us go up
at once and possess it, for we are
well able to overcome it.
This is victory.
This is God's way.
The greatest giants in the land today are
not the communist giants behind the Iron Curtain,
not the Muslim world giants in the Muslim
world that's much upon the heart of some
of us.
The biggest giant is not the giant of
liberalism or the giant of the false cults.
These are giants in a way, they're world
cities, they're problems, we have to cope with
them, but the greater giants are within.
And I want to ask you about the
big giants that I have seen destroying Christians
in the past years.
How are you handling the giant of worry?
So many of God's people are trapped by
worry.
They're not sleeping well.
They're not handling this strong emotion of worry.
They're worried about their job.
They're worried about the future.
They're worried about their children.
Now we have to have legitimate concern for
these things.
You say, what's the difference between legitimate concern
and worry?
Legitimate concern is controlled by the Spirit.
You may have to think about your children
and make plans and do some sensible, sane
family planning in the broad sense.
You may have to do some in the
narrow sense too.
It's amazing how many children you can get
when you just go at it.
A friend of mine was with me two
weeks ago.
He was going strong last time I saw
him.
Fifteen children.
So you know, you may want to consider
that one.
Anyway, that's not my subject this afternoon.
But when we're planning, when we're thinking, when
we're involved in legitimate concern, we control the
situation.
In worry, your emotion is run wild.
And worry creates many different forms of tension
and there are probably fifty different diseases you
can bring on your body through worry.
So if you're engaging in worry and operation
worry, what you are doing is saying, God,
which one of those wonderful fifty diseases are
you going to give to me?
My wife, as a result of a difficult
family background, tension, worry, lack of love as
a child, when I met her, had four
psychosomatic illnesses.
That's not something in the head.
That's real.
And they didn't disappear right away when she
was converted.
Even when she had a deeper experience with
Christ, somehow these things hung on her and
she was taking various medicines.
It was through that amazing book, Release from
Tension.
There's a few of them on the table.
There's a similar book called None of These
Diseases by Dr. McMillan about psychosomatic illnesses and
how worry and fear and tension can tear
our lives apart.
This isn't just here in the home country.
We're having a high percentage of nervous breakdowns
on the mission field.
Because people out on the field, when they
were back here, never learned to handle worry,
fear, tension, bitterness, anxiety, stress.
We live in the age of stress.
Through many months of soul-searching, through that
book, my wife, in the quiet of her
own room, fell asleep with a deeper knowledge
of the all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ.
A psychosomatic illness is not one that's just
in the head.
It's an emotionally induced illness.
In other words, though it may be a
real physical thing now, its roots go back
somewhere into worry or tension or lack of
love.
Now, I am not saying that God works
in everybody the way He worked in my
wife.
She fell asleep that night and woke up
the next morning completely cured of these four
illnesses.
That doesn't mean life has been a game
since then.
That doesn't mean there still aren't struggles.
In fact, some months ago, about eight months
ago, my wife went into a depression that
she had never had in 18 years, for
months.
And we didn't know what was happening.
God's people started to pray for us.
You know, God's people are so wonderful.
And I'm so thankful for people that have
stood with me in prayer over the years.
And we saw God bring her out of
that some months ago.
And I think in some ways she's still
suffering from the after-effects.
This morning, I mentioned that book.
I love it so much.
Eugenia Price's No Answer.
There's another tremendous book on this subject just
written by a man named Bill Heimer, the
same man who wrote Destined for the Throne,
a book called Don't Waste Your Sorrow on
the subject of suffering and healing.
And so we saw God just come into
my wife's life and take her out of
those four illnesses and prepare her for 18
years of service overseas.
Faith is the answer to the big giant
of worry.
And I want to tell you, there's about
ten books on that subject that I didn't
have in my day on the subject of
worry.
I have had tremendous struggles with this.
If I'm honest, I've been worrying today.
I've been thinking about that 7,000 ton
ship with its 1914 rudder, one of the
few steam rudders left anywhere on a ship
anywhere in the world.
We hope to convert it soon, but we
haven't been able to yet.
Sailing through the Bay of Biscay.
Last time our first ship went through the
Bay of Biscay, it was one of the
roughest storms in the history of the Bay.
They spent three days in an emergency situation.
Not a joke to operate a ship with
225 precious lives.
And the tendency for me is to start
to worry.
Now tell me, how am I going to
help the ship in the middle of the
Bay of Biscay, here in the middle of
Canada, worrying?
If you know how I can help the
ship through worry, you give me a note
on that, because then I'll worry even more.
And the last time the ship was in
the Bay of Biscay, despite all of my
messages on fear, all of my messages on
worry, somehow the evil one got in and
I was in a state of shock almost
to three hours when I thought maybe the
ship was really going to die.
I was really in trouble.
And I grabbed on to the word and
I talked to my wife and I wept,
and yet I didn't come totally out of
it.
It took several hours.
I know a little bit about this giant.
He's tried to leave me laying on the
side of the road many times.
Of course, the trouble with these giants, they
work together.
Fear works together with worry.
One of the things I liked about Joyce
Landorf, when she spoke here last year, was
her honesty.
I get tired of people just giving false
impressions about the victorious life.
And you hear this tremendous message about the
victorious life.
You find out two years later the guy's
wiped out.
Boy, that sure was a nice theory.
The victorious life, which I also believe in,
and sanctification which I also believe in, and
holiness which I am called on to, includes
knowing what to do when you sin.
And many Christians have never learned that ABC.
Know what to do when you sin.
Sin isn't just outward things.
It's not just beating up your grandmother, robbing
banks.
It's not just intensive gossip.
We can sin with our disposition.
Some Christians, Sunday morning they get a beautiful,
even-jelly smile, but they get a disposition
like a rattlesnake.
Just poke them in the wrong place and
you'll find out how lovely they are.
Talk about all God's peculiar people.
God is concerned about our disposition.
God is concerned about our attitude.
Our attitude toward other people.
Our attitude toward the fellow who belongs to
the church down the road.
That we don't really fellowship with them.
They're not as spiritual as we are.
One of the greatest plagues in the present
-day Christian scene in America is super-spirituality.
And if God reveals a beautiful truth to
you, and if you have a powerful feeling
or an experience with the Holy Spirit, that
should cause you to be more humble, more
broken, more concerned to find out the truth
about somebody or their fellowship before you condemn
it.
That's the real test.
Whether your experience with God has been real
or false and soulish.
Because if you don't think the devil knows
how to give out experiences, you haven't been
around too long.
Yes, I saw the giants.
And I'm sure as we gather here today
and we're exposed to the Word of God,
some of us will see the giants.
One of the giants in my life, and
it still is, is the giant of lust.
Now I thought that after I was converted,
it's less problem.
Because at 16, before my conversion, I was
peddling pornography and doing a few other things
which exactly wasn't the way to live.
Not much, just enough to warp my mind.
And I thought, well after my conversion, wow!
Deliverance of that.
I had no trouble with the pornography.
Just took a match and up and smoked.
What do I do with my mind?
What kind of gasoline do I pour in
my ears?
How do I get all the garbage out
of my mind?
The things I started to see from the
age of four.
Then I saw God's Word.
The way of the Word of God to
deal with lust.
Five ways to deal with lust.
Let me give them to you quickly.
Two, discipline.
Jesus said, if any man come after me,
let him deny himself, take up the cross,
and follow me.
You will never, never live for Jesus until
you learn that.
Number three, fellowship with others.
Sharing your problem.
Praying together.
I've seen so many people, people who have
been Christians for 7, 8, 10, 15 years,
still being tripped up by lust.
Still getting into the lust pit from time
to time.
I've had them come to me even out
of our Bible colleges.
Finished Bible college, still in the lust trip.
And when they've started to share, started to
talk about it, you see, so easy to
bottle this up.
It's the last thing we talk about is
our sex problems.
300 verses in the Bible on the subject
of sex, but we don't talk about that
in the church.
And a lot of young people have been
brainwashed from childhood that basically sex is dirty.
And it's private part is dirty.
And so he thinks, he grows up to
think that masturbation is a sin unto death.
Or is a blasphemy.
I've had someone come to talk to me
about masturbation, thought it was blasphemy against the
Holy Spirit.
Because when he was little, maybe even 3
or 4, he discovered this little thing between
his legs, and he started to play, which
is quite normal.
His mother screamed, don't touch it!
The little kid the rest of his life.
Burned into the subconscious, this is dirty.
In counseling married couples that have come apart
among Christians, I've discovered many of them came
apart because they didn't have a fruitful, beautiful,
healthy, happy, disciplined, overwhelming sex life.
Some didn't have any sex life.
Why?
Because the girl from childhood was taught it
was dirty.
Reminds her of animals.
And she didn't tell her husband before they
were married that this was one aspect of
marriage she had a few hangups about.
But she was sure that because they were
heavy on Bible study and heavy on prayer
and soul winning, surely this other thing would
fall into shape.
And we wonder why one half of all
the marriages in North America are ending in
divorce.
And we wonder why it's now becoming as
common among Christians.
Even Bible-believing Christians in some cases almost
as among the world.
Something has gone wrong!
We have failed to teach the whole counsel
of God.
We have failed to see that the Bible,
if it has 300 verses on the subject
of sex, we ought to study them.
We ought to see God's way and get
our life in tune with God.
If there's no answer to the lust problem
in this book, I don't want it.
Because the majority of the people we lead
to Christ all over the world have lust
problems.
Some of them have sex lives.
Some of them have been in bed with
more than 50 people.
And you're going to come up to them
and say, now look, the main problem in
the Christian life is the length of your
hair.
And I'm convinced, and I remember Billy Graham
speaking about this in 1957, if you don't
get victory in this area you will never
live for Jesus.
You will become another casualty statistic.
And though God is merciful, God can pull
you up, God can forgive you.
And though your sin be as scarlet, it
shall be made as white as snow.
Hallelujah!
At the same time, God wants to give
you victory in your marriage, in your home.
And so we've got to learn to fellowship
and to share and be honest and pray
together.
What does it say in James?
Confess your faults one to another and pray
for one another that you may be healed.
Do you have at least one that you're
walking in the light with?
I have several.
If I go into the railway station and
there's some real interesting pornography and I go
on a little five minute lust trip, which
is the last thing I want to do,
but sometimes it happens, fortunately I never end
up buying it, I'm too cheap.
But what happens when you're on a train
and you go into the WC, we call
it England Maloo, and there's a twenty dollar
pornographic magazine thrown on the floor.
Now I admire beyond all words the man
who has no trouble, he doesn't even give
it a second look, just nothing.
Of course he may have another problem, but
I mean the fellow who's normal, he kicks
it away, there's nothing.
But if I do, most of the time
I get the victory, but I don't always
get it.
Then I go to one of my brothers
and co-leaders and I say, look, you
know, this afternoon I had a little lust
trip, I want you to pray with me,
God will give me more grace and He
forgives me.
And it's not easy for me to tell
that because I know that surely somebody misunderstands
me and I know my reputation will probably
go down a little.
Well I will tell you, I'd rather have
my reputation go down and you go up!
Because I'm tired of people pretending they're living
up here when they're living down here.
And if we got more concerned about the
battle with the mind, we'd never get into
the trouble with our bodies.
It's all sin, but there are levels of
sin, obviously.
Because with some sin we drag the whole
church in the scandal.
And the name of Christ is blasphemy.
There's two Old Testament characters I love to
study.
One's David.
Remember David?
Up on the roof.
He shouldn't have been on the roof.
He was looking for trouble.
He knew there were women living around him.
He knew that girl took her bath on
the roof every once in a while.
You think he was a jerk?
David?
He should have been out in the warfare.
The Bible says he stayed back from the
warfare.
And he went up on the roof, you
know, he didn't even have any binoculars.
And Beersheba came out, and that was it.
He ruined his life.
He ruined his ministry.
I tell you, just read it.
Just read it.
Never the same again.
He was forgiven.
That's why we have Psalm 51.
And if some sin is hanging on your
conscience, then bathe in Psalm 51.
Renew unto me the joy of my salvation.
But you know my favorite story?
Joseph.
How many know, really, the story of Joseph
and his big temptation with this real, incredibly
chick from Egypt?
How many know that story?
There, many of you don't even know it.
What are you reading?
Are you reading novels?
You want to get out of these dull
novels and get into the real stuff.
Anyway, Joseph was in Egypt.
He was lonely.
He was frustrated.
He didn't have a wife.
He was away from his family, a natural
situation.
And the boss's wife, when the boss is
away, gets his eye on him.
Now, you can imagine the wife of this
top Egyptian.
You know, I don't think she was the
ugliest thing in town.
And you can imagine.
Don't imagine.
It can be a stumbling block.
Anyway, Joseph was there in the house alone.
And this girl came out.
And she said, Joseph, lie with me.
Now, you've got to understand the King James
terminology.
Lie with me doesn't mean what you did
in the kitchen.
You know, as a kid, go down to
the beach and lie there holding hands with
your girlfriend drinking a milkshake.
Lie with me in the King James means
come to bed with me and have intercourse.
And Joseph refused.
It's as simple as that.
He knew this would be a great sin
against God.
And so he refused.
And she tried it again.
Eventually, she tried a reverse rape and tried
to seduce him.
And he ran away.
Now, a lot of people think when you
do something great for God and you resist
temptation, then the Lord is going to bless
you.
We're always looking for outward blessing.
It's a mistake.
When you stand for Jesus Christ and you
pass the big test as Joseph did, you
may go to test number two.
Test number two for him was what?
Prison.
Now, can you imagine after winning this tremendous
victory, how many of you would have won
it?
Don't answer.
He won this tremendous victory.
So God puts him in prison.
Everything is getting worse.
Then these men even forget all about him
who promised to tell somebody in charge about
him.
And there he was seemingly wasting away.
But God had not forgotten.
And I believe the story of Joseph, in
some ways a poor example of Jesus Christ,
is one of the most beautiful stories in
the Old Testament.
Because God raised him up and in God's
sovereignty, he became a blessing to his family
and to his nation beyond words.
But if he had fallen into sin on
that one temptation, it would have all been
different.
So one of the things that I believe
is going to keep us from the sin
of lust in any of its forms is
feeding on the Word of God and following
the example of the Word of God.
And then lastly, there are some other things,
but I've got to move on.
Repentance.
Learning to repent.
Instant repentance.
I may say this again at another meeting,
but it's worth repeating.
I think there is a danger out today
among God's people that presumes that everybody has
to backslide now and then.
We hear so many testimonies of backsliders.
I came to Christ ten years ago and
I've been away for the last five.
Or I came to Christ so many years
ago and I went away and I came
back.
Now, praise God when they come back.
And I just love to hear a backslider's
testimony.
But at the same time, there's a slight
danger.
Again, it's the balance.
Because we get the idea, don't we, that
all of us are going to backslide.
And the devil gets that negative charge running
around our mind.
We're all going to backslide.
And I just share this very carefully.
That from the day I accepted Jesus Christ
23 years ago to this afternoon, I've walked
every day with Jesus.
Every single day.
I've had my hours, I've had my moments,
I've just shared those.
There are many other things.
Discouragement coming in, depression, a quick word, an
unkind word.
But you see, if we say an unkind
word, which is a sin.
And by the way, do you know the
way you handle the masturbation problem?
Put it together with all the other sins.
It usually does involve lust, doesn't it?
It usually does involve impatience.
And I think it should be treated as
impatience.
You don't see people getting so hung up
about their impatience factor.
I wish they were.
Do not allow the devil to make that
thing into a special kind of extra ugly
sin that in turn depresses you and discourages
you and wipes you out.
Many young people have allowed that.
Especially weird and strict Christian hoes.
Put it on the level with lack of
love, with impatience, with the sins of the
tongue, with unkind words, with a bad disposition,
with wrong attitude.
All of those things are sin.
And yet they do sometimes creep in.
And when they creep in, we don't get
depressed and give up because maybe we had
a little wrong attitude towards someone.
Or we said something unkind.
Or we engaged in a little gossip.
Actually, those things are condemned more in the
Bible than this other thing.
Oh, if only Christians would learn how to
bounce back and to stand firm in Christ.
Learning to repent.
Learning to keep a short inventory.
And by learning this as a young Christian,
through some of these books and through men
of God, every night I've gone to sleep
these years knowing I was with Jesus in
fellowship.
My burden is that some people will go
from this great gathering with the determination and
the conviction and the faith that you will
walk for Jesus every day, 365 days a
year, until you meet Him.
I wonder if you'd make that commitment.
I wonder if you'd believe God has that
much keeping power and therefore keep a short
account and instantly repent when temptation, and temptation
is not sin, you've got to go past
the temptation, meditating, enjoying it, engaging in it,
then sin.
You've all heard the old illustration, you can't
stop the birds from flying over your head
but you can keep them from nesting in
your hair.
And you may not be able to stop
temptation, wild temptation.
Many young people write to me.
They feel something's wrong with them.
They have such terrible temptations.
They have bad dreams.
They get ugly desires.
Look, that's normal.
Every person, minus none, has a certain degree
of hostility.
Some of the most Bible-believing people I've
ever met, I've seen in five minutes, I
could see their hostility.
They wind their hostility right into the Bible.
They're on their path.
They're ready, you know, ready, jump!
And somebody doesn't believe the same way.
Do you think that's Jesus' approach?
And we as Christians have to learn how
to handle our hostility.
Now, many of you can be so thankful.
You don't have these problems that I have.
See, I'm a very emotional person.
I'm way, way too emotional.
I go to see an animal film.
I saw the film Born Free.
You know, just a simple animal film about
a lion.
I had 15 minutes of uncontrolled weeping.
This is an animal film.
Some of these new Christian films, I just
saw this Christian film, Stranger in the Forest,
with this car crash and blood.
My son, he's sitting there.
You know, so, please, please forgive me as
I speak.
Whenever I speak, some of the old verb
word dirt gets mixed with the message because
this treasure's an earthen vessel.
And because I'm a bit of an emotional
case, I've got these problems and hang-ups,
and pornographic magazines bug me.
I'm not projecting that on you.
I mean, the more I look at you,
the more holy you look.
Some of you.
I'm in such a state that all those
over 50 look sanctified to me.
All those over 50, they look so holy.
And some of you are all young ones
that, well, I won't discuss it.
Yes, lust is a giant in the land.
And there are other giants.
We've talked about fear.
We've talked about worry.
We've talked about lust.
But there's a giant of unbelief, comes almost
unaware.
Suddenly we begin to doubt everything.
I find many young people, they doubt God
even loves them.
I wonder, anybody here today, you deep down
have been struggling, does God really love me?
Does God really care for me?
Why, that's ABC, you must learn that.
We sing that in Sunday school.
Jesus loves me, this I know.
For the Bible tells me so.
But we think, oh, that's for the kiddies.
No, that's for the adults.
And you and I have to daily bathe
in God's love and forgiveness.
I find people who haven't really accepted God's
forgiveness on a gut level.
A girl come to me not long ago,
incredible situation.
Raped four times by her grandfather.
Not exactly the experience most people want.
You say, do things like that happen?
I want to tell you, when you get
involved with people, when you get involved in
the ministry of counseling and you can't do
preaching without counseling, you're going to discover what
a crazy, sick world we live in.
And I've had the joy for 20 years
seeing people scarred with every kind of sin
and problem and wild thing in their life.
I've seen the power of God's forgiveness to
restore and to cleanse and to lift up.
But it doesn't just happen overnight.
It takes God's therapy.
It takes fellowship.
The church is supposed to be representing the
way of fellowship rather than the triumph of
individualism.
And as we understand real fellowship and acceptance
and forgiveness and as we become a caring
community, then we are going to see people
healed and restored.
And then we're going to see them being
used of God in ways that we cannot
imagine.
But unbelief can come.
Does God love me?
Does anybody else love me?
There's some people I meet, they know that
God loves them but they sure have their
doubts about anybody else.
But people love you probably more than you
know.
In the church we're told to be concerned
not just for the 99 but the 1.
And sometimes we don't have an opportunity to
express our love until there's a problem, a
crisis, a struggle and a difficulty.
And sometimes those of us who believe this
message, we run out of time.
We may put in a 17 hour a
day and some of us have been doing
that for two decades to run out of
time.
There's so many needs.
That's why we need more people trained who
can counsel, who can love, who can share.
It's not a few of us who have
been given the gift to speak.
We need a great army of people.
They may not be public speakers but they
have heart of compassion reaching out to needy
ones.
1 John 3.16 is very important.
We all know John 3.16 but do
you know 1 John 3.16?
In this we perceive the love of God
in that He laid down His life for
us.
So we ought to lay down our lives
for the brethren.
Are you doing that?
Are you laying down your life for the
brethren?
Are you opening your home?
You know the greatest evangelistic center in America?
The home, the home, not the church.
We live in pagan countries.
Let's face it.
These people aren't going to rush into our
churches.
Some will.
More will come to something like this.
But your home.
Have you opened your home?
I find some people, they never open their
home.
They're afraid that a sinner may come in.
I mean, who knows what he could do.
Maybe he will get dirt on the carpet.
It's a $200 carpet.
It's the Lord's provision, this carpet.
And what if a sinner comes in and
steps on it?
He'll get dirtied.
That may sound a bit extreme, but I
tell you, I find many believers with a
closed home policy.
And if we open our tents for evangelistic
meetings and don't open our homes and our
hearts, it's got to go together.
Something has gone wrong.
Fiery dart of unbelief.
That enemy of unbelief.
You know, there was another man together with
Caleb.
We have to wind down now.
And that was Joshua.
And we find his testimony over in verse
8.
If the Lord delight in us.
Isn't that beautiful?
Isn't that wonderful?
God is delighting in us.
He delights in us.
As I said before, God knows all about
us and He loves us still.
He loves us still.
Some people give the idea that when you're
zooming at 24,000 feet spiritually, Jesus really
loves you.
But when you fall flat on your face,
you've just opened your mouth and said something
unkind, or you've just done something wrong, then
God sort of rejects you.
Now, you may do that to your children.
That'll help them go astray.
But God doesn't do it to His children.
His acceptance to us is there when we're
up, when we're down, when we're in the
middle.
And we need to understand God's grace and
God's acceptance of us.
Doesn't mean we can play at the grace
of God.
We can't.
For the Bible says also that our God
is a consuming fire.
That's why to me the normal Christian life
is for Christians to be on fire.
We give the idea that the Spirit-filled
man, the Spirit-filled man is some kind
of an odd character.
You know, he's one in a hundred.
He's sort of an evangelical Holy Ghost freak.
The Spirit-filled life is the normal Christian
life.
I have people say to me, Oh, we
hope, Brother George, you'll have the anointing.
We hope you'll be filled with the Holy
Spirit as you go to minister.
We pray for the preachers.
What about my wife?
Oh, she's back in the kitchen.
She doesn't need the Holy Spirit in the
kitchen.
I want to tell you, the Holy Spirit
does not just work in the extraordinary.
The Holy Spirit is a specialist in the
ordinary.
And He wants to invade your kitchen.
He wants to invade your car, especially help
you to drive properly because many a man
who is an angel in the pulpit is
a devil behind the wheel.
The Holy Spirit is very practical.
And I believe that though God is a
God of the extraordinary and we don't want
to be nibblers of the possible, as C
.T. Studd said, but grabbers of the impossible,
so the Holy Spirit is also a specialist
in the ordinary and the woman's ministry is
just as important as the man's ministry.
And those behind the scenes, those who are
cooking, those who are serving, the Martha's as
well as the Mary's are needed in God's
work.
I wish I had time to speak about
the 20 major misunderstandings the average American and
Canadian has about world missions.
They think you have to go to seminary
before you can be a missionary.
Or they think you've got to have so
much specialized training.
You know, in our work, we need mechanics.
We need secretaries.
We need ordinary people.
We need working people.
We use seminary people as well.
We have quite a few men out of
Cambridge and Oxford and they've got degrees.
But you know, you go to Oxford University
and you're not going to find a motor
mechanic.
You're not going to find a carpenter.
We needed 15 carpenters to get that ship
ready.
Jesus was a carpenter, but somehow we've got
a little twisted today.
I think we think Jesus must have been
a banker.
And I believe that North American evangelical Christianity
has become too bourgeois, too extreme right wing,
and too capitalistic.
Because we have failed to reach the working
people.
We have failed to get into the ghettos.
We have failed to reach out to the
minority groups and demonstrate that Jesus Christ was
a savior of all people and all races.
That is very important in the present scene.
And I am convinced Joshua had the answer.
If the Lord delight in us, he will
bring us into this land and give us
a land which floweth with milk and honey.
I want to ask you in closing, are
you in that land?
Are you in the promised land?
More than 14 times in Hebrews chapter 3
and chapter 4, it speaks about the rest
of faith, the New Testament comparison to the
promised land.
It's not firstly an experience, it's a lifestyle.
God wants to give us a radical, loving,
compassionate lifestyle.
It's not a matter of having a new
message, it's a matter of having a new
message and a new life.
A milk and honey life.
I'm convinced that those giants in your land,
in your heart, whatever may be hassling you,
attacking you, and those giants that continue to
attack me, I was so amazed when I
read about David Wilkerson, having this incredible hang
-up about flying.
He is so petrified of airplanes, he gets
in his old bus and goes all over
the United States in his bus.
He still gets in a plane sometimes.
I don't know how he's going to get
to England in a couple of weeks.
Maybe he's coming by ship.
But I was really ministered to through that
book of his, Beyond the Cross and the
Switchblade.
You'd better read it because you can see
the growth of reality in this man's life
and the struggles they went through as a
family and the difficulties that almost broke his
home up, and yet how Jesus ministered.
I guess it helped me because I've also
had this incredible, ridiculous, embarrassing fear of airplanes.
I'd rather go across the Atlantic Ocean on
a floating donkey than fly.
You say, well, what kind of a man
of faith is that?
I don't know.
I've been trying to figure it out.
But I know one thing.
Nothing has stopped me from getting in planes.
Many, many, many times because I don't live
by my feelings.
My feelings go berserk.
My hands sweat.
I get dreams.
I start thinking about heaven.
And I got a real hang-up about
this heaven because I wonder now, what happens
after the first million years in heaven?
My mind was getting in what I call
vain imagination.
And then I repented.
And I said, Lord, forgive me and cleanse
me.
Up here, 40,000 feet or 30,000
over Thailand.
I decided I didn't want to go to
heaven.
I decided I wanted to stay on Earth.
I repented.
You know what?
God cleansed me, forgave me, and brought me
down to Earth not only spiritually, but hallelujah,
the plane landed in Bangkok.
Beloved, I don't know what your hang-up
is.
Those of you who don't have many hang
-ups, those of you who have it all
together, don't come to any more of my
sessions.
But those of you who are weak, those
of you who have struggles, those of you
who find fiery darts coming in on your
soul, those of you who have questions about
a lot of things, let's hang in there
because there are answers, and there is victory
in Jesus Christ, and there is power in
the Holy Spirit as we repent and walk
with Him.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, we thank you for your love
for us.
Lord, I thank you that you know all
about me and you love me still.
I thank you that you are the only
one that can put it all together.
After I've listened to 155 preachers and all
their different takes, I have to just go
back to you, living Jesus.
Thank you that we can drink of that
water and never thirst again.
We don't even understand that.
It's so great.
We worship you.
Search our hearts, Lord, that we may know
for sure that we're in promised land living,
that we are walking by faith, living by
faith, and holding up the shield of faith
wherewith we can stop all the fiery darts
of the devil.
In Jesus' name, Amen.