On this occasion, George Verwer took his reading
from 1 Corinthians chapter 9, commencing at verse
19.
1 Corinthians chapter 9, commencing at verse 19.
Here now is George Verwer.
For though I be free from all men,
yet have I made myself servant unto all,
that I might gain the more.
And unto the Jews I became as a
Jew, that I might gain the Jews.
To them that are under the law, as
under the law, that I might gain them
that are under the law.
To them that are without law, as without
law, being not without law to God, but
under the law to Christ, that I might
gain them which are, or them that are
without law.
To the weak, because I, as weak, that
I might gain the weak.
I am made all things to all men,
that I might by all means save some.
And this I do for the gospel's sake,
that I might be partaker thereof with you.
Know ye not that they which run in
the race run all, but one receiveth the
prize.
So run that ye may obtain.
And every man that striveth for the mastery
is temperate, that is self-controlled in all
things.
Now they do it to obtain a corruptible
crown, but we an incorruptible.
I therefore so run, not as uncertainly, so
quite I, not as one that beateth the
air.
For I keep under my body, and bring
it into subjection, lest that by any means,
when I have preached to others, I myself
should be a castaway, disapproved.
These are verses that every young man and
young woman needs to meditate on, and think
about, and pray about.
In studying missions and in reading some of
the latest missionary releases, almost all missionary directors
are in agreement that probably the major factor
that is crippling so many new-coming missionaries
on the field today is that so few
people in our age ever learn anything of
discipline.
We do not realize, most of us, just
from what an undisciplined society most of us
have been reared in.
And we get into a situation where discipline
is required, and we find ourselves against a
tremendous mountain of impossibilities.
The number of missionaries that are cracking up
in their first term on the field is
staggering, just staggering.
And it's so often because they have never
learned to bring their body into subjection.
Verse 27, Paul speaking, that I keep under
my body and bring it into subjection.
And more and more God has been impressing
upon me that if I fail, and those
of us who are carrying responsibilities in this
work fail to do everything possible to bring
you into a disciplined life, we are helping
you commit spiritual suicide.
Sometimes, leaders, we don't like to be too
harsh, we don't like to enforce the rules,
and we don't like to nag on people
to try to maintain the little bit of
discipline we do have, and believe me, it
really isn't much.
We don't want to get a reputation of
being hard.
We have a great emphasis on love and
on meekness and kindness and gentleness, and we
push books like Andrew Murray's Humility and Calvary
Road and all these things.
And so we at times, of course, can't
quite see where any kind of discipline or
enforcement can be applied.
If you think we have any kind of
discipline, you need to study the Salvation Army.
I might remind you that the General William
Booth cut his own daughter off, cut his
own daughter off completely because she disobeyed one
command.
He cut her off from the Salvation Army,
the famous Maruchal of France, and cut her
off as heir and as his own daughter,
and practically never spoke to her again the
rest of his life, even though she went
on to lead more souls to Christ in
her later years than he did.
And it was basically because of lack of
discipline.
He told his daughter when she left Britain,
he said, First, I'm your general, and second,
I'm your father.
And that's the kind of discipline that many
groups have had in years gone by, and
of course, when you see how many tens
and hundreds of thousands of souls were swept
into the kingdom by the Salvation Army, you
perhaps might hesitate to criticize General Booth for
what seems to be a rather extreme measure.
Well, we don't have anything near that.
We're more lenient than most people would ever
imagine.
But I have been coming under deep conviction
that whether I lose my best friends, I'm
going to absorb, I'm going to cry, I'm
going to preach, I'm going to do everything
I can to get young people to see
the need to bring their body into subjection
at any cost.
Because it's so clear here that if we
don't get this discipline, if we don't learn
to bring our bodies into subjection, we're going
to be castaways.
If the Apostle Paul is going to end
up a castaway, well, I don't know what
hope that gives for some of us, if
we don't bring our bodies into subjection.
You see, basically, the Spirit of God works
through our mind.
It works through our mind and our will.
The Bible says we have the mind of
Christ.
And so as we pray, as we think,
as we meditate, God gives us the solution
in our mind.
Now that's usually quite easy, isn't it?
The big job then is to get what
you know is right in your mind to
change the whole course of your body.
And many of us have, of course, discovered
that our mind goes one way, pulling us
toward that which is right, and our body
seems to pull us the other way.
If you look in Galatians, just very quickly,
you have a very vivid description of this.
The book of Galatians, chapter 5, verse 16.
This I say then, walk in the Spirit,
and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of
the flesh, for the flesh lusteth against the
Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.
And these are contrary the one to another,
so that ye cannot do the things that
ye would.
But if ye be led of the Spirit,
ye are not under the law.
You should never be amazed by the pulls
of the flesh.
Don't be shocked, discouraged, disappointed, and depressed when
the most vile, unbelievable, out-of-this-world
tongues and pulls come upon your flesh.
I have never met a man yet who
was free from temptation, which, of course, is
the pull upon the flesh.
God promises us that if we walk in
the Spirit, we'll not fulfill the lusts of
the flesh.
Walking in the Spirit is an act of
discipline.
Walking in the Spirit is saying yes to
the Spirit.
Some people have the idea that if they
go through a certain amount of spiritual gymnastics,
whether it's Bible reading, memorization, prayers, nights of
prayer, spiritual crisis, that they go through something,
and you've got a hundred different people telling
you what it is, that somehow you'll get
the victory.
But look, no matter what crisis you have,
no matter how many verses you memorize, no
matter how much you pray, no matter what
kind of spiritual gymnastic you go through, you
will never liquidate the need to make a
decision.
God is never going to take from you
the decision to do right or to do
wrong, to walk in the Spirit or walk
in the flesh.
Now, through the study of the Word of
God, through drawing nigh unto Christ, we sharpen
up our weapons, we learn to wear our
armor, so when the decision hour comes, we
have the power and the ability and the
grace to say yes, but we still will
not be forced to say yes.
God has given us the privilege, some might
not think it's a privilege, but God has
given us the privilege of constantly choosing, constantly
choosing who you will serve.
Every king in the Old Testament had the
choice.
No matter what they went through, some of
them went through revival, some of them had
great fathers, some of the fathers were very
righteous, but then it says, and he did
what was not right in the sight of
God and went after the sins of Jeroboam.
And over and over again we see how
these men chose, we see how Solomon chose,
we see how David chose.
All over the Bible it is clearly seen
that we have the freedom to choose.
And this is what life consists of, doesn't
it?
Constantly choosing, constantly choosing.
Yesterday I walked past a newsstand in the
morning and some planted magazines glared me in
the face, that which, before I knew Jesus
Christ, and even sometimes after, used to just
practically knock me out spiritually.
I had to choose.
Even though I had time in the world,
even though I was living time spiritually, I'd
been with different ones in prayer, I still
had to choose.
And I can tell you, even though I've
been converted ten years and God has given
victory for ten years, I still find the
choice not so easy at times.
And Paul obviously did not find the choice
to not serve the flesh very easy.
When he said, I bring my body into
subjection, lest that by any means, when I
have preached to others, I myself should be
a castaway.
And my word this morning is, young person,
you must develop a disciplined life, no matter
what the cost.
Some people think that a disciplined life brings
about the loss of their liberty.
No!
Disciplined life gives you liberty.
It gives you the freedom to do what
you know you should do and not just
what your body craves to do.
Discipline is the road to freedom.
Bringing your body into subjection is really the
way to bring it into liberty.
Because as long as you don't know discipline,
as long as you live by instinct, and
the majority of people in the world live
by instinct.
Freud in all of his psychoanalysis proved basically
man lived by instinct.
He does not live by logic.
He does not live by analyzing a situation
and doing that which is sensible and right.
He lived by instinct, by the drives of
the flesh.
And Freud gave man up as pretty hopeless.
But praise be to God, here Mr. Freud
didn't realize the power of the new birth.
That the new birth can replace instinct drive
with spirit guidance.
So that we as believers are not led
by instincts.
We're hungry, so we've got to have food,
no matter what.
Whether it breaks the rule, whether it hurts
somebody, whether it offends somebody, this doesn't matter.
We've got to eat, so we eat.
We've got to have sex.
And so no matter what, we try to
repress it, we try to push it back,
but it doesn't really, we don't really get
the victory and so sooner or later we
find ourselves in the mix up.
That's probably knocking out 80 to 90 to
95 percent of all young people in the
warfare sooner or later.
And you'll never get this victory over sex.
There's no sense pushing it under the table.
There's no sense hiding it like we did
in the days of Queen Victoria.
This isn't going to help.
We've got to face the reality that the
sex drive today and the fact that man
is not controlling it is literally driving us
into the deepest ditch, the same ditch that
Greece and Rome saw so many years ago.
But I want to tell you there is
victory over this instinct, this drive, which seems
to be so forceful.
Billy Graham, as some of you have heard
on the tape, says, don't be so surprised
when it's such a strong desire.
It's our creative power.
God created.
In the beginning, God created man, and he
created man in his own image, and that
meant he gave man the power to recreate.
And so this tremendous power that was released
from God when he created the universes, when
he created the stars, when he created man,
the same power is within us.
It's a tremendous force.
It's our creative power.
Every time we see a little child, we
see the fantastic result of God's creative power
to us.
And so we shouldn't be surprised, but we
should understand the words of Paul.
I think there's many people that believe that
when Paul wrote these passages, he had very
clearly in mind this tremendous battle that he
was not free from.
I keep it under my body and bring
it into subjection.
I was never very disciplined in this.
I can tell you stories before I was
converted.
It wouldn't be very pleasant, so I won't
do it.
But I knew nothing about this.
Eating, sleeping, it's just between eating, sleeping, and
buying everything I ever wanted, that's the way
I was.
And when I started to see these things
in the Bible about this, when I tried
to control my Coca-Cola diet, which could
almost take down ten bottles in one night,
or my popsicle craving, which used to liquidate
twenty-five popsicles on a hot day and
blow the end of my pocketbook out, and
all kinds of other little ridiculous cravings I
had, it was like going over Mount Everest
for a little babe like me.
And yet I can say it's only because
from the beginning of my Christian life I
began to practice discipline, I began to bring
my body into subjection by His grace.
That's probably the basic reason that I'm here
today.
If not, I would be washed out.
Absolutely.
Temptations that have come, and it's only been
because over time I've learned to say no
to the flesh.
And that's what you must develop, you must
develop that ability to say no to the
flesh.
And if you do it in little things,
little things concerning food, little things concerning sleep,
little things concerning work, then you will get
to develop, you'll develop a habit so when
that big crisis comes you'll also say no.
But if you don't develop that no to
the flesh and the little cravings that come
daily in this way and that way, sometimes
even things that aren't really wrong in themselves,
then when that big crisis comes and we're
all headed for it, we'll not say no.
And people can tell you, men have studied
this thing, that if you learn how to
say no over certain foods, if you learn
how to say no concerning sleep, if you
learn how to say no concerning work, you'll
learn how to say no concerning the great
battle of youth that seems to knock so
many out.
And one of the greatest testimonies of this
work is over the years God has given
us such tremendous victory in this area of
morals.
Not because we are anybody, but because God's
word is true.
And we have had people in the ranks
of this work, people I can tell you
so many stories, and I've heard them who
have seen the victory and the power of
God from all these kinds of problems.
I want to tell you there's been times
in my life before I was converted if
I started reading a lot of psychology, I
would have considered myself just a case, a
case for a doctor.
Some of the thoughts that have come into
my mind before I was a Christian and
later after, I mean, if I got reading
some of these interesting books which I'm still
clear of.
Some people think I know a lot about
psychology.
I've never read one single psychology book.
And I don't particularly have any desire to
do so.
I've glanced through a few pages, but I
think you can learn a lot more about
psychology right from this book and right from
just watching people.
God gives us discernment.
And with the word of God and with
the teaching, I believe, of men of God
like Dr. Adolph and books like that, I've
read some of those books, we can learn
more and understand more about psychology than we
could at four years of university grinding our
brains through the devil's meat grinder.
And I want to tell you I find
that a lot of people discover that they're
mentally ill by reading about it.
And I think if we all had enough
psychology, we'd all discover that we've got some
kind of neurosis or some kind of very
serious problem.
The more we thought about it, the more
serious it would get.
And I've discovered that God wants us to
take all of our little strange things and
just cast them upon him and then bring
our bodies into subjection, as it says here
so very, very clearly.
Look at that verse 26.
I therefore so run not as uncertainly, so
fight on, not as one that beateth the
air.
In verse 25, and every man that strives
for the mastery is tempered, that's disciplined, self
-controlled.
Some people are scared of that word.
We have people that are always talking so
much in the heavenlies that they're no earthly
good.
But I want to tell you God is
very practical.
And you will not find that you're going
to live a Christian life by going through
a certain creed and signing your name at
the end.
Nor will you find that you'll be able
to live a Christian life by going up
to a certain altar even if you cry
all night.
There is no substitute for self-control.
The very fact that God used the word
self-control means that you're involved.
You, as a free-will creature, as an
act of the will, must serve the living
God.
Otherwise, why would Christ say, if you love
me, keep my commandments?
He should have said, if you love me,
read my Bible.
If you love me, memorize my verses.
If you love me, do this, do that.
No.
He said, if you love me, keep my
commandments.
And look at John 14 very quickly in
another verse.
I think it's John 14, 21.
This is a very dangerous subject for me
because I still lack discipline in keeping my
messages short.
But anyway, chapter 14, verse 21.
He that hath my commandments and keepeth them,
he it is that loveth me.
Isn't that tremendous?
I believe it's one of the greatest verses
in the Bible.
Jesus is speaking.
He that hath my commandments and keepeth them,
he it is that loveth me.
And he that loveth me shall be loved
of my Father, and I will love him
and will manifest myself to him.
Isn't that tremendous?
It's your acts of discipline that say, Jesus,
I love you.
It's not when you get up in the
morning and have your little devotional.
Yes, Lord, oh, I love you.
Yes, I really do.
Does it feel a little tickle in your
heart?
No!
God isn't interested in that.
That's all right.
If it's backed up by life.
But it's when you don't feel like doing
a particular job anymore or you're out on
the doors and you don't feel like going
to another house and you say, because I
love you, keep your commandments.
This is the thing that proves to me
my wife loves me.
This is the thing that wins me.
This is the thing that my wife has
that batters me, that breaks me, and sends
me down on my knees is because she's
submissive.
She does what I ask her to do.
Because, you know, if she kept telling me
she loved me, but every time I asked
her to do something, she did the opposite,
pretty soon I just wonder whether she really
did love me.
And it's the same way with our relationship
with God.
We keep telling him we love him.
We go through our little pantomimes and our
little evangelical jargon and go through our little
worship wheels, and we don't obey him.
We don't keep his commandments.
It's just a joke.
If you love me, if you love me,
if you really love me, you keep my
commandments.
You walk in the Spirit.
You say yes to the Spirit and no
to the flesh.
I've discovered in the Christian life that a
vast majority of the things I do I
don't particularly like to do.
I didn't want to come on this trip.
I tell you, it's not easy.
Some people think it's only hard for the
women when the men go away, but I'll
tell you, here's one standing in these all
beat up shoes that finds it very hard
to leave his wife and three children.
The day before I left, I had three
days with my family from the last month's
tour down in Turandot.
So I took my family out sailing.
I have a friend who's a pilot at
the Bombay Port, a ship pilot, and he
wanted to do something for me, and so
we went out on a little sailboat to
visit a training ship.
I still have ships on my mind.
Anyway, we visited a training ship out in
the Bombay Harbor and took my children sailing.
What a wonderful thing it is to be
with one's family.
And one's wife, and one does love.
And then after one or two days, you
just sort of get to know them.
They just realize their little daughter's still trying
to figure out who's her father.
And just as you get together and the
Lord seems to be knitting your heart and
you have some time for prayer, of course,
then you step into an airplane and you
go away again for another three weeks.
If you think I enjoy this, you're crazy.
I hate it.
In my flesh, I'd rather walk through the
back jungles of Cairo, at least temporarily.
I'll get fed up with that soon too
because you must realize one thing about the
flesh, it wants change.
It's always greener on the other side of
the fence.
And that's why some people go through life
just constantly whirling around because the flesh wants
change.
You do door-to-door work eight hours
a day, you'll want to get an administrative
job.
You do administrative work eight hours a day,
you'll want to do door-to-door work.
You preach eight hours a day, you'll want
to do some other work because the flesh
just so constantly wants change.
And if you're going to serve Christ, if
you're going to live for Christ, you must
learn to do not that which you feel
like doing, not that which you like to
do, but that which God tells you to
do as you wait on Him in prayer,
as you allow the body of Christ to
take over in your life.
And that's going to mean you're going to
have to bring your body into subjection.
And if you're not willing to do this,
you're heading for the spiritual graveyard.
I have seen so many casualties, so many
casualties.
Men who have been evangelists, who have led
thousands to Christ, who hit the rock bed
of sexual lust.
I can name three missionary directors, some of
you have heard me say it before, but
I'll say it again.
It's a warning because God in His Word
gives us warnings about these things.
He says, these are written that ye might
not do the same thing.
But I can give you the names of
three missionary directors who rock piled and married
their secretaries to divorce their wives.
You say, that's unbelievable.
Men who have met hundreds of souls to
Christ, men who were respected, men who preached
all over the world, men who were considered
men of God, rock piled.
There were two famous men some 20 years
ago.
One's name was Billy Graham.
The other's name was a better speaker.
He was getting better results.
He was seeing greater things happen than Billy.
Chuck Templeton today is just a complete reprobate
writing filthy movie scripts and every possible thing.
I know a man who was the head
of a leading youth organization last year in
a large city.
Souls were coming to Christ.
Today he's singing comedy songs in a dirty
dingy nightclub in the very same city.
Why?
Because the discipline is laid aside in the
church.
The church has so forgotten about the discipline
that after the average evangelistic meeting everybody goes
out to load up on hamburgers, milkshakes and
what else you might have.
And we know nothing of fasting.
Fasting is just absolutely a forgotten thing.
You mention the word and people look with
horror at you.
I want to tell you if you don't
learn to fast you'll never learn to conquer
kingdoms for the glory of God.
I've never read about a man of God
who did not even know something of fasting.
Alan Redpath once said at Moody Church, he
says, you know why no one fasts anymore
in our day?
Because no one is really hungry for God.
Fasting isn't so much a denial of something
as it is a drawing out to someone.
You've heard of a young man who got
so in love he couldn't eat.
I can remember it happening to me.
Sometimes I had the flutter of a feather
in the inside that you couldn't throw me
a stake when you haven't even seen it.
And I believe when some of us really
fall in love with Jesus Christ we really
get to know God.
We're going to hunger for him and we're
going to be willing to say, well look
that's fine but I really don't want that
meal today.
I just want to meet with Jesus Christ.
Jesus said, I have a meal that you
know not of.
Oh if we learned something about, we learned
a little bit of denying our lives.
Do you know the stomach is far closer
to our hearts than we'd ever dare to
admit.
Do you know one of the major problems
on all mission fields of the world for
missionaries is adaptation to the diet.
One of our own girls when she got
out to India had a complete collapse.
Practically a nervous breakdown just for fear of
the diet she was going to have.
She went as white as a sheet and
just collapsed several times and was sick for
one or two days.
Unconsciously she thought she had the victory but
unconsciously she kept thinking of hot foods, she
kept thinking of getting sick, kept thinking of
all these things.
Of course you worry about something good enough
and you don't have to eat any hot
food to get sick.
You'll get sick right there and then.
And she got sick.
Well praise God he gave her a wonderful
victory over that particular thing.
And actually I actually love the food in
India.
It's nothing like people say.
But all by the things that can tell
you.
The missionaries I've been with only the past
week, they fly their food in from Singapore.
They fly their goodies in from New York.
You can't possibly live just on Indian diet.
And the things that are happening all over
the mission field today are so heartbreaking because
we have never learned discipline.
And if you don't learn discipline in the
coming days you're
going to be
in You're going to be in You're be
in trouble.
You're trouble.
You're going to be in trouble.
You're You're trouble.
You're trouble.
trouble.
You're trouble.
You're You're You're You're trouble.
You're trouble.
If I don't continue to learn more and
more discipline, then I'll be shipwrecked.
The Word of God is very clear.
It's so, so very blunt.
If I want you to just look quickly,
I think it's 2 Corinthians chapter 10.
See, very stunning words.
2 Corinthians, I think it's 10.
Let's take 1 Corinthians 10 again.
I really got my Corinthians mixed up this
morning.
It talks about Israel in the wilderness.
Verse 5, With many of them God was
not well pleased, for they were overthrown in
the wilderness.
Now look, these people had a spiritual experience.
They were all baptized unto Moses in the
cloud and in the sea.
They did all eat the same spiritual meat.
They did all drink the same spiritual drink.
For they drank of that spiritual rock that
followed them, and that rock was Christ.
But with many of them God was not
well pleased, for they were overthrown in the
wilderness.
Now these things were our examples.
See, that's why God put this horrible story.
This is a horrible story.
The guys that hate the Bible call this
pornographic.
They call it pornographic.
Well, there's a big difference between pornographic literature
and the Bible.
Because the Bible never condones it, it always
condemns it.
And that makes the difference.
Look at those words, neither be idolatrous is
where some of them is written.
The people sat down to eat, to drink,
and they rose up to play.
That's Christianity in 1966.
They sat down to eat and drink, and
they rose up to play.
Neither let us commit fornication, as some of
them committed and fell in one day free
of twenty thousand.
You mean those same people that were baptized
unto Moses?
Those same people that drank of that spiritual
rock?
Those same people that had an experience with
the promised Christ?
Fell in one day, twenty-three thousand?
What was the problem with these people?
They never learned in all the wilderness time
to say no to the flesh.
They never learned this.
When they wanted meat, they began to grumble
and groan.
You know, there's a lot of people in
our day, they don't have a clue of
how sinful it is to complain, to groan
and to groan.
You know, I don't believe in engaging in
complaining and grumbling and groaning any more than
I believe in engaging in immorality.
Because, you know, you see that they got
struck dead for both things in the Old
Testament.
Ever how they wanted meat, and they wanted
this, and they wanted that?
They knew nothing of discipline.
They were just carried by the appetite for
the flesh.
And where did they get them?
They never got them into the promised land.
They all died in the wilderness.
Castaways!
They were God's people, but they were cast
away because they never brought their body into
subjection.
God says these are for our example.
Neither let us commit fornication.
Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of
them also tempted and were destroyed of serpents.
Neither murder ye, as some of them also
murdered and were destroyed of the destroyer.
Now all these things happened unto them for
examples that are written for our admonition.
Upon whom the ends of the world are
come.
Wherefore, let him that thinketh he standeth, take
heed, lest ye fall.
That speaks to me.
It speaks to the strong man here.
The one who thinks he's pretty disciplined.
The one who says, well, boy, I'm glad
I don't have any trouble with lust.
The one who says, well, I'm glad that
I've got good control over my appetite.
I can eat anything at any time.
I even know how to fast.
Beware, lest ye fall.
And I just praise God for verse 13.
It's my only hope.
Therefore have no temptation taken you, but such
as is common to men.
For God is faithful, who will not suffer
you to be tempted above that you are
able.
But wherewith the temptation also make a way
to escape, he may be able to bear
it.
Now some people have read into that, the
thought that once they become a Christian, temptation
comes, the Lord is given victory.
No.
Once you become a Christian, temptation comes, the
Lord can escape.
That's what the Lord said.
There is a way to escape.
Doesn't say you're going to be forced to
take it.
You still have to choose.
It's very clear.
It's right there in black and white.
He will also make a way to escape.
And every time you're tempted, every time there's
some problem, be sure, look around, and you
can always look best on a bent position,
and you'll find there's a way to escape.
There's always a way to escape.
And you know, every time the devil comes
looming in on me with some stupid sin
or temptation, I always say, well, Lord, you
promised in 1 Corinthians 10.13 there's a
way to escape.
And I ask him to show me, and
I take that escape.
To do it, you must say no to
the flesh and yes to the spirit.
You know, as I read about the discipline
of men in the world, it just staggers
me.
Can't God do it in the church?
The men that are going out to Vietnam,
the training they're going through back in the
States, before they ever get on a ship,
getting up at the most early hours, two
and three miles running in the morning, the
way they're practicing to learn how to fight,
some of them are getting hospitalized before they
ever go.
Unbelievable.
The new training and teaching in the States
now increases training four times as much as
for the Korean War.
These men over there and all over the
world have learned that for soldiering there must
be intensive training.
And that is what the problem is.
If you're already a missionary, you're in the
wrong place.
We are not a missionary society.
We're not accepting missionaries.
We're training.
This is boot camp.
This is where we're hoping that men will
learn discipline.
This is where we're hoping that young people
will learn to pray, learn to study the
word, learn to love others, and learn to
carry out the most basic things of the
Christian life.
If you don't get the basics, how can
you build on that?
When you think of these men training, it's
only a miracle that some of us aren't
out in that war.
I've got three children and that's keeping me
company.
Roger's so close to going out there, they
might put a hoop on his neck and
pull him over at any minute.
And there's some others around here, among the
Americans, that could be out there.
And I'm here to say, most of us,
in our first four weeks at boot camp,
we'd be the first ones to break down
and fall.
Because it would be so tough, and so
hard compared to what we're used to in
the ranks of Operation Mobilization.
I was reading the life of General Westmoreland,
the man who leads the troops in Vietnam.
And when he had his troops over in
Korea after the peace, it said Westmoreland was
afraid that peacetime would play havoc with his
troops.
So he told his men, imagine telling your
men just after the armistice, OK, we've got
peace now, we're going to have a little
bit of training to keep you guys in
shape.
We're getting up at five in the morning,
and we're going to have a two-mile
run.
I'd like to see any one of you
get up at five in the morning and
do a two-mile run.
Probably at the end of the first mile
you'll call the transport department.
But that's what they did.
They got up at five in the morning,
took a two-mile run.
After they had a two-mile run, they
looked for a creek, tried to find one
with the thinnest ice, broke the ice and
went in for a swim.
When they got done with that, they found
and had a little breakfast, took their picks
and shovels and dug for eight hours.
And I went out here and laid cement
for one day, and that thing practically knocked
me out.
So they did fortifications all day, then they
had a little evening meal.
After the meal they'd do two and a
half hours of boxings, get their brains in
shape, and a few other things.
And then General Westmoreland made the comment that
at ten o'clock at night he never
had any mischief with his troops.
Some of you get a little bit excited
at night, you don't have to talk so
much, and you can't sort of calm down
because you don't get enough physical work.
And I think maybe next year, we may
make calisthenics voluntary at the conference.
Of course, we're always scared we might bring
someone under the law.
That's what people always say to you.
We're going to bring us under the law.
That is the biggest lie.
Discipline doesn't bring a man under the law,
it brings him into liberty.
But anyway, I don't think we'll require calisthenics
this year, but it might be good to
make everyone pass a physical fitness test.
Wouldn't that be interesting?
Then all those who pass, they would be
free from doing the calisthenics.
You know, just a little test like 60
push-ups and a few hundred sit-ups
and a few other little things.
Anyway, the Spirit hasn't confirmed that yet, but
it certainly would be a good thought.
But I'll tell you, Paul said you must
bring your body into subjection.
And we think of a discipline.
I just finished reading a story from World
War II of men that were in prison
camps.
And they had one great desire to get
out of the prison camps, just to get
out.
They dug tunnels 200 feet long with their
bare hands.
Some of you mechanics, you think you have
a hard time?
My, oh, my, can you imagine digging a
tunnel 200 feet long with your bare fists?
They had such a desire to get out,
such a desire for freedom.
Why, if we had that much desire to
see our lives free from sin, if we
had that much desire to see men free
from the chains of death, why, some of
these men, when they were digging tunnels, you
can hardly imagine it.
If you can picture a little tunnel, and
here are the men in here.
There's one man, and here's the other man.
No room above them, no room beneath them,
just squashed together, completely squashed together.
Here, they had to put the sand from
here over here.
This is closed off.
The biggest problem in building these tunnels is
you don't know where to put the sand
and dirt.
So they take the sand off here and
put it here, and then they move out
another half a foot.
There's nothing.
There's not a half a foot here, a
half a foot there.
They move more sand.
They have little tiny straw pipes going up
through the ground.
It's the only air they get.
For days, they go through.
Some of them went 10, 20 feet in
this type of tunnel.
Most tunnels use an air tube, and they
eventually were building underground railways.
They tried so many of these projects, and
the Germans were very, very smart.
They caught them every time.
It's a whole group of Air Force men
from Britain and America.
They dig these tunnels, and they get out
of the tunnel.
There was a German.
Okay, go back to prison.
And they tried again and again and again,
escaping, escaping, escaping.
And they got caught every time.
They tried everything.
These men escaped, and they couldn't get out.
And finally, they just determined they were getting
out.
400 men in one of the biggest prison
camps in Western Germany.
They just gave everything they had, and they
dug a tunnel hundreds of feet.
They sunk a shaft deep into the ground,
hundreds of feet with a ratchet and a
lice, and they dug their way out.
300 men escaped from this unbelievable place out
there.
Now, who were they working for?
And it was said that in those times,
English and Americans who normally couldn't stand one
another, they worked together in cock work.
And there were all kinds of other characters
from all over the world, all different odd
varieties that had been in prison there.
And they worked together in cock work.
Why?
They had a common goal.
They had such a common goal to get
free, such a common goal to get out,
that they forgot all their little petty differences
and the fact that some were Americans, some
were English and all, and they united and
they brought to pass this whole thing.
It's unbelievable.
You know there's thousands of stories like that.
That's just one little story.
There's thousands of stories like that.
Stories like the man I told most of
you about some time ago that swam across
the English Channel and back, nonstop.
You know, it was a great thing.
It used to be a great thing to
swim across.
Now what?
Now you've got to swim across, you know,
to really get the big status symbol.
You've got to go across and back.
And on the way back to school, jellyfish
came out of him and started stinging him
and stinging him.
Well, I thought I had a major persecution
in Turkey because a couple of fleas got
into my bed.
And jellyfish stinging him all over the place.
What did he do?
He just kept swimming, kept swimming, made it
back to Great Britain.
Unbelievable.
The men in the world are climbing the
mountains.
The pilots that run these airplanes through the
sky are going through such a discipline, why
it would scare most of us to think
about it.
The airline stewardesses that work on these airplanes,
everything you just look at, everything is a
team.
The way they dress, the way they operate,
whether they've been through finishing school, every kind
of discipline for just that job.
And some of us are so sloppy, so
untidy, so absolutely undisciplined, take one glance in
our room and you wonder whether we knew
how to pick up even a pair of
socks.
And God is just so concerned about this.
He's so concerned that we learn neatness, that
we learn discipline, that we learn to be
responsible, that we learn to take care of
ourselves, that we learn to bring our body
to subjection.
It's the only way.
You can say, well, that's very hard.
Sure, it's hard.
But anything in life, ever mounted or ever
counted for anything was hard.
And I'm convinced that in the future there
might be more dropouts on our way.
But when we get through, we might have
some body or some group of people that
are going to be able to accomplish something
for God.
Making it easier will never help us.
Will never help us.
We think that's the way out.
We make it easier.
But it isn't.
Because I tell you, days ahead are going
to be hard.
And we've got to learn now.
And don't wait for somebody to enforce it.
But do it because you love it.
I pray to God you'll not take lightly
what I said this morning.
And in your study program, in your evangelism,
in your letter writing, in your eating, in
your sleeping, in every aspect of your life
you'll become ruthlessly disciplined.
Not in yourself, not in your flesh, but
brought upon the grace of God, realizing that
His strength is made perfect in weakness.
And you're not tunneling through with your own
bare hands.
He's tunneling through out of you.
But you must want to go, you must
be willing to go, you must be hungry
to go, and you must say yes to
Him as He gives the orders.
And when you're in a job, it's typing,
it's working on vehicles, and you feel it's
hard, you feel you can't go on, that's
the time to go on.
That's the time to draw upon the resources
of God.
That's the time to bring your body into
subjection.
I was out just some weeks ago at
a ball, we were walking about three miles,
the sun was sweltering on me, I had
the water just running off my face.
My shoes had these little sandals and they
were just, stones were coming through them, and
I was tired, and the worst part of
it all was, it's so hard for me
when the houses are two, three hundred feet
apart.
And it seemed that we had to go
through a labyrinth to get to each house.
And you got to the house and then
they give you that, we were in a
very poor area, they didn't even have two
pices to buy a house for you.
So all we'd say alone, we'd give them
a little word of testimony and then we'd
walk out and then we'd go another three,
four hundred feet and sometimes much further and
we'd find another house.
And while I was out in the middle
of the morning with Jeremy and Brian, he
was with me, he said, well, he said,
don't you think it's very bad.
You know, we've got enough here in the
morning, it's about eleven o'clock, it's time
to go back.
And oh, oh, oh, I say, and all
the flesh just craves to go back.
I thought of the fact that if I
got back there he'd probably have a nice,
something cool for me to drink.
And yet this is what's going to happen
every day, so often times, as we go
forth from the flanks of the Lord's army,
the flesh will want to go back.
And it might even be now, in this
conference, already the flesh maybe wants to go
back.
But young person, if you want to stay
off the rock pile, if you want to
accomplish anything in your life for Christ and
for eternity, you must learn the secret of
the Apostle Paul.
He brought his body into subjection.
His mind controlled his body.
The mind of Christ controlled the body of
flesh that is with us and always will
be with us.
And he lived in victory and he became
a soldier and a conqueror for the Lord
Jesus Christ.
I pray to God, all of us, where
by his grace and his resources and the
life of Christ in us which you've heard
in other messages, bring our bodies into subjection.
Lest, after preaching to others, we become a
reprobate.
And if you think the days ahead are
going to be too hard and you're not
willing to pay the price, please be honest.
Drop out now.
You can make yourself, you can make your
life by getting prematurely into this kind of
warfare.
But don't go into the ranks of this
party unless you really are ready to bring
your body into subjection.
As the Spirit of God guides you and
gives you life.