It's amazing, in the scripture there's three things
that God tells us not to be ignorant
of.
What's the first one?
I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning
what?
Them that are asleep.
Okay, God would not have us to be
ignorant concerning what happens to believers when they
die.
Another, you look in another scripture verse and
it says, I would not have you be
ignorant, brethren, you look and it's the three
things that causes Christians to backslide.
Most Christians don't even know what they are.
The scripture says not to be ignorant concerning
that which causes Christians to backslide.
They know what it is.
How do you suppose 1 Corinthians starts the
gift chapter?
I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning
your gift.
Isn't it amazing the things we're ignorant of?
And God says I would not have you
be ignorant of those things.
Tonight, is this thing plugged in?
It looks like it's not plugged in.
Maybe it is.
Ah, it's plugged in.
I just want to share some projects.
I forgot they were in the back.
You're not going to be able to see
them very good, but I'll put them up
anyway.
Can you see them?
Okay, we have pride is basically building my
life around myself.
That was the first attitude we looked at
that said it will utterly destroy us as
Christians.
Then there are some things here.
One is areas to check off.
I need to increase my commitment to Christ.
These are projects to do to strengthen this
area.
Learning to see things from others' point of
view.
You know what that's called?
You know what your kids say if you
do not see things from their point of
view and you're giving them a decision and
they say, Mom and Dad, you are not
what?
Fair.
Fairness is seeing situations from others' points of
view.
And many times, as a parent, I want
to cut my kids off and tell them
no.
And I say, well, you should at least
give me the right to at least ask
the thing all the way through before you
say no.
And if your kids ask to do something
that you cannot do and then you listen
to it all the way through and then
just ponder a little bit and then give
them an answer, they'll think you thought it
through.
And as many times I knew, as they
were talking, that we were already committed.
And kids hate to be cut off with
no's.
You know, so be fair.
You're committing people.
And people working for you, they come and
they say, what do you think about, you
know, and you're saying, you're kidding.
You know, we don't, you know, ramp swordfish
for the clubs.
You know, to get people in.
We just wouldn't do that.
You know, so you let them tell it
and you listen.
And so learn to do this.
Because, you know, there may be that some
people do have ideas that may be better
than yours.
So do this type of thing.
Readily admitting when I'm wrong.
Remember we said that's very difficult.
Listening more and talking less and being more
concerned about Christ's reputation, not mine.
Some point in time in your Christian life
you will have to give your reputation to
God.
That's just part of growing.
And when you do, you better duck.
That can be one of the most struggling,
traumatic experiences when you give God your reputation.
A friend of mine gave God his reputation.
The very next day, got down, built an
altar and said, God, I want to give
you my reputation.
I am going to be concerned about your
reputation, not mine.
Pastored a very influential church on the west
coast.
The next day he got a telephone call
and said, have you read the Seattle Times?
He said, no, why?
He said, there's an article on there about
you and it's a bit of a terrible.
And he looked at it and it was
filled with lies in the religious column.
How his church was pushing the sex education
program in the public schools.
It happened to be his church was taking
a stand against it.
The guy happened to get the story wrong.
He got the telephone and started dialing the
Los Angeles Times.
I mean, the Seattle Times.
To straighten out the religious editor.
And all of a sudden, God said, what
did you do yesterday?
Whose reputation did you give to me anyway?
Mine or yours?
He said, God, I gave you mine.
He hung up the phone and said, God,
if you want to straighten it out, you
straighten my reputation.
And he left it in the Lord's hands.
And they got more letters that they printed
a front page retraction.
And he never did a thing.
Let me tell you, when you give God
your reputation, it's amazing.
You know what, people just call me about
you and you go, what?
Well, I'm going to get them.
So, humility is building my life around Jesus
Christ.
Anger.
You know, reacting to someone who violates my
personal rights.
Then I need to list the rights I
still tend to be touched with.
And then gratefulness.
I don't like gratefulness as well as meekness.
Because meekness is really a better term there
than gratefulness.
Meekness is yielding all my personal rights to
God and being thankful for each one he
returns to me as a privilege.
Now, when I worry, and I forgot to
tell you this, when you worry, worry is
an excellent signal and so is anger.
When you get angry, what is God doing?
He's using that to point out areas of
your life you're still holding on to.
When you worry, that's God's way of letting
you know what?
You've picked up a load that's too heavy
to carry.
Let's say we decide I want the piano
carried from here over here and the organ
from here over here and I ask the
dear lady back there to carry it.
And she's dumb enough to do it because
she wants to please everybody so she grabs
a hold of the piano and she goes
to pick it up.
You know how God lets you know that
that load is too heavy for her?
She gets a pain in her back.
And you know that pain to the physical
body is the same thing as worry to
my spiritual body.
Because worry is God's way of letting me
know that I've picked up a burden that's
too heavy for me to carry and I
need help with it.
I need to turn it over to him.
That's how you know that you're carrying a
load that's too big.
Worry is when I assume more personal responsibility
for a situation than God intends me to
take.
That's the way I know.
How do I know when I'm assuming more
responsibility for something than when I should?
Well, when I start to worry.
And that's a trigger for me to start
praying.
So how do I know when to pray?
Well, as soon as I begin to sense
that I'm getting anxious for something.
Then God says, see, I'm calling your attention.
Now you need to pray.
That's prayer meeting.
Do you get it?
See, these things aren't so bad.
They can really be a benefit.
If we use them right.
Bitterness.
I'm trying to talk with one of our
super cock drops and it's so big it
goes from one...
Buy smaller ones tomorrow, would you?
Bitterness.
Don't go.
Come back.
Resenting ones who have wronged or offended me.
And here, people I will react to.
And you know that you can react to
people.
Let's say that you go see somebody and
they say, Oh, I hear you're in spiritual
work.
Oh, yeah.
What do you work for?
Child evangelism.
You're kidding.
You know, when you hear this, you're kidding.
Or, oh.
You go, oh boy.
And then what happens?
You can begin to resent that person because
they have some experience somewhere that wasn't good
and they've just X'd out the organization and
you can begin to resent that person because
they X'd out the organization you work for.
Do you see?
It's not because they've done anything to you,
but what?
They're not behind what you're doing.
You say, well, I know a thing or
two about Baptists, I'll tell you about.
But we've got to be careful because we
can take resentments in different ways.
And then forgiveness is realizing that God is
working through the other person's offenses for my
benefit.
And we looked at some of the benefits.
And therefore, ceasing to be resentful towards him.
And we said forgiveness is having the same
openness towards an individual that you have after
they offended you, the same as you had
before.
I know I'm not saying it right, but
forgiveness is having the same openness towards the
individual after they offended you as you had
before they did.
That's real forgiveness.
You say, I've forgiven them, but I don't
like them.
Oh, come on now.
Okay, now we go to a new one
tonight.
This one is a very, very difficult one
to talk about.
Sensuality.
A spirit of sensuality.
And it comes from a character deficiency of
moral impurity.
Sensuality.
A sensual spirit.
A character deficiency of moral impurity.
And we want to look at just a
whole lot of insights tonight.
And I wish we could...
I wish we had a lot more time
than what we have.
But I want to share tremendous insights with
you that I think will be helpful.
And especially one area of material.
And I can't share it like I usually
do.
But this material, if I could share it
with the illustration, is dynamic.
It's the most dynamic thing I'd share anywhere.
And wherever we share it, at the school
or high school or wherever, tremendous conviction takes
place.
I shared it in a church one time
and two returning students had come to this
church that night.
Both fellows did not sleep that night.
And they came to me the next day
and they said, I've got to talk to
you.
I didn't sleep last night.
When I realized the truth of that, Mr.
Logan, I'm afraid.
For the first time in my life, I
am fearful for what I've done.
And so tonight we want to share this
material with you.
But we'll just share it in a nutshell.
And maybe sometime you will need to share
this.
Because young people and children do not know
this truth.
And they don't know this truth.
And you know what people feel?
They feel that grace is sin without consequences.
They believe that grace is sin without consequences.
That is a lie from the pit.
And I've got illustrations from Calvary Bible College.
I could keep you here all night long
sitting in the edge of your seat and
weeping over what some of those kids are
weeping in their lives even now.
For what they did in sin.
God can always forgive the sin.
But he cannot always what?
Change the consequences.
And you know the greatest consequences of sin?
Is disguise of memory.
Disguise of memory.
There are people who would give anything if
they could what?
Forgive.
What do you do that someone that comes
to you and says, I cannot stand my
memory when I look back at the things
that I've done.
The people that I've hurt.
The babies that I murdered.
How can I handle this now?
And you know what we have them do?
We have them every time that the scars
of memory begin to get a hold of
them.
To use that as a time to recommit
their life to Jesus Christ.
And say God I want to thank you
for reminding me what my life was like
when I was running at myself.
Lord let me live a thought a little
closer to you.
And I don't ever want to run my
life again.
Because I made a big mess.
Turn to Hebrews 13.
Or Hebrews somewhere.
12.
I'll switch this thing over.
It's hot.
Really good.
I let it sit there for a while
and it really is powerful.
If I get a hole in my cheek,
I'm going to sue her.
Oh, I've got to tell you this while
I'm eating this thing.
We had a lady in our church and
she always liked to do innovative things with
the little teeny ones.
You know, a child of answer doesn't hit
the little ones.
But I'll tell you the fun ones are
the little bumps in the log.
And the tiny ones that can't come to
good news clubs because they disrupt too much.
They're fun ones.
And so she had these little kids and
they were doing their verse.
You know, Jesus loves me or Jesus left
or, you know, one of those big long
ones.
And she came to this little boy and
he said, I won't tell you.
You know, and for three weeks the wound
polished.
And then one week he said, Jesus left.
And so she gave him a life saver.
And she said, Jeff, did you know the
verse last week?
Yep.
Why don't you tell me?
I didn't like the flavor.
It was a green one.
He'd had to eat it.
He said the verse, I wouldn't say the
verse.
He was going to eat one of the
green ones.
He didn't like it.
Isn't that cute?
We're talking about frame of reference.
This same teacher had a little girl and
she came home.
And I always ask kids what they learned.
What did you learn today?
She said, oh, we studied about the man
who got hit by the car.
I said, what?
She said, we studied about the man who
got hit by the car.
And I said, oh, no.
I said, did Mrs. Alvey's husband get hit
by a car?
And she said, yep.
I said, one of her relatives?
No, the man in the Bible got hit
by the car.
What man in the Bible got hit by
the car?
The man by the side of the road.
I said, he didn't get hit by a
car.
He did too.
Our teacher told me.
So we had to call a teacher on
the phone.
Because if her teacher told her he got
hit by a car, he got hit by
a car.
But she never told him why, or it
didn't click with Terry, why he was laying
by the side of the road.
And anybody laid by the side of the
road got banged up like they had to
be hit by the car.
You know.
You know, I tell you, you just got
to clarify.
You have to clarify, clarify, clarify with these
little kids.
Maybe run over to Terry if they're never
hit by a car.
Well, Hebrews 11.
Well, I have the right book.
This is the most picky bunch of people.
You always get leaders.
I just hate doing leaders.
I want to do lay people.
You know.
They're so critical.
But, Hebrews 11.
There's a choice that's made here that every
young person has to make.
And I remember when my son became 13.
I thought he needed a little refresher course
on sin.
And I said something to Richard that he
just couldn't understand.
And I said, Richard, I want you to
know something.
Richard, I want you to know that Dad
knows that sin is fun.
And he said, oh, Dad.
I said, Richard.
I said, don't anybody tell you that sin
isn't fun.
Because it is.
And the Bible said that sin is fun.
If it wasn't fun, people wouldn't do it.
And don't ever try to sell the kids
an idea that sin isn't fun.
Because they're going to find out it is.
And they're going to be set for everything
else you told them.
Moses said sin was fun.
And that's kind of a Logan translation.
That's what he said.
Hebrews 11.
In verse 24, it says, By faith, Moses,
when he must come to you, refused to
be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter.
Do you realize what he was giving up?
He was giving up the most powerful position
in the known world at that time.
Do you know that they worshipped the pharaohs?
And Moses could have been worshipped as God.
There would not have been one desire that
he ever would have wanted that could not
have been granted.
He would have had all of the largest
army in the world at his disposal.
And he had the wealth of one of
the largest treasuries of wealth of any kind
would have been his.
Now why did Moses, you know, why did
he refuse to assume all of this that
was his and what did he choose in
its place?
What was the choice?
Choosing, rather, what?
To suffer.
That's quite a choice.
Now where do you want to be?
Ronald Reagan or suffer?
Ronald Reagan, isn't he?
I don't want to suffer.
Now who wants to suffer?
Now why did he choose to suffer?
It wasn't because he had some moral struggles,
you know, and needed psychiatric help or something.
You know, not everybody would say that.
Moses had some real troubles, you know.
Anybody that would choose this obviously had some
problems.
He chose rather to suffer affliction with God's
people than to enjoy what?
The pleasures of sin.
See, Moses knew that sin was pleasurable.
Now why did he make that choice?
Have you ever gone browsing in a jewelry
store?
You know the most frustrating thing in browsing
in a jewelry store is the price tags
are turned which way?
Upside down.
You know, and you do this bit.
Can I help you?
No.
How much is this?
You know what they want to do?
And I don't care whether it's a jewelry
store here or in Nebraska or in Kansas.
They all do the same thing.
They all, you know, they go to a
seminar and they teach them the same tricks.
But they want you to hold this thing
in your hand, to look at the glitter,
and then turn the price tag over.
Remember one time we were in Goldman's.
That's where we do all our fancy shopping.
And this guy looked for a ring, and
they gave him this ring.
It was a man's ring, and he turned
it over.
And the price tag, and the woman says,
you know, it's only $1,000.
You know, $1,000?
You're not ready to drop this thing.
It's only going to be $1,000 for
a man's ring.
And that was, you know, a few years
ago.
And so I don't know what it's going
for today.
You know, and he said, $1,000.
You know, and if they'd have said, well,
it's $1,000, never mind.
But they want him to look at it.
And that's what Satan does, doesn't he?
He wants him to look at it.
Moses looked at sin, and boy, it glitters.
But he turned the price tag over.
You know what he said?
It's not worth it.
It's going to cost me too much.
And see, this is what you've got to
get through to kids.
Sin is not worth it.
Don't tell them sin's not fun.
It's not worth the price.
The pleasures of sin for a season because
the price was so high.
He esteemed the reproach of Christ's greater riches,
the reproaches of identifying with God's people, greater
riches than all of what?
The treasures in Egypt.
For he had respect unto what?
The recompense of the reward.
What did Moses do?
He looked at the long range consequences of
sin and the long range benefits of identifying
with God's people.
And Moses said, I'll identify with God's people.
Oh, it may cost me something now, but
these benefits are eternal.
He revealed his value system.
The kids are living for what?
The now and paying consequences the rest of
their lives.
I just wish you could see the Christian
kids in college weeping over their high school
past, wishing they didn't have one.
Some of these kids at 18 and 19
have pasts that you will not believe.
I was teaching spiritual dating in one of
the junior high schools in Kansas City.
A girl came up to me.
She was 14.
She didn't even look for it.
She came up to me and said, Mr.
Logan, I can't tell you how much I
appreciate.
Here's this little girl.
This little girl.
Kind of a little chubby little girl.
So I can't tell you how much I
appreciate your teaching on spiritual dating.
I was a 14-year-old girl.
Shouldn't I be dating anyway?
And she said, Mr. Logan, I want you
to know that I was a prostitute for
two years.
And I know what you're saying.
And I thought, what is a 14-year
-old?
What does she know?
And I said, do you mean you've been
in love with your boyfriend?
She said, no.
I worked the streets in Kansas City for
two years.
I didn't believe her.
And I said, are you sure?
Mr. Logan, I know what I've done.
You know, I thought, you know, junior high
girls, anything for attention.
I mean, she just didn't look like a
prostitute.
So, you see them all over Kansas City.
So you know what they look like.
This girl did not look like a prostitute.
But children come high priced in Kansas City.
There's a lot of men that like these
young girls.
So a 10, 11, 12-year-old girl
comes at a premium price.
So I asked the Christian school teacher, I
said, was that girl really a prostitute?
He said, oh, yes, Mr. Logan, she was.
So the next day I went to that
girl and I said, honey, I want to
tell you something.
God has done a marvelous work in your
life.
What do you mean?
I said, he's erased the sin from your
countenance.
And I said, you don't look like one.
And you don't have to live like one
again.
I said, Mr. Logan, I wouldn't.
I would not even let a boy touch
me.
And this girl, all the struggle she's had.
Her mother just recently committed suicide.
Can you imagine what this girl is going
to go through?
Two years of prostitution from 11 to 13.
Then she gets saved.
And then about a year and a half
afterwards her mother kills herself and now she
has no family.
And they make her a ward of the
court and all that stuff.
Isn't that terrible?
I said, you just don't know.
And we have girls coming to Calvary that
were prostitutes.
We have kids coming to Calvary that were
drug addicts.
Kids that have scars on their lives.
You can't believe it, A.T. And kids
that have done stuff their folks have no
idea.
One mother called crying.
She said, would you talk to my teenage
daughter?
She's having an affair with a pastor's son.
And she was going to a Christian high
school in the area.
And I said, sure, bring her in.
So this girl came in and she sat
down and said, Mr. Logan, I don't know
what to do.
I really don't know what to do.
So we told my dad and all this
stuff and everything.
And the pastor doesn't want his son to
marry a man.
And all this.
And we were sitting there talking.
And the scripture says that if a fellow
has intercourse with a girl that's a virgin,
he's to marry her.
And he's to go and talk to the
girl's father.
So that's the exact principles of Paul at
Calvary.
If a fellow is immoral with a girl,
if he is, he is to go to
that girl's father and tell her what he's
done.
And let me tell you, that puts the
fear of the Lord in kids and babies.
They don't want to go to any girl's
father, especially if any girl's father is a
pastor or a missionary and tell their dad
what he's done to her.
And then the dad decides whether to get
married or not.
It's the girl's father's decision.
Not the college's decision.
Not the pastor's decision.
Not the church's decision.
But the father of the girl's decision.
And they went to the girl's father.
But the pastor wasn't sure he wanted his
son to marry.
So I asked this girl a question.
The Spirit of God just moved in my
heart.
And I said, and here she was, 16,
17.
I said, was this the first time you
were immoral?
And the girl said no.
And the mother nearly fell off the chair.
The mother said, you never told me that.
She said, well, Mom, I didn't want to
tell you.
But she said, you didn't know this, but
when I was going to junior high school,
and this girl was 13, 14, and 15,
she would go down the stairs at night
very quietly and go out the sliding glass
doors and party and dope and sex during
the night and then come back in the
morning and slide the doors, lock it, go
upstairs and go back to bed.
I didn't know of other girls that climbed
out the window.
Folks didn't know there were guys.
And they're out partying at night and climbing
into the windows.
Folks didn't even know.
You have no idea what's going on.
Terrible, terrible things are going on today.
And these kids have got to see this.
And they've got to come to make the
same decision Moses made.
Now, what do kids have to see to
choose as Moses chose?
Turn to Proverbs chapter 1.
I did not bring my notes.
I'm doing all this out of my head
on this.
And it felt that we needed to go
over this material, probably not so much for
you as for goals that you're going to
be working with or talking with.
We need to go back to our very
first night.
We said that we needed to make what
the goal of every believer.
What should be the goal of every Christian,
Proverbs 4.7. Wisdom.
Wisdom is the principal thing.
Therefore, get wisdom.
With all I'm getting, get what?
Understanding.
Wisdom is being able to see as God
sees.
Understanding has to do with what?
My response to a situation.
But there's another truth that most people don't
even know what the word means.
And what's the word?
Reproof.
What are reproofs?
The scripture says, and you ought to do
a study on reproofs, that the reproofs of
life are the teaching aids of wisdom.
Now what are the reproofs of life?
They are the reproofs that come in life
when I violate God's perspective.
And there are predictable reproofs.
And we would teach this in the college
so our kids could be good counselors.
And if you violate certain things down here,
there's certain reproofs up here.
When you see these reproofs, you know what
they've done wrong.
You know, and you go down.
And you can go right down to that
particular reproof.
God says certain reproofs are predictable.
Young people who have a bad relationship with
their parents, we already talked about this a
couple of nights ago, what's going to happen?
Teenagers whose attitudes are wrong to their parents,
what's going to happen?
Things will not go well in their life.
God promises that.
So when you see a teenager and things
are going wrong in their life, don't get
caught up in what's going wrong.
Just know that if it's going wrong, they've
got problems with their folks.
Kids, a couple that comes in for counseling,
and they say, you know, we're having struggles
in our marriage.
And I say, well, are you struggling in
the physical aspect of marriage?
Yes.
You know what?
Why most couples struggle in making the physical
adjustments in marriage?
Because they lower their standards when they're dating.
And I ask the question, I ask, did
you lower your standards when you were dating?
And they never, the fellow never asked the
girl for forgiveness, or the girl never asked
the fellow for forgiveness, and that's between them,
and they just don't adjust in the physical
aspect of marriage.
It's not intended.
And there's just all kinds of predictable things.
Financial problems in marriage.
You just go right down.
These are reproofs.
So we want a female, so there's a
reproof that comes when I violate Scripture.
There's reproofs of all kinds of things.
There's a reproof of passions.
What's the reproof of passions called?
G-U-I-L-T.
That's the reproof of passions.
Guilt.
What's the reproof of being unforgiving?
Bitterness.
There's the reproof of government.
You drive any way you want to and
eventually there's going to be a red light.
I'm not going to pay my taxes.
Fine, I'll write you a letter.
We'll get you.
There's all these reproofs.
There's reproofs of relatives.
You know, whenever there's in-law problems.
I said, boy, we've got problems with my
mother-in-law.
The first thing I said, did you get
married with full permission of your in-laws?
Oh, no, I invited them to the wedding.
I said, hey, you'd like to come?
I'm going to marry your daughter, you know.
If you'd like to come, it's going to
be at a certain time.
That's a reproof.
In-laws really react when there's marriage without
full approval.
There's three things that I will not do
as a pastor.
I will never marry any couple without the
full approval of parents on both sides.
Never in my church.
Never.
And if they're divorced in six couples or
whatever it is, whoever's responsible, I will not
marry them unless both sides are in favor
of that wedding.
There's all kinds of problems a couple has.
Have you ever had somebody get married here
and you had a mother-in-law you
had to deal with that didn't accept you?
You know, she never will.
I don't care how long you've been married.
She won't change her mind.
If she didn't want her baby boy to
marry you, she won't change her mind.
That's right.
She hasn't changed her mind.
And you struggle with that all your marriage
life.
And you know the worst in-law problem
there is?
It's not the husband and his wife's mother.
You tell jokes about that, that's funny.
What's not funny?
The husband's mother and the wife.
That's not funny at all.
They don't even tell jokes about it.
No one even laughs.
That's pathetic.
And when the bride's mother-in-law dislikes
her, that girl is in for many a
heartache for many a year.
Unless they go and ask forgiveness and make
things right about that marriage.
So let's go now to these reproofs.
What is the purpose of a reproof?
It's God's way of calling my attention that
I have violated His principles for living.
And what is a reproof supposed to do?
I'm supposed to turn around.
I'm going one way and God wants to
turn me around.
So He taps me on the shoulder.
And He says, turn you at my reproof.
And what happens if I won't turn around?
We're going to find out.
But if God is talking to you and
you're willing to turn around, God says there's
two things I'll do in your life if
you'll turn around.
One.
Behold, what?
I will pour out, what?
My spirit unto you and I will make
known my words unto you.
Two things.
I'll fill you with my spirit and what?
I'll show you what to do.
I will reveal truth to you if you
will turn around.
Now let's look.
Because I've called and ye refused.
And I have here verses by the groves
written all over here on reproofs from all
over the Scripture.
God said, I have reproved you.
I've called and what did you say?
Leave me alone.
God, leave me alone.
Take your hand off my life.
I'll do my own thing.
Just leave me alone.
And there are people saying that today.
God, you just leave me alone.
I want to do what I want to
do.
You leave me alone.
Because I called and you refused.
I stretched out my hand and you shoved
it away.
And you have said it not all of
my counsel and you would not have any
of my reproof.
Then, this is God's what's going to happen.
I, God, will laugh at your calamity.
God said, I will laugh when the bottom
drops out.
And it will drop out.
God said, I will mock when your fear
cometh.
What do you fear the most?
Because it will come.
Do you fear that your folks will find
out?
Do you fear you will get caught?
I have a testimony written by one of
our students.
This boy, after sitting and hearing this, came
to see me.
He came in my office.
He said, Mr. Logan, I've got to talk
to you.
He said, I have got terrible problems.
I was never going to come in and
tell you.
I said, there's one person I'm never going
to go see.
It's Mr. Logan.
And if I ever go see him, I'm
not going to tell him.
I just don't want him to know about
me.
But he said, Mr. Logan, I'm going to
tell you plain and simple.
I'm a thief.
I said, are you really?
He said, you have no idea.
Mr. Logan, father, very outstanding Christian leader.
He said, I'm a thief.
A thief through and through.
I said, why don't you go home.
I gave him a project.
You go home and you write down all
that you can remember that you've stolen and
how much money.
So this kid went home and came back.
He said, Mr. Logan, he's 17 or 18.
Okay, I'm ready.
I said, how much have you stolen?
He said, well, I've never stolen anything big.
I've never stolen a car or a color
TV or anything like that.
But he says, as close as I can
figure, it's $5,000.
So I started stealing that I can remember
way back in grammar school, but I could
only start keeping track in junior high.
He said, Mr. Logan, I can't walk into
a store and I can tell you immediately
the security of that store.
I can see where the mirrors are.
I can pick out who the police are.
I got the whole thing.
He said, I'll just do it.
Just to me.
And I'll walk into the store.
I can steal from the store.
I can steal from the back there.
If I go back there, you know, I
know where the blind spots are.
I know where I can get the stuff.
And I said, were you purposely hired to
pay back all that money?
He said, yes, but the hardest thing is
the Bible camp I work at.
They made me a director this year, and
I've been stealing money from there for years.
He said, oh, and guess what almost kept
him from getting squared away in his line?
Point number one.
What's that one?
Pride.
Just about killed him.
But he went back, and he told these
people he had stolen, and he was going
to pay it back, and he owed them
this money.
Plus, he figured interest on that money for
all these places, which came out to like
$9,000 or something.
And he began to pay these off.
And he prayed and thanked God, and he
said, I'm free.
I said, no, you're not.
He said, what do you mean?
I said, you're not free.
I said, you know when you're going to
be free?
It's when you're tempted to steal and you
walk away.
But I said, until Satan brings the big
one, brother, you're not free.
He said, oh, I know I am.
And I said, well, I know you're not.
I said, listen, I've dealt with too much
of this.
You just better mark my word.
He said, he that thinketh he stand, take
he, because, brother, you're going to fall flat
in your face.
He said, okay, Mr. Logan, but I don't
think I'll ever steal again.
And I said, no, no problem, no problem.
I would love to read these testimonies awfully
long.
It came Christmas time.
And this fellow needed to go to Crown
Center.
And at Crown Center, he was going to
the bookstore to get a certain book that's
the only place they had it.
He parked his car in the Crown Center
parking lot.
Now, what do you suppose a thief fears
most?
Getting caught.
Well, he, instead of walking down, you know
how these parking lots, you go like this
to get up in them?
Instead of walking down the stairs, guess how
he walked down?
Through this way.
And as he was walking through, he noticed
the cars that had presents in them that
weren't locked.
Now, you probably would never notice that.
But he did.
And when he came downstairs and walked by
this Lincoln, there was a mink coat in
the back seat, full length, unlocked.
And he knew a place where he could
turn it in and get at least $1
,500 for it.
He went to the bookstore.
He came back.
The Lincoln was still there.
Well, Satan had been doing the number in
his head, you know.
And he walked by the car.
And he turned around.
And he walked back by the car.
And then he practiced some principles I'm going
to show you at the end tonight.
And he turned around, said, I'm not going
to do it and walked away.
And he walked up to get in his
car.
And he was surrounded by security.
He said, we've been watching you.
Open your trunk.
And he opened his trunk.
He said, shake him like a leaf, Mr.
Logan.
Shake him like a leaf.
And they opened the car and they searched
him and they searched everything.
We've been watching you walking in these cars.
He said, Mr. Logan, it's the first time
in my life I have ever been stopped
and I didn't have anything.
He said, he'd never been stopped before.
He said, Mr. Logan, if I would have
had that coat, it would have been grand
larceny.
Instead of being in this class after Christmas
vacation, I'd have been in jail.
And he was willing to share that with
the class.
And the kids are saying, wow.
You better listen to what he's saying about
reproofs because I know now that he's saying
the truth.
Let me tell you, the very thing you
fear will happen if you don't turn when
God is dealing with you.
When your fear cometh as desolation, that is
what is so tragic.
What's desolation?
Desolation that's all alone.
I wish that I had a hidden camera
in my office and I had silent movies
of the countenances of people that sat in
my office pouring out their stories in utter
bankruptcy.
And just let you see their faces and
you could read a story of desolation, of
fear.
I'm sitting there, what am I going to
do?
What is going to happen to my life?
How can I tell my dad?
What will my wife say?
What will my husband do when he finds
out?
How can I tell my boss?
Do I really have to call the Internal
Revenue and let them know that I've been
bezzling?
How am I going to do this?
Or they've audited the books, Mr. Logan.
And they know now, what am I going
to do?
I'm talking about Christian people.
Sitting there in utter, if you could just
see, that would be enough to turn anybody
off from sin.
Because they're starting to pay for it now.
When your fear cometh as desolation and your
destruction comes as a whirlwind, before we moved
to Broken Bowl, seven tornadoes went through Grand
Island.
You should go down and look where the
Safeway store once was.
Where houses used to be.
Motels that are gone.
Big cement motels, gone.
Airplanes were inside of hamburger stands.
Unbelievable.
God says, I will bring tornadoes through your
life.
You look at what a tornado does.
It does exactly what's going to happen to
you.
You are going to be torn apart when
what?
Distress and anguish shall come upon you.
I'm going to share another story with you.
There are none of our students that have
been involved in murders.
I know that Dr. Madison doesn't particularly like
me telling these stories, but they are so
real and I was there and I helped
these kids with these things and they had
no idea that their sin would come to
this.
One minister's son that was going to Calvary
went to Tennessee Temple.
Tennessee Temple said, listen kid, you are so
bad, would you leave?
He said, I'd be glad to get out
of the school.
And so he left and became a fireman.
And he was doing drugs and women and
wine and whatever he wanted to do.
And one day he was in a building
and the whole thing fell down on fire.
And it kind of fell all around him.
And he's standing there in this building.
I mean, standing where a building was and
it's all laying down and he's still standing
up.
And he says, God, you got my attention.
I just surrendered.
He surrendered.
He said, wow.
I mean, he had been through all kinds
of car wrecks and all kinds of things
and finally this building falling down.
And he says, you know, the next time
one of these buildings falls down, I've had
it.
So he surrendered to the Lord and came
back to Calvary.
He surrendered everything but all.
He surrendered a lot, but not all.
So he came to Calvary.
Well, Calvary is not as bad as Tennessee
Temple, but it's not, you know, it's no
picnic either there.
And they have a lot of rules and
regulations and he struggled with those same things
inwardly.
Here I am, 27 years old, and they're
telling me I have to be in at
1030.
And I was staying out all night or,
you know, three days at a time and
didn't answer anybody.
Why do I have to, you know, Mickey
Mouse stuff.
And so he began to resent some of
these rules.
You know, you can't listen to any kind
of music you want to.
You know, I want to show my hairy
chest.
But enough of that.
We don't want to see the hairs on
your chest, you know.
So he just struggled with those things.
And these resentments began to build in his
life.
And he began to struggle a lot with
rebellion.
Before it was open rebellion, now it was
just quiet rebellion.
Well, he went home to visit his brother.
It was his birthday.
And his dad's a tremendous man.
And he went to visit the family and
he decided with an unsafe friend to take
his brother roller skating in another town.
Because there's no roller rink in that town.
It was his brother's birthday.
He said, I don't want to go.
He said, get in the pickup, we're taking
you anyway.
So they threw the kid in the pickup
and were going to take him roller skating
on his birthday.
And as they were driving to the roller
rink in this town, they drove by the
discotheque where this kid used to hang out,
the Calvary student.
So he wheeled into the pickup into the
discotheque.
He said, I'm going to go in to
see my friend.
His brother, who was backslidden at the time,
said, I'm not going in there.
The Calvary student went in.
And it wasn't to pass out tracks.
The first thing he did was to get
a beer.
So he got a beer.
One of our own students, our dear old
students, walking around this joint with a dance
floor, drinking beer.
Well, his buddy went in too and was
sitting at the bar.
Well, this kid from Calvary loves to fight.
He liked to prove that he's strong.
And he was strong.
He really is real muscular and all this
stuff.
So he's drinking a beer and looking through
the dance floor and there is his buddy
talking to a girl at the bar.
And some guy walks over and he can
see a commotion going between his buddy, unsaved
buddy, and this fellow.
And he couldn't miss the fun.
So he walked over there.
He said, hey, what's going on here?
You messing up with my buddy?
The guy said, well, he's messing with my
girl.
He said, you leave my buddy alone.
The guy said, you tell your buddy to
leave my girl alone.
And this guy shoved him.
The guy from Calvary put his beer down.
And he shoved this guy.
And he shoved the kid from Calvary.
And the guy from Calvary gave him a
shove.
And he fell on the dance floor.
And when he fell, he laid flat on
the floor, reached in his boot, and pulled
out a gun.
And pointed at the kid at Calvary and
pulled the trigger.
He pulled the trigger again and nothing happened.
And he moved the gun and pulled the
trigger and shot his buddy to death.
He just fell at his feet, bleeding on
the dance floor.
He put the gun back on the kid
from Calvary.
He said, I couldn't do anything.
I just stood there and I shot him.
He pulled the trigger again and nothing happened.
And this guy began to shoot the people
in this dance floor.
And they were screaming and knocking over tables
and this whole thing.
I wish I had a camera of this
fellow's countenance as he was telling me his
story.
Tears streaming down his face.
He said, Mr. Logan, God's been trying to
talk to me.
I know he did, but I wasn't listening.
He said, I tell God, leave me alone.
I'm not as bad as I used to
be.
He said, Mr. Logan, the hardest thing was
to stand at the grave of my unsaved
buddy, knowing he was in hell.
And I was his Christian friend that took
him to the bar.
He said, Mr. Logan, when I go to
sleep at night, guess what I dream about?
This guy shooting these people in this dance
hall because of me.
People are in a Christless eternity because of
me.
He said, Mr. Logan, I don't know if
I can ever handle that.
And I can tell you story after story,
just as bad as that.
And this kid said, wherever you teach high
school kids, Mr. Logan, tell them my story.
Tell them, don't.
It's not worth it.
This kid finally dropped out of school.
He couldn't handle it.
Did God forgive him?
Did he forgive him?
Sure he did.
But he will never, what?
Forgive.
One summer I was sitting in my office.
A kid came in.
He said, Mr. Logan, you don't know me.
Can I talk to you?
And I said, sure.
He said, I'm from a certain Bible school
in another state.
I said, what brings you here?
He said, well, I was hoping you wouldn't
ask me.
But he said, I was hoping that you
could just pray with me and help me.
I hear you help kids.
I said, sure.
I said, do you want to tell me
your problem?
He says, well, I guess I can trust
you.
He said, Mr. Logan, I was loose morally
at this Bible school.
And I picked up a disease.
I don't know what it is.
But I've come to Kansas City because they
have excellent venereal disease centers here.
And I'm going to find out what it
is and get treated.
Would you pray for me?
I am so sorry for what I've done.
And I said, sure.
So I prayed for him.
I said, come back, will you?
School's not in.
Just come back and let me know how
things went.
He said, I'll do that.
I promise.
So he was gone.
And one day this kid came in.
And I'm telling you, he was lower than
a worm.
Just flopped in a chair.
And I said, what's wrong?
Oh, Mr. Logan said, it's terrible.
I said, what's wrong?
He said, well, I went there.
And they told me I had.
And he told me what it was.
And I'd never heard of it.
And I had been in medical work.
But there's so many new diseases now that
you don't even know what they are.
You know, brand XY and all this stuff.
He says, you know, Mr. Logan, they told
me this.
They've arrested it.
But they told me that I'll give it
to the girl I marry.
And my children will be born with it.
Do you think he regrets being immoral?
That he'll pay for it as long as
he lives?
One of the girls in the school came
in.
I like this girl very much.
It breaks me up.
She was a transfer student from another Bible
school.
She came in and she sat down.
And she just started crying.
She cried and she cried and she cried.
And this girl had so much potential.
I said, what's wrong?
And you can tell, you know, between breaking
up with a boyfriend and a real cry.
This was a real cry.
I said, Mr. Logan, it's so terrible.
You're the only person I can talk to.
I said, well, honey, tell me what's wrong.
I said, Mr. Logan, there's a fellow sitting
out in front of the school in the
car.
I pleaded with him to come and talk
to you, but he won't.
He says, it's none of your business.
I said, Mr. Logan, you're the only person
I know I can talk to.
He says, I'm pregnant by this fellow I
met in one of the local churches.
And we're getting married tomorrow.
And I don't love him.
Pray for me, Mr. Logan.
I've ruined my life.
I have letters from that girl.
She went on to another Bible school and
she's graduating.
And you should, I read her letters to
the students at the school.
Not submitting her name.
Pleading with the girls to have standards.
Because of the harness that she has in
this marriage.
She already has.
This is a few of these stories, but
you get the picture?
Every one of these kids asks God to
forgive them.
Did God forgive them?
Yes.
But they're still paying.
Now look at this.
Let's go back to the Scriptures.
When fear cometh as desolation, your destruction comes
as a whirlwind, and distress and anguish come
upon you, then shall they call upon me.
And God said what?
I will not what?
Answer.
They shall seek me early, but what?
They won't find me.
He's talking about his own people here.
You say, why?
Now they're crying out to God.
What happened in verse 23?
God says, call out to me.
They said, leave me alone.
God says, I just answered your prayers.
Why are they calling out to God?
Pseudo-repentance.
God, straighten out my mess, and I'll follow
you forever.
You know what pseudo-repentance is?
A friend of mine uses this illustration.
Beautiful illustration.
The parents tell this young teenager, or young
boy, don't play in the street.
And the kid says, Dad, don't you tell
me what to do.
And he runs out the door, and he
slams the door, and he runs out between
two cars, and he gets hit by a
car.
The folks go see him in the hospital,
and the kid's laying there, and he says,
Dad, I promise I won't break my leg
again.
That's what they're doing.
I promise I won't get pregnant again.
You see?
You know what the thing is?
I'm sorry over the consequences, God.
But I'm not sorry over the sin.
And what is the root of sin?
Pride.
And what is the root of pride?
Doing what?
What I want to do.
Not doing what God wants me to do.
And if a person's repentance does not include,
forgive me for running my own life, it's
not a genuine repentance.
It's just, I'm sorry.
For they hated knowledge and did not choose
the fear of the Lord.
Now what's the fear of the Lord?
A conscious awareness of God's presence.
That's why they're in a mess.
They put God out of their thoughts.
They would have had none of my counsel,
and they despised all of my reproofs.
Look at verse 71.
Therefore, they shall what?
Eat of the fruit of their own way.
You know how God brought this home to
me?
I decided, we had a super yard in
Kansas City.
Beautiful yard.
I just loved working in the yard.
It was my way of getting away from
all these hairy stories.
You know, I'd have nine or ten people
a day spilling out the most horrid stories
you ever heard of.
And I'd go home and weed my garden
and plant it and had a beautiful fruit
orchard and did all this stuff to get
this stuff out of my head.
I think I'd wash my head of all
the filth I heard today.
You know, clean it up and let me
think on you and just get this stuff
out of my life because this stuff can
be depressing.
After my first three months at the college,
I was going to quit.
I said, Lord, I can't handle this.
Three months of this stuff is enough to
put anybody in a booby hatch.
I just can't handle this.
But then there came a summer and I
said, God, teach me how to roll this
stuff when I shut the door to leave
all this garbage in here and you clean
it out in the morning and I come
in and have it all sprayed out and
I'll come in and start a new day
and we'll dump a bunch of garbage and
let me leave again.
So I decided I'd plant different things.
And I planted two different things in our
yard that usually don't grow in Kansas City.
Brussels sprouts and broccoli.
And guess what happened?
They grew.
And guess what I had to do?
Eat them.
I hate them.
My wife likes them.
I never knew how they grew before but
now I know I'll never plant them again.
But you know there's a principle, a divine
principle that's repeated in Galatians.
What you sow, you reap.
And that's wonderful.
That is a very wonderful principle because behind
my house, I planted 150 strawberry plants.
Now if I planted 150 strawberry plants and
looked under the strawberries and saw broccoli, I
would die.
But you know, every year, guess what we
got off those plants?
Strawberries.
That's wonderful.
We planted radishes.
You know the hardest thing about planting carrots?
I was always afraid I'd plant the seeds
upside down and they'd grow backwards.
But you know what's so neat?
When you plant this stuff, you know what's
going to come up.
It's not a surprise.
Then you find out, I wonder what's going
to grow.
I plant radishes.
I've always had radishes.
Isn't that wonderful?
But when you sow to the flesh, you're
going to reap what?
Corruption.
And if you don't, the scripture's not true.
And I happen to know it's true.
And that's what he's saying here.
What you sow, you're going to reap.
And you know what's worse than reaping it?
You've got to eat it.
You're going to eat it.
And how do you eat it?
So you're filled with your own devices.
You don't need a little of it.
You eat a whole lot of it.
You know, and the cook read this.
She doesn't throw anything away down there.
You've marked my words.
Tomorrow in the chicken soup, there'll be chocolate
floating in it.
I mean, I know this gal's really shrewd.
The other day we had a...
I know, you know what?
Catch her tricks.
The other day we had salad bar.
Well, what you didn't put on your salad
yesterday, she put in the chop suey today.
Did you notice the bean spouts from the
chop suey today?
You check her out.
See how she does it.
Man, she's tighter than I don't know what.
That's why they got her cooking down there.
She didn't throw anything away.
I'm just waiting for those eggshells.
But it's true.
We can laugh.
It's not funny, is it?
That's really not funny.
Let me tell you.
When you start eating this stuff, what did
the children of Israel eat?
They ate the meat to what?
It was running out their noses.
They were vomiting it up.
God says, you want meat?
Okay, you eat it.
I want you to eat it till you're
sick of it.
God says, you want to be in sin?
I want you to get so sick of
this that you'll never want to eat it
again.
For the turning away of the simple shall
slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall
destroy them.
And if we put a period there, that
would be the most tragic portion of Scripture
in all the Bible.
But God always gives hope, doesn't he?
He's a God of hope.
And what's the next verse?
But.
Isn't that wonderful?
Aren't you glad for the buts, the wherefores,
and the therefores?
But whoso hearkeneth unto me.
You know what hearkeneth is?
It's to hear what?
To dwell with doing.
Who will listen with doing unto me shall
what?
Dwell what?
Safely and shall be quieted from what?
The fear of evil.
Isn't that tremendous?
You know, I don't know what you're doing.
But if you're doing things that are wrong,
God says, you know, if you turn to
me right now when I'm speaking to your
heart, you won't read it.
If you turn now.
And you won't have to be afraid of
the fear, of the consequences of your sin
because I'll stop them right now.
But if you refuse to listen to me,
your destruction is going to come.
And your desolation.
And you will go through this thing all
alone.
You know, I think that's worse than any
part of it is the loneliness that these
people feel in it.
And you know you can't somehow get in
with them.
I remember the first time they performed an
abortion in Tacoma, Washington.
Just by accident.
We walked to visit a lady in our
church.
That wasn't an accident.
That broke her leg.
But the first abortion case was in the
next bed.
And it was a 17-year-old girlfriend.
A girl.
And she was crying.
She was going to be the first abortion
performed.
You know, her folks didn't even know about
it.
She was in over the weekend, you know,
in the hospital and out again.
And her boyfriend was going to come and
see her.
But he couldn't come because he was changing
the oil in his car.