I appreciated your prayer for Northern Ireland.
I don't know if you knew it, but
Mark Bahan, the president of Radio Bible Class,
and myself, and the chief singer of the
Discovery Singers from the television radio Bible Class
program, Day of Discovery, we went over to
Belfast in April and went into the prison
at the invitation of both the IRA and
the paramilitary terrorists to speak to them.
And it was amazing to discover that they
are reading the Our Daily Bread booklets, many
of them on both sides, coming to know
Christ as the Saviour while they're in prison.
And when we finished the evening speaking, two
of us, two very different people, Mark and
I, there wasn't small talk afterwards.
The prisoners were dashing up, asking us all
sorts of solid questions, but even saying, you
know, there's no excuse for us not reaching
people in the prison, because there couldn't have
been two more different people speak to us
tonight with different personalities and characters.
And yet, in both cases, God spoke to
us through your hearts.
Therefore, God can use anybody.
And that was coming from IRA terrorists.
And the whole reason that they've turned to
the Lord and are appreciating the booklets is
that one of them who's in for life,
for bombing, he's an older gentleman.
He'll never come out.
Went into his cell one day and saw
an old copy of Our Daily Bread lying
on his bed.
No idea who put it there.
It was outdated.
He could see that it wasn't the right
month.
But he picked it up and thought, today's
the 7th.
Let's look and see what it says on
the 7th.
And as he read it, it said at
the top of the page, put off the
old man, put on the new man.
And he sat down with a bump in
his bed and said to himself, I never
knew there could be an alternative.
He had grown up all his life knowing
he was a killer at heart, and that
he'd been evil as a boy, and that
what he did, he did enjoying it.
And he knows now and has confessed it's
nothing to do with IRA, nothing to do
with Ireland, nothing to do with politics or
a holy war of Protestants against Catholics.
I did what I did because I enjoyed
doing it.
But now I know it was sin, and
that I don't have to be like that.
I can become different.
And he sat up the whole night, read
the entire three months' readings, and put his
faith and trust in Christ by morning.
Wrote to us and asked where he could
get an up-to-date book and more
books to give to others.
He even wrote on one occasion and said,
I found a new text that says, go
into all the world, but the police authorities
won't let me go.
And he says, so I reckon that this
world in the prison is my world.
Give me the materials to dish out inside
the prison.
So it was a delight for us to
go over there and encourage him with a
visit and to be able to minister to
them.
But that's the exciting thing.
You can change.
The idea that I'm too set in my
ways is foreign to scripture.
Now, let me read you a little reading
before we commence our theme for the afternoon,
which is practical holiness.
And it's from Hebrews 12, and I'm beginning
to read from verse five.
If you endure chastening, God dealeth with you
as with sons.
For what son is he whom the father
chasteneth not?
But if you are without chastisement, whereof all
are partakers, then are you illegitimate and not
sons.
Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh,
which corrected us, and we gave them reverence.
Shall we not much rather be in subjection
unto the father of spirits and live?
For they truly for a few days chastened
us after their own pleasure, but he for
our profit, that we might be partakers of
his holiness.
Now, no chastening for the present seems to
be joyous, but grievous.
Nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of
righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
Wherefore, lift up the holy hands that hang
down, and the feeble knees, and make straight
paths for your feet, lest that which is
lame be turned out of the way, and
let it rather be healed.
Follow peace with all men, and follow holiness,
without which no man shall see the Lord.
And I happened to mention that reference last
night, that without holiness no man shall see
the Lord.
Now, it is rather interesting that the first
mention of holiness and God being holy in
Scripture was not by God.
You know, sometimes we tend to think that
the Word of God tells us that God
said, I'm holy, so watch it.
But no, in actual fact, the word holiness
never appears until after the two and a
half million people were redeemed out of Egypt.
And when they passed through the Red Sea
and came up on the other side to
a new life through that miraculous passage of
the Red Sea, they sang a great song
in Exodus chapter 15.
And in the middle of that song they
sang, it was inspired in their thankful singing,
the statement that God alone is holy.
So the first people ever to say the
word holy in Scripture was forgiven sinners of
their God who had redeemed them.
He never gave himself that title.
They at last recognized that God is so
supreme he could get them through an ocean,
destroy their enemies.
Therefore he is above their standard, therefore he
is holy.
And God in his word in Leviticus remind
the people to be holy.
Now, it's rather fascinating where that quote came
in.
In Leviticus 22 and 44, it says, For
I am holy, so be ye holy.
You shall be holy, for I am holy.
Now, where would you tuck that in?
Would you tuck in the holiness of God
in a section of Scripture about making sure
you're sexually pure, you don't commit adultery, there
is no immorality?
Well, in actual fact, in Leviticus 11, where
the quote was first mentioned about you shall
be holy, for I am holy, it came
in the middle of talking about what you
eat.
And I find that rather intriguing, because we
tend to classify sin and grade sin.
And we would say of a like homosexuality,
that's an abomination.
And yet God puts the word abomination with
an attachment to the word overeating.
And he calls people who overeat just as
abominable.
Because you see, a shoe is a shoe,
whether it's size 2 or size 20, it's
still a shoe.
And sin is sin, whether it's size 1
or size 90.
Sin is sin.
Therefore, one has to always keep in mind
that we are wrong in saying what sins
are deeper than others and more abominable than
others.
Because if we start classifying what's worse than
others, we're liable to make the ones we
like to do less sinful.
And it is interesting that even in the
New Testament, the word glutton and homosexual and
murder all comes into the same text.
They're all an abomination.
They're all against the will of God.
And it is possible for a person to
die of overeating who has never committed an
immoral act of sex.
And that's just as bad.
We all have our imbalances.
And yet the word of God is true
and teaches us to be practical about the
development of our holiness.
And in that text in Leviticus, it's stated
prior to the statement, you shall be holy,
sanctify yourselves to be holy.
It's not something you just simply look up
to God and say, well, you want me
holy, get ahead and get it done anyway.
And why don't you do it without me
even noticing?
And then it would be done.
And God says, no, I cannot.
Because I've given you the biggest gift I've
ever given anybody, the right to be made
in my image.
And the thing that makes God, God at
all, is his right to be free.
And God had no choice.
God would not be God.
God is free to do as he pleases.
And he made us in his own image
and given us that right of choice.
And therefore, until we make the choices to
have a better character, his divine power is
not released to aid us to be a
better character.
And God is not there like a battery
of special electric power that's dished out willy
-nilly.
No, we must be the people who release
the power of God by agreeing with him
that we want the change and that we
want to be different.
Now, Peter, in his first chapter of his
first epistle, tells us about the need for
holiness.
And it's a rather interesting chapter, because as
a human being, we think in terms that
if I was able to love everybody like
God loved everybody, then I would feel pretty
holy.
And if I felt holy, then I would
be sure I'm a good Christian.
And that's the order in which we tend
to put things.
If I work at being loving and kind
and gracious and good, I will feel very
holy.
And if I feel holy, I'll be sure
I'm a good Christian, and God will notice
that.
But in actual fact, when you read the
first epistle of Peter, Peter deals with the
three matters in the opposite direction.
He starts out in that chapter by telling
us, you are a Christian.
You are saved with a security that is
firm.
And because you're saved and sure you're saved,
you can relax about that issue and rest
in your assurance that you're a child of
God.
And when you rest in that, you can
turn from constantly trying to prove you're Christian
by acknowledging you are, and now occupy yourself
to become holy enough to love another.
Now, that's interesting.
We think we've got to love to feel
holy to be saved, and he says, no,
you're saved, so occupy yourself being holy enough
to love.
That's putting it in God's order.
For he states this in that first chapter,
we are elect according to the foreknowledge of
God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit
unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ.
Grace unto you and peace be multiplied.
Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant
mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively
hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead.
To an inheritance, something that's waiting in heaven
for us that we're going to collect one
day.
And it's there already, to an inheritance incorruptible.
Nothing will ever touch it and destroy it.
Undefiled, it will never get dusty and dirty.
And that fades not away, it never evaporates.
And it's reserved, where?
In heaven.
For whom?
You.
So right there in the presence of the
Almighty is an inheritance of eternal life with
Christ that's just waiting for you to go
there and get it.
And if God was of the impression you're
not going to get there, it wouldn't be
there.
So our confidence is, hey, we're on our
way to something that's waiting for us.
And God has said in his word, that
which I have begun in you, I will
complete.
Faithful is he who calls you, who also
will do it.
And he tells us here that we are
kept by the power of God through faith
unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the
last time.
Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a
season, if need be, ye are in heaviness
through many temptations and trials.
That the trial of your faith, being much
more precious than that of gold that perisheth,
though it be tried with fire, might be
found unto praise and honour and glory at
the appearing of Jesus Christ.
Whom, having not seen, you love.
In whom, though now you see him not
yet believing, you rejoice with joy that you
cannot utter.
That's full of glory, and I like that
text.
It's a joy that you cannot utter.
And all too often today, people are trying
to prove their holiness and their spiritual qualities
by an expression of joy.
And that is usually audible, excitable, emotional.
Something that the ear and the eye can
see in a person as they excitedly express
their joy.
And yet, isn't it interesting that here we're
being told that the real joy of the
Lord is unspeakable.
You can't even say it.
You can't express it, but it's there.
You can be a person in a hospital
bed and have a deep joy that you
cannot even utter.
Richard Dehan, the president past of Radio Bible
Class, has unfortunately developed in the last years
that stopped his ministry, Parkinson's disease.
Now, it hasn't affected his body to the
extent that he trembles like lots of people
with that disease do, but it affected his
face and his throat.
And when you see him, he tends to
give the appearance of being a very sad
person because the very skin of his face
just hangs.
And he can't utter much, but my, you
should see what he writes.
And even at a Carnforth, we've had various
letters from people who have responded to his
comments written within the individual packets they receive
as members, encouraging them in their faith and
sharing with them how he is just graciously
plodding along, writing what he can write because
he can't say it, but that he's full
of the joy of the Lord.
And it's also interesting that the Bible tells
us that it is the joy of the
Lord that is your strength, not your joy
for the Lord that's your strength.
So any joy that's manufactured by self to
impress the community or God is false.
The joy the Bible speaks of is the
very joy of the presence of Christ in
his salvation within your heart, so that no
matter what happens in life, you know that
you're safe in him.
And you will receive the end of your
salvation, your faith, even the salvation of your
souls.
And it tells us there that even the
angels and prophets of past times were curious
to know what all this salvation business was.
They never understood what it was God was
preparing, and it was something tremendously unique that
cannot be claimed by any other religion, where
all other religions you have to obey the
tenets, laws, regulations, rules, dress, attire, in order
that at the moment of death you might
meet God.
Christianity is different.
It is where the living God comes down
and comes into your life and mine while
we're bad enough.
He takes up residence within the life of
a forgiven sinner, but still a sinner, to
live there.
Now that's a miracle.
And when people say to me, Brother Billy,
are you into miracles?
I always tell them, yes, I'm into practicing
the miracle.
And they say, oh what miracle do you
practice?
Do you make long legs shorter or short
legs longer?
And I said, no, I don't deal in
fiddly little miracles like that.
I'm not into tiddly little things like curing
cancer or the mumps.
I'm into the biggest miracle there is in
the gospel.
And they've said, what's that?
I've said, putting God the Father, God the
Son, and God the Holy Ghost out of
heaven into the life of a forgiven sinner.
Now that is a miracle.
That's the one I am interested in.
That's the one I serve Christ to declare.
I'll leave the other pundits to play with
the temporary things.
I'm into the big miracles.
Oh, but Brother Billy, surely you must believe
that God is capable of working other kind
of miracles.
Oh yes.
Has he ever done one for you?
Yes.
What's your miracle?
Did he heal you of some sickness?
No.
The biggest miracle outside of receiving Christ is
that for the 38 years I've been a
Christian, I've never cursed and swore in the
pulpit.
And they said, is that a miracle?
I said, if you knew me before I
was converted, that's a miracle.
I couldn't even ask you to pass the
sugar to sweeten the tea without describing the
sugar in language that's not permitted even on
BBC One.
And it's been an amazing thing to me
all these years that each time I mount
a church platform and commit my throat and
my voice to the Almighty God, he has
kept me from blurting out in my emotionalism
rotten words during the preaching of the Word
of God, because I've never forgotten any of
them.
And I never walk around pretending I don't
know them.
In fact, I think I wrote the encyclopedia.
I'm just amazed that people still use the
language I used as a boy today.
But I know it all.
I don't pretend I don't know it to
pretend I'm more holy.
I know it.
And that to me is a great miracle
that he's controlled my tongue in the pulpit
all those years.
Yes, because sometimes you can get very emotional
and carried away and just blurt things out.
And even the angel said, this must be
special salvation.
Yes, it was.
It was God inside a person.
And so he says in the 14th verse
of this first chapter, moving into his second
section, "...as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according
to the former lusts in your ignorance, but
as he which hath called you is holy,
so be ye holy in all manner of
behavior."
Now, it's interesting to note that he's speaking
here of practical holiness, something you have to
do for yourself.
As obedient children, not fashioning yourself, which means
you have a capacity to fashion yourself.
There are people who spend time fashioning themselves
into one kind of person or another.
Putting on a role, playing a part.
Sometimes we play so many parts, the part
we play at church, the part we play
at home, the part we play elsewhere, that
we're never sure which one is the real
me.
And too often there is role-playing.
I once heard two ladies in the streets
of Glasgow, since our brother mentioned the humor
of the Glaswegians, and these two ladies were
walking down the street in front of me,
and I could tell that they were laying
on thick to pretend, and you could tell
from their attire and their dress that they
were not from the most salubrious part of
Glasgow, but they were pretending they came from
amongst the wealthy up in Maryhill.
That's where the wealthy stayed.
And so they were clip-clopping down the
street in front of me, conversing, and one
of them was saying, Oh, I think Charles
is simply marvelous.
And the other one said, Yes, I think
he's wonderful.
And the other said, Yes, he'd do absolutely
oneth and far yeh.
And she just let it slip.
And out came the gutter slang that told
you she came from the south side and
not the north end.
Yes, it's role-playing.
And that takes self-energy.
That takes self-energy.
And that's why people get nervous.
People often tell me they're nervous to speak
for God, to be a witness of God.
Well, nervousness is indicating that you're utilising self
-energy, physical energy, and it's draining you fast,
and therefore you do end up getting exhausted.
And the people who are nervous and witness
are people who are afraid to fail, afraid
that their humanity will show through, that their
cover will be burst.
That's why, as he is holy, lives within
you.
Instead of using your own energy to try
to be holy, to please God, you thank
yourself that you have the Holy One living
within you, and allow him to release his
kind of life and control and holiness through
you.
And when you're allowing him to be your
holiness, there is no nervousness.
There is no fear of failure.
There is no draining of your own resources
because you're drawing from him.
But you have to obey to give him
that right to be there.
And he has to be allowed to be
the life in every area in your life
that needs adjusted.
That's where the practicalness comes in.
And it tells you here you have to
fashion yourself.
Now, that's a process.
It's not Shazam.
Too often we go to meetings in the
hope that some speaker will be able to
do some great magical miracle with the Spirit
of God in your presence that will zap
you.
And from there on in, for the next
90 years, you can relax.
You'll have no problems, everything sorted out, life
wonderful, no difficulties, and have a great time.
And the answer is, that's not true.
Fashioning is a process that takes place all
your life.
All your life.
Fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts and
your ignorance.
In other words, you are personal.
This is not a general thing to the
public.
You are a personal individual.
And as an individual, you know what nobody
else in the church knows.
The vicar doesn't know.
The curates don't know.
The wardens don't know.
Nobody knows what you are really like except
yourself and God.
And you're the only one that knows what
you used to fashion yourself like in the
past.
The things you did and enjoyed doing them.
The sins you committed and you plan to
do it again.
Now it differs from person to person.
There are persons in the church that just
cannot understand anybody that would ever be alcoholic.
Why?
Because they've never had a problem with that.
They've never touched it all their life.
And yet the alcoholic might not understand why
a person like that is a gossip.
Because you may find the alcoholic's a very
discreet person that's never told another living soul
something that that person ever received.
You can have a person that's never gossiped,
never got drunk, but that person can have
an awful filthy imagination.
But you never see that.
You never see that.
That's why sometimes the holiness of a church
is determined by outward behavior.
And when people see someone coming into church
who's drunk, they're liable to say, I wish
that person would straighten up.
What they're saying, in effect, is you can
see their sin.
It's evident they're lying in the gutter outside
the church, and it's an embarrassment to the
congregation.
But you know, we never say that of
the gossip, the dirty-minded.
Why?
Because they can come through that door on
a Sunday, sit down there, and you don't
see that.
It's not embarrassing.
And yet it can be there and completely
cripple a person from being a holy person
of God to be a blessing in the
community.
So we all have our different weaknesses.
We all have things within our lives that
we know, that's me, that's what I'm like,
and God and I knows that's what I'm
like.
And bit by bit, you can practice the
fashioning of yourself into being a different kind
of character.
You can deliberately choose not to want to
continue being this kind of a person or
another kind of a person.
And you concentrate on that by taking the
power of God to occupy yourself with that
each time it arises in your life.
And when that comes under control and you
think you're really improving, that's when God suddenly
says, now let me show you what's next.
And sometimes we get angry with God and
say, how long have I been doing that
all your life?
Well, why didn't you tell me the first
day I became a Christian?
Look, it's taken us all these years to
get you this far.
And I'll tell you now, there's a few
other things I'll be showing you before you
go to heaven, but I'm not telling you
now or you'd collapse.
So we'll just do it an item at
a time, an item at a time.
That is God.
That's God's process.
I've always felt that my life was like
a house.
And when I got converted, it was as
though I couldn't get my heels onto the
very doorstep of my house for whiskey bottles.
And when I received Christ in the military
forces, it was as though God came along
with a dust pan and a brush and
swept up all the spirit bottles and lifted
the lid of the trash can, put them
in and slapped the lid on.
And I had a clean doorstep for the
first time in my life.
And I was able to stand on it
and thought, my, aren't I a saint?
Hello, everybody.
Look, I've got a clean doorstep.
Have you noticed?
No bottles.
Isn't it nice?
There's nothing on my doorstep.
And I thought that was life.
Till the spirit of God tapped me and
I turned and I saw a door.
And I thought, what's that door, Lord?
That's the door to your life, Billy.
You mean I have a life?
I'm not just a doorstep?
Oh, no.
You have a life.
Would you care to go in?
Well, of course.
I've been reading the book.
Says I'm a saint.
Says I'm saved.
Says I'm redeemed.
Says I'm forgiven.
Go on, fling the door open.
You'll find I'm fit to be a bishop.
And it's as though the door opened and
I looked in and I jumped in and
slapped it shut, bolted it and threw the
key over my shoulder.
And I looked at the filth in the
walls of the hallway and said, God, how
long have I had a filthy hallway since
birth?
Why didn't you tell me?
Look, I've been working on the doorstep.
Now are you going to give me permission
to empower you to get your sleeves rolled
up and start in on your dirty mind?
And as I cooperate with God in getting
the hallway clean, I find that I'm even
able to leave the door open.
And as people pass, go, oh, so that
they'll turn and look into my hallway and
say, oh, what a lovely clean hallway in
that house.
And I begin to think, well, now I
really must be a Christian until the spirit
taps me and I look and there's a
door.
And I say, where did that door come
from?
Oh, that's one of the rooms in your
house.
You mean I'm not a doorstep in a
corridor, a hallway?
There's actually rooms?
Yes.
On this floor.
What?
You mean it's not a bungalow?
No, you have a house.
Well, you know, bit by bit, I've had
to go into one room after the other
and fashion it, not in the style that
it used to be fashioned in, but to
see that with the power of God who
is within me, I'm cooperating to get the
power I need to make things different in
that room.
Well, I don't know about you, but I
know about me.
You know, there are times I feel that
God taps my shoulder and says, going up
and shows me an elevator, I think I
must have the biggest building in the world.
Because even after all these years, he's still
showing me things that need adjusted, things that
need to be learned, lessons that need to
be taught.
And I have every time got to come
back to square one of when I see
something in my life that needs adjusting to
decide whether I'm going to cooperate with God,
obey, to get the Holy One to release
his dynamic within me every time that issue
comes up so that it doesn't win.
It doesn't win.
You see, that practical holiness does take your
choice and effort, and that's why people would
prefer to believe that they're saintly and that
anything wrong in their lives is demonology.
And I tell you, we're in a church
today where every sinful thing that Christians do,
they're blaming on the demons, and the demons
have nothing to do with it.
The devil has never had to send a
demon into the heart of Billy Strachan to
be rotten.
I'm pretty good at being rotten all by
myself, and I'm not giving the credit to
any evil kingdom for the sins in my
life.
If I sin, I sin.
Why do you think you have a church
that gives you the opportunity every time you
come together to admit that you've sinned and
to show signs of penitence and repentance, and
allow forgiveness to be reinstated and proclaimed, that
you may step out into a new week
in the process of becoming more holy?
Trying to cut down the number of occasions
you do this week that you did last
week and had to confess again.
It's so much easier to say, oh, I'm
all right, it's the demons.
It isn't.
It is self.
And self finds it very difficult to agree
with God.
As I said last night, you fight holiness
rather than be practical about it.
And it's the practicalness of holiness that's needed.
And you yourself will know the things that
need adjusted.
I don't have to guess.
I don't have to suggest.
The Spirit of God is quite capable, even
today, of drawing to your attention something in
your life that he says, now, do you
understand?
This is next.
Are you going to obey to be holy
in that matter?
Are you going to yield obedience in order
that we may make progress?
Well, of course, when you begin to see
the years and the patience and the long
suffering of God to give you time to
change and for your practical holiness to make
you a better character, do you know what
the natural outcome of that is?
You then turn around and see the new
Christian that comes into your church, a mess.
And instead of going up to them and
saying, oh, so you got converted, did you?
Well, we'll believe it on Sunday when we
see you coming in here with your hair
cut and all tidied up.
No, you'll suddenly say to yourself, how many
years has it taken God to get me
here?
And if you say to yourself, well, like
I have to say, it's taken them 38
years to get me this far, then I
always look at the new convert and say,
just think what that person will be like
in 38 years' time, not 38 seconds' time,
38 years.
And what does it teach me to do?
It teaches me to love.
It teaches me to love the very thing
that we're trying to do to prove we're
holy enough to be saved.
Peter says, no, you're saved, so practice your
personal practical holiness, the process of agreeing with
God what needs adjusted in your life over
years, and that teaches you to look at
the new baby in Christ and say, I'll
wait.
I'll wait.
My own son, prior to his conversion at
18, said to me, Dad, how long did
you know I was leading a double life
and going down the tube?
I says, from day one.
He said, why didn't you tell me?
I said, because it was the hardest thing
that I've ever had to do in my
life is not tell you, because I knew
you had to discover why you needed Christ.
And if I had just stepped into the
situation the first day and said, don't do
that again, in your love for your dad,
you wouldn't have done it again, but you
would have thought you were a Christian, because
you didn't.
And what you needed was Christ, not your
father's warning.
And it was the hardest thing Mother and
I had to do, is to watch a
life that needed Christ.
And even for me to get up and
preach in churches, knowing that some people were
looking at me through one eye, as much
as what right have you to tell us
about sin when you have a nudge, nudge,
wink, wink sunlight you've got that we know
about?
And we had to wait.
And it took place.
I had driven all the way to Belfast
by car.
I got there at 10.30 on a
Saturday evening.
I was going to begin 10 days of
talks on the Sunday morning on relationships in
a Christian family, when the phone rang, and
it was my own boy on the phone,
in tears to tell me his life was
in a mess.
I said, I'm coming home.
And I did what you never do to
a church committee.
I cancelled the 10 days the night before
they started.
And I just came straight back home.
We fell into each other's arms outside the
house and just cried.
I made him pack his bag and we
left.
And we spent a whole week together, just
discussing his whole life.
It was amazing the things that came out.
You must have been disappointed, Dad.
I said, no, you only disappointed yourself.
He says, but I must have hurt you,
not as much as I've hurt myself.
I said, and don't forget this, your father
did worse than you and before he was
your age.
Oh, he says, there was a difference.
I said, what was that?
He says, you were a downright rotten pagan,
but I was brought up in a Christian
home.
And he knew the difference.
But he knew that Christ had forgiven him.
And he began the process of change.
It was interesting because even I had to
sit back with my wife and say, now,
has it really happened?
And you know, one of the first things
that convinced me that he really was born
again, he got rid of the XR2.
Unlike any boy that would want a car,
he wasn't content to go and get a
secondhand heap to begin with for a few
pounds.
It had to be vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom,
the big XR2.
When he got converted, he says, that's going.
That's the first thing he sold.
And later he told me, Dad, I'm happy
with a pound in my pocket.
And before that, money meant everything.
Money meant everything.
And he knew that Christ had forgiven him,
but it was great to see the changes
coming into his life.
Marvellous.
And the funny thing was, he said, you
know, I love you, Dad.
And I said, why?
He said, because I knew when I let
you leave the house to drive to Belfast
that I was going to phone you that
night.
And I didn't tell you before you went
away.
I let you go.
And I said to myself, I'll phone him
tonight, and I bet you the old beggar
won't come back.
He'll say, son, I'll be home in a
week.
He said, but you came home.
I was more important than the meetings.
I had no recourse but to become a
Christian.
Yes, even he knew there's a difference, and
there's a character to be developed.
There's a new life to emerge.
And I had to watch that change.
He went with me to Michigan, and for
a two-week stay to Vancouver.
And on the way home, he said, you've
three weeks to get me back there to
Bible school.
And we waved him away, and off he
went for two years.
And last March, he married a lovely Christian
girl in Vancouver, and he lives there.
What a change in a few years to
a faith and trust in Christ, a Bible
that's become alive.
And even a speaker from this country, visiting
that school, bumped into a lounge where Dixon,
my son, was being made to give a
Bible study on a chapter of Acts of
the Apostles to a group.
And they were all lying in the carpet,
and he was lying in the carpet.
And he had his Bible above his head,
and he was telling them what he'd found
in this chapter of the Acts of the
Apostles.
And when he finished, this preacher went up
and said to him, Strachan, if that's how
you sound, flatten your back, do you know
what you would sound like if you stood
up and said that in a church?
Because he didn't realize it, but he was
speaking the Word of God very effectively, but
lying flat on his back.
But it'll take time.
He'll learn he's got legs, and he'll start
to stand up to teach the Word of
God.
But we have to wait, if need be,
30 years.
I don't mind.
God's been very patient with me and given
me time to be practical in my holiness.
He will give you time, and you'll begin
to see others in the church that also
need time.
And as you give them time, they'll only
come to one conclusion, you love me.
That's why Peter says towards the end of
this chapter in verse 22, seeing you have
purified your souls in obeying the truth through
the Holy Spirit unto unpretentious love of the
brethren, see that you love one another with
a pure heart like a disease.
Yes, let it become an obsession to be
as patient with others in this church as
God has been with you.
And as you give others time to change
and develop their holiness, and you're developing yours,
you'll find that out there in the community,
people will be looking at all sorts of
classifications of people in different stages of maturity
coming in through the doors on a Sunday,
and they'll be saying without you putting a
tract in their hand or a campaign banner
up, I think I could go there.
It looks like you can go in there
no matter what condition you're in, and they
give you time to change, and they love
you.
And that's the biggest attraction that there is
to the gospel, patience and love, which is
a manifestation of the holiness of God in
and through the life of a forgiven sinner.
Be practical about your holiness.
Let's have a word of prayer before we
hand back to our brother.
Thank you, Father, that you're so long-suffering.
If it's necessary, you'll give us 90 years
to make adjustments.
Teach us to so enjoy that quality of
yours within us, that others will see it
coming through to them, and they'll be being
given an equal amount of time to become
holy too.
May the signal from this church to this
community be patience and love and holiness, for
Jesus Christ's sake.
Amen.