And this morning, while the heavens are full
of the worship of God, and the angels
and the archangels are bowing before thee, we
join our little worship with it.
It seems so little and so broken, that
O God, wilt thou be pleased to receive
from our hearts now and through the day
and through the days to come, thanksgiving and
praise and worship.
May our hearts always be in that place
of adoration, outpouring of all that we have
before thee.
The whole life may be an oblation that's
poured out at the feet of our Lord.
And so we come and we sing these
frail little hymns of praise and thanksgiving.
Receive this, Lord, in Jesus' name.
And wherever all that we have to offer,
wherever it has the dust and the touch
of the tarnish of of the flesh and
of the natural upon it, forgive, wash it
away, cleanse it out, until our hearts can
come into that place of real union and
communion and fellowship with thee that thou hast
desired.
Thou hast died to make these things possible
for us, and we are members of thy
body.
We are members of that mystical body, the
bride of Christ.
We pray, O Spirit, that thou will accomplish
your work in us, a mighty work of
transformation, a mighty work, a mystical work, a
heavy work, that which we cannot do.
We are helpless, we are bound, we have
no power within us, but the power is
in thee.
And thou who hast begun a good work
in us, thou will finish it, you will
bring it through to its time of consummation.
And the heart and the life and all
that there is there shall be brought once
again, be poured out by feet, that you
may be crowned, elevated and lifted and exalted
above all.
And yet in our inner heart and life
there will be that strange consciousness that thou
art ours, and we are thine, we are
one with him.
Now, Lord, today we commit our thoughts and
all that we have to thee.
Thou canst direct us, thou canst manage us,
and we want to be in thy hands
like that.
Not as we heard yesterday, the mule or
the horse, directed from the outside continually, held
by bit and bridle.
But we want to know what it is
to be formed and conformed and inborn from
within, a secret, holy dwelling place of God.
Thou art indwelling every one of us, for
thou hast said that you would come and
dwell in us.
May we recognize thee more.
Help us not to be scattered out over
the universe in all that great external flair
of living, and forget that thou art the
source and the very fountainhead.
Thou art the source of direction, thou art
the source of plan and purpose for life,
and we do want it lived in the
energy or in the wisdom even of what
we could afford.
But we pray thee to bring us into
the thoughts and the purposes of God, that
every day there shall be something accomplished of
God's will, and God's will shall be done
in earth, in our little earth, the little
earth instrument that we are, born, made of
dust and clay.
May that will of God be done in
earth as it is.
We are a portion of that earth.
Let the will of God be done in
earth as it is in heaven.
And we offer to you this earth consciousness,
this little existence, this little fleeting passing moment.
We offer it to thee, our God, and
we ask that thy holy, thy will that
moves through the universe, may our little wills
be swallowed up in us, and may that
will be done in this earth.
Be with us this morning as we have
it to our hearts.
Lead us wherever we be in the language
which we shall understand thy message.
And I
think maybe we'll go along with this idea
that there are many voices in the world
and none of them without their signification.
Yesterday we dealt with the first voice, the
voice of God sounding to us through his
whole created universe, inarticulate, but interpreted to us
through the power of his spirit.
He wants to communicate to us all that
it's now struggling through because of a judgment
that rests upon us, the judgment that was
placed there instead of upon us.
For thy sake, for thy sake, judgment
falls on the earth for thy sake.
So sometimes, I suppose you do too, have
an idea of what's about.
How many have ever sensed an apologetic sense
in you when you're in the presence of
all the disorder?
Like I owe the willing blindly, not of
its own volition, but it was made subject
because of us.
He has made that subject to his judgment,
not because.
And when I see creation like that, I
always feel, oh you are so because of.
It's because of mankind and his failure that
all creation today is roaming, traveling together in
pain.
I go to the zoo and I see
the animals pacing up and down in that
cage.
God never made animals to be like that.
No, never, never, never, never.
And yet they are subject to this law
and bondage that's thrown upon them.
Cursed be the earth for thy sake.
The poor dumb creature can't help it.
He doesn't know what it's about.
He's still moving under the laws and powers
of the inner instinct, and that is under
a judgment.
God never made him a snarling lion to
eat up something else.
Never, God never made a little lion or
helpless creature here.
Now he says, I'll make you lion so
that you can eat him up.
Well, it's all ridiculous.
He never does things like that.
But it's due to the disorder that's come
to us through sin.
And the whole universe has been thrown, every
phase of the universe has been touched by
it.
And so I'll feel all sort of an
apologetic feeling to the old lion.
Because I said God didn't make you right.
He looked upon his first creation and he
said, of
course, man is of a higher level of
creation.
You're thrown under a judgment in one sense,
that death has entered, and we're born in
it, born dead, partakers of death, partakers of
a whole broken down thing.
So it's wonderful that when we come to
this Christ, the son of the living God,
that very life, and the whole world, of
course, getting us to heaven is included in
it.
But let's get, I wish somebody would write
something sometimes that would exalt redemption.
Wouldn't it be lovely to have some kind
of a majestic, glorious expression of that thing?
Don't you feel it sometimes in you and
you can't say it?
It throbs and rolls through you.
And we find such a small, inadequate sense
of expressing it.
I think all of us who've had any
moving of the Holy Spirit in us at
times have been conscious that he has tried
to pour it through us.
Isn't that lovely?
Every little while he breaks through the limitations
of my flesh.
He sets me aside, but lets me have
the joy of my consciousness being itched with
his spirit so that I too may move
with it when I know I couldn't do
it.
It isn't, but it's the power of the
spirit of God moving again, even through the
little instrument, carrying its praise, carrying its worship,
carrying all that we can't make.
I long personally sometimes for touches of it.
I get it, you've had it.
When we're swept out of the consciousness of
just our need, and I need, and I
need, we forget that.
That in some way gets forgotten, but we're
conscious of the fact of intense worship and
glory rolling through us back again to God.
You know how that is.
Isn't that so refreshing?
It's so out of the world.
I don't get it too often, but sometimes
you've had it too.
I always feel when I get in there,
and of course I come back again, but
I always feel that's my habitat.
You know, you feel that's the thing that
I was made for.
Now I'm functioning.
I'm functioning now.
That's the thing.
That's the reality.
Here we are.
To be caught in that.
I think I've told you before, when God
was beginning to show me the development of
this scale that I showed you the other
evening, predation moving, when God years ago began
the power of this, although all of us,
all of us in our development, and we
should, and we must be uneasy because it's
not, it's not rounded out.
It's not complete.
As we said in that poem last night,
the holy urge, an infinite sense of incompleteness
haunts me here.
That's the haunting spirit in us that the
thing is not consummated.
That's entering, I think, as Paul says, all
creation grown is and travels together in pain,
waiting.
You get that grown in you.
You get that consciousness in you.
The incompletion.
It's not only the incompletion of the thing
in my heart, but it's the incompletion of
the great scheme of God of which I'm
only a little part.
Isn't that so?
That's the way it is.
But we become conscious of the cosmic whole,
the great scheme, not egocentric, but it's a
universal thing.
We're caught up in a universal scheme.
It's the universal program, the purpose of God,
bringing it back again.
And so we can't be uneasy because we
don't find these things all completed here and
now.
I don't know of anything really that's brought
to its completion.
I know there's very many things have their,
well, that's a whole period of adjustment.
It's when we begin to find out our
ideas of salvation, because they're restricted to the,
and I'm staying, and I'm going to heaven,
and that is a part of the scheme.
We rejoice in it.
But the scope of his, the scope of
the covering of it is, it's a universal
thing.
God told of the world, behold the land
of God that takes away the sins of
the world, the whole universe that has been
touched by this.
The sin and disobedience, the struggle, the pull
of it, the feel of it.
And that's what we have, but not in
completion.
Here, say, is the period of predation with
which we are first acquainted, because that has
to, we have to learn about the sin
question and the selfhood and the breaking down
of the human, the limitations of our flesh,
and it's about the Holy Spirit.
We have
to be strong enough that then he begins
this idea of illumination and brings it out
more fully.
Now, we can all prove that if we
have retrospection, if we can sit down quietly
and it says, consider the pit from which,
not morbid introspection, just a clear, unafraid introspection.
And you can find even in our limited
walk that we have illumination here in things
that we couldn't possibly have had there.
We couldn't bear five and ten years ago
the light and the demands of God upon
us now.
Then, no, we couldn't.
We couldn't because we were not geared to
it.
The processes of adjustment and predation and the
understanding of the thing that God is after,
the foundation was not strong enough yet to
bring the power of the illumination.
We had nothing to receive it and could
rest.
But we got glimpses of it.
We had flashes of it.
We had little moments of inspiration.
I call them the high moments of my
living.
How many of you ever, no, now, certain
epics when you had a high moment, a
touch with God, and God broke in, and
it was fleeting, it was a flash, but
yet you walked under the power of that
for some time.
Well, those are illuminations of what is here.
Now, this is under this and this.
That doesn't mean we can't have times of
worship and adoration.
We certainly do.
The very beginning of our experience in God,
when he fills us, he baptizes us, he
immerses us.
To immerse, that's a complete covering.
The baptism spirit isn't sprinkling spirit on us.
It's the submerging of this ego, the submerging
of my whole identity under the power, dominion,
authority of the third member of the trinity.
And when that happens, my theory is this,
and I still stick to it, I don't
feel that a person who really comes under
that consciously, knowing it, can ever be the
same when he comes out.
I really don't believe it can be.
I don't believe it.
You may not see the change completely in
a moment, you don't, but there's something that's
happened there.
Something has happened in that experience, special dominion
and authority, because yours has been lost in
this sweeping up of the infinite grasp of
God, the hold of God.
Now that doesn't mean, don't get me now
on the moral issue that we are made
holy and sinless.
I'm not talking about the moral consequences of
that experience at all.
I'm talking about something else.
I'm talking about the whole of life.
We're born with an intense hold, the urge
to live.
A little bitty baby, he doesn't know what's
about, because he wants to live, but he
doesn't know it.
The urge to live.
Now that, but even
here, you've all had it, I know.
Those who, when all could roll through you,
you weren't saying something, you weren't saying, I
thank you for, well those are little, oh
my, I thank you Lord for helping me
get, the former things shall not come into
remembrance.
The whole scale, the whole schoolhouse will be
set aside.
But here we will carry with us, I'll
tell it, because I don't tell it, because
I think I'll tell it from that angle
at all, but I like to relate some
experiences, that when others come along, have I
ever helped you that way?
I want to help you that way, because
I want all of you to come along,
and some have gone, many are way, first
way ahead.
I'm on the beginning, but I'd like to
say, this is the way it is.
I remember saying, this, that's really what you're
for.
I remember being caught up, as it were,
in my spirit, glorious
life, human, like an altar, which had the
sense of God centralized.
I couldn't only do it with my arms,
sleep, and God would wake me up, and
I knew God, and my arms would automatically
go up like this.
I didn't try to, but they went up,
and I think the lifted arm is the
symbol of aspiration and of worship, that becomes
the symbol.
Have you noticed in our architecture it's carried
out?
How many of you know the Gothic architecture?
What is the Gothic?
It's not the Norman architecture at all, it's
the Gothic.
What is it?
It's your arms put up like this in
the worship before God, and the cathedral is
based on it.
Those old cathedrals I visited in Europe, I
noticed every one of them, those old Gothic
things, what did they, they stand there as
symbols of faith, the symbol of the aspiration
of the spirit, and they always have, how
many know that Gothic?
Surely, well what is it?
It's the aspiration made in stone, so it
can stand there.
The testimony, it stands there.
It's a stone made symbol that even when
man is dumb, the stones still cry out,
where the hell is that aspiration?
Well, I can remember every little while I
would be caught up in like that sort
of a, I call them pockets, the sort
of thing I could call, caught up, and
I would be in that pocket of aspiration
and worship.
I didn't want anything all the day.
I would be busy, of course we're busy,
and that's what stumbled me.
I said, well, am I two people?
I'm getting queer every day.
I wonder if I'm two people.
Now there's one of me that's there, and
I know it's there, but here I am
getting breakfast, washing, raking the lawn, mending my
socks, going to the store, but I thought,
well, how can I be?
I think it's like this.
I think he lets us in spirit, which
is the essence of our reality.
We are the spirit.
It's a conscious entity.
I think he lets us just have a
momentary catching away to the thing which is
to be, you see, because it's an anticipation,
and I risked it, as it were, in
that pocket, and I could be busy with
things, and I could just stop like that,
and my real, is this getting queer, or
is heaven's thing telling me?
I don't know if I'm getting off the
handle or not.
Identify myself with that.
I could be just as conscious as though
I were in heaven with this.
Well, I think it's an anticipation of what
God really wants, because that's what we were
made for.
We were made and designed and geared for
the worship of God.
All creation is unto one objective, the glory
of God, the glory of God, and heaven
is filled with it.
All heaven is nothing but the glory of
God, the glory of God, the glory of
God.
Now, that was the chief objective with all
creation, everything, and man was made for it,
and even in the garden, the very first
objective that God had for them was to
glorify him by doing his will.
The idea of the responsibility of life was
never a problem until after their failure.
Never.
It was never a problem until after their
sin and failure, then they become earth conscious,
responsibility conscious.
What shall I eat?
What shall I wear?
How shall I do?
They became conscious of all that after sin
and failure, but never before.
He had given them the supply.
This is for you.
Eat.
Live.
The burden was not there.
Never intended to be.
Never intended.
But what was the objective?
He says, this is unto the glory of
God.
Glorify God.
I'll speak of it later.
Your objective is to glorify God.
The method or technique by which that is
accomplished is to do the will of God,
and when you will do the will of
God automatically, you glorify him, and you give
back to him again that which you were
designed for.
Now in the, after this period is over,
here's where our spirits will be caught up.
What do you mean to say then?
You just stand before the throne of God,
glory, glory, glory, glory forever and ever.
Oh, don't be ridiculous.
No.
I'm telling the attitude of heart.
Now, I believe through the eternal ages, there
will be manifestations of life and ministry and
cooperation with God and unfolding of things that
we don't know.
We don't dream.
It has not entered into the mind and
heart.
The things which God has prepared, they're in
abeyance, they're waiting, and if we can get
through our schooling, if we can learn the
meaning of being down here, what in the
heavens did the Lord make us?
Did he have an objective in mind?
Was there any thought?
Or did he just bore on us all,
and we have to go around till we
die, and if we believe in Jesus, we'll
something.
That's nice.
That isn't it.
The Bible doesn't teach you.
Because you've got some symbols which are representatives
of spiritual things.
You've grabbed hold of the symbol and lost
the reality.
The symbol isn't the thing.
The symbol is a symbol of something.
Then get the something.
Don't run around with the symbol.
The symbol, the picture isn't the thing.
It's the best thing that it can be
produced for us to catch the glimpse of
the reality, which is abstract, but it's not
tangible.
But we only know it through that eternal
period ahead of us, how little we dreamed
what God has.
It has not entered into our hearts, minds,
and thoughts, a preparation of the unfolding of
the eternal.
No.
But we can be united to it.
We can be brought into a conscious.
I said it last night.
I am caught up in this divine.
You have to be birthed to it, born
to it.
Flesh and blood cannot enter into it.
That which pertains to my mundane, earthbound period,
that can't enter into it.
It's not supposed to.
He says it's a new creature.
No longer to here, but it relates itself
to the there.
So we've become strange creatures.
We're creatures of two worlds, and we have
to live in two worlds.
Isn't that right?
The real thing that we are lives in
a world that's different from this, because that
is its point, its place of light, illumination,
and strength.
But we have to have our field here
in a body filled with action, filled with
the commerce of living, filled with the display.
We have to have that, because that's our
school.
That's the field of our demonstration.
That's the field where we pour out into
actual, tangible, visible form the thing which we
receive, seated together with him in heavenly place.
That's where we are truly seated.
But we're down here eating bacon for breakfast.
It's good.
He wants that balance.
But it is not here.
This is fleeting.
I think it's one of the oldest universities
in Scotland that has an over
-the-door carved in stone.
It's just as I thought.
Well, this tomb that we're so involved in
down here will pass away.
But we become enamored.
We become possessed of the thing.
I've said sometimes to students, and it's fortunate
the Lord can keep us all poor.
I said never ask for possessions.
Well, why?
Because if you're not careful, the possession will
possess you.
It has a nasty way of grabbing back
at you.
And as you take it, you think, oh,
I'll take this for the Lord.
See, but now, wait a minute.
We've seen that.
That's the impulse of your heart when you
don't have a million dollars.
Oh, if I could do it, I don't
know if would or not.
Because I don't know how safe I am.
I know under the inspiration of sense, of
need, and the fact that that could be
communicated to the need, I know that.
And so I say, oh, shit, a million
dollars.
I hope, I think, I sometimes think, because
sometimes right now with the limited stuff he
gives me, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't let me get married to it
nor attach to it.
No, they are, I call them conveniences and
accidents of life.
That's all they are.
That's all they are of sorts.
But now
don't get fanatical and say, well, if that's
the way it is.
No, don't do that.
You can't.
We say, I'm here, Lord.
He says, that's right.
Accept life, but accept it in me.
Then it'll be safe.
Otherwise, we're not safe.
Because the possession, it'll possess you.
And before you know it, you're under bondage
to it.
You can't do, you can't come, you can't
go, you can't sit down, you can't stand,
you can't do anything while you are possessing.
Well, how do I have a license?
That isn't reality.
This is the school of it, the school
of it.
It's all reactionary.
Strange spirit that we are, set free in
the world down here.
It's a very strange thing.
If it was given a place to live
in, in the bodies that we have, we
didn't choose them.
We didn't sit up the night before we
got born, make out what we thought we'd
like to be.
And neither did God sit up the night
before you got born.
He breathed
the life into a broken mold.
And the mold, he did not break.
The mold was a perfect thing when he
created.
His joy was to continue.
Everyone's got born in a crooked, broken mold.
And he doesn't blame us.
He doesn't say, why did you get born
that way?
Because he knows.
Now, don't mean he justifies and is happy
with us.
No, he gave his son and a tremendous
redemption that we wouldn't have to.
But as long as we keep identifying ourselves
with that thing and its limitation and its
earthbound thing, that
Paul didn't, he saw the secret of the
joy of his heart.
To be one more little instrument that can
gather up.
And your interpretation of the will of God
has to be uniquely personal, individual.
And the will of God flashed down upon
you.
You pick it up and say, thank you,
Lord.
Is this my pattern?
Yes, this is your pattern.
It is my will for you.
And if you walk in this pattern, in
its obedience, you shall glorify me in peace.
And so we grasped the consciousness that that's
the will of God.
Well, we didn't choose it.
We didn't choose the broken mold for our
being.
And I cluttered up saying here, no, the
real thing is living and moving, having our
being in an infinite God, related to him
as a father, related to his, and the
Holy Spirit is the dynamic and the power
of God in me to make this thing
live.
Anyone thinks the experience in life is dead
sortable, consent to truth.
It's the most dramatic thing that I know.
It's the most arresting.
I've lived 70 years.
I'm 70 years old.
I've lived 70 years.
And as I get older, I can see
it more and more.
It's the most daring, dramatic thing that ever
comes, that a soul should be born into
consciousness and can touch God and live.
Oh, to me, that's terrific.
But it's good to, um, to become conscious
of it.
So I have been, you have too, had
those strange, there, there it is.
That, that's, I often say, Lord, that's where
my spirit, my body, Lord, I have to
move along.
I have to do all this.
But this is only in my body consciousness.
My real spirit is with you.
Isn't that nice?
My real spirit.
My real spirit there is like a little
votive candle that's burning before the altar.
This represents, this is my votive candle.
See what I mean?
Or don't you?
My little votive candle.
But my body, while
we live, not in the thing.
Life, we have to become disciplined.
We have to unlearn.
Oh, I brought that little quotation for you.
I found it when I was looking.
It just makes me think of it.
And I'll read it to you.
I think you'll enjoy it.
I just, I like it.
So this is a translation from Terstegian's little
poem called My Task.
This is what he discovered to be his
task.
He was no Christian mountain mystic.
The one who loved the Lord.
He lived many hundreds years ago, but then
it didn't matter.
He found the reality.
And so he reduced his philosophy of life
to this simple little poem.
And I want to read it to you
because I believe it's what we have all
found.
But I'd like to have somebody say it
for me.
And then when he says it, I said,
this is it, Lord.
He says, to learn and yet to learn,
whilst life goes by, so past the student's
day.
And thus be great and do great things.
Die and lie embalmed in praise.
My work is but to lose and to
forget.
Thus small, despised to be.
All to unlearn.
This my task before me said.
Unlearn all else but thee.
Isn't that nice?
Unlearn all else but thee.
I like that.
Such a contrast.
You see, the earth spirit is possessive.
It doesn't mean just possessing money, but the
earth spirit is grasping.
It's possessive in the sense of fame.
You want to grasp it and hold it.
Name, hold it.
Wealth, hold it.
Glory, hold it.
Possessive.
That's the human spirit.
That's the natural man.
He's made that way.
He's grasping because he hasn't found the reality
that he must hold.
And he's still grasping at the bubbles and
the young realities.
That urge to retain, to hold.
It's in him.
So if it's not focused, if it has
not attached to reality, it grasps at everything
and he calls that life.
Now I'm living.
No, you're not.
Jesus said life consisteth not in the abundance
of anything which you grasp and hold.
Because it's automatic.
It will hold you and retard you.
Life is not holding.
It's losing.
Losing.
Let it go.
Lose it.
Don't let it have power.
Lose it.
Lose its power.
Glory, let everyone lose it.
It's a perishing thing.
I love that hymn.
You like it too.
I lay in dust, life's glory dead.
Isn't that a sweet line?
What a philosophy.
I lay in dust, life's glory dead.
And that's why he's saying here, same philosophy.
Not to grasp, to hold, but to lose,
to forget it.
What is that?
Life consisteth not in the abundance, the ability
to hold, to acquire anything.
Most people think that means money and houses
and lands.
No, no.
He's not talking about that.
He said life consisteth not in the abundance
of anything.
Anything is a rather inclusive word.
He didn't say life consisteth not in houses
and lands and money.
No, that, that's not it at all.
Life consisteth not in the abundance of anything
that holds you.
So let me read this again.
This is the average to learn, that is
to grasp, to get, to have, to learn,
and yet to learn whilst life goes by.
So cast the student's days, and thus be
great, and do great things, and lie embalmed,
my word, is but to lose, to forget,
thus all despise to be, all to unlearn,
this task before me said, unlearn all else.
But the call to task, a nice little
translation that I think is, now I'll give
you some scripture verses now for this next,
next voice that we hear.
I've been already telling it out to you.
How many are conscious it's the voice of
the world, or have you, have you, have
you been conscious that's the voice of the
world that clamors at everyone's ears, that taps
at every door, that sounds in every spirit?
So your next voice is the voice which
we should have to learn how to interpret.
It's the voice of the world, the voice
of the world.
The other one was the voice of all
creation, telling us God, God, God, explaining, telling
us, proclaiming God.
Now we hear another voice.
This is the voice of the world, which
is the most persistent, and is the earliest
to be heard, because it relates so, so
directly to our earthbound life.
It makes us appeal to it.
Now here's some approaches, and the things which
I've jotted down as little notes for us.
It's the loudest too, if you know, by
the way.
You know, the voice of the world is
the loud clamoring voice.
What is the voice that we are to
hear?
A still, small voice, utter contrast, utter contrast.
But the voice of the world is, I
don't, well, to me it sounds, it's vulgar,
like it's loud and brazen.
Of course it has very pleasing trappings, that's
all right, but that's its mask, that's its
disguise.
But the inner quality of the voice of
the world is brazen, it's loud, boorish, because
it just thrusts itself at you.
It thrusts itself at you.
That's the voice of the world under all
these masks and disguises, and you know, I
want to give you, I've got, let me
see, I have four here.
You can get a lot of them.
I just happened to hit on four of
the forms or patterns which this voice of
the world may take, and you know, he's
so clever.
The director of the voice of the world
is the enemy, of course, of our souls.
He's the antagonist of God, and he's so
very clever that he allows it to make
its appeal to us through all legitimate things.
Every one of them is a legitimate thing,
and a thing which God takes into consideration
in our life and has a part of
it.
Every one of them.
But you see, when the enemy takes those
things and places a wrong emphasis upon them
or throws them in a distorted pattern, he
gains a victory.
Now here, for instance, is the voice of
the world.
This is one.
We'll say it comes to most people as
the business of living.
I call this business.
Now I don't mean going into business selling
neckties.
I don't mean that.
I mean business in the sense of legitimate
commerce in the world.
The come and the go, the play, the
take, whatever form your vocation takes.
Now he'll come in that.
He'll come in that.
But you see, in the world, without any
vision, without any consciousness of God, that usurps
the place of the voice of God who
wants to speak to the soul.
He listens first to that voice.
It occupies him.
It's the voice of the world in what
I call the business of living.
That which should occupy you, which is right.
There's a place for business, I call it.
I mean the commerce of living in every
life.
We are not angels living on a planet.
We're here.
We're in the world.
We're eating and coming and going and wearing
clothes and getting a living.
That's right.
But when that voice of the commerce of
the world of our coming and going usurps
the place of the voice of God for
its direction, it has won a victory and
we come under the power of it.
The power, we call it the business.
Now look at the world today.
Did you ever know a world period in
which just the plain business of living occupied
such preeminence?
Everybody is so busy, they're living.
They're living with a consciousness of things, business,
money, position, better wages, more coming, more going,
a better television than last year and a
new model.
Well now listen, not one of those things
in itself is wrong.
There's nothing wrong in any of its dogs.
There's nothing wrong.
There's nothing wrong and damning and that's a
dog.
They're all right.
They're legitimate.
But living, life consists of not.
Seek ye first the spiritual adjustment and all
this living will find its right pattern.
Seeking first the seeking power in us to
live.
The seeking element in a man to live
is normal.
Otherwise he'd be a lazy sort of a
fool.
But we may be intelligent to adjust ourselves
for the time being to life in a
right pattern.
We if it's out of proportion, if it's
overemphasized, we lose the rhythm of our living
and we allow a thing which is legitimate
in its first thought and it becomes obsessive.
I know of a person, I'll say now
say for instance in the business world.
I grew up with him.
A fine boy, good moral boy.
But he got the idea of business.
He went into business.
He made money.
Then he made some more money.
And of course, you're supposed to be a
Christian.
Then he made some more money.
He married.
He built a very fine home, very beautiful
home.
And then he invested a little more.
Well, if he had done that for the
really the glory of God, that God was
getting the whole thing and he's getting 2
% for himself, that would have been quite
fine.
But I don't think God got the 1%.
But he justified himself by his reinvestments.
You see, he never did a thing wrong
with it.
Never gambled, never did what we would call
the wrong moving of it.
So he invested his money with two others
in a big concern.
Being an honest boy himself, he was every
bit of him was thoroughly honest.
He thought everybody else was honest too.
Guileless, you know.
And he had made his money in a
right way.
He'd worked hard for it.
And so he went into business, you see,
with the other two.
Thinking, of course, everybody was as guileless as
he.
Bogs, the world's full of scoundrels, don't you
know that?
Not knowing that's the first thing you know.
His investments began to go down, down, down,
till the thing was almost nil.
But what was it?
It was his home, but now it had
to be mortgaged to help meet the debt
of the company.
Well, what happened to it?
Well, you see, by hearing the voice of
the world through his business avenue, which was
right and good in itself, had deafened his
ear to anything of God, that when tragedy
strikes, he hasn't any God.
You see, he never had God in the
consideration at all.
Well, what did he do?
He went out in the garage and hanged
himself.
That's all he could do.
The blow was too severe for him, because
he had a face, you see, before all
these business people and friends, he had a
face which was so-and-so, and to
have loose face in the fact that he
lost everything.
He never got drunk, he never gambled, he
never did outrageous sins at all, not a
thing.
But his life ended in a tragic, horrible
ending, because he'd heard a voice that dominated
him.
It was the voice of the world taking
a business form, which was legitimate.
But you see, by and by, his possessions
possessed him, and he lost his grasp.
Now you can take that in any field,
you take it in any seeking.
Look at the people who hear the voice
of the world in some, now here's another
one, say pleasure.
Well, now let's finish this one on business
first.
What did Jesus say about business?
Well, when he was only 12 years old,
he recognized the fact that he was born
and brought here for a business purpose, didn't
he?
And he said, no ye not, I should
be about my father's business.
I mean, the activity, the flair of my
expression in life in relationship to God, I've
come to do that.
That's my demonstration.
That's my business pattern.
It's all right, but when it's out of
focus and out of line, it has an
ungodly grasp on the life, and it ends
in tragedy and trouble.
Nothing wrong with business, not at all.
But some feel, you know, just as soon
as you become a Christian and seek a
deeper life in God, one becomes spiritually minded.
You make that pattern.
You have got me in this.
This is yours.
Now show me how to handle it.
And if you want it, you can take
it.
And I'll walk down the street with $5
in my pocket.
But they aren't brought to that path.
Now look at the voice of the world
in what we would call the pursuit of
pleasure and agreeable living.
People have that all the time too.
Look at the playboys and these women.
What was that woman's name?
Zalzar or Zuzu or Zozo or Boo Boo.
I remember it was in the paper only
just a few days ago.
Anyway, she was one of the wives of
this rocker.
But they have all this pleasure.
They're trying to find this adjustment in God,
which should be in God on the lower
level of something which is left.
But pleasure is not wrong.
Recreation isn't.
It is wrong.
There's no pleasure of it, of living.
Nothing.
At my right hand, there are pleasures forevermore.
But where is the pleasure?
It's in the consciousness that it's related to
the Lord, even at his hand's breath.
At my right hand, I'm not asking you
to become a nun or a monk, shut
up, in a stone prison house.
I'm asking you to live a perfectly normal,
healthy life.
And in it, you'll have business to occupy
you.
But let it be so that you are
not under the power of it.
But it's held in abeyance to God.
He wants it.
He wants that.
God would like a lot of real businessmen
today.
He would.
There's a place in the business world for
that.
It's a little idea that you
don't have to be normal, have the business
pursuit, but it's held in God.
It's held in God.
Pleasure.
Have pleasure.
How?
I have them as God dishes them out
to me in his right hand.
At my right hand, there are pleasures.
I don't want you to go through life
numb and dumb with no joy, no relaxation,
no opening to the wonder of God.
But when it matches you, it's the voice
of the world, and full, in a room,
five minutes, unless I gotta get some kind
of a thing, more powering,
have pleasure.
But let it be.
I'll give you all that you need.
How many know God can give you some
of the most marvelous, thrilling things right in
him that satisfies every thinking?
They're far more thrilling to me than looking
at the thing played by proxy on a
screen.
How many know most of the people don't
like to live themselves.
They like it lived in someone else or
through.
Most of the living today is all a
vicarious living.
The man is too lazy, really, to play
ball.
So he pays so much to go and
see the ball all played for him, and
doing the things which he really would like
to do and should do.
Disappointed people who can't take the frustration or
what I call the denial, they'll substitute by
going to a movie and seeing it all
rehearsed, that they can get the emotional reaction
sitting in the seat that's thrown on a
screen.
How many know that's true too?
Of course it is.
Why do they have this?
It's because that has to be done for
them, the lazy thing.
And he doesn't live at all.
He's living by proxy.
He's living by, well, it's a substitution.
It is.
It really is.
I know one person who has had a
rather disappointing fare in her romance, and she's
satisfied the disappointment by going to any of
the movies that Carrie, they always know because
she's there.
Well, I always think, poor dear, you're trying
to get what you didn't get.
So you're getting it on a screen to
recapture the emotion.
Is that right or isn't it?
It's right whether you like it or not.
These analysis are terrible.
So I'm rather analytical.
I'm rather analytical, but I get somewhere after
I see through this thing.
I must be about my father's business.
That's right.
Pleasure.
There are pleasures forevermore.
Captivating things.
I'll look at them.
Here, for instance, is this idea and this
pleasure thing.
Here's another thing I noticed I think is
rather good because we're all made this way.
We're all human.
With some it's a little more pronounced.
Did you ever notice that the fact of
the necessity of pleasure and a release, an
outlet, we were made for it.
Man was never made to be wound up
and just kept under one intense pressure of
living, living, living, living.
We were made that we should have outlets.
We're made.
We are extroverts.
Dr. Rogers was my Hebrew master.
I did my Hebrew work under him.
He's a very gifted scholar, very fine.
He lectured in Oxford almost every summer.
They dragged him over to England, and they
paid any sum to him.
I have the joy of sitting.
I'll tell you something and you'll know it
too.
Do you know there's a dispensing of truth
and a dispensing of life through a dynamic
personality, sometimes even more than the book that
you study?
Now, I've forgotten much that I learned.
Technically, I've forgotten.
Of course, I'm rusty.
That's 34 years ago.
I'm rusty in that, but the impact of
that man upon me, that's never left.
The impact of that personality given to God
left something on me, and I carry it
around with me.
It's still on there.
Dr. Curtis was the same.
I gained more from those two men.
They were mighty men in God, too.
It was years ago before a lot of
the higher criticism and all that German philosophy
got over here.
It was before that.
They walked in the simplicity of the old
orthodox fundamental thought of God and redemption.
I was glad to get under them, get
their teaching, but I learned a lot of
things from Dr. Rogers.
Here's one talking about the legitimate flair of
the out, the out fart.
One day, he came into the class one
morning, and he was always very meticulous.
He had a great beautiful red rose here
on his lapel.
Well, imagine the professor coming in.
You're all smiling, aren't you?
Of course, he all felt sheepish.
He said, I know why.
He says, you're quite ...
He says, I have a right to because
this is one of my ways out.
There are two things I want you to
remember.
Never be ashamed to be sentimental.
Imagine a dry old authority on the ancient
languages, a world authority, a world authority.
He always was in Europe at all those
council tables on the early translation.
He could read all those.
Imagine him saying that the sentiment must be
in its place.
Never get so booked and so firm and
so deep that you can't open to a
sentimental thing.
Now, he says another is, don't be afraid
to have a hobby of some kind, which
is your outlet.
I said, this is my outlet.
This is my hobby.
I'll tell you why.
I get very tired sometimes in intensive work.
He was a great student.
He says, I have to have a place
of release.
I have to get out of it.
He says, I do roses.
I know the soil, the proper soil, the
combination of soil, the kind of roses, what
one rose takes.
I have done that now for a number
of years until that's my outlet.
That's my hobby.
He said, boys, what's your hobby?
Well, nobody wants to own up.
Well, have one.
Let it be a legitimate thing because he
says that's a good avenue of escape.
Have the escape.
Nothing wrong in that, but don't let that
master you so there's nothing left in life,
but that thing overgrown, but carry it to
its place.
I remember so well, see him coming down
the side aisle.
And now just that morning message gave me
two things that I've not forgotten.
I'm glad to have known and to have
seen it.
Have something that interests you, that entertains you
on the outside.
Oh, but you're so holy and so consecrated.
No, be holy, be consecrated, fall in love
with God, and at the same time say,
Lord, isn't this a wonderful rose you helped
me get?
Share it with him.
It was his outlet.
But some are afraid, even of lovely, the
little pleasures that he gives us.
I remember speaking in a camp meeting and
it was a dear soul there, a woman
who had been wonderfully used of the Lord
in what we call pioneering.
And she had done some pioneering in a
country where there was a great display of
God's handiwork.
It was phenomenal, like Yosemite, where people go
miles to see what they should.
And casually I said to her, I said,
Mrs. So-and-so, Sister So-and-so,
did you ever see So-and-so where
you were?
It was right by Yosemite.
She was very holy, very sanctified.
And sometimes she scared me.
And she just turned to me and she
said, Brother Fulett, I didn't go to lay
my life down there to see the scenery.
I went to save souls.
Well, that shut me off.
Well, I thought, why not save the souls
and see the scenery too?
But she thought she was putting herself, you
know, in a very dedicated place, a very
dedicated place.
I didn't go.
Well, I thought you wouldn't be what you
are today if you'd only looked at it.
Because there was a crampness in her and
you could feel it.
There was a bondage in her and you
could feel it.
There was no release.
There was no freedom in God.
Everything had to come into a little stereotype
pattern of, um, oh, just kind of a
morbid holy living.
It was very morbid.
No, she says, I didn't go to look
upon scenery.
I went to save their souls.
It shot me right dead.
Well, I, I don't think that.
Do you?
I don't.
I really don't.
I think that looked like a silly little
child that was overdosed with responsibility, helping poor
God out.
And she couldn't take an afternoon and look
at his handiwork and come back refreshed.
Uh, I remember in school, this was demonstrated
too.
We were having, um, a lovely winter.
Happened in Rochester, by the way.
And, um, it was a good cold crisp
winter and they were skating.
It was good skating.
And so the topic came up in the
Bible school, where there are holy students and
holy teachers.
The idea of skating came up and they
discussed it.
And I'm, I'm right out flat.
I never know whether I should scream the
thing or shouldn't.
I just generally get in and that's doing
it.
They said, well, let you skate.
Oh, I said, I love it.
They said, can you skate?
I said, sure.
I was apparently born on skate.
I said, I've skated ever since I was
that.
I just think it's marvelous.
Would you go with us skating?
And I could begin to feel two or
three of them.
Holy, holy, holy.
And I thought, well, now maybe if I
go, they'll all lose their experience.
Well, if somebody's experience in God hangs on
a skate, you'd better give the skate a
good shoot.
Let it go.
So I said, I would go.
So these other ones didn't.
And to prove it, they had skates.
And I remember that boy in, he took
his skates down and rolled them up and
took them out and put them in the
garbage can.
A great triumph over skating here.
And great victory.
He didn't sing the doxology that I think
inside he probably wanted to.
So he just took those skates, poked them
down.
Poor sinners.
I want to go fish him out and
skate out.
But I didn't.
I wouldn't dare do that because then I
would have gone to hell sure.
So go
this afternoon with the students and skate.
And I did.
I went, borrowed some skates and we went
down and, oh, we had the loveliest time
skating and all.
We were so all fresh and happy with
the good, fresh air.
We came home.
And that night they had a party and
I'll never forget it.
All those who had been doused got blessed,
actually.
And those three sat there dead as three
mackerels.
They couldn't even bless themselves.
And I thought, I hope.
So after that, they never said anything about
skating.
I went and looked and I never found
those skates again.
And I think secretly, he repented of his
devotion.
Well, now, pleasure is good.
The joy of living is good.
But it has to be tempered.
Taking in God.
God could bless us.
And he did bless us.
I used to go to the Y.
Imagine though, we hadn't any place for exercise.
You remember how shut up we were on
34 Long and then the East Avenue and
just cooped up in there with a bunch
of boys all sitting up in those rooms
studying, studying.
No exercise, no anything.
And Stanley Rowe, do you remember Stanley?
He was Dr. Rowe's son.
Well, Dr. Rowe, of course, was a very
fine physician in Brooklyn and they were a
very fine cultured people.
Well, they got the baptism.
Of course, Stanley felt the call of God
on his heart and he said, well, go
get a hold of Glenn and go over
there where he's teaching.
So Stanley came to, you remember Stanley?
So Stanley came to our school in Rochester.
That's where I gave him his first year
of training.
And of course, he was sort of an
athletic big boy, you know.
And to be cramped up in that room
all afternoon, he just felt...
So he came to me and he said,
say, Fletch, do you think it would be
awful if we went over to YMCA and
took some exercise every week and a good
swim in the pond?
I said, don't ask me.
You know where I am.
You'd better ask somebody that's under the law.
I'd love to go.
Well, so he says, let's ask Miss Sue.
And she was sorry.
So we went and I sort of fixed
it in good color and I pled the
cause of these boys who were cramped in
the schoolroom, didn't have exercise.
And I was putting in one for them
and two for me because I wanted to
go too.
So, well, she says, I think if they're
with you, you know how far to tamper
with, how far to go with them.
Says, I don't know.
Pray about it.
Well, I hope it wasn't that I wanted
him to say yes, but he said yes.
And so I went over to the Y
and made arrangements with the gymnasium director.
And he says, that's wonderful.
He says, we're having a class here twice
a week by the young theological students from
the Baptist Seminary up the avenue.
And he says, there's plenty of room on
the gym floor if a few of you
want to come.
We didn't have to mix with a lot
of fellows and people in the world and
smoking and all that.
We didn't have to mix with them at
all.
Here was a lovely class already organized of
the young ministers from the seminary.
And he says, we have room, would you
like?
We say, sure.
So we brought all our apparatus and trunks
and shirts and gym slippers and all the
rigging, you know, and we had quite a
nice little company.
We'd go over every Thursday and every Saturday
for a workout, we called it.
And then we'd have a good shower, all
of us in there showered and all jumped
in the pool and had a little swim
and come out.
Well, now we did that and never, there
was never any consciousness that this is worldly.
This is like the people in the world.
I didn't feel that.
And I think I was honest and open
to God.
Neither did they.
And God blessed it.
I don't know why he shouldn't.
There was a little relaxation with the joy
and pleasure of fellowship.
And then Theodore, Ruth Clifford, and I were
very good handball players.
I don't mean, how many of you know
what handball is?
You see, when you're caught with your stiff
wall here and stiff wall and you have
that hard ball to bounce and you have
a glove purposely for handball and you bounce
it against the wall and pick it.
And then sometimes you glide up and pick
it off the wall.
Oh boy, didn't I like that.
And we were both experts on the handball.
It never hurt us.
Pleasure.
Well, there was a pleasure at his right
hand.
I believe it.
I believe that was a pleasure which the
Lord arranged.
And he says, it's at my right hand.
You want to have that pleasure?
And we said, yes.
We didn't get hungry.
We used it.
It refreshed our bodies, gave us strength and
a real joy.
So now here's the world calling.
But look at those who can't take it.
Look at the people who today are bound
under, we call it the sport or the
pleasure, voice.
Just bound under.
Bound under.
They've never heard anything over the earth.
Bound under.
We'll use it.
None of these things are wrong.
Business, pleasure, schooling, and daily work.
Pleasure, Psalm 16, 11.
Business, Luke 2, 49 and Romans 12, 11.
And he commands us, he says, be not
flowful in business, be alive.
Don't cancel it, but be in business and
be alive, studious in it, but let your
living be unto God.
Now here's schooling, for instance.
We were talking about this last night.
The voice that calls for our, say, our
education in schooling.
That's good.
But people can get under the power of
it because it's fascinating.
I like studying.
I like schooling.
I'm more or less a student.
I like it.
It's natural in me.
I like it.
Father was a teacher and student.
It's in me.
I like studying.
I like it.
I like studying.
I like being, I like it.
But the Lord had to stop it because
I would have run, you see, I would
have gone wild with it.
I just want to take more and more
and more and more and more.
Well, you don't need the more and more
and more and more.
You trust God and he will give you
what is sufficient to carry you in your
pattern, in your pattern.
Now, that's the question today with our movement.
It's getting more, isn't it?
More and more.
Now, we'll turn, we used to have little
simple Bible schools and some people even couldn't
take them.
And you remember when our little Bible school
was almost poohooed by Pentecostal people because it
was a place where you studied.
And now that you have the Spirit, you
need no one to teach you.
Oh dear.
Well, we had to fight through all that
to maintain a little simple Bible school with
a very simple course, but it was good,
but it was simple compared with what they
have now.
But now, you see, more, more.
I hope it won't get completely out of
bound.
I don't depreciate education.
I do not.
But I don't want it to be pushed
out of bounds so the emphasis of the
power of the Spirit and the necessity of
the Spirit is lost.
The Spirit can use a trained instrument where
he can't use an untrained one.
I know that you do too.
God could do through Paul what he couldn't
do through Peter.
Both will have their rewards.
But he had to select Paul because of
that, the natural deposit in background.
I've never known him to choose an instrument
for singing the gospel and being blessed with
that, unless they had a bird born in
their throat.
That's right.
But he picked up that which was in
the natural deposit, sanctified it unto God, anointing
it and filling it with the Spirit, and
it began to move to the glory of
God.
Paul moved to the glory of God because
he surrendered unto death all that he did
have in his schooling, and he was a
real philosopher.
Had he not come into the Christian teaching,
we would have heard from him because he
was a born philosopher.
That's why God can use him to organize
our Christian teaching as it is.
He could do that.
That's the way he is.
But schooling is good, music is good, but
see what it demands of you.
It carries them into such a one-track
thing after all.
They are dedicated to it one thing, and
that's their God.
Great musicians are dedicated to it.
They dedicate their lives.
They surrender.
They sacrifice.
Don't you worry.
Look at things they have to sacrifice, and
Paul says it, for a crown of faith.
Perish it.
But they dedicate themselves to it.
Well, the thing isn't wrong, but don't let
it use up its place.
We don't really have to have too much,
because God can use even what's limited in
us for the passions.
I don't think he wants to make another
Paul out of any one of us.
He had Paul.
He may want to make something out of
us, but we can dedicate what we have.
Now this business of living, it's summed up
in this.
Whether we eat, or whether we drink, or
whatsoever we do, that's the business of living.
Let it be done how?
Under the glory of God, because he is
the objective.
This is lived unto God.
I get a reaction because it's my way
of living, of course.
I get a living.
That is it.
It's lived under the glory of God.
So there's the voice of the world calling
its appeal to this natural man, daily living,
Colossians 3.23. Now let me take up
one more voice.
I think we can handle one more.
Here's one that's a little hard for us.
Romans 12.11. Be not slow to go,
but fervent in business.
Well then, if he tells us to be
fervent in business, how can the business and
the voices go on?
That's just it.
It is the legitimate thing, but it's the
overemphasis.
Now can you give me an illustration in
the word where we see this very teaching
that I'm giving this morning proved out?
How many of you remember Demas?
Remember Demas?
Well he was a saved, sanctified, baptized, called
servant of the Lord, and he worked hand
in hand with Paul, Demas.
But what happened?
The text for that I'll give you in
a minute.
It's 2 Timothy 4.10. 2 Timothy 4
.10. 2 Timothy 4.10. Well what has
happened?
Here is Demas called out of the world.
He's brought into salvation, a dedicated spirit, baptized,
and even in the ministry with Paul of
such a caliber that he could work with
Paul.
Now we don't know how long he has
worked in the ministry, but you know all
the time there has been a voice sounding.
You don't always twig the power of the
voice.
This is such a gentle, almost a re
-echoing.
But all the while Demas is ministering and
working with Paul in the service.
God bless him.
Unconsciously, that way down somewhere in him, there
is a groundwork of reception.
There is something that can hear that voice.
I don't care how frail it is.
It's the voice of the world that's calling,
and it finds a little echo in him.
Now it isn't dealt with evidently, but it
is allowed to vibrate.
And he hears that voice, continues the ministry,
hallelujah, he's blessed.
But the vibration of the call of the
voice of that world has echoed in his
heart until it has gotten possession of him,
and it is stronger than the call of
God.
It's stronger than the call of the service
to which he is dedicated.
And finally, he breaks.
And he can't stand it in the presence
of Paul anymore.
He goes where he finds the satisfaction and
the answer, the re-echoing of that voice.
And these are the sad words that Paul
has to write.
For Demas hath forsaken me, having got drunk,
oh don't, having loved this present world, and
is departed unto Thessalonica, Caesarea of Tychus, Tychus
unto Elysium.
What aeolism.
Demas hath forsaken me.
Because he got drunk?
He didn't do a thing that you would
call outrageously wicked and vile.
But he heard a voice.
Now the word there, the voice of this
world, in our Greek, we lose the significance
of a lot of things that Paul is
teaching, and even the Lord, because we don't
have very good words in our English to
translate it.
For instance, here we call the world, the
world, the world.
There are at least four different words to
tell that.
If you're talking about the world as a,
as a, of the earth, the substance of
the world, the earth, it's gay.
Gay means the earth, the substance, the earth,
it's a planet.
Gay.
That's world.
We call it the world.
Supposing you're talking about the world as the
habitat of man, it's the world is the
place where we live and have our activity.
That's oikamini.
Oikamini means the world is my home.
That's where I live.
Supposing you want to think of the world
as God's creation, with all of its adornment,
with all of its beauty, with all of
its creation, mystery even.
That's cosmos.
Cosmos.
But it's world.
That's world.
And it's translated world.
But that means the adornment.
You ladies ought to know this.
Can you think of a word that comes
from cosmos that means adorning?
Cosmetics.
The same word.
Exactly the same word.
We get our word cosmetics from that word
cosmos, which means the adornment, the made beautiful,
the world, which is his handwork.
It is his footstool.
It is his handwork.
Cosmos.
Well, now supposing you're talking about the world,
which is this one, the world, which has
its dominating spirit.
What is that?
Age.
Aion.
Age.
The spirit of the age, not the spirit
of the world in which we live.
Love not the world.
Well, then some poor dear has to get
holy so they can't look at the beautiful
things like that woman couldn't.
Love not the world.
Don't look at his handiwork.
He's using the word ion, which means an
age, a period.
Well, every age or period has a dominating
spirit that corresponds to the period in which
we happen to be living.
The spirit of the age.
We call it the world spirit, but it's
the spirit which dominates in the world.
Be not conformed to this world, to this
age, with its philosophy, with its vision, with
its objective.
Don't be conformed to this world.
Well, then people say, well, I can't dress
like somebody in the world.
I can't conform to this world.
They're wearing ruffles and that's the world.
And so I'm not conformed to the world,
so I don't put ruffles on.
How many feet, how many million miles that
is what he's talking about.
He's not talking about that at all.
He doesn't use that word.
He says be not conformed to this ion,
to this age.
Be not conformed to the spirit of this
time.
Don't be subject to its philosophy of living.
It's always in antagonism to the thing that
God is doing.
And Demas having loved this present age, what
the age had to offer him, he loved
better than what God had to offer him.
It wasn't because Demas liked an automobile.
No, the spirit of the age had captivated
him.
And the spirit of the age, its philosophy,
its outlook, its impact, its power, the spirit,
we're all conscious of it.
Everyone who's lived at all, a little while
ago, how many of you know the awful
antagonism between the simplicity of the spirit of
Christ and the spirit of this age?
Why it says, mine is day and night,
day and night, absolutely.
And he says Demas having loved this present
spirit, the spirit of this age has captivated
him.
It wasn't that he got worldly and dressed
like the world.
Dear Lord, when will we ever learn anything?
He's not talking about that.
Having loved the spirit of power, what it
had to offer him, appeal to him.
Now I was thinking of that and I
was asking the Lord about it.
I said, well Lord, how does it come
that a person can be saved, baptized, even
in the ministry and serving as he, remember
he's a human being.
Yes, I will.
Remember he is but dust.
Yes, I will.
But he's holy sanctified.
He is dust.
He's a human being.
He's susceptible.
Well, what made it Lord?
Because in the searching out of his heart
before the Lord was your army.
You can't search it.
Let him search it and let him expose
it.
Kind of pretty terrific.
But you see, wherever there's anything in there
as a possibility to have an appeal, if
it's not dealt with, when the appeal moves,
it may be months and years after your
holy consecration and baptism and glorification.
If that item in there, in the interior,
I call it the
interior life that all has to be laid
and exposed to God.
If there's any item in there, not wicked,
but an item which is susceptible to this
external influence and power, if that's not dealt
with in God, it remains a dangerous factor.
And when this thing sweeps, how many of
you see it has something to catch on
to?
Do you remember that lovely testimony of Jesus?
And when Satan came to him and threw
over him all of the alluring things, he
found nothing.
How many see the terrific cleaning?
How many see the terrifying cleaning of the
interior that night?
That there was not one thing to which
this could make its appeal?
Well, if that could have in the beginning
been taken to the Lord and said, Lord,
this isn't bad, but I'm afraid of it.
I don't want it.
I don't want it, Lord.
It hasn't hurt me yet, but it's something.
Deal with that, Lord.
Deal with that.
And if God can have a chance to
deal with it, you're freed from a terrific
thing that the enemy may involve you in,
because that has been dealt with.
And he came to Jesus and found nothing
in him.
He couldn't hook a thing on, because his
life had been poured out before God, surrendered,
in all of the searching, in all of
the terrific trial, in all of the terrible
temptation to which he was subjected.
He came through, and after that temptation, all
the inner convictions of the thing which God
wanted, I think, were solidified.
They were hardened like steel, so that after
that temptation, though the onslaught was many times,
how many of you know there was no
flame?
Now, that comes rather close to it, because
if we're honest with God, sometimes he will
show us a most trifling thing, which in
the life of one, they would think might
be bad, but in the life of another,
it isn't as bad.
Now, there are things that some people can
do, I can't do, because I know it's
dangerous to me.
And to them, it is just silly.
They have a picnic in that thing.
I can.
I can sail by, and have a victory
in a glorious time, and people say, how
do you do it?
Well, God does it.
God does it.
But I have my danger spot.
Now, personally, there is a line of thought
in reasoning, and I reason, and I can't
help it.
Oh, let me help you with something.
Right now, how many of you know there's
a difference between rationalization and reasoning?
Shall I help you with that?
Reasoning is legitimate.
Rationalization is dangerous.
We have been given a reasoning power.
That is, we should reason.
Come, let us reason together, sir.
Oh, let us discuss this thing.
Let us look at it from every angle.
You offer what you have, and I'll offer
what I have.
Let's discuss this thing.
Let's reason this thing together.
That's right.
We should.
We are reasoning agents.
That's good.
Now, when a difficulty comes, which in reality,
we would like to defend if we could,
although we don't know that's the basis of
it, and it's very bad.
But if it's a thing which we like
to justify or defend, and sometimes we feel
we have a right to, then we bring
in a chain of thinking, an arrangement of
thought to justify or defend that.
That is rationalization, which is dangerous.
That's a dangerous thing.
When we rationalize, God had said to Adam
and to Eve, no, hadn't he?
That's definite.
No.
Now the enemy comes in and counteracts that.
So, in his influence over her mind, she
saw, she reasoned, she came into that scheme,
to that net, and became involved.
And in the real original, it is a
deception.
Well, now, how did he do that?
Has God said, let me see, start a
rationalization right away.
So, rationalization.
Did he say that?
If he had said that, he must have
meant this.
He doesn't want you there because you will
get this, and if you get this, you
will be there.
It's all rationalization to defend his deceit.
And so, rationalization usually is the pattern for
people who get into trouble because they will
not be obedient to the conviction of what
God says.
I don't want you to go there.
That's enough.
But, Lord, this is here, and he goes
there, and that is like this, and I
would like, let me see, I'm going off
right away.
You rationalize yourself into a justification because you
want to defend something.
And I know people who can rationalize themselves
into sin.
Rationalize yourself into sin.
And if it persists, the devil knows, how
many know, there are a lot of people
who think that black is white.
They can do it.
Black is white.
Distinguish.
Reasoning is all right with God in all
our situations, but rationalization is usually the process
we use to justify a point or to
defend.
Now, there are things I don't dare to
think along because I know if I persist
in there, I'm going to be defeated.
I just know it.
I know that.
And just as soon as the temptation comes
to think along that line, I just have
to stop it.
Well, why?
Because that's one of those little catches that's
in my makeup, that if that is not
dealt with and handled and taken care of,
when the swing comes in, it'll catch right
on there.
And I'll...
He says, I'm going to do something very
strange for that, and I wish you'd pray.
And I said, why?
He says, I have to throw this pocketbook
into...
I don't want to die.
How many can see there was a reason?
He says, as soon as I handle that,
it arouses in me a whole chain of
thought and difficulty.
And if I am freed of it, I
don't have the temptation to indulge in that.
Well, now there's nothing wrong in a pocketbook,
good heavens.
But I'm used to something disastrous could come
from it.
And so he had to, what?
Rid himself of it.
He burned it up.
I remember having some letters in a trunk.
Now, they were not tied with a blue
ribbon.
They were not love letters, I'll tell you.
But I had some correspondence, some letters.
And I knew that if I undid them
and started reading, I would be defeated.
Is this silly or isn't it?
Is it silly?
I don't want to be silly.
But that's an exposure.
I knew that.
I had them there.
As I say, they were not tied with
blue ribbons.
It wasn't that.
But it had a content.
And I couldn't get through till I burned
them up.
I'm like a boy.
I said, Lord, I'm not going to allow
this to become a snare.
There's nothing wrong.
Nothing at all.
But it can be used by the enemy
as a little snare in here that when
the temptation for something so-and-so-and
-so sweeps over me, it'll catch on that
and I don't want it.
Burn him up.
The voice of this world.
Demon.
He's forsaken me.
He's left me.
Because he loved this present age spirit and
captivated it and it's defeated God's purpose.
So there, we won't pick up anymore of
these voices.
There are a couple more.
Do you like these voices?
I want them to help you.
Because we're all very human and we're subject
to these things.
And when we get a little inner knowledge
of what God is doing, it doesn't scare
us.
It doesn't make us afraid.
Sometimes it makes us very shameful.
I know we get very humiliated.
Well, that's good for us.
But it need not make us afraid.
We can go to him.
To the throne of grace.
Bow to him.
Blessing to you.
Now, Lord, here we've been wandering around again
this morning.
Take the word.
Bless it to our good.
Make us honest with thee as thou hast
desired to be honest with us.
And may even the little lessons of this
retreat be carried with us in the days
to come.
And when thou dost approach us to love
us, to reveal thyself to us, to invite
us to take still another step in the
ways of God, we shall not hinder thee.
The thought of God shall not be frustrated
because perhaps of ignorance in us, but make
us wise as it turns.
Harm us as it does.
Give us the insight into the realities that
we shall profit by them.
That in the end, thou shall be glorified.
And each little light here shall become an
instrument which reflects God and pushes his influence
and power out over the face of the
earth.
When in body we may be hidden away,
but in spirit, in prayer, the outpouring for
the well-being, we may move.
We ask it for Jesus' sake.
I was just thinking, isn't it wonderful?
I read it.
I think it was a little verse.
I wish I'd cut it out now, but
I think it was a little verse.
It had such a comforting thought.
We are so limited.
We're so bound.
We have no great feel for our ministry.
And it was the story of the tree.
He was so bound, he couldn't move, but
his only joy was that he could grow
a branch that would throw a shadow where
he never could go.
So I've often thought how sweet.
Grow a branch, many branches, which will cast
the shadow where you will never touch, but
you throw your shadow.
Part of that I'm going to put, the
teaching of that, I'm going to put when
I finish my poem.
Another poem to start.
I love the soft gray shadows on the
monastery wall.
You know, these shadows, you know the old
mission, and you know how a pepper tree
planted near them can give the most elusive
shadows.
You know that.
Those elusive shadows on the monastery wall.
I love the soft gray shadows on the
monastery wall.
Soft shadows, elusive.
And how they talk and what they say.
Oh, I've got about that much written on
it.
And it's going to be about this tree,
this pepper tree.
And he sways and he swings.
He never got over the wall into the
court, but an old monk used to come
and sit in the shadow to do his
reading, the breviary.
You know, the monk has the breviary, his
everyday reading.
He never saw the tree, the wall, which
has a high.
But he did so enjoy the shadow that
was cast for its refreshing.
Don't that make a nice bit of material?
All of you pray that I get it
out sometime.
But I want to because I see some
nice things in there.
Nice things.
I love the soft gray shadows.
Did you give a fourth part of daily
living?
What's that?
Did you give a fourth part of daily
living?
Oh, that was the fourth one, the daily
living.
That would be all done under the glory
of God.
Eating, drinking, whatsoever.
You see, that's a general occupation of life.
It's focused in God.
Do you want to sing a little chorus?
A little chorus?
Yeah, now that's right.
I'm going to have you learn Bride of
the Lamb.
I'm going to read this and then we're
going to have the companion song of the
one we know.
Bride of the Lamb, only take me where
Jesus is.
Thy home is called Bride of the Lamb.
So I'll hold
these verses.
Do you want to try it?
You know the tune so well.
Then let's sing it.
Don't you like those words?
All these words are just beautiful.
Now this character's way back.
Oh my God, this song is difficult.
That character's 40 years, but it's still going.
Now it's Bride of the Lamb, here
this morning.
One only take me where Jesus is.
Thy home is called Bride
of the Lamb.
I would say you lose the philosophy.
But all that, I'm just glorious to it.
With every crowd, not for our sake, but
because it's ours to share.
Thou wouldst march amongst us.
Exultation or an upheaval in our life in
any way.
All those high things in us that exalt
themselves against the Lord.
All those high places of resentment.
And my dear, you know I know the
resentment that is in our hearts against the
Spirit of God until God begins to deal
with us.
We think we're yielded, but when God begins
to deal with us on certain lines, then
we find out how yielded we are.
And we want to reason God out of
the thing that he's asking of us.
And the claims that he's making on us.
And his will that is being laid on
us.
We'd like to reason with the Lord.
And maybe he doesn't understand our circumstances.
And we find in a certain resentment that
we didn't know was there.
And rebellions that we weren't conscious of.
Little do we realize the far-reaching effects
of the fall in our natures.
We have no conception of what the fall
has done in us until God, by his
Spirit, exposes the old nature.
And we see the depths of the curse.
But I'm so glad far has the curse
is found.
Hallelujah.
So far has his redemption reached.
And he can bring down that exalted thing
in us.
The thing that raises up its head against
God.
He don't mean to be rebellious.
We don't mean to be resentful.
God.
But we just don't really realize what the
curse has done to us.
And we must bring it to him.
The thing in
reasoning and I can
see a mountain there.
But the Lord's every one of them.
I'll make a way.
A way through to us.
God can take even our mountains and make
them a blessing if we'll let him.
If we'll let him.
Don't fight with yourself.
Don't fight with yourself because of what you
find in you.
God doesn't condemn us for what we are.
When he came and picked us up, he
knew what we were.
He knew what he was picking up.
He knew what he had set his love
on.
He loved us with a never-lasting love
before we knew anything about God.
Before we had set his
love upon us, he knew exactly what he
was picking up.
And he knew he was able for that
lump of clay.
He could bring down those mountains.
That was a little thing with him.
Oh, just think out there, out there in
the physical world.
How long would it take God to deal
with this ridge of mountains out here?
The psalmist tells us of the mountains shaking
and quaking.
Oh, Sinai, he says, what's the matter with
you, Sinai?
Why are you shaking?
And all the foothills around Sinai, he said,
look at them.
They're skipping like little rams.
What's the matter with them?
Look at you, Jordan.
Why do you stand back?
Why does the Red Sea act as it
does?
Look at nature.
Look at creation.
Look at it trembling and shaking.
What does all this mean?
Oh, says David, I understand the presence of
the Lord has come down.
And when God comes down, nothing can stand
before him.
We want him to come down, don't we?
We want him to come down and move
on my mountains and my little hills, however
little or however big that he can bring
them down and prepare a way for the
Lord.
Make every crooked thing straight.
Make it straight.
We don't see the way we should see.
Aren't you glad when God straightens out our
crooked thoughts?
When he turns our ways that we understand
the ways of God.
Paul thought he was doing God a favor
when he was persecuting the church.
He thought they were just a bunch of
upstart fanatics and he thought he was doing
the religious world a favor and would do
God a favor if he'd throw the whole
crowd of them in jail and get rid
of them.
Well, God just laid his hand on Saul
and picked him up out of the dust
of the road and told him that there
was a man in the city who lived
on straight streets.
Well, from that time, Saul was an entirely
different man.
God says you shall know the truth.
The truth shall set you free, free from
all of our ignorance, our ignorance.
And we may be fighting for something dogmatic
about something.
We're so positive of it.
We're just so sure about it.
We just stake our life on it.
And it can be just as wrong as
can be, just as wrong as can be.
But God is faithful.
If we're honest, if we're honest and want
to know, God in his faithfulness will come
and just a little ray of light.
Oh, God, I didn't know it was like
that.
But he'll let us know.
He'll let us know.
He'll make the rough things in us plain
and our old desert to blossom like a
rose.
All the dry waste, arid, barren, unfruitful places,
he'll make it beautiful with his glory.
The desert has its own beauty, hasn't it?
It has its own beauty.
It has its, its, all the depths of
possibilities.
How many times in passing through the desert
someone will say, I wonder what would spring
from this soil if it just had a
little moisture on it.
I've always wanted to see the desert in
bloom.
As many times as I've gone from the
east to the west, I've never been able
to pass through the desert just at the
right time to see it in bloom.
Well, that's all right.
If the Lord wants me to see it
in bloom, he'll let me see it in
bloom.
But, oh, within you, the desert within you
cries out, doesn't it, to lift up something
to God, just to lift up to God.
Oh, just something, something that is a result
of his seed, something that is a result
of his spirit.
For whatever the desert produces, it is nothing
of itself.
It's the moisture of heaven upon it that
calls forth out of it blossom and bloom.
May God send upon us the moisture of
his Holy Spirit, the dews of heaven, the
rains from above to water our earth, cause
it to bring forth for his glory.
He says he will.
So don't be discouraged.
Just be comforted, be comforted, and commit your
whole earth to the Lord, that the glory
of the Lord might be seen upon us.
In the name of the Father, say it
with me, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost.
Every valley shall be exalted, every
mountain shall be brought low, the crooked shall
all be straightened, the desert blossom just
like a rose.
Father in heaven, Father in heaven, we thank
thee.
Father, we thank thee.
Father in heaven, we
thank thee.
He laid thy word upon our lives.
We lay it upon our earth.
We lay thy word upon our upheavals.
We lay it upon our barrenness.
We lay it upon our disappointments and our
fears.
We lay thy word upon our past.
We claim it for our future.
We take it for tonight.
Oh, we would wrap it around us.
We would clothe ourselves in it.
We would gird up our loins with it.
Oh, Father, we want to eat it and
drink it until thy word is made life
and truth and real within us and the
way of the Lord is prepared and his
glory shall be seen upon us.
My Father, speak the word only.
Let the dues of heaven fall upon us
and the word of the Lord come to
us.
We ask for a visitation of God.
Blow, oh breath of God.
Oh, blow upon us all winds of heaven
that came into that upper loom upon that
assembled host, oh God.
Oh, wind, sweet wind, sweet, pure, holy breath
of God.
We thirst for you.
Our parts of earth wait for you to
come.
We lift up our faces towards you and
long to feel the breeze of heaven blowing
in our face, cooling and refreshing.
Our higher being, send us the light of
rain.
Pull out thy spirit upon us.
Bring the clouds over us.
Let them come over.