I'm sorry that this is the last opportunity
for fellowship this couple of days.
I have enjoyed them all both tremendously.
It's been a great privilege for us both,
my wife and myself, to be with you.
We've been specially helped by Larry and the
group in singing.
This is something not new, but different.
And it's wonderful to see it all based
on scripture and a real worship in music.
We've gone a bit wild that way in
Britain, in many areas, and we could do
with Larry's group coming over and just teaching
us.
How about that?
All expenses paid by you, of course.
Maybe Don and Jean and you all and
others would come.
It would be so thrilling.
The church at which we attend at St.
John's in Birmingham is the Church of England.
And in vicar, the minister is a tremendous
fellow, thoroughly liberated in spirit.
We have a midweek service that is called
Open to God.
It begins with a time of worship and
praise, much as you do, and then a
time of intercession and prayer for people who
speak of any particular needs, and a time
of real waiting on God.
And then there's a time when we're open
to God and open to each other, and
people move around.
And if there's broken fellowship or misunderstanding, it's
dealt with individually, personally.
Little groups meet for prayer together.
And then it's followed all, followed by a
real exposition from Scripture.
It begins about just before eight and finishes
well after ten.
And it's great meeting.
And you just could do with some more
of this type of worship that you have
here.
I don't know how I could introduce it.
My efforts at introducing, of course, are not
too successful.
However, maybe you'll all come one day and
see us.
You just love to experience the winter in
Britain, and you just enjoy the fellowship, and
we would love to have you.
Thank you so much for being so patient
with the British accent, and thank you so
much for your attentive, keen listening.
We're tremendously impressed with the potential of this
place.
It's terrific.
It's a seal upon, I'm sure, upon Don's
ministry and Jean and others, too.
And we thank God for it.
We shall constantly be thinking of you and
praying for you.
Of course, a work like this is open
to attack from anywhere.
If the Holy Spirit is really getting in
to bless, Satan's on the attack all the
time.
And we need to proclaim protection through the
blood of Jesus.
And I know you will.
Now, just to call us together.
Thank you, God, for sending us here.
Thank you, Jesus, that you came.
Holy Spirit, won't you teach me more about
His loving?
Thank you, God, for sending Jesus.
Thank you, Jesus, that you came.
Holy Spirit, won't you teach me more
about His loving?
Spending just a moment of quiet prayer, thanking
the Lord for all He means to each
one of us, and praying that we may,
today, appropriate all of Jesus.
That He made it through us and His
life may be expressed in us.
Speak just now.
Make me see some wonderful truth.
Thou hast to show to me.
Please be seated.
I said to you that He shall be
around for the rest of this month in
various Calvary chapels, looking forward so much to
it.
We'll be at Harvest in Costa Mesa.
And then we're going up to Northern California,
just to visit relatives for a couple of
days.
And we shall be at Redlands at the
end of the month.
And then we move across to Chicago, Moody
Church again, to preach there, and at the
Institute.
And then finally for a week with Billy
Graham and the team at their annual retreat
in Phoenix, a place called Carefree.
Sounds terrific.
And then back home again in the middle
of November.
We would appreciate your prayers for God's grace
with Don
and Jean.
The only problem about that house is that
there's only one moon a day, but it
lasts all day.
And I find I'm putting on weight, which
is really tremendous.
And I'm learning to get a victory over
snakes.
Hallelujah.
Still with chapter we read last night, it's
a preparation for the ministry, and a pattern
for the ministry.
Last night we began to think about power
in the ministry, the power of the Spirit
of God.
And then just to say a repetition, we'll
read from verse 6 of Ezekiel 47.
And he said to me, the Son of
Man, cast down three weeds.
Then he brought me and caused me to
return to being built on the river.
Now when I had returned, behold, at the
bank of the river were very many trees,
on the one side and on the other.
Then said he unto me, these waters issue
out toward the east country, and go down
into the desert, and go into the sea,
which being brought forth into the sea, the
waters shall be healed, or shall be made
fresh.
And it shall come to pass, that everything
that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall
come, shall live.
And there shall be a very great multitude
of fish, because these waters shall come thither.
For they shall be healed.
And everything shall live, whither the river cometh.
And it shall come to pass, that the
fishers shall stand upon it from Engedi, even
unto Enneagram.
They shall be oppressed to spread forth nets.
Their fish shall be according to their kind,
as the fish of the great sea exceeding
many.
But the mire places thereof, and the marshes
thereof, shall not be healed.
They shall be given to salt.
And by the river, upon the bank thereof,
on this side and on that side, shall
grow all trees for meat.
And wheat shall not fade, neither shall the
fruit thereof be consumed.
It shall bring forth new fruit, according to
its month.
Because their waters they issued out of the
sanctuary.
And the fruit thereof shall be for meat,
and the leaf thereof for medicine.
For as the margin hath it here for
bruises and sores.
That's the word of the Lord.
Now we're thinking of this picture of the
river as a picture of life in the
spirit and concentrating on Ezekiel's vision.
Just a moment to the capitulate, we saw
the energy of the river.
Its source, the throne of God.
Its course, the cross.
The cross waters to swim in without any
human earthly tributary.
And then we talk about the experience of
the river's depth.
Ankle deep, picture of carnality.
Knee deep, a picture of hunger.
Lying deep, a picture of new strength.
And waters to swim in, a life totally
committed to the Lord.
A life in the fullness of the Holy
Spirit.
An essential experience for all of us because
we cannot live or do a thing without
Him.
Now today we're going to think about the
effect of the river's flow.
There should always be inevitably evidence in the
life of a man who is filled with
the Spirit.
Do you remember that on the day of
Pentecost the crowd asked two questions?
The first, what does all this mean?
The second, men and brethren, what shall we
do?
There was something had happened in the lives
of the disciples that needed explanation.
And having received the explanation in the message
from Peter, what shall we do?
The explanation demanded a verdict.
We can't expect people to keep on asking
what are we going to do about Jesus
unless we have something to explain.
Something about us that can only be explained
by miracles.
And this is what we're talking about today.
The miracle of a Spirit-filled life.
The inevitable evidences in the life of a
man or a woman filled with the Spirit
of God.
It's a Methodist minister of whom I'm afraid
you won't have heard that I realize is
bad.
I shouldn't come over here with English illustrations.
But I'm a bit out of touch with
things in this country, so you must forgive
me.
But years ago there was a man called
Charles Lindbergh who was a great preacher, Methodist
preacher.
And he said, there is no such thing
as a once in a while experience of
the fullness of the Spirit of God.
It is a moment-by-moment appropriation of
a moment-by-moment supply from Jesus Christ
himself.
The moment I begin to believe, at that
moment I begin to receive.
And as long as I keep on believing,
I keep on receiving.
Now I think that's tremendous.
It's very simple, but it's very biblical.
You'll get it again on tape.
That'll save me boring you with repetition.
The life of a person who is filled
with the Spirit of God and who claims
the experience may be imitated, but it can
never be mistaken.
There are many, many movements today which claim
all kinds of experiences of the Holy Spirit
which are not supported either from the Bible
or from the lives of the people who
claim them.
By their fruit, Jesus said, you shall know
them.
But the effect of the life of a
person, man or girl, filled with the Spirit
of God, enveloped by Christ, will be unmistakably
genuine.
And I've just put together in my mind
about three things.
That sounds fairly orthodox.
Three things.
They don't all begin with the same letter.
That's not too good.
That will mark the reality of a Spirit
-filled life.
And the first of these, all of which
I take from Ezekiel 47, the first of
these is fruit.
Let me ask you to look at that
passage again at verse 7.
Very many trees on the one side and
on the other.
Verse 12.
All trees for meat, whose leaf shall not
fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed.
It shall bring forth new fruit according to
its month, because their waters they issued out
of the sanctuary, and the fruit thereof shall
be for meat, and the leaf thereof for
medicine.
The first evidence, therefore, of a Spirit-filled
life is fruit.
And you notice that the river has pursued
its course.
It has attracted growth, and it banks.
Very many trees.
And the roots have dug in to the
riverbed and draw constant strength from its water.
Now here there's a fullness that never fades,
and it doesn't disappear, or shouldn't, when youth
gives way to age.
All through the journey of life, there in
God's mind is intended to be a constant
freshness of soul.
Unless the revelation which I claim to have
had years ago can be supported by the
experience of today, it's worthless.
Absolutely worthless.
The psalmist described it, as I quoted, I
think, yesterday, in someone, like a tree, the
godly man, planted by the river of water
that bringeth forth fruit in his season.
His leaf shall not wither, and whatsoever he
does shall prosper.
The Lord Jesus described that also.
John 15, verse 16.
I have come, and I have chosen you,
and ordained you, that you should go and
bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should
remain.
No flash in a pen, not simply an
emotional experience, but a steady increasing fruitfulness displayed
in a growing likeness to Christ.
The Lord wants more than anything else from
each of us, a family likeness in all
of his children.
You see, the experience of the fullness of
the Spirit, therefore, is a crisis, followed by
a process.
I remember John Scott, of whom I'm sure
you've heard, speaking at the English Keswick Convention
a few years ago, and saying, beginning his
message, when he was speaking to about, oh,
twelve hundred missionaries from all over the world,
by the way, I hope you can get
to Keswick sometime, you'll enjoy that.
Come with all your waterproofs and umbrellas, and
ready for anything, but you will really enjoy
the ministry at Keswick.
And as he spoke to these missionaries, and
began his message, he said, I want to
speak to you about your greatest problem.
I saw twelve hundred missionaries sit right up
in the end and say, only an Englishman
could realize what they were saying, but I
saw, by the way they had their backs
up, how does he know?
Nobody knows about my problem.
We keep it to ourselves.
He said, your greatest problem is your fellow
missionary.
That was a bang.
And it would be true of all of
us, that our greatest problem is often our
fellow worker.
He said, my answer, of course he elaborated
considerably on it, treat every fellow missionary as
though he were Jesus.
React to every fellow missionary as though you
were Jesus.
That's it.
Listen, it takes all the glory of almighty
God to bring His glory, His reality, into
common place therein.
But there, there might be reflected a likeness
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so the fullness of the Holy Spirit
is a crisis which opens the eyes of
a Christian to a totally new plan of
Christian living, upon which he may live, and
in which Christ is everything.
As by faith we appropriate that life, then
we can begin to apply it in every
area.
We are reconciled to God by His blood,
and we are saved by His life.
Thank the Lord I have a share in
His death, and thank Him even more that
I have a share in His life.
And the fruit of the Spirit, of course,
is in Galatians 5.22. You know it.
Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
self-control.
Love, joy, peace, that's my relationship to the
Lord.
Love, joy, peace.
Longsuffering, gentleness, goodness.
That's my relationship with others.
Faith, meekness, self-control.
That's my relationship with myself.
The fruit of the Spirit.
And then that means that faith appropriates that
life and begins to apply it in every
day care of living.
By that I very simply mean Jesus, I
may have said to you this already, but
it deserves an emphasis, is exactly the opposite
to everything that I am.
And where it is so desperately wrong is
trying to narrow the gap between the holiness
of God and my sinfulness.
And as long as we go on trying
to do that, we end up drinking masses
of coffee, taking pills, in the hands of
a psychologist, or even a psychiatrist.
And in the end, quite probably, a nervous
breakdown.
By trying to polish up the flesh and
refine it and make it religious.
I'm so thankful that I'm beginning to learn
though it's not a natural tendency and I
can ease it over at any time and
I'm so often fearful that I do.
But I'm beginning to learn that when I'm
almost on the point of blowing my top
with someone, Lord Jesus, your patience right now,
please.
And when Satan comes at me with foul
thoughts, Lord, your purity, thank you, I take
it.
Because it's always the opposite to everything that
I am.
And I have to day by day, moment
by moment, feed my life on him and
draw upon his power.
His strength shows our best in weak people
and made perfected in our weakness.
How did Christ react in that situation?
How did he deal with that misunderstanding?
So in every moment, there is victory.
As we learn the liberty to refuse to
display ourselves and choose to reveal Jesus.
As the old hymn says, moment by moment
I've life from above, moment by moment I'm
kept in his love.
The fruits of the spirit-filled life.
Many trees on one side and on the
other.
Is that happening in your life and in
mine?
It's only that kind of life that can
be attractive.
And people are attracted not to you but
to Christ in you.
I want an explanation.
On my study wall, there's a calendar.
And it has pictures of Scotland.
And the one that I left behind at
the end of September had a picture of
one of these beautiful Scottish glens with a
river just flowing through it and tumbling over
a waterfall and I thought to myself, what
a lovely picture of Ezekiel 47.
Then I noticed that this picture was taken
in wintertime.
And the trees were bare.
The leaves were not there.
So I supposed to myself that well, it
must be an imperfect picture because Ezekiel says,
the leaf shall not stay.
Oh no.
When a tree is bare and has no
sign of life, the barrenness of wintertime is
merely a preparation for spring and summer.
Life is there but it's gone underground.
And that's an essential part of the growth
in fruitfulness in the Christian life.
Verse 12, it shall bring forth fruit according
to his month.
You know, if you reflect upon it, how
true that is of Christian living.
Why do you remember the early days after
your conversion?
Maybe the early years, I don't know.
Well, everything has become new.
Birds are singing, skies are blue and burdens
have been lifted at Calvary.
Springtime in my soul.
Time of great release and joy.
Why, this Christian life is perpetual sunshine.
But, then comes autumn.
Or as you very appropriately call it, then
comes the fall.
In the school of grace, I learned then,
in the fall time and autumn time, that's
the time of stripping.
You may bear signs of departing fruit until
apparently winter is everywhere.
I wonder if you've all known a time
in your life when it seems as if
God had forsaken you and your ministry was
stripped of every evidence of fruitfulness.
It was an experience.
Especially as if you've persuaded yourself, or some
other stupid person has told you, that summertime
is going to exist forever.
If that happens, it doesn't mean that everything's
gone wrong.
It's a principle of growth.
You can bring greater glory to God in
your spiritual winter than you can in your
summer.
For, it says verse 12, the lease is
for medicine, margin, for bruises and sores.
And our ability as ministers of the word
of God, all of us in fact, to
minister to a blessed winter life depends on
whether or not I've learned the lessons of
spiritual winter time in my own soul.
In the book of Habakkuk, or Habakkuk, I
don't know, depends what side of the Atlantic
it comes from.
In the book of Habakkuk, he read this,
as he closes, Though the fig tree shall
not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the
vine.
The labor of the olive shall fail, the
field shall yield no meat, the flock shall
be cut off from the fold, and there
shall be no herd in the stables.
Yet, yet, I will rejoice in the Lord
and joy in the God of my salvation.
In other words, hallelujah anyway.
You know?
I used to make a habit of saying
that, and I thought I was so spiritual.
Oh, everything's gone wrong, there's no sign of
blessing and no sign of fruit, and I
feel as dry as dust.
Oh, hallelujah anyway.
And my dear son-in-law in heaven
now said to me one day, Dad, you
shouldn't say that.
Oh, you know how you react to me
when you're kicked off by another generation.
Why shouldn't I?
I've been saying it before you were born.
And he put his arm around me, and
he said, You should say, not hallelujah anyway,
but hallelujah because.
And I hugged him and said, Don, you're
right.
Not hallelujah, but anyway, but oh, thank the
Lord because you've taught me what winter means.
Isaiah, Isaiah, Isaiah.
Speaking of Jesus, said chapter 50, verse 4,
The Lord has given me the tongue of
the learned, that I should know how to
speak a word in season to them that
are weary.
I gave my back to the smiting, and
my cheek to them that chopped off the
hair.
I hid not my face from shame and
spitting.
What a winter time.
You know C.S. Lewis's book, Screwtive Letters?
He had a great satanic attack on the
first paragraph that reads, Do not deceive Wormwood,
writes Screwtive to his nephew.
Our cause is never more in danger than
when a human being, no longer desiring, but
still intending to do the enemy's will, the
enemy, of course, being God, looks around him
upon a universe from which every trace of
his existence appears to have vanished.
Asks why he's been forsaking, but goes on
obeying.
I think that's tremendous.
Three tears in heaven, and it's in hell.
Satan hasn't an answer to that.
Have you learned your winter time?
Or are you a summer time Christian?
Only prepared to obey the Lord if He
gives you lovely feelings.
Nor can you face winter.
Does your fruit remain?
Does your leaf not fade?
Fruit like that is the outcome of the
flow of the river of life.
The evidence of the supernatural.
A few years ago I was in Kowloon,
near Hong Kong, and with Ornith, that was
his missionary fellowship.
And I was having a day with Philip
Peng.
He is the director of East Asia Theological
Seminary.
He took me out to the Chinese border.
And there we looked right out into Communist
China, across the river where so many people
have sought to escape and have been killed.
And he said to me, that's my country.
Yes, I know.
He said, you know, the church today is
twice as strong as when Chairman Mao took
over.
And I said, you don't believe.
You don't mean it.
Oh, yes, he said it is.
And he said, I'll tell you something, there
isn't a head of it left.
Oh, my goodness.
It took pressure, wintertime, to kill out the
hypocrite.
When we get back to China, and we're
back now, may I ask you something, you
westerners, please stay out.
I said, why?
He said, only Chinese people can evangelize China.
We don't need you.
We need you for teaching in Singapore, here
in Hong Kong.
We'll need your funds.
We'll need your support.
But when we go in, we've got to
do the job.
I hope we've learned the sense in the
West of a tragedy, tragedy, of trying to
westernize a situation like that.
Now, do you know that there are more
than 9 million Christians in China?
When the missionary was driven out in 1949,
50s, and there, there certainly weren't more than
a million.
9 million.
And there's not a missionary among them.
They're not the same, of course.
They haven't.
They're all western type of church building.
They're all in house groups.
And the church is alive.
Wintertime.
The Lord teaches what wintertime can do.
Now, do you know what I mean?
The whole spiritual,
of the holiness of the Spirit.
Because the Spirit has given us the character
and gifts of the Spirit.
And they are given to us by service
and ministry.
Now, I don't want to get involved in
controversy.
Though, of course, I am leaving.
As I said, you know, I'm leaving.
Oh, this is a terrible denial of what
I've been saying.
An awful advertisement of myself.
But, if you want to know more, there's
a book.
It's just been published.
And you'll find some things in it there
which may be of help to you.
But, what this tragedy is today is a
division that's been created by charismatic movement.
Tragic.
Of course, you understand that simply because we
can do nothing apart from the Holy Spirit,
it is the Holy Spirit upon whom Satan
concentrates his attacks.
And on that issue, we've got a whole
set split.
Everywhere.
The Christian issue, charis, grace, magic, gifts.
If I have no grace, and I have
no gifts, I'm not even born again.
So, every Christian is charismatic from birth.
And the only charismatic movement I know began
at Pentecost.
And it's been going on ever since.
And will continue.
Let me just say this to you.
How may I put this?
Discover the fullness of it in 1 Corinthians
12.
You will have, or may have, and should
have, all the fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians 5.22. But you cannot have all
the gifts of the Spirit.
Never since Pentecost till today, or until the
coming of our Lord, has there been anybody
who has had all the gifts of the
Spirit.
The gifts of the Spirit are distributed sovereignly
according to the will of God.
1 Corinthians 12, verse 7.
In that chapter, there are 14 gifts mentioned,
concerning their pastors, or evangelists.
Fortunately, there are some more gifts mentioned in
Ephesians chapter 4.
And Romans chapter 12.
About 19 in all.
But you can't have a lot.
What an extraordinary person you'd meet if he
had everything.
And therefore, it is utterly unbiblical to enforce
one particular gift upon others.
You've got to have my gift if you
want it.
In London, a lady came up to me
and said, What a pity you haven't got
it.
And I said, I beg your pardon, ma
'am.
And she said, What a pity you haven't
got it.
I said, What do you mean?
Oh, if you only come to my church,
we have it.
All the gifts are in operation there.
Come and get it.
So I said to her, My dear lady,
I'm not looking for it.
I'm looking for Him.
Not the gift, but the giver.
I'm ready for any gift you'll ever give
me.
I believe that all the gifts are available
for the whole body everywhere.
That in these last days the church may
stand its ground against all the attacks of
the enemy.
Satan is attacking the church today, I think,
more subtly than he ever has before.
Two miles away from where I lived for
the last fourteen years at Cape Moraine, there
was a church of Satan.
And they were praying regularly for the collapse
of Christian families.
And they made a pretty good job of
it.
Satan is very powerful.
And the Lord has equipped His church with
all the gifts.
And I think it is absolutely unbiblical to
say the gift of tongues, the gift of
healing, the gift of prophecy are cancelled at
Pentecost.
How can we arbitrarily dismiss three of the
gifts because we don't understand them?
All the gifts are available for the whole
church.
But not one of the church can have
them all.
Some people whom I love very dearly, close
to me, have received the gift of tongues.
I would never know because they don't boast
of it.
They don't speak of it.
The gift of tongues is for worship.
And they worship the Lord that way.
I wouldn't know unless I asked them.
And they certainly never inforted upon me.
I presume they know that it takes me
all my time to speak right for the
one time I have got.
But I am ready for it if the
Lord wants it.
It's not withdrawn, nor is the gift of
healing, nor is the gift of prophecy.
But I have no right to seek to
enforce my gift on anyone else.
That gift and all the gifts of the
Spirit are given to every member of the
church sovereignly in order that he may take
his part in the body and contribute to
the health of the whole body of Jesus.
So will you just remember this in 1
Corinthians 12, which I hope you will read
on your own.
You can't be a loner if the head,
as Paul puts it, says to the foot,
or the foot says to the head, saying
on your foot, I'm no longer part of
the body.
How can you do that?
They're all essential, all necessary, all dependent on
each other.
And when one member of the body suffers,
we all suffer.
The body in action, every member using the
gift that God has given them for the
glory of Jesus.
I have opened a God meeting in England.
Occasionally, not often, occasionally somebody will pray in
a tongue, audibly.
At once the minister stops the meeting and
says, an interpreter please.
And somebody interprets.
Fine, everybody's perfectly happy.
No fuss.
But in some churches, if that happened, they'd
be turned out completely.
And there'd be no fellowship.
When will Christian people learn to disagree agreeably
and not break fellowship?
Why do we smash the body of Christ
into shreds on secondary issues?
And fail really to unite and to love
around the Lord Jesus?
I'll say no more about that subject this
morning.
There isn't time.
But that's enough, I hope, to give you
just a little thought and for a further
study on the subject of the gift.
But, with the fruit of the Spirit which
produces character, the Lord will give you the
gifts that He knows you need in order
that you may take the part He has
for you in His body.
I hope you'll get that.
That He knows you need.
In order that you may take the part
He has for you in His body.
And I trust you will prove that.
That's it.
These waters go down to the desert and
go into the sea and the waters shall
be healed.
As the river flowed down to the sea
it brought healing.
What wonderful healing the Holy Spirit brings to
the heart.
The worst disorder of the soul, the unhappiest
estrangement in the family, the most damaging misunderstandings
in the church, the bitterest feud in society,
can all be healed by the Holy Spirit.
By His sweetness and by His fragrance.
Oh, what the Spirit of God can do
if only He was let loose and set
free.
The trouble is that when He begins to
work and to operate, we set up a
committee and we're afraid of Him.
And we'll say this church is getting too
emotional and we'd better do something about it.
And the Holy Spirit is grieved and withdraws.
When we used to sing there is a
balm in Gilead that makes the wounded whole.
There's a balm in Gilead that heals the
sin-sick soul.
If I really believe that, that the Holy
Spirit can heal deep down in my heart
the disorder that's there, most psychiatrists would be
put out of work.
He heals.
And wherever the Holy Spirit or the river
comes, look in verse 9 of life, everything
shall live where the river flows.
That's the whole principle of Christian growth.
The only sure method of growth.
You can see it running right through in
the Acts of the Apostles.
Holy Spirit life in every fellowship.
The church, the Lord, adding to the church
day by day those whom he was saving.
Life.
Does that mean to say that wherever a
spiritual Christian goes masses of people will be
converted?
No, no, it doesn't.
It means masses of people stop being neutral.
It means he's bringing life, the evidence of
Christ wherever he goes.
And most of all it means in his
own heart, in his own life, in his
own home there's a renewed love to the
Lord Jesus.
There's more time given for his Bible.
More time given for prayer.
There's a greater burden for other people.
There's less undisciplined habits.
Less waste of time where the Holy Spirit
is producing life.
Very many trees, verse 7.
Verse 9, a great multitude of fish.
Everything that lives, which moves wherever shall come
shall live.
That's the answer of the Bible.
Now, just one thing before I finish, to
be very practical.
The result of a Spirit-filled life fruitfulness?
Healing?
Life.
How may that be mine?
Well, I've got to do a thorough job
of repenting.
That's a word that is almost a forgotten
word in ministry today.
To illustrate what I mean, for several years
now, I have put this sheet of personal
questions, self-examination on the subject of repentance.
I don't often take these into public, but
they become very dear to me.
I would like to share them with you.
I'm not meaning to be introspective, but I'm
meaning simply to be honest.
Here they are.
Am I either consciously or unconsciously creating the
impression that I am better than I really
am?
Is there the least suspicion of hypocrisy in
my life?
Am I scrupulously honest in all my words
and acts?
Do I exaggerate?
Do I confidentially pass onto someone else what
was told me in confidence?
Am I reliable?
Can I be trusted?
Am I slave to books, dress, friends, work,
or convention?
Am I still self-conscious, self-pitying, or
self-justifying?
Is the Bible alive to me, and do
I give it time to speak to me
every day?
Am I enjoying my prayer life?
Am I making contacts with other people and
using them for the Lord?
When did I last speak to another with
the object of winning their person for Jesus?
Am I getting to bed in turn, and
getting up in turn?
Do I pray about the money I spend?
Am I disobeying God in anything or insisting
upon doing something about which my conscience is
uneasy?
Am I defeated in any part of my
life?
Jealous?
Impure?
Critical?
Irritable?
Touchy?
Or distrustful?
How do I spend my spare time?
Am I proud?
Do I thank God that I am not
as others, especially the Pharisee?
Am I running away from life?
Is Jesus real to me today?
Is there anybody I dislike, disown, criticize, hold
a resentment toward, or disregard?
If so, why?
And what am I doing about it?
Am I grumbling and complaining?
Realizing that I am a single unit in
an advancing army, I will surrender myself to
the discipline of a soldier in active service.
I'll welcome criticism from anybody else in the
field, and meet them regularly for prayer, and
frank discussion of progress and problems.
If I see what is inconsistent, I think
is inconsistent in another, I will first examine
myself to see whether I also am inconsistent
there.
I refuse to discuss that person's weakness behind
his back, and if I find myself doing
so, I'll tell him and apologize.
I'll pray for him, and if led to
do so, I'll go and tell him he'll
be as grateful to me for that friendly
act as I should be under similar circumstances.
I will be absolutely loyal to my fellow
worker.
If I want to know the fullness of
God's blessing in my life, there must be
a thorough job of repenting.
And then, there must be implicit obedience.
Ninety-nine percent obedience is the road to
disaster.
It must be a hundred percent.
Then there must be thirst.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after
righteousness, for they shall be filled, saith Jesus.
Thirst.
Do I want him?
Ask him.
How much more will your heavenly Father give
the Holy Spirit to them who ask?
Luke chapter 11.
And finally, I must believe.
He that believeth into me, out of his
inner man shall flow rivers of living water.
I close with this quotation from a hymn
by A.
B.
Simpson, the founder of Christian Missionary Alliance.
I take salvation full and free through him
who gave his life for me.
He undertakes my all to be.
I take.
He undertakes.
I take the promised Holy Spirit.
I take the power of Pentecost to fill
me to the uttermost.
I take.
He undertakes.
I simply take him at his word.
I praise him that my prayer is heard
and claim my answer from the Lord.
I take.
He undertakes.
I take thee, blessed Lord.
I give myself to thee and thou, according
to thy word, dost undertake for me.
That's it.
Let's pray.
Your word is really so simple and yet
it goes down to
your spirit, fellowship
and joy of it, worship, dear
Chuck, with
our believing prayer.
Each one here today who has the responsibility
of leadership, pastor of church and music and
everything, let us all stand together in a
sweep of nation.
This is the end of side 2 and
the end of this message.
May the Lord richly bless you as you
study his word.
Please fast forward to the end of this
side so that the message will again begin
on side 1.