I'd like to take my text from the first chapter of the Gospel according to John. John chapter one. We'll begin to read from the twenty-ninth verse of John one. The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taken away the sin of the world. this is he of whom I said after me come of a man which is preferred before me for he was before me and I knew him not but that he should be made manifest to Israel therefore am I come baptizing with water and John bear record saying I saw the spirit descending from heaven like a dove and it abode upon him and I knew him not but he that sent me to baptize with water the same said unto me Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, the same as he which baptizes with the Holy Ghost. And I saw and bear record that this is the Son of God. Again the next day after John stood and two of his disciples, and looking upon Jesus, as he walked, he said, Behold the Lamb of God. And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, which is to say, being interpreted, Master, where dwellest thou? He saith unto them, Come and see. They came, and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two which heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messiah, which is being interpreted, the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon, the son of Jonah, thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation a stone. John the Baptist introduced the people to the Lord Jesus and thereby lost his own following. He said, that's the way it ought to be. He must increase, but I decrease. He was quite glad for the Lord Jesus to be number one. And because he was of that turn, it was easy for those who listened to him to feel the same way. And it wasn't long until the very people to whom he spoke did exactly what he'd been doing, they turned to the Lord Jesus too. They wanted the Lord Jesus to be first and uppermost. Now he introduced the people to the Savior, first of all, as the Lamb of God, the taker away, literally, of the sin of the world. This is the way we first got acquainted with the Lord Jesus. If you know him at all, You got acquainted with him as the taker away of the sin of the world. This doesn't mean that he takes everybody's sin away. This means that this is his character. This is his work. This is what he came to do. And those who will allow him to do so, he'll be glad to take away their sins. That's where we have to begin. In case you ever get conceited, just remember this. That's where God found you. He found you as a criminal. He found you as a sinner. He found you in terrible need. And the first thing the Lord had to do for you was to take your sin away. You can never be very conceited if you remember this. They have a legend about the peacock. I don't know if it's true or not. I don't know how anybody will ever know until they learn and talk peacock language. But anyway, they have a legend that the peacock feels very proud. and spreads his tail and struts until he happens to look down and see his ugly feet, and then he just folds his tail and slinks away. In case you and I ever feel like a peacock, all we need to do is to remember that our first view of the Lord Jesus was as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. I was preaching in a tent in Longmont, Colorado some twenty years ago, and a boy came to those meetings with his mother. His mother had married quite late in life, and he was about twelve years of age, and she looked old enough to be his grandmother, and treated him about like a doting grandmother, too. The kid was spoiled rotten. And he came in, came around where I was tightening up the ropes of the tent before the meeting, and he said, those ladies in there embarrass me. I said, they do. Well, they do to embarrass you. Well, he said, they're always saying, what a good boy I am, and how nice I am to my mother and everything. Well, I said, you surely don't believe it, do you? He said, I don't know. He wasn't embarrassed a bit, the hypocrite. He loved it. He was laughing it up like a cat does milk. He loved to be told what a wonderful boy he was. So I thought, well, it was time somebody deflated him. And so I said to him, do you know how bad you are? He said, me? I said, you? I'll tell you how bad you are. You are so bad that the Lord Jesus Christ had to come all the way from heaven. and die on a cross to keep you from going to hell. And I might as well shout at him. He just went like that, around that tent, and back to his mother again. He wanted to hear more what the old ladies had to say that were there with his mother. He didn't want to be told that at all. But it's true, and it's true for you, and it's true for me. We were so bad that the Son of God had to leave heaven's glory and suffer on a cross to keep us out of hell. We'll never have anything to be proud about. Now that's the first way we get acquainted with the Lord Jesus. Well, that's all you've ever learned. You haven't gone very far. I'm not belittling that knowledge. I'm not saying that it's unimportant. It's elementary knowledge. In the second chapter of First John, he plainly tells us, I write unto you little children because your sins are forgiven you. That's elementary. You're not one of the little children if you don't know that. But I hope you've gotten to know a little something else. A friend of mine preached in the place one time, and a man came to know the Lord through the verse in Romans five, when we were yet without strength in due time Christ died for the ungodly. And he was so pleased to find out that he was the ungodly one for whom Christ died that he just beamed all over while my friend preached the few nights following that. And then the last night of the meetings came, and he said to him, well, I'm going to have to tell you goodbye for now. He said, how is it with your soul? Oh, he says, it's fine. It's wonderful. Christ died for the ungodly. Well, he said, that's good. That's fine. Now, just go on with him. He didn't get back to that place for about ten years. Ten years later, when he came back, he saw this fellow again. He still had the same smile, looked like his tattooed on. And he said to him, well, how's everything? I said, fine, fine, Christ died for the ungodly. He said, that's nice, but you knew that much when I left here ten years ago. Haven't you learned anything else about the Lord Jesus? I'd like to ask you that. What does the Lord Jesus mean to you today? What do you say he died for me on the cross? Yes, I learned that back in It isn't that I've gotten past that. I still thank God for it every day, but I hope I've learned something else. And I hope you have too. The next day John saw Jesus walking. He watched the Lord Jesus walking. And he said, Now look at the Lamb of God. Look at the Lamb of God, the walker. You've looked at the Lamb of God, the bearer away, the takeer away of the sin of the world. Now look at the Lord Jesus, the walker. Watch him walk. walk in the scripture, as you know, always has to do with our life, the way we live. Have you ever watched the Lord Jesus, how He walked? Now, God intended us to follow His steps. You couldn't follow His steps until you're born again. You've got to have new life before you can walk. But if you have new life, God puts something in you that will enable you to follow His steps. I don't believe that the Lord left us here to try to be as much like Jesus as we can. I don't believe that. I don't believe that the Lord left us here to try to be good. I don't believe that at all. I believe that when He left us here, He put something in us which we never had before. Our brother referred to this. He said, when Christ died on the cross, you and I died with Him. Do you believe this truth? Do you understand this truth? Is the sixth chapter of Romans real to you? Maybe I should not try to go any farther than just simply to go over this ground again. Do you understand what it means to have died with Christ? A fellow said to me the other day, what do you think about this book? Watchman needs the normal Christian life. He said, isn't that something, some kind of a new doctrine that's just come out? Well, he said that's exactly the same thing that J.N. Darby preached when he said, the place of the flesh is not to be better, but to be dead. That's the same thing exactly as you find in the book, The Normal Christian Life. There's nothing about this that's to be feared. No, I'm just as much against... what some people call higher life as you are. I don't believe in this kind of thing that makes people conceited. This kind of thing that makes people say, well, brother, I'm up on Bula Land. Why don't you come up here with me? That's just conceit. That's just pride. It must be abominable to God. I don't have any use for that. But what I am getting at is that the Lord has a way whereby you and I can live for the Lord Jesus and live like the Lord Jesus. It is possible for us to be like Him, but it's only possible because old John Walden was put to death at the cross. Now, this is not an experience. This is not something that you're trying to feel or try to do. This is something which we learn about in the Word of God and we believe because God says it. We know this to be true because the Word of God says it, just as He says, My sins were laid on Jesus, so He says, I was put away there at the cross. So I believe God about that, or should. And then I count on that. And because I count on that being true, I believe, and I count upon this being true, and I allow, or yield, that's the word used in the Six of Romans, I yield myself to him to allow his spirit to live out through me that new life that he has put there. I know this isn't a very good illustration. Illustrations are never very good, except we use the ones the Lord Jesus himself used in the Bible. But anyway, it helps me to understand. There are some people who know who think that their dogs are just about humans. I don't want to hurt any of your feelings. If you think that much of your dog, I'm not talking about your dog. I'm talking about somebody else's dog. But there's something lacking in the dog. No matter how intelligent that dog is, no matter how friendly is, no matter how much he seems to understand, No matter how well acquainted you get with him and how much he seems like a part of the family, that always bothered me a little bit, but then if it doesn't bother you, go ahead if you want to claim him for part of your family. But no matter how much that dog has attained to, there's still something lacking in that dog. You recognize that, don't you? Well, if you don't, other people can tell. They can look at that dog and say, well, he still isn't human. Now, if it were possible, if it were possible for you to give to your dog some of your spirit to put your human life into that dog, then he would be some dog, wouldn't he? Might as well think, whether his vocal cords are made for it or not, I can't say, but if they were, well, then he could talk. He could reason. He could understand more than just commands, you know, and motions of your hand. If he had your life, he would be a real companion in every sense of the word. If he had your life, he would act more like you. Well, if you think that that's a ridiculous parallel to draw, let me tell you something. There isn't nearly the distance between you and your dog that there is between God and you and me. There's a tremendous distance between God and human beings. And yet God has actually put His Holy Spirit in us. He has put His own kind of life in us. That's what we mean by eternal life. He has put His nature in us. We don't make much room for that nature to act. We don't make much room for that life to act. We don't permit His Holy Spirit to lead us like we ought. But God has actually put His Holy Spirit within us. Because He has done that, He has made it possible for you and me, not to imitate the Lord Jesus, but to simply allow the life of Christ to be lived out through us. John the Baptist said, I want you to look at the Lord Jesus. I want you to see how he walked. I want you to watch his life. And as they watched him, and he was going down the street without making a decision, they moved right out after him. They forgot all about the man who told him about him. They left him behind. They left their teachers behind. They left everything behind. They left their homes behind. They left their possessions behind. And they moved right out after this man who now held their vision. He said, look at him. And looking meant following. And they followed him. I think probably the most unpopular doctrine and most unpopular teaching today is the teaching of discipleship. We don't want discipleship. We want the blessings, but we don't want the responsibility of discipleship. Brother and sister, you and I are left here on this earth to be disciples of the Lord Jesus. What did you learn about him this last week? What have you learned about the Lord Jesus since you became a child of God that's made a difference in your life? What have you learned about him that's made you any different from the man next door or the person at the next desk or at the next machine, the elder housewife with whom you rub shoulders and exchange greetings in the supermarket? What has God done to you that's made you different? If he hasn't done something to make you different, you've missed what he intended. He intended us to be disciples of the Lord Jesus. Now this, I say again, is not my attempting to do something like him, but it is following after him so that he, by his Holy Spirit, can do in me what Paul prays for, In the fourth chapter of Galatians in verse nineteen, he said, My dear children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you. Said, certainly. Born again? Sure they were. Well, then why is he travailing in birth again? Do they have to be born again again? Of course not. but he wants Christ to be formed in them. It isn't enough for you to be in Christ. He wants Christ to be in you. Christ in you is the hope of glory. A man in Christ, that's our position. That's wonderful. I'm glad that I have acceptance in Christ. I'm glad that I can go to the Father in his word. I'm glad that I can go to the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm glad that I can be welcome in His presence because of Him. I'm glad that one of these days when the Lord decides to take me home to heaven, whether He takes me singly or with the rest of the Lord's people, when He takes me home to heaven, I'm glad that He's going to take me right into His presence for the sake of the Lord Jesus. But now there's something more than that. I'd like for Christ to be formed in me. I'd like for the life of Christ to be lived out through me. You would, too. Well, let's see, then, our Savior's question. And I think this may get at the crux of the matter. He turned and looked at these people following. Now, if they had not been following, they would not have heard his voice. And what I've got to say this afternoon will fall on some deaf ears in this room. I'm assured that is I'm at a foot high. I'm sure that some of you are going to go out that door and miss completely what I'm talking about this afternoon. If you're not close enough to hear him say this to you, you won't know what I'm talking about. But if there's somebody here who is saying, Lord Jesus, I not only love thee for dying for me, but I want to be like thee. I want to hear thy voice. I want to know thee. If this is your cry, He turned and said, What seek ye? It's awfully hard for us to be honest. Tell me you don't have any trouble about that. I picked up something here the other day. I think I have it in my Bible. Bishop J.C. Ryle of England said this. Comment on Psalm fifty-one six, behold, our desire is truth. in the inward parts. He said, Let reality be the great mark of your approach to Christ, and there is everything to give you hope. Your repentance may be feeble, but let it be real. Your faith may be weak, but let it be real. Your desires after holiness may be mingled with much infirmity, but let them be real. Never be content to wear a cloak of religion. Be all that you profess. Though you may err, be real. Though you may stumble, be true. This is what we need, brothers and sisters. We need to be real. We need to be honest. Do you really want to hear what the Lord has to say to you? Will you allow this to penetrate then to the depths of your soul and spirit? Will you allow him to search you out? Will you give him an answer to this this afternoon? What do you really want? They say young people are seeking pleasure and old people are seeking peace. I'm not so sure if that's true. I don't know how old you have to be before you're old, but I think most of us would still like to have a little pleasure, and I think young people still like to have a little peace. What are you seeking? Do you know what you want? Have you accepted the wrong standard of our materialistic civilization? You don't believe the things they tell you on TV, do you? You really don't think, do you, that if you use the right toothpaste and smoke the right kind of cigarettes and so on, that you'll be popular and wealthy and important and you wonder at the stupidity of the public that can lap up that kind of stuff. You don't believe that, do you? You certainly know that there's something far more valuable than these things. The complaint of the Lord Jesus in the sixth chapter of Matthew was, after all these things do the Gentiles seek, let them have them. They're not worthy of of your quest. As a believer, you ought to have higher ambitions than that, and I think you do have. I'd be awfully discouraged to get up here and preach my heart out if I thought that there wasn't something in your own spirit that responds to this. I'm sure there is. Well, then what are you seeking? Well, you say, I just want to behave myself. Well, that sounds like a nice humble hope, but it's not up to the Lord's plan for us. You say, well, I just want to keep out of trouble. Well, I guess you can just sit down somewhere in a rocking chair and do that. But I don't believe that's God's plan for us. Well, they keep them out of trouble is so important after all. Would you be willing for the Lord to make a choice for you? Would you be willing to say, now, Lord, you choose for me? That's literally what these people did. They didn't answer his question. I mean, not the answer that you'd expect. He said, what are you looking for? And they said, where do you stay? Where do you live? Now, they didn't say, but I'm sure this is what they meant. This is what they felt. They said, Lord, we don't know what we're looking for, but we just want to be with thee. We just want to go with thee. We just want to know what you're doing and where you live and this is where we'd like to be. Could you say that this afternoon? Even if you feel that there's a great deal of inconsistency in your life, even if you feel that your life has not shown this kind of an interest in the past, But just now, could you sincerely say this, Lord Jesus, what I want is thy company. What I want is to know thee. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. As the heart panteth after the water brook, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. Is that what you want? You getting tired of just playing church, being religious? I get tired of that sometimes. I suddenly wake up to realize that I'm on a treadmill. Here I am just going through the routine. I'm just doing religious things each day. This seems to be the right thing to do. I've got certain jobs to do, and so I go ahead and do them. But my heart isn't in it, and I'm not happy about it. Then I realize suddenly... It's been a long time since I had any real talk with the Lord Jesus. It's been a long time since I really enjoyed his company. I think housewives get like this sometimes. They don't always admit it to their husbands. But I think some wives get like this. They get the feeling of, oh, me, starting a new week, twenty-one more meals, and all the dishes that go with it. and cleaning the house and you never get through. It's an awful state to get in, isn't it? You always feel a little guilty about it, but you don't know what to do. It's just, you just feel that way sometimes. But then, but then you begin to enjoy your husband's company and your children's company, and you begin to realize I'm doing this for the ones I love. And then somehow or other, it isn't the same. and you don't feel the drudgery of it. You understand how the girl felt whose friends saw her for the first time after a marriage and said to her, well, where are you working now? Well, she said, I'm not working on marriage. Wasn't she working? Probably harder than she ever worked before in her life. What did she mean then? She meant my heart has followed in this direction. I love this man. I'm making a home for the one I love. And it's not drudgery. I think we'd be better off than that if we just stopped some of the things we're doing. Activism can be a terrible enemy to real spirituality. We just get on a spiritual treadmill. We just get to doing the things that we feel ought to be done. This is especially true for those who carry the biggest burden. in the assembly. Young people pray for the elders. Pray for them every day you live. They need your prayers. They get bored with life just as you do. They find it difficult to go on day after day just as you do. They don't have the help to keep themselves spiritually happy and alert that you have. Pray for them. Am I talking to somebody who knows what I mean when I say these things? Well then, brother and sister, what's the answer? He said, what do you want? They said, Lord, we just want thee. We want your company. We want to see how you live. We want to see where you live. We want to hear you talk. We want to see you walk. We want to see you work. And they got that privilege, too, for three and a half years. They spent all their time with him after that. My, what a privilege that was. But you and I have the same privilege today. Through the Word of God, we can go back over those scenes as many times as we wish. And we can see how the Lord Jesus lived. We can see how he walked. And we can hear how he talked. And we can see his wonders ways, and as we do, as we do, we abide with Him. Now, abiding with the Lord Jesus, let me suggest, might mean two or three things in our everyday life. Abiding with the Lord Jesus, I'd like to suggest, means resting where He rests. Do you know what it is to rest? I suppose our day is just filled with restlessness. That's why we have so many heart attacks. That's why we have such a high incidence of nervous tension and all these things. I'm not suggesting that anyone who has these problems is unspiritual. I wouldn't dare do that. I've had an awful time with myself. All I'm suggesting is that we live in days of extreme tension, and we need to find rest. The Lord Jesus still says, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. And then he says, take my yoke upon you, and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly in heart, ye shall find rest to your soul. Most of our unrest, brothers and sisters, can be accounted for by our own false ambitions. We are restless because we're trying to be something that we're not, and we're trying to get something that we don't have. We're reaching all the time, and it's the most tiring occupation you can think of, constantly reaching. Why don't you be satisfied to be what the Lord wants you to be? One of my little boys at the children's home climbed. He isn't a little boy now. He's married and got little ones of his own. But at that time he was a little fellow, and he climbed up on my lap, and I said to him, would you like to be President of the United States someday? Wasn't much chance then. Roosevelt was in. But anyway, I said, would you like to be? Then he frowned and fought real hard, and he said, No, I think I'd just rather be your little boy. And then he leaned back against me, and you can just tell he felt so rested that he wasn't president. And they didn't have any ambitions to be president. He was just satisfied to be my little boy. Are you satisfied just to be what God wants you to be? Maybe that accounts for your restlessness. you're just trying to be something you can't be. I remember what a time I had when I first started preaching. I tried to preach like the Scotch preachers. All the preachers I knew were Scotchmen, and I just never heard anybody could say, God, our Father, with as much feeling as those dear old brethren could. I tried to be kind of like them, but it's an awful thing to try to be like somebody else. You just can't do it. Finally, I decided that I just be myself. And it's so much easier. You don't have to be disturbed about everything. I'd suggest that following the Lord Jesus, finding everything you need in Him, will be a restful life. What do you say? Aren't we supposed to try? We have to strive, don't we? Is that the Scripture, the teaching of the New Testament? Is that the language of Scripture? Can you think of any scripture that says that we ought to try to be good? Can you think of any scripture that says that we ought to be working hard at this thing? Does an apple tree work hard, flex its muscles to bear apples? Or does the life just flow up through that? And aren't we said to be branches of the vine? Is this unreal? Does this seem to you to be something ethereal? Am I just talking through my hat? Of course I'm not. I'm talking about down-to-earth things. If you get up in the morning and say, well, now I tell you today I've got to get this job done. Today I'm going to be, I resolve. Before breakfast is over you've made a flop of the whole thing. How much better it would have been if you had said, Lord, I have no strength of my own. I cannot face this day in my own strength. I'll go out and do the same things to dishonor thee that I did yesterday, but I give myself to thee. Now live through me. By thy Holy Spirit, live out through me the life of God. Try it. If you think I'm just talking about something that I read in the book, you try it. It works. I'd like to suggest something else. Living with the Lord Jesus means eating where he eats. I think one of the nicest things about being with people is eating together. I don't think that I'm implying too much that way either. It's just that I think that's a nice thing about life. It's a wonderful thing to be invited to another man's table, another woman's table. It's nice to sit down with your friends at their table, isn't it? It's a nice thing to be at home at the table spread by the Lord. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. My cup runneth over. The old brother said yes, and my saucer too. The Lord just, he gives us so much, doesn't he? That's enjoying what he has for us. I hope you're familiar with the sixth chapter of John. Every Christian ought to study the sixth chapter of John, I think, a great deal. I'd like to suggest a lesson or two there for you. In the sixth chapter of John, the Lord Jesus fed the people with bread and fish. And then he said, now, this kind of bread won't last. Neither would the bread that Moses gave you last. Really, my father gave it to you, but that didn't last either. But he said, I want to give you the bread of heaven. Well, he said, that's fine. That's what we want. Give us the bread of heaven. Well, he said, I am the bread of heaven. I am the bread of heaven. He said, I give my flesh and my blood to be your meat and drink. And then I'd suggest that in verses fifty-three to fifty-eight, he has three tenses of feeding on Christ. Now let me say first of all that feeding on Christ simply means appropriating him and assimilating him for ourselves. Well, you say that hasn't helped us very much. Now, what do you mean? Well, that's what they wanted. They said, well, this man, can he give us his flesh to eat? Can he give us his blood to drink? What's he talking about? This is a hard saying. Well, he said, you must eat my flesh, and you must drink my blood, or you'll not have any life in you. Well, now, taking that with the other scriptures and that same gospel, what do you find? You find this. that the Lord Jesus Christ gave his life for the people. And when you see bread and wine, the Lord's Supper is not in the sixth chapter of John. Don't read the Lord's Supper in there. I think Martin Luther made a terrible mistake when he tried to do that. And the teachings of that church has followed in that line ever since. Don't read the Lord's Supper in the sixth chapter of John. But when you see the bread and the wine separate, when you take the Lord's Supper, you're reminded of the death of Christ, aren't you? Because the one stands for his flesh and the other stands for his blood. And when the flesh is separated from the blood, that's death. As long as I'm all together like this, I'm alive, but you separate the blood from the flesh and I'd be dead. And the Lord Jesus said, My flesh, and my blood. I'm going to give you these two, but I'm going to give them to you separately. In other words, I'm going to die for you. And when you appropriate that death of Christ, that's when you have eternal life. But then he takes it a step further, and he uses a different tense of the verb, and he says, now I want you to continue to eat and continue to drink. And that, I believe, means that he wants us to learn what it is to daily appreciate the death of Christ. He wants us every day we live to look back and remember that he died in our place. And further, he wants us to look back and see that we died with him, for his death was my death. He wants me to appreciate and appropriate and realize the meaning of the death of Christ and my death with him. And this will result in my growing. That will be my food. That will nourish me. Then he carries to the third step, and he says, Now, as I live by the Father, the Father lives, and I live by the Father, so he that eat of me, not my flesh and blood now. This is a step further. He that eat of me shall live by me. What do you mean by that? Well, he meant, every day I live, I think of my living Father in heaven. That's the way the Lord Jesus lived, isn't it? He always lived with his Father in view. He said, I do always the things that please my Father. He was always conscious of moving toward the Father. He said, I love the Father. He said, I go to the Father. They thought he was going to the cross. But he said, oh, no, I'm going to the Father. I'm just going by way of the cross. But he's my object. I'm always thinking of him, the living Father. Now he said, just as I live by that living one in heaven, so I want you to live by me. So every day that you and I live, we ought to think of that living one in heaven. We ought to think of him as being up there as our advocate to help us get out of difficulties. And then we ought to think of him as our high priest to keep us out of difficulties. That's better yet. We ought to think of him as our forerunner, opening the way for us into heaven so that we can go into his presence every day and enjoy it. We ought to think of him as our coming one, coming back for us. We ought to think of him as the reigning king in that future day. We ought to be enjoying Christ in the glory. This is how we... enjoy feeding where he fed. We eat the food that he ate. Now they say you are what you eat. Let me ask you what you fed on this last week. What did you read this last week? What did you see this last week? What did you meditate on this last week? Meditation is called the lost ark. No, it isn't lost at all. It's been traded for imagination. And if you've allowed your imagination to run right, young people, listen to me. The downfall of a man or a woman is always preceded by evil in his own or her own mind. That's where all sin starts. It starts in the imaginations of the heart. And if you can keep your meditations right, let the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord. If you can keep your meditations right, if you can keep occupied with Christ, you'll avoid these things. Eat where he eats. Rest where he rests. And then I suggest that it's more than eating and resting, it's working at his work. What do you say? I thought she said we just let him do it through us. Ah, but that passage in the fourth and the sixth of Romans has four words. Know these things, reckon them to be true, yield yourself unto him, and obey. This is the positive side of it. God expects us to do what he wants us to do, but we do it with the strength that he gives. He gives us the ability to do these things. Are you occupied with the things that occupy the Lord Jesus? Are you working at the things that he works at? What is he doing in this world? Have you just picked out something that you think would be nice and you're trying to do it for him? No man is crowned except he strives lawfully. Why not find out what he wants done, how he wants it done? where he wants it done and then do it in fellowship with him we're said to be workers together with god and that's a wonderful privilege why that puts that puts fine in you i remember when i went into some out of the way places to preach when i first started out in the work of the lord and i left the jewelry business and i found myself in very difficult places And I thought, well, I can never face this. And then I would remember that. I don't have to face it alone. I go with him. You see, when they followed the Lord Jesus and he said to them, what seek you? They said, where do you live? Where do you dwell? We want to be with you. We want your company. And that's what they got. And they served with him, too, for three and a half years. Oh, I know they didn't do very well. But yet at the end of that time he said, Ye are they that have continued with me in my temptation. He appreciated it, and he appreciates your company and your time. Listen, if there was no other incentive for this, brother and sister, it would be enough that the Lord Jesus himself wants your company. Don't ask me to explain that, but it's true. And I can believe it, if I can't understand it, the Lord Jesus actually wants my company. Whatever you think of it, He wants it. And He has arranged so that one of these days I'll be with Him forever. What do you say? That suits me. That's good enough. Oh, no, wait a minute. You won't have any choice then. When the Lord comes back, He's going to change you and make you like Him and take you to be with Him, and then you will be with Him forever and ever. But now you have a choice. Now you decide. Now you are the one to decide whether you're going to spend time with him or whether you're going to spend time for yourself. You decide whether you're going to present your body a living sacrifice to him or whether you're going to give it for this world. You decide whether you're going to lose your life or keep it. And the only way you can keep your life is to give it to him, hand it over to him. If you decide you're going to sell it for so much gold, you're going to sell it for so much fame, this is what you want to be, you make a terrible mistake. It's only when you hand it over to him that that life can be kept. And so we rest with him and we eat with him and we work with him and we enjoy his company. I ask you the question once again, what are you looking for?