Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 3.34 → restored 4.47
Use the player's Original switch to compare.How Diffio restores old speech recordings
I'm not overpowering you, Frank. Uh, amen. I won't give you a guilty conscience, brother. Okay. Can you hear me now? You can't see me, it's not glasses you need, it's a white stick. I know. Especially after being here for two weeks, I tell you, I'm glad we're not here next Sunday because I just wouldn't get into these pants at all. It has been a struggle for the last two Sundays, you know. And so I said another week here, Margot, I said I need to get a new suit on it, go and maybe see Grayling or somebody. Never failing Grayling, eh?
That's it. I didn't realize you were there, brother. Isn't it wonderful being saved, amen? Oh boy, I tell you what, this is all I live for, but I tell you, I'm, I, I, I enjoy it. I'm happier now when I'm not happy than I was before when I was happy. The Lord is precious, isn't he? Amen. And the interesting thing is, you know, I, I always look at those very intense, serious preachers, but if you talk to them later, you find them outside talking about all sorts of things, and that, it may look all... Don't always take us preachers by what you see here. Judge it by what we are out there. That's the, that's the criteria.
And if he's as precious outside the building as he is inside the building, then you've got, you've got the right preacher. Amen? That's good. Good to see you. Let's play for this class again. This class just thrills me every week have just to see them there. Father, we thank you for these teenagers. Make them men and women of God, and, uh, touch their hearts in a special way for Christ's sake. Amen. We turn with me again to John chapter fourteen and, eh, uh, just, just taken by the care of the Lord for us and for his disciples, uh, therefore for us down through the line, how the Lord wonderfully cares for us, and, eh, as he's, you know, in the upper room ministry leaving, we saw last week, of course, he gave us someone just like himself, the, the comforter, the, not the substitute, the, uh, real thing, someone just like himself, the alos comforter, not the heteros comforter, heteros being a substitute, alos being i- identical in
every way. So he gave us that. So we're at the, excuse me, we'll just read these verses again, verse fifteen of chapter fourteen: If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another. And just make a notation in your Bible there, another exactly like Jesus. That's what it is. I mean, it's not just a substitute. Hey, he, the Lord couldn't turn up, he had to go back to heaven and sit on the throne, so he just got somebody else to take his place. No, identical. Identical. That's important to remember that, eh, in every way. That he may be with you forever.
That is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it does not behold him or know him, but you know him because he abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans or comfortless. I will come to you. Let's just take a moment then, we'll go through this. Um, thinking of this world and what the world looks at comfort, um, there's a little song in the Redemption book there. It says, what though the world its gifts deny, I've treasures more than money can buy.
The key to treasure in the sky, oh bless the Lord, I've Jesus. So he said, I'm leaving, and I'm going to give you someone just like me living inside you, identical. So we can truly say this morning, I ble- oh bless the Lord, I Jesus. What a legacy he left you. I will not leave you comfortless, but, uh, in the translation I use it, orphans. I won't leave you abandoned. I just got a phone call before I left to come down here to hear a friend of mine of about sixty and my age almost, and they had died with cancer.
He came into this world in a paper bag on the doorstep of a, of a home in, uh, a one of these orphan homes in, in Britain, Dr. Bernardo's. He g- he was left in a brown paper bag on the doorstep. And I, he became a Christian in the process of his life, and a very strong Christian, a very bright Christian. He was a fo- he was in the, in the chapel in a place called Grangemouth in Scotland, which is the headquarters for British Petroleum, a big terminal and refinery there for the North Sea oil, and he wa- he ended up as chief of fire, which you would imagine was a very big job in a pe- petroleum refinery.
But a lovely Christian, time to work for the Lord, to witness for the Lord. And I thought of his passing, and I thought, well, his coming into this world was very unceremoniously presented, was it? You know, and just left on the doorstep in a brown paper bag. But, eh, his going out of this world was glorious. He had a Lord who was ready to receive him, a Lord who would take him in and receive him in glory. I think of legacies, of great legacies in America in the past. Rockefeller left or received the Rockefeller family seven hundred million dollars.
You know, I sometimes you see these Rockefeller from West Virginia, one of the poorest states, that is represented by one of the wealthiest men, isn't that me? You know, and they say, we understand the poor. How can you have that kind of millions and understand the poor, eh? The Mellon family of Pittsburgh, Paul, Richard, and a daughter, were left two billion dollars. You remember it's Mrs. Hines who said to the reporter of the paper for him to shove off, well, that paper was owned by the Mellon family, and she hadn't much time for them.
The animosity was there. A lot of money. J. Paul Getty, eighteen billion, a one billion, I beg your pardon, inheritance. And here you are, struggling through life, praying for your next meal, hoping the hurricane doesn't, eh, wipe you out because you can't afford the insurance to replace it. I mean, these are realities, aren't they? And Jesus looked at simple fishermen. I use, eh, simple in the words in the realm of ordinary men. As I said, eh, last week, John MacArthur has, eh, produced a book entitled Twelve Ordinary Men, showing how God took ordinary men to use them.
Uh, men who, who did de- deprived their fishing, who had made their living off of fishing, and if there was a storm, lost out. Uh, I heard a, uh, one of these famous preachers in America and, uh, saying, uh, Tony Campolo, he says they must have been bad fishermen, but they were always mending their nets. And I thought, boy, you know very little about fishing. Good fishermen are always mending their nets. Uh, if you go down the east coast of Scotland to these villages, you can't get onto the harbor for the men mending their nets.
And I thought, how little they knew about it, that they were they could say that. But we have a God who cares. It's interesting when missions read, there's a missions leaflet there, take it home with you. There's a pile of them. They've been there since I came, and if you haven't taken it home on Anthony Norris Groves, take it. I have the whole book. It was written by Dr. Tatford, but I, I have the book on Anthony. He was the beginning of the assembly missions. First place they went to was Baghdad. That's where Anthony Norris Groves went to. He went to Iraq, and that's where the first assembly missions began in Baghdad.
The leaflet's there. Take it. I'm sure the brethren would rather you took it home than it lie there, and eh, read it. And that is the founder, and they went through tremendous, eh, uh, suffering, uh, in those days of very little communication, but belief in God. I stood with T. Ernest Wilson as he, as I took him to see David Livingstone's house, and he, and he, he looked at the map, and that wonderful, godly old man, you remember old T. Ernest Wilson, what a beautiful Christian he was, and he stood there, this godly old wa- a man who, who came to our assembly in Scotland and said, told us the story. I said, come and tell the story how you met your wife. He said, I walked nine hundred miles to propose to her.
Then I walked back home the nine hundred miles, then I walked nine hundred miles to marry her, then I walked nine hundred miles back together to start our married life. I mean, that's inconceivable in our, in in our thinking, isn't it? When you think of it, what kind of commitment is it? And this godly man stood and looked at the map of Africa and the tears running down his cheek. I was so honored to be in the presence of this man at that time, as the tears ran down his cheek, and he says, to think that Livingston walked across Africa with the gospel. Wow. You know, you say, this is commitment and implicit, implicit trust in a living God, because remember, they couldn't go and, uh, to some office and say, did anybody wire me any money?
They were out there. C. T. Stott gave away all his and went out and formed the WEC Evangelism Crusade. Hudson Taylor, the same. He's a Presbyterian from Scotland who went out, William Chalmers Burns, and met him out there, met Hudson Taylor out there, and was so impressed by, and and it was eh the Scottish Presbyterian who said to him, he said, uh, who had seen much revival in Scotland, you can read about it, who said for him to dress like the culture he was living in. And so what happened was, foreign to all the mission of impact of that day, Hudson Taylor je- dressed like a Chinaman when he went out.
He was Chinese. Why? Because he had received a legacy. Why do these men do these things? Now, we're not all called to do that because we can't all, but we're all called to play a part. We're all part of the puzzle. We're all part of the picture. But why would they do that? Because they believed they had re- they had received a legacy from God that was beyond all that this world could give them. They could say, oh, bless the Lord, I Jesus.
Wow. It's a great point to get to, isn't it? Where he's paramount in our lives. And maybe God won't call us to Africa, and God maybe won't call us to some remote land, and if he does, we can still email home now. I had a friend who was out in the middle of the Stone Age, um, people. They were Stone Age tribes in the middle of, eh, South America, and he could email home. I said, how can you email home from a Stone Age tribe? He said, we've got a little generator and a, you know, a little satellite and shoo.
Just amazing, isn't it? What an age. But, you know, when you shut that satellite down and that email down and read your last email from civilization, you were still facing a Stone Age time. It takes commitment, it takes the realization that what God has given us is a legacy that is within us. The legacy of the Holy Spirit of God. We saw he indeed is a delightful person, our wonderful Savior, and he's permanent in our lives, and he's present with us.
But can I say something else just to encourage you today, that he's not only a delightful person, but he's a dynamic. I kind of like that word. It's, uh, it conjures up in my mind a form of power. You go through the words associated with the gospel of Paul. Paul must have been so convinced in the power of the gospel that, I mean, he wrote so many times about this word power. I want to deal with that now because we're going to look at it at night. But we find that here he is the one that's in us is a dynamic person.
He's the changer of lives. Now, if you begin to look at this together, you find in verses sixteen and seventeen, verses sixteen and seventeen, I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper, that he may be with you forever. That is the spirit of truth that the world cannot receive. We discover that he's a supernatural helper. He's a supernatural helper. He's part of the Trinity. And when you set out to witness or to lift up Christ in any way, the ministry of the Spirit in you is to exalt Christ, that the Father in heaven is blessed at the exaltation of Christ.
I was just thinking again, I've seen that message on Wednesday night, uh, Thursday night. I've seen it many times, and every time it comes with a fresh mind, and on Thursday night, one of the things that hit me was, you remember what he said? What are our prayers to God that he keeps them in bowls? Wow. That, and that's something, I mean, it just, I've seen that many times, but to think that God takes our heartfelt prayers and he, he preserves them. He preserves them. And so we have the indeed in our helper, in our inheritance, we have someone who is supernatural.
This is why I've said here before, and I say wherever I go, that I really believe that the Christian should live this Christian life, uh, that we should live the Christian life in a supernatural way, live the spiritual life naturally, and the natural life spiritually. That's what I was looking for. We should live the natural life spiritually, and the spiritual life naturally. What am I saying? What am I saying? Too many Christians switch on and off. Okay? We walked into the meeting, let's be spiritual. I want to see you spiritual at your work, at your factory.
I- I believe God wants to see me spiritual where- where I move around. I- I know, like yourself, I'm very, very human. I'm an extrovert, eh, eh, and eh, and eh, do- do I make it all the time? No. I sometimes have to come and weep for the things I've said and done. And I'm like the preacher in Scotland who said, boy, you were near the line today. He said, you, if you'd only known what I nearly said. But you know what I mean? The point, the point is this. Is this is, I mean, what have we come out of? We came out of that. We came, we we claim to be, say we come out of stoic religion to a re- a religion, to to an experience of a living Christ, a living faith, a living power, and so when we go out, we walk in, you know, and I and I always watch this, you know, as I travel around, it's very interesting.
We, how quickly we can switch off and the ball game becomes more important than the Lord. No, I'm not against ball games. He kisses, I'm not against anything but sin and Satan. I don't waste my time preaching against things. I know what I'm for, but always remember, you'll never start your car unless you've got a negative and a positive linked up together. And somebody said, well, I don't like a negative preacher. Well, I'll tell you what, good job you got a negative in your car, or your car ain't going nowhere after this meeting.
Because you need a negative alongside the positive, but you use the right negative, and you don't use it in anybody else, you use it on your own life, and you say, hey, I use this negative so that I can get self started by God started, and I can move with God, and when I go out into the real world that we live in, then I can live this natural life spiritually. Why? Because I realize that the legacy of Christianity and Jesus Christ, that in me is someone just like him. Wow. That is powerful, isn't it? That took you anything. We were, we were, we were abandoned.
We were, we, by the way, I'm not going to end the story, and left in America with absolutely nothing. Not even a home. At our age. And I thank God for the legacy. I'm here to tell you today that I have a legacy in me, and that legacy is of God who cares and loves, provides, and and and and here I am today excited about it. I'm not moaning about it. I'm not looking, you know, I believe God had to take me there again to stop looking at men and looking at him and to go out and say, hey guys, do you know what?
We have a God who works in the everyday world, even when you're repairing your roof. Told some of you about the old fel- the young felon we led to Lord in Scotland. My friend opened up beautiful old senior citizens home. Oh, if you ever go to Scotland, you've got to go and see this place. It's run by the assembly as well. It's run by one man, and the British government have come up to see how you can run such a beautiful place and make a profit and put the best of everything in it. He's got a whole village now, but I remember when he bought the house, it was just a mansion house. Bought it for under ten thousand dollars for the ground.
And as he went around, he was looking for things. One day he was going down to preaching in England, and uh, he said, I need a, he needed a washing machine. He was, he said for washing the clothes for the folks. He was preaching in this assembly. He was telling a story about it, and the guy came up to him, he said, hey, listen, he said, the laundrette has closed down the road. He said, they'll give you the whole lot. And he got all the washing machines, not one, he got the lot. But this is a story he told me that was absolutely true, and I know the man involved because I led his wife to the Lord. She got saved over in another village where I was preaching. And he said, Joe was on the roof of the house. He said, nah, the the roof needed repairs, and of course it was slate roofs in Britain, heavy slate roofs.
And he said, I I I climbed up, and I'm climbing up to see how Joe's getting on. I get up near the roof, and I hear sobbing. He said, I hear sobbing. I couldn't believe it. And he said, I got onto the roof, and he says, here's Joe standing. This is the roofer standing, crying on the roof. He says, eh, what's the matter, Joe? Well, he said, I just had finished this part, half of it, and this is the old part, and I stood up to look and see if I had the, the slates in line, and as I stood and looked, I said, that was my life before Jesus.
That was my life after Jesus. Do you know the first thing he had to do, he was such a gambler, they had no money. The first thing he had to do when he got saved was buy a table. And as he looked at this beautiful new roof that he had just done, he saw in it the work of Christ in his life. We have a miracle working God. We've got to get back there, not just to believe that God blesses in here, but he blesses out there. He blesses. But, you know, we're fighting against a very difficult age, and we don't move it.
We don't, we don't realize it. We've got the internet. Pray for these young folk. One of our preachers in the north was caught for over a year just recently in a sting by the police. One of the preachers. The police set up a sting, and he was caught going to meet this girl he had fixed up, a sixteen-year-old girl fixed up with in the, on the, in the, in the, in the, on the internet, and the, the when they came, it was a police sting. I don't know if he's in jail now. Now, I'll tell you what, if you've got men preaching the word, then what hope is there for these kids, eh?
We got to waken up, you know. We got, we got a television that's plumbing a sewer into our front room. That's what it is. My kids say, Jo- Dad, you're gross. I says, I know, but so is sin. It destroys people. I said, we're plumbing it into, we don't, you know, we used to stand and sing when I got saved, there are three things I will not do. I will not gamble, smoke, or chew, and then we go, and I will not stand in a cinema queue. It's a line in America, but you've enough British in you to know that queue is a line, don't you? I will not stand. You know what? The only movies I can watch today are the movies that I wouldn't go to see when I got saved.
Because there's no sex in them, there's no nudity in them, there's no bad language in them. And I'm going to tell you something, my friends. If Christians are watching the same as the world, you can't come in here and worship. Forgive me, but let me just tell you straight, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. You know why? Because just at the point of you breaking the bread, the old devil will go through your mind, and he'll take out the filthiest thing you've seen this past week, and he'll flood your mind until you're overcome with it. And I'll tell you, unless you get on your knees and ask them Christ by his precious blood to cleanse you, and then take the stuff that you've been watching and throw it out, you'll never make it.
You won't make it. You won't make it. But God has given us, in us, a supernatural help. You know what, my friends? Someone says, well, how do you know what's right and what's wrong? Very simple. Read the word every day. The Lord will let you know. The Lord will let you know. I don't know about you, but I can't even but argue with Margaret, but the Lord interferes. If I have a, well, uh, it takes a lot to argue with Margaret, God bless her. That's why she's been with me as long. Argue is not the word, just a f- a difference of opinion.
You know what, and I go down and I pray, and the Lord says, you be- you better get back up there and love that lady, and then you come back and talk to me. That's good marriage counseling, isn't it? It's called walking with God. Instead of paying some crazy counselor and a psychologist to do all this for you, all you have to do is every day pick up your Bible, keep, exercise your faith, you're the guys who put it on your t-shirts, and walk with God every day, and you know what? You'll have good marriages. Pray for these kids. The enemy's coming in like a flood.
And as the fellow said on Thursday night, they think right is wrong, and wrong is right. We're sitting here, and I'm going to tell you, friends, if any preacher come down just to butter you up and make you look like a good New Testament chub, I don't know what kind of guy that is, but I'll tell you what, I'm in the middle of warfare. I'm in the middle of warfare because the, the devil is destroying lives all around us. But greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world. Say amen. I hate to be like a black pipe preacher, but, you know, I think we need some of the black touches.
The one I love is when the preacher's struggling and the old black lady waves her hanky and says, help him Jesus, help him Jesus. I like that one. Amen? Have you ever felt like you've got a guy up there and you feel, help him Jesus, help him Jesus. My dear friends, we're in warfare. What do you think you gave it was we said, is happening in places now? It's spiritual warfare. And God says, wait a minute. I put within you a helper that will take your natural life and allow you to live it spiritually wherever you are, and take your spiritual life and live it naturally.
I often wonder about the early church meeting. Must have been fascinating meeting in the food fair, the early church. Just Acts two has just happened, and they, they get saved, three thousand get saved and go down to the food fair for their groceries, bump into a believer. Hey, we are the church. Let's have church. You got it? We built these walls. This is a church. This is a sanctuary. And there is nothing more exciting in life than to be somewhere, and you run into a believer, maybe somebody you don't know, and you're talking with them, and you don't get...
When I went to US Air, and we were having time to get out here, we went to the right desk, and I said, I have to get out. He said, why do you want to go down there anyway? I said, I have to get out. We've got to preach the word down there. He says, I'm a Christian too. And, uh, he said, do you know so and so? I said, yeah, he's a dear friend of mine. Oh, he says, what a preacher. And, uh, I mean, the whole relationship at the US Air desk changed. We were at a US Air desk, with... and the main conversation in our hearts was the Lord Jesus.
Now, there wasn't a line behind us because we're not selfish people. We went at a time when we knew they'd be quiet, but he had time to talk. You see, my dear friends, naturally is when we're allowing the Spirit of God to flow through our lives, amen? And you know, the Holy Spirit in me meets Ross down the road, and the Holy Spirit down the road in Ross says, hey, let's together exalt Jesus, amen? Oh, but wait a minute, we're just outside the food fair. Well, what a great place to exalt Jesus, amen? Well, I go to the chapel and do it.
That's sad. Listen, God's got a chapel with a blue roof, and you can worship him where- wherever you are. You bump into believers, and that's exciting, and the- and you begin to feel his power in a very real and wonderful, glorious way. And so what do we find a supernatural helper, he says, in us, a supernatural life, nineteen to twenty. What does he say that after a little while, the world will behold me no more, but you will behold me because I live, you shall live also, and in that day you shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
You can't have Jesus Christ in you without being supernatural. The wind bloweth where it listeth, you hear the sound thereof, you can't say whence it cometh or whither it goes, so is everyone that is born of the Spirit. This, you know, I have been taken by the phrase, the gospel is not just news, it is life. Can you imagine if you had one day that you couldn't breathe? You wouldn't breathe the rest of the days, would you? If you had five minutes that you couldn't breathe. Can you imagine what we mess we would be if we couldn't breathe spiritually? The very air of heaven pulsating through our spiritual lungs, saying, hey, you have all the authority.
You remember the, the prophet? Open their eyes, Lord. Open his eyes. His servant says, hey, oh, look at this crowd of the mi- look at the, we, we, we, we're, we're a goner. Open his eyes, Lord. And the armies of the angels of the Lord were all around. Amen. My friend, God didn't send us out to fight this battle alone, but to find the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they are mighty to the pulling down of strongholds. And my friend, if we ever sit down and think there are no problems and everything's okay, then I tell you, you, you are in big trouble.
But when you realize what the foe is. And you know what I've also discovered in churches? If you don't see anything happening for God, develop a good theological argument and have an in-house debate on that argument. I don't know how we've time to argue about theological debates, because fundamentally we all agree when there are people going to hell. I have a problem with that. I, I no longer get into, when I was younger, you know, you young fella, you want to get in and agib- no, I just look at the guys and my age now I can say things I could never say before. I say, get with it, get a life.
There's people out there that need to be changed, and we've got the power, we've got the message to change them. Let's go out and preach it. We have a, a supernatural life, he points out. If you go down, what a, what a union we have, verses twenty to twenty four: In that day you shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you, and he who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me, he shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will disclose myself to him. What a union. In the quiet moments, the Lord reveals himself to him, to us.
The quiet moments. Doesn't have to be a fancy corner in your house, but just find a corner. I go down to the basement, I've got cardboard boxes, books, stuff stashed all around, but I've just got a chair I can sit in it no more among all the rubble. Not attractive place, but I don't see it with my eyes shut anyway. In my view. dear friends, do you remember what the writer said? We would see Jesus.
And when you go to Hebrews, the writer to the Hebrew epistle said, but we see Jesus, who was made a little of the lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor. I was just looking at him, I was looking through some of the hymns in the Redemption, but I haven't sang out of that in years, and I was since I was here last, and I was looking through it, and uh, remember that one, and the the conquering Savior shall break every chain and give us the victory again and again.
And John picks up the theme and he says, this is the victory that overcomes our w- world. What? Our faith. Our faith. It's so beautiful when you see that. You have within you, in verse twenty six a supernatural cheat- teacher. But the Helper whom the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, I will teach you all things, bringing your to remembrance all things I've said to you. When you put it there, God will use it.
When you put it there. John Stott has said that the spirit without the word, the spirit without the word is weaponless. And the Word without the Spirit is powerless. Isn't that a great statement? What's this? This is the sword of the Lord. The Spirit without the Word has no weapon. Weaponless. But the Word without the Spirit is powerless. But put these two and you have an invincible force, the Word and the Spirit.
And do you know the biggest mistake we make in evangelism? We go out there thinking we've got to prove the gospel. No, my friends, and I use the word preach in a very loose way. We've only got to preach it. Because the word, what we preach is the word. What is applied is the sword of the Spirit. Isn't it very interesting that when you come to Peter's, end of Peter's Pentecostal sermon, what did they say? What did they record that? And they were pricked in their heart. What was happening?
Boy, the old spirit was taking the good old word, and he was, he was pushing it in all the right places. And what was happening? And don't ask me to explain it, but the miracle of conviction of sin. The miracle of conviction of sin. That is bad. And so we have a supernatural teacher, and and we just let me bring this to you. Peace, verse twenty seven, I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives, but do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, let it not be fearful. Oh, the peace my savior gives me, peace I never knew before, and my way hath brighter grown since I've left to trust him more.
And I've said this before, I see Christ crucified for me on the cross. When I trust him and go out into this world now, I have to see myself crucified for Christ. That's what Paul says. And you know what, my friend, I'm going to tell you something. I'm more alive dead than I was ali- when I, when I thought I was alive. Amen? When I was living in the flesh and I thought I was alive and, and eh, you know, and I, and suddenly you, you, you, you come and say, hey, you gotta, you gotta die so that Jesus can live up within you.
Woo. That, that is powerful, that is powerful. I see to any of our younger friends with us today, and you say, well, oh, that's all right, John, you're John, and, and that's you. No, I'm just a very ordinary, very simple fellow who struggles every day of my life to be where I want to be for Christ. It doesn't come easy, you don't push a button. Uh, sometimes I fail miserably, but I thank God I can always come back to the throne of grace. But you make a commitment, and I kind of hinted on it, and I close with it now.
And when I got saved, and uh, this whole thing came alive to me, you can appreciate not going to church and then suddenly getting saved, this whole thing came alive to you. I uh, heard this preacher say it was a mystery from Italy. If you want to get anywhere with God, you got to make a sacrifice. So what we did was, uh, I met this other guy who was saved two days after me, same background. None of us had no background like that. And we both had the same guy, and we said, OK, let's, let's, let's miss our supper every night and go up and pray, and the YMCA gave us a room at the top of the building so we wouldn't annoy anybody.
Just the two of us. We didn't know how to run and be religious. All we knew were we got saved. We go up there, we'd learn the choruses, we'd learn the children's choruses, and we'd learn a few of these, so when there was a pause in our prayer meeting, we sang. Two of us. But I remember we could fill an hour without trying. We'd look at our watch and said, oh, we better get going. Because I tell you, when you're pouring out your heart in sincerity to God, the Lord is listening. He's encouraged. And, uh, another fellow joined us, another fellow. Funnily enough, there was, uh, 4 of us.
One, I went into, I was in the assemblies, one fellow was in the Baptists, two fellas in the Baptists, and was, one was a Pentecostal. And I, and I, and, and here is the laugh of the whole thing, God bless him. The Pentecostal was the quietest and nicest guy you could ever meet in your life. He was the quietest fellow. The guy in the brethren was the noisiest guy. You've probably gathered that by now, haven't you? And I met him once, and I said to him, he was pastor of an Assemblies of God away down in Lincolnshire, and I, I, I, we were in his home, Mario and I went, and I said, hey, how do you, how you, uh, how you get on here? He said, oh, he said, I got a noisy crowd here.
And he said to me, I says, you you've got noise? He says, yeah, I've got quieting them down. I shook my head and looked at him, and I said, the Lord must want to know what he's doing. He's got you and the Pentac- Pentecostals quieting them down, and me and the brethren trying to liven them up. I said, the Lord must know what he's doing, amen? I would, I would have given my right arm for an amen. He had to shut them up from saying amen, amen? But you know what, friends? They that hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled. If you're hungry enough, you'll go and eat at his table.
And if you eat at his table, you'll be filled. That's why, after the first of May nineteen fifty eight, and now in September two thousand and four, I find that I am my beloveds, and my beloved's is mine. He brought a poor lost sinner into his house of wine. The bride eyes not her garment, but her dear bri- bridal's face. We will not look on glory, but on the King of Christ.
Let's pray. Father, bless everyone here today. Oh Father, forgive everything that John Clune has said. And oh Father, r- put home whatever the Spirit wanted to be said. But oh God, we do pray you'll bless this fellowship. We thank you for them, and the love, and the grace, and the mercy here. And as we come in a little while to sit around your table, Father, we do pray you will lift us to heights we've never been before, because we see Jesus. We ask it in your holy name. Bless those in need this day for Christ's sake.
Amen. Thank you. God bless you.