Iniquity in the heart is the central theme, emphasizing that God's primary concern is the inner condition of a person, not outward appearance. The sermon draws parallels between physical health diagnostics and spiritual health, highlighting that just as a doctor examines the tongue, God examines the heart. It explains that iniquity is not just outward sin but also harboring sinful thoughts and neglecting to address them, using examples from Scripture like Psalm 66:18 and Hebrews 12:1. The message concludes by stressing that unconfessed sin divides believers from God, dulls their spiritual sensitivity, and prevents their prayers from being heard, likening it to ships with radios turned off during a crisis.
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And those of you who like to sit in the rear, if you would come up kind of towards the front, it would help so I can see the white in your eyes. You heard about the meeting they were having. It was kind of an open meeting, you know, and especially at the close, people are allowed to ask questions. So there was a visitor in the back. He happened to be dressed in gray for some reason. And there were a good many people seated back in the rear part of the church, and he said, I have one question.
I'm a bus driver. What do you do to get him to sit in the rear? Of course, some of you can't remember the days when you rode buses quite often, and there was They keep telling people, go to the rear, go to the rear. Yeah, this man was in this meeting, and there were a lot of people in the rear, and it didn't seem to be any problem to get them to sit in the rear. You want to know what in the world you have to do to get them to sit in the rear. Well, it helps sometimes if you come up kind of towards the front. Four, five, or six weeks ago when I began to pray really in earnest, I've been praying for months and months about what we might share with you for these six or seven days.
I realize there's about thirty-two messages I'd like to give. I was going to speak ten times. One message that the Lord gave me about two years ago that I wanted to share with you, you really can't give it in one meeting. So I'm going to give you the first part of it this morning and we're going to close it tonight. And for those who are not here this morning, we will review for a few moments tonight. Now, I'm not one of those kind of people that would want anybody to believe that all that I try to share with you is originalist and shockless you because it isn't. value very highly the ministry of other men whose shoelaces I'm not worthy to unloose that I've heard down through the years.
And I try to feed and nourish my own soul regularly. In fact, yesterday in the mail I received four tapes from Columbia Bible College that I hope to listen to within the next two days. Because unless you are constantly receiving and taking in yourself you'll find yourself not having anything to give out. Anything you'll give will be stale. And unless it's fresh, bread is not good. And that doesn't mean it has to be new, because there's nothing new under the sun, but it has to be fresh and alive to the one who's giving it out. Now, many times those of us who have the privilege and the responsibility of ministering receive thoughts and sometimes skeleton outlines from other people, and God, by His grace, enables us to add illustrations and scriptures and truths to it from our own experiences and life and share it with others.
Now, today, I want to tell you where I got the outline that I'm going to use. He, in my estimation, is one of the greatest expositives of the Word of God in America today. and were you to try to get him to come speak at a conference, you'd probably have to write him now if you wanted to get him at eight or one or two. He happens to be the president of the Moodle Bible Institute, George Sweetie. There's another man up there a few blocks away from him that is a very close friend of mine. I don't know of Mr. Sweetie, and I've met him. I know all about him, but he doesn't know me. But anyway, a friend of mine by the name of Warren Willsby, at Moody Church.
It's an old friend of mine. I knew him back in Youth for Christ. And we started a conference up at Lookout Mountain. We had our first conference last summer. We should call it Southeastern Keswick. It's really just a Christian Life Convention, a Bible conference, that's all it is. And I really think we're going to drop the name Keswick because not many people in America know what Keswick is anyway. So we're probably just going to call it a Christian Life Convention after this year. In fact, Alan Redpath told me himself, he said, Mr. Fu, he said, if I, you, I just dropped the name, because they can call it Christian Life Convention or Christian Life Bible Conference. But anyway, we started praying about this three years ago, and we figured, well, one of the men we'd like to have was Warren Willsby from Moody Church in Chicago.
We had to invite him in early nineteen seventy-six, forgive him, in nineteen seventy-eight, for four days. So when God is blessing the life and the minister of a man, you'll find that there's a great demand upon that time. And so now the outline that I'm going to use today that I put some meat on, and one of the illustrations I'm going to give is from our brother Sweden, is from George Sweden. And I'm going to read a lot of scriptures. I found out some while ago that if you type out the Scripture in your text or in your notes, it will save a lot of time turning, and you can cover a lot more ground.
So some of the Scripture today I will have here, I've typed that out of my notes, I'll tell you what it is, but we won't necessarily have to turn to it and we'll save time by doing that. Now you may turn to Hebrews chapter And if you want to title the message, you can call iniquity in the heart. Iniquity in the heart. Hebrews twelve. Now I would remind you once again that I'll be reading from the New American Standards, and sometimes I still, having used the King James so long, I still quote to King James, and I'm practically reading it from the New American Standards.
But I have here in Hebrews twelve, one and two. Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Now, another verse that deals with iniquity is back in the Old Testament in the book of Psalms.
I'm sure that many of you have already thought of it. Psalm sixty-six, verse eighteen. And I must say that I appreciate King James here more than the New American Standard because it uses the word that we're thinking about, the word iniquity. And the King James says, if I regard iniquity, the New American Standard says wickedness. Of course they're the same thing. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Shall we pray? Father, we thank you for this beautiful day.
We thank you for the pretty music. We thank you for the health that you've given us. And we would look to thee now in these thirty minutes if you'd speak to our hearts. Give us something that will refresh us, that will rebuke us if need be, that will correct us, that will challenge us, and that will enable us to leave this chapel building this morning. better equipped and better prepared and better motivated to serve thee than we were when we came. In Jesus' name, amen.
Iniquity in the heart, the heart, the heart attitude, the heart relationship, the heart condition is what our Lord is really interested in. The phrenologist claims that he can look at the way a man's skull is made and shape and tell you something about his mental power. The palmist, you go around, you see these signs of a palm, you know, well, the palmist insists that they can look at someone's hand and tell something about their past, their present, and their future.
And the doctor, when you go to see a doctor and you tell him you have certain problems, the first thing he'll tell you to do, put your tongue out. He can look at the tongue and tell you something about your health. A good detective will tell you that he can look right into your eyes and tell you something about your integrity and your honesty and your character. And man is always concerned with the outward appearance. But God is not really concerned about that too much. God is concerned with the inward man, the heart of man.
Did you know that it was just a few years ago that God really spoke to my heart about this? I was really concerned about the way people dress. I really was. I had a hang-up about the way people dress, and I judged people by the way they dress. And then I went to Urbana-Seventy, the University of Oxford Christian Fellowship Missionary Convention in Illinois, and the Lord cured me right away. And I was so happy, I was delivered. I thought that if a man dressed a certain way, that meant that he or he was no good. And I saw people with long hair winning people to Christ.
I really did. And some of them even had old moccasins. that I'm even having bees. And they were witnessing to people and telling them about Jesus Christ and winning people to Jesus Christ. And I couldn't believe my eyes. And the Lord said, Shockley, you know, you got a lot to learn, brother. And I came back home. My son Jim is here. He can remember what just happened to me. And it just changed my whole outlook on life. In fact, it helped my understanding of the topic that I'm talking about this morning because the thing that God is interested in is my heart. God is concerned and rightful of soul with the inner man.
We're hearing a lot about out of faith, but the thing that I want to talk about this morning is the inner heart, the inner condition. I know that most of you, one time or another, have lived in some large cities, and you've probably seen sometimes when they're getting ready to put in some new sewer pipes and so forth and so on, and you perhaps have seen these areas, and I remember being in Philadelphia once, I remember being in Chicago once when they were just going through and going to put in all new sewers and pipes and electricity, and man, I was amazed at how many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds are big cables and wires and pipes and conduits and all kind of things going on the ground.
If those pipes and those wires and those conduits and all those things are in right, proper condition, you have a lot of darkness and a lot of disaster up on the ground. And if our hearts are not in the proper, correct, spiritual condition, you'll have a black soul and a black life and a ministry that is doomed so far as God's using it is concerned. The real you is the hidden man of the heart. Now, we have a lot of ground to cover. Now, you forgive me. I put a lot of work in hours and hours into getting these thoughts together.
You'll forgive me if I refer to my notes. quite frequently because otherwise I'd have to miss some of it because you could never remember it all. What is iniquity in the heart? What does it mean? It means that if I know there is something in my heart that shouldn't be there as a Christian, that's iniquity in the heart. If I continue to allow it to be there, if I cherish it, That's iniquity. In I Samuel, sixteen-six, when God sent the prophet Samuel to anoint one of the sons of Jesse King, we read in verse seven.
But the Lord said to Samuel, Do not look at his stature or his appearance, or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees, for man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks. at these hearts. In the summer and in the fall of the year we go out and we examine fruit. Of course, in the summertime it's peaches. In the fall of the year it's apples. And we go out and we look at the fruit and if it looks very, very good to the untrained man, we base how much we pay for that apple by the way it looks.
But if he's an apple by you, that doesn't really mean too much to him. You know what? The first thing he does, takes an eye, cuts it open. Because it could be a beautiful apple on the outside, but it could have a big old worm on the inside. And that all started in the blossom of the apple. In the spring of the year, when perhaps a worm laid an egg in the blossom and stayed on the inside of the apple. And there it is. So it's the heart condition of the peach or the apple or the fruit that is really conditioned. And that determines the price on the market, not necessarily how it looks on the outside.
It's how it is on the inside. And the same is true in the Christian life. Out of the heart of the issues of life, in Matthew, twelve, thirty-four, we read, You brewed a Bible? How can you be an evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. I remember probably twenty-five years ago hearing Alfred Gibbs make a statement. And you know, Alfred could be talking about one thing, and he'd make a statement, boom! And there it is, it stays with you. He'd go on off to something else, but you'd never forget that statement. I can't remember a thing as he said in the message, but this.
But it never left me. You're not what you think you are. What you think you are. I like that. And many of the things that are committed that are wrong, they didn't just come up all at once. Somebody thought them and thought them and thought them and planned them and planned them and planned them. Look at Matthew fifteen, nineteen. Once again I'll read, Out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murderers, adulterers, fornication, theft, false witnesses, slanderers.
Verse twenty, These are the things which defile the man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man. Those who study misbehavior and crime say that ninety-five percent of the crime committed has not only been thought of beforehand but well planned out ahead of time. Now, what does it mean to regard iniquity in the heart as we read in Psalm six, six, eighteen? To regard wrongdoing and sinful thoughts with pleasure rather than displeasure. To look upon sin and wrongdoing with approval rather than disapproval. It is to be aware of something wrong in my heart and life and neglect and do anything about it.
Evil doing is strictly in the mind to begin with, but you just leave it there and action will come later. In Hebrews twelve one, the sin which is, well, what is it but said in sin? It is the sin which really tempts you, that on occasion has conquered you, that beats you, It is the area of weakness that you can rest assured Satan already knows all about. You see, Satan, the Prince of the Power of the Air, knows where we are weak. That's where he's going to play on our weakness because he's a very, very shrewd competitor.
Just like Al McGuire, like last night of the Marquette coach, he knew where the weaknesses were on the North Carolina team and that's exactly where he played. He knew they couldn't shoot from outside, especially with their best outside shoe to hurt. And so what did he do? Practically all through the game, he used the best zone defense I've ever seen in my life. He won the game. And Satan knows your weak point. And the thing about it is that in the lives and hearts of many Christians they have weaknesses that many times they're not even aware of. They do not know themselves well enough to know that they have weak points that the devil knows all about.
There are a lot of Christians that are envious and jealous of other people and the devil has to see them so much they have no idea that one of the things that traps them of spiritual strength and vitality and power and usefulness is the fact that they have a most envious and jealous heart. They get their feelings hurt and they will not do this and not do this and they can't really enter into the work of the Lord with all their hearts because they're being held back by envy and jealousy and conceit.
We need to ask God to enable us to be able to see our heart as God sees our heart. Satan knows our beset and sin. He knows our weak places, and it's good to know where we're weak. I believe the psalmist had this in mind when he wrote Psalm and know my thoughts. Try me and know my anxious thoughts or touch me and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me and leave me in the way everlasting.
You see, David being a man out of God's own heart, knew what his real weakness was and said, Oh, God, touch me and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me into the way everlasting. Search not my brother, not my sister, not my friend, not my brother, or neighbor. No. Search me, O God. It is good for Christians to be honest with not only themselves but with the Lord God and honestly ask God to search out their heart and to reveal to themselves are revealed themselves to them.
Many are proud but not even aware of it. They are deceived into believing that they are spiritual giants when we are all very, very unworthy sinners. This has been a real hindrance in the life of many of the Lord's people down through the years. They have been deceived by the devils and sometimes even if you go to them in love and try to admonish them in love, they will not take it. They don't understand it. For so long they have been deceitful and for so long they've been jealous of others and for so long they've been so convinced that they were spiritual giants when actually there were things in their lives that were keeping them from really being used of God and they just won't listen.
And sometimes a person will go through a lifetime and spiritually they'll be held back from being used of God in any really great way. And perhaps it's years and years before God is able finally to get them to recognize that they've been spiritually deceived by the devil. Too often we think of sin as merely transgression of the law. Well, now, this is true. Sin is this, but it's much more. not only disobedient to the revealed will of God, it is a lack of conformity to God's will.
James says to know to do good and do it not, to him it is a sin. Sin is in the mind or in the area of the mind and the spirit. Christians should constantly be reminded that there is no victory over temptation apart from Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. Some haven't learned John fifteen-five what he says. Without me, you can do nothing. And most of the times when Christians are defeated by the devil and by sin, it is when they have tried to live the Christian life in their own strength.
I've been saved about three years before I really realized that Christ lives in my heart. Now, some of you, the Lord might have brought your attention as soon as you were saved. Praise the Lord. If that was the case, one of them. But I had been saved when I was at the University of Georgia, and I graduated and went over to Columbia Bible College and the Hallmahallan tree that some of you knew who was man in heaven. was there for the spring conference leading the singing, and he taught us this chorus, Christ liveth in me. Christ liveth in me. And when that hit me, it hit me like a ton of bricks. It liked it. I could tell you right now where I was. WIS Radio, this is before Jimmy would remember this, and WIS Radio used to be up in a little building right next to the Jefferson Hotel, which had been torn down now.
And we were up there broadcasting. And he taught us this chorus ten minutes before we were going on the air. And I was so overjoyed, I don't know what to do. The Christ lived in my heart. And that I didn't have to live the Christian life in my own strength. My, what a blessing. As John said in John three-thirty, he must increase, but I must decrease. And I began to learn that day that the secret of victory in Christ was that He lived in me. And isn't it wonderful? Our brother didn't know what I was going to speak on this morning, but he used a song before we even announced the message.
Christ lived in me. Oh, what a salvation this! But Christ lived in me. Now, I'll use the illustration which our brother Sweden used, and so I borrowed from him. He said that on one occasion he got a call from the president of a student body at a large Christian college in the Chicago area, the name of which we don't have to tell, because he didn't tell, we don't need it. But anyway, this young man had been the president of the student body, and he called up Mr. Sweden, said it's between the spring holidays, it's during the holidays, and I'm in Chicago for a few days, and I've been having some problems with evil thoughts and so forth and so on, and I'd like to talk to you.
Really bothered me. And Mr. Sweet said, all right, I'll be glad to give you an hour. I'll counsel with you an hour. And the young man said, well, I'm staying at the Lawson Y. You want me to come over to Moody or you want to meet me? He said, well, I'll just meet you over in the lobby of the Lawson Y. So he went over and said, He introduced himself and they got kind of acquainted and he says, well, you want to talk here in the lobby? The young man said, yeah, that'll be fine. Well, Mr. Sweden says, well, I think, brother, says we could probably get much more accomplished if we go upstairs to your room.
Oh, no, no, no, I'd rather stay down here. Well, no, I really think that we need to be in private when we talk. Oh, no, I think this is such. Now, brother, I've offered to give you an hour of my time to counsel you. And I think the least you could do, if I think we should go to your room, you should consent that we go to your room. Well, all right, but it's really messed up. When they got up there, Mr. Sweden says he realized what he meant. He said as soon as he walked in the room, he knew what the trouble was.
He said, well, young man, this picture over here has got to come down, and this picture needs to come down, and this book needs to leave, and this book needs to leave, and this magazine needs to leave, and this magazine needs to leave, and this music needs to go, and this needs to go. So that's your problem right there. You are feeding your soul and your mind and your heart with lustful, godless, licentious, sexy, literature and thoughts. And until you can just feed upon the Word of God and are things that are clean and pure and holy, you can never expect to have victory in your Christian life.
He said he's been there only five minutes. And he already knew what the problem with a young man was. And you know, this is one of the basic problems of the day in which we live in the lives of Christians even. Because, you see, we are taking in and feeding in all of the filth. This is especially true of many Christian women that stay home during the day. And they take in filth when the standards and their ideals that are portrayed on these soap operas and so forth and so on, and many of the movies you see at night, are anything but what God would teach in his word.
And it is no wonder that the conditions that we have in our land today are what they are when you recognize what people are getting hour after hour after hour after hour, and Christians are just as susceptible as anyone else. The only difference is that we do have the Holy Spirit of God in our lives which the unsaved man knows nothing about. But I tell you, it's a tragic thing and it's a very dangerous thing to play around with taking in and taking in that which is not going to edify and build us up. A good question or good, yes, a good question and a good standard for a believer is, will this edify me that I'm going to see?
Will this build me up? Does this have the, is there probability that this might bring me under its power? If there is, leave it alone. That's another method, though. We can't go into that. But there's some very simple standards that a Christian can use as to how he would spend his leisure time and how he would do this and when he would do this, if you'll just use them. Most of them are found in some of Paul's epistles. All right. The mind is the key. Jeremiah seventeen nine says, The heart is more deceitful than all else, and is desperately sick or wicked. Who can understand this?
I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind. And this next thought is not original. I borrow this from Brother Sweden also. He said that all Christians should remember and should recognize and should realize right away that all of us, except by God's grace, have the potential of a watergate in our heart. I'm sure that many of you have heard the illustration. I forgot who it was. D.L. Moody of some great man of God was in his office one day, and he saw them taking a man to prison.
And he said to his companion or whoever it was in the room, he said, But for the grace of God, there I am. And how very, very true that is. And whenever somebody falls or someone gets caught and something happens in their life and you say, Oh, how tragic. Just you remember my dear friend, but by God's grace it could be you. The main trouble is in the heart. Apart from the grace and the mercy of God, any person in the gutter today, or in the penitentiary today, could be one of us. Now, to regard iniquity in your heart is to know that it is there and to do nothing about it.
Hebrews twelve one. The new birth is the starting point of the race. He's to lay aside every weight and every sin. Now I believe in the day in which this was written, I think what he's talking about, of course, back in those days, they had long flowing robes. And can you imagine how I would be to run a race with a long flowing robe on? I was telling you the other night, I think it was, that I ran with Gil Dodd three or four seconds once, and then I followed him. But you know, before he ran his race and even he was just practicing, of course, he put on a little, little, and real lightweight shoes. You could have probably put them all on a scale, and the whole thing wouldn't have weighed a pound and a half.
He laid aside everything that might hinder him in the race. That's what the Word of God is talking about in Hebrews. Now, we've got to hurry. What will sin do? Number one, it will divide. Genesis three, eight, what sin do in the garden? It divided Adam and Eve from God. So the first thing that sin does, it divides, it separates. Isaiah fifty-nine, one and two, behold, the Lord's hand is not short that it cannot save, neither is there so dull that it cannot hear, but your iniquities have made a separation between you and God and your sins have hid his face from you, so that he will not hear.
Aimus III says, Can two walk together except they be agreed? So sin divides. After David's sin, the music in his heart was not the same as it was before. He wrote in Psalm fifty-one, he praised the God, Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. So sin dries up away from God. Cain is another example of this. He tried to hide, but he couldn't. Jacob ran from God. The prodigal son ran away. It's hard to face the music when you've been involved with iniquity in your heart. When Peter denied his Lord, he ran out.
After Judas betrayed the Lord for thirty pieces of silver, he went out. In fact, he went out and he hung himself. Not only does sin drive us from God, but it does one's thinking. This word dull in the dictionary has a number of definitions, but one or two of them is mentally slow, stupid, lacking in sensitivity, unfeeling, and not sharp. Scripture says in Matthew twenty-four, twelve, and because iniquity shall abound, the love of men shall wax cold. Samson is a good example of this. You all know the story of Samson. We don't need to go into that. But Samson was deceived.
He was blinded by the devil, and he suffered greatly as a result of it. He thought that when the Philistines came upon him, he could get up and go with it other times. But the Scripture says a very sad thing, but a very smart thing. He wished not that the Spirit of God had gone from it. It's as though you had an axe and you tried to cut a tree down, but the handle, or rather the axe was gone. There was no power there. What about your life? What about your life? Do you still have the power of God in your life that you once had when you were a young Christian, you were just a new Christian, and you had your new vital faith in God and in Jesus Christ?
Do you still know the power on this sweetness? and the keenness for God that you knew when you were a young Christian. Is God speaking to someone today about the fact that you actually don't know the power and the sweetness of your first relationship, your first love with Jesus Christ right now as you knew one time in your life? Now we're not going to turn to it, but I want to suggest to you that when you get to get home today, you turn to Romans chapter one. And you read verses twenty-one, twenty-four, twenty-six, twenty-eight.
And you notice that when these things happen, it says, God gave them up. And then turn to Ephesians four, eighteen, nineteen, because I'm going to read that because I've typed it here in my notes. Being hardened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart, and they, having become chalice, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. When a man is under the influence of Satan's power, he does not have the ability to reason properly, does things he knows he shouldn't do.
This happens when a person is in a cold, backslidden state. He'll do things that are illogical. He'll do things that are stupid from a spiritual viewpoint because he's not being controlled by the power of the Holy Spirit, but by the power, sometimes yes, of the devil. The most terrible of all things that sin does is not only devise and drive from God, but it does. but it does the is of God so that God does not hear our prayers. Now, of all the things that sin and the life of the Christian does, this is the most tragic. Because, you see, if God cannot hear our prayers, we cannot receive the help that we need.
We cannot receive the answers to prayers that we need. And so until we come to that place in our heart and our lives where we are willing to relinquish that which is dividing us from God, we are hopeless and helpless to get any real help. Sin that is unconfessed and forsaken in the life of the believer causes him to waste his breath when he prays. Sin makes the Christian powerless and ineffective when he prays because God does not hear him. Now, I want to finish this point, and then we're going to take up tonight where we stop today.
Let me give you an illustration. I'm not really a great sailor. I've been so sick on ships that I was afraid I was going to live. I don't know whether any of you ever been that sick or not. Really, I mean that. I've been sick on a few planes, but I wouldn't even compare how sick I've been on some planes as when I was sick. And I wasn't even way out at sea, well, I was at one time on the Queen, the Queen Mary ring it was, yeah. The sickest I've ever been on a fishing boat just a few miles out.
But I'm not a good sailor at all. But I'm interested in some of the stories of the great ocean liners and how they sank and things like that. And I've always been interested in the story of the Titanic and how it sank. And I've read two or three books about it. I saw a movie they made about it. And there's one outstanding thing about the sinking of the Titanic. That's a fabulous illustration. As most of you know that knowing anything about the sinking of the Titanic, because it was very stupid in the first place, that they said, oh, well, she can't be sunk. They just went plowing onto the iceberg fields where they'd been reporting all day long little icebergs in the North Atlantic, and they just went plowing on in.
That was stupid, of course. But another tragic thing was that after the Titanic hit the icebergs, there were numbers of ships in that area in Anchor. They were quite capable of taking all the people that were on the Titanic, and they would have had time to get there and rescue them. But the tragedy was these ships had their radios turned off. And they called, and they called, and they called, but no one heard. And that's just the way it is when a Christian has been unconfessed sin in his life.
He knows about it, and he does nothing about it. God is a stop-dump, and he cannot hear. And the bad thing about it is that it doesn't always have to be some great, great, violent sin. Some fragrant sin. No. It can be some little sin, some petty little sin that you just won't give up. And the Bible says, God does not hear.
It divides, drives us away from God, it dulls us, yes. It deceives us, biggest deceiver in the world is the devil. But, worst of all, it does the is of God so that he will not hear. Now, tonight we'll review these main points and we'll tell you those three, four, five steps that are necessary to get back where God wants us to be and where God can use us. Father God, thank you for your word.
Thank you for its simplicity. Thank you for its exactness. Thank you for its clearness. Thank you that it's up to date. We look to the need to give us help today in our fellowship with others as we rest, as we play, as we eat, as we study, as we meditate, We pray that you would protect us from harm, provide our needs, and lead us and guide us throughout this day that our lives might bring glory to thyself in Jesus' name.
Amen. Now, tomorrow morning, the Lord willing, I'm going to do something that I didn't know I was going to do, but the more I thought about it and prayed about it, tomorrow morning I'm going to give them a testimony. Now, that's a very difficult thing to do. because it's hard to do it without using the personal pronoun, but you have to do it some. And then when you have known the Lord for as many years as I have, there's a lot of things you'd like to share, and I want you to pray with me that the Lord will help me weed out this and weed out this and just use what he can use in the time that we have tomorrow morning. And I don't want to go over time tomorrow because I got to go straight to the airport to pick up my sweetheart and get her back here in time maybe to eat lunch.
You pray that the Lord will help me to know what to use tomorrow. I'd like to tell you how the Lord led me to meet with people as we do here at Park of the Palm Bible Center, Chapel, and some of the interesting things. We'll laugh some and we'll cry some and have a good time tomorrow morning. See you tonight. Good night. Good day, I mean. Excuse me. Thank you. Thank you.
I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about.