For as Jesus is, in heaven's earth. You think people know what a pet peeve is, you know? Do you have something that kind of gets next to you sometimes? All right. I'm going to tell you what... You don't know what one of my pet peeves is. I'm going to tell you anyway. Go ahead, pal. One of my pet peeves are these gospel sings where ninety-nine and ninety-one-hundredth percent of the songs they sing is about when you get to heaven. I want to tell you why. That's a wrong emphasis on the Christian life. Because you see, I happen to believe the song we just sung. I remember riding into Vancouver, British Columbia one morning. on a steamboat from Victoria, and there was a young college student on there who thought he'd arrived because I thought he was in university. And I began to talk to him about the Lord, and he kind of made fun of heaven and hell and so forth. I said, young man, let me tell you something. If there were no such place as hell to shun, and if there were no such place as heaven to gain, I still want to be a Christian. because of the joy that Jesus Christ has brought to my heart in life right here and now. If you believe that, say amen. By the way, it doesn't hurt, it doesn't bother me if you say amen, you know, when I'm speaking. I think some people have probably dropped dead, you know, but I'm not that tight. I'm not that tight. And I have observed, in fact, I used to sell those records in my bookstore. I quit telling them. I don't have a one in my store right now. Because many of these people, they're giving the impression that when you become a Christian and you're saved, well, all you do is get a ticket to heaven and you're going to be happy when you get to heaven. It's not like that. You're going to be happy here if you know and love Jesus Christ. And the happiness you have here, well, that's just a little drop in the bucket. the way it's going to be when we're there with him. When we get to heaven, a bucket's going to run over. Several people didn't get any of the folders about the conference up at Lookout Mountain. They've all disappeared back there in the back, so I've got four or five with me. Hope that we're going to be able to meet some of you people up at the Believers Bible Conference at Covenant College on top of Lookout Mountain, the third week in July. Lord willing, my sweet wife, Dottie, will be with me and our two younger sons, Jimmy who is sixteen and Stevie who will be twelve in June and perhaps even one of our married sons and his wife if they can get off from school and from their work. Now the message tonight is going to be a little different. and that I'm not going to use as many passages of Scripture as I would like to. There are several reasons for it. One reason is the time. Another reason is the subject. Tonight, I'd like to speak about what it means to be filled with the Spirit of God. Now, a number of the things that I'm going to say I cannot take you to a particular place and point to a particular Scripture which might necessarily teach what I'm going to say, but I'll tell you what I am going to do. I'm going to tell you from experience, not only in my life, but in the life of many of the Lord's saints, of how this thing of being filled with the Spirit of God works in the life of individual Christians. You know, there are a lot of things that are taught in the Scripture by a general teaching upon a subject. And you can't just pinpoint them and put this, this, this, this. But you can see the entire picture of God's Word teaching a certain truth. Now, I've been enjoying this week some tapes that I have. I must remind myself, I got to mail them back tomorrow. It's a couple of days over to you already. And these tapes were made at a victorious life conference. in Dallas, Texas. You see, those of us who minister again and again from the pulpit, we don't get to be ministered to, like a lot of people do, because we are in the pulpit so often. And praise the Lord through the ministry of tapes and cassettes, we can be ministered to now. I mean, in addition to our personal Bible study. And so this week, I've been attending a victorious life conference held in Dallas. And I've been listening to men like Alan Redpath and Stephen Oldford and Stuart Briscoe and Alan Fleece and others. And I've heard numbers of messages on the victorious life. But I'll tell you a little secret. If the Lord denies what it gets through to you on what it really means and what is involved in being filled with the Spirit, you'll have the victorious life. You see, the victorious life is wrapped up in the person that I've been talking about all week long, the Lord Jesus Christ. And when the right emphasis is placed upon God our Father and God the Son and God the Spirit in the Christian life, you will live the victorious Christian life. Not in your own strength, but in the strength and the power of the living God. Can you imagine, thirty, forty, fifty thousand people being over at Cape Kennedy ready for a launch of a titan missile, and everyone has their eyes glued upon that missile, and they begin to count down And find when they get to ten, everybody hollers ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, flask off. And nothing happens. There'd be red faces all the way from Houston to Washington by gate ten. All the power... available. But something goes wrong. I'll tell you something that's worse than that. And that's to recognize that the power of the living God, the power of the Holy Spirit of God, that the request of the Trinity is available for every believer in all of its fullness, in all of its power. And very, very few Christians avail themselves to this power. which is theirs but for the receiving." A lot of Christians are like the dry bones mentioned in Ezekiel thirty-seven, have finures, flesh, skin, but no breath, no life. A lot of Christians are like the young man we read about in Second Kings chapter six. He borrowed an axe. And while he was using the axe, the head of the axe came off. The love is you can't do any cutting without the axe. And this is one of the tragedies of much of the great pogroms and some of the great major denominations today. There's a lot of movement, a lot of activity, a lot of action. But unless the Spirit of God is upon it, there's no real permanent blackness. Why does a Christian need to be filled with his Spirit? Now let me say this, so I won't get tagged for heresy, because I'd like to come back sometime. As soon as you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, by faith you are in wealth. with the Spirit of God. Now, I'm sure that all of us believe that tonight. We all agreed on that. We might part paths a little later. But I'm sure that all of us agree and admit that as soon as we are converted, as soon as we place our faith in Christ and say, I do trust in you to forgive me of my sins, my faith I trust in you, the Spirit of God comes to indwell our hearts and our lives. Now what happens after that depends upon how much of us the Holy Spirit has. We need to be filled for every part of the Christian life. I'm afraid that many of the Lord's people especially maybe some who do not minister from pulpits and in the word and so forth, seem to think that it's important for Billy Graham to be filled and it's important for Lester Wilson to be filled and it's important for Dan Stanton to be filled and it's important for someone else to be filled and it's important for Jack Wilson to be filled and so forth and so on. But, oh, well, after all, I just teach a Sunday school class. Oh, well, after all, I just teach a little class of boys and girls. Oh, after all, I just have a little minister of giving out Christ. It's just as important for one member of the body of Christ to be filled as it is for another. Because you see, beloved, unless what you do as a Christian is led of the Spirit of God, you're talking about some goose. We can open our mouths and put both feet in them if we work apart from the Spirit of God. We need to be filled if we're going to serve the Lord. If we're going to try to produce the fruit of the Spirit of God, we need to be filled with the Spirit of God. And so what are the conditions for being filled? By the way, it won't bother me if you take notes. I know it's few people taking notes. I remember hearing Mr. Howard Hendricks, who I have already referred to several times this week, tell about a man who was a graduate of MIT. And he used to come to a Bible class that he had in Fort Worth, a Bible class of executives from several airlines and missile factories and so forth in the Fort Worth Dallas area. The man had been coming six or seven months, and he was just kind of a ordinary Joe, you know. He came to the class. He enjoyed it. He'd see you'd be getting quite a bit out of the class, and finally one day he had some coffee with this fellow. He says, well, I'm saying you went to MIT, yes. You graduated with honor, yes, yes, yes. Well, I imagine you took quite a number of notes while you were at MIT. Oh, yeah. Notebook after notebook after notebook of notes. Man, I reckon it did you a lot of good. Oh, I never could have passed with them unless I've taken notes. Henrich said, Well, listen now, Joe, did it ever occur to you that you could take notes in this Bible class? Hey, say, you know what I thought of that. And the next day or the next time they met, he came with a clipboard and a pen. Notes, notes, notes, notes. And as soon as the class was over, he was up to, Hey, say, what do you mean about this? What about this? What about this? It transformed you. It can revolutionize your spiritual life. Take notes and then study it. You get home and you find out whether the preacher was right or wrong. All right. We need to be filled. We need to be filled. What are the conditions? Number one. Number one. In order to be filled with the Spirit of God, first of all, you must know Jesus Christ experimentally. You must know that He is your Savior and your Lord. You must have received Him by faith into your heart. Now we have been commanded to be filled. And in such a familiar verse, most of us know it by heart. Be not drunk with wine. That's the command. And oh, there are a lot of people who preach about that. And it's all right. A Christian shouldn't be drunk with wine. Where is it said? But be filled with a spirit. Now, some of you may have one of the translations which translates that very wisely, I think. And be ye continually being filled with a spirit. By the way, if anybody has an ASV translation of the Bible, I'd like to use it tomorrow morning. Anybody with lonely ones? Appreciate it very much. Be ye filled continually with the Spirit. All right. Number one, we must know Christ. Number two, we must confess and forsake all known sins. If our God's iniquity in my heart, some The Lord will not hear me. Now, beloved, if God can't hear me, I'm wasting my breath to ask him to fill me. All right? How do we go about it? You know, I think Christians ought to be practical and down to earth, just like anybody else. So if I need to be cleansed from my sin, if I need to confess my sin, if I need to get things right with the Lord, how would I go about it? Well, I think the first thing I do is I get alone somewhere. I find me a quiet place, private. And I tell the Lord, I wanted him to reveal to me those things that are in my life that shouldn't be there. and I'd like for him to reveal to me the things that are not in my life that should be there. And as the Holy Spirit of God revealed these things to me, I'd get me a sheet of paper and a pen. And as the Holy Spirit of God revealed them to me, I would write them down. And as the Holy Spirit of God revealed them to me and I wrote them down, I would stop and I'd pause and I'd consent that sin to God. Now I want to remind you, beloved, a lot of Christians make light and almost ignore a lot of little things that they call mistakes and failures and weaknesses. I think if there's sin, we ought to call them sin. For example, a sin of omission is played with and left alone and ignored can bring about a tragic sin of commission. Let me give you examples. One of the greatest sins of the day in which we live is a neglect of the word of God. Now God has said in his words, study to show thyself. This is like a man. study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. And if I neglect God's word, and I'm careless about reading it and studying it and meditating upon it and memorizing it, if I neglect God's word sooner or later, I'm going to be doing those things that are wrong. because this book will either keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book. And so, if I have been careless about God's word, if I've allowed the devil to make me think that I was too busy to spend twenty, thirty, forty, fifty minutes a day in the book, and I've been neglecting the word of God, I should say, God, I've neglected your word, that's a sin, I'm sorry, I want you to forgive me. And the word of God says, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we confess. Now some of you, here's where you're going to part company with me, some of you. The Bible says if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. Now, how do we commit sins? All at once, all in a group, or one at a time? One at a time. All right? If I've neglected God's word, I should say, Lord, I've neglected your word. In other words, what I'm trying to say is this. I don't say, Lord, I failed you. I sin. Forgive me. No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about putting your finger on it and telling the Lord and ask the Lord to forgive you if I have been uncharitable towards others. If I've gone for it. If I've been unloving. If I've been jealous. If I've been covetous. I'm to tell the Lord I've been covetous. If I've been lustful, if I've been proud, I'm to tell the Lord I've been lustful and I've been proud. And as I tell him, and as I confess, I am forgiven. I think one of the things that a lot of Christians need to confess to the Lord, is the fact that their hearts are actually, honestly cold toward God. If my love toward my wife was as cold sometimes, and sometimes I believe my love toward God is, I think that my marriage relationship would be in a bad state. And so then if our love has grown cold, And we don't love His Word, we don't love Him, and we don't enjoy being with Him as we once did. What is that? That sin we should confess. And so we should confess our lack of love to God. We should confess our neglect of the Word of God. We should confess our unbelief. Well, now what do you mean by unbelief? Well, I mean very simply that God tells us in his word that he'll take care of us. And yet we don't believe that and we go around worrying, worrying, worrying about what's going to happen. What's that? That's sin. We're too busy to pray. We don't spend much time in prayer. What's that? Neglecting what we've been commanded to do, to pray. That's a sin. Some of us need to confess neglecting to assemble ourselves together. Some of us are very careless about caring for our brethren. People are sick. People are in need. And we let little things keep us from doing what we should for them in the name of the Lord. That's a sin. I know of a lot of mothers and fathers that are going to have to give an account when they get to the judgment seat about how careless they've been about bringing that children up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. That's a sin. Sins of commission, whirliness, pride, envy, bitter spirit, holding a grudge, slander, gossiping, lying, cheating, a temper that's uncontrollable, a spirit of malice, intolerance, self-centeredness. He said, brother, few. You mean Christians have these? Well, I'll tell you one thing. If they don't, Paul should have wasted a lot of pages back in here in some of the epistles. You just read them. Ephesians four and five, two or three of these books, these pages back in the epistles. He talks a lot about this. And in Corinthians you read a lot about some of the sins and the lies of the Christians. All right. So I've made my list. I've been along with the Lord. And I said, now, Lord, I want to be honest with you. Oh, by the way, when you think you're about truth, you really get honest with yourself. You just get in the start. And you confess them one by one. And by the way, don't forget, believe what the Lord said. He said, I will forgive. If you confess them, just remember, he has forgiven you. And you don't have to keep running back every five minutes. Now, Lord, remember, forgive me of this. No. He said he would, he's done it. All right, I confess my sins, and then I forsake them. On the basis of Isaiah fifty-five, seven, let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man is false, and the Lord will abundantly pardon. I confess them, and I forsake them. Now what's the next step? Next step is very simple. but it's not all that easy sometimes. I yield my heart, my life, my body, and all that I have to the power of the living God. In other words, I commit my life to him. I said, no, Lord Jesus, my life is not my own. It belongs to you. And I take this body, which is yours, I take this mind, these eyes, these hands, these feet, everything that I have is yours, and I now give it back to you. I yield it to you. Some people would call that a total surrender. Doesn't matter what you call it, as long as you give everything you have to the Lord. And then, I believe the Lord to completely, I'm going to use a different word now, Notice this. I believe the Lord to completely dominate and control my every action. You see, being filled with the Spirit is nothing more or less than God's Holy Spirit completely dominating and controlling me. One of the best illustrations I've ever heard of this was given by my good friend and brother, who now teaches at Emmaus Bible School, Bill Anderson. Bill Anderson was in the Navy, and the ship that he was stationed on was in Norfolk, and Virginia Hill, I believe was her name, lived in Newport News. And in order for him to see Virginia Hill two or three nights a week, he had to get off of the ship, get a taxi, then a bus, then a streetcar, ride a ferry across the harbor, and then get another streetcar in circles, and so on. And after about an hour and a half, he got there. And then he spent an hour and a half or two hours with us, and he used the same process to get back about midnight. He said that whether he was with Virginia Hill or whether he was at work in the ship or whether he was riding a taxi or the bus or the ferry or whatever it was to get there, all he thought about was Virginia Hill. He said, Virginia Hill dominated everything that he did. That's the way it is when you're filled with the Holy Spirit of God. The work and the person of God and His Son, Jesus Christ, dominates everything that you do. Everything that you do is for him and for him alone. It may be to drive a steak in the ground. It may be to cut a potato open. It may be to cook a meal. It may be to clean a floor. But everything you do is for one purpose and one cause. And that's to bring honor and glory to the one that you love, the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want to say one thing before I close in telling you what being filled with do in your life. We are not filled with a spirit by crying loudly and longly in a place of prayer, with all due respect to our dear friends who believe this. No, you don't have to cry loudly or longly or make a lot of noise. Right there in that pew, very simply and humbly, You can say, Lord Jesus, as best I know how, I yield my heart, my life, my body, my soul, all that I have to you and to your control, and I want you to take charge of my life. And God's Holy Spirit can take control of your life. What are the evidences of being filled? And one of them, I don't have this in my notes, but I want to give it right now, even though I might touch on it. One of the most beautiful things that you'll ever see happen, you'll see a lot of times in the morning meeting when we meet in the person of the Lord, in the name of the Lord, to remember him. I've seen, I've been in meetings where the Holy Spirit of God really had freedom. And I've seen one brother get up and give out a hymn, now get this, in the spirit. And I know Brother John has seen this many times. And that hymn might be about the name of Jesus. Or it might be about the sufferings of Jesus. Or it might be about the cause. And throughout the rest of that meeting, every hymn, every verse of Scripture, every class, every word followed that theme. That's what the Spirit of God can do when He has His way. I'll tell you something else the Spirit of God will do when the Spirit of God is in control. And I sense the Spirit of God here this week. I've seen the Spirit, and by the way, as I've already suggested, if death is important for the song leader and the pianist and the organist and the man that makes the announcement to be in the spirit, as it is for the man who does the preaching. Pardon this personal illustration. Some of you people are from Michigan. I love Michigan. I've had some great times there, especially back in the forties and the early fifties. Five times on the third Saturday night in February in a row, I had the privilege of speaking in Grand Rapids Youth for Christ. It wasn't planned that way. It's just one of those little innocent coincidences. And I remember one night we went to the big Calvary church. And I was introduced to the song leader, twenty-five, thirty minutes before the rally began, and we got together, and I said, Now, what's up? You usually have about forty minutes of preliminaries, yes, yes, yes. I said, just before I speak, I want you to have all the people to stand and sing a little chorus and let them stretch. All right, that's good. And so they had the preliminaries, and a little bit before I was to take over, they had a dear black brother by the name of Tinsley and his wife to sing. He's the man that wrote nothing between my soul and the Savior. And she was down at the piano and he was in the pulpit. And they sang that old Negro spiritual, Jesus will fix it for you. He knows just what to do when he comes to you, let him have his way. And Jesus will fix it. Now, it didn't sound like Belshazzar singing or anybody like it or with your own minds, but I'll tell you one thing. That man knew the one he was singing about. And his sweet wife, down at the piano, she knew the one they were singing about, and they were singing in the spirit. And you could tell that God's Holy Spirit was permeating that audience. He was preparing the audience for the message of the hour. And I said to myself, Oh, I wish I hadn't told that young man to have that chorus. We don't need a chorus now. Oh, we need just a short little word from the word, and I give an invitation. Oh, I wish I could get to him and stop him from having those people stand up and sing that chorus. But as soon as he took his seat, the man singing took his seat, the young song reader was in the pulpit, and I said, Oh, oh. But you see, the same one that was talking to me was talking to him. And he said, Friends, we plan to have you stand and sing a chorus, but we just want you to stay in your seats and bow your heads and sing that little chorus that I'm sure we all know. Spirit of the living God fall fresh on me. And I got up and spoke. And I don't believe I spoke over eighteen or twenty minutes. I just gave a little gospel, just a little gospel plan of salvation. And then we gave the invitation. Young people from all over that audience came without any pressure, without any exerted pressure of begging or pleading. I don't believe in it. But they came. And they went back to the choir room and they were dealt with. I'll never forget that service as long as I live, because I could see God's Holy Spirit preeminent and it worked in that night because those who took part on the preliminary part of the program was being dealt with and worked with and led and anointed and indeed with power, the same power that the Word of God was going to be preached in. Now, that's one of the evidences. That's one of the results of being filled with the Spirit. So, when you're filled with the Spirit, you'll have courage to witness. Now, God doesn't make all of us alike. Praise the Lord. Now, wouldn't it have been funny if he'd have made Lily here with the same personality he made carried? Wouldn't that be something? God doesn't do that. He makes us all different. Some of us are quiet. Some of us are quiet. outwardly boisterous and extroverts. But I tell you a little secret. I've seen people who were real shy and reticent and real slow and needy and very reticent to witness for the Lord. And I've seen them when the Lord got a hold of them. And when he anointed them and when he filled them with his Spirit. And I've seen them have the boldness, the witness that they didn't have before. Now, don't misunderstand me. God did not change their personality. They were still meek and a little shy, but in their own sweet way, they had the power and the boldness that they needed by God's Holy Spirit to be a witness for Jesus Christ. I've seen this happen a number of times. Twenty-six times in the book of Acts, we read where these disciples, though were very, very careful, the whole Pentecost, we read where they spake boldly the word of the Lord. All right. The first evidence then? Courage to witness. The second evidence? You say, well, how may I know when I've been filled? The second one is this, very, very simple thing. You've been filled with the Spirit. People won't have to have a magnifying glass when they look at you to tell if you have been. You know why? Because you'll be producing the fruit. Now, during the fruit season, if you go down to central Florida where they have a lot of fruit, you walk out into the orange grove, you won't have any trouble finding out which tree is the orange tree. You know why? Well, I certainly have oranges on it. You won't have any trouble finding out which tree is the tangerine tree. You know why? It'll have tangerines on it. And when a Christian is filled with the Spirit of God, they will manifest and evidence the fruit of the Spirit. It's as simple as that. Love, joy. You know, some Christians, I see some Christians, and when I look at them, you know, it kind of makes me discouraged. Because they seem not to be happy that they are on the way to heaven. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such, there is no law. And so it is very simple. To fill with the Spirit, you will be manifesting and producing the fruit of the Spirit. The verse here in John I want to share with you. I'm sure that all of you know it by heart. How be it when he, the spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth. For he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he will show you things to come. Now what I like about this verse is the middle part, for he shall not speak of himself. Now you want me to tell you something that scares me? I'm going to tell you what scares me. It's when I meet some Christians, or I hear a Christian preaching, or I hear him on the radio perhaps, and he keeps talking about the Spirit, the Spirit, the Spirit, the Spirit, the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and he's not making much of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because you see, when he When he has come, he'll not speak of himself, but of him that's seen him. And whenever you hear a man preach, whether it's at Park and the Palms or Boca Raton or Greenwood Hills or Believer's Bible Conference or Yosemite or wherever it is, or in your church or assembly back home, whenever you hear a man preach, if he's filled with the Spirit of God, you won't have to worry about what he'll preach about. because he'll make much of the man Christ Jesus. He'll not speak of himself, he'll speak of the Lord Jesus. First Thessalonians, one, five. First Thessalonians, one, five. For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance. As you know what manner of men we were among you, for your sake. Courage the witness, the fruit of the Spirit. Christ will have first place. He'll be honored. He'll be glorified. And last but not least, power in the life of the servant of the Lord. First Corinthians, two-fourths. First Corinthians, two-fourths. Very similar to what we've just read. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and the Spirit. of power. It's not a matter of whether a man's been to seminary or Bible school or not. It's not a matter of how much education he has, and I don't misunderstand me. I think it's very fine if a man can get an education. It's not a matter of where a man's been so much as it is who is in the man. I might say that I think that one of the prime prerequisites for being filled with the Spirit is to realize before we get started that we of ourselves have nothing good in us. And that without God and without the Holy Spirit of God in our lives, we will strike out every time. And whether it's to give a testimony in the county jail or the prison farm or to preach to the great audience, you'll strike out every time in the power of the flesh. You remember the illustration I gave when I stood in this pulpit last night after our sister had sung for us and we got there reminiscing a little bit about one on the lake. And I told you last night of how these people, they said, Oh, well, we won't have many people come forward tonight because Billy Graham was not preaching. Then I told you how God honored the preaching of our brother, Tara Johnson, I believe it was, and how young people were literally streaming down the aisles to get to the inquiry room to make that profession of faith in Christ. Pardon this personal illustration, I'll close with this. One of the most caring things that can happen to a young preacher is to be called on unexpectedly. Now I'm sure that most everybody that's ever preached has had this experience. I remember one time I was visiting with Jack Worcester and we'd gone to hear Glenn Wagner speak in a large church in New Jersey, North Jersey. And there wasn't any room, there wasn't any seats left. So we went to another church. And we got out there and we went in and we thought we'd slip in and nobody would see us. Maybe get us a new sermon. And the man was a good friend of Jack's, and he recognized Jack's right away. He said, well, I see Jack works and he said tonight. He said, I want Jack to come up and speak for us. I said, well, that's good. I get to hear Jack preach again. He said, No, he said, I'm kind of tired. Russell says, I've got a young man here from South Carolina who says, I'd like to have him come up and preach. How'd you like to try that one on the side? Well, I'll tell you one worse than that. And I give the law of the glory. Back when I was still the Methodist preacher in Memphis, Tennessee, I was twenty-four years of age. And before we were married, I could get away a little easier then. A young sailor boy that we learned to love and know in Memphis when he was at Millington Naval Air Station had been transferred to Norman, Oklahoma, and he was going to a big, huge, independent Bible church. And he didn't know me very well, and he thought I could preach. So he told the preacher that I just had to have, they just had to have shocked a few out to hold a youth crusade. So they rented a huge tent. and put this huge tin up right next to the church in a vacant lot. And so they invited me out to preach for two weeks in the Youth Crusade. And they did a lot of promotion and praying and planning, and they had good crowds and good music, and the Lord was good to us. And so the pastor of this Bible church was a wonderful Bible teacher. And I figured, well, then on Sunday he'll have his regular services, you know, in the church, and man, I'll just get food, you know. I'll get all steamed up and I'll get me a new sermon or two. I usually want to go back to Memphis. And so they had the regular services, you know, in the church, next door to the tent, and they had the announcements, and they had the songs, and I had them a little notebook about ready, you know, to start giving me some new notes for a sermon. And the pastor got up and said, Now, friends, it's been a joy to have the youth crusade in progress this week, and they'll be continuing next week. And now we all are waiting for the message which the Lord has given to us through our brother Sharks at you. Well, I want to tell you one thing. The message I gave had to be from the Lord. It couldn't have been from me. because I had been looking forward to receiving from this man, from the Lord through this man. And I will tell you, from that seat where I was sitting to the pulpit, I did a lot of prayer. And after we got in the pulpit, I said, Brother and Sister, I think we ought to have prayer. And we had prayer again. And we prayed. And in spite of my confusion and nervousness and everything else, the Lord use the word of God. Now, the secret, and I say this as simply as I know how, is being constantly in touch with the Spirit of God by daily communion and fellowship with the Lord. And by keeping Short accounts with the Lord. Now what is a short account? I want to tell you what it is. The very first time you say one little curse, unkind words, or you get the least little bit pity, and something doesn't go just the way you thought it ought to go. You know what that is? That's the flesh. Now you know what you ought to do? You think you ought to wait to get back home to confess that to the Lord? No. Fight then. Lord, that was of the flesh. That was of the devil, Lord. And I'm sorry. And I shouldn't have thought that about that, brother. I shouldn't have been teased. I shouldn't have been missed at him. I shouldn't have gotten disgusted, Lord. Forgive me. Instant confession. instant restoration. Keep short accounts of the Lord, and you can walk day by day in the fullness of the Spirit, and you can sing every day and every night where Jesus is, his heaven there. Shall we pray? Our Father, we are so thankful tonight that what we have been talking about is not available just to a select few. But we thank thee that the life of the fullness of the Spirit of God, a life of yieldedness and surrender, and of complete totalitarian dedication is a life that is available this very moment to every man and woman in this August. Now, Father, we pray that you'd help the people to forget all the things that were not important, not necessary, and help them to remember the things that are of God. But above all, may we be constantly available for your Spirit's guidance and empowerment, and, yea, thy cleansing. We thank you for what you're going to do. Bless us as we come back tomorrow night and tomorrow morning. As we come tomorrow night particularly to consider what is a New Testament church, we look to you and we thank you in advance for what you're going to do. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you. Oh, oh, oh.