To say that it's a joy to be here would be an understatement. This is about my sixth visit, Park of the Palms, third time on a conference capacity, and I've been looking forward to it for about a year now, perhaps even a little longer. Good to have one of our four sons with me, Jim. He's between schools. He'll be with us all week, and then on Wednesday the main one comes, Daddy. She'll be here about noon on a plane from Columbia. We'll meet her in Jacksonville, and then she'll be with us for the remainder of the conference. When I look around me, I don't know whether I'm in Baltimore, Buffalo, Rochester, New York, Detroit, Flint. Chicago or St. Louis or where? I feel like the black pastor who was pastoring a church and before his conversion he had been in trouble with the law and he spent a little time in the penitentiary, but none of his parishioners knew this and he didn't have any desire for him to know it. One morning he got up to preach and to his horror he looked in the rear of the church And a former cellmate of his in the penitentiary had just walked in. But he didn't know how to handle the situation because he just didn't want these people to know that he'd been in the penitentiary. And so he said, Brothers and sisters, my text today is from the book of Hezekiah. Chapter three, verse ten, I read, Them which sees me and knows me, please be quiet till the end of the service, and I will see you later. You know, I'm glad that as a Christian, you can have a merry, joyous heart. You know, the Scripture has a lot to say about that. In fact, you know, I think that makes a good message about the need of joy in the Christian life. The Word of God says, A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. One of the main things which drew me to the Lord Jesus, and I'm not going to give my testimony, I've given it many times here, but one of the main things that drew me to the Lord Jesus is a dear man of God that I met before I was saved. He was about the size and the height of our brother from Wheaton, and he was my philosophy professor at the University of Georgia. He had a big smile on his face and joy in his heart, and I was just a religious do-gooder, trying to work no way to heaven. And I saw the joy and the radiance and the happiness in Dr. William H. Reiton's life. And I said, I don't know what he has, but whatever he has, I want it. And it was because of that man's radiance and joy and peace and contentment in his heart and life that I really came to know the Lord Jesus. I'm glad that I can laugh and that I can smile and do it from the bottom of my heart because Jesus Christ has put joy and peace and happiness into my heart and life. Now, how would you like to come to a conference when they've already had eleven weeks of preaching? I'm not talking about come sitting in a pew. I'm talking stand up here. That's what I'm talking about. And some of them Well, all of them are very capable men, some of them whose shoelaces I'm not worthy to unloose. In fact, there are men out in the audience that can preach circles around the man in the pulpit today. I feel like a hummingbird trying to fill up an eagle's nest. That's right. But you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to forget all about that and just have a good time sharing with you what the Lord has given to me, most of it since I was here three years ago. I'm going to be giving some things to you. I've never given them before this week. The Lord has been speaking to my heart about some passages, and I've gotten so excited about them I can hardly wait to share them with you. So we're going to have a good time this week sharing from the Word of God. I'd like you to turn today. I'm not going to take a theme. I mean, not for the whole week. I'm going to share with you different truths and thoughts and challenges and exaltations that God has brought to my own heart. Turn to Philippians. I understand Brother Ramey spoke, I believe, four times from Philippians. And if I've ever met Brother Ramey, I don't think I have. I know who he is. I feel like I've known him, but I don't think I've ever met him. Talked to him on the phone once, had the joy of baptizing a young Jewish soldier one night in Columbia in a swimming pool, and he was going to Detroit. picked up the phone, called Brother Ramey when he was living in Detroit then, and introduced him to his new Hebrew Christian brother on the phone. And I understood, I understand he followed him up, and the young man went on well and sang to the Lord. But he spoke on Philippians, I believe, three, four, five times. But I'm not worried about giving you a lot that he gave you because there's a lot in the book of Philippians. But I'd like for us to thank today about three truths or three facts about the life of Paul that had a great deal to do with enabling God to use him the way God used him. Philippians chapter three, verse nine. Well, let's start with verse eight. We'll read through verse fourteen. Now, mine's a little different from some of yours. It's because I'm reading from the New American Standard. Verse eight, Philippians three. More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surprising value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in him not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. Then I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship with his sufferings, being conformed to his death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect. but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Our Father and our God, we look to thee now in the moments that we have left to give us something from thy word that will nourish and feed and challenge our hearts. In Jesus' name, amen. I'm sure that most of us do not need to be reminded of who Paul was and of his background. and of what he was. He was a prisoner, but he was a man that was being mightily used of the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the desires, or the main desire of the heart and the life of this man, Paul, Saul, who became Paul, was that he might know the living God. And I would remind you that those who lived in the first Christian century did not have at their disposal what you and I have that would assist us in growing as Christians. There's absolutely no excuse for any man today in the twentieth century at least who lives in the English-speaking world for not growing in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Even if you were bedridden, even if you couldn't get out to an assembly fellowship like this, with the availability of cassette tapes and things like that, there's no reason why no one shouldn't grow and grow and grow in the Word. We have the Word of God like this. Paul had nothing like this at his disposal. But there are certain characteristics and facets. and truths about the life of this man Paul, that enabled him to be the tremendous power and influence in his own day and, of course, on down to the day in which we live today. And one of the first things, there are three things, I'll tell you now, there are three things. One of the first characteristics that I want to mention that was characteristic of the life and the ministry of this man Paul. was the fact that he had a purpose. And his purpose was to know Jesus Christ. I like the motto of Columbia Bible College in Columbia, South Carolina, where we are from. To know him and to make him known. Benjamin Disraeli, the great Prime Minister of Great Britain, said this, The secret of success is consistency our purpose. Now one of the problems that many of the younger people in the day and the age in which we find ourselves today, one of the problems they have is that somehow or another they have not been motivated to have a real purpose in life, as some of us who are older had when we were coming along the way. And unless we have a real purpose in life, we will find that we will not accomplish much. in the life in which we're living. It is unfortunate sometimes, but you and I all have known people, many of them Christian people, godly people, who didn't seem to have any real drive in life or any real purpose in life. There is one thing a day and something else tomorrow. I know of a young lady. She used to work in our store, and I just got to thinking about it a few days ago when I was praying about this message. That young lady has been out of high school for over ten years, and she's held about... five or six or seven or eight different jobs. She doesn't seem to have any real purpose in life. D.L. Moody said, give me a man who says this one thing I do and not these fifty things I dabble in. He was always looking for the right man or woman who had one great purpose in life. And so one of the characteristics of this man Paul in was that he was a man with purpose. in his life. To know Christ, that I may know him. The New American Standard translates first James chapter one, verse eight, like this. Being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. And I think that this means sometimes that we have our inner is so divided, so many different things that we're interested in, we're not able really to centralize and to really hone in on any one single thing. That's why today we have specialists in a lot of fields. A man can accomplish more if he'll really specialize in one field and go into that and really learn it and know what he's talking about when you go to consult with it. Matthew six twenty-two. The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, your eye is clear. Your whole body will be full of light. Single-mindedness is so important in the Christian life. Now, let's think of a man who was single-mindedness, who had single-mindedness, who had a lot of purpose in his heart and life. You go back to the Old Testament to the book of Daniel, and you read about a man by the same name. A man by the name of Daniel. He purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with a meat which came from Kingston. So I say it is very, very important in the life, in the day and the age in which we live, as it was back in that day, to have a purpose in life. I was talking to a young man. In fact, I was just noticing in... Lutters of Interest or Interest Magazine. This morning I was reading for a few minutes an article by a young man who was on the convening committee of the Continental Congress on the Family, which it was my joy to attend in St. Louis this past October a year ago. And I was talking with a young man who rode with me from Columbia to St. Louis to that convention. And this young man had traveled all over the country. He'd been one of these guys just here today in Batamari, you know, just hitherto and yon. He was in the drug culture and so forth. But as a result of his drugs, he'd gotten in jail in Columbia. And fortunately for him, a fine group of students from Columbia Bible College came to teach and preach the gospel. And as a result of being in jail in Columbia, South Carolina, he found the Lord. And they followed him up, you know, and got him, found him a place to work and so forth. He was actually on his way back to southern Illinois to go back to be with his home there. I said, Mark, after you found the Lord, what was one of the main things which enabled you to stabilize yourself and get your feet on the ground and to overcome problems? your drug habit and so forth and so on. He said, Brother Hugh, apart from the fact that these Bible college students kept coming to see me and they kept my eyes in the Word and reading in the Word, he said, was it the fact that they taught me that I had the purpose in my heart that I was going to live for the Lord and that I was going to overcome these temptations that I had had? He said, but out of purpose, I couldn't have made. And so it is, whether it's a vocation, or whether it's an education, or whether it's resisting temptation, or whether it's going through for the Lord on this matter or that matter, unless you have a purpose, you might as well strike it. That I may know him. That was his purpose. Now, we can't get off into all the ways you can know him. We'll get that later in the week. That was his perk. That was the supreme desire that I may know him. Not about him, but him. By the way, there's a lot of difference. A lot of difference. That I may know him. All right, we've got to go. Got a little late start here today. Purpose is number one. The second thing is A-T-T-I-T-U-D. Attitude. Now, if you don't believe attitude is important, ask Al McGuire. Now, some of you may not know who he is. I see brother over here from over there. He knows who he is. All you people in the Midwest, you know who Al McGuire is. That guy is a psychologist from the beginning. He's taken his team all the way to the finals of the NCAA basketball. I sure am glad. We don't have a meeting that I have to go to tomorrow night. I'll tell you that right now. I may have to be excused tomorrow night, brother, from that little get-together you have. But here's a man, and he psyched his team up, and he gets them in an attitude that makes them almost mad. They have the kind of an attitude that enables him to go out there and do things they couldn't do in the night. In the Christian life, your attitude is very, very, very important. And of course, those of us who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, who are indwell by the Holy Spirit, we can have an attitude of faith. You see, Brother Ernest didn't know what I was going to preach on this morning, but the Holy Spirit used, so he had you to sing, faith is the victim. And just as important as having the right purpose in life is the right attitude in life. And unless you have Jesus Christ living in your heart and life, and unless the Holy Spirit of God is the dominant factor in your life in leading you and guiding you, you'll never have the right kind of attitude. We have a good illustration of this once again back in the Old Testament. Feel sorry for these people who don't have Old Testament. You know, I read about a church somewhere down in Florida. All they do is use the New Testament. I don't see how they can get to first base. In the Old Testament you have the supreme example, of course, of Caleb and Joshua, who went out to spy out the land. They went out with these ten other fellows. They saw the same armies. They saw the same grasshoppers. They saw the same fruit. They saw the same milk. They saw the same honey, they saw the same cities, they saw everything everybody else did. But there was one great difference. When they saw these things, they saw them through the eyes of faith. I never shall forget it. When I was about ready to graduate from the University of Georgia, I went up and spent a long weekend at Bob Jones College in Cleveland, Tennessee. And Dr. Bob got up in the pulpit on Friday morning. We went up there. I went with Aiden Stingland, who is now missing there in Paraguay. He got up on Friday morning to say, young people, I'm just going to talk to you a few minutes this morning. I want to talk to you about seeing things through God's glasses. And he mentioned every department in the college. He said, I want the professors in every department to see things through God's glasses. I don't remember what Jesse said. He said he's going to talk fifteen, but he went on for forty minutes. And it was good. But he got one thing across to me that it helps when you're looking to see everyone you see through God's glasses. And that's the way Caleb and Joshua saw it. And my, what a difference it makes when you're looking through God's glasses. Everything takes on a different look. outlook when you're seeing it through God's glasses. When you read this third chapter of Philippians, we don't have time now, but when you look at verse eleven, verse twelve, verse thirteen, and verse fourteen, you see this thing of seeing things with the eyes of faith, believe in God. It's good to be with Brother Jack and Ruth Gawley here this week. I remember a very wonderful time. I've been at home a number of the times up in Illinois, and I was there once on the occasion of the work of Congress. And I remember one of the Lord's servants. We went out to the airport to meet him, and he came back, and he was spending the night at the Gawley's, and we got to talking, and You know, preachers talk about preachers. I hate to say that, but they do. And we were not doing it disparagingly, but he happened to mention kind of disparagingly about one of my good preacher friends. And he happens to be a bachelor. He's still living, so it's not Alfred Gibbs. So get that out of your mind. All he needs is to get married. He's not asking. He just doesn't know what it'd be like to have a wife and a family and so forth and just come by trusting your Lord and being a good disciple and doing, oh, it's just not possible. Well, the scotch of the Irish or whatever it was in me kind of began to get wound up. I said, Brother, have you ever read The Life of George Miller? No. You ever read the life of James Hudson Taylor who started Chinatown on a mission? No. You ever read the life of Adnan Judson, the great missionary in India? No. You ever read the life of David Livingston, who went from Scotland to Africa, preached the gospel? No. The fire was building up as I went on. Here he hadn't even read any of these fellows. You ever read the life of Borden of Yale, who gave his fortune up To go out and serve the Lord? No. I said, Brother, you ought to get some of the lives of these great men who learned what it meant to trust God and to believe God to do the impossible and learn that God, the God that we're talking about and the God that our brother is preaching about that he encourages people to believe in is a practical God and that he can do the impossible whether you're married or whether you're not married. Whether you have a large family or whether you have a small family. Whether you have this problem or this problem, the God that we deal with is the God of the impossible. Then I think I even reminded him of Paul's little chorus. Very short little chorus. Oh, I know some people may not like it, but I love it because it's so very simple. And I found that the simple things are what people remember. If you'll notice the popular songs, songs that make it to the top of the chart. Did you ever notice that most of them are very, very simple? They said the same thing again and again and again. Very simple. Only believe. Only believe. All things are possible. Only believe. And all it is. You repeat the song once again. You sung the whole song. But you should have said a lot, doesn't it? Because now it's understood that you're believing in the living God. And it's understood that you're meeting the prerequisites that God has set down before he can answer your prayer. But Christian, let me tell you something. One of the key secrets and strategies of the devil is to get you to take your eyes off of the Lord and to put them on your problems and your difficulties and your heartbreaks and your hardships and your unpaid bills and your taxes. and this problem and this difficulty and this problem take your eyes off of the Lord and put them on what? You. And there are people in this audience right now, and you know good and well that the devil has done just that in your heart and life in the last week. He has one of victory in your heart and life because he's gotten you occupied with yourself and your problems and your difficulties and you've taken off of that glorious man in the glory who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask and think and when you're in that condition beloved God can't use you you've got to have your eyes and your thoughts and your confidence upon you and know that even though you see no way through that brick wall, the Lord is going to solve the problem. All things are possible. Paul's attitude was the attitude expressed in First Corinthians, fifteen, fifty-seven. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Or in Philippians four thirteen, I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me. Under Damascus Road, God had apprehended Saul, who later became Paul, and now Paul wanted to apprehend all that God had for him. So, beloved brother or sister, the attitude that you have toward what God is doing and is going to do in your heart and life is very, very important. The way you look at it is very important. I don't know where I've got this illustration. It doesn't matter. I heard it somewhere. A young lady fell in love with her childhood sweetheart, and they were married. They grew up in New York, and in his business, they were transferred to Arizona. Now, for some, that would be good for others to be bad. But she missed her people. She missed her mother. She missed her father. She missed her friend. And here the world, way out there in Arizona, every time she rode home, she was talking about, oh, how I miss New York. I'm not going to say that. Oh, how I miss New York. Oh, how I love to be back. And the father, finally, he was a very wise, smart man. He said, daughter, on a postal card. This must have been a long time ago, by the way, because it was a penny card. On a penny postal. He wrote it. He says, you know, it's just the way you look at it, daughter. He says, a lot of wonderful, beautiful things in Arizona, and you hadn't been looking for them. He says, you know, there were two men in a cell in a penitentiary on the fence, and they both looked out the same window. One of the men, all he could see was the bars in the window. But the other man saw a beautiful, beautiful flower bed. Try looking around Arizona. See how you like. But you know what she did? She bought her a camera. And she started taking pictures of some beautiful cactus flowers in Arizona. And she became one of the world's best known photographers. just because she started looking through a different set of gladness. And the way you look at life, when you know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, can make all the difference in the world. I'm certainly glad that Paul wasn't occupied with the bars or the dungeon or the soldier with whom he, to whom he was chained, except with an attitude of perhaps leading him to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is something in here that is actually not part of the message, but I want to drop it into your heart and leave it with you. It's in verse thirteen. It's in the middle of the verse. Forgetting what lies behind. I want to tell you, beloved brother and sister, and I'm preaching to myself, that one of the things you need to do as a Christian If you're going to be successful and if God is going to use you and make you a blessing to other people, one of the things that we all need to learn to do is to forget what's behind us. We need to learn to forget the wrongs that people have done to us. We need to learn to forget times when we have failed in our lives. We need to learn to forget some experiences that we have had though we're not good experiences, we wish they had never happened. We need to ask God to give us the ability, by His grace, to forget the things that are behind. A lot of people, they had great visions of doing certain things, maybe even for the Lord. And it didn't turn out just the way they thought it would turn out. And they are brokenhearted, and they are discouraged, and they are despondent, just because of what happened yesterday. The letter asked God to enable you to be a good getter. Somebody lets you down. Somebody said something about you. Someone said something about you that was not true. Someone took advantage of you. Someone stole from you, cheated you, robbed you of perhaps even your reputation. You harbored that thing and you've held it. and you held it, and you held it, and you held it. Beloved, ask God to forgive you the ability to forget it. Now, Paul had a lot of things to forget. Did you know Paul more than likely was a murderer? And I'm sure he had a problem with that. He held the clothes of those who stoned Stephen. He was a persecutor of the church. There were people that had been beaten and thrown into prison and perhaps killed because of Paul's persecution. You see, I believe Paul had the ability to practice what he preached. But yet all those things that are behind, all the sad experiences, all the failures, and reach for those things that are behind. The goal, the prize. And the last truth, because our time is up, is in verse fourteen. He says he presses on toward the goal. for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. I believe that if Apostle Paul was living, I think I know where he would have been last July. You know where he would have been? I think he'd have been in Montreal. I really did. He loved athletic competition. And in order to be a winner, you have to discipline yourself. And you have to press. And you have to work. And you have to plead. And you have to pay the price. And one reason a lot of people have never really made it in serving the Lord is because they were never really willing to pay the price. You go ask the young men that are in the finals of the NCAA basketball tournament. You could go talk to any of those young men. They'll tell you they have trained hours and hours and hours and hours. In nineteen forty-three or four, I had the privilege of meeting for the first time in Guild Odds. I saw him many times after that, around Wheaton and so forth. But in fact, I had the privilege of running with him for five seconds. And then I followed him. But you know, he trained. Then he trained. Then he trained. When I was at the University of Georgia, when I was a senior, we had a freshman of the name of Frankie Simpson. He became an all-American as a sophomore, which was very unusual back in those days. And I've seen many afternoons when the other boys would go to the showers, he'd still be down there on the south of the field learning to pass. Learning to pass. He trained. He trained. He worked. He worked. He trained. That's what Paul was talking about right here. He's talking about paying the price. He's talking about discipline your body and your mind so that you can press on toward the mark. The price of the high calling of God. Christ Jesus. You've got to be willing to pay the price. You're going to give anything in the Word to anybody else. You've got to dig into the Word. You've got to expose yourself to the Word. You've got to meditate in the Word. You've got to study the Word. You're going to have to keep yourself in good physical condition. You're going to have to learn that there are times when you have to deprive yourself of things that you and the flesh would like in order to put... God's body first. Last night, I would have loved to have been here, but I had a hard strenuous week, and I'd driven three hundred and eighty-five miles yesterday, and I didn't think it'd be honoring to the Lord for me to come to the last night because I knew my body needed the rest. You see, God doesn't give us the one body, beloved. He tells us not to defile, not to abuse it, but take care of it. So it's very important to have a purpose Very important to have the right attitude. Last but not least, it's very, very important in the Christian life and in any other aspect of life to be motivated. That's your third point. Motivated. And Paul's motivation was that he might press on to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. I'd like to say this. One of the most important things in the Christian life is to learn early in the Christian life, but it's not too late to learn it, even if you are as old as you are. And that could be fifty-six even, you know. I used to think I was old now. I think it's real young, you know. I've known some of these people in the audience for thirty-five years. And I was an adult when I first met them. Anyway, it's very, very important to learn in the Christian life to have priorities. And you're going to have to learn to put the priorities in the right order. I've had some people, pardon the personal reference, but I had a young man who was very active in our homeless family to come to me and say sharply, how in the world! And you do all you do. I said, well, Dave, I learned a long time ago to budget my time. And I learned to have priorities. And I learned to make a list at night of the things that need to be accomplished the next day. And he said, well, which one do you do first? Well, I do the one first that I think is the most important or that I'd rather not do. That's the way I do it. I put it in all of it. And the things that I put down, I don't want to do this one, but I put that first. And I go ahead and do it and get out of the way. Learn to budget your time and have priorities and ask yourself, is this what God wants me to spend my time on this? Hey. I heard about a professional artist. Some of you might know him. I don't know who he was, but he was in the Chicago area. And that bunch of them around there, some of them were Christians. And somebody called him up on the phone that said, listen, we need a sketch of a certain thing, and they told him on the phone what they wanted. We want to use it in advertising. We don't have a day or two to get it, aren't you, get it out for us and get it over here? The man did the sketch for him, sent it to him, and it was just what they wanted. Oh, man, they were thrilled, excited about it. This is better than even we thought. Everything was fine until they got the bill. The bill was for a thousand dollars. It took him twelve minutes to do the sketch. They said, well, man, that's really a wonderful sketch. It's really what we wanted. But isn't that kind of high? Oh, no. No. No. The thousand dollars is for knowing what to leave out. And in the Christian life, you know there's a lot of truth in it. There are a lot of things we do that are absolutely useless. We need to learn to have the right proper priorities in life. and to use our time and to use our mind and to use our hands and to use our feet and to use this body which is the temple of the Holy Spirit for that which will bring the most honor and the glory to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we close, let's ask the Lord to give us a purpose in life to know Jesus Christ. The right attitude to life, the attitude of knowing that God is going to bring it to pass and that we're going to believe in him to do that which is impossible with me. And then last but not least, let us be motivated by the desire to press on to the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Shall we pray? Father, thank you now for giving us help, for bringing to our attention some of these truths, some of which we never thought of before today. Seal it to our hearts and us to thy service. May this be a good day because we've lived it in the strength and the power of the Holy Spirit of God. In his name we pray. Amen.