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A number of people have asked me about my schedule of preaching and teaching. I should explain that I teach missionaries in mid-career at the School of World Mission. You've heard of Church Growth, School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary. Sometimes I'll have a bishop in my class. It's an exhilarating experience to talk to mature people who've been on the field for twenty or even thirty years. That's one job. I also direct a summer session at Oxford, dealing with evangelical revivals. But then, I spent a lot of time in research, researching these movements of the Spirit of God about which nobody has written.
Some people know very little about any revival except what they read about in Finney, and Finney died over a hundred years ago. But I have another side to ministry, and that is a mission to the academic community. I love preaching to university students and on college campuses. You say, what kind of ministry? Now, I have a friend, in fact, he's a very famous man, and he's visiting the Fuller campus this week, but he would begin his lecture by saying, the ontological argument for the existence of deity is now relegated to the limbo of obscurity. That goes right over their heads.
I prefer to talk in a different way. I was talking to a lady in Tashkent, the capital of the Republic of Uzbekistan. And she said, well, I'm not so foolish as to say that science contradicts the idea of God, but science explains everything, and that makes the idea of God superfluous. After all, if you can explain it, what do you need of God? I said to her, well, it's true that science explains many things that uneducated people attribute to God. When I was a little boy of four, I heard the thunder roll, and I thought God was moving his furniture upstairs.
I don't hold that view today. Why? Well, I started in a kindergarten after that, and as you get educated, you don't put forth such silly ideas. But does science explain everything? You come into my kitchen and you say, why is the kettle boiling? So I reply, the kettle is boiling because the combustion of the gas transfers heat to the bottom of the kettle, which, being a good conductor, transfers it to the water. The molecules of water become more and more agitated. They spin around, they make a singing noise, they give off water in the form of steam, and that is why the kettle is boiling.
Then my wife comes into the kitchen, and you say, Mrs. Orr, why is the kettle boiling? And she says, because I'm going to make you a cup of tea. Now, when you think that through, I didn't tell you why the kettle is boiling. I told you how the kettle was boiling. And the more you think about it, the more you realize science doesn't tell us the why of anything, only the how. For instance, when water freezes, it expands into ice and floats on the top. Go to a physicist and say, why?
He'd say, I'm not here to tell you why. That's the way it does. Science can't tell us why, only how. Therefore, when people say science explains everything, science really explains nothing when it comes to the real reason for things. You have to turn to philosophy, which is man's idea, or divine revelation. Now, I like to talk to students along those lines. They're simple enough. I don't think I went over anyone's head just now, did I? I didn't have to speak about the ontological argument for the existence of deity.
I put it into your language. I was speaking at an international students banquet when a Japanese girl raised her hand. Sir, isn't one man's idea of God just good as another man's idea of God? Well, I'd heard that often enough. I said, I have to answer your question by asking one. I was married in Africa more than forty years ago. What do you think my wife looks like? She said, I don't know. I said, well, have a guess. She was unwilling to guess. She knew that in North Africa there are millions of Arabs. In South Africa there are millions of Europeans. In Central Africa there are Pygmies.
West Africa, Negroes. East Africa, Bantu-speaking people. So she suspected a trap, so she said, I- I- I don't know. I said, come on now, I'm not going to grade you. What do you think my wife looks like? So I said, I have a guess. She decided to play it safe. Is she brunette? A majority of the women in the world are brunette. So I said, what else? Dark eyes? I said, what else? Short? I said, what do you mean short? Well, she's shorter than you are.
She's still playing it safe because most men marry someone slightly shorter, most men. I said, you're sure of this? No, she said, I was guessing. I turned to another fellow, I said, what do you think my wife looks like? Well, he'd just be different. I'll say she's blonde, blue-eyed, same size as you. Are you sure of this? No, he's I'm guessing. I asked another fellow, and I said, now can we get together in this? Do we all agree that her idea is no better than his idea? What he says is no more important than what he says? And we all agreed. So far, I was supporting the girl's question. Now I turned back to the Japanese girl, I said, would you like me to tell you what my wife looks like?
She said, please, you've made me curious now. As her parents were Norwegian. She's a natural blonde. She has gray blue eyes, but she spent eighteen years in the African sun, so she has freckles. She's five foot five in her stocking feet. She weighs one hundred and twenty-five pounds, one hundred and thirty-five pounds, which is only ten pounds heavier than the day she was married. As a matter of fact, the day we were married, we were both one hundred and twenty five, so we took turns carrying each other over the threshold. Now I said to the Japanese girl, would you say that your idea is just as good as my idea, and what I said is no more important than what he said?
She said, that's not fair. I said, what's not fair? Well, she said, we were guessing. I said, what about me? Am I not allowed to guess? She said, you weren't guessing, you, you, you were informing us. And what gave me that right? She said, because you know. Exactly. The prophets of old didn't say there must be somebody upstairs that likes me. They're a little more definite than that. Ezekiel said, the word of the Lord came unto me the second time. Moses said, God spoke these words. This is what we call divine. They spoke because they knew. Now, you're not compelled to believe them, but at least admit they were not guessing. But Jesus Christ was a little different.
He was the highest revelation of God. You notice he never said, thus saith the Lord. That was the highest thing a prophet could say. Why did he not say, thus saith the Lord? Because he is the Lord. He said, verily, verily, I say unto you. And we have a revelation of God. Now we had dialogue. Now, I don't suggest that you should get out of your depths and bluff that you know everything. But you're going to be asked serious questions by other young people. There are answers to many of those questions. So I've written little books to help people like that.
One, got it here, hundred Questions About God, published by Regal Books, that's Gospel Light Press. They've gone more than hundred thousand already. And then a companion book, I was going to call it a hundred Questions About Morality, you know, about, uh, situation ethics, about all sorts of things like that, extramarital sex, whatnot. They called it Candid Questions About Morality. So I went along, I was talking to the managing director of Gospelite Press, and I said, I'm going to Chuck Smith's place, up to their conference. Can you give me a bargain in books because some of the students there probably want them.
These two little books at, I think it's two twenty five each, but, um, the bookstore is letting you have them at a dollar, but only now. I mean, you walk into a bookstore, you won't get them for a dollar. So I just thought I'd mention, if you're interested in that type of ministry, simplifying these problems, you go to the bookstore. Now, there's one other thing, people ask me questions, where can I get a book that covers all these great revivals that you dealt with in that film? Well, I don't have a book, really, that, in fact, I'm hoping to start on a book interpreting all that I've been researching. Most of the other books, since I've published about eight this past five years, deal with certain aspects, like either the revival of seventeen ninety two, eighteen fifty eight, nineteen hundred and five, or all the revivals in Eastern Asia, or all the revivals in Africa or Latin America, and so forth.
But there's one book that does cover the field, but from the point of view of student revivals, deals with the general revivals, but particularly with the student revivals, all the way from the Holy Club at Oxford, in which John Wesley was commissioned, really, right to the Asbury College revival in nineteen seventy. The book was published in nineteen seventy one, so it doesn't go beyond nineteen seventy, but it deals with all the phenomenal student awakenings. And, uh, that book also was published by the same firm, and if you're interested, you can have it at a bargain price. I think it's over three dollars, but you can have it. I saw the price put in the bookstore, it's one seventy five. I just mentioned those because people are going to come up and ask me other questions about where to get them.
If you're interested, that's only for now, because you can't walk into a bookstore and say, I want this at half price. They won't give you at half price. Now, would you pray for me? I explained, uh, to Brother Paul and Brother Chuck that, uh, for a year now, I haven't been able to publish any research or conduct any missions to the academic community because I've been busy rescuing a missionary society with three hundred missionaries. The founder is eighty years of age and just wouldn't let go, and the accounts were in such a mess that if the board hadn't intervened, the Internal Revenue Service would have been down on them, and, uh, I hate to even imagine what might have happened to this old man.
So we've been straightening out a missionary society, and it's since I have to be in Hong Kong for a board meeting the week before Easter, an international board meeting. I- I'm vice president of the organization, but next Monday I have to be up in a court case in San Francisco where some- somebody's trying to rip off the organization that's in distress. I wish you'd pray with me that the Lord lift this load. The only way it can be done is if you can find someone to take over the organization that we have straightened out. The auditor says our accounts are straight now. Thank God for that. That means if we are examined, things will be in the clear. But I would like to get back to my work. I love my work. I love preaching to students, and I love lecturing on the works of God.
And I love also teaching a little bit of popular doctrine. That's what I did in the last series with you, and that's what I'm going to do now. Pardon? Let's find prayer then. Lord, we pray thee for this mission situation that thou wilt help us get the whole work straightened out. Not only that, but if it be thy will for the mission to continue, to raise up the right personnel to carry it on, to lighten the load from us. And if it be thy will that the work should not continue, give us wisdom in merging with another organization or distributing the assets to other work doing the same kind of thing.
Now, Lord, we pray thee, lift the load soon, for Jesus' sake. Amen. Now I'm going to ask questions, and I want you to be free to ask questions, but I put you on the spot, only if the question deals with the subject, and only if you're asking for information. Please don't ask a question to give yourself the opportunity to show that you know the answer. You say, well, you're going to apply that to yourself. Well, that's a little different. The teacher is allowed to, to ask rhetorical questions. I remember my son came back, my younger son David came back from school.
He said, my teacher's dumb. Always asking a lot of questions, you say. My teacher sure is dumb. Well, I don't know all the answers. In fact, you'll guess from the way I teach that I got the answers by asking questions, but then I keep them in my mind, improve them if they need improving. So I want to begin dealing with a very difficult subject, one that has divided Protestant Christians for centuries. I was speaking in the Queensland Bible Institute in Brisbane in Australia, and I said, what is sanctification?
A girl raised her hand, just sanctification is moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, growth in grace. I said, thank you. I said, any other definition? A young man got up, I could see he was going to contradict her, and he said, sanctification is the deeper blessing. I said, thank you. Any other definition? A young man stood with a great Scofield Bible under his arm, and thus fortified, he said, every believer is sanctified.
And in one minute I'd heard three apparently contradictory definitions of sanctification. I want to deal with that. But did you notice when I spoke about confession of sin, I spoke about acts of sin. In other words, when you lose your temper and say things you're sorry for, what do you do? Well, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins. But if you find that you're in bondage to bad temper, it's a continuing bad habit, what do you do? That's what I want to talk about. Now, I'm Irish by birth. What are the Irish noted for? Good humor and bad temper.
And I had my share of both. I remember trying to commit suicide at the age of eleven. You say, what put you in such a rage? Mother thrashed me. My father died when I was nine. Mother had to be father and mother. She thrashed me. I thought they don't appreciate me around here. I'll go and throw myself in the river. In my imagination, I could see the headlines in the Belfast Telegraph. Boy's body found in river, home difficulties, and I thought they won't treat me like that again. So I went down to the river to commit suicide.
It was all over some trivial little affair. Mother thrashed me for taking two pennies out of her purse and buying a box of matches and trying to set fire to two other boys. So I went down to the river to commit suicide, but the water was too cold. Sometimes I tell people in the States here, it's a regular thing for people to end it all off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, but nobody ever commits suicide in Lake Superior at Duluth.
In July, the temperature of the water is thirty four degrees. So I didn't commit suicide after all, but I had a bad temper. But I thought I was a Christian with a bad temper, the way some Christians have arthritis or migraine headaches. I didn't realize God could deal with my problem. And that's part of what I want to talk to you about. I'm going to use the overhead projector, and, uh, we're going to deal with some definitions first. First question is, what does it mean to be justified?
Raise your hand before you reply. Anyone? You've heard the word before? Yes, declared just, but now you've really repeated the question, the answer there. What does it mean to be just then? To be brought into right standing with God. I'm a little surprised that I haven't heard the usual answer I get. Justified means justified, never sinned. That's a pun. I don't mind the occasional pun. I remember asking my Sunday school teacher in Ireland, who were the Sadducees?
He said the Sadducees were a Jewish sect. They didn't believe in the resurrection of the body or the coming of the Lord, and that's why they were sad, you see. I've never forgotten that. It wasn't very profound, but it stuck in my mind. We just got back from Singapore, driving across the straits, and coming into Arizona, we turned on the radio in the car, and we heard Brother Norheim. It's a Lutheran radio broadcaster from Montana. And just as we turned on the radio, he says, as Brother Edwin Orr says, why were they called Sadducees? Well, he gave the answer, that's why they were sad, you see.
And we all laughed. So it stuck in my mind, and apparently sticks other people's minds. All right then, justified means when God looks at me, he sees me just if I never sinned. It means to be counted righteous, counted blameless, from the negative point of view, acquitted, exonerated. It's a wonderful thing. Now, justificate, I spoke to you on forgiveness. It's more than forgiveness. Way back thirty years ago, I was driving along California Boulevard in Pasadena. I came to a stop sign at the corner of Allen Boulevard.
Now they have a traffic signal, but then it was a stop sign. I stopped, turned left, driving up Allen Boulevard. With me was the Reverend Armand Geswine, a good friend of Chuck Smith and Paul Smith. Now, at that time, before the traffic signal, there generally was a traffic policeman hiding under the pepper trees there. And as I drove north on Allen Boulevard, in the reflection of my mirror, I saw this motorcycle policeman coming rapidly in my direction. I said to Armin Gesman, who's he chasing? He looked back. He said, you're the only one on the street.
And sure enough, he pulled me over. Pull over there, bud. I pulled over, I parked my car, he parked his cycle, walked back. Now I was driving a car with Illinois license plates. I just moved out from Glenellen. But this, it's not an offense to drive a car with Illinois license plates, providing you just don't keep on doing it. You don't do it year after year. I wondered what was wrong. He said, Mister, do you have stop signs back in Illinois? I thought, what a dumb question.
Imagine a cop that doesn't know you have stop signs in Illinois, you know? But, um, I didn't say that to him. I just said, yes, sir. Mister, he said, when you see a stop sign back in Illinois, do you stop? I thought, that's a dumb question too. I said, yes. Then he said, why didn't you stop back there? Yes, I did. I mean, I think I did. I mean, I hope I did. I mean, did I? He said, you put your foot in the brake, but you didn't stop rolling. Show me your driver's license. Mercifully, it was issued in Chicago. He looked at it and he said, well, I see you are a bona fide visitor to our fair state.
We'll forgive you this time. California traffic cops are often considerate to out-of-state visitors. In Illinois, they say, there's a California plate, let's give them a ticket. Because California drivers have a reputation. So he forgave me. I drove on. I was forgiven, but I was not justified. Do you know how I know? Because Gaswine looked back and he said, ha, he's following you. I was on probation. When I came to the corner of San Pasqual, I stopped, and I let him see me stop.
And then I drove on. Now, justification is more than forgiveness. It's a wonderful thing when God forgives our sins, but when he justifies us, he not only forgives us, he treats us as if we'd never sinned in the first place. There was a Captain Alfred Dreyfus, eighteen ninety four, arrested by the French military police, sent to prison for life on false charges. After he served seven years on Devil's Island, the worst prison in the world, the case was retried because of new evidence. They discovered there'd been a terrible miscarriage of justice.
It caused the fall of the French government. The president of France issued a pardon, but Captain Dreyfus wasn't satisfied. He said, let them give me back my rank of captain and all my back pay. And they did, because he had been justified, exonerated. You say, well, that I see, but how does it apply to me? I know I'm guilty. How does God exonerate me? That's part of the mystery of the atonement. All we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his own way, but the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
If someone in Calvary Chapel got in trouble with the police, the judge threw the book at him and said, all right, four thousand dollar fine or a month in jail. And Chuck Smith doesn't want to see the boy go to prison, so he takes up a private collection in the congregation, goes down and pays the fine. The moment the fine is paid, the boy goes free. Christ paid the penalty for my sin. But note, I have to accept it. There was a case in American history where Andrew Jackson issued a pardon to a man in prison waiting the sentence of death for murder, and the man was such a bad-tempered rascal that he cursed Andrew Jackson, told him what to do with his pardon.
That had never happened before, but it was ruled by the Supreme Court. Then there's nothing to do but to carry out the sentence. That's why forgiveness must be accepted. Justification is more than forgiveness. Supposing, for instance, back home, you go home after church, and the neighbors, somebody says there's a burglar in your house. Apprehensively, you go in. Sure enough, things, drawers have been torn out, and... but then you find a very amusing but alarming situation. The burglar has locked himself in the bathroom and can't get the thing undone.
He's caught. So you, you get him. But you find he's a transient, and he hasn't worked for some time. In fact, he was hungry. So instead of calling the police, you put him up for the night, take him to church on Sunday, take him downtown, get him a job on Monday. He so gratefully comes for Sunday dinner every day at your place, every Sunday at your place, and finally marries your sister. Wouldn't that be wonderful treatment for a burglar? Well, that's the way God treats us. Not only forgives us, but he says, now you're one of the family. That's justification.
Any question on that, or do you understand me? Now, what is sanctification? What does it mean to be sanctified, will someone tell me? That's right, to be set apart. I don't know any good pun on this. It doesn't mean to be set aside, it doesn't mean to be shelved or abandoned, but to be set apart. The word sanctified means to be set apart, and, uh, by the way, the word is used in scripture negatively as well as positively. The children of Israel did set themselves, did sanctify themselves to do evil.
That was like saying hell's angels set themselves out to wreck the town of Hollister. To shock you, do you know that the word for a male prostitute in the Old Testament is a sanctified one? I suppose, you know the way we say he's one of those when we want to speak of a certain lifestyle? In the Old Testament scripture, a male prostitute was called a sanctified one, mean dedicated to prostitution. So the word can be used negatively.
Did you know that Leonid Brezhnev is sanctified? He's a dedicated communist. That's what the word means, dedicated. But the way we're using it means sanctified to God. That's the only way we're dealing with it now. Now, what does it really mean to be set apart? Sometimes I ask the question, the first response I get is people say it means to be cleansed. That's implied, but that's not the meaning. Just as justification is more than forgiveness, sanctification is more than cleansing. Many years ago, I came home late one evening.
My wife didn't know when to expect me. She'd gone out shopping. I was too tired to cook for myself, too hungry to wait till she came back, so I said to my eleven-year-old daughter, how would you like to make supper for your daddy? She was pleased. This was the first time she'd ever been asked to cook. She had just learned something of cookery in junior high. Of course, I knew what I would get. Meatballs. That was the first lesson, meatballs. She put the pan on. She put a knife on the table, she put a fork on the table, then she put a plate on the table.
I lowered my newspaper. I said, take that plate away. She said, what's wrong with that plate, daddy? I said, that's the cat's plate. I'm not going to eat off the cat's plate. She said, but I washed it. I said, I don't care if you washed it a hundred times. That plate was sanctified unto the cat. You see the point? Cleansing is beside the point. I remember I had a quartet sing for me. Four nice young fellows singing, and there they were just standing in front of the communion table.
And one of the fellows, quite unthinkingly, sat on the communion table. I said, get off that table. People won't like it. A communion table is sanctified for a certain purpose, set apart. Now that's what it means. When you're sanctified, you're set apart for God. It doesn't mean you can't have fun. It doesn't mean you can't have entertainment. It doesn't mean you can't have sport. But it means you can't have sin and expect God to use you too. That's sanctification.
Now, because you're, some of you, training for the ministry, perhaps I should deal very briefly with the controversy over the word sanctification. Remember what I said to you about the Queensland Bible Institute, three schools of thought, the girl who said moment by moment growth and grace, the fellow who said the deeper blessing, and the other boy who said every believer is sanctified. I was so puzzled that I decided to study the word sanctification.
Now, sometimes when I say, what does it mean to be sanctified? Someone will say, to be made holy. That's answering the question with the question, because sanctified means to be made holy. To be made holy means sanctified. Sanctified is the Latin form, holy is the Anglo-Saxon form. The Greek word is the word hagios. So I took the word hagios in all its forms and studied it for myself, and I found that sometimes the word is used for moment by moment growth and grace. And sometimes it's used for a commitment. And sometimes it's used for every believer. There were three cubbyholes to drop the references into.
Now I've divided them into three: positional sanctification, critical sanctification, and progressive sanctification. What do we mean by positional sanctification? That's the idea that every believer is sanctified. That's it, it's pos- his position. Any scripture for this? Of course there is. The introduction to the First Corinthian letter, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, Socrates, our brother, to the church at Corinth, sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints. Now, the Roman Catholic Church uses the word saint only for a very special type of person. In fact, there have to be miracles worked in his name after his death.
The Roman Catholic Church, according to its definition, has no living saints. You say, what about Mother Teresa? Oh, she's a saint, all right, but not according to their definition. If ever she becomes a saint, it won't be until she's dead, and then it'll have to have a devil's advocate to find out if there's anything wrong in her life, and so forth. So I'm not going to deal with the Roman Catholic side. But every believer, according to scripture, is a saint. You're not your own, you're bought with a price. Even if you're only two weeks converted, you're a saint. It means a sanctified one, a set apart person. You belong to God. Now, this has been stressed by a great theologian, long since dead, John Nelson Darby.
You've never heard of him. Well, you've never heard of him, but, um, if you've ever seen a Scofield Bible, you know what the teaching of John Nelson Darby is, because the Scofield Bible is ninety nine and forty four, one hundred percent John Nelson Darby. Scofield popularized Darby's teaching, and Darby emphasized the position, the privilege of the believer. For instance, I have listened carefully, with benefit, to Chuck Smith speaking on Ephesians, one of my favorite epistles. But the Apostle Paul keeps on speaking about the privilege of the believer in Christ. That's positional sanctification, all right.
But I heard Dr. Harry Ironside, pastor of the great Moody Church in Chicago, say once, every time the Bible speaks about a believer's privilege, it adds something about his responsibility. You'll find, I think it's the fourth chapter in Ephesians, I, Paul, a prisoner of the Lord, beg you to walk worthy of the calling with which you're called. The trouble with some who emphasize the privilege of the believer, they forget his responsibility. The Los Angeles police found a young fellow lying in the gutter, drunk. They locked him up, went through his pockets to see who he was, found he was the son of a millionaire in New York. They notified the New York police.
The father telegraphed the money for his flight home. What was the position of the young man? Born to privilege, born with a silver spoon in his mouth. What was his condition? Just like a penniless bum. He wasn't living up to his position. So when we speak of our position in Christ, let's always remember about our condition. But let's not forget the scripture does teach that every last believer who's born again is sanctified positionally, or if you like to use the word, theoretically. Now we take the word critical.
I was speaking in a Free Methodist church. The Free Methodists, like the Nazarenes, talk a lot about sanctification. So I said, what do we mean by critical sanctification? There's dead silence. I'd never heard it that way. Then a lady raised her hand rather tentatively, and she said, critical sanctification? Does that mean those people that get sanctified and go around criticizing everybody? I said, no, no, I don't mean critical of criticism, but critical of crisis. In other words, there's a turning point in the Christian life subsequent to conversion. Now, conversion is a turning point, but there's a turning point in the Christian life subsequent to conversion. You say, well, is there any scripture for this?
Oh, yes. I'll quote the verse that helped change my life. twelve years after I was converted. Romans twelve and one: I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. There's that word holy. That means sanctified. You said, is that a crisis? Couldn't that be moment by moment? You know, each morning you get up after your devotion, you say, Lord, I'm ready today. No, no. The tense there for present is the aorist infinitive. There isn't time this morning to deal with all the finest, fine esses of the Greek text, but the erist infinitive is the most pointed of the tenses.
It means an act rather than a process. And in Romans twelve and one, I say this without any fear of contradiction, it literally says, I beseech you therefore, brethren, well, I'll quote the C. B. Williams translation that goes into these tenses, to make a decisive dedication of your whole personality to God. Note, decisive. Now, have you noticed one thing about American evangelical Christianity is when they have a campaign, they have so many conversions and so many rededications. Why do we have so many rededications? What happens to these people? Well, I remember when I was a young Christian, I attended the Christian Endeavor meetings, and we used to have a consecration service once a month, and we who were members were expected to say, I've failed Christ many times, but he's never failed me, so tonight I want to rededicate my life to the Lord, reconsecrate.
That was called a consecration meeting. I did that, and I meant it too, but I didn't give up my sin. I was holding on to Christ with one hand, holding on to my sin with the other. I've talked to people, for instance, who have told me that they were s- enslaved to drugs. They tell me they really want to serve the Lord, but I always try to find out, do you get to the place where you just hate the very thought of drug addiction? You hate it. You're ashamed that you were ever in it. Because there are some Christians go around bragging about it. They seem to think that because they were addicted to drugs, they're some kind of hero.
Of course, I can't think of a greater stupidity than taking drugs. You know, we all know what it does to people, yet people do it. But we've got to get to the place where we don't hold on to it anymore, even in thought. We just hate the thing. I used to get up and say, I consecrate my life afresh. But if you'd say, well, what about this? Not for instance, my bad temper. I'd say, well, nobody's perfect. You see? It didn't dawn on me at first that God could deal with that. That's critical sanctification. Who taught this? Another John, John Wesley. I don't need to tell you who John Wesley was. Any weakness in this?
Oh yes. There are some dear people in the holiness movement think that if they have had an experience of entire sanctification. You say, is that a scriptural? Oh yes, it is sanctify you wholly, W-H-O-L-L-Y. That's in the scripture. They've come to a place of total commitment that they're set for the rest of their days. A man came up to me in the Church of the Open Door, and he said, Mr. Rohr, you look at me. I was gloriously sanctified seventeen years ago, and I haven't committed a single sin since. Now, how do you argue with that? I didn't know the guy.
But I said, are you married? Well, he said, that's not a sin. I said, I didn't say it was, but are you married? Yes. I said, is your wife here? Yes, he said, that's my wife over there. So I called her over. I said, look, man, I don't want to be too personal, but would you agree with your husband that for seventeen years he hasn't committed any kind of sin whatsoever? She said, no, sir. I left the two of them arguing. The thing is this, if anyone has reached that kind of perfection, it's strange. I've never met anyone else that seemed to recognize it. For instance, one of the s- most spiritual women of my acquaintance, who was a member of my preaching team for two years was Corrie ten Boom.
There's a saint if ever there was a saint. But she would be the last to say she was perfect. In fact, if you read her story, she'll say, tell you how she apologized for getting cross with somebody, you know, that sort of thing. See, here's another doctrine in scripture, but... there's another side to it, the danger. Now, what about the growth in grace? That's a third emphasis. John Calvin. I mentioned three Johns. You can remember John Darby, John Wesley, John Calvin. Positional, critical, progressive. Now, Baptists and Presbyterians, oh, and quite a lot of other people, teach that sanctification is just growing in grace.
Is that in scripture? Oh, yes. I mentioned Romans twelve and one. How about Romans twelve and two? Be not conformed to this world, but rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That word transformed is not aorist infinitive. It's a continued tense. Be transformed again and again and again and again. By the way, that word renewing of your mind is a cognate for repentance. Now, the word repentance means change of thinking, but renewing of your mind means you go back to what you did before. You renew what you said before. In other words, you have to continue to put things right in your life. Therefore, that's growth in grace.
Any weakness to this doctrine? Oh, yes. I find among the Baptists and Presbyterians and others, some of them think that this is automatic. I used to travel a great deal with the gospel, I'd come back, and my sons would say, Dad, I grew an inch while you were away. I said, let's see now. I would go to the kitchen door and then put a ruler on their head and mark it up. Oh, they're three quarters of an inch. Yes, I expected that. If my boys didn't grow, I'd be worried. But does a Christian grow like that? Would you dare say that every day of your life you've grown a little bit? Oh no. You've marked time, and sometimes you've shrunk a little bit.
What conditions Christian growth? Obedience. If you don't obey, you don't grow. The trouble is, sometimes you can grow in one department. I remember in seminary, there was a fellow used to put the whole student body to shame by telling how he gave out tracts in Union Station in the old days to a captive audience. He was the greatest tract distributor we had ever heard of. We were simply amazed at his zeal. That fellow was dropped from seminary on moral charges. He was growing as far as giving out tracts was concerned, but he wasn't growing in his personality before God.
So you say, all right then, or what school of thought do you belong to? Darby, Wesley, or Calvin? Quite cheerfully, I say I belong to all three schools. I believe the moment a man's born again, he's set apart for God. He's sanctified. He's a saint. But he ought to be concern- concerned with his condition. So I believe with John Wesley that there is a commitment in the Christian life. Only thing is this, even the denominations that oppose this teaching, if you find out anyone that God's greatly using, you find that he had a crisis of commitment in his Christian life when he said, Lord, you can have all there is of me. And then I believe with John Calvin, you can grow in grace, but you must obey.
Now that's the difficult part of my talk. I want you to think it over. I hope you can understand it. Now I want to come to the practical side, but to give you a breather, perhaps, um, an awful lot of people have had an experience with God, but haven't thought it through. That's why I want to give this heavier emphasis today. Now, if you'll turn with me to the Epistle to the Romans? What would you say is the subject of the first three chapters?
I'll give you a clue. The key verse is Romans three twenty three. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. What would you say is the, in a, in a, in a couple of words, is the subject? Raise your hand to reply. What? The old nature. The old nature. What's the old nature? Man's guilt. Man's guilt. What were you going to say? Man's need. I would say, to sum it up, old nature, man's guilt, the subject of the first three chapters is the guilt of sin. The first chapter tells us how terrible sin is in the sight of God.
Then the apostle says, all the Gentiles are sinners. Then he says the Jews are sinners too, even though they have the word of God. And he sums it up, all. Every last man born into this world faces the problem of the guilt of sin. That's the problem. Now, we've already talked about what's the answer to the problem. You'll find it Romans four and five. Key verse is Romans five one: m Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Every last person is guilty. Now, remember we talked about guilt. What's the answer to the problem? To be exonerated, to be acquitted, to be counted blameless, to be considered righteous. The answer is justification by faith. But notice by faith. What about works? I was speaking at a Jesuit university once in Santa Clara. I was asked, does your Protestant Bible say that faith without works is dead? I said, let's not talk about Protestant Bible.
There's only one Bible. There are different versions. But I said the Douay version, the Roman Catholic version, also speaks in the same way, yes. It says very clearly, faith without works is dead. Well, then aren't we saved by two things and not just by one? Aren't we saved by faith and by works? Well, it's not really two things. It's really one thing. We don't understand. Well, I said, we're saved by the faith that works. They still didn't get me, so I said, now look, my next door neighbors are devout Roman Catholics. We heard that they wanted to go to a wedding in Mexico, but they couldn't go because they had a little tiny baby.
So my wife said, just leave the baby with us. We'll take care of the baby. You go off to the other children, enjoy yourselves. They said, oh no, Mrs. Or, we don't want to impose on you. She says, there's no imposition. Don't you trust me? I've raised mine, I can raise you, take care of yours for a few days. Just leave the baby's formula and everything, and I'll take care of the baby. So we had a little squalling baby for a week or so. Now I said to my Roman Catholic friends, that was good works, wasn't it? They agreed. I said, Mrs. Orr didn't do that because she thought that what Christ did on the cross was only ninety two and a half percent effective, so that she had to make up seven and a half percent good works to get by.
No, she felt what Christ did on the cross was a hundred percent effective. She was just glad to do the good works to please the Lord. But really, the emphasis of scripture is the brother of our Lord James said, what does it profit if a man says he has faith and have not works? It means you can talk all you like about faith, but if it doesn't work out, it's not real faith. That's what it means. So faith without works is dead. Now, how then does a man rise from the low level of sin to the high level of justification? By feelings, by works, or by faith? The answer is by faith.
What about the works? They follow the faith. What about the feelings? They follow the faith and the works. If you live on your feelings, you're not going to get very far. So I'll put on this answer to our problem. You all follow? First three chapters deal with the problem of the guilt of sin. The next two chapters deal with justification, which takes care of the problem. Now I'm going to ask you a blunt question. Why did the Apostle Paul take the trouble to write this to the Christians at Rome?
In the first chapter, he says, I thank my God that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. Now, Chuck Smith referred yesterday to Oswald Smith in Toronto. I was his associate pastor at one time. That's the greatest missionary church in the world. Supports three hundred missionaries. If I wrote to Paul Smith, Paul Brainerd Smith, present pastor of that church, and said, I thank my God for you all that your missionary Siegel has spoken of throughout the world. What would you derive from that? Would you decide that People's Church Toronto is below average, average, or above average in missionary giving?
You just have to say above average. Then what do you think of the church at Rome when he says, I thank my God your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world? Were they below average, average, or above average? Above average. Then why do you write and explain to them what justification by faith meant when they were all justified by faith? I think there's a very simple reason. He was recapitulating, setting up a schema, setting up an outline to show them that just as you were born with a problem of the guilt of sin, and God took care of it by justification, now you've got another problem, the power of sin in your life, and God can take care of that by sanctification.
Because Romans six and seven deal with the problem of the power of sin. Romans chapter six and seven. It begins in Romans chapter six: What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. That's the King James. The Revised Standard says, shall we continue in sin that grace may be greater? By no means. Then in the Phillips translation, it says, shall we sin to our heart's content and so exploit the grace of God? What a ghastly thought.
That's an Englishman's expression. My wife said to me, what word could be translated God forbid, by no means, and what a ghastly thought? I mean, how did one word mean all those three things? Well, actually, it's a very simple explanation. You know that the word amen, we often say amen, but it's amen, it's not Greek, it's Aramaic, which was a sister language to Hebrew. The language our Lord spoke at home, talking to his mother. The word amen means so let it be. May it be so. Certainly.
Sure enough. What do you know? Amen is assent. You agree. Now, there is an Aramaic word with the very opposite meaning, chalila. It means by no means. God forbid. When Peter said, when the Lord said he was going to the cross, far be it from thee, Lord, he just used one word, chalila. May it never be so. That's the word here. That's the sense of the word. What shall we say? Shall we just keep on sinning? Chalila. May it never be so. Yet that's what we do.
I told you about the man who hadn't sinned for seventeen years, but I could make it even more devastating by saying, is there anyone here who would dare tell me that since the day of your conversion, you haven't committed any sin? You'll have to say, oh no, I, I know I've sinned. Well, what shall we say then? Shall we just keep on sinning that God will forgive us some more? Supposing Sears Roebuck in San Bernardino put an advertisement in the paper that on the first of September nineteen eighty, to commemorate an anniversary, Sears Roebuck and company are prepared to forgive every outstanding debt against the firm. That would be good news for some little widow whose husband had died and left her not enough money to pay the bills.
But what do you think would happen between now and the first of September? Tom, Dick, and Harry would go to Sam's U-Drive and get a truck. They would order everything they could get their hands on, and they'd use the magic words, charge it, because if you're going to be forgiven on the first of September, you might as well run up a big bill. Some Christians are like that. Perhaps the most violent example is Rasputin. He taught the ladies at the court of Russia, taking the verse, whoever's forgiven much loveth much.
The best way to enjoy the love of God is to sin plenty, have God forgive you plenty, and then you really enjoy your salvation. That's antinomianism. That's the word for it in theology. There are lots of Christians. Well, actually, what happens in most cases, and you just think of your own experience, a fellow gets converted. Why? It's a new life. He- he's got a new Freemasonry, all these brothers and sisters, now boy, what have I been missing? And after about six months, he notices some do things he thinks they shouldn't do. So he said, well, why does he get away with that? Somebody said, well, there's nobody perfect. After a while, he finds he's doing things he knows he shouldn't do.
We face the problem of the power of sin in our lives. The old habits of the past life still linger, and that's the problem of every last person born again into the church, the problem of the power of sin. Now, there are some people may disagree with me regarding Romans six and seven, I heard a Baptist minister in Melbourne preach an excellent sermon on Romans chapter seven. He applied it to the unconverted. But I think if you analyze Romans chapter seven, it applies to the believer. Take four verses. I think it's Romans seven fifteen.
For I do not understand my own actions. I do not do what I want, I do the very thing I hate. In the King James version, it's obscure. That which I would, I do not. How do you would not do? It's old-fashioned English. I do not understand my own actions. I don't do what I want, I do the very thing I hate. Romans seven nineteen. I don't do the good I want, the evil I don't want to do is what I end up doing. Romans seven twenty two. Yet in my heart of hearts, I want to please God.
Romans seven twenty four, Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? Here's a person, knows what's right, doesn't always do it. Knows what's wrong, sometimes does it. Yet in his heart of hearts, he wants to please God, and the whole struggle gets him down. Now, is that a believer or an unbeliever? I'll take, for instance, the unbeliever. He knows what's right, doesn't always do it. It's okay. He knows what's wrong, sometimes does it. That's okay. But in his heart of hearts, he wants to please God.
He does not. If he did, he'd take the first step and repent and be converted, but he hasn't done that yet. He's not trying to please God. That's the believer. And it's the believer who can say that the struggle gets him down. The unbeliever enjoys his sin. He knows he's gonna, he's going to have a hangover, but it, that's part of the price he's paying for having a good time on Saturday night, as he calls it. But he enjoys his sin. I'm going to ask another question. Do you know anyone in Southern California?
Now, I'm not speaking of somebody you bumped into in the supermarket, but someone you could speak for. Do you know anyone in Southern California these points apply to? He knows what's right, doesn't always do it, knows what's wrong, sometimes does it, yet in his heart of hearts wants to please God, and the struggle gets him down. If you can think of anyone, would you raise your hand? Who? Well, I'm glad you're honest. I asked this question once in Coimbatore in India, and a little Indian woman spoke up and says, my husband, she said. No, if the cap fits, let's wear it. So I think you'll have to agree with me.
Romans chapter seven describes a believer under the law, in defeat, in the flesh, in discouragement. Romans chapter six gives us a clue to the answer. I think it's Romans six fourteen. It says, sin shall not have dominion over you. Now what's this? Well, Jesus said, whoever commits sin is the slave of sin. And the Apostle Peter said, whatever overcomes a man to that, he's enslaved. We talk about a man being a slave to drugs, a slave to drink, a slave to lust, a slave to temper.
But this verse says you don't need to be a slave. Sin shall not boss you around anymore. You're not under law, you're under grace. You may say, now what does that mean? You're not under law, you're under grace. But what does it mean? You're not under law. I was preaching in the Moody Church in Chicago when three gangsters came in and stole the collection. They got away. But if they'd been apprehended, do you think, for instance, one of them could have told the judge, honest, your honest, your honor, I didn't know it was wrong to rob a church.
They knew all right. But the law didn't help them. You see signs on the road, speed limit fifty five, So everyone does less than fifty five. Have you noticed that? Every lot. No, no, that's the law. But it doesn't compel you to keep the law. There's no help in the law. The law is only a warning. But it says you're not under law, you're under. What does that mean? Well, it's very simple. There's enough grace in Jesus Christ to help you. I have a good friend who founded the Slavic Gospel Mission, Peter Denica. And he told us that he emigrated from Russia to the United States in nineteen fourteen.
His mother said, Peter, we don't have enough money to give you for meals on the journey, but we'll give you a basket of sandwiches, and that will keep you going until you meet your uncle in Chicago. For two days and nights on the transcontinental train, he had nothing to eat but bread and cheese. Bread and cheese for breakfast, bread and cheese for lunch, bread and cheese for afternoon tea. For supper, he changed it around. He had cheese and bread. He got tired of it. The cheese was getting moldy, and the bread was dry. But he was excited. The ship left the Baltic port. He'd never been on the ship before, bound for the promised land.
America was the promised land to the immigrant. He heard the gong sound, and he saw the passengers troop into the dining saloon. He smelled the good food cooking, but he thought he couldn't afford it. So he went up to the top deck among the lifeboats and ate his bread and cheese in misery by himself. But he thought, well, it won't last forever. I'm bound for the promised land. But three days out of Halifax, it was wintertime, he couldn't take it anymore. He went to the cook and he said, please let me work. Please give me something to eat. The cook said, are you a stowaway?
Please? Well, you don't know that word. Are you a passenger? You a passenger? Yes. You got a ticket? Yes. Show me your ticket. He produced his ticket. That's your name? Yes. Well, what do you want to work for? Please, he said, I am tired of cheese. The cook said, come in, close the door. The cook caught on. He said, how would you like steak for dinner, ice cream for dessert? Peter said, I work very hard. All right, he said, now don't tell anyone, but you come at two o'clock each day and wash all the ship's dishes.
Don't bring anyone with you. Can't do this for everybody, but I promise you you'll get the same food the captain gets. So for three days he worked like a slave and ate like a king. So when he got to Chicago and told his uncle, uncle said, you silly boy, didn't anyone tell you when you buy a ticket on an ocean liner, all the meals are paid for in the ticket? It's out of fashion now to go by ship the way I did when I started, but I take you've all flown on a plane, and the airlines are in competition with each other about the good food they give. Can you imagine someone coming along and saying, sir, would you like to have steak or chicken for lunch?
You say, I can't afford it, I'm going to eat my peanut butter sandwiches. Oh no. I don't know how you do, but I always fast in the morning before I catch a plane so that I can do justice to what I'm paying for. It's in your ticket. And the scripture teaches clearly, this is in your ticket. What shall we say then? Shall we just keep on sinning that God will forgive us some more? God forbid. It's in your ticket. You don't need to be in bondage to sin. If you've got a bad temper, making yourself miserable and everybody else miserable, you don't need to.
Because God has provided for it in Jesus Christ. You say, well, tell me how. Well, look at Romans six eleven: Reckon yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God. Reckon yourself dead, what does that mean? Did you ever see a corpse sit up on a coffin and lose his temper? No. I knew a man in Ireland whose wife was an awful nag.
She nagged the life out of him. Time came for the funeral. Those old narrow streets going around the corner, the pallbearers bumped the coffin against a wall and heard a muffled scream. The woman was still alive. Sure enough, of course, this was many years ago, my mother's day. A few more years went by. The woman really died. But when the pallbearers got to that corner, the husband said, careful at the corners, boys. Did you ever see a corpse lose his temper?
Never. Then reckon yourself dead. You can just say to yourself, I don't need to lose my temper. I can't afford to lose my temper. But maybe it's shoplifting's your trouble. Did you ever see a corpse shoplift? You say, but then what about the good, it doesn't mention anything about good things. Count yourself alive, reckon yourself dead to sin, but alive to God. Anything that God approves of, you can be lively about. You say, well, I've tried this and it doesn't work.
I agree with you. You say, what? I agree with you, trying this doesn't work. Then why are you telling us to try it? I'm not telling you to try it. You've got to trust it. If this were an evangelistic meeting and some young fellow waited behind and Paul Smith were to talk to him and say, now, are you willing to put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ? And the young fellow says, well, I'll try. What would Paul Smith say? He'd say, now let me write down my telephone number. You keep on trying. I'll be rooting for you. Anytime you want to call me, tell me how hard you're trying. No, he'd tell him no such thing.
He's look, son, it's not trying. It's trusting. Matter of fact, if you say you're going to try, you're not trusting. And if you're going to try to reckon yourself dead to sin, you're not trusting. See, it's by faith. What's the answer to the problem of the power of sin in a man's life? Romans eight and twelve. You might say, why not eight through twelve? Because you have the Hebrew parenthesis here, where Paul gets caught up in his concern for his kinsmen after the flesh.
Romans eight, for instance, see if my memory serves me right. Romans eight and nine, is that right? If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he's none of his. Romans eight and eleven, If the Spirit of him who raised Christ from the dead really dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead can give vitality to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you. And the King James version says life, but the word there is properly translated vitality.
Means life in that sense. Scientists have perfected a bomb that can destroy a million people, but they can't raise the dead. Can anyone raise the dead? Yes, the Spirit of God can raise the dead. And if the Spirit of God that raised Jesus Christ from the dead really dwells in you, he can provide you the vitality you need through his spirit which dwells in you. It's yours. You can live sanctified life, set apart for God. And the real appeal comes in Romans twelve and one: I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
You've got to come to the place where, as I explained to you, Romans twelve and one means present at once. Hold nothing back. Make a decisive dedication, a complete commitment, not a wishy-washy decision. You're going to do better. When you say, Lord, you can have all there is of me, and I mean that. Then Romans twelve and two follows. Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed again and again and again by the renewing of your mind. That's the crisis of commitment. You know, people have asked me about my attitude to the charismatic movement.
I preach for all sorts of people, pro-charismatic, anti-charismatic, all sorts of people, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Plymouth Brethren, Salvation Army, all the rest. So they often ask me questions about this. I'm going to speak to you very frankly. I shudder when I meet someone who claims to be filled with the Holy Spirit and lives like a pig. There are some, for instance, who claim to have an experience, and they haven't been concerned with the sin in their lives. I spoke at Springfield, Missouri, and my Assembly of God friends said to me, keep on preaching this, because in our Pentecostal circles, we know of men who seem to have great power in the pulpit, but they're not living right, and some of our people think then it doesn't matter.
To me, that's a tragedy. The Welsh word for Holy Spirit is Isfrid Glen, the clean spirit. And if you're filled with the Holy Spirit, be ye clean, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord. I don't know if it's your doctrine, but it's my doctrine. I believe in the experience of the filling of the Holy Spirit. I believe he gives the gifts that he will. I've held this throughout my ministry, but I believe the proper preparation for such a wonderful experience as being filled with the Spirit of God is total commitment.
Romans Romans and one, when you give yourself completely to God. Now, I just mentioned this to you because if I were to say, can you think of anyone in your own field that sort of let us all down, yet claimed to be a spirit-filled man? Isn't that a tragedy? We try not to talk about it. We don't want outsiders to know. I believe that the evidence of the spirit-filled life is not so much in the gifts as in the fruit of the spirit.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, moderation. I met a deacon among the Baptists in New Zealand who told me he was converted under such an evangelist. I didn't answer. Then he said to me, I hear he went astray afterwards. I see he was astray at the time you were converted in Auckland. How do you account for the fact that sometimes people are converted through an evangelist who's living in sin? I met two ladies walking along Beaumont Street in Oxford, friends of my wife.
One of them told me she's so sorry that a certain healing evangelist had just passed away in the States, because when he was in London, she went forward and was healed of polio. Doris walked with a limp, now she walks straight. I felt a little sick at heart. I could have said to her, that man just died of cirrhosis of the liver. Yet people were healed under his ministry. I was once preaching in Duluth, an Assembly of God pastor came to me every night, came to the meetings, was really enjoying it. I was preaching in the Presbyterian Church, and I was preaching just the way I preach in Life Bible College.
I don't dress my message differently. So I said to him, I want to ask you a question. He took me out for supper one night. I said, have you ever known anyone to speak in tongues to your satisfaction, then seriously get out of God's will and still speak in tongues? He said, we don't like to talk about this, he said, but I put a man out of our assembly last winter, that very thing. He was engaged in a wife exchange. When they sorted themselves out, he came back and tried to take part. He said, I went to him, I said, if you open your mouth here, I'll expose you. The gifts and callings of God are without repentance. When God gives a man a gift or a call, he doesn't change his mind about the giving of the call or the gift.
He'll take the man out of the way, rather. So you see what I'm saying? If I want to know whether or not a man's filled with the spirit, I look for the fruit of the Spirit in his life, and that comes with total commitment. And I can't give you a more important message today. So, as our dear brother Van Cleef said, now comes the application. The application is this. If I were to ask you, are you converted? You'd probably say, praise God, I am. If you said, well, I think so, sometimes I think so, and sometimes I'm not sure, I'd say, look, you better wait behind and talk to Paul Smith.
You see the point? If I say to you, are you totally committed? If you say, praise God, I believe I am. I'd say, thank God for that. But if you say, well, sometimes I'm not sure, and sometimes I'm sure I'm not. I said, well, you better settle this. What's the test for total commitment? Well, I'll ask you bluntly, is there any area of your life that's not committed? Money? Sex? Pride? Oh, I don't, I don't need to go down a list, do I? Is there any area of your life that's not committed?
If you say, yes, yes, there's something needs taken care of. Well, it may be that you made a total commitment of your life and meant it. Now you feel you're falling short. That's where it says renewal of your mind. You come now and say, all right, Lord, you can have all there is of me, and this is something I'm going to deal with. Now, I'm not going to give an invitation. I'm not going to ask anyone to stand up or come forward. I'm going to make a very simple suggestion. Would you make an appointment with God? Sometime when you'll be free to pray. If you're married and your helpmate is a Christian, pray together.
If you're not married, even though you're dating seriously, still pray separately. It's awful hard for a fellow or a girl to find out God's will with his arm around his Sweetheart. When I committed my life to the Lord, it meant giving up a friendship in Ireland. It nearly broke my heart. Now, looking back, I think how wonderfully God worked for me. If you're married and your help meets a Christian, you're one in the sight of God. Pray together. If you're just dating, pray separately.
And pray the prayer, I will not let thee go except thou bless me. Thank God for whatever spiritual manifestations you have had in your life. How gracious he is in giving his gifts. But I'm more concerned with the other side. Are you committed? Are you surrendered? Well, Corrie Ten Boom used to say, are you one hundred percent for God? She never said percent, she always said percent. Are you one hundred percent for God? You say, yes, well, at least ninety six and a half percent. What about the three and a half percent? What's that refer to? So I'm going to ask you to pray the prayer with me.
Let's bow in prayer. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any grieving way in me. Then lead me in the eternal way. Lord, send a revival to thy work up here at Twin Peaks, but start first in me.
Now make your appointment with God. Whenever you can set aside an hour to pray alone, make your appointment now and pray through. Jesus, fill now with thy spirit, hearts that full surrender know, that the streams of living water through our inward man may flow. Channels only. Blessed Master, but with all thy wondrous power, flowing through us, thou conceals us every day and every hour.
Amen.