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“A Life of Victory in the Midst of Trouble”

February 6, 1955

Now, the 25th Psalm is the text for the morning. I do not intend to attempt anything like careful exposition, but simply let our minds play over the psalm. We have read it previously. If I were to pick a text out, maybe it might be the twenty-first. Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait on Thee.

Now in this psalm, we have a little section of a great spiritual autobiography where the man David is writing himself into this. He is telling us about himself and his relation to God and the world. And we see and hear in this 25th Psalm, a living man engaged in the business of living. We see here a good man living in a bad world. A right man living in a wrong world. And naturally, here it’s not a smooth psalm.

My brethren, nothing is ever smooth if it is a realistic, fair reflection of life. The life of our Lord Jesus Christ was not a smooth life. He had great inward tranquility, for he knew He was in the bosom of the Father. And He knew that not even His incarnation took Him out of the bosom of the Father. For He knew that the Persons of the Godhead are indivisible. You cannot divide the Son from the Father by incarnation or by crucifixion or by death. He knew that He could never be separated from the Father’s heart, though as a man among men He lived his turbulent life, his life surrounded by enemies so that I think it’s fair to say that if you’re living too smooth a life, you may well question whether you’re living in the will of God or not.

David served his generation by the will of God before he fell on sleep. And David was a man after God’s own heart. So, I think it fair to take him for an example. And David did not live a smooth, tranquil life. He had periods of tranquility. He had times when his heart soared away like a lark and sang in heaven’s gate. But he soon found himself down on the earth again, back in the in the turbulent and disturbed world where he had to live.

Now, we do not find here what we find in much modern religion, a man in a classroom learning and analyzing. We have taken on the classroom psychology too much in Christian religion in these days. Classrooms are necessary and this is not intended to be any reflection upon the classroom. It is only to say that the classroom is an abnormal situation. It is something apart from the stream of life, hoping that it will teach those who are in that classroom when they do go back into the stream of life to live better, more wisely. But it is for the moment, not a part of life really. It is the ivory tower of life.

Christianity is never to be understood, the faith of our fathers is never to be thought of from the classroom. It is not someone looking over heavy glasses, telling them the facts of Christianity or using a chart to illustrate. But, the faith of our fathers is the faith of the plain people, the faith of men living in the world.

The faith of our fathers is fitted to the marketplace where men argue and debate and cheat. The man of God won’t cheat, but he’ll likely be cheated. The faith of our fathers is geared to the kitchen and the home where the Christian housewife answers the phone and the doorbell a dozen times every morning and the baby suddenly runs the temperature and the doctor is out of town and she’s in distress and then the doorbell rings again. And then the phone and it’s a wrong number. And that’s her life. She’s got to have something that’ll go down there. The classroom can’t help her there. Nothing abstract and theoretical can do her any good there. The faith of our fathers has to get into the kitchen, into the home, into the nursery, into the basement, and where people are engaged in the downright, tough business of living right in a wrong world. The faith of our father has to get into the cab of the truck as it bowls down the highway, around the curves until the arms ache. And out on the long straight away stretches until the monotony puts us to sleep, and trouble everywhere and angry horns honking from the rear, and blowouts and difficulties. There is no classroom there. There is no theory there. No ivory tower there. Christianity has to get into that cab and behind that wheel and into the heart of that man so that he can do that like a Christian and drive his big truck like a Christian. The faith of our fathers has to get into the machine shop, where the smell of hot oil and dirty gloves and dirty overalls and cursing men and hard to please customers; and it’s got to be there and it’s got to prove itself there and live right there and be right there.

And so, the 25th Psalm is an illustration of all this, a man in the midst of life, a good man living in a bad world, a right man living in a wrong world, God’s man living in the devil’s world. And he has to come through that; and has to live it through and suffer it out and come out all right. And that’s why I like the Bible. It’s a book of a high philosophy and lofty theology and brilliant metaphysics. But, it’s as practical as your shoes you wear around the house or your bedroom slippers right down where you live and get into it and it doesn’t fail you. And you don’t have to know a million things and you don’t have to rise in the scale of culture, nor study from Emily post where to put your spoon. Plain people that don’t know what to do with a spoon.

A man told me one time that he went to a banquet that was so ritzy that it was one o’clock in the morning before it was through, and he found at one o’clock in the morning all he had left was a tablespoon. He’d evidentially used up the wrong one at the wrong place and the snooty waiter wouldn’t take it away, so there he was. He said, at one o’clock and they were through eating and he had just a tablespoon lying by his plate. Well, that would chagrin some people and drive them to suicide. But, the plain fellow who lives in this bad world trying to live right with God isn’t so much worried, because he knows that Christianity meets all situations, social situations, political situations, industrial situations.

So, here was the man David engaged in living, a living man living in a bad world. It was H.G. Wells, you know who said that Buddhism was the best religion, but that it wouldn’t thrive except in a warm climate. Christianity will thrive in any climate at all. Just let Christ get into the heart of a man, and whether he is living in an igloo hut somewhere in the far Arctic, or whether he’s living with but a G-string on somewhere in Africa. If he’s a true sincere man, whether it’s his grass hut or his snow igloo, Christianity will work. It will work in the mountains and it will work on the plains and it will work in the midst of the great city where we never see real sunshine for the smoke and the fumes. The faith of our fathers will work anywhere.

And H.G. Wells didn’t mean to be funny, but it was a humorous thing to say that God Almighty should give the world a religion that will only work in a warm climate. If that was true, and that might be true of Buddhism, then what would we do in cold weather? Our spirituality would rise with the temperature. Every morning, you’d have to go out on the porch and say to your wife, I wonder how spiritual I can be today? And if it is a little too cold, you’d say, well, I’ll be a sinner this day. I can’t live for God today because it’s too cold. Christianity is found everywhere. And it’s found in the hearts of men.

You know, we’ve had some errors in the church, and one of them has been, of course, to make Christianity consist of theological dogma. Now, I’m a theological dogmatist, and I believe in theology. I believe in the faith of our fathers, and I can define it for you and put it down. And I could write a book of discipline if I had been forced to do it, telling what I believe and what people ought to believe. And I believe in doctrine. But what good is it going to do you to know that the Trinity is composed of three persons or that there are three persons in the Trinity is a better way of expressing it if you don’t live pleasing to the Trinity. I borrowed that from an old saint who lived centuries ago. What does it profit thee to be able to discourse learnedly about the Trinity if I live such a life as to be displeasing to the Trinity? What difference does it make that you know that God made the heaven in the earth if you will live an ungodly life. Doctrine doesn’t mean anything until it gets inside you until it seeps by osmosis into the bloodstream of your life. Leaks through the walls of your soul and gets into your bloodstream and gets out into the cells of your spirit and changes you. Any doctrine that doesn’t change a man has never reached that man.

Too often we have a Christianity that consists merely of a lot of creeds held; doctrines that are believed. That’s not Christianity. That is only the raw material of Christianity. Until the fire of the Holy Ghost comes upon that raw material, or changing the figure, that is but the food, that is but the meat of Christianity. But until that meat enters the soul of a man by faith and repentance, it can’t do the man any good. Objective Christianity is not the Christianity of the Bible. The faith of our fathers is objective truths having become subjective reality within the soul by pertinence and faith and prayer.

Old John Ruskin, the famous art critic and philosopher and Christian, who a century ago or so wrote very eloquently about the error of calling this a church service. I still use it because I know what I mean by the word. But he says, watch that we’re not mistaken about it. He said, we meet together and sing a few hymns and listen to moral or spiritual truth being expounded and go home and say we have been to a service. And he says that not necessarily true. For service is more than singing hymns and going home again. Service is living for God and serving your generation and living like a Christian after the church doors are locked and the janitor is asleep. And it is living for Christ between Sunday night and Sunday morning; all week long as well as on Sunday. I think Ruskin was right though I do not follow him in throwing out the word church service as a result. It can be a service.

We can with giving our money to the Lord, we can do a service. We can by expounding the Scriptures, do a service. We can by singing hymns, do a service. But the danger is that it’s possible to render that kind of service, aloof and in a vacuum all together unrelated to the rest of our lives. That’s where the danger lies. And I agree with Ruskin there. So, let’s watch it. If your Christianity, your Christian faith, does not affect every part of your being, you have a reason to wonder whether you have the faith of our fathers really in your heart or not.

Now, look at David. David here was a man in the midst of life. Here he was surrounded by, look at them: verse two to nineteen, enemies; verse nineteen, hatred; verse eighteen, affliction; verse seventeen, troubles; verse eighteen, pain; verse seventeen, distress; verse sixteen, desolation, and perplexities all the way through and sin mentioned three or four times. Now, there was a man, no ivory tower there. No monk sitting on top of a high pole letting somebody else feed him. No hermit hidden away in a cave going barefooted for a walk at sundown when the birds were singing. No impractical dreamer, but a man who lived in the midst of all of these enemies were surrounding him. Verses two to nineteen talk about his enemies.

Now, I might say that a man is known by his friends. I think that’s generally understood. But the opposite is also true, a man is known by his enemies. No man worth his salt but will have enemies. If he does not have enemies, then he’s not doing anything. If he does anything, he’ll have enemies. If he does anything, he will have 100 telling him that he could have done it better if he had done it his way. And then we say what have you done? And the answer is, well, nothing but I’ve been observing. He hasn’t done a thing, but he’s been watching somebody else. You’ll have kibitzers, fault finders, critics and enemies and opposers and ill-wishers no matter what you do, if you do something. The way to have no enemies is to have no convictions, and do nothing at all. The man without a conviction has only one enemy, and that’s God. But, the man of conviction is bound to have enemies. And you will now be known by your enemies.

You should never worry if you’ll get an enemy. But you should be very concerned with what kind of an enemy that is. If I knew that a communist lived down on Longwood Drive two doors from me. Now, I don’t think there are any down, that Republican territory. But, if I knew there was a communist living down there, and he should turn out to be my enemy, I’d thank God to have a communist for my enemy. But, if he’s a good man and full of the Holy Ghost and he’s my enemy, I ought to be distressed about that. If you have the wrong kind of enemies, woe be to you. But if you have the right kind of enemies, blessed art thou for so the prophets fared before thee.

I might digress, as the preachers call it, from my sermon long enough to say to you young people, watch out who your pals are. You may never have done anything wrong. Nobody would ever, could be able to charge you with having done anything wrong. But, if you fall in with, and make pals of young fellows who are borderline delinquents, you’ll be blamed for being a delinquent too and you will have a hard time proving you’re not. If I don’t know who you are, your name is John Doe, Jr. and somebody says, Pastor, do you know young John Doe, Jr., sixteen years old and I say I don’t think I know John Doe. Well, he comes to our church sometimes, attends Sunday school class and goes to the, plays baseball Tuesday nights during the summer. Well, what about John Doe Jr? What kind of fella is he? Well, my friend says, I can’t tell you I don’t want to commit myself, but I’ll tell you who his friends are. And then he names some cigarette sucking, dirty tongue, borderline hoodlums, and says he runs around with them. I’ve got my opinion of John Doe Jr. without ever having anybody telling me anything. Somebody says that’s guilt by association. Sure, it’s guilt by association and the addled-headed egghead whoever said we shouldn’t be able to attribute guilt by association, ought to go somewhere and have his head examined.

Birds of a feather flock together. And a bird that flocks with buzzards is bound to be a buzzard or smell like one. And if I see a necked creature flocking with buzzards and I go along and say stay away from that creature. What has he done? You can’t prove anything on him. You haven’t got a bit of proof he’s done anything wrong? No, I have never seen him do anything wrong, but I know his crowd. So watch it you young people. But you say how can I win them if I don’t go where they are? Did you ever hear of a fellow going to hell to win a man who wouldn’t go to heaven? No. There’s a place to stop. You can win them, but you don’t have to win them by running with them. And if you run with them, you will not win them, they’ll win you. If we had all the young people in this church now that have come to make some kind of Christian testimony, or at least been interested over the last twenty-five years, and then who’ve been lost to us through bad friendships, we couldn’t contain them. They would fill every room in the building. They’re gone. They do fall from churches because they get into wrong friendships. But that’s only a side. That really is not part of the sermon.

This man was surrounded by enemies. And he was surrounded by hatred. Now that’s an ugly thing. I don’t like the word hatred. There it is, verse nineteen, bitter hatred. And always remember sin hates righteousness. Always remember that. And the better you are, the more sin will hate you.

And then here was affliction. Now that’s verse eight and verse eighteen. Now, Job’s experience interprets the word affliction here. In James, we have it. If any man is afflicted, let him pray. That doesn’t mean sick. That means if anybody is in trouble, like Job was. He may be sick, but that’s only a part of his affliction. You can get afflicted without being sick and you can be sick without really being afflicted because affliction means loss or bereavement, or having Job’s comforters comfort you. That was the kind of trouble Job had. He had a sickness too temporarily. But that was affliction. Well, Job had it and here it was. You say, will faith operate? Is the faith of our fathers good at a time when we have enemies, at a time when there’s hatred, at a time when there’s affliction? The answer is yes. Here was a man living in the middle of it and triumphant.

And there’s troubles, verse seventeen. I don’t know all the troubles. And a man that isn’t significant enough in the universe for God to let him have troubles is too insignificant for God to find. If you’re significant, if you signify, if you mean anything in the world, you will have troubles all right. Paul’s experience shows that. Read Second Corinthians and see what a time of it Paul had. Poor old Paul, his brethren and his enemies and the Jews and the Gentiles and everybody was after him.

And then there’s pain, verse eighteen. Do you know what I would like to be able to do? I wish I could stand here and say, believe on Jesus Christ, live as a Christian should, and thou shalt be free from pain. I wish I could do that, but I can’t do that. As He was, so are we in this world. And as my Father has sent Me, so send I you. And in one sense, Jesus is living over again His life in each one of us. And He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with pain and He bore it and He knew it.

Now, you might as well brace yourself for it. You’re going to suffer some pain in your lifetime. And there never has been a place in the human body yet found that was convenient for pain to lodge. Wherever you’re hurt, you wish it was somewhere else. And you say that’s always the most inconvenient place, and I could stand it if it was somewhere else. And then if it got to the other place, you’d want it somewhere else. There is no place where you can bear pain conveniently. Pain is always a rude, uncouth, barbarian, sadistic thing. And it’ll come all right. You can figure on it.

It was Shakespeare that said, no man is a philosopher when he has a toothache. It’s alright to sit back in our ivory tower and philosophize about the heaven and earth and the things that are therein. But, when you get a toothache, you don’t have so much success in your ivory tower. But Christianity is good where there is pain. Oh, the pain of the people of God down the years. Read Foxes “Book of Martyrs.” Read any good biography and see if it’s not true that the people of God have known pain. And our Lord said oh so tenderly to His suffering church, fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer. He didn’t say pray to Me and I’ll deliver you from your suffering. He said fear none of those things which thou can suffer. Always remember, you can suffer. You can. And when the human organism won’t take it anymore, you’ll die. But you can suffer. So, brace yourself and thank God for the privilege of feeling a little bit of the sting and the gall and the bitterness that our Lord felt when He was on earth.

David had it. Verse eighteen talked about pain, verse seventeen talked about distress. Now, distress of course is pain, mental and physical, mainly psychological or mental. And you know how distressing mental pain is. It’s more distressing than physical pain. I think it can be proved that rarely does it happen that a man commits suicide because of physical pain. Almost always it’s because of mental distress.

And then there’s desolation, verse sixteen. Desolation, the grief of loneliness. I saw a picture in the newspaper here I think yesterday of a man being held back by policemen. And I’ll never, I think, for many long months, forget that face. Five of his children were just burned to death in the building. But, it was gone to a point where no living organism could exist a second in that awful furnace. And this man was going to rush in there and try to rescue at least one. And they were holding him, and that face I’ll never forget it, I think. Brother, when the fire was out, and the hashes were being raked and that man sat alone, you know what desolation meant.

Some of you had a husband that has walked out of the house and left you. Poor thing. The worst part about it was when he went. He took part of you along with him. He took the part that lives and vibrates. He took your heart with him. And you scolded yourself for it but you can’t help it. Like the mother whose son has been nothing but a rascal from the time he was ten years old, a scoundrel. Now, he’s in prison. She can’t help it. Her mind doesn’t function. It’s her emotions, her nerves, her heart. She loves that no-good boy until she’s in prison. When they walk lockstep, she’s walking. When the clank of the door goes shut and the great iron key turns, it’s turned on her. And when he wears the prison gray, she wears that prison gray. She can’t help it. Her heart has been so tied up with that no-good boy, and yet, I don’t know why I should use the word no-good. Jesus died for him. And so, Jesus died for him, he is worth praying for and maybe will be saved. But anyway, she loves that boy.

So, some of you have had that happen to you and you’ve been desolate. I’ve had them come to me like that and sit with gray faces and tell me in a voice that was not a normal voice that everything was gone. That the only one that meant anything to me in the world has forsaken me. And I’ve had men come to me and sit embarrassed and twist their gloves in their hands and tell me about the wife that had walked out. Poor guy, if he could do something if there was something there you could clip. If he had a pair of scissors he would clip the umbilical cord and cut himself loose but he can’t. He can’t and he sees the face and hears the voice and remembers the little things? He can’t. And so, we, he has a desolation. Desolation requires loneliness.

Then, there are perplexities and the uncertainties and the confusion and the fear that we’re not pleasing God in all this and then sin. David said here four times; I think that he said about sin and he prayed to God to deliver him from his sin. He said, O God, don’t remember my boyhood, my youth when I was wild and did these things. Remember not the sins of my youth nor my transgressions. According to thy mercy, remember me O God. For Thy goodness sake. His sin bothered him. David knew whatever an instructed person ought to know. That the only real enemy in the world is your sin. That’s the only real enemy. As long as you can lock the door on sin and will lock it out, you haven’t an enemy that you need to worry about it. Hell or earth, nothing can separate you from the love of God. It’s only sin that’s your enemy. And when sin gives the key to the enemy, in comes the invader and takes over, then it’s too bad for you.

Then there’s distress and heartache and grief and sorrow and loss of communion and loss of fruit and loss of joy. Sin does this. Let’s be sure there’s no sin any place, because sin weakened David and almost destroyed his confidence here in this Psalm and gave to his enemies their only real power. Because I repeat, the only real danger is within. If you keep anything outside, you’re alright. As soon as it gets inside, trouble starts.

And so, David began to destroy the enemy within. The only enemy really that he had, really, sin. So, he prayed and confessed and he admitted and he trusted God and he pleaded and he forced it on God. But, he made God listen. And he didn’t grab at every hope that everything was all right. He insisted on knowing it. He wanted God to deliver him completely. So, David began to hope in God. Verse six, remember O Lord, Thy tender mercies and Thy loving kindnesses.

I read a passage in a version, I forgot what version it was. I have just rearranged my books up here and I have translations that go clear across a bookcase and leak down over the other side, four or five of them and I don’t always remember which translation it was. But one of them said, O God, Thou art loyal to me. And immediately I got on my knees and thanked God He’s loyal. God is loyal to His people. The loyalty of love and the loyalty of wisdom. He’s loyal, and David knew it. And so David trusted God and say, Lord, you’re loyal. Your faithfulness and your tender mercies have been ever of old. Good and upright is the Lord. Verse nine, the meek, He will guide in judgment the meek. He will teach his way. Verse fourteen, the secret of the Lord is within the fearing. And verse fifteen, He shall pluck my feet out of the net. That’s one thing we didn’t remember, a net, a booby trap. They had set booby traps for David. And David said, I can’t see the booby traps. I don’t know where they are. And you know how David escaped them. He escaped them by not looking for them at all. He escaped them by looking to the Lord. And as he looked to the Lord, the Lord plucked his feet out of the net and he didn’t get into any booby traps.

A lot of you, dear people, you’re developing myopia of the soul. You’re always afraid. People are always calling me or writing me or coming to see me and there’s always some little pimple on the body. And they forget all about the cancer in the soul. It’s some little old thing, afraid of some booby trap. Can I do this? May I do that? What do you think I should do about this? Do you think I ought to take in a play? What do you think about the opera Mr. Tozer? What do you think about television? What do you think Mr. Tozer about baseball? Oh my, don’t bother me about such things. Those aren’t the things that matters sir. There’s something bigger than that. If they should pull booby traps through you, the way to escape them is look straight to the Lord Jesus Christ, straight to Him, straight to Him. And as you see Jesus, He will lead you out of the net, and you will escape the net.

So, here we have a man. We have a man living in the middle of life, a living man in a dead world, a good man in a bad world, a right man in a wrong world, a man of God in a world filled with men of flesh. And he was living in the middle of it. Living right in the middle of it, and thanking God in the middle of it, and fruitful and useful in the middle of it, serving his generation by the will of God. So, here was a living man believing and praying. After all, the old song “Trust and Obey” says it. He believed and he prayed. The devil can silence you so you can’t pray anymore. That’s one of the first things he has to do. When an enemy comes into a country, one of the first things he wants to do is to destroy communication. A burglar comes to your home, if he’s a wise burglar, that is, wise in the ways of the devil, he cuts the telephone wires before he comes in. If he can break communication with help, the source of help, then you are an easy victim.

So, prayer is the source of communication between you and help. And if the devil can cut the wires and discourage you so you don’t pray, you’re an easy victim after that. In God’s name, I beseech you, begin to pray. You’ve had a rough time of it. Maybe some of you have and I suppose I don’t even know how rough it’s been with you. You’ve been treated rough this last week. You’ve gone through hard things.

Well, if you’ve come through all right, then I say thank God and I wouldn’t have had it otherwise. But if you’re discouraged and your prayers are cut off, then woe be to you and watch out. You better get your communications established. You better get into God again. You say, I can’t pray. I’m blue and gloomy and I have failed and I can’t pray. Oh, you can say Abba. You can say that much can’t you? If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And He gives forth the Spirit of His Son saying, Abba Father. And Abba, you know, is the Arabic, and one Arabic word for father and various other languages have it, Abba. And they tell me that Abba is a word you can speak without teeth. You can take your teeth out and still say, Abba. But if it was a difficult thing, you’d have to get your teeth in. But you can say Alba before you have any teeth. A little fellow I see back there now, I can see through the glass. Somebody’s holding a little chap. He can’t talk yet probably, but he can say Abba. And so we can say that. If you feel so little and hopeless and useless that you can’t pray, if you can’t pray like a Baptist deacon, pray like a newborn babe and say Abba. Keep saying that and God will hear your prayer and know what you mean.

I always think of Sidney Smith, that great English writer of several generations ago. He never knew what to do with punctuation–never. He was a brilliant writer, a stylist to perfection, but he never knew how to punctuate. So, he wrote a manuscript and then he wrote one page. And on that page, he put all the punctuation marks that were in the English language, and said, note, sprinkle these around where they’ll do the most good. He didn’t know where they belonged, but he hoped somebody did. And so, I say to you this morning, just tell God, O God, I don’t know how to pray. I don’t know what to say, but hear my heart and sprinkle it around where it’ll do the most good. Make it fit where it ought to be. I’m too dumb. I don’t even know how to pray God. Ah, God loves people like that. The meek He will guide in judgment. The meek He will teach His way. And if you will simply and meekly say, Abba Father, for Jesus sake, pretty soon you will get help from above, and then, the communications are established and everything’s all right again.

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Tozer Talks

“Danger of Propaganda”

“Message #6 in Dangers in the Way and How to Avoid Them “

May 22, 1955

The fifth chapter of Ephesians, see then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. And I have been pointing out that we as Christians must walk circumspectly, that is, watching and looking around lest we fall into the booby traps placed by our enemy the devil. And today, I want to talk about only one and recommend that we very carefully watch lest we fall into the snare of propagandism. I’ll explain what I mean as I go along.

Everybody knows what propaganda is, or as our British brethren say, propaganda. It became a familiar word during the First World War and was intensified by the Second World War, and is still a very popular English American word almost used to the point where it is a cliche, worn out.

And now there is an enemy in the universe that believes in slavery. He is opposed to God who believes in freedom. And there are two kinds of slavery. There is the slavery of the body, which seeks to control the conduct by physical force. And that slavery, once of course, we had in the United States much to our everlasting historical shame. That there was a day when men, otherwise good men, thought nothing of owning another man. Owning him as you own your car. He could sell him or trade him, own part interested in him, owning partly and be paying on him the same as you do your automobile or your house. That I say was a blot on our history that we never can quite get freed from. We helped to free ourselves from the disgrace of it by abolishing it. And this is not to speak against those who were themselves partakers in this chain. Because they had been brainwashed and properly conditioned psychologically to believe in it. Even the church has helped out there.

But there is the slavery of the body I say, where the control of the conduct is achieved by physical force and where obedience is rendered unwillingly. And the slaves know they’re rendering obedience, and are seeking and longing to be free from the yoke of slavery.

Now, with that we have nothing to do this morning. It’s only an illustration and for the sake of being as broad as we can and making our talks as educational as possible, I mention it. But there is another kind of slavery and that is the slavery of the mind. And the slavery of the mind is achieved, that control is achieved by means of ideas supplied to the mind. And obedience is rendered willingly. And the victims are unaware that they are rendering obedience and are quite satisfied and have no desire to be free from.

Now, there are the two kinds of slavery when you put chains on a man’s ankles and wrists, and he is a slave and knows it. And you’ll look deep into his eyes and you’ll find there the deep solemn revolt of the free human spirit against the bonds of slavery. And there is the slavery that is achieved by conditioning the mind so those who are seeking to make us slaves gets us, make us slaves and get their will over us by feeding us ideas which we adopt and learn to believe in and think are all right, and ignorantly adopt and follow not knowing that we are being conditioned by keen, sharp, unscrupulous minds who are making us slaves. We don’t know that and we render obedience rather willingly and are unaware that we are being controlled.

Now, the greatest war today is the war to win the control of our minds. The greatest war that ever was fought is not in the history books anywhere. It was not fought during the Second World War and nor in Korea nor in the First World War nor the revolutionary nor the Civil nor any of the wars that bloody the pages of history. That those wars were wars of body against body, gun against guns, sword against sword, battalion against battalion. But the greatest war in the world is the war, the battle for our minds. And that is being waged today by every modern, effective technique. It is being waged by the press. And if you could suddenly standoff objectively and look at your own mind and see how much the press has fed into your mind and how you have come to be more or less a creature of the press, you’d be shocked, I’m sure, and you’d spend days in fasting and prayer to get free from it. And of course, another technique being used is that of the school system. Without a school system of course, we would be barbarians and heathen. They must, it must exist; we must have our schools. And then there is the radio which is a new technique for the dissemination of ideas. And it is also being used to help control our mind. And of course, there is the drama which has always been in its various forms, an effective technique for the controlling of the minds of the people.

And then we have developed over the last years, perhaps over the last fifty or sixty years in America, one of the most potent techniques ever devised by the mind of man for the control of the mass thinking of the people, and that is advertising. The advertisers are the best educators in the world. And they’re busy educating us by every means that they know, expensive and carefully thought out means. They are busy controlling our thinking.

Now, the object of course, is to win everyone to think the same. And to think the same on certain subjects, certain great topics on life and love and money and pleasure and marriage and values and religion and the future and God and our relation to God and all the rest. We are being influenced very strongly by these means which I have mentioned, to think the same about life.

Everybody’s a philosopher, only some get the reputation for being philosophers, but everybody’s a philosopher, everybody. The gangster is a philosopher. And the kid who carries a switch knife and attacks another innocent kid on the street and kills him or cuts him up, he’s a philosopher too. If you press him and push him into a corner, he’ll come through with reasons why he did what he did. Reason is philosophy. Whatever you have reason for doing and do, that makes you a philosopher. So, everybody’s a philosopher.

And we have certain philosophies of life or a certain philosophy of life. And we look out upon life and see it from a certain viewpoint, that is philosophy, and that makes us philosophers. And whether we write great big books and call ourselves by that name or whether we’re simple people who would smile at a thought we’re philosophers. We are all philosophers nevertheless.

Now who’s going to control our philosophy? Who is going to determine our outlook upon life? Who’s going to decide? You say, I do that myself. Oh, don’t make me laugh brother. You don’t do that yourself at all. You only think you do. And I only think I do if I indeed didn’t know that I didn’t.

And then we have to have our viewpoint on love. What is this love business anyhow? All you have to do is switch a button and they will be telling you what it is and what it isn’t. And we get our ideas about human love; love between the sexes and love in the society. We get that from the radio. We get it from the newspaper and from the press generally, and from advertising.

And then, when comes such thing as money, we think of money what the press tells us to think of money, what the radio suggests we think of money, what we have learned at school about money. And then when it comes to pleasures, our attitude toward life, toward pleasures, say toward just almost anything, innocent and harmful, either one or both, we learn from the world. They control our mind. And they get us to thinking about it the way they want us to think. And they do it I say, by means of the press, school, radio, drama, and advertising and perhaps a few other minor techniques. And about religion and values and the future and God, those are of course the most important. What I think about money is important, but what I think about God is still more important. And there has not been a time probably since the Great Awakening under Jonathan Edwards, when there was more religion in the country than there is now, when more people talk about religion. We are now being bombarded by persons who are trying to persuade us to think a certain way about religion and God and human values and the future life and our relation to God in the future life.

Now, we’re going to be what they make us, unless of course we stage a revolt, which I trust I may stir you up to today. Now of course, the strategy to achieve these objectives is to control our conduct by disseminating ideas, and to gain acceptance for the counsel of the ungodly. The Bible talks about the counsel of the ungodly and pronounces a blessing upon the man who walketh not in it. We always must keep in mind this is a fallen world. And whatever originates in the world is bound to be bad and godless. That is, whatever originates in organized society. What originates in nature, the grass, the birds, the flowers, the simple appetites of life, they’re not bad. But whatever originates in fallen minds and fallen hearts and gets acceptance by society is godless. And the word of God was given to us to counteract the godless counsel of ungodly men, and to form our minds, not by all these techniques, but by God Himself.

The God who made us gave us a Bible and sent the Holy Ghost to interpret it to us in order that He may control our minds. And He who made our minds might mold them again. And he who made them once might remake them from their fall. And He who is the source and object of all are blessing and love, that that God wants to control our minds. He has no hesitation in saying that we’re to have the mind of Christ. Somebody is going to control my mind. Who is it? Is it going to be the advertiser? Is it going to be the public school? Is it going to be drama or the press or the radio? Or is it going to be God? You’ve got to make up your mind on that my friend, whether you want to or not, somebody is going to control your mind. Now, who is it?

And the Bible has given us that our minds might be directed. Wherewith, says the Holy Ghost, shall young men cleanse his way, by taking heed according to Thy word. How shall my ignorance become wisdom–by the Word of God? How shall my false notions become right notions–by being corrected by the Word of God? How shall my darkness become light–by this Book which is a light into my pathway. And it is from this Book, and from the Book interpreted by the Spirit that I gain the heavenly and final and right ideas about love and marriage and life and money and pleasures and values and God, and my relation to God and the future life and my status in that life is from the Word of God that I get.

So, the warfare is on between the counsel of the ungodly and the counsel of God. And now, which is it shall control our minds? My brother, you are a pawn and a puppet caught in between. And if you’re not awakened to it, you will learn the ways of Babylon and Egypt and pick up their notions and think the way they think, and value what they value, and love what they love, and ignore what they ignore. Be not foolish, but wise know what the will of the Lord is. Let him that is asleep, wake out of his sleep and God will give him life says the Holy Ghost.

Now, the Christian receives another mind and it is the mind of the redeemed. It’s a redeemed mind, a recreated mind, and it is committed to Christ. You say, is not that another kind of slavery? That is the slavery of love. That is the slavery of worship. That is the slavery of extreme joy. That is the slavery of the highest ecstasy. Paul, who lived in a slave state where slaves were common sights on the street, Paul said, I am a slave of Jesus Christ. Wherever the word servant occurs in the New Testament, you can write slave in. Well, that’s what he meant. He had no thought of a paid servant who comes at nine and leaves at five and get their pay and go. That’s unknown in the Bible I think. The word is slave there. And Paul told the people openly all the time, that he was a slave to God Almighty and a slave to Jesus Christ, but there is the freedom.

Let me ask the young mother, who with shining eyes looks upon her little baby. Let me ask that young mother, are you as free as you used to be? And she smiles and says no, I have to stay in a lot now. I used to be able to go everywhere with my husband, but I can’t now. He goes and I have to stay home. And you say to her, are you sorry? And she smiles and says, sorry? Would you like to have it all undone? Would like to get rid of the little monkey? Don’t you want him around? And she laughs and says, oh, don’t talk like that. Why, the slavery to this little fellow is nothing. I love it.

Love never feels slavery. And love never knows bondage. And that obedience to Jesus Christ which Paul calls slavery, is not the slavery that imposes itself from the outside by laws, nor imposes itself by the introduction of alien ideas into the mind. It is the happy joy of bondage of freedom and love. And the holiest and freest creature in heaven above is the angel that is the nearest the throne of God. And those creatures that bow and spread their wings, and run swift as light to do the will of God, and have no mind but God’s, no will but His, they’re the freest creatures in all the universe. And those that try to be free from the will of God, succeed only in becoming victims to the propagandists. Those who propagandize us into slavery and make us think the same as they think and feel the same as they feel about things and they’re slaves.

And it is the psychology of the servile slave, the vehicle and utensil of the master that cannot call his mind his own. The bird that flies in the air is free, and yet it is bound by the laws of aerodynamics. The stars that move in around their ancient and unmeasured orbits are free because they’re doing the will of God. And wherever we do the will of God, we’re free. And wherever we break from the will of God, we’re slaves. And it says in Romans that he that sins, is a slave of sin. That he that does the will of God, it elsewhere tells us, is the free happy servant of God.

So, let’s beware of the propagandists. And let’s be aware propagandism. For the world is trying to capture, and it’s a startling and shocking thing. The world is trying to capture the mind of the saints, and they are being captured. And we’re being made victims of the world’s propaganda. And the sad thing is, we don’t know it.

If there was a law passed in the halls in Washington that said, you can’t go to church at 70th and Union, and if you do, you shall be fined. And if you shall repeat the offense, you shall be jailed. We would know where we stood. And every last one of you Protestant Americans would stand up and put your chin high, and say if God helps me, I’ll never come under that decree. I go to church when I please. And I will pray to God as I want to. My fathers founded this nation dedicated to the proposition that every man should worship God according to the dictates of his own heart and I will not stay away from church because Congress said I should and the President signed it. That would never happen while we have our present set up in Washington. I’m using an illustration merely, but I say, if they ever got there, we know where we stood. And we draw the line sharp and we’d say, who’s on the Lord side? Let him come over. And there would be a tread of men’s feet, an army that would shake the earth, of free Protestant American men who would say, I will not bow to the state.

But they’re not doing it that way. It’s sharper and wiser. The devil is too much of a strategist to treat us like that. So, he’s busy brainwashing us, and conditioning us little by little, and feeding his ideas into the church, the counsel of the ungodly. And as the ideas of the ungodly enter the church, the ideas of God go out. And as the counsel of the ungodly come in, the counsel of the God goes out. And my crusade in the day in which I live, is to wake the church and rouse it to the fact that it’s being brainwashed and propagandized into accepting that which it would never accept if it was a law in Washington. We won’t bow a supple knee to any man who says you worship the way I tell you. But little by little, we’re getting their ideas; willing and unaware and satisfied, we’re being brainwashed.

Do you remember old Lot back in in Sodom? He had his whole family there. He went down for economic reasons because the grass was green. He rapidly rose to be, they say, the mayor of the city. He sat in the gate and they say the mayor was the one who sat in the gate. And his family was quite well known in the city. And they were slowly propagandized, brainwashed. Old Lot resisted it. He had enough of contact with Abraham. He had sat where Abraham sat. He’d walked with Abraham. He’d heard Abraham pray. And after having heard Abraham the Hebrew offer prayers to God, you never could quite accept the brainwashing of Sodom.

So, Lot vexed his righteous soul. Thank God for those words, vexed and righteous, in the same man’s heart. He vexed his righteous soul. He was a part of it, but he hated it. When Sodom put on her big shows, he heard the voice of Abraham raised in prayer. In memory, he heard it, and it still rang in his ears and it poisoned all of the pleasures of Sodom. But he wasn’t big enough to get up and walk out. For economic reasons he stayed in Sodom and hated it. And remembered the prayers of his old uncle and loved them and was caught in the middle. But his family wasn’t so strong and they weren’t so lucky. They got poisoned, his sons in law. They were propagandized into becoming Sodomites. And when God Almighty raised his mighty atom bomb to hurl on Sodom and sent fire out from His fingertips to destroy that city. Lot fled, fled with these two daughters. His wife never quite made it. She’d been brainwashed. She never quite made it. And a Lot escaped with his two daughters; that even his two daughters had been poisoned. For the sake of common social decency, I’ll not go into it, but you know what happened?

Well, then there was Israel. Israel went down into Egypt and for 400 years, they were subjected to the propaganda of the Egyptians. They kept themselves aloof, but they learned the ways of Egypt and came back out idolaters. And they were idolaters until Moses brought down the law from the Mount and corrected their wrong thinking and put away their idolatry and laid the law down for them and gave them the Word of God. And then slowly they got among the nations and the nations got among them over in Palestine after they had entered across the sea or river and had gone into the Holy Land as we call it. And there they learned the ways of the heathen, the Jebusites and the Hittites and the rest of them that should have been purged out of the land, were left in the land, and Israel learned the evil ways of the nations. You know the result was the Babylonian captivity, the captivity that finally destroyed idolatry. Israel had never worshipped idols since she spent 70 years in captivity in Babylon.

I wonder what it’s going to take to wake the church up. I wonder what kind of Babylon and beside what waters we’re going to sit bitterly and hang our harps and refuse to sing. I wonder what Ezra or Nehemiah will be sent to lead us back to the land again, purged of our idolatry and our brains that were washed, washed again, by this time by the blood of the Lamb. And the way the world is using the church in our day, to achieve its ends, I think of the fate of the scarlet woman.

I don’t preach on prophecy much, though I believe in it. And I believe on the coming of Jesus to the world again. But here was the scarlet woman and the world used her. And they exalted her to sit upon many waters. And they used her to achieve their ends. And then when they had done what they wanted to do, they turned on her says the Scripture and they hated her and made her desolate and naked, then they burned her with fire. And as long as religious people can be the pawns and cat paws of the propagandists, and can be made useful, they’ll put up with us. But if ever we cross them in anything, or oppose them or dare to stand up as free men in God and say that isn’t the way I see it, we’ll be branded as another sect and despised and given the silent treatment. The Press gives space to those it can use and the silent treatment to those it cannot.

Now, the only way to help the world, my brethren, is to stay free from its brainwashing. The man who has adopted its ways can never help it. It is by standing aloof from it that we can help it. The man who is aloof is the only man that can do any good. In the day when Hitler was taking over Germany there was only one man with any prominence who dared stand and say God is mein fuhrer. And you know who he was. He was not perfect. I’m not here giving a blanket approval of everything Niemoller stands for, or Niemoller. I’m only saying that there was a man who dared to stand and say, God is my leader, whatever you think. And said the public press, He stood in such spiritual dignity that he turned the tables on the court that was trying him. And the man of God with nothing but his Bible became the judge. And the judge that sentenced him became the defendant. They turned around and put him under what they called protective custody, the liars. They put him in prison, and there in his prison, so nervous, so sick, that he couldn’t even take communion because the passion and joy of it affected him so nervously, He said, Don’t bring it anymore. I can’t take it. He isn’t perfect, and he’s not an Alliance man by any means, but he was God’s man to stand in an awful hour.

The sycophants and brainwashed camp followers of Hitler could do no good in that hour. And the prophets hiding in caves could do no good. But the man who stood before a court knowing that he might easily be shot against the wall, he did some good. And he gave heart to the heartless and hope to the hopeless and strength to the weak and wobbly. And what little there is left of godliness back yonder in Germany may have easily be attributed to the man who was free and would not come under the yoke.

They say that you can only help it by staying above it. And if need be, go on contrary to it. Funny, isn’t it? That you can only help a sinner by going contrary to him. You wives will find that out. Many a wife with a testimony who was a real Christian, she listened to her husband’s blandishments. And he said to her, Honey, I am not against your religion at all. But I just want to think that if I go to your church, you ought to go with me. And so little by little she went and her testimony went to the dogs. Pretty soon instead of her standing out, clean and bold and opposed to all of his doings, she went with him and pretty soon lost her testimony. And now they’re back where they were. And she has nothing but a sick memory inside of her heart, and he’s had his way.

Now, sir, we help people not by going with him. You gamble with me Honey tonight and I’ll go to church with you tomorrow morning. So, until three o’clock they play their games. And the next morning, tired and weary with a hangover, they get up and go to church. She’s sick inside, but too weak to say anything about it. That’s happened so often.

And the young fellow sees that pretty girl. Ah, they can be so attractive. They can knock the young fellow clear off his feet. And he’s a Christian, a Christian. He’s given his heart to Jesus. But he likes the look of that girl. And so, they go out together. Pretty soon she’s brainwashed him. And he says, well, maybe they are a bit radical down at my church, maybe they are. And when she gets him doing things she does and going to places she goes and looking at life as she looks at it and adopting her philosophy of values and all, he’s lost his testimony. And they married, bring up a family without God and without the church. And all he has is a sick memory. And when he hears a hymn, he feels like a dog. And when he hears a church bell, he feels like a dog. He’s been propagandized, caught in the net of the world.

Do you know there’s only one way to help the world, and that is, stand clean of it. There’s only one way to bless mankind and that is, oppose mankind. Wherever he’s wrong and wherever he’s different from God, oppose him. It means that brother must be divided from brother and husband from wife and children from parents. Jesus said, if anybody come to me and hate not father and mother and home and life and everything, he’s not worthy to be my disciple. That’s why we don’t have crowds rushing in here and filling the balcony and hanging out the window. Nobody, not many people want to hear this. But my days of talking to people may not be as many as some younger fellows, so I’m not going to let you down. I’m telling you, you must walk circumspectly and beware of the propagandists and look out. Don’t sell yourself. And don’t allow yourself slowly to be reasoned into wrong by the counsel of the ungodly. Better to be radical on the right side than weak on the wrong side. Better go too far than not far enough. If there’s a atom bomb or hydrogen bomb going to break over the loop, if I can go down five stories that may be four too many, but it’s better to go down five than your risk dying, by only going down one. And incidentally, you can go down five stories. You know it’s underground down, yeah; I’ve been down. I went into a building. I think it is the building where Mr. Sandrock used to have a high position. And I went down and down and down. I think it was five stories below the ground if I remember. They took me down, four at least. And if when the atom bomb breaks, I get scared and run down four stories, somebody will laugh and say that’s three more than you needed to go. I say all right, better be safe by going too far, than being imperiled but not going far enough.

So, we’d better say to the world. I’m sorry. The world says, oh, you’re narrow. You say, maybe I am narrow. But the way is narrow and the path to heaven isn’t as broad as a sixteen-lane highway. And thou I am too narrow; I’m walking with my God. Maybe our pilgrim fathers were too narrow. I rather think that were. I think they went too far when they told the children that they could not laugh on the Sabbath. I think so. I think they went too far when they said a man could not kiss his wife on the Sabbath. I think they went too far. I think they went too far when they said you could not walk down the lane in your garden, pick up an onion and eat it, or any fruit. They couldn’t stand their eyes to look at the sun and said that’s harvesting and it can’t be done. I think they went too far. But better to have a strong testimony in the right direction, even if it goes too far, then to have all this weak compromise that’s cursing us today.

I was over in last year about a year ago now. No, it wasn’t, just about, yes, about a year ago, I was over in Grantham, Pennsylvania. At Messiah college, they asked me to come over and speak three times. I told you about it then. You’ve forgotten it now. They wanted me to speak to the publication department, to the Sunday school department. And what else was it? I forgotten, but there were three departments. I knew nothing about any, so I spoke on all three. And I said to them, now, I’m not going to speak to you as a writer nor editor, and I’m not going to speak to you as a Sunday school man. I’m not going to speak to you as whatever this other thing was. I said, I’m going to speak to you as a preacher preaching to your hearts. They said, we’d love it. That’s just what we want. So, I tied it in and somehow got away with it.

Well, there were 900 people there at that council. And they were packed into that building listening while I talked to them. And they were the plain people. You know what they, are the plain people? The women dress in plain garments. They keep a covering on their head all the time, white or black or both. I stopped a woman and I said to her, she’s nice looking, middle-aged woman. And I said, excuse me, but I’d like to know why do some of you wear white on top of your head and some black. She took the black off and showed me the white. She said, well, the white’s always got to be there, but the black you put on for when you go out. Very kind, very friendly and joy, jolly about everything. And I said to one of their leaders. The men wear uniforms, and they’re plain people. Some of the older fellows have long, silky beards. No ties. I had a tie on there as loud as ever. And I was dressed just the way we preachers dress. And I didn’t apologize nor even refer to it. I just figured they’d invited me there; that I wasn’t going to wear old for them.

So, I got to talk to one of their leaders, the brother of the president of their society, or their bishop or whatever he calls himself. They’ve got a lot of bishops. And he said you know Mr. Tozer, we’re wondering whether perhaps we’re not extreme. We’re not going too far and our separation from the world and being plain people.  We’re wondering whether we’re not carrying it too far. And there’s a strong movement toward conformity with the world.

And I said to him, Mr. Hostetter, I’d like to give you some advice as a Gentile; as a man from the outside your little room and I’d like to give you some advice. Don’t change. Even though you’re extreme. And even though what you’ve done is wrong. Even though wearing beards and head coverings is in Scripture. At least stand as a testimony in this terrible hour to something godly, even if it’s a hat on your hand or the beard on your chin. I said stand. Don’t let them make another little worldly denomination out of you. If you got any conviction, stand by your convictions. Wash the feet of the saints with water. They wash feet. He invited me down. But I was tired and didn’t go. I went to bed and let them wash feet. But if you want to wash feet, and if you want to dress plain, and if they want to do these simple, old fashioned plain things in God’s name, let them do it. I said stick by your guns and don’t surrender, even though you’re extreme, and even though it doesn’t have much value, be a testimony to something in this terrible hour. And that was my advice. I don’t know whether it’ll do any good or not. That’s what I told them.

So, let’s stand out even if it we’re wrong. I mean even if it’s extreme. Let’s stand out. Let’s be known as Christians separated unto God.  And if the world laughs, and the other churches laugh and say what’s the matter with you Alliance people. Are you a holy roller? Say no. I’m not as holy as I want to be. I’m too stiff to roll. I can’t do much good rolling. So, I’m not a holy roller. I’m just a believer in the Word of God. And if I go too far, you will forgive me. But I’d rather go too far than not far enough. Amen. The only slavery I recommend is the sweet slavery of His yoke which is easy and his burden is light. The yoke of Jesus is a love yoke. The yoke that binds us to the essence and center and Son of all that’s desirable and loving and wonderful and good. Put His yoke upon you and the yoke of the world will drop away. Amen, and amen. All right.

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“Dangers of Arrogance and Defeat”

“Message #5 in Dangers in the Way and How to Avoid Them “

May 15, 1955
Arrogance is that sin that follows in the wake of success. You know, it’s an old trick of radio and theatre and newspapers and novels and all the rest; the arrogance of the rich lady. I’ve seen a few of them in my time. I know their voices when I hear them on trains or hotel lobbies. I know their voices. They’ve bought their way through life. They’ve bought their way through. They only have to pay for it and get it and boss everybody around. They had the money to pay for it. And so, the maid became a slave, and the gardener became a slave, and everybody became a slave, and bought their way through. And they get a tone of voice. I’ve heard a tone of voice. Somebody addressing somebody else and turned around and said, now that’s a dowager, that’s a dowager. And sure enough, there she would be. They’re always big. I wonder why? I never figured that one out. But they’re always big. You never saw a little dowager. They’re always big. But there’s that tone of command and that superior look and superior way of bearing, even though it takes several dressmakers and lots of other people to help them. They learn to so balance themselves that they’ve got pride and arrogance sticking out all the way around.

And now that’s bad, brother, and it’s always bad when it gets into the church of God, the successful man. I remember once I tried to call a very famous preacher and ask him if he’d come and preach. And I couldn’t even reach him. He was too busy. He couldn’t talk to me. It was good many years ago, I don’t know whether he would talk to me now or not in deference to my advancing years. But he wouldn’t then. The Lord will always punish us for that kind of thing, brothers and sisters. God will never let you high hat anybody else. Never, if you’re a Christian. Now, if you’re a sinner, God won’t care. It’s just one more sin and you will carry that one to hell with you with all the rest. But if you’re a Christian, the Lord who loves you too much by letting you get away with it, to let you get away with it. So, watch out for arrogance. Watch out for the danger of arrogance; assuming that you are somebody indeed. The Lord had no servants. He bossed nobody around. He was the Lord, but he never took the tyrannical attitude toward anybody. You say, what will the Lord do then if I get arrogant and presumptuous and full of pride over my victory and success. Well, the Lord will rebuke you and chasten you painfully.

Our Lord Jesus Christ once, rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday centuries ago. He was a carpenter’s son, they thought, at least the son of the wife of a carpenter, though God was his true Father. He was not brought up in the schools. He did not know nor use the jargon of the learned halls. He spoke the plain language of the Jerusalem streets. And then one day, they put him on a little donkey, strew palm branches and garments in the way and the mobs lined the streets on all sides and shouted, Hosanna to Him that cometh in the name of the Lord. There was success. There was recognition. There was honor to whom honor was due. There was public acclaim. There would have been the place where Jesus suddenly could say, well, maybe the devil was right. Maybe I can be king of the world. Maybe my friends who wanted me to be king were right about this. And He could have reached into the depths of His mighty power and become king overnight. But He dismissed the little donkey, went into the temple and cleansed it, and then a week later went out to die. He would not allow any success of any kind, any temporary success, to lead him astray.

You want to watch it. If you get established and accepted in your field as being a victorious, successful person, you’re in danger. And if in your Christian life, you make some strides forward, you’re in danger. The old devotional writers would not grant that any man had made any forward progress, if he knew it. They always said he’s conscious that he’s getting somewhere in the kingdom of God. That’s pride, and until that dies, he’s getting nowhere. And Paul said if any man thinketh that he amounts to anything, let him know that he won’t amount to anything until he gets over it. That’s paraphrased, but it’s approximately what Paul said.

So, let’s remember, they may say Hosanna today, but next Friday they’ll say, away with this man from the earth. Crucify Him, crucify him. And the same crowd, the same multitude that said, Hosanna, said, crucify Him. So, keep that in mind. The great politician today can be executed tomorrow or in jail. A man highly honored today can be looked upon with scorn tomorrow. And the same crowd that thought you were worthy of acclaim today, may turn their backs on you tomorrow. Never tie yourself up to public opinion, and never accept any success you may have as being due to your superior gifts. Thank God for anything you get and then go on.

Now, second is the danger of defeat or in failure. That’s exactly of course the opposite. The best example of this that I know of is where defeat came upon failure. You remember the famous battle of the Walls of Jericho, and how the walls came tumbling down. And Israel became overconfident, misplaced her confidence and thought she was doing it and went out to Ai. And they only took a few thousand along. They said, look what we did at Jericho and they hadn’t done anything, only shout and blow a ram’s horn. God had done it all, but they thought they had done it. I don’t know how they figured it. They must have thought the wind from the horn blew the walls down, for they thought they had done it. So, the next day or so, they said oh, we’ll take Ai and said boy, we’re really, we’re in high gear now. And nothing generates success like success. And we’ll don’t take Ai the same as we took Jericho. And they went out with their chest high and their heads held high and fled ignominiously before those of Ai and 35,000 died. Their defeat followed their victory as effect follows cause.

So, there’s danger that we have. There’s danger in defeat or failure. It can plunge us into discouragement. That is, it can take out of our spirit, hope and optimism and drive. Discouragement, incidentally, is hardly a sin, but it can lead to any number of sins. Of course, to discourage is to dishearten. It’s to weaken the intention to want stomach for religion. That’s an old Shakespearean expression that I run into every once in a while. I like it. He says, he hath no stomach for it, meaning that he just hasn’t any zeal for that job. He doesn’t like it. Like a sick person who’s completely lost his appetite. And they say, but you must eat, but he said I have absolutely no appetite. Then he forces something down. That’s discouragement. That’s loss of stomach.

And in the kingdom of God a lack of victory, a defeat or two, a good hard reversal, often drives us into a state where we have no stomach for anything. We pray, but we have no stomach for it. We take it like food we don’t enjoy. We go to church, but we don’t care for the church. Nothing means anything to us. The hymns are dull and tasteless and the sermon is a bore. And the whole thing is tasteless, because we have lost our stomach. We are disheartened. We’re discouraged. And there are a lot of God’s people that have done it. Now, they haven’t become unborn again. They haven’t lost eternal life. Their relation to God hasn’t changed any. They’re still his children. Christ is still pleading their cause at the right hand of the Father. Heaven is still their home. But for the time being, they’ve lost their stomachs. They have no appetite. They’ve been defeated. And so defeatism has got hold of them. Lots of churches are like that. I’ve gone into churches where it was obvious that nobody expected anything to happen. And the result of course is what you’d expect, nothing did.

Now, the danger of defeat is that it will bring defeatism. It is never a disgrace to lose, but it’s questionable to allow your loss to give you a psychology of defeat. And that’s what can happen if we don’t look out. There’s a real danger in defeat. It is as though a man were to slip and fall on an icy sidewalk. And then he would say, I don’t suppose there’s any use for me to try it again. But he would finally struggle to his feet and go another block and fall again. Then he would say, well, I know something is seriously wrong with my equilibrium. And I’ll have to, I’ll have to accept myself now. I never can walk up right again on ice. Well, of course, he’d have to go to bed too. But that’s defeatism. It’s the allowing of a reverse to put a permanent reverse in your heart. A Good man falleth seven times but he getteth up again, says the Proverbs.

I remember once over in one of our Eastern conferences, walking by a porch and there on the porch sat a young preacher, a fine-looking young fellow. But that morning, his chin was just about reaching the ground. And I started to tease him bit and gave him a nice pleasantry, and no response, no response. He didn’t smile, didn’t respond, except to say, Mr. Tozer, something awful has happened to me. Something awful has happened to me. And I said, what’s the matter? What’s happened here? Well, he said, I just took my examination for ordination and I flunked it. I flunked my examination, and they won’t ordain me.

And I said, listen, Lincoln was defeated twice before he was elected. If God has called you, go to your examining board and find out what you didn’t know, buy some books and study up on it and ask for another examination. And his chin began to come up, at least where you could see it, or I could see it. And he said, that is what you would suggest? I said, sure, don’t allow a little thing like this to get you down. If God has called you, He’s not withdrawing the call because there were some questions you couldn’t answer it. Study up on it. Find out what the trouble is and bore into the book and get hold of it and pray and ask God to help you, and the next time you go through all right, and that’s just exactly what happened. He’s now one of our successful young pastors, getting along fine. But if somebody hadn’t come around there, it might have been the end for him. He’d probably got in the old Chevrolet and gone home and said there’s no use. God has let me down; the Spirit has deserted me and I don’t even know enough to pass an examination. You can’t quit like that brethren, you can’t.

Suppose you pray for something and you don’t get it and it’s obvious, you’re not going to get it. Don’t let that finish you off. Maybe you’re not living right. Maybe you’re praying selfishly. Maybe you’ve misunderstood the will of God. Go to the Scriptures. Search it out and get right with God. Give God a chance at you. And then, try it again and press on. And finally, the Lord will either tell you, now hold on, you’re praying for the wrong thing. Pray for this thing and He’ll give it to you, or else we’ll give you what you prayed for in the first time, but don’t be defeated. I don’t have this long face for nothing brothers and sisters. I am a born pessimist. And I can see the dark side of the fleeciest cloud that ever floated in this cerulean blue above. But I’ve trained myself by the Word of God and prayer never to look that way at things, but to take God’s side and take the resurrection side and the victory side and live on that side of things.

Now, I want to give you some rules and if you haven’t gotten anything up to here maybe you’ll get help here. I want to give you some rules for the moment of discouragement, the hour when you have no stomach. You know you ought to eat but nothing tastes good. Prayer doesn’t taste good; you feel you’ve failed. You’ve been defeated in your work and your effort. Either in your business or in your school work or in your spiritual religious work. The class got smaller soon as you took it.

We tried to elected a superintendent here one time. Brother Chase will remember this but nobody else does; a wonderful man. We liked him so well we wanted to make him superintendent of the Sunday school and we suggested to him, brother, the nominating committee would like to present your name. What do you say? They like you and we think the church would like to have you as superintendent. No doubt you’ll be elected. Well, he said, I don’t like to turn you down, but he said, my past experience has not been very encouraging. He said one time I was superintendent of Sunday school and the Sunday school got smaller and smaller from the time I took it over. And at another time in a different church, I was superintendent of the Sunday school and the Sunday school not only got smaller and smaller, but the church closed up. And I said, brother, we won’t say any more about it. The nominating committee will no doubt will want to look for somebody else. Now, I have no doubt, but what that gentleman had been the victim of a couple of funny coincidences. And I believe that if with the help he would have had and the prayers of the people and if he’d had a new psychology, a new outlook, I believe he could have succeeded in the Sunday school. But you can’t take a man who has no stomach and force-feed him. So, we didn’t force feed him. We elected somebody else.

But now, if your class has gotten smaller and your prayers just aren’t seeming to get answered, and somebody has, in a roundabout way, suggested that you’re not what you thought you were. Maybe you sing. Maybe you were an artist. Maybe you paint on china. Maybe you’re a budding architect. Maybe you’ve got a professional job, and you’re not getting the recognition that you think you should have, and you’re just discouraged.

Now, I want to give you four rules. And if you’ll remember these, they’ll help you. First, do not accept the judgment of your own heart about yourself, because anybody’s heart is likely to go astray. And a discouraged heart will always go astray. So don’t think about yourself the way you feel about yourself. Don’t accept the testimony of your own heart about yourself. Go to God and Christ. God loved you; Christ loved you enough to die for you. He thought you were worth something. If you’re a converted man, the Holy Ghost dwells in some measure in your bosom. And he hasn’t turned you away. And if everybody else thinks and the gossips and those that talk around behind your back, and it gets to you. They think you’re not so good in your profession. They think your voice isn’t quite as glorious as you would like to think it is. Maybe your brains and wisdom are not as great as you’d like to think they are. Somebody has gotten the news and it got around to you by the grapevine, and you’ve heard it and your blue.

First, don’t accept the judgment of your own discouraged heart about yourself. If Gideon had accepted the judgment of his own heart, he would have stayed in that depression and pounded out a few grapes and made a little wine and a little oil and kept out of sight. But God came to that defeated, discouraged Gideon and said, get up thou mighty man of God. And he said, did you mean me? Me, a mighty man of God hiding in a hole in the ground? He said, you say, me? God said, I said you. Get up. Get up. He got up. And he accepted God’s judgment of him and went out and became victorious and put the Midianites straight.

The second rule is, make no important decisions while you’re discouraged. Now, this is serious. Make no important decisions while you’re discouraged. If he has proposed, never say yes, while you’re down, as if anybody ever was down under those circumstances. I don’t know. I’ll back out on that one. But never say yes to anything and never say no to anything while you’re blue. Get up, look down on it and then make your decision. Because if you make a decision when you’re discouraged, it’ll be the wrong decision every time. Never resign when you’re discouraged. I suppose there isn’t a pastor in all of Cook County that hasn’t at some time written out his resignation on Saturday, and then Sunday, the blessing came and he tore it up. Don’t write out your resignation when you’re discouraged. Don’t resign from anything when you’re discouraged. When you’re down and blue, don’t move. Don’t sell your property. Don’t buy a property. Don’t accept a job. Don’t do anything when you’re down. Get down before God and get straightened out. Get the sunshine in. Ask God to roll the clouds away and give you the light of His countenance. Take the defeat out of your spirit and the reverses out of your heart. And then, when you’re on top of the world and you say well, I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me, then make your decision.

Now, third thing is, remember that failure, whether it’s business failure or any other kind of failure, doesn’t make you any less dear to God. Oh, I’m so glad God doesn’t look at our bank balance to know how much to love us. Preachers sometimes do. They’re always careful to play golf with the big boys. And the little boys that can’t help them much, they don’t. Now, that’s unkind, but then I am an unkind man when I have to tell truth. And I know literally, that’s so. Some fellows love to cultivate the boys with the bank account. And they’re just as good as anybody else as far as that’s concerned, God bless them, because they will give most of it to missions if they’re in the Alliance anyhow. But remember that the fact that you have failed doesn’t make God any less loving towards you and doesn’t affect God’s love for you at all. Neither does it affect the promises. And the fourth thing is remember the promises of God. Go to the Bible and read the promises. Read the promises. Read the promises until your heart begins to leap with the joy of the promises. They’re still good, even though you’ve suffered reverses.

Now, I close. Today, God is everything. Not success, not victory, but God. Not winning, not losing, but God. God is everything. My victory can’t enrich God and my defeat cannot impoverish God. If I make good, I bring God nothing. And if I peter out, I robbed God of nothing, if my heart’s honest and I’m right. God is our Rock it says back here, and our Fortress and our Deliverer and our Buckler and our Strength and our High Tower. And He sent from above and He took me and He drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy, and from them which hated me. He brought me forth also to a large place and He delivered me because He delighted in me.

Now, I have this little verse. I’ve loved it for years and I’ll give it to you. Thou wilt light my candle. The Lord God will enlightened my darkness. This poor, little light of mine. Maybe it’s gone out. Maybe the little candle has gone out. Well, God will light your candle for you. He’ll light it and He will enlighten your darkness. Believe it? Amen. All right. God is our refuge and we’re not going to let victory spoil us nor defeat, defeat us. We’re going to take them in stride, win or lose, we’re on God’s side. And if we keep away from sin, and keep above it all and keep happy in God, we’re winning whether we know it or not. So, we can be just as happy when we’re not happy, as we are when we are happy, because that is the prerogative of faith.

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Tozer Talks

“Dangers of Bondage and Liberty”

“Message #4 in Dangers in the Way and How to Avoid Them “

May 8, 1955

In the book of Ephesians, the fifth chapter, fifteenth verse, see then that you walk circumspectly. Not as fools, but as wise, if you walk looking around.

Now over the past few weeks, I have been preaching on the dangers in the way. And I have previously shown that there are dangers to the Christian life. But that there is escape from those dangers, and protection in the midst of them. Then, I went on to warn, and point out by name, some of these dangers. I spoke of the danger of prosperity and the danger of adversity. And last week of the danger that lies in idleness and the danger that lies in busyness. Today, I want to talk about the danger that lies in bondage and the danger that lies in liberty. We’ll consider them in that order.

The danger of bondage. Now, Galatians 5:1, the man of God says that we are to be careful and not return again to the yoke of bondage from which we were once delivered. And I want to talk about the bondage to superstition, and bondage to legalistic forms, and bondage to externals such as food and dress, and bondage to holidays and seasons.

Now, first of all, the bondage to superstition. You might wonder why I should speak thus at a time or to a congregation like this because superstition is something that American people laugh about in public. Superstition as they say, an abject attitude of mind toward nature founded upon ignorance. It is a belief in magic and chance. Now, there are those that tell us that the hope of the world is returning to primitive conditions. And they say why do you go into the Baliem Valley, the Shangri-La of World War, and there, 150,000 Monies and Donies who are stone age people. Why don’t you let them alone? You will take to them the common cold, tooth decay, bad digestion, tuberculosis, and all others; the white man’s curses. Why don’t you leave them in their simple childlike beauty?

Well, whoever talks like that is talking from the airless ivory tower, completely out of touch with reality. Ask any missionary whether there is such a tribe on the face of the earth. There is none. Not one. Superstition rides the primitive peoples of the world; rides them like iron yokes. It keeps them in constant bondage. And they carry a ball and chain heavier than that, that used to be welded upon the legs of convicts in the olden days. They are afraid of everything. They’re afraid of the sun. They’re afraid of the stars at night. They’re terrified at an eclipse. They’re afraid of the wind. They’re afraid of the cry of the night bird. They’re afraid of everything and live in a state of trembling terror. When twins are born in some parts of the heathen world, they save the first twin because they say that God sent that one, but they take the second one out and pound this helpless little mouth full of hot sand and kill it. They say it’s a child of the devil.

And so, superstition rides the primitive peoples of the world constantly. There is the fear of the spell and the charm and the evil eye, magic and enchantment and witchery and sorcery, and bondage to the amulet and the incantation and the taboo. All of these things are found in the heathen lands. And now if that were all, then I suppose that I would save myself the trouble of preaching except I would use it as a reason we should become missionary-minded and send missionaries to these benighted people. But superstition is found wherever men are found. It is refined, and some of the grosser manifestations are probably not present, but most people are superstitious. I know in the part of the country where I came from, superstition had become a chain, had become a yoke, perhaps, if not an iron yoke, at least a wooden yoke. And it rested upon the shoulders of the simple country people and rode them all their lives long.

Now, superstition is not something to joke about as we do now. It is a specific defamation of the character of God. For superstition assumes, without knowing it, that God is weak and so can’t control things. They’re afraid of devils and combinations of numbers and certain days, and stars and they come to the nations in certain combinations of star patterns. They’re afraid of them, assuming all the time that God created a juggernaut which he can’t control, and that the universe is too big for Him and that God moves about and hurries here and there excitedly through His universe as an old maid who took a tiger cub home with her. And now it’s grown to full adulthood and turned vicious and roams the house while she cowers in terror in some closet waiting for the police to come.

So, God is pictured by the superstitious man as being a little limited God who created a universe over which He can’t have full control. And so, witches and spells and incantations and devils and demons and omens, and the rest, roam up and down the earth. And God hides in some cosmic closet afraid of what He’s created. That’s defamation of the Divine character. My brother, God Almighty rides upon the wings of the wind and sitteth on the circle of the earth, and measures the waters in the hollow of his hand and comprehends the dust of the earth in the balance. And weighs the mountains in scales and the hills in a measure. And all that thou can know cannot be compared under Him. He speaks and it is done. He commands and it stands forth. He calls the end from the beginning and declares the things that are not as though they were.

God is a sovereign God moving sovereignly through His world. And they that know God and know His character will never be afraid of, nor will they take comfort in rabbit’s foot, feet rather than the rabbit’s foot, or rabbit feet, nor will they have a rabbit foot hung around their neck or a horse chestnut in their pocket to keep away rheumatism.

It sounds funny, doesn’t it, but men can get in bondage to that and be paganized Christians with only the name of Christian and not be Christians at all. I say that superstition is a defamation of the Divine character because it casts aspersions upon the wisdom of God and assumes that God is limited and can be fooled and cheated like any common Roman god. Whereas, God knows all things and our thoughts are loud, and our heartbeats are like hammer blows. And God can hear the tiniest thought that lies in the back of your mind infinitely amplified. And He knew it before you entertained it, or you knew that you entertained it, so that God can’t be fooled. He knows what’s in men. He looks on the inside and he predicts and predestinates and God is not limited in any sense.

So, there’s no such thing as cheating God. There is no such thing as telling or making God a promise and then having God ring His hands and say why that man broke his promise to me, whatever shall I do? That kind of God would never get my loyalty. Never would I bow my knee to a God that I could cheat. Never would I worship and cry, holy, holy, holy in the presence of a God that I could lie to successfully. No, no, superstition makes God limited in power and limited in wisdom, or it shows him to be spiteful, so that He takes childish revenge. Superstition is in some measure a projection of our own nasty little personalities into heaven and making God in our own image. Spitefulness in us becomes a vast and limitless spitefulness in God. So, people are afraid of God,

I remember as a boy that mothers would never say a word against a baby that was born anywhere lest she should have one. If she said, he’s an ugly little mutt isn’t he. Never would she dare say that. Because somewhere there was a spiteful God with a sour grin on His face, that would watch and remember that, and when she had a baby, it would be an ugly little mutt too. Now that kind of belief in God is a disgrace, and it doesn’t belong to Christians, and it isn’t a part of the divine revelation. God is above spite. And that is why He pays no attention to those who get up and say, if there’s a God let him strike me dead in 10 seconds. And then in ten awful seconds when scarcely a heart beats and nobody breathes, this two-legged ass stands and waits for the spiteful God in the heaven to strike him down, a God he knows isn’t spiteful. And so, he’s all right, but the superstitious don’t breathe waiting for God to rise up and act like a man. No, God isn’t spiteful. God is infinitely patient with us poor little chest-beating boasters. He is infinitely kind and merciful, lest, if He were not, we should all be in hell today.

So, superstition makes God to be spiteful, or it makes God to be childish and touchy, so that we always have to be afraid of Him. I hear this sometimes among us good fundamentalists. God bless our memories. We’re afraid ever to say anything that isn’t exactly the right formula lest the God who goes in big for words and symbols should be angry with us. I know there are some who never pronounce the name of Jesus apart from all of His titles; Lord Jesus Christ, or Jesus Christ the Lord or Christ Jesus the Lord. Always they’ve got to have the three. As a poor, cheap preacher who’s been given an honorary degree and is jealous to be called doctor, so they feel that Jesus is jealous of all of His titles and that He gets miffed unless we give Him all His titles every time we speak about him. What kind of a Christ would that be? A little, spiteful, childish Christ, that you never knew exactly how to predict.

Ah, you can predict Him my brethren. His character is holy and infinitely above and beyond all of the cheap, little, moral weaknesses of men. And you can always know how God is going to act. No, no, Jesus isn’t jealous of all of His titles. Of course, God has made this same Jesus whom He crucified, both Lord and Christ. But when Mary stood at the open grave and grabbed her heart and said, Rabboni. He said, Mary, he didn’t say, don’t you respect me? Why didn’t you call me by my three titles? He smiled and said Mary and stretched out His hands. Mary knew Him better than we do. In this terrible day, superstition makes Him to be little and childish. It makes Him to be limited or weak, whereas He is none of these things. I think that we could throw chains; I think there would be carload after carload of shackles that could be carried out and melted up into metal into soft metal and made into useful things, if we could only believe in the greatness of God and see how big and glorious and sovereign and mighty and patient and loving and holy God is. For almost all weaknesses in the Church of Christ spring out of an inadequate view of God. They spring out with a low view of God. If God is seen big enouigh, there will be a wonderful liberty. Now, bondage to superstition, let’s get free from it. All the black cats on the south side can’t hurt a child of God, not all of them.

Now, bondage to legalistic forms. That is, there are those who can’t worship unless they worship after a certain form. If they have been brought up to kneel, they can’t pray standing up. If they’ve been brought up to pray standing up, they can’t pray kneeling down. And they’ve just got to get into that certain formula, and certain form, and get into that certain posture, and say certain words. No, my brethren, they that worship God must worship Him how, in spirit and in truth, and that gives us complete liberty. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. And the child of God has infinite liberty in worshiping God.

My old friend, good and honored friend, Dave Fant the engineer, used to pray to God and praise God all day long in his great train roaring along, the engineer he was. Roaring along from Atlanta to the coast, and praising God all the time; was saved in that old cab, if you don’t mind, and filled with the Holy Ghost in that old cab. And when he got to a certain town, he used to salute them by pulling the whistle. It wasn’t necessary, but he preached there, and so he pulled the whistle, and one day he forgot to pull the whistle. And the news went like wildfire every place. Dave Fant didn’t salute us this morning. Do you suppose the Lord took him away and didn’t tell us. It sounded like the Old Testament in the days of Elijah. No, he just forgot.

You can pray on a train. You can pray in an airplane, most people do. You can pray standing up or sitting down or in any position. Because we worship God in spirit. We don’t practice our religion as a witch her formula. We worship God spontaneously out of our hearts. We love Him and He loves us. And there is no form there. Although, there must be some form in public worship, otherwise, of course, it would be bedlam. There has to be somebody to know which, we’re going to sing next, and so on. So, I believe in a certain limited, modified form in church service, but oh brother, it’s possible to get so legalistic and into such bondage and formality, that you’ll blow up and have a temper fit if things aren’t done the way they should be done in church.

Sure, our brother there had an experience like that one time. He was supposed to be leading the service and he took an offering and, or did something out of turn, and one old deacon got up white-faced and roundly scolded him in un-Christian harsh terms and said, we must have this done in order. He committed more sin by that act ungodly volcanic eruption than if there had never been any order in the church.

Then, there are other traditions which may not go back to Christ and the apostles at all. Let me give you a rather silly illustration of what I mean. It’s possible to follow old certain mannerisms or forms, traditions, and not know where they originated, or know how they got there, and yet they’re religiously followed and imitated by all aspiring Christians. I told you this before several years ago, but it’s time for a repeat. Several years ago, Walter Post, a missionary from our church over in the Netherlands East Indies, saw a young converted Diack preacher, and he was quite a preacher, this Diack. He could declare the Word of God in the language of his people wonderfully. And Walter had won this boy to God and taught him what he knew. And Michaelson, another missionary there told me smilingly afterward this. He said, this young Diack preacher was a great preacher, but he had the peculiar mannerisms. He would pluck at his collar while he preached and reach for his collar and pluck out and then reach with the other hand and pluck at his collar. And he said, I didn’t understand why he did it until I heard Walter preach. And he plucked at his collar. And then he said, I didn’t know why Walter did it until I came home and heard you. And you pluck at your collar. And listen now, the reason I plucked at my collar was that the collar didn’t fit the shirt band, and I used to have to get them straight while I preached. Now, that kind of thing sounds silly, but you can get into bondage to that thing and carry it down the years and found churches upon it and get your soul into a straitjacket. Throw your shoulders back and breathe deep and say in Jesus Christ, I’m a free man. And I will not be subject to bondage of any kind.

And then there is another type of bondage we’ve got to watch out for, and that’s the bondage to foods and to dress. Now, Jesus said, it didn’t matter what entered into a man’s mouth. That didn’t defile him, but it was what came out of a man’s mouth. And Paul said in 1 Timothy, that in the latter days, certain men should come. And they should give heed to doctrines of devils. And that the doctrines of devils were that they should not marry and that they should abstain from meat, meat which God had created to be received with thanksgiving in them that know and believe the truth. For all the gifts of God are good. All creatures are good and are to be received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer.

Now, there is certainly an emancipation proclamation that delivers you from foods. And yet, in spite of that, we find lots of God’s dear children running right back in and taking the oath. They don’t feel comfortable without it. Like the man who had the crutch so long that now he feels naked when he doesn’t wear his crutch. And there are people like that. They just must have something to make them miserable. They just won’t be free in God. So, they won’t eat this or they will eat that, and they buy a book somewhere for 25 cents to show us why they’re right, scientifically. Oh, no, no, no brother, the rule is if it doesn’t hurt you, eat it, as you can afford it. And if you don’t have an allergy to it, go ahead and eat it because all creatures of God are good and are to be received with thanksgiving. to them that believe and know the truth.

Now, here’s a place to tell you about a wonderful letter that I received last week, about a thirty-page letter, twenty of them numbered, and a lot of them on both sides only numbered on one, from a Presbyterian woman down in St. Louis, who had been converted to God; marvelously converted to God. And she said, oh, she grew up in an atmosphere and still is in it apparently in that church where they drink a little and do all sorts of other things that Christians don’t do. And she said, she had never heard of A.B. Simpson and she never heard of the Alliance Weekly, obviously, though she had read a couple of other books that I had written. But she said that she had a little baby, about eighteen months old and has got eczema. She said this little baby with the eczema was so sick that it couldn’t sleep and she couldn’t sleep and her husband couldn’t sleep and it had sores and it bled and the little bed in the morning was bloody from the scratching and the sores off this sweet little baby girl’s body. She said she went to God about it. And she said, God, I’d like to know what’s the matter with my baby. She went to the doctor. The doctor said it’s an allergy, but I don’t know what allergy. So, he began to make tests. He ran one test after the other and still she suffered and still she couldn’t sleep and still the home was in an uproar. No sleep at night and crying all day. She said she went to God and said, now God, I am Thy servant and I ought to know what’s the matter with my baby. Nobody knows. Now God, you tell me. I’ll be listening. She said, the next morning she went to salt the baby’s food and she felt checked in her heart. And she dashed to the telephone and said doctor, doctor, is it possible to be allergic to salt? He said yes, iodized salt. So she didn’t salt the food that day and for the first time in weeks the baby slept all night. She said she kept iodized salt out of the baby’s diet, and in seven days it was perfectly well, not a sore and sleeping all night.

Now, there’s your point, brother. If you break out in a rash, don’t eat it. But, if you don’t, don’t think there’s any such thing as religious food. I’m here to tell you there isn’t any such thing as religious food. No food is any more religious than any other food. Neither are we any better if we eat. Neither are we any of the worse if we do not eat, said the man of God. And that ought to take care of that. I won’t talk about dress this morning.

In Toledo I had occasion to talk about the kingdom of God being liberty, that in not meat nor drink, and I added dress and whiskers to it. And I said that the kingdom of God didn’t lie in a man’s beard, and if it were, to take it off, and it didn’t make him any nearer to God. And a dear old missionary that had studied under Simpson years ago, came smilingly down and shook my hand and talked to me and he had a long beard. And I felt mean for having said that, but it was true nevertheless. Beard or no beard, spirituality does not lie in the length of your hair. It does not lie in the length of your beard. It does not lie in the length of your garment. And it does not lie in the quality of your garment. The rule I would lay down is the easiest rule in the world; if it’s modest, and you can afford it and it’s appropriate, that’s all God cares about dress.

Well, in bondage to days and seasons, I don’t think I have to go into that. Certainly, we don’t need that fear, bondage the days and seasons. How they fill the churches on Easter and how they empty them the next Sunday. Which all goes to show that such Christians are bound, if they are Christians at all.

Now, that’s the dangers of bondage. Don’t let’s get into bondage. Jesus Christ set us free. Was it Luther who said, love God with all your heart and due as you please, knowing that if you love God enough, you’re only pleased to do the will of God.

Now with that saying, which is a dangerous same, I go to the second, the danger of liberty. That is the danger of antinomianism. There’s a long jaw-breaking word. It means that certain people tend to run by unchecked logic to extremes. And that if I get up and say you are free, they immediately leap into the air and say thank God, I’m free, I’ll do as I please, and they go out and commit sin to show how free they are. You wouldn’t believe it, but that is the case. That has been done. I just finished reading a book called, “Small Sects in America.” It is quite an exhaustive treatise on the small denominations and sects in America over the past history and extant now. And it’s quite amazing how many of those sects ran to free love and sexual extremes because they were free in the Holy Ghost therefore they were free in the flesh. Now, there is your danger brother. Paul said I am free, but I will not use my freedom as a cloak for the flesh. God set us free but he didn’t set us free to do evil. He set us free to do good. Freedom to do good is the Christian’s liberty, not freedom to commit sin. God never said you’re free now, go on out and sin.

Some Christians have carried freedom to such a ridiculous and unholy extreme that they have said, I’ve got to sin a little, right along to keep grace operating. I think that’s tragic heresy. And the children of God should know it for such and flee it as they would polio; for it is a disease.

Christian liberty is freedom to live in the Spirit unhindered by externals. Christian liberty is freedom from the fear of the government, freedom from fear of my sins, freedom from fear of God, servile fear of God that is. Freedom from fear of the devil, freedom from black cats and birds and amulets and spells and charms and wizardry. Freedom from religious bondage of every kind. Freedom from traditions, the iron yoke. Freedom to live in the Spirit and worship God in spirit and in truth. That’s Christian freedom.

But, when it becomes freedom to commit sin, that grace may abound, Paul cries out against it from his high hill with a shout, God forbide! How should we, that had been dead to sin live any longer, there in. Freedom to love, so that our conduct springs out of love, and freedom not to hate. Ah, it’s wonderful to be free from hate so that you don’t have to hate. Hate is a moral cancer. And it eats on the soul till it kills the victim. And to get free from hatred is like getting healed of cancer; delivered from that cursed wild bunch of cells that eat on our liver. Freedom from hatred and freedom from envy and freedom from unholy ambition and freedom from wanting your own way and freedom to do the will of God, that’s Christian freedom. That’s Christian liberty, but never free to commit any sort of sin. For the child of God who lives from within and whose heart is a fountain of affection and love for God, will not sin, but if he does, he will confess it with sorrow and be forgiven and cleansed from it and determined not to go back to that wallow anymore.

Now I want to point out another thing that a Christian will not use his freedom to put other Christians into a bad conscience. Paul told about meat that was offered to idols, and some Christians had a conscience about it. Now, Paul said, I have no conscience at all about meat that has been offered to an idol, if it’s good, clean meat, because I don’t believe an idol is a real thing. There’s one God, one Lord, one Spirit, and all these other so-called gods are all imitations. They don’t exist for me, said Paul. Yet said Paul, when I’m in the home of a young Christian that doesn’t know this, I will respectfully pass by meat offered to idols lest I hurt his conscience.

So, a Christian is in danger of allowing his very liberty to be a stumbling block to somebody else. So that he does freely, things that other people will think he’s sinning when he does. And thus, he’s a hindrance to other people. Well, there was a little rule I think that we can put down here, it is, take your freedom in Christ Jesus. Be as free in Christ as He made you. And remember, you’re not a bond slave, but a son. You’re not a servant in the house. You’re a child in the household. You’re your father’s child, not the king’s servant. Be free. Yet, not use your freedom for a license to the flesh. But mortify the flesh and keep your flesh under. And lay your loving burdens on yourself for Christ’s sake. A burden that I voluntarily lay upon my shoulder is no burden at all.

I don’t tell many stories, but the missionary told us one of a little girl about ten I suppose, carrying her little brother piggyback on her a little back in one of our foreign fields. And she carried him around all day while the mother worked in the field. And the missionary sympathized with the little girl and referred to the little boy on her back as a burden. And the girl looked up and said, “That’s not a burden, that’s my brother.”

What you do voluntarily is not a burden. It is only a yoke when somebody else leaves it on your neck, and says, take it or go to hell, where they shall but perish. Somebody with a beard, or clothing of certain kind, or tradition behind him, or stained glass to give him authority that the poor little shivering fellow doesn’t have in his own heart. Or some other religious accoutrement to add to his personality, that authority, which he doesn’t have inside. He tells me you do it this way, or you perish. I smile, I hope not too perilously, and tell him, oh, friend, you don’t know my Father. My father doesn’t look at it that way. My Father says, child, you were free, absolutely free. Free to take voluntary burdens for the sake of others; carry those burdens on your shoulder. And the burden you carry voluntarily will never make your shoulders sore. But the burden that religion lays upon you or philosophy or tradition or superstition, will gall you and scar you and kill you at last.

But, the easy yoke of Jesus, His yoke is easy and His burden is light, I found it so, I found it so. The yoke of Jesus is easy. I stand to declare to you, that the Lord Jesus has never asked a hard thing of me. My miseries have always come out of my own flesh. They have never come from any burden Jesus ever laid on me. And what few burdens I have laid on myself, I’ve never felt the weight of them at all. They are as easy and light as can be. For as little song says, as He always takes the heavy end and gives the light end to me.

So, let’s watch it. Let’s not get bound to anything, for we’re free men and women in Christ Jesus. But, let’s be sensible and not use our freedom as a cloak for the flesh. And let’s not hide behind liberty in order to practice license. Let’s remember that the man in whom Jesus Christ dwells will be wrought to be a good man. And don’t be afraid of the word “good.” Let us not fling back in the face of Jesus the charter of freedom which cost Him His blood. Stand fast therefore in the Liberty where with Christ has made you free and be not entangled with the yoke of bondage. But use not your freedom as a cloak for the flesh, but knowing your free, discipline yourself for Jesus’ sake. We trust the indwelling Spirit to fulfill in you the law of God, for what the law could not do and it was weak through the flesh, God sending His Son, has done by the indwelling Spirit within us.

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“Dangers of Idleness and Busyness”

“Message #3 in Dangers in the Way and How to Avoid Them “

May 1, 1955

It is difficult to follow consecutively a series of talks because of the interruptions that come from other speakers and from conventions and an occasional absence. But I feel that I would like to continue to talk a little for a Sunday or two yet about the dangers to the Christian. Dangers that lie in the Christian’s path. And as a kind of text I have here in the fifth chapter of Ephesians these words. See that ye walk circumspectly. Not as fools but as wise. Don’t be foolish, but be wise and walk circumspectly.

Circumspectly is one of those easy to figure out words. Circle meaning around, where we get our word circle, and circumference and all such words. And spectly of course means, look. We talk about spectacles. We used to call them that. And so, we are exhorted here to walk looking around. Not plunging foolishly head-long, but walk looking around.

Now, I repeat that I do not wish to make my hearers danger-conscious, because if you become danger-conscious excessively, that will slow you down. Scripture says, he that observes the wind shall not sow, and he that regarded the cloud shall not reap. The farmer who never looks at the wind, or observeth the wind, or looks at the clouds, will be a very foolish farmer, and he will not have a very good crop at the end of the year. But the man who becomes so cloud-conscious and wind-conscious that he gets up and moistens his finger and holds it up to see which way the wind is blowing every morning, and then sneaks back away if there’s a cloud overhead, he’ll get nothing done. He that observeth the wind shall not sow. There are times when you must pay no attention to the wind. And he that regardeth the clouds, he shall not reap. There will always be a cloud warning you to stay indoors, but the wise man will know which cloud to regard and which to disregard.

So, we Christians are not to become so conscious of the wind and the cloud that we don’t do anything. But on the other hand, if we are unaware of danger, we increase that danger a hundredfold and almost guarantee disaster. By reason, I’ve been giving this series on the dangers in the way.

Now today, I want to talk about the danger of idleness and the danger of busyness. First, there’s the danger of idleness. You see, God made us for creative activity. There is a notion abroad in the day in which we live that labor is a sin, or at best, it’s a curse resting upon us. I think some Christians even have that notion that labor is a curse, that it is a disciplinary punishment which the Lord laid upon the world at the Fall. Now nothing could be further from the fact than this. For if you will read the Bible before the third chapter of Genesis and the Fall, you’ll remember that God told the newly created couple that they were to replenish the earth and subdue it. Now replenishing the earth meant there were to be children born into the world. And anybody who imagines that there can be children brought up in the world without work, has never had any children or even been where they are. And the command to subdue the earth certainly embraces the idea of work.

And then it says, that they were placed in a garden, to dress it and to keep it. They were not there to be idle. God the Creator, made man in His image and made him to be something of a creator too, so that man was to labor. He was to subdue the earth. He was to bring, they were to bring children into the world and work to the bring up those children, and they were to dress the garden and keep it in shape. So that meant work. So that work is not a result of the Fall. But sin brought sorrow and thorns and thistles and sweat. There are four words that didn’t occur. In the first and second chapters of Genesis, sorrow and thorns and thistle and some sweat, they did not occur. But the word “work” occurred, or its equivalent, dress and keep and subdue and care. Those words occur in the first chapters, but the word sorrow, thorns, thistles and sweat, they were added when man sinned.

So, remember that work is not a result of man’s sin. But to work in sorrow, that’s a result of man’s sin, to work with thorns and thistles around you. That’s the result of man’s sin. And to work until we sweat for our daily labor, that is a result of man’s sin. So that, remember that God made us to be workers.

Our Savior was a worker, and idleness is very un-Christlike and contrary to the high will of God. For it is the avoiding of our commission. And it is an invitation to temptation. You know, our fathers had a little saying. I think Isaac Watts wrote it in his little book for children. The devil always finds some tasks for idle hands to do. And the word idle was, in other days, a very evil word, a very evil word. Our fathers scorned the word. They hated it. And they wrote poems about it, as Isaac Watts did. The devil always finds some tasks for idle hands to do. No, I have no statistics on this, but I think I’d be safe in saying that ninety-five percent of the deviltry of the world is thought up by people who have nothing to do at the time. People who are engaged in some kind of productive activity may sin, but they’re not as likely to as those who have nothing to do. It was when David had ended his labors and was on the housetop taking a little idle walk that he looked down and saw the scene that led him to the great temptation into adultery and murder. So that ninety-five percent of the deviltry of the world results, in my estimation, from the people who have nothing else to do.

Now, the idle Christian is in great danger. He’s in danger because, as I say, he’s unlike his Savior. Our Lord went about doing good, and there is no excuse for idleness. We’re not thinking at the moment of recreation. Personally, I think that recreation racket is greatly overdone. But I do grant that there should be some recreation, some exercise. But while we’re not speaking of recreation, we are speaking about idleness and our Lord was not idle. He chose industrious men for His disciples. He did not go to the Riviera and pick playboys, whether they be Bo Dyes or Jimmy Walkers or who, he picked simple men who were hard workers, who had something to do, who took an interest in life and had something to do. He did it deliberately and purposefully.

Now therefore, I recommend to you Christians that you make yourself available. That you be ready to do anything. Don’t hold yourself off until you’re ready to do something. Start doing something now. Learn to ride your bicycle by trial and error. Don’t wait until you learn to ride it before you buy one. But get one now and practice on it. Get something done. You may make a lot of mistakes at first of course. But do something if you can’t do anything around the church. Some people say there is nothing for us to do. I have had it said, your church has a wealth of talent and there’s nothing for me to do. Well, I suppose that person would mean that you have your soloist and there’s no solo for me to sing, or no committee for me to be the chairman of. Well, if it’s to be chairman of a committee or singing a solo, of course. Maybe, the average church wouldn’t have room for everybody. But any Christian who’s worth his salt will find something to do in the kingdom of God.

We learned and I suppose everybody knows it, but it came very dramatically home to us on the farm. That farm machinery seldom wears out. If you keep your machinery up, you can use it summer in summer out and along, seasons over and over and over until it becomes obsolete. And some new thing you buy to replace that which is an obsolete piece of machinery, not worn out, just old fashioned. But one season sitting out in the weather will wreck any piece of machinery. The idle machines sitting in the darkness will go to pieces in one season. But that same machine used for 10 years will only brighten it up, make it shine. Maybe a bolt wear out can be replaced like nothing and the machine will go on.

Now Christians are exactly like farm implements. One year of sitting around and sulking will do more to rust your soul, than one hundred years of hard work if God granted you that many years. Don’t be afraid of wearing yourself out. The devil is a master of strategy. When a child of God gets busy, he whispers in their ear, now watch it because you’re going to have a nervous breakdown. I’m positively sure that nervous breakdowns do not come from working in the easy yoke of Jesus Christ. They come from frustrations and hidden sins and stubbornness and refusing to hear God, then wanting our own way. But they don’t come from working. His yoke is easy, His burden is light. I’ve found it so, I found it so.

And I’m sure that there isn’t a gray hair in this head of mine was ever placed there by honest labor in the kingdom of my Savior. Not any one. But I wonder how many are there because I wanted my own way. I wonder how many are there because I wanted the world to obey me and they wouldn’t listen. Stubbornness, contrariness, resentfulness, those will bring frustration and illness, but not the late work of the Lord. Jesus Christ would never have gotten sick. He could have lived infinite years working as He worked. He did not kill himself by hard work. They had to kill him on a cross. And Paul became very old in the work of God and was still going when they cut his head off. And Peter, when they crucified him.

So, it’s our human weaknesses and faults that causes us to break down, not working in the service of the Lord. So don’t be afraid to work. You’ll rust out and some of you may have rusted out. Maybe it’s too late to do very much now of your time. The rust is so complete that like the one horse, Shea. One good lunge and you’re finished. But I don’t think it’s true of very many, maybe of nobody. I’m optimistic enough to think that that’s an extreme statement and there’s nobody here that’s completely rusted out. There may be a little rust around here and there. And you can get rid of that by going to work. You can wear your rust off awfully easy. And you will not wear yourself out in doing it.

So, there’s the danger of idleness, so many idle Christians who say I have nothing to do, nothing to do. There’s intercession to be made. There are calls to be made. There are letters to be written. There are booklets and tracts to be distributed. There’s singing to be done. There are many things to be done.

I remember I’ll tell this again, because the sermon won’t be long anyway. But a man who asked me whether he could do something around the church when I was in Indianapolis. And I said Elmer, I don’t know anything you could do. Well, I thought he wanted, of course, to be chairman of something. But he didn’t. He said, well, can I take care of the lawn? I said, yes, you can take care of the lawn. So, Elmer took care of the lawn. And that lawn never prospered as it did. He varnished the sign out in front. He kept up the little high fence up nicely. And the thing positively began to look like a golf course. Elmer had just been converted a short time and something in him wanted to work. And he was humble enough that he was willing to take care of the lawn; anything to look after the work of God and do something.

Well, the story is that it wasn’t very long until Elmer was preaching on the street. And after that, he began to preach in institutions here and there. And a little later, he began to go to another town out from Indianapolis and hold meetings. And that formed into a little group. And then came a church. And now there’s an Alliance church there, preaching the gospel and giving to missions and praying for missions and sending out missionaries, all because a man newly converted, was willing to do anything. If he had sulked and told his wife, there’s too much talent around here. I can’t be chairman of anything, I have nothing for me to do. He would have rusted out, and that church never would have been established there. But Elmer Durant was too much of a Christian to want to head something. He did have something later on, as I’ve explained, but he began by coming along.

So, let’s not be idle. The devil always finds some thing for idle men and women to do. So, there’s a danger in idleness. Let’s walk circumspectly and watch that. That’s a ditch on one side of the road. But over on the other side of the road, there’s another ditch and it’s called busyness.

There’s a great danger in busyness. Now, there’s a time for everything, says the Holy Ghost. To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens. A time to be born and a time to die and a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted. A time to weep and a time to laugh and a time to mourn and a time to dance and a time to cast away stones and a time to gather them. A time to embrace and the time to refrain from embracing. A time to get and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away. A time to rend and a time to sew, a time to keep silent and the time to speak. There’s the middle of the road Christian, realizing that he’s not to be extreme on anything, but that he is to be wise. And the wise man will know the time and the season.

Now, there is no time for idleness. And the scripture doesn’t say there’s a time for idleness here. But there is a time for relaxation, there is a time to realize that’s the time and to camp. That you pitch your tent there and you don’t go on for that day. You’ve gone far enough that day. There’s no time for idleness, because idleness assumes lack of purpose. If I have no purpose, I will be idle. It assumes this inclination to be inconvenienced, and it assumes addiction to pleasures. We have so many gadgets invented in our day, to minister to idleness, just idleness. Well, there’s no place for that in the kingdom of God. But there’s a time to cease activities. Even the creatures beside the fire up yonder in the heaven as revealed in the first chapter of Ezekiel. Those creatures let down their wings and waited on God. Now, Daniel prayed three times a day.

And it’s possible to be so busy in our secular work or even busy in the Lord’s work, that we have no time to pray. No time to wait on God or get still, and sew up the raveled sleeve of care and adjust ourselves, and orientate our soul toward God in heaven. And when that happens, there’s danger. Daniel prayed three times a day, the prophet sought the silences. You will find that God looked for his men in the silence. Men who can’t be silent, might as well be silent, because they won’t say anything when they talk. It is only out of the silence that the Word speaks. In the beginning was silence. Before the beginning was the silence, said the old writers. And then in the beginning was the Word. The idea was that God’s spake out of the everlasting silence of His own holy self-contained being. And we’re so likely to be so busy that we don’t get anything done, and so talkative that we never say anything. The prophets sought the silence. And in the silence, they learned what to say. And then they broke the silence by saying it and relapse back into the silence again.

We could well cut down the decibels in our homes and in our churches. I’m always cautious and be afraid of noisy people. It takes a very wise man to talk all the time and say anything. So let us learn the scriptural silence. And Christ Himself went into the desert, and there in the silence. Forty days and nights He waited on his God under the temptation of the devil. And when he came out from there, he came out in the fullness of the Spirit and went out to preach the Word of God everywhere. And our Lord Himself told us to shut the door. He said, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray unto thy Father, which is in secret. And My Father, who hears in secret, shall reward thee openly.

Secular business can ruin men. A man called me up the other day, not a member of this church, a member of some church down south further. And he said, I have been a Christian a few years, and I want to do God’s will. He said, I have a business, a real estate business and I have partners. And he said, we have made it a rule to be only open on weekdays and close on Sunday. He said, Now, my partners want to open on Sunday. What would you say? What would you have told him? What would you have told me? I said, by all means, follow the light. By all means, lose the sale, and keep your good conscience. And if your partners won’t listen, sell out and start something of your own. God will bless you for it.

Not that I’m a sabbatarian, No. Not that I believe that one day is above another day, no, but I believe we ought to have some time for God. And the man who works seven days a week has no time for God. The office that keeps open to get a few more extra nickels on that seventh day, has no time for God. Whether he takes Wednesday, Sunday or Friday off, he ought to take a day off. But Sunday would be the day to take off. It’s a testimony and enables the man to get into the house of God and mingle and raise his voice in songs of Zion with the people of God. Now, I haven’t heard from this business man. I don’t know whether he took my advice or not. But I think he did, because he felt very keenly that he should not open on Sunday. We’re not sabbatarians but we do believe that there’s a time for everything. And secular business can ruin men unless they take time to cultivate God.

But as I have said, excessive religious work can do the same. Unless we take time to cultivate God. Dr. Reuben A. Torrey used to take two weeks out of every year and put on old clothes and go into the hills. Nobody knew his whereabouts but his wife. Nothing short of death was to get a message through to him. No telephone, no telegram, no cables, no anything. Two weeks. He waited, relax, rest, engaged at the sky and listen. And then he came back to the busy world with a heart and the mind filled with truth. Too much busyness in the work of the Lord can destroy the effectiveness of that work.

Now, I want to give you a little motto here. If you’re too busy in the Lord’s work to spend time in the Lord’s presence, then you’re too busy in the Lord’s work. So, let’s be careful to walk circumspectly, looking around. Here’s the broad highway of God. Over on the left, there is idleness and over on the right, is excessive busyness. And then there’s the great broad highway in the middle. We can follow that highway, and go along, and have plenty of room and get a world of work done, and still not rust out from idleness, nor kill ourselves with excessive busyness. There’s a time for everything.

So, we wait on God to renew our batteries. And then, when they’re up to full power, we turn them loose into the work of God. And thus, we go wisely, not as fools, but as wisemen. So let us remember these two dangers. Whoa be to the idle Christian. He will not grow in grace. Even a baby exercises. Six months old Ruthie, down at our house, my wife’s babysitting. Stanley’s little girl six months old and beautiful, but exercise, she can’t walk yet. She can’t even sit up, but exercise. Exercise, she exercises until she grunts just exercising. Exercise, you grow and you exercise, and you will stop growing when you stop. But if we get all worked up and allow the world and the tense jitteriness of the world to excite us; we’re dashing continually in the work of God, it is just as great a danger.

So, let’s ask God for wisdom not to be idle ever, but to be inactive sometimes for the sake of renewing our batteries and relaxing our nerves and quieting our minds and above all things, seeing visions of God. And then we’ll not fall into either ditch. And down the great broad highway of Zion, we will move toward a predetermined end. God grant this is my prayer this morning.