In this sermon, the speaker discusses the three dimensions of living: being something, doing something, and having something. He emphasizes that many sermons focus on what Christians should do, such as witnessing, tithing, and serving in the church. However, the speaker highlights the importance of being surrendered to God and allowing Him to have control in our lives. He shares a story of a man in dire circumstances who turned to God in prayer and experienced a miraculous intervention. The speaker concludes by mentioning the impact of revival in people's lives, leading to repentance, restitution, and restored homes.

Well, I'm just as happy to be here, not because originally we wanted to be in this kind of a ministry, never looked for it, but then God allowed us to have that privilege, and I'm just happy to be here tonight, and I'm so happy to be on this team. I was reading some time ago about Jonathan Edwards' revival, you know, the revival that did a tremendous thing to turn the United States from a sort of a reckless path to a life of godliness again, and the greatest complaint about the revival in Jonathan Edwards' day was, there were two complaints. One was the meetings were too long, and would you believe it, in his day they had men in the church with long poles. I think they took their offerings with a sort of a stick going down, and a bag going down the bench, or down the row, or you perhaps have heard of that. And they used to use those long poles to wake up people who went to sleep. And the other, the other thing about Jonathan Edwards' revival that caused a lot of controversy, is it stirred up some layman who also began to get into the into the work of sharing the gospel. And some people didn't like the lame way laymen speak. You know, we lay people aren't all that polished. I don't know that I should put it this way. I think it's possible to walk around in a theological dream, and we lay people don't get into that situation very easily, because we don't know our theology all that well. And secondly, our feet are kind of in the mud a lot of the times, and we don't get into that way. Well, when lay people get to taking the pulpit like I am tonight, you just never know whether everything is going to come out just as precise as it should. And I guess we should be careful, we should study our scriptures, of course we should. We should share, we should share, we should share according to God's word, and not pretend we are who we aren't. But those were the two complaints in his day. And I've noticed that, I think, if I were to keep my ear to the ground, the two most serious complaints about revival today are exactly those two things. The meetings get too long, and secondly, there are lay people who seem to be all caught up with this, and it's hard to know what to do with them. They kind of run hither and yon, and they they share this way and that way, and they meet in their homes sometimes, and other times they share in churches, and it puts an odd kind of a dimension into church life when they start sharing. It puts kind of an odd kind of dimension into relating to each other as believers when lay people start getting involved and really getting on fire for the Lord. So I don't know whether that's to the credit or how we should evaluate, but I just report that. That's what those history books tell us about Jonathan Edwards' revival. But that's not really what I'm here to talk to you about. I just threw that in by the way. I want to share to you a little bit about the very first time I stood in the pulpit with Ralph and Lou's ministry. It was in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was on a Sunday afternoon. It was the first day of the Crusades in Vancouver, and while they had one of the largest evangelical church they could find in the city, in that area of the city, South Vancouver, and they had the downstairs all wired with closed-circuit TV, so you'd have two auditoriums downstairs and above, each seating about the same number. That church was jam-packed, and at the last moment they decided to open another church just across the way. And they'll say, we'll run Crusade services in sort of a shuttle system. Well, decisions are made very fast at the last minute. And the first assignment I had was to go over to that other church, which was also jam-packed, and there were people standing on the sidewalk trying to get in, and go over there and run a Revival Crusade service. And I will never forget that Sunday afternoon as I went to that church and I said, well, Lord, your word says that you're sufficient. I don't know how. I've never run a Revival Crusade service in my life, but they tell me to go up there on the platform, take that pulpit, and begin a Crusade service with a church with probably more people in it than this. Well, that's the way it started. And I want to tell you that in the process, from then till now, many a time, many a time, God has been teaching me how to die a death and live beyond humiliation. It seems that though the Calvary road that we're walking with God, when we're really in fellowship with him, is a life we live which is beyond humiliation. You cast yourself so completely upon the Lord that you say, whatever happens, Lord, even if I look like the most inappropriate and unwelcome fellow, I will do what I believe you want me to do for your glory and let it be. And I started that Sunday afternoon that way. I crossed that street and that heavy downpour, and many a time since then, I have been on my knees before God, telling him, Lord, I gave you my life. I gave you all of it. I'm not taking it back, and I want you to continue to do in me what you want to do. And again and again, God brings us to those little crisis points where we have to be ready to die so that we can really live. And I really believe that's what the Christian walk is all about. Everywhere we go, of course, we meet many new people. And Freda was just telling me today, she says, I think in Red Deer I found a few more people to become members of the Poor Me Society. Everywhere we go, we find the poor me people. And I guess maybe that's why the Lord has led her into that talk on depression. We find them everywhere, and the thrilling part is that we see God deliver them from the poor me kind of life to an abundant life where they can rejoice in the Lord Jesus. We meet people whom God deals with very harshly in kind of a crisis. I remember the man not so long ago in Jackson, Michigan, who had retired, and he felt that his severance pay wasn't quite right, figured out right. And because he retired a year or two early, they asked him to retire. The company was shifting its headquarters or something like that. And because he felt his severance pay wasn't quite right, he decided to take with him a rather expensive instrument that they used to do testing in the laboratory. And he felt that that instrument would sort of compensate for the incorrect calculation of the severance pay. Here he was, a man in his 60s, and he had an instrument in his basement which he hoped to sell for a reasonable price to make up for the severance pay that he was losing. Well, you know what happened in revival. God shook that man, and he was on his knees, and then he was on his way back to the company with the instrument. And then he gave his testimony to a whole series of people as he started with a supervisor and finally found the man who could accept the instrument and write it off. And our life is just filled with people whose hearts are touched by the Lord in what we call revival, even though some people don't like the word, and perhaps we should have another word. We don't know what what the right word is. I do know this, that as we watch God at work in the hearts of people, he does things that often bring about a crisis experience in the person's life. I remember in Michigan at a pastor's meeting on several occasions where the talk went something like this. Pastors would say, well, we preach exactly the same message as this. You people don't bring any new doctrines to town. You don't preach anything new. There's nothing new about this. But we see so many people go to the prayer room. We see people making restitution. We've even heard tonight. We see people getting right with God. We see how homes restored. We see people saved in the middle of this. What's the difference? How is it, you know, in Michigan, most of the churches there, it seems to be the evangelical churches, are so heavily Baptist, so this is almost always in Baptist circles. And you sit around and they ask this question. Why is it that something is happening now? And I've been listening as a lay person. As you've heard, physics and math is my background. When I did teaching in physics, I did a lot of collecting of data and then trying to analyze it to find out what it meant. And I've listened for, well, meeting after meeting, literally hundreds of pastors meetings. And I've listened to pastors speak from all kinds of churches and all kinds of congregations. And listen to them discuss this. And they say, you don't bring anything new to town. Why are people excited? Why do people get excited? Why do people get right with God when we preach exactly the same thing on a Sunday morning and nothing seems to happen? In fact, I quit giving invitations altogether. I did for so long and nothing happened, so I quit. And I don't have any invitations in my church anymore. Nothing happens when we do. They say, you people come to town, you preach the same message, the same gospel. You talk about loving the Lord and believing in Jesus Christ and being filled with the Spirit and walking in the Spirit and living a normal Christian life. We preach the same thing and nothing happens. And as I've listened, I believe that if we look at the Word of God very closely and we'll read carefully, I think Jesus shows us conditions just like they are today, they were there in his day, which begin to reveal why it is that we can talk so much about living a Christian life but never come to grips with it. And I believe it this way. We've read the scriptures already, this tonight, or I would take time to read Matthew chapter 5, the first 17 verses, where it talks about the Beatitudes, you know, blessed are the poor in spirit, and some of you can recite that. But you know, in life there are only basically three things you can do, three dimensions to living. The first one is you can be something. You can be something. And the second is you can do something. And the third one is you can have something. And there isn't any more than that. Those are three dimensions to living. And we can talk an awful lot about doing things. How many sermons have we heard about doing the things that a Christian should do? You should witness. You should come to church regularly. You should tithe. You should teach Sunday school. You should serve the Lord. You should do this. You should do that. You should become involved in the church program. You should have fellowship with your fellow believers. And then you shouldn't. Things you shouldn't do. You shouldn't do this, and you shouldn't do that. And we go all through that, and many, many sermons are built on what we should do. When we preach that way, nothing much happens. Some of us make resolutions that we will do something like this. We'll increase our giving a little bit, or we'll try and be a better witness, or we'll do something different than we did last week. And we walk out of the church, but nothing happens to us. We're the same people. We can have a lot of sermons about what we should have. You know, we should have this, and many of us spend our lifetime getting things we should have. How much of your energy is spent on having things? You know, you're going to have a house, and a car, and you can have this, a job, and a career, and a family, and you have all those things. And you spend energy on having all of that. The thing we don't really want to hear about is what we should be. And as I have watched God work in this thing called revival, the emphasis of the message, and the message God is giving to his people today, is that we should be what God wants us to be. There's very little said that strikes in the people's hearts in this kind of a ministry that I see God working among people that has to do with what we should have. Little is said about what you should have or shouldn't have. And little is said about what you should do or shouldn't do. But God is speaking very directly by his Spirit to our hearts about what we should be. And many of us have had to get on our knees and say, Lord, I am not what you want me to be. And in doing that, I've come to grips with reality. Because God is more interested in what I am than in what I have or what I do. He knows that if I am what I am to be, then I will do what I am to do, and I will have what he wants me to have. And he's dealing with me about who are you, Henry? Who are you? Are you the person that God wants you to be? Now, Christians dodge that question. That's a very penetrating question, because it gets right to the heart. That doesn't get on the outside of you, that gets to the inside of you. Who are you? What are you in God's sight? And we quickly dodge the issue by saying, well, Lord, I will do this. I will do something. Or I have this, Lord, and I'll give it to you. And we don't get honest with God because we won't deal with who we are. We won't admit to God that we are not the people that he wants us to be. I'm not the person he wants us to be. And I believe this ministry has been raised up of God to confront people, bring them to a crisis situation where they have to deal with the question, are we what God wants us to be? Now let's stop talking about doing. Even in this revival, I've heard lay people say, what do we do now? That isn't the question. You could organize more things in this community than you could shake a stick at. You want more organizations? Those are easy to put up. The man on the street can put up organizations, too, by the way, and he doesn't know anything about Christ. The real question isn't what we're going to do. It isn't what we're going to have. It's what we're going to be. That's very penetrating because it keeps us ever before God with that question squarely before us, am I what God wants me to be? That's what revival is all about. Revival isn't building new churches or filling the churches we have. Revival is being what God wants us to be. That's what it really is all about. Dr. Douglas Brown said, revival is not going down the front street beating a drum, not getting mighty busy and demonstrating what we've got, but getting back to the cross with a sob in the heart. Right there at the cross where I let God do to me what he wants to do so I can be what he wants me to be. And after that, the doing will be just fine and the having will come into place. And I could read on many quotes of what men have said about revival. And as I read, read in the past few days with great men have said about revival, D.L. Moody, people like that, and you read their definitions of revival and constantly the theme comes through. Revival is a time when God asks his people whether they are what he wants them to be. And I believe that's the message to the laypeople here in Red Deer. Let's not look for great, let's not look for great doings. Let's look for great beings. Let's look for people who are filled with the Spirit. People who are walking through this town in humility, in transparent honesty, doing their business and walking through life, being what God wants them to be. When we're what God wants us to be, I'm absolutely convinced that he will never fail to tell us what we should do. And we'll be doing, while we're being, we'll be doing what God wants us to do. I believe the reason God's raised up this ministry, and I say this with a bit of a perspective of what can be the ongoing effect of this ministry in this town, I believe the reason God has raised it up and made it so vital in people's lives is he wants to bring us to a position where we have to face that question. Am I what God wants me to be? I find out throughout Scripture, God always dealt with men to bring them to what he wanted them to be when they were not what he wanted them to be. You take a David when he sinned. God brought David to a crisis situation about that sin by bringing the prophet to him and telling him that story. You know the story. And when David reacted to that, the prophet said, David, you're the man. And right there, God brought a crisis situation into David's life, and David got right with God. And he wrote that beautiful 51st Psalm, which God is using right these days, very powerfully, about that experience. I look at the life of Moses. When he wasn't what God wanted him to be, God confronted him with a crisis experience. And as God speaks to us, many of us are confronted with a crisis, and a crisis is often emotional. And some people will say that this revival is emotionalism, because they have seen people in a crisis situation. God brings us to the crisis situation because he wants to perform in us and do in us what is his will. Now when I'm stopped in my Christian experience, and when I'm not yielding to the potter, the clay isn't yielding. The potter brings the clay to a crisis experience. He destroys the thing, as it were. He breaks it down, and he starts all over again. Same clay. But through that crisis experience, he brings us down on our knees, so that he can now pick us up and build us into what he wants us to be. He wants us to be conformed to the image of his Son. That's the only reason he saved us. The reason he saved us was to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, so that my life might reflect Jesus Christ. So that in my life, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ might be lifted up, and the whole community might see Christ living in me, because that's where Christ is living, in me, as he was born anew by his Spirit. And the purpose of God in redeeming me was to have Christ show through my life, live in my life, and show through my life. And as soon as I resist his shaping me, so that the image of his dear Son is reflected in my life, then God brings me to a crisis experience. I believe, for many of you, God has tried to bring you to a point of crisis long before this crusade came along. He has put situations in your pathway where he wanted you to break and say, Dear God, I give myself an unreserved surrender to you, but you didn't listen. You avoided the situation. And God brings this around, so Christians get together, and as we fellowship together, begin to pick up our ears, God shows us what he wants, and people become obedient, and they respond, and they get into a crisis experience. And when they're broken before God, as we break before God, God is able again, as the potter does with that clay, to shape us and form us into the image of his dear Son, and the life of Christ is reflected through me as he does that. Now, many of you have had a crisis experience, but that's only the beginning. That's not what revival is all about. Revival shakes us down and brings us to our knees, shows us what we really are, so that we can be involved in the process, because God wants to put us through a process. He wants to shape my life. He wants to direct it and guide it. And because I was stopped in my Christian growth, I wasn't growing the way Christ wanted me to grow. He had to bring revival to my town and get a hold of my heart, so I put my life back into God's hands, so he could continue to do in me what he wanted to do. And almost all people, when they've met God, they say, praise God, God broke me. He broke me so I can again be in his hands as clay in the potter's hand, and I sense the Master, my Master, is at work in my life, making me what he wants me to be. Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones from London, England, quoting from a book by Dr. Ryrie entitled Balancing the Christian Life, writes this as follows about a crisis and a process, because revival is both. It's the crisis and the process. In Romans 8, 13, if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. This is a very interesting verse, which brings a great deal of balance into the spiritual life. For one thing, it declares that those who have already crucified the flesh still need to put to death the deeds of the body. You see, coming to the point where we're willing to lay down our lives and accepting the cross of Jesus Christ as our cross and identifying ourselves with his crucifixion is a crisis experience. So God brings us to the cross where we lay down our life, but thereafter the process goes on. He says, for another thing, this verse declares that we do this through the Spirit, to be sure, but nevertheless we have a vital part. You is the subject of the verb, to be put to death, and it is in the active voice. I do it. If it were a passive voice, then it would mean that someone else does it for me. The Holy Spirit enables, but I do it. Now he says this death, which is that crisis experience whereby we come to the cross with our sins and our rebellion against God's way in our life, it says death always means separation, never extinction. So putting to death the deeds of the body cannot mean eradicating them. That doesn't happen in this life, but it does mean separating myself from those things. Death, I said, means separation. Death to self is not extinction of the self-life, but separation from its power. Now if I'm separated from the power of my self-life, then for all practical purposes in my life, it is gone. So putting to death the deeds of the body does not mean that those deeds will no longer be a part of our existence, but it can mean that they need no longer be a part of our experience. And many of us have come and we said, Lord, I want to die the self. And what we've really said is, I lay down my life and now I want to be in a continuous process whereby I am dead to the demands of my selfish life, my self-life, and I'm alive under God. Now how long will revival continue? It'll continue till Jesus comes, as we submit to the process through which God wants to lead us. And entering into that process is a beautiful thing. Dr. Richard Bennett says about that, again speaking about crisis and process, he says, do not minimize what God has done in your life. He's talking about meeting God, and we had the privilege of working with Dr. Richard Bennett both in Vancouver and again in the Netherlands. Man of God who preaches a powerful message. He says, do not minimize what God has done in your life. It is well to keep the memory green through thanksgiving and testimony. The Holy Spirit baptized you into the death of Christ at your conversion. This becomes effective when you attend your own funeral and brought to Calvary every expression of the self-life. What has happened since then? Has some deed or word, thought, or act caused you to doubt the reality of your experience and the validity of his provision? The deeds of the body have disappointed you and dried up the stream of revival blessing. There's an answer. Your responsibility is to continually hand over these potential deeds to the divine executioner, the Holy Spirit. As you do this, you exercise your responsibility aright, enabling the Spirit of God to separate you from the deeds of the body, as the verse says, to mortify them. And I'm excited about revival. Certainly I'm excited when people meet God. I think it's wonderful when people meet God and get things straight in their life. But all the process that continues is just absolutely tremendous, because it transforms our lives. It changes us. As we're changed, we become what God wants us to be. How many homes have been changed in revival? Hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds have gone transformations from within. How many lives have been completely changed? Literally thousands of them, thousands upon thousands. I just thrill at the way this revival trail kind of spreads about, if I can digress for a moment. Last night, I don't know, many of you people weren't in the afterglow we had, but there was a gentleman there who got right with God, 55 degrees below zero, kneeling in a pool of oil, 40 mile an hour wind howling. The generators had gone out on the station, a hundred miles north of Inuvik, where they were trying to build an artificial island with some chemicals. So how did he know what to do? How did he know how to get right with God? A pastor visited Regina in the revival there, took the message of revival to Edmonton, took a lay team out to a small town in Alberta, where this lay team shared, and this man was listening. He made no decision at that service, but he heard the message of being absolutely right with God. It just illustrates what I'm really saying. There he was in dire circumstances all of a sudden, as his generator went out, and he knew he would freeze to death there, and he knew that his chemicals would freeze in an hour or so, and the whole project would go down the drain. What did he do? He remembered what he heard. He got down his knees on that oily floor and that steel box, and he got right with God. He gave his life completely to God. This is what he said in the prayer room last night, or in the in the afterglow last night downstairs. He got his life right with God. And you know God is so gracious and so marvelous, so wonderful. When he got out through praying, he saw the headlights of a truck coming his way, and someone had driven, unexpected, had driven with a truck to that construction site. And who was it? It was the mechanic who put that generator into operation in a few minutes and saved the whole project. You see the way God takes the revival blessing, and he takes a little trail, and he goes all the way up there, a hundred miles north of Inuvik. That man, I believe, is in Calgary or somewhere like that right now. And he spreads this message that you can be right with God. You should hear his testimony and see the glow on his face, and the burden for others that he has, which is beautiful. Those of you who were there know that God has blessed people with this message, hither and yon, almost all over North America. And the message is always, almost always it seems, is accompanied with something of a crisis. See, obviously that man wasn't being what God wanted him to be. He wasn't what God wanted him to be. He wasn't surrendered to God. He wasn't willing to let God have his way in his life, and he knew it. And there he was up there a hundred miles from nowhere, ready to freeze to death, and that to me would be a crisis experience. God sort of boxed him in, and he said to him, now are you going to get right with me? And he said yes. And he met God, and today, a year later, a year and a half later, he's rejoicing and he's walking with God. He is in the process. That crisis experience puts him into the process of walking with God. Well, he called himself a Christian before. So many people ask us, are many people getting saved in these meetings? And the answer is no. Although in the prayer room downstairs I've seen a number of nights there have been people who accepted Christ. But the message God is giving to you and to me is, are we what God wants us to be? And I'm convinced that every one of us sitting in this auditorium tonight know, in our innermost being, we know whether we are what God wants us to be. I don't believe there's a man or a woman or a boy or a girl in this audience tonight can say, I have no idea whether I am being what God wants me to be. That man knew very fast when the lights went out. He knew very fast whether he was being what God wanted him to be. And deep down in the inner recess of our heart, we all know whether we are being what God wants me to be. If we are what God wants us to be, it will always show up in our prayer life. And I just want to say this, by listening to your own prayers, you will know where you stand with God. If you are mostly praying, help me, Lord, help me here, help me there, then you are essentially concerned about doing things. About doing, because you need help in doing the thing. And you say, help me, help me, help me. Now, God is not very interested in that prayer. If I understand the scriptures, that should be the last prayer we should pray, to be concerned about doing. We'll be doing what God wants us to do when we are what he wants us to be. That's the theme of my message tonight. And when people constantly pray, help me, help me, help me, help me, it means they're so busy trying to do something that they're not paying any attention about trying to be something. Then there's another group that pray a great deal, give me. Give me, give me. Well, they're trying to have more. Lord, give me this and give me that, and give me the other. And it's all based on the fact that they want to have more. Well, God isn't very interested in us, what we have. He can give to us the whole world if he wants to. His concern is what I am. And when you're really concerned and you are beating God's, you're in harmony with God so that his heart and yours are beating together, you'll be praying about what you are. Not what you do or what you have, but what you are. And many times we'll have to come and say, Lord, forgive me. Forgive me for not being what you wanted me to be in this circumstance. Forgive me for speaking to my children like that. Forgive me for having that attitude toward my wife. Forgive me for walking through my business life like that, because it's the pathway of forgiveness that God uses to make us what he wants us to be. Calvary is the story of forgiveness. That's what Calvary is all about. And my dear ones, what God was saying to us here tonight is, are we what God wants us to be? We don't have to concern ourselves about the doing and the having. Do you know what that does to the prayer life? It turns our life to a prayer of praise. A prayer of praise. Because when we are what God wants us to be, we will be worshiping him because we were redeemed. To worship for him, to bring honor and glory to his name, so that everything that we do will be done for the glory of God. Because it's really not what we do that's at stake, it's the glory of God that's at stake. And many of us, I'm pointing my fingers at me because I'm a layperson, many of us lay people in our churches are so busy planning what we should do, and we never sit down with each other and ask ourselves, are we what God wants us to be? I would suggest at your next committee meeting, whatever committee you're on in your church, instead of laying out another group of plans, why don't you start that committee meeting this way? You say, loved ones, you know your brothers and sisters in Christ. Why don't we ask ourselves the question today, first of all, whether we, the members of this committee, are what God wants us to be? Let's start there. You see, the natural mind always thinks about those three backwards. The natural mind, the man on the street out there who doesn't know Christ, will talk about doing things. You can go out there and talk about doing things right away. That's the way the natural mind works. The fallen mind, the carnal mind, works this way. The second thing a carnal mind says is, what have you got? And he'll show you all of his possessions and what he has, and he doesn't want to talk at all about what he wants to be. You try and talk to the man on the street there, what he is inside, what is he? He says, that's the question I don't discuss. That's private. And as Christians, you see, we're doing almost the same thing. What happens when you have a coffee fellowship in your home? What do you talk about? What you've been doing? What you have? Have you ever visited those people who have everything and they make sure you have to admire it? Oh, some of those relatives, you know, who got everything, they have everything. And you've got a day visit and all, you're just so completely exhausted, admiring everything they have. You know what it's like. And some of them don't have very much, but still expect you to admire it for a long time. You see, we're so preoccupied about what we do and what we have, and as Christians, we're in the same rut. And God says, it's time you started to ask the question, what are you? Are you right with God? Forget about what you're doing. I'll never forget in the town of Swift Current when a group of men doing Christian service brigade met one night, and they somehow, God steered them on to this question. Instead of being involved with all their activities, they sort of sat together, their spirit of revival was breezing through Saskatchewan, and they sat together and someone had come from Regina, and they talked to the men, and what the question seemed to emerge is, men, are we what God wants us to be? And they had revival in that meeting. Some results of that little meeting of those ten or twelve men, I heard reports of that two weeks ago, of that meeting with God. What happened? They stopped their doing. They didn't talk about did they have enough equipment for the boys. They sat down and said, are we what God wants us to be as men? And they had revival. And I honestly believe that God is strongly addressing us as lay people to ask the most important question first. I hear in the prayer room people say, I had to set my priorities straight. Well, it's true. We, the lay people, need to set our priorities straight about those three things. First, be what God wants you to be, and he'll take care of what he gives you to have, and he'll also take care of what he wants you to do. I sometimes see lay people in revival, and it disturbs me a little bit, want to get very busy in the ministry. I'm kind of perhaps the last person to talk this way, because I'll be honest with you, I left my school with some considerable reluctance. I faced the floor for about a week, not worrying, because God delivered me from worry, because worry is sin, but talking to God. I didn't at my age want to do something that looked glamorous, that might have appeal or be interpreted for any other way. I wanted to leave my position and go into a ministry like this for one reason only. I wanted to be absolutely sure that God was leading me into this thing, and I was going because God wanted me to be there. And it took me a week of praying in my spare time to talk to God and to weep before him and ask him and give myself to him and communicate with him, and God made it very clear that that was to be. But I find in revival a lot of lay people want to get very busy. I believe that's the wrong end of the stick. In fact, I'm sure it is. We, the lay people of our churches, should stay very close to the revival truth, and that truth is, be what God wants you to be. And when you've got that firmly settled in your heart and walking that way in a day-by-day walk, God will show you what he wants you to do. But people who are looking for great things to do for God are almost always not being what God wants them to be. That's why they're so preoccupied with looking so hard for things to do. So let's keep our feet right on the floors, lay people. We're in a process, and God may bring crises to your life if you resist God. You see, we're in a process of being conformed to the image of his Son as we have given ourselves to him, and he will continue to do that. He which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. He wants to conform me to the image of his Son. When I resist and say, no, Lord, that's too hard, I've gone far enough, God has only one alternative, he brings me to another crisis experience. And the crisis that he brings to my life is to break down my resistance and my rebellion. But as I give myself constantly to the Lord in a dynamic Christian walk, not static, not stationary, but a dynamic Christian walk, I give myself constantly to God, day by day and hour by hour, so that I'm clay in his hands and he will carry on the process to make me what he wants to be, and then I'll be doing what he wants me to do, and he will give me what he wants me to have, and I will be rejoicing. I really will be. You see, some people come to the prayer room and shop for joy. They say, I saw other people who are so happy, I'd like some joy, or I'd like some peace, or I'd like what they have, I'd like that glow on my face. Well, I'll tell you, God isn't in the business of handing out glow. Do you know that? That's not what the Scripture teaches. God wants to make me, I'm a son of God, and he wants to make me what he wants me to be. And I can't come shopping for joy, I won't find it. Joy is a byproduct. You see, you never get fire without burning something, and the process is in the burning thing, in the combustion. And the fire is just the byproduct of the process. And when we go shopping for joy, or peace, or love, it means we want the byproduct, but we don't want to be in the process. Often it means people have not really given their lives totally into God's hands. There isn't a person whom God won't fill with love and joy and peace, who completely and totally abandons himself and all that he has into God's hands. If God won't fulfill that person, then he isn't God. And I've yet to meet the person whom God doesn't meet and satisfy fully. It's because we want to not submit ourselves totally and completely into God's hands. We do not really make a total surrender and accept the death of that self-life, which the scripture says is God's way of revealing Christ through me. As I die to myself and the Holy Spirit can have me, Christ is revealed sort of in an automatic way. I don't have to work at it. I don't have to work in polishing up the qualities that will show the Christ life. The Holy Spirit will do it and I'll have the joy and the peace. Well, I don't know exactly what the Lord is saying to you tonight. Perhaps you say, well, you know, I'm a pretty good Christian. I go to church, that's doing something. I tithe, that's doing something. I teach, that's also doing something. I'm faithful, that's doing something. But I'm empty and dry, and I'm searching, and I don't quite know what's missing in my life. Perhaps the Lord is really just saying to you, he wants you to give up totally. He wants you to stop being preoccupied about doing things and having things, and simply saying to him, Lord, make me what you want me to be. I can't do it, but you can, and I want to be all wrapped up with you. My wife has a beautiful poem, which I wish I could recite. The title of it is, My Goal is God. Himself. I want to be like him. Oh, to be like him, like him. You know that song. Oh, to be like the blessed Redeemer. That's what God's trying to do in Red Deer. He wants a people who are like him. And all the results of evangelism and witnessing, that will all follow, if we are like him. Shall we bow for prayer?