In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of having the right actions and words, accompanied by the right attitudes. He explains that God allows trials in our lives to reveal the deceitfulness of our own hearts. The speaker encourages the audience to not give up and to hang in there with God, even when things get difficult. He concludes by highlighting the power of the cross and the crucified life, urging listeners to overcome evil with good and to have Jesus as their ultimate desire. The sermon references Romans 12:17-21 and Mark 10:32.

The psalmist said in Psalms chapter 3, which is titled the psalm of David when he fled from Absalom, Lord, how are they increased that trouble me? Many are they that rise up against me. Many there be which say of my soul, there's no help for him in God. Seal it. But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me, my glory and the lifter up of mine head. I cried into the Lord with my voice and he heard me out of his holy hill, Selah. I laid me down and slept. I awaked for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people that have set themselves against me round about. Arise, O Lord, save me. Oh my God, for thou has spent in all mine enemies upon the cheekbone and thou has broken the teeth of the ungodly. Salvation belongeth unto the Lord. Thy blessing is upon thy people. Last week I was sharing with you a little bit about David and how when he was being driven out of his own palace by his own rebellious son Absalom, he refused to hurt a man that was cursing and throwing stones at him by the name of Shimeon. Refused to let one of his mighty men go over and kill him. David had been taken as an old man to the point to where he could love and trust God in any situation. Now David was by far from being a perfect man. And as Jesus said, he that is without sin let him cast the first stone. We've been pretty quick to pick on old David in his sin. But what about ourselves? How have we done in the race of life? How have you done? And me in the trials of life. Have we got to the point in our spiritual life where we can say no matter what happens, it is the Lord that him do as it seemeth him good. Last week I shared with you a little bit in the area of responding to the trials and adversities and circumstances of life in a Christlike way so that Jesus might be seen in your life. You see we saw an aspect of Jesus in the life of David as he went through the valley of humiliation. Being driven out by his own son and cursed by a Benjamin. And I just wonder if God isn't trying to get our attention today to where we will be like Jesus. And one of the reasons that he allows us to go through the trials and he knows just what we need. He knows just what I need. And I've been going through my trial and I know you've been going through yours. I don't know why we wiggle so much and we try to squirm our way out of it, but we do. Instead of getting in there and just letting God teach us and patiently waiting, a lot of times we want to wiggle out of it. Well sometimes we do wiggle out of it. We make our own decisions instead of waiting on God and guess what? God lets us wiggle right into another one. You know moving all the way across the country is not going to solve your problems. Your personal problems. But moving into the will of God will. I was sharing some thoughts and some meditations last week from an old preacher by the name of Raymond Edmond. And I might share a few more with you this morning. I want to close up by sharing with you an amazing passage in the book of Mark on Jesus and his disciples. And it's when Jesus was taking them away they had never seen before. You see one of the things that throws us is sometimes God takes us away that we had not planned on. A way that we've never seen before. And it throws us off track. It gives us a jolt. And we even sometimes wonder if it's God. But let me assure you that nothing will happen in your life that God isn't aware of. Now I'm not saying he's responsible for sin. You can't blame sin on God. That's our problem. But he can take that sin when we have messed up and he can forgive us and he can make a new life for us. Some of you listening today there may be someone that is just about giving up on life. And as I go back to myself back in many years ago, 1966, when God got a hold of me and I was thinking about checking out on this old life. About burn up with life at the old age of 19. Psychology major in the university. About Freud, fried my brain on Freud. Getting into that occultic stuff. Listening to the voices of demons and God loved me and he drew me out of that and he drew me to Jesus. And I saw that I didn't need to be there to make a lot of money. Get an education, get a degree so I could hang out a shingle. No, what I needed was Jesus and I gave my life to Jesus. Oh, what a adventure it's been. It's just almost like a dream to be going with Jesus all these years. Boy, we've gone through some stormy waters and we've gone through some pretty bumpy roads. But I'd rather take the storms with Jesus, the bumpy roads with Jesus, than to go anywhere without him. You know, the psalmist, as we read this morning, was the heart cry of a man that had learned to walk with God. And I thought maybe God was wanting to speak to us this morning a little bit more in this area of taking up our cross and following him and not fighting and fidgeting and resisting and putting the brakes on, but just following Jesus. You know, David said, but thou, in verse 3 of Psalms 3, but thou, O Lord, art a shield for me, my glory, and the lifter up of mine head. Let him lift you up. Let him place you. Let him do it. Then you know when it happens that it was really God that did it. One of the things that the Spirit of God has driven me to do is put me in situations to where He gave me the choice to where I could take an easier way out or I could take the hard way, and I would know for sure that God did it. There's been many times I wanted to take the easy way, but the Spirit of God would say, now you can take the easy way, but here's the way that I would like you to take, and you'll know it's me. And I said, okay, Lord, I'll take it. It's just more dying to self, dying to self, to let Him have His way with me. And I found that He is my shield, and I'm finding that He is my glory. Now, you may not have a shimmy on it. That's your trial. We were talking about this, not this thing, but this thing of being godly and being spiritual and being mature. Pastor and some more men a few weeks ago, and we come to the conclusion, and this is my conclusion too, that no one ever walks with Jesus without a trial of some kind. I've not known anybody that has been godly and had the power of the Spirit of God on their lives that has not had a trial of some kind. Now, if you have, you let me know. I'd like to meet that person. But I really don't think there's anybody like that, because it's through the trials and the tribulations that we're driven to our knees, to fall on our face, and to cry out before Him, Oh God, I need You. Now, Father, I ask You to lead us and direct us on this morning as we go. Holy Spirit, give us the lessons that we need. In Jesus' name, Amen. So you may not have a shimei, that old persistent, rock-throwing, dust-throwing, cursing Benjamite, but you may have another situation that God has allowed to come into your life. And God is saying, let him alone. Let him curse. Let it alone. Let it go, and you just draw to Me. I had a little confrontation with my pastor the last few weeks. We had a little troubling in the fellowship, and some things were happening and developing, pretty rough things. And I told him the other day, as a matter of fact, it was just yesterday, I said, you know, one of the things when we went through our little thing the last few weeks, that God showed me, He showed me that I had taken my eyes off Him and was looking at you, pastor, as looking at your mistakes, instead of Him. And He rebuked me for that. And that about threw me off track, because I got my eyes on you and your mistakes, instead of Jesus. And He could say the same thing to me, or someone might say the same thing to you. Matter of fact, I don't know if you have the freedom to receive someone coming up to you and saying, you made a mistake. We are so proud that we will not recognize or acknowledge that we have been wrong. I'll tell you, I am a sinful man. If it were not for the grace of God, I wouldn't go anywhere. I need it every moment, every day. And these guys that are perfect, that never make any mistakes, and never sin and whatever, I get a little nervous around them. Especially if they are on TV, and we got this Hollywood lifestyle projecting across the screen something that is sort of a utopia type of experience. Watch out! Somebody needs to just pull the plug on all these things. And I believe one of these days it's going to happen. Because as I can see the handwriting written on the spiritual wall of the future, we are in for some rough times. And this is what the prophets are saying to us. Prophets of doom you might say them, but you better be a listener, you better be praying, you better be preparing for what's coming. You listen to Marlon Maddox, he'll give you all the stuff going on in the world around that's not right. And he's right on. But you'll get warped if you don't keep your eyes on Jesus. And you'll get fearful if you don't keep your eyes on Jesus. Now let's get back to David a little bit. David's not alone in his submission to savage and searching, invictive. As Ehrman said, and this is to show that a soft answer turneth away wrath. Moses in his day, the meekest of men, listen to this, suffered cursing, not only from the multitude, and that could be overlooked, but listen, from his own brother and sister. It seems like sometimes we think, God I've really gone quite a ways, I think I've about arrived, and then something turns around that you didn't expect. Something from somebody very close to you. You never expected that, and it throws you. And so here's Moses, even on a trumped up accusation against his wife. And then of course there is the Korah and his fellow conspirators. What do you do? Well I think you need to do what Moses did. He turned to God. God you take care of it. Moses didn't split the earth. He just turned to God and he said, God you take care of it. Both cases, all the things that Moses went through, he gave to God. And God was honored by the humility of his servant. I'll drop, let me put the brakes on here in a second, except that Moses had a besetting sin. And I believe that was anger. A root there, that cost him dearly and he couldn't get into the promised land. So there's a warning for us. And that's because he smoked the rock twice and Christ was not crucified twice. And we have a cultish system that crucifies Christ all the time in this world because I believe of that mistake. Paul said, I die daily. The day you forget to die is the day you may blow it. And God will forgive you, but it may be that you can never get back up as high as you were before. He who walks with God, walks with God alone. And if you soar on eagle's wings, you'll have to learn to go through the discipline of the eagle. You'll have to learn to fly on the turbulent winds and learn to soar on the storms of life and the circumstances to where the point where you do not complain and grumble and get bitter and bent out of shape because there are storms but you learn to fly on those things. The basis of this program is named on eagle's wings. That we would learn the crucified life on the basis of the victory that Christ gave us at Calvary. So we need to learn the lesson of the cross. Herman said, the master himself, the Lord Jesus Christ knew this discipline of defamation in supreme measure. Was man ever spoken against more falsely or viciously than the Son of Man? He restored to strength the man's hand that withered and received only the wrath of the politicians who plotted forthwith to be rid of him. He delivered pitiful human beings from the power of indwelling demons and was portrayed as possessing demon power himself. For his word of mercy and his deeds of might he received from his fellow citizens of Nazareth a contemptuous sneer, is not this the carpenter? For the kiss he was betrayed by one of his own followers. On trial for his life he was accused by many false witnesses toward whose perversities he held his peace. Before Pilate who had the power of life and death he was accused of many things by the chief priests the religious leaders of his people, but he answered nothing. In the days of his flesh he had fulfilled the prophetic word of Isaiah he shall not cry nor lift up nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break and the smoking flax shall he not quench and he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. And in the shadow of death he fulfilled their father word. He was oppressed and he was afflicted yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before his shearers is dumb so he openeth not his mouth. He knew in practice what he had declared in precept. And my friend, that's what he's trying to get you and me to. To the point of where we know in precept we'll come out in practice. I heard Stanley many weeks ago say on a program that if you have a bad attitude it's going to be followed by bad actions. So that attitude needs to be dealt with. One of the things that God showed me in the revival services we had here with a man from Georgia by the name of Charlie Orr. And I have permission to play some of his messages for you. And I don't know, maybe the Spirit of God is holding me off. I wanted to do that last week and this week. But let me tell you, there was so much conviction. Grown men were shaking in their seats and their wives got up. Two of them, their wives got up and went downstairs to the prayer room to pray for them. So much conviction. And if you and I do not have something right in our life there's going to be conviction of the sin and we're going to have the response of repenting, recognizing that we're right, that the Holy Spirit... I mean that we're wrong, the Holy Spirit is right and that we better get right or we're going to turn and walk away. And we'll have some bitter words to say against the messenger. I saw that. Some wouldn't come back to the meetings. I'm going to play his tapes for you. If God will release me to do that, I have His permission. So you can hear what a powerful revivalist is. He's just a man, like you and I, but God has taken him to the cross. Taken him to the bottom of the well. And beat him to pieces. As He does with you and me to get Jesus in there. This old self doesn't die easy. And so if we'll get to the point to where we will be like Jesus where we will not open our mouth, even if we're crucified on a cross and turn and say, why you dirty guy, why are you crucifying me? But he committed himself to God continually. And that's where God wants you and I to continually commit ourselves to Him. You see, we show our beliefs, not so much by what we say in our theology and the preachers around the country. We preach and we preach and preach. But it's not what we're preaching that's bothering folks. It's how we're living. As Gelfeisen said, it's not orthodoxy we need. Orthopraxy is what we need. How is it when you go home and you're with your family? How is it when you go to work and you're with your colleagues there? Do you listen to the dirty stories? Do you cheat on the time? Do you leave early? Get there late? Do you beat your kids? Do you verbally beat them? Are you white? Are you critical, cynical? Are you jealous? You see, your doctrine doesn't mean anything. What's in the life? There's a love of Jesus there. This morning, I went to my little 5-year-old and he had just... I was on the phone with somebody and my 12-year-old came out of his bedroom and I don't know what kind of burr he had under his saddle, but he came behind her and slammed the door. Behind her. Now, that was bad enough, but he slammed the door before she got her hand out of the door and it hurt her hand. And I was on the phone beginning to get a little heated up. Well, when I got off the phone, I went in there to see how the 12-year-old was and I thought she'd lived, so I went back into the room after the 5-year-old and gave him a pop on the behind without a warning. I was angry. Well, after a few minutes, I had to confess my sin to him, ask him to forgive me for my anger. We had had several things going wrong and then Dad jumping in there didn't help it. I asked him to forgive me. I told him, Daddy had gotten mad and it was sin and he forgave me. But you know what? That little rascal would not ask his sister to forgive him for slamming that door on her hand. And I stood him in the corner in her room so he'd had plenty of opportunity with her there for about 10 minutes. Still wouldn't do it. So finally I went in and I talked to him. I said, are you about ready to do it? He says, okay. And so he did it. I don't know how his attitude was, but we got the action out. You know, we can have right actions many times but still have wrong attitudes. We can have the right words but still have the wrong attitudes. And out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And so God's going to take you and I through the trials that we need to show us our own heart. To show us the deceitfulness of our own heart. And God may be doing that with you. I want to close up with something. By the way, the Bible says in Romans 12, 17-21, Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves but rather give place unto wrath for it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord, therefore if thine enemy hunger feed him. If he thirst, give him drink for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil but overcome evil with good. If you and I don't learn the power of the cross and the crucified life, we'll be overcome with evil. And it may be that you've had Jesus come your way in a way that you hadn't thought of. Now, I want to share this in closing with you. You know, in Mark chapter 10, verse 32, the Scripture says, And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus went before them, and they were amazed. And as they followed they were afraid, and He took again the twelve and began to tell them what things should happen unto Him. And He goes into the Scripture. But the thing I want to focus on is that they were amazed. There was something about the countenance, the pace, and the direction of Jesus. As He headed for Calvary that amazed them, it was unusual, unexpected. And it may be that God has taken you away that is unusual. It's amazing you. It's almost thawing you. And you can't understand. Let me encourage you, hang in there with God. Don't give up. Chambers said on this passage, he said, At the beginning, we were sure we knew all about Jesus Christ. It was a delight to sell all and to fling ourselves out into a hardy hood of love, but now we're not quite so sure. Jesus is in the front, and He looks strange. Jesus went before them, and they were amazed. There is an aspect of Jesus that chills the heart of a disciple to the core and makes the whole spiritual life grasp for breath. And He said, This strange being with His face set like a flint and His striding determination strikes terror into me. He is no longer counselor and comrade. He is taken up with a point of view I know nothing about. And I am amazed at Him. At first, I was confident that I understood Him, but now I'm not so sure. I begin to realize there is a distance between Jesus Christ and me. I can no longer be familiar with Him. He is ahead of me, and He never turns around. I have no idea where He's going. And the goal has become strangely far off. Have you ever experienced this where it seems like you're being left behind? You're losing that contact with God. And it may be that God is moving out ahead of you, and He's getting a little farther away from you in the Spirit of God and saying, are you going to jump out and go? Are you going to walk on water or not? And it may be that God is calling some of you today to walk on water. And I mean by that to go out into the deep, to follow God by faith, casting all your care upon Him, committing it all to Him, to where you know if God fails, you know if you take this step, if God doesn't come through, you're going to have pie all over your face. You're going to look foolish. And that's the way the cross is. And Chambers went on to say, Jesus Christ had to fathom every sin and every sorrow man could experience. And that is what makes Him seem strange. When we see Him in this aspect, we do not know Him. We do not recognize one feature of His life. And we do not know how to begin to follow Him. He is on the front, a leader who is very strange and we have no comradeship with Him. He goes ahead of us. He launches out, my friend, to show us that we've got to go deeper if we're going to go on with Him and walk deeper. And Chambers closed and he said, the discipline of dismay is essential in the life of discipleship. But he says, listen, the danger is to get back to a little fire of our own and kindle enthusiasm at it. And he takes that from Isaiah 50, 10-11. When the darkness of dismay comes, endure until it is over. Because out of it will come that following of Jesus, which is unspeakable joy. Go with Jesus. If it gets dark, you just hang in there. But don't turn back to the lesser way. Now I've got to go. My time's gone. Let me leave you with these words. Jesus Christ is all you need. But have you got to the point in your life to where He's all you want? Till next time, I trust that God will continue to bless you, my friend.