This sermon emphasizes the need for a deep transformation in believers, focusing on the sacrificial love and unshakable faith of the Apostle Paul. It delves into Paul's unwavering commitment to Christ, his willingness to surrender all for the gospel, and the desperate need for a revival of holy passion, anointing, and vision in the Church today.

Okay, Galatians chapter 4 and the verse is 19. My little children, of whom I travel in birth, notice, again, until Christ be formed in you. See the tenderness he has? He doesn't even say children, he says my little children, and you think how much protection they need and counsel and wisdom. Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians, pardon me, to the Philippians, four years before he wrote this letter to the Galatians. And in his letter to the Philippians, he says, I'm Paul the aged. Paul the aged. Well, he was older by four years at least when he wrote this epistle. I admit that Paul is my hero after Jesus himself. I was pondering about him today and wondered this, where did he get his incredible courage? Where did he get his unshakable faith? Where did he get his unfailing love? I believe he explained it all in this amazing epistle. One of the best known writings of Paul surely is Galatians 2.20. Tell me what it is. Good. Very good. How many of you know that by memory? Come on, let me see your hands. Good. How many believe it's real in your life? That's a bit tougher, isn't it? I believe that the reason that Paul had what I call incredible courage, unshakable faith, and undying love is explained by two things that he wrote. In verse 14 of chapter 6, he says this, But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. I believe there came a moment in his life which is explained again by Galatians 2.20, I am crucified with Christ. I do not believe anybody enters unconsciously into an experience with God. Demands our intelligence and our will. And I believe again, the reason, one reason is this, there came a place in his life where he wrote the world, all the world's systems off as corrupt, as totally antagonistic to the gospel of the grace of God. In plain language, he saw the world as a boneyard. He saw the world like Ezekiel 30, what, 7? 36? Where the property is carried out into a valley full of bones. And Paul sees every human system as being fallible and deathly. Now one thing none of us have ever seen, I've seen a lot of things, but I've never seen a crucifixion, I don't think I'd like to see one. I know when a man went out to be crucified, as dear Dr. Chaucer used to say, Len, when he went out with a cross, you knew one thing, he wasn't coming back. A cross was a one-way ticket. The other thing is, at six o'clock at night, you could go to that crucifixion and throw anything you like on that man on the cross. Bucket of filth, rocks, rotten eggs, rotten fruit, curse him, kick him, do as you like. Once he was nailed to that cross, he lost all his rights. Come on, did that happen in your life and mine? Happened in the life of Jesus. Six o'clock at night, you could do as you like. Six o'clock in the morning, nobody went. The first birds there were something like these horrible things we have around here, only a much larger edition, vultures. I remember seeing a lot there in India, huge horrible things about this height from the ground with seven or eight foot wingspan. They hide their necks in their feathers and so they should because when it comes out, it looks like a long string of meat, they've no feathers on their necks. They were there, they pecked at the eyes, they pecked at the body, they pecked at the body until the guts hung out and the dogs came and licked the blood. Nobody went to see a crucifixion 12 hours after the person was crucified. Now look at that horrible picture. You know, that's the place where Jesus was crucified, outside the city wall, the dump where they put dead bodies, where only lepers were allowed to live, where all the garbage was. It stunk, it smelled, it was full of everything, it was putrefying and it was there they crucified the most spotless man that ever lived. And all he had in the gallery were skeletons hanging from crosses. No woman might rush up to the cross when her husband was being crucified, but she didn't rush up to the cross in the morning when the birds had torn him apart, she didn't go two or three weeks after when he had no flesh at all. That's the figure that Paul, the world is crucified, it's hideous, it's corrupt, it's so totally unattractive to me. You know, very often in the heat of a meeting when the preacher knows the temperatures at the right degree, he says, how many of you will pray half an hour a day for the next year or something? All the hands go up, okay. Or the other thing he asks is, how many people will give so much every week for the next period? Never make a vow in the heat of your emotions or the heat of a meeting. Paul didn't just scratch his head and say, well, I think I'll be crucified with Christ too. It took the sum total of his life, and he says there in Philippians chapter 3, what things were gained to me, he says in verse 7, those I counted for loss for Christ, yea, doubtless, and I count all things lost for the knowledge of the excellency, for the excellency of the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ my Savior, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things. It was a calculated deal he made. Elsewhere he says he lost all his tribal rights. He was of the tribe of Benjamin and the seed of Abraham. He was one of the most cultured men in the world. And yet, I think one of the few people who could really say with eyes of quartz, my richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride. You know, it's easier for you to pour contempt on your pride. It's when somebody else pours contempt on it you're in trouble, isn't it? You know, when somebody rubs you out and says you're only a zero anyhow, you haven't much intelligence, you've no social standing, you don't have this, that, and the other, and boy, you start going down, down, down, till there's nowhere else to go. Then can we really put up our heads and say, as this dear man said, I rejoice, I glory in infirmities, in necessities, in reproaches. We run away from them all, don't we? Lord, I'm heading into trouble. Lord, send an angel, send anybody, but don't let me get into that situation, when that's the situation I need to prove my spirituality. Not prove it to God, but God has to prove it to me. But he says, all these things, I suffered for the loss of all things, and count them that done, that I may win Christ and be found in him. I said again that this man has an indestructible, unshakable faith, an unquenchable zeal, and an unfailing love. Think of his letter there to the 2nd Corinthians chapter 5. He gives us the nearest to his theological outline, I think. He says in chapter 5 of 2nd Corinthians, we know if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God and house not made with hands. Verse 10, he says, we must all appear at the judgment seat of Christ. Verse 11, he says, knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. Verse 14, he says, for the love of Christ constraineth me. Now on the negative side, he was crucified with Christ. On the positive, he has this great driving force, the love, the agape love of John 3, of John 3, 16, God's soul love the world, is that love, sacrificial love. I think the world around us is just about fed up of blackboard theology and notebook theology. The world is not waiting for a new definition of Christianity, it's waiting for a new demonstration of Christianity. And it can only have that when that love of Christ is constraining us. Now Paul has a desperate love for these people. That's an interesting word, isn't it? In the fourth chapter there, verse 19, again, my little children of whom I travel in birth again. The word again fascinated me, I pondered that today. The Greek word there is palin, p-a-l-i-n. It means to restore to its original quality. He says that they may be born again. Notice what he says in chapter 3 and verse 1 there, O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth. So there they had become disobedient. In verse 3 he said, Are you so foolish that, having begun in the Spirit, ye now being made perfect in the flesh? Have ye suffered so many things in vain, if it yet be in vain? He therefore that ministereth to you in the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you. So there you are, they had been embraced in truth, they'd been surrounded with the miraculous, and yet they'd backslidden. Because in the seventh verse of chapter 5, he's speaking obviously in the past tense, he did run well. He ran well, who did hinder you? I heard someone quote that verse the other day that's always misquoted anyhow. Saying about somebody he's lost his first love. Not so. Is that what the scripture says? No. At least not the King James version does it. What does it say? He left his first love. He didn't lose it. If you lose a thing, you don't know where you lost it. If you left it, you know where you said goodbye to that person down the road, or you know where you made a deliberate choice. And these people unfortunately had made a deliberate choice. They did run well, but something or somebody hindered them. My little children of whom I travel in birth again. Wouldn't it be something if every pastor in the nation suddenly realized how sick his congregation was, and how far they backslidden, and he began to travel in birth, and ordered every deacon to come along and say we're going to have a week of traveling. It would revolutionize the whole nation. He doesn't say we travel, he doesn't say all his buddies in the Abba revival party, no. Bless you, this man was so isolated that he says Demas hath forsaken me, and somebody else has gone off there. He stands in splendid isolation, and he says when all men forsook me, come on now, come on, haven't you been singing, nearer, nearer, blessed Lord, draw me nearer, me nearer, not us, not last days, me nearer, blessed Lord, or Agapio, wherever you go. And God starts doing it. What we do, we start squealing. The only way he can draw you nearer to God is to draw everybody else away from you. Is that okay, a good deal? Is that what I want? My little children for whom I travel in birth. You know, somebody has said in marriage, if the wife had the first baby, and the husband had the second, there'd never be a third. This is something we don't know a thing about, travel. And these days, of course, when anything's made easier, even childbirth is made easier in many cases. Some say they're sweated out, these precious women, and go the natural way, which often can take them to the very gates of death. Now here's a man who does not depend on somebody else's prayers, or somebody else's support. He has a hold on God. He's like the prophet, Bucks Basin, an old Jewish commentator. In fact, he lived in America until a few years ago. He said, maybe the most tragic figure in the world is the prophet. Some of you guys aspire to be a prophet, get ready for pain. He said he's a tragic figure because he has a fierce loyalty to God, and a consuming passion for his nation. He's drawn in two directions. Come on, how many, whether it's your daddy, or your pastor, do you think he lays at night in travel? Do you think he goes into the pulpit under his own steam, his scholarship, his ordination, or what? There can be no birth without travel, there can be no revival without travel. Little children, for whom I travel in birth, what did he say about it? My little children, for whom I travel in birth, again until Christ be formed where? In you. On the Damascus road, he said, Jesus came and revealed himself to me. A few years later, he said, he revealed himself in me. That's why he says so often, it's Christ in you. You can't love a theology, you can't love a textbook, you can't even love Mr. Finney, he's gone away a long while ago, as good as he was. You can love me, I wouldn't mind that, but that's all right. You can only love a person. God is love. The fruit of the Spirit is love. Love is the most extravagant, ridiculous thing in the whole world. And essentially, sacrifice is tied up with love, and true love is tied up with sacrifice. I'm praying, he said, not that you may make a mental assent, maybe they'd made that. Maybe the reason that they'd backslidden so easily was that they'd never come into a, what he calls later elsewhere, a full assurance of faith. He says, you began in the Spirit, why have you gone back into the flesh? You came out of Judaism, why are you going back to circumcision? Why are you leaning on visible things instead of the invisible one? Now this man knows something about anguish and pain. What did he say in Philippians 2? That I may what? Know about the second coming? What did he say? Know him and, and, yeah, but you see, actually, as we go the other way around, we have to know the fellowship of his suffering before we can know the power of his resurrection. The fellowship of his suffering. The dearest friend is the one to whom you can go and pour out your broken heart. Anybody will listen to you when you're in the good weather and in a good situation, but what about when your world collapses, when somehow something's gone desperately wrong? Do you know somebody you could go to and pour out your heart? What is, you remember on the Damascus road when he was intercepted by, Ananias was told to go and tell this man Saul what he must suffer? That's not what he said. The Lord said, tell him what great things he must say. That's bad psychology. I had a man chase me one day because I said, two disciples, to become a Christian, you have to renounce your sins, repent, restore what you can restore, and then take up your cross. Oh no, he said, you mustn't tell young people to take up the cross, it will frighten them. Well, you argue with the Lord about that, not me. That's what the word of God says, you take up your cross and you follow him. Paul is, I don't know, I was going to say it, well I'll say it anyhow, must be right if I say it, but anyhow, he wrote 14 epistles, if you include Hebrews. By the way, let me remember because I slipped so many times, we were going to start a class next Tuesday night, we have to postpone it until a week next Tuesday, which is good, it gives me breathing space. I didn't change it, someone else did. It's going to be over in Dave Wilkerson's place, as we call it, and we're going to stay with Hebrews 11, approximately from next Tuesday night until Christmas. I said last week, I've been in coal mines and gold mines and in submarines and seen many things, but the most wonderful thing that I find interesting is how God makes men and women. And that's what he shows us in Hebrews 11, how he makes people. They've only one common denominator, and that is they all had faith, but boy, their ministries were as varied as could be. Now, this man is tied to a whipping post, he was lashed 195 times. Well, it says five times I received 40 stripes, save one, so it's five 39s. 195 times, thrice I suffered shipwreck, once I was stoned. I don't think he had any smart, wonderful personality, he says even to the Corinthians, they said that, what will this babbler say? I think he's pretty ugly, I think he limped, I think his face was creased, he'd been stoned so many times, his cheeks had been split and his jaws broken. In weariness, in fasting, in painfulness, in perils of the deep, in perils of mine own countrymen. Come on, add them all up, what's the bottom line? He's filling up the sufferings of Christ, but what does he say? Does he whine about it? No. He says it's one thing to have a bleeding back and somebody rub salt in your wounds and stick you in a stinking hole and leave you there for days and weeks and months and years. But he says, you know, the most hurtful thing is this. What did he say? I what? That which cometh upon me, what is it? Remember? That which cometh upon me daily, the what? The care of all the churches. You think you've got problems with your children? What about a man who has a whole string of churches, they've just come out of heathendom, many of them are weak and vacillating, there's no revelation, they've no Bibles yet. God pities us. I preached to the, what, the first Sunday, it's Friday night here, on Elijah. And the more I see men like that and realize all he did, and yet he never had a Bible. All the heroes in Hebrew 11, not one of them had a Bible. And you and I have everything that God is ever going to say to the world. Boy, we're in for trouble at the end of the line. I like the hymn, Our Firmer Foundation, remember that hymn? What more can he say than to you he has said? But here is a man who has had the veil of eternity lifted up. That's why he says in the chapter that we read, in 2 Corinthians 5 there, the love of Christ constraineth me. Why? Knowing the terror of the Lord. None of this sloppy sentimental love business, God is a just God, a holy, God has a big investment in you. Your parents have a big investment, they sent you to school, maybe high school and college, they're paying your way here or paying your way somewhere anyhow. But above all, the precious blood of Jesus Christ was shed for you. I understand there's a bit of a garment, a bit of a girl's, do you remember the old-fashioned pinafores you wore that girls used to wear? You know, a lot of holes in them, I don't know what you call that. You used to wear one, didn't you Betty? You didn't, oh she didn't wear one, didn't wear one. Okay, but my sister used to wear them, they had holes in them. No, I don't mean holes like you when you rip a thing, I mean, you know, they used to stitch around them, they were beautiful. There's a piece of a girl's pinafore up in, what do you call a place there? They, I just meant a name, you've forgotten what was it? In Washington, in the museum, Smithsonian. It's not much bigger than my, less than my handkerchief. It's got a brown stain on it. It's one of the great treasures of America. It isn't a chocolate stain, it looks like it, but it isn't. What is it? When they were carrying the precious man that was murdered there, Abe Lincoln, carrying him out of the theater, he passed by a girl and some of his blood dropped onto a pinafore. They took that piece of that pinafore and it's a national shrine almost. The Rockefellers can't buy it, nobody can buy it. It's stained with the blood of one of the greatest men that ever lived, never mind in America. We could do with him now in the White House, I'll tell you. Soon with the Black House away, some things are going. Why is it so precious? It's the blood of a famous man, just one or two drops of his precious blood. Nobody can buy it. And one drop of that precious blood, sinners plunge beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains. That's a great hymn written in England by William Cowper, contemporary, a friend of John Wesley. Can you imagine John Wesley and Cowper and Newton who wrote Amazing Grace? And all that bunch of guys getting together every week for discussions and talks. It must have been wonderful to be there. I wish I could find a tape recording of it. So here you have this man with a comprehension of eternity that maybe nobody has ever had except himself. He says that you may know the height, the depth, the length and the breadth of the love of God. And he's only touched the fringe of it, he admits that. That that burning, consuming love that never fails, and he talks about it in one cringe. Isn't it amazing that the man who went down to Damascus Road, breathing out threatenings, carrying in his pocket a signed statement that he's permitted to liquidate every Christian he can find. And then instead of burning with unholy anger, he burns with an incomparable love. They throw him outside of a city on the refuse heap and say that's the end of him. He gets up, he has a kind of a little private resurrection. They lash him 195 times, but they can't beat the grace of God out of him. They starve him, but they can't starve it out of him. They send him to prison, they threaten him, they can't threaten it out of him. If we could get a baptism of that love in the Church of Jesus Christ today, we'd shake the world in less than a year. Theology on ice is no good. I would have liked to have been a scholar. I'm not a scholar by any shape or form. I'd like to have been. But Paul was a scholar. I think he had the greatest intellect of any man that ever lived, apart from Jesus himself. You know, somebody called John, John that gave us the, as we call it, the fourth gospel. As I've said often, there are not four gospels, there's only one gospel told by four different men, all with a different accent. And John, somebody called him the Plato of the New Testament. Ninety-two percent of what he writes is his own. He doesn't borrow from, like Matthew, Mark and Luke, borrow from each other. Ninety-two percent of what he says is entirely original. Take the 15th of John, nobody else talks about the true vine. Take the 16th, nobody presents the Holy Ghost like he does. Take the 17th, the most profound thing in prayer ever recorded. Not the most profound prayer. The most profound prayer was never recorded. It was Gethsemane. It was too holy. It would have shattered us if you and I had heard Jesus. I'd love to have heard Jesus, but I'm sure I couldn't have taken it. But here is a man consumed. He sees the world, hostile, every system. If you want a picture of his courage, turn for a few minutes here to the, uh, where will we go? The Acts of the Apostles. Uh, what chapter is it? Chapter 17. I was thinking about a certain message for Sunday morning. Sure, it was exactly what the Lord wanted me to speak on, but the Lord said it isn't. So I've got to obey the Master and change it. But in connection with that message, I'd been thinking of one of the most famous poems ever, I guess, written by an unbeliever, W.E. Henley. This is what he says, "...out of the night that troubles me, black as the pits from Paul to Paul, I thank whatever gods there be for my unconquerable soul. It matters not how straight the gate, how punishment the scourge..." No, let me go on to the next verse. "...out of the night that troubles me, black as the pit from Paul to Paul, I thank whatever gods there be for my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced or cried aloud. Under the bludgeoning of chance, my head is bloody, but unvowed." That's the most quoted poem, I think, phrase in all his poems. "...looms but the horror of the shade, and yet the menish of the years, finds and shall find unafraid." Beyond this place of wrath and tears, "...looms but the horror of the shade," or the grave, he means, "...and yet the menish of the years, finds and shall find me unafraid." Now, listen to his arrogance. "...it matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishment the scourge, I'm the master of my fate, I'm the captain of my soul." Exactly, go to hell. You're the master of your fate. You refuse to bow to God, the laws of God, the Word of God, the Son of God, the Spirit of God. You refuse the blood of the Lamb, well, go to the wrath of the Lamb. That's the only alternative, for him or this generation. After him comes A.C. Swinburne. Remember his famous phrase, "...glory to man in the highest, for man is the master of things." He says, "...from too much love of living, from hope and fear set free, we thank thee with brief thanksgiving, whatever gods may be, that no life lives forever, the dead man rise up never, and even the weariest river winds somewhere to the sea." Now, Paul, in the 17th of the Acts here, marches with his head unbowed, marches with a holy confidence into the midst of the most intellectual group of people in the world in that time. This 17th chapter says the Stoics were there, and the Epicureans, and the poets, and all the rest of them. And Paul goes in the midst of these people, Stoics, Epicureans. Their great leaning was on the natural, primal facility of man, or faculty of man, on individual self-sufficiency. But all he could see when he went into that city, he said his spirit was stirred when he saw, amidst all that massive intelligence, they bowed down to the gods of stone. And they sought for the unknown God. He walks into the midst of them with all their philosophies, and all their reasonings, and everything else. And they listened intently when they found he knew as much philosophy as they knew, as much poetry as they knew, as much history as they knew. But then suddenly he comes out with something they never heard of. He talks about a man called Jesus Christ who died and rose again from the dead. What did they do? He says, I passed by and I saw your devotions, and I found an altar with this inscription to an unknown God, whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him I declare unto you. God hath made the world, and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven. They wouldn't accept that very well. He's the Lord of heaven and earth, and he dwelleth not in temples with hands. All these temples you have down the side of the road, the investments of millions of dollars, all your philosophies, all your writings, they're nothing to him. He is the one God, he's the creator of heaven and earth. He dwelleth not in temple made with hands, nor is he worshipped with men's hands, as though he had need of anything. Then he winds it up, verse 31, because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained. He hath ordained whereof he hath given assurance to all men that he hath raised him from the dead. The message of the New Testament was not the death of Jesus Christ. That was only half of it. They could understand men who died as martyrs. What they did not understand was the resurrection of Jesus. That by one man's sin, disobedience, sin entered into the world and polluted the whole human race. This debate has been a bit interesting, not too much this week. I'm glad somebody really pulled one of the speakers up, was it last night, and said when they said about the abortion, this is a very emotional issue. Was that Fierce Ferraro that said that? This is a very, it's not an emotional issue, it's a moral issue, and it's a spiritual issue. Oh, we don't want a nuclear war, that would destroy a lot of our young people. Oh, a lot of our people, doesn't that sound very holy and compassionate? They don't want young men to go to war, they want to murder them in the womb, which is the worst. We should take care of our young people for the next generation. There won't be any young people in the next generation, their womb is their tomb. Is God going to wink at our iniquity much longer? If I were a Protestant Pope, I would close every evangelical church in America or the world, until after the election. Not that we can buy it by our supplications and devotion, but at least let's get serious. There's more talk about the World Series this week than about what's coming up on to the nation. There's more interest in football, now we're in the football season. I don't believe we've ever, as a nation, been in a more serious situation than we're in tonight. Mondale would have backed the philosophy, and Thoreau too. They'd have backed the philosophy of these men there, these Epicureans and these Stoics. These men who want to rationalize everything and reason everything out. Our only hope is God. Revival is not the best thing that can come to America to save it, it's the only thing. And you can't start it in Washington. If you could, I'd be up there right now. You know, I think one of the horrors, if I can use that, when we get to eternity, and we see the winding path from the throne of Jesus Christ right back to the moment you were born again, and you see how near you came to supreme blessing and supreme deliverance and revival, and we missed it by a hair's breadth almost. I think that will be one of the sorrows. No sorrow in heaven, of course. It's all joy and peace. We go to funerals and say, no more tears. But the same book that says that, the same book, Revelation, says God shall wipe away all tears. So where does he wipe them from? I consider at the judgment seat. No, the judgment is only for rewards. No, that's what Paul says. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3 there, we shall suffer loss. You don't usually laugh if you suffer loss. When we look back and see the turn in the road, the wrong choices we made, we didn't wait on God enough. We didn't obey him enough. I wonder what kind of compassion, no I don't. I think if Paul came back today, he'd look generally over the church and say, you know what I do? I don't sleep much at night. I don't eat much. My whole spirit is groaning. I travail. The man that honors me, and too many come to my door almost, but the man that honors me is the man that honors me with his burdens. I've not come for money. I've got such a burden. I've got such a concern. I'm in such agony. I'm in this, that. So what? What if God himself puts a burden on us? Do you know one sign of spirituality is when you ask God to give you a burden nobody else wants to carry? I know she didn't say amen, but it's true anyhow. Share your heart with me God. God says to one of the churches there, you know people say it goes to the great commission. What was the great commission? Going into all the world. That was God's message to the church. Prove it from scripture, you can't. That was the message of Jesus to the disciples. The last words of Jesus were not going into all the world and preach the gospel. Last words of Jesus were to the church, repent. And he says to one church, I counsel thee to buy eye salve from me. And that was the chief industry of that church, that city. They didn't have glasses like we have to screen their eyes. Their eyes got very sore going down dusty roads and seeing the white sand. And so they exported from that town eye salve that went all over that part of the world. And the irony is the Lord says, you need eye salve yourself that you can't make and you can't buy. I counsel thee to buy of me eye salve. Remember that hymn that says, open my eyes that I may see glimpses of truth thou hast for me. I used to like that till I found out it's a favorite hymn of the Spiritist, so I don't sing it anymore. But there comes a moment, this blessed man on the Damascus road was what? Blinded with the light. I've not read this anywhere else, but I'm sure of it. I don't believe he ever got his eyesight back again. This eyesight yet, yes. But he never saw the world the same. He never saw men the same. He never saw eternity the same. He never saw heaven the same. He never saw hell the same. He was born into the presence of God to see the lost world as God saw it, to see eternity, even caught up into the third heaven, and never said a word about it. You know, if you're going to a mission field, whether the mission field is a hell of a hole in America, ghetto, or London, or somewhere, Soho, or to a foreign country, if you don't have this love, you'll break down within six months of going to a mission field. You'll be a casualty there. You'll be a liability instead of an asset. The mission field isn't dying for want of miseries. Most of them will be better come home. They malfunction after a while. Why? They went out of compassion, went out of sympathy. We went to teach, we went to help the poor. Very good. But not the primary object of the man of God, or the woman of God. It's to go with an anointing, to go with a love that surpasses everything they have ever seen. A selfless love, an undying love, an unbreakable love. It's not the love of the poets. It's not the love of a book, novel. It's the love of God. Can you imagine that? Paul says, the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost. We try to prove we're filled with the Spirit by our different gifts. I'm not going to argue about that. There is one qualification that proves we're filled with the Holy Ghost, and that is we live a holy life. One qualification, that is that the love of Christ constrains me. You can trample on me if you like, I won't squeal. My richest gain, if need be, I'll surrender even my citizenship. I know a man that did that in India. When you've been there 15 years, wanting to come home, the government said you can go, but you can't come back. I must come back, this is my life. Well then you surrender your American citizenship. I have to think about it, I've got a boy 15, I've got two or three children. I take them out to America, they can't come back? No, no. And he renounced everything, his citizenship and everything that he had in order they may stay there and burn out for God. Exactly what Jesus did when he came to this lousy world in which we live. He took upon him, not the form of angels, he took upon him our human flesh. He took human limitations, he laid his glory by. They bowed down to him every day and cried holy, holy in eternity. Down on earth they spit in his face and pulled his beard. Oh, that this love could possess our hearts. This undying love, this unbreakable love, the love that doesn't seek its own, that is not provoked, that thinketh no evil, that beareth all things and hopeth all things and endureth all things. Look, let's face it, why don't we get on this in God's name? What the church of Jesus Christ has had in America or any other country in the last 25 years has not changed one of those countries. So something needs to be changed. We've gone to other countries, have we taken them? No, we haven't taken the gospel, we've taken American Christianity or English Christianity, Bible Christianity. It's the most costly thing in the world. It's the most beautiful thing in the world. It's the most glorious thing in the world. Paul says, I remember the time when I sat down and I did everything up. There isn't one thing, my citizenship, my position in the church, the tribe of Benjamin, the seed of Abraham, there isn't one thing that I will not forfeit to God. There's not one thing that's worth putting up as a barrier, that he can't come in and possess me, my spirit and my soul and my body. I've told you before, and I say this as I finish talking right here, I think the greatest honor that was ever given to a man on earth was given to the apostle Paul. Remember when some men tried to deliver demons out of the man, and the demons jumped up and beat the preacher up? I think he had every right to do that. What did the demons say? Jesus we know, and Paul we know. Didn't that take your breath away? In the same breath they say, Jesus we know, and Paul we know. He's on par, he terrifies us when he moves. We have to have a council meeting in hell every morning. Which way do you think he's going to go? Oh you don't know, because he doesn't walk in the flesh, he walks in the spirit. Before he gets very far, he'll turn round if needs be. Everybody's disappointed. He was going to Bithynia, but he went somewhere else, because God told him to. One of the hardest things is to change your mind when God says, that tests your pride. What will people think? Well if you've any sense, you know people don't think anyhow. But what if they do think? Are you living for what people think? God help you if you are. There's only one thing more difficult than finding the will of God, and that's difficult at your age, I know that, for many of you. One thing more difficult than finding the will of God, what's doing it? When everybody says you're a fool, why don't you stay at home? Why don't you take over your daddy's business? You could make a lot more money and give it to missions. God isn't after money, he happens to have all the world. I remember being at a prayer meeting with dear old Dr. R.R. Brown there in Okoboji. He was in that great church of the Christian Missionary Alliance in Omaha. And he said, Brother Aden, we're going to have a half night of prayer, you'll enjoy that. I said, I will. He said, boy we got some old farmers here, boy can they pray. He said, you better watch out, they'll scare you. I said, I'd rather be scared in a prayer meeting. Well last week he said, one of them got going, he said he took his coat off and right on once, he really got praying. We've been talking about many needs that we had. And he said this old boy got his hands up and his voice up and he said, Lord the cattle on a thousand hills are yours. The farmer next to him said, drive them this way Lord, drive them this way. He thought that would solve their problems. I would have liked to have heard the Apostle Paul preach. I'd like to have heard him on Mars hills, surrounded by intellectuals, philosophers, poets, Epicureans, Stoics, what have you got. But above all, I'd like to have heard him pray. It's forgotten in our day. I think a meeting we had, we had a rough guy with us and boy did he shout when he prayed. After praying one day, an old lady came up to the front and she said, Son, God isn't deaf. He said, no and he's not nervous either. He can't think of expression loudly, so what? When do you shout when you're in need? When do you shout when you're in danger? Isn't America in danger tonight? Isn't America in need tonight? Isn't my generation the greatest need it ever had? Is hell enlarging its mouth to swallow this generation? Hasn't the church miserably failed? Only God can deliver us. And I believe he, I don't believe he answers prayer. I believe he answers desperate prayer. I travail. Can you do this? Can I do this? Can you call the Holy Ghost to bear witness? That's a dangerous thing to do, Paul does. Is it Romans 10? I call the Holy Ghost to bear witness, what? That I could wish myself a curse. Do you know what the literal word is there? I could wish myself damned if need be. Madam Gein says, if there isn't room in heaven for one more sinner, give them my seat and let me go to hell. Because I enjoyed you so much on earth Lord, I'd enjoy you in hell. Now that's not my kind of theology, but that's what she said. I understand the feeling. I can understand Paul saying, let me be an outcast. Let me be the most rejected man in the world. Considered with my staggering intellect the biggest idiot. Because I'm following an invisible person called Jesus Christ. I might have been the greatest rabbi that ever lived. What is that? My richest gain I count but loss. Poor contempt and all my pride. I'm not suggesting you get into that state of prayer after two weeks in this Bible school or any others. But I'll tell you what, if your prayer life isn't deepened in this school, you've missed it or any other school. Prayer is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try. Prayer the sublimest strains that reach the majesty on high. It's always great when you get to my age to have hindsight. I told my darling wife recently, I said, Martha dear, I think if I were 10 years younger I'd sell this house we're in, with permission from the Lord. I'd go by the old house that E.M. Barnes used to live in. I walked in that house a while ago. The rugs are still the same, the chairs are still the same. The rug where he stained it with his tears, the chair when he used to dig his elbows in and groan and travail. There was something almost mystical about that house. I'd love to see somebody there. I'd turn it into a school of prayer. A 10-weeks course, no going out shopping, day and night considering, studying prayer, getting men that come in that could pray and men that could teach us to pray. It's the greatest need in the nation today. I want you to pray. Time's going. It's amazing how people stay at ball games till three o'clock in the morning. You know, it would be amusing if it wasn't so sad that people can't bear an hour, one hour in the house of God. Oh, it's a long one, that hour. What do they do? Get up and walk out. What are they going to do when they go to eternity? If you can't stick an hour with God down here, in God's name, what are you going to do for a million years in his presence? Except some reports from earth about football games or something? No. I say this again. My great concern for this area is that, in his mercy, God will produce a new race of Christians. Anointed with a new zeal, a new passion, a new love. Say goodbye to the sports world and the business world and every other world. And say, I'm going to live from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, my spirit, my soul, my body, my mind, my will, my emotions, on the altar. I like that verse of the hymn, Trust and Obey. We don't sing it so much. But we never can prove the delights of his love until all on the altar we lay. For the favor he shows and the joy he bestows are for those who will trust and obey. We all need a new baptism of love. A baptism. My eyes need to see. I've been around the world. These precious friends of mine are going back to India. Lousy hall if there is one. It was described this week on TV as the filthiest city in the world. I think the second one is Mexico City. You go and tiptoe through bodies on the streets. People just fall down in front of you and pull their clothes over their heads and sleep at night. Babies are left on the side of the road. Holy cows take up every blessed place. It's only one of so many nations. Two thousand years after Jesus died, there are more lost people tonight than ever there have been in history. Does that make you happy? Where did we miss the turn in the road? What are we missing? We're missing holy love, holy passion, holy anointing, holy vision. You think you dare kneel down and ask God for some of that now? Pray for our precious friends as they go to India. Pray for that group of young men that at this moment will be praying for the first time, seven of them. Pray for the ministries around here. One of them doesn't need a new anointing. Is that right, Brother Martin? You've got to pray particularly because there's a crisis period in, it's not a moral crisis, not just a financial crisis, there's a certain crisis here at last days that these precious leaders need special wisdom from heaven to decide at this time. Maybe thousands of lives depend on it. Pray about the political situation. It's a critical situation. We'd rather go forward or backward, we'd rather go up or go down. It's a horrid thing when the blind are leading the blind. Farrar talked last night as though, you don't need to ask the Russians to come to the table, it'll all be nice and obedient. Then the news this morning says there are 17 recent violations of the promises that they make. What did they do in England today? The IRA blew up, tried to kill Mrs. Thatcher in the whole cabinet and killed five but didn't fortunately kill her. She just got up and said, well, it must go on as usual. Oh God baptize us with love, baptize us with this courage this man had, this zeal that refused to give up, this love that would not, could not fail, this courage that wouldn't waver. If 120 people could go out and turn the world upside down, there's more than that here tonight. Would you cry to God and ask him to give what you need? Let's kneel and pray. As we kneel, let's sing when I survey the wondrous cross. When I survey the one on which the prince of