In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of focusing on one thing in the Christian life. He highlights the need to stay on the straight path towards God and not get sidetracked by worldly pursuits. The preacher also warns against the self-centered mindset prevalent in many churches today, where personal status and emotions take precedence over a genuine spiritual experience with God. He encourages believers to be fully committed to God, even if it means facing opposition and loneliness. The sermon emphasizes the significance of prayer and the worship of God in the life of a believer.

If I were to ask you tonight, you're saved, you say, yes, I'm saved. When? Oh, so-and-so creeps, I got baptized and I'm saved. What are you saved for? Hell? Are you saved from bitterness? Are you saved from lust? Are you saved from cheating? Are you saved from lying? Are you saved from bad manners? Are you saved from rebelling against your parents? Come on, what are you saved from? The Lord Jesus Christ is first, and for Him I surrender everything. To Him I give all. To Jesus Christ, my Lord and my Savior, He can command me. He's ahead of my wife, He's ahead of my children, He's ahead of my ambitions. He is first, and everything else is last. Anything else is not New Testament Christianity, brother and sister. Anything else is a compromise, and it leaves people half-saved, confused, frustrated, bewildered, and in the dark. Jesus Christ is your exclusive Savior, and all other relationships are determined and conditioned by this one overwhelming, almighty relationship. And we think all the great men of prayer lived a hundred years ago. There's a man who lives fifty miles away from where I live, he's thirty-two years of age, he prays ten hours a day. Here in America right now, come on you fellows at Pompeii and show your strength. How much stamina do you have to pray? How much vision, how much passion, how much burden? There's a man outside Waco, sixty years of age, who prays six hours a day. Brethren, what we need is the power of God, and let the public think what they will. And if we have the power of God on us and live like Christians, regardless of what the world says, I don't care what the world thinks of me. Any man, anywhere, at any time, if he be in Christ, he is a new creation. He isn't patched up, he's made a new creation. He gets a new heart, a new spirit, new desires, new hopes, new longings, that cannot be satisfied at the broken systems of the world. He preached the greatest sermon the world has ever had, it's got the answer for our day. Christianity has not been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Christianity has been tried, found difficult and rejected. Christianity is not only too difficult for the world, it's too difficult for the church. God's problem in the world is not communism, Romanism, Moonism, or any other ism. God's problem in America is dead fundamentalism. We know all the cliches, we know all the words. For me to accept Christ means that I am to accept him in every part of my being, and that I am to form an attachment to him, an emotional, an intellectual, a volitional attachment, which is complete, leaving no part of the life unaffected. If he cannot save, cannot control you, he cannot save you. And if he cannot control all of you, he cannot control any of you. And then it's to be an attachment that is exclusive. I mean that Christ is not to be one of several interests. My goal is God himself. Not joy, not peace, not even blessing, but himself, my God. It is his to lead me there, not mine, but his, at any cost, dear Lord, by any road. So faith bounds forward to its goal in God, and love can trust her Lord to lead her there. Upheld by him my soul will follow hard, till God has last fulfilled my deepest prayer. No matter if the way be sometimes dark, no matter if it cost be often great, he knoweth how I best shall reach the mark. The way that leads to him must neither be straight. One thing I know, I cannot say him nay. One thing I do, I praise to all my God. The secret of the life of the apostle was this, if you want to know, it's this one thing I do. He never got in sight track. He never got into business like so many preachers do. This one thing I do, it will be hell to get there. I forget, one of the old Puritan preachers said in the 1600s, you have to go through hell to get to heaven. You have to lose everything in order to become the part of the bride of Jesus Christ. One thing I know, I cannot say him nay. One thing I do, I press toward my Lord. My God, my glory here from day to day, and in the glory there, my great reward. Christianity hasn't been tried and found one thing. It's been tried and found difficult and rejected. And my dear friend, the only thing which can turn the course of world history and shatter the colossus of communistic power and bring every false god upon its face. The only thing that can resist the tremendous powers of evil abroad in the world today is the Holy Spirit released through spirit filled man. A force of evil can only be overcome by a force of righteousness. The weapons of our warfare are not common, but they are mighty through God to the pulling down of stronghold. The church today is helpless without the Holy Spirit. He says, consider yourself dead to all the worldly contacts. Loathe them, hate them. Hate what? Well, have nothing to do with sexual immorality. Have nothing to do with dirty mindedness. Have nothing to do with evil desire. Have nothing to do with uncontrolled passion. Don't lust after other people's goods. You see, and it's hard to say again, if Christ has been born in me, he wants to live in me, he wants to talk in me, he wants to walk in me, he wants to work through me. It's not a struggle that I'm trying to be a Christian. Life, life, life. He says, I'm come that ye might have life, and that ye might have life more abundant. I don't have to tell you that just to accept Christ as your redeemer doesn't mean you're saved. I'm sure I don't have to tell you just to know that your sins forgiven doesn't constitute your salvation. The fact that you happen to be on the way to hell, and don't now happen to be on the way to heaven, and you don't now happen to be on the way to hell, that doesn't constitute your salvation. Your salvation, of course, derives from the fact that as a redeemed sinner, no longer on the way to hell, but already on the way to heaven, Jesus Christ as God creator has come to invade your humanity, to play that role in you for which you were created. To give him the right 24 hours a day in your business, in your home, in your school, on your college campus, whether you're on recreation, in vacation, in business, no matter, at any time, under any circumstance, 24 hours in every day, 7 days in every week, you give Jesus Christ as God, the right to be God in you without reserve. Then you're beginning to get saved. That's what it means to become a Christian. We've conveniently reduced salvation to a moment in time when we raise a hand, walk down the front, or get baptized, or have our name put upon a church roll, and we call that salvation. Nothing, of course, is farther from the truth. That's totally divorced from the revelation given to us in the Word of God, which is our sole guide in every matter of faith. Salvation involves the reoccupation by God of a guilty sinner in such a way that Jesus Christ has the unchallenged, absolute, perpetual right to dictate the terms whereby that individual henceforth will run his life. For instance, where he's going to buy his new home. What vocation he's going to study for as a student. Where he's going to go next year on vacation. How he's actually going to spend his money. Who's really going to run the church that he goes to. All this is embraced in his salvation. And nothing less than that, of course, will do. Anything less than that shortchanges Jesus Christ and cheats him of that for which his blood was shed. God is looking for men and women who will be totally, totally, totally sold out to Him. You'll get stoned by your critics, you'll be lonely. I think the last time I went into my office, my dear Paul was there, and he was in the chair there, and he said, Daddy, I've realized this, if we're going to walk in holiness, we're going to be lonely people. I don't believe that any man is greater than his prayer life. I don't believe that any church is stronger than its prayer life. There was a day when men sang, Holy, holy, holy, and oh, worship the King. And they talked objectively about the greatness of God. Then we backslid into that gutter where we still are, where everything's about I. I'm so happy, I'm so blessed, I'm so nice, I'm so good. I am I, I always I. Well, the difference between heaven and hell is the difference between God and I. Keep that in mind always. And our churches, I am confident, from across this land of ours, are filled with people that are going to miss salvation, miss heaven by 18 inches, because they have their salvation up here in an intellectual comprehension, rather than down here in a spiritual experience and the presence of the Son of God. My dear friend, listen. The forces of evil are crowding on full pressure today. And there's a spiritual warfare which will never cease until time runs out. And the church of Jesus Christ has got all the equipment, all the buildings, all the plant, all the method, all the theory, and all the technique, but no power to move men to God. And I say that to my own heart. We've never been so well equipped, but so lacking in endowment. Now, for this, each one of us is personally responsible. The result is they die all around us, and we say they backslid. They never backslid, because they never were regenerated to start with. To accept Him is to accept Him with a revolutionary acceptance. It's to accept Him completely, all of Him to all of me. It's to accept Him exclusively, and not any other hope but Him. He alone is my hope. It's to accept His friends as my friends, His enemies as my enemies, His ways as my ways, His rejection as my rejection, the cross as my cross, His life as my life, and His glorious future as my glorious future. That's what it means to be a Christian. And my dear friends, it's worth everything. And if we all had to believe on Christ tonight and die tomorrow, we'd spend one eternity thanking God with tender affection that He allowed it to happen. Yes, sir. You can't afford to be lost. So a cross is something you take up deliberately. It is obedience to Christ. It is doing what the Lord commands you to do and then taking the consequences. And if the consequences mean a cross, then take the cross. And Paul says, that's what the world is to me. It's a system of corruption and rottenness and vileness. It's anti-Christ from the world ago. Is the world crucified to you tonight? Or does it fascinate you? The Lord Jesus did not shed His blood so that you could have a release from a guilt complex, so that you might escape the punitive consequence of your sin. The Lord Jesus died upon the cross not just to get you out of hell and into heaven. He died upon the cross to get God out of heaven and into you. And the measure in which you are saved is the measure in which God out of heaven in you is in function. Actually calling the shots. Actually controlling what you do with your hands. Actually controlling where you go with your feet. Actually controlling what you say with your lips. Actually controlling what you think with your mind. Actually controlling the decisions that you make. That is the measure in which you are saved. So don't kid yourself that because ten years or fifteen years ago you walked down the aisle or raised your hand and you've been paying your tithe and you've been through the tub. Don't fancy that. Constitutes your salvation. There are hundreds of thousands of men and women who troop to church every Sunday who've gone through all of that and they're not even regenerate. They're unsaved believers. They're conforming to denominational patterns that have become a substitute for a personal spiritual relationship to Jesus Christ and they know nothing, nothing really of the life that is the birthright of the newborn. And there are going to be some tragic surprises in the day the dust has settled. The first group that I am mentioning is not because of of its size or its priority but simply because of the habit of my thinking and therefore I give it to you first. The first group are those people that have met the forgiving Christ. They discovered their sin through some means or another. They realized they'd been caught and they didn't know what to do about it. They were told that they were in hell. In hell they weren't so sure but they figured they'd better be on the safe side. So someone said accept Jesus. Their primary reason for accepting him was to be inured and immunized against hell. They wanted to have an insurance policy. And so their primary concern in Christ is that he fulfill what they've accepted him for. They were so grateful when they learned that Jesus Christ had died for them that they wouldn't have to die. Well, put it in more colloquial terms. They were so happy when they learned that Jesus had taken the rap for them if I may express it that way. They were so happy that he died. They have mistaken their pleasure at the fact he suffered for them as being the witness of the Spirit. But their whole concern about Christ is that they should be protected from suffering and from punishment. They've only met the forgiving Christ and they've never gone beyond that. When they want to see someone saved actually what they want is to see someone else come to the place that if they die they won't go to hell. When they speak of revival what they mean is to have their hearts feel the same joy that they felt when they first came. There's an upper limit to their interest in the church and in Christianity and it all relates to them. They have met the forgiving Christ. There's a second group. These are the people that have met the utilitarian Christ. They were in great need and they prayed. And when they prayed God answered prayer. Perhaps someone else prayed and answered prayer. But they were impressed with the fact that God was tremendously useful and handy to know because they were in a dilemma. They didn't have any answer to it. Prayer brought the answer. They were sick and God healed them or they were otherwise in trouble and God brought them out. And so today they are extremely grateful, so grateful that they've joined the church, submitted to baptism, learned doctrines and tithed. But the whole of their interest in Christianity and religion is that they should be where God can take care of them if they're in trouble or in problem. They've met the utilitarian Christ. Today we have very popular a cult of the utilitarian Christ. We find that it has nothing to do whatever with this person as the sovereign God. It's just that faith in Jesus brings answers. And you will find people whose lives are seemingly just indescribably wicked that have learned faith and then they write articles and say, I'm so glad I wanted to be the queen of Hollywood and so I asked Jesus and this utilitarian Christ made me a success. And this, I say, is a cult that it lacks every biblical evidence of being a movement in the stream of Christianity. The utilitarian Christ. It has varying degrees. The forgiving Christ, the utilitarian Christ. Then there's a third group of people that have met the status-giving Christ. They were born in such a way that they didn't have the privilege of belonging to the country club. They weren't very accepted in society. They had gregarious impulse and need and so they were taken into the church. They found warmth and welcome and so because they wanted fellowship, this was what they accepted. They were willing to submit to the doctrine. They were willing to pray. They were willing to be baptized. They were willing to tithe, do anything that was required of them. But when they testified, their testimony is, I am delighted to be a Christian because there's such wonderful people in the church. I'm so happy because there's such grand people in the church. It's such a joy to be with such wonderful people and think we'll be together forever in heaven. They've equated status with the whole purpose of God. Their status, satisfying their needs for social expression. And then out of this group is another group that become to some degree psychopathic and equate their own status in the group with the glory of God. And anything that pushes them up is to God's glory and anything that would bypass them or diminish their influence is just the opposite. And these are the ones of whom we spoke about a year ago when I gave you a quotation from Christianity Today's article of November 1960 entitled, Crucifying the Pastor. This is the group that you find all over America. Just this past week I've been with a group of 50 pastors down at Summit Grove. And they've talked to me of some of the experiences they've had where people who have felt that somehow they were bypassed and their status wasn't recognized have used every nefarious, wicked means it was possible to discover in order to bring grief and heartache into they would rather ruin the church than to let for one little moment their own personal status be affected. Well now this is this third group, the status-giving Christ. So we have three, forgiving Christ, utilitarian Christ, and the status-giving Christ. Then there is a fourth group. This is the group of people that have met the emotion-satisfying Christ. Oh, they love to go to church because they enjoy the syncopation and the rhythm and the emotional appeal. And if they can weep or laugh or do both at the same time or in subsequent then they go away saying, my what a wonderful meeting. But the whole purpose of Christianity and religion is to satisfy their emotional needs primarily. And so we have people, they have all the same doctrine, they've all been baptized, they're all in the same religious organization. And when they speak of revival, the forgiving, those who know the forgiving Christ say, well I want to have others come to know forgiveness and those that have met the utilitarian Christ say, well I want to see others help and those that have met the status-giving Christ say, well I want to see others come into this wonderful fellowship and those that have met the emotion-satisfying Christ say, well I want to feel the way I felt back there in July 6th in 1903, back at that camp meeting. Oh, then we'll have revival. But it's all below the level. Then we have another group called number five. These are the people that have met the Holy God and the Sovereign Christ. These are the ones that have seen God in his majesty, have seen God in his sovereignty, have seen God in his holiness, have seen Christ in his glory. These are the ones whose eyes have been opened to God and in the revelation of God they've seen their immense unworthiness and their terrifying sinfulness. Obviously they've known forgiveness for in that brokenness of heart because they'd sinned against such a holy God they cast themselves on the nail-pierced hands of Christ. They were forgiven. God has obviously answered prayer. And they have certainly found status as a child of the King and their hearts have been satisfied with joy and peace. But thus we find in this fifth group are these who've had a revelation of the glory of Christ and are living only for his praise. They're broken. They've committed themselves to him. They've submitted to his sovereignty. The cross has pierced them through. And the one end of their being is that he be glorified. Now this is his church. This is his church. The religious organization can include other groups. But his church is here. His church is on this level. He is saying, if any man hate not his father and his mother and his husband and his wife and his brother and his sisters, yea, in his own life also, he can't be my disciple. The lordship of Christ transcends all human relationships. And his one purpose is the glory of God. And he's heard Christ say, if anyone doesn't take up his cross and come follow me, he can't be my disciple. And he's gladly gone with Christ out to the cross. And there he's brought his ego and his ambition and his vanity and his pride and all the things that once motivated and controlled him to the cross. And he has no plan, no purpose, but the glory of Christ. This is the one that's heard Christ say, if any man does not forsake all that he has, he cannot be my disciple. He doesn't give a seventh of his time and a tenth of his money. He holds that everything is Christ. All is Christ. This is his church. This is his church. He said, if any man come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and come follow me. And Paul says, that's what the world is to me. It's a system of corruption and rottenness and vileness. It's anti-Christ from the world go. Is the world crucified to you tonight? Or does it fascinate you?