In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the negative impact of indulging in sinful behavior. He shares a personal story of someone who was deeply affected by watching inappropriate content and how it led to a powerful encounter with God. The preacher also addresses the issue of broken relationships within families and the negative influence it has on young people. He reminds the audience that they are constantly being watched by various entities, including God, angels, and even demons. The sermon concludes with a message of hope and victory through Jesus Christ, emphasizing the need for His power, grace, and forgiveness in overcoming struggles.

Well, good morning. I don't usually start with an illustration, but I'm going to do it today. I hope you'll mind. Ralph and Lucitara were holding meetings in New Jersey, and the Lord broke in. Now, the church they were in was seeing, on the average, of maybe one soul a week finding Christ. Revival came, and the last I heard of that church, they were seeing from one to 25 souls saved every week. Quite a change. I was down in Rosario, in Argentina, a city of a million, in a Baptist church, seating probably 1,000. There were 1,200 people there that were standing along the aisles. And there were six different Baptist groups in Argentina. They'd invited me to come for a weekend, Friday over Sunday. And, no, that's not, I'm sorry, I should have told you exactly how it happened. The year before I was there, they found, when they met together and compared statistics, that the average Baptist church in Argentina was only winning about two people to Christ in a year. And this hit them so hard. Here's what they decided to do. We're going to have another conference next year, same time. Now, they didn't know I was coming to South America. I had never met them. I knew nothing about them. And so they told the committee that was setting up to meet, Now, you're not to invite a speaker. You're to pray that God will send a speaker that knows something about revival. Now, they didn't know I was coming down there. And the Lord put it together. It was incredible. I spoke in a Southern Baptist seminary in Buenos Aires. And after one meeting, a professor came running up and he said, What are you doing in this weekend? I said, I checked my book. It's the only weekend I have three in two months. Wonderful, he said. This was the weekend of the thing. This is how God put this thing together. It was incredible, you know. Anyway, I couldn't give invitations. The church was so packed with people. So I just had to depend entirely on the spirit blessing. I'll tell you what happened to one man. He was a pastor of a church of 500 members and nothing was stirred. He got the revival message right. He went back to his church. Now, he was a man of great faith and great prayer. I'll just give you one example of that. He needed a car because he had a good-sized congregation, no car. So he told the deacons and they said, We'll set up a little fund. No, no, he said. Don't do that. The Lord has told me what to do. What did the Lord tell you? He told me to go to the local Ford company and ask for a free car. Well, the deacons roared with laughter. Pastor, what did you have for your last meal? There's something wrong here. He said, No fund. That's what God told me. So he goes to a Ford company and they gave him a brand-new car, a brand-new car, and it was a big car, guzzling gas. He didn't have money for gas. So he somehow made a trade and got a smaller car. But anyway, he had a car. Now, the deacons didn't know about this, and so the night the deacons were coming for a meeting, he drove the car right in the steps of the church so they couldn't help but stumble over the car. Anyway, he was a man of great faith. After he'd been in those meetings at Rosario, he went back and he started praying, God, we've got to have it, and we've got to have it now. He prayed by the hour, by the day, and about two weeks later, a revival broke. His whole church was touched. It was a good thing, too, because one of the men in the testimonies confessed he'd been planning to shoot the preacher. If they hadn't had a revival, they'd have had a dead pastor. So there was a lot of things. But anyway, the Lord touched, it seemed, everybody in that congregation, and the sin was washed out. Then you know what happened? In two weeks, with no evangelistic meetings, in two weeks, 200 sinners were saved. They came beating on the pastor's door day and night. He phoned the previous pastor to come down and help him gather in the harvest. And in about two weeks, there were 200 people saved. So you know what that is saying to me? The problem is not out there in the world. The problem is inside the church. The churches are not right. There's sin, secret sin in the churches. And the Spirit of God knows that, and He's not blessing. I remember the pastor of the Alliance Church in Saskatoon at the time of the revival. He had the largest evangelical work in the city, probably 1,000 people. And we had around 175, 200. We were talking, and he said, I think if God was to take the lid off our congregation sometime, we'd find ourselves looking into some hell. We did. If you'd asked me if I had a patriarch in the congregation, I'd have pointed to this man. Beautiful man, about 60, white hair, soft, gentle, kind. He comes up to me one night, shaking from head to foot. He says, Pastor, I'm an adulterer. Can you help? An adulterer? This man? I had one man in my congregation who was the only man, I would say, that would seem to be faithfully witnessing. He comes to me with a list. Pastor, I've visited every home in this ten-block area. I've led six people to the Lord, and I have 30 homes that would like me to come back again. So a lady goes forward in the meetings. My wife dealt with her, and she and this man were sleeping together. And he was married and she was married. I couldn't believe it. There's song in there, you know? So, people listen. When the church is right, God has no problem saving sinners. It'll begin to happen immediately. That's why we're preaching revival. And each of us, of course, have a responsibility here to be right with God so the Spirit can take over and do the work He wants to do. 200 sinners beating on the door of the preacher wanting to be saved. Why didn't that happen before? Same preacher. Well, he'd been changed himself. Anyway, I want to look at promises God has given us in the Bible for victory over sin in the average Christian's life. Then we're going to look at the problem where many Christians are not having this victory and try and find out why not. Psalm 62, 11 says that power belongs unto God. Moody said, I'm glad it does because if I had the power, I'd probably use it for a selfish reason. Power belongs unto God. But Isaiah 40, 29 says, He gives power to the faint and to them that have no might. He increases strength. That's a great promise. Isaiah 40, 31, They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mutter with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. That's a great promise. Isaiah 41, 16, God said, Fear not, I will strengthen you. I'll give you strength. That's a promise. Isaiah 44, 3, and 4, God said, I will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground. I'll pour My Spirit on your seed and your children. And people say, Yeah, He poured His Spirit on my kids, but they turned their back on God. But wait, that's not the whole story there. I will pour water on your seed and blessing on your offspring and they shall spring up as well as by the water poured. So it's a promise that not only will God pour His Spirit on your children, they will respond to this. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and they shall be saved, and your house. So we have a promise there. If the devil's got some of your kids, get them back. See, I came from a broken home. My parents left us four boys, but didn't love each other. And the home split. There was a court case. I was about eight years of age. Mother went. But after a while, she got saved, and she came back, and Dad said, Your mother's coming back, but you don't have to listen to her religious talk. We didn't know what that meant, but she was a Christian. Well, she was a very wise fisher woman, and she left booklets laying around and tried to get us to go to church. She was very sweet and gentle, but she told us, listen carefully, after she came home, she had a time with God, and here's what she told the Lord. Dear God, I'm going to believe you from this day, all my boys and my husband are going to be saved. So nothing happened for 14 years. Are you listening? For 14 years, nobody got saved. And my oldest brother Don was past 20, and I was three years behind him, another brother behind me, and so on. And the devil got on my mother's back one day and gave her a hard time. But she said, Before the sun went down that night, I threw that rascal off my back, and I kept on believing the Lord. And all of a sudden, Don found Christ. He was 24, I think. I was 22. I found Christ. My next brother was about 21. And my youngest brother, listen, when he got married, he and his bride, they shook hands privately and promised each other they would never become Christians. He never got saved until he was 35. But the Lord got him, too, you know. His wife phoned me one day and said, You better come see your brother Keith. He's got some problems. So I went to see him. He was sitting on the floor. I said, What's up? He said, I'm so low down, the only way out is up. I've got to find God now. He forgot about his promise to his wife. He became a Christian. She became violent over that and gave him an awful time for two years. She said, I'm reading the Bible. She kicked the Bible out of his hand. Saw him praying. She kicked him in the rear end and called the kids in and mocked him and stuff. For two years this went on. Then one day, she was listening to radio broadcasts and she got saved. But see, my mom believed. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust often in Him. And one translation says, And He shall do it, or He'll bring it to pass. There's a KJV. But you have to believe, no matter what. You can't tell God, Do it tomorrow. One of our troubles is we're in a big rush, you know. We have a grocery list and we want the groceries home in the pantry in a week or two. That's not how it goes. Wait on the Lord. And wait, in any language, means wait. It takes God a while to work things out, you know. And so we have to know that. I will pour water then upon your seed, on you and your seed, and they shall spring up. 1 Corinthians 15, 57 says, Thanks be unto God who gives us the what? Who gives us what? The victory. Through who? Jesus Christ. Paul didn't say, What shall deliver me from this body of death? He said, Who shall deliver me? Christ we need. His power, His grace, and forgiveness. He will not allow us, God will not allow us, we're told, to be tempted above that we're able. But will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear. So God will not allow us to be tempted above that we are able. But why is it? Now, in Regina, I was talking to a Christian, he came to see me, a Christian worker. And he told me, he'd been a Christian 20 years, but he said, I'm struggling with lust from morning till night. He used to be in adultery, and years back, 20 years ago or something, became a Christian. Never committed it again, but he said, I'm struggling with this day and night. We had a long talk and prayer about it. Why is it? Don't these promises work? I've had people tell me, Listen, don't quote that verse in James 4, resist the devil and he'll flee from you. That doesn't work. I resist the devil, he knocks me down and tramps on me in the mud. I've had people tell me that. Well, doesn't it work? God gave me light on that verse many years ago before the revival in 71, through Cecil Carter, a missionary with the Shantyman's Christian Association in the logging camp. A great man of God. He was in our pulpit and he said, Is this verse in the Bible, resist the devil and he will flee from you? Yes, it's in the Bible, people said. No, no, it's not in the Bible. What? It's not in the Bible. I thought someone would say, Cecil, you goof, it's in the Bible. No, no, no, he said, that's not in the Bible. Here's what's in the Bible. Submit yourself to God, then resist the devil and he'll flee from you. You can't resist the devil if you're not submitted to God. If you're submitted to God, then you'll have God's power that promises to become real. You complete the promises then. But if you're not submitted to God, you won't get the power to resist the devil. He will knock you flat and that's what's been going on. And we see it again and again and again. Abraham, you know, Abraham, the great man of faith, did you know that he lied twice? He was a liar. He lied to save his own skin because he didn't think God was in business in Egypt or wherever, among the Philistines. And then his son Isaac, I guess he got it from his dad, he did the same thing too. He lied. Then David sinned not once, but twice. I mean, seriously, the first time with Bathsheba. And then the second time when he numbered the people in Israel, he was not to do that. And Joab, the captain of the general of the army, who was certainly no saint, he tried to talk the king out of it. He knew it was wrong. So, why are people, good people, doing that? Samson, by the way, did not always have that power on him. He had to believe God for it. People don't know that. He was a very humble person, you know. He killed a lion with his bare hands and didn't even tell his mom and dad he'd done this. Spurgeon's comment on that was this. Yeah, and if the average modern Christian should kill a mouse, he'd have to publish it in the Gospel Gazette. Very humble. And when they came back the second time on the same path, he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion and there was a bunch of bees, and he got some honey and went up and waited in the path for his mom and dad to catch up with him and he gave him the honey but he never told him where he got it because they might find out what had happened. People, that's humility. He was a humble man. His name is mentioned in Hebrews chapter 11 in God's Hall of Fame. So, he must have been a man of faith. Listen, when 3,000 men of Judah bound him with his permission, they had to ask his permission to let them bind him with these ropes and deliver him to the Philistines. He gave them permission. He said, if you'll promise not to kill me when you have me bound. And they promised they wouldn't. They could have easily done that then. He had to believe that the power of God would come. There are several places where it says that the Spirit came mightily upon him. Came mightily on him at the right time. Then, when he sinned with Delilah, he thought it would be the same and it wasn't the same. God had left him because of sin. The power was no longer there. It came back to him in the temple in Gaza when he died. But you know, he'd been monkeying around in the area of lust. He was no dumbbell. He was an intellectual. He was a judge of Israel for 20 years. People came to him with difficult questions and problems. And he had to judge them. All of that is fine. But you know, lust, you can't resist the devil, I say again, unless you said yes to God. I met a man one time. He had been an alcoholic. He accepted Christ as his Savior. And for eight months, he told me, I have the same problem with alcohol I always had. I've been drunk at least once a week since I became a Christian. He said, what is this born again stuff, you know? Where's Christ? We had a talk about it and I preached on it and he heard it and the light went on. He went to his pastor and said, you have to take me to St. John tomorrow. You're likely becoming home alone. On the way, he told his pastor what had happened. He'd been in trouble with the law. He jumped bail 22 years before. He'd been hiding in small towns in New Brunswick, you know, for all this while. And he learned from what I'd said about James 4, you know, submitting to God. He had to make things right with the law. So he did. When he walked in, the chief of police was away but the deputy chief was there and he says, Dave White, we've been looking for you for 22 years. Where have you been hiding? So he told him. Why did you come here today? He told him. I've got to be right with God. And White began, or the deputy, began to cry. And he said, you know, a Baptist church led me to Christ a couple years ago and I fell off the King's Highway. I've been walking in the ditch and I'm back on the King's Highway. You guys coming here today, he said, it's brought me back to God again. And then he said to Dave White, he said, Dave, we're going to forget about the past. Your crimes were not great but thank you for coming. And Dave White was never drunk another day, ever. It just broke at that point when he submitted to God. Does that really work? Yes, it does work. We've seen it again and again. I can't explain it. Submit yourself, therefore, to God. Resist the devil. What is God speaking to your heart about? This is the problem, you see. Relationship with your wife, your husband, not good. With your kids, maybe not good. Your neighbor, not good. Your employer, not good. What is it? Secret lust? You know, the Internet can be a blessing. It's also a great curse. You see all kinds of rotten stuff in there, ideas, pictures, garbage. And many Christians are being knocked down because of this sort of stuff. I met a fellow in the center in Saskatchewan and he said to me, we had a missionary here a couple of weeks ago and he gave an invitation for anybody who would consider mission work overseas and my wife and I went forward. Then he laughed and said, but we can't go to the mission field. I said, why not? Ah, well he says we're hooked on pornography. I got into this first, then I got my wife into it and we went from bad stuff to worse to dirty, evil stuff and he said, we're watching the worst stuff we can find. And he turned to walk away and I said, just a minute, don't you want to be free? No, he said, I don't, not really. So I said, before you go, let me share something with you. You claim you're a born again believer. Well, I've accepted Christ. I said, okay. Every time you watch that filthy garbage, you're forcing the Christ who lives within you to watch it with you. You know what happened? People, he looked, he fell on his face on the floor and started to scream to God for mercy. God just broke him into a thousand pieces. He forgot I was there, I'm sure, he was just screaming to God, oh God, I didn't know what I was doing to you. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. And the last I heard, they were in Bible college headed for the mission field. Thank God, they did the same problem. Fool around with sin, it'll just short circuit your power. It won't be there. I remember once being in a restaurant, I don't normally do this, I have several times I guess over the years, but you have to be sure what you're doing. It was a restaurant about 200 people down in the States. And the Lord told me to share something with the people. There's about 200 people in there, you know. It's a restaurant, that's not your turf. So I get up and told them I was from Canada and a few things about that. And then I told them how I found Christ as my personal savior. And you know, it was just as if I had some kind of a powerful amplifier. My words were just hitting the walls all around. And I finished, and you know what happened? People started to clap and praise, you know. There were some Christians there. As I was leaving, there was an old lady standing there and she said, oh, that was wonderful. Are you born again? I sure am, she said. Anyway, I really didn't want to do that, but I knew I had to do that. And that night in the meetings I was in, there was a demonstration of the power of God that wouldn't have been there had I disobeyed him in the restaurant deal. So submit. God is leading us constantly in these areas. Now, first of all, remember this. We have a very powerful enemy. Be sober, that is, be watchful, be wide awake. Your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion walks about seeking whom he may devour, whom resist steadfast in the faith. So we have a very powerful enemy. Begin there. Then you have another enemy, Jeremiah 17.9. The heart, your heart, is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and it starts young. My two oldest daughters, who were then about maybe the oldest one would be 10, the other one was two years behind, and we were at a place called Pine Falls. Wintertime, snow up to your ears. They were playing in the snow outside, and I just happened to look out the window, and I saw Judy come behind Lois and grab her by the shoulders and push her face down in this big snowbank, you know. And Lois comes up blowing snow. She comes running in the house crying, Judy, push me in the snowbank. So I called Judy in. She stands like this. Daddy? I didn't do it. Well, you know, we have a certain voice we reserve for occasions like that, so I said, Judith Lynn McLeod, don't you lie to me. I was looking out the window and I saw you do it. Well, Daddy? I didn't really do it. This hand did it. You know, the heart, deceitful heart? Yeah, that's where it starts when they're young. We all have that. Paul said in Romans 7, I know that in me dwells no good thing. To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good, I do not find. So in me, in you, in the flesh, there is no good thing. Matthew 26, 41, Jesus said, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And we live in a body of flesh and it's weak, very weak. You may be willing to do something and you refuse to do it, or you know something you're going to do is not right and you do it anyhow. And we've all had that kind of experience. But don't ever blame God. Don't ever doubt the promises of God. They're contingent on other things. So many times we're struggling with sin because there's some area we've never dealt with. Many times, the marital relationship is a problem. You recall in 1 Peter 3, likewise you husbands, dwell with them, that is with your wives, according to knowledge, the teaching of the Word of God. And it says, as being heirs together of the grace of life. Why? Not that your prayers be not hindered. If your relationship with your wife is not right, men, your prayer life will be hindered. Paul once said, we would have come unto you, even I, Paul, once in a game, but Satan hindered us. It's the same word in the Greek. We hinder our own prayer life when our relationship with our wife isn't right. And I was with a bunch of men, about 140 men, a while ago, just one meeting on a Saturday. A prayer breakfast sort of thing. And I don't know why, God led me to just talk about restitution. And I talked about some of these things, especially men in their relationship with their wives and their children. They're not just your wife, but your kids. And at the end, I saw God had spoken, so I said, now how many of you men have some restitution to make? God has shown you, and you're going to do it. Would you raise your hand? And people, half the hands went up immediately. What is it? Why aren't we seeing people saving our churches? Why aren't our churches really growing spiritually? It's always sin in the cup, you know. You know what happened to Israel when Achan sinned and brought problems on the whole nation. 36 people died as a consequence of his sin. And God would not go forward with Israel if they hadn't have dealt with this. I mean, Joshua might have just let it go. But he was wiser than that and did the right thing. And they dealt with it. I was in a church a while back, a church that has the blessing of God on it in a marvelous way. And I said, has the church always been like this? No. No, no, no, no. We started off 25 years ago. We had inner dissension, disunion, trouble, you know, sin, everything. I said, how did you handle all that? I said, we prayed them out or else we prayed them into a holy light. And we kept at it, just praying and discipling and also disciplining people. And he said, finally we got to a place where I had a clean church. I said, how is it today? He said, we now have 1200 people who are soul winning day and night. 1,200? What a church. They built a building seating 3,000 and it's in a town of maybe 8,000 people. You know, they're keeping the church clean. It was interesting to observe that even when they were having ordinary, like, conference meetings like these, they'd be baptizing converts at the end, you know. Now, they didn't baptize converts that were converted in those meetings, but their people were also winning. Their classes for them, so great just to see what was going on. And it was a church that was filled, I mean filled, with the love of God. I was never in 66 years in the ministry in a church like that, where the love of God was flowing in all the way. It was like being in heaven, I'll tell you. I had almost, but not quite, lost faith in the church in North America. I tell you, my faith was restored if it was gone when I was in that particular church. Now, we need to keep this in mind. Since the flesh is weak and the heart is deceitful, the devil has an ally in the flesh. Your real enemies were, you know, they asked Moody, the famous savantist, one time, who has caused you the most trouble? And he said, his name is Dwight L. Moody. He meant himself, you see. His worst enemy. And we are our worst enemy. So, it's not just Satan. I know people they love. I remember one time, meetings in Mule Alliance in Edmonton, Canada, and a man came for counseling. He was an Alliance pastor, but not the pastor of the church I was in. And he told me, I'm hooked on pornography very deeply. I think I have demons. And so we checked it out. Another fellow and I, we checked it out. He didn't have any demons. And so I said, now listen, it says in James, let no man say when he's tempted, untempted of God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither does he tempt any man. But every man is tempted when he's drawn away of his own lust. Now, so you have to face the fact that your problem is your own lust. And he bowed to that. He accepted that. And finally, he went to prayer. And I think he forgot my song leader and I were there. And he began crying only. And you know, his body was snapping back and forth. He was holding onto a chair. I thought he was going to break in two. Oh, how he cried to God. And after about five minutes, I heard him say, oh, oh. And he rose. You know, you could almost hear the chains hit the floor. He was free and he knew it. Oh, man, he said, I want to give a testimony tomorrow night. I said, listen, if you give a testimony tomorrow night, don't talk about the problem you had. You know, it's a mixed crowd and don't talk about the problem you had with pornography. Just tell me you had a tremendous problem and Jesus set you free. OK, so I'll do that. Well, the next night when he came, he said, I want to sing my testimony. And I, matter of fact, he told me so I beat up to see the guy doing the recording. And I said, I want you to record everything tonight, not just my sermons. That's what he had been doing. OK, so no problem. And so this guy got up to sing. You'll never guess the song. Oh, happy day that fixed my choice on thee, my savior, my God. Well, may this glowing heart rejoice and tell its raptures all about. Happy day, happy day. And he got singing this and he was no singer. But you know what happened? God came and God sang through him. The head pastor of Beulah Nice Church said afterwards, you know, I have never in all my years in the ministry, he was in his 60s, never heard singing like that before. He said the Holy Ghost was singing tonight. I said, I believe that too. Everybody was in tears. And finally, he couldn't sing anymore. He was in tears. And then he kept on. Now rest my long divided heart fixed on this blissful center. Rest no ever from my Lord depart with him of every good possess. Now this is wonderful. I've got this on tape. You know, I want to see the guy after you taped everything tonight. No, he said, I just taped your sermon. I said, what? You didn't tape everything. Don't you remember? I stood here when you were sitting there before the meeting as you tape everything. I don't remember that. I said, I thought, come on, am I crazy or something? You don't remember that? No, I said, I don't remember. I said, OK, forget about it. And I was walking away muttering to myself. The Lord said, now get on your knees. I didn't want that. It was just for the crowd tonight. You've got to stay on your knees. And you're going to thank me that I made sure I didn't get on tape. I mean, I didn't hear a voice, but that's what I got as a message. So I got on my knees and finally, OK, hallelujah, I didn't get on the tape and the burden. We have a great God, a good God, but the flesh is an ally. And treat your wives, treat your husbands, treat your children. You know, Bill Orr, he's in heaven now, but one of the most remarkable men I ever knew or worked with. I was holding meetings in New York City in the Alliance Church. He was there and God spoke to him one night. His mother had left him when he was three or four years of age and his uncle had raised him. So his real name wasn't Orr, but that's the name he adopted and so on. He hated his mother with a passion. He heard she'd become a Christian. He became a Christian. He still had nothing to do with her. And whenever he felt, you know, maybe God was speaking about seeing his mother, he'd say, I never left her. She left me. You wouldn't talk about it anymore. Well, in one of those meetings, I think I spoke on the subject of hardened hearts and God got it. And the next day he hopped on a plane, flew down to South Carolina, went to his mother's place. He said, you know, when I was walking from the terminal to where my mom lived, he said it was just like there was a thousand demons screaming at me, you stupid fool. Don't, don't go and see her. Don't go and see her. He said, when I rang the doorbell, they left me alone. And she came and he asked her forgiveness for his bitterness. And he said, you know, today he told us she's the sweetest woman in the world. He persuaded her to leave where she lived, to move down to St. Louis where he lived. He bought her a car, he got her a house and the whole bit. What happened after that? God got him into a ministry. And I was there when it started. We were in a church in northern Saskatchewan, a church, maybe 500 people, all kinds of kids around. And he said, you know, those kids, I just feel drawn to them. Why can't I have some meeting with those kids? Well, I said, ask the pastor. Pastor said, sure, that's fine. So he had meetings in the downstairs auditorium with the children and he had a whole mob, I think 50 kids there. He must have had more than that because I think he said there were 40 got saved during that one week, you know. And he was off and running. Before he died, he had about 30,000 kids in 12 different countries in mailbox clubs. And you know, everywhere he had these clubs, he gave them a little card. And on the card they were simply to write, if I could change my mom and dad. Well, many times he got the card. I wouldn't want to change my mom and dad. They're great. But he's getting cards like this. Every time I asked my dad a question, he rattles the newspaper and tells me to get lost. I wish my dad would listen to me. My dad is a hypocrite. He promises me all kinds of things and he never does them. I don't believe my dad anymore. Or things like this. Mom and dad, they fight at home like cats and dogs all the time. In church, they look so sweet and you know, they don't understand us. It's things like this that are killing our kids, our young people. So people, you don't live, you don't stand alone. Like Paul said, we are made a theotron, that's the Greek word. It means a theater to the world, to angels, to men. Demons are watching you. Good angels are watching. God is watching. Your neighbors are watching. Your family is watching. You're on stage. You may not like it, but you can't get off stage without backsliding. So be a bright Christian, a right Christian, filled with the Spirit of God, loving everybody you can, obeying God. And as you do that, you'll have no trouble with sin. It won't have the victory in your life. You'll have, by the grace of God, the victory that He has promised. You know, King Saul, some people think that God kind of shortchanged him and gave more to David than he gave to Saul. You feel, you think that? I don't think that at all. You look at the whole story. God gave him a new heart. It says that he turned to walk away from Samuel. It says God gave him a new heart. God turned him a new heart. So he had a born again experience such as they had in Old Testament days. And then the Spirit of God filled him and he prophesied. So he had a good start. And for some while it was OK. It says wherever he turned himself, he vexed, he troubled the enemies of God. The Ammonites, the Moabites and other nations are mentioned that he was successful in defeating. So he had a good start, but he got to a place where when Samuel faced him up with his sin, he said, I feared the people and obeyed their voice. And he lost his kingship and his walk with God and finally ended up falling on his own sword to kill himself. It's a sad story, but God did not shortchange him. He had it. He could have done what David did, but he failed. All right. First, the Samuel chapter 10 is where it talks about God giving him a new heart and the Spirit coming on his life. OK, I feared the people and listened to them. I obeyed their voice. Now, Galatians 5 16, it says this, I say, then walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. So if I'm walking in the Spirit, I won't be falling into sin is what he's saying there. OK, so how do I walk in the Spirit? In Romans 8, it says, if you live after the flesh, you will die. But if you through the Spirit do mortify, put to death the deeds of the body, you'll live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. You put these together. What he's really saying is if you allow the Spirit to lead you, you'll never fall into lust. He'll deliver you from that. Walk in the Spirit and you'll not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary, the one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you want to do. So there's an opposition there. Then we're caught in between it sort of, you know, the devil and the Spirit of God. How does one guy put it? God voted for me. The devil voted against me and I cast a deciding vote. So walk in the Spirit, you'll not fulfill the lust of the flesh. In the same chapter, a little later on, it says, Galatians 5, 24. They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh for the passions and lusts. Have you done that? I had a friend. He was a high school teacher in my church in Saskatoon. He was not there when the revival broke. He moved away. He became a university professor. But I found something happened in the classroom when he was in high school in Saskatoon. He told a dirty story in the classroom. Now, had I known he did that, he'd never been a deacon in my church. But I didn't know he did that. Anyway, a lady told me after he moved away what had happened. She said he told a dirty story in the classroom. My daughter heard it and she told me I'll never go near that Ebenezer Baptist Church again. He's a deacon in that church. He didn't know what he'd done. Well, I was speaking at Three Hills Bible College. I told that as an illustration. And somebody there taped all my messages and mailed them to this professor who is now in Acadia University in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia. So one day he phoned me. I was holding meetings in, I think, Halifax or someplace down there. And he said, somebody sent me some messages you preached at Three Hills. And then he told me what happened. He said, I was out in the garden working and it was like a voice said, get in the house and see what your wife is doing. He said, I ran in the house and my wife was listening to one of your tapes. Guess where that tape was when he walked in the door. I was just telling the story about the high school teacher that told the dirty story in the classroom. And when he told me about this, as we got together, he said, I didn't know what you were talking about me since he didn't ask me. I didn't tell him. But he said, when you told that story, he said, God didn't fire an arrow into my heart. He threw a spear into my soul. And I saw myself in a way I've never seen myself before. For the last three weeks, he said, my wife and I have been praying day and night. We've confessed every sin God has shown us. We got the slate. It's as clean as it can be. But he said, Pastor, he said, Bill, listen, how do you keep it clean? What do you do with this self problem? We have a saying in revival circles that self is the factor that manufactures the sin. Right. We're asking God to deal with a finished product where he should be asking God to bomb the factory. That's what he did that day. You know, we knelt to pray. And again, it was like he was the only one in the room. He seemed to have both hands on the throne of God. And he was crying to God with all his might. You think it's strange the way he prayed. Oh, God, he cried. Kill me now. Kill me dead. Every ounce of me. Kill this rot in the flesh. Set me free. He kept on shouting to God and crying and shouting to God. And then I heard him say, oh, with peace, you don't happen. He'd been a high school teacher and a university professor for a total of 25 years. He never ever let his soul to Christ. He sang a lot. He was a good public speaker. He never knew it was sort of been saved through. Nobody ever been blessed that he knew by a singing. In 25 years. And he said he used to sit down, say, hey, God, why aren't you using me? He said, I never had any idea. The next Sunday, the very next Sunday, he's preaching in a Baptist church. And halfway through his message, a lady got up and she said, sir, can you stop preaching? I have to come to the altar and meet with God. So he stopped preaching, gave an invitation. Half the church came to the altar and a revival broke. He saw more happen at one meeting than he'd seen in 25 years. Now he was right. Now God could use him. And he did. A long while later, he told me, you know, I've prayed personally with about 800 people since that day we prayed together. 800 people. Some he led to Christ. Others were backsliding. He'd help. And it became just a flame for God. Again, see, if God isn't using me, the problem is not his. In some meetings I had in Saginaw, Michigan, a lady met with God. The pastor told me, he said, she's the shyest person in the world. She can't look at herself in the mirror without blushing. He contacted me. I think he phoned me about a year later and he said, you know, that gal I told you about was so shy, I said, what about her? She's with a hundred people to Christ since that day. He said, she's at it day and night. She's leading more people to Christ than the whole church put together. So what had happened? She didn't read a book on how to do it. And that university professor didn't read a book on how to do it. They just got right with God. That was a natural thing. You begin to, you can't help, you start talking about Jesus, you know, the way of. So in Galatians five, it goes on to say in the latter part of the chapter after it says, they, their Christ have crucified the flesh, died to sell, dying with Jesus. We sing by death reckoned mind, living with Jesus, a new life, divine. We've got to die to ourselves. That's hard, but you have to do it if you want to be used of God. So it goes on to say that if you live in the flesh, then walk in the flesh and walk in the spirit, stop living in the flesh, stop walking in the flesh. Start working and walking in the spirit of God. Remember the verse, as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God, your child of God, you should be allowing the Holy spirit to lead you. And as you obey him and walk with him, he may lead you to make restitution or make different things, change the job you have, or maybe even go into full-time Christian work or whatever it is, let him lead you and you'll have victory over sin. As long as you let him lead you and you follow his leading. So if we live in the spirit, it says, let's walk in the spirit. What's the difference between living in the spirit and walking in this? If you're born again, you're living in the spirit, but you may be living in the spirit, but not walking in the spirit. So now we're talking about being filled with the spirit so we can walk in the spirit. The spirit is not a fire. He is a fire in a certain spiritual sense, but it's not fire. It's not wind. It's not water. It's a person. And we're allowing this person to control our life, to live his life through us, walking in the spirit. Walk in the spirit. You'll not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. If God is talking to you about something or things, take care of it. Don't be alarmed if it's many things. I had a friend who sang in a quartet, a lovely Christian, he seemed to be. But after he met with God, he made a list of 35 areas. He called them his death lists, things he had to make right. And he refused to sing again until he had the list taken care of. He finally got it all taken care of. And he and a friend of his, they were in a quartet, these two. And they both met with God and they sang in a meeting I was holding. There were 700 people there. And when they were through singing, we didn't have to give an invitation, just the prayer rooms over there. I bet there was 150 people streamed off to the prayer room after hearing these two men give their testimony and sing a death list. Take care of it, dear people, whatever it is. You may need help in doing that. Talk with your pastor if you have. That's fine. Do something. Get with it. And God will bless and the church will be blessed. You'll see things happen, things that only God could do. Remember, if you live after the flesh, you'll die. If you through the spirit do mortify, put to death the deeds of the body, you live. The next verse says, if many are led by the spirit of God, they are the son of God. One of the thought here, another illustration, a young man at Three Hills, Alberta, a student woke up one morning and discovered he had strong homosexual tendencies. Now, he never had these before. He hated the whole idea. He knew it was forbidden in the Bible and he was horrified. He thought, if I go and tell the staff, they kicked me out of the school. He didn't know where it came from. He prayed and prayed and prayed and cried. Nothing happened. Was still there. And a friend of mine was lecturing at the school a week or so later and he went up for counseling. And the first thing when he told him the story, the first thing my friend said to him was this. What's your attitude to your mom and dad? And the kid said, what's that got to do with it? He said, I may have a lot to do with it. What is your relationship to your mom and dad? Well, my mother is wonderful. I love her, but I hate my dad. He's a skunk. So he turned to Ephesians chapter six. And he says, it doesn't say honor your father, providing he's not a skunk. That's not what it said. It says honor your father and your mother, which is the first map with promise that it may be well with you. Is it well with you? He said, no, it's awful with me. How can it be well when you don't honor your father? And the kid got it, went home, saw his dad, made things right with his dad. Woke up the next morning, the homosexual thing was gone. My friend checked him out a year later. It had never returned. So again, submit to God. And then in God's power, resist the devil and he will flee from you. And people take time, get alone somewhere, you know, take time. Take all the time it takes. Get alone with God. And honestly ask him to search your heart, show you your sin. God will do that. He is a faithful God. Again, our father, thank you for speaking so clearly in the word of God. You made it plain so he that can read can understand. Lord, it's just thank you for the ministry of your blessed spirit, training and helping us. And thank you for being patient with us. David said, your gentleness has made me great. And you're gentle with us even when we're not walking right. You're gentle with us, but you do speak to us. And father, we pray for one another in these three days we have. It'll go so quickly. It'll be all over. And some of us may not change when I order it because we don't want to change. Oh, God, don't let that happen for your glory. Thank you. You just gave me that verse. Now share it to the people and close. You are not your own. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. You're not your own. You're bought for the price. Therefore, glorified God in your body and in your spirit, which are God. Take that to heart. Dear God, help us to take that to heart in a pure way. Thank you for blessing us in Christ's name.