Leonard Ravenhill emphasizes the profound nature of intercessory prayer through the story of Hannah in 1 Samuel 1:2-16. He highlights the essential elements of prayer, such as desperation, sacrifice, and the need for a deep connection with God, as demonstrated by Hannah's heartfelt cries for a child. Ravenhill draws parallels between Hannah's anguish and the spiritual barrenness in the church today, urging believers to seek God earnestly and to understand that true prayer often involves deep personal sacrifice and commitment. He concludes that God answers desperate prayers, often for purposes beyond our immediate understanding, as seen in Hannah's eventual gift of Samuel, a prophet for Israel.

First book of Samuel, the first chapter. First book of Samuel in the first chapter. This is what I call the classic on intercessory prayer. It's, I think, outlined for us what the necessary ingredients, unless that sounds too much like making a cake or something, the necessary constituents of prayer, intercessory prayer at least, are all found in this chapter. Let's read it. We'll skip the first verse with all the funny names. Come to verse 2. This man, verse 2, he had two wives. The name of one was Hannah, the name of the other, Penina. Penina had children, but Hannah had no children. This man went up out of his house or city yearly to worship and to sacrifice. And to the Lord of hosts in Shiloh and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the priests of the Lord were there. When the time was that Elkanah offered, he gave to Penina his wife and to all her sons and her daughters portions. But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion, for he loved Hannah. But the Lord had shut up her womb. Her adversary also provoked her so off, or to make her fret, because the Lord had shut up her womb. And as he did so year by year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, so she provoked her, therefore she wept and did not eat. Then said Elkanah, her husband to Hannah, why weepest thou? Why eatest thou not? Why is thy heart grieved? Am I not better to thee than ten sons? So Hannah rose up after they had eaten in Shiloh and after they had drunk. Now Eli the priest sat upon a seat by a post of the temple of the Lord, and she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord and wept sore. And she vowed of her own said, O Lord of hosts, if thou indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid and remember me, and not forget thine handmaid, but will give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life. And there shall no razor come upon his head. And it came to pass as she continued praying before the Lord that Eli marked her mouth. Now Hannah she spake in her heart, only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli thought she had been drunken. And Eli said unto her, How long wilt thou be drunk and put away thy wine from thee? And Hannah answered and said, No, my Lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord. Count not thine handmaid for a daughter of Belial, for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken hitherto. Now I notice in this reading in the first place here in verse 3 that this man went up to the temple, he went from his city yearly to worship and sacrifice. I do not think there's any true worship that does not have sacrifice in it. When that wonderful man Abraham went up the mount, took his child, his son with him. If I'd been doing that I would have said, I am the latter going yonder to sacrifice. But he said, I am the latter going yonder to worship. And worship involves giving God not something good, but giving God the best. In the Christian life the good is always the enemy of the best. The Lord normally, pardon me, Satan won't tell you to get drunk or do something like that. He'll get you to waste time other ways. You can do good things which are not the best things. They're not the most essential things. And the good thing in the Christian life is so often the enemy of the best thing. So Abraham went up the mountain and he took his son with him. Now if God had said, take your son, that would have been wonderful. It would have got him off the hook because he had a son. He had a child of the flesh by the name of Ishmael. But God did not want Ishmael. God never wants that which is of the flesh. And so he said specifically, not only take thy son, but take thine only son. God didn't even recognize Ishmael. He wasn't a gift of God. He was the work of the flesh. It was a, it was a, he was the product of somebody trying to help God out. And very often people do that. They try to help God out and then we get stuck in a mess and we've got problems. So again if we're going to sacrifice, if we're going to worship, worship involves sacrifice. Now notice that again this man went up out of his city yearly to worship. And this is mentioned again in verse 7, as he did so year by year. You see this is not an emotional outburst. This woman doesn't suddenly realize that there's something missing in her life. She's been provoked and irritated and scorned and ridiculed and all the time has been a wearing down in her life. Now again it says that this man had two wives. Notice what Hannah did in verse 7. It says her adversary provoked her, but it says she wept. Now if you go down to the end of verse 10, it says she wept sore. If you go down to the end of verse 15, it says I have poured out my soul before the Lord. Now when I read that, automatically I think of one person. I think of the Lord Jesus. Obviously going into the garden of Gethsemane, he walked into the garden. A little later he knelt in the garden. A little later he's prostrated in the garden. And sometimes even our physical attitude is a sign of our spiritual condition. And so Hannah, she wept. She wept sore. She wept until she couldn't stand it. I think she hadn't even the energy to stand and therefore she prostrates herself. Her husband says do I eat this or not? So obviously in this situation she was fasting. Now notice in the middle of verse 8. Let's go back to verse 7 pardon me. Her adversary provoked her. So there you have provocation. In the middle of verse 8. Why is thy heart grieved? And so obviously she was grieved. The first line of verse 10. She was in bitterness of soul. In the middle of verse 11. She has an affliction. Come down to the 16th verse. She has a complaint and a grief. Now that's quite a lot isn't it? She has bitterness. She has grief. She has an affliction. She has a complaint. And she has bitterness. You see there there is a bitterness which is justified. There is a bitterness which God condemns of course. But then there's a jealousy that God condemns. The heart, the word of God says can be cleansed of jealousy. And yet God himself is a jealous God. I think we forget that sometimes. There is a bitterness which is the result of us, well some injuries come to us. Somebody's hurt our feelings. Some other things and something rises up, bitterness comes. The same with anger. The Lord thy God is a jealous God. Every time I see an automobile with a sticker on, smile God loves you. I think well you could smile people to hell. You need a balance on the other side of the bumper. You need a sticker that says God is angry with the wicked every day. God gets angry. And if there's nobody can love like God, there's nobody can get angry like God. One of the great sayings in the book of the Revelation is that the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God, he's mentioned I think 17 times as the Lamb of God in that, in that book. But also he speaks of the wrath of the Lamb. And I'm told, I remember talking with some men in New Zealand about sheep and about rams. And one of them said well when a ram is angry, it maybe is more angry even than a lion. It takes a lot to provoke a ram to anger, but once it gets angry, it will tear up everything, destroy everything. So God is a God of love, God is a God of anger. God forbids that we should be jealous and yet that we should covet for instance. And yet again Paul says covet earnestly the best gifts. So nobody loves like God, nobody gets angry like God. God says we're not to covet, thou shalt not covet. Then he says covet earnestly the best. There's always a balance in the word of God. Today we've got what I call a glamorous interpretation of the spirits in life. It's all sunshine and no shadow, it's all kisses and no crosses, blessings and no burdens, which is totally unacceptable. It's totally, it's ridiculous. If you want to know about the greatest man I think that ever lived, at least in New Testament days after Jesus, you study of course the life of the Apostle Paul and you can get the background of his life, what he endured by just reading 1 Corinthians 4 and then 2 Corinthians 4. 1 Corinthians 4, we're the off-scouring of the earth, nobody wants us. That's not the ambition of most of us. Sure the preachers and big evangelists don't want to be considered the off-scouring, we want a position, we want to be esteemed, we want to be regarded as one of the top five best preachers, top five best evangelist, top something. And that's pure nonsense, in the light of the word of God again. You know God never flatters us, he flattens us sometimes but he doesn't flatter us. We're so good at flattering ourselves we don't even need anybody help, and it's help usually. God does the opposite thing, he keeps us down. So again this woman has all these things which we would say inwardly are eating her up. She's bitterness, she has grief, she has sorrow, she has tears, she's fasting, you can't offer anything that will satisfy her. Now what's her problem? Well she's just got one problem, and that is she's a barren woman, considered a reproach. Now again you notice that it says that when the time was that Elkanah offered, he gave to Peninna and his wife and all her sons, it kind of emphasizes it, all her sons and daughters. She must have had a whole tribe, maybe had as many as Mrs. Wesley, 19 children. And she said well finally this beautiful lady, Hannah says well look, I'm at the end of the line. Am I interested that you buy me the best clothes or the best jewels or I'm accepted? She says uh, you're asking why I fast, why I weep, why I pray, why I grieve, why I have bitterness, why I have heaviness of spirit. One thing only, I have everything the world can give me, everything you can give me, but one thing, I have no children. And so she prayed. And it's so interesting again that the man of God who sat in his position, there in the temple, and yet even he did not understand the woman. Someone talks about the contradiction of sinners, that's not difficult to take, it's the criticism of saints that's a difficult thing. Yeah, well who do you think you are? Do you think you're better than the pastor? He doesn't do this. Do you think you're better than so-and-so? She doesn't do that. She's the most spiritual woman in church. And we set up our standards and we judge by, by people, instead again of judging by the Word of God. And Eli marked her mouth, well why, why, why, why does she keep coming here? Why, why does she mutter? She never says a word. And so he said well, I guess the real thing is she's drunk. Well that's not a very nice criticism to say about somebody who's really honestly praying, she's drunk. But it didn't disturb her, why should it? You know actually the church never does anything when it's sober anyhow. We need to get the church drunk. That's what they said about the men who came out of the upper room, these men are drunk. That's what they said when Festus was, was standing up with, with a gripper and Festus was a guest, he should have kept his mouth shut. But he jumped up and he said Paul, Paul, what's wrong with you? Much learning has made you mad. In other words what he implies is you're, you're intoxicated. He says I'm not intoxicated with knowledge, I'm intoxicated with desire. Now again, Eli looks at the woman and says well, she's drunk. Well that's hard to take. But you see the great thing about this is this, that, that prayer is so simple that a child can do it and it's so profound nobody can do it. Prayer will exhaust language, exhaust vocabulary. I hear people say sometimes about Romans 8, well you know where it says groanings which cannot be uttered, it's praying in tongues, it isn't, if it was God would say so, he's got more sense than we have. If he was praying in tongues he'd say well right, you pray in tongues, that's it, he does not say that. He talks about groaning, the whole creation groaneth, we groan, the spirit groaneth. I believe that's the highest form of prayer when, when you, when you have no language at all, it's, it's the spirit. You might say did you see the pastor this morning? I said no. Well he's sitting there, well I can't see him. Well I can see the thing he lives in, his body, but I can't see him, he is a spirit, he has a body. His body can't live without his spirit, his spirit can't live without his body, he is a spirit, God is a spirit, God is a spirit. And because he's a spirit he communes, he is a spirit and his spirit communes with my spirit. And therefore in Romans 8 it's talking about groanings which cannot be uttered. It really is talking about praying in the Holy Ghost. There's a little verse in, I was going to say the almost the smallest book in the Bible indicates, it's an epitome of the Bible, and that's in the epistle of Jude where it talks about praying in the Holy Ghost. Now we don't emphasize that usually, but I'm suspicious of any experience, whether you call it sanctification like the Nazarenes or baptism of the Spirit or fullness of the Spirit, I'm suspicious of any experience in which we identify with the Spirit that did not revolutionize our prayer lives. Only the Spirit knows the mind of God, I do not know the mind of God. The Spirit knows the mind of God, he'll communicate with my spirit which is beyond my natural intelligence or your natural intelligence, and he'll put something that Wesley described as an impression upon his spirit. You can't explain it. I talked with a man not too long ago somewhere up this area and he said well if you can't explain it I won't accept it, so I said that's fine. Are you married? He said yes. Do you love your wife? Yes. I said well I've got five minutes to spare, let's sit down, explain love to me. Before you start talking about spiritual things, there are lots of things you believe. You believe those lights are shining but you can't explain electricity. Marconi couldn't do that, Edison couldn't do it. There are things we use, there are things we have, there are things we know, we know. I'm thinking of Pascal, what did Pascal say? I forgot how he said it, I didn't think of it before when I was meditating this morning, but no this is what he said, the heart knows reasons that the heart, the heart knows reason that reason doesn't understand. It's a bit complicated but it's difficult but it's true. There are things you know in your heart, you can't rationalize them, you can't put them into the language of a vocabulary, but you know, maybe you call them convictions. They're not opinions, a man often changes his opinions. He doesn't change his convictions very often, maybe never, but he changes opinions. Now again Hannah is praying, Hannah is weeping and Hannah is sorrowful and she prays and she says nothing. There's a poem, I don't know who wrote it, I don't know why he wrote it, but to me it's always very expressive in this area. The poet said this, what am I? An infant crying in the night, an infant crying for a light, with no language but a cry. All right you mothers say, well I think I know what you mean. You know a baby comes along and everybody's thrilled, he wakes up about two o'clock in the morning and the husband says, what's wrong with him? Oh he's all right dear, he just needs feeding. I hope he doesn't wake every morning at two o'clock. And then an hour after he cries, is he not feeding again? No dear, he doesn't, he's uncomfortable. He wants changing. Aw, aw, aw. Wakes up two or three hours after, what's wrong is he? You want changing again, you want feeding? No, no, no. He's frightened, I put the light on, he starts crying. Now the old boy may have a PhD but he doesn't know a thing about baby language. The mother has an instinctive knowledge of the need of that child. Now if you put your baby to bed, you've got some lovely children here, one of those little ones say six weeks old, and in the middle of the night it yelled out, I'm hungry! You'd be scared to death wouldn't you? You fed it and then an hour after it shouted, I'm wet through, come and change me quick! You'd say, oh goodness, what in the world have we got here? Is this a babe or a reincarnation of some old man or something? How come the baby can talk at this age? Now while we're there, let's say this again, you know, I think that, I don't just think of it, I'm convinced that spiritual growth is about the slowest growth of all growths. I don't think it has to be, but it is. There are degrees in the spiritual life. Again, I have seen people that have been saved only a year and at the end of that year they were more mature than some people who've been saved thirty years. And I've seen people who have been saved thirty years that I don't think are six months old yet. You see, we put so much stress on Bible knowledge and all this other stuff which is not necessarily growth. We're exalted to growing grace and in the knowledge. Now some people grow in knowledge but not in grace, some people grow in grace not in knowledge, but the combination is growing grace and in knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Again, the school of experience is the most expensive school in the world. You can't buy your way in it, you can buy degrees these days, but you can't buy any degree in the spiritual life. You've got to merit, you've got to earn everything. You see, we live in what some of you must have read Bonhoeffer, doesn't he? He has a chapter in one book I think on cheap grace, doesn't he? It's a very starting chapter, I think a very beautiful chapter. Cheap grace. And if you say to people, well you know, what you should do if you're not satisfied with the spiritual life, you should get up early in the morning when God opens his business and go buy some things. And they say, what? You don't buy things from God? Well maybe that's why you're poor, you should have done. Because it says in the book of the Revelation, I counsel thee to what? To buy. Buy what? Buy of me gold, buy of me white raiment. You know, we've a lot of flimsy, floppy songs about heaven, mansion over the hilltop and all that Jack. And we kind of figure that, well almost modern evangelism says if you come to this altar and weep for five minutes, tell God you're sorry, number one you'll get a mansion on Main Street, number two you'll get a five-decker crown, number three you'll get a free ticket to the marriage supper of the Lamb, number four you'll rule over five cities, number five you'll have immunity from judgment, you couldn't get a better deal than that anyway. Except it's not true. How many virgins were there? Did they all get in the wedding? Why not? They're all virgins. How many disciples were there? Did they all go on the Mount of Transfiguration? Why not? They're all disciples. He called them all, they all left all. Why didn't they all go on the Mount of Transfiguration? All right, there were twelve disciples. Did they all go in to get seminary? Certainly not. Well then I counsel thee to buy of me, how do we buy from God? Well in my judgment the way we buy from God is by obedience. You see we're all looking for more light and somewhere back there we didn't obey the light we had and so we aborted something. Oh well I'll look over that pass back, no no no God says, you go back. Remember the man who came he said I lost my axe head. Well the modern evangelist, miracle worker would say well just throw an old branch in the water here and it'll come up the river four miles. That's not what the scripture said. The scripture said go back where you lost it. That's where you find it. Well this is true in the spiritual life in every case. You go back to that situation where you lost ground or you lost blessing or you lost something else. Go back to that place, make a thorough job of repenting and buy from God that which he wants to give. I counsel thee to buy and I'm convinced, you may not be and that's all right. I'm convinced we buy by our obedience. When we get to heaven we're not all going to be the same. Not everybody's going to rule over five cities or ten cities or wear the same garments or have the same crowns. That's clearly outlined for us in scripture. There will be degrees in heaven. John Wesley was converted at 35. If you turn 35 around it's 53. If you add them together it makes 88 when he died. He lived on $100 a year. He disciplined himself. The dying thief the songwriter says rejoice to see that fountain in his day. And there have I though vile as he washed all my sins away. Are you going to suggest that the dying thief who got in on the last tick like that, he's going to have the same reward as John Wesley? Doesn't make sense. Well then you say David Brainerd died at 28 and Wesley died at 88. So this man had 60 more years to gain merit or gain reward more than, no he didn't. No he didn't. I believe at 28 years of age or 29, at 28 years of age David Brainerd could say I have finished the work thou gavest me to do. Now that's the key to the whole thing. It's not how long you live, it's how you live. It's not quantity, it's quality. It's not positions and possessions and all the other crazy things that even Christians live for. See there are only two kingdoms, the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. And they don't run together like that, they're opposite. You see the New Testament and the world couldn't exist together. The church can exist with the world now, the world can put up with the church. We're not salt in it anymore, we don't rub into its wounds, we're not a protest organization. Now remember this too that the church was born in a totalitarian world, a sophisticated world. It was born in a slave system. Jesus was born in a slave system, so was Moses born in a slave system. Jesus went to Egypt, Moses stayed in Egypt. Okay there's a lot of parallels there. But Jesus never said a thing about slavery. The Apostle Paul never said anything about slavery except he said be a good slave. That wouldn't suit George Meany but the Apostle Paul stressed it. Be a good servant. But also he said you'd be a good master. You won't exact on that man anything more than you would exact from Jesus or Jesus would exact from that person. You see we've got this idea we're going to make heaven, how do you know we're going to heaven anyhow? Could you prove we're going to live in heaven? Scripture says God's going to make what? A new heaven and a new earth. Well what's the new earth for? Rabbits? I believe God's going to restore the whole earth like the original garden of Eden and it'll be heaven. Now we may live here and maybe go shooting up to heaven sometimes according to the way the Lord wants it but you see it's a new heaven and there'll be no curse. The removal of the curse in every form. Death, sickness, everything else, tyranny, everything will have been abolished so it'll be heaven whether it's up there on the cloud. I believe there's a heaven, sure. But I don't know what period of time we're going to live there. There'll be no time anyhow or what our residency will be and so forth and so on but we're not going to be the same. We're not all going to be the same. That's the point when we, if you want to say it like Shakespeare, shuffle off this mortal coil. I hear people say sometimes, you know, boy I've got everything God wants me to have. I'm saying filled with the Spirit, God gives. I say good for you, I haven't. I'm looking for the last payment. I've got one or two down payments but I haven't have a body that's pretty rough and the last thing I'm going to get is a body like unto his glorious body. Brother when you have a body like unto his glorious body and you have his presence and he's there, does it matter whether you live on earth or heaven? Doesn't make any at all. The geography doesn't matter at all. So again there are degrees of spirituality. There are degrees of spiritual knowledge. You can be sure about this, there's nobody this side of eternity that has arrived spiritually. The second thing, and I think of a lady that tours the world preaching now. I was preaching in New Zealand once and she just came through the door as I happened to point this way and I said, you are as spiritual as you want to be. I wasn't saying it to her, I was saying it to congregation. And it kind of knocked her out for a while. She couldn't get over it. I am as spiritual as I want to be? Sure, you've got as big a Bible as John Wesley had. You've got a bigger Bible as Finney had. You've got a bigger, as bigger Bible as Adam Clark had. The pastor was telling me he likes to read Adam Clark. You should always read Englishman. But so what? Every one of it, you are just as spiritual as you want to be this morning. Can't blame the devil, the in-laws, the outlaws, mother-in-law, anybody. You have the same access, the same Holy Spirit, the same teacher, the same resources. Now why is this woman crying? This woman is weeping, she's full of grief, bitterness, sorrow, heaviness, everything, for one reason only. That she can see somebody, a woman who is more mature than she is. She may not be as good-looking, she may not have the nicest jewelry and clothes, but there's one thing that angers her. She's not functioning as she should function. She's not creative. There's a time in a girl's life she's too young to have children, there's a time when she's too old. I'm convinced that's true of churches. A church can get too old to bear, get stuck in the mud, get satisfied. God passes it. I believe it's the same in our individual lives. You can't offer for the mission field when you're 70. Not usually, I know a man that's going to the mission field now who is 70 by the way. Just packed up his farm, and he's a brilliant man, he's a Lutheran. Just a farmer, he has a library of about 3,000 books, I'd like to get them. He's a lot of old masterpieces, complete sets. He's a wonderful teacher. God got a hold of him some years ago, and he kept on his farm, fed the hogs, the dogs, and everything else. I went to University of Minnesota and took some studies in Greek, and a little Hebrew. And at night when he comes in, all he does is goes, I wouldn't give him, honestly, I wouldn't give him $10 for everything in the house, his furniture and everything. I mean about $9 too much. But he has a room with these wonderful volumes in it, and at night, immediately he's had supper, he goes in that room and stays to him in there. He has a bench, he has a Bible, he has two or three different versions of Hebrew and Greek and so forth, and he studies and studies and studies. He's what I call God's, one of God's millionaires, not material. There's nothing wrong in having money. It doesn't worry me what a man possesses, it's what possesses the man that's the problem. I know some very wealthy men. I think I know about 15 millionaires, never helped me, but they're nice people. They got it made on one level, but I know some spiritual millionaires too. Like someone I mentioned last night, the old man now, 95, 96 this year, I guess, in England, who says he finds it difficult to pray from midnight till five in the morning. I think he's a millionaire, spiritual. The old man that died last year at this time, on the 8th or 9th of February, who had never been through the door of his house for 12 and a half years, never been out of the house. Just prayed, lived in intercession. Wonderful man. All right, well Hannah is unsatisfied. She only wants one thing. I believe that's the secret of Paul's life, he only wanted one thing. He said this, one thing I do. He had no sidelines, he had no secondary jobs. Maybe there's a time when a preacher has to work and help things out, I'm not so sure it's right. I'm sure it isn't, in my own mind. You see, the book stands, and God says, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added. I believe you can stand on that scripture and defy the devil, your feelings, everything else, and believe God to supply your needs. I know there are degrees of faith too. All right, Hannah wants one thing. Paul says, this one thing I do. Just one thing, he lived for it, he died for it. He had no sidelines, he had no secondary interests. It wasn't God first, it was God only. People say, put God first. No, no, it's God only. If God's first, you've got some secondary things. People say of the Lord Jesus, he was the second Adam. No, he wasn't. Cardinal Newman said that in his lovely hymn, Praise to the Holiest in the High. The second I guess. He says, O loving wisdom of our God, when all was sin and shame, a second Adam to the fight. Jesus was not the second Adam. If he was the second Adam, you can have a third, or a fourth, or a fifth. Jesus was the last Adam. He was the end of the line. All right, well, Hannah is grieved, Hannah is fasting, weeping, broken, and she's praying. Now, if I say to you, what did she pray for? You'll say, a child. Well, she didn't pray for a child. You say, what did she pray for? She prayed for a man-child. You say, she got a man-child. I say, she didn't. She didn't get a girl, no, she didn't. What did she get? She got a prophet. God did more for her than she could ask or think. Now, she prayed. Remember the glory of departing. The glory returned when this child was born. And afterwards, I guess she had other children, but she prayed for a child. And you know, so often when we pray, and God answers prayer, we say, well, you know, in our own limited way, we say, God answered prayer, and therefore he, he did this for me. I don't really think God does much for us. I don't think God gave Hannah a child just to satisfy Hannah, and because she prayed, and so forth. He wasn't meeting her need, he was meeting his own need, because up the road, twenty years up the road, he needed a prophet by the name of Samuel. And he was solving his problem, not her problem. Oh, he solved hers, you know, kind of in the, in the, in the whole compass of the thing, but actually, he was solving his own problem. He needed a man there up the road. Well, who better than this woman? You see, again and again, you discover in the Word of God, and this gives me hope for the hour in which we live, that the barren women brought forth the best children. Now again, remember, I've said this, and people misunderstand sometimes, but I still say, God does not answer prayer. Or this thing, people say sometimes, prayer changes things. Well, sometimes. Prayer doesn't change things, prayer changes people, and people change things. We sing sometimes, sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer, that calls me for a world of care, from a world of care. And when the meeting's over, the world of care is still there, you didn't shift it by praying. All you did is get yourself more adequate to meet that world of care. God doesn't steamroll at every hill out. He doesn't fill in every valley, doesn't make every crooked place his street. The weakness about the modern charismatic stuff is this, to me, that it made us on charisma and not character. Now, I don't care how many gifts you have, and you can exercise them and be an adultery. Remember that the gifts and callings of God are without repentance. I know of a man that had mass meetings, he'd every miracle, he'd make your hair stand up. And on the way to his hotel, he called a call girl. He had a call girl every night, still kept up his ministry. He died tragically, sure enough. The gifts and callings of God. You see, whether people have tongues or any of that, well, I must be, I mean, God can't be too grave with me, I still have my gift. That doesn't prove anything. That doesn't prove anything. You see, it's character that God wants. And you don't make a character overnight. Who are the towering, towering figures in the Old Testament or the New Testament? They're the men who endured the most hardship, most difficulty. Somebody says, you know, if you read this book and did this and did this, you'd be a great preacher. God isn't interested in making great preachers. He's interested in making you a great character. By the same token, you say, God answered my prayer. God didn't answer your prayer because you're going to be a nice little guy down here for 20 years preaching. God had in view what you're going to be in eternity. Those things you went through that were as black as hell and as hot as hell and as dark as could be, God, God knew the alchemy. God knew what he was doing. God knew what he needed to purify you. You see, the heart is purified by blood. The head is purified by a rod, whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth. My father believed that. And he exercised it too. But anyhow, you see, our idea is that you just get saved, sanctified, saved, filled with the Spirit, and then it's all the way home. That's the very last thing. You see, anything that God does in your life, you can almost, I remember when I had to jump from a hotel window higher than this onto a sidewalk at three o'clock in the morning in a burning hotel in Chicago in 1951. And I brought my back in three places, my left leg in three places, my feet and everything else. And all kinds of preachers. The preacher at Moody there was Dr. Logsdon. He was very gracious. I liked to see him come. I was in hospital for months. And he would come on a Monday and he would sit at the side of my bed and preach the whole sermon through that he preached to thousands of people on Sunday. I thought that was very gracious of him because he sure didn't have the time to do it. But he did it. But almost everybody that came to see me in hospital quoted the same verse. Could you guess what it was? Sure, Romans 8.28. All things work together. I got sick of hearing it, honestly. Everybody, well, the Lord be with you brother. Romans 8.28, still true, but I have to hurry because I have a golf appointment. It was always encouraging. And well, that's the kind of thing, isn't it? One day Dr. Tozer brought in a little man. His face was all pleated with pot marks and he was yellow and small. He was on the last boat that brought missionaries out of China when Russia took it over in the, I've forgotten the year now, 1940 something, I've forgotten it. But this man got away on the last boat. And Dr. Tozer said, well, this is Brother Ravenhill, and you know, I don't understand what God's doing. We had the greatest revival in our church, in the history of the church. And the tower caught fire, Brother Ravenhill was injured and his partner's in the other room and so forth and so on. And I remember that little yellow man just, he nodded, he put his hand up like that. And all he said was this, what was it? Thy dross to consume. Yeah, and sanctified to thee thy deepest distress, that was it. You know, out of that hymn, our firmer foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in his excellent word. What more can he say than to you he hath said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled? And then the last, at the end of the last stanza, and sanctified to thee thy deepest distress. Sometimes people pray, call me and say, would you ask the Lord to deal with this thing, ask the Lord to take this thing and do something away. I say, wait a minute, wait a minute. What if the Lord put it on you? You're asking me to ask the Lord to take something off you that he's been wanting to put on you for six months or a year. And now as soon as he puts it on you, you want it on. Remember the classic case is the, case again of, of God saying to, to Satan, not Satan saying to God, God says to Satan, have you considered my servant John? There's nobody like him in the earth. Hmm. Why, that's something when the Lord testifies for you, isn't it? Huh? There's nobody in the earth like, oh, well, of course Satan says, you see his, his piety is tied in with his prosperity. Destroy the one, you destroy the other, take his millions away, he'll curse you to your face. Satan says, lift your hand against him. Now the Lord said, I can't, I'm too, I'm too busy. But you go, you go lift your hand against him. Did you ever think that God would employ Satan to make a saint out of you? Look, this is, this is Job. This is the thing that is in front of Job. That's what Satan says, I can't get near him, there's a hedge. Move the hedge. Well, there's one thing for sure, the Lord never takes advice from Satan. Move the hedge. And the Lord says, no, I won't take it away, I'll pull it in a bit nearer, and you destroy everything outside the hedge. He went to bed a millionaire, he woke up bankrupt. Satan destroyed everything outside. Have you considered my servant Job? Yes. Well, what did he do? Nothing, nothing. They couldn't get him to move. But if you'll take that hedge away, the Lord says, I'll pull it in a bit nearer, destroy everything outside the hedge. So the first stroke was bankruptcy, the second stroke was bereavement. He killed all his children in one day. Did you consider my servant Job? Yes. What did he do? I killed all his children. Well, what did he do? Well, I've heard people say, you know, we were in business, and we opened another shop, and then another, and we were doing real well, the Lord was good to us, and then the devil came. Did Job say that? Job says the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. A bit later he says, when, when he has tried me, not when Satan has tried me, when he has tried me. So the first stroke was bankruptcy, the second stroke was bereavement. Take the veil over, take the, take the hedge away, the Lord says. Okay, there you are, there's Job. What are you going to do? I'm going to strike him from his head to his feet with boils and sores, so he can't sit down, he can't stand up, he can't rest, he can't sleep, he can't do anything. Go ahead. Now he's already overwhelmed with bereavement, he's already broke, he's already mocked by everybody. And then in this situation, his dear friends came along, Eliphaz, the Temanite, Bildad, the Shuhite, and the others. There's somebody said, with friends like these, you don't need enemies. And he's got one in each corner, and then just like the devil, you know, he took everything that Job had and left him with a nagging wife. And his wife came in. You remember what she said? Curse God and die. The Hebrew's pretty strong there. The Hebrew says blaspheme God and commit suicide, get out of it. You're suggesting there's a God? The walls have gone out, the roof has come in, you're broke, you're bankrupt, you're bereaved, everybody mocks you. You tell me that God has controlled your life and all that mess comes? You're whistling to keep your courage up. Why do you admit there is no God? No God would treat you like that. Bankruptcy, bereavement, bored, you didn't sleep for the last two or three nights, you're sick. You know what he did? He stood up there and he just scratched a bit where he was itching, and he stood up and he says, I want to tell you something. Sure it's black and I'm bankrupt and broke and bereaved and battered with boils, but I want to tell you something. It may get worse than this, that'll be all right. If it gets worse and if my old flesh begins to decay, I want to tell you something. I know that my Redeemer liveth. And that's the answer. You see, God, God can let everything you have. If you're worth ten million dollars this morning, that would be nice. I hope you tithe to this church if you do. And if you, if you, if you have ten million dollars, you're no more precious to, than a, than a man lying in his own urine and filth in a gulag archipelago in a hellhole in Russia this morning or China. We're not more valuable to God because you live in a gorgeous home, a million dollar home with a lake in the front and all the rest. I hope you do, that'd be nice. But it doesn't give me any status with God, it doesn't give me any more importance with God. My commercial value doesn't mean a thing to God. Am I functioning in the area God wants me to function in? All right. This woman says I'm grieving, I'm weeping, I'm fasting, I'm praying, I'm burdened, I'm distressed, everything's wrong. I just need one thing. And again, I remind you that the, the barren women in the Old Testament brought forth the greatest sons. The 30th chapter in Genesis, you get the same thing. A man has two wives, one is gorgeous, everybody in the tribe, everybody in the nation looks and says she is the most gorgeous woman I've ever seen. And every time you see her, she's dressed beautifully, her hair's always lovely, she's, she's a queen. I think one day, I think there's a picture in one of my books, somebody sketched of this woman. Rachel doesn't bother about her hair or how she's dressed. She goes into Jacob and she says, Jacob, give me children or I die. See, God does not answer prayer, he answers desperate prayer. Do you know there's just one simple reason, in my judgment, why we don't have revival in America. It's as simple as ABC. The reason we don't have revival is we're content to live without it. That's, that's all, that's the simplest explanation in the world. If we were as agitated, if we were as troubled about barrenness, that's why again, to take his reproach, Abraham, Abraham's wife laughed. Oh, come on, I mean, suggesting we're going to have children, man alive, you're a hundred years of age, I'm 80, I'm going to have a baby. That, that's just about as stupid as anything ever heard in my life. You say to people today, we can have revival in these days. No, sir, no, no, no. Do you know how many millions are invested in filthy pornographic literature? Do you know how many billions of people were put, pieces were put out last year? Do you know how many dirty films there are? Do you know how many nightclubs there are? Have you seen the cesspools in these different cities? Sure I have. Lived in the subculture of New York for two years, my wife and I. Went down to some of the hell holes there. New York doesn't wake up till 10 o'clock at night. People are just going on for dinner at six, seven o'clock in the morning. I mean, that's the underworld section. I think I know a bit about crime statistics. It's not a plague in America, it's a universal plague. And you say we can have revival in this situation, why not? Here's a woman 80 years of age, all the laws of nature, she can't have children. She had a child. So this barren woman, Sarah, brought forth one of the most amazing men. Isaac was born. Samson's mother was barren. Samuel's mother was barren. John the Baptist's mother was barren. You find periods of darkness in church history, and then suddenly out comes a staggering figure. The Dark Ages over Europe, out comes Martin Luther. Christianity goes into the doldrums. Church of England becomes decadent. Up comes John Wesley. Methodism starts to go down, up comes William Booth. William Booth starts to go down, up come the Holiness Churches. Holiness Churches are going down, up comes the Pentecostals. It's a kind of a telescope, they come out, out, out, out, out, like that. There's a kind of a link almost in apostolic succession. All right, this woman prayed. There are three things about natural birth that you get in spiritual birth. One is conception, the other is gestation, and the other is birth. You can't alter the way. A woman comes to her husband and says, I'm gonna have a child. Fine. She carries that child for so many months. You can't accelerate the birth, you can't say, well look, we were going to go to Australia in eight months from now. I'd better have the baby in three months, I'll tell the doctor to rush it up. I'm sure there's no rush orders. Devilish that we've legalized abortion in the country, isn't it? You know, our government somehow seems intent on dismantling the Ten Commandments, don't you think? We've abolished the death penalty. Crime, well, you can get away with that. Abortion, we've legalized that. Prostitution is legalized in areas of Nevada. We've turned night into day. We permit things to be printed now that wouldn't be printed even in the dirtiest holes in France, 50, 70 years ago. It's a trade, multi-million dollar trade. We let playboys at church magazine compared to some magazines that are out now. It's a terrific day. When yet I'm not hanging my harp on the willows. I believe God will still give us a Pentecost that will out Pentecost Pentecost. I believe he's gonna do what he says in Joel 2, pour out his spirit on all flesh, but not without travail. You see, somebody has said facetiously, I guess, that if with a married couple, if the wife had the first baby and the husband had the second, there'd never be a third. For the simple reason men don't know a thing about travel. The scripture clearly says that when Zion traveled, she brought forth children. Then it says that she didn't have strength as travelers. She brought forth when? She brought forth nothing. As I said last night, to me, tears are a sign of strength, at least in men, when they pray. Now you've got to, you, from the moment that that woman conceives that child, her program has to change. She can't change herself to fit in with the program. In England, we used to see in the newspaper, the Queen has canceled all her appointments for the next six months. Oh, Queen's gonna have a baby. She likes to ride horses. She wouldn't ride. Why? She might be leaping over a hedge, fall, injure the child. There are other ways in which a woman, so, so immediately her program changes. As she gets nearer and nearer the time of birth, her body chemistry changes. Very often she craves for something she has never liked to eat. And she'll eat something that she's never liked before. And she'll lose her appetite for something she's had for years. It's one of those tricks that nobody understands quite. And then as she gets nearer and nearer the time of deliverance, very often, well, her sleep patterns are broken up. She'll sleep during the day and she's awake all night. There's fifty different ways in which a woman who's pregnant, the lifestyle is changed. Well, do you think we're going to live a normal life, church lifestyle and have revival? You can't do it. There has never been a revival in history that I know of, that hasn't been preceded by traffic, that hasn't been preceded usually by young men, mostly young men. The Welsh Revival was preceded by some young men who got together on the mountains there, as they called them, they're not mountains, they're hills really, big hills. And they spent nights, nights, nights, praying. I preached in a place called Hocho in Ireland. And up in the field there's a, it's just an ordinary field, it's got a hedge of trees and the men point almost with reverence and dignity and say, it was there, it was there. What was there? It was there where these four young men met together and prayed for months. They were only eighteen, nineteen years of age and they prayed and prayed and prayed until revival came into that area in 1859. It spread the whole country. So Hannah has to stay with this child, we have to stay with it. I'm quite sure that there have been many times when God would have sent revival, but it was aborted through the carelessness and carnality of people. It's too much to bear, too long, nothing's happening, why don't we give up? Hannah stays with the child until the time that the child is born. But then afterwards, remember, she comes running to the man that mistook her, the man that said, well, she can't really be a good woman because she'd say something, but she mutter, mutter, mutters and lips move and she says nothing. Later she comes with a child in her arms and she says to Eli, here for this child I pray. And the Lord has granted me my petition. I think he must have felt pretty bad. She must have felt awfully happy about it. One of the men that I had the privilege of praying with and enjoyed praying with was the man who had revival in the Hebrides, Duncan Campbell. And for a period we used to meet at five in the morning and pray, talk about the revival, what God did, how God did it. And he had been in a, well, a real move of the spirit. And then he went to another place where the heavens seemed like brass, seemed as though there was about a 10-foot ceiling of stainless steel they couldn't get through. He was preaching to a crowded house, there were preachers there, elders, deacons, all the rest. And he said, I realized that I wasn't getting anywhere. Saying the same words, but no anointing. And so he stopped preaching, he said to a boy, John Cameron, he said, John, pray. Bow your heads while John prays. The boy stood up, he was only 16. The boy stood up and he said, what's the good of praying when we're not right with God? And he began to quote Psalm 24. In Scotland, every child knows the Psalms. They grew up with them because they, they read them about every day. I tried to find out the secret of revival in Scotland, I think I found it. Because Duncan Campbell said this, you can go into any home in the Hebrides, that's a bunch of islands on the west coast of Scotland. He said, I would challenge you to go in almost any home and not find the Bible being read. Before the children go to school in the morning, daddy says, you take the dishes away, bring the book, as he says. And, and he reads the book and always almost the Psalms, or part of the Psalms. And then he prays. At night when the children come home for supper, all the dishes are taken out, and once again, the book is read. So the children have the word of God in their hearts right from infancy. Paul may plant a polish water, God gives the increase. And I said, well Duncan, obviously the thing is, that that seed was sown in the hearts of those children when they could just toddle around. They, they learn usually start with Psalm 1, good place to start. And they have to memorize it within so many days, or so many weeks. A portion is given and they read and read and read and read. And they memorize the Psalms. So those children had Psalms in their minds, in their hearts, in their thoughts. Somebody comes along again and waters that, and then the Spirit comes and you, you, you get revival. But anyhow, this young man stood up and he recited Psalm 24. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart. And so he went on. And when he got through, he started to pray. He prayed for 45 minutes. Halfway through that prayer he stopped and just said quietly, Lord, excuse me while I rebuke the devil. He didn't ask the Lord to rebuke the devil. The Lord did that on the cross 2,000 years ago. And the boy just turned and Duncan could tell he turned by, by, by the volume of his voice. He turned away from where he was sitting. And, and he began to cry, told Satan, get out of this place. I rebuke you. I stand in the name of the finished work of Christ. Get out of this area. And he resisted and resisted and resisted the devil. Then he finished his prayer. He said he prayed for 45 minutes. And when he finished praying, just as though there was a switch in heaven, the Lord pulled the switch. God descended on that church. But he descended on the tavern at the end of the street too. And he descended on the dance hall at the other end of town. And I don't believe they've been open since. Just one 16-year-old boy that knew how to pray. Oh, well, there was a couple of women, one was 84, the other was 82, that had been praying and, and had made a vow before God they wouldn't die. Again, not praying but desperate praying. They refused to die until God sent revival in that community. God sent revival in that community. And when revival came, then the Lord took them to heaven. He didn't lead them around. They became a kind of a showpiece, you know. People do this. We put halos on people's heads. Oh, let me, their cottages are not much bigger than the entrance to that room there. Just a little place with a fat old grass roof on it. This is a place? What is there inside? A couple of chairs, a well outside where they get water, the outhouse is way up there. They have nothing. Nothing. You wouldn't have to go too far to Balmoral Castle, which is the ancestral home of the Queen of England in a Scottish estate. It hasn't got a thing compared to that little house, with a stone floor and a couple of old beaten up chairs, and a big old fireplace where you burn logs. No hot water, no bathroom. But that's where revival was born. That changed tens of thousands of lives. Somebody has said, and I guess it is right to a degree, that you, you, a convert takes on the nature of the place where he's born. If you're born in a frivolous church, you'll be frivolous. If you're born in a spiritual church, you, you immediately know that you're going to have to live on that level. There's a kind of inward consciousness, this is what's expected of me. Let me give you one illustration of this, this dear old blind lady. Quite a character, Peggy, her name was Peggy, her sister was, Peggy was 84, she had a younger sister, she was 82, and she was called Christine. And these were the two ladies that agreed together that they wouldn't die until God sent revival, all right. But this, this woman who had no eyes could see a lot more than people who have eyes. She had an awful lot of visions, and she sent for Duncan Campbell one day and told him, look, you go down to so-and-so. When you get down there, you'll find a bunch of men gambling, and five of them are the communist leaders in the area. And when you get there, you just pull your Bible out of your pockets and preach from the text, that the Bible opens up. So he did that. She said to him, you know, you won't preach along with all those men, quit gambling, and they'll start crying, start weeping, and then they'll, they'll get saved. Well, everything happened, just as he said. The men were there, they were gambling, they kept gambling while he was talking, suddenly they quit, and they started crying, and they started crying to the Lord for help. And he finished that wonderful meeting with those five communist leaders all being saved. Now she said to him another morning, now I want you to go down to so-and-so. So Duncan told me, he said, I got on my motorcycle, and I put my big old scarf around my neck, cover up my clerical collar, and I got on my motorcycle. I was going down the road, and as he went down this hill, he noticed a girl sitting on the bank. They have some beautiful stuff they call heather, it's like your sagebrush, it's nearly not quite as red as this rug, but it's very beautiful. The girl was sitting on the side of the hill, and she had her elbows on her knees, and her head in her hands, and she was weeping, weeping profusely, weeping with real, you know, noise, obviously heartbroken about something. So Duncan, he said, I shut the gas off on my bike, and I went over to her and said, well, could I help you? And she said, in a Scottish way, ach, ach, she says, you couldn't have helped me, you couldn't have helped me. Well, he said, I think I might be able, ach, she says, you can't help me, only God, they say God with a long O, only God can help me. You know, prevenient grace, if you're a good theologian, the Lord's working on her before I get to her, and all she needs is a bit of my help, and he thought, well, this is, this is fruit ready to be plucked like that, you know. And he said, yes, God can help you. Maybe I could help you, ach, no, God, only God. Well, well, what's your problem? Ach, she says, down there in the valley, my father, my brother, and my uncle, they're not saved. She didn't open her eyes, she just did this, she said, over there, over the hill, there's a man called Duncan Campbell. And I've been praying, we've been praying that God will bring him, because when he goes down in, in a little town there, in the village, to preach, my father, and my brother, and my uncle will all be saved. He thought, well, that's, that's great. So he said, I just tore my scarf away, and let her see my clerical collar, and shook her, and said, hey, look at me a minute, please, look, what's your name? Jenny. Jenny, look! And he said, she looks, she has these grey, big blue eyes, Scottish eyes, lovely red cheeks. And he said, I've just looked at her, and said, I'm Duncan Campbell. He said, all she did was put her hands up, and the tears rolled down her face, she just said, ach, you're a covenant-keeping God. You're saying, we've been praying all night. Yeah, we've been praying. Who's we? My, my, my friend. How old is she? Sixteen. How old are you? I think she was eighteen. And you've prayed the whole night. Ach, she says. They say, nacht. Ach, we prayed all the nacht before, before that too. You prayed two whole nights? Ach, she says, we prayed the whole night before. You prayed three whole nights? And as though she was saying, you know, you're stupid, she says, ach, sure. My brother is lost, and my father is lost, and my uncle is lost. He said, I just went down to the little town, we had a move of God, a father was saved, a brother was saved, her uncle was saved, and at the end she was still saying, ach, you're a covenant-keeping God, you're a covenant-keeping God. We used to sing a hymn years ago, I don't know if they ever sing it anymore. Forever, forever or not for a day, he keepeth his promise forever. Do you know that hymn now? You're not old enough, all right. But he is a covenant-keeping God. Again, you want to give God rush orders, Lord do this, please, please, please. Do it, do it quick, do it quick, do it quick. No, no, no, no. There's a time factor. Again, like the birth of a child, there's conception, there's gestation, there's birth. In revival there's conception. I'm convinced of this, you may not be. I'm convinced that when, you know, Paul says on the Damascus road, God revealed himself to him, and he says when he got in the wilderness, God revealed himself in him. Now I believe in spiritual pregnancy. I don't believe a woman, I don't believe a woman will ever have a child like the Lord Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, I don't believe that. But I believe in spiritual pregnancy. I believe that God lets some men conceive, or women conceive spiritual things. I believe that when Paul came out of that experience in Arabia, that because later he says he travailed in birth. I believe that he had already conceived those churches that afterwards were born. Church to Rome, church to Ephesus, Philippians, Colossians. They were already in him, conceived by the Holy Ghost. He birthed them afterwards. I believe the same with these epistles that he wrote. They were conceived in him by the Spirit of God. Now remember again, God doesn't shout directions from the housetop. The Word of God makes it very, very plain, doesn't it, when it says that the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him. He made his ways known unto Moses, his acts, to the children of Israel. He let all Israel see his acts, but he spoke to Moses. Again, nine disciples, twelve disciples, they didn't all go on the Mount of Transfiguration. Twelve disciples, they didn't all go into the Garden of Gethsemane. All right, you've got Israel. Out of Israel you have seventy elders. Out of the seventy elders you get Moses, with Aaron and her. God says the seventy can come so far. You can come up the mountain so far with Aaron and her. Now you'll leave them and you'll come up here with me. God's always been selective. God always will be selective. There aren't many people that want the total will of God. They want blessing, they want help. Let me say this, and I'm through. One of the best-known, most used texts in evangelism, I think, is Matthew 11, 28. Come unto me, all ye that are weary, and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Well, that's nice, you say that to a sinner. That's what God says, you come to me, you're weary, I'll give you rest. Then he crossed the bridge to the second half of the text, take my yoke upon you, learn of me and ye shall find rest. He's already said you get rest. We get rest from guilt, we get rest from fear of death, we get rest from anything, but ye shall find rest unto yourselves for my, my what? My yoke. My yoke is easy, my burden. Madame Guillaume used to say, my freedom is thy grand control. I remember flashing through across the stage once in a very powerful, fast train. The train man came through, it was a morning light, he said, it's a lovely morning, sir, I said, it is. I said, by the way, what speed are we doing now? He said, oh, this is the fastest stretch. He said, we may be doing 85 or 90 miles an hour right now. Not for long, but, I said, man, it's great. I can feel it, you know, ripping of the train. He said, it's a good train. Yes, it's a good train. He walked off and said, I hope it stays on the track. I'm just saying, I hope it stays on the track. That train is only free while it stays on the track. No good doing 90 miles an hour if it leaves the track. You may have resources, gifts of the spirit ability, but if you get out of his dominance, you'll wreck yourself and wreck everybody else too. My freedom is thy grand control. That, that train is only free while it stays bound to the track. All right. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. You know how many times people say, well, cast all your burden on the Lord, cast all your burden on the Lord, cast all your burden on the Lord. Sure, sure, scripture says that. Who does God cast his burdens on? Oh, he doesn't need to. He holds the universe up with his word. God doesn't need anybody to share his burdens. Well, that, the scripture says he does. My yoke is easy, my burden. See, God shares his burdens with those who will take them. Those who listen, those who hear, those, those who find out what God's saying, what God's doing. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. One of the greatest hymn writers ever was Isaac Watts. He wrote When I Surveyed the Wonderous Cross and many of the other wonderful hymns. He said on one occasion, God does share burdens. And he said if God gave me six universes, not six, not six worlds, six universes with all the other planets and everything else in the firmament. If God gave me six universes to supervise, I'd do it very gladly. Because if he gave me the burden, he'd give me the strength for the burden. But he said I wouldn't look after six sheep. They'd drive me mad. I wouldn't look after six sheep unless God guided me in it. You see, a girl that was in the hospital when my, when I met my dear wife, she was nursing in a hospital in England. And there was a Scottish girl there. I've often thought of her. I've mentioned her in one of my books, I guess. Her name was Amy Macpherson. She had a rich brogue. She came from somewhere up in Perth, Perthshire, as she says, Perthshire. I like to hear her pray. She prayed for the world and she really rolled her r's, you know, and it was always interesting. I remember she came to the prayer meeting one night and man, she just flopped down and she started praying. She'd had a bad day and she told the Lord she'd had a bad day. And she said something like this. She said, Lord, I'm willing to carry any burdens. I'm not willing to carry any burdens the devil puts on me. I'm not willing to carry any burdens the preacher will put on me. I'm not willing to carry burdens the hospital puts on me. I'm not willing to carry burdens the church puts on me. But I'll carry any burden you give me because your yoke is easy and your burden is light. Now you could go to school, Bible school, theological cemetery, seminary, and when you've done not be as smart as that. Hmm? My yoke is easy. My burden is light. It's amazing what pressure the Spirit can bear. Because if the inward pressure is greater than the outward pressure, you don't need to worry. When the outward pressure gets bigger than the inward pressure, then you're in trouble. And the good book says greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world. The poet says, O lightest burden, sweetest yoke, it lifts, it bears my happy soul. It giveth wings to this poor heart. My freedom is thy grant control. I think Madame Guin wrote that. Isn't that lovely? Lightest burden, sweetest yoke, it lifts, it bears this happy soul. It giveth wings to this poor heart. My freedom is thy grant control. See, in the Old Testament, you couldn't plow with an ox and a nurse. Why? Well, because they can't keep none on that. That's not the reason. One's bigger than the other, they go this way. That's not the reason. The reason is one is a clean beast, the other's an unclean beast. All God demands is purity. The life that is pure, love that is pure, is passionate. I like a hymn, one of the few good hymns written in this country. Most of them came from Europe somewhere. But My Faith Looks Up to Thee was written in that fine church I preached in once, Hellfire Corner they used to call it, in Boston, the Old North Church. My Faith Looks Up to Thee was written by Ray Palmer. He was a member of the church. The music was written by Lowell Mason, he was the organist in the church. They put them together, made a lovely hymn, My Faith Looks Up to Thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary. The second stanza says, May thy rich grace impart strength to my fainting heart, my zeal inspire, as thou hast died for me. O may my love to thee pure, warm, and changeless be. That's just about sums it up. Let's sing that hymn.