In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of using speech that is edifying and gracious, as it can minister grace to the ears of listeners. He encourages believers to always be ready to give an answer to those who ask about their hope, with meekness and fear. The preacher also emphasizes the need for a clean heart and mouth, urging believers to refrain from stealing in any form, including relying on unemployment without seeking employment. He highlights the urgency of sharing the gospel with others, using the example of a group of believers in Detroit who experienced tremendous growth through prayer and soul-winning. The sermon concludes with a reminder to put away lying and to speak truthfully with one's neighbor.

Good evening. Pretty dull. Let's try again. We practiced once. Good evening. Everybody's awake. Harry and Evelyn probably won't tell you this when they give their testimony, so I'll say it perhaps for them. Dr. Sherwood Wirt, who was for 25 years editor of Billy Graham's decision paper, got a phone call from Leonard Ravenhill, and Leonard said, there's revival in Canada. Revival is next door to heaven. You better get up there. I don't know where he got my name, I think through from Leonard Ravenhill, and he phoned me and asked where the action was, and I said, well right now it's out in the far west or in Winnipeg. And so he flew down to Winnipeg. He was only there one night. But that night Harry and Evelyn gave their testimony, and that really spoke to him, because he had a tremendous need in his life in exactly the same area. It just related to him a hundred percent. And so he invited Harry and Evelyn to go down to Minneapolis, and they had an afterglow there, and that's all I'll tell you. There's a book on the book table. It's called The Afterglow, and in that book, Dr. Wirt tells what happened in his life, as a result of the revival in Canada and Harry and Evelyn's testimony. It's quite a story. Okay, did you come praying tonight? I heard one yes. At least one prayed. How many prayed before you came to the meeting tonight? I mean, prayed for this meeting. Let's see your hands. Oh, that's terrible. That's awful. I don't think there's more than 15 hands went up. Do you have turkey for dinner or something? Slept all afternoon? Oh, somebody said yes. I had duck for dinner. Okay. Some of us were talking today about this very matter of praying before you go to a meeting, and you know, we came to the conclusion that if every congregation would do that every time before they went to a meeting, we'd probably have revival in a lot of our churches. Not just pray, but believe that God would bless in that particular service, and then God would bless because you were believing. Maybe that's how revival would come to your church. I don't know. It's come to many churches, and I'm sure God wants it to come to all. But we have to find out the channel that God has in mind for our particular situation and church. I don't know what to, kind of a title to give to my message tonight. Maybe I'll know better after I preach it. We sometimes, and mistakenly, think that the church at Corinth was totally backslidden. It really wasn't, if you read the whole story. What did Paul say in chapter 1 of 1st Corinthians? He said, so that you come behind in no gift, waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He said, you are enriched by Christ in all utterance and in all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you. There were some people in the Corinthian church that were in trouble spiritually. There was one person guilty of immorality. But the concept that the whole church was badly backslidden is just not biblical at all. There were problems there. Now Paul, in writing to the church in chapter 6 of the first book, he said, what? Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which you have of God, and you're not your own for you're bought with a price? Now, he didn't say, some of you Corinthians have the Holy Spirit, and some of you don't have the Holy Spirit. He never said that. What he really said was, have you people forgotten that the God's Holy Spirit lives within you? Have you forgotten that? Don't you know? And that's something that could be said, a question that could be asked of many Christians today. Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? You're not the boss in your life. If you are, you are usurping the place the Lord Jesus Christ should have. And you're totally out of step with God. You are not your own, you are bought with a price. And then he puts in a therefore. That is, because you're not your own, and because you're bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. So twice he tells us that we belong totally, entirely, wholly, body, soul, and spirit to the Lord. You are not your own. And some of us haven't wakened up to that, we haven't faced this truth, that I don't belong to myself, I belong entirely to God. And I need to be asking the question that Paul asked when he met Christ, Lord, what will you have me to do? And if we'd all ask that question, and then follow through as God makes his will plain, he will do that for us, what blessings we'd have, what changes in our churches. We wouldn't have a shortage of workers on the mission field, we wouldn't be short of money to carry on the work of God around the world. We wouldn't have these long, protracted, dry periods in our churches where almost nobody gets saved. I just finished reading a book, it's a book written by some sociologists on Canadian religious life. And some people have called it the most significant book on this subject in the last century. And they're telling us that the average evangelical church in Canada wins to Christ from the world only 1.9 people a year. That's sad, very sad. How different is it for your church? The problem is, dear people, we haven't faced up to the truth, that we don't belong to ourself. So what we're doing is, we're doing our own thing. We do what we want to do with our money, and our time, and our talents, and everything else. And we justify this by saying, well, everybody else is doing the same. But not everybody else is doing the same, and even if everybody else was doing the same, it still doesn't make it right. The Bible says, thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil. Just because the mob is doing it, and most Christians are doing it, that doesn't make it right. Job said, how little a whisper is heard of him, of God. How little a whisper is heard of God today? Paul prayed in Ephesians chapter 1, and in his prayer, prayed for three things for Christians. And one of the things was that, was this, that we might know the exceeding greatness of God's power to us-ward who believe. And in Isaiah, the last verse of chapter 60 says, a little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation. I, the Lord, will hasten it in his time. One person can become a thousand. A small person can become a whole nation. And the next verse, remember that these chapter divisions are artificially were put in long after the Bible was written, just to make it more convenient for people to find certain places. So there's no break edge in the original writing in Isaiah. The next verse says, the spirit of the Lord God is upon me. And that's how one can become a thousand. But not, if I'm running my own life, and doing my own thing. And certainly not, if I haven't presented my body as a living sacrifice to God, which the Bible says is the only reasonable thing I can do. In the light of what God has done for me, and in the light of the truth, that I don't belong to myself. I am the Lord's. We sing it, I'm his, and he is mine. And we think more of he is mine, than of I am his. Forever and forever. Why isn't the spirit working more powerfully in your life than in mine? We should be asking that question, and in our churches. Why not? Well, in Ephesians chapter 4, Paul tells us there's certain things we're supposed to as Christians put off, and certain things as Christians we're supposed to put on. He says we're to put off the old man, according to the deceitful lust. Then he says be renewed in the spirit of your mind. There's revival. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind. He mentions this renewal again in Romans chapter 12, when he says present your bodies a living sacrifice. And then he says be not conformed to this world, but be you transformed by the renewing of your mind. And that's what happens in a personal revival. My mind is totally renewed. My way of thinking, my way of acting and reacting to God in his word and his will, it all changes. And it's a real renewal. And in these days some people have experienced that. And people are experiencing that all over the world actually today. Now let's look at some of the things he tells us to put off, and some things that we're supposed to put on. He begins by saying wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor. Now does that mean that Christians lie? Well apparently it does, because he's talking to Christians. Some of us don't lie, we exaggerate. Well that's lying too, but we don't think it is. When some people relate a story, if there were two men in the story, when they tell it there were four. You know. If the fellow ran 100 yards in 11 seconds, they say he did it in 9. If a church took an offering of $4,000, when they tell a story it was 7,000. They're always exaggerating. That's lying. Whether you're doing that or doing it in some other way. The reason we lie, dear people, is because we're afraid to tell the truth, because of the consequences of telling the truth. But the fact of the matter is, if you tell one, you have to tell two to cover up the first one, and the third one to cover up the second one, and it keeps on and on until you're face-to-face with a dozen lies. Then it's much harder. So it says, putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Even if it hurts, even if it kills you, tell the truth. And God will bless you for doing that. It's one of the things we have to put off. David said, I said in my haste, all men are liars. Someone's comment on that was this. He could have said it in his leisure too, as well as in his haste. So putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Then he says, be angry. Then he says that. I'll bet some people like to have a sermon on that. Be angry. People love to take a little text out of a context and make a pretext out of it, you know. Be angry and don't sin, it says. Jesus looked round about some people in a synagogue. It says he looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their heart. And there's some things we ought to be downright angry about. Schaeffer's son, Jackie Schaeffer, wrote a book. It's called A Time. Is it a time to be angry or a time for anger? I forget which. And it's a time for us Christians to be angry at what we see our governments doing. The things they're supporting and pushing and promoting. And the things they're pushing down. It's a time to be angry. And then beyond that, sometimes people do things we get so frustrated we just blow our top. But if you do that, the Bible says, don't let the sun go down on your anger. If you're angry overnight, you're grieving the Holy Spirit, because that's a context. It goes on to say in the same chapter, grieve not the Holy Spirit of God. And if we grieve him, that's why there's no power, because we've grieved him. And so you have people that hold grudges for years. And you hear Christians sometimes say, I hate him or I hate her. And I won't change. And sometimes they do change, thank God. But that's the attitude some people have. Be angry, but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down upon your wrath. And the next verse says, don't give any place to the devil. The devil will do his best to provoke you. And he'll try to provoke you through people that are closest to you. Sometimes the people you love the most are the ones that will provoke you the most. That's how Satan works. Neither give place to the devil. And beyond that, in the area of witchcraft, stay out of it. Don't monkey around with Ouija boards. Don't let anybody read your palm. Don't let anybody determine the sex of an unborn child in your body by using a needle on a thread. Don't let people do that. Don't get involved in this kind of thing, crystal ball reading, or going to a fortune teller, or any of these things. There's 150 areas of the occult in North America today. You get involved in that stuff and Paul says you're guilty of having fellowship with demons. Don't do that, because that will grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Don't give any place to the devil. Then he says, let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth. Don't let anything dirty come out of your mouth. Don't tell dirty stories. Don't tell stories that have a double meaning. Like sometimes Christians do that and they say, well, if they've got a mind and they take the other meaning, that's their problem, not mine. But it's your problem if you tell a story that's got a double meaning, and you know it's got a double meaning, then you're guilty. Don't do that. Don't let any corrupt, the word corrupt there in the Greek language means rotten. Don't let any rotten thing come out of your mouth. Don't let any garbage come out of your mouth. He says, but only that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace to the ears. Because everybody's got two ears and they're all listening, little kids and older people, and what you say they're picking up. And maybe the vibrations they're getting are vibrations from below, and not from above. Let your speech, it says, be always with grace, seasoned with salt. Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks the reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. Have a clean heart and a clean mouth. Then he says, let him that stole, steal no more. And there's different ways of stealing, you know. People sometimes, they get on unemployment, and they don't bother looking for a job because they say, I can survive through the winter on unemployment, I'll look for a job in the spring. The Bible says, if anyone will not work, neither should he eat. That's what the Bible says. And there are thousands of people in Canada and the United States today, and they're taking advantage of the system, and they're breaking the system by their stupidity. They're not looking for jobs. And I'm not saying anything against the person that has a legitimate reason to be on unemployment insurance, don't misunderstand me. Or people sometimes get hurt off the job, and then they lie about it, and they get someone to swear that they were hurt on the job, and they get thousands of dollars this way. I know a fellow in British Columbia, he owned a bread factory, and he employed 200 people, and he was a backslidden Christian, and he used to have beer parties, and one time one of his drivers, they're having a drunken brawl, and he fell down and broke his leg, so they carried him out to the truck, put him in the truck, and then they pulled him out of the truck so they could say, well, we saw him fall out of the truck. So he was hurt on the job. And when this guy got his life straightened out, you've got no idea the garbage you have to deal with. He came to me one day and said, Brother Bill, I think now we're going to lose the house. We've lost everything we've got. I think we're going to lose the house now. He says, Pray that we won't lose the house, because my wife's getting pretty bitter about it all. It's so easy to get involved in garbage, and so hard to get out. It's better not to get in, see. So let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor, it says, working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have to invest a twelve percent. I'm sure you read that, didn't you? Well, if you didn't read that, why are we doing this? That he may have to give, the marginal reading says to distribute, to give to him that needs. That's what God is saying. Jesus said lend, hoping for twelve percent. In Luke 6, you read that? No, he said lend, hoping for nothing. That's what he said. That he may have to give to him that needs. Jonathan Goforth, a great Canadian missionary to China many years ago, greatly used of God marvelous revivals. Here's a little insight into his life. You know, once or twice a year a check would come from the mission office back home, because in those days mail wasn't like today, and so you had to wait months for ships to get there and this kind of thing, no airplanes, and so he got his semi-annual check, and he was sitting there with a pad of paper and a pencil, and he said to his wife, you don't know what I'm doing. Oh yeah, she said, I know what you're doing. He said, what am I doing? She said, you're sitting down figuring out how much we can give to the Lord, and how little we can live on for the next six months. He said, how did you know? She said, I've lived with you for ten years. That's one of the reasons probably why God used him the way that he did. Figuring out how little he could live on, and how much he could give to God for the next six months. And of course missionaries never do get big salaries, you know. That blessed me when I read that. It was just a real challenge to my heart, to my life. So, these are some things that are mentioned in Ephesians chapter 4 in the context. Then he says, don't grieve the Holy Spirit of God. And if you fail to put off the old man, and you continue nursing and feeding the old man, you will grieve the Spirit of God, and you'll always be a dead, fruitless Christian. There's no way around it. So he says, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you were sealed unto the day of redemption. Don't grieve God's Spirit. And then he pursues this further by saying, that all bitterness, and here's things we have to put off. That all bitterness and wrath, someone has called wrath, explosive anger. That all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor, seeking for personal attention, some people are always yakking and talking so people will know they're around. They walk in the room and they take it over by storm. I met a lady like that down in Detroit. She was always ha-ha-ha-ing and yakking and yak-yak-yakking all the time. And you know, nobody could get a word in, and she was a center of attraction. She was a Sunday school superintendent in a certain church in Detroit, so one day I said to her, nobody else was around, and I said, do you know what I think about this ha-ha stuff I hear from you all the time? She says, what? I said, I think it's a cover-up for an empty heart. Oh, did she get mad. She went storming out of that room. She slammed the door so hard it almost came off the hinges. I said, oh boy, what have I done now? The next day she came to see me and she said, oh, thank you, thank you for what you said. It was so true. She said, I've been on my knees before God for hours, and I've got all this garbage out. You know, I came home after that crusade, and it must have been three weeks or a month later, I got a letter from her, an openness letter, and in big block letters across the top of the page it said, I'm free, I'm free, I'm free. That's how it started. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking, defined by John Wesley in the following terms, he said evil speaking is saying something about a person that you wouldn't dare say if they were standing in front of you. Put away. Put it off. All evil speaking, put it off. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. Malice is secretly wishing hurt to other people. You wish they'd slip on the ice, you know. Or you wish they'd get into a car accident, or something like this. We dealt once with a man who told us frankly that every time his wife got in the car to drive away, he used to pray that she'd get in an accident and get killed, because he said, I can't listen to that scrawling voice anymore. And he was really a murderer in his heart. That's what he was. He repented and made the whole thing right. And he put that off, which the Bible tells us to put off. The old man, with his deeds. This is the way the world lives and thinks. The Christians are not to live and think the way the world does, but to live by the word of God. So let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor be put away from you with all malice. Then to put on. And he says, be kind, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you. If God was to deal with you the way sometimes you and I deal with other people, some of us would have been in hell long ago. Even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you. Christ also received us to the glory of God. So I read in Romans chapter 15, and it says, wherefore receive you one another as Christ also received us to the glory of God. Things to put off, things to put on. And then he says, be followers of God as dear children. Be followers of God as dear children. And he says, walk in love as Christ also has loved us and has given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for sweet-smelling fragrance. Well, people, now here are some things to put off and here are some things to put on. If we don't put these things off, or if we put these things off and don't put these other things on, then, dear people, we grieve the Holy Spirit of God and we don't have to look any further than this if we're wondering why it is that there seems to be so little evidence of God's power in my heart and life, so little victory over sin, so little concern for souls, because the Spirit is grieved and His witness is no longer in my life the way it should be. He that believes in the Son of God is a witness in himself, the Bible says. Then, going over to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, he gives us another reason why the Spirit may be grieved. Here he uses a different phrase. He talks about quenching the Spirit, and this phrase means throwing water on a fire. That's the idea. The Spirit is called the Spirit of judgment and the Spirit of burning. And you can throw water on the Spirit, you can quench the Spirit by refusing to follow Him when He leads you. And that's what he's talking about in the context of 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. He says, rejoice evermore. You sang about that tonight. Ah, it's easy to sing about it. It's a catchy tune. Rejoice in the Lord always. But we can sing it, but do we do it? Would you be rejoicing tomorrow and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and the rest of your life? Rejoice in the Lord always. And then Paul says, and again I say, rejoice! Now, he says then, going back to 1 Thessalonians 5, rejoice evermore. Then he says, pray without ceasing. When the Spirit leads you to rejoice, rejoice. When the Spirit leads you to pray, then pray. But what we do, maybe we're just about to sit down and watch our favorite TV program, Bill Cosby or somebody, you know? And the Spirit leads us to pray, and the battle goes on, and Cosby wins. And then we wonder why we try to work up later on, we try to work up a time of prayer, and we can't. All we can think about is Bill Cosby. Or maybe it's your favorite football team that's playing the last game. Man, you've got to see that. But there's a verse in Proverbs that says, he that loves pleasure shall be a poor man. And the Marginal Reading says, he that loves sport shall be a poor man. I've often said, I like sport, but I don't love it. It's not a passion with me. I couldn't care less whether my team actually wins or loses. It's a diversion, and nothing more than a diversion. He that loves sport shall be a poor man. Spiritually speaking, it'll short-circuit you. It's not important to you that the things of God get crowded out. And that happens in many Christians' lives. I led a man to the Lord one time, and he was deeply involved in stock car racing. His whole life revolved around it. And when he got saved, I never talked to him about stock car racing, but God did, and he quit it. Then he moved from the area where I was at the time starting a church out to Edmonton, and he joined a church in the same denomination there. And just a few weeks after he got there, you know what the church did? They changed prayer meeting from Wednesday night to Thursday night because stock car racing was on Wednesday night. And it almost put him back in the world. He just almost went back in the world over that. He couldn't understand how the work of God could be juggled around to suit something like this. And I can't understand it either. Rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, God may waken you in the middle of the night to pray. What do you do? Turn over and go back to sleep? Well, I guess that's what most Christians do. Why don't you ask God to waken you every night to pray? People, there's a tremendous need out there. I remember years ago it started. God would waken me in the night and I'd start praying for China. And I'd pray. Think of those hundreds of millions of people. A billion people or more now. And I would just cry to God every hour in the middle of the night. Do you ever pray in the middle of the night? I'm sure the Spirit would like to waken all of us to pray in the middle of the night. To take a half an hour, 15 minutes, or an hour, or an hour and a half, and call on His name. There's great open doors in the world today, but we're not sending the workers in. The Philippines, listen, we should send 2,000 evangelists to the Philippines yesterday. There's a wide open door there. It's incredible. But we're not going in. But TM, Transcendental Meditation people, they sent a big team into the Philippines and I was there when they arrived. And they had $150 million with them. And they bought their way into one of the biggest universities in the Philippines. They got a controlling interest in the university. There just happened to be in the province of God a man from the United States of America who was right hep up on this occult stuff and he went to the authorities and they got him on TV and he blasted the whole thing into oblivion and the government forced him out of his university connection and they had to leave Manila. But I ran into him out in the country. I was in a hotel. I came down the stairs with Petra Lusa, the opera singer from Chicago, and I see some men sitting at a table in the foyer of the hotel. I stood there long enough to listen and I realized these guys are selling this individual here. And I said, listen, they're giving you straight garbage from the pit of hell. This is Hinduism that they're trying to sell to you and they got real angry. I just totally ignored them and I told this fellow, you better get out of this. And you know what? He was a Christian. He was a Christian. And he thanked us and he walked away. But dear people, we need to be sending evangelists to these countries. And letting the world sit down to hell. Do you remember what happened when nobody paid any attention to Absalom? He set Joab's barley field on fire. And then he got action. And that's what's happening today. Those third world countries, if we don't send the gospel to them, someday they'll set our barley fields on fire. That's what they'll do. And God will let them do it, I think. If we don't waken up and lay hold of the work of God and stop living selfishly the way we're living most of us today. Rejoice evermore as the Spirit leads. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks as the Spirit leads. Give thanks. Take time, make time. The Spirit isn't going to ask you when you're in the air diving from the springboard into the pool. He isn't going to ask you to witness to somebody when you're doing that. He's not stupid. And if you're driving a car down a busy highway, He isn't going to say close your eyes and pray. People think the Spirit is stupid. But there will be times when He'll come and He'll lay a burden on your heart. That's the time to listen. That's the time to obey. Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks. For this is the will of God and Christ Jesus concerning you. And what's the next verse? Quench not the Spirit. Don't quench the Holy Spirit. That's why we quench Him, we grieve Him. And consequently there's little evidence of His power in our heart and life. Was it 15 people raised their hands tonight who prayed for this meeting tonight when all of us should have prayed? I'm sure the Spirit was trying to get the rest of us to pray but we were too busy getting ready, doing things. We do make time for the things that mean something to us. And we can make time for these other things too. In exactly the same way. It's all a matter of priorities. It's all a matter of how we see things. Now Paul wrote a letter to a preacher named Timothy. And in the second epistle he wrote to Timothy, do you know what he said? What he really said was this. He said, Timothy, you need a revival. That's what he said. Well how did Paul know that? I don't know. Maybe he heard it from somebody else. Maybe he sensed it in the Spirit. Maybe the Lord revealed it to him but he knew. And so here's what he said. 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy 1.6. He said, I put you in remembrance. That is, I want to remind you of something. I put you in remembrance that you stir up the gift of God. One translation says that you rekindle a fire. Another translation says that you stir into flame. And the Spanish Bible says that you revive the gift of God which is in you. Paul said, by the putting on of my hands. In the early days when the apostles were still on earth people received the Spirit sometimes by the imposition of laying on of hands but mostly they received the Spirit directly as in the house of Cornelius directly, no laying on of hands as in the day of Pentecost directly, no laying on of hands. In Acts 19, Paul laid hands on some converts and they received the Spirit. So sometimes that way but normally, mostly without any laying on of hands at all. I just mentioned that. And he said, Timothy stir into flame, revive the gift of God which is in you. And the next verse he said for God has not given us the spirit of fear. I think this was Timothy's problem. Fears were taking over in his life. The fear of man brings a snare. May I ask you a question? When did you last witness to anyone else about Jesus Christ? You know, some of you would have to say if you had to say it you would have to say and some of you would have to think back well it was six months ago or maybe six years ago because we love God so little and we love the souls of men so little and we're so full of fear that we're dead and we don't know it. Stir into flame the gift of God which is in you. God has not given us God has not given you the spirit of fear. But he says the spirit of power that's the spirit of authority the spirit of love and the spirit of a sound mind a disciplined healthy mind. That's the spirit that lives in every Christian that's in this building tonight. What? Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you which you have of God and you're not your own for you're bought for the price therefore glorify God. In your body and in your spirit which are God's. So Paul is saying the same thing to the church of Corinth as he said to Timothy. Stir up the gift of God. Revive the gift of God. Quench not the spirit. Grieve not the spirit. Rather be filled with the spirit. That's what he's saying. In Ephesians 5 he says Awake thou that sleepest and he's talking to Christians as the context clearly shows. Awake thou that sleepest and Christ shall give thee light. See then that you walk circumspectly it means carefully or exactly looking all around because other people are watching you. See then that you walk circumspectly not as fools but as wise redeeming the time because the days are evil. Wherefore he says be you not unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord is and be not drunk with wine wherein is excess but be filled with the spirit. That's the opposite of grieving the spirit and the opposite of quenching the spirit it is to be filled with the Holy Spirit and those words dear people were written to people who have been Christians for some years they had the spirit living within them but many of them were not filled with the spirit and that's true of course today. Many of us are not filled with the Holy Spirit. I was in a crusade in Ontario one time and a fellow came home and told his wife he said I was talking to Brother Bill McLeod tonight and I invited him over for supper on Wednesday night. She said what? What are you going to do that for? Well he said what's the big deal? She said what are we going to say if he asks us if we're filled with the spirit? Oh he said I never thought of that. And so the two of them were fuming around the house wondering what in the world they'd say if Bill McLeod asked them if they were filled with the spirit. But you know what happened? On Tuesday night they got filled with the spirit. Then they could hardly wait for me to get there so they could tell me what God had done in their life. Acts 13.52 says and the disciples without distinction and the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. In those days if you were not filled with the spirit you were an oddity and there was something wrong. Today if you're filled with the spirit they think you're an oddity. I mean other Christians do. I notice in the book of Acts people were either filled with the spirit or filled with Satan. Why is Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Ghost? Peter said to a couple of professing Christians Oh full of all subtlety and all mischief thou child of the devil thou enemy of all righteousness wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? Paul had to say that to another man. Full of all subtlety and mischief a child of the devil. So Paul says in Romans 14 he says the kingdom of God is not meat and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. And in Romans 15.13 he said Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost. Let's go back to 2 Timothy chapter 1. You know what we do sometimes? We sit around and we say Well if God sends a revival to my church I'll be glad to be part of it I'll praise the Lord. But it never crosses our mind that maybe even tonight God may want to revive you. Because after all there's such a thing you know if you talk about a revival you have to break it down into its component parts. And its component parts consists of individuals who individually experience revival and they are filled with God's Holy Spirit. This is not some far out thing we're not talking about speaking in tongues or something like this we're simply talking about being filled with the Spirit. And the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace long-suffering gentleness, goodness, faith meekness and self-control. These are the fruits the Spirit will produce in our life if we're filled with God's Spirit. And obviously if we're not filled with these fruits then we're not filled with the Holy Spirit. Well then I remind you that you stir into flame the gift of God that is in you. And remember God is saying this dear people He's saying to you that you have a personal responsibility to be revived to be filled with the Holy Spirit. You have that responsibility and God expects it of you. How else can you glorify God in your body and in your spirit unless you're filled with the Spirit. How can you do that? Well of course we can't. So the responsibility is entirely yours. God expects it of you and the next move is yours. Will you do something about it? Now the ninth verse of 2 Timothy 1 says Be not thou therefore. The word therefore or wherefore in the Bible always projects you back into the context to something that's already been said. Therefore relates to the fact that Paul is saying you need to be revived. Therefore he says Don't be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord nor of me his prisoner. But be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God. Now we're getting down to the basics. If I am not sharing Christ with other people I am cold and there's a sense in which I'm even backslidden. A group of people in Detroit some years ago they got together with a pastor. The pastor and his wife and 12 people and they decided that a certain area in Detroit needed a church. So they prayed together for a while and God told them to go ahead. So these 14 people they covenanted together that they would spend all their spare time praying and fulfilling. At the end of the first year the congregation had already and it swelled from 14 to 400. And when I read the story they had 10,000 members in the church. And some nights they made 12,000 14,000 house calls in one night. Like Wesley used to say all at it and always at it. I was in two churches in Philadelphia several three or four years ago. They had both started on the same Sunday unknown to each other. They were both Baptist churches but they were independent Baptist churches so these guys didn't even know each other. They compared cards later on. They both started with zero seven years before I was there to hold meetings in their churches. And the one church was running at 300 Sunday morning and the other one was running at 500 Sunday morning in seven years. And it was really interesting you know. In the smaller of the two the one with 300 they had 40 people that went out every Saturday ringing doorbells. And Thursday night the pastor or Friday night the pastor said to his people he said now you people forget about soul winning tomorrow. You know you've been here every night listening to Brother Bill McCloud. We've had a great time here and listen. Forget about going out soul winning tomorrow. You need to do some things around the house. Maybe you have to mow the lawn or paint a fence or something. Don't you feel badly about that. We'll just forget about soul winning tomorrow. But 20 people went out soul winning anyway and they won five people to Christ that Saturday including a man in his seventies. They always gave me the report on Sunday morning you see. It was such a delight to be in that church. We pray for unsaved people sometimes but we don't talk to them because we're ashamed we're afraid we don't want them to think we're a Jehovah witness or something you know. And the devil fills our minds with all kinds of things and we just don't do it. And sometimes as Christian workers we don't do it. A man came to me in Regina one time. He'd been a missionary in Central America for nine years and he said to me I don't know what's wrong. My life is absolutely flat and empty and dry. I don't know what's wrong. I try and read the Bible. I don't have any interest in it. I try to pray. I can't pray. I have no interest in praying. I don't know what's wrong. And I shot up a prayer as we normally do and we're counseling and the Lord said ask them about soul winning. So I said when did you last try to win a soul to Christ? And you know people it's all the counseling I had to do. He said that's it. That's it. I've been ashamed he said. He said I can't think of when I last tried to win a soul to Christ. It's years back in Central America. My job didn't demand it. I was a missionary but I could get by without trying to soul win and I never did it. And he dealt with it that night as all of us need to deal with this. I don't know how many churches are represented here tonight. Six churches maybe? I don't know. Any one of your churches could have a building this size jam packed full every Sunday. If we got into this soul winning. And there's no such thing dear people in my thinking of a revival that will last if a person who is revived doesn't try to share Christ with other people. You'll never make it last. You can't sit around in little circles singing these beautiful choruses and expect you're going to keep revived. It'll never work. If God revives me it's because God wants me to share the gospel with other people. And if you commit every morning to God and ask God to lead you today to people then you have to believe the people you meet are God appointments. He sent them to you. I've had some marvelous things happen. Flying on a plane one time and the Lord said, talk to the stewardess. And I said, well Lord, I don't know how I can. The plane was packed to the doors. I was sitting at the very last seat down by the motors. And she's running up and down the aisle. There was a number of stewardesses but of course she was serving our end of the plane. And I said, okay Lord, you'll have to do it. And here's what he did. I had a sports coat on and it had a couple of brass buttons on both sleeves and I had my hand on the arm and she was coming down the aisle. And suddenly she said, she looked at me and she said, oh sir, a button just dropped off your coat. When I get to heaven I'm going to pray for going to pray for you. I'm pray for I'm going to be praying you. I'm praying for you. I'm praying for you. And I get back to And the girl suddenly turned to me and she said, Would you explain again about receiving Jesus into your heart? I've never heard that before. Please explain it. So I did, and she said, You mean that if I pray and invite Jesus Christ to come into my heart, He'll come into my heart and save me from my sins? I said, Exactly. She said, Now, just explain it to me again the way the Bible says it. So I explained it again from the book of Revelation. And she must ask me four times, Now, you're sure that He'll do this? And I said, Yes. And she put her head against the seat and she must have prayed for ten minutes. And then we landed in Saskatoon. And I got her in touch with some Christians in Prince Albert where she lived. She ran a store there. But dear people, we can have experiences like this if we're willing to be used of God. But let me tell you something. If you're ashamed of Jesus Christ, that's the basic reason why we don't share Jesus Christ. Because we are ashamed. And we need a personal revival as a result. I don't know what God is saying to your heart these days. But I hope we don't go home the way we came. We're not assuming that everybody's back's hurting or anything like that. Or that everybody needs a revival. That's something you have to sort out between yourself and the Lord. But you can sort it out. I don't know what else to say. God says, Don't grieve me. Be filled with my spirit.