In this sermon, the speaker shares a personal story about a car accident and how they believe it was God's will for them to survive. They emphasize the importance of knowing and following God's will in our lives. The speaker then transitions to discussing the Holy Spirit and how it leads believers. They reference Bible verses that highlight the Holy Spirit's role in convicting people of sin and teaching them the truth. The sermon concludes with the speaker emphasizing the importance of the Holy Spirit's testimony of Jesus.

Good morning. Are we happy in our thoughts? Or is it... I just want to read a couple of verses this morning. I mentioned yesterday morning that this is a verse that's always been a, you might say, a life verse of ours. We've been speaking about the Holy Spirit and He certainly has come to not only lead us into all truth, but that as many as are led of the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God, says Romans 8, 14. So we need to be led of God, the Holy Spirit. Verse 27, about Abraham's servant, he said, Blessed be the Lord God of my master Abraham, who would not let me destitute my master of his mercy and his truth. I being in the way, the Lord led me to the house of my master's brethren. I being in the way, the Lord led me. Let's just turn to the Gospel of John, chapter 16. I want to mention just a little bit about the Holy Spirit before we go on with our recounting the Lord's faithfulness in our lives down through the years. John, chapter 16, verse 12. I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth. For he shall not speak of himself, but whatever he shall hear, that shall he speak. And he will show you things to come. He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath of mine, therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you. It's a blessed thing to know that the Spirit of God is a person. He's God. We don't just have some kind of an influence with us that comes and goes, that women with, but he is a person, that with us, the divine person. The will of God, the method of Genesis 1 says, he moved upon the deep. He spoke, let there be light, and there was light. He strived with sinners. He said, my spirit shall not always strive with men. He's a person. And thank God he's still striving with sinners. There's still his ministry. Convict men of their sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. He teaches in John, chapter 14, verse 26, it says that, And he shall give you another comforter, and he may abide with you forever, even the spirit of truth. He's the spirit of truth. And verse 26 of that 16. But the comforter, which is the Holy Ghost from the Father, will stand in mine, and he shall teach you all things. And of course you have that old convert John, that he had come to teach us. He testified to the Lord Jesus. We read that in John 16, how he would testify of the Lord Jesus. He would make him known to us. In John 16, verse 12, he speaks. The spirit of God, he speaks. And only a person can do that. He glorifies Christ. He comforts. He's called a comforter. The glory of the comforter has come. And in Acts, chapter 9, verse 31, it says that, What a healthy situation that was in that wonderful verse. He directs men into service, as you have it in Acts, chapter 13. The Holy Spirit directed, He still directs men into service. And it's very, very important that we are directed of the Lord. Then you can really expect the Lord to look after you and supply your needs. If you really know you're in the Lord's will, and I believe the way the Lord led me, you can expect the Lord to look after you. You can go through all sorts of hard times, and he'll still look after you. He helps our infirmities, in Romans 8, verse 26. Likewise, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities. I like that. That's certainly good. As the body gets weaker and so on, we don't know whether we should pray for it. We hope for the Spirit himself to make an intercession for us. We're groaning, which cannot be othered. So, he not only helpeth our infirmities, he makes an intercession for us. And I hope he does that, and we have it made. We have one of the right hands of the Father that ever lived to make intercession for us. And we have the comforter indwelling us, making intercession for us. So, we have everything that pertains to life and God in us. We have the precious Word of God. We have Christian fellowship. We have so much to encourage in the things of God. There's no excuse for us to slip back or get cold and hot. In Romans 8, verse 11, it speaks about the Spirit quickening. He makes life. He gives life. In 1 Corinthians 2, he searched all things, the deep things of God. He may be grieved. It says, grieve not the Holy Spirit. He may be vexed. It says, vex the Spirit of God, it speaks of it in Isaiah 63, verse 10. Stephen said, he do always resist. He can be resisted. And he may be tempted like it. Ananias and Sapphira. Why test ye the Holy Spirit, says Peter to Ananias? And God, he may be blasphemed against in the days of the Lord upon earth. And he may be quenched. 1 Thessalonians 5, 19. These are just some of the scriptures that bring out that he's a divine person. That's a wonderful thing, too, that we are indwelled, not by something that's just a mere individual, but one of the third persons of Trinity, if you like the classic like that, dwelling in our bodies. Now, I want to go on a little bit with a testimony that we started yesterday recounting the Lord's faithfulness. I was born, as you know, in a little country called Denmark in Copenhagen. When I was nine years old, my parents came to Canada. My father came to Egypt and was born and bought a farm. And I remember I told you we walked to a church for three miles one way from Austin twice on Sunday. I never heard the gospel until I was 21. When I was in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and that was a wonderful thing to come to know the Lord. I gave you a little bit about how my oldest brother was killed on home on the farm and how all that led to our conversion. Sometimes it takes a real loud speaking of the Lord before he gets our attention. And it was the death of my brother that got my attention. The Lord chose that to bring me to himself. And then while I was in the Air Force, I was saved in November 1942. There was a glorious gospel of faith laying down on my bunk. But nevertheless, I was saved, even though I didn't get my need. My heart was bent and truly turned to Him with all my heart. It was a wonderful thing to be saved and have the joy of the Lord from the beginning. And that's all I wanted to do. I'll tell you, I was going through for an electrical engineer when I got saved. I lost all interest. I'll just not be wrong with being an electrical engineer. But it wasn't God's plan for me, and I lost all interest in it. And all I wanted to do was to serve the Lord and to preach. And not long after that, we were sent to England. And in England, we met the Lord's people all there that meet just around himself. And I'd only been there the six weeks we were sent to North Africa. And while reading the New Testament in North Africa four hours after the fiesta, I remember I gave you the scripture yesterday where the Lord said, in Mark 5, verse 19, Go home to your friends and tell them what great things the Lord has done for thee. You know, after I got back to England, a good friend of mine, he's still living in fellowship with the Lord's people, Ernie Stewart, he typed up my testimony for me. I couldn't type. I was raised, you know, on a back farm up in the P.E.I. And he typed up my testimony. I said, God's Word of Salvation by Alexander Marshall for everybody I knew up in Prince Edward Island. And I had a couple of responses. You know, it was a great booklet of God's Word of Salvation. But like Paul, we thought not to be disobedient to that heavenly vision. So when we came out of the air force, our first great desire was to go home and tell our friends what great things the Lord has done. We told her that the Lord leading us to Laird Bible School, how he opened the way for us to be discharged up there so it didn't cost us anything to travel up to around 1,200 miles. And that's where the Lord brought me in contact with my dear wife. And nearly 40 years now that we have been married and I still haven't had to be there, any. So that's a big thank you for the wonderful help made to me. Now, we told you about some of the work. I might say when we went back to Prince Edward Island first in 1947 and commended in 1948 from all of the gospel chapel in Toronto, the conditions were very backward in the area we labored in. The highways were terrible. The mud. I've been stuck right in the middle of the road with a four-wheel drive Jeep. All four wheels turning. I've got the Jeep sitting just on the bottom, you know. And I say we had some rough times. The cars didn't last too long because mud. They didn't use oil filters then. They'd get into the engine and it spilled oil at about 20,000, 25,000. It was amazing how hard it was on equipment. But swords are more valuable. And as we said, in those days it was a lot of hard work, physical work. There were no Christians around at all hardly. They'd hear the word and then get saved and then teach them and baptize them and meet together around the whole table. There's a lot of joy to that, but there's also a lot of labor. Everything we did, we had to go and cut. When we got the church of Scottsdale and picked it up, we had to go to the woods and cut the lump and haul it to the mill and fix it, everything by hand. And that's how it went. Cut the lump of a little child down Bible Chapel, which was quite a large building. We cut that with a box saw in the woods and then hauled it up with a big wild horse and to the mill with a truck and then through Charlottetown about 35 miles to build the chapel. But thank God today there's an assembly there. There's about 150 in fellowship, and we could do probably 250 or more to the family Bible hours. So it's been rewarding to see how the Lord blesses. I need to tell you a little bit about the camp. In 1953, we acquired 80 acres, $1,400. How do you like that? A nice lake. And we had very, very little funds, but we had 5,000 cap holders printed and went ahead building. And the Bible is how the Lord supplied. For a month I worked there single-handed. We had to clear the land, time to dig a well, and you know the Lord just provided a well digger. He'd just been saved one week. The name of John Moore, his two sons are in the assembly up there now in Charlottetown, and he dug that deep well just for the price of the casing you put down. He never charged anything for anything. Now, that's how the Lord supplied. I remember one time on Saturday night, I was at the well and built a thick cap and load. I had no experience building. Had to do it over again. I think I would have had it for a day and really learned how to do things properly. But we were too busy, we thought, to do that. We just built it the best we knew how, and it took so many years. Just recently it had been replaced. But we came to build a dining hall, a large building. We had a hire man, and one man was the elder in a modernistic church, and he'd say to me now, Stacey, are you sure you're going to get paid for this? Oh, yes, I said, there will be no doubt about that. Well, he said, you must have a big organization behind you. I said, it's the largest in the world. And so it is. But one night at an open air meeting in Montague, a young man that hadn't been paid that Friday came to me and said I'd like to get my pay. And I said, how much do we owe you? $45. Well, I looked at my bill form. I had the $25. And the visiting speaker would have asked, would you loan me $20? And I paid them all. In the evening we'd come over to speak at the chapel that afternoon. So he loaned me $20. When I got home, we only had $5 left in the camp fund. It was a Saturday night. And I was going to pay him. There was no other money in any purse, anything like that. Things were just coherent amounts, as it were, living by faith. Well, that afternoon I went to visit Mrs. Strait. Mrs. Strait was here a new day in the hospital. And just as I come in the hospital, I met a brother from another part of the island. Oh, he said, I'm so glad to see you. He said, I got $25 here for you for the camp. And so many times God just came in in the last moment and supplied all we need. He is faithful. And after that, I want to say a little word, too, how much the Jewish Foundation has helped us up there when we had very little. They gave us a loan with very little. And they trusted the Lord and trusted us. And I don't think we ever missed a payment in any of these payments. And they were really encouraging. Some of you, brother, might have invested in bonds for that. But it certainly helped in the camp and the building of the Charlottetown Bible Chapel and things like that. The Lord was very, very gracious. Now, we were in Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island for 10 years at that time, from 1948 to 1958. And under the Lord's goodness, we helped start the Upton Gospel Chapel, the Monmoutier Bible Chapel, the Beach Point Gospel Chapel, which is no longer in existence. And then the Charlottetown Bible Chapel came last. Then some brethren came over from Halifax, Brother Les Peter, he dropped in here the other day, and he said, I wonder would we come over and help them get a new building started in that area. There was a number of them gathering together in a little chapel up on a hilltop. And we were over there in Halifax then for three years and helped them get a new building started, the Fairview Bible Chapel. They've been growing and growing through the years. So we're thankful for that. Now, the brother yesterday, Brother Christensen, I've got my namesake here too, he said, now how did you come to come to Orlando? How did you come to go to Orlando? That's where Mr. Christensen lived in Orlando for 12 years. So I said, I'll tell you that tomorrow. So here we are. We were in Halifax. The building had been built. And that summer in 1960, we had letters from the oldest mother saying that her dad was very ill, and you'd better come down and visit him because you may not see him again if you don't. But he did get better. And he started to go down to Florida in August of 1980. While we were down there, the Florida Gospel Pioneers, they had just an organization of brethren that were concerned about starting an assembly every year in Florida. They invited me. I didn't know. Just one man invited me to have dinner with him the next day. And so they took us down to Fort Lauderdale, and he had a group of brethren there. And they said, we're really concerned about building a chapel in Orlando, Florida. But we all apologized. We will not help build a chapel. The Christian will let somebody else work with them for a while to help get it started. And we'd been taken up on wondering whether you might want to come. And of course, that's the thought that popped up in my mind. All these people, you know, that want to retire, want to go to Florida. And I wasn't ready to retire. That was my outlook. I didn't want to go. And I said, well, I imagine you'd be able to get somebody much older than us, and there's a lot of other workers around. And so we laughed at that. But they wrote to me, Frank Wardenbush. Frank isn't here this morning, is he? Frank Wardenbush wrote to us while we were both coming, and I still gave the same answer in reply. But, you know, as the month went by, the Lord began to exercise me about Florida, as strange as that may seem. And the months were moving on, but it was in February of 1961 I was in my study, and I was really struggling and praying. I'd been reading a book through Unanswered Prayers, and in the book it mentioned men asking for some definite evidence, like something they give you, you know. So I said, Lord, if you really want me to go to Florida, then give me a long-distance telephone call or a telegram, something I can't mistake. Well, I came up and had lunch and went down to the study again, and about 1.30, which would be 12.30 Florida time, the phone rang. And it was Frank Wardenbush. We'd just had a prayer meeting, and we had just all of a sudden said, you're the man that should come to Orlando. We wanted to phone him. We were going to rush him, and then somebody said no, they'd phone him. So it was very evident that the Lord's meeting was in it. So we came down to Orlando, dear Bob and dear Willie met us. We left up there in Halifax. It was blowing and snowing. It was sub-zero, and we landed in Orlando that night about 11 o'clock, and the temperature was 80. Quite a contrast from the zero to coming into 80 degrees. We just came at first. I said I would come and give you about six weeks, and we'll visit and work and try to give the assembly a start. So then the local brother, I'd never met any of them, the first time I met Bob and Willie. Many of you know dear Bob. We're very close to Bob and dear, and appreciate them very much. They showed us great hospitality, and the local brethren there met with us and said we'd like for you to come and labor here. So I prayed again that night, Lord, if you really want me to come to Orlando, that the day when I'm visiting, lead me to someone I can point to Christ. I put in the bleep up again. That day I met a Mrs. Gilmore. She was real interested, invited me in. I had the joy of leading her to Christ that day. Again, there was evidence that's where we should come. But you know, I went back up again, and after the snow was out then, we came down in August of 1961 to Orlando, and that's why I say, except you really know the Lord's will in your life, you can really say, well, that's why I must be doing something wrong here. We overloaded the trailer. A brother down here gave me a call for a loaded trailer. He said, you can load it. Don't be afraid. You can't overload it. But he didn't know much about the way the boat contained shit, so we didn't get very far, and the boat tied the blue leg balloons. And in fact, when we left, it was so loaded down, I had to take a ton of it off of the trailer, that shit down. Then as we're coming down to the customs, the Lord had worked so diligently with the immigration people that he said, everything is in order. When we got to the border, he said, now the two boys, we're not sure about them. You'll have to wait till the head man comes. The Lord wonderfully supplied a hunting cabin for us to stay in that night. We didn't, we just left all our money, and with the work where we left in Halifax, there was enough to travel down with. And anyway, the next day, that was fixed up. Then as we're driving down through Maine, a tremendous storm came on the way, and just ahead of us was a big tree that came right across the highway. And we had to go around it, just on the bank of the road. Never saw so many obstacles. Down the side was Baltimore. The road was driving, and it was one o'clock in the morning. The watch was wondering if we stayed there all night, but Johnathan, the youngest boy, he had, was it chickenpox or measles or something, and woke up with that. We didn't want to bother anybody. And we went to go across to get gas, and a great, big truck coming 70 miles an hour sideways just demolished the car. One of those new-type of trailers, it just flew like a balloon, too, as the thing tipped against it. And I remember black men coming running, well, isn't he cute? Isn't he cute? The man up there was shooting at you. There were two ambulances coming. It really looked much worse than it was. And thank the Lord, it was just a lot of bruises and all the rest of us escaped well. So, you see, you need to know the Lord's will. If not, we would have gone back and said it can't be the Lord's will, but we had a definite leading of the Lord. And I believe the years in Orlando were probably some of the most fruitful years of our lives. During 10 of the years, we averaged baptizing 25 every year. The Lord saved a lot of souls there. They kept on scattering because of the employment situation, but it was really a wonderful thing to see the Lord work then. And we were somewhat God-encouraged to use this, too. We started while we were there. We had the Winter Garden Assembly and the Bear Lake Assembly and indirectly helped with Lake Howe. So, there's now four assemblies in the Orlando area. Well, everything was going very, very good. We're getting our house fixed up and able to get wall-to-wall carpet in the bedroom. Never had that before. And so, the Lord said, That's how it is. I've been invited to speak at the Believer's Bible Conference up at Locust Mountain. And while speaking up there, we met Brother Bernowski from Augusta, Georgia, a dear Southern gentleman, Christian. And he said, wouldn't you like me to come up and minister in Augusta for a week? So, the following January, it was booked for us to go up to Augusta to minister there for one week. And while we were there, there were two of the brethren, his son-in-law and Dan Hollingsworth. They had us out for lunch every two or three times while we were there. And their burden was, we'd like to see a new assembly started in South Augusta, in the Southern part of Augusta, about eight miles from the mother of that family. And they said, we really feel that you'd be the man to come. I tell you, it gave exercise of heart. And driving home, out to the home of the family, driving home, I was really praying. At the judgment seat of Christ, would it be better to stay in Orlando? They probably do a lot of work that the brethren should be doing, or would it be better to move on and seek to help start another work? Well, you know the answer. I was convicted, I said. It was better to start to help some, just two other families, Dan Hollingsworth and Bernie O'Neill, and Roy and I were the first three couples to start that little assembly in South Augusta, doing another ten, another ten. I want to tell you, there was a tremendous baby in South Augusta. We met the first time to break bread as an assembly, September the 9th, 1973. We left Orlando in 1973. And they were all blessed. Sometime later in the fall, we were starting to look for a place to build or get a building, and we heard there were some army chapels for sale. So Bernie and Dan and I went out to look at them. And that very night, it was a Wednesday, that very night of the prayer meeting, a lady came to us, came to the assembly. She said, you know, there's a building, a church of God that's going to be for sale right across the street from where I live. It hadn't been advertised yet, but I thought you were going to see the minister. So after the prayer meeting that night, we went over to see the man. We asked him, is this for sale? Yes, it's for sale. Now, do you know what it was? It was a converted army chapel. Beautiful old rustic inside. You thought it was as Bob came down and looked at it. I think it was 96 feet long and 36 foot wide. It had a couple of rooms up where the doctors used to be. Two-thirds of the basement. Only the Presbyterians had it first, and they outgrew it. And then the church of God had it, and they outgrew it. And now we had so much. There's an acre of land. An acre of land in that part costs $20,000. There's a three-room house, a little cottage, and a chapel on an acre of land for $35,000. We didn't have anything. But there were only a few of us. And to properly qualify for the loan we wanted, we had to have $6,000. And the Lord provided that too. We were able to get the loan through a foundation. You know, we are human. When we left Orlando, where the brethren had been very kind to us, and we stepped out to a doctor, humanly speaking, one certainly said, Lord, how are you going to look after us? There's only two other families in our house, and we moved. How are we going to live? That's from the human standpoint. How are we going to make out? It's going to be tight-dooring or something. We lived in a servant's quarters first. The brother at Holland's wedding, he had a nice property, but on that there was a little one-bedroom house. It used to be the servant's quarters, and that's where we moved into, and they put a piece on it. There were just two of our children left at that time. And I met a boy named Wes to speak, and I said, boy, I'd pay for the ticket, $152. And I received, I guess, the fellowship through CNL, $50. So I went to the bank on the way to the airport to put $35 in for the loan, and I was going to take $15 with me to have a little bit of money, and something came up. So I made the deposit slip, and I went to the teller and gave her the check. She started counting out what I thought was $15. She started counting out 20s. I looked at her. I said, ma'am, aren't you making a mistake? She said, no, it's $500. $500? I'd never written a $500. I was thirsty. I didn't look at her that close, you see. And that happened twice, from some man we'd never met, never known his name. And do you know that year was the first year that we ever had to pay income tax. Is our God able? It's no vain thing to serve the Lord. And you know, we were in that new building, had it fixed up, and we had the Christmas program in it that same year, four months later. They fixed it up with air conditioning, carpet, all of us as part of the work. Many of us worked there manually, and others from other centers came and helped. Tremendous job to fix up that old building. But they outgrew that. Now they have built a nice new chapel on five acres of land. The Believer's Gospel Chapel on Orchard Beach Road, and that's the name of it, in Augusta. So it's good to see how the Lord blesses and continues to bless. We're only there less than a year. Less than a year. When situations arose in Prince Edward Island, they had quite a bad break off. Lack of, you know, one of the great and necessary things in any assembly is a good elderhood. If you don't have a good elderhood, you have trouble. And that's what happened. Jim Starr had gone to Beelzebub's interest. One of the other elders, he was a bank manager, had been moved to another city and left them very short of leadership. And things rose up again, and over 50 people left. And they phoned us down in Georgia and told us the situation. And I believe many more would have left if the Lord hadn't led us back. So we went back to Prince Edward Island in November 1974. I want to say the next five years were the hardest years of our lives to try to build up something that had been hurt and would have been troubled and where brethren wouldn't speak to one another and all this, you know. Young people had all departed. There was hardly a young person left. I tell you, it was hard going. And, you know, prayer and hard work and sort of deep into, you know, it speaks about elders need to be patient. And it has paid off. You go there now today, the half of the audience are more young people, young couples. Lord has given us many more than that we lost. The work has been strengthened. And some of these brethren that wouldn't speak to one another, they do. Oh, the Lord has just performed miracles. You see men that get so hard they won't even accept apologies. So when people ask for forgiveness and they won't accept it, God has to do something. And He has. There's a brother there in his early seventies and, oh, he was hard. And he was three or four brothers he wouldn't even talk to. And today, he's one of the sweetest brethren we have. He's loving, outgoing, tremendous when you see what God can do in a man's heart. And he's just a delight to be around him. Before he was something like a cranky dog, you know, you'd sit down next to him and he'd bite you. Not like this. But not anymore. Oh, this is his right. I just love that man. I led him to the Lord in 1957. So he sort of looks at me as his spiritual dad. But it's been wonderful to see him come around like that. So God has done great things for us. We're glad. Great is thy faithfulness. Isn't the Lord good? We can praise and praise Him, but we'll never praise Him that much. For the seventh time. Thank you very much. I hope I've informed you with some of these things. But we want to give God the glory and the credit.