In this sermon, the speaker, Corrigan Boone, talks about the importance of looking in the right direction and not being distracted by worldly things. He emphasizes the need to recognize our own insignificance and rely on God's grace. Boone shares the story of Moses, who had to learn to be a nobody before God could use him as somebody. He also mentions the temptation to focus on our own flaws and skin, but reminds listeners that Jesus' blood covers our sins. Overall, the sermon encourages having a sense of direction and relying on God's power rather than our own.

This is taped to the, by tape number 530. Corrie Finzel, with the message originally delivered to the 1963 Pacific Palisades Conference, entitled, Keep Looking to Jesus. I am the true vine, Jesus says, and my father is the husband's vine. Every branch in me that bears not fruit, he takes away. And every branch that bears fruit, he purges it. That it may bring forth more fruit. Now you are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. And the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abides in the vine. No more can you except to abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branch. He that abides in me, and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit. For without me you can do nothing. If a man abides not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and it withers. And men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in me, and my word abides in you, you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit. So shall ye be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. So bind you, you, in my love. If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love. Even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love, the things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. And in Colossians 1, 9, where we read from the translation of Philips, we are asking God that you may see things that occur from each point of view by being given spiritual insight and understanding. We also pray that your outward lights, which men see, may bring credit to your Master's name, and that you may bring joy to his heart by bearing genuine Christian fruit, and that your knowledge of God may grow yet deeper. Colossians 1, 11. As you live this new life, we pray that you will be strengthened from God's boundless resource, so that you will find yourself able to pass through any experience and endure it with courage. You will even be able to thank God in the midst of pain and distress, because you are privileged to share the lot of those who are living in the light. For we must never forget that he rescued us from the power of darkness, and re-established us in the kingdom of his beloved Son, that is, in the kingdom of light. For it is by his Son alone that we have been redeemed, and have had our sins forgiven. It is very important which direction we look. This afternoon, or late afternoon, when we are sitting here together, someone said, we need a sense of direction. And I applaud. That was so true. We need a sense of direction, because we are living in a world that is so dark, so foggy. It is so mixed up. And we need to have a sense of direction, and how very immediate it is to look in the right direction. Not by might or by power, but by my Spirit sent to Lord. This mountain shall be removed. You know, before I look at the might and the power of the Spirit, I look so often on myself. And then the mountains are full with so much. This morning they asked me to speak with a neighbor or a friend of mine, and there were all the things together that made it very difficult to approach the place. She was very needy. She had a difficult husband who was a Greek in style. She was terrible rich. It is so difficult, you know. If you have very much money, you have not much money. The money is you. And I saw that mountain that I cannot, I cannot do. I thought, I am really not removed. And I looked at her myself. And I didn't have to approach her. And then really the Lord spoke to me, and I looked in the right direction. And I said, Lord, I don't believe that I cannot do this. You know, there are people who, from the first moment, it flips. But there are also people where it doesn't flip between you and me, and you and the other person. And I was afraid it should be so. I said, Lord, I really don't think that I can do it. And the Lord said, I do not think it, I know it. But Lord, go, and now you, I can do it. And that is so awful. When I come to the Lord and say, I can't do it, then it's just that the Lord smiles. And He says, I know that already. One time it's time to blabber to you. You know it now. And I went. And do you know when I prayed, I prayed, Oh Lord, give me a little bit of humor. And the Lord has tremendous humor. Also distributed to us. And when I came to her, she started to, she talked about religion and religion this and religion that, and I cannot do this and I cannot do that. I said, I would rather you know that you cannot do it. She said, Lord, we must do rather much. It's all right when you say God must do it, but we must do very much. But I can't. And then I showed her this glove. I said, this glove cannot do anything. But when my hand is in the glove, it can completely help. And I said, you are nothing but a glove, and I am nothing but a glove. But when we ask the Lord Jesus to enter into our hearts, and He is the same, and you are the branch, and you are in Him, and He is in you, then you can do very much. And this glove that was with me the whole time, and always when she started again to say, Oh Lord, I cannot do this and I cannot do that, then I showed her the glove. Dear glove. And you know, when she went on a little bit, she made this kind of a point, and I said, I was in a high school or college, and the young people had their slogan. And the slogan was, KISS. And they meant to get, keep it simple, stupid. And when I said that to her, she started to laugh. We made it all a little complicated. This is all very complicated. It's from you and me and from the devil. But we need the Holy Spirit to understand the Bible in its simplest. She had a very good talk. And I believe that she is on the right way. But how good is it to look in the right direction? And I found that often in the world, we must start our examination. And we must get our, how do you call this paper? Diploma? Diploma. Diploma, yes. But sometimes with the Lord, we must first go through, fail our examinations. And when we have failed our examinations, then the Lord said, now I can use you. And I heard William McDonnell say, the Lord had to teach Moses to be a nobody. He was 40 years somebody, and then God made him 40 years nobody, and then the Lord would use him to, 40 years to be somebody. And how often must we learn that we are nobody? And I am very, now, slow to learn, but more and more I learned it. That when I say, oh Lord, I can do it. And the Lord said, oh, I knew it already, but now I will do it. I was in Athens Gym, and they asked me to speak in a hospital. And they brought me in a ward where all these patients, polio patients in iron lungs. I had never seen that before, and it made me so miserable when I saw babies in our people, that I had just the tendency to run away and to go somewhere in a car and to cry. And I said, Lord, I cannot say yes for anything which is so difficult. And then they asked me, speak with a Jewish man there. And that man was not in an iron lung, but I don't know how you say it in English, he was in a bed that went up and down. And then when the legs were up there, the diaphragm was pushed to his lungs, and then he could breathe out, and when the legs went down, he could breathe in. He was fed through his nose. He could not speak, but the only thing was that he could write a bit. And I said, no, Lord, I cannot. The Lord said, you cannot, but I can. And so I went in the strength of the Lord and in my own inability, and even certainly that man was difficult, because I had to look at him and then to look down and then to look up. And that was, it was so sad. And my heart was full of pity for that man. But I, he was a Jew, what I told him of the Messiah. And then I said to him, sometimes our life is so that we cannot understand. And when I had with me an employee, I told him that in my life there was a time that everything was mixed up and that everything was so miserable that there was almost no advice. When I was in a concentration camp, a prisoner, a prison where 97,000 women were killed or died. When I saw my own sister starving, when I was surrounded by people who had had a strengthening in cruelty. And I said, in that time I had experienced a peace that others all understand. And I always believed, but now I know from experience that Jesus' life is stronger than Jesus' arms and that the joy of God cannot go so deep always being around the everlasting arms of hell. And then I showed him my embroidery and I said, my life is like a weapon between my God and me. I do not choose the colors to work steadily. Of time he leaves a sorrow and I in foolish pride forget easily a person. And I, the other side, not till the moon is silent and the shadows easily fly will God unroll the captives and explain the reason why. The dark threads are as needfully still for Jesus' hands. And the threads are golden silver in the second nearest length. And I said, all these threads that we see the wrong side, God sees this side. And God has left no problem with our lives. There is never the threat. And then I told him what it meant when he asked Jesus to come into our life. And when he brought, we brought him all our sins. And I brought him the old, old story of Jesus and his love. And that man took his paper and he wrote down these words. Thanks God I am already seeing the beautiful side of what a man that that man saw already the beautiful side of his life when you are on a sick, in sick circumstances. And I can tell you, I was just praised a lot. And the next day, I went again to the hospital and I said, can I visit my Jewish friend? He said, no. Five minutes after you left, he wrote on the paper, for the first time in my life I have praised in Jesus' name. And the next morning he died. Oh, what a time to know that we cannot do what we can't do. Oh, I was, I was so, I was... This paper, this is the paper that he wrote me. Thanks God I see what I'm seeing. It is, it is of course very good that we see that we cannot do it. But, but it's the devil who always tries to bring our eyes in the wrong direction. I don't know if you, one speaker, have the same temptation as I have. When I'm speaking and I see how the Holy Spirit works in the congregation, when I see the people listening, when I see that, that there comes a kind of a rage on the place, that people understand, then the devil tells me, Corrie, you do a good job today. And I know if I, if I take, take that, that will perhaps not take the blessing from the people, but if I take that, then I take the blessing away from myself. Now, the devil has done it so often that now just I say, shut up in the name of God. So he starts already a little bit to slow down with his temptation. But you know that I have, really in America, in the big feminist nation, to get use of the way of institution of this American. My, I sometimes say, I sometimes get a headache by the heat of the halo that the people make around my head. And I was very happy when I heard the story of the woodpecker. The woodpecker was sticking with his beak against the stem of the tree. And the very same moment, the lightning struck that tree and destroyed it. And the woodpecker flew away and he said to other birds, I have never known a macaw in my beak. When we speak, and there is a working of the Spirit of God and of my beak, that is the Spirit of God who does it. But the devil tries to bring our eyes unto ourselves. People so often say to me, in college, I believe that your faith has carried you through the time that you worked in a concentration camp. I was during the last world war, a prisoner in Holland and in Germany by book of prison, and yet you can read about it. But when people say to me, it was your faith that has helped you through, then I always say no. It was not my faith. If you ask me how my faith was in that time that I was there, it was very weak, it was very weak. And if you ask me the dimensions, it was even not proper, it was messy. It was not the grace. It was not my faith. Do you know how I came through? Not through my faith, but through Jesus. Jesus. Jesus has carried me through that terrible time that I was in that hell of Rathenburg. And that's good. For if I say it was my faith, then it's possible that there is someone who says, I go through a very difficult time, but I have not your faith. But then I say, it was Jesus that the same Jesus who has carried me through, doesn't carry you through. And in the Antichrist New Testament, there is written in Philippians 3.8 that Paul had, when he was in a terrible prison, changed with his hand to the hand of a God, night and day. And he said, I found everything as lost compared with the priceless privilege, the overwhelming victory, the preciousness, the circumstant work and supreme appendage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. And I'll progressively more deeply and ultimately take a break at this point. That was the experience of Paul. That was my experience. And that is your experience. It is Jesus who carries us through. And yes, we need faith, but even the Bible says about our faith, not look unto your faith, but look unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. I had Jewish thoughts before the war. I was watching them. Sometimes I had in the store a new watch that didn't run well. I never repaired it, but I sent it back to the manufacturer and wrote him, sir, this new watch doesn't run effectively. After he had repaired it, it went absolutely right. When my faith doesn't work, I don't try to repair it. I send it back to the manufacturer. Jesus, the author, the finisher of my faith, and I easily repair it. Then it works. When I look at my faith, there are two possibilities, that I say I have a right, wrong, and good faith. Spiritual path. Or I say, oh, my faith is nothing. That is the tradition. It goes from the gospel. But we must look unto our faith, but unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. It's very important which direction we look. I think you have all read the book of John, and there he found there was a man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck rake in his hand. There stood also one over his head with a celestial crown in his hand, and offered him that crown for his muck rake. But the man did neither look up nor look down, but raked to himself the straw, the small sticks in the top of the door. It did ever let the church kneel. And one of the tricks of the enemy is that he brings out eyes always unto our feet. The devil likes it to make us imperfect, looking at our sins. But of course he must know our sins, but he must, the great joy is that Christ will hold the answer for our sins. When we confess our sins, God is graceful and just to forgive us, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sins. We confess. Let us cleanse the next few. At this point, please stop your machine and turn the tape over. The remainder of Corrie Kimball's message will be heard on side two. Let us not listen to our sins, but unto Jesus. There stood a man with a little stone before a lake. It was so, so quiet a weather that you could see in the lake the moon. And then the boy said, oh look daddy there is the moon in the lake. And then the father took a stone and threw it in the lake. And the boy said, oh daddy you have broken the moon. And then he said, boy look up. He looked up at the moon. Then he looked up to the sun. Then he opened, because the moon is broken. Then he looked up. You know, the moon is still there. And now, speaking about moon, we are all moon. We are moonshine. Sometimes I have the idea that I go to my own friend, that I go to a meeting at the sun. I will give my life but when I go in my own vulnerability, then I just move, I just reflect the sunshine. It is very important that we look at the sun, because we all will burn there and stay. We all will act in a mirror. The glory of the Lord has transformed our self into the same image from glory to glory even as from the Lord's image. Second Corinthians 3. A mirror doesn't do much. It stands or hangs in the right direction and then it does its job. And you and I have not to do much. Yes, yes, we do. Sometime ago I was in my hometown and I had a little accident. It was not so terrible but I did not know. I had hurt my wrist. So a policeman helped to carry me into a car. When a policeman does something in Holland, always he carries a clip and he must write a report. So if that was too late, I just called him home and said, I am you a member of that family that was arrested ten years ago. Yes, that's right. You know, during the war, the Dutch police men remained in the dark and so they were in the service of the Germans. But they did that with the purpose to help us to lift our position and got blessing for the good work that we have done. And these good Dutchmen was in the police station when my old father with his three daughters, a son, a grandson and fifty of our friends were arrested and we were sitting on the floor of this police station. That night we had no bed, we had no chair, we were all sitting on the floor. My father was eighty-four years old. He had often worn and said when you always help Jewish people, you end up in prison. In prison. And that was why we were arrested. The Germans intended to kill all the Jewish people and we helped them to escape and we made it home. And there we were. My mother was always children in the classroom and fifty friends. And after ten years, this man said, I will never forget that night. There was an atmosphere as if there was a feast instead of what most of you had to die in prison. Father died after ten years. He was too old for prison life. And he had often said when you are always new to your house, you will end up in prison. And father always answered is that should happen. I am too old for prison life but it will be an honor for me to switch my life for some students and people with you. And that commissioner said, before your father tried to speak, he said, here are the letters together and then he took his Bible and read Psalm 931. That man knew after ten years that his father had died. He died well in the secret place of the Lord's eyes. When I come in heaven, I hope to have a talk with my daddy. Many talks. But the first talk will be this. Do you also like to use your fantasy a little bit to see what you will see in heaven? You know the reality is a trillion and more times greater than you great son. But one thing I know from the Bible and that is that we don't know it yet. In the Bible it is told that on the mountain of Transfiguration the Lord Jesus was there and Moses and Elijah and the disciples. And I don't believe that Jesus has died. May I, in the news my disciples, Moses and Elijah or not. But the disciples knew that Moses and that Elijah. How did you know that? Because he still had celestial bodies. We will know each other in heaven far more and better than he is. Now when I come in heaven, I will ask Father, Daddy, do you remember that last night in Smedestra? Then I will ask, do you remember that evening that was very possible that he was saved? You know Father, that was not for that evening. Now I must pray for wisdom for that evening. But his eyes and his whole life were turned towards Jesus. And Jesus made him a mirror of his joy so that as a policeman you after ten years did something at last. And I am sure when you enter the beautiful city and the saints all around you appear that many of them will tell you it was you that invited him here. You will say, how? When did I invite him? What happened? And you will find out that that was the time so let us look at the things that always turn not turn to us. I am so glad that the Bible tells us what Jesus does with our people. And here the Bible speaks about blotting out like a cloud, throwing them over the shoulder, giving them death, giving them forsaken. And I am sure that at that time no fishing allowed. But Jesus does with our people. Now we have to understand that a perfect thing is still alive. But a perfect thing is dead. Just a burial. I was on my way to a graveyard to look at the dead body. My little child broke a beautiful cup of her mother. And she brought that cup to her mother and said, Mom, I broke your beautiful cup. And her mother saw that she was sorry. She said, Alright, I don't want this. Just give me this and forget it. You see, she put it in the garbage can. The next day the stupid little girl took the cup and put it in the garbage can and she took it and she brought it again to the mother and said, Mom, yesterday I broke your cup. And the mother said, I was entranced. I was a lady, I didn't know. And I was entranced. She had some way of doing that really that made me entranced. Then I became patient. I said, Oh, Father, give me this and forget it. The next morning in my quiet time again I remember getting patient. Before I knew what I did, I said, Father, yesterday I met Mr. So-and-so and I was so entranced and so impatient. When he said, Mr. So-and-so, forgive me, Mother. I almost asked for the second time forgiveness for that slave, for that slave. When God said, I'm thankful and just to forgive you. Of course, I had to do something else. I had to go to Mr. So-and-so and I was sorry. But I had not once forgiven him for the second time. I used sometimes this trick. When you give me a cup of coffee and you put that in front of me, just imagine that I then should say to you, Oh, please, I prefer to know you give me a cup of coffee. But you dishonor you as my foster. I honor you when I drink the coffee and perhaps when I say, Boy, what a good coffee, almost as good as the best coffee. Now, when God said, I'm thankful and just to forgive you, then he means it. And you may praise and thank for forgiveness. Oh, when we look unto the Lord, God's healing is unlimited. And we get fixedly out of focus as soon as our eyes are turned away from Jesus. Do you know what I mean? Are you a photographer? I have my camera, I must turn and think and move till the thing that I don't take a photo of is in focus. Now, when we look away from Jesus, we're fixedly set out of focus and our electricity is limited to look at Jesus. Therefore, it is very important that we look, that we have a peace for when there are so many things in our life. And you know, I read somewhere, I look at Jesus and the dove is a dove. The dove, the dove of peace flew into my heart. I looked at the dove of peace and it flew away. We must look unto Jesus. We must look unto Him. Look unto our experience. Too many experiences are very important, but we must look unto the other one. Feelings is something that Americans speak very often about. I feel that, I feel that sometimes I use the illustration of what I experienced in New Zealand. I was in a place and I worked with Edwin Orley, Dr. Edwin Orley, a student. And we worked in a place downtown and I worked in Chattanooga. And he wrote, you must come here on Monday for there is a revival here and I must go to another town. Now I had that big dream. So I put into it and gave the role to Dr. Orley. But I found out that it should take me about nine hours in a car to come there in time. The highways were very windy roads. Windy, windy roads. So I thought I would have a talk with my husband. But I said, Father, I cannot go by car. Nine hours in a car makes me tired. I have been alone for that long. I said, Lord, I think you must give me an F. That evening there came a man to me and said, Hey, is that true that you must meet on Monday in Dadafield and Sunday you speak here? I said, That's right. How are you going to go? I said, By day. He said, There is no airline to Dadafield. I said, I know it, but I heard some shoemaker say, Our problems are meant by God as the raw material to build His miracles. And to make a great miracle you must end God's impossibility. And God knows that I cannot go by car. He said, Revise to me a psalm message. And then I heard physically, He left. He said, Now that's very interesting. You know, I work in a sub-dormitory. Have you heard of sub-dormitory? I haven't. I thought it was the icing of the cake. But that is not it. It is what you call cross-dormitory. They throw from small airplanes the fertilizer over the vast fields in this land. And he said, My boss is a Christian. And he said, At quite a moment he in Dadafield on Monday that he can use one of my airplanes. I said, Thank you. He said, But my boss is concerned about the price. He said, And now he prays that you will be used by the Lord to bring the toilet back to the Lord. So I knew what I had to do. When I came in this small airplane I had seen in my life. There was not much room for, for example, I was sitting very close to the toilet. In my hands I had a book. And that was good for I had no room to get it from my bed. And very soon we had a good talk together. And I even he said, Why has God allowed that my wife died? And I said, When I saw my wife die, I said, That can't be a part of love. And I throw away all the religion. Then I told him, My wife, why has God allowed that my old father died alone in a prison where in the same building all his children were and six of them were friends. But the enemy did not allow us to go to the dying old man. Why has that in my picture to suffer in three prisons before he died? One week before I was destined to die. But in this book we see things that have worked from God's point of view. And I also told him my anointing. And then I showed him several texts where you see it from God's point of view. For instance, the sacrament which says, It is not worth it to be concerned with the present Lord. And those who love God, all things work for the best. And the good thing was that man had to read what I did before I snowed. He could not run away. At last he said, Oh, that's all very nice in that book, but I don't feel anything actually. He said, By the way, I must interrupt our conversation. We are now flying into that cloud. Now the first five and perhaps ten minutes, you will have the feeling that the plane goes to one side. But don't be scared. I promise you that I will keep the little plane absolutely straight. And if you are complaining, look at this instrument. When the needle goes to the right, to the one, and that needle to the left to the one, then you know that the plane is straight. So don't be afraid when you feel that you go to one side. I said, No. But the second explanation, you can feel it. Feelings come and feelings go and feelings are the feelings. My world is the world of God. None else is the world believer. This is my instrument. When I fly with my life, the plane of my life on this book, then I am straight and I am complete. I am glad that I can fly with it. And that is going to a huge depth. Look unto these pieces. In that plane you see them. You have sometimes very thin thick bricks. Sometimes before we went with the car over the bridge, we just left the car and examined the bridge if it was strong enough to carry the car. We didn't examine our plane in the bridge. We examined the bridge. We see that it is not that we must look unto our faith in Jesus. We must look unto Jesus. It is Jesus that is in us. And our faith is also in Jesus. And you know, when we go with our hand in Jesus' hand and we look unto him, then we are totally one. So some Christians are always so between hope and fear balancing. They are like a tiger of water. Going from the past to the future over a road. Balancing between hope and fear in one hand, in the other hand especially with a faith of future. Balancing between hope and fear. But when we look at Jesus, we are just like an escalator walker. You stand on an escalator and you go higher and higher and you stand totally one. We look unto him. That is our core. We look unto him. Always unto him. Look around and he is there. Look within and he is there. Look at him and he is there. I don't look at him. God knows. The way you spit out this inner, the regrets, I look at all those things which blocks the records and mercifully produces. I don't look forward. God is all the future. The road that short or long will lead you home. And he will stay with me in every trial and there for me the burdens that may come. I don't look around to him. When you pierce the ceiling, so wild is the cure of earthless deceit. So dark the world, so filled with woe and evil will reign the hope of comfort and of peace. I don't look in. For then am I most wretched. Myself have not on which to stay my presence. Nothing I see save failures and shortcomings and weak and damaged crumbling into dust. But I will touch into the face of Jesus. For there my heart shall stand erect. My fears are still and there is joy and love and light for darkness and fullness of peace and equanimity for peace. Hallelujah. Jesus loves me. He is faithful and Jesus will be faithful. And the best that he hath to do, this world will be filled with knowledge of God like the waters cut to the bottom of the sea. And these days when the saints in the new places embarrass and scare us, these are the days of what Jesus said look up, your liberation is the ascension of heaven. Our outpouring beyond this world.