In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of having faith and recognizing that God is eager to give. He encourages the audience to come before God with faith and worship, acknowledging the blessings they have received. The speaker then discusses the concept of escaping the corruption of the world through pursuing the divine nature and avoiding strong desires. He lists 16 things that Christians should seek freedom from, with the number one being pride, which he states is the root cause of all problems. The speaker emphasizes the need to stop comparing oneself with others in order to be free from pride.

Let's bow our heads before God and give to Him the worship and adoration due unto His name. Let's be still before God for a moment, bow our heads and shut our eyes, seek to be free from all distraction for a few moments and make sure our heart is in a ready condition to receive the seed of God's word. God is more eager to give than we are to receive, so that's the basis for our faith. Unbelief is when we think we are more eager to receive than God is to give. Faith is based on recognizing that God is more eager to give than we are to receive, so let's come with that faith. Whatever our need is, our Father we worship you this morning, you have really blessed us abundantly, amazingly these last three days and you preserved us, you've given us times of worship, praise, fellowship, many many good things and we want to thank you. We don't want to take a single thing for granted. We thank you Lord for your tremendous mercy and goodness. Thank you Lord, thank you, you are our Father, we rejoice in you, you made us so precious in your eyes. Thank you Lord, we find our security this morning in you. We pray that we shall have a heart that's willing to receive from you whatever you want to say to us. Holy Spirit move upon us, confirm your word Lord, we pray in your own way. We trust you, we trust you, we come to you, we don't want to hinder you in any way by our unbelief. In Jesus' name, Amen. Please be seated. In 2nd Peter chapter 1, we have this tremendous statement about the divine power, God's power verse 3. There are a number of wonderful statements here. First of all, that the power of God has granted us every single thing pertaining to life and godliness. Everything necessary for our life on earth, spiritual life and to live a godly life has been given to us. It's already given, if you don't appropriate it, you don't get it. And it says here, this has been made available to us through the true knowledge of Him who called us. It's very important for us to know God correctly. To know, for example, that He's a loving father, to know, for example, that He cannot look upon sin. You know, some of us can think that because God loves us so much, He tolerates sin in our lives. That is the biggest lie of the devil. That's why many of us don't get free from sin, because we've got so imbalanced on understanding God's love that we think He tolerates sin. Here is the clearest proof of it. The one whom the Father loved the most was Jesus Christ. But when sin was on Him, not His sin, our sin, on the cross, the Father forsook Him. And I want to tell you, if sin is in you, the Father will forsake you, no matter how much you think God loves you. If God forsook His Son, you think He won't forsake you and me? So don't play the fool with sin, thinking God loves me and it's okay. It's not okay. If you hate sin, even if you are defeated by it, you're battling it, battling it, battling it, battling it, battling it all your life, you're okay. But the moment you start tolerating it and saying, oh, God forgives, that's the moment God begins to forsake you. Because you're no longer in line with Him. I'll tell you this, a man can be defeated by anger or lust till the end of his life and go into God's kingdom. But the man who tolerates it and doesn't fight it, he'll never see the kingdom of God. It's not a question of whether you got victory or not, it's a question of your attitude towards it. That's what God sees, an attitude. And when we know God, that God is an extremely loving Father, but He hates sin like anything, because that's contrary to His nature. And you're insulting God when you sin because you say, yeah, yeah, you sent Christ to die on the cross, but it's all right, I can play the fool with sin. So the knowledge of Him is what enables us to enter into this life. And then it says, by this knowledge, He has granted you His precious and magnificent promises. The promises of God are also important for us to lay hold of what God has for us, God's promises. There are many, many promises in God's Word, thousands of them. And you'll never know what they are unless you claim them. It's like I heard of an old lady, an illiterate old lady who got her son educated and the son went off to the United States and got a big job. And this lady was living in tremendous poverty for many, many months. Somebody visited her and said, doesn't your son ever care for you? Doesn't he write any letters? Doesn't he send you any money? No, she said. He writes letters, sure, but he never sends me any money. He just sends me some beautiful pictures in the letters he sends. Every time there's a little beautiful picture. And he said, can I see those pictures? You know, in the United States, checkbooks have got a lot of pictures. And every one of these was a check for hundreds of dollars. And she had kept them thinking they were just nice, beautiful pictures. And he told her, for so many years, you've been so rich and you didn't know it. If you had gone and put this in the bank, you could have lived comfortably. You didn't have to live in a hut. I heard that story years ago and I thought many, many believers are exactly like that. They don't know. They think of the things they hear and the things they read in God's Word. Oh, these are beautiful pictures, nice illustrations. But they never say, God, that's for me. I got to claim that. Magnificent promises. And the whole purpose of all these promises is not that you might be healthy and wealthy first, that'll come second or third, but that first of all, you might partake of His divine nature. The primary purpose of these magnificent promises are that you might partake of His divine nature. Don't ever forget that. There's no promise greater than partaking of His nature. If you were to ask me, what is the greatest thing that God can give you? It's not health or wealth. It's His nature. If He gives me health and wealth and I go to hell at the end of it, that's not a great thing. But if He gives me His nature, I can live the most useful life on earth, even if I don't have health and wealth. Please remember that. There were many great saints. I think of one of those godly missionaries, Amy Carmichael, who came to India. I think she lived here 50 years without ever going back home for a holiday. Not like these so-called missionaries who come now for six months for spiritual adventure and think they are serving God. It's all garbage. The real missionaries were the ones who came old time, who really committed themselves. They came here and lived here for 50 years and did an amazing work for God, and she was one of them. And as I understand it, she had a fall once and that incapacitated her and she was in bed for the rest of her life. And that's when she wrote some of those lovely poems and books which have blessed people for many many years. But I think she accomplished more when she was in bed. You know that we would never have got the episodes of Paul, many of them, if he had not been in prison. Paul was a man who was always on the go, he had no time to write. And the only way God could stop him was put him in prison, then he wouldn't go anywhere. But he was a man who was so diligent, he wanted to make use of his time, he wrote those letters. I say thank God Paul was in prison. That's why we are blessed through those New Testament letters. So God's ways are not our ways. Amy Carmichael partook of God's nature, Paul partook of God's nature. It was not through health and wealth, Paul didn't have all of that, but this magnificent promise to partake of God's nature. And if you can be gripped by that, you'll find that God gives you enough health and enough wealth to live on earth, to take care of your family, and also to do his work. But if you pursue those earthly things, you may get them, but you'll miss the divine nature. But if you pursue the divine nature, you'll get enough of those other things, not too much so that they don't spoil you. If you pursue those other things, you may get too much, and you may lose also. So the best thing, the most sensible thing to do is to pursue the divine nature. And I have never in my life heard of a man who pursued the divine nature, who ended up as a beggar. In fact, David says in his whole life, he has never seen a godly man or his children ending up as beggars. It's impossible. So the greatest and the most magnificent promises in Scripture are to make us partake of the divine nature. Because when we think of freedom, as we've been thinking of in these days, what is the greatest cage that we are all in? It's this Adamic nature. You've got to see that. The greatest cage we are trapped in is not poverty, it's not sickness. I tell you, those are nothing. Those are just like two bars of the cage. The real cage is this Adamic nature that God wants to free us from. And if you're not freed from that, and you're just freed from poverty and sickness, I tell you, your freedom is pathetic. You'll be like these hens. The hens have also got wings, but how high can they fly? You can fly like the hen or you can fly like the eagle. There's a lot of difference. So pursue the divine nature, because the most magnificent promises in Scripture are related to that. And then it says, thus, verse 4, the last part, you escape or you get delivered, you get set free from the corruption that is in the world by lust. Lust means a strong desire. It could be for a good thing, it could be for a bad thing. Generally speaking, it refers to a bad thing. And that strong desire for these things which God has forbidden is what corrupts the world. And that's why the whole world is corrupt, because people have not controlled those strong desires, right from Adam's time, to reach out and take what God said, don't take. And throughout these 6,000 years, man has been reaching out with his eyes and hands and everything, taking what God said, don't take it. They have let loose the strong desire called lust, and that always leads to corruption. Now, the only way to escape from this corruption, it says here, is if God can give you His nature. Now, nobody in the Old Testament could escape this corruption. They could control it, but they couldn't escape it, because nobody in the Old Testament could partake of God's nature. Why? Because the Holy Spirit could not dwell inside anybody. If only you can see this wonderful thing, that the greatest blessing of the New Covenant is that the Holy Spirit can dwell inside. Nobody, till the day of Pentecost, could have. And if you don't value that, if you don't value, this is the greatest blessing of the New Covenant. It's not New Testament pattern or new wineskin. Those are all secondary. The greatest thing is that God's Holy Spirit can dwell inside, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom, there is liberty from this corruption that is in the world through strong desire, reaching out for things God has forbidden. Now, having said that, he goes on to say, Because of this, with all diligence in your faith, you must add to your faith moral excellence, and to your moral excellence, knowledge, and to your knowledge, self-control, your self-control, perseverance, and your perseverance, godliness, and godliness, brotherly kindness, and your brotherly kindness, you've got to add love. And if these qualities are yours and increasing, then you will not be unfruitful. But if you lack these qualities, you're blind and short-sighted, having forgotten what you were purified from then. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent, verse 10, to make certain about his calling you, and as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble. For in this way, an abundant entrance will be given to you into the eternal kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, what I wanted to point out is, now you would have thought, if I've got this divine nature spoken of in verse 4, then I'm okay, I just let the divine nature take over. Why does it say, now, now that you've got this, add these qualities, pursue after these qualities? Doesn't the divine nature automatically take care of that? It doesn't. The divine nature gives us the ability, but you have to choose. If the divine nature automatically made me pure, holy, humble, patient, kind, gentle, etc., I would be like the planets. God said, rotate around the sun. It's been doing it for thousands of years, without a question. But God doesn't want to make me like that, where I become a robot, where I'm programmed, or like the olden days, they used to just wind up the screw of a little doll, and the doll would just walk, and nowadays they have dolls that talk and walk and cry and all types of things. It's programmed, and God, divine nature is not some type of computer program that he puts inside me, that automatically I behave humble and gentle and kind and all that, because God doesn't treat me like a robot. And that is not holiness. And God doesn't want robots in heaven, just like you don't want robots in your home. Which parents would be happy with robots? You'd rather have a bunch of naughty children, even disobedient ones, than obedient robots. God is like that too. He doesn't want robots in heaven. He wants those who have chosen, not chosen just once. Life is a series of choices. It's like marriage. You don't have a happy marriage just because the day you got married you were deeply in love with each other. No. A lot of people who are deeply in love with each other on the day of their marriage, they don't understand what love is, and they begin to hate one another pretty soon, and start yelling and screaming at each other. Because marriage is a series of choices. The first choice was on your wedding day, where you said, yes, I'm going to marry this man, or I'm going to marry this woman. And that doesn't guarantee a happy marriage. No. Look at all the unhappy marriages there are even among Christians. It's a series of choices every day. And even if you're married 50 years, you've still got to keep making that choice. Because you can have an unhappy marriage after 50 years. But if you keep making the right choice every day, and I'll tell you one thing, it becomes easier to make the right choice if you keep making it. You know, like anything you do, it becomes very easy after a while. If you've done it. I mean, think of people who've learned typing. They don't even have to look. Blind typing. They're so fast, some of them. But that didn't happen the first day they started to learn typing. Oh no. They made so many mistakes the first day. But look at these fantastic typists who win competitions. They can, without a single mistake, they can type at such a tremendous speed. Anything that you keep on doing becomes easier after a while. And if you keep on making the right choices in marriage, it'll just get easier and easier and easier and easier. If both people make the choice, of course. And if the other person doesn't make the choice, you can still have a good life yourself. You keep making the right choice. It's the same thing in the Christian life. God gives us the ability to make the right choices, but He waits for you to make that choice. And if you don't make that choice, it's like having an electric power connection to your house, but you don't switch on the lights. I mean, if you ask the Karnataka Electricity Board to supply you with electricity, electric power, and they fix up the connection, and you call them next morning and say, please come and put on the switch. They say, what do you mean? We're not going to come and put on the switch for you. If you're so lazy, just sit in darkness. We gave you the power, you put on the switch. You connect up the refrigerator. You plug in the washing machine. We're not going to come and plug in the washing machine for you. We gave you the power. It's like that. God gives us the power, but you've got to use it. And you know how different homes around here in Bangalore use different amounts of power. They don't all use the same amount of power, and I believe all of us believers are using different amounts of that power, and that's why some people have more gadgets working in their home, and some people don't. That's why some people accomplish more in their life, and some people accomplish less, because it depends how much power you draw. And unlike Karnataka electricity board, God says you can draw unlimited power, as much as you want, for everything you need in your life, but you've got to use, make that choice, and that's what Paul is, Peter is saying. Okay, you partake of the divine nature, you escape the corruption in the world that is through lust, but now, you've got to add these qualities to your life. So, I wrote down here a list of, it's not a comprehensive list, I didn't write it under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but I tried to think of certain important qualities which I thought we could pursue. Certain areas from which we must seek, in the coming days, total freedom. Our subject is, the truth shall set you free, and I want to say, the number one thing, the number one thing, after many years of observation of Christians, which can solve many of your problems, that you should seek for freedom from, I've listed about 16 things here, and I'll go through them. Number one, we must seek for total freedom from pride. Pride is the root cause of all the problems in the world. And I want to tell you, it is pride that sends people to hell, not sin. Please remember this. It's not sin that sends people to hell, that's pride. There were two thieves hanging on either side of Jesus, both were equally great sinners. If it was sin, both of them should have gone to hell. But one man humbled himself at the last minute and said, I'm guilty, Lord. His humility took him to heaven. The other fellow was proud, even at the last minute, and said, I don't deserve this, Lord, get me down from this cross. He went to hell. What was it that took him to hell? His pride. If he had humbled himself like the other one, he'd be in paradise today. What an absolute fool to go and spend eternity in hell, just because he's too proud to acknowledge his mistake. Do you know the number of believers I have met in my life, who are too proud to acknowledge, that was 100% my mistake. You know, in the world, they talk about endangered species. You know what endangered species are? They say the deer, forest lions in Gujarat are decreasing, or the tigers in West Bengal are decreasing, because so many people are killing them, or the elephants in Karnataka forests are decreasing, people are killing, and then they call them, and certain animals are decreasing all over the world, so they call them an endangered species. The number of them is becoming less and less and less and less and less and less and less and less. Now I'll tell you one of the most endangered species in the world. Those who will say, that was 100% my mistake, I'm sorry. That is the most endangered species in the world, because the number of that is becoming less and less and less and less all over the world. Very rare to find people who will say, that was 100% my mistake, I'm sorry. Let's try and increase the number in that tribe. Humility. Let's make sure that there's not an atom of pride left in us. I mean, I'll tell you, I'm not preaching what I don't practice. I cry out to God that there will not be an atom of pride in me. You know, pride can come in the church when you do something well, particularly if it's an area you're still struggling in. You can do something well. I remember the early days when I started preaching, and God gave me an ability to preach, and I had a tremendous battle with spiritual pride those days. It's not so much now, because you keep doing it, and it gets easier and easier, as I said, like blind typing. But in the beginning, it was a battle for me, because anything you do well, you play a musical instrument well, it's going to be a battle. Every time you're conscious that people are watching you, how well you're playing, and what should you do? Stop playing? What should I do? Stop preaching? No. Repent. Go before God and say, God, I hate that. I don't want it. Or maybe you sing well, and your voice sounds nice over the loudspeakers, and you get very conscious of that. Don't stop singing, but battle it. It could be anything. Maybe you came first in the class somewhere, and everybody knew about it, and you naturally become a little proud, but you've got to hate it. Don't be like the rest of the world and say, oh, that's okay. Anything that puffs you up and makes you think you're a little special, a little better than everybody else. You know, very often when we criticize other people, think of this, all of you who have criticized others, all of you mothers who have criticized other people's children, what are you actually saying when you criticize somebody else's children? You're saying, my children are not like that. That's what you're actually saying. I did not bring up my children the way that mother brought up her children. That's what you're saying, and that's what's destroying you, and one day it'll destroy your children also. I would encourage you to get out of that habit. When you criticize somebody else for anything, what you're actually saying silently is, I am not like that. Did you hear it? I am not like that. He is like that. She is like that. But look at me. I'm not like that. And that's the thing that the devil wants you to keep on developing so that finally you land in his lap, unless some elder brother is kind enough to rebuke you, correct you, and get you out of the devil's grip. Well, there are very few like that. Most creatures are so kind and gentle, they just leave you in the devil's grip forever, because they don't care for your soul. That's one thing you've got to be thankful for in CFC. You have people who care for your soul enough to rebuke you so hard that the devil lets go of you. Dear brothers and sisters, pride is a very serious thing. It's the root cause of many, many, many problems. So seek to be free from that cage completely. Any spiritual pride, intellectual pride, pride of your good looks, pride of anything, don't ever stand before the mirror and start admiring yourself. If you see something good in yourself, immediately give thanks to God. Don't stand there and admire yourself and destroy yourself even more. That's how the devil became the devil. He was the most beautiful of created beings, and he kept admiring himself. He was the cleverest of created beings, and he kept congratulating himself for his cleverness. Beware of these things. Beware of these things. Beware of comparing yourself with other people, comparing your children with their children. These are the ways to destroy yourself and your children. Comparing yourself spiritually or comparing the jobs your children have compared to other people's children, what jobs they have. You want to destroy your children? Go ahead, do that. But if you want to save them, humble yourself and humbly give thanks to God. Or comparing how clever they are or how good looking they are and all the stupid things the devil puts into our heads. My brothers and sisters, be alert to see who is whispering those things into your ears when you have such thoughts. It's the devil. When you think your church is better than somebody else's, who's whispering that into your ears? It's the devil. When you think you've done a successful job in building your church compared to other people, who's whispering that into your ears? It's not God. You yourself know there are 101 things wrong in your church which you have carefully covered up. So God can't be telling you that. God says, you've got a long way to go, my son. Because before your church is anywhere near what I want it to be. I mean, it's like the student who got 5% comparing himself with one who got 2% and saying, boy, I'm great. How will that student ever get any further? Next year he'll probably get 4%. He's stupid to compare himself with somebody who got 2%. All pride is like that. We compare ourselves with somebody else. That's why we must stop comparing ourselves with other people if we want to be free from this cage. Like the illustration you've heard me use. In a corporation school, a student who gets 5% may have come first in the class. And he's pretty proud because he came first over all the other 40 students. But you take that same student and put him in the top school in Bangalore and he comes last in every single exam. And he fails and then he comes last in the next year also with other people who came one year later. Boy, he'll be humble pretty soon. How did his pride come? Through comparison. How did his humility come? Through comparison. How does your pride come? Always by comparison with other people. How will your humility come? By comparison. Compare yourself with Jesus Christ every day. You'll never, I give you a written guarantee, you will never have a problem with spiritual pride. I have practiced it for many, many years. I refuse to compare myself or my ministry with anybody else's in the whole world. With none of you and with nobody else in the world. I look at Jesus Christ constantly and I see how millions of miles I still have to go to get where He is. I want to encourage all of you to pursue that. Get rid of pride completely. Number two. The thing we need freedom from is dishonesty. We are all born liars. Did you know that? I think it's in Psalm 58, if I'm not mistaken, where it says the children of men go astray as soon as they are born, telling lies. 58 verse 3, the wicked are estranged from the womb. From the birth itself they go astray, telling lies. That means even before a child learns how to speak mama, papa, it has started telling lies. And we know that. We see children cry as if they're in pain. They're not in pain. They just want mommy to pick them up. That's all. They started bluffing. They know that mommy will pick them up as soon as they start crying because mommy thinks, oh, they're in pain. They're not in pain. They just want to be held upright and padded. They like that. As soon as they are born, they learn to tell lies before they learn anything else. That's the first thing you learned and it's the first thing I learned. To tell lies, to be dishonest. And sometimes it's one of the last things that goes from our life. But the sooner it goes from your life, complete, not partial, 100% freedom. Jesus said, let your yes be yes and your no, no. Anything more than that is evil. Anything where you have to explain but, but, but, but, it's evil. It's either yes or no. If you have to put but, Jesus said it's evil. Yes or no. And not only when you sign a document, every word that comes out of your mouth must be like a signed document in court. There's a verse in Psalm 15 which says, when a man, when a godly man gives a promise, he'll keep it even if it ruins him. He will keep it even if it ruins him. If a man, a Christian believer says, yeah, I said that, but I didn't sign it. I don't know whether he's even a believer. What do you mean you didn't sign it? Are you a godless unbeliever? You stand by only things you have signed? You're a wicked man, a wicked woman. You're a child of the devil who's the biggest liar of all. A godly man, if he says something, that is like a signed document, a stamp paper document. That's a godly man. If you're not like that, you're not a godly man or woman. And no wonder you're in the spiritual condition you're in. Your word is your word. If it ruins you, it ruins you. But you're going to keep your word. I've had situations in my life where I gave my word for something and afterwards, I shouldn't have done that because it involves a lot of loss in some way, but I'll keep it. Loss or no loss, I'm a Christian. And I'll tell you this, God has blessed me for it. You give your word, keep it. If you say that you'll sell something for some price and afterwards you discover it was too low a price, keep your word. If you told somebody you'll buy something for a certain price and afterwards people tell you, you're paying too much, buy it. Keep your word. Unless you want to go to hell as a liar with all the other liars who go there. I tell you, multitudes of people in our churches who speak about the new covenant, a new and living way, they don't even have the slightest conscience about telling lies or going back on their promises. I'm amazed at it. If you tell somebody you'll meet him at 4.30, meet him at 4.30, get there at 4.25. Otherwise you're a liar. I mean, if you have a flat tire or some unexpected problem arose which you couldn't anticipate, then you're not a liar. You tried your best. But if you were just downright lazy and you didn't make allowance for the time you need to take to get there and you say, well, that fellow can wait. You're a good for nothing, useless person who's unfit to be called a child of God. You're dishonest. You're a thief. You're a thief because you're stealing 15 minutes of his time. You won't steal 15 rupees from his pocket, but you don't think anything about stealing 15 minutes of his time. I tell you, lots of our believers are like that. Lots of our believers, they will take their children to school before 8.30 every day of the week, but they'll never come to Sunday meeting by 9.30, one hour later. Because there they're afraid of the principal. Here they are not afraid of God. Where can you expect that such people can be called godly people? Oh, we've got the greatest doctrine in India. Garbage. You don't have it. You're dishonest. You're a cheat. It's true. We say we'll be there at 9.30, but we're not there at 9.30. If the school wants your children there at 8.30, you will definitely get them, but they're by 8.25. I ask people sometimes this question. How many days have you taken your children late for school in the whole year? Question number one. Question number two. How many times have you ever come on time for the Sunday meeting? Why is it that you fear an earthly principal more than almighty God? As I said, I'm not saying that your child suddenly got sick or your little baby suddenly want to go to the toilet or you had a flat tire. There are many reasons why we can be late, but it doesn't happen every day. It's like the person who asked for leave saying my grandmother died. My grandmother keeps dying every hour so often because he wants leave from his office. Are you like that? Grandmother died. Grandmother died. Grandmother died. That's why I'm late. You know, if you keep making silly excuses, we'll never progress. We just got to be honest. Lord, I want to be honest. I said I'd be there at 9.30, but I'm a downright liar. My brothers, you want to be free from dishonesty? I'll tell you a little thing. Call yourself a downright liar. Call yourself by the worst name you can think of. Lord, I'm a downright liar. I made absolutely no effort to be there on time. Now, many people come by bus and I've seen a lot people who come from Hosur by bus who are on time here because they make an effort. They don't wake up at 9 o'clock in Hosur and say, oh, we got to be in the meeting at 9.30. They plan for it. They got a little more respect for other people who are waiting for them. So what I say is these are, I mean, these are things we've spoken 20 years. It doesn't make the slightest difference to some people. It goes in from one year, goes out the other year and they just remain the same the next year. But I want to tell you this. These are the reasons why we don't progress. I'll come to that a little more later. But dishonesty, telling lies, any type of deception of other people, any type of hypocrisy, it's evil in God's eyes. Absolutely evil. And unless we see that Satan is the father of all lies, every lie that came out of my mouth ever, Satan was the father and I was the mother. Remember this. No child can be born with only a father. Is that a great mystery? When Jesus said the devil is the father of lies, how can he produce lies without a mother? Who is the mother? Whoever offers his tongue and his heart to this father. Here I am. You want me to tell a lie? Here I am. Here's Satan. Come and commit adultery with me. Produce a child. That's how every lie is born. Small baby lies, big giant lies. You know, some babies are 12 pounds, some babies are 4 pounds. It doesn't make a difference. Big lie or small lie. You've got to have a father. You can't even have a small baby without a father. Is that a mystery? Is it only big babies that need a father? Or small babies also need a father? What about the small lies that you tell? Who's their father? It's not you. You're only the mother. Jesus said very clearly, Satan is the father of all lies. Every type of exaggeration. It's a lie. Something you say, you make it bigger than it really was. To maybe to emphasize the point or to prove that you're somebody great. You're a liar or to tear down somebody else. You make his sin bigger than it actually is. You're a mother of lies. Dear brother, sister, determine from today. You're going to root out lying, dishonesty, hypocrisy from your life completely. All right? You've laid hold of God. You've partaken of the divine nature. Escaped the corruption there is in the world through lust. Laid hold of his magnificent promises. Recognized that his divine power has granted all things. Now Peter says, add. Add these things. To add to this, add this. To this, add this. And say, Lord, free me from every type of dishonesty and lying in my life completely. Okay. We go to number three. The third thing we need to be completely delivered from, total deliverance from, is unbelief. The Bible calls unbelief, when you have unbelief in your heart. Some people think that's a weakness. And as long as you call it a weakness, you'll never be delivered from it. From today, you have to start calling unbelief an evil, wicked thing. Because that's what the Bible calls it in Hebrews chapter 3 and verse 12. Dear brethren, talking to believers, please make sure that you don't have an evil, unbelieving heart. Unbelief is evil. It's a cage. You say, Lord, please deliver me from it completely. I don't want a partial freedom from it. I want total freedom from unbelief. I'm not saying that by faith, like a lot of other preachers say, you can get whatever you want from God. No. Thank God He doesn't give me whatever I want. You've heard me say this, that God always answers all your prayers. But the answers are like the traffic lights, red, orange, and green. And the electricity never fails in God's traffic lights. One of those lights will always be burning. You ask for something? Red. What is God saying? No. Orange. What is God saying? Wait, you'll get it, but not yet. Green. Yes. So God answers every prayer. When He put the red light on, don't say He didn't answer your prayer. Because if you say He didn't answer your prayer, you're saying there's no electricity, there's no light at all. There is a light. God's traffic lights are always working. There is a light. The answer is no. Sometimes it's wait. He says no because it's not good for you. He says wait because you're not yet ready to handle it. You'll tell that little child, you're too early to turn on the gas in the kitchen. You're only three years old. I can't let you to turn on the gas in the kitchen or use a sharp knife. You wait. I'll allow you to one day turn on the gas and use the knife. But I'm not saying never. I'm telling you wait for your own protection. That's why God also tells us, wait, I'll give it to you. But wait, you're not ready for it. And sometimes He says dream. Yeah, you can have it right now. So faith doesn't mean I'll get anything I want from God. No. But faith is to believe that God will always give me what is good for me at the right time if my heart is open. But I won't get it if I don't believe. Two of the most dreadful verses in scripture, Matthew 13, 58 is one of them. If you don't know it, Matthew 13, verse 58, it says, He could not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief. And I've often thought about that verse, not in relation to you, but in relation to myself. I've said, Lord, when I stand at the judgment seat of Christ and you review my entire life, as God will review all of your entire lives, at some point when the Lord is reviewing my life on a video screen, when the Lord say to me, Son, you see over there, if only you had trusted me a little more, I was ready to do a miracle for you. But you sat there. No, no, no. I don't know whether God will do anything for me. I don't know whether He loves me enough. I don't know whether He can do this. That's why nothing happens. You run around to this man, the other man, the other man. You see there how you ran around to this man, the other man for help. They couldn't help you. And finally, you gave up. Why didn't you trust me? I could not do many mighty works for you there because of your unbelief. I say, Lord, please don't let that happen to me. I mean, it may have happened in the past, but I don't want any more in my life, any future point in the videotape of my life where God has to say, there, it was your unbelief that hindered me from doing something for you. It's a terrible thing. I tell you, all of us are going to see one day when God reviews your life, many, many points where something God could have done for you if you had trusted Him a little more. Even healing from a sickness, if you had trusted Him a little more, if you had prayed a little more, if you hadn't given up after praying for three or four days, if you said, Lord, I'm going to press through here. This is your will. I believe you can give it to me. Everything in your word seems to tell me this is your will. I want it. I'm not going to give up. Think what you could have got. Let's remove from our being every atom of unbelief. Let's make it a goal in our life to remove unbelief totally from our life. Okay, number four, impurity. Impurity is another thing that we must remove completely from our life. Don't sweep things under the carpet, they say. You know how maidservants, if there are rooms with carpets, sweep everything under the carpet. And months later, when you lift up the carpet, you see massive amount of dust. Don't do that in your heart. Get rid of it. Any slightest form of impurity, if there was a lustful look, call it adultery. Lord, I committed adultery there. Don't say, oh, Lord, I was just admiring one of your creations. What do you mean, admiring one of his creations? Call it adultery. Otherwise, you'll keep on admiring, and you'll start admiring more of God's creations, and you'll run into a lot of problems then. Call it adultery. Call it by the wicked name it is. If it's cheating, call it cheating. If it's anger, call it anger. Don't try to justify it. If it concerns you, it's always anger. The only anger that is justified is where it concerns the purity of God's house. Like Jesus was angry when people made God's house impure. But otherwise, he was never angry concerning himself. You could spit on him, call him a devil. He never got angry. But the Bible says we must be angry when it concerns God's house, but we shouldn't sin. But otherwise, every type of impurity we must hate, hate, eat. You know, just like people who like to have everything stick and span in their house. People who are keen about mopping the floor and sweeping the dust. Boy, how we need to do that in our heart, to keep everything stick and span in our heart, to hate impurity of every form, the slightest impurity. If you see a picture or a report, Lord, I don't want to read that because it'll pollute me a little bit. You know the type of reports which are unnecessary for you to read. I mean, some things you need to read to know what's happening in the world. But there's a verse which says the knowledge of evil is not wisdom. The knowledge of evil is not wisdom. Please remember that. Don't think that the devil says you got to know what's going on in the world. And so you better read up that. Otherwise, you won't know what's going on in the world. The knowledge of evil is not wisdom. It's foolishness. I don't need to know all the stupid things that evil people do in the world. I know that godless people do millions of evil things. Why do I need to find out all those details, what they do? Let them do what they like. So don't let the devil convince you to make yourself slightly impure in your mind. I just want to tell you this. You know, once you allow a certain impurity to come into your mind, it's there for the rest of your life. God can forgive you, but he'll never remove it from your mind. It's a law. If you put impurity into your mind, it'll be there 50 years later. You'll be able to recollect it. You say, why doesn't God remove it from our memory? He does not remove it from your memory because that's the way he tells you to be careful in future. If every time you confessed a sin, God removed it from your memory, you'd become very careless with sin. But when he doesn't remove it from your memory, you say, boy, you know, I'm going to keep on accumulating garbage like this. All of you who have sat watching internet pornography, and there's a lot of it nowadays, even believers sit watching it. I'll tell you this, 50 years from now, those images will be in your mind. You can keep on watching it if you like. The more you add into your mind, you will never get rid of it in your lifetime. And I tell you, it's easy to battle it if you just refuse to click there. I don't want to click there. It's easy. It's under the control of your hands. See, I'm not going to click there. Cut off your right hand. Don't click there. Many of you who are using computers, you don't realize this is the way the devil is destroying your mind so that it will not be useful to God. And it's all done so much in secret that you can come to the meeting and look like a holy person there. God's not fooled, and the devil has a big love. Be careful. I know it's a very strong temptation for young people. Curiosity. Young people are curious. I want to know. I want to know. But there are certain things it's not good for you to know at your age. Some things it's good for you to know when you get married, not before that. And that curiosity is what the devil feeds you with and destroys you. You must hate it. I've heard of cases of believers who were slaves to internet pornography, destroyed their marriages, and they ended up in divorce. Don't think that getting married will eliminate internet pornography from your life. You'll still watch it even after you're married, if you don't get rid of it before. Fight it, fight it, fight it, and say, I'm going to have nothing to do with it in my life. Absolute zero. Nothing. Never. I will not click on that. I will not go to that site. I know it's filthy. All this junk mail. I get a lot of junk mail. I wipe it out as soon as I know it's from somebody I don't know. Wiped out. Click here. I want to meet you. I don't want to meet you. Sorry. No, I don't want it. Please remember that. Be very careful, because I tell you, this is the way the devil's destroying fine young people who could be prophets of God. Determine that you will have nothing to do with impurity in your life. The knowledge of evil is not wisdom. Kill your curiosity for such things. If you value your own life, internet pornography can finally even lead a man to hell, despite all the praise and worship meetings he goes to. Because all unclean spirits come from hell, and the whole internet is flooded with unclean spirits. They know this is the maximum way people can make money, and they are dragging people into hell. Fight impurity with all your life. Okay, number five. Ingratitude. We must be free from a spirit of ungratefulness or ingratitude, lack of thankfulness. Lack of thankfulness to God, first of all, and lack of thankfulness to our human beings. The first step to backsliding, mentioned in Romans chapter one. Romans chapter one is the big chapter describing, from verse 1918 onwards, how the wrath of God comes down upon people who sink and sink and sink and sink, till finally you read the last two verses, slanderers, haters of God, etc., etc., unloving, unmerciful. But where does it begin? It begins with verse 21, when they knew God, they were not thankful. The first step to go downwards, away from God, is to be unthankful. You have to fight this, because we are so selfish. We are a bunch of ungrateful people from birth. We have multitudes of children in the world today who have not the slightest bit of gratitude to their parents. Just the other day, I heard one parent telling me, not in our church, somewhere else, that his son, I mean, his son is grown up and married, told him, yeah, he's an old man. Well, he said, you didn't do anything more for me than any parent should do for their child. That's all you did. Why do I have to be grateful to you? I feel sorry for that young man. I don't know what will happen to him. If you are ungrateful to your parents for what they did for you, boy, it's going to be sad. Learn to be grateful to your parents, young people, for what they did for you. Be grateful to the elder brothers in your church who shepherded you, protected you from a thousand evils, which you'll discover when you stand before the Lord how many evils you were protected from. Learn to be thankful to them. Learn to be thankful to the good examples you have among older brothers and sisters in your church and younger brothers and sisters who have not conformed to the spirit of the world. Be thankful to God above all for all that he's done. Remember his mercies, count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will really surprise you what the Lord has done. Many, many sins come because of an unthankful spirit. Learn to be immensely thankful to God for everything he's given you, material blessings. Look at the number of people in the world who are blind. You've got eyes. You can walk. Many people are lame. Many people are sick, like vegetables in their bed. You've got health. You've got a good mind. Be thankful. You understand English or some language in which you've got a full Bible. Learn to be thankful. Be thankful for every little thing that God has done. So many, many things. I was once challenged by what Jesus said that anyone who gives a glass of cold water to somebody will not lose his reward. That means in the day of judgment, Jesus calls up somebody. Hey, come here. I've got to give you a reward. The guy says, what did I do? I never did anything for the Lord. Yeah, you did. One day, one of my servants came to your house and you gave him a glass of cold water. A glass of cold water, Lord. I do that for anybody. That's okay. I give a reward to such people. A fellow gets the surprise of his life that Jesus remembers in all the thousands of years in one corner of the earth, one person gave a glass of cold water to one of his children. Boy, you know what that taught me? It taught me that I must always be thankful for other people who give me a glass of cold water or anything or do most of the things people do for us are much more than a glass of cold water. And I decided in my life that I will never forget what anybody, as far as my memory can remind me, I mean, if memory can remind people of internet pornography, why can't memory remind me of the good things? Sure. But as far as my memory can remind me of all the things that anytime anybody did for me, I want to thank them. And recently I wrote three or four letters to some people who had done some good to me 10 years ago. I mean, I thanked them earlier, but I hadn't written them for a long time. And I just wrote to them and said, I want you to remember my dear brother, what you did for me 10 years ago, that little thing. It was just a little letter you wrote. I have not forgotten it. And I will never forget it all my life. It was a little thing you did. Little, little things. I think of some brothers in CFC who used to take my children to school when I was not in Bangalore. I'll never forget it in all my life. It was a little thing. I was not here. My wife couldn't take them. She had other small children. Somebody was kind enough to take them to school. I remember that. I remember every little thing that other people have done for me. And I thank God for it. It has blessed my life. I want to encourage you to develop the habit of thankfulness, to remember, to thank God and to be thankful to brothers and sisters. Christianity is intensely practical. Let's be delivered from the spirit of ingratitude, which the world is full of. Amazing. And I've seen a lot of ingratitude among young people in our generation. It's very rare. How many of you write a small birthday card? You don't even have to go to the market to buy it. Take a piece of paper and write a birthday card. Once a year, thank, say thank you to your dad and mom. You know, the amazing thing that some children don't even know when is the birthday of their daddy and mommy. Boy, I mean, if you're from some village where they don't keep such records, it's one thing. Then create a birthday for your daddy and mommy. Yes. In Jesus name, I tell you to create a birthday for your daddy and mommy once a year so that you can thank him. If some wretched village registrar didn't keep a record, so what? Once a year, all of you must learn to write a thank you note to your parents. Okay, if you can afford to buy a card, buy it. But otherwise, write on a piece of paper. Little, little things. Be thankful and express your thankfulness. Don't just keep it all inside. We'll continue in our next session. Let's bow our heads. Heavenly Father, help us to add to one virtue, another virtue, and to add to that virtue, another virtue, and another virtue until the day you come. We really want to escape from every wretched cage the devil has made for us. We're going to be like the evil in the sky. Thank you. In Jesus name. Amen.