In this sermon, the speaker addresses the issue of receiving criticism as a leader. They emphasize the importance of not having a critical spirit and being open to feedback. The speaker also mentions a program in their church where children memorize Bible verses. They discuss the concept of making decisions based on the immediate situation versus considering the bigger picture, using the example of visiting the Rose Parade. The sermon concludes with a reflection on the idea of departing from evil and the impact of being aware of God's presence in our lives.

I've always wanted to come up here and look around, and to see the place. Our daughter was here. The people in the daytime probably know her. Our daughter was here a couple of years ago. She and her girlfriend, her roommate, are working with children with another mission down in Miami with Cubans. And she was out here, and she said, Oh, Dad, it's such a wonderful place. You ought to see it. And I said, Well, I hope to. I think I'd like to tell you just a little bit about who I am, and that may help you to listen a little bit. Sometimes you try to figure out, Where's this guy coming from? And if I can help you, you don't have to think about that so much. But I was a pastor, in fact. Many, many years ago, I stumbled in a camp. And I was young, and so was the camp direction. It was called Camp Goodness. And the fellow on the platform with gray hair didn't have gray hair then. And I don't know how many years ago it was, but it was about 20 years ago, I guess. And I told Ryder Kellen at that time I was out of college and wasn't sure what to do with my life. And he really almost, almost persuaded me to go into child evangelism. But the Lord didn't lead that way, although we've always had a real burden for children. But I pastored for a number of years. And then in pastoring, I was asked if I would leave the pastorate and go and work with college students. Just basically be a counselor and helping college students in their Christian life at a Christian college. And that seemed to be the leading of the Lord. So the past five years, I was chaplain of Calvary Bible College in Kansas City, Missouri. And while there, the Lord has spoke to our hearts. In fact, I met Roma down at her mother's church. And as I would go out from the college and minister in churches, I was being pulled. I had a tremendous ministry with these college students, that age group. And yet I go off to these churches, and it was so hard for me. Yet I was being torn. And I knew that God had given me a pastor's heart. And it just wasn't being totally fulfilled in a ministry with 20 to 25. And so I asked permission of the president of the college if I might leave and go back to the pastorate. So I just recently returned to the pastorate. And I would like to share some things with you that we found very, very important in our school. And it will be in the area of, first of all, understanding your own self. I think if we can understand ourselves, it helps us to understand those that we work with. And so I trust that these nights, that as we go into some of the difficulties and some of the major struggles that the people you want to work with are having, and you know that someone can have a real desire to serve the Lord. And yet they can have certain hang-ups in their life that are not really under the control of the Holy Spirit. And it diminishes their effectiveness. Have you ever had a club in someone's home that when you were in the home, you wondered if the children would get some kind of a disease? You know, and yet the mother is so busy, and she's so going all the time, and she can't clean the place up, and it's kind of like a dump. And you're saying, there's got to be a balance here. And then you go to someone else's house, and you're afraid the kids are going to bend the rug. And so I just hope that as we go through all of these attitudes that, first of all, you identify yourself. And maybe it will help you to realize that maybe you could pull some of these key people aside and share some insights with them that would help them. Because a lot of people want help, but they don't know where to go. We found this at Kansas City. We could not believe it was my weakness. If people want help, I just keep writing. He'll go anywhere and speak, and someone says, I need to talk to you. I was available. And finally, we trained students to help. We run a 24-hour call-in line, and we didn't think it would work. And you can't believe the Christians that called that 24-hour line for help in Kansas City. They just didn't know where to turn. Members of churches, that they were struggling. And so I just trust that as we share with you, we share this with our students, because we felt for them to serve the Lord, if they didn't have the right attitudes, then it was going to affect their ministry. And as I shared it there every summer, I go to the Green Mission here in St. Louis, and I work with the missionary candidates. And we share the same attitudes to these missionary candidates, and say it's imperative that you build these Christlike attitudes in your life for your effectiveness. So we're going to start with the negative. What is hindering this attitude from being in my life as God has really wanted it to be? And all of us have struggled. There's not a person here that's perfect, because when you're perfect, we won't find you. Enoch walked with God, and they just found his shoes. And he was gone, and God took him. And as long as you and I are here, we're not perfect. But yet we want to move on towards perfection. And if there's things in our life that are hindering the ministry, our ministry, what a tragedy. Isn't that a tragedy? If we have obvious defects, and some of the people have a struggle working with us, it ought not be. And so we'll try to do the best we can to point out these basic attitudes. I turn to, did they ever pray here? Our brother took me out to a lovely dinner, because I was late. Did you have prayer already? Would it hurt if we prayed again, you suppose? Okay. Maybe we'll have another prayer and ask God. And in the afternoon, I'm doing something different in the afternoon, or in the mornings. And we're going to try and take a new approach to spiritual gifts. Now, I'm not here as a big Bible teacher, you know, some theologian that's come in. That's not my, what I want to do is to share with you the different gifts, and then the personalities of people that have that gift. And I am sure that's really going to help you, if you have a number of people that you're working with, to be able to understand why you have some conflict between certain people. They say, well, if you're going to do it, you do it this way. And someone else, if you're going to do it, you do it this way. You have people that are, in child evangelism, I'm sure you're going to see that certain gifts, I think, that lends itself to child evangelism. There's just certain people that God has gifted in a certain way, and they go in. They have just what to offer. But, then you get the bulldozers in there. You know, you'll have these tender-hearted women that have sots of burden for children. But then you get that bulldozer in there. And she's like a bull in a Chinese closet. And she does so, and you're trying to, you know, go around putting Band-Aids in all the hearts. And so, I just hope that this week will be an understanding of not only ourselves, but those God has called us to work with in the ministry. And maybe if we can see them in ourselves, it will help to see where they fit in. Because I am sure there are certain Christians that you would rather not be around. There's just certain Christians, they just automatically, you just react to them inwardly. You don't outwardly, because, you know, that's all, you're leaders. I mean, leaders can't react outwardly, but inwardly, you kind of react to that person saying, you know, they just kind of rub me the wrong way. And if I was going to have a special friend, they would not be. You know, they just wouldn't be. And we're going to find out why. Why is it that you have a certain affinity to certain people, and then other people you just kind of pull back from, and yet they're God's children. And they may be very talented, but there's something about their basic personality that causes you to pull back. So, we trust that that will be a help in the afternoons. Oh, he wants me to see if it works. Okay, let's see here. Well, drop it down, and it's very, very tiny. But what we can do is we'll take, this is the overhead just to get some basic notes. Otherwise, you take other notes. In the college, I used this one overhead for ten weeks. You guys had ten weeks? You know, so it's just to give you an idea of what we're looking at. We're going to, the top is attitudes. The attitudes that God wants us to develop. Remember it says in Philippians chapter two, let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. We are commanded to have the mind of Christ. God doesn't say it's a good idea that we have the mind of Christ. We ought to have the mind of Christ. Now, the one thing I wondered, if I'm commanded to have the mind of Christ, how do I know when I have it? And how do you know when you have the mind of Christ? And this is my results of thinking this thing through. How I know I have the mind of Christ is when I would do, in any given situation, the very same thing that he would do. See, when I can think as he thinks, and I know as he knows in that situation that I know what to do, and that's wisdom. Proverbs 4.7 says, Wisdom is the principle thing. Therefore, get wisdom. So the goal of every Christian is wisdom, not knowledge. And that's the trouble about a lot of Bible schools today. They're knowledge centers. And knowledge pops up. But you want to turn out, because you can be knowledgeable and very unwise. You can turn out, in fact it's a tragedy today, that you can turn out magna cum laude seminary students whose lives are spiritually bankrupt. That ought not be. That should not be in a Christian school. And so brains and spirituality may not go together. And so we don't want knowledge to be our goal, and God never says knowledge to be the goal, but wisdom. What is wisdom? Wisdom is being able to see as God sees. That's what wisdom is. That you and I can see as God sees. Then he says, with wisdom, get understanding. Understanding. What is understanding? Understanding is the ability, now I know what to do and to do it. So understanding has to do with my response to a situation. Wisdom has to do with my seeing it from the right perspective. My son got a puzzle for Christmas. It was one of these ice cream cone puzzles. And it's just a puzzle of ice cream cones. And the same flavor is repeated. And so we would start making that puzzle, and we'd take a piece, and it didn't fit. Now we could have taken that piece, but if it doesn't fit, let's throw it away. You know, and throw the pieces away, because it didn't fit. But you know, it maybe didn't fit in that section, but it fit in the overall picture. And you and I have a struggle. We make decisions on the basis of our immediate situation, but God looks at it how? The whole picture. And sometimes you and I make the very wrong decision, because we make it on the right now instead of the whole picture. I remember one time I went to see the Rose Parade. And that's an experience. I stood on the street corner. We got there about 4 o'clock in the morning, and I still wasn't the first one. You know, and if you've ever been there, it's a beautiful thing to see. I don't know if our brother ever went to see it. When you live down there, you know, and you don't go. You have to move away, and then you go back to see it. You know, too close. But it's just, it's one of those things you cannot describe. It's a float. They're just so beautiful. And the way they've done them, you just have to see them in person to see all those flowers. It's unbelievable. But I remember standing there, and all of a sudden, nothing would happen. I mean, you're just standing there on the street corner, you know, doing this, and there's nothing. And, you know, you only see the section of the parade that goes by. But those at home watching, they used to do this. They put a, in a helicopter, they put one of those cameras, you know, and the helicopter would show you the parade from the beginning to the end from that perspective, and you'd see where a float broke down. And they're getting a tow truck to tow that float. That's why, right now, nothing seems to be happening in my parade. And so it's so important that you and I realize that God sees the whole parade. And that we've got to be very careful about making decisions, especially life-changing decisions, just on the basis of something that's happening right now. Unless we're sure that we've got the mind of Christ, or wisdom. And so in Philippians 2 there, we can have the mind to find. Let's just look at that. Philippians 2.5. And this would be our goal. Having the mind of Christ. And let this mind be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus. And it went on, it showed how that mind didn't elevate him, but it caused him to be what? A servant. It caused him to be a servant. And, you know, a servant is someone that gets excited about making someone else successful. That's important. And, you know, we all need to develop a servant's heart. You know, you may want, you're teachers. I realize that you teach. You may teach so that these people will make you successful. You don't have a servant's heart, do you? No, you should teach to make them what? Successful. That everyone that you teach and all the people you work with, that you will make them successful. Then you'll be a real servant. And I don't know if we have any employees right now here from the Institute, but if there are employees sitting here, your one job is to make this man the most successful man in all of the United States in Christian work. That's what God has called you to do. Because he's the president. Not because of who he is, but because of his position. And if he was someone else, I'm just saying the position. And so as a servant, my job when I was at Calvary Bible College was to make that school the most effective, successful school that I could. And we need to develop that today. We need to have a servant's heart today. And that's the kind of heart and mind that Christ had. Now we want to develop, we want to talk about specific attitudes. And we're going to do it three things. We're going to look at the negative attitude, which would be the spirit. We have the spirit, which would be the wrong spirit. This would be a negative spirit. Then we have the character deficiency. And then we have God's solution. What should be the solution? Because a person's attitude is absolutely essential. Attitude. The Scripture says, "...are the fullness of the heart." What? The mouth speaks. He says, "...as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." And you know that when we wanted to be successful parents, we have four children and we still have one teenager at home, just going into it as the first boy to take the teen years. And I remember when I was pastoring in my church and we had a daughter that was 15, and we had a man in the church to every one of his girls, because it was a total washout. And he says, He says, "...you just wait till your girl gets to be 16." You just wait. And I thought, I can wait and wait and wait. Something horrible is going to happen. When you get to be 16, you're going to turn out a terrible girl. Well, she got 16. He says, "...you just wait till she gets 17." And she got 17, 18, and so on, and she's serving the Lord today. The second one went through, and she's serving the Lord today. The third one is in Bible school today, and we've got a boy going through. But one thing my wife and I learned, in working with our children, that if you discipline for wrong actions, it's too late. You need to discipline for bad attitudes. Because attitudes is nipping it in the bud. And you need to deal with your children, with their attitudes, because when the attitude is bad, then there's going to be what? An action. It's going to come. And so you want to be very, very much aware of your children's attitudes. What are their attitudes? And you know, and I'm sure you're aware of this, that there's one attitude that's so important, with children. If you want to help a child, you must have, that child must have the right attitude towards his mom and dad. The child must have a right attitude towards their mom and dad. And we worked with a kid in the college, you know that's one of the main things we did with the freshmen, is to get the freshmen, Christian freshmen, back with right attitudes towards their mother and father. Remember it says, the eye that mocketh his father, and despises to obey the mother, that the ravens of the valley shall pluck it, and the young eagle shall eat it. Just the eye that mocks the father. It doesn't say anything. Just the eye that mocks the parents, the attitude, that mocking attitude towards mom and dad, is beginning destruction in that child's life. Look what it says in Ephesians 6 here. Whenever we'd have children in trouble, I'd get telephone calls from Christian parents, or from the Christian schools in Kansas City, saying, would you talk to this teenager, and the parents, can we work them in? I said, well, I'll work them in during my lunch hour. You bring them over to the college, and I'll work with these kids. I knew when any Christian teenager was having problems, a Christian teenager, struggling, I knew what their problem was. Their problem was, that attitude towards their mom and dad. I have never dealt with a Christian teenager yet, and I counseled in the Christian high schools, I go and I put on seminars, and teach in the Christian high schools in Kansas City, I'll be going again, and teach dating seminars, and all these kind of things to these Christian kids, and counseled the seniors in these different schools, and I've never found a teenager yet, that was in trouble, that had the right attitude towards their mother and dad, and that fulfills the scripture here, in Ephesians 6. It says, children, obey your parents, and the Lord, for this is right. Every kid knows that verse. I know that verse. My folks quote it all the time. They've got it written on the wall. I've been raised on that verse, and I'm sick of it up to here. You know, the kids don't see the benefit of that verse. Why should they obey their parents? You know, why should they do it? It says, honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment, with promise. And you ask people, what's the promise? You know what they say? That you live long. Well, that's half the promise. Well, what's the first half of the promise? Why people don't know it, I don't know. That things will go well with you. God said, if you will obey your parents, and honor them, things will go well with you. That's God's responsibility, to see if things go well with that child. Things go well with that teenager. Or an adult, if you've got parents. There's a lot of adults that are having a lot of troubles, because they have bad attitudes towards their mothers and fathers, which are older mothers and fathers. Now, look at this, it's important. I had a girl, just to explain this, come in and sit down one time, and she said, I know she didn't want to be there. You know, she huffed in her seat, and her mom was out in the outer office, and she was sitting in the inner sanctum with me, and I looked at this girl, and I sort of knew her. We went to about the same church as about eight, nine hundred people in that church, and so, she knew I knew who she was, but she didn't know that I knew more about the situation than what I knew. And so, I asked this girl, and I said, you're having struggles at home. She said, oh, I really am. And I don't like it. She said, I go to Christian school, and I'm a Christian girl. She went to an outstanding church in Kansas City, and she said, well, I don't like it. And she said, I don't know what to do. And I said, well, let me ask you a couple of questions, may I? And she said, sure. I said, do you obey your parents? And she said, yes. Now, I knew she did obey them. Then I said, do you honor your parents? And she said, yes. And I knew she didn't even know what honor was. And her mother would tell her to pick up her clothes, and she, okay. And do the dishes. You know, I know how kids do. You know, all of this. A lot of manners. It's all over the place. So I asked this girl, since I knew she didn't know what honor was, she did obey, but she didn't honor her parents. I said, would you talk to your Christian teachers at school the way you talk to your mother? Oh, no. I said, would you talk to the pastor the way you talk to your mother? Oh, no. I said, would you talk to me the way you talk to your mother? She said, oh, no. I said, you know another word for honor, a more modern day word? She said, what? I said, it's called respect. Oh, I guess I don't do that. So she was obedient. Obedient is an action. Honor is what? An attitude. There are many wives that say, oh, I'm submissive. They're not submissive. They're obedient, but they're not submissive. And it's very important that the Scripture deals with what? Not only our actions, but our attitudes. God's more concerned about our attitudes than He is our actions. Because I don't care how you try to carve it over. You can sugarcoat it. You can't say, oh, I'm not mad. Your wife looks right at you. Her hand's flat. It's not your eyes. I'm not mad. You're not mad. You're not ready. Looks could kill. I'd be dead. I know you're mad. No, I'm not. You know, it's just these inner attitudes that we struggle with. So let's look at these inner attitudes. We want to look at one that's just devastating. This one will annihilate you as a leader. It just annihilates you as a leader. Do you ever share somewhere maybe you just really poured your heart out in teaching the teachers and someone comes up to really clue you in on how you could do a much better job. You ever had that happen to you? You know, you're really feeling good about it. You say, oh, it was a wonderful day. We did, I don't know how much you do, whatever you do, but you did it, you know. And you just really feel you're rejoicing in the Lord. And this person comes up and they're going to say, you know what was wrong with your presentation. And you're going to say, I can hardly wait to hear it. And that's that critical spirit. A critical spirit. So that's the first thing we want to look at. And that's what we're going to look at tonight. We're going to look at these different attitudes, one and eight. But this critical spirit that will just destroy any organization. And I know, I was involved in a, I mean a church is one thing and a Christian organization is another thing. And I'm thankful that God has put me both. I've worked as a pastor in a church and I've also been involved in a Christian organization similar to this one. And I know what that murmuring, complaining, and critical spirit can do. It just destroys it, doesn't it? Doesn't it just destroy it? It's like someone that just opened the icebox on a cold day or something. You know, it just, and you see them coming and you're going, oh no. In fact, we had a lady one time that had such a terrible critical spirit in our first church and I just really didn't understand all these attitudes and I had some bad ones myself but a critical spirit wasn't one of mine. And when she would come to the front door, I'd go out the back door. And my wife would say, Jim, you're a chicken. Oh, I just, this lady, whenever she comes, everything was wrong and why did she do this and why did she do that and oh, you know, she just, she just, I think it's Twin Dollars, somebody says it. No, I don't know who it is. Jay Adams says, you know, it rained on my parade. You know that other guy, that Dr. Dodgson. It rained on my parade. This lady always rained on my parade. I don't know, if I could just avoid her when I can because she ruins the picnic. You know, she'd go to the picnic and she'd see the ants or whatever. That kind of person. Well, what causes, what's the inner deficiency that causes a person to be critical outwardly? See, that's just the symptom, isn't it? We know that they're critical but why are they critical? What's the, the deeper problem? The deeper problem is they have committed the worst sin in all the Bible. I believe that there's one sin that is worse than all the sins that you can find in the Bible and if you could write down, make a list of sins and put them in the order of, of bad bad. What would you put first? What do you think would be a bad sin? It's pride. God listed some things he hated in Proverbs chapter 4. Let's look at this. If you could put here pride, a character deficiency of pride. Now, I won't use it over here probably the rest of tonight and we'll just use our Bibles but look at Proverbs chapter 6. These six things does the Lord hate? God says, I'm going to give you a list of things I hate. You know what we need to do? We need to hate the things God hates. We should hate the very same things God hates. God says, these are six things I hate. Yes, seven are abomination to me and the very first thing is pride unaccountable. Pride reflected in the countenance. You want to do an interesting study sometime. Study countenances in Scripture. Psalm says, David says, thou art the house of my countenance. As a chaplain and as a counselor my job was to read countenances like that. When people would walk in I'd read their countenances to try to figure out what was wrong so I could immediately help them because we have such a backlog of people. When we were at the school the students had to wait six weeks to get an appointment. Well, I just couldn't wait six weeks to find out what someone's problem was. Because I had to nail it like that. Because there were so many people to work with and so many people to help. And we began to look that certain problems people have are reflected in certain ways in their countenance. And it's interesting. Certain studies. Now, it's easy to pick bitterness. Can't you? Isn't it easy to pick bitterness when someone says, you know, Dr. McGee described the lady that came to one time to set him straight on some Bible issue at some conference ground and he described what she looked like. He said this, she looked like she was weaned on a dill pickle. You know, that kind of gives you a, you know, you get the picture. You know, bitterness. Ah, it's just entrenched in their face. Guilt will show in a person's face. Anxiety will show in a person's face. And just all these different things show. Immorality shows in a person's face. In fact, it says in Peter a couple of years ago, looking for girls whose eyes beam forth immorality. And fellows learned to pick girls that are immoral. I asked our freshman girls, I said, you know, some of you girls will walk down the street here and fellows will honk at you in their cars because we're right in the heart of town at Kansas City. Other girls will walk down the street and they won't honk at them. Why? Is it because one girl's ugly or another girl's pretty? No. It's because some girls are still struggling with sensuality and these fellows will honk, pick it up. And they know by looking at that girl that that girl is struggling with sensual struggles inside. She's beaming out of her eyes and they can just tell the way she walks. You know, just her mannerisms and everything shows that this girl is still struggling with problems. Haven't you seen that in your clubs? Doesn't that make you sick? Doesn't that make you sick? Do you know in Kansas City the health director of Kansas City public health director was on the board of the college and one of our personal friends and he wrote a two page thing in the Kansas City newspaper that two years ago he did it in the summertime. They did a research that the increase of premarital pregnancies in Kansas City was between the 5th and 6th grade girls. 5th and 6th grade girls. Some of those girls look like they're going to a bar in that grammar school. Have you seen those girls? It's unbelievable. You guys have a job. You've got to get those kids moving. Boy, 5th grade some of those girls are already involved. It's unbelievable what's going on. I'm sure you're aware of it. All I'll say is I go to these schools, these Christian schools and I realize what's going on in some of these Christian schools. Struggles they're having. Immorality in the Christian schools. In Kansas City last year we had more teenage girls pregnant in the Christian schools in Kansas City than were in my public high school because times have changed. Haven't changed. There were more girls going to Christian high school that were pregnant out of wedlock in Kansas City that I know about than were pregnant that I knew about when I was going to high school back in the end of the 40s. This is a real struggle today. And you guys are called. You've got a tremendous responsibility. Don't you have a tremendous responsibility? I'll tell you I don't think there's ever been a time that they needed your workers in this work ever in our nation as they do today. If we don't reach the children not to my faith that a boy will not get through school public school in San Diego through high school without either witnessing or being in an approach to be involved in homosexual activity. That's too many. I'm just going to give the kids the training so that they'll say no to those temptations and to the struggles that kids are facing today. You guys have a tremendous responsibility. Well let's look at this thing of pride. Pride in the countenance. Why is pride so bad? Why is pride so devastating? Why did God put it first? Let's go and look at two portions of scripture and then we'll go back and we'll go through the book of Proverbs to look at the judgment that God puts on the proud. And that's just one book. We want to look at pride. Let's turn to Ezekiel and see if we can see pride in all of its ugliness. And we say, look, pride just doesn't seem so bad to be proud. It's devastating. Why was Satan cast out of heaven? Why was Moses cast out of heaven? What did he do that was so bad that God cast him from his presence? It must have been awful. It really must have been awful if God cast him out of heaven. It must have been something terrible. We probably won't be able to read it in public if it would be so awful. Let's look in Ezekiel 28 and he's describing this one. He says in the last part of verse 12 Thou sealest up the thumb full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. If you have any old flammogram that has Satan looking ugly, throw it away and put something else in there. He is not ugly. He is very attractive. You know, he wasn't something that came out of a swamp. You know, he was in the garden alone as this thing comes dripping towards her. Now, if you wanted to see the perfection of beauty, you looked at him. If you wanted to see the perfection of God's creative beauty, you looked at Satan. He is very, very attractive. Isn't sin attractive? Isn't it? It sure is. And so is the origin of it. He is very attractive. Now, let's look at this one. Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone you work with children, be careful about praising their outer being instead of inner qualities. Be careful because where does Satan want young people to put the emphasis on the outside? And where does God look? On the heart. And you need to learn to detect qualities and praise children for qualities. When you take and praise a child for something they have no control over, you know you're setting that child up for pride. Oh, isn't she pretty? Isn't she cute? And all that type of thing. Where's that girl putting the emphasis? And also you're causing them to compare. So be very careful about causing a child to compare because they that compare themselves by themselves or among themselves are not one. Do you know the greatest single problem we had at Calvary Bible College with the freshmen? Poor self-image. Almost 100% of all the freshman class year after year after year. And I went back there last year and taught even though I wasn't there. A special course for the freshmen on how to develop the character of praise in their life. And these kids struggle. I had appointments to pass midnight every night I was there. With these freshmen I never met before coming in and saying, oh, I'm so low, what can I do? I just feel so inferior. Why? Well look at the TV. You know what a beautiful person looks like? You turn the television on and this is what you look like. And all this stuff is used to make you feel worse. You brush your teeth with this and you do this and you do that and you still don't feel worse. It's wrong to put something out of it. So be careful that you don't contribute to this whole thing by not looking at inward things and praising children for inward things because any child can be thoughtful. Not every child can have blonde hair. Not every child can have red hair. Not every child can be big and tall. Some are short and spry. So praise qualities in a child. And if you do that in the club and get your teachers to do that because children want your admiration. And you admire character traits of Christ. And that makes a child want to develop the same character traits. You do it in the family with your own children and everything. And get the children to want to develop the right kind of character traits. And you do it family with your own children. And you do it in the family with your own children. And you do it in the family with your own children. And you do it in the family with your own children. And you do it children. And own And you do it family with your own children. it family with own And you do it family with your own And family with your And you do it in the family with children. And he said, would you mind if I ordered a beer? And I said, no, you know, I'm not God, if you're a minister and want to drink a beer, you go ahead and drink it, you know, you're not serving me. But I wanted to talk to him, and I just said, Lord, I don't know what to say. And they were very, you know, real intellectuals, shooting across, you know, the cross is biblical, it says keep your mouth shut, people don't know how dumb you really are, you know. And so the fellow, in his conversation, he said to me, and I knew I had to wait for this, you know, he said, I married the college beauty queen, praise the Lord. And I said, oh, that's too bad. And I said, you know, straight ahead, and I knew, I mean, and I knew he wouldn't let it go by, you know, it was kind of just dead for a while. He said, why did you say that? I said, well, because your wife has certain problems. He said, do you know my wife? I said, no. He said, what problems does she have? I said, well, your wife is terribly insecure. He said, oh, she is. I said, she's very jealous. Oh, I said, what happened? He said, oh, he said, you know, she's a youth director in another church, and he's a chaplain there at one of these schools. He said, we're on the verge of getting a divorce. I said, well, how did you know she'd be jealous and so insecure? I said, because she's comparing herself with other women, and she's getting older. You know, when you get to be 30, you don't have the figure at 19. A friend of ours went to try to pull this divorce situation out of the fire, and he went down in December, and I caught him the day that they got the divorce. I didn't even know it. He was with Bob and working with him, and they knew the problem. She's got the typical problems of a beauty queen, and silly, jealous, flirtatious, struggles, all these kinds of struggles and things in her life, because she's put the emphasis on her face. And you get a child, and you raise them up to be beautiful and beautiful and beautiful, and then they struggle when they get to be 30, and then they get older. Now, she's getting older. Now, she's almost a has-been at 35 or whatever she is, you know. She's having all kinds of struggles in her life, because her emphasis is on her face. So, be careful about setting your kids up for assault later on, and learn how to praise kids. Let's say a little girl comes to your club, and maybe she's got some new... you know, kids want to show you everything. You've got new dress, new shoes, and what do they say? Aren't you cute? They don't see stuff outside. You know, just try to think of creative ways of not flattery, because, you know, flattery is a form of hatred. Flattery says, I'm not for deceit, father said. So, don't flatter. But, and what does this girl have that God hasn't given her? You know, well, she can't take any credit for how she looks or whatever, but if she's dressed, you know, you could say, oh, it must be wonderful to have a daddy that works and provides the money for that. Or your mother, you know, put it on the mom and dad. Give some praise to them for working or buying this for this girl, instead of just putting it up to, oh, you look cute. But, you know, it must be nice to have a daddy that advises you. It's like that. And does your daddy know the Lord? Oh, you're fortunate. You know, so many of us have said, I don't have a daddy that loves the Lord. You know what I'm saying? Do that kind of a thing, instead of just being... be deeper in your praise of a child. Now, let's go to Isaiah 14. And Isaiah 14 tells us why pride is so devastating. We get Satan again, and we get just another little insight from Isaiah, through the Spirit of God, why pride has such far-reaching consequences in a person's life. In Isaiah 14, verse 13, there's a statement here. What did Satan say, and who did he say it to? You know, Satan didn't say it to anybody. You know, the most important conversation you have, you have with yourself. They call it self-affirmation. The most important thing that you'll ever say, you say to your own self. Because as a man thinketh, what are you doing? You're talking to yourself. As a person talks to themselves inside, it's what's going to come outside. And look at this. For thou hast said... What did Satan say it in verse 13? What did he say it? In his heart. He never said it out loud. He never said, God, listen, you're not going to do this and this and this. Satan had an attitude. He had an inward attitude that he had inwardly. But God looks where? On heart. And God knew his heart. For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend to heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars or angels of God. I will sit upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. And here comes this last one and it's just devastating. I will be what? Like. And that like is important. He didn't say, I will be God. He didn't say, I'm going to replace God. He says, I want to be what? I want to be equal or like God. And you know what you could put down in everyday language there? I will be my own life. That's what pride is. Pride is running your own life. Who wants to run your life and my life? God does. And pride is when I assume the control of my life. And if you and I run our lives, we'll make a mess of them. And God will step back and let us do it. Have you ever made a mess of things? And realized it was you and not the Lord? Haven't you? Haven't you ever made a mess of something? I said, oh Lord, look what I've done. You know, we just took things in our, took situations in our hands. And we worked them out ourselves. And that's what Satan says, I will be like the most high. I will be my own boss. He didn't want to check with God. Look at Jeremiah 10.23 and then we'll have to get and go through Proverbs here and see the devastation of pride. There's a tremendous scripture. Jeremiah knew a secret. Everybody needs to know this secret. And when you and I know the secret, and we will believe the first, then you and I are on the way to a very healthy walk with God. Jeremiah 10.23. Jeremiah said, oh Lord, I know that the way of man, it is not in man that walketh to direct his own steps. That's a good thing to know, isn't it? Satan said, I'll run all life. Jeremiah said, listen, I learned a long time ago that it's not within man to run his own life. He has to go to the Lord and acknowledge the Lordship of Christ. What's Lordship? The word Lord can be translated what? Boss. And the boss is the person that you check with before you do something. And that's what God wants. He wants us to check with Him. Acknowledge Him in all your ways. And what does He do? He'll direct your path. Acknowledge yourself in all your ways and you direct your own path. But acknowledge Him. And pride will keep us from doing it. I'll do it myself. Now let's go to Proverbs. And let's just go, we're going to go chapter by chapter and just look at these verses on pride just to see what happens when pride is unchecked in our life. If we struggle with pride and we won't put pride down and won't deal with pride and just allow pride to be in our hearts, what is the future for a proud child of God? We saw in Proverbs 6 that God hated it. Look at Proverbs 8 verse 13. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. And now He begins to list the evil. What are the evils? What's the first evil we're to hate? Pride. What is the fear of the Lord? Do you know that the very first thing you ought to teach a child is the fear of the Lord? We just did that in our church. We had every family teach their children the fear of the Lord. Because it says, by the fear of the Lord, men depart from evil. If you want a child to depart from evil, he must have a fear of the Lord. That is in Proverbs somewhere. You're going to find out by the time you leave here that I have a favorite book. It's right next to Psalms. It's called Proverbs. I don't know. I'll just quote these verses. I just can't tell you the reference. I've just learned them from reading Proverbs. So often I was challenged ten years ago to read a chapter of Proverbs every day, and five chapters of Psalms as I read my Bible through. And I've done that now for ten years. And I haven't realized how much of Proverbs I've memorized. But I've memorized Proverbs. It's just become a part of me. Proverbs is a tremendous book because it was written to teach us how to get along with people. Psalms was written on how to worship God. You put the two together, and that's a good way to start your day. You know, how to get along with people and how to worship God and put your day. And it says, by the fear of the Lord, men depart from evil. What is the fear of the Lord? The fear of the Lord is a conscious awareness of God's presence. The very first verse that I think you could teach a child is what Hagar said in Genesis. She said, bow God to me. That's what the fear of the Lord is. You say, well, how do people depart from evil? Well, I think it would be easy to understand. Let's say that you were in a grocery store. And you just had an overwhelming desire to slip on those little dinky Hershey bars that are 50 cents. I can't believe it. They're getting smaller and five and up in weight. To slip it in your pocket. You just had an overwhelming desire to steal a Hershey bar. And it just so overpowered you. You put your hand on a Hershey bar, and you picked it up. And just as you were going to put it in your pocket, you became aware of the store manager's presence. What would it cause you to do? Depart from evil, wouldn't it? Do you ever stop to think what it would do if we had a conscious awareness of God's divine presence 24 hours a day? And you can go through the scriptures. And we have a special program for all of the children in our church to memorize verses about God seeing them. Is the night too dark? Does the darkness hide from thee? And, you know, it's a comforting thought when you're doing right, knowing that God's with you. But it's not very comforting if you can do wrong. One of the principles I would share with the students at our Bible college. I said, kids, we wanted us to date on a spiritual level. And we had series on spiritual dating. Where you would build into the spirit of the other person, and they would be better Christians from a dating relationship instead of a worse Christian. So that you kids will remember that there's always three people on a date. A fellow on the girl in the front seat, and the Lord in the back seat. And as long as you remember the Lord's in the back seat, there'll be no problems. But when you forget the Lord's in the back seat, then you want to be careful about what goes on in the front seat of that car. And, you know, we just need to constantly be aware of God's presence. The things that we say. The things that we listen to. And all of that can be so different. The things we do in our home. You know, we just have an awareness. And we need to have that awareness of His presence. And you can get it through memorizing scriptures. And when you have that, you have the fear of the Lord. So you can't just use a concordance and just get all the verses on the fear of the Lord. Because you need verses that explain the fear of the Lord. You know, God's presence. That can be one of the first verses. You know, Jesus loves me. Says, Thou God, please save me. The little child. What assurance the little child has. We turn off the light, and God's right here. That's how we got our kids. Turn on the light. Why? It's dark. Why is she afraid of the dark? You know, we knew it. Boom. Or anything like that. Why was she afraid of the dark? And then we told her, you know, God can see in the dark. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, He can see in the dark. And so if God can see in the dark, we can leave the light off. And we just satisfied her. So you work on building the fear of the Lord in a child. And when a child grows up and fears the Lord, they're going to hate what? Pride and arrogancy. And the evil way and the forward mouth and so on. They'll hate what God sees. Look at Proverbs 11.2. This is, when pride cometh, then comes what? What follows pride? A thought. Well, what does it say here? Shame. Shame. You ever seen a teenager? You ever watch kids come up to your club and then become teens and decide that they'll make the decision and they'll run their lives and they'll do what they want to. They'll date who they want to date. They'll go where they want to go. They'll do what they want to do. And what comes? Shame. Because they're running their lives now. And shame will come. Just like Scripture says. But with the lowly, it's what? Not shame. What? They're the ones that see, like God sees. They understand, like God understands. Because they're seeking His mind. Not their own mind. Because you know there's a Scripture that says there's a way that feels so right in the man. It just feels so right, but what? It's the ways of the old life, death. It just seems so right. So right. Look at Proverbs. Let's look at Proverbs 13, 10. This is a strong verse. Have you ever had contention?