In this sermon, the speaker shares a personal experience of how he was inspired by his teacher to consider becoming a minister. He initially felt unsure and unprepared, but when he was called upon to preach, he found himself speaking with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The speaker also mentions a surprising encounter with a song leader who taught him the power of body language in leading worship. The sermon emphasizes the transformative power of God's inspiration and the unexpected ways in which He can work in our lives.

Just let's have a word of prayer, shall we? We thank you, dear Lord, for your great love for each one of us. In a world today where life is so cheap, each one of us matters to you. We praise you that the Lord Jesus died for each one of us personally, and he calls us to walk the Calvary road, that in so doing we may find the secret of life, the blessing of God in our hearts, and the reality of what it means to be a Christian. Lord, for all you have said to us tonight already, in song, in music, and in the singing of hymns, in the sense of thine earnest, we do praise you, and now we pray that as we turn to the word, and as we listen to it, that thou wilt speak to our hearts. May we see far beyond a preacher, and hear far beyond a human voice, and tonight may we see Jesus, and respond with all our hearts' love, because he gave all for us. May we tonight give all to him. We ask it for his name's sake. Amen. Good evening, everyone. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's good to be here again tonight. It's terrifically hot. I don't know what I do feel. I don't know if this is normal for this part of the world, but it's really, you don't need to lay it on like this, because I can believe it without experiencing it all. I remember last time I was to Adelaide, I saw some fantastic things, and one of them was, we had heat like this, went on day after day after day, and then one night we had a, not a rainstorm, but a storm of mud, and it simply poured on us, all sorts of mud and dirt from the skies. I didn't know you could do that, to turn out that in Adelaide, that's tremendous, but it made everybody's shirt very dirty, I remember. It was hard lands in the choir. So we're waiting for your mudstorm, and the sooner it comes, the better. Meanwhile I hope you're all watching with, may I say, real interest, the world-shaking events at Sydney, and the cliff-hanging experiences. I don't think I'm going to sleep too well tonight. It'll all be over tomorrow morning, one way or the other. Well, as from tomorrow night, we go to Flinders Street in the city, the Baptist church, and I believe that God would have me bring a series of messages, which will have a connecting link, on the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian. I think that that subject is very much needed today, and perhaps one that is very much misunderstood. So would you come prayerfully, expecting that God will speak to us night by night? I'm so glad the choir are going to be with us each evening, and we're not having a sort of regular hymn, prayer hymn sort of thing, but we're having singing and music, and then the message. I just ask you to pray that God may speak, as we move into the centre of the city, that we may really have numbers far exceeding our expectation. I've always heard that Adelaide's a difficult spot to get a crowd. Well, may the Lord can do that for us, and you come in praying and believing that he will meet with us. Now will you turn in your Bible tonight to the Epistle to the Romans, just a short portion, Romans chapter 14, verses 7 through 9. Romans 14, 7 through 9. I'm reading it from the King James Authorised Version. None of us liveth to himself, no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord, and whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died and rose and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. If there ever comes a time, I very much doubted myself, but if there comes a time when the history of the 20th century is written, I think it will measure upon the amazing collapse of democracy. When this century dawned, I wasn't here at the time, believe it or not, but when this century dawned, I'm told, that the system of government called democracy was regarded as that which would bring in a sort of millennium. The government of the people, for the people, by the people. Nowadays, any country which is practising that kind of government has its back to the wall. And new countries emerging in Africa, in many different continents, are discovering that there's got to be a different principle altogether to that. The thing that has brought that about, interestingly enough, is another phenomenon of this century which didn't exist when it all began, and that is communism. One of the earliest leaders of the communist regime in Russia, Lenin, said this, that it is the most absurd folly to believe that the transition from capitalism to socialism can ever be achieved apart from dictatorship. Do you get the thrust of that? That the shift, the transition between capitalism and socialism can't take place without dictatorship. And he's dead right. And you know, the very interesting thing to me is that Christianity has, at its heart, the principle of dictatorship. Not the Belsen camp type of thing, of course, but it begins with the statement that Jesus Christ is Lord of the dead and of the living. And to this end he died and rose that he might be Lord. And this is the whole principle of the Christian life. And that which makes it individually such a thrilling experience. Now, you know, it isn't very long before we discover that in many areas we must have a master. Every ship has to have a captain, and at sea his authority is undisputed. Every plane has a captain, and in the course of its flight he is in control. Every home has to have a head, and every Christian has to acknowledge the lordship of Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, the reason for our failure, our pathetic failure as Christians, is the strange belief that somehow or other we can get away with a kind of religion which pays Jesus Christ a sort of lip service on Sunday and then more or less forgets about him for the rest of the week. And the result of all that, merely playing church, is defeat and misery and failure. I remember some time ago I had a small car. It was eight horsepower, the kind of car I don't get into, I put it on. You know the sort I mean? I wrapped myself round it. Well, I was quite friendly with this car. It was quite a nice little vehicle, really. I bought it quite cheaply. It was eight horsepower, but I think before I bought it four of the horses were died. I only paid about thirty pounds for it, that's about sixty dollars. It did very well, but it was very bad in cold weather. I could never get it to start. The self-starter never would work. Battery wouldn't turn. So anticipating such emergencies, the manufacturers of this vehicle provided every owner with a colossal, long starting handle, a great long thing. And the idea was, you see, that you got hold of this starting handle and you went round to the front of the car and you stuck it into the engine. It went in quite a long way and then you cranked it up. But the unfortunate thing was this, that on the dashboard there was a little thing you pulled out that had written on it, choke. So you had to pull this out, you see. It wouldn't stay out, of course, you had to pull it out. Well, if you had this choke pulled out and the self-starter worked, well, that was fine. But I never have understood how the manufacturers of that vehicle expected anybody to hold the choke out with one hand and go round to the front of the car and crank it with the other. You get me, apparently. Yes. Well, you see, that was my problem. And that often happened. So the only thing to do on such an occasion was to call for my wife. And I got her to come and I said, now, would you mind just sitting in this driving seat and holding out the choke while I get round to the front here and crank it up? Well, she did that. And after some, several cranks and some hard work on a cold day, eventually those four house horses sort of startled themselves into activity and life with quite a considerable noise. Well, having accomplished that, of course, I went round to the driving seat and then I said to my wife, now, thank you very much, that's all, you can go back to the washing. Because it would have been absolutely ridiculous, wouldn't it? Supposing I'd said to her, now, when we go out this morning, would you mind just keeping your hand on that choke and I'll put my foot on the accelerator and you put a foot on the brake and I'll have a hand on the steering wheel and you put a hand on the handbrake, in about ten yards we'd be in the nearest ditch. The only secret of that vehicle going satisfactorily along the road was having one person in control. Now that's the only secret of life, really, when you've got the right person in control. And what I want to do very simply tonight is to talk to you about your relationship to Jesus Christ. Because that's what Christianity is all about. It's not your attachment to a church or a denomination or anything like that, it's your personal relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ. And may I ask you, right away, what place does he have in your life? Honestly, is he first? Or second? Or third? Or one of the also-rans? Or is he had no place at all? What position, when the chips are down, I mean, when you look at the thing and think of it realistically in your life, what place does Jesus Christ hold? Well, now, he demands the place of lordship. And, of course, you might have every right to say, what is his claim for sovereignty? I find people are willing to dedicate themselves, to give themselves a service, to consecrate themselves, but they're not willing, not willing to surrender their little kingdom. Everyone, even though he gets right the way down to some skid row, he's still a king in his own right. And he refuses to give up the throne, and he runs his own life. He likes to be the boss. Now, of course, this is the trouble in the whole world today. I have two daughters. One of them is on the mission field in Africa, and the other one is studying teacher training in Manchester in England. One is 30 years old, and the other 20. She's a post-it. And I remember so well how this daughter of mine, who is now 30, when she was about nine years old, and we were living in Richmond in London, she had a date every morning with a boyfriend who lived next door. She was eight, he was nine. It was getting quite serious, and developing very happily, and I'm simply recounting to you the incident which brought the whole thing to a screeching halt. She went out that day to meet him, as usual, at 8.30. And she got onto the gate at our garden, and I could tell that she was expecting his arrival. But he didn't deign to appear until about nine. And I could see that she was getting quite annoyed with him. I knew that from her back. You can always tell what a girl's thinking about when you see her back. There's something about it that conveys the impression, you know, that she's really getting a little irritated. And I could see that she was getting thoroughly vexed. So he came along at nine. Technically, it didn't really matter what time he turned up. And so he got up on this gate beside her, and I was watching out of the window, and I saw her just take her elbow and give him a terrific push. Well, he slipped and fell off the gate onto the back of his head. Well, no Englishman takes that from a girl lying down. So he got up, and to this day I can remember the sound of the tremendous crack as he smacked her face good and hard. But what staggered me was to see the reaction of my daughter. She was always one of the placid variety, the sort of calm, cool type. Goodness, she got hold of that fellow with both her hands round the neck and shook him like a rat. They both fell off the gate. And about two minutes later, I had to go and rescue him because he was having a terrible time with nails and teeth and all the rest that a girl uses in such emergencies. And when I got it all cooled down and went back into the dining room, I said to myself, what on earth caused all that? And I thought to myself, well, it's merely one little girl who that morning was in a bad mood, and a little boy who was selfish and inconsiderate, two little people with a little boiling point, both jealous of each other, both saying that it's as much right as the other to sit on that gate. And the only answer to such a predicament is a stand-up fight. Now, please don't think me childish, childlike if you like, but not childish. When I tell you that sort of thing is at the root of the situation in Vietnam, it's at the cause of the queue or line at the divorce court, it's at the back of unhappy marriages, broken homes, it's the reason for all the breakdown in human relationships, this little god-self which is always wanting its own way. Now, when you have hundreds of millions of people all wanting their own way, you're bound to have a clash. Now, the only answer to that is for the world to submit to the lordship of Jesus. For when he is lord of our lives, and we have a common lord and one master, then we enjoy the thrill of his life and power every day. But on what basis does he claim sovereignty? Well, I'd simply say this to you, that regardless of what you and I may think, God has put Jesus on the throne, he is lord. Psalm 110 says, the Lord said unto my lord, sit thou on my right hand until I make all thine enemies thy footstool. The writer to the Hebrews says, God has spoken in these last days to us in his son, who being the brightness of his glory, the express image of his person, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of God. The Lord Jesus Christ is on the throne. And he has that position because he has the right to it. Remember that wonderful passage in the Philippian letter where Paul says about Jesus, he counted not a thing to be grasped after being equal with God, made himself of no reputation, took upon him the form of a servant made in the likeness of man, humbled himself, and was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, wherefore God hath highly exalted him. Give him a name that is above every name, that the name of Jesus every knee should bow. So this Jesus Christ, this Lord is on the throne, and he has won the right to sovereignty and lordship because he came down here and lived the kind of life that God intends all of us to live, but we'd all fail to live it, a life of absolute obedience and absolute submission to him. And in response to that obedience, God took that kind of life up to heaven and raised it from the throne. It was impossible for him to stay dead. God has made that same Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ, says Peter. Now while we don't say so in so many words, most of us say, we don't want this man to reign over us. God has got no problem with the world. We think it's a very dreadful place, it is really, but God has no problem with it, because Jesus said to his disciples, be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. God has got no problem with the devil, for at the cross Jesus stripped from himself principalities and powers and made a sure man of many. No problem. He's only got one problem, and his problem is this, it's to make Christian people who profess to be Christians, to be followers of the Lord, to live the way he intends us to live, in submission to his authority. If your faith doesn't lead to submission to the authority of Jesus, it's invalid in terms of the New Testament. Let me illustrate just this in experience these days. I come from England as you know, and you know that we have a very strange form of government in Britain. We call it, and it sounds wonderful, a constitutional monarchy. Now in practice it's a very wonderful thing, I'll tell you what it is, it's very peculiar really, actually of course you're all part of it too. But on June the 2nd 1953, the present Queen Elizabeth was crowned Queen in Westminster Abbey. I never forget the day, I was watching the ceremony on TV from the home of Mr. Lindsay Glegg, a well-known evangelist and layman in England. And it was the day that was chosen by the weather prophets as likely to be the sunniest, the warmest, the finest day in the whole year. Actually it never stopped raining from daylight to midnight, poured all day long. Well I remember on TV to this day seeing that girl, that's all she was, she was just about 22 or something at the time, sitting on a throne in Westminster Abbey without a crown. And there were 5,000 people in that historic building which has witnessed the coronation of kings and queens for centuries. And the moment came in the service when the Archbishop of Canterbury, representing the church, turned to that whole crowd and said, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you your rightful sovereign, Elizabeth. Are you willing to pay her homage? And one word echoed through that abbey that day, I, and in response to the unanimous consent of the Commonwealth, in which we were all represented, the Archbishop turned and placed the crown on her head. And everybody stood up and shouted three times, God save the Queen. It was quite a moment, sent heckles up your back. But listen, I'm not getting into any secrets, I'm telling you what you already know. Not from that day until this, that's 17 years and more, has she made one decision. Ted Heath and company do all that, for better or worse. They made the decisions. Now listen, honestly, don't you think it would take an Englishman to think up a situation like that? I mean, really, seriously, when we have a Queen on the throne, monarch, sovereign, lady, whom we all love, and for whom we pray, because we know she's a Christian. Billy Graham goes and has lunch with her every time he's in London, and often tells me about conversations with her, and she speaks to him of family prayer, and how to arrange it in her home and life, and often speaks about the Lord. Unquestionably a Christian woman. But never has she made one decision from that day to this. And we have a Queen on the throne and a government over here who make the decisions. And all she does, poor girl, is sign on the dotted line. Everything she, that they bring, she has to sign it. That's all. That's what we call a constitutional monarchy. We like it that way, but then of course we're peculiar people. You know, but it sounds a good thing. That's democracy. That's a constitutional monarchy. But listen, the thing that concerns me is the mass of people in our churches who are carrying out that sort of experience into Christian living. If I said to you, which I can't do, but if I could, I would, say to each one of you, listen, is Jesus Christ your Lord? You would say to me, well, don't be so stupid. What do you think I'd be here on a hot night like this for? He wasn't. Of course he isn't. All right. I would come back at you, lovingly, I hope, but firmly, and I would say just this. All right. He's Lord. Well, tell me, who makes the decisions? I mean, who chooses your friends? Who chooses your life partner? Who chooses the books you read? The places you go? The way you spend your money? Who chooses? Who makes the decisions? I mean, really, who is at the centre of you? Let me tell you that God will not be a rubber stamp to anybody. He won't sign on a dotted line. He demands a position of absolute sovereignty, because he has a right to it, over all of our lives, and yet we dispute that tooth and nail. Oh, but you say to me, what are the implications of this in my life? Well, supposing Jesus Christ is Lord, what does it mean in personal experience? Well, it means, obviously, absolute submission. My will is not my own until I make it thine. This means submission to the sovereignty of Christ. Of course, this is not once and for all. Can you look back to the day of your conversion? Maybe you can't. Maybe you haven't yet been converted. I don't know. Maybe you can't remember. Well, I can, because I was there at the time when it happened. I remember the time, the day, the place, where it was. And as I look back on that day, I don't think I have ever had such a spiritual moment in my life. Forty years ago now, I don't think I have. Because when Jesus Christ came into my life, I had no reservations. I just needed him so desperately. And I said, Lord, you've got to come in and take over and put my life right and clean it up. There were no reservations, no hesitancy. I knew I needed him. And at that moment, he was Lord. But in less than six months, I'd started to kick. I started to rebel. I'd started to say no and to argue with him and to dispute his right. And Jesus Christ ceased to be Lord. Oh, he didn't go out of my life, but I put him on the shelf. I didn't want him to interfere. I wanted my own way. And he ceased to be Lord. And at that moment, I ceased to enjoy his presence and the reality and the communion and the wonder of knowing God. Nothing made sense after that for years until that sovereignty was re-established. So you see, there's no end to this. You remember the statement made by the angel to the Virgin Mary concerning the birth of Christ? He said to her, of his kingdom, there shall be no end. And what is true prophetically is true experimentally. There's no end to the sovereignty of Jesus. Every day, right till we get to heaven, he is demanding his own way in every situation. Now, I'm not asking you what the position was five years ago or ten years ago, but what is it tonight? This night in 1971, is Jesus Christ in command or isn't he? You know the answer to that question. I don't. But is he? Is he Lord? Has there been absolute submission to him without reservation? But then it also means not only submission, but that submission leads to obedience. One of the questions which our Lord asked and which personally I've never been able to answer to my satisfaction is this. Why do you call me Lord and don't do what I tell you? Now, I have no answer to that question. Why do I call him Lord and yet refuse to do what he tells me? I don't know. I don't obey him in order to get converted, but I obey him as an evidence that I am converted. And the evidence that I am saved, that I know him personally, is the desire in my heart to obey him at all costs. This is New Testament Christianity. This is the reality of the headship of Jesus Christ. Now, are you obeying him in your life every day? You have a perfect right to choose your master. He never forces his sovereignty upon any of us, never forces himself into our lives. Perfect right for us to choose. That's for us to do. But once you choose, what you haven't any right to do, what I've no right to do, is to wear the uniform of one master and do the bidding of another. That's an ugly word, describes that sort of person, and there's nothing worse than a hypocrite. Especially a religious one, who wears the uniform of a Christian, who gives the appearance on Sundays that he belongs to the Lord, but all through the week he's doing the bidding of the enemy. Now, are you obeying? Whom are you obeying? Lord Jesus or someone else? I have a perfect right to choose my own master, but if I choose Christ, then this means obedience to him every day of my life. Submission, obedience. And one other thing, this means ownership. Ownership. You are not your own, you are bought with a price, says Paul in writing to the church in Corinth. You belong to him. That's a tremendous thing, that you and I belong to the Lord Jesus. We belong to somebody. He possesses us and owns us. We are not our own. We are bought with a price. Have you ever surveyed in your mind, or better still on paper, the areas of your life which have been yielded to him and which you acknowledge don't belong to you? Have you surrendered him to your business, your home, your family, your money, your friendships, your recreation, your habits, your reading? You don't belong to yourself anymore. If you're a Christian, you belong to him. And everything you have belongs to him, and all you are belongs to him. Have you acknowledged his right to all you possess? You belong to the Lord Jesus. Now, what about your relationship, I again, I ask, to the Lord Jesus Christ? I would hasten to say, in case you think this terribly hard and tough, that he wants to establish his rule in your heart, in your interest. He knows it's in your own interest, and for your own blessing, and for your own happiness, for him to be Lord. It's very interesting that the 14th chapter of Genesis contains the first record in history of warfare, war, in the plural. It also contains the first record of kings, in the plural. And that's the story of human history. Kings, in the plural, war. Always, all throughout history. And that is the story of Christian living. When you have several people trying to learn your life, you have conflict, and warfare, and defeat within, until Jesus Christ is established as Lord, undisputed Master. There's no peace. There's constant battle, and warfare, and struggle, and unrest. Is he disputed Lord? Well, this disputed Lord demands absolute loyalty, in acknowledging that we are not our own. We are bought with a price. One of the greatest preachers in Britain of a generation ago was Dr. F.B. Meyer, a Baptist preacher of some years ago. One year he spoke at Keswick, Keswick Convention in England, and he was a wonderful man. He never preached at people. He just shared his heart and opened his heart to them as he talked to them about Jesus, who was so real to him. And one year I'm told that at Keswick he gave his testimony, which really brought tears to everybody's eyes. He said, you know, for three years there's been a sin in my life of which I've been ashamed. I'm minister of a church in London. But he said, three years ago I allowed something to come in which I knew was wrong, but I didn't think it would affect anybody else. It was between me and God. But soon I began to discover that it was coming between me and my people. Every time I preached, this thing came to my mind. It stood in the way, and there was no blessing. And congregations got smaller, and people dwindled away. Nothing was happening. No interest. And every time I prayed, this thing came before me. And every time I tried to read my Bible, over and over again, the Lord Jesus spoke to me about this thing. And I wouldn't give in. I was stubborn. And he said, a week ago, I came up to Keswick absolutely desperate. And I went up to the mountain like Jacob, and I went and wrestled all night with God. And I said to him, Lord, you've had the key to every part of my life, and every key except one. And I can't stand this battle anymore, this defeat, this misery, this failure in preaching and ministry. Lord, take this last key. And you know, he said, said Dr. Miles, and his face glowed, they tell me, when he said it. He said, you know what the Lord Jesus did? He never took that key. What he did do was, he took the door out. And ever since then, he put in a window. And ever since then, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ has shone into my heart. Lord, take the last key. Have you ever said that to a client? Signing off, completely. Every door open to him. No door in your room, no apartment in your hut, no section marked reserved, nothing closed. The Lord is free to move through your whole life. Have you ever taken that stand before Jesus? And is that the position as far as he's concerned now? Or do you shut him out? Do you try to lock the door? What about your thought life? Your sex life? Is he master, Lord, of this, the most sacred party of personality? Or is it a playground for the dead? Is he Lord, or have you locked the door? And what goes on there is nobody's business, but it's your business and God's business. He's not Lord. And that door is locked tight and barred to him. And Jesus wants you to recognise that this Christian life is acknowledging his Lordship, which means submission, obedience and ownership, that you belong to him and that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. What kind of traffic is going on in your body? The temple of God, it belongs to them. He owns it and he wants to live in it and dwell in it and control it. And you cannot have a holy life unless you have a holy body. Is he Lord? But let me say one more thing here. That isn't the end, it's only the beginning. And how does this work out and how is it applied in your life? I think most of us fail to understand this simple thing. That in crowning Christ as Lord and opening every door of our lives to him, we admit and make room for the incoming of the Holy Spirit. For, says the scripture, God has given the Holy Spirit to them that ask him, to them that obey him. And you can't live your Christian life apart from him. Matter of fact, he's the only one who can live the Christian life. God expects, do you know what God expects from you? I can tell you, from every one of you, God expects nothing from you but total failure. As far as heaven is concerned, we're a complete write-off, absolutely helpless. But he's given us the Holy Spirit that we need not fail. Not that we cannot fail, but we need not fail. Never impossible for a Christian to sin, but always possible for him not to sin. Always possible. So he's given us the Holy Spirit to live in us, to reproduce the life of Christ, to apply the Lordship of Jesus every day of my life. And you see, it works this way. When thoughts and temptation attack like a flood and you've no time to pray and you've no time to do anything except to say, Lord Jesus, I hand over to you, I get out of the way and I let you in and you move over and you come in and you deal with this. For the battle is not mine but yours. Well, he begins to work on my behalf. Oh yes, this is what Hudson Taylor called the exchange life in which it is not I who fight the battle but God in me. It's not what I do for him, it's what he does in and through each one of us here this evening that counts. And he can do nothing until he gets sovereign control and right to rule and right to live until we make room for the Spirit of God every day. And he always comes into the life that he's absolutely surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And therefore in absolute weakness and the knowledge that I just can't of myself, I can establish the Lordship and sovereignty of Christ in every situation and the power of his Spirit in my heart every day. Now, is he Lord? And is that life of Lordship being applied by the indwelling Spirit of God in every situation? I wonder. I think in my mind of a little place on the southeast coast of England which was in the days of World War II. And you can read this story in Winston Churchill's war memoirs. Quite an exercise to read then but very illuminating. In that volume we call Our Finest Hour, he tells there of an incident which occurred in an air base in a little town in southeast England called Ramsgate. And one evening if you'd gone there during the Battle of Britain, you'd have found six pilots and six gunners, twelve men, drinking coffee, smoking heavily. And outside on the tarmac, half a dozen planes. If you looked at those planes you'd said to yourself, well they aren't fit to go in the air. For as all that was left, nothing left, nothing in reserve, the whole of a squadron had gone. Except for that six planes and these twelve men. They hadn't had their clothes off for two weeks. They were exhausted, dead beat, drinking strong black coffee to keep them awake. Suddenly a message came from air force headquarters in London. Enemy approaching across channel. Estimated strength 500. Immediately those men put out their cigarettes, left their coffee and made a dash for the planes. And one of them, one of them on the way had just time to stop and say message received and understood. And in less than half a minute they were all in the air. Six planes to tattle 500. It was total war. Absolute war, unconditional war to an end. And there was no possibility of armistice. Everything depended upon their complete obedience and that obedience was taken for granted. Taken for granted. They never supposed at the headquarters these men wouldn't dare to go. They weren't. My friend, you and I, if we're Christians, are engaged in total war. And that war will continue until Jesus Christ comes again. And there were no armistice, no let up. It'll get harder and tougher as the days go by and the coming of the Lord draws near. And every man who owns the name of Jesus will have to be stand up and be counted. And known as someone who isn't prepared to be with it, who's prepared to take his stand for Christ, against things that are utterly, utterly wrong in the world today. This is absolutely impossible unless you and I know the secret of the Lordship of Christ and the sovereign rule of the Spirit of God in our land. If you do, I tell you, you can face the world with your head lifted high, with the joy of the Lord in your heart, with a sense of victory in your life, with the assurance that you're able to overcome, and you have the secret of living in the power of an indwelling Christ. Well, message received and understood? Message received and understood. Obedience taken for granted. Right Lord, I'm ready for anything. In your power. Can't, by my own strength, but I can in yours. I don't want to be any more a church member, merely. Merely a nominal Christian, merely an adherent to a denomination. Lord Jesus, make me a tool, an instrument whom you can use for your glory in these days to bring men and women to Christ. That's what he wants of us, that we may live unashamed as those who belong to him. And I tell you, when you start living like that, well, the fun starts. You find yourself in a battle before you know where you are. But people realize at last they've met someone who's living a reality. I close with just this simple illustration to show you what I mean. Before I left England, I had a few days holiday in Scotland. And I was walking alongside a Scottish loch, a lake it is, they call it a loch there. And it had a sea entrance. It was an ocean-going loch. And I walked alongside it, and as I walked alongside that road, I saw a man in the middle of it fishing. He was up to his neck in water, letting out a line. Pulling it in, letting it out, pulling it in. And as he pulled it in, it bent double. And I saw that line quiver, and then he let it up. But he pulled it in again, bending it double. As it quivered, and then out it went again another 50 yards. And then he began to pull it, pull it, pull it, pull it, pull it. And then out it went. And I was fascinated at this. I didn't know what he was doing. So I said, excuse me, sir, I shouted to him. What are you doing to that fish? I presumed he had a fish on his line. That's why he was shaking so much. So without looking at me, but continuing doing this, he said, I'm drowning it. Drowning it. What does he think I am? Drowning a fish? The thing's impossible. I didn't say anything, but I thought, well, no. And he said, he stopped. He began all this again. He said, you didn't look like that. He said, I am. He said, I've got a salmon on that line, and it's that long. I didn't stay, because I didn't have time. But knowing fishermen, I would put it at that size. But nevertheless, it was a mighty big fish, because it was making his line shake, quiver so much. He said, I've got it in a line. And he said, you know, what I'm doing is I'm playing with it. Playing with it. And he said, when I get it thoroughly tied out, I'll turn its head downstream, and water will get in its gills, and it'll drown. And then I can pull it in. If I pull it in right now, it will snap my line, and it'll go off with my line, and hook, and bait, and everything. Ah, but he said, when I've got it exhausted, when it's weary, when it's tired, then I'll just turn its head downstream, and it'll hide it. I didn't believe his story for a while. But I thought, I was very impressed. I thought I'd like to find out. So I went into the village. Then I saw there was a shop which had books on fishing, but I didn't want to buy a book. I've come from Scotland. So I thought I'd go to the public library, where I could see one for nothing. And sure enough, I got a book and read it there, a chapter on that part of the world, fishing at that season of the year. Ocean-going salmon swim against the tide for the spawning season, and come in to the locks. And the live salmon swims against the stream. And if you want to drown them, if you want to catch them, you've got to drown them. And you drown them by turning their head down, and getting them to go with the current. Now know if I say nothing more to this crowd than this one thing tonight, that trouble with many of you here is the devil that has you on the hook. And trying to make you serve two masters, and he's got you going downstream, and he's playing with you. Playing with you, tiring you out, saying it's okay, situational ethics, premarital sex, all the rest, okay, everybody does it. And he's playing with you, dragging you along until he's got you thoroughly weary, downstream, and then he drowns you. And that's the end. That's the end. He's won the battle. I tell you, it takes a man with all the power of God in his life to stand against the stream today. I don't mean that a Christian is negative, but he's against something. He's against principalities, against powers, against spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places. It's a spiritual battle, and he's fighting a warfare against them. And I tell you, it takes a man with all the power of God, the fullness of the Spirit, to swim against the current. Any fool can go downstream. Anybody can do what everybody else does. It takes no spiritual guts to do that. And that's the whole trouble. Satan has got people, young people, including professing Christians, on his hook, and he's playing with them and driving them. How many people really dare to stand for God today? In your school, university, college, and be against the stream, and live in the power of the risen Lord. It's those kind of people that they could turn the tide of history. And this country, which has never seen spiritual revival, can see it yet. And maybe that's the only hope for Australia, as it is for Britain today. Well, don't you want to be part of that? Let Jesus Christ be your Lord. Let's pray. Now I'll give you just a moment to give your answer to him. What place has he in your life? Is he sovereign? Has he had his coronation day in your heart? If he hasn't, give it to him now. You step right off the throne, which you have occupied for years, and ask him to take his rightful place in your life, which he purchased at Calvary, and which you've denied him. Let him be Lord of every thought and action. Let him be Lord of your heart. Just a moment of prayer. O Lord Jesus, please, by the power of thy Spirit, bring such conviction upon our hearts that it is absolutely impossible for us to leave this building without encountering the living Christ, without a personal encounter and a personal commitment to the sovereignty of Jesus in our hearts. Do save us from this trifling with Christianity, this playing with it all. Help us to understand that the enemy of souls is just playing with us and dragging us down and making us not care. But O God, we want to get off that hook tonight and want to swim against the stream in the power of the risen Christ by whose strength alone we can do this. So Lord, we would yield to thee that we may know thy strength in our hearts and we would make room in our hearts for thy Holy Spirit that he may be Lord of all of us. We ask it for thy name's sake. Amen.