In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of keeping our bodies healthy in a sinful world. He starts by telling a story about a gingerbread boy who runs away, illustrating the idea that if we rely solely on temporary pleasures, we will eventually run out. The preacher then shifts to discussing the spiritual aspect of health and how Satan seeks to destroy our bodies. He emphasizes the need to take care of our bodies as they are instruments for serving God and interpreting heavenly truth. The sermon concludes with the reminder to present our bodies as living sacrifices to God.

Isn't that a great chorus? Zezus kenia duhun hesaha. You should hear some of the Chippewans sing that. That's a blessing. Do you know why the Lord blesses you and titillates your emotions? It isn't that those emotions are a valid basis to stand on, to keep the world behind you and the cross before you. But the blessings of your emotions and the thrilling of your bodily senses are to enable you and help you and to crystallize in your thinking your decision to stand upon truth and principle that will be a basis to keep the world behind you and the cross before you. If we keep the emotions that God has given us in the right perspective, they'll always be a blessing. They'll be like icing on top of a cake. But if we take them and stand on them and use them as a basis, then you won't stand. I mean, we can feel how wonderful, just keep the world behind us and the cross before us. But if that's all we have to go on, it'll run out, just like you can't live on icing. But the principles and the truths of God, when we make our choice to stand on them and then we let the emotions give us the joy and the hallelujah, then we will with joy keep the world behind us and the cross before us. This morning, the title of our study is The Missionary and His Health. Now, I don't really intend to talk about getting healed, although we will touch on that. The lecture is more along the line of keeping healthy. From the spiritual standpoint, now I'm not a nurse like Joanne, and I really don't even know what a calorie is, you know that? I don't know, I've never seen one, I don't think. I wouldn't know one if I saw one. But I do know when I enjoy my food. And when somebody says how many calories it has, all I know is how it tastes and how it feels. But I'm not going to be talking about the nutritious value of food, different foods and how we should arrange our diet, but I'm going to talk about what a missionary can do from a spiritual standpoint to keep healthy on the field. And I want to read you the scripture this morning in 1 Corinthians 11, and verse 23 to verse 31. For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread. And when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, This is my body which is for you, or broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim or evangelize, euangelion in the Greek, you evangelize the Lord's death until He comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and the blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and sick and some have already died. Shall we have a word of prayer? Our Father, as we turn our minds to what your idea is about keeping our bodies in a sinful world where men are defiling their bodies, we ask for your help. We are ordinary human beings and we ask to quicken our mental processes and the ability to make decisions and choices that are going to keep us going through the years of service that you've given us. Bless each one here. Draw near unto us with thy spirit. For Jesus' sake, amen. I want to read you the lesson this morning. Once there was a little old man and a little old woman. And they lived in a little old house. And the old woman made gingerbread cakes. One day she made a cake in the shape of a boy. She put it in the oven to bake. When she opened the oven door, out jumped the gingerbread boy and he ran away. The old man ran after him, but he couldn't catch him. The gingerbread boy met a big man on the road. He said, I have run away from that little old man and little old woman and I can run away from you too. The big man ran after him, but he couldn't catch him. The gingerbread boy met a cow and he said, I have run away from the little old man and the big man and I can run away from you too. Yes, I can. And the cow ran after him, but she couldn't catch him. Soon the gingerbread boy met a dog. He said, I have run away from that little old woman, from that big man and from a cow. And I can run away from you too. Yes, I can. Then the dog ran after him and the dog ran very fast and the dog caught the gingerbread boy. And he began to eat him. And the gingerbread boy said, Oh dear, my legs are gone. Oh dear, my arms are gone. Oh dear, my body's gone. Oh dear, I'm all gone. And the gingerbread boy never spoke again. The first mistake the gingerbread boy made was to remember, was to forget that he was made out of edible material, something that could be consumed. The second mistake he made was to run away from his maker in rebellion. The third mistake he made was to glory in his own strength and to stand on that strength alone. And the last mistake he made was to think he could run away and overcome in his own strength, all things, all the time. And a logical scripture that would really fit this story of the gingerbread boy would be, beware of dogs. The Bible says that the dust is the serpent's meat. And it also says he knoweth our frame and he remembers that we are dust. And it also says the devil goes around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And Satan is out to devour your body to the place where you will cry someday on some field, Oh dear, my hands are gone. I have misused my body to such a degree and neglected it that I have no hands left to serve Jesus Christ. My legs are gone. My body is gone. I'm all gone. Without a body, you are little use to God in the world. You do not stay in the world. The body is an instrument for interpreting heavenly truth into readable actions that souls around you can read. I am little use to God dead. I'm no use to God dead and I'm little use to God sick as a missionary. I'm not talking about those stalwart souls that God uses in affliction. I'm talking about the ordinary missionary that does need a fairly healthy body. We have an earthen vessel in which we live and that earthen vessel is intended in God's plan to be the repository of heavenly treasure. I have another verse of scripture that I want to read to you in 1 Corinthians 6. The body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord. And the Lord for the body. And verse 15. Do you not know that your bodies are the members of Christ? Now, you hear sometimes preached about the invisible church in the world. And really, I don't know what they're talking about because the Bible says that it's our bodies that are the members of Christ. Not our souls or our spirits, but our bodies. We comprise Christ's body in the world today. And it's visible. And there really isn't an invisible church other than that which is, I suppose, in the heavenlies doing warfare with the devil. But that which is on the earth is a visible, as many visible members of Christ's body, a very physical thing. And somebody says you can get too spiritual minded so you're no earthly good. And the other way around, you can get so earthly minded that you're no heavenly good. And we have to remember that the Bible puts a great deal of emphasis and a lot of weight on our human bodies. It's through these bodies that we do the work of God on the earth. So remember that it's your bodies that are members of Christ. These things that God has given us. Point one. Keeping yourself healthy. I'm not talking about getting healed, although I do believe in healing. I believe the Lord heals. I've experienced His healing. My wife and I have both. And I have, from time to time, I've experienced His quickening. But I'm talking about the spiritual principles involved with staying healthy and being able to do what is God's will for you to do. I think that God intends to give me enough strength to do His will. And anything less than that, I believe, is of the devil. And I'll reject it. Keeping yourself healthy. First of all, Psalm 73, 26, The Lord is the strength of my heart. We need that strength. You know, you want to remember, back in my introduction, I said that you are dust. And, you know, when the devil, when the Bible says the devil, the dust is the serpent's meat, he can consume you. That's just what he eats. He consumes us in our bodies. He'll take you and use some appetite to consume you. Because dust shall be the serpent's meat. And if you don't believe you're dust, all you have to do is visit a cemetery or a mausoleum. Why, even the world believes they're dust. Haven't you heard that truck driver's prayer that they sing? I don't know, maybe they don't sing it in the States. They do in Canada. Truck driver's prayer that says, And Lord, I ask you once again, before I turn to dust, let me run the wheels right off a greyhound bus. But the world believes, they know they go to dust. They even have it in their ceremonies. And so remember that you, you can be devoured. You can be eaten up. And so you need to return to your maker and not exult in your own strength. And I'll say something about that later. The Lord is the strength of my heart. And that means both spiritual and physical. I thought I had heart trouble all the time I was in my thirties on the mission field. And I was afraid I was going to die young. It was such a waste. But I just found out that I was drinking too much coffee. And there's some things like that. You have to take into account to 13 cups a day is too many. The first thing I want to say after remembering that the Lord is the strength of your heart. He is the one that's made your body and sustains your body. Is that you need to give your body back to him. Romans 12, 1 and 6, 13. Romans 12, 1 says, present your body, a living sacrifice. You see, in 1 Corinthians 13, 27, our text, our scripture for today. It says that our body is for the Lord. The Lord was for our body. It says in chapter 6 and verse 13 that our body is for the Lord. You do not own yourself. The body that you have does not belong to you. It's loaned to you. It's given to you for a certain brief period on this earth. And you need to recognize that. You need to recognize as a Christian, being blood-bought, you do not have the right to do with your body what you want to do with it. And that means either enjoying to access the appetites of the body or using your mental processes of the brain to enjoy fantasies. You do not have that right. And when you do that, you transgress the primal law of the body. The body is for the Lord. It's not meant for immorality. He's given us some wonderful appetites to enjoy, but not to misuse. All right. Now, in John 6, 52, John 6, 52, I would like to read to you. Jesus says something amazing here. The Jews were disputed among themselves. How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Now, here's another statement of eating the flesh. I referred to the fact that your flesh could be consumed by the devil. And you see it in the world. If you have anything to do with people who have misused their bodies, whether an alcoholic or a whoremonger or a person who has consumed it with drugs, you'll see it can be consumed. But here on the other side of the coin, on the good side, is the part where Jesus said that we should eat his flesh. We should partake of him. Now, that, I would like to state, is not simply just a spiritual thing. It is spiritual. But there is a way on which we can partake of the health of Jesus Christ. We can use his body for our bodies. Before I say that, I want to go back to the statement I said about the body being given to you. God has prepared a body. Jesus said that a body thou hast prepared for me. If he prepared Jesus the kind of a body that he wanted Jesus to use in the days when he was on the earth, the body that you're sitting in right now is the one he prepared for you. He suited it for your spirit. He suited it for your soul. He suited it for you to live in. Now, therefore, it becomes wrong for you to complain about the kind of a body God has given you. The first thing you need to do is thank him for your body. I thank you for the kind of body you gave me. Instead of saying, oh boy, I wish my hair was curly. And I wish it was a different color. And look at the color of my eyes. And you know, I really don't have the kind of a figure I wished I had. But rather than that, say thank you, Lord, for the kind of body you've given me. Now I want to use it to do the kind of work you had in mind when you gave me this kind of a body. Now, he'll give you the kind of a body that will suit even the mission field that you're going to. When I was in Bible school, I thought, like some of you freshmen did, that as soon as I got into Bible school, I should know the mission field I'm going to go to, the mission board I'm going to go onto, and start learning the language of that field right away. Well, Joanne pointed out that there is that waiting period in between. And you don't always know that. But when I was in Bible school with my wife, first of all, I was going to India, and then I was going to China. And of course, I was going to every mission field that every missionary described when they came. And that was all right. I got to learn a lot about a lot of different mission fields. And then towards the end, we applied to and were accepted by the Unevangelized Field Mission to go to New Guinea. And I'd read a lot about New Guinea and knew a lot of missionaries there. And then we found out New Guinea was closed to North American missionaries. They were just open to Dutch and to Australians. Unless you were with a denomination like the Christian Missionary Alliance, in which, at that time, I'd have had to have taken extra years of schooling before I could join the Alliance. So that didn't seem practical. So while we were waiting, I took linguistics. And during the same week, the Lord impressed upon my mind through missionaries from Alaska and upon my wife's mind through a radio broadcast that we should go to the North, to the Indians. And we applied to the Northern Canada Evangelical Mission, were accepted the next year. And after we were accepted, then the Unevangelized Field Mission wrote and said the door was open and we thanked the Lord how he worked just right in time. But we found out, after we'd been in the North for a number of years, that my wife's body had been so constructed that she can't perspire. And she can't stand heat. So that if she's in a warm climate and a humid climate, she just gets redder and redder and redder till I have to find a bathtub someplace or a lake and put her in and cool her off. And I've had, on furlough, through the United States, when it gets very warm here in the summer, I've had to stop beside the road and lay her down under a tree until she cooled off. Or stopped and got some paper towels that we could soak and put artificial perspiration on. Because the Lord had given her a body that really suits the North. And she just is at home up there. So you don't know what God has in mind for you. So today, why don't you begin by thanking him and being grateful for the kind of a body he's given. Because nobody else has got a body just like yours. Individual it is. Like a snowflake. And isn't that wonderful? You can say, well, be what I am. Nobody else is just like me. Nobody. And nobody has a body just like my body. And I wouldn't be surprised if some of you have not been grateful for the kind of a body you had. Wouldn't it be nice if I was six feet one inch tall and was broad-shouldered and narrow at the hip and strong of muscle and wavy hair? No, you don't. You know, there's going to be a day coming, in glory, when you can then transform your body into just what kind of a body you want. Jesus could do it with his new body. And there's going to be some great hairdos in heaven, I suppose. But begin down here by being grateful for that body. That's the starting place of having a body that you can keep healthy. I don't think the Lord is going to be happy with blessing you if you're always complaining about your body. So let's be grateful for the body he's given us. Then, in Romans 8 and 11, the Bible says that the spirit will quicken your mortal body. Now, that may have a final reference to resurrection. But it certainly does have a very present reference to the help you need. Jessie Penn Lewis, I hope you've read some of her writings. You have them here, particularly on the line of Christian warfare, and deeper life, and victory, and joy. She knew what it was to have the spirit of God quicken her mortal body every day. She said, my body is no better than a corpse. She only had half a lung towards the end of her life. And yet, with that half a lung quickened and helped by the Holy Spirit, she could mount the steps of great platforms and speak to large gatherings of people quickened in her mortal body. And particularly, when you get older, you'll know the quickening of God in your body. So he can quicken your mortal body. This body that he has prepared for you. Read Hebrews 10 and 5 and see that, hey, Jesus gave you that body. He loaned it to you and expects you to take that body, like Jesus did, to do his will. A body has now prepared for me. And Jesus said, Lo, I come to do thy will. And you can take that body all over this world to do his will. And you can say every time you come to a new situation, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God, with this body that you have given me. Now, I would like to point out a mistake that we make sometimes in regards to our human body. And the mistake is this. Trusting in your natural health. You see, you're young and your blood is flowing strong and you've got lots of energy and you say, Well, I'll be a missionary. And you go to the mission field and you get out there and the first thing you know you're flat on your back with some disease, some germs, some little bug. And you wonder, Why is it, Lord, that you let me get sick when I'm out here doing your will? And there's been hundreds of missionaries whose bodies have been planted in foreign sods because they've transgressed a simple rule in the Scripture that you cannot trust in anything that came from Adam. You see, we deny our self-life because the self-life came from Adam. And we deny many of the things in the Spirit because they came from Adam. But we have forgotten that our bodies came from Adam, too. And your body that you are sitting in this morning, the health that you have and the very molecules that make up your body came from your parents and they came back till you got to Adam. And so it's necessary that you have yourself a little prayer meeting and say, Lord, I not only am not going to trust in myself, I'm not going to trust in my natural health. I can remember the time my wife and I had a prayer meeting and we renounced, not only we had renounced the gods of our fathers and the gods of our mothers because things that are not physical are not inherited and I don't have to take sins and fears and nervous conditions that come from my parents. That represents the gods of your fathers and you can renounce them and be free of them. But then we found that we couldn't trust in health that came from our parents because the body is weakened through sin and it's about to die. So we had a prayer meeting in which we renounced the health of Adam. The normal health of the body that came through our parents and we exchanged it for his health. The healthy body of Jesus Christ that was never sick. And it says here that this man can give us his flesh to eat. And that's what that part in the communion service is all about where he says his body was broken for you. The Lord is for the body. And the body for the Lord. The blood is to cleanse us. But his body was broken for that particular physical need that we have day by day to stay healthy. So start claiming his body for your body. This became very specific in our case. My wife had to leave the mission field on one of our second and our second station because she had sugar diabetes. And the doctor said you have to leave the field. We said Lord we don't want to leave the field. We don't think you want to leave the field. So while we were out there in the bush we said you must have something in the atonement for our body. So we read this that his body was broken for you. And it was broken not that it was broken up in pieces physically but it was dispersed and broken so that you could take part of his body for part of your body. So there wasn't anybody to tell us we shouldn't do this. So we had a prayer meeting and we started taking the Lord's pancreas for my wife's pancreas. And we said we're just going to make an exchange here because if your body was broken for us this is the part we need out of your body at the moment. And we started standing on that. And the next time we went home on furlough and when she went for her checkup there wasn't anything wrong with her. Now she still watches her diet and is careful. There's always a little stake left in to remember from whence you came. But you can exchange that. A.B. Simpson learned that truth. He could hardly prepare two messages for Sunday in his weakened condition before he learned the truth of the exchanged body of the Lord Jesus. And you're going to find a body that has weaknesses in it. Maybe you feel strong now. But you get out in the Lord's work and the devil will devour natural health. Borden of Yale went to China and he was a wonderful Christian. He loved the Lord. He exuded love. But he went out there he said and one of his statements were I'm strong I have a healthy body I'm going to the mission field. And he went out there and within a year he was dead. You can't trust in natural health. The arm of flesh will fail you. You dare not trust your own. That's what the gingerbread boy did didn't he? He trusted in his strengths and ran. I can outrun an old woman and I can outrun a big man. But watch the dogs. They'll devour you. Exchange your body. Now I don't belong to the cult of the perfect body. I don't think that we should chase around the country after healers. I met a man one time when I was in Churchill. He was working on the dew line way up north of the Arctic Circle. And he was on his way through coming back. He was a Christian. I said where are you going? He said I'm going back to California to get revived. And I said well why do you have to go to California to get revived? Isn't the Lord here? Well he says down there they'll pray for your body. I said I'll pray for your body. Well he had to go to a man who was a healer. Now I don't mean that there aren't some people who God does give the gifts of healing to. And there are. And there are healing meetings that are good. But when I say I do not belong to the cult of the perfect body I mean that I do not insist that God cannot allow me to have some imperfection in my body. Something that maybe isn't like it should. Like I would rather not wear glasses. And I would wish that I wouldn't have a nervous stomach and things like that. But they don't keep me back from doing God's will. It's those things that keep me from doing His will that I'm going to deal with. Sure I would like to have a perfect body. But I don't belong to that cult that goes chasing around from healer to healer to healer so that I can be perfect. That isn't the purpose for me having a body or being on earth. The purpose for me having a body and keeping a fairly healthy body is to do God's will. Lo, I come to do thy will. And so be careful of that because that has an earthly end. It has to be more than just the healing of the body. There has to be a purpose in it. I've known people who have spent a lot of money and gone to a lot of places to get healing for their body only so they could enjoy their body. And that isn't the purpose. Certainly we enjoy our body and certainly all the pleasures of life come through the body and through the faculties of the body and the appetites of the body. But that is by the way while you're doing God's will. Then be careful in getting in bondage to things like diets. They're great but watch the bondage. That's what I'm talking about. There's no easier place to get in bondage than in the realm of the physical body. And be careful in your attitude about fasting. And I believe fasting is necessary. But fasting isn't to be used as a force to make God do what you want him to do. Fasting isn't to be used to get God over a barrel. I read one time in a book about fasting a man was saying, now if you will fast in this way you can get God to do anything you want. That scared me. Fasting gives you control over your appetites. We should deny ourselves just to show who's boss, who's in control. Not like the man that my mother tells me about who said to the bottle of liquor, I'll show you who's boss. He said, I don't have to drink you, I'll put you right there. And he looked at it and said, no sir, I don't have to drink you. And he looked at it and said, maybe you don't think I'm boss, maybe you think I can't drink you. And he said, I'll show you who's boss. I don't have to drink you, I'll put you And he looked at it maybe you I'm boss, you. And he said, drink you, And he looked at it and said, no sir, right there. And he I don't have to drink you, And he looked at it and said, drink you, And he looked at it maybe you I'll put you him. and he Then in regards to health. You need to be sensible and remember that the body does have limitations, It is a limited body, and it is an earthen vessel, and it can't do certain things. You cannot do everything that everybody else can do. So you need to be sensible in that, and you need to be sensible in regards to medicine. God did ordain medicine. There is nothing spiritual about always going without medicine. Listen, do you realize that before the pilgrims came across here, which established life to a large degree on this continent, that God gave George Fox marvelous openings in England about the medicinal quality of roots and herbs and plant life in this country, and he wrote it down. And it was that that kept the pilgrims alive during those years when they didn't have a lot of the things that they'd left over there. And so you can be wise in regards to medicine, not that you'd be in bondage to it. And I think that that word in James 5 and 16, let them be anointed with oil, that isn't the ordinary word for anoint, you know, in the Greek. There's two words for anoint. One is to pour on, but this one is to rub on, which gave it a medicinal quality. Not that there isn't the anointing too, and the spiritual value in the anointing in which we trust the Lord and the Holy Spirit's anointing, but it also has to do with taking medicine. And I don't even take an aspirin unless I take it in Jesus name or anything like that. How wonderful to do everything you do with the Lord. And when you are obliged to go to the hospital and sometimes he will put you there, maybe for chastening or maybe just to speak to somebody in there. I can remember a person saying to me, well, I would never go to the hospital. I would, I trust the Lord for my health. I said, even if the Lord wants you to go in and he had a ministry for you there, oh, he'd never give him ministry in the hospital. How can you be so sure? And so when you take medicine, take it in the Lord's name and trust him to bless it. And if you have to be under the hands of, of a doctor or a nurse, trust God to bless their hands. And remember that this whole business of maintaining health in a mortal body is to do his will. All right. And one more thing about medicine or going without medicine. There are times to go without it and times not to, it's never either or. Number two, praying for others. Now the reason I said praying for others, it's not that I'm interested here about praying for others for their health so that they can be healed. I'm talking about keeping yourself when you are praying to others. You're going to go to places where you're going to have to pray for the sick. Now those of us who have had no medical training and background, we go into the villages and there are sick people. We don't know much about medicine and if you do, you're going to have to administer it in Jesus name. A Bernard Fredman is a missionary among the Eskimos and his wife has been dispensing medicine there. Not that she knows anything about medicine and not very long ago, some sick Eskimos come in and she didn't know what medicine to give them. She prayed about it and said, Lord, I have this medicine and I don't know which one to give. And she said, show me. And she chose one and gave it to that patient in Jesus name. And when the patient got to the hospital in Churchill, the Christian doctors who were there at the time said, if you give them the other one, you'd kill them. And so you need to be trusting in the Lord, even in your administration of things like that and praying for others. In anointing, and I believe in anointing, either with medicine or with oil, and I like to keep them separate, you don't always have to have olive oil. I think I mentioned to you that we used aviation oil at one time and the Lord healed them. So the Lord didn't mind. And, uh, and we couldn't always get some oil and, uh, even some nice smelling, uh, well, cosmetics at times. Anyway, it's the thing that Lord, this by this, we're symbolizing, uh, what you do for people's healing. Then, uh, that is just by the way, but a very important point is when you are praying for sick people, be careful that you remember that usually wicked spirits are involved with illness. You see, in the old Testament tells us that fallen angels and wicked spirits decimated disease. They still do. And you need to be careful. And I was praying for some Indians one time. They were Indian Christians and they had had a bad case of the flu for a long time and they weren't getting better. So I went down to pray for them and I was careless. I was learning and I was careless. And I don't remember exactly what I said, but I said something like, uh, Satan in Jesus name, leave these people alone and depart. And I named the flu germ. I thought that the Lord had given me. And I said, I stand between you and you have to come between me to get to them. And boy, while I was praying, I was hit right in the throat and I came home and I said to my wife, I got it. And I lay in bed for three weeks till I remembered that you need to be careful that you don't stand alone and the arm of flesh will fail you. And when you stand between the living and the dead, you stand in the in local Christos in Jesus place and you stand behind to conquer and it's Jesus and you never, you alone. A good habit in praying for others in this regards, I particularly remember your children. It's a good thing to give Jesus the first chance. You know, this keeps you from being in bondage to doctors and nurses. And I just followed a nurse here. And I'm certainly not belittling the work that doctors and nurses do. But you see, I'm talking about our attitude in this and you're going to have children and you're going to be on the mission field and you're going to be way back in the boondock someplace in the bush where there is no doctor and there's no nurse. And the first thing you're going to want to do is, oh, boy, they got a fever. Let me phone the doctor or get on the radio and call out or give them a medicine. No, no, no. The first thing you do is ask the Lord about it. Give him always give him the first chance. And I can remember waking up in the middle of the night many, many times way in the bush and our children burning up with fever. And we we said, Lord, we don't know what it is. We just lay our hands on them and pray in Jesus name. And we in all the years we're in the north, we we only once had to send one of our children out with an infection. And that was something over a long period of time. We always give God the first chance. And that gives me peace when I go to the hospital. Then I don't have to be under condemnation. And the devil says, oh, you don't know how to trust the Lord. So sure, I do. I said, I asked the Lord about it and I'm here because he he said this is the way to get healed this time. Just like I said yesterday about money, the Lord doesn't always tell you to get your car on cash, he does things differently, just like he makes all our bodies different. And then he'll give you miracles when they're needed. Wonderful miracles in regards to sickness. There are sicknesses. You can't make a blanket statement about sicknesses. They come for a multitude of different reasons. In Job 33 and 19, the Lord said to one of Job's friends, I chastened man upon his bed and sickness comes because of chastening. It does. The Bible says so. Secondly, missionaries get sick because they're foolish. Missionaries and you get sick because you have particular weaknesses in your body. I have to be careful. I have a stomach that is nervous. And that's all right. I can eat just about anything, but I got to be careful about eating certain things at certain times. Like if I'm going to be under pressure and speaking, I don't want to eat a large meal or drink a lot of coffee. Then I'm going to have problems. And so those weaknesses you got to take into account. And if you ignore the weaknesses that are in that particular body God has given you, you will suffer for it and you'll be hindered in doing the Lord's work. Then weakness, then sickness comes to missionaries because of poor diet. Now, there is nothing particular spiritual about denying yourself good food. There is a case in the north of missionary, not only one missionary, but many missionaries, one in particular, who continually subjected himself and his family to a poor diet. They said they couldn't afford a good diet. They spend it on other things. And the consequence of that was that that he himself developed very poor health. And he's now got a problem is going to be with him the rest of his life simply because of poor diet. And I said to my wife and I said to the Lord and we talked it over together and said, as long as you give me enough money, we're going to buy the best food we can while we're living in the north and up there where you can't get the greens and you don't have enough sunshine. We would buy juice and and we continually asked God if he wouldn't provide us with a good table in the wilderness. And, oh, he can sure provide peace. And I can honestly say that we had a greater variety of of delicious foods away north the Arctic Circle than we do now because that had become an issue. And God has maintained health. So remember, there's nothing particular spiritual about denying yourself the normal food that your body needs. You do have a physical body. Then you must remember there are spirits of sickness. There are spirits that attack you in sickness and you have to reject that. There is sickness that comes because of sin. And holiness is needed to maintain a good and a healthy body. Then there are epidemics that I alluded to before that are perpetrated by spirits of evil in Brochet one time, the whole north coming down from one village to another with hepatitis, one after another, entire villages. And I can remember still standing in my living room and and and and praying and telling the spirits of hepatitis and yellow jaundice that they could not enter our house in Jesus name. There was no room for them there. I took my stand on the basis of him who said that if you do my will and keep my words, I'll put on, you know, wasting disease. And we took our stand against this epidemic and we weren't touched at all. That went all around us. And you can be practical in this matter of diseases and sickness. You're going to go some of you to foreign countries where there is these fascinating diseases that some aren't even listed. And you're going to need to know how you trust God to live a normal life there with a relatively healthy body. Some excesses. The body does not work well with excesses. That's where you get into trouble. It tells us to be temperate in all things. Satan desires you to either be a glutton or fasting all the time. He hates it when people are in control and live a normal life. He would like you to be a celibate or a whoremonger. He hates you to be in control of any of your appetites. He hates. He would like you either to be lazy and sleeping all the time, or he would want you to deny yourself the proper sleep so that you're going to suffer there. He hates you to be normal. Remember that. I can remember when I learned that in the mission field that, hey, we don't have to live here an abnormal life. This is God's creation and we belong to him. And we start living a normal life on that mission field. And hey, it was great. And we start enjoying it. That's and we loved our mission field in every place God has sent us. We learned to love it because we refuse to let Satan push us into one extreme or the other. Watch anger, fits of anger. Now, anger is a God given tool to be used against the devil and to be used at times against people. Jesus did. But fits of anger are wrong, where anger is out of control, where you're in excess. Galatians 520 tells us that fits of anger and it says fits of anger in the Greek is one of the works of the flesh. And Ephesians 426 says that you shouldn't let the sun go down on your wrath. That means you shouldn't hold a grudge when you hold a grudge. Now, watch it, particularly in Bible school against another student, against a faculty member, that when you hold a grudge, when you allow a disapproval or disagreement to grow, you make a resting place for the devil. The Bible says, don't let the sun go down on your wrath and make place to the devil. Give place to the devil. I come from a background of a family who have carried grudges for years and years and years and years. My grandfather and my grandmother didn't speak to each other for the last 15 years of their life. They lived in the same house, but they never spoke to each other. If my grandmother wanted to find out something that my grandfather wanted, she'd tell the kids, go and ask your grandfather. And my grandmother, when she wanted to give some words, she would go and sit outside. And those were the days and I'm not kidding. Those were the days when they had the little houses behind the house in the path. And she would sit in there and talk in a loud voice. And the kids would go out and listen. And that's how they got communication from my grandmother. And say, you can sense that they didn't speak to each other. And yet at the same time, it wasn't that they really hated each other, but they wouldn't give in to that pride. She'd cook and bake. And my grandfather would come in from the field. And that was that same summer where Uncle Fred's boot stepped on the weasel. And he'd go into the pantry and take a piece of pie. And then he'd go out back out to the field and she'd go in and see the kind of pie he liked. And then she'd make more of that same kind of a pie. But she wouldn't speak to him. And she held a grudge for 15 years, and I don't even know where they spoke to each other before they died. Now, that gives place to the devil. Now, I don't know, but 15 minutes. Don't hold a grudge. Watch fits of anger. These are excesses that harm your health. Then watch fear. First John 418, fear hath torment. Now you have to deal with fear and you're going to have to deal with fear, but fear, if it is allowed to persist, will affect the health of your body. In the story of Pastor Blumhart's battle with Gottlieb in the 1800s in Germany, in a case of terrible demon possession, she was demon possessed because of fear at a very early age. Now, we can't fault a young kid sitting under the table at the time when occult practices are going on. But it is a warning to us that fear opens up doors. It opens up doors for ill health and even for the entrance of wicked spirits. So watch that. Let me tell you about laughter. Now, laughter can be used in excess if you're laughing all the time. But the Bible says that laughter doeth good like medicine. As you follow the Lord, he's going to lead you into situations where the pressure is great, where day after day it just seems that you're hedged in on the right hand and on the left and darkness is all around you. And as you live under that pressure, it's going to build up inside you. And we have experienced that in Brochet. And I can remember maybe we'd go on for two weeks or three weeks or a month and the pressure would just be there and you'd just be walking by faith every step. I trust you for this, Lord. I trust you for that, Lord. And then neither my wife or I would say something ridiculous or silly and we'd dissolve in laughter. We would just laugh until we cried. And, you know, all the tension and pressure was gone. And you could say, hallelujah. That's what C.T. Studd was talking about when he called the laugh in the spirit. And it's good to be able to laugh and laughter does do good like medicine. I can remember in action during the war when we would be surrounded by the enemy at before the fillets gap there before the allied armies broke out in Sherbrooke Peninsula, how that some guy would do something stupid and everybody would just laugh and how we relaxed would be. We've experienced in our board meetings there when we'd be going on with difficult decisions we have to make and and we'd be praying. Some of us part the night and some of us the rest of the night. And and someone would tell a crazy joke and and then we'd laugh and God would bless us. And laughter is a wonderful thing for human for health. I don't have any funny jokes at the moment, but. And then. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Lord, here we are together and I got this body and I'm going around in this earth and I'm part I'm your physical body in the earth. I'm trusting you to keep it healthy and show me how to to handle a physical body. I'm really grateful for it. And, you know, you can really be happy even if your body is a little out of shape. And when you start thanking the Lord for it and you have the right mind, a body that has prepared for me, isn't that wonderful? And then. Keep the streams pure. I'm talking about the mind. A young Indian girl was riding home with me one time, a Christian girl, she hadn't been saved very long, and she said to me, I'm really troubled about something. She said, I, I love the Lord and I want to please him. But she said all the time, all these wicked thoughts are coming through my mind and I can't. And when they come, I feel, oh, how can I be a Christian and thank them? So we were driving along the Saskatchewan River along by her reserve. And I said, Rita, do you see that river? I said, that river is just like your thought stream. And I said, do you see that junk in the river there? Somebody dumped some garbage in the river. And if you were pulling some water out of the river farther on and the garbage came floating by, would you pick out the garbage? Oh, she said, I wait till it passed or kick it away. Well, I said, there are three or more or four kinds of people or beings pouring things into your river of your thought stream. There's yourself and there's other people and there's God and then there's wicked spirits. And when you see things come floating across your your thought stream and being fixed on the screen of your of your consciousness and it's garbage. Rejected, you have the right to reject it and you can you can learn how to reject things that thoughts, not every thought that comes into your mind is of God, nor is it of you. Pilgrim was going through the valley of the shadow of death and a demon got on his shoulder in Pilgrim's Progress, and that demon was whispering blasphemous thoughts into his ear when he was going through this terrible experience. And he didn't know that a demon was sitting on his shoulder. And that will happen to you, too, in regards to your health. He's pouring thoughts into your mind's going to say, hey, you're going to get sick. That's garbage. Don't drink it. And and he'll pour other thoughts into your mind. You know, when you're on the mission field and you can get all kinds of symptoms and boy, if you read a doctor book and out there, boy, I could read a doctor book and I had it. And, you know, that's garbage. Don't drink it. My wife had a doctor book and we had a thermometer. And we used to use the thermometer until after a while we threw it away. I said, well, if we're going to die, we might as well die without it. Might as well die in peace. Might as well die in peace, thinking we're OK to die and suffer for all that time. So we threw it away and then we threw the doctor book away. Not that there isn't anything wrong with them, but in the situation where we were, we couldn't afford to give the devil a chance. And, you know, we didn't die and we didn't get sick and our kids didn't die. And I think we come out of there healthier when we went in because we we took care of this thing that was coming into our mind. All right. In conclusion, we are on trial on this earth. You're in trial in a in a very ordinary body, not particularly good looking, maybe not particularly strong, not particularly beautiful to look at. But you have a body and he's given it to you and he's loaned it to you. Frail body. And he's given it to you to test your faithfulness in a body. We'll be judged on the basis of what we do in this body, the deeds done in the body and what you did with the body. We're being prepared for the use of an infinitely more and powerful and beautiful body, eternal body. The body is the last aspect of our being to be changed. And it's all that will be changed when Jesus comes. Today is the day of salvation. There's no character change in heaven. Get that change now. So let us be sensible. Let us be chaste. Let us be temperate. Let us be watchful as we offer our bodies on the altar of human need. And he says when he comes, he'll change this lowly body to be like his glorious body. You're going to get a body that you can do anything with. I can't do anything with my body now. I can think of lots of things I could do if I had a different kind of a body. But use the one you have. And if you apply some of these principles, I will guarantee you that you can maintain enough health to do as well until he comes. And that's all we need. Bless his holy name, shall we pray our heavenly father. What a wonderful thing you have done to give us human bodies. And a lot of us haven't been grateful, Lord. And I pray that you'll remind some of the people here to thank you for that body, particularly those who would like to be a little better looking and and have different kind of hair and be taller or thinner or fatter, Lord, that they can say, thank you, Lord. You must have have a purpose for the kind of body you've given me. And I sure want to find that and teach them to to keep this body healthy in the way you've showed us, because we've got a lot of work to do. And Lord, you're going to give us a good body someday. And I can really hardly wait, but I'm satisfied with this tent for a while. It's a good tent. Lord, thank you for it. In Jesus name. Amen.