In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of being a testimony of Jesus in our daily lives. He highlights the impossibility of embracing this without the constant supply of the Holy Spirit. The speaker shares a personal experience of encountering a man who confessed his faith in Jesus but had a huge problem - his wife was dying of cancer. The speaker and a few others visited the woman and witnessed her emaciated state, yet she still had a smile on her face. This story serves as a reminder of the stark contrast between the material abundance in some parts of the world and the extreme poverty and suffering in others.

Before we turn to the word of the Lord, Keith is making a most amazing recovery. He was out of intensive care in less than 24 hours. Surgery just cannot believe his eyes. He's miles behind, dear Keith. And thanks to all of you. I said, how are you Christian? Christine, she said, much, much better. Hallelujah. So go on praying for them. They need our support in these days. I overheard a conversation at dinner tonight, and the brother will be here, who was relating something to my wife at the table. He said the thing that has impressed him most so far in this conference is the realization that God in Christ by the Holy Spirit actually lives in us and lives his life out through us. Now that's the very crux of the gospel. That's the most significant thing that happened on the day of Pentecost. It wasn't that they spoke in tongues. It wasn't that they received power for service. The miracle of the day of Pentecost was that God came to live in man permanently for the first time in all of history. That's the most wonderful thing about the day of Pentecost, and that's what the Spirit of God is desiring and continuing to do in our day and generation. He wants to come and live in all his fullness in you and me, and live out his life through us. It is impossible for anyone to live the Christian life apart from the indwelling Spirit of God. Utterly impossible. Many of us have strived. We've struggled. We've tried. We've cried. We've prayed. All to no avail until that miracle happens and God places his Son in all his fullness in our hearts. Bless God. Twice during the course of the ministry over the weekend, Les has made a statement which has confirmed what the Lord had been implanting in my heart for some time. First of all, he said the Gospel is incarnational. In other words, God clothed himself in humanity and came and lived amongst men and women first of all to show us what God is like. Everything that you and I will ever know about God has been revealed to us in the Lord Jesus. But not only did he come as the Son of God to show us what God was like, but he also came as the Son of Man to show us what every man and every woman should and can be like. God has come to reproduce the life of his Son in you and me. One of the earliest things that we experienced in Liverpool many, many years ago now was a tremendous concern in our hearts that people should be delivered from religion and brought into the reality of living. That was one of the reasons why we chose to live and worship and serve the Lord within the context of a house. As far as I know, we were probably the first house church in the United Kingdom. We weren't a house group. We weren't a cell group. We were a house church. Because our desire was to demonstrate, especially to young people amongst whom we'd moved and worked for a number of years, demonstrate and prove to them the reality of the life of Christ being worked out in the context of ordinary everyday living. They'd written the church off. They weren't interested in religion. But they were concerned about life. Jesus said, I've come that you might have life and life more abundantly. He didn't say, I've come that you might have religion. He didn't say, I've come that you might have doctrine. He said, I've come that you might have life and life more abundantly. Of course, that life was personified in the Lord Jesus. And in the following chapter of John's Gospel, in chapter 11, He said, I am the resurrection and the life. The life that Jesus lived as a man on the earth was resurrection living. He didn't die to get resurrection. He was resurrection. Jesus didn't have to die to get anything. He was it. He died to give to you and me what He had already got. He died to come and reveal Himself in you and me to bring us back into the normality that He intended every man and woman to enjoy before sin came and spoiled it all. Glory to His name. He wants to reproduce the Lord Jesus in each of our lives. He wants to make us realistically more like Jesus every day. We may not be able to define it. We may not be able to explain it. We may not be able to preach it. But again and again in the course of this conference and Olaf has just said this. The thing that is going to impact the lives of many of these children who probably wouldn't understand a scrap of the doctrine. Probably they would struggle to have words to explain about what it was all about. But that which they have received that is actually working in their daily lives that they rub shoulders with these children is that with which they will be infected. Not injected. Infected. Hallelujah. The gospel beloved when it becomes a reality in your life becomes infectious. You can't hide it. You can't keep it out of sight. You are it. You can't be anything less. The gospel is incarnational. And then Lez made another statement. He made it again this morning. He said the church is the extension of the incarnation. That was a title to an essay that I had to write when I was a student of theology. I have no idea what I wrote and I am utterly convinced tonight that I had no clue what it was all about. But I want to say tonight I know what that means. I know what it means. To be caught up in the continuity of all that Jesus began both to do and teach. By the impartation of the Holy Spirit. Not only to read it. Not only to talk about it. To have the ability to live it. Not with stress and strain and struggle. But be able to live it. Day in and day out regardless of the circumstances. No longer conditioned by our environment. No longer conditioned by the people amongst whom we live. No longer conditioned by what other people think or say. The ability to triumph even in the most adverse situations. And live as Jesus would live. Paul says Christ is our life. For me to live is Christ. To die is gain. I often say most people don't believe that or else the doctors wouldn't get so rich. Trying to ward off the evil day. It's alright, I know he's a doctor. And he's probably one of my best and nearest friends. Amen. We come from the same county. We're tied with the same brush. And we've enjoyed fellowship together for many, many, many years. I knew him when he was a student. Those were wonderful days. God did mighty things both in the university and in Liverpool as a whole in those days. Glory be to God. But the one thing that motivated me I didn't want to preach anymore. I just wanted to live. And of course that was the thing that nearly drove me to distraction. I couldn't live what I believed. I believed it up here. I could preach it with my lips. Had done for over four years. But I could not live what I believed. And I said to the Lord if I can't live it then I don't want to live. Many of you know that I studied psychology for four years only to be told that I was incurable. I didn't need anyone to tell me that I was incurable. I needed someone to tell me how I could be cured. And the answer didn't come from psychiatry or psychology. It came by an encounter with God in the power of the Holy Ghost that I knew nothing about. Three months later I discovered that I'd been baptised in the Spirit. Having been baptised in the Spirit I began to read the Scriptures with my eyes open. And came to the realisation that for the first time in my life or though I had believed it intellectually before for the first time in my life I had the ability to live in the reality of what the New Testament talks about as new birth or birth from above. Glory be to God. Wonderful. God wants to make his Son the Lord Jesus vitally real in your life and my life. We should be as a company of people corporately and as individuals the testimony of Jesus. Hallelujah. Now that's comparatively easy I suppose in the context of a conference like this where everyone loves everyone else. I hope you do. Amen. I hope you do. Of course that's the sort of evidence that proves whether we do or not. This is not something that you can work up. It's not something that you can plan. It's the outworking. I use the word again which Les says is a dangerous word. It's the result of a supernatural intervention of God in your life giving you not only revelation but illumination that does for a man or a woman what all the preaching in the world will never do. Remember when the Apostle Peter had just denied Jesus and was sitting in the foyer of the judgment hall having cursed and sworn that he never knew him. The wonderful thing was that Jesus had told him that he would pray for him. He said when you are converted comfort, strengthen your brethren. But according to the prophetic word of Jesus Peter denied him, blasphemed, cursed and lied and said I do not know him. And of course that was the truth. And when Jesus came out of the judgment hall we read in the scripture that he turned and looked at Peter. He didn't say I told you so. Did he? He looked at Peter with a look of love that plumbed the unfathomable depths of his being and broke him all up on the inside. And the scripture says that he went out and he wept bitterly. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a chondrite heart he will not despise. That was the first step that Peter took via Calvary to Pentecost where he became another man. It wasn't the sermons he'd heard the most magnificent sermons that had ever come from the lips of a man. It wasn't the miracles. You read John chapter 2 that wonderful chapter where in the beginning of the chapter we have the account of the wedding feast of Cana of Galilee and then that's followed by the cleansing of the temple and then in the last verses of that chapter it says, many believed because of the miracles but Jesus did not commit himself to them because he knew what was in the heart of all men. We talk a lot about we committing ourselves to the Lord. The more important thing tonight, brothers, is whether God can commit himself to us and trust his whole life and all its beauty and glory to you and me to represent him, to continue the work that he began both to do and teach. That was a scripture that used to boggle my mind at one time but you don't have to read very far in the Acts of the Apostles. In fact, eight verses down in the same chapter it says, you shall receive ability, power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you and you shall be witnesses, martyrs unto me both in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth. You shall be. Translate the word witness, testimony. You shall be the testimony of me. Glory be to God. That's why we're alive. That's why we're here. That's what God wants to accomplish in all our lives. To deliver us from all those things that inhibit us, that tie us down. To bring us to a place where we can't cope anymore. We blow our top and then wish we hadn't done it. To bring us to a place, beloved, where God so dwells in the depth of your heart and my heart that we can live. All that he needs, beloved, is for you and me to yield unto him our earthen vessel. That word literally means clay pot. I spend a lot of time in India and on the trains they used to serve chai. That's Indian tea in clay pots. If you were very thirsty, you were glad to get a cup of chai. When you drunk your chai, you threw the pot out of the window. Dust to dust, the earth ashes to ashes. Amen. It came from dust and it returns to dust. Of course, I didn't throw mine out of the window. I wrapped it up in my handkerchief, put it away in my bag and after a considerable amount of time, managed to get a number of these little pots back home to England. They sit on one of our mantelpieces at home today. People think that they're rare archaeological finds. In fact, all that they are is a little tiny clay pot which you could probably buy for less than a penny. But that's what God wants. He wants the clay pot. He wants the earthen vessel. We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. Amen. The reality of it all is God in us. I thought that Olav was going to steal my thunder by quoting from 1 John chapter 4, the most magnificent chapter both on the love of God and this central truth as I understand it of the Gospel. God lives in me. God lives in me. And of course, Paul says in the Colossian epistle, that's the great secret. That's the great mystery. Christ in you, the hope of glory. And his definition of Christ in that same letter in chapter 2 verse 9, he's described as all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. In chapter 1 verse 19 he says, it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell. In other words, all that God was in Christ by the Holy Ghost comes to live in you and me. And that's why that verse in John's Gospel chapter 1 which says, to as many as received Him, to them gave He authority to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name. Not born, beloved, of human ingenuity or power, but born from above. Amen. Are you full of God tonight? Has God revealed His Son in you by the power of the Holy Ghost? It is no longer like a carrot dangled in front of the nose of a donkey, alluring you endlessly on, never able to attain and live in the reality of the things that we believe. We make all manner of excuses, but the Lord Jesus Christ, beloved, is the answer to all our need. Blessed be His name. Tonight we need to praise Him for the gift of repentance. Magnificent exposition that we heard this morning. When Ron preaches, I want to crawl under the stage. Amen. I wish I had half of his brains. Praise God for the price that He prayed, paid for our redemption. Praise Him for the miracle of regeneration. Praise Him for the ultimate truth related to salvation, which is reconciliation. Praise God for reintegrating us back into that position that Adam forfeited in the garden. Praise God for the gift of His Spirit, who has come to recreate and reproduce in your life and my life, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's done everything. We can add nothing to it. We dare not take anything away from it. It is sufficient. And we constantly can avail ourselves of the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ to maintain us in the reality of that truth day in and day out. Do you know that lovely scripture that comes in John 7, verse 34, where it says, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink, and out of his being will flow rivers of living water. Now that word drink, beloved, doesn't just say drink. All this is lost in translation. It says, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink, and go on drinking all the time. We have both tenses in all the truths related to God's so great salvation. It's not just an experience, an encounter. That's the initiation. That's the beginning. That's the birth that causes you to cry, Abba, Father. But the maintenance, the constant supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ is there all the time for you and I to appropriate, to enable us to consistently live in the reality of the life of the Lord Jesus. No longer I, but Christ. All that He requires of you and me, beloved, is the abandonment of our total being, spirit, soul and body and all that we possess over unto Him for Him to do exactly what He likes with it. If God could get us all to that position, beloved, the whole tide of contemporary history would be turned. It was in the days of Charles Wesley or to go back further, it was in the days of Martin Luther. One man, an Augustinian monk who lived in a monastery in a place called Erfurt which used to be in Eastern Germany. God used that one man to reverse the whole tide of religion, of the political direction in which the whole of Europe was going. Just one man. Of course, God added to him companions. I remember when I preached in that same monastery many, many years later when it was a part of Eastern Germany. I found myself standing between the two great life-side portraits, one of Martin Luther and the other one of his friend who was Melanchthon. My wife should know. Melanchthon. Yes. Not that Martin Luther knew it all. He used to refer to the epistle of James as an epistle of straw. Of course, he was quite wrong about that because all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. He was also wrong in his attitude towards the Jews. He was anti-Semitic and some of the most vitriolic things that he ever said were levered against God's ancient people, the Jews. Scripture warns us not to do that. But God utilised that one man who yielded up his total being and was prepared to jeopardise his life to see the glorious truth of justification by faith reinstated and restored unto the church of Jesus Christ. It was a beginning and lot has happened since that time and I trust lots more will continue to happen as the days go by. Blessed be his name. I want to read you a quotation from a man who lived in the latter half of the 17th century just into the beginning of the 18th. His name was John Howe. He was a Presbyterian minister who obviously loved God passionately. He understood the truth that I'm trying to talk about tonight when he said this, God was made in the likeness of man to make man in the likeness of God. He partook with us of human nature that we might partake of the divine. He assumed our flesh in order to impart unto us his spirit. Shall I read that again? It's a magnificent quote. God was made in the likeness of man to make man in the likeness of God. He partook with us of human nature that we might partake of the divine. He assumed our flesh in order to impart unto us his spirit. In that quotation, we have the crux of the truth. Blessed be his name. Praise God he's had faithful men and women down through the ages who have seen the truth, embraced it and have been a part of that faithful remnant of God's people. You can trace them right down to the course of human history to this present day. And you and I have the privilege of being entrusted with the ongoing manifestation of that glorious truth. That's why we're here. We're not here just to enjoy the sunshine. We're not here just to enjoy each other's company primarily. Those are by-products. We're here to engage our hearts with God in Jesus Christ and believe him to work those miracles of grace in our life that will conform us more and more unto the likeness and image of our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter, in his second letter, writes the most phenomenal statement. I believe it is the most inspired statement that came from the tip of his pen. He was moved by the Holy Ghost. He writes the same thing in the same letter. In 2 Peter chapter 1 verse 4 where he talks about the promises of God. And then he goes on to say that we are partakers of the divine nature. Amen. We are partakers of the divine nature. Early Christians talked about being divinized. You know, so often we excuse our behaviour because we say it's our nature. We inherited it. What can you expect of me? My mother was a grumpy old woman. What can you expect of me? My father, he was a twisted, devious old character. What can you expect of me? I tell you, beloved, the reason why Jesus came and died upon the cross, bringing to a climax, beloved, the great doctrine and revelation of circumcision. Because when Jesus was cut off out of the land of the living, he was cut off for you and me, not for himself. To break that malicious, vicious cycle that takes you round and round and round and round. He came to break it. That's why we don't have to go on living with the legacy of our past, both inherited and accrued because of our own willfulness. We can be free. That will save you pounds, beloved. It will engage counsellors to try and sort them out. I tell you, in the final analysis, beloved, God and God alone can sort us out. He alone has the ability to plumb the unfathomable depths of our being. Like he did that woman in John chapter 4. When she said the well is deep, she didn't know what she was talking about. She was talking out of the back of her neck or the top of her head. She had no idea what she was saying. Jesus interpreted what she said. It wasn't just the external world that he was talking about. It was the unfathomable depths of his own nature. That's why when she left him, she went home and said, come see a man who told me all things that I ever did. Is this not the Christ? Scripture says he only told her one thing, that the fellow she was living with wasn't her husband. But she knew that he knew everything that there was to know about her. Her whole life was totally revolutionised. She was emancipated from all that she'd been. The whole course of her life was changed. She didn't verbalise her repentance, but rather she responded to the incarnate love of God who made an end to her lies, who made an end to her terrible life. She'd been abused. She'd been misused. She'd become a thing that men handled. They weren't called men. The Apostle Peter says they were natural, brute beasts. That's what we all are until Jesus comes. Working in the manifestation of that definition, beloved, differs in every person. But that's what God says we are essentially. I'm so glad that the New Testament, beloved, doesn't mince its words, tells us the truth. Wasn't that what we were told on Saturday night? That God cannot lie. He will tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He doesn't cover things up. He doesn't veneer things over. He doesn't stroke my feathers. He doesn't pat me on the head and say, you're not so bad as you think you are. You're not so bad as people suggest you are. I often say to people who are a thousand times worse than they ever imagined you were. And once you face up, beloved, to the reality of your own life, that's the great work of the Spirit of God that brings your conviction to your heart, comes to convince or convict us of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Amen. Where there's no conviction, said a great preacher in days gone by, there's no conversion. You could be convicted, beloved, without being converted, but you can't be converted unless you are first convicted. That's why many people never get properly saved, because they don't know what they need to be saved from. And that's one of the things that I believe that agonises the heart of our brother Ron. Related to contemporary evangelicalism, grace becomes terribly cheap. It's a slick way of entering in. Signing on the dotted line. A. Acknowledge your sin. B. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. C. Commit your life to Him. D. Sign on the dotted line born again. Rubbish! Scripture says, The wind bloweth where it listeth. Thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. So is every one that is born of the Spirit, or born from above. Glory to His name. We're made partakers of the divine nature. And that word partaker, brothers, is a very interesting word. It's very repetitive in Scripture, but not with the same translation. You have to go back and look at the original word. And it's the word koinonia, which in our Bible is often translated as fellowship, sometimes as communion. If you come from a Latin speaking country, they don't have the word fellowship, they just have the word communion. It speaks of intimacy. It speaks of oneness. Of course, the Lord Jesus expounded it, didn't He? John chapter 6. The wonderful story of the feeding of the 5,000. Of course, everyone loves that story because it's the greatest picnic that it was ever had. 5,000 men plus women and children, five loaves and two small fishes. That was some event. Amen. And there's a tremendous amount of truth of it actually in the illustration because that's all that the feeding of 5,000 was about. It was an illustration to convey to men and women something much deeper than that. And that's why Jesus said, labour not for the meats that perish. Now, I'm not suggesting, brother, that God isn't interested in making people well and strong, but feeding them. One of the most criminal things in our contemporary society, brother, is the phenomenal waste. Phenomenal waste. I tell you, I find myself all torn up again and again because I go to countries, beloved, where you see people at the other end of the scale. We were with Steve and Anne in Tanzania just a few weeks ago. And they took us, yes, on a Sunday morning to preach to about 78 people under a tree. They can't afford a building. They had a few planks to sit on. They didn't even have drinking water. I understand that Steve and Anne take them five litres on a Sunday. And then they take another five litres on a Thursday. And they share it. Blows your mind, doesn't it? Every time you pull the loo chain, beloved, you gush down the sewer more than five litres of water. They took us to see another dear woman lived on a hillside where people had made her life an absolute misery if they could have done, but they couldn't. She still smiles. Amen. Terachir, I think her name was. Anne will correct me if I've got all the definitions wrong. She took us to her little house, just two little mud rooms with her and her husband and five children. Two little beds about this wide. Took us to her kitchen. She had one battered aluminium pot and three stones. And that was the totality of her kitchenware. There was no food to be seen anywhere. We went to a prayer meeting on the Friday or on the Saturday then. This one woman came to the pastor. She said, if I don't get food for my children today, a maze is the thing that they need most. She said, they will die. We waste. America dumps tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of grain in the South Atlantic. Europe stockpiles until it rots. Of course that sort of thing never gets into the paper. It's too uncomfortable. And if you do get a glimpse of it on the television, it's very convenient. You can turn them on and not get involved. Go and live in India. I'd like to take you all to Calcutta for a single week, beloved. Your life will be revolutionised. I was so devastated the first time that I came home from India in 1975 that everything lost its meaning. I didn't want anything. It all seemed so futile and meaningless. Jesus is concerned, beloved, about the needs, the essential needs of men and women. He's promised glory to His name. But He said, labour not for the meats that perish but those that endure unto everlasting life. And then He goes on to say, I am the bread of life. Eat me, drink me. And if you won't, you have no life in you. He wasn't talking about the breaking of bread. That's something, beloved, that came later to serve as a constant reminder and illustration to you and I that we need to constantly partake of the divine nature so that our whole inward nature is changed. We can no longer excuse our behaviour if we really believe that we have partaken of divine nature. That's what that quotation said, wasn't it? That we might partake of the divine. God made you all divine on the inside. Christ-like. Like Jesus. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Eat me. Drink me. I want to get on the inside of you. I want to be the life of you. In another place He says we're changed. 2 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 18. He says we're changed into the same image from glory unto glory even by the Spirit of the Lord. We're changed. You can translate that word in three different ways. You can translate it as transformed or you can translate it as transfigured. You'll find it in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 18. You'll find it in Romans chapter 12 verse 2 and you will find it in Matthew chapter 17 verse 2. Translated in three entirely different ways all from the same original word metamorphosis. What happens to a chrysalis before it becomes a butterfly? A little dry shriveled up thing that lies sometimes in the hedgerows for years and years until the environment becomes conducive that causes that miracle to happen instead of being a little leathery piece of stuff that you wouldn't see unless you knew what you were really looking for suddenly becomes a magnificent moth or butterfly. Hallelujah. We're changed. Transformed, transfigured. The word that the Spirit of God uses to describe you and me when we've been wrought upon by the Holy Ghost is exactly the same word that He uses to describe the Lord Jesus manifest in His glory on the Mount of Transfiguration. Exactly the same word. That's better than being veneered over, beloved. It's revolutionary. Changed into the same image. That's that great rectifying work which God does reinstating us back in that position which Adam lost. Because the first thing that God ever said about man God's first thought, God's first word was let us make man in our image. After the image of God created him male and female. By the time you get to Genesis chapter 5, beloved Adam was no longer reproducing after the likeness of God. He reproduced after his own image. Like father, like son. That's what we don't like. But that's the tragedy of the fall that marred and spoiled the original image but it didn't alter the heart of God. That's why God took the initiative a second time and sent His man. You read in Ezekiel, you read in the book of Jeremiah in Isaiah that God sought for a man. Couldn't find one. Couldn't find one. Even in the greatest characters in the Old Testament, beloved they weren't what God intended them to be. They were remarkable men. From their lives we can learn many, many truths. But they were not man as God intended a man to be. So He sent Jesus. And repetitively He was referred to in the Scripture as the image of the invisible God the firstborn of all creation. You'll see it in Hebrews chapter 1. You'll see it in Colossians chapter 1. You'll see it in Romans chapter 8. You'll see it later on in the Colossians 5. We are changed into the same image. He was the image of the invisible God. And then the magnificent truth is the realization, beloved that what He was, He has come to make us by the Spirit. You are changed into the same image from glory unto glory even by the Spirit of the Lord. Again, beloved, it's not just an initial experience. It's coming into the reality of that life that God has provided for us in Jesus. A name constantly going on. Again, you get that truth, beloved, in John chapter 3 verse 16. We all know it, don't we? Off by hearts. About the one verse that everyone could stand up and repeat without stumbling. Someone stop me off. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. That is not what it says. That's why you have to do your homework. That's not what it says. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth and goes on believing in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. It's this wonderful realization, beloved, you've come into the reality of life but there must be that continuity. Those who endure unto the end shall be saved. Paul writes to the Corinthians in chapter 6 and he says now is the day of salvation. Amen, I'm being saved now. Paul says I am saved, I'm being saved and I will be saved. He uses a different word. He uses the word delivered there. In the first chapter of 2 Corinthians. I am delivered, I'm being delivered and I will be delivered. The proof that you are delivered, beloved, is that you're being delivered now and the guarantee that you will be delivered in that great day is that you're living in the reality of being delivered now. It's not just an experience, but it's a living relationship into which He brings us by the power of the Holy Ghost and does a miracle on the inside of us that utterly changes us. Fantastic. From glory unto glory. Amen. None of us have arrived really. We're on our way. That's why the Christian faith was often referred to in the Scripture as the way. And Jesus is the way because Jesus is the Gospel. Blessed be His name. How are you getting on along the way? Have you ever read Isaiah chapter 35? A highway shall be there and away. No lion shall come up thereon nor any ravenous beast. Always takes me back to Charles, no, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. I think it's been read on the radio. When you came to that narrow way, no great ravenous beasts on either side of the way. I guess they thought that Pilgrim was on the menu for the dinner that day. But He discovered, beloved, that those wild ravenous beasts were chained and they could not get up onto the way. All that they did was to serve to keep Him in the centre of the way. That's why you face difficulties. That's why you face hardships. That's why things seem to go wrong sometimes. It's to force you, push you more and more into the centrality of the life of the Lord Jesus. Amen. The devil has to work for you. It says at the end of Ephesians chapter 1, the devil was under his feet. And if you are a member of the body of Christ, go to the lowliest member. He spoke, remember he's under you. Not on your back. I knew a man who used to live in Exeter. He was one of the early members of the Exeter Fellowship. He wouldn't talk about the devil. He would say, who is he? He wasn't interested in the devil. He only knew him as a defeated foe and that was his testimony. All his emphasis and all his concentration was on the Lord Jesus Christ who had emancipated him and set him free from a religious system and caused him to be another man. I remember the very first time I spoke to the Rohrer Fellowship. It was before they came to Rohrer. It's when they lived down at Witten Farm, a little way down the road. That was Malcolm and Christine's farm. The night I arrived there, it looked like the old woman who lived in the shoe had so many children she did not know what to do. Out of every window and every door, beloved, there seemed to be hanging out a young man or a young woman. And that's how the work here in Rohrer began because God found a man and a woman and they're still going strong. Pray for Christine in these days. It's not the easiest period in her life. Pray for her. Thank God for them, that they have literally laid down their lives and not only them but their families as well and they've counted the cost. Amen. They've counted the cost, beloved, and come square, face to face with it. And they shouldn't be exceptions. Amen. That's what God requires of all of us. Blessed be his name. We find another truth in the Corinthian epistle, the second one, where God says in chapter four that Christ is to be manifested in our bodies, manifested in our mortal flesh. The Philippian epistle says we're to magnify Christ. Amen. Manifest in our bodies. So glad, beloved, that he relates it to our bodies. You know, sometimes we can get hyper-spiritual and talk about just having Jesus in our hearts. The proof that you've got Jesus in your heart really, in the power of the Holy Ghost, was that he will have a dramatic effect upon your body. That's why there's no legislation in Scripture as to how you behave, what you wear or what you don't wear. It's all implicit in the nature of Jesus. And that which is inconsistent with the nature of Jesus, beloved, becomes utterly inconsistent to the nature of men and women who call themselves the children of God. Amen. You don't need someone to legislate to you. You've got a teacher on the inside of you. He's called the Holy Spirit. In John's Gospel, in John's epistle, he's called the anointing, who promises to teach you all things and lead you into all truth. And the person who lives sensitively to that inward working of the Spirit of God, beloved, they don't need someone to tell them what to do or what not to do. He wants to manifest himself in our bodies, in our mortal flesh. Glory be to God. Are you God's magnifying glass, making Jesus look big and clear in the eyes of other people? Hallelujah. It says again in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 that we are here in stead of Christ or in Christ's stead. That's why the church is the extension of the incarnation. When Jesus was incarnated, when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, there we beheld the incarnate God. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. The church being the extension of the incarnation, beloved, means that you and I are to be the manifestation of Christ. Those sorts of things blow my mind. I don't know what they do to you. The phenomenal potential that is to be discovered in this great central truth of the Gospel. Amen. And that leads me on to the fact that in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 specifically, and it's recorded in many other places in the writings of the Apostle Paul in particular, that we are the body of Christ. We are the body of Christ. I often say the same head that graced the incarnate body of the Lord Jesus is exactly the same head that rests upon the body of Christ. He's the head. We're the members. Hands, feet, eyes, mouth. Peter refers to us in his epistle and says that we are the oracles of God. You'll find that in 1 Peter chapter 4 verse 11. We are the oracles of God. Literally, God's mouthpiece. We're God's mouthpiece. Jesus said, what is it? A man is in his heart, that's what he will speak. As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. We're God's mouthpiece. And sometimes, beloved, it's not just the things that we say. We can say all the right things from a wrong spirit. Every time we open our mouth, we communicate. Don't we? Ladies are better at it than men. Ask my wife. We communicate. We either impart life, beloved, or we minister death. That's what the apostle Paul's about, where he talks about being living letters. Read and known of all men. The letter killeth. The spirit giveth life. I wrote in the front of one of my New Testaments many years ago now, God's love letter to me. Until I read that wonderful verse in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 in verse 2. You are manifestly declared to be the epistles or letters of Christ. Read and known of all men. God is the author. The world is the reader. You and I happen to be the little piece of parchment on which he writes his message, which is a message of love. As I say, you can quote all the right verses, all the right words, but devoid of the accompanying spirit of God, the illumination of God's spirit upon his word, quickening it, making it spirit and life. You can kill many women with it. You can kill people with it. That's why you can sit and hear someone preach, beloved, and it's dead. There's no life in it. The words that Jesus spoke, they were spirit and they were life. Amen. It doesn't say the words that he preached, the words that he said. Anyone can preach. You don't have to be clever, beloved, to preach. The Bible's full of sermons already laid out. You don't have to be too intelligent, beloved, to collate the information and bring it together and make it presentable. You're not just being articulate. You don't have to have a charismatic, thematic character using that word in the broadest sense of its meaning. The only thing that you and I will ever communicate to anyone else is what we are. In other words, what we have first received, that we minister. We can't do anything more. We can't do anything less. That's why God has often taken up very humble people. Remember, beloved, that the majority of people in the Lord's day were illiterate. There's every reason to believe that the Apostle Peter was illiterate. It's said that his nephew Mark wrote his first gospel, the Gospel of Peter. They referred to, weren't they, in Acts chapter 4 as unlearned and ignorant men. They weren't the great scholars. They weren't the great orators. They weren't the great writers that so often we imagine they were. Now, Paul was a scholar. Probably one of the finest brains that has ever rested upon the shoulders of a man apart from our Lord Jesus Christ. And, of course, when he was transformed, transfigured by his encounter with the Lord Jesus, and it was what he saw. We've been reminded of that before, haven't we? It was what he saw. He said, I saw a great light. And following what he saw, beloved, he heard a voice saying, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And as a result of that encounter, beloved, Saul of Tarsus died. Never to live again. He was buried in a street called Strait. He neither ate nor drank. So the Bible says, dead men don't. And on the third day, the day of resurrection, by the power of the Holy Ghost, imparted to him at the hands of a man called Ananias, he rose up a new creation, another man. That's why when he wrote the Corinthian epistle, beloved, he was writing his biography. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things have and are constantly becoming new. There it is again. Wonderful. When did God make you a new creation? As a result of an encounter with the living God. And God means, uses many means, many people, many situations. Sometimes it might be a single word. Sometimes it might be a verse in a hymn. Sometimes it might be listening to a sermon. He uses all sorts of means to communicate and impart to you in a way that's relevant to your unique life that will do that work in your heart. Blessed be his name. Listen to the Apostle Paul writing to the church at Galatia. In chapter 4 and verse 11. He said, you receive me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. Let me just check that verse to make sure. I can see people looking it up. They will correct me afterwards so I do the correction myself. Galatians chapter 4. Yes, verse 14, not 11, sorry. My temptation which was in my flesh, you despised not, nor rejected, but receive me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. Now he wasn't the Christ. But that's how they received him. He wasn't the murderous, subtle, heresy that he had been before. God had changed him. Transformed him. Transfigured him. Made him another man. He was never Saul of Tarsus again. He rose up a new creation. He was a different person. Totally different. He wasn't the man that he was born. And I testify to you tonight, beloved, when God met me in the power of the Holy Ghost, I ceased to be what I was before. That doesn't mean to say that I was perfect. Because I'm going on. Paul said towards the end of his days, I'm pressing on towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. He wasn't dragging his feet, beloved. He was pressing on. But as a result of his encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ on the Damascus road, beloved, that was the end of Saul of Tarsus. That's why dead men don't have problems. Amen. You want to find the answers to your problems, beloved, they're all to be found in Jesus Christ. And you cannot produce a substitute. Substitute may alleviate, but anything short of the impartation of the Lord Jesus into your life will never meet your deepest need. I know it. Blessed be his name. You receive me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. It's many years ago now when I heard Mr North preach on that. He's now in glory. And I thought it was blasphemy. I didn't have my New Testament with me, so I went home, looked it up, and there it was. Black and white. I don't know what sort of... if those sort of scriptures blow your mind. So few people really believe, beloved, that they can be what the scripture constantly and consistently says we can be. It seems so impossible. It's beyond our ability to comprehend in our minds. It's something that we know deep within our hearts. When it happens, we know. He wants to make us like Jesus. He wants to make us the testimony of Jesus to our generation, to the particular group of people amongst whom you move and have your being wherever you are, beloved. Sometimes you might question why you are where you are. Well, I want to tell you tonight, beloved, you're there to be the testimony of Jesus. You're there to allow men and women to see the reality of the life of Jesus morning, noon and night outside of the constant supply of the Spirit of God, beloved. That's an impossible thing to embrace. But the scripture repetitively, again and again and again, says the same thing. Let me show you some truths. I'm going to have to leave a lot out, never mind. The more I've studied this, beloved, the more pieces of paper I have covered with notes. I sit there and think I've got it all sorted out and then other things come bumbling into my mind. It's impossible, impossible to exhaust these fantastic truths. But the wonderful thing that you discover is that the Bible is so utterly consistent. It keeps saying the same thing again and again and again in different ways but emphasising the same great truth. Go into the first epistle of John. And in chapter 1, 1 John, chapter 1, in verse 7, there are some phrases they will clarify as we go on because they're repetitive. They vary slightly but they're all saying the same thing. In chapter 1 of 1 John it says, verse 7, But we walk in the light as He is in the light and we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us and goes on cleansing us from all sin as He is. Turn over into the next chapter, beloved, you'll find a similar statement in verse 6. He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk even as He walked. Now this simple illustration, not as used repetitively in the scriptures. If you're familiar with the Ephesian epistle, chapter 4, it begins, walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called. And then there are seven other references, you can go and do that for a little bit of homework. Seven other references to walking. We'll focus down on this one. Talks about walking in love, walking in light, walking in truth, walking in the good works which God has prepared for us. Walking. Amen. Walking is very simple, isn't it? You put one foot in front of the other. Hallelujah. We're to walk worthy of the vocation or of the calling wherewith we are called. We're not to walk as the world walks. We're not to walk as the Gentiles walk. It says in the early part of Ephesians chapter 2, once upon a time we walked as the Gentiles. Let's just read that. One Ephesians chapter 2. To me it's the most magnificent chapter related to God's great salvation. It says in verse 1, And you who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also were the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. See the little all-inclusive word all. Had our manner of life in time past, and the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. We walk according to this world. Scripture talks about two ways, doesn't it? It talks about a broad way. It talks about a narrow way. Sometimes people point their fingers at us, beloved, and say that we're narrow. But I'd rather be in the narrow way than the broad way. Because Scripture Jesus said, The broad way leads to destruction. And there are many that be that find it. The narrow way, beloved, is the Jesus way. The narrow way again, beloved, is that spoken of in Isaiah chapter 35. It's a narrow way. Glory to his name. And we're to walk in it. We're not to walk as the Gentiles. We're not to walk according to the course of this world, being dictated to and manipulated by the prince of the power of the air. Fancy name for the devil. The most polite definition of the devil that I find in the Scripture. He's called the prince of the power of the air. In John's Gospel he's called the prince of this world. And he rules. That will explain the front page of his daily newspaper to you, beloved. That will explain to you all the things that are going on in the world which are so horrendous in these days. The devil's ruling. But once you and I come into Christ, beloved, we come into the realm where he overrules what the devil rules. And you're no longer the victim of society, of circumstances, of environment. You're free. And you've been set on a new way. With a walk in light. Jesus constantly refers to himself as the light of the world. You'll find it in John chapter 8. You'll find it in John chapter 9. You'll find it again in John chapter 12. He said, I am the light of the world. Paul refers to us as the children of light. And then Jesus says, you are the light of the world. Have you noticed how many times in Scripture, beloved, that Jesus has the faith to say to you and me what he said about himself. Yesterday morning we broke bread. Brother Terry read to us from the epistle to the Corinthians. Where we are reminded about the importance of the breaking of bread. Of course the early church, beloved, broke bread every day. And it was, it hadn't degenerated into a religious ritual. They did it from house to house. Breaking bread with gladness and singleness of heart. But in the previous chapter in 1 Corinthians it talks about you and I being that bread. Oswald Chambers said, we are broken bread and poured out wine. Hallelujah. For to walk in the light. We're to believe what Jesus says. Even if it blows our minds and seems to have impossibility written all over it. Let me say again, beloved, that apart from the Spirit of God what the Scripture teaches here is utterly impossible. It's not something that you will attain until by trying. Or even assenting, beloved, to the mere letter of the world. It will only be possible as you believe and trust the Lord Jesus by the power of the Holy Ghost to actually live in you and work out his life through you. We're to walk even as he walked. Turn over again in 1 John into the third chapter. Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth us not because it knew not him. Beloved, now are we the sons of God and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. That's how I know, beloved, that I'm not perfect. That's how I know that God's got something so much better. It's from glory to glory. You remember that Jesus said in John chapter 17 the glory thou gavest me I have given them. It doth not appear what we shall be. But we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him. For we shall see him as he is. Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as he is pure. Amen. That's when the Spirit of God, beloved, has applied the blood of our Lord Jesus. That great eternal detergent. Though your sins be as scarlet you shall be as white as snow. He blots out our sin. He puts it as far as the east is from the west and he remembers it. No more. And again we've seen, beloved, in the first chapter that's something he goes on doing all the time. We live in a fallen world, beloved. Though consciously and unconsciously you and I can be contaminated but we have constant access to the throne of God where the blood has been presented to the eternal Father that satisfied God's heart. And Isaiah chapter 53 was fulfilled. And its power is released unto you and me by the Spirit. All the things related to Calvary, all the things related to the life of Jesus, beloved, are communicated to us by the Spirit of God. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God, said Jesus. In Hebrews chapter 12 it refers to God as being holy and then it says later down in the chapter without holiness a man shall not see the Lord. Amen. Peter wrote in his first letter, didn't he? We're to be holy even as He is holy. You don't have to be very clever, beloved, to understand six two-letter words. As He is so be ye in all manner of living. Holy, pure, clean. Or writing to the church at Thessalonica that I pray God your whole spirit, soul and body be blameless even unto the coming of the Lord. Faithful is He that calleth you who also will do it. Do you believe, beloved, that He can do what He says? That's what I've come to, beloved. I'm naive enough, beloved, to believe that it means what it says. I can't do it for myself. You can't do it for yourself. But the moment that you and I engage with God in truth, beloved, it begins to work in our lives. And it's no longer something that has impossibility written all over it. God does it. But to be pure even as He is pure. And if you try to assess your own heart purity, beloved, you will be miles off track. The secret is look unto Jesus. Look unto Jesus. Don't compare yourself with other people, beloved. That will drag you down to a standard far beneath what the Scripture ever talks about. It's all to be found in our Lord Jesus Christ. And it's to be outworked because of our Lord Jesus Christ outworking His own nature within our own hearts. Further down in that first chapter of 1 John, verse 7, little children. I love that little phrase, little children. Except you become as a little child, you shall in no wise enter into the kingdom. All the important things, beloved, are addressed to the little children. Very few to the old men, some to the young men. Praise God, but here He says, little children, let no man deceive you. He that doeth righteousness is righteous even as He is righteous. That's what it says, isn't it? And in fact, if you look back into the second chapter, at the end of the chapter, beloved, it's the first great proof in John's letters of a genuine new birth. Prior to that, beloved, men went about seeking to establish their own righteousness and failed to comprehend the righteousness of God. That was the state of Judaism. They were locked up, beloved, into a legal system. They deviated even far from that. But they went about seeking to establish their own righteousness. That was what the Pharisees were all about. Listen to this. The end of chapter 3. No, chapter 5 of 2 Corinthians, verse 18. No, verse 21, I think. I'm getting old. He was made sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. That's the great exchange. But you and I were, and should I say aren't, because of sin, Jesus became. In order that you and I may be what He is and ever will be. Righteousness. And you will read at the end of the first chapter of 1 Corinthians. He is made unto us righteousness. The word righteousness means upright, straight, honest, true. That's why once you are born again and full of the Holy Ghost and have received the nature of Jesus Christ, you can't lie. You can't cheat. You can't be deceitful. You can't. Why? Because Jesus can't. And if He is your life and you are abiding in Him, but that's the great secret to the enigma, seeming enigma of the third chapter of 1 John. That's the secret, brother. It says here, doesn't it? It says, in verse 6, whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not. Secret, brother. If you are abiding in Him, you won't sin. If you move out of that place of utter dependence and abiding in Him, brother, you are immediately in sin. But if you abide in Him, you won't sin. And that's why the maintaining of our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ is so vital and essential, if we are going to come into the reality of the truth that the Scripture so clearly points out in a repetitive way. I don't apologize for the repetition. It's here in the Bible, brother. Most of us are so slow to learn. Hallelujah. Let's move on to another truth. Turn over into 1 John chapter 4. The verse following the one which our brother read. He read verse 16 and I read it again. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love and He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in Him. Beloved, that's the fulfillment of the great prophetic utterance of the Lord Jesus. The night before He went to Calvary when He said, that day you will know that I am in the Father, you are in Me and I am in you. Not only did He prophesy, beloved, at the end of John chapter 17 that great high priestly prayer of Jesus, He went on to pray for exactly the same thing. And the wonderful thing is, beloved, He prayed that for you and me. Prayed that for all who will believe on Him. The first part of the prayer, beloved, is related to Him. The second part of the prayer is related to the disciples who were with Him at that time. The last part of the prayer, beloved, is clearly written for you and for me. Turn into it. John chapter 17 is a chapter that you must read on your knees and keep asking yourself the question, am I the answer to the prayer of Jesus? You don't think that your prayers get answered, beloved, I want to tell you this one was answered and is being answered. Verse 20 Neither pray I for these alone but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word. That they all may be one as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee. That they also may be one in Us. That the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me and the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them. That they may be one even as We are one, I in them and Thou in Me. That they may be made perfect in one that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me and has loved them as Thou hast loved Me. Glory be to God. Those were words which Jesus spoke and words that Jesus prayed, immediately before Calvary. And there they were ratified and sealed with His precious blood. Later to be sealed by the Spirit of God into your heart and my heart. Engraven there. Incarnated there. So there's no longer words in the Bible that which you know deep inside of you. I want to tell you brother that once God illuminates and reveals His truth you cannot forget it. There's nothing wrong in memorizing Scripture. But I found that things that God has spoken to me powerfully down through the years in my own life they are not things that I have to try and memorize. They've become a part of me. I cannot dissociate myself from them. It's the Word being made flesh. And remember in John chapter 17 and verse 3 it says He's got power over all flesh. Yes He had power over His own flesh brother. And He had power over your flesh and my flesh. Blessed be His name. Let's read verse 17. Herein is our love made perfect. You know lots of people are afraid of this word perfect. They say it means complete or mature. Well at the end of the Colossian epistle Paul talks about being perfect and complete in all the will of God. Often we try to analyze these words beloved because we're wanting to avoid the impact of the truth that is to be found in them. Amen. Herein is my love made perfect. Our love made perfect that we may have boldness in the day of judgment because as He is so are we in this world. Most people think it means the next world but it doesn't but it says this world. As He is so are we in this world. God didn't just come in the person of Jesus Christ to fit us for heaven. He did but the proof that we're on our way is that He equips us and enables us to live down here on the earth so that when we appear before Him in that great day the climax, the full potential of the work of redemption will have come to completion and we find ourselves just like Him. What He's begun He promises to perfect and complete even unto the day of Jesus Christ. So no matter how far along the way, our beloved, that's God's commitment to you and me. You know sometimes when we, you know, we wonder and then the Lord whispers in our ear what I've begun are perfect. Amen. Who was it? Ron or or Les this morning pointed out that He came a second time. I love the word again. Came again. He spoke again. He worked again. Very few of us would be here tonight if He hadn't come again and again and again. Isn't that true? I doubt that there's anyone in this room, beloved, who responded the first time. That's a rare event, a very wonderful event when someone hears the Gospel for the first time and I can't tell you what a joy it is to preach to men and women who've never heard the name of Jesus. When I first went to Bhutan many years ago now, the sheer joy of being amongst the people, some of them having walked five days to be there, they weren't looking at their watch, trying to work out how long the preaching was going to last. I tell you, my preach tonight, beloved, would have taken six hours there. Amen. Two interpreters and then three or four in the congregation. Nepali on this side, Dzongkha on that side. Often the fellow translating into Dzongkha didn't listen to the fellow which was translating in Nepali and then he'd turn to me and say, what did you say? I will find my mind doing this. But to see God move and work. One vivid memory comes back to me. I've shared it in many situations. There was a man sitting in the meeting. He was the head of forestry for Bhutan. He was a regal looking man dressed in a black coat. That's the Bhutanese national dress. They had some magnificent dresses, both men and women. It's illegal to go out without wearing it. White collar and white cuffs. Black hair. Regal man sitting in the middle of the meeting. No chairs or sitting on the floor. When I'd finished preaching he rose up like a genie out of a lamp. Amazing. He just rose up like that in the middle of the meeting and confessed to the Lord Jesus. Absolutely wonderful. And he said, I don't care what people say. I don't care what I do. And it's illegal, but essentially in Bhutan it is illegal to preach the gospel. But God said, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every preacher. I don't believe any door, any country is closed in the world. I don't. I believe that there's a way in. You can't go to China, brother, and preach the gospel. Officially. Go there and teach English. China is wanting 200,000 teachers of English in the office. I prayed for China, brother, for over 25 years and it breaks my heart to see opportunities being lost every day. Go there as a teacher and go there as someone who can care for orphans, abandoned children. The opportunities are there. Many places I go to in the world these days, it is illegal to preach the gospel. I know exactly what I'm going to and I'm prepared for the consequences of going there. Because I've heard the word of God. Lots of people say, when are you going to retire? When are you going to get up? I've been busier this year, brother, than ever before. But when God speaks you have the ability to do what He says because behind His word is His power to perform it. And I believe that. As your days are, so shall your strength be. You can get all inward looking, beloved, and lament of your tiredness and all the rest of it. I do get tired. But people say, are you tired? I said, I think about that when I can afford to. Get all preoccupied with yourself, beloved. You find yourself disqualifying for the very things that God is perhaps speaking into your heart and wants you to get going. I know retired people, beloved, who come out of retirement. They've only had virtually elementary education and here they are teaching English to graduates in a university. Phenomenal opportunities. Well, this dear man stood up. As I said, he rose up like a genie in the middle of the meeting and confessed to Lord Jesus. And I talked to him afterwards. He said, brother, I have one huge problem. I said, what is that? He said, my wife is dying. I said, where's your wife? And he pointed out the window way up the valley. There was a house white standing out against the side of the mountain. He said, she's got cancer. Would you come and pray for her? The two or three of us went after lunch. Found this woman perched on the edge of what they call a charpoy. That's a bed made of string and wood. So emaciated that she looked more dead than alive. Three, four little children hanging on to the skirts of her kira. That's the lady's dress. Looking utterly desperate. Do you ever feel helpless? Ever feel useless? Ever feel inadequate? I'm glad Paul says that his weakness in God was made strength. Never use weakness, brother, as an excuse for sin. Never. He saw it as a magnificent platform upon which God could demonstrate his power. We simply prayed for that woman and left her. A year later, I was back in Bhutan introduced to a woman whom I didn't know. Only to discover, brother, that she was a woman who I'd seen a year before looking thirty years younger. Nothing to do with me. I don't claim to have a gift of him. All the gifts are God's gifts. They can utilize any of them through anyone when they need him. Blessed be his name. Herein is love made perfect. That we may have boldness in the day of judgment because as he is so are we in this world. Our time's gone. You can continue the study. You've got the same teacher as I have. Ask him to reveal what I believe are some of the most central and essential truths that relate to the heart of the Gospel. Do you want to be more like Jesus? We used to sing a song, O to be likely, O to be likely. A song of aspiration. God wants to make it a realization where it is operative in our lives. Let us pray.