(Steps Towards Spiritual Perfection) - to Do the Work — A.W. Tozer

In the third chapter, you know that passage, that what things were doomed to me, those I founded last for Christ. Write down something I can't all see, but let's not read the rest of it because you're familiar with it.

Except that passage describes that I'm remaining in the power of the resurrection, from the fellowship of the sufferers, to make conformable unto his death. Now, that's the passage we've been dealing with right along, but there's also a passage in the 40th Psalm, which I want to read now.

Psalm 40, verses 7 and 8. Then said I, Lo, I come in the volume of the book which is written of me. I do like to do thy will, O my God, for thy love is within my heart. Now, to do, in the simplest terms, is to perfection.

There's no more and no less, and I want tonight to talk about the will of God and its relation to our cause. Now, hell is the place where the will of God is never done, and that is why it is hell, and heaven is the place where it is always hell, and that is why the will of God either is not done at all.

As I will say, it is perfectly done. It is perfectly done. Now, our relation to the will of God is twofold, partly, and that's the two passes in that it is recognition to God's will. There are two passages in that, or five of them, and then you probably come to that, I don't know.

And, I want to ask you whether you agree with me on this, that when we mention the will of God in the day in which he is there with me, and are understood to mean recognition to God's will, you think about the will of God, and then you see reasonably means that Mary meant when she said, do it unto me even as thou wilt.

Now, that was something God was going to do, but not something that she was doing. That was recognition and captivity. That was saying, God, God, I accept thy will from thee, go ahead, do whatever you think is all right with me, and that was necessary, and do it.

But, there is a second relation to the will of God which we've ready, I'm sure, are willing to do, and it was earlier talked about, and that is the opposite side of the will of God. Voluntary observance of God's commandments.

That is to make such changes, as God indicates, to drop some things into the oven, and to live your entire life through the records with the new testament. Now, that is what I call reformation in the church, and it would result in a revival.

But, if it cannot come yet to the whole church, then it can come to as many as will receive it. This voluntary observance of God's commandments. Do you remember, I think this Paul Reutering pointed it out from a great sermon, R132, that God heard, because Elijah heard God, that God did according to the word of Elijah, because Elijah had done according to the word of God.

And, you can't separate these two things. There's a great lot of pastors sitting about saying, have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way. And, we don't know what it's going to do with pastors going down.

But, that is only a part of it. The other part is to hear the voice of God and do what was told. And, that means action. That means bringing your entire life into accord with the new testament teaching, with the bible teaching.

Now, I want to speak a little, as I've said, about God's will on the cross. The will of God is to place painful, fruitful, as Paul called it, the fellowship of the suffered. And, it is mentioned that one, that we have to live in a place of cross power, is because we will not have to cross trouble, and because we will not let the will of God trouble us.

We want to be passive, but we will not allow the will of God to trouble us. Now, Paul called it, I say, the fellowship of the suffering. But, don't forget this, that at the fellowship of the suffering, there will sometimes be clear manifestations.

I say this with him that way, that if there's anything in this world that I want, it is to have a clear and continuous manifestation of that presence, that one in whose presence my soul takes delight.

And, we do not have it because we cannot relate the will of God to the cross. Now, the great saints were acquainted with the cross even before Christ's time, and before that cross was raised on the bloody hill.

They were acquainted with it in essence because their obedience brought it to them. They were quick, but they noticed the direction that this cross came from. This cross came from his own carnal self, and I claim, brethren, that Christians ought to be exercised in spirit very frequently, and they ought to be in trouble with their own hearts frequently.

And, if they are not, probably it is because they do not know their own hearts. Gertrude didn't, I think, but did lately know his own heart, and Joseph's cross was Jesus. First possible kind of cross that a man can do if it was Jesus, and then there was Daniel, and his cross was the world, and there was Job, and his cross was the devil.

So, we have the world of flesh and of devil in Joseph, Daniel, and Job, and the devil crucified Job, and the world crucified Daniel, and Joseph was crucified on the tree of his own carnality. And, then there was Moses.

This cross was the apostle of God's people, and there were the apostles. Their cross came from the root of his carnality, and there was Luke, and his cross came from the church that makes the mustard-wooden crosses, the Catholic church, and there was Nephilim, and this cross came from the Protestant church.

And, I could go on down the line and just take the rest of the evening laying in Joseph's clothes. You have crosses in the will of God, and you followed the will of God through their cross. Christ's time is on the future.

God will not cross a person who is poor. Afterwards, he said, I am crucified with Christ. By faith they looked forward, and their obedience in the will of God led them into the place of blessed, and painful, and sinful trouble.

Now, this is going to be a short sermon tonight, but I think it's going to be an effective one in the Holy Ghost, and I want to talk a little about our cross, and point out to you, my friends, that we cannot go up on the hillside and receive following Jesus.

When Jesus was on earth, following Jesus physically was the easiest, cheapest way to get off. Anybody could get out of earth and say goodbye to his family and say, I'm going to follow Jesus. And, most of these did.

They followed him physically, but they didn't understand him spiritually. So, therefore, the cheapest, easiest way to dispose of the cross is to carry the cross, and physically that would be the easiest way to do it.

But, your cross isn't going to be going out and following Jesus along a dusty pathway, and it isn't going to be the climb to the hill where three others are, and be mailed up to treatment. Our cross will be the trouble we get our own hearts into by obedience to the will of God.

The brethren, there is a gentrification. Our friends, brethren, things rightly make a great deal of a gentrification, and they should. For that, a gentrification, oneness with Christ, a chance at more oneness in his description.

Oneness, and don't forget that I'm talking generally using some of the phrases of an old book called Child of the Lord, that where men are one with God, and this is the purpose of this series, that a few Christians of Greece might take this thing seriously, and that they might seek to be one with God in a way that the parallels of angelic awareness seem to consider either fanaticism or old-fashioned thought that they're not even talking about in our day.

And, a gentrification, there's a word, but resurrection is another word. There are some men who preach death so much that they'll never get anybody up out of death. They preach death, death, death. When I was a young boy, I was filled with the Holy Spirit, wonderfully filled with the Holy Spirit, and I was going along.

That's when the driver down there remembers well how he needs to be out to get her, and I was getting on well, and then I read a book about the cross, and that book took me on the cross in the first chapter, and as far as I can remember, it was still hanging on the cross in the last chapter, and the result was it was green all the way through.

Now, the preacher himself wasn't that kind of a gloomy man, but somehow he got that green into his book, and I had an awful time taking that off. It took me a long time to get away from the gloominess of it.

But, there was a preacher back beyond that time by the name of A. B. Simpson, and his approach to this cross was so radiant and wonderful that he died and blessed a generation. And, it was that rapture.

There's a cross, but beyond the cross there's a resurrection, and an identification, and a manifestation. You know all it would take, brothers and sisters. Now, we have the promises here tonight, and they're among my favorite people, and I like them as people, and I love them as Christians, and I enjoy them as singers.

The cross is not the greatest thing that could have happened to us, but each one has a key to its birth, and limits transverse. And, there are fine, tender, classical types of singers singing salvation army songs, and we'll enjoy them.

But, that's not the finest thing that could happen to this church, no, no. And, the best thing that could happen to this church wouldn't be that we could get younger, and better, and more active preachers.

Oh, that'd be perhaps desirable. I'm not suggesting that to the board, but that probably would be desirable. But, brethren, the most desirable thing, that which you've never been talking about, that which you could, it would bring tears of joy to your eyes every time you remember, would be that we could have a loving, real Christian Savior before the summit, so that we knew Jesus, so that Jesus came, and we weren't forced to sit and look at each other's back, with each other's neck, and listen to where Jesus was over.

But, a sudden befall of a kiss has always been the way it came, and I want to see that. I don't know when I'll die, but I do know if God will let me see one time, even on a small scale, this one children on earth, I'll consider today the favor he's done me just that there should be a sudden manifestation.

Now, I don't mean, I don't mean roaring in the air, I don't mean yelling, I don't mean tongues, I don't mean any physical manifestation at all, except that it would result in that tenderest manifestation to do the joy.

But, I just mean a presence made known to the spirit, that's all, and be willing to do that. That's what they have in the Welsh revival, in such a degree that the plan of the teacher couldn't be decreased, he couldn't be decreased.

They had that, but you don't see it much, and nobody wants it, and that's why I'm saying, and I'm going to say, and if you'll pray for me, I'll take night, but I'm going to continue to say that we must have reformation, and we must have look back on it again, before we can hope for revival that is really revival.

Now, those three words, identification, resurrection, manifestation, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I said I'm not going to talk very long tonight, but I do want to give you a few little presences here which I have taken from a man who's totally missed, who's known around the whole world, and still is down to this day.

So, it's about the cross, and he says it better than I, so let me read a few phrases and then tell me. He says, God is in Jesus in making us cross. Think of it. God is in Jesus. He can't take us up to the hillside there, and if you just say, I'm crucified with Christ by faith, that will cost us all.

That's technical. But, he, God wants to reincarcerate us. So, he's in Jesus in making us crosses. He makes them of iron and of lead, which are heavy in themselves, and he makes them of straw, which seems to be nothing, but yet they're more or less difficult to carry.

Some of these straw crosses, and nobody thinks about anything, but are just crucified by a need to improve. So, he says, he makes them of gold, which makes us change, which dazzles the spectators, which strikes the envy of the public, but which crucifies them less, and the crosses become more despised.

Now, there is what he means here. He was writing to some people here in high court, and he said, they wrote him, and they said, please, we're forced into high society. We're forced by our political job to, and yet we want to be crucified with Christ, and yet we're forced.

You've got to earn the money, and you've got to be, and he said, why brethren, that's your gold, these crosses made out of gold. You take the stones, and it dazzles the spectators, and it strikes the envy of the public, but it crucifies you, if you know how to take it, less than the others.

He makes them of all things we like the best, and turns them to bitterness. Now, he says this in terms of what the lion's people might not like it, but I'm going to say it anyway. It is often pleased with God to join physical weakness to this service of the spirit.

He said, nothing is more useful than these two crosses together. They crucify a man from head to foot, and when I read that, it was like a shock to my soul. Did you know the things that Jesus Christ was crucified from head to foot?

Did you know that when they nailed the man, he was crucified all over? There wasn't a part of his holy nature that was not tearing from the cross. He was crucified from head to foot, and he says God takes pleasure in that compounding human power which is only weakness which dies.

Weakness which dies. That's the power you have, my friend, whatever kind of power. Intellectual power, you have a great mind. Good, I'm glad you have. It'll bother you, and get you in trouble, but it's a good thing to have if God has so ordered.

But it's weakness which dies. You have talents, all right, but weakness which dies, and everything you have is just human weakness which dies. And God takes great pleasure in compounding it. He says God wants to make what the world most admires ridiculous and spiteful, so he treats without pity those whom he raises without name.

He treats without pity those whom he raises without names or any, and crucifies the man from head to foot because he wants to raise him without names. Oh, you know that passage, don't you? Back there, I think I read it the other day.

I read it a year and a half back with my own ears. It was all so enticing. He did him in the form of God. God is not robbing or corroborating the evil with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took on the form of a certain servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and he found his passion as a man who humbled himself, and became a deity unto death, even the death of the cross.

You know the next word? Therefore, God also has highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that it's a name that Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue should take. Now, my friends, God will crucify without pity those whom he wants to raise without names.

I believe this, and then he adds this rather beautiful and almost half-humorous expression. He says how beautiful it is to have our purgatory where others seek the paradise. I wonder who would wish to get your purgatory where others people are looking for their paradise.

Everybody else wants their paradise down below, and this wise old brother says you can have your purgatory here. You only have to wait to go to a non-existent purgatory after death. But right down here where others are seeking their funds, and their debts, their detainments, their movements, and all the rest, if you're walking with God, and you're letting the will of God lead you into that place, that cross, that place of blessed truthful trouble, your own heart, how beautiful it is to have your purgatory here.

And then he says suffering, then, is only a matter of being silent before God, for it is God who brings to birth within us dryness. Some of you have dryness over the last month since this campaign. We've even heard this again.

You've had more dryness than you ever knew before. It is God who brings to birth within you dryness, and encouragement, and discouragement to humiliate you and to show you yourself. It is he who does all we have only to see him and adore him with awe, to adore him for his grace, and to love him goodly times without pity, because without nature.

So, do you want to be raised without nature? Do you want God to save for all angels and all creatures of whom you are the lived-off for this man? There's no limit to where I take him. There's no limit, and no ceiling on what he can have.

Just keep it open. There's no top to it. Without nature, I'll raise him, and because without pity I'll crucify him. What does he mean? Well, he says in the very next line, he says, at the odds of raising him in this state, consider the hand of God which crucifies and shows pity.

So, what does he mean? He crucifies without pity, and he crucifies through pity. Oh, you that have had children, or have the care of children, do you know what it is to punish without pity, and yet punish with pity?

Do you know what it is when you pray for your child, and you want that child to be the very prime example of a good pity, and you love them, and you give your blood out of your veins just like that for them, and yet without pity you turn off the rod?

And yet, what is it through pity that makes you punish them without pity? Do you see the beautiful mix up there? So, that's the way God feels. It is the pity of God over his children that lets him turn off the rod that he might make us the kind of people he wants us to be.

Brother Chalmers, where are we going to find a sample of what I'm talking about? Where are we going to get a company of Christians somewhere who are completely separated from all their prejudices, and all their carnal desires, and that are willing to put themselves in the hands of God, and bear any kind of cost, iron, or lead, or straw, or gold, or anything, and be the kind of samples that we're talking about?

Now, he says, it is God who does it all, and we have only to see him and to adore him in all. There will be a time, and I don't know when it will be, for any of you, but there will be a time not far distant when all you have will be God and the cross.

We shall hold our right cross before my chosen eyes of rest. Time to grieve, and all you have, and how pathetic it is, and I don't want to be unkind, but how pathetic it is to know people who've never understood, and they've never been taught, and they have no evangelical message at all.

Clutch to their dress the cross when they're dying. Clutch it, and hold it tight, thinking that in metal, and wood, and paint, and enamel, there may be some things that take them over the river, although that's not the cross that helps them all.

It is another kind of cross. It is that cross which comes to you from being in the will of God. That which you do by being in the will of God, and it comes in many directions as well, and most of the time, I think it will come from within.

Mine usually comes from within, and God lets me fall on my face, or break a nose, or do some cool thing, or otherwise injure my soul, and that's the cross, and the Lord nails me there, and now all we have to do is see him, and adore him, soon as all.

When it closes, and I'm closing with these words, oh cross, oh good cross I embrace you. I adore indeed this dying beast with whom I also must die. Oh cross, oh good cross I embrace you. Not a cross on the road, not a cross on the church, not a cross on a chain, not a cross around the neck, but the cross of the will of God, whatever it is.

The cross of obedience to the will of God. The man, as I said some weeks back, a good English brother who was talking to me, and he said this. God has given him a marvelous testimony, and he said this.

He said, I find obedience brings the cross into the life quicker than anything else. Now, do you dare say tonight, and will you say, will you say looking forward to holy identification, manifestation, resurrection, and power?

Can you say, oh God, crucify me from head to foot? From head to foot, God. This is the reformation we need now. Once they knew they needed a reformation, it would bring the bible back to the church. They got it.

Again, they needed a reformation. It would teach men they could be justified and clean, and they got it under the record, and now we need a reformation. That child takes the will of God and adore it, and look on God and let him work, and look not backwards but look forward.

Disassociate itself from all whatever it calls itself, and however sound it may think of ease and doctrine, all that is unspiritual, and all that is unchristlike, all that is in the testament, and look on him and let him work, in personal, causal, good cause, and they see.

Did you say this is so very easy? It's an awful way to talk to young people. I'm not speaking in a word about young people. I understand it. It's amazing how teenage Christians, if they're really Christians, get what I'm talking about, and some want it.

But, brethren, did you ever stop to think that the Easter came after Good Friday, and that there had to be Good Friday before there had to be Easter, and before he could rise and sing among his brethren, he had to bow his head and suffer among his brethren?

And this is what's lost from the church. The only suffering you know about now is that which you imposed by accident from the outside, and everybody looks about it, and they feel as a people that wouldn't have had it that way if they'd got out of it, and had no credit coming because it happened to them by accident.

That's no cost, my brethren. Your cost is what you take from the hand of God, looking on him and letting him work, and thanking him and adoring him, and you wouldn't change it if you could, and you could if you want.

And so, when it comes to glory for a director, when it comes to lips and to breath, now, I don't know whether this would be a good illustration or a poor complete illustration of what I mean, but there was a minister here last Sunday night, a young minister of another denomination, and he went into the prayer room, and they prayed with him there, and it took quite a while, but he came to him in such a state of radiance that those with whom he was praying said he would talk about nothing of all that evening and the next day.

That was all the conversation was about. He was so lifted and so radiant with it all, but before there can come the radiance of the dawn, there must be the darkness of the night. Before there can come the light of resurrection, there must be the death that ends another kind of life.

Oh, cross! Oh, good cross! I adore, indeed, the dying Jew. Now, my friends, I believe that you want to go on with this, and I know I do, and I do at any cost, and when I say at any cost, I mean at any cost, and I have this.

I have nobody said it to me, but I wrote it here a long time ago. Oh, God, let me die right rather quickly, down on a low level. I'd rather reach a high spot and turn off the light. I'd rather live right, die right, and live wrong.

Oh, blessed cross! Oh, God's praise! Oh, truthful God! Do you know anything about it? Are you in it? Has it done anything for you? On the page of sleep, rest, and trouble, heart-searching, of travel, if you haven't, you can never know in the dusk and in the dawn.

You can pray for revival until you die, and you'll never get any revival. You can join groups and pray all night for revival, and all you'll lose will be sleep, and all your gains will be exercise. If we believe in this kind of reformation, ask that man who works, and why don't we do something about it tonight?

Why don't we have a little session where we can come and call and say, Oh, blessed will of God! Blessed will of God! Oh, blessed cross! Oh, I adore my Savior! Crucify me from head to foot! I believe that up out of your stony greens there'll be a battle raged, lots of vicious up my head.

I dare not ask to hide from thee. I lay, and just like glory, dead, and from the ground there blossoms red light that shall in me let be. Who come and lay his glory in the dust tonight? The best he knows how.

Who come and lay his, her glory in the dust? The best he knows how. And, we pray the Lord, teach the will of God for you in obedience. The will, and the cross, and the identification, and the presence, and the glory, and the resurrection, and the life.

You want to announce it now? And, we'll stand in third chapter, and you know that text. But, what things are gained from me, those I found it last, the text, which I'll keep to myself also, but that I'll not read the rest of it because you're familiar with it.

Except that passage that says that I am a manian, and the power of the resurrection, and the fellowship of the receptors, we make conformable unto death. Now, that's the passage we've been dealing with right along, but there's also a passage in the 40th psalm, which I want to read now.

Psalm 40, verses 7 and 8. Then said I, let the beast be hidden. I'd be like to do thy will always within my heart. Now, the beast, to its simplest term, is no more, and no less than God. We might just talk about the will of God having our cross.

Now, hell is the place where the will of God has never been. That is why it is hell, for it is always hell. It is not done at all, as I'll generally say. It is partly done, as among most of us Christians, or imperfectly done.

Now, our relation to the will of God is two-fold. Partly in that it is passive, in that it is a recognition that God's at, or that he thinks that there's a man, or part of him, and then you probably come to write on me, I guess.

And, I want to ask you whether you agree with me on this, that when we mention the will of God, in the day in which he lives, there we mean, and are understood to mean, recognition to God's will. We sing about the will of God, and when we sing, we really mean that Mary makes, and she said, do unto me even as thou wilt.

Now, that was something God was going to do, but not something that she was doing. That was recognition and captivity. That was saying, God, God, I accept thy will, so meet, go ahead, and whatever you send is all right with me, and that was recognition and good.

But, there is a second relation to the will of God which many, I'm sure, are willing to believe, and it is rarely talked about, and that is the opposite side of the will of God. Voluntary observance of God's commandment.

That is to make such changes, as God indicates, to drop some things into the oven, and to live an entire life through the course with the new testament. Now, that is what I call reformation through the church, and it would result in a revival.

But, if it cannot come yet to the whole church, then it can come to as many as will receive it. So, that the actual voluntary observance of God's commandment. Do you remember, I think this Paul Rader pointed it out in a great sermon, R132, that God heard Elijah because Elijah heard God, and that God did according to the word of Elijah because Elijah had done according to the word of God.

And, you can't separate these two things. It's a great lot of a passage speaking about who has ran away, Lord, has ran away, and we don't know what it's going to be, but it's absolutely that. But, that is only a part of it.

The other part is to hear the voice of God and do what was told. So, that means action. That means bringing an entire life into accord with the new testament teaching, with the bible teaching. Now, I want to speak a little, as I said, about God's will and the cross.

The will of God, I will say to you, brethren, which is the will of God which afflicts painful, fruitful trouble. Paul called it the fellowship of the suffered, and it is my conviction that one little cross power is good because we will not have to cross trouble, and because we will not let the will of God trouble us.

We want to be passive, but we will not allow the will of God to trouble us. Now, Paul called it, I say, the fellowship of the suffering, but don't forget this, that at the fellowship of the suffering there you will find quite the clear manifestation.

I say this as well that way, that it is anything in this world that I want to do, to have a clear and continuous manifestation of that presence, that one in whose presence my soul takes delight. And, we do not have it because we cannot relate the will of God to the cross.

Now, the great saints were acquainted with the cross even before Christ's time, and before that cross was raised on the bloody hill. They were acquainted with it in essence because their obedience brought it to them.

They were good, but they noticed the direction that which cross came from. This cross came from his own carnal self, and I claim, brethren, that Christians ought to be exercised in spirit very frequently, and they ought to be in trouble with their own hearts frequently.

And, if they are not, probably it is because they do not know their own hearts. Joseph didn't, I say, but did lately know his own heart, and this cross was Jesus. The worst possible kind of cross to a man could be if it was Jesus, and then there was Daniel, and this cross is the world, and there was Job, and this cross was the devil.

So, we have the world of Christ and the devil in Joseph, Daniel, and Job, and the devil crucified Job, and the world crucified Daniel, and Joseph is crucified on the key of his own judgment, his own carnality.

And, then there is Moses this cross was the apostle of God's people, and there were the apostles where their cross came from the root of his carnality, and there was Luke, and this cross came from the church that makes so much of woody crosses, the Catholic church, and there was Hefner, and this cross came from the Protestant church.

And, I could go on down the line and just take the rest of the evening, and in the evening, Joseph says, you have crossed in the will of God, and you followed the will of God to the cross, and even ordered the poor Christ's son to come to Jesus, died on that cross, and took his soul.

Afterwards, he said, I am crucified with Christ. By faith, they looked forward, and their obedience in the will of God led them into the place of blessed, and painful, and sinful suffering. Now, this is going to be a short sermon tonight, but I think it's going to be an effective one in the holy day.

And, I want to talk a little about our cross, and point out to you, my friends, that we cannot go up on the hillside and not receive following Jesus. When Jesus was on earth, following Jesus physically was the easiest, cheapest way to get off.

Anybody could get out of work and take a Bible sermon and try and go and follow Jesus, and follow him physically. But, they didn't understand him physically. So, therefore, the cheapest, easiest way to dispose of the cross is to carry the cross physically.

That would be the easiest way to do it. But, your cross isn't going to be going out and following Jesus along a dusty pathway. And, it isn't going to be the climb to the hill where three others are, and be mailed up between them.

Our cross will be the cover we get our own hearts into, by obedience to the will of God. The brethren there seek the gentrification. Our cross is that gentrification, oneness with Christ. The cross is that oneness and sanctification, oneness.

And, don't forget that I am talking generally, and using some of the phrases of the Lord, of Paul, the child of the Lord, that where men are one with God. And, this is the purpose of this series, that a few Christians of Greece might take this thing seriously, and that there might seem to be one with God, in a way that the paralects of the angelical world seem to consider either fanaticism or a type of stuff that we're not even talking about in our day.

And, identification, there's a word, but resurrection is another word. There are some men who preach death so much that they'll never get anybody up out of death. They preach death, death, death. When I was a young fellow, I was filled with the Holy Spirit, wondrously filled with the Holy Spirit, and I was going along.

My friend, Ignorah, down there, remembers well how we used to go out together. And, I was getting on well, and then I read a book about the cross, and that book put you on the cross in the first chapter, and as far as I can remember, you were still hanging on the cross in the last chapter, and the result was it was gloom all the way through.

Now, the preacher himself wasn't that kind of a gloomy man, but somehow he got that gloom into his book, and I had an awful time shaking that off. It took me a long time to get away from the gloominess of it, but there was a preacher back beyond that time by the name of A. B. Simpson, and his approach to this cross was so radiant and wonderful that he died and blessed a generation.

And, this was that period where there's a cross, but beyond the cross there's a resurrection, and an identification, and a manifestation. You know all the good faith brothers and sisters. Now, we have the Thomas's here tonight, and they're among my favorite people.

I like them, I love them as Christians, and I enjoy their singing, but that's not the greatest thing that could have happened to us. Let's think when we had St. Pete, St. Petersburg, and Lillith, St. Petersburg, and the fine, tender, classical type of singers singing salvation army songs, and we enjoyed them, but that's not the finest thing that could have happened to this church, no, no, and the best thing that could happen to this church wouldn't be that we could get younger, and better, and more active people, all that.

That'd be perhaps desirable. I'm not suggesting that to the board, but that probably would be desirable. But, brethren, the most desirable thing, that which you've never seen talking about, that which you could, it would bring tears of joy to your eyes every time you remember, would be if we could have a loving, willing, and sincere Savior before the summer, before the beginning of the season, before the season of pain, and we weren't forced to sit and look at each other's backs, with each other's necks, and just be calm and safe, and listen to when the music was over, but a sudden release before the pain.