He Spared Not His Own Son (Cd Quality) — Leonard Ravenhill

Romans 8: From Funeral March to Wedding March

Three verses that actually are linked together from maybe the best-known chapter in the Bible, Romans chapter 8. Everybody runs for refuge into Romans 8 28 when they're in trouble. It's almost in isolation except it's so popular.

Romans chapter 7 in my judgment, and my judgment isn't perfect though it's very near it, but anyhow, Romans chapter 7 is a funeral march. Romans chapter 8 is a wedding march. If the Apostle Paul had known it coming out of Romans 7, he might have sung that lovely song, out of my bondage, sorrow, and night, Jesus I come.

Out of my sickness into thy health, out of my poverty into thy wealth, out of my sin and into thyself. Romans 7 is a self-centered chapter. I, I, I, 30 times. Romans 8 is a spirit-centered chapter. The Spirit is mentioned 18 times in Romans chapter 8.

Only twice is there I in verses 18 and 38 when he couldn't do anything else but use that. You know, I told some preachers this week, I've had so many preachers, I had a wonderful privilege to insult them.

They come to consult me and I insult them. I said, you leave everybody in Romans 7. G. Campbell Morgan in his day, I remember listening to him, what, 50 years ago, and he was considered the prince of expositors.

And one day he gave a wonderful message on holiness. There were about 300 preachers there. You can tell them, they all had their colors backwards way. That's because they're going backwards way, but anyhow, they were all sitting there and he gave a wonderful message on the holiness and boy I was so excited.

I thought John Wesley would say amen to every word. Then at the end he said, but I'm not preaching sinless perfection. Well I never heard anybody preach that. And he said, remember the Apostle Paul finished in Romans 7 saying, O wretched man that I am.

And under my breath, rather loud breath, I said, that's a lie. And all the preachers turned around. You can't live in Romans 7. Our Paul, pardon me, did not end up in Romans 7, O wretched man that I am.

Or saying, it is not I but sin that dwelleth in me. Because in Galatians he said, it's not I, it's Christ that liveth in me. You can't have the indwelling Christ, the indwelling sin. You remember when Abraham had two wives.

Isn't that something? That's not scripture. No man can serve two masters. But he had two wives. And remember the wife that he got for himself bore him a son by the name of what? Ishmael. And one day when Abraham came in there'd been some strife and envy.

Ishmael is a type of the child of the flesh. He wasn't God's gift, he was a child of the flesh. And Isaac's the child of the Spirit. And so the Spirit lusts against the flesh, one against the other. So when he comes in and the son, the prodigals in which he really was, Ishmael had been giving trouble in the house to Isaac.

And Sarah comes and says to Abraham, cast out this bondwoman and her son. She didn't say put him in the basement and starve him to death, kick him out. She said, get him away. If the church of Jesus Christ doesn't have an answer to the sin question, there isn't one.

He came to save his people from their sins, not in their sins. The trouble is now in most churches they come up to the altar every week sinning and repenting, just like Catholics. Except it's cheaper, we don't take an offering for it.

Sinning and repenting was never the plan of God. It's to save his people from their sins. Well there you are, that's the introduction. You like that? Okay. So the best known verse in this chapter is what?

Romans 8 28. The verse I want to quote tonight is verse 32. I didn't learn many hymns in America, I confess I was pretty well stocked up with hymns when I came. I'm not sure if it's right here. But the second hymn that we sang tonight about himself, once it was the blessing, now it is the Lord.

I think it was A. B. Simpson who also wrote the hymn, O to be like thee, blessed Redeemer. But you know that's very nice and sentimental when you hear. Do we really mean, you know, fifty years, sixty years ago in England a man, I'm not sure, I think it was an American by the name of Bruce Barton, wrote a book and it became a bestseller.

The book had this title, The Book Nobody Knows. It was about the Bible. And then he wrote a book, The Man Nobody Knows. It was about Jesus. I'm mischievously tempted sometimes to write a book on the life nobody lives.

You talk about a narrow way. When it comes down to the nitty-gritty it's terribly, terribly narrow. O to be like thee. Come on, would you like the forty next days in the wilderness battered by the devil on every level?

Intellectually, sexually, physically, emotionally. And yet he's alone there. And the hardest thing in the Christian life is to walk alone. And God doesn't make churches, he makes individuals. And then he sets the solitary in families.

It's a paradox, but it's true. I had a young fellow in my office this week, I said, what in the world are you doing here? You live a hundred and forty miles away. I said, there's something in you and something in me that harmonizes.

And God is setting the solitary in families. He's bringing people together without a roof over their head. That's no point about it at all. It's a relationship in spirit. It's a oneness in the spirit that matters.

But what's it say here? He spared not his own son. Now how many poets do it? Was Wordsworth an American poet or English? Longfellow was American, he wrote Here Water. What about Wordsworth? You don't know.

English. Good, thank you teacher. Shows education comes up. Money doesn't count. Okay. Wordsworth wrote to him, how does it start now? O Lord of heaven and earth and sea, to thee all praise and glory be.

How shall we show our love to thee who givest all? Thou didst not spare thine only Son, but gavest him for a world undone. And freely with that blessed one thou givest all. And remember last week we thought of the child there, the Christ child.

And there was all the fullness of the God that in him. He's going to lift a burden that Samson could never lift. He's going to solve a problem that Solomon in all his wisdom could never solve. And then he comes down to earth.

N .Y. Fullerton. Do you know N .Y. Fullerton? He was an Irishman. He wrote, let me get a hold of it. The first stanza is Down from his glory. Remember that, anybody? Down from his glory. And the tune is what?

Oh, so may I. See? Good, thank you. You know it, all these musicians here. Well, it goes something like this, correct me. Do you know it? Well, I won't check you. You check me. Down from his glory, ever-living story.

From heaven to us he came, and Jesus was his name. Born in a manger to his own a stranger, a man of sorrows, tears, and agony. Without reluctance, flesh and blood his substance. He took the form of man, revealed God's hidden plan.

God, gracious, tender, laid aside his splendor. You ever think of the moment when he became incarnate? What did the angels think? What did demons think? I tell you, we pass over the story of Mary so easily.

That little tramp, as people say, that little girl, unmarried. She's almost due for a baby, and Joseph suddenly isn't the father. Maybe she's pregnant with one of those Germans. There was a German camp there at the time, tradition says, or history says.

And there she is. She has the Christ of God in her, and people passed within inches, as it were, of the Savior as she went up the road. And then the news spread that this little tramp had had a baby in a stable, and somebody says, well, oh, that's where she should have it anyhow.

A woman like her deserves to have it. Can you imagine the splendor down from his glory where angels had bowed down and worshipped him? Angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim, and yet he comes to a filthy stable.

Christ’s Rejection and the Holiness of the Remnant

He spared not his own son. He didn't spare him loneliness. He didn't spare him slander. Jesus was under a cloud from the moment. The first thing Jesus did before he could walk or talk was divide people.

Herod was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. All the society people, the hierarchy of the Jews, they were all troubled. People are saying that woman's going to have a baby, and it's the Messiah. Herod was troubled, and all the government with him, and all the bankers, and all the society people were troubled with him.

There's a little pocket of people here. This strange little woman, for the last ten years, she's nearly a hundred years of age, and she'd gone to the temple every day of her life. And Simeon was getting up towards a hundred.

And one day he said, I will not die till I see the salvation of God. And this little pocket of people, a minority. I was saying to a brother the other day that I have a group of people called the remnant in this town.

There's a remnant inside the remnant. There's a minority, more and more and more. I have no place. I'm glad for crowds, let them go. But God has always used the minority. Jesus didn't say to the five hundred he saw at once, if you wait somewhere outside the temple, remember the temple helped six thousand people.

He didn't say, if you five hundred come, I'll make a deal with you, I'll send the Holy Ghost. He gave them an invitation, they didn't come. Three hundred and eighty stayed away, a hundred and twenty came.

God is still looking for minority. A holy people, a cleansed people, a people that are totally sold out from the top of the head to the sole of their feet. And he took his son, he did not spare, thou didst not spare thine only son.

He didn't spare him loneliness. He didn't spare him misrepresentation. Wasn't it in the temple one day that somebody said, we're Abraham's seed. We were not born of fornication. In other words, you are, you're a bastard.

Would you like that hanging over your holy life? We're going to bear his reproach if we're his. I had a man in my office this week, that a few weeks ago was in Australia. And he said, would you believe in Australia the fashionable thing is to turn the knob Sunday morning and get Kenneth Hagan.

Everybody's crazy in Australia about Kenneth Hagan. Another man came in my office this week and he said, hey a friend of mine was in Poland last week. And he said the first thing when he got off the plane a young man came to him and said, are you a preacher from America?

Yes. Do you know Kenneth Hagan? Not do you know the Saviour, not are you concerned about revival, not are we on the edge of judgment. You know whatever they sign in that wretched concord, what do you call it, covenant with Gorbachev.

Do you remember as he signed it, he did this, he said that we're going to wind down the war in Afghanistan, the dirty liar. He knew that they planned this last week to send a new force into it. And they drove tens of thousands of women.

They're trying to get over the hill. Where does, there's a range, what's the range to divide them from? Afghanistan, what's over the hill? Pakistan. And he said, women on their hands and knees trying to get up the rocks, pregnant women, their little bellies bouncing on the rocks, skinning their knees, trying to get away from Khrushchev.

I'll tell you what, last week we became unequally yoked with the greatest atheistic diabolical system in the world. It's anti-Christ, it's anti-American, it's anti-God and anti-purity. Stalin himself said, there's one way to ruin a nation, two things, through its music and drugs.

And boy that's where we are today. Stalin said that. The man who liquidated more than six million people, we talk about the Holocaust, he put more people to death than that. But remember, Jesus, the first thing he did was to divide men and women.

There was, Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. The last thing he did on the cross was divide. A thief, this day in paradise, and the other went to perdition. All through his life he divided people.

We say, if we had a revival we'd all be together. Listen, after Azusa Street, before very long they were split up again. It's not a case of unity of flesh and blood, it's a unity of heart, it's a unity of purpose, it's a unity of love, and it's a unity of sacrifice.

Twice in the last two weeks I've heard of men who have come from other countries. One of them called me a thousand miles, he said, I can't believe this is Christianity in America. It's not the Christianity we have in Africa.

You're watching the clock every moment. Oh, the preacher gets up, oh good night, it's been so lovely to have you here. Nobody does God a favor. God does all the favors. You never pronounce the benediction in a revival service.

It goes on and on until early morning. These fellows used to go to meetings in Africa. He said, we're not always staring at the clock. We go on until 2, 3, even 4 o 'clock in the morning. Somebody came in from another country and said exactly the same thing.

Immediately I stepped into America and saw your system of Christianity. It's not biblical. Sure it isn't, but it's been handed down to us. Many of us wouldn't use clothing, would you? How many of you go to Goodwill to buy your clothes?

Don't raise your hands anyhow. But I'll tell you what we do wear, Brother Bob. We wear second-hand theology. I never try to indoctrinate people. I know I'm right, but still I want to share. In this last moment, there's not much time left.

America will not last another decade. She can't do that, economically or any other way. Just yesterday we talked with a lady, and she'd been talking to one of the wealthiest men in Texas, and he said to her the other day, you think it's rough now?

Wait until next year at this time. You're going to be in collision with some things you've never even dreamed of. And yet the church thrives in adversity. We want another Pentecost. If we had Pentecost, we'd be in jail within a month.

If you start the service and kill all the hypocrites, some churches, everybody would die. But anyhow, Ananias and Sapphira were killed. It was as much Pentecost as speaking in tongues. What did they do?

Immediately after the Holy Ghost came, they were cast into prison, and they rejoiced that they were counted worthy. What? To get a pension? To go on a trip to another country? They were counted worthy to suffer for His namesake.

And when that name to us is more precious than anything on God's earth, the glory of God will come. You know, some churches spent more time dressing the big Christmas tree this week than prayer. And would you believe it?

You know, the deacon of that big church in town, the chief deacon had the privilege of putting the star on top of the tree. Isn't that wonderful? Think of the reward you'll get in heaven for doing that.

All over the country they're doing the same thing. God allowed His Son, you talk about going through the mill, but from His birth, again He divided them at His birth, He divided them on the cross, and He went into the synagogue, and there was a division because of Him.

Didn't they like the clothes He wore? No, they didn't like the thing He preached. When He starts preaching, blessed are the poor in spirit, here is the greatest man who ever lived. He preached the greatest sermon ever preached, and nobody listens to it.

It's too big for us. God help us. Never mind the world. The world can't live the Sermon on the Mount. It's totally impossible. But if Christ is going to raise His kingdom, and He is, the kingdom of God is within us.

They're preaching a visible kingdom, but remember the Word of God says, the kingdom of God cometh not by observation. And then it says, the children of the kingdom were kicked into outer darkness. They don't present that either.

Christ’s Incarnation, Suffering, and Victory

But Jesus has thirty years of developing His manhood. Rejection here, rejection there. Even His own family, His brothers said He's mad. It's pretty rough. If it's outside the house, it's not so bad, but when He gets inside, and I'll tell you what, if you walk in holiness, you'll be rejected even in your own church.

There's so much worldliness in the church, there's so much permissible. If you walk in holiness, people think, oh, he's a holy Jew or he's something else. Let me push on with this. Spare not his own son, but deliver him up from us all.

How shall we not with him freely give us all things? I'm emphasizing the giving tonight. With him there's not one thing that God omitted for our redemption, everything's included for your purging, for your prosperity spiritually, for your progress spiritually.

God has given it through Jesus Christ. Verse 34 says, Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died. Can anybody challenge His substitution? It is Christ that died. Yea, rather than He's risen again, can anybody challenge His resurrection?

He liveth to make intercession for us. You see, this is the chapter of victory again. Freely He's given us all things. What has He given us? Well, in verse 16, if you look at that for a moment, in verse 16, we receive the spirit of adoption.

Isn't that wonderful? We were without God and without hope, and Jesus broke down the middle wall of partition, and we were afar off amid night. We received the spirit of adoption. Then in the next verse, the Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit.

The Spirit beareth witness. Do you know John Wesley preached on that text more than any other text that he ever preached on in his life? I think of our precious brother now up there. We used to sing so often, Blessed Assurance, and he'd wave.

We'd sing it, and I've seen sometimes on TV, it being 10 or 20, 30, 50 ,000 singing Blessed Assurance. I'd like to stop it and say, start right there. Explain your assurance. What's assurance? What's assurance?

Blessed Assurance. In other words, there's nothing can move me, neither hell or powers or principalities can move me. I've got assurance, and it's given because He's freely given us it. We don't have to go on a pilgrimage.

You don't have to pay tribute. You don't have to join a church. You don't have to wear certain garments. By obedience and submission at the cross, He gives us assurance that we pass from death unto life.

So we have assurance in verse 16. In verse 26, the same Spirit helpeth our infirmities. So we have the spirit of prayer, all because of him. I remember dear Mr. Chatterjee used to say, you know, if love is slightly offended it gets really petulant.

And when Jesus said to his disciples, I'm going away, they said, no, no, no. He said, somebody better than I, oh no, that's possible. You're the most awesome person that's ever trod the earth. But if I go away, somebody else will come, better than, no, no, no.

He said, listen, I'm with you, he shall be in you. And if I don't go, he won't come. And Mr. Chatterjee used to call the coming of the Holy Spirit, the coronation gift of Jesus. So he comes to bear witness with us.

He comes to pray through us with groanings sometimes that have no language. Not even tongues can do it. It's deeper than that. It's beyond that. It's the very heart of God breathing through my heart. I don't need a vocabulary, dear God.

Is praying better for the man who has an elastic vocabulary? Is it better in English than French? Is it better in Yiddish or Swedish? No, the prayer is something in the heart. I can say something with my lips tonight, but if my heart isn't there, I cancel.

And many people cancel, they sabotage their own praying because they're in the right relationship with somebody. You can't cover it up. How do we send into the hill of the Lord? We have clean hands, that's our relationship with the world.

And a pure heart, that's our relationship with God. So he gives us a spirit, the witness of the Spirit. He gives us assurance that we're born again of the Spirit of God. He gives us the ability to pray.

And in verse 37 he gives us victory. We are more than conquerors through him that loved us. Through him, not through our going to a cross, but through him, what he did and what he is doing even now in us and through us.

God’s Promises and Participation in the Divine Nature

He has with him freely given us all things. Turn a minute please to 2 Peter chapter 1. I like this chapter. I was going to say I love it. There was a man about over a hundred years ago. Let me check with another schoolteacher.

When did... I was going to give you the wrong name anyhow. The man that wrote on 1 Peter. He wrote a classic anyhow. Let me pass on and say this. Simon Peter. When Jesus found Peter, he wasn't Peter, he was Simon.

The name means shifty, like sand. If you take a grain of sand under a microscope, you'll find it has peaks on it like that and cavities like that. But if you go to England, if you go to Bath or somewhere like that, you'll see a cathedral that foundation was laid in 444 and that place is still standing.

Those grains of sand were pressed together, locked in together, and you've got sandstone. Thou art Simon, shifty, irresponsible, volatile. He was the most volatile and the most volatile of the whole bunch.

Jesus spoke more to Peter, not only to any other individual, than to all the disciples. Peter in turn spoke more to Jesus. He always had an answer. Thou art Simon, shifty, thou shalt be rock, dependable.

And here is the man giving advice. Listen to what he says in verse 2. Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God. You notice that's very important. Through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, according to his divine power, he given unto us all things again that pertaineth to life.

That means prosperity, success, easy street, no troubles, no anxieties, forget it. He's given unto us all things that pertain to life and godliness. We need to get through to people. Christianity is not a creed, it's not a dogma, it's a life.

He that hath the Son hath life. He may know his Bible inside out. I had a fellow in my office recently, eloquent in Hebrew, eloquent in Greek, and I told him a thing or two while he was there. But I was teasing him, I said, a lot of the greatest books ever written, he didn't know one of them.

I said, remember this, it's a life. He that hath the Son hath life. And if he doesn't have the Son, he doesn't have life. He may know all the theology. Oh, I believe in the incarnation, so does the devil, he witnessed it.

I believe in the resurrection, so does the devil, he witnessed it. I believe in redemption, so does the devil. It made him mad, it still makes him mad. But he has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness.

Through the knowledge of him he has called us to glory and power. Whereby are given unto us these exceeding great and precious promises. He's given us all things. He's given us great and precious promises.

And do you know why the devil gets to us so often? Because we forget to put up the shield of faith at the beginning of the day. We're praying about problems at the end of the day we'd never have had if we'd did our business at the beginning of the day.

We haven't taken full coverage. I love to hear somebody say on TV, or read it somewhere, Mr. So-and-so was caught. He's been taken in protective custody. I laugh at that because I'm in protective custody every day I live.

The custody of the Holy Spirit of God. The Spirit bears witness. When I'm slow, when I'm going ahead of God in something, then the Holy Spirit is the Spirit that restrains me. When I'm slow he constrains me.

I want to live there in perfect submission to him. He's given unto us exceeding great and precious promises. Do you know what? Most Christians, and this is a blanket statement, most of us I believe, I know Brother Sonny will agree with me anyhow, most of us we're underprivileged by choice.

There's a place in Glasgow called the Goebbels, and I remember walking through it with a very famous writer. If you haven't read his book, Fair Sunshine, Jock Purvis wrote one of the greatest books. I can't read that book without tears, and I've read the thing for 40 or 50 years.

I'm walking through with him, and it's a slum area. It's poverty stricken. At least it was 50 years ago when I was going through it. As a matter of fact, I went through it about the second day of World War II, and that was 1939.

He said, Len, look at all this property. I said, look at these people. They're in rags. Look at those children. They're poverty stricken. They're dirty, obviously diseased, malnutritioned. I remember he stopped and said, just a minute.

He said, you know, outside up in Perth, and Perth is a magnificent country. There are those great big stags there that are very much like what we call here, what do you call the big oversized things? The big elk, yes, like elk.

They're red, and they're beautiful. He said, Len, you can go there. If you can drive through the country there, you'll find mansions. You'll find gorgeous castles, with maybe three or four hundred acres, with every kind of wild animal that lives in Scotland, and you'll find pheasants there and all the other birds.

And he says, these people living here don't know that if they bothered about it, they could go to a lawyer and prove that they should inherit the castle and everything that's there. There's one of them there with about $10 million worth of antiques.

A duke lives in that, the Duke of Argyll, actually. My father lived in it for a long while with the Duke, but he didn't get rich. But you see, there's so much that's not been inherited. I think when we get to heaven, the first time, five minutes in heaven and look back, we'll be embarrassed.

All the territory we could have occupied by faith through the precious promises of God, and they're left undone. And it's not hurting the church, maybe it's hurting the world in laziness, in self-satisfaction.

We want our playground, God help us. We're more interested how a church should be known as Argylls when the volleyball for the state or in our denomination. Dear God, most churches are more interested in the sports field than the mission field.

I don't judge a church anymore by how much it gives to missions. There are some churches in this country that give a million a year to missions. I believe it's a good sign, I'm glad they do it, but what do they reproduce?

Are they producing missionaries? Are young men and women getting vision? Or are they going to die like other kids, just well-educated but useless to God? A man called me yesterday, sending me a Christmas gift.

I'm hoping for a hundred calls. He said, I'm sending you a Christmas gift, it's very good. He said, it's this new volume on the life of Amy Wilson Carmichael, and it's written by Elizabeth Elliott. You remember the Elliott's?

She's one of the best writers in the country. There are others of course, but anyhow, she's written this marvelous book and I can't wait to read it. This precious, frail little thing I preached in the tin church, just a tin building in Belfast years ago.

And behind me was a picture, must have been this height from the ground. It looked like my mother's, curly hair and a choker collar, little gold chain around her neck. Amy Wilson Carmichael went out of that church without a penny, took a one-way ticket, a one-way ticket to India.

Had a curvature of the spine. The last three years of her life, they lifted her in and out of bed. Why did she stay and take care of 350 children, who in turn became missionaries? They saw a model in her.

Where are the role models today? A young guy called me recently, I won't tell you the church, the big church in Alabama. He said, Mr. Amy, in our church there are nine deacons. I don't want to be like one of them.

Isn't that disgusting? There's not one of them I want to be like. They're greedy, grasping, materialistic. They talk about their big cars, their big homes and everything, as though they were not part of the divine nature, he says here, that we might be made partakers of the divine nature.

That doesn't startle us anymore, does it? It doesn't stagger us that God once cut history in two with a baby, not a super war. A baby came. Not an archangel walked up and down Main Street in Jerusalem and said, everybody here, here, tomorrow at this time the Son of God is going to be.

He didn't do that. There were angels in the sky for sure. But he sends his little child, again to quote a bit of Dougra, they were looking for a king to bring salvation. Nigh, he came, a little infant thing that made a woman cry.

How many times do you think she couldn't go to sleep, her hallelujahs and rejoicing that she was pregnant with the Son of God? How often do you think she read his record? This child has come to be a curse to summon a blessing to others.

This child is going to bear the sin of the world. Do you think when she washed his little hands she ever figured nails cast through them? You say that's rather dramatic. Friend, there's something far more dramatic than that.

There are millions of people going to go to hell because the church tonight is sleeping. And we're not awake, we're not alert to it. You can't get people, you can get them to travel, you can't get them to travel.

Partakers of the divine nature? There's nothing greater than that, this side of heaven. Then what does it say in Hebrews? We can be partakers of the saints in light. We can be partakers. Why are we still in the flesh?

Dear Lord, why are we so contented? Have you moved up today in God? Are you higher than you were yesterday? It's easy singing, I'm pressing on the upward way, new heights I'm getting every day. We don't do it in leaps, we do it step by step.

Trivial things. Paschal said perfection is made up of trifles, but perfection itself is no trifle. We can be partakers of the saints in light. Having escaped the corruption that's in the world through lust.

Holiness, the Church’s Condition, and Spiritual Wakefulness

Do you know how to put a margin? Bob, at the side of my Bible today I put the corruption that's in the church through lust. Swaggart said a few weeks ago there's more immorality in the church today than ever.

There's more corruption in the church today forever. We don't count how many people are transformed, we count how many people come up to the front, or how many people give us money. I know God's merciful, otherwise it's pure the church.

I'm reading almost every day Revelation 3. What the critics say about the church, I don't care a hill of beans what they say, but what Jesus says about it wounds me. Jesus says of the darling church that he died to save, she's wretched and naked and blind and miserable.

Do you ever see a bride walk down an aisle naked? We say the church is the bride, and he says it's naked. It's wretched. It's blind and miserable. She's lost the joy of the Lord. She's entertained now.

Oh, let's have a Christmas party. It's nice, you know, there's nothing wrong with it, and nothing holy about it either. For every moment you're sitting around and fooling in church people are perishing, and God Almighty is going to have to do some miracle and he'll do it.

But that won't get old with me. I've written it in letters I guess to a dozen people in the last week there where Jesus says of his church, she's blind. They had no windows, but they had a lattice like those, what do you call those, blinds we have, that type of blind.

The lattice was like that. And Jesus is standing at the door, and the church is so preoccupied she can't even see him through the lattice. She's blind. She can't see lost millions in eternity. She's blind tonight.

She can't see five billion people lost without God and without hope. She's blind. She can't see the judgment seat. If she did, she'd revolutionize her program in a week. Absolutely. Partakers of the divine nature.

Sometimes we sing a hymn written by Edwin Hatch, breathe on me breath of God. I like a phrase in it that says that I may love what thou dost love. One little lady lived a hundred years before Wesley, a petite little French lady, and she wrote a verse that he captured and kept it in his heart and lived by it.

Come Savior Jesus from above. Assist me with thy heavenly grace. Empty my heart of earthly love. That's it. Passion for fashion, passion for money, passion for fame, passion for priority. Empty my heart of earthly love, and for thyself prepare a place.