Practical Problems in Christianity — Leonard Ravenhill

The Church as a Hospital, Armoury, School, and Beauty Parlour

There are many ways of, I suppose, describing the Church. One could say that the Church is a hospital, not for people with bruised egos, but for people who are sick spiritually. It could be described as an armoury, where we come to put on the whole armour of God.

It could be described as a school, where we come to learn the things of God. There are many comparisons, and one of them, I think, might be that the Church is really a beauty parlour. Because there is an exhortation, I think in Psalm 45, it says, The King's Daughter is all glorious within.

These are days when there's a great deal of emphasis on beauty. I was in a house a while ago, and a lady told me she'd been going to the same beauty parlour for 25 years. I thought, well, heavens, what were you like when you started?

They'd been trying to repair her for 25 years, and she was still a sight. The King's Daughter is all glorious within. There is an internal beauty. As a matter of fact, we're exhorted, as we said last night, to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

And one of the sad things about the day in which we live, it seems to me, is that we're more afraid of the word holiness than we are of the word sinfulness. We talk about holiness, you start thinking about snake handlers.

People who are extremely eccentric and so forth and so on. I want to talk to you tonight with really two things in view. Not preach, just talk to you. If I can keep there. And the idea is to try to explain some more things about the spiritual life.

Consistency in the Spiritual Life

What is consistent with the spiritual life, what is not. For those who have already made a commitment to the Lord this week, and already there are crowds gathering, or opposition has come. Others will say, well, I'd like to do that, but you know, I've been to an altar so many times, and I haven't got very far.

Well, we've been considering in the morning sessions the epistles of the Hebrews, at least particularly the eleventh chapter. It seems to me that that's a kind of exhibition place where God has put on display men and women that he has taken hold of and found them very, almost disreputable characters.

Again, when you think of Abraham, you usually think of a man towering, you know, about twelve feet high spiritually. You think of Abraham, you think of Moses, you think of David. They're a bunch of rogues.

David was an adulterer. Abraham was a liar. Noah got drunk. Jephthah made some ridiculous vows. You go down the list of characters, you find them kind of despicable, but then God gets them and makes them.

And he's still in the making, isn't he? And I want to talk to you for a little while anyhow, a little while. I want to talk to you about a character. The epistle of Peter, the first epistle of Peter, the first chapter, the first verse, the first word, which again happens to be Peter.

And if you know the epistle at all, it says, Peter, an apostle. Peter is the apostle who wrote this epistle. Just in case you're confused, an epistle is not the wife of an apostle. The epistle was written by Peter and immediately I read that I'm challenged.

Peter’s Transformation from Fisherman to Apostle

Peter was a dropout. He was a problem boy in a little group that Jesus had. He was very volatile. He was very volcanic too. And when Jesus found him, he was just a rugged fisherman. I'm glad Jesus didn't go knocking at the door of a theological seminary looking for some smart boys in his day.

He totally ignored them. He ignored the temple. Picked up a tax gatherer, picked up a couple of fishermen, picked up some very, very ordinary materials. I sometimes wonder why people are so proud. You're only dust anyhow.

We go back to dust. We started there. And often when I pray, I say, Almighty God, if you could take dust and make a man like Adam, what should you be able to do with us already? You've got us made. Peter, an apostle.

He got to the highest grade spiritually. Well, if you'd seen him originally, I think again, you wouldn't have wanted to make as much investment in him as Jesus did. But you know what? Jesus spoke to Peter, not only more than he spoke to any other of the twelve apostles, but more than he spoke to all the other apostles put together.

And conversely, Peter spoke to Jesus. He was always ready with an answer. And he spoke to Jesus more than all the other apostles put together. Now he's come to maturity. Oh, he doesn't mean easy. He clashed once, you remember, with the apostle Paul.

Paul said, I withstood Peter, he was to be blamed. Now that's the way to straighten a thing out with a guy. Not call the pastor or go to somebody else. Go look him, as you say, eyeball to eyeball and straighten the thing out.

Takes a bit of courage to do it. And Peter got straightened out. He could have said, listen Paul, you're the last one to come in this team. I was here years ago, when you were the rich young ruler, which you probably were.

But you know what he writes in his epistle later? He writes about our beloved brother Paul. My, the Lord had sandpapered him down quite a bit. Straightened him out quite a bit. And so I'm encouraged when I come to Peter to see what material he was and what God made out of him.

God Shapes Worthless Clay into Useful Vessels

Often when we were in New York, we were there a couple of years and lived in a ghetto. And as we came into New York over Brooklyn Bridge or New York Bridge onto Canal Street there. There was a sign hanging outside of a building.

I wish they hadn't improved the building. I wish they'd left it with its weather-eaten bricks and its rough windows and its bad architecture. But you know, you've got to cover it up, put a new facade on it.

But I like to look at that sign and every time I looked at it I was moved. It just said, On Water Street making. It was there that a man went in one day, just on his wobbly knees, you know, drunk and sick.

And sitting in the church and sticking his nose in as vulgar as he could be. And at the end of the meeting somebody said, It doesn't matter what material you are. God can take clay that has no character and shape it.

And I've been in many places in the world and I've seen many things. But in the heart of Ireland, where my dear wife comes from, we went to a pottery there, Belique. Where they make that gorgeous Belique china.

And I watched men take hold of some clay, it had no shape, it had no character, and shape it. Even while they were talking they were shaping it. And then they bake it and then they paint it. And when it came out it was a vase maybe this high.

And when you saw it, you wouldn't have given the man $5 for the clay. And when it finished with it he wouldn't take $5 ,000 for it, the way he manipulated it and shaped it. And God did the same with this Belique that came in.

Jerry McCauley’s Redemption

I don't know, apart from the Mormons, I think he holds the record for being baptized. He got saved and baptized and they baptized him and he got saved again. And he hit the deck 19 times. 18 times he'd been saved, 18 times he'd been baptized.

One day he staggers down to the front there and somebody says, pray with that old bum. Nah, I've prayed with him three times. Jack, will you pray with him? Nah, I've prayed with him twice. You pray with him, pray with him twice.

You pray with him. Oh, I prayed with him once, months ago. Can't do what with him, his mind is unhinged. He's demon possessed. Somebody went up to the side of him and said, you know what, I hit that altar a few times till I really made it and prayed with him.

And he got up that night completely transformed. If he'd been a Methodist he would have sung, my chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth and followed thee. And after that man was saved, you see, the reason you don't get excited maybe about the things of God is you never felt you were right at the bottom of the pile.

You were so proud and self-righteous your daddy was a bishop. He could have gone to hell if he'd been an archbishop. No credit to you what your grandfather was or somebody else. You don't inherit any virtue because of that necessarily.

And this man went out to the loft. All right, let's abbreviate the story. Hundreds, thousands of people lined up outside of a building. They're going to bury somebody. Is it the mayor of New York? No, it's the drunken bum, Jerry McCauley, that came to the altar.

And the church is packed. And he's lying in the couch with his jaws a-pain, his eyes a-sunk. And he's lying there, poor little shriveled dead man. Somebody open the door. About a hundred women came all wearing a little white flower.

Every one of them had been brought to Jesus through this old drunken wretched bum. And then they opened the door at this side and a hundred men came out. Perverse of every kind. Name it, they did it. And like the women who came and bent and kissed him until those hollow eyes there were filled with tears.

Not his, theirs. He was too happy up there to cry. But they shed their tears and washed his face with their tears. I remember a man coming to King's Challenge when I was working there and he was a smarty.

He said, you can do the same thing psychologically. I said, you're a liar, you can't. If you can straighten them out. Why did the government spend ten million dollars down in a place for restoring derelicts who had been fouled up with drugs?

They had it in Kentucky. They spent ten million dollars and admitted they could not show one case of a complete transformation with all the psychological and drug reformation. We used to see kids come out of the mire and out of the clay.

I remember one day the fellow leaning near the wall and I said, can I help you? He said, no, help her. That's my wife. Is this your wife? Well, this is not my wife. She's a woman I've lived with a few years.

And I got her on drugs. I can't get her off. And she's dying. Do something. I said, we can help you. You go up there in the men's dorm. She goes in the women's dorm. About three days after, Mary went into a prayer meeting.

Oh, she was pale. Looked as though she'd washed her hair with something out of the clank jar. Smell? She didn't smell. She skunked. She was so bad a skunk would have walked away from her. What a mess.

She went in that prayer meeting. She came out with a face like an angel. And he looked at her amazed. He said, I don't altogether know what happened. He said, but you know, I feel all clean and new and changed inside.

And he said to me, will it last? I said, sure, it'll last. Three days after, he went into the same place in a prayer meeting and came out transformed. They decided to get married, so we married them. Dave Wilkerson, good old Dave, gave them $20 to have a honeymoon.

Maybe yours cost more than that, but he gave them $20 to have a honeymoon. And they went to a hotel in town and stayed there one day, had some meals, came back. Okay, we sent them to Bible school. That boy came, that boy would live for crime.

He plotted it, designed it, done every devilish thing. And you know, by the time he'd been in Bible school one year, they asked him to leave. You know why? I remember they came back to the Teen Challenge on Clinton Avenue.

And I said, Mary, how are you getting on? She said, oh, wonderful. We've such a lovely home. It's about as big as a hen box. When you've been sleeping in the gutter two or three years, it's a palace. I said, how's Bunny getting on?

That was his nickname. She said, wonderful. I just had one problem with him. I said, what's that? She said, he won't go to sleep. She said, I wake up and there he is at two in the morning and all I can hear is the rustle of the leaves.

Go to sleep, wake up at three, he's still working on his Bible. You know, in a year that fellow got the highest grade. He taught himself some Greek, which he didn't have to do. He put such questions to the professors, they asked him to leave.

You're an embarrassment to it. Isn't that something? Some of those professors haven't had a new thought for ten years. And here's a guy that's been to hell and back. He's been through the gutters and he sees the wonder of God's Word and he says, this next statement, what does this mean?

No, you're wrong. The Greek says that. I'm saying that to say this again, you see, God can take something that has no character, something that has no value or character, and take it and shape it. And the better he takes and he makes, and the better he makes, he cleanses.

And what he cleanses, he uses. Here's a classical example again. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. When Paul writes to the church at Rome, he talks about the people who are sanctified. He calls them saints.

Sainthood, Sanctification, and Spiritual Maturity

If a mailman brought a letter to your house tomorrow and your husband called John Brown and it said on the letter, Saint John Brown, would you say, I'm sorry, got the wrong place. My husband's just a deacon, he's not a saint.

Would you hand the letter back and say there are no saints here? We, you know, we've got such lofty ideas of sainthood. I'm reminded of when they were building the church in Scotland and they planned everything and didn't know what to do with the windows.

And they were arguing one day, well, oh, I'll tell you what we'll do. Put stained glass windows. Let's put pictures of the saints in the window. A little lady there was cleaning up the rubbish, you know, and she heard the architect talking about putting saints in the window.

She said, sir, don't you think they'd be better in the pew? I think they would too. Our idea of sainthood is you go live on an island, you keep yourself unspotted from the world. You know, our idea of sanctification is isolation.

One of the great classic pictures in the world is Raphael's picture of a miraculous draft of fishes. Oh, artists went from all over the world to see it. And they wanted to take the shoes off their feet, it was holy grail.

Oh, oh, oh, they would all fell down with it. Look at the colours, look at everything in it. One day an Englishman went on, and some of them are rough. I guess he never met one, but some of them are. And they went and, his name was Ruskin.

You may have seen his book, Modern Painters, two great volumes. And he looked at the picture and he burst out laughing. What's wrong with it? He said, I don't know. Will you tell me what's right with it?

Well, what's wrong with it? Where did the miraculous draft of fishes take place? On the Sea of Galilee. Well, why has he painted the dome of St. Peter's in the background? That's a long way off. How many men were in the boat at the miraculous draft of fishes?

Oh, well, let me look. Seven. Why has he got eleven men in the boat? So, number one, the background's wrong. Number two, you've too many men in the boat. Who's that fellow leaning over a boat with beautifully crocheted cuffs and a crocheted collar around his neck and a halo?

Pulling in fishing nets. Now, if you've never fished with a crocheted collar and a halo, you've never fished. But, you see, our idea of Sainthood is, if you're a saint, you wear special garments and you have a halo, and you do this and the other.

Here is old rough Peter pulling in the fishing net with crocheted cuffs. That's our idea of Sainthood, isn't it? Hey, you've got a man as rugged as they come, Peter. He's been hewn out of the rock. He's been shaped.

He's been in the furnace of the upper room. Let thy mantle fall on me. And not many days before, a girl says, Oh, I know you, your language gives you away. And he says, You're a liar, I don't know him at all.

A girl put up her finger and he ran. A few days after, he's saying to the hierarchy, to the bishops and the dignified people, the people who had authority to do so much in the church, You crucified the Lord of Glory.

What made the difference? Like taking a piece of metal, it isn't very valuable until you put it in a furnace and temper it. And the more pressure and resistance you're going to get, the more you temper that steel.

That's exactly what God did with Peter. And Peter here is writing, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, and he writes to the strangers scattered abroad, not only to Cappadocia and Pamphylia and everywhere else, but to the people right down here.

And he's writing to people who are elect, in verse 2 of 1 Peter 1, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit and through obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.

Did you get that? Because that verse has in it the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The work of the triune God. God is there to pardon us. Jesus Christ is there to cleanse. The Holy Spirit is there to inspire.

Resurrection as the Basis of Christian Hope

Now what does he say? Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

You see, that's the kingpin. There isn't a religion in the world that has a resurrection like that. Men have written volumes against the resurrection of Jesus. They didn't need to bother. Christianity could have been destroyed the first day.

All they had to do was produce the body. There'd be nothing left. You see, Jesus died, he died to save us. Did he? You say we're saved by his death. We're not. Did you say we're not? We're saved by his life.

If he was still dead, we'd have no redemption. As I said the other night, the most momentous thing that had happened up to that period was that Jesus was there lying on a slab. And I remind you again, the Holy Spirit of God is totally incapable of doing anything that's moral.

Everything he does is majestic. He made this world, he made this book. And because of him, Jesus was risen from the dead. See him again, there he is lying on a slab. The stone is rolled against the grave.

And then they put wax against the stone and then they put seals against the wax. And then the devil rolls the sin of the world against that and then he calls every demon and says, hold him, hold him there because if he gets out of there, we're done.

We're not saved by his death, we're saved by his life. He must do more than die, he must ascend. And lead, capture and give gifts unto men. We make all this fuss about gifts of the Spirit. There will be no gifts of the Spirit except he purchased them for us.

That's what the word of God says. He died, he rose again from the dead. He led, captured and he captured. He took death and put it to death. Led, captured and he captured and he gave gifts unto men. And the Holy Spirit just works out the will of God.

He's the executor, he's God's attorney. He makes and passes unto you what God, Jesus, what Jesus purchased for us. We're begotten again to a lively hope. By the resurrection of Jesus, you see, I think it must have been wonderful to live when Jesus was on earth and instead of going to work you go watch Jesus work and somebody says, were you there yesterday?

No. Oh, he cleansed the leper. Somebody bought a man in chains and he brought his chains, delivered him. Oh, that's not all, no. I believe that he can do greater things. Do you remember he went to a house one day when he got there and an impetuous young Jewish said, oh, so you've come at last, eh?

I thought you loved my brother. Why didn't you come earlier? My brother's dead. Been buried three days. By this time he's changed. Jesus said, OK, well, let's take a walk to your cemetery. Take him some flowers.

I don't know how to take dead people flowers. They can't smell them anyhow. Take him some flowers, go to the cemetery. Jesus says, my dear, your brother's going to rise again. Oh, he was a fundamentalist.

He believed in the 9th of Daniel and he says, I know my brother's going to rise at the last day. There's going to be a resurrection. You say the resurrection is a vital part of our theology. Forget it.

The resurrection is not theology. Jesus says, I'm the resurrection. And he says, come out to the cemetery. He goes out and says, I wish I could have been there. I'd have loved to have been there. I'd have shouted hallelujah.

It shouldn't have been the cemetery, but I would anyhow. I can see Jesus just going up there and he says, which is the grave? He says, that one there. You know, it's all nice and white. That's where my brother's buried.

And I don't know how Jesus said it. I don't know whether he shouted with a trumpet voice or whether he just whispered, but I know what he said. I don't know how he said it. He just said, Lazarus. You see, if he just said, come forth, all the cemetery would have come and it wasn't time for them to come yet.

So he just had to be careful what he said because he was the resurrection. So he just said, Lazarus, come forth. And immediately he came to life. And they said, isn't that amazing? Listen to what Jesus says.

If you think that's amazing, listen to this. There's coming a day when I, the son of man, will say to every person that lived from Adam right down to the final trumpet blast. Whoever he is, whoever she is, Caesar's, Alexander's, the star of Persia, the caliphs of Baghdad, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler.

At the voice of the son of God, every grave, whether a man's buried under a pyramid or he was rubbed out in the sand like Moses rubbed a man. At the voice of the son of God, at the voice of the son of God, he says, every one of them is right.

I am the resurrection. I have the keys of death and of hell. And some people are smart. They say, well, when I die, will you please burn me? Have me cremated and throw my dust to the wind? You won't give God any headaches.

That's how he started with you anyhow. You're only dust to start. If you saw the bits away, you'd just gather them up anyhow. So don't be foolish enough. When I was a kid, they used to say, tell us about people in heathen countries.

They're so heathens, you know, they do when people die, they burn them. So they do around here, don't they now? It's a classic thing, be cremated. All they do is do something in 15 minutes that nature does in about a hundred years, so you don't present any problems to God.

Don't worry about that. Now the apostles said, this is what we have. If you're a true believer, you have an inheritance. Did you ever receive an inheritance? I hear about people inheriting money from an old aunt.

Well, I've got no old aunt, so I won't get any money. But I'll tell you what, I've got an inheritance. Do you want to know what it's like? It's got three things to it. An inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, that fades us not away.

Incorruptible, beyond the reach of death. Undefiled, beyond the reach of sin. That fades us not away, beyond the reach of time. That's my inheritance. An inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that fades us not away, reserved in heaven for you.

The Believer’s Reserved Inheritance

When we lived in Ireland, across the fields from us was a beautiful castle. In fact, there were castles all around nearly. Lord Belmore lived here. Lord Enniskillen lived there. I went to Lord Belmore's castle one day.

He had an office about as big as this room. Big, beautiful place, you know, with lions in like, these big rich cellars have. And I remember there was a big harp there. A lot of lovely things. And there were a pair of chairs.

And I went up to one chair. There was a little tag on it. I went to the other. There was a tag on there. And it said on this, Lord Belmore. It said on this, Lady Belmore. They went to the coronation of the Queen of England in 1900, and I forgot when it was, 1952.

The Abbey only holds 3 ,000 people, Westminster Abbey. And so they put chairs down the aisle. And the people who sat on the chairs were allowed to buy them. And they brought them home so that they could show their children they were at the coronation.

And you see the tag there? It's reserved for Lord Belmore. I think it's reserved for Lady Belmore. And I remember that day that the Queen was crowned. I happened to go into New York. They found me at Chicago.

And Kate, the great artist, met me and took me to dinner in his lovely home. And his wife said, if you'd been in England, would you have been at Westminster to see the Queen crowned? And I said, no. She said, well, why not?

Well, I don't know all the answers. I said, one of them might be because I'm Ravenhill and not Goathill. And she said, would you like to have done that particularly? What would have happened if you had done?

Well, I'd have gone to the door and they'd say, who are you? I'd say, well, who do you think I am? I'm the child of a king. Oh, you're the child of a king, yes. King of kings, as a matter of fact. What's your name?

Ravenhill. Well, just let me check with the social register. We found the social register. No Ravenhill, sir. Lord Ravenstar, Lord Ravenspot. I think there's a Lord Ravensea. No Lord Ravenstar. Just look here a minute.

You see, you see those tags on every seat? Over 3 ,000 reserved seats. If you got in, you couldn't sit down. There's no seat reserved for me. Thanks. I suppose you're really upset. Upset? I'm a bit worried.

I'm not a bit worried to come to one of the greatest coronations I say, who are you? Oh, he says, I'm Lord somebody. I say, well, listen here, Lord. I'm going to a coronation soon that will make this coronation look like the dishes in the kitchen sink.

And you know what? I've got a reserved seat already. That's what it says. There's a place reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God. Oh, you'll say, that's one reason why I won't make a commitment.

Because, well, you see, I go back in the world. There's an office there full of blasphemy and sin. And I meet wicked men. And I'm not sure they can keep me. That's my problem. You know, I was out. We spent a lot of the last three, four years down in the Bahamas with some friends.

And they own yachts and whatnot. I want to try to eat. We've gone out fishing. We went out fishing one day. And oh, I thought I got something that swallowed Jonah. Could hardly pull the thing in. It fought it.

Life. When I pulled it in, it was a fish about that length, evangelically, about this length, really. And it weighed 34 pounds. A king fish. Oh, it was a beauty. And we took it home. And the home where we live with these friends, they have servants.

They have a cook. And this wonderful lady made a meal out of this fish. And when they served it on the table, they said, Now, the preacher taught it. We're going to give him the first slice. So they took a piece out of the fish and packed up.

Have you eaten king fish before? No, I started eating it. Don't like it, no? Put any salt on it? Salt? The thing's been living in salt for 30 years. What do you want salt for? That's the saltiest. The salt you get, Morton's salt, it all comes out of the sea down there.

Thousands of tons of it. You put your finger in the water and lick it. There. The salt will dry on your lips. Here's a fish been living for 20 years maybe in water that's the heaviest degree of salt anywhere.

And all it has is a skin about as thick as that paper. And do you know what? The skin on that fish won't let the salt go through. No sirree. You'll never get a fish out of the sea that tastes salty. Tastes fishy.

Well, what do you want it to taste? Like a turkey? Sure it tastes fishy. But it never tastes salty. I used to get, let me say this. In my office I have a thing up. We've got a good friend here tonight from Baton Rouge.

I guess he saw it. I've got a picture frame like that. There's a little thing an inch and a quarter by an inch and a quarter. That's all it is. And you look at it and say, what is it? Well, I'll tell you what it is.

It's this whole Bible. A microfilm by the National Cat Registry Company. Three quarters of a million words put into an inch and a quarter of film. Now, you could buy those in some of the Bible book stores for a dollar and a half.

You couldn't buy mine for a hundred dollars. Offer me a thousand and I'll consider it. But you couldn't have it for a hundred. What does it say underneath? It says, this Bible is the first Bible to be taken from planet Earth to another planet.

They sent it to me from the Space Center in Houston. One of the Apollo 15 crew went out. One of them slipped this in his pocket and he walked on the moon. And I have this little Bible in my office. You know, those fellows said going up to the moon, what amazed them?

When they looked back, they saw the world hanging on nothing, a sphere. And as they went up, they saw this ball. Isn't that funny? I have a sphere in my home. I have it set so I can see where my boys are in different parts of the world.

And you know what I noticed? The bottom part of the world is water. Why doesn't it fall out? Hmm? You think it isn't difficult to get water to... Well, you'll try it tomorrow with a bucket. Try a handful of water, see if you can stick it on it and drop off.

Most likely. Pardon my limited knowledge of science. But not only is the water there underneath, there's a ship on it. And it doesn't drop off into space. And the scientist said, you know, I thought that was amazing.

Poor guy. Isn't it amazing how ignorant these learned people are? Why didn't you read the book of Job? Job said 5 ,000 years ago he hung up the world on nothing. The world is a sphere in space. And you're suggesting that God can hang the world on nothing?

He can keep a fish in a salty atmosphere, but he can't take it to an office and keep it pure there, eh? The apostle said, if you're really redeemed, you can be kept by the power of God. We used to sing a hymn, He will keep me till the river rolls its waters at my feet.

And that's all right, if he keeps you till there, you'll make it. Kept by the power of God through faith and salvation. Ready to be revealed in the last time. Oh now, we like this part of the verse, don't we?

Well, I go for that. You see, I go for the happy part all right. But then the other half of the text says, Oh boy, I don't like that too much. Ye rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness.

Trials, Temptations, and the Testing of Faith

Ah well, somebody told me, if you got saved and filled with the Spirit, you're all bubbly over from here to eternity. Always bubbly, every morning you get up, bubbly, bubbly, bubbly. Great time, always happy, no shadows ever come over your sky.

When you got up there, the devil ran back to hell and he said, I didn't touch that man or woman, they're sanctified, filled with the Spirit. What he's really saying, you're not worth bothering with. But anyhow, no, no, no, he's going to attack you all the more because you're really spiritual.

At least he did with Jesus. Jesus was anointed of the Spirit and immediately was led of the Spirit into the wilderness and tempted for forty days and forty nights. Wherein ye greatly rejoice, that's great, though now for a season, if need be.

If you haven't learned this, you'd better learn it. You know there are seasons in the Christian life, just like there are seasons in the weather. There are times when you may get up and you may feel the whole world on top of you and there's no way that you can, whether you take out yourself or anything else, it won't lift your spirit.

You may be in heaviness through manifold, not through temptation, through multiplied temptation. Do you remember singing a hymn, I need thee every hour? Remember a part of that verse says, I need thee every hour, stay thou nearby, temptations lose their power.

There's nothing wrong with temptation. The only trouble is if you capitulate to it. If you bow to it, temptation is normal. It's for a season. Somebody told a preacher down in the south, there's an old colored lady came to the church and she wasn't too smart.

But they said she's a nice woman and very often she drops little pearls of fruit. And so the preacher went along and said, I understand Susanna that you never, never, never get upset. She said, oh sure, that's right boss, I never get upset.

Well he said, what's your secret? He was a smart boy, you know, he had a few degrees, so he hadn't anything to learn. And so he said, well what, I mean why are you always the same? Do you have a favorite scripture?

And she said, yes I do. What is it? She said, it came to pass. It what? It came to pass, that's my favorite scripture. It came to pass. Yeah, she said, you know boss, when trouble comes, I say, well don't get upset, it came to pass.