When the Church Is Right With God — Bill McLeod

When the Church Is Right With God — Bill McLeod

Well, good morning. I don't usually start with an illustration, but I'm going to do it today. I hope you'll mind. Ralph and Lucitara were holding meetings in New Jersey and the Lord broke in. Now, the church they were in was seeing on the average of maybe one soul a week finding Christ.

Revival came and the last I heard of that church, they were seeing from 1 to 25 souls saved every week. Quite a change. I was down in Rosario in Argentina, a city of a million and a Baptist church seating probably 1 ,000.

There were 1 ,200 people there that were standing along the aisles. And there were six different Baptist groups in Argentina. They'd invited me to come for a weekend, Friday over Sunday. And no, that's not, I'm sorry.

I'll show you exactly how it happened. The year before I was there, they found when they met together and compared statistics that the average Baptist church in Argentina was only winning about two people to Christ in a year.

And this hit them so hard. Here's what they decided to do. We're going to have another conference next year, same time. Now, they didn't know I was coming to South America. I had never met them. I knew nothing about them.

And so they told the committee that was setting up to me, now, you're not to invite a speaker. You're to pray that God will send a speaker that knows something about revival. Now, they didn't know I was coming down there.

And the Lord put it together. Wasn't it incredible? I spoke in a Southern Baptist seminary in Buenos Aires. And after one meeting, a professor came running up and he said, what are you doing in this weekend?

I said, I checked my book. It's the only weekend I have three in two months. Wonderful, he said. This was the weekend of the thing. This is how God put this thing together. It was incredible, you know.

Anyway, I couldn't give invitations. The church was so packed with people. So I just had to depend entirely on the spirit blessing. I'll tell you what happened to one man. He was a pastor of a church of 500 members and nothing was stirred.

He got the revival message right. He went back to his church. Now, he was a man of great faith and great prayer. I'll just give you one example of that. He needed a car, because he had a good size congregation, no car.

So he told the deacons and they said, we'll set up a little fund. No, no, he said, don't do that. The Lord has told me what to do. What did the Lord tell you? He told me to go to the local Ford company and ask for a free car.

Well, the deacons roared with laughter. Pastor, what did you have for your last meal? There's something wrong here. He said, no fun. That's what God told me. So he goes to a Ford company and they gave him a brand new car, a brand new car.

And it was a very, it was a big car, guzzling gas, he didn't have money for gas. So he somehow made a trade and got a smaller car. But anyway, he had a car. Now, the deacons didn't know about this. And so the night the deacons were coming for a meeting, he drove the car right in the steps of the church.

So they couldn't help but stumble over the car. Anyway, he was a man of great faith. After he'd been in those meetings at Rosario, he went back and he started praying, God, we've got to have it. And we've got to have it now.

He prayed by the hour, by the day. And about two weeks later, a revival broke. His whole church was touched. It was a good thing too, because one of the men in the testimonies confessed he'd been planning to shoot the preacher.

If they hadn't had revival, they had a dead pastor. So there was a lot of things. But anyway, the Lord touched, it seemed, everybody in that congregation, and the sin was washed out. Then you know what happened?

Revival Begins With a Church Right With God

In two weeks, with no evangelistic meetings, in two weeks, 200 sinners were saved. They came beating on the pastor's door day and night. He phoned the previous pastor, come down and help me gather in the harvest.

And in about two weeks, there were 200 people saved. So you know what that is saying to me? The problem is not out there in the world. The problem is inside the church. The churches are not right. There's sin, secret sin in the churches.

And the Spirit of God knows that, and He's not blessing. I remember the pastor of the Alliance Church in Saskatoon at the time of the revival. He had the largest evangelical work in the city, probably 1 ,000 people.

And we had around 175, 200. We were talking and he said, I think if God was to take the lid off our congregation sometime, we'd find ourselves looking into some hell. We did. If you'd asked me if I had a patriarch in the congregation, I'd have pointed to this man.

Beautiful man, about 60, white hair, soft, gentle, kind. He comes up to me one night, shaking from head to foot. He says, Pastor, I'm an adulterer. Can you help? An adulterer? This man? I had one man in my congregation who was the only man I would say that would seem to be faithfully witnessing.

He comes to me with a list. Pastor, I've visited every home in this 10 block area. I've led six people to the Lord, and I have 30 homes that would like me to come back again. So a lady goes forward in the meetings.

My wife dealt with her, and she and this man were sleeping together. And he was married and she was married. I couldn't believe it. His song went out, you know? So, people listen. When the church is right, God has no problem saving sinners.

It'll begin to happen immediately. That's why we're preaching revival. And each of us, of course, have a responsibility here to be right with God so the Spirit can take over and do the work He wants to do.

200 sinners beating on the door of the preacher wanting to be saved. Why didn't that happen before? Same preacher. Well, he'd been changed himself. Anyway, I want to look at promises God has given us in the Bible for victory over sin in the average Christian's life.

God’s Promises of Power and Victory Over Sin

Now, we're gonna look at the problem where many Christians are not having this victory and try and find out why not. Psalm 62, 11 says that power belongs unto God. Moody said, I'm glad it does, because if I had the power, I'd probably use it for a selfish reason.

Power belongs unto God. But Isaiah 40, 29 says, He gives power to the faint and to them that have no might. He increases strength. That's a great promise. Isaiah 40, 31, They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.

They shall mutter with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. That's a great promise, okay? Isaiah 41, 16, God said, Fear not, I will strengthen you. I'll give you strength.

That's a promise. Isaiah 44, three in one, God said, I will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground. I'll pour my spirit on your seed and your children. And people say, yeah, he poured his spirit on my kids, but they turned their back on God.

I'll be like, wait, that's not the whole story there. I will pour water on your seed and blessing on your offspring and they shall bring up as well as by the water. So it's a promise that not only will God pour spirit on your children, they will respond to this.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and they shall be saved and your house. So we have a promise there. If the devil's got some of your kids, get them back. See, I came from a broken home. My parents left us four boys, but didn't love each other.

And the home split was a court case. I was about eight years of age. Mother went, but after a while she got saved and she came back and dad said, your mother's coming back, but you don't have to listen to her religious talk.

We didn't know what that meant, but she was a Christian. Well, she was a very wise fisher woman and she left booklets laying around and tried to get us to go to church. And she was very sweet and gentle, but she told us, listen carefully, after she came home, she had a time with God.

And here's what she told the Lord, dear God, I'm going to believe you from this day, all my boys and my husband are going to be saved. So nothing happened for 14 years. Are you listening? For 14 years, nobody got saved.

And my oldest brother, Don was past 20. And I was three years behind him, another brother behind me and so on. And the devil got on my mother's back one day and gave her a hard time. But she said, before the sun went down that night, I threw that rascal off my back.

And I kept on believing the Lord. And all of a sudden, Don found Christ. He was 24, I think. I was 22. I found Christ. My next brother was about 21. And my youngest brother, listen, when he got married, he and his bride, they shook hands privately and promised each other they would never become Christians.

He never got saved until he was 35. But the Lord got him too, you know. His wife phoned me one day and said, you better come see your brother Keith. He's got some problems. So I went to see him. He was sitting on the floor.

I said, what's up? He said, I'm so low down, the only way out is up. I've got to find God now. He forgot about his promise to his wife. He became a Christian. She became violent over that and gave him an awful time for two years.

She said, I'm reading the Bible. She kicked the Bible out of his hand. Saw him praying. She kicked him in the rear end or called the kids in and mocked him and stuff. For two years this went on. Then one day, she was listening to radio broadcast and she got saved.

But see, my mom believed. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust often in him. And one translation says, and he shall do it. Or he'll bring it to pass, is the case. But you have to believe, no matter what.

You can't tell God, do it tomorrow. One of our troubles is we're in a big rush, you know. We have a grocery list and we want the groceries home in the pantry in a week or two. It's not how it goes. Wait on the Lord and wait in any language means wait.

It takes God a while to work things out, you know. And so we have to know that. I will pour water then upon your seed, on you and your seed, and they shall spring up. First Corinthians 15, 57 says, thanks be unto God who gives us the what?

Who gives us what? The victory. Through who? Jesus Christ. Paul didn't say, what shall deliver me from this body of death? He said, who shall deliver me? Christ we need. His power, his grace and forgiveness.

Submission to God Before Resisting the Devil

All right. He will not allow us, God will not allow us, we're told, to be tempted about that we're able. But will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear. So God will not allow us to be tempted above that we are able.

But why is it? Now, in Regina, I was talking to a Christian. He came to see me, a Christian worker. Then he told me, he'd been a Christian 20 years, but he said, I'm struggling with lust from morning till night.

He used to be in adultery and years back, 20 years ago or something, became a Christian. Never committed it again, but he said, I'm struggling with this day and night. We had a long talk in prayer about it.

Why is he? Don't these promises work? I've had people tell me, listen, don't quote that verse in James four, resist the devil, he'll flee from you. That doesn't work. I resist the devil, he knocks me down and tramps on me in the mud.

I've had people tell me that. Well, doesn't it work? God gave me light on that verse many years ago before the revival in 71 through Cecil Carter, a missionary with the Shantyman's Christian Association, the logging camp, a great man of God.

He was in our pulpit and he said, is this verse in the Bible, resist the devil and he will flee from you? Yes, it's in the Bible, people said. No, no, it's not in the Bible. What? I thought he was gonna say, Cecil, you goof, it's in the Bible.

No, no, no, he said, that's not in the Bible. Here's what's in the Bible. Submit yourself to God, then resist the devil and he'll flee from you. You can't resist the devil if you're not submitted to God.

If you're submitted to God, then you'll have God's power, the promises become real. You complete the promises then. But if you're not submitted to God, you won't get the power to resist the devil. He will knock you flat.

And that's what's been going on. We see it again and again and again. Abraham, Abraham's a great man of faith. Did you know that he lied twice? He was a liar. He lied to save his own skin because he didn't think God was in business in Egypt or wherever, among the Philistines.

And then his son, Isaac, I guess he got it from his dad. He did the same thing too, he lied. Then David sinned not once, but twice. I mean, seriously, the first time with Bathsheba. And then the second time when he numbered the people in Israel, he was not to do that.

And Joab, the captain of the general of the army, who was certainly no saint, he tried to talk the king out of it. He knew it was wrong. So, why are people, good people doing that? Samson, by the way, did not always have that power on him.

He had to believe God for it. People don't know that. He was a very humble person, you know? He killed a lion with his bare hands and didn't even tell his mom and dad he'd done this. Spurgeon's comment on that was this, yeah, and if the average modern Christian should kill a mouse, he'd have to publish it in the Gospel Gazette.

Very humble. And when they came back the second time on the same path, he turned his side to see the carcass of the lion and there was a bunch of bees, and he got some honey and went up and waited in the path for his mom and dad to catch up with him.

And he gave him the honey, but he never told him where he got it because they might find out what had happened. People, that's humility. He was a humble man. His name is mentioned in Hebrews chapter 11 in God's hall of fame.

So, he must have been a man of faith. Listen, when 3 ,000 men of Judah bound him with his permission, they had to ask his permission to let them bind him with these ropes and deliver him to the Philistines.

He gave them permission. He said, if you'll promise not to kill me when you have me bound. And they promised they wouldn't. They could have easily done that then. He had to believe that the power of God would come.

There's several places where it says that the Spirit came mightily upon him, came mightily on him at the right time. Then, when he sinned with Delilah, he thought it would be the same, and it wasn't the same.

God had left him because of sin. The power was no longer there. It came back to him in the temple in Gaza when he died. But you know, he'd been monkeying around in the area of lust. He was no dumbbell.

He was an intellectual. He was a judge of Israel for 20 years. People came to him with difficult questions and problems, and he had to judge them. All of that is fine, but you know, lust, you can't resist the devil, I say again, unless you said yes to God.

I met a man one time. He had been an alcoholic. He accepted Christ as his Savior. And for eight months, he told me, I have the same problems with alcohol I always had. I've been drunk at least once a week since I became a Christian.

Well, he said, what is this born again stuff, you know? Where's Christ? We had a talk about it, and I preached on it, and he heard it, and the light went on. He went to his pastor and said, you have to take me into St. John tomorrow.

You're likely becoming home alone, on the way he told his pastor what had happened. He'd been in trouble with the law. He'd jumped bail 22 years before. He'd been hiding in small towns in New Brunswick, you know, for all this while.

And he learned from what I'd said about James 4, you know, submitting to God. He had to make things right with the law, so he did. When he walked in, the chief of police was away but the deputy chief was there, and he says, Dave White, we've been looking for you for 22 years.

Where have you been hiding? So he told him, why did you come here today? He told him, I've got to be right with God. And White began, or the deputy, began to cry. And he said, you know, a Baptist church led me to Christ a couple of years ago, and I fell off the King's Highway.

I've been walking in the ditch, and I'm back on the King's Highway. You guys coming here today, he said, it's brought me back to God again. And then he said to Dave White, he said, Dave, we're going to forget about the past.

Your crimes were not great, but thank you for coming. And Dave White was never drunk another day, ever. It just broke at that point when he submitted to God. Does that really work? Yes, it does work. He would have seen it again and again.

Sin, Relationships, and the Need for Restitution

I can't explain it. Submit yourself, therefore, to God. Resist the devil. What is God speaking to your heart about? This is the problem, see. Relationship with your wife, your husband, not good. With your kids, maybe not good.

Your neighbor, not good. Your employer, not good. Your employees, not good. What is it? Secret lust? You know, the internet can be a blessing. It's also a great curse. See all kinds of rotten stuff in there.

Ideas, pictures, garbage. And many Christians are being knocked down because of this sort of stuff. I met a fellow in a synagogue in Saskatchewan, and he said to me, we had a missionary here a couple of weeks ago, and he gave an invitation for anybody who would consider mission work overseas, and my wife and I went forward.

Then he laughed, he said, but we can't go to the mission field. I said, why not? Ah, well, he says, we're hooked on pornography. I got into this first, then I got my wife into it, and we went from bad stuff to worse, to dirty, evil stuff, and he said, we're watching the worst stuff we can find.

And he turned to walk away, and I said, just a minute, don't you want to be free? No, he said, I don't. Not really. So I said, before you go, let me share something with you. You claim you're a born-again believer?

Well, I've accepted Christ. I said, okay. Every time you watch that filthy garbage, you're forcing the Christ who lives within you to watch it with you. You know what happened? People, he looked, he fell on his face on the floor, and started to scream to God for mercy.

God just broke him into a thousand pieces. He forgot I was there, I'm sure. He was just screaming to God, oh, God, I didn't know what I was doing to you. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. And the last I heard, they were in Bible college, headed for the mission field.

Thank God, they did the same problem. Fool around with sin, it'll just short-circuit your power. It won't be there. And I remember once being in a restaurant, I don't normally do this, I have several times, I guess, over the years, but you have to be sure what you're doing.

It was a restaurant, about 200 people, down in the States, and the Lord told me to share something with the people. There was about 200 people in there, you know. It's a restaurant, that's not your turf.

So I get up and told them I was from Canada, and a few things about that, and then I told them I found Christ as my personal Savior. And you know, it was just as if I had some kind of a powerful amplifier.

My word was hitting the walls all around. And I finished, and you know what happened? People started to clap and praise, you know. There were some Christians there. As I was leaving, there was an old lady standing there, and she said, oh, that was wonderful.

Are you born again? I sure am, she said. Anyway, I really didn't want to do that, but I knew I had to do that. And that night, in the meetings I was in, there was a demonstration of the power of God that wouldn't have been there had I disobeyed Him in the restaurant deal.

So submit. God is leading us constantly in these areas. Now, first of all, remember this. We have a very powerful enemy. Be sober, that is, be watchful, be wide awake. Your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about seeking whom he may devour, whom resists steadfast in the faith.

So we have a very powerful enemy. Begin there. Then you have another enemy, Jeremiah 17, nine. The heart, your heart, is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and it starts young. My two oldest daughters, who were then about, maybe the oldest one would be 10, the other one was two years behind, and we were at a place called Pine Falls.

Wintertime, snow up to your ears. They were playing in the snow outside, and I just happened to look out the window, and I saw Judy come behind Lois and grab her by the shoulders and push her face down in this big snowbank, you know.

And Lois comes up blowing snow. She comes running in the house crying, Judy, push me in the snowbank. So I called Judy in. She stands like this. Daddy, I didn't do it. Well, you know, we have a certain voice you reserve for occasions like that, so I said, Judith Lynn McLeod, don't you lie to me.

I was looking out the window, and I saw you do it. Well, Daddy, I didn't really do it, this hand did it. You know, heart, deceitful heart? Yeah, that's where it starts when they're young. We all have that.

Paul said in Romans 7, I know that in me dwells no good thing. To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good, I do not find. So in me, in you, in the flesh, there is no good thing.

Master said, Matthew 26, 41, Jesus said the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And we live in a body of flesh, and it's weak, very weak. You may be willing to do something, and you refuse to do it, or you know something you're gonna do is not right, and you do it anyhow.

And we've all had that kind of experience. But don't ever blame God, and don't ever doubt the promises of God. They're contingent on other things. So many times, we're struggling with sin because there's some area we've never dealt with.

Many times, the marital relationship is the problem. You recall in 1 Peter 3, likewise you husbands, dwell with them, that is with your wives according to knowledge, the teaching of the word of God. And it says, as being heirs together of the grace of life.

Why? That your prayers be not hindered. If your relationship with your wife is not right, men, your prayer life will be hindered. Paul once said, we would have come unto you, even I, Paul, once in a game, but Satan hindered us.

It's the same word in the Greek. We hinder our own prayer life, but our relationship with our wife isn't right. And I was with a bunch of men, about 140 men, a while ago, just one meeting on a Saturday.

A prayer breakfast sort of thing. And I don't know why, God led me to just talk about restitution. And I talked about some of these things, especially men in their relationship with their wives and their children.

They're not just your wife, but your kids. And at the end, I saw God had spoken, so I said, now how many of you men have some restitution to make? God has shown you, and you're going to do it. Would you raise your hand?

And people, half the hands went up immediately. What is it? Why aren't we seeing people saving our churches? Why aren't our churches really growing spiritually? It's always sin in the cup, you know. You know what happened to Israel when Achan sinned and brought problems on the whole nation.

36 people died as a consequence of his sin. And God would not go forward with Israel if they hadn't have dealt with this. I mean, Joshua might have just let it go, but he was wiser than that and did the right thing.

And they dealt with it. I was in a church a while back, a church that has the blessing of God on it in a marvelous way. And I said, has the church always been like this? No, they said, no, no. We started off 25 years ago.

We had interdissension, disunity, trouble, sin, everything. I said, how did you handle all that? I said, we prayed them out, or else we prayed them into a holy light. And we kept at it, just praying and discipling and also disciplining people.

And he said, finally, we got the place where it had a clean church. I said, how is it today? He said, we now have 1 ,200 people who are soul winning day and night. 1 ,200? What a church. They built a building seating 3 ,000, and it's in a town of maybe 8 ,000 people.

They're keeping the church clean. It was interesting to observe that even when they were having ordinary conference meetings like these, they'd be baptizing converts at the end. Now, they didn't baptize converts that were converted in those meetings, but they're people who are soul winning.

There are classes for them. So great just to see what was going on. And it was a church that was filled, I mean, filled with the love of God. I was never in 66 years in the ministry in a church like that, where the love of God was flowing in all directions.

It was like being in heaven, I'll tell you. I had almost, but not quite, lost faith in the church in North America. I tell you, my faith was restored. If it was gone when I was in that particular church.

The Flesh, Personal Sin, and Freedom Through Christ

Now, we need to keep this in mind. Since the flesh is weak and the heart is deceitful, the devil has an ally in the flesh. Your real enemies were, you know, they asked Moody, the famous Adventist one time, who has caused you the most trouble?

And he said, his name is Dwight L. Moody. He meant himself, you see. His worst enemy. And we are our worst enemy. So it's not just Satan. I know people they love. I remember one time, meetings in New Alliance in Edmonton, Canada, and a man came for counseling.

He was an Alliance pastor, but not the pastor of the church I was in. And he told me, I'm hooked on pornography very deeply. I think I have demons. And so we checked it out, another fellow and I. We checked it out, he didn't have any demons.

And so I said, now listen, it says in James, let no man say when he's tempted, I'm tempted of God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither does he tempt any man. But every man is tempted when he's drawn away of his own lust.

Now, so you have to face the fact that your problem is your own lust. And he bowed to that, he accepted that. And finally, he went to prayer. And I think he forgot my song leader and I were there. And he began crying only.

And you know, his body was snapping back and forth. He was holding onto a chair. I thought he was gonna break in two. Oh, how he cried to God. And after about five minutes, I heard him say, oh, oh. And he rose.

You know, you could almost hear the chains hit the floor. He was free and he knew it. Oh man, he said, I wanna give a testimony tomorrow night. I said, listen, if you give a testimony tomorrow night, don't talk about the problem you had.

You know, it's a mixed crowd and don't talk about the problem you had with pornography. Just tell him he had a tremendous problem and Jesus set you free. Okay, he said, I'll do that. Well, the next night when he came, he said, I wanna sing my testimony.

And I, matter of fact, he told me, so I beat him up to see the guy doing the recording. And I said, I want you to record everything tonight, not just my sermons. That's what he had been doing. Okay, he said, no problem.

And so this guy got up to sing. You'll never guess the song. Oh, happy day that fixed my choice on thee my savior and my God. Well, may this glowing heart rejoice and tell its raptures all abroad. Happy day, happy day.

And he got singing this and he was no singer. But you know what happened? God came and God sang through him. The head pastor of Beulah and I's church said afterwards, you know, I have never in all my years in the ministry, he was in his 60s, never heard singing like that before.

He said, the Holy Ghost was singing tonight. I said, I believe that too. Everybody was in tears. And finally he couldn't sing anymore, he was in tears. And then he kept on, now rest my long divided heart fixed on this blissful center.

Rest no ever from my Lord depart with him of every good possess. Now this is wonderful. I've got this on tape, you know. So I went to see the guy after you taped everything tonight. No, he said, I just taped your sermon.

I said, what? You didn't tape everything? Don't you remember I stood here when you were sitting there before the meeting as you taped everything? I don't remember that, he said. I said, well, come on now.

Am I crazy or something? You don't remember that? No, he said, I don't remember. I said, okay, forget about it. And I was walking away muttering to myself, the Lord said, now get on your knees. I didn't want that.

It was just for the crowd tonight. You've got to stay on your knees until you're willing to thank me that I made sure it didn't get on tape. I mean, I didn't hear a voice, but that's what it got as a message.

So I got on my knees and finally, okay, hallelujah, it didn't get on the tape and the burden was gone. We have a great God, a good God, but the flesh is an ally and treat your wives, treat your husbands, treat your children.

You know, Bill Orr, he's in heaven now, but one of the most remarkable men I ever knew or worked with I was holding meetings in New York City in the Alliance Church. He was there and God spoke to him one night.

His mother had left him when he was three or four years of age and his uncle had raised him. So his real name wasn't Orr, but that's the name he adopted and so on. He hated his mother with a passion. He heard she'd become a Christian.

He became a Christian. He still had nothing to do with her. And whenever he felt, you know, maybe God would speak to him about seeing his mother, he'd say, I never left her. She left me. He wouldn't talk about it anymore.

Well, in one of those meetings, I think I spoke on the subject of hardened hearts and God got it. And the next day he hopped on the plane flew down to South Carolina, went to his mother's place. He said, you know, when I was walking from the terminal to where my mom lived, he said, it was just like there was a thousand demons screaming at me, you stupid fool.

Don't, don't go and see her, don't go and see her. He said, when I rang the doorbell, they left me alone. And she came and he asked her forgiveness for his bitterness. And he said, you know, today he told us she's the sweetest woman in the world.

He persuaded her to leave where she lived to move down to St. Louis where he lived. He bought her a car. He got her a house and the whole bit. What happened after that? God got him into a ministry. And I was there when it started.

We were in a church in Northern Saskatchewan, a church, maybe 500 people, all kinds of kids around. And he said, you know, those kids, I just feel drawn to them. Why can't I have some meeting with those kids?

Well, I said, ask the pastor. Pastor said, sure, that's fine. So he had meetings in the downstairs auditorium with the children and he had a whole mob, I think 50 kids there. He must've had more than that because I think he said there were 40 got saved during that one week, you know.

And he was off and running. And before he died, he had about 30 ,000 kids in 12 different countries in mailbox clubs. And you know, everywhere he had these clubs, he gave them a little card. And on the card, they were simply to write if I could change my mom and dad.

Well, many times he'd get the card, I wouldn't want to change my mom and dad, they're great. But he's getting cards like this. Every time I ask my dad a question, he rattles the newspaper and tells me to get lost.

I wish my dad would listen to me. My dad is a hypocrite. He promises me all kinds of things and he never does them. I don't believe my dad anymore. Or things like this. Mom and dad, they fight at home like cats and dogs all the time.

In church, they look so sweet and you know, they don't understand this. It's things like this that are killing our kids, our young people. So people, you don't live, you don't stand alone. Like Paul said, we are made a theatron.