The Preacher Jesus Need for the Ministry — Alan Redpath

The Preacher Jesus Need for the Ministry — Alan Redpath

I feel like a wheelbarrow at an automobile show. I'm here. I don't know how much of you are being serious and how much of you are pulling your legs and all that, but I feel so unnecessary following a message like we heard this morning and the expository teaching of the Word.

There's no substitute for that. We may go about it in different ways, different methods and so on, but that's the answer. People need to hear the Word of God. It was tremendous. Thank you so much, Chuck.

I think I'd like you to sing a chorus with me. The trouble is, I don't quite know the tune. I think it's in the key of H. I don't know. It's really a tremendous chorus. Jesus Christ is alive today. I know, I know it's true.

Sovereign of the universe, I pay Him homage due. Seated there at God's right hand, I am with Him in a promised land. Jesus lives and reigns in me. That's how I know it's true. Do you think we dare? How many of you know it?

I don't know what I do either. Come on, should we just have it? Jesus Christ is alive today. I know, I know it's true. Sovereign of the universe, I pay Him homage due. Seated there at God's right hand, I am with Him in a promised land.

Jesus lives and reigns in me. That's how I know it's true. The first time I was ever in Calvary Chapel was when you had it in a tent early in the seventies, I think. And I came one Saturday evening with John and sat in the back row.

And all my seventeen hairs stood right on end. With sheer excitement and thrill as I heard young people praising God, singing, worshipping. And then afterwards, lighting lamps and going out and sitting in groups and studying the Word of God.

It was the most thrilling experience I'd ever known. And I've never forgotten it. There's a group in Britain who came originally from Church of the Redeemer in Houston, Texas. And they're known as the Fisherfolk.

And they brought over some lovely music. And it's in a book called Sounds of Living Water. And Fresh Sounds. Any of you ever heard of them? No. Well, it's very similar to what you've all been singing.

It's music sung to Scripture. And this is one of those choruses from that book. Jesus Christ is Alive. Would you try and sing it? If you sit silent, I'll stop. Because I never sing solo. Right? Come on then, everybody.

Jesus Christ is alive today. I know, I know, it's the Sovereign of the Universe. I pray He will pour me into... No, no, no, that's wrong. We are in trouble. I think we'll forget it. Come on, we'll try.

Could you bear to listen a minute? We'll try and get it right. Jesus Christ is alive today. I know, no, that's wrong as well. Thank you, God, for sending Jesus. Thank you, Jesus, that He came. Holy Spirit, won't you teach me more about His love?

Thank you, God, for sending Jesus. Thank you, Jesus, that You came. Won't you teach His lovely name again? Thank you, God, for sending Jesus. Thank you, Jesus, that You came. Won't you teach... He is Lord.

He is risen from the dead and He is Lord, right? He is Lord. He is risen from the dead and He is Lord. Every knee shall call Him Lord. He is my Lord. On your feet. He is risen from the dead and He is my Lord.

Every knee shall call Him Lord. And all God's people said, Amen. Things will change. We'll sing together later. Jesus Christ is alive today. I'm determined to get it over somehow. I'll get my wife to come and sing to you.

And we'll have a little rehearsal of it. Now, a brief prayer together. Thank you, God, for... You came. Won't you teach... The Spirit may just do that. Teach us more about our lovely Lord. And grant today that every one of us may move a step further forward in the will of God.

That through these days together there may be a difference about us. And that the people may sense that we have been and have met with you. I ask it in Jesus' name. I have felt it right in these few sessions we have together to share some thoughts with you about the ministry.

And we talked together last evening about the preparation for the ministry. And things that must happen to us if the gospel is to get through us to others in real power. And this morning I thought to take quite a different theme, really.

Something very practical, down to earth. The kind of person that Jesus needs today in the ministry. The preacher himself. This is mainly a conference for ministers and their wives. There are things that I think we need to share together and to say to each other in the presence of the Lord, which we wouldn't normally do with our congregation.

And so I thought we should take some time this morning to consider some of these subjects. What sort of person does Jesus want today? I think it's so important that we should decide that and know that.

Because too many of us get into the ministry without really ever having faced it. I think it would be good if you would open your New Testament at Luke chapter 6. Chapter 6, verse 12. Jesus went out into the hills to pray.

Spent the night praying to God. When he came he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them whom he also designated apostles. Simon, whom he named Peter. His brother Andrew. James, John, Philip, Bartholomew.

Matthew, Thomas, James, the son of Alphaeus. Simon, who was called the Zealot. Judas, son of James. And Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. He went down with them and stood on a level place. I think the most important thing is that to be sure when I'm in the ministry that I'm in a task to which God has called me.

I'm not there by my own choice. I know that God has called me to it. Jesus went into the hills to pray and spent the night praying to God. When morning came he called his disciples to him and chose twelve.

He called them to him. Why is it that you're not an attorney or a doctor or a nurse or a farmer? Why did you go into the pastures? Was it because of the suggestion of somebody else that you had the gift of speech perhaps?

Or because you felt it would be a satisfying career? Or maybe you'd admired somebody else who'd succeeded in it? Or because, perish the thought, you'd failed in everything else and you thought perhaps the ministry would be a little easier?

Of course, none of those reasons are adequate. The only qualification for any of us for being where we are is that you have been called of God. And that means you'll be very slow to resign when you're called of God.

But how do you know that? That's the question. How are you sure? Well, that's not simple to answer. God called Moses out of a bush. He spoke to Balaam out of the mouth of an ass. If I may say so, he's used many an ass since.

Using that in the authorized version, of course. He spoke to Gideon through a flea. We can't wait for that sort of thing. A call of God has got to be sensed by conviction. You see an example of it in Acts chapter 16.

The gospel first of all came to Europe, 16. And there, in verse 5, 6 rather, Moses and his companions travelled through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia.

When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troy. During the night, Paul had a vision.

The man of Macedonia, standing and begging him, come over to Macedonia and help us. And after Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

How did they know that? They didn't discover it by open doors, they found it by closed doors. I'm not sceptical in my old age, I hope, but I'm suspicious. Of some who come to me and say, you know, doors open so marvellously, every door opens.

It must be right. The devil is very good at opening doors. The gospel came to Europe through closed doors. You notice, verse 6, they travelled through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept or prevented by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia.

Paul, a great missionary, always wanted to go to a place that was the centre of population. He longed to go to Ephesus. But Ephesus wasn't ready for him, and he wasn't ready for it. And the door was shut.

When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bathynia, but the Spirit of Jesus wouldn't allow them to. As one paraphrase puts it, the Spirit of Jesus put down his foot and said no. I wouldn't know how he did that.

So they passed by Mysia, or, literally, correctly, they plodded through Mysia. They just kept on plodding along. And in the course of plodding along, God having shut one door after another, they got the clue.

They were to preach the gospel in Macedonia, in Europe. Now, you know, there are some simple tests that I may put to my own life as to whether or not I'm sure that God has called me. I want to give them to you.

I'll ask you to put them down and think of them and pray over them. First, is there evidence of fruit from your testimony? I mean, can you accumulate evidence that God has his hand on you in your life, in birthing?

I don't mean by that. Have you been successful in getting results? Do you find your love for the Lord Jesus growing, your burden for the lost increasing, your compassion for people, your love for the Lord and his word?

Is there that kind of evidence of fruit from your testimony? Again, are you clear that your message is adequate? If you have any doubt about that, you are defeated before you begin. I mean, have you absolute confidence in the word of God?

An Adequate Message Rooted in the Word of God

I love to read in Acts chapter 13, verse 44. On the next Sabbath, almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. That makes my mouth water to think about it. When the Jews saw the crowds that were filled with jealousy, talked abusively against what Paul was saying, then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly, We had to speak the word of God to you.

Verse 48. When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honoured the word of the Lord. And all were appointed to eternal life believed. Verse 49. The word of the Lord spread throughout the whole region.

The chapter ends by saying, The disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. Nobody was neutral. Some were filled with joy, a crowd was filled with jealousy. You couldn't be neutral under the sound of the message, but all the time it was the word of the Lord, the word of the Lord, the word of the Lord, the word of the Lord.

The word of God had taken fire in those men, as we heard this morning. It was coming through them, coming through them, like a fire burning in their hearts. Is the message that you preach adequate? It's amazing the difference in preachers.

I acknowledge it, confess it. In early days when I was not in the ministry, but in business as what you call in this country a certified public accountant in London. Backsliding terribly, right away from God.

I used to find myself constrained somehow to attend a church in central London on Sunday evenings. It was the Central Hall Westminster, the headquarters of Methodist denomination. I was right away from God at the time.

But I used to sit in the back row of this balcony of this church. It was packed in those days. Three thousand people in there. I was in the back row, but if you went now, you would find about 150 altogether in the place, in the hands of liberal theology.

The preacher there, I shall never forget him. He wore a long black fox coat. He had long hippie hair. Nothing new about that. And he was so short-sighted that he read every word he said. Every word, just went like this.

And you would have heard a pin drop. And every five or ten minutes, he went on for over an hour, every five or ten minutes he would look up. And when he looked up you saw the glory on his face. And I would say to myself in my wretched back-sitting condition, that man's got what I need.

Is your message adequate? I'm not asking if you're marvelous at homiletics and sermon preparation. But I'm asking, have you got the glory? And is there something about your ministry that's attractive?

Not in your style. Not in yourself. The Lord is there. Are you clear that your message is adequate? Is the word of God burning like a fire in your heart? Then again, what's your attitude toward sin? Is it total warfare?

Against it? Are there points of compromise in your life? You see, your attitude toward sin will decide your attitude toward repentance and salvation. Shallow views of sin lead to shallow views of salvation.

Total Warfare Against Sin and the Need for Repentance

What's your attitude toward sin? One of our great preachers in Britain, a generation or two ago, was F .B. Meyer. You may have known the name and read some of his marvelous Bible studies, especially on Bible characters.

He was asked on one occasion to speak at the Catholic Convention. And the letter came to him, and immediately he read it. He said to himself, I can't go there, because there was something in his life that was utterly wrong.

And yet he said, I would love to go. And he gave his testimony at the Catholic Convention, because he went. But before he went, when he had this letter, still debating and wrestling with the problem, he went up into what we call the Lake District in Britain, near Keswick.

And he found a night when the moon was shining brightly, stars all out, not a cloud in the sky. It's like that once in 365 nights. And he stuck to that night. And he wrestled with God. And at Keswick, when he gave his message, he gave this testimony and said, I said to the Lord that night, Lord, you've had every key to my life except one.

Lord, I cannot go on fighting any longer. Take the last key. And then he said, and people told me afterwards, that years later, his face just shone. He said, you know what the Lord did? He never took the key, but he took the door out.

And ever since then, the light and the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ has shone into my heart. And he said that from the Keswick platform. Do you know that that night, many, many house parties, which I held at Keswick, mainly missionary house parties and missionary societies, lights were on all night, with people praying and repenting.

Do you know that the post office in Keswick ran out of post lorders, people buying them the next morning to pay their debts? And that one year, real revival hit Keswick. I say this to my own heart and to you.

Revival always begins at the top. And I've seen it, I was going to say threatened. I've seen it almost break out, that student body level in colleges and being quenched by the packet, as to emotional.

I've seen it almost break out at the local church, but the pastor and the deacons and the elders or what have you, executive committee, squashed it. Revival begins with leadership. My dear people, I don't know when it was, if ever, I've had the privilege of speaking to such a potential congregation as this, that this could sweep through the western coast.

We've been in business with him. What's your attitude towards him? What's your attitude toward people? You're going to spend your lives with people, all kinds of people. Your reaction toward them will, they largely decide, success or failure in years to come.

Humble Leadership and Servant Ministry

You remember, jot down in your notes, don't trouble to read just now, but 1 Kings chapter 3, where Solomon comes to the throne out of true succession, and the Lord gave him a blank check on heaven, and came to him in a dream and said, Ask what I shall give you.

Solomon's answer to that was quite fascinating. He reminded the Lord that the greatness of his father had been due to his relationship with God. And then he said to him, Lord, I'm only a little child.

He was about, I suppose, getting out of his teenage then. I don't think he was ever quite so great as when he said that. I'm only a little child. And among this people, your great people, Lord, Lord, give me a heart that understands, a heart that cares.

And Solomon heard that, and the Lord heard that prayer, and promised him that as he went on with God, he would live to a ripe old age. He never did. Because he blew it. But when he was only a youngster, he learned the secret.

The country of Scotland has a very interesting national emblem. It is a thistle. That's a very prickly plant. And there it is. And around that thistle there is written in Latin, Namo me impuni laicestit.

Nobody touches me with impunity. Yet a Scotsman heckles up and you've got something on your hands. That's why Scottish troops always went in first to fight in World War II. How do I handle people? Especially the lovely thing to pray.

Lord, make me humble. But when the Lord answers prayer and gives us the medicine, it would be so much nicer if he used nice people to make me humble. But he doesn't. And therefore how am I handling today?

How are you handling awkward people? Can you be trusted with leadership? He who would be great among you must be the servant of all, said the Lord Jesus. I told you I was going to be honest. When I was pastor at Moody Church in Chicago, I had preached for, well, the first six months I preached on Joshua.

You've read the book. I've never read it, but I preached it. And I have to admit why I preached on that book. It was the only book in the Bible that I could find that Dr. Ironside had never preached on.

So I went for that one. And then I preached for a year on the Sermon on the Mount. And immediately was accused by many people who were extremely dispensational that I was bringing the church under law and not under dress.

Of course I didn't agree with that. I was simply, I believed, teaching them the kind of life that is impossible to us, but natural to the Holy Spirit once we're released in it. That's the Sermon on the Mount, I think, isn't it?

And then there began the ribbing. And then began, remarkable, the number of people who absented themselves. And one dear man, bless him, came into my office, or vestry, whatever, about two minutes to eleven, every Sunday morning, just poked his head through the door and said, Hopeless pastor, church is half empty again today.

And then went out. But imagine, a minute later, he was followed by another man who came right into the study, right to my desk, put his arm round my shoulder and said, Wonderful pastor, the church is half full today.

Which of those two men would you find it easier to love? I mean, they were both saying the same thing. One was of use to ribbing me, and the other was of use to encouragement. My response to that man was exactly contrary to what I preached to everybody else.

I had preached, Pray for those who despitefully use you. But my response to him was to say, at least in my mind, You can't have any blessing here with people like that around. Why doesn't he find his way to another fundamental church in Chicago?

There are plenty of them. He'd be happy there. So I thought, well, the only thing he'd do is to write a letter. After all, the Lord doesn't write him a letter. I'll do it on his behalf. So, I wrote a letter.

And I'm ashamed of that letter. It absolutely hit hard. I said, it would be much better for you to leave and get to another place and leave it alone. We can never have blessing in Moody Church as long as you're around.

I left that letter open on my study desk, and my wife saw it. And she said, Don't you think it would be a good idea, she didn't say honey. We don't use that word, unfortunately. We use the word darling.

Don't you think it would be a good idea telling if we had prayer together about it before it went? Oh, I said, I'd love that. I never thought that. How wonderful that you want to share with me. Yes, certainly, by no means do I.

I've prayed a lot about it, of course. But you come and pray with me. And let's get on our knees right away and kneel and pray. Thank you so much. And we did. And then I said, Would you pray first? And she did.

I've never forgot the next 15 minutes when she prayed not a word about the man, but when she prayed for her husband. And my heart broke. I had to see that man and apologize to him. He was never a lot different, not quite so aggressive.

But when we left Moody Church, about three or four years later, I suppose, we came back a year afterwards. And the first person to meet us on the doorstep at Moody Church was this individual. And he went up to my wife and hugged her.

When he finished with her, he came up to me. He put his arms around me and said, Pastor, how we miss you. Listen, my friend. If you imagine in any situation that you're the boss and you're the brain, your throne will soon begin to collapse.

Other people will lose respect for you. You find people like that man in almost every situation. And your first instinct is to crush them. And you can probably do it, especially as most likely they're in the minority.

Far better to win them than lose them. Better work with them than against them. It was never the Lord's way to crush. Never. A little spiritual attention and a lot of Holy Spirit love works miracles. Pray for those who despitefully use you.

Luke 6 .28. Put your attitude to people of other races and other colors. Superior. Paul said, 2 Corinthians 5 .16. Henceforth I know no man after the flesh. We've had a tremendous time in Britain, as I told you, with Mission England.

But you know, well, I live in the town of Birmingham. Not Birmingham, Alabama, but Birmingham. There are about two to three million people there. You know, there are no less than 160 mosques in Birmingham alone.

You could go about a mile from where we live, you'd never see a white person. They're all Pakistani, Indian, Caribbean. In ten years' time, if the church doesn't experience revival and do something about it in love, we're in exactly the same situation.

We expect to be paragons of virtue, but I am suggesting that we're expected to be consistent. That which touches other people is when they feel they have in their ministers someone they can trust. There is no more telling advertisement for the gospel than a life which is thoroughly good.

Holiness, Sexual Integrity, and Family Life

And the greatest dangers which beset every one of us in the ministry are money and sex. And only by the grace of God can we be beyond. The number of times I have sat alongside a colleague, especially one I think of now, who said, Burn the sin which has ruined my ministry when I was seven years old.

She used to do a lot of open air preaching, especially just after the war in Southampton, England, down by the docks. And I remember one day all the workers were gathered round sitting eating their lunch, and I was trying to preach the gospel to them.

And suddenly the crowd sort of broke and a gang of them came up to me and they started shouting and said, Just hold it for ten minutes, this is my meeting. And they held it. Ten minutes went by and they all rushed at me.

My few helpers disappeared and I was left with a speaker and I guess not of course as up to date and modern but it was there, and I couldn't turn it off. And the following conversation went loud and clear through the air.

That man looked at me and he said, You're a deathly coward. I said, What do you mean? He said, You don't know what to teach them, you've no idea. I said, What would you say to them if you were standing behind that mic?

I would tell them there are a lot of sinners going to hell and they can only be saved by the blood of Jesus. Oh? Who told you that? Oh, he said, I've been in your game. I've worn my collar round your way.

He wore a dog collar one of those days. And he said, There's nothing in it. I said to him, Sir, excuse me, You call me a coward? You've been in this game as you call it and you quit. I'm in the game and I'm still in it.

Who's a coward? You or me? And he swore at me and spat at me and lunged at me with both his fists and went for me. I'm so glad I was trained in the art of playing football. I knew exactly how to handle that situation and be sure I got the better of it.

And I went for him round the ankles and knocked him right over the head and he fell with a crash on the ground and I heard the crowd gasp. And he got up. He was sober then. And I said to him, Now you go back home.

You're the man who needs to be saved by the blood of Jesus. And I was so interested in that situation that I thought I'd just look into it a bit because after all that sort of thing doesn't happen every day of your life.

And I checked up on him. Do you know what I found? He had been for 20 years a missionary in India in an evangelical missionary society. And his wife had said to him, I can't stay out here. I've got to go home and take the children for education.

He said to her, I can't stand it without you. And she said, Well I'm sorry, for the children's sake I've got to go. He said, Please don't. He said, I must. She said, I must. And so she went. Six months later, another woman closed the missionary station.

A man out of the ministry and years later drunk. I said to him, My dear brothers and sisters, I'm not condemning him. But for the grace of God, there go I. But somewhere, somewhere along the line, the whole principle of the cross had been forgotten.

One of the devil's great, great tactics, weren't you? The greatest factor of evangelism in your life is the holy life. A man of God has to be a choice man. And that inevitably means he needs to have a choice wife.

So sad to see the number of people who are in the ministry. But one or other partner of the partnership is not really called to it at all. Simply going along with it. There's no sense of calling. In a choice of a wife, it needs to be someone of the same heart.

Fellowship. You know what that word fellowship means? It's really a word which had a secular use. It means Siamese twins who share the same life, who share the same love, who are absolutely one. My wife is not my better half, she's my better seven eighths.

And she knows I just couldn't go on without her. God's great gift to me. How I praise Him for it. I have a very strong willpower. And she has a very strong willpower. And we have some arguments, very strong arguments, and disagreements.

But I can say to you, in the presence of the Lord, and in her presence too, we had our golden wedding this year. Fifty years. In all those years, we have never had one day, not one day, when the day has ended and we're out of fellowship.

And we haven't been able to share what Jesus has done for us. My brethren, whatever you do, never neglect the family altar. In every arena of battle, there's got to be an altar of worship. I write to you, speak to you, not as one who has already attained.

Oh no, I'm right alongside you. When I told you last evening, or sometime yesterday, how desperately I fail to maintain that family worship often, through business at the church and so on. But marriage is never a competitor to the Christian life.

It's the greatest help to it, as the two of you are one in Jesus. It may be that the altar of the Lord in your home needs repairing. It may be, I don't know, it may be that family prayers have been neglected and thrown out.

Maybe. I spoke at a conference in Birmingham, Alabama, some years ago. And I stayed with a lovely family, a man and his wife, and three teenagers. In about three o 'clock or four o 'clock in the afternoon, the teenagers came home from school.

They roared in. And they all made a dive for the fridge. And they got a Coke or something like it and dashed into the television room and were never seen or heard again. There was absolutely, as I could see it, not a scrap of relationships between parents and children.

Soon after that, there was another home. And this one was in, way down in Cornwall, in England. I got there late at night, travelled a long way back home, and I went to bed. And an alarm bell went about half past six.

And I heard the scurry of feet dashing down the stairs. Many of them thought, I'd better join in. And I went down to them and found myself in the table tennis room, round the table tennis table. The only table big enough to accommodate the family.

I only stayed there one night, but as I remember, I think there were either ten or eleven children. They were in between the age of twenty-four and four. I squeezed in between number ten and eleven and sat down.

And Father was at the head of the table. And he began reading the scripture. He read a chapter from the Bible. And he gave every one of these children a missionary poem to pray. And then we all turned round, knelt at our chairs, and prayed.

By the time it came to my turn, I felt so emotionally involved, it was difficult. Do you know that every one of those children knew all about the missionary poems they were praying? Well, they were. Their need.

They spent about, oh, at least half an hour, more than that, over that time of prayer. I've never forgotten it. That man was a doctor, a surgeon. And at eight-thirty that morning, he had crisis surgery.

He could easily have neglected family prayer. But he didn't. He kept that in his priorities. Just the Lord will help you to do the same. Family worship. So much I would wish to share. We have two children.

One in her forties, and the other in her thirties. Both of them are Christian. Lovely Christian. The older one has been on the mission field for eighteen years in Central Africa Republic, with the African mission.

She herself has a family of three. One of them is at Texas A &M in Houston. The other is at John Brown University in Arkansas. And the third one is in Kenya, at school. In January of this year, our elder daughter's husband was killed on the mission field.

He was repairing a truck, a job he'd done often before. And he was right under it. And the jacks collapsed. And immediately he was crushed to death. The amazing thing about it was that his blood turned completely black with a sheer force.

Many funerals held the following day. The Africans, hundreds of them, walked past this coffin. And they said to him, they said in Zanzi language of course, he was born here. He was, because his parents started the ministry there.

He lived here all his life, except for a few years when he was crossed here to receive training. He died here. And now he's with someone else. He's a Zanzi. What a testament of the Church. My daughter went back to Nairobi and came to the States here a month or two ago.

Back to Britain. And today, right now, she's on her way back, on her way home. We are proud of the grace of God in her life. As she goes back, the place, why is she going? Because God has called her to appreciate your prayers for her.

Let me, however, just say one thing more to you. The preacher, the man in the pulpit, the Christian leader, yes, he'll be distinguished by his family life. The closest of families are not immune from testing, as we heard from Chuck this morning.

We don't understand, but we know the Lord and love Him and trust Him for it. But the Christian leader will be noted by an absence of gossip in his church. He will never use his people in conversation as a frustration.

In my time in Moody Church, we were preparing for Billy Graham coming to Chicago. And personally, I was 100 behind it, but a lot of people didn't seem to like the idea. For various reasons, they didn't like the idea of him having Roman Catholics on the platform.

And they thought we were compromising. I think, with the utmost respect, they were wrong, because Billy felt that they might get converted. And I'd be one of them. In that time, we were having the greatest enemy in the church's tongue.

I don't mean the gift of tongues, but I mean gossip. And I remember that one night at our Bible study, on a Wednesday evening, I put in inverted letters T-H-I-N-K. Think. And I said to the dear people, we're going to form a mutual encouragement fellowship in this church, and everybody who's prepared to assent to these letters is entitled to join it.

T, is it true? H, will it help? Is it inspiring? N, is it necessary? K, is it kind? If not, I'll shut my stupid mouth. Do you know, that had an electrifying effect. I just commend it to you. Let's stop the gossip.

Is it true? Will it help? Is it inspiring? Is it necessary? Is it kind? My other thing about that, if you're to be a choice man, it will be shown in your worship at home, in your family, your absence of gossip, and in your handling of money.

I believe that every minister, especially, should be someone whose shopkeepers would simply love to be multiplied, because they always pay promptly, and never run into debt. Your handling of money should be an example.