Avoid These Errors (Faith Defined) — Paris Reidhead

Mr. Roosevelt, I would like to present a book to you. Now, there's only about ten copies, and if they're gone, they'll get you one. I understand there are more. This is a Zondervan publication, How to Make a Habit of Succeeding, by Mack R. Douglas.

And I consider it to be one of the most significant books that's been published in this area in the last couple of years. For many years, there have been books published having to do with this matter of achievement.

However, most of them have been in the secular field. Yet, if you read them carefully, as I've done, you will find that the principles are all biblical principles. And I've rather regretted that the children's bread has fallen under the table, and it's been eaten by those who have not understood its source, and the children have gone hungry.

And I'm delighted that Mack Douglas has written this book, How to Make a Habit of Succeeding, and I urge you to get it, and I think you ought to get about three or four copies. There's another book that I'm not sure that the bookstore can get, but if they can, ask for it also.

It's entitled How to Change Your Life in Twelve Weeks. And it was authored, the authors are Arthur DeMoss and David Enloe. David Enloe was for many years the editor of Contact for the CBMC. And this book, How to Change Your Life in Twelve Weeks, also is written from a Christian point of view.

And I'm sure the bookstore will make an effort to get it. Perhaps we could help. I gave it to some friends who were visiting with us in the office. Tom Gorendous had been a refugee from Hungary after, some years ago, after one of the times of great pressure, and God had blessed him in giving him an opportunity to work here in the Boston area and set up his own business.

He read it, and he called me and said, send me fifty copies. And he's got the fifty copies all out through Park Street Church and his friends in Boston. And I rather think that some of you at least will have the same response to this book, and I urge you to get it.

Jesus as the Door and Good Shepherd

And that all leads into the message of the evening from John chapter 10, verses 7 through 11. I select from it. Someone asked me, I'll turn to it, someone asked me today why I hadn't said anything about one of the verses.

I'll point it out to you. I had a quick answer for him, perhaps a little bit light. I didn't intend it to be that way. But he said, in verse 8, all that ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.

He said, what does that mean? And so I gave him the preacher's stock retreat and said, well, I don't know. You see, that's an answer too. And I'm sure I really don't know what that means. I've read a half a dozen good explanations, but no use to weary you with them, they just worried me.

I don't know what that means. But I do know what the seventh verse means when the Lord Jesus said, I am the door of the sheep. Now, I know what that means. Someone said to Mark Twain, said, you know, Mr. Clemens, the things in the Bible that I don't understand are the ones that trouble me.

And he said, well, isn't that funny? It's the things in the Bible I do understand that trouble me. Well, here's something we do understand, and it shouldn't trouble you. I am the door of the sheep. And the ninth verse, I am the door.

By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture. And in the tenth verse, I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly. And the eleventh, I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. Father, we thank thee for thy word. Now, as we a group of friends have gathered to just talk and think together about that which the Lord Jesus provided, our good shepherd who did give his life for us and made us come, he, the door, and we, the sheep, so desperately in need, having turned to our own way, how grateful we are that thou didst love us when thou didst know the worst about us.

And having drawn us to him, and having spared not thy son, thou hast with him freely given us all things. So prepare us tonight to live this life, this more abundant life that the Lord Jesus purchased and intended to be ours, not only for our sakes, but for the glory of his name and for the good and blessing of others.

Amen. We're going to speak just one little time further about the phrase in the ninth verse, he shall, we've seen, we've dealt with it word by word, life and saved, he shall go in in worship and in abiding union with Christ, and he shall go out into a ministry, and we've seen a five-fold ministry, the fruit of the Spirit, a ministry of intercession, a ministry of ambassadorship, a ministry of authority, and a ministry of that special enabling that is given to us of the Lord.

The Christian Life Is Not Automatic

We're to go out, not in our own strength, but Christ living in us, being everything to us that we're not. It is not that we go, Paul said, I am crucified with Christ, that's where I live and stay. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and this is the life of which we read, shall go out in the strength and the presence of the Lord.

But I want to press this one step further. He shall go out. Now it would appear, would it not, that if you have taken your place crucified with Christ, and thus to yourself reckoned yourself dead, if you're abiding with him, crucified with him and buried with him and quickened with him and raised with him and seated with him in the heavenlies, if you presented your body to him and invited him to use your brain, your personality, all of your faculties and powers, that your life thereafter would be something of that of an automaton, a kind of a machine.

But it isn't so at all. It doesn't become automatic. You see, he made us, and he respects the way he made us. And his purpose in redemption was to release us from all that bound us and hindered us and free us from everything that intimidated us and cause us to become all that he'd intended us to be when he made us.

And so the Christian life, this life that's ours in Christ, does not become automatic. In other words, you don't just present yourself to him and then sort of move as a martinet. That isn't how it works at all.

Avoiding the Error of Passive Spirituality

So there's two errors. Every time you have a road, you always have a ditch on each side of it. And because we have ditches, we don't stay home, we just like to see where the lines are and stay out of them.

Now there are two errors that I have found in my own experience briefly, and I point them out to you, and I've seen them in others as well. One error is that if you submit yourself totally and completely to Christ, that you're so going to discount your own intellect and intelligence and personality, that you just don't even think for yourself, as though having Christ indwell you and fill you does away with all of the proper functions of your brain and personality.

And I recall, and one time in Bible school there was a movement among some of the students that were reacting and overreacting to this truth, that no one would even go downtown to get their dry cleaning unless they had a verse of Scripture, you know, sort of like using the Bible as a Ouija board to find out what they should do next.

Now that's not what we're talking about. And they'd read, and if the verse they opened to, you know, like this, said go, then that meant go down and get their laundry or dry cleaning or something. It was carried to the absurd.

This was a mistake, and we recognize it as such. God puts no premium on folly and on foolishness. Then there was a second, and that was that if Christ is living in me and dwelling in me, then somehow or other I've gotten a handle on God, and I can use God.

And that's wrong. You never get a handle on God, but we're trusting God gets a handle on you, so that he can use you. Well, these are ditches on both sides of the road. But again, I say, you don't, you don't stay home because there are ditches.

You just stay out of the ditch. And there's a highway there and a way, and a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein. So this life of utter and total abandonment to Jesus Christ, taking your place crucified with him, presenting your body to him, your personality, inviting him to live in you his own life, is made real by the principle of faith.

Faith as Spiritual Sight

In Ephesians the third chapter we read that Christ shall dwell in our hearts through faith. Now I said the other morning that I was going to refer to that again, and I do it now. Christ shall dwell in your heart through faith.

Now the fact is that if you're a Christian, Christ is in you. Christ be in you except you be reprobate. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he's none of his. But we're talking about that place where you, or that time when you come in your experiential pilgrimage to the willingness to say, Lord Jesus, now I'm just resigning, and I'm turning over to you all of my possibilities and personality and asking you to live your life in me.

Now that is a definite act of commitment and response to the Word. But again, I say, there's nothing automatic that issues out of that. Christ shall dwell in your heart through faith. What means this?

Well, let's go back to our definition of faith. What is it? Well, as I say, I have to have simple definitions because I think basically I'm a very simple person, and consequently if it's complex and confused, it just doesn't meet my need, and I have a feeling it doesn't meet the needs of others.

So, let me give you a working definition of faith. You theologians that would argue with me, go ahead, we'll argue alone afterwards, but right now we're just going to put the matter down so we can get a hold of it.

Faith is the sight of the soul. Faith is the eyes of the human spirit seeing what the eyes of flesh can't see yet, but what they're going to see, because they ought to. Now I'll say it again, I'll back out and drive into it again.

Faith is the sight of the soul. It's the eyes of the spirit, the eyes of the mind, seeing what isn't there yet to see, but what's going to be there, because it ought to be there. Now we'll go back to the definition from Hebrews 11.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, or seeing what you can't see. You have to see it in the mind before you can see it anywhere else. I've told you, I'm sure, in visits past, in other years, that on one occasion a young man came into my study in New York when I was pastor of the Gospel Tabernacle Church of the Christian Missionary Alliance at 44th Street and 8th Avenue in New York.

This young man sat down and he said, I'm going to be going to Florida. I'm going to, the Lord has burdened me and led to establish two radio stations and a Christian school and a Bible conference. Now when a young man comes into your office and says something like that, you've got two reactions.

One is to smile and say hmm, and then just hope he'll go quickly before anyone, you know, before you have to call anyone for help. Now the other thing is to say that fellow knows what he's talking about and that's just the way it's going to be.

Well, the young man that came into my office was Bill Caldwell and he was talking about these radio stations and Keswick School and Southern Keswick Bible Conference. You see, first it was an idea. He saw it in his mind.

Now I'd been down here in 1952. I'd been down here and someone said we were looking for a home for missionaries' children and they brought us out here and showed us what was the Grace Livingston Hill School under the moss on the oak trees.

And you know what I saw? Moss on the oak trees. That's all. I didn't see anything else. And I said, mm-hmm, let's go back to town. That was the whole of it. But Bill came and he saw what's here today.

And it was first in his mind, first an idea. Then it became a reality for others to see. And that's the function of faith. You see, the most godlike part of you is that part of you that imagines. The difference between you and an animal is that an animal responds to immediate stimulus.

We had on the farm back in New York State a very precocious horse, Beauty. Beauty was, she was a beauty. She's a fine animal. And she liked the grass that grew alongside of the road because it was more succulent and tender than that which had been picked over in the pasture.

And she found that if she were to take the bar on the top of the fence in her teeth and jiggle it a little, she'd get it off the end and she could get the other one off and she could get out without having to jump.

And I would, so that's what she did. And then we put a chain over it and she found that if she twisted it a little past the knot on the pole, that she could still slide it out. And then we tied it with some rope and we came out the next morning and we found that the rope had been chewed through.

And then we put wire on it and Beauty was thwarted and frustrated. She used to get out and go eat along the road and then come and stand at our bedroom window. And as soon as she heard any, she wouldn't want to disturb anyone, but just as soon as anyone awakened and made any noise, she'd knicker lightly, as much as to say, you know, you're awfully a bunch of sleepyheads in there.

I've been waiting for breakfast for an hour out here. Well, she responded to the immediate situation. But the difference between Beauty and you is the fact that she responded to what was present. A man, and the one of the saddest things about the young people today, is the seeming incapacity to visualize answers to their problems and use means appropriate to the ends that they design.

They're acting in something of an animalistic way by wanting to enormous problems by a demonstration in the streets of Washington. Now, there may be a function in the demonstration. I'm not saying, perhaps, that the issue shouldn't be demonstrated against, but I am saying that doesn't solve problems.

Problems are solved by solutions that are meditated upon until plans are developed that are capable of achieving the ends that are designed. And the most godlike part of any human being is the ability to put time and distance between an idea and its achievement.

And God gave to us this marvelous capacity to see something in our minds, to visualize it, and then to work for days, weeks, months, years to bring that to pass. Now, one day, Abraham was walking in the field and God spoke to him, probably not orally, probably in his mind, but so unmistakably clear that Abraham, Abram as he was known to God at that time, knew that God was speaking to him.

Now, what did he say? He said, Abram, if you will get up and leave your kindred in your father's house and you will follow me, I will make of you a great nation. Your seed will be more than the sands of the sea and the stars of the heavens.

Now, Abraham believed God. What does that mean? Abraham saw as fulfilled what God said to him. That's what faith is. Faith is the sight of the soul, the eyes of the spirit, the ability to see as actually there what isn't actually there yet, but what's going to be actually there.

And so, Abraham believed God, and he for twenty-five years, twenty-five years, he went on. No wonder he's the father of the faithful. Why is it that most people get their guidance about faith from Gideon?

One of the biggest unbelievers in the Bible. Why God not only had to send an angel to him, but he had to, why he almost wore the wool off on that fleece wringing it out, dry one day and wet the next. He had, he walked by sight, not by faith.

Abraham had God speak to him. God spoke to him. And for twenty-five years, he went on in the strength of what God said. He saw, he saw, he looked for a city whose builder and maker was God. He saw a son.

He saw a seed. It was in his mind. It was a picture that was there, something he'd seen and he couldn't unsee. And so, he became the father of the faithful. It's the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Visualizing Christ's Work in Daily Life

And so, Christ shall dwell in our hearts through faith. What does that mean? Well, it simply means this. Do you have that power that God gave you as a human being, developed and exercised to the point where you can see the difference that Christ will make in your life?

Now, if it's true that Christ is in you, and he is in you except you be reprobate, then do you have the ability of that godlike part of you, this creative part, this imagination, to see the difference that Christ will make in your home, in your personality, in the church, in your business?

Can you visualize the difference he will make? Now, if you can, to some degree within the will of God, and that of course is the test, because many of us have fertile imaginations, and we can visualize many things which may not be in the will of God.

Just because you've imagined it doesn't mean it's necessarily the will of God at all. So, I'll have to speak to that. There's a ditch again. Everything in the Scripture has, every road in the Scripture has ditches on both sides.

You're not surprised at that. One ditch is, well, everything I imagine is from the Lord, and that's going to come to pass. No, not so at all. It's still a process, though. The process is that of the knowing the truth, you're crucified with Christ, and buried with him, and quickened with him, and raised with him, and seated with him.

You presented your body to him. You've invited him to live in you. Now, Christ shall dwell in your heart through faith. What does this mean? Well, in terms of your personality, if you've seen yourself to have perhaps a disposition where when somebody says something about you, you have burned with resentment, and it's just sort of a smoldering fire there.

Well, can you visualize the difference that Christ will make? If you can visualize the fact that the next time someone says something about you, instead of being angry, or resentful, or filled with self-pity, or whatever it might be, because he is in you, he who was despised and rejected was reviled and reviled not again, that you're not going to be like that, because he is in you.

And if you can visualize yourself being what he would have you be because he is in you, you have programmed yourself to respond that way when it happens. Christ shall dwell in your heart through faith.

You have a Sunday school class. Can you visualize the fact you said, Lord, I can't communicate to that group, to those young people. I can't hold their attention. I can't do it. But I can give to you my body and personality, and you can draw out of my mind and release me from the fear and the timidity that paralyzes me.

Now, if in your mind you can visualize yourself speaking with joy and freedom and blessing, then when you come to the class, you're going to speak with joy and freedom and peace and blessing in increasing measure as your faith strengthens, as your ability to see in advance.

Prayer, Desire, and the Will of God

Now, I said there's a ditch, and you understand that, because this all looks too easy. Now, in Mark the 11th chapter in the 24th verse, our Lord gave us a wonderful, a wonderful verse. Verily, verily, I say unto you, what thing soever you desire when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you shall have them.

Well, that looks like the key to Fort Knox, doesn't it? And when you read it in the, get the strength of it from some other version perhaps, this is the way it sounds. Truly, I say unto you, what thing soever you intensely desire when you pray, see them as there, and they'll be there.

Oh, that just opens up everything, doesn't it? But just one little catch in it. A Christian, somebody who's been born of God, can't intensely desire anything the Lord doesn't want him to have. Did you hear me?

You just can't want anything you're not sure he wants you to have. You might say, oh Lord, I think I want it, but I'm not sure I want it, and therefore I can't intensely desire it until I'm sure I want it.

Because if your experience ferils all's mind, there may be some times in the past when he gave you the desire of your heart, and he sent leanness to your soul, like the time two fellas were mountain lion hunting out west, and they wounded the lion.

He was up, and one of them climbed up, and he said, called down and said, Harry, come on up and help me hold on to him. And then there was a snarling and a scratching, and he said, no, no, come on up and help me let go of him.

And there are times when that's what happens. We get what we want, and then we say, oh, help me let go of that. And you just might get it. So, it's terribly important for you to learn how to pray about things.

Did you hear what I said? Pray about things. You've got to spend far more time praying about things than you spend praying for them. Now, I think that that prayer formula, if it be thy will, is good. But do you know where it ought to come?

It ought to come on the front of the prayer instead of on the back of it. That's right. You ought to pray about that thing. Now, Lord, I'm not sure this is what I ought to have. I'm not sure this is the best way.

I'm not sure this is right. And you pray about it until you have his peace to pray for it. And then when you have his peace to pray for it, storm heaven! D .L. Moody has a series of letters, I've read some of them and told about others, about the Bible Institute.

It was an idea for a good many months, years, in fact. Having a Bible Institute in Chicago so that these men in middle age that had been won to Christ could get a few months training and become witnesses, even while they were carrying on their work.

That was the original idea. And he thought it would be a fine thing, but he wasn't sure. And so he wrote to his friends in Chicago and said, please pray with me. I'm still not certain. Wrote to friends elsewhere.

The letters were still available. And then there came a time when he wrote and said, the Lord has made it clear. He wants an institute in Chicago. Well, when that happened, then they were on the way. They knew.

But he had to pray about it until he was sure that it was right to pray for it. And so it is here. He wants you to go out. But he wants you to go out realizing that Christ is going to dwell in your heart through faith, and that you have to visualize the difference he will make in your life, that he's given you this marvelous privilege of prayer, and that he's given you this tremendous responsibility.

The Christian's Potential and Calling

Now, all of this is potential, tremendous potential represented in you, in your home, in your community, in your business, wherever you are. You can see now what dynamic is resident in everyone whose name's the name of Christ.

Because if Christ is in you, you have access to infinite intelligence, because in Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and Christ crucified is made unto us the wisdom of God and the power of God.

So, what tremendous potential in every Christian. But you have to understand that Christ shall dwell in your heart through faith. The effectiveness of the effect of his indwelling will be in measure to your ability to comprehend, to visualize the difference he will make.

Now, that gives just a little insight into how you're to function as a Christian. Now, God has a plan for your life. When you came to Jesus Christ, you said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? Your call was, come follow me.

You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, said Paul. That's salvation. That is what's involved in receiving Christ. You've committed your life to him. Now, there's no issue about that.

The issue is, how can I know the will of God? So, what has he done? He has given to you this marvelous thing called the human mind. And most of the guidance that you're going to get is going to be through the right and proper function of your mind.

That's why he says, gird up the loins of your mind. That's why he says, bring every thought into the captivity of Christ. That's why there's such responsibility implicit in those words. Whatsoever things are true and pure of good report, think, you think, on these things.

And the only thing that God has given you complete and total control over is your thoughts. And he expects you to exercise that. Now, here you are, you've come to that place of union with him in his death, you've presented your body to him, and he's put you in the world.

Many impressions are going to go through your mind. Many insights, many ideas, many things are going to come before you. Some of them of him, and some are not. Some are worthy, and some are unworthy. How are you going to win all of these?

Well, I think that there's a process given. In the first place, we have the word of God. And we have to understand the word, and we have to search the scripture. We have to bring these thoughts and ideas and plans that we have up against the word.

He's not going to lead you to do anything contrary to his word. Everything that he does lead you to do is going to be in relation to the end of getting the gospel out to the ends of the earth. That's the supreme task of the Godhead.

And he's going to lead you in concern for people. But you see, with him, there's no such thing as secular or sacred. We say, a man came to me, said, you know, isn't there a wonderful brother in it? I'm going to go into full-time service for the Lord.

Well, I said, you hypocrite, you, what have you been doing these last 30 years? I thought you were in banking. What do you mean you're not in full-time service for the Lord? Well, I was in banking. I mean, you weren't serving the Lord in banking.

He said, whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of Christ. What were you doing? Oh, he said, you don't understand. I did, but I was giving him a little shock therapy. I did understand. He said, what I mean is, I'm going to be supported by the church.

Oh, that makes full-time service for the Lord. Who writes your check? No, I don't believe that. That I don't buy. When you come to Jesus Christ, all delineations between secular and sacred are obliterated.

And if you're in a job that you can't do for the glory of Christ and ask his blessing on, you better quit and find something else. Because he has said, whether you eat or whether you drink, whatever you do, do it for the glory of God.

Every Christian in Full-Time Service

And every Christian is to be in full-time service for Christ. And what we've got to do is to challenge everyone who knows and loves our Lord to develop his full potential in Christ. Can you think of that young fellow in Duluth, Minnesota?

He was truant, he was stubborn, and they said he was stupid. He flunked every course, they just pushed him on from grade to grade because he got so big he was a tyrant over the little kids. And when he reached the sixth grade, his mother and his father and the preacher and the schoolteacher all agreed that he'd better quit school and go to work in the foundry.

And he did. And nobody missed him. They thought this was about all that Bob was good for. And then he got out to Oakland, out to San Francisco, California, there when the earthquake struck. And someone cared enough about him to pray him into a vital relationship with Christ.

And there at Stockton, California, in the Alliance Church, they had a missionary meeting. And the preacher said, now won't you come and surrender your life to the Lord for full-time service? And he was embarrassed when this great big fellow came down there and knelt at the altar because he had a sixth-grade education.

He didn't know anything. And the preacher knelt down beside him and he said, Bob, there's some people that the Lord would use in business, and that's where you'll have to be a missionary. Just putting him off nicely, you know, much as a stupid fellow, God couldn't use him.

You know who he was patting on the shoulder? Robert L. Letourneau. That's who. That's who he was patting on the shoulder. Bob Letourneau. And he said, as I knelt there, I said, oh God, I'll be a businessman for you.

No education. And he wanted to go into manufacturing machinery. He was a welder. He used to do a lot of brazing. And he's married. He had a big machine shop there in Stockton. They had a drawing room.

It was the grease on the paveway, on the driveway. And he'd get out there with a metal pointed thing he had, and he'd draw it out this way and this way and this way. And then he'd say, Evelyn. And she'd come to the window and he'd say, go down and get me a piece of steel so big by so big.

And he'd welded a frame on the side of the old Oberlin car. And she'd go down and bring the steel back, and he'd weld that up, cut it and weld it up. And then he'd go out and sit and put a little more.

That's where some of the inventions came from. And Robert Letourneau, Bob Letourneau totally revolutionized the earth moving industry. And every time you see this machinery, what do you see? You see the results of a man that determined that his life was going to count for Christ.

Perhaps more than any other man in his generation demonstrated what God can do through a person who has a purpose to glorify him. That's what I'm talking about. He went out with a purpose to make his life count in every way he could for the glory of God.

And this is what I'd like to have you see tonight. That if your life is to count, then you've got to know your resources, your relationship. But it's not going to be automatic. God is going to use you the way he made you.

And he put into you the capacity to dream and to imagine and to visualize. And then to test it by prayer until it was formed into a purpose. And then that purpose being seized upon and welded into your mind and into your spirit until it became something that was just as much part of you as any member of your body.

The purpose that God had put into your heart. And if there's to be anything contributed to this generation of youth that are in our homes and grandchildren of most of you, it's to take the principles in books such as this and see them built into the minds and into the hearts and into the character of the young.

Purpose, Planning, and Solving Problems

Listen, nothing worthwhile in life just happens. You have to make it happen. You make it happen. And God ordained that it should be that way. And he gave to us this second degree of creation, this capacity to see and to purpose that that which we have seen should come to pass.

And it doesn't happen. Again, I say, you make it happen. The day after Thanksgiving, I was over at Slavia, Florida in the office of Andrew Duda. Andrew Duda's father was a immigrant from Czechoslovakia.

Back when the land had been divided up so that the son of the son of the son got three furrows wide and a quarter of a mile long or something like that. The ridiculous divisions that came with too many people and too little land.

And so his father had immigrated from Czechoslovakia and ended up somewhere near Columbus, Ohio. And there was a Lutheran church there. Here were these people that had come from for land and the land was four or five hundred dollars an acre.

They didn't have any money. And this pastor heard about Slavia, heard about Florida, where land was four dollars an acre. And he brought his whole congregation that wanted to go down. And they created a little community called Slavia for Czechoslovakia, Slavia, Florida.

And they bought land for four dollars an acre. Old Senior Andrew Duda had his three sons and now these three sons have eight sons. And they're all in the A. Duda and Sons Incorporated. One of the largest producers of fresh vegetables.

Processing them, canning them, freezing them, shipping them. And what happened? The godly Lutheran man with three boys said, we're going to make this business count for God. And Andrew Duda and Sons have been the largest supporter of the Lutheran Hour for many, many years.

It doesn't happen. You have to make it happen. Yesterday I flew to Palm Beach and I flew over the farm of my brother's father-in-law, Ed Froelich. Worked for five dollars a day delivering milk. And he got an idea going into milk production.