Tired People — Major Ian Thomas

The World's Growing Population and the Global Evangelistic Task

I'm sure there are some folk here this afternoon who had the privilege that was mine to be a delegate to the World Congress on Evangelism that was held in the city of Berlin two or three years back. And you will remember that there in the entrance hall there was the big backboard with circles carved out of it and in those circles the faces of little children from different parts of the world.

And a time clock that registered the net increase of the world's population. Not just how many babies were born but the net increase after the number who had died had been subtracted from the number who had been born.

And this clock ticked out relentlessly throughout the whole of the Congress which lasted nine days and thirteen hours so that at the end of the Congress we might become aware of how much bigger the task had become since the Congress began.

At the Congress we were informed of the net increase of the world's population during the course of our deliberations. Throughout the whole of the period the world's population had increased by 2 .14 every second.

By 128 every minute. By 7704 every hour. And by 184896 every day. And the population had increased through the period of nine days thirteen hours by one and three quarter million. It's quite fantastic.

You know that there is something like three and a half billion, million million people in the world today. And it's estimated that that will more than double by the end of this century. Between seven and eight billion people.

And the amazing thing is this. That even now of the three and a half billion people that walk this planet, and this is something that's hard to credit, more than half of those who have been born into this world since Adam was created are still alive.

Did you know that? Of all the people born into the world since Adam was created more than half are still alive. And in thirty years the number is going to be doubled. Well people don't die at the age of thirty.

Some do, depends how well they drive. But can you imagine if more than half the population of the world that was ever born since Adam was created are still alive. Imagine what proportion it will be by the end of the century if Christ doesn't come.

Of all the people in the world today more than 50 are under the age of 21. And by the year 2000 if the Lord has not returned, two thirds, two thirds of the world's population will be under the age of 15.

This world is going to be run by teenagers. I hope they've improved. Do you know that the number of children in China under the age of ten at this moment is greater than the whole population of Russia?

The children under the age of ten in China, more than nearly 200 million. It's incredible. People. There are people everywhere. They're oozing out of our ears. But you know if it's people that overwhelms me, that there's one thing about people that strikes me above everything else.

Why People Are Tired and Trapped in Self-Justification

No matter where you look and no matter where you encounter them and no matter what their pedigree or background, by and large the people you meet and no matter where you meet them are tired. Have you found that out?

Tired people. Aren't you tired? Of puppets instead of people. Of crew cuts and tweed coats and pipes and Picasso buttons. Of people who drop soliloquies carefully labelled intelligence. I'm tired of people who play the dating game like touts at the racetrack.

Tired of seeing people used because it is only a game. Of people who turn making out into a social grace. Of watching sincerity fester into smoothness. I'm tired of cynics who call themselves realists.

Tired of minds rotting in indifference. Of people bored because they're afraid to care. Of intellectual games of ring around the roses. I'm tired of people who have to be entertained. Tired of people looking for kicks with a bottle in each hand.

Of girls proud of knowing the score and snickering about it. And of girls intent on learning the score. I'm tired of sophisticated slobs. Of people who tinker with sex until it's smut. Of people whose understanding goes as deep as neat.

I'm tired of people who scream they hate it but won't leave it because they're lazy. Tired of people with nothing better to do than to glue their days together with alcohol. I'm tired of people embarrassed at honesty, at love and at knowledge.

I'm tired, yes. Tired world. Wonder what it is that makes people tired. When I was thinking about this I thought there are a number of things that make people tired. I think perhaps the first and foremost is this, that people are tired of trying to forgive their own sins.

Because they don't know how sins can be forgiven. When you don't know how your sins can be forgiven and you get tired of trying to forgive your own sins, then you end up by trying to justify your own wickedness.

And the best way to justify your own wickedness of course is to blame somebody else. Find a scapegoat. And this is the world in which you and I live. Being in a world which is one vast combination of shattered human relationships.

Where everybody is blaming everybody else. And there's only one thing about which we're all entirely united and in complete agreement. And it's this, it's everybody's fault but mine. Of that we're all completely convinced.

That's the world we live in. This scapegoat in whom I can justify my wickedness by pinning the blame on somebody else. So the boy blames the girl you see whose life he's wrecked. And of course the girl blames the boy whose extravagance and excess she herself enticed and deliberately inflamed.

Blame their children for their own delinquency. And children blame their parents for their own pig-headedness. The employer blames the employee for his own greed. And the employee blames the employer for his own idleness.

This is the kind of world we're living in. The capitalist of course blames the communist but the communist blames the capitalist. The coloured blame the white but the white blame the colour. The Arab of course blames the Jew but the Jew blames the Arab.

The faculty blame the student but the student blames the faculty. The people blame the government but the government blame the people. The pulpit blames the pew but the pew blames the pulpit. The pastor blames his congregation for his own impotence.

And the congregation blames the pastor for its own lethargy and apathy and indifference. It's everybody's fault but mine. Of course there's nothing new about this. Way back when as by one man's sin entered into the world and death by sin, death occurred, about which we have been talking.

And God walked where he had always walked. But it wasn't God that reacted first to sin, it was man. God was where man left him. It was man that hid. Man's been hiding ever since. And I'm probably talking to some right here in this very building who are still running away from God.

Hiding. In a thousand and one different ways. God said, where are you? There's no answer. Finally said, I'm hiding. Why are you hiding? Afraid. God said, you've never been afraid before. This is a new experience.

If you are afraid, you've sinned. Because you see fear is the first child of a bad conscience. And a bad conscience is the inevitable consequence of sin. And if the first child of sin is a bad conscience and the first child of a bad conscience is fear, that fear begets self-justification.

And the first child of self-justification is to find a scapegoat. And so when God pointed the finger of accusation at Adam and said, you've sinned, he immediately said, oh no, you're wrong, she did it.

Don't blame me, blame her. And of course the moment God pointed the finger of accusation at the woman, she did exactly the same thing, she said, no, the devil, the devil, he lied. He deceived me. Everybody's fault.

But mine. You tired of trying to forgive your own sins? Are you really tired of trying to prove that it was your husband's fault? Are you kids really sick and tired of trying to prove that it's your parents' fault?

Living Without the Life God Intended

Are some of you students really sick and tired of trying to prove that it's the establishment that's wrong? Other people are tired, I think, because they're tired of trying to live a life they haven't got.

Because, you see, they've never had the courage, the moral courage, to be what God intended them to be. In Him was light, this life was the light of men. And until you and I found our way back to God, our Maker, and have had restored to us the only valid content that makes life add up, we won't even have a life to live.

And we get sick and tired of trying to live a life we haven't got. If you try to live a life you haven't got, you'll end up by trying to live somebody else's life. And if ever there was an age in which people lived other people's lives, it's the 20th century.

If you haven't got the moral courage to be the person whom God intended you to be, then you'll ape somebody else's existence. And you'll become a slave to servile, colourless conformity. So you'll copy everybody else's hairstyle, and you'll wear the silly little miniskirts, and everybody will rush around in little white socks.

And if anybody has the actual guts to be different and to be non-conformist, we all queue up to conform to their non-conformity. Isn't that right? This is the world in which you and I live. Nobody's got the moral courage to be different.

And if anybody happens to have the animal guts to be different, we admire them and worship them as though they were idols. This is the colourlessness of human existence without God. You tired? Scared of being anything other than the mass.

So that we excuse everything by saying everybody does it. So we'll all go to hell. That's the cry of the world today. Others, of course, are tired of trying to make life add up to something intelligent and meaningful when most of the essential factors are missing.

And when you get tired of making life make sense, when there's no sense to it, you find an awful lot of time on your hands. And when you end up with an awful lot of time on your hands, you end up by trying to kill time.

Billions of dollars are spent year after year to kill time. Somehow to occupy the hours of my existence until I die. Billions of dollars. In England, headquarters at Cape and Ray, we have a youth outreach.

We base it upon what we call the warehouse. It was an old warehouse, a great big old building, which we've turned into a youth club. Has a nursery school there in the morning, and every night of the week there are youth activities from which derive the outreach into the coffee bars and the dance halls and the public houses and the streets and the beaches.

And teams of youngsters go out and by way of introduction they use what is quite popular nowadays, a simple youth questionnaire. And this is directed by the wife of one of my very fine colleagues, Stuart Briscoe, whom I trust one day will come and visit you here, perhaps at the end of the year, here in Australia.

Jill Briscoe. And she's just a slip of a girl, really. But she's got the courage of a lion. Mind you, she tries to persuade us that she's scared stiff, and I think she is really. But you see, you don't need courage if you're not scared stiff.

Some people have got just sort of courage, which, that isn't real courage. But she was telling how she wanted to penetrate one of the largest dance halls in Lancaster, ten miles from my home. They have between 800 and 1000 youngsters every Saturday night.

And she wanted to be able to penetrate that dance hall and somehow get to grips with these kids. They wouldn't go to church, they wouldn't come to one of our meetings. So she wanted to take a team in and just begin to talk to them about the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is what they quite often do. She wrote to me some time ago and said, I've just written to the managers of 24 dance halls asking for 15 minutes on the microphone in the middle of the dance so that we can sing a few songs to them and then tell them about Jesus Christ.

And she said, I'm terribly afraid that they're all going to say yes. And they did. Anyway, she said three times she tried to go and see the manager of this particular dance hall and courage failed her.

And she said, God, I've asked you for courage three times and you haven't given me, I'm going without courage. And that's how she went in. And she saw the manager and she explained that she would like to bring a team of young folk and conduct a youth questionnaire.

And she said, I'm going to leave you the questionnaire. It has some loaded questions and designed primarily to bring to the centrality of the Lord Jesus the conversation that's being engaged in. She said, I'll leave you a question.

I don't ask you to make a decision right now. Just look it through and I'll call back and let me know what you think. And she called back two or three days later. She discovered the man had filled in himself.

This is what he said. He said, I know perfectly well that my life is utterly bankrupt, utterly empty, utterly meaningless. I know that the only purpose I have in life is to try to help 800 to 1 ,000 other people whose lives are equally bankrupt, equally empty and equally meaningless to fill in a few vacant hours.

I have nothing for myself and I've got nothing for them. That's all. And he said, if you can bring any young folk and introduce any of these boys and girls into a life that really makes sense, I'll give you 30 free tickets every Saturday night.

Now that's it. The world knows it's bankrupt. USAN, Secretary of the United Nations over a year ago said this world has got 10 years, 10 years maximum. And that's an optimistic view, he said. 10 years.

And he's got information from every country in the world at his fingertips. He says if the world hasn't solved its problems in 10 years, there is no further solution and it will be too late. So we've got less than nine now.

This is the world in which you and I live. And by and large, folk are tired. Tired of trying to kill time. And of course, when you get tired of killing time, you end up by killing yourself. That's why last time I was in Canada, I discovered in the previous 23 months the number of suicides had increased by 25%.

The largest single cause of death in the student world today is suicide. Not car crashes, not marijuana, not alcoholism, not cancer. Suicide. Suicide. Self-destruction. This is true of every country, including yours.

Interviewed on television, a slip of a girl in her late teens, a drug addict in England at Christmas time, was asked, don't you know that this is going to kill you? She said, yes, I hope it does. Cheery sort of subject, really, for Easter Sunday afternoon, wouldn't you say?

Why Christians Become Weary

This is the world. This is the world. But the question I want to ask you is this, why is it, even though we can understand why the world is tired, that there are so many Christians who are tired? I spend most of my life ministering to weary Christians, and not the least on the mission fields of the world.

And I have visited, I suppose, a very large proportion of the mission fields of the world in many different geographical contexts. And I discover that by and large, the average missionary, dedicated, loyal, marvelous people.

I can't help but admire them, because they stick at it. But the large majority of them, weary beyond description, tired beyond degree. Why? Do you know that in the city of Los Angeles alone, and this is typical of countless others, there are over 200 evangelical pastors, missionaries and preachers and evangelists in the hands of psychiatrists.

That's in one city alone. Now, let's not run away from the fact, this is hard, stark reality. And I counsel with such constantly, week after week. I can remember, after speaking in the church service during the Keswick Convention in England, the following day, a lady came to me and she said, I've been a missionary in South America for 30 years, and I'm due to go back in just about two months.

And do you know, she said, until yesterday, I dreaded the thought of going back to that country. In fact, she said, in 30 years, I've never once been on furlough, but I dreaded going back. Because for 30 years, I've fought all my own battles, I've carried all my own burdens.

I never discovered until yesterday that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead to live in me and share his life with me. And she said, for the first time in 30 years, I can't get back quick enough. I can remember after preaching in Moody Church, that famous memorial in the city of Chicago to Dwight L. Moody.

After the end of the morning service, I had invited folk who wished to talk to me personally, to meet me later in the vestry, and there were a number of folk there, and amongst them an older man. And as I chatted with them, and explained more fully how simply to appropriate the resurrection life of Jesus Christ, and then said goodbye to them, he was choking with tears as he went out and gripped me by the hand and he said, I'd like to talk to you this afternoon, could I come and see you?

Where's your hotel? I told him where I was staying, and he came to see me. And when he arrived, I apologized for not knowing his name. He said, I don't want to tell you my name. He said, if I told you my name, you'd recognize it once.

For two reasons. He was a man well into his 60s. He said, for two reasons. First, my father is internationally known, worldwide, and I'm known all over the American continent. But I've traveled 250 miles this weekend to discover what you had to say about a living Christ.

He said, I've been on the board of one of the largest Christian, evangelical, liberal arts colleges in this country, I've been an evangelist, I've been a missionary, I've been a pastor, I've served on boards and committees, but I've never discovered the resurrection life of Jesus Christ.

And you know, talking to that man, who's typical of countless others that I could tell you about, I could have been talking to a little kid of 9 or 10 or 11 years of age, simply telling him that the Lord Jesus died upon the cross, that his sins might be forgiven, so that, risen from the dead, he might come by his Holy Spirit and live within him and share his illimitable resources with him.

And he said, how could I have lived so long and missed it? Over 60 years of age, through die evangelical, a Bible-believing Christian to the fingertips, assuming heavy organizational and administrative responsibilities, ministering himself the Word of God, and yet never, never having discovered the real spiritual content of the Christian life.

Now, this is why Christians are tired. I was in Central America just two years ago, and a man came to me, and he said, could I talk to you privately? I said, I'd be happy to do so. He said, well, I'm the field director of my mission.

I sit on the committees, and I send out directives, and I believe, sincerely, I serve my God as best I know how, and I serve my fellow missionaries. I believe that I'm being true and faithful to my board, back in the home country, to the uttermost of my ability, I believe that I'm discharging my responsibilities, but do you know, as a man, as an individual, as a missionary, I'm absolutely fresh, I'm on my face.

Can you help me? Well, it's marvelous to be able to help a man like that. And, of course, you can. You've only got to talk to that man for five minutes to discover that he never knew that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead to live in him.

This is the crying need of our evangelical age, is to rediscover Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection. We've organized him out of existence. We've become so pragmatic in this age of hardware that whether Jesus were alive or dead, it wouldn't make the slightest difference to the average Christian organization or denominational entity.

Business as usual. And this, of course, is why we achieve nothing. And why so many people are utterly exhausted. Utterly exhausted. Not with insincerity, but out of sheer misguided dedication. Trying to do, for God, God's job.

That only God can do. Well, if that sounds all very miserable, I've got some good news for you. This is some poetry. It was given to me. I get lots of poetry. At least, it's called poetry. Folks sort of seem to wax poetic under my ministry.

Some of it... Some of it's good. Most of it's awful. Like the man, you know, who turned to his friend and he said, he said, do you think there's enough fire in my poetry? And his friend said, I don't know.

But I don't think there's enough of your poetry in the fire. And that was a little unkind. But I like this. Discovering daily who God really is. Thanking him daily, he's mine and I'm his. Discovering daily God's great love for me.

Such mercy, forgiveness, amazingly free. Discovering daily that God really cares. Discovering daily he does answer prayers. Discovering daily what grace really means. Unmerited favor beyond all my dreams.

Discovering daily God speaking to me. He speaks through the Bible. Once blind, now I can see. Discovering, discovering each day that I live that all that I need, he freely will give. Discovering daily Christ working through me.

Accomplishing daily what never could be. Discovering daily I can't, but he can. Thanking him daily for my place in his plan. Discovering daily how real life can be when I'm living in Christ, and he's living in me.

Discovering daily a song in my heart, with anticipation for each day to start. Delighting and basking in love so divine, securing the knowledge I'm his and he's mine. Besides mere contentment, excitement I see.

Our daily adventure, Christ, our lives, and living in me. Now that's, that's the normal Christian life. That's not just down-to-earth, biblical, historical Christianity. That's exactly what Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost are all about.

Here, historical Christianity fleshed out in the personal experience of a forgiven sinner. And this is that for which the Lord Jesus died upon the cross and shed his blood. That you and I might be caught up into this fabulous, fantastic adventure of proving daily that good, acceptable, and perfect will of God, God himself working in us, that which is well-pleasing in his sight, being himself the very dynamic of all his demands, the cause of his own effect, the source of his own activity, and the origin in us of his own image, in action.

A Redeemed Life Expressed Through Christ

I like that, but I like it particularly because I know the girl who wrote it, Bonnie Hayne, and I know the circumstances under which she wrote it. You see, about five and a half years ago, her husband called a friend of mine, or was, pastor of the church which they now attend.

They didn't attend that church then because they didn't attend any church. Her husband called this pastor, Bob Hobson, and he said, would you come round, please, in a hurry? It's an emergency. And when he got round to this home, he discovered that the husband had returned home unexpectedly early when his wife thought he was going to be very late.

And when he got back, he found his wife lying in the bathtub with both her wrists slit, bleeding to death. And on the table in the kitchen, a little note explaining that she did it in the bathtub so he wouldn't have to clean up the mess.

That at least was thought. So tired that there was only one possible solution. In the goodness of God, he arrived home just in time to save her life. Rushed her off to hospital, and when things had been tidied up, they were waiting for an ambulance to bring them home, and in the waiting room there was the television, and on it, the hour of decision.

And Billy Graham was speaking. Telling the simple story of a redeemer who shed his blood upon the cross that guilty sinners, tired that they wanted to finish it, could find forgiveness. Well, they went converted then and there, but instead of sending her away as he'd been told he should, to a mental hospital, he called this pastor.

And he led them both to Christ. And I mean exactly that. He didn't make them Baptists, or Methodists, or Anglicans, or even Brethren. He just led them to Christ. And I loved the lot. And constantly fellowshiped with him and our wonderful Savior, but he wasn't interested.

He was interested only in introducing them to that vital relationship to a risen Lord that would allow him to invade their personalities, and from then on, express himself in terms of their daily behavior.

And that's exactly what happened. And marvelous things have taken place as a result of the re-inhabiting of their humanity by the Lord Jesus. She wrote this for the daily broadcast. She writes one, I believe, almost every day.

And this simply expressed the new thrust that had come into their lives because they had discovered that the Lord Jesus who died for them rose again from the dead to share his life with them. And every day became the sheer adventure of stepping out into his timeless plan.

Lord Jesus, we haven't a clue what you're going to do today. We don't know who you're going to talk to. We don't know who you're going to raise from the dead spiritually. We don't know what weary Christian we're going to bump into who's just about to quit.

But it's going to be marvelous to know that it's our privilege to yield our humanity so that you can be in us where you please doing what you want, how you want to do it, anytime you like. Now that's the Christian life.

Great, isn't it? And I've been to the church. And I've seen the men and women, the boys and girls who've come to a vital relationship to the Lord Jesus simply by the communication of his life through these two to them.

But you know, it is exciting to see God at work in lives like that and I'm thrilled about this. I'm particularly thrilled because I know the pastor who led them to Christ. Because you see, I first met him fifteen years ago when he was as thin as a rake.

You could almost see through him. And he was so depressed, on the verge of a nervous breakdown that as pastor of a small church outside the city of Rochester in Minnesota he was just about to throw in the sponge and quit.

Had all his formal training. Evangelical to the fingertips. Loved Jesus Christ. Could look back to the day of his conversion. In his second pastorate, but just about to quit. Well it just so happens I had been invited to speak in a church in Rochester and the pastor, just before I arrived, resigned.

And I don't blame him for that. I think if I knew I was coming I'd quit too. But actually it had nothing to do with my arrival. He suddenly got the opportunity to do some postgraduate studies and he accepted the opportunity, but it left the pulpit vacant just at the time when I was supposed to be coming for a Bible conference.

And the officers of the church decided to go ahead but they had in the meantime got in touch with this young pastor, Bob Hobson and invited him to take care of certain matters in the interim period while he was still running his own little church about twenty miles out of town.

And he was doing this, on top of the other load. But he was living on his nerves. If you don't live through Jesus Christ you'll live on your nerves, there's no alternative. And when you live on your nerves you live on everybody else's.

And of course everybody else lives on yours. And when I arrived I was invited to speak at the morning broadcast at the radio station and they forgot to tell him and they told him he was going to do it.

You see, so now two were going to do it, I was going to do it and he was going to do it. And when he arrived to do it and found I was going to do it he wondered who really knew their own minds. You know how you get when you're living on your nerves.

And so he welcomed me. Strictly correct. But I can hardly say overwhelmingly warm. And he marched me off to the radio station, introduced me to the manager he showed me where the record library was and he was just about to leave me to stew in my own studio juice.

When for some reason or other he decided to remain. And afterwards over a cup of coffee we began to talk. And as I began to share with him the thrilling adventure of being caught up into Christ and just allowing him day by day to unfold his plan created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

You see there's nothing for God to settle about your life or mine there are no issues to face, no decisions for him to make we are recreated in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Just like the Lord Jesus when he was born in this world he didn't come into this world to do his best for God he didn't come into this world to do his best to redeem humanity it wasn't somehow, it was triumphantly.

Every step he took and every word he spoke and everything he did every decision that he made was a divine fulfillment of the plan agreed as between Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the eternal ages of the past.

It was simply that the Father had his yielded humanity in which to tell the story until he could cry triumphantly, it's finished. Story told. Bow his head and die and the Father say Amen and raise him from the dead and exalt him now at his own right hand.

Now the marvelous thing is this, that that same Lord Jesus has his own program to fulfill through you and me and all he's waiting is for our humanity to be yielded to him today as his humanity was yielded to his Father then.

It's just as simple as that. And the moment you and I become available for Jesus Christ to be who he is in action we are caught up into that predetermined purpose for which you and I first created have now been redeemed and we prove what is that good, acceptable and perfect will of God.

And I began to share these things with him just how simple it was to say thank you Lord Jesus for every step you take, for what you are in me for this next situation. I shared with him some of the things that I shared.

I believe when I was here 8 years ago I was a young fellow of 19 studying medicine preparing to go to the mission field. I was utterly thrashed, completely beaten, so discouraged never having led a single soul to Christ in my life in all the frantic endeavors in which I had engaged as a crusader leader and a member of the intervarsity fellow leading CSSM's on the coast I never led anybody to Christ.

And I was tired, very very tired. But it was then that in the goodness of God in tears of despair that he showed me that he was alive and just waiting to move into my bankruptcy and make perfect his strength in my abject weakness.

What a marvelous discovery that was when I decided to quit and thought God was going to be so disappointed and found that he was unspeakably overjoyed. Never have I chatted with Bob about these things.

He was just at that stage where the moment of truth could dawn upon his soul by and large. It isn't until we're scraping at the bottom of the barrel. It isn't until we're flat on our backs. It isn't until really we've jettisoned the last vestige of self-confidence.

It isn't until then that we see the significance of Christ's resurrection. We can talk about it, we can sing about it, we can celebrate Easter Sunday. But it's all academic, all academic just as countless millions of people today will talk about the cross and will have been to church today and practiced religion.

But they're not redeemed not redeemed because they've never really been convicted of their sin and have never really seen any redemptive significance in the cross. It's simply a beautiful sentimental symbol that's all but convicted of sin trying to find your way back to God your maker.

Then suddenly you see a deep significance in the precious blood that was shed upon the cross that reconciles us to a holy God and pronounces our acquittal though we never deserved it. And you see it isn't until you and I are convicted of our own sinfulness not just the sins we've committed that needed what he did but the sinfulness that we are what we are from which derives what we do that in our flesh dwells no good thing that we're rotten through and through that we're fit for nothing but the dump that our noblest, our best and our highest is only a filthy rag until at last we've recognized our own inherent destitution.

It's only then that we realize that we need not only what he did when he died we need who he is now that he's alive what he did because of what we've done. We now need what he is to take the place of what we are.

It's just as simple as that. That's gospel. This isn't gospel. Plus this is just plain biblical historical gospel designed to restore a man to his true humanity. My colleague Stuart Briscoe whose wife I was telling you about.

I remember talking to some of our teenagers one day and he said it's marvelous to discover why he is, who he is, where he is why he is, who he is, God, where he is in our hearts. That's the greatest discovery you can make as a Christian.

Well why is he who he is, where he is. Well because that's exactly what it takes to be a man. Because God created you and me to function only by virtue of what God is in us. So if it takes God to be a man what will it take to be a Christian Christ.

It takes Christ to be a Christian because it takes God to be a man. And you see Christ in the Christian puts God back into the man. And that's the meaning of the cross. We've seen this all through this weekend.

He died for us only that risen from the dead he might come and dwell in us and live his life through us. Well Bob, Bob he just embraced it out of his sheer despair out of his destitution out of the bitterness of self discovery.

He kicked himself. How have I missed it that Christ is alive in me. And I've been sweating it out in my pulpit Sunday by Sunday with those poor people listening to it carrying all the burdens, making all the decisions facing all the responsibilities trying to unravel all the problems when all the time Jesus Christ dwelling in me has been waiting to get into action.

I never gave him a chance. He didn't walk home, he didn't ride home, he didn't fly home he floated home and he burst into his house. And he said to his wife Nina I've made the most marvelous thrilling discovery.