How to Get Along With Everybody All the Time — Charlie Orr

How to Get Along With Everybody All the Time

Well, it's good to see you back tonight. I want to mention that I put up some books that I take with me, not all the books that I have had room for, but one book I would encourage you to get, Mighty Prevailing Prayer by Dr. Wesley Duell.

He was a missionary to India for 25 years with OMS International. And this book is dynamite. He's a man of prayer. We've had him in our fellowship several times and a great tool for those who want to learn how to pray.

Some other books that we'll mention later in the week, some newsletters that we put out bi-monthly. I trust you've come. How's your faith tonight? How's your faith tonight? If you look at the circumstances, your faith will get weak.

Circumstances always dictate to me negativity. Amen. But the Word of God and the Spirit of God always relays to me a positive rest that God's at work. And I'm glad you're here tonight on a Monday night.

Be praying much. Be open to God tonight. Let's open our Bibles to Matthew chapter 18, beginning at verse number 21. Matthew 18, beginning at verse number 21. Then came Peter to him and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him till seven times.

Jesus' Teaching on Repeated Forgiveness

You know, Peter had a tremendous knack of putting his foot in his mouth. And I thought Peter thought he was pretty spiritual to say that he'd forgive somebody seven times. But then Jesus showed him just how incapable he was of forgiving on God's level.

He said, Jesus saith unto him, I say not to thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven, four hundred and ninety times were commanded to forgive people. Then he goes into a parable in verse 23, therefore the kingdom of heaven likened it to a certain king which would have taken account of his servants.

And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which owed him ten thousand talents. Now, if that was in modern day money, he owed his Lord fifty two million dollars. How would you like to be in debt tonight for fifty two million dollars?

Would that be a burden? For as much as he had not to pay, his Lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife and his children, all that he had in payment be made. The servant therefore fell down and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me.

I will pay thee all. Then the Lord of that servant was moved with compassion and loosed him or gave him the debt. But the same servant went out and found one of his fellow servants which owed him a hundred pence.

Now, modern day terminology, this fellow owed him forty four dollars and he laid hands on him. He is Pentecostal. And took him by the throat, I know he is a Baptist for sure, amen, saying, Pay me that thou ow'st.

And his fellow servant fell down at his feet and saw him saying, Have patience with me. I will pay thee all. Now, that wasn't an unreasonable request, was it? That man probably had the capacity of paying back forty four dollars.

But I want you to notice the response which is generally the response of many of God's people, even when others go and ask for forgiveness, and he would not. But went and cast him into prison till he should pay all the debt.

Now, let me ask you another question. How can somebody pay off a debt when he is in prison? That guy was not interested in seeing that guy get right with him. He wanted to make that fellow suffer for some reason.

Is that not the way usually unforgiveness begins? And we'll mention how the process goes a little later, but I am convinced that there are people who do not want to totally settle issues. So when his fellow servant saw what was done, they were very sorry and came and told their Lord all that was done.

Then his Lord, after he had called him, said unto him, Thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desirest me. Should not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee?

And his Lord was angry and delivered him to the tormentors till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, that if you from your hearts forgive not every one his brother of their trespasses, God said, I'm not going to forgive you until you're willing to forgive others.

Reconciliation Within the Church

Now, I'm convinced tonight and that one of the major reasons why God is not blessing his church and why God's hand is not upon his people is because churches all over this nation and all over the world are filled with people who are full of unforgiveness and bitterness.

You see, we need to be rightly related to God. That's our first step, to being rightly related to God. But if we're rightly related to God, I can tell you folks, you're going to be rightly related to each other.

And the Bible does have a lot to say there, close to 27 reciprocal commands in the Word of God telling us how we ought to treat one another, love one another, forbear one another with love. And that's a unique Greek word.

It means put up with one another. There's some people you just had to put up with for the glory of God. Amen. Yes. And and you're supposed to what, bear you one another's burdens. You're supposed to forgive one another.

You're supposed to, you name it. One another's in the Word of God. But I'll let you know, folks, God will give us enemies to love. How can you learn to love an enemy until somebody rubs you wrong? Now, the Bible tells us how to treat our enemies, don't they?

If your enemy's thirsty, starve him. Thirst him to death. If he's hungry, starve him. Right? Now, that's Baptist language, but God says, do what? If he's thirsty, give him a drink of water. If he's hungry, give him something to eat.

But preacher, you don't know what they did to me. They don't deserve that. It's not whether they deserve it or not. It's whether or not we're going to beg God, whether we like it or not. There's a lot of things I don't particularly want to do, but I know I must do in the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfill the Word of God.

How can you learn to forgive until you're offended? How can you learn to pray for those that despitefully use you until people despitefully use you? Now, here's the way I used to pray for those that despitefully use me.

God send a lightning bolt between their big toe and scare them to death. Rip them off the face of the earth. No, God wants me to pray blessings on them. Why? Because isn't that what Jesus did for us when we were still lost sinners?

But I've never seen, especially in the last year since I've been doing this ministry, churches filled with people who are just not His. Unwilling to give up that marble that's in their pocket because they've been offended.

And it's usually over little things. They begin with little things that escalate into bigger things. Now, the title of this message I've failed to give you, how to get along with everybody all the time.

I know what you're thinking. You don't know my mother-in-law, preacher. You don't know my boss. You don't know my friend. You don't know that Christian that hurt me. No, you can get along with everybody all the time with Bible language, but there's several things we must understand about that principle.

Experiencing Divine Compassion

Number one, we had to personally experience the process of divine compassion in our own lives before we can ever forgive somebody else. And here we have a perfect illustration of biblical salvation and biblical forgiveness.

Number one, we must comprehend how great a demand we encountered. We must comprehend how great a demand we encountered. He was a man that was a servant of the Lord. One day his Lord brought him into His presence and said, I want you to pay me what you owe me.

This fellow owed him 52 million dollars. Do you know what kind of demand he encountered? The reality of meeting the Lord and the reality of measuring up to His standard. Isn't that what happened to every one of us when we got saved?

That we were brought to the presence of God by the Spirit of the living God and suddenly we realized who we were in the presence of? And once we got to the presence of God, we began to realize that we had a standard that we could not reach up to that by nature and by act we were all sinners and we could not reach up to the standard of the glory of God?

And isn't that an awesome, earth-shattering, life-changing experience when somebody is brought into the presence of God and for the first time in their life they see they owe their Lord 52 million dollars worth of sin debts, but they don't have a single penny to pay off because they are bankrupt?

And my friends, that's the only way anybody gets saved is when the Spirit of the living God falls on somebody and reveals to them just how sinful they are. You know why we don't see more people repenting of sin?

Because they are not brought into the presence of God, they are brought into the presence of men, in the presence of emotion, in the presence of easiness. And no wonder everybody thinks everything is just fine.

And then when a holy God shows up and begins to show us just who He is, and begins to show us what He demands of us as His children, you'll have a backdoor revival. They don't want to deal with that. This is too hard, too difficult.

That's exactly where God wants to get us, where we are at the end of our rope, where we can't do it apart from Him. God has graciously and mercifully in my life and probably many of your lives showed us from time to time just how wicked we were.

And you won't know that until you get into the presence of God. And when we comprehend how great a demand we encountered, and realize what God did for us, forgiving another person is no big deal, number two, we comprehend how great a disaster we escaped.

How great a disaster we escaped. What disaster did this man escape? Well, because he couldn't pay up. His Lord said, selling his wife and his children, and all that he had in payment be made. He was sentenced to become a slave, and he was to suffer because of his condition.

Isn't that exactly what every one of us escaped when we got saved? The slavery of sin, the possibility of hell. God set us free of sin. God set us free of the future of hell. Gave us a place called heaven.

Cleansed us in his blood. Gave us a new nature. And we escaped bondage in this world. Fifty-two million dollars worth of debts. Totally forgiven. And this guy set free. Isn't that wonderful to know that?

I have a hard time with this crowd that thinks they did God a favor by letting him save them. And when they join church, they say, Boy, you got a good one in me, friend. I heard these people say, you know, I don't see how the church can make it without me.

I can. You know, the people God uses, those who realize just exactly who they are before God, before they got saved, and how gracious and wonderful and thankful they are for God sparing them from hell and giving them abundant life.

By the way, Jesus didn't just save you to give you a ticket to heaven. He wants you to have abundant life. Victorious life. What else did he comprehend? He comprehended how great a debt he erased. He fell down and said, Lord, have compassion on me.

I'll pay you all. He couldn't pay up. But his Lord was moved with compassion, loosed him, forgave him the debts, and gone act like nothing happened, friend. Now, how would you like for somebody today to make a phone call to your house and say, Listen, you don't know me, but I've been watching you.

And I know you have a great need financially. And from now until the day you die, you'll never have to pay another bill. I believe I just might shout tonight. Amen? I think I just might say glory and run down the streets of Alliance, Nebraska saying,.

Whoo! Glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory. No more bills. Hallelujah.

Gonna take the preacher out for a steak tonight. Glory to God. Yes, he says, Amen. Now, listen, I want to ask you a question. You were bankrupt, incapable, had an enormous debt, and God blotted it out with his blood.

And he said, You're free. Can you imagine the load that gets off people's hearts and minds once their sins are forgiven and washed? Well, when I got saved that day in Charlotte, North Carolina, I was ready to commit suicide.

Been smuggling cocaine out of South America and snorting that stuff down my nosebleed. Had a fellow that had paid two men $500 apiece to shoot me because I had ripped him off in a drug deal. And had been involved with two devil worshippers.

And they set me up and took me for all my money with $100 and led me along that house. That day my life flashed before me. I tried it all. Religion, popularity, college athletics, drugs, girls. Anything, I tried it all.

It didn't register. I said, This is what life has to offer a young man. I'm going to take my life. I'm just going to take the last $100 bill I had in my back pocket, go two blocks down the road, and find an old dope dealer, write a note to my parents, and end it all, folks.

I admit, my mind's going to do it. There's a little old black and white TV in this house. And I just went by and unconsciously turned it on. And when I walked away, a voice came out over the TV set and said, Somebody out there needs help.

And when I turned around, guess who I was looking at? A preacher with a Bible. And he began to explain to me the gospel. How I was a sinner for the first time in my life. I recognized just how bankrupt I was.

Just how wretched I was. Just how I made a mess of my life just being me. Just being a sinner. But he said, The good news is, while you were yet a sinner, Jesus died for you. And He loves you just the way you are.

And He can change you. And folks, that day, I got on my knees in that house. I didn't have a choir singing just as I am. Or some preacher singing, Come on down. But praise God, the Son of God was knocking on the door of my heart.

And I asked Jesus into my heart. And folks, the sin debt was forgiven. The sin debt was paid. And it was like somebody took a load of bricks off my shoulders. And suddenly I had peace in my heart that I believed my life was going to straighten out.

Now folks, that's been over 17 years ago. And I never got over that death. God changed me. He broke the drug habit after three months. I mean, I struggled. I wanted it, but I couldn't find any. And God died.

And when I finally got a hold of some and took off that hashish, it made me sick as a dog. And I felt like a heathen could never do it again. Moved me in with a Baptist preacher. Can you imagine a hippie moving in with a Baptist preacher?

I had to change my whole vocabulary. Amen. Used to cuss like a sailor. And I began to read the Bible and go to church and pray and seek God. And I'll tell you this, folks. I'm so glad today that my sin debts have been forgiven.

And the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, continually cleanses me and you from all sin. As we walk in the light, as He is in the light. And have fellowship one with another. And as we confess our sins.

And you know, if God forgives us for so much, what's the big deal with that $44 debt somebody owes you? You have to experience the process of divine compassion personally. Now, the second step is this.

The Progression of Human Retaliation

And this is the negative thing of the sermon. I want to show you the personal expression of human retaliation. And this is a perfect picture of how most people act in most churches. He made his mistake in verse number 28.

But the same servant went out. Now, let me propose another question. I try to make you think when I preach. If somebody, Brother Neal, and you owe them $52 million, suddenly said, you get ready to throw them in jail, get in all kind of trouble.

And you said, hey man, have patience. This mid-guy said, oh, I feel sorry for you, man. You don't owe me a cent. Don't you think you want to spend a little time with that kind of fellow to do something like that for you?

Do you know where we make a mistake and begin to exercise human retaliation? When we do not stay in the presence of God and walk with Him. We walk out on God and decide we can do it by ourselves. We don't have our devotions.

We don't have our prayer time. We don't walk in the Spirit. And when we walk in the flesh, friends, everything in the world is going to irritate you and me. And the devil will make sure of that for you.

Yes, sir. He went out from his presence. Rather than worshiping the Lord and walking with the Lord and working alongside the Lord, he decided he's going to go out because he is free. I want to show you the method of human retaliation.

And then I want to show you the mess we get in when we practice human retaliation. What's the method? The first method is this. We curse the offense. We curse the offense. Somewhere along the line, way back, this guy came up to this other fella and said, I want to borrow $44.

The old boy reaches in his pocket and said, here's $44. I'll pay it back to you in a week. Well, a week passed, a month passed, two months passed, three months passed. Hey, man, you got my $44? I'm going to pay it back to you.

And he got, he cursed what happened to him. Do you know when you and I start practicing human retaliation? We get offended with what somebody does to us. We curse it. We resent it. We get aggravated at it and say, that's not right.

Smoke comes out of our ears and nose and we get bleary-eyed and puffed up. You know that? That's exactly what happens. What happens when we curse the offense? We decide to play God in somebody's life.

Now, listen to me closely. This will blow your mind. Do you know the only person in the entire world that has a right to have vengeance? God. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I'll repay. So when you and I decide to take vengeance on something that's happened to us that's not right, then we play God in somebody's life.

And I'll tell you something, folks, there's not a single person in this building and in this world has the capacity to play God in somebody's life and have vengeance. And we curse the offense. Number two, we rehearse the offense.

Rehearse the offense. We start remembering. And like a broken record, we start remembering what they did to us. This fellow obviously had rehearsed it because he never had forgotten it. Because the first time he saw him, he didn't say, Hey, dear brother, how you doing?

God bless you. He said, you sorry dog, give me that money you owe me. Give it to me! He didn't want the money. He wanted blood out of a turnip. You know what happens when you and I do? We start talking to people about what happened to us, folks.

Now, listen, if you're offended by something somebody does to you and you bring it up to somebody else, you brought somebody else in on your offense and you made a big mistake. Let me tell you what Sister Sunset said to me about that.

What do you think about it? Well, I think that's awful. I think I'll tell some other people. Isn't that awful? She said she's a Christian. She even sang a solo Sunday morning. And that sorry preacher, he gets there and preaches this.

I'll tell you what he did to me the other day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That means amen if you say enough of those, I'll preach quickly. That means amen. We start remembering. It's like a group of people that every time they're offended in a West Indies country, they put an object in their hut to remind them of what happened.

You know what happens? The hut gets so full of objects, objects got to sleep outside. When I went to seminary, there's a fellow that was on the security force that came to me one day and said, Brother Charlie, I have a great need in my life.

Could I borrow $150 from you? That's a lot of money now, but dear, it's a lot going to seminary and having a wife and a kid. But I felt sorry for the fellow and I made two mistakes. Number one, you don't loan people money.

You give it away. Right. Number two, I didn't check with my wife because she's my help meeting part of me. And when I check things with her, she's got a little different radar with me. She can read people different.

And she'll caution me. And she's always letting me be the leader, but there are times she's cautioned me. And she's been very good at her caution. I didn't even tell her about it. I just wrote him an old check out, you know, going to be generous and didn't even have a bit of peace, but gave it to him.

Figuring, you know, pretty good fellow, liked him. He even prayed with me now and then. Amen. Must be a man of God. His brother was a big time independent fundamental preacher, evangelist, big time boy, big time.

My motive may have been a little selfish to try to impress that fellow so his brother may be impressed with me. I don't know. Back in those days, I did a lot of awful things for wrong motives. I'm just being honest.

Well, a week passed. He said, I'll pay it back to you in two weeks so I can handle that. I knew what we had in the bank. Well, two weeks passed and I saw the brother go by and said, Hey, brother Fred.

And he was gone. I said, uh-oh. And, you know, next day I saw him and said, Hey, brother, come here. He said, Oh, I'm busy, brother. God bless you. Gone. That went on for a whole week. I saw him dodging me.

And, you know, when we were together, he'd be talking to somebody else. And then after a week after all that junk, a fellow came to me and said, Did Fred borrow any money from you? I said, Yeah, why? He said, Well, we made a survey of all the security fellows and he hit us all up for $1 ,150.

Something along those lines. Man, the thermometer hit 110 degrees. What'd you do? I was going to get that boy kicked out of school. I was going to go to the dean of students and have him put in a ring of washer and get his money back.

You know what happened to me, folks? From the first day I started remembering what happened to me, this Bible became a closed book. My prayer life diminished. My relationship with my wife began to corrode and we started getting irritated.

My going to school suddenly was a drudgery. And I lost contact with God. And I stayed up one night and I was wrestling with this thing, wondering what was going on because I said it was really his fault.

I saw a dog preacher ripping me off of money and he's going to be preaching next week and bragging about how many souls he's going to get saved. God won't even show up around him. Sorry, hypocrite. I was just letting that boy have it.

And every time I got around to the brother, I said, Brother, has Brother Fred paid you that money back? No. Isn't he an awful sorry dog? I said, Well, I'll pay the judgment of God on him. There he goes right now.

You know, just... Hot as fire. You know, I was like a firecracker. Well, what happened, preacher? God said, Preacher, you're the one wrong. God began to show me. He showed me the truth. He said, You've missed me when you loaned the money.

You disobeyed my commandments. You don't loan money, you give it away. So, therefore, you don't have anything to be mad at him about because if you gave him something, what you're upset about is something that's his.

And then you need to ask your wife to forgive you for being stupid and putting her in financial bondage. Now, folks, when you lose the presence of God and the touch of God, and you know you've got to walk by faith, friend, you'll do anything to get right if you mean business.

That's why some people don't want to mean business because they could care less about having the power of God and the touch of God and the presence of God. They can make it without it. So, the next day, I said, Lord, I'll make it right with him, but I can't ever catch this old boy.

Amen? He said, I'll hunt him up for you, son. Man, I was going around one corner, and I ran into Fred. He got raptured. Oh, brother, let me out of here. He was reaching in his pocket, trying to get some money.

I said, brother, you don't owe me a thing. You know, I wish I could... A picture is worth a... Oh, I wish I had a picture of that. He looked at me. He said, what? He said, oh, I gave you that money, brother.

I said, I was too stupid to know what the Bible said. That was a gift from me and Jesus. I said, you don't owe me a thing. And by the way, you forgive me for being bitter at you and talking about you.

I'm so sorry. Folks, the minute I did that, the glory of God touched me again. I was free. But I'd been rehearsing the offense. There's some of you here, even though you said you'd forgiven, if you're still rehearsing the offense, you've never forgiven, even though you'd gone to him.

Nursing and Enforcing Offense

Then you nurse the offense. See, if you rehearse it long enough, you pull it to your bosom. And it becomes a part of you. That means you have a certain spirit that emits from you. It's either an angry spirit, an irritated spirit, a hateful spirit, a cold spirit.

That bitterness will bring into your life, that unforgiveness. And you aren't free to love people. You just nurse it. You ever seen how ladies just hold their babies so close? Those babies are almost like a part of them.

That's how people get their old baby, pet a fence, and just pet it. Kiss it and say, oh, I'm so bitter and I love you because that's the way I'm going to pay him back. I'm going to look at him. Isn't that right?

You nurse the offense. And if you nurse something long enough, it will eventually become a part of the fabric of your character, your personality, your look, your speech. And it shows, folks. Some of you can't fool God, and you can't fool other people because they see it because you're not free.

You're inhibited in how you respond to other people. If you're inhibited in how you respond to other people, my friend, you're not free. There was a lady that joined our fellowship. She was a lady that was in and out of mental institutes.

They diagnosed her as a manic depressive schizophrenic, whatever that means. She was a rare bird. She just messed up with God. That's what I say. And she got saved. And, you know, once people get saved, God begins to try to set them free totally.

And she came to me one day wanting me to talk to her during my office hours. And so she came into the office. And the Holy Spirit whispered in my ear. See, the only counselor that's good is the Holy Ghost.

And whenever I counsel with people, I say, Holy Spirit, you're the counselor. I'm stupid. You're going to have to be the counselor. So she was talking and bringing up all this nothing. It was nothing.

We weren't going to. She said, God, tell me. He said, ask her about her daddy. I said, Debbie, could you tell me about your daddy? This is a big woman. Big woman, size-wise. And she was sitting in a chair like this.

The minute I mentioned her daddy, I pushed the red button. My daddy? I thought she was going to wring my neck off, Brother Neal. I'll tell you about my daddy. I mean, her face got red. Her eyeballs started bugging out.

I mean, her nostrils got flared up. She was like this. I thought she was going to flog me, preacher, beat me to death. Ah, he's a hypocrite. He's a preacher. And he slept with women and drank on Saturday nights.

And he called me some ugly name I don't want to repeat in front of young people. And I'll tell you what, I hate him. And I told myself the minute I got to be 18 years old, the first man that came by the house, I was going to marry him and leave there because I hated him so much.

And I did. I said, yeah, what happened? He said, he died on me of all things. I said, what? He said, my daddy died on me and I wanted to kill him. He said, in fact, you know what I did? I went in the funeral home and got over his dead body and spit in his face.

He said, why did you die on me? And walked out. What did you do, preacher? I just grinned. And I said, well, Debbie said that. Thank God for just showing us what your problem is. Well, what's my problem?

And I said, it's not your daddy, it's you. And you got to be willing to forgive your daddy for everything he's done to you because now you're a Christian and you don't have a right to feel that way. What did you do?

She got mad at me and left the church for two weeks. And lied on me for two weeks to people. I didn't love her and I made her feel bad and all that junk when you nail people down in the sin bucket. What did you do?

I just kept believing God. And one day she called up. Softest, sweetest voice I've heard in my life, preacher. Preacher, I'm free. I just forgave my daddy. And I said, preacher, how can she forgive somebody that's dead?

It's easy. You get an empty chair and say, daddy, if you're here in Jesus' name, I forgive you. And the Spirit of God knew that in her heart, that if he was alive, she said, in fact, I wish he was here.

I'd love to hug him and tell him how much I wanted to love him all my life, but I was too bitter to admit it. And that girl began to blossom. And all, like layers off an onion, all those problems began to drop off one at a time because she got to the chief ground where the demons torment her.

Nurse the offense. Then you start to enforce the offense. I mean, it all starts right down the line, and you'll get to the place where you're going to pay them back. Now, this fella is a lot more crude than most Baptist folks.

I haven't seen too many fistfights in Baptist churches. I've heard of a couple. I've seen a couple come close to breaking out. But we won't do that. You know, somebody offends me, I'm going to go around here and grab old brother Neal by the neck.

He'll ought to whip me anyway, being a little, you know, rougher than me. I'll tell you one thing I will do. I'll talk about him behind his back, and I'll slander him. Or, you know, if I'm a little more sophisticated, I might not talk about him, but when he tries to talk to me, he says, how you doing, brother?

Just fine. And give him the old solid treatment. Somebody says, what do you think about brother Orr? He's a good man, but... And that but's always the thing that they've been butted on against you. You've done it to them.

You know, most of the time you do it ignorant of the preacher, but boy, they certainly got that little black book out, and they've got all of them written down in their soul. I had a lady, we were having an all-night prayer meeting one night, and there's a bunch of folk in there, and in that setting we allowed people, as they felt led of the Spirit, to pray aloud.

And this one gal got to praying, and she was in the flesh, putting on a show, praying for things that was killing the prayer meeting. Prayed for ten minutes, praying for missionaries, praying for things that exalt herself, and I was in charge of the prayer meeting, and God said, just ask her to quit praying.

So I went over to this sister, and I patted her on the shoulder and said, Sister, I think for one whole year, when Revival came, she admitted to me that she had been bitter and angry at me for telling her just to quit praying.

She'd prayed too long. And she admitted, once she was willing to give defense, said, I was in the flesh, and I was trying to impress you and everybody else how to pray. How'd she pay you back? She didn't come to church but now, and then held her money out.

She wasn't hurting me, I didn't even know it. I'd call her up and ask her, say, we sure miss you in church. Okay. All over, just patting her on the shoulder and trying to help her not to ruin the prayer meeting.

Preacher, you shouldn't do things like that. I asked the preacher. Preachers can have the right to do things like that. He's a leader. I don't think that's right. Well, you don't need to think about biblical authority and biblical responsibility of a pastor, friend.

Well, if you don't do that, you'll try to hurt him one way or another. Preacher, however you do that, you'll do. I've seen people keep their money out, keep their kids out, jump like grasshoppers from church to church.

Oh, grasshoppers. Whenever people came to our church, I never got too excited when people visited from a good church. Why? Because I knew good and well they met the preacher. And they'd come and, you know, especially, you know, some of my folk were carnal.

Boy, if they had a little green stuff in their back pocket, you know, or had a little prestige or, you know, a good singer or something like that. Oh, preacher, you ought to go get them, preacher. Boy, they'd make a good addition to our church, I said.

And I'd visit them and I'd say, I want to ask you a question. He said, why did you come to our church? I said, well, we're not satisfied with our church. Well, that says a whole lot right there. I said, well, what are you not satisfied about?