Discipleship or Survivalship: Survival for Strugglers — George Verwer

We have to finish more or less on time, so I'd like to make a start. Thank you for coming back for the last segment. Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to again consider your grace toward failures, your grace toward strugglers, your grace toward us.

We just thank you that you are using weak, ordinary people. The Apostle Paul prays so much to have a particular struggle taken from his life without it happening, that our God, we want to be a little more patient when perhaps there's something in our life that hasn't gone, even though we've prayed many times.

Guide us in this session together. In Jesus' name, amen. Let's just again give a little bit of an opportunity for questions. I feel that's so important, maybe even as a result of what I said last night in either the main stage or at that other late night special I spoke at.

I don't know if any of you were at that, or as a result of the seminar, if there's something that you would like to ask while other people continue to come, let's just take a few minutes to do that. I have brought with me this morning, this finally only just came, some literature about the Ministry of Operation Mobilization, which I really haven't said that much about.

This is our new format prayer letter that you can get free a number of times a year. You can just subscribe to that. Here's the little leaflet you can use to subscribe to that, how to be an OM partner, prayer partner.

So after the meeting, this is available and it includes information both about the ships as well as information about all the different work on land. Here's an interview with our American director. I'm the international leader of OM, but David Hicks is the American director.

I haven't yet got him to cornerstone, but you can have that, of course, free. Who has the first question? Something that's been on your mind in the last few hours of the last couple of days about God's grace, about what we've been sharing about in this seminar.

Some of you wanted to know what point six was yesterday because I was going a little fast, and I'll try to review that, at least read it so that you can get that. Okay, we're not good at getting first questions on this group.

Who's got the second question? Not in the question mood, huh, yet? Still, how many got at least six hours sleep last night? Anybody got six hours sleep at least? Oh, good, a few. I got about five and a half, but I feel really great.

It's amazing how God puts things together. There's so many people here I want to see, and one of them is my friend from New Delhi, Vishal Mungalwadi, but it just didn't happen. I went out running early this morning, and I decided, because I haven't eaten much in the last 20 hours or so, to have a little breakfast, and there I saw the McDonald's, so I was jogging that direction anyway.

So I went in there, hardly anybody there, just open, 7 in the morning, and there, who's there, standing in the line, Vishal Mungalwadi, all on his own. God, I mean, I get such a hassle trying to get things organized, and there, God put in there, we had breakfast, talked about all kinds of things concerning India, and had a time of prayer, and that was just, it was just the right start for the day, to just know the hand of God is on this particular day, the people I meet, and whatever.

Discernment Through Scripture and Wide Christian Fellowship

Okay, anyone would like to ask a question before we get in to the final seminar?

Yes, beautiful question.

The question is, how do you know when you're into extreme on something, or whether what you're doing is not extreme, and to go back from your extreme would be compromise. I think that is an issue we're dealing with all of our life, and I would give a number of suggestions.

I believe, first of all, we've got to get a real saturation of the word of God, so that we really know the Bible, not just one verse, one chapter, many of the cults take verses out of context and use them, you've had them at your door, but to be able to see a wide range of scripture.

Another thing that I would suggest is that you read at least a variety, a few different Christian magazines. Now, I know some people are quite proud that they don't read any Christian magazines, because when you pick up a Christian magazine, there'll always be some stuff there that's really just, you feel, what a waste of ink, what a waste of trees, but I personally find, for example, Christianity Today, a magazine that gives a fairly balanced viewpoint on things that are happening in the body of Christ, Cornerstone magazine, they won't write about something unless they research it, and I read a number of Christian magazines to get a picture of a wider range of what God's doing, and when you get a wider range of what God's doing, you find it very difficult, especially if you're also in the Word of God, to just go and do your own thing.

Now, some people, if they're hurt and they're bitter and they're angry about the established church, and they love the whole established church in one big boat, and then they try to sink it, whereas there's a tremendous variety of reality and commitment within what some people call the established church, you can't throw them all into one big lake.

So reading widely, making sure you have a good, wide knowledge of scripture, and then reading a wider range of books, books are only sermons in print. And also, wherever you live, try to be exposed, and I know this is risky, but be exposed to different Christian ministries that come to town, always praying that the Lord will give you discernment.

As Tozer said, we need a little bit of reverent skepticism about some of the things that we read or hear or see. Another thing that can help you is if you really have a true love for other Christians, then you want to be positive rather than wanting to be negative.

Now this is why the person that doesn't have an emphasis on truth and has only an emphasis on love, he's often a little bit naive, and he gets caught into things that prove to be dead-end streets. So again, we need that balance between believing the past, letting love cover, and the discernment, the reverent skepticism that Tozer talks about.

Now a lot of people, to be quite honest, haven't even heard what I've just shared with you in the last five minutes. So they don't have this way of thinking programmed into their spiritual life, of learning how to look at different sides of an issue, and look at different scriptures, and read different books.

And I was going to end up by saying, fellowship with different people. Not only go and hear them, but get to meet different people. One of the reasons I ended up coming to Cornerstone way back in 1984 was linked with the fact that I had gone to a Jesus festival in Canada back in the late 70s, which was a little similar to this, and that began to prepare me.

And I started to meet people like Barry McGuire. I started to read magazines about Christian music. And there was no way, after reading all that I was reading, that I could write the whole thing off as being from the devil, even though some of the things were quite new to me, and I didn't know quite where to fit it in my many little boxes.

So I hope that will help you a little bit. This is why I just so urge Americans, if they can, not everybody can do it, to get a discount ticket and get over to Europe, and fly to Europe from some parts of the states, cheaper than you can fly around the states.

Again, we know nothing's cheap, but I think those who can go to Europe and get involved in evangelism, then at the same time, they will meet Europeans and get to listen to their viewpoint. And I just think all of that is helpful.

But it still will be an ongoing struggle. Also to understand that you can be balanced and still have a bit of extremism. There's some extremism, if you want to use the term, and every term needs definition, that's not a big problem.

You're not going to go to the perfect church. You're not going to go to a church where they don't say some off the wall extreme things from your pulpit, or a visiting speaker doesn't say something that may be off the wall or a little extreme.

And allow that to bring something else that you believe, perhaps, into balance. So God uses extreme statements, God uses extreme people, and the kind of spiritual balance I'm talking about, I know this is going to jump a circuit in your head, is in fact extreme.

But it's a good extreme. Someone else, yes, absolutely a brilliant question and one of the biggest issues we are dealing with. You seem to have three categories, just for thinking, we'll divide into three categories.

Conversion, Holiness, and the Reality of Ongoing Sin

You've got the group over here, as strange as it may seem that any Bible-believing person could be in that group, that feel they're saved, they know they're saved, at least they say they know they're saved, and they're very, very light about sin.

They're continuing sin, maybe they're confessing it, confession is different than repentance, we preach confession and repentance, we see that in the Bible. So that's one group over here, they're really in deception, some of those people may not even be saved, certain people would feel that they're in such deception they may never have been born again, it's just a head trip.

I have this conviction, that when a person is really saved, radical change begins, it may not be big in the beginning, but something begins to change toward holiness. If nothing at all changes, at the moment of professing faith in Christ, I tell the validity of the conversion, it's my own viewpoint.

So I'm quite big-hearted compared to some people way over here, we'll get over there in a minute, but I'm not way over here either, that you just profess Jesus and you're born again and nothing really happened, and then you go tell the church and you get baptized, especially in the southern part of our country, it all happens very quickly, it's all like a ritual, like a routine, surely there's deception in there, if there's no change in life.

That's why John MacArthur's come out with his very strong book, which has upset so many people, and it's sad in the sense that we have to have a big, thick book on the Lordship of Christ, because to me it's just so basic, it's so scriptural, but that's the way it is.

Then we have the group that I would like to think are in the middle, that's where I would be, and there's plenty of scope for people on both sides of me, I'm not claiming to be perfect. An absolute commitment to holiness, this is the passion of our life every day.

We see it in the Sermon on the Mount, we see it in Jesus Christ, we see it in the Apostles, how can anyone read the Bible and not want to be God's best? Now this man is ripe to move over here, if he doesn't maintain the balance, understand the human factor, I've been touching on that, understand 1 John chapter 1, if we say we don't sin, we deceive ourselves, understand the conflict that goes on in the flesh against the spirit, the spirit against the flesh, the two are contrary, and other basic scriptures that show that we will be battling, we will be struggling, we will be fighting, not in our own flesh, I'm not talking about that kind of person, but even in the power of the Holy Spirit, there will be conflict, there will be struggles, and as we grow stronger, there will be failure, there will be sin.

Maybe dispositional sins, maybe sins in our attitude, but it's still sin. Let us understand, any of you that are way over on either corner here, that so many mighty men of God, talk about Finney, talk about Jonathan Edwards, both on the opposite side of the theological spectrum, talk about Murray McCain, wasn't it the great Scottish holiness preacher that said the closer he got to the Lord, the deeper he got in fellowship with the Lord, the more he saw the sinfulness of his own life, and that of course is the absolute opposite of this, which we'll talk about for a moment, perfectionism.

A man that somehow has got some kind of teaching that the self-life can be totally annihilated, we know, living by faith, we die to self, and of course at that moment of walking by faith and dying to self, in a sense, is similar to that, but it isn't the same, as the man who says, now he is totally sanctified, and he can no longer sin.

By the way, very few people say that. You then get another group that's over in this extreme corner, who are heavy into a certain emphasis on the Lordship of Christ, where they're saying, if he's not Lord of all, he's not Lord at all, and then he jumps off into a cloud and says you're not saved at all.

A group of missionaries, laboring in a very discouraging situation, met a group of people from that extreme camp, this seemed to be such an easy answer to their struggles and failures on the mission field, to just think, well, we've never really been born again.

And so they all got saved properly, and left the mission, and joined this little extremist church, and were happily, happy ever after, or at least for a few weeks. Now I believe there's lots of scope for variety on both sides of this middle road.

I'm not expecting you to be exactly like me, no way, but I would say the closer you are to having a balanced view between the victorious life and the area of growth in which we battle sin and sometimes sin and fail, then the closer you are to what Jesus Christ taught, what the Apostle Paul taught, and what a high degree of men and women of God stand for today.

I must confess that I have been influenced by great, what I call committed middle road evangelical leaders, Billy Graham, John Stott, Michael Green, David Watson, who by the way was a very balanced leader in the charismatic movement in England.

So these aren't all on the same side of the fence in regard to the charismatic movement. And I've been influenced by people from both sides. A .W. Tozer, though he's extreme, he's potent, he's powerful, tremendous balance in the teachings of A .W. Tozer, L .E. Maxwell, the founder of Prairie Bible Institute, tremendous balance in what he's saying.

I believe, of course, that is the road that is going to enable us to run the race right to the end, growing in holiness, growing in spiritual wisdom, growing in the use of the gifts of the Spirit, growing in discernment.

So a strong emphasis on holiness, but reality about what it takes day by day to maintain that and a sense of discernment about people that go to either extreme. Now we're going to have to get into my final thoughts or we won't have enough time.

Six Survival Strategies for the Christian Life

Let's review my basic points of strategy for survival. Point number one was knowing that you were accepted and forgiven. Point number two, casting every care upon him, 1 Peter 5 .7. Point number three, making God your goal, Matthew 6 .33.

And I won't take any concept if there's only one verse. I've given you a reference, but every one of these concepts has whole chapters and the whole basic thrust of Scripture. Number four, learning how to be hurt.

Number five, learning the reality of praise and thanksgiving in our daily walk with God. And number six, that some of you missed, living in the rest of faith, Hebrews chapter four. And let's use that as our Scripture reading, Bible reading for this afternoon.

Let's turn in our Bibles to Hebrews chapter four. One thing when you're at meetings like this and you don't feel it's so easy to carry a Bible with you all the time, you may lose it or something, why not practice carrying a New Testament?

You can carry that in your pocket and have a New Testament that you're always ready to give away. So you can have it when you maybe go to a meeting and suddenly it's somebody speaking from the Word of God, and you can also have it to give away to someone the Lord may lead you to.

And many, many people have come to Christ through reading the New Testament. Hebrews verse nine, keep in mind these tapes are available at the tape table just across from our Operation Mobilization book exhibit.

There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also has ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labor, there's a paradox, yet some people, if you use any word like striving or labor, they say, hey, that must be in the flesh.

Don't fall for that subtle intimidation. To live for God, we've got to labor. To enter into this rest, our walk with God should be in the rest of faith, but to enter into this rest, we have to labor. Let us labor, therefore, to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

For the Word of God is living, powerful, sharper than any two-inch sword, piercing even to the divining asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, powerful.

Do you know something about that rest of faith in your own life? To me, that is just so important. I believe some people enter into a rest of faith in a crisis experienced with God. My own wife had a crisis that perhaps could be categorized.

It's difficult sometimes to put a category on various crises we have with God. But she was struggling in various ways when she was a student in night school at Moody. She was working in the daytime as a secretary, and I went to talk with her, and we had some fellowship, and of course we were in love.

But she had three or four psychosomatic illnesses, linked perhaps with her background. She made a commitment at one of these meetings of Keswick, where they emphasize holiness, emphasize a deeper walk with God, the work of the Holy Spirit.

But still she had these illnesses. And it was in the quiet of her own room, she realized the principle of the all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ. She fell asleep. She woke up healed of those illnesses. Now some people might have said they were psychosomatic illnesses.

Psychosomatic illnesses can be as real as regular illnesses. They often convert from being emotionally induced into being real illnesses. So it's not a matter of thinking, oh, it's just in your head. It's not that simple.

Don't feel excess of guilt because you have an illness that is emotionally induced. We are a complicated people, mentally and emotionally. We are more complicated than I'm afraid some preachers want to admit.

And many preachers have psychosomatic illnesses. Doctors tell us, Dr. McMillan's brilliant book, None of These Diseases, point out that worry can bring more than 52 different illnesses on the body. That's why it is important to know how to deal with stress.

It is important to find your own pace. It is important to know your own limitations. And I just feel that this is not preached enough, especially to the zealous crowd. It's almost as if Satan has two strategies.

First of all, to keep you from real commitment. To keep you from experiencing reality, the Lordship of Christ, the fullness of the Spirit, whatever terminology you want to use. Satan will do everything possible.

And it seems that when people commit themselves, and they begin to move into reality, and prayer, and witness, and zeal, Satan changes his strategy and tries to get them into burnout, overstressed, overstretched.

And it's pathetic when you see it. Neglecting the family, neglecting basic human factors that are linked with our very mental and emotional survival. I had a woman on my team, was uptight about something.

25 years ago, I had a team in Italy. She went on a 40-day fast. She wasn't ready for a 40-day fast, this young woman. And her motivation must have been really mixed up. Within one or two years after that, she overthrew the Christian faith completely.

I still have contact with her. She's still, 25 years later now, following Jesus Christ. One of my greatest concerns is people who have spiritual burnout experiences. They get into some real hype church which demands so much from you, and so many meetings, and so much commitment, so many rules, and so many regulations.

And the Spirit is leading, and they get this word from the Lord, and that word from the Lord. And people just, they get burned out in those places all the time. We've seen it for 35 years, some of us old coots.

Don't do it. Learn your own limitations. Learn that rest of faith. Now let's move on, because actually yesterday, I did get into number seven, realizing God is easy to live with. That's a quote from A .W. Tozer.

By the way, most of the books we've been selling in our book exhibit have been reduced in price. I just finally got to look at the invoice yesterday to realize what these books are supposed to be sold for.

So do take advantage of those books. And if some of you really want a book, and you don't have any money, or you don't have a checkbook, especially if you went to this seminar, you could take a book and send the money to me later on in the form of a donation.

Accepting God's Patient Growth Pattern

So number eight, this is a new one now. We're moving into new territory. Accepting God's growth pattern for your life. Have you ever heard of Lane Adams? Lane Adams worked very close to Billy Graham. Lane Adams, as a pastor, did some things that weren't too wise.

Nothing that big, really. Went through some struggles, and started to develop mental and emotional problems. And he had enough courage to get counseling. Not easy for a pastor, famous pastor, to admit he needs counseling.

And God used that. And he came through that. And I was in a meeting in England, and Lane Adams came in to speak. And his speaking was tied in with a book that he wrote, which is hard to find anymore. It's called, Why Is It Taking So Long To Get Better?

Now, if in your life you're wondering why it is taking so long to get better, you may want to go to a bookstore and see if you can find an old copy of that. And I read that book, and it's so ministered to me.

Because in my struggle with temper, my struggle with lust, which is usually in the mind, my struggle with other areas, especially after living for Jesus 30 years, I guess when I met him it was maybe 25, 20, 25 years, I was wrestling with that.

Why is it taking so long? I especially felt great failure as a father and as a husband. I'm not a naturally good father or a naturally good husband. I would have made a better Muslim. Muslims have five wives.

That's probably more in line with my choleric high energy. One wife for secretarial work, one wife for domestic duties and chores, one wife for the bedroom, cleaning the bedroom, one wife for evangelism and for travel, and then one just to, a real attractive one just to look at.

But the Bible teaches that as Christians, I know some of you women, you're high energy, you have five husbands, but the Muslims don't teach that, neither do the Christians, so you're in big trouble. But the word of God, of course, is clear about marriage and about one wife.

My wife and I went through quite a few struggles in our marriage. We discovered how different we were. And I felt I was really failing her. And why wasn't I becoming more sensitive and more loving and more laid back and more, everything that she perhaps would like me to be, wasn't it?

Why wasn't it happening faster? Even after having my quiet time, praying, letting self be crucified, under the pressure of marriage, I would lose my temper. Now, some of you never have this problem. Fine, we don't all have the same problems.

I don't want to project my problems on you, but I'll never forget one day on the ship. The carpenters, I live in a very small room. You can barely get in a room on this first ship. You can read about that ship.

And some of you will be so fascinated with this book. And by the way, it's a book you can give to unconverted people. They didn't put the story in the book. There's a lot of negative things in this book.

It's a realistic book, but they left out some juicy ones. You get 130 people living together on a ship from 25 nationalities with an 80 seasickness factor. And I tell you, you're talking about advanced training and sanctification.

I was the director on the ship, as well as the director of OM Worldwide 20 years ago. All day long, dealing with problems, dealing with difficulties. I felt at times on the ship that people were so petty, so selfish.

Have you ever felt that about God's people? So petty, so selfish. Some of them arguing over their room. Their cabin was smaller than someone else's cabin. Why do they have a bigger cabin than me? Can you imagine a Christian in God's work coming up with this kind of thing?

I was really uptight. And I got back to my wife about 6 o 'clock. The carpenters had just built our new bed, which had a sliding piece of wood, which was very sophisticated to build. And then the mattress pulled out and laid on top of that piece of wood.

And my wife laid some moan on me. She's very gentle in the way she moans, but she laid some little moan on me. And I don't know. It was just I was at breaking point. I just, without thinking, blew my cool.

I knew I had to kick something. My leg moved out into action almost before my brain could catch up with it. Bam! I kicked the end of that bed. They had just go and broke it in two. The leader of Operation Mobilization in action again.

Now that was 20 years ago. I repented of that. I asked God for a greater victory. And I seldom did anything like that for another 20 years. I had ongoing struggle with irritability and with impatience.

But I generally control myself. It's not good to hit your wife, right? And if you're hurting your wife, you need to repent. You can get put in jail for that in the United States now. So it's especially worth avoiding.

But just a few weeks ago, I'm very embarrassed to say this. Again, I was under pressure. Things were bothering me. My wife was going on about some things that I felt were trivia. Does that ever happen in your marriage?

You have your concepts of what's big. She has her concepts of what's big. My wife is very committed to making video cassettes for the ship. And she has a little video recorder and she's got it all organized.

And I came in and I touched some button that bothered her program. And she came in and said something to me about whatever. I couldn't handle it. I just went. I just freaked out. And again, I had to kick something.

I knew I couldn't kick her. This is what happens. Split second, I saw a box. Wow! As fast as I could kick. Now if that box had been empty, I would have been in good shape. But that box was filled with some notebooks.

Heavy notebooks. And I'll tell you, when I kicked that box, Ah! I'm an emotional kind of person, especially under pain. And I was in, upset. I'm getting out of this house. You know, you read in the books when you get upset with your wife and march out of the house.

That really frightens the wife. She thinks you're never going to come back. She chases you down the road. I ran out of the house. My wife stayed inside. Because of books like Calvary Road, because of God's grace in me, a weak, struggling character all these years, I couldn't get through the door without repenting.

I repented as I went through the front door. I went to the back gate. I ran to the back door. I apologized to my wife. I said, forgive me, I'm a jerk. And she just broke down and started laughing. Praise God.

Encouragement for Strugglers and the Practice of Honesty

Brothers and sisters, I don't know how many of you are married. But great marriage is not in the absence of these struggles. And I don't justify that. And I'm praying it's never going to happen again because I had to go down to the hospital.

I had to get my foot x-rayed. And then all my team members, I'm the leader of the team. I'm like the senior pastor of the international coordinating team. By the way, we need workers if you want to join.

And the team, at the morning devotions, we pray together every other morning. I come in limping. Oh, what's wrong, George? Then you're tempted to tell a little half-truth. Any of you have any trouble in that area?

Absolute casualty. But somehow I decided to tell the team the truth. And here I am in front of my whole team, long-term OM leaders, telling about the box experience. Then off to the hospital. Of course, this gets on the OM grapevine literally around the world.

Verwar's lost his cool again. He's kicking boxes. He's broken his foot. Praise God, I didn't break my foot. It's all better now. But one more lesson learned. Have, if you're my kind of person, a few empty boxes laying around the house at all times.

No, that's not the lesson. But how many people have become discouraged because they haven't grown quicker in a particular area in their Christian life, and so they've thrown in the towel. They've given up.

They've said, I'll never be the husband God wants me to be. I'll never be the father. I'll never be the pastor. I'll never be whatever. And I'm sure some of you came in here a couple days ago. Discouraged.

Because of some difficulty, some area of failure or struggle in your life. And by God's grace, though maybe you haven't been zapped by a lightning bolt from above, you're going to go out of here encouraged that God can use you.

You're going to go out of here committed to the way of brokenness and repentance and Calvary road. Because it's as we repent of whatever sin we have got into as much as we avoid that sin every day and we continue to build a stronger strategy, we experience ongoing personal revival.

God is easy to live with,.

But get to know God's growth pattern. All these men and women of God that some of you admire all have similar struggles to me. They just find it hard to verbalize. Not everybody can verbalize on these things.

And if you start verbalizing about your weaknesses, you might want to try it in small groups first. Before you stand up in front of your congregation and say, well, I heard George Berber and he's committed to honesty and I just have to confess.

To all of you people that though I've been masturbating regularly every week. Whatever you do, please, don't tell your church that George Berber told you to go there on Sunday morning around the communion table and confess that kind of sin.

You'll get me in big trouble. So I believe a lot of people are struggling with these different things, but they find it hard to verbalize. They have not understood, I feel, God's teaching about honesty.

Also for a pastor, it is much, much more difficult than for someone like me in an itinerant ministry. Though within my own teams and with my own workers, I walk in honesty and that's only possible because within O .M., most of our workers are committed to this way of revival, this way of reality, this way of honesty.

But if you're in the average church where they don't understand these truths, where there's somebody in the congregation who has as his goal to get things on the pastor so they can get him out, then it is extremely difficult for the average pastor to really walk in the light and confess his faults to other people.

And you may be in a similar situation, but you need to have somebody. You need to have somebody somewhere even if it's by phone or letter that you can really walk in the light with. Because bottling up all this garbage, things you have done that you're ashamed of, if you've repented, that's under the blood of Christ, that's God.

But if you're continuing to feel the effects of that in your walk with God, you may need some counseling. Not for forgiveness sake, but for your walk with God. Now it may help you in the process feel more forgiven, but in fact the purpose of that kind of walking in the light is the future, not the past.

And I thank God that from my earliest days I just learned to share my struggles with one other brother. And then in my marriage with my wife, I shared with my wife the struggle I had with pornography, I believe, before our marriage.

She shared some of her struggles. And she has developed a strategy to help me with my struggles. And I developed a strategy to help her with her struggles. And that makes for good marriage. We just had our 30th wedding anniversary.

Though it's been a battle, we're both failures, we've experienced the grace of God. And in the process, the Lord has done a little bit in birthing, operation, mobilization, enabling us to reach 400 million people with the word of God.

Now brought into being a mission society that I'm one of the leaders of with 2 ,000 full-time workers. Does God use ordinary people? Does God use strugglers, sinners, who have learned how to drink deep at the wells of living water?

Yes, He does. But we're all growing at different speeds. We're all growing in different ways. We need to accept one another's growth patterns. Now sometimes here I have an initial reaction when I see someone smoking.

I'm against smoking because I just hate to see so many people getting cancer. But God has worked in my own heart and changed me so that when I see someone smoking, I don't immediately think he's not a Christian.

I don't immediately think he's a backslider or he's lower down the pole than someone who's not smoking. Life is much more complex than that. Inner sins in the mind and the heart are worse and more difficult than outward things such as smoking that someone would even debate.

Whether it is a sin or not. I think most Christians would feel that it is. So is losing your temper. So is impatience. So is irritability. So are all these different forms of pride. Who in Cornerstone?

Who is walking across this place today that from the day we began a couple of days ago till now can say there's been no sin in his mind, in his heart, in his attitude? What about lukewarmness? People don't even think of lukewarmness as a sin.

Whereas Jesus Christ said, Be hot, be cold for if you are lukewarm, I'll spew you out of my mouth. I would have thought that the sin of lukewarmness among God's people is worse than the so-called sin of smoking.

You see, the whole extreme teaching about perfection is just loaded with holes. It's loaded with holes. C .H. Spurgeon, one of the greatest men of God who ever lived, bumped into a guy who was into sinless perfection.