(Steps Towards Spiritual Perfection) - Intro — A.W. Tozer

The two sermons that Dr. Tozer refers to on this cassette as having previously preached.

Are unfortunately unavailable. Tonight I want to read that text again. We've read it, you know, variously. I've read it, and we've read it responsibly, and we've read it variously. Now, I want to read it from a translation that you may never have heard of, and certainly most of you have never seen.

It is a translation directly out of the Aramaic, not out of the Greek, but out of the Aramaic of the Eastern Church, the language Jesus spoke and the language Paul spoke originally. I'll just read the same.

It's Philippians 3, 7 -15. Not much difference, just a little, and we're sticking by the King James, of course, but I thought you'd like to hear this. But these things, says Paul, which once were a gain to me, I count as a loss for the sake of Christ, and I still count them all loss for the sake of the abundant knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord, for whom I have lost everything.

And I have considered all those things as refuge, so that I may increase in Christ and be found in him, since I have no righteousness of my own gained from the law. But the righteousness which comes through the faith of Christ, that is, the righteousness which comes from God, so that through this righteousness I may know Jesus and the power of his resurrection, and be a partaker of his suffering even to a death like his, that I may by any means attain the resurrection from the dead.

Pressing Toward the Goal of Spiritual Perfection

Not as though I had already attained or already perfect, but I am striving that I may reach that for which Jesus Christ appointed me. My brethren, I do not consider that I have reached the goal, but this one thing I do know.

Forgetting those things which are behind me, I strive for those things which are before me. I press toward the goal to receive the pride and victory of God's highest calling through Jesus Christ. Then he takes a breath and says, Therefore, let those of you who are perfect think these things over.

That's why we're meeting this Sunday night, and this reason, if you reason any other way, that if you've got any other ideas about this, well, God will reveal them to you. I said, I'm right about it, and if you don't see the way I do, I said God will show you all right.

Now, I've given you two mottos. I want to give you a third one tonight. You know that we're allowing an old, a 600-year-old book to help us along the way called The Cloud of Unknowing, and we're basing our teaching on the New Testament, and then we're allowing this old brother to help us a little along the way.

And I have given you already two mottos. They are, Look now forward and let do backwards. You've got that one. Last week I gave you a second one, He will that do but look on him and let him along. I give you the third one tonight.

He is a jealous lover, and he suffereth no rival. I have said that there are four identifiable stages. A man might find 24, but there's a common Christian about which I've preached already, and I'm still talking about this social Christian.

I talked about that last week, and we're going to move on in the weeks to come into what we call singular Christian, and then there is the Christian who has moved up into God until he has begun to be perfect, though it is said both by Paul and by the old writer that we may begin in this life a life of perfection, but never attain fully to it till we attain it in the bliss of heaven.

Knowing Christ Through Intimacy and Experience

Now, Paul is our example, and Paul said in the text that I may know him, and the word know there means acquaint or acquaintance, and it means experience. It means these two things to be acquainted with and experience.

You may be acquainted with a man and yet not have experienced the man in any sense at all. If I introduce you, for instance, to my friend, who's almost lifelong friend, Herbert Miller, here tonight, you could say, yes, I'm acquainted with him, but you have not experienced him in the sense that I have, running around with him, traveling with him in his car usually, and preaching with him, and going with him here and there, and talking with him endless numbers of times, and praying with him.

There's a difference between acquaintance and experience. To get acquainted with God is one thing, but to go on to experience God in intensity and richness of acquaintance is something more. And Paul said, I want to know him in that depth and rich intensity of experience.

Because, you see, as I have said many times, personality can't be fully known with one encounter. You may meet a person you don't particularly like at first, but as you get to know them, you get to liking them because you find hidden potentialities in their personality which you didn't know was there.

Now, Christ is capable of increasing intimacy of acquaintance, and if I have anything to say to the Church of Christ, and to the Alliance, and to the evangelicals in the world, it is this that our great weakness is that we not only are not going on to know Christ in rich intimacy of acquaintance, but we're not even talking about it.

We don't even hear about it. It doesn't get into our magazines, it doesn't get into our books, it doesn't get onto our radios, it's not found in our churches. This yearning, this longing to know him in increasing measures.

Now, we may enjoy this increasing acquaintance with that. I want you to hear me say that. You say, but Jesus Christ is a he, a person. Why do you call him that? Now, you may not understand me now, but as Paul says, if you think otherwise God will reveal even that unto you.

Christ as the Source of Truth, Beauty, and Life

Before we can know God as a he or him, we know God as a rat. I think that every Elohim would agree with me on that, and I find back here in the book of John these words. First of all, before I read them, remember what was said to the virgin Mary?

That holy thing which is born of thee shall become called the Son of God. That holy thing which is born of thee. And now, John, not an amateur theologian, but the man who had laid his head upon the breast of Jesus, begins his wondrous first epistle with the word that.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon in our hands and handled of the word of life, personality is not found there yet. For the life was manifested, and we have seen it.

And bear witness and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that we also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

It's not until the last two lines of the third stanza that he put personality in there. It's that before. Now, remember, my friends, that Jesus Christ, while he is person, and you know that, we all agree that he's the person, he's the Son, the eternal Son, he is also that which is the source of everything.

He is that which is the foundation and fountain of everything you and I are created to enjoy. He is the fountain of all truth, but he is more, he is truth itself. He is the source and string of beauty, but he is more, he is beauty itself.

He is the fountain of all wisdom, but he is more, he is wisdom itself, and in him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden away. He is the fountain of all grace, he is the fountain and source of all life, but he is more than that.

He said that I am the bed of life, and I am the light. He is the fountain of love, but he is more than that. He is love, he is resurrection, and he is immortality, and he is, as the song says, brightness of the Father's glory, sunshine of the Father's face.

Recovering the First Degree of Love for Christ

You know, we try to discover what gets wrong with us when we start to backslide in groups and denominations and churches and individuals, and I believe that our Lord Jesus hit on the head of it when he said, you have left your first degree of love.

Not your first love consecutively in the sense that there's love number one, and love number two, and love number three, but he said you've left your first degree of love. And what I'm preaching to try to bring about in the Church of Jesus Christ is a rediscovery of the loveliness of the Savior that we might begin to love him again with an intensity of love such as our Father's knew.

I have said before, and I repeat it now, that the power and greatness of A. B. Simpson was not in his theology, for he positively was not a great theologian compared, for instance, with Calvin or some of the other theologians.

The power and greatness of the man lay in his unquenchable love for the person of Jesus Christ the Lord. There's a song we sing, and I want to read some verses that we don't know about. The first one says, "'Fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature, ruler thou of God and man, the Son, thee will I cherish, thee will I honor, thou my soul, glory, joy, and crown.'.

We know that one and two others, but there are others that we don't get, and here's one. It says, "'Fair are the flowers, fair are earth's children, when viewed in earth's unclouded day, yet they must perish.

All will soon vanish, Jesus alone abides for us. Gaze out upon the world, on your family, your friends, your loved ones, all the lovely beauty of children and young people viewed in earth's unclouded day.

Yet candor and realism compel us to say, yet they must perish, all will soon vanish, and when they have vanished we have only Jesus who alone abides for us. Earth's fairest beauty, heaven's brightest splendor, in Jesus Christ's unclouded sea, all that here shineth quickly declineth before his spotless purity.

There are those who would trouble you because you can't get all steamed up about things.". A friend of mine was quite hurt, because I just can't get all steamed up about earthly things. I can't possibly do it.

I can't possibly stand off and strike an attitude of awe at a poor porthole Buick, or a Cadillac, or something else. I can't. And the houses they're building that are supposed to be so magnificent. Remember that when you have seen the house or city that has foundations whose builder and maker is God, you can't get excited about any house ever any man in this world ever built.

You can't get excited about it. Somebody said that Abraham saw the city that had foundations whose builder and maker was God, and he wouldn't build a house after that. He said, I'll never try to imitate it.

I'll live in the tent till I get my house up there. It was so beautiful. Well, earth's fairest beauty, and heaven's brightest splendor, is all unfolded in Jesus Christ, and all that here shineth quickly declineth before his spotless purity.

That's what one man said about Jesus. Now, I want to tell you that it costs to know Jesus Christ like that. It costs, and most people won't pay the price for it at all. That's why most Christians are common.

Counting Earthly Gains as Loss for Christ

They won't go on, because for Christ's sake they have surrendered evil things. That is, things that are injurious, and things that are unclean and grossly sinful. Everywhere in fundamentalism we have given up the grossly sinful things, and we have all agreed on what those grossly sinful things are.

We shudder at the thought of a honky-tonk, though there are some churches and tabernacles that you couldn't tell the difference if somebody didn't yell Jesus occasionally to give it a holy atmosphere.

But honky-tonks and unholy places, we stay out of them, and there are certain things we don't do, and for Christ's sake we have surrendered those evil things. But this is the mark of a common Christian, and the man who's never gone beyond that is a mediocre Christian.

Paul surrendered the good along with the bad, and he said not only the things that are bad have I given up, but he said what things were gain to me, those I counted lost. The things that he had right to, the things that were gain to him, and that he had every legal and moral right to lay hold of and say this is mine, and Christianity's not going to take it from me.

He said I've given up even that because I've seen something so much better. It is that which was with the Father, it is that source, that fountain from which flows all wisdom and beauty and truth and immortality.

So, for the sake of that, I have given it all up. He knew, Paul did, that the human heart was idolatrous, and it'll worship anything that it possesses. Anything that you get your hand on, you worship.

As a little child would take his teddy bear to bed with him, so we grown-ups have our teddy bears, too. We were too grown-up and mature, you know, to be caught taking a teddy bear doll to bed. But we have what must look to God like teddy bears and dolls.

We hang on to them. A baby, of course, has a right to that. I believe in that. We kept teddy bears floating around for years at home, until they got driven, and they were pretty old when they did. But the point I'm making is that we are world leaders.

We mature people, people even in their teens, when we still insist upon hanging on to things. Whatever you hang on to, you worship. Don't forget that, because it gets between you and God, whether it be property or family or reputation or security or your life itself.

And Jesus taught us that we couldn't even hang on to our life itself. That if we made our living on earth to be something that we wouldn't give up and hung to, it would get in our way and we'd lose ourselves at last.

He taught that, taught it plainly. And then this grasping after security. Always we want to be secure. Well, Paul wasn't secure. He said he died dead, and he was out on the bosom of the sea for three weeks, night and day, and he was always in difficulty, just longing for security.

I want security in this life, and eternal security in the world above. And there we have it, that fundamentalism. Security here, and eternal security there. Brethren, Paul said, I give it all up. I disavow and disown everything.

The Jealous Lover and the Need for an Undivided Heart

Now, there are certain things God let him have. He let him have a book or two, he let him have a garment, a coat, he let him have his own hired house for two years in one instance, and he let him have some things.

But Paul never allowed them to touch his heart. Any external treasure that touches your heart is a curse. And Paul said, I give that up, that I might know him, that I might go on to deeply enrich and increasing intimacy and vast expanses of knowledge of the one who is infinite and illimitable in his beauty, and I go on to know him, and that I might know him.

I give all this up. And he never allowed anything to touch his heart. You see, friends, we have been taught over the last years in our Christian circles that Christ is something added on to a happy, jolly, rather clean, but well-earnestly life, to save us from hell and to get us into the mansions over there.

But that's not New Testament way of looking at things. It's not the way Paul looked at it at all. Paul looked at it as that Jesus Christ was so infinitely attractive that we didn't count anything at all to amount to anything.

Paul was a learned man, at the feet of Gamaliel. He had what they'd call now Ph .D. Paul was a learned man, but Paul said that's all dross. He said he used an ugly word about it, a garbage. He said it's no good.

I put it all behind me. And he said, I'm of the tribe of vengeance, and I'm circumcised the eighth day, and I belong to the fathers, and I've got the marks upon me, and my name's in the register, and I can show you who I am.

But he said, for the sake of Jesus Christ, I count that nothing at all. I put that under my feet. Some of you are proud of your Dutch blood, and that's why you're half carnal all the time. Some of you are proud of your Swedish blood, and that's why you're carnal all the time.

And some of you are proud of some other blood. All blood's the same kind of blood, corrupt blood. And I don't care that it comes from around here from the gutter. It's corrupt blood. But we're proud of things, and proud of what we can do.

Paul said, everything, the proudest thing I have, the thing at which I am the proudest, I count it but loss. But modern Christianity says, stop gambling or the bomb will get you. Stop drinking or you'll go down like Rome.

Stop this or that, and you pick out those ugly, gestural things that nobody wants to do if they're in their right mind. And that's all the sins there are. Paul said, I've quit those so long ago. He never even did them.

He didn't even do them. He was a Jew in all good conscience, and he didn't have to quit them. And that's why I sometimes feel like smiling kind of sourly when I hear a big testimony about somebody that drank and then got saved and quitted.

Now, sure, you'll get saved and quitted, but that ought to be elementary. That ought to be way back down the years. Man who writes a book on how bad he was, you can have the book. I already have books I won't read.

Well, friends, now let this old man talk to us a little bit here. He says, But one thing I tell thee, he that is God, he's a jealous lover, and he suffers no rival. Now, brethren, that's what's the matter with us.

We're allowing rivals to come up. No decent fellow, nobody that has any self-respect is going to suffer a rival, but he says God won't suffer a rival. And he says here in this old English, which I'll translate into bad modern English, he says,.

And him which not work in thy will, but he only would be by himself. He says that God won't work in your will, but unless he can only be there by himself. We have too many gods, we have too many irons in the fire, and we have too much theology that we don't understand, and we have too much religion, and too much churchanity, and too much institutionalism, and too much of too much, and the result is God isn't in there by himself.

He says, If I'm not in your heart by myself, I will work. He says, Remember that now. Him which not work in thy will, but he only is there by himself. Now, when Jesus Christ has everything cleansed from the temple, and dwells there alone, he'll work.

An old friend of mine talks about it when we hear that God's working like a miner in the depths of the earth. Have you ever been in a coal mine? Way deep down in the earth, they're mining out coal, or gold, or diamonds, and anybody can fly overhead, or walk overhead, or travel by, and never dream what's going on in the depths of the hill yonder.

Never know that way in that hill unseen, there is an intelligent force at work bringing out gold. And so, said St. Alon, that that's what God does in the human breast. He works hidden and unseen within the breast.

But we're dramatic in our day. We don't want God to work unless he comes with a beard on, and a staff playing a part. We want him to be theatrical, and do the thing with a good deal of color and pyrotechnics, which means fireworks in English.

And God won't work like that. God says, No, no, no. You children of Adam, you children of carnality and lust, you who love a fair show in the flesh, you who have been brought up wrong and have wrong ideas about tonight's pun, I won't work.

I won't work in you. Jesus says, I can't do it. I'm sorry, I can't work in you, in your womb or in your heart, unless I can be there alone. But some of you need to do it, cleanse the temple. You just need to get busy and throw out, drive out the cattle and upset the money changers, and shovel out the dirt, and get rid of a lot of things that are rivaling the Lord Jesus Christ.

Here's the motto, he's a jealous lover and he suffereth no rival. And he goes on and says this, Lift up thine heart now unto God, with a meek stirring of love, and mean himself, and none of these villains, and therefore look below.

I look that word low up in the unabridged, and it's an old English Saxon word meaning unwilling, be unwilling, hate, and be unwilling to think on aught but God himself, so that nothing works in your wit or in your will, that's in your head or in your heart, but only himself.

Now again, we're back to where we were started when I said that himself, and I said that Simpson in the early days talked about himself, and he shocked and blessed the generation because he talked about himself.

He said, Jesus himself, it's himself that we need. I suppose you know how himself came to be written. I'm sure somebody, if not I've told you about how Dr. Simpson went over to England, to London, to a Bible conference, and there were three sermons on sanctification, and he preached the last one.

That's a bad spot to be in. But the first fellow got up and said that the way to be holy and victorious in your heart was to suppress the old man. He taught suppression. Another man got up and taught eradication, and he said deliverance from the old carnal life is by eradication.

Get rid of the old man, pull him up, turn him up to the roots, up to the sun to die, and Dr. Simpson had to get in between there. So, he got up and he took one word for himself, and he gave his testimony about how he had tried to get the victory, and he said, sometimes I would get it and think I had it, and then I'd lose it.

Then he said, when I came to the knowledge that victory, sanctification, deliverance, purity, holiness, all is himself, then he said, after that was easy and the glory came to my life. I thought that was a beautiful piece of diplomacy.

I also thought that it was the most wonderfully wise way to handle a thing in good theology. And then, around that, he wrote his famous hymn, Once it was a blessing, now it is the Lord, once his gift I wanted, now to give her home, now himself alone.

Now, there's got to be more himself. He said, you know, Christianity has gotten to be, I've said this before and I'm summing it up tonight, it has gotten to be a way of getting things from God. A way of, we give a tithe in order that our nine-tenths or go further than our ten-tenths, and I claim that any businessman who wouldn't would be a jackass with long, hairy ears.

A man who would find out that by giving God one-tenth, his nine-tenths went further than his ten-tenths had. Ordinary business would lead you to do that, wouldn't it? Sure it would. A man that wouldn't do that, that's not spirituality, that's disease.

And if a man wants to be a businessman and a used God, okay. But that's not what the Bible teaches, and that's not what Paul talks about. Paul had given up that years before. That's not what the old writer of the Child of Unknowing talked about.

He said, it's only himself. And he said, now do thou that in the years to forget all the creatures that ever God made, so that thy thoughts nor thy desires be not directed nor stretched to any of them, but let them be and take no heed of them.

So that Christian businessmen are in danger. Now, I talk to Christian businessmen, committee men, and they want me to come and beg me to come just to say this to them. I'm not condemning my good friends of the Christian businessmen committee, or my good and loved friend who edits their magazine back here, David Inlow, but I say Christian businessmen can get to a spot where they make Christianity to be a way to have a prosperous business down here in a mansion in the sky.

Either way, you'll win. If you follow the Lord, you'll prosper down here. Brethren, to follow the Lord doesn't always mean, in fact I would say it rarely means to have financial prosperity. But following the Lord has meant down the years to count those things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ.

And where a fellow prospers in spite of himself, by then the way he gets around it, he gives everything away, as much as he can at least, and keeps enough to live on. Thank God he's still here. Brought his soul to hell together, and a place to live, and they try to take him to church and to work.

But further than that, there's not much concern. But we have made Christianity to be a way, a technique by which we can get things. Paul didn't know any better than that. He said, "'Nearly doubtless I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.

I've suffered the loss of all things, and I do count them but knowing that I may win Christ, and that I may know him through the power of his resurrection.'. Now, it's himself who said, "'Let them be, and take no heed to them.'".

That's why you can't get anywhere, and that's why some of you are going to stop coming to hear me preach this series, because we're getting around close to where you live. Before, we weren't so near to you, but we're beginning to stick the needle in a little, and you just don't want that.

You'd like to have a deeper life that could be given to you with a syringe, or that could be given to you with a glass of water and then a pill. They take one pill three times a day, and the fellow says, you just can't do that.

But some people, that's the way they get their religion. They want it in pill form, and they buy books to get it in pill form. Later in, there isn't any such a thing. There's a cross, there's a gallows, there's a man with stripes on his back, there's an apostle with no property, there's a tradition of loneliness and weariness and rejection and glory, but there are no pills.

But some want the pill, but I say himself, himself, himself. Well, friends, I don't know. I wish, yet I don't wish. I don't wish anything. I pray for it, and if it isn't God's will, why I don't want it, and if it is God's will, why I don't wish or pray.

But I'd like to see somewhere a recapture once more, before I die, of the glory that men knew of the beauty of Jesus. One old brother said this about him, many dubious names thou bearest, and I might say that as you students know, but the average person wouldn't have any reason to know.

Ishi, I-S-H-I, is the word for husband in the Hebrew, and so he wrote a poem about Jesus. This old brother, and he said, many dubious names thou bearest, brother, shepherd, friend and king, but there none unto my spirit such divine force and brain.

Ishi, Ishi is the jewel. Mind is violated, rose. Angels taste not of such glory. Holy Ishi of the soul. Other joys are short and fleeting. Thou and I can never part. Thou art altogether lovely, Ishi, Ishi of my heart.

They sang that once. Where could you sing that now? I think we could sing it here, brother, but there aren't many places where you can sing it, because people don't have the experience that it conveys, you see, that it embodies.

Whenever a song is rejected, it's rejected as a rule, it's a good song, because the people don't understand it, and they find it dull. If you like rock and roll, you won't like Ishi, and if you like tender lady watches over me, you won't like Ishi, and if you like tea, you won't like Ishi.

Ishi is the jewel. Mind is violated, rose. Angels taste not of such glory. Holy Ishi of the soul. And, this is the teaching of the deeper life. It is to put away all the features that ever God made, and stop trying to promote your family.

Stop trying to promote your business and use God to do it. Stop trying to promote anything and use God to do it, and put everything away with God, for he lists not work in my heart unless he can be there alone.

Put everything else out. Some young preacher will study until you have to get thick glasses, take care of his failing eyesight, because he has an idea he wants to become a famous preacher, and he wants to use Jesus Christ to make him a famous preacher.

He's just a huckster buying and selling and getting gain. They'll ordain him, and he'll be known as Reverend, and if he writes a book, they'll make him a Doctor. He'll be known as Doctor, but he's still a huckster buying and selling and getting gain, and if the Lord comes back, he'll drive him out of the temple along with the other cattle.

But we can use the Lord for anything, or try to use him, but what I'm teaching to you, and what Paul taught here, and what was picked up by the centuries and brought down the years, and what gave birth to the missionary society that you and I know about and belong to, was just exactly the other thing.

Oh, God, we don't want anything as we want thee. That's the cry of the soul on its way up. That's the cry of the soul. In England, they say there is a bird called the skylark. We don't have them here.

The nearest thing you have to it here that does the same thing is what they call the wild canary, the American goldfinch, but it's a poor little weak example of the skylark. So, they say the skylark will mount and mount and sing as it mounts, and the poet had talked about it said that the skylark mounts and sings hymns at heaven gate, and it mounts until it's out of sight, they say, and they can still hear the song coming down while they can no longer see the bird mounting and singing as it rises.

My friends, this is what I'm preaching about, but this is what most people don't want. I think most of you must, or you wouldn't be here because you knew what I was going to preach on. Another thing a man said about him was this, that I've always loved to quote, love sits on his eyelids and scatters delight to all the wide regions above.

Their silks are the cherry of them veiled in his sight and tremble with raptures of love. These people who have to have whole cut loaves of gadgets to get their religion going, what do they do when they don't have anything like that?

The truck can't get where they're going. I heard a man boast this afternoon on the radio to come to this place because they were going to bring in equipment from Pennsylvania and Ohio to serve the Lord with.

Equipment? What equipment do you need to serve the Lord with, brother? So, I had the dear little camp meeting ladies used to say, this is my harp of ten strings, and I praise the Lord, and the old wrinkled hands with brown spots you know on them, and they clap their little old wrinkled hands with shining faces.

So, Harper, what do you need? What clap-clap do you need? Do you need a bushel back of that basket to serve the Lord with, brother? If you have two knees, and even if you're stiffened up with arthritis so you can't get on your knees, you can look up in your heart, for prayer isn't getting on your knees.

Prayer is the elevation of the heart to God. That's all a man needs. You can pray in a prison, you can pray on an airplane, and I do, and you can pray in a ship, you can pray anywhere, and you can worship God because it's himself that we want.

Himself. Love sits on his eyelids and scatters delight, so all the wide regions above in their faces a chariot is veiled in his sight and trembles with raptures of love. Now, the only kind of revival that I'm even remotely interested in is the kind of revival that will cause people to tremble with rapture in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's all. Now, I'm merely true, but I'd like to say this to you. I've been reading the Proverbs devotionally every day, and I've gotten into the 13th chapter, and I rather smiled when I read one of the Proverbs there.

I don't remember how it runs in King James, but I have it in two other translations here. One of them says, "'Every sluggard is employed in wishing,' and the Knox translation says, "'idleness will and will not both at once.'".

Now, there we have a lot of Christians who are sluggards, and being a lifelong student, I wouldn't take that word sluggard at its face value. I said, what's a sluggard? So, I looked it up to find out what a sluggard was.

Well, a slug is a sort of a streamlined snail, and when they crawl along, they do about a mile a millennium. They just crawl along, leaving a wet streak behind them. That's a slug, and a lazy slug. Some fellow looked at it, and then when his son wouldn't work, he said, "'You're like that slug.

You're a sluggard,' and that's how we got their word in the English, a sluggard. The Bible says that every sluggard is employed in wishing. He goes to church, chases from one part of the city to the other to hear a new evangelist, hoping that he can become a spiritual man, but he's too lazy.

He's a sluggard. He will and he will not both at the same time. Now, that's the way a lot of Christians are, and what are you going to do with them? Dear God, do I have to wake them up? I can. I've set up every alarm clock I could wind up in print and in public, and I just can't wake people up.

Sluggards will be sluggards till the Lord comes, I suppose, but I think some of you here are going to get some wings and get rid of the shell. I'll tell you this, that if some of you women kept house like you keep your soul, you'd be in for a divorce, your husband wouldn't stay around.

And if some of you men kept your business the way you keep your soul, your wife couldn't live because you'd go bankrupt. What's your response? Well, in closing your seven minutes, your little brother says this, and I found it true.

Persevering in the Naked Intent Toward God

He said, now I'll paraphrase him and then read. He says, if you're going to go on now and know God and get up and stir yourself and lift your heart to God and put away things and desire for property and things and seek himself alone and let him work in you without any rivals.