Keys for a Successful Family Life - Part 5 — Don Courville

Our Father, we thank you for your word. And thank you for the Holy Spirit. And thank you for all the blessings because of the blood of Christ. Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son, Jesus Christ.

And these things have I written unto you. You wrote all these things so that we could have joy, so that we could know you and walk in victory. Now Lord, this session here, we just completely look to you to guide and bless and direct us in what we do here and what we hear.

In Jesus' name, amen. Well, y 'all seem to like stories. And you know, there's a, I guess if you want a title for this, and you could call it Victory in the Home. Going along with joy in the home. And I had a little thing, I was looking back over some things because I've got the theology of joy.

Joy, Victory, and the Christian Life

And I had this written, Jesus was full of it. The early church had it. The apostles thrived in it. The world needs it and tries to substitute it. Christians sometimes lose it, but are born with it. The unsaved and sometimes, the unsaved are sometimes envious at it, or the unsaved sometimes are mad at it.

It can be contagious. It can be unusual to see in a liberal church. It can bring unsaved to Christ, or it can bring the saved to the cross. It's the joy of the Lord. And also I think that joy is tied in with victory.

And so we could have the victory of the cross. And so when a Christian dies, he enters into the presence of the Lord. Thou would show me the path of life in thy presence is fullness of joy. There's a guy, I know that he probably didn't have, I haven't studied his theology, but I heard it wasn't very good at all.

But it is C .S. Lewis, and he wrote a lot of books. And he has this statement, a friend of mine puts on all his emails, that Lewis said that joy is the serious business of heaven. And so if it's a serious business of heaven, it should be a serious business of ours.

When the personality becomes egocentric, centered, someone said, it disintegrates into a life of extreme self-centeredness, defensiveness, hostility, antisocial behavior, greed, cheating, lying, and all these types of things.

But if we have a life of joy, we won't disintegrate. We will just grow stronger and stronger. I was just going back through picking out some statements here. And here's a little story from John Newton, that one time there was a family, and I don't know if he was the pastor in the church or whatever at that time, but this family had a fire and it burnt the house down.

And he come up to the lady and he said, I give you joy, madam. You know, preachers have been sort of crazy sometimes. And she said, what joy? All is gone. And Newton said, oh no. Joy, you have so much property that fire cannot touch.

So interesting to go into this. There is a French lady who got plugged in with Jesus and the Catholic church couldn't get out, went through a lot of persecution. She's wrote some books. Her name was Madam Gunion.

And one of her favorite poems that she wrote, she went through a lot of years of suffering, but once she made it to Jesus and she's locked in around this system and the priest would persecute her terribly.

She was put in prison. She was so full of joy in Jesus, but she went through seven years of real heart searching and struggle and everything, but she come out clean and free in Christ. And she wrote this little poem.

A little bird am I, shut from the fields of air. Because they didn't know what to do with her. She's just full of joy, full of Jesus. And of course, they're not tied into Jesus. They're into their system and their works and all their other stuff that doesn't give you joy.

A little bird am I, shut from the fields of air. And in my cage, I sit and sing to him who placed me there. Well pleased a prisoner to be, because my God, it pleased thee. Oh, it is grand to soar these boats and bars above to him whose purpose I adore, whose providence I love.

And in thy mighty will to find the joy, the freedom of the mind. So an amazing subject if we get into this area of victory and talking about the victory tied with the joy. William Gurnall, if you've never read his books, you ought to read those books.

Heavy books on spiritual warfare, powerful. He said, the reason why so many poor souls have so little heat of joy in their hearts is that they have so little of gospel knowledge in their mind. The further a soul stands from the light of truth, the further he must needs be from the heat of comfort.

Joy in the Home and the Call to Never Give Up

So victory in the home, following on. Thomas Watson said, there are two things which I've always looked upon as difficult. The one is to make the wicked sad, the other is to make the godly joyful. Detection in the godly, or dejection in the godly arises from a double spring, either because their inward comforts are darkened or their outward comforts are disturbed.

So joy is followed by victory. And I could title this, it's victory in the home, but also we could put in there, never give up. The kids in the church, the young people, gave me a T-shirt a couple of years ago, and it's a picture on the front of it, and I don't wear it much, but it's a picture of a frog.

Maybe you've seen that picture. It's got his hands around the neck of the pelican, and he's in the mouth, and his arms are sticking out, and he's holding, and this thing said, never give up. Whoever gives up first loses.

And that's funny, but it's really true. Never give up, no matter how. I've often thought, well, maybe, Lord, you raised me. Victor Matthews wrote a book about warfare. Born for battle. I thought, man, Lord, all these things.

I was born for battle. I like peace. True warriors like peace. Well, I was just flipping back through here, and seeing if there are any little tidbits. There's a story from the mission field. It comes, this testimony, there were many of us small boys in our village in the Belgian Congo.

When the missionaries came, this is from one of the natives there, we listened to them, marveled at their gentleness, the things that they had in their houses, the way they treated the sick, but we did not think of adopting their ways.

One day, a teacher whom we admired very much went down the river to meet his wife. We waited eagerly to see the new mama, but when the canoe returned to our beach, sometime later, the teacher was alone.

His wife had been taken ill on the streamer from the town that they came from, I can't even pronounce that, Leopoldville, I think, and had died before her husband reached her, so our teacher came back to us alone, his heart filled with sadness, but he did not go into his house to weep, and well for weeks, as did my people.

He carried on his work, preaching to us at every opportunity, saying, I have joy because I have Christ. We no longer could be indifferent to the teachings of a man who, in his deep personal sorrow, showed that he had joy because he had Christ.

We wanted to know his Christ. Later, six of my chums and I became inquirers and were baptized, and we have learned that in trial and sorrow, he was our joy, even Jesus. So, as we move towards this, let's see what God has to teach us.

Enoch’s Walk with God as a Pattern for Victory

I was meditating, and if you want a scripture passage, we'll go back to Genesis again, and I have just one verse, I won't make you stand on it, but just listen. Genesis 5 and 23. All the days of Enoch were 360 and five years, and Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him, for God took him.

So, whoops, the home life within, within our hearts, be a victory life, and Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. Enoch, the name means dedicated. Coming out of the line of Cain, and seventh from Adam, he walked with God.

Jude 14 says he was a preacher of righteousness, and also he was a prophet, and if you dig around in there, you'll see that also he was not liked, and anybody that's gonna be living in victory and have joy in their life, Jude 14, 15, he, I believe, lived with opposition because he goes into talking, maybe I ought to read that to you a little bit.

Jude 14, and Enoch, also the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, behold, the Lord cometh with 10 ,000 of his saints to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them, and all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed, and all their hard speeches, which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

These are murmurs, complainers, walking after their own lust and all this stuff, speaking great swallowing words. I just sort of wonder if he knew what he was talking about, if he was opposed, and the Lord just took him home.

Principles in the home of victory, those that walk with God within their home and their lives, they walk in unity, they are agreed, as Amos said, they have a life of communion with God, and to teach our children these things, we've got to have it ourself.

They make God's glory their own end. I've just got a list of things here. They make his word the rule of their life, they live by faith, and Enoch's occupation was to walk with God. This should be ours, too.

And so after all these years, and going through his life and everything, he just didn't live like the rest of the people around there, and he had such a walk with God that God just took him home, and the unsaved oppose the godly.

Well, I was just going through here, picking up some things, and thought I would share with you a little bit about walking with God and why we shouldn't give up, and just flipping through here on some things.

And it's going to be a little different, even more. When I was 17, 18, life had been so hard, I just wanted to die. But I was scared about that, because I wasn't sure my good deeds would outweigh my bad deeds, because I hadn't exactly been an angel.

Matter of fact, years later, I'd come back to my dad, I'd went to a seminar, and I had seven things I had to confess to him. And he took a knife, not physically, but he said, you always were a rebel. It's like he took a knife and stuck it in my heart.

You know, I'm confessing my weaknesses and everything, and he said, you always were a rebel. And God had dealt with me, and I didn't think I was that bad, but I must have been. I mean, a little kid that started a fire underneath the neighbor's house with some paper and matches.

Down in the south, the houses were off the ground. They don't do that anymore too much, but our house was off the ground, and that was for the floods. We had a river there, and there was a house, I lived on Kent Street, and a few blocks away, there was a plantation house built in 1730, I think it was, and it was like eight foot off the ground.

And so I just went on our neighbor's house one day, had some newspapers and a match, and started firing there. You know, that's the type of kid my folks had. As a wonder I'm alive, some of the other things, I don't tell a lot of those things, I don't want my kids and grandkids to do those things.

But so when I confessed to dad, he said, you always were a rebel, it hurt, but he's probably speaking the truth. Now, walking with God is a desire of mine. I grieve that I don't do it as good as I should, and that I failed the Lord and all this stuff.

I'm always telling God, you know, all these things that he knows about me, but I think that God raises us up to be victors, more than conquerors through him that loved us. And so we've got these little ones, and we've got our experiences, and maybe you're here tonight, and you're hurting, and you need Christ, you need the victory, you need some peace, you need, you've got some baggage in your life, and whatever.

Just ask God to speak to you. Now, I'm gonna be primarily talking about the life of a missionary. Just the life of a missionary. And I'm gonna go through this story. We've gone through all kinds of scriptures, and I got more scriptures, and we've heard scriptures in everything, and we got all these things.

Enoch’s Testimony and the Victorious Christian Life

But whatever we have, we have to have in our life victory. You know what? Enoch had a testimony in Hebrews 11, verse five, by faith Enoch was translated, that he should not see death, and was not found, because God had translated him, for before his translation, he had this testimony that he pleased God.

Does it please God if you're discouraged all the time? We have revival in 85, I told you back earlier, but before that I was pastor in this church, and I went in my first church seven years, and this next one about seven years.

But before revival, I was up and down inside. I was discouraged about this or that, and maybe up and what. That is not the victorious Christian life. You know, that's the life of somebody driving over hills, up and down.

And so God dealt with me, that I was not living victorious Christian life. I went through 12 messages of the revivalists when he come in. By the way, these meetings went for two years. Went into my buddy's church, I was talking about that with somebody, went through his church.

The deacon got saved the very first meeting, and the Indians are coming, not the Indians, some Indians came to the meetings, because we were near the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which is up north of Nebraska where the meeting's in.

The missionaries were coming in, and the missionaries getting right with God. God just met with us in revival. Deacon got saved the first meeting, went eight days there, come down to our church, went 18 days.

I went through the 12th message, and God just smoked me that I'd not been living in victory, and just really dealt with me. The flesh doesn't live in victory, only in the spirit. And then he went to my buddy's Brethren in Law's church down the road, and he was there two weeks, then he come back to my wife's home church, and went spontaneous after the third church, went down there for three weeks.

And God had those guys' attention, because they were ranchers, she was raised on a ranch in western Nebraska, and it was June, usually June the hay's about that tall, and that June the hay was that tall.

And God got ahold of those old cowboys down there, and revival broke out. And I remember, because I had to leave the country, go down to Louisiana, we had a family reunion or something down in Louisiana, and I remember seeing on my dad's TV, he had a TV there, and they had the weather, when the revival hit, big old red area on the radar, and God salvaged the country, it would rain.

But they had to get right with God, and all these stories, and while we were gone, the evangelist came back to our town, went into the Wessian church, and it just went like that for two years. That's when I began doing some traveling around.

And because the evangelist wouldn't go anywhere unless I went in, so I began going to different places around the country. Now God tonight, right now, has a message for each of us. And I'm gonna share this story, it came from David Wilkerson.

And I felt like earlier, God wanted me to share this story, and I read you a story. I don't usually read stories like that, but kids like it. One lady come up, I think she said, I'm a 41-year-old kid.

I like those stories. So I'm gonna tie it up tonight with why we should live in victory. Because if you don't live in victory, I don't live in victory, we just don't live on an island. We affect everybody around us.

The Missionary Story: When Suffering Tests Faith

If we're a professing Christian, you go at work, you cannot afford, and I cannot afford, to live in the flesh. Not for very long, anyway. Because God's gonna discipline us, because we're throwing off a false testimony of a Christian.

And we got just as bad problems as everybody else in the world. And this is why most of the world's not impressed with the Christianity, because the people in the churches, or whatever, and we could be like that, or whatever, they got one life in church, and they got another life back out in the world.

They don't see the power of God in their lives. They don't see you lose a mate, or a loved one, or a child. Unless you're a real Christian, they see the crashing, and the complaining against God, and all this stuff.

But when they see a real Christian go through the same thing they're going through, and they see something different, that impacts them. And so, Enoch pleased God. And I'm gonna go through this story.

I don't know how long it'll go, we may have a short service, may have a long service. And I've got other things in here, but I just felt like God impressed me earlier, and almost did earlier, and I thought, no, I've got to really seek the Lord on this.

Because I've got a lot of things here. But I just want to share this story with you. And I went through and highlighted it. Because it's so important that we understand the life of victory. Because God designed us to be more than conquerors.

The Bible says, thanks be to God which giveth us the victory, if we're not receiving that by faith. And we go through some hard things. My first church, I buried five members in that family within a year and a half time.

Can't remember the order and everything, but the father of this family, he met Christ. He really wasn't walking with the Lord, but he met God. And when he met God, he turned around, he was a completely different man.

He'd come into our prayer meetings on Wednesday nights. He wasn't there before. And I can't remember if he got saved through that, or just revived. But anyway, he had this testimony. His family was known all over.

Just like that. I can't snap my fingers. Just like that, he's gone. Semi come along on the ice, black ice, whatever, and he hit the semi and he's gone. And I figured that God had let me preach to most everybody in that country.

It was a tough, tough area. It was a mining area, 100 miles north of Wyoming. And it was a mining town, and ranching, and canyons, and it was rough life. People were always getting killed and different things.

It was a rough place, and I loved it. My folks and the pastors down there tried to get me lined up in these churches, and where I'd run around with a coat and a tie on, and I don't do this all the time.

I do this to honor my mom. She felt like I should wear a tie when I preached. There won't be any in heaven, I'm sure. But anyway, I liked Wyoming. I mean, it was wild, and Willie and I was wild Cajun boy, and you know, in canyons, and then we buried his brother.

I can't remember the order. He died back to the Presbyterian Church and preached there, the biggest church building in town. And then buried his mother. She died, went to that church and whatever. And then the son had a, I think he was 20 years old.

He died. He wasn't supposed to live very long. And so, and then finally the mother died. And it was some tough days. But the testimony of Christ goes through our lives however God wants to do it. And so here's the life of a missionary.

And David Wilkerson shared this story, and I copied it years ago, and he titled it, Are You Mad at God? You ever heard that one? Are You Mad at God? And this is a true story. It's an amazing story. And he picked it up in a biography entitled Aggie, which is the name of the girl that should be a main character in this story.

But it happened a long time ago. It happened in 1921 when two couples in Stockholm, Sweden, decided that they would go to the mission field. And so they did. They were sent off from their church and sent out down there as missionaries.

And they went down to the Belgian Congo, which is now Zaire. And these countries down there changed their names sometimes that they went down there to be missionaries. And their names were David and Siva Flood, and Joel and Bertha Erickson.

And Siva Flood was, they said she was just a four foot eight inches tall, just a little short wife, but very talented and everything. But they're going down there to serve God. And they gave up everything to go down there.

The typical life of Christians, we give everything to follow Christ. And so when they arrived down there, they reported to their mission and they were set up. And they were given the direction they were gonna go.

And they got their machetes and they hacked their way out into the jungles, 100 miles, out into the jungles. And they're gonna be missionaries. And David and Siva had a two year old son that was out there with him, David Jr.

And it was tough. They got malaria on the way out there. And it just really was hard, but they kept on going and they got to where they thought God wanted them to go. And when they finally reached a village in the interior, when they got there, the villagers wouldn't let them in.

They wouldn't let them come in there because they said the demons, the gods would not be happy with them. And so they couldn't get in there into this village. And so they went to another village, same thing, they couldn't get in.

And so they were rejected twice. So they found a place in the jungle, cleared it out and made themselves, I think it was a little mud hut. And there they were. And they retired and wore out, but they settled down there.

And the story goes that they went for months just being there, trying to reach however they could into these villages. And the story went that they got very lonely. They had sickness and malnutrition.

Of course, you're not eating very good out in there. You had to eat whatever fruits or vegetables you could find in the jungles. And they had almost no interaction with the villages because they were afraid of them.

And when they'd taken off, they thought they were gonna go and be successful missionaries. But finally, after six months of that, one of the couples, the story says, Joel and Bertha Erickson decided to return to the mission station.

And they urged the other family to come with them too. But Steva couldn't because she was pregnant now. And she couldn't travel those 100 miles through the jungle like that being. So they decided they would stay there.

And besides that, she had malaria. She was too sick to go anyway. And here's what David, her husband, said. I want my child born in Africa. I've come to give my life here. I've come to give my life. And that's how I started walking with God.

I told God he could take me anywhere he wanted to. I was his. Send me, do whatever he wanted to with me. And we've had quite a few conversations about this because I've tried to go back on my word and God's drug me through a lot of times to my blessings.

You know, God wants to bless us many times. And the way he does that, we just don't understand it. But he said he wanted his child born. He said, I've come to give my life here. So they simply waved goodbye to their friends.

Friends went back to the mission. And the story goes that Steva's malaria got really bad. She was in the bed a lot. And when it came time to give the birth to the baby, she delivered a very healthy little baby girl.

But within a week or so, she died. So he's got this little two-year-old boy and a newborn baby there. He's got that. The dad's left there. And he called the little girl, what the mother whispered to him.

She said, call our girl, Aina, A-I-N-A. And then she died. Now this really shook him up. Talk about things that shake us up. This really shook him up. And he was really shaken up pretty bad. And so he somehow or another found some materials and made a crude little wooden box and put the body of his wife in that and buried her in the ground.

Here he is 100 miles away out in this jungle. And he stood by the grave. He looked down at his little son beside him. Then he heard the little baby cry in the hut. And suddenly, his heart just filled up with bitterness.

He's mad at God. It just, this anger rose. And the story went that he just flew into a rage. Somehow or another, they got all of these things put together in the story. And he cried out to God, why did you allow this, God?

Why did you allow this to happen to me? He said, we came here to give our lives. My wife was so beautiful and so talented. And here she lies dead at 27. So he lost it. He said, now I have a two-year-old son I can hardly care of, let alone a baby girl.

And after more than a year in this jungle, all we have to show for it is one little village boy. One little village boy who probably really doesn't understand what we taught him. This is his crying out to God.

He probably really doesn't understand what we've told him. You have failed me, God. What a waste of life, end of quote. What a waste of life. And the story goes at that point, he got some tribal men from around there somewhere to help him get back to the mission station.

And when he got back there, the Erickson's were there and he blurted out to them, quote, I am leaving. I can't handle these children alone. I'm taking my son with me back to Sweden, but I'm leaving my daughter here with you.

And with that, he left Ena with the Erickson's and went back to Sweden. And all the way back to Stockholm, he stood on the deck and he just seethed at God. He was just mad at God. And he told everybody he was going to Africa to be a martyr.

And here he is on the deck going back on the ship back in the 1920s there very early. And he had said before he left, he's going to win people to Christ no matter what the cost. And the cost can be really high sometimes, no matter what the cost.

And now he's returned it as a defeated, broken man. And it gets worse. He told God he'd been faithful, but God had rewarded him with this tragic life. When he got back to Stockholm, he decided to go into business.

He went into an import business to seek his fortune and make a living. But he warned everybody that came around him not to talk to him about God. And if they would mention God, he would go into rage. So that was the way it went.

And usually it goes downhill from there. He began drinking and drank heavenly. But in the meantime, not back at the ranch, but back down in the jungle, the Erikson suddenly died. And they believe that one of the chiefs there poisoned them or whatever.

So all of a sudden this little girl, this little Anna is handed to an American. And the American takes her and back to, and their names was Burgs, the Burgs. They took her to a village, another village in Northern Congo.

And they changed her name. The story went to Aggie. And so Aggie learned the Swahili language and played with the Congo children. And so she grew up like that. And she learned to play. They said the story, she learned to play this game and it'll fit in later, an imaginative game.

And she imagined that she had four brothers and a sister and she gave them all imaginary names. This is in the story and it'll fit in later. You'll find out how it fits in. And she would set a table for all her brothers and sisters and talk to them.

And she would imagine her sister looking for her and all these things. But finally it came time for the Burgs to leave. And they went back to America on furlough. And they took Aggie with them to the Minneapolis area.

And it turned out they ended up staying there. And Aggie grew up and she married a man by the name of David Hirst who became the president of a Bible college. And all these years as she grew older, she had a longing to find her father.

But she never could find him. She couldn't find out anything about him. And finally the Bible college agreed to buy, to pay their way to go over to Sweden so she could go try to find her father. And so they did and they took off.

In the meantime, her dad had become an alcoholic. He got remarried to his wife's sister. But she had no heart for God. He certainly didn't have any heart for God. And so they get married and they have how many children?

Five children. Maybe more than Justin imagined. Maybe God was putting it in her spirit. So five children, four sons and a daughter. And Aggie had imagined she had a sister. She didn't know anything about this.

So they go over there and she crosses the Atlantic hoping to find her father. But there was a delay and they went into London. They had to stay there and they found there was a conference going on that they were familiar with.

And they went to the conference there and they listened to this black preacher preaching. And he's talking about what God is doing down in the Belgian Congo. The great works of God. What God is doing down there.

Wow. She perked up. Wow. That's where I was born down there. And so she went up to him and she asked him this question. Quote, did you ever know the missionaries David and Siva Flood? And here's how it went.

He answered, yes. Siva Flood led me to the Lord. Now this is really, I'm an emotional guy. And find out he was the little boy. He had kept them alive. He would bring food into them. And he got saved. Wow, this is the way God works.

And so here they are and they hug. And he said, yes, Siva Flood led me to the Lord when I was just a boy. They had a baby girl, but I don't know what happened to her. She said, that's me. I'm Anna. They called her Aggie now.

And so they hugged everything and he'd grown up and she found out from him that through him and what he did, there were now 110 ,000 Christians in that area just from that one little boy. It is powerful.

And there were 32 missions taken, several Bible schools, and 120 bed hospital. Don't ever give up on God. Now, the dad had given up on God, but if you give up on God and you quit, God's gonna keep on going.

If you miss out, your blessing's just beyond your trial. It's just beyond that. Now let's go on and see what happened. The next day, the story says that Aggie and her husband, Dewey, they left for Stockholm.

And somehow another word had gotten around because of the connection there that her brothers knew she was coming. And she found out that she had four brothers and sister and she'd got some information from some of the people there so her brothers greeted, three of the brothers greeted her when she landed.

And this next thing is very interesting. And they told her about the sister. She called up her sister and she found out about her father. She found out, they knew where he was, but they were all bitter also.

They're bitter against God, all of them, because of the dad. And she asked about her father and her brothers. When she did that, they all just went in anger. They were bitter. Bitterness produces bitterness, joy produces joy.

And so she called her sister. She said, what about my sister? She got her phone number, she called her sister. And when her sister answered, she told her who she was and suddenly the line just went dead.

And after hanging up, she didn't know what was going on. But in a little while, her sister arrived at the hotel and just threw her out. She just dropped it and took off for her. She didn't know what was going on, and here's why.

She found out, also her sister was very bad in anger towards the dad also. But when she got there, she told Aggie, all my life, I've dreamed about you. I've dreamed about you. And she said, I used to spread out a map in the world and put a toy car on it and pretend to drive everywhere to find you.

Now, this is a family that crashed because a father gave up on God. And so the sister's really mad about the father too. David Flood, he had bitter and he produced bitterness. But she did promise to help find their dad.

And they located where he was and they drove to this area, a very poor area of Stockholm where they entered into this rundown building. And when they knocked on the door, a woman let him in and there were bottles of liquor, empty bottles all around.

And there was this man laying on a cot in a corner and it was her father. He's in the process of dying. And she went up and she said, dad, I'm your little girl. I'm your little girl, the one you left in Africa.

And he turned and he looked at her and fear, just tears formed in his eyes. And he said, I never meant to give you away. I just couldn't handle you both. And she said, it's okay, daddy. It's okay to eat.

And she said, God took care of me. Wow, he went into a rage. And here's what he said. God didn't take care of you. He ruined our whole family. He led us to Africa and then he betrayed us. Nothing ever came out of our time there.

It was a waste of our lives. Nothing ever came out of that good. Don't talk to me about God. And then she told him about the black preacher. She met in London and she told him how the whole country had been evangelized because of that one little boy.