Self Life — George Verwer

Responding to Spiritual Emergencies

I would like to share a number of things this morning that I really believe will be a challenge to you and provide some thought for discussion. I especially would like to share something with you about what to do when you have a spiritual emergency.

I shared this with the main area leaders or perhaps it was the Asian leaders very, very early, but I don't think any of you were here at that time. And I really believe, just as they very much appreciated it, Thomas Matthaei said he was going to print it up immediately in his Molly Allen Spiritual Revolution.

And I thought that it would be good to share this with you and trust it will prove to be a real challenge and a blessing. We all run into spiritual emergencies on our teams. Suddenly a terrific crisis flares up and we get hurt.

Somebody gets hurt. And so when I found this little article, Ten Steps First Aid for Spiritual Emergencies, I typed it up and put it in my quotation book. In event of injury inflicted by a brother or sister in Christ, follow these procedures.

Number one. Some of you are nurses, of course, probably already aware of all these things. Number one. Keep calm. Still your soul before God at the moment of impact. Be still and know that I am God. Rushing about, trying to correct the injury, usually causes greater damage.

Number two. Apply direct pressure of understanding to the wound. What caused the incident? Could you have prevented it? Negligent? How does the offending party feel? What if things were reversed? Then what?

Three. Thoroughly to remove blindness, to remove all harshness and vindictiveness. Four. Coat liberally with the ointment of love. This will protect from the infections of resentment and bitterness. Coat liberally with the ointment of love.

This will protect from the infections of resentment and bitterness. Five. Bandage the injury with forgiveness. This will keep it out of sight until the wound is healed. Bandage the injury with forgiveness.

After the meeting at any time you can borrow my little book if you want to copy these things direct. Six. Don't pick the scab off. By bringing up the subject and opening your wound. Serious danger from the infections in number four still exists.

This could be fatal spiritually. Seven. Beware of self-pity which is painful and touchy. This is often referred to as withdrawal pains. Evidenced by the injured one withdrawing from others. Especially the one inflicting the injury.

Remedy. Accept apologies. Beware of self-pity. Eight. Prescription. Prescription. Take a generous dose of antibiotics from the word of God several times daily using prayer each time. This has a soothing effect and is definitely a good pain killer.

Stay in close contact with the great physician at all times. Depend upon his strength, joy and peace to help you in your convalescence. Stay in close contact with the great physician. Ten. Evidence of full recovery is noticed when the patient is in full fellowship and harmony especially with the offending party.

Taken from an article called Midway Manor of Cathedral Press. Midway Manor of Cathedral Press. Yes, I think we'd like to get duplicated. Some of you would like to follow through. The next thing is a story.

Greatness Expressed Through Thoughtfulness

I thought you'd all like a story. And some of you have heard this story. Sorry about that. Some of you people seem to pop up in the strangest places. This is the story of the Duke of Norfolk. How many have heard this story of the Duke of Norfolk?

Anyway, the Duke of Norfolk was a very famous man. And one day he used to go out in disguise, sort of dressed like any ordinary bloke. And he was in a railway station near the castle where he lived. And a little Irish girl got off the train and she only had a shilling.

But she had a very, very big bundle, a huge bundle that she had to carry. Apparently she was coming to work as a servant in the castle. Porter wasn't too interested in helping her for a measly shilling.

So she didn't know quite what to do. And the Duke of Norfolk, in disguise, offered to carry her bundle, this large bundle up to the castle. Of course, he didn't tell her who he was. And when he arrived at the castle, she was so thankful, she offered him the shilling.

And the Duke of Norfolk took the shilling and went away. What do we learn from this little story? I've written down these things, all received from someone else. One, it is never safe to judge a man by externals.

Never safe to judge a man by externals. How easily we do that in OIM India and everywhere else. Someday we may discover it was Jesus Christ himself in disguise. I've often wondered if Jesus doesn't revisit the earth from time to time in disguise.

Certainly, as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, he would have that privilege. Two, a great man is always a thoughtful man. A great man is always a thoughtful man. One of the accusations against some people on OIM, men more than women, is they lack thoughtfulness.

Sometimes we're looking for some great, supersonic, special experience or revelation, and some of the things we need in our life are much more basic. In fact, some unsaved people have them, without any of the Holy Spirit.

And when people who claim to know God and worship God and be filled with the Spirit, or even half-filled, and can't demonstrate just some basic courtesy, thoughtfulness, common sense, certainly the work of God is in great danger.

Three, there is grace in taking as well as giving. Different people wrestle with this problem in different ways. Many trouble at all taking and have difficulty giving. And other people, because of pride, are able to give but find it difficult to take, to receive.

Four, the truly great man does not think of his place or his prestige. Some of the troubles we have had in India is because people felt their leadership wasn't being respected or their seniority, which we've said again and again in O .M., we don't even believe it.

How many years you were in O .M. or how old you are, that wasn't respected. Under this fourth section, there's a few interesting thoughts that I gleaned from this particular section. One, it is only little people who think how great they are.

It is only little people who think how great they are. It is only unimportant people who think how important they are. It is only unimportant people who think how important they are. I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions to that.

There's nothing in this world which is a sure sign of a small mind than the complaint that one did not get one's place. There is nothing in this world which is a sure sign of a small mind than the complaint that one did not get one's place.

And there is no motive in this world that is more wrong than the desire for prestige. In the last analysis, to the truly great man, no act of service can possibly be humiliating. Quite a challenge. Now I'd like to share something for you to think about concerning world evangelism.

This is by Tozer. Again, a few of you may have thought about this. Don't try to copy this down. The task of the Church is twofold. To spread Christianity throughout the world and to make sure that the Christianity she spreads is the pure New Testament kind.

Christianity will always produce itself after its kind. A worldly-minded, unspiritual Church is sure to bring forth on other shores a Christianity much like her own. Not the naked word only, but the character of the witness determines the quality of the convert.

The popular notion that the first obligation of the Church is to spread the Gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth is false. Her first obligation is to be spiritually worthy to spread it, to spread an effing or false, degenerate brand of Christianity to pagan lands is not to fulfill.

The Denial of Self and the Crucified Life

I'd like to share something about the self-life that has a terrific depth to it, mainly all taken from studies of the Sermon on the Mount by Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones. Interesting that he refers to George Mueller in this particular section of his study.

You can't possibly write this down. Just ponder on these words as they come. This is very, very, very strong. The whole trouble in life, as we have seen, is ultimately this concern about self and what our Lord is inculcating here, or referring to here, is that it is something of which we must rid ourselves entirely.

We must rid ourselves of this constant tendency to be watching the interests of self, to be always on the lookout for insults or attacks, always in this defensive attitude. That is the kind of thing he has in mind.

All that must disappear. That, of course, means we must cease to be sensitive about self. This morbid sensitiveness, this whole condition in which self is, quote, on edge, and so delicately and sensitively poised and balanced that the slightest disturbance can upset its equilibrium, must be got rid of.

The condition here which our Lord is describing is one in which a man simply cannot be hurt. Perhaps that is the most radical form in which one can put this statement. It goes on to say, whenever I notice in myself a reaction or self-defense or a sense of annoyance or a grievance or a feeling that I have been hurt and wronged and am suffering injustice, the moment I feel this defensive mechanism coming into play, I must just quietly face myself and ask the following questions.

Why does this exactly upset me? Why am I grieved by it? What is my real concern at this point? Am I really concerned for some general principle of justice and righteousness? Am I really moved and disturbed because I have some true cause at heart?

Or let me face it honestly, and is it just myself? Is it just this horrible, foul self-centeredness and self-concern, this morbid condition into which I have got? Is it nothing but unhealthy and unpleasant pride?

Self-examination is essential if we are to conquer in this matter. We all know this by experience. How easy it is to explain it in some other way. We must learn or listen to the voice that speaks within us.

And it says, now you know perfectly well it is just yourself and that horrid pride. That concern about yourself and your reputation and your greatness, if it is that, we must admit it and confess it. It will be extremely painful.

And yet, if we want to rise to our Lord's teaching, we have to pass through such a process. It is the denial of self. A statement which the great George Muller once made about himself seems to illustrate this very clearly.

He writes like this. There was a day when I died, utterly died to George Muller and his opinions, preferences, tastes, and will. Died to the world, its approval or its censure. Died to the approval or blame of even my brethren and friends.

Since then, I have studied only to show myself approved unto God. That is a statement to be pondered deeply. I cannot imagine a more perfect and adequate summary of our Lord's teaching in this paragraph than that.

Muller was enabled to die to the world and its approval and its censure. To die even to the approval or censure of his friends and most intimate companions. We should notice the order in which he puts it.

First, it was the approval and censure of the world, then the approval and censure of his intimate friends. All taken from Martin Lloyd-Jones' studies in the Sermon on the Mount. Now way, way back in the earliest days of OM, through messages by Roy Hesher, through Keswick's sermons, through Alan Redpath, through various books and directly from his work, a small nucleus of us became absolutely convinced that this was the most important thing in the Christian life.

To die to self and to live a crucified life. And to really begin to experience reality in this area. This was our highest goal, far beyond our burden for evangelism. People often talk about the early principles of the work.

Most of the people talking about it weren't even there to know of the early principles. This was one of the early principles. And we were convinced that team unity was built out of people having an experience with the cross and really knowing this kind of very, very, very heavy truth that we've just been reading about.

Now we realize that to make this kind of life our goal is the highest possible aim. It's easier to gather decisions for Christ anywhere than it is to put this kind of thing into practice in your own life.

Activism can be easily the substitute for really growing into a Christ-like person and Christ-like individual. And yet without being active, which is not activism, without being active and without being in the warfare, often it's impossible for the Lord to give us the full range of tests that he wants to give us to expose all these hiddens of the self-life.

And this is why many people have learned something of this way of life through getting involved in this training program. And as we leave this place in just, say, ten days' time, certainly one of our highest goals should be the continual destruction of the self-life.

Everything I've read you this morning can be summed up in one term, becoming more like Jesus Christ. And yet if we are honest, we have to acknowledge that some of the lens teams are nigh on to spiritually bankrupt when it comes to really demonstrating this kind of life.

Isn't it interesting that the group who can distribute Calvary Road in twenty languages all over the world has such a difficulty putting it into practice under pressure in their local situation? Know that in some situations the testimony of OM is not what it should be because of demonstrations of the carnal heart.

Someone described the carnal heart as being like a balloon. You push it in one place and it just comes out in the other. And if in OM our efforts are merely to sort of discipline the carnal heart without really dealing the death blow, we will just push in one side and it will just pop out somewhere else.

And we'll push that in and it will just again pop out somewhere else. There has to be a willingness to die to self. One of the main messages in OM has been the message of brokenness. So impressed was William MacDonald through his early contact with OM when he was the principal of a mass Bible school, especially affirming seeing brothers repenting, seeing them go to other brothers and breaking and repenting, and saying they were sorry that he wrote the little booklet, Lord Break Me.

He had never used that terminology before in his spiritual life. He heard it in an OM night of prayer where he humbled himself as a principal of the school and came to pray with all these nobodies and he saw people before the Lord praying one main prayer, Lord Break Me.

He wondered, what is this? And so he wrote this booklet, which some of you maybe have now read, called Lord Break Me. I noticed a strong emphasis in the ministry of John's son when I was reading yesterday that he was very strong on people making restitution, people putting things right.

Repentance, Restitution, and Receiving Grace

People who stole must return all the money. People who hurt someone verbally must put it. And to me that would mean, for example, if I spoke against Brother Mike Wheat, something that he maybe had never even heard, I wouldn't go to him.

That doesn't make restitution. I have to go to the people I spoke to about him and tell them, look, what I said about Brother Mike Wheat is not correct. I gave a wrong impression. I repented that. And go to the next one.

What I said about Brother Mike Wheat is not correct. I don't even need to go to him. If I know that he knows, of course, and it's become a public thing, then I may want to go to him as well. When a brother doesn't even know something, then I think to go to him isn't necessarily an act of love.

And yet sometimes the hardest thing for us to do is to repent and deal with sin in this way, to really go to somebody or to put something right. Of course, there are other things that we have done to people that they know all too well.

In that case, we should go directly to them. If we have been offensive to our own parents, they, of course, I'm sure must know it. I think letters back home, putting things right with our parents. Not to gain forgiveness.

We are not forgiven by running around putting things right. But to be able to appropriate all that God wants to give us in that experience. Sure, we can appropriate some grace. When sometimes we don't do restitution, some people are mixed up as to whether they should do restitution or not.

God is a God of mercy. I think one of the greatest mistakes many people make is they are totally black and white in their thinking. They either think, for example today, they're walking completely in the spirit or they're totally in the flesh.

Most of you know very well how you've specialized in going back even in one day between the two. There are many gray areas in one's walk. Fortunately, oftentimes, when we're walking in a gray area, God, by his mercy, still accepts our feeble offering and somehow uses us for his glory.

Emotional Maturity and Spiritual Leadership

I wrote down something especially for the ladies. I never like to leave the ladies out. This is from a woman named Alshorn. Her book is not very... My little index to see if I can in fact find this quotation.

Yes, here it is, page 16. Florence Alshorn, she was a missionary. This is a biography by J .H. Oldham, page 75. Girls, you better get ready for this one. If Christ cannot save me from those things that jar on my fellow missionary, then I have but a thin message of salvation.

And if I cannot help my English sister to get through certain selfish attitudes which create unhappiness for myself or anyone else, how can I say that I have come to help my African or Indian sister to get through hers?

We shall have to realize that in building up the recruit, the mental and emotional health is of even more importance than the health of the few men, I think, can fully understand how much the emotional life of a woman plays in the matter of her health.

And this is far more acute in tropical countries. What is it, she asked in later years, that prevents people from becoming effective leaders? Chiefly the fact that they stopped growing. They stopped. They tried to face very complicated problems and tasks at an immature level of spiritual life and give up falling back on that most dolorous of all refugees, spiritual window dressing.

There's a lot in that little statement, again, that is very much linked with the very inner being of our life. Now this self-life we're talking about, that is so easily hurt, so easily disturbed and all the rest, of course, is completely linked with our emotional life.

As leaders or followers, I think we need to give a little more consideration to people's emotional life, especially as we're working in a strange land. Now oftentimes I can speak very hard to the farmers, I don't get too much trouble.

Sometimes if I say something too hard to some Indians, it could be misunderstood. I beg of you not to misunderstand me, because in OM we work as complete equals, absolutely equals in God's Word. Therefore we can also equally take the knife of God's Word.

But sometimes Indians are very, very slow and insensitive to terrific struggles that foreigners are going through, and they only learn something about this when they got onto the ship and spent weeks in loneliness and with all kinds of emotional problems that they never thought they had.

Just as foreigners who come to India must be patient and must adapt to the culture and they must go through terrific orientations. Very few can understand even what it is for a Westerner to live on this kind of Indian food diet.

Not just stomach-wise, emotionally, mentally, it can affect a person. And so just as the foreigner must come and adapt, die to self, fall into the ground, they could be greatly helped in this process by Indians who realize that foreigners are just as they, human beings with struggles and battles and fears, and that some of them live perpetually, emotionally, within five feet of the airplane that will deliver them from it all and put them back in the homeland.

I think it's a very, very beautiful thing in OM the way foreigners and Westerners have been able to work together in a relative amount of peace and harmony. In wanting to study about how to do this when we first came to India, I can assure you there was very little material because foreigners living together with Indians in the backs of trucks, eating rice and subji and rice and subji and rice and more subji day after day, giving out tracts, selling gospel packets, and engaged in other humiliating activities, in some people's thinking, there was not much material for me to review in order to present OM India with how to do this kind of work.

This is one of the great benefits of youth, and this is why my burden is to bring single people basically into this work, because I do not believe most people, once they get set into their life with their families, would ever be able to adapt to this kind of lifestyle, this kind of environment.

Of course there have been, even in the past, beautiful examples of individual missionaries who have adapted, who lived this way long before any little OM brother came on the scene. But they were a minority group, I can assure you.

Building Fellowship Across Cultural Differences

There are many complications when we try to have an international and intercultural work, many complications. And this is one of the values of a conference like this, to be able to openly talk, just in fellowshipping every day here, fellowshipping about three-fourths of the time with Indian brothers, one-fourth of the time with foreigners, just in talking to them, letting them share their burdens and their questions.

I can assure you we are in two different worlds. The Westerner and the Indian are very, very, very distinct in the things that they're concerned about, the questions they ask, their whole thought process.

There are exceptions. There are some foreigners who are beginning to become very Indian. There are, of course, some Indians who begin to be very, very Western. Now, there's nothing wrong with this, but we can see when we understand this why it is not going to be easy to have real fellowship.

I feel on some of the teams, all we get is a mutual toleration society. The Indians are tolerating this foreigner. They know that he's the truck driver. How are we going to go anywhere without the truck?

They know also he's short term. He'll soon be leaving. So there is a toleration. Also, some of the foreigners can be very, very, very cold and just barely tolerating some of the Indian brothers. I tried to speak to this brother and he doesn't seem to say too much.

And he makes a few efforts to fellowship. He thinks of aiming toward fellowship in depth. He doesn't get anywhere, and so he gives up. We have a lot of this giving up, more than we will admit, on trying to build deep relations.

We realize some foreigners can more easily relate to an Indian. But as an Indian brother, you don't want to just have fellowship with the one who finds it easy to relate to you. As a man who wants to respond to a challenge, you will try to break into that more shy, reserved foreigner who finds it difficult, perhaps, to fellowship with anybody.

You may think that he has got prejudices against you as an Indian. In fact, he never had any fellowship with anybody in his own country either. That was basically a withdrawn introvert. So it's not that he's in India and he doesn't like you.

It's that he's an introvert, he's shy, he doesn't know how to relate to people, and he's got emotional struggles, and he needs your help and your love, just as probably it's true vice versa. So we need to take this on as a challenge.

We need to see how death to the self-life and coming into greater spiritual reality is going to open the doors of fellowship and build true relationships that are going to last all of eternity because someday we're all going to be in heaven together.

And if we're going to have all of heaven together, it might be good to start to get to know one another here. These things, the way of true fellowship, is as important in many ways as the way of evangelism.

They work together. Think of the powerhouse a team is when they are really in fellowship with one another, really walking in the light, really living in brokenness, really experiencing the crucified life.

Can you think of a power that can be released by such a team? What is the purpose of having long prayer meetings with people who are not even getting on with each other, not even really loving one another?

Can our prayers go any higher than the ceiling if there are things in our hearts and grievances and questions and doubts and jealousies and fears and even shyness? Certainly spiritual reality opens the way for true prayer which in turn will open the way for accomplishing the job that God has put on our heart, the evangelization of India.

Turning Compassion Into Sacrificial Action

I wrote something down that really helped me. Again, very similar to the C .S. quote which I'm always giving C .S. Lewis. He had the tendency to think and not to act, the tendency to feel and not to act, and if we go on thinking and feeling without acting, someday we'll not be able to act.

You've all heard that many times. But here's a similar one that helped me in trying to understand why there is not more action when there is so much in the mouth. So much of the trouble in life is due to the division of our lives into emotion and action.

It is not that we do not feel pity or compassion. It is that so often the pity and the compassion remain untranslated into action because so often we are not prepared to make the sacrifice which action involves.

So often we are not prepared to make the sacrifice which action involves. Almost all of us lie under this condemnation for in many ways selfishness and self-centeredness are the essential human sins.

Self-centeredness and selfishness are the essential human sins. What a challenge that is to our hearts. I think that is very, very much related to another quotation which you may or may not have that is extremely important for the work in India.

Distinguishing Spiritual Burdens from Religious Irritation

And that is the need to be able to distinguish and again I've been speaking so often I may be confused as to whether I've already given this even in the evening meeting but it's worth hearing again because you couldn't have written it then.

But the need to be able to distinguish between a spiritual burden from the Lord and a religious irritation, something that's bugging you, something that's bothering you. Someone has touched one of your holy cows as someone once taught me and it is bothering you and you are deceiving yourself thinking this is a burden from the Lord.

It is a religious irritation. You've been upset, you have been irritated. Irritability is sin. One of the most subtle sins and one of the most personal sins in my own life. I am an irritable person. In myself I am a tube somewhere in a cork put on top.

In myself. In Christ I know that I have the fruit of his Holy Spirit. I'm aware of ministry this morning being probably more for myself than anyone else. And I'm determined if it takes my whole life to know more of true crucified living and true spirituality.

And one of the reasons I think I stay in OM is that it seems to be an ideal grinding machine to work some of these things into the fiber of your life. It requires great care. This is Tozer again. And a true knowledge of ourselves.

Great care to be able to distinguish a spiritual burden from a religious irritation. Often acts done in a spirit of religious irritation have consequences far beyond anything we could have guessed. Always it is more important that we retain a right spirit toward others than that we bring them to our way of thinking.

Even if our way is right. Satan cares little whether we go astray after a false doctrine or merely turn sour. Either way he wins. In the light of what I've said I would like to read some scriptures that I believe are absolutely relevant to the whole development of spiritual life in each one of us.

Serving One Another in the Spirit

I believe many of these things we have been reading if not all, are clearly based on the Word of God. People are expressing from experience and in their own terms the very foundational teaching of scripture.

Let us look at some scriptures to just further allow the Spirit of God by His Word to work in our own hearts. The book of Galatians, chapter 5, verse 13. Galatians 5, verse 13. For brethren, you have been called unto liberty.

Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. Serving one another. What a significant part of life are we. Another place it says that we are to outdo one another in good works.

Not generally the main competition going on. Especially in the mornings early. By love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Now a description of too many churches. But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one another. The Muslims and the Hindus do not need to attack us in India. We are devouring ourselves.

Satan doesn't need to send armies of Muslims with swords to kill the Christians as he once tried. He's just leaving the Christians to themselves and they're managing to devour each other. Churches, assemblies, groups, embezzlements, impurities.

You've all seen it if you've worked in India very long and it's not just India. What a challenge this is. If you bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one another. This I say then, walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

Then it gives, we'll bypass the negative if you've read that and go on to verse 22. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control.

Against such there is no law but here's the way it's done. That they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying, incredibly penetrating words.

If we're tempted to grow weary in such an awesome challenge, we can read verse 9 and let us, chapter 6, not be weary in well-doing. For in due season we shall reap. Turning over to the book of Ephesians, we find also some very penetrating words.

Speaking the Truth in Love

Verse 15 of chapter 4. But speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things who is the head, even Christ. Many of you in this room are on a level in OM in which you are supporting the existing leader.

The main leaders are not in the, at least most of them, are not in this leading discussion groups. You are the vital link in God's plan to keep that leader functioning in a happy and healthy way. Very few leaders can make it through if they don't have a faithful number two man.

And it is harder to be number two for most people than to be number two. If the number two man is going to be close to the leader, he will therefore see the leader's weaknesses more than most. And if he is not careful, he can be used of the evil one to undermine the leader's total authority on the team.

We've had cases with people openly challenging the leader in front of the whole group. A major error. If you have something against a brother, you should go to him clearly alone and speak to him privately.

Not with even in range of other people's ears. Because some brothers in India, we don't know who they are, sisters as well, only God knows, but they have long ears. They have supersonic transistor ears that can pick up stories from long distances and manage to screw them up and transmit them off to someone else and how deadly he is.

So when you have a burden or a grievance about your leader, how much wiser it is to go off alone. You have some great truth to share with him. You have been enlightened more than he. So you are going to share some truth.

But the word says, speaking the truth in love. So often, it's not what we say that gives all the difficulty. It is how we say it. It is the insinuation that goes with the few sentences we're giving that causes miscommunication, distrust, and confusion.

Kindness, Forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit

Ephesians chapter 4, by the way, certainly a mountain peak of inspiration when it comes to the Christian life. Let us look at verse 30. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, by whom ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.

Verse 30, chapter 4. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking, and here's a key verse that we should all memorize. And be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you.

These themes across India will not work without a continued spirit of forgiveness. Mistakes are going to be made. In fact, this very message the devil can try to use to bring difficulty. Because instead of seeing the application of this strong word about the self-life and the need for the crucified life and Christ-likeness, instead of applying this to ourselves, we will increase the standard at which we expect our leader to live.

And when we see him breaking some of these principles, we will be quick to judge or we will lose our respect for him or something else. Satan is not stupid. Do you not think he knows how to counter-attack even a session like this in which we're looking at some of the greatest jewels of his word?

Do you think he's been around for thousands of years watching blue movies? Satan is aware of the greatest challenge God has given to us to become more Christ-like and he'll do everything he can to hinder it.

I have seen this in my own marriage. I'm so idealistic. I have such high goals that instead of keeping most of my aim at my own personal life and being sensitive about any area of sin, I can start getting upset or concerned because I feel my wife is not living up to this high standard in Jesus Christ.