Heroes in Hebrews — Leonard Ravenhill

Faith Reckons, Risks, and Rests on God

Number one faith reckons on God. He says the key here is verse 6 in chapter 11. He that cometh to God must believe that He is and faith reckons on Him. He is God. He is the faithful God. He is the all-powerful God.

He is able to keep us from falling. He is able to make all grace go round. He is able to save the living. So the first thing faith does is reckon and then the next thing it does, because God is God, and this is what it must do, faith risks.

If faith is going to be trusted, it's going to be tested. And if you only take that home this morning, it will help you, I'm sure. So I just came to this conclusion recently. I kind of followed it and then I captured it this way, that if faith is going to be trusted, it's going to be tested.

So faith reckons, faith risks, and faith rests. He said that the people here were being attacked by, well, people who followed the faith of their fathers. And they were saying, well, this new religion of Christianity, as I mentioned yesterday, they said you don't have a temple, and they said, no, not a building, but we're the temple of the Holy Spirit.

You don't have a high priest, no, he doesn't wear a mantle and a robe and garments, but we have a priest at the right hand of the Father. He doesn't have to elect him periodically, he's there forever.

And by the same token, the people who were being challenged continually by the fact that these people say, well, we don't have the law on the prophets, we say, no, we don't have prophets of stone, but he's written his law on the flesh of tables of our house.

Oh, but Moses is the greatest person that ever lived, yes, but, wait a minute, he brought God to Egypt, but he couldn't take her into the promised land. No, that's right. Ah, ah, but listen, we have Joshua, and he took her into the promised land.

And right back comes the answer, yes, he took her into the promised land, but he couldn't give her air. Now, the fourth chapter, and it's well worth considering, there remaineth a rest for the people of God.

Entering the Rest of God Through Christ

How many of you think you'll have it? Maybe the reason you have so many wrinkles is you don't rest properly. No, you don't sleep, you don't rest. There remaineth a rest for the people of God. Amen. I think he's already given us rest.

Always given us rest for fear of judgment and fear of our sins and fear of this, but there remaineth a rest for the people of God. But what's the secret of resting? Resting. Ah, what's the secret of being at total rest, that I'm yoked up to Jesus Christ?

Take my yoke upon you. Madame Guion again says in her hand, if you buy that little book, and I hope you'll ever do that, it's the secret of it. It's always, it's Madame Guion, Guion, Guion, G-U-I-O-N, get it, it's cost you 97 cents, it's one of the greatest books you'll ever read, it's got, I don't know how many pages, but it's a fantastic book.

But she says in one of her wonderful poems, I think it's quoted at the back of the book, my freedom is thy right to control. I'm only free under the control of this Spirit of God. If I'm out of that, I think I'm free, I'll get into bodies like that.

I remember coming from Minneapolis once on the Great Northern. See how old I am, I've even ridden on a train. But we were coming down that track, the thing was snorting away, and I said to the rail manager, he came and talked to me, I said, by the way, what speed are we doing that?

Well, he said, I guess we're doing about 90, this is the fastest stretch of track that we have between here and Chicago. I said, I was looking at the track, man, it goes like that, this train doesn't.

I said, I hope it stays on the track. He said, I hope it doesn't. I said, because the only reason that this thing, this big snorting locomotive, has any freedom is it's in bondage to the track. If it gets off the track, I said, it's a stand-up village joke, we were going past the village.

And I said, if it gets off, it goes through that thing like an arrow going through that old village gate. The secret of its freedom is it's under control of the track that it's on. My freedom is my grand control.

His joke is easy. We sing often, don't we, burdens are lessened at Calvary. Burdens are given at Calvary. If you say at Calvary long enough, he'll take the burden of your sins, but if you do something greater than the burden of sin, give your burden to lost souls, give your burden to doing good.

My dear wife, when she was nursing in a certain hospital in England, as a matter of fact, we had a crusade not far from that large, one of the largest hospitals in England. My wife was the next supervisor of that big hospital.

And these nurses used to come in all walks of life, particularly one of them. And she used to be with, Martha used to be with a Scottish girl, I'll never forget that Scottish girl. Not certain, I'm going to say anyway, not certain.

Molly would come and she had a rich robe that these Scottish people have. She used to pray about the world and the words of the Lord. It sounded real good. She came into the meeting one night and she prayed and then she said, Oh God.

And she thanked God for the privilege of coming to the house of God and then she said, I refuse to carry the burdens the devil's trying to put on me. I refuse to carry the burdens the church wants to put on me.

I refuse to carry the burdens the pastor wants to put on me. I refuse to carry the burdens life wants to put on me. But Lord, I'll carry your burden whatever you send me. Now I heard a lot of sermons and that doesn't respond to that because I'm not a real preacher freak yet, but he said as much as anybody I heard him say and he was very good.

I'll carry your burden, it'll never break you. And I wasn't the greatest hymn writer I've ever been. I'm not going to say a hymn writer, I'm not going to say a hymn writer. Fifty years maybe before John Lesley.

That was Isaac Watt who wrote the lovely hymn When I Surveyed a Wondrous Cross. And he said on an occasion, I would not be afraid to be the ruler of a six universities, not six worlds, you and me know the world, the world is part of the universe.

I would be content to control six universities if it was God's burden for me. Wouldn't worry me, wouldn't trouble me. I'd do it because he says my yoke is easy and my burden. Whatever he gives me there's corresponding grace and strength.

But he said I wouldn't look after six sheep. But the Lord wouldn't give me any rigidness, strength if it wasn't God's will. Yeah, burdens are lifted at Calvary, burdens are given at Calvary. Now he said yesterday, talking about faith, people say you're sitting in a plane, you let the pilot say transfer that faith into the spirit.

You can't do that. We say to someone at the altar, they get muddled up, you know. Somebody thumps them on the back and says hold on brother, and somebody comes get them through and comes up and thumps him on the back and says let go brother.

And poor guy, he's more bewildered than he gets, but we'll anyway start with where we are. And we say to people, have you got faith? Let's just believe. Well we don't have faith. Read the second letter of Paul to the, isn't it to the Corinthians?

Where is that in, pardon me, to the Thessalonians, not Corinthians. 2 Thessalonians 3 verse 2, that ye may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men, for all men have not faith. Now the first requirement of God for a sinner coming to the altar is not what we said, only believe, only believe.

The first thing you have to do is repent of sin. And faith is the gift of God on his repentance. Now faith is the only thing which is a gift of the spirit and the fruit of the spirit. And it's also called the shield of faith.

Faith Tested Through Trials and Perseverance

I don't care what the devil's trying to do in your life today, whether he's attacking you on the level of your emotions, or your mind, or your spirit, the circumstances, the relatives, he's only after one thing, and that is to destroy or mutilate or weaken your faith.

I have prayed for you that my faith fail not. If you drop the shield of faith, then all the fight is out so that he can get to you. If you keep that faith intact, the devil may batter him to all he likes, and he's going to do that.

You know, Jesus had no sin. He had no sin. But he had sorrow. And there's no guarantee you won't have sorrow. We must say sometimes, oh, Mary, don't worry about that, the Lord is bigger than that. Shakespeare said it's always easy to bear the hand of Jesus.

Always easy, you know, when you tell your mother and say, I know, sister, you don't have much in there, you're having it difficult, but the Lord will see you through. I'm sorry I can't stand talking, this is going to buy you furniture for the house.

Oh, that's easy to tell somebody else how to tell the Lord. But when all is done and said, you know, the Scripture says that we ought to bear one another's burden. That's beautiful. But there's this other thing that is said that every man has his own burden.

There are some things you'll never share, there are some things you'll never equalize. It says in the 12th chapter of Hebrews, verse 3, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of all faith. He's been done it, he's going to perfect it.

Hebrews 12, 2, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of all faith. And he's going to perfect that which he's done of faith. Now, the Scripture again says, he's done a good work in you and he'll perfect that which is in you.

Whatever he's started, he's going to perfect. He's the author and he's the finisher. All right. Look what it says in the next verse. Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye do weird and faint in your minds.

You see, he endured contradiction of sinners. He did that, don't he? He said of the Lord Jesus, before he went into death's cavern, he was in happiness as he went into that experience. Now, these are things that we're not going to avoid, but by the same token, God is greater than our circumstances and feelings and everything else.

But we sing in our hymns, and they're very nice when we sing them all together with a bunch in church and we feel very strong, but the atmosphere still evaporates and you're out on your own again. But we fear, don't we, his loving kind heart that leads me to faint, he leads me at last in trouble to think, while he's there beneath and beholding with you, confirms his good pleasure to see it right through.

The only thing he's used to go right through, the church is going some other direction. They've all gone off here and they've gone off there and it's you, it's your faith he's spent and not their faith.

It's your faith he's spent and not their faith. And he doesn't do it capriciously, he doesn't do it for fun, he doesn't do it for the sake of ironing out the wrinkles. I remember seeing a tract a few years ago, do you know what the title was?

Wash, but not iron. He'd be washed there in the blood, but there's a lot of things to iron out there. And I don't think that piece of stuff that's being ironed out likes to kiss the big hot iron that's coming over it as if it could get out of it.

Some of us are looking for a, what do you call it, non-press? An air machine. Yeah, wash and wear, but all these sheets that don't wrinkle, you don't have to iron them. Are you looking for an experience like that?

You'll never find it. Dr. Covey said to me one day, if ever you see a book on six easy lessons on how to become a saint, he said, air mail it to me and I'll tell you one thing, I'll never read it. There's no six easy lessons on how to become a saint.

Oh, I hope the next book will get out of Watchman Needs. Oh, Watchman Needs is a good writer. Both of us are good. When you've read him, what's God's last words to man? No, no, no, not Watchman Needs.

Hebrews 11, God, in turn, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son. Nobody's going to improve on the book. The measure is of life, it seems, but it's still the author and finisher of our faith is looking through this book.

This is the foundation, this is the sure foundation of our faith. Now, all men have not faith until they're born again, and we do have faith. But it says there in the 12th chapter of Romans, it talks about having a measure of faith.

I'm going to do what Paul says, that he prayed for some people, the Thessalonians, again, in the first chapter. He prayed for them night and day that they may see their faith and supply that which was lacking in their faith.

Their faith, it was deficient. In the second example, again, the first chapter, about verse 3, he says that he rejoices that their faith grows exceedingly. How does it grow? By praying for it? No, it grows by testing.

I say to young people sometimes, my muscles are hard to find, because I never did much work. I never chopped down trees, I never swung hammers, so I don't have much muscle. A fellow comes along and he says, Rayfield, you know, I kind of like you.

I believe there are too many in the world that do, but anyhow, he says, you know, but you're too slim, you need more muscle. You need this, you need that, you need the other. I said, I've got a book here and I'm going to leave it with you, I'm going around the world on a trip.

You know, when I come back, you'll have two inches more on your muscle, four inches on your chest, you'll be strong and you'll be healthy. He comes back after two short years and he says, oh, I thought I'd collect my book, I wanted to loan it to a friend.

I said, I haven't done you much good, you don't look any better. I say, no, that's about the most stupid book ever. What's wrong with the book? Well, I've read it, that's my life, every night, after supper.

I've read that book, I've had a couple of cokes and two packets of Fritos and I've had my feet up and I've clenched on the Fritos and I've drunk the coke and I've read it. In fact, I can recite half the book.

Do you want to know what the third chapter says? Do you want to know what the fifth chapter says? Well, frankly, there's a whole ten chapters and I know pieces out of all of them. I haven't done you a bit of good.

Isn't that amazing? Well, I've done that and I've been really changed by it. You've read that book and done all the exercises and you've been telling me to do the exercises, you said, read the book, it'll change your life.

Well, that sounds stupid. No more stupid than you saying, I'll read my Bible, but I don't think it does much for me. Well, the Lord says, be, what? Doers. Doers of the Word, do the exercises. Love your enemies.

Obedience, Love, and the Cost of Discipleship

Love your enemies. That's not your problem. Loving your friends is a problem. You can love your enemies, they don't know much about you, you don't know much about them, but oh, those friends, that ugly bunch.

Oh, they'll take communion and shed a tear and they'll save the day for the next minute. Now, loving your enemies doesn't mean you go sloppily put your arms around them and kiss them and all the rest of it.

Forget it. God is the most perfect in his love. Remember this, he made hell too. The Apostle Paul said, love one another. He said, but can't that man have an afterbirth if he disobeyed God so and so? Can't he have an afterbirth?

And answer a curse on him if you have to. A meeting one day a few years ago when I said, you know, sometimes there comes a place where you say to somebody, look, I'm quitting praying for you. I'm giving it to the devil for the next year.

A woman in the meeting. That's a dear heart. That woman shouted, hallelujah. That's the one thing to do. That's evil. Everybody looked. She said, I'm going to throw up. I said, say it again. She came to me afterwards and she said, praise the Lord.

Oh, I enjoy that. You know, you concerned something about me a year ago and I lost some friends. What did you do? Well, I have a brother-in-law. And we prayed for him that he'd come in the house and he'd be purposely ornery and say nasty things and sometimes dirty things and sometimes take the name of the Lord in vain.

One day I said to him, listen, I want to tell you something, Jack. I'm not praying for you once more. I've prayed for you for five years and I've quit. What do you think I care whether you pray or not?

Oh, she said, I'm not only stopping praying, I'm handing you to the devil. I'm telling the devil now, you keep around me until I quit praying. Yeah, what do I care? There's no devil any more. You think I care that you quit praying and throw me over to the devil?

What do I care? That's what Paul says, doesn't he? Take them from bruising and bring them to judgment. Well, he laughed at me. Within six months he was on his hands and knees at my door crying, praying for me.

I'd lost him. He went to the devil and everything had gone wrong since that day. I can't, I can't even work now. I'm losing friends. I've lost my job. I've lost everything. Now, he didn't care whether you prayed, but boy, he got worried when you said, look, you're the devil's father from here on.

He didn't say damn him. He didn't say, well, let him die. He won't listen to you. He won't take corrections. He won't take ministry. He won't take other things. But the devil kicked him around. Now, sometimes God will use Satan to perfect his things.

Remember, it wasn't a challenge of Satan to God. It was a challenge of God to Satan. Have thou considered my servant Job? Sure I have. And you know why? You know why he's so pious? It's piety that's tied in with his prosperity.

You send him bankrupt, he'll curse you to your face. That's an interesting story. I'll go on it some other time, maybe. We'll see what happens with that. But anyhow, it's very interesting. It was a challenge, not Satan to God.

The challenge of God. Have you considered my servant Job? Oh, yes, but they're not all the kind, these Christians. He's just one of a kind. He's perfect enough for us. He walks with God. So Satan will be allowed to come in your life and harm you.

You may be in heaven on a Friday night. I want to talk on problems in the spiritual life, about temptation, about trial, about bucketing, about misunderstanding, and all these things which the old enemy says, well, if you were in the will of God, you wouldn't have that, and you know that.

Now, you've got to remember this. He's a liar. He's a specialist. The good book isn't very kind sometimes. It says, if you're a liar, he's your father. He's the father of lies. He's the father of lies.

A whisper disappears. The book doesn't heal us all the time. It's a two-edged sword. It cuts us to pieces. Carves us up. But whatever he's doing, he seeks God's input, my broth to consume and my gold to refine.

Faith is the gift of God on my repentance.

Faith must be tested to be trusted. Faith grows exceedingly. It grows every time I really trust and rest in God. Faith is not just a passive thing. It's an active thing. You know, when you get down to the end of the 12th, when things get to the 13th, it tells you about things that are permanent and things that are passing.

And amongst the things that abide, we take our time into eternity. Faith, hope, and love. These three, they abide. They're never going to perish, even faith. We want these to exercise in the same way.

I'm absolutely sure about that. But again, remember, this is the basic thing. That faith is what? It reckons on God. It reckons on His wisdom. I don't know what he's doing. You know this, God doesn't have to explain to you what he's doing.

Trusting God's Hidden Work in Our Lives

I learned a very beautiful thing with my dear wife. We were in Canada in the home of the millionaire. Very lovely, lovely, humble couple. They have identical twin girls. They're really something. One is the most mischievous little girl I've ever seen.

You're thinking, you wander up in the morning, and she's on, in fact, she's here, and she calls the other one, leaves the other, and they're like two little China dogs. They've red cheeks, blue eyes, they're just gorgeous.

And he has three sons. We've stayed in that home a number of times, and the one thing out of any other thing, a number of things out of any other thing in that home, is that the other boy is 14. A big, fine boy.

He's one of these guys whose daddy's taught him to do this and do that. He's an all-round little fellow, in more ways than one. But he's all-round in his ability. He would come in and say, if he was talking, excuse me, daddy, he stands like a soldier, excuse me, daddy, he'd say, excuse me, daddy, yes?

Daddy, can I do this?

Yes, thank you, daddy. Come in another time, daddy, can I do this? No.

Thank you, daddy. Never once have those children ever said, why? Never once. And all the time, they'd come in the home, and daddy said no. I sometimes say it, and people don't like it. The proof you have is control of your family.

You can raise a family without raising your voice. I never remember my mother shouting at me. I think it's part of what we ever learned. Of course, we had an unusual son, but apart from that, this was a law in our house.

They expected you to say yes, and no, and take it, and that's it. That's daddy's word. Now that's the same as dad. He doesn't have to explain why he's doing it. He doesn't have to explain what he's doing it.

All he sees is my dross to consume and my gold to refine. I've seen a lot of things around the world, how they make the best china, people painting pictures, people sculpting, all kinds of things. One of the most interesting things I ever saw was a man making one of these fabulous expensive carpets, rugs, you might say, with a gorgeous design that we came up from the bank.

And I looked at that big frame, and there was a long, oh, about a foot of black thread, blue thread, red thread, purple. I never thought it was going to be useless and nice in my life. It was chaos. It was tangled.

It had no design. It had no beauty. It had no anything. I never thought it was going to work. I stood looking at it, and I felt my friend saying, you're looking at the wrong side. I went around the other side, I never saw anything as beautiful in my life.

All that design, all that gorgeous. Well, Paul said, now we see through a glass garden. We're looking on the wrong side. But when we get around the other side and see what he was working at with, because God never works without pattern and never works without laws.

He obeys his laws. He sets his laws in everything, doesn't he? And he's designing your life. He's not designing Brother Jesse like he's designing your pastor or his brother or me or someone else. No, no, no, he's got a blueprint for your life.

There's a mold. There are certain basic things in life in which we're the same. There's an old saying, I think it's English, that we're all made in the same mold. An American said, some are moldier than others, but we're really made in the same mold.

Basically, there are certain things which are the same. But outside of that, there are things that you cannot reconcile and explain. Sometimes people think that pastors are the same. But if you say honestly, look, as dear Dr. Fainstead said, one thing that I think to him, he said, Brother Wagner, people come up with a problem and say, I don't understand this calamity in my life.

What is God doing? And I like his phrase, he said, I have no cheap interpretations of the will of God. I think that's nice. Some things are mystifying, some things are baffling. Some people that don't deserve to be a pastor.

Abel's Worship and the Call to Adoration

Faith has to be tested to be trusted. Now, what do you say, who is the first person in this list? The first person in this list is this man Abel. We don't know too much about him. What did he do? He built an altar.

An altar means what? Sacrifice. And it means worship. I was reading a bit of Faber this morning. I got up early and the dawn was just breaking and the birds were, oh man how lovely, and I thought, well I'm not going to let them beat me to it.

If they can sing like that in the dawn before the sun is up, well I'm going to join in and praise the Lord and offer him worship and praise and thanksgiving. And I was thinking again of one of those hymns of Faber when he said something about love's delight.

How beautiful the sight of thee must be. Again, thine endless wisdom, boundless power, boundless purity. And yet he says, Father of Jesus, love's reward, what rapture will it be? Prostrate before thy throne to lie and gaze and gaze on thee.

Did you ever get on a mountain somewhere and see a sight where or you rode home and said, well you couldn't explain it, it justifies explanation. Well that's exactly the same when you gaze on the Lord.

You cannot experience it as God and therefore your vocabulary then exhausts every word in everybody's vocabulary, everybody's language. You can't explain them, you don't have to explain them. If it's God working in you, it's something between God and yourself.

But again, I suggest that you fence a part of the day not only for prayer but a part of your prayer devotional life to do nothing, not even praise God, certainly not ask him for things. The lamb in the glory at God's right hand has my intercession forever he stands, I love him for just who he is.

It's going to take, we'll need a new glorified body because if we saw God in his glory these bodies would belong to this, each other. But we're going to have new capacity. We're going to have a new body.

Most of us would just go, we need it but apart from that we're going to have a new body, a new glory, a new beauty, a new glory, the new glory of Jesus Christ. You don't know what's going to happen It's a matter of the Bible.

It's a matter of faith. It's a matter of faith. All right. He was certainly a very remarkable man of God. But, I forgot what I was going to say about him there, getting all that slip off the track. But let's get back to what matters, I suppose, again.

This basis of worship, of adoration. We can get lost, as Enright has said, lost in wonder, love and praise. I wonder how often we do. Or going back now to C .S. Lewis, he says, and I think he's one of the most brilliant men we've had in modern life.

And he finished his message that one day, and there were hundreds of preachers there. You can tell the preachers in England, they wear the collars backwards away. The reason is most of them are going backwards away.

But anyhow, they were there listening, and this good man of God, he finished his fantastic message that day. He started on, I believe in the resurrection of the body. The way he said it was a sermon passage.

He's a big, big man with an oval face and red cheeks. He looked more like a farmer than a dapper little brilliant doctor that he was. He was a don at Oxford University. He was one of the best of preachers.

He just came to the pulpit for his adoration of the body. I believe in the resurrection of the body. The implication was, if you don't, you're a fool. That's what I gathered out of the very intimation that he was.

And then he went on to say how a friend of his had a little girl who was rather charming. Daddy said, you can write it outside of the gates of the estate, as far as that big oak tree that never passed, because there's a rose there, and you might be looking around, and then you'll get killed on the promenade.

One day, spring day, remember what the poet said, all of them in England, now that April's here. April is the time of blossom. The hedgerows have primroses, we call them, look very much like little tiny pandas, and bluebells, and the countryside is gorgeous.

The birds were singing. A little girl goes panicking down the road on her pony, forgot all about what Daddy said, and then, ooh, she saw the traffic, and she turned left. And she turned back, there was a giant oak tree, a huge, that's our favorite tree in England.

We used to make our oak ships, you know, hearts of oak on our ships, jolly cars on our men. And the oak tree was there, and rubbing its neck, there was a beautiful, beautiful riding horse. She looked at that horse, she got off her pony, she threw the reins over the stump, and she went to the horse, and she stroked him and patted his neck, and she talked to him.

She told her daddy afterwards, he talked back. He kept saying, hmm, hmm. Every time she said, you're a lovely horse, he said, hmm, that's right. Every time she said something else, hmm, hmm, he agreed with it all the time.

And then he backed off, and he started cantering over the field, just went round, and round, and round, and round, and up again. She looked at him and said, you're a beautiful horse, hmm, hmm, he said.

What's that thing you're riding? That's not a horse. That's an apology. That's an apology. You've never had a ride that you've ridden a horse. Why don't you get on my back and go round the field? I'll show you how to ride.

Daddy was looking out of the window of the mansion where they lived, and she was walking up the lane, crest-folding, not riding the pony. Walking ahead of him, holding the reins. She rushed out. Darling, what did you do?

Did you fall? No, I didn't fall. Did you kick it? What? I'm asking them, what happened? She told him she'd seen the horse. She didn't want to ride a pony anymore. Will you buy me that horse? Oh, Daddy.

He said, but not yet. Why not? Well, this is wrong with your horsemanship. You don't sit erect enough. Number two, you don't carry a riding crop. Number three, you don't mount a dismount race fully. Number four, now I'll tell the groomsman, and he looked after Daddy's horse and mother's and hers, I'll tell the groomsman to deliver more instructions.

And if you can get these things straightened out by Christmas, I'll buy you that horse. I don't mind. I'll buy you that horse. He said, but Daddy, every time I look over that fence, I want that horse.

He said, that's for a while. Keep looking and you'll straighten out your horsemanship and you'll get it to Christmas. You know, that great man of God said, and it's so beautiful, he said, you see, there's that little pony with all its limitations.

It couldn't eat the fence like that horse. It couldn't canter like that. There are lots of things he couldn't do. So he satisfied the little girl. He gave her something better. And she said, I want that horse.

And he said, you'll get it. As soon as you correct those things. He said, sometimes I look over the boundary of time into eternity and I see my glorified body, my unlimited intelligence. And my intelligence is so limited.

It's one of the greatest brains of modern men. You see, the big man can always humble himself. It's the fellow who doesn't know anything that knows everything. The man who knows nearly everything knows nothing.

He admits that. He may be a genius in this world, but he doesn't know his ABCs in another. I look over the boundary of time into eternity and see my glorified body, my unlimited mind. A vocabulary where I can really praise him, a capacity to adore him and worship him.

And I say, Lord, I'd like that glorified body. And he says to me, son, you stay down on earth a bit and correct your lesson here and correct that and correct something else in your spiritual life. And when I see you've got it made, you've got as far as you can get down there, you've got a functioning location, you've got a glorified body.

A body not very beautiful. You see, one day, the limitations are all going to be taken away. One day there'll be no testing of faith in heaven and truth, no crying in death and anguish, no healing in healing, no gifts to send, no prophecy, no sleeve, all those are gone.

They've passed away. There are some things that are permanent. Faith, hope, love, these three. They're back. Oh, I've got to learn to worship him. If we worship, we'll walk. Enoch walked with God. Didn't tell you how tough the road was.

Doesn't tell you how many times he stumbled. Doesn't tell you how many times they criticized him, ridiculed him, tried to trip him up. Doesn't say that. Doesn't tell you what. He kept on walking. Right after him comes Noah.