Cost of Discipleship - Part 1 — Paris Reidhead

The Authority of Scripture Over Sermonic Interpretation

With me. In chapter 22, verses 34 and 40, there's an important scriptural importance in those two quotes, when your intention is called to it, and if you wish it, and by name of the people, you prompt that same message at such and such a place, to admit it, that is true, alongside of the scripture.

But you may do that in the morning messages as you're listening from a patient, and again, I say without apology. Now, listen carefully as I read, and don't antipathize, just say, the scripture is what God said, and the sermon is what the preacher thinks God meant.

And if you've got to remember one or the other, always remember the scripture. When the Pharisees had heard that he, the Lord Jesus, had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together, and one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, and he would say, commandment, in the law, Jesus said unto him, thou shalt love, commandment, Jesus said unto him.

The First Commandment and Experiential Faith

I would have you leading up there, into that period, all my problems, all my loves, importance, and all the doubts, and all the doubts become inwardly, personally, vitally, experientially, pure. This is a missionary coming back from Africa, 40 years old, I prepared to go, but I discovered what I wrote, things I hadn't heard before was he and his.

I was counting quite a lot on an ocean voyage in those days, and when we did, they made 10 ,000 miles from home. The debate, and the only way I could survive, it seemed, was to prove nobody else was as spiritual as they ought to be, or thought they were.

And so, I became critical, and censorious, and I heard people did love the Lord Jesus, and wanted so, and yet didn't know where to put my own tridicular. I said, Lord, you know the desperate hunger of my heart, but I just don't think the answers are as I am afraid of my needs.

So, the next day, I dematriculated, and got out, and so I stayed there. I said to the bazaar, if I was honorable enough to be here as a student in writing, I need to do, and so I did. And I stayed there, period, spiritual inventory, my reality.

You see, all those years, the time I'd been a student, 40, building into my Christian life, that which was being given me as the building blocks for it. Something wasn't working. I'd gotten a straight A in the course on the Christian life, but when I got to Africa, I had to look at my report card, because it just wasn't working.

So, I began to go back. How much was theory? How much was pigment of the mind, or just ideas, or intellectual insights, or mental perception? And how much was experientially real in my life? Well, this was 1949, and I went back through the years on the mission field, and sorted for something real.

Oh, I know my failure had been real, but the truth that I had learned with my mind that the courses I had hadn't taken effect. Then I went back down from 45 through the common years, back to 40, when I left Bible Institute in the early years of pastoral experience.

And there again, it was words, good words, ideas, other men's ideas. And about this time, I began to view my heart as kind of like this way. Where you put the leaves, and when you rake them up in the yard, we have a compost pit.

Theological Knowledge Versus Spiritual Reality

You know, we just gather the leaves, cut the brush, and pile them up, and there they sit. They become mulch. Well, that's what I thought my heart was, kind of a theological compost pit. I'd been plucking the green leaves off of other men's trees, and I'd been just piling them in on my heart, thinking that if I could trace the leaf and identify and say what kind of a theological shrub it came from, that was enough.

Well, one night, I got a good truth from other people's plans. It just was laid there, in on top of my heart. Well, I was getting a little bit frightened. I went back down through the years of the Bible Institute to find the truth that I had acquired, and the insights that had been helpful.

Still hunting for reality. And by this time, I said, Heavenly Father, if there is nothing real in my life, I'm going to be honest. If I fool myself or anybody again in knowing me, I'm going to hunt for reality.

Childhood Church Membership and the Need for Personal Salvation

I got right back down to the house in St. Paul, Minnesota. There was this camp meeting, and the speakers that year were John L. Thrasher from Alabama and Joseph Owens, who at that time was president of John Fletcher College, and Paul Rees, whom you know and who was one of the three men that were ministering.

There were giants in the land, and though it may be a very wonderful way to be, I come from a Christian home. At about 12 years of age, the pastor of our church asked me if I wanted to join the church, and I have, and I did.

And I knew the answers to all the questions. The day that he invited me to come to be received into membership with others, he said, I talked with Sonny, my nickname at the time, and I'm certain everything is right with him, because he's answered all the questions.

Well, of course, I've been taught the answers all my life, and I had a fairly good memory. I knew what to say. And so I was taken into the church, I mean taken in, because the next day when I told my 8th grade teacher, Elsie Moore, tears came and took her eye.

Well, I don't know why I had more to being a Christian, Sonny, than answering the questions. I said, well, the preacher didn't say anything else. She said, no one's a Christian till Jesus comes into his heart.

She said, you see, salvation is a person. Salvation is God's Son. And it's not just to believe he's in the scripture, that he died and was buried and rose again. It's to receive him. And then she turned to that person, 2 Corinthians 13, verse 9, examine yourself whether you be in the faith.

Approve your own self, know you're not your own self. How did Christ be in you, except you be reprobate? And then she said, I'm going to pray for you. And every once in a while she'd say, you know, if you'd stay in after at recess, I'd ask me, I have something I could show you.

Well, you know, in those days you couldn't, you couldn't witness, but there were ways that you really cared. And she cared. And so I'd say, Miss, Miss Moore, do you have something to show me? When the others had left the room and she'd open her little, her little New Testament, and there would be my initials in that day, underlined.

And she'd read it to me, was honed in prayer, you know, shined with tears. And she put it into my heart, the dagger of truth, the sword of the spirit within. Well, that had gone on until after being done, knowing it, overthinking everything.

Conviction of Sin at the Camp Meeting

Well, on recess I went to see where my mother's plaques was going. And I kind of liked her, and I thought it'd be nice to spend two weeks where I could see her every day. And so I went for that reason.

And I'll never forget, those men, they began to preach, and they'd alternate the times. And I had to go, or else, and Chevy had a suit. You know what Chevy is? They don't make it anymore, thank goodness.

It was horse hair. It was spikes. Little, little wire spikes. You know, it was awful. And that's the only suit I had. I had to wear it. Boy, I couldn't wait to get home. They thought I was neat. I wasn't neat.

I was just trying to save the epidermis, that's all. But it wasn't just the outside irritation. It was the fact that as I sat there, those preachers didn't have any respect at all. They reached halfway across the auditorium, and they'd point me out, and they'd wiggle their finger under my nose, and they'd tell the people the things I'd done, the things I'd tried to do, and planned to do, and was counting on doing.

And it always made no difference where I sat. If I sat over there, it was like this. If I sat there, it was like this. And so it seemed, until God showed me how utterly lost I was. And then there was an invitation giving.

That night, just as I am a son, Paul Reese said, now there's, I've been burdened last night. There's someone, I don't know whether he's young or old, that came to this conference thinking he was a Christian, a church member.

But God has shown him or her, whoever it is, I think it's a young man, a young man, boy, perhaps, that he's lost. And he would have come on that first verse, but he's hanging on to the pew in front of him so hard.

Now you look, friends, up and down the pew, and if you see someone holding on to it, I drop to the store, or not. In the next stanza, I came forward. And I'll never forget, when I was down at the end of the altar, Paul, and they got three quartets there that year.

And I got the last man in the last of the three quartets. They said, well, you're not with anybody, but you go down to him. You know, the Drake, so to speak. And he has a little boy, 12, so he's not very important.

Confessing Christ and Receiving Salvation

This boy came, but he was God's choice for me. He said, what'd you come for, son? I said, to be saved. He said, from what? I said, I don't have a choice, do I? From sin. And he said, well, good. And I didn't know anything good about it.

And I said, why do you say it's good? I'm lost. He said, that's why it's good. Because Jesus only saves lost people. And until you know you're lost, you can't be saved. And so, he then took me to that verse, that thou shalt confess with thine mouth Jesus the Lord.

And he said, that means to be the king and the boss and the ruler and to be in charge of your life from tonight on, as long as you live. He's the one that's going to govern. He's the one that's going to control.

Is that, are you willing for that? I said, I'm willing for that. Alright, he said, now I want to, I'm going to just be brave. And you confess to Jesus every sin you've committed. And if he tells you something, you've got to make right.

You just tell him you're going to do it and remember what it was and make it right. And then after you've cut that whole mountain of your sin up, then you thank him that he died to save you from that.

And when you are sure he's forgiven you, you tell me. Wasn't that boy smart? Wasn't he wise? When you know he's forgiven you, you tell me. No, he's not telling me. He was going to let the Lord through to tell him because he couldn't stick with me all the time to reassure me in case that he told me and it didn't stick.

He said, you get it from headquarters, then you'll know where you got it. And so I did just what he told me. He said, I'll keep people from bothering you. And I went over the altar. That pile of sin began to mount up.

I wasn't very old, but it mounted up. And finally I just said, thank you for dying for the world. That's good. And thank you for dying for sinners. And that's better. And thank you for dying for me. And something stole into my heart.

And that those sins were washed away and removed. And I was forgiven. I said to him, he's done it. He said, of course, I knew he was. Spiritual inventory. And I went out. And you know, the last real thing that ever happened to me in my Christian life as of 1949 was that night in an altar in the straw when I met Jesus Christ.

Sanctification and the Limits of Intellectual Christianity

The next day I went in and saw dear Julia Hibbert. Bless her heart. I love her. She was our children's worker. And I said, Miss Hibbert, something wonderful happened to me last night. She said, what's that?

I said, Jesus saved me. And she smiled. She said, that's fine. Now you need to be sanctified. And she talked to me about that. She took me into the altar. And she put words in my mouth. And the day after I met God, a Christian worker introduced me to presuming that because I knew the words, so I had all the intellect can perceive, the mind can receive.

This is the end of side one. Please stop the machine at this point and turn the cassette over.