Search Me O God — Dale Yocum

Searching the Heart Through Psalm 139

Just two verses tonight from Psalm 139, very familiar verses, I believe, to most of us. Psalm 139, verses 23 and 24. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Shall we bow in prayer? Heavenly Father, we thank you for your goodness tonight. How exceedingly wonderfully kind and loving, tenderly merciful you have been toward us. You have done far more for us than we can ever repay, than we can ever mention to thee with our lips.

We do praise thee tonight, thou art so good, so very good. We pray that thou wouldst touch afresh in this service tonight. You know this packed auditorium, you know every distraction that may enter here to draw minds away from thee, you know those that are weary in body from loss of sleep or from long journeys.

But we pray that every contrary influence may be subdued tonight, that we shall all be united in our purpose to hear thy word and heed thy word. Will thou give that unusual anointing we just must have if this service is to be effectual?

We pray just now that thou wouldst rest upon thy word and upon thy servant and upon the congregation that hears thy word tonight. May there be a ready response to the call, the voice of thy Holy Spirit.

In the name of Jesus we pray, amen. I want to speak about heart-searching for a while tonight, as the Lord may give direction. Over in China a number of years ago, when it was still open for missionary service, there was an injured man who went to a missionary doctor and asked to have his chest x-rayed.

The doctor said, I am a poor man, I have no money. I need this service, but I can't afford to pay for it. Would you please perform it for me anyway? The doctor said, well, if you are too poor to pay for it yourself, we will perform this service without charge.

He turned the x-ray on the man's chest, examined it, and said, I find nothing wrong in your chest, but let me explore a little further. He put the x-ray in the area of his stomach and he searched there and he said, ah, I found a problem, a real problem.

My x-ray shows that you have on a secret money belt with a considerable amount of money hidden away in it. You have a deeper problem than you thought you had. There are lots of people that go to doctors for x-rays.

It would be good if they would go to God for his x-ray, for he can find deeper-seated problems than doctors can ever find with their x-ray. I believe that every one of us ought to pray this prayer, this prayer of the psalmist.

Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. I believe it would be good if every one of us in this service tonight honestly, and we should never pray this prayer unless we really are honest about it, honestly and earnestly to pray this prayer, search me, O God.

Why God Must Search What We Cannot See

First I would like to suggest why we need to pray this prayer, why we need for God to search our hearts, and there are a number of reasons why we should pray this prayer, why we need this so very much.

The first is that man does not see his own heart as God sees it. There isn't a one of us who in our own native ability has the capability of seeing our heart as God sees it. Our eyes are wonderful instruments, and with our eyes we see many, many things.

But you couldn't even discern the shape or color of your own eyes unless you had a mirror. Your eyes are wonderful seeing organs, but they never see themselves. Our hearts can discern a lot of things, but they can't discern themselves unless God gives us a mirror with which to see our own heart.

David discovered this fact himself. He was a leader, a great leader, but he fell into sin. He fell into repeated sin, adultery, murder, hypocrisy, and remained in that condition with his sin covered up for most of a year, we believe, before a man of God pointed a finger at him one day and said, Thou art the man, thou art the guilty man in the sight of God.

And he saw himself and made his confession. But for almost a year before God's prophet gave him God's estimate of his heart, he went along feeling quite good about his cover-up job. No wonder he would pray a prayer like this, Oh, search me, God, lest there should be in my heart any wicked way, and lead me in the way everlasting.

When we come to the judgment, my friends, we are not going to be judged by our own estimates of ourselves. Our opinion of ourselves will have nothing whatsoever to do with the judgment evaluation that God places upon us.

That's a most serious consideration. When we come to the judgment, it won't matter one whiff what this congregation of people thinks about Dale Yoakam, or what anybody else thinks about Dale Yoakam. It will be determined solely on what God himself sees I really am.

Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5 .10, We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. And that word appear does not mean simply that we are going to have to be there. It means that we are going to be revealed for what we actually are when we stand before God.

We won't be known for what people think about us, or our own self-estimation. We are going to be known and dealt with there for what God knows we actually are. One of the most sobering, one of the most awesome passages of scripture in all the Bible is found in Matthew 7, verses 22 and 23, where Jesus, speaking of the great day of judgment, said, Many shall say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast out devils, and in thy name have done many wonderful works?

Then shall I profess, I never knew you, depart from me, ye that work iniquity. What a horrifying experience that's going to be for a great crowd of active church members who, in their own estimation, have done mighty things.

Oh, how gifted they are in prophecy, in casting out devils, perhaps in speaking in tongues, perhaps in doing many wonderful works. Self-evaluation ranks them very high indeed. They even argue with the Lord himself.

They are so sold on their own values. They dispute the Lord's own judgment. But he has the last word, he knows exactly what we are. They saw their gifts, they saw their service, they saw their church activity.

He said, I see your sin, depart from me, ye that work iniquity. I can't describe, I can't begin to describe the horrifying experience it's going to be for a vast multitude of people who never discover what they really are until that day when God shows them what they really are, and it's too late to do anything about it.

I tell you, now is the time to pray this prayer. Search me now, Lord, let me know right now what you think I am, what you know I am, what I really am, in your sight. Don't let me wait until that horrible day to discover too late I'm not what I thought I was.

The Deceitfulness of the Natural Heart

We don't see our own hearts as God sees them. The second reason is because the heart is naturally deceitful. Jeremiah said it's deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Nobody can know it.

But he says, I, the Lord, search. There's a deceitfulness about the natural heart. Writer of Proverbs said, Every way of man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord pondereth the heart. Isn't that an astounding statement?

Man is right in his own eyes. No matter how wicked he may become, no matter how treacherous, he has an excuse for himself. He may be able to condemn a thousand other people for little discrepancies in their behavior, but he can manufacture an excuse for the most ignominious falsehood and treachery in his own life.

The heart is deceitful. You don't have to go clear around the world to find this illustrated. There are other of us that find it easier to criticize the other person than we do to criticize ourselves.

Many of us hear others criticized by a speaker more frequently than the speaker criticizes himself. Jesus spoke to a group of people and he called them hypocrites because he said, You can find a mouth in your neighbor's eye, but you overlook the beam in your own eye.

It's so much easier to find the fault of the other person than to find the fault in our own life. That's a part of the deceitfulness of the natural heart. Brother Leonard Ravenhill told about a large camp meeting in which one preacher had preached and another was to follow him in preaching.

The first preacher spoke to the president of the camp and tipped him off a little with a little criticism of the man who was to follow and suggested, If you really knew this man, you wouldn't be having him in the camp.

Then when the second man came to the president, he said, I'm surprised you had this other man there that just finished speaking. If you knew him as I know him, you wouldn't be having him in this camp meeting.

The president set an appointment and called both of the men into his office. They met in the office and they shook hands and greeted each other so graciously and commended each other for the splendid job they were doing.

How so good to see you, my dear brother. They were rather glad to be there. They both assumed that they were going to be booked for a coming conference later. The president had them be seated and told them what I've told you here, told them what each of the men had said about the other.

Now he said to the first man, you're not going to get your pay. And he said to the second man, you're not going to get to preach until you men get this straightened out. He went out and closed the door and left them there alone.

Later he came back, he found the man with red faces and swollen eyes and handshaking and weeping and praising God they had got it straightened out. They had prayed through together until they had ceased criticizing the other person and started criticizing themselves and got their hearts right with God and with one another.

Oh God, help us to be honest with our own hearts before God. Search me, oh God. I have no capacity to be a critic of anybody else unless I can first criticize myself in the light of God. After I've taken the beam out of my own eye, that's the big saw log, I might be able then in grace and meekness to go down and help a brother pull that tiny splinter out of his eye.

But not unless first of all I've had the honesty and the candor to say, Lord, show me this beam in my own eye. This subtle deceitfulness of the heart. The devil uses this natural trait of the deceitful heart and causes people to feel that they have a gift of discernment.

They don't have a gift of discernment, they have a plague of critical spirit. They feel able to point the finger at the other person and it puffs them up with a great ability of discernment. No, it isn't discernment, it's a carnal spirit of criticism.

Out in my home state of Kansas a number of years ago there was a holiness pastor that had in his congregation a leading layman. The pastor bore a burden for his flock and for this layman in particular.

He went and visited the man, shared with him his concern for the man's spiritual welfare. He said to the pastor, Pastor, I thank you for coming, but I feel quite all right. I don't sense any need in my heart as you seem to feel.

If I have any problem I'll let you know, but thank you, I'm getting along fine. Pastor went his way, but he prayed more and the more he prayed the more his concern grew for this man, his spiritual need.

He went to him a second time and he said, My brother, I don't want to offend you. I don't want to appear as hypercritical, but in my heart I have a longing to see you find a higher place in God's grace.

I feel you do really have a genuine spiritual need. God has laid it on my heart. Well, thank you, Pastor, I assure you I'm getting along just fine. I don't feel anything wrong. If I ever have any problem I'll let you know.

Thanks for coming. The pastor went his way. What more can you do? It wasn't long after this until the man working out on his farm spilled gasoline over the hot motor of his tractor and suddenly his clothes flashed into flames.

He rushed down to the watering trough, but it was dry, he could find no water. He got in his truck, raced to his house, fell across the threshold of his own home, and as he collapsed he said, My God, wife, I'm dying and I'm not ready to die.

He was rushed away to the hospital. My brother-in-law called on him in the hospital, but he never regained consciousness. He went out into eternity and those were his last words that passed his lips, My God, wife, I'm dying and I'm not ready to die.

A deceitful heart had puffed him up in his own self-satisfaction in spite of the tearful entreaty of his pastor, in spite of the true condition of his heart. He was deceived and went right on assuming he was all right.

My friends, in the heart of every unsanctified person there is a sinful principle of deception. We have an inherent built-in liar in every one of us until we are sanctified wholly by the purging, refining fire of the Holy Ghost, the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ.

I've tried to trace down this inner nature of sin to its very essence and find out what it is according to the word of God. And the most clear and succinct description of the inner principle of sin that I can find anywhere is in Ephesians 4, verse 22.

Paul says, put off the old man which is corrupt according to its deceitful lot. If I were to give a biblical brief definition of this inner nature of sin, it is the deceptiveness of lot, deceitful desire, until from the very root of our being the things we desire are the things that are not good for us.

A man desires that which is false because that falsehood gratifies his distorted heart. Until multitudes of people today would rather have a cheap lie than an expensive truth, because it suits their luck better.

God went to Adam and asked him what he had done. He wouldn't be honest with God. He pointed at Eve, she's the problem. He went to Eve. She wouldn't be honest with God. She pointed to the serpent. There's the problem.

And ever since that, people have been pointing to somebody else. That's the problem. Why? Because in the heart there's an inbuilt lying device that would rather buy a cheap lie than to pay for an expensive truth.

Deceitful lust, right at the very root of our being, to what the unsanctified man longs for and yearns for and reaches for, is something that is not right and not good for him. They deceive him and make him to deceive others.

Yes, we need to pray this prayer, Lord, search my heart. Revelation 22, we are told of those who love and make a lie. They shall not find their place in the kingdom of God. But I repeat, in every unsanctified heart there's a principle that loves a lie, loves a lie that protects its own image, loves a lie that builds up its own ego, loves a lie that makes it comfortable, rather than to open to that truth that makes it miserable.

And truth, when it first enters a carnal heart, always makes you miserable. You have to be miserable before you can be comfortable under the presence of God. So we ought to pray that prayer. This deceitful heart, even if it finally does come around to admitting it has a need, will postpone and procrastinate and look for a better day.

I remember a young lady rather inclined toward the world, she was asked about getting sanctified. Well, she said, any time God gets ready to sanctify me, it's all right with me. And never be sanctified with that casual approach to the matter.

This deceitful heart will hide behind a multitude of thoughts from. It will hide behind church membership. It will hide behind church activity. It will hide behind official positions. It will hide behind the good word of friends.

It will hide behind a modest attire. It will hide behind an emotional experience. It will shout loud and long and hide a carnal, dirty, false, deceitful heart. I was in a camp meeting a number of years ago, a large camp meeting.

Many of you have been there. And a certain man, about halfway down the middle aisle, got up and sort of whirled around and clapped his hands and made a little squeal. The president of the camp said, you see that man?

Of course I saw him. Couldn't avoid seeing him. He said he's one of the most cantankerous, one of the most critical, one of the most sharp-tongued, evil-spirited men in this whole part of the country.

What was he shouting for? To cover up his inner nature? To make himself feel good and try to make other people feel like he was good? Hiding behind a religious front, an emotional display, he would say amen to preaching on modest standards, but covering up a deceitful heart, a carnal disposition.

Seeing Sin Before God Cleanses It

Third, we need to pray this prayer because we can never be cleansed from the deceitfulness of our hearts until we see it, confess it, acknowledge it, and pray for God Almighty to rectify the error that's in our hearts.

God never sanctifies people in their sleep. He cleanses any heart when you're daydreaming. He only comes in his refining fire to people who are wide awake, who have seen themselves in the light of Almighty God.

They acknowledge what God has revealed. They've been hidden of things. They've been absolutely honest in the sight of God. They've confessed. But God has revealed, and they're entreating God at all costs, without any further delay, to come and apply the remedy to their heart.

That's the only kind of people that ever get this blessing from above. Isaiah went into the temple one day. I don't know what he was expecting to see when he got there, but what he did see was a mighty vision of the exalted holiness of God.

He saw the Lord high and lifted up, and his train filled all the temple, and he heard the seraphim crying, one to another, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts! And in the light of that display of divine holiness, he saw his own sinfulness.

He didn't make excuses for it. He didn't say, I'm better than most of my kinsmen or my contemporaries. He said, Woe is me, for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.

For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. The moment he made his confession, God had a remedy for that source of uncleanness. It touched his lips, and he said, Thy iniquity is cleansed, and thy sin is purged.

My dear brother, God has available for you a source of mighty cleansing, a refining baptism of heavenly fire. The very moment you get earnest and honest before him and confess exactly what your heart is like and what your lips are like and what your affections are like, and let God know you believe what he sees about you, you'll see it and you'll acknowledge it.

You want his remedy. I was in a revival meeting a few weeks ago. There was a young man who came to the altar a number of times. I watched him come, and he'd pray a while, and he didn't seem to get victory.

When the meeting came down to its close, he still didn't have victory. But I saw him some days after that, and he gave me an interesting testimony, or he gave it publicly, and I heard him give it. He said when that first meeting closed, and he still wasn't sanctified, he had seen his need, he wasn't satisfied, he went away to pray.

And in prayer he felt like he ought to go out on a ten-day die-out. Now, that's a new term for you folks. A ten-day, not a diet, but a die-out. So he took a tent, he had his pastor to carry him or carry him eight miles out in the country to a very heavily wooded area.

He put up his little tent, he took no food along, there was a brook nearby out of which he got his water to drink, and he determined he was going to stay out there ten days and eat nothing in a ten-day die-out until God came and satisfied the need of his heart.

But the first day he started praying, his faith began to look up, he began to reach out to God. He said, I made an absolute consecration, I surrendered everything to Almighty God, held back nothing. And he said, I began to pray like this, Lord, if you just sanctify me wholly on the first day, I'll spend all the rest of the ten days praying for other people.

Well I think God would rather have it that way. And he said he opened his Bible and he saw that word from 2 Corinthians 8, thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift. He read it over and over again, thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.

He took it out of its context a little bit, but he began praising God with those words. Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift. He said, I heard a sound as of a mighty roaring wind. There was no wind blowing, the trees were not waving, but I heard a sound and it was coming in my direction.

He said, suddenly something hit my tent and the tent pole went down and the tent collapsed and I heard the sound going on by. The trees remained very quiet. The tent went down and I went down on my knees before God and the refining fire of God went through my soul and I knew I was sanctified wholly.

The pastor came down about five days later and found him praising and shouting and having a time praying for other people. So it doesn't take ten days, and it really doesn't take a ten-day die-out. It does take a die-out, and you have to be wide awake, and you have to want this more than anything else in the world, and you have to be honest with God and confess your need absolutely to the Father before God will come and satisfy that need.

Hallelujah! Secondly, let us look for a while at how God searches our hearts. He has his way of examining our innermost being and showing to us what we are like. He searches us by his Holy Spirit. Paul says, "...the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.".

The Holy Spirit sees beyond what you and I can ever see, or where any other eye can ever penetrate. He sees the deep things, the hidden things. He knows us exactly like we are tonight, every one of us.

Isn't that good to know? The Spirit knows all about us, and if we ask him to search our hearts, he will do exactly that. That's his particular business. That's his specialty, to look into the heart of man and show us exactly what we are like.

It may be painful. It will be painful until the work of surgery is performed that takes out that sinfulness of the heart. Dr. Samuel Keane, that dear old Methodist preacher of years ago, was a holiness pastor.

He had an elder in his church that was not sanctified holy and didn't seem to be hungering or thirsting after the blessing. Dr. Keane said he prayed for the man repeatedly, earnestly, until he was sobbing outright.

Little later he arose and made his confession. I have been going along thinking I was so good, thinking I was so valuable here in the church. Never before have I honestly asked God to show me the condition of my heart, but he has done it tonight.

I didn't know before how much of pride, how much of selfishness, how much of complacency, how much of carnality there was in my life. I want you folks to forgive me for not being the kind of leader I ought to be.

They gathered in prayer, and this man was right at the center of the prayer meeting. And of course God, in his willingness, came and cleansed the man's heart and took out that source of envy and carnality, pride and self-satisfaction.

When the Spirit of God reveals these things in our hearts, he doesn't do it just to make us miserable. He does it to open the way for a wonderful cleansing stream to flow in our being and purge us in the sight of God.

I want to thank God for the Spirit's presence. I believe he has been searching out some hearts in these meetings here, and I hope every one of you is praying that prayer, Lord, search me! Don't let me hide behind anything, behind a spurious testimony, behind somebody else's fault.

Lord, show me what I am exactly! And the Holy Spirit is ready to do it in this very hour tonight. Then God searches us by his word. The word of God is quick and puffle and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing through the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and is the discerner of the thought and intent of the heart.

Joints and marrow, the bones of our bodies, are as hard as concrete. The figure that the Hebrew writer uses here is the figure of the priest slaying their sacrificial victims and severing their joints and opening their bones.

This was a hard job to do, to break a steel-like bone and expose the inner marrow, those hidden inner chambers of hardness and concealment. The knife of the priest was able to split the bone and divide the joint and lay everything open to view.

And the word of God, my friend, is able to do the same thing in men's hearts tonight. Hallelujah! He is able to penetrate where I cannot see and the other preachers cannot see, but the word of God exposes what is down there, hidden away, so deeply covered, so long concealed.

He is able to open it to view. Several years ago, in 1939, there was a lady missionary from Holland that came to South Korea, and out in one of the suburban areas of South Korea, quite a revival occurred under the unique ministry of this young lady from Holland.

She didn't have especially a pulpit ministry, but it was primarily a private ministry on a one-to-one basis. She took the blessed word of God and she went from person to person, asking for the privilege of just questioning them about the word and how the word was being applied in their own life.

She took the commands and the exhortations of God's word and asked them one by one, pointedly, are you living according to this command of God's word? And if they said no, she asked them to write it down on a piece of paper, I am disobeying this command, I am a deceiver, I am a dishonest person, I am a liar, I am an adulterer.

I am jealous, I am envious, or whatever their condition was. And one after another, as she prayerfully and with the power of the Spirit came to them with God's word, one after another was broken down to weeping and repentance before God.

And a revival spread on a one-to-one basis like that. There was a missionary doctor in that area. He resented this young lady who was there, going around, probing into the inner lives of people. He said to his wife, I'm not going to have that young lady come bothering with me.

His wife had a little more spiritual discernment and sensitivity than he did, evidently, and she said, why not? What are you afraid of? Well, he said, the young lady has no business prying around into the inner lives of other people.

The wife said, she is just simply taking the word of God and applying that. That isn't private meddling. That's the purpose of the word of God. I challenge you, husband. I challenge you. If you're not afraid of this young lady, let her come and let her take the word before you.

Well, he was a little abashed by this, but he said, all right, if you insist, I will. I ain't got anything to be afraid of. The young lady missionary came to him with her Bible, very humbly, very prayerfully, and said, doctor, I'd just like to ask you some questions about the word.

Have you given serious consideration to Matthew 6, verse 33, Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. He said, wife, of course I have. I teach that to the Koreans right along.

Well, doctor, are you in every area of your life consistently putting God first and trusting him to add everything else you need into your life? Well, he said, young lady, I suppose, you know, well, to be honest with you, I guess I'm not really.

He said, well, doctor, here's a piece of paper. Would you just please write it down? You say you teach this to other people? You teach this to the Koreans, and you're not living up to it yourself? What category does this put you in?

Well, he said, I suppose we might call this hypocrisy. Then, would you please write it down, doctor? I am a hypocrite. Come on, write it down. All right, if you insist. I am a hypocrite. That looks terrible in your own handwriting.

She wasn't finished with the good doctor. She went to other passages of scripture, and he was writing other things down. I am deceitful. I am complacent. I am proud. I am self-seeking. Before that dear young lady had left him, she had a doctor in tears on his knee, confessing out his true undone condition before God.

She had found him so complacent, so self-satisfied, but she left him a broken man, but looking up to Christ for his cleansing, to satisfy the need of his heart, and so the revival spread. Oh, would to God that we could get a crowd of people like this absolutely honest before the Word of God.

Search me, O God. Let the Word penetrate me. Let it go to the depths of my being. Let it uncover anything and everything that is not like Jesus Christ. The Word is able to do that. I'm just going to challenge us for a little while to turn to a portion of the Word of God and just let it search us.

Letting First Peter Examine Christian Conduct

I want you to turn with me to 1 Peter. Before we close this service, I just want us honestly and open, if you have your Bibles, I just want you to open your Bible. And I want us carefully to look into the Word of God for a few closing minutes here.

Lord, use this Word and search my heart. We wouldn't have to go to 1 Peter. We could go to a hundred other places and find sharp searching portions of God's Word ready to reveal us, just exactly like we are in the sight of God.

Pick out a few verses as we go here. 1 Peter 1 .15, As he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation. And I would just like to ask you, and I want you to ask yourself in the sight of God, in all manner of conversation, that means every single area of my life, am I living holy as he is holy?

Is my speech holy? Are my desires holy? Are my reactions holy and Christlike? Are my ambitions holy for myself, for my family? Is my service, my conduct before God, before the Church, before the world, is it holy and Christlike?

And I leave it to you to answer that, honest. Let's be absolutely honest before God. Look in the 2nd chapter, verse 1. Wherefore, laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisy, look in the 2nd chapter, verse 1.

Wherefore, laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and envy and all evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word. This is the requirement for the newborn babes in Jesus Christ.

Take that word hypocrisy. That's an ugly word. None of us would be happy to write down on a sheet of paper, I am a hypocrite. I ask you honestly before the word of God tonight, are you willing for this crowd of people to know you exactly as you are?

Are you willing to be known back in your home church exactly for what you're worth? Are you standing before God honestly acknowledging what he knows you are? Are you trying to cover up and pretend on a higher level than what you know you actually are in your inner life?

Write it down. At least acknowledge it before God, I am a hypocrite. Envy, evil speaking. Has all envy been put out of your life? Or do you find that rising desire when somebody else gets promoted and somebody else gets praised and somebody else gets the spotlight to say, I wish that were me?

I wish I could get that credit. You rare to resent somebody else getting the spotlight you'd like to have. Write it down. I am full of envy, evil speaking, or whatever it is. Verse 11. Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.

It's amazing, has been amazing to me, some people, gospel workers, missionaries, preachers, who in private have come to me and confessed the lustful things in their own lives that were constantly doing warfare against the best interests of their souls.

For one reason, I never want a TV in my home. There's enough out on the streets and on the billboards that would be seductive and suggestive. I don't want to import anything in my home that would put before me something that would war against the inner man of the soul.

I want to keep the strongest fortress against evil I can possibly keep in my life. My dear friend, are you allowing? Just because others are allowing it, the word of God says abstain from those fleshly lusts that war against the soul, that bring you down spiritually, that weaken your prayer life, that weaken your witness, that weaken your boldness to go out and shed abroad the light of Jesus Christ.