Worship Beyond Prayer and Praise — Leonard Ravenhill

Preparing a Sermon on Worship

In 1926, which is quite a while back, in our little church in England we had a visit from a distinguished American preacher and to my dismay he didn't preach, but his son preached. The son was about 21 years of age then I guess, his name was Paul Rees and his father was dear old Seth Rees, the founder, one of the founders of the Pilgrim Holiness Church and in a conference not too long ago somebody asked Paul Rees, how long does it take you to prepare a sermon?

It was a minister's conference and Paul said it takes me 15 hours. I need 5 hours a day, 3 days in the week to prepare a sermon. Well I think that's pretty good on the law of averages. This sermon that I want to preach tonight is not a sermon, it's a talk, it's a meditation on what I think is the greatest theme in the Bible and it is not prayer.

Paul Rees said he needed 15 hours to prepare a sermon. I started preparing this sermon in 1951. I started preparing it on a hospital bed where everything had been shattered, my program, my life, my body.

One night when I was particularly sick and I guess maybe a little downcast, I reached for my Bible, my testament which was hidden in some, between some 7up bottles. My sweet wife had gone home, she had stayed with me for sometimes a stretch of 36 hours when I was on the critical list.

I reached my Bible, my testament up and I opened it like that and I read these words, Thou gavest me no water, Thou gavest me no oil, Thou gavest me no kiss. People say you're getting old. I'm not old, I'm antique.

And I've been preaching now for about 55 years. I've been privileged to go around the world a couple of times and speak at some wonderful conferences. I've listened to many preachers. I remember one when someone said to me, well you've got a job now man, you're in a competition.

Some of the greatest preachers in the country, some of the great preachers. And they were all great preachers. After three days they all grated on me. I didn't think, I used to think the reason you get to a big conference is because you have something to say.

Now I know the reason you get to a big conference is because you have nothing to say. If you have something to say they'd never invite you. You'd rock the boat, you'd upset the ship. And so if you want to get to the top have nothing to say and say it well.

And you've got it made. So in that hospital I realized that there's a theme, a message, and again I have three sources and confirmations for this message. One again was on a hospital bed when I realized that while I could not preach and I could not maybe concentrate much in prayer, there was one thing I could do as adequately on my back as on my knees and that was worship.

Worship as a Neglected Exercise of the Believer

In a conference we had down in Florida just about three years ago, it was one that was organized by Peter, Dr. Peter Lord, many of you know him. We went down into the swamps and I had the privilege of speaking to these preachers for about four days.

And when I mentioned this, just the subject, I didn't preach on it. Afterwards the pastor of the First Baptist Church in a large city in Florida said to me, would you preach for me on your way home? Are you preaching Sunday?

I said no. Well, preach for me Sunday and Saturday night eat dinner with us in our home. So we went. He's a big handsome man. He's a very learned man. He had a, I believe, an earned Ph .D. He could read the Bible in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek.

And he was very open about what his ministry was. He said I have a big church, I have a successful church, I have a rich church. But he said, you know Brother Ray, there's one thing I don't know a thing about.

And that is the theme you mentioned the other night. And as Bunyan would say, his eyes filled with tears. And he said, I do not know how to worship. And because I do not know how to worship, my church does not know how to worship.

The third case was one night when I walked into the office of Dr. Tozer and I met many famous men, many great men. I've never met a man with the depth of spirituality that Dr. Tozer had. And I spent many hours with him, just the two of us, praying, talking, so forth, so on.

But this particular time he said, Lance, latch the door, let your hair down. And then he said, you see this piece of rug down here? I said, yes sir. He said, I bought it in Kresge for 69 cents. That was in 1951 of course, prices were different.

It was about four feet long and about thirty inches wide. It was made up of loose bits, you know, they used to weave them together. There's nothing attractive, it wasn't a costly person rug, 69 cents.

And he said these words, I've never forgotten them, I've challenged lots of people with them. He pointed down, he said, Len, you see that rug? I said, yes sir. And these were his exact words. He said, I've come in this office many mornings, picked up the phone, called my secretary in the other office and said, please go home.

I can't dictate letters, I can't interview anybody. And then he said this, Len, I've got down on that rug on my belly at eight o 'clock in the morning, just to worship. I've stayed there till eleven o 'clock, or twelve, or one o 'clock, from eight in the morning.

I've worshipped God for four hours, or even five hours, and I've never said a word of prayer. I've never said a word of praise. I've just worshipped him. Now, do you know anything about that? I want to talk to you about it tonight.

Three great exercises in the life of the believer. In the church, we have taught people to witness, we have taught people to work, we have not taught people to worship. Again, I remind you that Buck Singh, one of the greatest living men to date, told me that while he'd been in America and England many times, he had never been in a church in America where anybody knew how to worship, or in England.

And when I asked him about that, he said, I said, if I come to your church on the Lord's Day, what happens? And without batting an eye, he said, well, Brother Raymond, in our service, the first three hours, the first three hours we give to praise and adoration and thanksgiving and worship.

The second three hours we give to prayer and supplication and intercession. And the third three hours we give to a breaking of bread and one has a song, another has a hymn, another has a spiritual song.

And I said, Brother Singh, you don't mean to say that every Lord's Day you take nine hours in the service? Well, no, no, I didn't mean to convey that. Well, I said, I'm not asking you about conferences, I mean the ordinary Lord's Day.

Right, right. He said, some Lord's Day the glory comes down, whether it's twelve hours, thirteen hours, fourteen hours. Now, what do you do with a man like that? Isn't it embarrassing? Hmm? Dr. Tulsa said, Len, I won't live to see this, but I think you will.

And he said, I believe that we're going to live to see the day when men will come from other nations to tell us what Christianity is all about. And he, like many others in that group, they have learned to worship God in spirit and in truth and in a very beauty of holiness.

Prayer, Praise, and Worship

Prayer is preoccupation with our needs. Praise is preoccupation with our blessings. Worship is preoccupation with God Himself. One hymn writer put it this way, my goal is God Himself, not joy, not peace, not even blessings, but it's Thee, my God.

You know, as you progress in the Christian life, you'll realize this, that if this book is right, the world outside is crazy. And if the world outside is right, we're insane. But I'll stay by the book.

And if you stay by the book, you realize more and more that God's ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. I would imagine that when God was going to describe to us how He made the world, He would have taken an awful lot of time and chapters over it.

You know, there's only one chapter in the Bible that tells us how God made the world. It has 31 verses in it. But when God wanted to describe the tabernacle and the course and all the rest of it, you know, He took seven chapters with 243 verses in it.

Now, wouldn't you think it would be more interesting if God just spelled it out, you know, how He made the world and how He mixed the stuff to put the stars together and they don't fall? And if He'd taken 243 verses to describe the world, that would be interesting.

But He didn't. He took one chapter to tell us all about creation. And He takes seven chapters to tell us about the tabernacle. And the first thing He says about the tabernacle, the first thing that He makes any dimensions of, is not the courtyard.

The first thing that He gives dimensions of is in the 25th chapter of Exodus, in which He says this, Thou shalt make a mercy seat of pure gold. Two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof.

And in verse 22 He said, And there will I meet with thee, and will commune with thee, pardon me, from above the mercy seat. So the first thing on God's mind was He wanted men to meet Him in worship. Now, we've just stressed about everything else except worship.

You can go into a shop today and get 50 different books on 50 different ways to get the baptism of the Spirit. And you can go and get another one on 50 different ways to deal with demons. You know, I don't think the devil cares a hill of beans how many demons you chase as long as you leave him alone.

You can go bald. You can go cross-eyed chasing demons. That won't worry the devil. But if you tread on this territory, and this is one of the unrealized areas in the Christian life. The world goes to hell fire tonight because the church has lost holy ghost fire.

And above all, we've lost passion in prayer. And we don't know too much about resisting the power of the devil. God has already said through Jesus Christ, I give you in the church power over all the power of the enemy, not some of it, all of it.

And again, the answer to America's dilemma tonight is not in the White House, it's in God's house. That is if we set our house in order. Now, that 25th chapter is very wonderful, but let me go back a minute and suggest something for you preachers to chew on.

Meeting God in the Tabernacle

In the 24th chapter, and verse 9 it says this, then went up Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and 70 elders of Israel. Now that's not very dramatic, but listen to this verse. And they saw the God of Israel.

Did you come here tonight to meet God or hear a sermon about him? Tell me the last time you went to the house of God expecting deity to invade that place so you couldn't hide any sin, so you'd be so overwhelmed, you'd forget all about business and every other blessed thing that you have, and you wanted to meet him and worship him.

They're the most stupid Christians almighty God's ever had to deal with. Where did you learn it, in your Greek class or your Hebrew class, that God only comes to church 11 o 'clock Sunday morning, leaves at 12, comes back at 7 Sunday night till 8, and then you don't meet him till Wednesday night?

That's about as ignorant as you can be. Since when has deity been on call? You see, when revival comes, you can be sure of a number of things. Number one is, the lights for the sanctuary won't go out for months.

They never have in a true revival. Number two, to borrow Dr. Tozer again, that when real revival comes, the moral climate of the community is changed. You don't get that by mishap, massive crusade, it costs a million bucks.

Revival never costs a penny. You can never put a crown on the head of the man who is the key in revival. I'd like to stop there, but I won't. But I'll tell you again, I've got a little old man in England that writes to me about every two weeks.

He's 95 years of age. And he was the right-hand man of Eben Roberts in the Welsh revival. He knows every heartbeat of that man. He can tell you all about what happened. He can tell you about Mrs. Penn Lewis.

He can tell you about William Booth. That man lived in the throb of revival. And many times the meetings went on, for days and days and days, in the presence of God. But notice again, please, in this twenty-fourth chapter and verse ten, they saw the God of Israel, and there was under his feet, as it were, a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were, the body of heaven in his clearness, and the nobles and the children of Israel.

On the nobles and children of Israel he laid not his hands. Also they saw God and he'd eaten drink. Now I suggest you get your teeth into that and preach on that in the next few weeks. I'm not going to do it right here.

They sat down with God and ate and drank. This same sublime deity says that, you know, the God that the heavens cannot contain, his robe is the light, his canopy is space, the clouds are the dust of his feet.

Dear Lord, it's a wonder we don't crawl in the house of God, if that's his majesty and presence. One thing I do like about the Mohammedans, the only thing, boy, they're in bad shape right now, but at least they leave their shoes eaten at the door.

They won't bring the dust of the world into the sanctuary. They're afraid they'll defile it. We've been any old junkie. Oh, let's think of the tabernacle for a minute. Wasn't very attractive, was it? Some badger skins on it.

Have you ever thought of the contrast between the tabernacle in the wilderness and that multi-billion dollar thing that Solomon built? Now, there's a contrast there, but they both had the glory of God.

And that was a little stable. Not the thing you've got on your Christmas card, that pretty thing that will pass every sanitary test of the government. It was a stable. It had water walled down. And it stunk of urine.

And it had cobwebs for curtains. And it had the threat of the beast as a heating system. There was every vile thing in it. Why? Because I take it it was typical of the human heart in which Jesus was going to camp, which too was full of corruption and needed cleansing.

The Outer Court, Holy Place, and Holy of Holies

All right, the tabernacle. You've got an outer court. You've got the Holy of Holies. You've got the holy place of all. And of course you could stay here for months, which I don't suppose you want to do.

But it's a very amazing study. You see, in the outer court there were priests. Do you know in Israel a man could not be a soldier until he was 20? But you could be a soldier when you were 20 because you don't need brains to kill for.

You could not be a priest until you were 25. You could not be a high priest until you were 30. Now don't ask me, ask these Nazarene theologians and others that are here tonight, why? Because have you realized, again, a man could be a soldier at 20, a priest at 25, he could not be a high priest until he was 30.

Now, there were some people that ministered in the outer court. They ministered to each other. And in the outer court there was daylight. In the holy place there was a seven-branched candlestick. On your right, showbread on the left, table of incense before you.

Before you went into the Holy of Holies, thinking of it that way now, this is the court into which you come. Here there's sunlight. In the holy place there's candlelight. In the Holy of Holies there is no light.

Not unless the light of the world comes in, God himself. Not unless the Shekinah glory comes. And then his blinding presence, his residence is between the great wings of the cherubim on the mercy seat.

Does it ever strike you with a sense of awe that when you kneel down and pray you're talking to the one who can hear the, who heard the prayer of Elijah on Mount Carmel? Does it ever stagger you that the man who camped the first submarine ride, John, or in the belly of hell I cried when the Lord heard me?

Does that ever amaze you that you talk to the same God that Moses talked to on the mount? Huh? Or have you lost all the wonder of it? I mean, is your praying giving you a shopping list? I said repeatedly, if we spend as much time training people to pray as we've got with choirs, even your colleges, don't you send a team around the country?

Our choir is coming. Could we come to your church just for one night? Maybe that's all he could stand of it anyhow. But they go for one night, they move to another time. But do you send prayer teams like that?

Sure you don't send prayer teams. The professors can't pray half of them. Never mind the kids in school. The devil can put up with the singing. Well, most of it. Some of it, I don't think he can put up with some of the singing.

But anyhow, the singing of these days, where if you sing off key, you're accepted. Say, can you even remember a time when you went to the house of God and you tiptoed out because the shekinah glory of God filled the temple?

It used to be like that in some of your old Nazarene camp meetings, I'll tell you that. And it used to be like that when Abe the Earl was preaching for the Baptists. And it used to be a bit like that when they had meetings after the Azusa Street visitation at night.

We were in a meeting by three o 'clock at night and an old lady came with tears running down her face. She said, Mr. Regner, this has taken me back fifty years. Taken you back fifty years? Yeah, the early days of Pentecost, when we went to church at two o 'clock in the afternoon and didn't come out till ten at night.

And there was no breaking for a drink of coffee or something else. The glory of the Lord filled the temple. You never knew what was going to happen. We were in the church not too long ago when the man said to me, he said, you know Brother Regner, we're not like other churches.

I said, well that's good, what's the difference? Well, because I didn't think I'd find it, you see, so I said, what's the difference? And he said, we let the Spirit have his way in our church. I said, well why did you mimeograph all his orders last Wednesday?

That's all you boys do, isn't it? Wednesday you say to the secretary, remember this, we're starting with him, so and so. The Holy Ghost couldn't get in on your program if he tried. That's why he's left you, and you didn't even know many of you go through the mountains.

Now this is real rude preaching, but it's good. We've lost the glory, we've lost the majesty. The men could minister in the outer court, they ministered to each other in the outer court. They ministered to somebody else in the inner court.

But when they went into the holy place, they ministered to God. Again, prayer is occupation with my needs. Prayer is occupation with my blessings. But worship is occupation with God himself. Seeing his majesty, seeing his glory.

Well, of course we take a lot of time, but let me tell you, I'm going to leap into three sections here tonight, that's all. In the 30th chapter of Exodus, you have in the section from verse 23, a description of the ointment that should be used, the anointing oil that should be used for the various vessels in the sanctuary.

I'm not going to bother with that, but will you read it when you go home? And then read the next part of the chapter, because there's another oil that is used for the anointing of the priests. It's not the anointing of things which are inanimate.

Verse 30 says, Thou shalt anoint Aram and his sons, and consecrate them, that they may minister unto me. You get that? They're not going to minister to the people, they're going to minister to God. So you don't bring the same things, the oil that you're going to put on the vessels in the sanctuary.

This is a holy anointing oil. Ooh, it's a study all in itself. I'd like to spend all night on it, but I won't. I'll just pass it up. But it tells you, this holy anointing oil, they're going to what? Verse 31, Thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, This shall be a holy anointing oil unto me throughout your generations.

Now notice this very carefully, will you, in the next verse. Verse 32, Upon man's flesh it shall not come. God will never sanctify flesh. God will never anoint flesh. Do you remember the psalm 133, where it says you take the holy anointing oil and put it on the head of Aram, and the oil ran down his face.

It doesn't say that, it says it ran down his beard, from his beard to his dress, from his dress to the floor. What? Because never touches the flesh. I hear people say, if that young man ever got sanctified, or that young man got the baptism, he's such a nice personality.

And you know, he can speak and everything. Thank him, God isn't depending on that. You wouldn't really say that Bird Robinson was a jazzy personality, would you? And is a pretty bad lisp. But boy, when he got anointed he could preach.

I'd rather hear a man say ABC with the anointing than hear the most eloquent man in the world that had no anointing anyhow. Upon man's flesh it shall not be poured, neither shall ye make any other like it.

Oh, come on, come on. I like this. This sets me up on fire or something. You see, because it says you can't make any imitation of the anointing of God. Or you can gesticulate, you can learn all the art of being a pulpit orator, you know where to put on the pressure, and how to be dramatic, and all the histrionics and all the rest of it.

And when he was going out, somebody says, boy, he was sounding brass, he was like an old tin can tonight. And you thought you had done Wesley, resurrected. Upon man's flesh it shall not be poured, neither shall ye make any other like it.

After the composition of it, it is holy and it shall be holy unto you. And whosoever compoundeth anything like it or whosoever putteth anything of this on a stranger shall be cut off from his will. Now go through the chapter and read it when you go home, will you?

How this holy ointment was compounded. It's got some strange words. It says there's a thing called sakti, and onyker, and galvanum, and sweet spices with pure frankincense. That's interesting. You go down and I'll tell you what, it's a very, very thrilling thing.

How they compounded all these things. Some were living, some were dead. One juice you had to get in the morning before the sun came up. The other you got in the midnight, because it only flows in the midnight.

And sometimes your anointing will be best when you've been through midnight experiences, and experiences that pay your part. Because God doesn't merely sanctify us for the pulpit, he sanctifies us for prayer, he sanctifies us for fasting, he sanctifies us for anointing.

You see, the greatest need in the country tonight is some men who want the anointing of God to pray like some people want it just to preach. Man, if we had as many traveling preachers as we had traveling preachers, we'd upset the world.

The Woman Who Worshiped Jesus

These boys were always going to Israel. I wish they'd go to the cross. All right, we've jumped from there to a beautiful illustration of this in the gospel aspect, and then we'll finish up in Revelation.

Luke chapter 7, there's a story, you know it well enough, let me skip over it. It's a story of a man who was going to make a feast, and I figure that he had some problems. He got a piece of paper, a parchment, and he wrote the names of all the guests that were coming.

You know, the socialites, the millionaires, the manufacturers, the mayor of the town, everybody. He put all the names down. The greatest man in the world was coming to eat at his house. A man called Jesus.

The new sensation. You know, again I remind you, Christianity was not served up to the world on a silver platter. Christianity was born in a slave state. Christianity was born in a sophisticated, totalitarian world.

You preachers think you have it hard, bless your darling hearts. Would you like to have been John the Baptist if there hadn't been a good preacher around for 400 years? And he was the only man in the world with the truth.

Years of stillness and no prophetic voice. 400 years of midnight blackness in poverty, and then like Haley's comics streaking through the sky. Here is a man sent from God, incandescent with the Holy Ghost.

Dear God, I wish he'd give us just about a hundred John the Baptists for America in the next six months. And a hundred for England, and a hundred for Russia, and a hundred for every country in the world.

Man, we'd turn the world upside down. But they got rid of John. He was stupid. He preached against kings as well as commoners. Dear old Dr. Parker in London said somewhere about, I don't know, 1895 or somewhere around there, he said, listen preacher, if you decided to preach repentance, pledge your head to God, you might only last six months like John the Baptist.

John Wesley said in his preaching he offered men Christ. We don't offer sinners Christ. We offer them forgiveness, peace of mind, a home in heaven, a mansion on Main Street, a five-decker crown, free ticket to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

We don't offer them Christ. He offered men Christ. All right. This man is going to have the greatest preacher since John the Baptist, a man called Jesus, a miracle worker. Can you imagine his excitement?

Jesus accepted the invitation. And so what he did, he got the right folk on a list, and then after the folk he decided on the food, and after the food the flowers. And everything was in order. He went to bed that night saying, you know, tomorrow is going to be the greatest day of my life, a day I'll never want to forget.

It became a day he never wanted to remember. Everything went wrong. Tomorrow people will leave my house saying this is the greatest banquet there's ever been for the last fifty years, and they'll talk about my generosity, and all they did was talk about his stupidity.

He made it big that day in everything that was foolish. And he's there busy, busy, busy, busy, and he greets every guest, you know, the Oriental style. He kisses them on either cheek, and he takes them to a slave who washes their feet, and he's so excited.

Here's somebody coming in the latest Cadillac. It was drawn with two big black horses, and somebody else sweeping down the street, and his servant says, Master, Master. He says, hurry up, what's the matter?

Have you burned the roast or something? He said, no. You know that certain woman, oh now look, why bring her up? Well Master, it's not a case of bringing her up. She's in the kitchen here. And the man you call Jesus is there.

You don't mean that. Yeah, he's there. After all, Jesus came into the world through the back door, didn't he, with a suspicion of being illegitimate? I think it was Isaac Watts that wrote the hymn, My Heart and Voice I Raise, and one stanza in it says, A servant's form he wore, and in his body bore our dreadful curse on Calvary.

Isn't it wonderful Jesus never strutted, never showed off? His majesty was his meekness. His greatness was his humility. Can you see this man looking round the door? Goodness, goodness, he says, if he'd been a prophet as I thought, he'd certainly know who she is, for she is a sinner.

And Jesus says, time and a minute, I want to talk to you. There was a certain man who had two debtors. One owed him five hundred pence, the other owed him fifty, and he forgave them both. Which of them would love him most?

Well, I suppose it has to be the man that has the biggest debt. Forgiven loves the man. Exactly the point. Do you know why I love this precious woman? Number one, she wasn't on the visiting list, she wasn't on the guest list.

You see, what she did was unprecedented, but not unpremeditated. She could have lost her head going to a stag party. A woman of her reputation going with all the elites, Pharisees and others, that man, she's asking for murder.

I'll tell you why I love the woman. Number one, she went when she had no right to go. Number two, she was the only one that went to the party that took a gift. They all went to get something. How often do you bring a gift to the house of God?

I don't mean your dollar which has been keeping the kingdom together for the last few years. I mean, what else do you bring besides a stinking dollar or two? Huh? She was the only one that brought a gift.

I know why she came to worship him, because number one, she brought a gift, and number two, she never said anything to him. Can you imagine Dr. Tozer, a brilliant man like him, he was brilliant, lying there worshiping hour after hour after hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, five hours, and he said, Len, I never say a word of prayer.

I never say a word of praise. It's all adoration, contemplation, meditation. I'm overwhelmed with his majesty and his beauty and his glory. Sometimes I stammer out. You can find nearly all the hymns that inspired him.

They're written in a book called the Christian's, thank you dear, Christian's Book of Mystical Verse. Cost you two dollars in softback. It's a marvelous book. He said, Len, I gaze upon his holiness and I say to him how beautiful, how beautiful the sight of thee must be.

Thine endless wisdom, boundless power, and awful purity. Oh Jesus, Jesus, dearest Lord, forgive me if I say for very loud thy sacred name a thousand times a day. Burn, burn within me, love of God. Burn fiercely night and day till all the dross of earthly love is burned and burned away.

No earthly father loves like thee. No mother e 'er so mild bears and forbears as thou with me, thy simple erring child. Oh sometimes I sing, loved with everlasting love, led by grace, that love to know.

Spirit breathing from above, thou hast taught me it is so. All this full and perfect peace, all this transport, all divine. In a love which cannot cease I am in it. When did you last make love to Jesus?

Ministering to Jesus Through Worship

You'll wear yourself out knocking on doors. You could win a thousand people to Jesus Christ every day, and I mean this. God help me, I'll answer the judgment. You could win a thousand souls to Jesus Christ every day and leave Jesus Christ disappointed.

Why? Because you didn't minister to him. You ministered to him because I am needy and you're no spiritual. But you left him, you starved him. Doesn't it say there in Malachi that we rob God? You say I've taught my people to tithe.

If I were a gambling man I'd bet a thousand to one you haven't. You taught them to tithe their money. But that's not what the scripture says. It says bring all the tithes. So you would have to tithe your time.

And a tithe of twenty-four hours is two hours and twenty-four minutes every day. And then you give him an offering on that. So you give him a minimum of three hours a day. I never found it difficult to spend three hours a night with Martha.

Did you? Come on now, don't look so embarrassed. Maybe I haven't even told you how much I loved her for months. But I could spend three hours. I used to go over the mountains in a broken down old car and see Martha and enjoy an hour and go back and risk my life in the dark with a car that was blind in both eyes nearly and rheumatism in the wheels and it had asthma in the motor and the poor thing it coughed and sneezed its way over the mountain and I got trapped one night in a snowstorm.

And all I did was, because the mountain was like that, I sat down on my legs like this and I slid three miles down the mountainside. Left my car up there. Martha told me not to go, bless her, but I wanted to get back to a church, I passed it.

And I nearly got frostbitten. I was hungry. And I kept thinking it's all right for her. She's at home in the hospital which she happened to be the matron of at nine. Dear Martha, I'm glad she's not here now, man.

But you know what? I never wrote her a letter to tell her how I sacrificed. You know when you gave that girl that ring, that big ugly, that big ring. It was like a cauliflower or something. And you put it on her hand and you said, I want you to realize this, my dear.

I've been saving for this ring for three years. Do you know what there is in that ring? About 4 ,500 hamburgers, about 200 bottles of coke. And you have no idea what's in that ring. So you better look after it.

Don't do that. The poet says love ever stands with open hands and while it lives it gives and this is love's prerogative to give and give and give. And this woman knew she was coming to Jesus. Oh, maybe if you'd seen her heart it was going like that and she slips in.

And when she saw him she looked at him. Now the custom was that she should wash his feet with water. She said, not on your life. I wouldn't wash his feet with water. I'd wash them with my tears. Maybe Charles Wesley got his inspiration there for his hymn when he said, oh let me kiss thy bleeding feet and bathe and wash them with my tears.