Search Results for: A Free Spirit

Well, let’s think a little bit about the pathway to living a relaxed, comfortable life; really freedom. Everybody’s interested in freedom. I want to be free; I want to do my own thing. Well, I’d like to just talk about that a little bit. I think of this gentleman that came to see me one time. He was kind of mad at his wife, and one of the reasons he gave me was this. He said, “I just hate to come home from work because I know perfectly well that if I turn into the driveway, and if my wife got there ahead of me, she’s going to have her car parked smack in the middle of that carport. And I’ve said to her time and time again, ‘Jane, won’t you please either park your car to the left or to the right of that carport?  We’ve got two cars, and they both ought to be in that carport.’ But no, if she comes home ahead of me, that car is parked right in the middle of that carport, and she just makes me so mad.”

That’s what he said. So he’s always got a decision to make if his wife came home first. Either he’s going to let his car parked in the driveway, or he’s got to dig out his key and back her car up, and move it over, and back his in; and according to him, you see, his serenity, and his peace of mind and his joy depends upon a choice that his wife makes. Would you buy that? Is that right?

Now, I was talking to a lady and she was telling me about a discovery that she made that really startled her. She was down on her husband. Now remember the other night, I was saying, that if you’re going to be a contented person, you need to be happily aware of the whole person that you have to deal with. And by the whole person, when you think of anybody that you know, think of the person you like the best. That person has qualities and strong points and good points and some faults, right? Everybody is like that, and so we need to be happily aware of the whole person.

We don’t have any problem with people’s strengths, do we? Now that man that I was telling you about, you see, was at the mercy of his wife’s choices. He was unhappily aware of the fact that she knew what he wanted and wouldn’t do it. Now when you know somebody won’t do something that’s important to you, you see, there’s a choice to make there, isn’t there? You can resent that person, you can become bitter, you can dwell on the fact that there is some little old thing that this person isn’t doing that you want them to do, and it can ruin your relationship.

One lady was telling me this. Her husband was the kind of a fellow who knew what she expected of him in terms of how he dressed; but time and again, they would go somewhere where most of the men would wear a tie, and how does he dress? He comes busting out of the house in a sports shirt, and it just upset her and he’d just soothe her, “Calm down honey, it’s all right.”

He was one of these extroverts; you know one of these hand shaking, back slapping, and “Hey old fella. Hi Everybody!” and he was loud like that, and she was quiet and sort of shy. And you know that just annoyed her for him to act that way, and she got so that she could hardly stand him. Oh, he had such wonderful qualities, but he was loud and a back slapper, and he insisted on wearing sport shirts.

And so, he realized that she was upset, and he decided he was going to do something real nice for her and he said, “Honey, we’re going on a Caribbean cruise.” Now that’s pretty nice. A steamer out on the Caribbean Sea in the moonlight. Doesn’t that sound great? She figured that would be fine all right, and she needed a change. What kind of a situation could you possibly get into that would bring the best out of you than the Caribbean Sea and a steamer in the moonlight?

So there they went on their cruise and the first night he comes busting out of the stateroom in a sport shirt, and she figured he should have worn a neck tie, but he didn’t wear a neck tie, and so they headed up for the place where everybody was out on deck. He was out there, “Hello my friend this is my name!” And there he was the same old hand shaking, back slapping, loud …”did you ever hear this joke, folks?”… that kind of a fellow. And she said, “I discovered something about me. I was my same nasty self in the Caribbean in the moonlight as I was at home.”

You know, a lot of us have found that out, haven’t we? That your inner life doesn’t depend on where you are really. That you can be pretty consistent. I think of a gentleman and his wife that came to see me one time. And here again, you see, you don’t come to see me unless you’re pretty unhappy with life. People don’t make an appointment with a psychologist in order to tell him how well things are going. It’s always the other way around. We usually start with people who would rather not be there in the first place, that’s where we start. They hate to come to see us, and they want to make it as brief as possible. You have to get used to that idea.

Well, now, this lady was explaining some of her antagonism. I say, “What are some of the things that disturb you?” She said, “Well, for instance, there’s the kitchen. The faucet is dripping, and I explained to my husband that I would like him to fix the faucet, and he just doesn’t get around to it. You know we put the children to bed, and we sit down in the living room and everything gets quiet, and what do I hear? Drip, drip, drip, drip, and pretty soon I start tuning my ear in to listen for that drip, and the longer it drips, the madder I get. “Now why won’t he fix that faucet? He tends his lawn. Why, he’s got a perfect lawn, and if he can put that much time into his lawn, why can’t he fix my faucet?”

So I said, “Sir,” this fine gentleman, “Why don’t you fix the faucet?”

He said, “Well I’ll tell you. When my wife irons my shirts I say to my wife, ‘I would like you to put the collar stays in my shirts when you iron them. Now time and time again, it’s morning, you know, and I’m half asleep, and I’m putting on a shirt, no collar stays. That just burns me up. Now why won’t she put collar stays in my shirt? And if she won’t put collar stays in my shirt, I’m not going to fix the faucet.”

Now isn’t that amazing? How much education does it take in order for an individual to be generous and kind, in spite of what the partner does?

I’m thinking of another man whose complaint about his wife is she won’t close anything. I mean if she opens the cupboard door, she won’t close it. If she opens a bureau door, she won’t close it, and they have one of these things in the dining room, you know, where they keep their dishes, and if she opens that door to get something out, she doesn’t close it.

And so, when he comes home from work, he goes through the house closing things, and he’s slamming this one and slamming this one and shoving that one in, and why won’t she close those doors. Well now, she knows what he thinks about open doors, and he’s discovered that he can have a tantrum, he can sulk, he can rant, but she’s not about to close those doors.

Now do you see what I’m pointing out? That if you want to be free, if you want to live an easy going life, you need to find a way of becoming happily aware of the other people in your life which include the strong points and the commendable side of everybody, but everybody’s got that other side, haven’t they?

And often the thing that divides us is that we are so unhappily, so antagonistically aware of the side of a person that is a small side, too. Doesn’t really amount to much, but the presence of another person will reveal your spirit, won’t it? Not cause it, just reveal it. And it’s pretty important that we face up to some of these characteristics about ourselves. Because, mind you what I said now, the presence of another person will reveal your spirit, and how important it is for you to come to grips with the kind of person you are.

Now I don’t very often read out of a book, but I have a friend that wrote a book. He’s a physician, Dr. S. I. McMillian, and he wrote a book called, “One of These Diseases”,and there’s a few paragraphs in here that I’d like to read. He says, “The moment that I start hating a man, I become his slave. I cannot enjoy my work anymore because he even controls my thoughts. My resentments produce too many stress hormones in my body, and I become fatigued after only a few hours of work.”

Have you ever heard people say that? “You make me tired,” and you’re tired because when you become antagonistic and hostile, you find these bodily changes taking place. Your muscles tense up, and that’s hard work to keep your muscles all tensed up like that, and you can wear yourself out sitting in a chair by just being all tensed up, and that’s what he is saying here. “I become fatigued after only a few hours of work and the work I formerly enjoyed is now drudgery.”

You know, I happen to be a business man, and we have some employees, and I’ve observed this happening in my own organization. Well, we may have a waitress who is very happy with her job, and then we happen to hire another waitress that this first one doesn’t like, and it changes her whole outlook. Maybe she just doesn’t like the way the new waitress speaks up, and I’ve seen people quit a job they liked because of the presence of somebody else. You know, just too much stress around that person, and so if you’re going to be free and not be a slave to what other people do, you need to be happily aware of the whole person and that included his strong points and that includes his weak points.

Now when that’s not true, he says, “Even vacations cease to give me pleasure anymore.” That’s what that lady found out when she took her cruise.

“It may be a luxurious car that I drive along the lake fringed with the optimal beauty of maple and oak and birch and as far as my experience of pleasure is concerned, I might as well be driving a wagon in the mud and the rain. The man I hate hounds me wherever I go. I cannot escape his tyrannical grasp on my mind, and when a waitress serves me porterhouse steak with french fries and asparagus and crisp salad and strawberry shortcake smothered with ice cream, it might as well be stale bread and water. My teeth chew the food and I swallow it, but the man I hate will not permit me to enjoy it.”

Sound familiar? King Solomon must have had a similar experience, for he wrote, “Better a dish of vegetables with love, than the best beef served with hatred.”

“The man I hate may be miles away from my bedroom, but more cruel than any slave driver, he whips my thoughts into such frenzy that my inner spring mattress becomes a rack of torture and the lowliest of servants can sleep, but not me. I really must acknowledge the fact that I am a slave to every man on whom I pour the viles of my wrath.” How true that is.

Now your manner of life is not going to be determined by people and circumstances, it’s going to be revealed by people and circumstances. Now, I want to remind you of a term that I’ve been using. The Apostle Paul used this term in trying to be helpful to his friends the Corinthians and he said to them, “I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual people but as unto carnal people.”

Now that’s a word that we ought to become familiar with, and those of us who don’t understand the Bible, that may be a strange word: carnal. And he said that I have to be careful how I treated you because you were carnal. And then in the third verse, he describes what he means. “If there is envying,” that is if you are annoyed and disgruntled and uncomfortable over somebody else’s success and somebody else’s opportunities, and somebody else’s wealth, and you cannot enjoy these people because you envy them. Envy is a part of carnality and strife, wrangling, scrapping, fighting, and disagreeing, if there’s that kind of spirit, and divisions, unresolved issues.

Now those stories that I told you, you see, it reflected people who were like that. Unresolved issues, wrangling, scrapping, fighting, and he also says in Ephesians, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice.” Now these kinds of responses to life we need to deal with, if we’re going to be effective partners. As I’m saying, the people in your life bring out of you what’s in you.

Now you might say to me, “You make me mad.” Well I can’t make you mad if you’re filled with joy. All I can stir up is your joy. If you’re mad, I didn’t put it there, I’m just bringing it out. I’m not putting it in, is that right?

Then he talks about the spiritual man and I think this is important for us to realize that there is such a thing as a spiritual man. A man who has, at his fingertips in his inner life, the resources of God. Now which are you? Carnal or spiritual? What’s carnal? Envious, arguing, quarreling, striving, and there are divisions and unresolved conflicts in your life. Is that your description, or would you be described as a man filled with the Spirit of God, full of love, and joy, and peace, and gentleness, and kindness, and long suffering, and faith, and patience, and temperance? Locate yourself.

I sometimes talk to people and they say, “I’ve tried to contact God. I’ve prayed and wept and He won’t hear me.” I don’t believe it. The Bible says He’ll hear anybody that comes to Him, but let me read you a Bible verse that’s in Isaiah 59:1-2. It says, “The Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save, and neither is His ear heavy that He cannot hear.”

Now mind you I don’t deny that people cry out to God, and He doesn’t seem to hear. I’m saying that you don’t approach Him on His terms. What is it that separates you from God? You might have tried to contact Him, and it seems like you can’t get in touch with Him. Well listen to this, it is your iniquities that have separated between you and your God, and it is your sins that have hidden His face from you. Not your mother’s sins, not your father’s, not your partner’s, yours.

So, how do you get in touch with God? You see it’s important for us to realize that we don’t get in touch with God in terms of telling Him about somebody else, but in terms of ourselves. You know, Isaiah 53:6 says, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, and we have gone everyone unto his own way.”

Now you see this was the difficulty with those people that I was telling you about. The man said, “Park your car over here.” The woman said, “No, I’m going to park it here.”

The lady said, “Please wear a tie.” The man said, “I won’t.” The lady said, “Don’t be so loud,” and the man said, “I will.”

The lady said, “Why don’t you fix my faucet?” and he said, “I won’t fix your faucet because you won’t iron my shirts the way I want you to.”

The man says, “Why can’t she close those doors?” She says, “I won’t close those doors.”

You see how true the Bible is? What is the dilemma? What is it that divides people? “All of us like sheep have gone astray” … all of us … “and we have gone every one” … where? … “unto our own way.”  Isn’t that the sweetest music to anybody’s ears? Let’s do it my way.

I’ve often said to myself, “I think so clearly, I don’t understand why my wife doesn’t get it.” What do I mean? Well, I just like my thinking. And this is the dilemma, you see, when we put two or more people together, it becomes a contest, doesn’t it? My way verses your way.

And the rest of the verse says, “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” And what is the iniquity of us all? It’s that strong, tremendous drive within every man to do what? To do what you want to do. And see, when somebody else has a few little characteristics that don’t suit you, if everything has to be your way, then those little things can ruin your relationship.

One of the most important decisions that anybody has to make is to come face-to-face with the fact that you have to correct this tendency to want your own way, and the verse says all of us have gone our own way and the Lord hath laid on him, on Jesus, the iniquity of us all. What is the iniquity of us all? Why it’s the tendency to go your own way. And the preparation then for marriage, the preparation for an effective partnership with anybody, is to first of all to come to grips with the tendency to go your own way. There’s a lot of hope there because you can do that.

Now this is why you need a Savior. Why? To be saved from yourself. To be saved from having to have your own way, and to be able to be happily related to the whole person in your life which includes his qualities and it includes his liabilities. Why? Because joy is a quality that God will give you. Joy does not depend upon the perfect behavior of one of your friends. Joy does not depend upon the perfect behavior of your partner or your children. Joy is something that comes from God, and that’s why you need a Savior.

And so Jesus said, “Nobody comes to the Father, but by Me.” And He says, “Behold I stand at the door and knock. Anybody that will open that door, I will come in unto him, and I will sup with him, and he with Me.” That’s why you need a Savior.

This is why you need to invite Jesus Christ to come into your life, so that it will correct this tendency to have to have it your way. And until that’s correct, any little thing that you don’t like about somebody else can spoil your relationship. And so the best preparation for being an effective, free, individual, free from other people’s choices, is to come to grips with this tendency to have to have it your own way. How do you do that? By confessing that it’s there, by asking God to forgive you, by inviting Jesus Christ to come into your life, and give you the power to be able to correct that tendency. And then, and only then, will you be able to cooperate with somebody else.

It’s my conviction that the way the parents go in the family is the way the family goes. I came across a few lines that say that for me and I want to read them to you.

It was a sheep and not a lamb that went astray
In the parable that Jesus told,
It was a grown up sheep that wandered away
From the ninety and nine in the fold.
Out on the hilltops, and out in the cold,
It was a sheep that the Good Shepherd sought.
Back to the flock, and back to the fold,
It was a sheep that the good shepherd brought.
Now why should the sheep be so carefully sought
And cared for still today?
Because there is danger and if they go wrong
They will lead the lambs astray.
For the lambs will follow the sheep, you know,
Wherever they wander and wherever they go.
And if the sheep go wrong it won’t be long
Until the lambs are as wrong as they.
So still with the sheep we must earnestly plead
For the sake of the lambs, even today.
If the lambs are lost what a terrible cost
Some sheep will have to pay.

That good? I think it’s good for all of us recognize the opportunity and the possibility and the responsibility that we have. And to me one of the most pleasant tasks I ever had was the task of being a father. I still enjoy that, and we’ve had a lot of fun raising our family.

I want to remind you that raising children is a twenty year process. Twenty years. So those of you with preschool children you have a ways to go, haven’t you? So relax, take it easy, there isn’t any one day that makes a whole lot of difference, not in the perspective of twenty years.

There are some people who think that. I’ve heard folks say, “I’m this way because I got buttoned up wrong when I was three.”

I think that’s one of the dumbest ideas I ever heard. In my own counseling experience with people I’m not particularly interested in your past. When I realize that you and I have access to the power of God, we have access to His spirit and He will answer anybody’s prayer who turns to Him for help.

I don’t know any place in the Bible where it says that your opportunity to reach an empty hand out to God is hindered because you had a mother. I don’t see anywhere that it says that your opportunity is hindered because of your background or your circumstances. I understand the Bible to say that whoever wants to can call on God for help. That’s good news isn’t it?

There are some things that we need to do as parents and one of them is setting limits. Now picture this real nice lady and this real nice man sitting down together and they’re friends. Now mind you, that’s a condition that I’m presupposing. I’m assuming good will and friendship and admiration and affection one toward another. Now that’s not optional, you can’t take that out of the picture. If that doesn’t exist, then any man that I’m talking to, any woman that I’m talking to, and you’re married, and there is this spirit of carnality that is envying and strife and divisions between you and your partner, that renders you pretty useless as a parent.

One of the most difficult positions that you can put a child into is in the middle between a man and a woman who disagree over what to do with those children. Setting limits involves this nice lady and this nice man and they’re friends, sitting down. Now mind you, these people, I’m presupposing, that you’ve paid enough attention to your children so that you understand them, and the two of you sitting down to decide what’s best for your children. Doesn’t that sound great? That two people in the world who care the most about those children deciding what’s best for them? Anybody that loves the Lord. I want to make that qualification. I didn’t say anybody that was educated or wealthy. Anybody that loves the Lord and has access to the Spirit of the Lord and there is the desire to come to a meeting of minds. I can’t think of anything that’s any more fun than two people like that deciding what’s best for your children.

Now part of what you do is to set limits: These are the boundaries, this is what you do, this is what you don’t do. There’s a lot of freedom within the boundaries, just like a football stadium. A football field is a hundred yards long and I don’t know how wide, it’s pretty wide, but there are very definite, specific boundaries on a football field or a basketball court or a tennis court. But within those boundaries there’s an infinite variety of opportunity to express your individuality. There are boundaries, and that’s the way it needs to be in a home. There are boundaries, and when you set them you can expect your children to test them.

Let me tell you a story about a boy I was talking to and what happens when a man and his wife disagree. Now this boy, they brought him around because he was smoking and the parents were concerned about that and so they had made a deal with him a while back. They said, “If you promise to quit smoking we’ll buy you a bicycle.”

He said, “It’s a deal.”

So they bought him a bicycle and it wasn’t long and they realized that he was smoking again.

They said, “If you will quit smoking, we’ll send you to your favorite summer camp.”

He said, “It’s a deal.”

When he came home from his summer camp they discovered that he was smoking again and they brought him to me because they were concerned that they had a son who wouldn’t keep his word. You couldn’t trust him.

Well I got to talking to him and this is what I found out. His father had an idea that you shouldn’t have ice cream during the day and you know what his mother would do? Every once in a while she would pick the kids up from school and they would stop in to get an ice cream sundae and the deal was, “Don’t tell Dad.” Wasn’t she a nice lady?

Now there was another thing that he told me. These people went to a church and one of the standards that you accept if you join that church is that you don’t drink alcoholic beverages. But Dad was the kind of a fellow that liked a good, cold beer when he came home from work. So that’s what he did. He had a good, cold beer, and the requirement was that mums the word. Nobody talks about Dad’s beer.

Now where did this young fellow get the idea that he could make an agreement and then break it? Where did he learn that? Isn’t it obvious? He learned it from his mother. He learned it from his father. These were people who pretended that they were accepting some limits and then they went ahead and broke them. Mother made a little deal with the kids, now why shouldn’t the boy make a little deal with Dad and not intend to keep it. Where did he get that idea? The example of his mother. When you set a limit, that limit ought to be binding on everybody in the family including Dad and Mom and the children, if it’s fair and reasonable.

You can expect your children to resist those limits and to test them. One time I was speaking at a conference ground and my daughter came up to me just before the meeting and said, “Hey Dad, could I have the keys to the car after the meeting? I want to take a car load of kids up to Santa Cruz.”

I didn’t pay much attention so I said, “Okay.” And I went to a platform and made my speech about how important it is for a man and his wife to be agreed on the limits and both committed to them.

After I got through with my speech and this place where I was at they had a big foyer in the back and there were a lot of people milling around the back and I walked back there and my daughter came up with her car load of kids behind her and said, “Dad I want the keys now.”

My wife was standing there and she said, “I told you you couldn’t go.”

There were some people that heard that. We started assembling another little congregation there to see how is he going to handle that. After all it is true, isn’t it, that you can’t think of everything, especially when you’re traveling. We had a little rule at our house that said the first parent you ask, that’s it. All I needed to do was to find out who she had asked first and it turned out that she had asked her mother first. That’s what you call testing the limits. You can expect your children to pick times like that to do this. In a moment like that I had to make a decision quick, will we raise children or save face? We are committed to raising children and so I said to my daughter, “Well you know the answer if you asked your mother first.”

Then her response was, “But Dad, you are embarrassing me in front of all these people.”

Now I’ll tell you, that’s a child putting pressure on you isn’t it? She new perfectly well what she was doing, and she knew what the limit was. And for us to make sure that that limit holds, that’s security, that’s dependability.

And it’s very crucial and very important that your children realize that my mother and father have set limits, they’ve made them plain, and I can depend upon my father and my mother to carry them out. Very important point because all through life there are limits and there are people making requirements of us.

In the restaurant business they tell us how high off the ground our sign has to be. They even tell us what kind of a sign we can have. I remember an inspector walked into one of our restaurants, and there was an inspector there with a barrel beside him and a pile of our plates and he was going through those plates and every once in a while he would break one over his knee and throw it in that big can.

I said, “What are you doing? These are our plates.”

He said, “I don’t like the shine on these plates,” and he just kept on breaking our plates.

And you know what I did? I said to him, “That’s okay.” He had a right to do that.

We had a call one time. He claimed he was from an organization called the I.R.S and he wanted to come and look at our books. Now who is he to come and look at our books? You know what I said to our bookkeeper? “Get the books ready.”

I have more people telling me what to do at this stage of my life that I have ever had telling me in my life. So we might as well get our children ready to obey some limits. I think one of the frightening things in our country is this tremendous wave of undependability and dishonesty that you see on every hand. Setting limits is one of the requirements and one of the opportunities of being a parent.

When you set limits, many times your children are going to need some help. For instance, there was a television room and there were four children in this television room. And the understanding was no horseplay in the television room. And one of the smaller children was in an ugly mood that morning and she was going around pestering the other three children. Now the limit was no fooling around in the television room. Now how is a mother going to handle that? Here’s a little girl, she woke up in an ugly mood and she was trying to figure out how to make herself obnoxious. What’s the simplest little way to handle that girl? She needed some help. Now her mother was a pretty creative person. I suppose some of you would say you go on in there and swat her. No, then you create a louder mess than you had before, that’s no solution. She’s already in an ugly mood and to create a yelling, screaming, hollering child. That lady went into the television room. First of all she prepared just as an attractive of breakfast as she knew that little child wanted and she just simply bodily removed her, plunked her in front of the table, and fed her something. All that little girl needed was help in behaving herself. You follow me there? Simple solution.

You say, “What are you going to do? Do that all of her life?” Look, you’ve got twenty years to raise these children; you don’t need to make a crisis on any one day. Be as easy on yourself as you can. You have enforced the limit, she’s not going to be allowed to bother those kids in the television room, she just simply was removed until she could take care of that nasty mood of hers. Help, physical help.

I was in a home one time, we were in the living room and there was a little boy in the kitchen saying, “Oh you nasty, filthy, dirty old thing. I hate you. I can’t do anything with you.”

We went in the kitchen to peek, and what the little boy was trying to do was to move a chair and the chair got squeezed in an opening. All the little boy needed was a little help and all the mother needed to do was to turn the chair a little bit and move it. I’ve been in homes where a mother, because they had company would say, “Would you stop hollering? Don’t you realize we’ve got company out there in the living room?” The mother would create a great big mess. All this lady needed to do was to go quietly in the kitchen and say, “You need some help, don’t you? Just turn it a little bit and you can move it.” Isn’t that simple?

What a mess we create many many times because we just don’t understand that all the child needed was just a little help. Maybe your child simply needs a demonstration or some kind of an explanation.

A man was telling me about their little girl and the mother was complaining that that little girl simply wouldn’t brush her teeth. One day Dad was home and he was standing there in the bathroom and he realized that nobody had ever shown that little child how to brush her teeth. You can just unthinkingly say, “Here’s a toothbrush, use it.” Now if you set that kind of a limit every morning you brush your teeth, and if you’re thoughtful and do a little observing, that fellow resolved that issue very simply. He realized that kid needed a little instruction.

I think of this girl who went roller skating. She wanted to go roller skating so much, and this was one of the pressures that the mother was putting on a child to socialize with her group, and she realized when she got there that her little girl didn’t know how to roller skate. Some folks would say, ”Get out there and try.” All that lady did was get out there and give her a few little tips, a helper and so we need to think of ourselves as adults, as helping people. We need to set limits and then we need to help the children carry out the limits.

Now another thing we need is supervision. I think of this lady who put a piece of paper on the wall. This was a wallpaper wall and said to the child, “Here are some crayons and you can color on this paper.” She got busy and when she came back that child had colored the whole wall. That woman was so mad.

“Didn’t I tell you to limit your coloring to that little paper?” That’s asking too much of a small child. When you put a piece of paper on the wall and say to the small child, “You stay within those limits,” you had better stay there and supervise that child. Personal supervision.

You might say to your children, “It’s okay to go out tonight, but I want you back at ten o’clock.” What your children need is some supervision. One of the most important things I believe we ever did when we were raising our children was to see to it that one of us parents was always there when our children came home. They didn’t like it, but when your children realize that somebody is going to be there when you get there, that’s quite a deterrent and an encouragement.

And they would often say, “Why are you always waiting for me?”

Well the answer is very simple, “We love you, we’re interested in you, we want to know what you’ve been doing and we want to make sure that you get home when you said you were going to.”

So it takes some supervision in order to keep track of your children. The older your children get they need your personal supervision. I’ve seen children get into all kinds of trouble because their parents allowed their teenagers to have a party at their house and the parents took off and left them there unsupervised. Your personal supervision is necessary if you want to really help your children to grow up.

Now another thing that you can do for your children is to use pressure.

“It’s time to go to church.”

“I won’t go.”

That’s time to use a little pressure.

Some folks would say, “If you won’t go I’ll hit you.” That’s not good.

What kind of pressure gets them to church? You lock your arm in his or hers and march them to church, that’s pressure.

Some of you say, “Well when I do that the kids sneak out the other door.”

If they sneak out then you sit them beside you and when they say, “What’s the matter? Don’t you trust me?”

The answer is “No. You’ve got to prove to me that you are worthy of being left out of my sight.”

You need to help your children, and you need to supervise your children, and you need to use pressure. Now mind you I’m talking about limits. I’m talking about expectations that in your judgment and in your wife’s judgment is a good thing for your children.

I was in a restaurant one time and there was a little boy standing in the door, and there was a cold breeze coming in the restaurant. The mother said, “Don’t you think you ought to close that door?”

The little boy said, “No.”

“Aw, come on, close the door.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Look at those people, they’re cold.”

“I don’t care.”

A man got up out of his chair and he walked over to that kid and he took him by the hand and he marched him over to his mother and sat him down and said, “Stay there.” That little boy looked up at that man and that man looked down at that boy and the little boy looked at his mother and his mother looked at that man as though he was a miracle man and he said to the lady, “All you need to do lady is sit him down.”

The little boy needed some help. He simply needed some adult help. The man didn’t even say anything. Even a kid is smart enough to realize that that’s a sensible decision that the man made. Parenthood isn’t very difficult. All it involves is some deep convictions, and your own example and a loving spirit, that’s all. It takes a nice man and a nice lady who like each other and who agree on what the limits are. And then you set those limits, you help them, you supervise them, and use whatever pressure you need in order for them to do what in your considered judgment is in their best interests. That’s what’s involved in raising children.

I’ve been talking about what goes on underneath your skin. I want to impress upon you the fact that it’s your skin and there isn’t any place that you can go to get away from your own skin. And I can’t think of any subject that’s more important than dealing with the spirit of a man because that’s the part that actually does go on underneath your skin. Now, I want to start off by sharing with you a little story that happened to me. I’ve alluded to it a few times, but it was a life-changing experience for me, and it started during World War II.

In those days, I was an engineer and I had this boss that delighted in riding us. As I mentioned, when he wanted one of us he’d load his jaw with chewing tobacco, and he’d glare out across the engineering department chewing his cud like that, and we knew somebody was going to get it, and we all braced ourselves. And then he’d let out an Indian war whoop, ”Brandt!” and as I said, that made me instantly furious. Instantly furious, just as mad as I could be.

Well you don’t tell off your boss unless you want another job, and so as I said, I developed the art of looking like this; even though I was mad. I have discovered that this is true of so many people that enter the consulting room. We always start off the same way. They’re smiling and I’m smiling, and I say, “Hi, how are you?” and they say they’re fine, and I know that isn’t true or they wouldn’t be there. We seem to get the idea that Christianity is to control your emotions.

As long as I don’t let my anger show, I’m being a good Christian. But I just want to remind you that just because you hold it in isn’t dealing with it, Because there’s where you suffer the most, Because it’s under your skin that this anger is going on, and it tenses up your muscles and it messes up your digestion. What a foolish thing to try to contain your hostility. Well anyway, I did, and I found that I couldn’t do it twenty-four hours a day, and I would go home and maybe the radio was on too loud or something, and I’d say to Eva, “Shut that radio off!,” And I would say to myself, “Well who wouldn’t yell when a woman is that inconsiderate of me?”

Or I’d say to my little preschool boy, “Pick up that toy.” And if he didn’t pick it up I’d whack him one all out of proportion to anything that he did. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever behaved that way, but I know that I did. And I would tell myself day after day that I’m going to cut it out, and yet I found myself doing it all the time. And I began searching the scriptures for a key, and there’s a few important Bible verses that I want to share with you because they changed my life. In fact, not only did they change my life, but they changed my profession.

The first one is in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 31. Ephesians 4:31, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice.” Now that verse says that you can let that happen. And when I read that verse, I didn’t like it, because I didn’t even want that to happen. And I argued with myself that there’s nothing wrong with me being bitter, and wrathful, and angry, and malicious toward my boss. After all, the way he treats me and the way he talks to me I’m entitled to feel that way. And I didn’t like that Bible verse.

You know, in my profession as a counselor for the last twenty-five years, I’ve been using that Bible verse and I’ve been watching people respond to it initially the same way that I did. I mean you’ve got to be kidding. Why do you expect me to change? What about the other person? You see, there’s a rejection of that verse.

I like the next verse less. “Be kind one to another and tenderhearted, and forgiving even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” When I read that verse it made me mad.

Now the reason that I bring it up is because I run into this all the time where people get angry at the Bible. Oh, you know, it’s easy to say that this is the most precious book in the world, and this is God’s Word. That’s easy to say, but in practice I might just be describing your struggle like I was describing mine. That’s the last thing in the world that I wanted to have happen to me, to be kind and tenderhearted, and forgiving to that man.

Then when I thought of my wife and the lack of consideration that she had for me, and not making any attempt to understand all of the pressures that I’m under, why shouldn’t I get mad at her, and that little brat of a kid? I guess I was thinking that if my world would disappear, I’d be happy, and we often do that don’t we? If somebody else would change, I would be happy. If my wife would be more considerate, it would release all of these good, fine qualities within me, and it’s her fault that they’re locked up in there.

Now that’s about as wrong as you can get, but that’s the way I was talking to myself, and I was convinced that that was true. That I’m glum and miserable and sad, and it’s all my boss’ fault, and my wife’s fault, and that little child’s fault. I’ve had mothers say to me, “Oh these three children are driving me mad.” Three little preschoolers. Imagine a woman’s mental health in the hands of three preschoolers. Obviously that’s not where mental health comes from, or most mothers would be sunk.

You know I got to thinking about those verses, and I decided that they were right after all, and so I was going to be kind and tenderhearted, and forgiving toward my boss. You know I can make up my mind to do things. I’ve done a lot of things just by making up my mind to do them, so I decided I was going to cut it out. I was not gonna be mad at him anymore, and I screwed up my determination.

You know in a few days, one day he reaches into his back pocket and takes out his pouch and loads his jaw, and there he is, and he said, “Brandt!” And you know what? I was just as mad as ever. I found out that I couldn’t just decide to cut it out. Maybe you’ve had that experience, too. Well, I know since several of you have come up to me and said to me that, “I have asked the Lord to change me, and He wouldn’t do it.” I mean you’re serious. A lot of us take that position. I’m different, I’m a special case. God never had one like me.

Or people would say to me, “Doc if you would just listen to my story you would understand why the scriptures don’t apply to me. I mean I’m really something else.” Well anyway, that’s the way it was with me, and I spent a lot of days mumbling and grumbling about a book that tells you to do something you can’t do. I repeat, I’m telling you this because I hear it over and over and over again. “I’ve tried to do what the Bible says, and it doesn’t work.” That’s right, if you tried to do what the Bible says, it won’t work.

It isn’t difficult to do what the Bible says, it’s impossible, and you just can’t crank yourself up to do what the Bible says. Well I finally, I kept reading though, and I found a passage of scripture that changed my life, really changed my life. I’m talking about something that happened way back in the forties, not only changed my life, but changed my career. And these are the verses in 2nd Corinthians chapter three starting with the fourth verse. “Such trust have we through Christ God ward, not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything is of ourselves.”

When I read that I didn’t like that either. Did you listen to what I was reading? “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything is of ourselves.” And I had to say to myself, “That’s simply not true. I am not insufficient. I got an education all by myself without God’s help.” Our universities are full of students getting educations, and they don’t need God’s help. In fact, they are consciously rejecting Him. You don’t need God’s help in order to get an education. “I got a job without God’s help, and I acquired some wealth without His help. I can live up to the etiquette book without His help.”

When you stop to think about it, there’s a lot of things that you can do without God’s help, aren’t there? Oh it’s easy to say I can’t do anything without the Lord, but you can, too! I’m bringing this up because a lot of us stumble over that. After I got through sputtering about that verse, I started reading again and I found the answer. And a lot of times when we read the Bible, we quit too soon.

Now let me keep on reading. “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything is of ourselves but our sufficiency is of God who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament not of the letter but of the Spirit.” Did you get that? Did you follow that? You know every once in awhile I will read a Bible verse to my clients, and I’ll say, “Isn’t that great?” And they’ll say, “Yeah that was great.” And I’ll say, “What did it say?” and they would say, “I don’t know.”

Now I’m not just going to assume that you followed that. I didn’t get it right away. Now let me go through that a little slow, because I want to make sure you get this point. This can be a life changing point for you. “He will make you an able minister of the New Testament, not of the letter but of the Spirit.” Now you, by sheer willpower can live up to the letter of the law. You can control yourself. You can act decent. As I say, I can be furious with a smile on my face, and a lot of us are saying that way.

I wouldn’t let my anger go because I’m a Christian, but the thing that I finally got through my thick head was that living up to the letter of the law, that is simply taking charge of myself and controlling myself, would kill me! It was making a bundle of tensions out of me. It’s the Spirit that giveth life! And what I got through my head was that one thing that I can’t do for myself is to control my Spirit. I can’t make it, I can control it, but that’s all. I cannot live up to the Spirit through the law.

Oh, I can sound loving, and I can act loving, but I couldn’t be loving, and I hope you get the difference between sounding like a Christian, and being one. Now anybody can improve their acting ability. If you work on improving your act, that is, you’re gonna sound more like a Christian a year from now than you do now. You will succeed. If you determine to act more like a Christian a year from now than you do now, you’ll likely succeed. But I’ll tell you, you’re going to be cold and empty on the inside. You know the Christian life is not a matter of improving your acting ability.

The Christian life is a matter of yielding yourself to His Spirit, and one thing that I was absolutely sure of, and that is that I couldn’t love my boss, or my wife, or my little boy. I could act like it and I could sound like it, but that’s not the same as being. Being quiet on the inside like you sound. You know, I asked the Lord. First of all I had to recognize the fact that one thing I can’t do Lord, I’m helpless. All my boss has to do is holler, “Brandt!” and I’m instantly angry, and I can’t help myself, but I want to love him.

I don’t know, nothing happened. But you know, I remember the day very well when my boss loaded his jaw with his tobacco, and he’s scanning the engineering department and he yelled, “Brandt!,” and to my surprise, I wasn’t mad at him. I wasn’t! For the first time that I could remember, the smile on my face reflected my spirit, and I want to tell you, that was an incredible experience for me. I’m not trying to say that I yielded every day to the Lord, but everyday that I did, the Lord was always there.

Across these years it’s made a tremendous difference in my life, and it’s made a tremendous difference in the live of thousands of people. You know, one day my boss called me in the office, “Brandt!  Come in here!” And by now he amused me. I mean I actually enjoyed watching that guy. I tell you, what a difference to enjoy watching an old crab being an old crab, because he’s an old crab. What a pitiful thing to see an old crab. Wonderful to be released from that, and as I say, I began enjoying him. I walked in, “What do you want?”

He says, “What’s got into you? You seem to be in a good mood lately.” You know, I didn’t realize it, but he noticed something different. I didn’t change my smile, I didn’t change my tone of voice, but he noticed something different. You know, one day one of my fellow engineers, we’re walking out into the plant to look at a machine, and he said to me, “Hey Brandt, you seem to be happy lately. Are you?” You know that’s how an engineer thinks, he’s not going to take anything for granted, like the two scientists riding in a train and one says, “Hey look out the window. All those sheep have been sheered.” And the other scientist said, “Well, at least they’ve been sheered on this side.” That’s how a scientist thinks. And this fellow wasn’t going to take any chances, and so that’s what he said. “You seem to be happy, lately. Are you?”

Well, you know, I hadn’t thought about it too much, but sure enough I was. Oh what a difference between being happy, and seeming to be. I tell you it’s the difference between cranking up your determination to look like a Christian and sound like a Christian, and yielding your Spirit to the Lord.

Now you see, in yielding my spirit to the Lord, you see, I had to be willing to like my crabby old boss. You know I used to pray, “Oh God change him!” Never occurred to pray to change me because, you see, I figured he was my problem. You know, after a while it didn’t make any difference to me whether he was crabby or not, because now it was a matter of me changing and not him. Well I told this fellow, “Yeah, I guess I am happy.” He said, “You know I’m a miserable guy. Do you suppose you could help me?”

Well you know I couldn’t, I was a brand new Christian. I was so new that I had to use the table of contents to find the books. I told him, “No, I guess I really couldn’t help ya, but if you give me a few days I’ll do a little research and see if I can figure out what happened to me, and I’ll let you know.” That’s what an engineer does when you have a problem, you study it out. So I went home and studied it out, and you know I made a presentation. I started, well, one day anyway, I told him, “I’m ready for ya.”

So he and his wife came over that night, and the poor fellow, I started out in the Garden of Eden, and I took him through Moses’ problems, and the kings, and the prophets, you know I wanted to be thorough. I touched on a few Psalms. This took a couple of hours, and pretty soon I got into the New Testament, and I gave him the gospel, and I explained to him that Christ came into this world and He loved the world so much that He died for us. God sent His only beloved Son to die for us, and that as many as received Him, to them gave He the power to become the sons of God.

I very gingerly asked him if he was ready to receive Christ. He said, “You know, I was ready an hour ago.” I’ve boiled my presentation down a little bit since then, but that fellow is working for me today. My first convert, and you should see the change. They were on the verge of splitting up, and my, what a nice family life they had. And what a pity for anybody to be sitting here, and your goal is to perfect your acting ability, and the thing that’s keeping you from letting the Lord change your Spirit is that you’re unwilling to be nice to some old crabby old person in your life.

Sure, they don’t deserve it. We don’t deserve our salvation. It’s free. And we ought to be willing to envelop these people in our love freely, whether they like it or not. Your partner can’t stop you from loving them if you let the Lord give it to you. So Jesus says to you, and this is in Matthew 11:28, I mentioned this this morning,” Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you for I am gentle and humble in heart.”

You see, you’re going to have to be willing to have a gentle, humble heart toward that person that you’re thinking about. You might as well forget about praying, “Oh God change that person.” The prayer that’s really going to work for you is, “Oh God, give me a gentle, humble heart toward that nasty person, just like they are.” You know, so many of us would rather be miserable than do that. Would you be that kind? Would you rather be miserable than to do that?

You’re not going to have a gentle, humble spirit toward that person. Well, you know, if you don’t want it, nobody can make you take it. There it is, and you can have it. If you don’t want it, nobody can make you take it. Isn’t that a pity, that we would take that position? John 15:11 He says, “These things have I spoken unto you that My joy might be in you, and that your joy might be full.” You see this is His joy. This isn’t something you crank up, this is not your joy, this is His joy.

You can enjoy any day you want to, but you have to be willing to enjoy where you are at. You know, it’s not a question of, “Oh God, take me out of here.” You know, if you’re a cranky character and you get out of here, you know what you’re gonna be when you get there? A cranky character in another state. That’s all you’re going to be, and only the Lord can do it for you, and He isn’t going to do it for you if you don’t want Him to.

Romans 15:13, “The God of hope will fill you.” Did you get that? It’s the God of hope that fills you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s the power of the Holy Spirit that will fill you with hope, and joy, and peace. But you’re gonna have to be willing to let it happen to you right where you’re at, without anything changing. You see, that’s the hurdle that so many of us are unwilling to tap. Now I want to make clear that there isn’t anybody going to approach God without His Son in your life.

One time there was this learned man, you know the story very well if you’re a Christian, Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night and said, “Rabbi we know that You have come from God as a teacher, for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” And Jesus answered and said unto him, “Truly, Truly I say unto you unless one is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

You can’t see it, you can’t understand it. You know, we stumble over the simplicity of that little step, don’t we? Asking Jesus into your life. It’s a simple little step that you can take anytime. Simply ask Him to come into your life. And you know, I’m stumped. There’s no way for me to do anything for you unless you have Him in your life. I believe that as a counselor, that one of the most important things that I can say to anybody who rejects Christ is that I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do for you. I think it is important that people go away realizing that Dr. Brandt said that there was nothing he could do unless you invite Christ to come into your life.

And sometimes these people would say, ”Well, can’t you refer me to somebody else?” I say, “Sure, I can refer you to somebody else, but I’m telling you that they’re not going to do you any good without Christ in your life.” I want to make that as plain as I can.

Well, you know, I’ve spent the last thirty-five years helping people find the Spirit. About a year ago I was in a conference like this, and a lady came up to me, and she was telling me that they were married over thirty years, and she was fed up to here, she said, with him. She couldn’t stand him anymore. And well, her story was this man was a professional man, and he kept, he was a Christian, he was even on the board of a church, and the church rules said you shouldn’t drink, but he kept a bottle of vodka in his office. Every once in a while he would come home tipsy, and whenever he came home he expected a hot meal, even though she never knew for sure when he was coming home. And he’d come home all kinds of odd hours.

And she said, “For over thirty years I have cooked him that hot meal, and he’s taken it for granted, and he expects me to sit down beside him half drunk while he’s eating his meal. Then he expects me to sit beside him, and hold his hand while he watches T.V. and falls asleep. And I just have hated it all of these years, and I despise him. Now that the kids are gone, I can’t stand him any longer.”

Well, now what are you going to say? I said, “Do you mean that he doesn’t know how you feel?”

“Oh no, I’ve never told him.”

“You’ve never told him?”

“Oh no. You know I’m a Christian, I keep those things to myself.”

“Well then, why don’t you keep on keeping them to yourself?”

“Well I can’t stand it anymore.”

“Well that’s right, that’s your trouble; you haven’t been doing it right. Now I’ll tell you what’s the matter with you. You are a deceitful woman. You are a phony. You are an actress. All these years you’ve been deceiving your husband.”

“Yes, but haven’t I cooked for him all of these years? Haven’t I washed his clothes all of these years?”

“That’s right, you did all of those things and you acted like a committed lady, but it was only an act.”

You know what she said? “Ooo, you make me mad. You’re just like all the other men.”

I’ll bet you that a lot of you ladies have taken sides already. You know what you’re saying is, “How could a woman be spiritual with a man like that?” Listen, being spiritual doesn’t have anything to do with your partner. Did I say something wrong? Did I? I said that being spiritual doesn’t have anything to do with your partner. This simply involves a relationship between you and the Lord. You know, she went away very disgusted. But I got a letter from her and I want to read you part of it.

She says, this was several months later, she says, “Nothing has changed in our marriage, but I am content. I felt so angry with you for what you said to me about myself, but you were right. Before that I hadn’t really recognized my own sin. And God had to do some throwing down in my life, and that is never easy at the time, but the result is beautiful if you are submissive to the strong hand of God. And He has forgiven, and cleansed, and filled my heart with joy. I praise Him for this mercy and grace, and once again, I want to say thank you from the depths of my heart.”

How about that?

One time this young lady came up to see me. She was crying. Her life was awful. You see she had been running for the junior league, and they hadn’t let her in. She was a nervous wreck, she had had a break down, and she was a bundle of tensions. You know I tried to say, “I’ll tell you what’s the matter with you. You are a bitter, angry woman.”

So she goes, “Boo Hoo Hoo Hoo! I didn’t expect you to say that.”

Well I get used to that in the consulting room. That’s just one way of shutting me up. But you know, after she was through crying, I tried to remind her that she’s a bitter, angry woman.

Now how do I know that? Well she has just gotten through telling me how angry she was at these people who didn’t elect her. She went away disgusted, but I got a letter from her. Now I’ll read it to you. “I told you my problem was not being invited to join the Junior League, and I really had a hang up about this. I’d never been interested enough to do all the work and buttering up to League members that it took to get in, and so I didn’t make it.” She didn’t tell me that then.

“I was extremely disappointed, and I’ve never felt as crushed or deeply hurt over anything, and most of my friends are members of this group. And I felt completely rejected and guilty that I let my family down, and especially my daughter. And I cried and cried over this for hours at a time, and so many people could have helped me and I got mad at them, and you helped me to see that I even had the audacity to get mad at Almighty God.”

That’s what she did. She was praying, “God how could you do this to me?” Have you ever done that?

“Even though I have a Christian husband, and a lovely family, and most every material thing I want, I was miserable and I told God to even take my life. I kept telling you my problem was getting out of the League, and you kept telling me my problem was my attitude toward what happened. And during my second session with you I asked God to give me His perfect peace, and I can’t tell you exactly how it happened. The situation remained the same, but God erased all the hurt feelings from me. I literally felt as if a huge weight had been lifted, and then I wondered if the peace would last.

“He brought to my mind that part of John 14 where He says “My peace I give unto you. Not as the world gives give I unto you.” and I always thought this verse was for funerals. Only a couple of times in these three years have I felt a little pang of the old hurt, and each time I immediately thank God for the peace He’d given me, and I claimed it. God even changed my wants so that I honestly can’t imagine how I ever desired this. Hope that doesn’t sound too pious.”

I had a lady come to me one time in a conference and she was wondering how she could get the Lord to get her husband to let her conduct Bible studies, because he wanted her to work in his store. And she was bitter. And she thought that that was pretty legitimate to be bitter because, you see, she wanted to teach the Bible, and it’s all right to be mad at somebody who keeps you from teaching the Bible, isn’t it? Well, she didn’t like it, but I got a letter from her.

You know ladies and gentlemen, I’ve come to the place where I’ve learned to depend on your second reaction to me, and not your first. And you may not like what you hear, but if what I say to you is the truth and you go home and think it over, you’ll cool off and you’ll begin to realize that what I’m telling you is the truth. So she went away disappointed because I didn’t care about Bible studies, and I get this letter several years ago, this is several years.

“I came to see you for help with my resentment over my husband’s insistence on working in his store, and I wanted to spend my time in church work. You dealt with me about my retched attitude, and I didn’t like it, but I thought it over and came home determined that my work in the store would be a labor of love. Of course you know that God filled me with His peace and joy as I worked in that store.”

Did you get that point? Some of us flatly say, “God, get me out of this mess and that’s not negotiable.”

“God filled me with His peace and joy as I worked in the store, and worked at being a better wife, and it sure is true that our joy is dependent on a relationship with Christ rather than our circumstances, isn’t it? By the way, my husband changed his mind about a year ago, and agreed that I should get involved in ladies’ home Bible studies, and it’s a fine ministry. And I thank the Lord that you were honest enough to tell me my faults.”

What a pity for anybody to walk away from here tonight and turn your back on the love of God. You’d rather be mad than glad if your situation doesn’t change. There’s a common thread winding through all of these stories. You see, somebody was required to do something they didn’t want to do, or they were blocked from doing something that they did want to do, and in each case, the reactions were similar. Anger, bitterness, stubbornness, rebellion, hate, and that becomes intolerable, and you’ve got to do something about it. You’re going to run away, and you know one of the tragedies today is the number of men walking out on their wives.

Now some of the women are asking for it. You know I used to, in my counseling, women would come in, they would get beat up and they would show me their bruises, and my immediate reaction was, “Where’s the brute?” I’ve changed my mind, and I’ve come to realize that in some cases, it would take a spiritual giant to keep from hitting some of these women. You know what I mean, don’t you? You can needle, and I’m not defending the men that are walking out, but I’m simply saying that a lot of these men are leaving a pretty lousy situation at home.

I would also like to call upon the men to realize that God can give you the grace to live with your wife no matter how hard she tries to make life miserable for you. But I say that one of the tragedies of the day, wherever I go nowadays, including this place, where I’ve heard, in more than one instance, of a man walking out on his wife, rather than turning to the Lord for help.

You know I had a man come to me. He lives on two hundred acres. Big, sprawling, rolling hills, he’s got the most beautiful place. He’s got a million dollar jet airplane. His company makes so much money; he doesn’t know what to do with it. Listen, he didn’t come to me to tell me all of that. You know what he came to ask?  He said, “I’m sick and tired of being an old crab, and can you help me?” I tried to say, “Yes I can help you, but your millions aren’t going to do you a bit of good. You can’t buy it. You gotta reach out an empty hand. You have to come to God and admit to God that you are a hostile, angry, bitter, evil man in spite of your 200 acres and in spite of your jet airplane and in spite of all your money. You can’t buy cleansing from God, and you’ve got to come like everybody else. You’re going to have to be willing to love these people in your life that are unlovable, and otherwise there is no help for you.”

You know that’s hard to do. This is what Jesus said, and this is in John 3:19-21, He said, “This is the judgment that light has come into the world but men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil and you will not come to the light lest your deeds be reproved.”

You can be a Christian for years and years and years and turn away from the truth that you hear every week, and just keep on being a cantankerous character, and Jesus says that this is the condemnation that you, in spite of what you know, you keep right on being wrong. You’re not condemned and miserable because somebody else is wrong. You’re miserable because you are.

Well, you know, there are some riches available to us. Let me just read you a few and then I’ll be through. I read you this one before; let me read it to you again. You remember what I’m talking about now? I’m talking about what goes on underneath your skin. Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind to one another.” You know what that means. That means to be kind to the person you’re sitting next to. Oh well, to be kind to somebody in another city, but to be kind to the person I’m sitting next to?  Yes. That’s the issue. “Be kind one to another and tenderhearted and forgiving one another even as God for Christ sake hath forgiven you.”

Colossians 3:12-13, “And so those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved.”

Listen to this. “Put on a heart of compassion and kindness and humility and gentleness and patience and bearing with one another, and forgiving each other whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also do you.”

I Thessalonians 5:18, “In everything give thanks, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

I Peter 2:20, “What credit is there if when you sin and are harshly treated you endure it with patience, but if when you do what is right and suffer for it and you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.”

Well now, if you can imagine a cafeteria counter, and laid out on that cafeteria counter, you got the picture, is kindness, and tender-heartedness, and forgiveness, and compassion, and humility, and gentleness, and patience, and peace, and thankfulness, and reasonableness, and mercifulness, and you can walk up to that table and help yourself. It’s all free. You can turn around and leave just like you came. And so the choice is yours, if you’re a child of God, whether you will turn to God or whether you won’t. Which will you do?

Let’s pray. Father, we do thank You that You did so much for us. And I pray that there wouldn’t be anybody here that would turn their backs on what You have freely given. And this I pray in Jesus Name. Amen.