Transcript

1 Corinthians 16. Perhaps before you were converted, or perhaps in one of your most foolish moments as a Christian you had the notion in your mind or you had this thought and that thought is, “Wouldn’t it be good if God’s will was whatever I wanted to do? If, if God had, if I had a God that I could just do whatever I wanted to do?” I, I’ve said a time or two, um, through the years that I can see why some certain, uh, sects of Christianity are popular because some of them are set up so that Sunday’s just sort of the sponge that soaks up the sin of the week. You just kinda make a few checkmarks off and kinda the stuff you did, sorta taken care of or maybe see the priest and give a little money or whatever it is and, and you kinda get things cleared up. But actually, actually I want to say to you, I want you to hold onto this thought that actually in true biblical Christianity you can do what you want. You can do what you want and know it’s the will of God. I want to preach a series of messages on Sunday night for the next two or three weeks on “Insights on Understanding the Will of God.” Some of you have asked me about my sermons on this from many many years ago and honestly I couldn’t find them. Well, I found them and I’m reworking them because fortunately in Christ I’ve grown and matured and understand things better. I’m not saying the old ones would have, were of no value but we grow, do we not? So we’ll talk about insights on understanding the will of God and it is true that you can do what you want as a Christian and it’s the will of God. Well, we need to talk about it, don’t we?

1 Corinthians 16 beginning in verse 5, going through verse 9, Paul writes to the Corinthian church and says,

5 But I will come to you after I go through Macedonia, for I am going through Macedonia; 6 and perhaps I will stay with you, or even spend the winter, so that you may send me on my way wherever I may go. 7 For I do not wish to see you now just in passing; for I hope to remain with you for some time, if the Lord permits. 8 But I will remain in Ephesus until Pentecost; 9 for a wide door for effective service has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.

So here we have the Apostle Paul writing from Ephesus to the church at Corinth and saying, “I’m gonna make a journey and here’s my plan,” and he just kinda lays out this itinerary. He says, “I, I’ve got this definite plan. I’m gonna on the journey back from Macedonia, I’m gonna visit with you guys and I hope to stay the winter,” then he says, “I, I’ll stay the winter and then I’ll expect you to send me on my way.” I love that phrase as a pastor because wherever Paul went he expected those churches to contribute to his missions. That’s what he means, “Send me on my way. Give me some money, give me some resources, and help me on to the next few months of ministry,” or however long that would be. Then the next church, he’d expect them to take care of him, give him lodging for a while. Remember when he wrote Philemon, he said, “Uh, get my room ready.” I mean, it’s a letter. I mean, it doesn’t say, “If it’s okay with you, would you mind if I stayed at your house?” He said, “Let me get my room ready.” Now again, they were very close and there was enough love and Christian, uh, unity there that Philemon would not have taken that wrong, but Paul expected churches of like doctrine to work together to support missions. What a novel idea.

And so he says, “I’m gonna stay the winter, then you can kinda support me and get me on further in my missionary journeys but I do plan to stay at Ephesus until Pentecost.” Now Paul basically is saying, “This is what I want to do. This is, this is my plan.” He doesn’t say, “God showed me a vision.” He doesn’t say that. He said, “This is what I want to do,” like, like we see in 1 Thessalonians 3:1 where they said, “We, we did what we thought or we thought it best to do this or do that,” or whatever. “We just thought it best.” Interesting because if, you would think if anyone would know the will of God, it would be Paul, so how does Paul know, “I’m to go here. I’m to stay here this long. I’m to go there. On my way from there I’m gonna visit here but I’m gonna stay first in Ephesus until Pentecost.” How did he know that? It’s because that’s what he wanted to do. This is what he desired to do.

You see, God’s will for your life will unfold as you follow the desires of your heart. Now you better listen to my whole message or you’re gonna think I’ve turned into Joel Osteen East because that’s what this sounds like so far. There is a catch, it’s called the truth of the word of God. Joel hasn’t found the catch yet. So the truth of the word of God brings us to a beautiful and full balance and that is, yes, there is more to it than just doing what you desire and calling it God’s will, though there’s a lot of that going on in Christendom. People can do all kinds of fanciful things. “God spoke to me in a dream. I saw a vision.” Or they hopscotch through the Scriptures and patch things together here and there to make it look like it’s God’s will instead of a sound grammatical, historical, contextual exegesis of the text. And, uh, by way of clarification, if, if, if Tim Seal were teaching the class on expository sermon, this is what he would teach you not to do, what I’m about to do, and I would agree with him. But he agrees with me that there are certain things you do as a pastor that you have freedom to do if you’ve got 15 or 20 years of good exposition under your belt so that you’re not robbing the systematic balance of biblical truth.

But I just thought that very very interesting where Paul lays out all these plans but doesn’t say anything about how he knows it’s God’s will. Well, he does give one clarification at the end of verse 8, “if the Lord permits. I’m gonna go here. I’m gonna go there. I’m gonna stay here a while. I expect you guys to financially support me and get me on my way again and keep me supported for a while out there. I’m gonna do these things.” Then he says, “if the Lord permits.” Uh, rigor mortis sort of sets in to some Christians about trying to find the will of God. Brothers and sisters, there’s enough in the Bible we know to do to take off and say, “God, guide me now as I go. Shapen this thing.” You know, we just started our Pastoral Training Institute and I believe God’s blessing it. Some of these brothers are good brothers. Well, I think they’re all good brothers and I think it’s gonna have an impact but there’ll be lots of things we’ll have to change and adjust and, but if you don’t start you never get anywhere. So you’ve got to take the initiative on some things and do like Paul and say, “if the Lord permits.” We’re gonna talk about God’s red lights and God’s yellow lights and God’s green lights and God’s turn signals as we pursue him and his will for our lives. That’ll be in the next session or two.

Alright, four things I want to bring out tonight lifting out of this text or using this text something as a platform to talk about the will of God. Number 1 would be: become a Spirit-filled Christian. You know that’s God’s will. No question about it. I remember, uh, one evangelist one time, I believe it was Sam Cathy, y’all remember Sam Cathy? Here years ago. Strong, strong preacher. Sam, well, I’m not gonna go there. Anyway, Sam Cathy used to say, “Do you know what the Spirit-filled life is?” He’d say, “Quit sinning. Just quit sinning.” Well, there’s something to that, by the way, but nobody ever quit sinning perfectly and I would assume we can say nobody lives the Spirit-filled life without struggles and weaknesses and ups and downs, but there’s a difference between walking in the flesh and walking in the Spirit. A very clear difference.

Now though Paul doesn’t say here, “Since I’m filled with the Spirit I can do these things,” it is implied because we know Paul. We know his testimony. We know his, his heart. We know his devotion. We know his striving to walk with God and honor God and be filled or guided by the Holy Spirit. God’s will, you see – now listen to this – God’s will primarily does not concern a plan for your life or a path for your life or a place for your life. Not primarily. God’s plan doesn’t primarily concern a person that outta be in your life though that’s included. Note my word “primarily.” God’s will is chiefly, foundationally concerned with a person and that’s you. God wants you to be filled with the Spirit. That’s where your focus should be. Um, too often I think we find ourselves trying to discern the will of God for other people instead of looking at the will of God for us. It’s to walk a life striving after Spirit filling and control. You become the you he recreated you to be. 2 Corinthians 5:17, ” Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things have passed away.” All your old priorities and principles, your purpose and pattern of life has been laid aside and you’ve died to that. You’re now a new creature in Christ Jesus and you have a new approach to life in Christ.

Now that includes a Spirit filling in your life, not as a one-time event but as a continuation of striving toward and walking in. If you do that, then his will concerning plans and paths and places and people becomes relatively simple. God will put it where it needs to be. Remember Ephesians 5:18 where Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus and said, “Do not get drunk with wine for that is dissipation but be filled with the Spirit.” Now that’s an interesting contrast there and there’s a reason for that. Ephesus was a, a, a, a, a cosmopolitan modern city known for drunken immoral excess and so they would have understood what he meant because in the culture of the day there was a lot of religious paganism that centered on getting drunk, being loud, being exuberant, being boisterous, singing your songs, and even in many pagan temples, uh, falling into ecstatic gibberishes, uh, saying that you’re in communion with the gods. And so what he’s saying is, “You take this alcohol in and the intoxication begins to fill you with this excitement and this enthusiasm,” he said, “Lay that aside, that’s dissipation, that’s ruin, that doesn’t get you anywhere, and now instead as a Christian, you’re not like your culture anymore, now the enthusiasm and joy and filling of your life that brings forth song and joy is the Holy Spirit of God.” So you cultivate a knowledge and a walking with God and a, a, a repentance of sin in your life so that you are, you are filled with an exuberance and a joy and an expressiveness that comes from the Spirit’s flow in your life.

Um, years ago when there was a lot of pushes and pressures of perhaps about, uh, breaking lose in, in signs and wonders gifts in a lot of churches, um, unfortunately there were some, I might say many who put on spirituality. Put, if you want to be honest like the book of Corinthians, they put on a show saying that, “I have the power of the Spirit or I have the filling of the Spirit, or I have this gift of the Spirit, or I have that gift of the Spirit.” That’s not what we’re talking about. Just talking about, talking about daily living your life with the Spirit of God unquenched and abiding and guiding in and through your life. Walk under the control of the Holy Spirit. That’s God’s will.

Can I ask you something? We know that’s God’s will but here’s what you want me to do, you want me to skim over that and, and find out if you’re supposed to take that next job. God says, “Don’t look at the job, look at what I’ve already told you. I’ll take care of the job.” You young people, you want to skim over this thing of walking in the Spirit in your school and honoring God in your school because that could be difficult and bring persecution, but you want to know God’s will for your husband or who your wife may be and God would say, “Quit focusing on that and focus on what we know to be the will of God, being filled with the Spirit of God.”

All believers possess the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:9 tells us if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he’s none of his. All Christians have the Holy Spirit and the Bible teaches in Ephesians 5:18 that we play a role in whether or not the Spirit possesses us in the sense of controlling our life, filling our life. As someone said, um, it might’ve been Dr. Adrian Rogers that said, “But is the Holy Spirit in your life resident or president?” Good question. Could I call you to a recommitment tonight? Can I call you as I call myself to a recommitment tonight that we will strive to be people who are filled with the Spirit? That’s the will of God. The will of God is that we allow the Holy Spirit to illumine our minds and our understanding based on the clear preaching and teaching of the word of God, biblical preaching and teaching, your own Bible study, all of this is essential to Spirit-filled living. The Spirit uses the word of God. The Spirit is, it, the word of God is the sword of the Spirit. The truths therefore of the word of God begin to guide our thinking, our motives, our affections, and certainly our behavior and we should strive toward that this being a moment by moment flow in obedience and a quick repentance and a getting back on-track when we fail. The Spirit-filled life. That’s the will of God.

Romans 12:2 reminds us to “not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” I’m convinced what this church mean, this verse means and there’s been a lot of controversy perhaps about it, but what it means is if you are transforming your mind according to the truth of God’s word aided by the Spirit within you, then you are discovering the will of God. You are finding the will of God. Now, now, now get your mind off places, plans, patterns, paths, jobs. No, being transformed to Christ’s likeness, the Spirit of God enabling and helping you is God’s will and you’ll find, man, that is good, acceptable and perfect.

Put it back up there, guys. What does it say at the last part? You’ll find, “Hey, you know what, this is better than that job, this is better than that person, this is better than that plan, this is better than that new car. All that may be fine but the will of God is that I be transformed which involves Spirit-filled influence in my life and I’ll find that that is good, acceptable and perfect.” The glorious thing about this is all the stuff and activities and plans never quite gives us what we want, but when we plug into Jesus, he’s always more than we thought.

So he’s trying to say… You know what I found? That God is a very balanced God. Isn’t that a weird statement to make? What I mean by that, God gives his children good gifts and, and blessings in this world, but he does not want that to become your main thing. He wants to be your main thing because you would be robbing yourself and, of course, dishonoring him by doing that.

Well, try it and see, the Bible says. Try it and see if this life in God’s will is not good, acceptable and perfect. Another little insight, 1 Thessalonians 4:3, “The will of God is your sanctification, that is, you abstain from sexual immorality.” Well, we know that but if you’re walking filled with the Spirit you’re not gonna do that. It’s kinda two sides to the same, uh, coin. Uh, moral biblically obedient living and walking in the Spirit go hand-in- hand and they always have and they always will. You can’t, I think the idea in the balance of biblical teaching is you can’t premeditatively look forward to sinful experiences and be anywhere close to being filled with the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God checks out the moment you make your plan. Now you may be ignorant of what’s going to happen ahead but to knowingly embrace a purposed sin immediately quenches and grieves the Holy Spirit of God. I don’t care how many hoops you jump through, how many i’s you dot, how many t’s you cross, how many seminars you go to by Charles Stanley or anybody else that can give you the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It ain’t gonna work until you repent and say, “I’m not embracing that.” Now you might say, “Lord, You know I’m prone to this, You know I’m prone to that but, Lord, don’t let me do that. I want to please You. I want to live for You.” It is God’s will to live with the filling of the Spirit in your life.

II. God’s will is to love Jesus more. To love Jesus more and you know what? Somehow in the immense grace and the wonderful providence of God, for you today I’m a big part of that because the more you hear him preached, the more you know him and love him. Now you’re certainly responsible to do a lot on your half, part too, by the way. You have to come in here even on Sunday night with an alert and sober mind, ready to listen, ready to learn, ready to repent, ready to understand. Not half asleep. Not thinking about other things. Love Jesus more.

Uh, Mark 12:28-31, a very familiar passage of Scripture but let’s not just run over this. “One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, ‘What commandment is the foremost of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The foremost is, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And the second one flows out of the first one, “And the second one is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. You say, “Well, nobody can do that.” But here’s the thing, nobody even desires to do that until they’re converted, and then after you’re a Christian, you get on the track of striving toward that. As a Christian, you don’t just woefully obligate, obligate yourself to this duty. No, there’s something changed in your heart like we talked about this morning where you want to learn more and love him more. That’s the will of God, love Jesus more. Love him more.

And then Philippians 3:7-8, Paul says, “whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.” Anything for, for knowing Christ and loving him and fulfilling his will is set aside. Verse 8, “More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.” You wanna know the will of God? Be a Spirit-filled person. You wanna walk in the will of God? Then love Jesus more. That’s God’s will.

God’s not interested in wiping out your life and making you suffer like Job. In his providence that might be his plan for you for his purposes and for your good, I don’t know. And God’s not necessarily interested in making you a multimillionaire and having everything you could ever want or desire and enjoy. That may be in God’s allowance and in God’s providence for you, I don’t know, but whether it is one or the other or somewhere in between, God’s will for you is to live Spirit-filled and to love Christ more, and I’m convinced he’ll do whatever he has to do with our stuff to get us there, or maybe not our stuff but he has many many ways of teaching us that we need this more than we need this stuff.

God wants you to know him and God wants you to enjoy him. This is not, you don’t come to church so that you can learn a new lesson to make your life more effective and somehow keep God’s wrath off your back. You come in here because we have begun a love relationship with God together and just as, guys, you have to keep dating your wife, I’m in year, what year am I in, Pam? I’m way down there now. 36 and I’m still dating my wife and she’s fun to date. You have to put some work into it. You have to put some effort into it and so it is with Jesus. Have you ever realized that when you have prayer time, am I the only one that has this, and when you start praying you start sometimes cold but as you praise and thank him and pray to him, your heart gets warm and blessed? You’re learning to love Jesus more. So there are duties and disciplines but it’s because we already love him but we need to love him more.

Number three in knowing insights on knowing the will of God: find joy in Jesus. Very similar to loving him but I think there is a difference here. Find joy in Jesus. Psalm 16:11 reminds us, “In thy presence is fullness of joy, in thy right hand are pleasures forever.” I’m telling you, you need to mine out the depths of the wonders and the joys and the pleasures of knowing Jesus. There are pleasures there that are rich beyond compare. I, I, I guess I’m the most blessed man in the world because may job is to study well to preach well to you, but as I’m studying well, I myself am blessed and I myself, there’s so many times in my study where I just sit back and I think, “I can’t verbalize what I’m experiencing with Christ right now.” And that’s one of the great halting difficulties of my ministry is I wish I’d been a better student in high school and in grammar school. I wish I had a better vocabulary to better enunciate the wonders and the glories of Christ. But sometimes just in his word meditating on him and the truths of Scripture and the glories of our salvation, there’s experiences of communion and oneness and joy and pleasure that a million worlds of pleasure could not match.

And can I be transparent and honest with you? When I go 6, 8, 12 weeks with no breaks studying and preaching week in and week out, I get tired of it. I get weary and I grab myself by the nape of the neck and I go get in that study and I open the word of God and I start making notes and I read those commentaries and you know what? The joy comes back. Now that doesn’t mean I don’t need a break, that’s true. You need breaks. We all need some breaks not from Jesus but from the work of the ministry from time to time, but the point is you keep working to find joy in him. Listen to me: it’s worth the effort. It’s worth the effort. Matter of fact, if you’re a Christian and, of course, you love Christ and, of course, you think he’s the most wonderful of all and, of course, you’re committed to him as Lord, but you can get in seasons where this is fun and this is rewarding and this is a blessing and you’re busy here, and all of a sudden Jesus becomes number 4 or number 8, and you need to talk truth to yourself and say get him back to number 1. He’s the greatest joy. He’s the greatest joy.

John 15:11 Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you that My joy may be in you, and your joy may be made full.” It’s there. He wants you to have it. Seek it. Of course, there are means involved that I’ll not take all the time to go into, but you know what they are. Faithfully humbly repenting of sin, removing yourself from avenues and opportunities of sin is foundational to you tonight rekindling and renewing your commitment to a Spirit-filled life, to you tonight rekindling and recommitting yourself to love Jesus more, to you tonight rekindling and recommitting yourself to finding your full joy in Jesus.

The foundation stone of my heart is engraved with the words, “My joy is Jesus.” And I’m so thankful in many ways that my upbringing happened the way it happened because in, in area after area God in his providence, I wasn’t a Christian yet but God in his providence caused me to lose hope in everything else. I mean, just this would be in my life and it just would break apart, and then this was in my life and it would dissolve, and all the way up through high school whether it was an athletic future or whatever it was, it would be there and it just didn’t work. Then I was in my car driving back to Middle Tennessee State University one cold night in February, the roads were icy and I turned on the radio and heard the Gospel, and I was surprised by joy. I found the one joy that would never fall apart on me, that would never disappoint me, that would never walk out on me. And then I got all of you too. And that’s a joy. That’s a joy.

So honestly I think God trained me to look to him more than most people are able to perhaps, or it’s easier to. I mean, when you feel like I told you, I would think I was preaching on financial things and I told you you couldn’t have more of nothing than I had when I started out in the ministry. I had one ’72 Cutlass Oldsmobile that was totaled out. A Church of Christ preacher had ran into the back of it and just crushed the back of it in. It still ran, still held gas so I drove it. Some men in the church actually bought me a new car. That’s how I got a decent car to drive. You couldn’t have more of nothing than I had when I started out in the ministry, but I did have his joy.

God may give you favorable circumstances but favorable circumstances must not be your joy. God may give you significant wealth but wealth must not be your joy. God may give you a wonderful family but a wonderful family must not be your joy. God may give you special and good friends but special and good friends must not be your joy. God may give you a position of power but having power must not be your joy. God may give you great fame but having fame must not be your joy. You must find your joy in Jesus.

How good of God to cause us, notice the phrase, to cause us to place our joy in Jesus because all others are conditional joys. Paul spoke of the churches of Macedonia as experiencing, notice this, “a great ordeal of affliction and an abundance of joy.” Isn’t that interesting? God knows how to take horrible circumstances and baptize you in deep waters of joy at the same time. You go down into the waters of affliction and you’re down there with the fish of joy. It’s just, he just knows how to do that.

Joy is the fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5:22, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. You see, three little, three quick thoughts on joy right here. Joy is not produced by you, joy is produced in you, and joy is to not, not prevented by circumstance. Now did you get that? Joy is not produced by you, it’s produced in you by the Spirit, and it’s not contingent on circumstance, except bad circumstances seems to bring the Christians more joy. No, we can’t lose for winning. The Spirit vine is not rooted in the soil of this world, it’s anchored in the infinitely fertile unchangeable heart of God and it is nourished by the hardships of this life because often our joy increases as our circumstances decrease. That’s why James writes in James 1:2, “Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials.”

You wanna know the will of God? Be a Spirit-filled person. You know the will of God? Love Jesus more. You wanna know the will of God? Find your joy in Jesus. You want to do the will of God? Number 4, then do whatever you want. Do whatever you want. If those three are active in your life, then do whatever you want. What do you want to do? Just do it. Now do what Paul did, he did what, he was on a missionary journey and he said, “I’m gonna go here. I’m gonna go there. I’m gonna stay here maybe for the winter. Y’all gonna give me some money.” And I just wonder what they thought about that. But anyway, “And then I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna do that and I’m gonna stay in Ephesus until Pentecost.” Then he said, “if the Lord permits.” Just do what you want and say if the Lord permits. If those first three are active in your life, then the fourth one is a no-brainer.

Now there is a flow to this. There’s a flow to this. The Spirit increasingly reveals Jesus. You’re walking in the Spirit and the Holy Spirit who, what’s he gonna do? He’s gonna show you Christ. He reveals Christ. Of course, he uses the word of God but the Spirit makes Christ real to us. Paul talked about in Galatians 1:16 the Holy Spirit’s work revealed the Son to him. It doesn’t name the Holy Spirit here but that’s exactly what he means. The Spirit revealed Christ to him. John 14:20 Jesus talked about how the Holy Spirit will bring to your remembrance… That’s not the right verse. Sorry about that. But Jesus did say “the Holy Spirit will bring to remembrance all that I have taught you.” The Holy Spirit makes Christ known to us.

So we, we walk filled with the Spirit and Christ becomes increasingly real then, secondly in the flow of this, when you increasingly know Jesus better you increasingly love Jesus. Look, you, you can’t know him and not love him. Now you can’t know him unless the Spirit regenerates your heart and enables you, but you can’t know him and not love him. And then in the flow of this, the Spirit reveals Jesus, as Jesus is revealed we love Jesus more and then as we love him more he increasingly becomes our joy. Our joy increases.

So let me close with this verse, Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart.” A lot of debate over that. “Now what does that mean He’ll give you the desires of your heart? Does that mean He puts the desires in your heart or He fulfills the desires your heart has?” I think it’s both. If you are walking in the Spirit and you’re loving Jesus more and your joy is Jesus, you want what pleases Jesus and all of a sudden he gave you those desires. You didn’t just grow up in this world as a fallen baggage or fallen bag of corruption, ruin and sin and decide to love Jesus and have desires for him. That didn’t happen. Christ invaded your life. God changed your heart, gave you new desires. He gave you the desires of your heart and if he gave them to you, he’s very very likely to grant those desires. I’m one of the blessed, most blessed men on earth because the things I desired have greatly come to pass in my life but I’ve tried to desire the things I knew were his will like pastor a church that God might use as a mentor and a model for others. I knew that was God’s will. If we could be biblical and right, God would do that.

Now what about your life tonight? Seriously, this ain’t just quit and go home, okay? Seriously would you rededicate yourself tonight, “I’m going to recommit myself to a Spirit-filled life. I will not embrace any sin, certainly no purpose to sin. I will repent of it and turn from it. I will strive to live a Spirit-filled life.” Will you recommit seriously and generally tonight, “I want to commit to love Christ more and I want to commit to find more joy in Christ.”

Now the religionist of the past and the present would say something like, “Well, you’d better sell everything you have and give everything you have to the poor.” God may lead you to do that, I don’t know. But they would, they would view this as an essential work as such and you’d better go climb the Andes Mountains and find you a hole somewhere and crawl in there and get away from the world and find God. I’ve got news for you: he’s not there. He’s not there. He’s not in that hole in the Andes Mountains when you’ve given everything away anymore than he’s right here in this room tonight. If that were the case, we’d just make everybody get up there and go to the Andes Mountains and find a hole. But that doesn’t work. It never has worked. All it does is make people think you’re spiritual. “Oh, they’re so spiritual.” I’ve learned something in 40 years, I’ve learned just about everybody I run into that does that kind of nonsense, it’s not spiritual but very proud. They’re proud of their sacrifice. They’re proud of their unworldliness. And by the way, it’s worldly to want men to think you’re something. Here’s my point: you may not have to change anything but your heart direction tonight.