Morning. I just want to begin by saying that this is a day of transaction. This is an hour of decision. It is a time in which the Lord wants to transact business with us, individually and corporately. It is a time of decision in our lives.
You know, there are times in our lives when we can go for a long period of time, maybe even years, and it appears that there is no real transaction going on in our lives with the Lord. We are just comfortably moving along. Then the Lord will do something—something unusual, something unexpected—in your life, and He awakens us to the hour in which we are and the condition in which we are.
He says, “It is time for transaction. It is time to do business with Me. It is time to make a decision.” We can no longer stand between two decisions. We must make a decision. It is an hour of transaction.
We are thankful because this hour of transaction, this hour in which the Lord asks us to make a decision, is in His hands. It is something that He has orchestrated for your life and for my life. The Lord never brings us to a decision point in our life that He has not orchestrated for us.
As He does, He provides grace for this hour of decision. It is our place to respond to the grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, unfortunately, we do not always respond. Sometimes we miss this decision point. But in His graciousness, His love, and His tender mercy, He may send us back into the wilderness for forty years; but one day He brings us back to the Jordan River, and He says, “Will you cross it this time? Will you make that decision? I have brought you to the hour of transaction. Transact with Me.”
As we have been talking about this matter of straight paths—making straight paths—it is out of Hebrews 12. The context is that the Lord is encouraging us in the hour of training, discipline, and chastening in an hour of great shaking. He is saying that it is necessary that we make a straight path, that we be on the Lord’s path.
We know, brothers and sisters, that if we are looking for the straight path, if we are looking for that narrow path, if we are looking for the path of the Lord Jesus Christ, we must find Jesus, because He is very clear. The Lord says, “I am the way.”
If you want to be clear, if you want to know that you are on the right path, you have got to be in relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot have a strained relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and expect to be on the straight path.
You may be on a detour. We have talked about detours lately. We have talked about shortcuts. Often we find ourselves on a side road. We are not on the main road. Our relationship with the Lord, for some reason, has become strained, and we are not willing to get it settled with Him.
The Lord brings us to an hour of decision, an hour of transaction, and He says, “Here is a turning point. You have been on the wrong road. You have been going not My way, but your way. I have put a crossroads in your path, and I have brought you to this point in your life. It is time to make a decision. It is time to turn back to the main road, to get back on the right course in your lives.”
I pray that the Lord will do that in every life here, because it is important. The hour is at hand in which our Lord is going to return.
The Lord Jesus Christ and John the Baptist both had this message: “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” He did not say, “Repent because you are a sinner.” Now, we have to repent to accept God’s salvation because we are sinners, but that is not why He said, “Repent,” is it?
He said, “Repent, because the kingdom of God is at hand.” You need to be ready. You are not ready. You need to be prepared. You are not prepared. The kingdom of God is now. It is here. Are you ready?
Oh, brothers and sisters, they had to repent of everything—their good life, their religious life, everything. In other words, repent means to turn around, does it not?
Sometimes we are on this course called self-will, and the Lord brings us to this turning point in our life. He says, “You need to turn back to the main road.” That is repentance. He wants to get us back on the right course in our lives. He wants to get us on the course that is preparing us for the kingdom.
Let me read a few Scriptures.
Enter ye in by the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many are they that enter in thereby.
For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few are they that find it.—Matthew 7:13-14
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man;
But the end thereof are the ways of death.—Proverbs 14:12
Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way; and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.
—Jeremiah 6:16
Ask the Lord for the old path. Where is the good way? Walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. We have been sharing on this matter of straight paths: the need to be on the right path, the Lord’s path.
Let us go to Proverbs 3. We have been sharing on the right path, making the straight path.
Trust in the Lord with all thy heart,
And lean not upon thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct thy paths.
Be not wise in thine own eyes;
Fear the Lord, and depart from evil:
It shall be health to thy navel,
And marrow to thy bones.—Proverbs 3:5-8
Honour the Lord with thy substance,
And with the first-fruits of all thine increase:
So shall thy barns be filled with plenty,
And thy presses shall burst out with new wine.—Proverbs 3:9-10
And the verses that are for today:
My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord;
Neither be weary of His reproof:
For whom the Lord loveth He reproveth;
Even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.—Proverbs 3:11-12
“My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint under His correction,” or His training, or His discipline. Interestingly enough, that is the verse that Stephen shared on last week, and that is the verse I have come to today. I wonder if the Lord is not asking us to consider: it is an hour of transaction.
I think our brother Stephen shared that this is an hour in which we have to overcome. I believe that is a real turning point in any Christian life, when they come and realise that their calling in the Lord Jesus Christ is to overcome.
Regardless of the circumstances, regardless of the issue, regardless of the impossibility of the hour or the darkness of the hour, the Lord says, “Stand in the midst and overcome.” That is our calling.
We have been sharing that the only way to overcome is through resurrection life. Jim shared on that word: “Christ risen from the dead.” Remember Christ risen from the dead. It is He who overcomes in us. It is His resurrection life that enables us to enter into our calling to overcome.
How do we get on this right path? How are we to live this overcoming life? How are we to fulfil our destiny?
Brothers and sisters, we know that the kingdom of God is at hand. Often we think that our path as Christians is that we live our life on this earth and one day we will get to heaven.
We forget about a whole thousand-year period prior to the New Jerusalem coming down and our entering into eternity. We do not know much about what that means, but we know that it will be a millennium, a thousand-year period where the Lord will come back to this earth and reign and rule.
He has called us to repent, to turn, and to get our lives straight so that we might be prepared for the kingdom age—not just to go into heaven. Realistically, you have your ticket to heaven. There is an old country song about having a ticket to heaven and getting on the train. Well, you have your ticket.
But the matter of the kingdom is so important. That is what our Lord Jesus preached: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The millennium is on its way. Our Lord Jesus is the King of the kingdom. He is the kingdom. He is the life of the kingdom. We know all of that, but are we ready for the kingdom?
I think that is what the Lord wants to deal with us about: to get us ready for the kingdom, to qualify us to reign and rule with Christ. We are in training now. We are in training for kingdom life, so that we might reign, rule, and govern with our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord wants us to be prepared: our lives given to Him, to be His disciples, to follow Him, to stay under the disciplining hand of the Lord, under the chastening hand of the Lord.
If you were here last week, our brother shared quite a bit on that. Basically, this word chastening and discipline means training. You are under the training of the Lord Jesus all your life. You are never not under it.
The Lord is trying to build you up in Jesus Christ. He is trying to deal with our self-life, our soul-life, and our natural life. He wants to get all of that out of the way.
It is the cross, brothers and sisters. The cross crosses us out. Our self-will is crossed out at the cross. Our mind is crossed out at the cross—not that we lose our minds. Sometimes we feel like we have lost it. But the Lord is not trying to destroy your mind; He is bringing it into the mind of Christ, that we might have the mind of Christ and the heart of Christ.
You would have thought He would say, “Repent. You are lost. You need to be saved.” But He said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Why did He take that approach?
The narrow gate to the narrow road, that strait gate, is the Lord Jesus Christ in His work on Calvary’s cross. In other words, that narrow gate is accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour. You cannot get on the road until you have done that.
You have to accept Him as your Lord and Saviour—not only your Saviour, but as your Lord. I think some of us want to be saved and wander the roads as we please. But the Lord says, “No. I have brought you to this matter of salvation in your life that you might get on the straight path.”
“I am the beginning of this path, and I am the path, if you really get down to it.” The straight gate is the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no other way. No one can be saved except they come through the Lord Jesus Christ.
But the Lord’s heart is to have sonship for all of us, that we might enter into the kingdom ready—ready to reign, rule, and govern with Him on this earth for a thousand years. That is His heart.
Of course, His heart is that all men might be saved and none lost. He has a heart of love. But He has a purpose in mind, and that purpose includes us. We have got to be on the narrow road in order to be prepared for the kingdom.
If we are not on that narrow road, we can go through the gate and somehow get off the road. If we are not on the road, we will not be prepared. If we are not prepared, I am not exactly sure what the Lord is going to do with us during those thousand years, but I have a feeling it will be a pretty difficult training course. He has got to get us ready to take us into the New Jerusalem.
He wants those who know His heart so well that they are willing to follow Him wherever He goes, at any cost. Those are the ones He wants for the kingdom.
You may say to me, “Well, Jerry, I am not sure I am willing to pay that cost.” I have to say, in the weakness of my own heart, there have been many times when the Lord has brought me to that hour of transaction, that hour of decision, and I said, “No, Lord, I am not sure I can pay that cost.”
In reality, He has paid it for you. But there have been many times I have said, “Lord, I cannot pay the cost, but I am willing. Lord, I want to be willing. I may not even be willing, but I want to be willing to pay the cost, to walk Calvary’s road.”
That is a narrow path, brothers and sisters. It is called Calvary’s road. It is a path of discipline. It is a path of training.
Sometimes we think that if we are devoted to the Lord and love the Lord, our path will somehow be easy. We may run into problems, but we think they will immediately be resolved. It does not work that way.
The Lord is training us, training us, dealing with us. In the past weeks we have been sharing about this road: what is the process of walking this narrow path?
The first matter was dependence—being dependent upon the Lord, fully dependent on Him. We talked about trusting in the Lord with all your heart.
You know, that is so simple that we miss it. It is so simple that we complicate it because it is so simple. We humans seem to take something very simple and make it very complicated. The Lord says, “Just trust Me.”
You may be hanging off a cliff by your fingernails, but I want you to trust Me. I will catch you. And if I let you fall and you are hurt, I will heal you.
Brothers and sisters, the Lord has strange ways with His people. You would think this loving God, this loving Lord, would never allow us to be hurt or allow us to fall. But He does, because we are in the school of training. We are in school. We are being disciplined, trained, and made ready for the kingdom.
Paul exhorted Timothy. He said, “Timothy, I want you to be a good soldier in Jesus Christ.” Have you ever thought of yourself as being a soldier? Have you ever thought about being in boot camp?
Boot camp is tough. Boot camp is not easy. Boot camp is exhausting. Boot camp is where they see what you are made of.
The Lord said, “I brought you out into this wilderness forty years to prove you, to test you, and to show you what was in you.” That is boot camp.
The Lord has to take us through these experiences because we will not give up what is in us until we realise how bad it is. We think it is okay. We think we are okay. We love the Lord, and our life seems to be okay. Then one day the Lord moves in, and you realise there is something very wrong.
He brings out things in us, brothers and sisters, that we are horrified to look back upon. But that is part of the process. That is part of the training.
The Lord is always with us. He is with us when we are hanging on the cliff. He is with us if we are at the bottom. He is with us on the mountaintops. Thank the Lord for those times. But we are always being trained.
You do graduate from boot camp. But if you want to enter the kingdom prepared, you are going to have to make another decision. You are going to have to be willing to follow the Lord all the way.
He has got to be your Commander-in-Chief every day of your life. He has got to be the One issuing the commands, and we must take the orders, submitting to Him.
There is a unique thing about the kingdom: you do not enter it easily.
The Lord said that since John the Baptist, the kingdom is taken by violence. Basically, that means you have to be violent with yourself. You have to be willing to submit yourself to the disciplining, training hand of the Lord Jesus Christ in your life and not rebel against it.
Do not turn against Him. Do not get off the straight path. If you are off it, quickly submit and say, “Lord, You are right. I need to get back. I want to get back.”
In order to be prepared for the kingdom, you not only have to get out of boot camp and be in His army, but you have to sign up for special forces.
By special forces, I do not mean being a unique clique of people who are super-spiritual. One of the great lessons we learn in boot camp is humility. Only the humble qualify for special forces. Only the humble and meek can make it into special-forces training.
Have you ever seen the intensity of the Navy SEALs training course? They press a person to their limits. They run them. They keep them up all night long. They press them until a man hits the wall.
When he hits the wall and says, “I cannot go any farther,” they demand that he take the next step. They are pressing beyond who he is. They are pressing beyond his own abilities.
That is the natural, but in the spiritual realm the Lord trains us in the same way. We are in warfare with our enemy. Our Lord has won the victory, but we have to learn to be victorious with Him.
We have to know how to pray. We have to know how to bind and loose. We have to recognise the hand of the enemy in our life as well as the hand of the Lord.
I am getting way off my message, but I want us all to know today that the Lord is preparing you for the kingdom. That has been on His heart since before the beginning of time. He was a Lamb slain before the foundation of the earth. The cross was already in view when man was created. The narrow gate was already set up.
Thank God, I think most people in this room have gone through that narrow gate, that strait gate. Now the Lord wants us to stay on that narrow road.
The narrow road—in today’s vernacular, we would say, the road less travelled. The Lord Jesus is pretty clear about this road. He says there are not many who take it, and some who try to take it do not make it all the way through the course.
But His heart is that we would stay on that road, that we would press on, and that we would finish the course.
The Lord calls us to a life of dependence, just trusting Him. You may be eighty thousand feet in the air, dropped out of an aeroplane, not knowing what is up, what is down, where the earth is, or where the sky is. You are tumbling in the air. Everything is confused.
The Lord says, “Relax. Trust Me. I can take care of this. I rose from the dead. I escaped death. I went into death and I destroyed it. Trust Me. Trust Me. Just trust Me.”
Have that childlike confidence that He has determined to take care of you. He has put you on a difficult road because He loves you, and He intends to get everything of Christ out of you.
He loves us so much. Dependence, simple dependence. “Lean not to your own understanding.”
No crutches, brothers and sisters. We have so many little crutches in our lives that we lean on instead of the Lord. Sometimes it is our mental apprehension of things. Sometimes it is our affections. Sometimes it is our self-will, our powerful will.
“Lean not to your own understanding.” The Lord kicks the crutches out, and if necessary, He lets you fall. But you will be rid of the crutches, and you will learn to depend on Him. You will learn to walk by Him and not by your own sight.
We talked about direction: “In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.” It really gets at the motive in your life. Acknowledging Him means: is He Lord? Is He Lord of your life? It is that simple.
We talked about being guided with the eye, as opposed to the mouth. In the book of Psalms, it says He will guide you with His eye. I think it is so marvellous. He will guide you with His eye.
You have to keep your eyes upon Him. You cannot just be walking your way and hear a voice. He says, “No, you have to be looking at Me.” You will learn discernment. You will be able to discern what He means by the look He gives you. It is a life of discernment.
We talked about this matter: “Be not wise in thine own eyes; fear the Lord, and depart from evil.” Self-will. I call it deliverance. If there is anything we need to be delivered from, it is self-will—our self-will.
“Be not wise in thine own eyes.” That is saying there is a problem here. There is self-will. It is your will. Then it says, “Fear the Lord.” If you fear the Lord, it is His will that matters in your life, not your own.
Then it says, “Depart from evil.” We talked about deliverance from self, putting off the old man, just putting him off and saying, “That is not me. I am not going to accept this old man in my life any more.”
Today we come to the last two Scriptures, Proverbs 3:11-12, concerning this disciplined life, this life of training and chastisement.
My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord;
Neither be weary of His reproof.—Proverbs 3:11
In this life, on this path, He says there are two problems. One is despising the chastening of the Lord, and the other is fainting.
If you are going to finish the course, do not despise My discipline, and do not faint under My discipline.
The Lord warns us that the path is not easy. But I think it is interesting: He says, “Despise not My discipline.” What does that mean?
It means you think little of something, or you think little about it, or you think little of its effect on your life. The point I am making is that we despise the discipline of the Lord a lot more than we think, consider, and realise.
The reason I say that is because the Lord is disciplining you all the time. He is disciplining you daily, and we do not recognise it. We do not recognise the hand of the Lord in our lives.
We just take it as circumstance. We take it as a mean person. “That is the problem. I have got this mean person that I am having to deal with.” Or we say, “Every time I get around that person, I get offended.”
Look, the Lord knows this. The Lord has allowed this in your life. It may be a mean person. It may be a person who is totally irrational in their dealings with you. I say totally irrational because we are always rational on our side of the situation.
But the Lord has brought all these matters into our lives.
I thank the Lord for Owen’s testimony this morning—not only for what I received personally in reconciliation, but because it shows how the Lord works, sometimes in the strangest of ways. A funeral, but the Lord was at work.
The Lord was working, and has been working for a long time, to that hour of decision, to that hour of transaction. How merciful is our God? He loves you.
We do not always recognise it or even think, “The Lord has allowed this. The Lord is doing something here. I wonder what this is all about.”
You might feel like you are getting beaten up and you just have to take it. Some people are like that. But the Lord does not want us to take that attitude. He wants us to say, “Lord, what is going on here? What are You trying to teach me?”
If our heart is not daily towards that, then we are despising the discipline of the Lord. That is all it means. We are not thinking about it. We are thinking so little of it.
Somebody makes an unkind remark to you. They probably do not even realise they have made it, but it hits you. You can react very strongly, or you can say, “Lord, what was that all about? Are You trying to show me something?”
Maybe I need to go back to this brother or sister. Maybe that is what You are teaching me. Or You may be showing me, Lord, that there is something in here.
Owen said, “Jerry, if you were dead, it would not have hurt you.” That is Owen’s kind of way of thinking. I said, “You are right, Owen. A dead man does not hurt.”
If I were dead, that yellow-jacket sting the other day would not hurt me. A dead man does not often get hurt, does he? Are we dead in Jesus Christ?
We have to be dead in Jesus Christ before we can be raised in Jesus Christ. Oh, the old man—he hangs around there, does he not? We think he is gone forever, and he keeps wanting to pop his head up out of the grave.
We need to be more conscious daily. We need to get up in the morning and say, “Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.” We ought to get up and say, “Well, Lord, what have You got to teach me today?”
He wants that resurrection life to be activated in you, so He is going to bring you into situations daily in which you will have to use that resurrection life to resolve an issue or get through a problem. It might be something very simple. It does not have to be dramatic.
Anything that tries our heart, checks us, exposes us, or exercises our hearts—our circumstances, both good and bad—these are all His daily dealings with us, brothers and sisters.
He says, “Do not despise My training. Do not think little of what I am doing in your life, because I have got you on that narrow path and I intend to keep you there.”
The secret to not despising the training of the Lord is to recognise His hand in the situation.
Let me say it again. The secret for us not falling into this trap of despising the Lord is to recognise the Lord’s hand behind it, to begin to look for the Lord’s hand. If we are not looking for the Lord’s hand, we are not going to see it, are we?
We are just not looking. We say, “Well, this happened to me today. Honey, I had a terrible day at work. I think I am going to bed.” We did not learn a thing. We just got exhausted, tired, and aggravated.
The Lord is faithful. He wants to get you ready for the kingdom. The kingdom is at hand. But we do not recognise it sometimes.
I had a pretty good lesson in recognising things recently. I was on a trip to Arizona, and my wife was with me. It was a business trip, but we had a day to rent a car and see the territory. We had never seen the desert or that area around Phoenix.
We drove about two hours out of Phoenix. I had heard about this trail called the Apache Trail. I had read about it in a brochure and thought, “Apache Trail—that would be interesting.”
I asked someone at the visitor centre about the Apache Trail. She said, “Well, I would not worry about it too much. It is an old dirt road. I have never really been on it, but it is always dusty.”
Well, I wanted to see the Apache Trail. On the way up it was marvellous. It was a beautiful sight as we began to get into the mountainous area.
We came across this area of cacti. It was mostly barren land, and you would see these humongous cacti standing out there—the ones you see in old cowboy movies, with the great trunk and arms coming out.
For the younger folks, it is the kind you see with the Road Runner and the Coyote. I saw one that was somewhere between thirty and forty feet tall. I could not believe they grew that big. There were hundreds and thousands of these cacti out in the desert.
I read that in the desert it is windy and hot. Phoenix in the summer can be one hundred and twenty degrees. It is a terrible place to have to exist. Yet out in the middle of that desert were these thirty-foot cacti.
They live up to two hundred years old. I said, “Man, how can they stand all the opposition to their living? They are out there in the bare sun. They have to take the heat all the time.”
Then we went through something like an arboretum, and I saw this information about cacti. It said that in one rainstorm, a cactus can absorb up to two or three hundred gallons of water. So it does not have to rain very often.
I said, “Lord, if only we would absorb the Lord. If only the things that the Lord Jesus is trying to teach us along the way, we would really take them in. If we would really respond to them, it would not matter what was against us.”
It would not matter about the hours of heat, dust, and windstorms. We could stand tall in the midst of it. We could overcome because we had absorbed Jesus Christ in all our dealings. We had learned of Him.
It is important, brothers and sisters, that we not despise the dealings of the Lord. We need to absorb all of His life from all these dealings, that we might withstand the storms.
We finally got to the Apache Trail. We went through it backwards. It was twenty-two miles long and went through a canyon, with a river at the bottom. It was a trail made along the canyon walls and through the bottom.
At the entrance there was a narrow passage. You have heard of the strait gate. A man with a large boat behind his vehicle was stopped by the police. He was not properly prepared to go on the Apache Trail.
The police were telling him, “You will never get around these curves with that boat. It will be impossible. You will scrape the walls. You will never make it through this trail because you have that boat behind you.”
Brothers and sisters, cut the boat loose. That is what I am saying. A lot of times we want to get on this trail and just be what we have always been. We want to carry all this baggage with us. Well, you cannot get through with all the baggage.
He was not prepared even to start the trail. Fortunately, I had a rental car, so it did not bother me too much.
I started out on the trail. It was a narrow trail, originally made for one Indian. Then they widened it so that a car could get through there. There were places where, if a car came the other way, you had to get into certain places so you could get by each other.
Because I was going through it backwards, we were on the outside, on the canyon side—the precipice side. We were on the side where, if you fell off, you had a long way to the bottom. There were no guardrails.
There had been a rainstorm two nights before, and little gullies had washed out along the sides. My wife was pretty tense because she was sitting on the far side of the car and had no control.
We were winding in and out. Anne would say, “Be careful, be careful.” I said, “All right, Anne, I am taking it easy.” It took me an hour and a half to go those twenty-two miles. That is how slow it was.
We came around a curve, and there was a little wider spot. I was able to stop there and be aware of any car that might be coming. I looked up, and it was one of the most gorgeous views I had ever seen in my whole life.
It was more beautiful than I can describe. I had gone to the Grand Canyon also, and it was marvellous—an awesome sight. But this was absolutely breathtaking, and I mean it.
My wife even said, “This restores my soul.” It was so beautiful and awesome.
This is the point: I was so intent on the road and the problem I was having driving the car that I was missing the view. I was missing why I was on the trail in the first place.
The Lord is like that. He gets us into these very tough spots, and we are human, so we say, “Lord, it looks like I am going over the side here.” And what He is saying is, “Look at the view. Look at Me.”
“I am taking you through this experience, and when you come out of it, it will be something you have never experienced before. It will be marvellous. It will be something that changes your life. It will be something that restores your soul.”
Do not despise the chastening of the Lord. Do not get so hung up. Most of us in this room have been through times when you cannot even open your eyes because it is so intense.
But all I can tell you is this: once the Lord opens our eyes to see the view, you would never say, “Lord, I regret getting on this road.” It is a narrow path, and it is dangerous. There is no doubt about it.
But what you experience there is joy unspeakable on this road. It is rugged. It is dangerous. But there is joy.
The other matter the Lord talks about is, “Faint not.” Faint not when you are on this road. It is tough. It gets hard. Do not faint. You need to finish the course.
When we were on that narrow road, there were places where I could have turned around. There was even a road down to a little resort at the bottom of the canyon. I could have taken the easy road out and gone to that little rest spot and stayed there.
But the Lord wants us to finish the course.
I came across something on that Apache Trail that I had never seen or experienced before. The views were awesome, but right before the end of the trail we finally made our way to the bottom of the canyon and were looking up.
Anne said, “Jerry, this looks like little Christian when he was in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and the rocks were up over him.” I was not exactly scared and frightened, but the rocks seemed to go on forever.
I found myself in a box canyon. There was a little creek running by there. It was awesome, marvellous, magnificent. All of His creation brings glory to the Lord, and I have to say it was a glorious place.
I was looking at these sheer rocks, with all their different colours, and I said, “Anne, it appears there is no way out of here.”
She said, “Well, it does. What are we going to do, go into the mountain?” I said, “I do not know. It looks like the road is going to go right into this box canyon.”
I had met some cars coming the other way, so I figured there had to be a way out. But the appearance at that time was that there was no way out, that we were walled in.
Have we not found this true in our lives? When we are in a place where there seems to be no way out, when we are in this box canyon of life, the Lord opens our eyes and we see beauties we have never seen before.
I would not give up that experience I had in that box canyon for anything.
Finally, I looked around and saw, cut in the side of the mountain, a road. You talk about a snaky road—this one really was. What we had experienced before was nothing like this. But it was the only way out, unless I decided to go back the other way.
Brothers and sisters, this is the point: you have to finish this course you are on. We need to encourage one another to finish the course, even if it appears that you are in a box canyon in your life.
I got up on this road and started out of the canyon, regretting in some ways that I had to leave it. It was so narrow and so steep on the side that they had actually put up a little guardrail.
If I had met a car coming the other way for that last three thousand feet, I would have had to back down around. There was no choice if I was going to get out of that box canyon.
But I am thankful for the grace of God. I did not meet another car, and I was able to get out.
When I came out of that canyon, we came into a vast, large expanse. There were mountains over here, sunshine on the various colours, old cacti sitting out in the field, and another range of mountains. It was a great expanse.
As I prepared for this message, I said, “Lord, in pressure, You enlarge us.” In pressure, You enlarge us.
All I want to say is: we finished the course, and it was worth it. It was worth it. We finished the course, and it was worth it.
We went on for another ten or fifteen miles. It was a paved road then, but it was still beautiful. We got to this little place called Tortilla Flat.
It was a little town with a population of six people. Those six people owned a restaurant there, and I think they are rich. Tortilla Flat had become a popular place.
The point is that a lot of people do not go up the trail. They come, enjoy their little restaurant, but they will not go to the trail.
But I had gone backwards, so I arrived at Tortilla Flat at lunchtime. I had one of the best fajitas I have ever eaten there. That was my reward for the narrow trail.
It was a little old rugged, rough-looking restaurant. At the bar, where people sat and ate, they had horse saddles instead of regular stools. It was a neat little place.
The walls were covered with dollar bills. If you make it through the path, you get a little dollar bill, put your name and where you are from on it, and give it to them. They will tack it on the wall—or, in this case, the ceiling.
I thought that was kind of neat. It was just a little bit of remembrance. So I left a little bit of me right there at Tortilla Flat.
Yesterday, at the funeral, when we got to the gravesite, Patsy said, “Jerry, read the inscription on the headstone for Owen’s father.”
The inscription said:
I have fought the good fight,
I have finished the course,
I have kept the faith.—2 Timothy 4:7
I said, “Lord, that is the way You want me to end tomorrow: I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith.”
I pray that the Lord will encourage us. Let us not despise the discipline, the training hand of the Lord. May the Lord encourage us today that we faint not on this narrow path that He has called us to.
It is a difficult path because He has something marvellous in view. He is preparing you for the kingdom. I guarantee it will be much more marvellous than the Apache Trail. He is preparing us for the kingdom.
Fight the good fight. We did not go into that today, but brothers and sisters, not only do we need to recognise the Lord’s hand, we need to be able to recognise the enemy’s hand as well.
Our brothers talked about binding and loosing on Wednesday nights. There are some situations that will never be broken until they are bound and loosed in prayer. That is part of what we are called to. That is part of the way we overcome.
And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony; and they loved not their life even unto death.
—Revelation 12:11
We fight the good fight in prayer. We bind and loose. We have been given that authority if we learn how to use it.
If I had to say one word that is really on my heart, it would be this: let us press on to finish the course.
Lord, we just come to Thee today. Lord, we say how merciful You are, how loving You are.
Lord, grant us that we would see Your loving hand, and we would not faint. Lord, grant us that we would see Your hand, that we would not despise Your working in our lives.
Grant us that we would recognise Your love behind it all, and we would not faint. Lord, give us the courage, the spiritual courage, to press on, to plod down this path You have called us to.
Lord, I want to say today, I thank You, Lord. I just want to thank You, even for these difficulties that we all have to face, including myself, Lord.
You are faithfully trying to get us prepared for Your kingdom. Lord, do a work in our hearts. This is a day of decision, a day to get on the right path, a day to make that turning point, Lord—a day to be sure we are on the old rugged path.
A time of transaction. Lord, work in our hearts. Only the Holy Spirit can do it, Lord. Man’s words are feeble.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.