[Singing begins. Much of the opening lyric is indistinct in the recording.]
“That wasn’t too bad. I don’t know, some of the heartbeats here are almost terminal. What’s the story? Like a sound-life-support system here tonight?”
“Okay, let’s go with the only other one I do in QC. Yeah, a little Irish today. How many people are Irish here? Come on, come on. Mister Irish himself. All right, here we go—the rest of you.”
[The speaker leads the group in a lively song, repeatedly coaching the rhythm, clapping, and foot-stomping. The sung lyrics are largely indistinct.]
“You were allowed to clap twice. Just like they do at Irish dances. Here we go, ready?”
“Now, for some of you, it’s just you never heard the song before, right? So we got to the middle there and you say, ‘What’s going on?’ The guy just said, ‘I’m singing the song of victory, redeemed, redeemed,’ and I’m going to go, ‘Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey—free!’ You say that to your mind, okay?”
“I’m redeemed, redeemed, because they were dirty, rotten sinners, I got saved. And the angels—okay. So just remember the next time. You ready? Try it again.”
[The congregation repeats the song.]
“Yeah, very good. Wait a minute—there’s a little octave higher, blah, blah, bubbling. What happened?”
“I forgot we had a high tenor in the midst. There’s one more time, and I think we got this thing. I understand the whole idea of this song. I mean, you know, there’s a lot of people walking around like zomboids. But when you’ve been saved, you’ve got a song in your heart, and even when things are going wrong, there’s something always bubbling.”
“Do you ever get that feeling sometimes? Even when things are rotten, actually there’s something bubbling inside. Praise God, praise God—I’m saved anyway. My parents beat me up and lay me in a bloody pool; my siblings are picking on me; but praise God, praise God, something’s bubbling all the time, you know?”
“So this is what we’re accentuating in this song. One more time. You ready? Okay, Irish, let’s go.”
[The group begins the song again.]
“Hold it, hold it. Now, did you notice that actually the sisters who remembered the song that I had forgotten? When they come to, ‘You ask me how I can walk this way with problems all around,’ they actually stomp their feet. Now this is the proper way of throwing this off. Let’s be Orthodox, will you?”
“Actually, if we were standing up, this is my version of Riverdance at this point. Okay? But anyway, yeah.”
“Well, you know, that makes sense. Have you been doing it backwards? I’m needing us to start? Well, we’re like sheep—or sheepesses—honestly.”
“I’m fortunate to see most of you are in shoes that weigh more than ten pounds apiece, so make things simpler. Here we go.”
[The congregation sings again.]
“Now actually, what was the guy’s name? Bing Crosby wasn’t Irish, I don’t think. Was he? No, maybe he was Irish. He was a guy famous, but blah, blah, blah, blah.”
“All right, next song. Probably the other one’s—we’ll turn about it. Oh yeah, oh, come, let’s sing. I was just gone from Ireland; we take a quick journey to Israel. Here we go.”
[The speaker leads an Israeli-style song. The words are indistinct, though the song includes the phrase, “It would have been enough.”]
“Lord, I thank You that we can come here tonight and rejoice. They dance in Israel over just thinking about the Messiah’s coming again, and here He’s already come. So, Lord, we have laughter in our soul, joy in our hearts, peace.”
“If You just gave us peace, it would have been enough—for love, for life—but You also gave us laughter in our soul. As we gather together tonight, we want to rejoice that on this Sabbath evening, as we think about Your great redemption, we can have joy and peace, love and life, and all other good things that are given to us through Christ Jesus.”
“Lord, help us somehow, as we express our worship, to be true people who are beside ourselves because of You. Thank You, Lord Jesus. Thank You, Lord Jesus.”
“Okay, we had more songs in the pipeline. What is it? Oh, those two, yeah. But you guys, it’s been that long since there was this song?”
“Who stole an audio? Okay, now look, let’s bow our heads. The guy who stole it, just raise your hand. I’ll know it.”
“Well, that was a very nice song. Did you like that one? Praise God.”
“We had one guy in our fellowship. He loved ‘Our God Reigns.’ It was number 38 in our little songbook. The guy used to call it out every Sunday. Made no difference—we’re breaking bread, we’re stomping on people—it made no difference. Number 38.”
“It got to the place to be a joke. He’d say, ‘Number 38,’ and I might say, ‘Brave guy.’ That was a great song, because we’d done the song so many times everybody was so sick and tired of it, we couldn’t stand to sing the song.”
“You guys ever had an experience like that, where people keep choosing the same song each week?”
“One time I had a gathering, sort of for evangelistic purposes, in my home. It was at Christmas time, so we sang some Christmas carols and everything like that, you know. And we had some believers, unbelievers—oh, about sixty people.”
“So this one lady, she was a wonderful Black lady, and she’d come to the Bible prayers we had and everything. She said she’d like to sing ‘O Holy Night.’ I said, ‘Okay, well, Katie, you sing it?’ She says, ‘Well, just by A.K.’”
“So she started out like this: ‘O holy night, the stars were brightly shining.’ This is pretty cool. She asked me to accompany her on guitar. Well, the one problem she had is, the louder she got, she went sharp.”
“Now, basically what I’m saying is, she went, ‘O holy night, the stars were brightly shining.’ She had me up in here like—unbelievable.”
“She finished the first verse. All the saints breathed a silent relief, of course. Had young people in the background. I got through with that first verse, I thought, and then she said, ‘Long lay the world in sin and error pining,’ and she started carrying up again.”
“Well, by that time she’d gotten out and about. Oh, man. That was pretty tough. It’s an empathy song. A few people got saved just when she stopped singing. Unbelievable.”
“Okay, anyway. Hey, listen, we did two songs at Kenbrook this summer. I’d like to remind you of one and then let’s learn the other one so we can sing it tomorrow morning, okay? Probably some of you are friends of people who are glad you will not be here tomorrow, but the rest of you who are forced to come, we’ll sing it.”
“Set Apart. Let’s try that.”
“You know what? At the end of this meeting, can we take up an offering for the brothers with guitars? Because—”
“You know, the older a guitar gets, the better, but you have to serve a good one once in a while.”
“Excuse me just a minute. Maybe it’s the rain, I don’t know. Has King been crying too much lately? What do you think?”
“You guys, help me out to remember the song. Okay, here we go.”
[The group sings “Set Apart.” The audible words include themes of being set apart for the King, sharing Christ’s suffering, and bearing heaven’s greatest treasure.]
“I reckon that song was written back in the nineteenth century. I don’t know the music to it, so I made up that music. But this is the precious thing to think about, and it’s something to think about as young people.”
“You’re a chosen vessel, which means that you have a destined end. You have a certain equipment the Lord wants to use in your life. And even though this is your testimony—that you’re empty and weak and small, and everybody says, ‘Gee, you know, how could the Lord use me? I mean, I’ve got so many faults and things’—He wants us to bear heaven’s greatest treasure.”
“And He allows us to bear that treasure even before we’re perfected. This is an amazing thing.”
“But I remember my early days as a Christian. I was saved at twenty years old, and my father-in-law was an active Christian layman. He used to witness to people, and he got me out witnessing to people about Jesus and about salvation.”
“I told people how I got saved and asked them if they wanted to get saved, and people would get saved. And I was still smoking a pipe and cursing. I had just those two bad habits. The rest of me was perfect, of course.”
“But, you know, even though I was a blank, still the Lord used me as a chosen vessel. And it was a wonderful thing.”
“I remember the night that I was only a Christian for one month, and my father-in-law and some of the men took me up to a college. I went into the college—I was a sophomore myself—and it was a men’s dorm. So these guys came down and started asking questions.”
“The typical kind of, you know, bull-session, rap-session questions—the impossible questions. You know, ‘God’s all-powerful. Can He make an immovable rock and move it?’ You know, things like that.”
“So I’m standing there, two months old as a Christian. I still hadn’t read the Old Testament, you know, and parts of the New. And I’m standing there, and I’m telling you the honest truth: there I was, a Christian two months, and God was giving me answers.”
“They’d ask a question—ching, like a cash register—and I’d give an answer. Well, some of these young men, college students, came to the Lord.”
“I’ll never forget: I went into the men’s room afterwards because I was sweating like crazy, you know. I looked in the mirror and I said, ‘Oh God, I can’t believe it. I mean, You actually used me. You’d speak to me. I didn’t know the answers. Nobody had trained me.’”
“I never went through Four Spiritual Laws or anything like that. But I literally was given, like, miraculous answers and helped some people come to the Lord.”
“So I was two months as a Christian. I said, ‘Man, this is unbelievable. I mean, God uses you like a channel to express Himself and His love, and it’s amazing things. They’re really amazing.’”
“I hope you’ve experienced that. You know, the way you experience it is you’ve got to be a little bit daring. The Bible word is faith.”
“If you remain at Chick-fil-A, you’ll never know if God can use you. But if you’re willing to be brave—not a chicken—suddenly you realize, ‘Hey, God can use me.’”
“And of course, the mystery, and the thing that makes you feel bad, is He uses you while you’re still imperfect. And that bad feeling makes you go back to the Lord and say, ‘Oh Lord, please help me. You’ve got to save my life. How can I do all these things when You can do this?’”
“And so the Lord starts, you know, working on your life. Have you realized you’re a chosen vessel? I mean, not in theory, but actually, since you’re a vessel, He uses you sometimes. So they’re amazing.”
“Okay, this is the song we want to teach the brothers and sisters tomorrow morning, okay? ‘The Way of the Cross.’”
“Now this song also—is this song that was written? Actually, I saw this in one of the Chinese hymnbooks out on the West Coast. Yeah, ‘The Way of the Cross Means Sacrifice.’ What a great song.”
“But I mean, the tune from this, I think, came from like the second part of the opera Aida. I mean, you know, like maybe some kind of a soprano or something could sing the song. But a normal human being, there’s no chance.”
“So again, I took an Irish type of song, a typical melody, and made this song. So how many of you know this song? Okay, you see, we’ve got that little smattering, and the rest of you can learn it, because every verse is the same. But the message is very precious.”
[The group sings “The Way of the Cross.” The recurring refrain asks whether the believer is willing to give himself wholly unto God.]
“She’s a very insightful song, you know? It’s so easy sometimes for us to sing, and the Lord wants us to sing and worship Him. But you know what? If the singing isn’t backed up by a life that is willing to suffer, there’s something missing.”
“And it’s easy to say, ‘Oh Lord, I give You all. Lord, I really want You, Lord.’ And then some upper cross comes in the way, and then what do you do? Are you willing to die to yourself and your pride and your embarrassments, or whatever it is?”
“It’s the plan of life. And the consolation was on the other side: you can come closer and closer to the Lord. And so, instead of feeling dead, you feel more and more life.”
“It’s a mystery. This sounds like a very mysterious thing. I mean, you die to live, but it’s really true. And the more you’re willing to do that for the Lord, the more you’ll experience that kind of life.”
“Because what the Lord has to prove to you is that you have a life deeper inside of you than you realize. And the only way He can touch that life inside of you is by something outwardly being killed.”
“And so you witness to a friend, and they make fun of you. Then they gather with two or three of their friends, and they come around and make fun of you. You’re embarrassed and humiliated and all of that thing. But something deep inside your heart pumps and says, ‘Well done. Good job.’”
“And you sense there’s a life in it. The more you touch that life inside, the more you have an overcoming victory in your life. And the way of the cross is another thing: a way of life.”
“Now, let’s try to sing it again. Now here’s what I want you to do. I’m not saying you—let’s have the sisters stand over there so they can look at the thing, and the brothers stand right over here, as if this were tomorrow morning. You understand what I’m saying? Come on. Brothers are here; sisters, right over there.”
“Can you see the words right back there? There we go. Look at the words, and let’s see if we can sing those.”
“Yes, line up by size and color-coded sweatshirt. Okay, why does this look a little out of order? What’s the problem? This looks like a choir that’s never made the choir, too.”
“You look like a sloppy agape plant. I want you to be here, nigh unto the words. You’re embracing them, as it were—typically, of course.”
“You know, I was saying, a couple of verses, I maybe would have the sisters sing a verse, I buy in the chorus; brothers sing a verse, I buy in the chorus. What verse do you pick, brother?”
“Yeah, okay, so brothers go first. We all do number one together. Which one do you want? The third? You guys want to hop in there? Okay, good.”
[The brothers, sisters, and congregation rehearse the song in alternating verses.]
“Very good. So let’s do it like that, okay? And this will be just before I see the second half of the overlap. Okay. All right. So we won’t do this in the first, actually; it’d be nervous, which is more than an hour then. Okay, have a seat.”
“I just have a couple of thoughts on one Scripture. So if you take out your Bible, let’s look at Romans 12:1. I just want to ask you a question and hopefully get a couple answers from you.”
“The book of Romans is Paul’s greatest epistle as far as logically developing our salvation. He starts right from the beginning and talks about us as sinners, and then burrows into the Jews and says, ‘You know, you’re sinners too, even though you have the law, just like the Gentiles.’”
“And then he shows us the way of salvation through Jesus. I think you all know that. You’ve all studied the book of Romans. He gets to the place where we’re all saved by grace through faith, and then he begins to talk about our Christian life.”
“How now, as Christians, we’re to offer ourselves up to God, and that God fills us with His Spirit, begins to lead us by the Spirit, begins to overcome problems in our flesh. And then he says that wonderful word at the end of Romans 8: ‘If God is for us, who will be against us?’”
“Then he talks—that kind of reminds him of the fact that Israel appears to be against God’s plan—and he goes into a couple of chapters about Israel and what their condition is at the present time. And he comes right back into chapter 12 here.”
“Let’s just read the first two verses.”
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,
which is your reasonable service.And be not conformed to this world:
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.—Romans 12:1-2
“When he says, ‘If you’ll do these two things, you will prove the acceptable will of God,’ what he means is not that you will prove that the will of God is right. What he means is, in your life, you will work out the will of God.”
“And the two things that we have to do are this—very wonderful. One, we get on this altar, and we are a burnt sacrifice.”
“So you know what? There’s no Christian life without sacrifice. And so what he says is, ‘I beseech you by the mercies of God to give your bodies as a living sacrifice for the Lord.’”
“Now, let’s just kind of put that in perspective. Basically, he’s saying this: now, sisters, you’ve been saved by His grace, and He’s taking care of everything you need. You don’t have to worry about yourself anymore.”
“All you need to do is take your whole life and lay it down on the altar for God, because He’s taking care of everything. I know this is hard to believe. You have to accept that by faith.”
“Because you’re still working out problems, and, you know, because some of your sisters aren’t married yet, this is a major concern. Some of your brothers, you know, one day you may be married. It’s a major concern. Whatever the story is.”
“But you know what? Actually, the fact of the matter is, you’re already perfect and complete because of Jesus’ love for you, so why are you worrying about yourself?”
“The greatest change in a person’s life is as more and more of the salvation of Jesus—we forget about ourselves and concentrate on Him.”
“And a good way to do it is to get yourself on that altar and allow yourself to be burned to a crisp. Take your body and let Jesus just burn it up. Forget about yourself. It’s a living sacrifice.”
“And then the second thing he said to do is allow your mind to be renewed. And as you allow your mind to be renewed and you’re on that altar, you begin to show the will of God in your life.”
“It sounds like a very simple thing, and indeed it is a very simple thing. But it involves a lot of the Spirit’s working in our lives and a lot of offering of our life every day, and consecration.”
“Now, you know, the thing about a burnt offering is, you don’t—you know, some of the offerings, you take the hind quarter. Some of the offerings, you pull out the cow’s heart, put it on the altar—all kinds of gross stuff like that.”
“But the burnt offering is kind of neat because they just chuck the whole animal up there and let it crisp. I mean, the teeth, the nostrils, the bones, the meat, everything. And that’s what God would like you to do.”
“You know, don’t just give Him your muscles. Give Him the whole lot: your brain, your eyeballs, everything. Just put it on the altar. Let Him crisp it up.”
“When you do that, you find life, not death, because you’re a living sacrifice. You’ve been redeemed by Jesus.”
“And the interesting thing about it is this: when the fire of God comes down on this altar that you’re lying on—okay, you say, ‘Okay, God, that’s it. I forget about myself. I give You everything. I’m lying on the altar.’ The fire comes down.”
“Now something wonderful happens. As the fire burns you, every Christian burns like a different color.”
“You know, you have one of those fake fire logs. Up in New York, we haven’t seen a real log of wood in years, but we have those Duraflames. And one of the great things about the Duraflames is you chuck these fake logs into the fire, and once the paper wrapping burns up, they’ve thrown in some salt.”
“You know, like magnesium salt and potassium chloride and all this kind of stuff. So you get a green burn for twenty minutes, and then you get a kind of blue burn. It’s really different salts, you know what I’m saying?”
“Now, when you get crisp, every one of you is like a different salt. And the wonderful thing is, you know, this is what God says. He says, ‘Look at this. I’ve got a rainbow worth of burning.’”
“And you need to burn with the salt that God has called you to burn with. Everybody’s got a different salt.”
“Now here’s my question. This is like the quiz. Let’s just take a couple of guys. I’m talking about people. I’m talking about John. I’m talking about Paul. Let’s just do those.”
“Each one of those guys tried on the altar, and each one of them burned with a certain color light. And they had a different kind of aroma, because every Christian is different. You know what I’m saying?”
“Every one burns like they love God. You can tell. How many of you know Peter, John, Paul? You could tell they all loved God, but they all burned with a different smell.”
“You know, some people use one kind of cologne; some people use another. But when you burn for God, you have a certain fragrance, and each one’s a little different.”
“Now Peter, John, and Paul, they all burn with Jesus now. Oh, Jesus—it’s a certain odor that you can tell. We all have this fragrance of Jesus, but each one has a difference. You know what I’m saying?”
“And my question is, I’ll ask the men over here: when Paul burned on the altar, what was his fragrance?”
“Remember, it’s also not like Jesus—but I mean, let me put it this way. You’ve got to imagine this now. Let’s just remember, now here tonight, like we’re in this room and we’re all looking forward to vegetable pizza.”
“Now, just before we have it, somehow in the mystery of God’s providence, Paul comes walking into this room and he starts talking about Jesus. Now, as soon as he starts talking about Jesus, he starts blazing. What is his fragrance? Different from John? Different from Peter? What kind of salt has Paul got?”
“Apollos had a fragrance of, like, the beauty of the Lord, the wisdom of the Lord. Apollos was a well-learned rhetorician, and he spoke, and people said, ‘Woo, God, he’s so smart.’ See, that’s the fragrance of Apollos.”
“Now Paul didn’t have Apollos’ fragrance. That’s why some people preferred to follow Apollos. They said, ‘Paul, you stink. We like Apollos.’ Wrong. They all smell of Jesus; there’s different fragrances of Jesus, you see.”
“Paul had the odor of grit.”
“Hey, didn’t they all smell like smoky grass? Of course they were all barbecue grapes. When you get on the altar, you’re burning, man—barbecue grapes. This is a server at McDonald’s. We all know that. I’m talking about special.”
“But aside from, like, what his mission was, I’m just talking about the aura that comes off of Paul. You know, see, when you see Paul, you look at Paul, you say, ‘I see Jesus.’ But you see Jesus in the Pauline way.”
“And when you see John, you say, ‘Oh, I see Jesus,’ but that Jesus is a little different slant. But it’s the same Jesus. You understand?”
“You see, if you really stop and think about it, when you see Paul walk into the room, what happens? You see somebody so fervent for the Lord, he’s willing to lay down his life. You see somebody so absolutely for the Lord, you can just smell the zeal.”
“He is so for the Lord. That’s what you see in Paul. He’s so honest. He’s so zealous. You say, ‘Boy, that’s Jesus.’ And he reminds you of Jesus when Jesus went into the temple.”
“Paul got into controversies. It wasn’t really that he was controversial. He was just so zealous for the Lord that controversy was in his way.”
“How did Peter smell? And don’t say fish.”
“If Peter comes in here—the Peter we know from the Gospels—he comes in here and he begins to talk about Jesus or something, what just lights up? This guy’s burning for Jesus. How does it look to you?”
“Hope. When you see Peter preaching, you sense hope.”
“Forgiveness. Now you’re getting close. What do you see about Jesus? You’ve got to find me a name of Jesus that applies to Peter when he’s preaching.”
“I think probably you’re right. I think that sort of does come through. You know, when you see Peter, you get the sense of a humble servant.”
“But the thing about—you see, I was hoping that you were going to bring the same answer. Because when Peter preaches, you sense the grace of Jesus. It’s grace.”
“Peter could just throw the net out over people and they feel like, ‘Jesus wants to save me.’ And it’s the amazing thing about Peter. See, that’s why he’s the fisherman and the evangelist. I mean, that’s just the way he smells.”
“But Peter is burning with Jesus. You say, ‘I can come to Jesus and get saved,’ because Peter had no airs. He wasn’t a big deal. He was a humble servant, like Chris was saying.”
“I would say the word I was looking for—but now, you know, this is just kind of something to stir your brains a little bit. I would have said, ‘Jesus is my friend,’ whenever I see Peter.”
“Jesus is my friend. Because there’s something about Peter—he’s entreatable. That’s why he’s a gospel preacher. He just says, ‘Man, look how humble Peter is. Look how loving Jesus is. Man, I want to come to You.’ You know what I’m saying?”
“Okay, John. When he’s burning—ah, well now, there you go. But explain how. Okay, here John: he’s thinking about Jesus. He’s here, and then he’s here, and he’s smelling the veggie pizza, but he’s not going for pizza yet because he’s preaching about Jesus.”
“And what do you mean? You see the fire of love. How does love fire up? You say, ‘Okay, let’s go and hug each other?’ Not that.”
“Yeah, it is agape love. Yes. How would you describe it?”
“What was our residual impression about Jesus? How do you describe that love? A sacrificial love. Oh, okay—a wash-your-feet type of love. That’s interesting.”
“You know, the wonderful thing about John, especially if we met him in his later years, is that when John looked at you, he knew you.”
“You know, when Jesus went around, when He looked at a child, the child came to His side because, like the child, He knew the child in childhood.”
“And when John would walk into a room like this, he—you know, he said, ‘I speak to you, little children. I speak to you, young men. I speak to you, fathers.’ He knows people.”
“It’s that love that’s because, you see, John is abiding. His head-burning is abiding. And so, when he’s burning and abiding, when you meet John, you feel a union with this guy.”
“What is it? I mean, John, I feel like we’re one. I’ve known this guy. He knows me. Look into my eyes—he knows my soul. Because he sees in pure light. He speaks on light and truth and purity.”
“Because his love is burning with this kind of—you can’t escape him. He’s the scariest guy of the three. Because when he walks in the room, he looks in your eyes, he knows you. You can’t hide.”
“And that’s the love of Jesus. And that’s why when Jesus came into the room, He scared people. If you were a hypocrite, you became afraid of Jesus, because He just looked in your eyeballs and He exposed you.”
“That’s love. You say, ‘That’s love? That’s pretty scary.’ But if you’re willing to abide in that kind of relationship, you discover Jesus.”
“You see, that Jesus loves her too. Honestly, isn’t that the toughest part about Jesus coming to us? He wants to come to you and talk to you, but He’s going to look you over with His eyeballs. And He knows you. And that’s why we’re so uncomfortable.”
“Okay, now here’s the good news. Everyone, put your life on the altar and say, ‘I want to cry for Jesus. I’m going to burn up. I want to burn up for Jesus. Jesus, smoke me up with Your own fragrance, and whatever comes out, comes out.’”
“You don’t even know what your fragrance is, but you know what? Other people begin to notice a certain fragrance about you.”
“I bet you—and I’m not going to ask you, for fear of starting speculation into all kinds of cornball realms—but I know that if you thought about it, every time you see Brother Stephen Kong, there’s a certain fragrance of Jesus. And it’s different from Len, or different from our brother Ernie.”
“Isn’t that amazing? And yet you say, ‘Wow, I touched Jesus there,’ but it’s different. The fragrance is different. Well, I say praise God. Isn’t it wonderful? We’re just all so different.”
“You wouldn’t want everybody smelling the same. Yeah, I was like, ‘Ah, heaven’s cologne. I’m used to it.’ No. There’s always that—man, there’s the humility. There’s a true humility.”
“When you meet a man with true humility, it does something to me. You know what I’m saying? Then there’s somebody who’s got joy. And then somebody’s—oh, there’s all kinds of fragrances. There’s as many as the traits of Jesus.”
“And here’s the wonderful thing. You think you’re going to burn in a certain way—you have no idea. The way you thought, when you actually get on the altar, other people say, ‘You know, every time I meet Sister So-and-so, there’s a certain kind of purity that I see.’”
“Isn’t that wonderful? It’s not a self-conscious fragrance. It’s a byproduct of a focus on the Lord Jesus.”
“May that be your experience. I hope you enjoy being on the altar, because it’s life. And then, in the renewing of your mind, you begin to see, you know, my life of Jesus means so much to me, and the will of God means so much to me. And that’s when other people notice who you are.”
“Is it possible to be a Christian, really born again, love the Lord, and yet people around you not really know that you’re a Christian? It is possible—if you hide.”
“Now, my theory is, if you’re hiding under a bushel, some smoke is still coming out. And they think, ‘Smells like a smoked spirit, but I can’t quite tell.’ If you take the bushel off, they’ll see something.”
“And when you lay your life on the altar, that bushel starts to come off. And maybe you’re a peer, and your friends will get saved. All they do is smell the fragrance.”
“Paul says this—you remember how Paul says in 2 Corinthians? He says, ‘Everywhere I go, I’m giving a fragrance.’ You see Paul come into town, you see, like, smoke trailing behind him, you know.”
“And he said it’s a fragrance of life for the people who get saved. You see, when Paul goes by, somebody goes, ‘I like that fragrance,’ and they go after him and they get saved, because he’s smelling like Jesus.”
“Other people say, ‘Oh man, that smells like righteousness. It smells like holy—get away from me.’ And it’s a fragrance of death to the people who reject the smell.”
“Paul can’t help it. I mean, you can’t wear deodorant behind it. He’s got the fragrance of Jesus. As we lay our life on the altar, you’ll have a fragrance of Jesus, and the Lord will use you in a special way.”
“Maybe in college. You know, I mean, there’s all kinds of fragrances, like wisdom, revelation, life, joy, peace.”
“Isn’t it wonderful when you meet somebody who’s just got peace all over them? It’s a rare thing, but somewhere in the world there’s somebody like that. You know, they love Jesus and they’re burning with peace. It’s all settled.”
“Come around whenever you have a problem and say, ‘Can I just grab a hold of your peace? Have a pizza—pizza of your peace.’ Peace, pizza, pizza. That could work.”
“But you know what I’m saying? People who are agitated all the time, calling up a Sister Peace—there you go.”
“And all of you are going to bear that fragrance of Christ. It’s going to be wonderful to see. That’s why it’s so great to be in the body of Christ.”
“Wouldn’t it be terrible if we just had one flavor? We don’t. This is great. And they each want to manifest that fragrance that the Lord’s giving you—whatever that particular salt is that He’s got in your log.”
“That gets on the fire, you start burning blue or green or red, or whatever the color is. Just be amazing. Be amazing.”
“That’s great, then that’s it. And then I think they have some snacks—about twelve thousand calories’ worth in the kitchen there. We can eat them.”
“So listen, would you remember tomorrow? You know, we’re going to come up here and sing. And so when I say, ‘Okay,’ you know, I’m going to get up here and speak, Mike, and all the saints are going to say, ‘Oh no, not this guy again.’”
“So listen, when I ask you to please come up so we can sing, don’t take like twelve minutes. Man, don’t put your hands in your pockets. Let’s get up here. I know, man. Girls over there. Got that verse two, verse three. What’s up? Maybe even in the singing.”
“All right, let’s pray.”
“Lord, I just come to You in the name of Jesus and ask, by Your grace, You come and move upon each one of Your children here and set them apart as a chosen vessel, as a unique log on the fire of the body of Christ.”
“Help them to burn, oh, with the burning of Jesus. Whatever the particular fragrance is, we know it’ll be of Jesus, and that’s a glory. That’s a wonder. It’s a miracle.”
“Thank You that You use us, weak vessels, to bear that glorious fragrance and light. Lord, do encourage every one of Your children here to lay their lives upon the altar.”
“And to look around them in the body of Christ and see those sisters who love the Lord and watch their aroma, and see the brothers who really love Jesus and watch the aroma.”
“Such a wonderful thing to discover the many varieties of our many-faceted Lord Jesus. We worship You, Lord Jesus, O holy Son of God. You have more names than we could ever trip off our tongue in a half hour’s time.”
“And every one of those names are only symbolic of a reality of Your life that’s expressed in the fire that came when You died on the cross for us. Thank You for revealing, and even now revealing, Your life to us.”
“Help us to live that consecrated life upon the altar, burning for Jesus, the glorious flame. Set apart. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”