Such a privilege to be with you. I want you to know that Ruth has been praying for cool weather. That is what you have, isn’t it? The last times we have been here—whether up in the mountains, San Diego, Cornville, or wherever—it has been on the chilly side. The Lord answered your prayer, sweetheart.
I am so thankful for the privilege of coming and getting reacquainted after about ten years. It is good to see most of you again. I look over faces to make sure that you are all who I think you are. Ten years makes a little difference.
I do have a peculiarity. You may not remember it, but I need your response, and I do various things to get it. One of them is that I am going to tune the organ for a little bit.
When I say, “God is good,” you respond, “All the time.” When I say, “Jesus is Lord,” you say, “Amen.” When I say, “It is time to praise,” you say, “Hallelujah.” When I say, “This is the day the Lord has made,” you can say, “I will rejoice.”
God is good. Jesus is Lord. Time to praise. This is the day the Lord has made.
That is the best organ I have had for a long time. Good response. Thank you.
What I want to share these mornings that I have with you is a little unusual, I suppose, in some ways. I am going to use the overhead because it helps keep me on line.
The theme I want to use to begin with is this: leaders must finish well.
A few years ago, Dr. Robert Clinton, professor at the School of World Missions at Fuller Theological Seminary, did research on the lives of over six hundred leaders, both past and present. He concluded from this research that most leaders do not finish well.
That is kind of shocking, isn’t it? But just in case you need a little help, how many of you know a leader in the Bible who finished well?
What I want us to be aware of this morning is the fact that we have a fallen race. We have little idea just how deep the Fall has been until we begin to recognize the process through which God wants to take us.
Clinton observed that those who finish well seem to share some common characteristics. Those who did not finish well were missing those same characteristics. This morning, we are going to look at the first of five characteristics.
Leaders who finish well have perspective that enables them to focus. In seeing the broader view, they relate the present to the long range.
My burden this morning is the divine perspective and how we live in it. I believe it will help us finish the race well.
I so appreciate the burden our brother had last evening, because there is a need for awakening and stirring in our hearts. I do not want to come along with a negative note this morning, but I believe God is going to have a remnant of people who will finish the race, who will overcome, whose lives will be a tremendous example in this closing hour.
I am going to speak for the remnant this morning. You are here—those who are going to finish well. Amen? Amen. Good.
The burden this morning is the divine perspective. When I look back over the years, I think of two primary perspectives God has given in my own life that have been very helpful in keeping me on course.
The first is found in Genesis. God has some pattern men, and one of them is Abraham. We are going to look in Abraham’s life for just a little bit.
In Genesis, you discover what I like to call principles of God’s initial dealings, first mentioned in the life of Abraham. Let us pick it up in Genesis 12:1.
Now the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country,
and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house,
unto the land that I will show thee:
and I will make of thee a great nation,
and I will bless thee, and make thy name great;
and be thou a blessing:
and I will bless them that bless thee,
and him that curseth thee will I curse:
and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
Jump down to Genesis 12:7. This is the first time in Scripture that you have God appearing to anyone—first mention.
And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said,
Unto thy seed will I give this land:
and there builded he an altar unto the Lord,
Who appeared unto him.
And he removed from thence unto the mountain on the east of Beth-el,
and pitched his tent, having Beth-el on the west, and Ai on the east:
and there he builded an altar unto the Lord,
and called upon the name of the Lord.
The first principle I want us to get hold of this morning is this: God calls every one of us to build an altar.
The thing that is interesting in the life of Abraham is that the moment God appears and gives him something of Himself, there is a response in Abraham back to God. I believe this is the altar of dedication. God gives Himself; we give ourselves to Him.
This altar is a very significant place, mentioned again and again in Genesis—the rebuilding of the altar. It represents the dedication of Abraham’s life.
You will notice that it says, “And he pitched his tent.” Many years ago, I read a little book by Watchman Nee, The Altar and the Tent. It began to focus my own heart.
I saw that while God wants us to give ourselves wholly and totally unto Him, the tent represents what He does for us. God is concerned for us. The altar represents our dedication to Him, but the tent represents the good things we enjoy.
I need to stop for a moment, because all these years I have been utterly amazed at how many people build their tent and then hunt for an altar.
I could give you any number of people who found a house that was ideal. The wife found it; it was an ideal place. The tent was absolutely wonderful. They moved there and then hoped to find an altar—something to give themselves to.
It is backwards. God’s way is first the building of the altar. I find something to give myself to that has worth, value, and purpose; then He will provide what I need. Can you say amen?
There are people still hunting for the altar. They have the most lovely tent, but it is empty. It is meaningless, simply because God’s principle of operation is, “Give yourself to Me. I will give all that you need to make your life fulfilling and fruitful.”
The significant thing was this: there was Bethel on one side and Ai on the other. Many of you already know that one of the distinctive ways God works is to hide things. You cannot see them until He unveils them.
It is the glory of God to conceal a thing;
but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.
There are some things I am still saying, “Lord, I do not know.” He says, “There will be a time when you will understand, and you will need it. But for now, it is hidden.”
One day I discovered that God distinctively put Bethel here, and then He put Ai on the other side. I said, “Lord, why did You go about saying Bethel and Ai?”
Bethel means “house of God.” Here we have the house of God. Ai means “heap of ruins.”
What is the Lord saying? What He said to me absolutely changed my life.
Those who are living with total dedication to God’s purpose are helping Him in the building of His house—living stones being fitly shaped together, so that God can have a house in which to dwell. This is the eternal place in which God is going to dwell: Bethel, the house of God.
Then I thought, “What would a heap of ruins be?” I felt the Lord was saying, “It is a pile of stones that are not shaped, framed, and built together.” That is a heap of ruins, folks.
They are living stones; they just have not been worked on very much.
God’s way of working in all our lives is to chip away and frame us, getting us ready so that one day He can fit us into the house. Some of you wonder what is happening in your life. God is circumcising. He is getting away things that are not needed in order that He can fit you into the house.
We are more than just living stones. He wants stones that will fit.
God is wanting to take every one of us as living stones and fit us together into a living house. That is what each fellowship represents: living stones that are a part of one another.
I look back over thirty years in Indianapolis. When we moved there, seventeen families moved to start church life. There was lots of vision and hope concerning what we believed God was going to do in Indianapolis.
We discovered that getting those stones to fit, getting them shaped, takes some time. I remember looking up and saying, “Lord, You have my name on that stone right there. That is a real small place. I had more than that planned in the house.” He said, “You will fit very well, son, when I get through with you.”
We are being fitly framed and joined together because we have blind sides. We need the protection of one another. We need to stand on those who have been before us and be able to support those above us.
How many can say, “I am a living stone this morning”? God, keep working on me, because I want to fit. And He is going to do it.
In the last twenty-five years, I have discovered that among all the fellowships in Indianapolis and central Indiana, those living stones jump around.
I visit a fellowship and say, “Do you usually attend here?” “Well, no, I had a little problem back there, but I am doing better here.”
I really got disappointed a couple of years back. “Lord, is it possible down here to fitly shape and frame stones so that we can stay together and fit together?” It is the cement of the Holy Spirit that will keep us in place.
Then one day He showed me the real answer: Bethel is the house of God, but in Genesis 35 He takes Jacob to El-bethel. He says, “I am the One who is going to build it. It is not dependent on you.”
That brought great relief. El-bethel means “the God of the house of God.”
I do not know, but I think California has some of the same problems Indiana does—some loose stones, jumping stones, people who think, “Well, I will fit over there, and they will really appreciate me.” You have a honeymoon there for a while, and then the honeymoon is over. Amen.
Many years ago, the Lord privileged me to move about in different places. One year, I think I counted forty different weekends that I was away. Those were the days when the charismatics would have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday meetings—never a whole week, because they could not get enough people.
One day the Lord said, “What are you going to have when you finish the course?” I said, “Well, won souls. We got a few shaped up.”
The Lord pointedly said to my own heart, “I want you to be a part of what I am building, not helping men build their own kingdoms.”
There is an awful lot of private kingdom-building. I am with Paul: I thank God for everything that is being done. I really do. If Jesus is preached, people are being saved, and some lives are being conformed.
But it is kind of noisy in the quarries when they are chiseling and working on stones. One day God is going to bring all the stones together. I said, “Lord, I am waiting for that day.”
The first perspective God put into my life, which has been a touchstone for many years, is this question: Are these people building His kingdom? Is this the Bethel You are building, or does somebody simply want to use my ministry and end up as a pile of stones?
That is a deep burden this morning. I want to encourage you, because as I fellowship with you, my heart senses that many of you are here for this very reason. You have been in piles of stones. You have changed piles a number of times. Finally, you are saying, “Lord, is there a place where we can really find the rest, the purpose, the thing that God wants?”
Remember, it is El-bethel: the God of the house of God.
My dedication these years has been this: “Oh, Lord, I choose to give myself.” It may not show; it may not be very obvious. There are a lot of monuments being built today by men. But when you get in the midst of it, you see that much of it is simply living stones that have never been shaped together.
That is the first perspective I want to share with you this morning. I felt it was a turning point in my own life, and I have not ceased to thank God for what it has done. I suppose that is the reason I am here today.
I have a sense that I am speaking to people with something of the same vision and burden. We want to build with Him. Fellowship is wonderful, but building together requires people of a similar vision. Amen.
Let us move on to the next perspective. This perspective has to do with God’s working in the present hour in which we live.
I feel that we are facing real conflict around the world today, and many people are not quite alive to what the conflict really is.
For example, you have the Muslim world, which emphasizes one thing: submission. Submission is the issue. They go back to the sovereignty of God. Is God sovereign? Oh, yes. They say He is going to bring all things under His control.
But if you have ever been in a group of people who are only submitting, you know that the final end can be fatalism: what will be, will be.
This awakened me to the fact that when people pray five or six times a day, they acknowledge what it is to be submissive to God. They may be more God-centered than most of us. How many of you pray five or six times a day?
The whole Muslim world treats sovereignty as the primary issue because that is their touchstone in God.
Then you come to the West—that is us. We have one ideology today, one goal: freedom. “Do not fence me in.” I heard almost four hours on television: “I am free. I am free, and we are going to make you free.”
All I could say was, “Oh, God, that is the problem right now.” The West is so gripped with, “I am free to do what I want to do,” and freedom becomes the problem.
God granted Adam moral choice. When God made Adam in the garden, He gave him the privilege of choice. There were restrictions, but He gave him restrictions and privileges.
The great problem in the world—whether in the present hour or in the various struggles that have gone on in the church—issues between moral choice and the sovereignty of God.
The Lord has made this real to my own heart: if you start with a touchstone in God, one of His attributes, you are in danger. Is God sovereign? Yes. But we do not start with that attribute as the touchstone. If you do, you will follow submission and probably end up in fatalism.
The West comes back and says, “But we have another touchstone: God is love.” And He is. But if you start with love as your touchstone, the effort becomes, “A loving Father would not punish; a loving God would not…”
We magnify the grace of God, exalt the mercy of God, and recognize the importance of the love of God. But you must not start with an attribute of God.
This is why Paul prays in Ephesians:
I bow my knees unto the Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.
We do not start with virtues or attributes in God. We start with a Person: the Father.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing
in the heavenly places in Christ.
If I start with a Person, I come to recognize that the only safe sovereignty is paternal sovereignty.
I grew up in an Arminian church background, which meant I got saved at every revival meeting, over and over again. In fact, almost every Sunday night I was back at the altar to get saved again, because I had to hang on to keep saved.
Finally, I got to the place where I said, “God, I will never do it. I will never be able to. Just give me ten minutes at the end.”
I am not playing with your emotions this morning. I am simply saying that it is an awful thing not to know the grace of God.
One day He whispered to my heart, “Son, you are not hanging on to Me. I am hanging on to you.” It was the most wonderful thing.
I know Him Whom I have believed,
and I am persuaded that He is able to guard that which I have committed unto Him against that day.
The revelation of grace was tremendous. To this day, I thank God that the grace of God is very precious to me.
But if we are really going to understand what I call the ways of the Lord—God’s own design, the principles by which He works—we begin to see that this sovereign God invites man into partnership with Himself.
He has so ordained that man, who has free will, can come to yield and surrender his will to God. God becomes One who shares something of His sovereignty with man.
Watchman Nee said it this way:
Here in time, God does not move His children about like pawns on a board, but has limited Himself to their free choice. He has done this knowing what pleasure it will bring Him and us in the end.
In eternity past, God was unlimited; then there was no second will. Again, in eternity future, He will be unlimited, for love will have conquered and man’s free will will be one with God’s will. That will be glory.
Now in time, God has limited Himself. Only as men of free will are one with Him today can He accomplish His purpose.
Free will means I can obey or not, as I choose. It is as though God has put at our disposal a locomotive of immense power, and we are told to lay the track. The power is there, and the destination is planned, but the engine does not control the rails. It is the rails we provide that have power to limit the engine. How great is our responsibility.
God has an invitation to bring us into glorious participation—a partnership with Himself. It only comes because we, in our fallen condition, have been given choice; but we yield it up, and we meet Him there.
When we moved from South Dakota into Missouri, we moved just below the Mason-Dixon Line. My uncle from the North traveled all over, found a fertile valley, and bought a great deal of acreage there. There were three slave cabins still there, going back to the days before the Civil War.
The story that comes out of that community dates back to the days when slaves were sold at auction.
One day, a crowd was gathered, and a young lassie was brought to the auction to be sold. Everyone looked on with emotion because they realized she was being taken away from her family. She would be sold, and no one knew where she would go.
A tall stranger, whom no one knew, walked in. The bid kept going up, and he kept bidding until finally the auctioneer said, “Sold,” pointing to the stranger, who had paid quite a price for this lovely young lassie.
She quivered. She looked at her master, wondering what he would be like and where she would go. Then they saw something they never forgot.
He was writing on a sheet of paper, and he said, “Lassie, I bought you to set you free. You have been a slave, but I have paid the price to set you free. This paper represents your freedom. You will not need to go home with me. You will not need to be my slave. You are free.”
Once she was a slave; now she was free. Can you imagine the joy that must have filled her heart? Free!
But this is where so much of Christendom today stops: freedom from my slavery, freedom from my past, freedom from my sin. But what is my freedom for? That is the issue today.
My uncle always told this story with tears. He said the little lassie looked up at her new owner, who had paid a tremendous price for her freedom. He handed her the paper that represented her freedom.
Then she looked back at him and said, “Sir, you have such kind eyes. You would be a wonderful master. Would you take my freedom? I would like to go home with you.”
The freedom she had, she surrendered. She gave it up. That is the gospel. That is the half we do not hear much about.
It is a wonderful thing to be saved from bondage, slavery, and sin. He has paid the price. We grab our freedom, run, and say, “Hallelujah! Yippee, I am free—free to do anything I want to do.”
That is the trouble with freedom. That is the trouble with the moral issue.
God has built into the fabric of things the fact that our freedom is always from something, but it is for something.
In the Old Testament, when a slave had served a certain period of time and was allowed to be free, it was customary for that slave to come to the master and say, “I would like to be your love slave.”
They moved from one kind of slavery to a love slavery. They would take the individual to the doorpost and pierce the ear. The piercing of the ear represented that, from that moment on, someone had said, “I have been free, but by choice I have come under your authority.”
I said one day, “Lord, why do You pierce the ear?” Because if You can get them to hear, the hands, the feet, and everything else will follow.
The God Who finds us in our slavery, sin, and bondage sets us free so that we might yield ourselves to Him. We move along the line of purpose and fulfillment when we become free for the purpose of God—free to love Him.
When I yield, God comes to share. Up to that point, it is raw sovereignty; it is imposed. But I am so glad that when I saw the difference between paternal sovereignty and raw, hard sovereignty, something in my heart said, “God, I have been looking for that a long time.”
I read one of the great theologians of the Reformation who said that God could cast a million infants into hell without blinking His eye. He was demonstrating sovereignty.
All I could say was, “That is not my God.” That may be God with sovereignty, but it is not my God. Why? Because my God has His sovereignty controlled by His paternal heart.
I am covering some unusual ground, but I am burdened today to say that we are privileged to meet Him right here. As we read from Watchman Nee, He shares something of His sovereignty with us.
With our yielding and His sharing, we come to what I call the first issue: our spirits of birth. God has been convicting and working by His Spirit, bringing us to an awakening of our condition. We find that He has paid the price with His own precious blood, and now we are free.
His Spirit joins our spirit, and we become a child of God, born from above.
That is a new way of saying old things. I am just repackaging things you know. You ever go into the supermarket and see that everything is repackaged? That is all I am doing today, folks, but I am trying to be clever about it.
How free was Adam in the beginning before he turned his own way? Then he came into the bondage of sin, and he sold himself to the devil. That is why God has come to release man and bring us out of that bondage.
A question comes up: when I initially meet the Lord Jesus, I meet Him with all the information I have, and I yield on the basis of all the light and knowledge I have.
We have had struggles for fifty years over how much lordship is involved in conversion. Does that ever get to California? Anybody here have that problem?
Here is a man who comes off Skid Row. The first time he hears the gospel, he hears the good news, walks down the aisle, and says, “I need Jesus.” Does he get saved? How much lordship is involved? He does not know anything.
But here is a young man who has grown up in a pastor’s home for twenty-five years. He knows all the things, and he says, “Well, I think I will let Him save me, but down the road I will make Him Lord.” Theological—I better move on.
I was in a home in North Carolina some years ago. There was a very lovely teacher of child evangelism who had a young rebel as her child. One day I looked at him and said, “Are you putting the Lord first in your life?”
He said, “No, I am saved. That is all that is important. Somehow I will let Him be Lord.”
I loved the guy, but he was confused. Some of his mother’s wonderful teaching had somehow kept him from facing the governmental issue in his life.
I looked at him and said, “I would not give you a nickel for your salvation.”
He said, “What do you mean? Mother has taught me you can be saved, and then later…”
I said, “Well, that is your mother, but I do not find that in the Book.”
There is a time when you yield to the Lord Jesus. It is a matter of how much information you have. The man off Skid Row may have little understanding, but the good news is that all the rest of his life he is going to discover what lordship means. That is true of every one of us.
I am still discovering all that His lordship means. We do not pin it down and say, “You know this much or that much.” The issue is, Is He Lord this morning? Are you putting Him first in your life?
When I yield, He shares. His Spirit joins my spirit; we call it the new birth. That is the wonderful experience of God coming into life.
As we move on with God, it is a matter of God sharing and our yielding. God shares, and all the way through life He opens up new issues of truth—things you have never seen before. He gives you a glimpse into something.
It was a wonderful day when I discovered that God was building His church. The Lord said one day, “You could join those Plymouth Brethren down on the corner. You would probably just be one of their brethren, but you would never amount to too much as a preacher because they do not give much place.”
All my ambition went down the drain. I began to see that God wanted me to give myself to Him for whatever He wanted to do in my life.
There are crises we have all faced when we come to see a new issue, and God asks something of us. “Lord, I do not understand it.” “Will you obey?”
When we do, He says, “Then I will give you an anointing.” The Spirit is given to those who obey.
The Holy Spirit is resident within you the moment you trust Christ. His Spirit joins your spirit, and you are born from above. But in the process of the unfolding of His lordship, He is always asking new obedience.
Many years ago, when I left Youth for Christ in Salem, Oregon, after working up and down the West Coast, I went down to visit my uncle in San Diego and then headed for Missouri, where my parents had moved.
My mother was so happy to have me there. She said, “Son, I know you are speaking to young people all the time in large rallies, but would you consider speaking to our young people at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church?”
I said, “I will be happy to.”
There were probably twenty-five or thirty young people. I remember that first evening saying, “Lord, I met some issues earlier that I was not going to do a lot of speaking until You gave me a word.”
I had made a promise while riding the Trailways bus from San Diego back to Mount Vernon, Missouri. I was reading the story of D. L. Moody, Moody: A Biography. I read the place where Moody was sitting in a barn and the speaker said, “The world is yet to see what God can do through one life that is wholly yielded to Him.”
I had heard it before, but that day truth became light. Do you know the difference? Truth became light. The Holy Spirit zeroed in on that and said, “How about you?”
I knew that I knew. I said, “Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord.”
When we got back home, Mother asked why I did not speak to the young people. I said, “Well, if the Lord gives me something.” Usually I would have said, “Ready right now,” but I wanted to have the mind of the Lord—to have a word from the Lord.
I remember standing and speaking, and the pastor came up afterwards and said, “You know, I think we need a whole week of this. How many of you would like to come back all week long?”
All week long, the meeting grew and developed. The church was being moved. God was speaking, and individuals were being saved.
I went to the service the next Sunday night. The house was full, and the Lord had not given me a message.
I could not wire in and say, “This is it.” I was under a new obedience to the Lord. I do not know how to explain it.
I stood below the pulpit and said, “Folks, I am so grateful that all of you have come. This has been a very blessed week. God has encouraged our hearts. I have been under obedience to Him, and I do not have a message tonight—yet.”
I kept saying, “Quick, Lord, hurry.” You know, you have a barrel back there you can draw from. I had been speaking for years; it would not have been hard.
Then I said, “Let us pray that God will speak to some hearts tonight, that His word will come forth.”
As we bowed and I prayed, suddenly I saw a man move from one side of the church to the other and kneel down. Everybody knew what was happening. This elder was getting right with another elder. He was obeying.
The church knew the squabble that had been there for years. Things had been locked up and tied up. You can have all the revival meetings you want, but until God’s anointing breaks in—
By the time a couple of minutes had passed, things were clarified and they were loving one another. I saw people all over the church going to one another. Lots of things needed to be dealt with. Lots of forgiveness.
The pastor got up and said, “I think we will continue the meeting another week.” He did not even ask me.
A pastor in Mount Vernon had been slipping out to see what was happening. The next week he came and said, “Why do you not just move into Mount Vernon? We will have the meeting there after this.” That went on for forty weeks.
But the critical issue all the time was: obey. God gives the anointing. God’s Spirit comes. The Holy Spirit is given to those who obey.
Now, somebody says, “That is how you get it. I am going to start obeying.” But if your motive is wrong, you will fall flat on your face every time, because God has to sift out our motives.
I have tried many times to obey things that were nothing but me. He says, “You are on your own, son.” I wish I could explain all that means, but I do not know yet.
All I know this morning is this: God is working today to bring some people to the place where we will move in the line of purpose with Him. Through this middle zone, He is calling those who are willing to yield up their rights.
When that happens, God meets us. Sometimes I cannot explain His sovereignty, and sometimes I cannot explain how much responsibility He lets me take.
We were sitting on the plane yesterday, and there was a little grandson coming down the aisle. He was having a jolly good time. He was so sweet, and they were letting him do anything. “Isn’t that sweet?”
I have taught for years that you need more sovereignty—more control—over that little fellow at that time than at any other time. Now is the time. After that sweetness, he gets to be fifteen, and the rebel is impossible. Then you do not say, “Isn’t that sweet?”
God is all the time bringing us to the place where His control and our yielding meet. There He says, “I command a blessing. There I work.”
That is my plea for us today. God is taking a people along the way, and we need to be very careful about the giving up.
Sometimes I like to say that the hardest right is the right to be right—to give that one up. “But I know I am right, and I can prove it.” Yes, but your spirit is wrong.
Sometimes I have had to walk away and say, “Oh, God, I still know I am right, but my spirit needs to be broken before the Lord.”
We do not start with a touchstone in God that is merely an attribute. God is sovereign, God is love, God is merciful—but you do not start with those as your touchstone.
We start with God as a Person. He is a Father. He exercises sovereignty; sometimes He gives more freedom, and sometimes He gives less.
The only safe morality is paternal. How much freedom do you give your little ten-year-old? “Here is the key, son. Go out and have a good time with the car.” Of course you do not. Why? Because your paternal understanding says he is not ready.
God’s sharing of freedom with us is always exactly according to His Father-heart knowledge. As we move along the line of purpose and fulfillment toward what God wants, we discover that we were once independent, and then we became dependent.
We say, “Okay, what will be, will be. Go ahead, God; it is all Yours.” But He says, “Have you ever heard of interdependence?”
That is where we together come to share. That is growing up.
Sometimes I say, “God, I do not want all this responsibility.” He says, “Grow up. I am giving you responsibility because your heart and mind are focused. You have been to the cross. You are one with Me.”
I want to take a commercial time now. We have three new books that have come out. I have a wonderful friend, Barney Coombs, up in Vancouver. Barney is kind of the cement between about twelve different fellowships in that area.
I sent him a couple of the books just before Christmas, and he read one on the plane as he was on his way to London for a series of meetings.
One lesson begins this way:
Great men know how to seize the moment of opportunity. In fact, they usually make opportunities which others do not see. Perhaps there is some secret all of us need to understand.
In this lesson, we shall consider the power of mutuality. We must see how God, in wisdom, has designed our cooperation into His plan. We shall see that it is not you, nor I, but we.
Here is the story. A mother and her young son were attending a Paderewski concert. The mother spotted an old friend and walked down the aisle to greet her. Seizing the opportunity to explore the wonders of the concert hall, the little five-year-old son rose and eventually found his way through a door marked “No Admittance.”
As the house lights dimmed, signaling that the concert was beginning, the mother returned to her seat only to discover that her child was missing.
Suddenly, the stage curtain parted, revealing the impressive Steinway on which spotlights were focused. Then she saw him.
Sitting at the keyboard was her little son, innocently picking out:
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
At that moment, the great piano master made his entrance. He quickly moved to the piano and whispered in the little boy’s ear, “Do not quit. Keep on playing.”
Leaning over, Paderewski reached down with his left hand and began to fill in the bass notes. His right arm reached around to the other side of the child, and he added a running obligato.
Together, the old master and the young novice transformed what could have been an awkward situation into a wonderful creative experience. The audience was so mesmerized that by the end of the concert, they could not recall what else the great master played except for “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
Perhaps that is the way it is with God. What we can accomplish on our own is hardly noteworthy. We try our best, but the results are not always graceful, flowing music.
Thus we learn the divine secret of mutuality. In that final hour, when the great concert of life is concluded, we can happily announce: it was not me, nor was it Him alone, but it was we—God and I together.
With His hand enfolding mine and His arms surrounding mine, we can present the masterpiece of life for all the world to behold. Mutuality: not I, nor Him, but we.
It has become the focus of all my efforts. The early church fathers were right when they announced that the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.
When God is honored, then I will enjoy honor with Him. When He is fully satisfied, then I will be satisfied. That is mutual glory yet to unfold.
Have you heard Someone whispering in your ear, “Do not quit. Keep playing”? I do not call the equipped; I equip the called.
Barney told me, “I got to London and had five television broadcasts. I had been wondering what I would share, so I started out with ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’”
He said, “Every day for five days on television, I started with ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’ It got their attention, and then I shared that God is calling us to yield up and surrender. He wants to come in with His overshadowing.”
His word to some this morning who are discouraged is this: Keep on playing. The Master is there.
When you look down to the end, you see what God is working toward. He is going to put on display one new man.
The thing God is really working toward is not just what He can do. It is what we can do when, by love, we have chosen to give up our own in order that He can fulfill His.
God seeks communion—a people who will share His life and manifest His Son. To that end, He created heaven and earth and man.
In keeping with His purpose, God created man as a being with free will. He determined not to accomplish that purpose without the free cooperation of man’s will.
This is a solemn principle, none more so. It means that whereas in the eternities God was absolute, here in time He has chosen, instead of compelling His creatures, to limit His own omnipotence to their free choice.
Man has been given power to cooperate with God—yes, even temporarily to obstruct the power of God. The reason for all of this is that finally, in the end, He is going to put on display one new man: Head and Body, all of us in loving relationship to Him.
All the world will look on and say, “Is this what You have been doing—getting a group of people who do not have to, but want to? People who are conquered and overmastered by love until they are saying, ‘Lord, give me another opportunity to play my twinkle, as long as You are encompassing me.’”
I used to say, “I hope I can hold out to the bitter end.” Not anymore. I know that God has something He is working toward, where finally He is put on display, and the whole human race sees the manifested sons of God.
He is able to say, “I did not do it. They did not do it. We did it.” That is mutuality.
It will only work in a fellowship when individuals lay down their personal pride and ambition and say, “Oh, God, we are on the line with You.”
Nothing matters but Your fulfilling Your purpose through broken and contrite hearts.
Thank you for your patience this morning. I think I have delivered my burden. Let us pray.
Father, I want to thank You again for open hearts. I believe You brought us here today.
You are speaking to some individuals, some young people, who are finding it very difficult to really yield—to really say yes to all that lordship means. You are speaking to others who, through life, daily put the Lord first, putting Him first in every way.
Oh, God, make it so today. We will give You praise and honor. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Let me add one thing. When I look at the whole Muslim world and realize that their god of sovereignty is called Allah, that is not our God.
Our God is not simply a loving Santa Claus either, which the evangelical enjoys. Our God is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
People come and say, “Well, are you a Calvinist or an Arminian?” The Calvinists emphasize the sovereignty of God, and if they are not careful, it becomes fatalism. The Arminians can end up in humanism—every man doing that which is right in his own eyes. The whole Western world today is fighting over its freedoms.
So I am neither an Arminian nor a Calvinist. I am a paternalist.
What do I mean? Your touchstone is right. Do not start with something in God’s attributes; start with Who He is. That is the only safe place.
Then you can say, “Hallelujah, I can encompass both.” My paternal heart is out to bring everyone to the thing God wants in His glory.