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, it appears that 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.
And we are so 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. And 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 of the Lord Jesus Christ, 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. And 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: “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 a 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 crossroad 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 our 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.
Matthew 7:13-14
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.
Proverbs 14:12
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man;
but the end thereof are the ways of death.
Jeremiah 6:16
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.
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.
Proverbs 3:5-12
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.
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 vats shall overflow with new wine.
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.
The verses for today are these: “My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of His correction; for whom the Lord loveth He correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.”
My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint under His correction, training, or 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.
In these days, it appears to me that the Lord is saying 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 to realise that their calling in the Lord Jesus Christ is to overcome.
What that means is that 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 that 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. But we forget about a whole thousand-year period.
Prior to the New Jerusalem coming down and our entering into eternity, there 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, that we might be prepared for the kingdom—not merely to go into heaven.
Realistically, you have your ticket to heaven. There is an old country song about getting the ticket to heaven, getting on the train, and the Lord taking you on. Well, you have your ticket.
But the matter of the kingdom is so important that this 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.
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 the kingdom life. We are in training so that we might reign, rule, and govern with our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord wants us to be prepared, our life given to Him, to be His disciple, to follow Him, and 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 of 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.
The narrow gate to the narrow road—the 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.”
The strait gate is the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no other way. No man can be saved except 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.
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 have 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 a time that 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.
Oh, 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 surely they will immediately be resolved.
It does not work that way. The Lord is training us, training us, dealing with us. Boy.
In the past weeks, we have been sharing on this road. What is the process of walking this narrow path? The first matter was dependence—being fully dependent on the Lord.
We talked about trusting in the Lord with all your heart. That is so simple that we miss it. It is so simple that we complicate it because it is so simple. We as humans seem to take something very simple and make it very complicated.
The Lord says, “Just trust Me.”
You may be hanging off the 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 and never allow us to fall. But He does, because we are in the school of training.
We are in school. We are being disciplined. We are being trained. We are being 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?
Some men here have been to boot camp. Many have not. Most of the ladies have not. But some would say, “If you come to my house, you realise, Jerry, you are in boot camp.”
What I mean is, 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 stuff in us, brothers and sisters, that we are horrified at sometimes when we look back on it. 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. That basically means that 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 on these side paths. If you are on them, quickly submit and say, “Lord, You are right. I need to get back. I want to get back.”
May I say this? 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.
Now, 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.
But special forces training—have you ever seen the intensity of the Navy SEALs training course? They will press a person to their limits. They will run them, keep them up all night long, and 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. Brothers and sisters, we have got to get out of boot camp, but we are also in a warfare with our enemy. Our Lord has won the victory, but we have to learn to be a victor 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 the 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 language, we might say it is 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, brothers and sisters, is that we would stay on that road, that we would press on, and that we would finish the course.
So 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 just 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 I have determined to take care of you. I have put you on a difficult road because I love you, and I intend 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: “Acknowledge Him in all your ways, and He will direct your paths.” It really gets at the motive in your life. Acknowledging Him really means this: Is He Lord? Is He Lord of your life? It is that simple.
He says He will direct your path. We talked about being guided with the eye, as opposed to the mouth. In Psalms, it says He will guide you with His eye. I think that is so marvellous.
He will guide you with His eye. You have to keep your eyes upon Him. You cannot just be walking your own way and hear the voice. He says, “No, you have got to be looking at Me.” You will learn discernment. You will be able to discern what He means by the look that He gives you.
It is a life of discernment. Oh, brothers and sisters, what a marvellous way the Lord has for us all.
We talked about this matter: “Be not wise in your 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 your own eyes.” That is saying there is a problem here. There is self-will. It is your will. Then it says, “Fear the Lord.” That means that 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. 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 I am going to share from Proverbs 3:11-12: this discipline life, this life of training, this life of chastisement that we have been talking about.
Let me read it again:
My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord;
neither be weary of His reproof.
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 that He says, “Despise not My discipline.” What does that mean?
It really means that you think little of something, or you think little about it, or you think little about 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, or 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 this mean person that I have to deal with.” Or we say, “Golly, 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. And 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 had been working for a long time, as a matter of fact, toward that hour of decision, that hour of transaction.
How merciful is our God? He loves you. We do not always recognise it or even think, “Well, the Lord has allowed this. The Lord is doing something here. I wonder what this is all about.”
You might feel as though you are getting beaten up and you have just got 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 turned towards that, then we are despising the discipline of the Lord. That is all it means. In other words, we are not thinking about it. We are thinking so little of it.
Somebody makes an unkind remark to you and perhaps does not even realise they have done it, but it hits you. You can do one of two things. You can react 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 perhaps You are showing me, Lord, that there is something in here.
Owen said something about the bee sting: “Jerry, if you were dead, it would not have hurt you.” I think that is what he said. That is the Owen kind of way he thinks.
And he said that, and 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. It would not hurt Tom either. He got hit five or six times.”
But I thought about that. I said, “Lord, You are right. A bee sting would not hurt me if I was dead.” 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. I think sometimes we need to get up in the morning and say, “Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.” Then we ought to 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 where you are going to have to use that resurrection life to resolve an issue or get through a problem. It may be something very simple. It does not have to be dramatic—just little, simple things.
Anything that tries our heart, checks us, exposes us, and exercises our heart—our circumstances, both good and bad—they 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? I think that is what we do a lot of times. 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 saying, “I want 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 I was going to take her out to see the territory. We had never seen the desert or that area around Phoenix.
We drove about two hours out of Phoenix, and I had heard about this trail called the Apache Trail. I had read about it in a brochure. I 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 dirty road. I have never really been on it, but it is always dusty.”
Well, I said, “I want to see this Apache Trail.” So we went, and on the way up it was marvellous. It was a beautiful sight as we began to get into the mountainous area.
We came across an area of cactus. It was mostly barren land, and you would see these enormous cacti standing out there—the ones you see in the old cowboy movies, with the big trunk up the middle and the arms coming out.
For the younger folks, it is like the kind you see in Road Runner and Coyote. I saw one that was somewhere between thirty and forty feet tall. I could not believe they got that big.
There were hundreds and thousands of these cacti out in the desert, in this little mountainous area. I read that out in the desert it is windy, and it is hot. They say even Phoenix in the summer can be one hundred and twenty degrees. I mean, it is just hot.
It is a terrible place to have to exist, and yet out in the middle of this desert are 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 are having to take the heat all the time. It is one thing to take the heat occasionally, but when you are taking the heat all the time, it is rough, is it not?”
Then we happened to go through something like an arboretum, and I saw this information about cacti. It said that in one rainstorm, a cactus can absorb two to 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, if we would really take them in, if we would really respond to them, it would not matter what is 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. You might get out of here today; I do not know.
But anyway, we got to the Apache Trail. Typically, I went through it backwards. That is just me. The Apache Trail was twenty-two miles long. It goes through a canyon, with a river at the bottom, and it follows the canyon walls and goes through the bottom and on out.
We crossed a dam at the top, and immediately you start going down. We got to the entrance, and I found it interesting: it was a narrow entrance. You have heard of the strait gate, and it was a narrow entrance.
There was a guy stopped there by the police. They would not let him through. He was not properly prepared to go on the Apache Trail. The problem was that he had this big boat hanging behind him.
I am going to take this illustration and push it real far, but the police were telling him, “You will never get around these curves with a boat. It will be impossible. You will scrape the wall. You will never make it through this trail because you have this 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, and immediately, because I was going through it backwards, we were on the outside—the canyon side, the precipice side. We were on the side that, if you fall off, you have a long way to the bottom.
There were no guardrails. There had been a rainstorm two nights before, and you would get along there and see these little gullies washed out the sides, so you had to go around them.
Obviously, my wife was pretty tense because she was sitting on the far side of the car, and I was driving. She had no control. We were going along, winding in and out, and Anne would say, very carefully, “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. I was creeping along, stopping and moving.
We came around this curve, and there was a little wider spot. I was able to stop there and watch for 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.
I had never seen anything like it down in that canyon. It was beautiful. I went to the Grand Canyon also, and it was marvellous—an awesome sight. But this was absolutely breathtaking, and I mean it.
My wife even made the remark, “This restores my soul.” It was so beautiful and awesome.
Now, the point is this: I was so intent on this road and the problem I was having driving this car that I was missing the view. I was missing why I was on the trail in the first place.
It was gorgeous. The Lord is like that. He gets us in 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 that you have never experienced before. It will be marvellous. It will be something that will change your life. It will be something that will restore your soul.”
That little narrow road was marvellous, as we went through it. Do not despise the chastening of the Lord.
Do not get so hung up sometimes. Most of us in this room have been through it, where you cannot even open your eyes sometimes because it is so intense.
But all I can tell you is that 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.
The other matter that the Lord talks about is, “Faint not.” Faint not when you are on this road. It is tough. It gets hard. And do not faint. You need to finish the course.
When we were on this little narrow road, there were places where I could have turned around. There was a little road down into the bottom of the canyon where there was a small resort.
I could have taken the easy road out and gone to that little rest spot and just 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 interestingly enough, right before the end of the trail, we finally made our way to the bottom of the canyon and were looking up.
Anne commented, “Jerry, this looks like Little Christian when he was in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and the rocks were up over him like this. He was scared and frightened.”
Well, I was not exactly scared and frightened, but the rocks seemed like they went forever. I found myself in a box canyon. There was a little creek running by there. It was awesome. It was marvellous and magnificent.
All 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 the different colours, and I said, “Anne, it appears there is no way out of here.”
She looked at me and said, “Well, it does. What are we going to do—go into the mountain?”
I said, “Well, I do not know. It looks like the road is going to go right into this box canyon. What do you do?”
I had met some cars coming the other way, so I figured there must be a way out. But the appearance at that time was that there was no way out, that we were walled in.
But have we not found this true in our lives? When we are in a place where there is seemingly 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 in that box canyon for anything.
Finally, I looked around, and I saw, cut into the side of the mountain, this road. You talk about a snaky road. What we had experienced before was not like what this was. 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.
We need to be lifted. I got up on this road and started out of the canyon, regretting in some ways that I had to leave it. But it was so narrow at this point, and so steep on the side, that they had actually put up a little guardrail.
I was thankful for it, because 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 on out.
When I came out of that canyon, we came into a vast, large expanse. There were mountains over here, with sunshine on all the various colours. There were old cacti sitting out in the field, with another range of mountains beyond. It was a great expanse.
As I prepared for this, I said, “Lord, 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. It was a marvellous time.
We went on another ten or fifteen miles. It was a paved road at that point, but it was still beautiful. We got to a little place called Tortilla Flat.
It is a little town with a population of six people. Those six people own a restaurant there, and I think they are rich.
Tortilla Flat has become such a popular place. A lot of people come to Tortilla Flat, but a lot of people do not go up the trail. They will come, enjoy their little restaurant there, but they will not go to the trail.
But I had gone backwards, so I arrived at Tortilla Flat at lunchtime, around one o’clock. I had one of the best fajitas I have ever eaten there. I want you to know that. That was my reward for the narrow trail.
It was just 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.
You looked on the walls, and all the walls were covered with dollar bills. One of the things you do if you make it through the path is 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, they had to tack it on the ceiling.
I thought that was kind of neat. It was just a bit of remembrance. So I left a bit of me right there at Tortilla Flat.
I think you realise it was an awesome experience.
Yesterday, at the funeral, when we got to the graveside, 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 race.
I have kept the faith.
I said, “Lord, that is the way You want me to end tomorrow: I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. And I have kept the faith.”
I pray 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 indeed. 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.
The Word says that we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony, and that we love not our lives unto death. But we fight the good fight in prayer.
We bind and loose. We have been given that authority if we learn how to use it.
Well, I reckon 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.
Lord, grant us that we would see Your loving hand, and we will 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 will 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.