series of tapes for our radio work on some of the why that people are asking. And one of these that I found to be of special interest is why am I so often defeated? Why do I have so many relapses? Why don't I seem to go on any better? Why am I so often deceived? The tape has been borrowed by a number of families in our neighborhood and just played for their own help because they felt that this is a problem. Now there are some Christians who won't admit problems. Fundamentalism today has a very strange philosophy. You're supposed to spread your faith into a dream from ear to ear when you meet other Christians and they say, well, how are you? And you say, fine, fine, brother, praise the Lord, and right on top. That seems to be the philosophy in our day. It wouldn't do for us to admit that we have problems. And yet, every single one of us, knowing our own heart, must know that Not only do we have them, but as faith answers to faith in water, so the heart of man to man. I have my problems and you have yours. We're not going to solve them by denying them. There are great many false solutions to the problems of Christians. One of them is, well, let's don't look and maybe it'll go away. But it doesn't seem to work. Another one is the mistake of the fact. I have some friends. I believe they know the Lord. They're associated with one of the holiness movements. And one of them confided to me. He said, of course, I know that I don't have victory. I know that the old nature isn't completely eradicated, but he said it would be unbelief to admit that it's still there. And so he said, we just deny it. Just imagine reason like that. If you don't like black, you say black is white, and that makes it white. Now, the Lord doesn't call for any kind of untruthful, dishonest solutions to our problems. We do have a problem. More often among us, you have a kind of a cynical acceptance of it. We started out with bright hope. We received Christ as Savior. We said now our troubles are all over. Of course that was a mistaken idea. The Bible doesn't teach that, but we naturally assume that since our sins are forgiven and we're on our way home to heaven, we can never have any problems again. So we started out happy and bright. In about three weeks we had a setback, just like a baby that's born into this world, loses weight right away. I think if you ever lead anybody to Christ, you ought to remember this. That person is going to need your help worse three weeks after he's saved, and of any other time in his existence. He's going to hit bottom about two or three weeks after he's saved. He's going to become so discouraged that he would die if he was saved at all. And if you're around handy, you can help that baby in Christ, help to strengthen him. Most of us have gone through this anyway. There's a great deal of what we call higher life teaching in our day, and associated with that are what they call caring needs. I feel that there's something that we don't have, we've got to get. You're only justified, now you need to be sanctified, or you need the second blessing, or you need a fresh baptism of the Spirit, or you need a new Pentecost, or you need something. And so you wait. And I know a good many Christians are going around to the various places where it's supposed to be a good place to wait, and they're praying and they're earnestly expecting that some spectacular thing is going to happen. Or haven't they heard good men and women say that it did happen to them? And if you'll analyze it, you'll find out that they're waiting for and expecting a purely emotional experience. Now the emotional people have no trouble getting it. Emotional people can get any kind of an emotional experience that they're looking for, because they're all built up for it. All it takes is a little something unusual to trigger it and blew it. It had it. And then they get up and testify, but then there are some more serious souls who don't have that building mechanism, and they're discouraged. And after a while, they settle down to a kind of a cynical acceptance of second-rate Christianity. It may not be second-rate at all. Now, in the first place, brother and sister, there is no higher life than life in Christ. Every Christian has life in the Lord Jesus Christ. Every Christian has Christ within him. Christ in you, the hope of glory. Every Christian has the Holy Spirit of God in dwelling. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his, Romans eight says. Every believer is already blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heaven is in Christ. Ephesians chapter one. It is not a matter of getting anything more than you have, nor more of any particular blessing. That is not the solution. God has already given us everything in Christ. But now the apprehension of this is quite another thing. Let me illustrate it this way. When you accepted Christ as Savior, what did God do for you? Nothing. The work had already been done for two thousand years. Before you were ever born. God had laid on him the iniquity of us all. God had already sent his sons and finished the work. The Lord Jesus had already said it is finished. And he had already risen from his head in proof of that. He was already sitting at the right hand of God to make intercession for us and able to save for the uttermost. And the Holy Spirit had already come. to make the Word of God which was already in your hand real to you. Everything was ready. All things are ready. Come. We tell the unsaved this. Nothing had to be done. There simply had to be the entering into this on your part. Well, the same thing is true in spiritual blessing. The realization, the apprehension, the appreciation, of what we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the Book of Romans is the book that every Christian ought to be well-saturated with. I'd like to encourage you young fellows who are here this morning to study the Book of Romans. Not once, twice, three times, but soak your soul in it. It's the basic truth of all the New Testament. Unless you are well-grounded in the Book of Romans, You're going to get plubbed up the rest of your life. Get into the Book of Rome. There are many good books written on the Book of Romans. You written one on Romans? Yeah. Well, I'll recommend somebody else's in here. Be careful. I'll tell you what I like very much. I'll tell you what I like very much. I like William R. Millow's Roman verse by verse. Now, I don't say that I accept everything in anybody's book. But I do like that book. Romans verse by verse by William R. Newell. We had a young Japanese fellow who got saved down in Texas, and he had been a Buddhist, and he wanted to learn all that he could of the Word of God before he went back to Japan, and some of the university students at the University of Texas arranged for him to come and stay at my house. His father is ambassador for Japan to the British Isles. And his uncle is ambassador to Australia. And he comes from a very well-educated family. And I felt, well, here's a wonderful opportunity to send a missionary back over to Japan. So I went through the Book of Romans with him verse by verse. And we used William R. Newell's textbook. And I got a great deal of help from it myself. And I know that that young man, when he finished that intensive study, the Book of Romans, I know that he had a good grounding in the truths of Scripture. Now the first three chapters of the Book of Romans tell us what's wrong. They diagnose our case. They tell us that the down and outer needs Christ. They tell us that the up and outer needs Christ, the more outer. And then they tell us that the religionist needs Christ. And he sums the whole thing up by saying, and after all, there isn't any basic difference. All of Stephen comes short of the glory of God. And he shows us that salvation can never be through the law, but must be by grace. And in the first five chapters, up to the twelve verse of the fifth chapter, he gives us deliverance from the guilt and punishment of Stephen. I think all of you are perfectly clear on that part of the book of Romans. It isn't hard to get that straight in our mind. Most of us had it straight from the day we were saved. We understood that salvation delivers from the wrath to come, deliverance from the penalty of sin, is through the finished work of Christ. We are justified. Not just forgiven. But justified. And justified does not mean just as if we've never seen. Despite of all the silly stories we were told about, some little boy or girl has discovered that amazing fact. That isn't what justified means at all. Justified means given a right thing. God imputes his righteousness to us. He makes us right. With a rightness that Adam never had before he failed. Now we're clear on this, but what happens after the twelve verse, beginning with the twelve verses of Thessalonians? From there through the eighth chapter he takes up an entirely different problem. He takes up the problem of deliverance from the power of sin in the life of the believer. He shows us in the rest of the fifth chapter that the human race all started out under one leader and the believers end up under another leader. that our first federal head, the head of our race, was Adam. Not a matter of inheriting Adam's wicked nature. That isn't taken up in the fifth chapter of Romans. But it's rather the condemnation that we had in Adam, the place that we had in Adam, in Adam's family. And we need to be transferred to another family. And then he shows us that the only way to get out of Adam's family is by death. They say don't take this life too seriously because you never get out of it alive anyway. Well, I tell you one thing, you never get out of Adam alive. There's no way of getting out of Adam's family alive. I'm not talking about the body because the sixth chapter of Romans tells us about our crucifixion with Christ. I want you to read this with me. Romans chapter six. What shall he say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. This expression is used a number of times in Romans. One version translates it far be the thought. Another one translates it unthinkable. Is a Christian to continue to sin? Why this is unthinkable. It's in Congress. It's incompatible with our new position, our blessings in Christ. It can't be God's way for me to go on living like a man after the flesh. When I was in Adam, of course I acted like Adam. But now God says I'm not in Adam any longer, but I'm in Christ. I've got a new federal head. I'm part of a new race. There ought to be a change. We all acknowledge this to be true, I think. But then he goes on to say, how shall we that our dead sin live any longer therein? Now, all of the statements given in this chapter about our death in the revised version are put in the past tense. I'm going to read it that way because it helps us to understand that this is not something that is happening or that we're responsible to make happen, but this is something that has happened. This is a past event. How shall we that have died to see live any longer therein? Know ye not that so many of us, as were baptized unto Jesus Christ, were baptized unto his death? Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism unto death. See, baptism has its real significance because it is the burial of a dead person. It hasn't any other real significance to a believer unless he appreciates this, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this that our old man was crucified with him. that the body of sin might be destroyed, and henceforth we should not serve sin. Sin is a personification here, looked upon as a master. This is sin as a principle in our being. Not necessarily the old nature, but just sin as a principle in our being. For he that has died is freed from sin. Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dives no more, death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once. Of him that he liveth, he liveth under God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to have died indeed unto sin, but to be alive under God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that ye should obey it, and the lust thereof, neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. Don't put any part of your body or any part of your being or any of your faculties into the hands of this slave driver sin. But yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness under God rather than under sin. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law but under grace. What then shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? God forbid. Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness. But God be thanked that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, or liberated from this master, ye became the servants of righteousness. I seek after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh. For as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity, unto iniquity or lawlessness. Even so now, yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. For when you were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness. What fruit had you then in those things whereof you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, that is liberated from sin as a master, and become servant. Love slaves by choice, servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. Now there are four verbs that will help you to appreciate, understand what God has done for us here. The first one is the verb to know, K-N-O-W. You couldn't possibly become a Christian without knowing facts. This was the thing that bothers me about some of the testimonies that we hear people give, especially children. They say, well, I felt this way, and I felt that way, and I talked to my mother, or I talked to my counselor, and I got saved. And you feel like there's skipped over something in there. You say, well, now, what did they tell you? Well, I don't remember anything about that. Or somebody says, I got saved in such and such a meeting. And I was asked if I wouldn't like to come forward and accept Christ. And so I did. Well, what did he preach about? Well, I don't remember. I just remember that I felt that always worries me. Faith comes by hearing and hearing to the word of God. Nobody ever got saved apart from God's word. I don't mean to this. You've got to get a verse to hang it off. Some people had a chapter. Some people had the general teaching of Scripture without any specific verse. What I do say is that you must have heard the facts. If you want to lead anybody to Christ, you make sure that they understand the fact of the content of the gospel. Whatever you do, hold them still long enough. to point out to them that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that he was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. Get the facts of the gospel to them. Nobody can be saved apart from knowing facts. The same thing is true of our deliverance. The reason many Christians are not delivered as to their bondage to sin day by day is because they have not learned the facts. What are the facts? The facts as stated here in chapter six are these. You were so hopelessly bad that God couldn't improve you. He couldn't do anything at all with you. So he said, the end of all flesh had come before me, and he put you to death when he put Christ to death on the cross. And he said, now wait a minute, I wasn't even born then. Well, you don't have any problem about that when it comes to accepting God's forgiveness of sin. How could God put your sins on Christ on the cross? You weren't born yet. You see, where God lives, there isn't any past, present, and future. God lives in the everlasting present. Because God, the whole thing is unrolled before him. The lost we say that was two thousand years ago. God doesn't look at it that way. God could gather up all the sins of the unborn millions who would trust his Savior, his Son, and put them on the Savior and put him to death for the sins that had not even been committed. Likewise, he could put to death on that cross with Christ, all those whom he saw to be his eventual children. I was crucified with Christ. I didn't experience anything. I didn't feel it and I don't feel it yet. How in the world do you feel dead? This is something you must know as a fact. God says it. God says my sins are forgiven. Do I feel that my sins are forgiven? Of course I don't. I've heard people say that. Well, I just feel that all is forgiven. They did nothing of the kind. They may have had a good dinner. and feel good over that. But nobody could feel their sins forgiven. They could only feel good because they know the fact. I feel good over the fact, but I don't feel my sins forgiven. I know them forgiven because the Word of God says so. I don't feel that I was crucified with Christ. I know it because the Bible says so. And I accept this fact. That's where you have to start. Do you know the fact? A little girl attended Sunday school and the teacher said to the little children, they were just a little tight. Now how many people died on the cross the day Jesus died? She wanted to teach them, you know, on their fingers about the one on the central cross. And a little girl said four. Now, honey, let's see. Who died on the middle cross? Jesus. And who died on the cross on this side? A thief. And who died on the cross on this side? Another thief. So how many died on the cross? Four. And then the little girl said, doesn't the Bible say our old man is crucified as Christ? Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings? How many were crucified as a cross? Four! Including me. Whenever I believe this, I'm on the road to the apprehension, the appreciation, and the good of what we're talking about in the sixth chapter of Rome. It wasn't the thing God could do with you. I put you to death. The old life in Adam was absolutely worthless. There wasn't a spark in the human life. All the old song says, Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter, feelings lie buried that grace can restore and are in the word of truth to us. Well, maybe there are some feelings there, but there's no life there, ain't there? God had to create new life. When you receive Christ as your Savior, what happened? If any man be in Christ, there is a new creation. It was all made brand new. The life that is in you is a new creation. It's the life of God, not an improvement on the old, not a revival of something that Adam lost, but the complete infusion of a brand new life. Is that true? Well, if it is true, then you remember that you came to an abrupt end at the cross. God cut your record off. You ceased to be after Adam, and a new creation was formed. and you were joined to a new federal head, given a new kind of life you never had, made a member of a new family, bought into a new thing, the church, and given new desires and a new motive power that you never had before. That's what you need to know. Now the next verb that you need, in order to appreciate this, is the one in verse eleven, reckoned. This is really dead reckoning. God wants you to reckon yourself to be dead. Now, how do you reckon anything? Well, I grew up in a Southern family and a very common expression whenever somebody asked an opinion was to say, well, I reckon it's such and such a way. It simply means that this, based upon my knowledge of certain facts, is my conclusion. I believe that it's this way. I count that it is this way. I reckon that it's so. God would like to have you reckon that it is so. He would like to have you believe these facts to the extent that they become a part of your being, a part of your thinking. I can give you illustrations if you can think of them in your own everyday life. How many times you and I, acting upon certain facts that we have, change our entire behavior, our entire attitude, the entire course of our lives. Now when a man said to a lady and me one time, I now pronounce you man and wife, the reckoning on those few words and those facts changed my entire life. And when I believe what God said about Christ dying in my place on the cross, that changed my entire life, didn't it? I began to reckon upon that. Now God wants me to reckon upon this. You can see how this will affect you. You want your own way. God says reckon that you were put to death at the cross. Well, in what business have you got to have in your own way? If you say this is my money, I can use it any way I want. If this is my talent, I can use it any way I want. If this is my body, I can do anything I want with it. But if I reckon that I died with Christ and that I belong to him now, that the life I have is the life that he put within me, and that the instruments, parts of my body and of my being, my faculties and all, are his, If I reckon that to be so, don't you see what a difference that's going to make in how I live? This isn't just conditional thinking. This is the apprehension of certain truths and the reckoning upon them. Now, the third word is the word yield. The verbs, you know, the Chinese call the living word. Always watch for the verbs when you're studying the passage. In verse thirteen he says, don't hand over your members to sin. Don't give them up to sin as a master. Yield them to God. Somebody reminded me since I've been here at this conference of a lady who accepted Christ. No, she wasn't a lady then. She is now. A woman who accepted Christ as her Savior many years ago in a neighborhood where I was preaching, she worked in an overall factory, and the women of that town didn't want their girls to work in the same factory with her. They said she's the foulest-mouthed woman in eastern Kansas. She knows no greater delight than telling dirty stories. and she had quite an array of. And they called her a corruptor of youth. Now that's certainly yielding your member to sin, isn't it? The member of the tongue. What a fire that was. Set on fire of hell. You know what that woman's doing today? Thirty years later, she's the director of Youth for Christ for that part of Canada. She has led dozens of boys and girls to Christ. She has a class in her home. She's up in years now. She can't get around too well. But she still has Bible classes for children in her home. And she's been training some of the teenage girls in her community to use her flannel grass because she says, I don't know how much longer I can get around. She has to go through the door sideways now. She's so huge. And she knows that she's not going to be able to move around too much longer. So she's training these teenage girls to try to carry on this work among the children in her little time. Isn't that marvelous? A corruptor of youth has put her tongue into the hand of a new master. Now, how did this happen? Well, I believe it happened as a deliberate apprehension of a new truth. I belong to Christ. And she handed over to him. She yielded to him the instant of her being. The fourth word is obey. If we only go as far as yield, we're apt to be rocking chair Christians. You say, well, I'm willing. So I'll just sit here and rock until the Lord does something with me. If he wants me in Africa, I reckon he'll send me there. But he won't. If he wants me to speak to somebody, I guess he will show me that he's already showed me. You see, it isn't enough to yield. It isn't enough to say, Lord, here I am. There have been a lot of young Christians that have been misled through some kind of an emotional experience, maybe a candlelight service, through a complete dedication. And they got a real gooey feeling, and they thought that they were all the Lord. And then they sat down to do nothing. The Lord says he wants us to obey. Now, if these things are true, step by step, if it is true that I cease to exist as a man in Adam, that God put me to death and put a new life in me and created me anew, if I reckon upon this, and if I say, Lord, I belong to thee, then what's the next step? Why, whenever a slave yields obedience to his master, he listens to hear what his master has to say. Whenever a man enlists in the service and he realizes I am now a soldier, he listens to what his sergeant has to say, or his captain, or any of the other officers above him. And as a believer, my responsibility to listen to what God has to say. You know what I think is wrong with this, brothers and sisters, more than almost anything else? We are not Bible leaders. I suppose sooner or later you expect some preacher to take a blast at the TV. Does anybody have to tell you what a waste of time that thing is? Does anybody have to tell you that it's robbing you of your time studying the Word of God? You don't have to have anybody tell you that. They put a little button on the thing. If you twist it for the right, something will happen. Or laugh, whichever it is. You twist that little thing, and then you will have time to read and study. Christians are not reading the Word of God. Sweets the gospel were just stringing scriptures together. Now stories were all right. Stories had their place. C.H. Purgeon told his young students in England, he said stories are like windows in the house. You don't want your sermon to be a dungeon with no windows, but you don't want it to be a greenhouse. It's all grass either. You're trying to let in enough light through the illustration so that they will understand the scriptures. Everything is to focus on the Scriptures. Real Bible teaching today is lacking among us. The elder brethren in our assemblies are not taking time to gather enough of the Word of God to have to give to God's people consecutive, expository, verse-by-verse Bible teaching. They get hold of a textbook, a text-finding book of some kind. and they string together a vortex of the word wind in it. And they got lots of wind. Or they get some other kind of a thing and tie it together. What have we got? The right way to do it is to take the word of God and teach what passages mean, but you can't get that any short way. You've got to labor over it. I preached one time with John Watts. Some of you may remember him as a very able man. John Watts said it's the most discouraging thing. He said, I have labored for two hours to get something from the Word of God that I could give in two minutes. And while I was given it, half the women were playing kitschy cure with a baby in the room. He said, it's discouraging. You've got to work. You've got to dig to get things out of the Word of God. The Word of God is like a mine. I live out in a hard rock mining country. There's no harder work in the world than trying to blast the precious metal out of the rocks of the Rocky Mountains. If you're going to get something out of the Word of God, you're going to have to spend time over. Somebody said to Dr. Littlefield in Kansas City about a brother who was preaching there, she said, I just wish I could open my mouth and the Word of God roll out like that. Oh, Ralph Littlefield said, I can tell you why it rolls out. That man's been saying in my home, it's because he rolls it in about five or six hours a day. That's why it rolls out when he opens his mouth. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaking. What are we doing as Christians in our spare time? Well, you can tell what Christians are doing by listening to what they talk about when they get together. What do they talk about? What are they interested in? If we're going to obey it, then we're going to have to know what the Word of God says. We're going to have to study the book. Let's return, brethren and sisters, to become, again, the people of the book. I'm not against other books. I've already recommended one. I have a nice library, which I prize very highly. I love the help of good books. But we need to get into the book. Now, when you and I turn to the Word of God and see what the Lord says about these things, I accept God's estimate of it, then what happens? Well, I have a new life. He said so. With that, I have a new motive. This new life is a motive power. I used to be in the jewelry business, and in the old days, the main springs and watches were not made as well as they are today. They hadn't discovered all the secrets that they know today about springs. The Elgin Watch Company came out a few years ago with a watch spring. which is crawled backwards. When you put it into the watch, it's got so much spring, it stays with it all the rest of its life. But when I started in the jewelry business, a watch spring could hardly be expected to be wound and unwound more than a few years without losing its elasticity. It just didn't have the oaks anymore. And so you notice your watch running slow at the end of the day. and you bring your watch in, you say, what's the matter with this? And the watchmaker says, I think your mainspring is weak. So he takes the mainspring out and puts a new one in him. He's the right kind of a watchmaker. He's the wrong kind. He'll run it over. He's thrown backwards and give it a little push for a few days and he'll fall out of his two bucks. But that's what it was in those days. But if he's a good watchmaker, he throws that old mainspring away and puts a new one in. Amen. That's what God did to you. The new main spring for a believer is not even introduced, only once, as he mentioned, prior to the eighth chapter. He's not even introduced until two things are gotten out of the way. In the sixth chapter of Romans, he shows us that we were crucified with Christ and that there was nothing more that God can use in the flesh. And in chapter seven, he shows us that we are dead to the law, so that we are no longer under the control of the law. Many Christians think, well, if I just bind myself to the law now, if I've got a good set of rules here, and I just make myself keep those rules, I'll behave. But he gets that out of the way. He says that'll never work. All the law will do is bring out the evil that's within you. You know, like the lady who said, don't put any beans up your nose, and they had to take two of the kids to the doctor to get the beans out of their nose. You've prohibited anything, and this is exactly what people want to do, unreasonable as it may seem to be. And the Lord never puts you under a set of rules. You will never behave yourself because the rules say you have to. But when you receive the Lord for your Savior, according to the eighth chapter of Romans, God puts a new mainstream in you. This new motive power is the Spirit of God himself. The very life of God is in your being. So that Paul could say, I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I. But Christ lives in me. And the life that I live in the flesh, in the body, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. God has put a new life within me. Now what are we expected to do? as I turn myself over to him, and this ought to be a daily thing. I do believe there has to be the first time. I do believe there has to be the first time in a Christian's experience when he realizes and says, Lord, I belong to thee, and I give myself to thee. I remember how hard that was for me. I was scared silly. I didn't know what God would do. That showed how little I knew about the love of God. I was just a young fellow. Your brother Matthews from Waterloo came down to our town, taught me some of these things. He said, if you've never said it yet, you must say, you ought to say, Lord, what will thou have me to do? And for two weeks I tried to say, and I was honest enough that I simply couldn't make myself say. I didn't know what he'd asked me to say. I was like a girl who's afraid to promise to love, honor, and obey. But you see, people who are really in love don't have any trouble about that. And Christians who really believe the love of God to them, the love of Christ to them, don't hesitate to say, Lord, I belong to you. Complete. All right, there does have to be a first thought. But I think there has to be a second and third and fourth and many, many times. I don't see how Christians can begin any day and expect, bless it, expect a happy day without saying, Lord, here's a new day. I want to give it to thee with myself and all that I am. Thou hast redeemed me. I am not my own. I am bought with a price. Lord, take my body, my faculties, my possession, and all that I am. I don't know how you could start a day any other way. I mean successfully. I started quite a few of them the other way. Did I get into trouble clear up to here? That's what happens when you start a day by yourself and in your own strength. When you recognize your need of him, when you recognize that he has put his new life within you, and when you recognize that his interests are now your interests, it's remarkable how a girl, when she gets married, realizes a new interest in her husband's affairs. Not just in his checklist. That's only sinful. She realizes a new interest in all his affairs. Why? Why, because what is his is hers, and they're one now, and she cares about the things that he's interested in. I hope it's true for husbands, too. Some husbands don't get along too well with their wives because they're bored with their wives' small talk when they come home at night. Remember, that's where your wife lives. She's been at home keeping a house for her and taking care of her children, and this is her life, and you ought to be interested in the things that she has to say. as well as in the things that you have to say. I see some wives poking their husbands. I'll tell you one thing, the Lord Jesus never lacks any interest in you, brother and sister. He has showed complete interest in you, and in every detail of your life. Why shouldn't you show real interest in him and in his thing? New motives, new interests, because we have a new life, and the new motive power. Oh, the Lord help us, brother and sisters. The Lord help us to realize we have all we need in Christ. We have this new life. It isn't that we need to seek anything. Don't ask for anything. Just accept what God has for it. Apprehend it. This is what I was referring to yesterday when I talked about self-examination, when I talked about judging self. When I get into the presence and say, Lord, this came from an evil nature. This is the reckoning of my having been put to death with Christ. This is the counting that there was nothing good in me. Therefore I repudiate the old man in his way and look to God that he might live out his life in me. Twice in the New Testament we're told that no man has seen God at any time. In the first instance, in John one, eighteen, he says nobody has ever seen God, but the only begotten son who is in the bosom of the father, he showed him up. He's revealed. And people knew what God was like. You know how they knew it? Because the life of God was among them. God was manifest in the flesh. People knew exactly what God was like because God had come down to them in the person of his son. Now exactly the same statement is made in First John chapter four. Only there, he tells us, nobody has seen God, but that God is to be seen now through us as believers. The life of God is in you. Eternal life is not endless existence in a happy state. Eternal life is the very life of God in our being. God himself indwells his people. When you start out in the morning, you don't say, well, no, I'm going to flex my spiritual muscles and see how well I can do. You're really into trouble when you do that. But if you say, now, Lord, here I am. All that there is in me that's any good, you put there. Now take me. Live through me. Speak through me. Love through me. Win souls through me. Help other Christians through me. Take me. or if it please thee, to keep me in the corner today, to enjoy fellowship with myself, or on a sickbed, or some other place, it doesn't really matter. I belong to thee. Many years ago, up here in Duluth, Minnesota, Dr. Archer Anderson tells this story. He said there was a young lady in his congregation who was a very bright young woman. When she finished school, she offered herself for the mission field. She was getting her things together to go to the mission field when she was stricken with polio. Very serious time with polio. She was taken to the hospital and weren't sure if she would even live for a while. He said, I went to see her. And when I went into the room, with a bitter smear on her lips, she said, Dr. Anderson, why did God do this to me? She said, I gave myself to the Lord for the mission field. Why did he do this to me? He said, I said to her, I'm terribly disappointed in you. Disappointed in me? Yes, I'm disappointed in you. But she said, the Lord has done this, not me. He said, I'm disappointed in you. I thought that you gave yourself to the Lord. She said, I did. You know of that as well as I do. He said, I don't know it at all. I think you gave yourself to the glamour of the mission field. I think you gave yourself to the service that you wanted to do. And I'm disappointed in you. I had hoped that you had given yourself to the Lord. He said, I turned and left the room, left that girl in tears of rage. He said, I felt like a heal. I thought what a terrible way to talk to a poor girl. But he said, I went home and prayed about it. And the more I prayed about it, the less I was happy about what I'd said. So I thought, well, I'll go back. He went back the next morning and prepared to apologize for what he said. And he said, when I came in the room, I saw the face of an angel. That girl lying there in bed said, come in. Brother Anderson, I want to tell you something. I didn't sleep any last night. He said, I didn't either. Well, she said, You don't need to feel badly for what she said. She said about two o'clock this morning, for the first time in my life, I gave myself to the Lord Jesus. As a believer, I turned myself over to him. And I told him, Lord, it's all right. I'll be perfectly happy to be taken home. I'll be perfectly happy to sit in a wheelchair or to lie in a bed. I'll be perfectly happy to do nothing but pray. If this is what you want me to do, I belong to you. He said that girl lived several years after that. She carried on a tremendous correspondence with missionaries. She was probably more help to the mission field than she ever could have been if she had gone. Her letters were a great boon to missionaries, simply because she had said, I belong to you.