Taylor, Tom: Skyland Conference-2003-01 ~ Conflicts In The Christian Life

You to attend, if possible, the optional Bible studies in the afternoon next week. They're optional for everybody except the speakers. Alan Parks reminded me of that years ago. He said, why don't we go play golf this afternoon? And I said, a good idea. Well, he said the optional meeting is not optional for us, so we slugged it out. I think Larry, I think Phil will say something about that this afternoon, but I should tell you that the brother Rees and I will take part with Mr. Greikema on it, and he's going to have a day in prophecy studies and a day in evangelism. I think Joe and I will be there for those two, and then after that, I don't know what he's going to do. I think we'll go and play golf and let him have it. He can work with his wisdom. But it's really nice to be with you. I'm going to read in Romans seven this morning. I'll read verses fourteen through twenty five. Actually, I'll read through eight one in Romans seven. I want to talk about meeting some of the conflicts in Christian life. When I was thinking about this series originally, I said, I said to my wife, I'll call it the winning the battles in Christian life, and then the Holy Spirit said to me, you haven't won enough battles to talk about that. So whatever the case is, we'll work in areas where we have more experience. In Romans seven and verse fourteen, Paul writes, for we know that the law is spiritual, but I'm carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do, I allow not, but what I would, that do I not, but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it's good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing, for the will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that which I would not do, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit, for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. I'm not going to attempt to explain all the intricacies in Romans seven. That'll be left for somebody. I was years ago at the conference when I met at Bristol, John Phillips and E. W. Rogers were there, and on the panel discussion, somebody asked Mr. Rogers if he'd read Mr. Phillips' new book on Romans, and Mr. Rogers said, yes, and when he revises it, I hope he'll let me write the notes in chapter seven, he said, and I have never forgotten that. I don't think John listened either, but I don't, I've never forgotten that. I'm not going to attempt to deal with all the things that show up, but this one thing is the thing that I think is important to me today. In the conflicts of Christian life, the conflict with ongoing sin is a real conflict. I appreciated the great emphasis that Brother Rees gave last night to the fact that we are forgiven in Jesus Christ completely, past, present, and yet to come. And yet in the New Testament, we are urged to live godly lives. Paul says that Timothy should rebuke those that sin, and the Thessalonian letter says sometimes you have to kick them out if they sin enough, and other things like that. And our own experience is that sin, while it does not have the power or dominion over us, it is still around. And if you think it's not around you, you've just forgotten what sin is. You'll remember that biblically, sin is anything that's contrary to the word of God, anything that's unrighteous, anything that you know to be good and you don't do it is sin. It is a huge, huge subject. Praise the Lord that the work is finished and we in Christ Jesus are free from it in any eternal concept. And the key verse in all my discussion this morning, I shan't say much about it, but the key thrust is that in Romans eight one, there is therefore now no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus. The Spirit has freed us from the things that would condemn us, but we still have a life to live for God. And the problem or the conflict of ongoing sin is a big problem. I, I can't put it in everybody's life to the same degree, but I served for a number of years as an overseer and elder in our assembly. I retired from that a good while ago. You got to be home more than I'm home, but anyhow, I was there for a good while, and I would like to tell you, just all we have a happy meeting, but we could have had one meeting a year for the real work of the Lord if we hadn't had to have the other dozen meetings for sin among the people. And if you say, what kind? Oh, who cares what kind? Just all sorts of things, even defiance of the elders. See, see, we're told in Hebrews to listen to them and to respect them, to honor them. And when you defy the word of God in any line, it doesn't please God, don't you know? There's an ongoing problem, and I can't take the time, I don't have the knowledge totally to treat the things that Paul works with, but I generally think the first half of the chapter is Paul in the days before he was saved, and the section that I read this morning, Paul in the days when he was saved, I think, in those things. And Paul says, I still find that although I'm a new person and all of these things are true, I still find that a lot of times the things I want to do, I don't do, and I do do some of the things I don't want to do. And I think that every one of us has that experience to some degree, although sometimes it's kind of hard to admit it. You always like to have the other fellow tell his sins first, because then you can kind of look at him and say, well, that's the way it goes. And we have to understand, see, that we are forgiven. You don't have to think that you'll get the gate of heaven and God will say, well, how about the dumb thing you did on the sixth of October? Those things are away. Uh, Ruth and I have been in the Bahamas the last few weeks. Don't look and say we envy you. We had a great time in the Bahamas, but we are dedicated Christians. We go to the Bahamas in the summer and to Canada in the winter. Do you understand that? Yes, that's right. So, but in the Bahamas, in the Bahamas, there, a lot of them were going on vacation. I don't know why so many leave when I come, but anyhow, a lot of them are on vacation, and the choir was small, so I volunteered to join the choir. I, I, I don't wait to be asked. I volunteered to join the choir. And one of the songs we sang was a rollicking song. They really sing hillbilly songs in the Bahamas. One of them was a rollicking song, and that in which the Lord says to the person who's spreading, he says, he says, what are, what are the sins you're asking about? I don't remember them anymore. I've looked through the record book, they're all taken out. I don't remember them anymore. And I said, the poets may not be great theologians, but that's a, that's a thought that grips my heart in a wonderful way. But we go back and we read in First John about the concept that if any man sins, and that really says they will, see, it's really a very positive assertion. We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ. Wonderful representation we have. But the fact of the matter is that we live in a world which promotes us, and our parts of us provoke ourselves, and an ongoing problem with sin is a big thing. I can hardly play a game without it coming to my attention, you know, deceiving the other person. That may be a little lighthearted, you'll have to forgive me. Once in a while I forget what a serious conference this is, but the circumstances are such, the circumstances are such that it goes that way. I had a stepfather who was a man that loved the Lord Jesus, but he married my mother. He married into a family of game players, vicious game players, nice games, but vicious game players. They would beat you in every way they possibly could, and he came from a family where they never played games, so he was constantly being crushed, and although a godly man, he began to resort to cheating to try and win. Still didn't win, still didn't win, never won a game till the day he was called to glory, but he resorted to cheating, and I said, Charlie, I said, you know you're not allowed to hide the cards under your chair. Old maids, you know. I said, you're not allowed to hide them under the chair, Charlie. And he said, Tom, he said, I got to do something to win, but he never won anyway. And I thought to myself, he could set aside the testimony of godliness to cheat at a game with the kids. But whatever the case happens to be, it's around us somewhat. So I want to talk about it this morning in that general sense, but I want you to understand repeatedly, we're talking about the frustrations it brings in this life, not in some eternal sphere, because we're forgiven there, and we stand in the presence of God clean and made right, and I thank God for that. But where we are right now, we often are poor testimonies, poor witnesses, and poor examples of the grace of God. And you can't say we, meaning everybody, but a lot of characters, most of whom are at some other conference, I suppose, but a lot of characters fit that description in the nature of course of life. So I want to sketch it out this morning generally, and I have two or three other texts to call to your attention. I shan't read them in detail, but my concept is, my concept is fairly simple. You know, how do we meet the conflict of ongoing sin? And we do it largely by remembering that there's no condemnation in Christ, and we're alive in him. And I will structure that out a little further as I go on. But first of all, first of all, thinking about Hebrews twelve one through four, I shan't read it, but it's an important passage. Thinking about that, be honest about the character sin, ongoing sin, ongoing sin. Be honest about it. The apostle talks in Hebrews twelve about that great cloud of witnesses. He talks about how Jesus, for the joy that was set before him, despised the shame and didn't mind the cross at all. And then he says to that group of people, he wants them to be steadfast in their faith too, and he says, you have not yet resisted sin unto blood. You haven't done it. You haven't struggled nearly as hard as you pretend you've struggled. I'm not going to go back and critique the Hebrew community, but the fact is that there was a weakness showing up in the part of those who thought they'd given everything they had to God already, and there was no more to give. And Paul says, that's not right. He said, you haven't resisted against sin to any degree at all in the way that maybe you could or should or ought to have done it. I try to say to myself, be honest about it. Be honest about it. I've had friends that had a bad temper, and they would tell you how hard they tried to get rid of it. No, they don't. They enjoy it. nine times out of ten, they enjoy it. There's nothing they like better than giving you a piece of their mind. And I have a natural sarcastic tone. I, I rarely get angry. You'll have to ask my wife, but I r- I get angry with myself once in a while, but rarely with anybody else. But I've got a naturally sarcastic spirit that likes to say sharp things that irritate people. Oh, I enjoy it so much. And someone says, well, you really hurt so and so, and I say, well, I'm sorry, I didn't really mean to hurt him. No, I meant to kill him. And then I say, why am I talking like that? I'm a believer. Why am I talking like that? Well, the flesh just shows up in strange ways, and I say, I'm never going to do that again. You know how long that lasts? Well, maybe, maybe till the end of an hour, but that doesn't last a long time. And that, you know, that's the kind of, well, we won't category things much. It's, that's better than shooting people, but it's not a whole lot better. But to be honest about it, and to be honest about the fact that we have the difficulties with the Lord, because John says if a man sin, he says we have an advocate for the Father. We speak to the Father directly. One of the fellows in the Bahamas the other night talked with me, and with me and with, uh, with Shelly, with Mark. He sat and talked with us, and he said I, he said sometimes when I go to confess my sins, I can't remember what they all were. So he's a young man, and we both said that that was good. That was good. You didn't have to remember what they all were. Uh, if you've hurt somebody else with it, you ought to com- you ought to go to work things straight and that sort of thing, but you shouldn't come to prayer at night with a list of forty seven sins you've committed that day. And we need to have a degree of integrity and honesty with God too. Know that we're forgiven. We look up to him and confess what we have received through the blood of Jesus and by the grace of the Spirit day by day, but to be honest about it. And so if I have a particular practice that isn't right, and I look around and say, well, I've really tried to get rid of it, that generally is not true. That generally is not true. A fellow said, he said, I really can't get rid of my, this, he said, I just get mad. He said, I can't do anything about it. I said, have you tried any of the anger management classes? Oh, he said, they're just junk. That's right, that's right. Didn't want to get rid of it. Nice to get, although the apostle says not to get angry, nice to do it just once in a while and thunder at somebody. Makes you feel better all over. I'm not a psychologist. Aren't you glad for that? I don't know all the answers to those things, and and not all anger is bad, because in Ephesians four it says, be angry and sin not. Not all anger is bad, but most of the anger you and I know anything about is bad. Most of it. God, see, is angry in various things, and if he can be that, we can be that too, but we are prone to be angry for cheap or shoddy types of things. So the very first step in, in, in the contest with ongoing sin is just to be honest about it and honest about where you stand. The second aspect is to go back to Romans six and verse thirteen, is good, or Romans twelve one and two. The second concept is to yield yourself to God. This is where Paul comes in Romans seven. uh He comes to the point of yieldedness. He says, I can't do all these things, and the more laws you make, the more sinners you make, or something like that. So he says, I can't do all these things, and you go back to where you yield yourself to God. You say, my weapons, my instruments, they've been used for wrong things. I give them to you, God. My tools and the things about me haven't always been used right. I yield them to you, God, and I want them to be used as the way that you would use them, God, in Romans six thirteen, in a long, complicated section. I've probably heard thirty sermons in my life over Romans six on knowing and reckoning and yielding. I still struggle sometimes, but I've probably heard the sermons, so I'm not going to repeat those sermons. I'm simply going to say the big thing is to look up and say, Lord, you're the master, and your word is the rule, and I will yield myself to it. I will do that. I will yield myself to it. I told Carl today, it's good for Carl to let me play with him, see. The real musicians need a couple hacks around them, so I am happy. I just enjoy it enormously. You'll have to forgive me if I enjoy it too much, but I reminded, I reminded myself and said to him today, once I was in Canada and at an assembly somewhere in Canada, and they had a praise band. They had about fifteen loud musicians. They had a praise band, and I didn't play at the breaking of bread, but they played most other things. I, I don't mind that. I can live with it because I get to my harmonica to join them. I've said if they make too much noise, join them. You'd be surprised how much less noise it sounds when you're playing too. You'd be surprised how much better you feel when you're hitting the bongo drum rather than just listening to it. But I, I said to this fellow, I'd never met him before, I'd never been there before, but after the first service, I said, I, you have this band. I said, you don't have any harmonicas in the band. He said, that's right. I said, wouldn't a harmonica in the band be good? He said, yes, he said it would. I said, I play and I have all my harmonicas. I said, I can come and join the band. He said, that's fine. He said, there's one thing you have to remember. And I said, what is that? He said, I'm the leader. And I said, I can remember that. That's right. And so he says, when you play, you play, don't play. And I can, I can understand that. It's easy to understand with a guy directing a band or a choir and the leader. We won't try to rearrange the choir for Troy. We'll let him lead. And if he really wants the tenors, I may be playing, you know, if he really wants the tenors to shut up, they ought to shut up. But whatever the case is, we'll... And so the Lord is director over us. And a word, I can't speak of what a good master he is. I can't say enough about the goodness and gracious of God and his superintendence of our life. To yield to him is the very best possible thing in a Christian life in a practical way. It opens the doors for worship and praise and everything else, just to have an attitude that says, Lord, what you said, I will accept it. Uh, since I've been to Skylands a lot of times, I've told all my stories here several times. I don't get many new ones. New ones I get, I can't use them, you know, they're too sensitive to the people around, but whatever the case is, I remember how I learned that lesson in the army. In my days in college, I argued about everything, and in high school, I argued about everything because I couldn't do anything the real men did, like play basketball or anything, so I became a career at arguing. I had much admiration because I could argue. And I was out of college for a while. I was drafted into the army in the Korean War, to fight on our side, but in the Korean War. The second day at Fort Meade, we were cleaning up the parade ground. We were walking along the parade ground in a file. If you saw a cigarette or a piece of chewing gum or a wrapper, you bent over, picked it up, and put it in a bag. We just kept moving that way. That's tough business. The sun is hot. We're across, and so I said to the fellow in charge, I said, you know, sir, I said it'd be nice if we had one of those long sticks with a pin on the end of it, then we could stick it down, we could pick it up, and we wouldn't have to bend over so much to clean this stuff up. And in a loud, rude, nasty, insulting voice, he said, you don't want to bend down? All right, you guys, down on your hands and knees. And we spent the rest of the afternoon on our hands and knees while my popularity grew with the other men. And you know, I said to myself that day, I said, you're going to be in the army for a few years, you might just as well say, what they want me to do is what I will do. Now, I wouldn't do anything they wanted me to do wickedly, but in the bounds that were perimeters, and and you know, I came out a couple years later, I haven't had a hot argument for a long time. Ask my wife, ask my wife. Once in a while, I get into a discussion with some fellow who thinks the, uh, that the rapture is going to come after the tribulation, but even then I don't yell and snarl at him. I just say you're an idiot or something, something in a friendly sort of way and get on with the particular. I don't really mean that, forgive me. If you hold those views, the Lord has his own people. We shouldn't be nasty to each other, but the circumstances are that we need to yield to God. The greatest control in our lives is the control of the Spirit and God by his word, and we spend a lot of times just bucking against it, and rather than gaining the practical reality of growth day by day, we mostly get calluses and knots on our head in a spiritual sense. So first of all, we need to be honest about the ongoing sin question. Secondly, we need to be yielded to God. In the third place, looking at the end of Romans seven after this long discussion and this opening part of chapter eight, in the third place, we need to accept what Christ has done realistically. And I say in my notes here, to accept the victory that Christ has given. To realize that through Jesus Christ we have deliverance, a total deliverance, a wonderful deliverance because of the finished work that we looked at last night. And we just accept that for ourselves. We accept that. We accept the fact that we don't have to be dupes. We don't have to be servants to things that are contrary to the word of God. The concept is a brilliant one, I think. We wouldn't do anywhere by making more laws. More laws, you can read it through the chapter, either the earlier half or the last. More laws make more, well, I, you know, sometimes preachers say the dumbest things, and here's a dumb one, but more laws make more violators of the laws. When they don't have a sign, don't step on the grass, you don't violate it by stepping on the grass. But if I see a sign that says don't step on the grass, don't touch, the paint is wet, if I see a sign, I'm not sure they're telling the truth. I feel obligated to feel the paint and see if it's wet. I think it's necessary to step on the grass and see if it really works well. And suddenly I've broken two laws, when before that I was an honest man. I know it's kind of silly, but we kind of go that way. And some people say, well, well, if we would have, you know, if we had a better code for the whole assembly, nobody can look off through the, nobody can look out of the corner of his eyes when Brother Snookis pray. If we had a... No, no, we would just make people more guilty because the magnification of laws and the multiplication of laws just makes the greater our inability to keep them appear. But when we see Jesus, when we see what he's done for us, when we see the beautiful life he's given to us, when we accept that, then we are given deliverance even from our own weaknesses and our own failures. I haven't played golf for a long time. I was never any good, period. But I used to enjoy it because you could walk a lot. I had the ability, if the golf course was seven thousand yards, when I played it, it was fifteen thousand yards. I, I had the ability, I used to enjoy it. But, you know, here's what I discovered. Golf is really not a very suitable game for most Christians, because you're supposed to keep an honest score. And I played with some godly friends at Greenwood Hills and some godly friends in Chattanooga one time, you know, and when those guys got to report the score, they couldn't count beyond five. They could have worn out their club. I remember being on down here on these courses. I went out with Dan Hollingsworth and some other fellas, and they let my son Tim drive the cart, and that was a disaster too, but anyhow, he drove, he drove forty thousand miles, but anyhow, we got, we got to a particular hole, and there I'm keeping score. I have the kind of mental facility I can keep your score in my head for the whole game, and I'll remember it five years later too, but I'm keeping, and I looked at one of the fellas and I said, and that was, and he said, uh, he said, I think I had a six, Tom, a six. I said, a six? I said, weren't you down there in that creek? Didn't I see you? Oh, oh, he thought I forgot, Seven, Tom. You know, I ran him up to eleven strokes. Well, I haven't been able to play for years, so it saved me a lot. I enjoyed it, it saved me a lot, but I discovered that it's one of those games where you easily, very easily slide just a little bit. No, I'm not saying that's a wicked sin in heaven. I'm just telling you, you easily slide, and sometimes it's accidental, and sometimes it's because you don't want to admit you had fifteen, and so you adopt a rule of nine plus or something like that. I'm, you have to make your own games, I think. But in the course of life, to accept the victory you have in Christ, and that's a victory of honesty and integrity and strength in the face of trials by looking to him. So we've been honest about the circumstance, we're yielded to God, and then we accept what Jesus has done. I love the concept that shows up in Romans eight thirty seven, that he's more, we're more than conquerors in him. Now that, there are a lot of other things in that context, but he's won the victory, and we're more than conquerors in him. And when we go back to First Corinthians fifteen, we find out he's won the victory over death, so we still die, but death doesn't beat us. It simply opens a path into the presence of God in a remarkable way. I've heard of more friends dying in the last week than I have for the last six months, I think. Even since I've come here, I've heard of a couple more. I keep thinking they might have been reading the paper and saw my name. I don't know, but I keep thinking, see, and I just said to myself, well, well, that's because, see, I have a lot of young friends too, but I have a lot of people I've been friends with for fifty five years. What does that tell you? Sixty years. What does that tell you? That tells you we're all getting aged, and that's the way you go. Of course, you might go sooner, you might not get so aged, but that's the way you go. I don't have any friends that are over one hundred and four years old, and maybe they're gone now too. I certainly don't have any one hundred and fifty. and last January, when I had a couple attacks in the hospital, I, well, a couple attacks, I was laying, I kind of thought I might be gone also. I had that experience a couple of years ago when I had another problem. I've had, the Lord has blessed me with health, so I won't try to make you feel sad, but I had that, I was laying in the hospital bed, and I just felt so terrible. Uh, tubes are going everywhere. I felt so terrible. I thought I was headed for heaven, and I was not worried about it. I kind of thought it'd be tough for my wife to have to clean out the garage, but, but she's, she's rugged. She could have done it, so I wasn't worried. And I just, so one of my friends came in, and I said, uh, when I was a little recovered, I said, you know, as I laid there with all those things, I said, I just felt I could hear the chariots coming for me. And he said, Tom, he said, they only send the chariots for important people. He said, if you hear the chariots coming, they're not for you, Tom. Get over, he said. And we both laugh and chuckle together. We chuckle together. But the simple fact of the matter is, is that Christ has won the victory, and we accept that for ourselves. We are thankful for the finished work, and we're thankful for what he continues to do in our lives day by day. But in the matter with ongoing sin, we don't give into it. We look and say, the Lord Jesus has made me victorious, and I'm going to live. Now, you're not going to live a sinless life. The Lord did that. Nobody else that I know of has done it to that extent at all, but you're not going to do it either. But our lives ought to be instruments of growth and praise and development in the service of God, and God will give us grace in some things. So finally, you know, finally is a tough word with preachers. Do you know that? Finally is a word that almost nobody that ministers really understands. The only words that are less understood are the ones that say, just another few minutes, friends. Those words aren't well understood either. But finally, in the fourth place, and go over to Hebrews twelve again, and to verse thirteen, I think, and read about how you keep your paths, how you keep your feet in the straight path. There are lots of scriptures on this, including some in Proverbs four, but this one in Hebrews twelve has always struck me in a really powerful sort of way. After giving all the good advice about the difficulties and circumstances, and the apostle says in verse thirteen, make straight paths for your feet. Don't walk after the things that are wrong. Don't flirt with the things of the world. Don't toy with the things that you know are sinful. Walk make in a way that makes straight paths for your feet. He says it nicely. He said you should encourage one another in verse twelve, but then if you don't make straight paths, the lame things will be turned away and be held. Follow peace with all men and holiness, without which we do not really know God. He prescribes it so well for us, and I don't know why anyone would want to walk any other way, but I know that it happens. We get these irritating moods and fashions. We're going to have our own way no matter what, regardless of what it was. In New York City, there was this gospel, the the Water Street Mission, and the Water Street Mission a few years ago changed its direction a little bit, not bad, but changed its ministry and direction. And one of the men who was on the board told me a story. That's good. It's good to tell me stories. If you have any good ones I can use about you, I could use a few. But he told me a story, and he said we had this meeting to talk about the nature for the reason for directing a change in location and a general change in ministry. It's still a great work for God. And so he said, I outlined it, and he said one of the men said he opposed it. He said, I will oppose it, he said, until the day I die. He said, I will oppose it until the day I die, and he said, I will make an issue of it at every board meeting we have. Well, my friend, of course, they're all friends, but he said to me, he said, that was a hard attitude. He said there were only six or seven of us working at it, and he said we hated to have, but he said the other man bit his lip again, and he said I, it's not what I agree with, and he said I will oppose it till the day that I die. The day that he died was the day of the next board meeting. He collapsed on a heart attack as he was leaving his house to go to a board meeting and render his opposition again. And my friend said, I don't really think it was a judgment. Only God knows those things. But he said, sometimes we set our minds on something, I don't mean something truly biblical, but he said, sometimes we set our mind on something and we want to have our own way if we've got to run over half a city, and we become defiant and obdurate and hard of heart. Oh yes. But if we would simply look up and say, make a right path for my feet, Lord, and let me walk in it and stay between the lines of truth, and others could follow me in those lines of truth, the conflict with ongoing sin would be a winning conflict in almost any way that you want to say it. No, I've said this about four times. We are not talking about living totally perfect lives. We cannot do that. We do have a perfect life in Christ, and we have a perfect stand with God, praise the Lord. But for testimony and for life and for growth, we will always be in the process of making a few mistakes and whatnot. But sometimes believers just determine to walk after the ways of the world and the sinful practices, like the fellow in First Corinthians five and other places, regardless of what God has said, and that's a terrible situation. So with regard to ongoing sin where we stand, what, what really is the answer? Well, the answer is not to suddenly go and live in a monastery or say I'm never going to make mistakes again. The answer is to accept and live in the work of Christ. He finished it. To accept and to live in the work of Christ. And that work of Christ calls for us to be honest about our needs and our difficulties, causes us to yield unto God, calls on us to just trust what Christ has already done and will continue to do for us, and then to walk right, to walk right. I was raised on a farm in Pennsylvania, kind of. I was raised several places, but I was raised mostly on a farm, and I learned to walk like a farmer as a boy. I still do it when my feet will allow me. See, a farmer walks in about a forty-two-inch step, and he wiggles from side to side as he goes because he's following the horse, and today he's riding the tractor. They only know how to sit today, but I learned how to ride in that economy, how to walk. And so I had the struggles in the army, I got over them a little bit, but one day I was preaching at a church near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a very big church. They had a conference, and they didn't know how little I knew about the subject, so they invited me to speak on it, and I was there, and the church is about, I can't tell you, but about two hundred pews deep and a long, long aisle down the center. So I gave a message, and when the message was over and we had prayer, the, the host walked down there, and I walked there, and I was to walk back the aisle with him to beat anybody that came through that back door. And as we walked along, took about four steps, I noticed that he changed steps so he could walk in step with me, his left foot coming down with my left foot. I said, he likes to walk in step. So, it's a long aisle. So I took then about a one foot step and about a four foot step. By the time we got to the back door, he had changed step ten times. Talk about fleshliness, but anyhow, we got back and at the back door, or the, in the, well, to the whatever it was, he shook hands with me and thanked me for being part of the conference and those things, and he said, he said, I just want to tell you, Tom, he said, you're not easy to walk with. And I've always remembered that and said to myself, how many times would the Holy Spirit have said to you or to me, you're not easy to walk with? Because in our stubborn, rebellious attitudes, whether on purpose or incidental or accidental, we often try to make our own path, and we do not glorify God that way. I have several other conflicts to discuss, uh, this week, so I will not say anything more about this one. But the answer to the conflict with ongoing sin is to accept and live in what Christ has provided, and he will bless us and guide us and give us victories, abundance. We will find that the things that are errors are often turned into things that work for blessing. We will find a surprise of enjoying God's will and God's peace and God's leadership in ways that we would not otherwise have known. Let's pray. I thank you, Father, for your grace and for your mercies to us today. Thank you for this conference and the brothers and sisters who worked to put it together. I thank you for every blessing we received and those we expect to receive. We pray you'd watch over us today, Lord, and help us to be your children, loving the Lord Jesus, believing firmly in him, and having a sense of yieldedness to his will and direction. I give you thanks in Jesus' name.