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38B. You Have to Work for It (When you want God, you will seek Him early and find Him.)

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  speaker icon   1. Behold What Manner of Man Is This   (1:52)
  speaker icon   2. You Have to Work for It   (24:27)
  speaker icon   3. He’s a Wonderful Savior to Me, verses 1 and 2   (1:32)
  speaker icon   4. What a Day That Will Be   (2:20)

Selected Verses:

Isaiah 40:31.  But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Opening:

…Amen, amen, amen, amen.  In fact, you ought to be so filled with the Holy Ghost that you can’t keep down.  I mean, we must be led of God in testifying.  But you know, Jesus says, “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me.”  And Peter says, “We can’t help it.”  And the high priest said, “I’ll take a baseball bat, and I’ll split your head open.”  He says, “We can’t help it.  You can do whatever you like.”  And even after they beat them, and they forbade them to testify, and they locked them in jail, even the jail couldn’t keep them.  What’s keeping you?

Glory to God!  There was a time when I didn’t have a testimony.  But there was a reason for it, and I’ll tell you what the reason for it was: I didn’t know how to drink.  Nobody had shown me the Fountain.  I belonged to church, but it was like the restaurant I was telling about this morning.  When one afternoon I was very hungry, I went into an Italian restaurant.  They have a beautiful menu, you know: little antipasto, and big antipasto, and they have veal scaloppini with mushroom sauce, and they have spaghetti with Italian sausage.  And so my mouth was watering as I looked at that menu.  But the waiter didn’t come around for a long time.  Finally, he came and he looked at me so cross.  He says, “What do you want?  Beans?”  I said, “No, I have beans at home.”  I wanted a meal.  He said, “Nothing left.  All eaten up.”  Well, why have you got the menu there? 

Why have you got the Bible there?  Why have you got the “exceeding great and precious promises” there?  Why do we sing, “How marvelous!  How wonderful, and my song shall ever be”?  Why do we sing, “He is the mighty Conqueror” if I don’t let Him conquer in me and for me and by me?  Why does He say, “I am the resurrection and the life” when I keep lying in the grave like Lazarus?  And why does He say, “I am the Lord that healeth Thee,” or He is the great Baptizer and I can go year after year without getting the baptism in the Holy Ghost?

Selected Quotes:

speaker icon When God Himself takes notice of you wanting Him…  And if you are a beggar upon the dung heap, He’ll come to you.  He’ll forsake the royal palaces and the universities of learning—Harvard, and Yale, and whatever their name is—and He’ll stoop to that poor beggar on the dunghill, and He’ll lift him and “set him among princes,” and He’ll “stop making worlds,” like Billy Sunday says.  “I’ve found a man after My own heart—a man that cares enough for righteousness to work for it, a man that cares enough for Me—the bleeding Lamb of God—to repent of his sin and to turn to Me, a boy or a girl that cares enough to be filled with the Holy Ghost, who will pay the price.”

speaker icon Do you know there are not many people that stick to it?  Now, I’ve been, as I’ve said, I’ve been in faith homes where people had opportunities that were sublime, that were out of this world.  They despised—like Esau; they “sold their inheritance for a morsel of meat;” they did.  It’s because they don’t get the strength of Jehovah; they don’t work for it.  “They that wait upon the Lord…”  How much time do you spend waiting upon the Lord, alone with God?  “Alone with God.”  Tell me, are you working for it?  You’ll get something, I tell you, that nobody else has.  David says, “I am wiser than all my teachers because I keep Thy law, I meditate therein day and night.”  He says, “Seven times a day I will praise Thee.”  And I don’t know how many times a night he says, “I rise up to seek Thee.”  If you work for it…

speaker icon But I wonder what our regret will be when we get to glory, and when we behold the dazzling glory, and we’ll find a harvest of the things that we have sown upon this earth.  “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth…”  We shouldn’t talk much about reaping now.  You can determine your harvest by “sowing unto the spiritnow.  Make first things first.  Businessman, they said to me, “I can’t.  I’ve got to tend to business.”  Listen, what is your business if it isn’t to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness”?  You have no business anywhere else.  That’s your business.

speaker icon What a holy invitation: “Come, everything is ready.  All is ready.”  A King made a banquet, made a marriage supper for His son, and He calls them that were bidden to the marriage to come.  But they all had excuses to make.  No, Father.  Father, I can’t afford to make an excuse.  The best part of my day must be spent serving Thee, seeking Thee, finding contact with God.  Let everything go to the dogs if it will.  But this one thing I cannot afford to neglect: my soul’s salvation and the call of my God.

Illustrations:

The story of a woman who received the Baptism in the Holy Ghost even after trying to bribe the ministers with pie.    (from 4:30)

An evangelist who wants to be popular is like the man who succeeded in becoming popular by painting his donkey green.    (from 13:43)

The Arab legend of corn transformed into jewels.  “You know this simile.  You know what that means: ‘Today, if ye will hear His voice…’”    (from 21:16)

The diligence of the pianist Paderewski.    (at 23:09)

References: 

I Stand Amazed in the Presence, a hymn by Charles H. Gabriel, 1905:

O how marvelous! O how wonderful!
And my song shall ever be:
O how marvelous! O how wonderful!
Is my Savior’s love for me!

The Unveiled Christ, a hymn by Noah B. Herrell, 1916:

O behold the Man of Sorrows,
O behold Him in plain view;
Lo! He is the mighty Conqueror,
Since He rent the veil in two.

Alone with God, a hymn by Johnson Oatman, Jr.:

Alone with God, the world forbidden,
Alone with God, O blest retreat!
Alone with God, and in Him hidden,
To hold with Him communion sweet.

Date: “Tonight, the glory of the Lord fills this place like it did 33 years ago.”  That may place this recording around 1958.

Audio Quality: Poor

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