And finally, at the end when his back was against the wall . . . when all else failed. He called out to God, and we know the story—his hair grew back—and sometimes when we look at that how he killed more at his death than in his life, therefore it was God’s plan. You better see what he went through and why he went through it. And where is Samson today? Well, I can read about him in Hebrews 11. What’s that mean? Well, that’s the hall of fame of faith. Isn’t that amazing? Who did that? God did that. Why? Samson cried out. No more pride. No more arrogance. He cried out to God. He knew he was wrong and wanted to honor God in his death. A lot of us are old, we can do the same thing—cry out to God and honor God in our old age. Right?
We know that when you go through this Bible if you can, and I think you can, go through it once a year—force yourself. ‘I already did that.’ Well, keep doing it and I hope God convicts you every time you sit down to your relaxation time, that goes into 1, 2, 3 hours—and you know if you gave to God an hour a day—one hour? –and if even if you are a slow reader you can get a whole lot accomplished. Just think about that. Why? You go through all these characters. You get mad with them—when they get mad, you get mad—and when they get glad you get glad—then all of a sudden you see God’s side, you get mad at them because these dummies are doing this again. And then, BOOM! God shows you that you are like the dummy! And then God does something over here, and helps us out and we say, ‘Bless God! What a merciful God!’ He’s still a just God, but He is a merciful God.
Then we come over to the church age, my goodness! You can’t lose that Holy Ghost! You are sealed with the Holy Ghost! Christ is in You! The Hope of glory! Even though you lose the flame of revival, bless God, the pilot light still remains lit! You still got hope! What a blessing.
When all else fails. Trust God! Why? He loves you more than anybody else does, He loves you more than you even love yourself. Trust God! He’s your father! Believe His Word. Have faith. Yea, faith! There’re hundreds of verses in your Bible that cover topics that you’re going through. People in here usually get one of these lists. We pass them out usually. It’s got all these circumstances and all these different verses that go with them. Yea!
How about, “He makes a way of escape.” Remember that one? I Corinthians 10:13. With the temptation? ‘Oh, I can’t escape.” God says you can. You just called God a liar. ‘Well . . .’ NO! What it is, is you missed the way of escape because you kept going—you didn’t want to listen—so you go down that hill, from yielding (BOOM!) to sin. So, you’re in a position now where you cry out to God for forgiveness and cleansing—get back up—but He does provide a way to escape.
And then you “can do all things through Christ Jesus,” which what? “strengtheneth you.” Not you strengthening yourself, He does that. So that implies your surrender, your humility, your humbling to His strength. ‘Oh God, please help my will. Strengthen my will.”
And you think about where it says, “He giveth power to the faint.” When you are ready to check out, when you are ready to quit, God gives you power.
“The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished” (II Peter 2:9).
Us saints—YES—He can deliver His saints.
“Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).
That’s just a few. There are hundreds of verses in the Bible just like these. Many of them we have heard preached. We have read them in our Bible reading. They live somewhere in the back of your brain, if you have been brought up in church you have had Sunday school lessons that covered all of these subjects. You got Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. You got the fiery furnace. You got Daniel in the lion’s den. You got all the stories. Yes, you got all the stories. Impossibilities, but God comes through.
So, we are saved. We are going to heaven. And when all else fails, we go into this tizzy. We start reacting like a lost person. Some Christians that don’t have enough power will backslide. They won’t consider their heavenly Father at all.
Someone will say, ‘Well, they’re lost now!’ You better watch out with all that stuff. You haven’t read your Bible. People get depressed. Beyond. The Devil can slip them bunches of stuff. ‘Well, then God allowed it!’ He allows your will—that’s the key—your will. I’m not a Calvinist. What do you ‘will?’ And sometimes you can be so weak that you can’t even cry out—if you just wait on Him in the dark—He’ll come to you. Why? He loves us. He’ll do something for us, He really will. But you have to give the problem to Him, when all else fails.
I think about this individual named Helen Keller. She was blind and deaf. She started life off with failure. It wasn’t until she was taught by a loving teacher, to communicate and experience some mature difficulties, that she began writing and lecturing with great passion and power from God. You see, her teacher was a Christian, and her passion was Jesus—if you ever read about that. She had many moments when all else failed. Who? The teacher. I can’t even comprehend that! Did you ever watch that movie, Helen Keller, or read the book? I’m telling you what, man. The child was like a living animal. She had no structure, no discipline, of any kind!
Now the teacher never wanted recognition. She believed her calling was from God to teach this girl. And that is all the accolades that she ever took, or ever wanted, or ever needed. It was a ministry, and Helen Keller was her life’s goal. Now, naturally, through sacrifice Helen learned, Helen was saved, Helen helped others because she was taught that by an example to herself—when all else fails.
I think about the poem that Helen Keller wrote, fitting for her . . .
“They took away what should have been my eyes
(but I remembered Milton’s Paradise).
They took away what should have been my ears,
(Beethoven came and wiped away my tears)
They took away what should have been my tongue,
(but I had talked with god when I was young)
He would not let them take away my soul,
possessing that I still possess the whole.”
Now, Milton . . . When I say Milton, a lot of people don’t even know who he is anymore. They are not even being educated anymore, it seems like. But he had an experience in his life.
“Blind men seldom quote books, but it is not so with Milton. The prodigious power, readiness, and accuracy of his memory, as well as the confidence he felt in it, are proved by his setting himself, several years after he had become totally blind, to compose his Treatise on Christian Doctrine, which, made up as it is of Scriptural texts, would seem to require perpetual reference to the Sacred Volume.”
Did you catch that? AFTER he was blind, he took up his theological work.
“A still more extraordinary enterprise was that of the Latin Dictionary—a work which, one would imagine, might easily wear out a sound pair of eyes. After five years of blindness, he undertook these two vast works, along with Paradise Lost.”
I never knew that! A Latin Dictionary, are you kidding me? And then a theological, verse-by-verse stuff that he believed and taught. Doing that after he was blind.
That is what encouraged Helen Keller when she read “Paradise Lost.” That’s where we get that.
And so, here we are, we got eyes, we got ears, we get put up against the wall. We get discouraged. We faint. The assurance I got for my salvation finally came when I realized that I was calling God a liar. What do you mean? Well, He saved me. There was a change. There was some rough stuff afterwards. And I could never get it settled because of all the different preaching and teaching I heard about how you could do it, you could not do it, how to be saved.
Finally, I went to the Bible and I looked at that. And God took me down the Romans road again, “Whosoever that shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” I went through those verses over and over again. And in my mind, I was saying, ‘Lord, why do You keep bringing me over here, man?’
It was like a voice came out of nowhere, right? I use the word ‘stupid.’ ‘Because you are stupid!’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because you keep calling Me a liar!’
Do you like being called a liar? People used to have duels and kill one another over stuff like that. And here, Christians go around, after having been there when it happened—when they got saved—and went through some difficulties not knowing the Scriptures to grow in the Lord, they started accusing God of something He didn’t do. Because the Devil’s done got them in their minds. Listen, if there is a time and a place and you know you left this life and you asked Jesus Christ to save you, then you went into the light and you are no more in darkness.
It’s the Devil’s job to confuse us and to put us against the wall. But it is our job to cry out ‘Abba, Father!” To cry out to God for help! And I’m telling you, the Devil is slick like this. If we don’t get our prayers answered immediately, if we don’t start getting blessed, like we think we should (because we are watching TV and all this other junk), then we accuse God! And I’m telling you, it’s hard to get your prayers answered when you are calling God a liar!
If you are His kid, you are under Him. He is a holy God, He is a just God, He is a righteous God. When you mess up you need to come to Him and get that thing cleaned up. And when it’s cleaned up and you are waiting for answers—just wait! Why? I read the Scriptures. And I read about all sorts of characters and studies that are in this Bible, and I’m finding out that that is the way it works! He’s the Boss! Oh man!
So, when all else fails, guess what? Stay with Him when all else fails. Then you’ll be used to just going to Him when the stuff hits the fan. It will! Because we are proved. Our faith is proved. Do you want to come forth as gold? Do you want to have a good judgment at the Judgment Seat of Jesus Christ? Then you are going to have to learn to suffer with Him. For righteousness sake, do right. You have to learn to get right when you are wrong. Just admit it, just get right!
You are going to have to really believe what the Book says. And this Book should be your final authority. Don’t trust in yourself. Don’t trust in the confidence of the flesh, trust in God. It’s all about God. This is a God thing. If you are saved, there is a supernatural event that happened to you. You have a supernatural Book—this King James Bible—that goes with it, you got the Holy Ghost you are sealed with. I mean, you got a convicter, a teacher, a comforter. You got Jesus Christ wrapped up in that Holy Ghost inside of you. What a blessing!
But you gotta believe that! You gotta practice the presence of God every day. Be a creature of habit. Talk to Him. Tell Him you are sorry, as many times as you got to, you just do it. Do you know what that does for Him? That makes Him, like, personal. It puts Him right there with you. And when you don’t do that, you ignore Him. He’s somewhere off. Like Earl Hughes said, ‘a spare time.’ You’re just waiting for a flat tire, so you can go get Him out of the trunk.
You don’t want a God like that, and God doesn’t want a kid like you. He wants you get close to Him, grow and have fellowship with Him. That’s why He saved us.
So, whether in the valley or on the mountain top, whether being a bad kid all dirtied up, or not, you need Him to clean you. You need to come home and have that stuff taken care of. If you don’t maintain that, I’m telling you, you are just loading up a wagon full of junk. Eventually you’re going to start hitting that top of that hill with that wagon, and when it starts to go down, it ain’t gonna stop—and when it does—I ain’t gonna say it won’t stop, it will stop—abruptly—and everything in there will just cover you up. Spiritually speaking, you will be so depressed and discouraged and darkness—you’ll think there is no hope again.
I’m telling you, there is hope! But you didn’t have to fill that wagon with a load of stuff. You put the stuff in the wagon. God knows how to take it, how to empty your wagon, clean you up, give you peace in your heart, and you can be led by the peace of God instead of your stupid mind. It messes up at times, because you are not developing the mind of Christ.
The Holy Ghost’s purpose is to convict us of things that are wrong. It’s our job to receive the conviction and to tell God we are sorry
You need to get the slate clean again. Get the Blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, to cleanse you. Make you have peace.