The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his101/thoughts.arj/THOUGHTS.TXT

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"WANDERING THOUGHTS" by Peter S. Ruckman

     All right, we'll take our Bible this morning and turn to 2
Corinthians chapter 10. Second Corinthians chapter 10. Now this
day and age that you and I live in, the great saying is, "It's
all in your mind." That's the big saying. "It's all in your
mind." And so I'm going to talk to you awhile about "It's all in
your mind," and what the mind has to do with it, from 2
Corinthians chapter 10, beginning at verse 1, reading down
through verse 5.

     Second Corinthians chapter 10, verse 1 down through verse 5:
"Now I Paul myself beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of
Christ, who in presence am base among you, but being absent am
bold toward you: But I beseech you, that I may not be bold when I
am present with that confidence, wherewith I think to be bold
against some, which think of us as if we walked according to the
flesh. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the
flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty
through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down
imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against
the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought
to the obedience of Christ." The text is verse 5, "Casting down
imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against
the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought
to the obedience of Christ."

     Now, Father, we seek the power of the Holy Spirit in this
hour and the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ amongst us. We
know you're here; you never leave anywhere. You get to any place
we get before we get there. You haven't vacated this place any
more than any other place. But we seek for a manifestation of
your presence, and not simply your presence, but a sense of your
presence, and a sense of your power. We pray that you might
operate and work through us today, and work through the word of
God today, in light of this congregation. And salvage from this
congregation some men and some women who are going to mean
business, and are going to be serious, especially about the
ministry. Lay your hand upon the young men and young women here
who intend to serve thee some day in a full-time capacity; and
speak to the hearts about these matters, we pray. We pray it in
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

     Now, in this passage here, it says that every imagination,
every thought must be brought into captivity to Christ--or at
least it can be. And in verse 4 these things are called "strong
holds." Now, strong holds must be pulled down. A strong hold is
like a fortress or a castle. A strong hold is a place like a
bank, that's reinforced and protected. And, in the inner sanctum
of each man's individual life, he has that place he reserves for
himself, where his will is supreme. And he barricades it, puts up
things around it to protect it. And these strong holds in the
Christian life must be brought down and demolished, and the will
must be brought into captivity to Jesus Christ.

     There are references throughout the Bible about these strong
holds. That's why none of us can ever get anybody to really
accept Christ. If you really accept Christ, it'll be your own
act, and it won't be mine. Eventually, the last thing that comes
down is the inner will of a man. A man can lie, and his will will
be unbroken. Unbroken. And his will back there will say, "Well,
you're still wrong." And those things we have to deal with, and
bring those things down into subjection to God.

     Christians have hard thoughts about God. Many Christians are
practical atheists. The Bible says, "God is not in all their
thoughts." One passage in the Bible says, "The sacrifice of the
wicked is an abomination to the Lord; how much more when he
bringeth it with a wicked mind?" That is, when you're not right,
what you give to God is an abomination to him, and if you've got
bad thoughts about it when you give it, it's even worse. Those
things happen in man's thoughts--saved men and unsaved men.

     We're depraved. We come from a depraved race. Isaiah chapter
55 says, "Let the wicked man forsake his ways, and the
unrighteous man his thoughts. For my thoughts are not your
thoughts, and my ways are not your ways, saith the Lord."

     Men tend to excuse sin. Man is depraved, and the surest
proof that he is depraved is he can't see it when you show it to
him. You show a man that he is depraved, and away from God--and
he doesn't want to believe it. God is not in all their thoughts.
The trouble comes in their thought life.

     I've been up in Chicago sitting up there, between planes,
getting a shoe shine. Had a colored shoeshine boy working on me,
and witnessed to him about his soul. And he said, "I don't know
anything about that. I never heard of that."

     And I said, "You need to take Jesus Christ."

     He said, "What? Take Him to bed with you?"

     I said, "No, take Him into your heart, so you can be clean.
So you don't go to hell."

     And he said, "I'm going to hell, and I need all the help I
can get." And he said, "I'm sinning right now while I'm fixing
your shoes."

     I know what he had in his mind. Pensacola's filled with
them. The thing is, that fellow looked just like a normal fellow,
shining somebody's shoes. Oh, no. There's a thought life! There's
an inner thing that goes on. And that thing can be completely
counterfeited on the outside. So you never guess what's going on
inside.

     Man is depraved. When you show man his depravity, he rejects
it. Man thinks he's getting better. Christ says, "You shall know
the truth, and the truth shall make you free." I found out, you
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. When you
get the truth about yourself, it upsets you. Folks call it
"progress"--man getting better and better. Progress is just the
exchange of one nuisance for another, is about what it amounts
to.

     Man is getting better? Tell me something? How many people
went to Spurgeon's Tabernacle last Sunday to worship? Spurgeon's
Tabernacle, the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, is a museum.
There won't be a hundred people in it today. There were four
thousand in it back when Spurgeon preached there. How is that
progress? Tell me something. Where is DeWitt Talmadge's Brooklyn
Tabernacle? DeWitt Talmadge preached to 2,500 people every
Sunday, and had his sermons printed in 500 daily newspapers every
Sunday morning and every Sunday night. Where is his tabernacle
at? You can't even find where it was built.

     Progress? You go to the Kalay Temple in Delhi, India, and
when you come to that monumental thing there that would cost
millions of dollars now to build, with all that architecture and
Oriental art, you expect to find a large sign there saying, "This
is the gate of heaven. Enter into His courts with holiness. This
is the house of God." And instead you'll find a great big sign
there that says, "Beware of pickpockets!"

     That's man! That's man!

     I don't know what attention you pay to architecture; I'm not
an architect, and I know nothing about building. If I built an
extra room on my house it would look like a Chinese chicken coop.
I know nothing about building at all, but I study architecture,
and I admire it. And I stood as long as I could stand with the
time we had in Ludwig's castles in Germany, studying what they
did with that thing. And if you went to Notre Dame, you'd stand
in front of one of the greatest architectural marvels of the
world. You couldn't rebuild that place for a hundred million
dollars if you had the money. There's no way in the world. You
couldn't get the craftsmanship. What do you think you find there
in front of Notre Dame? You have a hard time studying the
architecture, because there are so many hawkers going up and down
the street selling pornographic photographs, you can't even look
at the building. Here's this great thing for the glory of God, a
hundred million dollars sitting up there, and the guy is trying
to sell you pictures on nude couples in action.

     You know what that is? It's DEPRAVITY! It's man. It's man.
That is, right where the temple is, right where the church is,
right where God is, you got that right there.

     Now the imaginations have got to come down. Paul says,
"Casting down imaginations, every high thing that exalteth itself
against the knowledge of God." Imaginations have to be cast down
because they do some things for you. First of all, they exalt
yourself. They raise yourself up. They make you think you're more
important than what you are. Back in the Dark Ages, one of those
kings there stopped by one of those Waldensian preachers, and he
knew he was preaching the Bible. That king was a Catholic, and he
didn't have him killed yet, but he was against him. And he said
to that Waldensian preacher, "And what did the preacher preach
about today on the king's birthday?" referring to his own
birthday.

     And the Waldensian said, "I preached that kings should have
kingly thoughts."

     Ohhhh, brother!

     The imagination makes you think you're worth more than you
are. Nobody here is necessary. Did you hear what I said? Nobody
here is necessary. On the platform or off. You're expendable.
You're expendable. If your imagination leads you to think
different, you fooled yourself. You kidded yourself. You're not
that important.

     We used to call that bullet back in World War II "six-cent
deaths." It was a 30-aught-6 shell. I guess they sell for about
25-cents apiece now. Back in World War II they were six cents a
shell. You know what a fellow's life was worth then? Six cents,
boy! That's a nickel and one penny. You got four years of college
education? One nickel and one penny. You are the conductor of a
symphony? One nickel and one penny. You're a bum out of the
street and a chronic alcoholic? One nickel and one penny, bud.
Six cents. Six cents.

     Imagination makes you think you're more than what you ought
to be. That Bible says, "Cast out the scorner, and strife shall
cease." That Bible says, "Only by pride cometh contention." You
know how folks get stuck on themselves? They sit around and think
about what great bigshots they are. And pretty soon, "They can't
do without me." Oh, yes they can! Oh, yes we can, and, oh, yes
God can! "All flesh is grass. All the glory of man is a flower of
grass."

     Imaginations have to be cast down because they cause
bitterness and harshness, in the best of men and the best of
women. They have to go. You take ol' wonderful, godly John
Milton, under terrible persecution, prayed for his enemies that
they might be consigned to the deepest hell. There's John Milton
writing all this wonderful stuff about heaven, and about glory,
and when the heat got hot, he's down there praying, "God, take my
enemies and put them in hell and let them burn." I never got that
far down the scale, you know, but I guess, if John Milton got
there, I could too! I can't imagine praying and asking God to
consign somebody to the lake of fire forever, but John Milton
did! I guess he was the most godly man who ever lived. What was
the matter? His imagination got to working on him. There was a
thought, there was a meditation, there was a series of thoughts
that weren't brought into captivity to God, and pretty soon they
got loose.

     Here's Martin Luther on his theological opponents: "Put them
in whatever sauce you please, roast or fried, baked or stewed,
broiled or hash--they're nothing but asses!" That's hard! That's
a hard thing to say. I think that if he was in his right mind, he
wouldn't have said that.

     It's astonishing with a conscience, when you violate one
precept of conscience, how the whole thing comes unraveled. It's
like a thread in a coat. Did you ever get a thread in a coat? You
pull it out? And it goes ZZZZZZZz..... I guess if you kept
pulling, the whole coat would come off your back after a while.
One single sin indulging makes a hole in your garment you can
stick your head through. You take one little old sin and just
mess with it and mess with it, it'll rip a hole in your clothes
you can poke your head through.

     In vain we call old notions fudge,

     And bend our conscience to our dealing,

     God's Ten Commandments will not budge,

     And stealing still is stealing.

     You try to soothe your conscience and tell yourself it's all
right, and bend your conscience so it'll match what you're doing-
-but it won't bend. It won't budge. It'll rip you.

     God Almighty's people are often destroyed spiritually and
put out of action by their thought life. Sometimes it's not an
overt act until much later. But they're put out of action by
their thought life, and they're destroyed. Did you know you can
destroy an army without killing every man? You don't have to kill
all the fellows to destroy an army. You can take a whole army of
twenty thousand men or a hundred thousand men and demoralize
them. That isn't all; you only have to kill about two thousand of
them. Now, you can fix it up. You can reorganize it, and send it
back into battle and say, "Well, here they are." That isn't the
bunch who went in before. That's a patched up job. You may have a
little ol' chevron up there, you know, 1st Cav, Hundred and Tenth
Airborne, sit up here, Blood and Fire Division, sitting up there-
-those aren't those divisions. There are not fifty men left in
those divisions who wore that patch.

     You go into action, 1st Cavs come back and you send some
recruits and put the patch on them. You know where the 1st Cav
is? It's dead. It's buried. You know where the 1st Cav is? It's
in the hospital. You can destroy an army without killing every
man. You can take a watch and put a watch out of action without
stomping it. That is, the thing can still run and keep time--and
be in a mud puddle. You can pick the thing up out of the mud
puddle, and clean it off, and put it back on your wrist again--
and it will still have mud on it. It may have some mud in the
works.

     God Almighty's people often have their testimonies destroyed
and their lives destroyed by continual bad thinking. The Bible
says, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." One of those
old fellows said, "Sow a thought; reap an action." He said, "Sow
an action, reap a habit." He said, "Sow a habit, reap a destiny."
Your destiny is determined by your thoughts. "As a man thinketh
in his heart, so is he." "Let the words of my mouth and the
meditation--the meditation--the meditation--of my heart be
acceptable in THY sight." Nevermind anybody else! "THY SIGHT, O
Lord, my strength and my redeemer." That's what Paul says.

     Your imaginations have to be cast down because they excuse
sin. They make alibis for sin. I like the story about a man who
went to three men one time and said, "What's two and two?"

     And the public accountant took out a pencil and said, "It's
four."

     And we went to a scientist and said, "What's two and two?"

     And the scientist got on a computer and said, "Two and two
is four."

     And he went to a lawyer and said, "What's two and two?"

     And he shut the door and pulled down the blinds and said,
"What do you want it to be?"

     That's how some Christians conduct their lives. I'll fix it
up so it looks like something it's not. Truth is, you can't win
the sin game. It's Murphy's Law. You can't win, and you can't
break even, and you can't even get out of the game.

     The strong holds must be put down, and the imaginations must
be brought into captivity, because they're subject to a number of
things. These things that run through your mind like this all the
time and go all these different ways, those things are subject to
twists and bends and perversions that have to be controlled. You
have to have mental discipline to be a child of God and be the
child of God you ought to be. And if you'll not practice it,
you'll never amount to a hill of beans as a child of God. You've
got to practice it. You have to control the thinking.

     A fellow said to me one time, "I can't control my thought
life." I said, you've got to! He was a kid about nineteen, and he
said, "How do you do it?" The Bible says, "Commit thy works to
thy Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established." Now there are
some times, I'll grant you sometimes, natural infirmity--natural
infirmity may prevent you from bringing the imagination into
captivity. People get up in years, and the mind may have trouble
because of lack of blood to the brain, this and that, so forth
and so on. Maybe you're pathologically injured, or something's
wrong with your mind. Some Christians as they grow old, bless
their heart, if they lived, they'd probably be mentally off as
long as he'd lived the rest of his life if he had lived. But
thank God the Lord takes them home quick like He does.

     But some people get up in years. Some people are not even up
in years. Sometimes drugs will do it to you. They'll get in there
and mess up your mind. You get to popping around and fooling
around with pills, and it'll have an effect on you. And many
times the natural infirmity will keep you from controlling
thoughts. If it's a natural infirmity and something that can't be
helped, I imagine the Lord will give you a little leeway. If
you're really crazy, OK. If you're really a kook, all right. God
be merciful to you and feed you for awhile.

     Like that fellow who got out of the asylum, they said, "Are
you cured?"

     He said, "Yes, I'm cured."

     They said, "Prove it."

     He said, "Well, ask me questions."

     They said, "What are you going to do when you get out of
here?"

     "Well," he said, "I might decide to become a doctor."

     They said, "Well, that's pretty ambitious."

     "Yeah, I know. I know what I have to do, I have to get a job
first, and make some money and save up some money, and have to go
to night school, and pass some heavy exams. And if I stuck to it,
I might be an intern and complete the work."

     They said, "Well, that sounds good. That sounds good. What
else might you do?"

     He said, "I might decide to be a lawyer. I could go off to
school, law school, and I think I could pass the exams. I would
have to study and really work at it, but I believe if I could
pass my bar examination I'd be a lawyer."

     They said, "Well, fine, you're really cured. Anything else?"

     "Well," he said, "I might be a teakettle!"

     They had to lock that fellow up again; he's not ready yet!
He's not ready to go.

     Now, those imaginations must be brought down and kept into
captivity because when you're talking with people and dealing
with people, you'll forget the subject at hand. That is, it'll
slip. One time a lady 30 years old was bragging about it to some
companion, and she said, "Nobody can guess my age; I've kept my
age a secret for 17 years!"

     And a lady said to her, "Didn't you ever tell anybody how
old you are?"

     And she said, "No, I haven't told anybody about it since I
was thirteen!"

     Well, then, they find out.

     You have lapses of memory. There must be mental discipline
because you have lapses of memory. You never keep track of
everything. These jokes about absent-minded professors are true.
And the reason why they're true is, by the time you cram so much
stuff in there, it begins to slip out here and slip out there.
You have to have a mental discipline in those things; you have to
work at it. Work at it.

     Thirty years after a split in a Texas church out there over
the placement of a piano--the church got torn up over whether a
piano should be over here, or over here--and thirty years after
that, the pastor was going around different houses and ran into a
man who had been deacon back there at that time. And he had
stayed with a widow's sister; he was 80 years old. And when the
new pastor came by there and got to talking to this fellow up in
his 80's, he was saying, "Well, you know, we had some hard
trouble back there with that preacher, you know, about where to
move that piano, and I said, uh--" and he turned to his sister
and said, "Uh...uh...uh...Lizzie, where did I say I wanted that
piano?"

     Big enough to split a church over, and he couldn't even
remember which side the thing was on! You get in those kind of
things.

     Here's a letter, a "Dear John" letter overseas, that a
fellow in World War II got. His name might have been Tom or Jim,
but they call them "Dear John" letters. And it said, "Dear So-
and-So, you're not coming back from overseas, and I've married a
4F. Please return my picture."

     And that guy went around and collected 20 pin-up photographs
from his buddies, and put them in an envelope and mailed it back
to the girl and said, "Please take out yours and return the rest.
It's embarrasssed me, but I can't remember which one was you."

     The mind needs to be controlled, because you forget. The
mind needs to be controlled and worked on because anything can
distract. A lot of Christians, their problem is simple. Just
EVERYTHING distracts them! They can't keep their mind on
anything! I thank God for the years, I look back on them now, and
they would have taken me to hell, but I thank God for the years I
did one thing that had some utility to it. I sat cross-legged on
a bamboo mat in a Uraka hotel in Katsura and practiced meditation
and Buddhism where I could fix my mind on a doorknob for thirty
minutes, without the mind leaving the doorknob. I found that to
be very useful when I got to studying the Bible. And I find that
very useful, and I try to keep my eyes on the Lord, when
everything was distracting me and making me think, "Look some
other way. Look at somebody else." It's been very helpful, very
helpful.

     But that stuff, you have to work at that kind of stuff.
Stuff will distract you. You people sitting here this morning,
there are 50,000 more things that distract you as a normal
American citizen than there was in this country in 1900. Fifty
thousand! Constant distraction! You go out the door, "Slow sign."
"Stop sign." "Red light." "Green light." "Car here." "Car there."
"Car over there." "Sign here." "Missed this turn here." "Right of
way here." "Yield here." That stuff will all get in your mind--
"off here," "off here," "off here," kids in the back seat of the
car, somebody doesn't like this, somebody doesn't like this,
fighting, turn on the radio, here's the news report, hear the
weather report, turn on the television---IP IP IP IP stuff! You
know what that stuff is for? It's to drive you NUTS! So your mind
goes like this so you can't get your feet down.

     You'll be like that crook that held up his first bank
robbery job and came up to the information booth in the bank and
said, "Is this a stick-up?" He forgot where he was.

     You know, it's a strange thing, is when you study people and
study thinking. It's strange how some distraction suddenly
intervenes and messes us your trend of thought, and you can't
remember the main thing, but some little ol' cotton-pickin'
detail that you wouldn't have thought you'd remember for half-a-
minute. It's a strange kind of thing.

     Did you know men in combat are like that? I've studied
combat accounts for years, almost half a century. One of the most
amazing things about combat accounts is what the guy remembers.
And for one guy, it was a great action, boy, great adventure. For
another guy, it was a horror. For another guy, "I would never
want to see that again." Another guy, "Oh, we had some pretty
good times, didn't we?" One guy in action was flat on his back in
a hospital tent back there getting an appendectomy while the
action was going on. Another fellow was out there in the shell
fire. Another fellow was over here messing around with hand-to-
hand. Another guy got sick and went back with a temperature of
105 and never saw anything. A strange thing.

     A train hit me a couple of years back, and to this day I
couldn't tell you what year it was or what day it was. I couldn't
even tell you what season it was. As God is my witness, if you
put me on the spot right now and say, "When did that train hit
you," I couldn't tell you the year or the month.

     But I remember the number of the train!

     1-0-1-6.

     Isn't that strange? I'll be you don't know the number of the
train. Let me tell you, man, when you're crossing that track, and
that thing hits the side of your car, and that whistle goes off
15 feet from your face and you look up, what you see makes an
impression on you. 1-0-1-6. I got that. I got that.

     One of these sky divers went out, and he was going to open
his shute. And about the time he was supposed to open his shute,
it didn't open. He fell 3,000 feet beyond where the shute should
have opened. And then he finally got it open. And when he got to
the ground, they said, "What was the thing that impressed you
most while you were falling?"

     And he said, "The one thought that impressed me more than
anything was the thought that everything was going up except me."
That fellow's impression of that thing was, "I was the only thing
that wasn't going up!"

     It's a strange thing about how these things go. When ol'
Franz Hammerlich was dying in All Quiet in the Western Front,
and Paul Barner and his buddies were around the thing there
watching him and talking with him and trying to cheer him up, the
thing that impressed Barner looking at him is his fingernails.
And he said, "I see that black dirt under those fingernails. I
have seen it so many times in the trenches. And those nails, that
continue to grow after his death. I can see them now, growing out
there like claws. How can it be? All of a sudden, all the
business about, 'Are you well?' 'Are you happy?' 'Are you
healthy?' 'Will you eat the food?' is all gone. I don't know how
those nails keep growing after that body's dead." You know what
that is? That's your thought life. And those thoughts will take
off like that, and take off like this, and you've got to keep
them down, if you're going to stay consecrated and God will use
you. You've got to get control of them! And if you don't, you'll
make shipwreck, just as sure as you live and breathe.

     I read an article where a fellow was tortured by his
torturers in Russia, and I've read, oh, maybe 20 or 30 of those
accounts. And this particular fellow, when he was brought in
before the torture, was sitting there. All they'd do with him is
kick him in the shins every time he didn't answer. If you think
that can't be painful, get somebody to kick your shins four or
five times with boots on.

     And then they got to twisting his wrists, and he said before
he passed out from the pain, he couldn't help but notice that
there was a place on the left side of his tortured face that he
hadn't shaved. There were some bristles around here. That's the
mind. That mind moves like this, and moves like this, and moves
like this. When it's out of control, it'll pick up anything. And
what it picks up, from your old depraved, Adamic nature, will
sure do you no good as a child of God.

     Brethren, your imagination is too lively to control if
you're exposing it all the time to movies, television, magazines
and newspapers. Your imagination is too lively; you can't keep it
in control. It'll run off with you.

     Some Southerners have a real advantage along this line. I've
talked to Southerners who, honest to goodness, if they had a
brain in their head, it was functioning about once every fifteen
minutes. And I've always considered it a real advantage, because
it won't get you in a whole lot of trouble. Now you take around
Bay Minette and Foley and Flomouth, and they talk pretty fast
around there. Down at the coast they talk fast. But you get in
the "black belt," you get up around Hale County and through
there, and come off through Atlanta and go off in Mississippi to
Meridian, and, "How ya doin', Brother Pete?"

     "Pretty good."

     "How ya gettin' along?"

     "Oh, gettin' along fine."

     "Sure is pretty day today, ain't it?"

     "Yeah, sure is."

     "That ol' umosa tree over there ain't doin' too good. Look
like worms mighta got it....You goin' to be around for awhile?"

     There are great big blanks in there! You could drive a bus
through there, man! I mean, they're not dumb. They're not stupid.
There's just nothin' going on! I mean, some of those fellows are
sharp, boy! They'll trade you out of your eye teeth, boy. It's
not that they don't have a brain; it's just that it doesn't
function. There's a blank here, and a blank there, and a blank
here. That must be great. I always envy people like that. I've
got a mind that goes "CHHH---CHHHH--CHHHH-CHH-CHH-CHH-CHH". I
say, "STOP!!" Then it stops, then there's a blank there,
sometimes as long as four seconds. And then it starts going
again.

     It must be great just to go through life and say, "Well,
looks like we might be able to grow some pretty nice 'maters this
year. Yeah, put a little pinch of salt on 'em....well, I tried
mine that way a couple years...I find the taste a little better
if you put a little sugar in 'em, you know....You got to kinda,
you know, doctor 'em up...."  Boy, I'm telling you, man, that's
somethin' else.

     Now, if you've got a mind like that, you've got an
advantage. Some of those old Southerners, I believe honestly they
have a television in their home and don't even know it's there. I
really do! I really do! I've been in homes where there was one on
in the living room, and nobody was watching it. It was just
running. People doing housework around, woman go right by and
doesn't even turn around and look to see what was on. Strange,
that thing!

     But most of you have an imagination much more lively than
that, and you fool with that kind of stuff, and it'll take you
off down the road, and I don't mean the right way either.

     All right, now I'm going to say four things about how to get
control over this mind. There are four things you've got to do. I
say, you have to do. I can't break down your will. You'll either
do it or you won't. Eventually, it'll be between you and God.
Eventually, it's a faceoff. It's one on one. But I'll tell you
what to do if you're interested in doing it.

     Number one, Proverbs 16:3. Proverbs 16:3 says, "Commit thy
works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established."
What have I said? I said, whatever you're doing, you turn that
over to God. And everything you do, you turn over to God, and
that will guarantee the thought won't go to pieces on that thing.
You get off from that thing, and the devil can't use that thing
to work your mind over and get your mind on it. You say, "What
kind of works?" Everything you do! All day long! You take that
and commit it to God. "Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy
thoughts shall be established." When you keep that in mind
running right, is what you do, I don't care if it's fishing or
hunting or repairing a septic tank or cutting down trees or
growing cotton or harvesting tomatoes or washing dishes or
changing babies or taking a trip to the grocery store, if it's
turned over to God, the mind will be established. And the part of
your life that you plan and work on and work out the way you want
it to come--that's the part that will fix your thinking and drive
you nuts. That'll fix you up. The part of your life that you do
of your own works through your own mind with your own brain for
your own understanding--that's the part that will guarantee your
mind is just as unstable as water.

     Number two, commit your requests. First, commit your works.
Secondly, commit your requests. Philippians chapter 4 says, "By
prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, make your requests be
known unto God, and the peace of God that passeth all
understanding"--listen!--"shall keep your hearts and"--what?--
"minds." You see that? You have trouble with that thought life?
That's two troubles there. The works aren't committed, and the
requests aren't committed.

     All right, the third thing. Commit the mind itself, the mind
itself. Take that mind so, "Now, Lord, you said I've got the mind
of Christ. You told me to be transformed into the renewing of my
mind." So you take that mind and you think the thoughts through
there that you want thought through there. Where is that? That's
Isaiah 26:3. Isaiah 26:3: "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace,
whose mind"--whose mind! --"is stayed on thee."

     All right, finally, the soul. The soul. And I say this, if
you're a child of God, you've already done that. Now, if you're
unsaved, you haven't done it yet. If you're saved, you've already
committed your soul to God and to Christ, but if you're unsaved,
you haven't. And that soul needs to be committed and turned over
to the Lord. And if you're unsaved, it hasn't been.

     Did you ever stop to think about a time come in to your life
when you're going to want this peace of mind and peace of heart,
and you'll want to control these thoughts? I feel sorry, I say,
and I say it many times among young people and especially these
young men, I feel sorry for some of you fellows because you never
had to discipline the mind to make it think the thoughts you want
it to think. And some of you fellows want to think the right
thoughts, don't you? Don't you? Some of you fellows want a clean
thought life, don't you? Yeah, I think you do. I think you do. I
think you work at it, too. And I'll tell you something else; for
some of you, it's a terrible job. And it's a terrible job because
that old mind can run along in that gutter track for so many
years and so many years without any check on it. But now, when
you want to check it, you find you don't have any practice in
checking.

     It's just like in hockey, a guy who comes down needs to be
body checked--and he doesn't know how to do it. He just comes on
it. He just comes on in.

     You've got to commit your soul, commit your mind, commit
your requests, commit your works. One of Brother Lackey's members
was dying up there in Carolina a couple years back. I think he
said he was dying of throat cancer. And Brother Lackey went to
the hospital to see him, and he had one of these little
diaphragms on that you talk through, you know, and it's all the
same tone. And Lackey talked to him about dying and going to
heaven. And the two of them there sang together, "Some Day I'll
Be in That Beautiful City." That guy was singing that thing
through that diaphragm. You can imagine how musical it sounded.
Now that fellow committed his soul to the Lord, see? He was
going. He's there right now.

     But somewhere down the line, that fellow hadn't taken the
imaginations and cast them down, hadn't taken the strong holds
and cast them down--and they cast him down.

     Are you saved here this morning? If you're not saved,
there's no chance at all that you'll control your thought life,
if the devil has control of your soul. You've got to give your
soul to the Lord. A fellow said to me down here downtown a couple
of months back, I witnessed to him, and he said, "Our hell is
right here on earth." He was from Pensacola; he's lived here
about 15 years.

     And I told him there are three differences between Pensacola
and hell. He said hell was here on earth, and he was from
Pensacola. So I said there are three differences between
Pensacola and hell.

     He said, "What's that?"

     I said, "In the first place, you've got some Christians
here. You're not going to have any in hell."

     And I said, "In the second place, you've got a chance to be
saved here. You won't have a chance in hell."

     And I said, "In the third place, it's only about two miles
down to the bay. You know what's down at the bay? Water is down
in the bay. There's no water in hell."

     All right, let's bow our heads for prayer. Now Father, we
pray to the Holy Spirit of God, take the Scriptures this morning
and lay it in the hearts and the minds of especially your
children here today that are here this morning and desire these
things. We know some of them mean business for you and intend to
serve thee in the years that lie ahead. We pray that they might
be clean vessels in your sight, not only outside, but inside.
Lord, save them from this slick, smooth, perfumed, soapy
Christianity that means a whited sepulchre outside and rotting
bones and dead men's bones inside. And may they be vessels fit
for the Master's use, Lord, that you can use. And Father, I pray
they help to apply these things I've talked about here this
morning, and these things I've given them from your word. May
they prove them and prove thee and prove thee to be true, and
prove your word to be true. And Lord, we pray for any unsaved
folks here this morning, that you might deal with them about
these matters. May they long for cleanliness and purity above all
things, and weep not because they're sick and weep not because
they're broke, and weep because they're defiled by sin. And
desire liberation, we pray."

     Let's pray a little while while the organ plays. We're not
going to stand and sing this morning. If anybody else would like
to come to the front for a word of prayer, you feel free to come.
If you're not saved, why don't you slip out of your seat right
now and come to the front, and let somebody lead you to Christ?
Why don't you do it right now? You haven't ever given your soul
to Jesus Christ, come on right now. Step out of your seat. Step
up and come down. There'll be somebody down here to lead you to
Christ at the altar. Others here, you can come. Nobody here but
us sinners. You're in good company. You're in good company. You
can afford it. Why don't you come, huh? Come on. Come the best
way you know how. Anybody here at the front would like any
prayer, raise your hand. Have Brother Reed and Brother McGaughey
come and counsel with you and pray with you. Anybody here? Raise
your hand. You want prayer? Raise your hand. If you don't, do
your own praying. We're going to wait a little while here. We're
going to wait a little while. I want these people to come and
make contact. Anybody need any help, slip up your hand, and let
somebody come pray with you and for you. Is there something
private and personal between you and God? Do your own praying.
You don't need a priest. You've got a High Priest in glory.

     That mind has to be brought under control. That Bible says,
"Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." All those old ways
of thinking, we put everybody ahead of God, they have got to go.
And if they don't, it's the shelf. It's the shelf and the pantry
and the door locked. I've seen them sit there for 25 years.

     Anybody want to be saved? Anybody want to find the Lord
Jesus Christ? If you want to, come on. Like I told you this
morning, God is more anxious to save you than you are to get
saved. Like I told you this morning, He'll beat you to this altar
before you ever get here. Will you come? Will you come? Anybody?
Whosoever will, let him come.

     All right, Father, we ask your blessing especially upon
these who came this morning, that thou might grant the desires of
their heart and show them how to master these things, lest these
things master them. May you work in their lives what's pleasing
in your sight, and bring forth fruit unto eternal life in the
lives of each one who came this morning desiring sincerely to get
control of these things and bring their imagination and thoughts
into captivity and obedience to Christ. Now, Lord, someone has
had terrible handicaps for years and years. We pray that thou
might have mercy upon them. Give them added grace and special
favors that they might accomplish this thing so they could please
thee. We ask in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
amen. Amen.

     All right, the Lord bless you, and you're dismissed.