Defeated for College President, He Found the Illiterates

Defeated for College President, He Found the Illiterates

by Frank Laubach

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

The nuns in the Roman Catholic Church, if they are very devout, try to be the brides of Christ. One of the most impressive books I ever read was Santa Teresa’s book called Interior Castle. I don’t know why it is not on every book stand. I suppose other people are not like I am. Well, they would all want to buy it and read it. It’s the story of her love affair with Christ. She was His girlfriend, as you might say now. That intimacy grew greater until at last the marriage took place. Now, that’s what all the nuns who are really devout try. And it’s all right for any woman, I suppose. But for me, a man, it doesn’t seem right to try to be a bride of anybody.

And so, I have taken Him into my heart and self as my senior partner. That does seem to be all right. He came in to take over the business which I was running. And now, we’ve had to put up a new sign in front of our house. Of our business house. This house is the house. Before He came in, like the rest of you, I had a lot of different ambitions and hopes. Once, I thought I’d make money. Then I thought I’d try to have a lot of comfort. Then I thought I might try to get famous. But all of those have had to be pulled down now. And instead of that, I… He has put up another sign. He does in front of every one of us who lets Him in. And that sign is…

We’re in the business of making the kingdom of God. In fact, under that sign is the Lord’s Prayer. Very few people know what the Lord’s Prayer is about. It’s the most widely repeated prayer in the world. Unless the Buddhist prayer is more widely repeated. I’m not so dead sure, but the Mohammedans repeat the first surah of the Koran. More than we repeat the Lord’s Prayer. But it’s the most widely repeated prayer by Christians everybody knows. And the least understood.

I want to try to tell you what it’s about for a few moments. I forgot I was going to use the world or I would have brought it up sooner. Excuse me. While I brought another prayer into the world. In the end.

By the way, that’s what happens to the world every time you pray for it. Maybe you didn’t notice it, but it does. If enough of us prayed for it, I wouldn’t think it would explode. But it surely would be not in as bad shape as it is now. Now, the Lord’s Prayer, first of all, is a world prayer.

The first letter in the Lord’s Prayer, I don’t think of as accident. In the English language, it’s the letter O. And the letter O is round like that. And this whole Lord’s Prayer is about that. Oh, it isn’t for lots of people. We ridicule that man who said, “God bless me and my wife, my son John and his wife. We four and no more.” And yet, a lot of us are just like that. And the Lord’s Prayer, they mean it, is give me.

But when Jesus taught them to pray, it was about this. I can prove it is instantly. “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on this earth as it is done in heaven.” Now, that’s a world prayer. And it didn’t mean part of the earth. It didn’t mean it all. And then take the next verse. “Give us this day our daily bread.” That doesn’t mean us here, we get too much. I cut breakfast this morning, partly because I’ve been getting too much. And every one of you now cuts some meals or gets Metrecal or something of that kind. By the way, they’ve got Metrecal shampoo. Have you heard about it?

Yes, it’s for fat heads. Well now, let’s get back to our subject. Give us this day our daily bread. If that made us, then we could shorten the Lord’s Prayer. Our problem now is buying books on how to get protein without carbohydrate. How not to lose this battle of the bulge. How to keep our girlish figure. We have books about it. But on the other side of the world, over here where Jesus said the Lord’s Prayer… By the way, I’ll show you where it was. Right under my finger.

See those black stripes? On both sides, it happens to be almost exactly in the middle of the black stripes. Here and there. And the Redlands are that way too. There, half the world is hungry. Half the babies of the world moaned last night all night for milk their mamas couldn’t give them because their mamas didn’t get enough food to provide milk for their own babies. And so, if give us this day our daily bread is the world, then it is surely needed now. Indeed, there’s more hunger now than there was 60 years ago in the world. That part of the Lord’s Prayer gets needed all the time worse. Not by us. Over here, we have no stripes. We just have too much. But over there, they have stripes and they mean hunger as well as endurance. And then the next part of it, the Lord’s Prayer, “and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” That part of it reminds you… The second part of it was, as we… In fact, the whole Lord’s Prayer is not asking God for a single thing. It’s agreeing with God in everything. God, You sent Christ down here to rescue this world from the devil. It’s a devil-possessed world. God, You want to annex it to the kingdom of God.

You want Your will to be done all over. I’m with You. If the Lord’s Prayer is anything at all, it’s an enlistment like a soldier enlists. It’s saying, I’ll help You, God, to make Your world right. And God is anxious to forgive us. If He hadn’t been, He wouldn’t have sent Jesus. But the trouble is, we won’t forgive each other. We won’t turn over a new page. We won’t as individuals, and we won’t as nations. Why, if Khrushchev suddenly became the most wonderful man in the world, good and everything, we’d be disappointed.

Because we hope they’ll… Well, I don’t know what we hope, but we sure hope we won’t win. In a war with us, of course we do. But we are to forgive. To start over. To take the chance. In fact, I’d rather take a chance of coming to some agreement with Communists now about disarmament than the chance of going on in the direction we’re going toward hell. Because if we get blown up, how can we face God and say, we at least were Christians. And we have to admit that all of us alike are following the way of the devil. Well, that’s the way of the devil and hell, the way we’re in now. So we’ve got to have that. That’s a part of it. Turn over a new leaf. Let bygones be bygones and start all over. Go out over there with an invasion of such love and such hard work on Khrushchev and Russia that we’ll convert them. Subvert them. All right, now the next one. And lead us not into temptation. That’s mistranslated. The original Aramaic didn’t say the translation into temptation. It said, do not let us be tempted. I don’t know why we don’t change that. And then the last one was, “but deliver us from all evil.” You see?

That’s an enlistment. Everything here is what God wanted. That’s the Lord’s Prayer. So, when you take Him into your life, the Lord’s Prayer is your purpose, and the Kingdom of God is your shingle on the outside of your business.

Now, last night I gave a picture of the world. Ahead, nobody denies this who knows the world facts. The lie is just annihilation for the human race, or at least for America and Russia, and a good part of China. Anybody who’s in the war. And then perhaps that fallout will kill the rest. If we don’t find a way to disarmament.

But, now we’re going to remember what our shingle is. The Kingdom of God. Saving the world. Bringing it to the way of Christ. And now, we confront such colossal opposition difficulty that it would stagger us. It would kill us if we had to do it alone. Take this disarmament, for example. Why can’t we disarm even if Russia wants to? Because our prosperity depends upon military production. It’s far and away the biggest business. It’s bigger, in fact, than any two other enterprises in the United States today as a military production. And if we stopped that, we’d have to suffer from a depression. That’s terrible when we face this thing.

And so, we have to… If there’s no real danger. If Khrushchev isn’t really bad right now, we have to exaggerate what he does say. In order to scare ourselves into producing more military so that we will prosper. Now you face that, friends. As you try to face making the world over into the Kingdom of God.

But the great danger with you and me… Me and you… Better put me first. Is that we allow ourselves to be hyphenated. That I mean to say we won’t take the clear, uncontaminated view of God. I know as congressman. I won’t dare you tell his name now because I did tell it several times in the United States. And a group of men, he told us this. He said, “I think I’ll have to leave Congress to save my soul.” He said, “I’m being attacked and… And… People are plotting all the time to get my vote. I look at a bill and it’s 51% right and 49% wrong. It’s got a whole lot of bad riders on the bills. And I have to pray like anything to keep from being contaminated.”

Well, I’m afraid he is contaminated. Without knowing it himself. At least he doesn’t agree with me. Which indicates that either he or I are wrong about some things. Very dear friend of mine, too. We sing, “God give us men. Tall men, sun crowned, who live above the fog in public duty and in private thinking.” And all the rest of that.

But when those men come, they will not be president of the United States. I don’t think a president of the United States can get elected without compromising. I think the saviors of our day will not be in Washington. Although, believe me, I’m thrilled with a few of them. I told you about the vice president. My goodness, if that man are up for election right now. After the conversion he had, on the way around the world, I’d vote for Johnson. Maybe you think I’m plugging for the Democrats. I’m not. But some of them are getting it over there in Washington.

But I think the saviors of our world are coming from the CFO. Maybe from the ashrams. Maybe from Moral Re-Armament. Maybe from the disciplined order. You are getting ready for saving the world. The Jesus way. It’s not going to be saved with bombs and missiles. It’s going to be saved by stopping bombs and missiles. That won’t be enough to save it, though. It’s got to be something very, very positive.

You all think maybe I’m talking about learning how to teach illiterates. But Koinonia knows what we need in order to get ready to save the world. It needs… It tries to take you there and give you spiritual integration. To be… That’s a hard word, though. To give you a new charging of your battery, spiritually, before you go abroad. We need that terribly. That’s what we’re here for. The real thing is not just to have a good time. Not to have a spiritual spree.

Because that has happened. People go to a meeting just in order to feel good, and then they hope the glow will last a while. If that’s what you came for, well, it’s alright. But it’s too little in an hour like this. You came here to get ready to save the world. And so we’ve got to get this spiritual thing that Agnes Sanford is giving us so wonderfully and so swiftly. This spirit… Pact filled with it before we leave here.

St. Francis wrote a lovely prayer that illustrates what we are doing. What we’re for. It’s the first page. The best thing in this book is his poem. We are here to become good channels. Wide open channels for all of heaven’s good to pour into all the world’s hellish evil. Here’s what St. Francis writes now, this lovely thing. “Lord, make me a channel of Thy peace. That where there is hatred, I may bring love. That where there is wrong, I may bring forgiveness. That where there is discord, I may bring harmony. That where there is error, I may bring truth. That where there is doubt, I may bring faith. That where there is despair, I may bring hope. That where there are shadows, I may bring light. That where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted. To understand rather than to be understood. To love rather than to be loved. For it is by giving that one receives. It is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.” There never was a more beautiful prayer since Christ uttered His last prayer than that one. That’s what we’re here to get ready for.

But before we’re ready to go out and do this deed for the world, a deed has to be done for each of us. And we have to come back often. Or go somewhere often. That’s why we ought to be in church often. That’s why we’re in church alone, I think often.

Because we’ve got to be cleared for action. Now, this morning I want to speak about how do we clear out these channels that are, after all, the main thing. It isn’t we who do this thing for the world. It is we’re pipes. Letting God pour out of heaven, down through us, out to the world. I was so pleased that Agnes reinforced so magnificently the thing that I myself see clearly. He has no hands but yours, Christ has them today. He has no eyes but yours. He has no mouth but yours. He has no feet but yours. And by yours I mean all of you who have let Him in. You are His reincarnation, savior of the world. And if you expect it to be done out there by some cosmic thing off there, maybe it will. But that isn’t the way He acts. That isn’t the way He started it. He started it with a person, Christ. He started it with… He continues it with persons, you. And only those who have Him are able to carry on and finish what He started. And we do that by letting Him and our Lord have a wide open pipeline. In the Catholic Church, if you read their literature, you find that a great many of the nuns and the monks who live in these monasteries with walls around them have one continuous complaint.

And that is they pray and pray and pray and it seems as though the heavens are made of brass and they get nothing back. Spiritual dryness. Of course, Christians do that everywhere, but those people do. And they wonder what’s the matter. They think it’s a trial God’s giving them sometimes. But I think it’s because they have those walls around them. I think that if they got those walls… Walked out of those walls and went out to help people who were in great need, they would suddenly find the Christ there. Many of them, in fact, have said so. A great many people come to a CFO camp as though they’re bringing a big bucket to be filled.

Somebody, in fact, used that figure here. Talking already in this CFO camp about how God likes to fill our bucket full. I don’t think that’s quite accurate. God wants to kick the bottom out of the bucket. And then that bucket will no longer be a bucket. It’ll be a channel. It’ll be a funnel. It’ll be a pipeline. He wants to fill it a good deal fuller than you’re able to receive it, or I am. He wants to get us ready so that all the infinite love of heaven, all the tremendous resources of heaven, power of heaven, will be able to flow down through us and flow out across the world. And if I’m right, then, this morning, it seems to me that my business is to talk about getting our channels cleaned out, wide open. There are three places where our channels are little. And when our channels are little, it doesn’t matter how big the reservoir is up there. All the resources of heaven are ready. But if the channel’s little, it’s like these faucets when they get filled up. Our… the water won’t run out because it’s clogged. One, this or that. Now, there are three places where we can get clogged. One of them is up toward God Himself.

How are we going to be open toward God? That is the first question. Well, that’s something that every Christian will work at all his life. Personally, I have. Many of you know that when I was still among the Moros, we worked out a game with minutes. These Moros, when I saw them coming around the corner, I used to think they’ll never see Jesus if they don’t see Him in me. So, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, get in me quick. And that didn’t seem to be very good. It wasn’t enough. And so, I began, and my wife did, and the rest of us did, to try to play a game. Once every second, we would try to think of God. To breathe a little prayer. To sing a little, hum a little tune of some kind. To keep Him there so that He’d come back at least once a second. I used to say, your mind races along from one thing to another. You can’t keep it on God all the time. If you did, you’d never think of anything else, and you couldn’t anyhow. If you tried. But you could bring it back once a second. One second out of a minute. And we used to play a game with ourselves. If you thought of God during those 60 seconds, any one of the seconds, then you won that minute.

And that’s pretty good. I still believe it’s a very good way to start, at any rate, to try. I don’t mean that you’ll succeed. Personally, I don’t. And I don’t believe anybody I ever met succeeds 100% of the day. Although you can come mighty close. And yet I… Now I don’t believe that that’s the ultimate. It’s a good thing to start, but not a good place to end. We ought to go farther out in this camp, farthest out, even than that. We ought to attempt to be like Paul, said he was, pray without ceasing. Now how in the world can you do that? Can it be done? Yes. It can be done.

It can be done if you have to stop everything else and think about God, but you don’t. If you have this senior partner with you, and He’s inside of you, then you and He think it ought to talk over every single enterprise in which you engage. If you’re going to engage in a new aspect of saving this world, you ought to talk it over within. Before you do it and then while you’re doing it. It is possible, like Brother Lawrence used to pray while he wiped the dishes about every dish. Things he was thinking about, he was talking to God about. It is possible to do that.

This morning, I came out and where I’m staying with Dr. Jones and she was listening to the radio. I listened a little bit, but it happened there was nothing there that was for me at that moment. Now, if I had only listened to that radio that part of that day, that’s all I would have gotten. But it happened that yesterday morning she had to run also. There I heard a little bit about that thing that was going around the world and I was interested in that. Now, we can be tuned in with God’s radio all the time. We can whisper inside.

I believe that’s the most important thing that I can possibly say to you because it is the most important thing to me in my life. I’m so glad I found this out, welcomed Him, and can talk everything over with Him. You can, too. That, I believe, is the way to have the pipeline open toward God. And that’s a swimming tank and it’s filled with water by a little pipe in a few hours, at least it can in a day, because it keeps on flowing and flowing. It doesn’t matter how big that pipe was. It just mattered how much of the time it was flowing. And so, in this relationship with God, you can, if you keep it open all the time, it doesn’t matter how big your pipeline happens to be. It keeps flowing.

So, how can you do that? How can you be open toward God? Not just easy. It needs a little gentle pressure in that direction. I hope that you have tried it. The best place to try it is right now. If you’re listening to me, you can’t help it because that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about openness toward God. Let Him talk to us. The most important thing in our relationship with God is not what we tell Him. Because it is a relationship of the senior partner, both of us inside this house working. Then it’s what He says to you and what He says to me, you in your house, I in my house, that matters. Keep listening. Otherwise, our point of view, our ideals, are going to be contaminated by this earth which is a very, very low level. No matter what you think about today, politics, anything, it’s very low level. And we will be dragged down unless that pipeline is kept open. But the next place I want to talk about for a little bit is our inside, the middle. There is the pipeline at that end, here in the middle, and then another one down toward the bottom. The middle is ourselves.

We have to be willing to let Him sweep selfish motives out. There can’t be a conflict inside between the senior partner and the junior partner. That’s our trouble, isn’t it? We want what He doesn’t want. And that blocks us. Agnes said already, one of the profoundest truths in the Bible, Jesus once said, you want to know whether it’s God speaking? This is the answer. He that is willing to do His will shall know. That’s very profound. It’s worth meditating on. If you don’t want to, you won’t be sure. Because your will block His. We’ve got to sweep selfish purposes out of the way. Now that is a very hard thing to do because even President Eisenhower used to say, the goal of America is enlightened self-interest. That this rugged Americanism is enlightened self-interest. That is not Christianity.

It is, and Christianity is dedication to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, now I’ll go to the bottom. I was down in Liberia a few years ago, and there, the Firestone company has a tremendous plant. And they have a hydroelectric plant up in the mountains and so they took me up there to see it. I’m very pleased about what I saw of Firestone in Liberia. They were really trying to do something for the people there. And so this public relations man was a very good friend of mine and we went up to see this hydroelectric plant. It was a big turbine wheel here and it was open at the top and no water was going through the wheel. Open there in the wheel too. And he said, “I’ll tell you why the water is not running. It’s closed down at the bottom.” And the water, this spiritual power that we must have, this wide open channel, can be blocked at the bottom. Overcome. How? In a great many ways. And there are not easy ways to overcome. It’s easier to love God than to just love people, at least a lot of people. The people who need us the most are the ones that we have the hardest time loving. We don’t love people if we are Christ-like because they’re lovable.

The most unlovable are the ones that we need to help the most. And if we don’t like them, we can’t help them. People can’t read books, but all the illiterates I ever met can read you easily. They can tell whether they like them or not. And so, if we have a line that says, I like that kind of people, but that kind, those crude people, those people that can’t, that have no manners or smell bad or something of that sort, I don’t want them to be around them. We are shutting ourselves off from them. And the Christ-like person is the person who loves people not because they’re lovable. That’s the human way. We look people over first to see if we can want to love them. Of course we do, if we’re human. But if we have the Christ-love, then we look them over to see if they need us. And we love them because we can help them. And that isn’t easy. That is a total reversal of the human nature that we have. Now, here in this book, Channels of Spiritual Power, I recorded something that happened at Winnipesaukee. The most wonderful camp, I don’t know what this is going to be yet, starts out with Agnes’ mighty high camp, but the most wonderful camp that I have ever been in was at Winnipesaukee a number of years ago.

We, I don’t know what happened, but the Holy Spirit moved upon us and seemed to me that it was the nearest thing to Pentecost almost that I have ever been in my life. And at that camp, people began to get releases. The channels broke. The log jams up here or in the middle or down there toward people began to break. One after the other. And it was so wonderful that at the end of the camp, we decided that all of us would, if we wanted to, tell what happened to us. Now, these reports were not from people who still had the log jams. When you have it, you don’t know what’s the matter with you. If you did, you’d be well in a hurry. The reason why you’re in trouble is because you don’t know what your trouble is. But they had had it. They had conquered it. The jams had gone out. The logs that had blocked them, their own self-uners, had blocked them. They had all been swept away. And 200 of them reported on what had happened to them. And now I want to read at first what was the matter with them. You can’t tell what’s the matter until after it’s over.

Let me give you an illustration in my own life. When I was out in the Philippine Islands, I was teaching in a college there and I thought I’d like to be president of the college. I was qualified educationally. I had studied in Teachers College, Columbia University, and also in the Bloomsburg Tate State College, Teachers College. And the man who was my opponent was a Presbyterian with a DD. But he didn’t know anything about education. He’d never been in an educational college. He’d never taught anything but a book of theology in the seminary. Now he was a Presbyterian and there were three Presbyterian trustees. There were two Methodist trustees and a Disciples trustee and I was a trustee. The other man who was my opponent was not a trustee. He didn’t have to vote. Now I hope you got how many there were. So when the election took place, one of these Presbyterians looked over my shoulder and so I voted against myself. I now think I was a fool.

To be afraid of him, but I was. And the two Methodists voted for me and the Disciple voted for me and the three Presbyterians voted against me and we four lost the election for me. Now what I’m telling you that for is this.

I was a fool. I began to didn’t know what was the matter but I blamed them of course. I was mad at the Presbyterians and then the first thing that happened to me was that I got paratyphoid very soon. Then I got flu. And then I got appendicitis. And then I had an ulcer in the right eye that nearly took it. And then I had got a… I was for six months with a black bandage on my face. And then when I got that off, I went down to the gymnasium again. I used to go there before I hated the Presbyterians. And I… I was trying to play volleyball again. But the very first game I went there, I jumped up in the area and hit the volleyball and crack! It was like a pistol with my sphincter muscle. There’s a muscle inside of the big one down on your cap of your leg. And that broke. So I had to go six months more on crutches. I was an invalid for two years because I hated the Presbyterians.

And yet today, I know that they’re my best friends. If they hadn’t lost that election from me, I’d still be in a little college with about 200 people over there in Manila. And I never would have discovered the illiterates. And I went down there to Mindanao thinking that I was going to bury myself forever. Fade, fade each earthly presidency of a college. And I’ll give myself up. And here I discovered a world. And now I love the Presbyterians better than anybody else almost. But that’s the way they’re fools. Often selfish fools.

Now, I don’t know whether there’s much time, but I’ll take a little bit to tell you some of the blockages. And then, oh, I’ll just wait until the next time to tell you the marvelous releases that took place at that camp. Here’s what 186 people out of 200 said was a matter of death.

Selfishness. It was blocking them. It wasn’t the top, it wasn’t the bottom, it was the middle, they thought, after it was over. 181 of them also said that they felt defeated. They felt inferior. Now, on one side, there were a terrible lot of that feeling that was defeating them. They couldn’t because they thought they couldn’t. But on the other side, there were a lot of them who felt that they were too ambitious, selfishly ambitious. There were a lot of them who said that there were There were 135 of them said that they were blocked by the feeling of resentment against somebody.

And one surprise that came to me was that only 33 of them blamed anybody else. Now, I blamed the Presbyterians. I belonged to 33 in those days. But most of them saw after it was all over… I don’t think they did while they were having them. But at the end of that camp, nearly all of them saw that it wasn’t anybody’s fault but their own. Their own selfishness if they were blocked in the middle. Here’s another interesting thing that struck me that’s very funny. Only 35 of them said it was because of any sins they were committing on the outside.

But 251 times they attributed it to sin of the mind. Fear, lack of faith, sense of defeat, evil thoughts. The saints too, the best people there, were blocked. Saints, you know, are tempted too. If you get too good, then you’re liable to look down over your nose at everybody who isn’t that good. The greatest sin of the saint is criticism of somebody else. You haven’t got any sins anymore, so you can’t sympathize with those who have. And the sin of carping criticism. Everybody who begins to feel that you’re pretty well cleaned out, had just better watch out for that one because that’s the hardest of them perhaps of all. The last sin of a good person is the sin of not being tolerant of those who aren’t good. Of not understanding them. And not having enough sympathy. Now, I want perhaps to take a minute or two to talk about how they broke the log jams.

It’s now six after nine, but I didn’t get started, or ten. But I didn’t get started quite on time, so if you don’t mind, I’ll take a few of those. There are 699 of them who said that it was Jesus Christ who released them from their condition that they were in. Gave them a complete release. They said that it was by being centered in Jesus Christ. I want to read one of them. Here is one of them said, “I suffered from two diseases. One was spiritual, the other was physical.” By the way, it usually is that way, but not always. “I had extreme self-itis and arthritis. I felt jealousy, possessiveness, resentment that others shared the friendship of a friend I had. I pitied myself. I couldn’t walk for pain. At the camp, I told a friend of mine my story, and we prayed together. I became so full of the Holy Spirit that I got up and walked. The pain had gone. My friend and I went to the prayer room. There we rededicated ourselves and left the problem with God. Now I have joy and love and peace.” That’s one of them. And there were just a lot more like that. Here’s one of them. “I hated my husband for his infidelity. I hated the children he had by another woman.

I hated men. I wanted to die. I came to the CFO. And there I saw Glenn Harding’s face. I saw every face radiating with kindness. I went to the prayer room every day. I couldn’t pray for myself, so I prayed for them, for other people. I had to die. And while the tears rolled down my cheeks, I surrendered. I tried to forgive, and I tried hard. And then came the release. I felt twenty pounds lighter. My cold disappeared at once. The tension left my body. I fell asleep. I wanted to go back to my husband and my babies now. No words can describe the relief. I had given God the burden, and now I can smile at people and love them and trust them. I can talk and pray aloud. All this the camp did for me.” Well, it’s time to stop. I hadn’t even begun yet. But time to stop. If you want to read the rest of this, it’s in this Channels of Spiritual Power. About that wonderful thing over there. It may meet your condition.

And then when the blockage does come, break in you, this is what happens. There flows down through you, out of heaven, pure love. Love that can’t be defeated by anybody who returns it with hate. It’s love different from anything we ever saw in this world.

It’s a divine love that loves people because they need your love. I expect to see that happen here. It started that way. If you pray enough, believe enough, we’re going to have another Pentecost before this week’s up. And then you’ll grow more so gloriously happy. But that won’t be the main thing. You’ll go out to save the world. One by one, in this group, people are going to be transformed this week. The blockage toward God or toward yourself or toward men are going to be broken. And then down flows through you. Love divine, all love excelling in. Then you don’t need to worry about yourself anymore. You will be happy because you’d like to have ever taken hold of an electric wire or it has a little too much electricity in it and felt the tingle. Everybody here must have. Or when you’re close to an electric light bulb sometimes and it vibrates too much electricity almost, flowing through, making a light. Forget all about your own joy and happiness. If you get the blockage broken. And then you will begin to be God’s blessing, God’s savior, God’s answer to the world’s problem today.

That alone is the hope of the world. I mean you are. And people like you. Thank You, Lord, for the experience I had over in Winnipesaukee. That has blessed so many of us that we had over there. We wish we had lived up to it, but that’s all right. We can forget the past. You’re so glad to do that. And start all over, anytime. And I pray that the people here know better than, partly at least, what their blockages are. Whether they’re up toward God, lack of complete surrender, or within, hanging on to some selfish purpose, or toward people, shutting them off with dislike or resentment or hate or superior feeling, whatever it is, help every blockage to be swept out here. Not only because it would be the joyful way to live, because we’re the sons of God and Thou dost want us to grow, but also because we can’t do more than we are for the world. And we can’t give more than we have to the world. And we can’t have more than Thou dost give us. We’ve got to be pipelines. So, Lord, help us all to kick the bottom out of the bucket this week. And to let God’s everything flow into the world’s every need. God’s love flow down to cover the world’s hate.

God’s faith flow down to cover the world’s fear. God’s love capture the hearts of men. We pray Thee. I feel at least like praying Thee for Khrushchev. I love him this morning. He’s trying to make a better world. He doesn’t know that there’s a better way to do it. God help him to see the better way. Helping God grant that many, many, many people may incarnate Thee in love. God, how will Khrushchev see Jesus if he doesn’t see Jesus in the United States? And how will he see Jesus in the United States unless enough of the people of the United States are incandescent like these glowing lights with Jesus? So start with us. And help us to be worthy of such a call. In His dear name, amen.