Every Program Was My Favorite Program

Every Program Was My Favorite Program

by Barbara Ann Chase

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

Let’s turn to Psalm 34 for a few minutes. I think I’ll read the whole thing to you, and then we’ll go back. Psalm 34. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear it and rejoice. O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together. I sought the Lord, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. They looked to Him and were radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. The poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all of his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and rescues them. O taste and see that the Lord is good. How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. O fear the Lord, you His saints, for to those who fear Him there is no want. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing. Come, you children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Who is the man who desires life, and loves length of days, that he may see good?

Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil, and do good. Seek peace, and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry. The face of the Lord is against evildoers, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. The righteous cry, and the Lord hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of all of them. He keeps all his bones. Not one of them is broken. Evil shall slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems the soul of His servants, and none of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned.

I didn’t intend to start backwards, but isn’t that a tremendous place to start? That none of those who take refuge in Him shall be condemned. I was sharing this morning in Ohio camp about how we really don’t know the difference between temptation and sin. And we can be walking down the street, and this lustful thought will come across our mind. These blasphemous words, these blasphemous thoughts. “You asked Jesus to come into your heart. It didn’t really take when you received baptism of Holy Spirit, or surely you couldn’t be looking at that girl that way. You couldn’t be looking at the movie posters like that, or the magazines in the drugstore or grocery store.

You couldn’t be having these thoughts. You couldn’t have swear words going through your mind. You couldn’t have ugliness there if you knew Jesus. Why don’t you just give up? You’re condemned anyway.” And you know that we are foolish enough to believe the enemy of our soul, instead of realizing that he’s the one that put those thoughts there in the first place. And we have only to reject them and refuse them, and think on those things that are good. And there is no sin involved.

Temptation becomes sin. Let’s think about a thought that is not good for us. And that thought enters our mind. And we don’t let it cross and go out the other side, but we let it attach itself there in our brain. And then we put our eyes upon it. We take our eyes from Jesus, from the work that we’re doing, from the play that we’re engaged in, and we look upon that thought, and we turn it over to see what it looks like from every angle. And we begin to enjoy it and to feast upon it, and to take it into ourselves. That is sin. That is sin. But we are free, by grace, not to do that. We are free not to openly fight against that thought, other than to dismiss it in the name of Jesus. But we’re free to let a good thought take its place, to think on those things that are pure and lovely and of good report. I remember a temptation coming to me in one of the most beautiful places in the United States, at Oral Roberts University. Wouldn’t you think on that lovely campus, you wouldn’t have any bad thoughts? The birds are singing, and they come chirping up to you, and they walk so close, and the grounds are beautiful, and the Holy Spirit’s presence is there.

And I’ll tell you when I got a bad thought. I was standing in line with a thousand people for breakfast. They had announced that we would have breakfast at 6:30 in the morning. This is when we had our national CFO camp, and we were able to join the seminar that Oral Roberts has at his university, which consisted of about 3,000 people. We were able to join them for a Sunday morning service. So I thought, well, I’ll get there to eat right at 6:30, as hard as it is to get up so early. And I was there, and so were a thousand other people. And one line extended all the way around the semicircle, and it met the end of the other line, going down the other side. And so I took my place in line. My thoughts were wonderful to that point. God’s grace was with me that morning. And I was very cheerful and happy and looking forward to the day. And then three people came into my life, and they were all elderly ladies. And I love elderly ladies, as long as I see Jesus in them. But when I start concentrating on their faults, they aren’t as lovely anymore. And it’s that way with little boys and middle-aged people and everybody else.

That’s when it takes grace. But one of these ladies was old and crippled. And I would have felt sorry for her, except she was awfully sneaky. She was walking up very softly in line. She’d stop and talk to somebody, then she’d go a few steps farther. She was just going from person to person, making her way up to the front of that line. Well, she got to the two elderly ladies behind me. They weren’t as old as she was. And she said good morning to them, and wasn’t it wonderful to be in this miracle working place? Praise the Lord. And she snuck right past them. And they knew what she was up to. And first in stage whispers, and then almost in shouts, they said, “Look at that lady sneaking up in line. Wouldn’t you think she’d know better? I wonder how many years she’s called herself a Christian. Imagine her. She should be ashamed of herself.” And they got louder and louder as she got farther away, hoping she would hear. And this is when I had trouble with my thoughts. I wasn’t as irritated with that lady. I thought she was kind of cute sneaking along. But I was irritated with these two ladies in back of me. And I just wanted to turn around and ask them how long they’d been Christian.

And Jesus stopped me. And I saw this line, this chain reaction of awful thoughts that are against God and His kingdom. Because if I had said something, let’s say that I had given in to the temptation and said to these ladies, “How long have you been Christian? How come you’re so negative? Maybe that lady is really in pain and she needs to get to the front of the line. How come you’re being so condemning?” Then someone ahead of me would have heard me and said, “What does that young woman think she’s doing, talking so disrespectfully to those two ladies?” And on and on it would have gone. But Jesus turned my heart and He let me have a word that would interest these ladies and turn their mind to another topic of conversation and to forgive all four of us for what we could have started in that line, waiting for breakfast. But Jesus can take what might be negative and turn it into good. We can stop at the point of temptation and say, “No, I’m going to let good words come forth, good, clean thoughts come forth.” We never speak, really, what we don’t think first about another individual. So it pays to keep the thoughts of our heart clean so it doesn’t pop out in conversation sometimes.

Words come from the very issues of the heart. I’m wondering where I wanted to go. Oh, it was with no condemnation, wasn’t it? That very last line of the psalm that I once started the first line of. Well, I think it’s important this week for us to know that there is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus because if we don’t know that we’re free of condemnation, we’ll never be able to take correction. And I couldn’t take any correction from Father until I learned that I wasn’t condemned. And when I knew that Father was correcting me in love, then I didn’t have to worry. I could say, “God, thank You that You don’t treat me like an illegitimate child, that You don’t treat me like someone that it doesn’t matter whether I please You or not, whether I learn how to live in Your kingdom or not, but You care enough, if You love me enough to correct me. Thank You, Father.” But we can’t have that attitude of praise and gratitude for correction as long as we’re being condemned. And it’s the enemy of our soul who condemns us. God does not condemn us because we belong to Him. You don’t condemn your children. You love your children. You want what’s best to them.

And they’re still your children even when they drive you crazy. When they’ve asked for the 14th glass of water, when they’re misbehaving, someone says, “Whose child is that?” It may take you a minute to admit it, but you say, “Well, that’s my child.” And if you really love them, you’ll be proud of them because you’ll know there’s much more to them than that present behavior. And that as they recognize your love and accept your love, as you’re consistent in that love, they’re going to respond to it, and their actions will show that they’re your children. And you can be proud of them because of who they are and they know who they are. And it’s the same with us. As we grow up in the Lord, we learn to know who we are in Him, that we’re somebody special, that we’re important. Many times I have people ask Jesus and have them say, “Jesus, what do You think of me?” And they’re so surprised to what Jesus would say. Sometimes they ask, “Father.” And I remember this one boy in Montana. He was probably about 18 or 19 years old. And he had never talked to Jesus and let Jesus talk to him before in his thoughts. He’d heard Jesus speak through His Holy Word and through other people and through creation.

But he had never heard Him in his thoughts. And so he said, “Father, what do You think of me?” And God said, “My son?” And the boy raised his hand. And I said, “Yes.” And he said, “God said, ‘My son?’” And I said, “Then what did He say?” He said, “Oh, just a minute.” And he went back. He’d just given God time to address Him. Like you’d say, “Barbara Ann.” And I’d get so excited and say, “Oh, this lady said, ‘Barbara Ann,’” that I wouldn’t even hear what you wanted to say to me. Although I must admit that is exciting to have the God of heaven and earth say, “My son, my daughter, my beloved.” And as we come to know Father’s love and to hear Him talk to us, after we hear Him talk about who we are, then we can say, “Now, what do You think of my husband? What do You think of my mother-in-law? What do You think of my child? What do You think of my neighbor who built that ugly fence?” Didn’t even ask me and took part of the apples from my tree, put it so close that all the good ones are hanging over. And you have to say, “Jesus, what do You think about them?” And He’ll begin to respond.

He’ll begin to answer. And we can really rejoice. Let’s turn back to that first sentence. It says, I will bless the Lord at all times. This is Psalm 34, verse 1. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. Now, to praise the Lord doesn’t just mean to say, “Praise You, Jesus.” Wouldn’t you get bored if I said to Walt or to Betty or to Chuck, to Pat, “Oh, bless you, Pat. Bless you, bless you, Pat. Hallelujah, Pat. Thank you, Pat. Praise you, Pat.” Pat would say, “Oh, you know, what’s this all about? Be specific. Why are you praising me?” And God delights when we get specific with Him. “Well, I’m praising You because You gave me these hands to give my little baby a bath with.” We do this. We thank God for specific things. We bless Him for specifics. And we can do that with the word of our mouth. I praised God that day at Oral Roberts University when I changed the topic of conversation with those two ladies. That was praise to God. Many times, our acts of obedience are praise to Him. In fact, anything that we do or say or think or feel that we offer to God as an act of praise becomes praise because we are a praise of His glory.

And that’s amazing that you can play a good game of volleyball, that you can spike that ball over the net and say, “Jesus, I’m spiking this ball to praise You.” Now, if you’re on the other side trying to praise God and that ball is just about hitting you in the face, you may have to praise Him for something else. You may have to offer Him another sacrifice of praise. But whatever we do, to do it with all our might, with all our heart, and to do it unto the Lord as praise. Many times, growing up, I offered an act of obedience as praise to God when it was time to do dishes at night. I was the oldest of six children and I was the only one who knew how to do dishes. None of my brothers or sisters ever could do it. They just didn’t know how. And finally, they learned how to dry them, but they never learned how to wash them. And I would go and, you know how you always stall when you’re little. And television was fairly new to our household in those days and I was so fascinated by it. And I’d always say, “Can I just wait for the commercial? Can I just wait?” And if I stalled long enough, it could take me from 6:30 until 9:30 to do the dishes if I raced out there during every commercial.

So my parents didn’t let me do that very often. And it was a sacrifice of praise to be obedient to them and to do it during the program because in those years every program was my favorite program. I’d like to share about the sacrifice of praise with watching television because more and more things are coming on television that are not pure and peaceable and of good report. I love Alan Alda and for a while, a number of years ago, the Lord let me watch MASH on TV without saying a word to me. I just enjoyed it and I enjoyed Alan Alda and all the other people and later on every night I would pray for him that he would come to know Jesus. I love to pray for movie stars and TV personalities. I say this more as a word of encouragement and I know it was much more than my prayers but when I was about 14 years old Pat Boone was singing Love Letters in the Sand and Bernardine and all these songs that I loved and I started praying for him and I prayed for him for about seven years and it was such a joy to me when I found what great things God was doing in his life and he did them in Pat’s life before he did anything in my life that was similar and it gave me encouragement that even the prayers of a young girl for someone could be part of God’s plan.

There were probably thousands of people praying for him and close relatives and friends and God’s sovereign act who knew Pat Boone from the very beginning and it called him by name but I always felt so excited that that had borne fruit. But the day came when even though I prayed for Alan Alda, Jesus wouldn’t let me watch that program again. Now if He’s still letting you watch it, you just enjoy it. I don’t even know if it’s still on. But I remember I have Iverna Tompkins saying once that it really upsets her sometimes when I can do her don’ts. So maybe you can do some of my don’ts and you do that with the freedom of Jesus. But I can’t watch many shows that I used to watch because they are saying and stating things that are against the kingdom of God and what I believe and what I hope for for the world. And how I pray that we’ll begin to use television not just with pious religious shows. They’re just as bad. God doesn’t let me watch some of those fakie ones either. They don’t bless Him. It doesn’t mean everything has to be hymns and speakers and rabble rousing and all this business condemning people with the Bible. But it does mean that when we turn on the television set we have to know how to turn it off again.

We have to know how to turn that little knob that says one, two, three, four, five, you know, channel six, channel seven, and turn it. So that when we see something that’s desedifying or we know it’s going to come on we’ll know how to use this great instrument, this great form of communication that God has given us. And if we don’t know how to do that, if we don’t know how to turn the button off, or if we don’t know how to turn the channel, then we really shouldn’t have a TV set. Because even though it is a wonderful means of communication, if we use it wrongly, it isn’t worth it. If we can’t have a cooperative effort with our children, with our husband, with the family, if we’re the ones in authority, we should take that authority in love for the sake of the family.

It’s the same with the telephone. The telephone is a tremendous means of communication. But if we don’t know how to take the receiver off, and we don’t know how to put the receiver back on, then we really shouldn’t have a telephone. It isn’t worth it. Now, I have both a television and a telephone, because I said, “Jesus, if it’s a choice between doing without them or learning how to use them rightly, I’m willing to learn.” And that’s the better way. But if you have someone who calls you evening after evening at five o’clock when you’re trying to get supper ready with the same problem they’ve had for the last eight years, and you somehow have distorted thinking to think that it’s more important for you to listen to them and to give them the same words of counsel you’ve given a hundred times before than it is for you to cook a good dinner for your family, then something’s wrong. Just try as a discipline to limit your calls to ten minutes, to limit your conversations with certain people. And there’s room for exceptions. There’s room for God’s compassion and mercy. But see what wonders it will work. Sometimes when people call me for counsel, and I don’t want this to frighten you, but if they’ve called time and time again with the same story and they really don’t want to get well because what on earth would they talk about, then I’m kind of like John the Baptist when he wanted to see fruit meet for repentance.

When he said to the soldier, “Don’t grumble about your wages.” When he said to someone else, “If you have two cloaks, give one away.” “Show me fruit of repentance. Show me that you’re serious about this.” So sometimes I say to a person like that, “I really want to hear from you again. I love you probably more than you’ll ever know. But before you call me back, I want you to ask your grandmother’s forgiveness for the way you talked about her to your brothers and sisters.” If God has told me that this is something that He is ready to give her grace for, don’t demand something that is so hard and so unreasonable that they would just shatter in two trying to do it. But again, hearing Jesus’ voice, something that is that next step for them, that they would have the grace to perform before they would call you back. So some progress would be made. Some people you never hear from again. Others phone you back and there is victory in their life. There is triumph. And then, what a wonderful phone call that is. Try and be thoughtful of various members of your family so that you can have the use of the phone, the use of the television that is good for each member.

And talk about it. Sometimes we can escape into prayer. I love to pray. Like Paul, I could say, “I pray in tongues more than ye all.” I don’t know that, but I pray in tongues quite a bit. And I wish I prayed in English more. But, I do know that as we pray, things will happen with our family, that we can use prayer to bless them if we refuse to use it as an escape.

There are times when, as husband and wife, you need to talk things out. And don’t say, “Oh, let’s pray about it,” when you’re not ready for prayer. Don’t ask someone to forgive you before you’ve had the discussion that needs to precede that. So that the forgiveness can be more than obligation. “Well, the scripture says I should forgive her if she asks.” But I’m hurting inside. Talk through and don’t jump a giant step from one place to another and leave undone all the things in between.

Neither should you have conversations when you should just pray. It would make it so much easier. One word of prayer would straighten the whole thing out. And in your prayer groups this week, ask Jesus, be very sensitive to one another. If you’re a talker, ask Jesus to give you listening ears. If you always sit back and kind of observe the group and then wait until they call on you to give them your gem of wisdom, knowing that surely they will because they’ll think you’re so wise because you’re sitting there nodding, taking it all in, you can fake that too. Maybe you aren’t wise at all. You’re just sitting there nodding. But if you do have a tendency to withdraw, then ask Jesus for the grace, for the courage to speak out your need or to speak out your blessing, to speak out your praise or your thanksgiving. He’s going to give us so much grace. He has an infinite amount of grace. I’ve heard people say that in this day and age the world has never been worse. There’s never been as much evil as there is today. And I tend to agree. I think the forces of Satan have been unleashed upon this world. And they say, “Oh, but we require so much more grace.”

But isn’t that good? Because how much more grace do we have? We have an infinite supply of grace. So here we have an opportunity to see more of it. To see how much more we have. We’ve just touched the surface. And here God is allowing situations to arise where we can use more and more and more of that grace that we didn’t even have a need to use before. And here it is at our disposal. After all, Jesus in us is infinite patience. If you need patience to sit down for five more minutes tonight because you’ve been sitting all day, do you know that God has an infinite amount of patience residing in you that you can draw from? Now that doesn’t give me the privilege of talking on infinitely. But it does mean that God has the patience, all that we need. If you need this much more love for someone you’re sitting by or someone you should be sitting by, why, you have limitless supply in Christ Jesus. Test Him on it. Try Him and see. Was He lying when He said that He was all we needed? That He was our all in all? Test Him and see. See if He is all that courage that you need, if He’s all that boldness, if He’s all that peace, if He’s all that understanding and that compassion. Don’t say that mercy, that compassion, is a gift that some people have, and others have administration, others have helps, others have tongues, others have interpretation. But mercy is part of God’s character. Helps is part of God’s character. Serving is part of God’s character.

And as we let Jesus express Himself through us, He can express Himself in any way He wants to, if we will only let Him. If someone is lying naked and wounded and bleeding, and we start to trip over them and call them a stumbling block, we don’t have to walk on by and say, “Well, someone else is a mercy person.”

God lets that compassion well up within us. And if we will, He will give us the equipping we need. He will give us what we need, the bandages, to wrap up, to bind up one another’s wounds. That oil of the Holy Spirit, that wine, that fullness of life, to pour in the wounds and make them whole of the one who is right across our way. We don’t have to go into someone else’s way, looking for someone who is lying naked and bleeding so we can help them out. We are likely to wrap up a lot of people that were walking along the way, and make it impossible for them to move. We might bind them. But in our way, in the path God has called us to, that He has chosen for us, we will be walking along, blessing His name, having a good time, and trip, we will start to stumble over somebody. We will say, “How could they have disappointed me that way? Why, he was my favorite speaker. He baptized one of my children in the Holy Spirit. Why now, he is believing in reincarnation. He is in ultimate reconciliation. And not only that, but he is running around with three women.” How could he trip, kick, stumble, and there he is lying, beaten and naked, exposed, wounded.

And we have within us that ability to bind him up. Not to invite him to speak to our little lambs and sheep. Because when someone is sick, you don’t put them right out on the battlefield again. You take them to a hospital where they can be cared for and nursed back to health. Where they can be blessed. Where they can recover and be presented well to the body of Christ. But it really does not do a thing for us to keep kicking them and finish the work of the enemy. And the Lord needs to show us the difference in this. He needs to give us hearts of compassion. And He will do that this week.

I was going to ask you not to put me on a pedestal, but I do not think people put me there. They usually do not even think I am the speaker when I come in. God has given me a little safeguard. I do not look like a speaker. I do not know what speakers are supposed to look like, but I do not look like one. So I usually remain fairly safe. But let us say, as I began to talk and as you began to recognize Jesus in me and begin to love me, that you would think I had really made it in the Lord. Which if you knew me better, you would modify that idea a little bit. But you put me on a pedestal. You know, God in His mercy has to allow me to fall if you do not push me off first. Because we do not need anybody on pedestals. We do not need any false gods. We do not need any distractions. And you would put me up there and then you would be disappointed. Because we really cannot trust one another not to make mistakes, not to fail each other. Jesus is the only one we can count on. But even though we cannot trust one another to act perfectly in love and sensitivity, we can still take that mighty risk of opening ourselves to them and being willing to be hurt, if that is what it takes to say, “I love you.” Knowing that God will heal us. That God will protect us.

When we make a commitment to someone, when we sign an agreement, whether it is a marriage agreement or a verbal agreement among friends or a part of the body of Christ, we are not saying, “I trust that you will never tell me something that is not of the Lord. You will never forsake me. You will never let me go hungry, spiritually or physically.” But we are saying, “I accept you as a human being. I accept you as my brother and sister. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in your sickness and my sickness, in your health and my health, I am going to reveal myself to you to the extent that Jesus wants me to, for our healing.” There is a type of privacy that God gives us that He does not really want us to expose or to have it violated. But sometimes we magnify that privacy to where we do not let anybody in. And we can surely not get out. And we make it our own casket. And the shame of it is that we are alive in there. Won’t somebody here open the door for somebody else? And let them come out and unbind them. And embrace them. And say, “I trust my relationship with God enough to draw you close to me.” Without smothering you. Without having expectations for you. Without making demands on you. Without saying, “You’ve got to change.” But just loving you. As you are.

This is our first night here. And I know that we are weary. I am. I counseled till about one this morning. And then I started doing my laundry. If you can believe at camp, all the machines were full at 12:30 at night. I don’t know who it was. Probably some silly people like me. Wanting to go home with clean clothes.

I was up early this morning. I spoke this morning and came here today. I am ready for a good rest. I feel so good. Isn’t this a peaceful place to rest? I really ask you to have wisdom this week. Don’t stay up all hours of the night. Follow that beautiful schedule that the Counseling has prepared for us, having sought the Lord about it. And especially you young people. Some of the older ones don’t need to be told. But the younger we are, the more we need to be told. To just ask Jesus for a word of wisdom. Because it isn’t fair to me either for you to come in bleary-eyed in the morning. And fall asleep when I am giving such a good talk.

I’ll see you in the morning. And you have an enjoyable evening. I love you very much. And I’m grateful to be here.