Feeding The Monkey On Your Back

Feeding The Monkey On Your Back

by Frank and Shirley Harvey

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

Father, we thank You again for this great privilege we have of coming and assembling ourselves together. And Lord, I ask that You anoint me and that You anoint Frank to proclaim Your words this day, that we have truly spoken what You would have had us said in this place to these people. Thank You for them. Bless them, Father, in Jesus’ name. Amen. If I asked you the question today, what would you say would be the number one illness in the United States? Would you say cancer? Would you say AIDS? What would you say? You know? Loneliness. Loneliness. Okay. Any others? Okay. There are 200,000 people in one year in this country that have had to be put in to have private help for depression. There has been 70,000 in one year that have committed suicide in our country. 125,000 people in one year had to be hospitalized for depression. One out of four women, one out of ten men, every year have had to seek clinical help for depression. What is depression then? It’s a state of feeling sad, you might say. Gloominess. Low spirits. Oppression. Dejection. A spirit of heaviness. It can change our moods. It can change our temperaments. It infects us with self-pity. It affects us physically by setting up a chemical imbalance in our body because of the stress.

It can create a feeling of inadequacy where we see we have no options. It’s anger toward inward many times. And it can cause us to not care what we look like. At those times, we don’t want to see anyone. We want to be in our bedroom many times with the covers up over our head. Don’t… if the phone rings, you tell them, “I’m busy. See, I’ve got the covers over my head. You know, I can’t talk right now. I don’t feel like talking right now. You know, because I’m depressed.”

And today, I just want to say, I want to give you four points that I feel that might help with this problem. I’m not saying, you know, this is the total answer to it all. I’m just going to give you four points that I heard recently that I thought it just could help us. And in defusing depression. Because that’s what we want to do. We want to take the sting out of it. We want to take the control out of it. And we don’t want it to rule us. Because when depression rules us, we’re not effective as we could be. When somebody sees you and you are depressed, you can’t really help them, can you? You can’t really help them because you’re down. And you need, you know, you need to get rid of it. And I know if we took a poll here this morning and asked, “How many of you have ever been depressed?” That’s probably every hand in this room would go up. I’ve been depressed at some point in my life. I’ve been depressed. And, you know, there’s others in the Word that have been depressed. And so we’re going to go to the book of 1 Kings today, in chapter 19, and we’re going to look at a man that got depressed.

Elijah got depressed one time, too. And I want to tell you, the first point that I want you to remember is that life moves in cycles. Now, Elijah had some high time. He had a high time. You know, this great man of faith, you know, he prayed that it would not rain for three and a half years. It did not rain for three and a half years because he prayed the prayer of faith. And he also was the man, remember, that asked the widow, he said, “Give me some water. I’m thirsty.” And said, also, “Give me a little morsel of bread.” And she said, “I only have a little flour. I’m getting ready to go in and fix it and prepare to die.” And then he spoke the word of God to her. And he said, your flour, in other words, will never… You will have it until the day that God sends rain. You know, you will never run out of flour. And also, he was the same man that when the widow’s little boy died, he prayed the prayer of faith. And that young man was brought back to life because of the prayer of faith. Now, Elijah, that was a high time, I’ll call that, for him. You know, we’ve had some… we’re on a mountain, I’ll say.

He was on the mountain. My father used to say, “Shirley, when you get on the mountain, stay on the mountain as long as you can.” Because he knew I wasn’t going to be able to stand on the mountain all the time. You know, but life moves in cycles. Praise the Lord. You may go through the water, but you won’t be drowned. You may have to go through the fire, but you won’t be burned. You’re going to come out. You’re going to come out. And that’s what you know. Keep on your mind. You’re coming out. You ain’t going to stay there forever because God’s going to bring you out. Now, we get out quicker many times if we follow His advice. You know, we get out quicker. But Elijah had reached a point in his life… That’s just a little bit of Elijah’s high time or on the mountain time. But all at once, God wanted him to go talk to Ahab. And he did. And he had this confrontation, you know, at Mount Carmel. And where all the evil prophets were destroyed by fire. Okay, Jezebel got word of this. And Jezebel didn’t like what she heard. And she said to a messenger, she says, “You go back and you tell Elijah by this time tomorrow, he’s not going to be here because I’m going to have him killed.”

So this messenger went and told Elijah. And you know what happened to Elijah? 1 Kings 19 verse 3. Then he was afraid. He was afraid. And if you look in James 5 verse 17, Elijah was a human being with a nature such as we have, with feelings, affections, and constitution as ourselves. He was a man too with a natural flesh. He became afraid, you know. And what did he do? He arose and he went for his life. He went 80 miles out of Jezebel’s reach and left his servant there. And he didn’t stop then. He went on another day. In verse 4, he went a day’s journey farther into the wilderness. And he came and he sat down under a juniper tree. And he said, he began to pray. He wanted to die. He said, “It’s enough now. Oh, Lord, take away my life. For I am no better than my fathers.” He wanted to die. I don’t know that he wanted to die. Jezebel could have killed him if he had wanted to die. He was depressed. I don’t know how… You know, sometimes when you’re depressed, you say things you don’t normally would say. That you really don’t mean them, but you say them. And when you get depressed, you be real careful that you don’t make important decisions when you’re depressed.

You’re in no condition at that time to make an important decision. You’ll probably make the wrong decision. When you’re real high, I’ve heard my husband say, or real low, that’s no time to make a serious decision. You wait. You wait until you’re not like this or way down because you probably make the wrong decision. But here was Elijah and he was afraid. And he said, “Oh Lord, that I might die.” And then he laid down and he went to sleep and an angel touched him and says, “Get up and eat.” So he got up and he ate a little bit, laid back down to sleep. That’s a lot of times what we want to do. We want to go to bed and go to sleep. “Oh, I got to forget this problem, you know.” And so he did. He laid down, went back to sleep. My angel warned him to get up. He ate a little bit more. And then that food that he got sustained him 40 days and 40 nights. And he came and he went into a cave. You ever felt like he was in a cave? And then God comes along and God says, “What are you doing?” Let me see. I want to read this right. Verse 9. “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

You ever had God ask you? You wasn’t laying in the bed with the covers over your head. “What are you doing here?” Now, did God put him in the cave? Okay, the second point that I want you to remember is, when God came along, He had some great counsel. He always does, if we listen. Verse 11, He says, and He said, well, we need to listen to how Elijah answered Him in verse 10. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Verse 10, he says, “I’ve been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts. For the Israelites have forsaken Your covenant, thrown down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword, and I only am left. And they seek my life to take it away.” Have you ever felt like you were the only one? The only one? “Lord, I’m the only righteous person here. Don’t you see how good? Why is this happening to me? Why is this happening to me, Lord?” You know, have you ever felt like that? And God said to him, He didn’t even try to answer that, I noticed. He said, go out, in verse 11, “Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.” Point two, function whether you feel like it or not. You get out of here.

You get out of that bed. Get out of that bed depressed. Go get dressed, even if it’s depressed. Get in that car depressed. Go to work depressed. But get out of here. Function whether you feel like it or not. You need to get out. Don’t cover your head up. He said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by in a great and strong wind, ripped the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake. But the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire. But the Lord was not in the fire. Where was the Lord? Behold, there came a voice to him and said, I mean, and after the fire, a sound of a gentle stillness, a still, small voice. God was in a still, small voice. He wasn’t in the earthquake. He wasn’t in the fire. He wasn’t in the wind. He was in a still, small voice. Elijah heard, verse 13, the voice. He wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him. What was the voice saying? “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

“What are you doing here, Elijah?” Same question. Same answer. Verse 14. “I’ve been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts because the Israelites have forsaken…” On and on and on. “They seek my life. I’m left. They want to destroy me.” Point three. I think God wanted him to touch his assurance point. God was his assurance. And when you’re depressed, if you’ll reach out and touch Him, He is your assurance point. You are coming through. You’re going out. If you’ll reach out and touch His hand, He’s trying to get his attention. “Here I am, Elijah. I’m not there. Here I am. Reach out. Grab me.” And God gave him instructions. In verse 15, He said, “Now, Elijah, go. Return on your way to the wilderness. I want you to go and anoint Hazael. And I want you, in verse 16, to anoint Jehu. And notice, I wanted you to anoint Elisha to be prophet in your place.” You know, the great man. You know, “I’m the only one left.” No, you weren’t the only one left. God chose somebody else even to take his place. You know, don’t ever feel like God can… You’re the only one. Because you’re not the only one. And point four, I think, would be a point that God would say, “Get out of yourself.”

Get out of yourself. Put my armor on and get out of yourself. Because Ephesians 6:10 says, “Be strong in the Lord. Be empowered through your union with Him. Draw your strength from Him. Put on God’s armor, the armor of a heavy-armed soldier, which God supplies, that you may be able to stand up against all the strategies and deceits of the devil.” You know, Job was depressed, too. And he, you know, in my reasoning, he had every right, you know, to be depressed. You know, and he said in chapter 17 of Job, he said, “My spirit is broken. My days are spent, snuffed out. The grave is ready for me.” And, you know, we felt that way at times, too. And no doubt, we’ve not been where Job has been, you know. But I want you to know that in 2 Corinthians 4, 8, and 9, these are very precious verses to me. They defeat the devil. “We may be hedged in, pressed on every side, troubled and oppressed in every way, but not cramped or crushed. We suffer embarrassments and are perplexed and unable to find a way out, but not driven to despair. We are persecuted and hard-driven, pursued but not deserted, to stand alone. We are struck down to the ground, but never struck out and destroyed.”

You can’t destroy Him. You can’t destroy God. You know, He’s there. And on in verse 17 of 2 Corinthians 4 says, “For our light affliction, this slight distress of the passing hour, is ever more and more abundantly, preparing and producing and achieving for us an everlasting weight of glory, beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations, a vast and transcendent glory and blessedness never to cease.” Hang in there. But keep your assurance points. Remember, life moves in cycles. You’re not going to stay there. And also remember, you know, function, whether you feel like it or not, touch your assurance point, get out of yourself. Because when you’re out of yourself, God’s in control. And when we’re in ourselves, we’re in control. And that’s no way to go.

Praise the Lord. That’s a good word. As Shirley said, most of us at one time or another have wrestled with depression. That’s… I’ve been told that depression generally afflicts people who are doers. People that are passive and never do anything very seldom wrestle with depression. But it’s people who do things. And it’s interesting to note that Elijah’s greatest bout here with depression was immediately following his great height when he prayed and fire came down from heaven and destroyed the sacrifice. I mean, it was a real high point. And it was immediately after that that he just fell apart. And a lot of times, we do real well in the battle. You know, when everything’s strong, we’re all girded up and we’re strengthened. And we do real well going through that. And then when the battle’s over and we win the victory, we fall apart. And so, we need to guard ourselves not only going into the battle, but coming out of the battle when it seems like we’ve won the victory. Because that’s sometimes when the devil will just blindside you. And he just… he just wallop you up and where you’re not looking. So we need to watch that. I want to say for… on behalf of Shirley and I both and the girls that we have just thoroughly enjoyed this entire camp.

We really have. It’s been a refreshing, like I say, not only just giving out and teaching, which we enjoy doing, but also sitting and receiving from Brother Wayne West and from Ruth, who’s so anointed as she leads. I’ll tell you, they’re just a super team. And it’s just… really a blessing. Amen.

The Council Ring and all the folk here, especially Ernie and Bonnie, everybody just flows together. And that’s a blessing. And you folks have all been a blessing. It’s always a joy to minister to people who are receiving. I’ve had opportunity on occasion to minister to people who sat back there like this and said, “Well, just go ahead. Bless me if you can. I dare you to say something I want to hear. Just see if you can touch me.” You know, and it just… everything you say just bounces back and hits you in the face. That’s not much fun. But now, you people are fun to minister to because you just gobble it up. And that’s good. Because that… I’ll tell you what that does. That’s like saying “Sic ’em” to a hound dog. It just… It just pulls it out of you, you know. And I appreciate that very much. You’re a beautiful group of people. I want you to turn, if you would, to James. The epistle of James, chapter 1. And I want to talk to you this morning about the matter of temptation. And the reason I want to talk about it is because everybody here faces temptation. As we said earlier in the week, some people, you know, we like to say, “Well, I’m just going to pray and I’m going to bind the devil forever and he will never, ever bother me again.”

You’re living in a fantasy land. I’m sorry. That just isn’t going to work. I mean, you can… It’s kind of like the… You know, people… You’re not supposed to tell Pollock jokes anymore. You do know that, don’t you? It’s not in good taste. I mean, because if you were a Pollock, you wouldn’t want somebody joking about you. Isn’t that right? Right. So we tell Hittite jokes. Because all the Hittites are dead. I mean, they’ve been gone for centuries. So, you know, we talk about Hittites. And you know how the Hittite goes through the minefield, don’t you?

He goes… Well, some Christians are like that when it comes to temptation. We just pretend it doesn’t exist and it can’t hurt us. But when you step on the mine, it isn’t aware of the fact that you weren’t looking at it. It explodes anyway and you just get splattered. Every one of us face temptation. But I want to say to you, don’t ever get the mistaken idea that being tempted is sin. There are a lot of Christians I know who when they endure temptation immediately feel guilty and feel unclean and feel that they’ve sinned simply because they’ve been tempted. And we’re going to talk about that. James chapter 1 and verse 2. We’ll begin with verse 2. He says, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials or temptations.” Boy, isn’t that a mouthful. I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t arrived there yet. I don’t say, “Oh, good. Here comes the temptation.” But that’s what he’s saying. He’s saying, count it joy. When you endure temptation. He says, “Knowing this, that the testing or the proving of your faith produces patience or endurance.” Okay? And I want us to go on down to verse 12. “Blessed is the man who perseveres or endures temptation. For once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to all those that love Him.”

“Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I’m tempted of God.’ Because God cannot be tempted by evil and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But everyone is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is accomplished, brings forth death. So don’t be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good thing that’s bestowed and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shifting shadows.” Now, I want to talk a little bit about this matter. He said, I want you to notice, “Blessed is the man who endures or perseveres under temptation.” He did not say, “Blessed is the person who is tempted.” There is a difference. Because everybody that’s tempted is not blessed because some people when they’re tempted give in to the temptation and you’re not blessed if you give in to it. But blessed is the man who withstands temptation and goes through it with the victory. “For he shall receive a crown of life.” Now, God loves us and as we talked earlier this week, He’s determined to bring us into maturity. And part of that process of maturity is to allow us to go through some temptations so that we can be proven.

Now, the word says here that God never tempts you ever. And that’s true. However, He does test you sometimes. And it says God never tempts you, it simply means that God never entices you to do wrong. God never lures you into sin. He will, however, allow you to be exposed to temptation from the enemy, so that you may know what’s in you can withstand temptation. There are five or six things I want us to look at this morning just briefly in temptation. There is a process in temptation. And if we understand the process, we have a lot better chance of withstanding and having the victory. If you understand the strategy of the enemy, then you can devise a strategy for opposing him. I want to tell you where the battle rages. It’s not in your hands, it’s not in your feet, it’s right here. Put your finger up here and say, “This is the battleground. This is where I will win or lose the area of my mind.” If I lose control of my mind, I’ve lost the game. But if my mind is girded up and renewed by the word of God, I have the victory. Amen. This is the battleground. If I begin to think about sin and allow my thoughts to run loose in sin, it’s only a matter of time until my body, my flesh, my hands will be doing that sin.

So here’s the pattern. Here’s what happens. Here’s the progression of sin. Number one is the entrance of the thought. The Bible says that Satan comes against us with his fiery darts or missiles or his fiery arrows. And what he does is he says, “Okay, here’s a good hot thought. I’ll shoot into so-and-so’s mind,” and he pulls it back and there’s a flame on the end of it and he looses that thing and phew! It launches in your mind. Suddenly, here’s this thought of sin. Now, I want to say to you, you are not responsible for every thought that enters your mind. Thoughts in your mind can be generated from at least one of three sources. Number one, God can give you thoughts. That’s how God speaks to us most of the time. He intrudes on our thoughts with His thoughts and thank God for that. Most of the time when people say, “The Lord spoke to me” or “The Lord said,” they don’t mean that they were standing there and all of a sudden God said, “John! Hey, you!”

What they meant is that as they were looking about this, praying about it, that suddenly God intruded into their mind and in their thoughts His thoughts. It wasn’t something they were thinking about but God just suddenly hears this thought. Praise God. I believe that’s the Lord. So God can enter our thoughts. Secondly, Satan can give you thoughts. You can be thinking about normal things, everything, even godly things and suddenly out of the blue comes this thought of sin, of that displeasing to God. Satan can intrude in your mind with thoughts. Now, you’re not responsible. You haven’t sinned simply because Satan shot you with one of his fiery arrows. That’s not sin. There’s a third area thoughts can originate from and that’s from yourself. You can sit down. God has given you the ability to reason. You can sit down and you can generate thoughts yourself. You know that, don’t you? Most of us are capable of that. There may be some of us that we have some doubts about but most of us on occasion come up with thoughts.

What we need to know is that just because you have a thought that intrudes that is an unclean thought or an evil thought you have not sinned. You are simply under attack. The battle is engaged. Now, we’re involved in it. The thought has come. So, point number two comes along and that is the examination of the thought. Check it out. Well, is this a worthy thought? Is it something that I should pursue? Or is this a thought that is unpleasing to God and something that will defile me? You need to examine. Now, some thoughts you don’t need to examine very long. I mean, you know they’re not of God and you just chunk them right there. You don’t even need to spend any time with it. You know it’s wrong. There’s some other thoughts that you need to weigh out and look at in light of the Word of God and see whether or not it’s a worthy thought or not. I want to say to you that you have not sinned by examining the thought that comes to your mind.

I’ve heard people pray and if you’re here and you pray this way forgive me now for what I’m going to say about you. I’ve heard people say the dumbest things. “Lord, forgive me of all my sins known and unknown.”

I’d like for somebody to explain to me what an unknown sin is. Sin is deliberate transgression. Sin is disobedience. Sin is knowing when God says “Thou shalt not” and you say, “By golly, I will.” That’s sin. Or sin is when God says, “Don’t do that,” and you say, “I will if I want to.” That’s sin. The Word of God says for him that knoweth to do right and doesn’t do it, to him it is sin. The Word of God also says where there is no law there is no sin. If you don’t know what God said and you do something that’s displeasing inadvertently that’s not sin. Sin is deliberate disobedience. It is deliberately disregarding what God said. That’s what sin is. Now you can’t do that by mistake. Hello? Hello? If you do something that’s displeasing to God and you didn’t know it, it wasn’t a sin. Now God may correct you, He may say, “No, that’s not the way to do it,” but it’s not sin. Sin is deliberately, knowingly saying, “I will not do what He said.” So in that context there’s no such thing as an unknown sin. Sin is what I know to do and refuse to do or I know not to do and do it anyway. So when the thought comes to me, good, bad or indifferent, I have not sinned.

When I examine that thought to see what I should do about it I have not sinned. But this is the crucial point. Because if the thought is unworthy or unclean at this point I need to disregard it. I need to get rid of it and move on. If I move on to the next point however I have made a commitment, and that is if I choose to entertain that thought.

That’s where I sinned. God says if I was you I wouldn’t forgive him. Or pardon me, not God, the devil says. The thought comes: hold that resentment, hold that bitterness and that unforgiveness. And you examine that and you say, “Well, I know God says not to do that. He says forgive like He forgave. But I tell you, I’m just not ready to forgive him yet.” I’ve made a commitment at that point. I’ve said I’ve looked, the thought entered, I’ve examined it, and now I’m ready to entertain it. I know God said to not hold unforgiveness but bless God I’m not ready to get right just yet. I want to enjoy it for a few minutes.

Don’t raise your hands but have any of you ever wanted to just stay stewed for a while? Say, “I’ll forgive him eventually but I’m not ready just yet. Besides that, they don’t deserve to be forgiven. I mean, they don’t even act like they’re sorry.”

So I’ll just sit here and think about it a while. I’ll think good thoughts like I can see them in the hospital in traction. I’ll just pretend they’re getting three shots every hour. Hallelujah. And while they’re there their yard grows knee deep.

And they get home and their lawn mower’s out of gas. I’ll probably get right later but I’m not ready just yet. You’ve already crossed the line into sin. Because see, you are deliberately, knowingly disregarding the law of God.

We pretend that we’re being spiritual. We say, “Well, I’m really going to get right. I mean, I’m working on it.” No, you’re not. You’re enjoying entertaining your sin. And you rationalize it by saying, “Well, I am going to forgive them. I mean, I know I’ll end up forgiving them. And I’m not going to do anything nasty like fuss them out or cuss them out or anything. I’m just going to think about it. And it’s just in my mind, in fact nobody will ever know.”

Boy, aren’t we funny. I want to say to you the longer you hold on to that junk the easier it is to hold on to it. And after a while you see you’ve entertained it. You’ve entertained and thought, “Well, you know, I’m not going to backslide but if I was going to, this is what I’d do. Now I would never do it but boy, wouldn’t it be something if I was. I mean, just for one weekend.”

“Oh, I’d never do that.” Praise God. No, no. Hallelujah. But wait a minute. And I begin to entertain the thought. Well, you know, the next step is not only entertaining the thought but it’s enjoying the thought. And saying, “Well, you know, it would be fun. I mean, you know, I could repent Sunday night and ask God to forgive me and it would all be gone and I could go back to work, hallelujah, on money and everything’s fine and be back right with God.” Don’t we play the silliest games? We say, “Well, you know, I mean, God will forgive me, He’s got to forgive me, He said He would, so I mean, you know, I haven’t lost anything, I’ve just had a good time on the town. I mean, I’ve just really did what I really wanted to do and I’m still ready to go home with Jesus if He calls.” Hallelujah. The problem is when you begin to enjoy the thought of your sin it probably won’t be long until you act on it. Now let me tell you something about Satan and the difference between the devil and God.

Did any of you ever hear any of Dr. Paul Yonggi Cho’s teachings or his books or anything? Pastors the largest church in the world in Seoul, South Korea, well over a half million people who are members of that congregation, and they have thousands of cell groups and so on. He made a statement some years ago that lodged in my spirit. It was this: visions and dreams are the language of the Holy Spirit. That’s how God talks to us. He gives you a mental picture. He shows you and you see what He’s saying, what He wants to do. It’s a beautiful thing. But I want you to know He’s not the only one who gives visions and dreams.

When you have visions and dreams from the enemy, from the devil, they’re not called visions and dreams, they’re called fantasies. And fantasy has a particular quality about it. Fantasies always tantalize, they tease you and titillate and draw you in, lure you. The problem is that if you ever have opportunity to carry out your fantasy and put it into practice it never ever lives up to its advanced billing. You think about it and Satan’s always a fraud. Satan can never deliver on anything he promises. He’s a liar, he’s a cheat, he’s a thief. And he’ll build this great fantasy up in your mind. “Boy, wouldn’t it be wonderful to whatever. Wouldn’t it be great if you could whatever.” The problem is if you pursue this line of thought and this progression from temptation to sin and you go ahead and do it and finally you get there and you’ve done it, it’s like ashes in your mouth. It never ever lives up to the billing. It never is as good as you fantasized and as he portrayed to you it would be. One of the reasons is because he never gives you the bad side or the downside of sin. He always lies and tells you the good things. See? I mean, you know, it’s just, that’s why I know that a lot of the advertising industry in America is just absolutely the devil because they operate by the same principles.

Hello? Don’t be too upset with me. But you know some of the stuff they advertise on TV, I mean, you know, all they present is the good side. Just using one illustration, the alcoholic beverage industry. All they ever present is you see somebody with a drink in their hand, they can’t talk without a drink in their hand. And you generally you have a drink in your hand in a lovely setting, generally with somebody who you’re not married to, and you just kind of smoke off to the bedroom, you know. And oh, it’s wonderful. If you drink Smirnoff or whatever, you know, everything’s wonderful, your life is great, you know, it’ll leave you breathless. And in fact, it will flat kill you. But… See, they always present the upside. In the same way with a lot of different things. They always present glamour and glitz and everything is super. They never ever show you the tragedy that comes with people who are drinking alcohol, who drive on our highways, and are killing tens of thousands of people. Innocent people. You never see the blood-spattered highways. You never see the wrecked homes by people who become alcoholics. You never see the downside of that. The same way, that’s the way advertising operates. That’s the way the devil operates with his fantasies.

He always shows you the fun side, but he never shows you that you’re going to have to pay the piper. And he certainly never tells you the price tag. The difference between him and God is this. God also gives you visions and dreams about things that He wants you to do, calls on your life, and what He’s going to do with you. The difference is, when you ever get around to fulfilling what God has called you to do, it’s always so much fuller and richer and better than you ever dreamed it could be. That’s the difference. Satan’s a fraud. He never lives up to his advanced billing. The other hand, with God, even if He told you, you couldn’t comprehend how good it is. So when you get around to finally tasting of it and enjoying it, it’s so much richer and deeper than you ever dreamed it could be. Because God is not a cheapskate. He gives good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. That’s the way God works. The devil’s always cheating, and he’s a fraud. So I want to say to you, there is the entrance of the thought, the examination of the thought. You’re cool. You haven’t seen it. But then if you entertain the thought, you’ve crossed the line. Then you begin to enjoy the thought and say, “Boy, if I…”

“Not that I’m ever going to do it, but if I was, this is what I’d do.” A lot of the folks in our church… And by the way, I want to say to you, I love you people, because there’s a lot of you here. You’ve just been real stinkers in the past. I mean, some of you have told us, you know, “Boy, what I used to do, so and so, and I was this.” And, you know, some people are kind of backward about saying that. I want to say to you, thank God you’re not. Because I want to say something to you. God’s people are not a bunch of holy people who’ve never sinned and who’ve never tasted or touched sin. That’s not God’s people. Paul, writing to the church at Corinth, he lists a whole list of sins. And he talks about adulterers and fornicators. He talks about homosexuals. He talks about people who were drunkards and idolaters and all this list. And he said, “And such were some of you. But now you’re clean through the word which I’ve spoken unto you. You’re washed.” You’re clean by the redeeming love of Jesus Christ. And that’s what the church is. It’s not a bunch of holy people that get together to pat each other on the back.

But it’s a bunch of people who’ve been caught and fished out of the dregs of sin and out of the sewers of the world and been washed and cleaned. And now they recognize that “I am clean by the blood of Jesus Christ.” Hallelujah. And I thank God for that. And I look at our church at home and I look back and I see people who were addicted to all different types of drug substances. Alcohol, coke, you name it. They’ve been on it. People who’ve been in all kinds of things and been in prison for various things. But now people who are clean and washed by the blood of Jesus. And that thrills my soul. People who are clean and washed by the blood of Jesus Christ. It really blesses me. Because… And sometimes though, you get around some people and it kind of worries me. Because some people, they talk about those days and they say, “Thank God they’re over. Hallelujah. I don’t even want to go back. I don’t even like to think about them. It seems like a different person. It doesn’t even seem like me when I look back on those days. Thank God it’s past.” But then you get around some other people and they start talking about it and they say, “Yeah, you remember back when we used to live over so and so?”

“Yeah, we really got bombed out of our head. Yeah. You remember when we used to have those parties? They go for days.” And man, they start talking and the next thing you know is they say, “Yeah, you can just almost taste it. Mmm.” I get a little concerned because you know what’s going on? They are not only entertaining but enjoying the thought of those sins again. And once you begin to entertain and enjoy those thoughts, it’s not a very big step to experiencing them again. Just for old times’ sake, of course. And that’s the next step. It’s not only the enjoyment of it, but then the experiencing of it. Doing it.

There’s another step even beyond that. And that is the step where you become enveloped. And that’s the step… All of you have heard the monkey on your back, the little story. How many of you have heard that? Okay, some of you have and some of you haven’t.

This fellow, young fellow, was walking through the forest and the jungle and he saw this little monkey and he liked him so much. He picked him up, set him on his shoulder, carried him with him. And so as they were going through a banana grove, he picked a banana and fed it to this monkey on his shoulder. He thought, “Man, he’s so cute. He likes to eat the bananas.” You know, but as time went on, the monkey stayed on him, you know, and just stayed walking with him. And he just kept feeding him bananas because he thought it was fun. And, you know, he’d go places and everybody would say, “Hey, give your monkey a banana.” You know, so he’d feed him a banana and everybody would say, “Oh, that’s really great. Wish I had one like that.” And everybody thought it was just great fun. And he thought it was great fun because everybody, he was the center of attention. Problem was the monkey continued to grow. As he fed him bananas, he got bigger and bigger. And also the problem was he wouldn’t get off his shoulder, wouldn’t get off his back. And finally, you know, he’d push him off sometimes, but he’d hardly turn around. The monkey jumped back on his shoulder, wrapped his arm around his neck, said, you know, “Feed me, feed me.”

Well, it was still funny because, you know, the monkey got a little bigger and everybody thought, “Boy, that’s really funny.” And he was kind of the center of attention. He still kept feeding him bananas. Well, the monkey kept getting bigger. And finally, he got so big that he was as big as the man and the man couldn’t control him any longer. He couldn’t keep him off and the monkey rode him constantly and stayed on his back with one arm around his neck and the other one reaching, saying, “Give me a banana, give me a banana.” And finally, the monkey got bigger than the man and the man couldn’t control him any longer at all. And the monkey ruled the man and demanded to be fed, demanded to be carried and demanded to be taken care of. And finally, the man had to expend all of his energy carrying the monkey and feeding the monkey and finally he died. Now I want to say to you, that’s exactly the way sin is. Sometimes we start entertaining a cute little sin that we think is funny and everybody else seems to be entertained by it. And that’s why people in the world, sometimes they do the most ridiculous things because it gets attention. And everybody says, “Go ahead, feed the monkey, we want to see.”

That’s funny, ha. But after a while, the monkey gets as big as the person and sometimes the monkey gets bigger than the person and demands to be fed. And that’s why people who are addicted to various substances, they thought it was fun at start. They thought it was something they could control, they could feed when they wanted and it was something that made them the center of attention and something that got them the approval of the crowd. But somewhere along the line, the monkey got bigger than they were and demanded to be fed and they didn’t have the strength to withstand that. And they spent their life feeding the monkey. And many of them have literally died in our land because of substance abuse of the monkey that they thought was funny to start with. And finally, enveloped them. Sin has a way of putting its hooks in us and holding us so that we can’t get free. It starts out funny, it starts out entertaining, but eventually the hooks get set so deeply that we can’t get unhooked. Thank God Jesus Christ is the answer. But we need to know how to resist temptation. When he gives me the thought, I examine the thought. If it’s wrong, immediately dislodge it and say, “No, I will not think about that.”

I want to say to you that you’re not responsible for every thought that enters your mind. But you are responsible for the thoughts you spend time thinking about. Just because you had an evil thought, you don’t need to feel unclean or guilty or dirty because you weren’t responsible for that. Only if you said, “Yeah, let’s think about that a while. Mm-hmm.” Then you’re accountable for that. You need to know. There is the entrance of the thought, the examination of the thought. Then when you cross the line, the entertaining of the thought, the enjoyment of the thought, the experiencing of the thought. And if you let it go long enough, it may come to the point, the enveloping of the thought, that it just consumes you and takes over your life. And there are people, Christian people, who are obsessed with all kinds of things that are not pleasing to God. The name of Jesus is the name at which every other name has to bow. And I don’t care what the monkey’s name is. I don’t care what the monkey’s name is or how long he’s been with you. The name of Jesus can set you free. Praise God. In the name of Jesus, you can be free. I don’t care what the monkey on your back is.

Hallelujah. Jesus came to set the captives free. And we do not have to stay chained to any monkey ever again. We are free. Thank God sin does not have to reign and rule in us. Amen. When you leave this camp, I can guarantee you, probably on the way home, probably before you get home, there will be some thoughts that are shot into your mind by the enemy. Critical thoughts, maybe lustful thoughts. Thoughts of anger or resentment. You need to, when those thoughts enter, examine them. And if they’re not worthy thoughts, immediately disengage and say, “I will not think about that. I choose what I’m going to think about. I rule my thoughts. I will not spend time thinking about it.” Praise God. If they’re worthy thoughts, if they thought, “Boy, well, that was a good word,” or, “Boy, I really appreciated that new friend I met,” “Boy, that was a great time in prayer or communion,” think on those things. If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on those things.

Because if you win the battle here, you won’t have any trouble with your hands, your feet, and the rest of your body. Hallelujah.