I Need You In My House

I Need You In My House

by Ruth Robison

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

Oh, our precious tender Father, our great eternal God, we began to venture out into things of eternity last evening. We began to see the mighty results of the power of love. Father, we feel to ask You to impress upon us this day that we must continue this.

Let the magnificent world broadcast last night be a continuing world broadcast throughout this week. Everywhere we move may be broadcast love to every nation in the world. Let it be in our conscious mind, not just in our subconscious mind, but in our conscious mind, the fact that we are in a moment of eternal crisis.

Not just the President of the United States, but you and me. I am. You are. Because we know that in the next few days, every thought we think, every word we speak, every deed we do in relationship to world development will be centered through the ways of the conscious mind of humanity.

And Father, on the other side of this, we know that this is one of the greatest privileges You’ve ever given us, to be at this moment a conscious mind of eternity. So help us with joy to be aware of this. Help us with complete peace to be aware of this. Help us with peace. Help us from this very moment, on and on and on, to do nothing, say nothing, be nothing, but that which is bathed in the depths of peace.

Bring to every soul in this room a consciousness that “my peace I have left with you.” To those who don’t know it, let them know that our Lord said, “My peace I give to you,” right now. Oh, we thank You, Father, for what will happen this morning, throughout this day.

But make us so grounded in peace that we can give nothing but peace. And we thank You in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

After the wonderful experience of last night, seeing the demonstration of the mighty power of God, other needs have been laid upon people’s hearts and minds and spirits. And they’ve come to me to express it. If something or somebody has been laid upon your heart, it is not mine to express, it is yours. Through my lifetime, I have learned that up until some years ago, I felt that whatever was given to anybody, and they brought it to me, it was my responsibility. When they bring it to me now, I know that I am to bless it and give it back to them for their… for their carrying out. And it makes the road so much easier for me and so much more joyful and glorious for me when I bless what has been given to you and give it back to you. And that reminds me… I go way back when I began to see something about me. And then I began to see that the Heavenly Father gave me… that I was His and with Him and He gave me to my parents.

So then, you know, there came a time when I began to know who I was. Oh, I thought I knew who I was and I thought I was a little girl down the next block. I thought I was my mother. I thought I was my grandmother. I thought I was everybody else but me. And then I began to try to be like everybody else but me. Because I didn’t know me. Then there came to a time when I knew that I was Ruth White, which I was at that time. And I could call me by name. I heard my name and I recognized it. I really recognized it from within. But then I knew that there would be another step. Some of you precious people who’ve known me for years will remember this. Others that are here, of course, haven’t heard it. So then there came a time when I knew that I had me to do something with. See? And I was 16 years old, so I decided then that what I wanted to do with me was to give me to China. China. And you know that I had heard so many missionaries speak, and this precious missionary friend of my mother’s came to visit us, and she had the most beautiful trinkets and the loveliest China dolls, and I just thought that any country that had these beauties I wanted to go to it.

So from that time on, way back, buried in my mind and in my life was China. China has always been buried with me in the center of me. I don’t know whether you have your country or not, but China has been mine since I was seven. And you know, then the time came when the Lord said, “I’d like you to give you to Me.”

And I said, “Okay, I’ll go to China.” That’s all I knew then. Anyway, I decided I would go to China, so I volunteered for missions in China. But then I woke up stalled one morning when the Lord said, “You haven’t got it yet.” And you know, He said, “You know, now this morning I have glorified you, and I will give you back to you to be used for My purpose, any place, anywhere, anytime.” And that meant whether it be in China or whether it be in my kitchen.

And that is… I don’t know why we got on this, but maybe somebody likes it. So anyhow, you come to the place where you choose. I feel that if you really… I know why I’m talking about the world. If you… Frank, you… thank you, Frank. If you really care about your world, you’re going to adopt a country. We have talked about adopting people, but you know, if we would adopt a country and really love it and really pray for it and really fold it in our arms for a year, don’t you think there would be real world peace? I’m going to confess that about two years ago I began to realize that, oh, all these centuries that I have lived I have prayed wrongly for peace. I prayed for peace, my churches prayed for peace, billions of prayers have gone up through the years that I’ve been here in body for world peace. No world peace. So then I had on my heart so much the whole transaction in Paris, and you know, I began to be stunned by what the Holy Spirit directed me to do. Again, you must know that when I tell you what He’s told me to do, it doesn’t mean He’ll tell you to do the same. It may. Don’t shut your mind to it. It may not. But anyway, He told me to stop praying for world peace.

He told me to begin to pray that no papers would be signed in Paris, no transactions would be agreed upon that was simply a name on paper, that behind the signature no country’s leader had much idea of seeing the thing through, that no leader of any… no representative… And this one, the second sentence of any country had any idea of fulfilling the spirit of the letter. Therefore, since I was a child, I’ve always been in a world of war. And you have too. There never has been world peace. So I pray God… then the Spirit said to me, “Listen, if you pray a prayer like that, you’ve also got to pray another prayer. Oh God, help me to pay the price for real peace. Whether it means continuation of the conflict, until we suffer so much throughout the whole world, that finally everybody is so desperate in their suffering that they’ll get on their knees and say, ‘Oh God, show us how to do it.’” You know that I am so glad… and don’t misunderstand me. I am so glad that it was delayed. And you know, I oftentimes pray for the delay of people’s healing until they catch the significance of the spiritual transaction going on behind the event when it finally comes to culmination.

So I don’t know how you’ll feel about joining in this idea or adopting the idea or even letting the Holy Spirit talk to you on the idea. So we don’t pray for world peace. We pray for the sake of our gracious eternal God that all the leaders of the world will begin to know Him.

And then when they begin to know Him, oh, there’ll be no question about world peace. There won’t even have to be a signing of any paper. Now, I tell you, this is a far-earth thing, but I’ve been trying to have Him teach me about what a new world would be like. And this morning, I want to talk to you upon some new ways that we seem to see that God is answering prayer.

But all of this came right off the bat because I felt like I would like to challenge you. Don’t do it unless you feel the challenge in the depths of your soul. I’d like to challenge you to bow your head. And if you feel led to enter into this sort of a transaction with the Holy Spirit and are willing to pay the price… I don’t know what it will cost me if this thing continues. I don’t know what it will cost my country. But above all the cost comes the precious anticipation of a true, pure world peace. May we bow our heads. May we bow our heads. Let’s just take all of those now that we love so dearly.

And our love is nothing compared to His great love. And He wants them to be whole. So let’s pray on that premise. Our Father, we come to Thee this morning, not in sadness, but in joy unspeakable and full of glory. Knowing Thou art the King of kings and Thou art the great physician.

And our well-being and our health is Your will. So we gather these now, Lord, that we’re thinking of. And we just bring them to You as they brought the sick to Jesus. Knowing full well that when Jesus touched them or spoke the word, they who they brought would be completely whole. So we come to Thee this morning in that faith, Lord. And we bring to You all these loved ones with our love and Your great love encompassing them. And so we would praise You this morning, Lord, knowing that this is happening. Because You said, “Pray and believe that you have it, and it shall be.” And so we stand on this precious promise this morning, Lord. Your children. And we praise You and thank You in the name of Jesus. Amen. Thank you. All right.

When one accepts Jesus Christ as his Lord and as his lover and as his master, then you begin a new world. I don’t know. I think so much of my life we’ve been talking about a new world. Then I began to wake up one morning to the fact that I am a new world. Everybody who accepts Him and lets what He was and is and always will be permeate to his very… the tips of his toes, the tips of his fingers, every cell of his brain. Then He begins a new world. And I carry a new world around with me. I don’t look for it. So you see that that’s… I think that’s a challenge, the new thing, if you want to put it, the new approach to a new world. Now, nobody has to wait for a physical new world in order to be a new person. I think so often we’ve been saying… we’ve been thinking, maybe consciously or subconsciously, that when we get this wonderful new world, a new heaven and a new earth, as which we think of in Revelations, boy, then I’ll be something. I’ll be a new person when you get this new world, because I’ll have a new world to live in. I think we’ve got the cart before the horse.

I think when I get to be a new world inside, I create all around me a new world. And as the cells… just one cell… as the cells of the new world begin to multiply, we really are going to have world peace.

All these 1900 years we have been working in the direction of working for, working for, thinking for, trying to achieve world peace. I don’t know how long it takes us… well, it takes us a long time to wake up to very… the very depths of eternal values. And of course, that’s… we know that. But now we’re coming to the place which is… you know, such marvelous things are happening today. God is at work in the most marvelous way that the world or the universe has ever known. And He’s having… don’t you be discouraged by one single thing that ever happens in this world today. Don’t let it pull down your spirit. The world is still God’s world. He’s still in control of it. And just like I would allow my little child to fall down and hurt itself, just when I would allow my little boy to scratch his leg and get a boil, and we will have to doctor it and doctor it because I know he’s growing up, God knows His world is growing up. God knows that I like to be a part of the growing up process. And He also knows that if I care to be a part of a growing up process in a new world, I have got to accept my responsibility, pay attention to His direction, not about me, but about me as a cell in the world.

You see? And not for me to think that China is way off yonder. China is in me. Not that Japan is way off across the seas. Japan, who has Japan on their heart? Anybody here has taken Japan? Yes, three people in the back. All right, China, Japan is in you. All right, now, what’s your country?

Say it. I’ve got a list of 70 countries in our world. How many do you know? You see, we don’t know our world very well. But the Holy Spirit will reveal to us something about our world. Get a map of the world and make a list of all the countries in the world if you want a growing concern for the world. Well, as long as my mind is United States-centered, as long as my mind is America-centered, as long as my mind is this continent-centered, you see, that’s all God’s got to work with. It really is. How in the world could He up to now have produced world peace? He just couldn’t do it. Because He depends on you and me to be that thing in order that it might be a reality.

A strange ways of God answering prayer. Perhaps this will speak to some of you. You know, I call it a strange day. I was scheduled one day, not long ago, to be at a district meeting, because I’m Methodist and have an office in the women’s work, to be at a meeting, an all-day meeting. My week up to that time, this was Thursday, my week up to that time had been very full, as a week often is. And like I sometimes am, not all the time, because I’m doing better. Well, sometimes I had not taken time out for rest. And that particular morning, my body was desperately in need of remaking. So then, but I didn’t have time for that, because I was to be picked up at 8:30 in the morning by a friend to drive about 40 miles to the center where we were going to have our meeting. So, I went on like I was. Now, going on over, she wanted to be a lot of business, so I thought I would have time to relax in the car. But my mind didn’t have time to relax. And I was talking to two precious young people this morning. God wants your mind.

And you know, the one little sentence, “Have this mind in you that was in Christ Jesus.” I hope you’ll take that home as really a great challenge. Because if you’re going to let the indwelling Christ build your new mind, you’ve got a job ahead of you. But anyway, here we are. And I got to the meeting. And Lee, I had agreed to Lee that he would pick me up at 3 o’clock. He would come for me at 3 o’clock and pick me up at the meeting. And then I had said to him before we left, “Now, honey, I have some very nice looking leftovers. If I dark them up a bit, would you mind eating them for dinner?” And bless his heart, you know, some of you know my Lee. He said, “Honey, anything your hands touch is just perfect.” But you see, that wasn’t exactly true. He should have remembered the night before our wedding. Because, you know, I always bake the nut cake for Christmas. And for any other time that we want a nut cake. It’s a recipe that’s come down in our family for generations. So I had a stepmother then. And my stepmother had said, “Ruth, you know how to bake the cake for the family. You bake the cake.”

“All right. Oh, I’d love to. Lee’s coming. I’d love to.” So anyhow, I put everything in the cake. And it’s an expensive cake. They have six kinds of nuts that go in this cake. And then through the process, you know what Lee did? He turned to me, said, “Honey, you don’t have to put any sugar in that. Your precious hands are sweet enough. It’ll take care of it.” And you know, I didn’t. And then…

When I went to look at that cake, and the other one, I nearly fainted. It was a solid brick. I turned to him. I said, “If you’re going to mislead me like this after we get married, by your sweet talk, I’ve just decided there’s not going to be any wedding.” I was so embarrassed, my stepmother was new. She had only been with us about six months then. And she’d given me this one great family opportunity. And because of Lee, I had failed. So I said to my stepmother, “Would you mind, would you mind if I buy some more material and bake another cake?” And bless her heart, she said, “Of course.” So we went out on Monday and bought some more material and I baked another cake. And believe me, I put Lee in the living room.

But she said, “Here is the interesting thing about all this.” The sweet ways that the Heavenly Father has a way of revealing to us that here is something new. And I think if you’ll hold the word just N-E-W, I’ve written it all over the house. In my mind, I look out the window. New. N-E-W. New. You see. A thought comes to my mind. Is it new? If it is, go. All right, something to do. Have I done this before? All right, go. You know, it’s really that giving Jesus a chance to build a new mind. Have this mind in you that’s in Christ Jesus. Well, this was the day. So I was thinking about my precious mind going on over to the meeting, and I was realizing that it had not had a chance to renew itself. Now, when I say renew itself, you know what I mean. The divine process of God within the cells of the mind. You see, that God Himself, His vitality, His wisdom written within us. So I went on over to the meeting and we were having a wonderful meeting. I was spiritual life chairman of the district. And so I had to present some plans for that, for quiet days and schools of prayer and retreats and so forth. So, at 2 o’clock, I looked up and I saw my best friend in Kinsale, Elva Allen, standing at the door.

Well, for a minute, I haven’t gotten over yet that when something unusual happens straight from home, that it could be Lee. I’m working through that, you know what I mean. And so the fact is, that’s the first thing I thought was Lee. Then Elva beckoned to me and she did like this. She knew me so well, she knew she did like this. She was saying, it’s not Lee. See? So then I grabbed up all my things and went on out. And she said, “Ruth, Lee just called me and asked me to come over here and pick you up. Well, because friends of yours from a distance have just called that they will be at your house by 4 o’clock and they will be there for dinner and spend the night.” You know where my mind was? The first thing I thought about was a little batch of leftovers.

And so I thought to myself, “What in the world am I going to do for a real decent dinner?” I have a kind of a little pride that my meals would kind of be what I could serve at the heavenly table. So anyway, I said, “Now what is, what can I do?” And then I got in the car and started home. All I need is a little while, any place, anywhere in between two things. So I thought of two stores I would place. Then I began to think what was on the pantry shelf. Way back yonder, I talked in one case, oh, way back yonder, on my spiritual pantry shelf. But anyway, what was on my pantry shelf and everything was plain. I stopped at one store, filled in what I already had, got home at 3 o’clock and had time to ask Lee to clean the living room. We hadn’t done that that week. But anyway, and everything was ready when these folks knocked on the door. I rang the bell and they came in. We were so glad to see them. We had been talking about them. We hadn’t had any real fresh contact with them for a long time. And Jim, the husband, had been in Yale with Lee. They had been roommates.

But something had happened where one had grown one path, one had taken another path, you know. And so we had not been very close together. And the wife, Violet, had had many, many physical difficulties. And I had written letters trying to introduce her to the idea that God’s will was for holiness. And apparently the door was shut. So these were the precious friends that were at our door. So anyway, we went and invited them in. I finished preparing dinner. By a quarter past six, the dinner was on the table. We had just sat down. Lee had just had the blessing. When the doorbell, when the car drove up. And I looked at the door and there was a car I’d never seen. So I went to the door and I saw Teenie. And if you all know Teenie Kelly here, maybe. Yes, yes. She is a perfect and magnificent black Negro minister in our community. But I call her Teenie. She calls me Ruth. And we are very close together, praying partners. So anyhow, she came in. And with her were two people. A lady and a man. She came to the door and she saw that we were just sitting down to dinner. And she said, “Oh, Ruth.” I said, “No, you come in.”

So she came in and introduced her sister and her brother. Her brother from Chicago. Her sister from Pennsylvania. And then they came in. And I went over to arrange the chairs so that they could look out the front window facing the water and see the sunset over the water. Because it was sunset time. And then I went back to the table to finish helping Lee serve. Lee was serving the other friends. And they had served my plate too. I said, I took on my first mouthful. And I said, “Oh, listening to God in this way. All right, what’s this all about? What’s this all about, Father?” You know? And all of a sudden it came to me that they didn’t come to… She had said when she came in, “Ruth, I just had to bring the folks to see the beauty from your window.” But I knew that wasn’t true. The Holy Spirit said to me, “That’s not the reason.” And then I knew it was a very deep need somewhere in those three people. I know where. So I said to the friends at the table, “I am just going out into the other room across from the porch where we have a club room. Where Lee has a collection of lovely pictures and there are books and everything there.”

And there are rockers and people can sit and look at the pictures. So anyhow, I said, I talked to Vi, the lady, and I said, “Vi, would you and Jim excuse me? Because I feel that I would like to show these people, these friends of ours who have such little time, some of our lovely pictures.” So of course they went on eating and Lee went on entertaining. My precious Lee is the best entertainer in the world. I don’t know what I’d do with that. And when I want to be quiet, I said, “Lee, honey, would you take over?” So anyhow, I went out. As we went through the porch, Teenie called my hand and she pressed it. She’d done it many times before in crisis. I knew. She said, “Ruth, my brother is in desperate need. Do anything you can. If he knew that I said this to you, he would not have come in the front door.” All right. All right. So I went on in. We went on in. I went around this large room showing pictures and things like that. Finally, I said, “You know, it’s our custom that before anybody leaves our house that we have a little circle of prayer. I think we could have a little circle of prayer right in here.”

The other folks are eating dinner. And so they really… We stood in Cardinal Haines. Now, let me back up a little. Dr. Turpo from Chicago, a Methodist minister, had been taken very ill. The medical world, the best attention he could get, could do nothing for him. Knowing his sister in Philadelphia, he had taken the plane and flew to Philadelphia to her home. And when he got in her home, he said to her, “We have got to find Teenie.” Both of them knew that Teenie knew the healing power of God. So they got in the car and they drove to Teenie’s house about 20 miles from ours. And when they arrived at Teenie’s house, Teenie said, “We’ve got to get to Ruth.” Don’t you see how God is answering prayer? And the many and intricate hookups that are absolutely necessary, that sometimes, not knowing, we say, we become impatient because the answers are not clarified. But all the time, God is working to hook up the answer to get the thing so clear that the answer can be made manifest to you or to me or to the person who prayed the prayer. So when I cutled the hands, and I cutled Dr. Turpel’s hand on purpose, and I looked up at him, I said, “Wouldn’t you like us really to pray for something definite?”

And then tears began to flow from his eyes. I love tears when they come that way. Not tears of resentment or anything like that, but tears of need. I love those. And so I said, “Here, sit in this chair.” And of course, Teenie knew what I was going to do, and her sister caught on. Teenie knelt by his feet. And I said to Teenie, “If you love him enough, take off his shoes and put your hands under his feet.” So she did. Then I knelt, and I looked up into his eyes. All of these are our precious, dear black people. I looked up into his eyes, and I said, “Doctor, what is your real need?” And when he finished sobbing, he looked up at me, and he said, “I’ll tell you.” He told me. We had a prayer. And then I took a deep breath. I always need a deep breath after I pray. I don’t know whether you all have a consciousness of that or not, but you give out so much, you really should take a deep breath after every prayer, which is breathing in the breath of God, after you’ve given out the breath of God. Anyhow, then we stood up, and I looked up at him. His face was waiting. He said, “Do you know my pain is gone?”

I looked at him. I said, “What did you expect?” I said, “You know, I would have been disappointed had it not been terribly disappointed. Had it not been.” He said, “Oh, I’m so grateful.” So then I said, “Well, will you folks come in and have dessert with us?” So we were going back into the dining room area to have dessert, and they decided, no, they had better get home to let him rest, and they were gone. All right, now. Ten years ago, I prayed that this precious couple would come into a realization that there was something, some true meaning to the healing power of God. When I went back and sat down at the table to eat my dinner, I said, “You know, I think every one of you here would love to know what has just happened.” And so then I told what happened in the club room. And then how Dr. Turpo had come in, a brand new person with his shoulders up high. And there was a dead silence. But you know, a dead silence is so created because that’s life. Life is created in dead silence.

And so it was a glorious day. When I got to the time in the evening that I really felt that I could lie down on the bed, I was… all I could say is, “God, You know, I’m simply amazed at You.” I am, because that had happened through that day. All right, I told you that dream. Now I had another. You know, in 68, when President Nixon, and I have to share this with you, I always again asking that you not have a spirit of rejection or anything, but just listen to me. This is me. You know, in 68, when President Nixon first ran, I voted for him. I had uttermost confidence in him. Fact is, I liked his looks and I liked his person and I liked what he said. That’s my judgment for a candidate. So anyhow, I voted for him. He was just defeated. I always kept thinking that I didn’t pray quite hard enough at this particular time. In between that time and 68, I had gotten utterly disgusted with him. And therefore, I was not going to vote for him in 68. I was so set in my pattern that Lee or anybody else, I don’t care who it was, couldn’t change me. But just before the night before voting, it had been my custom for a long time saying, “All right, Father.” Now, I don’t put too much on dreams, but I put a lot on dreams in a sense, as a little bit of direction.

So anyhow, I said, “Father, we go to vote tomorrow. And I do know that it is important in Your kingdom who will lead our country. So I wish You in the night would give me a little bit of direction.” This was my dream. I woke up quite suddenly in the early morning. I was walking down the street in front of the White House. You folks know that street. And we are very familiar with the White House, too. We’ve been there so many times. And so anyhow, I was walking down the street, and there was a very large group of people on the front lawn. As I passed by the gate, got up to the gate, I saw President Nixon out there in the group of people. And as I came by, he left everybody and came over to me just like this, putting out his hands to me. He said, “I need you in my house.” Now, I knew that what he was saying to me through dreams, I need your prayer. I need your prayer. And through that, to all praying people, oh, how I need your prayer. And of course, later on, I heard him say that once on the television. Perhaps you did, too. “I need your prayer.” So, not saying anything to leave, because sometimes we agree on how we’re going to vote.

And I let him think that we agreed him when I vote different. So anyhow, I went… we went to the poll. I voted for Mr. Nixon, and he voted for Mr. Humphrey. And of course, I liked him, too. I had been in touch with him a little bit. I liked them both. But I had my dream. So anyhow, from that time on, there has not been a day that he has not been in my prayer. And you know, if you aren’t too clouded, if you aren’t too clouded by human things, you will have caught a speck of spiritual insight through the four years that have been most amazing. My preciously doesn’t exactly see those things. And of course, he sees so many other things that haven’t been done. You know, it’s so easy to see things that haven’t been done than to see things that have been done. But anyway, I decided that I had to get some direction for this time. Now, in the prayer group last week, I’m coming up to this, the prayer group last Tuesday, the girls were saying to me and our young minister, “How in the world are we going to vote? We have just got two bad men.”

And I said, “What?” “Yeah, we haven’t got any charge much.” People say to me, “I don’t see why we’ve got much choice.” All right? I said, “All right, let’s have a quiet time.” Then we came up to the quiet time. “Ruth, how are you going to vote?” I said, “That is something only God’s going to know.” Well, anyway, then all of a sudden, one of the ladies spoke up and said, “You know, I’ve just gotten a new thought.” She said, “You know, we’ve got two good men. But which one will be the one that God can use for His kingdom?”

And so she said, “I think every one of us in the prayer group ought to really catch that as a vision of our prayer procedure between there and the time we vote. Which one, Father, can You use for the building of Your kingdom? Not in the United States, but in the whole world. See, it’s a world broadcast. In the whole world. Who has the greatest world context? Who knows the world better? Who knows You better?” Now, I’m not talking about what Mr. Nixon has done in China or Moscow or any of those other places. When I say world, I’m not thinking about one country. I’m thinking about world consciousness. You see, who is open to a world consciousness under the guidance of the Holy Spirit? So we left that in our prayer group. And the prayer group is holding that to get their guidance through. When Mr. Nixon… of course, when Mr. Nixon went to China, I went with him. I told you China was my love. I went with him in my spirit. And even I felt my body went too sometimes because as they were doing these lovely things, walking on the wall and everything else, I walked too. And my love for China all these centuries really made me do that. But you know the thing that I thrill with is when Mr. Nixon came down the plane and he put out his hand to Chou En-lai.

He put out his hand and they shook hands. I’ve lived long enough to have remembered that 23 years ago, John Foster Dulles refused to shake hands with his mind. Some of you know this as representing the government of the United States. A failure to shake hands produced the Iron Curtain. A failure to shake hands with anybody, no matter who, what they believe, who they are, where they are. A failure to put out your hand to a person produces an Iron Curtain. In between your spirit and another spirit. Then, of course, we followed him through China and here was a mended relationship. You see, that is kingdom business. Mending relationships is kingdom business. And we must not forget that. All right? So, we have this insight into our world and into our world need as we pray for it. Now, let me give you just a few other thoughts to take home with you. There will be just little snap thoughts because we are conscious of time. I have here a letter from Vivian Osburn. You know, it’s wonderful how God puts the pieces of the puzzle together. How many remember Vivian? Yes. Vivian has on her heart so deeply this whole world concern that she has written a magnificent letter, which I won’t take time to read, but the thought is that you, your family and friends are called to invite you to join with many to pray at least twice a day for America, the government and the coming elections.

She gives references here which you can get from Ruth, because Ruth came to Ruth, the letter came to Ruth Ganyard. One way of honoring ourself is by fasting. As a help in times of crisis, Moses fasted 40 days on Mount Sinai. Elijah went without food for 40 days. Jesus fasted in the wilderness.

Paul’s response to the experience on the Damascus Road was a fast. You see, there are so many different ways of fasting rather than food. He went without food for 14 days while interceding for shipmates in the storm at sea. Jesus said that after He was no longer with them, His disciples would fast. Now she says, praise the Lord anyway, whether you fast or do not fast. Pray, rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In our thoughts, let us fast from criticism and condemnation. That’s what I wanted to leave with you. And I was going to ask you this question. I had not read completely Vivian’s letter, but before I closed my talk, I was going to ask you, when are you going to forgive your country?

When are you going to forgive your country’s leadership? All day and through the years, we have condemned, we have judged, we have piled on criticism. I don’t see how a president has lived really. Some of them haven’t. But you know, I don’t see how they have lived under the pressure of Christian criticism. And I’m saying Christian. See, because we are followers of Christ. So she said, “In our thoughts, let us fast from criticism and condemnation. Let us really dedicate our mouths and thoughts to creative reactions and thoughts toward all leadership.” And whenever we’d ever sit in our church and look at our minister and look at him as a new man, that reminds me of another experience we had with a precious elderly minister in Washington, D.C., who had been at his church. He wasn’t Methodist because he’d been at his church for 20 years. So he finally came to Lee and he said, “You know, I’m going to resign.” And Lee said, “Why?” He said, “Because I think I’ve been there long enough.” You know, you ministers here, that’s no excuse. That’s laziness. So anyhow, Lee said, “You know, that’s not… that’s no excuse.”

Because you can’t decide what time is your ministry, how long your ministry is. That’s not given to you. That’s God’s business. But anyway, Lee said this to this precious man. And Lee said, “Why don’t you go home and let God make you the new man?” Well, he said, “Well, I’ve already resigned last Sunday. What are you going to do with that?” And he said, “I can’t tell you, but you’ll go home and see what the Spirit will do.” So anyway, he wrote us back and he said, “You know, what happened? I resigned last Sunday. I was reelected this Sunday.” He got up in this pulpit and he said, “Friends, you know, last Sunday, the old man resigned. This Sunday, the new man takes over.” Wasn’t that beautiful? All right. So, fast from criticism. And she said, “Please use this and share this, these ideas in any way you deem best.” After they were given to me, I could not find any peace whatsoever of mine until they were expressed in writing.

So we know that we approach a new world. But don’t approach a new world looking out. Approach a new world looking in. We look at ourselves and we see self-pride. We see ambition. We see imagined power. And, Reg, when you were talking about power, I thought about how often I had imagined that I had power.

You see, of course things will happen. Even if you have psychological insight, you have some power of mind. You have great power of mind over people. But that’s not what we are talking about here. All right. Imagine power. I have love. I have too much love for life. That sounds strange. I have love of possessions. I am thought wise and good, which is dangerous.

Remember, in this great book I talked to you about future… I did not mention, I know now, the book Future Shock. How many have read Future Shock? All right. If you do… If you read that book, you really will get shocked as what’s happening in that world. What’s actually happening in our world today? All over the world. And what is a possibility of today’s capabilities developing into shocking things? All right. But this is what he says. “Tomorrow’s illiterate… Get it? Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the one who cannot read. He will be the man who has not learned how to learn.” Not the person who can’t read. We always think of an illiterate person who can’t read. But the person who has not learned how to learn. Now, in the other book I spoke to you about, The Greening of America by Alan Stauffer, we are feeling and knowing that this fulfillment, world peace, this fulfillment cannot longer be delayed. We need a new capacity for working, for understanding, and for living together. We need the crystallization of love. A sweet thing happened along that line. One morning not long ago, a precious young mother from Massachusetts called me and she said, “I’m desperate.” All right. “What you need?” You know, I’m so conscious of long distance bills that I make my part just as short as I can.

“What you need?” She said, “I don’t know what I need.” Well, I said, “Give me a minute and let’s ask the Holy Spirit to tell us what you need.” So, we really found out that she just plain needed love. I mean, affection love. You know, just somebody to feel that cared for her. You know, when a young mother works with five children day in and night out, you feel like nothing’s coming to you. I can understand that. So can you. So I tell you what, Penny. Penny, for a week now, every morning, every evening, I’m going to, in my imagination, give you a good hug. I’m going to kiss you. And I’m just going to tell you, “Penny, I love you.”

So, oh, she said, “I feel better already.” And that was the end of the conversation. But a week later, she called me and she was so excited. You could have felt the glory flowing through because she said, “You know, I can hardly contain myself. Do you know how that love came to me, Ruth? How it crystallized…” she used the term, “how it crystallized to me, you know?” “No. Tell me.” Well, her youngest boy is seven years old. He’s in his first year of school. He’s not been a very affectionate boy. And all the other four children love to come up and sit in her lap and put their arms around her. But little Steve never did. But she said he came in from school two days ago and he came right straight to me through the front door up to me and said, “Mommy, I do love you. May I kiss you?” Hallelujah. And she said he put his arms around me and he kissed me. And you know what I thought? I thought, I don’t see why Ruth chose him to do that.

And you know, you get a little something, a little light on that too. But anyway, because you see, I had been working for some years with her little girl who was 12 years old who had had a blood disease. And she’s coming through so beautifully. That is with the hospital and doctors. When I say I’m working, I’m working with all that God has given to the human mind. Adding in my bit in the area of the spirit to the knowledge of the medical world, to everything, research and everything else in the area. This was in the area of a certain type of blood deficiency. So little Penny had gotten along so well that of all people, and Penny loves me. And she said, “Of all people, I would have thought that your love would have crystallized through little Penny. But it didn’t. It was little Steve.” And I could see why God did that too. All right now. When Jesus… When the power that was flowing through Jesus, and Jesus knew, “The Father in me doeth the work.” He said it that way. And so often, Reg and I will use the same terms because it’s the same message. God is giving us the power to crystallize love. I want you to realize that. He’s giving us the power to crystallize love and to make Himself visible here and there.

That’s what a miracle is. It’s the crystallization of love. You see it as a healing hand, a healed thumb. But it’s really the crystallization of love. When Jesus said, “Believe me for my work’s sake.” I pick up a little bit of last night. And Jesus said, “Believe me for my work’s sake.” This is the way He used the power. And don’t you forget this because if you have any questions or if you are tempted not to let the power come through for a purpose, this will give you a little clarification. Power to resist temptation.

Jesus used it. Power to meet social needs. Jesus used it. The water into wine. And sometimes we think that if we are in a social position that we have separated ourselves from God. Oh no. You know, people used to say to me, “I don’t want to go to that church. I can’t find God there.” Very lovingly and very tenderly, I asked them, “Who did you take there?”

Just who did you take? I can’t go any place that I don’t find God. Because I take Him. He’s there if I’m there. He’s there if you’re there. See? But this is what people used to think. Oh right now. Power to control the elements. And I’m working on that because you know where I live, it’s so open and so vast, the fields all around me and the sky above me, that when I begin to see a storm brew and the black clouds coming out over the water, coming from the ocean over the water, I say to myself, “Get busy and see what you can do with it.” And listen, one day I was hanging out of clothes and there wasn’t any sun, there wasn’t any wind, and those clothes needed to get dry. So I said, “All right now, come on, let’s try it.” You, when you stir yourself up. Believe me, it did. Oh, I was so excited. The wind began to blow and sweep across those clothes and ten minutes they were dry. Now listen, don’t get me wrong. I don’t know how to… I don’t know how to do that all the time.

He was… He used His power to pass out of conflict. And this is one of the greatest things to me that… You know how the crowds were around Jesus and they were gonna stone Him, toss Him over the side. And don’t you know how it says that He quietly passed out… I mean, passed through, I shouldn’t say, because that word’s passed out mean a different thing. He passed through and He was not there. But it came to me that the biggest thing in this, He prevented that crowd from doing evil. That was the thing I saw that was a great thing, because I knew Jesus could do this. But what He did to the crowd and always what Jesus did, if you look at what it did to the person, the crowd, the group of people that He was in, the effect upon the environment is what I’m trying to put across to you this morning. What every act He… every word He said, every act He did, had its effect upon the environment. So, when you’re thinking about pollution, and we are so conscious of pollution in so many directions, also think about the fact that as Jesus flows, as a power of love, and Jesus in you can use it. The Father in you, the Christ in you, put it any way you want to.

We have the capacity to purify the environment in which we live, and to transfuse the purity of the environment in us to those about us. Do you believe that? Or is that too confusing for you? That’s beautiful. Say it again. I couldn’t. She said, “Say it again.” That’s not written here. You know, I hold this book to give you the idea I’ve got something in it.

He used the power to restore minds and bodies. He used the power to protect the temple of God. I got an awful conviction there. How many times have I used my power, my spiritual power to protect my church? How many times have I used my spiritual power to protect my minister? People saying things about him, and I don’t say anything, which means I join in.

And I got a great conviction in this area. And of course, wherever you come across something and it convicts you, you know that you’ve got to work on that. He used the power flowing through Him to feed. He used that power to make from a little, a mighty abundance.

And you know, poverty is a, is not a Christian word. And the idea that we used to have that in order to be more spiritual, you had to have more poverty. It’s just not the picture of Jesus. It just isn’t. “I have come that you might have life and everything pertain to abundant life,” said Jesus. And if you only could see that I have it to give you. If you only could see that I have enough to build in you this new world we’re talking about. All right, I would give it to you. He used the power to show, to reveal the hidden secrets of life, like at the woman at the well. He used the power to forgive sins. He used the power to raise the dead. He used the power for Himself to lay His life down and to take it up again. “I have the power to lay my life down. Nobody makes me do it. I have the power to take it up again.” Didn’t He say that? Right. Now, I may stutter you, but I’m going to tell you that I have the power to do all these things. You have the power to do all these things. Why? The same power that brought Jesus Christ from the dead. The same power that enabled our Lord Jesus Christ to do everything He did. God has not changed.

And when you go away from here, if you have to say over a million times in order to get this to be a realized truth within your being, God has not changed. God is the same God today that was in Jesus Christ. God is the same God that has been in outstanding leadership. And God is in every person involved in next week’s election. For God’s holy sake, draw that God out through love. May we bow our heads.