Intelligence On Ice, Ignorance On Fire

Intelligence On Ice, Ignorance On Fire

by Horace Hilton

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I wanted to tell you something. For first timers, you know, we come. Now, after all these years, we come. We never really know the apprehension and the anxiety and the fear, really fear, of some people when they first come. And so I was all eyes. But the thing that I noticed, the first thing, was the joy among the people that were there. And the love. You know, they were just greeting each other. They were excited. And I had not seen that much life in Christians for a long time. But that was all right. And then I went to the service that night. Well, I was very uncomfortable because when they started singing, they started clapping. Now, I was 45 years old, had been a minister for 25 years, and I had never heard a person clap in a worship service. Now, I don’t know about you, but, you know, that was something new for me. I never heard any Episcopalians and Presbyterians clapping. And when I get nervous and upset, I flow right here. You’re talking about the flow. It just runs down, you know. Well, I began to flow, and I thought, oh, God, what am I doing here? This is the most sacrilegious thing I’ve ever heard of. People clap. Then the song leader, Lollie, and said, “I want all the men to come up front.”

Well, I thought, I didn’t want to sit out there with the ladies. So here I come up to the front, the lights beaming down on me, and singing songs that I had never heard. I don’t know where in the world you all found these songs. I was singing songs I had never heard. And all the time I was standing there, I say, you know, God is, oh, it’s… Do you know what I would have done if I had come up in my own car?

I wondered all the way why he had stuck me in that little Volkswagen anyway with those two ladies. And here, if I had my car, I would have been going off of that mountain that canoogers so fast, you would have said… There I was, stuck. Well, I noticed something else. There was a love for Jesus. No one was embarrassed to speak about Jesus. The two speakers were Jim Brown and Ruth Stapleton. I had never heard of them in all my life. I did think, well, this man is a Presbyterian minister. Maybe he will be redeemed.

But then the next day, the thing that struck me was the prayer group. I went to a prayer group, and God placed me beside a Presbyterian minister friend of mine, his wife. And we began to talk. So then about noon, I was beginning to know why I was there. And so I went to the telephone, and I called my wife, and I said, “You ought to come up here. You need this.”

She said, “What is it?” I said, “I can’t tell you. You have to be here to see it.” So she and another friend drove up. And that was my introduction to CFO. Let me tell you, don’t ever take no the first time for an answer. Now, I’ll tell you what came out of that. I lived just a few blocks from the Eastern Carolina CFO camp. I became burdened the last five years. But as I would go to different CFOs, apart from the speakers, there were no shepherds and no ministers at CFOs. There were very few, maybe. And I became tremendously burdened because when you come to a CFO, and you’ve just been on such a mountaintop experience, and then you go back to your church, and your minister and your shepherd has no idea what you’re talking about or what you might have experienced in your innermost being. And, you know, you just can’t tell it to people who are not in tune to it. And so for the last four or five years, I have challenged myself to bring five ministers to Eastern CFO on scholarship every year. Because if someone says, “Well, suppose they are turned off,” I said, “Yes, but suppose they are turned on. They are turned off anyway.” And I said, just think…

I said, just think what it will do to that congregation if they go back and knew what, you know, get what CFO really means to them. We have had some to come. They were just as blind, just as deaf, and just as dumb the day they left. I mean, not speaking. Nothing moved them or touched them outwardly. And they went back just as empty and dry as they came. Then there have been others that their lives have changed. Their congregations have changed. Their ministry has changed. And lo and behold, they would come back next year and bring 10 or 15 of their own. And so I’ve had a great burden. But CFO has had a very special meaning to me in my life. And I thank you for inviting me back and for letting me be with you. And to tell you the truth, I like a small group like this. And I live on an island, as some of you know, on the coast of North Carolina. California seems a long, long ways away. And I have a Bible study once a week there on the beach. And God has created a Christian community there. We have about 50 or 55 people who come every Thursday night. And we have a wonderful time together.

So I’m glad to be here. Would you open your Bibles to the Gospel according to St. John? The fifth chapter. Before we actually begin. When I was a young boy, my mother and father divorced, which was quite a heartache in my life. And my dear grandmother took me and raised me until I went off to college. In fact, I lived with her and commuted to college. And she used to have some homespun philosophy that she used to say to me. And you know, at that age, a teenager, all you don’t want to hear is an old lady giving you some sound advice. And it goes in one ear and out of the other. But it is amazing, which I thought was simply passing through my brain, how it stuck. And we talk about in the day of computers and about the memory bank. Well, that memory bank is there. And all of these thoughts still come back to me. I may share some with you through the week because it has meant so much to me. But one of the things, which was one I’d like to share today with you, one of the things she used to say to me, “Young man, son, there is only one thing worse than intelligence on ice. And that is ignorance on fire.”

And I thought about that balance. Would you like for me to repeat it again? There is one thing worse than intelligence on ice. And that is ignorance on fire. We have a God brings about a balance. We don’t go too far this way or too far. When we get out of balance, thank goodness that the Holy Spirit brings us back into balance. And I think that’s what I see in CFOs. When Harry talked last night about the schedule and how beautiful it is to enter into the schedule. Because the schedule is not just to fill up our day, but the schedule is to bring balance. The outward flow and the inward flow that Ann talked about this morning. And it is the totality of the entire schedule that brings about the balance. And one of the things I see so many times in the renewal of the Holy Spirit among the mainline denominations, that sometimes they get out of balance. They go too far this way. And sometimes they go too far this way. And God is seeking to bring us into balance. And so I hope that that’s what we shall be doing this week. The beautiful song that we sang today, “Good Morning, Lord.” You know, and another one that I heard is first time at a CFO, which has stuck with me so many times.

We’ve already sung it here. “This is the day that the Lord has made.” You know, God is in the creating business. I used to think that He was in the recreating business. And you may disagree with my theology here. But I do not believe that God is in the recreating business. I think that God is in the creating business. We have a tendency to recreate. But God creates each new day. When I awoke this morning and saw the beauty of that sun, and the thought came to me, this is the day that the Lord has made. The thought that came to me was that this, in all of eternity, this is the first day that this day has ever come into existence. This day has never been before. And when the sun goes down tonight, this day will be gone. You and I will never be able to bring back this day. You and I will never be able to turn back the calendar of time and recreate this day and live this day over again. Kris Kristofferson has a song that he sings. I like some of his singing. Not his lifestyle, but some of his singing. And he says, “Lord Jesus, help me to live one day at a time. I can’t bring back yesterday and I don’t know about tomorrow, so help me live one day at a time.”

Now, as we drove here yesterday and then came into that fellowship at the evening meal and the worship last night, which was so beautiful and so meaningful. And just to have Lollie as your song leader would be enough here. But then to hear Jem and his message of why we’re here and our identity and who we are in Christ Jesus. And as beautiful as that was, when we went to sleep last night, that day was gone. And what God wanted you to experience and what God wanted to say to you and what God wanted you to do in your inward self, that was the day that He created. But we cannot recreate that day. So I thought it was so beautiful this morning as we came with the singing and the meditations first and the singing and then the announcements of Anne that this is the day that God is going to say something to each one of us. What I hope and pray for each of us that we’ll be so sensitive to His presence, that we’ll be so conscious of living daily in the conscious presence of Jesus, that when He speaks to us, that we will hear Him. Now throughout this day, God has a special rhema for each one of you.

It may not be for me because I may not need to hear that, but it may be just especially for you. So as we talk to each other, as we listen to the various talks and the various things that we’ll be experiencing today, I ask myself, let us be open and conscious to what Jesus has to say to us today. And I’ve heard people say, you know, you said one thing in your teaching, or so on, the speaker before said one thing that it stuck with you. You know, it just was like a direct message to you. And so God has created this day. You see, God is in the now. He says, “Behold, now is the day of salvation.” I believe in a God who is the I am, not merely the I was or the I will be, but always He is spoken of is in the I am, the eternal now. So you and I who live in the present now are in the presence of the eternal now, and the eternal now wants to take our present now and with the present now, make it to the eternal now so we can hear what the eternal now has to say in our present now.

So God has this message. So what I’m saying to you is to be open, to be waiting. Don’t miss it. And what you say, “Lord, what do You have to say to me today in this day that You have created for me for the first time in all of eternity?” And when it’s gone, it will be gone forever. But may I look back and say, on that day, He said to me, and what it has done for me as an individual.

John tells a very interesting story in the fifth chapter. I’d just like to take this text and not read it as a whole, but to comment on some truths that have been especially meaningful to me. And I hope that God somewhere along the way will speak to you. “Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews.” My wife and I have been privileged to take a Bible study group to Israel for 27 times, 27 years. We go every year. We have a 60-some-odd page Bible study syllabus. And it’s not tourism, but we sit down and study together where we are. Just like when we come here to the Pool of Bethesda, we sit there by the Pool of Bethesda and then we study. We don’t just merely hear Israel propaganda. We don’t just hear facts by God, but that’s all very good. But we want to hear the biblical context of where this actually took place. And those of you that have been to Jerusalem know geographically, no matter where you are in the country of Israel, you have to go up to Jerusalem. There is no such thing as geographically as going down to Jerusalem. And it’s so interesting when you read the scripture, how the Holy Spirit has taken the very minute details and you see everything so become alive.

One of the great things for me in being very interested in the archaeological excavations that have gone on and continue to go on in Israel, that every new excavation that takes place, everything substantiates the scripture. There is nothing that has contradicted anything in the scripture so far through excavations of human beings and how God has seen to that through the years. And I often have gone many, many times, but in 1967, when I went back to Jerusalem, I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to find that they had discovered and excavated the Pool of Bethesda. This was not found until 1967. And this pool had been deep down under debris and all of that had been piled on it and they had found the Pool of Bethesda. And it’s so interesting as you visit there. It says, “Now, in Jerusalem, near the Sheep Gate, a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda.” You see, Jerusalem has been built and destroyed many times, as you know. But they level it off and build right back on it. Even the walls of Jerusalem, the present-day walls of Jerusalem, if you could dig down many, many hundreds of feet, you will find that they are built mostly on the same foundations of the previous walls. And when you look in the book of Nehemiah, that particular time in Israel’s history, when the Babylon…

After the Babylonian captivity, that the Israelites were allowed to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and to rebuild the walls, you will notice that certain groups were given certain sections in the building of the wall. The Nehemiah, the third chapter, talks about ten gates. And so these various groups were given portions from one gate to another and were responsible for that particular section of building the walls of Jerusalem. And it’s interesting as you look at the gates, one of the ten gates mentioned in Nehemiah in the third chapter is what is called the Sheep Gate. Now, why was it called the Sheep Gate? It was here that the sheep were brought and they were from this flock of sheep were picked sheeps without blemish and without fault and they were used for the sacrifices in the temple. Now, when you go to Jerusalem on Tuesday morning, you can go to this same location. It is still known as the Sheep Gate and the sheep market is there and the farmers carry on their trading of sheep even to the present day in which we live. But another name that you know about it is called St. Stephen’s Gate. And it’s, of course, in the traditional place where the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen, was stoned to death because of his faith in the resurrected living Lord.

So I’ll give you a little of the setting of this. And you can go there now and as you pass through the Sheep Gate or through St. Stephen’s Gate, you walk up a little narrow street for a portion and you turn into a door. And as you pass through this door, you enter into a very beautiful garden with flowers and the kind that I think would CFOs would like to have meditation as far as early in the morning. And there’s some beautiful pepper trees. And if you’ve ever felt the pepper tree, you take the leaves and you crush them in your hand. And it’s a sweet aroma that comes from the leaves of the pepper tree. Then as you go on a little distance to the right is St. Anne’s Church, of course, built over the traditional place of where Mary was born and raised. And this, beyond that, you come to the excavation of the Pool of Bethesda. It’s very day. Down, you look down several stories and there it is. And so that’s called Bethesda, which is surrounded by five covered porches. Now, being a kind of a theologian that likes to take everything apart and tear it apart and then put it back together, it used to bother me how you could have a rectangular pool and have five porches around it.

You know, I thought most of the pools in those days were rectangular. And I thought, how could you have five pools around a rectangular, five porches around a rectangular pool? But in the excavations, they have found that right in the middle of the pool is a porch in the middle that goes from one side to another. So if you’re on this side and want to get around to the other side, you can have a shortcut because you know the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. So they have a pool, I mean, a porch right in the middle where you can cross over to the other side. But don’t get the, don’t miss the other significance. You remember in the day of Jesus that numbers had far more meaning than just pure quantity. Numbers had a symbolic meaning. And the number for five is a symbol for grace. Now remember that. It’s a symbol for grace. The grace of God and the mercy of God. When you read about the story of Joseph when he was in Egypt, and there came a great famine in the land of Israel, and the brethren of Joseph went down to Egypt to secure supplies to bring back to their father Jacob. They did not recognize Joseph, but Joseph recognized them.

And when you read of that account, when they started back with their provisions that Joseph had given to them, along the way they stopped to see what they had. And when Benjamin, the beloved one that Joseph longed to see and love, when Benjamin opened his portion, he had five changes of clothes that the other ones didn’t have. It was a grace love that was given to Benjamin. When you read and when we say the Lord’s Prayer, which is so familiar to all of us, is it not unique to you that the fifth clause of the Lord’s Prayer is, “Give us this day our daily bread”? Do you think it is by accident that when we stop to say grace at the table, to give God thanks, and we call it saying grace? And isn’t it interesting that the only miracle of Jesus that is recorded by all of the four Gospels is the miracle of feeding the 5,000 men with their families with five barley loaves and fish? God’s grace. Now, here at this pool was a great number of sick people in many, many ways. And they’re about to experience the healing grace of God. Oh, you’re going to see the grace of God. There was a number of sick people that used to lie there.

You see, this is a picture of all of us in Adam. We’ve all been fragmented and broken by Adam through sin. And when Jesus comes as the last Adam, He takes the fragments of our pieces, the broken parts of our life, to make us whole again, to bring us wholeness, to put us back together again, to cause us to be the vessel that God created us to be. Truly, that when He puts us back together, unfortunately, like any broken vessel, there are cracks. I have cracks in mine. And there are sometimes I have some leaks and it leaks out and I have to be constantly filled each day. But the healing ministry of Jesus Christ, how He has come to us in our brokenness, in our being in shattered pieces, and through His marvelous grace and redeeming love, and through His healing, He has put us back together again, so that we are somebody in Christ. We are His chosen people. We are His body, as the word says. We are His bride. You know, sometimes it’s difficult for us men to think of ourselves as brides. Well, that’s exactly what the scripture says. Just like it’s difficult sometimes for you ladies to think of yourselves as the sons of God. But we are sons of God, all of us, and we are brides of Christ.

And so what beautiful names that are given to us. And we are the people of God, wherever we are. That’s the reason when I stand before you, I stand before a very special group of people. Not because of who you are in the sight of man or humankind. Not because of what you may have, materially speaking. Not because some of you are Presbyterians and Methodists or Baptists or for… But I stand before you are people that are the people of God. The chosen ones of God. When I look at you, I realize that I am standing before the bride of Jesus Christ. And as the great hymn says, you are the apple of His eye. And now John tells us something about the condition of this people. First of all, when I look at this group of people, I see a humanity. Humanity that has been broken by the first Adam. And then yet I can see in the latter part of it what humanity can become through our Jesus Christ. Through the last Adam. What He can do to broken humanity. I also see in the biblical context here that this could have been the condition of Israel. God’s chosen people. Because in John it says, you know, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

“And in Him was light. In Him was life. And in Him was redeeming love.” They are very three important words to understand what Jesus Christ has come to do for us in our fragmented broken life. First of all, He has come to give us His life. In Adam we all die. In Christ we are all made alive. We come into our life, His life. You see, each one of us have human life. And when Jesus was here on earth, He said, “I have come to give you life.” Now we know that He was not talking about human life. Because He was not speaking to dead people. He was speaking to people that are alive. Just like you and I. So we know that He must have been speaking about another dimension, another quality of life, which we know on today is eternal life, resurrected life, redeeming life. And so into each one of us, by the gift of God’s mercy and grace, we have been given eternal life. We have been given resurrected life. And we talk about in CFOs kingdom living. Kingdom living is that in human life there is another life, which is the dimension of God life, which is a gift of God’s mercy and grace. And it is as we live in this human life that we begin to experience this kingdom living and this eternal life now.

I don’t know about you in your churches, but for so long in our churches, we may not have really made like we were thinking this way, but this is what came across. We are born in this world as perfect little babies. And then as we get a little older, we meet some bad boys and some bad girls. And we begin to learn some bad words and learn to do some bad things. And then about 12 years old, we really ought to do something about it. So we join the church. And after we join the church, we try to go to Sunday school and try to go to church and try not to tell any stories and try to be kind to people. And we’re just constantly working and working. And in the background, hoping someday that if we do enough, when we get there, He might let us in because of what we have done. But you see, that’s not what it is at all. When divine life, when God life invades human life, we move into the kingdom then. We move into kingdom living then. And you and I are experiencing kingdom life and kingdom living now. And in what the world calls death, I just call moving. You know, I step out of this body into His presence.

And I just, you know, the continued eternal life takes on. So in that part, God comes to give us this life so you and I can experience. And so the God who is the I am, who is in the creating business every moment, who is the eternal now, has come to our present now to give us His life in the now, to give us His living in the present, so that when we get through this particular phase, we just continue on in a deeper dimension, in His eternal presence, forever and forever. Now notice how John explains the condition of fragmented people, of people who have not experienced wholeness in Jesus Christ, and people who have not experienced kingdom living on this earth. He says, “Some of them were blind.” You see, many of them had come there for a healing miracle. Now I think that many people in the world today are looking for a healing miracle of some kind. They’re trying all sorts of avenues to find for a healing miracle. “Some of them were blind.” Literally mean they were unable to understand spiritual truths. We are surrounded with people, some of them in your own families. Some of them in where you work. Some of your dearest friends that you play golf with, or tennis, or bridge.

Or some of your social friends. When you looked at them, they are blinded to spiritual truth. They’re blinded to kingdom living. They really do not understand why and what. What do you do up there at CFO? Does anybody ever ask you that? What do you do when you go off to these places? I thought this morning in meditation, how I have some of my friends, some of my minister friends. I wonder how they would have reacted sitting here this morning. They thought, I am with a bunch of weirdos here. You know, the beginning… And they just… That dimension that they do not understand. When you worship in music, you know, for 25 years or more, I think of myself every Sunday morning as conducting worship, or leading worship, or attending worship, but I was 48 years old before I knew what worship… Entered into worship. You know, there’s a thin, fine line when you’re praising the Lord, and then suddenly you step over into worship, and you become unconscious almost of anyone else. I tell you a little personal peeve I have in the charismatic renewal. I do not like to go anywhere where a song leader has to work me up. You know, I don’t like that. I want the Spirit to work me up.

I do not like for a song leader to say, “Now, I want everyone to raise your hands and praise the Lord.” I don’t like that. Now, if I begin to worship, and I… My wife says, “Some people think you’re going to sleep or in a trance,” but I close my eyes when I worship. So if you see me over there, sometimes I’m not asleep, I close my eyes, and I begin to picture, as she was leading us today, I begin to picture the presence of Jesus, and my pouring out my love to Him, and my worship in Him. And suddenly, I may raise my hand, and I’m totally unconscious, whether anybody else in that room has ever raised their hand, and I just don’t even look around. That’s the way I like to do. I like to just reach out and to worship. And I yearn sometimes, when I talk to different people, if they could move into the dimension of kingdom living, in its full dimension, if they could just experience worship. I see Presbyterians that have been to worship all of their life, and they’ve never really walked in and moved into worshiping. And just to enter into the flow of it, so to speak, and to know it is one of the most beautiful things.

Lord, help them to understand. But you see, you cannot understand spiritual things unless by the Spirit, for spiritual things are spiritually discerned. And then John says, “Some of them are lame.” Some of them are lame. Unable to walk. How often the Bible talks to us about walking in the Spirit. Living in the Spirit. In the book of Genesis, one of the most beautiful things to me in that beginning story is that at a certain time of the day, Adam and Eve and God walked. Walked in the Garden of Eden. You know, that’s what we are experiencing in kingdom living. We are learning again what it means to walk with God. In the original, in the language, there are two words for walk. One of the words used in the New Testament is when you walk alone. And you and I know that in our spiritual pilgrimage, no matter what Christian friends we may have, there are times when you and I have to walk alone. I think in losing a life’s partner. You have your family there. You have your friends there. But then I’ve often thought, being a pastor and seeing someone lose a wife or a husband, that that night when everybody goes to their rooms and the nighttime comes and you close your bedroom door and you lie down on your bed, what may…

That’s a time of walking alone and justin’. My wife and I have been married 48 years. My son came to visit us not long ago. And he came to our bedroom and he said, “Daddy, why in the world don’t you and Mama get a king-size, I saw a queen-size bed? Don’t tell me you’re still sleeping on a double bed.” I said, “Son, we’ve got room for another one in here.” You know, we have slept so long together and touching that I have difficulty sleeping. You know, last night we went to sleep. I was restless all night. It’s part of me not here. And it’s that becoming the oneness together. But we walk alone sometimes. I often say to her, “You know, I don’t know one when it will come. I hope I go first. Because I don’t know whether I could live without you.” And that walking alone. Then there’s another word which means to walk in step. It’s a military word. And if you’ve ever seen a dress parade, it means walking in step. That’s the way a dress parade. And understand enough, in the New Testament, when you come across the word walking in the Spirit, it is always the military word, which means walk in step with God.

What is kingdom living? We do not walk ahead of Him. We do not walk behind Him. But we walk in step with the Spirit. That’s walking in oneness. It’s walking in union. That’s union life. That’s what it means to be in union with Christ. But as he says, “Some of them were unable to walk.” Not that you and I are better than someone else, but you and I have begun to experience what it means to walk in union with Christ. You and I have begun to experience what it means to walk in kingdom living. And I believe that one of the great desires And the first sentence of all of us, and I don’t know how they can come about, is that we have so many people who are so very dear to us, that if we could just get them to walk in step, to walk in kingdom living. And so that was desire. And then it says they were paralyzed. Paralyzed means they were unable to work, unable to do things. You know, I constantly say, “Oh Lord, what else can I do for You?” You know, He really doesn’t need anything for us to do for Him. But I think He yearns and longs for us out of love to say to Him, “Let me do something for You. Let me praise Your name. Let me be a channel of Your love and blessing.” And so God speaks in various ways.

But it says here that they were waiting by the pool for a healing miracle, waiting in vain for something to happen. For you see in this, it says to us, the answer for all of us is not in the pool, but it is in Jesus. Jesus. I asked Lollie to sing today, “He Is All I Need.” You see, He is the all sufficient One. He is the One. Every need in our total being, spirit, soul, and body is found in Jesus Christ. It is not in the pool. It is not in the pool, wherever that pool is. And how many of us, for so many years in our life, have seemed to wait by the pool for someone else to help us. And when the answer is in Jesus Christ. Last night, when Harry spoke of the sycamore tree. You see, those are biblical stories. But as he said, they really represent us for every one of us. Sometimes, some place, there has been a sycamore tree in our life. And there comes a moment when we met Jesus Christ. By the way, I heard one minister say one time that when Jesus said, “Come down, Zacchaeus, I must abide at your house.”

That he so shocked Zacchaeus that he slid down that sycamore tree. And he slid all the bark off. And sycamore trees have been slick ever since. So, I don’t know. Every time I look at a sycamore tree, I can see the bark skinning off as he comes out. So, I don’t know whether that is or not. You can use that too somewhere. Sycamore tree. But He said, “Come down.” And you see, we have our wells of Sychar. We have our pools of Bethesda. We have our sycamore trees. It’s where God comes to meet us in the condition in which we are. And notice what it says in verse 6. “When Jesus saw him.” Did you realize that from the moment you were born, 24 hours a day, every day of your life, you have never been out of sight of God? That you have never been any place, any time, anywhere, that Jesus cannot see you. How beautiful that is. He sees us. He sees you today. He knows as He looks at you what needs you have. He knows whether you need a wholeness, a healing in your spirit, or in your soul, or in your body. In our church on Sunday morning, which is very unusual in a Presbyterian church, the ministers come at the end of the service, and our elders come.

And we have what we call the prayer for wholeness. And as the people come, they are anointed with oil, and then we pray for wholeness. What do we mean by that? You see, there are some who come and say, “God seems so far away. My spirit seems to be dead. I don’t sense God anymore. Or I’ve just drifted from God.” And so we pray for the healing touch of Jesus to come into their spirit, to fan that flame, and to cause that heart to burn, and to feel strangely warmed again, and to revive that spirit. But oddly enough, the biggest segment, the largest segment in our prayer for wholeness is in the soul. And the largest part of the soulish part of prayer is depression. I am absolutely amazed how many people have problems with depression. I had a football player type of fellow come up to the prayer for wholeness not long ago. And he said, “I want to pray I’m dying.” And I said, “What are you dying? From what?” He said, “I’m dying from loneliness.” And as I counseled with him, I found out that he was a big husk of a man. He trims trees. And the moment he gets off of work, he goes to his home and goes to his room and stays shut up in that room till the next day.

And I thought, after I met him, I thought, let’s meet for lunch tomorrow and we’ll just talk some more. So he told me the restaurant to meet. And so I went to the restaurant. And I didn’t see him anywhere in there. And he said, “I’ll meet you outside.” So I was standing out by my car thinking that he would come up in the parking lot. And I heard somebody say, “Mr. Hilton. Mr. Hilton.” And I looked and in some weeds behind a tree, he was squatting down in those weeds. “Here I am, Mr. Hilton.” And I had to go over there and talk to him hid in the weeds. He could not even walk into that restaurant. A hunk of a man that could lift up a tree. And he couldn’t even walk into that restaurant where people were. He was dying of loneliness. And so as we pray, there’s fear and anxiety, depression, many of those things. So we pray for the healing power of Jesus in the soulish part. Then there are some who say, “I have a bad back,” or “I have a problem with my kidneys. I’m facing surgery.” So we, whatever area, we pray for that wholeness. Because I’ve come to believe that Jesus is in the healing business of the wholeness.

And to pray for wholeness. Now notice Jesus saw him. Knew his condition. And then He went to him and noticed the important question that He asked. “Do you want to get well?” Now, Harry said last night that when Zacchaeus climbed that tree and when he said it just spoke to me. And literally, God spoke to you, threw you to that message to tell me what to speak about today. He climbed the tree because he wanted to see Jesus. Now, what he wanted to see in Him, we don’t know. He had heard a lot of things about Him. I really think personally that he just wanted to see what He looked like. Because Jesus was passing through Jericho. He was on His way to Jerusalem. And as far as we know, He never came through Jericho again. And Zacchaeus merely wanted to see Him. And as he saw Him coming down the pathway with His disciples, he had a good perch on the tree limb. And he expected to watch Him come, watch Him pass under, and go on. But to his amazement, Jesus stopped at the tree. Now, let me ask you this. God knows what you want. He will either stop at your sycamore tree, or He’ll come to the pool where you’ve been waiting in vain.

But He knows. And He literally, what He had in mind, that He was coming to Zacchaeus. And when He said to Zacchaeus, “Come down,” and notice this, “I must have lunch with you.” Not “I’d like to,” or “think about it.” “I must.” You see, when God sees you, He knows your point of need. And He comes to your point of need. And His heart says to you, “I must touch that need. So that you will not remain as you are. But can start becoming what I want you to be.” And when He looked up to Zacchaeus, and He said, “I must go home with you,” He knew that Zacchaeus’ moment had come. And when He came to this man, He knew that the very important moment had come. You see, Jesus comes to each of us to change the situation which we might be in at that moment. Jesus comes to us to take that which we can’t change and changes it for us. He comes to us not only in healing power, but He comes in redeeming love. Now, when I look at you, I don’t know what your need may be today, but He does. But I want you in your revision thinking, just to say, as He says, “Do you want?” What part of your life do you want His touch?

What part of your life would you like for Him to change? Are you content to stay the way you are? I think one of the things that I’ve learned in kingdom living is that when I come to that point of me, I am not content to stay there. Because I trust in a redeemer who has promised to change a situation that I can’t change. I have faith in a redeemer who does not make me content to stay where I am when something needs to be changed. I walk up with a redeemer who brings me to a place that I need not stay. And even if I want to stay, He doesn’t want me to stay and He makes every effort to move me on. And what He was really saying to that man is this. And He says it to each of you. “Are you willing to put yourself just as you are into My hands?” Where you are today, you need to ask that question. Hear Him ask you. “Are you willing, just as you are and just where you are, to put yourselves in My hands? Are you ready for Me this morning to do for you what you have been unable to do for yourself?” Do you want that? If you don’t really want it, then nothing will come of it.

But He said, “Are you ready for Me to do what you can’t do for yourself?” And what did the man say? “It’s impossible. I’ve given up. I’ve done everything I know what to do. I have no control. It’s no use. It’s hopeless. Every time I try to get into that pool, someone else comes and beats me to it.” And there he is back in that utter hopeless state. Here is a Lord of the universe saying to this man, “Do you want?” And hear him say, “I can’t. Somebody always beats me to it. I don’t have any hope.” I think we’ve all reached that place sometime. Father, I have a sin in my life that I have tried everything I know to overcome. And just about the time I think I have overcome it, I fall flat on my face again. Have you ever been there?

And what Satan does to us in a moment like that? Or we have someone who’s very close to us. And we say, “I have tried everything I know what to try. I have said everything I know what to say. I’ve even prayed everything I know what to pray. I don’t even know what to pray for anymore. I’ve just reached the end of my rope. I have taken that person to see everybody I know that might help them. And things have not changed.” And I’ve had people in my counseling ministry, and I’m sure Harry and Lollie have said the same thing. “I’ve given up. It’s no use. I don’t have anywhere else to turn.” That’s what this man was saying. It said, you’re wasting your time. Everything that could have been done has been done. And I have just given up. You see, when we walk in kingdom living, there is no such thing as hopelessness. There is no such thing as giving up. There is no such thing as coming to the end of the rope. And all there is left to do is turn loose and fall into utter darkness and utter despair. Now notice this. Jesus didn’t say to him, “That’s all right. Let me make you a little more comfortable. And you just hang in there, and maybe someday things will get better.”

You ever heard that? I like what He did. He looked at him and He said, “Stand up.” That’s a one word command. “Stand up.” You need to know this. But you do. This man had never been able to stand. You know, I think about when we say, Lollie says, “Let us stand to sing.” And I have been in CFOs when there’s people who could not stand. You know, we take so much for granted. Suddenly we just get up. As I get older, I tell you one different. I used to hop out of a chair like somebody stuck me with a pen. Now I get up a little slower, you know. And I know, but I’m thankful I can get up. My wife left. Her roommate from college and her husband, we all went to college together back in the dark ages. And they came to see us. They live in Grand Rapids. He was a star athlete. But we used to date these two girls. They used to giggle all the time. I don’t know what makes girls laugh, but that’s wonderful. They giggle. And I’d say to him, “Johnny, I hope if we marry those two girls, they don’t giggle all the time.” They’d say something, they’d just giggle. So that day, they started giggling.

Now here they are in their 60s now, but they still giggle, just like they are. And their voices are the same. But you know what they were giggling about? I had put down my glasses. I couldn’t find them. So I was looking everywhere for my glasses. And he has now got kind of a bum leg playing sports. So he was struggling up out of his chair to help me go look for my glasses. And they said, “Look at this. Two old men. One can’t get out of his chair and the other one can’t find his glasses. Well, what have we got here?” You know, they just laughed away. But you know, to get up, just to stand up. Now notice, He never reached over and said, “Give me your hands and let me help you up.” You see, when God Almighty speaks, He has the power behind Him to do what He says, what He tells you to do. You won’t be able to do it. But when Almighty, omnipotent God says, “Stand up.” And we need to stand in faith. That’s what I hope each day. I’ve come here to learn how I can stand in Christ. To stand in the Spirit. Then I used to think that the next thing He was going to say was, “Walk!”

“Stand up and walk.” But notice the middle word, and don’t miss it. “Roll up your pallet. Take up your bed.” Now why would He say that? Even though, some people would say, “Now leave the pallet there. Tomorrow you might need it. You might get your healing today, but what happens when you fall back tomorrow?” But what He was saying is, “Roll up anything in the past that has brought you to this place. And take it with you so you’ll never come back to the Pool of Bethesda.” You may have to change your whole gang of friends. You may have to change some lifestyles. There are certain things in your life that you’re going to have to do away with. You’re going to have to rearrange your priorities. Your whole total being is going to move away from the Pool of Bethesda. And I won’t go all the way, but you remember at the end of this story, the next time He finds him, where is he? In the temple. God comes to us at our Pool of Bethesda and leaves us in His house. God comes to us our utter hopelessness and leaves us whole in Him. God comes to us where we cannot stand and we are beginning to understand what it means to stand in wholeness, in kingdom living, in the daily conscious presence of Jesus.

Jesus. Then we roll up that pallet. There are some friends that… I say this to people all the time. There are some friends in your life that you must leave. There are some habits, some weaknesses. Don’t go back to them. And then He says, “Walk.”

“Stand, roll up, and walk.” And it’s interesting in the original. The first word, “stand up.” And the second phrase, “roll up.” They are one-time action verbs, which means now. And the third one changes in its tense. And it means continuous action. Once we stand, once we turn away and walk with God, the rest of it is a continual daily walking in Jesus and wholeness. Why did you come to CFO?

I think we all came to hear Jesus say, “I see where you are. I know what you need. And I’m here to do something about it. But you have got to want Me to do it. You have got to want to see Jesus in His fullness.” And then stop making excuses. I have to say to people in my counseling all the time, stop making excuses. I can’t help if you had a mean mother. Father. I can’t help if you had a domineering father. I know all of those are contributing factors. But when Jesus, when you stand and meet Jesus, He overcomes all of it. Not in a second, but in a continuous process. And hold this to me, and kingdom living to me, is beginning to walk daily in the conscious presence of Jesus. I’ll tell you this. Today, sometime, somewhere, someplace, you are going to meet Him face to face.

I don’t know which one of the schedules it will be. But before you go to sleep tonight, He will meet you at your pool and change whatever needs to be changed. The answer is not in the pool. The answer is in Jesus. That’s the reason today I asked Lollie to sing. And I didn’t know when she was going to sing it and how the Holy Spirit arranged it. Just before the message, she sang, “He Is All I Need.”