Jesus Steers, I Just Row

Jesus Steers, I Just Row

by Bill Godfrey

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

We praise You, Lord. We thank You for this day. I give You thanks for this wonderful time in our lives. And I thank You, Lord, for the peace that I feel here. Thank You, Lord, for just sending us Your peace.

And we give You thanks and praise in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen. I’m going to talk this morning about surrender. That’s what the Lord told me earlier this morning that I should do. And the 23rd Psalm this morning at the meditation is a psalm of surrender. And there are many psalms in that area, too, that are surrender. And even some of the songs we sang on that. And I’m going to read you a prayer that the Lord gave me about 12 years ago, 10 or 12 years ago. This prayer was, how do I teach these goodnicks out at the John Michael Talbot’s monastery to surrender to the Lord when they’ve surrendered everything? How can I let them know that they really need to give up? They’ve given up everything to be there. Because he asked me to teach on the 12 steps of AA for nine weeks out there on Tuesday nights. And so I was pretty desperate to find out how I could get them to understand the third step, which is the surrender step of AA. And I sat in our private chapel that we have out there on the mountain where I live, the retreat center. And we have the reserved sacrament. And I like to sit there and have a special focused presence of Jesus so that I can focus in on Him and look right there at the little tabernacle that they keep an eye on.

And then I talked to Him and asked Him to write. And I wrote this down. I didn’t change a word. And I didn’t have to do anything. It just flowed off my pen. It’s very interesting. So I’m going to read it to you. And at the end of the talk, if I can remember to do it, I’m going to ask you, those who’d like to, can follow me in it. Lord Jesus Christ, I abandon myself to You. I give myself to You just as I am. The good, the bad, and the indifferent. I hold nothing back. I give You my fears, my resentments, and my anger. I give You my powerlessness, my failures, and my defeats. I make You Lord over all of me. I renounce everything that is not from You or of You. Give to me the power and grace to love and serve You. Fill me with Your joy and Your peace. Have mercy on me and help me this day. Lord Jesus, if I should change my mind later about all this, then do it anyway in spite of me. I give You my will. Change it as You see fit. Deliver me from my self-seeking and make me into one who helps others and desires to do Your will. Amen.

So be it. Praise the Lord. That’s a good way to start the day. Someone asked me… Gosh, it was just a few days ago, or I can’t remember exactly what it was, just the last few days. And something about how I got prepared for prayer. And I said, prayer starts with me, with surrender. I must surrender. I cannot come into the presence of the Lord. He is the Lord. He’s the King of Kings, and I’m just one of His subjects. If I don’t get into an attitude of let go and let God surrender, total surrender, my prayer is just words that I say to the air and that sort of thing. And so for me to pray, it’s necessary for me to totally, again, acknowledge. And I begin the prayer by reading this and to say, I abandon myself to You, Lord. I give You everything. You know, change me. Do whatever You want. And then I’m able to ask Him for knowledge of His will for me, and then the power to carry it out. And that’s the only kind of prayer that I do. I just ask for knowledge of His will for me. His will for me might be to pray for you. It might be anything. You never know what it is.

And so I ask that I have to be surrendered. And for me, that’s the basic foundation for spiritual growth. I just have to tell you that all my life, I was trained by my father and my mother that if I wanted a helping hand, I could look on the end of my arm, and that’s the only place it would be. And do everything yourself. Be your own man. The little train that could. Bruce’s spider. Think of all these things that we’ve inculcated. And our culture tells us, try again. Never give up. Well, I did this for 40 years. And the 40 years of my self-improvement program, I ended up totally and completely helpless, as I told you last night, in that motel room, the Crane Motel in Roswell, New Mexico, on June 1st, 1967. And I turned to Jesus and I surrendered. I’d been fighting these battles, spiritual battles, and every kind of a battle in the world, psychological and everything else, for years and always losing. I always lost. Never won a thing. My life was a complete failure at that point. I mean, my sport, spiritually, morally, and physically, I was bankrupt. Every way that you could look at it. And so I surrendered. There wasn’t much to surrender, and I surrendered. And I won the war.

It’s amazing. Lost all the battles, and surrendered, and won the war. Or… That’s what the spiritual life is about. You know, Jesus said, “If you want to receive, give.” If you want anything, it’s always a reverse of what we think. It really is. Just look through the scriptures, and you’ll see it. That if you want to be blessed, ask others to be blessed. And bless others. Give, and it shall be given unto you. This sort of thing. And that’s not the way you get things in this world. Go out and get them. Hold on to them. Do unto others what before they do it unto you. You know, that kind of thing. Well, the life of surrender is very difficult for me. I’m very difficult. It’s very difficult for me to live that life. Simply because of my old nature, and the nature of mankind. I suspect some of you might have the same problems that I do. I used to live on a tropical island. This island is located off the coast of reality. It’s in the Sea of Insanity. Sometimes called the Sea of Denial. It used to be called that. It’s the Sea of Insanity. And the name of the island is Sunday Isle. Have you ever lived there? They have flights daily or hourly out there.

You can go back and forth to visit anytime you want to. The principal city there is called If Only. And I live there. And I have lived there. I don’t want to live there anymore. Every once in a while, I do. If only, like that, that my wife wouldn’t count my drinks, I wouldn’t get drunk. If only the banker was a little bit more lenient. My boss didn’t want me to go to work on Monday morning. If only, then I’d be all right. And the problem, you see, was not here. The problem was there. All out there. That’s called denial and projection. I denied that I had a problem within me. And I projected the problem out there. It was your fault. You were what was wrong. I was all right. There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s just these crazy people around me. These thin-lipped, blue-lipped people that just don’t like to party. You know, that sort of thing. That was what was wrong. And the whole society was wrong. That’s not wrong with me. I have on my mirror in my bathroom in Arkansas, I have a sign that’s about this long and about an inch high. It has lettering in it. And when I take my thyroid every morning, which I have to take, I drink it.

I see it. It’s right at the top of the mirror. This is right after my shower, so I have no clothes on. And I’m looking there across the sink at this thing, and it says, “You are looking at the problem.” And that’s a reminder each day to see what the problem is. The problem is here. And so my problem is I need to let go and let God. I just can’t seem to do that. I want to do it by self. I want to do it by myself. That was my oldest daughter when she was about three. She wasn’t quite old enough to tie her shoes. We were in a hurry to go to church. And so I said, “Let me help you, Kathy.” And boy, she, “No, do it by self.” You know, right. And this is the nature of the humanity. And we don’t want to surrender. We don’t want God to rule in our lives. We really don’t. And our lives prove it by what we do. Is we make plans and are very disappointed when those plans don’t turn out. Isn’t that right? Yeah. Well, what do we make the plans for in the first place? Did God ask us to make those plans? If He did, He can change His mind.

And so all of my plans are contingent on if the Lord wills. I plan to come here. I was planning to fly my own plane and fly my wife here. But she came to me about six days ago and said, “I’m worried that the weather is not going to be right. I don’t like flying through the mountains and everything else and with all these possible thunderstorms.” And I said, “Okay, what do you suppose we should do?” And she said, “I think what you should do is get a commercial ticket and go.” And so I did. I called up and sure enough, I was able to get a commercial flight here. And then, you know what happened the day before yesterday and yesterday, they had thunderstorms all out through there. And that was my wife again in tune with the Lord. So I changed my plans and instead of flying my own plane, which I really wanted to do, then I had to fly in a air-going bus. Like those things, you’re crammed in like sardines. Can’t see a thing. It’s much more fun to fly my own. But surrender is what I did in 1967. And I said, God, help me in any way You can. Help me if You’re there. I didn’t even know for sure that God was there.

I had just enough doubts about that. Although I had an experience with the Lord, I had been, quote, saved. I knew and I believed in the resurrection. But then after a while, I thought, is He really there? He wouldn’t answer my prayers. My prayers were, Lord, don’t let me get drunk tonight, Lord, while I drink. And He wasn’t answering those kind of prayers. What He wanted to do was He wanted me to stop drinking altogether.

In the act of surrender, I decided that I would not leave that place until God came and manifested Himself to me in some way. And I was going to stay in that motel. I had prepaid it for about a week. So it was all right. And I had several days to go on that. And I lay there and I talked with God and I meditated. I read the Gideon Bible. And I was getting over and I got detoxed in three days. And on the fourth day, I went into the delirium tremens. The delirium tremens are caused by dehydration of the neurons in your brain. And the only way you get that is, or the best way to get it, the most common way, is that you drink too much for a long period of time. And I’m talking about probably a quart and a half or so of booze for several days and weeks and a day. And that damages your brain. And so you go into this and you begin… The neurons of the brain misfire. And you see things that are not there. You’re actually psychotic. And you also don’t see things that are there. It’s a terrible thing to happen. Well, it happened to me started on Saturday morning after this Thursday.

I’d had two or three days in there that I hadn’t had any booze, and I was totally… I nearly… See, I tried to drink myself to death after I failed to kill myself. And that’s when I woke up. Anyway, I went into the delirium tremens and I began to have all these things happen. And in the meantime, I had said to Jesus, “I’m not going to leave this room until You come and get me.” Well, He did. And He came into the room. I didn’t recognize Him because He had a blue uniform on with brass buttons and a pistol on His hip, you know. So it took me to the hospital. And I got to the hospital and they gave me a shot that was codeine-based which further dehydrated me and caused me to really go bonkers and went wild. So they put me in a straitjacket and tied me down in a bed. And there, about an hour later, I had a convulsion and I died. And my heart stopped. And they revived me. But in the meantime, Jesus came into the room and I was sitting there. I remember standing and looking at my body, writhing in agony in this bed tied down. And I was in my death throes, so to speak.

And I didn’t feel any pain. And now, Jesus was right here on my right-hand side. And we spoke mind to mind. I don’t know how to explain this any other way. And it really was not a communication. It’s before I would even, just about the time I thought the thought I was aware of the answer. And I remembered a scripture that says, before you call, I will answer. And this is the way it was. And I have to report it like a conversation. It was like it was in my head. It really wasn’t. And I knew one thing. The most important thing I knew at that moment when I was standing there looking at me and here was Jesus, I had just had a complete review of my life in about one second. Which is, I couldn’t do that in the natural. But in there, in the supernatural, I got to see it all at once. And it wasn’t very pretty. But there was no condemnation, you see. None at all. He was there. And it was, I just, I acknowledged it. It just, it happened. And, you know, I was set aside from it, so to speak. Because there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ. Now, I don’t know what people are going to do that don’t know Jesus when they have this happen to them.

Because I believe this happens at death. That you’re going to see your life right there. And it would have, I would have curled up and died inside if I had not had Jesus there with me. And in the love and forgiveness I felt for Him. But I knew one thing. And this is something I want you to hang on to. Because I ran into it in another place. It’s everything is all right. That’s all there is to it. When we get there, you’ll understand everything. And I did. I understood why it was necessary to have things like the Holocaust and all the horrible wars and things that we did, that all of this was necessary for God’s glory. And I understood. I don’t understand it now. But I did then. Everything is all right. Several years later we went to England and up there we got to a town called Norwich. And there is a saint there called St. Julian of Norwich. And you all are aware. And she has in her showings, she had like 17 showings or something. She had a near-death experience from the Black Plague and everything. And then afterwards she wrote about it and meditated on it for 34 years. She was an anchoress. She built a place on the side of this St. Julian’s Church there in Norwich.

A small area for one little bed and just enough room to move around in with a window to speak to the people. And she lived there for the last 45 years of her life or 50 or whatever it was. She was a young woman. And it’s called an anchoress or an anchorite. They anchored themselves to the side of the church. That was one of the things and they prayed constantly and they offered spiritual advice for the people who would come up and talk to them. And they had a little window from the church side that they gave them food and this sort of thing. Anyway, one of the things she said in there that all manner of things shall be well and all shall be well. If you remember, if you ever read that. And I thought, boy, that is what all manner of things shall be well. Everything shall be well. And that’s what I knew. I knew that at that time. It was… It’s an incredible revelation. And so, anyway, as things went on, on this, why, directly, I found myself, and I don’t know exactly how, sitting on the bed, and Jesus was behind me, pushed the bed, and we went right through the wall there. And it opened up like an old-fashioned camera.

You know, it just opens up like this. And then it was kind of Venturi-shaped. And so that was my tunnel that I went through into the sunlight. It looked like rural Arkansas. I hadn’t even seen Arkansas at that point. And I couldn’t see the hand of man anywhere. But it was beautiful. And there were birds in the air and blue sky and white clouds. And it was in the fields. And people were out there in the fields, people that I knew that had died and gone on. And a great peace. It was just wonderful. And, anyway, we went through a lot of experiences on this that I don’t need to go in detail on. And finally, we stopped. And I looked over to my left, and there was… It was flat on the bottom and curved just like a railroad tunnel in the side of the mountain. Totally black. No reflection of anything coming out of there. And I knew that that was the gates to hell. And I thought He was going to throw me in. At this point, He said, “I want you to go back.” I said, “Yes, Lord, I’ll go back. You bet. Another shot at this thing. Give me another chance.” And so, then we went down, and there I was standing beside this river.

It was a… Let’s see if I can back up a little bit. It won’t get quite on me. The river looked like… I found the river later. It was the upper Rhine. And it was flowing from my right to my left. And it was 50, 75 yards wide. It was clear and cold. I knew it was cold. And on the other side was a flat, level plain. In the distance, I could see the lights. It was dusk. And I could see the lights of a city. Couldn’t see the city, just the lights. And the Lord said, “I want you to dive in the river, swim across, put one foot in front of the other, and don’t look to the left or the right. Walk to that city.” And I was holding an anvil. About 50-pound anvil was tied onto my neck. And I said, “Lord, what am I going to do with this?” And so He reached up and, like a bow knot, it dropped to the ground. And He said, “That’s the weight of all your guilt. Past, present, and future.” Got rid of that for me. And that was what was killing me. It was the weight of my guilt. So I dived in the river. And also, I said, I want you to be Catholic.

I said, okay. Yes, sir. And I thought, as soon as I got out of this thing, I rationalized. I said, yeah, I’m Anglo-Catholic. You know, that sort of thing. But anyway, I walked towards the city. I swam and got through it. Now, these experiences are real. It’s not like a dream. I could feel the cold water. I mean, it was just as real as talking to you. This hallucination is really something, the DTs. And you see, I was still in the DTs. And then as I walked maybe 100 yards, I must have blinked or something. And then instantaneously, I find myself back in the bed. I’m strapped down in the thing. It’s 10 o’clock in the morning, or 10 minutes to 6 in the morning. And the vision is all over. And I had, at that point, I had a decision to make. Was that the delirium tremens or was it the Lord? And so I chose to believe that it was the Lord. And it came to me in the midst of my vision. And the only way He could really do that, because I was seeing all these other crazy things that couldn’t exist anyway. And it didn’t frighten me to see. I think if Jesus would manifest Himself right now, right here, in our midst, it would scare me to death.

I don’t know about you, but it would really, it would be something to be. But anyway, I went from there. And I was, I was doing, I thought they were trying to kill me and kidnap me. Back in my DTs and still in them. And I thought they were trying. So I tried to escape from the hospital. And somehow I got out of that straitjacket. But I don’t know how. But I got out and I tore the whole hospital room up. And I tried to kill the deputy sheriff that came after me and everything else. And they locked me away for three days and three nights in a padded cell in Chaves County, New Mexico. Now, New Mexico jails are just like Mexico jails. I’ll tell you, they’re not pleasant. And they didn’t give me any food for three days, just gave me water. And I had to go to the bathroom in the cell itself. And there was no place to sleep. There was concrete on the bottom. And then the sides were there. It was a very interesting experience. But the Lord was with me in that. And I wasn’t alone. And then my brother came and got me. And they had these felony counts of attacking a officer and all these things on me.

And so he got me out of that by getting me committed to the state mental institution in Oklahoma. This is what I was sent up there. Very fortunately, I was allowed to sign myself in as a voluntary commitment, 90-day commitment, at the state mental institution at Norman, Oklahoma. And that’s… So I’m a graduate of Griffin Memorial Hospital.

Norman, the people from Norman know where that is. That’s the east campus of OU, is what we call it like that. It’s on the east side of town. And the University of Oklahoma is there in Norman, Oklahoma, for those that you don’t know. And then, while I was there, some interesting experiences happened, too. I don’t know how I got off on this, but I think I’m going to have to tell it. But they sent me… When I went into the room, they had a war that was maybe as long as from here, the telephone pole back there, and each about… Oh, I don’t know how many… 15 feet square, I’d say. And then there were brick squares and one entrance into it. But you could see up over the top of it, and it was kind of glassed in. You could see all the way down through the thing. They had two beds like this, and then three beds like here. There was five of us in here, all crammed in this little space. And they assigned me this bed right here. Now, the guy here on this bed was… His total response was he just lay there and drooled and then moaned a little bit, and that was it. They hadn’t even zonked out on Thorazine.

They were giving us all of us Thorazine. And then the guy in this bed right here, of the three, the far bed, his total response to the world was he lay and sucked on his thumb. He was in his 30s and wet his britches and acted like a baby. And the guy in this far bunk down here, now, he was the calmest guy I’ve ever met in my life. They had a rocking chair for him, and he sat there and he smoked incessantly, and it’s just as calm and cool as he could be. He just had one problem. Every time he got a sharp instrument of any kind, he tried to cut his wrists. You know, so… And this was in the unclassified violence section in there. And then they’re criminally insane. Because I’ve been violent, and they didn’t know what I had, and they didn’t have any idea. Now, the guy in this middle, I’ve saved him for last. Because as soon as I got ready to lay down in this bunk, it was about five o’clock in the afternoon. I hadn’t slept in a week. And I was tired. And he came up and he said, “That’s my bunk.” And I said, “I don’t know who you are, but I just… The guy in white told me that’s my bunk.”

I was coming out of the DTs at this point. And I didn’t know really, truly whether that was real or not. Because a lot of things in there, you’re not real sure what reality is. So I… I said… He said, “Well, the Holy Spirit told me this is…” You know, I said, “I don’t know anything about the Holy Spirit. And I know that this is my bunk.” And finally, I had to just threaten him, and I’d break every bone in his body or something. He was a big kid. Just a kid. 21 years old. And… Anyway, why… Finally, he kept coming back over there. And I said, “Who are you?” He said, “Don’t you recognize me?” And I said, “No, I don’t recognize you. I never saw you before in my life.” And he said, “I’m Jesus. Come back to earth.” Oh, boy. And I said, oh, here we go, you know. And so, he said, “Do you believe that?” Now, I said the magic words. It came out of my mouth right now. I said, “I really don’t know. I don’t even know if you’re here. I don’t know if I’m here. You could be. You know what I mean?” And so, then I said, “But whose body are you in?” Like that. And God, I’d prefer to call you by the name of the person whose body you’re inhabiting right now.

Oh, he says, “Carl.” And he gave me his last name. And so, I said, “Okay, Carl. All right if I call you Carl?” “Yeah, okay.” And so, he would talk to me. Now, he’d gone catatonic. He’d been there for three months. And every time a doctor or anybody else would get around him, he would just go within himself and wouldn’t communicate with anybody. So, anyway, why, he followed me around like a puppy. I came out of this thing and then in about two weeks I was sent over to the continuing alcoholic program. I convinced him I was an alcoholic. And by the way, if you ever get thrown in a mental institution, the way you get out is you tell them what they want to know. Don’t tell them the truth. Tell them, tell them what they want to know and he’ll get you out. That’s the truth. You can figure it out. That’s what I told Carl when he got out too. But, Carl wouldn’t talk to anybody. And when I was getting ready to leave, he was terrified because now he was able to communicate with people and everything. And so, I even went to, took him to mass one time on a Saturday afternoon and right, and the priest was getting things ready and had a little place over there.

So, he gets up, walks up, opens up the lectern Bible and proceeds to read from there, you know. Oh, my. And of course, everybody out there is in the nuthouse, you know, and the thing. And so, directly he gets done with this and he comes down and sits down. I said, “Carl, don’t do that.” He said, “Why not? They’re my people.” I thought, well, I got no answer for that, you know. He was really a nice, nice young man and since he followed me around just like a puppy, I had total control on him and when I got privileges for the grounds, I could take him with me. That’s where he went to that. Well, anyway, Carl, I told him, I said, “Carl, I’m leaving,” and he was just terrified. And I said, “You have to talk to these doctors.” And he said, “I’m not going to.” And I said, “Carl, let me tell you something. You’ll stay in here the rest of your natural life. You’ll never be able to let Jesus have His message to the people. So whatever the message that you come for, Jesus, in Carl, then you’re going to have to talk to those doctors or they’ll never let you out of here.” And I convinced him that’s what it was.

And he began to talk to the doctors. And before I left, he was going home on his first weekend pass. And he did eventually get out. And it was really interesting. I figured out what that boy’s problem was. And he asked me, he had a call to the priesthood. He also had a girlfriend like you did, Gene. And he couldn’t reconcile the two. He had a powerful cause to be a celibate priest. But he wanted to get married. And finally, it came down to him and he was from a wealthy family. And what he did is he just went catatonic. And now he was Jesus. Well, we are all Jesus, aren’t we? Here on earth, you see? And so he wasn’t so far-fetched after all. But he did get out. And I’m sure he resolved the whole thing. That’s the only way he would have been able to do it. But I wondered, one time I asked God, why did You let me go into the state mental institution like that? And He said, “For Carl.” And that was the reason. I come to these CFOs and I give all these talks and everything and sometimes they’re entertaining and people ask me back. And hardly anybody ever remembers what I say. That’s the truth. I mean, absolutely.

You’ll remember a little bit of it, but it won’t really have much application to you. But there will be one or two or three people here that I’ll talk to one-on-one. And that’s the ones that the Lord sent me to talk to. And that’s what He wants me to do. And that’s what the main ministry that I have is to be to that one or two. And I don’t know who they are. I have no idea. Always turns out that there’s at least one that needs to sit down with me and unburden their soul and we have to talk and God gives me something to say. Anyway, I got out of the mental institution and by the way, the state of Oklahoma has certified me to be sane. I have a paper that proves that I am sane. Do any of you have a paper?

You’re not certifiably sane then. That’s all there is to it. Oh, mercy. I have another way of looking at the spiritual life and spiritual growth that I think is interesting. It’s like there is a rowboat and there are two seats in the rowboat. The one in the rear has the oar that you, I mean, the rudder and they have the tiller there so that you know where it is. And that’s where Jesus sits. And I’m in the front there in the middle seat and I’ve got the oars and I’m pulling on the oars. Now, it’s not hard. It’s a real slow-flowing river. Very, very low down like the Mississippi and just not moving very fast. And I just row along and He steers me around all the rocks and whatever is necessary. And He’s so loving and gracious and we have fellowship one-on-one and it’s really great. That’s my spiritual growth. Now, if I get tired of rowing, Jesus is so loving and kind, He’ll let me steer. And I can steer to my heart’s content but He won’t row. It’s that simple. And I want you to meditate on that for a little bit because my job is to do the rowing on a daily basis and His job is to steer me. And that’s what…

And to love me and this sort of thing. But surrender is very difficult. The first three steps of AA are what I call the surrender steps. First of all, I admit that I’m powerless over alcohol or sin or anything and institutions, principles, people and places and things. That’s the way I feel. I’m powerless over everything. Found that in Scripture by the way. Jesus said, “Without Me you can do nothing.” It’s in John 15. Look it up. It’s no thing. Nothing. Not at all. Can’t do anything. Worth doing, of course. I can do a lot of evil but I can’t do any good of any kind without Jesus. So, I am powerless. I’m powerless over the circumstances of my life. I’m powerless over people, principles, places, things, anything. Things. And my life has become unmanageable. Huh. I thought I could manage my own life. Well, 41 years of self-improvement program, I found myself on my hands and knees in the dark with six days growth of beard and puke all over me. That’s my… in the dark and insane. Now, that’s my self-improvement program. And when I surrendered to Jesus, that changed. And it began to change right away. And everything began… Like I say, I won the war. And things began to go uphill from there.

Everything I have has been given to me by the Lord. And I think that’s true for all of us. Did you choose your grandparents, great-grandparents, parents? Did you choose when you would be born? What color your eyes would be? How tall you would be? How short you would be? You didn’t choose any of that, did you? Did you choose your intelligence? Whether you were an idiot savant or whether you were a genius or anything in between, did you choose any of that? I didn’t. I had an ambition to try to make money. Where did that come from? It came from the Lord. It got me doing things. It made me go to college, get an education, all this sort of thing. That came from the Lord. And in order that I would understand it, really, the Lord took everything away from me. And I had nothing. I was there where I had no… no resources, no anything. And when I surrendered to Him, I had nothing to give Him except me. And then everything that I have that has been given back to me by the Lord, He has given me everything. So it all belongs to Him in the first place. You see? And I don’t… Anything that I possess materially, spiritually, physically, any way at all, He has given to me.

He’s given me a strong, healthy body. I’m real happy for that. I’m grateful for the Lord that I can do things at my age that most people don’t even think about doing. And I don’t know how long that’s going to last. As long as it is, I’m going to keep doing it. And I’m going to ski and hike and bike and do all the things that I can, and I praise God for doing that. But all those are gifts. Just a gift. That’s all there is to it. So I can’t brag about anything, can I? I think Paul says that. “What is it that you have that you haven’t been given?” he said. So if it’s been given to you, can’t you give it back to other and share it with other people? And that’s what I try to do.

A few more minutes of trying to… There’s a strange talk and I… there are… a lot of images that I have like the… May Peach thing that God gives me and lets me see things in a life that I can see. I’m visual. You might have understood by now. But I see things in… I don’t think in words. I think in images. That’s one of the… There are two types of people. Some think in words, some think in images. I think in images.

And the first step, of course, is that… you must admit that you’re powerless. Absolutely, you can’t do it. That’s all there is to it. And that your life is unmanageable. Second step of AA says… And I’m going to give you a lot of AA because I think that’s the spiritual base from which I operate. Like that, it’s psychologically sound. It’s spiritually sound. And the most important thing is it works. That’s all there is to it. It works for drunks. It works for overeaters. It works for gamblers. It works for anybody. A 12-step program, there’s a hundred different kinds of the 12-step programs. And so the 12 steps do work. Second step says, “Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.” There we go. I came to believe. Now, I didn’t take that first step, I mean that second step, until I take the third step because I didn’t know whether God could restore me to sanity. I didn’t know that He could relieve me of my alcoholism. But I took the third step and it says, “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over the care of God as we understood Him.” There you are. So, as I can understand God is… I hope You’re there.

And I surrendered everything that I had which was nothing. But I really, truly, I don’t think until I was completely broken of everything, I don’t think I ever would have surrendered. I have too much of this I can do it in me. Like that. And when I got to where I knew I couldn’t do it, I surrendered. First three steps then says, and I’ll give you the short form, is that I can’t, He can, I guess I’ll let Him. And that’s exactly what it is. Three steps. The continued surrender that you do and the thing, and all those steps require prayer. Have you noticed that? All three, the first three steps, all 12 steps require prayer, by the way. Just as anything requires prayer. And if you don’t live in an attitude of prayer, you’re not growing spiritually at that time that you’re not living in an attitude of prayer. When you’re in attitude of prayer, you’re growing spiritually. Does that principle work with you all? Okay? And I’ll run through the steps because I think I’m going to talk about them in a couple of days when I come back. And I’ve got just about enough time to go through them. The fourth step is probably the most important step there is. Because it said, “We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

Well, I didn’t do that. I made a not very searching, fearful, immoral history. I mean, I did the whole, you know, there’s four points of that. I did the whole thing wrong. But it was all right because I got that stuff coughed up that I needed to. And because the fifth step comes up and it says that I admitted to God, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs. Woo! Here we… I knew I was going to have to talk to somebody about it and tell them just all the things that I had done. Which I did. And it helped. The sixth step became entirely willing to have God remove all these defects of character. This step is the most neglected step in AA and everything there is. Remember what it says. Became entirely willing to have who? God remove these defects of character. Now you don’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps. I’m going to be better. I’ll make resolutions on New Year. That’s… Forget it. You… And then the second… The seventh step says humbly ask Him to remove our defects of character. See? Now just humbly ask Him. So we pray again. We became willing through prayer to let God change me. See, that’s what I said.

Change my will as You see fit. That’s prayer. Just change me. Please, God, I can’t change myself. We have a serenity prayer that we do every meeting with. It says, God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Well, I went through that and the things, you know, let me accept the things I cannot change, which is everything. And the courage to change the things I can, which is nothing. And it didn’t take much courage to do that because I can’t change anything, not even me. And the wisdom to know the difference. And I know the difference. And the difference is I have to depend upon Him for everything. And if I’m not dependent upon God, I’m not progressing. That’s all there is to it. And if I’m doing it in my own steps, I’m building wood, hay, and stubble, as Paul called it, on a shaky foundation. And it won’t be long until I get this edifice all up and it sure is beautiful and everything else. And God will come along and just wipe it out like that. See, that’s it. Let’s start over. Let’s do this thing right. And He will show me how to build my buildings and do what I want.

The eighth step is He made a list of all the people that we’d harmed and became willing to make amends to Him. Boy, now we’re getting some toughies here. And then the ninth step said, “Made direct amends whenever possible, except when to do so would harm them or others.” And this is what I call the cleanup steps in the middle. First of all, you surrender and then you clean house. That’s the middle steps are cleaning house. The maintenance steps are 10, 11, and 12. 10 says, “Continued to take personal inventory. And when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.” That’s an order. That’s something to think about. Do you promptly admit when you’re wrong? I don’t. I mean, I don’t go as long as I used to. I used to deny it to my dying death. I’d give a breath. I thought, but no, I’ll finally, in just a few minutes, I’ll, okay, I’m wrong. I’m sorry. Most magical words in the world for interpersonal relationships. I was wrong. And when I admit I was wrong, the 11th step is my prayer step. I sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry it out. Now, what is the purpose of all prayer?

It’s to improve our conscious contact with God, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t know any other reason for prayer. I can sit and pray for the whole world, God bless the whole world, do all this sort of thing. It won’t mean a thing unless God’s told me to do that. And I have to have, like I say, I have to surrender first and begin to feel the presence of God and be aware of the presence of God, have a conscious contact with Him, and then say, God, what is Your knowledge? What do You want me to do? What would You have me to do? And the last step is that having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other people and other alcoholics, but other people, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. This is a real tough place to go through. It’s a spiritual how to do it. That’s how to live a Christian life. If you want to see written down in concrete form and a plan of action in which you can live a spiritual life and grow spiritually, this is it. The 12 steps of A.A. I’m convinced it’s all scriptural. Every bit of it is derived from the Holy Scripture and from Christian tradition and everything else.

It’s really great. The confession. Confess your sins one to another. It’s what James tells us, James, that you may be healed. Like that. We don’t do that, do we? We don’t confess our sins one to another. And here, it’s really not our sins. It’s the nature of our wrongs. And when I found out what the nature of my wrongs, I’m going to go just about five or ten minutes over time, if you don’t mind any more, if you.

In the… When I did the fourth step, the way the Big Book tells you to do it, I’ll go through it in detail, so you have to write it down now, because I think I will talk on that anyway. Is you get a loose leaf notebook like this that opens up, and you draw a line down the middle of each page. It leaves four columns. And so you write in the first column down there, your resentments and angers. We’re getting rid of negative things. You know, everybody that you’re mad at, or everything you resent, the IRS, the United States Government, Bill Clinton, you name it. Just, you know, resent all this. Just write it all down. I mean, you can write 30, 40, 50 names of things and people, but you don’t go across yet. You just go down. And then when you fill this page up, you turn it over and get the next page. You see what I’m saying? And you just keep going until you’ve got four or five pages of this, or however many resentments you’ve got, or you can come up with. And then when you finish with that, then you stuck the next column, and the next column says, why am I angry? Why? And, you know, just, and very, very briefly, even ten words or less, say why it is that you’re mad, or whatever it is.

And then the third column says, what does it affect? And in this, I’ll go into some detail on it so you can see it. And you see what it affects. And the pattern becomes clear as you do this. And then on the fourth column, you have observations. You make observations based on that third column, like that. And what you see is you see a pattern of behavior in there, and that’s the nature of your wrong. You see what I mean? And that’s what you’re going to admit to God, to yourself, and to another human being. I have yet to meet a person in AA who ever did that fifth step right, or the fourth one either. Fourth one, pretty good. But the fifth step never did it right because rationalization comes in. You’re going to admit to God. Well, He knows all about it. He’s, you know, right there. So I don’t have to tell it to God. And to myself, I’ve got it written down right here. What am I going to do? Tell it to myself? You know, this is admit to myself. Well, what I suggest that they do now, and that helps, is when you admit to God, you go someplace in a chapel or out here in the beautiful… Get totally alone, where you’re alone and nobody can hear you.

Have your fourth step inventory with you. And you read this out loud to God because you need to hear it. And that’s the truth. You confess with your mouth. You hear with your ears what you confess with your mouth. Salvation comes along. Do you understand what I’m saying? And Paul in… Where is it? In Romans, where he says, “For if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ and believe in your heart that He’s been raised, you know, from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness and the confession is made unto salvation.” And it must be confessed. So you confess this to God. Then you confess it to yourself. And there’s two ways I suggest you might can do this. You can do this by looking in a mirror and then reading this thing to yourself in your mirror in your bathroom or someplace like that. A much better way is to use a two-chair gestalt. How many of you know what that is? Know what it is? Okay. You put two chairs out here. And you sit down in one of them and you put yourself spiritually in that other chair. And so you read this list to yourself. Then you go over and sit in the other chair and you respond to yourself then out of your subconscious what you just heard.

And I’ll guarantee you it’ll be different. It’s interesting. And by the time you have done that, it’s no problem at all to look up some other fellow or somebody to talk to or a priest or whatever. And then you can confess this real easy there. It’s no problem at all. Now, what happened to me one time, I…

My company, when I worked for a major company, Sunway Oil Corporation, my boss told me when I went out in the field, because they didn’t pay me anymore and I worked 24 hours a day out there, that they had compensation for this in the form of your expense account. Now, when you go out in the field, everything is provided for you by Halliburton and all these other service companies to the thing when you’re watching the well drilling. And so you can’t buy a thing. I mean, they’ll give you whiskey. They’ll give you everything in the world. Just amazing. And they have a place for you to sleep and take showers and eat. You can’t buy a meal or anything else. And so they said, so many dollars a day for the food and so many dollars a day for the motel. And here’s the motel where you can go get a receipt and fake it. You know what I mean? It’s just like that. And I was just all but ordered to do that. And it didn’t bother me because it gave me some extra money. And so I enjoyed that. That was fine. So now this, I did this. And then years later, I’m about third time I’m going through my fourth step. You don’t do this once.

You do it several times. And once is, you know, great. But in about a year, you’ll find some more things you need to deal with. So I was going through there again. And I thought, you know, I took money from my company. But what I did is I lied to my company. And so I wrote down there, I lied to my company about my expense account. So I got to this point and I sat in a chair and I read this thing. And I said, “I lied to my company about my expense accounts.” I sat over there and said, “No, you didn’t. You stole. You stole money.” Oh, I hate a thief in the worst way. Petty thieves of all. And I are one. It’s just awful. You know, and then I found out that I’m not a liar. I’m a thief. I’m also a liar. I could accept lying. But thievery was something I just, you know, I don’t do that. Yes, I did too. And then I said, Lord, how many other ways have I stolen? I’ve stolen credit by being quiet when somebody was telling me something that they were giving me credit for something I didn’t do. And I didn’t correct them. That’s stealing, wasn’t it? Do you do any things like that?

Boy, I found a bunch of ways I stole. Really great. Well, I’ll get into that when I get into another talk. But the main thing that I want to talk about, or want to reiterate to you this morning, is that it’s not possible to live the Christian life unless you surrender. That’s all there is to it. Now, you can try it all you want to, and you’re going to fail. I guarantee you’re going to fail. There’s nobody ever been able to do it except Jesus. Jesus is the only one because He is the Christian. He is Christ. And He can live the Christian life because it’s His life. But we can’t live His life in our own strength. You can’t learn all about Jesus. You can’t follow Him and imitate Him. It will not work. What you must do is surrender to Jesus every day and say, what would You have me to do today? What’s on the agenda today? Sometimes He doesn’t say a thing. Just you’re on your own time. Just have fun. You know, relax. And there’s nothing to do. Other times He said, you need to go here, there, or what. And you better go. Because you get blessed if you do. It’s really great. Thank You, Lord. We just praise You for this morning.

And I ask You to take anything that I’ve said that might be amiss or harmful to anybody and just expunge that from their memory. Help us, Lord, to stay surrendered to You the rest of this day. Please help us to love You more perfectly. And I just got reminded. I’m going to read this thing and that will be the end of this talk. Those of you who would like to join me in this, I’ll read it so you can come back responsibly. Lord Jesus Christ, I abandon myself to You.

I give myself to You just as I am. I give myself to You just as I am. The good, the bad, and the indifferent. I hold nothing back. I give You my fears, my resentment, and my anger. I give You my powerlessness, my failures, and my defeats.

I make You Lord over all of me. I renounce everything that is not from You or of You. Give to me the power and grace to love and serve You. Fill me with Your joy and Your peace. Have mercy on me and help me this day.

Lord Jesus, if I should change my mind later about all this, then do it anyway in spite of me. I give You my will. Change it as You see fit. Deliver me from my self-seeking. Make me into one who helps others. Make me into one who helps others. And desires to do Your will. And desires to do Your will. Amen. No matter what I found out about resentment, anger, and fear, well, it’s marvelous. Learned this through practicing these principles.

Resentment is when I remember that I didn’t get my way in the past. Anger, I’m not getting my way right now. Fear, I suspect I’m not going to get my way in the future. There you are. Great. Thank you. Thank you.