Singing In the Ratty Barn

Singing In the Ratty Barn

by John Parke

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

In my talks, we will be talking about the abundant life. Living abundantly. First of all, perhaps we should ask ourselves, what do we mean by living? What does it mean to be alive? If you look at the billboards, the advertisements along the highways, sometimes they would suggest that being alive is more in terms of a whole succession of physical sensations in life.

I remember one in the past year where you see a boy with a sandwich, some certain kind of bread, and it’s covered with peanut butter and jelly, and he’s really taking a big bite and a big bulge in his mouth. And he’s saying, “Mmm, this is living.”

Oh, I saw another billboard which shows a little cocktail glass with a cocktail and a cherry in it, and it says, “Live a little.” Or you see another one which shows a young couple driving along a highway, speeding along in an open convertible, and the girl’s hair streaming behind, and the caption again, “This is living.”

In other words, the idea, perhaps, would be that living is a lot of wonderful sensations. The joy of eating, or the joy of drinking to some people, or the joy of fast cars, or fast company, or parties. Now, sometimes you hear a young person say, “Well, you’re only going to be here on earth once. Live it up. Live it up, man.”

Now, is this living? It is living of a kind. It’s part of life. And I know that God wants us to enjoy all of the good things of life. Jesus enjoyed His food. He enjoyed His drink. And sometimes they accused Him of being a glutton and a wine-bibber. He enjoyed good food. And I’m sure that God wants us to enjoy all of these things of life.

I love food, and I don’t especially like alcoholic drinks. I don’t care for the smell or the taste or what they do to us. But we know that all of God’s creation is basically good. It’s a question of what we do with these things. Some of these things do hurt our bodies. We have to be careful.

But I love so many things. I love a fast car. I’m sure I’d love to have a Thunderbird, but I never quite felt that I could afford it. I love to dance. Perhaps that shocks you. But I love to dance. I love things that have a lot of rhythm to them. And I think there’s a good kind of dancing, and maybe a wrong kind of dancing, too.

I love games. I love parties. But all of these things are just part of life, a very small part of life. And if this is all of life, well, then we are going to be very disappointed. Because it ends up in a sense of meaninglessness and emptiness, frustration.

We’ve got to look a little bit further than just material sensations and the succession of these things day after day. Many years ago, Saul of Tarsus felt that he knew a better answer than this. He knew that life was a lot more than just these physical pleasures.

He felt that the way to life must be the way that he had been taught in his Hebrew tradition. It’s the way of getting in harmony with the laws of God, obeying God’s laws. And all of these laws have been gathered together through the experience of many centuries of his race. And were put together in what was called the Torah.

And Saul believed that, now if I can only learn all of these laws and really obey them, why then, I’m going to have a wonderful life. When Saul went out to do a thing, he wanted to do it well. He was a perfectionist. He wasn’t going to be half-hearted in this living. He wanted to live life to the full. He wanted to be the very best Jew possible. And so he joined a sect that was very strict. A group called the Pharisees.

And the Pharisees’ purpose was to try to keep the law to perfection. Every little law, whether it was a ceremonial law or one of the great moral laws, let’s try to keep the law to perfection. And Saul worked at it. And he tried hard to keep all of these laws. And among the Pharisees, he was one of the best.

But the very disappointing thing he found was that he wasn’t a very happy person. He found himself very frustrated. And nervous and tense. Unhappy inside. And he couldn’t understand why. Oh, he was trying so hard to keep these laws. But some of them, he found, were pretty hard. Particularly these moral laws. “Thou shalt not covet.”

And the more he tried to follow that law and not covet things, the more he felt within himself this great urge to want things that belonged to other people. Our great coveting desires would well up within him. And he was very angry at himself. And oh, so frustrated. Instead of being a happy, joyous person, he said that he just felt wretched.

And while he was feeling this way, he came in touch with some of the Christians. Now he found that these Christians seemed to have a great deal of joy. And they seemed to be relaxed and happy. Just bubbling over with love for each other. But as he inquired more about what these Christians believed, he began to shake his head. And no, this is certainly not right. They’re off the track. They’re not very strict about these laws. These laws of God that we’ve learned. Why, they don’t feel that this matter of circumcision is very important. They’re not too strict about keeping the Sabbath day, as strict as we are, at least.

And as for this Jesus that they believe is the Messiah, why, Jesus was crucified, nailed to a cross, died. And the law says right here, “Cursed be any man that is nailed to a tree.” Jesus must be cursed. The law says so. And so he wasn’t ready to go along with these Christians. Rather, he felt they’ve got to be stamped out. They’re a bad influence. We’ve got to put an end to this sect. And so he got the authority to start arresting some of the Christians. And you remember, he arrested Stephen.

Stephen, a very young man, probably in his early 20s, fine-looking boy from a Greek family, and a very deeply converted Christian, and a very outspoken one. Paul, or Saul, arrested him. You remember he was brought up before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, the great court of 70. And Stephen made his defense speech that we read in the book of Acts.

And we read that in the course of this speech, people looking at Stephen saw his face. It shone like the face of an angel. It was obvious that this was a good man, a wonderful person. And they listened with great intent. But when Stephen came to the end of his speech, suddenly he seemed to have a vision. He said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of God.” And they stopped their ears, and they ripped their shirts, and they ran forward, and they grabbed him, and they dragged him out of the city, and stoned him.

And Saul was in charge of the stoning. But during the days that followed, we can be very sure that Saul had a very uneasy conscience. He felt very disturbed by that wonderful face of Stephen that shone like the face of an angel. No doubt he was disturbed by those words that Stephen had said as he died. “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”

What a wonderful spirit this young man seemed to have. And it haunted Saul. And no doubt he found it hard to sleep at night. But he was determined that he was going to stamp out these misguided Christians. And so he got authority to go on up to Damascus and arrest more of these Christians. And then you remember, on the way to Damascus, that marvelous conversion experience. And as he walked along the road with his friends, suddenly this light that shone from heaven, blazing light, and Saul fell to the ground. And he heard this voice saying, “Saul, why are you persecuting Me?”

And Saul said, “Who are You, Lord?” And the voice said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the pricks,” pricks of his conscience, I guess. And Saul said, “Lord, what do You want me to do?”

And the Lord said, “Arise and go into Damascus, and it shall be told you what you must do.” And then suddenly the light was gone, and they were all amazed, having heard this voice, but having seen no one. And they found that Saul was blind. And they had to lead him into the city of Damascus. And for three days he was without sight. And we remember that after three days he was visited by one of the Christians who had been guided to come, a man named Ananias. And God had told him that Saul had had this experience. And Ananias came in and said, “Saul, do you believe in Jesus, that He is the Christ?”

And Saul said, “I do.” “And will you repent for your past ways and make amends?” And he said, “Yes, I will.” And then Ananias says, “Then I will baptize you in the name of Jesus Christ.” And Saul was baptized. And after that baptism he felt like a new person. Suddenly all the tension of life seemed to be gone. Suddenly he had discovered that he had been on the wrong track. That the way to joyous life is not trying to screw up your courage and your willpower to obey a lot of laws. You must live in harmony with these laws, that is true. But it isn’t just doing it by your own willpower. But rather by relaxing and believing in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and praying that His power and His life and His love may live in you and that His Spirit may guide you.

It was a whole new revelation. And he began to live that way from then on. Every day now he began to surrender his life to Jesus Christ and to listen for God’s guidance as to what he was to do next. We find that he was guided to go many places. One time when he was in the city of Troy during the night he had a dream. And you remember in that dream he seemed to see a man from Macedonia who was saying to him, “Paul, come over and help us.” It was a very vivid dream and he remembered it in the morning. And he told his friend Silas about this dream and he said, “I believe that God is calling us to go over there to Macedonia.”

And so they were surrendered to whatever God wanted them to do. And they took a ship and they went over to Philippi. And there in Philippi you remember they didn’t know a soul there, but they began mingling with the people, and on the Sabbath day they went down to the riverside where some of the Jews gathered together for a service. And they joined them.

And Paul began teaching them about how Jesus was the Messiah. Some of them were skeptical, but some of them believed. Among them was a very prominent woman named Lydia who sold a purple cloth. And other influential people too. As they walked through the streets of Philippi you may remember that there was a girl who was somewhat psychic. She told fortune. She was a clairvoyant. And she made a lot of money for her owners. And this girl kept bothering Paul because she kept shouting out, “These men are servants of the Most High God. They have come to show you the way of salvation.” She would say this over and over again. Well, it was true. They were servants of the Most High God and they had come to show the way of salvation. But she was a bit annoying. And suddenly one day Paul turned around and he said, “I command you to come out of her in the name of Jesus Christ.” And suddenly her psychic gift seemed to leave her and she was completely normal and rational. And when her owners suddenly saw that their source of their livelihood was gone, they were very angry at Paul and Silas, and they stirred up the people against them and had them thrown into jail.

And you remember, because of the uproar the jailer put them in the innermost dungeon and put their feet in stocks. Well, was Paul discouraged? Not at all. In the middle of the night they had a little prayer group, Paul and Silas together. You might say it was a little CFO meeting. They started singing hymns and the other prisoners were listening.

Completely relaxed, happy, joyous, even in jail. And then you remember how the earthquake came and the doors of the prison flew open and some of their chains fell off. And the jailer, awakening, was terrified, and he thought all the prisoners had escaped and he was going to commit suicide with his sword. And Paul called, “Stop, don’t do that, we’re all here.” And the jailer came in rather terrified and he said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

And what did Paul tell him? Did he say, “Now sit down here and I’ll tell you some of these laws that you want to learn, and you try to follow them in your life and you’ll find eternal life”? No, he didn’t say that at all. He said, “Believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, you and all your household, and you shall be saved.”

And the jailer took him and washed his stripes on his back where he had suffered from beatings, took him in his house, and Silas too, and Paul instructed them in the Christian faith, and the man and his household were all baptized. And then you remember the next day they were released from jail, and Paul helped to get the little church in Philippi started, and it was a wonderful church, but he had to move on, and we believe that he left Luke in charge of the church in Philippi.

But he often used to write letters back to them, keep in touch with what they were doing, and this was perhaps his favorite church. Sometimes when he was in trouble they would send him help, and a few years later when he was again in prison in Rome waiting to be tried before the court of Caesar.

Once again the people in Philippi heard about his imprisonment and they sent one of their number, Epaphroditus, with a gift for Paul, and he was very deeply touched. And he wrote a letter back to them to thank them for their thoughtfulness and to encourage them and to stir up their faith, and that is the letter that we have in our New Testament, the epistle to the Philippians.

I want to read this letter with you this week and try to get the feeling, the spirit of this man Paul, a man who had surrendered his life to Jesus Christ. So will you turn, those of you who have your Bibles this morning, would you turn to the epistle to the Philippians. Remember, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. I love the way those words roll along. Philippians. I’m going to be reading from the Phillips translation of the Bible, and you can try to follow along with perhaps some other translation, but this particular one certainly makes it very understandable. A very sort of warm, friendly letter. This was written about the year 62 to 64 A.D. And Paul is writing from Rome. And he is in prison.

Paul and Timothy, true servants of Jesus Christ, to the bishops, deacons, and all true Christians at Philippi. Grace and peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ the Lord. We can imagine that Paul was dictating the letter and Timothy was doing the writing.

He says, I thank God for you Christians at Philippi. Whenever I think of you, my constant prayers for you are a real joy. But they bring back to mind how we have worked together for the gospel from the first. I feel sure that the one who has begun His good work in you will go on developing it until the day of Jesus Christ. It is only natural that I should feel like this about you all. For during the time I was in prison, as well as when I was out defending and demonstrating the power of the gospel, we shared together the grace of God. God knows how much I long with the deepest Christian love and affection for your companionship. God knows how much I am. My prayer for you is that you may have still more love. A love that is full of knowledge and wise insight. I want you to be able always to recognize the highest and the best. And to live sincere and blameless lives until the day of Jesus Christ. I want to see your lives full of goodness, true goodness, produced by the power that Jesus Christ gives you to the praise and glory of God.

If you have a pencil, I’d like you to underline in your translation, it may say, “just through Jesus Christ.” And what it says here, let me repeat it. I want to see your lives full of true goodness, produced by the power that Jesus Christ gives you to the praise of God.

We’ll come back to that in a moment. Now, concerning myself, I want you to know, my brothers, that what has happened to me has, in effect, turned out to the advantage of the gospel. For first of all, my imprisonment means a personal witness before Christ, before the palace guards, not to mention others who come and go. That it means that most of our brothers, somehow taking fresh heart in the Lord from the very fact that I am a prisoner for Christ’s sake, have shown far more courage in boldly proclaiming the word of God.

I know that some are preaching Christ out of jealousy in order to annoy me. But some are preaching Him in good faith. The motive of the former is questionable. They preach in a partisan spirit, hoping to make my chains even more galling than they otherwise would be. You see, some of these other Christians were a bit jealous of Paul.

But what does it matter, he says? However they may look at it, the fact remains that Christ is being preached, whether sincerely or not. And that fact makes me very happy. Yes, and I should go on being very happy. For I know that what is happening will be for the good of my own soul. Thanks to your prayers and the resources of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. It all accords with my own earnest wishes and hopes, which are that I should never be in any way ashamed, but that now, as always, I should honor Christ with the utmost boldness by the way I live, whether that means I am to face death or to go on living.

For living to me means simply Christ. And if I die, I should merely gain more of Him. I’m going to ask you to underline that, too. In yours, it may say, “to live is Christ.” For living to me means simply Christ. And if I should die, I should merely gain more of Him. I realize, of course, that the work which I have started may make it necessary for me to go on living in this world. I should find it very hard to make a choice. I am torn in two directions. On the one hand, I long to leave this world and to live with Christ. And that is obviously the very best thing for me. And yet, on the other hand, it is probably more necessary for you that I should stay here on earth. And that is why I feel pretty well convinced that I shall not leave this world yet, but shall be able to stand by you, to help you forward in Christian living, and to find increasing joy in your faith. And so you can look forward to making much of me as your minister in Christ when I come to see you again. But whatever happens, make sure that your everyday life is worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I do come and see you or merely hear about you from a distance, I may know that you are standing fast in a united spirit, battling with a single mind for the faith of the gospel, and not carrying two straws for your enemies.

The very fact that they are your enemies is plain proof that they are lost to God. While the fact that you have such men as enemies is plain proof that you yourselves are being saved by God. You are given in this battle the privilege, not merely of believing in Christ, but also of suffering for His sake. I like that, the privilege of suffering for His sake. It is now your turn to take part in that battle you once saw me engaged in, at which, in point of fact, I am still fighting.

Now, there is the first chapter. Now, if you will just look back a moment to, I guess it is verse 11. I had you underline that, “through Jesus Christ.” Now, I want to see your lives full of goodness produced by the power that Jesus Christ gives you.

You see, Paul had discovered that that goodness is something you don’t just produce by your own power. He had discovered that to his own great sorrow. He said, “The good that I would, I can’t seem to do. The evil that I don’t want, that I practice.” And that’s what made him feel so wretched. Because he was trying to do it in his own strength. But after he became a Christian, he learned that goodness is produced by self-surrender to Jesus Christ.

Turning your life over to Him and praying that His power and His love and His goodness may live in you. And then he found that he could begin to live that way. Self-surrender. And then down below, again, where I had you underline, “to live is Christ.”

Or as it says here, “for living to me means simply Christ.” Or in still other words, living is surrendering your life to Christ and letting Him live in you. This is living. Not a series of sensations and pleasures as part of life. Or not just obeying a lot of laws and a moral code. But living is surrendering your life to Christ and letting Him live in you. And then you have real joy in all of these physical pleasures of the world. A deep kind of joy. You enjoy life to the full. And you find that you are beginning to live in harmony with the laws of God. Living is simply Christ.

Going back in that paragraph to about verse 12, notice how Paul is just filled with joy about so many things. Thanking God for everything. Thanking God that even his imprisonment is a good thing because it’s an opportunity for him to witness to these palace guards. An opportunity for him to witness to all these people that are coming and going to see him. Thanking God that his being in prison is giving courage to other people to speak out a little bit more boldly.

Thanking God that even some of these people who are jealous are coming out and speaking boldly even though maybe their intention isn’t quite right. Still, he’s just happy that they’re preaching Christ. And that’s the main thing. He thanks God that even maybe he’s going to die because he knows that if you’re living close to Christ that death is not going to be the end, but it’s going to be a gain. It’s a step upward. You’ll have only more of Christ in the life beyond. You’ll be closer to Him. And so he says, “I’m in a quandary. I don’t even know whether I’d rather live or die.”

Maybe I’d rather die because that’s going to be even better. And so he’s just thankful for everything. And a person who has completely surrendered his life to God has this unbeatable spirit. If a person is thankful for everything, even the hardships of life, why, you just can’t beat that kind of a person. It reminds me of Francis of Assisi, another of the great disciples of Jesus living back in the 12th century. Remember when Francis came to the end of his life. He was even then just in his early 40s. But he lived a very full and wonderful life. He had been stricken with cataracts, I believe, and so that he was blind. They had tried to operate on these cataracts and sear them off with hot irons. And the terrible pain. And they were not successful. And Francis knew that he was dying.

Well… Must be time to stop. Almost. Francis knew that he was about to die, and they were carrying him back to his favorite little chapel, St. Mary of the Angels in Portiuncula. And on their way they had to stop at an old barn that night. And it was full of rats. Nobody could get any sleep. And Paul was… I mean, Francis was singing. Just singing to the top of his lungs. And somebody said, “Francis, how can you sing in a place like this?” And he replied, “Oh, I can sing because I know that I’m doing the will of God.” When a person has surrendered their life to God, they can sing all the time. And you see, the circumstances don’t seem to make very much difference. You can be joyous in an old ratty barn. You can be joyous in jail. You can be joyous in a hospital.

Sometimes people feel that the circumstances of life are going to make all the difference about whether they can live or not. They might say, “Well, how can I live when I live in this old dump, this crummy old house, this smoggy city? How can you live when you’ve got to work at this monotonous job every day? How can you live when you’ve got to live with this impossible husband or this nagging wife?”

“How can you live when you’ve got a backache all the time?” The truly surrendered Christian is one who knows that the circumstances of life aren’t going to make very much difference. He will simply say, “Lord, I give You my life. I pray that You will fill me with Your love and Your power and Your understanding and Your wisdom and Your healing life.” And somehow, as the Christian surrenders all of these difficult situations to God, wonderful things seem to happen. The crummy old house suddenly becomes a lovely home. And the monotonous job suddenly becomes interesting and exciting as you find new ways of serving Christ in that job. And somehow, those impossible husbands and those nagging wives begin to be a bit different when the love of Christ is flowing out through you toward that person.

And sometimes you become a much different person yourself. And as the love of God is flowing through you, the healing power begins to take away the backache and the rheumatism. You begin to feel a different person. You’re happy and you’re joyous. And even the plain-looking person begins to look beautiful and they’re filled with the love of God. So it is, as we surrender our lives to God, we don’t have to change our house or our job or our husband or wife. We don’t have to have a new body particularly. But as God lives in us, the circumstances change.

Now, these are the things that we are learning as we come here to the Camp Farthest Out all through this coming week. We are going to learn about self-surrender. And we do it in a variety of ways. In a few minutes, we’re going to be doing it through rhythms. A lot of us come rather tense and tied up in knots.

And our bodies are just that way. And you’ll find that sometimes people, as they come out to rhythms the first day, and maybe they’re asked to do what we call a figure eight, you’ll find that they’re all tight, and they just sort of wave their arms around a little bit like that. And then as the week goes on, they begin to relax, and let go, and let God, let go, and let God, and they get into the spirit of the music. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. And their whole body begins to get into the rhythm of it, and they get loose all over, and you’ll begin to find that’s true of you. And your neck will get loose, and your arms will get loose, and you begin to feel like a different person. And you get your body limbered up, and then your spirit begins to limber up, too. Same way with our creative arts this afternoon, or creative writing. You don’t sort of screw up your eyebrow and, “How do I do a pine tree,” or something. Or, “How do I write a poem? I just don’t know how to write poems.” No, you don’t just try hard to do these things. You just relax, and you pray that the spirit and inspiration of God will just flow through you, beauty, and ideas, and somehow as we let go, and relax, and surrender ourselves to God, wonderful things begin to come through.

And so it is, too, with our music, a very important part of our self-surrender. We let go, and the music. We sing with all our hearts. I just love that song that I was sharing with you last night. “Sing till the power of the Lord come down.” You just get release. You feel the power of God coming into you. And sometimes you’ll find that Wathia wants you to do some of these motions and sway your body, and you think this is kind of stupid, and it’s pawing the air as you climb Jacob’s ladder.

There’s a reason behind these things. It gets you out of all your self-consciousness and your inhibitions. You begin to let go. Let God live in you, and just be like a little child. It’s good for you. And you begin to feel a different person. And so, too, in your prayer groups and your periods of silent meditation, what are we doing but just relaxing, getting in tune with the Spirit of Jesus Christ and feeling His presence, letting His life just flow into us to meet all these problems that we have. This is the purpose of the Camps Farthest Out, to bring you into this feeling of self-surrender to our Lord Jesus Christ.

One of the great CFO leaders is one who has passed on now. He died just at the end of the Redlands camp a few years ago. His name was Dr. John Gainer Banks. He wrote this little poem which expresses these ideas. It’s called “Daily Surrender.”

Every day is a fresh surrender. Every morn is my life renewed. Day by day to Christ I tender the golden hours by His grace endued. Every thought once again is yielded. Lifted above the reign of sin to Him by whom I am daily shielded from war without and from stain within. Every desire is consecrated. Sing, my soul, for the glad release. Every faculty liberated. Shout for the power of sin doth cease. Now I am free to serve the highest. Now is the work of Christ begun. Now no longer my soul thou sighest. Today the kingdom of God is won.

Now this is a daily surrender. It isn’t something we do just once, but a thing that we keep on doing, as Elizabeth said this morning, every morning, the surrender of your life to God. “Lord, fill me, use me, guide me, inspire me.”

And we ask God just to take control of our lives. And when we do, we begin to experience the joy of the kingdom. And when you make this self-surrender in your life each day, you have found the first secret of abundant living.

I’m going to close this session asking you to join with me in singing, “Have Thine Own Way, Lord.” “Have Thine Own Way, Lord, have Thine own way. Thou art the Potter, I am the clay. Mold me and make me after Thy will, while I am waiting.” Amen.