The Over-Introduced Chauffeur

The Over-Introduced Chauffeur

by Homer Martin

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

Well, praise God. Had some conversation with Mary Virginia in the hall. She has seen lots of camps, been in lots of camps, and I have too. And together that would really make quite a number, wouldn’t it, if we told them.

And this camp is more special than you probably know. That amen came out of John Critchfield, who has been around lots of camps, who has been on ACR several years, who’s chairing that ACR now. And he knows, as Mary Virginia does, and as I do, what a camp should be. This camp is what a camp should be.

It’s just real joy. Leaving in the morning means that I’ve got to just give you the full load tonight. Oh, praise the Lord. There’s a chance to steal Mary Virginia scripture. Well, I thought that was just great myself.

For us to be that much in a flow. I thought that was just great. Wanting to share some with you. I believe really concerning harmony. You see, I choose to believe that the way God has made the universe, the way He’s made all of His creatures, and the way He has made man and woman, that everything is to be in harmony. I choose to believe that.

I choose to fully believe that He wants us in such harmony that we really, in essence, make beautiful music together. You go along with that, Kelly? That it’s that way. Problem is, we don’t always understand what harmony is. I’m certainly not going to try to give any kind of a music lesson. I don’t know that much about it. They may have so many fine musicians present they would know that I could err from time to time.

Nevertheless, harmony comes from our living a way of life. And our way of life is following the way who is life. I appreciate so very much that Jesus was narrow-minded. That may wonder with you for a moment, but He was. In John 14:6, He says, “I’m the way, the truth, the life.” And I choose to believe that. If He said, “I am the best way,” then I would have had to wonder which other way there was. I would have had to make a choice about various ways. He said, “I’m the way,” the only way. It means it’s no other way. He says that “I am the truth.” It means that everything outside of Him is a lie.

He said, “I am life,” so everything outside of Him is death. Now, whether or not you choose to believe that with me, you know, make your choice. But that’s the way I see it. I choose to believe it just that way, that He is who He says He is. And when we tell other people about this Jesus, can you believe that in a sense we are making an introduction?

I hope you can. Oh my, there’s various kinds of introductions, aren’t there? There was… This probably didn’t happen. Get ready, Mary Virginia. It probably didn’t happen, but it could have. This family had a maid who was a live-in maid. She was a single person and they were trying to play Cupid.

There were friends of theirs down the road a ways who had a chauffeur. Live-in chauffeur. And so, they began to talk to their maid about all of the marvelous relationships this chauffeur had. They were trying to encourage him, really encouraging her to accept a date with him. And finally, the time came whenever the chauffeur asked the maid for a date.

And her employers kept on bragging about him and lifting him up and telling attributes and fine qualities and whatever. And so, the night for the date came and the maid left the house about 7 and she was back about 7:30.

The lady of the house said, “Like, what happened?” She said, “Ma’am, that was the most over-introduced person I ever saw in my life.” And I am thankful that we don’t do that in CFO. Really, in CFO, I think we’re somewhat like Paul who in one place is writing what’s like this. If you’re wanting to think about credentials, I’ve got as many as anyone. And he lists a long list of his credentials and do you remember what he finally said about his credentials? He says, “I count them dung. I count all things loss” outside of Christ. And so I’m thankful that when I was to speak and also heard the same thing when Mary Virginia was to speak, you weren’t excited, none of you, about trying to list credentials that we might have.

We don’t claim any. And I’m not trying to claim for Mary Virginia, but I know this lady pretty well, having been with her on numerous occasions. And her credential claim is for her Lord. My credential claim is for my Lord. And a part of what I will be doing tonight is giving you some insight that I have gained from the Apostle John as he was, in essence, making an introduction of Jesus. A lot of this comes out of the first epistle of John in the first chapter. This is where my thinking has been nudged and this is where I’ve tried to be on the growing edge with it and come into some understanding about it.

When people wrote letters, when people wrote epistles, and I really think instead of calling this an epistle, it was a love letter. It had direction in it. It had many helpful points in it. So often, we start our letters out “Dear Whosoever,” even if we don’t mean it.

So often, we’re really not concerned very much about really who the other person is on the other end of this correspondence. We should be, but so often we aren’t. And when John began to write to those who would receive this letter, he said something like this.

“I’m writing you about someone who was there in the beginning.” And when he writes about the beginning, he’s not talking about some kind of a beginning like we could identify, like time to go eat fish is five o’clock. And I did my share.

Time to come in for the singing is 6:30. Time for this, whatever, you know. This isn’t what the Apostle John is talking about. The word that he uses says that in the beginning, this person I’m introducing to you, He was already there. The beginning goes back and back and back and it identifies in this way. Whenever it was that all of this got started, no matter what that time was and I can’t put a handle on it, but Jesus was already there.

That’s the way he’s making this introduction. I really believe that during a part of my life I had some kind of an understanding like this, that God created all of this and created the people and long, here’s Adam and Eve, they make all these mistakes and others come along and they make mistakes and it runs like a roller coaster. They’re good for a while, bad for a while and it all goes to pot just about and the Lord says, “Hmm, I’ve got to do something about that.” I think that I felt a little bit in that vein but John is setting this straight. He’s saying this person I’m introducing you to, He’s been here all along. As a matter of fact, He was there when all this was created which says to me that God knew all along the exact time He was going to send us this Jesus. Exactly. And He wasn’t late and He wasn’t early. And He came. John calls Him the Word of life, giving an introduction about Him, giving a testimony about Him.

We sing this song in CFO, have for years and years and years, “He’s all I need.” Is that right? Oh, it really is. Oh, I’ll ask that again. Is that right? Okay. Yes, it is right. He’s all I need. And brothers and sisters, when we say that, sometimes our intellect is not really getting hold of what we just said. He is all that I need, all that you need, all that we need in any kind of circumstance of life. And the problem is that once in a while Satan sneaks in and says, “That’s not really true.”

As a matter of fact, He expects you to do everything you can on your own. I hope you don’t believe that. Anything worth doing has got to have Jesus in it. Anything not worth doing, let it alone. I saw a cartoon a long time ago. You see, when things succeed, we tend to really get hold of it. When things fail, we tend to look around to see who we can point at. We may even say, “God, did You really know what You were doing in that circumstance?”

And this circumstance includes this sort of thing that I want to share with you. This was a cartoon I saw a long time ago. And it showed a preacher sitting at his desk. And he was pouring over his sermon notes.

There was a door open into a nearby room to his study and it showed two ushers in there. And they had the collection plates with them and they were just piled high with money. It was even falling on the floor.

The caption underneath this cartoon was, the preacher says, “I must have said something.” We get in traps like that. Things go so great and they succeed so much and we begin to think, “Hey, I must have had a real part in that. I must have been the one that steered the boat. I must have been the one that did everything to get where it’s supposed to go.” But John is divesting himself of this sort of relationship as he’s introducing Jesus.

He’s saying, “I want you to know this Man. This Man I’m talking about has been here since the beginning and to let you know that I know what I’m talking about, I have looked at Him with my own eyes. I have heard Him with my own ears. I have hugged Him with my own arms.” Loose translation at that point. He says, “I’ve handled Him. I’ve touched Him.”

I hear the man saying, “This Jesus is real.” Well, you see, beloved, whenever I tend, and I do want to, to copy that, to emulate that in my life, I cannot say it as John said it, that I have seen Jesus with my eyes. Now, I realize that there are people alive today who miraculously have seen Jesus. I know that I’m not one of them.

But I can see Jesus in you. I can see Him as Carol as she leads us and sings. I can see Him in Kelly as she plays. Mary Virginia as she speaks and not to overlook any of the rest of you. I can see Jesus in you wherever you are, if you know Him, if you love Him.

And so this helps me whenever I’m introducing this Man. And what helps me also is if whoever I’m talking to about this Jesus, if they can see Him in me. Without me having to say, “Don’t you see Him in me?”

And right away they can say, “No.” But if I don’t mention that, maybe right away they can say, “I see Jesus in that old boy in spite of all that he does.” I have been able to hear Jesus in people. Just as John was testifying, I’ve heard Him speak. Just as John would be saying, “Oh, I’ve seen this Man when He healed the sick, I listened to Him whenever He called Lazarus from the grave.”

I choose to believe that that was such a miraculous event that whenever Jesus was there and the scripture says He shouted with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.” And you know I’ve kind of thought on it this way. If He hadn’t said “Lazarus,” He would have emptied that whole graveyard. If He… I truly believe that. I’m that simple. That if He hadn’t pinpointed who He wanted to come out, everybody would have come.

Now you do with that whatever you need to. But He had that kind of power. John would be saying, “I heard Him when He spoke things like that. I saw Him hug the little children when they came to Him.” Boy, isn’t this a tremendous introduction to make of a Man.

“I’ve loved Him. I’ve leaned on His breast at the table. I’ve held His hand as we have walked down the street.” You may say, “Homer, are you kind of drawing on your imagination there?” Not really. I remember when Evelyn and I were in Jerusalem and we saw grown men, Jewish men, walking down the street holding hands. And it was a sign of love between men. It wasn’t anything that we thought that was funny or strange or lewd or whatever. No, not that. These men loved each other with a brotherly love. And you know, people who just drop in on this lodge out here and see all of us hugging and patting one another on the back and first one thing and another, they may have strange thoughts, but that’s their problem.

Praise God. That’s their problem. They can do with it whatever they want to. We are living in these few days here the manifestation of who Jesus is and it’s an introduction. This helps explain to me, Charlie, why the people in the dining room and elsewhere out here, the people who wait on us, who serve us, who meet our needs.

This says to me that they’ve got hold of what we’re trying to manifest, who we’re trying to demonstrate, how we’re trying to live. And you know, we could write a dissertation on that and try to tell the management out here of how much they should appreciate us and it won’t mean a thing. What means something is what we do when we get here. What means something is how we live in the rooms that we sleep in. What means something is how we conduct ourselves in the dining room when we’re there. What means something is how we behave on these premises. Can you believe that with me? It’s true. We are introducing Jesus.

We may be, and try this on for size, we may be from time to time the only Jesus that some people see all day long, or maybe all week long. Have you ever been in circumstances where you just felt so alone that you felt like the prophet of old and looked around and said, “There ain’t nobody but me.”

He said, “I don’t see anybody else.” And the Lord showed him a cloud of witnesses, did He not? But there are times, brothers and sisters, when we are maybe the only witness whom God has on the premise at that time.

And we have to introduce this Jesus and tell people who He is. John was doing the best he could at it. And he didn’t take nine pages to do it. It only took just three verses, really, to get along in what I’m talking about here at the moment. And then he begins to sum this up and he says something like this, “The reason that I’m telling you about this person is so that you can have fellowship with us.”

Stop and think why you invite people to CFO so we can have fellowship. Now I’m going to submit something to you and I hope you don’t take it wrongly. Fellowship, as it’s talked about in New Testament, fellowship, as it’s experienced between Christians, this is a relationship that is utterly impossible to have with those who don’t know Christ. Can you accept that? It’s absolutely true. Therefore, I come to this kind of relationship in that description of that word, in that definition of that word, I cannot fellowship with sinners.

Now that doesn’t mean that I don’t associate with sinners because Christ did. He would go home and have lunch with them. We can have lunch with sinners. We can drink coffee with sinners. We can do lots of things with sinners but we should be in the Christ-like attitude just as He was when He went home with Zacchaeus. He’s there to bring Zacchaeus in a right relationship with the Father. He’s introducing the Father to Zacchaeus through Himself.

And we introduce people really through who we are. We can tell people about Jesus until we turn blue, and it doesn’t make much difference until they can see an effect that this Jesus has made on us, the one we’re introducing. And so John says, “The reason I’m doing all this, I want you to have fellowship with us.” And he says, “What I want you to know is that I’m not asking you just to come join our church.

I’m waiting on you.” Because he says, “Our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son.” You know, we get it all messed up from time to time. We go out evangelizing. We go out serving the evangelism committee. And we call on prospect cards of newcomers that have come to town, people who maybe even visited our church one time. And sometimes we go into their presence, we knock at the door, and we say something like, “We want you to come join our church.”

And you know, I really just wonder what would happen sometime if the prospective member would just look the visitor in the eye and say, “What for? Why?” I heard about a lady that was on an evangelism visitation committee, and it was her first time. She didn’t really want to go, and she was really torn up about it. And they said, “Look, come on, let’s pray.”

So they prayed before she went out, and she was back pretty soon. And she was just all elated. And they said, “Well, how did it go?” “Oh,” said, “that prayer really works. And I prayed, wouldn’t anybody be home?”

But that’s honest. Has anybody ever asked you that question? When you say, “I want you to come join our church.” Why? What for? And if that has happened, maybe you said something like this, “Oh, we have such a wonderful program.

We’ve got this, we’ve got that. We’ve got a bus to pick people up. We have youth programs to do this, that, and the other. We go on hay rides, et cetera, et cetera.” And they just kind of look at you.

Brothers and sisters, I’ve never yet seen a program that sold people about Jesus. Now, I’m not against programs. I’m not against taking kids on hay rides. But what I am for is keeping it up front. We’re doing this because of Jesus. We’re trying to introduce people to Jesus. I’m recalling that in Maysville, Oklahoma, where I spent a great deal of time my last pastorate there in that little church. There are four years. And one of the things that we did, we would take the youth out on a spiritual life retreat. And when they went on the first one, they had such thoughts as, “We are going to have a ball.” You know what boys think about is chasing the girls. And some of them think about putting salt in the bed and short sheet in the cots and, you know, all sorts of dumb things.

But what they soon began to learn that this preacher is kind of strange. He expects us to sit through Bible study. He wants us to go to prayer group. He wants some kind of change to come spiritually in our lives. Yes, that’s right. That’s what this preacher wanted. We load them up in the bus. We took them out to the Methodist assembly ground there where we were. And we were teaching these kids about spiritual growth. And you know what happened? They liked it.

They were interested in learning about Jesus, being introduced to this Jesus. And you may say, “Well, Homer, weren’t those church kids?” Of course. Who didn’t know Jesus, most of them. And those who knew something about Him didn’t know very much about Him. And we would take them out and we would introduce them to Jesus. Oh, we would play some volleyball. We would stroll on the beach of the lake that was there. It wasn’t near as pretty as this lake out here, but we’d walk on the beach of it anyway.

And we’d pray together. I remember one night, I think it was our last night at this particular retreat that we were on. We had divided the kids into two prayer groups. We had so many, we got them into two prayer groups and we were praying together. And it came time, we needed to dismiss and get out of the building we were in because we were on a Methodist campground and they had a certain hour that they wanted that building closed. Well, the only problem was the kids weren’t ready to close. They started another prayer group downstairs. They all got in one prayer group. And this wasn’t anything that I instigated. Evelyn didn’t either. We just sort of stood off at one side and watched. And it just kept going on and kept going on. And after a bit, Evelyn looked over at the superintendent of the campground out there and she said, “Sir, I’m sorry that we’re holding you here so late keeping this place open.” And he replied to her, “Ma’am, I wouldn’t stop that for anything in the world.”

These kids were introducing each other to Jesus. They were experiencing fellowship in Jesus. They really didn’t know a lot about what the Word was, but praise God, I’ve come to understand that we don’t have to understand a lot we do to have fellowship with Jesus. Do you believe me there? Praise God, we don’t even have to know how to pray to have fellowship with Jesus. I’m not putting down that we need to know how, Mary Virginia. I certainly don’t mean that. But even while we’re learning, we do the best we can. Amen. And she’s agreeing with that sort of statement. And that’s what they were doing.

Moving in a relationship as best they could with the Master and learning as they went along, being introduced to who Jesus is. Oh, what an impact. These were teenage kids. Some of them weren’t in their teens yet. I may have already mentioned that parents got so they wanted to come with the youth. Not to oversee them, but to get in on what they were doing.

And just last March or April, I guess it was, I had a letter from a man who’s now married and he’s got two kids of his own. He’s living in Louisiana, but at this moment in the letter he wrote me something like this. “Dear Homer, I’m out in Colorado. I’m west of Denver. I’m on top of a mountain and I’m fasting and praying and I want to write you. And I want to thank you for the change that came in my life because you as a Methodist minister came my way and under duress began to teach us about the life and the Spirit. And it changed my life.”

Brothers and sisters, that was a treasure. It was a treasure. He was thanking me not for what I did for him personally, but for the Person to whom I introduced him. A fuller relationship as an introduction into Jesus. A relationship of an introduction to the Holy Spirit in the fullness of God. And he wrote me that kind of letter. And so he was getting hold of this relationship of fellowship with the Father, with the Son, that expresses itself in the community of the believers.

And the epistle goes on to say that the reason this letter is being written, “I want your joy to be full.” A better translation of the pronoun there is, “I want our joy to be full.” Our joy to be full.

So, when I look at this term fellowship, I like to put it in the context of harmony, harmonious living, and getting back to what I was saying earlier, I don’t know very much about harmony. But I do know this, that harmony always involves more than one note.

And I do know this, that as the other notes begin to come in, they have to be in a disciplined manner. And they’re coming in the right key, whether it’s four sharps or whatever you reduced that to a while ago, or three sharps. It’s got to be in the right key. It’s got to work together for harmony to work.

And I come to understand that everybody has got to be in tune. There’s a term… Kelly, you can help me here. In all of America, I suppose that the vast majority of instruments are tuned to the 440A. Is this correct? Correct.

Which means, and you can correct me anywhere I need help here, which means that there is a position on the musical scale to which the instruments tune, which means that if this piano is in tune with 440A, they could pick it up and carry it to Tulsa, Oklahoma. If there’s another piano in tune with 440A, they can make beautiful music together there.

Same way with horns, same way with guitars. If all of these instruments are tuned to 440A, they can play together. They can make music together. And the reason I’m saying that is to give you this kind of thought that I have about my Lord, Jesus. He is the Mr. 440A.

He’s the one with whom everybody’s got to be in tune. I don’t invite you to tune up with me. I invite you to tune up with Him and then we can make music together. We can play together. Years ago, this sort of thing happened in Ardmore, Oklahoma. We used to, at least one night during the camp, we’d have what we called an afterglow. And our afterglows meant that whoever could carry an instrument, bring it, and we would meet in some kind of a locality and we would make music, whether it was a guitar or a banjo or a violin or whatever, you know, if you can carry it. All we had to do was be in tune and we can play and people can sing and we can enjoy it. And this was harmonious fellowship that we had together. And one evening, a young lady who was a very dear friend of mine and Evelyn’s, Janie Dacus was her name at that time. She’s married now. She came in with a beautiful 12-string guitar which she knows how to play. There was just one problem. She started to play and she’s out of tune.

And so we say to her, “Janie, you’re not in tune with us.” And I don’t know if you know anything about tuning a 12-string guitar but that takes a while. So, one of the other players, Bill Godfrey, I think, was with us. I know he was. And I think either he or I gave her one note that she got in tune at that moment and she left. And we went on with the fellowship and the singing and the harmony that we were making and after a while she came back and she had her instrument in tune and we began to play and things went right on. Does this say anything to you about Christian living? It should. I don’t stay in tune, do you? I need help. I don’t always stay on key, do you? I need help. Sometimes I am so out of tune I don’t really have any business in staying with the fellowship because I may affect them in the way that I feel. And I need to go out and do some more praying. I need to go out and do some more aloneness with God. I need to go out and do some more confession and repenting. I need to do something to get back in the harmonious relationship where I can come and be with a group.

Do you buy that sort of thinking? I think it’s realistic. I think it’s spiritual. As a matter of fact, I think it’s in the heritage of Methodism because when John Wesley was having the Holy Clubs on the campus and some of the brothers would fall out of fellowship and Wesley knew it when they came to the meeting they couldn’t get in.

They had to go get prayed up. They had to go get forgiven. They had to go repent. They had to go make it right with God and come into the fellowship. Now whether or not you want to knock that or accept it, that’s what he did. And I think it worked out pretty well from time to time. It really did.

We kept on in this same meeting I’m telling you about. And those of you who play guitar will know what I’m talking about. When you are playing with enthusiasm, you understand? Really hammering the strings. You can hit a string so hard you’ll knock it flat. It gets out of tune. And after a little while I must have been doing some of this because Godfrey looked over at me and said, “Homer, you got one out.”

But this one was minor. And I could bring it up right there in just a moment where we were and get back into the harmony of the relationship of the group. And does this say anything to us? This correction then take place on the spot.

It can happen right then. We saw it here tonight. The change of a key where it needed to be. A correction that was blessing to all of us. It helped the thing flow. Y’all noticed that, didn’t you? Praise God. It’s helpful to us. Wasn’t that somebody is out of it. It’s that we needed a little change there.

We as Christians fellowshipping together with the Father and with the Son, trying to stay in harmony together with the Father and the Son, we have to express that in harmony with each other. And brothers and sisters, if we can’t be in harmony with each other, we’re sure not expressing harmony with the Father and the Son and the Spirit. Are we? No way as I see it.

And we have to be in tune. We have to come into a greater understanding of what being in tune really means. The harmony, the harmonious relationship of being what God would have us be. I know many years ago, you see, to rephrase a statement I might have made earlier, I don’t always see things as they are. I don’t always hear things as they are. And John has spoken a lot about seeing and hearing and touching.

Sometimes I completely misidentify. I can even do this when I’m trying to be in harmony with a group. I can do this when I hear a chord on the piano. And a part of this comes out of my Air Force training many, many years ago. Well, it wasn’t Air Force then, it was Air Corps.

And they took us in a room which they soon turned out the light. It was very dark and the instructor was up in front of the room and he had a flashlight that almost the entire lens was covered. There was just a small pinhead type hole in it. And if that’s the only light in the room you don’t have any trouble seeing that.

And so he had us focus our attention on that. And after a bit he began to say something like this. “Which way is the light now moving?” And maybe some said to the left and he said, “All right, that’s right. Which way is the light now moving?” Some say to the right, “That’s right.” After a moment he said, “Well, which way is the light moving?” And we kept looking and we kept looking and someone said, “Well, it’s moving up.”

And someone said, “No, it’s moving down.” And we got into quite a discussion about this and so he flipped the light on. The light wasn’t moving up nor down, it was resting on a stool. And our eyes had played tricks on us. And he began to explain to us that this is one of the things that happens sometimes when aircraft were trying to follow each other in formation and they were seeing a steady light on one or the other plane. It seemed that this thing was moving in a way that wasn’t moving and others would try to follow in that kind of relationship.

And so aircraft put on a blinking light that’s easier to follow. And you may wonder how that fits. I confess to you I don’t always know what harmony is. I confess to you that some of these chords that are so magnificent that take in the whole hand, thumb, fingers, the whole thing, and Kelly’s nodding, they do this. I don’t know how to make those chords, but I know how to listen to them. And sometimes I don’t know how to appreciate them, but I need to learn more about appreciating. Have you ever been in a really valid situation of the Lord that you didn’t know how to appreciate? I have too. And I had to grow into it. I had to learn how to appreciate that kind of harmony. I had to learn how to appreciate the way things were done in this fellowship instead of like where I came from. Or someone comes along and introduces a new type of chord.

And I say, “I’ve never heard that before, and we’ve always had this one.” Well, translated in churchese, it says, “We’ve always done it this way.” I’m laughing now, but there’s been times when I didn’t laugh about that. It didn’t come out that way.

The harmony that comes from serving Jesus as to who He is. The harmony that comes from fixing our total attention on who He is, what He is, how He is in His relationship to us. It’s the only thing that helps us do this old phrase, make beautiful music together. Father, I know that, well, one of my very favorite hymns throughout the years has been “Amazing Grace.”

I guess part of that is because the older I get, the more I realize I need it. But it’s still one of my favorite hymns, and I enjoy it, and I continue enjoying it. And wouldn’t it be a dumb thing if while Carol is leading us in all these beautiful things that she does, that just because I love “Amazing Grace” so much, I would just sing it out loud at the top of my voice while y’all are singing something else?

That happens, doesn’t it? And it disrupts the fellowship. It disrupts the harmony. It disrupts what’s happening in the group. The Lord gives us a discipline in this fellowship. A discipline that has to focus on Him. A discipline that says that we keep moving in this framework, keep practicing, keep daily, more than rehearsing. Many, many years ago when I was a kid, my mother who was a pianist and who really appreciated music, Paderewski came to our town, and she took me to hear that great man. And oh, it was a joy. I just thoroughly enjoyed it, young as I was, because he played some pieces that I had heard my mother play, and he did them so magnificently, and I enjoyed them. And one of the things that Paderewski is reported to have said, and I’ll try to get this exactly right, he practiced every day. How many hours? I don’t know. But day after day after day after day, and he made this kind of statement, “If I miss one day, I know it. Am I doing it right, Carol?

And he says, “If I miss two days, my agent knows it. And if I miss three, my public does.” Now, brothers and sisters, I tell you something about our relationship with Jesus. Miss a day of prayer. Miss a day of Bible relationship. Whether or not you read it, or whether or not you hear it, or whether or not somebody tells it to you, or whether or not you think about it, something involved with the Word. Miss a day, and you know it. Miss another day and your family knows it.

You get grouchy. You get out of sorts. And if you miss it much more than two days, I don’t know. To get fit to live with again, we got to get back in the framework of things, of making harmony, of making music together, of playing on the same sheet of music, of more than being in tune. That’s not enough.

My guitar is up in the room and it’s pretty well in tune, but it doesn’t do any good there if I want to make music with it, does it? I’ve got to have it with me. I’ve got to be ready to go. I’ve got to be ready at a given moment to sing as best I can with it. Isn’t it marvelous that I have Evelyn who sings so well to sing with me? Praise God. The Lord gives you what you need. I needed somebody to sing beautifully. One of the first things that Evelyn and I did together, and this is just a little extra I’ll toss in.

We were about 11 years old. And we sang a duet in the Methodist Church in Wichita Falls, Texas. Praise God. Yeah, it was. “Standing on the Promises.” I don’t suppose I ever sang that hymn without thinking about it.

Well, not only that, we used to hold hands in church. Did you men ever notice that you can hide your hands with a songbook and kind of hold hands underneath the songbook? Well, that was harmonious. See what it led to? 42 years next month. Praise God.

Evelyn and I haven’t always necessarily played on the same key, haven’t always necessarily been in harmony. But we’ve been willing to be tuned. We’ve been willing to be re-strung. We’ve been willing to be worked on. And we’re willing for more of that to happen. But we realize that there’s music we haven’t yet made with our lives. That there’s more to it than what we’ve yet done. There’s more blessings that can come. You see, one of the magnificent, marvelous blessings of music is the one who is doing it and the listeners can all be blessed at the same time. Does Mary Virginia and George speak? Oh, yes. You can tell it when she does it. And one Sunday morning in pastored, I think it was in Maysville, Oklahoma, I had given my message and I was standing out the door. People were coming by and some person said to me, “I enjoyed that sermon.” I looked them right in the eye and I said, “I did too.”

And I was sincere. When I sing a tune I like, I enjoy it. When I play a tune I like, I enjoy it. And when I’m ministering for the Lord, if I feel that I’ve done what He wanted me to do, I enjoy it. And it’s a blessing to be flowing in the harmonious relationship of who Jesus is.

This is the kind of introduction that I understand the Apostle John to have been given his Lord. Given it in such a way that it was not misunderstood. Given it in such a way that people could say, “That man believes what he’s saying. That man believes what he’s writing.” Have you ever known people who speak to you with tongue in cheek? And you almost look at them with question marks in your eye. Do they really line up with what they’re saying to me? And John does. He knows what he’s talking about. He knows the one he’s talking about. He spent time with Him. After Jesus ascended, John kept on spending time with Him. John kept on talking to Him in prayer. John kept on relating to Him.

Not just in his memories, but in his love and in his cooperation and in his utilizing of the harmonious relationship that Jesus taught him while He was here. I fully believe that. He was saying, “I know a Man who is the Word of life and He was manifested to us in the flesh. The Word that had been with God forever from whenever all this began. I heard Him. I saw Him. I touched Him. And I want you to know about Him. So we can have fellowship together in the name of the Father and of the Son.”

And our joy will be full. Amen.