The Ten Dollars Kept Moving

The Ten Dollars Kept Moving

by Tommy Lewis

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I can assure you of one thing. He has put a new spirit in you. There is a new heart in you. He will never take His Holy Spirit from you. He will never leave you, sugar. He will never proceed. Your sins cannot drive Him all. In fact, our sins attracted Him to us.

The thing that repels us from one another attracts Jesus. And His invitation is, “Come on to Me. All you who are burdened and heavy laden. Come to Me, I’ll give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me. I’m meek and lowly. My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Folks, He loves them.

Atta girl. Hallelujah. They cried unto the Lord and He answered them. Maybe we big folks ought to do more crying. Less complaining. Even the cry attracts the Lord. Remember the blind boy that they tried to make quit hollering? He was wanting to see and folks told him he weren’t supposed to, I guess. Heard that this great boy Jesus was passing. He started screaming and hollering. Everybody said, “Shut your mouth.” And he got louder. And his cry stopped God. Until his need was fulfilled.

See how wonderful He is. How can we do it? How can we go on living the way we’ve been living? This honoring Him is such a tremendous measure. Don’t you know where He is you are? You are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. The Father thinks you are as beautiful as Jesus is. The Father never separates the two. When He sees Jesus, He sees you. And if He’s pleased with Jesus this morning, He’s just as pleased with you.

He’s never regretted being in you. No one else in the universe would get in us and not want to get out by as quick as He got in. If you would get in me, you’d say I’d better off without him.

But Jesus has come to stay. We are His abiding place forever. He’s yours. And you’re His. “This is My dwelling place. This is My place of rest.” The Lord has come to His temple. He would have been satisfied in the other places, the temples and the things they built. He would have stayed there. But all the move of history is Pentecost. That through all that Jesus accomplished for us, now God could get where He had always longed to be. To come to us, to never leave us. Never forsake us. Folks, that’s wonderful. Someone asked where it says in Romans 12:2, I believe it is. It says, “Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” How is our mind renewed? Some people say, well, if you read the Bible. Well, I’ve read the Bible for 30 years. My mind could be just as bad five minutes after I read it as it was before I read it. So it’s not that. But it has to be, if it’s there in the book, it has to be so simple we’ll overlook it. We’re looking for God to do something real big and hard. And if you heard Bert, it’s in the simple thing. Just walking around. Just go to one place, think you’re going there for one reason, and you’re there for another.

Thank God, if the Lord let you know what He was going to do with you before we got you there, you probably wouldn’t go. Right? Right? A lot of times, I’ve been not knowing what I was going to do. And after I would get there, then He would let me know. He would have me hooked.

My wife and a couple of friends went to Greensboro one time to be in a retreat with Tommy Tyson, Joe Petrie, Wayne McLain, and Father Jim Burke. And the morning we got there, we were staying in one motel, but we were eating, having our meals in the Holiday Inn. I don’t know what it is about Holiday Inn that the Lord loved, but if I go in one, I get anointed.

I was in one on New Year’s Eve, and they had that little bar thing over there, and they were playing the loudest music. I don’t see how they even play so loud a music in a little bitty box.

And I got anointed and felt like I needed to report something there. And I said, “Jesus, I can’t report to these people if we’re going to have all that noise in there.” And in the one second, all of that noise was over. So I got up and started reporting on the good news, how much Jesus loved us. And I went on and on and on, and after the anointing was left, the noise started again.

I was on the first time I ever went to Georgia. It was on Sunday morning. We were going to CFO camp at Rock Eagle. And some of the people were sort of religious and felt they were out of church and needed a sermon. One lady said, “Tommy, why don’t you preach a little to us?” Well, I tried to drum up a sermon real quick. Couldn’t discover one. So she helped me. She said, “Tell me something.” She said, “It’s in the book of the Acts. Where Philip went and met the eunuch on the road to, back to Ethiopia, I guess, where he was going.” And said, he went up into the chariot, and the eunuch was reading out of the scripture. And I believe in the King James, it says there, Esaias. Esaias. You know, it’s not spelled Isaiah. And she said, “Was that Isaiah of the Old Testament?” I said, “Yes.” Then I said, “Let me tell you about it.” I said, “Isaiah was a wonderful fellow. A real aristocrat. Wonderful priest and minister of God. But notice Philip did not preach Isaiah. He took it from there and preached Jesus.”

And I said, “You know, I guess you could take anything and start at that place and preach Jesus.” And I felt so wonderful saying that. Felt like a tree full of owls. And about 20 miles from there, they said, “We’ve got to stop and get some gas.” Wonderful. So we stopped to get the gas. And I have to go to the restroom or toilet.

I like better what they have in Italy, toiletti. Don’t that sound beautiful? But toilet sounds crude. So I go into this little… Not the toilet. I first had to go into the filling station. And when I got in there, I felt the love of Jesus begin to pour over my mind and my body. And I know what that is. That’s the anointing. And you’re always anointed to minister. When you’re anointed, it’s for ministry. Now, when you’re not anointed for ministry, you’re supposed to walk in love all the time.

Somebody was bragging one time about, oh, that tongues was the real ultimate of everything. You know, they used to place everything on that. If you hadn’t spoke in tongue, you were a second-class citizen in the kingdom. And I said, “That’s wonderful to speak in tongues. At least you’ve come as far as a jackass is.” Because a jack… I said, “God’s no respecter of His anointing. He’ll anoint a pagan. You know that? He’s not a respecter of His anointing. He’ll anoint anyone.”

He anointed Caiaphas that had a murderous heart. And yet he was anointed of God and spoke the fulfillment of the prophets. He said, “Don’t you know that one must die for the nation that all perish not?” And it said, because he was a high priest, he prophesied. That was anointed of the Lord. And yet he had a heart of murder with him. So when Balaam was going in a rebellious way against the Lord, remember, jackass met him and spoke to him and a man’s voice spoke in tongues. Didn’t he? He had always brayed and, you know, kicked and jumped. But this time he spoke in whatever that fellow was, whatever his nationality was, he spoke in his language. But the difference… The key is, when the anointing left him, he was still a jackass.

And notice how sometimes we’ll get anointed and be real sweet and be a jackass right after that. Okay? So if you’ve spoke in tongues, thank God you’ve arrived to the jackass level. So don’t be so biggity about that. Just remember that other fellow. Balaam’s ass.

Where was I? At the service station. So that love began to pour over me. And two men were talking politics. They were running for the same office. Now that is really a place. So I kept waiting. I thought, “All right, Lord. You’ve opened the door and I’ll step right in.” Well, I didn’t seem to get an opening on that. So I walked into the toiletic. And I came out. And I said, “All right, I’m going to go get in the car, Lord. I feel that I’m anointed to minister now. You open the door.” I walked up to the counter where the man was at that was running the station. And he looked right in my face and he said, “Fella, what do you think about whiskey?”

If I’d have been in my Baptist mind, I would have given one of the most condemning sermons you ever heard in your life. I’d have said, “Don’t look on the wine when it is moving aright.” And I’d have said, “No drunkard shall enter the kingdom of God.” I’d have pitched a fit.

But this is what came. And I didn’t understand it either. I looked him in the face and I said, “I thank God for whiskey.” And he looked. And I looked. And I waited. Lord, is that it? And then it came. I said, “I thank God for whiskey.” I said, “It must be a rough trip for an alcoholic. It must really be awful. His mind and all of that. But if it leads him to the feet of the loving Jesus, I thank God for his trip.” I said, “I thank God for the whore. That must be an awful thing. But if it brings her to the place where she falls and looks up into the loving eyes of Jesus, I thank God for the trip.” And there was a drunk standing there. Drunk as a skunk. And when I began to talk like that, he was down like, he threw his shoulders back. Like, “I’m good as anybody.” And in the sight of God, he was. And that man said, “Are you a preacher?”

I said, “Yes.” He said, “I’ve never heard anything like that. I’ve never said anything like that.” So both of us were hearing it together. Fresh revelation. He said, “Where do you preach?” I said, “I’m in North Carolina.” He said, “I don’t go to church. But if you were preaching in this area, I’d go to hear.”

See, no one loved a condemning message. No one loved a guilt trip. If I’ve done wrong, you don’t have to condemn me. I do a better job on myself than anyone else can do. You don’t have to make me feel guilty. I’ve already been trained to feel guilty. But if any man be in Christ, what is he? What has happened? Old things are passed away and behold, all things are new. The world is waiting for the new to appear. Old judgments must pass away. New judgment must come. Old conviction must pass away. A new conviction has come. The world and even the church has done a good job convincing us how sorry we are, haven’t we? Well, that’s the old creation. Convict me or convince me that I’m a son of God. Keep telling me. Keep on preaching it until I am convinced or convicted that I belong to Jesus Christ, that my sins have been forgiven, that there’s nothing against me in heaven and God is trying to wipe it out in me here on earth. Isn’t that a better deal? Somebody told me, said, “You never preach the judgment of God.” I preach it all the time.

But usually when you think of the judgment of God, we cringe. Let me tell you how God has judged you this morning. If you’re sick, He’s judged you well. If you’ve sinned, He’s judged you clean. He’s judged you righteous. He’s judged you pure. That’s His judgment. You want to see the judgment of God? Look at Jesus Christ. “Neither do I condemn you. Go sin no more. Thy sins are forgiven. Take up your bed and walk. Lazarus, come forth.” His judgment on death is bringing forth life. His judgment on sickness is bringing forth health. His judgment on guilt is bringing forth righteousness. What a gospel we have to preach, folks. If Paul and them would have went throughout the earth preaching what we have thought was the gospel, I don’t believe anybody would have come to what they were preaching. But they preach good news. Does that make sense? You know, the way we judge ourselves is after the world’s judgment. The way they’ve judged us most of the time, we live that life of judgment. We’re under the judgment of other people. They judge you no good, they judge you no good, the way they’re judged. You get under the judgment and you suffer because of their judgment and we think that it’s the judgment of God.

It’s not true at all. Does that make sense? Most of the people on the face of this earth are living under a false judgment. It’s not the judgment of God at all. And the woman at the well, Jesus convicted her, but not of her sins. Samaria had done a good job of convicting her of her sins. What did Jesus convict her of? What was His conviction? He convinced her or convicted her she was a child of God and had always been. She was just in darkness and blind to it. But He awakened her because I know that’s true because all the inferiority complex, all the guilt, all the fear of man fell away. And when she went back into that town, she was so changed until she convinced them by her looks, not just what she was saying, and they came out to see where it came from. And notice, she didn’t say, “I met Messiah,” because she’s the only one in the New Testament that He told, “I’m Messiah.” Everybody else received it another way. She went into town and she said, “I’ve met a man.” And when we meet Jesus, we meet the real man. And when you meet love in a man, you meet a man. And if you meet, if you don’t meet love in him, you’ve just met a body.

Jesus was a man. Adam was a body. Does that make sense? Isn’t that wonderful? I was in Florida a few years ago and I was, it was after meeting, I don’t know why these people were meeting, I never found out, but I was walking around the campus and I saw a group and I decided I’d walk in and see what they were talking about. When I got there, I sat down on the side and listened to them and they were discussing love. And I thought, well this is interesting, I believe I’ll see what they have to say about it. And they were saying how love would act under different situations. And they went on and on and finally one person said, “Well, if a person has bad breath, what would be the loving thing to do?” Some person said, “Tell him.”

And I said, “Jesus, would that be the highest?” And He said, “No, buy him some Listerine.” Because if I tell you you’ve got bad breath and I don’t have anything to cure it, I’ve got you in bad breath conscience. And you’ll feel like a skunk at a lawn party. Who could accept me? I’m just breathing out stink.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. In the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, always been sort of a confusion on that book. The whole idea, the whole thing about that book is what? What’s the theme of that chapter? It’s love. And so when it says that tongues shall cease and prophecies will be, what does it say? Tongue shall be what? What is that? Done away with? Or cease or whatever it says. And it goes on with the gifts. And I don’t believe it’s talking about speaking in tongues.

And so I thought about it. Now, when should that happen? When should there be a time that none of this is necessary? Will it be in another world somewhere? I don’t believe he’s talking about that either. So this came to him and it fits. If I have a need, say I need $10, and you know it, you don’t have to speak in no tongues about it. You don’t even have to ask many questions about it. You don’t have to jump up and prophesy over me and say, “Thus saith the Lord, you’ll get it down the road.” You don’t even need a word of knowledge because I’ve already told you.

All you’ve got to do is keep your mouth shut. You don’t have to say anything. Reach on your hip. Get out that slip and give it to me. And all of that has ceased and then go back to speaking in tongues or whatever you want to do. Don’t that make sense?

So where love is required to act, it does not need a lot of words to do it. If you see your brother have a need and you just say, “Lord bless you,” and let him go on hungry, God has got him there to be blessed, but he ain’t going to be blessed with words, he’s going to be blessed with food. You can’t say, “Come in, brother, and let me bless you. Sit down here and feed and eat.” He’s blessed. Doesn’t that make sense? Speak in tongues all you want to. Do anything you want to. Back to the story in Greensboro.

So we go into the first morning we get there and this girl, Whitney, had just met Jesus and I mean she’s just unselfconscious. All she’s conscious of is how wonderful Jesus is. He had healed her of cancer, He had healed her about everything a person could have. You know they’re excited. So we get to the table and she said, “Tommy, I believe Jesus is here.” Real loud.

And it was New Year’s Eve. She said, “I believe Jesus is here within a Holiday Inn.” I said, “Helen, I know He’s here.” She said, “Let’s sing the blessing.” I looked all around. See, I was still a little self-conscious. I’d been speaking in tongues a long time.

And I said, “What would you like to sing?” And she just broke right into it. “Praise God, from whom all blessed…” She wasn’t even looking at anything but the Lord. I’d look at all around to see how they were doing.

And after she got through, everybody that was eating dropped their forks. You know, you don’t care about it like that. All of a sudden, in a quiet restaurant where everybody had been drunk the night before and feeling so bad they can’t hardly move, and somebody blurts out, “Praise God, from whom all blessed…” and she sung the whole deal.

And the folks that was waiting on it, they acted like they didn’t want to wait on this day. But when we started singing, they peered nuts. It’s by the anointing that Jesus breaks the yoke. And after we started to leave, and the hostess come up and she said, “We’ve never had anything like that to happen in the history of this place since I’ve been here.” She said, “Would you come back at lunch?”

How about that? She said, “We will have a piano in here for you.” Well, I got excited about that time and I went running over to the meeting where Tommy and all of them was at, and I reported what I thought would be good news to them. And I thought everybody would join us at lunch. But when lunch came, nobody went. But us. We went in and that place was loaded.

I mean, a few on that morning at lunch, there was not a table or a chair that was empty. The hostess met us and said, “There’s the piano. Bob could play.” Her husband was named Bob and Bob could play the piano. I said, “Okay, Helen.” And no one, no one would pay any attention. It was almost like we had a good audience and nobody knew we were there. And so we went over there to the piano and Helen said, “Tommy, could I say a few words to the audience?” They didn’t even know they were an audience.

And I said, “Help yourself.” And she was a real tall, I mean a beautiful, shaped gal. And she said, “Hey, folks.” And all of them looked around and she said, “We want to do something for you.” And I believe they thought she was going to perform strip tease or something. She said, “I’d like to tell you this. This is Christmas Eve or after Christmas Eve.” And she said, “A lot of you did things last night that didn’t please our fathers. Love us.”

And she said, “Tommy, I didn’t want to call my name. Don’t say it.” I said, “Tommy Lewis and Bob, my husband and me, we want to sing for you today and tell you how much Jesus loves you and how wonderful He is.” And we started singing, “He’s my rock, my sword, my shield, He’s my wheel in the middle of the wheel.” Have you ever heard that? Oh, wow, it was something. Have a good beef. Well, everybody just totally quit eating and I believe breathing too. They were in total fascination and we really cut loose on it. And when we got through, oh, I felt wonderful then, you know, Norton had come, everybody, they hadn’t thrown any dishes at us. And so we went to the table to sit down and oh, way back on the back side, I looked and there was a man doing like that at me. And I looked down and I feet backed up and he was and he weren’t smiling. You know, I used to be frightened of faces. If they didn’t smile, I thought, oh, what are they thinking? I wanted them to smile and that wouldn’t make me think I was doing with it. But he was just looking real mean. And he wouldn’t quit. He just… And I thought, “God, what is he going to do?”

And I started wanting to be protected. You know, I’ll let no harm come to him. So I got up and it was one of the longest walks I ever made. I went creeping up to him. And when I got to him, he started reaching in his pocket. I thought, “God, is he going to kill me? I’ll only kill him.”

And he reached in his pocket book and gave me ten dollars. I’m wondering if he gave me the money to keep on or quit. I just know. But he finally said, he said, he said, “Fella, I don’t know you, but I’ve never heard anyone or seen anyone with guts enough to do what you’ve done this time.” And I thought, this is the first time you’ve seen it and probably be the last time I’ll ever do it.

I went back to the table and I didn’t much know what to do with that ten. You know, I was totally embarrassed. And I said, “Look at that.” And Joe Petrie met this and the family who was sitting inside of me. I said, “Joe, this old boy not only support me with his lip, he doesn’t hit his hip.” And on the way to the meeting, I dropped that ten and stuck it in my pocket. And I was with Joe and it came to me by the Lord, give Joe that ten dollars. And I thought, “God, he didn’t do anything. I’m the guy that got up and went through that cross experience.” And I said, he was probably embarrassed at us doing it and probably praying that we’d quit. But then this came to me. I don’t know if that man ever confessed Jesus or not. I don’t know that gave me the ten dollars. But I know he responded to the presence or the love of God. The kingdom was at hand. And when he gave me that ten dollars, the kingdom had increased on earth.

And it came to me, when you give it to Joe, it’s going to be a bigger increase. So when we got to the meeting, Joe gave it to Father Jim Burke, who’s a Catholic priest. And it was in love, which was a furtherance of the kingdom. Jim gave it to the nuns that had came from Adrian, Michigan, and they told us later, they spent it at a service station with a Baptist deacon. You can’t get more ecumenical in that, can you?

And when I got to Michigan later to preach, I said, “You folks write to the Pope and tell him the Protestants are about to come in. They’ve already started tithing.” And you know, in enough love, you can get away with anything, I would call him Popey.

And they would laugh, and there was a mother superior there, and I would call her mama superior. I’d lay my head on her lap, and she would rub me, and she would say, “I’m good am I to take you to the convent with us.”

Love is not offensive, folks. Love is not offensive. And when I got home, I said, “Lord, what was that teaching?” You see, you’re not going to be taught of God unless you obey. Your teaching comes out of your obedience. You want to know what things means, He said, “If you will do the will, you’ll know the doctrine,” didn’t you? You’ll know the teaching. Well, most of my life, I wanted to have the teaching apart from the obedience. That becomes theology, or just the doctrine of man, and it becomes divine. I said, and here’s what came. If we could have took something like ten dollars, a small thing like that, and I gave it in love from hand to hand, everybody we saw, and they had kept passing it around. When it got to the last person, the kingdom of God would have come in manifestation on the face of this earth.

Isn’t that wonderful? Does that make sense? Another time of obedience, and this is in the book, but I will tell it, because this was really a teaching. Anna, my wife, how many has ever met Anna, my wife? She is a lovely girl, but I scared her to death. When I first received the baptism, she didn’t like to go with me because she didn’t know what I’d do, I didn’t either. I would do things I would just hope it was the Lord. If I even thought it might be, I would do it. And she was in a Presbyterian church one time. It’s quiet, I mean quiet. They never even rattled a page in it. And they had a Spirit-filled Presbyterian preacher, or baptized in the Spirit, Spirit-filled means controlled. Maybe he was that night. And old Matt got to preaching, and I got excited, and I hollered, “Praise the Lord.” And it looked like every head was on one neck. I meant it. And it was slow. They had never moved their neck behind them, or head behind them in that church. And all heads turned at one time. And I just stayed up, and Anna was gouging me like that. And when they settled back, I got excited again, and said it again, and the same repetition, all the heads turned, like one neck was turning all the heads.

When everybody was talking about that foolish stuff about the husband being the head of the house. Remember that? Oh, that ego mess that we got in, it just messed up so much. Tommy Tyson said, “The man is the head of the house.” There’s a frog in here, bless his heart.

Oh, isn’t that wonderful? Next thing you know, we’ll be able to play with snakes. The frogs have come. We’ll sit down on the at least side of them, not play with them. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. So, Anna just went through a lot with me. She would always say, “Tommy, I’ll go, but please behave yourself.” See, I wanted to serve the Lord. I wanted to do things. I’d even prophesy sometime when I knew it were Him. Just to… I was praying over a gal one time, I was prophesying over, and when I got through, she said, “Tommy, first two minutes of that was the Lord. The last five was you.” I said, “Well, why in the world didn’t you stop me?” She said, “You were having such a wonderful time.” What a great love. Now, that was love. She could have said, “Get your cotton-picking hands off me.”

And I was praying for one and for healing, and she said, “Tommy, time you laid your hand on my back, I was healed because your hand was hot as fire.” She said, “But you did pray some good praying there.” So, I’ve been loved alone in the kingdom of God. I haven’t been put with people. See, I’m a timid boy too, you wouldn’t think it, but I was raised very shy, withdrawn, because I didn’t think I was worth anything. I was hid within. I could never have sat and had a conversation with any of you for five minutes up until I was thirty-some years old. When I saw a neighbor come out of the house, I’d go in the house. I really would, to avoid speaking to them. Folks, that was sick.

I even took a job that I’d be isolated from people so I could work by myself. You would never believe that now. And so we went, we were going to Pennsylvania CFO camp. First one out of my state that I’d ever gone to. And Anna decided she needed a new dress. And I don’t like to go shopping with her because she’ll look all day long every little item in the store. And a lot of times to get her to go home, I’ll start doing the rain dance. You know, I got to go to the toilette like a little boy. And that usually get her. So I said, “Well, where do you want to go?” She said, “Let’s go out to the mall and there’s oodles of stores out there.” So we started in Penney’s.

And she found a little dress and I said, “Buy it, buy it. I want to go home.” And she said, “No, I’d like to look a while.” And I knew what that meant. So we drug around in those stores. She drug me around all the morning. Had another girl with us and on the, she found nothing. She said, “I believe I’ll go back and look at that little dress there at Penney’s.” So we come back and she decides she’ll try it on. And I’m so tired until I saw a seat over there. And you know, sometime the Lord, I actually, I did not see that lady that was seated there. I did not see her. And I certainly didn’t hear what she was doing or I didn’t ever went close to her. But I ran to the chair and sat down and all of a sudden my eyes, which was holding, was open. And I looked across and there was a woman. And she was coughing. You may, from deep, whatever, you’ve seen people that cough from so deep that even her legs would come up when they coughed. She would sound like a seal barking.

I looked over at her. And I didn’t know what to say. So I looked at her and I said, “Lady, how are you this morning?” She looked at me like, “You nut, don’t do sin, dog.” And I was, I heard the Lord say, “Pray for me.” I didn’t know what to pray for. And I looked around and that store was loaded. And I thought, I said, “Lord, let me pray silently.”

And He didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to pray. And I was hoping Anna would come out of that thing and she would get the dress or put it down and say, “Come on.” Her and Ruthie came out.

And she did not get the dress, but I couldn’t get out of the chair. And I’m not that heavy. You know, you almost fly. And I said, “Anna, would you and Ruthie come over here?” She told me later it scared her half to death because she saw that lady. And so, Ruthie didn’t know me very well, so she come and relaxed. Anna sat on the edge of the chair.

And I said this to the woman. I said, “Lady, we’re Christians. We believe that Jesus Christ is present in this store. And I believe He’ll heal you. Would you let me pray for you?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “I’ll pray silently.” And I thought I would. So I bowed my head and my mouth flew open. And my voice penetrates anyhow. And it came out something like this, “Lord Jesus,” and I opened one eye. And all the clerks had quit clerking. All the buyers had quit buying. It actually looked like they were just transfixed. They weren’t moving. And I said, “Lord Jesus, this lady’s sick. And she wants to be healed. And so, Lord, we accept with her and for her healing right this minute.” And folks, she cleared up. She was healed.

I went through hell up to that moment. If you’re going to obey God, you’ve got to die. Did you know that every obedience requires a fresh death? “I die daily,” is what Paul meant. Every day of obedience, of your life, you will have to die. But it is death to you, but it is life to those around people. And before the grape is mashed, the wine don’t flow. So there is the crushing by His stripes out of Him on the cross, through His bruise and through all that. We’re healed. Death to Jesus, but life eternal to you and I. And I could understand why the apostles and those people could be martyred and somehow not care. Somehow not even feel it. I don’t believe Stephen felt all those stones. I think he was so in the love of God until it modified the pain in his body. And I absolutely found if you want to have the fruit of joy, you can’t sing it up. Remember they used to say, if you want joy, you can jump for it. You might get sore feet, but you don’t get no joy. If you want joy, you can sing for it. You can sing until your tongue gets sore, but you won’t have no joy by that.

Joy comes through obedience. If you want to walk in the joy of the Lord, which the joy is that that modifies the pain, then obey the Lord. Obey holy love and you will have joy unspeakable that is full of glory.

Up to that moment, I felt a death. Death to my pride. Death to embarrassment. Death to what people might think. But the moment that I obeyed, I didn’t care what the world thought. I didn’t care what they did to me. I was all day long. Just that one little act of obedience set off the joy cord within me. And I walked in it all day.

And when we got to bed that night, I said, “Weren’t Jesus cute today?” I said, “Weren’t it wonderful? You know, if I would have known what was going to happen, I would have never went to that place. If He had said, ‘I want you to go out there later,’ I might do it now.” But in that training stage, once you have tasted of the good things of God, folks, you cannot stand it. Disobedience is hell after that. Your soul will rip you to pieces once it has tasted of the fruit of its bridegroom. I heard a story, Tommy tells it, about a gal in Mississippi, deep south, and she loved Jesus. I mean, that gal loved the Lord. But she had one prejudice. She had never gotten rid of. She was prejudiced against blacks. Raised in that environment. And one day, she felt one had offended her somehow. And guess what happened? She was resentful. She lost the sense of His presence. He was present, but her conscience now was on her resentment and what somebody had done to her. If you want to lose the presence of the Lord, you get to think about what somebody’s done to me. Think of what Jesus has done for you, and it doesn’t matter. So she after about a week of this, she couldn’t take it.

So she come to the Lord and she said, “Lord Jesus, I can’t stand it. Where are you?” And to show you the humor and the power of the livers, Jesus said, “Here I is.” She fell on the floor, laughing and laughing and laughing, and got up with no prejudice left, but a love in her heart. She saw no one else as an enemy, but only as brothers and sisters. Anything or anyone you have prejudice against, God can’t use them to bless you. And you remain a poor person. If I’m going to enter the kingdom, it will not be at your expense.

I won’t go in without you. This is a complete body. Thank God for variety. Aren’t we glad? God has been very careful to do away with sameness in the creation. No two things are alike. It is the difference in you that completes what is lacking in me. You are part of my body. And the more… A boy used to sing, “It’s just me and Jesus, and all I need is Jesus.” Let me tell you something. The more you live inward with Jesus, the more you are going to know that you need one another on the outside.

See, Jesus does not believe in isolationism. “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel.” Don’t that make sense? Don’t even look at the drunk as apart from you. Jesus has redeemed him. He don’t know it. God, you will never see a person, I don’t care how low you see him lying, that Jesus Christ is not there with you, waiting for him to awake.

The reality of the presence of Jesus, that cross, folks, done a complete job. Jesus does not have to die again. Jesus Christ is alive for every man. We don’t have a gospel until we see it universal. We do not have a gospel to preach as long as we hold a narrow vision. Paul, when he came into the greater vision, he said, “Why, God, Jesus has saved all men.” Had He? They don’t know it. We didn’t know it, but it was there. So I asked down, I said, “Wasn’t the Lord wonderful tonight, this morning?” And she said, “You want to know what I thought?” And I thought, I might ask you, my joy is too good, you might try to steal it. I said, “I don’t know whether I do or not.” She said, “I’m going to tell anyhow.” She said, “When I came out and saw sitting there and heard that woman barking the way she was, I thought, ‘God, does he have to do what he’s fixing to do?’”

He said, he’s already, people in his town thinks he’s crazy. Now the word is going to get out that he’s running all over the town, finding all the sick folks he could find and trying to heal them. She said, “But Lord, in spite of Tommy, heal the woman anyhow.” And I said, “Sugar, that might have been the prayer that got healed.”

But isn’t that wonderful? It’s going not knowing why. Just going. What if the, what was her name, Rebecca, that married Isaac? Notice, she was just doing everyday things. What if she had been sitting in the corner like little Jack Horner, eating her pumpkin pie, praying for a husband? Oh, send me a husband, send me a husband. I heard of a man who had prayed for 75 years for a wife, never got one, and he finally went to the Lord and said, “Well, Lord Jesus, I thought I needed a wife. I prayed for 70 years, and you didn’t send her.” The Lord said, “I said, pray and watch.”

He weren’t watching, he just praying. You’re going to pray for a wife, don’t get in the house, go out and look, say, “Is that her, Lord? Is that her, Lord? Is that her, Lord?” So, Rebecca was doing her thing, wasn’t she? Went out and gave the stuff to the cattle, whatever it was. Met the Holy Spirit, type of the Holy Spirit to serve her. And notice the first thing He did. He gave her gifts. How many of the, what we call the charismatic movement, has got the gifts and never gone on to the Giver?

I’m very serious. A lot of them are backslidden. Some of them that I came in with 30 some years ago do not walk with Jesus anymore. They do not. I doubt many of them even go to church. I know they haven’t spoken in tongues for years. Even the gifts dims after a while apart from that lovely Giver. If we don’t have anything else, Lord, give us Thyself. Let me, you know the reason David was a greater king than Solomon? Solomon had a gift. David said the Lord’s my portion. Your gifts are for others. Your portion is the Lord. All of your gifts is to benefit other people. Your portion is Jesus Christ. Isn’t that wonderful?

Do I have a few more? No, I have time for me to quit. Let me tell you one more story. Will you do that? Can I have that time for me? I was in Europe a few years ago and I was going through a lot of hell in my body. The devil told me I had lung cancer. And I was going through depression and everything else. Bert, you were talking about the man got relief when he read the Bible. I had no relief unless I was anointed to preach or reading the Bible. It was like taking medicine. But after that I would go back to that pain and all of that stuff that was within me. And I went to Europe with that condition. I was real down to about 155 pounds. So you know about how I looked. I’m 180 now and I’m still thin but 155, me 6 foot 3. I looked very small. And I thought on the trip maybe I’ll ask Tommy to pray for me. Tommy Tyson and I went. And on the way the Lord said, “No, you don’t have a right to pick your ministry.”

How about that? You know sometimes we miss the Lord because the vessel don’t look too, you know, like Isaiah 55, when we see Him, we don’t desire Him. And sometime it might really be a cripple. He might come to you anyway. And so I thought, “Well, Lord, I’m suffering, I’m weak, I don’t know whether I can make this trip without being strengthened.” And it started on the plane. I would be, I’d be, I prayed a lot. I was trying to really look unto the Lord away from everything else. And it would come to my heart, “Lord, I wish someone would just rub my back. I’m so tired of my shoulders.” And the first time that happened, two little hands seemed to come out of nowhere. And when I looked up, it was a little lady about that high named Dora Winters. Anybody ever meet Dora? She’s in Florida now. She was from Maine then, or Michigan. And she would minister to me. I wouldn’t have picked Dora. If I was even going to pick a woman, I would have got me a real thin, pretty. Dora was German type. She was German. You know how they’re shaped.

And then she would sit with me. All of a sudden, I’d find her sitting there and I would think, “Oh, if I just had somewhere to lay my head and somebody’s arm to come.” And all of a sudden, it was like I was speaking to the Lord. Dora’s arm would pull my head down and she would rub my back like a little boy. And if she saw me getting disturbed, she was so sensitive, any disturbance that come in my life, she knew how much I love Starr Daily. So she’d say, “Let me tell you a story about Starr.” That would get my mind open and everything else. And she would tell me little things that Starr did and it would just thrill me, you know. And this went on all through Germany, through, we started in Italy and wound up in England where I asked a lady to forgive me. I never finished that, but when I said, “Would you forgive me for all of England?” did you know she had never seen me? She did the same thing. Like I was her little boy and she was probably 20 and I was 40 some. And she said, “Dear sir, consider this day, you are forgiven.” And guess what? All England was saved. They looked so wonderful.

I thought, “Why, Lord, you saved the whole cotton picking mess since I’ve been here.” It was me, wasn’t it? I was saved with new eyes. And everywhere I went, they waited on me like I was the king. How about that? I had an experience in Rome one time. I believe if I had run for Pope the next day, they’d have voted me in.

Where was I? Oh, in Germany. This was in Germany. And after you’ve been even with saints, don’t stay with them too long. A lot of them are saints, but not quite sanctified yet. And in Germany, they got at one another’s throats. I mean, everything was irritating. They were mad and one of them cussed out one of the hotel folks and threatened something with them, acting everything but Christian. And I couldn’t take it. I felt my body won’t take this. And I got, I was getting mad. See, I same sin. I weren’t mad with the folks they were mad with, but I was mad with them and that’s no different. So I walked off down the thing and was looking out at the window. It was pretty grass. All of a sudden, I heard little bitty feet. I looked down, here come Dora. She said, “Let me tell you a story.” I said, “Okay.” She said, “The last time I was with Starr Daily,” she said, “I never heard, y’all knew Starr very well, didn’t you?” She said, “I never heard him lecture on the love of God as he did that night.” She said, “You could almost feel Jesus like heaven had come.” And she said, “Afterwards, Starr did something he very seldom ever did.”

He gave an altar call. Usually, you know, he wouldn’t. He believed that your heart was the altar and the Lord had come to you. Here are the words he said: “You can have anything from Jesus tonight that you want.” You know what that will do to Christians. Man, here they came with a stampede. That’s okay, wonderful. And she said she felt constrained to stay in her seat. She had only one left in the audience. And she said her mystical senses were open and she saw the Lord Jesus in the midst of His church. And said He would go to each one and give him his gift and just look up at him, stand there a few seconds, and move on. And go to the next one. And while she was telling me, I started crying. I didn’t know why, but I just started falling almost.

And I said, “What was He doing? What was that pause for? What was He saying to him?” And she said He was saying along with the gift, “Won’t you take Me? Won’t you take Me?” And they totally ignored Him, got all their goodies, and ran out. When Starr came down, he said, “Dora, you saw Him this morning, didn’t you?” She said, “Yes, I did, Starr.” He said, “Sugar, you could have had anything you want Me.” She said, “Starr Daily, when I saw Jesus, He’s all gone.” Glory to God. God.