The Twirl of Her Skirt

The Twirl of Her Skirt

by Willard Ireland

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I’m going to speak a bit about CFO. Now, I don’t worship CFO. I’m just eternally grateful that God, in His wisdom, created and used a vessel because it was so meaningful for me and for my family. But I don’t even worship CFO. I save worshiping for the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. But I’m grateful, eternally grateful, for what it came to mean to me. In a strange way, I don’t even love CFO as a thing apart from anything else. I love the church. And I don’t mean by the church that I love my particular denomination. Only through the power of God are there some people in my denomination that I could really love.

But, you see, I love the body of Christ. And it’s to that body that I commit myself and my efforts for Him. But… I hear people tell you about CFO, and they will say that Glenn Clark had a dream.

Now, I’ve been long enough in it, and Glenn has been dead long enough, and there are so many people that never heard of him or never saw him. And, in one way, they don’t know much… They don’t know what they missed. He was beyond all doubt the world’s most annoying speaker. Because he moved out. He’d start along an idea, and then that would suggest something else, and then he’d go out on this limb, and then you wonder, now, how am I ever going to get back from there to here? And you never did. Because by the time he got out there, he was over on this one. And it was totally disorganized. His writing was amazing. It was clear and precise. But, you know, Glenn didn’t have a dream. It was God who had the dream. And Glenn was the body that was ready and willing to allow that dream to come to life in the world. And, of course, it’s unique. It’s different. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing. No way. You know, if God could create all that He did create, why do we want to limit Him that there’s only one particular means, that one agency that He can use? There are many. Praise God there are many. And I would say this to some of you.

If you’re sampling this for the first time, and it doesn’t seem to be your cup of tea, let not your heart be troubled. God’s got a cup of tea somewhere for you. It may not be here tonight, but He has. He’s got a cup of tea for you somewhere. Because that’s what He said, you know, when He was talking about the thirsty to come unto them. And if He said the thirsty were going to come unto them, you know, He didn’t preach at them all the time. If they’re thirsty, He gave them something to drink physically, as well as spiritually. Just as if they were hungry, He gave them food, physical food, because He is total and is complete. And that’s the one little thing I suspect about CFO that a bit sets it apart. In this respect, that it is in the entity of it. The totality of it. You are just as important to the camp as any speaker you’ll ever hear, or any rhythm leader you’ll ever suffer under,

or any song leader that will turn you into a tenor when you know you’re born old deep bass. You see, because it’s in the wholeness of it. I know that God can touch people’s hearts through the spoken word. I know that because I’ve seen it happen. But I also know that God can touch people when they are in rhythms. As long as I’ll never forget seeing this happen at one of the earlier camps in Victoria. I better clear myself. Are there any Anglicans here?

Oh dear, there always are two or three. Well, there was an Anglican… what would we call her? What was Margaret? A deaconess. And that’s it. She was a deaconess. And I’m telling you, she had it written all over her. If it was not in the English language, it was perfectly obvious that she was set apart. But she was set so far apart that she didn’t have any contact with people. And us people were there and she was set apart. And the Lord touched her, of all places, in the middle of rhythms. And I wish you could have seen her stop moving in royal Victorian dignity… and get with it in hip. And bless her heart, she was way up in her 60s. But you see, it can happen there. It can happen anywhere. Because what we’re doing is, He’s dealing with us as whole people. It’s not just a time of coming together for spiritual feeding. It is. But it isn’t only that. It’s a time when we learn that our bodies have to learn how to become the temple of the Holy Spirit. And the kind of temple we have has to be readjusted. Or the kind of temple we are to become has to be readjusted physically. So that you know it’s supple.

You know, that means… what does it mean by being supple? Well, being supple means that you can move over and let somebody sit beside you when you prefer to be sitting alone. But you can move with dignity and quietly. And not make such a to-do about it that everybody knows you’re being very highly spiritual at that moment.

But this is what takes place. And it takes place in the totality of it. And that’s why what you witnessed… would that it were becoming more and more common, even verily in our churches, where those of us who are gathered together as the body of Christ, for that’s what we are, that when it came the time for our pastors to minister to us through the Word, that we would gather and lay hands on them, and seek, yearn for, expect, not just ask for, but yearn for and expect, that they would be anointed by the Blessed Holy Spirit, and that we would be similarly anointed into the ministry of hearing as they are being anointed into the ministry of speaking. And similarly, that there would times come when we will be anointed into the ministry of seeing, and above all, for most of us, into the ministry of listening. You know, if we would really just learn to listen, not only to the Word of God, but basically, of course, to that Word, but if we would listen to what other people are saying before we started to tell them what the Word of God was for them. Because there is a… it’s a fine art, this fine art of listening.

There was a time, you know, when they wouldn’t do that in CFO. They wouldn’t come forward. But it is a blessed experience. And I yearn and pray for the time when each one of you, in turn, will know what it is to be prayed for by the brethren,

to claim for them a special anointing. For verily, as you do this, you, in your own way and in your own time, will, too, be anointed with a new and wondrous concept of His presence. Well, I better tell you how it all happened.

It wasn’t all pleasant. Not by a gun sight in our family, because Gravina got touched… touched, I used to think it was. She got touched of the Lord, and I was sure she was going around the bend. And I had the best substantiation, the best supporter in the world in that. Our minister’s wife was equally convinced that she was going around the bend. The only difficulty is, she didn’t have to live with her. And I did.

And what’s more, the Lord didn’t give me much sense at that time, or have much control over it. Because I made the ghastly mistake of going to her and saying, “Well, you know, I think you’re going around the bend.” And I thought this would… that she would be impressed by my concern. And all she said to me, she says, “Willard, well, if I’m going around the bend, I’m going to go around it so fast you won’t even see the twirl of my skirt.” And I didn’t for two years. Literally. It was… she was just that far ahead and beyond. But whatever I may be now, I am a result of a prayer group.

In the tradition of our church, we didn’t have prayer groups unless there was a national emergency. But there was this prayer group. And mercifully, I didn’t know it existed. Because I would have been fit to be tied. And I was tied enough, without being fit to be tied, by a prayer group dangling around in front of me. They never let on at all that they were praying for me. Oh, well, sure. Sure.

There were a lot of things that had to be taken care of. But they prayed, and they prayed, and they prayed. And I didn’t know what was going on. And finally they reached the point that the Lord said, “Now you can be specific.”

A man, some of you may have read some of his books or have heard of him, was Starr Daily. I don’t worship Starr Daily either, any more than I worship Glenn Clark. But I’m eternally grateful to God that I met Starr Daily. And I’ll explain why in just a minute. So they began to get specific. They were going to pray me from Victoria down to Seattle for a retreat with Starr Daily.

And there was another, one of the other wives in the prayer group, her husband, he had now been catched and touched too. And he came to see if I would be willing to go. And I like Burton, I thought, yeah, it would be alright to go. And he explained to me a bit about Starr Daily, that, you know, what he was like. So I said, well yes, as long as I’ve got that weekend free, I’ll go. And I never intended to go, because I was quite sure I could get that weekend filled.

So it came on the Monday, and I was beginning to get a little bit shaky about all this, because normally, even then, if I said I would do something, I would do it. Though I expected I would suffer mightily for having done it. Well, it came Tuesday, and, mercifully, heavens, it was wonderful. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were full. So I didn’t have to go. Wednesday, everything went right out. Totally. Everything collapsed, and there I was, having to go. By Thursday I got it full again. And by Friday he got it empty again, and I went, and I went. And then I went in such a glorious attitude. You know, sometimes we just forget that there are certain things that are laws, but there are more than one way of obeying a law. You know, we have to love everyone. God, and you know, we have to be patient, and we have to be all sorts of these things, but by and large, it’s a question of what is our attitude towards it? Do we really mean it, or is it sort of, well, I’ll love them, though it slay me. And that’s often our attitude, but we think we’re doing it, but it’s the attitude that counts. And I went…

Honestly, down there, because I was an intellectual snob. I sure was. My father had been a minister, and what better introduction could you have to the Lord than being born into it? And you know, there aren’t any grandchildren in the kingdom of heaven, there are only children. First generations, no second generations. It doesn’t come by osmosis, it comes by direct contact. But I was banding along on my father’s, and he was a saint, I realize that now. There are many times when I thought he was the most peculiar one, but nevertheless, he was, because he lived that which he preached. And I’m so eternally grateful to him too that he was my father, and that he helped me through so many places. But Starr, you see, Starr only had a grade 4 education, and I had two university degrees, so I thought, well, he sure can’t teach me anything. And that’s the attitude I went down with. And what’s more, you know, he’d spent something like 27 years in jail. Well, I’d never spend any time in jail, so what possible link could there be between that man and me? And the safest place to go is to somebody that you have no respect for and don’t expect anything from. So I went.

Well, there were several staggering things that happened, because they did the most peculiar things. It was a CFO thing that I got mixed up in, by this… this basis. And one of them was they prayed for people who were sick. Well, I know way back a couple of thousand years they’d done that, and things seemed to happen, but I’d never seen any evidence of it in more recent times. But they did. And what’s more, they hornswoggled me into getting involved in this business. So they announced that so and so had… what did he have? Well anyway, it was bad. I guess it was sinus, real bad sinus pains. And of course, I had a dripping nose. I had a beautiful cold. If I had sense, you know, I’d have used that as an excuse not to have gone, but I didn’t have sense enough even to do that. I just went. So we all gathered together, and they were praying like mad for a poor bird and his sinus. And I was doing the best I could, with, you know, man that does background prayers, that… so she weren’t getting very high to heaven, but I at least was… I was there, and I was doing my best. And when we walked out,

I don’t know what happened to Burton, his sinus, but all of a sudden I realized I didn’t have a cold. It was totally gone. You know, I could just feel my back hair going right straight… I put it in… it was the beginning. And then Starr spoke to us. I don’t even remember what Starr said, I really don’t. But I know that for the first time, in a particular way, I saw the proof of the resurrection. Now I hope that doesn’t bother you when I put it that way, but I saw the proof of the resurrection, because he was a new creature in Christ. And praise God, there was just enough of the image of the Starr that had been… that you could sort of see it as a bit of a shadow behind. And I knew that the resurrection, not quite in the same way that Jesus was resurrected, but for us to become a new creature in Christ was possible. Possible.

Well then, you see, once you… you know, once you start, you better be prepared to go on, because God is… God is so magnificent. It is sometimes, to me, almost appalling. He is so magnificent, because there is nothing that He is that He will not share with you and with me. He is the most encouraging Father that could ever possibly be, because… He, out of His love for us, came His Son, and out of their joint love the Holy Spirit, the… the three-in-one, became totally available to us. And I mean that exactly. Totally. When we are living along at a weak level, it is not God’s fault, because He does not… it does not intend us to be weak. He has made His allness available to all of us through Jesus, by our accepting Him, and that which Jesus alone can bring to you in His wounded hands.

But it is all there, and if we are puny, it is because we are not great acceptors. And that is one of the reasons why this is so hard for our day and our generation and our country to understand this, because we think the important thing is giving, and the important thing in life is not giving, but it is… Receiving and accepting the glory and the fullness of the grace of God. For then, having first received in that way, and we in turn pass on, share out, then giving really becomes something other than most of us have ever experienced. And it’s all available to us there. Well, then we went back, and the first thing I had to do… You know, you’ll find this almost unbelievable, but it is true. I didn’t know anything about the Holy Spirit. Nothing. Except that He was the third person of the Trinity. And I was so completely familiar with Him that I always referred to Him as It. And it took a dear Anglican priest’s wife… And I was even leading a group in Victoria. I was doing the best I could. And you know, it’s amazing what the Lord can do with somebody. Only thing is, when you hear that, you better remember, you might be the somebody.

Because He was using me. He hadn’t done His total work in me. And praise God, He hasn’t yet. Because I don’t consider myself saintly. But I’m sure aiming to be before it’s done with. But, you see, this dear soul came up to me this one night, and she said, “Willard, I know you don’t know anything about the Holy Spirit. But if, for my sake, if for no one else’s, would you mind calling Him He instead of It?” Well, I liked her. She was a dear, sweet thing. So from that time on, I at least did advance from It to He. But I still didn’t know anything more about who He is. Didn’t know a mumbling word. But I knew I had to confess to them that I was an intellectual snob. Well, I’m telling you, the walls of Jericho went thundering down because all of them had been certain of that for a long time. So when I confessed it, they all just practically stood up and sang the Hallelujah Chorus, both in agreement and in rejoicing that at least I knew what I was, where I was in that particular area. Then God did a very beautiful thing right within our family.

We had two children of our own, and we were going to adopt a third child. Well, you know, I had the normal attitude towards adoption that, you know, what you got was a nice, cuddly little baby. But the social worker produced a 14-month-old little girl who had been born with two congenital hips. Both hips were congenital. That is, you know, the sockets don’t operate properly.

And she had been given by her mother for adoption many months before. She had been in many homes, foster homes. And I never realized that a child of 14 months knew as much as they knew about rejection. Because it was perfectly obvious that she knew that they had rejected her. She didn’t know why, but they’d rejected her because they were afraid of her physical condition.

Why I know that she was like that, because later on, I can still… She knew she had been in some other homes. Because every once in a while, even when she was two or three, she’d come running in, and we’d say, “Well, what do you want?” “Oh, I just wanted to…” She just wanted to be sure that we were still there. You know, that she was still… She was in the same family. Well, not only that, when she had been under treatment for this hip, she developed… I don’t know what the technical term is, but it’s a wry neck. She was in splints with her feet out like this for months, and her neck went over, so this side went flat, and this side mushroomed out to be the same as the two put together. And this was the specimen that God had evidently intended us to adopt. And I was expecting a cuddly little baby. And you know, isn’t that what we’re all like? You know, we all say that we believe the Word of God, and He says, you know, Peter, He talked to Peter, He said, “Feed my sheep, feed my lambs.” And most of us are all for the lambs. You know, if we can just hold a nice little cuddly lamb, and that’s the one that we’re to help.

But what about all the old black sheep, the stubborn ewes, and the equally stubborn whatever the… What’s the female of a… The male of a ewe? Ram, yeah. Rambling old rams. But we always want the cuddly little babies. But you know, Velma needed a home too. Well, of course, Gravina was far ahead of me on this, and the kids were further ahead than I was too, which is an interesting position to be in, in a family. And they brought her this one day, and this was the… This was it. And they set Velma down on the floor. She couldn’t creep. She couldn’t walk. She was 14 months old. Her feet were splayed out like this, and this side was ballooned out, and this side was flat. And Rob comes home from school and takes one look at Velma and sits down and starts playing with her. And I wasn’t half sure that I was going to sign those papers that day. And that night, I remember going up to me and said, “Dad, there isn’t any chance we wouldn’t be taking her, would there be?” And I thought, out of the mouths of babes.

Out of the mouths of babes, because I still wasn’t sure. But she came, and God in His mercy proved that what He could do to a Starr Daily, and I could see, He could do right in my own home, in front of my own eyes, with my own feeble ideas of what He might be able to do.

Because they taught me, Gravina and Rob and Ruth, taught me what to do, was to stop looking at this balloon side and this flat side, but see them as God had intended them to be. Well, that was easy enough, because I just sort of had to remember what they looked like at that age. And do you know, in a matter of weeks, I couldn’t tell one side of her face from the other.

And then there was this fact that she couldn’t walk, she couldn’t creep. And in British Columbia, the law is, unless a child is physically perfect, physically fit, they cannot be adopted. We could have her as a foster child, but we wanted to adopt her. We wanted her to be part of the family in the real sense. And there was this hurdle to overcome.

Well, it was… the cheeks were one thing, but believe you me, hips were a different thing as far as I was concerned. How do you visualize a perfect hip when you can’t see it? But anyway, the rest of the family were able to do this, and that’s what we were thinking, that God… we were going to see the intention, the perfect one, that God intended her to be. When something intervened… I don’t have to know what intervenes, but something intervened.

And God has a sense of humor. Sometimes I think it’s a bit snide, but nevertheless, it’s there all the time. Because, you see, we didn’t have a car, never had a car, really. Well, never have had a car, period. Well, do you know what it’s like to take a family on a train up to a summer camp? And particularly when you’re taking one of them who’s 14 months old but can’t walk or creep, and you have all of that paraphernalia. So we got all the paraphernalia onto the train, got it all off the train, got it down to the cabin where we were at the beach, and the second day after we got there, she stood up and walked and has never stopped. And I… Now, God, couldn’t you just have done it three days earlier?

So we didn’t have to haul all this junk up and around. But you see, she rose up and walked. The second person that was more surprised than I was the doctor. And he was a beautiful, spirited man. A wonderful… He was a Roman Catholic pediatrician, just a beautiful person in Victoria. Well, by the… Velma had to go in, you see, every two or three months to be examined. And he, that man, performed an act of faith on his part that I am convinced was the final step in Velma’s total healing.

Because when Gravina took him in, and this would be probably early in September, we were so used to her walking that, you know, well, she was walking. And so Gravina took Velma in and he said, “Well, strip her off,” so he could examine her. So Gravina stripped her off and put her down on the floor and she walked over to the doctor. But I’m telling you, his hair was right up on it.

Because, you see, she wasn’t supposed to walk for another 16 months according to the medical profession. And he was honest about it. And then he said, “What’s been going on?” Well, you know, when someone says, “What’s been going on?” that’s the time to witness. Instead of going prancing in and putting her down and saying, “See, doctor, she’s healed.” Now, I’m not making fun of that approach either. But you see, there is the right and the wrong way because he had something to learn and he learned it. Because they took the x-rays and the one hip was totally perfect. And the other hip, he said, “I don’t know whether it’s a faulty x-ray, but there seems to be a shadow.” But he said, “I’m going to sign the papers now because what I see has happened can continue to happen and all will be well.” Now, that was an act of faith on the part of a doctor, you know. And I’m always sure and he’s now, I’m sure he’s at home with the Lord. He’s certainly at home. I’m sure that that’s where he is and I’m eternally grateful to him for that act of faith. And some of us would not recognize… There had been a time I would never recognize that as an act of faith.

But you know, it was. It was an act of faith because with his eyes, his scientifically, medically trained eyes, he had seen something that he could not explain and he knew of God and he knew of Jesus and he knew of the Spirit and he bowed down in faith and signed those papers. And I’m grateful to him for what he did at that particular time. Well, then of course, you see, we had to live with our neighbors. And this is an interesting experience if you’ve ever had a living miracle in your house. Because our other two children had grown up in that same house. And you know, they used to get up and climb on the fences and fall off the fence. And they used to climb in the trees and fall out of the trees. So when Velma was old enough and she was up crawling on the, you know, climbing up on the fence, the neighbors would phone and say, “Velma’s on the fence.” Well, what were we supposed to do? Run out and grab her off the fence? They never phoned us to grab Rob and Ruth off the fence. And we had to learn something. Either God had healed her or He hadn’t. And were we going to deny His demonstration to offer us His power to heal by going out and hauling her off the fence?

Why, she was whole. She was normal. Why couldn’t she have the same right to fall off the fence as Rob and Ruth had? So the neighbors had to suffer through this and no suffering from our side. But you see how we can very easily undermine, undermine our awareness and our acceptance and our belief of the reality of God at work.

And of course, the fence was nothing in comparison with the trees. Oh, I know they thought we were crazier and who does? We were. But that doesn’t make any difference. I think that’s something about what the Scripture even I think supports. Aren’t we supposed to be fools for the Lord at times? Well, if they want to think we were foolish, sure. But you know, she fell out of the tree and she never hurt her leg any more than the other kids had. Because when God does something, He does it totally. Wholly. And I think we…

If we would just remember that He does it wholly. He deals with the body, the mind, and the spirit. And I care not what the sequence of the evidence of His dealing with it is. But I know ultimately that all three will be healed. We have a group in Victoria, the Lessons in Living. I guess it’s been meeting together now for 20, 25 years as a prayer group and study group. And just in this last fortnight, we’ve had some interesting experiences. One in particular. A woman phoned about her daughter who was going in for surgery. They weren’t sure whether it was going to be a malignancy or what it would be. And she phoned and asked if we would pray. And she was a troubled mother. Not just because of the physical problem her daughter might be facing, but she knew that her daughter had wandered away. Any of you ever had that experience of wandering away from the Lord? Well, anybody of you ever had that experience of wandering away from the Lord? Don’t be afraid to admit it. Praise God. Because you wouldn’t be here if He hadn’t got your back. You’d still be wandering only further and further. That’s the beauty of Camps Farthest Out. It depends upon the point of view.

You’re not farthest out from God. You’re farthest out from worldliness in this situation. Well, she was wandering away. And so we did. We prayed. And you know, about two days after the operation, the daughter phoned her mother. The surgery was complete. There was no malignancy. And what was more important, she was home with the Lord. You know, she’d come back.

What does God do? He does it perfectly. What’s the most important thing? The most important thing for her was to be in union with Him. And He used that. And He used doctor’s skills. But He didn’t destroy her. He fulfilled the complete thing. Physically, as well as the spiritual side of it. Well, then you see, we began to get going to camps.

And it was the fact that we could go as a family. I don’t know what your experience has been at times, but I presume most of you know I’m the United Church of Canada type. Oh, I’m not so sure that I’m the type. I think I’m the exception at times.

But there are some things we just didn’t do. And there are a great number of things we still don’t do. But we’re gradually beginning to see the light. And our church is beginning to see the light. That it’s a wholeness manifestation that we’re talking about.

Well, this is at the point when I still knew nothing about the Holy Spirit. Believe you me, I didn’t. Well, yes I did. I knew He was He, not it. But that’s as close as I came to an understanding at that particular time. And as I laugh at it now, I don’t suppose CFO would laugh about it too much. But, I don’t know quite how this all happened, but once, you know, I became the national president of CFO.

And it was just at the time when the moving of the Spirit was coming over the earth. And it has. We live in a glorious time. It’s just a wonderful time to be alive. Why? Because we are seeing in our day and our age a moving of the Spirit that wasn’t available or wasn’t seeable. Maybe it’s our eyes, I don’t know. But it wasn’t seeable 20, 30, 40 years ago. And we’ve lived in this area. Well, of course, you know, this got the back hair of most of the CFO went right straight up on edge about this. And it just shows how God can use the foolishness of even some of His own people. Because that year they decided they were going to write a statement against the Holy Spirit.

And I was the national chairman. Well, I only knew Him as He. But I wasn’t going to have to write an it letter. It was going to be a He letter. On behalf. And I thought, now really, how stupid can they be? This was the national ring. You know what the national ring is all about, Art. You’re finding out. I thought, well, really, what a stupid lot of people have on the ring. That they get somebody who doesn’t even know anything about the Holy Spirit to write a letter against them. Well, how can you write a letter against something that you don’t know anything about? And it began to dawn on me, well, that’s just how stupid the whole idea is. And then there was a piece of wisdom came to me, and I suspect it was from the Holy Spirit, because He said, “You agree to do this, providing they pray you through it.” Well, I didn’t even know much about what this would involve. But I was beginning to learn one thing, and that is obedience.

So I said it. Well, they were sort of stunned. But they said they would. And I said I would if they did. And we separated. But you see, this was the way in which He was beginning to move. I began to know.

And my first real introduction to the Holy Spirit came from an Anglican pastor, and when he first said it, I could have bunked him on the head. We had been ramping all over the Pacific Northwest looking for the Holy Spirit. And I’m telling you, we sure got in some peculiar places. And we sure saw some peculiar things that were supposed to be the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. You name it, we experienced it. And we talked to this man about it, and he said, “Why don’t you just sit still at home?” And we’ve been ramping all over the… down to California. If you want to find queer things in the realm of spirits, go to California. You don’t even have to go that far in most places that I’m aware of. But… and that’s what we did. We just sat still for a while. You know, gave God a chance to do what He wanted to do for us, but we were so ruddy busy. Talk about spiritual busybodies in the kingdom. At that stage… well, I don’t know about Gravina. Well, she was following along, but I was certainly leading the way and ramping all over everywhere looking for this.

And one day he came and he prayed. And I knew that the Holy Spirit was not it, but He, and God in His wisdom and His power, that He was the one who is the enabler. I’m not even going to look at it again.

What I think I want to be used to speak to you about in the time we have together here is the concept of something more. I think I become… the older I become both anatomically and spiritually, the more I realize that we’re prone not to use all of the resources that are available to us, but are prone to hold on to that bit that we know and cherish and love. And allow us to shortchange ourselves as living Christians.

Sometimes some things have become so real, so new, so beautiful, that we think they are the epitome and the fullness of what God has in store for us. And we are… consequently, we tend to settle for the lesser when God in His mercy and in His grace and His love is always dealing with the greater.

There is something more. And praise God, it is His perfect plan for each one of us that we never will come to the end of the road. We will never totally and completely arrive. There is something more. And I’m sure in heaven there is something more. If the concept of heaven that many people try to impress on me was real, I was not too interested in being there. Quite frankly. I have no particular aim. I don’t think I’ve got any phobia, but I’m not particularly interested in sitting on clouds and twanging a harp.

I think that eternity is a long time. And I think God wants to be using us, showing us, demonstrating to us something more. I became sort of hept on this and I began to go back through the scriptures, particularly the New Testament. And it’s an interesting experience if you do it. The number of times that more is spoken of in many, many different connotations. And I’m sure it’s said so often that it’s a very deliberate message of the world to you and to me. More. Don’t be satisfied with what you’ve got now. There’s more. Don’t limit God to this. There is more. Don’t limit Jesus to this. There is more. Don’t limit the Holy Word. And the Word is the living Word. That means it doesn’t change, but you do. If the Word of God means the same to you as it meant three years ago, there’s nothing wrong with the Word, but there’s sure something wrong with you. Now that I’m convinced of, because we grow in the Spirit. He is able because He… Yeah, that’s right. He is able to use us and to show us more effectively because we have grown. We can take from Him some truth that He wants us to understand now where a month ago, a year ago, four years ago, 50 years ago, we wouldn’t have been able to accept it, to use it or to believe it.

And it’s just full of it. You are worth more than any number of sparrows. Well, you know, sparrows were important if you were a Hebrew and you were in the temple, but there’s the concept of more. Life is more than food, and the body more than raiment.

A man is worth more than many sheep. You see, Jesus was a practical fellow. He was talking to people who were shepherds or who were in the world of that day, in that part of the world of that day. And He spoke to them. But He was talking to them always about that there was more. More signs than these.

You know, many of us want to think, oh, I’ve had a wonderful demonstration. And it is! Praise God it was there. And that you were there to see it. But that isn’t the end of God’s capability of producing signs and wonders. There’s always something more. He talks about more abundantly. He talks about more fruitful. Still more fruitful. It doesn’t make any difference how well pruned you’ve been. You can still produce more fruit.

And He expects us to. More than these. It is simply amazing. And Paul, you know, he was touched too. The same thing. That you may grow more and more. These are the ways in which… That you may… Following it, we may… To do something yet more thoroughly, more completely. More than conquerors.

God desiring to show more clearly to the heirs of His presence how unchanging was His purpose. It’s… It’s just plain there. That we have to be prepared to move out. And to accept more. And it becomes a bit difficult for us sometimes. And it becomes more difficult, I guess, for some people and others. But…

Difficult in all as… Physical… Arthritis. Spiritual arthritis is more disastrous and more devastating. That is where we just do not want to let God move in a new and wondrous way in our own lives, because He has something more for us.

Why is it that Jesus uses as illustrations things that are alive? You know, when He was talking about this thing of the quality of faith, why didn’t He… why didn’t He use a grain of sand? Sure, what He wanted to give us the concept was… is that it was a little… even just a little smidge of faith. A little amount. Well, if He wanted something small, sure, mustard seed is small, but so is a grain of sand. Why didn’t He use sand? Why? Why? Because the mustard seed has in it growth. The potential of becoming. And in so many cases He used the illustrations for us where there was this element of growth and expectancy.

And for people who come into the first glow of their new relationship with the Father through Jesus, endorsed and sustained by the Holy Spirit, oh, I know how easy to say, “This is so wonderful. Oh, I just want to hold on to it.” Well, you try and hold on to a butterfly long enough, and what will you have in your hand? You’ll have a dead butterfly. And if you hold on to your spiritual experiences long enough, you’ll have a dead spiritual experience.

Because it has to be alive. It has to be free to flow, and it has to be free to develop. And He yearns to make more and more of these things available to us. Let me speak for just a minute about… I’ll be speaking several times in this song. You just keep reminding me so I don’t get them all mixed up, eh? I want to talk to you about this, the business about love.

You know, we sing that hymn, “More love, O Christ, to Thee.” If God was not a gracious God, a great number of people in church would be flat on their faces. Because they can sing the most beautiful statements of God’s truth without any iota that it really is true and it applies to them. One of the great advantages of singing in a choir is to see the fantastic way in which people, the body of Christ, can sing “Joy to the World” and look as if they were sitting at a funeral. Well, that’s the way they do. You know, they get a bit off key, and there isn’t a crack on their face. It’s just all plastic. Pastor Paris… There they are, singing away about “Joy to the World,” the Lord has come.

Wonderful demonstration of it, isn’t it? Well, you see, literally, He has to crack them up. Because what they have is a rigidity that will not allow them to come forth. The same thing is happening with… with raising your hands and praising the Lord. My goodness gracious.

Can you imagine what’s going to happen when some of the great big churches of the United Church are going to have people going like this? Well, I’m telling you, it happens. It is happening. But that’s the easy thing to do. That is the easy thing to do. I have come through a beautiful experience with a men’s group. It’s been meeting for years as a conference. And how my heart has yearned for them to experience the freedom, the freedom in the Spirit.

Well, they reached the point that there was some who were sure free. But you know, their attitude wasn’t too good as to them that weren’t doing this. Their attitude towards those who were being free and were worshipping the Lord. Sitting firmly on their hands. They were, you know.

But I watched and it took… it took three years to see this happen. Where those who… no way… Oh, they might get them up this high, but no way were they going to get up like that. But you know, they could look at those who were doing… and they weren’t saying, “For goodness sake, I wish they’d sit down and be holy in the temple.”

I don’t know how they were spelling holy. And then it was the same way with those who were going like this, and they were looking at their brothers, and they were their brothers in Christ, you know. And they were still sitting firmly on their hands. But there was a freedom to appreciate that at their state, and their means theirs, at their state, they were worshipping the same God. When they get… when we get to that sense of freedom, then you know, we who are free in our way release those who are in bondage in their way. And we who are in bondage in our way are released by them who are free in their way. And this is the way it goes on. But we have to be prepared to. To let Him move us. To let Him show Himself to us.

I’m convinced that love and obedience are inextricably united. John makes this perfectly clear in his recording of Jesus’ word. You know, “If you obey me, you’ll love me. And if you love me, you will obey.” Obedience and love were united. And it’s so. But I think sometimes God has to give us fantastic demonstrations of the power of love. The power of it. Oh, we use that expression. Love is the greatest power in the world. The greatest force in the world. Who is it? Was that Drummond who wrote the book about it? I think so. Yeah, but do we believe it? I mean believe it, not just up in our noggins, intellectually, but here. In our soul, in our heart. In our very spirit.

Well, God permitted us to have a most fantastic demonstration of the power of love. I’ll never forget one day I was in my office in the parliament buildings in Victoria. And a man from the… I don’t know what you’d call him. He was in the Attorney General’s Department. He was… Parole. Kids who were in trouble and were on parole. This was his responsibility. And he phoned me up and he said, did I know a certain chap by the name of… I’ll just call him Del. And I said, “Oh yes, I know Del. I haven’t seen him for quite a while. Del.” And he said, “Can I come and talk to you about him?” Well, I said, you know, talk’s cheap. “Come ahead.” So he came. And he said, “You’re the only people that Del ever talks to me about.”

I knew Del was a… it was a broken family. Del had lived in our area and had been a pal of Rob’s for quite a while. They’d been at school together. And then Del had moved… they’d moved away and had lost touch with him. He was in real trouble now. And he said,

“We’re wondering if you would take him into your home.” And I said, “And what’s the alternative?” And he said, “Well, I don’t want to tell you. Because you may think that I’m sort of threatening you.” I said, “No, you can go ahead. I’m not easily threatened.” Well, he said, “The alternative is you’ll have to go to Brandon Lake.” Well, Brandon Lake is one of them… pardon me, one of those institutions. You know, they do the best they can. But they don’t know about the best. So it’s certainly second best all the way along the line in most cases. Well, I said, “I can’t decide this. It’s a family, so we’ll have to discuss this.” So we did.

I learned in this experience that pride in your children is not always sinful. Because as the kids discussed this, because Dal would have just sort of fitted in between Ruth and Rob in age. And we really… he was in his early teens. And we really hashed it up and down. They argued upstairs, downstairs, in the basement, all around. Were we going to do it? And I was… my heart just thrilled with pride in Ruth when she says, “Well, Dad, it sure isn’t going to be easy. But I don’t think I could live with myself if he went to Brandon Lake.” So Dallas came. And I want to show you one other little aside in this, too. It’s so easy for us to alibi people out of their misdeeds because somebody else did a greater misdeed to those that are suffering the consequence. Why was Dal in trouble? Well, he was in trouble just for this simple reason. That his father really didn’t care about the boy at all. In any sense that way. And it had come Christmas time. And a Christmas morning, all the kids… they lived out on one of the islands. All the kids were together in the island. And they were all showing each other what their dads had given them for Christmas.

And Dal, knowing his father, knew that his father would have nothing for him for Christmas. So he had gone out on Christmas Eve and he’d stolen a radio out of a car. And he now was showing them what his dad had given them for Christmas, a radio. Well, you know, it would be so easy to say, “Really?”

But Dal stole a radio. You know, he stole. He broke not only the laws of the country, but he was violating God’s rules to us about this business. Because we would have slopped over and thought, “Really, the delinquent one is the father.” Maybe he was, but who are we to do the judging? Dal had… he had done wrong and he was suffering the consequences. Well, it was an interesting experience because he was tough as nails. I’m telling you, he was tough as nails. He came with all his paraphernalia, which included knives and the whole kit and caboodle. There he was in the house. In the house. He had the finest sense of timing of any creature God ever created that I’ve ever met yet. Because they made the rules. He had to be in every night at 10, except on Saturday, and it could be 11. And at 10:59 and 99999, his foot would be on the bottom step, and he never broke it. He was always there. But if he had been able to go to one millionth of a nine, he would have been on it. But he was obedient. And there were times when… Well, Gravina, you’ll get to know her better as the thing goes on, but she has… she’s mainly Swedish, but she’s got some most peculiar expressions.

Because one with Dallas was that she was never quite sure whether she would wake up dead the next morning. Well… because, you see, he would… he had to be part of the family. So that meant, you know, he had to dry dishes. This tough, not drying dishes. Well, I’m telling you, when he got the carving knife in his hands, you know, you began to think of the knives that were up in the bedroom wall. So that’s why she thought maybe she might wake up dead some morning. But that… there he was. Now, by all the rules, how do you love a guy like that? I knew better than to think that you could just, you know, sort of go up and slosh your arm around him and probably kiss him on the forehead. You wouldn’t try anything further than that with him. But I knew, ugh, don’t try that.

But love is love. And love has power. And I would go up at night. And Gravina would go in her time as well, because I was away so often. And I would go in and Rob would be in his room and I’d sit on the side of his bed and we’d talk a little while and his prayers. And I’d go in on Dell and, my goodness gracious, I couldn’t even get anywhere near the bed. Because he was over at the outside edge, plunked, with his back towards me and his face towards the wall. And there wasn’t any room to it. You couldn’t sit on it. And I certainly wasn’t going to pole vault over him and sit on the backside of the bed. Because I didn’t know what might happen if I got caught in that position with the guy. So there he was, rigid. You couldn’t, you know, you could put your hand on him, but you might just as well have been putting it on the carpet. No response. Tough as nails. Talk to him, no response. Say a prayer. That was it. Out. That’s it. Zero. And that went on. Until one night I walked in. And Dell wasn’t over at the edge of the bed. Dell was over at the other edge.

And he was still with his face to the wall. And I could hardly believe my eyes. Because that tough nut was crying. I never expected to see this tough nut ever cry. So very timidly I sat down on the edge of the bed. And equally timidly I put my hand over on his shoulder. And I’m putting it around so fast I thought, “This is it, Father, I’ll be on the floor.”

And I would if he was a great big… he was far bigger than I was. And I’m not feeling sorry for myself about it either. But anyway, he whips over. And he looks at me and he said, “If you’d only hit me, I’d know what to do.” And I said, oh yes, Lord, he sure would know what to do. But he says, “You’re loving me and I don’t know what to do with it.” Now no one… no one will ever be able to shake from me my awareness of the power of love. Because you see, it didn’t have any real outward manifestations. But I had grown… through the Spirit and through Jesus, I had grown not only to accept him as he was,

tough as he was, to accept him just where he was and to love him. Without being able in any outward way to, you know, sort of give the evidence of it. And it worked. Now I wish I could say that, you know, that this was the transformation. Dal had his own particular road to go. And it had its… it had its both Emmaus characteristics and it also had its Gethsemane characteristics. But all I can tell you about Dal is this.

And it’s now many years, quite many years. That boy never comes into Victoria, but he comes to our home. He knows he does many things that, in a sense, that we could… I can say this, that I don’t approve of. That I wouldn’t approve of. That I wouldn’t… that I would wish he wouldn’t do. But that doesn’t deter him from coming. Because he still knows he’s loved. And he brings his family to our home. And at the time that I retired, one of the most… one of the most beautiful and touching things was… You see, I retired early. And I got into the newspapers. And Dal phoned from a way up in the interior. And by this time, he was calling us Dad and Mum.

And he was on the phone and he said, “Dad, is there something wrong with you that you’re quitting?” Because he was concerned. There was a mutuality of it. And this is a demonstration to me of the power. The power of love.

And that’s why it is too holy a thing to fool around with. To desecrate. If you love as I have loved, as the Father has loved, the beloved Son… the only begotten Son… that kind of a loving has power. That kind of a loving has healing.

We have allowed love to become so… denatured… that verily it takes on the nature of someone other than Jesus. And surely we know that. We keep the same name, but we demonstrate it not in the way that He wants it demonstrated. And that too has power. But that is power of destruction.

But what I’m talking about is the holy healing power of love. And I’m telling you, it is a way of discipline. And please don’t think… I’m not holding Graveen and I and our family up as something apart. But it’s a way of discipline.

Because it wasn’t easy to have Dallas in our home. It really wasn’t. At the beginning. But it became something quite wonderful. And that which God begins, He continues. That’s why he can still come, you see. We can talk to Dallas…

You know, when he’s leaving, we can talk to him about… “Now you pray for us, Dallas.” And I don’t know whether he does it. Yes, I do. I probably wouldn’t recognize when he’s praying for us, but I know he does. But what business of that is mine? That’s his responsibility. He doesn’t have to be prayed… I don’t have to be prayed by him in the way I think I should be prayed for by him. I have to be prayed, be willing to let him do his thing with the Father that is his natural way.

And that’s so true of so many of us. All around us. One of the greatest demonstrations we will ever achieve of the understanding of the power of love, of the Christ-like love, is when we, like Him, accept all of God’s creatures as they are now.

And not cripple them, thinking that they are always going to stay as they are now, but that through Him, they are going to become what the Father intended them always to have been. And when we learn to accept other people as they are, and leave the responsibility where the responsibility lies,

that it is the work of God in them. It is the blood of Jesus over them. It is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit working in them that does the will of God. Ours is to believe. Ours is to believe. That that person is a child of God. Ours is to believe that Jesus did die for that sinner. And I’ll point it to ourselves, and this sinner. He did. Verily, He did.

And He is able. And what to me is even more glorious, that the Father yearns for the home returning of all of His children. All of His children. So for those of us who have started down the road, He has something more.

There is something more beyond being born again. There is something more than being saved. Because if we want to limit Jesus only to being our Savior, we are limiting Him. And I’ll develop that with you shortly too. So praise be to His holy name. And… O Father, how kind and gracious, how firm and strong, how close, how insistent, how gracious, how wonderful You are. O Jesus. O Jesus. How wonderful that You are with us right now. O Jesus, when are we really going to learn the fullness of Your words, when You say that in my Father’s house are many dwellings. I go to prepare a place for you.

Help us, Jesus, not to just limit that at a graveside. But how wonderful it is to think that You went ahead and prepared this place for us this night. And You came, and You brought each one of us here. For it is by Your willing that we are gathered here. So it really is hallowed ground, Jesus. And we thank You for having gone ahead of us.

Gone into us. And brought us through to the place where You would have us be this weekend. And oh blessed Holy Spirit, how we praise You. How we bless You. And how we give thanks to You for the wonders that You’ve performed. Yes, even in me. Yes, even in every one of my brothers and sisters here.

For to those who accept Jesus, the fullness of God’s Spirit dwells within them. And He performs the wonderful works that He alone, by the will of God, is able to perform. And so, oh blessed Holy Spirit, open us. Help us to become more willing to accept

everything that You would do for us. Oh Holy Spirit, help us to be so open that we will reach out and accept from the hands of Jesus everything that the Father is offering us through Him. So be it. Amen. Amen.