The Wasps Kept the Truce

The Wasps Kept the Truce

by Agnes Sanford

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

They continued in prayer day after day, night after night, every night when the little child was asleep. The mother would lay her hands on her and say, “Now, Lord Jesus, here I am being a channel for Your love. Send Your healing love into this little girl now. Wake up in her mind whatever is sleeping. Finish in her body whatever has not been finished.” And then would make in her mind the picture of the little girl well and say, “Thank you, Lord, I believe You’re working toward this.” I have known ever so many children born with some affliction who have been gradually, and I might say partially, restored. Now, I do not say things that I do not know to be absolutely true. Some people get mad with me and fuss at me about that. I don’t care. I’m going to tell you the exact truth so far as I know it. And I will not tell you that every child who is born, mongoloid or afflicted, is immediately healed. I’d like it to be so when the kingdom of heaven fully comes. I trust it will be so. But at the present time, I have not seen it to be so. But yet I have seen perfectly wonderful improvement now for this little girl, who is a dear friend of mine, was ten years old.

One time she came upstairs and her mother had a bad headache and was suffering eye trouble. Thought she would have to get glasses. And Olive came and she said, “Mother, lie down on the bed. I’ve come to pray for you like Agnes does.” That’s me. So the mother lay down on the bed and Olive laid her hands on her and prayed that Jesus would come and take away her headache right then and make her eyes well. And then she said, “There! Now, Mother, you’ll be all right. Now I’ll go downstairs and finish my arithmetic.” Now that’s pretty good progress for a little girl who is not supposed to have any mind at all, isn’t it? She can do a lot of things better than I can. She can run that electric typewriter better than I can. She can play the piano a whole lot better than I can. Yet I will not tell you that she is perfectly normal. Well, who is?

But now here’s the wonderful thing. The mother’s headache disappeared instantly. And her eyes were so restored that although this was many years ago, she still does not wear glasses except to read, which is more or less common as we get older.

And there was a little girl ten years old who wasn’t even supposed to have any normal kind of a mind. So now don’t sit there and think, “Oh, well, but I can’t do this.” Because you can. Now, will you or won’t you? If you don’t, it will be for several reasons. One reason, of course, is that you think I’m silly and you don’t want to try. Well, that’s your business. But the other reason is that in the loving kindness of your heart, you may jump into a thing that’s a little bit too difficult for your present amount of faith. I say these things can be done. I do not say that every one of us is at this time sufficiently full of the power of God to bring about the healing of every person. I know I’m not.

I have to ask God. I have to ask Him. I can’t move unless I ask Him. Jesus said I don’t do anything unless I see the Father do it. So now, when someone asks me to pray for somebody, if someone just gave me this name, I ask Him quickly.

And He said yes. How do I know He said yes? Well, once in a while we make a mistake and yet if we really listen, as we did together yesterday, it’s not too hard to catch on. Sometimes you hear like a voice inside of you saying yes.

Now that’s what I want you to be doing right now while I talk. Lift up the person you are thinking about and listen. I’ll talk sort of slowly and you listen. And say, “Now, Lord, shall I pray for this one? Is this the one You want me to pray for right now?” And listen. Now, sometimes you don’t get it like a voice. Sometimes it comes to you like a feeling inside. Sometimes you feel happy and joyous. You know, it’s a green light saying, “Go ahead.” Other times, although you’d love for this person to be healed, it may be someone you care more for than most anybody. Yet when you try, oh, you feel dull and heavy inside. And you feel like a door closing. All right, respect that. That’s not you being a sissy. That’s God saying, “My child, wait a while. You’re not quite big enough for this one.”

You know the story. I’ve heard Glenn tell it many a time about Dr. George Washington Carver, who used to go out in the woods and talk to God at four o’clock in the morning. And listen. And ask Him questions and listen. And one morning he said, “God, why did You make the world?” And the Lord said, “Little man, that question is too big for you. Ask Me something nearer to your size and I’ll answer it.” So then he said, “Dear Mr. Creator, why did You make man?” And God said within him, “Little man, that question is still too big. Try again.” And he said, “Dear Mr. Creator, why did You make the peanut?” And God said, “Little man, that question is just your size. Listen and I’ll tell you.”

So He did tell him. And Dr. Carver was a brilliant scientist. And by God’s inspiration, plus his own wisdom, he thought of 150 uses for peanut oil, which was of great benefit to the land and to the agriculture of a certain part of the South. And he said, God, you see, if you will not ask God, but if you are just simply determined that you are going to have your own will no matter what, you very likely won’t get it. Now you may, but it’s not too likely. Many people think that prayer is a matter of twisting God’s arm and making Him do our will. Mm-mm. Prayer is a matter of listening and finding out what God wants to do through us at this moment, and then doing His will.

But if you will listen, and if you’re willing to listen, perhaps temporarily to lay aside, lay on the table the thing that you care most about, He’ll probably give it back to you later on when you get a little bigger. Or else you’ll find someone else who’s in a better position to pray for that particular thing. If you’re willing then to listen, and catch the person for whom He wants you to pray during this camp, then, when you go home, he will see a miracle.

Now, I don’t tell you what isn’t true, but I know that is true. It may be a finished miracle. Or it may be the beginning of a miracle. It’s lots of fun when it’s a finished miracle. Oh, I could tell you so many stories of that. A lady who went to call on the neighbor for whom she had decided to pray, a neighbor who was quite sick in bed. And the neighbor met her at the front door, and she said, “What has happened to me? At five o’clock on Thursday afternoon, I got well. I just simply got well, and got out of bed, and I’ve been well ever since.” That was the time of the prayer group. That was the time her friend was grateful.

One time, a father decided to pray for the healing of the relationship between him and his little boy. He told me the third night of the mission in the church. He said, “I have to choose something else because this has already happened.”

He said, “I don’t know why it is. The kid always annoyed me. He always made me irritated. I got him annoyed. He got me mad. And we just never had any peace.” And he said, “It has miraculously changed. I haven’t done anything. I haven’t said anything. I’ve just claimed it in prayer. And it has miraculously and completely changed. We get along just wonderfully. We just have fun together like any father and son.” That took three meetings like this before it was finished. Some of them.

However, I told you yesterday that God has shown me another thing He wants me to pray for. And I’m hoping that some of you, not all of you, but some of you, at least I don’t imagine all of you will catch this. But that some of you will and will join in prayer for this. Now, a friend said to me yesterday afternoon, she said, “I wonder if you mean what my minister meant. When I asked him to pray for healing, he said, ‘Oh, no, I think that’s selfish and death might be dangerous. I believe the healing of the personality is the real thing.’” No, that’s not what I mean at all. And if you ask me, that’s just simply an alibi.

When people… that’s one of the alibis people make up. When they know they haven’t got the power to do it. And they’re not honest enough to say, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have the power to do it.” I say that sometimes.

I do say it if I feel it’s true. Then they’ll make up alibis, you see. No, that is not what I mean at all. Because actually, in my experience and observation, the thing that most of all changes the personality and heals the personality is to sense and feel and perceive the power of Jesus Christ actually moving and actually working in the world today. That’s how people finally caught on that He was the Son of God. When St. John sent to Him, you know, St. John the Baptist, and said, “Tell me truly, are you the Christ?” He didn’t say, “Yes, I am.”

He said, “Go back and tell John what you’ve seen. The blind see, the lame walk, the poor have the gospel preached to them.” That’s how people knew. That’s how people come to know today. I don’t mean everybody, but that’s how I came to know. So maybe that’s why I feel so enthusiastic about it. I always believed in Jesus. I told you that yesterday. And yet something inside of me was very unhappy and very dull. And I didn’t put it into words. But I guess my feeling was, “Well, so what?”

Nothing happened. And so then it was seeing healing and feeling healing in me. I told you two instantaneous healings, but most of them were gradual. But nevertheless, not only perceiving that one got healed, that was a smaller part of it, but feeling the moving of the power within. That restored to me the joy in the Lord. I believed the Lord, but I didn’t have the joy in Him. That was what caused me to grow into an awareness that Jesus Christ not only came, but that He is here among us today. That’s what made Him be near enough so that finally I got so I could talk to Him and listen. That is what, I won’t say has changed, but I trust and hope, is changing the personality. I don’t think too much about whether I’m good or not and how good I am, because it’s discouraging in the first place and boring in the second place. I don’t think too much about that. But yet, I believe if one knew me 20 years ago, one would by this time see some improvement. I certainly hope so.

But maybe you’ll think I’m awful, but actually I am not primarily interested in being good. I’m not primarily interested in being saved. I’m mostly interested in helping other people. I agree. And I really think that’s kind of a sensible way.

Because after all, if you do that and if you keep your mind on getting the Lord’s work done, and helping other people to get well, and doing a good job of whatever He gives you to do in this world, whether it’s scrubbing the floor or writing a thesis or what, then He can take over the job of perfecting you, and He might be able to do a better job of it than you can, because He knows better than you just what He wants you to be.

So anyhow, He showed me however something else that He wanted me to pray for, and it’s not merely the personality, because that goes right along with the healing. Now, He showed me first of all from the Bible. And I wish I had about seven or eight hours, but I don’t. I’ll just let it go at that. For many years, I’ve studied the story of Genesis 1, 2, and 3, and yet there’s a point there that I never caught until quite recently. You remember that when Adam and Eve sinned against the Lord, they disobeyed the Lord. There was a tempter who came into this world, and he came from somewhere else, not this world. He fell from his highest age, and he descended upon this world. And I’m perfectly glad to believe that Eve saw him incarnated in some kind of a body.

You know, it tickles me almost to pieces that nowadays, people all over everywhere are catching the idea that such a thing is perfectly possible. Ten years ago, twenty years ago, of course, we were taught that it’s not possible. It’s got to be absolutely symbolic.

Well, what did he look like before he was condemned to crawl upon the ground beneath dust? In the beginning, he was not in the form of a snake exactly, because he wasn’t crawling on the ground beneath dust. What did he look like? Was he a little man with a pointed head? Was he a great tall giant, kind of whisper-looking? Was he a crawling sort of a thing with plate armor over him and purple scales? Now, where do I get these things from? Ha! Funny papers.

Science fiction. Now, you know, really, that pleases me, because it shows me that all kinds of people are searching out in the great invisible world, and they’re beginning to conceive the idea that it is possible to have a living creature with a mind and an intelligence, possibly in a form quite different from ours, or possibly like ours, coming from somewhere out in the vast universe. Well, anyway, this is such fun, but I shouldn’t get off on it. So anyhow, the tempter tempted them, and they sinned against God, and they ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, whether that was a real fruit, like the stuff some people eat today, this… What is this stuff? They eat LSD or something? That causes… that breaks down the wall between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind, and enables them temporarily to see visions and go on trips, as they call it, and then they say that they’re not prepared to see that their personality is not developed enough to endure. It’s just exactly what Adam and Eve did. Just exactly. Now, whether it was a real thing they ate in their mouths that gave them a premature ability to know good from evil, and later brought on destruction, or whether it means that they absorbed into them prematurely the knowledge that they were not prepared to take, I don’t know, but it was a sin against God, and it’s a sin that the human race is still making against God.

The ironic thing is, the devil said to them, “You become like God, knowing good from evil.” The ironic thing is, if we just wait on the Lord Jesus, and He comes into us and lives in us, we’re supposed to, in our small ways, become like God, knowing good from evil.

But they couldn’t wait. They rushed it. They tried to come in another door. They tried to come in the back way. They disobeyed. But now, here is the consequence, one of the consequences that I never grasped until quite recently. The Bible says that God cursed the earth for their sake, and the earth, instead of bringing forth fruit in abundance, brought forth thorns and thistles.

The earth. Our earth is sick. The planet we live upon has been poisoned. Later on, when there was the first out-breaking sin of jealousy and hate that resulted in the murder of Abel, the Lord said, what did the Lord say to Cain, who was still able to hear His voice? “Where is thy brother?” And Cain said, “I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?” And the Lord said to Cain, “The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth to Me from the ground.”

Tommy said last night, so truly, the earth is made by the breath of God, by the word of God. The very earth itself, therefore, is created in goodness and purity. And God put man on the earth and He said, “Have dominion. It’s yours now. Take care of it. Keep it in this goodness and purity.”

And every time that we come to the Lord and we pray together, we help to recreate this goodness and purity. But, our brother’s blood still cries to us from the ground. Still cries to God from the ground. Now, this may sound like an irrelevant matter, but I don’t think it is. I think this is the explanation of why, in spite of all our prayer and our faith, certain diseases are not healed. I told you last night, they’re not always.

I think this is the explanation of why, in spite of all the wisdom and skill of doctors and men of research, certain degenerative diseases increase. And I think this is the case of why even babies are sometimes born in a degenerate condition.

This is why. In a way, this is comforting. It’s always comforting to have an explanation. So many good and lovely people have said to me, “Why did God do this to me? That my child was born mongoloid or subnormal or something.” And I say, “God didn’t do it to you.” I cannot accept the old explanation, this is the will of God. And I don’t believe it’s the will of God at all, not at all in any way. It’s the work of the enemy who is still loose upon the earth. And it takes place due to the fact that the earth we live upon is sick and has got to be healed. Now, this is not just being symbolic or mystical. This is plain, drubbing, right down to earth, practical common sense.

After all, we eat and absorb into our bodies the fruit, the wheat, the meat of animals that eat the grass that grows upon the earth. Now, the earth itself has fallen into a wrong state of vibration, you might say. Has absorbed not only the goodness and the light of God, but also has absorbed…

Oh, how shall I say? The blood of many brothers that cried to God from the ground back through the centuries. All those slain in wars, all of those slain through the wrath of man, the earth also is poisoned in other ways, as you know. The radiation that is released upon the earth, nobody knows to what extent atomic fallout is present and cumulative.

Falling upon the grass, and the cattle eat the grass, and we drink the milk and the butter and the cheese and the flesh and the creatures that eat the grass that grow upon an earth that’s sick. Now, it can be healed. That’s why I’m telling you, I wouldn’t tell you if it couldn’t be healed. Not only that, it’s going to be healed, because that is the promise of the Lord. But also, our instructions are that we ought to pray for it to be healed. And I do think I’m uncommonly dumb that here I am, pushing 70, and it never occurred to me until this year to actually pray for the healing of the earth. But maybe I got it in time to pass on to some of you anyway. Oh, I had thought, of course, of praying for the healing of the earth in this way, praying for everybody to be good. But, oh dear, I’m not… that’s too big a prayer for me.

I try, but that seems so dim and far off. I do try. But somehow, when I see this more simple thing, I can pray for the healing of the lakes that are so… Some of them, like Lake Erie is a dead lake, you know. It’s so corrupted by industrial waste that it cannot be… it won’t cleanse itself anymore, and all life has died in it. I can pray for the healing of the rivers, some of them being so poisoned that the sides of the river are covered with dead fish. And then people wonder why in that area so many people get sick with an unknown virus that nobody’s ever had before. Well, I should think they would.

Don’t have to be a doctor or a scientist to figure that one out. All you got to do is go down there and smell the fish. Now, this is a big subject, and yet it’s not a hopeless subject by any matter of means, because here is this other glorious thing. That when Jesus Christ came upon the earth, God Himself appearing on the earth in a form of a man, He did not only taught us about God, He not only gave us His love for the healing of our souls and bodies, but also He did this most mysterious thing, He shed the blood of His body upon the earth.

He was the most merciful. And there is the heavenly antidote. And it needs our faith and our prayers to make it effective. But we are not praying without hope. We are not trying to pray this great prayer all by ourselves. We can pray this with joy and thanksgiving, because Jesus our Lord not only was once incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, and still is, but He also, in a mysterious way, is incarnate upon the earth. Let the hills hear His voice. Didn’t I hear you singing that? He said one time when the little children cried out, “Hosanna,” and someone said, “Oh, shh, don’t make a noise.” He said, “Let them, let them. If they don’t cry out, Hosanna, the stones will cry out.”

You couldn’t hear the stones crying out if you’d been there, but maybe He could. I really mean this. I know you sit there looking rather stunned, and I admit that this is a great big thought, and it’s taken me 70 years to get here, but you may as well begin thinking about it. You’ve got longer than I have to carry out your thinking and your prayers. So I’m not asking you right now to understand this. I’m not asking you right now to think, “Oh, this is wonderful. Let me pray for this.” No, that’s probably taking too big a jump. That’s probably going a bit too far. But I ask you to consider it. And I ask you to consider it with joy and thanksgiving. You might like to try it in just little things. God said to Adam, “Have dominion.”

Have you ever tried? Now, maybe you think this is silly, but it works. I have a shack up in the hills. And one year the wasps decided to build a house on the outside of it. And it’s just a wooden shack full of cracks. But I have my typewriter in there, and I go there to read and to pray. In fact, one time, after this thing that happened about five years ago, when I didn’t feel strong enough to go to church on Sunday, my young ministers, one of them, would usually be there over a Sunday. And we’d go up there and have a communion service. And they named it St. Agnes in the Meadows.

So I’d be up there in my little church and study, and the place would be full of wasps. There might be 14 or 15 flying around. Now, I could not kill one of them, because if I killed one of them, I would establish enmity between me and the whole nest of wasps. Now, this is not being mysterious. This is not being mystical. This is just absolutely practical. Okay. I wanted to establish love between me and the wasps. So I had to take a chance, you see, a little bit. I didn’t really feel it was much of a chance. So I talked to them. I took dominion. God told Adam to have dominion. All right, I talked to them. And I said, “Now look, you fellas.

I said, it’s all right for being in here. This is your earth as much as it is mine, and you may use my shack. It’s quite all right. But I said, now the only thing is, don’t sit down on me, because human beings are funny.” I said, “It makes them nervous.”

So they flew around and they buzzed around quite happily. Once in a while, one of them would forget to sit down on me and I’d say, “Now remember, we don’t do that.” Off he’d go. I don’t know if this was one of those wasps following me home or another one, but the whole race of wasps seemed to take a great fancy to me. And I had one of them that lived in my house all winter. And I didn’t put him out because then he would have frozen, of course. And I had a lot of plants in my study and he enjoyed them very much. And one time the bishop was there and the wasp buzzed around the bishop and the bishop jumped up. And I said, “No, no, that’s my wasp.”

Now you know, this may sound awfully silly, but it’s much easier to pray for a wasp than for some people. And really and truly, if you can put into practice this work of reconciliation, it will give you a key to how one of these days the work of reconciliation will go on upon the face of this earth and there will not have to be wars. Because the same principle exists in wars too. You kill a bunch of people in order to make the world safe for peace or democracy or some such thing. And your intentions may be fine. It may be even that in the present situation of the world you have to do it. I don’t know. I don’t know. But all I know is it will never work. Because the blood of your brothers cries unto God from the ground. And no matter how good and how noble and how right your cause is, the earth will not accept that blood and will cry after God. And only the prayers of love and reconciliation will heal the earth. So I don’t think this is as silly as it sounds. I’m going to have to admit to you that there’s one… I’ve not yet succeeded with mosquitoes.

I don’t know whether that’s my weakness or the weakness of mosquitoes. But I can’t do it with anything else. I have rattlesnakes in my new house in Los Angeles. I’m not a bit scared of them. They stay down in the canyon. But I speak when I go down in the canyon. I say to them, like in the Jungle Books, “We be of one blood, thou and I.” Here I come now, fellas. Stay out of the way.

So far it’s not filled with anything except these little unnameable creatures, which I did name. But maybe you pray for me, maybe one of these days I can talk to them too, so they will listen. Now you know, crazy as this sounds, you can feel the love of God in the earth and coming from the earth to you. I’ve said something about this in my most recent book. But also, you can send the love of God into the earth. And so you can begin to redeem and begin to heal this earth.

Now, I have a friend in Texas. One time when I was down there, she said, “Agnes, I wish you’d come out and say a prayer with me for this old live oak tree.” She said, “It’s beginning to die.” I could see that it was. And she said, “It’s such a beautiful old tree. I just love it.” And that didn’t seem a bit funny to me. And we went out there and the two of us put our arms around that old tree. And we just loved it. And we just asked the Lord to renew His life in that old tree.

And you know, this summer, this friend was up visiting me in New Hampshire. And she said, “You ought to see my live oak tree now.” Why? She said, “It’s just putting out new leaves on every branch.” Now, you know, I would not do this just to prove it can be done. Some people do that. But yet, I myself wouldn’t feel quite right about that. I have a feeling that God doesn’t like to be put in a test tube and sort of, you know, examined and proved.

But it does work. I would only pray this way out of love. Elna loved the big old live oak tree. So did I. In fact, just the love will have to work even without the conscious prayer. People say to me, “You’ve got a green thumb.” I haven’t got a green thumb, but I’ve got love. I do have one problem with it. My plants grow and multiply so fast. I hate to throw them away. And I give them to everybody that wants them and they still grow and multiply. And… It’s just love.

Now, we’re not all godless and we’re not all farmers. And some of us have a work that’s very far separated from the earth. And yet, I will tell you a marvelous thing. The same power moves. God can redeem factories. God can redeem businesses. And the glory of God can shine within machinery.

Now, maybe some of you are thinking, “Oh, but this is silly.” No, it’s not silly. Because you live in the midst of an earth. You belong to the earth. From the dust you come, to the dust you will return.

And therefore, everything that you can do in love and prayer to extend the glory of God into this planet, the earth that we live upon, its trees, its rivers, its lakes, its animals and insects, its factories and businesses and buildings, everything you can do to do that will work toward the redemption of the earth. I know a man, a very wealthy businessman. He owns all kinds of factories. They manufacture some very modern thing. I don’t know just what. Something connected with atomic energy, but not for the purpose of destruction, for the purpose of creation. And this man is filled with the Holy Spirit. Now, of course, I say filled. The word filled is not quite accurate.

In the beginning, you know, when the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit, they pointed a hand to a man who was born lame and said, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, arise and walk,” and he arose and leaped and ran into the temple. Now, I know I’m not filled with the Spirit. I’ve got the first fruits of the Spirit, but if I were filled, I could do that.

And we make it so much slower things. There was a preacher who was filled with the Spirit. His name was Peter. And he opened his mouth and preached one sermon and converted 3,000 people in one day. Have any of you preachers ever done that? Well, then, praise God! Because it shows that though you have the first fruits of the Spirit, you are not yet filled with the Spirit. Now, that’s wonderful. Because if you were filled with the Spirit, then there would be nowhere else to go. So it’s grand to know that there’s always more that we can receive. More power, more power, more power, more power. However, to get back. My friend did have the gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy and discernment, but a bit of all of the gifts, of course. And the way he used them was in his business.

Nobody was ever hired in that huge factory without he and two or three of the top executives praying about it. Nobody was ever fired without prayer. And without explaining to the man why he was not adequate. And suggesting that he pray and try to do better. And people coming in that factory would go among these roaring, clashing machines, and then they’d come out and look around and they’d say, “What is this that you have in this building? Why, it feels like a church.”

Now my friend did another thing, and still does. He would train some of his men in prayer. Then he would choose one that had a great deal of the power of the Spirit, and he would plant him in another factory in South America or somewhere to be a sort of a secret agent for the Lord.

And he would pray. Injustices would be removed. Racial discrimination would come to an end. Dishonest practices would turn into honest ones. You know, some business people feel, well, I must resign to something dishonest here. Well, okay, if you have to, but that’s the kind of a sissy way to do. It’s a whole lot better if you can stay and pray and transform it into honesty. Of course, you have to keep your mouth shut while you do this praying, or you’ll be out on your ear. Fortunately, the voice of God is louder than your voice. And if you just pray and keep quiet, He can move. Of course, there may be times when He’ll tell you to say something, but our great mistake is like Adam and Eve trying to run ahead of Him and do it first.

After a while, incidentally, this… what would you call it? This secret agent of prayer. Things would go so well in his department, he would be promoted. He’d probably end up being the head of the thing. My friend told me, he was telling me all about this, and I’ve heard about it from other people too. And he said, “There is just one problem. It’s a very real problem. My profits double and treble in a rate that’s embarrassing.”

He said, “Now, I did think, well, December is a slow month. Perhaps in December, there’ll be a little less.” But he said, “Even in December, they increased.” Now, there’s nothing wrong with this. In fact, it’s glorious. Why should not the supply of God’s love in the world, the money through which works are accomplished, why should it not flow toward one who has the spiritual power to use it and to direct it with wisdom and with justice to the glory of God? So this is one of the ways of praying for the healing of this earth, the land upon which we live. And I need not tell you, for you know. And this is one of the hidden reasons for the neurosis of a great many people. They don’t like to talk about it, but I’m not afraid to talk about it because I know the solution.

But one of the reasons for the hidden fear inside of many people is that they know that this little planet that they live upon is in a very shaky condition. All right? It’s all right to know it. It’s fine to know it if we also know that we ourselves, like Adam and Eve, are put here in this world to have dominion. And to have dominion not only by doing the work that God gives us to do, although that’s a very important part of having dominion, but also by praying about this work that God gives us to do. Now, you know, there are many people, I’m sure there are some right here, who feel that when they receive the Holy Spirit and when they become really live Christians, they should turn their backs on the earth and have no interest in it. As Tommy said last night, go back and just be spirits. Now, read the Bible and you will see that that does not, that is not God’s plan for this earth. He wants to redeem the earth, not to abandon it. He wants to redeem the flesh and people, as Tommy said last night, and not just turn it back to the spirits. He’s got plenty of spirits up there. I’m full of them.

He tried a new venture here on this earth to put together a physical being and a spiritual being, see what they could do with it, and see what they could do with the earth upon which they live. So it’s to the glory of God that we do whatever work He gives us to do with all our hearts, as unto the Lord, not as men pleasers. All this advice you’ll find in the Bible again and again.

And there’s a promise. In 2 Chronicles 7, 14, you’ll find this verse. Yes, you might like to jot that down, some of you. 2 Chronicles 7, 14. Because this promise is tremendous. “If My people, who are called by My name…” Now, that’s you. You are named with the name of Christ. Christians. Little Christ. You’re called by His name. So that’s you. “Will do…” Now, there are four things. Humble themselves. Humble themselves. Now, that’s kind of a funny one when you think of it.

So many of us have the feeling, well, now we’ve received the Holy Spirit, we’re filled with the Spirit. It’s above us now to be interested in small details of seeing that the garden’s clean, or… getting up suppers for the church, or… serving on the vestry and balancing books, or… just going to our daily work. We’re a little too good for that. We’re a little too big for that. Well, that’s not what the Lord said.

He said, “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves… and pray.” Now, we do pray, and what we are here for is to learn to pray. But the promise here is for the land, and so I will extend that and say, and pray for their earth, as well as for other things. “And seek My face.” Seek My face. That’s what we did yesterday in our prayer. We tried really to shut our eyes, shut out this world, and we tried really to seek His face. If there’s time we might… Well, no, there isn’t time. Next time we’ll… Next time we’ll try that again with another purpose, with the purpose of the healing of the world. “And cease from their wicked ways.”

“Then I will come to them, and I will save their land.” See, there’s the promise. The earth is not doomed, really. People may think it is, but it’s not. It’s in a somewhat precarious condition. It could go this way or that way. But the intention of God is that it shall become the kingdom of heaven.

And so there is the promise. Now, you know, cease from their wicked ways. We don’t have too many wicked ways, do we? We try right hard to be good. And I don’t imagine you’ll go home from here and rob the bank or something.

And yet… When I was in England a month or two ago… And every time I’d go to church, of course, and the same in the United States, in the Episcopal Church… You always have to say the same prayer, you know? Confessing your sins, the burden of them is intolerable, and so on. And I used to get rather impatient with that. I think, well, after all, I confessed them last night and I haven’t had time in 24 hours to accumulate quite such an intolerable burden as that. Well, one Sunday I went to St. Martin-in-the-Fields. There are no fields within a radius of about 40 miles, but that’s still the name. It’s right in the middle of London.

And it’s a wonderful church. And there was a little explanation of the communion service. And for the first time I understood. It said in the general confession, you are not confessing your own private sins. You are confessing the sins of your people and your nation and the human race. And sure enough, the burden of them is intolerable. I never thought of that before. That as Christian people and representatives of the human race, we have a right and a duty to confess to God, not only our personal sins, but the sins of our nations and of our races and of peoples. And ask His forgiveness. And that’s a great thing to confess. And even though we do it every day and His forgiveness pours forth, we can still ask because the need is so great. And so now we will conclude just with a brief prayer for this land, for this earth. O Lord Jesus, we do give thanks that You came down from heaven to save not only our souls, but also our bodies, and also the earth, which in a very practical way is Mother Earth, the earth on which we live, from which our bodies grew, and which is therefore the home of our spirits and of Thy Holy Spirit. And so now, O Lord, we do confess before Thee that as a race and as peoples, we have all sinned and fallen short of Thy commands and of Thy will.

And we do pray now, O Lord, in the name of the people and for the people, that Thy forgiveness will enter into us, will flow forth through us to the little bit of land that we live upon, to the trees and flowers and creatures that live upon this land, to the business that we do, to the streets we walk upon, and the schools and the factories that we enter, and the churches where we worship, and that the blood of the Lamb shed upon this earth will flow with joy and with love and with forgiveness, and that the earth will be cleansed and will become the Kingdom of God. We ask this, O Lord, and intend to continue praying this way, for Thy name’s sake, for Thy own glory, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.