United To Be Ignited

United To Be Ignited

by Reginald (Reg) Goff

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

Most of us begin our prayer life, our serious prayer life, out of the sense of need. We talked about that the other day. Tragedy, trouble, something bigger than we are, and we turn to God. And almost to our amazement, we find God is better than we thought and answers more than we expected. And this is the way most of us begin. But we go on from that deeper and deeper. Now, there’s another thing I’d like to say about prayer groups. I think many prayer groups fail because they have never sat down and figured out what they wanted out of their prayer group. Now, no company would ever get anywhere just starting out as a company with no goals, no achievements, nothing set up, what they wanted to do or what they wanted to make. And I believe that even some of them who have had goals just kind of got to be gimme groups and getting things from God. And that was about all they were concerned about. Now, let me say this. I believe that prayer is a power in the world, like magnetism, gravity, electricity, or whatever else. And I believe that when a person prays who is in touch with God, that actual power moves just the same as electricity. The Bible tells us that tremendous power is made available when a righteous man prays.

Now, it does not say tremendous power is made available when a man prays. It doesn’t say that. And that’s for most people’s faith. They think that just words are prayer. And therefore, if I say words off to God, I have prayed and power is made available. That is not so. If that were so, the world would be converted in two months. Because there are literally millions, and I mean many millions of people who pray every day, and yet the world is not being converted. Now, either prayer is not as powerful as we say it is, or else people do not know how to pray. Now, I think it’s the latter. So, I want to emphasize this word righteous. Tremendous power is made available when a righteous man prays. That is somebody in tune with God. Somebody living the laws of God. Somebody living in the kingdom of God. And this power is available to them. And when they pray, it is actually communication and working with God. And things begin to happen. So, if this is true, then I think instead of just coming together to get the mother healed, or my father better, or our problems solved, or myself better, we ought to start trying to get ourselves where we could, in a little way, without bragging or being smart, feel that we were in the class where it says, “Tremendous power is available when a righteous man prays.”

I’m not saying that in the sense of ego or bragging at all. But there is a condition there. And we fail to meet these conditions in prayer. And then people say, “But I prayed, and that didn’t happen.” That’s right. And you prayed as earnestly as somebody else, but nothing happened. You see, we have not met the conditions for prayer. Now, so I believe that what we ought to come, our first goal in a prayer group, ought to be to develop a Christian personality.

Oh, you say, “I’ve got a Christian personality.” Have you? I’d like to see it. I don’t have. I wish I had. I honestly wish I had. For I believe that a Christian personality is one who lives like Jesus lived. And I don’t. And I’m not, I’m frank to say it. I cannot live the level that Jesus lived. I cannot always turn the other cheek. I cannot always forgive when I ought to forgive. I cannot always go the second mile. I can’t always give good for evil. Sometimes I do resent. Sometimes I do feel bitterness. So I am not, I do not claim to have a Christian personality. But I am working at it. And I am striving to become. So I am saying, this is a goal, not an achievement. It is not something you’re going to rush out and get, and then say, “Oh, I’ve got it.” No. You will be working at it all the rest of your life. In building a Christian personality. Now, what is this then? I want to give you four points under that. Now, the first goal, there will be three of them. The first goal is to develop a Christian personality. One who acts like Jesus lived. Alright? I believe the first and the most important prerequisite to all of this is to know you are forgiven.

John Wesley used to preach all the time, “You must be born again.” And a dear old lady came up to him, rather, didn’t like it. And she said, “John Wesley, why is it you are always preaching on, ‘You must be born again’?” John Wesley looked at her and smiled as kind as he could. He said, “Lady, it’s because you must be born again.” Hmm. He was dead right. The last time I was with Rosalind Rinker in the great School of Prayer in Wichita, Kansas, where we had hundreds of people there of all denominations that gathered, she said to me, “Reg,” she said, “our trouble is that churches are filled with unborn people. They aren’t Christian. They’re just Christian colored. They have picked up Christian attitudes and they have run with the Christian crowd and they may have joined a church, but they’re not in tune with God. And therefore we are trying to work through mediums and people and vehicles of work that are not in tune with God.” And this is our main trouble, and I believe this. So, I believe we must strive to find a know-so forgiveness. How many of you were here last night?

Certainly. Now, I believe that forgiveness must be a known thing, not “I think I’m forgiven,” “I hope I’m forgiven,” “I prayed, I asked God to forgive me,” and all this. If I buy a gift for my wife, it’s mine. I paid for it. It’s mine. Not hers at all. For her, but it’s mine. It’s not hers until I release my hold on it and she accepts it. Then it’s hers. You see. Now, Jesus bought on the cross for you and me all the forgiveness we ever can need for every sin we could ever commit. Saint or sinner, it doesn’t matter. But He bought it and it’s His. He paid the price, not ours. So now, it is His until He releases it and we accept it. So, when I come to Jesus and say, “God, forgive me for the sins I have,” He releases the forgiveness because He says, “If you ask, I’ll give it to you.” And 1 John 1 and 9 says, “If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So, when I ask, He releases it. But if I don’t take it, I still don’t have it. And I want to say this seriously this morning.

If you are one of those lovely people who were raised in the church and raised in a Christian family and accepted the teachings of your parents and all that, but have never known, really, that you’re a Christian. You think you are, you hope you are, you kind of have to believe you are. If you are one of those four, goodness sake, settle it. Don’t be so proud that you can’t, that you say, “But I’ve been a Christian for 30 years, I think I have, and I couldn’t dare go to another, I couldn’t have to ask.”

Let’s swallow our pride and go into our own rooms and kneel by our bedside and make a confession to God of what you know your life has been wrong. And say, “God, I don’t know. Maybe I am a Christian, maybe I’m not. I don’t know. I’m not unchristianizing myself, but God, I want to be sure.” Then you say, “Father, Jesus, forgive me for all this.” Then turn and say, “Thank You. Thank You for forgiving me.” And accept it. And you’ll find you’ll have a new day in your life. It’ll be a totally new day that’ll happen in your life. Now, I say do this. We are having literally high officials in the church are saying, “Well, I don’t know.” Deacons, elders, ordained people are saying, “Well, I really don’t know. I’m going on this thing.” So I say the first thing above all is to know you are forgiven, know you have accepted the forgiveness. Now, psychiatrists tell us that you cannot forgive other people until you are willing to forgive yourself and accept yourself as you are. This is all a part of this forgiveness. Very, very important. The second point I would like to give you is to accept the teachings of Jesus as my way of life. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, it’s very simple.

And we won’t go on much talk. The Sermon on the Mount. Just take the Sermon on the Mount and try to live. That’s all you need to take. For this one point, you can leave the rest of the Bible aside. Just try to live the way Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. Now, again, this is a goal, not a achievement. The third thing, accept what Jesus taught about the Father. Many of us have a very bad idea of God, as we talked about last Sunday night. We don’t have an idea of a loving God. People in every church I go to will say, “But God put sickness on us to make us sweet and train us less.” And I say, “Will you do that to your child?” “Oh, no.” So we are saying God does things I wouldn’t do myself. We don’t have as good opinion of God as we think we do. God will put cancer on a person to make them sweet, but I wouldn’t do that. Now, that is a terrible thing to say. Now, God may use that, whatever it may be upon us, that comes from the evil. But Jesus came against sickness in every recorded instance as something that should not be. It was not the Father’s will.

So let’s take what Jesus says about the Father. And take for that, nothing in the words you need, but the story of a loving Father. You may call it the prodigal son story. Read it and reread it and see how loving and how wonderful that Father was. There are two points I want you to notice. He had unlimited love.

No strength. And unlimited forgiveness. Now, when you get a heavenly Father like this, life is going to change. The fourth point under this developing a Christian personality then, is to constantly strive to act and react like Jesus would. In all situations. This is the other Christian. Now, you see, but why do you say act and react? Well, we do it purposely. We people who run with the Christian crowd, whether we are actual Christians or not, have a pretty good record in how we act in our conscious mind. “I’m a Christian, so I don’t do this. I’m a Christian, so I don’t go here. I’m a Christian, so I don’t say this. I don’t swear. I don’t do this.” You see, in our conscious mind, we do a pretty good job. But where we fail is out of our subconscious mind.

Something happens to us quickly and reacts. And we don’t react nice. And we say, “Oh, I wish I hadn’t done that. Why did I say that? What made me do that? I wish I hadn’t done that.” But listen. A sinner who is watching you will judge you by those kind of reactions, and they’ll forget all the nice reactions you did when you think it. They will pick the worst that happens, and they will look at that. They’ll judge you by it. And they’ll say, “Well, they don’t act any better than I do, so I’m as good as they are, so I’m as good as Christians they are.” You see. Now, the subconscious reactions which come automatically, the difference perhaps could be summed up in this. In my conscious mind, when I get done here, I can decide to go out of that door or that door. But I will know any desire to go out of either one of those doors, and I’ll do that. But if the telephone should ring, and I would expect a long-distance call, I would go through the shortest one without ever thinking. I would stop the whole circle and go out and get in confusion, you see. You just… ..to that shortest one. Now, this is a subconscious reaction, you see.

It’s out of all the thinking of the past, all of the hurts, and all of the good things, and all of the bad things of my life, our pigeon-hole like little slots in our subconscious mind. Every thought you have ever thought is in your subconscious mind. And out of all of the hurts, out of all the things people have said, out of all the feelings that you have pushed in your subconscious, we react suddenly, and sometimes we don’t like what we do. Now, I believe that this is the area of the Holy Spirit. I do not believe that you can get cleansed out of the subconscious mind knowingly, out of a pattern, and go do it. I think you can confess conscious sins, you know, and you can be forgiven. But what about all this stuff that you don’t even know is in your subconscious mind? You see, like Karl Menninger, like a photogenyl last night, you said, “This hospital is filled with unredeemed guilt.” You see, things that are shoved down in our subconscious, and they keep coming up and deviling us and bothering us, make us act in ways that are not Christian. Now, when this happens, we actually lose our mind at times, if it’s enough, if it’s strong enough. So, I believe that we must find some way, as Agnes Sanford says, to find the healing of the memories.

And I like that phrase. I think it’s the best anybody has. The healing of the memories. Now, every one of us, and don’t you think you’re exempt, every one of us, including me, are sometimes deviled by things in our memories that Jerry and I were talking about this yesterday coming down the road. Hurts that have come to us in years past. Things that stick there. We don’t want them to stick there, but they’re there often. Now, I want you to listen to Phillips’ translation of Romans 8, 12 and 13. I think this is one of the most amazing verses in the Bible that I never saw it, so just about a year ago. “So then, my brothers, can’t you see that we have no particular reason to feel grateful to the sensual nature?” This is our subconscious mind. “Or to live on the level of the instincts.” You see, you act by instinct. You see, something happens and you jump. “Indeed, that way of living leads to certain spiritual death.” I think this is where the Methodists backslide. I really do. And Satan comes along and says, “See, you didn’t act so good. You’re not. You aren’t saved at all. You see, look what you did. A Christian wouldn’t do that. You’re not saved,” you see.

When you have been born again, and we give in and begin to criticize ourselves. Because this thing does come up and it doesn’t look very Christian, frankly, you see. Now, “indeed, this way of living leads to certain spiritual death. But, if, on the other hand, you cut the nerve of your instinctive actions.” Now, listen now. “By obeying the Holy Spirit, you are on the way to real living.” And I want to say hallelujah. This is one of the greatest truths I know in the Bible. Now, in 1 Corinthians 2 and 10, it tells us here again that the Holy Spirit searches the deep things of our life. And Jesus, talking to His disciples before He came up to the cross, said to them, “There are many things I have told you which you could not understand. But when He, the Holy Spirit, when He comes…” Now, listen carefully. “He will bring to memory all the things that I have told you.” Isn’t that clear? Jesus told them. They didn’t understand it. They put it into their subconscious mind because everything that you think goes in there. They heard it. It’s registered in their subconscious mind. But they didn’t mean… didn’t understand it. They couldn’t understand it until after He had been crucified and rose again.

But the Holy Spirit is the one that’s to go back into their minds and bring out of your memory, as Jesus said. And then explain it to you so you’ll understand it. Isn’t that tremendous? Now, if the Holy Spirit can do this on the good side, He certainly can do it on the bad side. If He can bring things out of our mind, He can bring the negative things as well as the positive things. So, Jesus is saying, in my opinion, to us today, if you will rely on the Holy Spirit and ask Him to do it, He will bring out of your subconscious the things that need forgiveness. And He’ll let you see them, likely by an action. He will allow something to happen and you will react wrong and say, “Oh. This needs forgiveness,” you see. You’ll take it to Christ and say, “Christ, I didn’t know this was in there. Cleanse it and take it out. Cleanse it,” just like you say a known sin. And I believe that this is the healing of the memories. And the Holy Spirit can come in and take out of our lives the hurts and the bitterness, the things that are stuck in there and just eaten us for years and years and years. These are the things that the Holy Spirit works.

So, I say the fourth point was to constantly strive to act and react like Jesus will. And this is the work, I think, of the Holy Spirit. Now, let me come to the second major point, or goal rather. The second goal. The second goal is simply… Well, I guess I shouldn’t say any of them are greater than the others because they’re all so important. But to me, it just is one of the thrilling things. To develop real vital union with Jesus Christ. Now, when I say vital union, I am not talking about somebody who likes Jesus. Who goes to church once in a while. Who tries to be nice and decent because Christianity has taught us how. I am talking about the kind of union that happens and must happen before anything can happen to you. From God to you. Let me illustrate. Again, let me refer you to my son, the physicist, who says… He says, “Dad, there’s a law for this.” Now, I knew there was a law on the spiritual side. But I didn’t know the law on the physical side. But he knew the physical side. And he said, “Here is the law. No transference of power without contact.” Now, that is a physical law. Now, the spiritual law is… “Abide in me and I in you.”

Now, that isn’t what I want. I haven’t got it here. Yes. “Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine.” It’s the contact. You can cut the… Beautiful. Take the nicest sign or the nicest branch on the tree. Cut it off at blossom time. And you can put it in a jug and you can put it in water and you can even bury it in the ground. You can do anything you want to with it and you’ll never get fruit off that. It has to abide touching in contact with the tree and then the juice and the sap will flow right through it from the tree. But if there’s no contact, even the width of the paper will stop the flow of that sap. You know that. Even the width of the paper will stop the flow of electricity between two wires. No transference of power without contact. So, you see, you and I are going to have to have a known, unknown contact with Jesus. It isn’t going to be a thing, a matter of believing about Jesus or accepting Jesus as an ideal or accepting His principles. This isn’t a trouble. It’s an actual, known relationship that unites me to God so much so that this power from God can flow right through me and out comes the fruit.

It isn’t my power ever. It isn’t my power ever. God’s power flowing through me and the fruit is borne. “If you abide in me, ye shall ask what you will.” If you abide, contact, you see, “and it shall be done unto you.” Now then, it’s a wonderful thing to belong to a family that is more Christian than just Sunday. And if you were to be in our home with our son or daughter or daughter-in-law or in the cars we travel, anywhere, on the beach or anywhere, I’m sure you could prove that half of all the conversation is spiritual. Why? Because it’s the most exciting thing we know. It really is. Why is it so? Well, because we know we have caught the vision that we can be united to God and things can happen that never would happen otherwise at all. We were driving down the road and discussing religion, four of us, Carla and I and Sharon and Jim.

And Sharon, out of the backseat said something that just thrilled me. And I asked her afterwards, “I don’t know where I got it. I don’t know whether I read it or somebody said it or I thought it or what. I don’t know where it came from.” But here’s what she said. Now you remember these two things. I wish I had them on nice little models and could sell them to you, if it’s a sense of reason.

I’ve actually thought of doing this. To be united to God, of course, is to be ignited. That’s great. Whoo! Gives me good people. To be united to God is to be a light. Think of that. What a tremendous statement. And then she went on to say, one that is just as good, that we are difficult to understand. To be one, and she’s referring here to Christ after we were discussing, union. To be one with Christ is to have won the battles of life. Now think of this. If this won’t take a load off your back, then you don’t know what I’m talking about.

To be united to God, and know you are united, and know transference of power without union, if you are in union with God or Christ, however you want to say it, that means that I am in contact with the power enough for any situation I can ever get into from now till I die. In other words, every battle in life is already won.

You keep your connection. You couldn’t say other words because you are in touch with the power of God. And that’s big enough for anything, isn’t it? Not that God said, He will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we are able to bear, but with that temptation, He will provide a way of escape or the power to win, however you want to interpret it. So you see how important our union is?

The union, I almost think the union is almost everything. It isn’t everything. You’ve got to have conversion first, but… Actually, as a Christian, union is everything, in my opinion. Taking care of our union with God is actually taking care of enough power for anything that can happen. I don’t care what can happen to you. Even death. Doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you something. To be united then is to be ignited. Now, if you want to be a light for God, you better take looking at your connection. This is it. Now, union means life then. The branch will die if it isn’t united. You know that perfectly well. And it means continued life, this union. It also means power because there’s no transference of power without union. It means growth. Now, here’s where we get into trouble. And here’s where I squirm just like you do, because I’m just as human as you are. I don’t know where they get the idea, people, that these people run around as speakers and leaders that are inhuman and not human. We are human just like you are. Now, and I squirm here too. Union means growth.

You can’t have growth without change. And we don’t like change. I have a pretty good opinion of myself, don’t you? You do? No, come on, small. You know you do. Or you’ve got changing yourself. Of course you like yourself. You don’t, you’re a fool. Hmm. I like myself. I think you ought to like yourself. Now, and when somebody comes along and wants to change me, whoo! See, I just rise up and begin to paw the air. I don’t like to be changed, you see. That’s why people don’t like criticism, even though it’s named constructive criticism. Now, let’s… I was down in the southern part of Indiana a year ago. I was, had two days and only really had about one day’s travel. That’s a rare thing. There always was… this time I had two days and only had one day really of travel. And I was just goofing along. It was a glorious bright, sunshiny day in the fall and the leaves were at their best. And I found a place to get off the freeway and because it was a beautiful forest there. And I got pulled off and down into the ditch and parked the car and got to the camera. And the whale went into the woods to photograph some trees. And I had photographed a very beautiful oak.

It was a beauty. Symmetrical and just… oh, and sitting out by itself where you get it. It was just a beautiful thing. Framed in the background of the forest below, behind it. I had photographed a tea tree and I had gone back and sat down a little old broken stone fence. And the blue jays were yelling at me saying, “Get out of here, this is our property.” And the squirrels thought I was trying to steal their nuts and everything else. And we were just having fun. I was yelling back at them and we were just having a lot of fun. There was no way around. And I was just really enjoying it. Like I said, I was a kid back in the woods. I used to enjoy it. And then God taught me a lesson as I was sitting at the fence. I looked at this beautiful tree once more and out on the edge about cupid out past the edge of the tree was the most beautiful little oak you ever saw. Two year old. Oh, it was beautiful. Every leaf was perfect. Beautiful, bright, light green. And the bark was so shiny and green and smooth. And oh, it was just a beautiful thing. And I looked at it and I said, “Well, I suppose that’s the parent tree there.”

Some squirrel took an acorn and hid it there for winter and didn’t need it. And it grew into a tree. But I… and I said, “There it is.” And I looked at the two and began to compare them. The leaves on the little tree were much prettier and more glossy and green. Beautiful. The ones on the other tree were somber and they were coloring and all that. And I looked at the bark and the little tree was just shiny and it was just a thing of beauty. But I looked at the bark of the old tree and it was nasty and dirty and had bugs had eaten and the woodpeckers had cut holes in it. Drilled holes, I guess. And it had split and was full of scars and everything else. It wasn’t pretty at all. And God seemed to say to me this. If this little tree, in all its beauty, is ever going to become an oak, it’s going to have to change. And it’s going to have to be all split and torn and stretched and become like the old oak, not nearly as beautiful. But it’ll never become an oak unless it lets nature split it and change it, enlarge it, and all it wants to do. And I learned a lesson.

Listen. God had a dream for every one of us, for you and for me. He has right now. I don’t think any of us have anywhere near attained the dream that God had for us when He gave us life. I don’t believe that. I really believe that we have never yet attained this goal that God wants us to be. Not one of us. Anybody. But listen. You and I are not going to gain fulfillment in love. Unless we are willing to let God take us and just break us and split us, discolor us. Anything He wants to do with us. And this, I think, is where we think we are willing to be knights. But we aren’t willing to be taken over and rebuilt. Now there’s one more thing I want to mention on this union, which is tremendous in my opinion. Union not only means all these things, but it means one more thing. It means agreement. It means agreement. Now I’m talking about the prayer groups now, not the personal individual. It means union. It means agreement. Now, there’s a passage in the Bible which says, “If two of you agree as touching anything in the kingdom, you can ask what you will and it shall be done.” Now, I suppose there isn’t a person in this room that really believes this honestly.

Now, I had a very rude awakening. It was a shocking awakening that I had for me to learn this. I had known the idea of the magnifying glass that you put it out on a piece of paper in the sun and you have a big piece of light here, but nothing really happens. And you focus it down to a point and you get fire, don’t you? You haven’t multiplied the rays. You don’t have any more sun. But one, you just got a big blob of light and the other one, you’re getting fire. Why? Because you brought all the rays together in union or in agreement. And you really, something happened. They tell me that when an army walks over a bridge, even the finest built bridge in the world, that army has to break step or the rhythm that they have will break the bridge down. But the single steps, you can walk forever over there, never bother the bridge at all. It’s the rhythm. The laser ray, the most important discovery I believe in electronics in our generation, is fantastic. What they have done with that thing. They tell us that they can talk to a person on a laser ray as far as five billion miles away. Which means that nobody needs to worry about their kids anymore, no matter where they would go in the universe, we could talk to them.

They couldn’t live long enough to get away with them, we couldn’t talk to them. Now, it’s fantastic what they’re doing with it. And all they’ve done with the laser ray is… Now, I’m over simplifying, you understand that. I mean, it’s more complicated what I’m saying, but I… If I took time to explain the complication, I might make some mistakes and it might be right. But what is simply is this. When we take a white light, put it through a prism, and break it up into the colors. We have a series on the wall, and it’s all in different places. The island did to go blue, green, yellow, orange, and red, if I remember since I was a high school kid. All these different rays. And they all come on different places because they’re traveling at different angles and at different wavelengths, you see. And you can break them up. Now, all the laser ray has done is take that white ray, put it through a gas or a ruby with the electrical currents around it, but through it, and take all of those rays and put them into one beam in one wavelength. And they have found a power that man is almost afraid to touch. They turned it toward a diamond, the hardest gem we know, and right through it, they couldn’t even measure the time it took to go through it.

A diamond. They turned it on the moon from a laboratory in Boston. And in less than three seconds, it hit the moon and bounced back to Boston. They tell us that they can carry a thousand telephone calls and no interference whatsoever in one beam alike. Or a hundred full TV programs and no interference whatsoever in them. I mean, it’s fantastic what they’ve done. Just because they’ve brought us all together in union. So we better wake up to this power of union. And it’s the same thing in the spiritual world. Now, what do we mean by this? Let me tell you the first experience I ever had. I was at a retreat. Now I’ll make it very short and leave out a lot of interesting things. But I was at a retreat with another lady, with a lady.

And we had had a tremendous move among the senior college and the senior high school kids. It really had been a youth camp, really. The work was done among the youth. And as we got to the end of it, the last day, some of the parents, who didn’t quite realize, in my opinion, the deeper spiritual things, decided that the best thing to do with these kids is send them home happy, was to have a great big hoedown, the big fling, after the last service, and send them home happy. Bring them right down to where they came, you know, back to the old level, and send them home. And, so anyway, I didn’t believe this was the best thing. And, but I didn’t know what happened. And I came into the last meeting. I was late because I had been counting, and I waited till I heard them. I thought they were at the last song. And I came in the side door. And, the person who was the other speaker was waiting for me. And she motioned me to come down. And they were standing up singing. And I went down and stood and talked to her. And she said, “You know what they’re going to do?” I said, “No.” She told me. I said, “Oh, no.”

I just had my reaction. “Oh, no.” And she said, “Oh, then you don’t agree with that.” I said, “You don’t think that is God’s will.” I said, “No, I don’t think that’s God’s will. Not that it’s wrong, but it’s just not the best thing to give these kids. Go home on.” And she said, “Well, then we’re in agreement, aren’t we?” I said, “Yes, ma’am.” She said, “Then it won’t happen.” I said, “What? It’s all planned. Everything has been gotten ready.” And she said, “Then it won’t happen.” And I looked her like this. She’s in there. And I said, “What do you mean?” “Well,” she said, “Reg, don’t you know that the Bible says, ‘If we are agreed as touching anything in the kingdom, we can have it’?”

Well, I’ve been quoting that, but I didn’t know what it meant. And I looked at her and might say, “Are you really serious?” And you know that she reached out and took my hands and I took her, and we stood there in the aisle. I said everybody would stand up singing, no hardly anybody thought was going on. And we stood there and we bowed our heads and prayed. And we said, “Dear God, we don’t believe this is the best thing for these kids tonight. And we’re in agreement with this, and we believe we’re in agreement with Your will, and we’re asking You to take care of it. Amen. Thank You for doing it.” Ha! Oof! This was new to me. I went back up the platform and started to preach. And the Holy Spirit lived, fell on that place. I don’t know when I’ve ever had such liberty of preaching. Notes didn’t mean anything. And I was having the time of my life preaching, and all of a sudden I felt we ought to have a time of dedication. And there was no altars in a little stage, you know, in a little three step stage. And no altar, no nothing, no places. I turned to some of the men behind me on the platform and I said, “Hey, go around behind the stage there and get some stuff out here and make an altar.”

Ha! And they went back there and rummaged around, found a few boards and sticks and a ladder and a few things and some chairs. And they started making an altar in front of me while I kept right on talking. I said nothing was going on. I expect the people wonder what was coming off. And this was a stage, a good place to have it. Ha! Yes! And then I said to the people, I said, “You know, we’ve had a marvelous time this week and I want to go down there and pray some more and dedicate myself afresh to God. And I’m sure lots of you want to do it too and if you want to come on down.” That altar was filled three times with those people as they came there and made new commitments to God and started. So we closed the meeting and went on. Now I had arranged to come, prompt people to counsel and I was there and until almost 12 o’clock. Now when I’ve been going from home a long time, which I had this time and my daughter was with me, and I’m starting for home the next day, you can… Well you shouldn’t say this but I can now, but you can bet your bottom dollar that I am going to be on the road before about 4 o’clock in the morning.

And I have a daughter and she is a typical woman that doesn’t like to get up in the morning. Now don’t… that isn’t a slam. Not in my vernacular. God made you that way. There’s nothing wrong with that.

And so… but she’s good to get up. I mean if I want to. She’ll crawl out in her pajamas and get in the back seat and cover up and go to sleep and I drive. Well this is what is going to happen the next morning and I wanted to tell her that I was going to wake her up about 4 o’clock in the morning. And I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t find anybody. Couldn’t find the kids. Couldn’t find anybody on the campus. Now what’s going on here? Because the last night, you know the kids hardly ever go to bed at 1 or 2 o’clock. They’re goofing off around, raising a cane, getting their last look at their new girlfriend, etc. And I couldn’t find the kids. And Ruthie wasn’t in her room and I finally… I was walking down… She was on the campus there and I walked down and I thought I heard voices and I started following the voices and it led me right out in the bleachers in the football field. And here were all the kids. And Ruthie was just an assistant but she was one of the leaders, youth leaders. Ruthie and this lady who was a wonderful youth leader. And they were out there with these kids. And they were having the most grand testimony service you ever heard.

Praying for the kids back home and witnessing what Christ had meant to them and how their lives have been changed. And they were having a little camping all by themselves. And you know I sat there like a mousy in the corner until 2 o’clock in the morning and listened to those kids. They weren’t the best at all. Ruthie just had two hours sleep. But you see what God did? I didn’t do that. If I had gone to that committee and said, “I don’t like this and I don’t think this is the thing I ought to be doing and I don’t think this is Christian,” we’d have a fight on our hands. You see? A lot of mad people no matter which way it went. But when we knew agreement and knew the power of God through agreement, we saw something done, an actual miracle. Now lest you think this is just too much, let me tell you quickly another story. I was in a church and the lady that was the organist was just a real lovely lady. She was just one of those pleasingly plump, jolly women that smiled all over and you just looked. But she came to church one night and her face looked like a storm cloud. And I said to the preacher, “Boy, what’s happened to the lady?”

He said, “Boy, I don’t know but something sure has.” I said, “It sure has.” I said, “I wish you’d go find out.” I didn’t feel free to go ask her. And so he went over and he came back and he said, “Well, she’s really tore up. She said she has a lovely daughter that has grown up in this church and through our FYF and our summer camps and she plays the organ here, sister mother and she’s just a leader, just a marvelous young lady. And she went off to college this fall as a freshman. And her mother and her had dreamed of the great wedding they’d had, you know, and all the things they’d have in the church. They loved the church so much and they had a new church. And boy, they almost had the wedding all planned. The great time they’d have when her only daughter would get married. And now the daughter calls her up and says, ‘Mom, I know you won’t like this, but I found a boy I like and we’re going to get married Saturday and we’re not coming home even.’ You know what that’ll do to you.”

And I said to the pastor, “Well, that isn’t right for her to do that.” Not that the boy was wrong. She finally did marry the boy and was very happy. But it was wrong to do this. I mean, not even bring him home and let the family know and see him and meet him and do the things proper. And the girl would wish she hadn’t all the rest of her life. And I said, “Well, I don’t think that’s the right thing to do.” And the pastor said, “I don’t either.” And I said, “Well, then it doesn’t have to happen.” See, I was picking up my cue from the other key. I said, “Then it doesn’t have to happen.” And he looked at me, that’s funny. And he said, “What do you mean by that?” “Well,” I said, “if you and I are in agreement that this is God, not God’s will, it doesn’t have to happen.” And he looked at me just like I looked at Geraldine. It was Geraldine Conway. And he looked at me just like I did at Geraldine. And I might say, “Are you kidding me?” I said, “Let’s go and talk to the lady.” We went over and talked to her. And she said, “Oh, she’s breaking my heart.” She said, “I don’t think this is right.” And I said, “Oh, oh.” I said, “Then three of us are in agreement.” And she said, “What do you mean?” And I told her what I meant. Now I said, “Let us three of us bow our heads and ask God to take complete charge in this affair and bring what’s best out of it. And we don’t feel this is the best thing for her.”

And we bowed there. And both the preacher and their mother, I know they thought I was just, you know, that they don’t want to talk. But two days later, that mother came back to church just a little, just a happy life. And I said, “Oh, oh, something happened.” And the preacher says, “Yep.” So I went over and I said to the lady, “Tell me what happened.” She says, “Preacher, you’re not going to believe this.” I said, “Oh, yes, I am. Go ahead.” She said, “My daughter called me today. And she said, ‘Mom, we’ve been thinking this thing over. My boyfriend and I have talked over. And really, this isn’t right. And this is the wrong thing to do to you. This isn’t fair to you or anybody else. And so we decided not to run away and get married. We’re going to come home Saturday. And you can meet him and then we can make plans for what we want to do.’” Now, that whole thing was changed. And frankly, the memories that girl would not likely want to keep in her mind the rest of her life were erased. Because two people or three people knew the power of union. Now, don’t you run away and say that I think that if your daughter is marrying somebody you don’t like, that all you got to do is get somebody in agreement and pray and he isn’t going to get married. Don’t you run away and say that?

I haven’t said that. This was what you might call a perfect case. Here was a mother who really loved that daughter. And she wasn’t being selfish in a smother love. She really loved that daughter. And the daughter loved her. Also, that daughter was a Christian girl. Now, she’d gotten off the beam for a little while and was carried away with her new love and was making decisions she shouldn’t have made. But she was the kind of a girl God could easily get to and talk to her in her spiritual mind. And then because we had agreement with her and had to bring the power, bear the power of God upon this, the thing was solved so easy it almost seemed funny. It was so easy. They’re not always solved that way, is it? But it is nevertheless true that if we can find union with people who are in union with Christ, not just two people, but two people who are in union with Christ, so that the power of God and the work of the Holy Spirit can be come through our eyes as a part. And then you put those together in union in something we believe is God’s will, it literally is true. We can ask what we will and it shall be done.

So union is terribly important, isn’t it, for our lives. The third point, and we’ll have to hurry, is that… Now remember, this is creating Christian personality, we’re talking about. The whole thing under this… Because the third thing is to develop a redemptive fellowship. Now, you form a redemptive fellowship by having individuals redeemed and coming together and forming a redemptive fellowship. Now, what is a redemptive person? Well, I have my definition. A redemptive person is a person that every situation they are in is better because they are there.

Now, that’s pretty inclusive. Doesn’t matter whether it’s school, work, play, home life, church, whatever it is. That if I am there and I am a redemptive person, then my influence is going to be for good always and a redemptive influence in that group. And whatever happens there is going to be better off because I am there. Now, you get three or four of these people who have become redemptive people like this, who would rather die than criticize the preacher, even if he was wrong, who would rather die than tell stories of gossip about somebody else, even though they were true, who are always trying to pour on love on the situation and always trying to be constructive and willing to be used or broken or pushed aside or taken second place. A redemptive person, this can literally change situations. You get as many as four of those in a church. And listen, you can redeem a church.

And if you get enough of those people in a church, that redemptive church can change a city. I know what I’m talking about, and this gentleman over here knows I’m right in what I’m saying. I saw a city change because one church became redemptive and developed redemptive parents. I saw every major denomination in that city had to build a brand new church because the Spirit’s life became after this one church became a redemptive praying church in the community. I saw a school board split in hate and dirt and rot and immorality that was just awful. I saw it redeemed as Christian men went in and ran for office, knowing there was stick-in-the-neck out, and said, “We’ll do something in this community,” and saw it change. I saw a police force so rotten that the chief of police was out one night with a gun, gunning for one of his lieutenants because his lieutenants had his girlfriend out, and he was a married man.

I saw that completely change in our city. I saw politics change until man who did not want to be mayor and did not want to give the time said, “I’ll run for mayor, because I want to see a clean city.”

Now, redemptive groups can’t really cause a church to be redemptive, and out of that you can actually spread out into a community. And if you can be redemptive in the community, you can be redemptive worldwide. You literally can. You see, we’re all doing it wrong in the modern way. We’re not going to redeem the world by pressuring people into form. We could change the world only one way, and that is by redeeming people who go out to redeem people who go out to redeem people. Someone said in the Presbyterian church at their meeting here a couple years ago, that he had figured out, and the Presbyterian church is not a large church, but he had figured out that the Presbyterian church alone, if they would win one soul to Christ a year, their members, the entire world would be converted in seven and a half years.

Now, think of that. One soul a year. It’s almost staggering. See, we aren’t doing much, are we, in the world? We really aren’t. And the church must become redemptive. Now, this will happen in the life-first individual. Then, in your family life. And then, in your social life, your recreation and politics and church and all of this thing. But it will begin first in your home. And if it doesn’t begin there, it will never, as we say, get to first base. If it doesn’t begin between you and your husband, and you and your children, it’ll never get beyond that. Never. Let me tell you two stories. I went to a church where a minister had been really crucified. He really had. And I mean that. I know the facts. I know both sides. He had really been crucified. And he was one of the great ministers I know in Methodism. He had a record of life. He’s as old as I am. And he had a record of changing his paths about every five or six years. That’s the pattern he liked. And every church he’d ever been in had either built a new parsonage, a new education building, or a new sanctuary. Every church he’d ever been in had always done one of those things.

Get a tremendous record. Yet this man had been literally almost kicked in the face by a spirit. He became bitter. His wife became more bitter than he did. And then they became bitter with each other. And then they became bitter with their people. And on and on, out it went. When I came to that church and went to that home, I don’t know that I’ve ever accepted maybe once or twice in my life ever been in a home where there was such bitterness that there was in this pastor from… It was real bad. I couldn’t help them. There was no way I could counsel them. They had been hurt. I knew I had to side with them. There wasn’t anything I could do. The people wouldn’t come out to church. We had… It was a city church, and we didn’t have half as many as you had last night. Out to church, you just wouldn’t come. But we got two groups started. An older women’s group and a young adult women’s group. Four in each is all the one. Now listen. When they learned to pray redemptively for their pastor instead of criticizing him, instead of judging him, when they began to pray redemptively for him, this pastor came back to his wonderful former Christian life.

And within six months, that man called me one Sunday morning. He said, “Reg, I couldn’t let you go into the pulpit without calling you this morning.” He said, “I’m a new man.” And he just kept saying it. “I’m a new man. I’m a new man.” He said, “I spent Friday writing letters to ministers, DS, and to my bishop, asking him to forgive me for the attitudes I had, even though,” he said, “I think I was right, that my attitudes were wrong.” Then he said on Saturday, “Now listen to this, I walked the streets of my city, and I went to the house of my people, and I asked them to forgive me for being such a rotten preacher for two years as I’ve been in their ministry.” Whoever heard of a ministry doing anything like that? I never before or since. That church literally blew apart spiritually. In less than two years, I went through that town, and we stopped straight overnight, as my wife and I did, and they had to expand that church, mind you, a half a million dollars to take care of people driving into that church. One of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. That morning, as we left in the car, that pastor put his arm over my shoulder, and he said, “Reg, everything that’s happening down at that church came out of those two prayers.”

You see what power you have, but you don’t have just gather together and pray and run home again. It takes redeemed people becoming redemptive group and praying and feeling and loving and living redemptively. This is really it. I want to tell you one story more. We’ve just time for that, and I’ll tell you very quickly. But this tells you several stories. A lady came to… We had gone to a church and started some prayer groups, and one of them especially had really produced… I had written about… In fact, the prayer on the limit has had some of their answer prayer written up in it. And I hope that’ll happen in this church, but it hasn’t happened in that church. And then we seemed to lose contact and no more letters were coming and there wasn’t the contact. And they wrote and said, “Won’t you come back to the church?” And at that time, we never did it because we have two years of calls ahead of us all the time, but we have done it more recently. But I said, “Yes, I’ll go back,” because I knew something was wrong. And he got there. I think the lady came to me and she said, “Old Reverend Goff,” she said, “we’ve got a problem.” I said, “What is it?”

“Well,” she said, “our purge has just gone to pieces,” and she said, “we don’t care whether we go or not.” She said, “We actually liked it so much at one time we thought of having it twice a week because we couldn’t wait to get there. Now,” she said, “we don’t care whether we’re going out.” I said, “Oh, it’s just rotten.” And I said, “What’s happened?” “Oh,” she said, “a woman came into our prayer group and she ruined our prayer group.” And I said, “Tell me about it.” “Well,” she said, “this woman came in there and she said, we had found real union, real love and real fellowship and openness and we talked about our personal problems and we prayed for each other and we had really found a tremendous experience. And this strange woman came in and asked to come in and she heard us talking about ourselves and she said, she went down to the hairdresser’s.” I said, “I don’t have an answer for that. I don’t know what to do. Surely you aren’t going to tell somebody to get out of your prayer group. I said, I don’t know the answer. But I said, this can be 24 hours and I’ll pray. I’m sure God will give us an answer.” So, the next day, she came back. “Well,” she said, “what about this?” “Well, I think I have an answer. Now,” I said, “you may think this is red. I think it’s gone. But,” I said, “you don’t like that woman.” “No, I don’t like her. She ruined our prayer group.” That’s a good reason. And I said, “Have you ever visited her?” “No, and I don’t intend to visit her.” It’s quite clear which way the wind is blowing.

And I said, “Well, I think God is telling me to tell you to go visit her.” “I don’t intend to.” I said, “Okay. Goodbye.” But two days later, she came back to church. She was a chain woman and she had a dirty look, sheepish look on her face. And I knew something had happened. And I went to her and I said, “Tell me about it.” “No. Oh,” she said, “never go. She didn’t like you when you told me that about going this and that lady. And she said, but the next day I was ironing. And she said, I was standing at the iron board ironing and thinking about this thing.” And I said, “Thank God for something. A woman can’t get away with more things after.” Here she was standing at the iron board ironing. Don’t buy a mango man. Leave him at the iron board. But there she was ironing. And she said, “God came to me and He talked to me and He said, ‘Now Reg told you that you ought to go in business. I don’t tend to business that woman.’ And she said, then I felt that God was telling me. I really saw that I was wrong. So,” she said, “I put up my ironing and I put on a clean dress and I bust myself up a bit and I went out.”

She said, “I don’t know all the time finding that woman. She was in a trailer house way at the edge of the city and nobody knew her. She would have been a stranger who moved that city. And then all of the joy she received back left. And the same hard pan face took over like I saw her what two days before. And I knew something was coming. And I didn’t say a word. And all she said, she looked me straight in the face. She said, ‘Reverend, oh,’ she said, ‘has she got troubles?’”

She had completely switched from hate to love and redemption. This woman, I sat down with me and we talked to her. I said, now here was a woman broken. And she was a real broken woman. God literally moved that woman from a distant city to that town. And then He got her to ask to get in that furniture. Because God knew He had a redemptive group here and He could help her. But when she, you see, when nobody knew and she began to hurt them, they returned resentful, you see, and lost all their power. And they couldn’t help her and it was all lost. I said last night, I want to say it here now. In every situation like this, you only have two choices as a Christian. You can resent what happens to you and lose every bit of power to help that situation. Or you can go to redeem it and you have behind you all the powers of the kingdom of God. And you can’t lose. My, why don’t we see this as Christian people? When we are tempted to resent, the tempts to be better. This woman saw, I said, “God sent that woman here because He thought He had a redemptive group in this city. But,” He said, “you turn resentful instead of being redemptive.”

And you not only hurt her, but you hurt yourself. That woman cried and she said, “I didn’t know I was like that.” I said, “No, I didn’t. You didn’t do it intentionally.” And they could hardly wait for that meeting to close to get that permitting started. And they didn’t want her out of the group. Of course they were going to shut up for a while. Of course they were going to not talk about all their real problems. But they were going to redeem that woman.

Now you see, you and I only have these two plans. We can go out and resent things that happened to us. Or we can go out to redeem them. So I’ve said this morning, develop a Christian personality by, first of all, learning forgiveness, accepting Jesus’ teaching for life, His ideas of the Father, go through a forgiveness both of our conscious and subconscious mind, to find union with Christ so that power can flow through us. It isn’t our power. It’s God’s power. And as He cleanses us, we become the kind of people God can use. And listen, my friend, God can’t only use redemptive people. He cannot use, in the kingdom of love, resentful people. He can’t. It isn’t God’s fault. This is our fault. So, the goal ought to really be to develop a Christian personality through and through. Thus, finding union with God, we find a redemptive group whose power is absolutely unknown, almost in this world. Literally, we could change the world. Amen.