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This is a conversational podcast that brings powerful moments from the Inspirational Media sermon library into fresh, engaging dialogue. Hosted by voices who care deeply about sharing timeless biblical truth, each episode unpacks key ideas from sermons, devotionals, and real-life stories — helping listeners reflect, relate, and rediscover hope in today’s world.
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00:00:00 Speaker: We want to give to you the simplest way we can tell you how to see what is inside of yourselves and other people for ministry. Because all things go back to the root. And the root was formed in our life with our parents in the beginning. Let me say that you should have a basic understanding that our spirit can sin. Is that news to you? Did you know that our own spirit, not God's Holy Spirit within us, in our own spirit we can sin? Is that news to you? If it is to some of you, put your hand up and be honest, you know, okay. The reason I ask is I want to explain that to you. Psalm thirty two one and two says, in whose spirit there is no guile. Isaiah fifty one nine and ten sings about create in me a new heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. There's no need for a new and right spirit if there isn't something wrong with the first one. Ezekiel thirty six I will put within you a new spirit. Then he goes on to say, and my own spirit will I put within you. My own spirit refers to the Holy Spirit. A new spirit within you refers to your own being made new. And there's no need for a new spirit unless the first one is sinful. And so we can and do make choices in the depths of our spirit, which are sin. In the New Testament, I think it's James four twenty seven. If it isn't, it won't hurt you to read. And this is the King James Version. Do you not know that the spirit within us lusteth to envy? But here's one. You can all see it in second Corinthians seven. One might be first. Won't hurt you. And it goes. Seeing then we are surrounded by so great a crowd of witnesses. That's not it. I'm not quoting rightly. Um, anyway, it's where he says, let us lay aside all every weight of sin and cleanse ourselves of all filthiness of flesh and spirit. And he's writing to Christians all filthiness of flesh and spirit, writing to Christians. So, you see, we can and do sin in our spirit. We make wrong choices. Now, all of this I gave as a prelude for you to understand that when I say it always goes back to the life with the father and the mother, we are not blaming our poor fathers and mothers. Much counseling winds up putting us in a pity party forever, because we find out that our parents failed us and then we blame the parents. Listen, it is never what the parents did or didn't do, which is important. It is how we in our spirit chose to react to what they did. Only if a thing comes to guilt can we be made free. We need never to be afraid of guilt because guilt then goes to the cross. If you aren't guilty, you can't get hold. The lady came to school as a pastoral care. She used to be in depression many, many times and she came to a school where Joe Buchanan and Agnes Sanford and I were the three teachers, and she came out of a conference with Joe Buchanan, and she was just radiant. And they said, well, how come you're so happy? She said, he said, the kindest thing to me. Now, this lady, when she was six years old, had gone to the beach with her family and they said to her and her four year old brother, don't go across that to that promontory. But they forgotten they did. The tide came in, swept them out. The brother was drowned. She wasn't for years. She would go into depression. She'd go to counselors and psychiatrists. They'd say, well, when they got the story out, don't feel so guilty. You were just a little girl you didn't know. And so on and so on. And she'd go right on in her depression. She went to see Joe Buchanan, and Joe Buchanan said to her, you're guilty. And she said, he said the kindest thing to me. She was free because guilt goes to the cross. Christians, don't be afraid of being guilty. That's healthy because then it can go to the cross. If you're not guilty, you can't get hold. Are you clear on that? You see me an amen. Amen. All right. Now then, with all that prelude, let me tell you what is the simplest and most profound law in the Bible. Right in the Ten Commandments. Deuteronomy five sixteen. Honor thy father and thy mother, that you may live long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth unto thee. And that it may be well with thee. Honor thy father and thy mother, that it may be well with you. Now the Bible is a description of reality. It's not a bunch of rules that somebody made up. And if you just obey them, everything would be all right. It's God's description of the way reality works. And so the inverse corollary is an absolute law in whatsoever area or way. You could not consciously or unconsciously honor your father or your mother in that very area. It will not go well with you. That's an absolute law. And that's the secret to counseling right there. If there's something manifesting in the present life somewhere back there, there's a sin in relation to the parents. It's that simple. So real healing always goes through the cross of forgiveness. Even if what was done to us was a bad hurt. Like a father who beat on us. That is not as important as our sinful reaction and resentment to that beating. You see it. So he came to take both the hurt and sorrow and bear that, but also to take the guilt of resentment out of us. And it's that simple, that that which ye sow, ye shall reap. Suppose I drop that. Why did it fall? Law of gravity. The law, isn't it not personal? It's a law. Suppose that the pen decides, has a mind of its own. Decides. I don't want to fall. I want to go up. Will it make any difference? No. It's going to fall. It's just law. Okay. In the same way, if back in our history there is a judgment against our parents. Judge not, lest you be judged with a judgment you mete out, it shall be measured unto you. That which you sow, ye shall reap. Absolute law. No escape. Irrevocable. Unless the cross of Christ intervenes. So suppose that you have a judgment hidden and forgotten against your parents somewhere back there. All of life is going to attract itself to go that way. Just law. Here's a most common example I can think of. How many of you wives said when you were children? I am on father's when you were children. I am not going to discipline my children like my mom did or my father. I am not going to scold them. Now, let me ask you. What are you doing? Huh? Aren't you doing the same thing? And it's just law that which you judge another for. You doom yourself to do. Law not personality. Not psychology. Law. Okay. I thought you had something to say. That. Okay. Now, what we want to show you is how that works in practice. and we want to show you how roots of bitterness operate in life and how forgiveness is the key to set free. And we'll start with a bunch of outlandish stories, and then we're going to talk about you and about Paula and me. First of all, a lady came to me, and this lady had been made to work like a field hand by her father as a little girl on the farm, and he never appreciated what she did. He always berated her and accused her. She would go out to work in the field when he'd come. When she'd come home, he would be drunk, and he would accuse her falsely of all kinds of things for which she was angry and judged him. Then she married a man, and for eighteen years she lived with a guy who made her go to work. When she came home, he would be drunk, accusing her falsely of all kinds of things. She divorced that man, married another man, and for two more years she lived with a man who did what? Same thing. Make her go to work. When she came home, he would accuse her of all kinds of things falsely. He would be drunk. She divorced him now. She thought she was wiser. So she hunted around and she found a Christian man. This man had money in the bank and real estate. And he was a praying Christian. She thought, now I got it made. She married him within two months. He made her go to work. When she came home, he was drunk and would accuse her falsely of all kinds of things. What was doing it? She was like your bitter root expectancy. Now, on the conscious level, she didn't expect it at all. But that law, that which you sow ye shall reap, was in operation. I wish I could say this woman believed me. I talked to her and tried to pray for her, for her healing, But she wouldn't confess that she had anything to do with it. She kept her pity party and she left. I think when John looked over at me as though I had something to say, he was probably reading my mind because all the time that he was talking, it was just occurring to me. What a beautiful thing the mercy of the Lord is, because we aren't really asked to get rid of these bitter roots until we come to him and we die with him on the cross and he resurrects us, the new creature. So these roots that the Lord is lifting out of us are dead. They're not live roots. And you know, it's only live roots that cling to the ground and experience some real pain and bleeding when they're brought up out of the ground. A dead root is not hanging on to the old soil, and a dead root can just be lifted out very easily. Those of you who have gardens know that you don't have any trouble pulling out old, dead weeds, and it's a real struggle to pull out the live ones. So we're talking to you people. You. You dead people who are made live all over again. You know, it's after you come to the Lord that the Lord begins to deal with you. And that's when you need to respond. And if you experience pain, when a root is lifted up to look at and to hand unto the Lord, it's pain that's in your mind, really, because you're afraid to look at it, not because it has any real claim on your inner being, or because there's going to be a ripping and tearing. It'll be good riddance. When you give it to the Lord, there was the woman who came to us for counseling, and her husband had left her, and there seemed to be no apparent reason for his leaving to her. It was a very sudden thing, and it was a devastating thing. It just really knocked the props out from under her confidence because they had not fought. They had not had any great difference of opinion. Things had seemed to be running rather smoothly. And we prayed about all kinds of things. And finally the Lord revealed that this woman, when she was a very little girl, had lost her father, and this had just gone into her inner being, this ripping and tearing, this losing. And then she wasn't too much older when she lost a brother. And again, that just tended to reinforce that feeling of loss and pain. And by the time she was a teenager, every single male member of her family in whom she had taken any strength or comfort, anybody who had meant something to her was gone from the family. And so she had a judgment against life, that if she would open her heart and risk in any way that that male person, that person upon whom she depended and with whom she'd risked would be out of her life, and she'd have to deal with that pain and that struggle. So there was an expectation there, a very real anger against God, because God would let this happen to her. And so when she recognized that and she repented of her judgment against life, she asked the father's forgiveness and she asked him to give her a new heart. It made all the difference in the world. See, what she had been beaming to her husband was come and love me. This tremendous need to be loved and held. And at the same time you're going to go away, you're going to go away, you're going to go away. And it was just like his inner being was tuning in to those little radio signals. And finally he obeyed. And he was as bewildered by his action as she when she really asked forgiveness. And the Lord made it real in her heart. Her husband just called out of the blue, and he said, honey, I don't know what came over me. Let's send the kids away for a weekend. Let's get back together again and see what God can do with our marriage. Let's make a new beginning. There was a man who grew up trying to please his father, and every time he would work around the house or do a chore, his father would rip him up and criticize him. It made him angry and he judged his father for that. Then he went to work. Every job was the same. The boss would always rip him up and criticize him. Finally, he took a new job and he went in and he did a good job for the guy. And the boss thought, I'm going to go in there and compliment Sam. He's doing a good job. The boss came in and sat down, and within five minutes the boss found himself ripping Sam up one side and down the other, and he came out and said to himself, what did I do that for? I went in there to compliment him and here I ripped him up. Why? Why did he do it? He invited it. He was drawing it. It was his judgment on life. It was broadcast out of him from the unconscious level, from his judgments on life. You're going to rip me up. Do it until he obeyed. That's hard, for I see some of you. It's very hard. You brows knit. It's hard for you to receive that, isn't it? But do you know that we have that kind of power with each other? We really do. And it isn't something we consciously beam out. It comes out because of law. That which ye sow, ye shall reap. Heart taking it. Sometimes it pays for us to get our counsellors together. A woman was coming to me for counseling. Her husband was going to John, and I was dealing with her about judgments against life. She had a very strong spirit of control. She would just really exert a lot of energy to get things whipped into shape in the house. And she wanted people to respond to what she said and to what she did. She just couldn't let go. She had a great deal of difficulty letting her husband have any say so in the house. And at the same time, she was demanding that he take charge, that he exhibits some sort of authority and was just desperately angry with him because he wouldn't. And she said, we can't even communicate because every time I try to talk to him, he says, I come across too strong. But she says I have to because he just retreats into his shell and she says, I get so mad because she says, you reach over and touch him and there's just a nothing. No response at all. And she says, I'll yell at him and I'll scream at him. She says, lately I've been. I've even been beating on him with my fists and I don't get any response. He just if he says anything, it's with this cold, calm and collected sort of response. And he thinks he's being kind and she says, I'm just out here in midair, kicking and screaming and feeling bad about myself for doing that, and we're going to have to do something about him. And so. I told her, you know, well, you're just going to have to lay it down before the Lord. Ask him to stop your rampaging Energies to take charge of you. So you aren't trying to control. You have to give him space to take up his authority to come into his own. Well, she says, I've given it to the Lord. I don't know how many times. And I said, you give it again. You just choose daily to give it to the Lord, and he's going to take you seriously. Eventually he'll get you there, but you have to continue to give it to the Lord. But she did that. And finally, after a long space of time and much conflict, she got to the point where there was a real laying down of her life, and she became quiet in her spirit, and she didn't demand a response from him for everything that she said or did. There was a real quietness there. Well, what happened in her husband about this same time was that he did experience a little more space in which to live and breathe and express himself. And just a short time ago he asked if I could be in on the counseling session that John was having with him, and during that session it came out that when he was a little boy, there was a mother, and there was a grandmother in the family, and the father a father who was not a very strong kind of model. He didn't know his own authority as a man. And the grandmother and the mother were both very domineering personalities who held him as some kind of a ball, a football between them. There was much arguing over him. They each had an idea of how he should behave as a little boy, of what kind of a man he should grow into. And it wasn't just an unconscious thing, but he could remember as a five or six year old child, hearing them argue over him in the kitchen. And they had conflicting ideas about what he should be. And so what he did in defense of himself so that he could be in any degree his own person was just simply to withdraw within himself. Let them have their fight out there. Not allow his emotions to become involved. He would think his own thoughts. He would do his own thing and hang the rest of humanity. And so here you had two a dynamic. You know, her hang up and his hang up, coming together and just feeding one another. So you really had a mess. But her coming to repentance gave him room to come to repentance about it. And it was just like the lights were going on inside of him when he saw where this whole thing had started, where he had rejected his parents, rejected the grandmother, and had decided, I will be my own person, I will do it myself. So his wife couldn't get in, his children couldn't get in. Not too many other people could get in. You had a hard time getting in. John would just. He hammered at him for a long time in as loving a way as possible. And when this young man saw this, it just unnerved that all the strength of the argument that was going on, it was just, you know, like you lean hard on a door and somebody opens it and suddenly there isn't any push at all. And his you could just feel his whole inner being just kind of collapsing there in the office. And he says, oh. Now what do I do? And that you don't do anything. You just go home and love your wife and give her room to be and give her some arms to come into. It's really not a scary thing as you thought it was. Young man came to me separately from his wife. And his wife came the time they were separated. One of the most beautiful girls I've known. By the way, uh, might tell you a little surprising thing. This man was a philanderer. Do you know what? My foot in my mouth now. Um. I've almost never found a case of a man stepping out on his wife with an ugly wife. Almost always happens with a beautiful wife. Strange thing, isn't it? But one of the things that happens is that the man seeing his wife as so beautiful, puts her on a pedestal. Then he doesn't want to hurt that little thing. And so he begins to treat her with kid gloves. He doesn't share his inner hurts because, you know, she's so dainty and beautiful. So he treats her as a doll image. And now he's lonely inside. And some woman who knows how to get to him gets him. So, wives, get yourself off the pedestals. One thing. See? What you do. Maybe wear a pin or curl or something, I don't know. Now. This girl had grown up with a father. I don't remember whether the father was actually a philanderer too, or whether when he came home, he simply wasn't there. She's one of four girls. All the sisters have come to me and I've had to become a surrogate father. This dad fails so badly. I father to all four of them now. And, uh, to get them alive in the Lord and supply what was lacking. And, uh, so she had a bitter root judgment that the man would not be there for her. Her husband then fulfilled it by going after other women. There came a time, finally, when she was coming to me on the Lord just prompted me and her talking together to come to the realization that she had to learn and exercise. What real forgiveness and real trust is. Real trust is not. I can believe that the other person is capable of doing what he says he'll do, and therefore I can believe him. Scripture says, don't put your trust in the flesh. Trust no brother. Real trust is I will trust the Lord Jesus Christ in this other person, and I will hold my heart open to him. Though I know he is incapable of doing what he says he'll do. That's real trust. Not I can believe that you are able to do what you say. Rather, I will hold my heart open to you and take it and lay my life down for you. Though I know you can't live up to what you say. That's trust. And the Lord led her to to see that as this little girl. She had fled back inside of a cave. She had fled into her own little world, and she wouldn't really give herself to her husband, because after all, he was going to leave her anyway. And so he made her aware that she had to come out and commit herself to her husband and to life, no matter what. no guarantees, no safeguards that she was going to just give herself to life. She was going to hold her heart open. She was not going to flee back and close off her heart and say, she there and lock herself off. She was going to hold her heart open in the grace of Jesus no matter what she said. John, if I do this, I'm going to get hurt. I said, I'm not going to give you any guarantees. In fact, I'd almost guarantee you will be. And I told her a story. Another beautiful young gal who came to me and I told her name was Johnny. I said, Johnny, oh, her sister's here. Um, I said to Johnny, if you come out, you know, she said to me, if I come out, I'm going to get hurt. I said, I expect you will. She decided she'd come out anyway. About six months later, she got devastated. Just devastated. And I went to see her. And, uh, on the way I thought, oh, boy, I'm going to get it now. She's really going to land on me. I came in and sat down and she got me some coffee and she said, John, you remember I said if I came out, I was going to get hurt. I said, yeah, I thought, I'm going to get it now. She said, well, I did get hurt. And I thought, here it comes. And she says, but it was worth it. So I told that story to that young lady, and she decided she'd come out. And as she left that day, you know, some of you in the spirit, get these senses from the Lord. I knew as she left I could feel it coming. I knew she was going to get crushed. Well, on Wednesday she had a visit with her husband. He was angry and he fled off. And he committed adultery with a gal just punishing her, you know? She didn't know that. On Friday, they went out together and she did it. She opened her heart to him. Just gave herself fully to him. This blew him out. And he thought, oh, if she's going to be this open, I better be honest. And of course, there was also this punishing thing. So then he confessed everything he'd done Wednesday night. Now she was really horribly crushed. And for two hours, they kept trying to phone me. But the Lord had me out on purpose and they couldn't reach Big Daddy, so they had to settle their own problems. And after two hours, the Lord had gotten hold of her and reminded her of her promise that she would just pour herself out no matter what. She'd lay down her life and let the Lord be her strength. And so she gave herself fully to her husband in total forgiveness. Now he was totally blown out. It thoroughly upset him because he had had the kind of mother against whom he had had to protect himself. Now, in his case then. He was just so upset he didn't know what to do because now her love for him. Totally unconditional, was just upsetting. All his judgments, his whole picture of life was being shattered. No woman was supposed to be this good. And so he came to me with her, and I could see that he was protecting his mother. I'd start saying, come on, talk about your mother. And he was just protecting her. And I kept saying, you got anger towards her. He wouldn't admit it. You know what it finally turned out? It turned out he wouldn't admit he had the anger, because he also wouldn't admit he had any love, because to admit anger would indicate some degree of relationship. And he had closed off from women. He had closed off and hidden, and he didn't want to admit an anger because that admit he had some relationship, that's what he was doing, was punishing women by entering into surface relationships. By the way, here, this as a law, all sex outside of the marriage bond is hate. It is never love here that I want to repeat it again. There is no love outside of the marriage bonds. We may be deluded into romantic feelings, but it is hate, not love. There is no love outside the marriage bonds because love comes from God's Spirit flowing through. And God isn't going to pour his spirit to the wrong woman. Is that clear? So he had to see then that he was really filled with a bitter root, and her love for him was upsetting it, and he had to see that he really didn't want to be open to a woman. And I'm sharing this one because many men are in this position. The mother has been controlling and dominant. And so the man hurried to grow up, control his emotions, and withdraw from her control. Now he really can't let his heart be open to his wife. And what's the matter? A root of bitterness unseen inside. And fear of control. And while I'm on it, I'm going to say one more thing, which I didn't plan. Several years ago, there came through the church a teaching about wives being submissive to husbands. Right. A very good teaching. What also went through became a dominant and a control, where that teaching was taken off balance. And men began to put down women and use this teaching as an excuse to shut down their voices in church and everywhere else. Do you know what's really behind that teaching when it goes off balance? Little boys afraid to let a woman be a whole woman for fear they'll be controlled. I used to have a bitter root in me, which caused me to think that I was the Lord of John's mouth. And praise God, he's lifted that one away. I grew up with brothers who thought that they were especially anointed of God to embarrass me at every possible moment. They this was their privilege. They would have fought to the death for me if anyone else had treated me in any way that was unbecoming or hurtful. But they thought that this was what they should do. One point in my life I remember they I was sitting in the bathtub and they ran in through the bathroom and threw earthworms in my bathwater. And this this was the source of great merriment. Whenever my friends would come, they would manage to say something true or untrue. Which would cause me to blush because it was very funny to see the sister get nervous. So when I married John, I married a fellow who was not satisfied with making the everyday run of the mill remark. Anyway, he would make many rash statements just on his own. But I was so fearful of being put in a light which would expose me. And being a minister's wife, you know you're in an ideal situation where you can feel on the spot and exposed that when he would leave in the morning and this was at Streator, I would say, you don't have to say something startling today, do you? And at every turn, I was giving him that word of caution. And what that affected in him was to say, you know, I don't have any confidence in your common sense. I know you're going to do the wrong thing. And he'd have to go out and do it just to prove that he was his own person. And it wasn't until I saw this and I repented and I said, Lord, you know, he's he's your problem. If he has a problem, you take care of him. That is not my job. My job is to love and support and nurture. Then he could make the conservative statement. He could be on target and I wasn't pushing him anymore. His mistakes are his own now. If he makes any, he takes responsibility. When I was at home preaching, I just had to say I had hoof and mouth disease all the time. Then I got away and began to teach in schools of pastoral care, and was surprised at the wisdom coming out of me, and I didn't have to say foolish things. Then we went into it to say, what is it? And the Lord revealed that what was in Paula was pushing me to do it. She she repented then of her bitterness because men were dumb. Dumb. Now. I had an older brother and a younger sister and a very demanding mother and somewhat demanding father, and they made us work hard. But my older brother rebelled against doing the work. Wouldn't do it. My younger sister rebelled against the work, wouldn't do it, and I wound up doing it, against which I was very bitter and angry, very judgmental. So that meant that in my ministry in the beginning, there were many who would not do. That was my judgment on life. I would be the sole pastor among the pastors who would carry the load. The other brother pastors wouldn't carry the load. Why was it happening? Because there was nothing in me that easily could expect that other brothers would carry the load. There was in me that which put them down and programmed to them insofar as I could affect them. You're not going to do it. I'll have to do it. And all of life went that way because of my bitter judgments against my mother and my father and my brother and my sister. When I forgave them, then I've been amazed continually how people just naturally and easily take up the load and do the work. And I can even rest. Until that happened and I repented of what was in me, not what was in them. See, what we're telling you today is that the world teaches you that the problem is out there, and you don't get well until the Lord teaches you that the problem is always in here until you face it in here. And take that rock out of your heart and that log out of your heart. You can't do anything about the motes and splinters out there. So the key is always in here. What are you doing that sets up life to go that way by the operation of law? We'd sit down to play a game, and it was just a frantic struggle because if we were playing a game of cards, he'd play his hand, my hand, everybody else's hand at the table with like, you know, an octopus. It had to move fast, you know, he was grabbing play time because somebody was going to come and interrupt that. And I used to say, well, if you want to play by yourself, just go play by yourself. No, I'm not going to get involved. But finally he saw what was doing it and he spun. Now he's a lot of fun. All right. My dad was just a wonderful guy. He was a good provider for our family. He was loving. He was gentle. He was kind. He was with us when he was home. But he was gone for two weeks at a time. He'd come home just on the weekends. And so while I understood stirred that he was out there working for our benefit. Still, there was something in my child's heart that was unsatisfied and uncared for because he simply wasn't there. It didn't seem fair, you know, to express an anger about this because he was doing that for our benefit. And yet, in that child's heart, there was lodged a judgment that the man would not be around all the time. The man would be out tending to other business. And so when I married John again, this was beaming across to him. You're not going to be here for me. You're going to be out taking care of all those other people. And he was. He was minister to everybody in the parish. And I used to say, who's going to minister to me? You know who's there for me? And we'd go on a camping trip, and he would very quickly find somebody in that campground who had a problem to minister to. It was that strong until we saw it and we repented of it, and the Lord changed it. Now we can be together. Amen. I even found myself making calls unnecessarily late at night. And after she repented of her judgment on her father, I easily found myself coming home. Now my father and mother. My mother has a head right in the Osage Indian nation, and I was raised on Osage Indian oil money. And my parents, uh, became wealthy at several points in their life. And they had an absolute genius for losing money. Uh, it didn't matter. They had a jinx. Total jinx. Uh, they opened up a jewelry store. And in the days when you couldn't get insurance, they were robbed three times. And down they went. They opened up a gift store in Joplin, Missouri. Joplin promptly went into a depression. And what goes first? Gift store. So, uh, they just did this again and again. Now, my mind said they can't help that. You know, that's life. Didn't think I was too angry and bitter, But my spirit inside was angry and bitter, unbeknownst to me about that. And that was my bitter root expectancy, that life would go that way. There would never be enough sustenance. God the father wouldn't be able to provide for me. Nothing would go right. I would never have enough. And so three congregations dutifully starve me. Including that one. You know, you know what? You know what Dick Sexton told me? The first memory he had to tell me when he was sixteen years old was watching me walk down along the grass with my shoes in my hand so I wouldn't wear out my soles. Right. They never provided enough money. You know why? Because I was saying to them unconsciously, by that law which I had a judgment I had made against life, God the father isn't going to provide for me. And then one time somebody prayed over me and said, John, I perceive that you cannot expect the Heavenly Father to provide for you on a regular, sustained basis. And it was just like bong bong, bong bong bong bong, bong bong, all the way down through me. Because I'd had enough counseling by then to know as a counselor what it was. And I repented of my judgments on my mother and father, and of my judgment against God that God wouldn't be able to provide. Because, you know, God the Father wears the garment we see our parents in and we can't really expect in real terms, God the Father to be any different than our natural father and mother. So I repented and prayed that the Lord give me a new expectancy. Well then, this is in nineteen seventy three, before nineteen seventy three. And then in July of nineteen seventy three, the Lord said, we were serving in Wallace, Idaho. And he said, resign your church, resign as of July thirty first in that church. We have ninety days in which the church has to pay the salary, and we have to serve there. And so I resigned. Then he said, you are not to look for a church. You are not to circulate your papers. You are not to let anybody know you need a job. You're not to look for a counseling job. You're not to be a chaplain. In fact, you're to do nothing. So we did. All of August went by and the Lord is saying, do nothing. And we knew what the Lord meant with Saint Paul when he said, the spirit refused to let us go into Asia. We knew we were being checked by the spirit and tested in our faith. And all of September went by and people are coming up and they're saying, John, what are you going to do after you're done here? Where are you going to go? We've got four children at home. Still one's in college. We have a girl, seventeen years old, living with us, taking care of her for the parents, and we're not getting any support, so we've got all those dependents. Valerie is going to end November thirtieth, and we don't know where we're going. I'd say I don't know where I'm going. What are you going to do? do? I don't know. And they go away saying, huh? That proves that he is as much as I thought he was. All that went on clear through October. They're still asking us. I'm still saying I don't know. And the Lord still wouldn't say anything until November twentieth and November twentieth. He said to me, you are to go to Coeur d'Alene. There you are to become a writer, a teacher and a counselor here to teach in the body of Christ. And you are to write books, and this book is the first one now, and you are to counsel in the afternoon. Salary was to end on Sunday. On Thursday went to Coeur d'Alene and thought, well, Paula and I did. We thought we'll rent a place. And we found out that you have to pour two hundred and fifty dollars a month down the drain for a family our size. They want to pour that much money down the drain. So we thought, well, I've got a camper. We'll use that as a down payment. Maybe we can buy. So I walked in Ten to a real estate agent. And I said, I'm a pastor without a church, without any money and without a job, and I want to buy a house. And he smiled, because out of the twelve men in that office, I walked up to the one guy who was a Christian who had just moved there on faith. And it turned out I was his first sale. And so he took us in the car and he said, we were trained to take you to the worst first and the best last. So I'm going to take you to the best one first. And he took us to this house, which became our house. Two fireplaces up and down and a full basement, three bedrooms, one for an office covered deck in back, sixteen by twenty four, two car covered garage and a kitchen, living room and dining room, and two bathrooms and a one hundred and fifty nine feet deep and one hundred feet wide. Not the house, the yard we fell in love with it for. Can you believe this? Now that you can tell how long ago that was. Four years ago. Twenty nine thousand five hundred. Impossible today. Absolutely. Well. But how? And we went home and we found out that the gasoline scare was on. We couldn't even give the camper away, so we had no down payment. Saturday, I walked back into the office and said to Alan's boss, I'm a pastor without a church, without money, without a job, I want to buy a house. And he smiled. On Sunday, a Catholic nun to whom I had been giving counseling talked to a Catholic laywoman whom I had never met. She called me up and said, John, I've got six thousand dollars you can use as your down payment. And how's that for Ecumenicity? No wonder I love a Catholic church. So we went to the banker on Monday and here's a miracle for you. How many have tried to buy a house and how long did you wait? We went there on eleven o'clock on Monday morning and I told him I'm a pastor without a church, without any money, except I got the down payment without a job. Uh, and I want to open up a counseling office. Well, how much are you going to charge for counseling? I'm going to charge twenty dollars an hour. How many hours a day? Five. And he figures it up. How many days a week? And he figures that up. Okay, we'll move on this for you, John. Eleven thirty Tuesday morning. He calls me up. We've already processed your loan favorably. We've checked your house and we're excited about it. It's perfect for counseling and what you want to do. And, uh, what else? Oh, process and appraise the house and everything else. Anyway, it was all done. We could move in, and we moved in Tuesday night. But get the timing of the Lord now. On Wednesday morning he says to me, John, Luke six thirty eight give, and it shall be given unto you, pressed down, shaken together, and overflowing shall men give into your bosom. You're never to charge for anything. You must not charge for counseling. I have to charge for tapes because I got to pay the guy, you know. But I don't even care if you. I want you to copy him. Uh, but don't don't charge. Now, if he told me that on Monday and I said that or Sunday, and I said that to the banker. If I were the banker, you know. So we have not charged ever for counseling. We never mentioned money. We just give the service. The Lord has supplied to us by nothing but faith. We exist on nothing but faith. He is supplied to us at a rate three times what we ever received in the pastorate. Now, all of this. I didn't want you to get lost. From the main point, all of this is just a testimony of forgiveness, because it was necessary for me to forgive God the Father, to forgive my father, to forgive my mother, and more importantly, to be forgiven for judging them. And when that happened, then the father who always wanted to shower blessing on me. Could you see the father? God will not go against your free will. And if my free will says you are going to treat me in a certain way, that's what he's going to do. I couldn't even admit that I had anything against my father because he was so loving. But God the Father will reveal himself to you. He'll bring another experience to let you know what his nature really is. And John kept telling me you're angry with your father. And so, just on faith, I said, alright, Lord, I'm angry with my father. I repent of this. And then God gave me a couple of experiences, along with the realization that I had a weekend God, because I'd had a weekend father, I could really get with the Lord in worship and celebration at church on Sunday. But to know that God the Father was my defense at every moment of my life, that he was always on the job and I didn't have to worry about myself and defend myself and keep my guard up because God was going to do that for me. That had to be learned just by the sovereign teaching of the Lord. So he gave me two experiences. Really, I just want to mention the one briefly and then tell you the story of the other one. The first was that on an icy road, I flew through the window of a Volkswagen just before it rolled three and a half times, and God took care of me in that experience. My body was somewhat damaged my head. I had four broken transverse crosses in my back. I was laid up in the hospital for a time, but God kept me in a sense of love and peace for the two weeks that I was in the hospital, and during that time he broke down every defensive wall in me. That said, I have to do it myself. I can't let somebody in to love me. I can't believe that somebody is going to be that much with me. And I learned to let people love me. When he knew that I had learned that experience, and I could let someone in to love me moment to moment. Then he healed me very quickly. And in two and a half weeks from the time of the accident, I was back at school teaching without the back brace that they told me I would have to wear for a time. So that was the first lesson. The second lesson I didn't have to get my body broken, but it was also in a car. John and I were on our way to Seattle to minister, and John always falls asleep when he's on the road. And I've been very judgmental of him, because it seems to me that you ought to know when you're getting sleepy, and you ought to have the good sense to move over and let somebody else who is alert and awake take charge. And I used to tell him this all the time. Well, this particular occasion, he did know that he was sleepy. And so he let me drive. And we had a brand new car with Cruise-o-matic, and we turned the radio on and we set the cruise-o-matic at fifty five, and we were just going merrily down the road, and suddenly I was jostled awake by John's elbow in my ribs, and I looked up and on the left hand side I could see the road going by at about the level of the top of the window, and I looked out the right hand window, and I saw this rocky face of a cliff. And when I looked out the front, there was a gravel ditch, and we were in this ditch, and we were just going down at lickety split, and this strange sense of calm and peace and quiet was over me, and it was almost like it was happening in slow motion. I thought, if I try to get back up on the road before we get to those two signs that I can see one on each side of the ditch down there, I'm going to Overcorrect and we're going to wipe out on this gravel. Therefore, I will just tap the brake lightly and will come to a stop. We'll steer through that and we'll be back on the road. And that's what we did. Back up on the road, I took my foot off of what I had thought was the brake that I was tapping, and we returned to the fifty five miles per hour that we were still on with the Cruise-o-matic. So apparently I had been pumping the accelerator all this time. John looked over at me and he said, that was a humbling experience, wasn't it? And all I could say I just said, praise the Lord. But what was happening inside of me was the real miracle. It was the miracle that we hadn't just crashed right into the cliff when we went off. It was the miracle that we got back up because that wasn't something I could have accomplished if I'd been a trained stunt driver. The Lord was indeed driving that car. But the real miracle was that for the first time in my life, I felt that quiet, bubbly kind of joy that just says, God loves me. God really loves me. He knew where I was, and I was completely out of control and he was in control. He is really on the throne of my life, and there's no way that he turns his back on me or he shuts his eyes. He is my sure defense. And when we got home, that realization was reinforced because a friend of ours said what was happening to you and John at ten o'clock Thursday morning. And we told her that was at the very time that our trip through the gravel ditch occurred. She says, I was sitting at my typewriter typing, and I was just suddenly filled with this tremendous urgency to pray for you. And I prayed, and I prayed for a period of ten or fifteen minutes. And so I knew also that not only could God just sovereignly take care of me because he is God, but that he could call on people within the body of Christ to intercede for me and they would hear. Do you understand that we are telling you these stories about ourselves? Because whether we're right or wrong, we regard ourselves as rather normal. And we have normal parents, good parents. But we had roots of bitterness on these roots of bitterness, which were what we're programming our lives until the Lord revealed them and brought them to death on the cross. And by the way, the Lord never puts together a man and wife who are compatible. I will. Oh, okay. The only truth about that is that if he keeps bringing me income, she'll keep bringing parable. He keeps. He brings together people who are totally different from each other. So that those things that we're diabolically designed to grind, so that those things in us are forced to come to the surface and we have to deal with them and face them where they are. One final story with which we close. Although I worked hard for my mother and father, I never got any compliments. Is that familiar? I always got criticized and knocked down. In fact, I grew up in Oklahoma ranch culture, and after I worked, my mother would say, well, now you just never worked like Uncle Leon. Now, Uncle Leon would have been up at three thirty. You waited till five thirty, you know, and he'd had a day's work done before he came in to breakfast. You just never worked like he worked. And so I had a bitter root judgment and expectancy I would never get compliments and I would always be criticized. And again, of course, three congregations dutifully obeyed. And the harder I work, the more criticism I got. Until finally, you see, I'm blaming them. But it was me. I repented of my better judgment against my mother and asked that I be delivered to that. Do you know I never get wrong kinds of criticism anymore? Nobody comes up and attacks me anymore. Ever. It just doesn't happen. I don't have to do anything about it. It just doesn't happen. If somebody has a criticism to make, they make it rightly. To my face, it's good for me. It's said in love. I can take it. It's beautiful. But nobody does carping, negative criticism anymore. It just doesn't happen. But why? Because the Lord delivered me, set me free from all my fears. This is the end of the recording. Please advance the tape to the end of the track.