Warning

The materials in course one that include Handbook for Followers of Jesus, by author Winkie Pratney, are not to be copied inside the United States or Canada due to copyright restrictions. These materials are for use only in those countries where this book is not distributed.

Used by permission for ISOB students Handbook for followers of Jesus Winkie Pratney author

Bethany House Publishers Copyright 1977 not authorized for resale

a handbook for FOLLOWERS OF JESUS

Chapters 31-50

(Short Form with various chapters omitted)

Used by permission for ISOB students in Africa Handbook for followers of Jesus Winkie Pratney author Bethany House Publishers Copyright 1977 not authorized for resale

Chapter 31

The Tests of True Love

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

Do you really love your boyfriend or girl friend? Test out your personal friendships and love life against this exam

John 3:16"For God. . . ." All true loving must be done for God. We don't know what it means to love until we can unselfishly put the Lord Jesus first, and because of our love for Him care for all we meet. Christian love must happen within real Christian fellowship and witness. Our love is to be holy, set apart as sacred under God. The man who has never given up h selfish way of life has never really learned to love at all. Everything he does can only be to make himself more happy. Then if others fit in to his own pleasure and interests, he will make them happy too. If not, he won't. And this is in no way real love.

You do not know the real meaning of any kind of love until you have first experienced the love of God. This love will be the control, the guide, the underlying care behind all our actions and words. Without it, there will be nothing but surface friendships based on our own interests or sexual attraction that is based wholly on physical lust. Honestly now, are you loving your friend for God's glory? Did you start this friendship to please and honor God, or is it just a sidetrack of the devil and his crowd? Love doesn't seek her own.

"So loved...." Real love, God's love, is special. It can feel more deeply than any other kind of love, but it is not just a feeling. It is tremblingly alive to all the joy and pain of the world around it, but it is not just a sensitive compassion. Love is far more than a feeling; it is also intelligent. No one who loves with God's love ever "falls in love"; that is romance. Though romantic feelings are beautiful and exciting, they are not enough to hold a marriage together.

130 / Friends

The love of God is first of all a wise choice for the highest happiness of the one loved. Love is an act of the will; love is something you do; it is sure and careful. If you are a girl, you must promise the Lord that you will bring your boyfriend to Him for His approval, and not just rely on your feelings to tell you whether he is all right to go with. It is too easy for you just to let your feelings run your heart, but you cannot do it if you want to be a woman of God.

If you are a man, is your first motive in going out with this girl to bring her closer to Jesus? You may feel strongly about her, but remember that feelings can come from anyone who is interesting and attractive, who shows some interest or attention in you. And you can't marry or live with everyone who does this. Enjoy your feelings, but do not let your affection run ahead of your mind and will. Love takes time; it thinks before it commits itself. If you trust your feelings, you may be hurt very deeply. Trust God. Learn what it is to "so love." Don't blow your purity and your future over a supercharged gland. if you love God, don't cheaply sell the body and affections He has given you.

"The world...... Love wants everyone in on its happiness; love has a great heart. If you love your friend with God's love, you will want the world to know about it. Do you love like this? You can always tell shallow, counterfeit affection. It is selfish; it wants to keep to itself and for itself.

If you love with true love you won't try to control your friend's life exclusively; you won't be envious or worried if he spends time with others because you will trust him. You leave the one you love free to make his own choices before God. True love cares for all creatures and doesn't willingly inflict pain. It is not partial to a select few; it is color blind. Do you mind sharing your love with others? Do you want to tell the world about the one you love? If you are envious, you do not love with God's love. If you cannot witness or pray with your date, you don't love him. Now, do you trust your loved one enough to share him with others? Do you admire film so much that you can be sure he will not let you down in any situation or with anyone else at any time?

"That he gave...... True love always wants to give gifts. Love works out ways to make others happy all the time. It would help everyone the same way if it could; but it does whatever it can. Love from its very nature will deny itself to promote a greater good whenever it is wise to do this. You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving! Love is concerned with God's happiness, and others' needs; it only thinks of its own in the context of these. Love never uses the other person as a tool for personal pleasure or popularity. Now, do you want to share with your love? Do you want to give gifts, even if it costs a lot to do it? When you see her, do you think in terms of what she would like? When he calls, do you just naturally have something for him? Is he worth your giving him the full devotion of your heart? Do you think she deserves the loving labor of your hands?

"His only begotten Son...... There is always a cost to true love. Love cost God His Son; love cost the Lord Jesus His life. Love means you are willing to give up everything for the one you love. When love rules, you choose things for their true value, and not just for personal gain. Love counts the cost, but doesn't keep on counting it. Now, how much do you love God? Do you love Him enough to even say good-bye to one who grows in your affection if you learn this will interfere with God's will for you? Do YOU have that unreserved trust in God that leads His true child to say, even if it hurts for a while, "Your will be done, Father"?

This is a costly test, but you must be prepared to take it. Do you love God enough to give up earthly love if He asks? When you pass this test, you will know the joy of listening to God for a happy love life.

"That whosoever believeth in him. . Love involves absolute trust. To fully love, you must first trust yourself and the other person wholly. Love has faith in the other person's character and integrity, Love hardly even notices when others do wrong; love is able to live with another person's failures and weaknesses, because love knows the other person for what he is and is willing to be known for its own true character. Love does not seek to impress or pretend. Ask yourself, does it encourage you on to greater things to think that she would like what you are doing? When questions come up, do you quite naturally think about what she would say? Do you thick a good deal about him? Whatever you are doing, is she never far from your thoughts? Do you trust the one you love anywhere, with anyone? This is one of the reasons why God puts limits on premarital sex. To hold back from sex before marriage with the one you love is a proof of your trust of each other.

"Should riot perish, but have everlasting life. "When you love someone you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost. You will always believe in him, always expect the best of him and always stand your ground in defending him ."Love is an eternal thing. True love will last, regardless of the trials it will face.

Do not rush into deciding whom you will marry. Love always has time, and it is never in a hurry. It will be hard, if you are a girl, to wait on God and trust that He will arrange for you the one that will bring you the greatest happiness and usefulness. Here is the final test: are you willing to wait? You can test that out very easily in your dating. If you cannot discipline your life to wait for God's time, you have not learned what it means to love with God's love.

If you are getting serious, give your relationship the test of time. "Love is patient, and is kind." Get to know the other person really well- not sexually, but personally. Do you have a good time together, no matter what you are dome. Do you think alike in many of the things you do together? Do you have the same basic, heart- feelings about Christ and the work He has called either of you to do? Do you quite naturally think of the future with film? Do you see her standing with you as you stand up for God?

If you think it is serious enough for you to get engaged, but you are not sure, give yourself a separation test. Now it is not good to have long engagements as it is too much of a strain on you both. Once you are sure, you should marry soon. But first spend a period of time really apart from each other- some six months. In the Bible days, if a man wanted to marry a girl, he announced his intention to do so, then left for a year to raise money for his future home. At the end of the year, if he still felt the same way about her, he would come back, and they would invite over all their friends and relatives and make a formal commitment to each other. Then after a big party, they simply would live together as man and wife.

If you are going to spend the rest of your life with this person, you can afford to give it these two tests- time and separation. The time- test will show you if your love is genuine and deep, or if it is only a feeling of attraction that may pass when you see someone that looks prettier or nicer. The separation test will help you know the difference between excited, romantic feelings and serious, loving commitment. You will want to write a lot during the separation- test; it will give you a chance to learn to know the one you love without their physical attractiveness getting in the way. Bring all the trials and tears you have at this time- all the tests to God. If it is of Him, it will last; what God joins together, no man can break apart. "Love endures all things." What is of God will last forever, and you can trust film to guide you in this, your happiest and most important human decision.

No voice is heard, no sign is made,

No step is on the conscious floor;

Yet love will dream, and faith will trust,

Since He Who knows our need is just,

That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.

Alas for him who never sees

The store shine through his cypress trees,

Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,

The truth to flesh and sense unknown,

That Christ is ever Lord of Life,

And Love can never lose its own.

-Author unknown

Chapter 33

Forgiving Your Family for Wrongs Committed

Have you been hurt by your family? It is easy to see the Signs. Your face gets hard; you avoid other people; you expect favors from everyone without gratitude; you spend a lot of time and attention on people who feel like you, and because of your attitude you wind up with only a few friends you are really afraid to lose. Bitterness makes you sensitive, touchy, ready to "fly off the handle."

The worst thing about not forgiving those that hurt you is that you get turned totally into yourself, and you get so hard you don't care anymore. And when you give up on others you also start to give up on yourself; you just might want to finish the whole thing by jumping off a bridge or with a deliberate O.D. Bitterness is deadly. It sends more kids to the street of death than any other sin.

Bitterness keeps getting worse and takes you deeper and deeper into trouble. You trust someone; they betray your trust. They shun, disgrace and reject you. Today that horrible happening is still painfully burned like fire on your mind. That hurt makes you want to hit back. Other bitter young people have done it before; they left behind them a trail of more wrecked lives.

A young man got hurt once; now he specializes in hurting girls who fall for him. I met a girl who got deeply hurt once too often, but now she says she is insensitive to pain. She has learned the frightening art of being tough, hard as rock, callused to tenderness and care. Now she tells me she doesn't get hurt anymore. But the trouble with not feeling hurt is that you can't feel happiness either. When you get hard, you stop feeling anything.

Bitterness makes you blind to others' needs. It wraps you up totally in yourself. It poisons everything and makes everything you do poisonous. You lose all your friends except those who feel hurt and mad as you do. Up goes an ice wall around you that no one can break through with love. Proverbs 14:10 says, "The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy" (RSV). Bitterness starts you blaming everything and everyone else for problems. You get the idea that if you point long enough at others, people won't look too hard at you.

Bitterness is the basic sin of the streets. Ask one hundred kids why they dropped out and blew their minds and lives in one trip after another, and you will almost always get the same answer: "I got hurt; this was my way of getting even." Hurt kills love dead. It wipes out your trust for any authority.

Bitterness attracts rotten "friends" like dung gathers flies. I have this funny feeling that some marches for various causes are only convenient vents for bitterness. Lives that once trusted now burn with the acid of revenge, and come out in protest against all rule or control. Yet in the face of all this, God commands us to forgive!

Now maybe you feel like joining the thousands of people who just laughed. It is a cynical laugh, compounded from a hundred thousand hurts and trusts betrayed. It came from both old and young people, flag waving sixty-year-old patriots and angry young sixteen-year-old anarchists, street kids and church kids- people with thin lips and unsmiling eyes.

I hear those voices. If they talk at all, they say, "Forgive? Are you Putting me on? What for? MY parents? My kids? Them? You don't know. You just don't know."

But God does know. That is why He commands us to forgive. We ignore this law at the cost of our lives. Forgiveness is God's way to spare your happiness. Look at your life. See what bitterness has done. Face it! Think back over all the things you have said and done because someone, sometime hurt you. Was it worth it, this getting even? Was it worth what it has done to you? Look in the mirror. See what you are becoming- a walking grudge against the world. "Forgive." If you do not do what God says, bitterness will destroy you. Yes, being hurt is their fault. But being bitter is always your own. And you must forgive or you will change, step by step, until you become like the ones you most despise.

If you have been hurt by your family, or by others that you know you must forgive, here is what you can and must do to be free. It will be hard, but you can do it. Choose to. God will help you and strengthen you. Take His help and do these things:

1. Make a list of all those who have hurt you. Take time. Leave plenty of space under each name. You won't have any trouble remembering them.

2. Under each name list the wrong things that person has done to hurt you. Sum up individual acts in principles. Sum the little things into basic wrongs. Get it all down. It isn't hard to remember when you are hurt. You've been thinking about some things for years. "Let it all hang out."

Funny about bitterness. It is pain, but you can actually half enjoy feeling hurt! It is like biting down hard on a sore tooth so that a smaller pain is swallowed up in a larger one. Being bitter includes the sin of intense self-pity.

You have held onto wounded feelings long enough. Write them down, Perhaps your parents failed to give you the kind of example you wanted. They told you not to do things you saw them do, The word "hypocrite" was easy to say. Maybe Dad just wasn't there when you needed him; maybe he took out his drink or his guilt on you with a belt. Your parents expected too much from you; they always told you how in their day they had to "walk five miles through the snow to get to school," and, "Why couldn't you do better when they had tried to give you the chance they never got?" Or maybe they couldn't care less what happened to you. Perhaps they kept harping on how good your brother or sister was, and "why couldn't you be like them," until you just wanted to kill that brother or sister. Write them all down. This is the poison that has eaten your life.

3. Now, take another list. On it, write down the things you did to hurt them! It is strange how your normally excellent memory can fail you about now. But ask God to run his plough through your heart. Let Him bring to light all You did to wrong them, and write them down. Maybe you just froze them out of your life the day you found out what they did wrong. Then you didn't love them enough to do what they asked, even if it was right. Or you lied to them, and made a habit of it, because they had lied to you. You smoked pot because Dad drank highballs; you dropped acid because Mom couldn't sleep without her tranquilizers. You just went out and got pregnant from the rottenest guy YOU could find because she was always so concerned with the family name. He hurt you; so you never said thank you, no matter how much lie tried to make it up, just to show him You couldn't care less. You did things with friends you never did before because you gave up thinking real decency existed.

How many lies have you told yourself because of your hurt? How many times have you punished your own body and mind because of something someone else did to wrong you? How many others have you hurt because someone hurt you? Write it all down. Be as honest as you can. Put on your paper all you have done to hurt your family. I know you are not too proud of it. I know it is not easy to bring it all back. But you must really see what the sin of bitterness has done to you. And you will find a strange and terrible thing.

A lot of what you have on your list is exactly the same as what you have on your parents' list. You have judged and condemned them; but you have done the same things! In a multitude of ways, you have become like the ones you despised.

4. I think you know what the next step is. Get on your knees, and ask God to show you how much the things you have done have hurt Him. You are not finished yet; it is not over until you glimpse what has happened to His heart. Oh, what a terrible thing bitterness is! And remember- in every hurt you ever felt, in every hurt your family has felt, in everything where your bitterness slashed into someone else, God felt it all. He who has total experience has been put through the sum total of all that pain. Isn't it time you stopped hurting yourself Isn't it time you quit infecting others? And isn't it high time you stopped hurting God?

No excuses. Everything you have felt in all your deepest hurts are only a tiny fraction of what God has felt for you. There is healing in His heart. Only Christ can carry this burden and live. If with all this He can forgive you, you can draw on His grace to forgive. Deeply repent of what you have done. The way of bitterness is a street that dead- end in hell. Hurt put you on that street, but you were not made to be its slave.

You must let God set you free, but freedom is impossible if you bold onto the very thing that is changing you into the kind of person you hate. Spread out your horrible list before the Lord. Let Him break you over what you have done. Maybe it's time you cried. No one, not even you, is too hard to let Christ's love melt away the years of hurt and anger. Let His blood cleanse your stony heart of hate. Bring your list to Him, and ask His forgiveness. Get it as clean as you would want it on the Day of Judgment.

Charles Warner said:

In the very depths of yourself, dig a grave. Let it be like some forgotten pot to which no path leads; and there, in the eternal silence, bury the wrongs that you have suffered, Your heart will feet as if a weight had fallen from it, and a Divine peace has come to abide with you.

Apologize to God for what you have done. Say, "Oh Lord, I have been hurt, and I hit back in horrible ways. I have been just like the ones that hurt me. I have become filled with bitterness and callousness and pride. Forgive me for my rotten attitude. Forgive me for my sin, I know I couldn't help being hurt. I know that you understand that. But I could help what I did to hurt back. Wash me and make me clean again. 'rake away my bitterness over these feeling, these grudges I have in my heart. Wash them out, oh God! Restore to me the joy of MY salvation."

5. Now, the hardest part. Get off your knees. Take the list of what your parents have done. Pick it up, and rip it up. This is the last time you are going to think about it. Tell the Lord as you do this, "I forgive them, Lord, right now. I refuse to hold this hurt that has bound my life any longer. I will not be the slave of others' wrongs. I choose with my will not to hold these things in my heart or mind any longer." Then take a match and burn your torn list. As you burn it, see those old resentments going up in smoke. See the old past turning into ashes. Crush it when it is dead and cold, and blow it away in the wind. Let your grudges, your hurt, your past go with it.

6. Call, write or go to see them right away, as long as you know what to say, and if you can speak with them for a minute without interruption. (Write only if seeing them or phoning them is impossible.) Now, what do you have to do? You have to apologize to them for what you have done to hurt them. 'rake the worst thing on your list, and use that. Do it humbly, Sincerely, with a broken heart. It will do you good to break before tire ones that have hurt you. Do not mind their reactions. That is not your concern. They may be surprised; they may be embarrassed they may be so convicted that they rip off at you. Leave this in God's hands, They themselves may also break, and God will be able to heal in seconds a breach that has taken years to split. But you must do this, even for your own and God's sake, if not for theirs. And you will find you can never be sure that you have forgiven them until you have first asked their forgiveness.

You could say something like this: "Dad, something has just happened to me that should have happened a long time ago. God has showed me how my ---- has really hurt you. I know I've wronged you in this and I want to ask you, 'Will you forgive me?' 11 When you have done this, you will open a channel on your side for healing to begin. Your own heart will be cleared by the Lord. Many others may even be heated from hurt too. Now you must begin the process of living in love towards them. It will be a challenge. You must prove by your life that you really feel differently towards them now. This will not be easy. Bitterness causes suspicion, indifference, ingratitude. You understand all this. You have been there yourself.

You know you will have to work at it. It may take month for the breach to heal. But God will do things in your life that you never would have believed possible.

Through it all, pray for the ones who have hurt you. Don't you dare pray, "Oh Lord, I have tried. I have done my bit. Now I am right, but they are still wrong. Now get them for me, Lord! Judge my rotten father! Really smash my hypocritical mother! Deal with them for me, Lord. Wipe them out if it is your will!" Really see your parents with all their hurt, frustration, rage and sin, being loved by Jesus. See Him reach out His hand and touch their hurt hearts. The Bible says, "Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you, that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and unjust" (Matt. 5:44, 45).

7. The final step for you in forgiving a family that wrongs you is to begin to list ways in which you can help the ones that hurt you. Are there things that they need that you can work to buy for them? Are there jobs around the house that no one likes doing that you can do for them? Are there things that they have asked you to do that you have not done before? Then do them in the name of Jesus. The Bible way is to will their highest good. And you will find something strange happening to your heart. As you do these things, step by step God will restore the love that you once might have had for them. It may even bring them to Jesus. After all, if you can't be an effective testimony to your family about the wonderful change the Lord Jesus can make in a life, who can?

Chapter 37

How to Know God's Will for Your Life

From the beginning of creation, when He flung the stars into the trackless hollow of space, God has had a purpose for- you as a tiny part of His vast purpose for mankind. To know and follow God's purpose for our lives brings the joy and radiance of a Christ-guided life. Here's how- if you are willing!

1. Be sure you are filled with the Spirit of God. Honestly, without this, you will never make it. To know the power of the Holy Spirit and to be sensitive to His voice is the difference between defeat and victory, failure and success, direction and aimlessness. There is a Price- God wants you empty of self and sin. He is always ready to fill your heart- but you are not (Luke 11:13)! Be honest with yourself and with Him. Be earnest. Confess your sin, ask His forgiveness. Then, just as you asked Christ to come into your heart, ask the Holy Spirit to flood your soul with divine power. It is impossible to be in the center of God's will continually without knowing the guidance of the Holy Spirit. He is the Master Guide and the "dynamite" of God's power.

2. Be sure you have fully yielded yourself to the will of God. It's not what you want, it's what He wants! God can't direct a life that doesn't want to be directed. You must ask Hi to direct your will totally. Now, is this unreasonable? He knows what the future holds- you don't. And who is best equipped to run your life- you or God? e has all wisdom and power, and the ability to be with you wherever you go. Nothing is too hard for Him. He has never made a mistake, never had to say, "I don't know." And He has never made a selfish decision. You don't have to be afraid of surrender to Him. He is a loving, kind, and compassionate Father who longs for your highest happiness and holiness. Make it a matter of sincere and heartfelt prayer and selfsearching. Then tell Him you are willing to go wherever He wants you to go, and do whatever He wants you to do, no matter what the cost. If you don't mean it, don't pray. God will take you up on any promise you make to Him.

3. Count the cost. A halfhearted Christianity is powerless and joyless. All--or nothing- is God's standard of committal. God never uses people whom He can get rid of easily. He never does business with people who don't mean business with Him. Now, are you willing? Think specifically. Are you ready to leave home? Give up your rights to a home? Friends? Family? Marriage? A specially lucrative or important career you have followed since you were little? Remember the story of Abraham. God may not ask you to give up or sacrifice your rights to any of these- but unless you are willing- honestly willing to do so, forget about Him ever using you. This is going to be hard- really hard. But if you really mean business with God- and you do- you won't want it any other way. The best things cost the most.

4. Be willing to be called a fool. Doing God's will often goes against the ideas of a selfish world. Usually His will [its perfectly with our minds and thoughts. Some Christians do not do anything because they say they don't know God's will. But we need not always expect a voice from the sky when the path of service is clear. God gave us common sense and He expects us to use it. God's will is usually an area of general direction in which He leaves us quite free to work for Him.

However, sometimes His words cut across all human thinking and even go right against it! This is guidance from intuition as our spirits connect to the Holy Spirit, who has promised to guide into all truth if we obey the Bible.

It is sensing in spirit what is on God's heart. People who know God's voice may be called fools for obeying Him but they will be Gods fools and they will see His power.

5. Be sure you have a clean conscience from the past. God's voice will be blocked if there are still sinful things in your life that He has urged you to get right, How can He show you more if you have not obeyed in the little things?

Every time you kneel to pray, the finger of His Spirit will point back to your clear duty to get that thing cleaned up and put right. A clear conscience is a must to tell between God's voice and the voice of the enemy. Many do not know God's will because of un confessed sin. It is the "pure to heart" who see Him.

6. Spend time daily in prayer and the Word of God. The Word of God is the whole basis of guidance. It contains principles and guidelines for almost every walk of life. God's will is clearly shown in His Word. Bible study shows us what God expects in daily living, and most Bible principles can be directly applied to life. No guidance will ever break the fence of Bible laws. Freedom in following the Lord Jesus always stays on the tracks of right. Prayer teaches us to learn what God is like and how His voice sounds. Many do not recognize the call of God simply because they have never taken the time to really talk with Him long enough to know what He is like. It is not enough to know about Him; you must know Him.

7. Ask Him to show you His will Don't expect that God will always detail everything for you, or tell you in advance all that He has in store for you. As men's choices change, so God changes

the ways that He works. Don't get mad at God because He doesn't show you a diary of the next five years of your life. Such a diary is impossible because you are a moral creature.

Every choice you make brings into being new creations in God's universe. God will use these to fulfill His own purposes. But because they don't exist until you actually make them, it is impossible to give you a detailed diary of your life in the future. You will not find the word plan or blueprint in the Scripture. You have been made free to choose, and for this reason, it is important that you learn to know God's voice on a day-to-day basis. You can expect guidance for what you have to do right away, but He may not always show you what you are supposed to do. next year! And don't be hung up on words or definitions of your ministry for Him. God may call you to do something, then change it later as He feels you are better equipped to handle another task. The only thing you can be sure of is that He will use you wherever He wants you and that you can expect Him to show you what to do in each circumstance.

8. Don't be too impatient. A walk with God is one step at a time. He will never forget you. He will never be late in His promises. Failure can only come from your side. But there never need be disappointment, or the sense of having missed His will if you want to know Him- if you want to know your task for the present with all your heart.

Chapter 38

The Ways God Speaks to Us

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" (John 10:27).

Study the men and women by whom God changed history. They were not special. Not many were wise after the ways of the world. You will not find many naturally gifted among their ranks. But all had one thing in common: they knew and did the will of God in their generation.

Those that God used in the past were ordinary people with an extraordinary Lord. They were not all champions of great faith, but little people who had put their little faith in a great God. The driving force. in their lives was the sure conviction that God had called them to His work, and that as long as they were faithful to that call He would work with them and through them against impossible odds to victory.

Scripture is the story of common men and women who found the will of God. Wiley Jacob met the Angel of the Lord. Show- off Joseph in his multicolored coat had a dream. Failure Moses saw a bush that didn't burn. Disobedient Baalam heard an ass speak. Paul saw a blinding light. Little Samuel heard a voice. Old John saw a vision. God speaks in many different ways. He has not changed; what He has done before He can do again. He can speak to you and you can learn to recognize His voice.

First, have you faithfully met the basic conditions for guidance? Do this first, God cannot speak to you if there is still sin in your heart, or unyielded rights, or something yet undone that He has already told you to do. Be clean before Him first.

Now it would take too long to go into all the different ways that God has guided people before. It would take even longer to show you how to be sure it was God in each case. But if you have spent time in God's Word and your heart is truly honest before Him, you can be sure He will guide you. Leave the way up to Him. Here are a few simple things to remember about true guidance from the Holy Spirit of God:

1. God is never spooky. No echo- chamber type voices, weird apparitions or other fear producing, scary sights or sounds come from Him! The Father always ides His children gently, lovingly, matter-of-factly. Whatever God does, He never "shows off." He is kind, gentle, loving. The voice of God is the voice of the Good Shepherd who gives His life for the sheep. Watch out for any guidance that is tense, harsh or strange. God is very normal and spiritually natural in His ways (see 1 Sam. 3:4-5; John 10:14, 16, 27-28). Little Samuel thought that God was Eli, his spiritual father.

2. Never decide in a rush. If you have to know now and you have no time to thick it through or pray about it, refuse it. You cannot afford to act on anything you are pushed into by pressure. The Bible says, "He that believes shall not make haste" (Isa. 28:16). We are not to be hasty in words, heart or spirit (Pray. 14:29; 29:20; Eccl. 5:2; 7:9). The Bible also says, "Whatever is not of faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23). Never decide until you are sure, or have a reasonably firm conviction that God is in it. Watch all voices that demand or are bossy or that ask unthinking obedience. No voice that keeps harping on your mind like a continuous commentary comes from God. Don't act until your heart has full peace and is at rest over your decision. The Bible says, "God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind" (2 Tim. 1:7; 1 John 4:18). This means that even when we have to act in faith we should never have to act in unrest, turmoil or fear. Don't make rush decisions.

3. God will never "waffle around." He doesn't keep on changing His directions. If it is His voice, you can expect a clear direction, and then you can expect the silence that signals He is waiting for you to obey. God is never confused. He is always frank, direct and right to the point. If you are confused in guidance, it is probably because you already know what He wants you to do and you are looking for an easier way out or an excuse to not do it!

4. The Holy Spirit will never depress, deaden or arouse you sensually. He will never guide you when your head isn't straight. Never seek guidance through any means that requires you to "turn off your mind"! God speaks to our heads and hearts together. We must be alert and active. He has asked us to check what we feel by facts- facts from His Word and from what we know is right and true. Beware of any suggestions to your mind that push you to do kooky things about your food, dress, sex or manner of acting.

Sometimes the enemy will try to fool a young Christian and wear him out by throwing in false compulsions that look at first glance to be real guidance from God. Beware of thoughts injected into your mind. If something comes to you like a bolt from the blue, with no reference at all to anything you have been thinking about or doing, and if it is to do something strange or unusual, think it through very carefully. It could very well be from the devil's side. Look out for anything that tends to either put you down or puff you up. Both are forms of pride and are first steps towards inviting satanic attack disguised as divine guidance.

5. Most important of all: Gods guidance will never break His own laws or go against what He has said in His Word. "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them" (Isa. 8:20). Every major problem you have in guidance can be solved in the pages of God's Word. His will is revealed in His Word. When you don't have enough light on something, walk within the broad principles of obedience to the Scriptures and God will always get through to you exactly what He means. You will never need guidance, for instance, as to whether you ought to lie or steal or be sexually immoral. You already know what His Book says. And that is the only guidance you need on that subject.

When you need anything else that is not specifically covered in God's Word, He will show you in whatever way He wants to. If you are fully yielded to Him, you can expect His directions just as surely as you can expect the sun to rise.

6. Get your, guidance from Him, not from a Christian friend or someone else. No one else can guide you as a disciple of Jesus; all spiritual friends can do is to advise you and instruct you from the Scriptures for help. The Bible gives serious warnings about listening to men without first seeking God's face about a matter. God may guide in your daily Bible reading, He may bring to mind a verse of scripture you once learned to help you decide in a situation. But don't be afraid to act when something needs to be done because you are afraid you "might get out of God's will." There is an unhealthy extreme either side of happy rushing ahead foolishly without taking time to wait on God, or worrying over every motive and decision, fearing to act when the Bible principles are plain and clear. You may at all times do anything that the Bible directs you to. This never takes special guidance, just ordinary obedience.

When you need to know the Lord's voice in a special decision and you want to be sure it is His voice, rather than the enemy's voice, use this method to help you hear Him speak to your heart and mind:

1. Die to your own desires. Take some concrete object- a Bible, a book, or a piece of paper. Use this as a symbol of your own feelings and ideas on the matter. Place it to one side, up on a shelf or in another corner of the room, and as you do it tell the Lord, "Lord Jesus, this represents all that I have on my mind and heart right now. I put these over here for You to deal with. I desire to die to these ideas and feelings of mind, whether they are right or wrong. I choose to give them up to You. Put them to death for me I surrender them to You. By faith I ask You to crucify them for me." Choose to die to them; then reach out in faith and believe God to really put them to death for you. See yourself as dead, totally dead to all your own ideas and feelings on this matter.

2. Yield yourself to God. Pray, "Lord, I submit myself to You.

I give You my mind and heart for Your complete direction and guidance. I confess to You now that I am Your child and You are my heavenly Father. I just put myself wholly in Your bands right now. Cleanse me from all sin. I yield all my rights to You now, I want to do whatever You want me to do." Submit yourself wholly to God.

3. Resist the Devil in faith. Take your stand in the name of the Lord Jesus. Each child of God has a place of power with Christ the head of the church in heavenly places (Eph. 1:17-23; 2:1-7). Stand in that authority. Use a scripture verse to resist the devil to drive him away from your consciousness. Say, "Satan, the Bible says, 'Submit yourself to God.' I have done that. Then it says, 'Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.' I did not say that. Jesus said it. His Word says it, He made that promise, and you must obey. In Jesus' name and on His authority, I resist you and command you to take all your thoughts and suggestions out of my mind. It is written, 'Greater is he that is within me than he that is in the world' " (James 4:7; 1 John 3:8; 4:4; 1 Pet. 5:6-9).

Do this Simply, Clearly and without asking. Make it a command in the power of God. Jesus will back up His promises. You will feel a peace and clearing of tension when there has been a release from satanic pressures and suggestions.

4. There is now no voice left but the voice of God to your mind. By faith take the mind of Christ (1 Car. 2:16). Ask God, "Father, I have done what You asked. I am Your child, and You promised that You would speak to me and show me what to do. If You would be pleased to show me now, put into my mind and heart what is on your heart for me." Take the first clear, definite direction. Do what He tells you!

Chapter 39

Finding God's Man or Woman for Your Life

Do you believe that God can guide you to a wife or husband? One Bible story tells us the ways you can find the right one. There is more spiritual truth to this story than just guidelines on marriage. You can think about the story as a beautiful illustration with Abraham like God the Father, Isaac like Jesus the Son, the servant standing for the Holy Spirit, and Rebeccah as the Bride of Christ, the Church. But I want to use its outline to help you find God's girl or guy for your life. Open your Bible to Genesis

24.

1. "And Abraham said to his eldest servant. .. I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that you shall not take a wife to my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell" (Gen. 24:2,3).

Here is your first rule to find God's one for you life: Don't Date Canaanites!

Who is a Canaanite? A Canaanite is a selfish person. A Canaanite is someone who really only carts about himself, someone who has never made a real surrender to the Lord Jesus, someone who doesn't practically put Christ first in his life. Canaanites don't really care. Notice how much that word looks like "canine." And Canaanite love is in its mildest form only "Puppy" love; it is in its worst form the prelude to a dog's life! Date a Canaanite and don't be surprised if he treats you like a dog. A dog is something you pet, something you play with- certainly not someone to marry.

Selfish people don't know how to love because they have never loved God. Only true disciples of Jesus can really love because Christian love in marriage operates on three different levels at once. A Christian couple joined in marriage know much more than just sexual love and Physical attraction. They also have a friendship love because they have learned to honor each other as brother and sister in God's family, and have shared common interests in His work. Then they are both ruled by the love of God that smoothes over the rough places and brings them together under the rule of the Lord Jesus.

Don't even go out with Canaanites! There is no way you can keep on seeing some attractive Canaanite without mixing up any spiritual concern for them with purely physical attraction. And girls, don't fall into the trap of saying, "I'm going to win him to Jesus by going out with him." Maybe you can, but the odds are greatly against it. Some of the most beautiful disciples of Jesus I know went down the moral drain because they hung around too long with some sexually attractive Canaanite who would not give in to God.

I know it is easy to fool others when you are really getting into deep trouble. It is even easy to fool yourself that you are really spiritually in love with their souls. But remember, love is not just a feeling of affection. Anyone, even a Canaanite, can turn you on if they give you enough interest and attention. But love is not romance. (Romance begins when you sink in his arms; romance ends with your arms in the sink!)

I know Bible college girls who have gotten messed up by some of the worst pimps and addicts that ever fought with God. The girls each thought they were close to winning those guys to Christ; all along they were only being seduced by smooth talk and practiced lines. When these rotten guys were finished with them, they laughed and split just like they did with every other girl they used the same way. There is one safe rule, especially if you are a girl: stay away from all Canaanites.

2. "But you shall go to my country, and to my kindred" (Gen. 24:4). Find God's person for your life among God's people. Christian marriages must build first on a common love for Jesus. This will give you a forever bond- one that will never fade out, an eternal love for and in God. You may really grow to like them by finding they are interested in the same kind of thing,, you are interested in. What has God done in their life, and what does He want to do? You may even find that you have the same basic goals in life. You want to do the same things under God, care about the same values and find that you work together beautifully. If the question of getting engaged comes up, you can begin to seek God and put your friendship to the test of true love.

3. The servant had a, good question. How was lie going to find the right girl for his master? Abraham gave him this word of advice: "The Lord God of heaven ... shall send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there" (Gen. 24:7). So the next rule is: Date the angel that is sent by the angel from God.

You will find eat pleasure just being with God's people. You will make many friends of the opposite sex among disciples of Jesus. None of these may ever lead to a serious personal marriage type commitment. But you can be happy knowing that if God wants you to marry He will arrange for you to meet at the right time the one He knows you would be the happiest with. One thing is sure about this servant: he really believed that God's angel would guide him to the right girl. And if you want God's best, you must really trust God to lead you the same way.

There are plenty of people you could marry and make it for a while. But unless there is a sureness to God over the choice you make, you will always wonder whether or not you married the right one. What will you feel like in five years' time, looking back over the steps you took to decide? Will you have regrets and doubts over whom you married, should Jesus tarry? It goes without saying: don't flirt with anyone when you have no intention of being seriously interested in them. God keep you until you are

sure.

Some kids are afraid to trust God for a girl or a man to marry. They will let God manage everything else, but have the funny idea that God doesn't know anything about picking life partners. They imagine He will punish their trust by giving them some vile creature- feature reject.

Can you see a guy who loves God and who believes he needs a wife come to tire Lord? He says, "Oh Lord, I'll take anyone you want me to have. Anybody, Lord, anybody!" Then be stops in fright and says to himself, "Oh, no! What did I say?"

He thinks God now pounces on his words like Snoopy the vulture- dog and says, "Ah Ha! Now you did it. You said it. I heard you. You said anybody. Good! I have this horrible old hag with a bun, hairy legs and wears tennis shoes, who has been praying for ninety-five years, 'Oh God, give me a nice young man!' She has been praying so long she finishes each prayer with 'A man!' Now, I can't let her go un- rewarded. You were the first one who said anybody, so for the rest of your life you'll have a chance to regret your dedication!"

What a horrible picture of God. God it knows the kind of person you would be most happy with better than you do. You, brother, have a fairly good idea of the kind of lovely girl you would like to spend the rest of your life with. You, sister, want some marvelous guy that you can willingly give the love of your whole being.

And listen, both of you. God knows the thoughts of your hearts even better than you do.

I know two things about God: first, He is really wise; second, He really is love. That means He never makes a mistake, and what He decides for us will always fit in beautifully with what in our heart of hearts we really want. God's angel will find for you another earthly "angel" to share your life. Trust Him! If you trusted Him for your eternal life, surely you can fully trust Him for short time happiness in this life. And whoever He picks out for you will be really right on.

4. "And the girl was very fair to look upon"(Gen.24:16).Ready for the next rule? She must be beautiful; he must be good looking. That's what the Bible says! One guy sent a letter to a columnist and asked, "Why do girls always close their eyes when I kiss them?"

She answered, "Look in the mirror, and you'll find out,"

A girl sent her picture to a boy pen-pal after he had written to her for a year without ever seeing her. She wrote on the back of it "This picture doesn't do me justice."

He sent back another letter. It said, "You don't need justice; you need mercy!"

But God is far kinder than we can ever imagine. No one knows the depth of the lovely thoughts He has for us. Yes, the one you marry must be beautiful or very good looking, At least, to you. You are going to spend the rest of your life with him. Why shouldn't he be? God designed physical attractiveness. It was His idea.

It would do no harm for you to pray what Catherine Marshall calls "the dreaming prayer." Ask God to give you the man or woman of your dreams. But first set your heart on pleasing Him, in delighting yourself only in Him. Don't be just running around in quiet desperation looking for someone to marry. Just be content that you are married to Jesus, that His love is the spring and source of your contentment. And God says that if you delight yourself in Him, He will give you the desires of your heart. Don't be afraid to set your sights high. Be a man or woman of God, in love with God, and your dreams will come true in Christ.

Perhaps you think you look ugly so your dream girl or man will not think you are the right one. Do not despair. You can become beautiful! Beauty is not something that comes in cans or by genetics. There are some people with pretty faces who have ugly hearts, and they are not beautiful. Real beauty begins within.

William Booth said to his sons, "You want more than a pretty face to live with 365 days in the year, my boys. Look for those deeper womanly gifts and graces with which your mother has so enriched my life."

The most outwardly beautiful person in all the Bible was not the Lord Jesus. That person was an angel of such glory and beauty that he was called the Prince of Morning. But his beauty made him proud. He sinned against God and was cast out of heaven. The Bible calls film Satan. No, beauty is not always an advantage. The only record we have of a description of Jesus is the one Isaiah gives us: "When we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him" (Isa. 53:2).

People didn't come back from seeing the Lord on earth and say, "Wow! Didn't He look like Paulus Newmanus!" No, it was not what the Lord Jesus looked like that made Him truly beautiful. It was what He was. And you can be beautiful the same way. I have seen street people with the most awful looks changed by miracles into beautiful people by the power of the living God. Their beauty is Jesus. It comes from the time they spend with the supremely lovely One. You can change your face! Just forget about yourself Give your love wholly to Jesus. Let that outpoured love spill out to others. Your whole life and appearance will change from the inside out. The Bible puts it in a beautiful

way: "They looked unto him, and were radiant."

5. "Let it come to pass, that the girl to whom I shall say, 'Let down your pitcher, please, that I may drink'; and she shall say, 'Drink, and I will give your camels drink also' ; let the same be she that you have appointed for your servant Isaac" (Gen. 24:14).

Here is a marvelous test. The servant wanted some kind of sign by which he could recognize the girl God had for his master. Here is a way by which you can recognize that girl too, if you are a man looking for God's girl: Can she water camels?

Of course, your land may have no camels. But the principle still holds true. Is the one you are attracted to willing to really work to make it? Is he willing not only to help, but ready also to go more than the second mile for you?

In Picking kids for leadership, we found a simple principle. Each new volunteer would be given a tough physical job. The ones that stuck at it the best and did the cleanest work made the best leaders and the most trustworthy followers.

Here is a simple test you can try on that "angel" you have in mind. What do they work like? Are they willing to give marriage everything they have'? Marriage only begins with a ring and a vow; it takes a lifetime to build. to begin with, find out how he treats his mother, his sister. How does she care for her father, her brothers? Talk with him and ask him what he thinks of your loved one.

Is he really serious about commitment? Has God delivered him from the casual liaisons of the street, and made him truly committed to Him and to others? Can you really trust him? Is he really giving of himself sacrificially to meet needs? That is what it means to water camels.

When she is not around one day, sneak a look at her room. Is it neat? Does she take good care of her clothes, of her appearance without being a slave of fashions? Is she really clean? Ask Yourself. would I like my home looking like her room? Marriage will not drastically revise personal habits. What you see is about what you get!

And what about hi , sister? Is he careful with the money God has entrusted with him? Is he generous where it is needed, and yet knows how to save when things get tight? Does he know how to be abased and how to abound? Is he kind to you now, or does he have bad habits that you just hope will change? It is God, not time, that changes habits. Don't marry anyone that hasn't got cleaned up from all known sin. Remember- no Canaanites!

To help take the edge off your romantic cloud, look at his father. Maybe he will look better when he is his dad's age. But then again, maybe not. Are you going to be happy with him after fifteen years even if he looks like that? ... the same goes for her mother. It may hurt, but it is better to think clearly now than to have to do it in repentance later. Remember, love is a wise, thinking choice. Don't marry anyone that doesn't pass this

test: can they water camels?

6. "And the man ... held his peace, wondering whether the Lord had made his journey prosperous or not"(Gen. 24:21).

The servant learned what you will have to learn. He learned to wait, after he had set his signs and made his vows to God. And to find God's sweetheart for you, you must be willing to wait too. If God has called you to marry, He will bring your team mate on time. This means, of course, that you must first give Him the right to have you on His own, that you have given Him the right not to marry, if He thinks that is best. That is the only way true surrender to God can take place. Then, don't confuse the moving with the moment. If God shows you His one, that is the moving. Wait for the right moment.

Chapter 41

The Purpose of Sex and Love

"For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh" (Matt. 19:5).

God created and ordained sex. It is not evil or unholy. The Bible does not hesitate to praise the joys of a God-given, God blessed sexual love in marriage. Sex is God's idea. He made it up! It is an earthly symbol of a great many things that are precious arid sacred to Him as shown to us in the Bible, Marriage is the symbol of some of the deep and lovely truths of Scripture.

Study the relation of Christ to His Church and you will see a heavenly picture of the ideal earthly marriage. The wife gives up her own name and takes on her husband's. She merges her life with his; she recognizes him as her head and looks up to him as her support, protector and guide. She devotes her whole life to his happiness and to carry out his will in her love for him. She naturally looks to her husband to protect her from injury, insult and want. She hangs her happiness on him and expects that he will protect her, and he is bound to do it. Their reputation and interests become one; what affects her character or reputation affects his.

The faithful husband loves, cherishes and honors his wife he gives of his time, his labor and his talents to promote the interests of his bride. And the faithful husband is jealous of his wife's good name and feels deeply when her feelings or reputation are injured. Tire Lord Jesus is the perfect picture of the faithful husband; His true Church, every real disciple of Jesus, is the perfect pattern of His loving wife (1 Car. 18:20).

Likewise, a Christian family is the earthly pattern of God's longing for a heavenly family of sons and daughters to rule and reign with Him. In its God-designed place, sexual love is the most beautiful relationship on earth, It is His special gift to show us in symbol His ultimate purpose for man: to be in the Father's house and family, living in love and fellowship with Him and with each other forever (1 John 3:1-2).

Because God made sex in human beings such a special relationship, He set definite differences between animal and human sexual drives. Animal reproduction is sparked by automatic instinct laws that operate at certain times of the year. 'There is no love in these sexual couplings, just blind instinctual desires.

Human desire for sexual love and children is to be quite different. It is not automatic. It has been placed by the Creator under the sway of our human wills and thoughts. He designed it to awaken and work under our control. In early years this force sleeps hidden from our attention. As we grow older and grow up it becomes a strong energy in our lives that can be channeled into creative and joyous living, even if we are not yet married or do not use its potential in asexual way.

Sex was given to us for two main physical reasons: to keep our race going on by men and women together bringing children into the world (Ps. 127:3-5), and as a source of deep spiritual and Physical Pleasure between a husband and wife (Matt. 19:4-6; Gen. 2:24-25; 24:67; Eccles. 9:9; 1 Car. 7:2-5). The same Bible that gives stern warnings about the misuse of sex (Prov. 5:1-8, 20) clearly describes how sexual needs should be met to bring us great happiness in marriage (Prov. 5:15, 18-19).

The Bible does not teach us to hate sex, to consider it an Unpleasant but necessary duty that is basically evil that must be done in order to keep the world going. People who ought to have read their Bibles more carefully sometimes thought that sex had something to do with the Fall. But Adam knew and loved Eve long before the Fall happened. Sex was not part of the sin of the Fall. God commanded sexual love. Sexual happiness and love were enjoyed by the first man and his wife long before sin came into the world. Men and women who should know better give the Bible a bad name by saying Christianity teaches people to think of sex as evil. The Bible never says that because it is simply not true. Sex is like any other gift that God gave men; used His way and in His time, it is beautiful, enriching and fun; outside of His laws which regulate its direction for happiness, it can be terribly painful and hurtful.

In the Bible we are warned that one sign of the last days will be men who "forbid to marry." There is nothing "more spiritual" about not marrying. A husband and wife who love each other can be as holy in their sexual relationships as a man or woman who have given their life wholly to others in ministry and foregone the right to marry in order to spend more time with people,

The Bible actually commands a husband and wife not to hold back from each other sexually unless it be by consent for a time so that they can give themselves to prayer and fasting (I Cor. 7:5). This Bible command is a powerful force to weld marriages strongly together. There are many blessings realized when a husband will obey God to regularly meet his wife's sexual needs and the wife likewise to meet her husband's. The beautiful song of Solomon poetically and reverently describes some of the joys of this physical-spiritual blend of married love (Song of Sol. 6:1-10; 7:1-9; 2:3; 8:3). Marriage is to be held in honor, and sexual love in marriage is to be exalted as the highest physical pleasure gift God has given a young couple (Heb. 13:4).

Read the Bible and think hard on all the symbols that sexual love in marriage can tell us about spiritual truths. Only in the Bible is sex placed in its proper, lovely place. Only in the Bible is the woman's place in marriage uplifted and honored, where the husband is to be "intoxicated" by his wife's love, and where the Holy Spirit describes this union as a part of divine wisdom which God sees and approves (Prov. 5:1; 5:21). Sexual love in marriage, God's way, is tenderly beautiful.

In this love, there is a mutual giving and sharing which is unlike any other relationship on earth. Each partner invests of his life in the other, in a bond which makes them both grow more strongly in love with each other and more open and honest with each other. What happens in essence is that each one makes a little emotional home in the other's heart, a place where they can let down all their guards and barriers and be really honest and trusting with each other like little children. Sexual love builds this home. It is a place where two people in love can relax in each other's trust and love, secure in their care and giving for each other, a place where all the rough places of life they face together are smoothed and heated.

Sex is a precious gift. It is the way God has given us to show our love in the deepest possible physical way, to build a bridge of love that is not only the joining of two bodies in the most profound of Pleasures, but the joining of two souls in a bond of happiness that will only be surpassed by heaven itself. Sexual love, God's way, God's time, is one a 'God's highest blessings.

Chapter 42

Bible Words on Sex Without God

Sex is like fire. What happens when that fire burns out of control? Across your world this fire is burning the wrong way. Once let loose, it knows no boundaries, classes, ranks or positions. Hell itself feeds this flame with the fuel of unclean stories, dirty books and smutty imaginations.

Another name for this chapter could be "Dreams in Flames." That is what the sin of sexual immorality does. It can take a beautiful girl and turn her into a mottled diseased where. It can take a man and make him worse than an animal. It can take your dreams and turn them into flames it can take everything you hope for and leave you with nothing but smoke, ashes and a burned-out life.

Some of you know this from bitter experience. Thank God that to disciples of Jesus who have already suffered from this flame God gives the promise that He will "give to them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. . 61:3).

Do you know why so many marriages c ' rack up? Boil it down to the main reasons and you get two: people either get married too Young, or get involved in some form of premarital sex that hurts them later. A fire is warm and wonderful on a cold night in a hearth under control; but that same fire if set loose can also burn your home down. there is no difference between the fire that comforts and the fire that kills; it is tire same flame. When it helps it burns to the right place, under control and at the right time; when it hurts, it is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and out of control.

When you first discuss sex, it's a common temptation to want to test out sexual powers or prowess by experiment. Mothers don't help who push their little girls to act grown-up and who spend their waking hours making sure their daughters will be popular with the boys. It is often tire same mother who is shocked and hurt when her little 14 year-old comes home pregnant and in tears because she became popular with the boys.

The "going steady" trip has laid the foundations of much divorce. It's nice to know that if you have somewhere special to go that Fitzroy or Tinsenella will always be there; but big problems begin when you spend so much time alone together that you are tempted to let down your standards and your moral codes. Parents once didn't let their kids get stuck in situations like this. They respected sexual chemistry enough to give kids tight discipline and limited time with boyfriends and girl friends.

It's the old story: familiarity breeds contempt. You can get too familiar with each other. Transfer it to your bodies, light the flame, let down your guards, lower your codes and you will fall right into trouble. And it's too easy to excuse sin when YOU get sexual attraction confused with love. You may find yourself saddled with responsibilities before you are ready to handle them.

Here is some advice about "going steady"- don't! Don't go steady unless you are really in love; don't go steady until you are both serious about getting married, unless you are ready to be a husband and a provider, or a wife and mother. Don't do it, bacon a the odds are that you'll get into trouble. Going steady is one big reason why too many kids marry too young. They light a fire they can't honorably put out and are pushed by their own guilt into marriages that are finished before they begin. Marry too young, out of pressure from an early sex experience, and you'll have every chance of breaking tip your marriage, your home and your happiness. Sex and love is not a game for children. Spend time just being friends with a lot of brothers and sisters in Jesus. Keep clear of unhealthy, exclusive attachments.

A safe rule is don't get "Physically involved" with anyone until your wedding date is set. Now what does that mean? How far is too far? The Bible uses words that tell us exactly how far is too much. Many disciples of Jesus who have been on the streets and have known the hell of sexual sin know by experience what could violate their new life in Jesus. But it is also good to know that God ties not left us in the dark here. The Bible has three words that exactly define where sexual problems begin, long before fornication or adultery or sexual perversion is committed. They are big words, which is why some Jesus people don't study them and why some preachers don't use them. They are the words lasciviousness, concupiscence, and defraudation. Now don't freak out over them. Each one is heavy with meaning and help. They tell us where wrong starts that winds up in actual acts of immorality. Here is what they mean and where they are

found in the Bible:

1. Lasciviousness,, used in a sexual sense, means to make a choice to turn yourself on sexually outside of God's limits in marriage Any thought or action you deliberately make that stirs you up sexually when that desire cannot be rightfully expressed in marriage is the sin of lasciviousness. It is a choice of your will. The Bible tells us it doesn't come from temptation outside, but from the heart. No picture, book or sexually stimulating person can make you lascivious. If you are faced with a sudden temptation by seeing one of these, that desire is not in itself sin. The word lascivious a means simply a very strong desire. It is used by the Lord Jesus when He talked about eating supper with His disciples, and by Paul when he talked of his longing to die and be in God's presence (Luke 22:15; Phil. 1:23). But strong desires become sin when we choose to turn them on.

How far is too far? The Bible gives us this answer in the word lasciviousness- anything that begins to turn you on sexually when you know you can't afford to be turned on. Too far is anything that stirs up sexual desire in your heart outside of God's ways. Necking has been defined as "an exchange of kisses and caresses, keeping both feet on the floor and all hands on deck." If necking turns you on sexually, necking is wrong for you. I know there are disciples of Jesus who can line each other and not be wrong; but there are other kids who can't even look at someone of the opposite sex without sinning. God knows your heart. Remember, it is sin in the sight of God to make a choice of heart to stir UP sexual desire when you know you can't go on with it and be right before the Lord. This is why masturbation is wrong before God it is simply an expression of lasciviousness.

2. Concupiscence is another- big Bible word that spells trouble in sex. It simply means to be caught in a strong physical lust for sex. It is an overexcited state of sexual focus; it is being so hung up on sex that you keep on going back to it again and again in your mind. It is being so turned on that you can't turn off. The Bible sometimes translates it "lust." It is this word that Jesus uses when He says, "But I say to you, Whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her has already committed sexual immorality with her in his heart" (Matt. 5:28).

Concupiscence happens when sexual fire begins to really burn out of control. It makes a girl parade her body before guys, and to wear a sign in her eyes, "For sale cheap. Slightly used." It makes a man give the X-ray treatment to every girl who walks past.

Concupiscence is no light matter before God. The Bible tell, us it is one of the things He will judge in anger (Col. 3:5-6). We are not to let our bodies be bound by it, "even as the heathen who don't know God" (1 Thess. 4:5).

Lasciviousness leads to concupiscence. A little light necking can lead to a lot of heavy petting. And it will do you no good to pray and ask God to take away the desire for sex if you are doing all you can to keep it burning. God ads sex. It is His idea. But He put its control under your will, and expects you to yield that will to Him. He can no more wisely take away sexual feelings from you than He can wish to make you a non-man or non-woman. Sex is like a time bomb with a long fuse. 'he fuse is lit by necking and it burns shorter by petting. Petting is a prelude to going all the way with someone- full sexual intercourse with them. That is reserved only for the love and responsible commitment of marriage. Long before actual sexual intercourse you can break God's law in lasciviousness and concupiscence.

Don't pet at all. Don't even start. If you have started, stop now before it gets any worse. Petting will add to your life, it is true. It will add guilt and shame. It will add dirt to your name. It can also take away. If you are a girl it can take away your boyfriend, because after you 90 further than you should he may decide you are too cheap and leave you. It can take away your virginity and %a lead to pregnancy, break your parents' hearts and get you married too early, too soon or to the wrong person. God has reserved petting and sexual foreplay for one place marriage, and marriage only. If you want to mess, go ahead! But be prepared to be part of tragic statistics. And remember this: no sexually immoral person will walk in white with God's new family. No true disciple of Jesus is a slave of sexual sin.

3. Defraudation is the last word. It just looks big with an ation ending on it. The Bible word is actually defraud. It defines the sexual sin that begins when you involve someone else. It simply means to turn someone else on sexually when you know you can't go through with it without getting into trouble. The original word means "to make a gain of" or passively "to be taken advantage of." Anytime you set out to capture someone's feelings of affection, when you deliberately choose to make them fall in love with you so that you can use them selfishly, you defraud. You don't even have to involve them sexually to defraud.

It is possible for a disciple of Jesus to unwittingly deeply hurt a brother or sister by giving them the impression that they are in love with them in more than a brotherly or sisterly way, Anything you do towards that impression is fraud.

But used in a sexual sense, defraud means to make choices and actions to turn someone else on, when you know good and well that it is wrong to do so. You cannot take advantage of someone else's trust and affection without getting into deep trouble from God. He says that no man should "go too far and defraud his brother in any matter, because the Lord is tire avenger of all such, as we also have warned you before and testified. For God has not called us to uncleanness, but to holiness" (I Thess. 4:6, 7).

Don't let the fire burn outside of God's controls and limits. You will not be able to stop it, and it will burn you badly and deeply. Sex without God is full of dangers. Do it, and you will not only get yourself and others into trouble, but you will also be in deep trouble with God. Sexual sin has terrible penalties. Ask any disciple of Jesus who has already been there once. Once you get into that, then only God can help you out of this fire, and even then it will leave scars that you might never erase.

Chapter 43

Why Not Go All the Way Before Marriage?

"Can a man clasp fire to his chest and not be burned?" (Prov. 6:27).

"I came back to reality with a sickening thud. I wasn't drunk anymore. The party was over, and I felt sick, cheap and dirty, It didn't make me feel any better to hear him say, 'Why on earth didn't You stop us before things went too far? You should have known what would happen. You could have called a halt at anytime. But you didn't.' "

"My mother and dad just found out that I'm pregnant. They were so shocked they just won't believe it. I'm only fourteen years old. They just stare into space and when they see me they break down and start crying. They say, 'It just can't happen- not to our little girl!' But it did happen. Now I don't know what to do or where to go. What future is there for me now? It happened so quickly; it just wasn't worth it. Could you please find a home for my baby when it comes and could you please give me some advice before I lose my mind?"

"It's not so bad if you've never loved anyone, because what you don't know won't hurt you. But if you're like me and have loved a guy before, what do you do when it has to end? I never used to have problems getting to sleep, but now I stay awake nights wishing I were back in some guy's arms again. And although I know it's impossible, I dream of all kinds of situations where he comes back and we make up and it's all beautiful again. But it never happens, and the memories never go away and leave me alone. If you really care, give me some answers quickly. Please help me!"

Sex is like an emotional hand grenade. It blows up so fast when the pin is pulled that lives can be shattered almost without warning and blasted forever. Necking and petting light a fuse of desire that will not easily go away. The trouble with petting is that it never just stops in one place. Thinking what is beyond makes it hard to be satisfied with less. It demands an ever increasing stimulation. Kids who once laughed at the Word of God and ignored the warnings of their conscience are now trying to put their lives back together because they allowed a fuse to be lit that cost them their purity. Listen to these burning words from David Wilkerson in his message, "Parked at the Gates of Hell."

Who but God could know what goes on in parked cars and secluded woods across this nation? Who but God could see what happens on nights like this when students test their moral courage and their codes; who but God could really know what sweethearts are allowing in their lives; what privileges are being demanded; what risks are being taken; who but God could see the whole picture? The Bible warns, "Can a man take fire in his bosom and not be burned?"

Young people break the laws of God and then excuse it by saying, "God made me this way; we're only doing what comes naturally; we're in love; God will forgive us anyhow; God knows our human weaknesses; He knows our hearts." It can happen so quickly; it can even happen on the way home from a religious service such as this. Too suddenly, in a frenzy of hugging and kissing and petting, the natural flame that God has put in the heart of every young man and woman begins to burn out of control before God's appointed time and without God's approval; and the devil keeps urging you on and whispering, "It's all right- you're in love, you belong to each other, you have a right- and even if you get into trouble he will carry You through. he'll stick with you, she'll stick with you- everything's all right!"

These stolen pleasures last only for a very short time, and then the roof caves in. One minute it can seem so right and pretty and so good because the devil can bring two young people together and make everything seem so pure and sweet and clean, when in actuality their lives are going through the filth and dirt and exceeding sinfulness of sin. Then as the pleasure ebbs away and the emotions are brought under control, it becomes dirty, wrong and sordid. One moment you thought it was real love, and the next you saw it for what it really was. It is then that these two realize they have parked right at the gates of hell and allowed Satan to deceive them.

The trouble with sex before marriage is that there is far more involved than just giving up your virginity. You can walk the streets and talk to kids who have really been around sexually -kids who say they know how to take care of themselves, kids who have grown up in the language and practices of the gutter who have learned to use sex as a weapon and a commodity and who have heard all the arguments against sex before marriage that they want to hear. But the problems that come into your life in premarital sex are not the usual ones that everyone talks about. No, you might not get pregnant. You might not be as dumb as the girl who took a birth control pill before giving in to her boyfriend, hoping that would protect her. You might have learned all there is to know about birth control methods so that you can trust your body to be chemically or physically blocked from its normal function. And, no, you might not get venereal disease either, although it is in runaway proportions throughout the world. The new virile forms of V.D. show no response to any known form of treatment, striking permanently and cripplingly at those who have played loose once too often to bring them disease, sexual debility and agonizing death or insanity. You might not have to have an illegal abortion, and die at the hands of some butcher who lives on girls who have lost the great debate and can't face it. These are all reasons, good reasons why sex before marriage is out for the disciple of Jesus, but they are not the basic ones. You may think that if you can only avoid these, sexual experimenting will be so cool you won't get burned, but you would be wrong.

God never gives His laws for fun. He always designs them for our highest happiness and holiness. Every advocate of sex before marriage adds three cancers to sexual happiness, three things that can never really be undone, three things that will destroy something beautiful. It will always happen no matter how careful People are and no matter what precautions they take These reasons lie behind what happens with many young people who finally try marriage and just split up again; why many others no longer find ordinary sex beautiful or satisfying arid turn to deviation, homosexuality or lesbianism. Have sex before marriage and you add three things to your sexual happiness that you can never get rid of:

1. Guilt. God has placed an alarm in your soul, a red light of warning to protect your integrity. It is your conscience. When you are about to lose control of yourself or hurt others it will sound, and you had better listen if it does. God made petting as a fuse to burn naturally down in marriage, with trust and love, to going all the way. You can't really give yourself to another until you feel free to give of your whole person to the other. Sex is not just physical. It is an investment of your life in someone else's. God made it to function in trust and love.

Experiment with sex before marriage and you will begin to learn about it in an atmosphere that is furtive, sly and secret, that is confined to wayside cabins, cheap hotels, out-of-the-way beaches and forests and parked cars. Sex outside of marriage is watchful, hurried, scared of interruption or discovery. And here is the first problem : sex outside of marriage is always sex learned with guilt. As the fuse burns down, you learn to feel guilty with it. As you learn sexual surrender, you also learn to feel badly about it. And what will that do to your married? You get used to holding yourself back in fear, get used to being worried and hurried, and you carry into your marriage guilty hands and a soiled mind. The wound you give to your conscience may never heal. Or if, instead, it hardens, you will join the ranks of the sexually sophisticated. That description means usually those who have so burned out their moral sense and related nervous systems that sex has simply turned into physical dexterity, and the other person means nothing much more than a coke bottle,

2. Fear. Love means believing in the one you love. That means trust, If you can't trust the one you love, you will hold back. Fear and love are opposites in the Bible. You can't love someone you are afraid of. Love without fear means to be able to fully trust the one you love. And here lies the second problem with going all the way before marriage.

Some people say, "Why not? We love each other. We're going to get married anyway. If we're going to get married soon, why not try out sex first? What difference does a scrap of paper make anyway?" That philosophy is all right in its right place. But that place is hell. Marriage is not just a scrap of paper. It is a public declaration to each other before the watching world that you love and are committed to each other. the waiting time before marriage is just as important as the time after. It is important both to you and to your fiancée. It says that you trust each other enough to stay within limits, even when you want each other more than anyone else in the world. It says that you trust yourselves not to give in to temptation to indulge in pleasurable experience outside of moral standards. If you both believe in real rights and real wrongs, you have a chance to real it out before marriage. Give in, and you blow your trust and your codes together.

So what? So then you add another ingredient to your future fear. If you have sex with each other before you've committed yourselves publicly to each other in marriage, how can you be so sure you'll stay trusting each other later? What guarantee do you have in your heart that your partner will not give in to sexual temptation with someone else later? You say you love each other, but if you are not willing to keep faith with each other through the pain of waiting before marriage, how do you know you will keep faith after? What does that bit of paper mean in marriage anyway? It means nothing- nothing but the public point in time around which you prove to yourself, to each other and to the world that you can be trusted to stay true. Jump the fence before marriage, and who is to say that you won't jump it again? And if you can't trust yourself or the other person enough to stay clean before you marry, you will always have doubt and fear, when some new sexual attraction comes his or her way, that that fence will be jumped again. And fear kills real love.

3. Dilution. Sexual love is such a deeply profound act that it is impossible to do without investing a part of yourself in that other person.

Rarely do the immoral realize the terrible price of sexual sin. The one obvious result of a dulling in normal sexual stimulation and a loss of excitement in natural forms of sexual intercourse seems to be deliberately ignored or justified away. The fact remains: Mix your sexual life with guilt by breaking God's rules and you will lose the power to have normal sexual satisfaction. You will be pushed by your own lusts into deeper, more bizarre forms of perversion until you find yourself doing things for sexual kicks that you never would have believed you would stoop to before you started in immorality.

This frustration is the source of hundreds of forms of sick sex that abound in our time- sexual involvement with groups, with animals, with machines; homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexual lifestyles; sadism and masochism, hurt and torture, even murder- applied to sex in the name of "natural love." In sexual addiction, the wildest forms of insanity must be justified in a way that almost no other addiction could allow.

In some countries like Denmark, legalized pornography in books did not satisfy; dirty photographs were superseded by dirty movies, and that in turn by dirty live theater, and that even further, by audience participation. Not enough. The latest has been films and Plays making the holy and sacred bow to this perverse and poisonous addiction. Christ and the disciples are pictured as lechers and perverts. The masks are coming off; the true source of this insane drive towards hell is beginning to show itself as the demonic pressure it really is. Break God's rules, ignore His warnings, but once you choose the way of immorality, you are locked in absolute slavery to the consequences. And nothing or no one will ever get you out of lust if God gives up on you, You'll be hooked, and it will get worse, and that has to be the most de nine addiction of them all.

Chapter 44

Dealing With Sexual Hang-ups

"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God" (Matt. 5:8).

Perhaps you have already gotten into trouble with some form of sexual sin. Sex out of control is as addicting as drugs. If you really want to be free, deal with your heart, for the Bible says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart." Take these steps to get right out and to be pure again before God:

1. Be brutally honest with Yourself Stop excusing what you did. Strip away all excuses that you have made for what you did. Don't tell yourself that it is "weakness," or, "God knows my heart," or, "I'm only doing what is natural." Reject the philosophies and moralities that have built a bridge for you to sin. Sin is not new. The same broken laws bring the same tragic results in every generation. Stop baptizing your sexual problem with any soft names. Call it sin, see it as one great habit of selfishness, and be willing to turn from the sin itself, not just be sorry for the trouble it has caused. No one can live a disciple life in the grip of sexual lust. God can free you only if you are willing to take sides with Him against it. Begin now, before conviction goes away and you start to feel cold and hard again.

2. Make a gift of Your love to God. Ask God to forgive and cleanse you from the rotten things you have done. Let Him deal with the stain of your past through His blood. Ask Him for the courage to free up to what you have done, and get right. Ask Him for a new heart to love Him and serve Him as you ought.

Deal with your body. "Love Him with all your strength." You can do this by making a present of your body to the Lord. If you are a girl, you have taken that which is God's gift to you and wasted it. It was God's property that others used so cheaply. If you are a man, you took the temple of your body and used it like an animal. Misused sex has blown your purpose in life, bound you to a chain of mind and action habits that rise up against you whenever you struggle to break out. Now there is only one way out. Give up your life, give up your body. Give them back in their entirety to God. You have not taken care of them. Now give them to God as His rightful property. Let Him take ownership. From this time on, it will be not yours to use, but His. 'rake it part by part.

Begin now. Start with your hands. "Lord, take my hands. They have been defiled, and Your Word says, 'Cleanse your hands, you sinners. 'Help me to keep them from doing wrong.'

Then take your eyes. They have gotten you into trouble too many times, "Lord, here are my eyes. I am shaken by Your Word that says, 'If your eye offend you, pluck it out ... it is better that you enter life with one eye rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire' (Matt. 18:9). 1 make a covenant with You and my eyes right now. I will not use them lustfully again. I will not look on that which stirs me up into sin (Job 3l:l).

"Take my lips. I remember that Judas betrayed You with a kiss. 1, too, have beep Judas to You. Take a fire from Your altar of cleansing and touch my lips. Make them clean again to sing Your praises from a straight heart." Do this carefully. Give God everything (Rom. 12:1, 2). Deal with your relationships "love your neighbor as yourself."

3. Confess to the other person involved, and break off with him. Write a letter, but don't tell him all the details of why you did. Sexual sin cuts so deep that everyone knows what was wrong. Do not go to see film in person unless you cannot help but see him, as this may only involve you deeper with him in your feelings, and that may start your problem all over again. You must break off with him unless you are engaged, in which case God may want each of you to really get right with each other and stay clean for His time in marriage. This will not be easy. It will be hard for you, especially if this has gone on a long it e. But if you want to be free, you must do it (Matt. 5:28-30).

4. Set up a prayer covenant with another disciple of Jesus. If the other person doesn't know what you are gain through, just relate that you have a great Deed for victory in your life and you would like support in prayer. If you are engaged, set up this prayer time with each other (James 5:16).

5. Stay away from sources of temptation. Avoid places where you will be alone together if that is a temptation, or stay away from the places where the person is who was party to your problem. Go out with a full crowd of disciples of Jesus. Stick together in a big family where you can have friends and learn to love without having to bring sex into it (1 Thess. 5:22).

6. Get into some solid work and exercise, Throw yourself into activities for God with all your energy. This will help channel the powerful drive of sex into more useful outlets. It will help release sexual tension and make your happenings more fun. Set yourself tough deadlines on all that you do. Don't waste time. Challenge yourself to meet everything in Christ with all your heart, mind and strength.

Chapter 50

Don't Live Like the World

"Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but be a new and different person with a fresh newness in all you do and think" (Rom. 12:2, The Living Bible).

What is the world? It is not the planet earth which God gave us to enjoy. Right through His word, God warns us to not live like the world around us. "Pure religion is to keep yourself clean from the sinful things of the world" (James 1:27). "He [Jesus] gave Himself to die for our sins. He did this so we could be saved from this sinful world" (Gal. 1:4). "Because of the cross, the ways of this world are dead to me and I am dead to them" (Gal. 6:14).

We see from reading the Bible that the world is the system of ideas and ways of living that are evil, against God, ruled by the devil and headed for hell. The true disciple of Jesus has been saved from it, and must refuse to live like it, keep clean from it, and to remain against it. There is no such a thing as a worldly Christian. God says, "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (I John 2:15).

Living like the world does not have to do with things. Worldly living is a heart attitude. It is a spirit of giving in to selfish ways of life. It is to copy the standards of lost people, instead of living like Jesus. The real disciple of Jesus does not live like the world around him. If you want to serve Jesus, you will not copy the fads and fashions of our selfish society. You will take your standards from the Lord Jesus and from His Book, the Bible.

Resist the temptation to do what is "in" at the time. The way of the crowd is usually the wrong way. The disciple of Jesus has been called to go against the crowd. The world is against God. If we want to follow the Lord Jesus, we must go against the world's ways. Remember, if everyone who is selfish is for it, God is usually against it.

Do not try to do God's work in tire world's way, there are many things that we can use for Jesus to do His work in a better way. The tape recorder, television and film have all been used for Jesus to bring lost people to Him. No one thinks that in a modern world we ought to use oxen and carts instead of cars and planes to take us to places where God wants us. Some things can be used to make our task to reach the world more simple. But no new method can make the job of touching and changing people's lives in Jesus easier. It cost God His Son. It cost Jesus His life. To share Jesus will always cost us something too. Do not give in to the world's ways of doing things. We must not make God's costly gift of life cheap by worldly methods,

Sometimes disciples of Jesus follow the world's ways without knowing it. Whatever new thing is "in" they take pains to show that Jesus says the same things. If drugs are in it is easy to say, "Jesus will get you high too. Jesus can also put you on a 'good trip.' " It is good to speak in ways that the world will understand. We must always speak in words that lost people can grasp. But we are not free to put Jesus and His standards into someone else's mold. He is the standard by whom all lives must be measured. And serving Jesus is not a "trip," not just a way of feeling good or leaving problems behind. If long hair is in, everyone says Jesus had long hair without ever reading His Book first to see what it says. What will we do if bald heads come in? Do not tie the Eternal God to the changing fads of the world. He does not change. He is the same.

Now I know it is hard to be lonely. Many kids today would rather sell their souls than feel left out of the crowd. They would rather mix in with a crowd that is rotten than walk out if it means standing alone to do right. The youth culture shows constant change from idea to idea, a series of searches to bring kids together without God. About the only thin most of these ideas have in common is that they all were things kids could do together. Most of these ideas became merely what was "hip" at the time and were not seriously practiced.

The need to belong can be a real addiction. It can he just as strong as drugs or sex. And Satan knows this. If he can make Jesus just another fad, if he can make the gospel just a cover to bring people together without their need to change their hearts, he will have success in using the gospel against the gospel. If kids can unite around Jesus, riot because they really believe or act on His words, but because it is what is bringing people together, he can fool the world. Look around you. Jesus is being sold for the wrong reason and is being sold out. He is not presented as a threat to wicked living or to the hang- loose trip, but merely as the next step in the evolving drive to "get it all together." No, mark it down clearly. If we follow the Bible Jesus, we will not go the way of the crowd. The way of the crowd is the way to hell and death, and the disciple of Jesus is the one person against the crowd.

Used by permission for ISOB students in Africa

Handbook for followers of Jesus

Winkie Pratney author

Bethany House Publishers Copyright 1977

not authorized for resale