Delighting in Jesus

This message is one of the Times Square Pulpit Series. It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times Square Church in Manhattan, New York City. Other tapes are available by writing to World Challenge P.O. Box 260, Lindale, Texas 75771 or calling 214-963-8626.

None of these messages are copyrighted and you are welcome to make copies for free distribution to your friends. Praise the Lord. I promised you that in our new church we'd have wider aisles and I made that promise before I even saw the place.

And I'm glad that not only do we have wider aisles but we have more of them and we have more in-seats for those of you that need an in-seat. Praise the Lord. Amen.

Turn with me to Psalms 37. Psalms 37. Read to you a familiar portion of Scripture tonight.

It will be familiar to many of you. I want to talk to you tonight about delighting in Jesus. I hope you are delighting in Him.

And this is a church that loves to come and worship and praise the Lord but the center of it all is the fact that we are delighting in Jesus. Psalms 37 says, Do not fret because of evildoers. Be not envious towards wrongdoers for they will wither quickly like the grass and fade like the green herb.

Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in Him and He will do it. And He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday.

Verse 4 says, Delight yourself in the Lord. You know, the Holy Spirit has been speaking to me lately and teaching me more and more about my need to delight in Jesus. And what it means to make Him my total joy, my total delight, my total satisfaction.

But it's been a long road that I've had to travel to discover that and to learn what that means. And I feel now that I'm only an infant, only an infant in understanding it. And looking back over my past, I've discovered to my surprise and to my conviction that I was not always delighting in Jesus like I should.

I remember it was some 10 years ago that the Lord tried to get my attention in this matter and tried to draw me closer to Him. And at the time I was being asked to take on a different or a new direction in my ministry and actually it had to do with letting go of some ministry activities and responsibilities so that I could draw closer to the Lord. And when it came to that moment in my life and I was faced with having to make certain decisions, I went away to pray.

Went to a cavern and prayed and took three days. And I took with me just a Bible and a book picked at random from my library, a devotional book. The title of it happened to be Christ, the sum and substance of all things.

And during those three days I prayed, I read the Word, and I read that book. And I prayed about whether I should release myself from certain ministries. But as I prayed about it, I was unable to do so.

I felt from the Lord that I was to make no changes. And so after three days I went back. As far as I was concerned, the matter was settled.

I went back to implement my decisions or to remain at the status quo. But one thing confused me. The book that I had read and the Scriptures that it had took me to had made a tremendous impact upon me.

And I couldn't understand the relationship between those truths and the decision that I had to make. And in essence, the message that the Lord had said to me and the Scriptures that He gave, He led me to through the book, Christ, the sum and substance of all things, was out of John chapter 6, verses 57 and 58. As the living Father has sent me and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me, he also shall live because of me.

This is the bread which came down out of heaven, not as the fathers ate and died. He who eats this bread shall live forever. And also in that same portion where Jesus says, I am the bread of life.

And I discovered that I was eating, it took me some time to discover this, but I discovered that I was eating off of something other than bread. I was living more off of my ministry activities, more off of my work for Christ than off of Christ himself. You see, I was like the president of the bakery company in charge of distributing bread at various outlets, supervising the delivery system, had a lot of people under me and sending them here and there delivering the bread of life, but failing to eat it myself.

Like Martha, I got more satisfaction in being encumbered with the joy of service than being like Mary who enjoyed more sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening and feeding off of his every word. You see, how could I let go of something that I had made my delight? Oh, it was a good thing that I was doing. I was involved in evangelism and in outreach and in discipleship and rehabilitation and feeding people spiritually, meeting the needs of others.

I was in charge of a multimillion dollar bread business, but starving spiritually. And you see, the Lord was trying to show me, and when I think of it, it brings grief to my heart that how the Lord tried to show me that if he is my delight, if he is my bread, if he is my satisfaction, if he is my motivation, I could have gladly and easily made the changes needed to be made in my ministry. But sadly, I did not see it, and it took me seven years to be able to see it.

But thank God that he brought me into it and he's continuing to bring me into this understanding of what it means to make him my total delight. And tonight my prayer is that the Holy Spirit will help me to convey this same truth to you at whatever spiritual level you're now operating. Jesus wants to be your total delight.

If I can borrow one of Pastor David's favorite lines when he says, Jesus does not just want to be number one, or he doesn't just want to be first, but he wants to be everything. In other words, Jesus does not just want to be number one on your top ten list. He wants to be number one through ten and everything else.

Psalms 23 and 1 just hit me so wonderfully this last week. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

The greater our vision of Jesus, the more we delight in him, the more our want list begins to go down. And in fact, it goes down in proportion to how much I make him my total delight. And everything else grows strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.

Hallelujah. When you turn your eyes on Jesus, Psalms 73, 25 says, Whom have I in heaven but thee? And besides thee I desire nothing on earth. Can you say that tonight? And besides thee I desire nothing on earth.

God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. I don't know about you, but what I desire, and I haven't reached it yet, but what I desire is expressed by Isaiah 26 and 9. He says, At night my soul longs for thee. Indeed in the morning my spirit within me seeks thee diligently.

Or Psalms 119, 35 says, Make me walk in the paths of thy commandments, for I delight in them. And so this message tonight is about what it means to delight in Jesus and what happens to us and in us when we come into this fullness of delighting in Jesus. And you know, I was thinking, let me just say this.

You know, some people, somebody called me this last week and said he was going to start coming to our church, but his pastor warned him about us. And in essence he said we preach a hard message here. Well, I got to thinking, you know, well, if you want to build a tent, then, you know, look for a soft message.

But if you want to build something that lasts, you want something that's hard. You want a hard message, right? Because you can build something that's going to last when you build it upon the rock. But a lot of people think that people who preach what we call, what is called a hard message or a message of holiness has no happiness and has no delight and no joy in it.

And I don't know, I don't know about you, if you've seen, I'm sure there's other churches have as much joy as we do, but I want to tell you, nobody, I don't think anybody can outdo us. We have a lot of joy in this church, hallelujah. When you delight in Jesus, there's joy in him, hallelujah.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First of all, let me say that every man, every person delights in something. Matthew 6.21 says, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

We are and we become what we desire and what we delight in. Our affections are like the magnet on a compass pointing us towards the object of our desires. And your desire will control your thought life.

It controls our aims and our ambitions, our actions and everything about us. I remember when I was a teenager, I think about my delights, my desires. In fact, I came home one Sunday night from church.

I was 15 and a half years of age. And my mother asked me, she said, son, if you could be any age, what age would you want to be? And I didn't hesitate one moment. I said, 16.

And she said, why? I said, so I could drive an automobile. And I lived for my 16th birthday. And when it came immediately, I went down in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and I took my test, I passed it, and I legalized my driving.

And then I could go alone, you see, in dad's big Buick. And I tell you, I thought I had arrived. Here I was, 16 years of age, behind that automobile.

And now I could drive it. And I also figured now not only do I have the car, but this would go a long way in helping me to get dates. But it didn't work.

I figured I needed a Buick to throw in with a deal. I remember I shared that one time at a youth rally, and some kid yelled out in the audience, amen. And I said, it takes one to know one, doesn't it? But you know, it wore off, because my dad told me, son, you got to pay for the gas and the oil, and you're going to have to pay for the insurance.

And so it was no longer a toy anymore. It was a responsibility. And then I remember I set my sight on graduating from high school.

For some reason, I had it in my mind that when I graduated from high school, I was going to be more independent. And I don't know what was in my mind, but anyway, I graduated, and prepared to go off to Bible school, filled a call to the ministry. But that wasn't so great, because my father informed me that he couldn't afford to send me to school.

I'd have to work. And so I started working. And then I went to school, and I remember I had set my sights upon certain things that even though it was a Bible school, I was in more to the social life than the spiritual life.

And I began to realize at a certain point something that many of us do, and many of you do. I began, I would start, and sometimes it happens, it never ends. I started when I was a teenager, but for some of us, it never ends.

I would set a goal, a stake in my future, and I would say to myself, oh, if I only had that, if I only had this thing, if I only had that thing. Or some of you think if I only lived there, I've only had this or that. And I was putting my delight in so many earthly things.

They were not sinful in and of themselves, but they were distracting me from delighting in the Lord. Ecclesiastes 1.8 says, All things are wearisome. Man is not able to tell it.

The eye is not satisfied with seeing. And I've seen men and women destroyed by both natural and unnatural desires and delights. We're all familiar with the destructive desires such as the overpowering lust of drugs or other sinful pleasures.

And yet I've seen others who have desires in the realm of the intellectual or the social or monetary pursuits that become fixations. Drawing that person away from the Lord as much as drugs or alcohol will draw others away. You see, there are godly and ungodly dreams.

There are natural desires that can be deadly as unnatural desires. And many things enter our minds and hearts wrapped in the trappings of loveliness and even godliness. But when you open up the package, you find that it is a deadly thing.

I do not believe that the prodigal son intended to squander his inheritance in loose living as Luke 15, 13 says. All he wanted was what belonged to him, his portion of the estate. And there was nothing wrong with that in itself.

His inheritance rightly belonged to him. But it's what he did with it that got him into trouble. He did not have a godly character to accompany his inheritance.

You see, it is a dangerous thing, my friend, to follow the desires and the delights of the heart. Jeremiah 17 and 9 says that the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick. Who can understand it? Now, I don't know about you, but I don't understand my heart sometimes.

And I sure don't trust it sometimes. Oh, how it tricks me. Oh, how it fools me.

Oh, how it leads me astray. The heart is so deceitful that you can actually do something contrary to God's will and think that you have the peace of God in that matter. And yet, it can be a false peace.

Deuteronomy 29 and 19 says, And it shall be when he hears the words of this curse that he will boast, saying, I have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart. You've heard it preached here before, the pastors, that you can have stubbornness in your heart, desiring something out of the stubbornness of your heart, and you can say, I've got peace about it. Instead, it doesn't line up with God's Word.

Probably one of the most frequently asked questions that I have of me from a growing Christian is this. How can I be sure to know what God's will is for my life? Well, there's no quick answer. There's no easy answer to it, and this is not the subject of my message.

But one thing I can say, one thing I do know, the first step in knowing God's will is to acknowledge the fact that you can't trust your own dreams and your own desires and your own delights because they often arise out of a heart that is prone to wickedness or self-centeredness or selfishness. The prerequisite for knowing God's will and bringing our desires into check is to do what it says in 2 Corinthians 10 and 5 in the King James. It says, casting down imaginations and everything that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

My friend, we've got to bring every desire, every dream, every delight into the obedience of Jesus Christ. Proverbs 28 and 16 says, He who trusts in his own heart is a fool. Have you ever been such a fool? I have.

Are you fooling yourself now in a certain matter? He who trusts in his heart is a fool, but he who walks wisely will be delivered. Beware, my friend. There are many landmines along the path to the promised land and our own hearts are the biggest trap.

Don't trust it. You can't trust it. Now the key to praying right prayers, the prerequisite and the key to knowing God's will is to delight yourself.

Know what it means to delight in the Lord. Now I must confess that as a young convert, as a youngster, this scripture that I base my message on tonight both delighted me and confused me. Growing up in the church, I'd hear this verse quoted, and you know, there is one problem about Bible verses.

You know, it's too bad, you know, sometimes it's better to read it in paragraphs. And sometimes we have a problem because, you know, we pick out these one verse and we pull it right out, not seeing it in the context of what preceded it and what follows it. And sometimes we base truths that are half-truths on it.

And I used to hear this verse quoted over and over again, delight thyself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. And I like that second part especially. I mean, that really appealed to me.

And I remember, I remember how that verse stuck in my mind when I was a little Sunday school boy. And I was in Sunday school class one day, and the Sunday school teacher went around and asked everybody, what's a prayer? What prayer do you have on your heart? What are you praying for? And the different ones, they went around, and they were saying different things when it came to me. I said, I'm praying for a bicycle.

And the reason I remember that is that the teacher gave me a look, and he gave me a comment, and he gave me a lecture that made me look about that big. And what made it worse is my dad was a preacher. My dad was a pastor.

And here all the others had nice spiritual requests and I was praying for a bicycle because, after all, it said, delight thyself in the Lord, and he shall give you the desires of thy heart. But you see, the older I got, the more I began to realize, I realized then, but I realized more so the shallowness, the carnality, and yes, even the corrupt desires of my heart. And by the way, you may have heard the definition between a boy and a man.

It's simply the price of his toys. Or the kind of prayers that he prays. The same principle.

You see, the difference between a Christian walking in true righteousness and one who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart is reflected in the object of his prayers and the object of his desires. Your desires will tell you how far you're coming in the Lord. Be careful how you pray and what you delight in because you may get what you ask for.

Jacob wanted his twin brother Esau's birthright. He got it. Oh, but he got years of wandering and hard labor and he paid a price for it, not only for the manner that he went about it.

Israel prayed against God's will for a handsome, charismatic king to rule over them so that they could be like other nations. And they got exactly what they wanted. Plus high taxes and servitude and suffering and a series of wicked kings ruling over them.

Lot, Lot got the lot of real estate that he wanted and Sodom and Gomorrah with it. Judas got his 30 pieces of silver and committed suicide. Be careful what you pray for.

That's why we must bring our hearts to the Lord. You see, at the root of all true spiritual growth is a set of right and sanctified desires. Psalms 37 describes three keys.

In this regard, it says, delight yourself in the Lord. Verse 5, it says, commit your way to the Lord. In verse 5, it also says, trust in Him.

You see, it's a dangerous thing to teach on prayer without teaching on being committed to the ways of the Lord. It's also dangerous to teach about faith if the heart has not been presented to the Lord for cleansing and removal of our greedy desires. I remember the very first time I heard, or I may have seen it or heard it on the radio or saw it on a Christian television, the very first time I heard one of the popular prosperity preachers teaching.

And I listened to him, and I didn't know anything at the time, but when I listened to him, it sounded all so good when he talked about delighting in the Lord and just claiming whatever you wanted. But he said, absolutely, he said nothing, absolutely nothing about God's will. He said nothing about the corruption of our hearts.

And I remember the time when I heard him, I said to somebody with me, I said, you know, he's teaching a doctrine that's like putting dynamite in the hands of a little kid. And it will destroy you. It'll blow up in your face, and it's blowing up in many people's faces.

The whole of Scripture teaches us that we can have whatever we want if we want it bad enough and if our desire is in accordance with God's will. The desire after God must be the motivating force behind our lives. It must be the object of our delight.

It must be the guiding principle behind our approach to God. You see, when there is a desire to know Him and to love Him and to obey Him, when that becomes predominant in us, nothing can prevent us from having what we want because in reality, it will not be what we want, but it will be what He wants. Hallelujah.

When Jesus invited His disciples, He said, ask me anything in my name, and I will do it. I mean, that's tremendous. But He also based it on the principle and the understanding.

He said it within the context that His disciples, He knew that His disciples were delighting in Him. They knew that, He knew that they were committed to His will and they were trusting in Him. And when Jesus is saying that, when He says this, ask me anything in my name, what Jesus is saying is that He hears the prayers which He Himself prompts in our hearts because of our relationship with Him.

You see, the reason that He can grant to certain men the desires of their hearts is because He has inspired those desires because of their walk with Him, their relationship with Him. You see, Jesus always taught prayer. Always taught on prayer and asking in the context of those who knew His mind and obeyed His commands and followed His will because He can trust such a person.

He can invite such a person to ask me anything because He taught at the same time, if you abide in Me, if you delight in Me, and My words abide in you, you ask whatever you wish and it will be done. You see, the asking and the wishing will be right because of the Word that abides in the asker. Remember in Luke, in fact, if you want to turn to Luke chapter 11, that famous verse that we all know very well, Luke chapter 11, verses 9 and 10, and it says, and I say to you, ask and it shall be given you.

Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened to you. For anyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it shall be opened.

And then I like to go, the following verse, I like it in the King James better because immediately the next verse says, if a son shall ask bread of his father. The very next verse is the key to understanding the principle of how prayer works. If a son shall ask bread of any of you, there's a father, would he not give it? And here Jesus teaches that the only one who has, only the person who has a right relationship with Him has the right to be able to come and to ask and to seek and to knock at His door.

That's the whole point of it. If a son shall ask, you see the Lord only obligates Himself to His children. Those that are walking in right relationship, those are the ones He invites.

He says, ask and it shall be given you because you'll know how to ask. You'll ask because My Spirit's in you. Now, let me go on.

The more we delight in the Lord, the more we are purged of asking what is not in accordance with His will. You see, we must continually wage a warfare against the carnal mind dominating our desires. Listen to Romans.

It's the 8th chapter, verses 5 to 7. Listen as I read it. For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile towards God, for it does not subject itself to the law or to the will of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are of the flesh cannot please God.

You see, not only can we not please God when we're not walking in the Spirit, but our fleshly carnal desires overtake us and can only lead us to disaster. The human desires are so deplorable. They're so selfish in their operation that the moment we give in to them, they go from bad to worse, and as I said, only a fool can trust or will trust in his own heart.

I talked to someone just this last week about a move that he had made in his life, and he said, oh, he said, Brother Don, if I'd only waited two days, if I'd only waited two days, it looked so right, it looked so good, but somehow my own desires got all mixed up. If I'd waited two days and waited a little longer on the Lord, I would have seen it much clearly how many times I've heard people say, but the Lord told me it was okay, or the Lord showed me it was his will, when in fact it was that person's own will, even stubborn desire, which was at the root of it. Psalms 119 and 70 says, their heart is covered with fat.

You know what it means to have a heart covered with fat? It means to be covered with self-interest. It means to be covered with your own fleshly desires. The heart is covered with fat, but I delight in thy law.

Let me read to you a letter that we got in our office from a pastor that illustrates what I'm talking about here tonight. He said, nine years ago, my wife and I came to this town to begin a church. At the time, we received word from the city fathers that plans had been made to demolish the little old building we had been renting for our Sunday services.

As I took this to the Lord, I felt the Lord was leading me to not seek a permanent facility for worship. We would worship in the local school and let God build the church his way, I thought. He said, I had been raised in a Pentecostal church that was setting all of my life, and I had little instruction or experience in hearing the voice of God.

He said, I checked out the cost of the school and immediately felt that this could not be God's will because there was something else I really wanted to do, and that was to build my own church. I knew that I could do it. I did not recognize this as pride because, after all, it was all of God or for God.

After all, my denomination also would be proud of me if I built this church. He says, one morning, a lady came to church. She was not of our church.

She was visiting from another church, and she walked up to him immediately after the service, and she took me aside, and she said, I don't know what you're about to do, but the Lord gave me a dream last night, and you are about to make a serious mistake. This mistake will leave you in deep depression and difficult circumstances. But he said, I had so much pride that I did not even recognize that this was from God.

I was sure that this was, in fact, he said, I was sure that this was confirmation that the Lord wanted me to build our own building. So without taking any real time to seek God about it, I continued on my course. It took, to make a long story short, we built our building.

He said, for four years, we struggled to pay the bills, and we kept adding interest that we could not pay. In addition to this, because of the Great Depression and the responsibilities that were out of my league, I began wrestling with personal problems and fell into areas of sin that I had struggled with for years, but had always managed to either suppress or hide. But all of this together almost consumed me.

When I went to my state overseer to ask for help for our building and our getting behind, he was kind but later did several things to try to terminate my ministry. With our church suffering and my heart broken, the Lord began calling me to a deeper call, a deeper life of prayer. As I sought the Lord, he reminded me of the sweet lady that came with a dream, and how that I had been so proud and arrogant.

Through time, the Lord helped me to repent of the pride, the sin that had overtaken me, and the desire to do my own way. As he restored my desire for true humility and ministry before him, he began moving in our circumstances. In a matter of weeks, we had our mortgage and debt reduced by $20,000.

But then, he said, one night, we continued meeting for prayer for another year. We were directed in the spirit to wait on the Lord. He said, then it happened.

One night, this last August, a terrible storm came through our area. In a matter of minutes, lightning had struck our building and burned his dream to the ground. He said, I knew immediately, immediately there was a witness of the spirit that the Lord had visited us.

That was a nail in the coffin, as it were, to his own fleshly dream of building a church. We took that from the Lord, he said. And then he went on, he said, we received the insurance settlement and were able to pay off our debt in full and still have a large sum of money left over.

And he goes on, he said, we don't have a building yet, but we're waiting on the Lord, and we're going to do it God's way this time. Hallelujah. You see, when our delight is totally in the Lord, we're able to judge between what is of God and what is not because our desires get sanctified.

Go back to Psalms 37, if you will. And I didn't see this at the first when I studied this, but then the Lord took me down a few verses. It says, delight yourself in the Lord.

He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him, and he will do it. And he will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday.

Do you know what noonday judgment is? Noon is when the sun is the brightest and when you can see the clearest. There are no shadows. And you see, noonday judgment is talking about discernment.

Those who delight themselves in the Lord have clear discernment. They know whether a thing is of the Lord or not of the Lord. He gives you noonday judgment.

And listen, I've had enough judgments in the shadow. I want noonday judgment, hallelujah, to be able to discern whether it's of my own heart or whether it's the Lord leading. Hebrews 4.12 says, for the word of God is quick and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit of both joints and marrow and able to judge the thoughts and the intents of the heart.

Listen, my friend, if the scriptures condemn an object, we must accept that judgment and conform to it no matter how we may for the moment think about it. To want something or think you want it or need it and then to turn from it because it's contrary to God's will is to win a battle on one of the greatest battlefields that was ever fought, hallelujah. And unsanctified desires, unholy desires will stop the growth of any Christian's life.

Wrong desires pervert our moral judgment so that we're not able to appraise the desired object as to its real value. A thing can look morally good to us simply because we want it. This is why our hearts are bad counselors often pleading for the purity of something that is far from pure.

Our only hope and safety is to bring all our unholy, even unnatural desires to the cross and have them nailed there. To be tempted and yet glorify God in the midst of it is to honor and please him where and when it counts the most. We know of King David who looked upon a neighbor's rooftop and was tempted and sinned.

But what of other Davids who faced similar temptations and they nailed it to the cross? Genesis 39 and 7 came about after those events that his master's wife looked with desire at Joseph and she said, lie with me. But Joseph did not look with desire back. She spoke to Joseph day after day but he did not listen to her.

He nailed that to the cross. If there was any temptation, whatever it is, he nailed it to the cross. That's the kind of testimony that glorifies God, to nail your lust to the tree, to nail that desire to the tree.

As I was praying about this service tonight, I knew that in this audience there would be those that would have unholy desires that need to be nailed to the cross. You need to bring them to this altar tonight. I knew that there'd be people who have unsanctified desires or unnatural desires.

And then the Lord reminded me and spoke to me about one more because I can identify with this other one. And the Lord spoke to me and said, what about those who have unnecessary desires? Unnecessary desires. Oh, it may be seemingly all right, but the Lord says it's not necessary.

You don't need it. And would you lay down unnecessary desires on the altar so that Jesus can be your total delight? Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

God is always glorified when he wins a moral victory over our unsanctified desires. And we're all so blessed at the same time. I know a sister in the Lord.

Years ago, I knew this sister. She kept insisting. I was younger, a new young lady.

She kept insisting that the Lord was going to make her a millionaire so that she could be able to bless ministries all over the world. But I realized something. God can't make you a millionaire if you have a bankrupt heart.

And God can't give you the desires of your heart, whatever they might be, unless God can refine your character and bring your character up to the want of those desires. One more thing in closing. What about delighting in Jesus when the road is rough and you're in a very difficult, hard place? The real test of whether we really know how to delight in Jesus is when there is little in the way of outward circumstances and blessings to be joyful about.

Psalms 81 and 16 says, but I will feed you with the finest of wheat and with honey from the rock, I will satisfy you. Now, please listen carefully. When I grew up, people in the church when I grew up in early Pentecost understood the teaching and the meaning of honey in the rock.

Modern charismatics and converts of today's yuppie gospel know nothing, almost nothing about this. You see, honey in the rock simply means sweetness in a hard place. It means joy in the midst of sorrow.

It is delighting in Jesus even when you're going through sorrow and suffering or sickness and tribulation or other troubles. You see, when you have a theology that says God does not permit anything negative to come into your life and then something negative comes, the only thing you're left to do is blame it on yourself or blame it on the devil. And that's a very difficult position to be in.

Nothing but discouragement follows. But if you understand that God permits suffering and sorrow, then you'll find honey in the rock and you'll find satisfaction, joy, and delight in the midst of your tribulation. Listen to Deuteronomy 32 and 4. Moses says the rock, the rock, his ways are perfect, for all his ways are just.

A God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is he. And then verse 13, he said he made them ride on the high places of the earth and eat the produce of the field and he made him suck honey from the rock. Listen, my friend, to maintain delight in the Lord at all times, you gotta know how to suck honey from the rock.

You see, in Canaan, there was an abundance of bees and the bees used to go up into the clefts of the Rocky Mountains and there they would produce their honey. And the residents, they knew that there was honey there and those who were willing to make the climb, those that were willing to go through the hardship knew that if you made the climb, that when you got up there, that you could get honey out of a rock, sweetness in a hard place. And Moses likens the promises and provisions of the Lord as honey from the rock.

Now listen, I wanna make a statement and I'll make it two times at least or three times. Every believer drinks of the water from the rock but only a select few find honey in the rock. Let me say it again.

Every believer drinks from the water, the water from the rock, but only a select few know what it means to taste of the honey in the rock. When Moses smoked the rock in the wilderness, it's a type of the water of life flowing out from our rock of ages that satisfies the spiritual thirst of any man that thirsts after him. 1 Corinthians 10, 4 says, and all drink the same spiritual drink for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them and the rock was Christ.

All believers drink of the same spiritual drink but not everybody knows the taste of honey. The honey is reserved for those who by patient continuance and perseverance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality and eternal life. Honey in the rock belongs to those who persevere under trial because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life God has promised to those who love him.

1 Peter 2 says, for it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. Listen to what Jesus said. John 8, 31 and 32, to the Jew who has believed him, Jesus said, There's honey in the rock in a difficult place.

We used to sing a chorus. Oh, there's honey in the rock, my brother. There's honey in the rock for me.

Then I don't know the rest of it. Trusting in his blood to cover, there's honey in the rock for me. And you know the beautiful thing about when you discover it, whenever you find honey in the rock, you also find joy.

You find delight. That's what it means. Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials because of the trying of your faith.

Hallelujah. Victory brings joy. Go with me, if you will, to the Old Testament very quickly.

A couple verses that I've discovered recently that bless me so. Habakkuk. Go to Habakkuk.

I'll give you a little time to find it. Anything that's almost... I can't pronounce, so it must be hard to find. Habakkuk, chapter 3, page 1128.

Habakkuk, chapter 3, verses 18 and 19. Did you find it? I mean, I cheated, you know. I had my secretary type it out for me, so I cheated.

Habakkuk, chapter 3, verses 18 and 19. It says, Though the fig tree should not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive shall fail, and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold, and there be no cattle in the stalls. Ha-ha.

Yet. Now, listen, I don't know if you've ever... If your fig tree hasn't blossomed, I don't know if there may be no fruit on the vine. I don't know about you, but many a time I go, there's no fruit on the vine.

Sometimes the fields produce no food. The flock are cut off from the fold, and there is no cattle in the stalls. And he says, Yet I will exalt in the Lord.

I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. I remember one time I was going through a time like that. And it was a time of trial, a time of testing, and things were so dark in my life.

And I remember how the Lord just simply spoke to me. And what brought me out of it was the fact that I said, I discovered I'm saved. Now, I knew that, of course, but it just began to dawn on me.

Yeah, oh, that's happening to me, but so what? I'm saved. I'm saved. I'm a child of God.

Hallelujah. I was drinking out of the wells of salvation. Behold, God is my salvation.

Isaiah 12, I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and song. He has become my salvation. Therefore, you will joyously draw water from the springs of salvation.

And in that day, what day? That day when the fig tree doesn't blossom and there's no fruit on the vine. And in that day, you will say, give thanks to the Lord anyhow. Call on his name.

Make known his deeds among the people. Make them remember that his name is exalted. Praise the Lord in song, for he has done excellent things.

Let this be known throughout the earth. Cry aloud and shout for joy, O habitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. I don't know if you've ever experienced this. In early Pentecost, I've experienced it several times in my life.

I've also experienced it occasionally in my prayer closet. I don't know if you've ever experienced holy laughter. I've been in revivals when holy ghost laughter breaks out.

Now, I almost hesitate to say this, because you see, I've also been in meetings, and we have it right here, where people break out inspired by the Holy Spirit into dance. And you see, whenever the Holy Spirit is removed from a people, and they try to duplicate the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, then they have to orchestrate it. You don't have to train people to dance.

You know, when I was a kid, it always amazed me, those would dance in the Spirit, and they'd never hit anything. It amazed me, how come they never hit that thing? Their eyes are closed, they're dancing in the Spirit, and they never hit into anything. And I hesitate to talk about laughter, because pretty soon somebody will try to say, alright, everybody raise your hand, that's all laugh.

No, I'm talking about something that comes supernaturally by the Holy Spirit, when the Holy Spirit begins to move. And I have it occasionally in my prayer closet. And I want to tell you, if anybody was there looking at it, and didn't know the Lord, they'd be calling for the ambulance or something.

Experiencing holy laughter. You say, well, Brother Don, show me that from the Scripture. I am in closing, and this is it.

Genesis 21, 6, And Sarah said, God has made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh, and rejoice with me. Hallelujah.

Psalms 2, 4, He who sits in the heavens will laugh at the rulers who take counsel against the Lord. Psalms 37, 13, The Lord laughs at him, for he sees his day is coming. Hallelujah.

Talking about the wicked man's destruction. And Psalms 126, 2 and 3, Says then our mouth was filled with laughter, because the Lord has done great things for us. Hallelujah.

Oh, are you delighting in Jesus tonight? Hallelujah. Then he fills your soul with joy, and yes, at times even holy ghost laughter. Praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord. Let's stand together. Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus. Oh Lord, we're delighting in you tonight. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. And in your law, do we meditate day and night. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. Glory to God. Glory to God.

But Lord, we pray. We pray for some in this meeting tonight. We've got to lay down some unholy delights, unholy desires.

Lord, bring conviction by your Holy Spirit right now. In the name of Jesus, Lord, reach out across this audience, down on the main floor and the balcony. And you've ministered to some, Lord, tonight.

They've let the desires of their own heart, the stubbornness, the selfishness, the lust of their own heart, have gotten out of control and have taken over, have taken over their lives, taken over their minds. And Lord, free tonight some people. Free some people tonight in this meeting, we pray.

Oh, God, move around this altar. Do a work in hearts, we pray. In Jesus' name, we thank you.

We thank you. And tonight, as Steve leads us in a course, I believe there's some of you tonight, say, Brother Don, perfectly clear.