>> I'm delighted to be back and thank you for the
privilege of being invited by your centennial team to
come and open God's word and share some things from my heart. Just in a sentence or
two, my background is U.K. I hope you can still hear that even though I've been here 37 years. Keep going back to polish
up the accent a little bit. A child of the Second World War, not from a believing family. Never slept in a bed, just
in an air raid shelter as the bombs fell in Liverpool, England. Wasn't a very good idea to
live in Liverpool, England at those days. Frightened, scared out
of my mind one night at the height of the Blitz, I prayed. I didn't know who to pray to. I had never been to
Sunday School or church but in my church, because
there was no separation of church and state, for
which I am eternally grateful, for where would a little
British child like me have ever heard of Jesus otherwise. From my school prayers
which, by law, had to be said with the Apostles' Creed. I began to pray through
the Apostles' Creed and I prayed to God the Father and I prayed to God the Son
and I prayed to the Holy Ghost, as we called him, and I
prayed all the way through. I prayed to the holy Catholic Church and I prayed to Mother Mary. I prayed to everyone I found
in the Apostles' Creed. [audience laughing] And when I'd finished I
prayed to the Apostles' Creed who I thought was a person,
I didn't know who he was. [audience laughing] And then my mind returned
to that Holy Ghost and my mind camped on it and I
thought who's the Holy Ghost. Do I believe in the Holy Ghost? Does my mother believe in the Holy Ghost? I didn't know. And my sister and my mother
and I were just sitting in that underground shelter
clutching each other and crying and I just prayed that
God would stop the bombs falling all over my life
and my sister's toys and my mother's sewing machine and suddenly, into that
shelter, came a presence. In fact it was so real I
looked up to see who'd come in. And I was so sure that the
Holy Ghost, whoever he was, had come to me in my panic
and my little heart's just calmed down a little bit and I thought surely he's heard my prayer. And in the morning I
walked out into our garden and looked towards our house
and the back of it had gone. And I remember at the age
of six looking up at heaven and saying well, I don't
know what that was all about in the shelter but you're either not there or you don't care. So I grew up very confused
and asking a lot of questions with no one to answer them basically and eventually went to
college, I went to Cambridge and when I got there
somebody handed me a book by a professor who happened to be there at the same time I was called C.S. Lewis. He had written three books at that point. He was sort of persona non grata by the evangelical community
for different reasons. I never met him but I read his book. It was called Weight of Glory
and it talked about heaven and it talked about hell
and he made heaven and hell so real for me it frightened
me into the arms of God. And two weeks later I went into hospital in the middle of the night and
they thought it was appendix, they took that out, but it wasn't. Now I was scared. [audience laughing] As I lay there very sick
with no one figuring it out there was a girl in the next bed to me who was a Jesus lover and a glory giver and the first Christian I can remember and so-called Christian
I'd ever met in England. And she led me thoroughly,
totally, irrevocably to Christ. Gave me a bible and said
hang your heart over this. Do it. Be obedient. And, by the way Jill, the
mission field's between your own two feet at any given time. Look here's the head nurse,
tell her what you've just done. So seeing I'd just prayed
the prayer five minutes ago I had no idea what she was talking about. I said what's, she said
you're a missionary, I said what's that. She said well you're
either a mission field or a missionary and you
were a mission field till 10 minutes ago. Now you're a missionary. [audience laughing] So she said just try and tell her what we've just prayed. So I had no option, because I was British and you obey authority
and do what you're told and I thank God for that. And so I did, I stumbled
through goodness knows what and looked hopefully at
Janet and said how did I do and she said terrible but
never mind, try again, here's the next nurse. [audience laughing] And seven times that
day I stumbled through once I was blind, now I can see. That was it but it was
enough and I was off and I remember her saying
go to sleep tonight Jill saying this. All of God is in all of me. I said why do I say that,
she said never mind. Just pray that. And I thank God for her care for me. She took full advantage
of my total ignorance. I thought everybody went
through what she put me through as she followed me up, I'd no idea that's what she was doing. And she became the catalyst
to a life of figuring out that the mission field's
between my own two feet at any given time. That's, geography is
nothing to do with it. You just get hold of that. That's so important. Well, I want to talk to
you today about a war because I had been through
the Second World War but I had no idea it was
only a pale reflection of the real war that's going
on between God and Satan and I want to take a couple of messages from a series that I did on David. I taught this, I've taught it
all over the world actually, but I taught this starting
with the five smooth stones, the building blocks that
made David a giant killer because I observed, as soon
as I became a Christian, that there was a battle
going on and that this world is not a playground it is a battleground. And as soon as I stepped
into that I had no problem because I was reading C.S. Lewis and had just read Screwtape
Letters, et cetera et cetera, and his Weight of Glory
book on heaven and hell. I had no problem realizing
that we have a formidable foe. Somebody far stronger than us. Somebody absolutely
incredibly evil, pure evil. Pure evil, if you can put
the two words, oxymoron, in one sentence. Formidable foe but we have
an invisible host of angels and powers and we know that Paul says we don't wrestle against flesh and blood but against this invisible
army of evil in high places and what all that means, who knows. I only know there is a devil. I only know there is Satan and I only know every time I talk about him I pay for it. And we are in a battle. A battle royal. And I want to draw some
parallels from the story of David fighting his
Goliath, for behind Goliath was the bigger enemy. And Goliath represented those evil forces that Paul talks about
in the New Testament. The giants of Gath and
their champion Goliath came out to take on the
God of David, son of Jesse. And it's a marvelous story. It's actually the only story I knew before I became a Christian. I had never opened a bible of course but I didn't know whether
an apostle was the wife of an epistle, I had
to learn that later on. But I did know the story
of David and Goliath because we were taught
the bible in this school that I went to. And I'd heard about
David killing this giant, of course no application
was ever made of it. But as I became a Christian I went back to the Old Testament. That was because I was teaching
in the back end of Liverpool with street gangs and they
began to come to Christ. I had no idea what to do with them but I found that I needed to keep them in the Old Testament
and that's a long story but they were absolutely
mesmerized with the stories in the Old Testament. It was very hard to start
with the New Testament with street gangs in Liverpool, most of whom couldn't read
or write incidentally. And I began to cartoon the
Old Testament for them. Those that came to Christ. And when I got to this story it absolutely resonated with them and they began to tell me
about the giants in their lives and the giant deception
and the giant destruction and all these giants that
they related to so much. And what a great joy it was to tell them but we have a captain
of the Lord of hosts. Do you remember when Joshua saw him? He was about to try and take Jericho. He was totally inadequate,
he looked at these walls and he was frightened out of his mind and he went and he prayed to God. And suddenly here was
Jesus, pre-Bethlehem, standing in front of
him in all his splendor as captain of the Lord of
hosts and all those angels and spirits and powers
that were on Joshua's side. And Joshua looked at
this man, angel, what, he wasn't quite sure, and he
was dressed in battle gear. Manifestation, a theophany,
a revelation of God at that point to this man. And he said are you for us or for them? Whose side are you on? Whose side are you on? And the Angel of the Lord said
I haven't come to take sides I've come to take over and the
Angel of the Lord took over and Jericho fell. And I remember looking
at those street kids and realizing the giants that they faced, if they were ever going
to go on and walk with God and be transformed from the inside out. And I lived in the story of David for them for months and months and
months and we learned David and we began to talk about
being a giant killer. One of the things that made
David a giant killer, of course, was he learned to be alone,
he never had companions. He didn't have friends, just
sheep and lions and bears and stuff like that, and
that's how he grew up. He didn't have any social life. He was alone. Hard to be alone. I mean, imagine your teenage
life and you're just alone but he learned to be alone and like it because he learned God. He learned what it was to go deeper and stretch the sides of his soul and sit on the steps of his soul. And talk. And listen. And learn. And if you're gonna be a giant killer that's where it begins. It's one of those smooth stones. You've gotta learn God. The hardest place to do
that is a place like this. Now I'll tell you why. It's so much easier to be
friends with Jesus' friends than friends with Jesus. Hardest place you'll ever
find to get the reality of the presence of God as a holy habit will be in Biola College. Once you get out, and
you're alone, perhaps, one light in a dark
place, it's sort of easy. You're driven by fear or
intimidation or whatever. You're driven to the steps of your soul. But to choose the steps of your soul when you can reach out to
wonderful people who know Jesus, and there's so many holy
substitutes in a place like this, is very very difficult. David didn't have an
option, there was nobody. There was no Biola for him. He didn't have an iPod and
he couldn't download sermons and stuff like that. He was alone with the sheep
but he was alone with God and he learned solitude,
if you learned solitude, you gotta fight for it
in a place like this. Gotta fight for it. But have you learned solitude,
he learned to be alone. And then secondly, of course,
he learned God's word. We don't know how he
did sitting out there, except he read creation, what is man that thou art mindful of him, as he looked at the stars. I remember at the age
of 14, after the war, my father took us to France and we were probably one
of the first families that ever went to France. He'd omitted to realize that
after the Second World War there were no hotels,
there was nothing open. The whole country was
absolutely destroyed. So we just slept in the car,
the little tiny Austin car, my sister and I and my dad and my mom and one night, high in the Alps, actually on the Austrian
border, Swiss Austrian border, we'd spent a very uncomfortable
night crunched in our car and I got out and walked
to the edge of a mountain, literally, and sat on a rock
and watched the sun rise. Now here I am without God,
without Christ, without hope. And I will never forget the awe
and total overwhelming sense of the majesty of God as I sat there and I ran back to the car and got a pencil and wrote my first bit of bad poetry and it went something like this. The dawn breaks softly,
filling me with awe. It seems the other side of heaven's door. The God forgives my sin, to me is plain. Today, in spite of my sin,
the sun did rise again. Grace. Saw it all. The overwhelming sense of
the majesty of God showed me my sin or my unworthiness, overwhelmed me. And yet in spite of that there
was another sunrise folks. And when David sat out there
looking at the stars, God spoke and he learned God in creation
and of course he learned God in the word. He learned God in the word
and we'll talk about that a little later. But that was a building block in his life. God was God, read Isiah 40. Haven't you, don't you
know, haven't you heard. God is God, look at the
work of his fingers. Finger work, just finger work. Creation's just finger work. God is so clever. Have you noticed? And David learned that alone. And he learned to play by the rules. Read the Psalms. It's the longest Psalm
in the bible, Psalm 119, what's it about, all
about the word of God. All about the word of God. I believe in the west and
specifically in America there is a failure of nerve in this book. I don't know what's happening. I'm out of the country all
but six weeks now a year working in the developing world. But I tell you I come back and I say what's happened to the preaching. What's happened to the careful
taking of this powerful tool? Power in this. Whether people believe it or
not there's still power in it. Right. And David believed that, read Psalm 119 and in there there's a
little verse that says how shall a young man cleanse his way. By taking heed thereto
according to thy word. Thy word. Have I hid, in my heart, that
I might not sin against thee. And David learned to love his God. Love his God. And therefore he learned that
if he didn't want to hurt the person that he loved, had to be holy. Thy word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin, and he
learned to play by the rules. He learned to play by the rules. I remember growing up,
getting into the wrong group, and my sister, who was
three years older than me, not a believer but a very
morally upright girl, saw me with this group of
kids coming home from school. And when I got in she pulled
me apart, pulled me aside not pulled me apart, and
sat me down and said Jill you're gonna get into trouble if you stick around with those people. Don't do that. And of course I argued,
they were my friends and I was 13, 14, what did she know. And she simply said to me well all right, you won't listen to me. I just want to tell you one thing. If you get pregnant it will kill Daddy. Well about two weeks
later I went to a party I shouldn't have gone to and
the young man who was with me tried to take me to bed. And I resisted. And he said, you're just afraid of what your dad'll do to you. And I said no. I'm afraid of what I'll do to my dad. Save me. 'Cause I love him, right. Holiness isn't a set of
rules you have to keep because you feel guilty, you don't. 'Cause you love him. It kills God when we sin, right. And David learned that, thy
word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee. And of course there's other
stones, he learned his gifts, developed them out there. What would he have done
when he faced Goliath if he hadn't been working on his gifts when he was alone in solitude with God and learning to kill the
lion and kill the bear. Giant was nothing after that. And for 20 years he did pretty well. Did pretty well. And the giants of Satan
were getting worried. And then one day, when the kings were going out to war and David should've been
at the head of them, he stayed home. He stayed home. You know the story. You can read it, of course, in Samuel. Whenever I look at the
story of David on the roof it's usually just before I
meet someone in this world in high places for God. And when I get to the
Tajikistan or the Vietnam or wherever we happen to be, we hear a very sad story
of a life well lived, of a mission accomplished, of
God being God until one day, instead of going forth to war, somebody stays home. And they find themselves on the roof, just like David did. I want to look at the
steps that got him there. You know in a Middle Eastern house there's steps up to the roof. Steps down from the roof. And I want to talk about
the steps that take us into temptation, onto the roof. And I want to talk about the
steps that get us off the roof because there are more leaders falling, there are more missionaries coming home, there are more pastors
resigning, I think, than, I don't know, it's an avalanche. Is it more open, I don't
know what's happening. But we're all in the same boat. Whether we're little people
serving somewhere or other or whether we're prominent, like David, doing his thing for God in
front of a lot of people. So what were the steps of David that got him onto the roof? Well the first one was laxness, laziness. In the evening he got up. What's he doing in bed till evening, and why isn't he at war? In the time that kings go
forth to war, in the season, it sounds as if there's
a season for fighting. Well actually there was because
you couldn't move animals, pack animals, with all
the things an army needed in the winter. So in the spring, if you're gonna fight and everybody seemed to
be fighting in those days, then that's when you went forth to war. And the winter was over. David had been home,
as had everybody else, and David stayed home and sent Joab. In other words he said
here am I, send Joab. I wrote a book once called
Here Am I, Send Aaron and that was the beginning
of a whole lot of trouble for Moses. But I'll tell you something. He stayed in bed. Shows me that his disciplines, all his disciplines are going. One of the hardest things to do is to battle the spiritual
tiredness that comes, the discouragement that
comes, for different reasons and we'll look at the reasons for David. But I think David was just tired. I think he was tired. One of the things we hear
more than anything else, people tell us they're tired. Now I'm not talking
about physical tiredness. If you're going to be any danger to Satan you're going to be tired, let me tell you. My husband always says
to me I was born tired, I've lived tired, I'm gonna die tired but if I'm tired in heaven I'm
coming straight back because his idea of heaven is waking
up and not being tired. But you can be tired in the
work of the Lord or tired of it and there's a difference. And I think David was tired of it. He just, he was done. Let the younger ones do it. He is tired of being good. Ever been tired of being good? He was just tired of always
having to be an example. Some of you relate to
that, your pastor's kids, your missionary kids, your eldest kids. You have to be good. I know, we have three kids. We have 13 grandchildren, all teenagers and in college now, nearly. They get tired of being good
because they're PK's or MK's. Ministry kids. He was tired. And so he forgets, his
disciplines have gone. He's not in the word anymore. Did you know there's a verse that says when kings came to the throne, this is way back in Leviticus, the king is to write for
himself, on a scroll, a copy of the law, taken
from that of the priests who are Levites, the Ten
Commandments, the rules, remember. It's to be with him, he's to read it all the days of his life, so
that he may learn to revere the Lord, his God, and follow
carefully all the words of this law and his decrees. David quit taking his bible
along the road of life into battle, into his
work, into his bedroom. Just got tired. Lax. Laziness. That was the first step. Number two, self-indulgence. Do you know that the bible also says that the kings must not
multiply horses, women, and silver and gold. He'd done all three. Had this huge harem of
women and it wasn't enough. It's never enough. Giant deception will say,
the next woman David, the next queen. Stuart and I were in
Thailand, in the summer. We were going to do a
conference for Wycliffe, and they said well Wycliffe's
holiday place is on a swamp, which is not good. Not in Thailand in August. So you're gonna need mosquito spray. And I said well we
didn't bring any with us and the lady said I'll
see if I can find you some before you go up there to the swamp. It was, indeed, a big swamp and the mosquitoes were
about the size of small mice. [audience laughing] She gave me this tin,
she said I've only got children's mosquito spray
but she said it's pretty good and it was all in Thai so I
said what does it say on the can and she said, guaranteed to make you
invisible to mosquitoes. Not. [audience laughing] It promised more than it could deliver. And that's what Satan does. Promises more than it can deliver. Next woman. And he becomes so self-indulgent,
doing all the things against the rules for kings, that he was on the way up to the roof. Laziness, laxness, what was next. Remember the temptation isn't necessarily only a reason to go wrong, it
can be a reason to go right. In fact, God tempts no man, God tests. He uses the temptation to toughen us up, to help us to overcome
et cetera, et cetera. And temptation isn't sin. Succumbing is. Staying on the roof is. First look isn't. Second look is. And Satan uses the world,
the flesh and the devil and everything in his arsenal,
once he gets you up there, and if you can recognize the steps up you might save yourself
a whole lot of heartache and other people too. Self-indulgence, laxness,
wilful disobedience. You know we live in a sex-saturated world. So did David. He walked about roaming. Interesting word. It means, looking for signals. Like a cellphone switched on. And somebody found the
signal and signaled back and that was Bathsheba. Now what was she doing on the roof? I was very interested
reading everything I could from commentaries about
this, that the consensus is she was just as guilty as David. The bathing or swimming
pool in the rich houses was on the roof. So what were the steps
to her getting up there? Skinny-dipping. Well number one, loneliness,
her husband was out of town. She didn't know if he'd be back. He was one of David's mighty men who'd risked his life for David. And her grandfather was
David's main counselor. So the family's sort of
intertwined in a way. And the first thing that'll
get you up there is loneliness. I remember being in Australia,
I'm sorry I'm very conscious this isn't good. Do you want me to turn to
another mike or is it all right? [talking faintly] >> Man: We're hearing you good. >> Okay, good. 'Cause I want you to hear me. I remember talking to an
Australian pastor's wife who came to me and I
wrote a book once about the women prime rib, I
called it Prime Rib and Apple starting with Eve. And I was talking about
Bathsheba and that title was How to Commit Adultery When
Your Husband's Out of Town and it was really
resonating with my audience, I want you to tell. But this pastor's wife,
beautiful Australian girl, gorgeous blonde girl,
came up to me and she said I can't relate Jill. Murder yes but adultery no. She's talking about her marriage. [audience laughing] She said, we love each
other, we're in this church, God is good, we have three young children. And I said have you ever had a chance, have you ever had a real temptation. Have you ever had this
experience, and not to my surprise she said yes I have actually, and I said how did you handle it. She said well it was
somebody in the church. We just were thrown together in ministry and I began to realize
there was a bit of chemistry from his part and she said it was easy. So I said tell me something. Was he like a King Lear or a King David? She thought for a minute
and she said Lear. I said it's easier to say no to Lear. Wait till David moves in next door. Never say never. And I had this feeling and I said would you keep in touch with me. And I did for about three years and I got this frantic letter from her. Help. Pray for me, David moved in next door. And she got on the roof,
she didn't get off. And she was out of her
marriage, out of her ministry. Sad. And you can sort of be
lonely, certainly in ministry, because your husband's
usually being friends with everybody else first before he comes home
to be a friend to you. Loneliness. Carelessness. It says she was very beautiful. Only three times is that
word used, of such beauty. One is Vashti and one is
Esther and one is Bathsheba. Those are the three times, very beautiful, that particular word. She was gorgeous, she was a
knockout, absolute knockout. And if God has gifted you, as a woman, then will you learn
yourself and learn the power that your body has. Will you think about how to dress? When I was preaching this in my church I stopped at this point and I said I am a grandmother of 13,
five grandchildren, women. And I'm including them. Girls, put some clothes on! And everybody stood and clapped! And apparently that engendered
a lot of conversation over the dinner table. I included my own daughters,
my own granddaughters. Know yourself. Carelessness. And then willingness. Willingness. You say Jill, he had
power, that's not fair. He was the king. Hey! What about Vashti? She said no. At the risk of her life. She wasn't even a believer in Jehovah. She could've said no and of
course she should've said no. So how do we get off the roof? Well, we remember the rules. Hide God's word in our heart. We just say no, 1 Corinthians 10:13. There's no temptation taken you but such is is common to man. Every single one of us in
this room will find ourselves on the roof. Only people that are
perfect will not be there. Anybody perfect here? And especially if you're
heading out into ministry there will come a time when
you find yourself on the roof. Just say no and get off the roof. Look for the way out as
surely as you found a way in. Look for the way out. I'm going to read you a testimony, somebody I know pretty well. A young pastor. Big church. Wonderful wife, three children. And he was giving a sermon messages series on uncommon sense from
the Book of Proverbs and he was describing Simple Simon, the man in Proverbs who's a fool simply because he's never
heard right and wrong and all of that. And then he was describing the scoffer who knows the truth and the rules but gets away from his
restrictive upbringing and begins to buy into such things as there's no point waiting
till you're married et cetera, et cetera. He's challenging the old-fashioned
values of his parents and all of that and really believes that sex is a wonderful gift from God and God would want him to be happy. And then he describes the third man who really is a fool, who knows it all, who's heard his pastor preach
these wonderful sermons, who's grown up, who has
his own prayer diary, who knows absolutely the
whole thing inside out. There's no excuse for this
young man who really knows God. And he's taking the
passage in Proverbs where it talks about the man who goes
like an ox to the slaughter, who's on the roof, sees Bathsheba and gets into bed with her. So that's what his sermon was about. Now. I'm going to just simply
read you the transcript from the end of this sermon
of this young person. If I can find it. Okay. A 19 year old young man,
this is a true story he says to his congregation. I want to take the principles
I've just taught you and apply them to a
specific situation example so you can see how this
works out in real life. Here is the case study. A 19 year old young man is
dating a 20 year old girl. After a college basketball game he and his best friend on the
team are given Valentine cards from their girlfriends. The card leads them on a scavenger hunt, driving them all around the
city of St Paul, Minnesota. The hunt ends at a hotel room, on the first floor of a nice establishment on the north side of town. The young men go inside,
there are balloons, ribbons, romantic music, cake,
ice-cream awaits them. And their girlfriends
yell happy Valentine's Day as they enter the room. After chatting and laughing for a while and playing some board games one of the young men excuses himself and goes to the restroom. When he emerges the other couple has left. The lights have been turned down, his girlfriend is in the bed and all her clothes are on the floor. What does the young man do? Well it all depends who he is. And then he describes what
Simple Simon would do, what the scoffer would
do and what the fool, who knows better, would do. Three completely different people, who for completely different reasons, end up in the same place,
labeled a fool by God, dealing with the
consequences of their actions for the rest of his life. Then the young pastor says to his audience so what did I do. Yes, he said, this isn't a case study. This actually happened to me when I was in college in Minnesota. I came out of the bathroom, I found myself in this situation and let me walk you
through what took place. I had three thoughts that
hit my mind all at once. I didn't know I was capable of thinking three things at once. Usually women multitask. [audience laughing] But apparently, at that
moment of crisis, I did. The first thought was this. I'm convinced it was the Holy Spirit screaming in my soul,
run, run, run Pete, run. So that was going on while my
other two thoughts popped in. The next thought was, I was
able to picture my mum and dad and I saw their faces as I closed my eyes and I reminded myself that if I did, what I'll be honest with
you folks, I wanted to do, if I did it it would affect them. It would be going against
what they always taught me and what they poured into my life. And the third thought
which came into my mind was a verse I had memorized
because my youth pastor had forced me to. I got the words all wrong
but I remember something along these lines. No temptation has seized
you except what is common to everyone else. Okay Pete, you're no different. Other people have dealt with this too. God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear. He'll also provide a way out
so you can stand up under it and I opened my eyes and
there was the door, there, and I thought that's the way
out, those are the steps, that's the way off the roof basically. All three of these thoughts hit me at once and I started to run. I literally ran to the
door, whipped it open, I was in the parking lot
and I sprinted to my car and I couldn't get my keys. I was trying to get them. I got in the door, I rode
home as fast as I could and I got to my dorm room and
I sat on my bed and I wept. I was so scared. I got on the phone and I called my dad and I told him what had just happened. And I told him how scared
I was and we talked and oh I look back on that
day and I think you know for a 19 year old kid
I made a wise decision. I'm absolutely convinced
the Holy Spirit grabbed me and pulled me out of that
room, absolutely convinced and I'm so glad he did
because my life is better now because he did, my marriage
now is better because he did and what I want you to understand is that all this biblical stuff
I'm throwing at you today really applies to real life and you're going to find yourself in a bunch of situations this
week, maybe not that graphic, not that defining, but a bunch
of situations nevertheless where you have to make a decision and the decision you make
and the action you take will dictate whether you're
a fool or a wise man. It's at that point of
decision when you decide who you're gonna be and
my hope and prayer for you is that you'll make the wise one as you rely on the Holy
Spirit who lives in you and gives you the ability. And that's written by my son. Who's a wonderful young
pastor in Dallas, Texas. I did not know that story
until I heard it on the radio. [audience laughing] And I went and said Stuart. [audience laughing] I just want to know where
you are in the story. I know, in a crowd like this, some of you are standing on the roof. Looking at Bathsheba. What you going to do? There's no temptation that God, by a spirit,
cannot help you to overcome. That's the promise. You say I can't Jill. Yes you can. Yes you can. Anybody can be obedient. Obedience is simply
doing what you're told. Playing by the rules. Yes you can. And if you take the first
step down all the power of God will help you to run Pete, run. Get out! Flee youthful lusts, old King James. Get out! Get off! Get off the roof. Now tomorrow, in my session, I'm going to talk to
those of you that didn't. And we're going to be
taking apart Psalm 51. Pray with me. Heavenly Father. Let he that thinketh
he standeth take heed. Letteth he fall Lord, I've
seen it over and over again. God's best. Whether man or woman. Bathsheba. God's best. How your heart must break. But, we know better. And you promise all the power of heaven. All the armies of heaven are on our side. So Lord I pray for any person
here, young or middle aged or old, listening to me. That they may listen to your spirit and be reminded of what they know. Nothing new here Lord. But what they know already. And our Lord God, show
them the way off the roof. Show them the door. And help them take the first step. And Lord I pray for those who
stayed right on the roof and roamed, picked up the signal. Followed it home to bed. Their whole life, whether it
looks like it on the outside or not, began to disintegrate. And I pray for people like that and I pray that as we look at
the fact that there's no sin too big for God to forgive, I pray that you would deal
with us and convict us through your word, because
you love us so Lord. You won't leave us in this horrible place. Maybe nobody knows, except you of course. You know. And Lord as we watch David pray
a prayer of true repentance and we watch you restore him, may this be a total
lifeline for someone here. So chase us, hound of heaven, back into your arms we pray. In Jesus name, Amen. [audience applauding]
