Pastor Ravi Zacharias - The Rule Of The Holy Spirit ( AWESOME REVELATION UNVEILED TO MEN)

three we are based in Atlanta so it's not far to come from there except that I'm coming from elsewhere I came from LA and in fact I wrote to a friend last night and I said I'm in Greenville North Carolina and he wrote me back and said no you are in Greenville South Carolina we had come in from LA meetings in the last seven weeks if I told you where all we have been you'll know not only question our presence of mind you will question our sanity of mine I think it began seven or eight weeks ago I was at Guantanamo Bay speak there at the naval base straight from there we came in and then flew to Toronto spoke there for two days from Toronto flew on to Delhi India spoke for four days from Delhi on to Hyderabad from Hyderabad to Chennai Chennai to velour velour to Mumbai came back stayed home for two days then went and did two open forums at Dartmouth and so goes the story and now I was in Los Angeles for two nights and just arrived here whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell so if I got my Carolina's mixed up that is the least of my problems I'm just delighted to be back home tonight with my wife and family for two nights in Atlanta and then on Wednesday we leave for Oxford University in England to do a couple of lecture ships there Oxford in London let me begin with a curious little story and I hope it doesn't offend anybody at this stage of my life I don't know if I'm as wise and some of my stories but fortunately I forget what I told them and it doesn't affect me for too much longer after that but I have a reason for telling you this you may be familiar with it about this little boy who was wanting to know how to pray and get what he wanted in his prayer so he decided he'd watch some Christian television programming and learned how to pray so he turned on to a high church program and at the end of the day he got on his knees and said Almighty and eternal God if it is in your perfect plan for me to have a bicycle I will be very great full if I can receive it tomorrow morning world without end amen and he woke up the next morning and he looked outside the door there was no bicycle so he decided to switch programming and then he prayed thus that night he said yeah Jesus I declare my need for a bicycle and pray that it'll be blue and silver and be at my door at 6:00 in the morning thank you for my answered prayer amen he woke up at 6:00 there was no bicycle he really got frustrated now his mother watched him around the house that day and she saw him pick up one of the statues of Mary in one of the rooms tuck it under his arm and disappear into the woods and he came back without that statue and she followed him he went into his room she saw him get on to his knees and heard him praying dear Jesus if you want to see your mother again have you ever wondered have you ever wondered if a person who is totally agnostic doesn't know much about what the Christian faith means if they were to just observe how we worship what would they did use philosophically theologically practically about what it means to be a Christian in worship just by observation if they were to just watch what you and I did how we did it and then form some conclusions as to what we're doing and why we're doing it and I want to assure you that so much goes on in so-called Christendom today that sends very confusing signals to people who know very little about the gospel message if you'd asked me before I had turned my life to Christ at the age of 17 in Delhi which happened in a crisis experience on a bed of suicide if you'd asked me before that what it really meant to be a Christian I don't think I would have got one statement right in that IRA probably hinted in the direction because my family were nominally Christian and my dad insisted that we go to church I'd be sitting on Sunday morning trying to memorize the prayer book so that I could time it and know how quickly I could get out of there and get on to the cricket field and play cricket I don't ever remember hearing anything that seemed to make sense to me and a lot of it may have been my fault but I have no doubt whatsoever that I was not the lone one in that congregation who sat there Sunday after Sunday and didn't really hear the gospel message being preached so let me ask you this question what does a person totally committed to Christ really look like if you and I were to take a blank sheet of paper are there people who will come to mind who have represented for us what it means to be a true follower of Jesus Christ you know in the year 2000 the former Soviet Union emptied out its prisons of political prisoners and they were going to execute one man whose name was Andres Thomas he had spent 55 years he'd been captured at Bevin in 1945 now it was the year 2000 had been kept in solitary for most of his time there he is oh he was a Hungarian and they thought he was insane but some of his mates pleaded with him for to bring in a psychiatrist to examine him and not to just execute him summarily so they brought in a Hungarian psychiatrist and he examined this man and they they had been been told that he speaking gibberish doesn't make any sense he acts strange better to do away with him now he was 75 yes years old and looked much older than that Hungarian psychiatrist spent time with him came out and he said the man is not insane he's speaking an old Hungarian dialect give him back to us we will make him well if anything you have driven him to that brink of total into the rational decimation and so on maricon think clearly but we'll make him well just release him to us and so they gave him permission and the psychiatrist was wheeling him out in his wheelchair and as he was being wheeled out he made his first request if you have never read the story you will never dream what he asked for the first thing Andres Thomas asked for was a mirror he hadn't seen his face in 55 years incarcerated at 20 he was now 75 risen emaciated thoroughly depleted and when he looked at the mirror he couldn't and do that for more than about 10 to 15 seconds turn the mirror down on his face put his face in his own hands and sobbed uncontrollably like a little child and as I read that story and I told that story in the early days when I heard it in Washington and there was a man in the audience from Hungary he came up to me and said I know who you're talking about I was involved in the release process he said thank you for just telling that story and as I pondered that my dear friend the question came to my mind you and I wake up every morning we go through our ablutions look at the mirror put on our innocent forms of disfigurement and we move out to face the rest of the day we get a glimpse of what we really look like and we accordingly make the adjustments is there a mirror for the soul is there a description in the Bible of what you and I are meant to look like by our Lord and our Savior and especially if God is calling some of us to be that ambassador for him in a land where little understanding is held in terms of the very Gospel message I want to read for you a passage of scripture from the Book of Daniel and it goes the story begins by saying how in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem besieged it and the Lord delivered Jaheim king of Judah into his hand along with some of the articles from the temple of God these he carried off to the temple of his God in Babylonia and put in the hot Raja house of his own God then the king ordered ashvin as the chief of his court officials to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility please notice now young men without any physical defect handsome showing aptitude of every kind of learning well-informed quick to understand and qualified to serve in the king's palace he was to teach them the language and literature the Babylonians the king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king's table they were to be trained for three years and after that they were to enter the King's service among them was some from Judah Daniel Hananiah Mishael and Azariah the chief official gave them new names to Daniel the name Belteshazzar to Hananiah Shadrach to misha Elmi shackin to Azariah Abednego but Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way what's going on here one of these demagogues who splendored the Holy Land takes away their vessels from the temple wants to bring it over into his own courts and into his own sacred places but that's not all he takes he takes the best of the young minds the most attractive of personalities and notice what he is doing in their thinking he's reprogramming them in the language the philosophy and the literature of the Babylonians language gives you the power to communicate literature strains and addresses the imagination comes in from the backdoor of the imagination the philosophy of the Babylonians through the front door of reason this man never could Nezzer knew exactly what he was doing when he selected the choicest of the young people in order to retrain them and use them for his own purpose you know there was there was an old Limerick I'm havin quarter for so long and plan recording it today not sure if I'll remember it it went something like this there was a young student at Trinity who had cracked the square root of infinity but to work with the digits gave him such fidgets he chopped math and took up divinity isn't that the idea we sometimes have if you want to become a doctor or a lawyer or a professor you know get the brightest in your youth youth group at the best of your young people get them into these and in the follower there a young gal is not really doing too well the ministry is a distinct possibility for them that's why we thought so we thought that's the way the world thinks nobody will ever think what a brilliant young mind he or she is a theologian when I was speaking at the greater Europe mission graduation in Paris some years ago the young woman who came to pick my wife and me up from where we were staying to it for me to deliver the address she is a French gal and she said to us we were while we were driving she said you know here in France if you tell somebody you're going to a theological institution they'll look at you in total shock they tell me I would be more in a realistic world of I plan to go to the moon than to study theology isn't it fascinating how these demagogues knew that they needed the best of their young people if they were going to reprogram their own culture the Bible tells us of what happens to men like that and people like that who train our minds into a worldly way of thinking away from all truth Percy Bysshe Shelley writing about the Middle Eastern demagogue of that kind said I met a traveller from an antique land who said two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert near them half sunk on the Shan a shattered visage lies whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that the sculptor well those passions read the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed and on the pedestal these words appear my name is Ozymandias king of kings look on my works ye mighty and despair nothing beside remains round that colossal wreck boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away my name is Ozymandias king of kings look on my works ye mighty and despair nothing beside remains on that colossal wreck boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away go into the desert terrain of the Middle East today and you'll see the broken statues and the fallen icons of those times and you go into Egypt you're going to Iraq you go into some of these places now and you see the demagogues that once clenched their fists come and gone come and gone they always had the idea that they were the ones who were going to eternally remain and Nebuchadnezzar was one of them so he wanted his kingdom to have that eternal value and how is he going to do it get the best of minds even from lands he plundered bring them and help them in their rethinking in their retraining in language philosophy and literature and so on and use them to propagate the grandiose image that he had of himself and then all of a sudden one night he's in a dream and he's having a tremendous dream about for a huge statue that is coming crashing down and he's terrified by this dream and he's not going to tell anybody his dream but he calls the enchanters and the magicians and all of them to interpret the dream but he was one up on them he said I will have you interpreted but that's not how easily I'm gonna let you get away with it you better first tell me what the dream was at that point the boys were disappearing into the woodwork when I was growing up in India my mother called an astrologer to read the palm of us five kids I was number two my brother older than me then after me two girls and my youngest brother and he was reading all of our palms and making his notes and he was giving glorious words to the other four of them and then he looked at mine and he said Ravi bah bah bah bah bah bah table cover hare which means the lovely little boy I've got very bad news for you I was one of those who would pray that I wouldn't get a bus ticket because I never wanted to go to school and thank thankfully my mother prayed and her prayer went out and I did go to school but he looked at me but Quran covered a very bad news for you I said tell me what are you what are you reading here he said you are not going to travel much in your life and at that time growing up in India the big credential you could have against your name was foreign returned that you went abroad studied and you've come back everybody wanted to go abroad to study he tells all the four of them they're gonna do very well telling me I'm not going to travel much I hope in his present profession he is taken to weather reporting because that's probably the only profession where you can sound so eloquent be backed up by all the pictures still be dead wrong and be back the next day for people to listen to you but so it was the enchanters the astrologers you go to any Hindu home today and before all that goes on in the wedding the pomace comes the astrologer comes the future is sought and told out Daniel knew the future in ways that were general now he was going to find them out in particular but he knew how to live in the present here's what he says I don't want the food in the palace I don't want to do it because I don't want to get spoiled and gets so comfortable here ladies and gentlemen here's the first lesson I learned from him he drew the line of resistance by training his appetite he drew the line of resistance by training his hungers training his apatite what do I mean the things you and I begin to taste and enjoy they are the things that pop themselves in our memory which we long for to make our life enjoyable and delightful remember what David said when he was evicted from his own home and he was longing for a drink of water from his bed well in Bethlehem he remembered that very well here's what Daniel says just like Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter and such choose rather to suffer affliction with the people in the missionary called you will always have to draw the line of resistance by training your hungers you have to draw the line and - some of you young people I want to Bay issue some challenges because getting into the ministry doesn't really take us away from temptation in fact sometimes the temptations intensify because you're leaving leading a much more disciplined life and the enemy of our souls would desire to have us desperately just for that reason I want to talk to you a little bit about how young people's appetites are being corrupted today through internet through the media one of the most devastating facts of the reality is that the imagination is assaulted very early today let me back up just a little bit give you this illustration and then pick it up again late one night when I was making my home in Toronto my wife's from Toronto we were living there for ten years and then moved out of his teaching in New York for some time and one night from Toronto where we lived I got a telephone call and it was about 11 o'clock at night and generally horizontal by that time after 9:00 9:30 my worldview changes and it's over and here about 11 o'clock at night when anybody calls it's either a wrong number or somebody is in an emergency for me I picked it up the voice on the other hand side was a person I knew well he's arrived I'm sorry to wake you up said I have a problem and I just need somebody to pray with me I saw watch smadi's so well as you know I'm an emergency physician and he said tonight they brought in a woman for surgery and she was so badly beaten up by whomever she was every major bone in her body was broken and when the paramedics and ambulance brought her they said doc she's gone he said I looked at her my heart was so rent I said you cannot allow a person like this to just be abandoned he said I knew I was fighting against all odds I told my team skrub we're gonna go for it and he said I knew my only hope was a direct heart massage so hastily I cut into the ribcage thrust my hand into the chest cavity just to be able to hold the heart for a moment and give it that massage that I needed to see if I could get it going and he said it was just blubber it kept not responding in any way I pulled my hand out and I said she is gone we can't do a thing he said I went back to the sink and he said I was just so overcome with what I'd seen I don't know whom she'd been with I don't know what the police found where they found her what had been going on but she had been so battered and he said I was washing my hands and the nurse came with the bag she said doctor you better see this she emptied this stuff out onto the table he said I was drying my hands and I noticed in the haste of my thrusting my hand into the ribcage I nicked my finger cut it and as I was looking at the stuff on the table it was all a drug addicts paraphernalia used needles and all that stuff and I looked at my hand cut and looked at all that and I said have I made contact with diseased blood he said I don't know he said they've taken the test he said as a young father he said I'm terrified of what this might mean I'm just calling for you to pray with me I said there's a gut pretty deep he said no it's a very thin paper cut that thing I said you're telling me a paper thin cut making contact with that kind of disease blood will put you at risk for what you're fearful of is and doesn't take anything more than that do we inflict paper-thin cuts on our soul but the choices we make by the decisions that we make and the world of cyberspace today has found a way of getting into the youngest minds and cutting into their soul planting images and imagination that could ultimately haunt them for years to come threaten their very marriages and their homes and I I just want to challenge our no way I do a lot of work on University campuses and I listen to their stories of how far they have gone wrong how decimated the life becomes my colleague Matt travels with me and he listens to some of these stories himself what are these young men whom we have traveled with us now and they's just blossoming in the Lord brilliant young man lives in Cleveland he told us once while we were driving with gotten off in New York wit I was taking him to a place to share his testimony as a relative newcomer to Christ and you know he told us it all happened for him and he was sucked into the vortex of a lifestyle that nearly wiped him out completely it happened on the first night at university first night he said I crossed every line that my parents had helped me draw up to that point 18 years old one night and I'm sitting the back seat Matt's driving and he's sitting in the front and I'm listening to this and I think to myself my goodness we never really think of the cost of an evening do we we never think of the cost of a moment and I just want to challenge you if the world is going to see what a Christian is like what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ draw the lines in the right places draw the lines on the right now I'm not talking about legalism I'm talking about knowing where not to compromise your convictions so that you don't plan sort of imperishable in your memory something that can ultimately extract much greater a price and your thing you and an audience this size I have no doubt there are those who know exactly where off I speak draw the line of resistance to train your appetites but then there's a second thing that Daniel did he drew the line of dependence not just on the knowledge that he had but he learned to draw the line that he went beyond his learning to the wisdom that comes from God's Word and comes from being with people who have endured much and whose faith has remained unshaken and I repeat that being with people who have endured much and whose faith has remained unshaken wisdom comes from people like that who have known how to manage suffering how to manage pain how to endure it all and remain faithful and devoted in their heart and mind and will to the Lord who has called them Joseph was one of those you know the fascinating thing about what happened in the dream for Nebuchadnezzar is that he's telling these enchanters and these astrologists tell me my dream and none of them could so he's gonna do the only thing he knew in that part of the world finish them off lop off their heads that's been the solution for centuries you don't like the other guy next door and some parts of the world finish him off so Nebuchadnezzar said if you but he had the dream but he's wanting them to tell him his dream and if you don't tell me my dream you're finished Daniel gets on his knees and says Lord I can't do this you help me and so he goes to Nebuchadnezzar and he says you know what I've got some good news and I've got some bad news for you I've got some good news God's revealed to me the dream that you had the bad news like the interpretation he says go ahead he had a dream of a gigantic statue a head of gold shoulders and chest of silver the midsection thereof bronze and then legs of iron and then feet of iron and clay and a stone that was cut out or no man's hand comes and smashes that destroying these kingdoms one after another to plant a new one and he says o King you are the head of gold and your kingdom is going to be shattered whoa that's not why one of these boys trained but you know he gained such respect from a man like Danielle that he elevated him and put him in a place that others try to get rid of him from jealousy but he knew that he needed wisdom from God more than anything else we are living in a time where all the learning in the world will not help us as followers of Jesus Christ we desperately need wisdom to know how to deal with the incredible situations socially morally politically economically religiously all of this I've been in the work of the Lord now for 40 years I have never felt so testing in my own soul in terms of how to answer questions in very hostile situations because one wrong word and one wrong line and you're finished wisdom how to deal with it I remember some years ago I was in Israel with the former Archbishop of Canterbury who taken five of us for a trip to talk to the political religious leaders on both sides five of us and the Archbishop former Archbishop

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Length: 28min 40sec (1720 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 04 2018