R. A. Torrey: One of the Saddest Things Christ Ever Said

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[00:00:18] Revived Thoughts is a production of Revive Studios This is Triangle and you're listening to Revive Thoughts There are a great many men in this world who know their need of a Savior, who long

[00:00:44] for a Savior, but they know if they come to Him they must leave their sins behind. Every episode we bring you at different voice from history and a sermon that they delivered Today's sermon comes to us from R. A. Torrey, we're going back to the turn of the

[00:00:58] century, late 1800s into the early 1900s. Joel R. A. Torrey is one of those men and we have them on the show that can just do everything. Especially in this era, the early 1900s men like D.L. Moody and G. Campbell Morgan were just

[00:01:13] doing just more things than it seems like one human should be possible, just be capable of doing. And R. A. Torrey is just one of those kind of guys and I think you'll be very impressed by his life by the end of this episode.

[00:01:24] R. A. Sands for a Rubin Archer, so Rubin Archer Torrey goes by R. A. Torrey is born in New Jersey in 1856 and despite growing up in a Christian household he was not a believer throughout most of his early life.

[00:01:40] He did stumble across this book when he was about 15 Christian book. We don't really know what the book was but it inspired him and it convicted him and he felt God's calling

[00:01:49] to be a preacher but again he was not a believer at this point and he had a bit of a rebellious streak towards the calling of God. He didn't want to be a preacher.

[00:02:01] He was a smart kid, he wanted to become a lawyer. That's where the money was. That was that's where the career pass was and so as soon as he was of age he went to Yale to become

[00:02:11] a lawyer studied for the legal degree there and he was excellent at being a student. And by all outward appearances he was a good Christian. Again he was raised in a Christian household. He had this Christian vows. He had this Christian terminology but he himself

[00:02:26] would admit later on in his life that he was not a believer. He even attended Bible meetings and prayer groups and he admits that he read his Bible and prayed every night but again later he says he didn't believe in any of it he admitted.

[00:02:42] He reminds me of John Wesley, the guy who went through the motions but there was just no heart in it and later on he would go back and go yeah that wasn't a legitimate that

[00:02:50] wasn't the real authentic thing. The same time his mom is just begging him to become a believer and become a preacher but he's not want to. He decides to leave his home and

[00:02:59] go off to be a bit of a heeded on to live for the world wild parties fast and loose friends that kind of lifestyle. And his mom begs with them is as he's packing the house. He can

[00:03:09] his mom is just saying please please crying don't do this as he's heading out the door she's like you know pleading with him please please please as he's heading out the yard out the gate she's following behind them and as he's leaving he says that she stops crying

[00:03:21] and she just looks at him very seriously and says son in your darkest hour if you will turn to your mother's god he will still hear you. Tory lives for the world for a short time but one

[00:03:32] day in a hotel room he wakes up from a just a terrible dream. He says he was so overcome with sorrow he felt no point in doing anything that he'd been doing anymore and he decided he was just going

[00:03:43] to go ahead and end his life. Now the sources disagree whether it was a gun or a razor but he reached out and grabbed this tool the tool that he intended to end his own life with

[00:03:55] and then he said he felt no strength in his hands and suddenly he found himself on his knees and while he was there he said he fought for a long time before finally calling out to God and

[00:04:07] asking for help and agreeing to give up being a lawyer to become a preacher. He started off on his long trek home and when he got home he was excited to tell his mother that he had given his

[00:04:20] life to the Lord and as he was coming up to the house she met him at the door and she said that the night before she was urgently praying and that God had comforted her in the peace that

[00:04:34] her son had surrendered to him to God and he became incredibly burdened for the last he had gone through this experience himself and so he could relate with unbelievers quite a bit there's a story of

[00:04:47] him after he became a Christian meeting with a girl that he had previously taken to a dance in this girl thought that they were going to go on another dancer you know they had this night of party

[00:04:57] this guy's calling me up probably wants to go for another night of parting and they once they got together he ended up preaching the gospel to her for two hours until eventually leading her to

[00:05:07] the Lord which is not dating advice. Oh maybe it is that he might be recommend because that we're down for eternity so you know what's it all the flirt to convert flirt to convert. He's

[00:05:19] shifts focus in his education he's going to yell he's switched over to the Yale Divinity School and he met a person that would become very important in his life another and D L moody himself

[00:05:30] D L moody is someone we've had on the show you know we've featured on the show a couple times he's also one of our seven speakers that we we show in highlight on Revive D was he's a very important

[00:05:41] person in this era especially in the United States of America. D L moody was also influential in the life of G. Campbell Morgan who we did an episode on pretty recently go check down on a very good

[00:05:52] now moody preaches a sermon at the chapel at Yale and it just hit hit Tory it really got to him it really just encouraged him and floored him and afterwards all these students crowd around moody

[00:06:04] for a while to see his kind of taking conversation and questions and getting to know everyone there and they asked him if he could share the secret to bringing people to conversion

[00:06:14] and D L moody tells them he's like okay is everyone there's kind of keep pressing like you know what is it what is it what do you do that brings people to Christ what is that special sauce basically

[00:06:23] and you know what is that secret he does tell them and he says okay just go do it he said the best way to learn is just start doing there's no there's no secret sauce there's

[00:06:33] no way to teach it you just have to start telling people about Jesus Christ and as you do that you will get better at it but it's just not something that you can learn in a book per say

[00:06:42] it's something that has learned through experience. This became Tory's just driving goal in life he was later quoted saying quite regularly I just love sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yeah he got married while pasturing his first church in 1878 to a woman named Clara Smith

[00:07:00] they would have five kids over the course of their marriage and in the 1880s he did something kind of unusual he went to Germany for more education for more learning you know Yale you know that

[00:07:11] Ivy League school that wasn't enough or any decided to go overseas and he actually went to two separate universities during his time in Germany he felt like he still needed to grow more to

[00:07:22] learn more you know a lot of people would consider a degree from Yale and a pastor of a large church success you know you did it you made it you made it a rise or you go but he is ever the student

[00:07:35] always wanting to learn and always feeling like he needs to learn more this was also during the time you know if you again if you've heard our stories where we talked about Princeton

[00:07:44] all of the universities in this era were becoming more liberal kind of buying into this higher critics in an era quote higher critic way of thinking meaning that the Bible is not supposed to be

[00:07:56] taking as literally and this was something that all of the the preachers in this era had to deal with whether what side of this day would come down on and going into these education going into these

[00:08:06] colleges Tory was on that side of that higher critical thinking this idea that the Bible is more of guidelines for us and it's more metaphorical but during his time studying and thankfully

[00:08:19] through the Lord working in his life by the time he was finished with this education he was firmly on the other side there he firmly took this dance at the scripture was truly the word of God

[00:08:28] and thought that this higher critic movement was firmly wrong. He had to opportunity as when he leaves Europe one was this wealthy nice church in New York and the other was a poor struggling church and Minneapolis he chose that poor struggling church and Minneapolis because

[00:08:45] he thought to himself I'll do more good there in the long run and when he returns he starts to in revivals he's very successful evangelism he's well known for conversions at these revivals

[00:08:54] and in 1889 deal moody hears about him and says you don't want to invite him to team up with me we can do some of these tours together he becomes the successor of deal moody at the moody Bible

[00:09:06] one thing that surprised people was how much he shared the gospel in his own personal time you know it's easy to hear stories about people you know preaching to the masses there are occasionally times

[00:09:17] and revivals has had this happen a couple times but there occasionally times right here that they go do it on their own when no one's looking just because they love the Lord and those are really cool

[00:09:27] and Tori was one of those guys he would if he's on the train he's talking at the person next to him trying to lead them to the Lord if he's on a bus same thing he sat a restaurant he's

[00:09:35] chatting at the waitress finding out her story he said the story I just imagined holding up the cash register is he's explaining the rumours I don't know exactly how he does it but he's just

[00:09:44] that guy it it just meant that much to him Tori was just always known for meeting people sharing the gospel and anyone who spent time with him or walking with him or getting to know him or just blown away

[00:09:54] at the number of times he would just stop his day to share his gospel which is a complete stranger he met as he was going and the many of Angela's are known for doing that at the big meetings but

[00:10:03] well it was just cool about Tori is when the big meetings weren't going on that was still just as much as passion and his drive. Diel Moody was on this circuit of revivals and he was preaching in Kansas City our last episode

[00:10:24] we did on Diel Moody covers his time in Kansas City it would be at the end of his life he would fall ill in collapse while preaching this revivals one week long revival in Kansas City

[00:10:37] and it would be Tori that would pick up the rest of that tour and finish those revivals on the rest of his towns and he keeps on going all around the world where Diel Moody was successful

[00:10:49] in America in Britain Tori he didn't do preaching all over the world Japan China Australia New Zealand, England, Scotland, India and Canada were all countries that he had revival meetings in and this

[00:11:03] was all at a time again where airplanes didn't exist. This was you're getting on a steamboat in your trekking across the long trip it's not quite easy if you listen to a little bit of

[00:11:13] martyrs and missionaries you've probably heard just how long it can take to get from one location to another and he's going all over the Pacific to do this. He also would go on to found a

[00:11:22] Biel University the Bible Institute of Los Angeles he was an excellent speaker pastor teacher and academic and just as an aside another kind of reference to Martyr's missionaries if you

[00:11:35] have listened to that show you may not know this or may not have remembered it but R.A. Tori is mentioned on that show he was the man who marries John and Betty Stam who go on to get martyred in China so

[00:11:46] he is that's just another place you can find him still doing weddings despite how busy he was at he died in 1928 as he reached in the business life he said his desire to be a lawyer never went away

[00:11:58] every time he preached he still saw himself as a lawyer and he had to carefully make the case but not to a jury or at least a jury is the audience in his mind and he had to make that case to

[00:12:08] the jury to convince them that Christ was their hope for salvation he had to lay that case before them every single time he preached. In this sermon he goes into the reasons people do not choose

[00:12:19] Christ as someone who rejected Christ himself for a time and as someone who made it his life mission to preach the gospel to people in as many ways as he could whether on stage or not this is his thoughts on why people sometimes do not accept Christ.

[00:12:36] You will not come to me that you will have life John 540. That is one of the saddest utterances that our Savior ever spoke. I wish I could reproduce his tender tones and his loving look when

[00:13:03] he uttered the words, I believe it would break your heart. He came down from heaven with its glory to earth with its shame to bring life to men. He went up and down among men proclaiming that

[00:13:16] life could be obtained by simply coming to him but men would not come and that last he turned around upon the men who had not come to him and with a heart aching with disappointment with

[00:13:28] tones of full of yearning pity he said, you will not come to me that you might have life. Those words contain the explanation why any man is lost. If any man is lost it will be

[00:13:41] because he will not come to Christ. If any man or woman goes out of this hall tonight unsaved, that will be the reason. Jesus Christ offers to every man and woman here on the simple condition

[00:13:54] that you come to him and if you go out of this hall tonight without it it is simply because you would not come to him. For starters, no man is lost because he needs to be lost.

[00:14:07] No man needs to be lost. God has provided salvation for everybody. The atonement of Jesus Christ covers the sins of every man. He tasted death as we are told in the Word of God for every man

[00:14:20] and the offer of salvation is made to every man. If any man does not take it it is because he will not come and get it. No man is lost because of any purpose or decree of God. It is the

[00:14:33] will of God we are told expressly in his Word that all men should be saved and he is not willing as we read in 2 Peter 3 9 that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

[00:14:45] And if any man is lost it is solely because he will not come. Secondly, no man is lost because he has gone down so deeply into sin. Indeed it is true that all of us have gone down into sin so deeply

[00:15:00] that we deserve to be lost but this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners even the chief. He can do it. He is doing

[00:15:14] it every day. Christ did save the chief of sinners, Saul of Tarsis and he has power tonight to save any man or woman in London. No man or woman is lost because they have gone down so deeply into sin

[00:15:27] but simply because they will not come to that only Savior who has power to save them from their sins. Third, no man is lost because he is too weak to lead the Christian life. It is true that

[00:15:42] every one of us is too weak to lead a true Christian life in our own strength but thank God we have a Savior who is able to keep us from falling and to present us thoughtless before the

[00:15:52] presence of His glory with exceeding joy. If any man is lost it is solely because he will not come to Christ. If any man or woman or person goes out of this hall tonight unsaved it is no one's fault

[00:16:07] but your own and the whole reason will be that you will not come to Christ and obtain life. But why will not men come to Christ? There are many things that keep them from coming.

[00:16:18] The first one is sin. I believe that sin is keeping more men and women from coming to Christ than almost anything else. There are a great many men in this world who know their need of a Savior,

[00:16:29] who long for a Savior, who have a deep desire to take the Lord Jesus Christ but they know if they come to Him they must leave their sins behind. A man cannot come to Christ and retain His sin.

[00:16:43] You have to choose between Jesus Christ and your sin. Men know that but they are not willing to give up their sins. At one of Mr. Moody's services in Chicago after he had preached on the

[00:16:55] product of Son, a fine looking young fellow came to me and said, that was a good sermon to night. He pictured my case exactly I am that product of Son. I said, don't you want to come to

[00:17:09] the Father tonight then? He said, I do. I said, and the Father wants you to come. He said, I know it. I said, will you come? He said, I will not. I asked, why not? He replied,

[00:17:24] I am entangled in the meshes of a disgusting sin. Then I said, will you not give it up tonight? No, sir, he said, I will not. That young man went out of that place where he had been brought

[00:17:37] face to face with God's love, deliberately choosing a vile sin and death instead of Jesus Christ in eternal life. I dare say there are men and women who will go out of this hall tonight

[00:17:49] with a clear view of the fact that they can come to Christ and be pardoned but you will not come because there is some deliberate sin in your life or your heart that you are not willing to give up.

[00:18:02] Secondly, the love of money keeps many men from coming to Christ. Many men know that if he came to Christ, he would lose money by it. There are things in his business that would need to be given up but he is not willing to sacrifice the prophecy gets

[00:18:18] by doing wrong. He is deliberately choosing a larger income and eternal death instead of Jesus Christ and eternal life. How many young fellow has come to me and when I have urged him to come

[00:18:31] to Christ he has said, I believe it is a good thing but I should have to give up my career if I did. Two young ladies said to Mrs. Torrey at one of our services in Australia when they seem to be

[00:18:43] very near to a decision. We cannot come to Christ. We are employed in a large shop and our employer requires us to misrepresent the goods. We cannot do that and be Christians can we? No, you cannot

[00:18:57] Mrs. Torrey replied and the young lady said, if we don't then we lose our positions. God pity the man or the merchant who requires his employees to lie and yet there are such who profess to be Christians. God have mercy on such hypocrites who are hurrying on fast

[00:19:16] to an eternal hell every one of them. How sad it is that those young women were ready to choose their position and a small salary in the place of Jesus Christ and life everlasting.

[00:19:30] And third there is a love of pleasure which keeps many a man and woman from coming to Christ. How many young men and young women there are in London who know they need Christ and would

[00:19:41] like to be Christians but they say if they come to Christ they will have to give up this or that pleasure the dance or the party or their entertainment. I can never do it they say and they are

[00:19:52] choosing the dance or party or entertainment or some other form of worldly amusement and death instead of Jesus Christ and life. Dr John Hall of New York City was at one time pastor of

[00:20:07] perhaps the wealthiest church in New York City. There came to him one day a young lady who was a most beautiful waltzer and she said if I become a Christian will I have to give up my dancing?

[00:20:20] He replied if you become a Christian and Jesus Christ asks you to give up your dancing you must be ready to do it. She replied if I must choose between Jesus Christ and dancing

[00:20:33] I will hold on to my dancing and let Jesus Christ go. What an awful choice you have not said it outright perhaps you never thought it out so plainly but some of you tonight are making that

[00:20:46] very choice. You feel you could not be a real Christian and hold on to your worldly pleasure and you reject Jesus Christ rather than give up your worldly pleasure. You are saying by your

[00:20:56] actions if I must choose between Jesus and my dancing or partying or entertainments or this or that and the other thing I will hold on to my dancing or whatever it be and let Jesus Christ go.

[00:21:11] Fourth, the fear of man is keeping many a man and woman in London from coming to Christ and obtaining eternal life. How many there are who when the invitation is given would like to stand up but they say

[00:21:25] if I should do it my friends and business or society would hear about it and what would they say you keep your seat and you reject Jesus Christ for fear of what they would say. In Proverbs 2925

[00:21:38] we read the fear of man brings a snare. It is bringing a snare that is landing many in a path that leads to eternal ruin instead of to Jesus Christ in life eternal. I would rather that men

[00:21:53] would laugh at me down here for doing a wise thing then that the devil's in hell should laugh at me for all eternity for doing a foolish thing. We have in our country a very foolish custom.

[00:22:06] I think you have it to a certain extent in your country also but perhaps not to the same extent as we have in ours. It is called April Fool's Day. On the first day of April all the fools in America

[00:22:18] try to make fools of all the other fools. One custom is to drill a hole in a silver coin and after attaching a string to it put it on the sidewalk. When anyone comes along and stoopes to pick

[00:22:30] it up the coin is pulled away and they cry April Fool another joke is to take a wallet and fill it with dust and dirt and chips and throw it on the sidewalk and when someone picks it up and opens

[00:22:44] it they cry April Fool one day a farmer went to his bank and Baltimore and drew some money which he put for safekeeping into his wallet. After walking some distance he felt in his pocket

[00:22:57] and found the wallet had gone. Retraising his steps he had not gone many blocks when he saw a circle of people around a wallet no one daring to touch it thinking it was full of sawtests and shavings.

[00:23:09] When the farmer entered the circle and picked up the wallet all cried April Fool but when he opened it and accounted the money to see if it was all there they felt that they were the fools.

[00:23:20] I tell you that a day is coming for those men and women who laugh at you because you choose Christ in life eternal when they will say that you have made a wise choice and they were the fools.

[00:23:31] Don't let them laugh you out of eternal life. At one of my missions I asked a woman how she was getting on. She replied, I am not getting on at all I am perfectly miserable. Why is that I said?

[00:23:47] I don't know she replied. Another said, I can tell you why it is she has never told her husband that she has accepted Jesus Christ. Is that so I asked her? It is she replied.

[00:24:02] But you stood up in the meeting, I said yes but not when he was present. Well you must tell him. I can't tell my husband he would laugh at me she answered. Never mind how much he laughs I said.

[00:24:16] I can't do it was all she could reply. The next Sunday night the lady and the gentleman were sitting together in one of the front seats. I stopped in the midst of my address and said,

[00:24:27] every woman in the house who will say that from this time on my husband shall have an out and out Christian for his wife please rise. This woman immediately rose to her feet.

[00:24:39] Now I said, every man who will say from this time my wife will have a true Christian man for her husband please rise. That man was the first in the house on his feet. Show people

[00:24:55] the beauty and power of a living faith in Jesus Christ and you will bring them with you and then there is an unforgiving spirit which is another thing that is keeping men and women

[00:25:09] from coming to Christ Jesus. They know they cannot come and bring a heart full of hate and so they choose bitterness and hatred and death instead of Jesus Christ and life.

[00:25:22] One afternoon in Cleveland after Mr. Moody had been speaking he brought to me a lady to show her the way of life. I had been speaking to her trying this in that passage to see what was in the way

[00:25:34] of her accepting Christ. When suddenly I turned to her and said, is there somebody you cannot forgive? She looked quickly at me and said, who told you? I said, nobody told me and I have never

[00:25:46] seen you before tonight. That was her trouble and that is the trouble with some of you. Someone has done you in injustice or you think they have and you will not come to Jesus Christ

[00:25:58] because you want to cherish this bitter grudge in your heart. I once talked about two hours to a young lady trying to leave her to Christ but at last she said, there is somebody I cannot

[00:26:10] forgive. I told her, you must or be lost forever but she replied, I cannot. They have done me a wrong. I said, if they have not done you a wrong there would not be anything to forgive. Have they wronged you as much as you have wronged Jesus Christ?

[00:26:29] In the 18th chapter of Matthew, commencing at the 23rd verse we have the parable of the servant who was forgiven a large debt and then would not forgive his fellow servant a triveling sum.

[00:26:42] That is a picture of the unforgiving one today. I said to her, read that incident you must forgive but she said, I can't. Are you willing, I then asked her, that God should take the bitterness out of

[00:26:55] your heart? She replied, I am. Then I said, kneel down and ask him and she knelt down and scarcely had her knees touch the floor when she burst into tears as she felt that feeling of hate being taken away.

[00:27:11] Are you going to reject Jesus Christ and eternal life for the sake of hating someone? God have mercy upon you and then for others self will stands between many and Christ.

[00:27:25] There are a great many people in this world who are not willing to surrender their wills to anybody, not even to God. They are determined to have their own way. A woman told me that on just on Friday

[00:27:38] night she said, I cannot give up my will to anybody. What foolishness? Who is this God to whom we ask you to surrender your will? God is love. Is it not wisdom to surrender our wills to infinite love and wisdom?

[00:27:56] Oh the folly of those who will not surrender their will to God and to His love? There is one more thing that is keeping people from coming to Jesus Christ and that is pride. I believe that

[00:28:07] there are thousands and tens of thousands of people in London tonight that are kept from him because of the pride in their hearts. Pride manifests itself in many ways. It makes men and women who have led moral and respectable lives unwilling to admit that they are lost sinners,

[00:28:25] that they must come into the kingdom of God to the same door as the thief or the harlot or the drunk. You will all have to get into the kingdom in that way. Look at Christ's parable of the

[00:28:36] tax collector and the sinner. First, there came the Pharisee to the temple to pray, a moral, upright, prominent citizen. But what is his prayer? It is just a parade of his own virtues.

[00:28:48] God, I thank you that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this public. I fast twice in the week. I give tithes of all I possess. Do you know what Jesus Christ

[00:29:01] says about him? He says that this man went down to the house unforgiving. Then came the public and outcast, despised by everybody but a man who had been brought to the consciousness of his sin.

[00:29:17] He would not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven but smoke upon his breath saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. Thus sinner. Do you know what Jesus Christ says?

[00:29:29] I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone that exalts himself will be abased and he that humbles himself will be exalted. I believe that very

[00:29:43] many people are being kept from Christ and from eternal life by the pride of their hearts. In Chicago, I was once telling the story of a woman who had been lost in sin and then saved. And afterwards every find lady came to me and said,

[00:30:00] you do not need to say that that woman was saved. The strange thing was that the refined lady was a universalist and believed that everybody could be saved. I told her,

[00:30:12] the woman was saved and what is more, she was saved in precisely the same way that you will be saved if ever you are saved. That is God's truth. Ah, but some of you people are not willing

[00:30:23] to lay your pride in the dust. You are not willing to throw your pride to the wind and go to God to seek pardon through the atoning blood of the Son of God. You will never be saved any other way.

[00:30:35] A lady once came to be and said, my Christian experience is not satisfactory. I said, I don't think you have any Christian experience. Why? She said, I have. I am the widow of a minister

[00:30:51] in the member of a church. Well, I responded, I don't think that you were ever saved in your life. No, you never were for you. Never saw yourself as a lost sinner in your life. She said,

[00:31:05] I never did because I am not. I replied, let me deal frankly with you. You are just full of conceit. Unless God opens your eyes to see that you are not essentially better than the

[00:31:17] vialis sinner and unless you come to God and cry for mercy through the atoning blood of Christ, you will never be saved. She said, you are cruel. No, I said, I am kind. You are a physician,

[00:31:31] I believe? She replied, yes. Then I said, suppose a patient had a tumor and you cut it out to save her life. Would you call that cruel? No, she said, I should say that that was the kindest thing

[00:31:45] I could do. Well, I said, you have a tumor. You are pride and your conceit are blinding your eyes so that you cannot see that you are a poor, vial, worthless sinner and Jesus Christ died for you on

[00:32:01] the cross. The woman had the good sense at last to see it, but that is more than some of you have. I tell you among the people who are in this hall, there are a lot of people who are being kept

[00:32:13] away from Christ by spiritual pride, but pride operates in another way. Oh, that by the help of God, I can tear these awful scales from your eyes, pride makes people set themselves not to do certain

[00:32:28] things which they are asked to do. I am not coming, they say, to the meeting or I am not going to the front seats or I am not going to the inquiry room. A person can be saved without that.

[00:32:42] They can, without a doubt, be saved by other ways. But if you make it a point that you won't do something of that kind, you won't be saved until you do. In Mr. Finney's day, many people found

[00:32:56] salvation listening to him preach while sitting under a specific tree. One prominent man said he would not go there. It was not necessary, of course. He did all sorts of things, but he would not

[00:33:09] do that. He got no peace, however, and one day he snuck out of town the back way and made his way to the place where the tree was and climbed the fence that was around it. When he went to kneel down

[00:33:22] the wind shook a leaf and frightened him. But as soon as he knelt down and asked God, God saved him right there. There are some of you men and women like that. Do not misunderstand me. I want to make it as

[00:33:35] clear as day. It is not necessary for you to do anything except to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. But if you say, well, yeah, but I won't do this one thing. Then how many times you will never

[00:33:47] be saved until you do? You have got to lay your pride in the dust before you can find Jesus Christ. I remember the first time I went to hold a revival. The last meeting had come and the last

[00:34:02] person had stood up and I got up to dismiss the meeting when a lady rose. She was the leading society woman in the town. She rose, slowly to her feet and said, before you dismiss this meeting,

[00:34:15] may I say something. And then turning around to face the audience, she said, when Mr. Tory came, I said he would never get me to stand up. But I now wish to most humbly

[00:34:29] take it back. And I ask you to pray for me, the power of God fell on that meeting. Some of you men and women think your position in society is too exalted for you to come up to

[00:34:42] the front with common folks and accept the Savior just as ordinary men and women do. But if you think that you will never be saved until you humble your pride in the dust and are willing to go

[00:34:55] anywhere to find peace and pardon. Let us throw away everything that stands between us and Jesus Christ. Oh, I see him. Here the tender tones that fall from his lips, the heartbreaking tones,

[00:35:07] you will not come to me that you might have life. The Lord Jesus Christ who died on the Cross of Calorie is standing here with his thorn crowned brow in Pierce Hand saying,

[00:35:19] you will not come to me that you might have life. Men and women rise and say, I will come Lord Jesus. I come now. There was a line in the sermon where Tory says,

[00:35:41] whatever it is you have told God in the past, I'm not going to give this up to serve you. That is the thing that Christ is going to make you give up. And in the life of our

[00:35:52] Tory, I'm not going to be a preacher if that's what I just don't want to do that. It wasn't until he said, okay, I will be a preacher. He have that revelation of Christ in his life.

[00:36:03] In the same way, you can listen to the stories on Revive Studios and you're going to hear a lot of different stories where there is one thing keeping them maybe it's alcohol or maybe

[00:36:11] some entangling sin with a woman or whatever it is that it is in his life or in their lives in your life that's going to keep you from going forward until you give it up. And I think that's

[00:36:23] really important. I think that is not something to miss that. We need to recognize that as Christian, some of us we need to recognize in the matter what we do to preach the gospel perfectly to people.

[00:36:32] There's going to be sent in some people's lives just to keep them from wanting it and in reverse if there's something you're holding onto and you want to walk with God or you want to have a

[00:36:41] better relationship with God but you also really just don't want to let go of the same. Tori's telling you that is the thing that is keeping you from that better walk with God. You need to recognize it and you need to let it go.

[00:37:01] Thank you for listening to today's episode of Revive Thoughts. Special thanks to Jociah Carigan for narrating today's sermon. Jociah lives in Washington State and is married with fourth kids. He is active in student ministry at his current church and worked as a missionary

[00:37:15] overseas in Africa before that. He's also a teacher. If you are listening to this in real time, you're listening to this pretty recently after it comes out, you may have noticed

[00:37:25] may have messaged us and said hey the website is currently down. We are aware we are updating it. It needed an overhaul. It was designed. Revive Thoughts.com if you've been there before before the first episode of the show at Ever Erd anywhere it was done by me.

[00:37:41] Watching a YouTube tutorial and it needed a lot of love. We are very excited to tell you about the new website. It's going to come out as it's going to be so much smoother and nicer. It's more

[00:37:51] effectively we really put thought into designing it as like what could help serve you and I really think that this new website has a look in a field that's going to be easy for you to tell people about

[00:38:00] easy for you to pull up in front of a friend and not you know, Winston said oh don't look at it too hard. The podcast itself is good and we really want to encourage you it should be

[00:38:09] up very very soon so if you follow us and social media be looking out for that link that will go out and just keep an eye out we have some new a new website with that we're going to be launching

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[00:38:46] This episode is brought to you by the In-Between podcast, a podcast about marriage parenting faith and everything in between. On the In-Between podcast you will hear how to raise children that change the world. Ideas to keep the romance alive with your spouse? How to not hate your in-laws?

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