Born of the Spirit

9 December 2012

Dear Phyllis,

Yesterday had to be the happiest day of my life. It started at 5:30 when an alarm went off. I had a very good nights rest and was wide awake. I got up, fixed a cup of coffee, and went out on my balcony, where I meet with the Lord every morning. There was an awesome sense that the Lord was indeed there watching and listening to me. This is a mystery that blows my mind. I had been outside having devotions for a couple of hours when I heard Annie and Pammy talking in our bedroom. We all had slept well. Saturday was no school, so Annie had come to get in bed with mommy. The joyous chatter was too much to resist. I went back to get in bed with family. It couldn't have gotten any better. There is no king or rich man on this planet that was happier than the three of us. Adam in the Garden couldn't have been any happier. It was a moment of intense satisfaction and pleasure. For 21 years I have lived a lonely life by myself. If that was what God wanted for me, I was satisfied, but there was always that sense of loneliness. Now I had the happiest family in the world.

Last May Pammy and I had been attending the Baptist Annual National Camp. A brother who had a children's home with 14 children had come bring six of his young kids with him. The sleeping arrangements were more or less dormitory with woman in one building and men in another. This brother had an adorable 3 year old daughter that wound up sleeping next to Pammy. The next morning Pammy gave her a shower, got her dressed, and brought her to breakfast. When I saw that sight of Pammy with this precious little girl I said, “We are going to keep this one.” We did.

Eight months later here I was frolicking in bed with my wife and daughter. To see how happy our little girl is, and the intense love between mom and daughter, was a sight that would have melted the heart of the devil. For half an hour we lay there laughing, hugging, and playing with each other. There was nothing you could add to it. There was absolutely nothing more we wanted. Just to be together and know that we belonged to each other was all that we wanted.

There was an intense awareness that this is what God is after. This was His purpose in creation. This is why He made the Garden and placed man in it. This is what He was seeking in the cool of the day when He came to fellowship with His created being. Seven thousand years later, when the work of redemption is totally finished, this is what God will have again in Paradise, when the tabernacle of God is again with men (Rev. 21:3).

What a mess sin has made of it! It was curiosity, and a suggestion that there was something more to be had, that led to the departure in the Garden. After man fell, he has been craving to satisfy his needs through all sorts of horrible ways. John summed up the deadly trinity as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. These have accurately classified as pleasure, possession, and position. Something we want to feel, something we want to have, or something we want to be. It is in the pursuit of these things that man has walked his agonizing rocky road to hell. The Bible calls it the deceitfulness of sin (Heb. 3:13). That is exactly what it is. Sin is deceitful. It offers satisfaction but winds up with bad addiction that never satisfies. Certainly there is pleasure in sin for a season. But when the pleasure wears off, there is a craving for more. Unquestionably, rich people are some of the most unhappy people in the world. Powerful men are never satisfied. What a hell this has made of this planet! What a heaven it is when we are satisfied with Jesus and simply enjoy the amazing things He gives us. There is no way I could have been more satisfied than I was yesterday morning in bed with my family.

Thursday I made a serious mistake at school. I have the privilege of speaking to the children at Annie's kindergarten four mornings a week. Thursday morning I was teaching my class and asked a little girl to come up to speak to me. I have a marvelous relationship with all the children. None of them are afraid of me. I am intensely loved by all, but this little girl refused to respond and come forward. I got angry. I sternly told the class that one thing I would not tolerate was disobedience. “You don't say NO to Uncle B ill!!!” Then I told this little girl, “If you don't obey me, you are out of this class.” After the class the director got me aside and shared with me that that poor little thing was a girl with emotional problems due to a broken home. When I realized that I had scolded a girl who was suffering because of a broken home I was shattered. I told Pammy, “Get the name of that child and we are going to make a project out of her.” The next day the mother and grandfather came to the school to talk to us. I told them how we wanted to make that child special, and have her in our home often. We want to see if we can make up for her some of the love that she is missing in her own home. She came to spend the day playing with Annie yesterday. It was a joy to hear her laugh again. I don't know how much we can help her, but the least we can do is to do what we can.

Many years ago I was quail hunting with me dear friend and spiritual father, Otto Stadsklev. It had been a good day, and I had got two or three quail. Around five we were walking back to the house through a corn field when, suddenly, a large covey of quail went up in front of us. I emptied my shot gun on them. Nothing. Otto said, “Praise the Lord.” Then he explained a deep truth to me. He said, “If you had shot at one you might have got two or three. But because you shot at the covey you got nothing.”

I believe this applies spiritually. The first time I spoke on the radio preaching the Gospel, it was a bit intimidating. It is difficult to sit in an empty studio talking to a microphone. But I imagined that microphone was a person and I was talking to one person. Every time I have been on radio since then I never speak to the audience but to one person listening. Paul uses this approach in his letters. In Romans 2 he says, “Thou art inexcusable O man... and thinkest thou this O man...or despisest thou the goodness of God... but after thy hardness and impenitent heart...” (Rom. 2:1-5). This is all very personal. It is like he is talking to one man. The message in the book of Hebrew is similar.

Jesus never told us to love everybody in the world. He only told us to love one man – our neighbor. This is not restricted to where we live, but where we are. My neighbor may be the person nest door. But later my neighbor will be the person sitting next to me on a bus or train. Then my neighbor will be the person at the desk next to me, or the man I work with. Whoever is standing or sitting the closest to me is my neighbor.

I can't reach all the children in the school but we can take one child and try to make her special. By doing so we might reach several other children . By shooting at one we might get several but if we shoot at the school we probably won't get any. So far she has been here two times. Each time has been increasingly good. At first she was very shy. But now she comes and clings to me like I was her dad. We took her to church today, and she did very well. Along with the marked improvement we have seen in Kam, there is the additional factor that we are establishing a strong relationship with her grandparents who bring her over. We certainly plan to invite them to come to our Friday night Bible study. This has given us a relationship that is absolutely unique.

Two months ago I felt that Pammy had fallen below the acceptable level of conduct for the wife of a Christian leader, and told Kichikun that I was no longer qualified to preach. Since then I feel things have improved sufficiently so there is no reason why I couldn't get back to public speaking.

Today Pastor Kichikun was out of town, and asked me to step in for him. Reluctantly, I did. Nearly 2/3 of the people coming to church are unsaved. That is a very unique situation, and gives us a strong reason for preaching evangelistic messages. As I prayed about my message this past week I felt the Lord would have me speak on COME – the last invitation in the Bible in Rev. 22:17. I was all set to give a high powered appeal until I got to church. There was virtually no one there. At 10:30, the congregation consisted of one dear old Christian sister. There were a few others who came in late so we wound up with about 10. With no one there that I intended to preach to, obliviously, my message was out the window. When Fa introduced me to speak, I was at a complete blank. This is the third time in the last five trips to the pulpit that I have stood up with a blank.

I started off by talking about a subject Paul and I had been discussing at 6:00 this morning. I was rocked a couple of years ago in reading Andrew Murray's comments on Heb. 2:11 – “For both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of One...” Andrew Murray brought out that, just as Christ was born of God, so are we. When that little Baby was born in Bethlehem; the very same Spirit was was born in Him is the same Spirit that is born in us at the new-birth. We both – Christ and us – are from the same source; we have the same Spirit. To illustrate this I said, “Suppose you had a very delicious drink and you put some in an expensive gold glass. Then you poured some of the same drink in a tin can. The gold glass and the tin can were radically different, but when you tasted both of them, you had to admit it was the same drink.

This is one of the proofs of the reality of the Body of Christ. I have preached Christ in over 15 countries and fellowship with Christians from over 30 countries, plus another 10-12 different minority group people. I can speak with Christians in Tokyo, or Russians in Siberia, or underground Christians in Vietnam, Laos, or China; and when I do, I discover that they are born of exactly the same spirit that is in me. I have fellow shipped with believers in chicken-coup-like churches in Korea, in houses in Cambodia, or Thais here in Thailand, and I find that everyone is born of exactly the same Spirit as me. And that Spirit is the same Spirit that was in Christ Jesus. We are all out of God. This is a subject that has blown my mind in recent years. It seemed to have some impact on the folks in church this morning.

But I still had another twenty minutes left, so I decided to speak on the Severn Spirits of God. In the Book of Revelation, three times we see this reference to the Seven Spirits of God (Rev. 3:1, 4:5, 5:6). For years I wondered what the Seven Spirits of God were. I decided the best way to find out was to preach on them. So several years ago I had a seven week series in Japan on the Seven Spirits of God. I have never heard a message, or read a book, where anyone ventured out to tell what the Seven Spirits of God were. All that I got was original and something I believe was from God.

To identify the first one was easy. If the Spirit of God is anything, He certainly is the Holy Spirit. This is probably the most fundamental characteristic of God. In the two glimpses we have of God in heaven, we see in both cases there are seraphim's or living beings standing before the Throne crying ceaselessly “Holy! Holy! Holy!” (Isa. 6:3; Rev. 4:8).

I ran out of time this morning and they asked me to quit. And I am out of space now. Too bad. It really is a very good message.

Have a good week. Jesus is coming soon;

bill