The Christian and His Comfort Zone: Endurance, Reformers, and the Arena (Part 2)

That’s the next thing I want to tell you: I don’t care how I do it, I get blamed. I think the most noble thing I’ve ever heard in my life is a man who let his enemy take over his church in order to keep from having the flesh. I think that’s beautiful, Gene. I commend you for doing that. Thank you very much for helping…that’s never happened, one bit, and those people don’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t know what they’re doing. When I began with you, I went through the Old Testament, and what people do. I’ve just told you what they did to Tyndale. I forgot to tell you what they did to Wycliffe. Evil is there. It is always present, and there are always those with a better answer, but they don’t have the stress level or the void of a comfort zone. They cannot eat fire and brimstone for breakfast. Here it is. It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man erred, or whether the doer of deeds could have done it better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly though he errs frequently. Comes up short and again and again and again. Comes up short because there is no effort without error and shortcomings, but who actually strives to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasm, great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause. Who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Teddy Roosevelt.

I don’t have a comfort zone. I got a very high stress level…or a low one. I don’t know which it is, and endurance. And you should understand that if you follow me, some of the blood may get spattered on you. Cindy, some of the dirt might get on you. Some of the stress might come your way. Now, I’m going to make a statement I never thought I would, but I always enjoy doing something. I really swore up and down. I’d never do it. This is going to be recorded, and I have a notion that I’m going to catch it. If some soul who has a better idea begins trying to lead this church in some direction other than what you and I are going, and if anybody tries to split the church for the first and only time, I’m going to stop it, and I’m going to let him and his followers suffer and be bitter. My record is clean; it’s perfect, but I have never been able…I never got a single credit for it ever. So I’m asking you to do something, and that is, decide whether you want to follow somebody who doesn’t have a stress level, and doesn’t have a comfort zone, and whose whole life has been one of constant conflict, which is exactly how it should be and you may say that it’s all Gene’s fault; well, it was Watchman Nee’s fault too and it was Prem Pradhan’s, and it was Bakht Singh’s and it was Tyndale’s and it was Luther’s. It was T. Austin Sparks, and it was Paul’s and all of those.

There is so much to restore, so much to keep. Yes, I wouldn’t mind having your help. I want to find somebody who has already proven, before I met him, that he can chew fire, walk through the very boughs of hell, and come out drinking ice water. They don’t come very often. So, I now end with one more word. I’m going to cuss. Today we have another para… whatever… well, what I believe is. They will never get into the arena. They will not spill blood. They will not have their life threatened. They will not have people hating them. They will fall off the fire, and that’s all they will ever do, and they are the Oxford movements, the Humanists, and the Renewals. I would really urge you to go join them. I’d say they have four to five years left to exist, and I will tell you something else. There’ll come a day when they themselves will destroy because it is the nature of men. They will.

Oral Roberts preached a message that worked, and every Pentecostal preacher in America started raising money the way he did. There’s a gentleman named Mueller who ran an orphanage, and he went around saying, “We never let our needs be known.” And then he tells all these stories about how their needs were met, and we never let our needs be known. We live by faith. We live by faith. We live by faith. We live by faith. We never let our needs be known, and they had an orphanage choir that sang, and everybody cried. On the day he died, he was one of the ten richest men in America. When Wesley died, he was one of the five richest men in Europe, and I’m sorry, they were both in Europe.

People copy things, and if something gets successful, it’s going to get copied, but I’m going to tell you something else. If it gets successful, it gets cruel. It gets fleshly, knows squat about the word of God, and has never paid one minute’s price. At the end of this sentence, when I have finished this sentence, I will utter two words, and those are my two cuss words. Are you ready for those words that come at the end of this sentence? Emerging church, and I recommend that you take its spirit, its ecumenicity, its philosophy, its unwillingness to get into the arena, just like all the rest never were, and go join them, but don’t come here with that garbage.

Now, saints, I guess that’s been about as honest as I know how to be with you. I think you should decide something now, but I’m not going to tolerate disunity in this church. If it starts, I’m going to stop it. I’ll probably stop it in a meeting by calling names. Gene, that’s terrible. I learned it from the best. In the meantime, I have called it quits to my stroke, my bad leg, my blinding eyes, my deaf ears, and my other diseases that I have acquired over the last few years. If you would like someone else to be your worker, ask him… no, observe one thing. Has he already proven his stress level and his comfort zone, no matter who it is? That’s one.

The second one is, and always ask this question, and ask it again, again and again and again and again and again and again: What is your worldview? Your worldview, and he’ll look at you deadpan, having no idea what you’re talking about. Every man who’s ever been driven has been driven by revelation, by call, and by worldview. When I was 24, I entered a contest called “How to evangelize the world in one generation,” and I won. I got $1,000 for a trip to Hawaii. I presented it to Bill Bright, Campus Crusade for Christ, a long time ago, to evangelize the world. Ask him what his worldview is. Observe his comfort zone. I don’t want to, but I will disturb your comfort zone, and I apologize ahead of time, and I won’t do it deliberately. It’s just who I am.