Paul’s Letter to the Gauls (Galatians) – Chapter 6

I brought this up one day. A brother walked up to me. He said, “Gene, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with all these people. They all need, every one of them, they need to have faith. The problem they have is fear, and they need to have faith.” Well, you know, I looked at him, and I thought, “Yeah, you’re right. They’re all afraid, and they all need faith. In the meantime, what am I going to do with these 200 people out here?” It’s a great theory. I have a notion. I don’t know, but I have a notion that young men right now are shipwrecked spiritually. His theory is great. It’s probably correct. Well, it just doesn’t work, saints. I have to deal with things practically every day—really practical things.

Now then, there is a very practical cure for all of your eccentricities and your peculiarities and your psychopathic tendencies, and we have discussed it this week, and that is – the law. We will simply outlaw your problem. You cannot cry anymore. You are an emotional sister. There will be no more crying. You will praise God instead of crying. You understand? And the whole community turns on that woman. They will not let her cry. They rebuke her. They grab her. They make her praise the Lord. Maybe that’s what will heal her for a while, but I’m telling you this: there used to be a song. I know none of you could possibly remember the song. It came out right after World War II. I don’t remember any more of the words, but it was the cutest, funniest song in the world. ‘We’re saving up coupons to get one of those.’ The coupons were very, very popular on that day, and this song was about “we wanted a baby, so we’re saving up coupons to get one of those.” And they wanted something else, so they’re saving up coupons to get one of those. Well, that dear little sister will be saving up coupons to get a nervous breakdown.

You cannot outlaw human weakness. You cannot pass laws against it; it will seep out somewhere. There is no way under heaven for you or me ever to imagine how weak and how needy we all are until you see us in community. This is the first piece of Christian literature that was ever written, and the other day I stepped back, and I said to that piece of literature, and I said to myself, this is the first one that these churches are four years old. Paul is not blind, nor is he a fool. Is it in there? Did he address these things practically? If so, what did he say to these churches? There are only a few verses here, but I believe they reflect a large part of his ministry. Chapter six, as is most of Paul’s writings, his last chapter or his last couple of chapters, he will almost invariably get very, very practical. Here, he is very, very spiritual. Very, very spiritual. Giving us all the spiritual, theological, heavenly principles, but boy, man, listen. We’re down here still. We’re still ordinary human beings. These things help, but he does not neglect the ordinary everyday challenges of life. Yes. Praise the Lord for that. And I have to sit here, and I have to look at these, and I have to say, Paul, what’d you say, and how did you deal with them? Now, I don’t know about Paul of Tarsus, and I don’t know about the church in Pisidia, Antioch, but I know about people.

Let’s imagine that we are that church or that we are a modern-day church. We all live in this city. Let’s take it out of Memphis entirely. Give me the name of another town. Don’t say Atlanta. Don’t say Portland. Brownsville is perfect. We all fellowship in the town of Brownsville. Poor Mr. Brown. Now, I’m going to tell you what we have here, and I was hoping you could help me. Those of you who have lived in church life, I want you to help me. I want you to be open. I want you to stand up. Please tell me. I’m going to repeat it because it needs to be on tape. I will start, but I always fizzle out. I can’t seem to hold these things in my mind. Now, I want you to hear me, and I ask you to believe me. We are a fellowship; how many are we? About 120. Is that it? That’s a good number. 120. Is that about right? That’s a good number. In fact, that’s the perfect size for a church.

There is a minimum of 20% of you, maybe 25%, and I trust you won’t feel embarrassed or misunderstand me. I want you to understand these things, and I don’t know any other way than to be realistic. There is a minimum of 20 to 25% of you who are on one level or another, dealing with problems of sexual perversion. Latent homosexuality or homosexuality. That’s where my mind always goes blank. Incest. Scars from incest. What is it when you dress up in the clothes of another person? A transvestite. A voyeur? A peeping Tom. People addicted to pornography are fighting that battle. Not the normal biological drives, but they have turned. Now, how many can you help? Are there anymore that go into that? That’s good enough, huh? Alright, that’s enough of that seeming subject. That’s at least 20% of the people in this room. Bet the family farm owns it. Bet the family farm owns it, but you will not seek help. Because, as a Christian, Christians don’t have these problems. When God saves us, he delivers us from these, and besides that, we have been filled with the Holy Spirit. We have spoken in other tongues with signs following. Therefore, we could not possibly have these problems. Sometimes it’s practicing, sometimes it’s latent. They are all there. There are brothers and sisters in the church in Brownsville who are fighting this battle daily, and my question is: Is the church of the living God armed to minister to such needy folk? And the answer is generally speaking, NO. And those of us in the community are about 200 years behind in this challenge. The church…the typical organized church, is 2,000 years behind in this matter. We will not admit it exists. And these are not problems that go away overnight.

Now you may be feeling very uncomfortable, and you may say I’m very disappointed the conference is going to end on this note. The book ends on this note. I didn’t write this book, but I have experienced the church in Galatia. I’ve been there. I have lived in the church of the Lord, and more of it has come to me than any other human being in the fellowship. I know from whence I speak. There are sisters and brothers in their private lives who are having real problems with biological things. There are deep scars from childhood in the biological realm.

Now, we leave that subject and move on to other things. And again, I always draw a blank. I wish I didn’t. Alcoholism. Help me. Thank you. Can we have some more? We have alcoholics or those who tend toward it in the church. Drug addicts and those who fight the battle of it. Child abuse in the church. And I’m glad you said spouse abuse because it is not wife abuse. It is often the husband who is abused, something that is rarely mentioned. Yes, violent, even physical violence between…this is us; this is us, saints, and these are the things we face, these are why churches sink, because they don’t have men or women of the stature to handle these things, to minister to them, or even to admit that they are there. These are the kinds of things that sink your fellowship: an inability to handle them. And coming in and having a great, glorious meeting isn’t going to make them go away. I want to say to you now, and I want to say it for the rest of my life, that a meeting should be one of the lesser things of the house of God. You go to give, not to get. It’s not … the big thing we’re going to do as a Christian is get help in a meeting. No, a Christian gathering is where, out of the fullness and abundance of life, you go to share what you have gotten through the week. That totally changes the meaning of church life and gatherings.

Now, the church of the living God among laymen, for it is a lay movement, must be in some way armed, and you start by being forewarned. You ought to be able to come into the church of the living God expecting to at least get help, if not eventual healing, from virtually anything. And I’m not talking about this kind of healing. The kind of things I’m speaking of run so deep that it takes years, sometimes decades, but the church is still the church, and you’re still a brother or sister in it. Now, I’m seeking to give you a new dimension here, but I’ve lived long enough in church life that I can speak of not today and tomorrow or yesterday, but over long periods of time. I’ve learned a great deal by watching God’s people… kleptomaniacs, a domineering wife, a domineering husband, passive aggression. Some of you don’t even know what that is. It’s so intangible that you cannot even keep up with it. Not suicide, but threats of suicide. It’s depressing—enormous depression.

Single brothers who consistently string along single sisters. An obsessive thing. We’ve seen it again and again and again. Going from one to another, making that sister think that he’s about to marry her, and going to another, and another. Oh, I kill those people. I have their hides tacked to my wall. I will not tolerate it. That’s one of the things I will not tolerate in church. You will meet me, brother. You will meet me. You will not get away with that in the house of the Lord. That will not be tolerated. That’s just…you’re not going to do it. And if that’s law, forgive me, but you’re not going to do that to our single sisters. We see this again. It is a pattern that is everywhere you go. There are young Casanova brothers like this, and there are sisters who will carry the damage of it throughout their lives. Sisters, you’re partly to blame because sometimes we come to you and say to you that this is happening, and you deny it, and you have to take part of the responsibility.

Saints who cannot handle money. Absolutely cannot. Oh, an enormous amount of theft. Wouldn’t we like to tell some of our funny stories? You ought to tell one. Would you like me to tell the tweezers story? No, it wasn’t funny. It still kind of hurts. Well, we made this really deep box so people couldn’t get into it because we’d had theft problems. Well, a brother, at 3:00 in the morning, was down there doing some laundry, and he walked in and here was a guy, and I’ve forgotten his name, but I think it was John, somebody, and this kid had a pair of tweezers. Tweezers this long, and he was down there with the money box, bringing that money up. There is no end to the stories we could tell you. I want to tell you the same boy who did that… we were being robbed in another building at a totally different time, and we had this black filing cabinet. He came in one night, broke in, and stole. We didn’t know who it was at the time. So, I said to a brother, “David, do something about that.” Well, Gene, he won’t do it again.” The very next night, he broke into it again and took the money. I said, “David, do something about that.” And David said, “Gene, he couldn’t possibly ever do it again. He hadn’t done anything yet.”

So, the next night he did it again. He stole the church’s money three nights in a row. I came back to David. I said, “David, do something about this.” So, David welded two doohickeys of some kind on the side of that filing cabinet on the theory that by doing that, this kid could not get his crowbar and open the thing. And, for the fourth night in a row, the kid broke in and stole our money. I said, “David, put a lock on that thing.” And finally, David put a lock on it, but that young man continued to come. He came the next night. He was caught and, of course, arrested. I don’t remember any more about the story than that. A lot of theft in community, Christians stealing from you. Are you sure you want church life? Are you really sure you want church life? It sounded so beautiful tonight when everybody got up and testified.

There are other things you learn about Christians in situations like this. Manipulators. Oh, I’m here to…what’s going on back there? He locked our door. Tonight?  I don’t blame you. (laughter) You have people who are so skilled at manipulating you that you find out you have blamers. I think this one is one of them, where, if I’ve got scars, this is one of the places I really feel scars, and that’s the person who is always making someone else feel guilty for their problem, and because I’m a large target, I catch that more than anyone else. Not the only one, but I do catch it more than anyone else. Getting blamed. There’s the person who always has their version of the story, and they tell it to everyone, and everyone believes it because they tell it to everyone. The truth is never known. The truth is never known, but the story spreads, and then it spreads throughout America, and it is only after that that it becomes reality and truth, and you have to live with it all the days of your life.