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Overcoming Evil
with Good, Part 4

by Jay E. Adams


Edited transcript of conference message

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We've been looking at Romans 12, verses 14 to 21. And the first night we looked at the last verse: "Don't be conquered by evil, but conquer evil by good." And we said that God wants His children to win the battles with evil that they fight in they're lives individually. Paul said, first of all, you're going to fight. You're in a war. You didn't declare it; you didn't ask for it. God declared that war, and He put you in that war. And whether you like it or not, somebody's going to be shooting at you. So you had better get ready for the battle. And He said when you do, first of all, you must not let evil win. Do not be conquered by evil. But on the other hand, you must win. You must conquer evil. And in doing so, you must use God's method: conquer evil by doing good; don't return in kind.

Then last night we went back to the beginning of this section and started with verse 14, and started talking about what you had to do to win those battles because each of these verses moves on toward that conclusion that we find in verse 21. And we saw there that God was saying you better learn how to manage your mouth. We all have problems with that mouth of ours. And He said one of the things you're going to find in this battle with evil that you must do is to learn how to bless those who persecute you. "Bless and don't curse." It's so easy to spit back what was spit at you. It's so easy to say that sharp word to those who said the sharp word first. But a soft answer turns away wrath, and a blessing is what God requires instead of a curse. We talked about what a blessing means and what a curse means last night.

Tonight we move on to verses 15 and 16. If we had one more day in the week, we'd take each one separately. But in order to come out evenly, we'll put the two together tonight and look at them as one. In verses 15 and 16, Paul says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Think in harmony with one another, not being haughty, but associating with the lowly. Don't become conceited." Now, you may ask yourself the question as you hear those words, what do those verses have to do with this business of overcoming evil? What do they have to do with battles in this life with evil, with how you fight those battles? And at first, as I began to look at them myself, I wondered about that. And then it became very clear, no man is an army. You know that book No Man Is an Island. But we're thinking tonight, no man is an army. You are not an army. You can't go it alone. If you're going to fight the Lord's battles, and you're going to fight them successfully, you're going to have to do it as part of a team, an army that works together. And so before he tells us a lot of things we must do, he makes it clear that we're going to do what we do individually as part of an overall plan and an overall battle that's going on and an overall structure for opposing and conquering evil. God put you in the army. And these verses say you are in the army now, and you must learn to cooperate and operate and do all that you do in conjunction with others who are in that army. You cannot be a lone wolf. And so this tells us a little bit about how to work with others, how to work with other believers in this task of overcoming evil.

As we begin, Paul says these interesting words: "Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep." The first thing he makes clear about this army is that you are to be a concerned member of that army. You must be interested, deeply interested in the other soldiers who are fighting with you. You've got to care about them. You've got to be concerned about them. You've got to think beyond yourself and your nap sack and your helmet and your gun to the man next to you and the one beyond him and those on this side. You have an obligation of concern and care for others who are fighting with you. What kind of an army is it where there is no such concern, no such comradery, no such concern for the man who is out there stuck in a place where he can't get out of it and where somebody has to go out there and drag him back to a place of safety? What kind of an army is it where every man is out for himself, and out for himself alone? I'll tell you what kind of an army it is. It's an army that's going to lose. It's an army that's going to be defeated because the only kind of army that really makes it is an army that functions together where there's concern one for another. I'm not going to go into all the World War 2 and other kinds of wars. I'm not going to go into stories about people who did things for one another. You've heard enough of them. But you know as well as I do that what makes an army effective is where people are in it together. They're really together in that army, fighting side by side, caring about other. That's what creates morale. And morale is absolutely critical in an army. When you've got low morale, you've got people bickering and fighting with each other. When you've got deception, when you've got gripes and complaints, when you've got people who are upset all the time, you have an army that's going to be defeated. And when the thing that brings morale to an army more than anything except the food is when men really care for each other.

This is a very interesting statement: "Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep." When I first began to look into counseling, which is something I've had a little interest in over the years, I discovered that Freud and a number of others thought that you should not get involved emotionally with your counselee; that you should take a white-coated approach (a professional approach), take people in a clinical way and handle them as though they were objects rather than persons with whom you become involved. That always seemed wrong. Then one day I looked at this verse and I said I know it's wrong. It's got to be wrong because this says rejoice with people who rejoice and weep with people who weep. And it wasn't long before in our counseling sessions when somebody sitting in the next counseling room next door might hear us shout and yell, "Wonderful!" or "O, don't tell me!" or something like that because we really decided to care about people rather than just approach them as bodies.

There's a great difference between talking about people and actually caring about them. And sometimes the approach we use at counseling is misunderstood drastically. People who talk a lot about getting fury with others and rubbing up against them, and all that kind of thing in developing relationships, and who work at this, rarely do get close to others when they work at it that way. It's kind of like this: here's a fellow down underneath his automobile, and one of these fury types (these people who work hard at being empathetic and who work hard at building relationships) comes along and sees this fellow under the automobile and he says, "What's going on?" The guy says, "I'm pulling on this wrench and I can't get this nut loose." The guy on top who talks a lot about getting close to people and who says a lot of things that he thinks will develop relationships between him and others says, "I feel what you feel; I lie where you lie. I understand what you're going through." And the guy underneath says pretty soon, "Hey, look, I've got enough trouble with this nut." Now, one of our types comes along and says, "Hey, what's going on?" And the guy says, "I can't get this nut loose." Our guy says, "Just a minute." And he takes his coat off and he gets underneath the car and he pulls on the wrench with the guy. Now, it's not the one who talks about empathy; it's the one who shows it who is really empathetic. We don't talk much about it. We just get in there and we sweat in our counseling sessions. We work hard at getting to the roots of the problems and finding what God says about that problem and bringing God's solution to it as quickly as possible.

Early in the game, I wrote a book called Competent to Counsel, and in there, incidentally without realizing it, I mentioned something about a desk once. And there are types who will look at every little aspect of what you say, and so questions began to come back to me in Q & A periods in which people started to say things like, "I see you use a desk. What does that desk symbolize?" I had never thought about what a desk symbolized before until people started asking questions like that. But I went back and said, "What does it symbolize?" And I realized it symbolized work. We work hard in counseling. We really work at it. We have a telephone there, and we use it. If we don't have data we need, we get on the phone, punch up a few numbers, and get the data. Or if somebody needs to make a commitment, we punch up the number and let them go make a commitment. "Here, talk with that person; make a commitment with him. Confess that sin to him or whatever you need to do." We get right on the horn and we use that telephone. And we take notes and give books and pamphlets. And we use our Bibles and we open them up. Man, I'll you, we need a desk because we work hard in our counseling sessions. I've always wondered about these guys who don't have a desk. I wonder what they do. They must work hard. I wouldn't want to think they didn't work hard. But they must all be acrobats because their able to put a phone on one knee with a scratch pad underneath, where you're taking notes....

In counseling, you listen and talk and try to be empathetic, not really knowing that empathy is something you show, not something you talk about. Now, an army, where people really rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, is not just an army in which people talk about that or in which they try in some way to get their emotions in gear. But their emotions of weeping with those who weep and rejoicing with those who rejoice are only natural to the situation because they have so entered into the other person's problems that they can't help but rejoice; they can't help but weep; they can't help but get emotional because they're involved with other people. That's the point. This isn't something you do as a technique. This something you do because you can't help it. It's something you do because you're so deeply involved in that person's problem, you so deeply care about that person that you feel the tears welling up within, and you can't stop them. This is something where you laugh and you are thrilled to the bottom of your soul because you can't help but be so. Because you've been so deeply involved with that person that when the good thing happened, it's just as so it happened to you. Now that's what Paul's talking about. If you want to fight a battle and you really want to serve the Lord Jesus Christ as you should, you need to get involved in the lives of other people. There's no white professionalism in the Christian church. Tear that white coat off and throw it away. A lot of people don't want to get involved in other people's lives, however. If you're one of those tonight, and you want to go it alone, and you want to be an individual on your own who never gets next to anybody else and never deeply penetrates into another person's life or allow that other person to penetrate into his and have interpersonal relations on any level of depth, you are a hindrance to the work of the Lord and the battles that need to be fought. You're going to have to be involved with other believers around you who are struggling and fighting in the same battle, in the same war that God has called you to fight in.

Empathy is misunderstood today. A lot of people think that empathy is sympathetic agreement. Nothing could be further from truth than that. The woman who allows another woman to call her up on the phone and hangs on that phone for an hour and a half to two hours everyday with that woman, allowing the woman to pour all kinds of garbage into her ear about how bad her husband is and how awful he treated her and how everything is wrong is not really being empathetic at all. That person is not only hurting the other individual, but hurting herself because she's becoming a garbage can into which all that garbage is being poured. And secondly, she's not helping that woman over there, even though the other woman every time says, "O, I feel so much better after talking to you everyday. Thank you for letting me talk." Sure she feels better because she got the pressure out of her system, she got it off her chest. But it's obvious that it didn't help her because she's back on the phone again tomorrow. It's just like that priest who stood daily offering the same sacrifice that could never take away sin. She never hangs up and says, "It's over." Everyday she stands daily on the telephone offering the same old stuff that never gets settled.

Let me tell you how to really be empathetic. To be empathetic is not to be in agreement. You see, that's the problem. A lot of people think that empathy means to be in agreement. And they talk about seeing the problem the way the other person sees it. That's exactly wrong. Carl Rogers says you've got to so see the problem the way other people see it that you enter into his frame of reference. Forget your own values, forget your own beliefs, forget your own ideas. Forget everything and see everything the way the other person does, and be so empathetic, as he sees empathy, so accepting, so non-judgmental of the other person that you are willing to see whatever he says is absolutely correct from his point of view. You've got to accept his frame of reference. That's wrong, all wrong--nothing right about it! You must never let go of the values that God has given to you. You must never say that another person is going to set your values for you. Your values must be from the Word of the Living God, from the Scriptures and from nowhere else. And when you enter into another person's problem, you must see that problem as he is not succeeding and solving that problem on his own. You must see that problem and enter into it even more deeply than he has so that you see the problem in a way that he does not. You must see that problem the way God sees that problem. You must see that problem through the eyes of the Biblical writers and through the words of Scripture, not out of the frame of reference of the person who is not solving his problem, but out of the frame of reference of God's Word. That's the way you've got to enter into that problem. And if he were seeing the problem God's way, he would know the way out. But since he doesn't know the way out and since he has asked you for help or since he needs help whether he's asked or not, obviously, he does not see that problem as God sees it. And so real empathy, true, Biblical empathy is empathic disagreement, not empathetic agreement. You cannot help another person until you're willing to say, "Yes, I see what you are involved in, but...." That word but becomes the helping point where you can begin to get traction with the another person and begin to move somewhere, where you begin to do something to help him. Until you can come with an alternative, until you can come with a "but", until you can come with God's alternative, God's way that he is missing, you have nothing to say to that person. And that's why that woman is continually on that phone because all you're doing is saying, "O, yes, mine too." You're not helping her a bit. You want to know how to get two free hours every afternoon? You start telling her,

"Okay, now, I've been doing the wrong thing listening to you. I want you're forgiveness for it because I've been sinning against you and your husband and against God letting you day after day tell me all the wrong things your husband has been doing. That's obnoxious, and I've been a part of it, and I've been wrong. I hope you'll forgive me for sinning that way against you and your husband and against God. But also, I want to do something else. I want to stop talking about men's problems; I want to start talking about God's solutions."

You start focusing on the Biblical solution to the problem rather than focusing on the problem. You don't need any more data on the problem. If you needed to gather data, that would be the first thing you'd do, but you've been taking data for 16 weeks. It's about time you started working on the problem in terms of solutions, not in terms of what he did last. And either that woman will take God's solution and use it and solve her problem in which case she won't have to hang on the phone two hours everyday. Or if she's not interested in solutions and only interested in talking about problems, and you keep insisting on solutions every time she calls, she'll start calling somebody else. What you need to do is focus on God's solution to the problem. Real empathy is empathetic disagreement. Until you can bring a deeper solution to the problem and a deeper understanding of it, a Biblical understanding of it, God's understanding of it into the circumstance, you have not come to a place to be helpful to another person. And so when you rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, it's because you have really entered into the problem; you've really sweat over the Scriptures trying to find out what God says about it until you have reached a Biblical solution to offer to the person in need.

You can probably gather a prayer meeting easily if somebody is in trouble. We don't have too much trouble getting people to pray for those who weep. But it's pretty hard to gather a prayer meeting to give thanks and rejoice with those who rejoice. It's easy enough when Joe loses his job, for everybody to get together and pray that Joe will find another job. You weep with those who weep. But what about when Joe gets a fantastic raise and you didn't? That's not so easy. That's hard to rejoice over. And yet the Lord's work is going to prosper because Joe's a tither and more. Joe's going to prosper; his family has desperately needed it. When Joe gets a raise and you didn't and you can rejoice, you know that you really care. If you get envious or bitter or resentful or say, "Why didn't I get one? I deserve it equally as well or even more than Joe," there's something wrong with your so-called empathy.

"Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep." It's right to weep. It's right to really cry. A lot of Christians don't think that anymore. It's a strange breed of cats that's grown up in the Christian world these days. Have you met any of those cats around? They go around with a big Cheshire cat smile saying, "Praise the Lord anyway. My daughter just was raped yesterday. Praise the Lord." That nauseates me; that makes me sick--I mean that. That's awful. That's some kind of unnatural stoicism. That's not Christianity; that's Christian science. Christianity knows that Jesus Christ wept at the grave of Lazarus. He was deeply involved in His friend's tragedy over that loss. It's not wrong to weep. We ought to thank God even for the tragedies of life because somehow or other He is working in them to bring good out of every tragedy. And we know that we can give thanks even in problems as Philippians 4 tells us. But that is not a thanksgiving that ignores the tragedy and the awful consequences of sin. Sin has wretched consequences. Sin brings misery. We don't act like some kind of weirdoes running around with a sneer on our face that supposed to look like a smile saying, "Praise the Lord anyway." That's horrendous and totally unchristian. It's through tears that we say,

"O Lord, it hurts badly. O Lord, I don't understand how You're going to work good out of this. I don't what Your purposes are in bring this, but I believe You're a sovereign God. You're in control of all things, and You have promised that all things work together for good to those who love God who are called according to His purpose. And I'm one of Your children, and You have brought me into the family, and my nose is too close to the problem now and it hurts too bad right now, and the tears are welling up in my eyes and in my heart too much now to understand or appreciate how You are doing it, but I believe You. I believe You're working it all together for good, and so, Lord, I know that goods going to come and Your name's going to honored and Your Son's going to be blessed, but I don't see it and I don't feel it right now, but I believe it. So, Lord, I thank you even in the midst of this heartache and this trial and this suffering and this grief and this sorrow for what You're going to do. There's a lot different attitude when the eye of faith looks beyond the problem and the heartache and the sorrow. It also experiences the heartache and the sorrow from the one who pretends that there's no heartache anywhere, anyway, and that sin really has no bitter consequences upon the one who commits it or upon others around them who had nothing to do with it but must suffer because of it. Sin does have bitter, bitter consequences, and we dare not deny that pain.

You're a part of a whole, so verse 16 says, "Think in harmony with one another, not being haughty, but associating with the lowly. Don't become conceited [or don't become wise in your own mind]." You're a part of a whole; you're a part of an army. You need the other member; you need the other parts of the body. Just like Paul said the eye needs the ear, and the hand needs to toe, and toe needs the foot, and the foot needs the ankle and so on; they need you. No man can fight a war alone. Your efforts are a part of an overall battle plan and battle strategy and battle formation that is going on across a wide front. What you're doing is not just what you're doing. What you're doing is part of what a whole army is involved in doing. And whenever you lose sight of the rest of the army and the whole picture and become only interested in the one little tree or the twig on the tree and forget the forest, you're in trouble, and you're a problem. And the army is in trouble because of you because you need to be coordinated in whatever you do with other Christians. It says that you need to have the same mind or think in harmony with other Christians.

You've got to get a battle program and a battle plan and a strategy that's understood by all, where everybody understands and everybody's in agreement and everybody's working together on it. Now, the Bible provides the plan, the order, the strategies, the methods, and all the rest. That's the only thing that can pull us together. That's the only thing that can bring unity in thought and practice. That's the only thing that can bring the army to a place where it functions as a whole--the Bible. And to the extent that we agree on anything, we function together. To the extent that we disagree on what the Bible says, we have problems among one another. That's why we must continually be in this Book until more and more we share I own ideas and we shed the ideas of the world, and we shed all these eclectic views and get down to the place where we agree more and more because we are spending more and more time in the Word. Only the Word will bring people together.

One of the interesting things about the counseling we've been doing is to see the wide swath of background of people who are interested in it. And the reason why I think we see so many people is because it's Biblical. I'm that there's a wide background of people who follow and who support and who are encouraged to support Family Radio. And the reason why is because it focuses on the Scriptures. And unless the focus is on the Scriptures, there will be dissension, there will be disorder, there will be disharmony, there will be disunity in the ranks. And to the extent that the Scriptures are not the focus, that exists. And of course, we know so much disunity among the members of the army. But every time you trace it back, if you want to, you'll see that it's because somebody's doing something that you can't really support in the Scriptures. How we've seen that in the whole area of eclecticism in the church, not just in counseling but in everything. The world's ideas are brought in and mixed together with the Bible. That's as foolish as taking the strategies and the plans and all the rest of your enemy and mixing them into your strategies and plans. Why you only play into his hands if you do what he wants you and expects you to do. That's just so foolish. It's like a farmer who thinks he spraying some kind of herbicide, and really he's spraying nutrients. What's he going to get? More weeds, greater weeds, bigger weeds, glorious weeds! I don't know any farmer who would do that. That's stupid, and yet we find Christians doing it everywhere, taking the world's ideas and the world's ways and the world's beliefs and the world's whatever it may be and mixing it up with the Bible. To the extent that the world's ways are mixed with God's ways, God's ways are weakened. It's like taking pure water and mixing ink or poison. The more you put into it, the less pure it is. So we need to take the time to study the Word ourselves so that we know what we're talking about. We need to take the time and make the effort to speak with others who may not know and discuss with them what God has to say in His Word and help to persuade them to become more Biblical. And we don't have all the answers, so we need to hear what others have to say to learn from them, to gain knowledge that God has given to them in their Biblical studies and share it. We need each other as we focus on the Scriptures.

How wonderful it is when you disagree with someone who believes the Bible as long as your attitudes are right. You can a great time digging in to see what really is right. My problem is not with people like that. My problem in the field I've been dealing in counseling has been with people who have an entirely different game plan, who have an entirely different set of battle orders. They believe that you don't use the Bible only. They believe that the Bible will go just so far, and then you've got to add all of man's ideas. Well, I can't even play the game with them. I can't even get together with them. Our rules aren't the same. It's not a matter whether we're in the same league or not; it's just not even the same game. What would happen if people down in Los Angeles all came together from all parts of the world and they had different rules and different games and different objectives? One was hitting is this direction, the other was hitting in that direction to do the same thing. You can't get there that way. You've got to at least agree on the basis. That's what we're talking about here. The basis for harmony and unity and thinking together is the Scriptures. There is no other basis; there can be no other basis, for God has given us no other basis. And people will not work together and will not be coordinated until they become more Biblical. The more Biblical they become, the closer they come to each other. Now, this doesn't mean some kind of cookie-cutter conformity. The Bible has range in it. The Bible is a book that understands and supports the idea of variety and difference within the basic principles. Everybody in the army doesn't have the same rank, and everybody doesn't have the same task. But everybody has to function together, and they have to have the same objectives and goals and methods and same strategy and plan. That's what we're talking about, the Bible basics, even though there may be multitude of ways that people function within those basics, and all sorts of differing gifts that God has given to people. Of course, God's the God of variety. He's the One who made this world with all of it's variety. All the snowflakes are different, yet they all fall down. None of them go upward. And all the snowflakes are cold until they melt; then they become water. They all function the same way in the basics, though they're different, and at those basics upon which we must agree. And you're going to have to learn how to associate with all kinds of people, therefore, since they are all different.

This says, "Don't become haughty; associate with [to go along with, fall in with, learn how to walk along with] the lowly." When everybody is standing in line there in his shorts ready to get vaccinated, get all of his shots, you can't tell who it is at home who has in his closet the marks Shaffer & Hart Suits because everybody is going to get the same kind of uniform there in the army. The army levels people, and God's army does the same thing. It's not leveled in the sense that everybody doesn't have his own gifts and his own abilities and his own rank and all the rest of that. But it levels them in the sense that they're going to have to learn how to love and care and get along with all different kinds--you can't have clicks. A click in a church is a horrendous thing. People have to learn how to get along with one another. Whether one is high or low in other areas of life, you're all the same in this area of life. Before God, there aren't any high people; there aren't any low people. That's what James tells us. He says to us we're all the same. And if a man with rich, shining clothes comes in, you don't give him the best seat; you don't respect persons. That's sin, he says. And so it's pretty important, then, that we learn how to associate with all kinds of people. Some people are more likeable than others. I know that, but that's not your business just to associate with the likeable ones. You're to associate even with the not-so-likeable ones. Maybe, if you being so likeable yourself were to associate with them for a while, they might catch a little of that likeableness that you have. And not everybody is so interesting either. Some people are just plain dull--they really are. They are as dull as they can be. But if you with all of your interest were to get together with them, you might just brighten their lives a little bit. And who knows, they might have some subject after all about which they're not so dull that you might find interesting if you ever got past all your prejudices about them.

Well, we better get off here because it's getting fairly late. Finally, he says, "Don't become conceited [don't be wise in your own mind, literally]." This is that spirit of lone wolfism that we talked about at the beginning. "I've got all the answers; I don't need any help from anyone else. I know what to do, and I know which way to go. And those other people can make it on their own." That is Protestant monkism. That is somebody going off into a cave somewhere as an aesthetic and leaving the world. The aesthetic leaves the world behind because he wants to get into this great relationship with God and forgets that there are two great commandments, not just one. The first great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, body, soul, and strength. And so he says, "Man, I'm going to get out of this world; I'm going to run into that cave, and God and I are going to spend a lot of time together until I really love Him the way I should." And he forgets that there's a second great commandment: love your neighbor as yourself. And he has violated that second great commandment by putting his own life in such a place of priority that he must have this special relationship with God and let all the world hang. O no, 1 John tells us, if you can't even love your brother whom you can see, you certainly can't love God whom you can't see. If you don't keep the second great commandment, you certainly can't keep the first one. These two hang together. And so it is here before us that we are told that we must not become wise in our own mind.

How many marriages are on the rocks today because some husband or some wife says, "We don't need any help from any other Christians? I'm not going to them. They can't do anything for us," when that's exactly what they need--a third party, somebody else who could really help them. Galatians 6:1 tells us that when there is a Christian who is entangled in sin that he cannot get out of, then the one who knows that Lord, who has the Spirit within him, who is a spiritual person must come and help him out of his mess. We are there to help each other. Now, he's to come in the spirit of meekness, not haughtiness in which he says, "Uh huh, there you are down in the gutter again--might know." No, his attitude has to be, "Hey Bill, I'm here, not because I'm any better than you are, but I'm here because I care about you and because God sent me. And I may need your help months from now--who knows? But I'm here today because you need me. Whether you want me or not, I'm here." That's the spirit of meekness, and that's the way in which we have to go.

There are so many Christians today who are ashamed to go seek help. You may be even having trouble tonight. You may be here tonight with all kinds of problems that you've never gotten resolved, all kinds of questions and difficulties, all kinds of personal issues. I don't know you--you know your heart before God. Maybe your marriage is in trouble. Maybe you're having problems with your kids. Maybe you're having problems with your parents. Maybe you're having problems with your in-laws. Maybe you never even referred to them that way; you used the word out instead of in. Well, that's not right. And if you can't get out of those problems and you can't deal with those problems, you're part of an army. And those are the battles you're fighting, and God has to strategy for it all. And He's put people in the army to help you. And you're sinning against the overall warfare. The war effort is being bogged down because you're sitting around behind the lines licking your sores when you ought to be up there on the frontlines fighting the battle. And the reason you're not fighting the battle is because you're too proud to go to another Christian and seek his help. That's wrong, and there are people here tonight who can help.

Maybe some of you wouldn't help because you'd be too afraid to approach another person. Maybe you're too scared of what his response might be, but you know full well that there are other people who need you. And you know full well that Galatians 6 says you're involved and you've got to restore him if he's in trouble, and you can't just sit on the sidelines and watch him deteriorate and watch him go down and down and down and finally out of the army altogether. You can't allow that to happen, but you are allowing that to happen because you're afraid of what he might say in response if you offered help. Neither one of those approaches is right. If you need help, go get it. If you can offer help and you see somebody who needs it, offer it. Don't worry about the consequences; obey the Word. Do it meekly, do it kindly, do it watching out that you don't get yourself entangled in the problem, but go. We need each other. Who needs you tonight? Think of somebody who needs you. Think of somebody in your church, somebody here really in trouble, and you haven't approached that person, haven't done a thing to help. And the war effort is in trouble because of you. You need to talk to God about that in our closing prayer. Aren't you glad that the Lord Jesus didn't just look at us in our need and say to us, "Well, you can go it on your own, and I'll go it on My own." The Lord Jesus got involved, deeply involved. He wept with those wept; He rejoiced with those who rejoiced. And He got so deeply involved that He became one of us. And He gave His very life for His people that they might have forgiveness of sin and the assurance of eternity with Him. He wants you to become involved too.


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