YP Sing Address—P. House
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Well, I used to, uh, come to a lot more things like this at conferences than I do now.
And, uh, I look forward to the things.
I think because I enjoyed, I Can't Sing very well, but I enjoyed the songs. I like to think about the words that I'm singing.
Many of those songs that we sang tonight were just wonderful. When you look at the words and what they really what the words really have for our hearts.
But I look forward to the things because they were encouragement to me.
You know, we need encouragement, each one of us. We need to be encouraged. That's why I'm here. I came to the conference because I need to come to the conference. I came to hear about the Lord Jesus. I came to get things that would make me happy, meditations that would fill my heart with praise for Him. That's why I came. And so this little thing that we have together is same purpose.
Just one more thing in a grand day that we can be encouraged by.
Pardon the reference to myself, but.
I've just spent the last couple of months reading through the book of the Psalms.
And it's been a real special.
Groups of readings that I've had for myself.
One of the things that's impressed me the most is.
That most of the Psalms are written by David, and you know, the affection that that man had for God is incredible. It's incredible.
Now who can tell me what the first verse that was read to us in the conference was this morning in the prayer meeting? Does anybody know the first one?
Anybody.
You remember.
It's alright.
Yeah, that's right. What verse?
Verse what? Verse 4 Correct. Let's read it.
Thank you very much.
The fourth verse of Psalm 27.
One thing have I desired of the Lord that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple. 3000 years ago, young people, 3000 years ago, this man had this meditation.
And by the Holy Spirit of God, he wrote it down.
3000 years ago, this man loved God enough to have this desire. And to me that is so impressive. And if you read through the book of the Psalms and just keep that in mind that this man, he loved God so much. And very often I would sit and think, is this the response from my heart?
Do I want this?
Do I have this desire toward God that I would write down these beautiful lines? Have I ever done that, just written down my thoughts toward God? Well, David did by the Spirit of God 3000 years ago.
You know, sometimes we think that we're advanced and progressed and all these things well.
The affection that this man had for God puts me to real shame.
But you know what's encouraging to think about the heart that this man had. You know, we read in the book of Acts that.
David had a heart after God's own heart, and God chose him.
To lead his people.
But you know, he had some rough times. He had some difficulties in his life.
And you know where he turned, He turned to God, and the Lord helped him in his trials and his adversities, his difficulties. There were many years that he was haunted like an animal. He ran away from a man that he had been kind to for years. He lived in the deserts, in the caves, and yet he was able to come out with verses like this.
00:05:07
One thing have I desired.
Of the Lord that will I seek after, that I might dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life.
Well, let's stop there for a minute.
I said that I like to come to these events because they were an encouragement to me.
Sometimes a challenge can be an encouragement.
I challenge you tonight.
When you read a verse like this.
One thing have I desired of the Lord? Have you had that desire? Have I had that desire?
To dwell in the House of the Lord. Now we may take it this way.
Do we want?
To be gathered to the precious name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
All the days of our life.
Do you, do I have that desire? That's a good desire.
You know, there's a lot of Christians that would say, huh?
But you know what?
By the grace of God.
God has given me that desire.
And I trust that each one of us here today has that same desire.
To go on, to serve the Lord, to be preserved in the assembly, to be a help to others, to be a joy and encouragement.
To behold the beauty of the Lord.
To behold the beauty of the Lord. You know, I think of David and the affection that this man had for the Lord Jesus.
You know, sometimes us guys, we like to be a little bit kind of, you know, like this isn't kind of language that we're comfortable with.
But you know what? It's OK. It's OK to love the Lord.
He loved us.
How is it with each one of our hearts?
Do we love him?
Do we love him? I trust everyone of us can answer that question. Yeah, I do. I do love him. You know, when we come to the assembly meetings, when we come to the conferences like this, this is when we get to see a little bit more of the beauty of the Lord.
You know, we have time to think and reflect and hear thoughts that perhaps we've never thought of before.
I got a few today I'd never thought of before. It was such an encouragement to me to see these little things about the Lord Jesus. Man, that's beautiful and reflect on it.
But how is it with our personal lives?
You know, and we, we're busy, all of us. We're busy. We live in a world that just packs everything into our day. I'll tell you a little story. When I worked at the Compu at a computer company for a few years.
One of the things that we had was a beeping watch survey. So all over the world they gave everyone of the sales force, I don't know how many thousands of people that was, but many thousands. They gave them a nice, really nice watch. It had all kinds of features on it. It could do everything it was. It was a nice ******* watch and it was free, but the hitch was every 17 minutes.
Every sales person in the world that worked for Hewlett Packard had to record what they were doing.
No matter what it was, if you were in the bathroom, you wrote, I'm in the bathroom. If you were in a sales meeting, you're in a sales meeting. If you're on the phone, you're on the phone. If you're in your car, you write down, you're in your car. Whatever it was, you wrote it down. And you did that day after day after day. And then the survey information went off to wherever in the somewhere in the world. And they put it all together. And then they decided, OK, well.
These are the results the whole sales force in the world spends this many hours a day.
In our bathrooms, this many hours a day, in their cars, this many hours a day, writing letters, whatever it was, I forget, but it was amazing. They tabulated this, they spent thousands of dollars on it, and then they said, OK, these guys are in their cars a lot of the time. How can we get more productivity out of them? We'll put phones in their cars. This was when it was expensive to have phones in your car.
00:10:18
But we got phones in our car built right in by 4, right at the factory. Why? Because they wanted to squeeze.
A little bit more time out for the company. So what they ended up doing was they let go 20% of the sales force and sales went up 25%. And you say, well, how would that work? You got rid of sales people, but you got more results. Yeah, because they gave us tools.
But what did it do? It took all of our time and squeezed more of our time and squeezed more of our time. And all these nice tools that we have, what do they do? They take our time a little bit, a little bit here, a little bit there, and before long we're busy. The point is, yes, we're busy, but what do we do with the time that we have? Do we sit and reflect?
On the Lord, just have a little bit of time to tell Him that we love Him.
You know, if you love somebody.
You love for them to say, you know, I really love you.
That's OK to tell the Lord that we love him, He loves us.
He wants to hear our voice.
That I may.
To behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.
To hear him speak to us.
You know, the Lord spoke to us a lot today, didn't He? He had all kinds of things for us.
I have to admit that there were times where I was kind of dead, you know, tired. I missed a few things in the meetings. Now, am I gonna get some tapes?
And play the meetings again and get the rest of what I missed.
Do we want that?
Well, it's available four different ways, we heard.
Cassettes, we all have some way that we can review these meetings again to get something more for our hearts. Now we read another verse in this chapter today. The last verse that was read in the prayer meeting this morning was the 14th verse.
Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.
You know it's hard to wait.
It's really hard to wait sometimes.
I know about that.
But it's important to wait.
If it's the Lord's will for us to wait, we need to wait.
And not give up. Not give up.
You know, I used to benefit by hearing these words from other people who said the same thing 20 years ago, 30 years ago when I was a lot of your age. But, you know, times gone along. I got some white hair. I'm losing some hair, but the message is the same.
We need to have courage and wait on the Lord, and it says here, wait on the Lord, be of good courage and then what?
He shall strengthen thine heart.
And, you know, this is one of the things that I really appreciate about being at a conference.
We need this, I need this, we all need this, we need to be strengthened.
In the Lord.
And isn't it a joy to be here? You know, it's a privilege to be here. It really is. It's a privilege. There's a lot of people that would give everything they could find to be here, but they can't come.
You know, we have this privilege, we value it.
Is it important for us to be here?
I repeat one more time.
Do you have that one desire?
Is that the desire from the very bottom of your soul?
That you want to be with the Lord.
Here, and for all eternity.
To enjoy him, to love him, and to enjoy His love for you. So may it be an encouragement for us tonight to follow the Lord, to wait for him, to be of good courage and to be strengthened.
00:15:03
By the Lord Himself. So we ask his help.