You Must Decide

Tape No. I-4284Page

The theme of this message is “You Must Decide.” I’m going to be dealing with decision, which is one of the most important elements in human experience but is often underestimated by religious people. Especially the excitable kind of religious people of whom we probably have some here this evening. Let’s not speak too much in detail but let’s say people like Pentecostals or Charismatics or other strange people like that! I’ve been one of them for nearly 50 years now so if you’re strange, I’m strange too, don’t be offended. There’s a tendency to think it all depends on emotions, on what I feel. If I feel it it’s there, if I don’t feel it it’s not there, and if I’m going to do something I have to feel it first. That is really a misunderstanding and has led to a lot of problems. The decisive factor in human experience is not the emotions, it’s the will.

Many Bible commentators suggest that the human soul has three main elements. The will, the intellect and the emotions. So, emotion has an important part but it’s not the decisive part. What decides what we do, what we experience, how we live is our will. It’s the will that makes the decisions for us.

I’d like to read a passage from Psalm 103 which illustrates this principle in a rather vivid way. A very familiar psalm, I’m sure, to many of you. David is speaking and he says:

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.”

Now, David is speaking to his own soul. How can a person speak to his own soul? Well, I’ll tell you how I understand this. I believe that David’s spirit was in direct contact with God. I believe it’s the spirit that contacts God direct but the soul initiates action. And what we do with our bodies is the result of our soul’s decision. David, through his direct, personal contact and communion with the Lord, saw that it was appropriate to bless the Lord. But he had to get his body to do it. And so he had to go through his soul. So his spirit said to his soul, “bless the Lord.” And when the soul turned the switch, then his body began to bless the Lord. So, our spirit is what enables us to have direct communion with God. God is Spirit, those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Worship is a function of the spirit. But acting out the things that we receive through worshipping God requires the cooperation of the soul and of the body. And so, David’s spirit said, “Soul, come on, wake up. Don’t just be passive, don’t be indifferent, don’t accept all God’s blessings without responding. So, bless the Lord.”

And then he enumerates six wonderful blessings. God forgives all our iniquities, He heals all our diseases, He redeems our life from destruction, He crowns us with lovingkindness and tender mercy, He satisfies our mouth with good things and, as a result, He renews our youth like the eagle.

There was a time in my life when I was very content with the fact that He heals all our diseases. But I have reached that stage in life where it’s important to know that He also renews our youth like the eagle. But you see, all those blessings are there potentially but to experience them, to appropriate them, to enter into them we have to respond in faith. And it takes the decision of our soul to make that response. So, a lot of people, a lot of Christians believe it all in theory. They say, “I believe the Bible from cover to cover.” It’s important to believe what’s between the covers, too. But, just believing it passively doesn’t really do much for it. There has to be a response. And the response is initiated by our soul.

You could say the soul has three functions. The will, I want; the intellect, I think; and the emotions, I feel. But what we think and what we feel is only effective in our life when our will takes the initiative and makes things happen.

So I’m going to speak about certain important elements of the Christian life which depend on a decision. You see, if you don’t know how to make the right decision you’ll be like a leaf on a stream, just carried wherever the stream goes. You may be carried off into an eddy, a backwater and just go on going round and round and round. Or you may get carried down into a kind of torrent that takes you away outside of your own control. That’s not how God intends His people to live. Moses said something very interesting to Israel which I’ve often pondered on. He said, “If you are living under the blessing of God you’ll be the head and not the tail.” I wanted to know and enjoy the blessing of God, I asked God once what’s the difference between the head and the tail. And I felt that the answer God gave me was this. The head makes the decisions, the tail gets dragged around. So, let me ask you this right now. How are you living? Are you living like a head? Are you making the decisions and seeing them carried out? Or, are you living like a tail just being dragged around by circumstances and pressures over which you have no control? You’ll never change that until you learn to make the right decision.

I’m going to speak about various things in the Christian life which are the product of decision. The first and I think undoubtedly the most important is repentance. The Greek word used in the New Testament meaning to repent in secular Greek is translated this way. So we’re talking about changing your mind. You were doing one kind of thing, now you’re going to do another kind of thing. You were walking one way, now you’re going to turn around and walk the other way. That’s the essence of repentance. The Hebrew word in the Old Testament means to turn around. That’s very typical. Greek focuses on the mind, Hebrew focus on what you do with your body. But repentance is both. It’s making a decision to turn around but then it’s turning around.

The perfect example is the prodigal son. You remember he’d gone far away from his father, was in a terrible situation, starving without proper food or clothing. And he made a decision. He said, “I will arise and go to my father.” That was the turning point in his experience. But he also arose. He didn’t just say it, he did it. And those two things put together are repentance. Every time a human being gets away from God and out of the will of God, the first step back to God is repenting. If we don’t learn to repent we cannot live in real close fellowship with God.

Repentance is emphasized tremendously in the New Testament. And it’s somewhat ignored by many sections of the church and by quite a number of preachers. I’ve no desire to be critical but Ruth and I were in Singapore, I think a couple of years ago, and it was a large conference. There was a man preaching on healing. It was an excellent message on healing just filled with the word of God but at the end he said, in essence, “Now, if you want all these wonderful blessings just come forward and pray.” But he was talking to people, most of whom were idolaters who had on background in Christian knowledge at all. And when they came forward and started to pray there was real confusion because he’d missed out that one vital requirement—repent, change your mind, turn your back on what you’ve been involved in and then pray.

Listen to some of the things in the New Testament. There was a man who was sent before Jesus to prepare the way for him. What was his name? John the Baptist. And what was his message in one word? Repentance. And Jesus could not come to Israel until the hearts of the Jewish people were prepared by the message of John, “Repent.”

And when Jesus came a little later on in Mark 1:15, he said:

“The time is at hand, the kingdom of God has come...”

What’s the first requirement?

“...repent and believe the gospel.”

Not just believe but first repent then believe. Make a decision. You’ve been living the wrong way, God has not been at the center of your life, you’ve been ignoring his requirements, change your mind and then you can believe. I don’t believe that true New Testament faith is possible without repentance. I used to spend a lot of time counseling people, I don’t do very much of that now because I give my time to public ministry. But I eventually came to the conclusion that 50 percent of the problems that people came with would not exist if they had repented. That one requirement would eliminate half their personal problems.

And then right at the end of His earthly ministry, after His resurrection, in Luke 24:47, Jesus reminded His disciples of prophecies about His death and resurrection:

“Thus it was appropriate for the Messiah to die, and to be raised again...”

And then he says:

“...repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”

Notice He didn’t say begin with forgiveness, He said begin with repentance. Repentance is the first move of any soul who wants to come to God.

And then on the Day of Pentecost after the Holy Spirit fell and the multitude of Jewish listeners were convicted, they said:

“Men and brethren, what shall we do?”

And Peter gave them a one verse answer which says it all.

“Repent, let every one of you be baptized, and in the name of Jesus receive the Holy Spirit.”

That’s God’s answer today. Repent, be baptized, receive the Holy Spirit. But what was the first requirement? Repent, that’s right.

And then in Acts 17:30, when speaking to a totally different kind of audience, the people of Athens, not religious, not Jewish, intellectual humanistic, Paul said:

“God has overlooked the times of your ignorance but He now commands all men everywhere to repent.”

If he commands all men everywhere to repent, no one anywhere is left out.

And then in Acts 20:21, Paul reminded the elders of the church at Ephesus of the ministry and the message that he had exhibited amongst them. He said:

“Testifying both to Jews, and to Greeks, [first of all] repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.”

So never begin with faith. Begin with repentance. Many of your struggles for faith would be resolved if you had truly repented.

Then further on right at the end of the New Testament in the book of Revelation, Jesus sent messages to seven churches in the province of Asia. We won’t turn there but to five out of the seven churches His first requirement was repent. Do Christians sometimes need to repent? I would say the proportion is at least as great as it was Ephesus. Five out of seven.

Now, whereas we have to make the decision, we need to bear in mind that we cannot make the decision without the help of the Holy Spirit. The initiative actually comes from God, it always does. And there’s a beautiful verse in the book of Lamentations which probably some of you have not given too much attention to. But it’s the laments of the prophet Jeremiah after his prophecies for the destruction of Jerusalem had been fulfilled. And it’s a book of grieving over God’s judgment and over the failure to repent in time. And right at the end in the 5th chapter, verse 21, there’s this pathetic plea:

“Turn us back to you, O Lord, and we shall be restored.”

But if you look in the margin of the New King James it says “we shall be turned back.” And that’s the literal translation. So, the prophet says turn us and we shall be turned. The first move comes from God. If God doesn’t turn us, on our own we are unable to turn. But on the other hand, if God begins to turn us, we will not turn unless we make the right decision.

I suppose this is the most critical moment in the life of any human soul. It’s the moment when the Holy Spirit is saying, “Turn, I’ll help you.” And we have to decide am I going to cooperate with the Holy Spirit or am I going to shrug it off and say I don’t want to? But your decision is what makes the difference. The Holy Spirit will plead with you, the Holy Spirit will move upon you but He will not make the decision for you. Jesus said in John 6:44:

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”

So there’s that moment when God is drawing and we have to make a decision. Am I going to come or am I going to resist? And if we shrug it off and refuse the pleading and the drawing of the Holy Spirit, we never have any guarantee that we’ll have another opportunity.

When I came to know the Lord Jesus about 48 years ago now, I didn’t have any doctrinal knowledge of salvation or the gospel. I was just a highly educated Anglican. I mean, I knew a lot of things but I didn’t know the gospel. I’m not blaming the Anglican church but that’s the way it was with me. I mean, I was totally ignorant of the basic truths of salvation. And God dealt with me sovereignly, supernaturally alone one night in an army barrack room. I was serving with the British army. I realized that I could get it that night. It was a frightening experience because the power of the Holy Spirit came upon me and all sorts of things began to happen to me which weren’t in the prayer book! A lot of them were in the Bible but I didn’t know that. More than once I said I think this is too much, I don’t want to go this far. Each time I did, the thought came to me, “Now, you’ve come this far tonight. If you stop now you may never get this far again.” And in all my ignorance and my carnality I had a clear understanding of one thing. God was speaking to me and dealing with me and if I didn’t respond He might never speak to me again. And that was really why I yielded. I’m not saying God would never have spoke to me but I had absolutely no right to claim it or to expect it.

And I want to tell you one thing, I am so glad I responded. In 48 years I’ve never regretted it once. It hasn’t been easy, I’ve encountered lots of things that nobody told me I would encounter but I have never felt the least inkling of a desire to turn back. For me, there’s nothing to turn back to. It’s all ahead of me. But that was the moment that I made a decision. And that decision has determined the course of my life for the last 48 years. I’m not offering you a theory, I’m not speculating. I was there when it happened. I know it’s real.

Let’s come to another very important thing in the Christian life which also requires a decision. Many of you, I think, might not realize this. It’s forgiving. A lot of people think that forgiving is an emotion. And my attitude is I can’t forgive so and so because I don’t feel forgiving. You don’t have to feel forgiving, you have to will forgiving. Forgiving another person is not an emotion, it’s a decision. It doesn’t affect your emotions. It may in due course but it centers in your will.

I used to know how to preach to get people to come forward to the, quote, altar. I would see them kneel there and cry a little and get a little bit emotional. I’d think that’s wonderful but I discovered that in most cases they didn’t change the way they lived. And if another preacher came along six months later with a similar message, they’d come forward and have a little cry at the altar again. I’d say to myself what’s the good of that? If it doesn’t change the way they live, what’s the use? See, I was appealing to their emotions but it was their will that decided the way they were going to live.

Forgiving is extremely important for every believer because if you don’t know how to forgive, you’ll end up unforgiven. In Mark 11, Jesus is speaking about prayer and in verse 25 He says:

“Whenever you stand praying...”

This relates to any situation in which we’re praying.

“. . . if you have anything against anyone, [do what?] forgive him, that your father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.”

You see, if we retain unforgiveness in our hearts our prayers will be hindered. We will not get the answer to our prayer. So Jesus said whenever at any time when you’re praying, if you’re conscious you have something against another person, don’t go on praying. Stop. Put it right, forgive them. He doesn’t say wait till they come and ask you for forgiveness. That’s not what decides it. It’s your decision not theirs that matters. Forgive them if you have anything against anyone. Tell me what that leaves out. It leaves out nothing and it leaves out no one. In other words, you cannot afford to pray with unforgiveness in your heart. And that possibly is a reason why some of you have been struggling with the fact that you don’t seem to be getting your prayers answered. Maybe you’ve overlooked that simple condition. Don’t pray with unforgiveness.

Jesus said forgive. It doesn’t depend on what the other person does or does not do. It depends on you. You, by the grace of God, when the Holy Spirit prompts you has the power to forgive. Again, it’s just like repenting. Without the Holy Spirit you may not be able to do it. So again it’s a vital moment when the Holy Spirit is prompting you. Now you remember you still have got something in your heart against that lady from ten years back, the one who did or said such and such. God says, “I’m not going to move in answer to your prayer until you have forgiven.” In the Lord’s prayer, which I’m sure most of us are familiar with, it says “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” So we are entitled to ask forgiveness from God in the same proportion that we forgive others. Actually, the Greek is more vivid. It says forgive us our trespasses as we have forgiven those who trespass against us. The lesson is the same. Don’t pray with unforgiveness. Even if you want to say the Lord’s prayer, make sure that you’ve forgiven everybody before you start.

I have, I think, been able by the grace of God to help countless people by their simple understanding that forgiving is not an emotion. I’ve told people it’s like this, and maybe one category of persons that often are involved are wives who’ve been mistreated and may be betrayed by their husbands. So I say to such a wife, now listen, you have in your hand a stack of IOUs from your husband. I owe you love, I owe you care, I owe you support, I owe you respect. Those are perfectly legal, they’re valid IOUs. You can hold on to them but just bear in mind that up in heaven God has a stack of IOUs in His hand from you to Him. And God says let’s make a deal. You tear up your IOUs and I’ll tear up mine. But you hold onto yours and I’ll hold onto mine. Now, let’s say your husband owes you in figurative terms 10,000 pounds, dollars or whatever you think in. That’s a lot of money. But you owe God ten million pounds. So you see, forgiving somebody isn’t really being super-spiritual, it’s just enlightened self interest. I mean, if you will not forgive 10,000 for the sake of being forgiven ten million, you are not much of a business person. So that’s it. Jesus was so practical.

Well, I was teaching on this once a good many years ago now and right at the end of the message before I had time to do anything, a very smartly dressed woman of about 30, I would guess, came right down the aisle right up to me. I thought what is she going to do? Is she going to slap me in the face or—and she just looked me in the eye and she said, “Mr. Prince, I just want to tell you that while you were preaching I got rid of about $30,000 worth of IOUs.” Turned around and walked out! I didn’t have to counsel her, I didn’t have to pray with her, she got the message. So remember, forgiving is doing what? Tearing up the IOUs. And you’ll feel much better when it’s gone. It’s hard, there’s something in us that wants to hold on.

Let me say this, it’s not altogether relevant but it just comes to my mind. If you justify yourself God won’t do it for you. God justifies the ungodly. If you can justify yourself why should God do it? Sometimes we don’t let God justify us because we’re so busy justifying ourselves. But he did this and he did that. True. But that’s not the way God operates. And God has not changed His way of operation. So, if there has to be a change, guess who has to change? We do, that’s right. So just remember that next time you’re having a struggle forgiving somebody. Just get a little mental picture of God up in heaven with a heap of IOU’s from you to Him. I won’t say it’s easy. It’s hard to forgive somebody. But it’s worth it, it pays.

I want to go on to another thing, or two things related to one another which are a matter of decision. I think some of you would be surprised when I say that. But I’ll show you the scriptures. Life and blessing. Did you know that you have to choose? It’s in your hands. Let’s turn to Deuteronomy 30. This is not the first time I’ve preached these truths, and in many different parts of the world people have come up to me and said that message of yours on decision changed my life. They made it clear the change was for the better. Listen to what Moses says to Israel in Deuteronomy 13:19. It’s a very solemn moment, so solemn that God says, “I’m calling heaven and earth to witness.”

“I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore, choose life that both you and your descendants may live.”

So here’s the choices. On the one hand life and blessing. On the other hand death and the curse. And God says you choose. Did you realize that? A lot of you are struggling with situations in your lives that are simply due to the fact you never made the right choice. It’s a very solemn moment because when God says choose, we have to choose. And if we make no choice we’ve made the wrong choice.

I can recall when I was confronted by this verse. I was staggered to think that I had to choose. I thought to myself, do you mean to say that I determine whether I get life or death, whether I get a blessing or a curse? The language was so clear. The Holy Spirit made it so plain. And in a very, I would say, almost tentative way I said I’m going to choose life and blessing. If God gives me the choice, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m not going to ignore God and pretend that He never spoke and that there’s nothing to choose. I certainly don’t want death and curse. So I made the choice. And I’d have to say to the glory of God I got what I chose. Can you believe for that? Can you believe that God is saying to you, “I’m setting before you life and blessing on the one hand, death and curse? Now you choose.”

You see, some of you at one point or another in your life made a wrong choice. In one way or another you chose death. Ruth and I are astonished by the number of people that we have to deal with who actually wished to die. I might as well die, what’s the good of keeping on, it’s no use trying to live. That’s a choice. Thank God in His mercy He may give you the opportunity to unsay that. One of the scriptures that Ruth and I use, I think almost daily, is Psalm 118:17, which is a decision.

“I shall not die but live and declare the works of the Lord.”

Did you realize you have to make the decision? That doesn’t mean you’re going to live forever obviously. It means Satan isn’t going to kill you before your time. Remember, he’s a murderer and he kills people. Physically he destroys them. People that haven’t made the right decision.

Notice also something very important which is very vivid to me because I’ve just completed the first draft of a book on this theme of curse or blessing. So that’s why it’s particularly vivid to me. But notice that your choice affects your descendants. Choose life that you and your descendants may live. This is very clear all through the Bible. The choices that we make not only affect us, they affect our descendants. If we worship idols, the curse comes to three following generations after us. If we make the right choice, scripture says, the seed of the righteous will be blessed. God says His salvation is from generation to generation. That’s another reason why choice or decision is so important. We’re making decisions for our descendants.

Let’s take the United States. Contemporary Americans have decided to saddle their descendants with astronomical debt. Totally irresponsible. I think the national indebtedness of the United States is one trillion dollars—if you can even comprehend what that is. We aren’t going to have to pay. Our descendants, if we have any, are going to have to pay. That’s just one simple example.

The alcoholic who chooses to make alcohol his god, he’s not merely making a choice for himself, he’s making a choice that affects his descendants. The man who decides to be unfaithful to his wife and run off with another woman, that choice doesn’t affect him only. We all see today it affects the children and their children. And again, in the United States we have just three generations that were born out of marriage. Very, very common. It’s a fearful thought that the decisions we make are going to affect our descendants.

Now, if you make the decision, let me just read to you the beginning of the next verse. Deuteronomy 30:20:

“Choose life that you and your descendants may live, that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey his voice, and that you may cling to him.”

That’s what’s implied in the decision. In a certain sense, it’s not difficult. Your decision is to love the Lord, obey His voice and cling to Him.

Maybe there are some of you here this evening who need to make that decision for life and blessing. Maybe you feel like what I spoke about earlier, a leaf caught up in some whirlpool somewhere just going round and round and round. If you want to get out of it you’re going to have to make a decision. Not any decision but a decision that’s based on God’s word.

Let’s look at another thing that comes by decision. Humility. Did you realize that humility is a decision? Let me show you some scripture. 1Peter 5:5–6:

“Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility...”

It’s very interesting, that’s a very vivid simile because in the culture of that day a slave wore a special kind of apron which marked him out as a slave. And the word that Peter uses means put on the apron of slavery, let everybody see you’re here to serve. Be clothed with the apron of humility.

“...for God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

That could be another reason why you’re having a problem getting an answer to your prayer. Maybe you’re praying out of pride. God resists the proud who pushes against Him. So no matter how hard you push, God pushes harder. The Bible says God knows the proud a long way off. That’s where He keeps them. It is impossible to have access to God with pride.

See, I’ll give the application.

“Therefore, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time...”

What does the Bible say? It says humble yourself. I tell people as far as I understand it it’s not scriptural to pray to God, “Make me humble,” because God replies, “You humble yourself.” God can humiliate you—and He may have to—but only you can make yourself humble. Again, you cannot do it without the Holy Spirit. But it’s while the Holy Spirit is pleading lay down your pride and your arrogance, humble yourself.

Jesus uses a very vivid picture, a parable of a banquet, in Luke 14. He says when you’re invited to a banquet and you walk in and here’s the room spread out with all the tables and the chairs—this is the modern version of it. Don’t walk up to the head table and sit in the seat of the chief speaker because you’re going to be embarrassed. The emcee is going to come along in a little while and say, “I’m sorry, you can’t sit there. That’s for the chief speaker. Why don’t you take one of the tables in the corner?” And you get up off the platform and you walk to a seat in the corner, that’s embarrassing. Jesus said you don’t need to be embarrassed, just take the lowest place. Find a seat in the corner, sit there. See, that’s a decision, not a feeling. It’s a decision. You may not feel like it but you decide it. Then when you’re in the corner there’s only one direction you can go, that’s upward.

I love a poem of John Bunyan which really says it so clearly.

“He that is down need fear no fall.

He that is low no pride.

He that is humble ever shall have God to be his guide.”

When you’re on the floor, you can’t go any lower.

Ruth and I almost always before we have any major series of meetings, we take time in prayer and generally we end up on the floor on our face. Then at least I feel safe.

So there will be countless opportunities in your life to make the right decision to humble yourself, take the lowest seat. And then Jesus ended that parable with this statement.

“Every one that exalts himself will be abased, and every one that humbles himself will be exalted.”

So you make the decision. How high do you want to go? Go that much down and God will life you up. See, the perfect example is Jesus and the devil. The devil, as you know, was a main archangel outstanding for his wisdom and his beauty. But he decided he wanted to go higher, what happened? He fell. Jesus had no need to go higher because He was on an equal plane with God. What did He do? Humbled Himself and went down to the lowest point, death on a cross. And in Philippians 2:9, Paul says:

“Therefore [notice the therefore], God also highly exalted him and gave him the name above every name.”

Why was Jesus exalted? Not because He was a favorite son. Because He met the conditions. He humbled Himself. I can guarantee exaltation to any of you here. If you want to go higher, go lower. The result is guaranteed by the Lord. But remember, it’s not a feeling. What is it? It’s a decision, that’s right.

We have just time to go quickly through two more. The next is very different, it’s speaking or singing in tongues. Do you realize that that’s a decision? Let’s read quickly in 1Corinthians 14, Paul says in verse 14:

“For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my understanding is unfruitful.”

See, there’s where the spirit operates independent of the soul. That’s why speaking in tongues is such a decisive experience. It’s the only situation that I know of in which your spirit operates without depending on your soul. Your soul has to begin, your soul has to turn the switch, but after that you discover you have a spirit that is not part of your soul. I mean, I could speak on this for a long while but I need to move on. Paul says when I pray in a tongue, my spirit is praying but my understanding is inactive, it’s not producing anything. It doesn’t do your understanding any harm to be inactive sometimes, let me tell you that.

Then he goes on:

“What is the conclusion then? I will pray with the spirit [that is in tongues], and I will also pray with the understanding [with my mind]: I will sing with the spirit, I will also sing with the understanding.”

Notice Paul uses the words “I will” four times. I will, I will, I will, I will. Every one of those is a decision. Once you’re baptized in the Spirit, speaking in tongues is not the result of some external explosion, it’s a decision of your will. You can speak in tongues when you decide to. When God baptized me in the Holy Spirit, as I say, I didn’t know anything about the doctrine of all this. I didn’t know, first of all, that you had to go to church to saved so I got saved in an Army barrack room. Then I didn’t know that you had to wait six months after being baptized in the Holy Spirit to get any gifts of the Spirit so I immediately received the gifts of tongues and interpretation. And every time I spoke in tongues I interpreted. I didn’t know there was any other way to do it. Well, after awhile my mind became burdened with all the interpretations I was getting so I said to God, “Do I have to do this?” And God said, “No, you make the decision.” I realized I decided whether I would interpret or not. I decided whether I would speak in tongues or not. It wasn’t an expression of emotion. A lot of people who don’t have the experience think speaking in tongues is emotionalism. It isn’t. It’s a decision of the will.

It said on the day of Pentecost they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. This is very important. Who began to speak? The disciples, that’s right. And when they began to speak, the Holy Spirit gave them the words. But He did not do the speaking.

And when you speak in tongues, it’s just the same from that aspect as it speaking your own language. The difference is the language. And for that you’re dependent on the Holy Spirit. And here is where you have to operate in faith. You have to open your mouth and start to speak, not knowing what you’re going to say. Because without faith it is impossible to please God.

Let’s look quickly in Jude 20–21, the epistle of Jude which is just before the book of Revelation. And he says in verses 20–21:

“But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit keep yourselves in the love of God.”

Praying in the Holy Spirit, praying in tongues. You do it if you want to keep yourself in the love of God.

A little earlier on in the same epistle it says about the coming of the Lord in verse 15:

“He will execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

Notice the word ungodly occurs four times in that one verse. What is the prevailing climate of the latter days? Ungodly. How are you to keep yourself from being contaminated? By praying in the Holy Spirit. Don’t wait for emergency, don’t wait for a crisis. Make a practice of doing it. When you’re driving in your car alone, you can drive just as well speaking in tongues as you can not. When you’re in the bath, why not speak in tongues. Lots of people like to sing in the bath, sing in the Spirit.

I have discovered, I did this just recently in Israel, we’ve recently come from Israel. At the end of two days of teaching I invited people who have been released from the curse to enter into the blessing. I said come forward and receive the blessing, that’s the Holy Spirit. And about 40 people came forward and I think all except one was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she had to put some things right in her life and I heard just by coincidence she later received. And after they had been speaking in tongues for a while I said why stop at speaking, let’s all sing in tongues. And within thirty seconds all those people were singing in tongues. I’m not afraid to be an example because I cannot sing one note if it’s with my understanding. But when I just launch out in faith and sing in tongues, it sounds good to me! I don’t know about other people.

Finally, one more important decision, and we’ll be dealing with this much more fully in our next session. For the sake of completeness, let’s look at it now. Proverbs 1:28–29, a warning to people who fool around with God’s mercy, people who don’t respond to God’s call.

“Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but they will not find me: [they left it too late. Why?] Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord.”

The fear of the Lord is something that we have to choose. Many, many people don’t realize that. It’s not an emotion, it’s a decision.

Now, I would like you for a moment or two just to look through that list. I’ll read it out. These are not all the things that are the result of a decision, they’re just six examples. The first and much the most important is repentance. Remember what I said? It’s changing your mind. I’ve been doing things one way, my way; now I’m going to change and do them God’s way. And remember, your way is never God’s way. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and God calls that iniquity. Even if it’s a religious way.

Then forgiving. Tremendously important because your own being forgiven depends on understanding this. Forgiving is not an emotion, it’s a decision.

Life and blessing. I could preach for a week on that one theme. But the key that opens the door is your decision.

I thought about this little example. Here in Britain when you have an electrical power outlet in the wall and you want to plug something in you’ve got a three prong plug, some places don’t have that, and you prong in the three prong plug but you still don’t get the power. What else do you have to do? Switch on. Well, we don’t have to do that in a lot of places. So Ruth and I tend to plug in and try and use the apparatus and it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work if you don’t use the switch. What’s the switch? My will.

Humility is a decision.

Speaking or singing in tongues is a decision.

The fear of the Lord is a decision.

Now in just the closing few seconds, why don’t you ask the Lord to show you if there’s some decision in that list that you need to make. And then quietly in the privacy of your own heart, you make that decision.