<TITLE>12. Par 87-102</TITLE>L-87 "Well, Lord, if You'll just bless me and do this for me, I'll do so-and-so." That's not a decision.
"God, I don't care what you do with me; I'll go anyhow. If I die, all right. Live or die, or whatever, if they laugh at me, make fun of me, don't make any difference, I'll go anyhow." That's clean cut decisions, like Rebekah made 'fore she even seen Isaac.
Her parents said, "Let the girl answer. The girl, she's of age, let her answer."
She said, "I'll go": clean cut decision, quickly made. She clave to it. That's what Ruth did. Orpah went back.

L-91 They journeyed on. Ruth in her heart, not knowing where she was going, but a type of the church... We sojourn like Abraham, pilgrims in a strange land, among strange people. And on she went, and finally she came into the room and the place where Naomi was bringing her. And what did she find? Everybody patting her on the back and saying, "Ruth, we're glad to have you down here"? She found discord. She found something evil. She found trouble.
And preachers that'll tell you that the--the Christian life is a flower bed of ease, he either is deceiving you or he's never accepted that experience himself. The world hates you. And the people will hate you. You've got to take the way of the Lord's despised few, and be laughed at, and made fun of, or anything else. You got to be different. You're borned of another nation.

L-93 My wife (As I have... We'll--we'll quote it again; it seems so well to do it.) asked me, "Why don't the Christian women wear those clothes like the other women do?" I said... Said, "We're all Americans, aren't we?"
I said, "No, sir."
"Well, what are we?"
I said, "We're neither Germans, French, Belgiums, Swiss, Africans, or Americans; we're none of them."
"But what are we?"
I said, "We're Christians." American acts like American; German acts like a German, because that's their national spirit. And we have a national Spirit. That's the Holy Spirit coming from God out of heaven, and you act like that. Makes you conduct yourself as they do up there. Because you are of another world.
We're living in America; that's true. That's the body part. But the soul that conducts us, our character is from above. We live from above because we're born from above. All Christians come from above. Jesus said, "I'm not from below; I'm from above. If I was from below, My subjects would fight for Me, but My Kingdom is of above." And so is every man that's born of the Kingdom of God, He's from above.

L-100 Now, watching now, as we go on we find them coming into disappointments. Is that where you come into when you got the Holy Spirit? Sure did. I did: making fun of and everything...
Then notice, life was hard for her. And it's hard after you become a Christian. Because you got to adjust yourself from one life of gaiety and pleasures of the world, to another life of consecration to God. You've got to readjust yourself, over into this side.

L-102 And Ruth had to adjust herself from being in a land where plenty to eat, and everything respected, to a people that was laughing, making fun of her; into a land she gleaned in the fields for what she eat. Put it in her scarf and take it home, and beat it out and make some bread, and her and her mother-in-law eat it.
When she was there, they come to find out, while she was gleaning, or going to glean... Now, she made her decision; that was her deciding. Now, the next thing she has to do is serve.
And that's what the church has to do. The church, after making your decision, you have to serve, serve God according to His diagram, according to His blueprint. You must serve God.


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