It's good to be with you again at the beginning of a new week, sharing with you some of the keys to successful living that God has placed in my hand through many years of personal experience and Christian ministry. In my talks last week, I was opening up for you some pages from my life's book. I was sharing with you in an intimate way personal experiences in my walk with God that had built my faith and shaped my life's destiny.

This week, I'll continue with this theme, opening up for you more pages from my life's book. In my talks last week, I shared with you about my search for truth as a young man. Looking for the meaning of life, I had failed to find it in the form of Christianity I was raised in. I turned to philosophy and to yoga, but again I failed to find what I was looking for.

Drafted into the British Army as a hospital attendant in World War II, I decided to study the Bible, only to be disappointed yet once more. I couldn't find any coherent message in the Bible. Then I met a Christian family who were different, humble, uneducated, but different. Being with them in their home, I realized two things about them.

The first was that for them the Bible was a meaningful, up-to-date book. The second was that they had a real, personal relationship with God. Eventually, I decided to pray and ask God for whatever this family had. But once again I was baffled on the point of giving up. I found I didn't know how to pray. I didn't know whom to pray to.

And then suddenly I made contact with two things, a power and a person. Finally, I identified both the power and the person. The power was the Holy Spirit. The person was Jesus. I discovered that the truth is a person. Very soon after I had come to know Jesus in this real and personal way, my company was sent overseas to North Africa, and I spent the next three years in the deserts of North Africa, Egypt, Libya, and the Sudan.

It's interesting to trace in the Bible how God sometimes used the desert to prepare his people for their future service. There are some very vivid descriptions of desert in the Bible. For example, Jeremiah 2:6. They did not ask, "Where is the Lord who brought us up out of Egypt and led us through the barren wilderness, through a land of deserts and rifts, a land of drought and darkness, a land where no one travels and no one lives?"

I remember once in the desert reading that verse to my fellow soldiers, and they all agreed that it was an exact description of the situation in which we found ourselves. Let me read those words to you just once more.

"A land of deserts and rifts, a land of drought and darkness, a land where no one travels and no one lives." The desert strips away from us the non-essentials and brings us down to the basics of life. In the material realm, these basics are four: water, food, shelter, and transportation.

In the spiritual realm also, my years in the desert stripped away many non-essentials and brought me down to the spiritual basics. I'm reminded always when I think back to that time of how Moses described God's dealings with Jacob, that is with Israel, when he led them through the desert.

This is what Moses says in Deuteronomy chapter 32:verse 10. He, that is the Lord, found him in a desert land and in the waste howling wilderness. He led him about. He instructed him. He kept him as the apple of his eye.

I see there four successive stages, all of which were fulfilled in my experience. First the Lord finds us, then he begins to lead us. And as we are willing to be led by him, he instructs us. And as we are willing to be instructed, he keeps us. But his keeping us depends on our being led and indestructible.

Let me read those words again. They're so vivid. He found him in a desert land and in the waste howling wilderness. He led him about. He instructed him. He kept him as the apple of his eye.

One thing especially that God revealed to Israel in the desert was the real source of nourishment and life. Again, I'll read the words of Moses in Deuteronomy 8:verses 2 and 3, where he reminds Israel of their experience during the 40 years in the wilderness.

"And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness, these forty years, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you, and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone.

But man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord." There's the lesson that the real source of life is not just physical, material bread, but the real source of life is that which comes out of the mouth of the Lord. Another translation says the word that comes out of the mouth of the Lord.

But the real life source is God and his word. And in order that Israel might learn that, God humbled them. He tested them. And in particular, he allowed them to be hungry. And I will tell you from experience in the desert, being hungry is a test.

There were many, many days we really did not have enough to eat. We only had brackish water to drink and very little of that. I was in charge of a group of eight men who were called stretcher bearers, though they did very little stretcher bearing.

There were also two drivers that shared the driving of the big three-ton truck that we traveled through the desert on. So altogether there were ten men and myself on that truck. Before very long the rest of our company had dubbed us Prince's Pioneers because I was the one in charge of this group on this, this motley group on this truck.

But I'll tell you that being hungry brings things out in you that you don't know are there. I remember how many times it was a test of unselfishness and discipline whether we would be content with our rations or whether we'd try to cheat or one man would try to get some rations that belonged to another man.

It really was a humbling experience. But in it all, God showed me that he had made provision for my spiritual life through the Bible, the Word of God, and through the Holy Spirit. The Bible was my manner. I lived by that day by day.

I remember the words of Job when he says, "I esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food." I could honestly say that that was true of me. If I had to choose between eating or reading the Bible, I chose reading the Bible. I was living by the words that proceeded out of the mouth of God there in that desert.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 10, Paul also brings out some of the lessons that God taught Israel during their years in the wilderness, in the desert. And he reminded the Christians to whom he was writing that those lessons had an application for them also.

This is what he says in 1 Corinthians chapter 10:verses 1 through 4. "For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea. Our fathers means Israel.

And all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ."

There were four experiences appointed for all of God's people. All of them shared in those four experiences. The first two experiences were single events, two baptisms, two immersions. All God's people were baptized.

To Moses, their leader, that is, set apart to Moses as their leader by a double baptism. The baptism in the cloud, which corresponds to the baptism in the Holy Spirit for us as Christians, and the baptism in the sea, which corresponds to water baptism. Those two baptisms set those people apart to Moses, their leader.

And by our two baptisms, in water and in the Holy Spirit, we are set apart to Jesus Christ as our leader.

After that, for Israel in the wilderness, there were two ongoing daily experiences. Every day they ate of the manna, which God provided supernaturally from heaven, and every day they drank of the water from the rock.

And Paul says that rock was Christ, the Messiah. So they had a double source of spiritual nourishment. The manna, which corresponds to God's word. The water which corresponds to the Holy Spirit.

And so it was in my period there in the desert. I lived by the Word and by the Spirit.

In three years in the desert, I gained a basic knowledge of the Bible. I read it through a number of times, and I discovered that the interpreter of Scripture is the Holy Spirit.

In God's marvelous provision for us, the Holy Spirit, who is the author of Scripture, also becomes our teacher and our interpreter. And I discovered that wherever I needed to know anything in the Scripture that was practical and relevant to my spiritual life, the Holy Spirit would always lead me to the answer.

As a matter of fact, when I started attending churches some years later, I discovered that there's much more in the Bible than we hear about in most churches. And I was disappointed many times at how little the churches had to tell us of the Bible.

But I learned one thing which I have always kept with me. I learned to judge the church by the Bible and not the Bible by the church.

It's good to be with you again today as I continue to open up with you some of the pages from my life's book.

The title I've chosen for my talks this week is "Discipled in the Desert." I'm sharing with you lessons that God taught me during the three years that I served as a hospital attendant with the British forces in North Africa during World War II, the years from 1941 to 1944.

Yesterday I pointed out how God sometimes uses the desert to prepare his people for their future service. The desert strips away from us the non-essentials and brings us down to the basics of life. This is true both in the natural and in the spiritual realm.

When God led Israel through the desert for 40 years, he provided them with two basic forms of nourishment, the manna that they gathered every morning and the water from the rock that they drank.

In my experience, I saw that God had made a corresponding provision for me. My manner was the Bible, as I read it each day. The water from the rock for me was the Holy Spirit within me. It was He within me, the Holy Spirit, who made the Bible a living, up-to-date, personal message for me.

I discovered that the Holy Spirit, who is the author of the Bible, also is given to us by God to be its interpreter, to be our teacher, to lead us into all the truth.

Today I'm going to share with you one particular way in which the Holy Spirit made certain truths of the Bible very real and personal to me. I need to give you a little picture of our way of life.

We traveled almost incessantly. Desert warfare is extremely mobile. We traveled on a three-ton truck, and I explained yesterday that on this truck there traveled eight men called stretcher bearers.

That was the official military title. Two men who were responsible for driving and maintaining the truck. Myself, who was in charge of the total group. And I mentioned yesterday that the rest of our company dubbed us Prince's Pioneers.

We had a little flag with that title on that we would put up every time we stopped for the night.

When we stopped for the night, we usually slept out in the open desert. And I discovered that the desert, though it's usually hot in the daytime, very, very quickly becomes cold at night.

Sand gathers heat very quickly, but also loses it very quickly. And so there was an art in learning where to sleep and how to keep warm.

I usually used my boots as my pillow.

And we would try to have one of the wheels of the truck to shelter us from whatever direction the wind was coming from. And then we were each allotted four blankets.

It's almost comical when I look back how important those blankets were to us.

But I had one particular blanket, which really was my most cherished material possession. I think it must have been a horse blanket originally, and it was at least twice as large as any normal blanket, but it only counted as one.

So I had three blankets plus this great large horse blanket.

And I learned to stretch them out on the sand and put some under me and some over me and sleep in such a way that I was almost shut off from the wind and the cold.

And I had a kind of little nightly home there inside my four blankets.

Well, I was just a new believer and there were many things about the spiritual life I didn't understand and I was continually questioning God.

I wanted to know why we had to go on like this day after day and what good was it doing and why couldn't God get me out of the army and he knew that I wanted to serve him and really I had a lot of questions and a lot of complaints and I was far from being restful at times.

So one night I wrapped myself up in my blankets and lay down there in the sand. We usually went to sleep just about the time the sun set and got up when the sun rose because we had no artificial light.

And as I lay there with these questions in my mind, arguing with God, why was he allowing all this to go on? And didn't he know how useful I could be to him if I could get out of the army?

I found myself in a strange way, and I believe it must have been by the power of the Holy Spirit, pinned down on my back on the desert sand.

And the blankets were wrapped about me in a strange way so that I couldn't move. And my arms were stretched out horizontally from my body.

So I was lying there on my back with my arms stretched out horizontally, the palms upwards.

And in some strange way, I couldn't get into another position. It was as though I was just pinned down by these blankets.

And suddenly I realized that I was exactly in the position of a person being crucified on a cross.

That is exactly the position in which burial took place in the customs of the Bible.

So I realized not only was I crucified with Christ, but I was also buried with Christ. While a person is crucified, they're still visible. They still show. But when a person is buried, they've been put out of sight. They're no longer visible. There's no longer any evidence of their life.

And I saw again, as I turned to the New Testament and read its pages, that that's how God saw me.

I'll give you just one scripture out of several that speak about the fact that we are buried with Christ.

Colossians 2:12 says this, "Having been buried with him in baptism, and raised with him through your faith in the power of God. Who raised him from the dead."

So I saw that I was buried with Christ, and that only through burial could I enter into the resurrection life that God had for me.

I had to be first crucified, then buried, and then I could be resurrected.

But I noticed there that it said, "buried with him in baptism," and somehow that lodged in my mind and started a train of thought.

Nearly a year later, after I'd been in the desert for almost a year and had not once seen a paved road in nine or ten months, the army gave me a brief leave and permitted me to go to Jerusalem.

So in 1942, I went to Jerusalem for the first time. Going to Jerusalem from the desert sand was really like going to heaven from hell.

The first time I saw Jerusalem, I fell in love with her.

And I have to testify now that I've been in love with her ever since.

But while I was in Jerusalem,

I was introduced to a Christian minister who explained to me the spiritual and the scriptural basis of water baptism.

And God gave me the wonderful privilege of going down one day in August 1942 to the River Jordan just by the Allenby Bridge.

Here is the cleaned-up version of the sermon transcription:

And there, on the basis of my faith in Jesus as my Savior, I was immersed in the waters of the Jordan, baptized, probably not more than a quarter of a mile from the place where Jesus himself had been baptized by John the Baptist. And so I was actually buried with Christ by baptism. And I discovered that that produced some important changes in me. I had had a wonderful deliverance from my old way of life. I was indeed like a dead man, but many of the old pictures and scenes and incidents remained in my mind and came up to trouble me.

After I'd been baptized there in the River Jordan, I realized that those pictures and scenes and memories from the past had been erased. They were no longer there. They no longer troubled me and accused me and tormented me. And so I saw that it's important not merely to be dead, but to be buried. It's not enough that we have a dead body, but that body, to be dealt with in a proper way, must be buried.

Baptized, must be immersed, must be buried, and that lesson God taught me there in the wilderness, in the desert, and then in the River Jordan. It's good to be with you again as we continue to turn together some of the pages from my life's book, and I share with you some of the lessons God has taught me in a lifetime walk with Him.

The title of my talks this week is Discipled in the Desert. Shortly after I had come to know the Lord in a personal way in World War II, I spent three years serving as a hospital attendant with the British forces in the deserts of North Africa.

God used this period of my life to teach me, from the Bible and from personal experience, many of the basic lessons of the Christian life. Yesterday I shared with you how the Lord showed me, in a very vivid way, two aspects of my identification with Christ, that I had been crucified with Christ and also that I had been buried with Him.

Today I'm going to share with you two further practical lessons that God taught me during this period. The first lesson relates to fasting. Before I say anything about this, perhaps I should give a brief definition of what I mean by fasting.

By fasting, I understand abstaining from food deliberately by choice for spiritual purposes. I say abstaining from food because in most cases in the Bible where people fasted, they abstained from food but not from water. Sometimes they also abstained from water, but that was something of an exception. So I'm talking now about fasting as abstaining from food by deliberate choice, even when food is available for spiritual purposes.

One of the things that the Holy Spirit showed me immediately, I think more, only maybe four weeks after I'd come to know the Lord in a personal way, The Holy Spirit showed me that fasting is a normal part of Christian life and discipline. It's not something strange or way out that a few fanatics sometimes practiced. It's a normal part of Christian life and discipline.

As a matter of fact, later on, when I was able to attend churches and hear preachers, I was astonished that so many Christians seemed to know nothing whatever of what the Bible had to say about fasting. And yet the Bible is full of fasting, not least the New Testament. For instance, Jesus himself fasted, and he assumed that his disciples would fast.

In the Sermon on the Mount, when he was laying down the principles of the Christian life, in chapter 6, he said to them, when you fast. He didn't say, if you fast, he said, when you fast. In other words, he assumed that they would be fasting, and he gave them the principles to follow.

In chapter 6, he says when about three things, when you give alms, when you pray, and when you fast. Clearly, he assumed that all his disciples would do all three of those things, give alms, pray, and fast.

If we look on in the... New Testament, we find that the early church fasted and that its leaders fasted. Paul said of himself that he was often in fastings. It was a thing that he practiced frequently.

If you look back in the Old Testament, you find that many of God's most faithful servants fasted. To name just a few, Moses, David and some of the other kings, Elijah, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. And you find that in some cases, the fasting of God's people brought down divine intervention and changed the course of history.

At any rate, without my knowing all these facts from the Bible, the Holy Spirit just showed me that God wanted me to fast. And so, in the desert, for two or three years, I normally fasted each Wednesday. I went without food all Wednesday. The reaction of my fellow soldiers was somewhat amusing.

Those of you who know anything about the religion of Islam will know that the Muslims have one month in the year, called Ramadan, where they don't eat in the daytime. They eat plenty at night, but nothing in daytime. It's a month of fasting. Well, because we were in a Muslim country in Egypt, the British soldiers had learned a little about Ramadan.

So the soldiers in my particular company used to call Wednesday Ramadan because that was the day I fasted. Of course, I didn't make a show of fasting, but when you're living in close quarters with men every hour of the day and night, if you don't eat your meals, they certainly notice it.

The attitude of my fellow soldiers was rather remarkable. After they saw that my faith was genuine and that I was really leading a life that corresponded to what I believed, although they didn't want to join me in my faith, they respected me.

And in a strange way, they were glad to have me because in moments of danger, they considered to me to be a kind of insurance policy with them. More than once when we were in a real difficult situation, and once when our little medical unit was cut off behind the enemy lines and we didn't know where we were going to end up, I remember one of those tough, blaspheming British soldiers came to me and he said, Corporal Prince, I'm glad you're with us.

So although they didn't follow my example, they respected my life. And in many ways, I think I was a kind of help and protection to those soldiers. For two years in active service, we hardly lost one man out of that company. And that was a very unusual record in those circumstances.

Interestingly enough, Later, when I read the journal of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodists, I discovered that John Wesley practiced fasting regularly and that he would not ordain a man to the Methodist ministry who would not promise to fast each Wednesday and Friday till 4 p.m.

So I learned that God had shown this lesson to others, but he showed it to me individually and personally. I would like to just briefly mention three results in my life from fasting, three things that I experienced. First, I experienced a sense of the nearness of God. As I separated myself from material things, spiritual things became more real.

Secondly, I got special insight into Scripture in periods of fasting. And thirdly, I obtained specific answers to prayer through fasting. I want to give you one specific example of how God answered prayer for me when I fasted.

One of the things about desert conditions, which is very obvious in the history of the children of Israel, is that the desert tends to provoke murmuring or complaining. This happened with Israel many times and it often brought God's judgment and disfavor upon them and they had to repent well.

I have to say that I went through some of the same experiences. I began to complain many times. I got so weary of the desert and the food and the blaspheming British soldiers, and I said Lord why do you have to keep me here? Why can't you give me some other place to be?

And when I did this, I lost my sense of God's presence and blessing. I knew still somewhere that God was caring for me, that God was real, but my close and intimate personal relationship with God that had become so precious to me somehow seemed to have disappeared.

So one day I decided to set aside a special day, not a Wednesday, but some other day, to fast and to ask God the reason why his presence seemed to have been withdrawn from me. So I spent the whole day fasting. It was a day when we were not moving around. We were near some base depot.

And I said, God... Why aren't you near to me? Why do I have to continue in this monotonous, wearisome life in this desert? And by the evening, God gave me an answer. He spoke to me very clearly in words that I can record for you.

And he said this, Why have you not thanked me? Why have you not praised me?

And as I meditated on what God said, I began to see that I had become unthankful, that I had stopped thanking God and praising him. And that was why I had lost the sense of God's presence.

And so in that way, I learned the importance of continual thanksgiving and praise in the Christian life. And in due course, the Holy Spirit directed me to various scriptures along this line.

I'd like to share with you just two of those scriptures. The first is in 1 Thessalonians 5, verses 16 through 19. Paul says three or four very simple things. Rejoice always, even in the desert. Pray without ceasing. In everything, give thanks. In everything includes there in the desert with the flies and the sand and the bad food and the blaspheming soldiers.

In everything, give thanks. For this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit. The implication is that if we don't always rejoice, if we don't pray without ceasing, and if we don't give thanks in everything, we are quenching the Holy Spirit.

And that's what I had done. By murmuring and complaining, instead of praising and giving thanks, I had quenched the Holy Spirit in my life.

By murmuring and complaining, instead of praising and giving thanks, I had quenched the Holy Spirit in my life.

And then there's a passage in Hebrews 13, 15. Through him then, that's Jesus, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to his name.

And there again, I saw that as Christians, God expects us to continually offer up a sacrifice of praise, and that it comes from our lips, not just inwardly from our hearts, but from our lips, that we have to make our praise vocal, and it's by giving thanks to the name of the Lord.

And I saw that praise is a sacrifice. This was a real lesson for me that a sacrifice costs something. That I had to praise God the most when I felt like praising him the least.

And that that was when my praise was most acceptable to God. So I adjusted my life and I learned the discipline of giving thanks and praising God in every situation and circumstance.

And you know what I discovered? My circumstances didn't change. But I did, and when I changed, then my view of my circumstances became different too.

It's good to be with you again as I continue to share with you vital lessons of the Christian faith that God taught me during the three years in World War II that I served as a hospital attendant with the British forces in the deserts of North Africa.

For almost this entire time, I had no opportunity to attend a church or listen to a preacher. In a very real sense, God himself discipled me in three main ways. Through the Bible, through the Holy Spirit, and through the successive situations and circumstances in which I found myself.

Looking back, I see how God systematically arranged one situation after another in order to teach me the great basic principles that I would need in my subsequent service for him.

When I think about this, I'm always reminded of what Moses said about God's dealings with Jacob in Deuteronomy 32, verse 10. He, that is the Lord, found him in a desert land and in the waste howling wilderness. He led him about. He instructed him. He kept him as the apple of his eye.

The order there is important. God found him, he led him, he instructed him, he kept him. That's the order that God deals with us. First he finds us, then he leads us. If we're willing to be led, he instructs us. And if we're willing to be instructed, he keeps us.

But being instructed depends upon being led, and being kept depends upon being led and instructed. And that was the order in my life. God found me, he led me, he instructed me, and I thank God he kept me.

Today I'm going to share with you vital lessons that I learned through one year that I spent sick in the hospital as a patient. I was attached to, or I was part of, a medical unit that was attached to one of the main British armoured divisions in North Africa.

Our function was to provide medical services to the troops in the armoured division. We went together through the Battle of El Alamein, the great turning point in the war in North Africa. We shared in that victory, and we began the move westward across the Egyptian desert into Libya.

And I was moving with my company, but I became sick with a condition that was undoubtedly due to the desert, to the food, and possibly also to my emotional reaction to these things.

The skin on my feet and later on my hands became raw and sore and infected. After a while, I couldn't wear army boots, and then I found it difficult to walk.

The medical officer that I worked with valued my services, and he did everything he could to keep me out of hospital, but eventually he had to say, there's no alternative. I'll have to let you go into hospital.

So I was admitted into a hospital in Libya. And later transferred to a hospital in Egypt and then to another hospital in Egypt. But one way and another, I spent almost exactly one year on end in British military hospitals in North Africa.

Much of the time, I was a bed patient. My condition would clear up temporarily, but the moment I began to use my feet or expose myself to the sun or to the sand, the condition reopened. It was a comparatively common condition with British soldiers in those conditions.

I remember being in one ward with another British soldier who'd been two years in the Middle East and spent 18 months in hospital with that condition.

And apparently in the condition and with the facilities available to them at the time, the doctors really did not have a satisfactory medical answer. They gave my condition various long names. Each doctor picked a new name. Eventually it was characterized as chronic eczema. But whether it was chronic or not, or whatever the name was given, the medical profession in that situation didn't have apparently a complete cure.

As I lay there one year in the hospital, there were many, many battles going on in my mind. I had two main enemies that assailed my mind. Both of them begin with D. One was doubt, and the other was depression.

I'm sure that none of you have ever had problems with doubt or depression, or maybe you have. But I was a believer. I knew the Lord. I was committed to him. And yet I lay there having these raging battles in my mind against doubt and depression.

Had God forgotten about me? Did he really counsel me? Could he heal me? What was going to happen to me?

And one of the things I said over and over again was, I know that if I had faith, God would heal me. And the next thing I said was, but I know I don't have faith.

And every time I said, I don't have faith, I was right there in that dark, lonely valley of despair.

And then God sent help to me through his word, through one particular verse of scripture, Romans 10, 17. So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

I'm quoting the King James Version, which was what I was reading. And I laid hold of two words, faith cometh. They were like a ray of light in the darkness of that lonely valley. Faith comes. If you don't have it, you can get it. How does it come? I studied that verse over and over.

Faith cometh by hearing. Hearing what? God's Word. So if I wanted faith, if I needed faith, if faith was the answer, I could get it if I would hear God's Word.

I knew God's Word was there in my hands. The Bible that I held before me. The bible that i was looking at at that very moment how could i get faith by hearing what god was saying to me by his holy spirit through his word and i determined that's what i would do so i determined that i was going to get faith i determined that i was going to hear what god was saying to me

that I was going to try to shut out other voices, that I was not going to listen to doubt or to depression when they attacked my mind, but I was going to focus my entire attention on what God was saying to me in his word.

I thought of a practical way to do this. I armed myself with a blue pencil, and I decided I'd read through the entire Bible, and I would underline in blue, certain particular themes.

And I chose four related themes, healing, health, physical strength, and long life. And so in order to make myself focus on what God was saying to me about those four aspects of that total theme, I read through the Bible from beginning to end, underlining in blue everything that related to healing, health, physical strength, and long life.

I think it took me about four months to get through the Bible that way. And afterwards, when I'd finished the Bible and looked back through it, you know what I had? I had a blue Bible. There was hardly a page anywhere in the Bible where I had not had to use my blue pencil.

Interestingly enough, there were probably two books that contained the most blue pencil. I wonder if you can guess what they were. One was in the Old Testament, the other in the New. The Old Testament book was the book of Proverbs. The New Testament book was the Gospel of Matthew.

But the whole Bible was just filled with passages underlined in blue. And I suddenly realized that healing is one of the major messages of the Bible. That God is a healer.

I saw time and time again how God revealed himself to his people. Exodus 15, 26, I am the Lord that healeth thee. I am the Lord, your healer. Again and again, God said to his people, If you'll obey me, if you'll keep my covenant and my statutes, I'll put none of these evil diseases upon you. I am the Lord that healeth thee.

I read Ps

Here is the cleaned-up sermon transcription with proper punctuation, capitalization, and natural paragraphs:

Alm 103, Bless the Lord, O my soul. Forget not all his benefits, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases.

Again and again, this theme of healing went through. Matthew 8:17, himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses, and with his stripes we are healed. That's the edition of 1 Peter 2:24.

I saw that Jesus spent many, many hours of his ministry ministering to the sick, probably more time ministering to the sick than he spent actually preaching. And as I did this, my whole mental image of God underwent a radical change.

I think I'd grown up with a kind of boyish image of God as a, let me say it reverently, a rather irritable old man with a long beard somewhere a long way off in an office. And if you were in trouble, you had to go to his office. I think I pictured him like a kind of grumpy, unreasonable schoolmaster.

But now, through reading the Bible this way and hearing what God was saying to me through the Bible and focusing my attention on it, my picture of God changed. I saw God as a loving Father. I saw Him as one who planned the best. I saw that if I could commit my life to Him without reservation, He would arrange everything for the best.

That He loved me, that He cared for me, that He made provision for me, that He wanted the best for me. A whole kind of religious background fell away from me. I'd always had the impression that if you were going to be a Christian, you better prepare to be miserable.

I think it went back to those words in the Anglican church service that I heard so many times, "Pardon us, miserable offenders." And really, somehow it made such a deep impact on me that Christians were miserable people and that God was a harsh, stern, unreasonable God.

And then that image changed and I saw God as loving and wise and gracious and kind and able to provide for his people and keep them in every situation and circumstance. It's good to be with you again as we draw near to the close of another week.

My theme this week has been Discipled in the Desert. I've been sharing with you vital lessons in the Christian faith that God taught me during the three years in World War II that I served as a hospital attendant with the British forces in the deserts of North Africa.

Yesterday I shared with you how I became sick with a skin condition and had to spend a year in various military hospitals in Egypt. As I lay there week after week and month after month, I went through tremendous inner battles in my mind against doubt and depression.

But finally, the Holy Spirit directed me to the answer in God's Word, Romans 10:17. So then, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. The words that became so real and vivid to me were, "Faith cometh." If I did not have faith, I could acquire it.

There was a way to get it. Faith comes. How does faith come? By hearing. Hearing what? God's word. So if I needed faith, I could acquire it if I would carefully listen to what God was saying to me through his word, the Bible.

I decided to do that to the best of my ability. I had a particular way that occurred to me. I armed myself with a blue pencil. I decided to read through the entire Bible from beginning to end and underlined in blue every passage that related to four related themes: healing, health, physical strength, and long life.

It took me about three or four months to do that. And at the end, when I'd finished and looked back, I had a blue Bible. I saw that healing is one of the main themes of the Bible. Healing is one of the main provisions of God for his people.

My image of God changed. I'd always pictured God as a kind of old gentleman who didn't like to be troubled, who was remote and unapproachable. And although my image had begun to change after I came to know the Lord Jesus, there was a residue of that attitude in me.

But now I began to see God as a loving Father, one who cares for his children, one who makes every possible provision for his children, one who always wants the best and is able to provide it. So I'm going to share with you today the second part of this story.

I'm going to share with you how after faith had come, faith in turn led me to healing. As I continued studying the Bible and seeking the truth about healing, I had one particular mental problem which was doubtless due to my background in philosophy.

It was hard for me to accept statements in their plain, straightforward meaning. When I look back and remember that we spent one term discussing whether the desk the philosophy professor was speaking from was really there, I can see how in a certain sense philosophy had trained me to doubt even the simplest things.

And this was a kind of mental problem that still troubled me even while I was reading the Bible and underlining in blue. It seemed to me that there were some things that were so simple they couldn't mean what they really said. And especially about physical healing.

I still had a sort of residue of what I would call a religious view that the body isn't really very important. God doesn't care much about the body. God cares about the soul. That's going to heaven and be with God. But the body is corruptible anyhow, and one day it's going to die.

And God isn't really too concerned in the meanwhile whether our body is well or sick or how it gets along. Now, there were many, many statements in the Bible that contradicted that, but I found it hard to take them at their face value.

For instance, in Psalm 103: David says, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases." That was so clear. But my philosophic mind said, Ah, but that's only diseases of the soul.

That doesn't mean physical diseases. That means mental and emotional diseases. Subsequently, I've studied the Bible in the original language, and I've come to see that's a completely impossible way of representing the meaning of the Hebrew word soul.

But at that time, it was a real problem for me. I said, sure, God heals, but he's really interested in spiritual healing. He's not much interested in our physical bodies. But then one day, the Holy Spirit directed me to a passage in Proverbs chapter 4, verses 20 through 22.

And this is the passage that got me out of hospital. And I want to emphasize the importance of being directed by the Holy Spirit. He's the one who directs us to that particular portion of the word which represents what we need to give us the faith that we need at any given moment.

This is the passage in Proverbs chapter 4, verses 20 through 22. Remember that reference. Proverbs 4:20 through 22. If you don't have a Bible with you, remember it and look it up when you get an opportunity.

This is what God says. "My son, he's talking to his children, to those who know him personally." My son, attend to my words, incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes, keep them in the midst of thine heart.

For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh. And when I got to those last words, "health to all their flesh," I said to myself, that settles it. Not even a philosopher can make flesh mean spirit. Flesh is flesh. It's my physical body.

And God says he's provided health for all my physical body. And then my philosophy helped me because I said to myself, logically, if I can have health in all my physical body, there can be no room for sickness anywhere.

Sickness and health are opposites. Where there's sickness, there isn't health. Where there's health, there isn't sickness. And then I looked in the margin of the Bible I was using, and the alternative reading there for health was medicine.

So I saw that God had provided medicine which he guaranteed would give me health in my whole physical body. And so I determined to take God's word as my medicine. I saw that God said it was his words and his sayings that would be health or medicine to all my flesh.

Now, I was a hospital attendant, and of course, one of my jobs had been giving people medicine. And again, I decided to be simple. I decided to be down to earth. I said to myself, I'm going to take God's word as my medicine.

Then I said, how do people take medicine? The answer used to be in those days, three times daily after meals. So I said, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take God's word as my medicine three times daily after meals.

So I decided to take God's word as my medicine. But as I did that, God spoke very clearly to my mind. He said this, he said, when the doctor gives you medicine, the directions for taking it are on the bottle.

He said, if you want me to be your doctor, This is my medicine bottle, and the directions for taking it are on the bottle. You'd better read them. So I looked back at the passage, and I saw that there were four clear directions for taking God's Word as my medicine.

The first... attend to my words. I had to give very careful, undivided attention to what God was saying. This was in line with what I'd already seen about how faith comes.

Second, incline thine ear unto my sayings. Now I saw that inclining or bowing down my ear meant bowing down my whole head, because you cannot bow down your ear without your head.

And I saw that bowing down my head meant taking a respectful and reverent and humble and teachable attitude toward God. Again, the problem came up that every time I read in God's Word about God's goodness and his willingness to heal and provide, I said to myself, that's too good to be true.

I really couldn't be understanding it right. And after I'd done that many times, one day the Lord spoke to me when I took that attitude. And he said this, he said, now tell me this, who is the teacher and who is the pupil?

And I thought it over and I said, Lord, you're the teacher and I'm the pupil. And the Lord said, well, would you mind letting me teach you? And I saw that's what it meant to incline your ear, to stop arguing, to stop telling God what he ought have said and to believe what he was saying.

You see, I was like many other people. I approached the Bible with my mind made up in advance through tradition and background as to what God ought have said. And if God said something different from what I thought, it was very difficult for me to hear Him at all.

So the second instruction is, incline your ear, bow down, be humble, don't argue with God, be teachable, let Him tell you. The third was, let them not depart from thine eyes. I saw that I had to keep my eyes focused on the promises of God, that if my eyes strayed from God's promises to other kinds of suggestions or other kinds of teaching that were not in line with the Word of God, then...

I didn't receive the healing effect of God's Word in my body. And the fourth was, keep them in the midst of thine heart. And I saw how true that is psychologically. God uses the eye gate and the ear gate. He says, incline your ear, focus your eyes.

In that way, through the ear gate and the eye gate combined, my word will come into your heart. And when it's in your heart, it will provide healing and health for all your flesh. The very next verse of Proverbs says, keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.

And that's very true. What you get in your heart is going to determine the issue of life. So I took God's Word as my medicine three times daily, after meals, faithfully, for about three or four months.

And I cannot go into all the details. Time is running out. But I received complete and permanent healing and health. And I've walked in that health for nearly 40 years from that day until now.

So God's Word is true. You can trust it. He does provide health to all our flesh. As I look back now on that situation in which I found myself, I see that I was at a kind of crossroads in my life.

I was confronted with the clear truth of God's Word, but as a philosopher I found it difficult to believe it so simply. And I realized that I had two alternatives. I could go on making things complicated and stay sick, or I could be willing to make things simple and get well.

And looking back, I'm so glad, so glad that I was willing to make things simple and get well. And let me offer that advice to you. Make things simple, believe God's Word, and get well.