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[Music] Speaking from the Glendale Presbyterian Church, Dr. Bruce W. Thielman asks, "Is somebody standing on your wings?"

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[Music] In the background, you can hear the voices of hundreds of Glendale Presbyterians coming together to worship. They are people who rejoice in being able to fly high

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in the atmosphere of faith with their Savior, Jesus Christ. But what do you do when you encounter people who make it difficult for you to fly? Earthbound people who don't lift you, but rather drag you down. Well, that's what I'd like to think about for a while today.

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I am grateful that you are going to be one of those to hear these words. I hope and pray that they will be worth something to you. It has been good for me to preach this message. I hope it will be good for you to hear it.

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God bless you, my friend. The scripture reading of the morning is taken from two places in the New Testament. First, from the Gospel of Matthew at the 17th chapter, beginning at the verse which is numbered 14.

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"And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and kneeling before him said, 'Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly,

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for often he falls into the fire and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.' And Jesus answered, 'O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you?

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How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.' And Jesus rebuked the demon, and the demon came out of him,

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and the boy was cured instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, 'Why could we not cast him out?' He said to them, 'Because of your little faith.

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For truly I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move hence to yonder place,' and it will move,

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and nothing will be impossible to you.'" And our second reading is from Paul's letter to the Christians who lived in Corinth. The thirteenth chapter, the great love chapter,

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beginning at the verse which is numbered four. "Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful. It is not arrogant or rude.

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Love does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.

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Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

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And may the same God who inspired these words incline our hearts to their understanding. You may be seated. Let us pray.

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

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Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move,' and it will move,

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and nothing will be impossible to you." The phrase "mountain mover" was commonly used in Jesus' day. It referred to individuals who were able to solve problems. It had reference to persons who were able to surmount difficulties.

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So when Jesus talked about moving mountains, he was not speaking literally about moving great piles of stone and earth. Instead, using this phrase so well known in his own time, Jesus was saying this,

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"If you have even a little faith, as much as a grain of mustard seed, you will be able to solve problems. You will be able to rise above difficulties.

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Nothing, in fact," Jesus said, "will be impossible for you." Now, as a believer in Christ Jesus, I am sure that you are convinced of the truth of that. As one who has given his life to the Lord,

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I know that you are experiencing the tremendous power which faith is already in your daily experience. As Christians, you believe your Lord. You have what might be called "pinions of power"

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which lift you above, or at least give you the strength to confront and to finally defeat, the problems and the hardships of life. I have seen so many of you demonstrate that so many times that there can be no doubt of it in my own mind.

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But this morning I would like to ask this question. How do you deal with the person who stands upon your wings of faith? How do you deal with the person

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who plants himself right on your pinions of belief and makes it so difficult for you to rise up into the great adventure that faith is? How do you deal with people

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whose faithlessness frustrates your faithfulness? A couple of weeks ago in the state of Missouri, I met a young man who was taking flying lessons. And I asked him what his parents thought about his taking flying lessons,

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and he said, "They're all for it, but they would prefer that I learned how to fly without leaving the ground." That, of course, is quite impossible to do. But how do you handle the person

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who every time you try to launch off into some great adventure of commitment and belief insists on pulling you back to earth again? How do you approach, how do you deal with,

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how do you minister to the individual who every time you feel lifted by the Lord insists on being some kind of anchor dragging you earthward?

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Now, I'm not talking about people who irritate you with their questions. And I'm not talking about people who who aggravate you

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by repeating the same question over and over again. I'm talking about people who frustrate you by their unbelief. Now, you recognize the difference

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between irritation and aggravation and frustration. Two men were talking about the definition of those words. And one man said to the other, "I'll show you what the words mean."

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And at one o'clock in the morning, he opened a phone book, picked out a number at random, and dialed it. And when someone answered at the other end in a very sleepy voice, "Hello?"

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He said, "Is Sam there?" "No, there's nobody named Sam here. You have the wrong number." And he hung up. And the man said, "That is irritation."

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He waited one hour until two o'clock in the morning. And then he took exactly the same telephone number and called it again. This time, the voice at the other end was impatient.

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"Hello? What do you want?" "Is Sam there?" was the question. "I told you before, there's nobody named Sam who lives here. Don't call again."

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And the phone was slammed down. "That," the man said, "is aggravation. Now I shall show you what frustration is." He waited another hour, three o'clock in the morning.

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Picked up the telephone and dialed the same number. And when the individual at the other end answered saying, "Yes!" he said, "This is Sam calling. Have there been any messages for me?"

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Now how do you deal with people who do that kind of thing to your belief? People whose cowardice limits your courage. People whose earthiness limits the heavenly which is in you.

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The Apostle Paul says to us in the great love chapter of Scripture, "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." Well, how do you apply that

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to individuals who insist on standing on your wings? One member of our church said to me of another member of our church, "We're very lucky to have so-and-so. If there's anything wrong with an idea, he is sure to find it."

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That really isn't much of an art. It doesn't take skill to knock things down. It only takes skill to build things up. All right.

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How do you deal with those so-and-sos who are standing on your wings? Well, the first thing we can notice is very obvious. We must not get angry at them. Instead, we must forgive them.

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If you get angry with such an individual, you may or you may not hurt that individual. It's an open question. But one thing is not a question.

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Still, with your anger, hurt yourself. The psalmist put it this way, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me."

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Reinhold Niebuhr, the great American social theologian, said on one occasion that forgiveness is not an intellectual quality. It is a moral quality.

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That is, in order to forgive, you must rise above your own prejudices, your own preferences, your own tastes,

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your own predilections, whatever they may be. You must achieve a degree of selflessness. And that's not easy.

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But that's what must happen when we're dealing with people who stand upon our wings. We must not permit ourselves to become angry with them. Oftentimes, our disagreements with people

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stem from something as simple as poor communication. On a campus in the Midwest about a month ago, I was talking to a fraternity group, and I found particular hostility in one young man.

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I discovered very quickly in our conversation that we had a totally different definition of God. To him, God was all judgment and a book in which scores were kept.

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To me, God is forgiveness and an unending expression of love. Until we got those definitions straightened out, we couldn't really communicate.

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Well, communication can be that which causes difficulties between individuals, so learn to overlook people's tone of voice. Never shackle people to their verbs.

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We don't always say what we really mean to say. But sometimes the difference is beyond communication. Even then, we must forgive. Not too long ago, an individual

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began to spread some untruths about me. I was not aware of the fact that this was going on. Later, this individual, entirely on his own, came and confessed what he did,

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and I was happy to forgive him. A few months went by, and this individual again went out and began to spread untruths and lies.

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This time, I was aware of what was going on, but I did not say anything. And once again, this person came to me and, on his own, confessed the sin,

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and again, I was happy to forgive. Recently, this individual has begun once more, and this time I was aware of what was going on, and this time the individual has put the confession

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in the form of a letter and sent it to me. Now, I will not deny the fact that the things that have been said have hurt. In this last instance,

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they caused to crash to the earth one of the greatest flights of faith which I think I've ever been given the privilege to know by God. I have been wounded by this,

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and I'm not yet sure how I'm going to deal with this repeated sin and what appears to be a very easy plea for forgiveness. But I do know this.

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I must not let anger infect my relationship with that person. For to the degree that I do that, I am wounding perhaps him,

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but certainly myself. When people stand upon your wings, forsake anger, and instead forgive.

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And the second thing to do is to discover what there is of God in the frustrating delay which confronts you. The Bible teaches us that there are seasons to life.

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Sometimes things are going smoothly, and sometimes things are very rough indeed. Sometimes we're all on the upswing, and sometimes nothing seems to keep us from going down.

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It's put in Scripture like this, "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven, a time to be born, and a time to die,

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a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted, a time to weep, and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance, a time to get, and a time to give,

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a time to keep, and a time to cast away." All of us then in life are going to have seasons of storm. But our confidence as Christians can be built upon what Paul says to us about these seasons.

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He says that for those who believe, everything works together for good. That means that even in the off season, the bad season, we can find something which God has for us.

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So when we enter the frustrating circumstance where an individual is standing on the wings of our commitment and limiting our adventures for Christ, try to discover what there is of God in the time of delay.

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I've always been intrigued by that story in the 11th chapter of John, in which Jesus receives word that his good friend Lazarus is seriously ill. And Jesus says he will go to help him, but then the scripture notes that he stayed where he was for two more days.

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And of course, when he got to the home of Lazarus and Bethany, Lazarus had died. Now it seems very difficult to imagine how it was that Jesus could be concerned about his friend

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and still wait two days where he was, not hurrying to his assistance. Difficult that is, until you remember that when Jesus got there, he performed the mighty miracle of bringing Lazarus from the dead and then went on to give us one of the most sublime teachings in all of scripture,

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"I am the resurrection and the life, whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." Those words arose out of the delay. Try to find what words God is saying to you in the time of delay. Once there was a ship in the waters just off the coast of South America.

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Those were strange waters for the ship, and not knowing how far or how near they were to land, they were in desperate straits having run out of fresh water. Another vessel came into sight, and they immediately signaled with their flags,

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"Send us some fresh water. We are desperate." And back came the flag message, "Cast down your buckets where you are." They knew they couldn't do that. You can't drink salt water. So they sent the same message, "Send us fresh water, fresh water.

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We are desperate." And again came back the response, "Cast down your buckets where you are." So, with nothing better to do, they cast down their buckets, and when they pulled them up, they were filled with sweet water, not salt water.

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They were, you see, in the mouth of the Amazon River, which is so wide that you think you're still at sea when you are in the midst of it. But the water of the Amazon is fresh water, not salt water, and consequently they could drink of it.

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When you get in the kind of a situation where someone else's lack of faith is crippling you, learn to cast down your buckets right there, and to discover what God has for you, even in that circumstance. And here's a third principle. Hang on to your helpers.

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Dr. Joseph Matazaro, who is the chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Oregon, has written, "More psychotherapy is accomplished between good friends at coffee every morning than all day long in doctor's offices. A good talk with a good friend can solve problems,

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or at least put them into a perspective before they become overpowering." Okay. When you encounter circumstances which are weighing you down and keeping you from flying, take hold of the people, not the ones who drag you down, but the ones who lift you up. Reach out for the hands of those who are ready to help you.

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There is a term in biology which describes the relationship which should exist between Christians. It is the term symbiosis. It refers to two animals or organisms that live one off the other. Now, it's not the same as a parasitic relationship.

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A parasite is when one creature lives off another creature. But a symbiotic relationship is one in which each creature lives off the other creature. For example, in Africa, I often saw a great rhinoceri with little birds on their backs. Those birds are called tick birds.

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The rhinoceros goes around and roots up insects, which the birds like to eat. That's the favor that the rhino does for the bird. But there's a favor which the bird does for the rhino. Insects have a way of getting down into the thick folds of flesh on a rhino

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and can do great damage to that great animal. But the little tick birds who ride around on the rhino's back eat those little insects and prevent that from happening. Now, that's a symbiotic relationship.

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And what we are supposed to be is in that kind of relationship in which we feed one another and feed off one another. I have a friend back in Pennsylvania who's 87 years old, and I saw him about a month ago, and he told me an interesting story.

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It seems that one of his Christian friends had come to him and said, "Doc, I think it's about time that you gave up driving." I guess there had been a few hair-breath escapes with old 87-year-old Doc at the wheel. So he said, "I think you ought to give it up."

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And Doc wasn't about to give it up. I mean, after all, he was only 87. But his friend reasoned with him at great length and finally got him to take the state examination.

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And it turned out that he really was not qualified to drive. I'm not saying that all people 87 aren't, but this man wasn't. So he had to give up his driver's license. And he was very indignant about it until suddenly he discovered

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it was one of the greatest things that ever happened to him. He found out that driving had been what had been making him so nervous and uptight all the time. Now that he could rely on other people to be driving him wherever he wanted to go,

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he didn't have to worry about that anymore. Now there was a relationship, you see, in which two individuals ministered to each other. It is important for us to let people apply the teaching of Paul to us. Let others bear us.

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Let others believe with us. Let others hope things for us. Let others have that love which endures in their relationship to us. Let yourself be loved.

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When someone's trying to drag you down, reach out and give your hand to one of those friends who are always trying to lift you up. And here's another principle.

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If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. The illustration which always comes to my mind when I think about trying again is that of Winston Churchill. Now we all know what a great man he was.

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If we have any knowledge of history, whatever, we understand the adventures which were part of his early life and how he was the magnificent leader of Great Britain during the Second World War. I can remember just a few months ago when Park Stilwell quoted from this pulpit

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some of the great words of Winston Churchill which inspired the British people to endure. Those are great examples of continued trying. But when I think of Churchill, I think of an incident that happened after the war was over. An incident which occurred when a war-weary population and an impatient people

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actually voted Winston Churchill out of office. Now he could have gone to his estate at Kent and spent the rest of his years as an honored old man painting pictures and writing books, but not Winston Churchill. He went right back into the campaigning again and after the campaigning he won,

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he was restored to office and some of the most splendid leadership which he gave to Great Britain he gave during those post-war years. That's the reason you see that the British people on the occasion of his death put an onyx tablet into the floor of Westminster Abbey which bears only these three words,

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"Remember Winston Churchill." When you remember him, you remember one who kept on trying. Aviators of the spirit, if someone's standing on your wings, keep on trying. Even in the trying, marvelous things can happen.

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I think the most interesting painting in the world, at least from my perspective, is Velazquez's great canvas, Las Maninas. It hangs in the Prado Museum in Madrid. It's a fascinating picture to see, but that's because Velazquez was a very fascinating man.

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He was the court painter to King Philip of Spain and very successful. Then he received an invitation to paint a portrait of Pope Innocent X. He didn't need that job, but he was always trying. He always wanted to do new things and he kept on working.

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There was a magnificent persistence about the man. So he agreed to paint the portrait and then to practice, he got his servant, a fellow of Moorish descent, and he had this man sit and he painted a portrait of this man

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as a kind of a warming up exercise for the portrait of the Pope, which was to be painted later. This was an attempt. This was his trying, you see. That picture of the servant was titled "The Moor,"

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and it hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City today. They procured it about a year ago for a little over $5 million. That's what he got for a warming up exercise. He kept on trying, you see, and in the trying he produced something magnificent.

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If at first you don't succeed, keep on trying, but then add this principle. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again, but if you still fail, then quit. There's no use making a darn fool of yourself.

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That profound word was uttered by W.C. Fields, and you know there's a lot of truth in it. Now I'm not talking, of course, about quitting the faith. We never quit on God.

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We never quit on God because God never quits on us. We never quit on our final confidence in him. There are times when we separate ourselves from what we're trying to do and go on to something else.

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The Scripture speaks frequently about this. Jesus says, "If they don't receive you, shake the dust off your feet and go somewhere else." Jesus says, "Don't cast your pearls before the swine." We're told in the New Testament,

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"If someone continually offends us, then come out from the midst of them." The Bible teaches us that we are never to quit on our pilot, Jesus Christ, and there's no place in the Bible where you'll find the verse which says, "Don't give up the ship."

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There are some times when we give up the ship, although we never give up the pilot. Now most of us find it hard to quit when we're in circumstances like that. Our pride says to us, "We don't want to give up.

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We want to keep on going. We want to keep on plugging." But the teaching of Scripture is perhaps best exemplified by God's word to Abraham. He said to Abraham, "Get thee out of that country, and from that kindred, and from thy father's house, and go unto a new land, which I will show you."

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We're often called upon to do just that. In an English-language newspaper in Cairo last year, I came across an article in which there was a sentence which affected me the moment I saw it.

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That sentence read, "Life is too short to tolerate without refocusing what appears to be mediocre." Yes, try. Yes, try again. But if you still don't succeed, don't make a fool of yourself.

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Quit and go on to something else. In this, life is rather like swinging on a trapeze. You climb up into the rigging, you grab hold of the bar, and you swing out. Now, when you swing out, there's only three things you can do.

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One, you can hang on, in which case you'll swing right back again. And that's what most people do in their faith. They swing out, but they never let go, and so they come right back to where they started. It's a repeat process, out and back, out and back,

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same tradition, same ritual, same song, same procedures, same theology, everything back and forth. That kind of swinging, of course, gains no applause, that is, it wins no one, and it leaves nobody breathless.

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There's a second possibility. You can let go when you're out there and fall straight to the earth. And there are some individuals who tragically do that. But the Christian, it seems to me, is the one who knows exactly the moment

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to swing out, to let go, and to reach out to the bar which is just then swinging into his grasp. You can't hang on to both bars at the same time. You've got to let go of the one in order to know the thrill of the other.

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And that is what we are to do when we run into people who repeatedly frustrate our faith. Know the moment to let go and to reach out for something else. Someone wrote to Livingston, the great missionary, once and said, "Have you found a good road to where you are going?

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We have some men who want to come and serve with you." And Livingston wrote back, "I do not want the kind of men who wait until a road is built. Send me the kind of men who do not care whether there is a road or not." There are some people who, by standing on your wings, will lead you down the road to nowhere.

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God is not down that road. God is always going somewhere. Follow him. Don't let anyone lead you to forget how to fly.

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And one last comment. Never let the misery of the moment cloud the glory of the long view. And that reminds me of Morris and Mary Alice Flint. They didn't have a very happy life.

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He had failed in many business enterprises, had not been successful. A great deal of bitterness and resentment and anger had built up inside of him. And then he heard a sermon which converted him. A sermon built on those words of Jesus, "If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed,

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nothing will be impossible to you." Now he lived in Philadelphia with his wife and his two sons. So he went to talk with the minister whose sermon he had heard over the radio. One of the great evangelical ministers of our time, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale in New York City,

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probably has won more people to Jesus Christ from his pulpit than any other single pulpit ministry in our country today. And he went to see Peale. And Peale talked to him at great length on the basis of that text.

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And Morris Flint held on to that text. And he realized the first thing he had to do was to get rid of all that resentment and anger which he had accumulated. That's the first principle, remember, to forgive? So he did that. He wrote letters of forgiveness and released people

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from any feelings of animosity which were there. And then he began thinking about the circumstances in which he found himself. He was casting down his bucket where he was, you see. And every day he would remember that text about the mustard seed.

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One night he went out to his wife in the kitchen and he said, "You know, I think I could remember the text better if I had a mustard seed. Do you have any mustard seeds?" She opened a pickle jar and she gave him a little mustard seed.

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He didn't realize how small it was until he saw it. He put it in his pocket and of course he lost it before the next morning. Every day he was going out and getting a new mustard seed. He knew he didn't really need to have a mustard seed to remind him,

00:34:20.000 - 00:34:36.000

but it was a help. And he kept casting his bucket down where he was. They got an idea one day. Wouldn't it be nice if that mustard seed could be placed inside a little ball of plastic or of glass?

00:34:36.000 - 00:34:49.000

Then he wouldn't be losing it so easily. Then he could be able to find it. He was beginning to discover what God was saying to him. He told the idea to some of his friends,

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hanging on to those who would help him. And they encouraged him in the project. So he went out to talk to people who made those kinds of things. Is there any way to put a mustard seed into a ball of plastic in an attractive, visible form?

00:35:03.000 - 00:35:21.000

And one after another, they told him no. He kept on trying and trying and trying, but no. Even Norman Vincent Peale, the expert in positive thinking, gave up on the project. But that wasn't enough to stop Morris Flint.

00:35:21.000 - 00:35:49.000

He quit going to other people, and he decided to focus on the project himself. Within a very short time, he had solved the problem. He had solved the problem and went on to build a factory in a Midwestern state where they produce hundreds of thousands of keychains and necklaces and tie clasps,

00:35:49.000 - 00:36:10.000

all of which feature a little crystal ball with a grain of mustard seed inside. And the text, "If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, all things are possible to you." He kept the vision of what he was trying to do in front of him

00:36:10.000 - 00:36:28.000

and didn't let the misery of any moment stop him. And that's what we have to learn to do. So if someone is standing on your wings, love them. Bear them. Hold on to your belief. Hold on to your hopes.

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Hold on to your enduring conviction. For truly, truly, I say to you, if you have faith no more than that much a grain of mustard seed, then you, you will be able to fly. And only heaven will be the limit of your flying.

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And I promise you this morning, from my heart to yours, that you can't even begin to imagine the splendor of the winged victories which can be yours. Let us pray. O God, we thank Thee that we can believe.

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Grant to us such a confidence in Thee that we will never be dismayed by the lack of confidence displayed by others. Our Father, fill us with love, but also with vision, that we might mount up with wings like eagles.

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We pray this in our Savior's name. Amen. [END]