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And now let us continue in worship. As I read the 42nd Psalm, I begin with the verse which is numbered 1. "As a heart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? My tears have been my food day and night, while men say

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to me continually, 'Where is your God?' These things I remember as I pour out my soul. How I went with the throng and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me?

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Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my help and my God. My soul is cast down within me, therefore I remember thee from the land of Jordan and of Hermon from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the thunder of thy cataracts. All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me. By day the Lord commands his steadfast

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love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock, why hast thou forgotten me? Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me while they say to me continually, 'Where is your God?' Why are you cast down,

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O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my help and my God." May the same Spirit who inspired these words incline our hearts to the understanding of them. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

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He went into his attorney's office and said he wanted to have a divorce. His attorney said, "Do you have grounds?" He said, "Yes, I own property in Pennsylvania and Florida." The attorney said, "I mean, do you have cause?" He said, "Yes, I have two cause. I have a Buick and I have a Honda." "What I mean," the attorney says, "is do you

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have a grudge?" He said, "Yes, I have a two-car grudge. That's where I park my Buick and my Honda." "I mean," the attorney said, "why do you want the divorce?" "Well, it seems that my wife and I just can't communicate." "Well, I know how he feels. Sometimes I stand up here and feel that I'm just not communicating because I've

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been talking to you now for more than two and a half years about the power of faith and I think some of you don't believe me." Now, Dorothy Neal believes me, sitting up there in the balcony in her usual spot. She comes up to me every Sunday morning with a big smile, gives me a vigorous hug. Usually she says

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something like this, "I love the Lord. How's that?" One morning she came up and she said, "I hurt my arm, but it'll get better and I love the Lord. Praise God." And last Sunday she came up and said, "I'm going to be a great-grandmother and I love the Lord. How's that?" Now, not everybody who comes here on Sunday

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morning has that kind of enthusiasm, that feisty faithfulness. Others come in with faces looking like the dark side of the moon. They remind me of that verse, "How are you is a greeting and not a question. Don't tell people about your indigestion." These people not only tell about it, they give it. They are misery wrapped around

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the moon and framed in a lamentation. How different that is from the individual who says, "I'm going to be a great-grandma and I love the Lord. How's that?" You see, Dorothy Neal knows the secret. A secret which, at least in one place in the Scripture, is summed up in just 13 words. 13 words that can change your life. The

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words are Proverbs, the 16th chapter, and the 32nd verse. I've adapted them a little in order to make them easier to remember. "He that conquers his spirit is mightier than he that taketh a city." Now, cities in those days were difficult to take. In the first place, they were built on the tops of hills. The ground about them was

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cleared so that there was no place to hide. They had high walls. They also had enforced gates. There were guards in place every night. I remember visiting the archaeological ruins at Jericho and seeing seven cities built, one on top another, and each one with these mighty walls. So it was a difficult thing to

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take, to capture, to subdue a city. Yet the Scriptures say, "He that conquers his spirit is mightier than he that taketh a city." What is being said is that the mastery of the spirit is the most important principle in life. If you master your spirit, if you control your mind, if you can discipline your thoughts,

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you'll be tough to beat. Let me run the role on a few noted disbelievers. Einstein did not talk until he was four and did not read until he was seven. He was described as a slow learner, but he didn't believe that. Beethoven was told by his music teacher that as a composer he was absolutely hopeless, but he didn't

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believe that. Edison was informed by no less than two teachers that he was too stupid to ever learn anything, but he didn't believe that. F. W. Woolworth was taken off the floor of a store and not allowed to sell anymore when he was 21 years old because it was said he did not have enough good sense. Walt Disney was

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fired by the editor of the paper for which he wrote cartoons because the editor said he has no good ideas, but he didn't believe that. Enrico Caruso, possibly the greatest tenor of all time, was told by his voice teacher on one occasion, "You can't sing, you have no voice at all," but he didn't believe that.

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Louisa May Alcott was told that her writing has no popular appeal, but she didn't believe that. These individuals had mastered their own spirits. They were not defeated by extraneous comments and circumstances. They knew that they could depend upon themselves and that they could utilize their talents in

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accordance with their dependence upon the grace of God, and because they had that kind of attitude, they won. Greater is he that can conquer his spirit than he that taketh the city. Did you read in the newspapers just last week of a mother out west, a paraplegic, totally paralyzed from her waist down, sitting in a

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wheelchair beside a swimming pool, and she saw her little child, her baby, fall into the pool. Now what did she do? She hurled herself out of that chair. She dragged herself across the deck of that pool. She plunged into the water and got to the sides of that child, and imagine what that must have been like, trying to

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move in the water with everything dead weight from the waist down. When she got the child, she lifted the child up onto the deck of the pool. She then dragged herself out of the water and, calling for help, began to administer CPR, and she saved the life of that child. What was going on in the heart and mind of that

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woman? Did she sit there and say, "Oh, there's nothing I can do. All I can do is cry out and hope that someone else will come." Oh, not at all. She had conquered her spirit. She saw her child in trouble. She said, "I must help, and I can help, and I will help." And she did help. It was all in the matter of her attitude and her

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spirit. Look at our Lord Jesus. On one occasion, they brought a man to him that I don't think really wanted to come and see him. There's no evidence that the man did. Four of his friends opened a hole in a roof to lower him into the presence of Jesus, and I think he was embarrassed and somewhat disgruntled and somewhat

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afraid over what was happening. And Jesus saw this, so what was the first word he said to that man? He said, "Be of good cheer." That's a word directed to the spirit. Do you remember the story in Matthew 14, when the disciples were on a ship at sea, and Jesus was not with them, and a storm came up, and even though some

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of them were fisherfolk, they became excited by what was happening and panicky, and the defeatist attitude was with them. And Jesus came to them walking on the water, and what did he say? He said to them, "Be of good cheer." Or do you remember that time recorded in John chapter 16, when Jesus tells his disciples

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how they are going to be persecuted by the people of the world, and then he says to them, "In the world you're going to have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world." Those, you see, are spirit-directed words. Jesus spoke to the spirit of that father who had the epileptic son. Jesus spoke to the spirit,

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the attitude, the inner feelings of that woman at Sychar. He spoke to the heart, to the mind, to the sensitive spirit of the woman who broke that alabaster box. He spoke to Peter when he said to him, "Feed my sheep." Words aimed straight at the heart. Words aimed straight at the spirit, because you see, once the matter of the

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spirit is settled, then all kinds of wonderful things can follow. For he that conquers his spirit is greater than he that taketh the city. The question becomes, of course, how do you activate these 13 words in your life? How do you bring your spirit, your mind, your attitude into a tune with the power of God? Well, that's

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the reason I read this 42nd Psalm to you. The best way to do it is to begin by talking to yourself. This psalmist begins by describing a pathetic circumstance that he is enduring. He has been separated from the temple, separated from those with whom he worships. He finds himself thirsting for God. He remembers

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the times when he had been in the temple with multitudes of other worshippers and they had prayed to God together. And remembering all of this, he is led to despair and he says, speaking to himself, "Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God. I shall yet praise him, my help

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and my God." Now that word "hope" is the key word. That's an active word. Hoping in the Scriptures is not just sitting back and waiting for something to happen. Hoping is moving out in aggressive and positive faith. Hoping is contributing to the happening itself. The psalmist goes on and repeats the whole thing again in the

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second part of the psalm. That's very typical in the psalms, that the message is brought again and again. Now he talks about how the waves and the billows of circumstances drowned him, how the cataracts of trouble and befuddlement that fall upon him are such that he's unable to stand up under the burden of

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them all. He says he's caught up with the billows of God so much that he almost forgets God. And then he asks himself that same question, "Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope" - there's that active word - "Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him, my help and my God."

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Hope is an active word. Hope is living the faith you don't feel like you have. When the Scriptures say, "He that conquers his spirit is mightier than he that taketh the city," what is being said is this. In the moments when you don't feel like you're the master or the conqueror of your spirit, at the faith

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you don't feel that you have. Hope in spite of the fact that you don't feel very hopeful. You know how it is if your body becomes weak. Say you're laid up with some illness and you're in bed for many weeks, and when you get out your body is very soft. The muscles have no strength. You find yourself

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filled with an emptiness. What do you do? Do you coddle the body? Do you put it back to bed to take care of it? No. You stretch it. You strain it. You pull it. You exercise it. Well, just as you do to regain strength in the body, so you do to regain strength in the spirit. When you find that your spiritual level is low, when

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you find yourself low on faith, you push and stretch and strain and reach out with all the faith you can muster, even at the moment when you don't feel like you can muster very much. You hope actively and aggressively. And that's what brings the spirit into line. Psychologists have known this for a long

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time. They say if you change your actions, you will change your attitudes. Or Alfred Adler perhaps put it best of all when he said, "Your moods match the contagion of your attitudes." You've seen some noted actor get into a part. Let's suppose that this actor is playing the part of Iago, a treacherous man, an evil man, a deceitful

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man, a furtive man. And he begins to get into this part and he begins to act more and more like Iago until he becomes secretive and he becomes treacherous. And he gets so much into that part, acting it, so takes over his attitudes and his mind and the behavior of that role that we sit back in amazement and we say, "My, he

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was Iago!" You see, when you act it, it begins to become a reality in your life. So, when you find yourself with weakness of soul and weakness of spirit, what you do is to act with all the aggressive power that you can muster, the opposite way that you feel. Happiness, you see, is something that you have to work for. It's

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something that you exercise for. It's doing something secret every day for someone else and never letting them know that you're their secret benefactor. It's doing one thing every day that you don't want to do, but not ending that day until that thing is done. It's maintaining a spirit of peace when all about you is

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discord. It's planning your work and then working your plan. It's spending 30 minutes each day in company with God, soaking yourself in his spirit and in the scriptures in communion with him. It's living one day at a time, not a whole lifetime at once, but just one day at a time. If you do these things, if you

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act the opposite to the way you feel, then your feelings will change and you will be enabled to master your spirit. I am terribly uncoordinated. That line, "He can't chew gum and walk at the same time," was written of me. And one of the demonstrations of that that occurred very early in my life was the fact that

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I was the last kid in my block to learn how to ride a bicycle. I was nine years old and still couldn't ride a two-wheeler. I used to lament about that all the time. Now one Thursday afternoon I was sitting in front of my house with a bunch of the other neighborhood kids. My mother was going out and as she

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walked by she said quite casually to the group, "If you kids will teach Bruce how to ride a bicycle this afternoon, there'll be ice cream and cake for all of you tomorrow." I was appalled. But it didn't seem to affect the other members of the group that way, and they

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took it upon themselves to teach me how to ride a bike. Now we lived in a house that had a long driveway. I mean a very long driveway, and it was a steep driveway. It was a very, very steep driveway. We lived with a Mount Everest type driveway, and the kids decided that if they could put me on the bike at the top

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of the driveway and push it off, that I would learn. Now my mother never would have permitted that, but she was gone from the scene. Now when you're on a bicycle and you don't know how to ride it and you're at the top of Mount Everest type things like that, it has a wonderful power to concentrate your mind.

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And I found myself concentrating. I learned by the second time down to steer the bike, because it was better to run into the street than it was to run into the wall on either side. And by the time I went down for the fifth trip, scraped here and here and here and here, I had learned to ride a bicycle. Now as long as

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I sat there and lamented about it, as long as I sat there and felt sorry about it, nothing was happening. I still couldn't ride the bicycle. But when, in this instance, under the impetus of others, I began to do that thing, which I couldn't do at that moment, but plunged into it, it wasn't long till I knew how

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to ride that bike. Some of you would like to give much more to the Lord's work than you give, but you're afraid of what the results might be. You'll never know until you try. Some of you would like to act much more courageously in your Christian witness, in the world of work where you are, but you hold back because

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you don't know what the results will be. You will never understand the power which will become yours until you act. Some of you have profound doubts about the Christian faith and about your place in it. You will never ever understand what the Christian faith is until you go beyond those doubts and take a leap of

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faith. That's where it starts. The power, you see, is in the Spirit. She that conquers her spirit is mightier than she that taketh a city. Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ, always went to the heart of things. And do you notice how the same thing happens in His disciples? James and John got out of that boat and followed

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Him. They didn't know all the answers at the moment that they got out of the boat, but they would have never discovered any of the answers if they hadn't taken the journey. Matthew got up and left his tax tables behind him. He never would have written the gospel had he not taken that act of faith. But it was that step, you

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see, it was that moving out that enabled him to become what he is. I remember once in East Tennessee. I was visiting some friends and my one friend, the man of the house, happened to be a member of the Jaycees. And the Jaycees were having a beauty contest in that small town. And he invited me to go up for the rehearsal and

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the interviews on a Thursday night. So we went up and there were all these pretty young girls coming in to be contestants. And in order to be in the contest, you had to have a talent. Well, this one young lady, strikingly attractive, walked over and she announced that her talent was baton twirling. Now, I'm 53 years old and

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I've seen enough baton twirlers to last me for a century. I mean, you know, whether they do it with one hand or both hands, they always do it to the same music, that Malagany. You ever notice that? In any case, she announced this and someone said, "Oh, how recently did you study?" She said, "Well, I took it for two weeks when I was

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in the second grade." And this girl was 18 years old. And I turned to my friend and I said, "She'll never be able to do that. She can't do that." Yes, he said, "That's true, but isn't she pretty?" I said, "Well, she's got to have a talent if she's going to get out. She's one of the most beautiful young Christian ladies in our

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church and she's just full of faith." And, well, I just couldn't say no to her. Well, each person had to try out that night. So I waited with bated breath to see this tryout. And on came the phonograph with Malagany. And she stood there in the middle of the stage and she took that baton. You know, you're supposed to make

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it go between your fingers, something like this, you know. She grabbed the baton and went like this. And everybody looked at her. I mean, there she was. Did she think the dimness of the auditorium was going to make it impossible for people to see? There she was, standing there, just going like that, and then

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taking over to this hand and going just like this. She might have gotten away with that, except right in the middle of this, like all of these numbers, there was a big toss up into the air. And she tossed the baton up and it came down and she missed it. And she threw it up again and she tried three or four times, but

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this time people backstage were standing behind the curtains trying to avoid the line that the baton might be taking. Well, eventually it was over and we went home. Now, I was supposed to leave the next morning, but I was determined to stay that night for that contest. Now, get the picture. It's August. It's East Tennessee.

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It's a Friday night. It's very hot. We're in the high school auditorium, which seats 650 people and there are 800 in attendance. There are wooden sticks holding up the windows and some enterprising funeral director has given all the ladies these fans, you know, that have an ad for the funeral home on one

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side and a picture on the other. And they're all sitting there like this, standing all around or a bunch of JCs talking into walkie-talkies to somebody just four feet away and saying, "Can you hear me, Jack? Can you hear me?" And it came time for the show to begin and the first girl came out and said that she

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was going to play a medley of George Gershwin tunes which she had written. Now, the next girl to present herself was the baton twirler and she came out and the music started and she stood right there in the middle of that stage just going like this. And you could see the people in the audience leaning forward

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and looking. I mean, they didn't know whether this was a joke. Were they supposed to laugh? Were they supposed to clap? They didn't know. The judges were breaking their pencils at the side of the stage, holding their hands over their mouths because they wanted to break into laughter. And there she was out there

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like this, you know. And then it came time for the big toss. And she threw the baton up. All 800 of us saw it go up. And it didn't come down. It didn't come down. And she looked over where we were standing. We said, "We don't have it." It had gotten caught in the rigging up there. And this girl, I

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wondered what she was going to do. You see, the record was still going because it didn't know the baton hadn't come down. And I looked over at this girl. What would she think? Would she start to cry? Would she begin to hurl invective on the Jaycees for not having the staging correct? Not at all. She pretended as if

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it came down. And then she did the most remarkable routine you ever saw. She threw it behind her neck, you know, like this, and around her waist like this. And all the time the music was going on and everybody is still leaning forward. And just as it came to its end, she kind of danced with that wonderful smile of

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hers over to the side of the stage. And I thought she was going off. Oh no, she pretended she got another baton. Now she had one going in each hand like this and threw them up in the air and made them do loops. And you could see the people in the audience going like this. And I heard a man sitting in the front row

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turn to his wife and say, "Mother, she's twirling those batons so fast I can't even see them." Greater is she that conquers her spirit than he that taketh a city. She went out there ready to give it everything she had. And when she didn't have very much, she pretended like she had it all. And she kept on going and

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it made all the difference. Laugh if you will. Let it be the laughter of the people of God. For the truth is this. He or she that conquers his spirit is mightier than he or she that taketh a city. And if you'll believe and live those 13 words, your life will be changed. Let us pray.

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Oh great and glorious God, we thank thee that the scriptures say you laugh. And we enjoy laughter too. And we can laugh because our world is not all sadness and darkness. There is joy and brightness here. Fill us with the joy and brightness of believing. And even at the moments when we feel we can no longer believe,

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teach us then to hope. To hope actively and aggressively and to live the faith we don't even feel. Until, like those of old who heard the voice of Jesus, we hear him say to our spirits, "Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world." This is our prayer and we pray it in his name. Amen.

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