Are You Satisfied as a Christian or Do You Want to Go Further?

And right from the day that I knew about salvation, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, divine healing, I testified and preached of these things. I preached the full gospel, if you want to use that phrase. I knew about the new birth, I knew about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I knew about healing the sick. I lay for one year and end in a military hospital later in the war, and only got out when I found that divine healing worked and that I could trust God for the healing of my body as I’d trusted Him for the salvation of my soul. I also believed that the signs in the world indicated that the second coming of Christ was near at hand, and I testified and preached to that effect also.

And I really believed that I was preaching the full gospel. I was preaching all that I knew to preach, and I saw results. I saw people saved regularly, I saw many people healed, I saw many receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

And I completed, with my wife, five years of missionary service in East Africa, where people would have rated us as successful missionaries. We had the approval of our mission, we had the approval of the British government, the education department with whom we were associated. I still have letters of testimonial from them today.

But when we came back to Europe at the end of 1961, and we were in my wife’s native country, which is Denmark, for a little while I was not actively preaching, and the Lord began to deal with me. Now, I’m not going to seek to explain to you tonight exactly how He dealt with me, nor exactly how God speaks. I know there are different ways that God speaks to different people.

But let me say that the Lord very clearly spoke to me, but not with an audible voice. And in essence, what He said was this, and I’m summarizing. “Now, you have preached for so many years, you’ve been a missionary in two countries, you’ve been a pastor, you’re the principal of a college, you’re the member of a denomination, you have a pension scheme.” He went down the whole thing in a very practical way. And then He came up with this question, “Are you satisfied, or do you want to go further?”

And that question really upset me. And you know, my first reaction, I’m ashamed to say it, was, “Well, is there anything further? I’ve preached the full gospel. What more is there to preach?” Now, I knew there were many, many things in the Bible that I did not understand, but I did not feel that they were urgent, practical truths that a preacher needed to make known every day.

But then that the Lord said, “Do you want to go further?” It obviously seemed to the Lord that there was further to go. Now, I’m somewhat ashamed, really, of my reactions in some ways. Well, I have learned by experience not to speak hastily to God. Never say to God anything you don’t mean, ‘cause He’ll hold you to it.

So I said, in so many words, “Lord, give me a little time and I’ll come back with my answer.” And about three days later, I got back in touch with the Lord. It was on the top of a cliff, in a lonely place, and I said, “I’m ready with my answer.” And I said, “No, Lord, I’m not satisfied. If there is anything further”—God forgive me for saying that, but I said—“If there is anything further, I want to go further.”

And you know, when I said, “I’m not satisfied,” for the first time I realized how dissatisfied I really was. And with many Christians, particularly preachers, there has to come a moment of truth, when you face the fact that the results you achieve are not what you would wish to achieve. Many, many preachers come to this place. And then the devil will say, “Well, that’s what everybody does. This is all there is to it. There is nothing more. There’s nothing more to know. You just have to go on this way. True, it was different in the days of the apostles, but those days are past.” Now, I didn’t believe that, theoretically, but sometimes I acted as if the days of the apostles were past.

Anyhow, I made a sincere commitment to God without having any idea of what I was committing myself to, but I said, “Lord, I’m willing to go further.” And from then on, the course of my life began to change under the hand of God. And it ended up totally different from what I had been anticipating. Within a year, the Lord brought me to the United States without my planning it, or having any intentions in that direction. I became a permanent resident of the United States, and just recently I took United States citizenship. Now, that was not in my plan, but it was in God’s plan.

And I began to realize, a few months after I made this commitment, that the Lord was putting me through what I call a postgraduate course of spiritual training. And I must say it was thorough. He spared no time, He spared no expense. He would take me halfway across the continent, back again, just to learn one lesson. There were various things in the New Testament that He opened up to me that I had never understood or been able to apply before. And one of them was this business of dealing with evil spirits.