Safe at Home - One Way

Rick: Hey, welcome, folks, to another edition of Safe at Home.
This is Rick, Rick Arndt.
And sometimes they call me Dad in our family.
I'm traveling with Philip today.
Thanks, Philip, for holding that heavy camera,
one of the many cameras that we have hooked up within this car.
Most of them are light cameras,
but Philip has the assignment of holding the heavier one.
And as has been the case lately,
we're doing an on-the-road show.
I think we're enamored with spring.
We were in the northeast for six weeks.
Of course, we're in the heartland now.
We're in Illinois,
actually very close to the Missouri border,
bumping our way and winding our way down one of these back roads
that you've probably traveled with us at one time or another
if you've ever watched this show.
Anyway, here we are, rolling our way along,
enjoying a beautiful afternoon spring day --
April as we tape.
And I think I'm going to head for the bluffs
that basically lie along the Mississippi River
between Missouri and Illinois.
People have an image of Illinois
being a flat state with a lot of crop land, farmland --
and that's true --
but the part,
the little nook in which we live and where our land is located,
it starts to roll a little bit.
And you know, I like rolling hills, mountains.
We all do within our family.
And let me just take a left here.
I could take the interstate, though.
Which way?
No, I think I'll take a left here.
I could take 255, Philip, but I'll stick to the back roads.
This might be --
this is kind of a smooth, semi-back road.
It's not really a back road.
It's a state highway.
But anyway, as you know from this show,
we talk and we listen.
We listen to God.
We listen to each other.
And we keep it simple.
Since we built the big house with our own labor
eight or nine years ago -- it'll be going on nine --
we made it large enough so that we could have our equipment,
our businesses, and everything under one roof,
and yet the guys --
the older guys could have their own separate world,
almost like having their own apartment, their own house --
but everything held in common, like the early church.
Because their approach has been,
"Until I meet Ms. Right and God calls me to marry someone,
"I don't want to just go out and get tempted,
"or tempt other women and just kind of fool around,
"or anything like this."
It's a rock-solid commitment
to saving everything up until marriage.
And not only in a physical sense,
but also in terms of just not --
just dabbling, and just trifling with someone's emotions,
and fooling around.
So what happens is they have hundreds of friends --
girl friends, sisters in Christ,
and people who aren't Christian,
but with whom they're very close and respect --
and activities --
co-rec volleyball.
Just everywhere.
Their businesses, our travels,
the Softball Classic, through the media.
But they really want to stick with the community of the family
until that moment when they launch their own families.
So we're all under one roof.
It's very much like the early church.
And God's Spirit has led us to hold everything in common
with our physical activities, our prayers,
our coming together every night for prayer as a family --
not in some stiff, formal way,
but something that's developed very naturally
since those early days as a mom and a dad.
Because from the very beginning, Cathy and I knew that --
and this was mainly as single people --
we met in '73 --
that you're only as successful or fruitful --
to the extent that you're rooted in the soil
and you're nourished by the water,
that's the extent to which you'll produce fruit.
We see in John 15:1 that unless
we're attached and just right there, part of the vine --
and not just taped on, but literally part of the vine --
we're not going to produce fruit.
It's just so simple.
And that transcends -- John 15:1 --
what he's talking about is so wonderful,
because it's beyond just knowledge,
or dogma, or the mind.
It's about literally being in Jesus,
literally being filled with the Spirit,
literally being one with Him.
And of course, that's a model or a type for marriage,
being one between man and wife.
And that goes back to what I was saying earlier
about the sacredness of it, and waiting for the right time,
and not just using somebody's body
or even using somebody's emotions
as sort of a temporary parking spot
as you move down the road of life.
And one of the enemy's biggest weapons against us
in his staff of tempters
is to have people dumb things down
and not respect and love themselves enough
to wait for God's best and to hold out for God's --
what God really created them to be --
not in some exclusive thing, like,
"Oh, I'm holding out for the best,"
but in the sense of just yielding to Him and saying,
"I'm not going to compromise,
"because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made."
And that applies, obviously,
to our physical beings, the sexual area,
but it's all across the board, you know?
Well, looks like I'm a little late for the first break.
That really doesn't matter.
It's a very casual show.
As I head down this road toward these bluffs
that I was talking about earlier,
let's take a little break.
And I'll be right back with you.
Rick: Hey, we're back.
And as promised, we're still rolling down the highway.
The bluffs are on our left.
They're not real tall right now,
but as we move to the south,
they'll become more that way.
Interestingly, to the right, it's flat.
So it's the part of country that has, basically,
a great expanse of beautiful bottom land.
This was all flooded -- severely flooded
and made national, international headlines in 1993,
when the Mississippi went over its banks.
And a lot of this was underwater.
People were basically, I mean, changed forever.
The town of Valmeyer --
I don't know if we'll make it all the way down to Valmeyer --
was actually flooded to the point
where after the floodwaters receded,
the people of the town literally moved up the bluff
and established, basically, a new town.
Some diehards still live in the old section.
But it's just a beautiful part of the country.
Every once in a while,
we'll take a day trip in this direction.
We were talking earlier about waiting for God's best.
And I just have learned that what seems like a hopeless delay
or a feeling of being kind of all on your own --
that's a false fear.
If someone fears that by doing it God's way,
I'll be left behind, in whatever department --
just if anyone would ever fear,
"Oh, by obeying God, I'll lose popularity.
"I'll kind of be isolated.
"I won't have this.
"I won't have that."
Let me just say, from the benefit of having
lived this life for a long time --
and it was mainly in the last 39 years, since '73,
when I was really alive in Him and baptized in the Spirit,
but even prior to that,
just learning about Jesus, and obeying, and praying,
not understanding everything about the Holy Spirit --
even before then, it holds true
that everything I've ever given up or had to yield,
or anything I've ever had to obey Him on,
whether I wanted to or not,
has been rewarded many times over.
And any deviation from His way
has always been met with disappointment.
I mean, it's a universal law.
In fact, I heard once Derek Prince --
the late Derek Prince, a wonderful Christian leader,
and scholar, and just a Spirit-filled man --
you might want to look up sometime --
sometime online, look up Derek Prince --
D-E-R-E-K Prince.
A lot of his resources are still there, available online --
videos, audio things.
But he once said it this way,
that even if we are living for ourselves
and want to be selfish,
it behooves us to follow Him,
because to obey God is enlightened self-interest,
because God has your interests --
and we've talked about this on the show before --
at heart more than you do.
And that's hard.
It's hard to put yourself into His hands --
into someone else's hands.
And it has to start with a decision,
because your feelings will never want that to happen.
You'll always want to be the one to kind of control your destiny,
because that's one of the features of having fallen,
being part of a fallen race --
is that you want to be God.
You want to kind of call the shots.
You want to be in charge,
and even to the extent that some people
will put God on their team.
"I have a little God.
"I have some in my life.
"I have some spirituality."
Whatever.
It's not about that.
It's about us being children,
letting Him be the dad, Him being the Father that He is,
and obeying Him.
And in losing ourselves and dying to our way --
our stubbornness, our self-centeredness,
our disobedience --
we're born again,
and we find something that was invisible at first.
And it just takes faith.
God has set it up so that you have to
become like a little child to even begin to see it,
because only a little child will trust and obey.
Someone who considers himself or herself wise
in his or her own estimation won't even get there,
won't even find out what he or she is missing.
Now, the bluffs are starting to really look attractive
as we move to the south.
And I don't know how the lighting will be,
because the sun is straight ahead of the car,
and it might --
I'm always conscious of the backlighting or the lighting
whenever we do a video shoot or a photo shoot.
So it might not be as vivid at this time of day,
so bear with me.
But we'll make it through.
I mean, when I say "vivid" --
sometimes the hills are just lit up beautifully.
If we were looking ahead to some hills
that had the sun kind of --
the sunshine playing on the branches
or kind of hitting them, it lights up.
Even though it's all green, it looks like fall foliage,
because it's variegated.
But this will still look --
this will still give you an idea of
the scenery that we have down here
in this part of Illinois.
I think it's time for another break.
Let's take a quick one and join --
and I'll talk some more.
We'll rejoin each other,
and I'll talk some more about some of these things.
And we might even have time to pray.
Rick: Hey, folks.
I'm back again.
And we're in the third segment of the show.
We're starting to move out into the open country that
separates the bluffs of Illinois from the bluffs of Missouri,
which can be seen in the distance.
It's a wide expanse of farmland,
bottom land that kind of lies between the two areas of bluff.
And we were talking about the guys
and their decision to basically hang together as a family.
And it really has been a decision
on a second-by-second basis within our lives,
as individuals and as a community, a family community,
to do exactly what God wants and to check --
kind of compare what we're getting,
compare our readings with each other.
And that buttresses and reinforces discernment.
Because it's one thing for me, as a dad,
or Cathy, as a mom,
to feel that God's calling us to do this,
but it's neat to see the joy
and the connection within the family when other people --
when the guys report,
"Hey, God's moving in my heart in this way.
"Or I can see Him moving in this way."
It makes you feel so secure when you see a plan in your life,
and you see that God has a very unique purpose for you,
and that you get it by letting go of your plans,
or by letting go of other people's plans,
or of course, not going with the world's flow,
or not going with the enemy and his team of sneaks.
So basically, you just --
to be successful,
you just simply have to obey God literally.
All the general principles that we see --
obviously, the 10 Commandments
and all of the teachings of the Old and New Testaments --
but then literally believing also
when He specifically leads you,
when you are convicted to do something
or not to do something,
to also be as sensitive as --
to obey that as well, to take that when you know it's Him.
You know it's His Spirit.
He's convicting you to obey that.
In other words, every time we obey Him,
we sensitize our ears to hear more from Him,
and every time we disobey Him,
we deaden our hearts and our ears,
so that it makes it more difficult
to ever hear Him again.
So really, we put ourselves in danger of being kind of jaded,
and deadened, and losing --
kind of going out of radio frequency,
going out of the distance of being able to hear Him anymore,
because if we keep grieving the Holy Spirit --
now, thankfully, God is so merciful.
He continues to try, and sends His angels to kind of
set up a Plan A, a Plan B, a Plan C.
He keeps striving --
He just keeps working with people
to bring them to a point of decision.
But at some point,
people harden their hearts and just reject Him.
And it's the wonder, the awesomeness of a free will.
So we try to obey in fear and trembling.
We don't want to get to the point where we don't hear Him.
It's so easy to be deceived when you refuse to hear His truth,
because it leaves you open to everything else
except for the truth.
And there is only one truth.
And there's only one way that everything makes sense.
And that's mathematically true.
Scientists, mathematicians will tell you that there is
such a thing as objective truth in terms of science.
There is an objective point at which water freezes,
at which light travels.
And the same holds true for the things of God, His principles.
He made all the things that scientists can measure,
and that's reliable.
Why should it be beyond the pale of belief
to believe that the truths of the Scripture
are equally as wonderfully developed,
and just as meticulously planned by Him
as these things that will one day pass away?
The universe.
The timing of the sunsets.
The sunrises.
The fall foliage.
The spring wheat.
The tides.
The fact that mankind --
men have to time their clocks
according to His universal clock.
We've brought that up before, haven't we, on these shows?
This can seem so far away and so pie-in-the-sky, though,
because we often are so deadened by our sinful condition,
so coldly --
we're not able to even comprehend what God's saying,
because maybe we've become jaded.
It's become like a hardening of the arteries.
There's a deadness that comes from sin,
and we're all born needing to be brought alive
to even hear God in the first place.
And if He hadn't come after us, chased us down,
sent His Son while we were still sinners,
we wouldn't have even known we were lost or what being lost is.
We wouldn't have even known --
I guess we would have intuitively known we're lost.
But I mean, we would not even --
there's no way we'd ever find the way out.
We'll come kind of to a conclusion here
and we'll pray in the next segment.
Be right back.
Rick: Hey, I have to come right back quickly here, folks,
because we'll have to have a shorter segment.
But before we go on, let's pray.
God, I just thank You for this day.
I thank You for my friends who are riding along with me
and viewing this through their television sets,
but yet we're --
distance means nothing in Your Kingdom,
and so if we're both believing in You through Your Son Jesus,
we're brothers and sisters, or brother and brother right now.
Look at those bluffs.
Cliffs.
Really cliffs.
God, I just thank You.
Send Your Spirit.
Send Your Spirit on our friends who are listening.
And I think of it as a one-on-one show.
Someone is riding with me.
I hope you're not getting carsick.
And I ask God to send His Spirit on you,
to send His Spirit over you right now,
convict you, to literally enlighten --
to just illuminate everything,
so that you know what displeases Him.
Well, first of all, if you haven't,
that you'll say "Yes" to Him --
not just in some formal way, rattling off a prayer,
but literally, you'll donate yourself,
you'll surrender yourself -- your whole self --
to Him right now, and repent, and just decide,
"I'll do whatever You want.
"And I surrender.
"And please forgive me for all the sins,
"and any disobedience, and my whole condition.
"I welcome Jesus as the Savior,
"the one who can fix all this."
He not only legally set me free.
He's also still living
and can enter my heart and fill me with His Spirit.
And it has to go way beyond just the intellect.
But it's a good place to start --
with the intellect --
to understand, "Oh, yeah. I'm lost.
"Oh, yeah. There's been an offer of reconciliation.
"Someone -- the Son of God, in fact --
"died for me, paid my debt.
"Whew!
"Wow, this is great.
"Yeah, I'll take advantage of it.
"I sure wouldn't want to shatter this relationship
"now that I've taken advantage of it,
"so, oh, let me say 'No' to all sin.
"What does that mean?
"I have to make restitution.
"I have to kind of yank myself out of this habit,
"with the help of His Spirit,
"and plant myself over there,
"because He tells me that's the right way.
"Now, oh, I'd rather still do this.
"My flesh kind of wants to do this.
"My nature would like to keep doing this.
"I would like to be in charge."
And the Spirit will start to work with you.
"Hey, come on. Let's do it this way."
In a very gentle way, a noncondemning way.
And that's what comes after we yield.
If we have to wait until we feel perfect or we're perfectly good,
we'll never come to Him.
It just won't happen, you know?
Let's just continue that prayer that I started.
God, I just pray for my friend here -- he or she.
Whatever --
wherever this person is before you,
Lord, I just ask that You would touch Him,
even as we travel,
that this person would feel You right now, feel Your Spirit,
feel Your movement, feel Your conviction,
conviction to give up sinning.
Bring tears of repentance and a commitment to You.
I can't even verbalize all this, folks.
It's just too hard,
because each condition is just so unique.
But it just --
somehow or someway, if you have ears to hear,
you'll hear, and you'll respond,
and you'll know that this isn't a coincidence
that you tuned into this,
and it's not a coincidence that I'm sitting here,
driving along the isolated corner of Illinois
in which we find ourselves,
looking right over into Missouri,
going by some old farm here.
It's not a coincidence that we met on this day.
And God, I trust You.
I trust that Your Spirit --
drink deeply of the Spirit right now.
Just say, "Yes, I drink deeply. I yield."
Whatever the Spirit wants to do, surrender.
"I surrender."
And just keep doing that.
Keep repenting.
Keep calling on Him.
And just trust that He's listening,
that things are happening.
It won't take long before you'll begin
to experience a change.
Something will change.
It might not be an instant explosion of emotion or tears,
but something will change.
You'll start to sense a peace with Him.
You'll start loving people more.
Something will change.
Your tastes will change.
You won't want to sin.
You'll feel convicted if you do sin.
And just check out our show once in a while.
Come check out our website if you would like to.
And I'd better close this show.
We're going to a double-header,
if we have enough time out here.
So shortly after doing this show
and taking a little breather,
I think we're going to start a new one.
For now, goodbye, and thanks for watching.