I want tonight to go over to the book of Joshua for just a little bit, for a message that the Lord gave me a couple of years ago anyway. And I was just reading one day, just reading, and that's kind of the way the Lord speaks to me, is I'm just reading along and something will just jump off the page. I asked the Lord. I said, surely there's a message to go with that. And then a while later, He began to tell me and show me some things about it. And I'd like to look at that for a little while tonight. I want to encourage you just to continue on. Continue on. Don't turn back. And I want to remind you of something probably you already know. We usually fall in the when we think we're the strongest, when we're in more danger of falling than any other time. When we're the strongest, and we feel good about ourselves, we have a tendency to kind of slack down. And not only do we have a wonderful Savior, but we've got a dedicated enemy that wants to destroy you. He wants to destroy your family. He wants to steal your kids. He wants to tear this church all to pieces. You've got to realize that. That's what He's here for. And He's good at what He does. He's good at what He does. And I want to talk about that maybe for just a little while tonight. But over in the book of Joshua chapter 11, and I want to start reading verse 1. I have a hard time with some of these names. So if I pronounce it wrong, if you know how to write, Good for you. I got about a sixth grade education, but it took me 12 years to get it. The Lord's been good to me. But there is some of these names I have trouble with. But I want to start reading verse number one of Joshua chapter 11. And it came to pass when Jabin king of Hazor had heard these things that he sent to Jobad, king of Madon, and to the king of Shimron, and to the king of, I don't know, Aksha, and to the, somebody got it, did they get it? What did you say? Aksha. Is that right? Okay. I'll take your word for that. I never met him myself. And to the kings that were on the north of the mountains and the plains south of Shinaroth, and in the valley and in the borders of Dor on the west, and to the Canaanites on the east and on the west, and to the Amorite and the Hittite and the Perzite and the Jebusite in the mountains, and to the Hivite under Hermon, in the land of Mishpah. And they went out, they and all their hosts with them, much people as the sand that is upon the seashore, in multitude with horses and chariots." Very many. This was a great army. And when all of these kings were met together, they came and pitched together at the water of Merom to fight against Israel. And the Lord said unto Joshua, Be not afraid because of them, for tomorrow about this time will I deliver them up all slain before Israel. Thou shalt how their horses and burn their chariots with fire." So Joshua came and all the people of war with him against them by the waters of Merom suddenly and they fell upon them. And the Lord delivered them into the hands of Israel and smote them and chased them into great Zidon. And upon, I'm only going to try that one, and into the valley of Mishpah eastward, and they smote them until they left them none remaining. And Joshua did unto them, as the Lord bade him, he howled the horses and burnt their chariots with fire." Now, the thing that the Lord impressed on me about this is they howled the horses. And what that means, I think, is they hamstrung the horses. Anybody ever heard of that? They hamstrung the horses, and that's to cut that tendon on the back of their back leg, just above their knee. That is the hamstring, and they cut this hamstring, and it rendered that horse, and I looked it up, and it means to, to howl means to hamstring or to render powerless. or ineffective for use. And the horse, they could survive. They could walk, but they couldn't pull. They couldn't run. And they were ineffective. They were still a horse. They could still graze. They still could do most everything, but they were of no value. They were ineffective in war or to pull a wagon or a chariot. They were ineffective. This is exactly what the devil is doing to many churches today. They're hamstringing us, and we've become ineffective. Now, there's never been a time in history that the church has the opportunity that it has now. Now, the darker it gets, the brighter the light ought to shine. And I've never seen it in my years. as dark as it is now. So this is a great opportunity for us to reach the world for Jesus Christ and to change some things that need to be changed. But the devil comes along and he hamstrings us and he renders us ineffective. He's very sly how he does that. Now a horse like that would just be like a You go out here in the parking lot and you punch a hole in all four tires on a car. Now it's still a car and it'll still run and you can still drive it, but it's ineffective and take you a long time to get home. And that's what the devil has done and is doing to God's people today. He's hamstringing us and he's rendering us ineffective. And the stronger we are, the more the danger is that he will come in and hamstring us and render us ineffective. Now, I'm quite a sports fan. I like especially baseball. And every once in a while, there's a player, he'll pull his hamstring. And boy, he's out. Now, he's still a good ball player, but he's out. And he's not able to do what he ought to be doing. But the devil is very sly, and he's able to hamstring even the strongest of us. Now, when we the church are hamstrung by the devil, we leave the world without light. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5, verse 14, He said, You're the light of the world. A city that's set on a hill cannot be hid, and it giveth light unto all the house. Now, we are the light of the world, and if the world sees Jesus Christ today, they must see Him through us. and through the light that He has given to us. But the devil, he'll come and he'll try to put out that light. You know, he'll come and suggest to you that this little thing, everybody else is doing it, the church down the road is doing it, and it won't hurt for you to do that. Because everybody else in there is doing fine. He'll come in and He'll begin to cut at the hamstring. And after a while, when this continues on, then you'll find yourself. You're still a Christian. You're still on your way, but your neighbors have all seen. And we become ineffective. The most terrible thing today is for God's people to be to the place where they can't affect those around them. I tell you, the world is going to hell. And the church today, We have the answer, but we have become ineffective in many cases because we've become just like the world. We need to separate from the world. When the church turns from the truth and becomes ineffective, God raises up heathen rulers to rule over us. Why do we have the leadership that we've got today? In Deuteronomy chapter 28 and verse 43 it says, The stranger that is within thee, I read it this morning, shall get up above thee very high, and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him. He shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail. Moreover, all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed, because thou hearkenest not unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee. And they shall be upon thee for a sign, and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever, because thou servest not the Lord thy God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, for the abundance of the things. Therefore shall thou serve thy enemies, which the Lord shall send against thee in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want, and in all things. And he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until He have destroyed thee." So you see, when we become ineffective, then the devil can begin to rule in our lives again. You know, back thirty-five, thirty years ago, I guess, when I got saved, I was set free from all of my past sins. And I was in a position where I could be effective. Because there was nothing there to dim the light. Sin dims our light. And it puts our light out. But as we go along, if we don't... I tell you, we need to keep our sins confessed in the blood, don't we? When we know that we've missed the mark and we've sinned, then we need to take care of that right then. But if we don't, we can become ineffective. I'd like to look tonight at the life of Samson. to illustrate this truth tonight that we can be rendered ineffective. You know the story of Samson and how that he was the strongest man, I guess, that ever lived. And you know the things that he did. He went out and he caught the young lion and he just killed him with his bare hands. I don't think there's a man in here as big and strong as you are that you'd be willing to try that. But he did things that no one else has ever done. He carried the gates of the city and ran to the top of the hill with it. And he slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. You know all about those things. And God had raised him up. He was miraculously born. And He raised him up for this cause. But he was rendered ineffective because of his sin. Oh, he was mighty. There was no one who could do anything with him. But he was rendered ineffective. God bless Samson. Samson, he was known as the world's strongest man. I guess old Hulk Hogan, but even, he wouldn't have been no match for him. He was the strongest, world's strongest man. And he did things that nobody else could ever do. But power, but his power was conditional. The power of the church is conditional today. You know that? Oh, the church needs power, and it has it at its fingertips, the power to do. Jesus said, these things that I do, ye shall do, and greater things, because I go to my Father. But the power is at our fingertips, but it's conditional. Just like Samson's power was conditional, so is ours. Now, you know the story about his Nazarite vow to God. And over in Numbers chapter 6 and verse 1, it tells about that Nazarite vow. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speaking unto the children of Israel, And say unto them, When either man or woman shall separate themselves to a vow of the Nazarite, to separate themselves unto the Lord, he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink, and shall drink no vinegar, of wine or vinegar of strong drink, neither shall he drink any liquor of grapes, nor eat moist grapes or dried. And all the days of his separation shall he eat nothing that is made of the vine tree." And then we go on down to verse 5, "...all the days of the vow of his separation, there shall no razor come upon his head until the days be fulfilled." Now this was the conditions. Now, these are the conditions that Samson had agreed to. And then we go on to the sixth verse. It says, In all the days that he separated himself unto the Lord, he shall come at no dead body. He shall not make himself unclean for his father, nor his mother, for his brother, nor his sisters when they die, because the consecration of his God is upon him. All the days of his separation he is holy unto the Lord. Now, when you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you became holy. You became one of His. Anything that's holy belongs to God. Anything that God owns is holy. But Samson, he took this Nazarite vow. This was what he was supposed to do. And Samson was separated from worldly motivations. Samson was to separate himself from strong drink. Now, in the world that we live in today, everything is, there's some kind of alcohol connected to it. Wherever you go, and you guys up here in Missouri are a whole lot worse off than we are in Arkansas. The county where we're at, it's hard to get, I guess. But when you cross over into the Missouri line, it's everywhere. You can't buy gas. You can't eat where they don't sell it. But it's connected with worldly pleasures. But Samson had to separate himself from strong drink. The Old Testament priests were forbidden to drink wine when they enter into the tabernacle, lest they die. If they come in drinking, then they die. It was just absolutely forbidden. Wine in Scripture is referred to as a malker. And strong drink is raging. That's Proverbs 20 and 1. We live in a time when worldly attractions are designed to lead God's people astray. You know that? Everything. If you watch TV, you see on the TV, all of the commercials are to lead God's people astray. There's a few things on there that's still worth watching. But you have to turn it off when the commercial comes on. But we have to separate ourselves from worldly motivations. I tell you, we can't do things as Christians the way that the world does it. Amen? If we do, we'll be rendered ineffective. We'll become ineffective when... You know, I've always thought of it this way. How can you lift someone up if you're not a little higher than they are. We've got to be a little higher. We need to separate ourselves and be different. Now, God was using Samson to begin to deliver his people. But he was to separate himself from worldly motivations. And then he was to separate from worldly reputations. You know, I don't know whether you know this or not, but sometimes preachers want to have a good reputation. We want to be known as a great preacher, a great entertainer. But we need to separate ourselves from worldly reputation. Verse number 5, it says, No razor shall come upon his head. This was a humbling thing for him to let his hair grow. You know, the Bible says that it's a shame for a man to have long hair. Now, God didn't change His mind on that, you know it? And this thing that He had, this Nazarite vow that Samson took, and He let his hair grow, and that was a shame to him. The Bible teaches that it's a shame for a man to have long hair. That's what it says over in 1 Corinthians 11 and 14. Does not even nature itself teach that if a man has long hair, it's a shame unto him? Now, they probably didn't do it to Samson's face, but when they got around behind his back, they probably laughed at him and said, look at that guy with that long hair. Don't you imagine? It was a shame. It was then and it still is today. You know, I found out that if something was ever wrong, it's still wrong. If it was ever right, it's still right. You know, you see the pictures of Jesus with the long hair. I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I don't believe he had long hair because the Bible says it's a shame. Jesus didn't take the Nazarite vow. The Nazarite people didn't have long hair. It was the vow. They were willing to separate from their worldly reputation. Are you willing? You know, in this world that we live in today, we're willing to do the great things for God. You know that? You know, if God would speak to any one of you here tonight and say, I've got a great work for you to do, I want you to do it, and you'd volunteer, you'd be willing to do it, wouldn't you? But are you willing to fail? If God called you to fail, if He called you to fall, would you be willing to do that? Well, that hurt my reputation. I've got a reputation to keep up. Jesus also made Himself of no reputation. Look at Him. In Philippians 2, verse 7, But He made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. The greatest man that ever set a foot on this earth, he became a servant. But oh, I've got a reputation to keep up. I tell you, we need to turn our reputations over to God and let Him take care of the reputation. And let's be obedient to Him. Oh, let's don't have a reputation of being a brawler. Let's don't have a reputation of being a sinner. But let's turn our reputation over to God. Well, that's the hardest thing in the world, to let us go. But he was to separate himself from these worldly reputations. You'd think Samson would be as strong as he was. Everybody liked him. Nobody liked him. They were afraid of him. Even the women didn't like him. He liked the women, but they didn't like him. Pressures put on us today from every angle to be number one. Kids, if you're not number one, you're nothing. And we're just pushed to be the very best. But listen, you'll not be the best. You're not always going to win. Even as a Christian, you're not always going to win. We'll learn more from our failures and we'll learn. Now, I'm not advocating that we go out here and fail. No, not at all. But I'll tell you, if you fail, you'll learn something in that failure. Don't miss an opportunity to learn when you fail. But pressure's been put on us to be number one, to have a great reputation, achieve things, great things, and to be a celebrity. You know, I said a while ago I'm quite a baseball fan, and I've noticed some of these great players, boy, they'll have a great year. And you go and you see the crowds, and everybody's got their name on their back. And by next year, they can be nothing again. to be traded off and even out of the game. But we've got to quit worrying about our reputation. Bearing the reproach for the name of Christ is not popular today. If you want to be popular, don't you bear reproach for the name of Christ. In Romans chapter 12 and verse 1 and 2 says, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. If God's able to lift you up. Oh, I've been around long enough that I see preachers, Brother Edgington, I know you do too. It's a political thing. And boy, they try to make all the right moves that they can be popular and move up. But you know what? God knows where you're at. He knows what you're doing. We're going to be surprised one of these days when we stand at the judgment seat of Christ, who maybe has got the greatest reward. We've got to do something about our reputation. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. The schools today, you've got to be the best. You've got to do the most. You've got to have the best name. But Samson wasn't worried. Listen, God is able to humble us. You know that? And He will. Andrew Murray said this. There's a little book, if you've never read it. It's a wonderful little book. And it's the name of it, Humility. And he says this, and I want to read it to you. But it says, Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord where I can go and shut the door, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around me and above is trouble. That's humility. He said it's not to think a little of yourself, but it's not to think of yourself at all. I think that's a pretty good definition. How humble are you tonight? He was to separate himself from worldly reputation. No, it was a shame for him to run around with that long hair. And by the way, that long hair is what got him into trouble. That's where his power was and that's what got him into trouble. And then number three, there's separation from the uncleanness of this world. In verse six, he shall come at no dead body. You remember when Samson killed the lion, he went back and he wanted to take one more look at what he'd done. He probably got to thinking, maybe, I don't know what he's thinking, but he probably thought, well, man, did I really kill that lion with my bare hands? And he went back and he touched it. Samson touched the body of the dead lion. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 6, 17, it says, Therefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you. We need to separate ourselves from the worldly, the uncleanness of the world. If we don't, the devil will render us ineffective. People say, and maybe in some instances, this might be all right. They said, I just go right into the beer joint and get them and talk to them. Listen, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. In most cases, there might be a time. But we need to be careful and not be caught up in this world and these worldly pleasures and worldly things. Come out from among them and be separate. Separate. There's got to be a separation between God's people. Oh, well, if I don't get down on their level, you know, then I'll never be able to help them. If you get down on their level, you sure won't be able to help them. You've got to have something that they don't have. And they've got to see that in our lives, that we have something that they don't have. In 2 Corinthians 6.14, he said, but be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. We're to have no fellowship with unholy practices, Paul said. I'll not go into those. You know what they are. But we're to have no fellowship with unholy practices. We're to pay our taxes. We're not to cheat on the IRS. Amen? We're to be honest with our neighbor. We're supposed to do what we say we'll do. and have no fellowship with unholy practices. No fellowship with unholy pleasures. Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. We shouldn't have fellowship with unholy pleasures. Get out of those places and those things that are unholy. If we can't do it in the light, we had no do it, had we? If we can't do it in the light, we had no do it. No fellowship with unholy prophets. Oh, there's no unholy prophets today, is there? Unholy people. We're to be careful, especially young people, to stay away from the wrong crowd. A companion of fools will be destroyed, the Bible says. We need to be careful who we're around. You know, they've got the upper hand. I know a lot of people said, well, I'm going to send my Christian kids to public school and I'm going to win. We're going to win them. It don't work that way. It will not work that way. We're not being equally yoked in unholy places. In 2 Corinthians 6, 16 says, In what agreement hath the temple with God and idols? for you are the temple of the living God. An idol is a substitute for God. Anything that dims our vision of Christ or takes away our desire to serve God and to pray and to study is wrong for us. I don't care what it is. If my love for baseball becomes my idol, it's wrong. I need to quit it. Amen? Well, I hope I don't have to. But we need to separate from the world. I want you to notice in Judges chapter 14 and 1, that Samson went down to Timnath. He went down to Timnath. The direction of the backslider is to go down. Huh? That's the direction. You know, Jonah went down into the belly of the ship. He went down into the sides of the ship. It's always down. When Samson went down to Timnath, he shouldn't have went down there. He was contaminated by the world. As he was going down to Timnath, he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion. If he had been where he ought to be, he wouldn't have seen that. He wouldn't have done it. Samson forgot that after the greatest victory comes the greatest temptation. That's true. Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you really have a great revival or great meetings and people are rejoicing and that's when the problems usually come is right after the greatest victory. It really does. That's when we let down. Samson let down. He'd kill this lion. He just wanted to go back and sing about it. But he was contaminated by the world. And he lost his resistance to the world. Delilah flirted with Samson and finally deceived him into telling her where his great strength was. And Samson ended up in the world. Now this is the way we get hamstrung. We are rendered ineffective. See, we start out by just looking. We start out by looking, and then we begin to covet like Achan did. And then after a while, we're right in the big middle of the mud hole. in the middle of sin. That's what happened to Samson. He ended up in the world. The Philistines took him and put out his eyes. They bound his hands and made him work for them. The Bible says he became as any other man. He was ineffective. How many of you know that any other man today is not going to win anybody to Christ? They're not going to lead anybody down the right path. Just like another man. He was rendered ineffective. He had been hamstrung by the devil. I imagine he heard all the talk around town about how strong he was and they probably had begun to put him up against some of the other strong men around him. But old Samson, he's stronger and probably his ego got swelled up just a little bit and he's liking that. I tell you, you get to liking that praise. And it brought him down. And finally, he ended up in the world. The saddest thing today for me is to see somebody that used to be on fire for God. And I look back and I see so many that just was on fire for God. And they just begin to drift just a little bit. The devil says, well, that's not going to hurt you. But now they're completely out and away from God. Ineffective. They become a part of the problem instead of a part of the solution. Isn't that sad? Isn't that sad? They were hamstrung by the devil. You know who he wants to get to? You. And you, and you, and you. He wants to pull us down. Reg Kelly, he wants to get you. He'd like to shut you up. And he can. If you're not careful, He'll cut your hamstring and leave you ineffective. What a terrible thing. Just like the church, Samson was called by God to judge Israel and had been given great power to set them free, but he ended up in captivity to the enemies. And that's just like the church. We're headed down. I'm talking about the church as a whole today. Our rights have been taken from us. Why? Why? Why can they do that? Why don't we have the power like the first century church had? What happened to us? Well, sin came in and the devil came in and he cut our hamstring. Oh, we still look like Christians? We still talk like them. We still do. We've got all the lingo. We do all the things that Christians ought to do, but we're ineffective. We go out into the world and we talk to them and we tell them that Jesus loves them and He does. But we're ineffective. They don't hear us. We don't have the power. I tell you, that first century church, they had some power. First day they won 3,000. Next few days they won 5,000. And then the next meeting, they don't know how many. They couldn't even count them. And you know what? They continued on. They continued on. And the Word of God spread. And it wasn't in good times. It wasn't a good time when the first century church started. It was in terrible times. They were hated, despised, and many of them killed and beaten. But they had power. They had power. And in Isis, fire come along and they They lied to the Holy Ghost and God killed them. You know why? Because the devil had rendered them ineffective. If he'd have let them get by with that red tape, man, everybody would have been lying to the Holy Ghost. And he knew that it would destroy that young church and it would never win anywhere. Oh, where's the power today? Where's the power that we need to just be the witness, the light, that the world needs to see today. He lost his strength. He lost his vision. He lost his ministry. He became just like other men. He was laughed at. He was hamstrung and became ineffective. Can you imagine that, that great man? Great, strong man, but he was ineffective. He was grinding in the mill, around and around. Working for the enemy. Could that happen to me or you? It's happening a lot today, isn't it? It could happen to me and it could happen to you. But there's the end of the story. Is everything lost today? Maybe this is gloom and doom. I don't know. But no, all is not lost today. All is not lost. We may have lost our witness. We may be ineffective as a church as a whole. We are ineffective. But listen, something began to happen while he was going around and around in the mill. His hair began to grow again. His hair began to grow again. And all wasn't lost. The victory was still there. And in Judges 16 and 22 it says, The hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaven. The evidence of his separation began to reappear. And tonight, if the church would just go back and see and ask for the old paths and walk their end, we could get the credibility again. Our light would begin to shine again. And they'd begin to come back in to the church again. Wouldn't you love to see that? I tell you, this morning I looked around at this full house of people, and I told somebody yesterday when I was coming up here, and I said, there's more people that go to that church than there is in the town. Quite a few more. And that's great. But my, there's so many out there that's not. And there's so many churches, if you drive around this morning, you'd find two or three cars sitting there. They're ineffective. They're not affecting the world. Ineffective. They lost their power because we've had our hair cut. But the hair began to grow. And he began to pray. He said, Oh God, Lord God, remember me and strengthen me just one more time. I believe we've got enough time maybe left to be strengthened one more time. Maybe we want to pray, Reg, one more time. Lord, strengthen the church once more. Just one more time. Give us that power. That power to go out and be the witness that, you know, I see all these families. This really impresses me, the kids. It looks a whole lot like ours at home. We just don't have as many. And the people out there, if they could see how you raise your kids and how happy and well-adjusted and settled they are, you know what? They'll want that for theirs. And they said, well, come on down to our church and we'll show you how this happened. Let the hair begin to grow back again. There's cleansing and there's restoration when we repent. If the church today would just begin to repent, if my people which are called by my name, you know, would humble themselves and pray, and seek my face instead of my hand, and turn from their wicked ways." Oh, I don't handle wicked ways. Some of the most wicked people that I've ever met are church-going people. Really, that's true. Oh, they look the part and bite your head off in a minute. When Samson was willing to die for the cause, his mighty strength returned. That's all the church is going to have to do today. It's so simple, Brother Hedge. All we've got to do is just be willing to die. I tell you, if it's not worth dying for, it's not worth living for. And when we're willing to die for a cause, to die out for our reputation and for Our popularity and all of these things, if we just be willing to do that. Are you willing to do that today? To see the power of God come back in the church? Oh, I believe it can. I believe the hair can begin to grow again. I can see old Samson out there between the pillars. And he said, Lord, just strengthen me one more time. And he began to pull. It didn't take very long for him to pull her down. It wouldn't take us very long to make a big difference in our communities where we live. And he began to pull, and he pulled that thing down, and he killed more. He said he killed more in his death than he did in his life. Would you be willing to die if you could do more in your death than you could in your life? Would you be willing to die? A few years back, I'll say this and I'll quit, I just thought of it, but we had a man in our community who was an unsaved man. Well, he's actually, Loretta's sister is married to his son. But he's driving a mule. He'd come out on a wagon and the mules run away with him and throwed him out of the wagon and hit a fence post, a corner post with his head. And he's unsaved and they didn't think he'd live. I didn't know any better, I guess, then. I remember before that, I had a friend. I told the Lord, I said, Lord, and I'm in it. I just didn't know any better. But I said, Lord, just take my life if you'll save him. If you'll save him, just take my life. I'm willing to die for my friend to get saved, and I'm in it. I'm in it. And then when this man was thrown out of the wagon and hit his head on the post and they didn't think he would ever live, I was praying for him. And the Lord just spoke back to me. He said, you remember that time you was willing to die for your friend? He said, are you still willing to die for him? Boy, I tell you, I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to say. But when we come to the place that we're willing to die, and others not live, the power begins to turn back. Samson said, boy, just kill me, Lord, but just one more time. Give me the strength. And he pulled it down, and they were destroyed. Hamstrung by the devil. Oh, he comes in so sly, and he'll cut her hamstring. We can still go on and play the part, but we're ineffective. You know, the hardest people to fool is your neighbors. It really is. They're hard to fool. And they'll know. They may not even know what you did, but they know something happened because you've changed. Amen. Amen. I want to thank you tonight for your attention. You've been a joy to be with. I thank you for this opportunity to be here. But don't let the devil render you ineffective. Don't let him do that. Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer. Brother Ridge, come on. Father, I thank you tonight that you've been here with us this day. And Father, I hope and pray that I've not said or done anything that would discourage these precious people. God, only the things that would encourage. Father, help us to take a good, honest look at ourselves and see if we still have the power that we used to have. Or have we been rendered ineffective by the devil? Help us to be strong in these last days and to let our light shine that the world might see our good works and glorify our Father which is in heaven. Thank you, Lord, for this strength that you give us and the love that we share tonight. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you.