The title of my sermon this morning is A Testing Time. And I have to admit that I am preaching this sermon to myself more than I am preaching it to you. I suffer from a disease called bipolar disorder and depression just comes in and sits on me for no apparent reason and just tries to conquer me. And it's a real test to try to grin and bear it and get through that. But this morning's verses have helped me. And I figure if I suffer from something, you may suffer from it too. And whatever comforts me may also comfort you. And so with that, I've turned to Exodus. Chapter 15 and verse 22 and following. You have time to turn. Then Moses led the people of Israel away from the Red Sea and they moved out into the desert of Shur. They traveled in this desert for three days without finding any water. When they came to the oasis of Marah, the water was too bitter to drink, so they called the place Marah, which means bitter. Then the people complained and turned against Moses. What are we going to drink, they demanded. So Moses cried to the Lord for help, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood, and Moses threw it into the water, and this made the water good to drink. It was there at Myra that the Lord set before them the following decree as a standard to test their faithfulness to Him. He said, if you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in His sight, obeying His commands and keeping all His degrees, then I will not make you to suffer any of the diseases that I have sent on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord who heals you and who tests you. God sends us through testing times. Now to set this up, the nation of Israel has just come out of Egypt as a great deliverance. And Egypt is a symbol of sin because they were chained as slaves to the very wishes of Pharaoh. So Egypt becomes a symbol of sin as we are slaves to our sins here in life. And so then Moses becomes a type of Christ because he delivered the nation of Israel from Egypt through the Red Sea just as Jesus delivers us from our sin. And so he's a picture of Christ that is going to come in the future. And Moses was the man of Mount Sinai. The law was given through Moses and Jesus was the man of Mount Calvary who kept completeness. And so Moses becomes a picture of Christ delivering us from our sins. And the water that they went through in the Red Sea is a symbol of baptism. They went through the Red Sea, and then the Red Sea collapsed on the army of Pharaoh, and it is a type of baptism. When a person gets saved, the first thing they can do to be obedient to the Lord is to be baptized. And so they've come through there. And now they are in the wilderness. And the wilderness is a place of grumbling and stumbling and complaining and unhappiness and without faith. They go 30 days and they have lost their faith in God. They've already forgotten that he has delivered them to the Red Sea, and wilderness represents the carnal life. There seems to be three lives at work in our life. First, we're a natural person, and we do not know the things of God, and we don't care about the things of God. become carnal Christians, we're born again, we're saved, we're brought out of Egypt, and we are wandering in the wilderness, but we forget to trust God, and so we complain, and we're bitter, and we're groaning, and we're moaning, and we're absolutely no fun to be around. And when I get into my depression, folks, that's the way I am. I'm no fun to be around. I'm lower than a snake's belly and a wagon rod. And I've told my wife that whenever I'm depressed, when I'm down and struggling, don't have any mercy on me, make fun of me. And so she will make fun of me and the laughter helps to break the cycle of the depression that I'm in. So I laugh at myself. I sort of just say, old George is having his own pity party. And so that helped me to break the cycle of the depression. Also, you might like to know that sometimes I'm down and lonesome, and I call Brother Mike. and he comes over and we drink coffee together and we'll share scripture and praise God, talk about fishing and golf and all those things we used to do when we were younger. And just the fellowship of another believer helps to break the cycle of sin and break the cycle of depression. But I'm in the wilderness and Mike helps to get me on to the promised land. And the promised land is a symbol of the spirit-filled life, a life where we praise God and sing and are happy. And this testing time that the nation of Israel is going through is for one reason. God wants to teach the nation of Israel to be happy and to praise Him and to trust Him in good times and in bad times. And how many times do we go through bad times in our life and we forget our faith and so we crumble back down, we go back to the carnal life that was there before. And so the purpose of God's testing us is to teach us to be obedient in good times and in bad times. Job was probably the ultimate person to be tested. And God and Satan are talking And God brings the name of Job up and he says, have you considered my servant Job? And Satan says, well, you have put a hedge around him. He's got all the cattle. He's got all the grain. He has a big family and you have protected him. And so God says, you can touch him, but you can't kill him. and God put him into a testing time. He lost his cattle. He lost his grain. Things are so bad in Job's life that Job's wife says, curse God and die. And so Job cries out, though he slay me, yet I will praise him. And God wants to bring us to a point in our life to where regardless of what is happening to us, we will praise God in all things and whatsoever he has put before us. And so anyway, a testing time. Have you ever been through a testing time? When I was a pastor at New Hope Baptist Church, I had a young man in our church that was unemployed. He lived in condemned housing, and he needed a job. And I was in position to help recommend him for a job, and he got the job. The next day, the employer called me and says, where is this guy? I said, I don't know, but I'll find out. So I drove 45 miles, 45 minutes down into the city. I went up to his door and walked in, and there he was. He was sleeping. And so I got a pail that they mopped the floor with, filled it up with water, threw it on him, and woke him up. And he said, it's no fun to have a pastor who used to be in the Marine Corps. And so I said, get in there, get a shower, go to work. And so he did, but he lost the job. He failed the test because he failed to go to the battle that was before him. He wasn't praising God for the job. He slid back into being a carnal Christian and he lost the job. He failed the test that God put before him. And I've been placed before a lot of tests in my life. And one of the first tests that greatly embarrasses me is when I went to college with Mike back at Missouri Baptist College, I had to take a course called English 113. So I had to learn to speak and to write the English language. And so my father is an English teacher. I've lived in America all my life. I think I know how to talk, and I think I know how to write, but I failed English 113 completely. That teacher would not give me one point. I made a 69. get to 70. So I took the course again and once again I failed the course. I couldn't learn a noun from a verb or a pronoun and it was embarrassing to me to tell my dad that I had failed English 113 twice. But God was testing me to see if I would overcome my weakness and overcome my troubles and be obedient unto him. And I didn't know how I would do it, but I was reading in the scripture and in Timothy chapter one, verse seven, he says, God has not given you a spirit of fear, but of love and of joy and of a sound mind. When it said sound mind, That kicked all my excuses away. God said I had a sound mind. There was no excuse for me to fail this course. So I took it again with another professor, and I passed the test. And then I went on to college. and seminary. Now I've written a book and I write meditations every morning and place them on Facebook and people in India pick them up and use them as preaching sources and Sunday school courses because they don't have any Bibles or Christian literature. And a guy named Francis in South Africa has done the same thing and I get about a hundred responses a week out of being able to write. I never thought that I would ever have to write in my ministry, but God was testing me to see if I would quit. He wanted to cut off my ministry so that I would do nothing in the future. I would just wallow in self-pity, but God did not create me to be a quitter. He created me to be an overcomer. And so I had to overcome my own weaknesses and my own failures to be able to go on. And God has not given you the spirit of fear, but of love and of joy and of a sound mind. And he says, the greater is he who is in you than he that is in the world. And I had to remember that this past week because I was moving into that dark area, but God would say, I've given you, greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. And so I was able to wrestle through the depression and not use it as an excuse. God wants to give you an excuse to fail. Now, the corner of life, is summed up in Galatians chapter five, and I'll read it to you. And this is where God wants you to live. You see, the natural life without Christ and the carnal life are so much alike that you can't tell which one is which. Only God knows. but this is where God, Satan wants, during the testing time, Satan wants to push you back to the carnal life. And so from Galatians chapter five, verse 16, it says, so I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants you to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These are two forces who are constantly fighting each other so that you are not free to carry out your good intentions. But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under the obligation of the law of Moses. When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, The results are very clear. Sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outburst of anger, selfish ambition, dissensions, divisions, ending, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these, let me tell you again, is I have told you before that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the kingdom of God. And when we go through a testing time, this is the place that Satan wants to take us to, and he wants us to fail the test. But then it says, but the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives. Love. Love. It's so simple. Now, my wife has just had a knee replacement, and she's been on a walker in ice for two weeks, laid up. She can't leave the house. And a lady from our church brought over a pot of chicken noodle soup, a big pot. I was so glad because now I am the chief cooking bottle washer. I am the caregiver. I do the dishes. I do the cooking. And about all I had to cook that night was peanut butter and jelly. But she brought over a big pot of chicken noodle soup. It was just an act of love. And it overflowed me. And I was able to feed my wife, take care of her. And we lived on that a week. And she came to get the pot. And then you know what she did? She brought enchiladas. And so we've been able to feed ourselves, even though I'm not much of a cook. But I do cook bacon and eggs, and my wife taught me how to cook oatmeal. And so we've been able to get through the process. But an act of love touched my life, and it meant so much. When I was in Vietnam, I got shot three times in the right hip. a cast from my arms, my armpits, all the way down my right leg. They loaded me into a rope litter in a C-130 transport plane. We stopped in Alaska, and they opened the back door. And the cold air came in, and a beautiful blonde nurse saw me shivering. And she came over and put a blanket over me and tucked me in. Not a word was spoken. But I fell in love with that woman immediately. Yes. And that act of kindness, that act of love, gave me the grit to want to live another day. And so I was able to keep on going just because someone did something nice. Don't diminish the act of love. But the spirit, the Holy Spirit is a love factor. So he says, love, let me see. The Holy Spirit pronounces the fruit of love, joy. I have a friend who makes my videos for me. And he's a Catholic, and I'm a Baptist, but we get along good. And the man always has a smile on his face. And he knows what he's doing, and he puts it together, and he does the job. But this man radiates so much joy. I'd like to be around him, just let the joy rub off on me. And so God wants to give us a spirit of overcoming the evil with the spirit of joy, love, joy, peace, the opposite of warfare. He wants to sell the warfare in our hearts. Patience, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness. I've learned gentleness I've got four grandkids that live right next door to me. And in the morning, I pick them up and take them to the school bus. And in the evening, they come by and watch cartoons at the house. But my little grandson, Lucas, who's seven years old, I'll be laying in bed watching Walker, Texas Ranger. And it'll be at the climax where Walker is beating up on somebody and Lucas will come in and change the channel and he watches his cartoons and then he jumps up and down on the bed and he wants to play man overboard. He'll hit me with a pillow and I'm supposed to catch him and throw him off the bed. And by this little seven-year-old, I've learned what gentleness is. I don't spank him or run him off. I just have fun with him. But the Holy Spirit has taught me to be gentle towards this young man. Gentleness, self-control. You know, there's really no excuse for us to fall into sin or to fail our test because the Holy Spirit gives us the element of self-control. There were two great sins that I had when I got saved. I was just out of Vietnam. And all I knew how to do was cuss and fire an M60 machine gun. And I had to learn a whole new vocabulary. And self-control, I had to learn how to quit cussing. Missouri Baptist College did not have a use for either one of these. But I learned how to have self-control and overcome the words that I select and the words that I use And instead of being harsh on everything, God taught me to use a softer word to be kind to the people around me. He gives us self-control. The other thing was I was angry. I was mad. I've just came out of war and I grew up at Leopold, Missouri, and I went through a lot of rejection in school. And I wanted to go down and blow those people up. I figured I knew how to kill a man a hundred different ways. But God changed the anger into love, and I had self-control, and I'm no longer a person of anger. I hope that it is said of me that I'm a man of love, but you would have to be the one who would decide that. But I'm no longer driven by anger because God has given me the power of self-control. So against these things, there are no law. So God sends us through testing times to turn us into the character of Christ, that we will be obedient in times of good and obedient in times of bad, that we will have joy and peace and self-control controlling our lives. Can anybody say amen to that? Yeah. If you don't give me an amen, I'll ask for one. Well, it's nice to be with you this morning. This is my message. And so I have learned this week, again, to have self-control and not allow the bipolar depression to defeat me because I have the Holy Spirit which gives me self-control and I don't have to be full of bitterness. I can be full of praise. The wood that Moses found at Myra, he threw it into the pool of bitter water and the bitter water was turned sweet and that log represented Christ. When the people went through the log into the water, it became bitter, and their bitter spirits became sweet, as representative of the cross of Christ. If your heart is bitter, if your spirit is bitter, cling to the cross, the word of the cross, and he turns your bitterness into sweetness. When I get backslidden, I always have to come back to the cross where the spirit of bitterness is dwelt and the spirit of joy arises. Thank you for listening to me this morning. I hope that you've been able to gain just a little bit of the stirring up of your spirit and to help encourage your faith a little bit. It just gives comfort to me. I hope it will bring some comfort to you. So if you want to stand for a hymn of invitation, if God is speaking to your heart and you need to come and cling to the cross of Christ and turn the bitterness of your life and turn the testing of your life into sweetness, you can come to the altar this morning to pray. Thank you.