fact, I got so many problems I wish you’d shut up so I could go solve them.  I’m gonna think about this a while now, and maybe if I can get it in my head I’ll lift my head and try this Faith business.”  Nuh-ah!  “Lift up now thine eyes.”

I never make altar calls.  I believe that truth is like turning on a light in a darkened room and you see.  If there’s any kind of reaction to what I’m communicating it’s gonna happen right here and now where you sit.  I don’t know your problems.  I know I have my own personal problems, and I also have the responsibility to keep the eyes of this Church looking up, and I said we came downtown to keep the upward look down here.  Whatever your circumstance, this promise is yours to claim—“Lift up now”—right inside you where it starts, the level of confidence and belief.  “Is it possible that God might really respond to me as an individual doing this?”

How many of you know the New Testament passage God promises “He will never tempt you beyond what you’re able”?  How many know that?  The Greek has it, in the next phrase that says, “but with the temptation provideth a way of escape”— remember that?  The Greek has it that as particularistic and as individual as the temptation, God has already, the promise is, worked out the escape route particularized to each and every temptation.  That means even if you’re in a mess, and you can’t get your eyes up, the escape route has already been worked out.  You ain’t giving God any option—if you don’t take it, it stands wanting.  But the God that Jesus says “numbers the hairs of your head” so particularizes His play on the keyboard of humanity that every problem you’re facing today that would take you a week to tell me, He’s already got the escape route worked out. 

All you gotta do is “Lift up now thine eyes”—starts with that attitude—“from the place that thou art.”  Quit whining, saying “I’ll

serve God if He changes my circumstance and when I’m out of this or that I’ll think about it.”  “Now from the place that thou art”—that’s the promise—and, look, in his case it gets very particularized.  God hasn’t said to me that I can walk and wherever I walk the territory’s mine—at least my belief level hasn’t reached that yet or I’d be walking up and down Broadway and have you guys with a map going various directions.  That’s particularized to Abram, but God made him seize it. 

He said “Look north, south, east, west: as far as you look I’m gonna give it to you.”  Then comes the action part that hangs the body a little beyond looking.  He says “Arise, right now, and start walking, and everywhere the sole of your feet touch is gonna be yours.  You just keep walking.  If you want your descendants to have a lot of land, take big steps and keep going.  If you want a little bit of—you want a little ol’ potato patch for what I’ve already promised you, which is seed or descendants that you can count like the stars—go in circles.” 

Now I don’t take sides in the political arena.  When I get to heaven the first thing I’m gonna do is punch Adam out, if he’s there.  Now that has two interpretations—where I’m going and where he’s going.  That’s irrelevant to the message I’m preaching, where I’m going—and I think I’m going to the right place because God’s gonna give it to faithers.  And you know Jimmy’s gonna go up there and say to Him, “When you consider all else that I’ve done, what’s this little motel got to do with where I get in this place?”  And that’s all on performance.  I’ve said for years the only thing Jimmy revealed at his motel was bad taste.  What I still haven’t heard him apologize for is that impossible perfectionist, hypocritical doctrine he preached that

he himself couldn’t live as he beat everybody else on the head with it.  God’s not after that kind of perfection.  Christ died for our imperfection.  He broke the barrier that our sin created and covered