HomeARC ML 0703
"SHTICK!"--By Father David May 21, 1978 MO--DFO NO.703
© June 1978, by The Family of Love, CP 748, 00100 Roma, Italia.
1. I WAS REALLY HEARTSICK AND DISAPPOINTED when I received a letter from one of our leaders requesting clearance to leave his present very successful responsibilities. It's a terrible disappointment to know that he wants to forsake his extremely important post, which if he deserts, we'll probably have to close down which could result in a loss of literally millions of souls. The Scripture I got for him:
2. "LET EVERY MAN ABIDE IN THE CALLING WHEREIN HE WAS CALLED. [DELETED] If one has been called to be a servant, seek not to be loosed, if you're free, seek not to be bound." (1Cor.7:20.21.) We were expecting tremendous things from that radio show, it's one of our biggest outreaches in the whole world.
3. MISSIONARIES HAVE GONE TO FOREIGN FIELDS AND WORKED FOR YEARS and years and years in a lot harder job than he had and with much fewer results, but he can't stand it more than two years and he wants to run off.
4. I THINK WHAT GOD IS TRYING TO TEACH THAT BOY IS TO STICK to a job and endure it, "Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ!" (2Tim.2:3.) If he forsakes this job, we hesitate to give him clearance to go anywhere else in the Family since he might very well leave that one too.
5. IF HE LEAVES THAT JOB HE'LL BE LIKE KING SAUL: A DISAPPOINTMENT TO GOD, a disappointment to us, and a disappointment to the world! I don't blame anybody for getting bored and fed up with their job once in a while. I worked for my mother from the time I was 16 to the time I was 36--20 years--and I got bored and fed up with the job and sometimes almost hated it.
6. BUT BECAUSE I WAS FAITHFUL, I WAS LOYAL AND I STUCK to it, even when many times I didn't want to, as a result hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of souls were saved, and I got the training I needed.
7. THE GREATEST MEN IN THE WORLD WHO'VE ACCOMPLISHED ANYTHING AT ALL THAT THE WORLD HAS HEARD ABOUT WERE THE MEN WHO STUCK to their jobs through thick and thin, even when they hated it. Nobody particularly enjoys sticking to their job for 20 years.--But my God, you should be able to stick to a job for more than two years! If you don't know how to stick, you're "double-minded and unstable in all your ways, wavering like the waves of the sea. Think not that that man shall receive anything from the Lord!" (Jam.1:6-8.)
8. I STUCK TO MY MOTHER FOR 20 YEARS. I STUCK TO FRED JORDAN FOR 15 YEARS, and I've now stuck to the Revolution for 10 years. If I'd run away from any of them, there would be no Revolution at all. Any soldier that keeps running away and deserting his post is just a damned deserter!
9. THESE PEOPLE WHO GET TIRED AND BORED WITH THEIR JOBS AFTER ONLY A FEW MONTHS--some of them after only a few weeks or days! Especially after a couple of years then they always want to run off someplace else, when they've done so well where they are and they're so needed, they just make me furious!
10. I DIDN'T GET WHERE I AM BY RUNNING AWAY FROM THE JOBS GOD GAVE ME TO DO, the assignments of my Generalisimo. Jesus said, "He that having put his hand to the plough and even looking back, is not worthy of Me." (Lk.9:62.) He's put his hand to the plough and he's not only looking back, but he wants to go back!
11. EVERYBODY GETS FED UP WITH A JOB AND BORED WITH IT sometimes, and even sick of it. But if you don't stick to it, you'll never pull out and pull through and accomplish anything for the Lord.
12. YOU YOURSELF HAVE PROBABLY GOTTEN SICK AND FED UP WITH YOUR JOB sometimes and felt like quitting, but if you hadn't stuck to it, look what you would have missed. But don't forget if you haven't already gotten sick and fed up and thought about quitting your job, you probably will sooner or later.
13. THE DEVIL MAKES US SICK AND FED AND BORED and resent this or resent that, and don't like this and don't approve of that. But if you stick with it, God is going to bless you mightily, because we're not finished by any means yet, even when I'm finished.
14. BUT IF YOU QUIT, YOU COULD MISS THE BLESSING, cause a tremendous collapse in God's work or diminishment or something and untold damage to His Kingdom. But if you're faithful, the Lord will bless you.
15. THERE'S NOTHING I HATE LIKE A DESERTER, and nothing God hates like a deserter! He says, "My soul abhorreth him that turneth back." If he quits, he is one of the biggest disappointments we have ever had and one of the biggest disappointments God has ever had!
16. HE WILL BE ONE OF THE BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS TO MILLIONS of people who are dependent on his show. You know what Fred said about one station that kicked his "Church in the Home" show off the air in an area where millions of people were listening, poor invalids and shut-ins and so on, it was the only church they had. He said, "My God, they just burned down their church!" I want to warn you of something, son, and that is:
17. A MAN WHO CAN'T STICK TO HIS JOB WILL NEVER GET ANYWHERE WITH GOD or with the people and certainly not with me or us, no matter what a hell of a job it gets to be sometimes.
18. I GOT FED UP WITH MINE THE LAST TWO OR THREE WEEKS and I felt like going, it would have been so easy to go. But I fought all Hell and the Devil and everything to stay alive, because I knew I didn't dare desert it, or you, or the people, especially not God!
19. IF I HAD, I WOULD HAVE BEEN ASHAMED TO FACE GOD! I just tried to refuse one little assignment that God gave me once and He slew me, He literally slew me, and I woke up dead in bed! And it scared the wits out of me--not because I was dead, but because I was having to go now and give an account to God of a failure! Let me tell you, I sure repented of that in a hurry. Whew! (Read "Another Holy Ghost Story," No.679.)
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21. MANY WAS THE TIME I DIDN'T DESERT MY MOTHER BECAUSE I WAS AFRAID GOD WOULD KILL ME IF I DID! That's the truth! A lot of people need this message. A lot of people are not backsliders, they're not leaving the Family, they don't plan to leave the Lord's service, but they're just fed up with their job and they just want a change of scenery and to go someplace else and do something else.
22. SO THEY QUIT some school or some big job, something that's very important that God has for them to do, and it leaves them flat, just flat. A bird in the hand is worth 10,000 in the bush!
23. WHY WOULD HE WANT TO TRADE A HERE-AND-NOW TREMENDOUSLY FRUITFUL, SUCCESSFUL MINISTRY where he's reaching hundreds of millions, for something he doesn't even know about, for the unknown? It usually takes years to build up any kind of genuine regular popular radio show--years! And he has a going popular successful show in a few months, and now he wants to run off and leave it! One of the saddest Scriptures in the whole New Testament is, "Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world." (2Ti.4:10.) And when
24. JOHN MARK LEFT PAUL AND BARNABUS while they were on the road fighting the battle in their first missionary journey, Paul would never ever let him work with him again, he never trusted him again. He figured,
25. ONCE A DESERTER, ALWAYS A DESERTER. Some have left post after post when they got a little fed up or bored. One kind of individual God is not only disgusted with, He almost hates, is a deserter!
26. TURNING YOUR BACK ON THE JOB GOD HAS GIVEN YOU is just as bad in God's sight as turning your back on Him! Because that's exactly what you're doing. If you turn your back on God's job, you're turning your back on God! He may just have to slay you for desertion like He's done to quite a few people throughout the Bible and history.
27. COULD YOU IMAGINE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO A BATALLION IN THE ARMY IF THE OFFICERS LEADING IT INTO BATTLE SUDDENLY TURNED AROUND AND RAN! ALL the soldiers would run too, they'd follow, that's what they're supposed to do, follow their officers! Let that be a lesson to all of us.
28. IT'S A LESSON I LEARNED THE HARD WAY. I don't know how many times I tried to run away from my mother, and how many times I got slapped back again, embarrassed, humiliated, and almost killed because I was trying to run away from my job.
29. THE LORD PUTS UP WITH ME in all kinds of my craziness, idiosyncrasies, all kinds of mistakes, failures, wine, women and song. But there's one thing He will not tolerate, and that is desertion. I mean they will put up with you in the army through almost anything.
30. BUT WITH DESERTERS, whew, they sock it to them and if they ever catch them, put them in prison for years. And if it's in time of war on the battlefield, the officers have orders if the guy runs, to shoot him in the back!
31. ONE SOLDIER TURNING AND RUNNING CAN CAUSE A WHOLE BUNCH OF SOLDIERS TO DECIDE TO RUN. It's such a bad testimony, it's such a bad influence. It's just about the most despicable thing a man can possibly do, to desert his job when he's needed.
32. THAT'S REALLY WHAT ESAU DID, HE DESERTED HIS JOB. He's going to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage, if he leaves that job. I think that's one lesson I've learned, but I've learned it the hard way, by bitter experience. I'll tell you, I learned never to try it again!
33. THAT TIME IN THE ARMY CURED ME: GOD NEARLY KILLED ME! Three days unconscious, double pneumonia. Because I wanted to go into the army to get away from my mother and the Lord's work. I'd never seen what the world was like, and I wanted to get out there and see it. And I paid for that like hell from that moment on!
34. THE LORD NEARLY KILLED ME, and if I hadn't prayed for the mercy of God, I would have died! But I'll tell you, I never tried to leave my mother again, until she finally retired.
35. I'LL TELL YOU, GOD KNOWS HOW TO SPANK YOU! If he quits that job, I know God well enough, he will be so sorry, he'll be one of the sorriest men in the world, and he will rue the day that he ever left that job! But God may never give it back to him.
36. GOD MAY GIVE HIS BISHOPRIC TO ANOTHER, like Judas and Esau. They never found a place of repentance, though they "sought it carefully and with tears." (Heb.12:17.) He never got another chance like that, never.
37. IT IS DANGEROUS TO QUIT THE JOB GOD HAS GIVEN YOU! I don't think I ever quit a job for the Lord from that time on. Then after my mother retired, the Lord gave me that little church job out in Arizona, which was one of the toughest jobs I've ever had.
38. BUT I STUCK TO THE JOB until the Lord made it very clear I had to leave, whether I liked it or not. Then the Lord gave me a job in Los Angeles driving a Christian School bus, and then both driving the school bus and teaching school too. Though I had one of the toughest, worst classes in the whole school, that five teachers had already quit,
39. I STUCK IT OUT FOR THREE YEARS, think of that! When I was practically weeping in the mirror one morning shaving, saying, "Lord, I can't stand anymore, I can't take it anymore, I just can't! ..." The Lord said,
40. "ENDURE HARDNESS AS A GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST, that you may please Him who hath called you to be a soldier!" (2Tim.2:3) I knew God had given me the job. If it's a job that you know God has put you in where you've got a good ministry and you're helping souls or being a blessing and you know it's the Lord,
41. YOU SHOULD BE AFRAID TO QUIT! It was a miracle I got that job, I'll tell you, and I was afraid to quit! Throughout my life and training I had a bunch of little rinky-dink jobs, but they were God's jobs and I stuck to them, until God said, "You're finished, it's time to go."
42. THE LORD SHOWED ME CLEAR ENOUGH WHEN THE SCHOOL JOB WAS DONE. He told me several times by prophecy and then by heart attacks, and I finally said, "All right." Finally the Lord said, "Go and sell all that thou hast, and come follow Me!" (Mt.19:21.) And I had two houses full of furniture, the best pay I'd ever had, a good job, and I was just getting along great, when He drops that bomb! I said,
43. "WELL, I CAN'T, I'VE GOT A LOT OF BILLS." "Sell everything!" He said.--And it paid the bills and I left! With an old taxi car, an 18-foot trailer, thin tires and a wife and four kids and $30 in my pocket! And between there and Texas we had 7 blowouts! And I thought,
44 "MY GOD, I MUST HAVE MADE A MISTAKE, maybe I shouldn't have left!" You know how the Devil really tempts you. In the meantime we had gone to the Soul Clinic School, and boy, if there was ever any place I wanted to quit, it was there!
45. BUT I STUCK IT OUT! And I didn't quit because I knew God had called us to come there and learn what we needed to learn, or there probably never would have been a Revolution. But then when I finally had the training and was ready, away we went!
46. WE WENT TO MIAMI AND I STUCK TO MY JOB THERE trying to evangelise Jews until God closed the door and told me, "No more, that's it, you're finished." And I had plenty of problems, all kinds of difficulties and oodles of enemies. The final thing that really closed the door was that the City Council slammed the door in my face and said they were going to tear down our house!
47. SO YOU'D BETTER STICK IT OUT UNTIL YOU KNOW GOD WANTS YOU TO LEAVE A JOB and you know He's finished with you there and He's got something else He wants you to do. And with Fred Jordan, when everybody else was deserting him, I asked the Lord, "Lord, what shall I do? What should be my attitude toward this man?" The Lord said,
48. "AS DAVID WITH SAUL," just as clear as anything! And when everybody else left him, I stuck it out with him for 15 years, until he fired me! My Dad was pretty good at that, he said, "David, don't you ever leave a job unless God gives you another one."
49. MY MOTHER ASKED DR. WISEMAN, THE LITTLE JEW that ran that mission in San Francisco and hardly ever had many people there, "How could you stay here so many years when you seem to be accomplishing so little?" He said,
50. "SHISTER, IT ISS VON TING YUST TO SHTICK!" Apparently he felt called there to stick it out and he just stuck. Now if God makes it plain to you you should move or you should change or this is not the place for you, He better make it awful plain and you better make sure it's God!
51. IF IT HADN'T BEEN FOR MY STICKING to a good many unsavoury and unfavourable jobs that I didn't like, and some of them for years, you wouldn't have a Revolution today! I was with my mother for 20 years, with Fred Jordan for 15 years, and I've been with you for 10 years!
52. WELL, I ALMOST RAN AWAY A FEW DAYS AGO TO HEAVEN, I just felt like life was a little too hard sometimes, always an exile, always on the run. But how could I feel like that when God has been so good to me and blessed me so much, and yet I just get tired of living, tired of fighting?
53. THE LORD HAS TAUGHT ME A LESSON, once again one of the most severe lessons He ever taught me. I better never get tired of it again, or else! PTL?
54. SO "IT'S VON TING YUST TO SHTICK!" And you'd better learn a lesson on faithfulness and how to "stick" to a job, no matter how boring or how tiresome or how fed up you get, or offended sometimes, or feel like you're unappreciated and all the rest.
55. "IT ISS VON TING YUST TO SHTICK!" at least until God tells you it's time to go. I was so afraid that I would jump the gun and leave before time, that I usually waited until I got kicked out or I got fired or forced out, to make sure it was God's will and time for me to go.
56. "THERE'S A CLASSIC STORY IN THE BIBLE ABOUT THAT, and that's about dear Jacob in the School of Laban. Just think, the guy had to work 7 years for the girl he loved, Rachel, and on his wedding night in the dark his crooked father-in-law slipped him her old maid sister Leah!
57. HE COULD HAVE GOTTEN FED UP AND WALKED OFF THE JOB, but the Lord told him to have patience. Then his father-in-law promised him if he'd work another 7 years he could have Rachel, which he did and finally got her.
58. AND ON TOP OF ALL THAT HE HAD TO WORK AN ADDITIONAL 7 YEARS FOR HIS SHARE OF THE FLOCKS. And even then he had to flee in the middle of the night to take what was his, with his in-laws chasing after him. But he was 21 years at the same job, 21 years before God was ready to release him, think of it!
59. WE'VE GOT A FEW FOLKS IN THE REVOLUTION WHO HAVE REALLY STUCK it out through thick and thin, through everything; in spite of everything everybody did to them, they stuck. I mean they are shining examples of what people have lived through and stood and withstood, in spite of persecution and everything, even right in the Family!
60. A CERTAIN TOP LEADER'S WIFE IS A SHINING EXAMPLE OF THAT. SHE PUT UP WITH A LOT, STOOD A LOT, AND YET SHE STUCK. And though everybody maligned her and ridiculed her and scoffed at her and criticised her and made fun of her behind her back and even to her face, she stuck, because she felt it was the Lord's will and because she loved the Lord and the Lord's work and she loved her husband.
61. SO I TELL YOU, HE OUGHT TO BE SO THANKFUL FOR SUCH A JEWEL OF A WOMAN! I don't think he'll ever find anything any better, she's so precious! She may not be perfect, and who is, and she may not always do the right thing, who does?
62. BUT GIVE HER CREDIT FOR ONE THING, SHE STUCK! Because of her faith in God, her love of the Lord, she stuck in spite of everything. And I could say about the same for him.
63. IT'S ONE THING JUST TO STICK in the job that God has given you, no matter what happens, if it's of the Lord and you know it's of God. Sometimes you may even doubt that.
64. BUT YOU HAD BETTER MAKE SURE THAT IT'S NOT OF GOD AND LET HIM THROW YOU OUT first, before you take it upon yourself to make that decision and run away. Because you can be sadly mistaken. Sometimes I'd figure, "Well, my usefulness to mother is up and she doesn't seem to be so useful anymore and I think it's about time I got out and learned to be a flaming glorious evangelist and make something of myself" as Jane often tried to persuade me.
65. BUT I'D PROMISED GOD, AS LONG AS SHE WAS SERVING THE LORD AND FRUITFUL IN HER MINISTRY, I WOULD STICK WITH HER, AND I DID, 20 YEARS! And when God told me to stick with Fred, I stuck another 15! So you had better be sure that when it's God's time, He will let you know. Or if you're not sure, just wait till He throws you out or you get fired or something, then you'll know for sure. So,
66. "IT'S VON TING YUST TO SHTICK!" God help us to be faithful and just to stick! Praise You Lord! Hallelujah! Help us to have some sticktoitiveness, Lord, some determination to go through. Lord, there's so many stories in Thy Word of men who went through many trials, but they stuck to the job.
67. LIKE DAVID himself working under such a horrible boss as Saul. But You told him to stick with him and he stuck, Lord until he was driven out in the wilderness. Saul even tried to kill him! But he stuck it out there, Lord, until you let him know it was time to go.
68. HELP US, LORD, TO KNOW IT'S ONE THING JUST TO STICK to the task that you have given us, determined not to quit, but to go on whether we succeed or fail, to stay put in the job You've given us until you tell us it's time to go.
69. LORD, HELP AND HAVE MERCY ON ALL OF THESE DESERTERS, who are almost worse than backsliders, Lord! They deserted their post. They were real soldiers already and then they turned around and ran. You said that if they even look back they're not worthy of Thee.
70. LORD, YOU REMINDED US OF THAT VISION GRANDMOTHER HAD ONCE OF THAT DESERTED PLOUGH out in the middle of that vacant field, and she heard Thy voice, or the voice of an angel, say, "Whose plough is this?" And she replied, "I don't know." When she told us the vision,
71. I REALISED THAT IT WAS MY PLOUGH, A CERTAIN JOB THAT I HAD DESERTED which You had given me to do, and that really shook me up, Lord, because I knew You were trying to show me what a terrible thing it is to desert your plough in the middle of a field!
72. HELP THESE NOW, LORD, NOT TO DESERT THEIR PLOUGHS right in the middle of the field just when they're really getting the job done and preparing for a tremendous reaping, Lord.
73. HELP US TO SHAKE THEM UP AS THY PROPHET, LORD, WITH THY MESSAGE, and scare them half to death, literally afraid to leave the job! Lord, it's a pretty important lesson, probably one of the most needed in the Revolution right now when the going gets tough and rough for a lot of new pioneers. They don't have the jobs they had anymore and they're tempted to turn back.
74. SO LORD, IN JESUS' NAME, WE ASK YOU TO HELP US ALL TO REMEMBER THAT IT'S ONE THING JUST TO STICK AND BE FAITHFUL. "It is accounted unto a servant that he be found faithful." (1Cor.4:2.) And the one thing that You said as they entered Heaven, Lord, was "Well done thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." (Mt.25:21.)
75. HELP US TO REMEMBER that the most important thing in our service for Thee, the most important thing in the world for us, the most important thing to Thee, Lord, is our faithfulness.
76. EVEN IF WE'RE STUMBLEBUMS LIKE PETER and we make a hell of a lot of mistakes and we do crazy things like I do, still Lord, help us to be faithful.
77. I THANK YOU, LORD, YOU'VE HELPED ME TO AT LEAST BE FAITHFUL. We know that's why we're here today, and You've used the most ridiculous instrument You could possibly use in me, but at least I've been faithful. Praise You Lord! That's one of the things You said in that prophecy, Lord. (Rev.3:7-13.--Read it!)
78. "THOU HAST KEPT MY WORD--LET NO MAN TAKE THY CROWN!"--Found faithful, thank You Jesus!
79. THANK YOU JESUS FOR THESE FAITHFUL ONES, and all the rest who are faithful throughout the world. Lord, teach the unfaithful ones some real severe lessons through all this so they'll learn to be faithful, just to stick, in Jesus name. Amen. I love you! Thank you for your faithfulness! Please don't be unfaithful! "It's von ting yust to SHTICK!"
Copyright (c) 1997 by The Family
