THE LASH OF THE RASH!    DO 2446  7/88
--Lesson on Obedience to 9-year-old Techi.

(Techi breaks out in hives after disobeying Grandpa.)

         1. YOU USUALLY MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION & YOU DO OBEY, BUT SOMETIMES YOU REALLY STALL, & YOU REALLY FIGHT IT! Remember the story about the little boy whose sister asked him about the Lord's Prayer? It says "Thy Will be done on Earth," in other words obey, "as it's done in Heaven," & she asked, "What does that mean?" He said, "RIGHT NOW!"
         2. NOW THAT IS A DISTINCT PROBLEM YOU HAVE, HONEY, & that is about "right now" obedience! You seldom ever do it right now, you always stall & you're always objecting & arguing about it. You always finally yield & give in & obey, but you put it off as long as you can, you stall & argue, & try not to do it.
         3. SO MAYBE YOU NEED TO LEARN THAT LESSON OF "RIGHT NOW!" Obedience is right NOW! And when you stall & you argue & you don't obey right away, then what are you doing? (Techi: Disobeying.) You do finally obey, you finally yield, but not without argument & discussion & stalling as long as you can get away with it, until we really lay down the law & say, "Well DO it!", & then you finally do it. Or you stall until you're finally CONVINCED that you should do it. But in the meantime, you do have a hard time with instant obedience. So the Lord just may be trying to teach you a lesson about instant obedience.-Obedience which is not INSTANT is NOT obedience, it's DISobedience!
         4. (TO MARIA:) I WAS TRYING TO TELL HER THAT OBEDIENCE THAT IS NOT INSTANT OBEDIENCE IS DISOBEDIENCE, & that is one of her major failings that I have had a problem with. When you ask her to do something she doesn't WANT to do, she STALLS. She EVENTUALLY yields, but she argues & stalls & is stubborn about it.
         5. STUBBORNNESS IS A PRETTY SERIOUS SIN! What does the Bible say about it? (Techi: "For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, & stubbornness is as iniquity & idolatry."--1Sam.15:23.) So it's pretty bad, huh? If we ask you to do something & you stubbornly refuse & argue about it & it sometimes takes us 10 or 15 minutes to CONVINCE you, that's not instant obedience. Sometimes it takes half-an-hour to an hour before you finally give in & yield & obey! So maybe the Lord's trying to teach you something, Honey.
         6. WELL, YOU THINK ABOUT THAT & PRAY ABOUT IT. Why don't you talk to the Lord & tell Him you're sorry & ask Him to forgive you. (Techi: Thank You Lord that Grandpa could teach me this good lesson, Lord. I pray that You will really help me to be more agreeable & obedient & have instant obedience, Jesus, & to learn from my mistake. Please forgive me for being naughty, Jesus, & I pray that You will help me to learn my lesson, in Jesus' name. TYL!) Amen.
         7. IF YOU KNEW THAT EVERY TIME YOU STARTED ARGUING & STALLING & STUBBORNLY REFUSING TO DO SOMETHING YOU'RE ASKED TO DO, I'll bet you anything, if you immediately got the HIVES when you got that spirit, it would soon cure you of disobedience! Is the Lord going to have to do that now to try to cure you of disobedience?
         8. WHICH IS WORSE, THE HIVES OR DISOBEDIENCE? (Techi: Disobedience.) Which would you rather be cured of, hives or disobedience? (Techi: Disobedience.) So therefore if the Lord allowed some little imp to afflict you with the hives every time you disobeyed, you would soon learn instant obedience, wouldn't you?
         9. REMEMBER WHAT KING DAVID SAID? HE SAID, "BEFORE I WAS AFFLICTED I WENT ASTRAY, but in my affliction I cried unto the Lord!"--Ps.119:67, 18:6. In other words, he turned BACK to the Lord. Instead of running AWAY from the Lord he turned BACK to the Lord & cried to the Lord & the Lord saved him, delivered him out of all his troubles. So PTL! As you obey now, maybe the Lord's going to heal you. "As they WENT they were healed!"--Lk.17:14. PTL!
         10. (TECHI: I THINK THEY'RE ALL GONE NOW.) How about that! It's almost funny! You just got through asking the Lord to forgive you & help you to obey more. Yes, they're all fading away, look at that! Ha! It was the PRAYER! But see, OUR prayers alone wouldn't do any good, YOU had to pray! Boy oh boy, if I won't [discipline] you to make you obey, the LORD knows how to do it! The minute YOU prayed & asked the Lord to FORGIVE you, immediately it started going away!
         11. YOU SEE, YOU'VE NOW GOT TO DO THINGS YOURSELF. We can't just pray for anything & everything & ask the Lord to deliver you from something that He allowed you to be afflicted with to teach you a LESSON! Right? All the praying in the World is not going to do much good if YOU still don't REPENT!
         12. NOW, ARE YOU GOING TO THINK ABOUT THIS LITTLE RASH THE NEXT TIME YOU DECIDE YOU'RE GOING TO STALL & DISOBEY & ARGUE? If you thought maybe the rash was going to break out just a few minutes after you started disobeying, what would you do next time? You wouldn't disobey! Which means you would do what? (Techi: Obey.) How quick? (Techi: Pretty quick.) To make sure you didn't get the rash, right? I bet you'd obey in a hurry!
         13. OKAY, FROM NOW ON, EVERY TIME YOU START ARGUING, STALLING & DISOBEYING, DO YOU KNOW WHAT I'M GOING TO SAY? (Techi: Remember the hives!) Yes, exactly! Remember the hives! The rash, Techi, the rash! Remember the rash! I bet that's going to have some effect on your slow stalling & your putting it off & arguing all the time.
         14. HONEY, THE LORD IS REALLY DEALING WITH YOU, & if WE don't [discipline] from now on, you may find out you're going to start getting [discipline] from the LORD! "The rash, Techi! Remember the rash!" It's funny that rhymes with LASH! (Techi: Grandpa, let's say HIVES!) I like rash, "Remember the Lord's LASH, the RASH!"
         15. BEWARE OF THE LASH OF THE RASH! I think that's what I'm going to say to you next time you stall & argue. I'm going to say, "Beware of the lash of the rash, Techi!" Amen, Techi? What do you say? (Techi: Amen!) GBY!
         16. (MARIA: TECHI, EVEN WHEN YOU'RE JUST PRETENDING TO POUT LIKE YOU DO SOMETIMES, OR PRETENDING TO FROWN, you SHOULDN'T do that, because that gets you in a bad spirit. Like that article said that Grandpa put in the WND, if you smile, you instantly feel happy & better. If you frown, you feel bad. So it's better not to even do that in fun, to make your mouth into a pout or a frown, even if you don't really mean it, because that can actually get you in a bad spirit.)
         17. HERE IS THE PROBLEM, TECHI: When you disobey--even START to disobey--you open a nice little crevice for one of the Devil's little imps to get in & cause you trouble, even if it only gets skin deep. Maybe when you got that rash of mosquito bites the other night you disobeyed something too.
         18. YOU MAKE A LITTLE HOLE IN THE DIKE FOR THE IMP TO GET THROUGH TO GET UNDER YOUR SKIN.--Get UNDER your skin. That's an old expression: "Boy, that really got under my skin!"--Meaning an IRRITATION. "Something somebody said got under my skin." It means it offended me. So you don't want the Lord to say, "Okay, go ahead, Mr. Lash Rash, she was rash again & she didn't obey, so give her a rash!"
         19. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT WORD "RASH" MEANS IN THAT CONTEXT? "Techi was rash." (Techi: "Be not rash with thy mouth & let not thy heart be hasty to utter anything before God."--Ecc.5:2.) So what does that mean when you say "be not rash"? What is it to be rash? To be rash is to be foolish. So when you were resisting obedience, you were being foolish, you were rash, not considering the risks involved, so the Lord used the lash of the rash on your rashness! Amen?
         20. SO THAT'S A VERY GOOD LESSON TO LEARN, & THAT WAS REALLY A QUICK LASH, BUT IT WAS A QUICK HEALING TOO. PTL! That's a good testimony that you can share with others, how you were slow in obeying & you were arguing about it & immediately you got a rash. But then when you PRAYED & asked the Lord to FORGIVE you & you promised to try to be quicker in obeying, immediately your rash stopped itching & it started going away.
         21. BLESS TECHI, LORD. THANK YOU THAT YOU DID BLESS HER TONIGHT WITH A GOOD LESSON. Help her not to forget it. And bless her for being such a good girl, willing to confess it & pray & ask for & get deliverance. TYL! That was a wonderful illustration tonight of Thy Love & Thy mercy, but "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth & scourgeth every daughter that He receiveth."--Heb.12:6. So You gave her a little lash with the scourge tonight, Lord, a lash with the rash for being rash, TYL! Now finish healing her completely, in Jesus' name, amen.