AUDIENCE: (LAUGHING)
JIM: But, man, you’ve got the most polished speakers in the world. You’ve got this one guy up there and you’re just looking at him like “What?” Man, he walks up. And he was funny. His glasses were sliding down his nose. And he was always making all these weird faces trying to get his glasses up. And all these other guys, you know they would preach for like 90 minutes, you know? He gets up and speaks about 15, 20 minutes. I’m going to tell you something. From that day to this day I have never struggled with faith. Never! And the verse that he taught on was from the Book of Philemon, Philemon 6, where it says “That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing that’s in you in Jesus.” Now if you just took that at the King James translation that’d be enough to change your world! And that’s what he did! He… and, and he just basically said, Look, if you want the communication, the living, the sharing, the functioning of your faith to become effective, start acknowledging all the good things that are in you in Jesus. Man, that was, that was monumental in 1975! And I remember the very next day I, you know, I was, I was doing my undergraduate work in theology. Man, I’m telling you the next day we got together, we’d, we’d have a big chapel service every morning, there’d be several hundred of us get there, get together and pray. I’m walking around saying Father, I thank you that I’m the righteousness of God in Christ. I thank you that I am an overcomer. I’m more than a conqueror. I mean I’m going through this stuff. And I notice it’s getting quieter and quieter in the room and finally nobody’s praying but me! And you know I don’t care so I’m going to just keep on. Finally when I get through praying I look and the whole class had stopped praying and they were all standing on this side of the room looking at me. And basically one of the guys that had… you know, was, was, was a senior went to one of the pastors and said you need to talk with Jim. He’s got an ego problem.
AUDIENCE: (LAUGHTER)
JIM: And they called me and they said what, what is this you’re doing in prayer? And I said I’m doing what the Bible says. I’m acknowledging the good things that are in me in Jesus. And, and I mean…. honest… They gave me the nickname “Mr. Self-Sufficient” because from their perspective you, you needed to be talking about what all was wrong with you. You need to be, you know, you know whining and crying about whatever was wrong with you. And let me tell you something. That doesn’t change anything. Now yeah, you got to own that stuff. But I, I don’t want to live in the realm of what’s wrong with me. And that’s not what I, see that’s not what I share with Jesus. I shared that with Him when we died together. But when I got raised up with Him we left that in the grave.
