The Sand in My Shoes

It is just great to be together, isn't it? A few months ago I was looking at my calendar and upcoming dates — of course this camp was not on there at that time, because I was a last-minute substitute when Brother Woodward could not cross the border — but he could cross it, but getting back was going to be a problem. But last week I was just north of here, in the Western District, and I saw a large collective meeting in California, and I thought, wow, I wonder if that's going to be able to happen. A few months ago — I'm glad to be together. Isn't it wonderful? I'm telling you, it is a joy to be with you tonight.

To give honor to your leaders: Brother Hodges, Brother [Durantz] — so very kind to me — and it's a joy to get to spend time this week with Brother Hodges, driving around together and making our way across your district; that's a joy. Amen. Give honor to Brother Butler tonight, presbyter here in this section, longtime friend. Amen.

I will direct your attention tonight, as a foundation for my preaching, to the book of Micah. The prophet Micah writes — and I will read what is a familiar passage for many of us — out of Micah chapter 6, beginning in the sixth verse, Micah 6 and 6, where the word of the Lord says this: "Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

The title tonight — well, we'll have to — I'll have to make it make sense in a little bit, I hope. I'm going to preach on this subject tonight: "The Sand in My Shoes." The sand in my shoes. And if you'll smile — and you've got a chair — you can be seated. Some of you may be willing to smile, but you may not have a place to sit. Give honor tonight to Brother Wyatt, member of our general board, superintendent of New Jersey. Honor him tonight.

Okay, let's accept this as just a truth. Are you ready? We are commanded — we are called — to walk with God. We are commanded: we have to have our own walk with God. Much has been written and spoken about this topic; I have myself preached on more than one occasion regarding the importance of walking with him. We are charged in the Scriptures to walk uprightly. We're told in another place that we are called to walk worthy of his calling. We are told to walk humbly.

The Bible says this in First Thessalonians chapter 4 and verse 1: "Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God" — there is a connection in that verse, a linkage between my walking with him and my pleasing him. I tell you tonight: you must have your own walk with God.

That does not deflate or detract in any way from the importance of you having a relationship with a church. You need faithful attendance at a local church. But you can have a relationship with a church and not have a relationship with God. You must have a relationship with a pastor — I am of the opinion nobody's going to heaven without a pastor. You need a pastor; you're submitted to a pastor; you listen to a pastor; you follow. But it is not enough to have a relationship with a pastor if you don't have a relationship with God. You need your own walk with God.

I maintain that God really does care whether or not you're walking with him. Walking is highly favored: "They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." That verse is backwards in our thinking, in our mindset. We would look at a developing child and say, well, you've got to walk before you can run; and if it was in our capacity to fly, we would say you're going to have to run before you can fly. But that verse goes the entire opposite order. It says they that wait upon the Lord shall mount up with wings as eagles — because flying is easy. Flying is easy. The night you got the Holy Ghost, your feet didn't touch the ground for about two and a half weeks; you're just flying, talking in tongues. And then when you hit the ground, it was easy to run for a while, because you still had that excitement of what was new. But when life begins to happen and the trials hit and it gets hard, the real measure of what you have with God is: can you just keep walking? When the choir's not singing and you don't feel anything, can you just keep putting one faithful foot in front of the other and just keep walking?

See, walking is a private matter. You can fill stadiums with tens of thousands that will cheer the Olympic sprinter as he darts that hundred meters in under ten seconds. Thousands will cheer for him. A hundred thousand people will line the streets of New York or Boston to watch those people — that apparently have not heard of the internal combustion engine — run 26.4 miles. Gasoline is abundantly available, but they will run over 26 miles in a marathon, and a hundred thousand people will line up to cheer them as they run. But I have yet to hear of the mall that has had to build bleachers so the masses can come in there and cheer for Granny as she does laps past Chick-fil-A. You don't have to buy tickets; there's not crowds of people in there watching her as she goes shuffling by — "That a girl, Granny, keep picking them up and putting them down." No crowds there.

So what is it that gets Granny out of bed on a chilly morning, and straps her tennis shoes on, and goes down to the mall and walks when nobody will see it? I will tell you why: she has an appointment in a few weeks with a guy that's going to check her heart, and he will be able to tell whether or not she's been walking. I say to you that most of what you do for God will never be seen by the masses, and nobody's going to give you a plaque. Hey, but hear me: one day soon, I've got an appointment with the guy that's going to check my heart, and he will know whether or not I've been walking. My heart will show if I've been walking.

I maintain, therefore, that if walking with God is that important to him, then it must be very high on the devil's hit list of things he would like to destroy in my life. I maintain to you tonight that the enemy would love to do anything he can to get you to quit walking. He would delight in destroying your walk. He would be thrilled to so strategically attack you that you would just stop walking. He'll let you keep worshiping where everybody can see you, if you're not walking where nobody sees you. He doesn't even mind your giving, if you're not walking. He'll laugh at your holiness and separation if you're not walking. He'll endure your Sunday night shout — no — and it has very little lasting effect if you are not walking. And therefore it begs the question: what can stop a man from walking?

There are probably few individuals around who know as much about walking as does a man, retired now in Tennessee, whose name is Peter Jenkins — not Peter Jennings, the old newscaster: Peter Jenkins. In the early 1970s, Mr. Jenkins was trying to find himself. He was a product of the '60s and the whole anti-war movement — burned his draft card and marched in the streets and protested — and so he finally said one day, it came to himself and said: I'm talking about how bad America is; I don't even think I know what America is. So he decided that in order to find out what America was really like, he would walk across it. He started in 1973, and over the next few years he had a collection of the most amazing and fascinating experiences you could ever imagine, which are chronicled in two books: one called A Walk Across America — a lot of creativity went into that — and that gets him halfway; and then the second book is called The Walk West. Fascinating reads.

He set out from New York, journeyed south down the Appalachian Trail, over the Smokies, down through the Carolinas, and then all over to New Orleans; west, all the way across the vast reaches of Texas into New Mexico; north out of New Mexico, up through Utah and over the Rocky Mountains; on north into Montana; and then he hung a left across Idaho and into Oregon, over the Cascade Mountains, and finally finished up in the waters of the Pacific. Over 5,000 miles and five years of walking. He would walk until he just ran out of funds, and then he'd just stop and get a job. He'd walk, and just somebody — of course, it was a different day, I know that — he'd walk, somebody'd just take him into their home for a couple of weeks, while they'd feed him and he'd rest up and get his strength back. And he chronicles all this in his books.

He had some neat experiences. I mean, it's like a little kid just doing what he would: he hunted alligators one time in the swamps in Louisiana; he worked on an offshore drilling rig for a while; he helped in a cattle roundup in Idaho — every little boy's fantasy, to be a cowboy, you know. He'd just get taken in by strangers. He met fascinating people. He lived for a couple of weeks in some kind of flaky commune in North Carolina. He spent one winter in a one-room cabin in Lake City, Colorado, a little over 13,000 feet in elevation, in a town of population of 100.

Along the way he endured a collection of the most amazing hardships. He walked through temperatures and extremes of over 120 degrees in New Mexico to minus 30 during a blizzard in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. He'd get so thirsty he'd go face-plant in a little mud puddle and drink the water out of that mud puddle, out of ditches along the side of the road. He got so hungry that at times he was faint, and he would find old apple cores that somebody'd thrown out their window and gnaw on that to get enough strength to make it to the next town. He was chased one night out of a swamp in Louisiana by swarms of mosquitoes that he was convinced were going to kill him. His dog was hit and killed by a pickup truck. He himself was hit, on another occasion, by a pickup truck. He was mugged at knifepoint in New Mexico by three men. He carried 70 pounds, at a minimum, on his back every day for five years. He went hungry for days on end. He spent three days in delirium from a high fever in a cave in the Smoky Mountains, and did not know where he was nor what day it was when he finally came to himself.

But when they asked him, in a magazine interview, what came closest to making you quit, his answer has long stayed with me. He said: the thing that almost made me quit walking was the sand in my shoes. It wasn't the heat, he said, because when I left home I knew it would get hot. I didn't like it, I didn't look forward to it, but I knew it would come. It wasn't the cold, he said — I packed for that; I knew I'd get cold. It wasn't the hunger, because I knew I'd get hungry. It wasn't the thirst, because I knew I'd get thirsty. But it was those little things that nobody could see, that would wear on me every day. It was nothing big enough for anybody to look at me and have compassion. It was just a little private battle that I dealt with every day. Every step I took, it was wearing on me. Every time I tried to pray, it was rubbing on me. Every time I tried to watch, it was fighting me. The little, small, unseen, inconsequential grains of sand — the nagging, wearisome, fretful sand — hard to see, harder to handle. It nearly drove me, he said, to stop walking.

I am of the opinion that the devil works much the same way. At 56 years old, I've lived long enough to observe a few things, and it has not been my experience — I cannot think of anyone I've ever observed that quit walking over big things. Maybe you have, but I've never seen anybody stop going to church when they got a cancer diagnosis; I see them get more faithful. Never seen anybody backslide because they got a pink slip; that's when they come to church and pray, "Somebody pray — I've got to have a job." It's not the boulders that make us quit. It's not the heat of the journey that makes us stop. It's not the frigid cold seasons we go through that make us quit. It's the daily grind. It's the little grains of sand.

Come on, somebody. It's the little temptation that brings us every day. It's that word that hurt us years ago, and the bitterness eats at us every day. It's the pressure that we're under every day. I can't think of the last time I saw anybody backslide because of a huge assault of the enemy. We expect those; we anticipate those. We know sickness is going to come. I know that I will stand by the bedside of dying loved ones — it's going to happen. I know those things are going to come. We don't enjoy it, but we prepare for it. But it's those little nagging daily attacks that only I can feel, and therefore nobody's even praying with me about it. I know where I am in the Holy Ghost right now: it's that little temptation you've been battling that you're ashamed to even admit to anybody, because it's so little. It's that little hurt feeling that happened a few weeks ago, and you can't even bring yourself to tell anybody about it because it seems so little. But every time you step, every time you walk, it's just rubbing on you a little more — and it will stop your walk. Simple, little, inconsequential grains of sand.

But sand has amazing power. To take the paint off your car — with sand. Not one grain: a thousand grains, one after another. And when they just keep coming — alone they amount up to nothing, but when partnered with another 20, and another 100, and another thousand, and another 10,000 — and when I just get over that one, and another one comes, and I just brush that one aside, and another one comes — they wear at our joy, and they grind away at our peace, and they corrode our faithfulness, until one day we just sit down and say, "I can't take it anymore." It wasn't the heat, it wasn't the cold, it wasn't the devil — it was the sand.

I believe the Bible teaches me this principle. Look at this verse — it's Psalm 42 and 10: "As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?" First time they ask it: "Where's your God?" But that — see this — and it comes back the next day, when your loved one hadn't got healed yet, when you prayed for him: "Where's your God?" And another week later, when that prayer still hadn't been answered: every day, "Where's your God? Where's your God?" "Leave me alone — where's your God?" And that stupid, innocent little question that you could brush aside the first thousand times it was asked — he said that thing becomes like a sword in my bone, because that stinking devil just keeps asking it, and he just keeps plaguing me, and he just keeps fighting me. And if he'd ask it once and walk away I'd be fine, but he asks it every day, and it became like a sword in my bone. I know it's just words, but they were reproaching me every day.

Paul — I didn't put this; don't worry about this first. Paul, what wearies you? Well, here we go: "In labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck" — "a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches."

Paul said: I can handle a shipwreck — it happened once and it's over. I can handle a beating — they beat me, and then I heal. I can handle a stoning — I'll get up and walk away and let my bruises heal. But every day, I feel the pressure of what I'm trying to do for God. Every day, it's beating me down. Every day, it's the same — it's that daily person on my job; it's that daily temptation with the internet; it's that daily flirtation of the lady down the street. And it is, little by little, wearing away my feet.

Well, you don't think that's Bible language? Moses' father-in-law said: "Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee" — Moses, you won't vanish in a moment; you won't go up in some puff of smoke; but if you don't give this address — you're going to wear away. And so the psalmist said one time: "My feet were almost gone."

Jump up here, bud — Mr. North Face. I got him because he's a big, stalwart lad. He stood up; he just kept standing up. It's not the bears or the lions that get us, because the shepherd has a plan for bears and for lions. When the grizzly comes out to get him, the shepherd says — David said, "I grabbed that rascal by the beard and just killed him." When the lion comes out to consume him, the shepherd said, "I grabbed him — I killed him." Find me one time where David slew a fox. See, the little fox just walks up to him one day in church when somebody doesn't shake his hand just right: "Nobody loves you here." "Get away from me." And then that little fox comes back. It doesn't tear his arm off — that's what bears do. It doesn't rip him open — that's what lions do. It just nips; it just picks at him this Sunday, and it wears at him next Tuesday, and it just keeps coming back, until before long he gets ready to worship one night — that arm doesn't — "My worship's not what it used to be." "I didn't come in one—" Next Sunday, be on a barstool — because the devil can't tear my arm off, but he and that little fox can keep coming back and nipping at me and biting at me.

Embarrassed, because it's so little. I'm embarrassed to stand up and say, "I need prayer." If I got a bear after me, I'll call a prayer chain. If I got a lion chasing me, we'll all come together for a special prayer meeting. But a little fox? I'm embarrassed to even admit it bothers me, so I'll let that stupid thing just keep biting at that wound until it festers and kills me. It's not the boulders — it's the sand. You be seated.

And I really haven't even got to my point yet. Be encouraged; it won't take me long. Can I tell you something? Nothing's little if it affects my walk. All right, all right, all right. You need a story, and I happen to have one — it's convenient.

Many years ago, several presidential administrations ago, I used to be the general youth president for the UPCI. Yes, this geezer was the youth president. It was so funny — this has nothing to do with this, but you need to breathe a minute. My daughter was eight years old when I left the youth division, so she had an intellectual knowledge that I'd held that role, but it just didn't quite — when she was about 17 or so, she had this epiphany, just this — and she looked at me and she said, "Wait — you were Shea Mann?" Because Shea Mann was the youth president at that time, and her hero. And she was like, "That was you — you were Shea Mann?" I said, "That's correct." And she said, "No, no, no." She said, "He's cool." I told her, I said, "Baby, I'm going to tell you something that's going to keep you up at night. You're going to be haunted. You're going to lay down in bed at night; you will not be able to sleep, by the truth of what I'm about to tell you: there was a whole generation of young people who thought I was cool." She flinched.

Youth Congress in Atlanta, Georgia, 2001. We were getting ready to head down there. We were driving down on Monday, and so we were all packed up Sunday — Sunday morning, early Sunday morning. Went to bed Saturday night about — about four o'clock in the morning, when I got up, Jessica was about six years old, and she had an amazing ability to kick the covers off all over the room. And so I woke up about four in the morning, went to the bathroom, and decided I'd go down and cover her back up, you know. So I'm walking down the hall. Now, what happened next is my fault. It's my fault — I put it there. It's my wife's suitcase, which is the size of some third-world nations. And I did it — I put it at the end of the hall. I completely forgot it was there. I'm walking down the hall in the dark. I don't sleep in steel-toed work boots — I don't know about you, but I did not have that on. I didn't even have on my Winnie the Pooh slippers. I'm barefoot, okay? And I'm tooling down the hall to go check on my daughter, and I caught the pinky toe — that's what I said — of my left foot, on the wheel of that piece of artillery. I buckled, man.

But it was dark, right? And so I get a hold of the door frame in my daughter's room, and I stick my foot in there where the nightlight is to examine the carnage, only to discover that I've got four toes pointing north — that's what I said — and one pointing due west. Next morning I told my wife about it; she said, "Ah, that must hurt." She's got a future in medicine, no doubt. I said, "I thought it did. It really didn't, when I grabbed that rascal and pointed it back north." That's what I said. She said, "I didn't even hear you scream." I said, "I didn't scream — I quoted Scripture. I quoted — listen, listen, listen: when at four in the morning you look down at your bare feet and there is a right angle among your toes, there is a verse in the book of James that applies. Because I looked at that thing, and James said — I said, 'Brethren, these things ought not so to be.'"

Now, I knew that rascal was going to swell up, and I was never going to get shoes on. And I knew if I went to the doctor — they don't know anything for broken toes; they'd just tape it up and charge you 500 bucks. I taped it up myself and paid myself. I went and took a shower, I taped that rascal up, got dressed for church at 4:15 in the morning, and put shoes on. I went to church that morning determined that nobody was going to know I was hurting — because it's hard to, you know — if I had injured it saving a child off the train tracks, I'd have limped for a month. But it's hard to be heroic when you punted a Samsonite. So I go to church, and I get out of my car, and I put my foot on the ground and went — and then a buddy gets out of his car: "First— Lord, you okay?" "Huh? Doing great. Good to see you." They walk around the corner — until the next person walked up. Laugh at me if you will, but don't you even pretend like we don't do that. If it had been a big thing, I'd have gone up front for prayer. It was just my little toe. But I'm not fooling anybody, because however little it may be, it was affecting how I walked, and everybody could see it. I want to know why my stinking pride made me hurt, when there were all kinds of people around there that would have said, "Come here, lean on me; let me help you." They wouldn't have made fun of me; they would have helped. I don't care how little it is — it's going to stop your walk. The body is here; the church loves you.

I've got to make my point. My wife is from Florida. My wife thinks the most wonderful thing in the world to do is to walk barefoot down the beach. I hate it. We got married; we were so broke, we didn't know how broke we were. We went down one time visiting her parents, who still lived down in Sarasota at the time. She said, "I've got a great idea for a free date night." That sounds wonderful. She said, "It's on the west coast of Florida; the sun sets over the Gulf. Let's go out and walk the beach at sunset. There's nobody out there. You don't have to worry about having to look down because everybody's half dressed — there's nobody there. It's just great; you go walk it." What do I know? So we go out to the beach. I know nothing — I'm a Midwesterner; I grew up in Illinois. We get out of the car and I just start — she said, "We're quite good — I saw it in the beach over here." She said, "Take your shoes off." What do I know? I don't take the shoes off. She said, "Socks too." Socks off. We go walking down the beach. We took three steps, and half the sand in Sarasota was crawling up my feet and around my ankles. I'm just like, oh, yuck. I said, "Honey, what are we going to do about this?" She said, "Don't worry — they've got little shower things up there; you wash it off and get back." Okay, what do I know? So we go have our lovely romantic walk — I'm hating every minute of it; love her — we get back up to the car, and she takes me over to this little shower deal. It doesn't work. Here's the problem: back to my car there's sand all over the parking lot. Now my feet are wet. I get to the car, I'm leaning on the bumper, I'm trying to wipe the sand off. I sacrifice my socks for the cause — I've wiped, and what — socks, trying to get the sand off — and put my shoes on. I drive half a block, and I'm like, oh, gross. I took those shoes home; I ran them through the washer; I did everything; I beat them and hosed them out. Put them on three weeks later — I found out, my dear friends: you can't wash the sand off your feet. You can try. You can get some of it gone, but you can't get it all gone. No matter what you do, it's still going to be there.

See, that's what Peter Jenkins said in his book. He said, "I would spend hours each night trying to wash my feet and make sure there was no sand there. And it felt okay overnight, but when I'd start walking again, I could feel it was still there."

Now you hear me: I am just now finally coming to my point, and I will be done. We have to walk with God. The devil would like to stop our walk with God. He will attack our walk by bringing the sand of life into our feet. We can't get the sand off our feet. Now, that sounds like a hopeless situation — except for one little thing. Brother Wyatt, I'm so glad to tell you that in God's economy, he never told me to wash my own feet. He said, "In my church, I wash your feet — and you wash my feet." And the way we're going to get to heaven, the way we're going to keep walking, is by loving one another and caring for one another. And I won't let you stop walking.

Stand with me. You know what we need here tonight? A foot-washing service. No, I'm not talking about getting plastic tubs and towels and lining up in rows. I'm talking about telling somebody: "I don't care what you're going through. I'm not going to let you quit. I'm going to love you. I'm going to pray for you. I'm going to encourage you. I'm going to help you. You're going to keep walking. I'm going to wash your feet." I wish you'd lift your voice and shout to God right now.

If I have to do this alone, I will stop on the side of the road someday and quit, because of my inability to get the sand off my feet. I can't deal with the frustrations of life. I feel all alone, and it feels hopeless, and I've tried my best, and I can't get it to stop. And so at some point I just give up hope and do something stupid. And if you try to walk this thing alone, there'll be a temptation that nags you until you give in. There'll be a hurt that works on you until you get bitter. There'll be a wound that works on you until you walk away from God. But if we walk together, then when you're weary, I can wash your feet; and when I'm about to quit, you can wash my feet. That's why I'm so glad this pandemic is over, so we can come back together again and say: "I love you. I believe in you. You're going to make it. I'm not going to let you quit. You're not alone. It's not hopeless. I'm here with you."

And so the altar call tonight: it is not even remotely possible, in this beautiful and wonderful and sizable crowd, for you to even think about everybody coming up here. Oh — wonder who can— I know, if you can. But see, right back here — this is not a gift of prophecy; I'm just talking — right back here there's a lady; she's been going through it, and over the last year she's battled more depression and discouragement than she's ever known in her life, because she felt so alone. And she limped in here tonight with sand on her feet, and the devil telling her, "You might as well just quit." She needs some lady to come embrace her and say, "I've missed you. I love you. You're not going to fall. I'm going to wash your feet."

There's a man — there's a weary— He's been battling little things; by themselves they wouldn't be a problem, but they've hit me one after another this year. "I buried Grandma, and then I lost my job, got COVID and was sick for three weeks, couldn't go to church for a year and a half. I'm trying to get back into habit. I don't know what's happened." Would somebody wash his feet? Would somebody come up to that man and say, "I just want you to know I'm going to text you about once a week, just to tell you how much I love you" — and it's going to be a digital foot-washing. Because my job — my job is to make sure he keeps walking, and his job is to make sure I keep walking. And I'm going to make sure he keeps walking, and he's going to make sure he keeps walking. And you know what's going to happen? We may limp a little bit, but we're going to walk all the way through the streets of glory, saying: "I made it — and the sand in my shoes could not stop me."

So, with a thunderous voice, I wish every way you could — I know in a lot of cases it's just going to be the person next to you, because we're so full — but if you feel led, let the Holy Ghost lead you, and step across the aisle to somebody you don't even know, and say, "Brother, can I pray with you?" We're going to have prayer meeting all over this house right now. Would you join up with somebody and lift your voice like a Holy Ghost-filled person prays? Don't pray by yourself — we've got to wash one another's feet.

Some of you are still just standing there looking at me. You've got to wash somebody's feet. You've got to go get a hold of them and say, "I love you. I believe in you. I'm not going to abandon you. You're going to make it." That's it. That's it. That's it — let it roar. Wash one another's feet. There are folks all over this house the Holy Ghost is still trying to help, by ministering through the body. So if you would humor me for just a moment, I'd just like us to make one more push in the Spirit, for the benefit of some that are still finding this breakthrough moment. Don't pray with the same person you just prayed with. Would you just turn around, or step across, or excuse me, and find somebody else? I'm asking everybody, as a marked community in this house, to find somebody. You say, "Well, I don't know what they need." I know — it's so little you can't see it. But it's not little to them. Bear one another's burdens. Pray for one another, that you may be healed. Would everybody in this house, as they sing again — would you lift your voice like a trumpet, and pray in the Spirit, and minister one to another, in Jesus' name?