TAME YOUR FLESH
(By Kenneth Hagin)

I remember the time my wife and I were holding a meeting for some folks, and I don't know why in the world they invited us to preach for them, but I happened to have the week free, so we went down there. (They lived in another state.)
We stayed in the parsonage with them. We were their guests. We'd never been there before.
They didn't say anything about eating, and they didn't fix us anything to eat. They'd get up in the morning and leave the house. We'd rummage around to see if we could find something. We had very little to eat.
One of the deacons suspected something. He lived on their street, and he came down and asked me how we were doing. "Oh," I said, "we're all right, brother." I didn't want to cause the pastors any trouble. (I knew people like them were going to get in trouble soon enough without my



causing them any!)
The deacon said, "Now, there's a freezer on the back porch of my house, and it's full of meat. Just come on up and get anything you want."
Then he asked, "Where are the pastors?"
I sort of covered up for them. I said, "Well, they had some kind of call to make" (which I'm sure they had).
On the last Sunday we were there, we returned to the parsonage after the morning service. While I was watching the news on television about 12:30, the pastors walked right by me. They never said "Goodbye; we'll see you" or anything. They just left. And they never came back.
We were sitting there with nothing to eat. Finally, my wife, who had been in another room, came out and said, "Where did they go?" I said, "I don't know. I guess they went to get something to eat." I knew there wasn't much in the refrigerator.
By 2 o'clock they hadn't come back, and we began to get hungry. We looked in the refrigerator and found a slice of bologna and two eggs. We boiled the eggs.
I said, "I believe I'll go up to the corner and get a fryer out of that fellow's freezer. We can thaw it out pretty quick in water and fry it."
Then I said, "No, I can't do that, because if I go down there, he's going to ask me, 'Where are the pastors?' and I'm going to have to say, 'I don't know.' And he's going to say,
'Well, didn't they take you out and feed you?' And I'll have to say, 'Well, no.' And he's going to wonder what kind of pastors they have. So I can't go to that deacon's house, because it would get the pastors in trouble with him."
Then my flesh rose up. (Now don't tell me your flesh



never rises up. Don't tell me you don't have trouble with your flesh.) I began to be a little angry. I went to the phone and actually picked it up. I said, "I'm going to phone long distance to the district superintendent. I'm going to ask him, "What kind of preachers do you have over here, anyway? I'm tired of this!"
Then I put the phone down. My heart said, "No, you can't act that way. That's not love. You'll get them in trouble with the district superintendent if you do that—and they're going to get in trouble soon enough."
I couldn't figure out anything else to do except eat that piece of bologna and an egg apiece and just forget it.
When the pastors finally came home, I acted like nothing had happened. Then I thought about it a while, and finally decided I'd load up the car and leave; I wouldn't even stay for the night service. And when I didn't show up, it would put the pastors on the spot!
Their church members would ask, "Where's Brother Hagin?" And they'd have to say, "We don't know. He left while we were gone." The people would wonder, "What made him leave?"
But we didn't do that, either. We went ahead, held the service, and acted like nothing had happened. We did our best.
Why did I put up with all that? Mainly to spare the flock.
What a difference it would make in a lot of lives— preachers and laymen alike—if we would put the other fellow first and consider the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in our actions.