Seeing others the way Christ does, next, on
The Road to Reality, with Brother K.P.
Johanan.
So many people are tottering their way through
life with little or no purpose, but the
Bible tells us we don't have to live
that way.
There is a God-given plan for every
life, and John's Gospel, Chapter 4, models this
for us.
I'm your host, Richard Bewes, and it's time
once again for The Road to Reality, with
K.P. Johanan of Gospel for Asia.
K.P. takes us then to John 4,
right now.
Yes, it's where Jesus meets with a woman
by a well site.
K.P. will use this to encourage us
to step into the way of Christ and
see others the way He does.
He begins with this startling reality.
Nearly 200,000 people die every day without
Christ and going into eternity.
How does that affect the heart of Jesus?
I want to know.
I need to know.
But the disciples, they are not getting it.
In Matthew, Gospel, Chapter 9, the writer Matthew
says, after three decades of the event, he
was moved with compassion when he saw the
multitudes, broken, helpless, harassed, sheep without shepherd.
My question, why couldn't he say, We, along
with Christ, we were so broken up, moved
with compassion.
No, they didn't understand that yet.
He only could say, He.
What happened on the face of Jesus that
Matthew could not forget?
After 30 years, he couldn't forget it.
Did Jesus collapse and just wept and wept
when he saw the suffering and the poor
and the needy?
Question.
What is hindering me from understanding Jesus' heart?
Or am I really following the Jesus of
the New Testament?
Or have I created a Christ of my
convenience as Corinthians did, who smiles at me
no matter what I do, where I go?
What is wrong?
And this is where I think Jesus is
asking, Would you please stop and thinking about
yourself and look away and see what I
see?
Keith Green was a dear friend who went
to be with the Lord, a radical disciple
of Jesus.
He wrote many wonderful songs.
He sang very well.
And I will not attempt to sing any
of his songs.
But here is a couple of lines that
will speak to us clearly what it's all
about.
Do you see?
Do you see all the people singing down?
Don't you care?
Are you going to let them drown?
How can you be so numb not to
care if they come?
You close your eyes and pretend the job
is done.
Oh, bless me, Lord.
Bless me, Lord.
You know it is all I ever hear.
No one hates.
No one hurts.
No one even sheds one tear.
And it goes on.
But he cries.
He weeps.
But all I can think about is me,
mine, my wife, my children, my health, my
wealth, my future, my education.
It's all about me.
But Jesus says, look away.
1974, I came to the United States to
Dallas to go to seminary.
North America does strange things to aliens like
me.
Someone who walked on the streets of India
and Nepal for eight years weeping over the
lost multitudes, getting beaten up and abused for
the ministry.
Now having come to America, without me even
thinking about it, I was becoming normal.
When I first came to America, I thought
hot dog was dog meat.
Hot curry, hot rice, hot D-O-G.
But I learned my lessons well.
Because of the resources we inherited from Germany,
I didn't have to borrow anything or buy
no credit.
Just pay cash and buy stuff.
I began with the Kmart, the cheapest stuff.
When I first came, I ended up with
Neiman Marcus.
You can buy a suit for $100.
You don't need to spend $800.
That's dumb.
You can buy $5 and buy a plastic
watch, which tells you more accurate time than
an expensive Rolex.
But I had to have a Rolex.
Seventy expensive silk neckties, all from Europe.
It took me sometime half hour trying to
figure out what color fits me.
Because I read a book, Color Me Beautiful.
If you men don't understand what I'm talking
about, please ask your wife.
Or look into her purse.
Different little pieces of clothes she's carrying around,
matching, trying to figure out what to buy.
And she's smart.
Books with thousands of books in my library.
Books I may never read, but they all
look so wonderful.
Ten acres of land.
Brand new, beautiful house.
New cars.
Please don't misunderstand.
I was not doing anything dumb on the
streets.
I was an ordained minister pastoring a church
also at the time.
Nearly three years went by.
I found I couldn't cry anymore.
My eyes were dry.
Oh yeah, I talked about heaven, hell, missions,
the lost world, suffering world.
And everything, I mean that's a priest's job
and I did it too.
But it was all so objective.
Nothing moved my heart anymore.
And finally, I was so discouraged.
I thought about walking away from the ministry
itself.
And that's when, by the grace and mercy
of God, the Lord began to deal with
my heart.
I went to my room, just sat on
the carpet, and I said, Lord, I'm lost.
I can't cry anymore.
It's all a profession anymore.
I'm no more the person I used to
be.
I don't know what to do.
I prayed before my congregation and meetings.
Such praise that people were so moved.
They thought it was the best praise they
ever heard.
But they were all carefully thought through words.
And now I sit before Him and say,
Lord, I just don't know what to do.
I don't know what to tell you.
I'm lost.
If you know me, Lord, would you please
talk to me?
It was no more Jacob saying, my name,
Father, it is Esau.
He was clever.
But finally, all alone, when God said, what's
your name?
I'm Jacob.
I'm lost.
I know it all in my head.
But I'm lost.
And that's when the Lord broke into my
life.
He made my heart soft and tender.
I could cry once again.
People thought I got eye disease.
For two weeks, I couldn't stop crying.
I was so in love with Jesus.
If He asked me to jump off a
building, I would have done it.
Nothing, nothing I wouldn't do for Jesus.
It was the most amazing discovery to love
Him, to fall in love with Him.
Nobody told me to sell my land, my
house, empty my bank account, sell my clothes.
Nothing, nobody, nobody.
It was the greatest joy of my life
for my wife and I to exchange everything
we owned, including my clothes, except a couple
of ties and a couple of jackets for
the sake of preaching the gospel.
And I beg of you to understand, I'm
not promoting to sell your house, sell your
clothes and sell your husband and wife and
kids and cars.
I'm not saying that.
I have friends who are multi-millionaires who
walk with God, who are used by God,
who are more devout to Jesus than some
poor people who say they have nothing but
they're greedy and so bitter.
I'm not talking about money here.
It's my personal journey, how finally when I
came to the place I realized that I
didn't care about Him, my heart had to
change.
It was not external, it was internal.
And the Lord will do the same thing
for you.
But you know what?
Today, Gospel for Asia, we are in 10
nations in the heart of the 1040 window,
15,000 missionaries, 24,000 churches planted among
people that never had a church before, 54
Bible colleges with 9,000 plus students, three
years of training.
Every year we send 2,000 mission field.
92 languages radio broadcast heard by multiplied millions,
over a million people write to us every
year.
We produce over 100 million pieces of literature
every year in 18 languages, just launching a
full-time 24-hour, seven days a week
television channel.
And I could go on and on and
on tell you, you know, all this came
out of 28 years ago.
I came to the place, I recognized, unless
the seed falls into the ground and dies,
died to my ambition, my plan, my cardinality,
my self-centeredness, my lust, my dreams, my
decisions, unless I am willing to lose it
all, I will remain as I am.
Nothing else will happen.
My brothers and sisters, Jesus is not angry
at you or me.
No, he loves us.
It is out of such love.
He says, come away, my love, as Keith
Green sang, come away from this mess.
And that is the invitation, not of condemnation
and judgment, rather out of love and faith.
Why?
Because he called you and me, not for
time, but for eternity, to be with thee
forever and ever.
What we have here is but only for
a few moments of time.
Let's not forget that.
With that invitation of love, we'll take a
little break from our study, but we'll come
back to Brother KP in just a moment.
This is The Road to Reality from Gospel
for Asia.
Hey, listen, if you are aged between 18
and 25 and want to grow in your
walk with Jesus as well as impact unreached
people for him, our school of discipleship could
be just for you.
You can take a precious year to grow
closer to the Lord and help reach the
world's most unreached with the gospel.
To find out more, click to roadtoreality.org
.uk or call 01904 643 233.
I say that again, roadtoreality.org.uk or
01904 643 233.
Now, with the rest of his message from
John's Gospel chapter 4, back to you, KP,
once again.
Now, Jesus said, I send you to a
harvest you didn't work for.
You know, one of the most amazing thing,
Jesus said, I will build my church.
That makes me so happy.
I don't have to do anything.
Jesus used, yeah, you just be faithful to
me and I will do the rest.
It's none of your problem.
Fine, Jesus.
But Lord, I read in the book of
Acts, daily you added to the church thousands
of people.
In them, they changed the world.
And the Lord says, yeah, daily they obeyed
me.
Therefore, I could do that daily.
My brothers and sisters, how many of you
traveled 2, 3, 4, 5 hours, 10 hours
from this humongous country to get to this
place?
By plane, by car, by, I was going
to say bullock cart and donkeys.
No, you don't have those things here.
How many gas stations, petrol stations you stopped?
Now listen, how many people received that gospel
tract from you?
You know what?
It is time we become little crazy, little
extreme and radical, unafraid, unashamed, to say, I
belong to Jesus.
We need to learn to say, there's a
hell, there's a heaven, there's a Jesus, time
is running out, repent, whether they like it
or not, we need to start doing that.
Just a few days ago, another sad telephone
call I received.
One of our missionaries in Bangladesh who won
nearly 100 people to the Lord, they were
baptized, their church was born.
As he was going in a bus, they
stopped the bus, pulled him out of the
bus and beat him to death right on
the street.
He left his 23-year-old wife and
five-month-old child behind.
You know what the sister said?
I'm so sad, heartbroken, I lost my husband.
He actually was one of our graduates from
our Bible college in Dhaka.
Then the sister, in the midst of her
tears and sobbing and pain, she said these
words, but I have a child, I will
raise my child to take the place of
my husband.
Jesus is asking his disciples, see what I
see and understand who I am and then
you go and be mine and do exactly
what I would do.
I'm going after the cross.
Willing to pay the price and you'll be
willing to do that and that's exactly what
Thomas did when he came to India.
Finally he was killed for preaching the gospel
and his tomb is still there.
I do not know if you ever read
the story of Adoniram Jetson.
With this story I want to conclude and
pray for you.
Jetson was the first missionary from America to
leave his country.
But before he would take off to India
and Burma, in 1810 he happened to fall
in love with a young girl named Anne
Nancy Haseltine.
She was a daughter of a very rich,
affluent businessman.
So young Jetson asking permission from John Haseltine
to marry his daughter writes these words.
Listen close.
I want to ask you if you're willing
to part with your daughter early next spring,
you may never see her again in this
world.
She will be subjected to terrible hardships and
sufferings of a missionary's life.
She will be exposed to the dangers of
the ocean, to the fatal influences of the
southern climate of India.
She will have to face every kind of
distress, degradation, insult, persecution, and possibly a violent
death.
Can you consent to all this for the
sake of him who left his heavenly home
and died for her and for you and
for the sake of perishing immortal souls and
for the glory of God?
What a way to ask a father for
his daughter.
I got a daughter.
He'll ask me.
I'll tell him.
Can you agree to all this in hope
of soon meeting your daughter in the world
of glory, wearing the crown of righteousness brightened
with the acclamations of praise to the Savior
from heathen saved through her sacrifice from eternal
hell?
That's a letter.
The answer.
Her father left the choice to her.
This was her reply.
I have decided to give up all my
comforts and enjoyments here, sacrifice my affection to
relatives and friends to obey the call of
the Lord.
As far as I know, no female has
ever left the shores of America to spend
her life like this.
The Judson's labored for seven years before winning
the first convert.
After nine years, they had baptized only 18.
Several of their fellow missionaries died.
Others simply left the mission field.
Judson himself was brutally imprisoned 17 months during
a crackdown against all foreigners, barely surviving the
horribly inhumane treatment.
One night, while his raw and bleeding feet
were hanging in elevator stalks, swarms of mosquitoes
settled on his bare soles, producing excruciating torture.
Then, not long after his release from prison,
Judson's beloved wife, Nancy, died.
Her constant life of sacrifice and service had
finally taken its toll.
Just a few weeks later, little Maria, their
third baby, was suddenly taken from this world.
Judson was left utterly alone in a hostile
Buddhist land, almost shattered with pain and grief.
Before him lay the prospect of a tiger
-infested jungle, bat-infested houses, and a fever
-infested climate and for life.
Behind him lay an almost unimaginable trail of
hardship and loss, but he did not leave
off his mission work.
He did not abandon his Bible translating or
his preaching and teaching labors.
How could he?
Eternal souls are at stake.
Who else could reach the Burmese as well
as he?
So he remained for 20 more years, returning
to America only once, and that by necessity,
not by choice.
Judson's devotion for life was not in vain.
On one occasion, during a great annual festival
held at the Towering Golden Buddhist Pagoda in
Rangoon, I've been there, he recorded that he
had distributed nearly 10,000 tracts, giving to
none but those who asked.
Some came two, three months journey from the
borders of Siam and China, saying, Sir, we
hear that there is an eternal hell.
We are afraid of it.
Do give us a writing that will tell
us how to escape it.
Others came from interior country where the name
of Jesus is little known.
Are you Jesus man?
Give us a writing that tells about Jesus
Christ.
For Judson, it was worth it all.
Today, there are more than one million born
-again believers in Burma.
Jesus said, I'm sending you.
It's exciting news.
And to think that God could use little
me as a part of His plan to
reach the world for Him.
Well, it's an honor.
If you are aged between 18 and 25
and want to grow closer to the Lord,
be interested in our School of Discipleship, an
opportunity to set aside a year to serve
the Lord and to impact the unreached world.
Go to roadtoreality.org.uk to learn more
or call our office, would you, on 01904
643 233.
Again, visit us on roadtoreality.org.uk or
call 01904 643 233.
You know, we'd love to hear from you.
So again, just turn to roadtoreality.org.uk
and we'll lead you from there.
This is Richard Buse saying, when we hear
from you, leave it to us to give
you the necessary tips for the next steps.
Bye for now!