As you continue in your study and application
of the biblical principles of spiritual leadership, may
the truth be illuminated by the Holy Spirit.
It is the responsibility of every Christian man
and woman to be the best they can
be for God.
He wants us to make the most of
ourselves, and it's good every now and again
in the midst of the pressure of studies
and so on, to stop and take stock.
The wise businessman, if he finds he's going
into the red, he stops, he takes stock.
He tries to discover where the leaps are
in his business, and then he plugs the
leaps.
Are we sufficiently wise to do the same
thing, and to see how we are moving
in our Christian life?
I've been working among students for more than
50 years, and I've watched generation after generation
of students move on.
And I've been able to see those who
have made a significant contribution to the work
of God.
It isn't always those who are the most
brilliant, thank God many of them are, do,
but not always that by any means.
But I've noticed it is those people who
were most willing to place themselves at God's
disposal, and who most had the spirit of
a servant.
They're the ones who made the greatest impression
on their generation.
Now many of us fail to achieve anything
significant in our lives, because we've got no
over-mastering ambition, no dominating motive that inspires
us and drives us forward.
And I believe this is what is needed.
We need to have something like that.
When I was traveling in China before the
Communists took over, I was traveling with Mr.
Fred Mitchell, who was the British director of
our mission, the Overseas Missionary Fellowship.
And he was telling me about some of
his earlier years.
He had been a pharmacist, and he said
in connection with that he had also taken
a course in optometry.
He said one day the young fellow that
he used to attend lectures with, they both
came from the north country, in Britain.
He said one day he said to me,
Fred I'm going to be the king's physician,
or the king's optometrist.
And Fred said to him what I think
you would say if one of your fellow
students said he's going to be President Reagan's
advisor.
He just said oh yes, he's going to
be the king's optometrist.
And yet Fred said to me, do you
know who the king's optometrist is?
I said no.
He said that young man.
Now he was a young fellow, he came
from an insignificant background, but there had been
from earliest days a determination, I am going
to be the king's optometrist.
And the whole of his life was channeled
into that one narrow stream.
And he became the king's optometrist.
He achieved something significant.
Why?
Because he fully abandoned himself to that objective.
Now have you got an objective like that?
What is your goal in life?
If I came and sat alongside you now,
without giving you notice what I was going
to do, and I said to you what
is your goal in life?
Could you answer me immediately in a word
or two?
Have you got a goal?
Or are you just slipping along from day
to day, living at haphazard, doing the next
thing and hoping it will all be well
in the future?
Or have you got some clearly defined goal
ahead of you to which you're working, so
that the whole of your life is integrated
into that one narrow channel?
I believe this is what we need to
do.
Paul says here, this one thing I do.
What is the one thing you do?
Is there any one thing that would mark
your life out?
What would your fellow students say was the
one thing, the dominating thing in your life?
What is the over-mastering ambition, the dominating
motive in your life?
Now that's worth asking yourself, so that you
really are aiming at something.
Our word, our word ambition comes from the
Latin, and it's got a rather ignoble significance.
It means looking both ways to try to
gain an objective.
You can get a good illustration of that
in the politician who is canvassing for votes.
He goes to one group, and they've got
this viewpoint, and he says, yes, yes, yes,
yes, that's right, I agree, and I'll do
so and so for you.
And next place he goes to another group,
and they've got entirely opposite views, and yes,
yes, yes, that's right, I agree, I'll do
so and so for you.
Not a very noble attitude.
Well that's the background of the word, our
word for ambition.
But that's not the word Paul used.
Paul used the Greek equivalent, and it has
a more noble history.
It carries the idea of a love of
honour, striving for noble ends.
For example, he said, I make it a
point of honour to be well-pleasing to
Christ.
Well, that is the word which Paul used.
I say he'll let, here is an ambition
of the right kind that we should entertain.
There are ambitions that are unworthy.
You know it's been said that ambition is
the last infirmity of noble minds, and there
are some ambitions which warrant a scripture like
that.
You may remember that Shakespeare made wolves, he
said.
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition, by
that sin tell the angels.
How can man then the image of his
maker hope to profit by it?
He didn't have much of an idea of
that kind of ambition.
Why?
Because it was a worldly ambition, and worldly
ambition generally runs in three lines.
And it can run over into Christians too,
and into Christian work.
The same kind of ambition can be present.
One is the ambition to be popular, to
build a reputation.
That's very easy for a preacher to attract,
for the preacher that Paul called it.
More concerned about the way his message is
received by his congregation than whether the Lord
is pleased with its content.
Another line in which a worldly ambition runs
is the desire to amass a fortune, a
desire for wealth.
You know Christian workers are not above that.
I'll guarantee that not every student here is
absolutely on top of money.
Yes they haven't got much.
Well are you on top of what you've
got?
Do you think you're exercising a wise stewardship
over it?
It's quite easy for a person to go
into Christian work and to be overcome by
a desire for money.
And the third way in which a worldly
ambition usually runs is a desire for power,
to wield authority.
You know when a person gets into the
ministry they have a rare opportunity of wielding
authority, and some become little popes.
Well here are the dangers of worldly ambition
coming into the church.
But what kind of ambition is a worthy
ambition, and one of which God will approve?
You see all these worldly ambitions terminate on
self.
The worthy ambition centers on Christ.
And if your ambition centers on Christ you
can be as ambitious as you like.
If your ambition is that through you he
might be glorified, the Holy Spirit will cooperate
with you to the limit.
If your ambition is to make yourself great
you'll seek in vain for the cooperation of
the Holy Spirit.
He's not interested in making me great.
He's interested in making Christ great.
A worthy ambition.
Now Count Zinzendorf, who was the founder of
the great Moravian church.
That church which began in almost the missionary
enterprise of modern day.
A church which had probably five times as
many converts abroad as it did at home.
A church which sent out one out of
70 of its members to the mission field
in a day when missions were hardly known.
He was a man who had one over
-mastering passion.
What was it?
He said I have one passion.
It is He.
He alone.
Have you got a passion?
Something into which the whole fervor of your
being is poured?
Or do you only have opinion?
A passion.
I have one passion.
It is He.
He alone.
And that passion infused the whole of that
Moravian church.
So that it made such a tremendous impact
in the world of that day.
Notice that our Lord didn't stigmatize the desire
to be great.
The thing he stigmatized was the desire to
be greatest.
You've probably read in C.S. Lewis's Near
Christianity, I think it is, where he's speaking
about pride.
He says you know nobody's proud because they're
clever.
Or proud because they're rich.
Nobody's proud because they're good looking.
When I read that I thought boy this
is he's not right there is he?
But I read on.
The next thing he says they are proud
because they are cleverer.
Or richer.
Or better looking.
And you see there is the competitive element
in this.
And that's where the thing came in.
James and John didn't want to be great.
They wanted to be greatest.
To be number one and number two.
And the Lord said nothing do we.
It shall not be so among you.
God has got no objection to us being
as great as ever we can.
But he will not have us desire to
be greatness.
That's a very significant difference.
When I was a young man there was
one task in Christian work that I covered
that very much it was something that I
felt I could do and it appealed to
me.
And I wanted that.
And I knew I had friends if I
only asked them they could just pull a
string and I could get it.
And I was battling with the tendency to
pull a string to get a spiritual opening.
I was going down our main street in
Auckland and New Zealand.
Crowds of people around about me.
I can see the very spot now.
And as clearly as though it were words
spoken by a man alongside me.
There came the words of Jeremiah to Bara.
Speakest thou great things for thyself?
Speak them not.
And it was a word of God that
came with singular authority and clarity.
I was almost arrested on the spot.
And God gave me the grace to renounce
that ambition.
Actually it came to me automatically later on
without my seeking it.
But I had first to gain that victory.
And looking back I believe that that was
a very real turning point in my Christian
life.
When I renounced seeking great things for myself.
Allowing God to maneuver if he wanted me
somewhere.
And I think I can say truthfully I've
never since then ever angled for anything of
that kind.
You can't do it in a spiritual ministry.
You can't lobby for office.
Never do it.
Leave it for the Lord.
If he wants you there he'll give it
to you.
And if he doesn't want you there far
better you shouldn't be there.
But you'll notice that in that passage Jeremiah
didn't say speakest thou great things speak them
not.
He said speakest thou great things for thyself.
Those are the operated words.
If it is self-seeking that makes you
want to be great then God is not
interested.
If you want Lord I want my life
to count for the very most for you
and for your glory and for the blessing
of my fellow men.
Then God is interested and he's concerned.
And that is a worthy ambition because it
centers on Christ and his glory.
So I need to ask myself is my
supreme objective God's glory and not my own.
Will my if I secure this ambition of
mine will it bring greater glory to God
and more blessing for my fellow men.
If so then the Holy Spirit will be
with me to achieve that.
David Brainerd whose biography you ought to read
if you haven't already read it.
There's a very good one written by Richard
Ellsworth Day.
But David Brainerd was so consumed with a
passion to glorify Christ in the winning of
souls that he said this.
He said I cared not where or how
I lived or what hardships I endured so
that I could but gain souls for Christ.
Didn't care where or he lived or how
he lived if only he could gain souls
for Christ.
My brothers and sisters wouldn't it be wonderful
to be able to say something like that.
I don't care where I live.
I don't care how I live.
I don't care what hardships are involved.
If only I can win souls for Christ.
There was a worthy ambition was it not.
And look at the way in which God
used and honored that man.
Now the apostle Paul was an extremely ambitious
man.
You read the story of his in the
Acts of the Apostles and read the incidental
references in the letters that he wrote.
And you'll see there that there was a
burning consuming passion.
There was something in him that couldn't be
denied.
It was there before his conversion.
He said I excelled, exceeded in zeal my
contemporaries.
He was he was more zealous than any
of the others.
But his zeal, his passion, his ambition led
him to terrible excesses.
So that he said I persecuted the church
of God.
He hailed them to prison.
He did everything.
He had one ambition.
What to do?
To efface the name of Christ and to
exterminate his church.
That's what he wanted to do.
When he was converted all his ambition ran
out of his fingers.
Did it?
Indeed no.
After his conversion there was just as much
ambition if not more.
But now it's redirected into constructive channels.
What is he desiring to do now?
He wants to magnify Christ.
He says I don't care whether it's by
life or by death.
If only Christ is magnified in my body.
Instead of exterminating the church he spends himself
in building up the church.
The same ambition but directed into new channels.
And I believe that we need to have
an ambition like this so that God can
use us to build up his church and
to magnify his name.
When Billy Graham was giving the funeral address
at Dawson Trotman funeral.
Dawson Trotman was the founder of the Navigators
as you know.
Billy Graham said of him.
Here was a man who did not say
these 40 things I dabble in but this
one thing I do.
Are you a dabbler or are you a
person with a single track mind?
I use that expression in a limited way
of course.
But are you a person who says this
one thing I do or do you play
around with a lot of other things do
you dabble?
Why did Dawson Trotman make such a significant
impression on his generation?
Because there was only one thing before him.
Navigators.
He lived for us.
He ate for us.
He prayed for us.
He works for us.
One thing.
This one thing I do.
And God used him to bring to the
world a navigator movement which now is spread
right to the ends of the earth and
having a significant ministry because one man said
this one thing I do.
What is the one thing you are going
to do?
Define it.
Don't let it be fuzzy.
Have something clear before you that will unify
and integrate the whole of your life.
If we are going to make any significant
impact on this disoriented world in which we
live we will need to absolutely abandon ourselves
without reserve for that time.
And yet today we're so slow to commit
ourselves irrevocably.
There are some few who are prepared to
commit themselves without reservation.
They'll commit themselves for a year or two.
They don't mind being a short-term missionary
or going to see something and see whether
they will like it or not.
They don't mind that.
But as for an unreserved commitment that is
for life and for irrevocable that's something different.
But I believe it's tremendously important that we
abandon ourselves to God without any reservation.
Let him fill in the blank.
There was a girl at a conference up
at Ben Lippin conference ground in South Carolina
and she gave a testimony.
And in her testimony she held up a
blank sheet of paper.
The only thing on that paper was her
signature.
And she said, this is God's plan for
my life.
What was she saying?
She was just saying this.
My life is at God's disposal.
There's my signature.
I concur in what God plans for my
life.
Could you do that?
Here is somebody who was completely abandoned for
the Lord.
And I have no doubt that that girl
found that the plan which the Lord wrote
on that paper for her life was something
which was good and acceptable and perfect.
The master to me was a great Greek
orator as well as a philosopher.
When he first appeared on the platform in
the Greeks in Athens he was hissed off
because his performance was so deplorable.
He had a weak voice.
His voice was harsh and weak.
His personality was unimpressive.
He had a painful stammer.
He, as he spoke, he had facial distortions.
And in addition to that he had an
ugly hitching of his shoulder that every now
and again he'd give it a hitch.
Well, interesting watching preachers isn't it?
You're watching me and seeing my peculiarities.
Well, he had this one which was not
very attractive.
Well, when he was going away from the
platform he said to himself, they'll hear me
yet.
So what did he do?
He went away and he isolated himself.
He shaved off half his hair.
Well, you're not very acceptable in company if
you've only got half your hair.
And that saved him wasting time socializing.
And then he gave himself the practicing elocution
day and night.
This one thing he did.
He used to do it in front of
a mirror so that he could correct the
facial contortions.
He went down to the shores of the
Aegean Sea and there he competed with the
waves so that he could develop volume in
his voice.
He used to speak with pebbles in his
mouth to enable him to overcome his stammer.
But then there was the problem of the
hitching of his shoulder.
How could he get over that?
Well, he found a very satisfactory solution.
He got suspended from the ceiling of sword
with the point resting on his shoulder.
It was remarkable how little desire he had
to hitch his shoulder.
But here was this man who said, this
one thing I do, the nation will hear
me yet.
The time came when they were fighting against
Philip and the nation wasn't being aroused.
And so Demosthenes and Aristotle were called upon
to make an oration to arouse the nation.
But Aristotle spoke first and he gave a
marvellous oration.
The people were carried away and when he
finished they said, what wonderful oratory.
And they praised him tremendously.
Then it came Demosthenes' turn.
And after he had spoken with great ability
did they say, what marvellous oratory?
No they didn't.
What did they say?
They said, come let us fight Philip.
He had said, they'll hear me yet.
He was prepared to make end sacrifice in
order that this one thing might be achieved.
My brothers and sisters, if we could have
a worthy ambition that we are prepared to
sacrifice anything for, we too will be able
to make a significant contribution to our day
and to our generation.
Now Paul uses the word ambition three times
I think in the New Testament.
In one case he said, I make it,
2nd Corinthians 5, I make it my ambition,
what to do?
To be well-pleasing unto people.
Well, wouldn't that be a worthy objective?
That in all I do, Lord will this
please you?
If I do this, will this please you?
If I don't do that, will that please
you?
This was one of Paul's ambitions.
Ambition, to be well-pleasing to people.
Another ambition he records in Romans chapter 15
and verse 20.
And this is one that had more involvement.
He said, I make it my ambition, what
to do?
To preach Christ, not where he is already
named.
I don't want merely to build upon another
man's foundation.
I want to preach Christ where he has
not been named.
And it was that which was the tremendous
driving force behind Paul.
He had been told when the Lord called
him, I will send you far hence to
the Gentiles.
He knew that his calling was not to
be at home, it was to be far
hence.
He knew it wasn't to be his own
people, the Jews, but to the Gentiles.
And so here was this man who had
the tremendous ambition, I must see Rome.
I must go to Spain, the farthest limits
of the then known world.
No limits to him.
He must preach to the regions beyond the
places where Christ has not been named.
Now you know very well that your own
missionary societies are doing this very thing.
But I wonder how many of you have
personally come to the place where you say,
Lord without any reservation whatsoever, I am prepared
to make my life available to you to
take me to minister to some of the
two and a half thousand million people in
the world today, who have never yet had
any vital contact, opportunity of vital contact with
Christ.
Have you really faced up to that?
I believe that people are not fitted for
the home ministry unless they have first faced
up to the implications of the people who
are without Christ overseas.
If the Lord says I want you to
serve at home, then that is the highest
possible thing you can do.
But I wonder whether with all, almost half
the world without Christ, I wonder whether more
of us should not be moving out into
the regions beyond.
Paul says I don't want, I want to
preach Christ where he has not been named.
May I close with this.
Whenever I speak to a group of young
people, especially theological students, I can't help thinking
of the tremendous potential that lies hidden in
a group like this.
I've seen so many young people who, having
taken their course, just melt away into mediocrity.
They just don't, don't make any much, much
mark for God at all.
They're good Christians, they do good work and
so on, but they really don't make any
significant contribution to our disoriented world.
I was invited some years ago to give
the graduation address at Columbia Bible College.
And after the services were over, the graduates,
the alumni, turned on a dinner.
And they kindly invited me to it, and
I went along, enjoyed the dinner.
Then afterwards they were showing pictures of former
graduates.
Well, it had no interest to me because
I didn't know any of them, and I
just sat in the dark feeling pretty bored,
until I heard a name.
And it was somebody I knew.
And I saw a face on the picture,
a face on the screen.
They went on, showed other names, but my
mind was going in a different direction.
And I thought, now supposing someone had come
to that girl when she was a student
in Columbia, just as you are here.
Supposing somebody had come to her and said,
you know that God is going to use
you to take the gospel to people in
all parts of the world in 4,500
different languages.
What do you think that girl would have
said?
Supposing somebody whispered that in the ear of
one of you girls, what would you think?
Wouldn't you think, well how stupid, how impossible.
I only know two languages, you mightn't even
know two.
And yet that's exactly what God did with
that girl.
Her name was Joy Ridderhoff.
And she founded the gospel recording, which has
given the elements of the gospel to people
all over the world in 4,500 languages.
Not one person, not one fellow student, not
one staff member of Columbia College had any
idea that sitting in their classes every day,
there was a girl who was going to
make one of the most significant missionary contributions
that's been made in the history of mission.
And she had no idea herself.
You don't know who's sitting next to you.
You don't know who's sitting on your own
seat.
You don't know what God could do with
that life of yours, if without any reservation
you passed it over to him.
If you said, Lord this one thing I
do.
Say like Paul, I have not already obtained,
neither am I already perfect.
But this one thing I do, I press
on to the prize, for the prize of
the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Make us, may God make us, men and
women who do one thing, and who do
it supremely well.
Thank you for letting the Overseas Missionary Fellowship
share this message on spiritual leadership with you.
If God has used this message in your
life, please share it with others.
May the Lord bless as you move forward
in training other Christians in the biblical principles
of spiritual leadership.
Mr. Sanders' book, Spiritual Leadership, is now in
over 20 different languages.
To help in the teaching of the biblical
principles in his book, Moody Press has published
a leader's guide.
We also have a series of eight of
his messages on spiritual leadership on VHS.
Sanders' book, Paul the Leader, demonstrates these principles
worked out in Paul's life and ministry.
For detailed information about the Overseas Missionary Fellowship,
please write to us at 404 South Church
Street, Robesonia, Pennsylvania 19551.
In Canada, write to 1058 Avenue Road, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada, M5N 2C6.