In ministry and missions across the world where
you can see people and you wonder, I
wonder what's really happening in that mission.
I wonder where the money goes to, and
I don't see much happening.
When I was there, it just absolutely astounded
me, the ministry that's going on.
And you'll hear them say this morning, every
day in India right now, through Gospel for
Asia, five and a half new churches are
starting.
That's every day.
And I want to highly recommend him to
you, and all the things at the back.
There won't be any hype, you know, we
never hype anybody for money.
They don't.
I just want you to open your heart,
and if you feel like you're helping to
support a missionary, you can begin just to
fill that card out, we'll give you more
information at the end.
You can actually get a picture of who,
and they've got hundreds and hundreds of missionaries
that are there.
Four thousand young men in Bible college right
now, getting ready to come out.
Four thousand to start new churches.
So just hold on to that, and I
want you this morning to relax.
You will be challenged for the next hour.
Now, K.P., we're going to give you
55 minutes.
You've got all 55 minutes.
And he's going to just challenge your heart,
and we'll have some time at the end.
David will come, and we'll have you sign
up and get some books and stuff, and
all that kind of stuff.
So let's give a great welcome this morning
to K.P. Yohanan from Gospel for Asia.
Good morning.
Our coming here is a miracle, really.
Dallas to Tampa, this was the only flight
that was not canceled.
Our flight and all the other flights were
canceled.
We came from Dallas, Texas to Tampa yesterday.
And we realized the Tampa-Dallas flights are
canceled, except the one that we are supposed
to go back with tonight.
The Lord is really wonderful.
And originally we thought we would come to
Orlando, but when the office called and checked
the prices, it was too high.
So they decided to make the drive an
hour and a half longer.
So that was God's plan.
Had they booked the flight to Orlando, all
the flights were canceled.
So the Lord knew what He was doing,
so this is nice.
David Carroll, my associate, is with me here.
We have some 40, 45 people that work
in Dallas.
That's our U.S. home office of the
mission.
David used to be a CPA, still is
a CPA, from California.
Had his own business.
Seven years ago, the Lord called him to
sell his home, sell his business, walk away
from everything with his wife and kids to
serve the Lord.
And he's in Dallas serving the Lord with
us, and we travel together often when I'm
here in America to speak.
And about seven, eight times a year, I
travel in and out of the United States.
We have quite a lot of countries we
work in in the Asian part of the
world.
And I'm here three, four weeks, then I
leave and come back.
So I don't necessarily spend all my life
in America.
The little time I'm here, I travel like
this to speak.
My wife, Gisela, she left yesterday from Dallas
to Burma, that's Myanmar, for about a week
or so for the graduation of the Bible
School students in Burma.
In the last four years or so, those
graduates from our Burmese school planted 350 churches,
and 75 of them became self-supporting, and
they're supporting 75 missionaries through their offerings with
a lot of poverty and struggle that they
delivered.
And I have two children.
Daniel is 22 years old, my daughter Sarah,
she's 18.
They both finished their studies in the United
States high school.
Then the Lord called them to go to
India to serve the Lord.
So they went to India to study in
the Bible School, and my son is in
North India now, and my daughter is just
finishing her Bible School this year.
So that is a brief little news about
us generally.
If anyone here wants to give your life
to serve the Lord, on behalf of multiplied
millions that do not know the Lord, like
with David Carroll, we have 10-15 positions
open in Dallas with our home office.
You will be a missionary.
Please talk to us about it if you
think about giving your life to serve the
Lord.
Retired people, young people, writers, graphic artists, computer
people, anyone with no skill also, but all
you need is a broken heart and a
fervent attitude to be used by the Lord.
You understand my English?
Thank God.
That is good.
I want us to look at a Bible
verse in 2 Corinthians 3
.18. 2 Corinthians 3.18.
And after that you want to turn your
Bibles to John's Gospel chapter 4.
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding up
in a mirror the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image from
glory to glory, just as by the Spirit
of the Lord.
Just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
The Holy Spirit does two things.
Throughout our life.
One is He takes the mirror, which is
the Word of God, and in it He
shows us Jesus Christ, the glory of the
Lord.
So we see what Jesus is like.
Secondly, He changes us to become like the
one we are looking at.
The Pharisees studied the Bible, memorized the Bible.
They were expert theologians, PhDs in all disciplines
in theology.
Yet they missed it all.
Jesus said, you study the Bible so hard,
you search in it day and night, thinking
by knowing you will find life.
But Jesus said, but they testify of me.
But you people will not come to me.
All you want is information and knowledge.
You will never come to me.
Because for you to come to me, you
have to give up everything that you are
holding on to, and renounce, and be broken,
and be humble, and change your ways.
But you will not give it up.
That can happen.
That is happening in our evangelical churches.
Knowledge pops up, but love edifies.
My dear brothers and sisters, of all the
countries on planet earth, the believers in America
have more information on theology, and worship, and
all the things of the Bible than any
other people on planet earth.
For example, I tell you, in India where
I come from, almost 1 billion people, we
don't have one Christian radio station in the
entire country.
In Dallas, Texas, where we come from, we
have 13 full-time radio stations blasting the
gospel 24 hours.
You want to hear soft, mellow, nice, old
hymns, you can hear it.
You want to hear contemporary music, Christian music,
you can hear it.
You want to hear the worship songs, like
this morning we had, you know, the Integrity
of Maranatha and all, you can hear that.
You want to hear songs that blows your
brains out?
That too is there.
You want to hear preaching?
John MacArthur, Jr., Chuck Sundor, Chuck Smith, all
the fantastic teachers, conservative, wonderful preachers, and you
have every denomination, and they are preachers completely
off the wall also, you know, send me
your money, I'll send you oil to put
on your head, hair grow out, and all
kind of funny things.
And I'm just 24 hours.
And when I was in China, I remember
those Chinese brothers showed me a stack of
color photographs of people being baptized in the
icy waters in the middle of the night
in mainland China.
They said, Brother KP, if we would do
it in the daytime, we would be arrested
and persecuted.
And then they said to me something more
sad.
They said, you know, we have thousands of
congregations, underground churches all over mainland China, millions
of believers, simple poor people, churches with 800
,000, 900,000 believers even.
And they said, these congregations are lucky if
they have two Bibles with the name of
the entire congregation.
I was so amazed by that.
I said, what did they do?
They said, with the Bibles we get, we
tear 10, 20 pages into one family, next
10 pages to the next family, and we
tear the Bible into pages and they copy
and bring it back.
We hear radio and they read the Bible
slowly, and we will copy the Bible after
we hear it on shortwave radio.
How many Bibles do you have in your
home?
I mean, Christian bookstore?
Anywhere in the United States you can just
go, abundant of them.
There is not one Christian bookstore in the
mainland China, not even one.
Average believer that goes to this church, hearing
my brother teach here, you've been here 2
-3 years, I can tell you, you qualify
to be a Bible college professor in many
parts of the world.
Do you lack information?
Do you lack understanding?
Do you lack music?
No, as a matter of fact, we are
spiritually fed so much, that our heads are
so big, that we can't walk anymore, it's
so wobbly.
What we need is this information, go down
to our feet, so we can walk.
And so, it is not that we don't
know, it is we are not really longing
to see the face of Jesus and to
be like Him.
In all your learning, all your study, my
prayer is that everyday you will say, Lord,
today I want to be like You.
We are called to worship Jesus as God,
but also to imitate Him as a man.
He is a forerunner, it says in Hebrews.
What is Jesus like?
And that's what you see in this mirror.
You know, these words we sang this morning,
Forever I love you, forever I will stand,
nothing compares to the promises that I have
in you.
You, you, think about those words.
There is another chorus that we usually sing
in our prayer meetings.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in
His wonderful face, all the things of earth
will grow strangely dim, in the light of
His glory.
In John chapter 4, we see our Lord,
what He is like.
And this is the story of the Samaritan
woman that you read and study and you
heard from, I'm sure, many times.
In this we see Jesus, the way He
is, so we can imitate and we can
walk in His footsteps.
John chapter 4 verses 13 through 38 is
the passage where we find Jesus hungry and
thirsty, His disciples coming back with food and
telling Him to eat and the response Jesus
gives to them.
Verse 31, In the meantime His disciples urged
Him, saying, Rabbi, eat.
But He said to them, I have food
to eat that you do not know.
Therefore the disciples said to one another, Has
anyone brought Him anything to eat?
Jesus said to them, My food is to
do the will of Him who sent Me
and finish His work.
Do you not say, There are still four
months and then comes the harvest?
Behold, I say to you, Lift up your
eyes and look at the fields, for they
are already ripe for harvest.
And he who reaps receiveth wages and gathers
fruit for eternal life, that both he who
sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
For in this the same is true.
One sows and another reaps.
I sent you to reap that for which
you have not labored.
Others have labored and you have entered into
their labors.
I come from the part of southern India
where my people are farmers, rice farmers.
And I have a little boy growing up
in my home, our farm.
The harvest time comes, it is crisis.
Nobody is worried about vacation, drinking, eating, sleeping,
long hours, nothing like that.
It is around the clock.
You know why?
Harvest is a fixed time.
You wait one week, two weeks, longer.
Until rain comes, something happens, the entire crop
is destroyed.
And the whole year we have to suffer
if we didn't get the harvest in.
Harvest is a fixed time.
And Jesus, using daily events of life, teaching
His disciples.
He didn't have classroom and church building like
this to teach them.
He taught them about what He is about
through daily life events.
And He takes food and drink issue and
teaches them eternal truth.
And this is one of those incidents.
He teaches them, first of all, the urgency
of the hour that they are living with.
He lived with perpetual emergency, urgency.
Jesus, all night long praying, all day long
working.
I must work while the day is still
here.
Night is coming when no man can work.
The urgency of the hour.
How is He doing that?
He was hungry.
Very thirsty.
When they came with the food, He said,
I lost my appetite.
You don't need Greek and Hebrew to explain
this.
You don't need the simple English.
The disciples said, my goodness, did someone bring
Him something to eat?
He said, no, no, no.
My food is to eat and be satisfied,
do in the will of my Father.
How would He explain something like that?
It's kind of weird.
They don't understand this.
He said, alright, you can understand it if
you can lift up your eyes and look
away and see what I see.
You say four months of harvest.
Now is the time.
It is all ready for harvest.
You know, I remember coming back from Bombay
one time reading the English newspaper called Indian
Express.
On the front page, there was a black
and white picture of a little boy laying
on the sidewalk of Bombay Street.
Beside him lays a female dog.
As I looked close, I couldn't believe it.
That boy, four or five year old boy,
was drinking milk from that dog laying beside
him.
And the caption reads, this dog is his
mother.
I never saw anything like that before or
since.
I was amazed.
Then the three column article explained about the
story.
Over 100,000 children live on the streets
of Bombay not knowing who their parents are.
Five million people live in the largest slum
of the world, the Bombay streets.
And their fate, their suffering.
Say, you were with me in Bombay and
you decided that together we will go and
meet the little boy.
If you found the boy and ask him,
what can we do for you?
What kind of things he will ask for?
Will he say to you, listen, the rags
I'm wearing with holes all over, give me
a new piece of cloth that I may
wear?
Would it be, I never held a toothbrush
in my life in my hand, give me
a toothbrush and a toothpaste?
Would it be, I never washed my hair
with soap or shampoo, let me experience that?
Or would it be, I never laid my
head on a soft pillow, covered my body
with a clean bedsheet, I never slept on
a bed in a home, help me experience
that?
Or would it be, take me to the
school, I never learned ABCD?
I don't think so.
He will simply say, you want to help
me?
Thank you.
Give me some food, that I don't have
to live on the streets like this, and
die like so many of my friends.
That request he makes, he calls the basic,
of the basic, of the basic essential to
life.
It is on Haggadah and M&Ms and
all the soft drinks and funny things and
vitamins and all the stuff he talks about,
the basic of the basic, a piece of
bread and a glass of water.
And Jesus takes that, the basic of all,
to survive.
Says, even that is not important to me,
compared to the reality I just encountered.
This woman I talked to, someone who is
lost without the Father's love, going into hell
and forever.
That realization, consumed, destroyed, eliminated my very appetite
for even food and drink.
A few years ago, my wife came to
me to our dial-up office and gave
me a letter to read and said, please
read this letter.
And then she turned and said, oh by
the way, don't speed read, that kind of
makes me angry a little bit.
I didn't know what the letter was about,
so I went to the room and sat
down on my nice chair and began to
read the letter.
When I finished reading, I was no more
sitting on my chair, I was on my
knees weeping.
The letter was not written by her.
The letter came from one of our native
missionaries from the mission field, from Haridwar, by
river Ganges.
That particular time, 35 million Hindus went into
the river during that week, washing themselves in
the river Ganges for the forgiveness of sins.
They never heard about the blood of Christ
that can wash their sins away.
And one of our missionaries working during that
time came by Haridwar writing this letter.
He said, as he was coming home that
evening, he saw a young Hindu woman sitting
by the bank of river Ganges weeping uncontrollably
and pounding upon a chest.
And he said, I went to her and
asked, why are you crying?
What happened?
And she explained, we are very poor people.
My husband is sick.
He cannot work anymore.
My sins are so many that nobody knows
about.
For the forgiveness of my sins and solution
to the problems of my home, I have
given the best offering I can give to
God of Ganges.
My only child, my baby boy, six months
old, my son, I threw him into the
river.
In this paragraph, I began to explain to
her, the missionary wrote, that your sins are
forgiven.
Two thousand years ago, Jesus died for you.
God is not mad at you.
He didn't make you poor.
He loves you.
I explained the gospel to her.
He said, finally, she wiped her tears and
looked straight into his eyes and simply said,
but why didn't you come to me half
hour sooner?
I didn't have to kill my child.
It is too late.
And she went back crying again.
And that was another opportunity.
I made a pledge one more time to
my Lord.
As long as I am alive, till the
last second of my life, every finder of
my being, every penny that you give to
me, everything I am, I will give completely
to see the lost one to you, Jesus,
that they will not have to kill themselves
and throw their babies into the rivers to
find salvation.
You realize, my precious brothers and sisters, in
America, we have an ordained minister for average
every 40 to 50 people living in this
country.
If you take the ordained ministers and the
singers and teachers and Bible schools, students and
radio preachers, but for Bihar, 22 million people,
not one missionary working among them.
Afghanistan, 17 million people without one church in
the entire nation.
25,000 villages in Sri Lanka without a
church.
500,000 villages in the land of India
without a missionary, without a church.
It is not peace time.
Don't you ever think.
Yesterday I was told, Hey, listen, you think
you'll be comfortable and at ease and peace
in your palace?
Don't you ever think like that.
This is emergency time.
And Jesus lived with such urgency because of
the lost people around Him that He didn't
do anything for Himself but He gave His
life.
Do we understand the emergency?
Now is the time.
20 years ago, living in Dallas, Texas, the
Lord broke my heart.
I write a lot about it in my
books.
One day He asked me a question, Son,
some 60,000 people die every single day
and plunge into hell.
What are you doing with your life?
A fancy house, library with books I may
never read but look fantastic, Newsweek, Time Magazine,
70 neckties, expensive suits, Rolex watch, all the
stuff, material things.
I was gathering for myself while I was
in the seminary and preaching and teaching in
a local church in Dallas, Texas.
And I realize all of a sudden in
my own self-centeredness, I was seeking everything
for myself.
My heart was breaking for the lost world.
And Jesus is trying to teach His disciples
this is a time of crisis.
The world is waiting and they're perishing.
So then He tells them you must become
unselfish in your thinking.
Lift up your eyes He says.
You will see what I see.
I do not know if you remember the
name Keith Green.
Anyone remember the name Keith Green?
He was a crazy fellow, strange human being.
But a radical soldier of Jesus who died
and went to be with the Lord in
a small airplane crash.
He was a close friend of our ministry.
He wrote many songs and one of his
songs, the words go something like this.
Don't you care?
All the people singing down and goes on
to say, bless me Lord, bless me Lord.
It is all I ever hear.
No one ate, no one hurt, no one
even shed one tear.
It's all bless me, bless me, bless me.
When I was 16, I gave my life
to serve the Lord to go to North
India.
2,000 miles away from my home.
And one of the place I went to
serve the Lord was called Boondi along with
others.
That is the first place I was beaten
and abused for preaching the gospel without any
mercy.
A few years later, a young man who
went to one of the Bible schools and
got his training felt the Lord was calling
him to go to Boondi.
The leader told him, brother, this is a
dangerous place for you to go.
You don't want to do that.
He said, no, no, the Lord is calling
me to go.
So in the end, he went to Boondi
believing the Lord is calling him to plant
a church in that place.
Stoned hard Hindus.
He rented a small room for a few
dollars a month.
And one night, as he was sleeping, somebody
busted the door open and he found himself
surrounded by a group of men and a
tall turbaned Rajput just pulled him up by
his leg.
And he said, young fellow, we can tear
you apart like we do with a chicken.
Why have you come here to preach about
your God?
We got plenty of Gods.
We don't need your God.
You better leave this place tomorrow first thing
in the morning.
And this young brother got frightened.
And he ran back to a mission station,
told our leaders they are going to kill
me.
You see, a few years prior to that
a brother called Dwararajam, southern part of India,
went as a missionary to that part of
the country and within a week they killed
him.
And he was the first martyr in that
state for preaching the gospel during that particular
time.
And this young brother said I cannot go
back.
They will kill me.
And the leader said, we told you this
is going to happen.
Our senior most brother said to him, son
did Jesus ask you to go to Boondi?
He said, I know he told me to
go to Boondi.
But they came.
They will kill me.
And this brother said are you sure?
The Lord called him.
He said, you know I have been praying
for over a year during the Bible school
time and I know the Lord put the
burden upon my heart.
And our brother said to him, son you
go back to Boondi.
They may come back to you.
They may kill you.
But remember, heaven is a much better place
than Boondi.
If they kill you you go and wait
there for us.
We will come later.
He knelt down and the brothers laid their
hand on him and prayed for him and
sent him back.
Sure enough they came back to him and
said, now why have you come here?
You are going to make us murderers.
He heard all the mighty speeches and everything.
He said, look, the sooner you can do
your job, it is better for me.
Heaven is a much better place than your
Boondi anyway.
What can I do with a fellow like
that?
Yes, he faced some persecution.
But God used him.
A few years later, I get a telephone
call here in United States.
Brother K.P. I said, yeah, this is
me.
Brother, we want you to come to Boondi.
I said, what?
I want to put the phone down.
Because I remember how I was beaten up,
you know, my time in Boondi.
He said, no, no, no, brother.
We want you to come and inaugurate the
church we have in Boondi.
Now I am hearing a wonderful story.
Next, the following month, I took a flight
to Delhi and went by train on to
Boondi.
And there, a beautiful church with over hundred
uncles and children and their wives and everybody
worshipping Jesus.
And it's when heaven came down on earth.
And it was a glorious day when it
was all over.
He took me and said, uncle, this is
the man who said he stared me like
a chicken.
And that is his friend, that is his
wife, and on and on like that.
I was absolutely amazed.
You know how that could happen?
Jesus said, unless you love me more than
father, mother, son, daughter, your own very life,
you cannot be my disciple.
What is hindering us from taking this world
to the feet of Jesus?
It is our own self-centeredness.
I want even spiritual things, everything for my
self.
Hussain and Salsal, two of our brothers, Muslim
converts from the religion of Islam.
They went to the Bible school, got their
training, went to a community to preach the
gospel.
Strong Islam community.
They began to preach the gospel.
Led several dozens of people to Christ.
During the day, they preached.
Night, they will teach the new believers.
One morning these two brothers were going about
their ministry.
A group of men came and met them.
The leader stepped forward and said, So, you
are Hussain?
You are Salsal?
They said, Yes, we are.
You came to tell us about your Jesus?
Yes.
No more conversation.
The leader pulled out a long dagger, a
knife, and stabbed in the heart of brother
Hussain.
He fell in a pool of blood.
Salsal grabbed him, holding him, weeping.
They stabbed him six times, believing they both
are dead.
These men ran away.
Salsal survived, but Hussain died on the spot,
leaving a young wife and two little children
behind.
A few weeks later, hearing the news, her
father, Hussain's father-in-law, a Muslim from
a distant village traveled, came and saw his
daughter and said, My daughter, thank God the
devil is dead.
Now, you come home with my grandchildren.
This young girl replied, Father, you don't understand.
You don't understand, Father.
The Jesus my husband loved, I love him
too.
The people that he loved, I minister to,
I love them, Father.
I cannot come home.
I must continue the ministry my husband started
and died for.
They were amazed, this man.
Two more weeks he stayed with her during
the time she led him to the Lord
Jesus Christ, and he was baptized publicly.
What did that take?
A whole bunch of knowledge?
Wonderful worship?
All good.
But a radical commitment to abandon the desire
to preserve my own life.
Jesus calls for such radical commitment and abandonment.
And my dear brothers and sisters, living in
a country like this, what a blessing, what
a privilege, what a freedom, what opportunity.
But those much is given, much shall be
required.
In the midst of my self-centeredness, my
affluence, my seeking things for myself, I remember
those days.
Contemporary Christian music, my favorite thing.
I can hear beautiful music on stereo 24
hours, but I was not satisfied.
I hear one song that I like from
my favorite artist, the next thing I do,
I go to the bookstore and spend the
money to buy the entire cassette just for
the one song, like you do today.
But when the Lord broke my heart and
said, son, what is this all about?
Don't you care?
Millions are perishing for eternity and you live
such a life of self-centeredness.
I remember it was not a guilt trip
or condemnation.
I simply prayed a prayer borrowed from a
missionary and the prayer went like this, Jesus,
I cannot change my heart.
Would you please change me?
Take eternity and stamp on my eyes.
My heart changed.
Twenty years ago and I remember for two
years living in America until then, every time
I went to the store, I would buy
the expensive deodorant soap that I loved, the
habit I learned from Europe, a dollar fifty
cents every time you buy that piece of
deodorant soap.
But when the Lord broke my heart, immediately
I switched without any pain and agony to
ivory.
Thirty-five cents ivory, I don't like that
soap.
I don't recommend you to buy that.
But the reason I did that, I can
tell you, the difference between dollar fifty cents
and thirty-five cents meant hundreds more people
to read for the first time in their
life, Jesus died for me, I don't have
to go to hell.
Some of our missionaries working in northwest of
India, they are distributing gospel tracts and open
air preaching.
A Hindu man came up in his late
fifties, got a tract in his native language.
On the street he was reading it.
For the first time in his life, reading
about a God that loved him enough to
die for him and willing to save him.
A Hindu brahmin.
You know what the problem was?
He was running away from his home to
commit suicide having cancer in his body.
He was leaving his home not to bring
shame to his family he was going to
kill himself.
On the street now he reads about Jesus.
There is a prayer he could pray at
the end of the booklet and right on
the street he cried out to Jesus to
forgive him and come into his life.
He felt something happening to him.
He didn't kill himself.
He went back home.
Next day went to the hospital and said,
Doctor, would you please check me?
The doctor said, Listen, you got cancer.
There is nothing more we can do for
you.
Please, you know, live the rest of the
time.
He said, No, no, doctor, please check me
one more time.
So he persisted.
They checked him up.
They were totally shocked.
What medicine?
There is not a trace of cancer in
your body.
He pulled the booklet out of his pocket
and said, Doctor, this healed me.
They thought he went cuckoo.
He went to a mission station, explained to
a brother what is happening.
They explained him more about Jesus.
The man began to weep.
He said, Oh!
Now I know this Jesus is my God.
He was so overjoyed.
And he said, You know what?
I am a landlord.
I have plenty of money.
I have plenty of people in our village.
Would you come and make all my people
Christians?
He couldn't figure this out how this thing
works.
Two of our missionaries went within, began to
preach the gospel and 10, 20, 30, 40
people wept.
We began to come to Christ.
We began to baptize.
The man gave the land, the money, the
whole thing to build a beautiful church.
The first church in that village.
Worshipping the Lord Jesus Christ.
How did that all happen?
Through one gospel tract that cost less than
what you and I pay for a chewing
gum.
See, once we decide to live a life
in the light of eternity, everything changes.
Everything we look at, we have a different
glass on our eyes.
Just a week ago, a call came from
one of our leaders in mission field and
said, Sir KP, we have good news for
you.
You wouldn't believe it.
I said, our school went out for a
week outreach and they planted 36 churches during
this week in villages where there was no
worship before.
I said, can you explain that again?
I said, it is too good to be
true.
And they began to explain how the Lord
was doing such enormous work in these regions
where people are coming to Christ.
Pastor from this church when he was in
India, Gail Irwin, 1200 workers in one part
of India in the last few years, over
600 churches and mission stations planted by those
brothers who were giving their life.
And one brother was telling me his legs
got tired after baptizing 135 people one after
another in the river one Sunday morning.
That's quite a few people to be baptized.
But you know what?
This is harvest time.
This is the time the Lord is working.
I want to just ask you to pray
that prayer, Lord change my heart, make me
real, stamp eternity on my eyes.
Maybe the greatest influence I had in my
life was my own mother.
When I told her at the age of
16, I want to go and pray to
the Lord.
Without even asking one question, she said, please
go.
I thought she didn't like me anymore.
After two years of my life in North
India, skin and bones and tired and worn
out, as I came back, traveling 2000 miles
by train to see my parents, the first
time she saw me, she started weeping.
The next day she said, son, I want
to tell you something.
Nobody in the house.
I was in the kitchen.
She was cooking.
She said, you are one of my six
boys.
You are the youngest of you know.
I prayed to the Lord that one of
our sons would become a missionary.
But one by one, they went to business
and done all these different things.
And after you came along, shy, withdrawn, timid,
I lost all my hope.
Then I decided I will still pray.
Three and a half years my mother prayed
every Friday fasting only drinking water.
Three and a half years, every Friday fasting,
one prayer request.
Jesus, call one of my sons to be
a missionary.
And the day I went to my mother
and said, I want to go and pray
to the Lord, she knew the Lord answered
her prayer.
And she told me the story.
I never knew that.
The memory of my mother, early morning, 4
o'clock, 4.30, she would get up,
all my life I remember, spend an hour
or more in prayer on her knees when
she would wake up the rest of the
family for family prayer.
No wonder all her sons came to know
Jesus Christ.
1990, I was on the way to South
Korea to speak in a mission conference and
I stopped in India when I heard the
news my mother was sick and taken to
the hospital.
So I cancelled my trip and went to
the hospital and spent that week with her.
That weekend, my mother died at the age
of 84.
My oldest brother called his younger brothers, including
me, and said, now our mother is gone,
you may want to know what all she
wanted us to do after she is dead.
One of my brothers, who is a businessman,
immediately said, I want to know how much
money our mother left in the bank.
And my brother said, there is nothing in
the bank.
He said, what happened to all the money?
Because all of her sons believed there must
be a large amount of money sitting in
the bank because they were giving her money
all her life.
And he pulled out an old, worn out
little booklet, scribbling all over it with pencil,
filled with names.
And then he said, if you really want
to know what happened to the money, I
will tell you.
We found this under her pillow and in
it she had the names of deaf and
poor young people that went to the mission
field.
She was sending money secretly every month to
support those missionaries.
And quite a lot of young people studying
in Bible schools that she was helping month
after month and she never told anyone what
she was doing.
And I began to cry because I remember
one time when I came back from America
I saw my mother wearing a blouse which
is our native clothes with stitches on there.
And I was so angry.
I said, Mother, what is wrong with you?
Are you mad?
You've got six boys.
All of them are well to do people.
Our community will think we don't take care
of you.
It's a shame upon our family and your
sons.
Why can't you buy some new clothes?
Don't you have money?
You've got everything.
You can buy a new dress every month.
Why is this?
And I went on and on and all
this.
And in the end she smiled with her
face and said, See son, you are too
young.
You don't understand.
I have plenty of clothes you do not
know nothing about.
She never answered me.
But now I get the answer.
Yes, she could have bought any number of
clothes, anything she wanted, any fashion.
But she refused.
She stayed wearing all the clothes so that
her money can be sent to support missionaries
on the mission field preaching the gospel.
And finally my brother said, You want to
know the last will our mother left?
It's what she said before she died.
When I'm dead, the only thing I will
leave behind is my earrings, my wedding ring,
and the gold chain my husband gave me
the day he married me.
I want you to sell these and take
the money and give to preach the gospel
to those that never heard it.
Those jewelry, the last thing she would leave
behind.
If my mother could talk to me now,
what kind of thing she would say?
Son, now you are older, you understand a
little better.
It is worth it, son.
It is worth it to walk on the
narrow road.
Let others do whatever they want to do.
You choose to walk on this narrow road.
Time is no more there for us to
take rest and be at peace.
No, it is time to do all.
You know, something that is very sobering, if
we care to think about, is this.
A hundred years from now, what does it
matter?
America is a strange place that you can
put new nose, new ear, new hair, all
kind of new things and make you look
younger.
This is a wonderful country for that, but
you can hide your driver's license as long
as you want.
But you see, my dear sister, my dear
brother, a hundred years from now, what does
it matter?
What happened to your dream car?
The dream fashion?
The catalogs that are now piling up in
your bathroom, you can more time look into
the catalogs than for the business you are
there for.
The new house you are dreaming to buy.
And all the stuff that you are gathering,
and then you go for roommate sale, garage
sale, yard sale, all this stuff, to get
rid of things, to buy new things.
And all the amazing things you need to
live.
But a hundred years from now, what does
it matter?
It means nothing.
You go around looking at fancy hairdos and
all kind of nice clothes and things, everybody
is looking at him, nobody is looking at
you.
Everybody thinks somebody is looking at them.
This is a hopeless, deceptive world.
We are strangers and pilgrims on this earth,
following the son of God who said, son
of man has no place to lay his
head.
And we are not here forever.
And that is the kind of mindset Jesus
lived with.
This world is not my home.
And he had one thing on his mind,
others, others, others that do not know the
Father's love.
How do you translate this into reality?
Jesus himself spoke to his disciples, I am
sending you to reap that on which you
bestowed in all labor.
Today we are 10,000 missionaries on the
mission field.
Or 4,000 young people between the age
of 18 and 25 studying, getting ready to
go to the mission field.
You know when they graduate, what we do?
We lay our hands on them and say,
brother, we are sending you with a one
-way ticket.
When you get to the mission field, is
the Lord so fit to give your life
as a sacrifice?
Remember, heaven is a much better place than
the mission field you go.
Be faithful till the end.
You will receive the crown of life.
A lot of tears, a lot of embracing,
a lot of emotion.
But today, continually, every day we hear of
our missionaries, other missionaries being killed on the
mission field for preaching the gospel.
These are difficult days.
But these men and women, they are going
out preaching the gospel.
How is it possible?
I tell you how it is possible.
Someone like you, living in a country like
this, or in Canada or Europe, somewhere says,
brother KP, I cannot be in India.
I cannot be in Bhutan.
I cannot go to Burma.
I cannot be in China.
But I can link my life through prayer
and help so that these missionaries can go
forth and preach the gospel.
Punjab is a place I spend a lot
of my time.
I remember one of our brothers, a Sikh
convert who went to a village to preach
and he found this family looking so sad,
like somebody died in the family.
He said, you people look so sad.
What happened?
They said, look, that's a buffalo.
The only way for us to make our
living is to milk the buffalo and sell
the milk and make a living.
Our buffalo is sick and dying.
We don't know what to do.
And our missionary, first time in that village,
he said, I will pray to Jesus.
My Jesus can heal your buffalo.
And they said, please talk to your God
and if he can help us, we will
be very happy.
And he went and laid his hand on
the sick and dying buffalo and said, Jesus,
if you ever need to do a miracle,
it is the right time.
This is my only chance.
If you please do something, I can plant
a church here.
See, the Lord is gracious.
And the buffalo jumps up.
Totally healed.
The whole family now totally amazed.
They heard the gospel.
That day the entire family gave their life
to Christ.
Then more families joined the family.
And within a month time, he had a
glorious church established.
And we sent the money to buy the
materials.
About $5,000 he sent to buy the
materials and everything to build the church today.
People worshiping Jesus Christ.
And we named the church the Buffalo Church.
And this is every day!
Harvest is taking place.
There are four things I will ask you
as a practical step.
Things you can do.
You know, a lot of times you hear
preaching and teaching.
You know, you go home and you say,
it was nice and this and that.
No.
Today I want you to do something.
This is given to you very practical.
One, you please decide to take one day
of the week to fast and pray for
people in our generation that do not know
Jesus Christ.
Over 2 billion people still waiting to hear
about the Lord Jesus Christ.
You say, Brother KP, I have no feelings
for it.
I hear about Rwanda, 100,000 people dying
overnight.
I don't care about it.
In Sri Lanka people dying, I don't care.
Bangladesh, I have no feelings.
It shall be given to you.
Ask!
Jesus!
Break my heart with the things that break
your heart.
He will answer your prayer.
So it will not be carnal reasoning and
fleshly work.
It will be His grace.
Take one day of the week to fast
and pray for some country, some people do
something.
And by the way, get a world map
put in your house.
World map will help you to think about
the world.
God want us to become world Christians, not
worldly Christians.
So you will not say, I don't know
where to get a world map, Brother KP,
I have no time.
I brought it for you.
World map with a shaded part with 1040
windows, 2 billion people living without knowing the
gospel, how to pray for these people.
And I want you to get a world
map like this, put in your house.
In Dallas, 20 years ago, when the Lord
touched my heart, every room in my house
world map and all kind of maps came
in.
Even our shower curtain is made of world
map, plastic, K-map.
Take a shower, pray for Burma, Bhutan, Afghanistan,
Mongolia, India and Sri Lanka.
You can pray and you know what?
Listen, be crazy.
Be crazy sometimes for Jesus sake.
Do things like this.
Let your children learn about the countries of
the world and they will live with the
world upon their heart, not about their own
little ice creams and hot dogs and all
this funny stuff they waste their life about.
Second, some of you want to lose half
a pound more, add one more day to
your fast day.
You know, some people cannot fast because of
health reasons.
I am not promoting everybody has to do
that.
Second, simplify your life.
You know my sister, you are dreaming about
the diamond ring and all the jewelry.
Listen, He loves you anyway.
Don't worry about it.
Brother, the car you are driving, you got
old car, lay your hand on it and
pray Jesus will make it run again.
And I drive a 1962 Volkswagen Bug.
It is running by miracle.
I am telling you, I am not recommending
you buy old Volkswagen Bug.
It is not the best thing on the
main road.
But whatever you have, listen, ask the Lord
to set you free from the pool of
materialism.
When I gave up on Neiman Marcus and
Rolex and all the funny stuff, I said
to my wife, I want to keep couple
of ties, couple of jackets and couple of
shoes and few trousers and few shirts.
You know what?
20 years, I still didn't do the same
thing.
I don't look that bad, do I?
Do I look bad?
No.
I look awful.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
What I am simply saying, listen, this thing
here, in couple of years time, this tie
will go back to this string tie.
I am not going to give it away.
I will keep it.
It will come back in style again.
This world, this society is so crazy enticing
us with sales and all kind of things.
Some of you spend half hour trying to
color coordinate because you don't know what to
wear.
If you want three or four pieces, you
can put anything you want on you.
That's all you have.
Half of the world go to bed with
empty stomach.
Something sober.
Seriously.
Jesus said you cannot serve God and mammon.
He didn't say devil.
Devil is not your enemy in your walk
with God.
It is your own self-centeredness for material
things, comfort and ease and luxury.
The measure in which you are willing to
give up the love of materialism the same
measure you will know the reality of walking
with Jesus.
Some people like me say that.
But that is true.
Now, what must you drive?
I can tell you.
Some people must drive BMW, Mercedes-Benz or
have nice house.
That's nobody's business.
Each one is called to do different.
I have people that are now friends who
are millionaires who serve God and give the
resources and touch the lost world.
It is not that poverty is going to
make anybody spiritual.
That is not what I am promoting.
But you make your decision.
Third, if God is calling you to give
your life to serve Him somewhere in the
world don't hold back.
Give your life away.
It is worth it.
It is a privilege.
Lastly, this is one of the main reasons
I spend some of my time in this
country, calling people to give their life to
join their life with others on the mission
field to reach the lost world.
How will they hear the gospel without a
preacher?
How will they preach except they descend?
The little card that is given to you
as a fourth application, this card if you
take it out just for a second this
is not a plea or a persuasion or
a business proposal or manipulation or anything to
make you give anything.
I am one before the Lord I can
tell you, I don't care if you give
one penny or one billion, it matters nothing
to me.
I represent my Lord and I want to
do it in such a way that honors
Him.
This card if you look at, is simply
to help you to take the fourth step
and the fourth application that is joining your
life with at least one or more native
missionaries on the field.
Four thousand now getting ready to go to
the field, but someone must send them.
If nobody is going to pray for them,
wipe their tears and help them to go,
they can go to the mission field.
It says they are starting now I will
prayerfully help sponsor one missionary with $30 a
month or $60 or $90 and then underneath
your name and your address and on the
back of the card if you turn the
card around you can simply see a native
missionary is a person working full time on
the mission field and all these different things
talks about how it works.
If you look here just for a second
Brother Dave and I, we brought with us
some 300 missionaries like this that do not
have any help today to get to the
mission field.
These are precious brothers and sisters from many
of these Asian countries who will go to
the most unreached areas like Haridwar, Bihar in
Bhutan where no one ever went to some
of these villages with the gospel.
And what I am asking you to do
if the Lord is giving you the grace
would you fill out this card saying Brother
KP, I will support one missionary or I
will support two missionaries.
My wife and I began to support four
missionaries when our kids were so small.
They used to pick up beer cans and
aluminum cans from the streets and sell them
and bring the money.
So we were helping these missionaries giving $30
a month in four different countries.
Even today those brothers are planting new churches
in the unreached areas we still support them.
And I ask you, if the Lord is
giving you the grace, at least one or
more some of you can support more than
two or three missionaries.
Mark how many you want to support.
When you fill this card and bring it
to the table, we will give you a
missionary to take home with you today put
in the refrigerator and start praying for them
today.
This is your missionary planting church.
You join with them reaping a harvest where
you bestow no labor.
It's a privilege.
So my prayer and request is that you
fill this card out, bring it and get
your missionary.
Some people say Brother KP, I don't have
any money with me no checkbook with me,
no problem.
If you have the money to give the
first month support or cash, please bring it
with the card.
But even if you don't have any money
with you, you still can get your missionary
by bringing the card and picking up a
missionary.
And 100%, 100% of your money you
give, go to the mission field.
Nobody take a penny out for postage or
salary, life, nor hidden agenda.
It is all very clean and very open
the way we operate.
Now Christian television is funny.
In America I see that some people say,
we need to hear from you today.
If I don't hear from you, I have
to go off the air.
And I usually talk about the television.
Would you please go off the air?
Leave me alone!
I understand there is a tremendous amount of
manipulation.
Guilt trips, building projects, all kind of projects
all kind of tricks used to get people
give and give and give.
What are they doing?
Building their own empire.
I am not part of it.
I am sad for it.
And therefore people are a lot of times,
sincere godly people deceived and tricked in a
lot of games people play.
And I want you to know, if you
seek the Lord, He will talk to you
what you must do.
Don't go by carnal reasoning.
And our heart desires this.
When time is over, someday when we stand
before the Lord, there will be multiplied millions
and millions that no man can number.
All of us together, the missionaries, the believers,
us, all of us, through our eternity, rejoicing
for the privilege the Lord gave us to
be like Jesus while we lived on earth.
And He calls us, come, follow in my
footsteps.
May the Lord speak to us.
Thank you.
David.