We are not a mission society as you
would know it.
We are a training movement.
Of course, some of our long-term people
who are in church planting in places like
Turkey and Pakistan or Afghanistan, that's different.
And there are several hundred of those.
Among their other jobs, whatever work they're doing,
they also have to train the new people
who are with them short-term.
That creates quite a lot of tension.
But the work of the summer crusade and
the one or two-year program, one of
our greatest burdens, and I say this all
over the world, this isn't something I'm saying
tonight because it's Brother Trevor's, is to recruit
people, because God has given us a great
open door among hundreds of thousands of people
and with a ship, to recruit people and
to train them to join these great mission
societies.
Ralph Shallis is speaking in my place tonight.
Dr. Lionel Gurney, the founder of the Red
Sea Mission Team, will speak on Monday.
And as these great men come to speak,
I remember when Len Mould came to speak,
he was director of the WECC.
His new biography is also there, just published.
Then people leave OM and they join these
missions.
Every year, dozens and dozens leave OM to
join some of these great mission societies.
In fact, every time I'm given orientation at
OMF in Singapore, when I've been out there,
there's two or three or four OM people,
even our second officer off the ship, going
through that difficult OMF orientation to be a
missionary with that great society.
So this is where it fits together.
Many of these young people come with us.
Not are they not only ready for mission
societies, many of them don't even believe in
mission.
They come from churches and house groups that
have no teaching on mission.
But somehow they heard about OM, that it
was a summer of service, and maybe their
talents could be used on this ship or
somewhere.
And it's often after they come with us,
and many of them are just babes in
Christ, then they begin, as they meet missionaries,
and as they go to these one-month
training conferences as they're in right now, 12
hours a day for a month, their eyes
open.
Many of them feel, because the missionary has
always been painted in some people's minds, even
though missionaries haven't said this, it's in people's
minds as something's going to be very super
spiritual.
I did read some time ago one of
the qualifications, a little booklet, qualifications to be
a missionary.
It turned out I was utterly depressed after
reading that.
I certainly don't have it, never did have
it.
I went to three years of Bible school
and got some training, two years of Bible
school and a year of college.
But I believe there is so much miscommunication
that God has raised up movements like OM
to communicate what it's all about, to give
young people a chance to meet a real
missionary and to see that missionaries are ordinary
people.
God is calling ordinary people.
Tonight you may feel the last thing in
the world you would ever be as a
missionary.
And you don't have the gift.
You're not able to speak in public.
As a young lad, I never thought I'd
ever be able to speak in public.
And you may feel you'll never get the
theological training or whatever.
But if you've got a better understanding, I
believe your ideas perhaps could be changed.
Now we read from the word of God
in Matthew chapter 9.
And you could turn there again.
And I think we need to often turn
to that passage to be reminded of the
great ministry of prayer that God has given
us.
Let me just somehow push in my own
feeble testimony of God's grace at this point.
Because it's a testimony concerning a woman who
believed that this was God's word.
There in the church today, and it's frightening,
there is an eroding of the word of
God and a failure to acknowledge that this
is God's holy inspired word.
And in our own movement, it doesn't mean
we won't fellowship with you if you don't
believe exactly as we do.
We believe that this is his inherent word.
The originals were without error.
They were inspired by God.
We know in God's providence those originals are
no longer available.
But we believe in studying the text and
in studying archaeology that there's enough proof and
we know there are problems to say this
is God's word and we can trust it.
And it is without error.
Though it has been copied many times and
there are slight changes in manuscripts, those changes
do not affect the basic teaching of the
word of God.
You say, well, that's a strange exhortation to
bring into a missionary meeting.
But you see, the reason people are not
going to the mission field is they don't
believe in the authority of God's word.
They don't believe that men are lost.
Our seminaries have become cemeteries and they're not
sending forth men any longer to the mission
field because they don't believe that the heathen
are lost.
Or if they believe something even more extreme,
like, well, if the Lord wants to save
them, he can save them.
There's nothing we can do about that.
Anyway, I've got to build a bigger house.
How can I get involved in world missions?
Here was a simple, ordinary woman near my
secondary school where I started to study.
She believed the word of God.
Therefore she believed men were lost.
Therefore she believed world missions was a priority.
And she started praying forth labors, not from
the nearby Bible school.
We didn't have any Bible school near there.
She prayed for labors from an ungodly secondary
school where a third of the students were
drunk every weekend.
In God's providence, I went to that school.
I didn't know Christ.
My grandfather and father from the Netherlands.
Grandfather was an atheist.
My other grandfather from Glasgow, he was a
drunk.
Divorced from my grandmother.
Our home was one big mess.
And this woman prayed for me and sent
me a gospel of John through the post.
Have you heard of the great ministry of
the pocket testament league?
Well, one of their gospels ended up in
my hands through this woman, through the post.
I believe in distributing the word of God.
And it is our burden and our goal,
working together with all different organizations and fellowship,
because we feel we're one in Christ, to
see the word of God go into the
hands of every single person on the planet.
If you'd like to have a big goal,
would you join us with that goal?
The word of God in every single hand,
every single heart.
And if they don't read, then we'll put
it on film.
We'll preach it.
We'll put it on cassette.
There are ten ways you can reach a
man, including those who don't know how to
read.
Never has the world been faced with such
unlimited opportunities for reaching the masses.
Yet, despite that, probably 40% of the
world has still not had the word of
God even once.
People say, well, giving the gospel once, that's
not enough.
Certainly giving the gospel once, a leaflet, a
tract, a gospel, you can't say he's evangelized.
No, we wouldn't say that.
But Hudson Taylor said, and he founded the
OMF, and now James Hudson Taylor III is
the director.
That excites me.
And a new film is just being released
about the life of Hudson Taylor that I
believe the Holy Spirit wants to use in
a mighty way.
We long to put it into about ten
languages and circulate it across the world, both
in 16 millimeter, Super 8 video cassette, and
I better not talk about that.
Another sidetrack.
Hudson Taylor said, if giving the gospel once
is not enough, what do we say of
not giving the gospel at all?
And that's the way 40%, approximately, of the
people in the world are tonight.
Especially the Muslim world, especially the unreached people.
So this dear woman had a vision.
And she sent a gospel to a little
lad in school, myself.
I read this, and in the hands of
God, it led to my conversion.
Billy Graham came to New York City just
for one night.
I didn't even know what an evangelist was.
Even though I had people living next door
to me who belonged to the Exclusive Brethren.
I didn't even know what they were.
They were my next door neighbor.
I just thought they were crazy.
We have no idea.
Those of you reared in the church, I
came from the other side.
We have no idea how we tend to
become isolated through our jargon, through our vocabulary,
through our meetings where people would often not
feel very welcome.
They may not be dressed properly or something.
How isolated we become, even from the man
next door.
Much less the Hindu, the Muslim, the Buddhist.
And as you know, the Muslims are building
mosques from one end of Britain to the
other.
Probably haven't got one up yet.
And Barry, it'll take a little while to
get down this far.
They'll have to check their map.
One woman prayed.
God spoke to me through His Word in
a strange set of circumstances.
Not time to explain.
I went to this meeting in New York
City, and I heard the gospel of the
grace of God.
And by His sovereign, irresistible grace, I was
drawn to the Savior and born again in
His Spirit that night.
And I've never been the same, not one
day, these 27 years.
One woman prayed.
Think of the potential in this church tonight
if men and women would become men and
women of prayer.
If prayer were our priority, if the prayer
meeting were brought back into the rightful place
within the church, and even in the work
of world mission.
Because if you don't think the lack of
spiritual reality spreads to the mission field, obviously
you haven't been out there.
We have had thousands of Christian leaders and
workers come to our ships for seminars and
for training.
And we bring anointed men of God, often
nationals, to minister the Word.
And we've discovered that prayerlessness is no respecter
of persons.
And I can tell you, as we met
as leaders of our own fellowship last week,
came together from all over the world to
pray and have a day of prayer and
a night of prayer, and wait upon God.
Our Lord convicted us as a fellowship of
prayerlessness, of playing around with holy things.
I do not come to you to talk
about some great movement of spiritual giants.
Because O.M. is a very needy fellowship.
And we're hungry for God.
We're hungry for what men like Lloyd-Jones
and Tozer say in these great books.
We're hungry to re-read again and again
the writings of men like Andrew Murray, that
somehow the spiritual superficiality, which is so prevalent
in our day, may be burned from our
lives by the purging, loving fire of our
God.
It is said of our God that He
is a consuming fire.
A consuming fire, something that I've often meditated
on.
I read a book by Samuel Logan Bringo
called Resurrection, Life and Power.
And in this book there is a definition
of fire.
He said, what is fire?
It is love.
It is faith.
It is hope.
It is passion, purpose, determination.
It is utter devotion.
It is divine discontent with formality, ceremonialism, lukewarmness,
indifference, sham, noise, parade, and spiritual death.
It is singleness of eye and a consecration
unto death.
It is God the Holy Ghost burning in
and through a humble, holy, faithful man.
I want to ask you.
I don't believe anyone is here tonight by
accident.
Would you be that man?
Would you be that woman?
I went back to my secondary school in
fear and trembling.
And through the Word of God I saw
that in a little booklet that the best
thing we could do is just start to
pray.
So we started a prayer meeting in this
ungodly secondary school.
And one or two came to Christ.
And then a dozen.
And when I left the school, the dozen
or two opened the door for me to
come back.
Six hundred came to the meeting.
And over 125 came for counseling in regard
to the salvation of their lives and their
souls.
One woman prayed and a revival came to
that school.
She not only prayed that people would be
saved, but she prayed that people would be
saved and sent.
That's the kind of praying we need today.
Open-ended praying.
Open-ended evangelism.
Praise God that your conference here still even
has a missionary night.
Something that some conferences have decided to drop.
Well, in the future, if you don't call
it a missionary night, that's not the most
important thing.
Often in order to get the young people
in the meeting, I have to make sure
they don't announce that I'm a missionary.
That's a guarantee to cut 30% attendance
on the meeting.
Isn't that a shame?
But it's true.
At Spring Harvest, I could speak to six
and a half thousand.
Because I just go there as a youth
speaker, as an evangelist, as a writer, whatever.
I don't care what they call me, as
long as I get in.
And I've had dozens and dozens of letters
and feedback of young people touched in those
meetings.
In fact, some of them were already in
Europe.
Some young people got touched by the message
of prayer.
They organized a night of prayer on their
own.
Only seven came.
Four out of the seven joined us on
Operation Mobilization three months later.
And are praying about a life of service
for Jesus Christ.
It was E.M. Bounds, the man who
wrote one of the strongest books on prayer
ever put in print, called Power Through Prayer.
Who said the church looks for better machinery.
God looks for better men.
What kind of men?
Men of prayer.
I want to ask you, are you a
man of prayer?
Are you a woman of prayer?
Is that some kind of mythological thing of
yesteryear?
Like Robin Hood?
Is George Mueller become a mythological figure?
Playing hard?
Hudson Taylor?
And we say, though not verbally, but by
our actions.
Oh, not today.
We're so busy, you know.
Heller-Sivy and all the wonders of the
documentary programs we can get.
And usually the best one is Sunday evening
at 6.30. And the second best is
during the night of prayer or the half
night of prayer or the church prayer meeting.
How can it be that our spiritual life
has sunk so low in this nation, and
that includes Wales, my beloved brethren, that we
can't afford one hour to pray.
And yet we so quickly point fingers at
other people, whether they're English or French.
Or just the denomination down the road.
Or just a little house group up the
road.
Billy Graham says we have taken the sword
of the Spirit and we have turned on
one another instead of using it to evangelize
the world.
I believe that God wants to bring us
back to His Word.
God wants us to face the reality of
what spiritual life is really about and what
New Testament Christianity really is.
There was a little quotation I cut out
of one of those books by A.W.
Tozer because I wanted to paste it somewhere
that I wouldn't lose it.
He said evangelical Christianity is now tragically below
the New Testament standard.
Worldliness is the accepted part of our way
of life.
Our religious mood is social instead of spiritual.
We have lost the art of worship.
We are not producing saints.
Our models are the successful businessmen, the celebrated
athletes, the theatrical personalities.
We carry on our religious activities after the
methods of modern advertisers.
Our homes have been turned into theaters.
Our literature is shallow in our hymnology, borders
on sacrilege, and scarcely anyone appears to care.
World mission is directly linked with spiritual life.
We cannot propagate that which we do not
have.
Tozer said that our first obligation is not
world evangelism, but it is to be worthy.
It is to be the kind of men
and women who are able to spread a
true form of the Christian message across the
world.
I was singing this evening as I was
praying about this message about two men in
the Old Testament, Caleb and Joshua.
Do you remember those two men?
Do you have any of those in Wales?
I'm sure you do.
And I've studied just enough of church history
in Wales to know that this small nation
has played a major role in world evangelism
in years gone by.
And to this present hour.
And this is not the hour to faint.
This is not the hour to put our
head in the proverbial evangelical sand like some
kind of gospel ostrich and feel, oh, there's
nothing really we can do now.
Just wait to the end.
No, this is a time to unite.
Men and women of different churches, we may
not all agree, but we need to unite
in prayer.
We need to unite in world evangelism.
We can still fellowship in our own churches
if they are biblical.
There is unity in the midst of diversity.
God's great work isn't to amalgamate denominations.
God's great work is to amalgamate the Holy
Spirit and the living Christ with people.
Transform lives.
And as lives are transformed, churches will be
transformed, and the gospel will go forward.
To remind me of this, I wrote something
in my Bible that came into my mind
some time ago.
And it's one of the mottos in our
own work, where we work together with people
of different denominations, provided they stand upon the
Word of God.
I've written this.
It may help you.
Because of world evangelism and the reality of
spiritual warfare, we need to agree on a
plan of action and a strategy and policy
to carry out that action, even when there
are things we don't like or even agree
with.
You know, I discovered that wasn't only true
for world evangelism and to be in tune
with God's people.
You know where else I discovered it was
true?
Marriage.
I wonder how many of you have entered
into marriage.
You look, most of you, like the married
type.
You know, it seems that marriage is God's
great graduate program.
At 20 years of age, I had been
to Mexico.
I had won many people to Christ.
I was preaching.
I was leading these teams.
I was learning and speaking Spanish.
People had rebuked me for my lack of
love.
I was seeing these things in the Word
of God.
I began to understand the crucified life and
what it was to appropriate the power of
Christ.
And I was saved at 16.
I thought, boy, I'm really getting spiritual.
Boy, I'm really, really getting on.
Then I got married.
God's graduate school.
And ever since the day of those wedding
bells, through marriage and through rearing three teenagers,
one going off to Southampton University next week,
the other to Croydon Technical College, the third
is going to join me and travel out
to Pakistan in an old bus.
I have discovered many uncrucified areas of Georgeville
where, I can assure you, and I know
a lot less now in some ways than
I knew when I graduated from Moody Bible
Institute with a big gospel smile.
In the Christian life, we never arrived.
I heard Alan Redpath preaching at Keswick.
A man who's had a great influence in
my life was a pastor in Chicago when
I lived there, emphasizing the need for a
childlike spirit.
Not childish.
We have lots of that in the church.
A childlike spirit, even as we go on
in Christian service, even as pastors or teachers.
I'm encouraged this evening as I think of
Caleb and Joshua.
Now, I must confess my tendency is to
go too long.
I've only got to my introduction.
I'm known as one of the longest speakers
in Europe.
I was speaking in Germany, and I won't
go over time tonight, so don't worry.
But I was speaking in Germany.
It was our own meeting.
It's our own OM meeting, and I feel
I'm going to decide the time.
If I'm a guest, especially first time, I'm
always very cautious.
As you can tell tonight, I'm very shy,
taking it through our low profile.
But it was so funny, this meeting, because
the young people were just really taking the
Word of God in.
And God is working in Germany.
We had 350 Germans join us this summer.
They are the main group standing behind the
second ship.
Great Britain is the main group standing behind
the first ship.
And I'm preaching about an hour and a
half.
One man in the back, I think he
wanted to go home, and he wanted me
to stop.
So he held up his watch, and he's
pointing.
I was preaching about world evangelism and total
commitment, discipleship, forsaking all for Christ.
And as I saw that watch, I said,
oh, praise the Lord.
Here's a man donating his wristwatch for world
evangelism.
So be careful when you try to stop
me, brother.
But really what I wanted to speak on
was about Caleb and Joshua and the spiritual
warfare and how Satan will attack any effort,
any effort we make to evangelize the world.
Just in quick summary, Caleb and Joshua went
into the Promised Land.
They came back with other spies.
Everybody was negative.
They were positive.
Caleb said, let's go up.
We can take the land.
Joshua, he had a different vocabulary.
He had been to Keswick, the more deeper
life vocabulary.
Joshua said, if the Lord delight in us,
he will give us the land.
So one had been in Petrus.
Let's go up.
We can conquer the land.
He and Thomas went like that.
The other one, if, how did it go?
If we abide in the Lord, we trust
the Lord, we delight in the Lord, he
will give us the land.
The Christian church so often fights over vocabulary.
Have you ever compared Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones'
vocabulary with Ian Thomas' vocabulary?
Well, it seemed to me in one of
his recent books that Dr. Lloyd-Jones just
about destroyed everything I read from one of
Ian Thomas' books.
Maybe I was just seeing things.
I'll go back and read it again.
God uses different men in different ways.
And as Dr. Francis Schaeffer says in his
amazing book, Ash Heap Lives, all Christian leaders
have clay feet.
And the church must understand that, or they
will never understand God's purposes.
They will never understand some of the unbelievably
ridiculous things that men of God do.
And some of the greatest men of God
have been subject, for example, to tremendous depression,
like McCain of Scotland or Spurgeon of London,
who used to run away to the beaches
of France to overcome weeks of depression.
This treasure is in earthen vessels.
That is so important to understand, because otherwise
we read of Caleb and Joshua and we
think, well, I mean, that's not me.
These are ordinary men who had an extraordinary
God.
And they launched out by faith.
And they were the only two men allowed
into the promised land.
Of course, as they went into the promised
land, there were many enemies.
And as we think of the task of
world evangelism, there will be many enemies.
And even as we leave tonight praying about
this, considering the possibilities of missionary service or
becoming involved through more prayer, giving and going
and being, mobilizing others, Satan will counterattack.
One of the passages that the Spirit of
God has burned into my heart the most
is Ephesians chapter 6, where we're exhorted to
take the shield of faith, wherewith we should
stop the fiery darts of the devil.
This week I was reading about the new
sex revolution that will be coming our way.
It's already coming.
You say, what's that?
The teaching that it's all right to have
sex before marriage?
No, that's 20 years ago.
Is it the teaching that homosexuality is acceptable?
No, that's the last 10 years.
The new teaching that is coming out is
that there must be a child's liberation movement
and that it is perfectly normal and acceptable
for children of any age, even shortly after
birth, to engage in sexual activity.
Full page, major magazine spread last week.
And then people wonder why some of us
feel that at times there's a little need
to cry out and to pray for our
nation and to speak up and to go
down to this little funny guy in the
corner who's displaying all the pornographic things and
who eventually will have the child pornography under
the drawer and maybe just gently give him
a little exhortation.
Pornography has broken on London like a giant
hurricane sweeping in.
And child pornography is part of it.
And no doubt there will be a toddler's
liberation movement so that all the toddlers can
do what they want.
I won't go any further.
But I believe that is just one of
30 things I could speak to you about
tonight concerning what's happening in the world.
Brother Talbrook, an author who is with me
tonight, has written this book on death that
shows that so much of this talk, a
major feature in Reader's Digest this month, about
people coming back from the dead, is generally,
as far as it can be understood, evil
spirits.
People are not coming back from the dead
and telling about it.
But evil forces are moving.
People are deceived.
And there are many deceptive spirits loose in
our day.
And Christians, if they don't stay close to
God, if they don't know their Bibles, if
they're not in the spiritual warfare resisting the
forces of darkness, can also be deceived.
I believe that we are in a great
spiritual warfare.
And in these closing moments, let's see where
I am on my watch.
I'm going to finish at 9.
I think you even said 9.15. So,
see, I'm giving you the benefit of the
doubt.
I've got to drive to Southport.
I don't know whether to go tonight or
tomorrow.
I guess it would be better tomorrow.
Might be floods.
But as we launch out in the spiritual
warfare, there will be counterattacks.
And as we have launched out in this
great missionary work, and I believe we're all
one, OMF, WEC, BMMF, all of us together
are a very small force.
Let's face it.
Satan is going to counterattack.
Let me just share, a few of you
may want to write this down, some of
the things I believe we can expect as
we become serious about the Lord and about
the Word and about His Lordship.
First of all, there's the fiery dart of
unbelief and fear.
God's Word says in Timothy, Our Lord has
not given us a spirit of fear, but
of love and power and a sound mind.
I am a naturally fearful person.
Some of you young people, you think to
be a missionary, you've got to be courageous.
You're looking at a real coward.
In our country where I was reared, you
know, we call them chickens.
But you see, now, because of conversion, because
of Christ's Spirit, I have a courage, I
have a force within me that is not
mine.
And I have seen the most shy, little,
quiet, English sister, controlled by the Lord, learn
something of evangelism and become a fervent, effective
witness for Christ.
So many sisters used to say to me,
or some said to me, You know, we're
very quiet.
You know, if you come in big, noisy,
loud-mouthed American, you don't understand us.
We're just a little shy.
English.
Now, I know the Welsh are supposedly not
quite that shy.
But you get that same sister on her
favorite subject, sewing or cooking or boys.
Great gift to speak.
Tremendous gift to speak.
And then get married to her and give
her some trouble in the kitchen some night
or complain about this or that or be
a general pest like many a husband around
the house.
You'll discover she's quite a speaker.
I believe that if somehow we could come
to know the Lord Jesus a little more
and we knew His Word and His life,
we would be able to speak more freely
of Him.
It's not a matter of being some super
-talented, great speaker.
It's a matter of letting Christ control your
tongue and your heart.
God has not given us a spirit of
fear.
We live in fearful, awesome days.
The laser beam, the neutron bomb, term warfare,
every day in the newspaper, someone else killed,
some other terrorist.
You don't think it's going to happen in
Wales?
The child of God has not been given
a spirit of fear but of love and
of power and of a sound mind.
And I have seen that work these 20
-some years in 40 or 50 nations across
the world in many a frightening situation.
The second fiery dart, I believe, is the
fiery dart of materialism.
There's an amazing book out called The Golden
Cow by John White, a man from Lancashire
now disturbing the saints in Canada.
He also wrote that book Parents in Pain
to help those who have children away from
God, a gifted writer.
And he speaks of how money often becomes
very, very manipulative in the work of God.
Surely it's the root of many evils.
We discover one of the biggest things that
keeps young people from coming with us is
the manipulative power and the control that money
has in our society.
The unwillingness to become serious about commands like
those words of Jesus in Luke 14, 33,
except you forsake all that you have, you
can't be my disciple.
We rationalize about those verses but we take
John 3, 16 literally.
The blessings we take literally, the responsibilities we
rationalize and explain that that would lead us
to extremism.
Now I admit, and that's my third enemy
of world evangelism, that extremism is an enemy
and we need to avoid it like the
plague.
Tozer said the more keen young person is
more easily led astray.
And one of the main things we teach
when people come on OM is Bible doctrine,
how to avoid extremes, spiritual balance, church history,
and a lot of other things that have
kept us these 25 years, almost a quarter
of a century, from going astray.
But you know, I don't think that's the
problem in the average church.
People too enthusiastic, maybe that's your church.
A.W. Tozer said to think that too
much enthusiasm was the greatest problem in the
average church was like sending a squadron of
policemen to the nearby cemetery to guard against
a demonstration by the resident at midnight.
He didn't feel it was the biggest problem
in the average church.
Praise God.
If revival has come to your church or
even a degree of church growth, God works
in different ways in different churches, you can
be sure that right after it will be
the fiery dart of extremism.
Yes, we believe there needs to be fire.
Our God is a consuming fire.
But there's also false fire.
The false fire of emotionalism.
The false fire of intellectualism.
The false fire of super-spirituality.
Perfectionism.
Prosperityism.
Super-submissionism.
Total answerism.
I could keep you all night if I
got on that subject.
Yes, the devil's clever.
And I'm concerned that many of the house
groups go into these things.
That's why we need to pray that if
there's a new church born, it may be
based on the Word of God.
That's why we need to have dialogue and
contact, so if they're young Christians, they can
learn what true biblical doctrine is and avoid
the extremes that so quickly carry people from
one thing to another.
And I want to tell you, already thousands
have come out of some of the house
groups that were too super-spiritual, and they're
beaten down, they've been hurt, they've been manipulated,
and they don't even want to go to
church anymore.
It seems that whatever God has done in
Britain, at least in the history that I've
read of the church, it has always begun
with extremes.
It seems that when God wants to start
something, He has to find someone who's somewhat
extreme.
That doesn't mean He's totally away from God.
I'm not talking about that.
Whether it's Wesley or Whitfield, whether it's the
story of the early brethren, they were usually
men of tremendous extremes.
And unfortunately, some of their followers became more
extreme, and that led often to spiritual difficulties.
The fourth fiery dart is the fiery dart
of impurity.
2 Timothy 2.22 says that we need
to flee youthful life.
But you know what many young people think?
They think that because they don't have yet
100% victory in the area of impurity,
in the relationship with the opposite sex, they
could never possibly be a missionary.
And so they're waiting until they get 100
% victory, and then they'll feel maybe worthy
to think about being a missionary.
That is completely backwards.
Many missionaries on the field still have struggles
in the area of lust.
I've had many missionaries tell me it's the
greatest battle they face, wherever they go.
And yes, I believe there must be a
degree of victory, and I believe there must
be spiritual growth, but our message is not
perfection, it's reality.
And we are sinners saved by grace, and
we have to understand that the victorious life
includes goal number one, 1 John 2, verse
1, part 1.
Sin not.
What's part 2?
If you sin, you have an advocate with
the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
Young person, the Bible says, though your sins
be as scarlet, they shall be made as
white as snow.
Maybe you think you're a failure.
Maybe you think you've got too many problems
in your life to ever be a missionary.
Some of the greatest missionaries who have ever
worked, even as Christians, even as missionaries, had
many difficulties and many failures.
The church and mission organizations are not fraternities
for super saints.
They're dynamic fellowships of people relating to one
another, walking with God, who are all sinners
saved by grace.
Needless to say, without total war against impurity,
we're not going to go very far.
There's a book on that table, also I
believe by John White, on that subject.
God has used mightily in the lives of
many people called Eros defiled.
And then the fifth fiery dart is the
fiery dart of false ideas.
The enemy is always sowing false ideas.
False ideas about missionary work, like missionaries are
no longer needed, or you can only be
a missionary if you have so much education.
Do you know one of the greatest needs
in our work?
We have 450 full-time people in India,
many speakers, many preachers.
You know what we lack?
Secretaries, truck drivers, and bookkeepers.
We have more preachers sometimes than we know
what to do with.
Where do you get bookkeepers?
Accountants, truck drivers, mechanics.
We live in a highly technical world.
There are ways that we can serve the
national church.
In India we mainly serve our Indian brothers,
and they want transportation, they want literature, they
need help in the offices.
Teaching and teachers are also needed.
Church planters are also needed.
One of the main things our Indian brothers
go into after they graduate from OM, usually
five years of training, church planting.
I believe the most effective church planting will
be done by nationals.
Spirit-filled, trained, spiritually balanced nationals.
That is one of the greatest goals in
our entire work.
Everything we have in one sense goes to
that direction, and it's one of the reasons
that even in places like France we've seen
14 new churches born.
No, it's not just young people roaming around
Europe giving out tracts.
It's not just a couple of ships reaching
a few millions of people with the Word
of God.
Ultimately our burden is to see, especially in
the Muslim world and places where there are
no churches, living churches born of people who
know God, who worship God.
Tozer said worship was a missing jewel of
the evangelical church, and it's one of the
greatest burdens on our hearts.
And then, sixthly, ignorance is another fiery dart.
That's why it's so good to get books
like Operation World and get to understand more
of what God is doing around the world.
This book presents information on almost every nation
in the world.
That's why it's so good to have conferences
like this and times when we can hear
from missionaries like our brother from Japan.
And then seventhly, laziness.
Eighthly, intellectualism.
Ninth, disunity and failure to build relationships.
Tenth, carelessness.
Eleventh, the lack of Holy Spirit power.
And twelfth, the failure to make Jesus Christ
Lord.
The first thing tonight is to decide whether
you're going to go with OMF to Japan
or OM to India.
The first thing tonight is to make sure
Christ is Lord so that you can say,
Jesus, I'll go wherever you want.
Maybe it's just Cardiff.
Maybe it's the back streets of London who
work among Bengalis.
They're coming in there by the tens of
thousands.
Our biggest Arab team works in London, just
among Arabs.
Can you say, is that great prophet of
old, Isaiah?
Here am I.
Send me.
In the context of the New Testament, can
you say that Jesus Christ is your Lord
and that you'll begin under His Lordship to
search the Word of God and to more
seriously commit yourself to the great task of
world missions, praying for others to go out
into the harvest, getting involved in the prayer
life of your church and especially praying for
world missions and especially holding high the shield
of faith wherewith you can stop those fiery
darts.
Beloved, there's a job for everyone.
One of the greatest heartbreaks in my life
is when I no longer as an American
could get a visa back to India.
And in God's providence, also as my children
were going to secondary school for education, I
settled where I could find a rent-free
house in southeast London.
It hasn't been easy.
Now my adopted country, two of my children
are British citizens.
They're not going back to the United States
no matter what.
So this is home.
My heart is still in India.
My desire in so many ways is to
be in India and praying since 1968, 13
years, I still cannot get back.
For me, the door is closed.
But for anybody who's a British citizen, the
door for India is wide open, at least
for short term.
And so I come.
I come as someone who's found it wonderfully
fulfilling to live in England.
And for those of you like me who
feel a little bit stuck here in Wales,
which is, of course, a lot better in
England, there's a job for you.
There's a work for you.
And I remember when I first came, I
learned a new hymn.
I never heard it in Spain, where I
was living before, or America.
There's a work for Jesus ready at your
hand.
It may be small, but as you're faithful
in the small things, God will give you
a bigger thing.
And I hope, and I pray, that somehow
tonight as we go, we will not be
hearers of the word, because we become accustomed
to hearing messages.
And in Wales, you have many great preachers.
I've come with just feeble exhortation.
Somehow, we may not go as hearers, but
doers.
Let us pray.
Let's have a moment in which we can
pray in our own hearts prayers of commitment.
And maybe recommitting our lives to Jesus and
asking Him to take over our lives by
His Spirit in a greater way.
And maybe to, by faith, make Him the
Lord of your life.
That might mean dealing with specific sins.
If you confess your sin, He's faithful and
just to forgive you and cleanse you from
all unrighteousness.
Do that now.
And make Him Lord of your life.
To go where He wants you to go
and to do what He wants you to
do.
For others, God may lead or be leading
you to take specific steps to move toward
at least missionary work or missionary training or
short-term training or something.
You can get information about OMF or about
OM or other missions.
But you need to take some sanctified initiative.
Not waiting for God to somehow grab you
by the collar.
But because you love Jesus, you'll obey Him
and begin to seek His will in a
more fervent way.
Let us have a moment of silent prayers
of commitment.
Others committing themselves to renewed prayer, to getting
involved in the great prayer warfare, in the
warfare of spiritual life.
Let us pray.
Lord, You know all about us and You
love us still.
You're not trying to send us out of
here with a double guilt trip or take
us through some kind of evangelical purgatory.
But You're wanting us to respond and to
yield our lives to You in a greater
way.
To be Your men, to be Your women.
You want to bring renewal and revival to
our hearts and then in Your sovereign timing
to our churches.
Lord, deliver us from false fire.
Deliver us, Lord, from dead orthodoxy on one
side and false fire and extremism and emotionalism
on the other side.
That we may find that narrow road of
spiritual reality, that we may walk where You
walked and do what You want us to
do.
Lord, we would surrender our lives afresh to
You in a deeper way and say, Lord,
take us, You, for Your glory.
In Jesus' name, amen.