I think one of the beautiful things in
the work the Lord has called us into
is our emphasis on open sharing.
And every leader should have at least some
other leader that he can openly share with.
Now that doesn't mean there are no pitfalls
when you openly share.
And we found that in everything we attempt
in our Christian life the enemy has his
booby traps.
He has his minefields.
I shared part of this message when I
had the privilege of speaking just about a
year ago at the Canadian Revival Convention.
In fact, it is almost a year ago
to the day.
There is a movement in Canada that doesn't
invite in too many outside speakers.
They experienced revival in the churches in Canada
about ten or eleven years ago and what
was once a river has become many streams.
The main revival, in a sense, has not
continued in its intensity.
Whole churches being turned upside down people coming
into newness of life.
But now there are many streams.
The two men that the Holy Spirit has
especially used in this revival are the Setera
twins.
They are twins.
Very unique men.
Italian background.
And they go in a church, not for
a couple of nights.
They go in for weeks at a time.
It takes them one week just to get
the people ready.
Just to get them off their TV addiction.
Because most people go home at night and
watch TV.
Their meetings go on two and three hours.
You can imagine attempting that kind of thing
in Canadian and American culture.
It is quite an amazing movement.
There is a man, Mr. McLeod.
Some of you may have read some of
his writings.
He is praying about spending some time on
OM.
He travels more overseas whereas the Setera twins
feel really burdened for Canada.
So I worked a lot and prayed a
lot and brought forth a message which I
called Maintaining Balance in the Midst of a
Revival.
If you study the history of revival you
will discover that very quickly revivals go into
extremism.
It has been our burden from the earliest
days of OM that we would experience revival.
It at times becomes a neglected emphasis.
Rather than thinking in terms of the quality
of spiritual life and living in revival and
communion with the Lord and the power of
the Holy Spirit we become merely a form
of Christian work.
People join the Lord's work so they join
Operation Mobilization.
As I shared yesterday my burden in sharing
these things with you is that you can
go back and share them with your own
team.
It is God's purpose for our teams to
be functioning in revival.
And I want to talk about what that
means.
And I believe by functioning in revival we
discover the best way to maintain our own
spiritual life.
Let's look at a very basic scripture that
we've all ministered on.
Ephesians chapter 5.
Ephesians 5 verse 19 Speaking to yourselves
in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing
and making melody in your hearts to the
Lord.
It's a text I often preach on and
I hope it's a text that you share
as well.
Compare that with Colossians 3.16 If you
can keep both places in your Bible it
will be helpful.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you
richly in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one
another.
It's beautiful, isn't it?
Teaching and admonishing one another.
It's one of the things that we want
to do here to be able to admonish,
to be able to teach one another.
Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs singing with grace in
your hearts to the Lord.
And whatsoever you do in word or deed
do all in the name of the Lord
Jesus giving thanks to God and the Father
by Him.
And then it goes into those very, very
basic instructions for the family about wives submitting
themselves to their husbands.
Most of you men don't probably lack that
emphasis but what about verse 19?
How are you handling that one?
Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter
against them.
Maintaining spiritual life in O.M. means maintaining
family life.
If you cannot separate one from the other.
And there's a passage where all of this
the reality of the fullness of God in
a man's life.
This is revival.
Don't think of revival as some special thing
that comes every once in a decade which
everybody starts jumping up and down in the
church and all feel that the Lord has
touched them.
There are more backslidden people that once felt
the Lord touched them than you'll ever be
able to count.
But revival is Christ living in us, controlling
us, working through us.
There may be the times of special blessing.
Amen.
There may be the times when you feel
like jumping up in the air.
Be careful on the doulos.
Very low roof.
But revival is a seven day a week
reality not an alternate leap year spiritual jamboree.
And there's no purpose in having a great
revival at the next AIC if the river
is not going to be carried out into
the teen life.
Seven days a week.
I think there's a lot of confusion about
revival.
I think there's tremendous confusion about the fullness
of the Holy Spirit.
And I feel as much as we have
to urge people to walk in this reality
we have to be able to point out
from the scriptures the dangers.
I think most of you know enough of
the word of God to know that most
of the epistles were written to correct the
church.
You get people dissatisfied with OM and the
OM team and sometimes we don't blame them.
And they think that the reason is that
this is not the local church.
If they get in the local church then
that's really where the blessing is.
But if you have fellowship with as many
local churches as some of us you will
know that many local churches are experiencing the
same problems we experience on our teams.
And that often it's no different.
Sometimes it's better and sometimes it's worse.
Maintaining spiritual life, revival.
As it says in Galatians walking in the
Spirit so you don't fulfill the lust of
the flesh is difficult in any circumstance.
Now it's interesting that in Ephesians I'm going
to need that glass of water, Rudy.
In Ephesians it says be filled with the
Spirit and then it follows it.
Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs singing and making melody in your
hearts to the Lord.
Very similar to Colossians 3.
Some of you have heard me speak about
this before so I won't tarry here.
I hope you're showing your team members this.
At this conference I'm not interested in whether
you've heard this before.
I'm not interested in even whether you're hearing
it now.
I'm interested in knowing whether you're getting some
of this basic material firstly through your own
life down to your team members.
It's the greatest challenge we have to get
this down to the newest recruit on the
team.
Be not drunk with wine in which is
excess but be filled with the Spirit.
Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs singing and making melody in your
hearts to the Lord.
And then what we emphasized yesterday.
Giving thanks always for all things unto God
and the Father in the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear
of God.
You know many of you are preachers and
you go out and you take meetings and
you teach and you preach.
And I hope in the midst of your
teaching and your preaching that you are also
receiving.
I'd love to know from some of you
when you write who's feeding you?
Who's challenging you?
Maybe I'm someone who listens to too many
tapes and I've been accused of being a
tapeworm as you have bookworms.
I'd rather not mention that here in Nepal.
But I have received so much spiritual help
from these tapes.
Of course they're not a total answer.
Just before leaving I've been imbibing an Italian
wildcat preacher that I've never hardly heard of
before named Tony Compello from the streets of
Pennsylvania.
I just can't tell you what a blessing
that man was to me in my time
of making transition from Mexico packing, changing my
suitcase and whatever else and coming here.
We have a tremendous tape library in Bombay.
God has spared it in the fire.
I wonder how many of us really make
use of that.
Different men have such different insight into some
of these truths.
And I don't see one man necessarily contradicting
another though there are some contradictions.
But I see how God works in different
people in different ways.
So important.
So beautiful.
And we have that portrayed here so beautifully
because Ephesians talks about being filled with the
Holy Spirit.
The book of Colossians hardly mentions the Holy
Spirit.
Yet the results in Ephesians and Colossians are
the same.
And it ends up on that same practical
note.
Ephesians verse 20 Giving thanks always for all
things unto God and the Father in the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear
of God.
We have some extremist movements in the West
that overemphasize submission and submission becomes manipulation.
And I always have a fear of this
sort of heavy-handed leadership that sometimes gets
into our teams where the team leader is
doing just the opposite of what the Bible
says.
The Bible says, Lord it not over God's
heritage.
In other words, you don't rule God's heritage
with an iron hand, with a big stick,
with some kind of heavy pressure.
But you esteem them and you work with
them in love and you encourage them with
your own life.
I was saying to Ray Eicher this morning,
it would be tremendous if every leader including
every main coordinator would spend one week a
year out on the teams.
I'm sure some of you are.
And I would tell you some of you
are visiting teams.
It is no good just going in there
one day and leaving the next.
You'll never accomplish really what God would have
you accomplish with a team through that type
of team visiting.
Now if Ray Eicher, the overall coordinator of
the work, visits the team and goes in
one day and leaves the next, maybe that
could be accepted.
But if your responsibility is the cultivation of
spiritual life on those teams, you need to
go out there at least once in a
while and live with them.
And go out on the streets with them
and get to talk to those men heart
to heart.
And you will learn something.
That's very, very important.
See, verse 21 talks about submitting to one
another.
There is a sense where we as leaders
are submitting ourselves even to the youngest new
recruit.
We can learn from him.
We can receive exhortation from him.
He should share in all humility what's on
his heart.
But we can often learn from the man
out on the team.
And we can learn from one another.
And we can learn in our cross-fellowship
that we have here during the tea break
or during the free time.
For me the hardest part of these conferences
are always the intensive sessions where we discover
at times we don't agree on certain things
and we even at times get upset with
each other on certain things.
Sometimes it gets pretty intensive.
That is always the hardest part of a
conference like this.
God is always wonderful.
Whenever you're in a situation where certain things
are hard, other things are a blessing.
And often the greatest blessing is just to
get with individuals and get to know them
better and go for a walk and see
where the cheapest tea shop is or whatever
else in the process.
I think most of you know and I
believe by God's mercy I've proven this these
twenty-some years of the work in India
that in no way am I interested in
lording over the work here or anywhere else.
I've had to constantly change through what I've
learned from other people.
I had to acknowledge the gangrene of extremism
in my own life.
In some of those early tapes there are
things that are extreme and need to be
brought into balance by other things.
I believe if some of you developed a
message and were able to communicate on this
thing of spiritual balance and maintaining spiritual life
that you would become in such demand in
the churches that you'd find it hard to
know how to continue and live.
Because I've found all over the world enormous
response to this kind of message.
So many of God's people have been crushed
by extremism.
They have been worked over by unbelievable uncontrollable
local church situations.
And by manipulative leaders who often are very
insecure people.
Leaders are often very insecure people trying to
build their own little empire which helps them
in turn remain more secure.
And when criticism comes and disunity comes and
problems come they crumble.
Keep that in balance.
I would love to share with you I
don't think I'll have time a message that
I've been working on on how to understand
Christian leaders.
This has been one of the messages I've
been working on the most lately.
By the way I find that every year
the Lord gives me at least 10 or
20 major totally new messages.
We cannot just keep preaching the same thing.
Now of course when we preach some of
the old basics will creep in almost every
message.
There's nothing wrong with that.
You ever heard Billy Graham?
I've heard probably more than most of you
I'm sure.
And some of it is incredibly basic.
And yet most of Billy Graham's messages some
new little avenue of light comes in.
I believe that Billy Graham's ministry of exhortation
and teaching to the church will in eternity
prove to be a greater significance than his
evangelistic preaching.
Because through that he's influenced so many Christian
leaders who have gone out across the world
and have become mighty harvesting instruments for Christ.
This may sound strange to you but it's
been one of my prayers that God would
raise up within O.M. more anointed preachers.
I'd rather have one anointed preacher in some
of your states.
In some ways, don't misunderstand that all your
team's put together.
There's no substitute for the anointing of God
brothers and sisters.
All the energy, all the activity all the
commotion and all the book sales will never
be a substitute for the anointing the Holy
Ghost anointing of God upon a man who's
walking with Jesus.
One of the leaders here felt yesterday if
he didn't have enough team members his base
would not be justified.
He must have been jolted but my rather
quick reaction to that which may or may
have not been in the spirit when I
get to heaven I will no doubt get
a fair number of spankings at the throne
of grace but I said to him that
base is justified if only you are there.
Yes!
They're the numbers of the people that justify
whatever that word means O.M.'s bases.
One anointed man one anointed man with a
ministry demands secretarial help demands other practical help
and if we have some anointed men in
India then let's rally around them loving them,
exhorting them working with them.
We do have some anointed men some are
right here in this room.
We know they will be a primary target
for the enemy.
Often anointed men are subject to experiences and
depths of struggle that others don't know so
much about.
Many of the anointed preachers I have read
about are subject to depression.
Spurgeon, the great perhaps the greatest preacher of
all times was subject to depression.
Some said some say it was because of
the gout a disease that I never understood.
Mary Machine was subject to depression and this
is why it is important for an anointed
man to also know how to maintain the
spiritual life in the midst of the battle.
And I believe some of the keys are
found here in Ephesians and Colossians.
Being filled with the Holy Spirit cannot be
just a once and for all experience.
I have a note in my Bible that
says this is in continuous tense in the
Greek.
I don't know whether that's true or not
because I don't know Greek but it's wonderful
that those of us who don't know Greek
can still study at the feet of Greek
scholars.
We can still read commentaries by men who
do know Greek.
Probably that's how I got that note in
there.
So continuous tense.
We go on keeping on being filled with
the Holy Spirit.
It's a daily experience.
I want to ask you is that your
daily experience?
I'm not interested in knowing whether you were
baptized in the Holy Spirit terminology some people
use or filled with the Holy Spirit terminology
some other people use five years ago or
ten years ago.
I'd like to know whether today you're going
on being filled with the Holy Spirit.
Is this just spiritual jargon?
Is this just terminology we use so that
we have a spiritual message that sounds good?
Or is it a practical reality?
I think if I had to choose any
one group of people to work with in
the world today I would choose Indians.
I would choose Indians.
I've worked with many people.
Mexicans would perhaps run a close second.
Maybe the Spanish and the Italians would run
third.
Maybe the British would run fourth.
In one sense it doesn't matter because life
isn't that way.
But generally speaking there is a spiritual appetite
here in India.
I don't know what it is.
People are willing to talk about spiritual things.
People respond in the churches.
I've never had a church in India where
I went and didn't see some response.
Probably there's one that I've so bad I've
repressed it.
Forgotten about it.
Of course, Indian brothers always brought me into
balance.
I went down to Carolina.
Boy, the people seemed to be coming out
of the trees for Jesus.
These conventions were just people responding and then
someone told me that this was a habit.
It can be rather disappointing to the young
preacher who finally feels that the anointing of
God has settled upon his ministry to be
told that these people are doing this out
of a habit rather than because the Holy
Spirit was convicting them.
The awakening that any evangelist and any preacher
has when he begins to discover the deceptive
heart of man can be so great he
may never recover from it.
They say that one of the hardest ministries
to maintain is a ministry of evangelism.
It truly is amazing that Billy Graham has
gone on for so many years and many
others.
Oswald J.
Smith, now over 80 years of age.
Bob Singh, regardless of things we may not
agree with and the extremism that has caused
much grief within that work certainly is still
a tremendous testimony of the grace of God.
80 years of age.
Only recently has health beginning to go down.
There are many, many others.
Being filled with the Spirit is the normal
Christian life.
When we teach on this subject I think
we need to teach the brothers and sisters
not only what this is but what it
is not.
Being filled with the Spirit you may want
to note a few of the things that
it's not.
It does not mean you always feel wonderful.
It does not mean that you always feel
wonderful.
The Spirit-filled man is still very human.
In my mind I've been working very, very
much on a new book.
I'll probably write it in my retirement which
means I probably won't write it.
But I was going to title the book
The Human Factor.
I wanted to borrow some of your testimonies.
The Human Factor.
And one of the things that has caused
much grief in O.M. and O.M.
India especially is the failure to recognize the
human factor.
That every leader, every anointed man is a
human being subject to the human factors, the
weaknesses.
Legalism, as I said yesterday, has paid a
heavy toll on the church in India.
The idea that you're not spiritual if your
hair is not cut at a certain length.
You can be sure I didn't want to
take any chances with any of you.
And so I got a Nepali haircut before
coming down to Butwal.
It was a beautiful experience because it was
so cheap.
You know, you can't realize the blessing of
working in India where everything is so cheap
if this is the only place you work
because I'm sure you see how the prices
in India are going up, up, up.
But you know, if you go in Germany
and you're in a railway station and you
just happen to crave a cup of tea,
you'll never get a decent one, I will
tell you that.
It's going to cost you about nine rupees
Indian for a cup of tea.
And when you come out here to India
and you discover how inexpensively a lot of
things can be done, it really does challenge
you to try to emphasize India a little
more.
Some people feel that for years George Burwell
has had the rest of the movement by
its throat in order that India may go
forward.
And to this day, finance for India gets
absolute number one priority in all of OM
worldwide.
If ten groups all need money, India will
always generally get it first, if we know
that the need is there.
Sometimes, people like Alfie are a little hesitant
to let us know.
Other times, there's a lot of confusion as
to what the situation is.
We count this a great privilege because we
highly esteem what you're doing.
Do not think because I come out with
some negative things that we are not just
in the total picture just so wonderfully thrilled
about what you're doing.
In the midst of the struggles and the
failures and the problems, we believe this is
an anointed work.
We believe the Holy Spirit is bringing to
pass an important and historic work.
But of course, we long to go on.
My greatest burden really is your own spiritual
walk.
I wonder if some of you are being
driven a little bit into extremes at times
because of the failure to understand the human
factor, to understand your own humanity, to understand
your own limitations.
Billy Graham said that if he had to
do things all over again, he would pace
himself more.
It's incredibly hard in O.M. in some
places to pace yourself because people look down
spiritually on people who are just trying to
relax, who are just trying to get a
little bit of a break.
It's interesting that one of our main sisters
has not had a break or a holiday
I don't know for how long, a year
or two.
We somehow seem to have it in our
minds that a holiday must mean we've run
out of steam or we're going through a
hard time.
We don't take a holiday when we're feeling
great, we're committed to the work, we're highly
motivated, we're filled with the Spirit.
We don't take a holiday or a break
at that time.
What an absolute mistake that is.
Some of you are going to wait until
you have a nervous breakdown and then you're
going to ask for a holiday and for
some of you that'll be the end.
You'll never recover.
You're afraid to talk to your leader.
I hear this often in O.M. I
don't feel my leader's approachable.
When you say that you're demonstrating your own
immaturity together with perhaps his unapproachability.
Two wrongs never make a right.
Some people outwardly never will be very approachable.
History shows us that many great, great Christian
leaders were not very approachable at least to
certain types of people.
But the man who knows the Word of
God and loves the Lord Jesus Christ will
approach Him anyway.
And if he senses rejection in the first
effort just like a boxing match, he will
go back for round two.
Building relationships is not easy.
And it deeply grieves me that so many
people give up trying to build a relationship
with this brother or that brother because in
round one it didn't work out.
I have people who totally reject me on
the simple basis that I forgot their name.
I've only had 23,000 people in Operation
Mobilization.
You know, often we get false ideas about
Christian leaders.
Some people because in an unusual way I
remembered their names, they've gossiped that I have
a tremendous memory which only hinders further progress
because then when I don't remember the person
really feels bad.
They feel they're the special case.
I don't have that great a memory.
I have a mediocre memory.
I remember some and I don't remember others.
If you want to go into a very
nerve-bending place, especially someone in my position,
visit the doulos.
One Mexican girl shared with me that she
told a friend that she just couldn't consider
me as a friend since I had never
even shaken her hand.
Do you know what it is to go
on a ship and try to shake hands
with 300 people?
So right with the first 50.
After that, you can't remember which ones you
have shaken hands with and which ones you
haven't.
Especially as they appear from all different parts
of the ship at different times.
And so you're going back to some saying,
oh, praise the Lord, it's really good to
meet you, brother.
And he says, you just met me.
And as I was going around the ship
on sort of a tour, I dodged around
the corner and into a tiny room and
for some reason I said hello to this
Mexican girl and I shook her hand.
Just a few hours before, she was more
or less assuming that she would never even
meet me and certainly she would never shake
my hand and therefore I would never be
her friend.
And you can imagine how it just about
blew her away.
She must have thought someone was talking.
I didn't know anything about her.
I wouldn't even be able to tell you
who she was today.
But somehow the spirit or the coincidence or
the providence or whatever you want to call
it, led me to just go into that
little room and say hello to her, ask
her name, because I speak Spanish, and shake
her hand.
Of course, that was a victory.
You know, that just about, if you know
the big term in America, blew her away.
Not literally, for those of you who are
learning English.
But in this kind of work, for every
one that you, that you win, you seem
to lose some.
And so many of us as leaders live
under the cloud that we are unapproachable.
You have as many women confessing to you
over the years that they're afraid of you.
I've had my secretaries at times finally acknowledge
that they were afraid of me.
I accept that.
I must at times be very, very frightening.
Sometimes my visit to my own office consists
of about five minutes.
I come in from one series of whatever
I've been into, wanting to do more in
five minutes than any three people would want
to do in several hours.
Including getting my proper cup of tea, which
really needs the right amount of milk, the
right amount of sugar, at the right temperature.
You know, not even one out of ten
in O.M. can make a decent cup
of tea.
Now we know this is of the flesh,
but the flesh enjoys it, and so it
becomes another hassle, another problem.
I've had to really repent.
I've had to take extra time with people
and just allow them to get to know
me better in more calm situations, so that
in turn I became more approachable.
And I hope you will do that as
well.
If people are not coming to you in
your area, opening their hearts, sharing with you,
not everybody, but some, it is a sign
that perhaps you are unapproachable.
You have an air about you that sets
you apart from ordinary folk who would like
to talk to you and like to share
with you.
Fellowship should be as much a vital part
of the work in India as evangelism.
Evangelism should spring from a team that is
in fellowship one with another.
Being filled with the Holy Spirit will bring
fellowship.
It will bring approachability because with it comes
humility.
The human factor will still be there.
Failure at times will still be there.
One of the men who was touched in
that Canadian revival has written a book Failure,
the Back Door to Success.
Don't be afraid to acknowledge failure to your
team.
I can't believe it when I meet with
people who have never heard their leader acknowledge
real failure.
Don't be afraid to acknowledge failure and to
share some of the struggles you are having.
If you just try to maintain this air
of spirituality that you don't have these struggles,
you don't have these problems, you're way up
here, some of the team members for a
while they may be captivated by it.
But ultimately it's going to cave in.
And we want long-term relationships with people.
We want reality at any cost.
So the spirit-filled life does not destroy
your humanity, but slowly, continuously brings it into
control.
It's a long-term program.
Don't be surprised when some of these team
members do something completely stupid.
See, there's a great danger in OM that
for a short people we force, for a
short time we force people into a spiritual
capsule.
I think this is especially true of women.
Because some of the things in OM are
so contrary to the cultural lifestyle of a
woman in India.
And so for a period of time we
force them into a particular lifestyle.
We don't mean to do that, it just
so easily happens.
And we need to ask ourselves what's happening
to these women when they leave the team.
That's why I believe that discipling women in
Category 2, in the context of their own
culture, is as important as bringing them onto
the team and discipling them in Category 1.
And I think if we cut down on
the number of women we'll be able to
increase our input into Category 2, discipling and
encouraging women where they are in the culture
where they are.
Not just single women, but married women.
And I just pray that many of our
women will develop an anointed women's ministry.
Teaching in small groups.
Sharing.
In O.M. worldwide there is an enormous
need for more women who will have a
public ministry.
An enormous need.
One sister wrote me a note on the
doulats just saying how much she was praying
and hoping that some of the married women,
she was thinking of one in particular, but
I'll use it in general terms, you know,
would develop a public ministry.
There are things that women can say that
men cannot say.
Things that women understand that men will barely
understand.
There are open doors that women will have
that we will never have.
Let us never, men, fall to the pit
of thinking that women's work is secondary.
The reason we would like less women is
not because they are less effective.
It's simply because the women's work is more
complex and it's the women's leaders trying to
cope with all of this that would prefer
less women so that a more in-depth
training can take place.
We think of being filled with the Spirit
when we're ministering the Word of God.
But in contemporary society we need to emphasize
being filled with the Spirit in rearing your
children.
Some of the mistakes I made as a
father in moments when I was not walking
in the Spirit I think really hurt my
own children.
Spirit-controlled discipline in the home is not
easy.
Under the pressure of home life, the pressure
that OM creates, it's so easy to get
into the flesh.
I find, especially in certain cultures, men very
unwilling to really share about the sins they
have committed in their own home.
They have operation cover-up.
If Watergate is a tragedy, it's just as
much a tragedy when we're trying to cover
up our sins.
Afraid to really walk in the light.
Even end up telling lies.
Yes, Christians tell lies.
It causes a fear of the truth being
known and what may come as a result
of that.
We can be filled with the Spirit and
weep.
We can be filled with the Spirit and
laugh.
We can be filled with the Spirit and
be hurt.
Being filled with the Spirit does not liquidate
normal emotion, struggle, heartache.
Being filled with the Spirit is not an
arrival point.
It's a continuous journey.
It is not an arrival point.
I'm here now.
The main thing now is to get other
people to come up and be with me.
We're constantly growing.
No matter how filled we are, we need
to be filled more.
Somebody came on D.L. Moody who emphasized
being filled with the Spirit and said, Look
Moody, why are you always saying that we
need to be filled again and again with
the Holy Spirit?
And Moody said, Because I leak.
I leak.
Like the little barrel you pulled off the
truck yesterday.
The leak.
All of us have leaks.
I have leaks.
I have to be filled again and again.
I've heard testimonies of some that say they
have a good quiet time and it carries
them through the rest of the day.
I'm not one of those fortunate souls.
Because I have the ability to go directly
from my quiet time into the kitchen and
say something totally in the flesh to my
dear wife.
Now those of you who are on a
higher plateau of spiritual reality than me in
that area, you know, praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.
Our quiet time is not some kind of
a Christian Ouija board.
It's not a matter of just feeding certain
clichés and Bible verses into your mind in
the morning and therefore like some kind of
programmed computer the rest of the day it
all just ticks out in neat, orderly fashion.
There has to be the moment by moment
crucifixion.
Going into that kitchen after your quiet time
and whatever happens, whatever your wife says to
somehow be able to take the lower road,
to somehow respond in love and to have
a sensitivity toward her and where she is.
She missed her quiet time trying to get
you to your perfectly patterned cup of tea
or perfectly brewed cup of tea.
We all have a bit of our fathers
within us.
If you want to understand yourself and I've
had real struggle in that, understanding myself, understand
your own father.
Some of you may not even know who
your father is.
The one that gave you the very genes
that are in your body.
But I can remember my father grousing at
my mother because the egg was not boiled
the exact amount of hardness.
We have in the western world and I'm
sure you do in India soft boiled egg,
medium soft boiled, hard boiled, in many different
eggs.
And we are a family into soft boiled
eggs.
And yet the man who likes a soft
boiled egg hates a runny egg.
I'll never forget Bak Singh, the only man
in the world who forced me to eat
a raw egg.
He's a raw egg neurotic.
He pops raw eggs into his mouth, you
know, like a squirrel would eat acorns.
And he felt this was one of the
keys to taking me further in the things
of the spirit.
And he insisted on me eating a raw
egg.
It's a miracle that my entire stomach content
did not come up on his plate.
I like my eggs cooked at just the
certain temperature.
And I eat my eggs in a very
special way.
I put them in a little cup.
The cup has to be the exact right
size so that the egg does not drop
into the cup so you cannot get it.
But it sits in the cup like a
Nepali hat on the top of a Nepali
hat.
And then I cut the toast into well
-arranged strips.
And I dip the toast into the yolk
of the egg.
Now if the egg is hard, the toast
does not go down.
And everything must be just according to timing.
It's usually three and one-fourth minute on
the egg timer.
You have to have an egg timer.
But if the egg has come from the
refrigerator, a fourth of a minute extra will
have to be added.
Otherwise, the yolk will not be in the
right place.
And so I dip the toast.
Then, of course, when you put it in
your mouth naturally, after that, see we eat
with our hands in the West, this particular
meal.
Then, of course, with a spoon.
The spoon must be the right size.
In the Western world, we have over ten
different sized spoons.
In OM, you go to an OM conference,
every spoon is different.
And you have to especially beware of the
plastic spoons because in going down into the
egg, at the final moment of challenge, the
spoon breaks.
And then the bottom of the spoon is
caught under the egg.
You're tearing the spoon trying to get it
in your mouth.
You may think that's an exaggeration, but I
have discovered in the spiritual life that the
littlest things, the littlest things can cause the
greatest crisis.
And my father used to yell at my
mother for not making his egg right.
I'll never forget him saying when she was
probably about 45 years of age, I'm sure
he was half kidding, half joking, but he
said, if you're not going to do better
than that, then I'll trade you in for
two younger ones.
Remember as a young man hearing that over
the kitchen table and wondering exactly whether he
was serious about that or not.
God wants the spirit-filled life to penetrate
the routine, the ordinary, the loading of the
truck, the preparing of the meals, every aspect
of our life.
I remember once counseling a couple that were
about to divide in their marriage.
And you may think it's big things that
destroy marriages.
Often it's little things, little habits that men
pick up that just drive their wives crazy.
This fellow had the non-bat habit.
Somebody told me the Tibetans only bathe four
times a year.
I don't know, that's probably an exaggeration.
But most of you are not Tibetans as
far as I know.
And you may, during your single days on
OM, get away without too many baths.
In England, baths.
But when you're married, you know, bathing and
having a clean presentation is often very, very
important to women.
Some of you think we want you in
OM to prepare you for a great evangelistic
ministry.
We want you in OM to prepare you
for life work, for marriage, for employment, for
whatever God leads you into.
Let's not put a guilt trip on these
brothers in the work who don't feel led
to go into what's classified as Christian work.
Let's have a kind of balanced program that
will prepare people for evangelism as well as
life in the whole.
A little research into the marriage of ex
-OMers in India would be interesting.
Have they learned the spirit-filled life in
the whole?
Next, I would say that spirit-filled living
is not extremism.
And beware of biographies of great men of
God that don't always give you the total
picture.
It was the custom, it was the custom
not so many years ago that when you
write a biography, you don't include anything negative.
A lot of young people, for example, are
very guilty about their sex problems.
A little research would probably show you that
most of your men on your teams, I
don't know about the women, you could teach
me, most of the men have guilt problems
in connection with sex, especially masturbation.
So often, so often in my counseling, when
I got involved in in-depth counseling, I
found out the young man here in India,
I've spent many, many hours in counseling Indians,
and it's similar in the West.
They have a lot of difficulty with this
thing, masturbation.
Tremendous guilt.
They don't know what to do.
Some of them go for months and they
don't have any problem, and then it hits
them.
Some have even believed this was the seventh
deadly sin.
Some have felt this meant they'd never win
any souls to Christ.
Some felt this meant they'd never be happily
married.
There's a strong judgment concept in many Christians
in India.
They believe they're going to be judged and
when the next day something bad happens, they
think that's a result of the previous day's
sin.
There's a lot of superstition among God's people.
A lot of paganism has crept back in.
A lot of Hinduism has crept back in.
All kinds of things.
I don't know how we can possibly continue
to work without leaders having a counseling ministry.
Every leader should have almost a course, at
least a mini course in counseling, and I
don't think importing Western courses, I don't believe
that's the answer.
I think some of you studying counseling, people
like Joseph in the training program, and then
putting that into an Indian cup.
I know some of you have a burden
in this area already.
Maybe the Lord wants to lead some of
you out of OM to get further training
and then to be able to minister to
the Indian church in this difficult area.
I know, of course, it can become extreme.
I've been preaching on that lately.
But if nothing's going on, it's not going
to go extreme.
I can't believe it when I find out
a team member has never had a real
conversation with his team leader.
And some of you leaders, team leaders, you
need to understand, you are the key to
this.
It's not Alfie and Ray and Mattai and
Joseph D'Souza, it's the team leader that's the
key to operation mobilization.
And if you aren't doing your job, we
might as well retire.
Because this work is so big, there's so
many problems, that it's impossible to any great
degree, it can be done to some degree,
for Alfie and Ray and the country coordinator
or the state coordinator to get down on
any long term basis to the new recruit
or the team member.
I don't think there's anything wrong with having
a little notebook in which you keep a
record of the times you're spending with the
team members and determine that in the course
of one month you will have a personal
hour long time with every team member as
a minimum.
Jack Rendell leads my team, I wouldn't be
foolish enough to think at my stage in
my ministry I could lead a team.
He spends time with almost every team member
every month or two and his team member,
his team is three times the size of
your team.
If you only have eight or nine men
in your team, there's no excuse, there's no
excuse.
It doesn't have to be a heavy sharing
session, you don't have to try to fish,
you know, fish for their sins, I'm not
talking about that.
We fellowship, please get this, we're talking about
some very basic things that even people who
have been in the work ten years are
making mistakes on.
But our fellowship is different with different team
members.
With some you may mainly listen, with others
you may have to do more talking.
And I think we want, as God gives
the grace, ask brothers, how are they doing
in their basic spiritual life?
Do they have any particular problem?
And maybe in the second or third time,
you can share maybe your own struggle, sometimes
in the first time, some of your own
struggles, which may enable them to feel freer
or to feel free about sharing some of
their struggles.
We have to emphasize forgiveness.
We must emphasize forgiveness.
And that's many battles in the Christian life
are not won in one encounter.
It's many battles.
Battles with lust.
For most people, even most men of God,
and I've had contact with a lot of
men of God in 25 nations for 27
years.
I still have much to learn.
The battle is continuous.
With some it's temper or irritability.
Long after you're going to get victory over
temper, you may have a struggle with irritability.
With others, it's jealousy.
With others, it's bitterness.
With others, it's shyness.
With others, it's some sexual thing.
Lust of the eyes.
I would be very foolish to tell you
that I had 100% victory over the
lust of the eyes.
It's a continual battle.
The last couple of months have been great.
I've been absent from the tougher areas of
conflict.
Traveling in a bus is much easier than
traveling in a train in Europe.
If you travel in a train in Europe,
you are going to have head-on collisions
with some of the most seductive literature that
the mind can ever face.
I know of very few men that go
through London without some moments of failure.
And the far greater danger, not the moments
of failure, but the extremism that makes it
impossible for that young man to regain that
ground, appropriate that forgiveness, have his mind cleansed,
and be able to move on.
He may do it for a while, but
if the sin and the lust reoccurs, he
begins to doubt everything he has ever experienced
in Christ.
And he begins to blame God, especially if
he's had a deliverance experience.
Now, one of the extremes we have got
into in India in years gone by is
the deliverance extreme.
The conviction or the teaching that the fullness
of the Holy Spirit means total deliverance.
And, of course, we get people who, when
they counsel and they find a brother has
a lust problem, they feel he has a
demon of lust.
You ever run across this teaching?
And so, we get one or two together
and we cast out the demon of lust.
I've hardly ever known a case where someone
was totally delivered through that kind of thing.
Now, I've just dealt with it again.
A brother in OM had a lot of
problems.
He was undergoing counsel.
He was not coming into victory.
So, he went back to an extremist teacher
who he knew.
They cast 23 demons out of him.
Those of us who know him know that
after that he wasn't much different.
So many other different forms of health were
going on at the same time, plus discipline
being put upon him.
Sometimes you do have to discipline people.
There was some improvement.
Very difficult to know.
But the people that get into this casting
out of demons, they have this little trick
in their bag.
When they cast out the demons and everything
still goes wrong, they say, we missed one.
No, really.
I've heard casting out up to 30 demons.
The one demon that remained caused more grief
than the 30 that went out.
How in the world can we cast out
30 demons and nothing happened?
What were the demons doing in this man's
sleeping bag?
And untold harm has been done to people
on OM when they have got into this
kind of extremism.
Untold harm.
And I know there was a lady in
my audience once when I shared a weakness.
She wanted to have a go at me.
She felt, you know, they're usually polite and
don't say demon possession.
That's too hot.
If they say demon possession and the person's
a believer, we can really nail them down
quickly.
So they change the terminology and they talk
about demon obsession.
Or being under the control.
Or being in bondage.
Or, you know, it's all different terminology.
If you start reading all the books on
this subject, you'll start leaping in your bed
in your sleep.
That's right.
The demons will be coming right out of
the mosquito net.
And personally, I steer clear of a lot
of these books.
I've read a few.
I've counseled a lot of people.
I believe there are legitimate cases of demon
possession.
And I believe, of course, that the enemy
can get a hold on our lives.
But it's not a simple little black and
white thing.
They have books that tell you point by
point exactly what to do.
I've had people, when they were casting out
the demon, using the books, reading literally from
the books, reading the text.
I've noticed that most of the men that
were heavy in this in the church have
come out with new books on the spiritual
warfare and have retreated from making this a
major part of their ministry.
Isn't that interesting?
Can't we learn a little something from this?
That this is a difficult area.
And that generally today the strategy of Satan
is a little more sophisticated.
And I just believe that, especially in a
work like ours, we need to teach spiritual
balance in this area.
I try to emphasize the need for daily
deliverance.
The need for daily deliverance.
We can pray for a brother without making
him feel, please get this, without making him
feel he is a special case.
Without making the whole thing into a very
high-peaked emotional situation.
We have had people in OM fake demon
possession because in OM in some cases if
you fake demon possession you will get more
attention from the leaders in one week than
you had in the previous one year.
Really, it becomes big.
They'll be flying in from the nearest headquarters.
They'll be calling in special help.
And once in one of our offices in
England we had a case of fake demon
possession.
And sometimes a person's emotions can trick him
into saying things that are not true because
all of the attention he gets through that
experience.
And you know, we crave attention.
People on our team are craving a little
attention.
When's the last time you paid them a
compliment?
When's the last time you told them something
that was complimentary?
In our emphasis to increase book sales and
to face the reality of hard work, let
us not make the mistake of making the
book sales the big thing on the team.
Book sales is still a small thing.
We have to pay attention to it because
it's reality.
It's the bread and butter.
It's part of life.
Most people in India spend 10 to 15
hours a day just surviving.
Just surviving.
Just getting food in their stomach.
So if we have a little bit of
pressure on the tent making side, it's going
to prepare them for their life's work.
But it's not the biggest thing on the
team.
And when a brother has low book sales,
you need to encourage him.
You need to spend time with him and
say, well look, praise the Lord for the
tracks you were able to give out.
Acknowledge your own failures in book selling.
The time you went out and sold nothing.
George Burwell has had such experiences.
And there's always a better day next week.
And no one is going to be asked
immediately to leave a team or be disciplined
because they don't sell books.
That is not planned.
If they spend a whole year and don't
learn anything, I guess we will have to
search our hearts.
Because I don't believe in India there are
going to be many who can't sell gospel
packets and books over a period of a
year.
But we're far more interested in spiritual life.
We're far more interested in that person learning
to accept himself.
To be a little more relaxed about himself.
To be able to bounce back after sin
and failure.
To be able to walk seven days a
week in the Holy Spirit.
Maintaining balance in the midst of revival.
In the midst of blessing.
It's not easy.
Beware of those extremes.
Beware of the total answer.
The easy answer.
This brother has a really heavy problem.
Let's lay hands on him and cast out
the problem.
Before you do that spend time with him.
Counsel him.
Try to get the total picture.
When you're done you can pray.
Don't misunderstand me.
I have meetings in England when people come
forward after the meeting and I take them
one at a time and I pray that
the Lord will deliver them.
The Lord will give them strength.
But then with it I counsel them.
It's going to be a battle.
There still may be some failure.
And they need to grow in the word.
And they need to learn to repent.
And they need to learn to accept their
humanity and not think that spiritual life means
that wings are going to grow out their
back and they're going to be flying on
this high level of blessing the rest of
their life.
Let me in the latter part of this
hour I'm controlled by this tape which may
be more than an hour I think it
is.
Let me just share a few of the
other points that I shared up there in
Canada and then bring this to a close.
What are some of the other areas of
difficulty that come when there's blessing there's revival
there's the fullness of the Holy Spirit?
I put here confession.
Some of the revivals have led people to
confess things publicly that shouldn't be mentioned publicly.
It's not good in a mixed company for
a brother to get up and testify about
victory over masturbation or fornication.
I've been amazed some testimonies in India how
people are so blunt about their sexual life.
It's not the normal thing but a few
people seem to get into that.
It can be a great embarrassment and it
causes confusion.
Public sin perhaps at times needs public confession
not always.
Private sin just generally private confession is enough.
We are not Roman Catholics who do not
have freedom until we've gone to mother confessor.
The team leader is not the father confessor.
His total forgiveness through going through Jesus Christ
alone even restitution which is emphasized and which
was part of that revival in Canada easily
becomes extreme.
People trying to repay somebody that they stole
candy off sweets off twenty years ago they're
going through the streets of that town trying
to figure out what sweet shop it is
and going in the shop has already changed
management the new man is there and this
man comes in I stole some chocolate from
your shop twenty years ago I want to
return it.
I mean the Lord may need some people
to do that kind of thing but it's
so easy to get into bondage.
OM for some can be operation bondage all
these different rules all these different things we're
supposed to do.
Get up early get up early in the
morning don't eat too much don't have too
much tea don't spend too much money don't
you know the list is endless endless and
if you get one of these heavy handed
leaders who is trying to make out the
right report about each leader it really is
operation bondage.
We know for other people OM can be
a picnic for some team leaders you can
get away with murder.
You have cases where the team leader doesn't
have a clue what's going on.
Little Johnny and Little Joe they like to
sleep together they like to go down the
streets holding hands it's all part of the
culture.
Look you're naive you're very naive because homosexuality
is everywhere in this country it's everywhere.
We know some people who go down the
street holding hands it's absolutely innocent it's an
Indian custom in some places but other people
especially when they're not only holding hands or
holding legs and they're sleeping together and then
you find them on top of each other
they are not playing some kind of new
gospel game that they learn.
They are engaging in that which is clearly
condemned in the scriptures.
And I will tell you it will not
take long to turn OM into a movement
whose reputation will not be worth an American
quarter in a Russian slot machine.
We must avoid all appearance of evil.
And I think that because we are international
and cross cultural we have westerners here because
we have westerners we have to try to
understand Indians some of their thinking and what
can just completely blow their minds.
They in turn must submit even more they
must submit even more to your thinking.
But we agreed years ago in this work
we would avoid appearance of evil.
We would not have brothers sleeping together in
the same sleeping bag.
We will trust God for the money and
we will not have the sisters sleeping together
in the same sleeping bag because homosexuality among
women is as rampant as among men.
And OM has had this.
We have had it definitely had it.
We had to remove one westerner.
Some of the ugliest situations we had in
India were with homosexual westerners who had a
real infatuation with Indians.
One after he left OM India was living
with men in different parts of the country
after he also stole money and when he
got to India he was imprisoned.
Now praise God we haven't had much and
so this kind of thing I probably wouldn't
say that much if this were an all
India conference.
But you're leaners.
You've got to have a little sabe.
A little entendamiento decimos en espanol.
And no one is putting you into any
kind of guilt trip about anything that's happened
in the past.
We believe the best.
We're not judging but for the future where
this works so under the attack of Satan
and that fire in Bombay will create far
less problems than one of our leaners getting
accused of immorality and a great mass of
people believing.
It'll spread like wildfire right across the country.
Billy Graham a man of God and many
many following his steps he avoids appearance of
evil.
He won't go anywhere alone with another woman.
He has his wife with him.
One of the reasons I like to take
my wife everywhere I go.
My wife is now with me 90%
of my journey.
This is the exception this year.
Is it just helps in terms of the
image.
People see my wife with me.
People know I love my wife.
I have a good marriage.
I have a happy life.
And then when one of my secretaries is
with me my wife is with me as
well.
The enemy has a roaring lion seeking whom
he may devour.
We need to be very wise in this
area.
And we need to lovingly tenderly counsel people
and teach them how to live in a
cross-cultural interaction with each other.
We need to be very wise in this
area.
we need to lovingly and teach them how
to cross-cultural interaction with We need to
lovingly and tenderly teach to in a cross
-cultural interaction other.
We need to lovingly and tenderly counsel people
and teach them how to live in a
cross-cultural interaction We
need
to
lovingly tenderly in a cross-cultural interaction other.
We need to lovingly
and tenderly people and teach them how to
in a We need to people and teach
to We need to lovingly
and tenderly counsel people and teach them how
to live in a cross-cultural interaction other.
We need to lovingly live in a cross
-cultural We need to lovingly and tenderly counsel
people and