Good evening.
Thank you.
I am told if I go over time,
from behind me, they will pull me, my
jacket, and push me down.
So, then they told me, you better look
straight, there's a clock.
And if you go over time, it will
explode.
Now, I got it.
Thank you for inviting me to be here
with you.
And after me, you will have a brilliant
speaker, Michael Johnson.
And this is a very special gathering.
I learned so much about it by people
just telling me.
Oh, by the way, I just came to
Northern Ireland just about three, four days ago,
first time.
And I'm quite happy to be here.
And I was telling people, the only thing
I can think about Ireland, long, long, long
time ago, when I heard the Irish rovers.
Oh, them silly unicorns.
You forgot all about it, I know.
I gave my life to the Lord at
the age of eight.
My mother led me to Christ.
I'm obviously, you know, by my look and
my accent, I am not Irish.
I am from the southern part of India,
born and raised there.
And Thomas, Christ's disciple, came to preach the
gospel in AD 52 and planted seven churches.
And one of those churches happened to be
just three kilometers from where I was born
and raised.
That makes me a better Christian, I think.
And I had this amazing privilege to be
born in a Christian home.
And my mother prayed for many years that
one of her six boys would go and
serve Christ.
And I'm the youngest in my family.
And one by one, they all went to
business and farming.
And when I was growing up, she kind
of lost her hope because I was kind
of timid and shy and withdrawn, which you
don't believe.
But it's true.
So she decided to fast and pray, which
she did for three and a half years,
every Friday fasting, one prayer.
Lord, call one of my sons to serve
you, which she never told any of the
boys.
And when I finished my studies, when I
came and told my parents that day, if
you allow me, I'd like to go to
North India and serve Christ.
Before I could finish my sentence, my mother,
who was sitting on the bench, jumped up
and said, Go!
And I said, Dear Lord, I was an
accident.
She hates me.
So after two years of my life in
North India with Operation Mobilization, I went home
2,000 miles down the south to visit
my parents.
That's when she told me the story.
And she is the reason for the Lord's
call in my life, I believe.
After eight years of my life with OIM,
I went to the United States to do
my seminary studies and to be pastoring a
church for four and a half years.
And it was during that time the Lord
convicted me deeply, which was 30 years ago,
to give all for the sake of people
in India and the subcontinent, where they did
not allow any more Americans and Europeans to
come and be missionaries to preach and plant
churches.
But the lives of William Carey, Hudson Taylor,
Judson, Amy Carmichael, and thousands like these wonderful
missionaries, they gave their lives, and today what
we have is the fruit of their labor.
And God continues to work there.
So I serve the Lord with a mission
called Gospel for Asia.
Our focus is to recruit and train natives,
nationals.
Now we are 13 nations, some 15,000
or so workers, about 14,000 plus workers
in 13 nations serving Christ.
They go through three and a half years
of intense training before we send them out
to the mission field where there is no
gospel yet preached.
And by the grace of God, we see
no less than 17 churches planted every single
day on the mission field.
When I say churches, it means no less
than 20 adults baptized, which means you may
have 50, 60 people total in the worship,
and the work continues to grow.
And I left India just a few days
ago and landed in London for a few
days of meetings both there and here.
And tonight, right after the meeting, I'm going
to run away to the airport and catch
a flight to the States and be there
for a week then again.
Somebody asked me where I live.
I said, in the suitcase.
That's a good place to be.
I have a wife and two kids, and
my children were both born in the States.
And we prayed from the day they were
born, Jesus called them to know you, then
called them to serve you.
So when they finished their studies there, they
both ran off to India to serve Christ.
And they're a little older, and they both
are married.
And my son Danny, his wife was in
Nepal serving Christ, and they have a little
daughter.
And then my daughter Sarah, also serving God
in India, married to a young man who
is a medical doctor.
They have a little boy.
They both are serving Christ.
And incidentally, we don't arrange marriages for our
children, but we assist them.
So I remember when this young man wanted
to marry my daughter, I asked him, Danny,
can you tell me about your life a
little bit?
You are a medical doctor.
I think you will run off to America,
and do you want to be there?
And my daughter never wanted to leave India.
She wanted to serve Christ here.
He said, oh yeah, when I was young,
the Lord saved me.
And when I finished my college, the Lord
told me to go to medical college and
get my degree.
But you know, my call is to serve
Christ and reach the lost.
My vocation is being a medical doctor.
I said, you got it.
You can marry my daughter.
And I'm quite happy.
Now, you understand my English?
Thank God.
I speak English, you speak Irish.
My assignment tonight is to talk about loving
God, loving others.
When the going is tough, looking at you,
you people look like you're starving to death.
What an impossible situation you are in.
And so this message is quite applicable, I
think.
One of the places I went to serve
God...
Oh, by the way, if you need a
Bible reference, since this is a mission conference,
read Matthew's Gospel, chapters 9 and 10, tonight
when you go home.
That's my text.
So one of the places the Lord allowed
me to go with a group of young
people to serve Christ was in Rajasthan, in
northwestern India.
I was just about 18 at that time.
Boondi is a place where people said, you
don't want to go there because mean, bad
people live there.
They usually beat up Christians and Christian workers.
And we happened to be the seventh team
to go there.
True to their reputation, we were seven of
us on the team, they beat us up
real bad.
I was laying on the ground, this man
was kicking me without any mercy.
Another brother, blood was oozing down from the
side of his head from the beating.
And they said, dogs, leave this place in
five minutes or we'll have to kill you.
We left the place.
Some years would go by.
The young man who finished his Bible school,
we have 62 Bible colleges in 13 nations
and when they finish their studies, we usually
send them out saying that it's a one
-way ticket.
This young man felt the Lord was calling
him to go to Boondi.
He was 19 years of age or barely
20.
And the elder said, Boondi?
You are tiny, skinny, it's not the place
for you to go.
But he said, I've been praying for a
year and I feel I must go there.
He said, okay, they prayed and sent him.
He got there, rented a place for a
few dollars and every day he would go
and talk to people.
And one night, as he was sleeping, early
morning, six men came and busted the door
open.
And the tall Rajput with the turban on,
he said, pull this young brother up by
his legs and said, we can tear you
apart like we do with a chicken.
You don't want to stay here.
We've got our gods and goddesses.
Leave this place.
He was scared.
I would too.
Next morning, he ran back to the mission
station from where he was sent and reported.
They came last night.
They said they will kill me.
And he was really scared.
And they said, well, we told you this
is going to happen.
And the senior brother said, son, I just
want to ask you a question.
Did Jesus ask you to go to Boondi?
He said, I know he did.
But I'm scared.
And he said, son, go back to Boondi.
Yeah, they will come and give you some
trouble.
Maybe beat you up and give you some
problems.
And there's a small possibility they may kill
you.
But son, if that happens, heaven is a
much better place.
And you wait there for us.
And we'll come and see you later.
He knelt down.
They laid hand on him.
And he tells me, he got in the
bus, saying goodbye with tears, saying that he
may never see them again.
He got back to Boondi.
Within a few days' time, the same men
came back and said, we told you never
to come here again.
You are now going to make us murderers.
After hearing their threats and mighty speech, this
young man simply said to the gang leader,
you know what?
The sooner you do your job, it is
better for me.
I came here to die.
There's no way I'm going to leave this
place.
Jesus sent me here.
What do you do with a guy who
wants to die like that?
Another three years would go by.
I get a telephone call in the United
States.
I said, hello.
He said, is that a KFP?
I said, yeah, it's me.
Oh, I'm calling to ask you, we want
you to come to Boondi.
I said, what?
I want to put the phone down.
He said, no, no, no, no, no.
We want you to come and inaugurate the
church we just finished constructing.
Ah, the story changes.
The following month, I flew to Delhi and
took a train and went on to Kota,
on to Boondi.
You want to see people's face almost grow
with Christ's love?
So intense, you can touch it.
First generation, some 120 adults and kids just
worshipping the Lord.
And I taught the Bible, weeping through the
whole service.
When it was over, this young man said,
you know what?
This is the guy who said, he'll tear
me like a chicken.
And that is his friend, his wife.
And I said, I can't believe it.
Now, another story.
One of the ministries that we don't talk
about is the work among the Muslims.
We have 180 plus full-time workers working
among the Muslim communities in India, in Pakistan,
in Bangladesh.
But we don't talk about it.
Salsa and Hussain, two young brothers, having done
their special studies, they were assigned to work
among a group of Muslim communities in northeast
India.
A couple of dozen people showed interest in
Christ and few came to know the Lord.
Praying for the sick and God healing them
and seeing some miracles.
Evenings they would spend their time teaching the
new converts and daytime they both would go
do evangelism.
One day as they were going about their
work, a group of men met them and
said, how, you are Hussain, you are Salsa,
you came to tell us about Jesus.
And our brothers thought they were friends.
But no more words exchanged, the leader of
the gang pulled out a dragger, a long
knife, and stabbed into the heart of brother
Hussain.
He fell in a pool of blood.
They stabbed Salsa six times, believing that both
are dead.
These men fled.
It took many months for Salsa to recover.
Hussain died.
Hearing about this incident, Hussain's father-in-law,
his wife's father, who is a committed Muslim
from a distant village, traveled to meet his
daughter and the two little children, his grandchildren.
And this is what he said, my daughter,
thank God the devil is dead.
Talking about his son-in-law.
Now you come home with me and we
raise the children.
Now, a lot of you sisters sitting here
and wives and mothers and grandmothers, I imagine.
How would you respond to that kind of
request?
This young sister replied, said, father, I just
want you to know.
I love the Jesus my husband loved and
gave his life for.
And I love the people that he loved.
And I cannot come home.
I must stay here and raise my children
to serve Christ.
It took a couple of weeks before this
man to understand the reality of Christ and
his love.
And he gave his life to Christ.
Finishing his seminary, a young man named Juby,
traveled over 1,500 miles to a group
of people called missing people between Arunachal Pradesh
and Assam Delta area.
Some 2 million people live there.
Even today, when some people come to them
as honored special guests, the way they honor
them, they give them a special drink.
Not whiskey and beer.
They grow these humongous worms in rotten meat.
And they take these worms and get juice
out of it and give it to you.
What?
Look at your face.
You're right.
That's the reason I'm not going there much.
And Juby found himself in very difficult circumstances.
Strange language, strange food.
And no one could understand Jesus or the
gospel.
With great enthusiasm, he went there.
But all of a sudden, the honeymoon was
over.
Life becomes very painful.
And he told me, he began to pray
this prayer.
Lord, I'd like to go somewhere else.
And maybe someday later I can come back
here.
No answer.
He kept praying the same prayer.
And he said, after a few weeks, all
of a sudden he felt the Lord answering
him back.
Yeah, you can go.
Wherever you want to go, you can leave.
But I must stay back.
These are my people.
I love them.
Juby tells the story with tears.
He said it broke his heart.
He began to weep.
And simply said, Lord, I don't want to
leave you.
I will stay.
Whatever it takes.
Another 10 years will go by.
He will have 92 churches planted.
A Bible school to train new converts to
go and preach the gospel.
A radio broadcast in the missing language.
I think the saddest days of my life,
it was when my mother died.
My father passed away in 1974.
The memory of my mother, as growing up
in this tiny village in the southern part
of India, I mean, she was hardly five
feet tall.
A small frame.
But oh, how she loved Jesus.
Early morning, she would be up about four
or earlier and spend a couple of hours
praying.
And reading her Bible.
I never saw her reading any other books,
except her Bible.
And then he'd wake up the whole family
for what we call the family prayer time
in the morning.
And as a young boy, I heard my
mother repeat this verse a million times.
Well, thousands of times.
Psalm 73, verse 25.
Whom have I in heaven but you.
And on earth I deserve no one and
nothing beside you.
And I used to think, what on earth
is she saying?
Because I didn't understand that Bible verse.
But oh, how she loved him.
After our father passed away, in our culture,
our mother becomes the head of the family.
And her son is fairly well-to-do
people, including me, in terms of not that
I'm rich and rich, but we would take
care of our mother.
And they all gave her whatever money she
wanted, and we always did everything to take
care of her.
And one time, I was in India, and
I traveled to visit my mother, and I
saw her wearing this, what we call the
blouse, torn from here to here, and stitched
by hand.
In America, they call it a Mickey Mouse
job.
I was angry.
And I said, Mother, what madness got into
your head?
Don't you care?
The whole world will think we don't take
care of you, Mother, but we give you
all you want.
You can get a new dress whenever you
want, but you are doing this.
You are putting cow dung on our head
and shame on our face.
You know, preachers can get mad.
After all my anger and frustration, my mother,
as always, incredible, gentle smile, she said, My
little boy, you don't understand nothing.
Someday you'll understand.
That's all.
And I was on the way to Seoul,
Korea, in 1990, when I heard my mother
was taken ill with a heart problem at
the age of 84.
And I canceled my trip and went down
to see my mother that weekend.
She passed away.
I didn't know there was so much pain
and emotions that I had experienced.
But when the funeral was over, my brothers
and I, we met to talk about our
mother.
Right during the conversation, one of my brothers
said, Anybody know how much money our mother
left in the bank?
The guy who asked is a kind of
greedy individual.
Don't tell him that.
But somehow we all knew she didn't spend
any money, but she was given quite a
lot.
So what do you do when you don't
spend it?
You keep it somewhere.
Answering the question, my older brother pulled out
a notebook and held it up and said,
I found it under the pillow of our
mother's bed.
We were terribly curious.
And he opened it up.
He said, well, pages after pages, scribbling of
our mother.
Names of young people studying in Bible schools,
missionaries scattered throughout many states of India.
And the money she was sending marked against
their names.
And then he said, as far as I
know, there's nothing in the bank.
And I broke down, began to weep.
It was as though my mother walked back
to the room, put her arms around me
saying, My little son, now you understand what
mother lived for.
Sure, I could have purchased a new dress
if I wanted every month.
But my son, I saw something that maybe
others didn't see.
Accepting the inconveniences and less inconveniences, a choice
she made.
Oh, that's from the end of the story.
The last thing she left with us.
When I'm dead and gone, the only thing
I will leave behind my earrings, my wedding
ring, and the gold chain my husband gave
me at the age of 19 when he
married me.
I wanted to sell these items and give
the money to preach the gospel among people
that never heard my Jesus name.
I want to meet them also in heaven.
Before my time runs out, just a few
more minutes.
I can tell you all night stories.
And now my dear brother Michael is coming.
He can tell you a lot more stories
from the mission world because for 40 years
I've been living with them.
But please listen to me.
Missions and involvement is not you give a
few more dollars or pounds or go somewhere
for a few months or a few years.
Jesus died on the cross to save sinners.
And you and I are called to continue
the journey as Paul did.
And this will not come by without suffering
on the cross.
In 1974, I went to the United States
within a few years because of the resources
given to us, my in-laws.
I was living for a luxury life.
Seventy expensive neckties, all silk imported from Europe.
Suits.
So many I couldn't figure out what I'm
going to do.
It took me half an hour to figure
out what color and what clothes I must
wear because I read a book called Color
Me Beautiful.
And not any fountain pen was good enough.
No, I had to have a fountain pen
that was worth $600, Mont Blanc.
Nothing wrong with nice things in life.
Please don't misunderstand me.
But living like that for nearly three years
in the midst of seminary and being a
pastor.
One day Jesus said, son, half of the
world goes to bed with an empty stomach
and naked bodies.
And you have an expensive leather-bound Bible
sitting on your shelf and half of the
world has never seen one page of the
Bible.
It was not guilt and condemnation.
It was love and grace.
And I looked at my life and said,
Lord, whatever happened to me?
My heart was cold.
I couldn't cry anymore.
And that's when I said, Lord, borrowing somebody
else's prayer, take eternity and stamp on my
eyes.
That was 13 years ago.
And we exchanged all and everything possible for
the sake of the lost world.
No regrets.
I'm the happiest human being traveling over 300
,000 air miles average a year like this.
But this is what I want to tell
you.
You are not going to go to Burundi
or Bangladesh or Orissa or Afghanistan.
Most of you will never make it there.
But this is the time you need to
embrace the cross by taking maybe a day
or the week for fasting and prayer.
Get Operation World Book.
Get a world map put in your house.
Become a world Christian, as somebody said, not
a worldly Christian.
And if you fast one day of the
week and if you die, you please let
me know.
It will not happen.
Develop a more deeper commitment for prayer.
Secondly, let the Lord give you grace to
evaluate your life and what you do, where
you go and your time and all those
resources.
And maybe you'll find it's a beautiful thing
to serve him.
Maybe you are called to go somewhere.
But let your life become a living sacrifice.
Get a one-way ticket.
And then also, like our mission with thousands
of brothers and sisters scattered throughout many of
these nations, you can become a prayer partner
and a sender for many of them to
continue the journey, reach the most unreached.
Throughout all the stories I told you, they're
all literally true.
There's one common denominator.
Whom have I in heaven but you, nothing
beside you.
Love me, Christ said, more than all and
life itself.
When things get tough or difficult, emotionally draining,
whatever, you will make it.
It's worth it.
Oh, I end by saying, tonight, when you
go home, look at your passport, your driver's
license, your ID, and look at your date
of birth.
Add 100 years to that and ask the
question, what happened to all the stuff I
lived with and for?
It's worth living for him.
And may the Lord speak to us.