I'm sure some people who know me are
probably worried that I'll be a little shaken
and intimidated by that award and therefore missed
what I want to say, but thanks to
a lot of different reasons I don't get
so easily intimidated.
I was completely intimidated at my son's wedding
and broke down and wept at the reception
and couldn't even get three syllables out of
my mouth.
His name is Benjamin.
One of the greatest joys in the Christian
life is to have children grow and come
to know the Lord Jesus Christ.
Benjamin born in Spain.
Daniel and Krista born in England.
There is a little problem about the history
of O.M. and George Verwer.
This leaflet says I graduated in 60.
Dr. Sweeting said 61.
This confusion comes because I did a three
-year course in two years.
Actually, I went to Mexico in 57, but
I didn't arrive here until January of 58.
I only make that correction because an awful
lot of people around the country have received
this information by the very challenging tool of
Christian radio.
I'd love to speak about Christian radio.
Tremendous impact upon India right now by Christian
radio.
I was in the Soviet Union not so
long ago.
One of the young men in the meeting
saved through Christian radio.
And we need to be praying more for
the radio and television ministry that God's people
have around the world.
It's an enormous encouragement to be here.
I didn't know anything about this that we
just went through.
You know, if I had my way, I'd
make photocopies of this and give it to
a thousand or two thousand people that have
helped me along the way.
It's an emotional thing for me to come
back to Moody Church.
I will try to control myself.
I'm one of these unstable characters that's, uh,
you know, one minute a little high and
the next minute a little low.
None of you have that problem, of course.
But it was here in Moody Church 26
years ago that Oswald J.
Smith spoke in this very place.
I was with O.J. Smith just a
couple of months ago at his bedside.
One of the greatest single influences in my
life.
And that great man of God and I
met together.
And he prayed he wanted to go to
heaven.
He was 96 that week.
And last week, God took that great servant
to the glory.
Billy Graham had been booked to speak at
the funeral for a long time.
And the funeral took place the end of
last week.
That great people's church, probably one of the
most dynamic missionary churches in the history of
all of Christianity, that committed again $1,000
,000, $1,300,000 in Canadian dollars to
the great work of world missions.
I'm indebted to him.
I'm indebted to his book, The Challenge of
Missions, one of the first books that got
into my hands as a young student in
college before I came to Moody.
My life was never the same.
This past week, another man who influenced my
life when I was a student at Moody,
Harold Shaw, suddenly went to be with a
living God.
His funeral was yesterday.
He was the director of the tremendous Moody
Bible Institute correspondence course when I was a
student.
When I came, I went up that great
building to find out what all those ministries
are about.
And those men had a great influence on
my life.
Peter Gunther of Moody Press, Ken Taylor of
Moody Press, Harold Shaw of the correspondence course.
And I don't think those who don't really
understand how the Institute works and the way
the Holy Spirit is working through so many
different ministries can just grasp what God has
done a hundred years through this place.
I don't think we can grasp that with
our feeble minds.
Let us pray together.
Our God and Father, we are thankful for
what you have done through this Institute the
past hundred years.
We know you'll share your glory with no
man.
We do not mention men to give them
glory, but only to bring balance to what
we already believe.
Yet this treasure is in earthen vessels, and
we have our part to do.
We have our decision to make, to follow
you or to follow the devil.
We believe this institution has gone on controlled
by your spirit because there are men who
follow you and who believe your word.
Lord, we need strength.
I need strength even to share weak, feeble
vessel with great, great needs.
So Lord, help us in this meeting tonight.
We thank you for what you've done through
so many men and women.
We don't have time to mention more names,
but we believe, O God, that those names
are written in heaven.
And we believe, O God, that the humblest,
most unknown servant, that unsung hero in the
packing room or in the post room has
an equal reward with those that may be
known to multitudes as they crisscross the world
and preach the gospel to millions of people.
We thank you, God, that we are one
body.
When one suffers, we all suffer.
When one is honored, we are all honored.
And we lift up your glorious name tonight
through Jesus Christ.
Amen.
I was saved because an elderly lady prayed
for me.
Most of you know the story.
Prayed for me for three years.
Every year I got worse.
I wasn't from a home of committed Christians.
My parents were sort of very traditional American
nominal Christians, good parents.
My father came to Christ shortly after I
did.
In fact, that meeting that was referred to
in the manuscript, one of the 125 who
stood was my own dear father who's 80
years of age and pressing on for Jesus
Christ.
My mother came to Christ and ran the,
used to be called Send the Light Incorporated
when it was exploding here at Moody in
those early days.
All those days my mother ran that little
office there near Patterson, New Jersey.
And I was saved, actually, after reading a
gospel of John that that lady sent me
through the mail, I was saved in a
Billy Graham meeting in Madison Square Garden.
And I have watched this man.
I am, I'm a cynic.
I have a lot of struggles in my
Christian life.
Many times I've almost fallen by the wayside.
I'm, I'm, I'm literally held up by my
prayer partners.
And men like Dean Broman, who took me
under his arm when I was a wildcat
student, instead of punching me in the nose,
he said, why don't you come along to
one of our prayer meetings?
He knew my weak spot.
I went to prayer meetings every single day,
almost during my entire time at Moody Bible
Institute.
And I thank God that you have Billy
Graham coming here on Sunday.
You know, Billy Graham has been viciously attacked
and misunderstood.
I wondered about this as a young Christian.
You know, I discovered in the word of
God, the human factor, this treasure is in
earth and vessels.
All of us fail.
All of us make mistakes.
And if we don't have more compassionate ability
to disagree and press on as one body
in Christ, I believe we are eventually going
to scandalize the church of Jesus Christ in
the United States.
I thank God that Jack Van Emphy, after
many years of criticizing Moody, criticizing Billy Graham,
had a deep experience of the love of
God.
I was with Jack a couple of years
ago, and he wrote this book, Heart Disease
in the Body of Christ, that anybody who
dares call himself a fundamentalist, and in the
biblical sense of the word, we are.
They need to read that amazing book.
He wrote an apology, I believe, to Moody.
I know he did to Billy Graham.
And this book contains facts that I tell
you we need to know.
And it's a great triumph for the message
of love.
A similar book is Love Covers.
A man 80 years of age, Paul Bilheimer,
showed how different kinds of Christians can disagree,
like Whitefield and Wesley, and yet still love
and respect one another.
I thank God that Billy Graham has been
an example of this, that George Sweeting has
been an example of this, and that Moody
Bible Institute, in all the years I have
watched it, is continuing to grow and be
an example of this kind of 1 Corinthians
13 reality.
Praise God.
It's exciting to be back here in 1986.
This compartment must have been built by an
amazing man.
It has a place for books.
Where did this pulpit?
I've never seen this pulpit before.
Moody's.
I should have known it.
Books.
Who knows what else is in here?
I'd like you to turn with me now
in your Bible.
The other thing about George Sweeting that I
so love, and he's from New Jersey, is
that he gives me time to speak.
And when we go off the air, you
just relax, because we're just going to press
right on.
Most of you know my favorite story.
I'll tell it for the newcomers, because I
love the students, and I'm here especially to
speak to the students, and the others can
listen in.
But I was in Germany, and the work
of O.M. in Germany has grown beyond
all expectation.
They are the strongest nation behind the ship
Dulaus.
An amazing story.
It's a German company that owns that ship.
O.M. is divided into many countries.
But I was in Germany preaching mainly to
young people.
It was an O.M. meeting, so I
felt quite free.
I was going about an hour and a
half, and the young people, as usual, were
just absorbing it like sponges that had been
in the desert.
But somehow there was one man way in
the back.
I think he wanted to go home and
get the news or watch the TV.
And he held his watch up, trying to
catch my attention.
And I was preaching on world evangelism and
discipleship and forsaking all for Christ.
And I saw that watch, and I said,
folks, praise the Lord.
Look at this.
Here's a man donating his watch for world
missionary work.
Let's turn in our Bibles.
Turn in your Bibles to 1 Kings.
1 Kings chapter 18.
I owe much to this church.
Not only was I shaken to the core
by Oswald J.
Smith when he preached that night.
I think I was the only one.
He gave an invitation, and I ran forward
into that back room, rededicated my life to
Christ, though I had won many to Christ.
I was thought of as a student leader.
I'd been to Mexico.
The work had already been born.
God zeroed in on needy areas in my
life.
And the choir went into that room.
There was no counseling.
I ran down the basement, weeping, and got
under a table and went my way back
to Calvary.
And you know, it's encounters with God when
we're students like that.
We're not all of the same emotion.
And I've discovered that to get missionary work
done in the Muslim world, which is our
main target, you don't want to look for
characters like me.
No.
You want to look for slow, plagmatic, steady
types.
We got some of them out of Wheaton
College.
One of them is sitting here.
We got some of them out of Oxford,
and we got them out of Cambridge, and
we got a few out of Moody, you
know, years later when they got more mature
than my class.
But God works in different people in different
ways.
One of the men that influenced my life
the most as a student was Alan Redpath,
who Sunday after Sunday preached right here.
My own wife came to Chicago Keswick and
had her life completely turned around.
We would have never been married if it
wasn't for Chicago Keswick.
She had to leave her home.
She came here to Chicago.
She worked in the Moody Institute of Science
where I met her, going up to rent
a film.
Boy, what a bargain, I tell you.
But she had a lot of psychosomatic problems
in her life, a lot of struggles.
Her real father had been killed in the
war, and it was here during Chicago Keswick,
some of those men like George Duncan, now
dear close friends of mine, ministered.
Her life was turned around.
It's amazing what God does in answer to
prayer.
But let's get into the text of 1
Kings 18 and 1 Kings 19.
We're going to have to shorten things because
we're going to have a film.
Every time I say something, I think of
ten other things to say.
It's an enormous problem.
But I got to say this.
One of the other great influences in my
life as a doubter, my grandfather was an
atheist from the Netherlands.
My other grandfather was a drunkard from Glasgow.
I've got, you know, skeptic's blood in the
brain.
And as a young student, even here as
a student, I almost overthrew the Christian faith.
I lived in the YMCA.
They had no room for me in the
inn.
They put me in the YMCA.
And I mean, that was a wild place.
There were hardly any Christians in the whole
place, so they made me the chaplain.
But I had some wild temptations.
And one of the things that strengthened my
faith the most, I do not in any
way exaggerate, was the Moody Institute of Science
Films.
And we've had the privilege of showing them
all over the world, even in many other
languages.
And films have become an almost important part
in OM as literature.
And of course, video cassettes and audio cassettes.
I tell you what God has given us.
Talk more about it tomorrow afternoon.
Tonight I really can only get started.
Tomorrow afternoon we'll get into orbit.
But let's look at the text.
Let's try again to get to the text.
First Kings 18, verse 21, And Elijah came
unto all the people and said, How long
halt ye between two opinions?
I remember Peter Marshall speaking on this text.
That dates me.
But I heard a record when he spoke
on this text.
How long halt ye between two opinions?
If the Lord be God, follow him.
But if you fail, then follow him.
And the people answered, Not a word.
That's a challenge to us throughout our life.
That's not a once and for all thing.
I've had to make many recommitments of my
life.
I'm a natural backslider.
I don't know about you.
Maybe you just go on automatically to higher
plateaus in the things of the spirit.
But if God doesn't meet me every day,
my heart begins to grow cold.
My eyes begin to wander.
I thank God that as far as I
know, since the day of my conversion, he's
met me every day, and especially those days
when I lived here in Chicago.
How long halt ye between two opinions?
If the Lord be God, follow him.
But if fail, then follow him.
And the people answered, Not a word.
Notice verse 24, And call ye on the
name of your gods.
He was challenging these false prophets.
Sometimes we have to do that.
And on the name of the Lord and
the God, capital G, who answereth by fire,
let him be God.
And all the people answered and said, It
is well spoken.
I've had the privilege, as we have had
teams working in Israel for many years, one
of the many, many target areas of this
work.
Keep in mind the many, many beautiful Arab
people that live within Israel, who need the
message of Jesus Christ, who live side by
side with Jewish people.
And I've walked by the mountain where this
is taking place, to visit one of our
teams who is going door to door with
the word of God.
Often forgotten, neglected teams.
And you know that's true of many missionary
workers today.
Because let's be honest, it's not my message
for tonight, but let's be honest, a lot
of missionary activity and a lot of talk
and a lot of what happens in some
of our churches, you and I know, it's
just tokenism.
It's just token commitment.
And I believe God is wanting to say,
especially through the missionary student movement that's taking
place.
I just spoke in Mandate 86 out in
DeKalb, 700 university students, 400 of them on
the final day stood to make a deeper
commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I believe it is God's will that
what in many places and many churches today
is token commitment will, by the grace of
God, become total commitment.
And you and I can make the difference
through prayer and love and obedience to the
word of God, the God who answers by
fire.
It's interesting that in the book of Hebrews,
it also says that our God is a
consuming fire.
Interesting verse, isn't it?
The word fire is used quite often in
scripture.
Then we find, of course, Elijah building the
altar, putting water on the altar, strange way
to build a fire.
We find the false prophets are crying aloud,
beating their bodies, nothing happens.
And then Elijah praise look at verse 37.
Hear me, O Lord, hear me that this
people may know that thou art the Lord
God and that thou has turned their hearts
back again.
Then the fire of the Lord fell and
consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood and
the stones and the dust and licked up
the water that was in the trench.
And when all the people saw it, they
fell on their faces and they said, the
Lord, he is God.
The Lord, he is God.
We're going to go back to Hebrews 19,
but if you could look for a moment
at, we're going to go back to first
Kings 19.
If you could look for a moment at
Hebrews chapter 12, a great chapter.
I wonder how many of you young people
and adults regularly memorize scripture, even one a
week, raise your hand that depresses me, but
I'll, I'll make it now.
Moody students used to have to memorize scripture.
I hope you still do.
I remember old Mr. Gardner in my Christian
ed class make, and, and, um, I think
it was Mr. Pearson or someone made me
memorize scripture for personal evangelism class.
You know, those kinds of practical courses, you
don't get them at Harvard business school.
And I pray that you Bible college students
will never be intimidated by the so-called
intellectuals of this world.
We can't all have all of life's experiences.
I've been traveling around the world and across
the world for 31 years.
I've seen a lot, but I feel I
only have a small experience of all there
is, and who can imagine eternity.
And God led me to graduate from here.
I never went to any further education.
I'm not boasting about it.
It just wasn't God's way for me.
And I found the enemy tries to intimidate
some of us who don't have a lot
of degrees in a degree conscious world.
And there's nothing wrong with Moody now giving
a degree, but beware of a subtle intimidation.
If you feel somehow you're less than other
people, because it's one of the most subtle
methods Satan uses to intimidate Bible college students.
I personally believe that most Bible college students
before further education need a couple years out
on the field, putting into practice what they
know in their hearts.
A lot of it is only in the
head.
And we have seen many, many Moody students
come on OM.
Some of them then have gone for further
education and got other degrees.
But when they got to that further education,
I will tell you, there was reality in
their lives.
There was reality in prayer, reality in relationship,
reality in witness, not perfection, reality.
And they became student leaders almost overnight in
their campuses.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons that
so many young men from Cambridge and Oxford
and leading universities across Europe, I've just been
preaching in Oxford again, have become the backbone
of Operation Mobilization, a movement that had its
second birth right here in this little old
Bible school.
I tell you, when my relatives heard I
was going to Moody Bible School Institute, you
know, there were some interesting looks, you know,
what's that?
The most important decision of my life next
to coming to Christ and meeting my wife
was when God led me out of university.
I was getting good grades.
I was relatively happy.
A lot of it was a waste of
time, but God led me out of university
to come to this institute.
God works in different people in different ways.
We certainly see that in the spectrum of
people in OM.
I got into that because I want to
encourage you to memorize scripture.
It was one of the most important factors
in helping me grow with all of my
struggles and all of my problems.
And I'm amazed today that people aren't memorizing
the scriptures more.
So you may want to start right there
in Hebrews 11 and Hebrews 12.
You can memorize the chapter in the coming
weeks.
You know, when I went to college, a
little college in the South, a little school
10 years before I got there, it was
Christian.
When I got there, it more or less
had gone largely apostate, but it was God's
will for me to be there.
I heard about a guy who was supposedly
a fanatic.
Some of you know Dale Roton.
His books are there on the book table.
I was warned about Dale Roton.
They said he's a fanatic, avoid him at
any cost.
He's baptizing people in the showers.
You can be sure he was one of
the first persons that I sought out.
And probably one of the greatest single influences
on my life among my peers.
He later baptized me in a little chapel
in Wheaton.
He went to Wheaton after we went to
Mexico together.
The other brother who went with us to
Mexico on that first trip is here tonight.
And I came to Moody, but I'll tell
you, when I met this man there at
that college, I knew, I knew I was
fellowshipping.
I was a baby Christian with someone who
had reality.
I've watched him 29 years now.
And he's been an example.
He's not perfect, but he's been an example.
You know, before he finished Wheaton College, I
think he had a third of the New
Testament memorized.
And he had a lot of other things,
including outreach among the beautiful black people of
this great city.
Memorize scripture.
Memorize Hebrews 11, Hebrews 12.
And I just want to look at that
verse 29.
For our God is a consuming fire.
Do you believe that?
You know, we used to have a phrase
when I was a student.
And you know, you've had the privilege of
one of the greatest communicators in America here
this week, Charles Swindoll.
I've listened to him, has read his books.
I read his page on and thought I
should give up the ministry.
Really just overwhelming.
But you know, God can use a cliche,
especially outside center and evangelists.
A lot of the people we're talking to
have never heard any of our cliches.
A lot of the people I preach to
have never heard John three 16, because we're
not in this country where there are 1
,000,000 full-time Christian workers.
We're out in unreached nations where there are
no churches, no witnesses, many times, no literature,
no Bible, no nothing.
Forgive me.
I jumped in tomorrow afternoon again.
A little excited about that.
People always warned me when I was a
teenager on fire for Christ.
Oh, that was the cliche on fire for
Christ.
Do they still say that?
That's finished.
You can still say that.
I tell you, you know, uh, Billy Graham's
old expression.
When you're preaching in a place like this,
you feel like a lion in a den
of Daniels.
But, uh, I believe, I really believe it
is a beautiful cliche to be able to
say, here's a brother, here's a sister.
She or he, she's on fire for Christ.
Doesn't mean she's some weirdo climbing the wall.
You know, there's a great danger among us
who are a bit conservative like me.
Good faithful to the moody tradition.
There's a danger.
There's a danger that we don't want extremism.
And one of the most powerful messages God
has given me all these years is against
extremism.
I've written books on it.
My book on balance is there on the
table.
My daughter came to me some years ago
and she says, dad, now you're getting extreme
in the whole area of balance.
How can this be?
And I believe extremism.
I think I learned this when I was
a student.
Satan has two strategies.
Keep you from real commitment.
When you get to know something of commitment,
which is an ongoing process, then Satan will
counterattack, change the strategy and try to get
you into extremism, judgmentalism, phariseeism.
And I'll tell you some of us early
OMers at this college, we got into it
and we're not proud of it, but God
was patient with us.
And he put into our hands books like
Calvary Road.
He put in front of us men like
Alan Redpath, Dr. Culverson, old Dean Browman, Ms.
Donson.
She's also a longstanding friend.
Don't forget her.
What a ministry, her whole life teaching the
word of God, different parts of the world.
There's a danger that when we overreact to
some of the things that are extreme, we
overreact into the deep freeze of dead orthodoxy.
And let us be reminded that the man
who's going to preach here this Sunday is
the man who has again and again all
over the world preach.
Be he filled with the Holy Spirit.
And that's the privilege of every believer.
It happens in different people in different ways.
Some seem to have crises.
Torrey believed in that.
Some seem to be more of a process.
I say the crisis without the process becomes
an abscess.
Billy Graham and speaking about the things of
the spirit and the life and the spirit
said, I don't care how you get it.
Just get it.
I want to ask you, brothers and sisters,
do you have it?
I'm not speaking about something you had 10
years ago, five years ago.
Hallelujah for any blessing.
I don't want to despise people's special blessing.
I want to know, are you on fire
for Christ tonight?
Is there a burning in your heart?
Is there a burning?
Please don't rob me of my time.
Is there a burning in your heart tonight?
You say, oh, this is, this is extreme
spiritual balance.
And now people are attacking balance in America.
People attack everything.
And what, what wisdom A.
W.
Tozer, who ministered in this city when I
was a student, who later became my favorite
author in God's mercy.
I never knew his ministry when I was
a student, I was already so getting so
hyper and so intense and sometimes a bit
critical.
If I had got too much of Tozer
at that time, I would have got OD
and probably freaked out.
So God gave me more of Culberson and,
uh, balance Moody Bible Institute balance.
And this school does stand for that, but
balance is not compromise.
If any of you are triple B fighting,
triple Decker fighting fundies, don't don't, don't you
just relax a few more minutes.
You can read that empty book after, but
relax.
Now we're not talking about compromise and Moody
Bible Institute is not compromising the truth and
neither is operation mobilization, but we believe that
balance is one extreme from the word of
God, bringing another extreme from the word of
God into the proper perspective.
And so it's commitment with balance.
It's being filled with a spirit and controlled
by the spirit, which means the fruit of
the spirit is going to be the priority.
The Holy spirit gives gifts, but if you
get gifts without fruit, you get circus and
we're promoting many circuses in various parts of
the world today.
The balance is what the Bible speaks of,
but if you're not on fire for Christ,
if you've never committed your life, if you've
never fallen at the foot of the cross,
a broken man that Jesus might invade your
life, that self might be crucified.
Galatians 2 20, then your big problem isn't
the need for balance.
There ain't nothing to balance.
Is too much enthusiasm the big problem in
your church?
Send me a photo, praise God.
People too excited about winning souls for Christ,
people crowding into the prayer meeting and now
you're going to have to change rooms again.
The prayer meeting is getting too full.
People just too loving with each other, sweeping
people off their feet with love and service.
Is this the big problem in your church?
You know what Tozer said and read his
books.
They're there on the table.
You don't think I'd come here without Tozer.
I'd rather be here without my belt, but
really, I really believe this man has something
to say to our nation and we didn't
want to hear it.
And one thing he 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 the demonstration by the residents.
You know, it's good to laugh, but some
of us laugh because we feel like crying
because we know how true it is.
I want to ask you, are you filled
with the Holy Spirit, whether it's a quiet
way or a noisy way, whether it happened
in a meeting or in the quietness of
your room?
There's a lot of confusion about this and
I wish I had more time, maybe some
other occasion.
I share about this on some of my
cassette tapes.
That's right.
I'm not only a bookworm.
You can be assured of that, but I
want to read this definition of fire.
I may have read it at Founders Week
some years ago, but I want to read
it again.
It's by Samuel Logan Bringle from Resurrection Life
and Power.
What is fire?
Because we're talking about spiritual fire, right?
It is love.
It is faith.
It is hope.
It is passion and purpose and determination.
It is utter devotion.
It is divine discontent with formality, ceremonialism, lukewarmness,
indifference, shams, noise, parade, spiritual death.
It's singleness of eye and a consecration unto
death.
It's God the Holy Ghost burning in and
through a humble, holy, faithful man or woman.
And I say, oh God, that's what I
want.
And I have not arrived.
Some of you have heard my message, the
confessions of a weak, struggling missionary.
It's now going all over Europe.
Mission societies are using it for orientation.
My failures, my lifelong struggle with lust.
And some of you students, you're going to
be wiped out because you think while you're
a student, you're going to learn how to
get total, absolute, final, once and for all
victory over all forms of lust.
Cockeyed ideas about sanctification have intimidated and destroyed
more students in Bible College than anything we'll
ever know.
Listen, my dear student, it's going to take
you 10 and 20 and 30 years to
become the man, the woman of God He
wants you to become.
You be patient with God's spiritual growth rate
in your own life.
And some of you are going to battle
lust for a long time, like many of
my missionary friends.
Get that book by Erwin Lutzer, have a
systematic program to grow in grace.
God kept me here in Chicago when I
almost fell into deep sin and God has
kept me ever since, but it's not been
without failure in my mind and failure with
those horrific magazines that pop out everywhere we
go.
Once in England, I was walking through the
woods, praising God, singing to Jesus in worship.
And there was a magazine at 16.
I was a pornoholic just like an alcoholic.
I have to stay completely away from it.
But there was hanging in a tree in
the woods in England, a $10 magazine.
Now I'd love to be able to stand
up, especially since I've been given the alumnus
of the year award.
Maybe they want to take it back.
But anyway, I'd love to be able to
stand up and say my what they taught
me at Moody and what I had spiritual
power, just a laser beam of hot Holy
Ghost power, the magazine disintegrated.
What a testimony.
Here he is, a miracle man in a
nation that is infatuated with a spectacular that
has led us oftentimes into deception.
And in one church, because of that kind
of deception, 60 people are dead.
I wish I could talk to you about
that.
But I have to confess that day, that
little magazine made a complete fool out of
this soldier of Jesus Christ.
But I learned way back as a student,
first John chapter two and verse one, number
one, sin not that's been the goal of
my life every day.
And I'm still growing in holiness to be
like him a long journey for a character
like me.
But the second part of the verse says,
if you confess your sin, he's faithful and
just to forgive you and cleanse you from
all unrighteousness.
There's not time tonight, but on your own,
you look at first Kings 19.
You'll find this great man who stood on
the mountain.
When the fire came down this man, we
idolize it's such a great spiritual figure in
the old Testament.
We find that same man under the Jennifer
tree.
You read it.
He was depressed and you know what he
said, God, I've had enough.
And I made the mistake as a young
student of emphasizing the fire, but not emphasizing
enough the next chapter.
I call it the human factor.
First Kings 18, the divine factor, first Kings
19, the human factor.
And I hope someday I might be able
to share with some of you the burden
God has given me from his word about
the human factor.
This treasures in earthen vessels.
We're going to struggle.
We're going to fail.
Being filled with the spirit doesn't destroy your
personality.
Being filled with the spirit doesn't mean you're
not going to make mistakes.
We just made a mistake two days ago
in Poland.
We haven't got the facts, but I had
the phone call waking me up a couple
of mornings ago, another fatal accident in operation
mobilization.
And one of our young men just recruited
from Scotland is with the Lord.
Pray for his parents who I don't think,
no Jesus, another Swedish associate worker with the
Lord, another man in the car in front
of them, a Polish man with the Lord.
Some of you know, Jonathan McCrosty.
He was the student leader.
When I arrived here as a freshman, he
met me and carried my bags.
Never did I dream that we would be
together in the work for 25 years, but
in an accident three years ago, he became
a paraplegic.
I pray that he may come here because
he is surely, he is surely more worthy
of this alumnus award than I am.
Though, praise God, we know such award is
always representing all people who work together on
God's team.
Brothers and sisters, it's already been shared here
in this great Founders Week that the Christian
life is rough and tough, that we've got
to bounce back.
We can't allow discouragement to corrode our spiritual
batteries.
And I think some of you will be
encouraged and caused to recommit your life to
Christ through 1 Kings 18.
May the fire fall upon you.
But I think many of us here need
the encouragement of 1 Kings 19.
I do.
I failed him many times.
I haven't been the husband I should have
been.
I haven't been the father I shouldn't have
been.
My tongue has always often gone a little
faster than my brain.
Many times I've said, even as Elijah under
the tree, I've had enough.
Yet God at that moment ministered to me.
And you notice he didn't send a revival
meeting.
He didn't send a big, heavy exhortation.
He didn't send some kind of spiritual atomic
bomb.
He sent a very, very quiet, low-profile
angel and gave him some food and gave
him some sleep.
And often our problems are not spiritual, they're
physical, they're emotional, or they're more complicated than
the average sanctification book wants to admit.
And I want to tell you as I
close, God wants to bless you at this
Founders Week.
Satan is trying to intimidate you that you'll
never accomplish great things for him, or that
you're not spiritual enough.
I seldom feel spiritual.
How does a character like me feel spiritual?
Do I look spiritual?
I tell you, my wife and I are
tremendous balance, tremendous balance.
She's just been operated on again.
She looked at me the other day and
said, just looking at you makes me feel
tired.
And I, we make a tremendous balance.
So my wife looks so beautiful and she
feels miserable.
I look miserable, but I feel great, I'll
tell you.
And I just, I just close by saying
that there's a lot of truth, a lot
of truth in this great book.
Don't expect to have all the answers when
you graduate from here.
Go from here in humility as a learner
to follow Christ all your life.
Don't be intimidated by your mistakes and your
failures, your prayerlessness, your lack of evangelistic zeal.
You're still a human being and it's going
to take time to make the likes of
you and the likes of me like our
glorious Savior, Jesus Christ.
Let's get 1 Kings 18, the fire of
God, be filled with the Holy Spirit.
I'm not going to give an invitation tonight
because that's coming later in the week.
And I want you to think about it.
I want you to seek God in your
prayer closet.
But when you get that fire in your
soul, and many of you I know already
do, and it's an ongoing thing, you get
into 1 Kings 19 and you accept your
humanity.
And you accept the human factor and discover
in that chapter, when the earthquake came, God
wasn't in it.
The fire came, God wasn't in it.
The wind came, God wasn't in it.
Elijah went away and the still small voice
spoke to him.
Some of you will be spoken to me,
spoken to by God tonight, my somewhat loud
voice.
But others are going to be spoken to
in a more powerful way, quietly in the
Word of God in your own room or
through some soft-spoken, Spirit-filled speaker.
God is on the move.
Let's have absolute commitment, filled with the Spirit,
the fire of God.
I've known it to varying degrees every day
since my conversion, but let's make sure it's
with balance.
And it's got the, the, where the rubber
hits the road and the willingness to accept
not just the divine factor, but the mess
factor that all of us make and which
so easily intimidates us if we're not biblical
and balanced and committed to run the race,
Hebrews 12, right to the end.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank you for your Word.
Lord, you know that we just desire to
go on for you with all of our
hearts, to be your men, to be your
women, wherever you lead, whatever the cost.
Fill us afresh with your Holy Spirit during
these days, be it in the auditorium or
in the prayer closet.
May we put our hands on the plow
and not turn back.
And may we find biblical balance in the
many different areas we're wrestling within our own
lives.
Lord, bring a revolution of honesty to our
homes and our hearts, that we may not
pretend.
We may take off the mask and be
real and unafraid of the way you will
deal with us at that moment of brokenness
at the foot of the cross.
For we pray in the powerful name of
Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Only one life so filled with problems and
its troubles.
One life so very short, so much the
same, just empty bubbles.
My life so dark and void without my
Lord, my friend and Savior.
I choose to take his hand to guide
me his way.
When all is dark and cold, the waves
are high, the storms are beating.
I tell my Jesus all.
He knows the problems I am meeting.
If I should walk alone, that would be
wrong and bring me failure.
So I choose to take his hand to
guide me his way.
What is this life?
Just a few years, a crooked way with
all its fears.
Jesus draws near right on my road.
He is my all.
He takes my load.
Now I can walk in peace each day.
I'm going his way.
At last when life is done and I
go home with him forever, my song will
be the same.
He takes my hand.
He changes never.
I bow my knee to him, join in
the chorus of redemption and forever praise his
name that I went God's way.
What is this life?
Just a few years, a crooked way with
all its fears.
Jesus draws near right on my road.
He is my all.
He takes my load.
Now I can walk in peace each day.
I'm going God's way.