Can you turn to Acts chapter 15?
In Acts chapter 15, we find a very
interesting incident.
Sometimes the church seems to forget, or maybe
it doesn't.
Verse 36, some days after Paul said unto
Barnabas, Let us go again and visit our
brethren in every city, where we have preached
the word of the Lord.
Let's see how they do.
That's a normal thing.
We send people out to visit O.M.
teams in the summer.
See how they're doing.
Visit the O.M. bases and teams during
the year.
That's one of Viv Thomas' ministries.
See how they're doing.
Barnabas determined to take with them John, whose
surname was Mark.
But Paul thought it not good to take
him with them, who departed from them from
Pamphylia, and went not with them to the
work.
I'm sure your translation sounds a little smoother
than this old English.
Basically, Mark was somewhat of a deserter, having
left Paul's previous team.
So when Barnabas, great son of compassion, really
Paul's senior, wanted to bring Mark, they had
a communication problem.
Isn't that amazing?
Two great men of God, great heroes, were
all patterning our life after these people, and
they had a communication problem.
Verse 39, and the contention was so sharp
between them, oh, if we had only had
a movie, that they departed asunder, one from
the other.
And so Barnabas took Mark and sailed on
to Cyprus.
They were in the ships back then, as
you probably are aware.
Can we have that in a modern translation?
Verse 39, and there arose such a sharp
disagreement, that they separated from one another, and
Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away.
Any other words for contention and disagreement?
What does your Bible say?
Matilda, is that English?
Sharp disagreement?
Bob?
It's in Greek, it's from the Greek Scholar
Department.
Anybody else have some light on that word,
contention?
Well, I think we've got enough.
Paul chose Silas, plan B.
Paul chose Silas and departed being commended by
the brethren unto the grace of God.
And he went through Syria, Cilicia, confirming the
churches.
And of course, we know the result of
that particular trip.
Now, you can go right back into Genesis,
right through the Book of Revelation, and you
can make an amazing study on the whole
area of communication.
A high percentage of our difficulties in our
own ministry, on our own teams, are in
the area of communication.
And this is something that I think we
need to talk about far more often, and
study, and read about.
And I am still a learner, I can
assure you.
I had the privilege of going through David
Cummings' tapes a couple of years ago.
That was basically on communications to our prayer
partners, to our churches.
That actually is not my greatest burden, and
that's not particularly what's on my heart tonight.
It's an important area, unlimited scope for improvement.
But, you know, if a group of people
over here are not interested in getting involved
with OM, you know, fine.
That's not my biggest concern.
But if they're fighting among themselves and dividing,
that is what really puts an ache in
my heart.
God has given OM, it's frightening, a very
important ministry in building unity in the body
of Christ.
I don't know if you can imagine the
impact of the ship in this area.
As they go from port to port in
these cities, where the church is so divided,
even in Canada, there are people that said,
if this group is on the committee, we
are not coming onto the committee.
And let me just say something that's very
important, especially for so many of you who
are new.
Don't be naive about disunity.
Don't go praying some flippant little prayer that
all the Christians are going to all be
united together, until you study a little bit
of what's involved.
Because you are talking about something far more
difficult than sending the Dallas Cowboys to play
cricket on the moon.
Christians are of a tremendously difficult and different
viewpoint on many, many issues, and they are
not small issues.
Some of the things I touch on in
this little talk may be small issues that
can be overcome.
But many of the issues that are dividing
people and dividing churches are not small issues.
Just like oftentimes we are very naive about
some of the struggles people have in marriage.
I've been listening to John Stott today on
marriage.
I've been going through his lectures on the
contemporary school of Christianity.
Think of all the money and time they
pay to go to that school.
I've got all the tapes for nothing.
I have it right in my office while
I'm trying to shuffle around my papers.
And his lecture on homosexuality is brilliant.
Just brilliant.
And you know, he can speak on the
subject because he's a single man.
And the people who are crusading for, you
know, homosexuals to be able to do anything
they want and get married and all that,
and the strong push that says, look, how
can you deny a man or a woman
the privilege of sex just because, you know,
they are homosexual?
And of course this is based on the
fact that they don't think anybody can live
on the planet without sex.
And of course he, as a single man
who's lived in purity and reality, points out
that it is possible to have a fulfilling
life without sex.
Or without sexual intercourse because sex is a
bigger thing than sexual intercourse.
I don't want to get into talking about
those tapes because it's so great and so
vast and it's not specifically what I'm sharing
about.
I wanted to read something from this book
by Swinlow.
It said, John Wesley and George Whitfield were
good friends in their earlier years.
Wesley, having begun his outdoor preaching ministry at
Whitfield's Encouragement, as time went on, agreed with
Whitfield's leaning more heavily toward Calvinism, his younger
friend's Arminianism.
When Whitfield died, Wesley was asked if he
expected to see Whitfield in heaven.
In exaggerated but honest respect, he said no.
He will be so near the throne of
God that men like me will never even
get a glimpse at him.
Though differing, they did not lose their sense
of oneness in Christ.
It has been my observation that well-meaning
but narrow-minded evangelicals in this generation have
spent far too much time camping on a
few differences and thereby opening our ranks to
disunity and petty infighting and not enough time
accentuating the vast number of things that link
us together.
And the result has been weakness rather than
strength.
A divided, splintered, fractured body of Christian cripples
instead of that mighty army of cracked troops
he had just quoted from Onward Christian Soldiers
marching as to war.
What a powerful state.
Well, I don't think we need to go
into, because we're limited in time, great proofs
about the divisions in the body.
I'd rather share some of the areas where
probably Satan is trying to hinder us in
our own unity or things in our lives
which will bring disunity.
One of the great problems as we've emphasized
a number of times this year is when
you leave OM and you try to go
back to a so-called normal secular situation
and to try to communicate what you've learned
on OM.
The problem is not the lack of sincerity
generally.
The problem is a lack of communication skills
or other things which I'm going to touch
on right now.
I think you know by now one of
my favorite verses, it's not a favorite in
some ways, is where it says in Corinthians
let's not be ignorant of Satan's devices.
Let's not be naive.
And let us understand some of the strategies,
some of the methods that Satan has used
to try to bring disunity as he brought
disunity between Paul and Barnabas, as he brought
disunity between Whitefield and Wesley, though it was
broken down somewhere later on.
You know the greatest tragedy in Methodism is
that when the pressure came after Wesley's death,
though he predicted it before he died, greater
disunity came.
And of course Methodism is a growing segment
of Evangelical Methodists, but the Methodist church in
some places, if Wesley has to look at
it from up there, it must be something.
I don't know how he handles Heaven.
I guess he can.
Maybe he can't see it.
That sounds a little more sensible.
What are some of the enemies of reality
in this thing of communication?
Just a few that I would say, if
you work on some of these things in
your own life and avoid either one extreme
or the other, it will help you on
your team right now, the next couple of
weeks.
We don't want the next couple of weeks
to be miserable for anybody here.
I know you feel we emphasize brokenness, but
we are not trying to arrange your situation
so that you can get all broken up.
We haven't purposely put somebody on your team
or living in your flat who's a pain
in the neck so that you could learn
the crucified life.
God handles that.
We're actually wanting to arrange things so things
can go smoothly.
What are some of the things that often
bring disunity in the body, on our own
teams, in the church?
I've listed number one, not because of its
importance, but just to get started.
Rigid thinking.
That's very much linked with pride and prejudice.
Pride and prejudice.
Last year, we had to make a statement
to our leaders, especially to some other people
from different countries, to take it a little
easy on the Americans.
The Americans being the sort of big nation
with big TV coverage and their mistakes are
greatly publicized.
With Ronald Reagan not being the most popular
person in Europe and a lot of other
things, there were quite a few things being
stated last summer that really hurt some of
the Americans who were on the teams.
And that's sad because the history of OM
is a history of Americans generally trying to
esteem other nationalities and to, in fact, step
back and let the Europeans or Asians take
the lead.
This is almost policy within OM.
It doesn't always work.
But I've noticed it's especially been hard lately
for any dear soul from South Africa.
Everybody now suddenly thinks they're great advisors on
South African politics.
Most people don't know what they're talking about.
And I can tell you God is working
in South Africa.
One of the things God is doing in
South Africa is sending out workers.
Workers are more important than political solutions, though
we actually believe in law.
We know what our calling is.
And we have been having South Africans coming
on OM for 20 some years, some very
outstanding people.
Somebody once really hit me heavy that we
didn't have any black South Africans.
It is a very complicated situation.
They are not easily granted visas.
But how many Polish people do we get?
How many Saudis do we get?
How many Soviets do we get?
There are dozens and dozens of countries whose
injustice is just as great as the injustice
of South Africa.
All nations have injustice.
If they're leading the pack right now, let
God or somebody else decide it, not me.
It's interesting that there's an exhibition now in
London that people think is the greatest thing
going right now, just finished.
The Saudi Arabian exhibition.
Would you like me to give a lecture
on injustice in Saudi Arabia?
Did you receive one of the leaflets that
some of the dissidents of Saudi Arabia were
giving out at the entrance?
One of my co-workers put one on
my desk.
It's very interesting.
I think personally, as Christians, we should have
had a Jericho march around that arena.
If I didn't have so many other things
going on, I would have organized it.
Because they want all this freedom in Britain
and we cannot even have one believer, not
one Bible, not one church in that country.
And nobody says anything about it, including Amnesty
International.
The whole world, brothers and sisters, is filled
with injustice.
It's not just this country or that country.
The media is what affects our thinking.
We think the way we're told to think
to some degree, and it's highly complex.
It gets very emotional, especially when we see
some of the pictures.
And, of course, they show us the pictures
we want to have, and it's all very
short.
And it really takes a lot of prayer
for a movement like OM, and especially with
the ship Dulles headed in that direction.
I tell you, it needs a lot of
prayer.
But I have this burden that somehow on
all sides, we battle prejudice in our own
hearts, in our own minds.
We do have prejudice about nationalities.
Why don't we just be honest?
German people have prejudice about Swiss, Swiss about
Germans, Norwegians about Swedes.
A Norwegian told me once the only advantage
the Swedes have are good neighbors.
Every nation, every group has its prejudice.
You know, I can honestly say that I
just so love the Russian people.
I may not be a hundred percent delivered,
I don't know what that is, but my
trips to the Soviet Union, my studies of
the Soviet people, I just love those people.
I see right beyond their political viewpoint.
And I love the Polish people.
And I love the people of all these
different nationalities.
And I could, in some cases, care less
what nationality it is.
And certainly when he tells me his nationality,
I'm not going to immediately list in my
mind five things I don't like about that
nationality.
That is unchristian.
I heard such a great challenge, I was
listening to the tape twice, by John Starr,
who brought out that nationality and he said
nationalism in its more extreme form, he said
nationalism in general, but I think he was
referring to it in an extreme form, maybe
in a different definition than I do, is
sinful and wrong.
And I will tell you, I think he's
right.
Our loyalty is to the body of Christ,
our call is a revolution of love, and
we must slowly be set free from pride
and prejudice, and this means we are going
to have to learn how to love and
handle people who are filled with prejudice.
When you meet someone who is a real
racist, you have to learn to love him
as well.
And I found this a problem, after I
got a long time ago more free from
racism, which I never thought I had, but
I had it in its more subtle forms,
I became really uptight when I met a
racist, or someone I thought was a racist.
But you see, with God, love has no
barriers.
And when you meet someone who I have
a real struggle still to this day with
the Orthodox Jews.
It's a psychological reaction.
I see them in the airports, little curls,
the hats, the black, I don't know what
it is or how I pick this up,
but I get a negative feeling about these
Orthodox Jews.
Reform Jews, Jews I love, I love their
noses, great, but the curls, the black hats,
you know, and I've walked around Jerusalem where
I've heard of these people coming out of
their houses stoning, you know, Christians, and burning
their cars, and they are probably the strongest
enemies in the world to the Gospel.
I mean, these people are very, very, very
anti-Christian.
They have written books that say things about
Jesus Christ that you wouldn't want to even
look at.
But I saw the privilege of seeing that
little film, The Chosen.
It's based on a great novel.
I'm not a great novel reader.
I have to read so much that if
I want a novel, I'm going to go
see it in the cinema.
But I tell you, I saw that film,
The Chosen, and my heart just broke for
the Orthodox Jews.
In many ways, they are very beautiful people.
When you get beyond the first impressions, beyond
our prejudices, of course, we legitimately disagree.
I mean, I've met one on the train
in Belgium who believes that the modern Israel
is a greater enemy to Judaism than Hitler.
You know, I think he was really extreme.
He was a prophet, and he literally tried
to disciple me right on the spot.
And this guy just went for me.
And while Leon was with me, I saw
I was safe.
Amazing.
Divisions, actually, between these people.
So rigid thinking.
It's not easy because as Christians, we are
Orthodox and biblical Christians.
We have definite doctrines.
And again, forgive me for mentioning his name
too much, but it seems to me that
John Stott is a terrific example of someone
absolutely Orthodox.
And of course, some people in the world
would accuse him of having rigid thinking.
But he's Orthodox, he's evangelical, he's biblical, he's
very strong-minded.
And yet, as you listen to him, and
I have for many years, you read his
books, there's that love, there's that compassion, there's
that balance, there's that willingness to listen to
other people.
And I believe that he, and men like
him, are people that we can learn from.
So let's beware that number one enemy of
communication, rigid thinking coupled together with pride and
prejudice, realizing of course often on a nitty
-gritty, you know, on a team level, the
area of pride, it touches far more basic
things.
But we don't have time to get into
that right now.
The second enemy of reality in our relationship
building especially as we try to build a
relationship with different churches, is super spirituality.
Now you may think, well, oh, I'm just
so balanced now, we don't have that anymore,
our problem's the opposite, no spirituality.
Well, probably it's somewhere in the middle.
But let me just tell you that when
you go back to your home church, some
people, even emotionally without realizing it, they'll be
waiting for you.
And they'll be waiting for you to say
something that gives the idea that you feel
you're better than they are.
And to break this down is not easy.
One way is to take a legitimate interest
in what they are doing and in their
ministry and to never communicate that the missionary
is, you know, God's highest calling, especially the
likes of us, shouldn't have too much problem
in this area.
Super spirituality has caused terrific grief on our
teams.
Places like India.
Places like, well, the ships.
Different places.
It just comes in a most surprising way.
I think of the terrific emphasis in scripture
on humbling ourselves, on humility.
As you know, Eugenia Price has been an
influence in my life.
She says if you're sitting with someone over
a meal and they say something that really
just puts you off and you want to,
you know, really put them immediately right, she
says maybe one thing you could do is
just humbly realize, well, maybe they have never
had any light on that side.
This is a great problem that some of
us grow older.
How many of you are over 35?
Over 35.
That's it.
Quite a few of us.
Some of us are over 40.
Over 45.
Moving on.
And as we get older, there is a
danger that we are impatient with the new
recruits.
We think that they are going to learn
in the summer conference what has taken us
10 years.
Or just, not necessarily on OM, just 10,
15 years in life.
This is why often there is friction between
younger and older people.
I sometimes just presume anybody knows how to
go down the post office and send a
telex or make a long distance call to
Mongolia.
I mean the things I've presumed on with
some of the people that have worked for
me.
Very intelligent people, all of them of course.
Brought some very interesting side lights in the
OM program.
Beware of super spirituality in all of its
subtle forms.
And as you go back to your church,
try to be a good listener.
What's going on there?
Before you open your big combustion chamber or
whatever, try to find out what's going on
there.
Number three.
The third enemy is just the lack of
communication.
Faulty communication.
It's played havoc in my marriage, I tell
you.
It's a miracle that I survived 27 years
of marriage because what I would never do
on a team, I wouldn't be so dumb
to do on a team or in the
office.
I do, you know.
And I read a book about this.
It seems to be quite a common phenomenon.
A businessman is holding his whole business together.
He's a manager.
He comes home and he's a complete twit.
How can it be?
And this is me.
I'm still working on it.
And there's a fair amount of failure.
And one of the reasons is because I
have never developed a great enough gift in
the area of listening.
Listening.
Listen to people.
Perhaps this is a part of the danger
of life in the fast lane.
I thank God for this book by Gordon
McDonald, Ordering Your Private World.
Every time we put it on the table
and we offer it, all the copies go.
It's obviously there are quite a few people
around that would like to order their private
world.
And if that's the only book you get
exposed to in your time on OM, it
is worth coming to Europe for.
Because that is a brilliant book.
Go over to the book shop if you
have it in stock.
Use your private money or make a deal
with Christine and somehow get a hold of
Ordering Your Private World.
I've only seen a few Canadian films.
One was brilliant.
It was a little risqué.
I saw it one night when I won
a great victory over pornography and thought this
was a great victory.
It was a clean film, sort of.
How many of you have ever seen a
real Canadian film?
Raise your hand.
But it was about a Jewish fellow reared
in the back streets of Ontario.
His mother was a prostitute.
She did a strip tease in front of
all the local Jews.
Incredible.
That was the only bad scene in the
film.
Of course, I closed my eyes.
He, of course, broke from his Orthodox Judaism.
He fell in love with this daughter of
a top diplomat, Canadian government leader.
It was just a brilliant film about communication
problems.
I learned a lot through that.
That's when my wife was broken down in
a motorhome.
I had to fly on to Ontario.
I had this Monday night free.
I thought I was doing great.
I went to buy my son a magazine
in this newsstand.
There was one of these pornoholics.
An old guy.
I walked behind him and just saw over
his shoulder.
I tell you, God gave me great grace
to get out of there and get into
the movie.
It wasn't a total escape.
Faulty communication.
We're all so different.
Often, often, what we say has different meaning
to different people.
That happens all the time right in this
room.
Right in this room.
And we need to work on it.
Number four, the fourth enemy, of course, is
absolutely basic.
Another one of my greatest problems, impatience and
irritability.
Do you ever find that you get a
major victory over a really heavy problem?
You know, doctors told you you've got terminal
cancer, you go out of there, praise the
Lord, I'm going to heaven, terminal cancer, and
you lose the keys to your car.
The whole day is destroyed because you can't
find the key to the car and you
remember that you put one, you know, you
buy these little cases, little magnetic cases, you
knew you put one under there.
You went under there to look
for
the key to the car and you remember
that you put one under there under there
and you under there that you under there
and you remember that you put one under
there and you remember that you put one
under there and you remember put one under
there and you remember that you put one
under there and you remember that you put
one under there and you remember that you
put one under there put one under there
and you remember
that you put one under there and you
put one under there and you remember that
you
put one under there and you put one
under there and you remember that you put
one under there and you remember that you
put one under there and you that
you
and you remember that
you put one under
there
and you remember
that you put one under there and you
put one under there and
you that you put one under there put
one under there
and
you that you does that.
The world does that.
Christian secular rock artists had songs about that.
The Christian, because of Christ, is able to
forgive at the moment of impact.
Whether apology ever takes place.
I had a very moving experience a few
days ago.
The first director of STL, Paul Ingram.
A man who didn't last very long.
Well, he'd been backslidden for 15 years.
His marriage broke.
He got remarried, came back to the Lord.
Second wife came to the Lord and then
died of cancer.
And on Sunday, I met his third wife.
He now has children from three families.
And he came to me at the church
meeting Sunday morning up in Sunderland and he
said, you know, I want to apologize.
This is 24 years later.
I want to apologize for the way I
left STL.
And I thought and thought and thought and
thought.
As far as I know, I've never had
anything against Paul Ingram.
He did let me down.
He left in a hurry and a huff.
I knew he was under pressure from his
wife.
But, you know, it would have been really
daft for me to hold that against him
for 24 years until he came to me
and apologized last Sunday morning.
Now that apology helps him.
He gets that off his heart.
Fine.
But I had nothing to forgive.
Nothing to forgive.
We had a beautiful time of fellowship.
The apology is water above the glass.
Jesus fills the glass through his blood, through
the miracle work in your heart.
And if the person apologizes, it puts it
right and he or she should.
And there are cases when you have to
even talk to them about it.
I'm not excluding that.
That's water above the glass.
Your glass is already filled by the love
of God.
I tell you, it's a beautiful way to
live.
You never go to bed with anything against
anybody.
You may have memories.
We can't liquidate memories where people have hurt
us.
And we have to learn to deal with
memories.
We have to cast them on the Lord.
They may come back five minutes later.
Cast them again.
It's like fishing, fly fishing.
You just keep throwing it out.
Eventually you might even catch something.
So forgiveness is so absolutely basic.
And you know another key emotion that brings
a lot of chaos and a lot of
division is this whole thing of rejection.
You know, you can pray for me.
I've got a lot of struggles, a list
of all.
But I really find it hard when I
may have 15 positive experiences with a person
through personal fellowship, through letters, through serving them,
through loving them, through being at their wedding,
through writing, all 15 or 20 things that
have all been positive.
The person has been encouraged, they believe I'm
their friend, and all that kind of thing.
And then one negative thing and the whole
thing's finished.
I will tell you this has almost driven
me to despair in the past few years.
But God has given grace because I know
Satan is such a specialist at using negative
things.
We all want to build relationships.
We all want friends.
He who wants friends must show himself friendly.
And if you're going to develop relationships, you've
got to dwell on the positive.
And when there is a legitimate negative, maybe
your best friend fails to show up at
your wedding.
Maybe somebody fails to show up and give
you flowers at your funeral, of course.
That's usually the wife.
The wife gets upset then.
Don't, please, don't write off a lifetime friendship,
even a one-year friendship, on the basis
of one bad experience.
It may be a heavy experience.
You may have felt rejection.
But to, you know, to take that which
has been taking time, you know how long
it takes to build relationships.
You know how long it takes to build
marriages, to build the kind of relationships that
OM has right across the world.
Our prayer partners, our churches.
And we have situations in which one negative
thing, I remember this dear pastor, I was
working with him, visited him, preached in his
church, loved him, and his daughter went on
OM.
It was a Pentecostal church.
She was a Pentecostal girl.
I don't know what happened.
Went to Italy.
Somehow she started feeling inhibited about her tongue
speaking.
She went back, that got out to her
father that OM was not, you know, so
positive about tongues.
And we got a letter, we are through
with Operation Mobilization.
I will tell you, I didn't give up
on that one.
And I got him on the phone and
I just, I shared, look, we have people
coming on OM all the time that are
getting the gift of tongues.
We may have others who come on OM,
they meet different kinds of people and maybe
they lose, I don't know.
I said often these problems, these problems aren't
because they're coming on OM, they're because they're
people.
People change.
Most of the hyper Pentees, forgive the expression,
were once brethren.
Yeah, the group that shoots the Pentees the
most.
And many of the people who are anti
-Pentecostal, or at least perhaps have chosen a
little more non-Pentecostal road, many of them
came right out of the Pentecostal church.
So I don't think we can blame OM
because someone, you know, has this or that
experience.
Well, when I talked to that man on
the phone, you know, he backpedaled and he
wrote me again.
He said, we are praying for OM.
And I recently went and saw him again
and had a terrific time of prayer with
him and his wife.
The church is linked with us.
But you know, you don't always get that
opportunity.
They don't always write you a letter.
They don't always tell you what's on their
mind.
They just drop you.
People are like that.
We must get used to it.
And I don't think the average person, maybe
even Arnold M, realizes what we are up
against as leaders trying to maintain long-term
relationships.
We have relationships with prayer partners, relationships with
those who are giving, relationships with the churches,
relationships with new people, relationships with ex-OMers,
37,000 of them, relationships with new OMers.
And then we have relationships with each other.
If OM is to continue, we are going
to have to become a little more relaxed
with each other.
We're not going to have as much time
with each other as the work continues to
grow.
And when something goes wrong or we don't
get a birthday card or we hear a
bit of gossip, we somehow have to believe
the best and say, you know, 15 years
we've been linked, 15 years or five years
or two years we labored together, we're not
going to get one even nasty experience.
We're not going to allow that to hinder
a long-standing relationship.
And that should especially be true when people
leave.
The time of transition when you leave in
movement, if you've been in it for a
number of years, is a very vulnerable position.
I could write a book on it.
There's a lot of different emotion involved.
And we've had people that during three or
four years on OM had no really big
problems, but in the transition to leave, a
root of bitterness came in.
Maybe we didn't give them enough money or
maybe we had a case where they were
insulted because we tried to give them too
much.
I mean, there are so many rules in
this transition period.
And I just pray that as some of
you leave OM, they're only short-term, that
you'll realize that the great unity is not
whether you're in OM or not.
The great unity is that we are in
Christ.
Don't sit back developing a root of bitterness,
pouting, moaning, or thinking, why don't they write
me a letter?
I heard George Brower phones people, he has
never phoned me.
Don't do it.
Believe the best.
Probably if an OM leader knew that you
had a particular need, he might be on
your doorstep, you know, within the day.
OM is a movement to some degree, I'll
be very honest, that has run out of
energy.
Too many people, too many commitments, too many
problems.
It's all tied in with the church, it's
all tied in with the environment we're living
in, and we want to do so much
more.
We don't have the energy.
And I tell you, if I hadn't learned
my own limitations in ministering to people, my
marriage would have broke, I would have broke,
and who knows what else could have happened.
Beware of that subtle danger that comes in
when we're going through a period of sensing
that we're rejected, or forgotten, or not loved,
because it's one of Satan's greatest booby traps.
And then lastly, I've just put here a
very practical thing that brings disunity and confusion,
it's just a lack of discipline and organization.
I hope I can put some of my
Herman posters up, but I'm sure that is
not going to resolve the problem.
Vera puts a new one up for me
each week.
Each one of them hits me on the
nose.
We cannot separate the practical from the spiritual.
And I will tell you, if you want
to pray that OM can go forward in
this next decade, pray that God gives us
a few more spirit-filled administrators.
Spirit-filled people who do not consider paperwork
as second-rate, because paper is often the
key to people.
And by the way, you can't get married
without a piece of paper.
And I want to thank every one of
you who is committed to administration, committed to
organization, committed to oiling relationships.
Maybe a memo, maybe a book, maybe a
phone call, maybe a telex.
Do you think that sending somebody a check
on their wedding is a secondary thing?
Then you don't understand very much about people.
And yet we have seen in OM many,
many cases, things like weddings, funerals, different things
that are very important in people's lives are
just considered as a very secondary thing.
I tell you, if a friend of yours
invites you to come to his wedding, and
especially to the wedding and reception, you better
consider that a pretty big thing.
Maybe it's not true in your culture, maybe
there's some culture I don't know much about.
And I tell you, when a friend dies
and the funeral takes place, though it may
be a few hundred miles away, you better
get on your bus or your bicycle and
try to get there.
And just at least let that widow know.
Things are incredibly important sometimes for people, you
know, in the outside.
Those of us as Christians, all that we're
trying to do, we may not think that's
so important.
Or maybe that's something we learn as we
get older.
We do change as we get older.
Discipline, organization, keeping the phone numbers, being faithful
to what you're asked to do, just so
incredible.
They say in marriage, oftentimes, problems come because
of disorganization, mismanagement in the area of money,
keeping of the car, all kinds of pressures
that come in.
And then lastly, enemy of reality, I've written
down extremism and activism.
This is one of the dangers of OM,
we become hyperactive.
I'm still wrestling for balance.
If you don't think I've changed a little
bit, you obviously haven't followed me very closely.
And let me tell you, you'll not be
able to become less active without being criticized.
Not in a movement like OM.
It's not possible.
You're not going to be able to pick
up a set of golf clubs in the
middle of the day when everybody else is
working, walk off to the golf course without
people talking.
Not if anybody knows you.
And you've got to, if you're gonna survive,
and if you're gonna put into practice what
Gordon McDonald says in his book, because one
thing is to say it, another thing is
to go try to practice it, among God's
hyperactive, tending towards judgmental people.
I heard recently right here, somebody was telling
an ex-OMer that he was going on
a vacation, on a holiday, and this ex
-OMer said, Oh, OM has really changed, hasn't
it?
Well, I wish I were there, because I
can tell you, for at least 20 years,
we've been trying to get people to go
on holidays.
For a long time, I was a very
poor example.
There was a brand of schizophrenia going on,
and a lot of people never felt free
about it.
But certainly in the last few years, it
has actually be almost a written policy now.
And most OM people, when they go on
holidays and vacations, apart from getting some rest,
which they need, and some relaxation, a little
fun, most of them actually do very profitable
things.
They may read, they may listen to tapes,
they may actually show a little love to
their wife, probably the greatest need in my
life.
And I'm going on a vacation starting tomorrow
morning.
Well, extremism comes out in many different forms.
Extremism from a phlegmatic is almost completely different
from extremism in a choleric.
And probably the fact that I'm choleric in
temperament has caused much grief to OM over
the years.
You better look at Dale Roton.
Better follow Jerry Davey or Jonathan McCrosty.
Peter Mayne, he once told me he wished
he had a little more of my roar.
He does roar occasionally.
But if you're not a choleric, don't pattern
your life after a choleric temperament.
You'll get ill.
What can set him free and make him
happy will drive you right around the bend.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for this great book,
Dropping Our Guard, Dropping Your Guard.
And we want to increase in our love
for one another.
We want to increase in our communications.
We want to understand one another better, different
nationalities, different backgrounds, different denominations, different
temperaments, different ages.
And yet, Father, you don't die when there's
a shortage of personnel.
You don't die when we make mistakes.
You don't abandon us when we don't see
the breakthrough the first time.
We think of our work in Turkey and
Afghanistan.
We think of the setbacks in the Muslim
world, the setbacks in India.
Father, we believe that any setback that we
have to face in September or October, we
can use as a stepping stone to learn
better ways to do things, to learn more
about ourselves, to improvise, to pull back and
regroup.
But Father, we pray that whatever may happen,
we will not allow disunity to get in.
We will not allow judgmentalism and censoriousness and
harshness to get in.
That we will be quick to repent and
yet at the same time forgive the offender
before he even repents or apologizes.
Lead us if we're supposed to talk to
somebody about their sin.
Because we know that's another chapter in the
Book of Unity, a chapter of openness and
honesty.