A group of people were present who could
not understand English.
Translation took place, therefore, step by step into
six languages by means of interpreters.
This interpretation has now been extracted, but it
has resulted in there being a few places
where unexpected changes of tone occur in the
speaker's voice.
Nothing has been added to or taken from
the original message.
To the book of Joshua, the first chapter.
I'm sure all of us desire to live
in victory.
We want to see success.
We want to see God work, just as
Joshua wanted to see success in the plan
or the proposal that God had given him.
And God gave to Joshua some very clear
-cut instructions.
And I believe these are for us as
well this evening.
Let's begin at verse 7.
God had promised this land, and here we
read in verse 7, Only be thou strong
and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to
do according to all the law which Moses
my servant commanded thee.
And turn not from it to the right
hand or to the left, that thou mayest
prosper with it, soever thou goest.
And then verse 8.
This book of the law shall not depart
out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate
therein day and night, that thou mayest observe
to do according to all that is written
therein.
For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous,
and then thou shalt have good success.
Now this is a tremendous promise.
And I'm convinced if we take this to
heart, we would need even one more day
of conference.
Too many of us are conference Christians.
We've had meeting itis for years.
And we're never able to do anything until
we get conference-ized and challenged and spurred
and rebuked and everything else.
And then finally we launch off at least
for a few weeks.
Many a young person recommits his life every
year from the time he's six or seven
until he's tired of raising his hand.
And never to know real victory down in
the deserts and the front lines of everyday
living.
And basically it's because they never learn to
feed themselves.
They never learn to get their daily needs
for themselves from the word of God.
We all have heard many times about the
quiet time.
Every Christian should have a quiet time.
Every Christian should have his devotional time, whatever
word you want to use.
How many of us could stand up and
say, for the last six months I've known
reality and blessings in quiet time every morning
of every day?
Dawson Trotman, before he died, interviewed many missionaries
and discovered even a great high percentage of
missionaries were not having a systematic quiet time
with God.
This is basically what God was saying to
Joshua.
He was telling Joshua to have his quiet
time.
And he was telling Joshua to make sure
that he set aside every day for meditating
and feeding upon the word of God.
He says, but thou shalt meditate therein day
and night.
Not just in the morning, but in the
morning and at night.
In the book of Deuteronomy, we have some
tremendous verses along this line.
Chapter 11, verse 18, Therefore shall ye lay
up these my words in your heart and
in your soul, and bind them for a
sign upon your hands, that they may be
as frontlets between your eyes.
Ye shall teach them, your children, speaking of
them, when thou sittest in thine house, when
thou walkest by the way, when thou liest
down and when thou risest up, and thou
shalt write them upon the doorposts of thine
house and upon thy gates.
Very clear, isn't it?
The absolute importance of the word of God
in our lives.
Yet wherever I go, I find Christians trying
to live a Christian life without time with
God.
We get up early in the morning, but
because we lack discipline, because it's so easy
to get going in a conversation with some
person, it's so easy to spend extra time
taking care of our physical body, before we
know it, today's work has begun and we
haven't been with God.
And then, of course, we wonder why we're
not experiencing the reality and the victory that
God wants to give.
I want to tell you, out in India,
we have a very, very difficult schedule.
But I know that I can't afford, no
matter how much I have to do, I
cannot afford to miss that time in the
morning with God.
One mistake I made for many years was
trying to get time with God before getting
my body awake and alert.
This is why starting on Monday morning here,
we'll help you get alert with our physical
exercise program the moment you get up.
Because, you know, it really isn't very pleasing
to God when we sort of drift into
His presence in the morning half asleep, and
some of us have even developed the ability
to sleep while we're praying.
Maybe some pray while they're sleeping.
I don't know.
That's not so bad.
Verse that comes to my mind is, Whatsoever
you do, do it heartily as unto the
Lord.
Nothing wrong with sleep.
You sleep, sleep heartily.
And I can tell you, you laugh, but
in my years of Christian service, I've discovered
one of the greatest things you can develop
is the ability to sleep with everything you've
got.
If you want to stay healthy, you learn
to sleep well.
But then when you come to pray, pray
with that same intensity.
When you come to dig into the Word
of God, come with that same intensity.
And this will revolutionize your spiritual life.
No greater power, breaking down that dichotomy that
we've talked about much, than the meditation on
the Word of God.
I can say that 90% of the
Christians I've met in my life do not
have a quiet time, anything near as systematic.
Even when I was at Bible college, there
was only a small percentage of students that
knew anything about a real quiet time with
God.
It's no wonder that there's so much carnality
and so little victory and power in our
spiritual lives.
To many of us, this is an old
message.
And we like, of course, to hear new
things.
But unless we get this old thing, all
the new things we hear will always eventually
be of no avail.
Of course, we always have an excuse, don't
we, why we don't get our quiet time.
And by the end of the summer, I'm
sure you'll blame your team leader for not
giving you enough time in the morning.
Maybe he expected you to be ready to
work by 9.30. So you say, well,
we didn't have enough time in the morning
to get with God.
Just oh, and they're always running about just
9.30 in the morning, looming off to
do the work.
Not enough time for God.
Now, with that philosophy, what hope is there
for the man in the normal job ever
to live the Christian life?
There's none at all.
Because he cannot come in at 10 o
'clock or an hour late and say to
his boss, well, you know, I had a
great blessing in my quiet time this morning.
It was a little late, but you understand,
of course.
And one of my great burdens is to
testify to the layman, to the man in
the world, and many of you will be
in that position, that no matter where you
work, no matter what you do, you can
find time for God.
So it means learning how to use those
early hours of the day.
And that takes initiative.
This is the word that has come to
my mind almost every other day out in
India.
Initiative.
Taking the initiative.
That means not worrying about the problem, the
difficulty, or whatever might be missing, but on
your own steam, accomplishing what needs to be
done.
Were you determined tonight, in the beginning of
this conference, to have a quiet time?
To give God priority in your day?
Not literature, not O.M., not a summer
campaign, not driving a vehicle, or whatever else
you might be doing, but God.
Use whatever message you want.
I must confess, I'll be very honest, that
this past year, the one that has stirred
me almost every other morning is not Joshua,
nor Matthew, nor Paul, but A.W. Tozer.
Every time I've opened one of his books
in the past months, I've received breaking and
blessing beyond capacity to hold.
Most of us have this mentality, oh, we
must get it from the word.
And of course, the word of God is
a hundred times more important than any man's
book or anything else.
But all through history, God has spoke to
men through his prophets, through speakers, contemporary men,
relating the word of God to the problems
of their day.
And when I read a chapter of Tozer,
the verses that he uses, that he applies
to the contemporary situation, revive my soul and
cause me to want to press on for
God, and then drive me deeper into the
word.
I don't care what message you use, but
get the message that will drive the word
of God deep, deep, deep into your heart.
Everybody I meet has some kind of problem,
and we want to see our problems solved.
They'll have emotional problems, and they want to
see them solved more and more.
We see that the majority of sicknesses are
caused by emotional and psychological problems.
Again, all this year, I've just had this
confirmed every week, that the major source of
physical illness is emotional and spiritual and mental
problems.
And this means that these problems are very
deep in our psychological makeup.
But you know what can go very deep
right into where those problems are?
That which can go down into the very
depths of the word of God.
John chapter 15 says, Now ye are clean
through the word of God which I have
spoken unto you.
And I'm convinced that as we meditate day
and night in the word of God, it
will cleanse even some of the deepest problems
of our life.
I find that people today are plagued with
fear, and fears of various kinds.
And sometimes these fears are not even seen
on the surface.
And you will find this work of door
-to-door distribution a terrific battle if your
heart is gripped with various kinds of fears
of people and of situations that you will
be going into.
There are more than 50 major diseases that
can be brought upon your body through fear.
And his sister, a little misworry.
These two things have caused more illness than
all the microbes that you can get under
a microscope.
But again and again, when people have gotten
serious about the word of God, I've seen
them delivered from fear.
I've had letters even this past week from
people who were delivered from fear for simply
getting down to business with the word of
God.
2 Timothy 1 verse 7, God hath not
given us the spirit of fear, but of
power and of love and of a sound
mind.
Recently a girl wrote to me.
She heard me preach on that verse.
She claimed it as her own.
And was delivered from tremendous fears of her
own life.
Recently I spoke to a young man in
India.
He was suffering from a number of sicknesses.
He'd gone through all the tests, about a
half a dozen tests.
Doctors told him there's nothing wrong.
Till he saw that his problem was fear.
That when he went out into the streets
he had a fear of being beaten.
And the next time when he went into
the streets he claimed God's promise and he
received terrific victory and blessing.
And I think most of us are honest.
We've got to admit that there's some fear
lurking in our hearts tonight about this whole
work.
The very thought of knocking on doors in
France.
There's some little unrest in some of your
hearts especially when you think of your French.
But the word of God says I've not
given you the spirit of fear.
So when we read that, what do we
do?
Do we just pass over it?
Oh, that's another nice verse.
No.
God said to Joshua, meditate on it.
Take that verse and all day think upon
it.
In the morning, noon, at night think on
that one verse.
One verse in the subconscious is worth a
hundred in the conscious.
That's why we read so much in the
Bible about meditating and very little about reading.
I dare to say that many here are
probably Bible readers but you're never going to
know real real reaching of the word until
you become a meditator on the word of
God.
So this is the thought I want to
leave with you tonight that we make quiet
time the number one priority for this country.
If you're a weak person then you want
to get a partner.
You know, when I'm all alone it's very
hard to get my 6.30 exercise.
And my wife is so loving she always
lets me sleep an extra half hour and
then it's too late.
But almost all the time wherever I go
I'm with at least one other fellow.
We walk completely in the light.
He knows what a wretch I am, I
know what a wretch he is.
From there we can start building together.
And so in the morning we have the
opportunity of beating each other to getting the
other one up and helping him get the
exercises.
And through this system over the past two
years we've had a complete revolution in this
thing of bodily exercises which is so important
for physical, mental and every part of our
health.
And so we can do the same thing
with our quiet time.
If we find that we just keep slipping
on this we can have someone check on
us.
And it's a great blessing.
I just believe that victory this summer depends
on whether we really determine to become serious
about our meeting with God in the end.
Of course the word of God without obedience
is nothing.
We must come hungry and ready for obedience.
You know one of our greatest problems is
that we don't know how bad off we
are.
Many of us are not hungry for God
the way we should be because we don't
realize how far we are from God's plan
for our life.
We also don't realize the importance of obedience
or of discipline in our lives.
And above all this we live by feelings.
Many mornings this summer you're not going to
feel like getting up you're not going to
feel like doing any exercises that's for sure.
You're not going to feel like reading the
word of God you're not going to feel
like distributing books you're not going to feel
like being obedient to a team leader or
anybody else.
The greatest enemy without any doubt of a
victorious life is feelings.
Tozer says this.
He says to want a thing or feel
that we want it and then to turn
from it because we see that it is
contrary to the will of God is to
win a greater battle on a field larger
than Gettysburg or Bunkerville.
And there's a lot in that statement.
And I can tell you that decisive point
of turning from feelings to obedience is the
thing that will make a complete difference in
your life.
You know this summer we have to be
ready to be crucified.
And it's amazing what God will allow to
come upon us to bring us to that
point where we're truly dependent upon Him.
The same morning I wrote that quote in
my Bible I wrote this other quotation.
Tozer said, To do His supreme work of
grace within you He will take from your
heart everything you love most.
Everything you trust in will go.
Piles of ashes will lie where your most
precious treasures used to be.
I wonder how many of us are ready
for those kind of ashes.
You know those ashes are going to come
even more when we go back home.
In some cases this campaign can only give
the motivation for the action that must take
when you get back home in that normal
situation.
You know it's very hard for me to
communicate and every year it gets harder.
Six years ago when I went to preach
in a place people took one look at
me and expected nothing.
So whatever they got they weren't disappointed.
Now people come, they've heard some exaggerated story
or they've seen some ridiculous picture or something
else and they expect great things and no
matter what they go away disappointed.
And believe me, in many ways I would
rather be back in the desert of Rajasthan.
But I want to say this, I trust
you understand it.
We're interested in you.
We're not interested in a machine.
We're not interested in just seeing how many
tracks we can give out.
We don't even count them anymore in most
places.
We're not interested in just being able to
say we've had another summer campaign.
We've had so many hundreds that come with
us.
Another airplane has crossed the Atlantic and has
gone back.
So many souls have made decisions for Christ.
This means nothing.
If lives are not changed, if you don't
go back different, more like Jesus Christ, ready
to live in a lost world, then we
will have failed.
We will have failed.
I'd rather not have any more campaigns.
You know, I just pray that you'll see
what the Spirit of God wants to do
this summer.
What He wants to do in your life.
That this will not be soldiering for a
summer.
Some kind of a special holiday that you'll
be able to tell your grandchildren about many
years from now in your $40,000 home.
You know, about nine years ago, when I
began giving the orientation tapes at Moody Bible
Institute, some of the things, some of the
things I said, people really got upset.
I said some radical things about the condition
of the Church.
I said I believed that the Church was
completely hopeless to evangelize the world in our
present generation and its present state.
I said I didn't believe that any of
the evangelical churches or any of the so
-called New Testament churches were living and following
real New Testament patterns.
And that we needed reformation.
I used the word revolution.
And I...
Some of you have heard me make comparisons
in which I've, I believe, proven that our
situation today is worse than the situation that
Martin Luther faced.
Very few people comprehend this.
We American evangelicals especially refuse to believe that
we are pushing nothing but a carbon or
a false copy of New Testament Christianity.
And I can get it, I seem to
be able to communicate to very few people
how bad our situation really is.
How completely hopeless is the direction of all
of our schools.
You can imagine, when I said things like
this at eighteen years of age, it didn't
exactly get an applause from many people.
But now, in the past two years, the
works of Tozer have become widely known.
Though I lived two years in Chicago, somehow
in God's plan, I never heard him or
read his books, though I lived in the
same city.
I don't understand that.
But Tozer, in far clearer words, with twenty
times the intellect and experience, if you read
his writings, has said the exact same thing.
He says in one of his books that
we're making converts to an ethic, I don't
know how to pronounce that word, type of
Christianity that bears little resemblance to that of
the New Testament.
He says the average so-called Bible Christian
in our times is but a wretched parody
on true sainthood.
He goes on to say, yet we put
millions of dollars behind movements to perpetuate this
degenerate form of religion and attack the man
who dares to challenge the wisdom of others.
They're very hard words, aren't they?
Very hard words.
If it wasn't for the very hardness of
the dichotomy that we live in, we would
get very sick just reading them.
Thousands of Christians trapped by this blindness can
even wade through Tozer and come out untouched
and unchanged.
You can too.
You know what scares me, really scares me,
the deception of the human heart, the blindness
of the masses of people.
You'd think that especially we in America would
wake up by now, but we won't.
The masses have never woken up.
All of history proves that the masses have
never been right, and the message of the
cross will never be popular in any of
our campuses.
And it makes me really search my heart
to know what areas am I being deceived
in?
In what areas have I been blinded by
a degenerate religion?
And it drives me to my knees.
It drives me to the Word of God,
hunger after God, that He might be my
sufficiency, He might deliver me from this present
world and from this deception.
And I pray that in these days nothing
else will receive a fresh hunger for God.
Quite a few of you have come up
to me, and you were at Urbana, a
special conference that I spoke in in December,
for those of you who don't know about
it.
And you remember the response that there was
there to a rather unusual kind of invitation.
Yeah, where are these young people?
Not that they have to come on O
.M. That's completely irrelevant.
But I can tell you this.
Because they go out from that giant gathering,
many of them with hearts really hungry, if
there was anything there, there was hunger for
God.
They go back to their colleges, and the
Pied Piper plays, and the world calls, and
the deception is so great that within a
year, the vast majority might as well never
have come.
You say, how can you say that?
Well, history proves it.
So many commitments we have made, so many
tears we have shed, so many times we've
been to the altar, so many times we've
promised God we'd change, so many times we've
rededicated our lives, yet we remain.
One of the reasons, don't realize how bad
it is.
Don't realize how deep we are.
Don't realize how much it's going to take
to pull us out of this deception and
bring us into life.
On the day of Luther, many people were
interested.
Many were hungry for God.
Not only Martin Luther.
There were only a few.
Mainly him, who were ready to pay the
price.
Who really understood how bad the situation was.
Who refused to compromise and go back under
the deception, but who determined to stand.
And he stood.
And I believe it's the same today.
The deception is great.
Billy Graham says 95% of all Christians
are living in defeat.
We seem to be able to hear that
statistic, and it rolls off as if that
was nothing.
95% Christians living in defeat.
That very thought is enough, should be enough,
to drive us right into tears and crying
out to God.
It's going to take more than a summer.
In the past seven summers, you know what
we've learned?
We've learned a summer you can't do much.
But you know that's so typical of us,
especially from the West.
We want instant Christianity.
And some people are sure that if they
can get a month on OM, they're going
to come out a different person.
And we've got OMers that have been around
for a hundred months and have proven still
that OM doesn't make a person different.
Only God can do that.
And you and you alone will determine whether
God works through OM.
I just must read this other quote that
I put in my Bible recently.
He writes, The American genius for getting things
done quickly and easily with little concern for
quality or permanence has bred a virus that
has infected the whole evangelical church in America.
And through our literature, our evangelists, and our
missionaries has spread all over the world.
An automatic once-for-all quality is present
here that is completely out of mode with
the faith of the New Testament.
A summer on OM won't do it.
A year on OM won't do it.
But God can do it.
Take his word.
Meditate therein.
Day and night.
Allowing it to break down every area of
your life that's not pleasing to him.
Allowing him to make a pile of ashes
out of the things you cling to, love,
most of all.
Let us pray.
Our Heavenly Father, we're not willing by nature
to face truth.
We know by nature we're rebels against truth.
The pride of our heart deceives us.
The deceitfulness of our heart overwhelms us.
Lord, we look out over thy church.
We are part of that church.
We cannot leave it, but we plead with
thee.
Revive thy church.
Change individuals that we might know a New
Testament reality in our generation.
We ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Book of Numbers and chapter 13.
For we do so ask the Lord to
speak to us through his word as we
read it.
Father, we do praise you for the power
of your word, which is as powerful as
when it was written.
We praise you, Father, that we see it
at work in our own lives, day by
day, and in the lives of others.
Lord, we ask that it might be operative
in our lives tonight.
Father, we ask that, as we've prayed so
often before, we might not become used to
your word.
We might not become hardened to it.
But, Lord, that it might speak in a
living and a powerful way to our hearts,
day by day.
Open our hearts, Father, lead and guide us
to what we should meditate on tonight.
We ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Numbers chapter 13, and reading from verse 26.
George will be speaking after me, but I
don't know how much of what I have
to say there'll be time to say, but
we'll just go as the Lord leads.
Numbers chapter 13 and verse 26.
And they went and came to Moses and
to Aaron and to all the congregation of
the children of Israel, unto the wilderness of
Paranth, Chedesh, and brought back word unto them
and unto all the congregation, and showed them
the fruit of the land.
And they told him and said, We came
unto the land with it as our sentence
doth, and surely it floweth with milk and
honey, and this is the fruit of it.
Nevertheless, the people be strong that dwell in
the land, and the cities are walled and
very great.
And moreover, we saw the children of Anak
there.
The Amalekites dwell in the land of the
south, and the Hittites and the Jebusites and
the Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the
Canaanites dwell by the sea and by the
coast of Jordan.
And Caleb filled the people before Moses and
said, Let us go up at once and
possess it, for we are well able to
overcome it.
But the man that went up with him
said, We be not able to go up
against the people, for they are stronger than
we.
And they brought up an evil report of
the land which they had searched, unto the
children of Israel, saying, The land through which
we have gone to search it is a
land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof.
And all the people that we saw in
it are men of a great stature.
And there we saw the giants, the sons
of Anak, which came as the giants, and
we were in our own sight as grasshoppers,
and so we were in their sight.
I'd like to apply the different passages of
Scripture we'll be reading strictly to our situation.
Those of us who'll be going out on
teams during the next few days.
Because it's a very similar situation to the
situation that existed in this passage we read
and in some of the other passages, in
that we're entering into new territory, we're entering
into new sphere of work, of witness.
And I think we can learn some lessons
from the experience of the children of Israel
here and in other books.
We saw that in this passage the children
of Israel brought back an evil report of
the land.
They brought back a report which made God
seem very small in their own eyes, and
which exalted the circumstances, which exalted the difficulties.
And so we read in Hebrews that they
didn't enter into the land because of their
unbelief.
And if you'd asked those children of Israel
excuse me, if you'd asked those children of
Israel why they hadn't entered the land they
would probably have given you a number of
different reasons.
Some would have said it was because of
the children of Anak.
Some would have said it was because of
the Amalekites.
Some would have said it was because of
the Hittites or the Jebusites or the Amorites.
Each one would have had its particular reason
why they couldn't enter into the land.
And yet we read God's verdict.
He says it wasn't anything to do with
that at all.
It was because of your unbelief.
You saw something as bigger than me.
Although you profess to worship the living God
you thought that there was something greater than
I am.
And this is idolatry.
Although we may think that those Israelites were
strange and rather foolish people to react in
that way after all the wonders they've seen
God do, yet I believe that we in
our own generation are very similar, sometimes unconsciously,
to them.
And over this past year I've just been
looking back over it and thinking of the
different things that we exalt in our own
eyes to take on a bigger perspective than
God takes in our eyes.
And there are four things that particularly stand
out when I think back.
The first one, as we look forward into
the future we need to beware of, is
the thing that stumbled the Israelites.
They looked at the circumstances, they looked at
the evil conditions, they looked at the obstacles
in their way.
And they got so caught up with their
conditions, they got so caught up with the
problems that faced them that they forgot about
God.
And the whole report was concerned with the
situation in the land.
The whole report was concerned with the enemies
that faced them.
And they forgot the promises of God that
He would give them that land for inheritance.
And it's so easy for us, as we
work on the teams in different lands or
those of us who aren't going out to
no end, we're working in our own home
area, to make excuses.
To make excuses for why we don't see
God's blessings.
And to justify ourselves for the lack of
truth.
You find this wherever you go, people will
come up to you and they'll give this
reason, that reason, why God isn't blessing their
work.
Because of the hardness of the people's hearts.
Because we lack this or because we lack
that.
And yet we only find one reason for
failure throughout the Bible.
It's lack of faith.
Lack of faith in the promises of God.
And we need to beware as we go
out on teams of blaming other things for
a lack of truth, for a lack of
results in our work.
Another thing that we often exalt in our
own eyes and which we often use to
excuse our own lack of results, I want
to go quickly through these, is the great
men of God that we see down through
the history of the Church.
This might seem an insignificant thing.
It might not seem very important as we
admire the men that God has used in
the past or the men that God is
using in the present.
But in actual fact it's very subtle and
it's a very dangerous thing.
We look back into the Old Testament and
we read the life of someone like David.
We see the way that God used him.
We look back and we see the life
of someone like Elijah and we see the
way that God used him.
We look back and we see the life
of the Apostle Paul.
Or we look back and we see the
life of someone like Hudson Taylor.
And sometimes it can be discouraging to read
their lives.
And we wonder just how can I ever
achieve that standard?
How can I ever achieve that standard of
dedication as it seems to us?
And we use this as an excuse sometimes
for not seeing God being able to do
more in our own lives.
If you think of David, we admire him
so much for the things that he achieved
for God, the way he flew Goliath, the
things that he did throughout his life.
And yet one of the things which characterizes
David as he reads the Psalms is the
consciousness of his own sin and his own
unworthiness and his own lack of dependence on
God.
Over and over again through the Psalms you
find that he's bemoaning the fact that he's
so sinful and he's so wretched and he
can do nothing.
You read the life of Elijah and you
find the same thing.
We think of him as a great man
of God, a great man of prayer.
And yet the book of James says that
he was a man of like passions as
we are.
And it uses that to emphasize the very
thing which I'm trying to say tonight.
He was a man of like passions as
we are and yet he prayed.
He prayed fervently and God answered.
It didn't depend on him, it didn't depend
on his ability, on his training, on his
dedication.
He was conscious of his need of God
and he prayed fervently.
We think of the apostle Paul, a great
man of God.
Sometimes we tend to idolize him and set
him up as someone who is just someone
apart, very special.
And he was special in many ways.
And yet we should beware of just putting
him on one side as being an unattainable
kind of life to live as we read
into his own intimate life.
And we read when he pours out his
heart about his own failures and his own
weaknesses.
And the thing that he exulted in the
most was the fact of his own weakness.
As for time, he struggled against this fact
that he was weak until he realized that
this was the very thing that God had
wanted to show him so he could lift
him up and use him.
When I am weak, then I am strong.
These great saints bounce through the pages of
the Bible.
Each one of them was a weak man.
Each one of them was a frail man.
Each one of them was dependent upon God.
We think of the life of someone like
Hudson Taylor in a more up-to-date
year.
And you may have heard already the answer
that he gave when someone said that he
must find it very difficult not to be
proud because God had used him in such
a wonderful way.
And he said, on the contrary, he said,
he thought that God must have been looking
around for someone weak enough and frail enough
to take up and use.
And this is the kind of person that
God is looking for in our generation.
Someone who is conscious of his own failings.
Someone who is conscious of his own weakness
so that God can take him up and
use him without fear of him becoming proud,
without fear of him becoming swollen-headed, without
fear of him eventually falling through pride.
And I don't think that any of us
should be discouraged as we go out into
this coming year because we don't think that
we have abilities and talents and some kind
of what we call dedication.
The main thing that we should have as
we go out into this year is a
sense of dependence upon the living God that
he is going to do the work through
it.
And as we go out in that attitude,
we are going to see God at work
in our lives.
Another thing I was going to mention that
I was just going to go over briefly
is this attitude of so often wanting God
to bless us.
Wanting God to give us all blessings, blessings
all the time.
And we get caught up with these things
and we forget that the thing that God
is wanting to really teach us is to
get to know Christ irrespective of whether he
blesses us, as we call it, or not.
You remember how Jacob was so caught up
as he wrestled that night with being blessed.
I will not let you go except thou
bless me.
And yet he didn't realize that he had
already been blessed because God had touched him
and had crippled him.
And that was the blessing that he needed.
And this is the blessing that many of
us need tonight.
It's for God to touch us and cripple
us in our own strength so that we
rely on him throughout the rest of this
year, throughout the rest of the years that
lie ahead.
Finally, the fourth thing I'd just like to
mention briefly, the thing that's often we exalt
in the place of God is activity, works
of the Lord, doing things all the time.
I was down in Spain in the middle
of August and was with a team down
there, working down there.
I think at least one of you was
on that team.
And I was talking to the team leader
and he said that the one thing that
God had taught them as a team, the
thing that he seemed to have brought them
there, teach them was that he was more
interested in them than he was in all
that they could do for him.
And this is the thing that he taught
them during that time down there, that he
was more interested, God was more interested in
them as an individual than he was in
all their futile efforts to serve him.
It didn't mean that they didn't go out
in evangelism, but it did mean that they
went out realizing that they had a much
greater priority to know God.
Again, this reminds me of Jacob.
So often we push God to one side
and get caught up in activities.
So often we're afraid to be alone with
God.
And it's when we're alone with God that
he can move in and speak to our
hearts.
It's when we're alone with God that he
can reveal his will to us.
And sometimes what we need to do is
to get alone, not to come to a
meeting, not to come along and hear a
message, but to get alone and speak his
faith.
I wonder how many of us go along
to a meeting or to a film in
order to just blank out our minds so
that God can't speak to us.
I think there's great danger of this.
In the evangelical church today, just blanking out
our minds through meetings, through films, through books,
so that God can't get through to us,
because our minds are crowded with other people's
words and thoughts and ideas.
I can think of one young person who
is complaining that they didn't have enough time
to meet with God, that it was difficult
to get time to meet with God alone
day by day.
And that very day, when that young person
said that, in the evening, they were in
watching an evangelistic film.
Seems rather strange, doesn't it?
A Christian going to watch an evangelistic film,
not taking a contact along, just going and
watching, when they don't have enough time to
meet with God.
And sometimes we replace our communion with the
Lord, with some kind of thing that will
fill our minds, so that we're just running
away from God, running away from God, refusing
to acknowledge that what we need is to
get alone with Him, so that He can
deal with the basic difficulty, which wasn't the
lack of time, it was the lack of
desire for Him.
And so often we bring in these other
things to blot out our picture of God,
to exalt them in the face of God.
We remember that eventually the children of Israel
did enter the Promised Land, and I'd like
to read one or two verses from Joshua.
If we're really believing that we're going out
into this coming year, and we know that
we're going to put God first, we know
that we're going to exalt Him, we know
that we're going to recognize Him as all
-powerful, let's read what happened as a result,
when they eventually did begin to enter the
Promised Land.
Joshua 2, verse 24.
It's a bit of a different picture, a
bit of a different report, it was brought
back by the spies the second time.
Truly the Lord hath delivered into our hands
all the land, for even all the inhabitants
of the country do faint because of us.
Before, they thought they were grasshoppers in the
sight of the inhabitants of the country.
Now, they say the inhabitants of the country
do faint because of us.
They were the same inhabitants, well, they were
their children, but their attitude has changed.
The children of Israel's attitude has changed, and
they realize that God is with them.
And he says, Joshua said in the next
chapter, verse 5, Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the
Lord will do wonders among you.
Some of us are leaving tomorrow.
Some of us are leaving on Tuesday, to
move out on our team.
I pray that not one of us will
go out in any unbelief, in any second
bet, knowing that there's still some area that's
not committed to the Lord in our lives,
something we're still clinging on to.
I pray that not one of us will
go out tomorrow, into this coming year, completely
giving ourselves to God, for him to do
whatever he wants in our lives.
But I'd like us to turn on in
the book of Joshua, because although they went
in with such high-sounding words, and although
they achieved great things, there was another part
to the story.
In Joshua chapter 11, verse 16, Joshua 11,
16 says, Joshua took all that land, the
hills, and all the south country, and all
the land of Goshen, and the valley, and
the plain, and the mountain of Israel, and
the valley of the same, and it lists
the different places, the different peoples that they
conquered.
Verse 21, From all the mountains of Israel,
Joshua destroyed them utterly with their cities.
There was none of the Anakims left in
the land of the children of Israel, only
in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod, there
remained.
Perhaps we'll go out tomorrow, on Tuesday, or
whenever it may be.
We thank God I've given everything to you.
I'm going in, I'm going to possess the
land this coming year.
I'm going in, and I'm going to give
myself totally to worshipping you, to getting to
know you, to serving you, to witnessing to
others.
And we're going with this determination.
And yet we must be aware that there
are little areas that still remain.
Little areas that are still unconquered in our
own minds.
Little areas that we refuse to give up
to God, and we think they're unimportant.
Perhaps we haven't got a victory over some,
perhaps we just can't get on with someone
already, who we know is going to be
working on the same team.
We just haven't fellowship with them, we just
don't really know them.
And we know it's going to cause a
problem this coming year, and we're just trying
to ignore it, we're just trying to turn
our eyes from it, and pretend that nothing's
going to be difficult.
Perhaps there's some area of our lives that's
unsurrendered in terms of something we're clinging on
to, in the way of possessions that we
know God is asking us to give to
Him.
Perhaps we're clinging on to some relationship back
at home.
Some girl or fellow that we're interested in,
and we know it's not of God, and
we're clinging on to it.
Perhaps it could be so many things, and
we just think that they're not important.
We think that we can get by.
And yet as we read on, we find
that this isn't the case.
Turn with me to Judges chapter 16.
It says that only in Gaza, in Gath,
and in Ashdod, there remained unpossessed land.
Judges chapter 16, it says, Then went Samson
to Gaza, and saw there an harlot, and
went in unto her.
And we know the sad story of Samson,
and his defeat, and his imprisonment, and the
way that God's name was dishonored because of
what he did.
Samson went down to Gaza, that little place
that seemed so important, Joshua didn't bother to
conquer it when they went into the land.
It didn't seem to matter very much.
It was a place that eventually was a
place of defeat.
It was a place where eventually God's name
was dishonored, many years later.
Turn to 1 Samuel chapter 17.
1 Samuel 17, verse 23.
And as he talked with them, behold, they
came up the champion, the Philistine of Gath.
Gaza, Gath.
They came up the champion, the Philistine of
Gath, Goliath by name, out of the armies
of the Philistines.
What was the result?
The men of Israel said, Have you seen
this man, verse 25, have you seen this
man that has come up, surely to defy
Israel?
He came up.
A place of defiance.
A place where someone came out and shook
their fist in the face of God and
said, I defy you to conquer me.
A place of defiance where God's name was
discredited until along came David, foolish David, believing
in the promises of God.
And then finally, in Nehemiah.
Nehemiah chapter 13, verse 23.
In those days also saw I Jews that
had married wives of Ashdod.
Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod.
Three places that Joshua didn't bother to conquer.
Three places that he thought were so unimportant
that it wasn't worth bothering with them.
Three places that he thought wouldn't really cause
any problems during the coming years, and he
just ignored them and turned his sights on
them, and he just turned his back on
them.
Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod.
And they were the three areas in the
promised land that were constantly a thorn in
the side of the children of Israel.
Over and over again, these were the areas
that tempted and that tried the children of
Israel and were a cause of God's name
being degraded and God's name being defied.
Let's not, as we go out on extreme,
take these things lightly.
That little bit of lack of fellowship with
someone.
That little thing that we know we just
don't agree with a brother about.
That little misunderstanding we had with someone and
we still haven't put it right and we're
just hoping that he'll forget about it.
That relationship that we know isn't of the
Lord.
Let's be sure that before we move out
we put these things right.
There's a weekend at least before us to
do it.
It doesn't take long.
Just to repent and to ask God to
cleanse us and to fill us with himself
in preparation for this coming year.
Gaza, Gaza and Ashdod.
These are one of these areas in our
lives tonight that aren't given over to God.
A place of defiance.
A place where God's name may be defied
during this coming year.
A place of defeat.
A Gaza.
Some emotion that hasn't been given over to
God that the devil will come in and
use to pull us down.
Some Ashdod, some place of defilement.
These are the things, the little things.
Not always the big things, but the little
things that are going to mean either defeat
or victory during this coming year.
The book that I read during this past
summer one of the great blessings of this
past summer as I was away in July
was just a small book by Dawson Trotman
called The Need of the Hour.
And it just seemed to fit in with
the situation that we were working in at
that time.
In the land of Poland at the time
and brother had this book with him in
the house.
And we were going from place to place
and felicitating with different groups of young people
and speaking to them and presenting the burden
to pray for the evangelization of that land
as some are beginning to do and some
have been doing before.
Different people would come up with reasons why
it couldn't be done.
Perhaps it was the Amalekites.
Perhaps it was the Hittites.
Perhaps it was the sons of Anak.
It was the lack of literature.
It was the lack of funds.
It was the lack of transport.
It was the lack of this.
It was the lack of that.
Every kind of reason why the job couldn't
be done.
And Dawson Trotman brought out in this little
booklet some of you have heard this story
before if you were at the August conference
but it was such a blessing to me
as we were going around and it seemed
to apply so vividly.
And Dawson Trotman said how he was meeting
with a group of German young men shortly
after the war and he was presenting this
burden that was on his heart for the
evangelization of Germany.
And not only for the evangelization of Germany
but the Germans would move out to reach
the world for Christ.
And he spent several days with them each
night meeting with them for several hours each
night and presenting this to them.
And he said if you have any questions
come across your mind just fire them at
me.
Any objections.
And as he spoke different ones got up
and said well we can't do it because
we don't have the funds.
We're a defeated nation at that time.
We don't have the funds.
You Americans are so wealthy.
And Dawson Trotman said when the Lord Jesus
Christ sent out his disciples he sent them
out without any funds.
And they got up and said we don't
have any transport.
We just have bicycles.
And Dawson Trotman said the early disciples didn't
even have bicycles.
And some other young man got up and
said we don't have the literature.
We don't have the word of God in
great supply.
We don't have Christian books and facts.
He said when the disciples were sent out
they didn't even have the New Testament.
And finally one young man got up and
he was very bitter and he said he
said you don't understand our situation here.
This particularly applied to the country we were
in at that time in July.
He said you don't understand the situation here.
He said our souls aren't our own.
We're an occupied country.
There are foreign soldiers roaming the streets.
And Dawson Trotman said when the Lord Jesus
Christ sent the disciples out the situation was
the same.
Roman soldiers were in power.
They were a defeated nation.
They were an occupied nation.
And he said how just that time showed
to him hammered home to his heart how
the Lord Jesus Christ sent out his disciples
how the Lord Jesus Christ began to build
his church at the very time when the
situation was the most difficult.
When everything seemed to be against the spread
of the gospel.
Not only things we've mentioned but the authorities
the Jews the Romans the Greeks everyone was
against the spread of the gospel.
And he said he just told him that
the Lord Jesus Christ was or God just
arranged it that it should be at that
time so that we should be without excuse.
So that we could never come and say
well we couldn't get the job done because
we didn't have this or we didn't have
that or this difficulty was there or that
difficulty was there.
And we're just without excuse because it's not
the reason.
And he said what was the need of
the hour the need of the hour for
men and women who would take God at
his word and believe his promises.
It wasn't always external things it wasn't big
campaigns it wasn't gospel film shows it wasn't
rallies it wasn't literature it wasn't vehicles it
wasn't anything except men who would take God
at his word and believe his promises.
As we go out into this year let's
determine that we're going to be men and
women like that.
Let's determine that we're not going to make
excuses we're not going to limit God by
situations by circumstances by unbelief but we're going
to take him at his word and say
no matter what the situation whether it's a
hard area externally perhaps in the Muslim world
or whether it's a headquarters situation where it
seems that so many people from so many
nationalities and so many churches it's just impossible
for them to work together in unity whatever
the situation let's realize that that isn't the
reason for defeat the reason for defeat is
if we allow that to become bigger than
God if we allow that situation to take
on a more important take on more importance
than God and allow to allow that to
become an idol in our hearts.
Let's pray this prayer as we go out
into this coming year that Joshua told them
let's just in our hearts make this determination
as Joshua said to the children of Israel
sanctify yourselves for tomorrow the Lord will do
wonders among you sanctify yourselves for tomorrow the
Lord will do wonders among you and he
will.