What a challenging day this has been.
Praise the Lord.
Let's just pray.
Oh Lord our God, we thank you for
all that you have done today in individual
lives.
We thank you for the privilege of gathering
in this way and to feed and receive
so much information and challenging material.
We thank you for this church.
We praise you that you are going to
send out laborers from this church.
Lord, we just commit now this, in some
ways, brief time to you, that we may
really do your will, even in this meeting.
In Jesus' name, amen.
My great problem is that I always have
too many messages on my heart, and I
find it very difficult at times to know
exactly what to share.
I'm not one of these persons that's always
100% sure what the will of God
is.
I even have some doubts whether I should
even be in Memphis right now, because I
feel so strongly that I belong back with
my wife and my two sons.
I don't think we can comprehend what it
is for some people to be separate from
their wives.
Sometimes, just thinking about it, I almost start
crying.
I was taught, of course, as a little
boy that crying was for sissies.
So, before I was converted, I was declaring
all-out war against tears.
So ashamed, whenever I cried, I'd go hide.
And it was a wonderful experience when I
came to know Christ.
I discovered I was allowed to cry.
Isn't that great?
Jesus wept.
Paul wept.
And I hope that if you feel the
need to cry in these days, you know,
just cry.
You want to come in my office and
cry?
I can assure you, if you cry in
my office, I will definitely cry.
We will have a Niagara.
Now, that doesn't mean we live.
We don't bathe in our tears.
We just, you know, out and away.
I try to talk to my wife every
day on the phone, because the phone rates
are now much cheaper.
You can direct dial from Memphis.
Isn't that exciting?
It's also dangerous.
But, overall, I took the gamble and I
came here, and I think and hope that
I am in God's place.
And it's the same way about this message.
I'm not sure this is God's message for
tonight.
But I'm going to take the gamble.
The message has a title because you're all
so diligent in taking notes.
It's too late to go get a pencil
now.
But I call this message Foundations for Communication.
Now, sometimes I've given a similar message called
Foundations for Communication in Marriage.
But I don't think we have enough married
couples tonight to justify that effort.
So, I'm just going to talk about basic
principles of communication.
However, let me say that in marriage, communication
is absolutely essential.
I once counseled a married couple.
They had no communication for six months.
You know, except, you know, pass the butter,
warm up the coffee, have you washed my
socks, you know, real, real heavy stuff.
And when there's no communication, the devil is
very clever in getting in.
As we launch out this summer to Europe,
we must communicate on our teams with one
another, with the leaders.
We have to learn about the, to communicate
about the things that really warm our hearts.
But we have to learn about, to communicate
also about some things that may be bothering
us.
And I want to just give you some
of these basic principles that God, because I'm
a slow learner, has been trying to burn
into my soul over these many years.
You know, we're all in God's university.
Some of you feel you don't have enough
education.
You're like me, I've got a great desire
to go back to school.
It's one of many desires I tend to
have to put on the altar, because I
don't think that's the Lord's plan.
But you know, it's wonderful that we can
be constantly studying, constantly reading, constantly learning.
All the time I'm listening to new cassette
tapes.
All the time I'm reading new books.
I subscribe and read to a couple of
dozen periodicals.
I receive prayer letters from several hundred missionaries,
including O.
Emmers.
Always learning.
Someone once said, well, when do you prepare
for your sermons?
Of course, I have to have specific preparation.
These notes didn't just jump, you know, off
a cloud into my Bible.
But I feel in another sense that my
whole life, everything I'm doing, everything I'm living
out, is preparation for my next message.
And that next message must be in total
line with the way I'm living.
Cannot be separate from what I'm living.
Doesn't mean that I'll be living in the
exact same par, because the message often will
represent my goals.
But I feel this is one of the
most important aspects of what we're going into
in this work.
Our desire is to put into practice that
which we say we believe.
I hope that's one of the reasons you're
coming on this summer effort, those of you
who are coming.
To put into practice what you say, and
some of you have been saying it and
singing it for a long time.
And if we're going to do that, we've
got to learn to communicate.
We were sharing in the leader session this
morning about relationships.
And I shared with the leaders, they're just
leaders in training.
It doesn't mean they're ever going to be
leaders, at least in the next couple of
years.
But I shared how every relationship will be
tested.
Some of you are beginning to build friendships
here.
Friendship is the first stage, or should I
say the second stage of relationship.
The first stage is acquaintance.
Some of us, we're only making an acquaintance.
But praise God, many an acquaintance I made
years ago, in God's timing, became a friendship.
A friendship blossoms into a relationship, where there
can be continued fellowship and prayer and unity
to work together in God's Word.
There's a lot of emphasis on this in
the New Testament.
Let me, for example, just share one of
the verses that again and again has challenged
me along this line.
In the book of Ephesians, the book of
Ephesians, chapter 4,
verse 30, I
hope I can speak one of these evenings
on be filled with the Holy Spirit.
It's the message that I sense I need
to speak about more than almost any other
message.
Be filled with the Holy Spirit.
That's not some super spiritual experience for a
few people who stay up late, or who
fast near unto death to get some extra
blessing.
That is an extremist, ascetic view that will
help very few.
The fullness of the Holy Spirit is basic
crucified living.
It's for every Christian.
Some seem to come into this walk with
God because in a sense it's a walk
with God.
It's a lifestyle by crisis.
Others by process.
Many more by crisis and process.
Be filled with the Holy Spirit.
I believe if you yield your life wholly
to Christ and experience something of the cross
and the lordship of Jesus, that you will
be a spirit-filled person.
But you will have to be filled again.
And also there's a danger that as a
spirit-filled person, you will grieve the Holy
Spirit.
Some of you may use the terminology the
baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Whether you use that terminology or the fullness
of the Holy Spirit, you'll have to agree,
I believe, that it is possible to grieve
the Holy Spirit.
We often do.
And this is especially true in our relationships
one with another.
We grieve the Holy Spirit by an unkind
word, by a wrong action or reaction.
And the actions are easier to handle than
the reactions.
I do all right if I have a
couple of minutes to think about it.
It's the split-second stuff on the telephone
that sometimes disarms me.
Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.
31.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and
clamor and evil speaking be put away from
you with all malice.
And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another.
Forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's
sake, has forgiven you.
Let me read this in the New International
Version.
Chapter 5, especially starting at verse 31.
It's beautiful.
God has so spoken to me again and
again through these words.
I pray that you will let the Word
of God speak to your heart.
We're not here mainly to hear man's ideas,
even man's commentary.
We want to hear the Word of the
Lord, and He uses His Word to speak
to our hearts.
And as we listen, as we pray, that
Word becomes real and personal.
And we experience revelation in our hearts of
what it says here.
In print.
Hear the Word of the Lord.
Ephesians chapter 4, verse 31.
Well, let's read from verse 30.
Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God
with whom you were sealed for the day
of redemption.
Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, brawling,
slander, along with every form of malice.
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving
each other, just as Christ God forgave you.
Then it goes on about being imitators of
God as dearly loved children.
If we go to Europe with this kind
of reality, we will make an unbelievable impact
for God.
You may feel at times that people don't
like Americans, and there are many around the
world who do misunderstand, and others who don't
like Americans.
That will be no problem when this Holy
Ghost reality is burning in your life.
I find no opposition to any great degree
to the Americans who are with OM and
who are by their life demonstrating this kind
of Holy Spirit reality.
Most of our fields in OM will take
all the Americans and certainly all the Canadians
and Mexicans that they can get, and especially
so if they have some of this Holy
Spirit reality in their lives.
It's this kind of reality by God's Spirit
that's going to enable us to build relationships
and to learn some great things about fellowship
and communication.
Now, Satan will counterattack this, and he will
try to hinder us, and he will try
to discourage us.
And I pray that you'll not be discouraged
by any failures in the area of communication.
In some ways, it's a high art.
We live in a world that has become
almost a semantic jungle, and it takes perseverance
to learn how to communicate.
I've often said that I feel OM is
a greater preparation for marriage than it is
for missions.
Some mission societies are upset with us because
we don't send them enough candidates, though we're
trying very hard.
They fail to realize that a high percentage
of people that come on OM, especially in
Europe, they are not people who have even
thought of becoming missionaries.
They don't feel that is God's will for
their life, and that is their privilege.
And it is not our job to put
a guilt trip on them because they want
to go back into secular work.
And the majority of Europeans come on OM
because they feel relaxed about it, and they
feel it is a training program for life.
Of course, many of them do end up
going to Bible school and going on into
missionary work.
An amazing number.
There are ex-OMers in almost every nation
in the world.
But our first burden, and if any leader
disagrees with this, there's no problem.
He's wrong and I'm right.
It's simple.
You don't have any problem.
He may have that as a personal burden,
that his biggest personal burden is to get
people in the Muslim world.
And of course, I can understand it when
he expresses that, expresses it that way.
But overall, as a movement, in sensing everything
that all the leaders are feeling and praying
about, we feel our first burden is to
see spiritual revolution in the lives of the
people who come with us, to see spiritual
growth, to see spiritual health, and to see,
therefore, a foundation laid for marriage.
We are preparing people as much for marriage
as for missions.
And if your marriage isn't on a solid
foundation, and now, before you're married, is the
time to prepare.
People often say, well, it isn't fair to
marry couples.
Boy, do you hear what they said?
If I have 10 kids, they may not
even take me.
Here's some of the murmuring.
But if people would only understand, we as
a movement have our limitations.
We cannot take everyone.
And the organizational effort to handle one family
is equal to the organizational effort of 10
to 20 single people, without any question, in
this kind of work.
And any family that comes in OM, I
hope you see it as a very real
privilege.
If not, just don't come.
Because we are looking for people before they
are locked into marriage, because in 25 years
of experience, we have found so many married
couples have just launched into marriage without getting
some of these very basic things sorted out
in their lives.
And though in some cases in OM, we're
able to, you know, get these things sorted
out, and I, for one, especially take a
lot of married couples into my team.
My other leaders are always on me about
taking too many married couples.
So don't misunderstand what I'm saying.
But I believe that a lot of our
marriages would be doing a lot better today
if somehow there was more training and preparation
for marriage.
When I went to Bible college, there wasn't
a single course that taught anything in relation
to preparation for marriage that I can remember.
I must have forgotten something.
Maybe I repressed it.
I don't remember any instruction or training about
rearing children, though I did take a course
in child evangelism.
Maybe that was supposed to be the key.
In one sense, marriage is God's graduate school.
The single life is the undergraduate program.
It's easier, less strenuous, more free.
But when you're married, you're locked into a
lifelong thesis, so to speak, and you're in
God's graduate program.
I'm so thrilled when I meet so many
ex-OMers, often in their own countries, going
on for God with happy marriages.
That just excites me.
In fact, I may be getting on a
tangent because in many places, I prefer to
speak about marriage than missions.
And one of the reasons is in Europe,
if you speak about missions, and it's true
in some places in this country, the people
you want to talk to don't come to
the meeting.
It's sad.
I don't agree with that.
It's sad.
And I'm finding now when I take a
weekend of meetings with the church, I say,
don't call it a missions conference.
Call it a spiritual life world outreach conference.
Something, because the word missionary and missions is
so misunderstood.
It's so loaded with funny little connotations.
And we have so many false ideas of
what a missionary is.
What a challenge.
Communication.
What are some of the specific things we
can learn on OM this summer that will
prepare us for marriage or prepare us for
teamwork?
Some of you are going to be single
all your life.
You've been praying hard.
The Lord would lead, leave you single.
I've met too many of those and you're
going to be in the single life, but
you're going to be on a team.
You have to learn to relate to people.
You're going to be in the church.
We feel there must be a continued strong
emphasis on the local church.
And we want you to know how to
relate to people in a local church.
I have a whole message.
I won't have time to give it at
this conference, but it gives the reasons why
I feel so committed to the historic church.
It's called why I remain in the church,
even when at times the church may be
lukewarm.
I won't give you that now.
It's not time.
The first thing I believe we have to
learn is we must learn to be more
unselfish.
Write it down, underline it.
Selfishness is so unbelievably easy.
In the next couple of days, you're going
to be given a memo about manners.
Manners is a simple way of being unselfish,
considering the other person in food, in sleep,
in practical things.
And if we can go to Europe just
a little bit more unselfish than perhaps some
others that we may meet, then we're going
to minister to them.
Philippians chapter 2 teaches that we should esteem
others better than ourself.
I want to say that I am still
very much in God's school in this area,
learning to be unselfish without going extreme and
becoming an ascetic, neglecting my body, developing a
wrong image about myself, and arriving therefore at
the point where I do not have a
healthy, sane respect for myself and my own
body that God has given me.
It has to be kept in balance.
Like everything else we talk about this week.
If you heard the orientation tapes, you heard
the funny little illustration about the apples at
Bible school and how everybody takes the apple
until the bad one is left for the
last person.
Oh, that there may be a revolution of
unselfishness in every practical aspect of our life.
It's more blessed to give than receive.
You'll never understand OM until you understand that
in all that we do, we want to
esteem our brothers and sisters in poorer countries.
You're going to wonder why we're driving at
times old vehicles.
Why is George Burrward driving around in a
seven-year-old Renault that's worth about $100?
One of the reasons is because I want
to esteem my brothers and sisters in India
and I want to channel any money for
vehicles, all that I can pray in, out
to them.
I want to think about them.
Now, I still need some transport so that
I can carry out this vision to serve
them.
And in Europe, it seems best for me
to use this little old Renault.
And then after a few years ago, for
all of our international travel and so that
we could live together, my wife and I
prayed and trusted God for a five-year
-old, much better van, a rather large van
that's converted into a little tiny house.
Some of you will see it.
And that has enabled us to survive some
of the so-called pressure of the middle
years.
I believe that in the whole area of
expenditure for transportation and everything else along that
line, we find one of the most difficult
areas to find balance.
In fact, I'm just writing a new tract
on the simple lifestyle.
Let me share something almost for the first
time in this form to help some of
you old-timers.
You like to hear something new.
Jonathan McCrosty is very worried about this memo.
He's arch-conservative on spending.
Peter Maiden, our leader in Britain, boy, this
memo ministered to him.
He wants it published everywhere in magazines.
McCrosty gets me, Hey, have you sent that
out to any other people?
So I have to get together with Jonathan
to see what's wrong with this memo.
Anyway, I'll share with a little about it.
I have come to see that if we
are going to give ourself to world evangelism,
4 million people, 4 billion people, 4,000
million, we say in England, if we're going
to really do the job, we cannot live
the kind of simple lifestyle that some people
talk about.
For example, I don't know everything about the
book, Rich Christians in a Hungry World.
I just know that with that general line
of thinking, I am not actually totally in
agreement.
And I believe a lot of the thinking
in that area, I'm not saying necessarily that
book, but in that area, number one, there
is not enough emphasis on world evangelism, reaching
the world for Christ.
There seems to be more emphasis on social
change and giving everybody a bowl of rice
and a lot of other things that are
somewhat unrealistic.
If we really look where Russia is and
what Russia is planning to do and a
lot of other things around this crazy planet.
And I feel a lot of the emphasis
on the social side of things.
And I lean that way myself.
Don't misunderstand me.
And I'm very concerned about the lack of
reality in that area.
But I feel it quickly becomes a tangent.
And we lose the priority of spiritual revival
and world evangelism.
The reason we like to practice a simple
lifestyle as much as possible.
We don't like to spend too much money
on ourselves.
The reason we mainly use secondhand clothing and
a lot of other secondhand things.
By the way, there's some things you can't
use secondhand.
You write me, I'll let you know what
they are.
Is to release more money for Bibles.
To release more money to get the gospel
to the ends of the earth.
That has always been the heartbeat of the
movement.
And if some men are going to be
raised up by God to really support God's
work around the world.
I don't think they're going to be able
to have the kind of minimum salary that
some people suggest if we're going to live
a simple lifestyle.
And even within a work like this, we're
going to have to spend money.
Some people have criticized the ship because it
was out of line with their simple lifestyle.
Actually, this ship is relatively simple lifestyle.
Had very old ships, very small cabins.
But of course, it does in total 300
people cost a bit of money.
Nothing like 300 people living in this country.
Probably maybe one third of what it would
cost to live in this country.
But if we're going to evangelize the world,
we're going to have to learn how to
spend money.
For some of you, that's hard.
For instance, I could have a much more
simple lifestyle if I could give several hours
every week to start a vegetable garden.
Some of the books suggest that.
But you see, time is money.
If I start giving myself to a vegetable
garden, there's many other things I could do
around the house to save money.
Endless things.
I could be puttering around my little tiny
house in London, which I have rent free
and answer to prayer a long time.
But then I wouldn't answer those letters.
We wouldn't get that next 10 million pieces
of literature off the press.
The 30 or 40 film projects we're into
wouldn't come to pass.
And an awful lot of other things we've
been doing for 20 some years, it just
wouldn't be.
And I wouldn't be here because I couldn't
be away from my vegetable garden that long.
And I had to fly here.
In many ways, I'd love to come here
by water bicycle or canoe.
But it would be a long journey.
So I had to spend $300 to get
here.
And I could say in my mind, $300
could buy so many soybeans for this man
living in Somalia who is starving.
This kind of thinking is utterly ridiculous.
Because unless God raises up some men of
integrity, unless God performs a spiritual revolution in
the very fiber of our being, most of
the money that goes out to these countries
is wasted because they don't have men of
integrity and ethic and discipline who can organize
and manage and make sure the food that's
given gets out to the stomachs that need
it.
We need men in the world today, unselfish
men, crucified men.
And those men will have to know how
to spend money as well as how to
save money.
The battle will be perpetual all their lives.
And we'll have to reframe from judging others
in a complicated world.
So lifestyle is important in OM.
We want to be unselfish.
We want to be radical.
But at the same time, we want to
evangelize the world.
And that means we're going to have to
have some office machinery.
I used to force my secretaries to work
on the most weird, outdated office equipment you
can ever imagine.
It's a miracle some of them weren't killed
by flying keys that came loose.
Now, to this day, we don't believe in
OM.
We should just flippantly buy the most expensive
office equipment.
We pray.
We try to find it at a lower
price.
We try to look for good secondhand things,
not junk.
And so there's a lot we can do
to remain simple, to stay in union with
our brothers and sisters in poorer countries.
Why is it that so many young people
in poorer countries have so linked with us?
Why do we have 400 workers in India
just willing to do almost anything there for
the sake of the gospel?
Because they know our manner of life.
And they know the way we live, even
though there are always problems when there is
an amalgamation of people from such very, very
different cultural backgrounds.
Number two in this building foundations for communication,
and a long way to go.
David Hicks will appear in the door sooner
or later.
Learning to be patient.
This is so important.
How many of you, like me, have had
some really serious difficulties with your temper?
I'm not talking a little irritability and you
get a little upset and saying, Oh, I
mind.
Would you mind not doing that?
I'm talking about people that, you know, you
really, you know, raise your hand.
Any of you in that category?
This seems to be a national disease.
And I want to tell you your time
on Operation Mobilization is going to give you
a glorious opportunity for you to see that
temper crucified and crucified and crucified.
And not only your temper, but God wants
to go right down into the disposition, right
down into your very attitude and teach you
the way of patience.
The New Testament talks more about patience than
it does about evangelism.
I won't take the time to give some
of my favorite illustrations, but there is no
area.
Well, there are one or two other areas,
but perhaps.
Patience.
It's hard to know what is your greatest
problem, isn't it?
You know, when you got quite a few.
But I think at the core of so
many of my problems.
Has been this this difficulty.
In in terms of being patient.
And as Americans, we are often in a
hurry.
We are a in the hurry culture.
And we are very offensive.
We are often very offensive to people in
other nations.
You must understand that.
Here's a dear brother who's trying to change
a tire.
He's not doing it as fast as you
would.
So what?
You feel he's turning the wrong way.
And so you push him aside and say,
look, I've had training.
This Americans are quick to tell you about
their training.
The guy changed one tire as a small
boy with his dad's help.
I've had training in this.
Let me show you.
So if it's an Englishman, especially he and
they're generally a little more patient, he steps
aside and say, oh, well, thank you very
much.
He happens to know that that particular boat
only turns that way.
Because in some nations, it's reverse.
And he just sits there and watches you.
Steaming, sweating, praying, crying to God for every
inch of sanctification you've ever held.
Turning it tighter and tighter and tighter and
tighter.
One event like that can ruin your whole
day.
It's like someone said to me some time
ago, one midair crash is enough to spoil
your entire day.
It's true.
You don't need that to happen to have
your days ruined in one sense in operation
mobilization.
Patience.
You meditate on that word in your Bible
and you will see just what I'm talking
about.
The fruit of the spirit is love, joy,
peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness,
temperance, self-control against such.
There is no law.
And I made a study of all the
fruit of the spirit.
The first OM conference of this type took
place in 1960, the month of June, the
Mexico border.
Every night we talked on the same subject,
fruit of the spirit.
That was the basic thrust of this movement
from its very earliest days.
And I don't know where we'd be if
it wasn't for that patience.
So many of the problems in my home
have been a result of my impatience with
my wife.
I have had to repent again and again
and claim his precious blood over my words,
my lack of patience.
Sitting in the car, I gave her 20
minutes notice.
I don't know where in the world she
is.
We've got to get to this meeting.
And I remember once I decided I wasn't
going to say anything.
I've already blown it 58 times.
I was just going to be quiet no
matter when she came to the car.
I wasn't going to say anything.
I'm going to be patient.
She finally got to the car.
I didn't say anything.
One look, I could burn her through the
door.
There is a real sense in which if
you don't have control over patience, if you
don't have control of your temper, you are
almost disqualified to be married.
And there was a great general in Britain
that said, until you have mastered the art
of warfare, you should not even consider being
married.
I wouldn't go that extreme.
If there's any area where women are often
naive, it's about what lurks down in the
inner furnace of this good-looking lad that
they're about to marry.
I've had to counsel women beaten across their
faces by men who were as gentle as
angels before the wedding and who became as
ferocious as lions afterward.
We can be very naive about life.
Very naive about what happens one year after
the wedding.
Praise God, there are many, many cases where
that doesn't happen.
But we need, if we're going to be
effective communicators, if we're going to have reality
in our marriages, on our teams, and in
our churches, there must be the crucified life.
And there must be the development of patience
and spiritual reality in that area.
Thirdly, we must learn how to accept one
another.
There's too much of this manipulation mentality in
which we say to our wife or to
our friend, if you become more like me,
then I will accept you.
And we form mutual admiration societies.
And us, we as husbands, and I failed
in this area, we're always trying to change
our wives.
We need to accept one another as we
are.
We can have our prayer.
We can have our aspiration.
We all, of course, want to grow in
Christ and to be more spiritual.
I think the key word in this is
the word we read in Ephesians 4, forgiveness,
forgiving one another, forgiving each other, just as
Christ God forgave you.
I want to ask you, is there anyone,
anywhere that you've not forgiven?
I'm not saying you don't have some memory
difficulties.
We can't plot everything out of our memory.
But as far as you know, by faith,
you have forgiven everyone.
I remember speaking in a morality section in
Europe, a morality session, and a question came
up at the question and answer time.
The colonel said, my father has raped me
many, many times.
Can I ever forgive him?
Yes.
There is nothing that we cannot forgive as
his child, because God, through Christ, has forgiven
us of every ugly wickedness, every defilement that
man could ever imagine.
And any finger we point at one man,
there are three fingers that point back at
us.
That doesn't mean it will be easy.
That doesn't mean there will not be emotional
scars.
I am an emotionally scarred person.
My wife is.
And we'll have to learn to claim God's
grace on a day-by-day basis.
And just like the ship, we can't get
the ship from London to New York in
one day, nor in three days, nor in
five days, but we can get the ship
at least pointed in the right direction.
At this conference, we cannot give you the
total answer and cure to emotional hurts, to
struggles, to awesome things that have happened to
you.
That can't happen in one week, but you
can get your ship, your vessel of God,
pointed in the right direction this week.
And know, therefore, that when you leave here,
you're taking a stand against all bitterness, against
all resentment, and against any unforgiving spirit or
unforgiving disposition.
What a revolution could take place in the
church and in our homes if this became
one of our main goals.
And by God's power, we put it into
practice.
Fourthly, I believe we must learn to bend
and to break.
I cannot tell you how much I appreciate
that book, Calvary Road.
If there's any book I would recommend you
get, it's Calvary Road by Roy Hesschen.
It's not the total answer, just a small
part of it.
But a small key can open a big
door.
And if you learn something of that key
of a cross, something of knowing how to
say, I'm sorry, Lord, forgive me.
Or to our friend or our team member
or our team leader, forgive me.
It will open the door to blessing.
1 Peter chapter 5 says that we should
submit to the mighty hand of God.
We need to know how to humble ourselves
with one another, to be honest with one
another, and to learn how to break and
to bend.
Don't feel you have to run around Europe
defending the United States.
If something is said wrong about your country
and you feel it, that's an opportunity to
demonstrate the love of Christ.
Whenever I go to a country, one of
the first things I do is in my
mind make a list of the positive things
in that country.
I've never been in a country where I
couldn't find something positive.
And I talk about that.
Herbert Cain, the great missiologist and missionary teacher
at Trinity College seminary, in his new book
on the missionary life, says that when we
launch out overseas, we need to, in some
ways, forget our own country.
That's right.
As you launch out, even for short-term
work, to some degree, we need to forget
our own country.
Stop always talking about your country, how lovely
it is in Western Canada, how much cooler
it is, how much wider the streets are,
how much cleaner the toilets are.
Forget all this kind of thing.
And start to re-enter or enter that
new culture, appreciating it, trying to understand it,
and then learning to bend and break when
you do say something that's wrong or that's
offensive.
And so often, these people, who even at
this very moment, are receiving some of these
same messages, they will be wanting to go
the extra mile to love us and to
forgive us.
And we don't have to be uptight as
Americans that the French or the Germans are
trying to pounce on us.
In fact, probably some of you, in an
amazing, unpredictable way, within the next couple of
years, will be married to a German or
a Frenchman or a Swede.
How that happens with this social policy is
a miracle that is without explanation.
It's supposed to all happen after the first
year.
Anyway, birds fly where they will.
You know not the flutter thereof.
And then, very quickly, we have to learn
to love.
You're supposed to be meditating regularly on 1
Corinthians chapter 13.
Memorizing those great verses about love.
It's true, the fruit of the Spirit is
love.
But also, we must learn the way of
love.
That's why we have endless verses about love.
It's not some little automatic thing.
You just get the right cliches and make
the right verbalization in terms of sentence structure.
And from then on, you just go along
in the Spirit-filled life.
Jesus said, If any man come after me,
let him deny himself daily and follow me.
No matter how loving I am, on any
one day, I know I need more love.
One of my goals is to love my
wife more.
And I already love her so much, sometimes
I can hardly think straight.
I want to love her more.
And, of course, love has many aspects.
1 Corinthians 13 will give you some of
those aspects.
Some of the ways of love will only
be learned through failure.
So don't be discouraged by your failures in
that area, but learn.
We all switch some people off.
Don't get into a guilt syndrome and allow
your image of yourself to be trodden underfoot
by the fact that you've failed at times
in communication.
Or you've been unloving, or something else along
that line.
And then, sixthly, we need to learn to
discipline ourselves.
We're going to be talking about that more,
so I'll just go past it now.
But if there's going to be an effective
teamwork, there must be discipline.
If you're going to have an effective marriage,
there must be discipline.
Marriage is not firstly love, as we think
of it here, brainwashed by Hollywood.
I would prefer to use a different word,
that love is firstly commitment.
Commitment that includes the kind of love that
the New Testament talks about.
We are committed to one another.
That commitment will not be broken.
And love is there.
It will vary, it will change, our feelings
will go up and down.
Other women may come by, or men, and
bring greater emotional vibrations for a particular season.
But because we're committed to one another, we
know the biblical basis of marriage and relationships.
These little flutters in the dark, these little
emotional kicks, will not have an effect on
our basic life and throw us off God's
narrow path.
We must learn that, we must learn that.
And any discipline you can learn this summer,
will help you in your marriage and whatever
lies ahead in your life.
And then seventh, we've got to learn to
relax.
Tozer spoke about how we as Christians easily
become religiously jumpy.
We know God sees our every action.
And so, you know, we're sort of walking
around waiting for Him to bomb us on
the head with a hammer.
God knows all about us.
Tozer quotes, probably getting it from some other
mystic from hundreds of years ago.
God knows all about us and loves us
still.
I would add that God loves us as
much when we've failed, as when we're moving
along in some great soul-winning expedition.
Let's learn the secret of what Tozer says
when he speaks about God being easy to
live with.
Isn't that amazing?
After all his rather extreme statements, he turns
around and he says, God is easy to
live with.
Learning to cast every care upon the Lord.
Let's become a little more relaxed about ourselves.
I like people to work for me who
are relaxed about themselves and their lives.
Relaxed about me, so when I say something
a little dumb, you know, they don't climb
the wall and think I hate them.
Really, Christians get uptight on this whole area
of sanctification and love.
And it becomes an awesome, awesome experience for
some people.
We need to be a little more relaxed.
We're going to make mistakes.
Parents that want their children only to say
nice little evangelical statements sitting around the table.
And the first time their little teenager utters
one of those four-letter, really shocking words
in a moment of impatience, and the dear
little mother just about has a nervous breakdown.
What do you think our children are learning
in our high school?
Nursery rhymes?
Oh, I know in America we try to
protect all the children in the Christian schools.
They'll probably turn out a whole new brand
of spiritual schizophrenics.
I will tell you one thing, and I'm
not against Christian schools.
They aren't giving us very many missionaries.
And you should get the British evaluation of
the American Christian school.
Very interesting.
Not saying I'm against the Christian school.
Just like the people that have fresh thoughts
all the time.
But there is a danger, and this is
true in O.M., that we can live
a very sheltered life.
And little Johnny doesn't hear any swear words.
And little Johnny only goes with little Susie,
who's born again and all that.
And someday he's got to get out in
the world.
Someday he's going to work with someone who
calls him a son of a...
And someday he's going to get punched in
the nose.
You can't just protect people all their life.
And if people aren't used to a little
bit of the hard knocks of this world,
they are often more subject to mental illness.
I believe with all my heart that living
on planet Earth as a Spirit-filled Christian
includes failure, it includes sin, and praise God,
victory includes knowing what to do when we
do sin.
There is a way of victory, but it
is not some isolated, little hairy, little fairy
cloud type experience.
It's a nitty-gritty experience where we have
to face failure and problems and mistakes head
on.
And to me, at the same time, learn
how to, in a sense, roll with the
punches.
That's an American expression, I think.
I like it.
In OM, I hope you'll learn at times
to roll a little bit with the punches.
There are some things you're not going to
like in OM.
There are some things I don't like.
You can't fight everything.
You get nervous.
Do what you can and get a good
night's sleep.
If I start carrying just the problems that
have been loaded on me today to bed
with me tonight, I'm going to feel miserable
in the morning.
And at 5.45 tomorrow morning, I don't
care what you think about it, I'm playing
golf and I want to be in good
condition.
Because I've got to preach here, I guess,
at 8.30 or something else.
And so I think in about one minute,
I'll close.
Learn how to relax.
That's why I took up golf.
And then very quickly, learn how to share
and be open.
It's better to speak at times and say
something stupid.
Praise God, I'm so thankful for my children
that they're all communicators.
And though I feel sometimes what they say
is not the most edifying, I'm just thrilled
that they're all constantly verbalizing.
Many of our family meals, I'm the quietest
one at the table as we go through
World War II, civil wars, and other various
things along that line.
Some of you are very introverted, very shy.
You never speak, never pray in public.
That's all right.
But if you think that's spiritual, you're crazy.
You're just scared.
Or shy.
Or introverted.
We're not going to put a strong grip
on you that you must become an extrovert.
We don't want you to be that way.
That would be weird if all of a
sudden, little Susie Quiet, you know, walks up
here tomorrow.
God is not trying to destroy your personality.
He wants to work through you.
But there needs to be growth, little by
little.
We're not asking it for all to come
in one week, one summer, one year.
But learning to share.
Learning to open up.
Learning to take off the mask.
Learning to express yourself a little bit in
public.
Even if it's one sentence.
God, I love you.
I haven't learned how to pray yet.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
What a prayer.
We're supposed to be little children.
We don't have to create elaborate theological sentences.
Coming to God as if He were some
kind of, you know, gigantic theological wizard who
was computerizing your every prayer sentence to see
if you were in tune with the proper
spiritual vocabulary.
And then, just two closing points.
Learn to repent and embrace the cross.
Ultimately, that is the most basic of all
the issues.
And number 10, learn to redeem the time
and organize so that you have more time
for fellowship.
The person who organizes his time and disciplines
his life, he has more time even for
a little recreation, which will help him to
organize his life even more.
So, ultimately, he will enjoy life more, he
will accomplish more, and he will be happier
as well.
Happiness is a byproduct of holiness.
Our goal isn't happiness.
Our goal is God.
Secondly, holiness of life.
Happiness is a byproduct.
And I feel it's important that even in
this summer together, we learn something of organizing
our time, keeping track of phone numbers, addresses,
instructions.
Some of you have already scattered your instruction
papers from one end of the building to
the other.
Your briefcase looks like someone threw a hand
grenade into it.
I have great struggles in this area, but
I believe it is very, very important for
communication and for building relationships to learn something
of being disciplined, tidy, and orderly.
It's all linked.
You cannot separate the practical from the spiritual.
It's all linked.
I hope that these thoughts will give you
a great desire to be a communicator, to
go the way of fellowship, the way of
relationships, whether it's on a team, in the
office, in the factory, or in your home.
And by God's spirit, it can be done.
And we'll be hearing more about that throughout
the week.
And of course, through these books and tapes
that are available to us.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank and praise you for so
many principles in your word.
It's just so exciting.
And we believe you are going to teach
us some of these very basic principles about
communication.
Don't allow us just to forget all that
we hear.
We believe, O God, that you want to
do a deep work.
I know you want to do this in
my heart.
A deep work in this area of relating
to others, loving, communicating, and laying down our
lives.
At the same time, we believe you're going
to minister to us.
You're going to bless us because you love
us so much.
And we feed upon that grace and mercy
through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.