Let's look at a few verses in the
book of Acts that should charge our spiritual
batteries a little bit.
In Acts chapter 2 we see in verse
47, Acts 2 47, verse 47, praising God,
having favor with all the people.
And the Lord added to the church daily
such as should be saved.
The Lord added to the church daily such
as should be saved.
Notice verse 41.
Then they that gladly received his word were
baptized and the same day there were added
unto them about 3,000 souls.
Not 3,000 books sold or 3,000
tracts given out, but 3,000 souls were
added to the church.
And if you go on to Acts chapter
5, it gets rougher as you read further,
you see what God did through these disciples,
the people that were saved.
Notice Acts chapter 6, verse 1, in those
days when the number of the disciples was
multiplied, the number of disciples was multiplied.
Is that what happened on your field?
The number of disciples was multiplied?
Notice verse 5, verse 7, the word of
God increased and the number of the disciples
multiplied in Jerusalem.
I believe God wants to give us more
fruit in this coming year.
And I don't believe the problem is whether
or not God wants to give.
The problem is whether or not you and
I are willing to be the kind of
men and the kind of women that God
can use in bringing forth fruit.
Now you may be the strongest Calvinist in
all the world, but that doesn't relieve you
of one single responsibility in regard to what
the Bible commands.
And a man who truly believes in the
doctrine of grace will be a Whitfield and
nothing less.
We've got a lot of Calvinists in Britain
today, but not many Whitfields.
We've got a lot of Arminians and not
many Wesleys.
A lot of Brethren and not many Darbys.
So easy just to pick up the words,
so easy to have the same theology, but
it takes something quite different to get the
kind of life, the kind of fire that
these men had that made them soul winners,
all of them.
Darby in his early days was one of
the greatest soul winners this country ever knew.
The same could be said of Whitfield, the
same could be said of Wesley, the same
could be said of most of the men
that our churches look to as their founders.
I believe God wants to give us fruit.
I believe that we as leaders, as we
meet in our coordinators conference, are going to
have to repent and fall on our knees
because we could have seen much more fruit.
And though we can talk about God's sovereign
overruling, that's never an excuse for laziness, unbelief,
pride, lack of prayer, or anything else that
hinders us in the work of God.
We see what happened in the book of
Acts, but we don't really seem to believe
it can happen again.
Souls being added daily, it hasn't only happened
in the book of Acts.
It's happening right now in some places in
the world.
And I believe that you can see fruit
this year.
Don't you want to see fruit?
Don't you want to bear fruit for Jesus
Christ?
I believe with all my heart that the
power available to those disciples in the book
of Acts is available to you and to
me.
I believe the same God who added daily
to the church in that day can add
daily to the church in our day.
How thrilled I was this morning, or was
it yesterday, when Daniel Gonzalez mentioned how fifty
souls have been added to the church there
in Barcelona.
I believe he must have been referring to
the church in Barcelona as they've gone on
planting their second church.
God has added to the church there in
Barcelona, these two churches that have been born
out of the work there, especially of Brother
Daniel.
In Indonesia, I saw tremendous work of the
Spirit of God.
It was only the beginning, and in the
midst of a few disciples, there were, of
course, many false believers.
I'm sure that's true in every situation.
We know that many of the countries that
we have chosen to work in, you know,
are countries that are not at present fruitful.
They're the hard lands, and boy, it is
tempting.
It's tempting to go to somewhere else right
now with our ship other than the Persian
Gulf.
My, we could stay for another two months
in Asia and Indonesia, probably see several thousand
more come to Christ.
But God has told us we must go
to the hard places.
This is going to mean that this fruit
may not come as quick as some of
you desire, but I believe it will come
if you and I are willing and ready
for the kind of life that God can
use to bring forth fruit.
I would say there's not enough, not enough
fruit, because there's not enough reality in your
life and mine.
Maybe we could be specific.
What are some areas that, if we're honest,
we could say there's not enough?
I would say there's not enough faith.
There's not enough reckless faith in these days
to just believe that God is going to
save men, to just believe that God is
going to penetrate some of these countries, and
to refuse to take no for an answer,
to refuse to be sidetracked.
I believe basically missions is sidetracked, and I
know many mission leaders would agree.
We've been sidetracked into organizationalism, and we're over
organized.
We've been sidetracked into secondary pursuits of all
kinds.
We've been sidetracked into too much social work.
We've been sidetracked into professionalism.
We've been sidetracked into bureaucracy.
That's why many missionaries don't like that little
book, No Graven Image, because some of that
is very, very true.
It's so easy in missions to get caught
just keeping the machine going and losing the
vision for souls, people who are lost.
And I believe there's danger in OM.
And when you're working in OM, I don't
care what you're doing, and you have no
passion for souls, you're in danger.
You're in danger.
When you're too busy in the work of
God to speak a word for God to
an individual who's lost, you're too busy.
And we're so busy running around organizing, and
we haven't got time to stop and pray
and exercise faith and believe God for a
miracle.
We're too busy.
The sin of being too busy.
Too busy to win a soul for Christ.
Too busy to stop for a man in
need.
Too busy to say a few words of
encouragement on the phone.
Too busy to visit the local hospital and
minister a little comfort, a little love.
Too busy for the man next door.
Perhaps you don't even know who he is.
Too busy for the milkman, except when he
comes for the bill.
Too busy, period.
Alan Redpath used to warn us all the
time of the barrenness of the busy life.
Watch out in OM for the sin of
busyness.
When you're too busy preparing for the next
crusade to get involved with people now where
you are, you're too busy and your crusade
is going to be a blimp or a
partial blimp.
Not enough faith.
Not enough, not enough prayer.
Oh, I want to tell you my heart
has ached when I've seen how Satan tries
to move in on the OM team and
cut the prayer life.
Get it down smaller and smaller and change
the prayer meeting to a discussion session and
change the prayer meeting to a fellowship hour.
All those things are good, but not as
good as prayer.
Prayer is communion with God.
Prayer is the Christians vital breath.
Without it we can't move any more than
you're gonna move without lungs tonight.
Not enough prayer.
Not enough faith.
Thirdly, not enough boldness.
Not enough boldness.
My heart was stirred out there in Hyde
Park on Saturday.
I'm so glad I went.
I was stirred.
I had to repent listening to Arthur Blissett.
I used to have more boldness than I
have today.
Maybe I think I'm wiser now.
Maybe I feel that I don't embarrass people
so much.
Maybe I feel that I no longer can
be accused of trying to push the gospel
on someone.
And many of us, in an effort to
be tactful and careful and to watch out
and not rock the boat, we've become a
bunch of timid retreatists.
I think this is something the whole church
must learn from the Jesus people.
Boldness.
I think of Arthur Blissett standing up in
an airplane.
I've hardly ever even given tracks out in
an airplane.
Very few places I don't give tracks out,
but the airplane, only a few times I've
tiptoed down the aisles, fear and trembling, giving
out any tracks.
Oh, I always witnessed to the man next
to me.
I don't remember all that was said, but
Arthur Arthur Blissett stood up in an airplane
and made out, shouted out some slogan for
Christ, stirred the whole plane.
You say, oh well, that's not the way
to witness.
Who of you in O.M., who of
the sum total in O.M., have won
as many souls as that reckless young man?
Boldness.
Read the book of Acts.
It's on every other page.
They spoke the Word of God with boldness.
Now, of course, it's true.
Some people try to be bold without a
knowledge of the Word of God, without a
knowledge of even Jesus.
And that just comes out almost stupidity.
There's a difference between energy in the flesh
and being in the Spirit.
But I believe that God can overrule our
blunders.
Praise God for that day, old Dick Dreyer
stood up in a bus in Lancashire, started
to preach the double-decker bus, all the
foolish things to do.
But Henry Pachinowski ended up getting saved through
that.
And it's amazing how God has used acts
of boldness, that which seemed to be foolishness
to the world, to save men.
Haven't we learned this from Ray Lynch, this
man who came into our midst nine years
ago, that went everywhere preaching?
I'll never forget, he got some little shy
O.M. girl, dragged her into a five
and ten cent store or Woolworth's or whatever
it was, had her on the stairways giving
her testimony until they got thrown out.
You say, well, that's extreme.
Well, maybe it is extreme.
But those of us who have won those
souls to Jesus Christ this year, what finger
can we point at anybody?
Ray Lynch has won hundreds, hundreds.
May God give us boldness in the Spirit.
He has people that you can win to
himself, if you'll believe him for the courage
and take that step of boldness.
I'll say something that may be very, very
dangerous, but I'm dead scared of literature.
I wrote that manual and maybe I'll have
to get buried in a coffin of unsold
copies, I don't know.
But I'm scared of literature.
If you think the literature is a substitute
for your lips, if you think literature is
some kind of magic that's going to bring
people to Christ when you go back and
sit in your home in your little shy
closet and drink tea, you're deceived.
Literature's only a tool.
We can fill Britain with literature, but without
Holy Spirit boldness, very few will come to
Christ.
We can give everybody in the world a
gospel tract and a Bible on top of
it, but until we're willing to get involved
in the foolishness of preaching, like the Bible
talks about in the book of Acts, we're
not going to see many saved.
We need boldness.
This movement is not desperate for more books.
It's not desperate for more clever leaders.
It's not desperate for more vehicles.
It's not desperate for another ship.
It's true, we need these things, but we're
desperate for men who can witness personally and
who can preach publicly in boldness and the
power of the Holy Spirit.
One such man will win more souls to
Christ than 40 teams playing with their literature.
There can never be a substitute for the
power of the Holy Spirit, and that power
will bring boldness.
Unction.
Ravenhill in his book says, whatever you get,
get unction.
It doesn't have to be noise.
Don't confuse any noise that I give out
with unction.
I may have a little unction, but it's
probably a lot of it is noise.
Praise God, he can sort it out and
still use it.
Boldness.
Not enough boldness.
That's what's marking OM, I believe, in these
days.
Then I believe there's not enough compassion when
it comes down to it.
That's the crunch.
Not enough real love for people.
Many places on OM, you and I know
it, we have to push people out in
evangelism.
We got to encourage them, we got to
coax them, we got to preach to them.
We got to set times and set schedules
and jump up and down and wave banners
and motivate.
Sometimes you get out for two or three
hours and people want to come home.
There's a lack of compassion.
There's a lack of love for souls.
And if the only time you go out
in evangelism is when it's organized, then I
would say spiritually you must be running on
a very low horsepower.
Evangelism, real evangelism, should be spontaneous.
You don't need any leader but the Holy
Ghost.
This is why many who leave OM or
some who leave OM drop evangelism as quick
as they picked it up.
It was all phony in the first place.
OM can be a hothouse of phony evangelism.
And as long as you're in the hothouse,
you play the game, you carry the tracks,
you say the words.
When you leave OM, you drop it like
you never saw it.
Hothouse evangelism.
Not spontaneous, not real, not from the Holy
Spirit.
So easy.
Oh, the words of Alan Redpath sunk into
my heart like an arrow because the Spirit
of God has said the same thing to
me every month this year.
You and I can get into a spiritual
hothouse and we can go through the motions
and pronounce the cliches, but it's not real.
Oh, we've got to get on our faces
and say, Lord, give me that compassion.
And then we've got to believe that He
has and not doubt.
Compassion.
Compassion for souls.
There's not enough of it.
And that compassion for souls mixed with faith
is that which is going to bring forth
fruit.
Not because, of course, it's our efforts, but
because God, in His perfect sovereignty, knows how
to mix man's spirit-led action with His
sovereign act of grace.
And you'll never figure out how He does
it.
You never will.
Praying Hyde had such a passion for souls,
he entered into such a covenant with God
in prayer that it said of him that
his heart actually moved over a little bit.
And he claimed a soul a day for
Jesus Christ.
Could you ask Him for one soul this
year?
Not enough compassion.
I would say another reason we don't have
this fruit like we should is not enough
discipline.
Too many of us think we're going to
sit back, pronounce some little evangelical cliche, or
say, fill me, Jesus, with your Holy Spirit,
and all of a sudden it's going to
lift us up.
We're going to go sweeping out to the
uttermost parts of the earth.
I believe the Holy Ghost will bring a
holy go, but it's not by force.
It's got to be love.
If you love me, keep my commandments.
That puts the shoe back on your foot.
If you love me, keep my commandments.
There's got to be a revolution of discipline
in this movement every year, or we've had
it.
We've had it.
What about your letter writing?
Someone you led to Christ, still haven't written
them?
Someone you knew was on the brink of
conversion, you said you were going to write
them, you knew that letter might have just
done the trick, just pushed them over by
the help of the work of the Holy
Spirit.
You never wrote it.
You lost the address.
No discipline, no ordered life, dropping the ball
all over the place.
Let's face it, we can talk about our
victories, we can write fancy prayer letters, but
this movement has dropped the ball from Bangkok
to Mexico City every day the last 365
days, and oftentimes through lack of discipline, lack
of diligence.
Little things do count.
The track the man left in the toilet
that led the next man who went into
the toilet to the feet of Jesus Christ.
Little discipline, half of us in OM tonight,
if we search your pockets, we wouldn't find
any tracks.
Do you dare ask me to ask you
to stand, those of you who have no
tracks in your pockets tonight?
Oh no, don't do that, don't do that
tonight.
Give me another week, another week, some of
you have had a year.
Little things, little things.
We think it doesn't matter.
What if the person that led you to
Christ, what if he hadn't come or hadn't
given or hadn't preached?
Would you call it a little thing?
What if you were in that Turkish village,
in that Indian village, in that French village,
and you knew that at this conference they
had the gospel, the medicine, that you needed
to be saved?
What would you say?
What would you write?
Dear O Emmers, now if you have enough
time next year, after you get all your
other things done, and minister to your own
many needs, if you perhaps could drift this
way to this tiny village of Turkey, and
if you could possibly spare the time to
share with me a little bit of this
secret of the gospel, I would very much
appreciate it.
Of course, don't go out of your way,
and whatever you do, don't miss any sleep
or any meals, or tax yourself too much.
But if you're free, do come and tell
us about Jesus.
Do you think that's the letter he'd write,
if he knew his situation, and that you
had the medicine?
No, he wouldn't.
He would send a telegram, and he would
say, come to my village at any cost,
whatever the discipline, whatever the price, come to
my village at once.
I'm lost.
I'm on the road to hell, and you
are my only hope.
Beloved, little things make a big difference.
And until you and I become disciplined in
little things, we're not going to see that
fruit.
And I believe in the sovereignty of God.
Lastly, I would just say we don't see
enough fruit, because Christ doesn't have enough of
us.
When Christ has more of us, he's going
to do more with us.
When Christ has more of us, he's going
to be able to move more freely through
us.
When Christ has more of us, he's going
to be able to touch more lives through
us.
You know that you can sit through many
weeks of such a conference as this, and
never really surrender all to him.
May God, in these days, take us into
the kind of life that will bring forth
much fruit.
Perhaps the only thing I could add to
that is that we don't persevere enough.
You know, I speak to you after I
give a message like this as someone completely
condemned.
I've failed on every one of these points.
I wanted to give up a thousand times,
but I believe that we shall reap if
we faint not.
Maybe you feel weak and undone at this
conference.
Maybe you feel like a failure.
Maybe you only see your own problems.
Maybe you feel you'll never be a soul
winner.
You can barely carry on a conversation with
a brother in Christ.
And I would just say, let's persevere.
Let's persevere with our weaknesses.
Let's persevere with our problems.
Let's persevere in these countries we're going to.
Let's persevere in our language study.
Let's persevere in our prayer life.
Let's persevere in learning how to witness more.
But whatever we do, let's not give up.
If God has to humble us a thousand
times, praise his name for each time we
go down, because every time you go down
at the cross, he brings you back up.
Don't be afraid for the Lord's heavy hammer
of his word upon your heart in these
days, because he never takes a man down
that he does not want to bring up.
He never humbles you through his word and
through the reality of the cross and the
death of Christ without wanting to bring you
up into resurrection and newness of life and
fullness of joy.
And he accepts you not as a soul
winner, but as a failure.
Not as a great preacher, but as a
weak sinner.
And I believe as we humble ourselves and
pray and seek his face and hunger after
this life and repent of each thing he
touches us about, that he will make us
fruitful this coming year.
But it's up to you.
This is not man centered theology.
This is God centered theology, part of which
is his command to man to go into
all the world and preach the gospel and
to bring forth fruit and fruit that does
remain.
You can't do it, but his Holy Spirit
can.
He wants to.
But he wants you to cooperate.
Let us pray.
Oh, father, we thank you for your Holy
Spirit that does want to work, that does
want to give us fruit even in these
weekends.
And Lord, we pray that we may know
more of this boldness of the book of
Acts.
Pray that we may know more of the
power of the Holy Spirit.
We may know more of compassion.
That we may know more of discipline.
That we may know more of prayer and
more of faith.
For we ask in Jesus name.
Amen.
Now unto him who is able to give
us this power to be his witnesses, to
him be all the praise.
In Jesus name.
Amen.
Just a moment of prayer before you get
up.
In trying to do everything, we come very
close to missing all of it.
There are a number of movements that are
being much more effective in evangelism because they
concentrate on evangelism.
We don't want to just concentrate on evangelism,
so perhaps we're not being so effective in
evangelism.
Which wouldn't be so bad unless we miss
the rest of it as well.
And I think one of the reasons that
we are having neither the experiences that God
wants us to have in discipleship and in
evangelism is because we're missing this thing of
friendship.
And now everyone knows, at least I think
they do, that we've got to have real
deep fellowship if we're going to make it
a very interesting year.
Without this you become like one of the
many who keeps a calendar close to his
bed and checks off each day, counting the
days until he'll be back home.
Because the romanticism wears off in a few
weeks and you just kind of wonder what
God probably wants to do through you back
home.
I wonder if the majority of the O
.M.ers don't live in the future.
Either in the past or in the future.
Thinking about what we used to do back
home and thinking about what we're going to
do when we get back home.
When we're home, of course, we think about
what we're going to do when we get
out to Iran or India or the ship
and so forth.
Constantly living in the future instead of in
the present.
And this is just evangelical escapism.
Might as well go on drugs for all
the good that does.
Instead of really believing God to see the
present really become all that he wants it
to be.
But the key to this, I believe, is
friendship.
We are quite involved and have been in
the past with a church in Brussels before
we went to Beirut.
And I remember after every service, we would
all shake hands.
Everyone in the church would shake hands.
People would say, this is quite a friendly
church, you know.
Everyone would shake hands and they would spend
at least thirty minutes after the service with
each other.
And it went something like this, Sava, Sava,
Sava, Sava, Sava, Sava, Sava, Sava, Sava, Sava.
Everyone could have been ready to commit suicide
for all we knew, but that's about all
you heard.
Just this great echo of a room full
of Sava.
And we can become very close to this
on OM.
I was walking down the, coming out of
the train station at Blackfriars and handing in
my ticket to the ticket collector there.
And I said, well, how are you doing?
And I kept right on walking.
And I stopped suddenly and I realized he
hadn't said fine.
He hadn't said, he said, and I went
back to him and I said, did you
say struggling?
And he said, that's right.
That's what I said, struggling.
And so we went out and had a
good talk together for a few minutes and
we exchanged addresses and I've written him a
letter.
But very seldom do we even do this
with each other.
How are you doing?
Oh, fine.
I have a good summary.
Yeah, yeah.
How are you?
It's good.
It's fine.
It's good.
So, and, and of course it's no more
fellowship if you're just negative.
Some of us rebel against saying fine, fine,
good, good.
So we say bad, bad.
How are you?
Bad.
But that's not fellowship either.
That's just negative nonsense instead of positive nonsense.
I was reading a book which I recommend
called Future Shock, which is talking about how
our generation is becoming a throwaway society.
Everything is becoming more and more temporary.
For example, people used to live in one
house all their life many years ago or
in one town.
Now they live in many houses or apartments.
They live in many towns.
They live in many different places.
They have many different jobs.
They do something and then they throw it
away and they get something else.
But the problem has become that we also
get throwaway friends.
See, throwaway bottles, throwaway cups, throwaway jobs, throwaway
places, and throwaway friends.
And we begin to realize early in life
that you probably won't stick with this person
all your life, so don't get too committed
to him, because it'll hurt too much when
you have to part.
And besides, he might not be faithful to
you, so you don't want to be too
faithful to him.
And we've actually become a generation of throwaway
commitments to one another.
And boy, I tell you, this was not
a Christian book, but I was getting awfully
convicted as I was reading this thing, and
the author said, I want you to write
down a list of your friends.
I want you to write down a list
of your friends.
And he described what he meant by friends.
Those people to whom you have a lifetime
commitment.
Those people with whom you can share your
struggles openly.
Those people who will stick with you no
matter whether you decide Jesus Christ was a
complete fraud, whether you go into adultery, whether
you completely think they are something terrible.
People who will stick with you whether you
get on with their other friends or relatives
or not.
People you can be a failure with.
I like that.
People who are ready to understand and who
are willing not just to cry with you,
but who are willing to wrestle with you
to find real answers to the things you're
struggling with.
This is what we're talking about when we're
talking about friends.
And I challenge you to write down, we
talked about this in the leaders conference, to
write down the list of the names of
the friends that you have on this basis.
It might be a great shock for you.
That's one of them, but keep quiet during
this meeting.
We'll talk about you later.
Who do you have that you can think
out loud with, without being afraid to say
it, without having a feeling of being censored?
You know, I don't like to always have
to have the answer.
I like to think out loud about the
possibilities of the answers with someone.
Without them saying, oh no, that's not right.
No, that's not biblical.
No, no, I mean, oh, you can't say
that.
But to be able to say, well, I
wonder about this.
A friend is maybe somebody you can say
with, well, what if Jesus isn't really God?
Well, what if, you know, I really can't
understand how this could be really the word
of God.
Or whatever might happen to be your real
doubts going on inside you, you know?
I really wonder about this.
And he can absorb that with you, and
he can, he can try and see with
you why such thoughts have come up and,
and what are the, the issues.
Mickey Walker and I met in India and
said, and since his visa was running out,
he decided to come back with us to
Beirut.
And we went overland together.
Well, overland flying as well.
From India to Beirut.
And we were on an Indian train from
Bombay to New Delhi, which is, takes as
long as flying around the world twice.
And so we had hours and hours and
hours to talk.
And my, you know, I realized right away,
well, we're gonna spend all these days together,
and I'm gonna get awfully exhausted if I
try and keep up the image of the
big O.M. leader and so forth, so
I'm gonna just tell him who I am
right off the bat.
And he told me who he was.
And we had such a tremendous time together.
Wow, just, just being real with one another.
And instead of being depressive, it was exhilarating.
Because people know what you're like anyway, without
you telling them, because they know you're probably
like them.
And the Bible tells everybody, lets out the
secret for everybody, what we're really like.
That everything we do is mixed with selfish
motives.
And so why not be like everyone knows
we are anyway?
Some of you know Brother Frank Buss, who
was just contributing.
And some of you might think he's a
rough old bear, if you don't know him
very well.
But I can, I can tell you that
we just practically ran.
When I came up from Beirut, he came
over from Belgium, we practically ran up to
each other to get an opportunity to go
out and talk and share and have friendship
together.
Now I've got some friends in this work,
people I've worked with longer than I have
worked with Frank, people who are other leaders,
people who might even be more consistent Christians,
who perhaps haven't, who have perhaps been a
little more gracious, who perhaps aren't any threat
to me at all.
But most of these people are closed boxes.
Closed boxes.
I heard an African speak at a conference
one time, a young man from Kenya.
And he said, you know, the missionaries always
want us to be open boxes.
And they always want to know how we're
doing, what our sins are, whether we're getting
victory in our Bible study, everything.
They're always asking us all these questions.
They want us to be open boxes.
But they're closed boxes themselves.
And I wonder how many OM leaders are
guilty of this.
And I wonder how many of us are
guilty of this with one another.
We're closed boxes.
And then we wonder why we don't have
a more exhilarating year.
Why don't we have real fellowship?
Well, basically because we're afraid.
We're just plain afraid.
I contend that everyone in this room, without
exception, is emotionally wounded.
And because of our experiences through life, we
have become more and more careful what we
let people know about ourselves, because we've been
wounded when we've been real, when we've been
honest.
And so we are very, very calculating on
how much we let known about ourselves.
For example, I can remember when I was
twelve years old.
And there was a certain group of fellows
who, they were the real in fellows.
And I wanted like everything to break into
this little clique.
And I remember telling them some things that
I really thought would really get me in.
It wasn't very nice.
It wasn't very repeatable.
But instead of them accepting me, they just
laughed and mocked me.
And it was a terrifically traumatic experience.
And I just shut right off from then
on out.
Oh, I didn't do like some of you
have done, become a timid little person and
hide in the corner.
I went on to become the leader of
the school, began to get everything I wanted,
began to use people, exploit people.
But I could never be real again.
And though I was, learned how to make
enough jokes and enough noise to be popular
as a thing in a party, you know,
like a record could be popular, I had
no friends, no real friends.
And it hasn't become so easy to have
those kinds of real friends.
Even since becoming a Christian, we score and
other people for the evangelical mask.
I hear many of you talking about the
people back in the church for their evangelical
mask.
But how many of us are wearing masks
here?
We talk about others, but we don't change.
And yet it's so obvious that we're all
in the same boat and sinking and so
obvious that we're all hurt.
It's so obvious that that we're not being
the disciples that we want to be, that
we're not succeeding in the fruits of the
spirit and all these other things that we
want to be.
So why not just be real with one
another?
One of my friends here got a letter
recently criticizing him rather devastatingly.
Various things he'd done while leading a certain
OM area.
And of course it hurt him quite a
lot, but he decided he wasn't going to
be defensive and he decided he was going
to write them back and say, look, you
don't know half the story.
Let me tell you some other things I
did wrong and let me tell you some
other things I'm quite ashamed about and wish
hadn't happened.
And I'd like to see their faces when
they get that letter.
I'll tell you a secret.
I shouldn't be much of a secret if
you have half a brain.
The coordinators are all discussing you.
And because we're trying to get God's mind
at who's going to work together best and
how who's going to work together happily in
various situations.
So you may not think that spiritual, but
we have, we feel we have to discuss
you.
We do pray too.
But it's very easy to know those who
are trying to impress us.
So easy.
And, uh, we read their reasons for coming
on OM.
Oh, they want to turn India upside down.
They want to submit to the nationals.
They want to just be a blessing wherever
they go.
They're willing to do anything.
Yeah.
And our eyebrows begin to go up and
say, now this guy looks like trouble.
And, uh, because, uh, it doesn't seem very
real.
And we, we look up the summer report
on this guy, find out that when his
leader asked him to stack some books for
10 minutes, he went into depression and self
-pity and, uh, that he isn't exactly being
honest with himself, uh, much less other people.
And so I plead with you.
I plead with you.
If you don't want to be on a
team this year, that's going to be a
disappointment.
It's going to be a great letdown.
Learn to be real.
Learn to share your real self, not going
into hours of introspection and, uh, uh, self
-criticism and so forth, but just as we've
tried to say in other sessions, uh, having
a desire to change, but being ready to
keep open before the other brothers and sisters
and getting their help, getting their help in
letting God make you the kind of person
that you really want to be and that
he really wants you to be.
It doesn't have to be a disappointing year.
It could be the most exhilarating year that
you've ever known in your life, but it's
going to depend on whether you can be
a friend, a real friend, and whether you
can share your life with, with others.
This isn't normal for most of us.
It goes against the grain of many of
our cultures.
I think the British find this, uh, maybe
more than anyone, but I think we've all
got that same hunger in our heart to
have a close relationship so that we can
really have iron sharpening iron and seeing God
use us to mold one another and become
truly beautiful people in his sight.
Let's pray together.
Father, we know these things are impossible with
man, but all things are possible with God.
We pray that you would so break through
in our sealed up lives that we might
be able to become a friend to sinners
because we know what a sinner's like and
that our name on our team might be
Mr., Mrs., or Miss Encouragement this year.
We might be the ones to whom people
love to come to because they find help.
God, rescue us, deliver us from being any
kind of evangelistic machine or island who can
laugh and joke and make us a lot
of noise but never let anybody really close
us, close to us.
We ask these things in the authority of
Jesus Christ.
Amen.