I'm sorry, but we were just too late
to catch the first few words of this
address.
Jesus Christ took the penalty, the punishment, and
the gas, spiritually speaking, that we deserve.
The Bible says he bore his sins, our
sins, not his, he had no sin, our
sins in his body on the tree.
So what should our Christian life be?
Our life should be like that young man,
who out of joy, who out of thankfulness,
came again and again and again in service
to the man in the bed.
And I believe, young people and friends tonight,
that our going out with the gospel is
one of the greatest ways to say thank
you, Lord.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for taking death for
me.
Was it C.T. Stott or someone else
who said, if Jesus Christ could give his
life for me, what can be too much
for me to give to him?
How true, how true that is.
I have something written in the front of
my Bible, I would like to read, that
speaks very distinctly to me.
And I'm going to read to my own
heart, by a man named Faber, I believe
a great Christian mystic.
He said, Oh Lord, that I could waste
my life for others, with no ends of
my own, that I could pour myself into
my brothers and live for them alone.
Such was the life thou livest, self-abjuring,
thine own pains never easing, our burdens bearing,
our just doom enduring, a life without self
-pleasing.
This is the life that God has called
us to.
To me it's described, perhaps best in some
ways, in a little poem, that I carry
around in my diary and which I have
to read very often.
This little poem, again and again, shows me
what the real aspirations of my heart must
be.
And I believe this will lead to worldwide
evangelization.
This is the prayer, it's called the litany
of humility.
Deliver me, Jesus.
Oh Jesus, meek and humble of heart, hear
me.
Deliver me from the desire of being esteemed,
from the desire of being loved, from the
desire of being extolled, from the desire of
being honored, from the desire of being praised,
from the desire of being preferred to others,
from the desire of being consulted, from the
desire of being approved, from the fear of
being humiliated, from the fear of being despised,
from the fear of suffering rebukes, from the
fear of being calumniated, from the fear of
being forgotten, from the fear of being ridiculed,
from the fear of being wronged, from the
fear of being suspected.
You know, unless we can pray this prayer,
I don't believe we'll be effective on the
mission field.
Because I believe those things are going to
happen to us wherever we stand as an
ambassador of Jesus Christ.
How we should be ready to pray that
little prayer.
It continues on the other side and it
says, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire
that others may be loved more than I.
Can you pray that tonight?
How we crave love.
As we've explained the other night, how we
want love, how we want attention.
Can you pray tonight that revolutionary prayer that
others may be loved more than I?
That others may be esteemed more than I?
Can you pray that tonight?
That in the opinion of the world, others
may increase and I may decrease.
Can you pray that?
That others may be chosen and I set
aside.
That's revolutionary, isn't it?
That others may be praised and I'm unnoticed.
Is that the desire of your heart?
That others may be preferred to me in
everything.
And the last, so speaks to my heart.
That others become holier than I, provided that
I can become as holy as I should.
Oh, young people, A.W. Tozer hit the
nail on the head in a very clear
way that we cannot argue with when he
stated the popular notion that the first obligation
of the church is to spread the gospel
to the most parts of the earth is
false.
Her first obligation is to be spiritually worthy
to spread it.
To spread an effigy or degenerate brand of
Christianity to pagan lands is not to fulfill
the Great Commission.
And as we go forth this year, we
cannot go forth as missionaries in the full
sense of the word.
We can only go forth as those who
desire to learn this life, who desire to
prepare to perhaps someday be a real missionary
in the real biblical apostolic sense of the
word.
We can go forth as learners, as Timothys
in the first stage of being Timothized.
And if we don't have this attitude, we
know that we'll only see defeat.
At the same time, we know that the
youngest believer can be used in world evangelism.
The blind man whom Jesus Christ healed was
immediately used to witness for Jesus Christ.
His testimony was simple.
His testimony was clear.
It wasn't the four spiritual laws.
It wasn't the twenty-eight principles of presenting
the way of love.
It wasn't any of the things that perhaps
we learn about in a conference or a
Bible school.
It was the simple word.
Once I was blind, now I see.
This is our message.
This is what we go forth to tell
the world.
This is why young people, even young people
only a few years old in the Lord,
can go forth under the proper supervision and
teaching and be effective witnesses for Jesus Christ.
Sometimes even more than others.
God has given us as young people an
open door to the world.
Wherever we go as students or young people,
the door is open.
The people are willing to let us in
the home where many times the normal missionary
would have a hard time.
And many times we can open the way
for him, and it's happened hundreds of times,
thousands of times.
Our work, we believe, must complement, it will
never take the place of, but must complement
the work of the established mission, more so
the work of the indigenous church.
God's plan, we believe, around the world is
to use the local church as his testimony
to make Christ known.
The basic strategy as far as I see
it in the New Testament, this will come
as a surprise to some of you, is
not to come sweeping through an area, giving
everybody the gospel.
The primary strategy is to establish a local
testimony that will in turn spread through the
whole area, giving everyone the gospel.
Sometimes this takes a time.
It's true, if in Barcelona we hadn't spent
the last two years planting a church, we
could have covered all the provinces.
But we believe by putting that time and
seeing that assembly planted, and seeing believers gather
together, and working completely with the other assemblies
in Barcelona, that in the long run, more
people are going to hear about Jesus Christ
than if we just sweep through.
This is basically the strategy of our year
program.
Very few people know what OM does.
I have never seen so many ridiculous ideas
about anything as I've seen about this work.
It is fantastic.
What people think that we do, some think
we travel in blimps, throwing tracks through the
air, believing that any track that hits a
town automatically evangelizes the town.
Others believe we travel in our lorries, special
devices to shoot tracks far and wide out
the windows as we pass through.
It's just unbelievable the things I hear.
Little do they understand what really is on
our heart.
This year as we go out in the
year program, what will be happening?
In Paris, most of the young men will
be working with a French brother to establish
a living assembly.
In Vienna, the main work will be to
follow up among contacts, working with some other
churches to establish a living group of believers.
In Freisteit, Austria, the work will be to
establish a living group of believers.
In Barcelona, the continuation of the assembly that
has begun there.
In Montevideo, the continuation of the assembly there.
In Pomona, there's a continuation of the assembly
there.
A traveling team in Spain to go out
to already existing churches to help them grow
and expand and reach their area for Jesus
Christ.
In Persia, the problem has come many times
in our strategy of who we should work
with.
God has taken us over many difficulties in
some ways, as it is such a complex,
complex situation.
That's why our strategy changes from field to
field.
But even though much blitz work has been
done in Persia, it has always been with
the aim of seeing little living assemblies born
and to work with missionaries who have this
vision, to help them.
In many countries we are not ready to
do this.
We believe it must be nationals.
And we believe that until the nationals are
raised up, that it is good, especially when
we're young, to spread the word of God
abroad.
This is all right.
This is not the best way.
But it is one of God's ways, and
He uses it because He's sovereign.
We believe in the long run in Persia,
it will be the establishment, the helping of
others to establish these living assemblies.
In Turkey, of course, you realize that all
these years our strategy has been the same,
to see a living group of Turks born,
to see them going on.
The work is not basically literature distribution there,
nor in most of the other fields, although
that is oftentimes one of the effective ways
we use, as well, of course, as our
tent making.
And in Turkey over the years there's been
one goal, to see a group of believers
established, and praise God, there's a little nucleus
there, the first, practically, first nucleus of believers
in the entire nation.
In Trieste, Dave Borman has labored year after
year with a passion to see a little
living group born in that city.
Though the efforts have been difficult, there are
a few praised to His name.
This is God's way to reach the world
for Christ.
It's true, in a summer campaign, many times
it is good to spread the word far
and near, especially when we have so many
young people who couldn't possibly be used in
church planting and assembly ministry and things like
that.
Spread the word out, help the churches do
this so they can give themselves to the
more strategic work, so they can give themselves
to the building up of the assembly, the
preaching of the gospel, the edification of the
saints.
We can go forth.
In India, our one great burning desire, despite
many things that take place, is to see
living assemblies planted.
To unite with those men like Bhaktsingh who
have this vision, who are called of God,
who seem to have a modern day calling
as an apostle, to help, if it's trucks,
if it's literature, if it's painting a building,
if it's building the church, whatever it is,
to lay down our lives and to help
this movement spread, get its roots in.
At the same time, we never want to
lose the vision of the masses.
It's easy as we get the vision and
maintain the vision of the local church, God's
place for the local church, God's plan for
the evangelism out from the local church, it's
easy in the midst of that to lose
the vision of the masses.
Many have done it.
What can we say of the millions who
go out into eternity and have never had
a scripture because we hadn't that vision?
Oh, how God wants to give us a
full vision, to see local believers established, to
see local churches revived, empowered, and given the
materials and the manpower and the vehicle power
to move and to do the job.
We believe that this can happen.
I think one of the unique ways we've
seen in India how this happens, some of
our teams, even Peter Balin from this assembly,
goes and works with the local assemblies.
He spent several months visiting and ministering in
the existing assemblies.
Prayer is mobilized.
Unity of heart is mobilized.
Then to Kashmir, a thousand miles away, but
not alone.
Not as a band of young men sort
of flippantly going out, but a band of
young men backed by the prayers of the
saints, sent forth by God's men.
And this is why these teams many times
are effective for Jesus Christ.
Simultaneously from the same assemblies goes another team,
sent out by God's people, prayed for to
Orissa.
No wonder men and women come to Jesus
Christ through these efforts.
This, I believe, is God's method for world
evangelization.
And I believe if OM is to be
effective around the world, we must be completely
united and working with the local believers.
Many times this will mean even turning our
backs on our Western missionary friends.
If we must choose between our Western missionary
friends and many Western missionary methods which many
times do not work, and national indigenous living
movements, we must choose this.
We don't believe this choice will have to
be made.
We pray that these difficulties will not arise,
but they do.
But as you go forth to Spain, you
must identify yourself with the Spanish church.
As you go to Italy, you must identify
yourself with the Italian church.
You must be as an Italian, not as
an American in Italy.
If you go to Turkey, you must be
as a Turk to the Turks.
If you go to the Arab world, you
must be as an Arab to the Arabs.
You must be ready to learn the language.
You must be ready to learn the culture.
You must be ready to literally fall to
the ground and die in that country.
It's the only way through.
An Indian to the Indians, a Frenchman to
the French, an Austrian to the Austrians.
Young people, this is probably one of the
things that's burning on my heart more than
anything else that I haven't mentioned to you
yet.
And really, I need another two years to
get off what's on my heart.
This thing of identifying with the country you
go to.
We've had such Americans, they arrive in India.
All they can talk about is California.
Not in a bad way, not in a
bad way, but just they're still living in
California.
They've got the California mentality.
But the California mentality doesn't make an impact
on a Rajasthani who doesn't know California from
a boweeble.
And I don't think they have boweebles in
Rajasthan.
But as you go out to these countries,
you must be ready to take off your
Westernisms.
In India it does mean off in the
suit jacket, praise God, and the tie, gone,
praise God.
But of course it goes a lot deeper
than that.
Our basic attitudes must be revolutionized if we're
going to reach the world for Jesus Christ.
Oh, how easy it is to carry our
culture.
And instead of spreading Christ, we spread a
culture.
Instead of spreading the Gospel and speak where
the Bible speaks and be quiet where the
Bible is quiet, we spread our Western culture.
Our Western way of marriage, our Western way
of dress, our Western way of doing so
many things.
We don't realize that in Austria they don't
live like they live in Liverpool.
In Turkey they don't eat nor drink nor
take their coffee the same way you get
it in New York.
Never forget my first cup of Turkish coffee.
It was in a Bible society in Yugoslavia.
I thought it was going to jump out
of the cup.
And there will be many things you face,
young people.
And if you're not ready to go there
and sit down at that table and in
the Spirit eat that food and fellowship with
that man and identify and like it, then
you better stay back.
There's still room in Bromley.
Not that those in Bromley are less committed,
but you'll be able to live there a
lot better as an Englishman.
My American friends, some of you who are
working in Bromley, you will discover soon if
you haven't already that you are a foreigner.
You might as well be in the Congo
because they don't do things in England like
we do in America.
And here you have the boot and the
car not on the feet and many other
things that you're going to have to get
used to.
And we have a list, two pages or
two sides of one long sheet, giving all
the Americanisms that we need to try to
slowly get rid of as we live here
in Great Britain because this is also, for
those of us from other countries, a different
culture.
And if we come here with all our
Americanisms, we come here with all our American
ideas, we discover that sometimes we don't get
quite as far.
We discover that we often make enemies because
this is the way it is.
May God grip us with what it's going
to take to evangelize the world.
A local church-centered strategy, a willingness to
identify with a culture, to die to your
own culture.
Now this is not easy because we've all
been brainwashed.
That's right.
From little childhood, we've all been brainwashed by
our culture.
And I can remember before I could hardly
walk being given an American flag.
And I can remember being taught the little
songs, God Bless America, My Country, Tis of
Thee.
Little did I ever realize we robbed the
tune from God Save the Queen.
Never even knew.
I remember when I got my first history
book and I was taught about the big
bad British and the Boston Tea Party.
Taxation without representation.
Give me liberty or give me death.
Brainwashed.
This might be a minor thing.
These minor things as we go out to
the field become serious problems.
You've always had the idea that India was
mainly a group of backward, lazy people, primitive,
living in the jungles.
And you get around to India and you
have this superiority feeling.
It can be even in the subconscious, it's
deadly.
The big white chief, poor little Indians, won't
work.
Won't work anymore.
Won't work.
Because today these people have proven themselves as
brilliant as any of us.
India is sixth in the world in atomic
research.
It sells atomic reactors or atomic things that
are necessary for atomic research even to places
like France.
These countries and these people have proven themselves
just as brilliant when given the chance as
any of us in the West.
The age of imperialism, the age of colonialism
is gone.
And we must make sure that every inch
of this attitude is gone from our lives
if we're going to make an impact for
Christ in the nationalistic, non-white world that
we go to today.
World evangelization is a lot more than going
somewhere.
It's being somebody.
It's not being somebody.
Are you ready for this?
I wonder how many of us are still
willing to say, Lord I'm not ready for
Persia.
I'm not ready for India.
Though we've only got a week or two
before we leave, are there some that realize
you're not going to identify with that culture?
You love the British way.
You love the American way.
You love the tea four times a day.
You know when you get to India, you
order your first cup of tea.
Some of you, when we Americans make the
tea, you just about leap.
We forget to put the milk in first
or some other thing goes wrong.
We put one too many leaves in or
we make it in a glass instead of
a cup or some other thing.
And this is a major tragedy.
You get to India and you have your
first cup of tea.
And you have it boiling.
Boiling on the stove.
Pour all the sugar in.
Boil it up.
Put the leaves in.
Boil it up.
Boil it, boil it, boil it.
They serve it to you.
You'd never know it's tea.
What are you going to do?
You're going to write home and say, Mommy
sent me some tea.
It's a minor thing, but I've seen many
a British young person in quite a stew
without his brew.
And all this thing of food is no
minor factor in missions.
And we've got to be ready to go
out and eat it and love it and
believe that we'll live through it.
I wonder how many of us really are
ready.
In the end, you don't have to be
ready to go, but you have to be
ready to be ready.
If we all waited until we all got
ready for this kind of thing, we'd never
go.
In ourselves, we can't.
But are you ready to be ready?
Are you ready to learn?
Are you ready to bend?
Are you ready to stand before that Austrian
pastor and do what he tells you to
do, even though that's not the way you
do it in America?
Are you ready to stand before that national
leader who you might not agree with him?
Maybe you think his sermons are five times
as long as you think they should be
preached.
Do what he tells you to do, because
you esteem him higher than yourself for Jesus'
sake.
Oh, young people, evangelization is much more than
going somewhere.
It's much more than getting in a truck
and crossing a border.
It's much more than getting a visa and
your passport.
It's a whole new life.
It's a whole new life, unless you're ready
to leave the old ways, the old habits,
the old customs, the old ideas.
Your own nationalism.
How we were taught in Bible school, how
the great problem in Africa today is nationalism.
The great problem in South America today is
nationalism.
We were never told anything about American nationalism.
I didn't think nationalism?
We don't have any nationalism in the United
States.
I don't know what we have, but we
don't have any nationalism.
What have we discovered as we've gone out
on OM?
Here in Europe, probably our Americans are the
most nationalistic.
We carry a subconscious nationalism that makes anything
that's come out of Africa look mild.
The same also comes out of the British
Isles.
And oftentimes, we've got to go, young people,
with what this poem describes.
Ready to esteem these brothers better than ourself.
Ready to submit.
Ready to identify.
I'll never forget the first time I had
an Indian meal.
Sat down on the floor.
Made my, take my shoes off of all
things.
Wasn't used to taking my shoes off to
eat.
To take my gloves off, but not my
shoes.
They brought the food, waited for the utensils.
We're going to eat with this.
What are we going to eat with?
I heard in Japan they have chopsticks.
Maybe they have shovels here.
I don't know what they have.
And in my mind, I remember this one
particular time we sat, the children were there.
It was in Madras.
We're sitting on the floor.
Little mats.
Waited for the plates.
They brought leaves instead.
A little leaf out in front of me.
Another man came behind the leaves with a
bucket.
Some rice.
Another man came with some other yellow stuff.
Boom.
Puts that on top.
I looked at that.
Nobody told me this before I went.
And then the lady, of all things the
lady, started digging in with her hands.
Rolling in the little balls.
Putting them in her mouth.
For three years I've taught my children not
to touch the food with their hands.
My children smiled and gleamed.
I want to tell you that some girls
that have gone into it, it's taken more
than a few weeks to learn to eat
relaxed with their hands.
Not a small thing.
We have to be ready young people to
just fall into the ground and die.
So many things in these countries that unless
we have this attitude, unless we have this
submission, this brokenness, this willingness to learn, this
willingness to identify, so many things we'll do
that'll offend us.
Think of a story recently where one westerner
on his team was hot.
One of the Indian brothers wanted to take
a bath in olive oil.
Wanted to bathe himself in olive oil.
The westerner, typical, maybe not typical of O
.M., I hope not, made fun of him.
Oh, going to bathe in olive oil?
And I don't know what else he said.
You know that brother was so hurt.
Letters got written.
It took me, it took Thomas Samuel, it
took prayer, it took sessions to just overcome
that one blunder.
Is it necessary to be a learner?
Is it necessary to have the right attitude?
Is it necessary to be ready to learn
the culture?
To identify with the people?
Oh, young people, we have to be so
alert to this.
I was talking to one of our Italian
brothers.
I said, what's one of the things that
brings a problem with the girls in Italy?
He said, well, you see, some of the
O.M. girls and the western girls, they
go out in the street and they're loud.
And you see, any girl in Italy who's
loud, well, she just has a certain kind
of reputation.
And it's true that many of us from
the west are loud.
And especially girls from the west just don't
add up to what an eastern woman is.
And unless you're ready to learn, unless you're
ready to bend and submit, unless you're ready
at times to change your dress and to
change your hair and to change a lot
of other things, you will just be a
hindrance to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And you'll bring a reputation to God's work
that will hinder, that will hinder rather than
help.
Young people, the work we're going into is
not impossible because of the amount of literature
that's needed.
Not impossible because of the miles we need
to travel.
It's not impossible because of the people to
be reached.
It's impossible because most of us have not
come to that place where we really know
brokenness, we really know humility, we really are
ready to die to our culture and our
background and our western ways and our nationalisms
and our idiosyncrasies.
You know, in the Middle East, if you
want to really give a man a lot
of blasphemy, you don't have to open your
mouth.
You just show him the back of your
heel like that.
And you've spewn out enough to have him
knife you.
Little things.
I never forget one time in India, I
let my foot touch my Bible.
Boy, you don't let your foot touch your
Bible.
Not in many places anyway.
Little things.
Are you ready for that?
You say, well, that's very good for those
going to India, those going overseas.
What about those of us who stay back
in Britain?
Believe it or not, it's the same problem.
Many are not being effective in evangelism because
of peculiarities in their personality that put people
off.
You approach them with the gospel, but because
you haven't let the Lord take over your
personality and conform you to the image of
Jesus Christ and smash you down, you discover
that people are repelled by you.
People are not drawn to you.
And I'm convinced that if we're going to
reach 20th century man, we're going to have
to be ready to adapt.
We're going to have to learn his language.
Many of our favorite sentences that we use
in witnessing are pure nonsense sentences to the
20th century man.
The word Christ has almost become a nonsense
word in Britain today.
The word God loves you.
The word love itself is practically meaningless.
We're facing a generation of brainwashed people who
have been brainwashed with the ideologies of Sartre,
Brunner, Bultman, Nietzsche, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, and whose minds
are thinking on a completely different level.
We are entering the age of despair.
We are entering the age of relativity.
Not only in atomic energy where it might
be true, but in philosophy and religion.
How many of us are willing to learn
the language of the men around us?
The man in London, the university student, or
are we going to continue in our little
own ways that we've picked up who knows
where, wondering why we're not effective for Jesus
Christ?
I believe it will take the same kind
of revolution to make an impact on the
20th century man in Britain as it will
in some ways to reach the man in
India.
It will take a revolution in the way
we witness, the way we walk, the way
we talk, the way we react.
It will mean that perhaps at times we'll
have to pick up the newspaper and at
least know what happened in the morning.
We'll have to at least know what a
drug addict is, what philosophies of some of
these people are.
We don't have to study, take courses in
it.
We must be concerned enough to know so
that the man talks to you about the
cup final, you don't sort of look at
him as if you were talking about astronauts.
Many of us as Christians are very unwilling
to identify ourselves with sinners.
Jesus went among sinners.
He was accused, he was torn apart as
being a friend of sinners.
Today we stay aloft.
Our homes are our castles and no one
dares enter in without a special pass that's
hard to get.
And we wonder why we're not making an
impact.
And today in Britain the evangelical church is
over here in a little island, Holiness Island,
only it's not very holy.
And the world is all around it and
there's very little contact.
Billy Graham comes and we all get excited,
tremendous, we're rock Britain for Jesus Christ.
We have it rock Britain.
There's been a potential shaking, amen, and I'm
not, and I'm all for it.
But unless now you, nurse, teacher, doctor, factory
worker, whatever you might be, are willing to
roll up your sleeves and get down among
the sinners, bring them into your home, win
them, show them the love of Christ, you're
not going to reach them.
We'll continue this island.
We'll speak, they will not hear.
We'll preach, they will not understand because we've
built this enormous gap between ourselves and the
world.
There's a great difference, young person, friend, between
isolation and separation.
I believe in separation from every defilement of
the world, but I don't believe in isolation.
Where I can't invite a man in my
house because he's of another class of society,
or his feet are dirty, or he might
break my favorite vase, or he might break
one of my cups if I serve him
a cup of tea.
So completely contrary to the philosophy of Jesus
Christ.
Yes, to evangelize the world, it's going to
take identification.
It's going to take humility.
It's going to take adaptation, flexibility, love.
All these things we've talked about again and
again, but in a practical way in the
realm of food, in the realm of dress,
realm of talk, realm of walk, the way
we look, the way we sit.
Some girls, if you sit in the Middle
East or in India the way you sit
once in a while here, you'll start a
major revolution.
That's right.
And young girl, I beg of you, don't
you go to Persia, don't you go to
India, don't you go to any of these
other countries unless you're ready for a revolution
in the way you dress and the way
you act, unless you're willing to believe God
to make you a quiet, submissive, broken, humble
woman, don't go.
You'll destroy the work of God.
You'll bring bad repute to the name of
Jesus Christ.
We've got to be ready to go the
extra mile.
Yes, evangelization is more than a trip, more
than giving out literature, more than preaching, more
than any of these things, whether it's in
England or in the regions beyond, world evangelization
is going to take the giving of one's
entire self completely for the other.
Can we remember that poem we read in
the beginning?
May we remember it as we go forth
in our work.
O Lord, that I could waste my life
for others with no ends of my own,
that I could pour myself into my brothers
and live for them alone.
Are you ready for that?
You must be.
If we're going to reach the world in
our generation for Jesus Christ, let us pray.
Our Father, deliver us from every foe, deliver
us from every form of superficiality.
God, make us ready to go into these
nations and fall into the ground and die
to our westernisms, to our provincialisms, to our
idiosyncrasies, to our ideologies, to our follies.
We might be all things to all men,
to Inza, the Indian man, an Indian, to
the Frenchman, a Frenchman, to the Italian, an
Italian, to the Englishman, an Englishman, to the
twentieth century man, a twentieth century witness.
O Father, bless those that go back to
their offices, back to their factories, not to
their hostels, back to their homes, that they
might be the friend of sinners.
They might have a love that radiates and
communicates and builds and saves and snatches men
from the jaws of death.
We might go forth likewise, ready to give
our lives for others because Christ gave his
life for us.
We pray in his name.
Amen.