One of the first things I ever wrote,
I think I was about 20, maybe 21,
I guess.
I was five years old spiritually, and I
wrote this, a brief history of the origin
and early work of Send the Light, later
renamed Operation Mobilization.
This is just a reprint.
It's not well written, but it'll give some
of you a little bit of the early
days, written, believe it or not, in May
of 1960, just before coming over to Europe.
So you can pick that up on the
free literature table and lots of other valuable
items, okay?
Okay, let's turn in our Bibles, turn to
the book of Peter, 1 Peter.
There are many scriptures I'd like to give.
The title for tonight is a message that's
very, very much on my heart.
And I hope that it will be one
of those messages that you will take seriously,
is how disunity comes to the body of
Christ.
How disunity comes to the body of Christ.
Let's look at chapter 5.
I think we've looked at this passage before.
Let me get it in my other translation.
Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as
your fellow elder and witness of the suffering
of Christ, and a partaker also of the
glory that is to be revealed.
Shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising
oversight, not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to
the will of God, not for sordid gain,
but with eagerness.
Nor yet as lording it over those allotted
to your charge, but proving to be examples
to the flock.
And when the chief shepherd appear, you will
receive the unfading crown of glory.
You younger men, likewise, be subject to your
elders.
And all of you clothe yourselves with humility
toward one another, for God is opposed to
the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of
God, that he may exalt you at the
proper time, casting all your anxiety upon him,
because he cares for you.
Isn't that a tremendous verse?
Be sober, be of a sober spirit, be
on the alert.
Your adversary, the devil, prowls like a roaring
lion, seeking someone to devour.
But resist him, firm in the faith, knowing
that the same experience of suffering are being
accomplished by your brethren who are in the
world.
And after you have suffered for a while,
the God of grace who called you to
his eternal glory in Christ, will himself perfect,
confirm, strengthen, establish you.
To him be dominion forever and ever.
Young people, we're not here in these evening
meetings just to get a blessing, or just
to get a message that perhaps the Lord
can use to encourage us tonight.
Now, that's good, but there's something better.
We're here to get wisdom, understanding, biblical knowledge
that we can use by God's grace the
rest of our life.
I realize many of you who are here
are new to Operation Mobilization, but this message
is in some ways geared to those of
you who have been around a year or
two.
Let's just try to bring it into balance,
and then everyone will get, hopefully, something.
Some of you, a year from now, you're
not going to be on OM.
You'll be on your way home, maybe some
of you two years from now.
You'll be depressed.
You'll be disappointed.
You may be even disillusioned.
Now, let's just make that very clear, that
OM is not scoring 100%, not even 90%,
brothers and sisters.
On reaching, and ministering, and discipling, and loving,
and encouraging all the people who come into
this evangelistic training program.
That's our goal.
Most of us in OM love our work.
If you give me a holiday where I
can do exactly what I want to do,
I'll probably dictate letters to my friends, and
to pastors, and to churches, and encourage people,
because that's what I want to do.
People always ask me, when are you going
to take a holiday?
I say, brother, I've been on a holiday
from hell for 31 years.
There's nothing better than that.
Not that I'm against traditional holidays.
I think holidays should be according to your
temperament.
You take my kind of temperament and just
stick them on a beach, with no books,
no dictaphone, nothing to do but look at
the water.
That is not a holiday.
That's a painful experience.
Now, I went to the beach this time
last year, and I had part of what
some people would call a real holiday, because
I do have that type of thing as
well.
Recreation, we call it.
I got into a wetsuit for the first
time in my life.
Amazing I ever got in this thing.
Didn't just get lost in the leg.
But I got into this wetsuit, and I
went windsurfing.
How many of you have been windsurfing?
Oh, my land, where have you been?
Probably giving out tracks or something.
But, you know, just a few hours out
there was freezing cold.
This was outside of the freshwater east in
Pembrokeshire.
Freezing water.
That, you know, that to me is recreation.
Last year in August, I was operated on.
And I wanted to do it the cheap
way.
You know, I had vocal cord little surgery.
So I did it all on the same
day.
Went in the hospital.
I was dictating letters there in the little
day room waiting for the doctor.
I went in, and it was a great
experience, really.
Came out a few hours later, and then
we jumped in the motorhome and headed down
the road.
In fact, we took a tour that night
of Niagara Falls.
And the next day, I had a true
verver holiday.
I went swimming in the morning.
I went parasailing the first time in my
life.
How many have been parasailing?
I mean, that is tremendous.
One person.
Two.
Three.
Three have been parasailing.
I better explain what it is.
This is the advantage of not having this
interpreter.
I get more time.
It really turns me on.
Parasailing, you get out on a little barge
in the middle of Lake George.
This is the lake named after me in
New York State.
And you get on a little barge, and
a speedboat is in front of you with
a rope and a parachute.
You get on the barge, and they tie
you into this parachute.
And then the speedboat takes full speed ahead
away from the barge.
Guess what happens?
You go straight up.
And I was up about 300 feet.
Crazy.
I couldn't speak.
I wasn't allowed to speak for 10 days
because I'd just been in the hospital.
I have a picture of this in case
you think it's a story.
My wife was watching from shore.
And here I was over Lake George where
I went.
I used to go as a child for
my vacation.
Praising God without saying anything.
And then he let go.
So you parachute down.
First time I've ever done any parachuting.
Until your feet hit the water.
And then they speed the boat up.
Straight up in the air.
After that I went jet skiing.
How many have been jet skiing?
See, you've got all these things to look
forward to in life.
This is going to completely destroy this rumor
that George Ferber doesn't have a holiday.
Jet skiing is a funny little set of
skis on water with an engine.
And you sort of get dragged behind it.
It looks four times easier than it is.
You sort of get dragged behind this thing
in a very awkward position.
Until you can gain speed and then you
can get up.
And to get up you really need to
be going 25, 20, 25 miles an hour
over the water.
You don't stay up for long.
But that was a great experience.
We did a number of other things that
day.
But you see we're all different, aren't we?
We're all different.
And I think it's so important to, in
Operation Mobilization, accept the wide range of temperaments
that we have.
And to ask God to bring us unity.
Unity in the midst of diversity.
Now in this passage of scripture we read
that Satan has a roaring line, seeks whom
he may devour.
And we know that when Satan sees a
team of people getting united together, as some
are getting united together here, this is a
very upsetting experience for the devil.
French, Germans, English, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, South
Africans, Argentinians.
But do not think that when you leave
here and you're united together in that team
that it is going to be easy.
It is not going to be easy.
Some things are going to go wrong.
They're going to go wrong.
You are going to get hurt in the
process of this training program.
We have a great controversy going on in
OM.
We have about 50 controversies.
But one of them is, what is training?
You're going to hear this throughout the year.
What is training?
Am I being trained?
Now different OM fields have different training programs.
But let me tell you who the master
trainer is.
That's the Holy Spirit.
And when the OM training program goes wrong,
it may be the study program, it may
be the evangelism, it may be something else.
When the OM program goes wrong, that's when
God's graduate school often begins.
And though we don't like to plan it
this way, sometimes you can learn more on
a team where things are going wrong than
on a team where things are going right.
And if you've had a hard experience on
OM this year, I'm not excusing anything that
we have done wrong.
Please forgive us.
But I think it's so helpful if you
ask yourself, God, what are you saying to
me through this mess, through this leader, through
this problem, through this disappointment, through this hurt?
Do you think it's possible to have a
social policy like Operation Mobilization has?
And in this area, there's no easy road.
We have debated and discussed this every year
for 28 years.
And we make some modifications.
But there's no easy road.
And there's no way, please understand, that you
can join a fellowship like this and even
break such a simple thing as a social
policy, which we now have people who laugh
at it.
I laugh at it sometimes as well.
But do not think you can come into
something like OM, break that policy as simple
as it is, as easy as it is
for us to forgive people.
We don't hold that against them if they
break a social policy.
But don't think you can do it without
things going wrong.
And when it goes wrong, it may be
the leaders of OM who have made the
mistake.
Because our leaders are not professionally trained people
who know exactly what to do every time
a human relationship goes wrong.
You think we have some group of professional
experts who have, you know, a master's degree
in psychology and another advanced course in handling
social confusion?
And I will tell you, we'd avoid a
lot of hurts if we just simply agreed
to pass on to the Lord, even though
we may not fully agree, just to keep
this simple policy.
Even here, if you're a first-year person.
Because it just so easily gets out of
control.
Easily people take sides.
Some side with the leader who may have
to discipline the couple.
Others side with the person who's being disciplined.
And I've seen whole teams come completely apart.
In fact, last year or two years ago,
through one social policy mix-up on one
of the ships, I will tell you, we
had hurt and agony that it took them
months to pull out of.
When I got there six months later, some
people were still not out of that.
Why?
Because we, in our naiveness and in our
own disposition, many of us are crusaders for
justice, right?
I mean, this is the justice generation.
And we want equal rights for everybody.
And it's amazing what people are crusading for.
And believe me, I'm in agreement with quite
a bit of it.
But brothers and sisters, we live in an
unjust society.
And if you think OM is totally just
and totally consistent, you know, you're just in
for some big surprises.
That's our goal.
And we're rebuking and exhorting one another.
And we're probably doing better than perhaps some
who don't aim at this with all their
hearts.
But there's no way you can come in
OM without seeing some inconsistency, some weakness, some
unfairness.
Somebody's birthday gets remembered with a big cake,
and somebody else's birthday is completely unnoticed.
Do you think it's possible to be completely
consistent on a ship with 300 people of
25 nationalities, trying to accomplish what they are
trying to accomplish?
Do you think everybody here now has the
same amount of money in their pocket?
Do you think every OM leader lives in
the same size house, drives the same age
car, and treats his wife the same way?
Surely you realize that life includes variety, which
has to include some degree of inconsistency.
We preach the message of the revolution of
love.
But we also teach in our messages on
balance and the human factor that this is
a goal and we are not yet there.
That includes your leader.
That includes your roommate.
That includes anyone you may be meeting in
or out of Operation Mobilization.
So the enemy is going to try to
bring disunity.
And some of the things that disappoint people
the most when they see disunity in the
church, in an OM team, between leaders, do
you think all of these leaders are in
complete unity with one another?
Some of them barely speak to one another.
If we as leaders spend all of our
time building our own fellowship as leaders, we
won't have time to talk to any of
you.
And personally, I prefer sometimes to just talk
to brand new people that I've never seen
before, rather than this same brother that I've
been fellowshipping with every September for 25 years
or 20 years, who's probably fed up with
having fellowship with me anyway.
But I can tell you, with this strong
-minded group of a couple of hundred men
and women who are leading this work, there
is not like-mindedness on every issue.
And you're going to see leaders that don't
get on so well with each other.
And you may find a leader who says
something negative about another leader, even though that
really isn't the right way to go about
it, because these leaders are human, they are
under pressure, and they are prime targets of
Satan, and because we're dealing with a lot
of areas all at once in OM.
You ever notice that?
In which you don't find quick, simple solutions.
Let me give a few specifics how we've
seen disunity come in the past.
Number one, Proverbs 13.10. What does it
talk about?
Pride.
Pride cometh before a fall.
Pride bringeth contention.
Again and again, I've seen this in my
own heart.
When you find yourself reacting against somebody, criticizing
somebody, hurt by somebody, just check, could it
be pride in your own heart?
I'm not talking about expressing yourselves.
And in Operation Mobilization, we want to leave,
you know, quite a bit of scope for
expressing yourself.
I tell you, no one's going to stop
me from expressing myself.
That's a key to sanity.
You start bottling it up, you know, you
can't say that, people will think you're unspiritual.
And, oh, you know, we get uptight.
There are ways, and biblical ways, of expressing
ourselves.
I told you last week, you have a
suggestion about the conference, send it to Nigel
Lee in an envelope.
Mark Nigel Lee.
How easy it is just to murmur to
somebody, oh, about this or that, rather than
a constructive criticism.
Every week, every single week, I am reading
letters that are critical of Operation Mobilization or
something we do.
That's part of my job.
And I am subject to a board of
directors, that's why I wasn't here yesterday.
We had a board meeting, so that these
people can find out what we're doing.
We're in subject to these people.
They're not in OM.
They're from different churches, businessmen, you know, lawyers,
accountants, farmers.
We are accountable to those men.
When they hear criticism about OM, they talk
to us about it.
It's tremendous.
I thank God for constructive criticism.
We can't ever make all the changes everybody
wants, but we can make some of them.
And now we have a policy that when
you're a longer-term OMer, you are part
of a general council, which is the sort
of final place within OM where we come
into unity about what we're going to do.
It's not a matter of Peter Maiden in
Georgeville or sitting on, you know, in the
hills of Cumbria, telling 1,600 people what
they're going to do.
A lot of our time is just listening,
just reading, just listening, praying.
And from the criticism and the suggestions, we
work for improvement before God.
But you know, as leaders, we've discovered that
pride does not die easy.
If pride is dying easy in your life,
perhaps you could write me some of your
secrets.
Secrets of victory over pride.
You could, you know, put your picture there.
Number two, the second reason often disunity comes
in an OM team, in a headquarters, in
the church, is idealism.
Idealism.
Now, I think we should have ideals.
I think you should have biblical ideals.
And believe me, we don't distribute books like
A.W. Tozer because we're trying to destroy
your ideals.
I mean, he is an idealist.
That's probably why he had some difficulties with
his wife and his children.
He was a prophet.
Maybe prophets shouldn't get married, but the Bible
doesn't teach that.
But he was very idealistic.
Later in his life, he said a lot
of things that brought other things into balance.
He openly confessed that his greatest problem was
lack, excuse me, lack of moderation.
You know what moderation is?
Self-control.
And he pointed out how as preachers, we
can easily say things that are a little
bit, you know, immoderate.
And he pointed out in that same article,
A.W. Tozer, it's difficult to pin a
preacher down.
I was introduced in a meeting this past
Sunday.
I'm sure the pastor didn't realize what he
was saying.
As mobilizing millions of young people in 1963
across Europe.
Millions.
It was actually a little less than 2
,000.
And it wasn't me, it was many people
and hopefully the Holy Spirit.
Isn't it sad that sometimes we, as Christians,
lean a bit toward exaggeration.
It was a tremendous meeting.
Oh, it was one of the greatest meetings
I've ever been to.
It was packed.
How many were there?
Hundreds.
You find out later there was 101.
It's not hundreds.
It's 101.
Or to be safe, about 100.
Even that's not safe because the next man
says, a little over 100.
Because that's about 100, isn't it?
A little over 100.
So the next man is saying, well, you
know, a lot more than 100.
The next man says, well, it was between
100 and 200.
And the next turkey says, over 200 people
were gathered in the meeting.
Forgive me for using the word turkey in
vain.
We don't like to do that in OM.
Idealism.
David Siemens, in his powerful book, Healing for
Damaged Emotions, tries to deal with this.
And it's a plague in Operation Mobilization.
It's a plague.
It ruins teams.
It ruins relationships.
We get people that we really think are
tremendous.
Do you ever get somebody, wow, he's a
really great person.
I want to get to know that person.
And somehow in God's providence you manipulate things
a little bit, organize or pray, and you
get that person on your team.
You discover a few months later, selfish, proud,
insensitive, and worse of all, doesn't like you.
We can laugh now, but for many people
in Operation Mobilization, it's a shattering experience to
have someone they think is a man or
a woman of God, and that they want
to learn something from them, and later to
discover is a piece of clay.
Piece of clay.
And I think many, many a pastor has
had a nervous breakdown because it was impossible,
impossible to perform to the degree that his
congregation expected him to perform.
And believe me, there's many a pastor that
becomes a performer.
Because if you don't please some of these
saints, they're going to give you, not the
right hand of fellowship, they're going to give
you the left boot to the door.
And I will tell you, I have faced
hundreds of broken and discouraged pastors in my
ministry.
And it's often linked with the idealism.
This is a New Testament church.
You get even people who boast about it.
Ours is a New Testament church.
Ours is the real fellowship of this, you
know, this day.
We're not, you know, we're not a dead
church like that one down the road.
Ours is alive, look at it.
We've got a band, we've got this, we've
got that.
People are being saved every week.
And then you join it.
Maybe for a month, sometimes even years.
And they go relatively well.
Read James chapter 5.
What about the book of Galatians?
Galatians chapter 5 and verse 15.
We can't look at all these references and
race against the clock.
Galatians 5, 15.
But if you bite and devour one another,
take care lest ye be consumed of one
another.
That can happen on an OM team.
Let me just insert this in the way
of an announcement.
If you know anybody that has been hurt
and has had a negative experience on OM.
That you feel any of us as leaders
could minister to.
By, you know, just a general letter.
We don't have to, you know, go into
detail.
But just a general letter that we just
happen to write.
Saying, look, you know, how was your year
on OM?
You know, is there anything we can be
praying for?
If you know anybody like that, please don't
hesitate to write to us.
And we know, no matter what kind of
experience someone has on OM when they go
home, they will be tested in new ways.
Any training program, no matter how good it
is, is no guarantee that you're not going
to fall flat on your face three or
four years later.
May we understand that.
But going back to this sins of a
tongue, I guess OM still continues to be
idealistic in this area.
You know, we still, we still somehow feel
it's good to aim for a hundred percent.
I think last night there was that emphasis
on holiness.
And we believe that.
And I continue, and I thank God for
His grace.
I thank God for His patience to work
on the sins of the tongue in my
own life.
What are a few things you may want
to just watch for in this area that
perhaps you don't have in your list yet?
Watch out for negativism.
In fact, if you're basically negative by disposition,
that is, you more easily see the negative
than the positive, let me just share a
little prophetic thing that isn't a prophecy.
You're in for a very hard time.
You know, I don't want to make you
feel depressed, but since you're negative, you probably
already are depressed.
But when a movement gets this size, and
it's trying to do so much with so
few and so little money, and I might
be just open with you, that the Bible
school today had a discussion with Case, or
within the last couple of days, and they
are desperate for us to pay our bills
here.
And we are behind.
I don't know if they've given us the
invoice yet, but if they did, we don't
have the money.
We want to pray, even tomorrow, that we
can bring our bills.
I think we're only paid through July.
And you may ask, well, what happened to
the money I prayed in in July or
in August?
Let's just understand this.
The campaign and the ministry that we're engaged
in in the summer is this big, with
this much expense.
And the amount we pray in is this
big.
Because the overheads of getting the whole thing
going, just in recruiting people, the overheads in
our offices, phone, telex, letters, postage, you know
what it costs now to post one letter.
Would you like to know how much it
costs to post our prayer letters, without which
some of you would not be here.
So unlike the early days of OM with
this hyper-low overhead, the overheads in OM
are much bigger.
I don't think it's out of control.
There are areas where we need to sharpen
up.
But you have to have more trained, experienced
personnel to do some of that sharpening up.
That's why often we are running a month
behind or two in paying the bills.
We're trying to change that.
We're thinking, we're praying, we're making changes.
Mind you, it certainly keeps us very humble.
But would you unite with us, that we
may pay our bills soon.
The BBI, who in turn needs the money
to keep this going.
They've had to increase the costs here.
And it's still very fair for the facilities
that we have.
I think you realize when you're in a
place like this, it's not just the dormitory
room that costs.
The dormitory.
The whole fairness.
But all these conference rooms.
Can you imagine holding this in a hotel?
As many Christian groups do.
Somehow, I believe God's going to bring that
breakthrough.
But watch out for negativism, especially when there
are so many nationalities and so many denominations
and things somehow do go wrong.
Beware of ingratitude.
Beware of cynicism.
Tozer gave one of the most devastating blows
to cynicism.
When he said, the cynic is often right.
He's often right.
But in fact, he's frightfully wrong because he
has the wrong attitude.
How's your attitude?
You know, this is one of my basic
goals in life.
To keep a right attitude toward people.
And you know, it's good.
But I've got so many areas of failure
that this is an area where somehow the
Lord has given more grace than victory.
I find it very difficult to maintain a
wrong attitude toward anybody.
It's just, to me, it's just so basic
that we've got to have that right attitude.
And if I get a wrong attitude, I
immediately repent.
If I see somebody doing something really I
feel is wrong, I feel is unchristian, I
pray for them, I might speak to them,
but I don't harbor a grudge.
I don't want to hold anything against anybody.
Don't let the sun go down upon your
anger.
Surely that must also include not letting the
sun go down upon bitterness.
Not maintaining a grudge.
Is that worth it?
That brilliant book, None of These Diseases, said
we can even bring many illnesses upon our
bodies by holding a grudge.
So beware of cynicism.
Beware of the wrong attitude.
Now, you may have struggles like me, and
in certain cases, your attitude about a person
may lapse back several times in one day.
The Bible doesn't teach you can only repent
once a day.
Praise God, you can repent all day long.
If somebody around the office is really driving
you bananas, he's a real spiritual cockroach, and
you'd really wish that somehow the earth would
open up and he would go to the
other side.
None of you, of course, get that kind
of hostile thoughts.
I do.
But you repent of that.
You know that's wrong.
It's not from God.
You know, I get a wrong attitude sometimes
toward my wife.
I never thought this before I got married.
How can you have a wrong attitude toward
your wife?
I mean, you know, you're one flesh, the
Bible says.
You're having a wrong attitude toward yourself.
And just this weekend, home with my wife,
you know, you go home for the weekend
and it's going to be great, and your
wife, your family, this is tremendous, free from
the OM conference, and this little thing goes
wrong, and this little thing goes wrong.
Boy, I tell you, we had an interesting
weekend.
I've come back here for a break to
prepare for next weekend.
The only way my wife and I have
kept going these 25 or more years is
continual repentance, continual bending, continual cleansing, continual
forgiving.
I tell you, you can never know how
affirmative my wife has been in my life
in ministry.
Now, not every woman has the same degree
of ability to be affirmative.
If you're married and your wife's not what
you feel the most affirmative person, you need
to love her and accept her as she
is.
Maybe you're not so stimulating yourself.
I tried to watch a little bit of
Superman III when I was home.
My daughter makes recordings for the doulos, and
I'm part of the censorship committee.
And so I tried to watch a little
bit of Superman III, and I didn't get
very far.
It was very intimidating.
But, uh, somehow we in OM had the
idea that there are some spiritual supermen around.
And some of you little Suzy Q's, little
Sally, little Betty, little Lucy, or whatever your
name is, you think you're going to marry
some great spiritual macho superman who's going to
take care of you the rest of your
life.
Let me tell you, you're in for some
big surprises.
Because with the way things are today, a
lot of our feeble, feeble spineless men are
looking for some dynamic apostolic woman who's going
to take care of him, at least through
her prayer life.
Number four, the fourth thing that so easily
brings disunity into the body and into the
fellowship is crooked thinking.
Crooked thinking.
Wrong thinking, if you want a simple term.
You know, two plus two equals six.
Objective mathematical mind.
Two plus two equals six.
Joe smiled at Sally.
Therefore, Joe is madly in love with Sally.
Two plus two equals eight.
It could be that this brother actually has
the kind of face which, you know, smiles.
Somebody wrote me some time ago and they
said they were very, very happy they actually
saw me smile during a message.
I think it's somebody who'd been mainly listening
to tapes.
But, you know, one of the beautiful things
about meeting together as a general council and
all these leaders' meetings they do take a
lot of time.
But I think it's worth it.
You know why?
We listen to each other.
And some of our faulty thinking, I've had
some faulty thinking for a long time about
the area of money and where money and
prayer, you know, fits together and all that
kind of thing.
It's been one of my blind spots.
And it was through listening to other people,
especially of other countries and other denominations and
other cultures that finally God got a hold
of my heart.
And you're welcome to listen to my financial
crisis tape in which I share some of
my struggles with faulty thinking as far as
I can see today.
Don't listen to rumors and think that OM
is throwing off its basic policy because it
is not.
And we're not going into big fundraising and
we're not going to go around, you know,
we're still, when we make these few changes,
we'll be almost the most conservative people in
the Christian world when it comes to money.
But we feel there are a few areas
of faulty thinking where dishonesty gets in, spiritual
pride gets in, and other difficulties have gotten
into OM.
And we want to try to nail that.
And our board members yesterday in the meeting
accepted 100% the decision of the General
Counsel in regard to a few small changes
in this area.
And all the people who have written to
me, I've sent this tape out to church
leaders, every single feedback, people in OM and
outside of OM, basically has been positive.
I will tell you, encouraging letters, quite a
few of them with very nice-sized checks
enclosed in the letter to encourage us forward
in a few of these just simple changes
about communication.
Such things as we don't want to just
go around claiming that we never make our
needs known.
I have stopped saying that for seven years,
I think, at least.
What we have tried to say, even before
these few changes, and I must avoid getting
on about this tonight, is that we have
not overtly made our financial needs known.
Now, in the future, we may not say
that because it got us into a lot
of dead-end streets.
And it made other people and other mission
groups think that we were better.
And super-spirituality sometimes came in.
And a lot of other difficulties.
Anyway, we won't get into that.
But I think God is constantly wanting to
put on corrective lenses in our thinking.
It is possible to listen to a report
about a person.
Here's Brother Joe over here behind this map,
okay?
And you hear Sally says something about Joe.
And John says something about Joe.
And then you get a third witness.
Maybe an older, mature person.
They say something about Joe.
Even in that case, there's a possibility that
it's not, the evaluation is not correct.
It's possible.
Now, with three witnesses, there's a good chance
that maybe there's an element of truth.
But a lot of people are trying to
prove things these days by case histories.
Do you know what I mean by case
histories?
Testimonies.
This person did this and they were healed.
This person did it and they were healed.
Therefore, all people who do this will be
healed.
You get it?
Brilliant logic, right?
Crooked thinking.
Generalizations.
Pendulum thinking.
Overreaction.
I have a message.
I don't think I'm going to get to
it this year.
How to make decisions.
How do we make a logical decision in
our lives as we face so many different
possibilities and so many different ideas?
I don't think I'll get into that tonight.
The time is going.
I am still myself learning how to think
through issues.
How to relate the Word of God with
the actual situation.
How to be a better listener.
And how to ask God as it says
in James for wisdom that comes from above.
If I didn't believe God could give us
wisdom that comes from above to combine with
all we get with all we get from
His Word and from what we read and
from what we listen to.
Think of the wisdom just in this book.
Surely we can learn from people like this.
We may not agree with everything that Charles
Colson says.
But here's a man who's gone through real
life experiences.
Prison.
Failure.
He's also been through divorce.
And he opens his heart.
He just opens his heart.
Somebody says, well that's not Bible exposition.
I don't want to read that.
That's not expounding the Scriptures.
Is that the only way that Christians get
truth?
Some people give that idea.
I believe in expounding the Scriptures.
I've been listening to Stephen Olford over the
weekend expounding the Scriptures.
But I tell you, I thank God there
are many ways to communicate to God's people.
Testimony.
Exhortation.
Different types of preaching.
Just reading the Word.
And Christian books.
And I tell you, I learned something from
this book.
And I believe one of the greatest marks
of spiritual health on OM, and I pray
it'll never go, is that we read widely,
we listen widely, and we're always learning and
always growing and not afraid because of pride
to change when we see that something isn't
best.
Number five is impatience.
You know how much the Word of God
talks about this?
Talks more about impatience than it does evangelism.
Talks more about impatience than a lot of
things we talk about in OM.
Would it be an awesome thought for you
to think that maybe God has mainly brought
you on OM this year to teach you
patience?
You thought you were coming to serve the
Lord.
We get a certain group that come in
and say, serve the Lord.
God's called me to serve Him.
Nothing wrong with that.
The Lord's servants?
But you know, if you're gonna serve the
Lord, it needs to be in the energy
that the Lord alone can give.
And that means self is gonna be crucified.
Christ is gonna be reigning and ruling in
your heart.
And that means God wants patience in your
life.
That's one of the schools where my victories
and my problems have been far greater than
some of the other things I've mentioned.
God is so merciful.
And I praise the Lord so many ways
He teaches patience.
I won't go into the list.
There's not time.
Number six, just plain old lack of love.
Ooh, that sounds too too, too, too.
That's just too...
It doesn't have a punch to it.
Lack of love.
What's your problem, brother?
Demons!
A lot of people believe that now.
Everything that's wrong, you know, a little twitch.
I just heard of a guy.
He went up and down the country.
He said in his message he had so
many people laying hands on him to get
him free he thought he was going bald.
I hope he was exaggerating.
I know that sometimes there are serious cases.
I like to use this terminology in which
the enemy seemingly has got, you know, a
foothold in our lives.
He certainly did in my life in the
area of lust.
And I tell you, I'm not afraid to
pray.
I'm not afraid to fast.
I'm not afraid to ask someone else to
pray.
But more often our problems are more basic.
And the lack of love is certainly one
of the big basics.
Most of the problems on our teams, not
all of them, most of them could be
solved with a little more love at the
right time.
And of course the fruit of the Spirit,
Galatians 5, 22, the fruit of the Spirit,
it's like the spectrum of love.
We've all heard messages on it.
You had an orientation tape on it.
But we still don't have enough of it.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance
against such.
There is no law.
And let me just say this.
And this has been the motto of OM
since its inception 28 years ago.
Whatever you get in OM, if you don't
get love, you haven't got it.
Please don't go around too much talking about,
you know, OM principles.
Why don't we talk about biblical principles?
Why don't we talk about what the Word
of God says?
I believe in the OM principles.
I'm not against that if it's kept in
balance.
But if you want to talk about OM
principle, I know it doesn't sound so exciting
as far as I'm concerned.
And I've been watching it all these years.
Love.
I have a little message about people that
are difficult to love.
All kinds of people I've met along life's
road.
What a challenge.
Number seven, darkness.
Just spiritual darkness.
Lack of walking in the light.
1 John 1, verse 7.
I don't think walking in the light works
very well if love is not mingled with
it.
I know leaders who have been totally devastated
when some team member finally decided he was
going to tell that leader a thing or
two.
And into the person's office he went.
This thing and that thing.
And maybe that leader had just been giving
his all.
He'd been going the extra mile.
He'd been staying up late, working, trying to
hold the team together.
And this brother comes in and just blasts
away.
I want to tell you something worse.
It's when a leader gets upset and starts
blasting away at some new recruit.
And I pray if that happens to you,
you'll somehow let love grab your heart at
that moment.
I know most of these leaders.
They don't want to do that.
They don't mean to do that.
But they are all different temperaments.
They get under pressure.
They've got a lot of goals, a lot
of programs.
They're actually one of their greatest goals is
to make you happy.
I can tell you every leader basically wants
to see happy, fulfilled people by this time
next year.
But the very thing we're wanting to do
creates pressure that sometimes keeps us from doing
it.
Certainly in my life.
My very desire at times to do the
right thing and say the right thing to
my wife, my secretary, my team, my children.
The very pressure in wanting to do that
has made me vulnerable so I didn't do
it.
And then when they misunderstood it and thought
that I had something deep against them when
that wasn't the case.
It was a passing thunderstorm.
And the whole thing goes out of control.
Walking in the light is good.
But it needs to be with dignity.
Do you like that word?
We need a little more dignity in operation
mobilization.
It needs to be with love.
It needs to be with a deep sense
of respect for that person.
He may have failed.
He may have said the wrong thing.
But if he is in a place of
leadership and to me even not in a
place of leadership, he deserves.
You're believing the best.
You're respect.
By the way, let me just throw another
practical thing in that could save a lot
of situations.
You try to share something with a leader
and you feel he didn't hear.
We have people they try to share something
when the leader is on the run.
He's busy and they try to get to
him.
And they get brushed off or, you know,
they get a negative.
And so they go back and sulk.
And they hold that again in their heart.
In working with leaders, here's a little motto.
If at first you don't succeed, try again.
Maybe with a letter.
Maybe he has said, no, you feel you
want to appeal.
Write a letter and say, look, just give
this one more consideration and what you decide,
I'll live with it.
That's a good way to go.
My wife has got a lot through that
method.
But don't say, please, don't say, the leader
was too busy.
He wouldn't listen to me.
Especially if it's only been a passing, you
know, quick little comment.
And sometimes it's necessary to communicate to your
leader that you really want to meet with
him and talk about something serious.
I tell you, when I get communication like
that on my desk, that goes right to
the top of my list.
If somebody says, you know, I have something
serious, I really need to see you.
That's very different than people who just make
a passing remark, oh, you know, I'd like
to get together with you.
Have you got any time?
I may get to that person.
But I tell you, the man who writes
the letter or, you know, gets to my
secretary or sees me and says, I really
need to see you.
This is important.
It's on my heart.
I've got to get it off.
That kind of stuff, my antenna goes, and
sometimes you lose sleep because you end up
talking late into the night.
Listen, I'm not, I'm not, how can I
say, I can't overstress this enough.
There's got to be vital, loving communication between
the new recruit and the leader if this
thing is going to work in 1985 and
1986.
There's got to be that communication.
Neither party can withdraw.
And I think with the size of OM
today, the complexity of OM today, more followers,
new people, whatever you want to call yourself,
disciples, learners, you have to take the initiative.
I know people that have waited all year
or six months for the leader to call
them in for fellowship.
And I tell you, especially many male leaders
don't easily take the initiative in calling all
the girls in for fellowship.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But some just find it difficult.
But they would not be refused any woman
who wrote to any of our leaders and
said, look, you know, I'd like to get
some time with you and just talk about
something.
There's nothing wrong with that.
We need more of it.
And women certainly need to be heard more
around Operation Mobilization.
Number eight, the lack of vision.
If we lose the vision, we don't know,
you know, what we're really going after, why
we're doing this, then our motivation goes down
and sometimes division comes in.
Number nine, division often comes because of rigid
thinking.
I'm convinced we have a five to ten
percent people in OM who are way too
rigid in their thinking.
And you know why God has brought you
into OM?
If you're in that camp, God wants to
make you a little more broad-minded.
Some of you are very brethren.
How we love the brethren.
But you've been reared in the brethren.
You mainly know the brethren.
Maybe it's time to get to know the
cistern.
But you mainly...
And you're a little bit rigid.
And let me just tell you, if you're
rigid PB, and I was baptized in that
little fellowship twenty-seven years ago, believe it
or not, by Dale Roton, you're going to
find OM very hard.
And as a new recruit, you may prefer
to leave at the end of the week
and go back and just work with your
own denomination.
Because OM is committed to an interdenominational position.
Not in word, but in deed.
Then you get some people from the Pentecostal
side.
That's the fastest growing church in the world
today, the Pentecostals.
And I tell you, Pentecostal pride can come
as fast as brethren pride in the 1800s.
The brethren, you know, they're going a bit
downhill.
One thing about the brethren I fellowship with
these days, they seem a lot more humble
than they used to be.
Praise the Lord.
But the Pentecostals, they're riding high.
They got churches with 500,000 men.
I always thought God was a diamond miner
rather than a coal manufacturer, but no doubt,
they're all Spirit-filled, dedicated, realistic people.
Let's believe the best.
But I find people, I listen to a
lot of tapes, fellowship with a lot of
people, I find people and I know I
must have been in this camp, maybe I
still am, because I don't believe in sacrificing
basic doctrines and so in that sense we're
all a bit rigid, aren't we?
We're all a bit rigid.
But oh, wouldn't it be beautiful for some
of you who are a little bit narrow,
a little bit rigid, a little bit broader
mind.
Maybe if you're Brethren you can fellowship with
a little more Pentecostals.
Maybe if you're Pentecostal you could reach out,
fellowship with some of the Brethren.
Maybe if you're Lutheran you could get to
understand these Baptists.
Maybe if you're German-Lutheran you could have
fellowship with an American Southern Baptist.
Or maybe if you're Anglican, if you're Anglican
you could have some fellowship with what would
be good.
What about the Methodists?
You don't get so many of those.
But this is a Methodist book I offered
you free.
Rigid thinking has divided many O.M. teams,
it's destroyed headquarters, it's destroyed homes, and I
feel one of the greatest things that God
has been doing in my own heart is
just make me a little more broad-minded
about it.
A lot of things that I once thought
were so important, so important, doesn't matter now.
Doesn't matter.
It's not worth.
Let's not hunt mice.
You ever heard that expression?
Let's not hunt mice.
Little things.
You've got your big gun and you go
down the road.
Baloom!
A little mouse.
Let's hunt elephants.
You know, let's hunt elephants.
And the Lord Jesus taught that.
He said you strain in a gnat and
you swallow a camel.
And we do that in O.M. We
do that in our teams.
We get tidiness neurotics linked up with Mr.
Mess Pot on the same team.
And one is perpetually cleaning and he changes,
you know, everything every day and he washes
everything every day and he's got heavy-duty
deodorant and he's got super deodorizer soles in
the inside of his shoes.
And, you know, we can use some of
those people.
Let me tell you.
But that person needs to become patient with
the other person who has not yet learned
some of these basic disciplines.
Keep communicating.
Don't get upset.
Don't throw in the towel.
Don't let that thing grow up.
Become bigger and bigger.
He hasn't washed the teacups.
We're going to bed with dirty teacups.
My mother taught that all the dishes must
be washed and put away every night.
And if my mother taught me that, then
that's gospel truth.
And this is heresy.
Dirty teacups.
In our home, we have had civil war
on this issue.
We not only have dirty teacups in the
kitchen, which is quite painful for my wife
at times, we have dirty teacups everywhere in
the house and dirty coffee tubs and other
dirty cups.
And I don't know how it's happened, but
in our family now, even though we teach
forsaking all, we have over 50 cups.
All different sizes and varieties.
And no one really wants to wash them.
Mind you, we're pressing on and we've seen
some real victories lately.
Little things, we may laugh at here, but
on our teams, our blood pressure goes up.
Have you ever seen the team member when
his blood pressure is going up?
You know, it's like an elephant is sitting
on one of his corns.
And then he tries to say something.
Alan Redpath once said, when you're upset, when
you're upset, you know when you're upset, do
whatever you want, just don't open your mouth.
You can wiggle your ears, wiggle your toes,
count to 10.
I've been saved in many situations in the
past years when I wanted to burst out
and say something and I learned this lesson,
count to 10.
And it works.
You say, oh, that's using Carl methods to
be spiritual.
Let me just say this for you, dear
spiritual brothers and sisters.
When you're battling a war on many fronts,
sometimes you have to use as many different
methods as possible.
And I find some of the practical methods
are an enormous help for me in standing
against Satan.
It's not always just prayer, just the Word,
just quoting the blood of Christ, just standing
in the name of the Lord with a
shield of faith.
Sometimes there are practical things.
You may want to get some more sleep.
You may want to go get a decent
meal.
You may want to go have a walk.
You may want to just get some exercise
or do something you like to do.
Isn't it wonderful that as Christians we are
allowed to do many things that we like
to do?
Isn't that great?
Because years ago in O.M., there was
a little group that believed that the Christian
life was mainly doing all these things you
don't want to do.
We had people actually come on Operation Mobilization
thinking it was about the best purgatory program
going.
They didn't want to be a disciple.
They didn't want to forsake all.
They didn't want to be a missionary.
But then they felt so guilty about it
they didn't know what to do with all
that guilt, so they joined Operation Mobilization.
And then we wonder why we've got ex
-O.M.ers around the world who haven't
quite made it through life.
Don't think we have some miracle cure for
deep emotional long-term struggles.
It's going to take time.
But one thing we can do even as
we go from here tonight is somehow by
the grace of God at least be going
in the right direction.
And unfaithfulness in little things, it may be
washing up, it may be the vehicle, it
may be your manner of dress, it may
be your breath, it may be some other
little thing, in Christian work it can be
tremendously important.
We're dealing with people.
I remember taking a course under Billy Graham's
senior counselor and they emphasized when you're witnessing
for Christ you make sure you have sweet
breath.
You make sure you don't have any odors
coming from your body.
Little things have caused teams tremendous confusion.
And in O.M. we're not just wanting
to teach you the big spiritual lessons of
life, how to tear down enemy strongholds in
the Soviet Union.
We want to teach you basic principles of
godliness.
My mother always used to say cleanliness is
next to godliness.
Well, my tenth point is simply failure to
receive admonition and correction.
How do you handle correction?
Has anybody corrected you in the last day
or two?
How did you handle that?
Maybe if nobody's correcting you, you could sign
somebody up.
Sign somebody up.
Maybe somebody living near you in the dormitory
and say, look, why don't you be my
exhorter corrector for the next ten days?
Anything that I do you think is a
bit offensive, let me know.
When I have a man working for me
as my helper, and I always do, one
of his jobs, if he sees something I
do or say that's offensive, he's supposed to
tell me.
It's a blessing.
Who do you have correcting you?
Really walking in the light with you?
Maybe you see enough yourself.
Maybe you can correct yourself.
But I needed help.
I needed help.
Do you get offended if someone says something
to you about maybe some little habit you
have?
Little idiosyncrasies we have.
I know, I have one or two, and
one really bothers my wife.
I'm battling away at this little, little pesky
idiosyncrasies.
Couldn't necessarily call it a sin.
Life isn't just sin and non-sin.
Life is many things.
Little idiosyncrasies that irritate people.
Maybe you could ask someone to give you
a list.
Ten things you do that I find rather
detestable and offensive.
You say you're not ready for that kind
of advanced training.
Okay.
May the Lord make you ready in His
time.
How does disunity come?
These are just a few ways.
Let's learn from this.
And let's believe.
Would you believe with me for greater unity
within OM this year?
We already are united in Jesus Christ.
He paid it all.
It's not all our efforts.
He has made this possible.
So let us, even as we go from
this chapel tonight, even as we think of
our brothers and sisters who don't know English,
who we need to be exercising greater sensitivity
toward, let's just think of ways that we
can build the unity.
And I will tell you, OM will have
a lot more mileage for Jesus Christ this
year if we'll hold the shield of faith
up against some of this stuff.
This is my greatest desire.
I don't have any super-huge burden as
far as strategy for this year.
I got my Muslim thing there.
That is a major thing.
I've got this Africa with a doulos.
Don't worry.
I've got too much vision.
It's hard for people to live with it
all.
But my goal this year is personal holiness
in little things.
I want to be more gentle in 1985
-86 with my wife, my family, my team
members.
I want to be more sensitive.
I want to think through better before I
open my mouth.
And yet at the same time I want
to be less nervous about my mistakes, my
sins, my poor manners that my wife lovingly
reminds me of fairly regularly.
Praise the Lord for committed wives.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you for this time together.
If we can win some victories in this
tonight it will gain us mileage every week
this year.
In our dormitories, in our flats, on our
teams, in our headquarters, on the ships, in
the vehicles, in our families, in our leadership,
in our discipleship, we want to deal with
these areas, these subtle methods that Satan uses
to bring division and disunity and confusion.
Lord, we are so different one from another.
Even different words have different meanings to different
people.
It scares us sometimes in OM when we
see the complexity of what we are attempting
to do.
We realize we need each other more than
we know.
The new recruit, the longer term, the ten
-talent man, the one-talent man, the Ph
.D. university graduate for Bible school dropout, the
creative, the plotter, the visionary, the consolidator, all
different kinds of people, God draws together.
Break down the barriers even as we wait
upon you in prayer tomorrow and we'll give
you all the glory and all the praise
in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Let's stand and sing all over the world
the Spirit is moving and let's believe that.