We really want to honor God, that's our
great burden.
We'll all be sharing a little about the
ship and some of the things that have
happened.
Above all else, we just want to honor
God.
A lot of people have been phoning me
and extending their sympathy, their encouragement, but when
we think, especially because they feel, of course,
we've gone through a great trial, and we
have, but you know, when we think of
some of the other suffering in the world
tonight, it just makes us look very, very
small.
And I've always had this commitment, though I'm
somewhat of an emotional character, that my final
vote has to be with my mind.
And my mind tells me that God wants
to use this to just alert us to
all the crises that are going on in
the world, and just enable us to see
beyond our own struggles, our own family situations,
and face up to what's happening among those
Afghan refugees, four million of them, face up
what's happening in Iran, in Iraq.
If that war was taking place here in
Europe, can you imagine it would be equal
to the Second World War, almost?
But because it's out there, we sort of
leave it out there, though there have been
300,000 slaughtered, and even at this moment,
Iran is building up for what may be
one of the greatest military invasions in history,
with a quarter of a million forces, a
quarter of a million, many of them teenagers,
who are hallucinated with the thought of martyrdom.
And we know all over the world there
are just awesome things taking place.
We got through our crisis without hardly a
finger scratched.
Unlike the exaggerated articles in some of the
newspapers, no one was plucked from the ship,
they all very calmly got into the lifeboats
and went off and were picked up by
the Chilean Navy, who was already standing by.
And all of them are safe.
Some are in Chile, some are in Argentina.
Some of our leaders, especially Dale Roton, who
coordinates the ship ministry, are down there.
And we are just rejoicing that God gave
us 17 and a half years of ministry
with this ship, 17 sailing years.
It's just about this time, 17 years ago,
she sailed from Rotterdam to London.
And those of you who get the international
ship letter from OM here in the UK
will be reminded of that.
As I was traveling from Rotterdam to London,
I typed up one of the early prayer
letters.
And so I typed up a prayer letter
this last week, which will go out to
our praying people and friends around the world,
including a number of you.
So let's just pray together before we launch
into some other thoughts and burdens.
Our God, we believe that your ways are
past finding out.
We pray often for people.
We see one healed, we see another one
die.
We pray often for ministries.
We see one go ahead with great success,
we see another one disappear.
We have prayed for this ship, launched out
of Europe way back in 1970, 71.
And we have seen that ship minister in
over 400 ports, over 100 nations, touching 50,
70 million people.
We've lost track.
Bringing tens of thousands to some kind of
commitment.
And we just give you thanks for all
that you have done.
And we would like this service together, for
there even be a time of thanksgiving and
a time of praise for what you have
done through that ship, which was once just
right here, down the coast in Shoreham, and
which now is there, two-thirds submerged in
the seas of that channel, Beagle Channel, in
the southernmost tip of South America.
Father, we give you the praise and the
glory.
We honor you.
We worship you.
And we trust you, Lord, to use this
event to speak to people.
We know a majority of people who have
gone up the gangway of the ship, especially
in Britain.
That was it.
They never wrote.
They never took an interest.
It was just an event.
We pray that somehow as the news has
come over television and radio and newspapers, and
as we consider perhaps replacing this ship, that
many more would get involved in praying, in
giving, in going.
We look to you, Lord, to bless us
tonight as we minister together, as we worship
together.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
We've been on the phone with a very,
very godly woman named Marjorie Foyle, asking her
for some wisdom and counseling ideas as our
pastors and counselors are there in South America
to counsel people who have been through quite
a traumatic experience.
And some of them are now feeling the
aftermath of that experience.
They're not sleeping.
They're getting reruns of the collision of the
ship.
This is the woman that God has been
using to help many of the Lord's wounded
soldiers.
And there are many wounded soldiers.
We're not going to go forward to battle
and not have any wounded soldiers.
And so here's a book you may want
to give to someone you know who's been
wounded in the battle of spiritual life or
of missionary work.
It's called Honorably Wounded Stress Among Christian Workers.
It's a very real factor.
If I hadn't learned years ago how to
deal with stress, and I'm still learning, I
wouldn't be here.
I definitely would not be here.
And among Christian leaders, the stress factor has
taken more men and more women than any
other factor I can think of, including impurity,
including car collisions, or whatever else.
So I'm excited about this book.
It's a serious book, but it's one that
you may want to take a look at.
There are also just a few leaflets about
Lagos.
This is the new program for 1988.
As you look at this and what Lagos
was planning to do, you will realize it's
not something we would print now, but it
was already printed.
And it's the one major piece of literature.
And it will be, I think, of interest,
even though anything in here in connection with
Lagos will have to be changed.
We're hoping some of these things will be
done by our Lagos Latin American shore teams.
One of the main goals for 1988 was
the entire rebuilding of Lagos.
We were going to put 125,000 pounds
sterling into this ship.
We only paid 70,000 for it.
To make it more useful, because from the
day we got it, it was always too
small.
We could never fit the people in.
That's one of the reasons we got in
Toulouse.
Well, the Lord has saved us.
All that work.
All that effort.
And there are many people feel, one man
called me today from Canada about it, that
really what God wants, it may not be
immediately, but what God may want is a
larger ship.
So that's something you will find interesting.
I don't have enough for everyone.
And if they run out, you can write,
and we'll send you one.
Let me just take a little more time
now to share what happened to the MV
Lagos.
This is my first public meeting since this
catastrophe.
We're talking about a 3,000-ton ocean
-going ship.
And I'm sure some of you don't know
much about it, and that's perfectly understandable.
You probably saw something about Argentinian pilots.
Almost every major newspaper in the country has
covered this story.
All the major news media has covered this
story.
They're still covering it even this morning.
When they found out one little factor about
the pilot, which was significant, somehow they grabbed
on to that.
The pilot, or pilots, we're still trying to
find out whether there's one or two.
I thought there was only one.
Never heard of two pilots.
But there may have been two.
Requested permission to leave the ship early, supposedly
because it was getting windy and they were
concerned about getting home.
And our captain did give them, on request,
official permission to leave early.
They charted out a route, which supposedly was
one of the more difficult routes.
They did not route us, you know, into
a rock.
But supposedly they gave a route that was
a little more difficult.
Well, we took this route, and I guess
with the high winds, this, of course, is
being investigated by both the Chilean and Argentinian
government because we are on a rock in
disputed water.
They don't even know who the rock belongs
to.
The rock is being claimed by both countries.
Now they will both probably claim it is
not their rock.
But it was just before midnight on the
5th, I hope I got that date right,
that the ship seemingly just slid onto a
rock.
It wasn't a huge collision all of a
sudden.
It just got on this rock.
There was a scraping.
There wasn't a large, you know, a large
tremendous shaking of the ship, but a tremendous
scraping.
Captain ordered people into preparatory stage, danger stage,
whatever you would call it, not to abandon
ship but to be ready with life jackets
in the dining room.
And they spent several hours just praying, singing
as crew members worked on trying to free
the ship from the rock.
But with the way the water was, things
actually got worse.
And soon the water was coming into the
ship.
And in the early hours of the morning,
the shipper, of course, went into a list.
In the early hours of the morning, it
was 15 or 20 degree list when they
abandoned ship.
This is down in the very, very southernmost
part of South America, south of Tierra del
Fuego, what's called Fireland.
It is one of the most dangerous shipping
areas in the world, but much more so
in the winter.
It is summer there right now.
And it was in this channel.
Can someone remember the name of the channel?
I've had it on my mind.
Beagle Channel.
They were getting toward the end of the
channel.
That this event took place.
I heard the news.
This actually happened when I was in an
airplane between New York and London.
I heard the news when I arrived.
And there was, of course, with it, the
immediate news that no one was injured.
So though I broke down and started weeping,
I think I was weeping for joy more
than for sorrow.
I'm the kind of character that weeps more
easily in very joyous events.
If I watch a film and everything's going
wrong, and then suddenly a totally unpredictable happy
ending, like Billy Graham's film Time to Run,
that's what causes my tears to really flow.
You see, because I'm one of the characters
that expected far worse than this over these
17 years.
Someone wrote me and said, Oh, I guess
you never thought of this.
Poor soul.
He must have a very, very poor imagination.
I've lived on this ship.
And I know something about dangers at sea.
And, of course, many, many times I've dreamed
of terrible things happening.
People say, Well, where's your faith in God?
Well, my faith in God is built on
this book.
Maybe your faith in God is built on
some fantasy that somebody's throwing you from some
other kind of book.
Because there's no place in this book that
tells us, as God's people, we are not
going to suffer.
There's no place that tells us it's all
going to be well.
In fact, the Word of God teaches quite
the opposite.
And if you just read the Scriptures, in
both the Old and the New Testament, you
will see that God allows His people to
be tried to the very bone.
Why do we have such a large book
in the Old Testament called Job?
What a waste of paper.
How downright depressing.
The average evangelicalist has never even read it.
We're very caught up with the Psalms.
Hallelujah, I'm caught up in the Psalms.
But where do we get the basis that
the Psalms are the only inspired part of
the Old Testament?
Maybe you want to write a chorus on
Job and bring the church back into a
little bit of biblical balance.
And the suffering that I have seen just
in my lifetime would make it folly for
me to just somehow claim that everything we
do in OM will never, you know, never
run into any difficulty.
In fact, we had an automobile accident years
ago that took four people.
We had one in the very beginning of
our work 20 years ago that took two
of my closest friends.
Both directors of the work in the UK
were killed simultaneously in Poland.
And we've had many, many other tragedies because
we've been involved with over 40,000 people
on OM for 30 years.
And the law of averages, a term I
do not like, and I believe through prayer
we can shift, hallelujah, the law of averages,
we are going to face suffering.
Of course we pray against these things.
Of course we ask for extra-angelic assignment
to watch over the ship.
And we believe that God understands our burdens
in our prayers and in fact has given
us far more years with this ministry than
we ever expected.
In fact, there was only one man on
the ship who began in the ship ministry
17 years ago.
The ministry goes back six years before that
because there were six years of prayer and
planning and praying before the actual first ship
came into being.
We just celebrated the 10th anniversary of the
doulos.
I could hardly believe it when they sent
me this news because it just doesn't seem
that long ago that God gave us our
second ship, a ship of 6,000 tons
with over 300 people.
And I really would appreciate your prayers for
doulos right now.
Can you imagine?
This news hit them out there along the
Indian coast, the captain, the officers, because sometimes
it's helpful for the young people if they
don't believe this can ever happen to them.
You know what I mean?
When they're young in the Lord, maybe God
lets them be a little bit naive, otherwise
they wouldn't even join the project.
But I can tell you when that news
comes to the doulos that Lagos is sunk,
and doulos is much older than Lagos.
The newer ship has gone down.
Built in 1949, doulos was built in 1914.
Of course, the age of the ship, as
far as we can ascertain, had nothing to
do with this particular accident.
And in fact, with doulos, almost nothing is
left of the original ship.
Almost nothing is left of the original ship.
You know, it's like a bionic person.
And, you know, as if we took Charles,
and over the years we just put all
kinds of new parts, and so Charles is
here, but nothing left of the original Charles.
That doesn't happen with people spiritually.
Of course, something happens along that line.
It was in the morning that they abandoned
ship.
It went very, very well.
There was no panic.
They had practiced this many times.
It was dangerous because a 20-degree lift,
often you cannot launch the lifeboats.
But lifeboats went down on both sides.
People got in them and rowed away like
that to these nearby Chilean vessels where they
were taken on board and brought to shore.
When we first heard it, we thought the
ship was just within 24 hours going to
be sunk completely beneath the water.
But she landed on a big rock shelf.
And that's where she is right now, about
two-thirds submerged.
In fact, two of our men spent the
night on the ship two nights ago, including
this man, Dave Thomas, the one who's the
chief engineer who's been in this project and
on this ship from the very beginning.
Pray for him especially and his wife and
children.
And the captain.
Of course, the captain feels a great degree
of responsibility.
And it's probably the most awesome thing that
can happen to a captain.
But you know, he's a man who knows
and loves the Lord Jesus.
When I spoke to him on the phone,
it did seem to me that he was
appropriating the grace for surely one of the
most difficult experiences in life.
And pray for others as we, our pastoral
staff and our leaders, will be interviewing everybody
to see whether they want to stay down
there for a while and work on the
program on shore or whether they want to
be relocated on the other ship or in
one of our home offices or go home
for a while.
We've already begun to see some money come
in to help in what we call the
Lagos aid to try to work out the
many, many, many details of this particular crisis.
I want to thank you for praying.
I want to thank you as a church
for praying because some of you have been
involved in this ministry from the very early
days.
You know, if something like this had happened
in that first or second year when we
did not have the credibility, we did not
have the kind of organizational structure and partnerships
and everything that we have today, a movement
now almost 30 years old, it would have
been just almost overwhelming beyond perhaps what we
could have handled.
And I thought about it many times as
my wife and I lived on that ship
during those early years when I was both
director of the Lagos as well as director
of OM.
And God, in His mercy, took us around
Africa and out to India, back again to,
you may have read in the papers, over
400 ports in these 17 years to over
104 nations of the world.
It's just incredible.
It's an incredible story.
A book actually is being written about it
right now by Elaine Roton, the wife of
the ship ministry coordinator.
As we move toward the future, one of
our great burdens is for the Dulas ministry
out in Asia.
Another one of our greatest burdens is that
as a lot of attention now is being
focused on Lagos, which is normal, that this
will not detract from any other aspect of
God's work.
For example, we would never want someone to
send to the Lagos aid fund money that
was to go to their regular missionary support.
This would be unacceptable to us.
We would not want our own work in
the Muslim world, 250 people.
The subcontinent, 450 people.
With a ship, 700 people full-time in
the subcontinent right now.
Somehow, as Lagos gets the focus of attention,
we would not want these other aspects of
the work to be neglected.
It's one of a number of reasons that
I'm not in Chile or Argentina right now.
A number of our other directors are.
I have to leave in 10 days for
Hong Kong, for Dulas, for Australia and Pakistan.
And since I've been away so much from
my wife, who's not well, and my family,
I felt, especially since no one had been
killed or hurt, that I should let other
people fly there and handle that situation.
And that's one of the reasons I can
be with you as well.
I'd like now to have an open time
of prayer in which several of you, perhaps
some of you who have been linked with
this ministry, could just lead in a brief
prayer.
Now, someone may have a really long prayer,
just sense the Holy Spirit's given you a
really long prayer.
I don't want to inhibit anybody, but if
you could just step out in the parking
lot and pray that prayer, you're great.
Or you could go in a vestry.
But as we just have this little short
time of open prayer, just pray briefly, so
a number of people, men or women, can
pray.
For the ship, for the staff.
And let us make this a little service
of thanksgiving.
I've heard that in Northern Ireland, a number
of our crew are from Northern Ireland, they've
organized tonight in one church a service of
thanksgiving.
The news of this event has gone around
the world more than, you know, anything in
the entire history of OM.
In fact, any 20 things we could put
together.
You know, we didn't organize this.
As you know, OM is not a great
publicity-seeking movement.
We're usually low-profile people, and the ships,
perhaps, have always been somewhat different when they
actually come into a port.
But let's pray that God will use this
news to stir His people to prayer, and
to greater vision, and whatever other way He
wants to.
I would appreciate prayer for the many meetings
I have in Australia.
I haven't been there much, only five days,
six days.
It was quite a big response.
We're getting quite a few key staff from
Australia.
We will be going there for almost four
weeks of meetings.
The news is already there, of course, in
the press.
Pray that somehow the Lord uses that.
Australia has a lot of potential for sending
out missionaries, but there's only a small increase,
number of missionaries coming out from that part
of the world.
And then I'll be on Dulas, in a
nation that has gone through suffering that makes
our little crisis look very small indeed.
The awesomeness of the Sri Lankan almost civil
war, the Indian so-called peacekeeping force, which
was like almost an invasion.
So many people dead, maimed, blown apart in
Sri Lanka.
That's where Dulas is going.
And I just read on the way down
here, one of the reasons I can take
so many meetings each year is I can
work in my car as good as I
can work in my office.
I even now have a phone in my
car.
And that's been a great answer to prayer.
But as I was coming here, I read
about Sri Lanka.
They're giving us the Queen Elizabeth birth, writing
Colombo, all permissions, book distribution, program, the works.
And I'm looking forward to being on Dulas.
I've been there many times on Lagos.
But as this news goes around the world,
you know, Satan can try to use it.
Let's really pray and cover that with our
prayer.
So let's just have a time of prayer,
one after another, leading in prayer, intelligent prayer.
God, guide us now as we pray together.
In a time of intercession and thanksgiving, we
ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Father, we just want to thank you from
the bottom of our hearts that when people
see their TV screens and normally with any
disaster, there's loss of life or some injury
associated with it, that this time it was
different.
Father, we thank you for that BBC summary
headline, shipwreck, all safe.
And we just pray that that very fact
might burn itself into the experience of those
who don't even think about you.
Lord, cause them to ask themselves, why should
it be different?
And Lord, may you use that to stir
them up to their responsibility as far as
you're concerned because we ask it in your
name.
Amen.
Yes.
Lord, we rejoice that in your service, Lord,
a disaster becomes a triumph.
And we thank you, Lord, that it was
truly a triumph that all was saved.
And we pray, Lord, that you will continue,
that this work shall go on.
Go on to your praise and glory, Lord,
that truly it shall resound throughout the world
that our God moves, and he moves in
a triumphant way.
Thank you, Lord, in your blessed name.
Hallelujah.
Thank you, Lord.
Lord, we pray for the pilot of him.
And we ask that you will continue to
give him the grace to face up to
the consequences.
Lord, will you be with him, give him
your peace.
Amen.
Father, we lift these matters to thee.
It's good to have a sense of rejoicing,
a sense, Lord, of your presence.
You are handling beyond our conception.
And we just cry to thee, our God,
that everything, all works out in glory for
him.
We commend to thee the Jew, Lord.
We commend to thee our brother and his
wife, who has a great need at this
time.
And we would ask you will further the
gospel, Lord, in your strange way.
And we magnify thee again for the safe
rescue of these men and women.
We give you thanks in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Oh, God, yes.
Hallelujah.
Lord, we thank you too for the ministry
that that ship has been throughout the world.
And the many thousands of people who have
come to know you because of it.
That's right.
We thank you too.
It's been such a marvelous work of distributing
your literature amongst people.
Lord, that they may come into that knowledge.
Lord, it's a blessing that you've used it
for your glory.
Yes, Lord.
Father, we thank you that when the folk
had to abandon Logos, it's been very evident
that you had not abandoned them.
That you were with them.
You protected them.
And, Father, we pray for those on the
Dudos that, Lord, they will really understand this
truth, that you are not a God who
abandons.
That even when we go through times of
trial and testing, you promise to be with
us.
You promise to give us the strength to
take us through.
And as you have been and as you
are now, being a source of strength and
encouragement to those at this time who are
still going through various traumas in the aftermath,
that, Lord, indeed, that the folk on Dudos,
Lord, that this, instead of shaking their faith,
will indeed strengthen them and cause them to
go on even more spreading your gospel.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
We do thank you, Lord.
Do you answer prayer.
We're trusting you to turn, as we've already
seen you, this whole situation around.
We do uphold Jonathan Stewart, the captain.
Tom Dyer, the first officer.
Dave Thomas, the chief engineer.
Brother Alam from India, first engineer.
We just believe, Lord, all these crew, the
ones that are still down by the ship
and all that's involved in that.
We're trusting you to work these out.
These details out in Jesus' name.
Amen.
I might just add just a few other
comments about the ship and then we're going
to look into the Word of God.
That we, 17 years ago, looked at the
possibility of getting insurance on the hull of
the ship.
Then we looked at insurance of the cargo.
The cost of insurance was so huge per
year that we just couldn't see ourselves to
paying that kind of money out.
Because that still wouldn't insure the most important
thing.
That's the people.
And the complexity of insuring the people is
also quite overwhelming and is left to each
individual within OM to seek out what they
feel best is in their situation.
But we did, four years ago, finally decide
to take out a third party insurance.
We had, I think, something before that was
not suitable.
And so, if our ship ever runs into
another ship or a dock or another person
or anyone else, just like some of you
may have only third party car and vehicle
insurance, we are covered.
The ship is almost surely being, they're asking
us to move the ship to Chile.
It's in Chilean waters, so there is this
dispute.
And our insurance will cover the moving of
the ship.
Would cover the salvaging of the ship.
But the nearest place where we can take
it is a thousand miles.
Where there is any kind of proper dock.
We've had the word, the ship is salvageable
but not repairable.
Technical.
So, the possibility is that she has to
be moved, taken out to deep water and
buried in the deep.
Probably, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years
from now when they've got high tech equipment
and they can raise things up.
There will be a great story, for not
all with the Lord by then, of the
raising of the Lagos.
But do pray as there is still a
lot to be done.
And we have another emergency meeting of the
board of directors.
The ship is owned by a British board.
It's all part of Operation Mobilization.
One of many companies within OM because things
have to be done legally.
And we'll be meeting in London again tomorrow
to discuss and pray through all of these
things.
Even our insurance broker who helped sell us
that third party said in terms of stewardship
of the money entrusted to us that we
have not done an unwise thing of not
insuring the haul and the cargo these last
17 years.
I might just insert here that a movement
like OM, the size we are, it is
becoming increasingly complex, the function on this planet.
Many countries have so many laws and rules.
The kind of simple lifestyle we were committed
to and still are to some degree is
now almost illegal in many countries by law.
So we really need prayer, not just for
our ship that represents about 5-7%
of our personnel, the ship Lagos, but the
whole ministry.
Turn with me in your Bibles.
As all of you know, I've been coming
around here for quite a few years and
just like all of you, I'm getting older.
And I now have to use these to
read my Bible, which is quite an embarrassment
for me because I always thought I had
such good eyes.
But my wife gets great kicks out of
it all.
2 Corinthians chapter 6.
I'm going to get a big print Bible,
then I won't need them.
2 Corinthians chapter 6.
I love this passage of Scripture.
Let the Word of God...
I'm not going to be able to expound
all this.
You won't go home till midnight.
Let the Word of God just speak to
your heart.
He wants to feed us from His Word.
He wants to build us up.
As God's fellow workers...
I'm reading from the New International Version.
As God's fellow workers, we urge you not
to receive God's grace in vain.
For He says, I tell you, now is
the time of God's favor.
Now is the day of salvation.
We put no stumbling block in anyone's path
so that our ministry will not be discredited.
Rather, as servants of God, we commend ourselves
in every way.
In great endurance.
Isn't that beautiful?
That's what I need.
In troubles.
In hardships.
In distresses.
In beatings.
In imprisonments.
In riots.
In hard work.
Ooh.
Sleepless nights.
Hunger.
Impurity.
Understanding.
Patience.
Kindness.
In the Holy Spirit.
In sincere love.
In truthful speech.
In the power of God with weapons of
righteousness in the right hand and in the
left.
Through glory and dishonor.
Bad report and good report.
Genuine yet regarded as imposters.
Known yet regarded as unknown.
Dying and yet we live.
We live on.
Beaten yet not killed.
Sorrowful yet always rejoicing.
Poor yet making many rich.
Having nothing.
And yet possessing everything.
We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians.
And open wide our hearts to you.
We are not withholding our affection from you.
But you are withholding yours from us.
As fair exchange, I speak as to my
children.
Open wide your hearts also.
That's what God wants us to do.
Even in these remaining moments together here in
this time of worship and thanksgiving.
To open our hearts.
What does God want to say to us
through this incident?
That in a rather unusual way has received
so much publicity here in Britain.
In fact, easily in the next week, you
can surely use this to open a door
of witness.
And all you have to do, even those
of you who are the most low-profile
witnesses that the Lord ever had, is say,
have you heard about that ship in South
America?
Probably they have.
And then you can maybe tell them something
about it.
You can tell them that the man who
had the idea in the first place was
speaking at your church.
I'll never forget it.
It was in a converted pub in Bolton,
Lancashire.
I had taken vehicles across the channel in
the summer of 62 when Owen was being
born.
About 12, the next summer, it was 100
vehicles.
I had known about, of course, the fact
that one of the best ways to get
to India was by sea.
Our teams had already traveled overland.
And various things came together as a small
group of us got onto this subject of
ships.
And it just rang in my mind that
this could be something that God could use.
I shared it with a few people.
This was 64 or 65, Bolton, Lancashire.
This pub was converted into a Christian bookshop.
And a few people laughed.
Others thought, well, you know.
Other people, of course, thought it was crazy.
So I didn't push it.
I wrote a memo on how to use
ocean-going ships in world evangelism and just
quietly circulated that to a few hundreds.
I then immediately went off to Sweden to
look at some ships and discovered these ships,
older ships, were selling at a very low
price because the shipping industry was beginning to
drop and because people didn't want old ships,
old cruise ships.
Because people who go on cruises, you know,
not usually East Enders, people who go on
cruises, of course not now, but generally, you
know, they want really posh accommodation.
Posh, by the way, comes from the word
pour out, starboard home.
Did you know that?
See how much you learn when you go
to church?
But I looked at some ships and I
was just even more amazed.
Just as the first vehicles we had in
OM were vehicles that went thousands of miles
and yet we bought them for three or
four hundred pounds and we repaired them ourselves.
And I thought, why can't we get our
own ship?
And it was two years before we even
had our first crew member.
In fact, one of the first was Graham
Scott.
Talked to him on the phone today.
Left a big first officer's position with a
top shipping company to come when we didn't
even have a ship.
And he helped promote this vision, helped us
find other members of the crew.
And then we came across this ship in
Denmark and were able to purchase it seventeen
and a half years ago for seventy thousand
pounds.
And even with that ship now going down
the bottom of the ocean and all that
we've lost with that, economically the whole project
has been a huge success just beyond anything
we could ever dream, including everything we've just
lost.
Just beyond anything we could have imagined.
Because we have hardly been turned away from
a port.
Sometimes we would sell a hundred thousand pounds
or fifty thousand, a hundred thousand would be
due loss, fifty thousand pounds in books in
a week.
And this is why, unless people understand the
ministry of OM, they can't understand how we
are rejoicing in the midst of this crisis.
It is a crisis because we measure what
God has done these seventeen years.
So let's open our hearts.
What does He want to say to us?
How does He want to prepare us better
for 1988?
It's hard to believe isn't it?
It's 1988.
Beatings, imprisonments, riots.
Have there been any really big riots lately?
Hard work, sleepless nights, hunger.
I find that this emphasis is left out
of a lot of so-called Christian teaching
in our day.
And it greatly concerns me.
Because if we give the idea that as
Christians we go around with some kind of
magic wand that we can wave together with
a few Bible verses, I will tell you
we will produce another gospel.
We will produce another gospel.
I felt the strongest speaker at Urbana, where
I've just come from, this missions conference that's
been going on since the forties, was a
character named Tony Compolo.
And he accused us there in America of
actually creating another Jesus.
Some of us have actually been saying that
for many years.
And I tell you, I can't try to
repeat the way he explains it.
But there is a danger that we do
produce our own nice, middle class, staid, reserved,
traditional, don't rock the boat Jesus.
When that's not the Jesus that we find
in the Word of God or demonstrated by
the New Testament Church.
Hardships, beatings, difficulties, distresses.
This passage is not saying this is all
that we have as Christians.
No!
This is just bringing into balance, as the
Scriptures do in such a beautiful way, other
passages that talk about blessing, talk about joy,
talk about gifts, talk about heaven, talk about
healing, talk about deliverance.
Hallelujah!
The Holy Spirit is doing all those things.
We all love to have those experiences.
But you see, if we don't have both
sides of the coin, if we don't have
the whole counsel of God, Paul said, I
have not shunned to declare unto you the
whole counsel of God.
Acts chapter 20, another very powerful chapter, where
we see Paul says for the space of
three years, night and day, he was weeping.
I know some people get a little surprised
when they find me weeping.
I weep once in a while.
To me, weeping is biblical.
Maybe all my weeping may not be biblical,
but weeping is biblical.
When did you last weep for lost people,
a lost world?
If you can't weep here, at least weep
there.
At least tell the Lord you want to
weep.
When I get the news about Iran and
Iraq or about Sri Lanka or about Kampuchea,
I want to weep.
I can't always weep.
You know, I'm as human as the next
person.
And I believe we need the challenge of
this great chapter here in the sixth chapter
of 2 Corinthians.
It goes on to speak about the reality
of the Holy Spirit, purity, patience, kindness.
In front of 18,000 people on New
Year's Eve when I was given five or
six more minutes to speak to this congregation,
the Lord just led me to read a
powerful quotation from Psalts and Itzyn about repentance
and confession.
And then confess to that whole congregation that
I felt my greatest failure in 1987 was,
at times, the way I spoke and treated
my own wife.
And ask God to forgive me, I think
I already had done that, and to somehow
make 88 a better year in my home.
Now, I don't know about your home, but
my home becomes a little bit of a
pressure cooker.
And I'm the kind of person who is
somewhat living in the fast lane.
Someone accused me of not living in the
fast lane, but creating my own lanes.
But I know at times when I have
been under pressure, and this has gone wrong
and that's gone wrong, that I have spoken
to my dear wife in ways that were
displeasing to God.
Because the Word of God puts a strong
emphasis on self-control.
It's a strong emphasis on kindness.
And it is always an enigma how sometimes
those of us who are so fluent and
gifted in the pulpit can behave so unkindly
and so ungifted in our own homes.
I understand from many Christian leaders that this
is somewhat of an epidemic.
It may be linked with the ministry, it
may be linked with the fact that as
leaders we are being carefully watched.
And so we do, we always like to
believe it's all victory, but we do repress
some of our emotions.
There are people probably in the church or
our team that we would really like to
poke in the nose, but that will not
go over very well in front of the
rest of the congregation.
So sometimes we bottle it up.
We like to believe it's all victory.
We get home, we let our hair down,
we feel a little more relaxed.
In fact, we are maybe uptight, and then
our wife says something that we feel is
not on, or she wants to talk about
something that we believe is irrelevant.
This is one of the problems I have
with my dear wife.
What she feels is relevant and what I
feel irrelevant, some of the little issues of
the house, it's like two people from two
different planets coming together to go water skiing.
Very difficult.
So I thank God for this passage and
many other passages of Scripture that put an
emphasis on kindness, on self-control, on purity,
on godliness.
And I pray that if you are committed
to this way of living, and I'm sure
most of you are, that you will not
become impatient with yourself, because that's also wrong.
We don't rob Peter to pay Paul.
We don't become impatient with ourselves in order
that we may become more patient with someone
else.
Because I find that sometimes, especially young Christians,
become extreme in the whole area of sanctification
and spiritual growth, and they think it's all
going to happen so quickly, and maybe for
a while, for a while, they maintain quite
a level of godliness, and really, you know,
really feeling encouraged.
Somehow they're carried along on last summer's big
camp and great church meetings and lots of
fellowship and good books and Bible studies, and
they maintain a level for quite a while.
Very few people I've interviewed in 30 years
keep that level all the time.
Something goes wrong, something happens, some of that
may have even been repression rather than victory,
and such people, when they fail, they don't
know how to bounce back.
So what do they do?
They turn on themselves.
Many decide they're not even going to go
to church anymore because they had a great
experience in the church, they got a great
blessing, and maybe after a while it didn't
seem to last, so why go back there?
And I just think it's so important as
we go forward in our Christian lives to
be patient with ourselves.
I don't think I would be here today
if I hadn't learned that.
I learned it many, many different ways.
Even as a young Christian, I was privileged
to study under great men of God, to
read a wide range of books.
I remember picking up Lane Adams' book, Why
Is It Taking So Long to Get Better?
Just the title was a stimulation to me.
A number of areas where I was trying
to be more godly, more sanctified, more self
-controlled.
One of them was my driving.
I read Billy Graham's sermon as a young
Christian, Highway Safety, a Spiritual Problem.
I wanted to be, you know, a spiritual
driver, and I repented when I read that
little sermon, and I distributed hundreds of copies
of it, and I launched a campaign within
OM for safe, spirit-controlled driving.
We even got an OM driver's license.
You couldn't drive unless you had an OM
driver's license.
Not enough to have a British license, you
have to have a spiritual license, OM driver's
license.
Quite a few failed the test, got really
depressed about it.
Here I am, 30 years after that commitment,
still finding it very difficult to be the
spirit-controlled driver.
I find it so easy to get irritated
in driving.
Maybe you don't have this problem, people cut
you off, hit you back, park in the
wrong place, do these things wrong, you probably
just rolled your window down, praise the Lord,
God bless you today.
Maybe you could write me a few little
notelets on how you do that.
To me it's a beautiful illustration, because most
of us would accept the fact that to
be a totally spirit-controlled, safe, rejoicing, happy
driver basically is a long-term program, right?
Most all of you would agree with that.
You're not going to come forward after the
meeting and ask for deliverance over poor driving.
I mean, if you do, praise the Lord,
probably Charles, who used to be a pilot,
can pray for you on that.
Most pilots, by the way, are very dangerous
drivers.
I'm sure that's not true of you.
That's right.
But the same is true in many other
areas of our life.
It's going to take time.
That area in your marriage you're working on,
that difficulty you're facing in your office, where
you want to be the Christ-like example.
You want to be the testimony like all
the messages say, right?
So that everybody in the office is going
to see Jesus in you, and they're all
going to come running to you and ask
and say, how do you do it?
How do you maintain the glow?
And there you are.
You give them a little track, and they
kneel down during the morning tea break, and
they accept Jesus as their Savior, and you
live happily ever after.
But for most of us, it doesn't work
that way.
Some of us, we find out when we're
witnessing, we're actually turning people off.
And then when we try to tell some
other maybe Christian counselor about it, instead of
getting encouragement, he puts us in a double
guilt trip.
A lot of God's people are going around
today living in perpetual guilt, because they're not
witnessing good enough, they're not a good enough
husband, or a good enough wife, or a
good enough father.
I mean, a good enough father, I mean,
that's really something, right?
And I find people are depressed because one
of their children has gone astray.
Most of the men of God I've read
about in all history had at least one
of their children gone astray.
Would you like to hear about Tozer's children?
Want to get depressed?
What about Moody's children or Finney's children?
What about Charles Marsh just wrote to me,
this godly man who worked in the Muslim
world.
His son is completely, completely gone as far
as anyone could ever be.
And he's writing up his biography.
He wrote to me and he said, should
I include this in my biography?
And I'm going to write him back.
I said, you jolly well should, because we
got enough phony biographies, and we need to
understand that as Christians we are human, and
we are in a warfare, and there are
heartaches, and things go wrong, and sometimes we're
responsible, oftentimes we're not responsible, other times it's
mutual cooperation.
And I believe we can learn from the
logos going down because that's the way life
is.
Billy Graham, my spiritual father, wow, I finally
met him.
After 33 years, I've dreamt about this, I've
had, you know, nightmares and dreams, when I
would meet Billy Graham, my spiritual father.
And we were ministering together at this conference,
and on the first night when he was
speaking, I was in the prayer room, and
he came in and, you know, I had
three minutes, one minute for each decade since
I've been a believer.
Well, praise the Lord.
And he told us as he was going
up to preach, I go up tonight in
fear and trembling.
Actually, he was suffering from phlebitis in his
leg, and had to go the next morning
off to the Mayo Clinic.
The newspapers, by the way, in the United
States says, Billy Graham, ready for heaven, unwilling
to retire.
69 years of age, Billy Graham, and I
think he's praying and thinking toward at least
another decade of evangelism in the work of
God.
It's exciting to be a follower of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
We do see answers to prayer.
We see souls saved.
We see blessings.
I can tell you about thousands of answers
to prayer with the MV Lagos.
I'm not demotivated in my praying through this
accident at sea.
I am encouraged and challenged to pray more,
understanding that prayer is God's weapon for accomplishing
his work.
There are many other things I would like
to say about this passage.
It's so powerful, but I'd like to just
focus on those words where it says in
verse 10, sorrowful yet always rejoicing.
It goes on to say, poor yet making
many rich.
That's an interesting little statement, isn't it?
Having nothing and yet possessing everything.
I think of some of the people who
have come off the ship, especially some of
the families, and some of them probably have
nothing left.
They lived on that ship for years.
They have their possessions on that ship.
Some of them may have nothing left.
And isn't it interesting that this scripture says,
having nothing yet possessing everything.
God's great concern in scripture, as I'm sure
you understand, is what we possess spiritually.
I hope you never feel bitter because you
don't have as much money as the man
down the road.
We have a lot of this in the
States.
People just getting downright depressed.
I just counseled someone absolutely depressed because in
his particular job he can only get this
much salary though he's pushing toward 50 years
of age.
But these young people are coming in with
the right career, especially accounting, something along that
line.
And at 25 years of age, they're already
getting more salary than this man, even though
they may have similar, almost equal education.
And we think of how much of this
is in the press these days.
Everybody seems to feel that their group is
getting the wrong end of the stick.
Is that an American or a British expression?
Both.
Everyone feels they're not getting a fair deal.
But I just believe it's so important to
realize that what we possess spiritually is just
so much more important.
God uses different people in different ways.
God commits different amounts of this world's goods
to different people in different ways.
And that's something we need to remember.
But let us just focus on those words,
sorrowful yet always rejoicing, because this will really
help me share something that I found just
true of my own life.
I think sometimes if people listen to me,
at least certain messages, they might think I
was this person of perpetual energy and perpetual
joy, rejoicing in all situations, praising the Lord
no matter what happens.
But in fact, I am a man of
many sorrows.
In fact, God prepared me for this sorrow.
It is sorrowful.
Some of us spend a lot of our
time just trying to save one more pound.
OM is a very frugal organization.
We're always trying to save a pound, even
less than a pound.
And then all of a sudden, hundreds of
thousands, hundreds of thousands, counting the books, gone.
It makes everything seem so bizarre.
I get sort of in the middle of
the day, but a wave goes across me
of depression.
What's the use?
And I think it's just so important to
realize as Christians there is a place for
sorrow.
I already quoted Billy Graham who said, every
life at its best is filled with sorrow.
Maybe you've lost a loved one.
You've grieved your sorrow.
There's a place for that.
Remember that little girl in Texas?
It just seems a few weeks ago, about
the same time as that horrendous Hungerford crisis.
I can't get that out of my mind.
I drove by there on that very day.
There was a girl in Texas and they
went down this well.
The amount of money and effort and manpower,
one life, what would you say is more
valuable?
To have lost one life on the ship
or to have lost the ship?
How would you like to write a story
on that?
How much value to put on life?
We've had two men just killed in Bangladesh.
It won't make any newspapers.
Nobody even asks.
Two men standing by the side of the
road just visited someone in the hospital.
Two of our full-time Bengalis, Bengali workers,
a log truck coming down the hill.
It was a very strange place for a
bus stand, but that's the way it is
in some places.
And this log truck came down the hill,
went out of control, plowed into the bus
stand, and those two men were in eternity.
Praise God, both of them know the Lord
Jesus.
We had to deal with a Hindu family.
We had to deal with one Christian family.
The driver, of course, just jumped out of
the truck and true fashion ran away.
If we do get a settlement for their
lives from the insurance company of the truck,
we will get 500 pounds sterling, total value
of one Bengali.
How do you face this kind of thing
in life?
One person seems to be worth so much,
and another person, well, when I lived in
Nepal, it was cheaper to pay off anybody
you killed than buy car insurance.
Life was so cheap in Nepal back in
those days.
In fact, in some areas it would be
far more difficult if you hit a cow
and killed a cow than if you hit
a person, especially a woman.
We live in an unusual world, and I
believe we have to know how to weep,
because in some of these situations, many of
the things that face us, sorrow comes to
our heart.
And in a sense, God prepared me for
this incident, this awesome crisis that we're in
right now, because over these years, there have
been many sorrows.
The sorrow of seeing someone get away from
the Lord.
A man, a friend of mine, one of
our early directors, got away from the Lord.
Soon he was an alcoholic.
He was destroying his life, destroying his family,
destroying his lovely children.
He told me just a few days ago
he sat on a park bench and was
going to take his own life.
I've been sorrowing over that man for years.
I have his picture.
I know him very closely.
But I haven't given up praying.
And he flew from his hometown to the
Urbana Convention, where I was, among other things,
to share with me that God has broken
through.
He had enough courage to put himself into
a detox center, detoxification center.
They specialize in this kind of alcohol addiction.
And somehow there, he met God again.
And he's been off the bottle, we say,
for many, many months, back with his dear
wife, who suffered with him in ways that
you could not, not fathom.
Yes, there is a place for sorrow.
And all of us could tell of sorrowing
situations we've gone through.
One of the things that grieves me the
most, that hardly I get through a day,
is often the state of the church and
the state of God's people.
Don't think, because I'm in Operation Mobilization, you
know, I'm off here, you know, giving out
tracts in a tree.
My whole work is completely involved with the
church.
Local churches.
Over one thousand are in partnership with NOM.
We have pastor's conferences.
We're involved in in-depth counseling with pastors,
Christian leaders, thousands and thousands of them all
over the world.
And often people like ourselves, who come in
maybe for a month from outside, they will
unload their burdens.
They will open their hearts.
Often even phone us long distance.
The church is under attack.
Local churches are under attack.
Ten, fifteen years ago, when new churches were
being born, many people in Britain rushed into
these new churches, tired of their old congregations,
tired of some of the traditions, tired of
some of the things they thought.
They ran in, just as we went into
the ship ministry.
A little bit naive.
And now we're finding even many of the
new churches are going through splits that are
more difficult than the old churches went through
fifteen years ago.
There are many of us that could set
up full-time clinics in Great Britain just
for hurting people.
And I tell you, some of these hurts
that people get in the churches when things
go out of control are awesome.
There are people having mental and nervous breakdowns
because as God's people so easily we drift,
so easily we get into extremes, so easily
we get selfish, so easily we see only
our viewpoint.
So slow we are at times to draw
upon the deeper resources of God that can
enable us to love someone who is hurting
us.
That can enable us to put on not
just a gospel band-aid, but a deep,
deep covering of God's therapy and God's acceptance
so that we can get through rejection, we
can pass through difficulties, be it in our
church or anywhere else.
The church is not some special fraternity for
super saints and the totally spiritual people of
this world.
The church is still in some ways a
clinic for sinners.
Don't be surprised if you don't get hurt
in church life.
Be absolutely amazed if you don't because we
are still people.
We are still human.
The greatest men of God written up 15
years ago have had some of the greatest
heartbreaks and have disappointed the greatest numbers of
people because as human beings we do tend
to look to man.
We do tend to put our confidence in
man.
We do lift up our leaders and talk
about our leaders and tell of the wonderful
things they do or don't do.
And then when they sin or they fail
or something else goes wrong or we even
hear something, that's the thing that grieves me
is people operating just on the basis of
something they've heard.
I praise the Lord for people that have
had courage enough when they heard something a
bit wild about George Brewer to call me
up.
Blessed be such people.
I have three phones now just to handle
the conversations.
One even travels with me.
But I can tell you the people who
actually call up when they have something against
you and open their heart in fact are
very few.
It's just so much easier just to talk
to someone else even though we may discover
to our own heartbreak time afterward, sometime afterward
that in fact what we've said is not
true.
Then the devil tries another tactic.
Tries to get us discouraged.
Tries to get us so we don't forgive
ourselves.
Tries to get us to take the blame.
I am convinced there are people here tonight
you are taking blame for things in your
life that you should not be taking blame
for.
It's not as simple as the devil is
trying to get you to believe.
There are many factors that brought this situation
or that situation into being or broke that
relationship or caused this particular difficulty.
Life is not as simple as the devil
sometimes would like us to believe when he's
trying to really run us into the ground
and trying to get us to believe we're
to blame.
Our captain, from what I heard, trying to
take the blame.
Technically, with a ship, legally and in court,
there are things, of course, that have to
technically pin the blame on someone with no
loss of life.
This is relatively simple for a Christian organization
like us.
When I called the captain, I said, I'm
not even interested in talking about the accident
right now.
I just want to tell you we're standing
with you.
I said on the phone from here to
Chile, we believe it's an act of God.
We need to be bigger hearted in all
that we do and all that we think
and all that we say.
We need to be more open minded in
trying to understand what life is all about,
what's happening in the church, what's happening in
our mission societies, what's happening in our homes,
what's happening in our offices, what's happening in
our families.
Yes, there is a place for sorrow.
Don't be afraid of a little weeping in
1988.
One of our godly men in this country
had an accident in which one or two
people were killed with a car.
And I know that man of God went
through great trial and stress for a long
time.
What if that happened to you tonight?
None of us want that.
None of us want to drive out here
in these automobiles, all of which are potential
weapons, and kill anybody.
Yet it happens.
I pray that somehow whatever may come into
your life in 1988, that you will have
greater grace to handle it, greater grace to
see that God can overrule, greater grace to
see that probably the reason for it isn't
maybe exactly what you think.
There was a man in a mission field,
I think Indonesia, who was working on a
small plane and I'll never forget reading the
story.
And while he was working on the small
plane, he was called away to the telephone.
He went back and he completed his work,
at least he thought he had.
That man, that missionary mechanic, saw that plane
explode in front of his very eyes and
all the passengers killed in the plane.
And as he saw it, he realized he
had failed to tighten the bolt on the
fuel line.
Now that I call a big, very, very
big personal crisis.
And yet God, through the agony and the
regret and the suffering, gave that man the
grace to somehow work his way through this,
face the loved ones and press on as
a soldier of Jesus Christ and eventually even
write an article about it with his own
name in the article.
We are God's people not because we can
do a miracle a minute, not because we're
some kind of superman or superwoman.
I think she was on last night.
None of you, of course, watch such things.
You just recorded it for your grandchildren.
But we are God's people who have in
Jesus Christ and by the power of the
Holy Spirit, the stickability, the stamina, the resilience,
the gifts of the Spirit, the grace of
the Spirit to press through when God chooses
not to deliver.
I tell you, when they had the alarm
on that ship, around midnight, they gathered for
hours and hours of prayer and they were
praying, Lord, deliver us, deliver the ship.
They got half.
They got half of their answers.
They were all delivered.
But the Lord let the ship go.
I don't understand it all.
But I know that's what life is made
of.
There's the good and there's the bad.
There are the times of blessing and breakthrough
and joy and there are the times of
weeping and heartache and sometimes dryness and even
depression.
We have to be those who can rejoice
and who can praise and who can believe
and do and accomplish great things.
But we also must be those people who
can fight, who can stand firm when everything
seems to be going out of control, who
can love when it seems there is no
more ability to love and who can go
one more mile when it seems there is
even no more road to walk on.
We are God's praising people.
Amen!
But we are also God's fighting people and
I will tell you, it will take more
than an old ship on the bottom of
the ocean in South America to stop any
mighty movement raised up by the Holy Ghost.
And I pray you'll be in that movement
and you'll be among those kind of people,
sorrowful.
Yes, I've wept many times in the past
few days, yet always, always rejoicing.
Let us pray.
Our God and Father, You've brought our paths
to cross at this particular moment in history
to drive these great truths of Your Scripture,
of Your Word, deep into our hearts.
That we may develop greater fight and greater
stamina to be Your men, to be Your
women.
A people of praise, a people of power,
but also a people of fight, a people
of stickability, a people of spiritual integrity and
balance.
We may know what it is to love
the unlovely.
We will know what it is to go
the extra mile when it seems that each
step will have an element of pain or
hurt.
We may have a balance of truth and
let one great Scripture bring other great Scriptures
into the right focus in our life for
the moment of history in which we are
living at that time.
Lord, keep us from judgmentalism as different Christians
are led different ways on different issues.
We may major on the majors and sometimes
agree to disagree on the minors and on
the minor issues.
We thank You, Lord, for Your mercy.
We thank You for Your deliverance of all
the people of the Envy Lagos.
And we thank You.
We thank You for the sinking of the
ship, though it be with sorrow, though it
be with questions, though it be with an
ache in our heart.
And we believe that from the death of
this ship will be resurrected something far greater,
maybe another ship, far more important than another
ship, more people, more people who will allow
the Lagos, the Word, to indwell their hearts
and dominate their lives and to take the
Gospel, yea, Lord, even from Latin America to
the ends of the earth.
For we pray this in the name of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.