It's been my privilege a number of times
to minister together with Andrew.
I don't know why it ends up usually
that I'm last.
We did everything tonight to make him, well,
we're going to put him first and last.
We weren't going to speak, but he told
us when he arrived that he had to
leave at 830.
Since it would completely break tradition, history, and
everything else to ever end an OM meeting
in one hour, we decided we better just
have these few closing thoughts.
Could you turn with me in your Bible?
To Romans chapter 12.
The book of Romans chapter 12.
It's my favorite chapter in Romans, though I
love the whole book.
First 11 chapters give us some of the
greatest theology.
In fact, most of the great theology is
summed up there.
And it seems to come to Romans 12
and say, now in the light of all
this, this is what you must do.
In the light of Romans 7, 8, 9,
and all the rest of these tremendous verses,
this is what you should do.
Look at those words.
I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies
of God, that you present your bodies a
living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable service.
And be not conformed to this world, but
be transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that ye may prove what is that good
and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Let us pray for a moment.
O Father, speak to us from your Word,
from the facts we've heard tonight.
We ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
As I was in my office praying, and
listening to Brother Andrew over my loudspeaker that
I have from here up to my office,
my own heart was challenged afresh.
The very first countries that God ever spoke
to me about, almost 13 years ago, apart
from one or two other places like Mexico
and Spain, were these communist lands.
And about 14 years ago, I went everywhere
before I'd ever left the states except to
Mexico, crying out that there was no such
thing as a closed door and that this
was a lie of the devil.
In fact, the whole movement of OM was
to some degree built on this principle, that
no place is closed to those who believe
in the God of the impossible, and that
these lands must be evangelized, whether it was
ever going to be our part or not.
We knew this was on the heart and
mind of God.
My heart was stirred tonight again, as I
heard Brother Andrew's challenge.
And I just hope that none of us
will just go from here saying, oh, I've
heard Brother Andrew, I've heard God smuggler.
You'll be able to tell some of your
friends, and they'll say, oh, I didn't even
know he was in town.
But I hope that as you go from
here tonight, it will be with a decision
to do something about what you've heard.
And there's a lot that you can do.
When God first spoke to me about these
communist lands about 14 years ago, before I'd
ever been in one, before I'd ever even
hardly left my own country, I saw that
the main ministry that I could have was
prayer.
In fact, it was when I was about
17 before I had this vision of the
communist world, that I knelt down by the
side of my bed, just shortly having been
converted, and said, Lord, one thing I want
above all else in life, and that's to
learn to pray.
Have you ever come to that place?
You should.
You'll find some tremendous books on prayer in
the bookstall, like Hallowsby's book, or Bounds's book,
or Andrew Murray's book on intercession.
Samuel Chadwick, a mighty man of God, a
man who won only God knows how many
precious souls to the Lord Jesus, once said
these words, and I hope you'll write them
down or remember them.
The one concern of the devil is to
keep the saints from prayer.
He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work,
prayerless religion.
He laughs at our toil, he mocks at
our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray.
We'd welcome you to come here on any
Thursday night and spend a night or a
half night with us in prayer, as we
pray for one country after another all over
the world.
Of course, you can do the same thing
in your own home, your own church.
You can have a day of prayer, it
doesn't have to be at night.
But I believe that if you and I
really felt what our brother Andrew said tonight,
then we're going to want to say, Oh
God, teach me to pray.
That is the only way these communist countries
will ever be penetrated.
Do you realize with all the literature that
is going in from different groups, how few
people in these countries have ever had a
piece of Christian literature?
Nobody knows, but it's only a few.
You see, you have seven or eight hundred
million people in China.
You have more than two hundred million.
Only those who've been engaged in this work
can tell you how hard it is to
get even a thousand Bibles in.
That isn't too much.
Praise God for the way they circulate.
But beloved, though these doors are slightly open
and though there are some keyholes that we
can crawl through, there is a tremendous amount
of work that must be done on our
knees before we ever see the breakthrough.
And if we don't believe that, we're just
fooling ourselves.
In some ways, I believe O.M.'s entrance
into these lands was premature, God only knows.
I was young, had far more zeal and
wisdom.
The first thing I did when I arrived
in Europe in 1961, ten years ago, was
study Russian.
That was in 60.
In 61, I was on my way.
Yugoslavia, we got a lot of literature out,
and then we were arrested, thrown out.
Czechoslovakia, we did all right, and the second
day in Russia, we were all arrested.
That was my smuggling career.
I thought I'd write a sequel, actually, to
Brother Andrew's book.
Call it God's Bungler.
When I came back with these armed machine
gun guards through Russia and through Czechoslovakia, that
time, O.M. did not exist.
We had no particular plan as it came
to be, because I had such a passion
for these communist countries, though I don't believe
I was really ready for that work.
And as I came back, I went into
Austria, where I'd been giving out a lot
of tracts during my time of learning to
type in Russian.
And we had been working in Spain.
We had seen God do a whole series
of miracles in Spain.
That was a closed country then.
But I think it was a bit of
presumption to think because we did it in
Spain, we could do it in Russia.
We needed more prayer.
We needed more wisdom.
We needed more training.
This is why when people come to Brother
Andrew, they say, Brother Andrew, I want to
go to Russia.
He says, go to O.M. And get
some training, because this kind of work needs
thorough training.
It needs men of prayer.
It needs men of wisdom.
And so when I came back through Austria,
through a number of other things that had
happened previously, the Spirit of God was tugging
with my heart, and I was thinking that
unless we could make an impact in Western
Europe, and unless we could prove that we
really had something in Western Europe, what would
we ever do in the East?
And it was just a week after I
was thrown out of Russia, in the mountains
of southern Germany, actually in the top of
a tree where I was praying, getting alone
with the Lord, one of my peculiar habits,
that this vision and this idea of mobilizing
a mass of European young people to reach
Western Europe with the Gospel and to overflow
into Eastern Europe in God's timing.
That's when that vision and idea came.
I went back to Spain.
I met with a few Spaniards in the
mountains of Madrid, in another day of prayer
and some fasting and waiting on God.
And these Spaniards agreed, yes, this is the
will of God.
Daniel Gonzalez, the director of our work in
Spain, who will be speaking, I believe it's
next week, or this week, at Europe Night.
He may have to go home next week,
so he will be speaking this week, probably
Thursday or Friday.
He is, I believe, one of the few
who is here today that was at that
very small gathering.
Not many North Americans had even arrived.
Britain was not even involved at all at
that time, in 1961.
A little after that, a few came from
North America, and we had the first annual
conference, 20 of us.
This is our 10th annual conference, 400 of
us.
God fulfilled that vision and that prayer completely
beyond all we could ever ask or expect.
And only the Lord knows what's spilled over
into other lands and other places.
And I believe that as we have come
to a new decade of Operation Mobilization, that
God wants to do greater things than ever
before.
But during that year, after I came out
of Russia, I began to pray and to
see just what God's will was for my
life.
And God showed me very clearly that He
had better men than myself and wiser men
than me that would do this work in
these Iron Curtain countries, and that our ministry
in OM should mainly be one of intercession
and fulfillment.
And in 14 years, never has a night
of prayer gone by in this movement that
I've ever remembered when there has not been
fervent prayer for the evangelization of these communist
lands.
And this I only say because it's to
show you what you can do.
Most of you are never going to have
the privilege of running Bibles through the Iron
Curtain.
Some of you will.
If you want to know how, just write
Andrew.
But every one of you can have the
privilege of intercession on the part of those
who are involved in this dangerous work, in
which literature is lost, in which vehicles are
lost, in which people get imprisoned.
Yes, there's another side to this kind of
work that is not always talked about.
It's not a game.
Brother Andrew never got involved in this in
order to write a book.
I'm sure he never dreamed of writing a
book.
Only after many, many years did he do
that.
It's not a game.
And I believe the great need of this
hour, if we want revival in Britain, if
we want evangelism abroad in the free world
and in the not-so-free world, though
we've seen that's a misnomer tonight, then you
and I are going to say, Lord, teach
me to pray.
Teach me the reality of extended prayer.
Teach me the reality of living in the
closet.
Teach us as families to pray.
Teach us as children to pray.
And without that, we're never going to evangelize
the world.
And we have proved it, because we have
so totally failed to reach even lands that
are wide open.
Have you realized that?
Northern India is more un-evangelized than even
most parts of Russia.
And yet in northern India, a great majority
of the people have still not heard, even
once, even once, most of them have not
even received a gospel tract.
In fact, 50% of the people of
India have never once heard the gospel.
And if we're not careful, and if we
don't move now, we're going to discover that
India is going to be another China.
And while we're going into China, India will
become another China, and it will be too
late to do anything but a very, very
small work.
You all know that India has signed a
major pact with Russia.
You all know that the state of Kerala
is very strongly moving toward communism.
Bengal is communist.
Our days may be numbered in India, not
only by the threat of communism, but other
difficulties.
In fact, some political leaders believe that India
and Pakistan, China and Russia, will be in
a full-scale war before the year is
out.
These lands are wide open.
We've got 30 trucks and cars in India
now, ready to move.
Some of them can't move, we don't even
have a driver.
Others don't move because we don't have any
tires, or parts, or some other problem, or
mechanics.
The task seems incredible when you think of
the fact that one-seventh of the world's
population is in that land.
And yet it's wide open.
We moved into Madras with a ship, as
if we were the lost brother of Indira
Gandhi.
The chief minister came aboard, we had 20
minutes on all India radio, we had nationwide
press coverage, and 100,000 people visited the
ship.
Do you know how long and how hard
it is to reach 100,000 people behind
the so-called curtain?
Do you know what that would involve?
And yet 100,000 Indians, many of them
just as unreached, march onto our ship, through
our doors, receive our literature, watch the gospel
on television, listen to us preach on the
deck, sometimes 10 hours a day, go off,
and some came back.
And almost every day there were souls that
accepted Christ.
The door is so wide open.
We saw a similar thing in Cochin with
the ship, and we hope this year by
a miracle of God to see it in
Bombay and Calcutta and in other ports as
well, but we won't see it unless we
can get an army of people who will
literally pray this ship in one port after
another.
God has wrought a miracle in giving this
ship.
Those of you who can stay, you'll see
this very interesting film.
When the ship moved out of Rotterdam, a
miracle in answer to six years of prayer.
And when this ship came into our minds
seven years ago, you can be sure, though
I can't say anything about it, you can
be sure that there was a burden for
the whole world.
The whole world.
We've seen some thrilling things with that ship
in trying to reach communists.
We've had a burden.
Brother Wormbron has challenged us about this, to
reach communists in the free world.
Do you know how many tens of thousands
there are?
I've stood in the docks in Las Palmas
with hundreds of Russians coming in in their
lifeboats, wishing I could speak some Russian.
I could have preached freely to them.
We were able to get on the Russian
ships.
We have Russians coming on our ships, sitting
down in our lounge.
We present them with free gifts.
We gave Christmas gifts to the Russians who
visit us in Rotterdam.
Secret of happiness in Russian.
We even got on Chinese ships.
There was one big Russian spy ship in
Las Palmas, among 15 other Russian ships.
We couldn't get on that ship.
But we found a drunken second officer, a
second engineer, and he was really moving back
and forth, and he was so happy he
took gospel tracts in Russian in all his
pockets, and he went back on the ship.
I wonder how many people sitting here have
gone to Las Palmas for a holiday, but
never thought of reaching the thousands, tens of
thousands of Russians that come into Las Palmas
every few months.
The biggest Russian shipping center in the whole
of Europe, outside of the Iron Curtain area.
Where there's a will and a prayer, there's
a way.
And you and I can be involved far
more than we ever dreamed, but it has
to start with prayer.
It has to start on our knees.
And linked to this, it has to start,
as described here in Romans 12, with a
complete presentation of our bodies as a living
sacrifice to Jesus Christ.
And I believe, ultimately, this is the most
important decision you have to make.
Brother Andrews spoke to us about the authority
of the Lord Jesus.
Last week we had Brother Alan Redpath in
our midst.
God used him in a mighty way, as
he spoke about the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
And I would ask you, tonight, is Jesus
Lord in your life?
Have you presented your body as a living
sacrifice to him?
You say, well, how do I know if
my body is presented as a living sacrifice?
How do I know whether my life is
really on the altar?
How do I know whether I'm really walking
in the fullness of the Spirit as God
wants me?
I believe the man who has made this
kind of commitment will have some very distinct
marks, very distinct.
Do you have them?
You say, well, what are they?
First of all, I believe the man who
has made this kind of surrender is a
man of compassion, a man of compassion.
I've seen this in Brother Andrews, long before
he was ever known.
I came to know him, and I saw
he was a man of compassion.
He was motivated by compassion.
It wasn't publicity, but compassion and love for
those people behind the Iron Curtain, and in
his own country as well.
If you're not a missionary in Britain, I
doubt if you're going to be a missionary
in Russia.
If you can't reach an immigrant down on
your corner, I doubt if you're going to
be an ambassador for Christ in India or
Pakistan.
One of the reasons this year we're starting
a team, a full-time year program team
to reach immigrants in Britain.
How in the world can we only go
abroad when there's so many hundreds of thousands
of precious immigrants coming here?
I'm one of them.
I immigrated nine years ago to this country.
I've hardly ever had anyone try to reach
me with a gospel.
I have only once or twice ever been
given a tract in all these nine years
in Britain.
Beloved, you are tonight either a missionary or
a mission field.
You are either evangelizing or fossilizing.
There's no middle ground.
And I believe there's a danger that some
of us may have come here tonight for
evangelical entertainment.
What in the world would God's smuggler do?
He certainly would have a fantastic program.
But I pray that tonight you'll go from
this tremendous factory that God miraculously gave us
for this month, free of charge.
God knows how we stand, and so he
ministers in amazing ways.
It's not because he can't supply money.
I believe if we had to pay 100
,000 pounds for this factory, he would supply
it.
God knows that we want to put our
few pennies out in that literature in India
and Asia and in those other things in
other parts of the world.
We don't sleep on the floor in a
factory because we're poor and don't have money.
God supplies.
He's a debtor to no man.
But because God has given this passion to
us of putting a piece of literature into
the hands of every man, woman, and child
in the world, working together, of course, with
all of God's people.
And I believe that if you and I
have this kind of commitment that the Bible
talks about, that Andrew has spoken about tonight,
we're going to have compassion.
In Matthew chapter 9, Jesus goes to all
the towns and villages in the heat of
Israel, moved with compassion.
Today in America, if you want to get
a key preacher in a big church, you've
got to have a little more than compassion.
You've got to give them a salary of
about 7,000 pounds.
There's many a good American preacher that holds
in 7,000 pounds a year, lives better
than some of the top class people in
Britain today.
And even in the States, for preaching the
gospel.
Rather different from Peter who said, silver and
gold have I none, but what I have
I give.
Rise up and walk.
But the church, I'm afraid, has been buried
in the fog of materialism.
And because of it, the world goes without
Bibles and without Gospels and without tracts and
without even Scripture texts.
Right now, there are 7 million refugees in
India.
Maybe more.
They are living in absolute squalor.
They would consider a building like this among
the refugees a paradise, and they would sleep
no less, I'm sure, than 20,000 people
in such a building.
Tonight you and I sit here, maybe some
are standing and feel already uncomfortable.
But can you put yourself for a minute
in one of those refugee camps?
Where things have become worse, as all foreigners,
with all their help, have been thrown out,
all of our vehicles have had to stop.
The Indian government has refused any foreigners to
work among the refugees.
In some places it has been stated, we
don't want to make it too good for
these refugees, we want them to hate it
and to go back to Pakistan.
I don't think that's the official government position.
We have only one team left, an all
-Indian team, working among the spiritual needs of
the people.
Some have tried to pass this great crisis
off by saying, oh, it's the judgment of
God, be careful.
Because there are thousands of Christians among those
refugees.
How do you explain that?
And they are suffering.
And so we have gone in among those
Christians with literature, with Bengali New Testaments, we're
trying to make little makeshift shacks that they
can worship in and start Bible studies, and
somehow maintain a ray of light among those
believers in the midst of one of the
greatest crises of history.
Seven million refugees.
Seven million.
What happens in your heart when you hear
of this, when you read of this in
the press?
Are you moved with compassion?
I was recently at a meeting and I
poured out my heart about this.
Nothing happened.
Except one ex-OMer, who had labored in
Asia, came and it seemed to me from
what was in the envelope, gave everything he
probably could scrape together around his house.
That was the only thing that I know
of that happened.
We can hear challenges.
I could bring Brother Andrew, Billy Graham, Richard
Wurmbrandt.
I could bring back a dozen missionaries and
they could weep, they could show films, and
you and I become so callous, so deceived,
so cold, so blinded, we could go home
and have a cup of tea and forget
it all by morning.
And this is the plague on Britain today.
It's not the porno shops.
It's not the low morale and the low
morals.
It's the fact that the Church has lost
her compassion.
It's the fact that the saints of God
have been rocked to sleep.
I'm not concerned about Joe Porno.
God will take care of him.
I am concerned some, but not so much.
I'm not concerned that all these crazy things
are happening.
Yes, I am concerned, but nothing compared to
the concern I have for God's people, who
seem to be able to maintain such a
lukewarm heart in the midst of such a
drastic world.
Do you have that compassion, that compassion that
will lead you to a life of sacrificial
living, the kind of living we read about
in the Bible, the kind of living Hudson
Taylor knew when he lived in London on
bread and apples?
You can call it fanaticism if you want,
but where are the Hudson Taylors in 1972?
Would you please, 71, introduce me to a
few?
We in OM are conscious that we are
a generation of cripples.
We do not claim to be the big
disciples.
We are weaklings, failures, and sinners, and we
have become more aware of our state of
affairs, and we believe it's partly because we
have been brought up in softness and ease,
and we've been told to do what we
feel like doing, and there's been no discipline
in many of our homes, and sometimes less
in the churches, and no spirit of sacrifice,
and everything's been handed to many of us
on a platter, and now we want to
go, and we want to fight, but we
can't.
We can't.
Without compassion, without sacrifice, without a willingness to
suffer, we're doomed to merely holding festivals in
Hyde Park.
We'll never get across the ocean.
We'll never get into the back villages of
India.
We'll never get to those 10 million Nepalis,
where there's only 500 believers, or those 14
million Afghans, where there's only 20 believers.
Think of it.
14 million tough, rough Afghans, the toughest people
perhaps on earth.
Mountain people.
Missionary girl who was just shot to death
in a car outside of Kabul.
This is tough territory.
You have to leave your car behind, your
O.M. van.
You've got to put a pack on your
back, and you've got to be strong and
tough to go into the mountains of Afghanistan.
We don't have one candidate for Afghanistan this
year.
Beloved, don't misunderstand what I'm saying.
I'm not judging you.
I'm not pouring cold water on the church.
I love the church.
O.M. has fought all these years to
stay and to work with the churches.
You don't think we've been tempted to become
a bunch of rebels?
Do you think I want to wear neckties?
I have enough rebel blood in my veins.
I don't know what would happen if I
ever let it loose.
We wanted to break from the churches.
We wanted to just forget all this establishment,
throw our ties in the trash can, let
our hair down to wherever we wanted, and
go start our own churches.
But God told us, no.
You stick with God's people.
You pray for God's people.
You work with God's people.
You submit to God's people, and you believe
for revival among all of God's people.
And we, despite the difficulty in doing this,
feel this is where we must stand.
But it's not easy.
It's not easy.
I pray that God will show us the
results of a full commitment.
Compassion.
It's not easy.
It hasn't been easy for my wife, 11
years, married to me.
Three children.
We don't have any home.
And I live on the ship eight months
of the year.
Some people think, oh, these O.M.ers,
they have an itch for this kind of
life.
They sort of, I've got an itch.
I've got an itch for a nice beach,
a Coca-Cola, ice cream, and a good
long sleep.
That's what I've got an itch for.
I don't know about you.
But the compulsion from within by the Holy
Spirit goes beyond the itch of the flesh.
And woe is me if I preach not
the gospel.
Woe is me if I choose the road
of least resistance.
Woe is me if because of a few
problems along the way I turn back and
seek for an easier solution.
Praise God.
When we get to heaven, we'll have plenty
of time to relax, plenty of time to
count the blessings.
But we've only got this short life to
fight for Christ.
There are two favorite men of mine in
the Bible.
I'm sure you know both of them.
They both started with the same name.
One was Saul, and the other was Saul,
and he changed his name to Paul.
And at the end of their life, they
both had a testimony.
The testimony of Paul was this.
In Timothy you can read it.
I have fought the good fight.
Not a game, not a religion, not a
contest.
I have fought the good fight.
Warfare.
But Saul, he chose the role of least
resistance.
Better economy, better living.
And so this great man Saul, and he
was also a great man in many ways,
at the end of his life he gave
his testimony.
You can read it.
Do you know what it was?
He said, I have played the fool.
I have erred greatly.
And I believe that God has brought some
of you here tonight because you have to
make the biggest decision in your life.
And that decision is going to determine whether
at the end of your life you'll be
able to say as Paul, I have fought
the good fight.
Or whether you have to utter those words
of Saul, I have played the fool.
Oh beloved, the choice is ours.
God says present your body as a living
sacrifice.
And when we do that, He will fill
us.
He will work through us.
The decision is yours.
Another thing that will happen when you make
this commitment, and there's not much time now,
is that you will be willing to go
anywhere.
The tendency is only to see our own
country.
Some people don't even see past their own
village.
But we are called to the whole world.
There's not one verse in the New Testament
that indicates that God's vision is a national
vision.
That went out with the old covenant.
Now it's the world.
And it's got to include Afghanistan.
It's got to include Iran.
We've been praying.
We've been pleading.
We've been calling for people to go to
Iran.
And this year, we have less than four
candidates for the land of Iran.
Oh beloved, that land has 24 million people
or more and just a handful come to
Christ each year.
And think of East Pakistan.
I don't want to take much more time,
but I just came from East Pakistan a
month ago.
If you're interested, you can write to me
and I will send you a very earth
-shaking report on East Pakistan.
Confidential report, signed by a friend of East
Pakistan.
But what I saw there, I can never
forget.
When West Pakistan moved in with their aircraft,
they opened up those machine guns and they
killed everything that walked.
Babies, animals, men, women, they laid in the
villages of East Pakistan.
I can't pronounce the name of that village
and I lie, I believe.
But there were dozens of such situations.
And those people were living there in East
Pakistan in absolute fear.
Gospel work has almost been completely stopped.
The Bible Society is not doing hardly any
more distribution.
Most missionaries left, though some have returned.
People are afraid to write into their Bible
courses.
We were involved in helping in a Bible
correspondence course ministry.
Almost no one writes back now.
I have never seen such a tragic situation.
Because of some tremendously stupid mistake or negligence,
though they were warned by satellite communication about
the weather, they missed it.
And a million people were swept into their
death approximately.
And then on top of that, this tremendous
crisis that's facing them now.
But we don't seem to care.
For 14 years, I've pleaded with people to
go to East Pakistan.
One of my best friends is there and
is now the director of his mission.
But very few others have gone.
Out of the 76 million people in East
Pakistan, 90% have never once heard the
Gospel.
And that nation has been comparatively open.
A year ago, I was in the streets
giving out tracts completely freely, thousands in one
night.
Not now.
We missed a golden, God-given opportunity in
East Pakistan.
And I could go on all night but
I believe when you present your body as
a living sacrifice, you'll be willing to go
anywhere.
And you'll be willing to go through the
necessary training that will make you effective when
you get there.
The answer isn't just to run off.
You see a war's going on, you don't
just pick up a gun and run off.
You're liable to fire it backward and kill
yourself.
But you've got to train.
And I believe there's a tremendous need for
increased training in East Pakistan.
We want to train young people.
We don't care if they stay with us.
We're willing for them to go with Brother
Andrew.
One of his key men was with O
.M. for five years.
He was so young and green when he
came to us I wasn't even sure we
were going to keep him.
But he went to India.
He went to Bible school in India.
He worked in India.
Lo and behold, now they call him Brother
something, I forget.
But we need training in the Word and
in prayer and in discipline, in spiritual warfare.
It will take years, not one year program.
But I believe with such an army of
trained disciples who learn how to pray, we
can, by the grace of God, see this
world evangelized, especially when you consider what other
greater movements than ours are doing in these
days.
Let us unite hands in many doctrinal disunities
and become of one heart and of one
mind in love and compassion.
It's now.
I pray tonight will not just be another
message, another meeting, but a time in which
you say, Lord Jesus, I give you my
life anywhere, whatever the cost, as you, my
Lord.
Is he Lord?
I believe there are some of you who
need to make at least some form of
outward commitment tonight.
You know down in your heart that Jesus
is not Lord, that Christianity for you is
not really a warfare, that you're not really
a disciple, a soldier who has presented his
or her body as a living sacrifice.
And I don't want to take much time,
but if tonight you want to say, Jesus,
you are my Lord, if you want to
say tonight I present my body as a
living sacrifice, this only can be the beginning.
This is not some great one shot, now
it's all over experience, but it can be
the beginning of the road to discipleship.
And many have begun on that road in
these conferences over the years.
And I believe there's some of you who
want to say tonight, Jesus, be my Lord,
so that at the end of your life
you'll be able to say, I fought the
fight, not I played the fool.
And if you'll make that commitment, it's between
you and God, but I would like you
to just stand where you are so that
we can have a prayer of dedication.
Wherever you are, there may only be a
few, many stood last week when Alan Redpath
gave such an invitation.
And many of you are new tonight.
So until you have this opportunity simply to
take this step of faith.
You see, the Bible says if you don't
mix the word preached with faith, it will
be of no avail.
That's the problem.
That's why you can go home and have
your tea and forget it all because you
don't mix it with actual faith.
So if you would like to mix the
word preached with a definite commitment of faith
and make Christ Lord of your life, he
may not even be your Savior.
Stand up.
Now I want to have a prayer of
commitment.
Praise God.
God knows your need.
If you're already standing, maybe you just want
to step forward a few steps, just some
outward action of this inward transaction.
Maybe God's saying to you tonight, you have
got to be willing for the first time
to be a missionary.
The last thing I ever wanted to do
was be a missionary.
And you're willing to say, I'll go if
God wants you to go.
Maybe it means someone saying, I'm going to
serve Christ next summer with OM.
I'm at least going to get involved in
some training, at least see what it's like
and begin to serve.
Maybe that's your decision.
I can't tell, but God can.
So in this closing moment, we're not even
going to have a closing hymn.
Just stand and say, Jesus, be my Lord.
I present my body as a living sacrifice.
Not just young people.
I know always the young people stand up
first.
But it is possible to arrive at a
ripe old age and still not have Jesus
as Lord.
And you may have made this decision years
ago, but is it fresh?
Is it real tonight?
Is he Lord tonight?
Are you on fire tonight?
Is your life on the altar tonight?
Is there nothing worse in his sight hardly
than a lukewarm heart?
Anyone else before I pray wants to make
him Lord?
Just stand where you are.
Yes, praise God.
Not easy.
Pride.
Fear of what others may think.
Fear of failure.
If you have a fear of failure, I
just want to tell you, I guarantee you
will fail.
There will be some failures even after tonight.
And you will bounce back like a lion
released from a cage.
I've made so many failures down through the
years, I could produce an encyclopedia, a small
one, on my failures.
Told you, just about a few tonight.
So if you're a failure, maybe it's time
to stand up and say, Oh Jesus, become
Lord of this great failure.
And watch him work through you despite your
weaknesses and your failings.
Anyone else?
Stand up on him.
He can live the life through you as
Alan Redpath so clearly showed us last week.
It's Christ in you.
Christ in you.
It's the only way I could ever stand
up.
Christ in you.
His Holy Spirit.
Brother Andrew's not with us but I know
he's praying for us right now.
He often gives such invitations.
Let us pray.
You can join those who are standing even
as I'm praying.
I pray for each one of these who
has stood before you and has asked you,
your son, to become Lord of their life.
And oh God, I pray that it may
be a burning reality.
I pray, oh Father, that they may see
Jesus, your son, in a new and fresh
way and that they may be filled with
compassion, love that will burn across this lost
world in this generation to Muslim lands to
all lands to their next door neighbor as
well.
Oh Lord, we present our bodies as a
living sacrifice to you in the name of
Jesus Christ who will make this a reality
as we trust him.
Amen.