Father, you know all about us.
You know our heart.
You know why we're here, and we pray,
O God, that by your Spirit you would
speak.
Hide the speaker behind the cross and exalt
your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose
name we pray.
Amen.
Perhaps we could turn again to the scripture
that was read to us this evening from
Romans chapter 12.
I'm very grateful for this privilege of being
here in South Africa, this opportunity to share
with you something of the ministry of the
ship Logos and something of the burden that's
on my heart for other countries.
I don't want to go too long, but
there is much that I would like to
share.
I would be greatly encouraged if I saw
even a few people taking a few notes.
I'm not here to appeal to your emotions.
I'll let someone else do that.
I'm not here to appeal to your sentiments,
but I'm here to appeal to your will.
I believe only those who will to follow
Christ with all their heart, in the long
run, will keep on following Christ.
Many begin.
I don't know much about South Africa, but
in England and in America and many other
parts of the world where I've lived, for
though I'm an American, I left, immigrated to
Europe some 16 years ago.
That's somewhat of a reversal to say the
least, and I have settled in Europe, though
I've spent about half my time in Asia,
mainly in India and Nepal.
But in all these countries, I found that
many make a profession of faith in Christ,
go to church for a while, and then
when things get rots and the problems come,
and the way of suffering and the Lordship
of Christ is presented, many of them dwindle
away.
We saw tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands
in America get on the Jesus bandwagon, and
when it hit its first bumps, they fell
off.
Praise God, some stayed on, and that's encouraging.
God is working in the world today, in
the universities, among professional people, among laymen.
I think in most places we're finally, finally
getting to the place where we realize the
world is going to be evangelized, not by
ministers and full-time workers, though we need
those people, but the world is going to
be reached by Mr. and Miss and Mrs.
Joe Ordinary, what some churches call the layman.
And I believe that is something that God
wants to keep on our hearts tonight.
I also want to appeal to your intellect.
I like Christians that think, perhaps this is
why I spend a lot of my time
ministering in the universities throughout Europe.
I love the hard questions.
I love to see the agnostics coming to
Jesus.
I love to see the atheists taking up
the cross and experiencing the new birth.
Perhaps that's because my own grandfather from the
Netherlands was an atheist, and I was somewhat
of a agnostic myself, though I was more
just a normal good old American pagan.
Romans chapter 12.
We've read it.
I won't read it again.
But this chapter has spoken to me many
times.
It speaks to me above all else of
the simple biblical fact that Christ demands all.
Christ demands all.
But I sometimes wonder if we even know
what that means anymore.
Tozer said, we have measured ourselves by ourselves
for so long that we no longer have
higher plateaus in the things of the Spirit.
Could this not be true?
We seem to be quite content, thinking that
at least I'm as dedicated as the rest.
That's not a very safe way to live.
Just looking at other people and saying, well,
I'm as dedicated as they are.
The burden of Operation Mobilization and the ship
Logos is to present the message of discipleship
and spiritual reality.
If Logos comes to Durban, they do not
come as a great group of super victorious
missionaries, but they come as a school.
Logos in a real way is a school.
Everybody on Tuesday night gathers for classes.
Every morning there's Bible teaching and prayer.
Almost everybody is reading and studying books.
We have one of the largest cassette libraries
in the world on the ship.
Some young people go through 200 cassettes, taking
notes and studying messages from some 20 to
50 different men of God from all over
the world.
We are training young people who, after a
year or two, will leave Logos and go
back to their churches, or back out to
some mission field to serve the Lord Jesus
Christ.
About 600 graduates of Logos and OM are
now working with almost every major mission in
the world.
I'd never go anywhere without meeting some ex
-OMers who receive some training and challenge and
inspiration from OM and during their time on
OM.
Right now, we are again praying forth laborers
for our summer crusade.
The ship is only a small part of
this worldwide outreach that has grown up over
the past decade and a half.
We go back to the earliest routes to
Mexico almost two decades.
This summer, and this is an item of
prayer that you may want to write down,
our main target are the six million Muslims
of Western Europe.
I wonder if you knew that Western Europe
had so many Muslims.
Germany has half a million to a million
Turks.
Germany is so prosperous, there's no one to
do any of their work.
They have to bring in the Turks and
the Italians and people from other parts of
the world.
This is causing no small amount of difficulties,
especially with unemployment going up in Germany.
So now they're sending the Turks home.
It's interesting how all these things take place,
but there's still a half a million Turks
in Germany.
What a challenge that is considering that there
are 37 million people in Turkey and only
about 50 believers among the real Turks.
Some of you had the opportunity about an
hour or two ago to see the Turkish
film strip, and I believe your eyes were
open as you saw what a difficult and
impossible situation that is.
Our great prayer right now throughout the whole
OM world is that the Lord of the
Harvest will send forth laborers into the Harvest.
Will you join us in that prayer?
We believe that between 2000 and 2500 men
and women need to unite together this summer
in our various mobilizations around the world.
As this great campaign is taking place in
Europe, Logos will come into Cape Town and
then, Lord willing, into Durban.
It is our prayer, and this is why
I'm here to pray and to seek God
about the ship coming to Durban.
And if a large enough number of churches,
believers, feel this is God's will, then we
believe it will be His plan to come
in mid-July.
As we're launching out among those Muslims, we'd
like to launch out among these 400,000
Indians who seem to be living here.
One man said to me, there's less than
that, but an Indian told me today there
must be more than that.
So, I don't know.
It doesn't matter.
We believe that if God brought the ship
here, it could be a great challenge to
the believers, as well as a great outreach
to those who don't yet know the Lord
Jesus Christ.
I think to give you a greater understanding
of all this, I should give my own
personal testimony.
I think that will help you why I
feel so strongly about some things.
Also, there may be someone here tonight who
doesn't yet know the Lord Jesus Christ, and
perhaps my own testimony of how I came
to Christ would be of some help to
you.
I wasn't reared in a true Christian home.
My grandfather, as I mentioned, was an atheist
from the Netherlands.
My father was also born in Holland, then
immigrated to New York City, just outside the
city.
My other grandfather was a more tame fellow.
He was a drunkard from Glasgow.
So, I had an interesting background.
My father was just sort of a typical
middle-class, somewhat hard-working materialist, who injected
me with a great passion for money, great
passion for pleasure, for sports, and for women.
This was my life.
You cannot imagine how fast life goes in
New York City.
And what people are involved in, even at
14.
By 16, most of my weekends were in
the nightclubs of New York.
I'd started to peddle pornography in my high
school, and I had two, or actually three,
small businesses.
I had this great capitalistic dream of making
money and not working.
Into this situation came a Gospel of John.
An elderly lady, who wasn't really that old,
but everything over 25 when I was 16
looked like an antique, began to pray for
me.
She prayed for me for three years.
She had been praying for that high school
for 15 years, persevering in prayer.
She really had the life, and she really
had the love, and she coupled life and
love with prayer, and I can assure you
that's an unstoppable combination.
Fifteen years she persevered in prayer, not only
that people would be converted to Christ in
that school, but she prayed that people would
go from that school, that there would be
a movement of God in that school, that
would cause people to go all over the
world, presenting the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Operation Mobilization is a direct result of the
prayers of that one woman.
She sent me a Gospel of John through
the post.
This began to melt my heart, though it
took three years.
She kept praying for me those three years.
Every year I got worse.
She kept praying.
The teachers who taught me, many of them
gave up on me, and they blacklisted me
from getting on the Honor Society, even though
I had high grades.
So this little blacklisted nobody in this high
school became more and more of a radical,
and I became the president of a rattle,
a rather radical student body, one-third of
which was drunk every weekend, but she kept
praying, and in a miraculous way, I ended
up going to an evangelistic meeting in New
York City where Billy Graham was speaking.
I did not even know what evangelism was.
No one in my family knew Jesus Christ.
I did go to a very good church,
like many Dutchmen, a good Reformed Church, but
in this particular church, no Gospel was ever
preached.
I can't say that's true about every Reformed
Church because my parents now, because they also
got converted shortly after I did, joined a
different church of the same denomination that preaches
the Gospel.
What a difference it is.
In fact, that church partially, partially supports my
wife and I, and it was there that
night, in that huge meeting in Madison Square
Garden, that I came to know the Lord
Jesus Christ as my personal Savior, as my
Master, as my friend, and if there's any
of you that have never had that experience,
I would beseech you to trust Christ tonight,
to give Him your heart and let His
love fill your life.
It is not some kind of a religious
trip.
It couldn't have lasted 23 years if it
was just that.
It's a real experience with God.
Jesus said, you must, you must be born
again.
You may be religious.
You may go to church.
Maybe a good Reformed would.
I've heard they had a few of these
here in South Africa.
In fact, I spoke in one of the
biggest ones in the nation, in Cape Town,
but if you're not born again, you're lost.
Your father may be a preacher, but if
you're not born again, you're lost.
You may have been baptized.
In America, we baptize some people two times
over backward.
You're not born again.
You're still lost.
I was religious.
During that period of time, in the midst
of all the other crazy activities, I decided
to get involved in church.
The pastor, he didn't know Christ either, made
me his assistant.
And the Boy Scouts gave me the highest
award, religious award, the Boy Scouts can ever
give.
I tried to get in the Girl Scouts,
but didn't quite make it.
And I was still lost.
So you see, you can be very religious
and lost.
And that's a scary position to be in.
You can even pray or try to pray
for Logos and be lost.
You must be born again.
And if Logos comes to Durban, that will
be our message.
You must be born again.
To Muslims, I was interviewed for television yesterday
here, very interesting interviewer.
His sixth question was loaded.
But I got him so caught up in
the first five, we had to cut the
time, and he didn't get to number six.
Was, you know, how can we possibly think
that a good moral Muslim needs Jesus Christ?
So we didn't get to that question for
the television.
But I handled that with him personally afterward
and gave him my testimony.
And why I believe that Jesus Christ is
the only way, the only truth, and the
only life.
The problem with us sophisticated modern men is
we like to be so proud of ourselves
that we can understand everything.
We will never understand everything.
There are many things in this life we
must take by faith.
Have you ever met these agnostics who say
they only believe what they see?
We are so inconsistent.
The same man goes out to the airport,
gets on an airplane he doesn't know anything
about, flown under a pilot that he's never
met, and even the pilot still doesn't fully
understand all the laws of aerodynamics any more
than the electrician can fully explain electricity.
They can't.
I believe the only way to live on
this planet is by faith.
You can try every other road.
Now the big thing in Europe is the
philosophy of despair.
This is the latest, biggest way of life
in Europe.
If you want to understand it, study the
writings of Dr. Francis Schaeffer.
Under the teachings of philosophers like Jean-Paul
Sartre, a great mass of Europeans now believe
despair is the only answer.
They sit in little circles, sometimes without clothes,
sometimes in other ways.
They just sit in total despair.
Sartre said there is no exit.
Men like Jaspers came along after Sartre and
said the only exit is a final experience.
This is why people are going into the
drug experience.
This is why people can even murder someone
in an attempt to get the final experience,
to find meaning in life.
We have entered in to a whole new
era and words that once had meaning today
have no meaning.
And I believe just as in the in
the world of philosophy, it is necessary to
define terms and there's this whole emphasis on
relative thinking, relative morals.
So if we are not careful, into the
church comes this relativistic thinking so that the
great biblical terms no longer mean what they
used to mean.
And we can talk to people about dedication,
sacrifice, the love of God, and all these
things and it has no meaning.
God saved me that night, sent me back
to my ungodly high school and taught me
to pray.
The first thing that it seems God taught
me next to witnessing was to pray.
And there in that ungodly school that that
lady had prayed for for so many years,
we started prayer meetings.
We started half nights of prayer.
Can you imagine teenagers, football players, coming and
spending half nights in prayer?
How many young people go to your prayer
meetings?
The one major effort with young people is
to keep them from understanding the power and
the way of prayer.
He gets young people to think that prayer
is for elderly ladies.
It is, it's for everybody.
But it was young men and women, I
was only 17 myself, that started these prayer
meetings that today have spread all over the
world.
There are several of them right here in
South Africa that some of you are involved
in.
They can be traced back 22 years and
then back another 15 years through the life
of that one lady.
The church looks for better methods.
South Africa has had quite a gift in
copying America on a number of points.
I hope you won't be offended by that.
I'm sure most of your things are original.
But everybody has copied America.
We have been the mass exporters of every
kind of gimmick, especially religious gimmick the world
has ever dreamed of.
May God help us.
Now fortunately in the midst of it, we've
exported a few good things as well.
A few men of God, a few dedicated
missionaries, and it is exciting because I just
believe if God can change an American like
me, he can change anybody.
Anybody.
So there's plenty of scope for you.
The church looks for better methods.
This has been the emphasis of the American
brand of evangelicalism exported in the past hundred
years.
But God looks for men.
That's the message of E.M. Bounds.
It's the message of many men.
Praise God, even a few Americans.
For God is no respecter of persons.
I am convinced as Samuel Chadwick once said,
that the greatest single effort of Satan will
be to destroy your prayer life.
If he gets your prayer life, if he
gets your quiet time, if he dries up
your church prayer meeting, he's got you.
Everything else is just a matter of time.
And I want this time as short as
it is here in South Africa to be
a call to prayer.
The need in Durban is not Logos.
The need in Durban is men and women
anointed of God.
Men and women seeking the face of God.
Men and women who will present their bodies
as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to
God, which is their reasonable service.
With such men and women, Logos will never
need come.
If it comes, it'll only be to get
a blessing from you.
Of course, oftentimes, God draws people together to
work together.
And this is what we envision if the
ship comes here.
Did God answer her prayers?
Did God work through those prayer meetings in
the ungodly high school?
Well, I'll never forget a meeting just like
this.
There were 600 students.
I'd been out of the school six months
by a miracle.
Even the principal allowed me to come back.
We had seen God work somewhat before I
left.
Some had been converted.
The prayer meetings took place.
But the work of the Spirit continued in
a greater way when I left.
And so they invited me back.
And I'll never forget this meeting.
It was in an auditorium about twice the
size of this.
There in the school.
600 were in the meeting.
I didn't know how to preach.
I gave my testimony.
I shared some Bible verses from the little
track, Four Things God Wants You to Know.
And I asked how many students wanted to
repent of their drunkenness, their immorality, their pride,
their middle class sophistication.
And 125 students left their seats and went
into the school cafeteria.
Many of them with tears running down their
face to repent and take Christ as their
Savior.
One woman, 15 years, and a school is
brought to its knees.
And a movement is born that in turn
in two decades has reached 240 million, not
thousand, 240 million people face-to-face around
the world.
140 million of them alone in the subcontinent
of India where we now have an army
of 200 men and women.
One woman prayed.
And God began to move.
We often sing that chorus in the West.
It only takes a spark to get a
fire going.
But I want to tell you with a
chilly atmosphere we provide in some of our
churches, even sparks can't seem to get going.
Oh, may God revive the church.
May God revive our clergymen, far too many
of them who carry on their ministry for
the sake of money instead of living for
the glory of God in a humble Christ
-like way as is demonstrated by the man
of Galilee.
Unless revival can come to the clergymen, perhaps
I speak more for Europe than South Africa.
You'll have to judge your own nation.
Then I don't believe we'll see revival and
renewal in the Church of Jesus Christ.
Every kind of crazy sin has invaded the
church.
You don't need to go to the world
to become worldly.
You only need to go to the church.
The love of money, the love of ease,
the praise of men, slothfulness, sleepiness, and even
impurity that has put hundreds of our pastors
in North America and Europe into every kind
of crazy situation.
Divorce is now the order of the day.
I know pastors that face even evangelical congregations
that have no more than 20, no less
than 10, 20, 30 divorces in their own
church.
Now even many of our Christian leaders, or
to correct that I should say some, are
having divorces.
We have one man in the United States,
got divorced on the west coast, went to
the east coast, remarried, divorced on the east
coast, went to the west coast, remarried.
Of course, it's a big country.
There's plenty of scope.
Praise God for Roy Hession, who has now
written this book called Forgotten Factors, speaking about
the problem of immorality in the church.
Of Jesus Christ.
My burden is renewal among God's people first,
and then evangelism second, though I believe most
of the time they go hand in hand.
God moved in the high school, and then
God began to move in the college that
I was attending in the southern part of
the United States.
There were just a few of us.
We met regularly in prayer.
We went out in practical evangelism.
And though later on I spent two years
in Bible college, I learned more from the
Word and about the Christian life in that
secular college than I learned in Bible college.
I'm not against Bible college, and we send
many, many hundreds of our young people in
the Bible college.
But nothing, neither Bible college nor OM, produces
instant spirituality.
And there is no substitute for on-the
-job training, getting out with people.
I worked with alcoholics.
What lessons I learned.
I visited the prison every week, working among
prisoners.
I was only 18.
I was scared.
I didn't know what to say.
But boy, did I learn something in that
jail.
First the jail and then a prison.
Some of my prisoners graduated after they accepted
Christ, went into the state penitentiary, and here
I was at 19, preaching to 500 convicts
in the state penitentiary of the state of
Tennessee.
And I saw God working among these prisoners.
And then I went and worked in the
poor sections.
You know, in America, we have many, many
poor people.
You may not believe that.
We certainly did back in the 50s.
I haven't been there so much in the
past 15 years.
We went down into the poor areas where
many of the children didn't even know who
their fathers were.
And what lessons I learned working with people
of a totally different cultural strata.
Then I had the blessing of working with
people of other races and backgrounds and nationalities.
Then God took three of us into Mexico.
This led to another life-changing experience.
For in Mexico, I met people that were
poorer beyond anything I even thought existed on
this planet.
I remember going out to a garbage dump.
I don't know what you call it here.
Rubbish tip, I think we call it in
England.
And there out in this garbage dump, with
all the garbage and a smell that could
have knocked you over, people were living.
I picked up a little baby.
You had no less than 60 or 70
flies crawling across their little body.
Her mother sat inside a little hut made
of garbage and string and tin cans as
she gave milk to another baby.
I talked to another little girl because I
learned Spanish.
I asked her what she had for lunch
and she said garbage soup.
Perhaps the next time you complain about one
of your meals, you may remember the little
girl in Mexico with her garbage soup.
I couldn't believe it.
I remember vividly walking away from that garbage
dump.
Looking at the sunset and recommitting my life
again to Jesus Christ.
I knew I never could be the same
after that experience in Mexico.
I knew I never could return to my
middle-class way of life.
And I had to go wherever God wanted
me to go.
But especially among the poor and the masses
who don't have the opportunity to hear the
gospel of Jesus Christ.
In Mexico, when we went there, 50%
of the people had never had a scripture
portion.
And as we sit here tonight in this
beautiful church, in this incredibly prosperous country, half
the people in the world have never had
a gospel tract.
That cost one South African cent to print.
Half the people in the world have never
received the gospel.
And we don't believe this is right.
We believe this is the crime of the
century.
And so as we came back from Mexico,
we came back with a new vision.
Little did we realize, because the name Operation
Mobilization didn't even exist, little did we realize
what God was doing.
That this was the birth to some degree
of what today is known all over the
world as short-term missionary work.
And though this was considered rather wild, and
we were widely criticized, today almost every major
mission and denomination has started their own short
-term work.
Many of them, in many cases, can be
traced back to O.M. and to this
work in Mexico.
We saw that we could help the missionaries
during the summer.
We saw there was a job to be
done.
Literature could be given out.
Records, gospel records could be played.
Physical work could be done.
And in the process, we could at least
begin to learn the language.
We went back, I went back to this
very interesting college, and I knew I could
not continue with my studies.
We don't challenge young people to leave their
studies.
Most people on O.M., if they're studying,
finish their studies.
But I could not.
I could not go on and get a
university degree.
God would not let me.
And I transferred out, and I did something
that my parents thought was completely insane.
Though they had already just become believers themselves
and were beginning to understand, you know, it
takes time for Dutchmen to get the message.
My father was beginning to understand the way
that the Holy Spirit works.
And so I transferred to Moody Bible Institute
of Chicago.
I didn't know anything about the place, but
it was in Chicago, and my one main
burden was to get into a big ugly
city with lots of drunks.
And Chicago seemed to have more drunks than
people, at least where I was living.
And so I spent two years working among
alcoholics in Chicago, and did some studying on
the side.
I also went door to door among the
Spanish-speaking people.
I found that what I was getting in
class was becoming real in my life.
Because I was constantly using it, winning people
to Christ.
In the summertime, going back to Mexico.
Through this, a whole unique system or method
has been developed of training people.
Letting them go to Bible school, but taking
them in the summer in evangelism.
So what they hear, what they study, what
they learn, becomes a functional, practical reality in
their life.
This was the birth of OM in practical
terms.
A somewhat new way.
First, not accepted by mission leaders.
Today, accepted by almost all.
Because it works.
Because teams doing this kind of work in
France, with the missionaries, have planted 13 churches.
Because these same teams have pioneered unreached areas
in more than 20 nations.
And have seen even churches born in some
of those nations as believers, or people are
brought to Christ and trained and discipled and
brought together in a local worshiping community.
And once again, this summer, in Europe, an
army will move to reach a continent for
Christ.
I've actually more or less just come back
from Mexico.
When we first went to Mexico, of course,
we were told this was fly-by-night.
How could teenagers and people 20 years of
age establish a proper work for God?
Well, if it's fly-by-night, you can
judge.
But we just finished our 18th Christmas crusade.
And our young men, Mexicans who were converted
and who worked together in the early days,
are still going on.
And the Christian bookshops we opened are still
going on.
And the radio broadcasts are still going on.
And today, God has opened the door in
most of the churches in Mexico to work
together in evangelism.
Mexicans have even launched out to work in
places like Nepal, India.
From the very beginning of our work, we
took a very unusual step that was not
accepted 19 years ago.
Total internationalization.
Any national from any country coming with us
worked on an equal level with us.
This now has been accepted in the past
decade by almost every major mission society.
Because we cannot continue to evangelize India, to
evangelize various parts of the Middle East, if
we from the United States go out on
one level and expect the man from the
Middle East or the Indian to be on
another level.
We have to work with them and treat
them as brothers.
Not only that, the only way our work
can continue in a place like India is
now, 12 years after the work was born,
we have to work under them.
They have to be the leaders in their
own country.
And God has blessed this and has raised
up an army of leaders all over the
world, most of them nationals, in their own
country.
They know their own culture.
They know their own language.
They know how to face the problems in
their own society.
And this has led to tremendous blessing.
And the and thousands and thousands have come
to profess the Lord Jesus Christ.
The work quickly crossed from Mexico to Spain.
And to abbreviate what happened, I can only
say that in those days we had two
main visions.
One was the Muslim world.
The other was the communist world.
As soon as I arrived in Spain with
my wife, who always manages to hide somewhere
in the back row, but she is with
me.
When we arrived in Spain, a missionary told
us, just before we got there, he said,
if you hear anything big is happening in
Spain, you know it's a lie.
It's real encouragement.
But within two years, God broke that country
wide open.
Within four years, we had taken the gospel
to every town, village, crack and corner of
the entire nation.
Churches were being born.
A land that was closed, open.
Though for the two years we were there
when it was closed, it didn't matter.
We sent 900,000 pieces of literature through
the post.
Soon, Spaniards were taking over the leadership.
My wife and I were looking for another
place to go.
I thought, in those days, that this would
be the Soviet Union.
I had studied Russian.
I had learned to type in Russian.
So in 1961, I went on my first
trip into the Soviet Union.
We went into Yugoslavia first, distributing the word
of God secretly.
Then into Czechoslovakia, flooding out the word of
God in the night.
But in the Soviet Union, due to my
own error, I was arrested by the Soviet
secret police.
This was a very important and significant experience
in my life.
Because I had to humble myself, realize I
had made a mistake.
Secondly, realize I wasn't ready for that work.
Thirdly, on the way back from that Soviet
Union experience, with a lovely submachine gun escort,
God brought into view this name, Operation Mobilization.
Up to that time, it was unheard of.
It didn't exist.
We were working under an old name called
Send the Light.
And it was in a day of prayer
in southern Germany, on the way back to
Madrid, Spain, that I realized that, first of
all, we must make an impact in Western
Europe.
First of all, the Church in Western Europe
must be revived and renewed to some degree.
And that, as we were trained in Western
Europe in a more easy environment, then, if
it be God's will, it could flow over
more carefully into these communist areas.
This is exactly what has happened in the
past decade.
Though all that happens in these communist areas
is not officially called Operation Mobilization, and when
people ask me if we work there, of
course I tell them, and officially we don't.
God's Spirit is.
And the Word of God is going out
by a number of different groups.
Some groups allow publicity.
Other groups say nothing.
But I can tell you sometimes the ones
that are seeing more done.
But the Word of God is going out
into all the Soviet bloc.
And I believe, as we pray, that we
can see even more take place.
By the next summer, the vision had exploded.
Three hundred young people joined in Western Europe
to go through our training program.
This is when a young girl named Heather
Wiles found out about OM.
After receiving her wonderful university education in one
of your great universities, she turned her back
on it all and went to France, spent
part of her life there working among prostitutes.
She joined OM in 1963, and that's when
we had two thousand young people unite together
and move out across France, Italy, Austria, Belgium,
and many other countries.
It was Heather who eventually got some of
us in OM aware of South Africa.
And really, if it wasn't for her and
then her mother, I wouldn't be here.
Heather was with us on Lagos when we
sailed around Africa, and then labored with us
in the land of India and later in
Nepal.
How we praise God for one girl who
was willing to turn her back on this
all too comfortable country.
Don't misunderstand me, but I do believe that
comfort is a great enemy of spiritual reality.
Not that God never wants us to be
comfortable.
We in OM have incredible comfortable situations, and
usually after we're in them for a while,
we get kicked out of them again.
God is not calling you into asceticism.
He is calling you into a warfare.
The good is the enemy of the best.
And so oftentimes God's people are involved in
good things instead of the best.
This is a very nice church.
Makes me think I'm back in the United
States.
Cleaning the windows is good.
Cleaning the carpet is good.
But if the church was burning down, I
wonder how wise it would be to bring
in the vacuum cleaner or start cleaning the
windows.
And beloved, the world is burning up.
A.W. Tozer said the whole world is
a disaster area.
Nothing is right, nor will be right until
put right by the redeeming work of Jesus
Christ.
When is the church going to rise up
and march as we sung about before we
have this message tonight?
A.W. Tozer, a man with tremendous insight,
said this.
He said if any secular company needed so
much raw material to get so little finished
product as the Church of Jesus Christ, it
would go bankrupt in six months.
You are an industrial nation.
If your industries ran the way the church
runs, they would no longer be in business.
I believe we've got to go back to
this book, which teaches that every man and
woman in the church is active for God.
Every man and woman who loves Christ is
in the prayer meeting every week, unless they're
sick or out in some kind of special
work.
Every man and woman in the church, filled
with the Spirit and moving forward in the
power of God.
Many of our young people cannot get their
church to stand behind them when they go
out.
The church is not interested.
They're usually building a new building or paying
for another electronic organ or raising the pastor's
salary or doing something else.
They're not interested in sending missionaries out to
the uttermost parts of the earth, except maybe
a few, but they go anyway.
Because ultimately, we must obey God rather than
man.
Ultimately, if Jesus tells us to evangelize the
world, we will go.
There's always a few people in the church
who will pray.
If the whole church won't.
And so, for 20 years, we've been going.
Now it's a lot easier because men that
we've trained are pastoring churches all over the
world.
They're a little more cooperative.
It's a wonderful thing when the pastors go
out for a few years.
We have quite a few who come.
I know I have now.
And I tell you, things happen.
We just had an American Baptist pastor, one
of the fastest growing churches in the Chicago
area.
Everything a pastor could dream of.
You know, pastors dream big homes, car, nice
congregation, you know, good middle class set, lots
of money.
Then he went on OM for a summer.
What a dangerous thing for a pastor to
do.
He just gave in his resignation.
Now the elders are learning to preach.
They should have learned to preach anyway.
It's what the Bible says.
And this pastor is launching out to join
us with his family of five on the
second ship.
Other pastors have received the burden to stay
in their church.
I think of one from one of the
biggest churches in the whole of Memphis, Tennessee.
First, much to his own dismay, his daughter
got recruited.
Then his son got recruited.
Then his wife got recruited.
Poor stubborn guy ended up coming himself.
He got so turned upside down working in
France, sleeping on the floor a little bit,
that he went back to his gigantic multimillion
dollar congregation that was just putting up a
two million dollar building.
And I want to tell you, those people
were in for a life changing experience.
They ended up having the whole OM North
American Conference in their church.
400 people sleeping in the church.
About time they put these places to good
use.
And things really began to happen.
God is moving in the world today.
God is moving in the church, among pastors,
among laymen.
Many, many are getting tired of the game
of words.
They're getting tired of playing church.
They want God.
They want revival.
They want world evangelism.
They want to learn what it is to
obey Jesus, as he said in Luke 14,
33.
Except you forsake all that you have, you
cannot be my disciple.
When's the last time you heard a message
on that?
Rather interesting verse.
And I believe that right here in South
Africa, God wants to do a new thing.
God has blessed many of you.
If you're saved, there's no greater blessing than
that.
And now your responsibility is to take this
great salvation and spread it all over the
world.
There are many countries that South Africans can
go to.
No need for this complex about the fact
that with your passport you can't get in
many places.
Let's start thinking about the places you can
go to.
Israel is wide open.
We would like to see some from this
country helping us in Israel.
We have work among the Jews.
We have work among the Arabs.
The door is wide open.
Iran is an open door.
France is an open door.
There are many, many countries where you can
go with your little passport.
You shouldn't feel people don't like us.
I want to tell you, can you tell
me what country they like Americans?
Maybe South Africa.
Maybe I finally found a place.
I ought to settle here.
In most countries, we are not wanted.
In India, I will tell you, we are
hated.
In India, when things were getting difficult, you
know what the Canadians did?
So that they wouldn't be mistaken for being
Americans, they had big signs on their cars,
I am a Canadian.
That makes all the Americans feel really great.
But you know, as we go out to
evangelize the world in obedience to Jesus Christ,
we cannot say, I will go if they
like me.
I will go if they think my country
is wonderful.
I don't care what people think about my
country.
My real country is heaven.
I am an ambassador of Jesus Christ.
This crazy planet with all of its suffering
and all of its misery and all of
its problems is not my home.
And if it's your home, you better go
back to your Bible.
We are pilgrims just passing through.
And our citizenship is in heaven.
And oh, that God would take some from
this little part of the world where you've
had so much of the gospel, relatively speaking,
and send you to places like Iran and
France and Israel and 20 or 30 other
countries that are wide open.
Beloved, I bring this message to a close.
But as I bring it to close, I
beg of you, do not take this in
as just another sermon.
God has not brought me here to deliver
a sermon.
But realize that as you hear this message,
you must determine to be not a hearer,
but a doer of the word.
C.S. Lewis, that brilliant theologian, said we
have the tendency to think, but not to
act.
And we have the tendency sometimes to feel,
but not to act.
If we go on thinking and feeling without
acting, someday we will not be able to
act.
This is the spiritual schizophrenia I have described
in my book, in which on Sunday we
are one person singing our choruses and our
hymns, arguing about our doctrines.
But on Monday through Saturday night, we're something
quite different.
Many people cannot even tell the difference between
the saved and the unsaved, in the office
and in the factory and in the street.
Oh, may God cause us to go from
this meeting tonight, not picking apart perhaps some
little thing that I didn't say quite as
nicely as I should have said it.
I acknowledge every time I speak some of
this old earthen vessel, even though it's only
126 pounds, gets in the way.
Don't worry about that, but listen to the
voice of God.
Don't worry about some little phrase that maybe
I didn't say the proper way, or something
that may be misunderstood, but listen to the
voice of God and go from here and
pray, Lord, what do you want me to
do?
Where do you want me to go?
And I sometimes wonder, at least back in
England, where we have such an incredible immigrant
community.
And if we can't love these people and
win them to Christ, hundreds of thousands of
Pakistanis, Bradford even has a Pakistani mayor, if
we can't win some of them, I do
wonder what we will do in India.
You have a mission field on your doorstep,
and I pray you'll take on the challenge
to reach them for Christ.
When I see some of you here who
are Indians, you've got a mission field among
your own people.
Though non-Indians may try and God can
use them, they'll never have the uniqueness that
you have.
Take advantage of it.
The mission field right here in Durban, a
cosmopolitan city, if there ever was one.
Let us pray.
Let us unite our hearts in a moment
of silent prayer.
Let us search our hearts.
Have you ever told God you'd go anywhere?
Then you can't really say that Jesus is
Lord of your life.
Because if Jesus is Lord of your life,
you'll go anywhere.
That may mean He'll keep you right here.
Some may have even an itch to travel.
The Lord will say, you stay here a
while.
Work with your own church.
But I want to give this moment for
some to make an outward decision of an
inward transaction.
Right now, some are praying.
And in a moment, I'm going to ask
those who have made a commitment in their
heart to go anywhere for Jesus Christ, whatever
the cost, to be a disciple, to be
a soldier, to present your body as a
living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.
If you'll make that decision or renew that
decision or that commitment, then whatever your age,
I'm going to ask you after you pray
silently to just stand up.
To stand up where you are as an
outward expression of an inward transaction.
And I want to pray for you.
You may not fully understand.
You may be fearful.
That's why faith is necessary.
That's why God says that we must live
by faith.
With every head bowed right now, you come
to that very serious part of this meeting.
You have heard, you have listened, you have
thought, you have felt.
Now you must act.
And though standing is only a small act,
isn't it?
It can be very hard.
And it can be the beginning of the
big standing up for Christ that will have
to take place seven days a week in
the midst of many different situations.
So right now, as anyone, it may only
be a few.
I don't know.
I'd like you to stand up where you
are as an act of commitment.
Praise God.
Many are praying for this meeting.
Many are praying.
I believe God has spoken.
Praise God.
He sees you.
I can't remember so many faces, but God
can.
Isn't that wonderful?
You ever feel alone and no one cares
much about you?
I tell you, the cure for that is
a knowledge of God himself.
And as you hunger for him, he will
bless you.
He will meet your needs.
Is Christ really Lord of your life?
There may be businessmen here.
God would lead you to a business in
a country where you could witness at the
same time.
We know a number of people in that.
There may be teachers.
God may lead you into some difficult area
in your own country.
Not everybody is booming with prosperity.
Anywhere, whatever the cost.
Scary, isn't it?
And yet it's wonderful.
The mystery of God's will to go where
he wants you to go.
To do what he wants you to do.
One woman prayed.
The movement is born.
Do you have a ministry of prayer?
Maybe some should stand to say, Lord, I
recommit my life for prayer.
I can't go.
I don't sense that I should go.
I'm willing to go.
I'm sure many are in that category.
But I want to recommit my life to
be an intercessor, to be involved in the
prayer life of my church, to be involved
in other missionary prayer groups, to be like
that dear lady, to be like those high
school young people.
Maybe there's someone in that category that needs
to come back to God in honesty.
Maybe there's someone that doesn't know Christ.
Maybe there's someone that isn't walking with Jesus
at all.
And this moment, you can settle this thing
with God.
You can say, Lord, I will follow you.
There's problems in my home.
There's problems in my life.
But by your grace, I will follow you.
I will go where you want me to
go and do what you want me to
do.
Stand up as an act of surrender and
commitment to Jesus Christ.
And I believe he will honor your step
of faith.
As you take one step toward God, he
takes 10 to you to lift you up,
to bless you, and to lead you in
the way you should go.
We're not going to take much longer.
Just a moment.
Anyone else?
Praise God.
It's only the beginning.
And God knows, for all of us, it
takes years to bring us into spiritual maturity.
But we've got to begin.
And even if we've already begun, at times
we've got to take new steps of faith.
That's what this will be, I'm sure, for
some.
You may have already made a similar commitment
to this before.
But tonight, God is urging you to take
a greater step of faith.
To give you a vision of the world.
To deliver you from the slipperiness of selfishness
that so drains us of spiritual reality and
love without which we cannot function.
All may God grant.
May God grant.
Anyone else in this closing moment?
Please stand.
Praise God.
God bless each one.
Anyone else?
Praise God.
Victory in Jesus.
Do you believe that?
Say it in your heart.
Victory in Jesus.
He is Lord.
I'm going to sing that chorus in a
minute.
But first, let us have this prayer of
dedication.
Anyone else?
Praise God.
Lord, you know each one.
You know our burdens.
You know our lives.
And you love us.
You accept us.
You're not trying to hit us on the
head.
You're not wanting us to go away with
a double-fold guilt complex.
You're reaching your arms out around us tonight.
And despite our weakness, our failures, our selfishness,
our mistakes, our sins, you love us with
an everlasting love.
And God, we just breathe in that love.
And we say thank you, God.
Thank you for this acceptance.
Thank you for this joy, this reality.
And we do rededicate our hearts to you
tonight.
We present our bodies as a living sacrifice.
And we say, oh God, by your grace,
we'll go where you want us to go.
And we'll be what you want us to
be.