Father, we do thank and praise Thee that
You've been with us during this day.
You've now brought us to this place, this
place of prayer, this place of accomplishing what's
on Your heart.
Lord, we know men through various ways.
Lord, we don't have many opportunities like this,
to be together, for You to speak and
say something.
We ask that You would truly not allow
us in any way to harden our hearts,
not allow us in any way to be
discouraged, not allow us to drift from Your
very perfect plan.
And God, You'd continue to bind our hearts,
though we're from many countries and backgrounds and
temperaments and different ministries and gifts from the
Spirit, we would be one body operating in
no other way.
We thank Thee and praise Thee, Lord Jesus.
In His name we pray, amen.
I want to just speak a few moments.
I told you I wasn't planning to speak
much, but I do have a few things
that I want to share.
And one or two, especially Brother Greg, who's
always so encouraging, have requested that I try
to share or would share some of the
things that really pound on my heart concerning
this position of leadership that you men are
in.
There's only a few men in the whole
work that I've ever really spent a lot
of time with and really shared some of
the things that I believe and that I
believe are from the Lord.
It's one of the reasons I believe God
is going to give a ship someday so
that I can spend many hours with different
brothers.
Even this afternoon as I was with Mike
and Paul and Johan, I sensed that that's
really the way to teach.
Just a few people and sharing and teaching
and opening your heart, rather than before a
great audience with a tape recorder going, or
even like I am now with so many
of you.
Because you're all different.
Every one of you is very different.
Some of you I've been corresponding and fellowshipping
with for ten years, and you know me,
and I know you.
It just constantly hits me how different, different
ones in OM are.
Some of you are so different from each
other that it's only grace that can keep
you together in one movement.
Dave Borman confesses that he's a rebel.
Well, the only area where he perhaps needs
clearing up is that we're all rebels.
We have just different forms of rebellion.
Anyway, I thought I would just share with
you some of my real burdens for you
men on the top.
First of all, when I refer to those
on the top, you realize that in reality
you're on the bottom.
Because you've been called to serve.
Talking to DeVerne Frompke the other day, our
hearts were so quickly knit together, he told
me about being with Laurence Sanning.
Why are we getting such an echo?
He talked about...
He talked about how
one day we were sitting in the office
of the navigator headquarters, listing all the various
staff members, from Laurence Sanning, director, right on
down, sort of on a chart.
And Laurence Sanning said something to the tune
of, actually what we have to do is
just turn it completely upside down.
Because the man on the top has been
called to serve, to minister.
And as you go out this year, if
you don't see that your job is not
directing but serving, you will probably lose your
team and a lot of other things.
And so when I refer to people on
the top, I'm really referring to the people
on the bottom.
Yet we have this terrific exhortation in scripture,
let not many be teachers.
Let not many be teachers.
And that really, really speaks to me.
Because most of us are in that position,
where we're teaching, where we're instructing, where we're
counseling, where we're telling others what to do.
And of course, that is a serious position.
It's a serious situation to be in.
And God gives that warning and tells us
that we, ourselves, are going to be judged.
Let me read it.
James 3.1. My brethren, be not many
masters or teachers, knowing that we shall receive
the greater condemnation.
Jan Darby once said, It's easier to teach
others than it is to govern ourselves.
It's true.
Phillips translates this verse.
It's a little hard to read.
I wrote it in my Bible, but the
water faded away.
But basically he said, Dear brothers, don't be
too eager to tell others their faults.
For all of us make mistakes.
And where we, teachers, who should know better,
make mistakes, the punishment will be far greater.
Which is true.
And this afternoon, we close with just a
thought that if we're really going to see
breakthroughs, we're really going to see some of
these resolutions become realities, it's going to take
desperation on our part.
Real desperation.
Not just desire.
That's not enough.
Every year we desire to do better.
Everybody desires to do better, don't they?
Every year we want to push on and
be a better Christian and all the rest.
But this isn't enough.
It isn't enough.
Anybody who studies psychology, and if you study
the psychology of business and the psychology of
movements, you will discover that the second generation
always gets softer.
The pioneers are the rough, tough individuals who
fight, and some of them get killed in
the process, in order to plan a work.
And this is true in the business world.
This is true in the whole of society.
This is why America is corroding today.
Because we're not only second generation, we're further
on down.
And a large part of your companies in
America today are directed by young playboys whose
fathers beat their brains out to start a
company from scratch and who they're living off
the fruit of the land.
And so things degenerate rather quickly.
Now you might think it's an advantage to
have a nice, smooth operating headquarters in Sovington,
and have a well-organized office in Bolton,
which is a very well-organized office, and
to have a well-stocked literature department in
Bromley, which might at times seem like a
bit of chaos, but if you could come
back to 1962 and see what we had,
you would think you were riding in the
top of a Rolls Royce.
And this might all seem great.
We've got a good finance department who seem
to be able to untangle anything you tangle
up, and tell us all how much money's
in the bank, and all the rest, things
that most of us don't even understand.
And this all can appear nice.
And we think we're going to move smoother,
and we're going to get more accomplished.
But history has proven otherwise.
History has proven that the first generation curses
the second generation by its helping it so
much.
This is a strange phenomenon.
And you can ask me about it tomorrow.
But it's true.
You see, you've all heard the slogan, Survival
of the fittest.
And this is something that goes back, really,
to nature.
But I think you'll discover that there's some
truth in this, in applying it to Christianity.
When things are rough, and tough, and hard,
and impossible, a number of men go forward
to tackle a job.
Quite a few of them fall flat on
their face.
But the ones who get through become mighty
men.
And this is what happens in the first
generation.
A few people tackle an impossible job.
Quite a few never get through.
But the ones who get through are men.
Then comes the second generation.
These ones that have made it through, especially
within the Christian fold, have love in their
hearts, don't they?
And they tend to want to think, well,
boy, we don't want him to suffer the
way we suffered.
Just like my father.
My own father worked like nobody from the
age of 14.
His one goal was to put me in
university.
He didn't care how hard he worked.
He saved his money.
He was ready to put me through Harvard,
through Yale, through any one of the Ivy
League schools.
That was his dream.
And so he did everything for me.
And I tell you, I had a wonderful
father.
I'll always be indebted to a father, even
though he didn't know Christ, who gave everything.
When I joined the Cub Scouts, he joined
the Cub Scouts.
When I joined the Boy Scouts, he joined
the Boy Scouts.
I wanted to play basketball, he founded the
basketball league.
When I founded to play baseball, he founded
the baseball league.
He was an umpire.
He got his legs spiked up and down
and bruised and kicked because he loved his
son.
And I know that it's a very important
thing in my own life, a father like
that.
And this is the way it is, isn't
it?
He was the first generation.
He wanted me to have every opportunity.
And the very fact that he did that,
in many ways, made it a lot easier
for me.
And in some ways gave me some weak
traits in my own life.
Although maybe if he didn't make it easier,
I would not have made it.
It's a little different outside the family, back
to organization, back to operation mobilization.
Some years ago, when certain things had to
be done, it was a bit rougher to
do them.
When they wanted to repair those vehicles to
get to India in 1964, that situation in
Switzerland, I tell you, was rough.
It was really rough.
And even when Frank started here a few
years ago, it was a lot different than
it is today.
And this doesn't mean we shouldn't work toward
progress.
Of course we should.
But we must keep this in mind.
And we must do everything we can to
avoid the road of least resistance.
And therefore take on bigger tasks.
You get that phone, pull the plug out
or something.
And make sure that we're not just riding
in.
Now this is so easy in the area
of finance.
This is just an example.
This is very important for you to understand
this.
So important that this concept could save this
world.
Especially in the second, third, and fourth generation,
if we believe such a thing exists.
Now when I wanted to get finance back
in the beginning of the work, there was
no question of central fund, was there?
And this work almost rock piled many times
in its early days.
Many times was almost completely smashed out.
Because you see, back in those days, either
we got through for God or that was
it.
There was no question of, well, if we
didn't get through for God, we could always
do this or do that.
No, if we didn't get through for God,
that was it.
And I want to tell you, I got
so desperate.
So desperate before God.
That's why I fasted more.
I want to tell you, back in the
early stages of this work in Mexico, the
devil threw such a dart that I couldn't
describe it in a public meeting.
Such a dart.
What did we do?
I got Hosey Burks, I got one or
two other guys.
We just didn't eat.
We just didn't touch food for quite some
time until we knew that God had won
that victory.
Why?
Because if we hadn't won that victory, there'd
been no more work.
It wasn't a matter of changing fields.
It wasn't a matter of going somewhere else.
There was nothing else.
That was it.
We either won or we were through.
And a number of times in the early
growth of the work, and even to this
day, because we're still in the very early
stages of this work, this had to take
place.
We had to get through to God.
Now, of course, we love young people.
The last thing we want to do is
see anybody cry.
The last thing we want to do is
say go home to anybody.
The last thing we want to see anybody
have is a nervous breakdown.
But I'll tell you this.
If you and I are going to win
battles for Christ, we're going to have a
lot of those three things.
Some people are going to fall by the
wayside.
And I'm not saying this at all.
We had a previous conversation here.
It has nothing to do with that conversation.
Please don't get it confused with that situation.
But if we're going to go forth and
we're going to pioneer and we're going to
make impact, we're going to have problems.
And some people are going to be hurt.
Some people are going to be lost along
the way.
Because in order to go back and pick
up all those that fall, the only way
to do it basically is you've got to
make it easy.
Now, with the revolution of love, a lot
of this can be covered through liberty, through
realizing people differ, through many other things.
And you know this is basically the way
we operate.
But in the long run, if we set
the standard where O.M. has set it
and keep it up there, some people are
going to get frustrated, some are going to
quit, and a few are going to crack
up.
And people can say, well, look, man, you've
got to be a little easier.
You've got to lower the standard.
Some people are getting frustrated.
Others are not able to make it.
But I tell you, when you lower the
standard, every time you lower it, you have
that less opportunity of producing any real men.
Because real men will only be produced through
fire, through difficulty, through trial.
And many times when you make it easier
for a brother, in the long run, you
make it harder.
I shall repeat that.
Many times when you make it easier for
somebody, you make it harder.
I believe that we've got to continue to
operate with all stops out.
We've got to continue to operate and demand
from the young people total surrender to Jesus
Christ.
Absolute commitment, as far as the Holy Spirit
has revealed to them at that time.
Naturally, we never reach an ultimate.
And we continue to press on.
And if I make it easier for you,
if I let up on you because, well,
you're different from me, you've got a different
situation, and I love you so much, I
certainly don't want to put you in a
situation where you're going to maybe crack up
or have a difficulty.
So I make it easier.
I do this, I do that.
I know how to do that.
In the long run, it could be your
curse.
Because there comes a day when the cushions
all fall away.
There comes a day when maybe George Berwick
can't help you.
There comes a day when maybe headquarters can't
send you five cents.
There comes a day when Frank won't have
any more trucks.
And you never learned to hitchhike.
And when you went out to hitchhike for
the first time, you had a heart attack.
Whereas if you'd learned to hitchhike many years
ago, because that was the mode of transport
I had, it might have helped you.
And I just believe with all my heart
that the temptation is going to come to
lower the standard.
The temptation is going to come to slack
off.
The temptation is going to come in many
different directions.
Just like it comes to me.
I'd like to go into psychiatric counseling.
Is it fair for me to go off
to Nepal?
Off to Bangkok?
Off to India right now?
When I've got young people back in Europe
that need counseling?
And I have a gift as a counselor?
And could pull many of these young people?
I'd give some of them a hundred hours
and I've done that to some people.
I could pull them right out.
Is it fair for me to go running
off to the regions beyond?
You see how easy it can go?
Because the emphasis today is on depth, isn't
it?
The emphasis today is, you know, we've got
to go deep.
We can't be superficial.
And evangelism gets tended to be classified, doesn't
it?
Why, when I tell people I do counseling
work, why they think that's, you know, that's
fairly soft.
When people hear I spend 20 hours or
10 hours out in the street giving out
tracts, they're not impressed at all.
You see?
And it's going to take discipline.
It's going to take continual balance and God
-given perspective for us to keep evangelism and
invasion for Christ in the center of this
movement.
Because we're going to have psychological cases.
We're going to have problem children.
We're going to have heartbreaks.
I've got a girl right now in a
mental institution in India under intensive shock treatment.
I know now I should have never brought
her.
I didn't screen her careful enough, but it's
too late now.
She's out there and she's in.
And she's very, very ill.
And I share that only confidentially with you.
I believe she's going to come through.
She's a girl with a terrible background from
the communist world who's never had love and
never had anything else.
Her problem isn't O.N. You'll get this
charged at you once in a while that
O.N. brings nervous breakdowns.
I want to tell you, as far as
I can see, our record in terms of
nervous breakdowns is probably better than any mission
in the world.
Probably because we're young.
Only the Lord knows.
And the cases of people we've had who
have had some nervous troubles basically had brought
it in with them and had the problems
before they came to us.
I don't believe discipleship will bring nervous breakdowns.
I don't believe preaching the full message of
the New Testament is going to cause any
more people to crack up emotionally than preaching
in soft silver and whatever other simple message
you give to them.
Let me go on from this to pass
on to you very, very much where I
think we must get desperate.
And if I tell you to get desperate
in any area where I don't want to
get desperate myself and haven't got desperate, then
God have mercy on me.
But I believe we've got to get desperate
in these areas.
And I'm speaking to you just the way,
right from my heart.
If the shoe fits, put it on.
If it doesn't fit, leave it off.
But I believe firstly we've got to get
desperate in this prayer life.
For any of you to be able to
come back next year after what we've said
here this weekend and say that your devotional
time's not going right, that you're not getting
through to God at length, I want to
tell you, you better get ready and pack
up.
I don't care who you are.
I tell you, it's just desperate.
We've got to have a prayer life.
If you're in a position of leadership and
you're not having quiet time and intercession and
prayer and getting through and seeing specific answers
so that you can put them in a
book just like George Mueller, then you have
no right to continue another year as a
leader in God's Word.
You may have the guts to get out.
And I want to tell you, if I
had to stand before you and tell you
this past year I haven't had a prayer
life and I haven't got through to God
most days, not every day, but I've spent
hours with God and mornings with God and
got through to God on many issues, I
tell you, I'd have to quit.
I'd have to quit because we've got this
army of people that are looking to us
as men of God.
We have this army of young people who
are looking to us as people as God's
people look to Moses and look to Joshua.
So they're looking to us.
And we just can't glibly come up and
say, well, somehow I've been too busy and
somehow I just haven't got down to it.
Somehow I've been slipping.
We can't do it.
We just can't.
And this desperation has come so much upon
me that I just can't get through a
day anymore without getting with God.
If I have to stay up till two
in the morning, I've got to get with
God.
Sometimes it's only a half an hour.
Less than a half an hour is mockery.
What men of God in history have ever
spent less than a half an hour in
His presence to accomplish a work?
In Afghanistan?
With half hour titbits of prayer?
Do we think we're going to invade the
Muslim world with pop guns and five minute
God bless our new worker?
Never, never.
And I want to tell you this is
a secret with many of our brethren in
India.
These boys don't think of leaving a prayer
meeting after first hour, second hour, third hour,
fourth hour, fifth hour.
Many of them in their own simple way
believe more in prayer than we do.
It's the backbone of boxing and prays more
than probably all of us in this room
put together.
It's an exaggeration, but it seems that way
sometimes.
His faith is so simple.
He doesn't have any of the paraphernalia we
have.
They haven't got a single vehicle in the
whole world except what we're given.
They haven't got any of the offices we
have.
Their office is so disorganized.
Their literature room is so disorganized.
When I go in there, I almost get
a nervous breakdown.
The accounts are so confused.
They haven't got Dr. Schaefer.
Bhaktsingh never even preaches an apologetic.
He doesn't believe it.
But he's had 200 to 300 assemblies born
and hundreds of intellectuals and college students and
even some with PhDs saved through his ministry.
And now he's invited to every part of
the world to tell the world how to
do it.
You see, he's got prayer.
And I don't care if you come to
me with muddled finance books.
Steve does.
I really do also, but I tell you,
I want prayer.
And that convinces me about Brother Steve.
It's not his accounting.
Because ever since I've begun to live with
him and prayed in a cellar of Gopin
with him, I know we've got a man
in the accounting department who believes in prayer.
And that's the backbone in the accounting department.
And he doesn't believe it.
He doesn't believe it.
Oh, I just say it.
I just do anything.
Prayer.
You've got to be invested in prayer.
We are from the activist West.
We think of everything in terms of what
we can calculate, what we can organize, who
we can counsel, who we can encourage, who
we can show a film to, who we
can show slides to, who we can preach
to, what strategy we're going to have, what
graph, chart we're going to put up.
But God sees everything in terms of prayer,
which is just communion with God.
When you say prayer, you say God.
You can't say prayer without saying God.
It's just a nonsense.
And I just pray if any of you
really are not getting through, really are not
seeing prayer life just to say Lord, Lord,
Lord, I cannot go on.
Without prayer, without you, I cannot go on
without prayer any more than I could go
on in my marriage without love.
You've got to get desperate concerning this.
You've just got to.
And if I'm off being here, well, God
knows.
Why do you think God didn't let me
in India?
Because he wanted me to pray.
And I want to tell you there in
the mountains in Nepal, early in the morning,
to pedal my bicycle off alone into the
mountains.
Because, you know, if you try to hold
your prayer life around a soft, cushy little
warm room, you're never going to get through.
You'll fall asleep, just like I did the
other day.
And I tried, I still try every once
in a while.
You know, God is so patient with me.
Try to have my prayer life in a
nice cushy little chair, my Bible on my
knee.
You can do that sometimes.
Get out of that cushy little room.
Get out where it's zero, but get somewhere
where you're awake and then pray.
And what a difference I got on that
bicycle and pedaled out a couple of miles
and went off into the hills in Nepal.
And I tell you, I felt that the
God of Moses was standing right next to
me.
Time went by just like water.
I want to tell you, you've got to
get with God.
Fold your whole program up.
Close down and send me the weekly report.
But you've got to get that time with
God.
You've got to get that time with God.
And if you had to stop the truck
in the middle of nowhere, you know, every
time God slows the truck down or something
breaks down, it's just an alarm, pray.
If we all get stuck in Zalmonton and
Brother Frank gets ill and the trucks don't
go, God's just saying pray.
Every time He slows you down, He's just
saying pray.
If you don't get back into the country
where you belong like I did, then He's
just saying pray.
You know what the devil can do at
a conference when the so-called authority isn't
there.
And we've got an awful lot of leaders
in India.
You get all those leaders together and no
leader above them and you can have a
lot of trouble.
And those guys sailed through one of the
greatest conferences this world has ever known without
Jesus.
And they had prayer times and worship times
and they sailed out of there and back
into the front lines.
And I tell you, that encourages me.
That encourages me.
That means that Jesus can take me if
He wants.
Perhaps at least as far as England is
concerned, although I believe He does have a
ministry yet for me there.
The next thing we've got to get desperate
about and with all of our heart, it's
just as linked, and that's loving one another.
One thing that has discouraged me about leaders
in this work, if anything can discourage me,
it usually lasts a few minutes, is the
lack of love one for another.
I tell you, I can't believe it.
How the devil can get us together and
get us twisted on this.
We're in the same work, we're born of
the same Spirit, we have the same Father,
we're moving in the same direction and yet
the devil has a way to keep us
from loving one another.
There's too much toleration in OM, not enough
love.
Too much toleration.
Nobody's fighting anybody in OM.
Nobody's sort of writing me caustic letters against
the other leader.
But there's not in a number of places
that firm love for each other.
Not a cheap little cardboard love that gives
a wishy-fish handshake like I gave Greg
years ago.
It was probably this thing wasn't operating in
my life the way it should.
But we really do love one another.
When we love one another, we're going to
want to go, we're going to always want
to stay right with one another, we're not
going to want any gossip behind the back,
all these things we've heard about can be
worked out.
Look, in my family, we've had lots of
interesting little problems.
I tell you, my home just runs smoothly.
Just the environment that I live in and
my wife hasn't even unpacked yet from India
because she's been ill and one month we're
going to repack.
She's still not sure whether she's going to
Bangkok, Nepal, she doesn't know whether I'm leaving
her the moment I get there.
I might leave her in Africa but I
know because love is there between my wife
and I we've never gone down without reality
in our home.
We've never once, I mean to sleep, it's
just real.
It's the same among us.
I tell you, I'd like to know when
the devil has driven disunity between Jonathan and
I, I'd like to be told about it.
He just can't do it because we love
each other too much.
And it's certainly a lot harder for him
than it is for me because he is,
of course, the faithful type, the submissive type
and I'm the overbearing type, the bull-headed
type, I guess.
I'd like to believe I'm not but I
guess I still am.
So it's harder for him but the devil
has not been able to get in.
He's not been able to get in between
Dale and I.
He's not been able to get in between
Greg and I, not even been able to
get in between Frank Boss and I.
Frank was in the United States and I
was headed for the moon or something.
But God knit our hearts and I want
to tell you, over this past year, my
heart has been so knit with Frank and
even there we were just praying and having
a tremendous time in fellowship.
It doesn't matter who it is.
I know the devil has tried to get
in between Steve and I.
I've had some of my most precious fellowship
with Steve because he's the most different from
my temperament and because he's got a lot
more personalities and I tell you, I've had
some of my best fellowship with Brother Steve
because fellowship on just the natural, the guy
that looks just like you and agrees with
you on everything.
Steve disagrees with me.
We've got a great disagreement right now.
He thinks we should sell Lobo right away
and I don't think we should sell it
for a higher price and he's written a
letter and I don't agree with it.
That doesn't mean a thing.
When you're in love, I don't care if
my wife wants to turn off a love
because she wears a different color skirt.
This is the answer.
And this is what most works don't have.
You and I know it.
They don't have this fervent love.
I've seen the devil come in.
Look what just happened to Campus Crusade for
Christ and I don't want to speak against
any group and I'm not speaking against them
but three of the very top men at
Bill Bright have just walked out, started a
new operation, Operation Acts 26.
But it seems to me that love would
have found a better solution than that, I
hope.
But it seems to me that in evangelical
circles we walk out on each other pretty
quick.
My oh my, you watch the United States,
these guys bob from one organization to the
next.
Here one minute you see a guy united,
next minute you see him with somebody else.
Now if the love continues, praise God, and
it does continue in some cases.
And when you leave ON, if you do,
that love should still continue even outside of
ON.
But when they separate and never write each
other and never see each other and then
start competing with each other, that's a different
story.
And I just say that we've got to
get desperate about this.
And I've been in headquarters situations where there's
been two leaders and they don't pray with
each other one week to the next.
You can't tell me there's love there.
You can't tell me, you can't tell me.
You might not hate him, your way of
saying things is not fervent love.
You might not say I have fervent love
for my wife and never talk to her,
never say anything to her, or my children,
or any other love relationship.
And I just say that though we're thought
of in OM as over-preaching love, I
don't think so.
I don't think so.
And this is the thing that has won
team members and this is the thing that
has lost team members.
When you love your team member, you'll win
him.
He'll work for you.
That's exactly what he needs.
He needs more love.
He needs more understanding.
He needed more encouragement.
And Dale's message at the leadership conference some
time ago, I don't remember the whole thing,
I just, I don't know where I read
it or saw it somewhere, about encouraging rather
than, do you remember what it was?
Dale, do you remember?
That's it.
And you know people are sheep.
The Bible says that.
And you can't expect ordinary people who basically
are going to live a fairly ordinary life
to become your spiritual superman.
They need leadership.
The world without leadership would be the most
hopeless, crazy place, just completely impossible.
And the leader makes a team.
You will make or break your team.
I don't care what people you have.
There will always be a few impossible cases
that in the long run you'll have to
commit to the sovereignty of God, that I
believe.
But basically you will make or break that
team.
And the boys that have it, I can
tell you, you've got a guy like George
Miley out in India who's got it, no
matter what you say, anybody, he's not a
man in India, he doesn't have confidence of
it.
I sent many foreigners out there and all
they've done is they put Thomas Samuels back
up, they put all the Indians backs up,
but you send a guy out there that's
got love and understanding and warmth and it's
just fantastic.
It's just fantastic.
You can send a guy out there that's
got truth, got evangelistic zeal, he's got truck
driving ability, he's got anything, he doesn't have
love, he'll put everybody's back up, screw up
the works, cause you more headaches than you
can handle, love makes men work, love makes
men do almost anything.
And it's just a tremendous thing and I
know that the love that people have shown
to me has been the greatest motivating factor
in my life outside of this great grace
that comes from God.
The love that Brother Dale has shown to
me over the years has probably been one
of the biggest factors in my life.
And other brothers, some are in this room,
and I tell you, it's the ointment, it's
the greatest thing in the world.
And it always works with prayer, faith worketh
by love.
When you love a fellow, you want to
pray with him.
When you pray with him, God works.
When you pray with him, God moves.
And oh my, this is my yearning and
I don't want to miss it this year.
I'd like to go out to Bangkok and
Nepal and stay there all year because I
hate aircraft and I hate traveling and all
the rest but if God tells me to
get in that plane and go to Los
Angeles and Seattle and Mexico City and Monterey
and New Jersey and London and Paris and
Madrid and just in every one of those
places, this is the message I'll pray.
Because if we don't learn to love, and
the church doesn't learn to love, because this
is the message we should be bringing in
the church, we've had it.
Are we ready to become really desperate about
that?
Are we ready to say, look Brother Greg,
anything you see in my life this year
that's not loving, the way Jesus
does it, it's not loving, you tell me.
I want to tell you, he came over
me with a fine tooth comb, even the
slightest increase of intonation, I said, that gave
the slightest idea of irritability.
He just came very quietly, George, were you
irritable?
And I tell you, when he asked you
that, were you irritable, immediately within you something
says, are you getting on me?
I'm not that irritable.
And there's been a lot of repenting.
A lot of repenting.
But if you get somebody like that and
they'll walk close with you, you'll learn this
life.
You'll either learn to get out and kick
him out or something.
Because you can't live that way.
That's why marriage is so hard, because your
wife can see through all your idiosyncrasies.
Your wife knows you.
If you asked your wife to write your
biography, you know what it would be.
And these people that are headed for marriage
that don't know how to live in unity
with a small team, well, it's going to
be an interesting time.
I hope they've got a lot of something.
But this is my concern.
And I'll preach on this until I'm dead.
Because this is what I see.
I think Frank would be the first one
to testify with all of us that there's
only one way.
And that's the way of the cross and
desperation.
We've just got to get desperate over this
thing.
We can't put it off.
We can't say, that's my temperament.
We can't say, well, circumstances.
We can't say pressure.
We can't say, well, I've been this way
for 20 years or five years.
We've just got to get desperate.
And God can do it.
God can do it.
It's the most important factor this year.
These young people over there in that conference
center, the thing they need more than anything
else on the practical human level, and God
uses humans.
He's not going to pour out some bowl
of oil sufficiency out of the sky.
Basically, he's going to use you and me
to love and to encourage and to build
up.
There's so much phony dependence on the mystical.
The idea that somehow this young person is
going to have an experience with God, and
then everything is going to be rosy.
Well, there's very few people who've ever been
like that.
Very few have ever gone on for God
in all of history without love and encouragement.
You want to name him, you want to
name George Mueller, you name Wesley Hudson-Taylor,
you name them all.
They all needed love.
You and I need each other's love, and
the man who thinks he needs love the
least needs it the most many, many times.
We've got to get desperate concerning this revolution
of love and loving one another and loving
our wives.
I'm going to tell you, I'm shocked.
And again, Frank, you're not the exception.
You realize the average husband is battling this,
especially after five or ten years goes by,
and really being loving and gentle and meek
and in the home and understanding of the
wife.
The wives have the rough end of the
stick in this world.
We're here now getting blessed, aren't we?
We're getting messages, we're getting prayers.
Where are our wives?
My wife's with three kids who are completely
illogical.
Who knows what?
The house could be burning down at this
very moment.
Or they could be throwing darts at her.
Anything can happen.
And she's supposed to be sick.
Her eyes are a bit yellow again.
And there's no one in the house particularly
to help very much.
And that's a big difference in being here,
isn't it?
Listening to a message and getting encouraged or
kicked or whatever else it is.
And I want to tell you, if we
don't go back every time we see our
wives and love them and make them feel
wanted and encourage them and build them up,
then we are sinning against God.
We're sinning against God.
And if they get away from the Lord
a bit and they aren't as disciplined as
you want and disciples, then you have no
one to blame but yourself.
No one to blame but yourself.
You who were called to love your wife
as Christ loved the church.
And I tell you, it's a hard message.
And in the marriage counseling I've done, it's
always come back to the same issue.
It's always come back to the same issue.
And it's serious.
Let me go on to another point.
And it's just so, so, so urgent.
We've got to get desperate about our concern
for solace.
Now this is a terrific area of weakness
in a number of leaders, even men in
your position.
You know who you are, but you know
down in your heart you don't have a
love for the lost.
You know that there's a dichotomy.
You know that you can pass people in
the street.
Even the thought of getting into the track
doesn't even come to your mind.
You're too busy looking in the shop window
or a car going by or some other
thing.
Maybe a girl, which is the worst of
it all.
But you know, you basically don't really have
a passion for souls.
And you've prayed about it.
You want it.
All of you want it.
You want to sense the burden that Paul
had.
You want to sense the urgency about the
lost so that you don't have to be
kicked out every week to go on evangelism.
Someone doesn't have to come and say, look,
every week in O.M. we go on
evangelism.
You'll be one of those ones that they've
got to tie down.
You're letting your job slip because you're too
busy getting involved with the lost.
And that isn't the problem in O.M.
The problem isn't that the office is being
neglected because we're too busy out winning souls.
And Jonathan has given the most honest confession
and he's not alone.
How many of us have gone through a
year without winning souls?
I want to tell you.
I believe if I did not win souls
to Christ, I'd be disqualified for the rest
of my life.
I have to win souls to Christ.
And I haven't won as many this year
as I would want to.
And if you get out in the Muslim
world and you win one every five years,
that's equal to us back in Europe winning
one every second, every third month.
But are we ready to really get desperate?
Are we ready to say, Lord, give me
fruit that my womb not be barren this
year at any cost.
God will lead you to men.
Though you're the most busy administrator in the
entire world, God will lead you to men.
You've all heard me tell the story when
I went out in the streets one day.
I had so much to do in Bombay,
I couldn't even think straight.
I've got so much to do now.
I've got so many letters I haven't even
read.
Not to speak of hundreds of other things,
but that day I went out in the
streets and right in the streets God gave
us the most faithful literature man and book
packer this work has ever seen.
If you had one at Zomtom, you'd have
half the problems in the book room.
Where did I find him?
In the streets.
And do you realize that some of our
best men who have filled the gaps that
you're racking your brains over have been won
in the streets, in the buses.
God honors evangelism.
The work isn't going to slip down the
pipe because too many people are getting impassioned
for souls.
The trucks aren't going to fall into the
ditch because too many people are out trying
to reach the laws.
It very, very seldom happens.
And when that does happen we can always
easily check it because we have so many
submissive people on the web, we really do.
I've had people come up, key people come
up.
One of the key leaders going out to
the Middle East, he comes up and says,
look, I'm ready to work.
Anywhere.
University boy.
Cambridge boy.
He says, book packing?
Accounting department?
I tell you, that's revolutionary.
That's revolutionary.
So, you know, if we do get off
balance in the evangelism, we can always take
some of these extremely submissive ones and make
them fill the gaps.
And I just say this.
Don't let the devil get out with you.
Get out with your team.
When's the last time you took your team
out or you were with your team and
you just led them right out?
You preached in the open air with them.
They saw you giving up the tracts.
They saw you moving out.
They saw you winning men to Christ.
And I can just, I'd be a hypocrite
if I couldn't tell you that all this
year that God has given me that grace
and that love to maintain evangelism.
Of course I need more.
I so condemn myself.
But I've been out week after week.
Everywhere I've been.
Every, almost every single week of the year
there's always been time for evangelism.
And there's been some conversions.
And I just believe if I can do
it in my completely impossible situation trying to
hold on to two continents plus Mexico and
all that all together and very few people
understand what that involves anybody can do it.
I believe everybody in this room can do
it.
Just maintain evangelism.
Even if, I mean, there's so many people
in the world it's just fantastic.
And I have many young people come to
me team members and they say next
thing there's only a couple more things and
I won't take any more.
But we've got to get desperate about our
disciplined life.
Oh yes, we've heard this message so many
times in OM it's practically killing us.
Some of you know that your life has
not increased in discipline.
You're basically the same way you were last
year maybe a little bit back.
The area of sleep the area of food
the area of correspondence the area of your
files the area of all these things.
I know we've all got excuses and reasons
but in your heart you want to do
better, don't you?
I think everybody here and I know you
I'm just being in your presence under conviction
but I know you want to do better
in the area of discipline.
But are you desperate?
Are you desperate?
Just so desperate?
I am.
I tell you I'm so desperate to be
a better man this year.
So absolutely desperate.
And I know God's got to give me
a disciplined life this year and the year
before.
I know I don't have it the way
God wants it.
And I just see what can be done.
Time to me is the most valuable thing
in the world.
It's the most valuable thing.
And I've seen what you can do in
one hour.
I've seen what you can do in one
hour.
I've seen what you can do in ten
minutes.
I've seen what you can do in two
minutes.
In two minutes you can write a letter.
That letter can encourage a man and keep
him from anything from suicide to a nervous
breakdown.
That's right.
And you know people like to talk about
praying in finance but you and I know
that letters play a large part in finance
in God's plan.
We don't write letters just to raise funds
but we write letters as God leads that
if He chooses He can use those letters.
But I want to tell you if it
wasn't for the letters that a few people
write in this world we wouldn't have anybody.
Sure, God could do the impossible He could
turn this door to gold but you don't
go around believing that.
But you know when a man gives ten
dollars or a hundred dollars or a thousand
dollars he likes to at least hear that
the money has arrived.
And a word of encouragement that he's a
vital part.
He is a vital part.
And to me to not have discipline in
correspondence is sin.
Sin.
And I know that this is an area
where we've got to dig in.
Some of you have been given dictaphones.
What are you doing?
You could have done more letters by hand.
Do you really take that dictaphone?
Do you use it?
I mean to me to have a dictaphone
and not be putting out twenty-five letters
twenty-five or thirty or forty letters a
week that's a lot lower than my original
statement.
I mean I don't understand that.
It's just a matter of disciplining your mind.
That thing once you learn you see but
you know what people don't want to learn
new things.
People think well this is the way I
am.
Look if we've given up changing at twenty
years of age boy I don't know what
I'm going to do at fifty.
We'll be digging the tomb.
And I'm just convinced that we could our
production and correspondence could increase just ten times
what it is.
What about all these XOMers?
What about guys that have been on our
teams three years ago and haven't heard from
us since?
What do they think about all that love
story they got at the OM conference?
You know how we're going to love you
and all the rest?
And it really breaks my heart.
And I just know that's only one area
of discipline.
There are many many other areas and it's
it's a desperate situation.
The greatest need in OM and the practical
level is for top rate spirit filled organizers.
We're just playing the game.
We're playing the game.
This work has the potential to do ten
times what it's doing.
We don't need more men.
We don't need more trucks.
We've got to get better organized.
One example when you go into a town
and you've had a man ahead of you
two months to line up that campaign who's
got something in his head besides sawdust and
discipline, knows how to gather the pastors, get
a proper auditorium, get the advertising out, get
everything informed, then when the guy comes in
to preach, ten times as many people are
at the meeting.
Then the normal situation where we sort of
drift in, we're not even sure who's lining
it all up.
Just like some of the meetings down in
Italy.
I heard about them.
Why do we have such a small attendance
as some of those tent meetings?
We didn't have anybody, did we, really, to
go there three months in advance and line
up that town, arrange for the tent, stay
there for some weeks, get everybody praying and
moving.
We move in sort of last minute, half
organized, and we wonder why we don't even,
one tent campaign, I don't think they had
a single Salse.
Is that right, the last campaign, where one
came to Christ?
One.
Praise God.
I praise God for the ones.
Don't get me wrong.
I think Giovanni's
This is one of the problems.
Many of us, we do only that which
is the emergency.
That which comes in the door that day,
woo, we got to do it.
A carnet comes through the mail that day,
woo, we got to do something with it.
We've got to think ahead.
If you're going to have a meeting over
here in this town two months from now,
what are you doing about it?
Now.
So that all the prayer partners will be
coming.
So that you don't go there and after
you've left, somebody writes you, you've been on
OM four years ago, backslidden, would have come
to the meeting and maybe come back to
Christ.
He writes you and says, I didn't know
you were coming to the town.
There's another chance down the drain.
Down the drain.
So desperate about it.
So, so desperate because we're missing opportunities.
We're missing opportunities and we're losing, we're losing
in terms of the potential.
I want to tell you, I think that
our summer campaigns are just scratching the surface
compared to what they could be.
It's all right to sit back and say
we're doing more than others.
It's all right to think we're the most
zealous ones in Europe.
Yes, that's fine, but that's not going to
accomplish your job, is it?
Let's have a healthy criticism of ourselves.
Let's see where we've dropped the ball.
Let's see where the campaign could have been
ten times as effective if two months ahead
you'd got on a phone or got on
your knees or went there or did something.
We have cases where what happens to some
of our teams in the summer is completely
ridiculous.
There's no coordination between the missionary and the
team.
There's confusion and we've improved.
Year by year we've improved.
I think this is the year to get
desperate.
Why can't we have 5,000 souls?
Why not?
Is Billy Graham the only one who can
see people save more than ones and twos?
This is why this ship is so much
on my heart because I want to get
you all together.
If you think that I'm just talking, I
want to get you all together in one
place and let's have a campaign and let's
send somebody ahead.
We're going to have somebody go five months
ahead of that ship in every port and
when that ship comes into that port, that
city is going to shake.
I believe that or I would never enter
into this project.
We've seen it, small tastes of it here
and there.
We saw it in Calcutta.
We lined the campaign ahead.
We got a place to the open air.
Our teams worked in coordination with the local
church and we had evangelists preaching.
We had a thousand people.
Half of them were Muslims every night.
We saw 10, 15, 20 converted every single
night and the whole of Calcutta, the churches
and many thousands and hundreds of thousands of
unsaved people knew that Jesus was alive.
What a difference between drifting into one of
the local halls for a week of meetings
where the same people come, been to the
meetings for the last 20 years.
If you get five unsaved people in on
any one night, you think you're just about
conquering the world.
What a difference.
I'm willing to wait one year, two years,
three years, four years, five years, ten years.
I'm ready to wait a long time to
see this kind of thing happen as well.
But let's aim in the right direction.
Let's believe God to give us the discipline
to line things upright and to penetrate whole
cities for Christ and to mobilize the church.
I remember in Mexico City back in 1959,
1959 when we hit that city, I want
to tell you they knew what happened.
We had meetings in more than 50 different
churches.
My Spanish was so shocking then, most of
them probably thought I was speaking in tongues.
And yet we gave invitation after invitation.
Souls were saved.
More than a million pieces of literature went
out.
Half of it distributed by the local people
in the churches.
We were just a handful.
I was going to university at the same
time.
The same summer the vida abundante book shop
was open.
The same summer God miraculously opened for us
the opportunity to speak to more than 1
,500 young people because youth for Christ came
in and we got our nose into that.
And in that one day all those youth
for Christ young people all went out with
arms of literature and half a million tracts
went over Mexico City in a matter of
hours.
In Bombay when God gave us the burden
to make impact in one day half a
million gospel tracts went out.
Do you realize I can take up any
five days.
Let me choose the five days.
The day of the Calcutta blitz, the two
days of two Bombay blitzes, the day of
the Delhi blitz.
And in those five days we gave more
literature out in India than in all of
Europe in the entire summer campaign.
And I tell you unless you and I
get real desperate let's forget about evangelizing.
We're running backwards.
This continent has an exploding population.
And it's exploding in a tremendous way and
yet all the evangelism there are practically no
groups that are really engaged in mass evangelism.
I believe that we must return to a
small degree to the initial vision of mass
evangelism.
We cannot spend all of our time in
one little area to win three little converts
and attempt to plant the earth.
That's important.
But every mission group in Europe is trying
to do that.
God gave us a vision initially for mass
evangelism.
Many of our young people are not being
effective in personal work.
Anyway, why not get them involved in reaching
the millions for Christ.
We can print the literature in India at
half the rate.
We could send in millions and millions and
millions of tracts and we could reach people
and I don't know who else is going
to do it.
We don't.
And I'm very concerned but it will never
be done without this.
It will never be done without for instance
a man to get in a blitz team
where he's going to have eight or nine
to ten hours pressure every day for one
year.
Nobody wants to live that way, do they?
And oh, I tell you, I've seen this
out in India, how few want to stick
on a firing line.
How few want to stick with their finger
on the trigger.
Out in Rajasthan, out in Bihar.
It's a tremendous thing.
We've really got to get organized and get
serious about these things.
You see, if you were on Billy Graham's
team, you'd be getting something, most of you
in this room would be getting ten grand
a year.
That's a nice salary.
But if you don't throw the line, you
walk.
Because for ten thousand dollars a year, you've
got to work.
You can't be a normal man for ten
thousand dollars a year.
You've got to be toughs when he sends
one of his boys out like Mooningham out
to Singapore to line up the whole Congress
of Evangelism.
One thousand delegates from every part of Asia.
Do you know what it is to organize
something like that?
Bringing in by aircraft, of course they've got
all the money in the world to do
it and that makes it a little easier
than some of our hectic affairs and maybe
we need to be ready to spend a
little more money.
I am.
Get the job done.
But I want to tell you, these men
who get ten thousand dollars a year, they've
got to produce and they know that.
First of all, I believe they produce for
the Lord.
And I don't judge that system because it's
a product of America and I've got too
many problems of my own to worry about
Billy Graham's system.
But if you were getting ten thousand a
year, do you think you'd do a little
better?
You would probably at this point because you're
so purely motivated say, well no, that wouldn't
make any difference to me.
Of course, if you had to feed your
four children under ten thousand, you might be
a little bigger than them.
And I'm telling you, the world runs us
around, runs us around.
What's the answer?
You've got to get desperate.
Or in the long run, this work is
going to go down the pipe.
I'm not going to go any further.
I've got so many areas where I need
to be desperate.
I need to be desperate concerning my motives.
I need to be desperate concerning my study
habits.
I need to be desperate concerning so many
other things.
But you and I know that everything else
we talk about here will be meaningless if
we don't get serious about it.
And if I took a vote right around
now, I think everyone would agree, we have
not scratched the surface of the potential of
this movement of the Holy Spirit.
And I'm convinced in many ways that laziness,
lack of love, lack of interest in people,
lack of passion for souls, it's clogging the
pipe.
It's not that the Holy Ghost doesn't want
to move.
It's not that the Holy Spirit doesn't want
to give us more recruits, more souls, more
of everything.
It's that those things are contaminating the pipe.
And many years ago, when God gave us
a literal revival at Moody in a prayer
meeting, it happened when I came back, and
this is my last illustration, it happened when
I came back from getting a haircut in
the boiler room.
Some of you remember this story.
And Moody Bible Institute is a whole city
block.
It's a fantastic beautiful place.
I've never seen anything like it over some
downtown London city block.
And I was down in the boiler room
talking to my friend, boiler man, and he
said, you know, this, all the fuel that
heats this whole city block passes through, I
think he said, five tiny little holes.
The fuel comes out of a tremendous force,
shoots through those tiny little holes, and then
bursts into flame and heats the whole city
block, thousands of ten-story buildings, turns generators,
radio stations, and all kinds of things out.
Five little holes.
I said to him, I said, you know,
what if a couple of those holes, even
one of those holes gets clogged?
He said, the whole crazy school is cold.
God has that power.
It's flooding right on you.
You can feel it.
You know it.
You sense it in the meetings and the
conferences.
The power is there.
It's not that God is holding back.
It's not that God is not wanting to
do more and save more and work more.
But somehow, some of the holes, some of
the pipelines have become clogged with bitterness, with
resentment, with laziness, with lack of brokenness, or
any of these things.
And so the fuel is not getting through
and the whole place is getting cold.
It only took a few years to freeze
O-M-Solid.
That's all it took.
It only took a few years for the
Lord to get it going, but unfortunately it
only took a few years for it to
freeze solid.
As we go to prayer tonight, let us
believe God to clean those holes out.
And let us be ready to do it
daily.
And I just say to you with all
my heart, I don't know which one of
you will be living closer to me this
year, but I say anything you see in
my life, please don't think you're going to
hurt me.
Don't think you're going to offend me.
Don't think you might discard me.
Please tell me the things that are wrong.
Even though I've probably seen it happen before,
you're going to hurt Please don't think you're
going to offend me.