Very grateful for this opportunity to share, especially
the first meeting, or one of your first
meetings.
I guess it was about two or two
and a half years ago that I was
with you.
I don't know if anyone remembers.
No doubt the headache has gone away by
now.
Our hearts are really thrilled as I know
yours is thrilled over what God has been
doing over the summer, not just in our
own work, but in the whole work of
the Lord Jesus Christ around the world.
We're living in tremendous days, days of harvest,
in which tens of thousands are coming to
Christ in some parts of the world.
And I know many of you have been
involved for God this summer, and you have
stories to tell and testimonies to share.
We had about 2,000 involved with us
this summer in a movement known as Operation
Mobilization.
Our main goal is to give young people
a training experience and then to channel them
out to work with the church, their local
church, or a local church overseas, or in
a number of cases with other mission societies.
About 700 young people who have trained on
OM are now working with most of the
major evangelical mission societies in the world.
And we just had such an encouraging summer.
We especially would appreciate your prayers this week
as we are in the process of purchasing
a second ship.
Some of you know that OM has a
ship.
We usually get a few British University student
recruits each year.
Last year we got the president of OICU,
and he's now back as the traveling secretary
in Wales.
We hope we've trained him for that.
And it's just exciting to see young people
being trained on the ship Lagos.
They've just finished a visit to Africa.
Talked with them on the radio telephone last
night as they came out of the Suez
Canal, and they'll be moving in for a
large campaign in Marseilles, France on Thursday.
I'm looking forward to being with them.
This ship has been sailing for about six
years.
I know quite a few of you have
been praying for that ministry.
Some of you were on the ship when
it was in Glasgow or Liverpool or in
London.
Now we just feel after several years of
seeking the Lord that the hour has come
for a second ship so that we can
have two ships moving in two different directions
in different parts of the world.
We don't think this will detract in any
way from our major land operation.
And God has given us a thousand this
year, a thousand young people, so that we
don't have to rob Peter to pay Paul
in terms of manpower, especially our Middle East
program and Muslim world program.
We have just put our bid in for
this ship, and they are deciding this weekend.
This is an Italian luxury liner, one of
the oldest ships in the entire world.
Built in 1914, which is enough to frighten
any thinking man away.
But the steel on this ship is so
thick that it has better steel than ships
built in the 50s.
And not only that, they put a new
engine in it in 1970, which especially turns
on our engineers.
So we have made a bid for this
ship.
There's room on this ship for 600 people
in cabins.
It's a 7,000-ton ship, three times
the size of Lagos.
We just believe that God wants to do
the impossible in bringing this ship into His
service.
It's been in the service of worldly people
for long enough.
So maybe you could pray about that.
I'm not going to say much more about
our work, but did want to share that
little bit with you, because it is a
very urgent item, and we don't even have
time to get it into a prayer letter.
In fact, very few people know what I've
just told you, including the people who are
on OM right at this very moment.
I think in the next week or two,
according to the Evangelical Alliance, there's International Literature
Sunday.
I think it's in October they declare that,
and quite a few hundreds of churches around
Britain honor that as International Christian Literature Sunday,
while we at OM have declared every Sunday
as International Christian Literature Sunday, and Saturday night
is included.
I had to bail out of the car
at Victoria Station, if you know anything about
London, because we weren't going to make it
to King's Cross.
And I got on that very swift Victoria
Line Underground and made it to the train
with two minutes to spare.
Unfortunately, my massive suitcase of literature didn't make
it, coming a little further behind.
But Billy, my avant-garde man, he made
it.
So we have just a few books, and
of course you have your own book display.
We hope you'll take advantage of some of
this literature.
We had seen for 22 years, that's when
I was converted, through a meeting of Billy
Graham in Madison Square Garden.
I was told it was just an emotional
experience and it would soon be past.
But 22 years ago, Madison Square Garden, God
reached into my life, and through Christian literature,
brought me into knowledge of evangelical and biblical
truth, and through his word.
And I have just seen for these 22
years, that Christian literature is the most powerful
weapon we have in the Church, apart from
our own lives and the love that we
can show.
Literature will never be a substitute for love
or life, but together it is an unstoppable
combination.
I'd like to mention just a few books
that have meant a lot to some of
us.
The writings of Oswald J.
Smith.
Here's a man who has lived a life,
I was just with him, he's 80 now.
I was just preaching in his church, a
church that this year is trusting God.
It's not an American church, it's a Canadian
church, they're not wealthy people.
They're trusting God this year to give 600
,000 pounds sterling to world missions.
This was born out of the vision of
this man.
I was recently preaching in Pippin J., down
in Bristol.
If you know that interesting, the most interesting
of all Anglican churches in the whole of
Britain.
Unbelievable.
You know, when I preach with the Anglicans,
they usually say, You could keep to about
22 minutes.
In that church, they let me preach all
night.
And anytime I want to go back, I
can do it over again.
Of course, I don't want to give them
an overdose.
But that whole movement of Pippin J., which
has made such an impact in Bristol, was
born out of the vision of this man,
Oswald J.
Smith, when he came to Britain.
And I would recommend his books.
They're not very well written, but they're powerful
messages.
The Challenge of Missions by O.J. Smith.
You know, a lot of people have asked
him what his secret is.
And by the way, all that I'm saying
about the books and these other things, is
all part of the message, it's not the
introduction.
Because I know there's so many different people
here tonight, and some things are going to
be so meaningful for some of you, and
other things will not be so meaningful.
But here's something that's going to be meaningful
for some of you.
Oswald J.
Smith told us, speaking at one of our
conferences, that the reason he's still going on,
the main secret of his life, has been
his quiet time.
Every morning, he started when he was a
teenager, shortly after he was converted, and he
has hardly ever missed his quiet time since
he was a teenager.
He's now 80, still going strong, still preaching.
That's interesting.
I think we can learn something from such
a man.
And then, some of you may not know
the Lord Jesus Christ, yet, in a personal
way.
You may not have that assurance that we're
going to be talking about tonight.
And here's a book that will really give
you some short circuits, and some things to
think about.
You Must Be Joking, by Michael Green.
That man is making such an impact in
Oxford.
And I hope you'll read this, because it
answers some of the basic questions.
His other book, Runaway World, which I'm sure
you have in your own book table, especially
written for students.
This is written more for Joe Ordinary, and
most of you are still in that category,
even though you're also a student.
But You Must Be Joking is a great
book.
Another man who's made an impact on me
is George Duncan.
This man who has spoken at Keswick so
many times, and had the church in Glasgow.
He's just left there.
This is his day-by-day devotional book.
It's worth its weight in gold.
A new book on prayer.
Years ago, I had the unusual privilege of
speaking at the InterVarsity Convention in Urbana to
about 9,000 students.
This was the radical man who got me
into that meeting.
I never got back there.
But Eric Fyfe, an Englishman who God has
greatly used.
And that's a new book on prayer.
He was with InterVarsity and the Christian Union
work for many years.
So you may want to take that along.
An unusual book on the simple life.
I believe one of the greatest mistakes the
church is making, especially since so many of
us in the evangelical church come from that
interesting sector of society classified by some as
the middle class, we tend to be a
little bit off balance when it comes to
material things.
And you will find this book rather upsetting
to your middle class way of thinking.
Christian view of possessions, the simple life.
I don't agree with everything in it.
I don't agree with anything in any of
these books.
Roy Heshin, We Would See Jesus.
Another man that God has greatly used.
I'm sure you've all read Calvary Row.
A classic.
Now in 35 languages.
If you haven't read it, I apologize for
not having any copies on the book table.
Maybe you do.
So I'll have to send that to you
free if you write to me.
You'll find my address on a little calendar.
I'm trying to get rid of those because
there's 77 calendars.
So you can pick one up at the
book table.
The writings that we distribute the most for
believers are the writings of A.W. Tozer.
And I would count it worthwhile, not only
coming here by train, I would count worthwhile
jogging here.
I like to jog every morning, mind you,
not from Bromley to Durham.
But just to introduce you to the writings
of A.W. Tozer.
How many of you have read something of
A.W. Tozer?
Raise your hand.
If it's been a blessing to you or
kicked you in the spiritual stomach, say hallelujah.
I know you're tired.
Wait till the end of term.
That's when you read Claude Naramore's and John
Hagiai's How to Win Over Worry and Care.
William MacDonald's book On True Discipleship, also in
about 30 languages.
By the way, this one's worth 30 or
40 pence.
If you look down the other end of
the table, you can get the same book
in our African edition free of charge.
Now, you don't have to be an African
to get this.
But we've just done another 100,000 of
those.
We have just a few laying around.
Britain.
There's some other literature that's free.
The most powerful Keswick sermon I've ever read.
I don't know if they're still preaching that
at Keswick.
I've read a lot of Keswick sermons, and
I've listened to a lot of their cassettes.
I've been there.
But I haven't heard that kind of message
in the past few years.
It is unbelievable.
A little sermon called Not to be Ministered
Unto.
If you put that into practice in your
Christian union, you will have a radical revolution
at Durham University.
Not to be ministered unto.
We have some ministry cassettes also available.
We have these prayer maps.
We're trying to get every Christian to get
a prayer map.
We've just printed another 40,000 of these.
Got tired of buying the daily telegram maps,
so we printed our own.
This one has a scripture text.
Now just think of how that will make
your digs look so much more attractive.
Pray ye the Lord of the harvest, that
he will send forth laborers into the harvest.
I know that most of you don't know
who I am, and that's good.
If word had gotten around, of course many
would have boycotted the meeting.
Because at some universities they spread the rumor,
I don't get back to it anymore, that
I am a Pied Piper.
And that I come in with my maps
and my prayer cards and slides, which isn't
true, and I lead these young, quiet English
university students to the regions beyond, and they
never come back.
Which is not true.
Most of them do eventually come back.
Take that map, put it somewhere.
If this were a normal church meeting, I
would recommend that they hang it right in
the living room, in the sitting room, right
over the front of the television.
Perfect place for this map.
I know most of you have sold your
televisions to pay your fees up here.
And with that map you'll find these prayer
cards.
This is not just about OM, this is
just general prayer requests from 52 of the
most needy nations in the world.
Many, many other Christian groups and missions are
using these cards.
Very, very helpful.
I have a great problem in prayer.
My mind is always wandering.
I find it difficult to concentrate.
And if you have that trouble, you may
find the map, these cards, helpful in enabling
you to concentrate in prayer, especially intercession.
You know, praise and worship, I believe, is
the highest calling in the Christian life.
And that's why I like the writings of
Tozer.
That's why I believe the greatest book in
this decade is probably Destined for His Throne,
a new book on worship that has just
come out by Christian Literature Crusade.
I'm sure you can get it from your
local bookshop.
Because this is our calling.
It's worship more than anything else.
But worship and praise will lead to intercession,
or otherwise it will become subtly selfish, especially
in a world where 50% of the
people have never heard the gospel even once.
So I hope that you'll make use of
those little cards.
And if you can't afford the cards, this
little book has very similar requests from nations
around the world and sells for about one
-fifth of the price.
Now, how does one recommend his own books?
Most of my books are not here.
But recently a book came out that's not
selling very well.
So we brought some of those.
It's called A Revolution of Love and Balance.
Because this is a follow-up of what
I want to say tonight.
I hate to just speak once in a
place.
I'm just going off to Gordon Conwell Theological
Seminary in a few weeks, and I'll speak
twice a day, every day, for five days.
I like that.
That's not possible at university where you're all
studying.
But this is a little follow-up of
what I want to say tonight.
Because when I finish tonight, some of you
are going to think he's an extremist.
Because when you're trying to state truth that
is very meaningful to you and has been
burnt into your soul for twenty-two years,
it's not easy to present it in a
sort of a docile, quiet, gentle, unassuming, unoffending,
appropriate English way.
Even though you've spent, and I have spent,
sixteen years trying to learn the English language
and the English ways.
Total failure.
So I don't believe I'm an extremist in
the wrong sense.
And when you finish my book, Revolution of
Balance, I think you'll understand better what's really
on my heart.
Let's just spend a moment in prayer as
we look into God's word now, together on
this subject that is on our hearts.
Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to
be together.
We do not want to just present truth.
We know that the letter killeth and the
spirit bringeth life.
And Lord, we are very, very conscious that
we as human beings can get in the
way, and we pray that we may be
hid behind the cross, and that we would
see Jesus, and that you would start this
term off with a mighty move of your
Holy Spirit in our minds and in our
hearts.
Now, people in this town may know we
have been with Jesus.
Now, we're all different, and we have different
backgrounds and different ideas.
We come from different theological streams, and we've
been in different activities during the summer, and
we've got excited about different things.
But we pray that in these days there
would be a like-mindedness among us for
the glory of your name here at this
university.
And though we may worship in different churches,
and house groups, and fellowships, or cathedrals, that
we may walk in the Spirit and not
fulfill the lusts of the flesh, and that
we may know the assurance of our faith.
Oh, God, we thank you for your Son,
the Lord Jesus, and we remember Him, and
we want to yield our lives to Him.
We thank you for this literature and the
ministry it can have, and we pray that
from this meeting will go forth men and
women who will choose the way of the
cross and never turn back.
For we ask in Jesus' precious name, Amen.
Let us read a number of scriptures together,
starting at the epistle of John, 1 John,
chapter 5.
In the old college buildings in the universities,
like Cambridge and Oxford, usually during the meeting
you freeze to death.
But in these newfangled buildings, everybody starts roasting
and sweating.
So I hope you won't mind if I
take off my old coat, and feel free
to take yours off as well.
Here comes the electronics supervisor.
Ventilation.
Very good.
Ventilation.
High.
If anybody gets too cold, I can just
adjust it.
1 John, chapter 5, verse 9.
I hope you will take some notes.
You're all serious students.
That's why you've come to university.
Listening to messages without taking notes tends to
drowsiness and mind-wandering.
It also helps people misquote the speaker.
1 John, 5, 9.
If we receive the witness of men, the
witness of God is greater.
For this is the witness of God, which
he hath testified of his Son.
He that believeth on the Son of God
hath the witness in himself.
He that believeth not God hath made him
a liar, because he believeth not the record
that God gave of his Son.
And this is the record that God hath
given to us eternal life.
And this life is in his Son.
He that hath the Son hath life, and
he that hath not the Son hath not
life.
These things I have written unto you, that
believe on the name of the Son of
God, that ye may know that ye have
eternal life.
Repeat.
That ye may know that ye have eternal
life, and that ye may believe on the
name of the Son of God.
And this is the confidence that we have
in him, that if we ask anything according
to his will, he heareth us.
And if we know that he hears us,
whatever we ask, we know that we have
the petitions that we desired of him.
Keeping those verses in mind, go back to
Romans chapter 12.
Romans 12.
Perhaps we could have operation feedback tonight, if
you have another piece of paper apart from
your little notes.
George Whitfield used to have this method.
When he was preaching sometimes to 20,000
people in the open air, he would have
people write notes to him as he was
preaching, sharing what the Spirit of God was
doing.
People were being converted.
They'd send a note up to the Pope.
And I guess he would preach with greater
volume and compassion.
No Englishman has ever shaken America, as George
Whitfield.
I have sometimes practiced this.
I've asked people to keep their notes to
the end.
Once I had a note that came up
to me during the meeting.
It said, your time is up.
Would you please sit down?
So, if you keep your notes to the
end.
But really, I want people to feel free
to feedback thoughts, questions, and I'll try to
answer them by letter.
I'm taking a lot less meetings this coming
year, because of the responsibilities in the work
and my family.
I took about 700 meetings last year and
felt it was a bit much.
So I'm cutting back and hoping to see
a better quality, a higher quality of meeting,
and somehow come out of a meeting with
relationships.
I'm still corresponding with students that I preached
to at Cambridge University 14 years ago.
And I'm not here to just deliver some
kind of a message and disappear.
Though I have to go later on.
I would like to maintain contact at least
with some.
Romans 12, 1.
I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies
of God, that you present your bodies a
living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable sex.
And be not conformed to this world, but
be ye transformed by the renewing of your
mind, that ye may prove what is that
good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
I think these two verses especially are appropriate
to begin a new term, because after 11
chapters of heavy theological truth in the book
of Romans, it's as if God, by his
Spirit, is saying to us, in the light
of all this truth, this is the way
you should be living.
C.S. Lewis said, we have the tendency
to think but not to act.
He went on to say in one of
his books, we have the tendency also to
feel, some more than others, but not to
act.
And if we go on thinking and feeling
without acting, eventually we are unable to act.
And some of you may prove that in
the next two or three years.
You may be a regular attender at the
Saturday night Bible reading, and you may even
go to other messages during the week, and
by the end of three or four years,
and the range of speakers you are able
to get, you will have filled your head
quite well with various assortments of Bible truth.
And there's nothing wrong with that, if you
act upon it.
But if you don't act upon it, the
very truth you receive can become like poison
in your spiritual bloodstream, and lead you into
a disease that I call spiritual schizophrenia, in
which people develop a double life.
And we have many evangelicals who have developed
it, and people who don't call themselves evangelicals.
They feel they're better than evangelicals, whatever they
are.
When we hear about the evangelical church having
great problems, we try to cop out and
say, well, no, I'm not part of that.
I'm something new.
We take on a new name.
Whatever your name is, whatever your group is,
if you study it, you will see that
spiritual schizophrenia is coming in.
If you're a real new group, you may
not recognize it yet.
And I believe that C.S. Lewis put
his finger on it, and I would strongly
recommend that man's writings.
I'm rereading parts of Problem of Pain by
this man right now.
And I believe if you'd use his writings
in your evangelism, you would see even some
of the most agnostic people coming to Jesus
Christ, because many have been brought to Christ
through the writings of C.S. Lewis.
A tendency to think, but not to act.
And that is what always concerns me when
I come to bring a message, especially after
preaching for 22 years.
Sometimes those of us who are ministering and
teaching, we are subject to depression, we are
subject to want to quit, because we know
how people can listen, and we know how
few often are willing to pay the price
to convert what they hear into action.
One leading Bible commentator said in one of
his books that I read not so long
ago, that so much of what we feel
and so much of our emotion and our
thinking never gets translated into action because the
past is too great.
And let us understand that if we are
going to be disciples of Jesus Christ in
Durham or anywhere else, it is going to
cost.
Look with me at Luke chapter 14.
Luke chapter 14.
There is always a danger when we speak
of the standards of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that we can knock ourselves out on the
very standards we talk about.
And though this evening we will be bringing
into this message some of the standards of
the Lord Jesus, as we've seen right there
in Romans 12, 1 and 2, we hope
you will keep that in balance.
Something from J.B. Phillips has helped me
along that line as someone who tended toward
being a perfectionist, especially my first year at
college.
I had my first year at university in
Mexico.
I didn't stay there, by the way.
And I never finished college, so I don't
want to give false impressions.
I got such a burden to go to
the mission field that I just couldn't bear
another year, so I transferred into Moody Bible
Institute, took a two-year crash course in
Spanish and missions, and got out into the
University of Mexico for a summer or two,
and then over into the University of Madrid
for a summer or two, and of course
you can never put all that together.
Supposedly if I go back to Moody now,
I can put it all together and get
some kind of a degree.
I'm sure that would be extremely significant at
this stage.
J.B. Phillips in his book Ring of
Truth said this, Like many others, I find
myself something of a perfectionist.
If we don't watch ourselves, this obsession for
the perfect can make us arrogantly critical of
other people.
By the way, every Christian union gets a
few of those.
If you don't get any at Durham, let
me know, and I'll send a prize as
the most unusual Christian union in Great Britain.
Of course it always takes a term or
two, you know, for them to come to
the surface.
Desperately critical of others, especially in certain moods,
and desperately critical of ourselves.
In this state of mind, it is not
really that I cannot subscribe to the doctrine
of forgiveness of sins, but that the tyrannical
super-me condemns and has no mercy on
myself.
And if we don't understand the truth of
forgiveness, perhaps the greatest truth of God's mercy
in the Bible, we can walk out of
this meeting tonight only condemning ourselves and fall
into a greater trap, because introspection is also
the order of the day in many circles.
And there are some groups that don't even
believe in world missions anymore.
They just believe in gathering in their little
holy huddles and try to become holier and
holier and holier until they become more and
more confused, especially judging all the other Christians
as being carnal, especially those who run off
and attempt to evangelize the world.
But I believe this doctrine of forgiveness is
so essential if we are going to be
liberated men and women.
One of the greatest struggles in my life
was to accept myself, and I believe it
will be the foundation of some of your
struggles in the next year, perhaps more than
any other doctrine.
A deep, level acceptance of yourself.
The man who has drawn the greatest crowds
in Christendom next to Billy Graham is a
quiet-speaking young man named Bill Gothard, who
is not yet known in Britain, because he's
so quiet and shy and unassuming.
He doesn't assume that he's going to have
a great ministry in Britain.
But he now has a seminar in North
America just to teach basic principles of life,
how to live, from the Bible.
The average seminar has 15,000 people sitting
for one week, drinking it in, and many
of them go back for advanced seminars.
And now he does it simultaneously by large
-screen television in two or three cities, sometimes
filling whole stadiums, because he has found the
message from the Word of God that shows
men and women how they can live victoriously
in Jesus Christ.
Not perfection, but victory.
Victory includes knowing what to do when you
sin.
Did any of you, we all have testimonies
of what we did this summer.
I won someone to Christ.
I went to a Christian camp and rededicated
my life.
I went on OM and gave tracts out
or led people to Christ.
How many have a testimony, this summer, I
fell into sin?
I do.
Only in a student meeting could I get
any hands up on that kind of a
question.
Sometimes we can launch out on a great
campaign to help others and end up flat
on our face, barely able to help ourselves,
much less help any other people who are
around us.
To be quite honest, I have difficulty just
getting from the McDonald's hamburger place at Haymarket
over to Charing Cross without falling into sin
in my mind at that little interesting flick
joint on the corner across from Trafalgar Square.
Of course, none of you know any of
those things.
And that's why I am so convinced that
the victorious life not only includes knowing how
to live in victory over sin and how
to deal with temptation, but it includes knowing
what to do when we do sin.
And in the Epistle of John, it says,
if any man says he doesn't sin, he
deceives himself.
It was Mary M'Chane, one of the
greatest Scotsmen of all times.
Any of you from that great part of
Britain?
Good.
I knew I was getting up near Scotland.
I don't know if they separate, whether they're
going to take Durham with them.
But we hope they'll remain part of Great
Britain, especially if I become a citizen.
But Mary M'Chane from Scotland said, for
every one look at yourself, take ten looks
at Jesus.
There is a danger that when we're hungry
for the Lord, we become overly sensitive, overly
introspective, especially when we sin, and then we
become depressed and discouraged, and we quit.
It happens.
It happens to people after three or four
years of bathing in the sunlight of Christian
Union activities, and then they get out into
this rough, interesting world, and they're the only
Christian in a factory, or an office, or
somewhere else, maybe overseas, and they go down.
And then I heard the simple gospel, that
man is not saved by works, he's not
saved by going to church, he's not saved
by his own efforts, that man can only
be saved by grace, by the grace of
God, demonstrated through the death of the Lord
Jesus Christ on the cross.
That's the gospel.
Jesus Christ died on the cross for our
sin.
And if somehow that has not become a
reality yet to you, please talk to someone.
You may not want to talk to me,
you're probably, some of you are afraid of
me, or don't understand my language.
I could speak Spanish, but I don't know
if that would improve the situation up here.
Talk to someone and say, show me, show
me from the Word of God if this
is true.
I don't want you to just believe what
I say tonight.
I often think of those words of A
.W. Tozer.
He says, the more keen a young person
is, the more easily led astray, because they're
hungry for truth, and they seem to be
willing to believe almost anything, especially if it's
given by someone with a superior personality.
I don't know whether that's a threat or
what, but I believe that is true today
in Britain.
The young man is more hungry for God,
the more easily led astray, because the devil
is after him.
Today I was at a wedding of one
of my closest friends, a young man that
is really committed to Christ.
By the way, Roger Mitchell was there at
that wedding.
And just two nights ago, this young disciple,
he was converted through our work.
He was hitchhiking to India years ago, and
we picked him up in one of our
trucks, and we took turns witnessing to him.
Finally, he fell on his knees and accepted
Christ as his Savior.
And he went on, what, 15 years now.
And he was just married today.
But two nights ago, he called me on
the phone, 11 o'clock at night, I
was phoning all over, trying to get our
board members to give their final go-ahead
on another bid for this ship.
And over the telephone, he said, George, something's
just happened.
He's very phlegmatic, he's very English, quiet.
These are the men that are really going
places in our movement, we Americans.
We just said, hey, what's going on here?
You see, the Americans talk about it, and
the British come along, very quietly, and they
just do it.
You see that in the film, The Bridge
Too Far.
I don't understand it.
But he talked to me on the phone,
and he said, all my possessions, because he
doesn't have much of this world's good, and
he checked out a hundred pound for his
honeymoon, all my possessions, my briefcase, my clothing,
my files, everything, and the car that's just
been given to him, an old car, but
a rather good car, the way O.N.
cars go, just been stolen, everything.
He just parked it for 20 minutes, some
of you know London, it was all locked,
gone.
Imagine two nights before your wedding, and yet
we watched him and his beautiful fiancée, who
just three years ago lost her first husband,
and beautiful Turkish brother, we watched them just
rejoice in the midst of that, and how
they were rejoicing together today, as they rejoined
together in the Lord.
I bring in that story because I just
want to somehow communicate in my own feeble
way that Christianity works.
I have been watching that fellow in my
office under incredible pressure for two or three
years.
He lives the love.
I have never seen him lose his temper.
I have never seen him do anything but
shed his love on those he's working with,
and he is in a hot spot leading
our international team.
Yet he is a young man with a
permanent back trouble.
He's tried every method you can think of.
He's had more people pray for him than
everything you can think of, and yet he
has a permanent back trouble.
For months he was laying in pain on
his bed.
Now he's able to walk around and carry
on to some degree.
Many other things he has suffered.
Christianity works.
That man found Jesus Christ in the back
of a truck.
I found Jesus Christ in Madison Square Garden.
I'm sure most of you have found Jesus
Christ, and you are experiencing this reality.
It works.
But when we are Christians, and when we
are born again, that is not the end,
it is the beginning.
Temptations will come.
Struggles will come.
Doubts will come.
Fear will come.
This whole area of self-acceptance, which I
would like to dwell more on, but may
have to just pass it over because of
the time.
Do you really accept yourself?
The Bible says, Love your neighbor as you
love yourself.
You're not going to love your neighbor around
Durham until you learn how to love yourself.
What do I mean by that?
A healthy respect for yourself.
A belief that you are created in the
image of God, that God has a great
plan for your life, that you are just
as important as anyone else.
Any speaker who ever gets up here, you've
got just as much room in God's book
in heaven as anybody you'll ever bring here,
or Billy Graham, or any other evangelical favorite
you may have.
Do you believe that God is in you?
Do you believe that God created you and
loves you?
That may sound very simple.
I think we need to sing a new
song again in our churches.
Jesus loves me, this I know.
Do you know it?
Do you have that assurance?
In some ways that is almost as important
as the assurance of your salvation, because if
you have assurance of salvation without assurance that
God loves you, you will become an evangelical
misfit.
You will become another religious parasite, unable to
express yourself, unable to relate to people, unable
to communicate the gospel to this lost generation
that is going to read your life much
more than they are going to read these
books.
A lot of people have trouble looking in
the mirror.
My great struggle as a young Christian was
along this line, accepting myself.
I always felt I was too skinny.
I wanted to be a great athlete.
I wanted to impress the girls.
I saw this advertisement once in the newspapers,
a picture of a real skinny fellow on
the beach could barely hold his bathing suit
up.
He had a real nice looking chick or
bird, whatever you call them here, next to
him.
And along comes this big strong guy and
he knocks this skinny fellow and he runs
down the beach.
You've probably seen this ad.
They had a big write-up in Time
Magazine about it recently, just this one ad.
And he walks off with a girl.
And I saw that advertisement and I thought,
well, that's what's going to happen to me.
No one is ever going to marry this.
And I wrote in, and you know, I
was Charles Atlas, one of these kicks.
I wrote in, and here I was.
And I was exercising.
I was eating extra food.
After about six months, I gained about half
a pound.
Now, you can laugh.
But try tomorrow morning to look in that
mirror.
And can you say when you do it
from your heart, I accept what I see.
This is good.
And if you can't say as you look
at your own face and look at your
body that this is good, then basically you're
saying, look God, you made a mistake.
But our God, the God of this book,
doesn't make any mistakes and you sold me
out at first.
And there is a release in our spirits.
There's a book on that table by Watchman
E called Release of the Spirit.
It's a good book.
If you're not too intensive in your mentality.
You get some people that are so intensive
and so sensitive, they read these Watchman E
books and they never come out the same
again.
They're blinking the screen.
Then you need to pick up a Eugenia
Price book.
Books need to be kept in balance.
And there's no book better than this for
doing that.
But it's a liberating, a liberating thing when
we come into this place of assurance about
God's love for us.
So many people that I have been involved
in counseling and for every hour I preach,
I spend far more counseling in just being
with individuals.
And I don't believe there's any method in
evangelism that is greater than man to man
just sharing, just being a friend, loving and
giving yourself to people.
I'm not against other forms of evangelism.
We've reached about 240 million people in the
past 15 years.
And that's not an exaggeration.
So I think that proves we believe in
evangelism.
But there's nothing more powerful in evangelism than
a child of God who is demonstrating the
love of Christ.
And that's your strongest weapon here.
And nothing can stop it.
But it's got to be built on that
assurance.
God loves us.
He has a plan for us.
He's in us.
We're not all the same.
God is not trying to push us through
some kind of evangelical biscuit manufacturing machine.
We all come out the same.
And it's so thrilling to see the unity
in the midst of the diversity.
And I speak to you as someone who
is outside the Christian unions and outside inter
-diversity and yet is 100% convinced about
this movement of God here in Britain in
the Christian unions.
We just had Chaw Wee Hin as the
main speaker of our Leaders Conference over in
Belgium.
God has given you an international leader of
tremendous perception.
I just was yesterday with Chandapila for lunch,
the young man who led the Christian unions
in India for 20 years.
One of the most anointed prophets I've ever
met.
A tozer of India.
I say this because there is a movement
going on and I've hit it in some
of the universities that is now saying, well,
all these Christian unions, this is not really
scriptural.
No, maybe this is something that's only in
the South.
It hasn't come North yet.
But you get people who say, well, this
really isn't scriptural.
What's the biblical basis for this Christian union?
And they will get you on the local
church kick and they will tell you the
only really biblical thing is the local church.
And if you find anybody on that, would
you please, please give them one of my
calendars with my address.
I fanatically believe in the local church.
The main function of our work, practically speaking,
the ultimate step is to plant churches.
We planted 13 in France.
We planted some of the first churches in
Turkey, modern Turkey.
We planted churches in Spain, churches in Italy,
and churches in other parts of the world.
We believe in the local church.
But as we study the book of Acts
where we get this strategy, we see that
there are not only local churches, there are
teams of men who were the men God
used to start those churches.
Because, you see, people say the same thing
about, oh, well, this is not scriptural.
It's like the Christian unions.
So this unscriptural OM team, a lot of
whom come out of the British universities, because
that's where they got saved, because in many
of our churches nobody's being saved.
Some of them, they're off.
Praise God.
And there's no competition at all between the
two, there shouldn't be.
But these young men have come out, and
they've been trained in OM, and many of
the men get sent out from the local
church.
But when they get in Turkey, they work
as a team, and they plant a church.
So if we have this unscriptural mentality that
OM or Christian unions, and we're a fellowship,
we're a team of people in a particular
situation, a bit of an unusual situation, banding
together, most of us all have local churches,
and I hope you will.
And if we say this is unscriptural, then
what we're saying about that OM team, and
we have also university teams, is that the
unscriptural team gets the blessing of God somehow
and plants the scriptural church.
That doesn't make sense.
I'm sure you can even get that in
your first year.
And so I pray that you will not
feel hesitancy to throw some of your weight
behind the work of a Christian union.
No one has asked me to say that.
If anything, they've asked me probably not to
say that.
They didn't actually, but they told me a
lot of other things might be good for
me to say.
But I believe God is moving in the
Christian unions in Britain.
I saw this at Oxford a year and
a half ago when I was there on
a Saturday night.
I've seen it at Cambridge, I've seen it
all over the country.
Even in this little Christian union I was
way out in Wales.
That's another beautiful part of this island metropolis.
Here in this little Christian union of Wales,
God was working.
But when God works, the devil will work.
And you are going to see the devil
work this term.
You are going to see him try to
bring division.
You are going to try to see him
bring confusion.
You are going to see the devil trying
to get people to major on the minors
and minor on the majors.
And if only we could get a vision
of the unity of God in the midst
of the diversity.
We will be loyal to our local churches.
Most of you are now away from your
local church.
And there needs to be this fellowship here
in this situation.
And I just believe God wants to do
great things here this term.
I tried to get away from coming to
this meeting.
I promised initially that I would probably send
someone else.
But if I could possibly come, I would
come myself.
The Lord would not let me get away
from this meeting.
And I don't believe it's mainly to speak
on this theme that I've been speaking on,
but to just ask of you in the
name of the Lord Jesus to draw together
in the power of the Holy Spirit to
love one another with a compassion, to deal
with sin instantly and quickly, and to press
on to make an impact in this university
and in Britain.
And I believe as that happens, it will
be felt in the uttermost parts of the
earth.
Half the people in the world are still
waiting for their first gospel tract.
Did you know that?
Half the people in the world.
Seventy-five percent of the people in the
world have never had a Bible, even a
New Testament.
Fifty percent have never had even one gospel
tract.
In history, Britain has been one of the
main places under the providence of God through
the power of the Holy Spirit to send
out laborers.
Now reports come that we are just barely
keeping up with the death rate among missionaries.
So many young people I talk to have
a false idea of what a missionary is.
And I pray that you may study some
missionary books.
I recommend especially the books of Michael Griffiths.
And by the way, he's living in Britain
for a year.
If you can get him here to speak,
drag him up, fly him up, but get
him up here.
Read Martin Goldsmith's book, That Converted Jew, at
All Nations College.
His book, Don't Just Stand There.
Get some good missionary materials and you will
see there's tremendous changes taking place in missions.
Missionaries are needed and wanted just as much
as ever before.
And there are incredible open doors.
Not only can we go in by twos
and threes, we can go in even in
closed countries with a whole ship.
The semi-closed country of Sudan has just
asked us back for the second time.
Top government level.
You know, we have difficulty convincing Christians about
the ship Lagos.
It frightens them.
It's too big, especially in Britain.
Christians in Britain, anything that's big they feel
it's not from God.
Except finally, they like that.
But you know, when Moses moved across the
wilderness it was no little, little thing.
There were a million men.
They didn't count the women so much then.
Now we count the women.
But though we've had difficulty convincing Christians, especially
university students, about a ship, government leaders all
over the world, all over the world, presidents,
prime ministers, admirals, generals have been convinced that
this has been one of the greatest things
that has ever happened in their nation.
And we have more nations inviting us to
go to than we can possibly go with
one or two ships.
President Marcos alone wanted to adopt the ship
as a permanent project and let us share
the gospel in the Philippines nationwide free on
television after he paid his visit to the
ship.
Doors are open.
The harvest is plenteous.
We've seen thousands profess Christ in Africa.
But their labors are few and there are
some African countries that have less than five
believers.
In fact, there are ten African countries that
have less than five hundred believers in the
entire nation.
We almost seemingly have that many people here
tonight.
And I believe as God works in your
midst and as you come into this greater
assurance of your own faith by his word,
and as you experience his forgiveness on a
deeper level, and as you learn how to
witness and share Christ here at the university,
that this will flow and flow and the
ends of the earth will feel the impact
of this meeting tonight.
I believe that.
And I hope you'll go through these doors
with a spirit of expectation.
My closing message at our annual conference, I
spoke on five points, and I'm going to
close with those, not speaking on them, but
just telling you what they were, because I
believe it's the best way to begin a
new term, begin this term, because this conference
that we just finished in Belgium really marks
the beginning of the OM year.
And so this is what I recommended as
I spoke on the final night on how
to begin the year, how to leave the
conference and begin the year.
And I'd like to recommend it as the
way you can leave here and begin the
year.
First of all, with a thankful spirit, a
spirit of thanksgiving.
Tozer says one of the greatest diseases today
among Christians is cynicism.
I have a terrific temptation in that area.
You cannot be around the Christian world too
long without a few temptations in that area.
The cure for it is thanksgiving, thanksgiving.
Secondly, go away and into this year with
a spirit of expectation.
William Carey said we need to attempt great
things, and we need to expect great things.
Some of you are expecting very little of
yourself spiritually.
You say, well, I'm so weak.
I've got so many problems.
Man, this man doesn't know the hang-ups.
I'm done.
And you have so convinced yourself of your
own low image that you probably won't do
anything.
But if you can get God's revolutionary image
of yourself, Jesus Christ in you, the hope
of glory, I will tell you even a
dozen people filled with the Holy Spirit who
can tell what God could do.
Thirdly, go with a spirit of faith.
Faith is a victory, and this means prayer.
My burden for some of the Christian unions
is that the missionary prayer meetings and the
other prayer meetings are not very well attended.
We'll flock to the meetings if we get
in some great speaker, bring in Johnny Cash
or Cliff Richards or Little Elf and Annie,
and we'll all come out.
But to go to a meeting where only
the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, and God the
Father are present and there's not too much
interest.
May God have mercy on our twisted thinking.
A spirit of faith, and fourthly, compassion, and
fifthly, awareness.
The Bible says watch and pray, lest you
fall into temptation.
When you walk toward those newsstands, if some
of you have that problem like I have,
maybe we could correspond and have a mutual
exhortation, but I have trouble with these newsstands,
with these little pornographic magazines.
And if you have that trouble, then be
a little more watchful and learn where the
newsstands are and go the other way.
You say, well, how do I get my
paper?
Send your girlfriend or your grandmother.
Billy Graham says, we are living in the
age in which we have become sex gluttons.
At Oxford, they asked me to speak on
the subject of sex in the Bible.
We didn't have any trouble getting a crowd.
Maybe you don't have those problems up here,
but there are 300 verses in the Bible
on the subject of sex, homosexuality, sex with
animals, everything right there in God's Word.
This is an old-fashioned book.
Maybe it's time you started looking into it
and obeying it.
And so we must go away with an
awareness.
The enemy seeketh whom he may devour.
Maybe it's not lust with you.
Maybe it's pride with you.
Maybe it's some uncanny devilish fear.
Satan has many weapons, and I pray that
as you go forth this year, it will
be with the whole armor of God wherewith
you can stop all the fiery darkness of
the devil.
Do you believe that?
As you believe, so it shall be.
Remember, we have the tendency to think and
to feel, but not to act.
Reverse that tendency.
I beg of you in the name of
the Lord Jesus and go from this place
willing to pay the price that I was
going to read in Luke 14.
Pay the price to be a disciple of
Jesus Christ.
Let us close in prayer.
My Lord, I got to at least ten
percent of what I wanted to share, so
I'm grateful for that.
And I believe all the rest is right
in this book.
We thank you for the assurance we can
have.
We thank you for the reality of your
love and your acceptance of us.
We thank you for the shield of faith
wherewith we can stop the fiery darts of
the devil and for forgiveness and your precious
blood which cleanses us as we turn from
sin, as we repent of sin.
Oh Lord, we're so grateful.
You know each individual need tonight.
Meet those needs by the power of your
Holy Spirit.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.