We turn in our Bibles to Matthew chapter
9.
We do especially praise God for those of
you who are parents who have come tonight.
Though last night was Parents' Night, we praise
God for others who have come.
Tonight we especially would like to meet the
parents of young people going on OM after
the meeting here at the front.
Matthew chapter 9, verse 35.
Familiar passage to those on OM, but perhaps
not so familiar to others.
Jesus went about all the cities and villages,
teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel
of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and
every disease among the people.
But when he saw the multitudes, he was
moved with compassion on them, because they fainted
and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no
shepherd.
Then said he unto his disciples, The harvest
truly is plenteous, but the labors are few.
Pray therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that
he will send forth laborers into his harvest.
Let us pray.
Speak, O Lord, a message to our hearts.
We may go away from here with something
definite and real tonight.
Hey, Lord, no prejudice, no bias, no fast
experience.
Keep us from what you have for us
tonight.
We would give you all the glory through
Jesus Christ.
Amen.
I have so much that I would like
to share with you tonight, and so much
I'd like to say.
I wish I could somehow communicate to you
what God has been doing in this conference.
As someone who doesn't come from a Christian
home, I wasn't reared in what would be
called a real Christian home, a home where
the Bible was never read, a home where
we never prayed.
It's always a fantastic thing for me to
think of what God does in a life.
Tonight, during our month here in London, the
newspapers have reported to us increased crime, increased
immorality.
If a young person gets drunk and hits
somebody on the head with a bottle, it's
in the headlines or near the headlines.
And our newspapers report every form of corruption.
As many an adult in Britain today thinks
that the younger generation is completely hopeless.
They look at the hippies with disgust, the
long hair, the fags, the pills, and they
wonder, what is our nation coming to?
They read the papers.
There's no newspaper in London that has given
even a line to what has happened here
over a month.
Not that we want that, because we don't.
But it is interesting, isn't it, that 300
people could gather, young people whose lives have
been changed, young people who are just as
committed to righteousness as others are committed to
iniquity, and the world will never know that
they even were here.
There will be some who know, because during
these days, in a quiet but real way,
men and women have come to know Jesus
Christ through the witness of these young people.
And though that will never be flashed across
the press, though no newspaper man in London
today would walk across the street to get
the story, in the captions, in the press,
in glory, it's big news.
For the Bible says that there's joy in
heaven over even one sinner who repents.
And oh, how twisted our world is, how
twisted our newspapers are.
Sometimes one wonders if they're even worth picking
up anymore, for you can get so little
of the real picture, especially of what God
is doing in the 20th century.
You be here in a conference, never smell
any smoke, never have the foul sting of
booze and liquor cross your nose, never see
anybody in a fistfight or hardly in an
argument, never seeing the things that, if you've
ever lived in a world as I have,
just happen every day, all the time.
To see young people of different races, of
different creeds, of different backgrounds, working together, praying
together, loving one another, is to me a
bit of heaven on earth.
And that is the plan of God, really,
to through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, through
the new birth, bring some heaven down to
earth, to use it to show forth his
glory, to use it to show forth that
he is God, and that he, through love
alone, can draw the deepest sinner from the
clutches of Satan into a living relationship with
Jesus Christ.
If I could allow young people tonight, if
we have the time for it, to come
and give their testimonies on this platform, you
would be amazed.
They'd be former drunkards, former communists, former atheists.
There'd be some of the young people who
never got very far in school, and there'd
be others who graduated number one in their
field in Cambridge or Oxford.
Such an array of young people from every
background, from the lowest of the lowest class,
to the upper caste, class, and all the
different things that we say don't exist in
Britain, but exist in a very real way.
You'd be amazed.
Some reared in Christian homes, godly parents.
Others rear under the crash of beer bottles,
cussing, swearing, beating, and divorce.
In some cases, suicide.
And yet here tonight, after a month of
living together, praying together, discussing in our discussion
groups together, all having decided that for one
year they will work together in love, for
one year they will launch out, and I
can tell you a vast majority of these
young people have no intentions of a one
-year program.
Though they may only be with O.M.
a year or two as a training program,
many of them have set their sights and
their burdens toward spending the rest of their
life in world evangelism.
To me, it's a 20th century miracle.
I no longer can understand people who can
be skeptical about such a thing.
They certainly must not read the papers.
And if there's anyone tonight who's skeptical, I
wonder if you could just turn the table
for a minute.
And picture us not here, some of us
rather young, some of us certainly not mature,
some of us certainly bound to make a
few mistakes, some of us probably have maybe
even caused you personal harm, I don't know.
But turn the table tonight, in your mind,
if you will, and let's go into a
nightclub.
Let's pretend that tonight God had never saved
the wretch who stands behind this microphone.
Let's pretend that the ones sitting on the
floor here were never saved by the grace
of God.
They still exist in the way they existed
before Jesus Christ came into their life.
And I've been in nightclubs like that.
The way I traveled, even at the age
of 16.
Young men, we loaded our cars.
We'd mock our parents.
Today, mockery of parents is as common as
drinking, as smoking.
I've heard more young people smash their parents,
call them every dirty name in the book,
than you could ever dream.
We did that.
What were parents?
They brought us into the world, they were
old-fashioned, and some of us had even
wished that our parents would die off.
If you don't think that talk exists, then
you don't know youth.
You don't know youth and rebellion.
You don't know youth let loose with a
pill, with a bottle, with a woman.
You've got your head perhaps in the sand
like too many evangelicals in the 20th century.
Turn the table tonight and take us out
of this religious environment.
Take us away from our zeal for Christ.
Take us away from our mistakes because we
are young and because mistakes seem to be
an inevitable part of life.
You might remember it was Winston Churchill who
said there's only two things we can be
sure of in warfare.
Disappointments and mistakes.
That's right.
Take us down to perhaps the Communist Youth
Club, to perhaps one of the hippie meetings,
to perhaps a man-the-bomb meeting.
Any one of these groups gets caught up
in a tangent, gets caught up in something
that never lasts.
What would you have tonight?
The first place you wouldn't even be able
to hear.
Because the modern medium of music is no
longer a medium of reason.
It's a medium of communication beyond communication.
And though the older generation doesn't understand it,
the young understand it all too well.
In this new medium of music, communication beyond
communication has invaded society and has turned young
people into spontaneous robots who upon the twist
of a jukebox lose all sense and dance
and give themselves first to dance and then
to lust and then to things you can
never talk about in a public meeting.
Not a few little odd ones, but youth
by the thousands, youth by the tens of
thousands tonight are sold out to out-way
out music that I believe after years plays
with the mind and destroys the soul.
Music that makes anything that ever came out
of the jungles sound very mild to say
the least, and I know I've compared both.
You wouldn't be able to hear.
And maybe you wouldn't be able to see
because the lights would be dark.
In many of the clubs today, sexual vice
of every form takes place right in the
room, hidden.
We're commanded not to speak about such things.
So you wouldn't maybe even be able to
see.
You certainly wouldn't be able to have a
rational conversation for many of them would be
high, not with old-fashioned liquor, but with
pills, with drugs, with dope.
It flows among young people today at such
a rate we can't imagine.
Leaves a young man with nothing to live
for so that last year in the UK,
5,000 teenagers and those a little older,
5,000 of them took their own lives,
suicide.
I don't think there's a rational man here
tonight that would say I'd rather have these
young people there.
I don't think you could be rational and
say, well, that would be better, wouldn't it?
We could go to many other places in
London, places the average adult in Britain does
not even know exists, but who young people
in this room have been to.
We could not describe.
London, my brethren, has become a 20th-century
Sodom and New York, a Gomorrah, and perhaps
it's only because of the few righteous in
these cities that the wrath of God is
night.
One out of every three girls in Britain
today before she's married, yea, before she's 21,
has had sexual intercourse.
But we don't talk about that in the
church, do we?
We're the silent ones in the evangelical church.
For the Bible speaks about this problem of
morality as straight and as blunt as any
book.
We in the 20th-century evangelical church are
still on the Victorian hush-hush.
Though even thousands of evangelical young people dive
into immorality every year, we don't want to
talk about it.
We don't want to get too close to
it.
And I've had young people testify to me
that they knew that basically in the long
run their parents didn't even really want to
know the way they lived.
Oh, I tell you.
Would you want us in that situation tonight?
Would you want the table turned?
That these religious fanatics, these immature youth, might
be in something else?
You say, well, of course we don't want
that.
Of course we don't want to see that
kind of thing.
We want the more neutral situation.
We want a normal Christian existence.
We want our young man to just get
a good education and just be a normal
young person and just go on and be
happily married like us, I hope.
Get a job.
You can witness for Christ where you are.
You don't have to get excited about this.
You don't have to rush off to other
countries.
You don't have to begin giving tracts out
on the streets.
You don't have to begin carrying your Bible
around as if it was the most valuable
possession you had.
But I want to tell you, if you
as of tonight think that we as young
people in the 20th century can remain neutral,
you must not read your papers.
You must not be educated.
Because you can't remain neutral while Vietnam and
Nigeria and Czechoslovakia and Congo and Sudan continue
blowing up in the papers every day.
And the only way you can become neutral
is just become so selfishly involved with yourself
that basically you don't care about anything else.
But you wouldn't want that either.
Young people, especially those of you who are
visiting tonight, I believe that I can prove
in any debate, in any match of logic
that there is no neutral ground in the
20th century and I'm not sure there ever
was.
And this is what Jesus Christ taught.
Jesus Christ taught that you were either for
him or against him.
Jesus Christ taught that you either were all
the way for him or you weren't for
him at all.
There is nothing in the Bible about this
evangelical lukewarmness that exists so pleasantly in so
many places.
There is no verse in the Bible that
teaches anything about the fact that we can
be sort of normal by building our own
little house somewhere and living in it without
bothering any of the neighbors, without ever taking
a stand for Christ, without ever letting the
people in our office know that we belong
to Jesus, without ever letting the people in
the factory know that we were his.
There's not a verse in the Bible about
this.
This is a product of what most Indians
will call Western Christianity.
Not biblical Christianity, but a Western Christianity that
has unfortunately been constantly linked with our own
culture, constantly linked with Western philosophy, with the
Western idea of success, with the Western concept
of superiority, with the Western idea of white
superiority and all the other things that are
such a hindrance to us in world evangelism
today.
But this affluent, easy, lukewarm Christianity that gives
heaven on one hand with the lowest possible
investment does not exist in the Word of
God.
This is why A.W. Tozer is being
recognized around the world today as a man,
as a prophet, though he died a few
years ago of our generation, because he is
the one who says that there is no
such Christianity in the Bible.
There is no such middle road experience.
There is no such lukewarm state that one
can sort of slip into.
For as we read the Bible, we see
that Jesus was a divider of men.
He did not come and pat people on
the back and say, Now look, join my
band.
Join my band.
We're going to be the largest group in
all of Galilee.
We're going to have the biggest numbers.
We're going to put on the biggest meetings.
That's not the way Jesus worked at all.
And don't accept what I have to say.
I'm sure my very accent, the very fact
that it's very difficult for me to even
begin to be a reserved, calm Englishman, though
I've lived and loved this country for more
than eight years, I know that very fact
alone will hinder God's communication tonight, because I
admit that these things excite me.
I admit that I don't understand, and I
see the Lord Jesus' standard and principles so
completely different from what most of us, and
I'm speaking to all others as well, believe
that Christianity is today.
When they were about to make him king,
do you remember what he said?
Of course, they just had a good meal.
And I'll never forget the great British preacher,
Alan Redbath, speaking at Moody Church when I
was a student.
My, I tell you, if he was a
reserved Englishman, wow.
And I'll never forget what he said.
He blasted out with all his heart this
congregation of superficial Americans.
He said, you know, many of us don't
believe in fasting anymore, do we?
And with all of his heart he said,
because we're not hungry for God.
How true it is.
Today we want to be satisfied.
If we find a young person who's struggling,
a young person who's concerned to break the
status quo, to know more in his life,
we quickly slip him a verse on assurance,
or a verse on resting, or a verse
on sleeping, or something else, because you can
find anything in the Bible.
And there's no place, hardly, that I know
of where the rest of faith is preached
more than right here, and where we believe
more in the all-sufficiency of Christ.
And if you judge O.M. by this
one little message, you'll have the picture completely
distorted, because we've been ministering for 30 days,
and to sum it up in one night's
impossible.
But I want to tell you there's a
difference between the rest of faith and the
sleep of death.
There's a difference between moving in the Spirit
and sleeping in oneself.
And God has not called us to a
lounge.
He's called us to a battlefield.
And I believe with all my heart, the
man who once said, it's either evangelized or
fossilized.
And I wonder how many of you know
tonight, deep in your heart, that in your
Christian life you're fossilizing.
You're not alive.
There's a verse in the Bible that in
some ways was used to bring O.M.
to Britain.
It began in Spain.
And two British young men, both evangelists, came
down to Spain, and they came to Madrid.
And in Madrid, they met some of these
O.M. young people, and they saw their
way of life, and they were quite amazed
and quite shaken by the whole thing.
Shaken.
Really shaken.
Just the way these young people lived.
They couldn't believe it.
They went into the mountains, somewhere near Spain.
And in the mountains, these two men, who
later organized the first meetings in this country
where I spoke, in the mountains, God took
them to Revelation chapter 3.
And with Matthew 9 in mind, I'd like
us to look at Revelation chapter 3.
And let me just say this.
I know what to say tonight to make
the adults happy.
I have hardly ever had an adult that
I was given 15 minutes with that I
could not win.
Anyone of any spiritual caliber whatsoever, and even
many people who do not even consider themselves
Christians, I have been able to link because
God knows my major interest in all life
is people.
I love people.
I just asked my wife how many hundreds
have tramped through our house and how many
dozens we've lived with.
And I pray for every O ever by
name and every XO ever as much as
I can.
And to me, the major thing that God
did in my life when he converted me
in March 5, 1955 was give me an
unbelievable, completely unexplainable love for people.
Africans, Indians, it doesn't matter, poor, rich, drunkards,
dope addicts, I just love people.
And God knows how I would do anything
to somehow be able to communicate something to
parents of what your son and daughter really
is going to get involved in.
And it's not an evangelistic bubble.
It's not something that's going to harm them
unless in God's plan something very unusual happens
that very seldom happens.
It's not something fly-by-night, as this
work has not only been established in land
after land, but has brought to pass the
birth of new churches and has brought into
its fellowship hundreds of adults, pastors, ministers, and
missionaries from all over the world.
And I could go on along this line
tonight and convince you, and I'm not against
that, but I can't do everything and we
did that last night.
And this is my last chance to say
what God has put on my heart.
And though some will misunderstand and though I'll
miscommunicate to some, I must speak what God
would have me speak.
We had 70 pastors to our luncheon on
Wednesday.
As far as I know, every single pastor
and missionary went out of that place completely
content and sold on Operation Mobilization.
And we've done that and seen that all
over the world because it's God's work and
basically God's people will recognize God's work without
us having a big publicity program.
An editor of one of the Christian magazines
was rather offended because I wouldn't give him
a personality story.
God knows our 25 reasons why we're not
interested in that.
The likes of us.
And I believe when people do come in
contact with us, take time to get to
know the core of what God is doing.
If they are at all spiritually discerning, they
will say, this is something I want to
pray for.
This is something I want to get behind.
They will see the mistakes.
I see the mistakes and it almost overwhelms
me.
But I've also studied an awful lot of
history.
In fact, history was my major subject at
college next to Spanish.
And that was involved mainly in Spanish history.
And all of history is mistakes.
Where in the world do we get the
idea that you have a priority on mistakes?
Hitler wasn't a boy when he made his
big mistakes.
And neither were all the other great generals
and monsters and tyrants that have run across
the world.
And history proves that the majority has never
been right.
Therefore the majority of people in the world
have made the biggest mistakes.
And mission leaders and church leaders will tell
you they also believe a majority of Christians
are making awful big mistakes.
And so, it's not a priority for you,
though we're all on the same street.
And if you could come to one of
our lectures on organization, if you could go
through a 120 page manual on leadership, if
you could go to a conference in Belgium
where we discuss about every subject under the
sun and train in both practical and spiritual
ways more than most people that I've ever
seen, I believe you would say, I praise
God my son is going to this work.
I praise God my daughter is going to
this work.
I praise God there's people from our church
going to this work.
And I'd be glad to answer any question
that anyone has about this work tonight.
But I can't speak on it.
So I want you to look at this
verse in Revelation.
I came to these two British evangelists in
the mountains of Spain.
And I want you to allow the Holy
Spirit, forget George Burwell, forget my accent, forget
my outgoingness or anything that's hindering the Lord
tonight.
Listen to the Lord.
See what he says from this verse in
his word.
And unto the angel of the church in
Sardis write these things.
Verse chapter three, verse one.
He that hath the seven spirits of God
and the seven stars, I know thy works,
I know thy works, that thou hast a
name that thou livest.
Many of us are like that tonight, aren't
we?
The very name evangelical, the very name Bible
believing, the very name Christian relates life, doesn't
it?
He's a Christian.
He's a believer.
He's an evangelical.
He's a keen Christian.
And many of us in this room tonight,
when I speak to the youth, as much
as to the adults, many of us have
a name, don't we?
You're known in your church, in your assembly,
in your mission, in your group.
You're known as a live Christian, a keen
Christian.
Perhaps you lead meetings.
Perhaps you minister the word.
Perhaps you're known in your own circle as
a man of God, as a servant to
the Lord.
That's the way these two young men in
the mountains of Spain.
And then God, almost like a thunderclap, showed
him the verse and said, Yes, thou hast
a name that thou livest and art dead.
I wonder if tonight there are some who
know that this is God's word to your
own heart tonight.
You're not even sure why you're here, but
the Spirit of God has sent you or
is saying to you, Yes, you have a
name, evangelical, Christian, leader, but in reality, you're
dead.
In reality, there isn't that life.
There isn't that Christ-likeness.
There isn't that love.
And the word of God said that without
love, we're nothing.
There is no life without love.
This is the message that perhaps we as
leaders teach and preach more than any other
message I know of apart from the work
and the person and work of Jesus Christ
and his all-sufficiency.
The fact that Christianity is a revolution of
love.
Some of you have seen my booklet on
this subject.
I hope you would read it and study
it because it's the very pulse of this
work.
And the Bible says that though you be
a martyr, though you give all, though you
be a great preacher, though you have great
wisdom, all of these things, if you don't
have love, you're dead.
And isn't this the disease that has worked
into the church?
I know it's in us as young people.
I know it has infiltrated our lives that
if some of us ever learn to really
love, it will be the greatest miracle in
the 20th century.
To learn to smoke is very easy.
To learn to drink is not much harder.
To learn to take heroin isn't even that
much harder.
To learn to dance, to learn to even
make a living, to learn to do so
many things is not really that hard.
Many of us have been very successful.
But I want to tell you to learn
to love as Jesus loved, to learn to
love as Paul loved, to learn to love
people as the Bible commands is the greatest
challenge a young man can ever accept.
Even to accept Jesus Christ as Savior is
not very hard because it's by grace and
we only come as weak sinners and fall
at His feet and He miraculously and wonderfully
saves us and begins to change us.
But when that Christian determines to become a
revolutionist for Jesus Christ, when that Christian determines
that he's going to believe God for a
revolution in his love so that he can
love all people of all nations, of all
backgrounds, of all religions, regardless of age, size,
dimension, or anything else, he's in for the
toughest, roughest, most impossible job he can ever
take on.
Some of you know, some of you know
deep in your hearts, though you've been a
Christian for 20 years, 30 years, though you've
preached and been successful, though you're a leader,
though you're this or that, you know deep
in your heart that the great lack is
love.
Love sometimes even for your own wife.
One out of every three marriages in my
country ends in a divorce court.
The statistic in Britain is not much better.
Not to think of separations, not to think
of unhappy, happy couples living together in order
to meet the young people who come from
broken homes.
One out of every three young people on
OM is from a broken home.
Why?
Because man has never learned to love.
Because man has never learned to live with
his fellow man.
Because many a husband who had big words
at the wedding altar became a complete failure
when the chips were down and the emotions
were gone, and after that it was love
as a discipline, love that only God could
give, and he failed.
There was another broken home, another torn heart,
another potential schizophrenic child and all kinds of
other things that fill our prisons in all
that some of us would take time to
visit our prisons and visit our mental institutions
and visit these places that some of us
have been to and see what Satan has
done because the world does not know how
to love.
Because you and I as Christians, as Christians
many times do not know how to give
love to the weak.
Why do you think the vast majority of
people who make decisions in our evangelistic meetings
don't go on for God?
Why don't we come down to earth in
our evangelism?
Why do we continue climbing up the wall
of statistics when we know for a fact
anyone who has studied knows for a fact
that a majority of people who make decisions
for Christ never go on to be disciples
of Jesus Christ, many of them never even
to go to church.
Why?
Because they come out of a warm evangelistic
meeting where there has been a loving preacher
pouring out his heart and they go into
a frostbitten, cold generation that doesn't even want
to open their home, that doesn't even want
to dirty their hands or bend their back
for a man of another color skin or
a man with a different length of hair
or a youngster or someone who might break
their favorite vase or some other thing.
And so out of these evangelistic meetings come
thousands of hungry people and they are hungry.
Come thousands of people who that night made
a decision which was the beginning of something
but because we're cold, because we're unloving, because
we don't know this revolution of love, this
vitality, this overflowing, this gathering in, they freeze
in a cold climate of a dead church
and we go on with our name, we're
alive, we're evangelicals, we're biblical.
Don't you see this?
This is the situation in the world today,
a lost world, young people, adults giving themselves
and all the dishonesty of it all.
You know, one of the reasons why God
can use youth is because young people take
off their masks quicker.
That's right.
Young people have come to me in this
convention.
They've taken off their masks, they've confessed their
sins, they've confessed immorality, they've confessed terrible things,
some of them.
Not that many, but many of these young
people are truly young.
But there's not many an adult who'll take
off his mask.
There's not many an adult that'll even take
off his mask at times to his own
wife.
And we live in a false world.
And the more reserved our society, the more
cold our society, the more emphasis we put
on status and position, the more we put
the mask tight up against the face.
And many of you who sit here tonight,
you know that no one really knows you.
The places you've been, the things you've done,
the things you've looked at.
Some time ago I was talking to Roy
Hesschen.
I said, Roy, what is the answer to
the great problem of immorality among youth?
And I want to tell you one of
the greatest miracles of this work.
It's the way God has kept us from
impurity.
It's truly a miracle.
I said to Roy, what can we do?
This is a message that O.M. stands
against and preaches.
You know what Roy Hesschen said to me,
a man who's counseled hundreds.
Roy said, look, George, if you think this
is a problem among young people, you don't
know anything.
This is a greater problem among adults.
And oh, I wonder how many of us
are maintaining a facade, we're maintaining a front
in the church, we're maintaining a front among
our children and many of us as young
people have had to be jolted and knocked
and almost become reprobates when we saw the
facade in the lives of our parents who
put up the front, who pretended they were
angels when they were living like the devil
in secret.
And oh, I tell you, God knows all
about it.
And I used to be afraid to speak
to adults.
And I used to think, oh, they'll never
understand.
And now that I'm 30 and have three
children, still doesn't give me any authority to
speak to you.
It doesn't.
But the fact that I believe God's spirit
is with us and is with me by
some miracle that I don't understand, I speak
to you with this authority.
Take off the mask.
Whether you're young, whether you're old, I'm not
saying go around and make big public confessions
and cause confusion.
But with your wife, with your best friends
at least, become real.
Confess your faults one to another and pray
for one another that you may be healed.
Some of you have had habits that have
ripped your life apart for 20 years, for
30 years, for 40 years and you've never
got down with a brother in Christ and
said, look, I've got this problem, I've got
this habit, let's pray and believe that God
can take it out of my life.
So God many times has to bypass adults.
That's right.
He has to bypass because he can't work
with a man with a mask, he can't
work with a man who's unwilling to be
real, who's unwilling to face his real spiritual
condition, who's unwilling to really be real with
his family, with his wife, with his church.
So he goes to young people who don't
know sometimes any better and who because of
their very youth at times are willing to
be honest.
Do you know how many young people I've
spoken to who have lived a complete lie?
Some of you as parents I think you'd
have nervous breakdowns.
It's incredible.
Young people today are absolute specialists in deceiving
their parents, absolute specialists in living double lives.
We had a testimony like this the other
night and the young man who gave his
testimony has been plagued for several days by
others who have been living the same way.
If I told you things that I know
go on and have gone on in Bible
colleges you wouldn't believe it and it would
accuse me of slander.
So I won't say it.
But I want to tell you the situation
is desperate.
And God in this third chapter of Revelation
I believe has his hand on the pulse
of twentieth century Christianity and perhaps has the
hand on some of us tonight and he
says yes you've got a name, you've got
a reputation, but you're dead.
Sin, habit, blindness, dishonesty has gripped your life
and though you're twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, though
you may be an elder your life is
dead and you know it if you'd only
be willing to repent, to say it's right,
God's right, I'm wrong, I want to start
anew.
I want to be real with God, real
with my wife, real with my children, real
with my father, real with my mother.
For young people it is a sin to
be dishonest with our parents, an absolute sin.
Be watchful and strengthen the things which remain
that are ready to die for I have
not found thy works perfect before God.
May we tonight realize the job of world
evangelism will never be done.
Perhaps you expected me to speak on that
and give some wonderful presentation of the field
we've done that other nights but I'm here
to tell you those countries will never be
reached never, never, never be reached.
Those millions of India, of China, hundreds of
millions, half of whom have never had a
gospel tract that cost a tenth of a
penny will never be reached.
They'll never hear.
Though OM teams will mobilize, though we'll fill
our trucks, though we'll recruit armies, though they'll
go forth, these lands will never be reached
unless those of us who love Jesus Christ
are determined to become real and honest and
true and repent of spiritual death.
This is the biggest problem today.
It's not more money.
We always have some people gripe and complain
after a meeting because we don't take an
offering.
It's not what God wants tonight.
It's not money that's needed.
It's not ships that's needed.
It's not literature that's needed.
It's not a bigger radio station.
It's not a greater campaign.
Man has always wanted to organize.
The church looks for more organization and God
looks for men.
And this is the need of the hour
and regardless of what you think, we as
youth and as adults are all before God
the same.
Naked.
He knows all about us.
He is no respecter of age nor person
and I believe he's saying to many of
us including some of us on O-M
if not all of us behold you have
a name.
O-M-er.
Wow.
Evangelist.
Witness for Christ.
India team.
Turkey team.
The name you know deep in your heart
you're dead.
You've never really cleanly broken and repented of
all that grips your heart light.
You've never become honest with God and with
man.
The light has never penetrated the inner secret
room where you store your favorite habit where
you go at certain times unseen unknown.
It's there dark and ugly like a sore
and as you grow older it grows and
many times the seed of the teenage years
becomes the acorn of the twenties the tree
of the thirties the forest of the fifties
the world of the sixties and the universe
of the seventies and that's why many die
wicked old men who before maintained the spiritual
front and you know that's true.
O-M God Jesus by his power by
his love many of us when we have
a name are dead and may we in
brokenness and repentance as God commanded believe him
for a quickening for an awakening for a
personal revival for a spiritual revolution that he
promises to give if we will come broken
hungry I
could perhaps give an invitation of some kind
tonight sometimes I do but I
don't want to pull an emotional rip cord
on you tonight I want this message to
be driven home by the Holy Spirit himself
and I would ask you again to try
to forget who spoke even forget O-M
and allow the spirit of God to search
your heart tonight you're not here by coincidence
you're not here to just see an O
-M team go off God has something to
say is he saying to you you have
a name a name that you're alive but
you're dead maybe only in certain areas of
your life but still it's death nonetheless may
you right now in obedience to God's word
repent which means to turn from to turn
around and break before God and ask him
in faith to produce a spiritual revolution will
you do that in your own heart Lord
I know I know this message is for
me in many ways a big name in
yet areas of my life that are dead
some I'm sure I haven't seen O-Lord
I don't know what to pray you know
my love for those who are here tonight
and those who I've spent this month with
you know that I have not planned this
message but I pray O our Father by
the power of your Holy Spirit to bring
men and women boys and girls to the
feet of the Lord Jesus tonight Lord Jesus
we've spoke so many nights about your sufficiency
about your love about your person but we
know we can only come as sinners broken
tearing off the mask ready to accept ourselves
as we really are stopping the little game
that we've been playing please God hear our
prayer cleanse us forgive us you know many
of us have failed to pray for each
other we've signed as prayer partners and it's
all gone by the board because other things
have occupied us and so God we know
young people go to the field and there
are few to stand in the gap to
make up the hedge Lord I just pray
and I do something in this meeting this
is the last meeting Lord you know we're
not ready to go you know we don't
have the people really praying with us you
know all the impossible barriers God that face
us as 300 young people with a handful
of prayer partners and we wonder where they
are O God we ask in the name
of Jesus that you would break through and
do the impossible in changing lives for we
know it's only then that this world will
be evangelized it's only as we become real
and repent and turn to you that this
thing can really take place we pray this
we cry this prayer in the name of
Jesus Christ Amen