Things are tight in Bangladesh.
One man tried some open-air meetings recently
in Dhaka.
After three days he was in prison.
American man.
And the national who interpreted for him is
still in prison.
So things are tight in Bangladesh.
I'd like to mention a word about Nepal.
We thought of closing our work in Nepal,
such a difficult place.
We have to do educational work in order
to stay there.
We don't like doing educational work.
There's a lot of business involved.
We don't have the staff.
We don't have the bookkeepers.
A lot of other things.
The Lord would not let us close this
work.
Mainly because we have such a miraculous opening
there.
They normally give 15-day visas.
They're giving us two-year visas.
We're selling books even into the palace.
And every logical reason says they should kick
us out of the country.
We are distributing Nepali gospel literature all over
the place.
They must know about this.
And yet they're letting us stay in the
country.
Also, the Nepali church leaders asked us to
stay in the country.
And when the church leaders asked us to
stay, and I went around to the church
leaders asking them what their thoughts were, we
felt we should stay.
Well, we've increased the staff a little bit,
but we'd ask you to pray for the
work in Nepal.
I'm amazed at little interest in these places.
You know, if you want to know a
place that can depress you spiritually, you travel
around the world and then you come back
to England.
It'll knock you cold.
And the lack of interest in this country,
in world evangelism, is appalling.
You put in a prayer letter that goes
out to thousands of people, a challenge about
Nepal.
Does anybody want a free piece of literature
about Nepal?
And almost no one writes it.
Now, I realize most people don't know how
to write letters anymore.
I realize most people are busy, mainly watching
television.
I realize a lot of things.
I don't want to be negative, but the
fact of the matter is that the lack
of vision and burden for world evangelism in
the church of Jesus Christ, including those who
talk much about the Holy Spirit, is enough
to depress any thinking man.
I'm not giving up on this country.
I'm having the biggest effort yet in August
to try to shake the bushes.
And praise God, there is many, many encouragements
here, especially among the young people.
The older people, I think if most of
them died, nothing would be missing, to be
quite frank, apart from a few.
And of course, they're probably the ones here
tonight.
But there's great hope in the younger generation,
especially among the university students.
We don't have any trouble getting young people
to go on the Crusades.
The biggest representation in O.M. worldwide, where
are they from?
They're from the British Isles.
A majority of our key leaders worldwide, the
biggest number, from the British Isles.
But their churches don't back them up.
They don't pray for them.
They don't support them.
They don't even write them in many, many
cases.
And that's just straightforward truth with a capital
T.
And I would ask you not to go
out and say that I said this.
People will misunderstand it out of the context
of this meeting.
But to get on your knees and ask
God to move among His people in this
country, which was once the greatest missionary sending
country in the world, and in which today
a number of the missionary societies cannot keep
up with the death rate.
That's right.
And we know, because out in the mission
field, they want to give us their properties.
They have nobody to staff them.
Pray that God will move, and that we
will get away from being overly introspective, and
think that the British Isles is caving in,
so everything must be for Britain.
And that we will get this vision for
the whole world.
And that when these young people go forward,
we'll stand with them in prayer, and believe
God to do great things through them and
with them.
Maybe this can be the focus as we
just spend a few minutes in prayer right
now.
Many other countries I'd like to mention.
I was just in Iran, Turkey, Israel, Italy,
Germany, all in the past two weeks.
My heart is just overwhelmed, overwhelmed with the
need.
One in every seven people in the world
is a Muslim.
Eighty percent of them never had the gospel
of Jesus Christ.
We're now on to the 30th version of
the Bible in the English language.
These people haven't had John 3.16 yet.
It isn't fair.
I have returned to protest.
Maybe I should try some new tactic, I
don't know.
But let us go to prayer.
Let's have three or four or five people
lead in prayer for these countries and for
the Church here in Britain, and for ourselves,
that we may see the Word of God
going out.
As we sit here tonight, half the world
is waiting.
Half the world is waiting.
They've never had the gospel once.
Not once.
You know, when this country was almost overrun
in World War II, it could have easily
happened.
There was only one explanation.
The providence of God and prayer.
Winston Churchill sent a message to the United
States.
He said, give us the tools and we'll
finish the job.
I believe today there are the men out
in these countries.
The Church is there.
Some of these churches want to move.
I was in a worship service with Brother
Bakht Singh three Sundays ago.
There were 2,000 people in that meeting.
2,000 people.
We started the worship meeting at 10.30
in the morning.
It finished at 5 in the afternoon.
And then they went out for open air
before food, and had no food since breakfast.
And they came back from the open air.
They had a snack, and then they had
the evening meeting.
And these people write to our office in
Bombay, and they said, give us tracts.
Give us Bibles.
Do you know how many Bibles are left
in the Telugu language, a language spoken by
30 million people?
There are no Bibles.
There are no Bibles in Gujarati.
There are no Bibles in Telugu.
There are no Bibles in Hindi.
And that's 100 million.
No, that's 200 million souls.
This is why we come burdened and concerned.
This is why we cannot keep our mouths
shut, even if some misunderstand and be offended.
Half the world is waiting.
Give us the tools, and some men, and
we'll complete the job.
And of course, the biggest tool is prayer.
We've got to use, for the Word of
God says, the weapons of our warfare are
not carnal, but mighty unto God, till the
pulling down of strongholds.
Can we have four or five?
Leave it in brief, specific prayer.
And then we'll have the last part of
our meeting.
We refuse to put our eyes on the
circumstances.
We refuse discouragement, as we would refuse a
bottle of poison.
And we look unto your Son, the Lord
Jesus, and believe that He is going to
continue this work.
We praise you and worship you now.
God, as we look into your Word, in
Jesus' name, Amen.
I'd like to just share with you some
verses from Philippians that have hit me very,
very hard.
Verses that hit me as a young believer,
verses that every time I go back into
the book of Philippians, several times a year,
hit me again and again.
And I pray they will speak to you.
Now, I believe we could go into any
book in the Bible, especially in the New
Testament, but in the Old as well, and
we could find similar verses.
Verses that are clear, verses that really aren't
controversial, and yet verses that we tend not
to appropriate and obey.
I want to look at these verses.
I want us to think.
I want the Word of God to be
a mirror.
I want the Word of God to be
a hammer, and that, I believe, it will
be, in my own heart.
Do not think, because I speak as straight
as I can by the grace of God,
and sometimes people feel it's too hard.
Do not think for a minute that I
do not come to you in weakness, because
I do.
And I come to you so broken in
many ways by my own failures, that there's
been many a time when I thought I
will never preach again.
Do not come to hit you with a
rod.
Most of the people I like to hit
aren't even here anyway.
But I come as a sinner, saved by
grace, living by grace, under the burden of
the Spirit.
Many times, I get up to preach, and
God completely takes away everything I want to
say, and gives me something else.
That happened recently in Thailand.
Mainly missionaries in the meeting.
I wanted to esteem them.
I felt inferior to them.
I knew many of them had done a
great piece of work, and I thought I
will just give a word of encouragement.
I know exactly what to say to make
missionaries happy.
I've done enough PR work to know what
to say and how to say it.
And that's probably one of my biggest problems.
And so I got up there with a
real nice comfort message.
And generally today in the church, the people
prefer the comfort messages.
80% of all the hymns we sing
are comfort hymns.
Do you ever notice that?
80% of all the hymns in our
hymn books are comfort hymns.
And so I had this comfort message, this
encouragement message, information message.
They always like my information messages.
I always have a lot of information about
things that are happening all over the world
that I'm involved in, and they like that.
So I got up with this nice message.
God took it all away.
He gave me Revelations chapter 3.
Repent!
I didn't even know, I don't think, what
I was saying.
And I called these missionaries and pastors to
repent.
I spoke to them as hard as I
speak to the OMers, and that's pretty hard
if you've ever been to an OM conference.
And you know, they came up to me
one by one after the meeting, and they
said that was God's message for us.
That's what we need here.
And there was repentance, and there was a
touch of God.
And these were missionaries.
In our pastors' conferences, over one-third of
the pastors have stood at the end of
the conference.
Pastors, Christian workers, missionaries, have recommitted their lives
to Jesus Christ.
So oftentimes what we need is not another
comfort message.
We've got the book of Psalms right in
front of us.
And other books we can get comfort in
at any time.
But sometimes God wants to speak a firm
word to our hearts.
Because unless we're willing to go down, we
can't go up.
In the Christian life, the way up is
down.
So I hope you'll understand that as we
speak together.
I want to start in the first chapter.
And the first verse I would like you
to look at is verse 21.
We all know it by heart.
It's a short verse, so we can learn
that.
I'm appalled at the lack of Scripture memory
among God's people.
It's a separate message.
I won't go into it tonight.
Frightened!
Muslims memorize the whole Koran.
Christians can't get one chapter down.
Amazing!
Movie actors memorize on into the night all
equal to books.
Christians can't get even John 3.16 straight
anymore.
I pray that you're a memorizer of the
Word of God.
I think it's one of the major things
to help us in our spiritual life.
Well, this is one most people have memorized.
For me to live is Christ and to
die is gain.
I want to tell you that verse has
upset me so many times I can't record
it.
I'm not sure I can say it.
To live is Christ, to die is gain.
Especially the latter part.
You may have more trouble with the former
part.
Because though I've suffered a little, I haven't
suffered very much.
And strange as it may sound, maybe to
some of you, I enjoy life.
I enjoy the Christian life.
I've learned to live on problems and to
laugh at some of them and to ride
on some of them and to jump over
some of them.
And I have other interests, hobbies like tract
distribution and other things.
And I enjoy life.
And I told my wife the other day,
I don't want to die.
Now, probably the Lord will change that.
Sometimes, of course, this verse has been more
real.
For me to live is Christ and to
die is gain.
And I think that before we flippantly say,
oh yes, we believe this verse, we need
to ask ourselves, am I ready to die?
Am I ready to die?
Have I been faithful with the talents God
has given me?
Have I put my treasure in heaven?
You know, it's amazing.
If you want to read a shocking novel,
I don't recommend it really for single people.
It's got a few sordid sections in it.
But it's a historical novel.
I thought it was a history book when
I started to read it.
I couldn't put it down.
It's a book called The Odessophile.
The Odessophile is the book of the SS
men, the story of the SS men in
Germany and how most of these men, these
were the real murderers, the real butchers, to
use a strong word, and how most of
them escaped Germany with their money before the
end of the war.
And they are living, many of them, very
nicely today, in Argentina, in Egypt, and many
other parts of the world.
When I finished reading that book, reassurance came
to my heart, there is a hell.
Has to be for such men as that.
And yet the Bible says that all men
outside of Jesus Christ are in that condition.
And we're all potentially that way.
And you know, as I read that book,
and I realized how when these men saw
Germany collapsing, they got their money out.
Boy, they got it out quick, into those
banks in Zurich.
A lot of it is still there.
Most of the gold of the teeth of
the Jews was in the banks in Zurich
before the end of the war.
Don't worry why.
Where will your gold be when that final
day comes?
Where will your treasure be?
And as far as I'm concerned, a vast
majority of Christians on that one area are
not yet ready to die.
They're not yet ready to die.
And so this verse becomes very embarrassing.
To live is Christ.
To die is gain.
It's gain because all your treasure is in
heaven.
And when you arrive there, the joy, the
blessing, as the Lord Jesus himself echoes out,
well done, my good and faithful servant.
I've entrusted you with ten talents.
You used them.
With five, you used them.
With one.
Yet I believe we see today the biggest
talent-burying contest that's ever existed in the
history of the church.
There are many young people that I meet
who have qualities.
They have talents.
They could be used of God.
But they're burying it through fear, through worry,
through tension, through pressure, through problems.
They've decided to bury their talent.
They're going to have a big surprise.
And if you think my words are hard,
beloved, I would ask you to study the
sayings of the man of Galilee.
No man made harder pronouncements on this earth
than Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the
King of kings.
His words are very strong.
And do you know his words to the
man who buried his one talent?
You look them up for yourself.
They are very strong indeed.
To live is Christ.
To die is gain.
How hard it is to say that when
often in our daily life there are so
many other things that bring our real joy.
And so when we're trying to squeeze joy
out of this and joy out of that,
pleasure out of this, and we're selfishly pursuing
our own interests, how can we say to
live is Christ?
When we sit on a bus and refuse
to open our mouth and talk to the
man next to us about Jesus Christ.
When we refuse to respond to the call
to pray.
When we refuse to get out on the
doors with our literature.
When we refuse the Lord in so many
practical areas, how in the world can we
say to live is Christ and to die
is gain?
Please read and study those beautiful yet powerful
lines from the Lord Jesus Christ.
You know one reason I don't get discouraged
when I don't see great masses of people
moving in this kind of reality and with
this kind of spiritual dimension is because the
Apostle Paul clearly taught that not many would
walk this way.
We'll see that later on in the book
of Philippians.
Don't be worried, don't be upset when the
majority of Christians are dilly-dallying around, sitting
in the grandstands.
But get on with the job yourself and
make sure you're one of those who is
in the game, who is on the field.
Isn't this the problem today in the church?
We go to the game, so to speak,
and we sit in the grandstands.
Do you call them the grandstands?
And we watch the game and we're excited
and we give a few cheers, we call
them hymns.
And we've got our team, we've got our
different groups, and we're cheering for our team.
And we go out of the grandstands and
into the local restaurant and we're no different
than when we went in.
We've never got down in the field.
And I think every Christian has to ask
himself, am I in the grandstands, am I
a Christian spectator, sitting in the church twice
a week, going to my Christian holiday camp,
taking part in a few evangelical activities, watching,
singing, cooing, or am I on the field
in the game?
Makes a big difference.
My meeting in Germany recently, the attendance was
bad because it was the replay of the
big football game between Germany and Spain, and
they win it in the last two minutes
or something.
It was the biggest news in this city
where I was in Germany.
Of course, people had to stay back and
see the rewind.
But oh my, to get into the field
is the need.
Let's go on because I want to call
your attention to several other verses.
I'd like to, of course, read the whole
book.
Verse 29, For unto you it is given
on the behalf of Christ not only to
believe on Him but also to suffer for
His sake.
Now this is the whole, at least a
better picture of the whole gospel.
So many times today we emphasize, you come
to Jesus Christ, you'll be saved, you'll go
to heaven, you'll get peace, you'll get joy,
your sins will be forgiven.
God will straighten out your marriage, He'll straighten
out your financial problems, He'll bless you.
We've got groups in America that teach salvation
and prosperity come in the same package.
It's the only country, plus a few other
places in Europe, you can teach that in.
It doesn't work much in India.
All kinds of lopsided presentations of the gospel
of Jesus Christ.
Raise your hand, accept Christ.
Everybody's doing it.
Get on, here's a button, here's a badge.
Whoopee, wave the flag and away you go.
Where are these people three years later?
You know, when you're in my kind of
work, you've got to ask where they are
three years later because that's generally where we
start with.
No, we do get a lot at the
end of the first year as well.
And we see quite a few saved also.
But you see, as we preach the gospel
of Jesus Christ, and I believe that even
in preaching the gospel, we need to include
this, that being a follower of Jesus Christ
will involve suffering.
And I believe that if we preach the
message that Jesus Christ preached, and the message
we see in the gospels, and we told
people clearly that when they come to Christ,
they may not find it easy, they may
end up suffering because it says all who
live godly in Christ Jesus, in Timothy, will
suffer persecution.
And here it says it's been given unto
you not only to believe in Christ, but
also to suffer.
I believe that if we preach that, we
may have less decisions, but more disciples.
And in the book of Acts, you can't
find one instance of the number of decisions
multiplying.
You always find the number of disciples multiplying.
We have lowered the message in order to
get the crowd.
And we are producing a pseudo-saint, and
of course that's why we can't get anybody
on the mission field among so many of
these young people because it's just completely beyond,
completely beyond.
And though we are encouraged with those that
we are seeing go, because we believe in
being positive, the number going forth compared to
the number who know Jesus Christ or claim
to know Jesus Christ is incredibly low.
The greatest proof of it is in the
United States.
The United States is an evangelical boom going
on second to nothing.
Probably becoming the nation almost leading in history
in terms of the number of Bible-believing
people.
And yet the number of missionaries, according to
recent surveys, has hardly increased at all in
the past decade.
We have ten times the number of Bible
schools, ten times the number of Bible school
students as ten years ago, and no proportionate
increase of missionaries.
Because we're producing a pseudo-saint who has
little resemblance to what we read about in
the book of Acts.
He wants blessing, he wants fun, he wants
nice songs, he wants a guitar and a
good time, but he doesn't want to suffer
for Jesus Christ.
This is why at least 75% of
the whole Jesus movement in the United States
from men who I'm in correspondence with who
I believe know about it has been completely
wiped out.
Don't judge the Jesus movement.
It was as real as many other things
in history.
But it's the same old story, and we
can never be discouraged by it.
It's just like when Jesus fed the 5
,000, they say, Man, this is great!
Free bread from the cradle to the grave!
What more could we want?
And Jesus turned around, and he looked at
them and he said, If any man come
after me, let him deny himself.
Take up the cross and follow me.
They didn't know what to say, and many
of them went away.
These sayings are too hard!
Isn't that what they said to Jesus?
These sayings are too hard.
It has not only given you, on behalf
of Christ, to believe on him, but to
suffer for his sake.
And I want to tell you, if you
get in the Christian warfare, you are going
to suffer.
You may not suffer in the way you
expect.
You may expect bombs and bullets.
You may expect beatings and lashings.
That still goes on in the world today.
But the big method of suffering today, that
Satan inflicts, or tries to inflict, on those
in the spiritual warfare, is on the mind.
I believe we live in the generation in
which Satan's main attack is on the mind.
On the mind.
As a soldier of Jesus Christ, you may
go through torment in your mind, that you
never dreamed possible.
Sometimes like that, you can go to those
wonderful verses.
Hundreds of them in the word of God,
that assure you of his comfort, of his
presence, of his love, and all that we
heard about many times in our churches.
Take that verse.
Think on it.
Memorize it.
Because I believe, it is a neglected verse
in the word of God, and needs to
be thought upon more.
Turn quickly now, to the second chapter, and
look at verse 16.
I remember this verse, because it's a key
text of the Pocket Testament League, a great
work of God, that was born in this
country many years ago.
Holding forth the word of life, that I
may rejoice in the day of Christ, that
I have not run in vain, neither labored
in vain.
Holding forth the word of life.
I'm sure there are many interpretations we can
give to this verse.
But I think in the Pocket Testament League
they've chosen this verse, because their ministry is
to give out the Scriptures.
It's one of the reasons we work somewhat
together with them.
To give out the Scriptures.
80% of the world at least still
does not have a Bible.
80%.
The percentage would be a little bit better
in terms of those who would have a
New Testament, but not much.
50% of the people in the world
have never had a gospel tract.
That means they've never had their first verse.
I'm not throwing out exaggerated statistics.
I'm throwing out things that are giving you
a conservative figure after a lot of reading
and a lot of study in a lot
of countries.
In fact, the World Congress of Evangelism, which
will be gathering in Lausanne soon, they're talking
about the two-thirds of the unreached world.
Of course there's some problems in terms of
definition.
Why is it we've not held forth the
word of life?
I believe when we get a vision, of
holding forth the word of life, it'll revolutionize
our lives.
Some people get the idea that discipleship is
hard, it's unpleasant.
That's a false concept.
First of all, discipleship does not mean you
cannot enjoy the good things that God gives.
Every disciple is supposed to eat.
Every disciple is supposed to sleep.
Those two things alone, to me, are enough
to cause all of us to sing a
hallelujah chorus.
I enjoy both sleeping and eating immensely.
And God doesn't tell me I can't do
it.
I enjoy nature.
Nature is free.
You don't have to pay to look at
the creation.
Many, many things that we can enjoy on
this earth without spending much money.
And I'm sure God doesn't mind when some
small amounts of money are also spent.
His call is not to asceticism, but He
has given us a job to do.
And those few who seem to get this
vision for the job should be willing to
lay aside the good to get on with
the best.
It's not that it's wrong to do many
things that we do.
I would never say to someone, it's wrong
to sit and watch your television.
Many programs are good.
I'm sure.
But you may want to ask yourself, the
next time you sit down to watch one
of your good programs, is there something better
you could be doing at that moment?
And I believe that that better thing is
holding forth the Word of God, getting the
Scriptures out, getting the Word of God out
through prayer, through giving, through going, through publishing,
through printing, through preaching, and every other method.
People talk about a closed world or closed
country.
I want to tell you that OM has
never been faced with so many open doors.
I am torn apart.
There's over 20 countries that want us to
come and start permanent work.
We've turned them down.
We aren't even beginning to do the job
in the countries we're in.
And that's because we're in India, and India
is equivalent to at least 20 other countries.
We've got 570 million people.
We've got 15 to 16 states.
We have one-seventh of the world's population.
And this coming year, in October, we're going
to move every team we have in India,
30 teams, into one state.
Do you know how many people are in
that one state?
The state of Uttar Pradesh.
90 million.
One state.
90 million souls, 70% at least of
whom have never had the Gospel.
We have so many open doors that we
just can't even begin to meet the opportunities.
And I believe that we can move into
many more of these open doors, and many
more different dimensions, if God's people have this
vision, holding forth the Word of Life.
Holding forth the Word of Life.
You talk about Bibles and New Testaments.
Maybe your heart is pricked when you hear
me say that people can't get Bibles, and
believe me, it's true.
Even in open countries, they can't get New
Testaments.
I want to tell you, our battle is
on a lower level than that.
We can't get enough tracts.
Even tracts.
You just can't get enough.
You can't get enough.
We're writing letters all the time.
We're sorry, brother.
These are people in poor churches.
These are Christian workers in India who are
living on less than 20 pence a day.
And though there are tracts they can get
with money, they don't hand the money in
many cases.
Some cases they do, and I've seen these
believers sacrificially send in money to cover the
freight, the freight charges, which are expensive.
But we write letter after letter, we're sorry,
there are no more tracts this month.
Try again next month.
Incredible thing when we read verses like this.
Holding forth the word of life.
That I may rejoice in the day of
Christ that I have not run in vain,
neither labored in vain.
It's important.
Please think of that verse.
Turn over with me now to chapter 3.
There's so many other verses in between I'd
like to speak about, but we don't have
the time.
Over in chapter 3.
Verses that have perplexed me a long time.
Starting with verse 7.
But what things were gain to me, those
I count in loss for Christ?
Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but
loss for the excellency of the knowledge of
Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have
suffered the loss of all things and do
count them but dumb.
What an unpleasant phrase in the middle of
a beautiful book.
Count them but dumb.
That I may win Christ and be found
in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which
is of the law, but that which is
through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which
is of God by faith, that I may
know Him and the power of His resurrection,
the fellowship of His suffering being made confirmable
unto His death.
What do we do with these kind of
verses?
Relegated to the Keswick Convention once a year?
This is powerful truth that we must act
upon, beloved.
Said of men of God in years gone
by, they study the word of God with
pen and pencil.
We 20th century evangelicals study the word of
God with a pair of scissors and we
cut out dozens of verses that we have
no intention of acting upon.
And instead of following a dynamic New Testament
form of Christianity, we've created our own cultural
carbon copy, manufactured from our own minds.
In the first century, a few hundreds gathered
in Jerusalem were filled with the Holy Spirit
and moved out in that immediate area and
spoke the word of God with boldness.
1974, over 3,000 Christians, mainly from America,
spent quarter of a million dollars or who
knows how much money to fly to Israel
to discuss the Holy Spirit for seven days.
And we know not of one who has
a burden to return to Israel and reach
lost, dying Arabs and Jews for Jesus Christ.
Beloved, something has gone wrong.
The first century will have been known as
the age of the walk of the Spirit.
The 20th century will be known as the
age of the talk of the Spirit as
we've produced over a hundred books about the
Holy Spirit in the past three years.
The devil has deceived us and is making
a fool out of us from California to
Thailand.
Oh, beloved, may God open our hearts and
our eyes.
I'm not saying that he's not blessing.
I'm not saying people are not experiencing blessing
here and there.
Of course, God is always blessing.
But what are we doing with the blessing?
Are we willing to go the second mile?
Or are we like the nine lepers who
got the blessing?
But that's all.
These words in Philippians, I have not the
power to expound.
I've been studying them for 19 years.
The depth of them has not yet penetrated
my soul.
Can I say I count all things as
done?
I'm not sure.
Easy to say it.
But I want to know this in my
life.
Do not think of O.M. as a
group of young people who have found these
things.
Beloved, we have not.
We have proven otherwise since the day we
were founded.
But I believe we are a movement of
young people who to a large degree are
hungry for this and want this.
And though they may be crippled and though
they may be lame and though they may
not be finding it easy, there are many,
praise God, who are pressing and who want
this truth in their life and who are
willing to repent when God shows them that
it's not becoming a reality.
Study those verses as you have opportunity.
And then chapter 4, and I believe the
Bible is so balanced, I'd like to send
you my booklet, Revolution of Balance.
You write me and I'll send you a
copy or ask Graham Scott.
I don't know if we have any in
England, but they have a supply in Belgium.
We can get them over here.
I think some are on the way.
But I want to make sure that we
get some of the balance tonight.
Because, you know, if we don't get balance,
we can really go off the deep end.
And A.W. Tozer once said this, it's
written in one of his books, he said,
the keen, more zealous young person, and that's
oftentimes somebody in OM, more easily goes astray.
And I've seen that's true.
This is why we have tried to emphasize
over these years, in OM, in ministry of
teaching.
And from the day and moment, the moment
a young person gets in contact with us,
he is being taught through tape, through books,
through conferences.
And if he gets sort of the OM
vision, without the teaching, he's dangerous.
He's immense.
We've got them in the movement.
I try to chase them out each year.
It's not easy.
Sometimes I wonder, maybe I was the one
who was the menace.
But believe me, when we get to verses,
like verse 6 in chapter 4, we see
the balance.
Be careful for nothing.
Good English, don't worry about anything.
But in everything by prayer and supplication, with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto
God.
God does not want to manufacture a group
of evangelical neurotics who can't spend ten pence
on an ice cream cone without developing a
slight pain in the side.
God wants us to be balanced.
God wants us to take these burdens and
these cares and to cast them upon Him.
I cannot go around with a burden of
world evangelism on my shoulders.
Can't do it.
I'll go down.
I can't go around with a burden of
the lukewarm, lackadaisical, evangelical church on my shoulders.
I can barely take it in short terms
of thought.
Short periods of thought.
And so I praise God.
He says, Cast in Peter all your care
upon me, for I care for you.
There's the balance.
Don't worry about anything but in prayer and
supplication.
That's why, you know, our burdens, our concerns
have not led us to write all kinds
of appealing letters and in all kinds of
publicity stunts to try to get the saints
moving.
But it has led us to pray.
We'd rather have 20 praying, interceding people than
thousands weighing the O.M. banner.
May God show us the truth of that.
Of course, this is all tied in with
the word joy.
And you know the main theme of the
epistle of the Philippians?
You know what it is?
You've all had Bible teaching from this epistle?
Joy!
You know where he was writing it from?
Prison.
See, that's the glorious paradox of the Christian
life.
You can be in the most difficult, strenuous
circumstances with fear and worry and everything hitting
you from every side and yet, there can
be the joy.
You know, in many of our modern, high
-flying, evangelical leaders, I don't want to be
too specific, especially from certain countries arrived, you
know, they check out which is the best
hotel.
When the Apostle Paul came into town, he
used to check out the jail because that's
where he generally spent the night.
Things have changed, haven't they?
Things have changed.
Rejoice, verse 4, in the Lord always, and
again I say, rejoice from a prison cell.
You know, one of the greatest problems that
cripples our spiritual life, I've seen it everywhere
I've gone, is rebellion.
You know in your heart right now whether
you are rebelling against these verses.
But it is not me.
Maybe my personality, my voice may tune a
few people off, I'm very conscious of that,
but this is the Word of God.
This is the Word of God.
You take Philippians, you forget about me.
You take Philippians and you go through this
and you go through it on your knees
praying that God will reveal the truth of
this and I will tell you it will
come out stronger than I could ever give
it to you.
Just two or three more verses and we'll
close in prayer.
I want to take verse 8.
I feel it's very important to keep this
balance.
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things
are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things
are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things
are of good report, if there be any
virtue, if there be any praise, think on
these things.
If you want to go anywhere for God,
if you want to be a disciple and
a soldier of Jesus Christ, you've got to
become a positive thinker.
It's the only way.
I have never met a man dwelling on
the negative continually who amounted to anything for
God.
You can't do it.
A.W. Tozer, who spoke more negative things
than you could ever imagine because he was
speaking under the anointing of the Spirit and
therefore you must speak the truth and therefore
there will be negatives.
He was basically an optimist.
He would have died years before.
And if you read his writings carefully, you'll
see the optimism this man maintained in the
midst of giving prophetic utterances of what the
true evangelical situation really was.
And I believe optimism, positive thinking, dwelling on
the best.
You have to think about the evil.
Of course, you've got to be realistic.
If you go out right now and you
discover somebody's stolen your car, you'd better do
a little thinking about it.
But you don't want to dwell on it
and meditate on it.
And you'll begin to think on the positive
blessings you'll get through your car being stolen.
And there probably aren't many.
But I believe that we need to go
into the Word of God and take these
verses literally and begin thinking more and meditating
more on the true and the pure and
the lovely and the honest.
I've met some people who, in one way,
agree with me on many things I say,
but then dive into a pool of introspection,
negativism, the church is hopeless, everything's impossible, and
so they sort of go into the ground.
Whereas personally, I believe that though these things
that I've been saying are true, there's tremendous
hope tonight because Jesus is alive, because the
Holy Spirit is moving, because God is real,
because God answers prayer.
And wherever God is, there's enormous hope.
Enormous hope!
In the darkest, dullest hour, there's tremendous hope
for the man who has his eyes on
Jesus Christ.
And I believe God can bring revival to
the church.
I believe God can thrust out these labors.
I believe God can bring in the tools.
And with hope and expectancy, we go forward.
For six years, every dream was smashed about
this ship.
Graham and I, as we talked together for
six years or five about this project, it
seemed so impossible.
People thought we were crazy.
At times, we thought maybe we were crazy.
On and on, we prayed the same prayers.
We prayed for crew.
No crew came, except very few.
And yet, we had this hope.
We had this belief God is God.
Nothing is too impossible for Him.
And He gave us this ship.
And in port after port, this ship has
shaken hundreds of believers.
You know, when this ship comes in, the
main thing is not what we do in
that one month.
No, that's a lot.
The main thing is the catalyst.
The ship comes in.
These Christians hear the story of it.
Group of young people, no money, praying in
a ship.
And here they've been wrestling with some ridiculous
little thing.
Praying whether they could buy a new pulpit
for their broken down church and they still
didn't have the money after three years of
prayer.
Praying about having a campaign to reach 40
people for Christ.
And this ship has come in with these
young people from 20 nations living together.
Most of these countries, the church is divided.
The Penties against the brethren.
The Baptists against the Methodists.
The Charismatics against the Anti-Charismatics.
The Tall against the Short.
The Long Nosed against the Short Nosed.
There's a million divisions in the church of
Jesus Christ.
And the ship comes in and they see
young people working together, serving together.
They don't see any fights.
They don't see any arguments.
There are some arguments on the ship, but
generally they don't see them.
And they can't believe it.
A government leader in Sudan, a Muslim, said
I want to take this ship and park
it outside of the United Nations to demonstrate
to these characters how it's done.
Because the United Nations has failed the whole
world knows.
They couldn't keep two seven year olds from
shooting a BB gun and a bird.
And here's a group of people who believe
in Jesus Christ and who believe the Gospel
and they are a demonstration with their weaknesses,
with their failures because that's part of it.
And Jesus Christ is real.
There's tremendous hope.
That's why I want to take you to
this next verse.
Just two more verses.
Verse 13.
I can do all things through Christ which
strengthens me.
I made that one of my life verses.
You know people have life verses.
I have a hundred.
I have a hundred life verses.
I keep changing.
But that's one of them.
And that verse is helping me so many
times when I felt I was such a
failure, when I felt I couldn't go on.
And we all get to that stage sometime
or other.
And I've turned to Philippians.
I can do all things through Christ which
strengthens me.
Do you believe that?
Somebody gives you the challenge to go out
door to door and witness for Jesus Christ.
What do you do with that verse?
I can do all things except go door
to door through Jesus Christ who strengthens me.
God tells you to witness to the lady
on the bus sitting next to you.
You're scared to death.
You're frightened.
You're shy.
You're afraid she might, I don't know, maybe
think she'll eat you up or something.
What do you do with that verse?
That verse should be the anchor of our
personal evangelism.
There will be failures.
But we keep going back.
We claim that as a promise of God.
It doesn't all happen overnight.
I'm still wrestling with fears in my life,
enormous fears.
People think this prayer is big, bold, dynamic,
fearless.
I can't walk up an airplane gangway without
my hands sweating.
When I was in Vietnam, the curfew went
off at midnight and I almost went three
inches out of the bed.
I'm a child of fear.
I am weak.
My loudness of mouth means nothing.
It's the most deceptive factor of my whole
nature.
But I can do all things through Christ
who strengthens me.
He is in me.
His treasure is in earth and vessels.
Some of our vessels have cracks, holes.
Sometimes we think the whole thing is going
into the ground back where it came.
And it will someday.
But that treasure is in you and some
of the people that I've seen making an
impact on the mission field are some of
the weakest characters I've ever met.
One of the first missionaries I ever met
went to France.
I was with him one day and I
thought the guy was never going to make
it.
I've never seen such an impossible case.
He was a former alcoholic.
He couldn't speak the language.
He couldn't even speak English.
And he was from the States.
Of course, I know none of the Americans
speak English properly.
But I mean, he couldn't even speak American.
And that man has been in France 13
or 14 years.
He has won souls.
He's planted two or three assemblies.
With his broken French he gets up and
people are getting saved.
Reminds me of Deal Moody when he stood
before this Presbyterian congregation in New York City
and he began to preach and the people
were laughing and snickering.
He was breaking the English language into pieces.
And then the anointing came and the conviction
of sin and the Spirit of God moved.
God's treasure is in earth and vessels and
it's in you and God wants to use
you more than you have ever yet imagined.
Start believing.
Trust.
Hanging on to these verses.
And lastly, verse 19.
My God shall supply all your need according
to His riches and glory by Christ Jesus.
After most O.M. meetings someone always comes
to me usually a dear elderly lady and
she said, Oh, why didn't you take an
offering?
You could have got so much money here
tonight if you'd taken an offering.
Now, I'm not against the church taking an
offering.
I believe local churches should take the offering.
That's what the Bible teaches.
Nor do I want to judge other groups.
But as long as I have promises like
this in the Word of God I don't
need to take any offering.
Of course, someone always misunderstands.
They think, Oh, some big organization Andrew Carnegie
must be behind it.
Some multi-millionaire must have bought the ship.
All kinds of rumors.
Of course, that makes the prayer even more
challenging.
That's like Elijah.
Now, how did Elijah get the fire on
the altar?
He did the most ridiculous stupid thing a
man could ever do.
He put water.
I would have put benzene.
Elijah put water on the altar and he
prayed and God moved.
And so though some of the things and
the practices of O.M. make it perhaps
harder and some people misunderstand that little bit
of water on the fire will not stop
the flame of God when we have broken
through in prayer.
By God, she'll supply all my needs.
And I believe that's emotional.
I believe that's physical.
Though it may not mean perfect health.
I believe that's our only hope in O
.M. We cannot trust in men.
We cannot trust in a pound that devaluates
too quickly.
The dollar is even worse.
We trust in the living God.
He can finance it with rubles or whatever
he wants to use.
And we have seen God work miraculously in
so many areas.
One example and we'll come to a close.
We were in Persia.
First of all, the ship was ordered out
of Persia.
We made a big blunder and put Arab
Gulf in our pamphlet.
That's like hitting the shore on the head
with a two by four.
We agreed.
The Christians in Persia said, you've blown it.
Don't worry, the U.S. Navy did the
same thing.
Airline carriers have done the same thing.
Just go.
No hope.
The ship will never come back.
We got on our knees.
God worked a series of miracles that I
can't tell you about.
And the top admiral of the Iranian Navy
ordered Lagos back into Iranian waters.
Can't tell you all the complications that we
would have had if that didn't happen.
All our people already down in the Persian
Gulf sitting there waiting including women who are
about to have children and babies and every
other kind of complication.
God did it.
We got on the ship.
We needed fuel.
This was in the middle of a fuel
crisis.
We heard that fuel was about 30 pounds
a ton.
That was bad, but we didn't have much
choice.
We scraped together what money we could from
all over the place.
We got this money into Tehran.
The next day they telephoned us back.
They say fuel has gone to 60 pounds
per ton today.
I couldn't believe it.
At that moment I thought there was only
one answer for this ship.
Sell it.
Flog it.
Well, there's still any hope.
I do get these depressing thoughts once in
a while.
We had to pray.
What to do?
Should we get this fuel at about 60
pounds a ton or should we sail over
to Saudi Arabia?
Everybody seemed to think Saudi Arabia, the prices
also go up.
Iran has fuel.
Saudi Arabia has fuel.
There won't be any difference.
We decided to risk it to go to
Saudi Arabia.
We sailed to Saudi Arabia.
There were ships in the Persian Gulf not
sailing.
They were ships loaded with crude oil that
could not sail for the lack of marine
diesel in their own tanks.
We sailed into Saudi Arabia Rashtanura.
We made the turnaround in 15 hours with
150 tons of fuel.
We got the bill three months later because
of the confusion in the fuel crisis and
it was less than 22 pounds per ton.
We've hardly taken any fuel since.
Just took it last week.
You know, I don't believe I believe not
only can God supply fuel to us and
reduce prices in answer to prayer.
I believe we could find an oil well
in Danzig Street if that was God's will.
Nothing is too hard for our God.
Let's stop cutting off His legs and cutting
off His arms and making Him into a
little mini Englishman or a mini American.
He is the all-powerful God who will
supply our needs.
Let us step out by faith.
Let's climb out on the end of the
limb and cut off the branch and watch
God hold the branch in the air.
Until we go into this kind of supernatural
living of course we'll never reach the world
for Christ.
May God grip us with these verses from
the book of Philippians.
And if it takes us twenty years to
get it into our spiritual bloodstream it's worth
it.
It's taken me almost that long.
I'm nineteen years in Christ.
But this is my desire and I thank
God that when I fall He picks me
up and keeps me going.
Let us pray.
Our God and Father we thank You for
Your Word.
It's like a two-edged sword cuts into
our innermost being, into our subconscious.
Do not let us, God, tonight just be
hearers of the Word but doers.
Men and women of action in prayer and
going, giving, being, witnessing, loving in all the
areas that we know about all too well.
We praise You Lord for the balance of
Your Word.
We praise You Lord for the reality.
We thank You God for the practicality of
all these things and that it can become
a dynamic reality in our lives.
We thank You now Lord as we go
our ways that we can appropriate these truths
by Your grace and we believe that as
impossible as this coming summer crusade is it
shall be done.
Nothing is too hard for You.
We commit all the details to You.
The transportation problems, the fuel problems, the literature
problems, the training problems, the orientation, the processing
of the applicants, everything.
Put it in Your hands and we say
that all things can be done through Jesus
Christ who strengthened us, whose name we pray.
Amen.