Just reading a few very, very relevant portions
from the Word of God.
Starting in the Book of Luke, the Gospel
of Luke, Gospel of Luke, Chapter 9, starting
at verse 23, through verse 26.
And He said to them all, if any
man will come after Me, let him deny
himself, take up his cross daily, and follow
Me.
For whosoever would save his life shall lose
it, but whosoever will lose his life for
My sake, the same shall save it.
For what is a man profiteth if he
gain the whole world, and lose himself, or
be cast away?
For whosoever shall be ashamed of Me, and
of My words of him shall the Son
of Man be ashamed, when He shall come
in His own glory, and in His Fathers,
and the Holy Angels.
And then, please turn to Romans, Chapter 12.
Read verses 1 and 2.
I'll ask that we read in Cantonese, and
we'll just follow in English.
Chapter 12, verse 1.
May God add a spirit of obedience to
the reading of His Word.
Well, I've been thinking about coming to Hong
Kong for about 17 years.
And every time I thought about it, I
realized all the Christian workers that were here,
and great Christian leaders and organizations, I always
felt this was at least one place that
I did not need to go to.
My heart has always been more captivated by
the Middle East.
And places like Afghanistan, I've probably visited about
30 times.
And you may be aware of the fact
that in all of Afghanistan, there are only
about a few dozen believers in the entire
nation of 18 million.
And right now, we're faced with the greatest
opportunity ever to reach these people, as many
of them are coming into Pakistan, which is
a country that is more free.
Of course, being involved with the ship Lagos,
I became somewhat involved praying more for Hong
Kong.
And actually, I'm here now trying to get
to Lagos.
In order to have a special conference with
the staff and crew, while the ship is
in dry dock over in the Philippines.
And it seemed that most of the flights,
the good flights from London, where I live,
went to Hong Kong first.
So I'm very grateful for this opportunity.
Certainly, God has put you in one of
the most strategically located nations in all the
world.
Twenty-three years ago, shortly after my conversion
to Christ, God put it on my heart
to pray regularly for China.
And today is somewhat of a historic day,
after 23 years of praying, that I've been
able to spend one day over in mainland
China.
That's not very much time.
But I'm afraid if I went there much
longer, and the burden became much greater, I
don't know what I would do.
I'm sure many of you have a greater
burden for that than I do, so that
certainly will not be what I'm speaking about
tonight.
I do believe the burden of every Christian
is the whole world.
And especially tomorrow night, I'm going to be
sharing about some countries that I have been
in and worked in, such as India, that
I believe will be an encouragement in expanding
your world vision.
In preparation for tomorrow night's ministry, it would
be good if you could read this book.
You can at least read through this section
on the Middle East, and some of the
Muslim countries, one out of every hundred, seven
people in the world is a Muslim.
Yet less than 2% of the missionaries
in the world work among Muslims.
And you'll see through this amazing book of
information and prayer requests, how so many of
the most needy nations in the world, unbelievably
needy, are Muslim countries.
This book has now come out in a
number of languages, but I think English will
be the closest to home for most of
you.
I'd like to also mention three other books
that have meant a lot in our work
around the world.
The Calvary Road, which you can't come on
supposedly until you read this book.
The Discipline Life, which we often use as
a study book in our conferences.
I don't know much about Hong Kong, but
I can tell you in Europe, the greatest
need in our lives is more discipline.
Perhaps the only thing I can think of
more important is worship, and that involves discipline
as well.
And so it's a joy to recommend also
this book on prayer and worship, called Destined
for the Throne, which I hope soon will
also be in Chinese.
I don't think most of us are aware
of how many different dialects there are in
Chinese.
Even on the mainland today, we went from
one town only seven miles, and the people
were speaking two totally different dialects.
By the way, I think at this time
of the year, everybody must be going over
there.
There was just a huge queue of people,
most of them had stereos and everything you
could think of in their hands, carrying in.
This evening we're considering the subject of discipleship.
And is it possible today?
Since I am very new to most of
you, I thought it would be good just
to share my own testimony.
And bring into that some very important truths
about discipleship.
I wasn't reared in a Christian home.
My grandfather was from the little country of
the Netherlands, he was an atheist, he didn't
believe in the existence of God.
My other grandfather was from Glasgow, Scotland.
He was a drunkard, and he used to
beat my grandmother so much that she finally
divorced him.
My own parents ended up near New York
City.
They were sort of very nice, middle class
materialists.
So by age 14, I was baptized into
materialism.
And by 16, I had three of my
own little businesses.
And I hadn't remembered ever having heard the
gospel.
I went to church, because there were contacts
in the church, there were nice girls in
the church.
And I even became the president of the
young people's group, and the assistant to the
pastor.
I'm not sure if anybody in that church
really knew Christ, it was more of a
social club.
But there was a godly woman near the
school that I was attending.
She had been praying for that school for
15 years.
Not only that people would be converted to
Christ, but that from that school, they would
go to many parts of the world.
And then when I went to that school,
she began to pray for me.
And she prayed for me for three years,
and every year I got worse.
And she sent me part of God's word,
a gospel of John, through the post.
And as I read this gospel, God began
to deal with my frozen heart.
Then also she put a rack of gospel
tracts in the local railway station.
And one day on the way to the
doctor actually, I picked up a little tract
from that rack that God also used to
speak to my heart.
Now I was often buying pornographic literature.
And one day when I went to get
some of this, there was a different magazine
in the same place about Billy Graham.
So again, literature was the use of God
to work in my life.
This is one of the reasons I have
a slight bent toward Christian literature.
I was so thrilled to see the book
display.
I always feel a little unhappy preaching if
there's no book display.
On Saturday I had a little conference with
the navigators in London.
It's a great Christian group that specializes in
man-to-man follow-up.
And several hundred came together.
So we set up great piles of books.
And in that one day we saw 7
,000 Hong Kong dollars of books sold.
Just from two small tables.
I discovered everywhere in the world that somehow
God is moving and giving people a concern
to read Christian books.
Now as I read this magazine about Billy
Graham, I didn't know anything about that kind
of thing.
But because he played sports and was married,
he seemed at least partially normal.
So when Billy Graham came to New York
City, partly out of curiosity, I went to
see and hear him.
Of course this lady had been praying.
Others had started to pray.
That night I heard the gospel.
And I experienced conversion through Christ.
And I went back to that school.
And God began to work in a very
unusual way.
As I shared with other students, a few
came to Christ.
Then we decided to distribute Gospels of John
to the whole school.
Of course there were very few Christians in
the school.
This was a very unheard of thing.
There were hardly any teachers who were Christians.
But somehow we got this permission and a
thousand students promised to read the whole Gospel
of John.
One of my many burdens is that everybody
in the world should have at least one
portion or one of the Gospels.
Before a year or two, some 200 students
in that school surrendered their lives to Jesus
Christ.
Now some of you know about the ship
Lagos.
Some of you here have worked on the
ship.
In two or three years you will get
to know the ship Dulos.
We hope somehow in a couple of years
we may be able to bring this bigger
ship here to Hong Kong.
But some of you may not know that
story that I just told you, which is
a true story.
Which is how the whole work of the
ships and operation mobilization was born.
One woman, one disciple, who knew reality in
prayer, who had compassion, who knew the reality
of persevering and pressing on, even when things
seemed discouraging.
And they of course are just a few
of the marks of a true disciple.
Sometimes we think of a disciple as sort
of a young man moving out down the
street, preaching or giving out tracts.
But here is this disciple, is an unknown
elderly lady, quietly in her own home, literally
making an impact on the world through prayer.
One of the most powerful books I have
ever read on prayer is called Power Through
Prayer.
I just noticed some on the book table.
And the author says the church looks for
better machinery, God looks for better men.
Men of prayer, women of prayer.
And to me, this is the greatest activity
that the true disciple of Jesus Christ can
be involved in.
Well a few of us continued praying in
that school.
But of course we soon left and went
on to university.
At university I was destined to meet another
very dynamic disciple.
His name was Dale Roton.
And he is now the director of the
second ship, the ship Doulas.
Originally he was not involved with the ships.
Because he was leading our work in the
Middle East, especially Turkey.
Some of you may know his book, The
Logic of Faith, written especially for Muslims.
He then led our work into about seven
of the Soviet countries.
Then he went back to university and picked
up one or two more degrees.
And we thought, well, maybe he's going to
become a professor.
But in an amazing way, God put the
second ship on his heart.
And that's where he and his family have
now settled down as the leaders of the
second ship.
When I met Dale at university, he was
older than me.
And I saw reality in his life.
You know, this would speak stronger than anything
else, even stronger than literature.
A life that's on fire for God.
Of course, some people didn't like him.
And when I first arrived at the college,
they warned me, said, watch out for this
fellow, he's even baptizing people in the showers.
Which I thought was rather unusual since he
was a Presbyterian.
But I went to a prayer meeting that
some students were having.
And I saw again reality in their lives.
Dale and I have now been locked together
for 23 years.
I think, in fact, very few people have
ever understood Operation Mobilization.
Some thought it was a literature agency.
Then after that, some thought it was a
shipping company.
And all kinds of different ideas.
And all these things, to some degree, are
true.
But as I look back over these past
25 years since I came to Christ, I
think the key thing that stands out in
my mind is that Operation Mobilization is a
fellowship.
A fellowship of people from all over the
world who have been drawn into a very
deep relationship with one another.
There are now about two to three hundred
leaders in OM.
And over a hundred of them have been
together for many years.
Even though one of our greatest joys is
always when another one of our main leaders
gets led into another fellowship.
In fact, just two weeks ago, in a
small church, we were having a sending-off
meeting for one of our workers.
To become a full-time worker in the
International Evangelical Students.
This brother's fellowship.
Working under Chua Wing Hin there in Europe.
And one of our greatest burdens is to
just be able to lock hearts and lock
arms with all of God's people around the
world for the cause of world evangelism.
Well, about eight months later, Dale Roton, myself,
and one other brother headed overseas to Mexico.
We were just students.
And back then, this kind of thing was
not done.
Somehow, we felt we must go and just
work with missionaries and learn about other cultures
and the language as well.
This was one of the birthplaces of short
-term missionary work.
We were received especially by the Wycliffe Bible
Translators, another great fellowship of God's people.
And we saw God answer prayer.
Already, we were getting so much into our
heads as Christians.
Dale was memorizing the New Testament.
He soon had almost half of it committed
to memory.
We were studying the Word of God.
We were reading Christian books.
But how do you get this into practice?
And when you're 19, as I was, just
before I went to Mexico, what hope is
there for you at that age?
Everybody was saying, you know, study harder, study
longer, go to cemetery, seminary, etc., etc.
And I found that I was getting bigger
and bigger in the head, but my heart
was not growing at the same pace.
Maybe this is a problem more in the
West.
We get men who are big-headed theologically,
but their hearts, when it comes to compassion
and love and reality, are often small.
And then how would we learn to communicate
cross-culturally?
I was studying Spanish at university.
Both my professor and I were getting discouraged.
It did not seem that I had language
ability.
I was doing better in history.
One month in Mexico, and I was preaching
in Spanish.
It can be very helpful.
Even today in China, my guide, he was
speaking Spanish.
I don't understand this.
But some of you may not think you
can ever learn a foreign language, like Arabic,
or Turkish, or Pashto, or some other language.
But once you get into that environment, where
all these people are speaking, you will discover
that God will give you the gift of
languages.
Do not be discouraged in your language study,
whatever language you are studying.
A number of our men have proven that
the first four languages are the hardest.
After that, it's easier.
Almost without planning it, OM became a massive
program, teaching literally thousands of people their second,
third, and fourth languages.
We did not have such a plan.
But later on, OM began to train people,
many people, to learn many languages.
Not just one, but two, three, many languages.
It was a long story, but I want
to shorten it a bit.
The work began to grow in Mexico.
It was a very outward proclamation of the
Gospel.
Literature had to be distributed secretly.
So we sent it out through the post.
In one and a half years, 900,000
pieces of literature went out through the mail.
And Spaniards began to move in reaching others
for Christ.
And it was Spanish young people who first
took on this name, Operation Mobilization.
And they could not freely work in their
own country, so they worked quietly all year
in the Spanish capital.
And in the summer, they launched out in
evangelism in more open countries.
We had Spaniards moving on teams, evangelizing Germany.
It would be as if suddenly a team
came from mainland China to evangelize Hong Kong.
But God used these Spanish young people.
Their faith triggered off a movement of God's
Spirit in Great Britain.
In fact, in that first summer, 90 British
young people, many of them university students, joined
with the Spaniards.
By the next summer, there were 2,000.
900 from Britain alone launched out across the
more needy European lands like Italy, Spain, France.
And this had been going on every summer.
Though soon, the one and two year programs
became more important as it gave a greater
opportunity to do an in-depth kind of
work.
It was only in 1965 that the burden
and the vision for the ship came.
Already a foundation had been laid.
And I think it's so important to understand
that the miracle is not the ship, but
it's what God has done in people's lives
for more than 10 years before there was
any ship whatsoever.
Just a few days ago, actually on Friday,
I was in Glasgow.
In Scotland, and I was on the Doulas,
the second ship.
There were about 300 people on that ship
living.
And it's two to three times the size
of the Lagos.
And yet, once again, I was made aware
of this fact.
It's not the ship.
The people.
The people that God has brought from all
over the world.
To go through this discipleship training.
To learn the reality of prayer.
To learn the reality of loving all kinds
of people, regardless of race, or nationality, or
anything else.
To learn how to effectively communicate cross-culturally
to people of a totally different background.
To learn the reality of books like Calvary
Road, and what it is to daily repent
and live in revival at the foot of
the cross.
And I believe that the young people on
these ships, and the other six or seven
hundred who work on shore, are just one
of many proofs that discipleship is possible today.
Not because they're perfect.
Not because they're special.
Because according to the New Testament, every true
believer is a disciple.
Discipleship is not some superior level of Christian
living.
It's not something that only missionaries qualify for.
According to what I can see in the
New Testament, every person, once he becomes a
believer, he is a disciple.
It says in the book of Acts, the
number of disciples increased.
That was Acts 6, verse 1.
And then in verse 7, the same thing.
The number of disciples multiplied in Jerusalem.
It's not decisions God's looking for, it's disciples.
It's not a matter of just saying with
your head that you believe in Christ.
It's a matter of putting your life on
the altar, as we read in Romans, chapter
12.
And the most amazing thing in the past
few years, is what is referred to in
Europe in OM circles as the Chinese invasion.
Because in God's providence, with the ship Lagos
registered in Singapore, even though we were the
movement committed not to going any further than
Bangladesh, it was God's providence to overrule our
little man-made decision, and put us in
Singapore.
And then in Malaysia, just about a year
ago when I was in Singapore, we had
a full-day conference called an Operation World
Conference.
We had sixteen hundred young people there, serious
young people, for the whole day.
When I went to Malaysia, the response was
even greater.
And now almost the third largest group within
the whole OM worldwide are the Chinese.
From Malaysia.
And in all fairness, just a few from
Hong Kong.
Maybe that's why I'm here tonight, I don't
know.
But when I found out the Malaysians are
not allowed to go into mainland China, I
was very disappointed.
The Malaysian government will not allow their citizens
to go into mainland China.
Singaporeans, I think, it's a little easier.
But from what I've seen today, those of
you who have the privilege of being residents
here, in most cases are faced with one
of the most unusual challenges, perhaps in the
history of the Church.
However, whether it's that mission or some other
mission, if it's God's work, the first step
is your own life.
It's not a matter of just running out
and doing something.
The first step is always that our own
life be brought into deeper reality with Jesus
Christ.
This is why in our work we want
to remain a training program.
It's true we have many other aspects of
our work.
Especially in some Muslim countries, where we're almost
the only group functioning.
We have longer term people, they speak the
language fluently of course.
I guess maybe they are no longer in
training, though we feel God's training of course
is all of our life.
People often talk about closed doors.
For 24 years of Bible study, I've been
looking for this doctrine of the closed door.
I have not yet found it.
But if you can find it, you can
also autograph my Bible at the end of
the meeting.
Everybody said for years, Afghanistan, a closed door.
The most fanatic country.
People accepted Christ, within 24 hours they were
dead.
But God opened the way.
Gordon and Grace Magni have been there for
9 years.
Of course, they went as students.
They got into the University of Kabul.
Of course, they were very slow students, took
them 9 years.
Turkey is another so-called closed country.
No official missionaries in Turkey.
We have a brother there in one city.
After he finished at London and Oxford Universities.
He got a job in a university in
Ankara doing brain research.
Also a professor.
And in his free time, he's planting a
church among the Turks.
It's the only one of the few churches
of converted Muslims in the whole nation.
Just a handful, just a few.
So there are many aspects of our work
in which it's not just training.
And even when people are in training, when
they are working under the right supervision through
prayer, they can be used of God to
accomplish great things.
Two years before we got the ship, we
started our work in India, our main OM
field.
In the world today.
Every year there were less missionaries in India.
And we were told again and again, this
cannot be done, this cannot be done.
But we first made our priority prayer.
Secondly, we determined that the whole work must
be built on our Indian national brothers.
And that we as foreigners must serve them
and humbly work with them and under them.
And people said, but you're not going to
find the strong men of integrity to lead
this kind of work.
You say, God, is this too hard for
you?
Are not Indians capable of being disciples?
Are they some special case?
And as we began to pray together, and
as we shared these principles of spiritual life,
we discovered many Indians were more hungry for
God and these realities than any of us
who came from the West.
And that especially in the area of devotion
and worship, that they had seemingly at times
something that we often lacked from our workaholic
Western world.
And within 12 years, these Indians had reached
150 million people with the word of God.
They were reaching between 12 and 15 million
people every year, preaching, mainly preaching, but also
with literature.
Thousands went through the training program and are
now working with almost every denomination and every
major mission in all of India.
And some areas, those who were trained went
on to plant new churches of new believers
in those areas.
And today there are 300 full-time workers
with OM India.
Is discipleship possible today?
I believe it is.
And I believe that as we look out
across the world today, there is an increase
of desire, especially among young people, for taking
that which we have in our heads and
getting it down into the life, that which
we read about in the book of Acts,
the boldness and witness, the courage in claiming
great things for God, the faith to do
the impossible, the nights of prayer we read
about in Acts 12, the nights of praise
that we read about in Acts 16.
There is an increasing number of people who
are hungry for this kind of reality in
their own lives.
They are tired of the game of words.
They are tired of just going through religious
motion.
They want reality.
They want to know God.
And they want God to be controlling their
life.
I personally feel that I have a long
way to go.
And I've come to this conviction now that
I'm in the middle years of my life.
And most of the realities of discipleship must
be relearned again and again in one's life,
in different age brackets, under different circumstances.
I'm re-reading some of these books.
I say, Lord, now how does that apply
for a 20-year married man with three
teenagers?
How does this apply?
Recently I was reading a book called The
Middle Years Crisis.
I was actually feeling quite well until I
read that book.
I think that book created a new crisis.
Actually I've stopped reading it.
There are times when you have to stop
reading books and go back to this one.
Yes, discipleship is possible today.
It's not some special little weird thing way
out here for just a few little super
saints.
It's God's way of life for every believer.
It doesn't mean you have to leave your
beloved Hong Kong.
For some of you it may mean that.
Certainly it seems to be a rather crowded
place from the little I have seen.
And I'm so glad that your underground system
opened completely yesterday for my arrival.
And I just pray that as we go
from this meeting tonight, it will be in
a spirit of seeking the Lord.
Saying, Lord, what would you do with my
life?
Is there some other country?
Is there some other thing I should be
involved in right here?
Is there more that I can be doing
right in my local church?
Or even in my own church, is there
something new that I should be able to
see?
I feel that the Lord has to do
the work of world evangelism through the church.
And if at times you feel a little
discouraged, just think of that one lady, and
that one schoolboy, and that one gospel of
John, that one gospel of John, what God
was able to do.
And of course, this is only the beginning.
Let us pray.
Let's have a moment of silent prayer in
which we can make deeper commitments of our
lives to the Lord Jesus Christ even here.
Our God knows all about us, and He
loves us still.
Let us in silence just pour our hearts
out in prayer and surrender and commitment to
the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our God and Father, we thank You for
this time together.
Lord, You know I have come here in
great weakness and inadequacy.
There are so many things yet that I
must learn and relearn in my own life.
Lord, I thank You for Your great patience
with me.
I thank You for Your great love and
mercy and acceptance.
Lord, I thank You this day for the
privilege of even having some hours in this
great land to the north of us.
Lord, waken our hearts to a greater burden
of prayer.
Cause us in these days to surrender our
life in a deeper way to You.
Deliver us, God, from the subtle enslavements of
the self-life that keep us from being
what You want us to be.
Lord, fill us afresh with Your Holy Spirit
that we may be as those men and
women we read about in the Book of
Acts and that compassion and communion with Yourself
may be the marks of our life.
Strengthen Your work around the world.
Raise up and send forth more laborers into
trading and into the harvest fields.
For we pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.