Living God, these have been precious days together.
It is our prayer that the spiritual weather
within our hearts may be equal to the
weather you have given us outside.
And yet at the same time, may we
know that when it rains, actually it's just
as much a blessing as when the sun
shines.
Because that water, that rain, is the greatest
thing many parts of this earth need.
And oh Lord, may we not have the
human viewpoint of things, but may we have
the divine viewpoint.
Speak to us in this final time together
from your word, we ask in Jesus' name,
amen.
It's an awesome thing when God begins to
pour truth into our hearts, because we are
then responsible for living out these truths and
for aiming in this direction.
And I want us to look at verse
2 in Hebrews 4.
Of course, most people, many people believe Paul
wrote Hebrews.
Some say he didn't.
It's still the truth of God.
Paul was only a channel, he was only
a pipe.
You know, there's a great danger sometimes among
Christians that they begin to admire the tap,
and admire the pipe.
No doubt you have a tap in your
kitchen, water comes out of a tap.
When you're thirsty after doing something, you go
in there, what do you do?
Polish the tap?
Admire the tap?
Isn't this a lovely tap?
Now generally, a wise man wants the water.
And I'm just a tap.
Paul was a tap, a pipe, a channel,
whatever word you want to use.
So it doesn't matter whether he wrote Hebrews
or not, it's from God.
Verse 2, For unto us was the gospel
preached as well as unto them, but the
word preached did not profit them, not being
mixed with faith in them that heard it.
For we who have believed to enter into
rest, as he said, as I have sworn
in my wrath, if they shall enter into
my rest, although the works were finished from
the foundation of the world.
Then he goes on to speak about this
rest of faith.
Verse 9, There remaineth therefore a rest to
the people of God.
Verse 10, For he that is entered into
his rest is also seeked from his own
works, as God did from his.
Verse 11, Let us labor therefore to enter
into that rest, lest any man fall after
the same example of unbelief.
The word of God is living and powerful
and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing
even to the dividing ascender of soul and
spirit, the joints and marrow, and is a
discerner in the thoughts and the intents of
the heart.
Now keeping this in view, let's just realize
that all that you hear this week, whether
it's from me or Eric Hutchings or an
angel, unless it is mixed with faith, it
is of no value.
And as we come toward the end of
this first week, and we have much ministry
in our hearts and in our heads, we
must realize there comes a time when we
must mix it with faith.
If we're speaking about the victorious life, there
comes a time when we have to stop
speaking and stop listening, and appropriate by faith.
And I was wrestling with this, thinking about
the meeting, and realized that I was not
really believing God for you.
I was not really believing that something is
going to happen as a result of these
few days together.
Usually speaking, perhaps some of my leaders and
members of the board of directors say, you
waste your time in some of these small
meetings.
The other summer I went up to Dingwall,
Scotland, and I was out having some time
with the president of our board, Mr. Val
Greve from Manchester, who is a lawyer up
there.
He said, what are you doing going up
to Dingwall?
He said, you got to preach in the
strategic centers.
And I said, well that's okay.
I'll just go where the Lord leads me.
Thank you very much.
I went to Dingwall, Scotland, and you know,
we have one of the strongest prayer groups
in our whole work worldwide, right there in
Dingwall.
They may not be many.
They gather regularly for intercession and nights of
prayer.
And they committed this little meeting out nowhere
in the middle of August, the worst time
of the year.
And you know, hundreds came to that little
meeting out in Dingwall, Scotland, including pastors from
the We Free Church all over Scotland.
People drove in from the Isle of Skye,
people came in from other parts, and God
moved in that little out-of-the-way
meeting.
It wasn't that many.
Someone may say, well, you know, what are
you doing a week down in battle with
this little group of saints?
Not many university students, not many potential Hudson
Taylors in the crowd.
Of course, you never know.
But you know, I believe God sent me
here and God put me here.
And I don't believe it's in numbers.
And I believe he has something very real
and very special for many of you.
And I trust that you'll take the word
preached and mix it with faith.
If you want to try to understand Operation
Mobilization, let me just say this.
Operation Mobilization is a movement.
It started very small.
It stayed quite small for many, many years.
People see it today.
They don't see it in years and years
and years and years.
Of just being a bunch of nobodies battling
the evil one and pressing forward.
But it's a movement of people who want
to live what I have been talking about
this week, and of course much more.
And I thought before going on expanding, I
would just pick up a little where I
left off.
Just to tell you what happened to this
little group of young people who went to
Mexico.
There were only three of us on that
first trip.
Five of us on the second trip.
As they began to mix the word, these
principles we've been talking about in these days,
we're going to review them again in a
minute.
But as they began to mix it with
faith, this is what God did.
Let me give you in a few minutes
a history of what happened from those early
days.
The word spread to several different colleges.
Nights of prayer began to spread from one
college to another.
People were converted.
People came back to the Lord.
Skeptics who were about to overthrow the Christian
faith in universities came to realize through seeing
God answer prayer that he was alive.
You know, if I had to believe that
all the answers to prayer I had seen
in 20 years, thousands, thousands, that this was
coincidence, I would need more faith, more faith
than simply to believe that God is alive
and answers prayer.
I don't have that much faith.
Maybe somebody does, but I don't have that
much faith to believe that I had seen
20 years of coincidence.
Any more than I have faith that I
can go to Switzerland and find some little
bits of steel and copper, what have you,
and put it into a bucket and shake
it a few thousand times, and I'm going
to bring out a Swiss watch.
I don't have that kind of faith.
It's easier for me to believe that a
Swiss watch was built by a Swiss watchmaker.
You don't need so much faith for that,
do you?
As we look at the wonders of this
universe and the galaxies and the intricacies of
the human body, and when we think of
all the answers to prayer, it's all just
a great shout that God is God, and
He is not dead, and He is answering
prayer.
So God answered our prayers.
We prayed for labors.
He gave us labors.
We prayed for bookshops.
We opened six in two years in Mexico,
and we only did it in our holiday
period as we had to get back to
college.
We asked for faithful Mexicans, and He gave
them to us.
Then we started to claim faithful Spaniards, and
after six months in Mexico, after I graduated
from Moody Bible Institute, I went over to
Spain.
Within six months, He gave us these faithful
Spaniards.
It was these Spaniards of all places, because
Spain was closed back then, that launched Operation
Mobilization in Europe.
I remember we were having a couple of
days of prayer and some fasting in the
mountains of Madrid when God gave us the
go-ahead for Operation Mobilization.
Before that, we never had that name.
In fact, the name came to me when
I was coming back from Russia in 1961,
where I made a number of rather interesting
goofs and got myself arrested.
As I came back, I went up into
the mountains of Bavaria, and I was spending
some time on the top of a tree
singing and praising God.
It's one of the few places you can
go without disturbing anybody.
It was there, as I thought of these
great armies of Europe clashing and murdering and
butchering one another, and this name, Mobilization, somewhere
had been in my mind.
It was basically originally a World War II,
or before that term, Mobilization.
I thought, what if God could mobilize an
army to move across this country, hundreds of
young people, thousands, and then it could spill
over into the closed countries in an unorganized
way.
I went back to Spain and shared this
with these Spanish brothers.
We'd been meeting in the nights of prayer
there.
They'd already sent out secretly gospel literature to
almost everybody in all the telephone directories in
the nation, and they had many, many other
ways of getting the Word of God out
in Spain.
We opened a Catholic New Testament shop in
the center of Madrid when the land was
closed.
People couldn't believe it.
Christians were stirred by this, and people would
come and they'd see Catholic New Testaments and
Catholic Bibles, and this would really speak to
their hearts, and then if we knew that
they could be trusted, we would give them
a little card and they'd go down the
road and up a few blocks, a few
flights of stairs, through two or three doors.
There was the hottest load of Spanish Christian
Protestant literature that Spain had ever known, and
yet through that literature brought in secretly to
Spain, tremendous things took place.
I think of Daniel Gonzalez, the young Spaniard
whose life was turned upside down through the
book Calvary Road.
Daniel became the leader of our work until
it became completely nationalized and we turned it
over completely into Spain, and you know what
God has used him to plant?
Three churches.
That one brother whose life was originally turned
upside down through that one little copy of
Calvary Road.
You know, it's amazing how God uses the
printed page.
Well, that summer in 62, these Spaniards really
set the pace, and because they took over
the work in Spain, I was able to
come to Britain.
I came to Britain in February of 1962.
The first place I spoke, that was a
network conference organization, I don't think, I'm not
sure if it exists anymore, but not long
after being here, I sensed that this was
a place God wanted me to make as
my home base, and apart from Spanish, I
didn't know any other language than English.
God uses sometimes this kind of providence, but
we saw God work, and within a few
months, we had 90 English young people join
with the others around the continent, and that
summer, which was largely mass distribution, that's why
we've been stuck with that literature image, because
that first summer, we had such a short
time, everybody was so new, our burden was
to flood out 25 million pieces of literature
in seven weeks, which had never happened in
the history of missions, and God did it.
God did it.
For the next summer, we asked God to
do 10 times as much.
We asked God for 2,000 people.
People said we were crazy.
Hardly anyone ever knew about us.
Everything was against us in so many ways.
We had no money.
We had no financial resources.
Contrary to public opinion, there has never been
any big money behind this work.
Even people who know about this work, who
have big money, have hardly ever given.
God has not worked that way.
No, he may in the future.
I think it's some of the biggest gifts
we've got.
It looks like a really large sum of
money from a German youth fellowship.
It involves hundreds of young people who caught
the vision and just give their little bit,
and it adds up.
That German youth fellowship has been one of
the biggest contributors to the ship project, and
the widow's might is still God's method.
I don't know how quickly we seem to
forget that.
We saw miracle after miracle in God providing
funds for that 25 million pieces of literature,
most of which we paid for ourselves.
People don't give this stuff to you.
People think, oh, the Bible Society.
The Bible Society?
You have to buy from the Bible Society,
and we lose our discount if we don't
pay in 30 days.
And we see the Lord bring in the
funds to buy these tons and tons of
literature.
In 1963, God gave us this larger army
and 200 tons of Christian literature, and we
just praise God for all that happened.
This began to spread then into the Middle
East and 64 into India.
People said, Indians will never do this.
All we'll get is unemployed.
It very good jobs and good salaries to
come and to live and to walk by
faith in this spiritual warfare, and I can't
begin to tell you what has happened in
India.
Those that have been converted, churches that have
been stirred, so many things I could not
go into.
Again and again, our backs against the wall.
I remember times we had no money.
We didn't know where any money could come
from.
Once we were up meeting in Bolton or
Atherton up in Lancashire.
It was the end of the summer.
We had not yet paid for all of
our literature bills.
We had this policy that we'll not move
out in the spring, I mean in the
fall, in September, that's when the OMU starts,
if all our bills aren't paid.
We don't borrow money.
We don't take loans, any of this kind
of thing.
We will buy literature in 30 days, just
like any other business, and so we decide
we're not going to buy any more food.
Those who feel mature enough will fast, and
the others will eat what's left until there's
nothing left.
We're going to believe God for the breakthrough,
and we had bills at that time for
25,000 pounds, and that was an amount
of money.
Think about it.
You've heard of movements that operate on a
shoestring.
Well, I can tell you this movement doesn't
operate on a shoestring.
Half the time we can't even find the
shoestring.
But we went to prayer and fasting and
waiting upon God, and I remember in the
night of prayer, around midnight, that God filled
our hearts with faith that he would provide
us money.
He would launch us out.
This was the year we launched the first
teams into India and the main thrust into
the Middle East, and even for that conference,
we had the most horrible accommodation.
We were just jammed in the same room.
We lectured in and ate in and slept
in.
It was just very wild, very difficult days,
and I remember around midnight, we decided to
sing a song of praise and thanksgiving and
adoration because we knew God was going to
bring the victory.
A letter had come around five o'clock
from Holland to our Dutch director.
The Dutch were up in another room praying
in Dutch, and that letter had gone around
the special delivery, I don't know, but until
midnight, it didn't get open.
Around midnight, this letter got to the Dutch
director.
I decided to go up to the Dutch
and tell them that the Lord had filled
us with faith that this money was coming.
People didn't know about this need.
Prayer partners didn't know about this need, and
as I went up to go up to
the Dutch prayer meeting, Huey came down the
stairs with this letter, the biggest gift we'd
ever had from the Netherlands, over 9,000
Dutch guilders, a couple thousand pounds.
That was the break in the dam, and
after that, God brought in the funds.
Many of the young people sold their possessions.
This is one of the things that has
brought the greatest criticism to our work, especially
in the early days, because we have sold
our possessions, our lands, anything we could get
our hands on.
We even sell used postage stands because we
saw this in Acts 2, we saw this
in Acts 4, and we said, why doesn't
this happen in 1975?
Why are our homes so clogged with junk,
half of what we don't even need?
When missionaries don't have Gospels, they don't have
Bibles, they don't have even the basic tools
to do the job.
Remember World War II, when Winston Churchill said,
give us the tools and we'll finish the
job.
In so many places, the national workers around
the world want to do the job, and
they're crying unto us, give us the tools.
Every week, we have to write nationals who
are begging us for tracts and say, there
are no tracts.
Print them on leaves.
Christians have all the furniture they want in
their homes, and Christians have so many things
that they don't need.
Let them print their Gospel tracts on leaves.
19 years ago, God spoke to me and
said, you're never going to buy a piece
of clothing again.
I said, what?
You're never going to buy a piece of
clothing again.
You're going to trust me.
Others can, you cannot.
You know what a little tract is?
Others can, you cannot.
I don't have that policy for the other
people in the world.
It's something a little similar.
And for 19 years, of course now it
doesn't mean much because people have heard it,
and of course I have more clothing and
I know what to do with it.
So that's past now.
But in those days, the early days, no
one knew about this, and yet God provided.
And in OM worldwide, with 900 people on
a full-time year program, almost 2,000
in the summer, we hardly ever buy clothing.
Because God brings it in.
Admittedly, it's easier to pray for that in
an affluent country where there's extra clothing around.
But of course, a lot of young people
don't want to wear second-hand clothing.
To me, it's a good energy to wear
second-hand clothing that may not fit.
I've never had anything that fit.
Where do you find anything that fits someone
my size?
I'm so out of proportion.
I can't even find shoes that fit my
feet.
So I couldn't play tennis much.
Playing one game in Rhode Island, my toes
were bleeding.
But it's just so thrilling to see God
work.
People have said, well, this fellow's a fanatic.
My early days, I was a little more,
perhaps slightly more extreme than now.
I wouldn't buy soap.
I used to go to the shower in
the YMCA, Lord, I'm trusting you, there's got
to be some soap.
Somebody's left some soap.
Lead me to the right shower stall, oh
Lord.
For one year, every time I went, someone
left me a bar of soap.
God works like that.
I was listening to Corrie Ten Boom this
morning.
You didn't know that she was here.
You missed her, sorry.
But I was listening to Corrie Ten Boom
this morning on tape, and she was sharing
how she tends to worry, and she was
sharing how she's learned how prayer can combat
worry.
And she was with her sister in the
concentration camp, and she had a cold, and
she said, I don't have a handkerchief.
And her sister said, well, let's pray for
a handkerchief.
Corrie Ten Boom was like, how silly, how
can we pray for a handkerchief?
Nope.
Sister said we're going to pray for a
handkerchief.
Daughter had a prayer for a handkerchief.
Corrie was sort of, you know, half smiling,
praying for a handkerchief.
Suddenly there's a shout outside the window in
the concentration camp, and there's a lady outside
the window.
Corrie, I've got something for you.
What?
Yeah, look, it's a gift, a handkerchief.
This lady in the concentration camp had found
an old sheet and cut up in pieces
and felt burdened to give them to her
friends, and as she was doing it, the
Lord spoke to her heart, give one to
Corrie Ten Boom.
Meanwhile, Corrie's sister, Lord Jesus, you know how
they say it in Dutch, provide the handkerchief
in some such way.
God is concerned, and I could tell you
hundreds of stories, call it fanaticism, call it
whatever you want.
I did it because I believe that God
wanted me to put the little money I
had into Gospels, into Bibles, into literature, because
I believe men are lost, because I believe
the book of Acts, because I believe the
words of the Lord Jesus, except you forsake
all that you have, how can you be
my disciples?
I remember once, one of the very first
dates with my wife.
She wasn't my wife then, and I never
thought I'd ever find a girl that would
marry me with all my crazy ideas, but
I told her in the very beginning of
meeting, as we were studying the book of
Acts together, giving out tracts and going house
to house, I did everything I could to
scare her away.
This was my method with women.
I told her she'd probably end up being
cooked in New Guinea in a cannibal's pot.
She wasn't interested in me in the beginning,
that was pretty wild for her, but she
was a bit challenged by the whole thing.
I said, I'm not going to spend any
money on you until we're married.
Then of course I had the obligation, because
I'm getting my food at school, you're getting
your food at this, she was staying in
a hostel, so no need to spend any
other money.
Food and raising, content.
Of course there were times when this became
a little complicated, once we were sitting on
the beach in Chicago, and we were talking
and sharing, and lunchtime came, and I often
skipped lunch.
I'd done a lot of fasting in those
days, and I thought, well this may not
be right to inflict this upon her.
Maybe she doesn't want to miss lunch.
So I committed to the Lord.
Lord, you know I don't want to spend
any money.
Every ten pence is fifty more of gospel
tracts, and I don't want to spend any
money.
We'll get a good meal when we get
back home tonight.
It's not that we're not eating, but Lord,
your will.
Maybe she should have a sandwich or two.
Committed to the Lord.
There we sat.
Some young people came behind us, had lunch,
munching away, sandwiches, apples.
Stomachs began going, Lord!
I cried out.
Then they left, and they threw a big
bag, a big American paper sack, into the
dustbin.
And I don't remember what I said to
Drina, but I went over the dustbin with
great courage, and I took out the bag,
and there were sandwiches that had not been
unwrapped.
There was fruit that had not been touched,
and she had her lunch.
Now if I only saw this once every
alternate week here, you know, it's a coincidence.
I have seen God's hand for twenty years
working this way.
Whether it's fifty thousand pounds to purchase an
ocean-rowing ship from the Danish government who
thought we were crazy because we weren't a
reputable shipping company.
When I signed the contract, we hadn't even
organized the company.
We had no company.
When they saw this money come in from
all over the world right the day it
was due, the day before it was due
in Denmark, they knew that God was God.
We were dealing maybe with atheists, or whether
we're praying for toothpaste.
Of course, I'm sure that when most people
die often, generally needs them to buy it.
But at least we should pray before we
spend the Lord's money.
We're to be faithful stewards of God's money.
And Jesus Christ and the apostles and the
word of God talks more about some of
these things than most of us dare to
admit, because the Bible is a very practical
book.
Anyway, this kind of lifestyle, this vision, this
emphasis began to spread, especially amongst students, thinking
people.
They realized that Jesus Christ in many, many
ways was a revolutionary.
And God gave us those Indians, and then
God gave us some Turks, and then God
gave us some Arabs.
And the work just continued to explode every
summer, every holiday.
And then, of course, the year program began
to grow from 200 to 400, and now
some 800 or 900 young people.
Many failures, many setbacks, many mistakes, and yet
a demonstration in the 20th century that these
principles we have been talking about do not,
in fact, work.
It's not evangelical talk.
It's not something we let go through our
heads at a conference and put into our
notebook and say, well, isn't it wonderful?
The Christian faith is certainly true, but it's
something that gets into our spiritual bloodstream, and
we begin to live lives that are different
for his honor and for his glory.
Well, there's a lot more I'd love to
say.
Some of the things that have happened with
the ship.
You just can hardly believe the answers to
prayer.
Some of the things that have happened in
the Muslim world, some of the things that
have happened in countries where I can't even
give you the name of the country.
I don't know if you knew that the
ship had actually visited the Maldive Islands, 99
% Muslim, no Maldive Christian.
Closed country, island.
The Ministry of Education sponsored the visit of
the ship.
700 New Testaments went out among these people.
The young people started to read English 15
years ago just in preparation for our visit,
and oh, what God did right there in
this most closed, forgotten, there is no Christian
literature or scriptures in the Maldive language.
Most people don't even know where it is.
Actually, it's just southwest off the corner of
India.
By keeping these things in mind, all the
principles we've seen in the life of Paul,
all that we've been talking about all week,
keeping this in mind, what should we do?
I've discovered that this tape is shorter than
I thought, and I wonder if anybody has
another tape.
Do you have another tape?
Thank you.
We've got one here.
It's a demonstration cassette.
Thank you.
With these things in mind, all that we've
talked about all week, and just as using
OM in the way of illustration, and there
are many other illustrations we could give from
other movements, other people, other spiritual works, other
men of God, I think we're now at
the stage, and this is my last opportunity
to speak with you, where we need to
take an inventory.
We need to really get personal now in
these closing moments and take inventory.
We perhaps have been doing this all week.
Then let's just do it in the way
of review.
Let's ask ourselves some basic questions, based on
what we've heard from the life of Paul
and from the teaching of Paul, which of
course we've only touched on considering all that
he's given to us.
Number one, you may want to make a
list of these.
You may want to review this list from
time to time.
Number two, how is my motivation?
How is my motivation?
A.
W.
Poser said, your Christian life can get no
higher than the motive that drives it.
Your Christian life can get no higher than
the motive that drives it.
And we see Paul saying, the love of
Christ, we have to pay more attention to
motivation.
It's so easy, as we mentioned, as we
saw, to do things for the praise of
men, to be seen by others.
We come into a spiritual environment, and so
of course we tend to be more spiritual.
We get into another environment, and we tend
to be pushed by that environment.
In these days, the man who lives for
Christ has to be a little bit stubborn.
He has to put his foot down and
say, here I stand, when it rains, when
it blows, when the sun is melting and
I'm burning up, here I stand on God's
word.
Now, I know the devil, of course, can
use our stubbornness, and I don't think we
should be stubborn on minor points.
I don't think we should be stubborn in
dividing one against the other as Christians.
I'm not talking about that so often, and
this so confuses me.
Christians have so little contact with the world,
in reaching out into the world, that they
always caught up among themselves, dividing and subdividing
and arguing and splitting hairs over every peripheral
issue one could ever think of.
The same person who's found blabbing so much
at times among Christians, he barely opens his
mouth out with people in the world.
The fact is, he's scared.
We get very secure among the saints, but
emotionally we're still the same insecure babe in
Christ we were ten years ago, and there's
a danger of becoming spiritual monastics.
And you know, when you get involved with
people in the world, you know, just get
down.
If you have a chance on your way
home, most of you going north, would you
go through Blackwall Tunnel and spend one half
an hour and drive around the east end
of London?
Because I want to tell you, that is
a different world, and we need to be
conscious of that world.
There are areas there where there are tens
of thousands of immigrants, and don't look down
on these immigrants because it wasn't so many
years ago when British people were living in
the same flats and they were living lives
just as low and lower.
Don't make the mistake of thinking everything is
so bad now, oh if only everything would
be like it used to be in Britain.
If you say that, obviously you've never studied
any history of your country, certainly not Charles
Dickens or any other famous historian.
Sin has always been in this country.
Hypocrisy has always been in this country.
Now the great problem is it's all becoming
more legal and more open, and it seems
to be just bursting out.
So of course in some ways it is
getting worse.
I would argue against that.
When you go back into the white slavery
that took place not so many years ago
in London, and child labor, and oh, if
you've read any of the history of London,
history is my favorite subject, it's the word
of God.
Now we have these masses of immigrants, and
the way they live, they're chained into little
rooms, and many of these people are very
emotional, and so every family has desperate needs,
every single family has desperate needs.
Recently a young girl was made pregnant by
her boyfriend, which of course is just a
normal course of events these days, and the
mother, these were probably Greeks, very emotional, the
mother insisted that the boy marry the girl
and he wouldn't do it.
She just exploded.
They were in a chip shop, and she
reached and took the fine pan filled with
boiling oil and poured it on this young
man's head.
Can you imagine?
He ran around in utter screaming and agony
for an hour, two hours before he was
taken to the hospital and died.
Little family domestic problem.
Many of the murders and killings in London,
and they're happening all the time, in Detroit
where I had my conference in North America
recently, happen within the families.
Now when you start getting involved with people,
drunkards, alcoholics, think of people's domestic problems.
You know, some of the problems you think
you have are going to become mighty small,
and when Christians are not involved in reaching
out into the lives of others, I don't
know why, maybe because of an emotional need,
then they tend to get involved more in
picking other Christians apart.
Oh, look at this speck in Sam's eye.
Oh, look at this green and pink and
purple speck in Susie's eye.
Oh, look at this church down the road
here.
Do you know what happened at the breaking
of bed last Sunday?
And oh, do you know what the deacon's
wife has done over there?
And did you see that girl, she was
there at the breaking of bed and she
didn't have a hat on.
And Christians get all caught up in all
kinds of periphery, secondary things, and some man
down the road, five doors down, has just
pulled a gun out of the dresser drawer
and shot his wife.
And if that Christian had done a little
door-to-door work and had a little
concern for their neighbors, it would have never
happened.
It's been our privilege to see in our
work many people saved from suicide.
Murders have been prevented.
You know, when you come on the MD
Logos, it's not a group of semi-school
graduates.
These are rough, tough, Satan.
Our chief electrician was only converted at 46
years of age.
He lived in such perversion and such sin,
such sodom before that, that he cannot talk
about it in public.
He's also been mentally ill.
And God saved him at 46, and he
has one of the most beautiful, solid testimonies
on that ship.
He was just sitting in a meeting I
took in Southport just a year ago.
Nice job, he left the sea, no more
of that.
Nice job, factory, good pay.
He walked into my meeting in Southport, and
God hit him.
Now he's on the ship.
Always had battles.
It hasn't been easy.
Electrics is the biggest problem we have on
the ship, on the technical side.
And you know, he's just one of the
souls to Christ, and God has so used
him, right from the beginning.
Many of these young men have tattoos up
and down their arms.
You can't take those off.
Our first captain, sailing captain, Bjorn Christensen, he
was an alcoholic for 15 years.
He was lying in a hospital bed in
Norway.
He was dead.
His heart was enlarged, all kinds of problems
because of alcohol.
He'd already been separated from his first wife.
Some little nurse said, you know, have faith
in God.
He's able to work.
And he did.
He was saved.
He was raised up through healing and through
surgery.
And he became the first sailing captain on
the Embry-Lagos.
God is working.
God is doing great things in our day.
And in the midst of it all, we
need to search our hearts and search our
motives and move into action.
The second question, how is our love and
compassion?
Actually, I've already got into that.
How is our love and compassion?
How important it is to realize this is
the crux of the issue.
1 Corinthians 13, penned by the Apostle Paul.
I believe as we have love for these
people around us, we're going to move.
You may say, look, I have to be
honest.
I don't have love for people.
Okay.
You and I can join the same club.
I don't either.
In myself, oftentimes people put me off.
Trees, birds, squirrels, wonderful.
Stars, tremendous.
Dogs, lovely.
Cats, fine.
People, my only problem is with people.
Animals, never had any trouble getting on with
animals.
I don't know if any of you are
in that category.
People who say one thing and do another.
People who seem to live in their own
little selfish world.
And yet I can tell you born again,
something came into me that is supernatural.
The Holy Spirit of the living God, the
third person of the Trinity.
And the Bible says that he, the Holy
Spirit produces fruit, love, joy, peace.
And the most unusual thing I've not been
able to explain in my wretched life is
that all these 20 years, I have never
found a person yet I could not love
by God's grace, did not love and like.
Some people say to me, well, I love,
but I don't like him.
What do you mean by that kind of
schizophrenic remark?
If you love someone, you must be learning
to like them.
Sure, there may be things that bother you
about them.
But love covers a multitude of things.
And so I understand basically what they're saying
when they say, well, I don't like that
person.
There are initially things that sort of put
them off.
But as you love them by faith, taking
a stand on God's word and denying your
silly emotions, you will begin to like them.
I have a lecture, some of you may
have heard the tape, 18 ways how to
learn to love someone.
Too many people think that in the Christian
life, everything is like putting a funnel in
your ear.
You just put a big funnel in your
ear and tap that into a deeper life
convention.
And then you get a deeper life.
And after that, you live for Christ.
My Bible and Martin Lloyd Jones stands on
this front, many of the greatest men of
God I've ever read stand on this front.
Many of the basic Christian principles must be
learned.
That is not a denial of supernatural power.
God gives supernatural power to learn some of
these lessons.
Otherwise we're robots.
And we can learn to love people by
the power of the Holy Spirit.
Some victories come instantaneous in our lives.
We've all had that.
Deliverance.
Praise God, I believe in deliverance.
But other lessons are learned through the rough
and tumble of life.
And the Holy Spirit, one of his greatest
works is to make us humble, loving learners.
One man once said, you know, any fool
can learn by experience, but it takes a
wise man to learn by instruction.
That's why we have such a big book.
It was just a matter of memorizing one
deeper life phrase or getting some special formula.
And after that, everything would be automatic.
All God would have had to given us
was two pop cards, one with John 3,
16, and the other one was Romans 8,
1, or whatever other favorite verse about the
victorious life you like.
But he didn't.
He gave us a whole book of instruction.
And Paul said, I give you the whole
counsel of God.
And I believe though the Holy Spirit gives
us love and produces love at the same
time, it is not a contradiction.
It is a paradox to say we must
learn to love one another.
I wish I had more time to go
into that.
The third question I want to ask myself,
as I reflect back on Paul and his
teaching and his life, how is my worship
and praise?
How is my worship and praise?
I'm never impressed if people have great public
praise meetings with all the guitars and all
the emotion.
If when I talk to them, I discover
they would not learn this in their own
private devotions and in their own private life.
I believe they're being deceived.
I know young people that'll come together, man,
you get some guitars and you get some
of this amplifying equipment, and man, you get
the devil to praise Jesus in such means.
Don't think he doesn't.
Try to deceive us because he comes as
an angel of light.
And every ugly thing in this world is
being done in the name of Jesus.
Did you know that?
There are men and women committing adultery in
the name of Jesus.
There have been murders committed in the name
of Jesus.
There are people that say the name of
Jesus repeatedly, over and over again, Jesus, Jesus,
go on and on and on, until they
go into hallucinations and hysterics, and boy, then
they really get wiped out.
And I've seen things in the religious world
that I'm afraid I've been too involved in
for 20 years.
A test of whether a man knows worship
or praise is his private life.
His private quiet time.
What he does is he drives down the
road in his car.
What he does is he spends hours in
that kitchen, hours cleaning the crazy house, picking
up after all the children.
That's when we praise him.
Do you know there's praise in your life?
When everything's going wrong, to praise him.
There may be sorrow outwardly, but in the
heart there's the anchor of rejoicing.
There's nothing wrong with sorrow.
There's nothing wrong with tears.
I praise God that somehow in his mercy,
he has taught me to cry.
I always have great sympathy for people who
don't know how to weep.
I don't point a judging finger at them,
because I know emotionally people have had experiences
in the past that they no longer can
weep.
I've had people fall down in counseling and
say, I cannot cry.
I haven't cried for 15 years.
Doctors will tell you that people who don't
know how to cry and don't know how
to express their emotions, they tend to bottle
it up and make them develop well.
There's about 50 illnesses they can bring on
themselves.
Why is it that we're so slow in
expressing ourselves, so slow in opening up, so
slow in real fellowship?
How many days have gone by here and
I wonder if there aren't some of you
right now, you know very well you haven't
had any real fellowship yet this week.
Really when you open your heart and you
share the things that are bothering you and
you really have, as they say in the
States, a gut level conversation with somebody.
You can't do this with that many.
I think one of the biggest problems today
among Christians are links where the minds are
basically psychological that they've never learned to share.
I've found it so helpful to let my
life be an open book.
I refuse to bottle things up.
I know that I will become a sick
man sooner or later.
Yet we're so slow to learn this.
How is our praise?
How is our worship?
How is our fellowship?
The next question, how is our discipline or
how is my discipline?
This seems to be the last thing that
people want in our day.
Discipline.
This has been one of the main principles
of our whole movement and if it wasn't
for this discipline no matter what other experiences
young people have.
And you know in OM we have young
people about every brand of crisis experience ever
described.
Some of you may be somewhat charismatic in
your orientation.
I haven't tried to figure out who you
are.
It doesn't interest me that much.
Some of you may be somewhat charismatic in
your orientation.
Maybe you believe part of the answer is
to be baptized in the Holy Spirit.
I was listening to a lecture on this
yesterday.
We have many, many, many young people.
Maybe 40% of all the young people
on OM have had such an experience.
And some of them maybe have spoken in
tongues after.
That's of course another major controversy still going
on.
We have more on OM.
You know what?
When the chips are down, when the trumpet
is blown, when the call to battle comes,
you hardly can tell the difference between one
deeper life group and the other deeper life
group because so often we all fall flat
on our face.
And we've been 20 years watching it.
And it's those charismatic young people of that
background and those of the other backgrounds, you
know, at least in our work, we all
have come to agree, you know, we've got
to walk daily with Jesus.
Any crisis that does not lead to a
process becomes an absence.
What good is that going to do?
That's poison.
God may have given you a double-triple
blessing three years ago.
He may have healed you of being cross
-eyed.
I don't know what has happened in your
life.
But that is no guarantee that today you
are going to live in victory.
And this is why people have had, and
listen, I don't say this lightly, people have
had emotional experiences and allow that to lead
them into a more emotional type of faith,
75% of the time end up in
immorality.
And I could give you facts along that
line you'd drop from your chairs.
We saw in the Indonesian revival, we've seen
in Mexico, the whole church in Latin America
is one string of immorality from one end
of it coming to the other.
Because you see, if you don't learn discipline,
you've had it.
Paul said, I buffeted my body and bring
it into subjection, lest after preaching to others
I become a reprobate.
Paul said that, and he had a few
crisis experiences, went into the heavens.
There must be discipline.
There must be the buffeting of the body.
There must be some rules in the game.
2 Timothy chapter 2 says we've got to
run the race according to the rules.
Keith Miller, who wrote the book Taste of
New Life, who's considered being rather free, you'd
hardly call him a regimented man of the
18th century.
You know what he said?
Keith Miller said, in a situation where a
man and a woman, apart from the husband
and wife, are together with one another over
a long period of time, it is very
seldom that immorality does not come in.
That's after a man has been many, many,
many, many years in the church, who is
very, very open-minded.
We end up being considered old-fashioned because
we have a few rules over the boys
and the girls and where we sleep and
where we go and the dating and all
this jazz.
And probably the discipline we've had along this
line has freed us from being destroyed, because
young people get very emotional.
I don't know if any of you have
read the book The Devil and Mr. Smith.
There's a young Mr. Smith there, I'm sorry
about that.
There's a few million other Mr. Smiths, so
don't get a neurosis on that.
But this is a true story.
It's written by a friend of mine who's
a very, very honest and ethical man.
And this is a young man in the
southern part of the United States who was
the son of a pastor.
He saw so much hypocrisy in his church.
He was in one of these more emotional
-style churches, always looking for the next vision
or the next dream and who knows what.
He saw so much immorality.
Almost every visiting evangelist left two or three
girls pregnant in the church.
And I've heard reports like that from many
circles.
In this country, not so far from here,
there was a group not so long ago
in which women were giving themselves to the
men in sex and it was quote, ministry
to the body.
Sounds nice.
In Germany, things more wild than that are
going on.
Anyway, Mr. Smith saw so much immorality in
the church.
In the guise of this and that.
He became a follower of Satan.
He left his father, he left the church,
and he became a worshipper of Satan.
He joined the Satanist society of California.
He saw young girls put their fingers off
and offer them up as offerings to the
devil.
I don't even recommend reading this book.
The third chapter in this book, I started
to get ill.
I flipped to the end and read the
more positive part.
He was walking down the beaches of California.
He had soaked his body in petrol, or
kerosene I think, and he was deciding the
final sacrifice to Satan.
He was about to strike the match when
somehow a group of people had been interceding
for years, crying for this young man's soul,
and there on the beach of California he
was saved and is a preacher of the
gospel today.
But how many others have been switched off
some brand of Christianity because it wasn't consistent,
because it may have had experience but no
discipline.
It may have had nothing but no responsibility.
And because Christians can be deceived, like the
man who got the prophecy that he had
the wrong wife, we in the church of
Jesus Christ must go back to the discipline
of the New Testament.
And that first is self-discipline.
Controlling our eyes, controlling our minds, taking a
stand, realizing we are weak and linking with
that adversity, to avoid all appearance of evil.
All appearance of evil.
You know we had a racket in California,
do you know what a racket is?
A group of gangsters working together on a
tennis racket.
And this gangster group in California, they worked
on clergymen.
That was their specialty, clergymen.
This just shows how subtle and vicious Satan
is.
And they would send beautiful girls to these
clergymen for counseling.
You know, when the beautiful girls, the knockouts,
come to me for counseling I say, excuse
me very much, yes, here's a copy of
my book, and this is my wife, you
can talk to her.
I'm not taking any girls into some room
and counseling publicly, I may spend a few
minutes talking to them.
And these girls would go into the pastor's
house and study.
It was all set up.
They knew when the wife wasn't home.
And they seduced the pastor into sex.
And when they got the pastor in bed,
their co-worker came in with a camera
and got pictures in the bedroom.
They blackmailed pastors all over California.
Because these pastors would lose their job, they'd
lose everything.
And they paid thousands and thousands of dollars
to keep those pictures from being released.
You say the devil's not clever?
You're in Christianity's game?
And I tell you, if you go out
of this place determined to be a soldier
of Jesus Christ, you may get more opposition
in your Christian life than you've ever had
before.
The weapons of our warfare are not carnal,
but mighty unto God.
Alan Redplant, speaking to a group of Christians
some time ago, said our greatest problem in
Great Britain is blanket victory.
How are you doing that?
Blanket victory.
You know what that is?
Getting the blanket off in the morning and
getting up out of bed early.
I love sleep.
I fell asleep once standing up.
I love sleep.
And if you're not careful, at the end
of your life, you will have slept one
-third or more of your entire life away.
Down.
Spent it laying down with your eyes shut,
doing nothing.
Most of us get too much sleep.
And I believe with all my heart, this
is the area where we need this.
We're all different.
I don't judge people.
Some people need eight hours.
Some people can do with But to get
up early in the morning and to get
into God's word and memorize God's word is
to me the crux of the spiritual warfare.
Oswald J.
Smith speaking to our conference just a couple
of years ago, sharing how he hardly missed
his quiet time, but a few times since
he was a teenager.
He's now 80-some years of age.
He believes that quiet time is the most
important thing for feeding your spiritual life.
It's not an automatic remedy.
There are many, many other things, but it's
basic.
It's basic.
I find that I'm naturally lazy.
This is why I get people to help
me get up.
Oh, I find it terrifically hard.
At the end of the morning, I was
actually praying.
You know, when you're half asleep, you're not
normal.
I was praying at a semi-sleep stage
that this guy would not come to the
door that morning and knock.
No, no, that prayer didn't get answered because
he knocked and I had to get up.
You don't like to leave two people standing
outside the door waiting for you.
For an hour, they're liable to come in
and drag you out.
You know, it's amazing what the false cults
do.
You ever read the life of Herbert W.
Armstrong, one of the biggest false prophets in
the world today?
Producer of Plain Truth, I call it Crooked
Truth magazine.
I gave a sample to a brother this
morning.
Their organization is now paying the news stands
in London to give him away.
They believe in literature.
They put a rack of them free of
charge in front of the newsstand.
For everyone this newsstand man can give away,
he gets paid.
Their subscription is now three million.
Three million copies of Plain Truth.
And this false prophet was so determined to
get victory over sleep that he paid a
man a dollar if he did an effective
job of waking him up every morning.
And he hired a big bruiser, a big
guard, come to the door and come in
and get him out of bed.
And stay in there until he was completely
clothed.
And if in any way Herbert W.
Armstrong got back in the bed, God didn't
get his dollar.
Well, I can tell you, he never got
in the bed.
And that man collected a dollar every morning.
The world does that.
The false cults do that.
But Christians, you can't even get them out
of bed any more than a cup of
tea, unless it's after 7.30. And I
believe that every morning, when it's time to
get up and get in God's word, you
are saying, whether you admit it or not,
Jesus, I love you or I don't love
you.
Because he says, if you love me, keep
my commands.
And how many commands do we have about
getting into God's word, about disciplining our bodies?
I find the best thing in the morning
is a little exercise.
Even more than a cup of tea.
Get your whole body moving, your blood circulating,
your organs going.
You go out and walk.
Those of you who are older, we have
had people come and tell us that their
health was deteriorating, they never took on any
kind of exercise program, you know, there's no
time for that, until the doctor said, you
either exercise or you're going to be dead
within two years.
Boy, that thing really went into orbit.
What they wouldn't do for Jesus, they'd do
to stay alive a few more years in
this crazy mixed up planet.
God has given you a physical body, and
it's linked with your spiritual life, it's linked
all together, and this is an area where
we need discipline.
And one of the great sins, Billy Graham
is one of the few who dares to
speak about it, is the sin of gluttony.
The sin of gluttony.
Now at a conference like this, generally, you
know, we're a little bit constrained, you know,
people are watching, and of course I don't
know how much is going into the silver
plate, I've never seen that kind of a
system, I think it's quite good.
So, you know, we're all a bit constrained,
but I believe with all my heart, and
each one has to stand personally before God,
it has nothing to do necessarily with weight,
you can be a skinny little glutton, that's
right, I've seen them.
Some people have, well the doctor told me
what I have is a high octane combustion
engine, anything you put in it will burn
it up, it's a tremendous cover up for
gluttony.
And I believe the sin of gluttony is
to be equated with the sin of alcoholism,
I believe it's equal with many other sins.
On the other hand, I believe it's just
as simple to become neurotic about food, and
to judge others, and to develop tremendous guilt
feelings.
That's just as bad.
And I'm a natural for that.
Once you get high principles in your life,
you can follow it up with the biggest
overdose of guilt you could ever think of.
That's where we need the spiritual balance.
How is your discipline?
Are you running the race?
Paul said, I so run.
I so run.
When I think of these athletes who train
to go into the Olympics, and recently I
was reading a women's sports magazine.
I tell you, I pick this thing up
in an airplane, I don't buy such magazines.
Women's sports, and there was a summary of
Billie Jean King's latest exercise program.
Now as far as I'm concerned, I've read
a little about her, she's already won everything
you can think of in tennis, but after
winning all that, this was just a few
months ago, she went into a 17 day
exercise program.
You wouldn't believe what she did.
For 10 hours a day, she knocked herself
silly.
She got on a bicycle, when you change
the various levers, it changes the bike, so
it's just like pedaling uphill, and even she
fell off the bike.
And three girls with her disciplined themselves for
17 days, their whole bodies right with pain.
Why?
A corruptible crown.
And Paul said, I so run for that
incorruptible crown.
Why aren't we running?
Spirits, men, running the race.
Quickly, how is your boldness and witness?
We saw that in the life of the
apostle Paul.
And it would be easy to forget it.
To me, finding Christians without Christian literature, without
tracts, and without gospels, is worse than finding
them without clothing.
Maybe I'm an extremist on that point.
And all the need is so great.
Some of you know I wrote a book
on literature evangelism, I don't even have copies
here.
And I'd be happy to send that to
you as a gift, pointing out dozens of
ways that you can be involved with literature
distribution without becoming high pressure, you know, and
becoming unnatural.
And I'd be happy to send that to
you.
Then how is your attitude toward suffering and
hardship?
We saw how real this was in the
life of the apostle Paul.
And God is so concerned about our attitudes.
Very, very concerned.
And God is concerned about sins of the
disposition.
See, sometimes outwardly there can be a great
big smile and a big evangelical handshake, but
inwardly there are the snakes and the crocodiles
and there's the bitterness and the resentment.
And it just surprises me when Christians can
go around with bitterness toward anybody.
You're just hurting yourself.
Maybe somebody's walked on you, maybe somebody's mistreated
you, maybe you feel you're neglected, maybe you
feel a dozen things, but when you maintain
even a root of bitterness, you are hurting
yourself.
Not just spiritually, beloved, physically.
Doctors tell us.
Bitterness creates all kinds of tensions in the
body and other illnesses called psychosomatic illnesses, but
they're real, they're not just in the head.
A psychosomatic illness doesn't mean it's going away.
How are you doing in dealing with dispositional
sins?
Lastly, I just wanted to bring this out.
As we think about these things and as
we want to press on in this kind
of life, I think basically I can set
up how it's done in three words.
I wrote that little formula and I've worked
with different people in different ways, but these
three words have to be involved somewhere, even
if you don't pronounce them.
First, the cross.
We've got to be willing to embrace the
cross.
You all know Romans 6.6, but let's,
as we come to the close of our
time together, just read that.
Romans 6.6. We
know Romans 6.7 and 8, how important
it is in understanding the victorious life.
Knowing this, that our old man is crucified
with him and that the body of sin
might be destroyed and henceforth we should not
serve sin.
The cross.
You can have a whole message on it.
I don't think there's anyone here that hasn't
heard a message on the cross.
You know where you've been if you haven't,
but are you appropriate?
One of the reasons at times I feel
the burden to preach so strongly what I
feel the Bible says in every aspect, rather
than taking the whole message on the subject
of the cross, is because I believe until
we have higher goals in the things of
the Spirit, I believe until we see ourselves
as we really are, and Billy Graham says
that's the greatest obstacle to our sanctification, until
that happens we will not go back to
the cross the way we should.
We'll only go back for a look.
I don't want you to go back for
a look.
I want you to go back to appropriate
your death sentence.
I am crucified with Jesus Christ.
Secondly, resurrection.
The Christian is not left at the cross,
even though his whole life is a crucified
life, but there's resurrection.
We are seated with Jesus Christ in the
heavens.
He is our all.
He is our everything.
We, according to Colossians, are complete in him.
I wish I had time to give my
wife's testimony, but before we were married, she
was raped, her body and her mind and
her head with four major psychosomatic illnesses.
She was taking pills.
She was going this doctor, that doctor.
She came from a very bad background.
Her father was killed.
Her second father didn't like her, threw her
out of the home.
She was beaten, all kinds of wild things.
She was emotionally a really mixed up girl,
even though she knew Christ.
Migraine headaches, back trouble, heart trouble, heart murmurs,
man.
It came to the point where I knew
we couldn't get married.
I would never minister enough to her needs,
unloving wretch that I was.
In the quiet of her own room, after
months of soul agony, she came to the
place where she knew she was complete in
Jesus Christ.
It wasn't Jesus plus George, Jesus plus a
husband, Jesus plus success, Jesus plus this, that.
So many Christians that way.
It was Jesus plus this, Jesus plus acceptance,
Jesus plus doing this, Jesus plus husband, Jesus
plus wife.
And so often, we won't experience the victory
that God wants us to experience until it's
just Jesus.
Not that he doesn't add many of those
things.
He does.
But it's water above the glass.
And in the quiet of her own room,
in a sense, she fell in love in
a deeper way with the Lord Jesus and
experienced his resurrection power, his completeness.
And she woke up the next morning completely
healed of those four sicknesses, went back to
the doctor for confirmation, cardiograph, and all the
rest.
The rest of faith, the sufficiency of Christ,
the resurrection power that is available as we
come to the cross.
And thirdly, the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
Paul was the one who wrote.
You see, this is why we got to
keep it in balance.
The one who wrote all this about discipline,
all this about the warfare, all of this
about prayer, he's the main one who gives
us a command in Scripture about the Holy
Spirit.
One of the few commands in all of
Scripture about the Holy Spirit.
Be ye filled with the Spirit.
The book of Ephesians.
Be not drunk with wine, be filled with
the Spirit.
And of course, this is a very controversial
thing.
I haven't met anyone in the Christian Church
that hasn't read at least two books on
the Holy Spirit.
So I will just leave those words of
Billy Graham with you.
I don't care how you get it, but
get it.
Be ye filled with the Spirit.
It's not the end, but it's the beginning.
Just as the cross and the resurrection life,
it's all the beginning of the Christian warfare.
It doesn't mean everything's going to be easier,
it may in fact be harder.
The crucified life, the resurrected life, the life
of the fullness of the Holy Spirit is
the normal Christian life.
Forever believe it.
Whatever gifts may follow, whatever way God believes
you, this is the normal Christian life.
And it's this that gives us the power
and the strength to be soldiers and disciples
and intercessors and witnesses.
Not automatically, not because we become robots, but
because we have a power beyond ourselves.
The word preached was of no value, because
it was not mixed with faith.
Will it be said the word was preached
in battle the last week of July, 1975.
But for some, it was of no value,
because it was not mixed with faith.
I have done my part.
I've shared what God put on my heart.
Now my part, the second part, is the
same as yours.
I must believe.
I must believe that God is going to
make this more real in me.
I must ask God the specific things he
wants me to do in the days to
come, and we need to be very specific,
even in making lists, and then believe God
is going to do it.
And if we fail, we get up, we
believe again.
Every failure will be a springboard to success.
And in this way, we'll be Book of
Acts Christians.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, you know each one of our
hearts, you know each one of our lives.
Just guide us now as we wait upon
you.
Can we spend a few moments in silent
prayer?