Turn to 1 John chapter 3, epistle of
John, 1 John chapter 3.
What a powerful epistle this is.
For this is the message that ye heard
from the beginning, that we should love one
another.
Not as Cain, who was of that wicked
one, and killed his brother.
And why killed he him?
Because his own works were evil, and his
brother's righteous.
Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate
you.
We know that we have passed from death
unto life, because we love the brethren.
He that loveth not his brother abideth in
death.
Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and
ye know that no murderer hath eternal life
abiding in him.
By this proceed we the love of God,
because he laid down his life for us.
And we ought to lay down our lives
for the brethren.
But whosoever hath this world's goods, and seeth
his brother at need, and shutteth up his
compassion from him.
Very strong, isn't it?
How dwelleth the love of God in him?
My little children, let us not love in
word, neither in tongue, but in deed, and
in truth.
And by this we know that we are
of the truth, and shall assure our hearts
before him.
For if our heart condemn us, God is
greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.
Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then
have we confidence toward God.
Whatever we ask, we receive of him, because
we keep his commandments, and do those things
that are pleasing in his sight.
This is his commandment.
That we should believe on the name of
his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another,
as he gave us commandment.
And he that keepeth his commandments, dwelleth in
him, and he in him.
And by this we know that he abideth
in us, by the Spirit whom he hath
given us.
I want to speak in this session about
relationships.
Building lifetime and long-term relationships.
We've just finished remembering the Lord Jesus, and
his death is atoning death for our sins.
We know that we are right with God
because of what Christ has done on the
cross.
But we also know from Scripture that we
are to also be right with our brothers
and sisters in Christ.
We all know John 3.16, we all
memorize it as children in camp.
But how many of us know 1 John
3.16 that we've just read?
By this we perceive the love of God
because he laid down his life for us.
That's very similar to John 3.16, isn't
it?
But we have another part to this verse.
And we ought to lay down our lives
for the brethren.
I often refer back to 1 Corinthians 13,
because to me it's another one of the
mountain peaks of biblical inspiration.
And I just commend to you reading and
memorizing 1 Corinthians 13 and other great passages
of Scripture.
How many of you already memorize Scripture?
Even one verse a month, you at least
memorize Scripture.
I wonder if you'd raise your hand, it
would encourage me this morning.
You've memorized Scripture.
I know some of you are tired.
Let's try it again.
Raise your hand on the count of three.
One, two, three.
You've memorized Scripture even one verse a month.
Not overwhelmingly encouraging.
You know, maybe I wonder why the Lord
had brought me up here.
I'm sure others could speak messages and bring
home some of these great truths.
But maybe the Lord brought me up here
just to challenge you about memorizing Scripture.
You know, we have a man in the
United States named Bill Gothard.
He started out just a young man trying
to encourage people to memorize Scripture.
And through his very humble ministry, more people
have now received teaching from the Word of
God than any man, as far as I
know, that has ever lived.
Except Billy Graham.
And Billy Graham's an evangelist.
Bill Gothard now has seminars 12 months a
year, almost every week.
He doesn't go to them all now.
Some of them are on big screen television.
Average attendance, 20,000.
One solid week of teaching, several hours every
day if it's an evening seminar.
The success of that one man's ministry is
phenomenal beyond anything I've ever read about in
church history.
Of course, it's linked with the mass media.
And though a lot of people have criticized
him, most of the leading Christians in America,
some who would disagree on certain points, believe
that he is one of God's outstanding Bible
teachers.
How did it all start in the life
of Bill Gothard?
Well, first of all, he had a godly
father.
But secondly, he believed strongly this is God's
Word.
And if it's God's Word, and it's powerful,
as it says, then getting it into your
mind, getting it into your heart, gives tremendous
strength.
It gives light.
It's a lamp.
Well, just read Psalm 119.
The most repetitious psalm in the whole Bible.
It says basically the same thing over and
over again.
Get into the Word of God.
And let the Word of God get into
you.
Dale Roatan, who I first met when I
went to university, I was warned about him.
He was a year older than me.
And I was warned about him that he
was a fanatic.
The rumor was out that he was baptizing
people in the showers.
And so I decided to find this character,
Dale.
And he was a Presbyterian at the time.
Later got linked in with the Brethren Assemblies.
He's actually the one that eventually baptized me
in the local assembly.
We won't get into that.
It wasn't in the shower.
Or Wesleyan Chapel.
But I remember coming back from church one
Sunday morning, I think it was 1956.
Long time ago.
And I saw him walking along the road.
And I walked up to him and we
spent some time together just talking.
And we've been together now in the work
except for one or two years when we
were still linked in heart.
All these years, 27 and some years.
And Dale is very different in temperament.
He's very phlegmatic.
And I remember going out to...
We both transferred out of that college.
And I went to Moody Bible Institute.
He went to Wheaton College where men like
Billy Graham have studied and many other Christian
leaders.
And I remember going out to visit him.
And he was memorizing scripture.
And by then he had it all on
little cards.
One verse on a card.
All over his room with his little cards.
And by the time he finished university, he
had memorized one third of the New Testament.
And I've seen that in his life.
I don't think anyone commands as much respect
in O.M. as Dale wrote on.
I don't think I do.
And I've seen the reality in his life.
People have often asked him, Well, what's your
secret to this life?
Dale pioneered our work in Turkey.
He pioneered our work in the communist countries.
He's now one of the main leaders in
the ship ministry.
And they said, Well, what is it that's
really the secret of your life?
Because young people today, they want quick answers.
They want instant spirituality.
They want to know how to become a
man of God overnight.
With minimum work.
And Dale simply in his very phlegmatic way
said, Well, I read the Bible.
He reads the Bible.
That doesn't sound very spectacular, does it?
Well, actually he does read it quite intensely,
so that it actually gets memorized as he
reads it.
I would just really commend to you, even
if it's one verse a month, one a
week, start hiding this in your heart.
If you have a particular struggle, in a
particular area, find scriptures relevant to that area.
You know, when I was 17, I thought,
I'm never going to be a victorious Christian.
My great problem was lust.
Started from age 4.
Now, it was at age 4, not really
lust.
It was more this romantic, sort of puppy
love that can come even on young people.
But the reason I remember this, is because
I stood outside the local primary school, waiting
for a particular girl to come to the
pencil sharpener.
Now, by the window, of course.
Now, those of you great playwrights, if you
could just control your imagination, I would be
very grateful.
But I think between that particular experience, and
when I was converted, there were about 32
different romance experiences with different women.
And unfortunately, it started quite innocently, you know,
grabbing a little neighborhood girl for a kiss
or something.
It didn't go over so well with her
parents.
But later on, when I was 15, it
got into little things that were, of course,
not right.
Pornography, the lust trips, and all the rest.
And after I became a believer, I also
did not find instant victory.
Now, maybe after you became a believer, you
got instant victory over this problem of lust.
And maybe you can write to me how
I got instant victory and have maintained it
these ten years.
I would like to keep that in my
scrapbook.
But with me, it was an ongoing struggle.
The pornography was easy.
I learned it.
It was a great day.
I went up in smoke.
What about my mind?
And the pornography I was into was very
mild.
Some Christians today, believe it or not, don't
even classify this kind of thing as pornography
anymore.
I believe it is.
But it wasn't the kind of hard thing
that's floating around today.
Child pornography, all that kind of thing, which
is just an abomination.
So the ongoing struggle continued in my own
mind.
And I sometimes thought, you know, I'm never,
never going to make it.
I'm never going to make it.
I'm not spiritual.
I'm too lusty.
You know, one minute I'm praising God.
The next minute I'm almost breaking my neck
looking at some new chick that rolled into
town.
And I thought, you know, there's no hope.
No hope for me.
And I started, I'd already started, but I
started more intensely to memorize Scripture.
You know those words in Proverbs.
There's three chapters in Proverbs just on this
subject.
There's over 500 verses in your Bible on
the subject of sex.
I don't know if any of your assemblies,
you know, teaching about sex is a no
-no.
In some places it is, you know.
We sort of boast, we believe and preach
the whole counsel of God.
We are the New Testament movement.
But you never hear from one year to
the next a Bible exposition on the subject
of sex.
And there's 500 verses in your Bible on
that subject.
And you know, sometimes the ministry that we
get is so irrelevant to what we're really
facing in the real world out there.
And we're not living in a real world
really so much even in this camp.
Nice, protected, quiet, relatively nice place.
Now praise God, some things do go wrong
and that helps us, you know, reminds us
that this isn't another planet.
And if you go walking out on that
main road with your eyes closed, you'll be
surely facing a real world.
Probably a month or two in the hospital.
And I thank God for the power of
His Word.
It says in John's Gospel, now you are
clean through the Word.
I've spoken on Duke.
And I found that the Word of God
could even cleanse my thought life and cleanse
my dreams.
I used to have these terrible dreams.
You know, women, women, I don't know what's
wrong with me.
Coming down the chimneys, coming through the windows.
And I knew I was really, really gaining
in my spiritual life.
I remember one time a very seductive woman
came through the door and I just jumped
up and jumped out the window and ran
away.
And I knew the Word of God was
gaining the upper hand in my mind.
And I thank God that because of His
Word, He has kept me in this difficult
area of life all these 29 years since
my conversion.
Of course, there's been a lot of battles
in the mind.
But you know, if you limit the battles
to the mind, then you're probably never going
to have to fight some of the battles
in places where you should never be in
the first place.
So don't be afraid of a little conflict
in the mind.
And don't feel, I used to feel, I
must be the dirtiest little kid in town,
dirty-minded little, you know, we have a
lot of words in the States which we
probably shouldn't use here in England.
But the more I got involved in counseling
people, and that started when I was about
17, the more I discovered so many people
had problems greater than mine.
God led me into a ministry of counseling
homosexual people when I was only very young.
I didn't hardly know what that was.
A young man came to me, one of
the biggest evangelical choirs in the city of
Chicago, in a very strong evangelical church.
Actually, Alan Redpath was the pastor.
And as he began to share, suddenly he
opened up that he was a practicing homosexual.
Was there any hope for him?
And I began to research this subject before
anyone had hardly written a book on it,
Christians, before hardly anyone was even talking about
it, though the Bible talks about it.
And I discovered there was hope for homosexuals.
I've been involved in a very small way
over these 25 years in counseling mainly homosexual
men, sometimes women.
I can do this because I have no
difficulty in this area.
I don't think the Lord would lead me
into counseling women from the Soho of a
particular occupation.
I think God teaches us how to know
our limitations, and I've seen a lot of
people get in trouble when they got in
-depth counseling with the opposite sex.
I don't know what your rules are here
in this camp, but we're very foolish if
we think we can have ongoing private counseling
with the opposite sex and not get into
trouble.
That's a quotation from a brilliant Bible teacher
whose book I read some time ago, and
it's been proven true again and again.
But I saw in my counseling ministry with
homosexual men that God could change them.
God could give them the victory.
Contrary to what some people may say, generally
their emotions do not totally change.
It depends how far they are down the
line.
But it can be a great and very
discouraging factor if we promise the homosexual that
all those emotions are going to change and
that now he's going to be totally heterosexual
the rest of his life.
Generally, if he's going to press on victoriously
as a Christian, there'd be, by the way,
be very few evangelical churches now in England
that would not have someone with a homosexual
problem.
Very few.
But by the power of God's Word, by
the cross of Christ, he can or she
can get and maintain the victory.
Now probably your difficulty is not in that
area.
But whatever your problem, whatever your difficulty, whatever
your, you know that old-fashioned term, besetting
sin, the Word of God being hidden in
your heart is part of God's answer.
Now whatever other answers God may have for
you, if you don't get that part, personally,
I doubt if you're going to make it.
You may.
Now let's move into the subject of relationships.
Building relationships.
Developing greater love for our brothers and sisters.
Laying our lives down.
1 John chapter 3, the second part of
the verse.
Laying our lives down for the brethren.
This is going to be the big test
even as we go away from this weekend.
Whenever some people get a spiritual blessing, other
people misunderstand it.
And you need a lot of wisdom and
discernment even as you share what the Lord
has done this weekend.
You need a lot of wisdom.
And one of the keys is found in
Philippians chapter 2, esteeming others better than yourself.
Don't immediately go back and presume everybody wants
to hear what you have been doing on
your Easter weekend.
Rather, be revolutionary and take an interest in
what they have been doing over their Easter
weekend.
Maybe they got a bigger blessing than you
did.
Maybe even right there in their own local
assembly on Sunday, the Lord met with them.
Take an interest in other people.
And of course, there's nothing wrong with you
wanting to share what God's been doing in
your heart.
And one of the best ways is to
pray to the Lord and say, Lord, somehow,
cause them to ask me questions.
Rather than you sort of pushing some new
burden or some thought that may be on
your heart.
Also, when you share what another speaker has
given to you, it's good not to start
off with some little controversial thing that you
may have picked up in passing from his
message.
But try to share that which you feel
that person you're talking to will appreciate.
Because it's so easy to take things out
of context.
And it may, if we take things out
of context, give some of our brothers and
sisters who are not here the idea that
I have come here with some sort of
radical anti-established brethren assembly message.
When the truth is that I have been
linked with the established brethren assemblies for now
27 years.
And whereas some of those who criticize me
for being a little bit outspoken are now
no longer in fellowship at all with the
assemblies and are down the road swinging on
the trees in some new group.
I'm still here, flotting away, still hoping, still
believing that there can be renewal in the
established assembly.
We're not only here, all over the world.
And next week I'll be speaking in some
of the largest assembly meetings in London.
And when I go to Chicago, I speak
to the largest assembly meetings there.
And in Barcelona just about one year ago
I spoke to almost 1,000 from all
the assemblies of Barcelona which are fairly tight
in general and yet opened that door for
me to be the main speaker at their
conference.
So I come not as someone outside throwing
rocks.
I come as someone from the inside who
believes that God is not through with what
some people call open brethren assemblies.
As you know, there's now a controversy whether
it should be recognized and called Christian brethren
or whether we should just accept the old
name open brethren or whether we should, you
know, insist on just being the brethren, etc.,
etc.
So may the Lord give discernment and wisdom
about how we share, especially when we take
things out of context.
And may we go back not to throw
stones, but to build relationships.
To build relationships.
You know who's the chairman of the OM
Board of Directors?
His name is Mr. Dalley.
Now Bill Dalley was a very typical, somewhat
tight, do they still use that word in
Merseyside, brother living in Bolton, fellowshipping with a
very small little hangout to the end assembly.
And God prepared his heart for the invasion
of Bolton by Operation Mobilization through reading a
book by George Mueller.
He was one of the founders, by the
way, of this whole thing that spread all
over the world.
And this prepared him for the arrival of
OM.
And he heard that there were people living
by faith.
He heard about there were people praying for
God to supply finance and who were not,
you know, raising money in the traditional way.
And a lot of other things he heard
that reminded him of what he'd been reading
in that book.
My first contact with him was that I
heard that he was one who had left
a great bag of groceries on our front
door.
We were living in Atherton, Lancashire at the
time.
Bolton was the birthplace, by the way, of
the ship Vision.
This video, by the way, is about both
ships, a little bit about OM, produced for
Dutch television.
And he and I became very close.
I remember one of the first times he
invited me to that assembly.
I thought I'd loosen the place up, so
I led in a chorus in the middle
of a worship morning meeting in Spanish.
Mr. Dalley became one of my closest friends
and has been the chairman of the board
of directors for many, many years.
And God is used to, among the assemblies,
we recently traveled together in Canada, and to
hear his testimony, we were speaking in some
brethren assemblies in Canada, and to hear his
testimony of how God prepared him for this
rather unique type of missionary fellowship is quite
interesting.
This is our burden for this camp.
This is our burden for your own church.
Building relationships.
It's easy to tear down.
It's easy to criticize.
It's easy to disagree.
It's easy to be disgruntled.
But God is calling us to build relationships.
I think you all know many, many verses
that exhort us to do this.
What will be some of the dangers as
we attempt to build relationships with the young
people here in this camp?
You know one of the things that really
scared me about working with young people?
I've discovered if you don't get through to
them, some of them, within a year after
you're with them, actually overthrow the Christian faith.
If you're a normal audience, there's probably several
of you, even your type of person, at
your level of spiritual growth, there's probably several
of you that have thought about throwing the
whole thing in.
And if you haven't, in the next few
years, you may.
I don't know how many of you have
been reared in fairly strict brethren homes.
But statistics will show, research will show, that
a percentage of people reared in fairly strict
homes, if they don't come into balance and
see the thing in perspective, they rebel and
they throw the whole thing in.
Very interesting.
Now though I may seem like a bit
of a loud mouth, and probably appear at
times to be insensitive, I'm actually, in some
ways, too sensitive.
And just the thought of one person overthrowing
the faith, it just destabilizes me.
And if I hear of such a person,
I will write to them, I'll phone them,
I'll visit them, and I've had to spend
a lot of my time over the years
counseling people who I thought were getting near
that border of just saying, well, I'm through
with it.
I watched this out of the students that
came out of the Emmaus Bible School.
I remember one, Marty Schmidt, who came on
O.M., and he went through a rough
time in that Brethren Bible School.
And he wasn't towing the Brethren line, because
the Brethren line in those days in the
States was also very right-wing politically.
And this was the day of Martin Luther
King.
And he dared to demonstrate with Dr. Martin
Luther King.
And the people in the local assembly, they
just stayed this way.
Went wild!
Backslidden!
He's becoming a communist!
Special prayer is needed!
Edgar Hoover, the head of the CIA, the
FBI in the United States, he had difficulty
with Dr. Martin Luther King.
And he did everything he could to blacken
his name and accuse him of being a
communist.
I don't believe.
I've studied quite a lot about Luther King.
I visited the place where he was killed.
I just stood there and wept as an
American who as a young man was so
totally ignorant of my own culture, my own
brothers and sisters among the black people.
I just stood in that little, that little
motel in Memphis, Tennessee and I wept.
I don't believe he was a communist.
Anyway, my friend, Marty went out demonstrating.
That was the days of Selma.
And I tell you, the assembly shot him
down and he just coughed the whole thing
up in one big gulp.
He threw the whole thing over.
He became an agnostic.
He then became a communist.
He wasn't a communist at that time.
I met him years later when his great
guru was Che and that Davis woman.
He's come way back out of that now.
We've kept writing him and praying for him.
He says now he believes in God and
he believes in Christ but he just cannot
handle God's people.
God's chosen people.
Sometimes God's frozen people.
And I will tell you, if you and
I don't reach some of these young people
this summer, with a balanced message of love
and who God is and what the Christian
faith is really about, how to wrestle with
some of the problems and doubts and struggles,
some of them, within a year or two
after leaving here, they'll throw the whole thing
over.
They are given the idea that if you're
a dedicated Christian you don't have any problems,
especially with lust.
And a lot of these young people will
be having struggles with lust and sex.
Some of them won't.
You don't want to project that problem on
everyone.
And so often, they're given the idea that
when they dedicate their life in Christ as
Lord and Jesus as their Savior, they're not
going to have any more problems with that.
And they may go away from here with,
you know, quite, what's the word, quite hyper,
quite excited and enthused, and you'll feel, wow,
we reached them at camp.
What a great work of the Spirit.
We'll write about it in our little camp
report and we'll go back and tell it
to others.
But where is that person two months later?
Where is that person one year later?
Where are those that were at camp here
last summer?
Do you write any of them?
Are you following them up?
Did God really link you in relationship with
people?
Or was it just part of your ongoing
journey through life?
When it's happening, it's a big thing, it's
an important thing, but a month later, a
month later, it's not so big and it's
not so important.
What am I trying to say?
God is wanting to build into this camp
permanent relationships.
Or bring as a result of this camp
permanent relationships.
What are some of the dangers?
Let me quickly give them to you.
Number one, the danger or the enemy, you
can use whatever terminology you want.
Think of, for example, Ephesians 5, Ephesians 6
talks about fiery darts.
Maybe you could talk, refer to this as
fiery darts to hinder relationships.
Whether in the family, the assembly, in camp,
or wherever.
Number one, pride.
Pride.
We all have it.
It's so subtle.
Some of us who feel linked to the
assemblies, if we're not careful, we have brethren
pride.
Others have Pentecostal pride.
Others have Anglican pride.
That form of pride is mild compared to
other forms of pride.
Nationality pride, intellectual pride.
I've even met people with Bible knowledge pride.
Preachers get preacher's pride.
Evangelists get evangelist pride.
And then you get those who are proud
because they don't have any of these forms
of pride.
It seems that the enemy has an endless
range, an endless range of pitfalls of pride
to get us into.
You even find people now that are sort
of proud because they're unemployed.
They're the self-appointed martyrs.
And they're living in self-pity and they're
suffering.
And they become bitter against the nation, against
the government, and against those who are employed.
It's amazing, isn't it?
All the subtle forms of pride.
And we need to search our own hearts
because the Bible says God resisted the proud
and gives grace to the humble.
You meet people from Merseyside down in London.
And they've got Merseyside pride.
They think that Merseyside is the best part
of England.
Of course, they don't really believe that deep
down.
Some of them anyway.
But they would want to tell you that.
Now, of course, all of this, in some
ways, is not so important.
As long as we can maintain our sense
of humor.
But you see, when we go overseas, or
we start mixing with people of other nationalities,
that which may be a joke at home
becomes a harmful, hurtful thing.
And British people, as Americans, we're more advanced
than this, have a gift of offending people
of other nationalities.
Our universities in Britain train people in professional
cynicism.
And a university person, graduate of Oxford or
Cambridge, he can take the most intellectual American
from Yale or Harvard and in a couple
of sentences he can reduce him to a
piece of bread.
Now, of course, if it's all in humor,
there's no problem.
Like yesterday, that was great.
Because I knew that, you know, we were
linked in Jesus Christ and that was all
in fun and it was very meaningful and
I got my pictures of it.
I've already told my wife about it.
And I'll use you as a red hot
sermon illustration the rest of my life.
So if you're looking for winners and losers
as a result of last night, check your
own seat.
But that which may be funny in one
context becomes ugly in another context.
And I want to share something with you
that's very important.
In summer camp work, beware of belittling the
young people who come here.
Watch out for your little bit of lucid
humor because some sensitive young people, they cannot
handle it.
And I fear there will be people hurt
here in your camp this summer because of
a lack of wisdom and discernment who will
go away with a hurt.
You'll never hear about it.
People more easily tell you sometimes the good
things.
The more sensitive young person doesn't write.
If I have hurt you here during these
days, it's unlikely you're going to tell me.
Fortunately, I live together with my OM people.
We get to know one another.
They get to know me and so they
do often tell me when I hurt them.
And I have learned so much from the
people that I have hurt and from the
people that I have been insensitive with.
Beware of subtle forms of pride.
Beware of rigid thinking which often comes as
a result of pride.
Don't think for a minute that some of
our strong unmovable doctrinal positions are minor things.
I believe it is good to be unmovable
on major issues.
Even then, it must be with love.
Calorie love, even on the major issues, right?
But to become so intense and so uptight
about minor issues.
I just got a letter from a man
who is more or less semi-breaking fellowship
with me.
Because of one sentence in one book or
one paragraph in one book on that table
that I have mentioned and pushed in the
past.
He has found something wrong in that book.
He has become so strong about it.
He has written the author.
Actually part of what he said is true.
That's often the difficulty.
That part of what these very rigid proud
people are saying is often true.
But you see, truth without love becomes a
form of lie.
You read the book of James.
The truth that comes from above is peaceable,
gentle, loving, easy to be entreated, full of
good words.
And so, when we speak the truth, it's
got to be with love.
When we stand up in the assembly with
one of our strong convictions, it's got to
be with love.
You know another reason why my friend became
a communist, this fellow Marty?
He went with O.M. to Turkey in
the early days.
And O.M. Turkey in the early days
was very brethren.
We were very, very close to the brethren
movement at that time.
And some very strong men were there.
And the churches we were planting in Turkey,
they would have been brethren assemblies.
And they actually almost are the ones we
started today.
They're very small.
And a number of the workers there were
commended.
Imagine that.
Officially commended workers.
And one morning at a breaking of bread
with just baby converts.
Muslims.
Baby converts.
One brother got a real heavy message at
the breaking of bread against not having the
heads covered.
And you know, he had a way of
explaining it.
It sounded like, you know, if we didn't
get our heads covered in this breaking of
bread, you know, the wrath was going to
come crashing down.
You know, it would be somehow like that
last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
And you know, this brother who had been
through years of a brethren Bible school and
he had been through so much, that was
one of the final straws.
Because he knew the life of this brother
who was sharing it.
Actually, the one who was sharing it had
a lot of emotional problems.
Very insecure brother.
Who since left missionary work, settled somewhere else.
And that was one of the, do you
know that expression, straws that broke the camel's
back.
Smaller convictions need smaller emphasis.
Bigger convictions need bigger emphasis.
And in the process, we've got to learn
to live with people who don't agree with
us.
It's too late to ever again get the
kind of assembly that existed a hundred years
ago.
Because of the cassette tapes, because of books,
because of all these big events like Spring
Harvest with the amalgamation of all kinds of
teaching and people, It's too late to turn
the pages of history back and think you're
ever going to have an assembly where everybody
believes exactly the same.
In fact, if you study, the bigger divisions
always come among a group where they all
say they believe the same.
The big divisions haven't come between the Pentecostal
church down the road and the tight assembly
up the road.
These two groups don't even have contact.
The heavier divisions have come right within the
assembly over little tiny, cute, pocky things.
And then personality clash and it's generally linked
with pride and it's linked with rigid thinking
and it's linked with lack of love.
We have to as mature people.
Isn't it good that as Christians we're still
people?
I'm glad that I'm accepted as a Christian.
I think all of you accept me as
a Christian.
But I'm glad after these days you got
to know me a little bit.
I used to be hesitant to speak about
myself.
And the great, brilliant psychologist Paul Tournier helped
me over that hang up.
He said, you know, if you can't speak
openly about yourself then who can you speak
openly about?
Don't be afraid to share your own testimony.
There's no sense in me pretending that I'm
John Stott and come up here and give
you deep Bible expositions.
I'm not John Stott.
And I gave up a long time ago
trying to be other people.
I'm just me.
Warts and all.
Including my tag sticking out.
One of the reasons I keep going is
that I'm so liberated when people try to
grab on to me they might get my
boots and then they can have my boots.
But I keep going.
I keep going.
By the way, I like these because they
come off nice and quick.
And you can't be George Mueller.
You can't try to copy that little brethren
elder who's been there for 40 years in
your assembly still in charge of the Sunday
school.
You have got to be you.
You've got to be real and be yourself.
And that's beautiful and that's important.
This means we have to know how to
compassionately disagree.
Not obnoxiously disagree.
Not in the flesh and in anger disagree.
But compassionately disagree.
And we may be how much we respect
him and we appreciate his ministry and we
know the Lord has used him.
But on this particular point we just don't
agree.
We hope that we can continue to work
together and learn from each other.
I think it's crazy.
We all think we're going to all agree
in our churches.
Do we all agree in our marriages?
Some of you are married.
Why?
Do you agree with everything your husband teaches?
Everything he does?
Everything he says?
Is that what Ephesians 5 teaches?
Not my Ephesians 5.
And I'll tell you through extreme teaching in
that, when I got married I almost destroyed
my wife.
Because my wife was willing to obey everything.
And I, I'm just the area of money
alone.
I wasn't going to give her any money.
My money was committed to world evangelism and
Bibles.
And I would have all these stories.
People dying without food.
People dying without Bibles.
My wife wouldn't dare come and ask for
money for a piece of clothing.
We got all of our clothing from the
youth, missionary barrel, everything.
And in response to my challenge she had
given away her inheritance, a lot of money.
She had sold her sewing machine.
She had put her nice coat up for
sale.
She was an Ephesians 5 extremist, right down
the line.
And I was destroying her.
And God had to break me and break
my heart.
And I realized how ugly it is when
we take one truth without letting it be
brought into balance by other truths.
And if it wasn't for balance coming into
my life and marriage, you know, I would
have, I would have I would have just
destroyed it.
I still would have been preaching.
Many divorced men are still preaching.
In America, double divorced, three time losers in
marriage are still preaching.
Let me tell you something.
Preaching is easy for some of us in
comparison to love and brokenness and humility and
godliness.
And you cannot measure a man by his
preaching.
You have to live with him to know
what he's really made of.
Well, slowly, God humbled me through some of
these great books on marriage, through brothers and
sisters in Christ who weren't afraid to take
George Berber to the wall and tell him
where he was wrong.
And I came into balance.
I remember giving my wife a pound and
saying feel completely free.
Arch enemy of relationship.
Arch enemy of unity.
Arch enemy of growing and building together is
pride and all of its related tentacles.
Prejudice, love, rigid thinking, obnoxiousness, narrow mindedness, bigotry
and all the rest.
Let's flee it with all of our hearts.
The second enemy of relationship is super spirituality.
I, of course, got into this as well.
Overdosed with Andrew Murray, F.B. Myers, Keswick
Books, Watchman Me, E.M. Bounds, Leonard Ravenhill.
I, without knowing it, without knowing it, got
into super spirituality.
I had crisis experiences.
I had table top experiences.
One meeting where the Lord just so blessed
me I leaped on top of the table
praising God.
How many of you have had that kind
of blessing?
Table top crisis.
You heard of that lady that had the
leap experience?
I don't know if this story is true
but it's really good.
This rather emotional woman, she was in a
meeting and I don't know what happened but
she was jumping around and she leaped into
the air and as she went up boom,
God met her.
She came down, of course.
And she then felt everybody should have this
experience.
The leap experience.
And she became a Bible teacher.
Now, you know, I like to keep everything
in balance but I always have a little
hesitation when these women Bible teachers come out
of the closet.
She developed a theology of the leap.
And in her meetings at the end when
she'd give the invitation she'd have people getting
the blessing by leaping.
Most of the people of course didn't get
the blessing that she got.
You know, it may be a funny story
but it's a very good illustration of how
that which may be a blessing for one
person like my tree experience in Germany which
is the truth would be totally ridiculous for
someone else.
And I was so happy.
You're so balanced here.
I just catch the balance vibrations because as
I got out early this morning and went
running there were no girls up in the
trees.
Thank you Lord.
The third enemy of relationship and an ongoing
ongoing spiritual growth is faulty or lack of
communication.
Many times what we think is an accusation
or gossip against us is actually a miscommunication.
And if you can have a summer camp
here without some miscommunication you are very very
unusual people.
Miscommunications are a basic part of camp life.
Don't immediately think somebody has it in for
you.
Have you ever felt that somebody's got it
in for me?
It usually especially comes when somebody tells you
what someone else said about you.
What a blessing.
Especially if it's negative.
But so often when you trace it down
it's a miscommunication.
There's a problem of language.
Problem of language.
I probably in these messages have miscommunicated some
things because I speak to a small degree
a different language.
Someone was trying to recruit me for a
work team just a few minutes ago.
I did not know what his brother was
saying.
I can't even pronounce it the way he
pronounced it.
Work, work, work something.
And I'm not saying that my pronunciation is
better.
It is not because I'm the visitor.
I'm the foreigner here.
But the fact is we had a miscommunication
and he thought, he wondered why I wasn't
responding and we were signing up.
Of course, when I found out actually what
he was saying, I was even less responsible.
So there will be miscommunications, there will be
faulty communications and that can happen when you
go back to your assembly and you tell
them what the Lord has done here this
weekend or at the end of the summer,
what he's done in the summer camp.
So easy.
The older generation is often speaking a different
language.
They're speaking a different language.
We have a semantic problem.
Often what we think is a doctrinal problem
is a semantic problem.
That's why I prefer to use terminology that
doesn't necessarily blow the roof off.
Maybe some of you go off to some
special camp somewhere where they emphasize the teaching
of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and
maybe in the evening meeting or something there's
an invitation and you're prayed for and you
have what you feel this is your experience.
This has happened again and again.
So you go back to your assembly and
the first opportunity you testify how you were
baptized in the Holy Spirit in the woods
or in this meeting.
And the older brethren and the more traditional
brethren they're just shaking.
They're grabbing on to their Bibles, they're ready
to come out to you with a whole
full course in theology to show that you
were baptized in the Spirit at conversion and
then give you what they feel is a
solid teaching.
I think there are different ways to explain
some of our experiences in different groups in
order to understand one another and in order
to be more open minded in our ongoing
process of actually trying to understand what did
happen to us.
Because what happened to us may not be
what we think happened to us.
And it's to me very important.
Anyway, I'm convinced in the road ahead here
in Britain there's going to be ongoing misunderstanding
in the churches.
And if you don't want any of it,
I don't know what to say to you.
Because I know this is one of the
ways God tests our maturity.
When through misunderstanding there's rejection, there's hurt, there's
confusion, it may seem terrible, but God can
use even that division, God can use even
that hurtful situation to mature you, to bring
you into greater spiritual balance.
Because if we think these things don't happen
in the world and in other churches and
in secular organizations and in the army or
whatever sphere of life, then we're very naive
about life.
And then the fourth fiery dart of real
relationship is impatience and irritability.
I remember first reading that book Calvary Road
and Roy Hesham calling irritability a sin.
You know, sometimes in my life I can
gain the victory over some really big problem.
Two Christmases ago my son came back the
day after Christmas and shared that he and
some friends were out on the road in
their sports cars and my son's fiance's brother
was in an identical Spitfire Triumph sports car
ahead of him on the road.
Tried to miss a Christmas box, somebody left
on the road, the sports car turned over,
he was crushed to death, right there in
front of their very eyes.
Ben came back and shared that with me.
I saw God give him a rancorous victory
in that situation.
He was a great ministry to the family.
And God somehow, a terrible thing, went out
to the scene of the accident, the Lord
gave me the victory and the grace.
I had to go to one of our
own accidents in Yugoslavia, four killed.
And yet sometimes the very next day after
winning a major victory, the littlest thing brings
irritation.
And I sin against the Lord.
Little thing somewhere, I heard a message once,
the little foxes that spoil the vines.
I would say that we have to, many
of us, declare all-out war against irritability.
Oh, to have a sweet disposition.
Isn't it great in camp to have some
people with a sweet disposition?
Every camp has to have at least some
with dispositional problems.
Don't jump on them, especially if they're in
the kitchen.
You just keep loving them.
God has a purpose in bringing them.
You minister to them, you accept them.
But you know, a camp would be a
difficult place if there weren't always some people
around who've got that sweet disposition, who are
consistent, who are balanced, and who really know
how to keep the joy gates open, even
in times of crisis and pressure when things
are going wrong.
A.W. Tozer strongly emphasized the need to
deal with the sins of disposition.
You see, they're the sins of commission.
You go out and you do something wrong.
You go up there to the phone booth,
and in the midst of trying to get
through to someone, you can't get your money
in, and you get upset, and you tear
the phone booth apart, and this could get
you in some difficulty.
That's the sin of commission.
But there's the sin of omission.
You never go near the phone booth.
Your mother would like to hear from you.
Maybe your husband.
Maybe a hurting loved one, but you just,
ah, a phone call is going to cost
ten pence.
And I find that so easy, as Christians,
our big sins are not sins of commission.
They're sins of omission, and they're linked to
disposition.
We're just so used to just taking the
easy road of least resistance.
We don't know how to exert ourselves in
order to serve one another, and we need
to improve our serve.
By the way, my favorite sport is tennis,
and if any of you have a tennis
racket and know where there's a court, I'd
be happy tomorrow to have a game with
you.
I brought my tennis racket.
Impatience and irritability, deadly enemies of spiritual reality,
and ongoing relationships.
And number five, selfishness.
Of course, it comes out in so many
ways, and, you know, when we do get
really hungry for God, and we do sort
of enroll as a disciple in God's army,
there's a danger we will become too hard
on ourselves.
We will want to become the totally unselfish
person, and we'll get ourselves into perpetual guilt.
You know, for the sake of survival, at
times, you have to care for number one.
If you don't call yourself number one, maybe
you call yourself number ten.
Or you then have to care for number
ten.
There's nothing wrong caring for yourself.
The Bible says love your neighbor as you
love yourself.
If you don't care for yourself a little
bit, you're not going to be able to
have a ministry for your neighbor.
So taking care of your health, trying to
have a balanced diet, having a good physical
exercise program, learning how to relax, some of
these things, look through certain binoculars, and especially
as outlined in some extremist books, they seem
to be selfish.
And we get into a neurosis about crucifying
self.
Gotta crucify self.
And pretty soon we get into asceticism, where
anything that's good is really probably not God's
will.
In O.M., in the very early days,
we moved down this road.
We thought, food is only just to keep
the engine running.
None of it's just enjoying the food.
Keep the engine running.
And I want to tell you, I served
some meals to my wife.
I was in charge.
In those early days after the wedding, that
you wouldn't want to feed to your dog
if he was your enemy.
Selfishness.
We declare war against unselfishness, but in order
to do that, we have to, in a
balanced way, care for ourselves.
Now, with most of us, that's pretty natural,
pretty easy.
But there's more and more people with damaged
emotions.
There's more and more people who live in
perpetual guilt, who don't really accept themselves.
I find that all the time in correspondence
and counseling.
And number six, idealism.
Number seven, the lack of forgiveness.
I wish there was more time to give
you a message on each one of these
points with the related scripture verses.
You might try 1 Peter 4, 8 on
that particular one.
And then the lack of discipline and organization,
number eight.
And then number nine, the ninth enemy.
There are more, but time is gone.
Activism and extremism.
We've already dealt with this enough, so I
think we can end here.
And I hope that somehow through these very
basic principles and through understanding something of Satan's
tactics to destroy relationships, that some beautiful relationships
will blossom as a result of being here
this weekend and in the summer, and that
this reality will spread back to our assemblies
and to other churches and right across the
world.