This is in the Old Testament, if you
do not know.
It's a very simple verse.
The end of a matter is better than
its beginning.
You know, this is true.
Somebody starts to build a beautiful house, the
blueprint is there, we look at it, terrible
excitement, but when the house gets done, sometimes
it's a huge disappointment.
What we dreamed, imagined, is not what actually
we are getting.
Then of course, you know, you go into
a crisis of trying to fix everything.
So even though we might understand the beginning
of the process, the whole thing, but if
the thing is done beautifully, then it makes
us quite happy.
Hebrews chapter 13 verse 7 says like this.
The scripture says, consider these people, you know,
like Hebrews 11, consider their end, how significant,
beautiful, wholesome it was, and you follow in
their footsteps.
Paul said in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 verse
24, he said, a whole lot of people
are running the race, millions of them, he
says, are starting this race, but not all
going to finish it well.
We learn from bad examples.
You know, I heard one famous evangelist one
time, when I was studying in seminary, he
said, you know, I grew up in this
home where my father was, then he explained,
I mean, it's a disastrous example.
He said, I made a decision, I don't
want to be like him when I grow
up.
But then we have incredibly godly examples in
the scripture.
Also bad examples, you know.
Paul said, follow me as I follow the
Lord.
So in our life journey, as believers in
Christ, particularly as people, those who want to
serve the Lord, I think it should be
a consideration, especially if you are over age
30.
You want to be concerned that you continue
to run the race and finish well.
Consider their end, not only of godly people,
but, you know, when you think about people
like Saul, Solomon, Gehazi, Judas, Demas, I mean,
Paul writes in one letter, Demas, my colleague,
my co-worker, who labored with me so
faithfully, greet you.
Just four years later, he writes in 2
Timothy, Timothy, I'm so grieved.
Demas, having loved this present world, he has
forsaken me, and he left me.
I thought about sharing tonight.
I said, you know, this is not the
right message or talk for you, my brothers
and sisters.
You know, this is the kind of message
that would be spoken to a bunch of
really bad, mean, backsliding people.
But here I'm talking to a group of
vibrant, committed, godly people.
As a matter of fact, today I was
looking at the entire list of our staff,
their wives and children and all that, and
looking at it, I said, dear Lord, I
can't believe what an incredible group of people
you raised up, the kind of people we
are, the community, the family.
So I kind of felt, you know, weary
about sharing this.
But then I asked myself, why I even
thought about sharing this during our Gospel of
Asia Tuesday night prayer meeting.
The answer was very quick.
You know, someone like me in Christian leadership,
you know, it's now becoming almost a normal
thing.
I no more should be shocked.
There's not a week go by I don't
read one email or get a telephone call
or hear somebody tell me on the telephone
about someone that I knew or I heard
about who'd been doing very well for years
in their walk with God, all of a
sudden disappears.
And it reminds me of this interesting song
in my native language.
Now, don't get panicky.
I'm going to sing it for you.
I want you to remain here a few
more minutes.
The meaning of the song is, Lord, people
that been more godly, upright, sober, holier, knowledgeable
and committed than me.
Oh, Lord, in this journey now I see
only the skull and the bones of these
people that remains.
They have fallen by the wayside.
Then the last answer, Oh, Lord, preserve me
by your grace and mercy that I may
make it till the end.
And so the answer why I'm sharing this,
and maybe you, my brothers and sisters streaming
and watching this, maybe the reason I'm sharing
this more than anything else, because I am
reminded every week that I have to be
cautious and be concerned and fearful and have
some trembling about my own journey a few
more years that left before me.
It's been over 43 years since I began
this journey serving God.
And obviously you know I have dealt with
literally hundreds of people around the world.
And the stories of people that I believed
to be the best, super great people, many
of them are no more in the race.
And I say, Who am I to take
my journey for granted?
And in Gospel for Asia story of over
30 years of our journey with the Lord,
we can tell you story after story of
people that, you know, I pledge my life
to.
And people like David Carroll can tell me
I would fly across the world to spend
days with someone to pray and weep and
agonize, trying to rescue them from sliding away
back into the world.
People who walked with God for 20, for
30 years, being Christian leadership.
And so some ways this is a message
for my own heart, because I know my
struggles and weakness, my failures, as someone who
seek to follow the Lord.
But then I found Abraham, this amazing individual
who began this journey and ended brilliant.
He finished exceptionally well.
But here's the thing that encouraged me.
Abraham, I'm sure you are saying to yourself,
What do you mean?
He did a whole bunch of dumb things.
That's the reason I like him.
The reason is, he was a man who
dealt with many struggles and fears and anxiety
and failures.
Times as a husband, he couldn't be a
husband, but let his wife talk him into
doing some real weird stuff and got in
trouble and all those different things.
Wives, don't get mad at me.
As Paul said, we get knocked down, but
not knocked out.
So it is not the failures and setbacks
and our cold hearts and times we fall
in sin or our discouragement or want to
kill ourself and temptation to give up everything
and walk away from God.
It's not the end of the story, because
we see that in the life of Abraham.
And finally, we know the promise God made.
Abraham, you are going to be the father
of nations.
And he did become.
In Psalm 2, we read the promise the
Lord gave to us.
I will give you nations as your inheritance.
Just ask of me.
And the promise we have, just as Abraham,
we are his children by faith.
I will bless you and make your life
a great blessing.
The older I get, the more convinced I
become.
The greatest blessing of my life is not
the material things or the books I write
or stuff like that.
It is some ways the legacy I can
leave behind of the influence in the lives
of other people that somehow the Lord used
the feeble life of mine to bless other
people.
And I think this is our inheritance.
But here are some key principles that I
figured out that could be applied from Abraham's
life.
Just a few of them.
I will not tell you how many.
If I run out of time, then we
will pick it up later.
One is his willingness to forsake all to
obey the call of God.
Genesis 12, verse 1 and 2.
Abraham, yes God, I want to bless you.
And I want to show you something that
is incredibly wonderful.
You can't even imagine about these things.
But you have to give up your home,
your siblings and everything you know.
Just walk away.
And there is no way he could explain
that to his people and convince them.
There are staff people sitting here.
When they heard you are going to Dallas,
Texas, I am sure a whole bunch of
your people said California or Seattle or somewhere
else said where?
Texas?
And you made it.
And there was no way for you to
be here without walking away from a lot
of stuff.
And not only geographically but also relationships.
And even now some of us I am
sure are struggling with the old emotions and
the pull.
And sometimes we slide back like flashbacks.
You know the kids face who have been
on drugs.
I have never been on drugs so I
am just telling you things I hear from
people.
What you call flashbacks.
And so, but Abraham in spite of the
whole world against him.
Saying you are the dumbest, most stupid, insane
human being on earth to leave everything here.
Then go to a place where?
I don't know.
What do you mean you don't know?
Well God said, which God?
We got 300 million sitting here.
He said, I can't explain.
Logic and reason won't help.
Only the heart help.
And my brothers and sisters, a lot of
things we do in life, nobody will be
able to believe it nor will your reason
be able to accept it.
But I am telling you like Judson and
his wife Nancy leaving the shores of America
as the first missionaries to go overseas to
India and Burma.
He will have to bury his children and
his wife, a broken man.
Nobody in the world understand.
The whole America cried out, come back.
But he must continue the journey.
To leave a legacy over a million Burmese
that were lost for eternity.
That will come to know the Lord through
one life.
He left all.
And Abraham did it.
And no wonder why we still talk about
Abraham, we still talk about Judson.
Number two.
Never he gave up the call no matter
how many trials, temptations, problems, obstacles, and personal
failures he faced.
Now here's the thing.
Some of us like me, we travel here
and there by airplane, train, all those things
you know.
Please ask us if you want to know
the details.
Because our lives are not that easy.
We miss the flights.
We get the rotten seats and all kind
of things and snow.
Sometimes the plane don't leave and all kind
of things.
But we don't, you know, hang ourselves and
say I can't do this thing.
We have to keep going.
If you want to know horror stories of
my early days of journeys, talk to Heidi
Chopp.
We're going to talk about some of those
things.
Why?
Because I knew where I was going.
Whether Chicago, New York, or London, wherever I
was going, whatever it is.
Many difficulties and obstacles and setbacks and diarrhea
and cough and sneezing and all those things,
you know.
But we don't stop.
See, this is what Abraham had to deal
with.
Along the way he had many personal losses
and grief and disappointments and no kids and
promises never coming true.
Waiting and waiting for 25 years and God
said you can have it but nothing happens.
The whole world is mocking at him.
Where is your God?
And he says, God told me.
It's dumb.
But he will not give up one thing.
My God said, go.
I will show you.
I can't see it now but he said
he will.
Brothers and sisters, anyone who really want to
follow God and I say this to you,
especially after 40 years in this service of
my Lord, you will never make it if
you are going to depend on the good
times or bad times or difficulties to figure
out if this is a real call of
God in your life.
William Carey was called to go to India
and his wife was excited.
And the last minute his wife said, I'm
not going to go.
He says, fine.
He stayed back and he got on the
ship.
And the ship started slowly moving.
And then she stood, then she was screaming,
come back!
Did I wake you up?
That is a deliverer just to make sure
you don't sleep on me.
And the ship will come back and pick
her up again.
Did his life get easier?
No.
He had to dig the grave with his
own hands and nobody would help him to
bury his wife on the mission field.
What nonsense it is for you to think
even one time in this life of serving
God you will have all things easy.
And you personally will fall in sin and
fail but if you remember this is God's
call, you will keep going no matter who
will cut your hand off, let go, put
your eyes out because you have one thing
on your mind.
My God called me and I will keep
moving till the end.
If I cannot run, I will walk.
If I cannot walk, I will crawl.
If I cannot crawl, I will sit here,
will not give up.
When I saw one of these dear brothers
in Orissa who said, they asked me to
make a choice or my family will be
killed.
And he made a choice, I can't deny
Christ.
And they hacked that young man to death.
You think the gospel of Christ for Indians
and Chinese and Burmese are different from Americans?
How lost we are in the cultural gospel
that we are given to us by watered
down superfluous Christianity and the promoters of such
self-centered gospel in this country.
And no wonder half of the world is
going to hell while we are agonizing over
our few dollars losing its value on our
future.
And I say this to you because we
need to be aware how deceptive our hearts
can be, how can we lose our focus
also.
Number three, he made a choice that he
is going to have his total dependence on
the Lord.
And you see, God said, Abraham, I'll give
you a son.
But God looked at him and said, you
know what, Abraham, you are too strong.
Now a 75-year-old man is now
100 years old.
Romans 4, he looked at his body and
said, dear me, I'm dead.
My wife, Sarah, you look more dead than
me.
I just made it up, by the way.
Romans 4 says, he looked at his body
and recognized he's dead and his wife too.
Then God says something quite strange.
Abraham, yes, God, hey, I want you to
do something.
Whatever, be circumcised.
What?
Yeah, that's what I said.
I can understand taking a little boy eight
days old to the hospital or rabbi and
get them done, but 100-year-old man?
Philippians chapter 3 says, we are the true
circumcision who place no confidence in the flesh.
Your education, your good look, your smartness and
your riches, your background, your cleverness and you
think you can do it, I can do
it.
You know, one of my struggles of my
life, often being always and always will be,
I think, there are times in my life
when I'm speaking to people in meetings and
talking to individuals on the telephone, counseling.
Once in a while, the Holy Spirit whispers,
you're trying to be smart.
You're trying to be clever.
Drop it.
Don't do it.
Don't say anymore.
Leave it.
And I recognize my strength becomes my failure,
my weakness.
And I say, Lord, I'm sorry.
You have your way and I back off.
Continually, this is going to be our struggle
in our journey with the Lord if we
must make it to the end.
Our accomplishment should never become our titles and
positions and our abilities, our whatever, nothing should
become the reason for us to say, I'm
going to do it now.
It's going to be the weak, struggling people
that continually depend on God will make it.
As a matter of fact, I tell you,
a lot of great people that I knew
fell by the wayside, not because they fell
in adultery or stole money or murdered someone.
I can tell you, it happened 99%
of the time, arrogance and pride and self
-centeredness.
And Abraham found that out very well that
he must come back to God for everything
and we know that.
Number four, serve God with sacrifice.
Leave everything you have.
Yes, God.
Finally, after God giving him his son, God
said, Abraham, I want you to give up
your son, the one you love, not Ishmael,
but Isaac.
And he didn't even tell his wife about
it.
And he chooses to do that.
And you know the story.
And he raises his knife to kill his
son.
And God says, Abraham, now I know you
fear God.
Not that you are a great, mighty leader
and you can do great things.
No, you now fear me.
I know that.
So, one thing we learn from this is
this.
There's no way we are going to finish
the race without continuous sacrifice, whatever that is.
Sacrifice to me is not something that you
sacrifice.
We all are different.
And the Lord asks us for different things
in our life, whatever we are holding onto
it so dearly.
Sometimes the Lord says, would you just give
it up or walk away?
And without suffering and the cross, we will
not fulfill the call anyway.
Let me move fast.
Maintaining a life of separation from negative influence
is a must if we must make it
to the finish line.
That's number five.
Lord was a close family member of Abraham.
But a time came, Abraham had to make
a choice.
Am I going to hang on to him?
He said, I can't.
Abraham, you go that way and I go
this way.
If it's king or sodom or a family
member, Lord, Abraham must maintain his aloneness, his
private walk with God, his separation from negative
influence.
I can actually spend another ten hours talking
to you.
There's nothing more dangerous in your walk with
God than the telephone calls you receive from
people that want to be nice to you.
The emails you receive and the time you
are so enticed, gravitating toward that individual or
individuals.
Because they say the things you want to
hear, but they are not seeking your best.
Even among Christians, even among believers.
And that's the reason why you must become
your own enemy and your feelings and emotions
to choose people that would be honest with
you and say, look, I don't think this
is the right thing you are thinking.
This is not the right thing.
And unless you make some choices to say
goodbye to some friends.
There are, you know, in my own life
experience, I can tell you, this is, I
won't say names, there are sometimes in my
life I made a decision.
I will not want to talk to that
individual.
I will not want to keep friendship with
them.
Believers, Christian workers.
As a matter of fact, today on the
telephone I told one of my senior leaders,
I said, would you give this instruction to
so and so?
I'm talking about one individual who is in
senior leadership of our ministry overseas, who seems
to be sliding.
And through few dialogues and discussions, I found
out one of the key reason is that
individual maintaining a continuous telephonic conversation with another
brother.
These are two brothers, but one influences the
other and they both are sliding away.
And I said, this is an order from
his leader.
He must not continue this telephone relationship and
conversation.
Cut it off and I will talk to
you later a month or so.
That's the instruction I gave.
Well, for your ears, maybe it is a
tough thing to hear because the culture is
different maybe.
But I'm telling you, I'm more concerned about
sustaining my brothers and sisters in the ministry.
When I know there is a problem, I
have to say, this is the end of
the journey for you.
Don't do it anymore.
If he disobey me, that is his problem.
But I'm telling you, in your life, ask
the question.
Are you, your heart burning with the fire
and intensity, the blue flame as it was
some years ago, year ago, six months ago?
And ask also, what happened?
Then ask the Lord.
Most probably you'll find it's some friendship, some
association.
I ask you to be careful.
Number six, life of continuous surrender.
Abraham is my friend, which is not one
time, it's a perpetual, non-stop, always in
the present tense.
And without your daily time in God's word
and prayer and meditation and confession, I guarantee
you, assure you, you will not survive spiritually.
That is one thing I can underline a
thousand times.
You will not, I will not make it.
And Abraham had to do that on a
daily basis.
Number seven, the last one, I can't believe
I'm doing it.
He knew, he knew that the finish line
is not that far away.
He considered himself as a pilgrim and stranger
on this earth, Hebrews.
He looked for a city that has foundations,
the builder and maker is God.
Therefore he was not attached to the material
things, all the stuff around him.
He was least worried about it.
Why?
He fixed his eyes on eternity.
I said this story the other day when
I was speaking in Tucson.
It was yesterday.
It was kind of really yesterday.
When the Lord called me to leave my
home, my parents, go to North India 2
,000 miles away to serve him.
Really, kind of yesterday.
One of the earlier experience I have in
America in 1974 when you can America was
watching these televisions and there was one guy
I really liked him a lot on television.
His name is George Burns.
Anybody remember him?
You know the old man who played God?
And he had a cigar in his mouth,
you know, he smokes, I mean all these
things coming out of him.
But when he goes off from his show,
he sings this song, I wish I was
18 again.
Remember that?
Chris Brewer is trying to say, yes, you
are old enough.
I mean it's an 85-year-old man
singing, I wish I was 18 again.
You know, it's strange.
To me, yesterday I was 18.
Today I'm 60.
And I said to myself, whatever happened to
time, I just don't know.
It's just like a second.
How dumb and foolish we are to think
that we are here forever.
We act and behave as though this is
it.
Look at your driver's license.
Look at pictures, you know, when kids get
old, you know, married, you know, like Terry,
John's daughter, she had all little pictures of,
you know, little baby crawling and playing with
toys and all those things.
The next thing you know, she's sitting there
getting married.
What happened to the time?
And Abraham somehow knew, it's not worth wasting
my life here.
And I pray that you and I will
consider the end of many lives that we
heard, read about.
May our hearts be encouraged with someone like
Abraham and run the race that we may
finish well.
Let us pray.
Dear Jesus, we want to thank you for
this evening that you gave us.
Just as you promised Abraham, nations, Lord, you
promised us.
I'll give you nations.
Multiplied millions in our generation, Lord.
You are looking to us, each one of
us.
That we may run the race and remain
faithful to you with our time, resources, our
energies, our opportunities, our talents.
That somehow, Lord, you can continue to fulfill
the promise that you gave to Abraham.
That through us, you find ways to touch
the lives of others and call them to
be yours.
Lord, lead us tonight.
As we spend time with you.
And may our hearts be touched by you,
Lord.
In Christ's name.
Amen.
All right.
We are going to have time of sharing
and prayer request.
And those of you at home or wherever
you are, thank you for joining us again.
And we'll continue to have the prayer meeting.
And again, we are going to share prayer
request, as John mentioned.
Divide into small groups and pray right there
in your home or wherever you are.
Join us in prayer for these prayer requests
that we are going to be just now
sharing and talking about.
God bless you.