Let's just pray.
Father, we praise you for the beauty of
this day.
We praise you for the great reality of
knowing you on a personal basis.
We thank you for faith that in the
midst of struggles and trials and whatever may
be facing us, we can rejoice in your
grace and your salvation and your love for
us.
And we just thank you for your Son,
the Lord Jesus, through whom we pray.
Help us to be diligent now to receive
from your word, to receive from your word
that which you have for us.
Strengthen those that are not able to be
with us, that may hear this by tape
but may not hear it at all, down
in the engine room, up on the bridge,
working in the galley.
Those that are not feeling well, just enable
them to somehow persevere.
We look to you to make this day
count for eternity, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, it's great to finally be back sailing
with one of the OM ships.
If I look back over the past years,
perhaps one of my mistakes, many mistakes, is
not spending more time sailing on God's ships.
It's a privilege to have this extra time
to share, and I know that so many
who come onto, into OM, they have this
desire, of course, to grow in the Lord,
to become more mature spiritually.
I think most discover it's not as easy
as perhaps they thought.
Maybe for some it's easier.
I'd like to get some letters from the
easier crowd.
Growing in Christ is easier than I thought.
I brought to the ship some cassette tape
albums that I'm going to present to the
librarian.
Is the librarian here this morning?
Alec Brackett was on the ship briefly.
He's the man that's been duplicating these tapes
for 28 years.
Lives near Manchester.
He came on the ship.
I gave him a little Verwer tour, even
though I'm only learning to find my way
around.
And we got two albums here.
This is an anniversary album of ministry tapes,
just a few select tapes of all the
tapes he did before 1970.
We're going to put this in the library.
There's Growing in Grace by Keith Beckwith, the
man that was killed in Poland in 1965.
There's A Day Jesus Came to My House
by William MacDonald, a message he gave at
an OM conference, I think, in 1964.
There's George Miley, who led this ministry of
the ship for so many years.
Power of His Resurrection.
Jonathan McCrosty, Counting It All Joy.
Dale Roton, Confidence in God and Inspiration of
Scriptures.
Greg Livingston, Four Spiritual Laws.
Ralph Shallis, What Does God Mean to Us?
And then the other side are mainly messages
that I shared before 1970.
I already felt the glory may be departing
from OM way back in the 60s.
So here's a message, is the glory departing?
And there's a message I gave at Cambridge
University, A Christian Manifesto.
I would not even...
I need to listen to these myself, because
I haven't a clue what I'm saying on
these tapes.
This is 20, 30 years ago.
So that's going to go into the library.
We hope when you borrow those tapes, you
could return them.
If you want one of those tapes to
keep, if you write to me, I will
arrange for you to get that.
This one is after the 80s.
And it even has my Toward the Year
2000 message, which was only given last year.
A message that somehow, in God's mercy, very
distinct from other things I've spoken, this particular
message, somehow in God's mercy, he's choosing to
use in an unusual way.
I talk about survival of the family.
This seems to be a sex album.
I talk about living under pressure.
I talk about what the Bible says about
sex.
Then over here we have Rotan on principles
that are alive, Miley on why does God
allow a crisis, Nigel Lee on battle for
the Bible, Howard Norrish on suffering, Martin Goldsmith
on prepare for leadership, Peter Maiden on overview
of the OM work, Peter Conlon, what on
earth is God doing?
So that's going to go in the library.
Another message here you may want to get
to is being big-hearted.
And if any of you are in OM,
not just for work, now I know on
this ship, most of you, praise God, have
come to work your knuckles off, and that's
wonderful for Jesus.
But any of you who are into the
training thing, you're not writing anything down at
this point.
It's a denial that you have any real
interest in training.
So if you can take out a pen
and paper, or if you can't find one,
you can just repent.
You've got about as much initiative as a
backslidden grasshopper.
That's an overstatement, and maybe bring it tomorrow.
But really, a lot of the talk in
OM about training among the troops is just
eyewash, because they're not willing to pay the
price to be trained.
Training hurts.
Training is hard work.
And I believe that the fact that we
are a work-oriented ship with all the
complexity of that can make this a better
training program if people are serious.
But if people are not that serious, or
somehow they've lost their zeal, I'm going to
talk about that this morning, how to maintain
spiritual freshness, then they will not get what
they should be getting.
And it's just so, so important to understand
that.
I would like you to try to listen
to this message, being big-hearted.
I gave it in Peshawar, March 6, 1987.
And I felt so strongly about this message
that the message on extremism has been taken
out of the book Revolution of Love and
Balance, now called Only Revolution of Love.
Ship's one of the few places you can
find that book.
And it's been replaced with this message.
A plea to be big-hearted, and how
we need that in all of the OM
ministry.
Then there's this famous message on financial crisis.
It's interesting that hundreds of major Christian leaders
have all over the world listened to this
tape, but OMers haven't listened to it.
You will never understand where OM is financially
today, why we are taking offerings in these
meetings, which is an offense to some people,
not many.
If you've not heard that tape.
Then I talk about apathy.
Then I talk about the laborer is worthy
of his hire.
Shortly after the new financial policy five years
ago, the Lord gave the anointing to share
this message.
I was speaking about this with my team
yesterday morning in London.
From passages in Corinthians, don't muzzle out the
ox.
And pointing out the dignity of living off
money given to us by other people.
We are not beggars.
To go out in churches and preach and
pray for funds to come in is something
we can do with dignity, because the laborer
is worthy of his hire.
And there's another bunch of verses tied in
with that.
Some of that I touch on that tape.
The laborer is worthy of his hire.
And then there's emotional and spiritual survival.
Discouragement.
I talk a lot about dealing with that.
So that's going to the library.
An extra two, three or four of these
will be in the library.
So that is more than one copy of
some of these tapes.
Let me ask a question.
How many of you knew that in the
whole original vision to get a ship, one
of the main guiding principles was that we
would be able to study, we would be
able to have sessions like this as we
moved toward the target field in that first
year it was India.
How many actually knew that little principle?
Well, Dave Thomas did, praise God, and a
few others.
That was a guiding foundation principle.
How did that come?
Because some of us had spent hundreds and
hundreds of hours in the backs of dusty
trucks bouncing over washboard roads in Turkey and
Iran where to read a book could mean
the end, seemingly, of your eyesight or schizophrenia.
And it is very much linked with what
many people would classify as Verwer's extremist view
on redeeming the time.
To me, time is as valuable as money.
There are people in this world who receive
a salary of one million dollars per day.
And they are unsaved jungle bunnies as far
as I'm concerned.
We are kings and priests.
We are sons of God.
What do you think God would pay to
do His work?
A measly one million dollars?
Forget it.
How much do you think that's worth in
heaven?
God has a different pay system.
He talks about rewards in heaven.
He talks about treasure in heaven.
And so I believe, as God's people, time
is more valuable than money.
And one of our first scriptures this morning,
we're going to have a number of scriptures,
is that word in Ephesians, redeem the time.
I used to be so strong that everybody
in the back of the truck traveling with
me should be redeeming the time.
Around that time, we had no Walkmans.
We had old recorders and you could plug
a little earphone in, stuck in your ear,
where you could listen carefully in the corner
bouncing along.
Of course, you never had enough battery power.
We rigged up some of the strangest things
in those trucks to run different recorders in
the back of the truck.
As I was insisting, everybody as they travel
must be in the Word of God.
All the time must be redeemed on the
trip.
And it did get a bit bizarre.
Some people rebelled against it.
There were people who slept a high percentage
of the journey just for pure survival.
And so when this original idea, the idea
came of a ship in that converted pub
in Bolton, Lancashire, not far from where we
were there in Liverpool.
When I wrote that original memo, How to
Use the Ship in World Evangelism, that was
one of the concepts.
Of course, there was some opposition, like people
getting seasick.
I get seasick occasionally.
I was traveling on another ship before we
had this ship, and that helped in some
of my original concepts.
I think it was called the MV Vietnam.
We were sailing from Marseilles to Bombay.
Long journey.
After some days, somehow in the rough sea,
I did get seasick.
Now, in my particular case, and it's not
always possible when you're working, if I lay
down, it more or less goes away.
We're all different.
Some people have it so bad, laying down
does not resolve it.
But I lay down and listened to tapes.
I can remember, this is a long time
ago, we're talking 25 years ago, I can
tell you the tapes I listened to, at
least five of them, were Dr. Schaeffer's message,
The Problems of the Man That Does Not
Believe the Bible.
Probably one of the most significant training tapes
series I ever listened to in my life.
I was flat out in my bed, seasick.
So even when you're not feeling well, and
one of the greatest things when you're seasick
is to somehow try to keep pressing on.
Don't let the first little feeling knock you
for a loop.
It is a battle.
And people that don't get regularly seasick cannot
relate to those easily who do.
But I remember long-term people in the
ship ministry who were seasick every voyage and
somehow they pressed on.
That was a very big challenge to me.
So today and tomorrow can be a great
day of study.
We know there's also lots of work.
I did not envisage when this ministry was
born how much work it would take to
keep a ship going.
And even in the first year with my
family living on Lagos, I was stunned at
the amount of work to keep a ship
going.
That has been something we have constantly battled.
And the fact that this ministry has been
going for 20 years, two ships for 13
years, is an amazing answer to prayer.
I don't easily say things are an answer
to prayer.
You're looking at a skeptic.
You're looking at a potential cynic.
I get really upset when people say something's
an answer to prayer when it's just a
natural course of events but God can still
be involved.
I'm not heavy on throwing around the word
miracle.
Everything's a miracle.
Somebody's constipated and finally they go.
Hallelujah, it's a miracle.
You can hear them in the toilet praising
God.
You know, I think this word miracle does
get overused.
It gets overused.
But I believe this ship is a combination
of miracles.
That's God intervening.
God doing something unusual.
God, of course, in one sense answering prayer
is always a miracle.
I guess the problem is the definition of
the word.
But it's wonderful that now we don't have
to over-emphasize prayer.
Woo!
Prayer is going off the wall.
Over-emphasize prayer.
How can you over-emphasize prayer?
C.T. Studd felt that prayer was sometimes
a cop-out for obedience.
And I believe that's sometimes true.
But this ship and your ministry is going
on because of the combination of the different
gifts that God gives to us.
And the grace to work hard.
I thank God under our new policy there's
no contradiction between working hard and praying hard.
There's no contradiction between me praying for a
prayer partner to give finance to the work,
which is one of my jobs, and talking
to them about it.
And I hope that you can see that
there's not a contradiction between working diligently and
hard on the bridge or the engine room
or the galley and praying hard.
I appreciate so much the extra time I've
been given this morning.
This definitely should be rewarded.
It's not near as much as Dulas gave
me, but Dulas was stuck at port somewhere
and they had been building up for my
visit for a long time.
And I am just so grateful for this
extra time.
I think I'm going to be with you
in your prayer time after lunch.
And then is there a meeting tonight?
Here tonight?
And then tomorrow morning again?
Boy, thank you for praying for my voice.
It's still there.
I want you to turn to Hebrews 12,
wherefore seeing we also are compassed about what
so great cloud of witness is, let us
lay aside every weight in the sin which
does so easily beset us.
Let us run with patience the race that
is set before us.
Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of
our faith, who for the joy that was
sent before Him endured the cross, despising the
shame, and is set down at the right
hand of the throne of God.
For consider Him that endured such contradiction of
sinners against Himself, lest ye be wearied and
faint in your minds.
Ye have not yet resisted unto blood striving
against sin.
And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh
unto you as unto sons, My son, despise
not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor
faint when thou art rebuked of Him.
For whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth and
scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.
If you endure chastening, God dealeth with you
as with sons.
For what son is He whom the Father
chasteneth not?
I want to just talk to you about
running the marathon race.
But I want to use a different message.
Some of you heard my marathon running race
message.
So I want to really talk to you
about...
And these are the words the Lord gave
me this morning.
How to stay fresh.
One of the most beautiful things about being
on the ship, and I've spent a lot
of the time since we sailed out, I've
spent a lot of time out on the
deck, is the fresh air.
Coming out and breathing in the sea air.
When I went out early to jog around
the deck, I don't know if that's allowed,
but forgive me if it isn't.
I always watch out for people.
I'm very careful.
I just go very slow.
I'm in the 50's club.
I didn't meet many people by the way.
One secret about survival on the ship is
when you get a chance, go outside.
The big complaint about this ship, some people,
oh the cabins are so small.
On a ship, you don't stay in your
cabin all the time.
Now some people of course may have to.
You're working on a word processor, I know.
But you go out, go out on the
deck, and there's a lot of deck space
on this ship.
And just pray, and meditate, and think upon
the Lord who created all this.
And I hope that you will develop the
ability to stay spiritually fresh on this ship.
When we are not spiritually fresh, I do
not believe we can blame other people.
I have been in many difficult environments, including
in jail, and arrested by the Soviets, and
living with backslidden people, and all kinds of
interesting environments.
I don't ever remember blaming my spiritual condition
on other people.
Certainly not on O.M. or on my
wife.
I tried blaming my wife.
I had a wonderful talk with my wife
this morning from the bridge on my little
phone.
And I am so grateful to God for
the provision of such a life partner.
But don't blame other people, institutions, organizations, for
your own spiritual health.
Sure, there are negative factors in every environment.
Where are you going to go on the
planet where there will be no negative factors?
I know this may sound like a broken
record, but most ship people, and we have
been involved with ship people for 20 years,
will tell you it is tougher when you
leave.
It is tougher when you leave.
And re-entry for ship people back into
church life, hometown life, secular jobs, is rough
and tough.
There is a sense where Satan tries to
use everything.
Isn't he?
He is clever.
And he can even use the blessing.
Try to use the blessing.
Many people find the ship very invigorating.
They do stay fresh.
They are used greatly of God on the
ship.
Eventually when they have to leave, it is
a very hard experience for them.
There is lots of tears.
They return home and the people home cannot
relate to them.
This is a major problem in Latin America,
my friends.
Latin American churches do not understand OM.
They are only beginning when it comes to
world missions.
There is a lot of false stories now
going around.
We have a brother that was with us
from one of the countries there, and this
is not anything to do with Latin America.
It happened in England.
It happened in America.
When he got back to his country, the
devil put on the pressure.
He started to drift away from Jesus.
A lovely little girl came along.
He was seduced.
He was thrown completely his Christian faith altogether.
We are in a spiritual warfare.
Satan has much less capacity to attack us
when we are together like this, a mighty
force for God.
There are powerful people of prayer on this
ship.
There are powerful people of prayer praying for
us.
Satan is very limited in what he can
get away with when a community are standing
together and we have so much prayer covering
us.
Who knows?
I don't understand these things.
How many angels are assigned to this ship?
God cannot, the devil cannot touch you or
this ship without some form of permission.
Look at the book of Job.
Now these things are a mystery.
Was there a discussion in heaven before Lagos
hit the rock?
In which Satan was challenging, maybe through an
angel, saying, Yes, these OM people, these ship
people, they love you.
They worship you.
Nothing has happened much in terms of real
catastrophe to that ship ministry in 18 years.
You let me touch them.
You let me take their ship.
You will see.
They will spit in your face, living God.
You can just imagine Satan challenging one of
the angels.
And the angel is going back and having
a discussion with God.
And God reluctantly, of course that's not a
good word to use about God, says, Okay,
we'll let them hit that rock.
These few little circumstances and they'll end up
on the rock.
And the devil has been really upset about
that strategy ever since.
That bounced back in his face like someone
throwing a ton of garbage into the back
end of a jet and standing behind it.
Satan has got it in the face because
out of that came Lagos II.
Out of that came more interest in the
ship than ever in history.
Out of that, some of you decided to
follow the Lord Jesus and join this ministry.
Don't blame your spiritual dullness, myopia, lukewarmness on
your environment.
There is provision in Jesus Christ to run
the race in a fresh and in a
vigorous and diligent way.
Now I don't want to just tell you
to do that.
You've already had that, right?
Some way or other.
I want to share just some practical things
and fresh for the Lord every day since
my conversion.
Now that's not a boast.
Forgive me, I can only boast in Jesus
Christ.
But Jesus Christ lives in me.
Now I've had many moments when I was
not fresh.
Many moments.
I've had hours.
And I'm ashamed of that.
But whole days.
A whole day of not being with it
for Jesus, it's inconceivable.
I'm not going to give the devil a
whole day.
I'm battling for minutes.
And he does get those minutes.
I get really down.
People of my temperament go way up and
they go way down.
Now some of you can't relate to that.
You're even-steven-steady-eddy.
You're the laid-back, even-keel-phlegmatic.
And I admire such people.
I mean, really.
One of the secrets of my ministry is
being able to surround myself with laid-back
phlegmatics.
Initially they can't stand me.
I get on their nerves.
I upset them.
They feel I have to repent when they're
around me.
But eventually we get a relationship and it's
amazing.
I've watched Mr. Laid-Back Peter Maiden now
for, what, 15 years.
I mean, it's awesome.
Just try to get him upset.
Just try.
And you are going to run out of
steam.
You're going to end up pounding the wall.
Now I've heard occasionally when OM pressure gets
at a very high level, that Maiden has
raised his voice and really dug it, I
tell you.
If I could only get a video of
it, could sell it around OM.
Doesn't mean he's not firm.
People who know Dale Roton and George Verwer
say Verwer is the bark and Roton is
the bite.
He can be tough.
He can be strong.
And we need that kind of leadership in
the work of God.
It's always a struggle to find the balance.
How can we stay fresh?
Let me share some of the principles God
gave me as a young Christian.
Some of them are very much in the
way of remembrance.
There may be some things that are new.
First of all, we get in the Word
of God whether we feel like it or
not.
And we memorize Scripture.
In my life, memorizing Scripture has been a
key to spiritual freshness.
Sometimes Bible study for me is very boring.
I easily get bored.
I've got this new book.
I think I may have brought it with
me.
101 Things to Do During a Boring Sermon.
It's brilliant.
101 things to do during a boring sermon.
But I have discovered that the Word of
God is sharp.
And if I get in the Word and
I memorize and I meditate, it is one
of the keys to freshness.
Now, I have variety in Bible study.
I don't just plod through one system.
We're all different when it comes to Bible
study.
I don't judge other people.
But I always have a little time each
day in the Psalms, a little time in
Proverbs, then a little in the Old Testament,
then something in the New, and then some
memory work.
And then I often read books.
Reading books during my devotional time.
I've dropped the habit now, actually.
But in my first 10 or 15 years,
it was absolutely key to my spiritual foundation.
One chapter of Tozer.
One chapter of Lloyd-Jones.
One chapter in a daily reading book by
Andrew Murray.
And I found that so stimulating to get
on with that day.
Number two, neglecting
prayer!
Did you get the point?
I think it was Winston Churchill went to
speak at some great school.
It's probably not far from here.
These are the Welsh mountains you're looking at.
I've climbed a number of them.
It's thrilling.
I wish we could dash over there.
I remember one of the first ship intensive
training programs.
I took them to one of those hills
you're looking at.
I didn't go with them.
I don't know.
I had to preach at Bangor University.
That's just over there as well.
And I dropped them off the van in
the rain, cold, and I pointed to the
place on the map on the other side
of the mountain.
I say, I'll meet you there tonight.
Go!
I tell you, what a scared lot of
turkeys we had climbing over the Welsh hills
trying to find this little pinpoint place that
I had pointed to on the map.
When they got there, they were so wet.
They were sick.
They were angry.
They were ready to...
No, I don't think they were going to
kill me.
But they did have doubts about that particular
program.
I almost got killed over there in the
rock climbing part of the intensive training.
It's good that was eventually dropped unless we
lost some good people in the rocks.
The Word of God, memorizing, meditating, prayer.
Winston Churchill was speaking to this group at
this, I think, graduation, some kind of big,
big meeting, the end of term.
And he said as he stood up facing
this very, very big audience, this was the
great Winston Churchill, he said, never give up.
Then he said, never give up.
Then he said, as he threw out a
great nugget, never give up.
Never give up.
And the great Winston Churchill sat down.
End of message.
And I think that's one of the keys
of staying fresh is the commitment to never
give up.
And if you know that you're never going
to give up, you save a lot of
argumentation with yourself.
You've already settled that.
As it says in the cover of the
book, no turning back.
You're not going to give up.
So keep praying.
Keep worshiping.
Now there's a whole group of things I
could talk about in this category, like worship,
praise, praise tapes, listening to the Word of
God, praying with other people, small group prayer,
any kind of prayer you can imagine.
If I had come into this project at
19 years of age, I would have never
missed any prayer meeting on the ship unless
I had to work at that time.
That's the commitment I made at 18.
There, I'm sure, were some exceptions.
And so at Moody Bible Institute, as a
young student, they had prayer meetings after every
meal.
All the students were encouraged.
Can you imagine this?
No wonder I almost flipped out in the
place.
All the students were encouraged to go at
least once a week to a prayer meeting.
If there's a prayer meeting after every meal,
it was only 45 minutes, it was nothing.
Just go every night.
I mean, it's normal.
You've got 24 hours in a day.
I was looking for prayer meetings.
I was doing research.
Praying.
If you go on Doulas, you do some
research, find out where some of these prayer
meetings are, you'll find some interesting meetings.
You never find them if you don't do
your research.
Prayer meetings have been a key for my
remaining fresh and on the cutting edge each
day of what God is doing.
Now, when you go into those prayer meetings,
often you don't feel like praying.
Big deal.
How many of us human beings run around
all day feeling like praying?
We are, no matter how filled we are
with the Spirit.
We're incredibly human.
I don't understand myself yet all of these
years.
Part of me wants to pray, part of
me doesn't want to pray.
Don't you ever have that struggle?
The Bible says, the flesh lusteth against the
Spirit, the Spirit against the flesh.
If we read that in the Bible and
then we experience that, why are we surprised?
Part of me wanted to sail with the
ship.
Part of me didn't want to sail with
the ship.
Part of me enjoys the ship, enjoys being
here.
Part of me right now is in struggle
about certain things in my life, in an
OM, and that struggle is always there.
It doesn't go away.
Great victory is not in the absence of
struggle.
Great victory is not in the absence of
frustration, doubt, hurt.
Great victory is as we focus on Jesus.
We sort ourselves out from the Word of
God and press on.
You've got to stop living by feelings.
When you leave the ship, you may get
far more hurt than when you're on it.
Rejection, misunderstandings.
You're going to feel pretty miserable at times.
You've got to learn to deal with those
feelings.
One of the main reasons, I may run
out of numbers, but I'll give you another
reason why I've learned to stay fresh is
just what I was just speaking about.
Not living by feelings.
Now, eventually, as you take steps of faith,
as you deal with self, as you begin
to worship, even if it's a ten-minute
slot, your feelings will often get on board.
Not always, but often.
Isn't that great?
There's nothing wrong with feeling good.
I often feel good.
Is there something wrong with that?
Even in the midst of struggles and doubts
and pressure.
I feel good about God.
I feel good about myself, even though there
are things I don't like about myself.
I know God loves me.
He accepts me more than I accept myself.
If people reject me because I'm too loud
or bombastic, Val Grieve jumped on me already
last night, hinting I spoke too long at
his church.
He lined up this meeting at his church,
a very, very nice Anglican church, and I
was really flying high by Sunday night.
A lot of exciting things were happening on
Sunday, and so I just let loose.
And he told me to take 45 minutes.
I may have taken more.
I could care less.
I don't even care if I ever go
back.
There's plenty of other Anglican churches.
No, I do love those people.
It's a great church.
So he jumps on me last night, Why
did you tell the people that I told
you you could speak 45 minutes?
He told me that I could speak 45
minutes.
So I told the people, Val Grieve, who's
a big shot in the church, said I
could speak 45 minutes.
Let him take the blame for the trouble.
Why should I always take the blame?
But when things go wrong and misunderstandings come
and we feel bad about ourselves, why did
I do that again?
We feel still good about ourselves because God
loves us.
God has created us.
Do you know what it is to be
in God's work for 25 years, as I
have, and fall flat on your face through
a pornographic magazine?
Have you had that experience yet?
You haven't because you haven't been in God's
work 25 years.
You figure after 25 years of OM's trying
to train you, that you're going to be
totally, totally free.
Well, I'll tell you, if I went back
to my cabin at a certain time in
this voyage, I don't know when it would
be, my emotion has ups and downs, you
see.
If I was on a down, struggling, maybe
missing my wife, maybe wondering, as I do
a lot, how can we possibly evangelize the
whole world?
Maybe you could tell me about that.
Six billion people.
Population growing so fast that we can't even
hardly keep up without the computer.
If I were at a low moment, and
I walked into my cabin, and a pornographic
magazine of the right type, not the heavy,
hard stuff, but the kind of stuff I
peddled a little bit in the 50s, which,
of course, now people say is art, you
see.
They say looking at women's bodies, that's just
art, and if you're not free to do
that, there's something wrong with you.
You need a psychiatrist.
Of course, you go to the psychiatrist, you
discover he's completely off the wall himself.
He's into perversion.
He's got women stacked in the icebox and
all kinds of things.
But somehow, if I went into that cabin
at a particular time in my emotional and
spiritual battle, there's a chance that I wouldn't
get the victory.
So I just keep praying that that never
happens.
William MacDonald taught me that years ago.
Pray that the mood and the circumstance don't
collide.
And, of course, you can organize your life
so some of these things don't collide.
I just want to warn you, if anybody's
planning to put any magazines in my cabin,
it's locked.
I've got the key.
Not far from here, in Edinburgh, I was
going to a huge meeting to preach the
great George Verwer.
And I went into the toilet and there
were about ten pounds sterling worth of magazines
just laying there.
I know some of you women cannot possibly
relate to this.
You need to hear this, women.
This is an awful struggle for men.
Your bodies have tremendous power.
Why do we teach women to dress modestly?
Because a woman's body has power.
And the Bible teaches that.
And we don't expect men to totally understand.
And we don't expect women to totally understand
men and their struggles.
But they can at least try.
Now, we know, men, that your body also
has power.
And many women have written to me over
the years.
And they said, hey, you're telling us how
to dress.
Why don't you tell these guys how to
dress?
They wear these, you know, really tight shorts,
which, you know, it would be less tempting
for a woman if you didn't have any
shorts on at all.
They could see how weird and ugly it
is and run down the other end of
the deck.
But these tight shorts, the curiosity, you know,
what is really behind there?
Of course, we're a little more free in
this day and age, which has, in some
cases, helped some people.
Because let me tell you, and I've studied
a lot of history.
The story of sexual immorality in the church
is the greatest cover-up in history.
In every nation in the world.
In every church.
I would debate any Christian leader in the
world on that subject.
It's the greatest cover-up.
Because in some cultures, it is so forbidden.
It was covered up in the family of
John Wesley.
Did you know that?
Did you know that Hetty, John Wesley's sister,
got into big trouble?
The father never forgave Hetty the rest of
her life.
He forced her to marry another man who
turned out to be a drunk.
And it was the scandal of the Wesley
family and it was completely covered up by
the Methodists until research was done and a
new book came out that I read.
We got a load of them on Lagos
1 and I wept.
There's always more to history than anybody who
would put into a book.
You're going to have to learn.
And that brings me to the next point.
How to walk in the light.
I've been involved in counseling a woman on
the phone the last couple of days.
No big counseling.
Her husband's away.
She's feeling very, very low spiritually.
She told me in the second phone call,
I talked to her again this morning from
the bridge, the second phone call which was
the other day, that just sharing her struggle
with me on the phone has been such
an enormous help.
How have I stayed fresh?
I almost always share my struggles.
Not overly so.
Making everybody feel miserable.
But I don't keep things in.
I talk it out.
You don't have to go for counseling in
a heavy way.
The ship is not filled with people with
training in psychology.
We probably have a few.
But to go to someone and say, hey,
I'd just like to share with you for
ten minutes.
Sometimes people use it as an excuse.
They say, well, they're too busy.
Busy people are often the best counselors.
If you want to get something done, you
go to a busy person.
Don't use it as an excuse.
He may not be able to do it
at that time.
But if you give him an advance notice,
if you give him a note, he'll find
time.
If anybody here had written me and said
they'd like to have time with me before
I came, not after this message, that would
go immediate priority.
And a couple of you have written me
and I'd like to see you today.
But we can't always come up with a
time at the moment if we're doing something.
We're only human beings and many of us
do a lot of counseling.
Take the initiative.
Don't sit back in your cabin waiting for
God's man to knock on the door and
offer to talk with you.
Some people stop knocking on other people's doors
because they got rejection after the door opened.
Life is complicated.
And initiative...
What is our finishing time?
Isn't it nine o'clock?
Ten to nine.
Okay, we'll finish.
Continue tomorrow.
So take the initiative.
Learn to share.
Don't keep it in.
There's different kinds of fellowship with different people.
That's another thing that has helped me to
remain fresh is to have different kinds of
fellowship with different people.
You don't always have to talk about things
that seem a bit in depth.
You don't always have to talk about sex,
some people think, because I occasionally touch on
the subject of sex.
Well, any fellowship with Vera where you got
to talk about sex.
Most of the time in my fellowship I
don't talk about sex.
There's all kinds of fellowship.
And it's just so important.
If another way that I learned to stay
fresh was to always be involved in evangelism.
Now there's all kinds of evangelism on the
ship.
You can go back to the coffee bar
and win someone to Christ.
You can give out a tract and pray
for him to be saved as he goes
down the gangway.
I'm working on trying to get another hundred
thousand Gospels of John to you right now.
It looks fairly encouraging.
The best possible Gospels I've ever seen.
They're worth 15 pence each.
The first load will come to the ship
tomorrow on my old bus, maybe half a
ton.
But as you go to Africa or Spain
or the rest of your life, make a
commitment to talking to the unsaved people about
Jesus.
If you are not spending at least some
time with unconverted people, the devil will try
to use that to get you to grow
stale.
One of the persons, I had an evangelistic
witness from the bridge last night talk to
my unsaved, atheistic uncle.
I don't have to give him the four
spiritual laws on the phone.
He knows where I stand.
He's totally opposed.
My first task with my uncle is to
melt his heart.
And I tell you, that phone call last
night, because he's a sailor and he's got
a yacht.
Anything to do with the sea, he just,
poof, couldn't believe it.
He's calling us from the bridge of a
ship.
He's never seen these ships.
I'm not sure he even believes what he's
heard.
Maybe he thinks it's a lark.
And there's all kinds of evangelism.
We know it's an enormous battle for people
to get official time to join Jonathan and
go out in evangelism.
It's worth that battle to get an hour
here, two hours there, and go off this
ship, or on the ship and talk to
people, give out tracts, bang on doors.
We know it's not easy, but it will
force you to stay fresh, because it's hard
to witness when you're an old, stale, mildew
cracker.
And we've got some old, stale, mildew crackers
around Operation Mobilization, and it scares me.
Brothers and sisters, you can stay fresh.
No matter what else you have in your
life, if you don't develop discipline, you're not
going to make it.
Discipline is not mainly something that comes to
you through getting a special experience with the
Holy Spirit.
I've had many experiences with the Holy Spirit.
But whatever experience you have had, you have
to follow it up with discipline, with old
-fashioned obedience.
Repentance!
Hear this.
Repentance is the greatest key to staying fresh.
You get cold, you get dull, you get
wrong attitudes.
You repent.
You deal with it.
You put it under the blood.
You say, what do I do?
It comes back five minutes later.
You repent again.
There is no excuse for the present state
of operation mobilization worldwide.
There are too many people who have lost
their freshness.
There are too many people that have fallen
for subtle lies from Satan.
Too many people allowing bitterness and resentment to
creep into their life.
They mainly harm themselves.
And if a character like me with all
my struggles and doubts and fears and battles
and these things can stay fresh every day,
many lost hours, many lost minutes, I admit
that, then anybody can do it.
The principles are in the Word of God.
I've shared some of them on these tapes.
Others are on these books.
Isn't it exciting?
You can live in personal revival.
You can live spiritually fresh the rest of
your life so that whatever garbage, whatever rubbish,
whatever Satan throws your way, somehow, through struggle,
sometimes even failure and sin, you can bounce
back and keep on running as you're told
to do in Hebrews 12.
If you've missed what I've shared this morning,
so basic to our whole movement, then you've
missed OM.
You've missed it.
Because what I've talked about this morning is
as basic and as central to this movement
as anything I could share from the Word
of God.
Let's pray.
Our God and Father, we thank You for
Your Word.
We thank You for this challenge of Hebrews
12 that we're to enter this race and
we're to run with our eyes fixed upon
You.
And we know as we keep our eyes
upon You rather than sin Satan herself, that
that is one of the most important factors
in maintaining this freshness.
We are bought with a price.
We are Yours.
And we're going full steam ahead.
We're trusting You to enable us by Your
grace and obedience and faith to walk in
a fresh, vigorous, diligent way the rest of
our Christian life.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
God bless you.