We want to turn to the Word of
God and just share a few thoughts from
Peter and James.
God has really met with us here during
this last week.
We've been here over a week.
We had, first of all, the meeting connected
with the leaders of the whole South Asia
area, including the surrounding countries.
It was a time of sharing, of prayer,
of unity.
There are now 450 full-time people, including
the work among the Afghans.
It's an enormous responsibility.
We really sense God very much working in
our midst.
The last couple of days, we've been meeting
with the All India Coordinating Team, and there's
been a great sense of encouragement, unity, even
in the midst of a diversity of opinions.
So that's great.
Thank you for praying for us.
And I hope that you, even though your
time here is short, as you know, there
are many, many other people that wanted to
come here.
I'm afraid that I had to be a
little hard this year and ask them not
to come, partly because of the finance, partly
because they only get disappointed, because I cannot
meet with all these people personally.
And I do want to get personal time
with everyone who comes up here.
I am not the focus of these meetings.
I am part of the problem because I'm
not able to go into India, but the
focus of these meetings is the Lord himself.
And let's get time with the Lord Jesus.
We've come to a different environment.
Actually, I've found this place, compared to Bromley,
somewhat restful.
I have different varieties of fast lane operations,
but this has been a lower variety.
Good, quiet time in the morning, not having
to rush off.
Of course, I have jet lag.
Little bit of time in the evening to
do letters, go for an occasional walk, and
spend lots of time or some time in
prayer.
So I'm grateful for these days, even though
greatly miss my wife.
James chapter one, verse two, my brethren, count
it all joy when you fall into various
trials.
What are some other words used for that
in modern translations?
Testings.
Knowing this, that the testing of your faith
worketh patience.
God allowed our faith to be tested when
we lost Lagos after 17 years.
I don't think we ever dreamed in the
beginning of that project.
We'd have that old ship for 17 years.
I used to cry out to God just
for one thing at times, it would just
get to India.
Such struggles with fear and doubt during those
early days of Lagos, as we had never
done anything like that before, and as there
was criticism, there was division.
You can read about it in the Lagos
story, quite an honest history.
Though, of course, it's not really history, it's
just snapshots of some of things in 17
years.
By the way, if you can't sell that
book around India, let me just announce to
you that you don't know how to sell
books, so you might want to learn.
Maybe AIC will have a good session on
how to sell a book.
There is a difference between collecting a donation
for a gospel packet, which a clone could
do, and selling a book.
Maybe this is why the Lord is keeping
me out of India.
I would go down there and make you
all feel so miserable, as I go around
to your bases and see how neat and
tidy and organized everything is.
I just saw one box of literature in
front of one house here in Kathmandu.
I don't go around snooping anymore, it's too
depressing.
One box of literature in front of one
house here, and you know, I wanted to
weep.
Just books thrown into a box, dust, dirt,
garbage.
Of course, they're used books, but I tell
you, one of them was a New Testament,
and that is often an offense to people.
It certainly is to a Muslim to see
the Word of God treated as if it
were some kind of...
Right underneath it was an old crummy novel
that fell out of some newsstand in the
Western world.
Anyway, I don't want to get excited about
these things.
Brethren, count it all joy when you fall
into various testings, knowing this, that the testing
of your faith worketh patience.
That's my greatest need still.
How can that be?
Thirty-four years after my conversion.
It's quite amazing.
I wrote something down in my diary the
other night.
I was just...
I've been saved and living for Jesus 12
,410 days, approximately.
And the way I've done that is just
one day at a time.
And some of you have been going on
for thousands of days, you've never realized it.
I've actually been alive for 18,500 days.
I got started in this when I was
washing my hands and realized how many times
a day here in Kathmandu I wash my
hands.
And I figured I probably washed my hands
over the years a quarter of a million
times.
And what is the lesson in that?
I don't know.
Knowing this, that the testing of your faith
worketh patience, but let patience have her perfect
work, that ye may be perfect and entire,
lacking nothing.
Perhaps the lesson in that is that I
find it difficult to even wash my hands
because it seems like such a waste of
time.
I like to move, but it's a wise
thing for your health to wash your hands.
Oh, look at that.
There's lessons every where.
Then it talks about if you lack wisdom,
and one of the reasons we're here in
Kathmandu these days is that we may increase
in wisdom as we listen to one another,
as we wrestle with the problems, as we
determine to develop policies and principles, strategy and
programs so that we can be more effective.
I believe you are effective in your work.
I highly esteem your work.
I thank you for your reports.
I read them.
I stand amazed at your perseverance, especially during
the hot time of the year.
I have difficulty thinking about India in May.
I remember being in New Delhi in May.
I broke all records for bathing.
I think I had six showers in one
day battling New Delhi in May and was
happy to leave and go back to London
after that.
I know some of you, of course, just
revel in the heat.
You like to pedal your cycle down the
street in May at noon.
Not too many probably in that camp.
If any of you lack wisdom, let him
ask of God who giveth to all men.
Liberally upbraideth not shall be given him.
Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering.
For he that wavereth is like a wave
of the sea driven with the wind and
tossed.
For let not that man to think he
shall receive anything from the Lord.
And it talks about a double-minded man.
It talks about the rich, very unpleasant verses
for many people.
Then verse 12, blessed is the man that
endureth testing, temptation.
They have a difference.
There is a difference.
For when he has tried, he shall receive
the crown of life which the Lord hath
promised to them that love him.
And then it clearly shows that being tempted
does not come from God.
God allows it.
Let no man say when he is tempted,
I am tempted of God.
For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither
tempteth he any man.
Important little bit of theology often neglected.
But every man is tempted when he is
drawn away of his own lust and enticed.
You know, even today in some places there
is a tendency, watch out for it, to
think that the problem is always some evil
spirit.
And people blame their behavior on evil spirits.
I am sure there is an element of
truth in some cases in that.
But here it is very clear that, you
know, it does not take a special work
of an evil spirit to get you and
I in a big mess.
We are drawn away of our own lust.
It is in our own hearts.
And we see that clearly in Scripture.
When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin.
And sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth
death.
Do not err, my beloved brethren.
And it goes on to that section of
James 1 that is talked about in my
book, Revolution of Love, which I think most
of you have read.
Turn now to Peter.
Even if these things are not new to
many of you, they are worth feeding upon.
When you have been living for the Lord
thirty-four years, there are very few new
Scriptures.
But it is still God's Word and it
still does something for us, I believe, even
on a subconscious level.
Verse 5, who are kept by the power
of God.
1 Peter, chapter 1, sorry.
1 Peter 1, 5.
Who are kept by the power of God
through faith unto salvation.
Ready to be revealed in the last time.
I certainly hope everyone feels in the early
morning in the English weather, not everybody feels
like, you know, standing on top of a
cassette quarter and doing a gospel jig.
But it seems to me we ought to
rejoice in the Lord and that we should
have a time of praise and prayer before
we come to our early morning devotions.
And probably eight o'clock out here is
hardly considered early.
But there it is.
This isn't just talking about joy, is it?
Ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of
glory.
Another thing that's very painful for me and
O.M. is the lack of participation in
our prayer meetings.
I've been personally confronting people about that lately,
especially some of the women.
Women are to be treated as equal, therefore
they must have equal, straightforward confrontation.
So I will tell you, I've been developing
my boldness.
We also have a policy.
I don't know how this works in India,
but in the West we have a policy
that as leaders we must deal directly with
the women.
The old policy was an unbiblical policy supposedly
that I started.
I thought I found it in Ephesians 5
and other verses that I would always go
through the men.
I remember in the early days once going
to a woman about something and a man
really, really, really really coming on me, you
know, this is my wife and if you've
got anything to say to my wife then
you come to me.
And I think we got into false practice
through that.
There are certainly certain things I'm sure that
you should go through the husband, but apparently
in the West, the way people are thinking,
that certain things you should sit down with
a wife, especially if she's working in your
office.
And many of our women are really married
women going the extra mile to help out
in the office.
But it's amazing how few women pray in
an enthusiastic way in the prayer meetings often
in certain countries.
If you put a new ruling, we'll take
it to the general council, women no longer
are, we've seen a scripture, we can find
a scripture for anything we want, we've seen
women are no longer allowed to pray in
the meetings.
I will tell you, George Verwer would be
voted out of power at the next general
council.
But we take our freedom as an occasion
to the flesh.
I can understand a first year person, a
little shy, first year baby Christian woman being
silent, I can understand that.
That's why she's joined OM, to learn how
to get her mouth open, get her tongue
to move so that, you know, thank you,
Jesus, can come out from her little feminine
vocal cords.
But someone who's been in the work 10
years sitting there like a stone through several
hours of prayer is extremely difficult.
And I know my own wife is very
shy, very quiet, very reticent to pray in
public, but she does it.
Maybe not as often as she should, she
never listens to my tapes.
So that is tied in, that is tied
in with our joy, that is tied in
with the reality of what God is doing
in our life.
What if sometimes the OM prayer meeting is
a little bit of a trial?
Not every prayer meeting is a great, overwhelming,
emotional jamboree of blessing where you just come
in and feel so oozy for God and
go out ready to take the entire nation
for Christ.
Some of the OM prayer meetings that I've
been in are a trial.
Things go wrong, the leader, you know, seems
to be on a rather dull note, the
guest speaker goes on too long, then there's
a tea break, that goes on too long,
the end of the night, you look back
and think, how much time have we actually
prayed?
It's a trial.
But I believe trials can come to us
in many, many different ways.
Don't try to tell God how he is
to test you, because he'll do it in
a different way.
And it is often a great surprise.
I believe, as we go forward in this
work here in the subcontinent, we are going
to continue to experience great testings and trials.
We want blessing, we want breakthroughs, we long
to see greater answers to prayer, we sometimes
search our heart to great depth, but we
are going to be tested.
My mind goes back to the book of
Philippians, chapter 2.
Just look at that for a moment.
As I want to just touch on a
couple of specific areas where we probably are
going to be tested personally.
And the first area I'm thinking of is
our attitude.
And even as we come here, let's examine
our hearts this morning about our attitudes toward
one another, toward God, people do develop a
bad attitude toward God.
That's often a deeply psychological thing.
Our attitude toward the work we are involved.
I develop at times a very bad attitude
toward operationalization.
It's inevitable when a movement is so big.
None of us are happy with everything that's
going on.
Nobody even knows everything that's going on.
We are committed to a pluralistic moving together.
We operate under the guidance of the Holy
Spirit by consensus in that we don't have
one dictator making decisions, but we come to
decisions through prayer and discussion.
And they had Jerusalem meetings back in the
New Testament, just as we have Kathmandu meetings
today.
And we are part of the same church,
the same Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, the same
yesterday, today, and forever more.
But as we think about attitude and how
we will be tested in our attitude, let's
look at Philippians 2, where we're told in
verse 5, one of the greatest verses on
attitude in the New Testament, Let this mind
be in you which was also in Christ
Jesus, who being in the form of God,
thought it not robbery to be equal with
God.
He was equal with God.
We believe in the Trinity, and extreme Jesus
-only, Trinity-denying movements are growing in some
parts of Asia.
I'm sure you must have some in India.
But made himself of no reputation and took
upon him the form of a servant and
was made in the likeness of men.
Being found in fashion as a man, he
humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even
the death of the cross.
One of the great influences on OM from
its early days, not its earliest days, but
after we got started, were the writings of
A.W. Tozer.
And Tozer was a person who greatly emphasized
attitude, having the right attitude.
He emphasized motivation.
Brothers and sisters, in this work we are
doing, we must constantly check our motivation.
You can be in this room as a
leader and be largely propelled by ego, the
praise of men, Christian work, various and sundry
ego trips.
And some of the casualties we've seen in
OM India prove that even after many years,
those people who left bitter and who did
not recover from that, were not being motivated
properly in their work.
Because if we are motivated properly in our
work, if the Holy Spirit is dominating us
in our work, we will not leave any
Christian work with a bitter or wrong attitude,
even if the work is at fault.
We have been at fault in some situations.
And we stand before God, but we have
generally always repented of that.
And within some days, usually days, maybe weeks,
our attitudes have been put right and there
has been a great sense of peace and
joy in the work, even toward the person
that may have backbitten us and gossiped us
and lied and all kinds of things.
So our heart is clean, our conscience is
clean, though we have failed and we have
sinned.
How sad it is to meet a man
two years after he's been on OM and
he's still groaning, he's still backbiting, he's still
gossiping.
This poor soul has not graduated from even
spiritual infancy.
We have men in the pulpits of America,
we have men in the pulpits of Europe,
who have proven that their ministry has been
to some degree an ego trip.
And so when the real testing comes, they
don't stand.
Now there's a difference between an ego trip,
by that I mean we are dominated by
pride and by ego, by our desire for
recognition, by the praise of men and all
that kind of thing, rather than by the
love of Christ, love for people, desire for
Jesus and the cross, crucifying self.
And of course, no wonder not many people
are buying anymore the books of Andrew Murray,
F.B. Meyer, even A.W. Tozer is
not read today by a majority of Christians.
And of course, I, in reading some Tozer,
lately I've been listening to Tozer's tapes, which
are hard to find.
And I seldom get through one of those
tapes without being just shot, having to fall
wounded at the foot of the cross for
resurrection and for healing.
The Keswick Convention, born over a hundred years
ago, had as its main purpose seeing people
come into a victorious and crucified life.
I wrote here in my Bible, the main
thrust of the Keswick Convention, Peter Maiden, by
the way, is speaking there this summer.
One of the main emphasis, the believer's union
with Christ in his death and resurrection, the
perfect cleansing available in the precious blood of
Christ, and the freedom from sins and guilt,
and the power with results through faith.
And over that week at Keswick, there's generally
not always a theme which covers those main
points of the victory we have in the
Lord Jesus Christ.
We've got to be willing to deal with
the mind.
We've got to be willing to deal with
wrong attitudes, with the wrong disposition.
Some of you know one of my favorite
Tozer quotes.
Let me read two of them.
They're dynamite.
Some of you have heard them.
Listen again.
The danger is that we assume that we
have been delivered from our sins when we
have in reality only exchanged one kind of
sin for another.
We must, for instance, be careful that our
repentance is not simply a change of location.
And joining Christian work can be just that,
only a change of location.
Whereas we once sinned in the far country
among the swine herds and the pigs, we
are now chumming with religious persons considerably cleaner,
much more respectable in appearance, to be sure,
but no nearer to the true heart purity
than they were before.
Let's go to that next quote.
We've got to move on.
It requires great care.
This is absolutely dynamite.
Let it go to the soul of your
need.
It requires great care and a true knowledge
of ourselves to distinguish a spiritual burden from
a religious irritation.
And a lot of our teams, and sometimes
even in our discussion here, I know it's
true of me, we get strong and it
may be a spiritual burden.
I think often it is, but there are
other times when it is a religious irritation.
Something is bugging us, something is bothering us
about O.M. or about our brother next
to us or about someone else.
He goes on to say, often acts done
in a spirit of religious irritation have consequences
far beyond anything we could have guessed.
Always it is more important that we retain
a right spirit toward others than that we
bring them to our way of thinking, even
if our way is right.
Satan cares little whether we go astray after
false doctrine or merely turn sour.
Brothers and sisters, our hearts grieve when we
meet people who have turned sour and how
we need to pray for them and show
love to them.
The Holy Spirit worked in a mighty way
at the XOMers reunion last summer when some
XOMers who had, you know, some sour experiences
about O.M. came together and there was
prayer, there was repentance.
One brother from even 24 years back acknowledged
that in those days he had been extreme
in his thinking.
It was a very strong Pentecostal that felt
O.M. wasn't really moving with what it
should be and he went off and joined
that movement in Holland which was a counter
movement to O.M. called Operation Pentecostal Fire
that was going to have the real gifts
and the power, a movement that fizzled within
a few years.
We know today it is one thing to
talk about the Holy Spirit, that's easy.
We've got a lot of backslidden televangelists talking
big about the Holy Spirit.
It's another thing to live in the power
with the fruit and the gifts of the
Holy Spirit operating and we all know we
have a long way to go.
How will your attitude be tested?
What are some of the things that God
may allow to come down life's road to
test you in your attitude that you may
be refined, that you may be purer than
gold, that you may become more mature and
godly in Christ's light?
I've just written a few things.
You're going to be tested when you are
rejected.
How are you doing in handling rejection?
You can feel rejection even when you're in
O.M. You might be, I hope there's
no one here feels rejected because you're staying
in a house down the road and there's
a few of us staying in this hotel.
Just for your information you're looking at one
of the few Christian leaders that I know
of that hardly ever stays in a hotel
and I often am booked into beautiful expensive
hotels and I phone them up and I
say as I just did at mandate can
you please book me out of the hotel.
This is the Lord's money.
I don't have to pay for it and
I usually have a lot of people with
me and they don't book them into the
hotel and what a blessing this last time
I booked out of this hotel and so
the whole group, Paul Troper and my nephew
George Cooper, Ray's brother, we all ended up
in the pastor's house.
The pastors are usually hospitable and they have,
you know, in America their house is a
room and what a blessing we had.
Through that we got a heart linking with
him, ministered at his church, they gave a
$500 gift and we have another permanent long
-term relationship with a very dynamic church.
But we are dealing here in Kathmandu with
a security situation.
It is a great answer to prayer that
we can be here.
This hotel knows us.
We've never had any difficulty here but it
is getting more expensive so the more people
that can just stay somewhere else even though
we eat here, it just saves a lot
of money and sometimes we have almost canceled
this.
We now are doing it every other year.
I think we need to remember for a
long time we've been up here every year
but now it's every other year largely linked
with expense.
We bring less people often from the west
dealing with expense.
Anyway, that might be a poor illustration but
it is possible in little things to feel
rejected, to feel someone else is being treated
better than you.
There is a teaching in the word, the
labor is worthy of its hire.
I hope you listened to that tape.
Some people certainly take that to extreme which
we don't want.
As we've dealt with the allowance system, we
have done something that is very, very seldom
done in the church, east or west, that
basically everybody at OM who is in long
-term staff will be receiving a similar.
It can't all be the same, especially when
it comes to health, children, living in the
city, living in the village.
Basically, we will be living.
Everyone involved on a similar allowance, a similar
amount of money.
People say this doesn't work.
It's not going to be easy.
Of course, if we consider what it costs
to finance even our single people on the
teams, there is not so much difference between
the way they live and the way some
longer-term personnel live, some of whom are
on those teams.
But needless to say, in Christian work, you
will at times feel rejected.
You will go to a church and feel
rejected.
Definitely, at times, we have bad attitudes in
OM toward particular local churches, as if they're
making mistakes, and they're unloving, and they're carnal,
but we're spiritual.
We're not making those mistakes.
We've got to have a revolution in our
attitude toward local churches.
Of course, if we see sin, we grieve.
But I know myself, I've said things at
times, being a natural motor mouth, God cleanse
it, that were really uncalled for and indicated
a wrong attitude.
And sometimes, of course, I have apologized.
Secondly, you're going to be tested when you
discover that you are being gossiped about.
Again, I am amazed at people who are
getting all uptight and all worried because they're
being gossiped about.
Where are you living?
I mean, you people are not 22 anymore.
You're growing older.
I'm not the only one here that's getting
365 days added on to my life every
year.
Surely, you know you're not going to live
in this world without being gossiped about.
Do you think there's anybody in this room
that has never been gossiped about?
No one's ever spoken behind your back?
We fight against gossip with everything we have.
We need to increase that fight.
It is sin.
But man is not perfect.
He does not arrive at perfection in this
world.
I know that might upset one or two
people, I can think, down in India who
are deceived.
But we therefore, at times, will say things
that should not be said.
It will be classified as gossip.
Unfortunately, the other brother will eventually hear a
twisted form of it.
He won't hear a straight form of it.
It's amazing some of the things I hear
quoted that I've said, even in magazines now.
I have more and more people that want
to write things and me to sign the
end of it.
I just have one from a major publisher.
They already wrote a whole six page forward
to a new book by Billy Graham and
somebody else.
They want to put a short chapter in
the middle of it, the beginning of it.
So he's taken some material off a tape
of mine, mixed it with his own thinking
and impressions of what he feels that I
believe.
And he's asked me to sign this, and
this will go into a book.
Well, I had Vera, I hope she's done
it, phone him and say that that's, you
know, I'm not playing that kind of cricket.
And I need to, you know, if he
wants it forward, I have to write it
myself.
And I'm sorry even for some of the
things, a couple of things in some of
my older books that through translation don't exactly
come out right.
Who knows what verve comes out like in
Malayalam, what people are believing in Kerala on
the basis of some message I gave in
Bolton, Lancashire in 1965.
If we are to be God's men and
God's women, we have to be ready to
handle gossip.
Doesn't mean we never do anything about it,
because at times we must try to put
it right.
But we want to put it right from
a position of spiritual rest, not a position
of anger, anxiety, tension and all the rest.
It is good to put things right for
the sake of the work.
And I don't think we want to take
some super spiritual view and pretend we're Christ
on the cross and we utter not a
word.
I read a little poem like that, that
sounded beautiful, but it wasn't true.
It wasn't biblical.
We're not Christ on the cross.
We got too many people with a persecution
complex as it is.
Plus, Jesus did speak some words from the
cross.
It wasn't many, but I dare to say
a few words from the mouth of the
Lord Jesus Christ are equal to any thousand
sentences you and I can put together.
Paul definitely defended his ministry and his doctrine,
and sometimes we have to do that.
I wish I had the privilege of setting
the record straight with a few people who
are gossiping against us in India and in
other places as well.
But let's learn to receive that testing.
Let's not be overprotective of our reputation, nor
let us become neurotic about O.M.'s reputation.
Our goal in O.M. India is not
the maintenance of our reputation.
Our goal is to live in the power
of the Holy Spirit at the foot of
the cross and demonstrate God on a day
-by-day basis.
Ultimately, very few Christian groups come out with
a good reputation.
Everybody seems to be saying something negative about
everybody.
Billy Graham's reputation has been tarnished and stained
in a great degree in some circles.
In other circles, in our circle, it would
be the way we would think without blemish.
But it's a difficult area, so we're going
to be tested.
And it is easy to have a wrong
attitude toward a brother for years because we've
heard that he said something against us.
And if there's no one in Kathmandu right
here that doesn't have an area, a need
of improvement in your attitude toward a brother
and sister in this room, then you certainly
are the most godly group that has ever
come.
Maybe you'd like me to take your picture.
Let us search our hearts and let us
not play games with the Holy Spirit when
he tries to convict us.
Thirdly, when we feel someone has used us,
we have a word in English, you know,
this, we've been conned, you know, we've been
tricked, the big sting.
Generally, it doesn't go that far in Christian
work.
But sometimes we can feel used.
All of us will struggle with this.
We feel that when we're really doing something
for someone, we're their friend.
They appreciate us.
But when we're no longer doing much for
them, we never hear from them.
It just seems to be a different world.
This is where we are naive at times
about human weakness.
I think the next time someone says to
me on radio or television, they ask me
all these interesting questions.
What do you feel is the greatest surprise
you had as you went along life's road
in Christian work, missionary work?
I think I will say I never realized
how weak all of God's people were, including
my spiritual hero, Billy Graham.
There's a book that thick pointing out some
of his weaknesses.
Most of them aren't too valid.
Some of them were valid.
And I got depressed in the middle of
the book and decided I'd rather not continue
reading.
Maybe that's unreality or escapism.
We are all weak.
We should not be surprised when we see
men fall.
So we know that our great goal in
our own life is not to fall and
we believe in holiness.
So if you understand more of the human
factor and the weakness of man, you'll be
less surprised, probably less bitter along life's road.
You'll not be hurt when someone doesn't write
you for a year.
I struggled great hurt when my father, my
mother died and I heard from so few.
My own father, relatively speaking, didn't hear from
that many people.
In fact, in some cases, the unconverted people
around him, the senior citizens around him, seemed
to be more present at the funeral than
God's people.
Now, on the other side, we were just
so encouraged by the people who did come.
In America, funeral is a two-day event,
usually.
It's a great variety in a country of
immigrants.
But the first day, you stand for four
or five hours in front of an open
coffin and you welcome people.
I tell you, if you've ever seen me
emotional, you should have been there on that
day.
And that is awesome.
Many countries like England seldom have an open
casket.
I lived in England for 25 years.
I'm a little out of it.
New Jersey, Dutch, open casket culture.
And my father, to see what he was
going through, and then all these people come
and everybody's weeping.
I mean, it's not quite Italian style.
I mean, Italians, you jump in the grave,
it goes on for days.
But that was a heavy, heavy event.
And as I've wrestled through this over the
months, I realized that as human beings, we
cannot relate to the death of other people's
parents to any great degree, especially if none
of our own parents have died yet.
Now, somehow in my own life, because of
the death of John and Keith Beckwith, John
Watts and Keith Beckwith back in around 65,
I learned to relate to parents who just
had people die.
I go the extra mile to go to
funerals and try to send a word of
condolence.
And Ray has been a great example in
that as well, I've noticed from various letters.
But the average person cannot feel to any
great degree the loss of someone else's loved
one.
How wrong it would be for me to
develop a wrong attitude.
You know, people that never said anything to
me, people don't know how to say anything
to me.
They probably would be afraid that I'd break
down and weep.
No one here, hardly at all, has said
anything about my mother or father since coming
here eight days ago.
We are human.
I don't hold that against people.
I wrestle with it because that's the biggest
thing in my life.
And my own father may soon die.
And I tell you, if I'm even functioning,
if I'm even functioning after that, it'll be
only the grace of God.
I'm a weak person.
I went into the woods after my mother's
death and I wept and wept and wept
for two days and almost two weeks.
There was continuous weeping and it has not
stopped.
Who understands these things?
We are human beings.
We have doubts.
We have fears.
And my father did a wise thing.
He immediately got rid of the house with
all the memories.
Got rid of all the furniture and the
clothing.
We all, my children have some of it
and some of it's gone to Waynesboro.
And he's functioning.
He's battling on.
He often just sits down and begins to
cry and people wonder why he's crying.
But this is what life is about.
And we've got to somehow understand how weak
we are and how we will fail one
another.
We all have four times more to do
than we are able to do because we
are committed to this vision and to this
work.
It's incredibly difficult that I've had only a
couple of days with my father since the
funeral.
And we've tried to change and bend my
schedule and you know wrestled with this how
it could work out.
And all of us here probably have had
very little time with our parents since committing
ourselves to missionary work.
And it's difficult.
So I just share that with you that
we are weak.
We will fail one another.
We cannot possibly keep up with all the
goals and aims that we have.
We have too many goals and we're up
here creating more goals.
Very few people can understand the pressure of
trying to pray and to find the money
we need to keep all this going on.
By the way, my father set up a
memorial to my mother rather than people bringing
flowers.
Though now you cannot mention it in the
newspapers in America.
They used to put, no flowers, memorial gifts
to Operation Mobilization.
The florists have protested.
The flower sellers have protested.
So now you can't say that in the
newspapers.
So it was circulated by word of mouth
and you mentioned both.
So there were some flowers and I found
a great struggle to see them throw them
away at the end of this event.
And I was trying to figure out what
I could do with them.
I took some of them and gave them
away.
But quite a lot of money has come
in in memory of my mother, who, by
the way, was an ex-OMer.
Carried the OM office for eight years on
her own.
When she left, three people had to take
her place.
So we will, especially during times of struggle
and difficulty, we will at times feel used.
We will at times feel that everybody wants
us when we're about to be their main
speaker at Urbana with 18,000 people all
waiting for you to speak.
But we will feel other times how we
are just used.
And we will go through enormous struggle.
Don't let me exaggerate this because this has
not been a huge struggle for me.
I'm using this to communicate truth.
But I believe it is valid.
And then we will be tested.
When someone reminds us of someone else who
has hurt us.
Do you know you make subconscious evaluations of
people?
Do you have the problem of seeing someone
and instantly liking them and seeing someone else
and instantly not particularly liking them?
I'll just give you a little advice.
I recommend that you repent.
Whenever that initial meeting of a person causes
you to initially not like them, just repent
gently.
It doesn't have to be a big thing.
Don't fall down on your face in front
of the person and say, I don't like
you.
Forgive me.
A sure mark of spiritual immaturity.
But repent and deal with it and realize
that we are not called to particularly like
everyone.
What does the word even mean?
I actually do like people.
That's probably got me in far more difficulty
than not liking people.
And I get involved with people.
People don't easily turn me off, an expression
some people use.
Maybe it's God's grace.
Maybe it's some things from my background.
There are exceptions.
I especially had a struggle with Orthodox Jews
to this day.
The Orthodox Jews, just saw them again, the
curls, the black hats.
And I know these people persecute believers in
Israel.
And just the sight of them, I find
that a struggle.
So my old hostility comes out.
I really like to have a go at
one of these types.
Fortunately, I saw a film that brought some
of that into balance.
My love for the extreme Orthodox Jews has
increased.
What about the extreme Orthodox fanatic Muslims who
would like to hang you up by your
beard in the back of the mosque together
with a dog?
Not easy to keep your right attitude.
We must not give up the battle to
reach out in love and to develop relationships.
How can it be in OM that you
have people that are not really on great
speaking terms?
If I find someone that I feel I'm
having difficulty communicating with, I will probably do
what I can to work it out to
talk to him more than the one that
I can easily communicate with.
Because it's obvious that we've got something to
work on.
And it won't be easy.
Even when we first sit down and talk,
that person may say something that upsets us.
We upset each other here when we talk.
And we need to work for balance in
that area.
And then lastly, it's not always easy to
maintain that right attitude when we are corrected,
when we are rebuked, when we are exhorted.
I was so encouraged.
I really lit into Alfie Franks here at
the meeting the other day.
And I told him, boy, I was really
energized.
Alfie, you are stubborn.
I thought surely I could have got a
carnal reaction from that.
That was a arrow.
And he just looked at me and smiled.
And later I repented.
And there was no need for repentance.
He acknowledged his stubbornness.
And I acknowledged mine, both born on the
same day.
I can just imagine when God was making
this decision in the glory.
And perhaps he made a mistake in that
this one should have been born in New
Jersey, and I should have been born in
Carolina.
But here we are, and we're pressing on.
Well, let's pray.
Lord, we thank you that though none of
us like to be tested, nor do we
like the trials, the problems, the things going
wrong.
And we haven't even begun on the list.
We've only got started.
All the practical problems, the testings, the breakdowns
of the vehicles, the money that doesn't come,
the recruit that backslides, the pastor that punches
us in the nose or steals our Scofield
Bible.
Endless range of trials, difficulties, losing a ship,
having a whole warehouse burned to the ground.
We can list hundreds, thousands of testings and
trials we've had over the years.
Lord, we do want to learn from these
things.
We do want to turn them into stepping
stones, our failures toward one another, the exoemer
that we hurt as we may have mishandled
a complex social policy situation or mishandled a
situation when he stole money out of the
base treasury or jumped over the fence and
made love to the girl on the other
side.
All these different things that over the years,
not much, we've had to face.
And sometimes when we've tried to deal with
them, when we've tried to solve it and
resolve it, we made a mess and people
left with a wrong attitude.
Oh God, give them the grace to see
that this is your training program, not ours.
They can leave OM, but they can't leave
your gymnasium.
They can't leave your school of chastisement.
And those of you who love, you will
chase it and help them to return to
a place of peace and rest and to
cast that hurt, that wrong attitude, that bad
disposition or that anxiety.
Help them to cast it upon you and
help us to cast these things upon you.
Now, truly, we would be motivated from within
and from above by your Holy Spirit, rather
than human ego, and yet help us to
live with ourselves in our moments of difficulty
and suffering, times when all we can do
is weep and fall at your feet.
When we at that moment may feel that
we cannot go even one more day, as
the pressure is so great, the problems seem
insurmountable, the task seems to be a triple
Everest on the moon, and help us at
that moment to draw upon those resources from
above and from your Spirit within and to
obey and to live that one day, that
one moment by moment, with our eyes fixed
upon you.
In Jesus' name, Amen.