I have a burden on my heart and
I didn't want to wander astray so I
wrote it down.
And I'd like to give you a title.
Some people say you can't take notes when
George Verwer speaks to me.
I hope you will take notes.
Some of you forgot paper.
You can write it on your hand, the
old-fashioned way.
Six Blessings and Six Barriers.
Some people have been getting upset with my
sevens messages.
I got about twenty sevens messages, including the
seven blunders of the person who, when they
return from OM.
That's one that some of you missed and
that's you blew it all over the place
when you got home.
But this one is called Six Blessings and
Six Barriers.
There are many, many scriptures that pop into
my mind as I think of the work
God has called us to.
Believe it or not, seldom do I talk
much about the ministry of OM at any
length.
Last weekend I was at Oxford University ministering.
I may have mentioned OM, you know, a
few minutes.
Sunday night was an evangelistic meeting.
Saturday I was speaking on the fullness of
the Holy Spirit and the crucified life.
A couple of dozen students recommitted their lives
to Christ.
You know, God has kept Oxford and Cambridge
and so many of these other universities open
to us in OM for twenty three years.
And I will tell you, God is working
in these places.
The Saturday night meeting in a place twice,
three times as large as this was completely
packed, people sitting on the floor.
Nigel Lee had a mission there last year,
over a hundred professed in Jesus Christ.
And it's exciting what's happening in so many
different ways here in Britain.
We are not on the verge of blessing
in Britain.
We are in the middle of it.
God is blessing.
God is answering prayer.
People are coming to Christ.
New churches are being born.
Whole new denominations are being born.
Some people of the older denominations, they get
upset.
You know, why do we get upset when
the church is growing?
And whenever the church grows, both the old
and new will grow, usually.
Some will be left out.
God doesn't always bless every part of the
country in the same way at the same
time.
Maybe that's why the challenge is so great,
because there's plenty yet to do here in
Great Britain.
I think of that passage in the book
of Acts where forty men pledged they would
not eat until Paul was dead.
I think of the many barriers the apostle
Paul had in his ministry.
I think of the many blessings the apostle
Paul had in his ministry.
Perhaps you could look with me at 1
Corinthians chapter 4, just as one of the
many scriptures that I would like to read.
And I do believe God has something for
each one of us here tonight that's very
relevant.
The last thing I want to do is
minister irrelevancies.
I believe what Brother Jonathan said is tremendously
relevant and trust that you received it in
a spirit of faith.
1 Corinthians chapter 4, Paul describes his ministry.
It's called the apostolic example.
He speaks about in verse 9, the reality
of his life.
For I think that God has set us
forth the apostles last, as it were, appointed
to death.
For we are made a spectacle out of
the world and to angels and to men.
We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye
are wise in Christ.
We are weak, but ye are strong.
Ye are honorable, but we are despised.
Even under this present hour, we both hunger
and thirst and are naked and buffeted, have
no certain dwelling place.
Labor, working with our own hands, being revived,
we bless, being persecuted, we endure it.
Being defamed, evil spoken of.
That's what that means.
People just blasting you verbally.
We entreat.
We are made as a filth of the
world and are the off-scouring of all
things unto this day.
I write not these things to shame you,
but as my beloved sons, I warn you,
for though ye have 10,000 instructors in
Christ, yet have ye not many fathers.
For in Christ Jesus I have begotten you
through the gospel, wherefore I beseech you, be
ye followers of me.
For this cause I have sent unto you
Timothy, who is my beloved son and faithful
in the Lord, who shall bring you in
remembrance of my ways, which are in Christ,
as I teach every man in every church.
Paul's was a life of blessings and buffetings.
Paul was a man who faced enormous barriers
in his ministry, thrown in prison, misunderstood by
the very churches he planted, spoken evil of
in ways that are very hard to comprehend.
And I think as we go forward in
the work of God, we must be ready
for the blessings as well as the buffetings,
the barriers as well as the breakthroughs.
Many of you know that my favorite theme
is spiritual balance.
Balance for me is not compromise, it's the
right blending of the extreme truths found in
different parts of scripture.
And one of the reasons OM is still
going strong today, 25 years after its birth
in Europe, down in Spain they just had
a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the
work in Spain.
That's the only place it existed 25 years
ago.
And I believe one of the reasons it's
still going strong and growing and seeing so
many people come to Christ is because we
have discovered commitment with balance.
It's nothing new, Paul knew about it, Hudson
Taylor knew about it, many great men whose
shoelaces were not worthy to tie knew about
it, but it needs to be re-emphasized.
It needs to be re-emphasized.
So let me just share six blessings, six
breakthroughs, and then bring it into balance with
six barriers, six buffets if you want to
explain it that way.
You can receive lots of ministry in your
own church, and from books and from tapes.
And so I do want to focus tonight
on what is happening in OM.
This is a special kind of meeting, this
isn't the Oxford Christian Union, this isn't a
meeting where they give me a theme, 50
% of the meetings I speak at they
assign a subject.
That's why I have become a specialist in
subject bending, and I've known all over the
world for that.
But here I am with my own family
and the people that know and understand something
of OM.
Yes, OM is different.
Why would God raise up something that would
just be the same?
God doesn't just do the same thing over
again.
When God brought into being Operation Mobilization, for
a while I tried to fight it, I
tried to stop it.
It's like trying to stop, you buy fire,
and I hope some of that's burning in
your heart tonight.
One of my favorite books is down here,
you can get it free tonight if you're
quick, called Personal Revival.
I was just talking to the author of
that book on the phone, a man who's
lived for Christ for many decades, who's amalgamated
the message of renewal and the message of
revival that came out of East Africa, Stanley
Volk.
Many people paid two pounds for that same
book.
We changed the title and produced a magazine
edition, 50,000 copies were flooded out across
Asia and Africa.
I believe it is the privilege of every
believer to live in personal revival, and I
hope you'll read that book.
What are six blessings?
There are many more, but we don't want
to be here all night.
What are six blessings we're experiencing in OM
right now?
I had a man write me this way,
he more or less felt Ichabod should be
written across OM.
He has some very interesting letters from prayer
partners.
He feels we're infiltrated, he thinks it might
be the Freemasons.
He mainly thinks it's because he found a
book about evolution on the doulos.
It's amazing because doulos was criticized for showing
anti-evolution films.
You can't win.
What was the other thing?
Oh, he heard that we didn't have enough
money, so surely God must have, you know,
we must be infiltrated.
If you study spiritual ministry, you'll discover through
history most of them never had enough money.
George Whitfield, probably the most anointed man that's
ever walked across Britain next to Wesley and
Moody and a few others, he died in
debt.
Only through his debt money came in to
pay his bills.
Now, of course, we don't want to go
down that road in OM.
We believe in owing no man anything.
We're a pack of idealists that have almost
beat each other on the head, striving for
perfection.
But anyway, that's not my main subject this
evening.
Six blessings.
What's the first blessing?
You, you, the ex-OMer.
We're wrestling for a better term, graduate.
The Americans are now into the OM alumni.
Ex-OMer will probably hold for many decades.
It doesn't mean you're excluded.
It means you're included.
It just means that technically you're not in
the OM budget.
This is the big thing in the 80s
for OM.
This is budgets.
Glorified guesswork has never been engaged in with
such discipline as when OM went into budgeting.
But really the great blessing for many of
us, and I know it's true of Jonathan,
is the ex-OMer.
There are ex-OMers serving Jesus Christ with
almost every single major mission in the world,
in almost every single nation in the world,
even many closed countries.
There are 37,000 of you, so you
belong to quite a large club, though we
don't usually call it a club.
And you know one of the reasons this
is such a blessing is because it drives
forward a non-sectarian challenge.
The main thing is not what organization you
belong to.
The main thing is that you're walking with
Jesus.
Many people get depressed, even in the local
church scene, because they get their eyes on
the local church or on the pastor.
Or if they join another organization, they get
their eyes on that organization.
We know people, of course, leave Operation Mobilization
disappointed.
I've interviewed people for 29 years working with
almost every organization you could think of.
There's no organization that doesn't produce disappointed people.
That's what life is about.
Two people can have the same experience on
OM.
One goes out absolutely blessed, filled with the
spirit, convinced OM is the most powerful, loving
New Testament thing he ever fellowshiped with.
Another person on the same team, in the
same circumstances, go out bitter, feeling OM has
been the greatest disappointment of his entire Christian
life, in hopes he can never see them
again.
Of course, such people don't show up at
reunions.
But when we find out about them, we
chase them and we repent and we apologize.
And I just want to say this.
OM is a story of much failure and
sometimes even sin.
And if through sin or failure or anything
we have hurt any of you, I want
to beg you to please forgive us.
To please forgive us.
And you'll do well to do that, because
if you don't forgive and you allow a
root of bitterness to fester and a critical
spirit or a cynical spirit, which is so
easy to get into today, I know because
I've been there and back, you only harm
yourself.
In fact, doctors tell us that bitterness and
cynicism and lack of forgiveness is no less
than 50 different illnesses you can bring upon
your own physical body.
Forgiveness is a beautiful thing.
And some of the people who have the
most difficult experiences in OM are today some
of our closest friends and strongest prayer partners.
In fact, I just did a radio interview
two nights ago.
They phoned me from Chicago.
There's a young Indian in the States in
a very difficult time on OM.
When he left, we weren't even sort of
linked very much for a while.
And we got it all sorted out.
Today, he is the leader of a movement
that's probably doing more for reaching India than
most movements that I can think of.
And he and I, he was in Dallas,
Texas, though he's an Indian, married to a
German girl.
I was in London.
We had a radio interview in Chicago live
over a number of stations just a couple
of nights ago.
And we're locked together to reach India with
the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Forgiveness is one of the most significant factors
in the whole Christian message.
And we thank the Lord for ex-OMers
who have forgiven us.
Maybe some never felt they had anything to
forgive.
And that together we can work for world
evangelism.
Don't think we just want to lift up
the ex-OMer who is in foreign missionary
work.
For every man on the field, we need
10 senders.
We need 10 faithful prayer warriors back at
home.
It's not the privilege of every believer to
go to the mission field.
And it is a privilege, the overseas field,
or to be a full-time paid Christian
worker.
And we are convinced that the ex-OMer
in a secular job is as much a
strategic part of God's great program as the
man who's overseas giving out tracts in the
streets of Calcutta, or planting churches in outer
Mongolia, or opening a Bible school in Mauritania.
The second blessing that we're experiencing in OM
right now is seeing so many people come
to Christ.
Perhaps this is because OM is no longer
mainly just in non-responsive and closed countries.
Through the ships, we branched out to some
of the more responsive countries.
And so we hear of hundreds sometimes making
professions of faith in Christ.
We know they're not all conversions.
It's good to be in a few countries
where people are really responding.
It somehow helps charge the prayer partner's batteries
when they're continuing to read about Turkey and
some of the lands where we're not seeing
huge response.
And I tell you what Jonathan shared about
a thousand believers possibly by, what was the
date on that?
1990.
You're praying for something greater than asking God
for five million more believers in the United
States.
That's right.
I won't give a statistic out for England,
but Turkey is certainly still one of the
most neglected lands.
Yet we've seen churches planted in Turkey.
You know, one of the things that hurts
us the most is when people write OM
off as just a short term missionary operation.
Maybe you have contributed to that as many
of you have only been with us short
term.
The people who are long term don't come
to reunions.
They're out in India and the Middle East
and Turkey.
Many of us at OM was long term
before it was ever short term.
We didn't even know what short term was
when we started in the early days to
any great degree.
Uh, many men have been out 15, 20
years.
I've been overseas 25 years and we have
no intention, you know, of going back.
OM is both a short term training program
and a long-term missionary worship.
And if you can help us spread that
word around, you might help us find some
of those needed longer term recruits because you
can only do so much with short term
people.
And OM is at a stage now where
we've got to have an increase, even if
it were just a 10% increase of
longer term people, both behind the scenes in
places like Quinta, which is a, I don't
know, it was short staffed last year.
I think this year you've seen a surge,
but they'll be looking for people.
You can be sure by September.
And down in Bromley, we are very short
staffed, especially STL and another one left yesterday
because his father may be dying.
We have a January conference to bring new
recruits into the work.
This year in Germany, the conference will take
place.
Pray that we'll have people there, but it's
a joy.
And this is one of the great blessings
we're experiencing right now to see new churches
being born directly or indirectly.
We don't always get directly involved in church
planting in Turkey, in France, in a number
of other countries, Bangladesh.
We are in other places.
We train church planters.
That's especially been one of our major goals
in India because church planting in India is
better done outside the international fellowship of Operation
Mobilization.
You know, the man who arranged for that
interview on the radio two nights ago, David
Maines, an outstanding Christian leader in America, was
so impressed when he went to India, meeting
people everywhere in the nation.
And he said, most of them who were
doing something were people trained on Operation Mobilization.
He's more convinced about it than I am.
I know a lot more of the negative
factors that you have to battle through before
you get those church planters and before you
get to the place where that Indian brother
and sister are mature, spirit-controlled people.
It's a long road.
The third blessing is greater maturity in OM
in general.
That doesn't mean there's no weakness or failure,
but I've sensed in the last three years,
OM has come into some maturity that we
did not have five years ago.
That doesn't mean we can't have lapses because
each individual is walking with God and there's
plenty of immaturity among individuals.
We went through a serious testing a couple
of years ago.
Heavy division almost came into OM in different
ways, things that perhaps will never be written
about publicly.
But through that, relationships were tested and strengthened.
Through that, we developed a deeper understanding of
the human factor in God's work.
The strongest among us is weak.
With the right amount of pressure and the
right amount of satanic nonsense and trickery, that
person can make serious mistakes and get into
serious problems.
That's why forgiveness is so important.
That's why God's grace is our hope as
we go forward.
A number of the changes we have made
in OM recently, I believe, have demonstrated maturity
that God has brought to us.
God has often brought this to us from
other people.
We don't get it all on our knees
in the prayer closet.
We get it through books.
We get it through men of God who
disagreed with OM on a particular issue, listening
to them, talking to them.
It's not time to go into detail, but
I believe God is taking us into greater
maturity.
There are a lot of false ideas, especially
by the people who are really gung-ho
pro-OM people.
They just think OM is great.
Sometimes your friends can be the greatest enemy.
Some have thought OM can do no wrong,
especially the old days.
The good old days were all forsaking, all
galloping down the road in cars that had
no engines, seeing the impossible take place on
every corner.
Let me tell you, back in those days,
there was sin in the camp.
There were problems.
There were failures.
There was extremism.
It wasn't all one big, rosy, dynamic apostolic
army.
If I had to choose OM back then
and OM today, it would take me about
four seconds to make the choice.
It would be today.
With God, you don't go back.
You go forward.
We don't despise the past.
We certainly don't despise the people who came
and joined us when we were nothing.
We did attract some extreme peoples at times.
I mean, how would a character like me
ever attract extreme people?
I mean, this is amazing, isn't it?
God showed us some of the things that
had to change.
And God put something on my heart some
time ago.
You know what he said to me?
Don't shoot mice with cannons.
Do any of you have a cannon in
your house?
Or a bazooka or a laser beam rifle
or anything?
I think you understand what I'm trying to
say.
And at times in OM, we shot mice.
We got so head up about little issues,
little things.
We had more convictions than you'd find in
the New Testament.
And little things in people's minds became big.
Like the girl who came back from the
campaign in the early day and asked her
mother, because she'd now become a disciple, to
remove the bed from her bedroom because she
was a floor girl.
That doesn't sound right.
But anyway, she wanted to sleep on the
floor.
And the way in the early days some
people described me, I mean, it was unbelievable.
Even some of the press articles, most of
it before your time, describing George Brewer when
I first came to the British Isles.
God used that.
God overruled.
Within four months, we had 90 people ready
to cross the English Channel.
Just a couple of you who are here
were from that 1962 division.
And we thank God for what he did.
But we're growing.
We're learning.
We're getting our priorities sorted out.
We're not going to throw the baby away
with the bathwater.
You know that expression?
We're not going to forsake those dynamic principles
that God has given us about total commitment,
about forsaking all, about a crucified life, the
fullness of the Holy Spirit.
You know the leaflets, the seven major emphasis
of OM.
We're not moving an inch on those seven
emphasis and many other emphasis.
The fourth blessing in OM, as I see
it today, is deeper and richer relationships, tested
relationships.
Jonathan's relationship and mine, which goes back now
27 years, because Jonathan met me as a
senior student when I arrived as a freshman
at Moody Bible Institute.
He was a big cheese around the institute
and I was just a little mouse coming
through the door.
And I think I may have, well, we
won't get into that, but we've been laboring
together now 23 years and our relationship has
been tested.
I remember years ago, the Italian campaign, shouting
at him on the phone.
You remember that?
And I'm sure I was in Italy and
you were in Paris.
And I remember the Lord convicted me and
me phoning back and repenting.
And I remember one of the most encouraging
things Jonathan ever said to me.
He said, what keeps me linked with you
is not what you do.
I forget how he expressed it, but it's
the brokenness that God has brought into your
life.
We're not going to live up to these
principles we're preaching.
We're aiming high.
We're still aiming so high.
Sometimes I think we're crazy.
Just the books we distribute create an idealism
that many people can't live with.
You see all these A.W. Tozer books?
He couldn't even live with it himself.
His children, some of them didn't follow Jesus
Christ.
His wife found it extremely difficult.
That doesn't put down A.W. Tozer, but
it maybe helps you realize that he also
is a human being.
In fact, Tozer said his greatest problem in
his life was a lack of moderation.
It was also one of my problems as
I would get in the pulpit and say
things that lacked moderation.
Yet the word of God says, let your
moderation be known to all men.
That wasn't my strongest point in the early
days.
So God is taking us deeper.
Relationships are being tested and we're expecting less
from human beings.
Does that sound like a backslider's testimony?
You know one of the reasons our churches
are torn apart?
You know one of the reasons families are
torn apart?
Because we expect from Christians what Christians cannot
produce.
Because Christians are human beings and they fail
and they don't have unlimited energy.
Did you read that book Love Within Limits?
Just the title brought a lot of freedom
to me because I was on the road
at times to becoming a neurotic with so
many goals and so many convictions.
A redeeming the time neurotic.
I wasn't trying to do two things at
once.
I was specializing in doing four things at
once.
My wife said to me one day, just
looking at you makes me tired.
I sent her to bed early tonight.
She's had more verbal messages than any human
being could ever possibly want to handle.
Deeper relationships with our wives, with our children,
with one another.
Sure that includes heartache.
Great relationships are not built in the absence
of heartache and difficulties and struggles.
They're built as we battle through, as we
keep forgiving, as we keep pressing on.
And the emphasis on relationships has become one
of the strongest messages of all of OM
worldwide.
Tens of thousands have been brought into new
relationships because of what they've experienced in our
conferences, in our seminars, in our fellowship meetings,
our small group meetings, all the various things
we do along that line.
And then the fifth blessing I title New
Frontiers.
OM is a movement on the march.
New Frontiers.
A few years ago we added Sudan and
exciting things are happening there.
Pakistan is the, that was the fastest growing
field within OM counting the work among Afghans,
which takes place there.
It still is the fastest growing field.
It ships pioneered South America, which has now
been accepted as a field within OM under
the leadership of Latin Americans and Frank Dietz,
especially Brazil and Argentina.
God has led us, of course, to pioneer
especially the Muslim world.
And Tunisia has been a country much upon
our hearts.
Egypt, Sudan, and through indirect contacts, the STL
sales force, almost every nation in Africa is
distributing and receiving literature from Operation Mobilization.
We're trying to focus on unreached people.
The Baluch people, the Patan people, the Kurdish
people, many unreached people's groups in Nepal have
been reached through our teams hiking into the
Himalayan mountains, often with the literature on their
backs, always trying to penetrate a new frontier.
Church planting in Bangladesh, exclusively among Muslims, where
all the converts are from one homogeneous unit,
a Muslim background.
An ex-OMer, Phil Parshall, has written a
whole book on this subject, which is available
here on the book table.
Phil, who went with OM in Mexico in
those early days, is now considered one of
the leading scholars on Islam and reaching the
Muslims, goes all over the world lecturing on
that subject.
Often we don't see what God is doing
through an ex-OMer until 10 or 15
years down the line, because people come on
OM very young.
And you know it takes time, and I
hope some of you will be more patient.
It takes time to prepare a person for
his life ministry.
And God has been teaching us more about
that kind of patience.
Through the ships, of course, we've been able
to pioneer in areas that we never dreamed,
especially in reaching the very upper level of
society and getting Christian books into places that
without those two ships surely would never have
had those books.
I'd love to talk for a long time
about the two ships, because I can frankly
tell you I'm as excited about that ministry
as I was when it was first being
born.
And I believe God wants to meet that
10% shortfall of personnel we have right
now on the ships, especially in the lineup
department.
And if you want to find out back
doors and windows and chimneys into operation mobilization,
you just talk to Rex Workin about the
possibility of being a lineup man.
And if you have any trouble with him,
phone me immediately.
He was the chief engineer of both ships,
not at the same time.
The sixth blessing is the blessing of greater
wisdom.
You know, at OM in the early days,
we were strong on zeal and weak on
wisdom.
We had some.
The thing would have come apart from the
beginning because we were reading, we were learning.
We're an L plate movement.
I'm still listening to cassette tape by dozens
of men of God, gleaming, learning.
And I believe God has increased our wisdom.
This is why a number of us as
speakers have more invitations to speak at conferences,
pastors' meetings, conventions than we can accept, because
men of God have acknowledged that the Lord
has given us wisdom through 30 years of
spiritual combat.
Some of us have learned something, even those
of us who are slow and stubborn like
me.
Praise God for the wisdom from his word.
Praise God for what we learn through experience.
And I believe God is commanding us in
OM to share this wisdom through literature, through
memos, through leaflets, through the whole body of
Christ.
Much of the OM truth that we preached
20 years ago is disseminated through the whole
body of Christ throughout England.
No one would even know that OM had
anything to do with it.
It doesn't matter.
There's a sign on the president's desk in
the United States, probably off by now, you
know, you hear these things and then you
find out later it's not, it's no longer
happening.
But I think it goes something like this.
It's unlimited what can be accomplished if we
don't care who gets the credit.
I think of Philippians, esteem your brother better
than yourself.
Put those two statements together and I tell
you a lot can be accomplished for God.
And I hope you realize just how many
opportunities there are right now for you.
You may be unemployed, at this present time,
you may be perhaps in a difficult period,
but there are opportunities, but you've got to
push, you've got to pray, you've got to
refuse discouragement.
I've done a little bit of mountain climbing
and often when I thought I was to
the top, to the summit, there was another
whole section.
We tried to climb even little Snowdon over
here once in bad weather.
We thought we were just to the summit
and there was another big chunk sticking up
in front of us and the snow and
the wind, you know, we had to turn
back.
Later on, on a nice day, Peter Maiden
and I walked to the top of Snowdon
and he had his suit on.
So the weather does make a difference in
Wales.
Here's a little quotation I've been giving on
the opportunities that face each one of us.
Opportunity not only knocks, but is playing an
anvil chorus on every man's door.
The trouble is opportunity looks so much like
hard work we often fail to recognize it.
A professional is a man who can do
his job when he doesn't feel like it.
The amateur can't do his job even when
he does feel like it.
People can be placed into three classes.
The few who make things happen, the many
who watch things happen, and the overwhelming majority
who have no idea of what has happened.
The man who is looking for magic or
some mysterious shortcut to success will be disappointed
because ability without agility doesn't win.
The worst bankrupt in the world is the
man who has lost his enthusiasm.
The many a man never fails because he
never tries.
Let me tell you, I believe it's a
miracle of God that OM, with all of
our zeal, with all that we had built
into us, is still running the race hard
30 years almost after our birth.
I thank God for the gift of enthusiasm.
I don't have it anymore in myself.
I'm a man who battles with depression, discouragement,
unbelief, you name it, I'm battling it.
And yet I discover every day God meets
my need.
I'm a natural backslider.
Any one day that God doesn't meet my
need and I start to grow cold.
If you think I have some built-in
passion for souls that just oozes out when
I have a Bible verse in the morning,
then you're obviously a little naive.
It's a battle, sometimes just to get out
of bed.
Blanket victory always been a problem in my
life.
Now I've got an electric one and my
wife and I often go to bed wondering
if we might, you know, be roasted.
Yes, God has blessed us and I could
go on all night sharing the blessings and
some of you are worried specifically about that.
What are the six barriers?
Six barriers and there are big barriers.
There's more misunderstanding about OM today perhaps than
ever because it's bigger.
It's bigger and so, you know, there's more
understanding and more misunderstanding.
What are some of the barriers?
Number one, there's the manpower barrier.
Let's pray more fervently over Matthew 9.
Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that
he'll send forth laborers.
Let's just pray and pray and pray until
we see laborers going out from our churches.
There are so many needs and we need
to see more people going through basic training
in cross-cultural communication, learning foreign languages, learning
how to survive overseas.
We need more people behind the scenes.
Mechanics seem to be harder to get than
astronauts and typists and people who are willing
to work behind the scenes, behind the computers
and the typewriters, I will tell you, they
are hard to find because in the secular
world there's probably 20,000 gaps just in
London, Birmingham and Manchester.
So how are we in Christian work going
to find these kind of talented people?
We even started a training course but almost
no one signed up.
We find a lot of Christians taking on
jobs, learning skills that are not needed.
Maybe we need a little more research but
I will tell you the manpower barrier is
the greatest barrier in Christian work today, especially
when it comes to overseas work.
The second barrier I call the local church
barrier.
The fact that most churches are not sending
churches.
Many churches haven't sent anyone to the mission
field for a decade, some for a couple
of years.
I think we need to be very sympathetic
about this.
This used to be one of my areas
of lack of moderation.
The more pastors I got to know, the
more churches I preached in, the more I
sympathized with the impossible situation many people face
on a local scene.
Let us face it, many of God's people
are very, very small minded.
Their vision does not extend beyond their garden.
Many men have told me, how can I
talk to world evangelism in my congregation?
Half of them are not yet saved.
I need an evangelistic crusade here, not somebody
to come in with giant maps and charts
which will scare people right out of their
shoes.
And so we are facing the need in
OM for more input to the local church.
We've always had this.
It's always been a big part of OM.
Ministry to the local church, but we need
more.
That's why we have men like Peter Maiden,
Nigel Lee, Tony Kirk, others taking meetings to
be with the local church.
Many of these meetings have nothing to do
with OM, spiritual ministry, but we get the
relationship.
Then the next time we go back, we
take stage two and stage three.
God has given us now across the world
an in-depth relationship with about 1,000
churches and assemblies.
Do you imagine how much energy it takes
to maintain those relationships?
Then you wonder why we need people on
our traveling teams in ascending countries, in our
headquarters, in places like Quinta.
Linked with a local church barrier is, of
course, what we call the financial barrier.
This is a new day in operation mobilization.
I tell you, it is the greatest thing
that has happened to OM in two decades,
minus nothing.
I have taught, listen, because some of you
are going to get shaken, listen.
I have taught for years that every Christian
movement has its blind spots and every Christian
leader has his blind spots.
Why?
I've seen them.
They frighten me.
Great men of God.
They're so blind on certain areas.
It's just frightening.
I'm talking about men who are considered some
of the greatest Christian leaders in the world
because I mix and meet these characters for
some strange reason.
More and more, I kept wrestling.
God, what's my blind spot?
God, slowly, I tell you, is so patient.
He's got somebody like me, so patient, because
my blind spot was in the area of
money.
I tried to out Mueller George Mueller.
I tried to out leap Hudson Taylor.
I thought OMF was compromising because they wrote
all these books about their financial system.
That was hinting.
Now, I backed down years ago from saying
anything in public about OMF because I love
them so much, but I would never allow
any book to be written about OM that
would mention money.
Nobody knows how extreme at times I was
in this area.
One of the few movements in the world
that doesn't even take offerings in its meetings,
and we still don't have unity that we
can do that so you can relax tonight.
And if you think OM is going to
go into fundraising, you can also relax because
that's not what I'm talking about.
Though for many years, I have strongly spoke
in favor of other groups, fundraising and of
local churches taking offerings.
So don't think everything we're talking about is
new, but God just showed us that we
have to be more honest and forthright about
money.
And we have to teach the young people
who come on OM the reality of what
they are going to face when they leave
and try to join a mission society.
And young person, if you don't get your
act together in the area of money, you're
not going to be a missionary.
Just forget it.
And we've got 28 years of proof because
for everyone that ever made it to the
mission field as a result of OM, there
are 10 that never made it.
And one of the reasons is because we
didn't teach them how to communicate about finance
and that it was not just prayer.
We made the mistake of teaching that it
was just prayer.
And one of the things that helped us
change was the ugliness of the extreme healing
movement who said it was just prayer, no
doctors, no medicine, just prayer.
And when the thing really dawned on me
that I was teaching in money, what they
were teaching in health, I will tell you,
it wasn't long after that I made the
most historic tape in OM's history called Financial
Crisis that has gone to over 300 Christian
leaders and full-time workers around the world
and has brought almost completely positive feedback from
every single person.
The first major negative letter was this man
who just wrote, believing we're infiltrated by the
Freemasons and evolution teachers.
He completely missed the point of the tape.
But there are people that when you don't
have money, they immediately think it's because you're
in sin.
It's a great mistake, young people, to think
that if you pray and that prayer is
not answered, the only explanation is that you
are in sin.
That's why many people who prayed for healing
and haven't seen it, they were told it
was only because of their unbelief.
On top of that, we have many young
people who have wanted to go to the
mission field, they have prayed for money, it
didn't come in, and so they accepted this
as God's final will that they were not
to go to the mission field.
And I, I'm afraid I contributed to that
deception.
Now God overruled.
And if people listened to other things that
I said, it was often brought into balance
even 20 years ago.
But people don't always listen to everything that
you're saying.
And God has told us, and we've got
unity right across our work, that we must
be honest about finance and that the churches
who are sending young people on the OM,
they need to know at least what we
believe and what we teach.
People through rumors and misunderstandings actually thought in
some countries that we were loaded with money.
After all, any group that has two ships
and these lovely bookshops and their leaders, look
at their leaders, are flying around in airplanes.
Now they have computers.
Certainly any group that flies in airplanes has
computers and two ships is loaded.
And you know what?
Because of those lies, the average person on
our mailing list doesn't even send the money
in to pay for the postage.
Doesn't even send the money to pay for
the postage.
And OM at times has been the laughing
stock of Christian work.
But I will tell you, God has brought
us into a new day.
I don't believe we're going to go into
extreme because we're a conservative lot by nature.
But we are going to teach young people
what it's about.
Because when you leave OM and you go
into another mission society, the support they ask
for is three times greater or more than
what you have in OM.
Yet it's our program to prepare you for
other mission societies.
There are a few, of course, exceptions and
some denominational societies that actually pay a salary.
God has brought us into more balance in
this area.
And the churches, one of my churches wrote
me.
They said, we are so thrilled with this
tape.
And the international coordinating team is the most
in debt of the whole of OM.
The team that's supposed to be coordinating it
worldwide because no one even knows it barely
exists.
And this church, one of my supporting churches
in Philadelphia, wrote me a letter jumping up
and down about that tape.
And they said, we want you to know
that we really believe this.
It's prayer and information.
And they sent me four thousand dollars as
feedback that I might get the point.
I got the point.
They got a receipt.
Listen, young people, many people want to give
and they don't know where to give.
They are confused.
And a man of God said to me
once, you have one of the greatest missionary
endeavors in the world going about going on
and no one hardly knows what you're even
doing.
And so they're often giving their money to
things that are completely ridiculous.
And I tell you, it's seeing where some
of the money goes in God's work that
also has changed me because it breaks my
heart to see people throwing money into things
that I know from world, a lot of
experience on the field is just a dead
end street and some cases even straightforward and
desolate.
Men of God who have the resources, they
are under the constraint of the word of
God to examine the facts before they give
that money.
And as someone who was a businessman before
I was saved, I can't believe that I
ever got into this thing so deep, into
such confusion.
And it was all because I wanted to
be absolutely spiritual.
And so in wanting to be absolutely spiritual,
I got into super spirituality.
Any of you ever been down super spirituality
highway where you also so easily judge other
people, where you always feel your way is
better and God has blessed you in a
special way.
You're not going to tell people about it,
but you know deep down he's blessed you
in a special way.
And why don't these people get with it?
May God humble us and cause us to
grow in that area.
And the third barrier is what I call
the organization barrier.
And that as OM has become large, we
don't have enough professional spirit filled administrators and
organizers.
People like Tony Kirk miraculously left British Rail
where he was designing supposedly some part of
that 125 train that frightens people as it
goes through their towns and went out to
the ship.
I thought he was going to the engine
room and they put him in the kitchen.
And then somehow in the mercy of God,
because he's basically got a good wife, which
is his best feature, he stays in OM
and he returns to work in a place
like Danzig Street with a kind of skilled,
highly experienced administration personnel that we managed to
recruit.
Like chief engineers who are so fed up
with going to sea, they'd do anything to
stay on land.
Not exactly but God has brought men into
this task and yet right now OM is
hurting for lack of administrative help.
And we ask you to pray and if
you know people who are accountants or have
management training, they have a gift in the
area of organization, tell them about some of
the needs.
The greatest need on the ships right now,
together with perhaps a financial mountain, is the
need for lineup people.
People who will go ahead of the ship.
And if any of you know people you
think may have some experience and could go
out ahead of the ship, they'll give them
a crash course after the January conference on
the Doulos and they'll be off to some
African port doing lineup before they know what
has happened.
I got official permission from Dale Roton to
make that kind of statement.
Number four, the fourth barrier as we come
to the end of this little talk, is
what I call the gossip barrier.
Bad news travels quicker than good news.
Some people think today OM has got so
much credibility and so many people are speaking
well of us.
It depends completely what circle of friends you're
with.
I would dare to say there's as much
bad going out against OM today as it
was in the 60s, 62 and 63, when
I mean we were really being viciously attacked
and some of it was our own fault.
There are many churches today in Britain of
the new churches that we so love and
appreciate who are anti-parent church.
They will not be involved in anything that
is not a local church, which mainly they
mean their local church or their circuit or
stream of churches.
We need an amalgamation of the outreach agencies,
that's what I call them, not parent church,
the outreach agencies that God has raised up
and some of them have been the biggest
church planting bodies in history.
Please understand that.
So the separation between the two is completely
ridiculous and unbiblical and very few scholars that
I meet around the world and men who
know the word of God follow this.
But some people never get that far in
their studies and so today there is a
strong anti-parent church and therefore anti-OM
wind blowing and many many fellowships, especially among
the new ones, would never send anybody on
operation mobilization.
And we've gone to some of these groups,
we've talked, it gets more complicated than I
have time to explain.
But the gossip barrier probably is hindering mission
work more than almost anything else.
We're just about to get a breakthrough with
a church or with an individual and then
they pick up this bit of gospel, you
know, if you go on OM you'll never
eat properly again.
I mean that isn't the way to warm
the heart of the average British person.
Or, you know, OM is dominated by this,
or OM is anti-charismatic, or OM is,
or especially Verwer is a raving Pentecostal.
We get hit from every side.
People don't understand something that is as broad
as OM.
We are not anti.
Most of these things people claim us to
be anti.
We're not anti.
We're just trying to keep some balance because
we have people from different churches.
We believe in integrity.
Integrity means if we tell a church we're
interdenominational, then we have to be interdenominational.
Otherwise we've got to tell the church in
advance.
Why do so many churches send their young
people on OM?
You know why?
One reason, they trust us.
They know when we say something we mean
it.
And they realize that when failure comes, often
it's not because we teach that, but because
of course sometimes things get out of control
and we're dealing with the human factor.
Pray with us in faith, with the shield
of faith against the gossip barrier.
Let us know when you pick up innuendos,
false stories, that we can try to combat
them through information, through the truth, through love,
through a necessary phone call, through a church
visit.
We have men committed to this job.
Rex Worth and his staff, their work is
people.
Director of personnel, that's of course includes churches.
Our team down in the southern part of
England, based in London, working under Manchester, tries
to reach out in relationship to the churches
in the South.
And we now have a full-time man
committed to that, Ray Anderson, who's finding he
has a lot to do.
And then number five, the barrier of prayerlessness.
Nothing is more significant than that.
Nothing is more subtle in the enemy's tactics.
So many ex-OMers have told me that
after they left OM, the hardest thing to
maintain was their prayer life.
You know, it's one thing to go to
a night of prayer when it's organized in
a room next to you, and everybody's expected
to be there.
It's another thing you go to a half
night of prayer, and praise God, many other
groups are starting them now.
I noticed Oxford Christian Union was organizing one
for a couple of weeks.
I was at Sussex University a day before
that.
They're organizing half nights of prayer.
This vision of extended prayer is spreading, but
I tell you, it's not easy, is it?
I wonder if you'd commit yourself to getting
involved in extended prayer wherever you are, even
if you have to help organize it yourself.
It doesn't have to be all night, even
a couple of hours, would enable us to
really dig in and have something a little
more than the average church prayer meeting with
a total time of maybe 20 minutes in
actual prayer.
And I praise God even for that.
I wrote an article about it, and some
of you know.
Prayerlessness is the most subtle of the sins
hindering world evangelism and OM today, and it
comes within OM as well as outside.
And then that sixth barrier is the barrier
of unbelief.
A lot of other things I'd like to
touch on, like how tradition can hinder the
work of God.
Things that were good and acceptable in one
particular day in OM are no longer acceptable
or good.
There was a day in OM when we
were absolutely almost adamant against purchasing any houses,
as it became more and more difficult in
certain countries to even rent a house, and
the rents went out of sight.
God showed us that it was sensible for
our families, not as a movement, but our
families, if they could get a mortgage and
it was in their own country, to get
necessary accommodation after much prayer in that way.
We are fighting a problem in accommodation that's
amazing.
We are here in Quinta largely because of
accommodation problems.
Do not think we got some great dream
in Manchester, you know, Quinta came down on
a big plate.
You know, OM, when it comes to guidance,
OM is a very down-to-earth movement,
and we believe in the many different ways
of finding out God's will.
Our backs were against the wall in Manchester.
We love Manchester.
We love cities.
OM is mainly in cities, and already negative
things are going out against OM about our
move here to Quinta, and it's linked with
the thought that OM is no longer the
old OM where they're all suffering for Christ
on the floor.
They're moving to some mansions.
They got this postcard picture of this one
building up here, which we're not even involved
in yet, as far as I know, and
it belongs to a trust who owns Quinta.
We are here on a rent-free, isn't
it rent-free basis, a dollar or a
pound we're paying.
And so, you know, in a sense God
pushed us here, because we don't want to
put a lot of money into huge rents.
We want to channel that money for another
million tracks in India, more vehicles in the
Sudan.
Most of our workers here that came actually
wanted, or a number of them, wanted to
stay where they were.
It took them years to build up those
in-depth relationships.
This is no retreat, brothers and sisters, to
a country mansion.
This is a practical down-to-earth economy
move so that OM India doesn't have to
cut back another 100 people as we did
three years ago.
And in God's work, it isn't always all
forward.
If your life, it's all forward, you're doing
a lot better than me.
Maybe you could autograph my Bible.
And in God's work, there are times when
it's a practical retreat.
Initially, coming out here to some seemed like
a practical retreat.
The more we moved, we realized God was
in it, and when God is in it,
even if it's plan B, it's going to
be a blessing.
And we've already seen what the Lord wants
to do out here in this part of
the country.
Praise his name for the flexibility and the
adaptability, the extra-mile mentality that still exists
within OM, and yet the willingness to throw
some of the traditions into the air that
we may get on with the job.
But the greater barrier really is that barrier
of unbelief.
It's linked with fear, it's linked with worry,
and I have fought it, you know, sometimes
spiritually speaking with my bare fists.
And I wonder if there's any tonight, if
you're really honest, unbelief has been dominating your
life in these past months.
Maybe in the area of a job, maybe
in the area of missions, maybe in the
area of giving, maybe in the area of
prayer, maybe in relationships, maybe just life in
general.
With me, just life in general at times
just frightens me.
The whole thing just frightens me.
And I just fall before God and say,
Lord, I don't think I can keep on
going.
I wish I could preach on 1 Kings
18 and 19.
What a divine message from God.
Elijah in the 18th chapter, the fire falling.
Miracles!
The 19th chapter, he's under the jennifer tree
and saying, God, I've had enough.
And I've been under that tree.
Because, you know, when a work gets this
big and you're up against these barriers and
you're up against every kind of hassle Satan
can give, because Satan knows that O.M.
is one of the largest forces in the
Muslim world.
Over 200 people in O.M. committed to
reaching the Muslim world out on the field.
And it's one of the larger forces moving
into the communist world.
It's one of the larger forces moving into
the Hindu world.
And with the two ships and a lot
of other things, one of the larger forces
moving into the whole world.
You think Satan sits back and says, well,
isn't that nice?
1600 people that want to blow my dominions
right off the map.
I will tell you, Satan is going to
resist with every inch of hellish fiber he
has.
C.S. Lewis' book was not a comic
book.
And we need your help, your support, your
prayers, your one hour of voluntary labor more
than ever in our history.
Because especially something that's based in Britain and
becomes big is easily misunderstood.
The Americans understand big things, but God led
us to base this work in Europe with
a hub as Britain.
It's extended all over the world and Americans,
of course, are welcome, but our roots are
here and we need your prayers, your support,
your love, your understanding.
And if X.O.M.ers can't give
us this, who can?
Not because you had a perfect time with
us, but you know something of what this
is about and you've got vision and many
of you are actually headed out to the
regions beyond.
Well, there are six blessings and six barriers,
lots to do, lots of opportunities.
Will you join hands with us in 1986,
which is almost upon us?
And we may again see four or five
hundred workers go out for the summer.
How many do we have British on the
year program right now?
428.
That must count the children, I believe.
Counting the children who are very important, 478
British people.
Seldom heard of in missionary history in connection
with this country.
So we need your help because sometimes it's
easier to find people to go than it
is to find people who will give, who
will send.
Romans 10, how shall they go unless they
be sent?
Will you be a sender?
It may only be the widow's might.
It may only be an extra hour of
prayer, but believe me, that's what makes a
difference.
Thank you very much.
Let's pray.
Our God, we thank you for the privilege
of being together here tonight, the freedom we
had and sort of the family meeting too.
Forget about the clock a little bit.
We know many a pub around Britain, things
are just getting warmed up.
The wine is flowing, the song and the
dance.
And it is our prayer that the new
wine may flow around this place tonight.
That we would make deeper commitments of our
lives to you and determine to go, to
give, to send, to recruit others, to stand
against gossip, misunderstandings, subtle intimidations, and to be
part of this great army for world evangelism.
We thank you for bringing us here to
Western Rim.
We thank you for bringing us here to
the Quinta, in your providence, in your sovereignty.
And we commit again, all that is happening
here and all that must happen in the
coming months, that we may see another army
of workers raised up for next summer, raised
up for next year.
That many may graduate and move on to
OMF and WEC and other mission societies who
we sense a high degree of like-mindedness
with in the battle.
We thank you, Lord, for showing us some
of our blind spots and for the adaptations
and clarifications you're helping us to make.
We thank you for men and women that
have searched the scriptures to see what the
truth is.
We believe, Lord, that we're going in to
a tremendous new period in OM's history.
And we thank you for those two ships.
We thank you for the 300 workers in
India, and the subcontinent, 400.
We thank you for the 200 or so
in the Muslim countries.
We thank you for, I don't know how
many, in the communist lands.
We thank you for what you're doing in
Southern Europe, Northern Europe, in places like Germany,
Sweden, Norway.
We thank you for the expansion and the
breakthroughs in South America.
We pray for the Duluth's coming thrust into
all of Africa.
We thank you, Lord Jesus, for what's happening
in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong,
and Korea, for the total internationalization of missions,
as people are joining from third world countries,
hand to hand with people from places like
Britain and the States to accomplish the task.
We thank you especially for the national church
in each land.
Help us to continue to submit to them
and work with them for the accomplishment of
the job in their country.
Lord, we've covered a lot of territory in
this message.
Bring back to our minds the things that
we need to remember at the right time,
in the right circumstances, that we may stand
with a shield of faith and stop the
fiery darts of Satan.
For we pray in Jesus name.
Amen.