This evening I want to speak to you
on the subject of spiritual balance and maintaining
your spiritual equilibrium, maintaining spiritual balance.
And I'm trying to unite together two messages.
One is on spiritual balance in general, and
the other is finding spiritual balance in our
missionary thinking and our missionary work.
I've worked on these messages, and again and
again I've changed them, I've studied literally hundreds
of books and magazines, interviewed hundreds of missionaries
and young people, and traveled equivalent to around
the world about once a year for the
last twenty-some years to research this particular
message.
Somebody said to me recently, when do you
prepare your messages?
I said, my whole life is preparation for
my next message.
I am always learning, I am always taking
notes, I am always reading or listening to
cassette tapes, and even from the people that
I have had the opportunity to fellowship personally
with today and here and these days, I've
learned something.
And I just think it's such a great
blessing to be in God's school.
You know, in some ways it's an embarrassment
in North America to speak to people when
you don't even have one degree of higher
learning.
This is greatly looked down upon in the
USA today, and I do not boast of
this.
Many of our men in our work have
degrees, and I've often thought maybe I ought
to go back and get a little more
education.
But God led me to leave university in
my sophomore year and go to Bible college,
which people in my sphere of friends laughed
at, but it was one of the most
important decisions in my life.
To leave secular university, I had very high
grades, and to go to Moody Bible Institute
in Chicago, I was a babe in Christ.
I mainly went to Chicago because I wanted
a witness to drunks.
I found out this Bible school was there,
and that was, in some ways, the greatest
decision in my life, next to coming to
Christ.
Among other things, God had behind a nice
little desk at Moody Bible Institute my wife,
who's been with me these 20 years of
marriage.
It's good to obey God, even if people
don't understand.
My parents, when I was converted, did not
know Christ.
I talked to my father on the phone
today, by the way, who just had a
heart attack, and he's a lot better and
seems he'll be all right.
But shortly after I came to Christ, my
own father, who was an elder in a
liberal church, came to Christ.
That caused quite a stir, I can assure
you, especially when he left the church.
And my mother came to Christ and became
the first office manager of our work.
For eight years, she ran our office.
When she left, we needed four younger women
to take her place.
And then my sister came to Christ, and
then her husband came to Christ.
He was an ex-Marine, and what a
blessing to see God put us back together.
We were coming apart as a family.
My father shared with me years later that
probably the marriage would have come apart.
But Christ put us back together, and it's
just a beautiful thing to have this prayer
support of my family.
I want us to read together from the
book of Ephesians, chapter 4, Ephesians chapter 4.
What a wonderful sound, the turning of all
those pages.
And I'd like to just say this, there
may be someone here tonight, you're not going
to understand much of what I'm talking about,
spiritual balance and world missions.
There may be someone here that has not
yet come to know the Lord Jesus Christ,
and all of this seems a bit strange.
You know, I can sympathize with you more
than I can explain, because that's where I
was.
At 16 years of age, I didn't have
a clue.
I didn't know what an evangelist was.
If you had said, are you saved, I
would have thought about swimming or drowning.
I didn't know.
And I thought a lot of this type
of thing was religious extremism.
There was a little gospel church in the
center of my town, you know, I didn't
know what they did there.
They made some kind of noises, I thought
they were, you know.
So I can sympathize with you.
If you think Christians are, you know, a
bit, you know, I understand.
We're supposed to be God's peculiar people, but
you know, not that peculiar.
And I just want to say this to
you.
I pray that you'll never let any one
of our weaknesses, because as Christians, we're still
human beings.
You'll never let any of our weaknesses or
our poor show of who Jesus Christ really
is to ever keep you from the blessed
reality of personal salvation in Jesus Christ.
What a foolish mistake.
There are counterfeits, and even real Christians have
their struggles and their failures.
We are not angels.
There are no wings in the back of
our, behind our shoulders.
And I would just long to see anyone
here tonight that's never taken that step of
faith for one reason or other to somehow
tonight surrender your life to Jesus Christ.
Maybe you've come to attend the graduation of
a loved one.
That would be the greatest graduation gift you
could ever give to a loved one, is
to surrender your life to the Lord Jesus
Christ.
It happened to me 25 years ago in
a very unusual way, and I can just
say, He is real.
I still don't understand it all, and Christians
still sometimes perplex me, and then as you
say over here, they bug me.
And I don't fit in, I guess, to
the total religious scene, but Jesus Christ is
alive, and I know if He can save
such a character as I, that He can
save anybody.
I really believe that.
So if you don't understand a lot that
I'm talking about, well, think about the Lord
and surrender your life to Him.
Ephesians 4, verse 1, I therefore, the prisoner
of the Lord, beseech you that you walk
worthy of the vocation to which you are
called.
With all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering,
with forbearing one another in love.
Did you get that?
Forbearing one another in love.
Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit
in the bond of peace.
There is one body, one spirit, even as
you are called, in one hope of your
calling.
One Lord, one faith, one baptism.
One God and Father of all, who is
above all, and through all, and in you
all.
I believe one of the greatest burdens on
the heart of God is the unity of
His people.
I have been stunned in the past two
weeks here in Canada to hear of the
divisions within the churches here in Canada, the
splits and the sub-splits, and the splits
of the sub-splits that go on and
on.
I know there are cases when people legitimately
have to leave their own church because it
perhaps has gone apostate or is no longer
preaching the Gospel or standing on the Word
of God.
I shared how my own father was led
to leave his church.
But I believe that far too often the
divisions and the splits that take place in
our churches are not of this nature.
But they are splits that take place because
so often we are carnal.
So often we have not experienced the revolution
of love.
And remember, the only thing the New Testament
talks about more than love, if you count
all the synonyms, is Jesus Christ and God
Himself.
The Bible says God is love.
He that says he loves God and doesn't
love his neighbor, he's deceived.
He doesn't love God.
And I believe that one of God's greatest
burdens, and the Spirit of the Lord has
already brought this through some of the previous
speakers, is that we go from this place
with a fresh baptism of love.
That we go back to our churches with
greater patience, greater forbearance, greater desire for unity,
more humility, more reality, and all that we
read about again and again and again in
the pages of the New Testament.
These divisions sometimes spread to the mission field
and cause unbelievable pain and suffering.
They sometimes even take place between different mission
societies.
Our disunity, our carnality, our divisions have been
more of a stumbling block to unconverted people
and even some people who have known the
Lord than we will ever know.
And some people have left the Lord's way
because they were so overwhelmed by the divisions
and by the backbiting and the problems that
come into local churches.
We have many teachers.
And I think of those words of Paul
in Corinthians where he says he had many
teachers but not many fathers.
And I think of how Paul rebuked the
Corinthians because they were sectarian, because one group
said we are of Apollos and the other
group said we are of Cephas, or we
are of Paul.
And he rebuked them and he declared them
as carnal because they were not of one
heart and of one mind.
Again and again in the book of Acts
we find God's people of one heart and
of one mind.
That's why they knew power in prayer.
Unity releases a tremendous force.
Where two or three are gathered in my
name, I am in the midst of them.
And I believe one of the ways that
we will find greater unity on God's Word
is when we become less spiritually lopsided and
we come to know more about spiritual balance.
Now often I am speaking in pastor's conferences.
Probably over the past years more than 50
pastor's conferences.
And if there's any message these pastors have
indicated has been a help to them in
their ministry is when I share on the
subject of spiritual balance.
And so it's somewhat with the pushing of
others that I come and share this message
when there are many other messages I would
love to share.
And I pray that though this message may
not be perhaps as challenging maybe as last
night, that we will see it as a
very basic teaching and basic exhortation that we
desperately need and that I believe will be
very, very much in line with what other
men of God have said here in the
past few days.
A number of people have taken advantage of
the messages that have been given here.
I'm hoping you get a series of cassettes
of every message given at this conference because
I have not been able to get in
on all the sessions to say the least.
Between the telephone and the priority which I
felt of personal counseling with needy people, I
have not been able to get in to
all the sessions.
But through cassette tapes I can do that.
I know someone phoned the bookshop and asked
for every single cassette tape.
That person certainly is going to get some
spiritual food.
But let's get in to some of the
specific areas where we need to find balance.
I think we know from the Word of
God, like Acts 20, 32, that there will
be those who will attempt to deceive, who
will attempt to lead us astray, and this
has been emphasized.
There are many other verses that I would
like to share about how there will be
seducing spirits in the last days and how
it says in 1 John how we need
to test the spirits.
We mentioned already how A.W. Tozer said
the more enthusiastic Christian is more easily led
astray.
I wanted to dedicate this evening's message to
the graduates because I believe as you leave
this great institute, the enemy will attempt, maybe
because of something you've struggled with here or
something you haven't understood or something you haven't
agreed with, the devil will attempt to move
you into some extreme.
Or maybe he's just got a more easy
method, just get you discouraged because you feel
maybe you're not all that you should be
in Christ.
The enemy is subtle and often the more
hungry, the more enthusiastic person is led astray.
That's why he urged us to develop a
little bit of healthy disbelief.
That's good.
Let me give some of the areas that
I believe where we need to work for
spiritual balance.
First of all, I believe we need to
find the balance between discipline and liberty.
We need discipline.
We think of 1 Corinthians chapter 9 where
Paul says, I buffet my body, I bring
it into subjection, lest after coming to others
I be a reprobate.
I think most of you know by now
my strong burden and belief about discipline.
But at the same time, there must be
freedom.
There must be even freedom to fail.
And I want to say this word to
parents, there has to be enough freedom in
your family for your children to fail or
they'll never learn.
And if you've got your children tied to
your little apron string, and if you're trying
to put some little kind of evangelical halo
over their head or put them in a
little gospel goldfish bowl, you're going to be
in for some big surprises.
Some of them may go along with it,
but the average thinking young person today, it's
not going to work.
There has to be freedom.
Legalism is a deadly tentacle.
And as Prairie Bible Institute is very much
on into its second generation, the principles and
the burdens that God gave you in the
beginning days are going to have to be
borne again in your own hearts year after
year if this institute is not to become
legalistic.
The same is true of Operation Mobilization.
That which was once a burning principle, a
great reality, a deep experience, if not handed
down in the power of the Spirit, becomes
nothing but a legalistic regulation that the devil
himself can use to confuse more people than
perhaps the world will ever know.
Legalism brings people into that frame of mind
where they're always going around judging other people's
spirituality.
And they're very quick to condemn others who
may not have the exact same convictions about
worldliness and separation or sanctification, an extremely difficult
subject.
I can tell you most Christians in Britain
don't believe the same way that most Christians
in western Canada believe.
And the Christians in France don't believe the
way the Christians in southern Georgia believe.
And one of the reasons I feel so
strongly that our young people in our very
pressurized American and Canadian cultures need a couple
of years in Europe and overseas is because
it helps to de-Americanize them, de-Canadianize
them, and often bring them into a place
of spiritual balance.
When I went to Mexico at 19 years
of age, it was one of the most
important steps in my Christian life because for
the first time I really saw the ugly
American that I was, George Verwer.
I never saw it before that time.
I was very nationalistic.
I was very proud.
I, of course, was a dedicated, totally dedicated
anti-communist, even though I had never really
researched much about any of it.
And then when I went to Europe and
lived in Spain and had to function in
the Spanish language, and then when I moved
to Great Britain and lived there for a
number of years, believe me, I had a
re-education and I thank God for it.
I believe ultimately it has even saved my
family.
I believe that my temperament, my strong temperament,
my tendency for extremism would have driven many
of the best workers right out of the
fellowship that God had put me into, in
a position of leadership.
And I have never found it a problem
now to have total identity and unity and
a deep relationship with British or Spanish or
Indians or Malaysians.
Part of that happened through the Word of
God.
I had the privilege also of Bible school.
Part of it happened on my knees.
Part of it happened because I read a
wide range of Christian books.
Part of it happened because I had influence
from many different men of God, not all
from the same school of thought.
But another major influence was to get out
of my own culture, and the USA culture
is more intensive, probably more nationalistic than Canada,
though that would be debatable.
And I got into Europe and I began
to see areas of my life that were
offensive and I began to learn more about
brokenness and I still have so much more
to learn about that.
And I began to see that I was
moving at times into legalism.
I was becoming, in a number of areas,
rigid.
I believe one of the enemies of reality
is rigid thinking, closed-mindedness, people that think
they're open-minded, but all they do in
their studies is rearrange their prejudices.
God has called us unto liberty, yes, but
not to use that liberty as an occasion
to the flesh, Galatians chapter 5.
We need to remember that as well, or
otherwise we go into the liberty cult and
that leads to licentiousness and a lot of
other things.
And I personally would rather have someone leading
a little bit more toward this side of
discipline, even perhaps bordering a little bit at
times on legalism, than get over into this
thing, which is like going from the frying
pan into the fire.
Then we've got to find the balance between
zeal and wisdom.
Some people look at our ships and they
hear the story of God answering prayer and
they think it's all faith, but it's not
quite that simple.
God laid the foundation for this ship ministry
over a period of 15 years, building men
together.
By the time we even started to pray
for a ship, we had about 200 men
heart-linked and thousands of prayer partners heart
-linked.
And then God began to bring engineers, top,
absolutely top engineers.
Some of them He had to save to
bring them to us.
So there was not just the faith and
the zeal, but there was the wisdom.
We often find that people are led astray
by just coming and seeing the ship.
They see the ship, they hear it's an
answer to prayer, they go back, they've never
had much prayer experience, and they start to
pray for wild things.
And they don't happen.
And then they're discouraged.
Someone wrote me recently and they said, oh,
we're so excited about your ship.
It's inspired us to pray for a jumbo
jet for Jesus.
I felt terrible.
I wrote this person, tried to investigate.
There was no real organization.
There was no fellowship yet.
Just one fellow, I think from somewhere in
the States and one or two other people
thought this was a great idea.
Jumbo jet for Jesus.
Everybody here should read the history of Prairie
Bible Institute.
The book is in the bookshop.
The sweat, the tears, the toil, how this
began, so small.
And our own work was the same way.
In 1957, three of us went to Mexico,
three teenagers.
The next summer, and those two went other
ways because the two others who were with
me, we had no plan for anything.
I found four others and five of us
went to Mexico and the problems we had.
I was a very strong, choleric leader.
One fellow on the team didn't like me,
thought I was, you know, related to Hitler
and all kinds of problems.
And it was through these experiences as young
people, and we were under missionary supervision and
getting good counsel, men like John Beekman, the
great Whitcliffe Bible translator.
He was one of our first counselors.
I'll never forget what he said to me
in Mexico City as he took us out
to see the pyramids.
You know, he had his concern about us
and he said, you know, Brother George, God
has given us a mind.
God has given us common sense.
I wonder why he said that.
And that stuck.
That went in.
And I've always worked since that day to
find the balance between zeal and then reckless
faith, total abandonment to God, and wisdom, discernment,
patience, building a slow, solid foundation in whatever
work God puts you into.
One of the greatest lessons God had to
teach me in missionary work was patience.
I remember offending this Indian brother who I
dearly loved.
I named my first son after him.
I left him in charge of the bookshop.
After my wife and I were married, we
went to open some bookshops in Mexico for
our honeymoon.
And we opened this bookshop.
And I remember one night going off to
preach, and I left the Mexican in charge
of the cash register and gave him a
few pointers.
And I went off.
When I came back, he had done things
wrong.
And so, you know, the old Anglo-Saxon
rites of righteous indignation.
I gave him a piece of my mind.
And I want to warn you about this
giving a piece of your mind.
Sooner or later, some of you can run
out of pieces.
And it really looked funny when your nose
collapses and your ears fall in because you're
empty-headed.
And God broke me.
God broke me right there in that bookshop.
And I think it was because I had
read Calvary Road.
In fact, my wife and I had read
that on our honeymoon, which really wasn't a
honeymoon.
And we read the chapter in Calvary Road
called Revival in the Home.
If you don't read any chapter in that
book, sit down with your wife and read
Revival in the Home, because that's where it's
got to begin.
And anyway, I said to this Mexican, I
said, look, I'm wrong.
I have sinned with my mouth.
Will you forgive me?
He was weeping.
And I got down on my knees and
I wept my way back to Calvary.
And I went to my Bible for the
next couple of days.
And I meditated on almost every verse about
patience.
And God began a long-run program in
my life to teach me about patience.
And if he had not done that, I
would be disqualified today from Christian leadership.
There's no question.
And I've still got plenty of scope for
growing and learning.
Balance in that area is very important.
And then balance between basic biblical principles and
policies that we may believe.
In OM, we have a lot of interesting
policies.
Some of you have been trying to figure
out OM for the last five years.
Our financial policy is a little bit different.
A lot of our policies are different.
God had to show us that we must
clearly teach young people the difference between biblical
principles and OM policies and not allow them
to get mixed up.
All some of the things that we, you
know, we did.
For example, in our work, often we would
sleep on the floor, especially in the summer
crusades.
It's cheaper.
It's faster.
And when you get so many people moving,
living in tents, evangelizing villages, you just sleep
on any church floor.
We've been on more church floors in England
than anybody in history probably since, who knows,
maybe Wesley.
I don't know where he slept.
Probably on the horse.
We would get people that would think this
was a spiritual principle.
And one young girl went home.
Her mother's waiting all summer for her daughter
and had the bed nicely made and the
room all fixed up.
And the first thing she asked her mother
was if she could remove the bed from
her room.
From now on, she was a soldier of
Jesus.
And her mother thought a disciple of some
nutcase burwer and she would sleep on the
floor.
I have written about this at some length
in my book, Revolution of Love and Balance.
And I hope that as you leave Prairie,
graduates, you will be able to discern between
that which was a biblical principle and that
which was a Prairie principle, which may have
been very valuable here in this particular situation,
but you may not want to carry it
everywhere you go to the ends of the
earth because, among other things, you may limit
your fellowship with other people who will not
understand you.
O-M-ers, people who have been in
O-M, if God had not broken us,
it could have become a cult.
It could have become a cult.
The children of God began with a zealous
group of young people, a Christian Missionary Alliance
pastor.
It's true he was bitter.
And it went further and further and further
away.
I often give a message called the marks
of the false cults.
And you'll discover that most of the false
cults have the same marks.
And we need, especially in these days, after
the Jonestown crisis and other events, we need
to avoid even being cultic in appearance.
This is why in our work we very
much esteem the parents.
We send letters to parents.
Young people make a commitment to us.
But if the parents feel that that commitment
has to be changed mid-year, we will
follow as much as possible their instructions.
I have to move on because the time
is going.
And I want to cover a number of
other subjects.
The balance between this whole area of the
warfare and the rest of faith.
Last night, we mentioned this great book, Total
Warfare, by Mr. Maxwell.
I hope you get it and read it.
I almost overemphasized warfare.
I started reading war books.
I started using all kinds of illustrations from
warfare.
And God had to bring a check on
me and show me that some people could
not handle all this terminology.
And some of my illustrations were offensive to
certain nationalities.
And I had to see how the warfare
had to be balanced with other messages of
Scripture.
How God wants to bless us and the
rest of faith.
And so many other Scriptures.
In any case, though we're in the spiritual
warfare all the time, our finger is not
on the trigger all the time.
You'll burn the gun up and your hand.
And we have to learn to refuel.
We have to learn the reality of Isaiah
26, verse 3, and many other verses where
we learn about what it is to really
be cast upon God.
And in this, I had to see how
God was working in different people in different
ways.
This always worries me when I'm speaking to
a group of people who have all gone
through four years of the same school.
One of the things that helps here is
the emphasis there is on spiritual balance and
that you're not here at Prairie, as far
as I can discern, all pushed through one
little doctrinal evangelical cookie cutter so that you
all come out sort of walking the same
with the same length hair.
You know, it's difficult to preach with this
guy sitting behind you.
Maybe you'd like to sit down with my
wife.
She looks very lonely.
He told me it was a bad illustration.
Anyway, it's actually a good illustration, because some
of you, when you go to Europe, are
going to discover some of the most committed
people that I ever have known with rather
long hair, including evangelical gospel preaching Bible-believing
ministers.
You've never found that too much around Western
Canada, or maybe you have.
If only we could realize that God works
in different people and in different ways, and
never allowed any greater truth that God has
given you, any blessing that God has given
you, in any way lead you into the
school of the Pharisees or into the cult
of the super spiritual, which drives perpetually innocent
people away from the Savior.
It's a spiritually balanced man who can have
strong convictions, know where he stands, but not
feel he has to push that down everybody
else's throat.
It's so important to see this, especially on
the mission field, where we must work together.
If only hybrid American total, total, total fundamentalists
can work together on the mission field, then
we have an extremely small number of missionaries
in the world today.
And I will tell you in the opinion
of hundreds of Europeans and Asians, sometimes this
type of hyper person has been the most
offensive person we have had to deal with
in Europe and in Asia and many other
lands.
God wants to give us spiritual balance, but
it's going to cost.
One great man of God said, it's difficult
to convert emotion into action because it costs.
And as we go out, we're going to
have to learn something of this spiritual balance.
Then the balance between evangelism and church planting,
a number of very quick practical areas.
I say we need both.
I say do not allow our missionary work
to polarize.
And when it comes to world missions, there
are a number of areas where we must
work for balance.
The balance between the call, people who emphasize
the call and people who emphasize making an
objective decision and getting God's guidance.
I am totally on this side.
But I greatly respect people who emphasize the
call.
Praise God.
There are people who have had emotional calls
and all kinds of calls all over the
world.
Hallelujah.
But I believe God often leads other people
through just basic down to earth guidance.
And for the local church, sending them out
to the field because they believe that they
have the gift or whatever else is needed
in that situation.
Don't put one against the other.
I believe you'll find both in the book
of Acts.
The balance between the need and guidance of
God.
We've heard of incredibly needy nations in these
days where there are hardly any workers.
But that is not the only factor.
It is one factor.
It is a major factor.
It should be studied and researched.
But then there must be the guidance of
God.
The counsel of the saints.
There must be providence.
One thing I like about the great Puritan
writers is their emphasis on providence.
God's circumstances.
All how God can work through circumstances.
And then the balance between closed lands and
open lands.
The great missionary rush has been to open
lands.
This is why I like the emphasis of
Ralph Winter.
The unreached people.
I believe God has raised up this man.
I believe we can learn something from him.
And we are seeing so many missionaries are
laboring among people who have already had to
some degree the gospel.
Second, third, fourth generation.
We need that.
Let's not polarize.
But let's bring it into balance.
And to do that, there's going to have
to be a greater emphasis on the Muslim
world.
There's going to have to be an emphasis
on China.
There's going to have to be an emphasis
on North India.
And other unbelievably unreached areas.
We need both.
Praise God for church growth.
I hope to have Donald McGovern as our
speaker.
One of our conferences in Europe.
And it's interesting that Donald McGovern in recent
years has also strongly emphasized the need to
go also to the Muslim world and the
unreached peoples.
Spiritual balance is needed in every area of
missions.
The balance between social work and evangelism.
The balance between working with nationals or nationals
doing the work and missionaries.
Some people attack missionary work.
They say nationals can do it cheaper.
This kind of comparison to me is a
little bit dangerous.
And it brings more problems on the mission
field than we know between nationals and missionaries.
We need both.
And the big thing is not whether the
man's a national or a missionary.
Is he a man of integrity?
Is he spirit filled?
Does he love Christ?
That's what counts.
I think we would all agree with that.
The nationals are crying out in many nations
to send more missionaries.
Missionaries are needed in almost every nation in
the world.
And there is a great internationalization of missions
taking place today that we need to recognize.
We just had 70 Latin Americans go on
our ship to evangelize Spain.
Praise God.
They all speak the language.
The moment they got off the ship in
Vigo, Spain, they could communicate and lead people
to Christ.
And they made a great impact.
World Missions is no longer an Anglo-Saxon
project.
God is raising up different people from different
countries to launch out.
And this is why we need even more
than ever spiritual balance and a greater degree
of flexibility, adaptability, and humility, without which no
man will be a really good missionary.
Then we've got to find the balance between
the radical, which sometimes OM represents, and the
status quo or the stability and the continuity
that the more traditional viewpoint brings.
I feel we need both.
I feel that movements like OM and others
that have somewhat of a radical message, and
sometimes they state things in a way that
maybe people don't agree with and can be
misunderstood and misapplied, I think that is balanced
off by some of the great traditions, many
of which are based on Scripture.
And I believe the younger missionaries must major
on understanding older missionaries and not go out
just shooting their mouth off.
Learn submission, how important that is.
At the same time, older missionaries must beware
of dogmatism, must beware of their own ego
trip, their own fear of change, and being
threatened by younger people who may have more
education or who may have different ideas.
We need both.
We need each other, the young and the
old, the radical and the traditional.
And unless we band together in the unity
and the power of the Spirit, we will
never evangelize the world.
That's why I believe many of the divisions
in our churches are unnecessary, because with love
and humility and brokenness, different kinds of people
with different viewpoints and even some degree and
difference of doctrine could work together and pray
together and shake their town or city for
Jesus Christ instead of creating another evangelical scandal.
I would beg of you in the name
of the Lord Jesus who commanded all of
us, if we want to follow Him, to
deny self, take up the cross daily and
follow Him.
I would beg of you to see that
that will have great practical implications in bringing
us into a greater like-minded and united
thrust for the cause of Jesus Christ around
the world.
How do we find the balance between the
simple lifestyle, which I have tried to emphasize,
and the need to use modern methods in
world missions?
We have a television.
Putting this material onto television videotape to use
it on our ships, to use it in
many parts of the world, to use it
where people can't even get out of their
homes because they're crippled.
On one hand, I'm trying to live a
simple lifestyle, spending as little money as possible.
On the other hand, I've got to sign
a check that pays for a video recorder,
which I'm glad I didn't sign.
Someone else bought it.
I will tell you, I have wrestled with
this problem.
We now have a computer in our British
operation because the book selling has grown so
big, we cannot keep track of it.
I never dreamed that ever we would have
a computer in Operation Mobilization.
I used to attack computers, you know, not
physically, but in my messages.
I have had to back down.
I have had to confess areas in which
I was extreme, in which I was off
balance.
And the Lord has been merciful.
So it's an area where we'll never totally
find an easy answer.
In some ways, a person in my situation
has to detach himself from the work.
Though the work may involve fuel bills, I
dare not even tell you a fuel bill
for our ship.
I cannot go down shopping on the basis
of what I've just spent to refuel the
ship Dulles.
I have to live my personal life, not
before OM, but before God.
And God is looking for people that He
can entrust millions of dollars with for the
cause of Jesus Christ, knowing that He could
give this man or this person or group
a million dollars, and in no way would
they be stained by it, or led to
sort of take advantage of it, to just
move up the social ladder and what we
talked about the other day.
It's an area where we desperately need balance.
And then balance between the emphasis on personal
work and the emphasis on mass evangelism.
Why is it that people using different methods
attack each other's evangelism?
They do it very subtly, but I believe
it grieves God.
I pray that every one of us will
rededicate our tongues to Jesus Christ tonight.
And say, Lord Jesus, once again, nail my
tongue to the cross that I may not
speak against your work.
David could have taken the life of Saul,
but he said, dare I touch the Lord's
anointed, even though Saul was a wicked old
man.
And I believe we must be careful before
we speak out, especially when we're not sure.
Of course, we must evaluate.
And it's an area of great difficulty, but
certainly without love and without compassion and without
patience, we are doomed to become extremists and
to move into the snare of the enemy.
Yes, I could give you another 40 areas
where we need to work toward spiritual balance,
but I don't think it would be fair
to take more time.
Study this subject.
Compare Scripture with Scripture.
Spend lots of time in the book of
Proverbs.
Read some of the writings of Tozer and
then pick up perhaps something of Tim LaHaye
or Eugenia Price.
Then read some of Maxwell.
Then go read something of Lloyd-Jones.
And of course, then lay it all aside
and go back to Romans and Ephesians and
Philippians and Colossians and the Word of God.
Balance is not a place of compromise.
No, it takes a totally committed person to
find spiritual balance.
It's something that enables us to build, enables
us to grow without going off into this
extreme or that extreme, into this false doctrine
or into this overemphasis.
It has been the basic principle of this
work, Prairie Bible Institute.
And I believe it's one of the reasons
that there's been such a linking between some
of the leaders here and some of us
in OM because we feel so strongly that
without spiritual balance, we are doomed.
We are doomed to be second-rate in
God's program.
Oh, He may use you.
He doesn't lay you aside the moment you've
got a few kinks or a few extremes.
Boy, you'd really be shorthanded.
But you'll never know all that God wants
you to know.
You'll never see all that God wants you
to see in your life and in your
ministry and in your church unless you know
this kind of spiritual balance in your church,
in your marriage, in every area of life.
I think it's one of the most exciting
subjects in all of Scripture.
And I pray that you'll pursue it and
become that on-fire, biblical, balanced man or
woman of God that I know He would
have you be.
Let us pray.
Let's have a moment of silent prayer.
If we feel that we've been off-balanced
and in some extreme in our life in
one way or the other, this would be
a good time to tell God about it
and say, Oh, Lord, I have wandered away.
My own imagination, my own tendency for extreme,
my own temperament.
And ask the Lord to bring you back
to Calvary where He can do the balancing
of the power of His Holy Spirit.
There may be some that are right away
from the Lord, may be driven away by
some extremists.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could come
back to Him right now and place your
hand in the hand of a man from
Galilee and say, Lord, I'll go where you
want me to go and I'll do what
you want me to do.
Maybe some of you have turned away from
going to the mission field because you've had
off-balanced views of what it's really all
about.
And you need to come back to a
new commitment and say, Lord, I'll go.
I'll go to the mission field.
I'll begin to move by faith.
Maybe you've been deceived by some overemphasis.
Oh, I pray you may come back to
the cross and back to spiritual balance tonight.
Let's have a moment of silent prayer.