These other books are just sermons in print.
We can't accept everything we read in them.
We've got to look in the scriptures and
see if these things be so.
As you probably know, in these days at
OM, we're not just bookworms, but we're also
tape listeners.
I said tapeworm in a meeting once and
the people looking at me thought I had
one, especially when I turned sideways behind a
microphone.
He couldn't see me at all.
But how I praise God for the Walkman.
I usually have mine with me.
You've probably got yours.
I love these new earphones because some Christians,
they don't like to see with Walkmans.
Christians oppose everything.
Anything new Christians are against.
They were against electricity when it came out.
They were against cars.
They were against beards.
I still am, especially for women.
But look at these newfangled earphones.
Look at this.
You can't even see these.
These are evangelical earphones.
I want to listen to some country western
while I'm preaching because I get tired of
listening to my voice.
That's great.
I think I'll leave that.
Well, you know I believe in tapes.
All the tapes we had at 50 Pence
are gone, but there's a lot of good
tapes at the book display, including some of
the seminars from this morning.
And I wish somehow I could have shared
with all of you this little seminar on
how to be an encourager.
So I was quite encouraged to see they
have copies of that.
Turn with me in your Bibles to Ephesians
chapter six.
How do we avoid the pitfalls as we
run the race for God, as we get
involved in world missions, in evangelism in our
own country, in serious Christian living?
Ephesians six indicates that we're involved in serious
spiritual warfare.
And the reason some of us have tried
to sharpen our sense of humor is because
what we do, we take actually so incredibly
seriously.
I would not be here this weekend.
I've just come back from Kathmandu.
I've just come back from the Gulf, from
Switzerland.
I would like a weekend home, especially go
down and take another look at my little
granddaughter.
And it's amazing how in the, you know,
as it goes down one generation after another,
they get more attractive.
There's great hope even for, you know, some
of you.
So don't, you know, don't get depressed, but
press on and believe God for the best.
I believe that we are locked in a
great spiritual conflict with the forces of darkness.
I believe in general, Christians are not serious
enough.
The greatest problem that hinders young people when
they come on OM is their superficial attitude
toward life and the word of God in
prayer, their general flippancy, their inability to redeem
the time, and the lack of real cutting
edge dynamic discipline.
And I thank God for all the changes
that are being made in OM.
And we want to be a movement committed
to change and Love Europe represents change, but
we are not going to throw away the
baby with the bathwater, especially if it's my
granddaughter.
And we are committed to discipline living.
We are committed to serious discipleship.
We are committed to spiritual warfare, intercession, world
evangelism, sacrifice, forsaking all and obeying God, whatever
the cost, wherever he leads, whatever the price.
We know that at the same time, we
are incredibly human.
Gordon Bailey's poetry reminds me always of the
writings of A.W. Tozer, though completely distinct,
because it has a cutting edge.
I've read many of Gordon's books.
It has that cutting edge to expose superficiality,
to expose playing evangelical games.
And we hope that every one of you
will go away from this weekend with a
greater seriousness of purpose and yet not deny
the human factor that life at times is
funny, that we are funny, that a gift
of God is a sense of humor and
that can be mightily used for his kingdom.
But when we read Ephesians 6, we don't
see too much humor.
I'm sure there is some for those who
are more discerning, but we see an awful
awesome conflict.
And I want us to just read a
few verses because as usual, we are battling
the clock and we have a lot to
share.
Verse 10, Ephesians 6.
I want you to take out two pieces
of paper.
Some of you already have one piece.
One is for me called Operation Feedback.
It isn't fair.
I have an hour or two to speak
to you and you can't say much to
me, though I've had some wonderful personal conversations.
So you can write anything you want on
paper.
I'd especially appreciate it if some of you
would write, please don't come back next year
because in my heart I would like to
give this wonderful conference a break and not
have to have George Brewer three or four
years in a row.
But anyway, you write whatever you want.
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord
and in the power of his might.
Put on the whole armor of God that
you may be able to stand against the
wiles of the devil.
I want you to mark that in your
Bible.
How many of you mark your Bibles with
a pen or a pencil?
How many of you do that?
Revolutionized my Bible study.
I'm glad to see you're into that.
If you're witness to Muslims, you may have
a separate unmarked Bible because they don't understand
marking your Bible.
They don't understand in general how we treat
our Bibles.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood
but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers
of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness
in high places.
Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of
God that you may be able to withstand
in the evil day and having done all
to stand.
Stand therefore, stand therefore.
That puts responsibility on you.
Stand therefore, having your loin skirted about with
truth, having on the breastplate of righteousness, your
feet shod with the preparation of the gospel
of peace, having the shield of faith with
which you'll be able to quench, to stop
the fiery arrows or darts of the wicked
one.
Satan, take the helmet of salvation, the sword
of the spirit, which is the word of
God, praying always.
Did you get that?
Praying always with all prayer and supplication in
the spirit, watching thereunto with all perseverance and
supplication for all things.
And for me, that utterance may be given
unto me that I may open my mouth
and boldly make the mystery of the gospel
known, for which I am an ambassador in
bonds.
That in this I may speak boldly as
I ought to speak.
Tonight, at the end of this meeting, I'm
going to give a call.
I'm going to give a call for you
to make a deeper, more serious commitment of
your life to Jesus Christ.
I might as well tell you now, then
it won't be a surprise.
You can think about it for the next
half an hour.
Because I believe the average Christian young person
today has a shallow, apathetic commitment to Jesus
Christ.
I believe the average evangelical does not understand
spiritual warfare, does not understand what it is
to resist Satan, does not have a knowledge
of the word of God, does not know
how to agonize in intercessory prayer, as Jesus
Christ taught us when he spent a whole
night in prayer.
And I believe part of the answer to
this is a recommitment of our lives to
Jesus Christ.
I don't think that's the total answer.
The only total answer I know is Jesus
Christ himself.
But the Lord Jesus gave us teaching.
The Lord Jesus gave us his word.
The Lord Jesus gave us his disciples.
And they made other disciples.
And we are the disciples of the disciples
of the disciples down over 2,000 years.
Isn't that exciting?
Same message, same book, same Christ, same baptism,
same Holy Spirit.
Hebrews says Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today,
and forevermore.
Those of you who are already on OM,
I want to give this word to you.
You don't have to accept it from me.
You accept it from the Lord.
I am very concerned for Operation Mobilization, because
any movement when it gets this size will
pay a price.
I just got the official statistics from our
communications department, the first time in several years,
about the number of people we now have
in this movement, because we haven't been very
much on counting numbers.
But we had to produce this statistic so
we don't exaggerate.
We now have 586 single men, 485 single
women, 700 married people, and 557 children, and
they're coming at us a baby a week.
Operation Multiplication.
And yet I can tell you, some of
our keenest, some of our most committed intercessors,
prayer partners, have gone to be with the
Lord.
I hardly ever go through a week without
hearing of some other prayer partner going to
the Lord.
I was on the phone tonight with Lindsay
Brown, who canceled his trip to Switzerland as
one of the leaders of ITs in Europe
because he's at his mother's bedside.
A woman saved a few years ago, an
intercessor who will probably be with Jesus in
the next few days.
We've just heard of Alan Redpath, one of
OM's closest friends, who was standing right with
us a year or two ago.
He has just gone to be with the
Lord.
Where are we going to find the intercessors?
Where are we going to find this kind
of caliber prayer partner to stand in the
gap and to make up the hedge to
engage in the spiritual warfare that we must
engage in if we are to reach a
world of 5,000 million people?
Surely we need to take seriously this challenge
from the book of Ephesians and every other
book, of course, in the Word of God.
We're told that Satan sometimes comes as an
angel of light.
We're told that Satan is a roaring lion,
seek ye whom ye may devour.
This is not my terminology.
I don't even like to talk about the
devil.
I don't even like to think about hell.
I'm not a natural Christian.
I'm a natural non-Christian.
I'm a natural hell-bound, hell-bent, big
-mouthed, over-energized sinner.
And I wasn't reared in an evangelical home.
You can't blame my parents for the extremism
I got into.
There was a little old lady, a little
meddling old lady, praying for me, put me
on her hit list some 36 years ago,
sent me a piece of dynamite through the
post, the Gospel of John, almost blew a
hole in my brain.
Then Billy Graham comes to New York City,
one of these wild emotional evangelists.
I was a skeptic about all this.
None of my friends were into this kind
of thing.
We were into dancing.
We were into women.
We were into nightclubs.
We were into business, money.
We were normal, according to the world.
Somehow, a young person who went to school
with me who I didn't like, I didn't
like a lot of people, I was filled
with hatred.
I fought with my fists from the age
of four.
I had my own little gang when I
was only 10, 11, and this little kid
moved into town and got on the opposite
gang.
I hated him.
Another fellow lived across the street from him.
I hated him as well.
I went to his house filled with hatred
and wrote in big black paint so everybody
could see it, S-H-I, not P
for ships.
And I'll never forget this fellow asking me
to go to a Billy Graham meeting.
But I went.
I was infatuated with this chick or girl
and I thought she could use some religion.
I had some religion.
I was the president of my youth group.
I was teaching the young people how to
rock and roll.
The pastor was a liberal and didn't really
believe the Bible and hell and sin and
all that business.
He thought I was great.
He made me his assistant.
You can have religion and be lost.
But that night I went to that Billy
Graham meeting and I heard the gospel and
I heard about heaven and I heard about
hell and somehow something rang in my heart
and I trusted Christ as my savior and
I was born from above and I started
to read this book and I started to
base my life on this book and when
I read about hell in this book I
believed it even though I didn't like it.
When I read about Satan in this book
I believed it although I didn't like it.
To this day I still struggle with these
things.
I studied under atheists, agnostics, communists at the
University of Mexico.
I almost overthrew the Christian faith completely when
I was a student at Bible college.
I thank God for men that have ministered
to the intellectual side of us.
Men like Dr. Schaeffer, Josh McDowell, C.S.
Lewis and a host of others who help
answer the hard questions and hallelujah there are
good answers to hard questions and as believers
in Jesus Christ we're not committing intellectual suicide.
This is not some late adolescent religious escape
trip because she felt guilty uh reading pornography
as a baby.
So I was saved and suddenly I was
thrust into this into this body of people
called evangelicals and fundamentalists and charismatics and they
all you know different ones went by different
names which is so confusing for the young
believer as I was but I held fast
to God's word and I fed upon it
and I memorized it and then I got
some of these great books especially the writings
of Billy Graham and Oswald J.
Smith and it changed my life.
I believe brothers and sisters with all my
heart that men and women without Jesus Christ
are lost and on the road to hell.
I don't like that and I can relate
to you if you struggle with it.
There are excellent books like Dick Dowsett's book,
God's that's not fair, but I believe we
have to accept the scripture over human reasoning.
Men are lost.
I've just come back from Kathmandu.
I wish I know I'm not supposed to
do that but I'll do it anyway.
I wish I could just take you right
now with me on my early morning run
through the back streets of Kathmandu.
Just seems just a couple of days though
it was a couple weeks ago.
I know you'll never be the same.
Just on that one walk through Kathmandu you
would see poverty in the raw.
You would see the absolute degeneracy of Hinduism.
If you are Hindu, I'm sorry if that
offends you, but it is a degenerate unbelievably
overwhelmingly pagan pagan system and we have the
freedom to say that just as people have
the freedom to say Christianity was all wet
or Jesus Christ was not the son of
God.
You cannot be put in jail for saying
that and you would see poverty and you
would see a lot of things that you
would never forget.
I never planned to be a missionary to
India.
When I was at Bible college, Bhakt Singh
visited the Bible college.
He gave glowing reports of the Holy Spirit
working in India and I thought that's not
the place for me.
I was interested in only going places where
others were not working.
My burden was the Soviet Union, Turkey, Iraq,
Iran, Afghanistan was high on my list.
I was a little interested in Spain because
it was semi-closed under Franco.
I knew Spanish or was learning Spanish so
after Mexico I went to Spain, but India
I thought they got enough Christians in India.
But Dale Roton and I who had been
teamed up from my early days in college
were praying and I asked Dale when he
was working in Turkey, starting the work there,
he now coordinates the ship ministry.
It's his wife really who wrote this unique
book.
I said Dale, go to India after you
visit Afghanistan where we wanted to pioneer in
church planting.
Go to go to India because we know
there's a lot of Muslims there, though we
know there's a lot of Christians in India.
Maybe they're not reaching the Muslims and Dale
went to that agonizing trip.
I'll never forget reading his letter.
He got a cinder in his eye and
stayed there for 24 hours and he had
horrendous pain and difficulty on that trip.
But he wrote these letters back to me,
sort of like a spy in the land.
At the same time an Indian brother named
Thomas Samuel came to Europe to work in
our early operation mobilization summer efforts.
And after I read those letters I thought
we've got to send some teams.
And so we plan to send the first
few teams overland and beat up old British
lorries all the way to India.
Incredible story in itself.
This is our jubilee year.
I just made five videos in one night
in five different languages with five different interpreters
because that's India.
A multitude of languages, a multitude of people
and they will be taken down from Kathmandu,
they already have been, to be shown and
played throughout India as they celebrate OM India
with over 300 full-time workers, the silver
jubilee of that work.
But I felt I should go out myself.
And that one visit, sort of a lightning
trip, Delhi, Lucknow, Bareilly, Benares, Calcutta, Madras, Bangalore,
Bombay, completely changed the course of my life.
It changed the course of OM.
The whole ship ministry was born out of
the vision for the subcontinent.
Because I went later on to the subcontinent
by ship and that's where the vision to
have our own ship increased.
To carry large numbers of workers out to
India and all kinds of other things is
not time to talk about.
The Bible says in the words of Jesus
Christ, the harvest is plenteous, the labors are
few.
And in a sense I come to you
with this Macedonian call from the book of
Acts, chapter 16, where they call for Paul
to come over and help them in Macedonia.
That's not a call to become a missionary.
They were already missionaries.
That is a call to come and help
in a particular situation.
Just before I get back on track with
this message, I give this plea for many
of you, please to consider the possibility of
giving two years of your life in the
subcontinent.
Pakistan is a wide open door, especially for
single people.
India is a wide open door for short
term.
It's closed basically to career missionaries, slight openings
for tent makers.
The job will have to be mainly done
there by nationals.
Those nationals have officially deputized me to look
for more British and internationals to come and
help, to give out literature, to drive trucks,
to teach, to be a servant.
We don't need people with too much talent,
too much theology, too much ability.
They sometimes threaten the nationals.
We need some ordinary people who will give
two years of their life to the subcontinent.
Even that door may close.
We need people to consider places like Bangladesh,
places like Nepal.
I wanted to mention a book called Don't
Let the Goats Eat the Loquat Trees.
Who is ever going to buy that book
from this ignorant generation who don't know what
loquat trees are like me?
But I will tell you as I began
to go through this book, I couldn't believe
it.
This makes a James Bond thriller look like
something that you'd prefer to leave home when
you go on your summer holiday or love
Europe.
This is exciting.
This is well written.
This is missionary work in the raw.
Don't let the goats eat the loquat trees.
That's for you there in the front row,
free.
Give me a book review on it, please.
I just want to make sure he's awake.
Pray for Nepal.
Pray for India.
Pray for Bangladesh.
Pray for Pakistan.
In that part of the world, we have
as many people as many people has lived
in the entire world around 1830.
Can you imagine that?
One billion people, 1,000 million people, approximately
in 1830.
Now, 1989, one billion people in the subcontinent.
One thousand million.
And I would say as Oswald J.
Smith said, if you can't go, send others.
One of the ways you can send others
is perhaps get involved with STL who needs
staff.
Another way that you can send others is
go see Tony Kirk and sign up as
his secretary and help Quinta process all the
Love Europe applicants.
Another way you could help send others is
by giving financially, even if it's one pound
a month.
It would be an enormous help to what
these brothers and sisters are wrestling with on
the subcontinent.
There's free literature about it in a number
of different places here.
That's all I can say.
I feel I fulfilled my commitment to God
to share about what I have just seen
again in that part of the world.
What are some of these pitfalls as we
go out to India, as we get involved
with STL or in prayer or in the
ministry of giving, or with Birmingham City Mission,
or helping Billy Graham in London?
Whatever we do for God, Satan will counterattack
it.
I've listed just a few that I've absorbed
from the Word of God, from 34 years
of following the Lord Jesus, however feeble at
times that has been.
The first pitfall that you can expect is
the pitfall of pride.
It's the worst of all.
It's the most subtle of all.
It's the hardest to recognize.
And I'm sure tonight as I give a
call to commitment, there are many who need
to stand and say, Lord, forgive me for
so often I am on an ego trip.
Some of you know, you know in your
heart how quickly you get into self-centered
living.
Self is your biggest problem.
It's generally not demons.
It's generally not the man next door, your
pastor who you feel doesn't preach so well.
Self is the real problem in most of
our lives, and in most of our marriages,
and in much of our Christian work.
That's why Jesus again and again said, if
any man or woman come after me, let
him deny self, take up the cross, and
follow me.
It's so simple, yet often so hard to
do because pride is such a great obstacle.
It may be religious pride.
It may be intellectual pride.
Almost every year I've visited Cambridge or Oxford
and how God has worked in those great
universities.
But I've noticed as I've gone to those
great towns over the years, how often there's
a great division between the university people and
the ordinary town folk.
Some of the town folk actually hate these
students, and the reason is all the wretched
stinking pride those institutions generate.
And if you think those great institutions really
represent what you're dreaming about, you're bordering on
being an idiot.
Spurgeon gave his evaluation of those institutions many
years ago, and I think we need to
re-read it.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't study there, because
I'm sure some of you should, or any
other university, but it should mean that we
are not deceived.
We are not deceived by the system that
these institutions represent.
They are spawned from the very mouth of
hell, and until God's people rise up and
speak against drugs, and against sin, and against
injustice, and against manipulation, and against abomination in
the area of philosophy, and psychology, and religion,
we will never be the people that God
wants us to be.
Praise God for men like Spurgeon, and a
few today who are willing to speak up.
The brainwash, the brainwash from our institutions is
too much for most people to resist.
And so we have a generation of mascots
instead of a generation of prophets.
And I hope that if you're studying at
some university, you'll be giving an hour at
least to God in prayer and in his
word, so that can counter the brainwash you
get from some of these books that are
not even worth reading or studying.
And if you think I'm anti-intellectual, you're
completely wrong, because hundreds of long-term OMers
come out of these institutions, and they do
not deny the benefits of secular education and
secular training.
And we do not teach that the world
has nothing to offer, because man has a
degree of dignity even after the fall, and
we can learn much from fallen man, and
we can learn much from secular books, and
yes, even secular music, and the arts, and
culture.
And I wish I could give you my
balancing message on the subject of culture, but
there's not time tonight.
I haven't preached it yet.
Pride is so subtle.
Pride is so ingrown into our whole system,
politics, government, yes, even religion.
Do you know the religious systems that now
exist in our world, the politics that are
ingrown in those systems, the commercialism that has
taken over those systems?
I'm not speaking of a faithful church on
the corner that preaches the Word of God
and loves Jesus Christ.
I'm speaking about religious systems that now stand
opposed to the Word of God.
Now, forgive me if I get excited.
When I first came to England, I got
some orientation about calming down.
A man put me in a black suit,
took me to this conference in Swanwick.
Do you remember?
Gordon was one of the few here tonight
who was there.
I was petrified, one of the first times
I ever preached.
And I go to this conference, and I
meet way out characters like Gordon Bally.
Don't generalize about British people.
Don't do it.
This nation, this great nation, now my adopted
home country, has produced a wide range of
people, and now from many races and backgrounds.
It is as mongrel as any nation in
the history of the planet.
It took me a while ministering in Britain
to just be a little more relaxed about
myself.
I was greatly helped by Alan Redpath because
he's another one of these preachers, these British
preachers, that never could remain calm.
I used to watch him at Moody Church
when I went there as a student.
He was the pastor, and he'd get going,
you know, and you could see him putting
the brakes on.
Smoke would come up from behind the pulpit,
and somehow, eventually, he would just pour out
his heart.
This isn't something we fake.
This isn't acting.
It is part, of course, of our natural
temperament.
As one Englishman said to me when he
first met me, you are rather intensive, aren't
you?
I never heard that word used in a
spiritual way.
I don't think he meant it in a
spiritual way.
The pitfall of pride.
Let Tozer expose some of it.
Let your roommate expose some of it.
Give a little paper to your roommate tomorrow
if you're in digs with somebody else and
say, please list on this paper this week
10 areas where you feel I could become
more Christ-like.
You're gonna get depressed.
But, you know, sometimes as Christians, we can
learn more from an enemy than we can
from a friend because our friends don't want
to offend us.
You know, when I'm living with someone, and
generally it's my wife is with me, but
other times I'm traveling with people, and, you
know, I like to just tell someone, look,
if I have bad breath in the morning,
would you tell me, you know, if I
smell as I walk out the door, would
you be a friend enough?
Just, you know, just tell me, you know,
you don't even have to say anything, just
hint, you know.
But so often our friends won't tell us
anything.
They see pride in our life, but they
don't want to say anything.
That's why I believe in the message of
Calvary Road, a book I was telling you
about this morning.
It talks about walking in the light.
Do you have anybody that you walk in
the light with?
I don't mean you have to jump up
in front of your congregation, you know, next
Sunday you're back home, and God's convicted you
about the fact that every once in a
while you fall into reading pornographic magazines.
So, you know, they have a little breaking
of bread, and one elder gets up and
prays, and another one gets up and prays.
You've heard both prayers before, but still you're
learning.
So you feeling the great conviction, you get
up and you pray, oh God, thank you
for delivering me this week from all the
pornography I've been reading for the last five
years.
As you see, several elders faint.
You don't have to get up in public
and confess that you've been picking your nose.
As Christians, we need to maintain, you know,
a degree of manners.
Actually, you know, Em, we've produced a leaflet
on that.
I think you can get it free of
charge.
We can't even give it away free.
Who wants a leaflet on manners?
Do you have someone that will walk in
the light with you?
Do you have someone, as I had with
Dale Roton, who after I preached a message
and I thought the Holy Spirit was working
in mighty power, he would take me into
a corner and he'd say, he was so
tactful, Brother George, God's hand was upon you.
We preachers never have any struggle with pride.
But, Brother George, something like that he would
say, I just felt the Lord could have
used you so much more if you could
be a little more truthful in what you
were.
Truthful?
Are you calling me a liar?
And I'd usually, after wiggling my feet, groaning,
repent of exaggeration.
One of the great evangelical sins.
The pitfall of pride is as deadly as
anything we could talk about tonight.
And I pray that you will deal with
it even though it will be a lifelong
battle.
Secondly, the pitfall of lust.
I don't want to tarry on this.
I hope you've all had a good message
on sex in your church lately.
It's so important.
I'm tired of preaching on it myself.
When I preach on sex, people always think
I have problems.
I do.
How many of you, be honest, in your
Christian union or in your church, you've had
a good red hot anointed message on sex,
you know, in the last six months?
Raise your hand.
Come on, I'm taking a survey.
Peter Conlins, not the only one allowed to
take surveys.
Come on, try it again.
I know you're tired.
You've heard a powerful message on sex from
the Word of God in your church or
see you in the last six months.
Raise your hand.
Look at that.
Hardly any hands.
Why is this?
Why are we afraid to talk about sex?
Is this the big no-no among God's
frozen people?
If you are involved in a ministry of
counseling, you know that one out of four
or five people you counsel has a sexual
problem of some kind.
That is a generalization, but I don't think
it's far from the mark.
Roy Hesschen backs that up in his book,
Forgotten Factors.
We need to deal with impurity.
We need to read books on it.
We need to get into those 500 verses
in God's Word about it.
We need to have someone we're sharing with
and praying with.
The Bible says, confess your faults one to
another and pray for one another that ye
may be healed.
At 16 years of age, I am sorry
to say I was a sexaholic.
Pornography, I lived in the age of romance,
so I never went to bed, by God's
mercy, with another woman.
And I just know that if God can
keep a character like me, these 34 years
in the midst of struggle and sometimes failure,
especially with the eyes, then He can keep
you.
He can change your life, whatever your problem
may be.
Meditate on those Proverbs that talk about this.
Read and think on verses like that verse
in Timothy, where it says, flee, flee youthful
lusts and many other related verses.
Perhaps if you don't get any other book,
you should pick up one of the books
that deals with this subject.
There's also an excellent book, I don't know
if I have it up here, but it's
especially for someone that has fallen into sexual
sin.
Rebuilding Your Broken World is in that category,
and a book called When a Good Man
Falls.
I saw it there on the table.
The third pitfall is the pitfall of the
love of money.
Money can be greatly used in the work
of the kingdom.
We need to release money through prayer.
I've written a leaflet on that, which you
can pick up.
We need to have a balanced view of
money that we see in the New Testament
and exemplified in the life of Jesus Christ.
But the love of money is the root
of so much evil.
God wants to set us free from materialism.
That is completely linked with the life of
faith.
We are over-dependent in our culture.
We are over-dependent on material things.
We are over-dependent on our insurance policies,
on the treasures we have laid up in
heaven.
Hallelujah for a little group of wildcat British
people that formed something called Wallington's Missionary Auctions
and challenged God's people to give their antiques
and other items to sell for world missions.
People may have laughed, but they have given
now over two million pounds from selling these
items.
Some of them had a lot of sentimental
value, selling them for the kingdom.
That's practical Acts 2, Acts 4 Christianity.
And when I go to the States, I
always tell them about this famous British organization,
because we don't have anything similar to it
that I know of in the United States.
The Americans, they just lack that kind of
sanctified true British imagination to think of something
as wild as this.
They do think of a lot of other
wild things.
I would love to talk longer on the
subject of materialism, because I believe unless we
experience deliverance from that, it will be a
pitfall all of our life.
Tozer said materialism will not go out easily.
It's not a matter of raising your hand.
It will go out as a tooth extracted
from the jaw by a dentist.
It means we're going to have to deal
some heavy blows to that part of our
human nature.
The fourth pitfall I've listed is the pitfall
of apathy.
Truly, apathy is the greatest sin of all
sins in the church today.
It's not really lust or materialism, immorality, or
even pride.
It's the lukewarmness.
It's the fact that people can hear message
after message on Sunday and never change, never
give sacrificially, never wrestle with the principalities and
powers to do the Lord's will in a
more revolutionary way in their community.
How desperately we need revival.
How desperately we need restoration and revolution.
Call it whatever you want, but we need
to wake up.
And we need to go forth.
Someone said we need to evangelize or otherwise
we will fossilize.
I hope it's not too late for you.
Let's beware of the pitfall of apathy.
Those of us who are on OM, it
seeps in, especially this time of year.
We become callous to the night of prayer.
We become chilly in our evangelism.
We let walls go up in our relationships
with our leader or our fellow worker and
we fail to repent.
Isn't so much of our difficulty the failure
to repent?
God knows it will take us a lifetime
to learn some of these great biblical principles.
Peter shared with us last night.
We on shared with us today.
Some of us have to make a more
serious, fresh beginning.
And it means repentance.
It means being filled afresh with the Holy
Spirit.
I may speak more about that tomorrow, but
I love that command in Ephesians 5, being
filled with the Holy Spirit.
And I want to ask you as we
bring this to a close and we give
this invitation, are you filled with the Holy
Spirit?
Are you sure you're filled with the Holy
Spirit?
People are a little hesitant to say yes
to that.
They feel that might be spiritual boasting.
No, it's just an acknowledgment of normal Christian
living.
As far as my, I know most of
my life since my conversion, I've lived in
various degrees of being filled with the Holy
Spirit.
That's just the normal Christian life.
That doesn't destroy the human factor.
That doesn't mean you're not going to make
mistakes.
It doesn't mean you can't fall out of
bed tonight.
Praise the Lord.
It's a lot easier if you're on the
floor.
You don't have far to go.
Be ye filled with the Holy Spirit.
God works in different people in different ways.
Some people have very emotional experiences with the
Holy Spirit.
I'm afraid I'm in that camp, but some
of the most Spirit-filled people I know,
they hardly know when it actually happened in
their life.
The key is not rhetoric or vocabulary.
The key is fruit, power, gifts, love, reality.
That's what we need today, rather than one
more book on the subject.
Be ye filled with the Holy Spirit.
It can happen tonight and may it happen
again and again.
I can't resist my annual illustration from D
.L. Moody, who always went on about being
filled with the Holy Spirit and knew something
of that reality.
One secular encyclopedia said D.L. Moody was
an overweight American evangelist who depopulated hell by
two million souls.
How are you doing?
One day a lady said to Moody, why
do you keep going on and on about
being filled again and again with the Holy
Spirit?
And Moody looked her in the eye and
he said, Madam, because I leak.
I don't know about you, but you're looking
at one leaky Christian leader standing here tonight.
But hallelujah, I know where the refills are.
At the foot of the cross, as I
acknowledge my sin, as I repent of the
wrong attitude that may be corroding my spiritual
battery, as I deal with not only outward
sin but dispositional sin, as I apologize to
my wife for some unkind word or to
the man who's pumping petrol into my vehicle
because I lost my temper when he pumped
it all over the ground.
And I'm filled again and again and again.
Fifthly, there's the pitfall of prayerlessness, which we
all already touched on, and may tonight be
a fresh call to prayer.
And sixthly, there's the pitfall of discouragement, which
I tried to deal with this morning, because
discouragement for many of us is Satan's most
subtle, regularized, fiery dart to hinder us and
slow us down.
I can't even begin to explain how much
discouragement I've fought over these past years.
Do you think those of us in OM
live on some great glory bandwagon because this
movement is considered some great success story among
other Christians?
No.
We live in a constant awareness of our
weakness, of our failures, of the sins in
our own movement.
We're in spiritual warfare.
There's not much time to look at the
credit points.
There's too many battles to be won.
The best way for that is to look
at the Savior, number seven.
And finally, the pitfall of bitterness, the pitfall
of an unbroken spirit, the pitfall of unforgiveness.
I am so burdened for people who are
finding it hard to forgive.
I've got a selection of books in my
book room just dealing with forgiveness.
There have been the most significant books on
forgiveness ever written next to the Bible in
the last 10 years.
Rebuilding Your Broken World is one of them.
If you are finding it hard to forgive
someone, it may be your father.
It may be someone who did something terrible
to you.
I would love to correspond with you personally
and send you some of these in-depth
books about forgiveness.
But I know one thing, that one of
the most exhilarating, mega-motivating things in my
life has been that I, as far as
I know, have never fallen asleep at night
with anything against anybody.
When Jesus Christ saved me, He put His
Spirit within me, and that's a spirit of
love, that's a spirit of mercy, it includes
the fruit of the Spirit, and it's a
mega-force for forgiving people.
And I just pray that some of you
who are in the grip of bitterness or
unforgiveness will be set free by the power
of God tonight.
Before that, hand on that clock goes a
few more minutes, because it is so destructive.
You mainly hurt yourself.
You may feel, humanly speaking, you have valid
reasons.
My heart cringed as that man was put
in the electric chair in Florida a few
weeks ago, and people cheered, and people said
these terrible things, even if they believe in
capital punishment, which some Christians do.
There should be a sense of remorse and
pain when anyone is put in the electric
chair or dies or is killed in some
other way.
Corrie ten Boom forgave those who did such
awful things.
The bottom line message of our faith, and
it must permeate our leadership, is forgiveness.
It's not nine times, 90 times, it's not
seven or 70 times, seven.
You know what the Word of God says.
Why don't we practice it?
Why don't we somehow ooze with forgiveness when
people punch us, when people stab us, when
people speak against us, when people criticize us,
or when people reject us?
That's the biblical revolutionary faith our Jesus came
to teach and to spread across this world.
Beware of the pitfall of an unforgiving spirit.
Beware of the pitfall of even a root
of bitterness creeping into your soul.
Be big-hearted.
Forgive.
Try to forget, even though you may not
be able to.
Be ready to continue to wrestle with these
things, because living the Christian life is just
that, a life.
I have failed on all these points.
I have fallen into every one of these
pitfalls at one time or other, if we
count the battle of the mind.
Yet somehow God, in His sovereign purpose and
mercy, has chosen to use me a little
for His kingdom.
How much more?
How much more He can use you?
Brothers and sisters, let us dream dreams tonight.
Let us have visions tonight.
Let us believe God for the greatest work
of the Holy Spirit that this nation has
seen in recent years, and believe that as
we run this race, we will stay out
of these deep ditches, and when we fall
in any of them, we will get out
as fast as possible, even if we have
to walking in the light.
Cry for help, and it's our pride that
keeps us from crying for the help that
we need.
Cry for help, that He may reach down
and pick you up, pull you out of
that pit.
I want to give this moment for silent
prayer.
I want to give this call for recommitment.
I believe you are a select group of
people that God has brought here because He
has selected you, and I believe this is
not just some last-minute thing to make
a recommitment of your life to Jesus Christ,
to be filled with the Holy Spirit or
filled afresh with the Holy Spirit.
To determine in your mind that's the way
Daniel got the victory.
As I've been studying that book so intensively
in preparation for Spring Harvest, the key is
that Daniel purposed in his heart, Daniel determined
in his heart to stand for God when
the pressure came on, and you're going to
be under pressure in the coming weeks, in
your studies, in your home, in your witnessing,
in your prayer life, and so tonight needs
to be a step of determination.
You need to purpose in your heart, and
I want you to pray your own prayer
right now, of surrender, of commitment, of confession,
of repentance, and then ask God in simple
faith to fill you afresh with the Holy
Spirit and to do a deeper, greater work
in your life, to set you free from
some of these things that are hindering you
and holding you back.
So just pray right now, O Lord, help
us right now, please, O God, to pray
sincere prayers of faith, to take steps of
faith, to go where you want us to
go, to do what you want us to
do, set people free from some of these
things we've talked about, and enable all of
us to purpose, to purpose, to determine in
our hearts, to follow you in reality and
discipline and integrity for your glory, that the
world may be reached for the gospel.
Help us as we pray, O living God
through Jesus.
You just pray your own prayer, and as
you pray, if you mean it with all
your heart, if you sense that the Spirit
of God is striving with you to make
a deeper, outward commitment of your life to
Jesus Christ, you're not joining any organization, you're
not joining OM, that's something you have to
seek God about.
We're talking about reality right now, not geography.
If God has spoken to you and you
feel it would be helpful to give outward
expression to that inward obedience in your heart,
then I'd like you just quietly, without looking
around, to just stand up before the living
God, to be counted as His marathon runner,
to be counted as His soldier, to make
a fresh determination to stay away from these
pitfalls and to survive any pitfall or diabolical
attack that may come on your life.
So you pray.
It can't take much time, and if you
mean it with all your heart, I want
you to stand and I want to pray
a prayer of commitment and consecration and dedication
for the fullness of the Holy Spirit and
the power of God to be upon and
in every one of you as you stand
before the living Christ.
If He could be nailed on the cross
for us, surely we should at times be
willing to stand up for Him and say,
oh God, I'll go where you want me
to go.
I'll do what you want me to do.
Will you do that now?
The Lord has prepared you.
Other people are praying for you, and so
if you mean it, whether few stand or
whether many stand, you just personally before God
stand up at this time.
Anyone else?
I know you can make a commitment in
your seat, and if you're not willing to
deny self every day and take up the
cross and follow Him, even though it's in
fear and trembling and weakness, as it is
with me, then please just sit down, but
I believe God has given you the grace
to stand.
Our Father, you see everyone standing before you.
There is a sense that this was ordered
before the foundation of the world, though that
is an exceedingly great mystery for poor characters
like me, and we would ask you, oh
God, to fill us afresh with your Holy
Spirit, that we will have the power and
the strength to do these things, to avoid
these pitfalls, realizing our part as well as
your part, and determining and purposing in our
hearts to follow you in integrity, in honesty,
commitment, in spiritual balance, in love, to encourage
others, to live for others, to die to
self.
Oh Father, you know our hearts.
We surrender all to you.
Fill us afresh, even now, with your Holy
Spirit.
The gifts, the graces, the fruit, the reality,
the joy.
Oh God, you can do this, and we'll
give you all the praise and all the
glory through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
Let us all stand.
Let us all stand, and let us sing,
He is Lord, just as we close this
night together.
I think we know that chorus.
I guess it's the one that ministers to
me the most when we have a meeting
like this.
With all of our hearts, He is Lord.
And He is Lord.
We shall bow every time Jesus
cries.
Once again, make it more personal.
He's my Lord.
I'd like you just to sit down for
a moment, and I want you to take
a piece of paper.
This is separate from the official feedback that
you will give tomorrow.
We want you to be thinking about that
official feedback.
This is personal for just a few of
us intercessors.
We would like you to give your name
and address.
I will look at every one of these
pieces of paper and pray quickly through them.
If the letter, the little piece of paper
that comes to me, says personal, then I
will be the one that sees it.
Are you good at getting brief instructions at
this late hour?
It's not late really for a Saturday night.
But if you put personal, you would like
to share something with me that I can
pray about that's a bit personal, write that
on the page somewhere.
I will see all of these first.
And then, the ones that don't say personal,
a little team of us will use those
in our ministry of prayer.
And eventually we will send you just a
reminder letter that you have made a serious
commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ tonight, not
to us.
You will not be added to any computer
or any list.
This is just a personal thing between you
and a small group of us intercessors and
counselors.
And if it says personal, then only me.
We want to pray for you specifically.
Satan will counterattack.
The pitfalls are out there.
You know some of my weaknesses.
Some of you will pray more intelligently for
me.
I want to pray for you.
I would like to know how I can
pray specifically for you.
I don't take a bundle of these and
put my hand on them.
God bless all these people.
I read every one individually.
I have purposely cut back on numbers and
meetings to give more time to intercessory prayer,
sometimes many hours in one day.
So I want you to do this.
You can give them to me up here
after the meeting, or better yet, because of
the number of people here, give them in
at my special free literature table there in
the back where you met Chris Little.
Or you can give them in, I'm sure,
to someone on the book table and they
will pass it on to me personally before
it goes to the team.
I want to just pray for you as
you do that.
You don't have to close your eyes.
You write.
You can stay behind and write for a
few minutes.
Lord, I just pray that people would be
open so that we and this little prayer
team can pray intelligently.
You know we are so mega serious about
all this, and we know you answer prayer,
and we are your people.
We are called to fight and stand together.
So help people as they put their address
and put a couple of requests on this
paper that we may have specific prayer for
specific situations.
For we pray in the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.