I'm very grateful to Buzz and Youth for
Christ, but firstly to the Lord for this
opportunity to be here.
One of my deepest convictions, I mean this
with all my heart, is that as different
fellowships, different organizations and movements here in Britain,
we may be able to move together in
God's great purposes.
We're not all the same, we're not all
doing the same thing, but we have one
Lord.
How my heart was touched last night for
the ministry, and I hope we'll not forget
that which we've heard, especially when I think
of what God is doing here in Britain.
I've actually felt this for a number of
years.
It's one of the reasons, in a very
strange way, there's not time to tell that
tonight.
God very clearly, 18 years ago, made this
country my home.
I've never been back to my own country
except to speak for a few weeks.
And it was with that conviction that God
was going to do something very great in
this country.
He has been down through history, and it's
just exciting, just exciting to be a part
of it.
Ever since my conversion, I've been accused of
being a fanatic.
It's not a very interesting cloud to live
under.
In the last five years, I've been preaching
about spiritual balance, I guess trying to get
away from my image of being a fanatic.
I don't think that's the reason, actually.
But I am very, very strong on this
subject of spiritual balance, and we've been seeing
that in the life of Jesus, in our
seminar on Jesus.
My daughter came to me the other day,
and she said she felt I was getting
extreme on the area of balance.
And I come with a heart very, very
full.
I've just arrived back from Turkey Jordan, Israel,
Syria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, a few other places.
Traveled by van, thought we'd never make it.
We had three punctures before we got out
of Germany.
My heart is so full.
I'm known as a fanatic about literature.
I've written a book on literature, an absolutely
dead book.
It doesn't sell.
We have to give them away every time
we get stuck with the edition.
Because the fact of the matter is, the
Church does not have a vision for Christian
literature to any great degree.
A few of these men do.
And I've cut my book review by 80
percent because I know they're talking to you
about books all the time.
But I hope you will visit the book
tables, not just to get something for yourself,
praise God, that's good, but to think in
terms of perhaps giving books to others.
You may not be a great communicator, but
if you give books away, loan them, lose
them.
I just put a book about a famous
converted political leader, Senator Harold Hughes, in the
library in Bromley where I live.
They sent me a letter of appreciation.
Imagine if everybody here put a few books
of Christian testimony in the library next to
a lot of the liberal teaching and other
books that are in the libraries.
What a ministry that could be.
I want you to turn with me now
in your Bible to a number of scriptures.
We're going to be asking some serious questions.
It really excites me when I see people
taking notes.
If you look in the seminar book and
you turn to my notes, you will find
it very easy to memorize.
Don't do it tonight.
But there is a page actually that you
can write on if you don't have some
blank paper with you.
And I would like to also engage in
operation feedback.
I was too afraid to do this last
week, but George Whitfield used to do this.
When people were preaching, when he was preaching,
he would ask people to send up notes
to him in the pulpit about what God
was doing in their hearts.
He's probably the greatest British preacher of all
time.
Used as greatly as Wesley.
Incredible.
Now, I don't want you to hand your
notes to me up here.
A number of reasons.
I once had a note that said, your
time is up, please sit down.
I'll probably get one of those from Clyde.
But you keep your notes and send them
to me later on, or turn them in
at the OM literature table where you can
pick up a lot of free literature.
But if there's anything you want to ask,
anything you want to say, I won't be
able to get to it all this week.
Just feel free to communicate.
I actually can say this honestly, prefer small
meetings.
In Turkey, I spoke to almost all the
believers in the capital city of Ankara.
I would have preferred that to be a
little bigger.
There were only five Turks in the whole
meeting.
So I'm a little overwhelmed here.
But I would like to have some communication.
And so feel free to communicate any question,
any burden.
Now, if we can get to that scripture
in the book of Hebrews.
Sorry to leave you there halfway.
Chapter 11 tells us about faith.
If you can read that chapter on your
own, you will be greatly stirred.
Remember, even as we hear the word of
God tonight, if we don't mix it with
faith and it's true all day, it says
that earlier in Hebrews, if the word preached
is not mixed with faith, it will be
of little value.
That's why I so believe in the ministry
of counseling and pray that you will seek
help and counsel if you have a spiritual
question or you want to make a commitment.
There are people that want the help.
That's not the total answer, but it could
be part of the answer.
One of the young men who shared with
me recently some very heavy things said he
had never talked to anybody in his life
about this.
I don't believe that's God's way as Christians
to go around with things bothering us, eating
away at our conscience, making us feel guilty.
We've never talked to anybody ever about it.
I would have been wiped out years ago
as a very weak, struggling Christian if I
hadn't learned something of opening up.
And I'm scared because I know that keeping
things in also can create about 50 different
psychosomatic illnesses.
It's just not healthy, it's just not sensible,
and it's not God's way.
The word of God says, confess your faults
one to another, pray for one another that
ye may be healed.
And we're the introspective, bottled-up generation.
And I pray that many, even among ourselves,
will be sharing and praying for one another.
And there'll be a flood of spontaneous fellowship
right across this great camp.
The word preached must be mixed with faith.
Faith will demand action.
Faith will demand decision.
And I believe we're in a divine moment
tonight.
Last night God was speaking especially to leaders.
Tonight I believe God very strongly wants to
speak to just, ordinary, nobodies, especially some who
may be very young in the faith, and
you may be just struggling along, bound up
with doubt, in some bondage, gripped by some
problem, or whatever else.
And God wants to bless you.
Those whom He loves, He chastens.
If you feel the chastening hand of God
tonight, it's because He loves you.
And if you're never chastened, if there's ever
any correcting ministry of the Holy Spirit in
your life, it's because you may not be
yet His child.
Then you better really, really be scared.
So in Hebrews 11, we have this great
message of faith.
And then we get to Hebrews 12, and
I want us to read starting at verse
1.
What a wonderful thing to hear those pages
of the Bible.
Let me see the Bible.
I learned this from Buck Singh in India.
He planted about 400 churches, by the way,
slight anointing.
Raise your, uh, raise your Bible.
Where are the Bibles?
Hallelujah.
Well, let's try something else.
You got a bit puffed up on that.
How many of you have not read yet,
you love the Word of God, you love
Jesus, and you believe it's God's Word, but
somehow, you know, television, other books, Little Orphan
Annie, Bionic Man, how many somehow have not
yet read the Bible once?
Let's be honest, or maybe a few.
Never read the Bible once.
Raise your hand.
Well, you're honest.
About 75% of you.
You know, it was a blessing last week.
People came up to me and they said
God's spoken to them about reading the whole
Bible through this year.
We did it as a youth fellowship years
ago.
As a group, we did it individually as
well.
It only took us 66 hours.
You just read it nonstop in the church.
66 hours, 70, something like that.
It's so funny that the local people thought
this was so strange in this pagan community
and made front page and got on the
Associated Press, went all over the world, youth
group reads Bible, you know, big thing.
Let's read the Word of God.
Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed or surrounded
about, with so great a cloud of witnesses,
you read about those in Hebrews 11, let
us lay aside every weight and the sin
which doth so easily beset us, hinder us,
and let us run with patience the race
that is set before us.
Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of
our faith, who for the joy that was
set before him endured the cross, despising the
shame and is set down at the right
hand of the throne of God.
For consider him that endured such contradiction of
sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and
faint in your minds.
We read more, and I hope you will
read more, from Genesis right through Revelation.
I want to ask you a number of
questions tonight.
I think it's good to take spiritual inventory.
It's Wednesday night, the middle of the week.
And I feel these are some of the
most important questions you can ever ask.
I wrote them down this morning in my
Bible.
I may not get to all of them.
And you can write them down, and you
can before you go to sleep tonight, and
there may be some tonight that right from
this tent, you'll just want to get alone
with God, and not just be caught up
with more activity.
Others, God will lead you into activity.
But all what a need there is, as
we're here receiving much, receiving much, to have
times alone with God, there may be some
that may want to try to get to
sleep early, and try to get up early,
and get out on that beach, not necessarily
to run.
That's not my main burden, but to seek
the Lord.
I believe these are days when God wants
us to seek his faith.
The key to revival found way back there
in 2 Chronicles 7 14.
If my people, which are called by my
name, will humble themselves, and pray, and seek
my faith, and turn from their wicked ways,
then I will hear from heaven, and heal
their land.
Beloved, in our Christian life there will be
no gain without pain.
There will be no revival in Britain without
a paying of the price upon our knees,
and upon seeking his faith.
Let's ask some serious questions.
First of all, I want to ask you,
are you in God's race?
I had a rush to get back to
England for a leadership conference a week, or
two weeks ago.
Drove almost non-stop from southern Italy to
London.
The amazing thing is, when I got to
London, one of the first things I read
about was the London Marathon, which they're expecting
to become one of the great sporting events,
or athletic events, in the future.
Somehow, in an unexpected way, 4,300 came
and finished the race.
26 miles.
We had a very interesting group jogging this
morning.
Most of them, after the first 400 yards,
started pumping and stopped.
I hope you won't give up.
We are, we're, it's a very low-profile
effort.
One other brother went jogging up the mountain,
so we got quite a variety.
26 miles.
There was a picture of one elderly gentleman
in his 60s crossing the finish line.
And on that same day that I read
that article, there, the main thing that everybody
in Britain was thinking about was the great
horse race that was going on that day.
And if they weren't thinking about that, then
they were probably down at the Thames watching
Oxford beat Cambridge again in rowing.
And I was sitting on the tube late
at night, and there was obviously a Cambridge
fan on the tube, and I asked him,
who won, you know, Oxford?
And he said, well, I said, well, you
know, what happened?
He said, well, I'll tell you how they
did it.
I said, well, how?
He said, they import Americans.
Hallelujah, there's still some hope in the race.
They also had a woman calling as Coxwain,
so maybe that was the secret.
But it's interesting to watch races, to watch
the Olympics.
And if you think this is irrelevant, you
obviously haven't studied your New Testament, because not
only here in Hebrews 12 do we have
the picture of a Christian as a runner,
but also Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 9
says, I so run.
And he goes on to say, and I
believe it's the missing link in many Christian
lives, and I believe it's the reason that
many of God's people, instead of being his
chosen people, are his frozen people, is because
they don't know the secret of what Paul
talked about in 1 Corinthians chapter 9.
Do you know it?
Paul said, I buffet my body.
Discipline.
I buffet my body and bring it into
control, bring it into subjection, lest after preaching
to others I become a castaway, disqualified.
Beloved, the Bible teaches, not me, you can
forget me, the Bible teaches that we are
in an intensive race.
I say this with fear lest it will
be misunderstood, but I pray that you'll at
least think about it.
I'm really convinced that few of us, I
don't care whether you're from a house group
or a cathedral, whether you're with OM or
who you're with, I feel that few of
us know the kind of commitment we read
about in the book of Acts.
And it burdens me day and night.
I feel that few of us I feel
that many of us are just playing games.
And I feel even many of my friends
and co-workers as Christian leaders, many of
them have been deceived into a commitment, into
a commitment that is less than what God
would have.
And we have neglected whole basic emphases in
the New Testament, like the warfare, discipline, buffeting
the body.
And such things as when Paul wrote to
Timothy and said, endure hardness and a good
soldier of Jesus Christ.
This is why though the church is growing,
and it is, the number of missionaries from
Britain is decreasing.
Because somehow the thought of going to a
strange country and eating strange food, and maybe
not having the things we're accustomed to, does
not appeal to most people.
It does maybe appeal to a few, and
they have to experience much of crucifixion, lest
they do it in the energy of the
flesh.
Tozer said, and I hope you'll read his
books, that we have measured ourselves by ourselves
for so long.
There are no longer higher plateaus in the
things of the Spirit.
And for 25 years, I've gone from nation
to nation, looking for examples, looking for men
I could pattern my life after, looking for
men who I could learn to pray from,
looking to men who had more love, more
zeal, more compassion, more reality, who were living
examples of what I see in Paul, and
in Jesus, and in Timothy, and what I
read about in books like Hudson Taylor, and
George Mueller, and others, who I don't believe
are fairy tales.
And I found few.
I found few.
I can tell you, praise be to the
living God, I have found some.
And some I'm not worthy to tie their
shoelaces.
And don't misunderstand what I'm saying, because I
can assure you, no matter how committed a
man is, no matter how zealous, no matter
how much he knows of total commitment, no
matter how much he's in that race, he's
still an earthen vessel.
He still will have his weaknesses and his
failures.
And that's where God had to break me,
and God had to humble me, and God
had to show me I was looking at
times for things that didn't even exist.
And I went back to the Word, and
developed, I hope, a little bit of spiritual
balance.
But you see, if you're not committed, if
you're not really in the race, if you've
never really presented your body as a living
sacrifice unto God, there's nothing to balance.
Balance is not a position of compromise.
It's not a matter of sacrificing the basic
truth.
No.
It's a matter of taking the often extreme,
strong statements of the New Testament, and letting
one statement balance off the other.
Love and truth, zeal and wisdom, freedom and
order.
And there's a hundred areas where we can
find that one truth will balance out another
truth.
The Concorde, the fastest airplane in the world,
is a perfect example of balance.
And if you're more balanced, you can go
faster for God.
So it's not a matter of compromise.
But if you don't even have that basic
commitment, if you're not really filled with God's
Spirit, and moving forward as a soldier in
the battle, well, it's nothing to balance.
It's like having two wings out in Heathrow
Airport, and no, no, no main fuselage of
the airplane.
Can you imagine it would be a strange
sight for airline spotters to see two wings
going down the runway?
There's got to be the body.
There's got to be in your life that
commitment, that abandonment to God.
And then God can bring in the balance.
I remember when I was ministering in the
Netherlands with Brother Andrew.
Some of you know Brother Andrew, God's smuggler.
Tonight you've got Brother George, God's bungler, and
that's no joke.
I went into the Soviet Union.
One of the first things I ever did
in Europe, got arrested by the Soviet secret
police due to my own stupidity and accused
of being a spy.
It wasn't very exciting.
So God uses even mistakes.
But Brother Andrew gave, oh, we met together
for tea, and he asked me if I
gave an invitation at the meeting.
And I said that I hadn't.
I said, well, you can do that.
He said he thought he would, because he
discovered that it was easier to cool down
a fanatic than warm up a corpse.
I don't know.
I don't know your churches.
Maybe the greatest problem in your church is
too much enthusiasm.
Too many people just getting excited about Jesus,
running out, witnessing all over the place, disturbing
the neighbors.
A.
W.
Tozer said this.
He said to think that too much enthusiasm
was the greatest problem in the average church
was like sending a squadron of policemen to
a local cemetery to guard against the demonstration
by the residents at midnight.
If you don't like that, you can take
it up with Tozer when you get to
heaven.
Oh, how we need that God-given enthusiasm.
I was reading just a few moments ago,
a little bit in this book on the
subject of zeal.
William McDonald says that's the one thing we
are without excuse for not having.
You don't need a theological education to have
zeal.
All you need is to be born again.
And that leads me to another question.
I wrote it down and I don't want
to forget to ask it.
Are you really a child of God?
We have to step back a little bit,
because you don't enter God's race by your
own efforts.
You don't enter God's race by baptism or
church going or being good to grandmothers or
taking little children to school on whatever day
they go these days.
But by faith in Jesus Christ and I
sense there may be some that have never
even begun the race in terms of being
born again.
Perhaps I could just briefly share my own
testimony because someone may be able to relate
to this.
I at 16 would not have understood anything
about this kind of gathering.
I would have considered it complete fanaticism.
This was not my side of life.
My grandfather from the Netherlands was an atheist.
My other grandfather from Glasgow, Scotland was a
drunk.
My father came over from the Netherlands to
find the good life.
And we were not finding that so well
because the Bible says he who commits sin
becomes a slave to sin.
When you live near New York City as
I did, at 16 things get very heavy.
I don't want to go into the details.
But one woman began to pray for me.
She'd been praying for the school that I
was attending for 15 years.
Not only that God would save people, but
that God would send them.
That school, that ungodly secondary school became the
first birthplace.
London became the second in a sense of
operation mobilization.
It wasn't called that back then.
One woman who believed in prayer I will
tell you if she was here, even though
she's very, very old now, she would be
in every single prayer meeting going on around
this place.
She went for prayer meetings like ducks go
to water.
Prayer is, as Mr. Vendoran of Caponry once
said, I think it's the title of his
book, the Christian's vital breath.
No wonder so many of God's people are
anemic.
And that woman prayed for me for three
years.
She sent me a portion of God's word,
a gospel of John, through the post.
And I read it over a period of
two years, three years approximately.
And every year I got worse.
My conduct was so bad I was blacklisted
by the teachers of the school.
I was arrested by the police for housebreaking
and stealing and a few other things that
should have discouraged her completely.
But she kept praying.
And then Billy Graham came to New York
City one night.
I didn't know what that was either.
I didn't even know what an evangelist was.
I was a little bit into pornography.
I went to pick up some once and
there was a magazine about Billy Graham right
next to it.
I saw he played sports and he had
a wife.
I figured he wasn't totally crazy.
I figured I'd go in and see what
he had to say.
And there in that huge place, a little
bit similar to this, with my doubts, with
my questions, I even had my binoculars because
I heard he was a hypnotist.
I heard the simple gospel.
Jesus Christ died on the cross for my
sin.
And I was convicted of the Holy Spirit.
And I went forward for counseling.
And I repented of my sin and trusted
Christ as my Savior.
And I can tell you this is not
an exaggeration.
It has been real every day ever since.
And if there's anyone within the sound of
my voice tonight that's not yet made that
commitment to Christ, to trust Him as your
Savior, I pray that you may make your
way to that counseling room and someone can
show you how tonight you can know the
peace and the forgiveness and the joy of
salvation.
It's real, beloved.
Oh, it hasn't been an easy road for
me.
I had many questions, especially God's people.
Any of you ever had this problem?
Everything was going right until you got more
and more involved with God's people, God's peculiar
people.
Ah, you haven't met me yet.
You know, if there's anyone here tonight that
I turn off, you know, we Americans, I've
been 18 years trying to learn English, you
can see I failed.
We live with a total inferiority feeling when
we're in Britain.
And we know the moment we open our
mouths, I preach in Christian unions almost every
other week, if it's an evangelistic meeting, the
moment I open my mouth, they find out
I'm American, switch, they're switched off.
Look, if you're switched off by anything I've
said, be encouraged because when I listen to
my tapes, it really switches me off.
And I am glad for cassette recorders with
automatic quick stops.
But I will tell you though, maybe something
I say or someone else says switches you
off, God can switch you on.
We are weak, we are human, we fail,
we do turn people off at times.
I remember witnessing to a hippie up in
Kathmandu, I think he was a little high,
and I was going strong.
Oh, I was using all my apologetics, Dr.
Francis Schaeffer, FF Bruce, you know, boy, I
thought he's going to come to Christ any
minute.
I'm crying to God, in the name of
the Lord, in the name of the Lord.
He looked at me, he said, buddy, I
don't read your vibrations.
I didn't want to ever witness again.
You know, failure is often the back door
to success.
And those of us who are so-called
Christian leaders, we're not always bounding over the
wall in some kind of gospel van.
I remember once giving out tracts in the
street of Thailand.
I really wanted to be home, drinking a
Coca-Cola, having a milkshake.
Oh, the great day that McDonald's came to
England.
Thank you, Lord.
Oh, I'm sorry about that.
I don't get paid for that.
But I was dreaming about hamburgers and milkshakes.
And here I was standing in the streets
of Thailand, giving out tracts.
I've always had trouble with my nose, that's
why I don't turn sideways.
I don't like these people sitting over here.
And they have an expression in Thailand, it's,
if they don't like a foreigner, they call
them, because their noses are so, you know,
so streamlined, these nice noses.
They think ours are like Pikes Peak.
Sort of a Snowden on the face.
And here, as I was giving out tracts,
a man came up to me, and instead
of taking a tract, he reached out and
he stroked my nose.
If I ever had a missionary call, and
I never had a call, God just saw
me, knew what a bullheaded character I was
and gave me a kick, and I've been
going ever since.
But I think if I ever had one,
I would have lost it there.
But failure is often the backdoor to success.
And if there's any of you, you have
doubts, you have fears, you have questions, would
you at least seek some counsel?
Would you open God's Word in a fresh
way, and let the Lord Jesus work in
your life?
But just a couple of other questions I
want to ask before we go, and we're
going to keep to our time tonight, and
that's this.
I think, uh, I heard Clive's explanation after
David Pawson's message, and I agree with it
100%, because I have the opportunity to come
back in two days' time, just about the
time you're getting relaxed and you're, I'll be
back.
But I want to ask, just in closing,
a couple of other very serious questions.
And that is simply this, are you filled
with the Holy Spirit?
How in the world can we ever even
think of evangelizing Britain, or the world, unless
we know we are filled with the Holy
Spirit?
Oh, I listened to A.W. Tozer on
this, he hit me very hard.
You need to know, he said, you need
to know you have been filled with the
Spirit.
Some speak about a baptism of the Holy
Spirit, some speak in other terms.
I'm not going to argue about that tonight.
I think of what Billy Graham says.
He said, I don't care how you get
it, just get it, just get it.
And it won't hurt you to get on
your face and pray for 20 minutes tonight
to make sure that you're filled with the
Spirit of God.
Acts 4.31, after Pentecost, some of the
same people who were at Pentecost were praying
and they were filled with the Holy Spirit
and they went forth and spoke the Word
of God with fullness.
You cannot explain the book of Acts without
understanding that doctrine.
It's not just some spectacular event that happens
to a few certain people who need to
preach.
The fullness of the Holy Spirit is a
very down-to-earth thing.
It's a very practical thing.
God works in different ways in different people.
Some are more emotional than others.
But you must know if you're going to
walk with God, if you're going to run
in God's race, you must know God's power.
Ephesians 5, be ye filled with the Holy
Spirit.
In Hebrews chapter 13, you'll find another verse
that should warm your heart because in that
chapter it says, our God is a consuming
fire.
Have you ever heard anyone preach on that
text?
Our God is a consuming fire.
And I want to ask you this other
question.
Are you on fire for Christ?
Isn't that the will of God?
It doesn't mean you'll necessarily be loud like
me.
Some of the most consistent on fire people
I know, they don't preach.
They live and their light burns.
There was once a man who went, joined
the Salvation Army, became one of the greatest
soul winners of all times.
He wrote a book called Resurrection, Life and
Power.
And in that book, he gave a definition
of fire.
Let me give it to you.
What is fire?
It is love.
It is faith.
It is hope.
It's passion, purpose, determination.
It's utter devotion.
It's a divine discontent with formality, ceremonialism, lukewarmness,
indifference, sham, noise, parade, and spiritual death.
It is singleness of eye and a consecration
unto death.
It is God, the Holy Ghost, burning in
and through a humble, holy, faithful man or
woman.
Are you that man?
Are you that woman?
And then I want to ask you, is
Jesus Christ Lord of your life?
Lord of your money?
Lord of your time?
How I praise God for the emphasis that's
come across here on a simple lifestyle.
To me, that's so basic in our day.
Not that we're all going to be the
same.
Not that we run around judging people whose
God may have prospered in a special way
for a special purpose.
But that we may become a little more
like the Lord Jesus.
Is he Lord of your life?
A constitutional monarchy may well work for the
British government.
We all pray for the Queen.
I remember when I came across on the
Queen Elizabeth, first time I went to an
Anglican service, heard them pray for the Queen.
She's number one, but she has no power.
The power is in the hands of the
Prime Minister and other ministers.
That's all right for your government, but it's
not for your Christian life.
Jesus wants to be King, absolute Lord, absolute
monarch in your life.
Have you made him King or is Prime
Minister self somehow still running your life?
If you're really honest and all that's hard.
All that's in these days, Prime Minister self
and some of his other departments, the Department
of Jealousy, the Department of Social Affairs, the
Department of Greed, that somehow these departments and
Prime Minister self may be dethroned and Christ
may be made Lord, Lord of our lives.
Have you ever done that?
Are you still doing it?
I believe this is God's word for us
tonight.
I share this as someone who has failed
oftentimes in the midst of the race.
Yea, even fallen flat on my face.
And I know one thing, that whether I'm
running full speed, winning men to Christ and
praising him, or somehow I've fallen flat on
my face and usually with me it's either
lust of the eyes or my big tongue.
That somehow for a few moments gets me
down.
I know that at that moment he still
loves me.
And somehow there's someone here tonight, you've been
in the race, you've known what it's been
to run for Jesus, to experience the exhilaration
and the joy of being in God's way
and in God's work.
And yet somehow tonight you're down.
Maybe lust, maybe pride, maybe bitterness has got
in, maybe fear.
Somehow you're down, oh, to just realize he's
reaching out and he's saying, come and run
again with me.
Lay aside every weight, fix your eyes on
your Lord, allow him to fill you with
the Holy Spirit, and believe me, you will
be running, not some little dinky 26-mile
marathon, but a full total life, thousands of
spiritual miles for Jesus.
And the joy of that, which I've only
known 26 years, it's not very much.
Talked to my friend on the phone, Oswald
J.
Smith, 90 years of age, still running, still
praising God, I almost wept.
Man came up to me in South Africa,
he gave me some sweets, he thought I
was a little boy.
He was a hundred, personal friend of George
Mueller, patted me on the head, run along,
sonny.
A hundred years of age, still running the
race.
Oh, beloved, may this camp be filled with
men and women who in these days put
their hands on the plow, allow God to
fill them afresh with the Holy Spirit, make
Jesus Christ Lord, and never, never, though all
hell resists us, turn back from our Savior,
who we love.
Let us pray.
Let's have just a moment of silent prayer,
searching our hearts, asking those questions.
Are you in the race?
Are you really His child?
Are you filled with the Holy Spirit?
Have you made Jesus the Lord of your
life, so that you'll go anywhere, anytime, whatever
the cost, by His grace, by His power?
Are you on fire for Christ?
If you're not, would you confess?
Would you come to the cross and say,
Lord Jesus, forgive me, lukewarmness, pride, playing around.
One more evangelical fish floating downstream.
May God give us a backbone by the
power of His Holy Spirit before it's too
late.
Would you just spend a moment in silent,
quiet confession, commitment, prayer to the living God
who loves you?
With an everlasting love.
Let's pray silently.
Just pour it out, pour it out.
Oh, Lord Jesus, I can't pray for others
in a full extent, but I know that
I must pray for myself.
Fill me afresh, oh God, with your Holy
Spirit, that I may not be found just
playing around, that I may not be found
speaking things that I'm not living and experiencing.
Lord, I seek your cross tonight.