2 Corinthians chapter 10.
You know, if you're somewhat new to an
OM conference, you can really have your circuits
blown right out of your head with all
these visions and ideas, different people challenging you
about different nations.
And it's good to, you know, just take
in what you can and then leave the
rest for another day.
We're all different.
We all have different capacity.
Before I was 19 or 20, I had
a specific burden for over 40 nations.
And I was involved meeting missionaries, writing people,
starting prayer groups.
I'd already gone to Mexico when I was
19.
And we're all different.
We all think and operate in different ways.
Some can take in more than others.
And I hope that you'll not be overwhelmed
by these challenges.
Because there are 4.7 billion people, or
4,700 million.
And we are way behind in the task
of reaching them with the gospel.
So sometimes we need conferences like this to
sort of catch up in our vision, in
our commitment.
Of all the needs that have been shared,
there is no greater need than the need
for prayer.
And if you can go from this conference
with motivation to pray and with discipline and
the Holy Spirit's help to even put 15
minutes more into your prayer time, I will
tell you it would have been more than
worth coming here.
The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 10, for
though we walk in the flesh, we do
not war after the flesh.
For the weapons of our warfare are not
carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling
down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every
high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge
of God, and bringing into captivity every thought
to the obedience of Christ.
And when we think of the Muslim world,
and OM has been committed to Muslim evangelism
from almost its birth in Europe, we had
plans for people to go to Turkey before
God ever gave us the name Operation Mobilization,
which was born out of my fiasco in
the Soviet Union, my day of prayer in
Germany, where on the top of a tree
God gave me those two words, Operation Mobilization.
I think you know the story.
And that's what led to mobilizing European youth
to reach Europe with the word of God,
with the Muslim world.
But before that, people like Dale Roton, Roger
Malsted, Krista Fischer, now Krista Eicher, were on
their way emotionally, in terms of plans, to
Turkey.
Others were praying for Afghanistan, for Iran, for
Iraq, for the Kurds, for the Arabs.
And we believe specifically that one of the
major reasons God raised up OM in the
first place, there were already many great missions.
Was that the Muslim world might be penetrated
with the word of God.
And he showed us when we got to
Europe, there were only a few of us
at that time who had worked in Mexico,
that it was to be Europeans who are
so close to the Muslim world and who
soon would be invaded by Muslims.
We didn't know that at that time.
Would be God's springboard, so to speak, for
workers to go to every part of the
Muslim world.
Around that time, a young student just going
into Oxford University caught this vision.
The age of many of you.
Later, worked in Turkey in church planting with
OM and then became the director of OM
in the Middle East.
And there's a hundred other stories we could
tell, but not time.
As we go forward in this decade of
Muslim emphasis, we don't want to neglect any
of the burdens and other visions God has
given us.
Because OM operates in a way that we
respect the vision of each national group within
OM.
And we don't want to forget Mexico or
Israel or Nepal or any other country.
I've just come back from New Zealand and
Australia and Singapore and Malaysia and Mexico.
And you know, God is doing a unique
and special work in each one of these
nations.
But as a body, we've agreed together that
we want to increase this thrust into the
Muslim world.
And that means first, mobilizing for prayer.
And even those of you who are here
as OMers, I wonder how your prayer life
really is when it comes to really agonizing,
prevailing intercessory prayer for Turkey, for Iraq, for
the Kurds, for the Baluch, for the Uyghurs,
those Muslims there in China, for the Turkman
people over there in the Soviet Union and
Central Asia.
And you know, if we don't learn more
about prayer and the reality we see in
2 Corinthians 10, 4 and 5 and many
other passages, then you know it's going to
be almost dangerous to send people.
And we will see many returning as casualties.
And I hope that you will get involved
in these nations where Muslims dominate the national
scene completely.
It's a great burden that I believe is
so much on the heart of God for
this decade.
As you take your last visit to the
various literature tables, try to get some of
those leaflets.
You won't easily get this opportunity again that
speak about Pakistan or Bangladesh.
In Pakistan and Bangladesh, together with a minority
group of 100 million Muslims in India, we
have a quarter of a billion, they say
in the States, 250,000 million Muslims, Bangladesh,
India and Pakistan.
And those countries are relatively open.
Some of you who have some spiritual preparation
already could be there by December of this
year.
I hope you'll pray about it.
And I'll tell you, I would personally put
a lot of other letters aside.
I've only got a few hundred right now.
We're catching up.
Put a few hundred letters aside and look
at your letter about Muslims in the subcontinent.
And other people will be happy to correspond
with you about Muslims in the Middle East,
including the Arab world and Turkey and those
lands.
Let us right now, because of the time
factor, just form little clusters, little groups of
four or five people and pray for the
Muslim world.
Whenever we're at a conference like this, I
think we're just reminded of all the opportunities
that we are faced with.
And one of the reasons that we are
highly motivated people who love our work and
love to get on with the job, get
into the prayer closet and get out to
the ends of the earth, is because God
has given us a vision.
Someone once said that discipleship without a vision
becomes drudgery.
We just go on and on.
We don't know why.
And of course, soon we run out of
steam.
Thank God for the vision He has given
many during these days.
And all around us, we see opportunities as
you pray.
And as you go home, you're going to
see opportunities.
I've been spending a lot of time just
talking to individuals.
And two brothers came to me from that
great city of York and shared their vision
for seeing something happen in that city.
And we had prayer about it together.
And I know God is giving different burdens
and different visions.
But you know, God's work is teamwork.
It's not mainly leaders.
It's certainly not mainly loud mouths like me.
Forgive me.
But it's teamwork.
And if we had the time, I would
ask all the full-time workers who are
with OM right now, dozens sitting here, to
come up and just once again pray as
we do in our September conference and commend
them to the grace of God.
And really, it's only because of the joining
of hands and the joining of hearts, Englishmen
with Americans, French with Germans, Italians with Indians,
Malaysians with Mexicans, that OM has been able
to give the Word of God to 350
million people face-to-face.
Three hundred and fifty million people plus face
-to-face since its birth a couple of
decades ago.
Someone passed on to me a little quotation
about opportunities that I've been carrying around in
my Bible.
It says opportunity not only knocks but is
playing an anvil chorus on every man's door.
The trouble is opportunity looks so much like
hard work that oftentimes we fail to recognize
it.
A professional is a man who can do
his job when he doesn't feel like it.
The amateur can't do his job even when
he does feel like it.
People can be placed into three classes, the
few who make things happen, the many who
watch things happen, and the overwhelming majority who
have no idea of what has happened.
The man who is looking for magic or
some mysterious shortcut to success will be disappointed
because ability without agility doesn't win.
The worst bankrupt in the world is the
man or woman who has lost his or
her enthusiasm, but many a man never fails
because he never tries.
And I do pray that we will go
from here with a burst of faith and
enthusiasm to believe God for great things.
I'm sure many of you are not able
to purchase more books and more tapes, and
I hope those who are able will share
with others because that's what the ministry is
about.
We also, and I especially wanted to emphasize
that when it comes to cassette tapes, our
far bigger program is not selling them, but
it's a free loan library, and you can
get this information sheet about these tapes, one
from Arthur Blessing, I was listening to him
this morning, available on a free loan basis
from our brother Alec Crackett, and these sheets
are available in different places.
So don't feel, you know, somehow if you
don't have the money, and I can tell
you many of the people full-time here
with OM don't have money to buy all
these things, there's a lot of material that's
free.
In fact, the free literature tables are just
crying out for hands to go down and
take some of this material and distribute it
to your friends.
Let's just pray right now.
Father, we've come to the end of this
conference, this weekend, which we'll never forget.
Lord, I remember those weekends in North London
when this conference took place there.
I remember two years ago in Birmingham when
you met us in that place, and now
you've met us here in Salford, this great
area of Greater Manchester.
And Lord, we just believe that in this
final look into your word for today, you're
going to speak, and we, by your grace,
are going to obey, for we pray in
Jesus' name.
Amen.
I want you to turn to the book
of Timothy, 2 Timothy.
I can quote you the verse, but I
can't find it.
No wonder.
1 Timothy 4, 12.
I hope those of you who stood up
in the step of faith to be filled
or refilled with God's Spirit, to acknowledge again
Christ as absolute Lord of every area of
your life, that you'll not forget to give
that personal feedback on the back of that
paper, your response paper.
The bottom part you're to keep.
The top is to come back.
Side one, the official side.
The blank side is for me and a
small team who will be praying over every
request that is written.
1 Timothy 4, 12.
Let no man despise your youth, but be
thou an example of the believers in word,
in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith,
and in purity.
What a verse for your generation.
I'll tell you was I encouraged here this
morning.
I, hardly ever a day passes when I
don't phone my wife wherever I am, unless
it's some way out of the way place
and there's no phones.
And yesterday I failed to phone my wife.
And so this morning I was a little
thinking about that, and I remembered where the
phone was from when I was here for
God's World Congress, and I had it for
the phone.
It's one in that other building, maybe one
here as well.
And I saw the little sign out of
order.
Now in Britain, you never let those little
signs put you off, or you never get
many phone calls.
But I saw a little sign and I
called up and I talked to the operator
about transfer charge call.
And I found out something I haven't learned
in 23 years of living here.
That if the phone box is out of
order, but you can get through on the
phone, just the coin section is out of
order, get through on the phone, when you
make a transfer charge call under those circumstances,
you get a discount.
How many of you knew that?
See how ignorant you are about your own
country?
So I got a discount and discovered my
wife wasn't home.
She went to sleep last night with a
friend, Kathy Rendell, whose husband was up here.
So I talked to my daughter and woke
her up.
So then I went back to the coach,
my little converted coach, where I have my
office, a lot of other things, literature, team
of us traveling.
We're to Paris next weekend.
I'm going to have to brush up quick
on my French since I don't know any.
So I went back again and I had
to ask the man for the number.
If you don't give the number of the
phone box, you can't get the discount.
So I asked the man for the number
and he looked at me and he said
something like, happy to give you that young,
young fellow.
Hallelujah.
I thought, Jesus.
Then he put his glasses on and gave
me the number.
No, he had his glasses on.
But this text is not for me any
longer.
I'm over the hill, but it's for you.
Let no man despise thy youth, but be
thou an example of a believer in word,
in conduct, in love, in faith, and in
purity.
I guess I memorized that when I was
a baby Christian.
That's why I said, you know, I can
quote it, but I can't find you.
I have a lot of difficulty with the
street addresses on these verses.
How many of you memorize regularly the word
of God?
You memorize even one verse a week.
I want to be big hearted.
You, you memorize a verse a week or
you try to at least try to raise
your hand.
Oh, you got a few more out of
that.
You know, the only thing you learned this
weekend was to get serious about the scriptures
and started memorizing the word of God.
I just was to get into the word
of God more and to dig and to
meditate and to memorize.
We have a little book about memorizing scripture
on our little special backstreet, uh, flea market
bookstore down there where things after this meeting,
the guy will go crazy out there.
Just start throwing things in the air like
Armstrong.
We will never, never, never, never be outdone
by Dave Armstrong.
So just go check the bargains on our
little book table.
Anyway, we're all on the same team, especially
when he's going to send the prophets to
India.
Let no man despise how you memorize that.
Would you take that as the first verse
to memorize?
If you haven't started memorizing scripture yet, put
it on a little card.
I remember when I first met Dale Roton,
some of you know this story, Dale, who
coordinates the ship ministry.
We've been together for 28 years.
When I went to a college, a little
sleepy Presbyterian college that had semi abandoned the
Christian faith about a decade before we got
there.
And when I got there, I was warned
about this character, Dale Roton.
He was a number, what we call a
sophomore in the space, second year.
And I was warned, I was told that
he was a man.
I thought this is a man that I
must meet.
That very week I met Dale Roton and
God put us together as a team.
And how much I have learned from this
man.
We used to pray together regularly.
He and I were with one other brother,
the little team that first went to Mexico
and those very early roots of this movement
were being laid into the ground.
And Dale Roton has just been such an
example in the word of God.
He left that college and went to Wheaton
college because he had brains.
I eventually left that college and went to
Moody Bible Institute because I had steam.
And we got together again about two years
later.
I think by then he had almost memorized
one third of the New Testament.
That was while doing a university degree.
I remember years later, someone asking Dale because
he's been an example of stability and reality
and all the whole history of OM.
And someone was asking Dale what his secret
was, you know, to his Christian life.
You know, if you can get the idea
that these men and women of God, they've
got some secret, they've had some, you know,
lightning bolt special experience with God on the
top of a church steeple or, you know,
some crisis experience out in the jungles or
somewhere.
Dale, in a very calm way, sharing his
secret, said, well, I read my Bible.
Read his Bible.
Anybody can read their Bible.
But you know, that is Dale Roton's secret.
That's not a secret.
But he reads it and has read it
fairly intensively.
That's been Ralph Shallis's secret, as mentioned powerfully
in his book from now on.
Of course, Dale read it so hard and
so heavy, about a third of it got
into his memory.
Would you memorize scripture?
You put on the back of your little
feedback paper, I'm going to memorize the Word
of God.
And maybe I'll write to you a little
reminder a few months from now.
Are you memorizing the Word of God?
In fact, I like to motivate people.
And if there's anybody here that memorizes a
hundred scriptures this year, 1986, you write to
me and I will send you a giant
bundle of bombshell Christian books, at least 50
pounds worth at the end of the year.
You say that's false motivation.
Okay, don't use it.
But I tell you, if you're a sort
of a lazy, drifting, naturally backslider, big talking,
hard, difficult living character like me, a little
false motivation once in a while is helpful.
As long as what I'm aiming at is
basically good.
You know, if you only get your motivation
from that which is totally spiritual, you'll probably
end up a nutcase.
God uses many things to motivate us.
I was motivated when I went, forgot my
running shoes, so I just went walking this
morning.
And I was motivated as I walked down
along this lovely river.
Well, I mean, it's a river anyway.
I walked down and I just thought about
this great city and the great need and
the times when I went door to door
in the early days of OM, when I
lived in Bolton, where the Ship Vision was
born.
And it was mainly men in the Manchester
area that got behind OM in those early
days.
And how we thank God for this city.
And it was a heartbreaking thing for some
of us to move our headquarters from here
to the Quinta.
It was a move basically to save money
for the Lord's work.
How unfortunate that some have criticized saying we've
left the needy city of Manchester to live
now out in some country estate, the one
really beautiful building out in this estate nobody
is living in.
And it's not even part of OM's section
of the Quinta.
It's nice on a postcard.
We're in the little building behind that building.
And though we're glad for the fresh air
and we believe it's God's provision, in no
way are we abandoning Manchester.
In fact, I have more meetings booked now
in the next months for Manchester than I
did when the OM office was here, including
the prison.
And I've wanted to speak here in the
prison for many, many years.
Almost be worth getting arrested to get in
there and share with a blessing that's been
taking place.
And so I hope you'll memorize scripture.
Because if you made a commitment to the
Lord last night and God filled you afresh
with his Holy Spirit, that doesn't mean now
it's going to all be automatic.
And that somehow it's all going to be
easier if you think that you were not
listening to the message.
And believe me, the invitation and the response
to the invitation without receiving the message that
preceded the invitation is dangerous.
Because we made it clear that it's going
to be rough and it's going to be
tough to follow the Lord Jesus Christ.
Look at 2 Timothy chapter 2 to get
just a little glimpse of what's involved in
this program of following Christ with all of
our heart and all of our mind.
Paul writes to Timothy and he says in
verse 3, He thou therefore endure hardness as
a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
No man that woreth entangleth himself with the
affairs of this life that he may please
him who hath chosen him to be a
soldier.
This was and I pray will continue to
be a major emphasis of OM and I
hope of the whole work of God.
Now I know people can go extreme on
this and OM for a while got a
little bit heavy on the soldiering aspect and
we neglected the friendship because we're friends of
God, we're heirs and co-heirs, we're kings,
we're priests.
Every description of a Christian in the New
Testament is brought into balance by other descriptions.
I was heavy on the soldiering, if you've
listened to those early tapes on warfare, but
I was weak on some of the other
aspects.
I was strong on Luke 14 33, except
you forsake all you can't be my disciple,
but I was weak on being stewards of
that which God gives to us.
And I don't believe as OM has come
into balance in a number of areas that
that makes our sword any duller.
I believe spiritual balance makes our sword for
world evangelism sharper.
Too often in OM, in some years, we
have been shooting mice instead of shooting elephants.
Forgive the illustration, but you know perhaps what
I mean.
We have a big job to do.
We are called to reach the world with
the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We are called to love one another.
We are called to renewal and personal revival.
And to do this with a world of
4,700 million people, I believe we're going
to have to determine what our priorities are.
And one of the reasons that many people
are not accomplishing much in world evangelism is
what I call misplaced priorities.
And some of you are going to have
to rethink that verse in Ephesians where it
says, redeem the time.
I can't believe the way people use their
time.
I can't believe the number of hours that
some people spend watching idle television programs.
And I am not against people watching some
television.
But the Word of God has given us
such a challenge that most of these things
must be very, very small in our lives.
To recharge our spiritual battery, to meet the
needs of the human side of us.
And we're all different.
But a good segment of our time and
our energy and our thrust should go into
serving others, into worshiping God, into serving God,
into evangelism, into things that are profitable.
What about the elderly?
The one thing I find hard about these
conferences is not enough older people, but it
is a youth leadership training conference.
So that's, of course, what happens.
But do not think that OM is just
a youth movement.
I refused that terminology 25 years ago, much
less now.
That is part of what OM is.
It is our burden that OM will be
a movement of the Spirit of God, and
the Spirit of God is no respecter of
persons.
And I will tell you, I meet people
who are 50, who are 60, who are
outrunning some of the 20 and 30-year
-olds that we have around Operation Mobilization.
One of them, a Manchester man, just celebrated
his 60th birthday, and he's going into technical
semi-retirement.
He's 60, and he's sitting over here, and
because I would never want to embarrass him,
I wouldn't ask him to stand up.
His name happens to be Val Grieve.
He's written a book on the Resurrection.
He's the chairman of the EBE board, and
I'm sure you'll want to meet him after
the meeting.
I didn't think he was that old.
He doesn't look that old.
His wife looks 20 years younger, but anyway,
life goes by.
And I want to tell you, there is
an untapped resource among elderly people today.
I have been speaking about that for years.
That's not Val.
He's in middle years.
He's like me.
I don't know where you have to be
to be elderly.
I tell you, if you're feeling old, go
to Florida.
If you're 60 in Florida, they look on
you as a teenager.
When the film Cocoon comes to your local
flick house, go see it.
Absolutely brilliant.
It'll make you feel young.
God is using all kinds of people.
Did you know the captain of the Dulles
over the last years is a retired man?
Do you know that Dr. Homer Payne, who
was with us in France for so many
years, he must be, does anybody know his
age?
75?
At least.
He left OM.
He was going too fast for us and
went back and became the president of a
Bible college in French-speaking Canada, and he's
turning the place upside down.
How old are most of the people who
are running the nations of this world?
The old president of the USA just had
a birthday.
75.
What about some of these other nations?
And I believe if we are going to
evangelize the world, we need that dynamic partnership
between men and women like you, with all
your creativity, all of your energy, with your
whole life out ahead of you.
We need that dynamic partnership of men and
women like you with godly people, like Dr.
Payne, like our brother Valgrieve, like many others
that the Lord has given us the privilege
of working with and submitting to all over
the world, because I don't think I would
even be here today if I had not
submitted to older people ever since my conversion.
And before I ever went back to Mexico
on that, or even the first trip, I
shared it with a little group of men
who became sort of people that I was
responsible to.
A year later they became the official board
of Operation Mobilization.
I was only in England a few months
when God began to put together the official
board of directors of Operation Mobilization that I
would for the rest of my life be
responsible to, as unto the Lord.
Let no man despise thy youth.
Doesn't mean that God is only going to
use you when you're young, but it does
mean that now is the time to get
started.
And one of the things I thank God
for the most is that I got started
at 17 years of age.
I know that's not usual.
To be overseas at 19, especially in those
days, was considered fairly way out.
It almost was before the birth of short
-term missions.
And we had a lot of people right
off O.M. in those early days and
we've never held it against people.
I don't think I've ever gone to sleep
on bitterness in my entire life because I've
never, never had a heavy desire for poison.
It's just not been my big thing.
Now I know different people are tempted in
big ways, different ways.
And I, you know, if you're heavy into
being tempted into drinking poison, I'd like you
to write to me and I'd like to
pray for you and send you a cure
or some advice.
Maybe your big thing is, is, you know,
bank robbing.
Some of you, maybe you're sitting here and
just thinking, you know, how can I break
into a bank and get some really quick
money?
You know, I don't think that's a big
thing as far as I know with the
average evangelical, but you know, this is an
exceptional group.
I'll tell you, there's very few temptations I
haven't had.
I often feel that I'm in the category
of the over-tempted.
Do you ever feel that way?
The over-tempted.
I sometimes say, Lord, can you give me
one day?
Can I have one free day in the
cotton-picking devil?
Get off my back.
And I tell you, under the financial pressure
of recent years, I've taken several looks at
a man.
Well, with an associate director like Peter Maiden,
I generally can't get unity on this kind
of activity.
Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus
Christ, for no man that woreth entangleth himself
with the affairs of this life.
That he may please him who hath chosen
him to be a soldier.
Do you know why many of us are
spiritual cripples?
Do you know why?
One of the biggest reasons we're man-pleasers.
We live for the praise of men.
Psychologists tell us that's absolutely basic.
If a person doesn't get acceptance, if he
doesn't get some kind of commendation, if he
doesn't get some pats on the back, some
encouragement, he probably will end up mentally ill.
And it's amazing what people will do to
get recognition.
You ever see some of the things people
get recognized for?
And what it does to their lives.
This is why often, not always, people are
so fanatically committed to sports.
The radio this morning, it says in this
century, 1,000 have been killed through boxing.
1,000 dead through the sport of boxing
in this century.
One last week.
But these men are committed.
And in the area of sports, people are
committed, and it isn't all the love of
sport, that's a factor, but it's the tremendous
praise of men factor.
Rewards and honors and all that goes with
it.
And our whole society is just loaded with
it.
Some of it is perhaps quite harmless.
But as we come into the Christian life,
there is the danger that we are living
our Christian life with an awful lot of
the motivation coming from what people think, what
people say, whether we're appreciated or not appreciated,
determines our attitude in our church and toward
other people, often.
And Jesus said, how can you believe, how
can you believe who seek honor from one
another?
And oh, how we've got into this in
OM sometimes.
No one is free from this, or so
you.
Jesus said, how can you believe who seek
honor one from another, instead of the honor
that comes from God alone?
Brothers and sisters, as we go from here,
let's seek the face of God.
Let's spend extra time with God.
When did you last have a half day,
even a half day of prayer?
Maybe you should go to one of these
beautiful woods.
We live in one of the most beautiful,
sane, organized nations in all of the world.
You may not think so.
I find a lot of English people are
down on their own country.
Really gets me upset as a little lonely
immigrant trying to get my stakes in the
ground.
But you know why they're mumbling and groaning
about British rail and the telephone and this
thing wrong and that thing wrong, the taxes
are too much, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You know what?
They never lived anywhere else.
They never traveled on some of the trains
like I have from Turkey to Tehran.
Only 35 hours.
Late.
That's right.
And I tell you, I am a British
rail fan.
And when I hear people speaking negative about
British rail on the trains, sometimes I just,
I just go right up and I sit
next to him.
And I said, you know, you really don't
know what you're talking about.
This is a problem with me.
You know, I opened my mouth.
In fact, I was dictating a letter on
the train sometime ago.
And I said, greetings in the name of
Jesus Christ.
And I think the guy must've been an
atheist just sitting behind me.
He just started to curse and mumble.
And I said, excuse me.
God somehow in his mercy, in his sovereignty
has allowed this country to be fairly well
organized, to be fairly peaceful with tremendous freedom,
with tremendous opportunities to travel.
London must be the travel hub of the
entire universe, much less the world.
Manchester doesn't agree with that.
And I want to tell you, if Britain
cannot continue to play a major role in
world missions, with all the resources, with the
location, with the fact that it's relatively easy
to just live your life here, so you
can use a lot of your time in
serving others.
In many other countries, all of your effort
is just survival.
It's just survival.
In many countries you have to have two
jobs just to live.
And you send your wife out to work.
And at the end of the day, you
don't have much time free.
I'm thinking of countries that are economically in
difficulty.
They're the countries often I visit.
But God has blessed this country.
I know that's a cliche.
I know that it's something we don't understand
because there's so many things wrong as well.
And there's so much evil and so much
sin and hate and abortion and corruption and
lies.
That has always been true of every nation
in the world.
Injustice and lying.
You think it's only South Africa who everybody
seems to want to pick on these days,
where injustice is?
Many of these people who speak of these
things are naive.
Injustice is everywhere.
Racism is everywhere.
Hatred is everywhere.
And though I believe very strongly, of course,
that things that are happening in these countries
are wrong, I myself want to be careful
of just throwing out simplistic little answers.
I want to search the scriptures.
I want to know what's on the heart
of Jesus Christ for South Africa.
I want to know what's on the heart
of Jesus Christ for Kerala, South India, where
I've seen racism that can match anything I
saw in South Africa.
I want to know what's on the heart
of Jesus Christ concerning people and nations.
And that's why my commitment, though I have
interest in many things and I'm involved in
many things, my priority commitment is to preach
Christ and Christ crucified.
And I tell you, this is becoming less
and less popular today.
We are living in a day of many
Gospels, many Gospels.
People speak of the Social Gospel.
People speak of the Revolutionary Gospel.
And today, it seems to me, if we
get into the New Testament without just pulling
things out of context, we are going to
go back to what the Apostle Paul said,
I choose to know nothing among you but
Christ and Christ crucified.
All these other things can have a place.
The preaching of the Gospel, seeing people saved,
having their lives turned around, will have powerful
social implications.
You know, if we never preach the Gospel,
if we don't obey Jesus Christ and the
Great Commission, if we're not able to convert
what we hear in a weekend like this
into dynamic action in our own lives, then
it's not going to happen.
It's not going to happen.
I wanted to put a little plug in
for reaching the elderly with the Word of
God because they are becoming a bigger, bigger
segment of our community and they are forgotten
and they are neglected.
How many of you have shared Jesus Christ
with one elderly senior citizen person in the
last month?
You've shared the Gospel, or even just the
love of Christ.
You didn't tell them the Gospel, but you
did something for them.
You shared some love with some elderly person
in the last month.
Raise your hand.
Encourage my heart.
I need encouragement.
You've just depressed me anyway.
We'll try again next year.
You know, if some of you are students,
you know the sin of many of our
university towns, don't you?
University snobbery.
In university town after town that I've been
going to for 23 years in this nation,
I found that the people in the town
can't stand the people in the college and
university.
And I found that there's almost a wall
between them.
There are beautiful exceptions, and praise God, it's
often in the churches and among the Christians.
But it's way, way, way, way too good.
And if you're going back to a university
town, how many of you are university and
college students?
Raise your hands.
That's about 80 percent.
As you go back to that town, how
many of you are from my big town,
London?
We need more from London next year.
Next year we need to bring coaches up
from London.
But as you go back to that university
town, why don't you covenant with God to
relate and to love a few elderly people?
My next door neighbors are elderly people, and
they've become close friends.
I don't think they know Jesus, but I'll
tell you, we've got a meaningful relationship with
those people.
And God wants to give you meaningful relationships.
Evangelism is not some mechanical thing that you
grind up at weekend conferences or Easter evangelism
and then somehow you run out of steam
a few weeks later when it gets rough
and tough and you get misunderstood, or your
church doesn't want you to give out tracts
at the supermarket in front of the church
building.
Evangelism must involve relationship.
It must involve commitment.
It must involve 1 Corinthians 13 love.
It's not only that.
You know, and we believe in almost every
kind of evangelism you can think of, and
even some you've never thought of.
Beware.
But the bottom line is love.
Deeds.
Action.
Stopping to help elderly people.
Taking time for that little crippled girl at
the end of the street.
I remember going door-to-door many years
ago in a town in southern England along
the coast where we have so many lovely
churches.
The man didn't feel I should go door
-to-door on Sunday afternoon.
He wanted me to rest, but anyway I'm
not easily intimidated, so I told him to
get lost and went out the door.
And I went down that street, and I
found that most of the people on that
street were willing to talk to me.
Most of them took some literature.
Most of them had hurts of some kind,
and most of them had no relationship with
any kind of believer or Christian and did
not understand what they were doing in the
little chapel at the end of the road.
They didn't understand what that was about.
Others were just downright bitter.
One lady had a heart attack.
It may have been a man.
I think it was a man.
Had a heart attack, and no one seemed
to care, and the only person that meant
anything to him in the world was the
man who gave him heart surgery a doctor.
Brothers and sisters, as we go away from
this conference, we've got a job to do.
We have got to put into practice.
Now, I know the danger is for the
idealistic type that you will attempt to do
too much, and that always worries me.
I was speaking at a college in London
University.
It was a college where there were a
lot of nurses.
I think one connected with a hospital, and
the chaplain was sitting in the meeting.
I don't think he was an evangelical Christian,
but he sat in the meeting and I
spoke on the subject of love within limits.
Have you ever heard a message on that?
Love within limits, and I pointed out how
I learned the hard way, because love was
a whole passion of my life, putting it
in practice, and I discovered the hard way
that I had a lot of limitations, that
I could only have an in-depth relationship
with so many people and maintain those relationships,
that I could only reach out to so
many drunkards, I worked among drunkards for a
couple of years, that I could only handle
so many homosexuals, and I worked with homosexuals,
and so many poor people, and I was
working among the poor, and so many people
in prison because I was working in the
prison.
Before I was ever born, or I ever
went overseas, I was involved in all of
that kind of thing in my own college
context, in my own hometown, where I was
also going door to door selling Christian books,
and I learned the hard way that I
have severe limitations, and one of the ways
that I learned is because with my vision,
and my idealism, and my love, and my
desire to be literally obeying the Sermon on
the Mount, I developed continual guilt and neurosis,
and I was living in a state at
times, though I was enjoying the Lord, I
was experiencing His grace, there was the continual
nagging of, you're never doing enough, you're always
failing people, you're always hurting, you're not reaching
out, and the pressure that this brought upon
my wife is just staggering to the imagination.
When we first arrived in Mexico, I almost
immediately went out, fished someone in off the
street.
She had just become accustomed to living in
this little, we were living in the back
of a bookshop, and there was no room,
so we were living in a closet, and
in a large, what do you call that
over here, it's a word I've never got
straight, where you keep your clothes, wardrobe, we're
living in a large wardrobe, and there was
a lot of tears, and she was just
getting used to this wardrobe, it was quite
large, and you know, at least it was
a little longer than we were, so we
could lie down.
Then I brought in someone off the street,
because you know what I believe from the
Sermon on the Mount, they didn't have any
place to stay, helped them out financially, brought
them in, and I said to my wife,
darling, God's leading us to move out.
You know, where are we going?
We're moving out.
We're giving our room to these people.
Who are they?
I met them in the street.
The one, the guy's already accepted Christ as
his Savior.
Back in those days, I gave her Ephesians
5 almost every day.
Ephesians 5, Ephesians 5, Ephesians 5.
It's obviously, you're really heavy students of the
Word, but uh, anyway, we moved across the
other side of the bookshop, where there was
a smaller room.
I don't know what this room was for.
It wasn't long enough, but by squeezing up
a little bit when we slept, and having
a little table over the bed, and put
our things on top of the table, we
slept under the table with part of my
head out the door.
We couldn't close the door.
All in the name of Jesus.
All because I was determined to be the
totally committed disciple of Jesus Christ, obeying every
single verse in the New Testament, whatever the
cost.
And it almost cost me my wife, my
sanity, who knows what else, certainly friends.
And I thank God for that book that
came out some years ago, Love Within Limits.
We are limited, weak, struggling people.
The Christian life is a long road, and
if you try to go out this weekend
and put into practice everything you learn here,
next week or next month, you're going to
start.
And I want to give this plea, Love
Within Limits.
Reach out to the elderly.
Reach out to the poor.
Reach out to the needy people around you,
but accept the fact that you're going to
fail.
You're going to witness to some people and
turn them off, instead of winning them to
Christ.
You're going to make a great, glorious effort
to touch your family for God.
How many have that as a priority burden?
You want to touch your own family for
God.
Raise your hand.
Right?
And yet history will show you that that
is the toughest, biggest challenge you can ever
take.
And to get discouraged because your parents are
not believers yet, or to be discouraged because
you've hurt your parents after you became a
Christian, is to make a big mistake.
And if there's any area where you must
be patient, you must be balanced, it's in
family affairs.
Because it's just a lot more involved than
is seen on the surface.
And it's not just a matter of praying
a prayer.
Prayer is not some kind of Aladdin lamp
type of operation.
Prayer is waiting on God.
It's worship.
It's growing in faith.
It's coming into a experience of God on
a day-by-day basis, where His will
is amalgamated with our will, and we can
pray in the Spirit.
And one thing we know, no matter how
powerful prayer is, that God doesn't, in a
sense, answer your prayer by manipulating and running
roughshod over other people's wills.
And so we pray, and God hears that
prayer, and He speaks to a person, but
they may reject it, or they may throw
it aside.
And so we pray again, and God in
His mercy, He touches that person again.
He may bring someone into their life, or
a book, or something.
We have to learn what it is to
persevere in prayer.
We have to learn what it is to
maintain our joy when that prayer is not
being answered.
My own experience, and oh, I'm known all
over the world in some circles as a
man of faith who has seen thousands of
answers to prayer, which of course is true.
But sometimes in my messages in early years,
I deceived people because I didn't talk enough
about my unanswered prayers.
And I will tell you, you may not
think this, but you are looking at a
broken person, a wounded, broken person that will
never be what he was in the 20s.
So there's no sense turning the pages back.
Many of my deepest prayers in which I
have fasted, sometimes up to three days when
I couldn't even walk, have never been answered.
This was such an agony upon my soul
as a young student that I almost abandoned
the Christian faith, because I'm just that kind.
My kind of character were categorized by some
psychiatrists as dangerous.
We go very, very heavy with everything we
got, and when we leave it, we go
down like a rocket.
Somehow because of other people, because of people's
prayers, at those moments of desperation when some
of my prayers were not being answered, and
when it seemed at times when I prayed
for certain situations, have you ever had this?
It actually got worse.
If you have ever had that, maybe I
can relate to you.
I don't relate well to people who have
it all together.
I admire people who have it all together,
tremendous answers to prayer, people of faith, name
it, claim it, you know, healing.
You know, I like to take a picture.
God bless you.
Somehow I relate to people like myself that
somehow feel they're just on the borderline.
Have you heard that new pop song, Borderline?
It's just about coming apart.
But I want to tell you, though I
have felt at times for 20 some years,
that I'm just about coming apart.
Do you ever have a holy scream?
It's great for my kind of temperament.
Go in the woods, go in the closet,
you have a holy scream.
If I did that now, number one, it
damaged my vocal cords, number two, it upsets
the English, which is a majority group here.
But I'll tell you, let's not fake it.
Let's not fake it.
You're not going to get through living 10
more years in this crazy planet with Satan
doing what he's doing from one end of
the earth to the other, with the misery
and the suffering.
You're not going to get through the relationship
hassles, and the family hassles, and the university
hassles, and the dating hassles, and the financial
hassles.
Probably you're not going to get through, most
of you, without a few screams, even if
it be mainly within.
And some of us as Christians, we can
look all right on the outside, but inside
we're screaming.
And I have the ability sometimes to look
all right on the outside, and people say,
oh, there goes George Burroughs, dynamite for God.
And inside, I'm just screaming.
I've just watched something on television that's eating
away at my heart.
I've just thought again about the Bihari refugee
camps.
I've just thought again about South Africa.
I've just thought again about friends who are
having terminal cancer and are screaming in their
hospital beds from pain.
And I just pray that among other things,
this weekend has been a burst of holy
ghost reality in your heart as to what
life is about.
Any fool can learn by his mistakes.
It takes a wise man to learn by
instruction.
And we've had men of God and women
of God here from all walks of life
for these three days, opening their hearts, sharing
what life's about, what being as a leader
is about, both the pain and the blessing.
And I pray you'll not forget it.
And I pray that by faith, you'll convert
it into action.
You'll refuse to be discouraged, and you'll bounce
back every time you fall on your nose.
I've fallen so many times, it's a miracle
I even have one.
I know this.
As Peter emphasized in that first message Friday
night, it's God's grace to weak people.
It's God's grace and forgiveness to pick us
up, put us back on the road when
we fail.
I'd love to hear from some of you
in the next month.
I'll be up front giving out my little
calendars.
Just got a new fresh supply.
Look at that.
And it's a miracle.
These are 86 calendars.
I'm famous around the world for giving calendars
that are year old.
This is 86.
I'd love to hear from you in the
coming months, but I'll tell you something I
prefer.
I'd love to hear from you 10 years
from now.
I'd love to hear from you 10 years
from now and know that you've walked with
Jesus every day since this weekend.
I'd like to hear from you 10 years
from now and know that you have a
godly marriage where Christ is Lord.
I'd like to hear from some of you
10 years from now from Africa and India
and the uttermost parts of the earth where
you're planting churches among the unreached people.
I'd love to hear from some of you
10 years from now who may be vicars
in the Anglican church or ministers in the
Baptist church or elders in the Brethren Assembly
in Carlisle, but somehow you're going on.
You're still running the race.
You're still loving Jesus.
You've been hit.
You've been discouraged.
You've been misunderstood.
Life hasn't been what you perhaps dreamed it
would be at 19, but somehow you've put
your hands on the plow and you're not
turning back.
That's the message I want to leave with
you as you go today.
No turning back.
Come what may, the whole hell will turn
loose on you and your family.
You'll stand firm on the promises of God,
in the sovereignty of God, and believe for
the forgiveness and the mercy and the grace
to keep on keeping on.
And I'll tell you, the likes of characters
like Peter Conlon and myself and so many
of us in OM, I wish Rex could
come and share his testimony.
This chief engineer who God saved out in
the middle of nowhere and brought into our
ship, one of the oldest passenger ships in
the world.
I used to go down and visit Rex
in the engine room and I tell you
sometime when I saw the work he had
to do and the obstacles and the problems,
I would just weep.
And when I think of the grace of
God in Rex's life and the grace of
God in so many OM friends that I
see everywhere in this auditorium, then I know
he can keep anybody here.
My brother Moke here, converted from a Muslim
background.
Years ago, I never told him this, might
as well tell him now.
When I met him, I thought, you know,
is he going to keep going?
So many Muslims, when the pressure comes on,
they just can't keep it.
Ninety percent failure rate in Turkey, approximately.
Here's a brother that's been going on for
a decade or so for the Lord Jesus
Christ, though he had all that in his
background.
You don't have to be from a Muslim
background to have a lot of things against
you.
A lot of young women today have been
raped before they were 12.
A little girl came to me some time
ago and been raped again and again and
again by her own grandfather.
How is that going to be healed?
I will tell you where sin abounds, grace
doth more abound.
Never forget it.
Though you may feel you're such an unworthy
character, though you may fail even in your
Christian life as I did, where sin abounds,
grace doth more abound, and that's what this
has got to be about.
It's not rules, it's not discipleship programs, it's
not getting all heffed up in a weekend
conference and going out of here like some
kind of wind-up spiritual tornado.
It's the grace of God available to all
temperaments, all nationalities, and I'll tell you, we
Americans can get a hold of it.
Anybody can.
And I'm still praying for the salvation of
J.R. because nothing, nothing, nothing is too
hard.
I think it's too late for Bobby, but
nothing, nothing is too hard for the Lord.
Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, you know how complex many of
us are.
We laugh, we cry, we sing, we dance.
We get hurt by people one minute and
we embrace them and love them the next
minute.
We shout at our wives one minute and
tell them to go wash their hair, and
the next minute we're hugging and repenting and
jumping through the tulips like a couple of
young lovers.
We thank you, Father, that as Christians we're
not running away from life.
We're not running away from television or the
arts.
We're not running away from politics.
We're not running away from atheists or social
action or institutions.
We're not running away from each other or
the church with all of her need and
all of the mess factor.
But we are among those people who have
put our hands on the plow, are looking
light straight in the eye, and we are
by your strength saying we will not turn
back.
We will not turn back.
As Eric Little, we will run the race
to the end, though we're in utter pain
as we cross the finishing line.
And oh God, when those subtle intimidations of
Satan come upon us, even this very day,
we will hold the shield of faith and
stop that fiery dart.
And if we fail or it gets through
our armor, then we will repent and we
will claim your cleansing, and we will bounce
back and get back into the ring, even
if we have to go 15 rounds with
a personified devil.
Oh God, grant us wisdom in these things.
Take us deeper into your word in these
weeks to come.
We will know how to wear the whole
armor, that we will be in your Holy
Spirit-controlled training program the rest of our
lives.
For we ask this in faith, in Jesus'
name.
Amen.