I want to read two passages of scripture
this evening, perhaps two passages that you've never
had combined before in a Bible reading.
Romans 11 and Hebrews 11.
I remember at Bible college having Old Testament
books linked with New Testament books, but I
think my linking together of these two passages
may at least seem a little bit far
-fetched.
But let us read them including the first
two verses of Romans 12, starting at verse
33.
Speaks about the mercy of God in verse
32 and then says, O the depth of
the riches both of the wisdom and the
knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments,
and his ways are past finding out.
For who hath known the mind of the
Lord, or who hath been his counselor, or
who hath first given to him, and it
shall be recompensed unto him again.
For of him, and through him, and to
him, are all things to whom be glory
forever.
Amen.
I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies
of God, that ye present your bodies a
living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable service.
And be not conformed to this world, but
be transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that ye may prove what is that good
and acceptable and perfect will of God.
And then Hebrews chapter 11.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped
for, the evidence of things not seen.
For by it the elders received witness.
Through faith we understand that the worlds were
framed by the word of God, so that
things which are seen were not made of
things which do appear.
By faith Abel offered unto God a more
excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained
witness that he was righteous, God testifying of
his gifts, and by it he being dead
yet speaketh.
By faith Enoch was translated that he should
not see death, and was not found because
God had translated him.
For before his translation he had this testimony,
that he pleased God.
But without faith it is impossible to please
him, for he that cometh to God must
believe that he is, and that he's a
rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
And then it talks about the faith of
Noah, and Abraham, and Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph,
and Moses.
And we get to verse 32.
We've spoken of people who have experienced great
deliverance, great exploits of faith.
We read about a few more and then
there's a sudden change.
Try to catch it.
What shall I more say?
For time would fail me to tell of
Gideon, and of Barak, Samson, and Japhthah, and
David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets,
who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained
promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the
violence of fire, escaped the edge of the
sword, out of weakness were made strong, became
valiant in fight, and turned to flight the
armies of the aliens or the enemies.
Women received their dead, raised to life again,
but others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that
they might obtain a better resurrection.
And others had trial of cruel mockings and
scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment.
They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they
were tested and slain with a sword.
They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being
destitute, afflicted, and tormented, of whom the world
was not worthy.
They wandered in deserts and in mountains and
in dens and in caves of the earth.
In these all having received witness through faith,
received not the promise, God having provided some
better thing for us, that they without us
should not be made perfect.
Let us pray, and let us include prayer,
once again, for the brother I told you
about, Omer, who is on loan to our
relief work among Afghan refugees, John Tarswell.
I spoke to Pakistan just a few hours
ago.
It's over a week now, and there's still
no sign whatsoever of this brother or his
whereabouts.
Keeping in mind both of those passages, let
us pray.
Our Father, we do thank you for these
great passages of your word.
In a sense, we could sit down and
go home because they are already such a
strong message to our hearts.
We do reach out in prayer to those
who are suffering, to those who are being
martyred for the cause of world evangelism or
for their own fate, to people in prison
in China, in Nepal, in other nations of
the world, to people being harassed, persecuted.
We pray for our friend John Tarswell.
We know not whether he is alive or
dead.
It is a mystery for us, but on
the basis of these scriptures, we lift our
hearts and give this whole situation to you,
his dear wife and family back in Canada.
And we ask that through this, whether it's
life or death, that glory may come and
that it may be used as the forward
step for the planning of your church among
the Afghan people, who are one of the
most unreached people's groups in the entire world.
Speak to us now in this final meeting
of this anniversary weekend, for we pray in
Jesus' name.
Amen.
It was so encouraged to see some of
you taking notes last night and at least
writing down those six words.
For those of you who weren't there, we
emphasized as part of our anniversary celebration, thanksgiving,
vision, action, discipline, love, and forgiveness.
And we believe that this ministry over these
hundred years has incorporated those great biblical mega
-principles into what has taken place here.
We know it has not been all victory.
I was really wrestling with what to share
tonight.
I always have too many messages and too
many burdens.
I'm sure I can drive people around the
bend by talking too much and sharing too
many visions, especially about Operation Mobilization.
I hope some of you will become serious
about world missions.
In ministering up and down Britain now for
almost 28 years, I would say there's certainly
not more than 5% of British Christians
who in any way could consider themselves serious.
About world missions, I've not even met many
pastors.
A lot of my ministry is to Christian
leaders, seminars.
We've had the privilege of ministering to tens
of thousands of Christian leaders.
Many of them have recommitted their lives in
those meetings.
I guess I've ministered in at least 200
Bible colleges and theological colleges this week again
in the south of England, an hour or
two with the students and then an hour
with the staff.
But even only a small percentage of Christian
leaders have a vision for world missions, as
we would see it, for example, burning in
the heart of the Apostle Paul.
It's an uphill battle for anybody that commits
himself to world evangelism, even though we have
so clearly those words from the Lord Jesus
Christ, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and then
the Acts before he ascended, ye shall be
my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the
uttermost part of the earth.
How can it be that perhaps 30 to
40% of all the people on planet
earth have still not had the gospel even
for the first time?
They know about Coca-Cola.
They know about some of these famous television
programs.
I was sitting in a cafe in Adana,
Turkey, where I'd visit the graveside of one
of our men who was martyred there, and
they were watching Dallas on the cafe television.
I remember in India when America first sent
someone in outer space, put a man on
the moon.
I think I was in India, may have
been somewhere else, but I thought of the
fact the whole world almost immediately knows that
America put a man on the moon, but
they don't know that God, the living God,
the creator of the universe, put his son
on the earth.
It's really quite awesome.
There's a lot I would like to say
about world evangelism, about the ministry of O
.M., but I don't feel that's God's direction
for this anniversary of your own ministry.
I may be able to sneak a few
things in, but I want to share with
you six other mega words.
Words are so important to me.
The word, for example, the word integrity.
Just saying that word means so much to
me.
I could speak for probably 24 hours non
-stop if God would grant me the voice
on the subject of integrity.
The word is so powerful.
It covers everything we can think of in
ethics, in theology, in church life, in home
life, integrity.
It's a great word.
Study it.
Look it up in the dictionary.
And I want to share six words that
I believe we should keep in mind as
we go into the next 10 years, the
next 30 years, the next 100 years.
We don't know what lies ahead.
There's a lot of talk about the year
2000.
It's great.
A lot of it is just hep or
hype.
God can use it.
Americans, we're especially into that.
We say all kinds of things we don't
really believe will actually ever happen.
It's just to make you feel good and
get people excited and revved up.
The amazing thing, some of the things they
say actually come to pass.
And that's always embarrassing to the English, who
are known throughout the world for being basically
very small-minded people.
Did you know that?
Yes, Americans are always criticized over here because
they're big mouths and they're bad television and
they're in trouble and they're now 45 years
in prison.
The main thing we talk about now is
Jimmy Baker.
And it's true.
Americans are big mouths and they're big thinkers
and a lot of it never happens.
And oh, I hope some of that television
never comes here.
But what would you prefer to have a
reputation?
As being big thinkers and trying too much
and speaking too much or as being small
-minded?
Small-minded Englishmen.
I'm debating whether to become a British citizen.
I now can become all I have to
do is fill out the forms.
I felt I couldn't do this when my
mother was alive.
I mentioned it once to her and I
thought she was going to hit me.
True flag-carrying American.
Also, my wife's stepfather was very anti-British
and totally against Jesus Christ and the gospel.
We prayed for him for over 30 years.
I even took up golf in order to
get to know him better.
It's the only thing we had in common.
I used to get these people on the
golf cart with them.
Americans like to ride around their golf courses.
There's such traffic jams, they have to do
that.
And I used to get people on the
golf cart with them that had powerful testimonies.
And this year, that man surrendered his life
to Jesus Christ.
Don't ever give up praying for the person
you love.
No matter how hard.
He persecuted my wife.
He persecuted his wife.
He spoke against Christ, against the church, all
kinds of things.
About January 1st in a big Bible preaching
Southern Baptist Church in Orlando, Florida, he was
baptized and became a follower of Jesus Christ.
He's now sending me tapes from his church.
My father-in-law.
Amazing.
Don't give up.
Keep on praying.
We know, of course, there are many, many
English people, British people with a big vision.
Last weekend, I was in Northern Ireland.
There are certainly some people there with a
big vision.
I was with the most unusual man.
Monday night prayer meeting, 800 were out to
pray.
That's a real church.
They might almost be able to claim a
New Testament church.
They're going to throw up a 3,000
-seat auditorium.
What God was doing there is quite amazing.
Six more words.
Do you think you can handle six more
words?
Are you going to take your notebooks out
or your church bulletins?
You don't have church bulletins here, do you,
Ken?
Well, whatever.
I gave some notes to Tom on the
train the other day.
He wrote them on his hand.
The first word that I want to give
to you for this next 100 years, probably
the Lord will return before then.
We might not even get out of the
auditorium tonight.
The first word is the word mercy.
Mercy.
Isn't that one of your favorite words?
God's mercy.
That's why I'm still here.
People say, how are you still going so
many years?
I often meet people who met me 25
years ago, and they say, well, I didn't
expect you to keep going.
25 years ago, when I first came to
Britain, I looked like a natural burnout case.
People wrote to me, slow down, be careful.
So many exhortations.
You're going to have a nervous breakdown.
I never have had a nervous breakdown.
I discovered through study, a little bit of
psychology, I'm not the type.
I'm more the kind of person that gives
other people nervous breakdowns.
You have somebody clapping.
God's mercy is the reason I'm still running
the race.
God's mercy is the reason that OM has
gone from strength to strength in the midst
of much failure and now has 1,800
full-time workers, many of them career missionaries
across the world.
In fact, our personnel department recently gave me
the statistics that 600 of the present OMers
are long-term, many of them lifetime people.
Mercy is the key to what God wants
to do in the months and years to
come.
We can never take credit for what's being
done.
How sad it is when man gets in
the way of what God wants to do.
I don't like some of these meetings where
we praise people and we give out awards.
I've tried to be more balanced, but I
find it a struggle.
Seems to me that all the awards should
be given to God, but I guess he
understands.
He has a sense of humor when we
pat one another on the back on occasion,
and we have television programs in the States,
and we bring our Christian leaders on to
the program in Christian television, some of which
makes me sick, and we say, this is
your life.
This is your life, and we're telling all
these wonderful things about this character.
The fact is that most of us who
ever accomplish anything, it's because of a team
of people, and the team often, we don't
even know who they are, and often in
our culture, our more chauvinistic society, the women
are left out.
The men get these great awards, and the
women have done all the work, and it
helped this guy stay propped up even when
he was falling on his nose.
Half the people there couldn't even tell you
what her name is.
The mercy of God, that excites me, and
that passage we read, that neglected passage at
the end of Romans chapter 11 is what
we need more of today.
My favorite author is perhaps A.W. Tozer,
competes only with Dr. Lloyd Jones and a
few other characters I've met, mentioned to you
over the years when I've come here.
Tozer, J.I. Packer, Dr. Lloyd Jones, Andrew
Murray, F.B. Myers, Alan Redpath, many other
men that I can think of, emphasize the
need to know God.
There's always a danger, especially in a movement
like ours, and I'm sure in a church
like yours, that we get caught up in
church activities, church activities.
We're running from one activity to the other,
and we we gauge the church on how
full the church calendar is, and how many
activities we go to, and how many meetings
we go to.
And we don't want to swing the pendulum,
because God uses meetings.
We don't want people who are sitting around
doing nothing, but we need to make sure
that we're getting time with God, that we're
getting to know God.
We're understanding his attributes through a lot of
time in his Word.
A week ago when I was with this
man of God who started this church in
Ulster, in Belfast, I couldn't believe the parallels.
The age of that church, which started with
10 praying men, was the same age as
Operation Mobilization.
Part of the vision that God gave him
for that work was in a mountain outside
of Belfast.
I remember when I first came to Britain,
and God took me to Belfast.
I went, as I often did, into the
mountains for a day of prayer.
And I was in that mountain outside of
Belfast for a day of prayer, trying to
figure out what God was trying to do
in our small ministry.
And in my life, it started to rain,
and I went into that cave in that
mountain, and God met me there.
I looked some time ago at a memo
I wrote, urging OM to take great steps
of faith.
But it came from that experience in the
mountains outside of Belfast.
There was a strange experience when I went
to that church on Monday night.
This man and I had never met.
I wasn't even sure he wanted me there.
Often, pastors don't want me in their churches.
I get in there through the missionaries committee
from some little person who wants George Furwer
in the church.
And the pastor, reluctantly frightened to death, lets
me in.
You ever heard Tony Sargent's testimony about OM?
Tony Sargent's five times more convinced about OM
than I am.
Tony had heard about me and was determined
that I would not get in Worthing Tabernacle,
one of the biggest churches in the South
Coast.
But one little prayer partner, one little OM
prayer partner kept Adam.
She was a real talker.
And in God's sovereignty, in God's mercy, when
my wife had major surgery, she had to
go to Worthing, to one of these convalescent
homes to recover.
And the head of the convalescent home also
went to that church.
Dear Tony Sargent, according to his own story,
didn't really have much more ground.
And he opened the door for me to
share, I guess, at a prayer meeting.
And we became two close, intimate partners in
God's work.
I know of no church in Britain that
has done more for OM than that one
church.
Tony himself has ministered over 15 or 20
times in India, on the ships and OM
fields.
In fact, last time he went to visit
the ship in Amsterdam, he took 20 men
out of his church to go scrape paint
and work on the ship.
And as I met that man in Ulster
just about a week ago, with such totally
different ministries, quite different also in theology and
background, I wondered what he thought about my
being there.
There was immediate warmth, great Irish love and
hospitality, and he's given me a carte de
blanche to come and minister at any time
to his congregation of many thousands of people.
Why do I share that?
Because I believe God's mercy is greater than
our particular doctrinal emphasis.
I've never had anyone attack my rather conservative
doctrinal position.
In fact, I just spoke again eight messages
at my own Bible college, one of the
most conservative in America.
But I believe that God's mercy, God's providence,
God's sovereignty, God's greatness is bigger than all
the things that we are fighting about in
our churches here in this world.
And I plea with you as you go
forward together, and we have people here tonight
from different churches and fellowships, that you will
make your goal God himself.
Not your particular little emphasis, not your particular
little denomination, but God himself.
Surely we know there is only one God.
There is only one faith.
There is only one Bible.
There is only one baptism.
I don't believe we should emphasize unity in
the sense of compromising our basic doctrines, and
it's frightening to see the increase of various
kinds of amalgamations and coming together of church
leaders.
And soon they will also want us to
unite with Buddhists and Muslims.
I can assure you there are church leaders
that want us eventually to come into a
union of all world religions.
The exclusiveness of our message about Jesus as
Savior and Lord is very, very upsetting.
In our evangelism among Muslims, including in the
Manchester area, our opposition has not come from
Muslims.
Our opposition has come from churchmen who do
not believe that Muslims are lost, who do
not believe that Jesus Christ is the way,
the truth, and the life.
He is one of the ways, and who
certainly do not believe that there really is
such a doctrine as hell.
Even some leading evangelicals seem at times to
have a rather wishy-washy position concerning hell
and the lostness of people.
It is a great mystery.
None of us want to believe in hell.
I'm ready to throw it off tonight.
Just show me from the scriptures.
I've been itching to throw it off for
years.
But the more I go back to the
Bible, the more books I read, the more
I somehow feel that I am not God's
counselor.
His Son Jesus Christ spoke about this place,
warned us of this place, and though I
as a human being find it difficult to
grasp, I want to stand on God's word.
The second word I want to leave is
the word faithfulness.
This ministry has continued over the years, your
ministry here, because of the faithfulness of God.
I believe also because of the faithfulness of
God's people.
If I had more time, I would perhaps
also speak about the need for us to
be merciful.
I just feel it's so important for us
to be merciful.
As we think about people who have hurt
us, as we think about people who have
failed us, as we think about people who
we don't agree with, let us, as the
Beatitudes say, be merciful.
I'm thrilled at some of the new books
on the subject of forgiveness.
I mentioned one here this weekend.
Sorry about that.
I don't have it on the table.
These books by David Siemens do emphasize forgiveness,
and I'd be happy to send that book
if you want to write to me.
Faithfulness.
God's faithfulness and our need to be faithful.
The fruit of the Spirit, according to Galatians,
is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness,
faithfulness.
Faithfulness.
A lot of times, the work that God
gives us in the local church, and the
key to all that God is doing is
the local fellowship.
It's the local church.
Sometimes people think OM has been able to
do what we've done because we've got this
particular principle or that particular principle.
It's not one thing or two things that
causes a spiritual movement to go forward.
Any more than it's one or two things
that's caused this work to keep going on
a hundred years.
Usually, it's many things.
Paul emphasized the need to have the whole
council of God.
And our commitment to the local church and
our partnership with over a thousand churches all
over the world has been perhaps the main
factor that's kept this thing from being the
fly-by-night organization some people once felt
it was.
God's faithfulness needs to be matched with our
faithfulness.
If you're responsible for serving the cups of
tea, do it heartily as unto the Lord.
If you have to park the cars, do
it heartily as unto the Lord.
If you're in charge of the music or
the sound system or cleaning the pulpit or
the pews or whatever, do it as unto
the Lord.
I was excited about a church I discovered
in Colorado some time ago.
There's a new book about it called The
Church Unleashed.
Rather upsetting book, a little extreme, like a
lot of books.
You don't have to accept everything you read
in a book.
You do have to accept everything you can
read in this book.
I still don't understand everything I read in
this book, so that gives another challenge.
Faithfulness.
In that particular church, you're not allowed to
belong to the church unless you have a
specific ministry.
No sleepers, no passengers, no spectators.
Christianity in Britain really, let's be honest.
Let's be honest.
It's a spectator sport, isn't it, largely?
It's a spectator sport.
It's a little unlike rugby.
A few guys out in the field scrumping
around, desperately in need of a rest, surrounded
by thousands who desperately need some exercise.
Oh, to see God's people get a vision
of responding to God's mercy and God's faithfulness
with some faithfulness on their part.
Remembering people.
We pray for our missionaries.
We lay hands on them.
We send them across the ocean.
Six months later, they're not supposed to come
back every six months.
They're supposed to stay out there.
Amy Carmichael went out.
She never came back.
May God give us a few more.
But if you stay out beyond six months,
you can be sure every month past the
six months, more people will be forgetting you.
When you do come back, if they know
your name, you'll consider revival has probably swept
in.
Many missionaries told me they never get a
letter.
They never get a letter.
And sometimes when churches go into crisis, the
first thing that gets dropped is the support
of the missionaries.
And if you don't think one of Satan's
strategies is to get churches into crisis so
that the program of world missions can be
slowed down, obviously you haven't read much about
the enemy's tactics.
My own White's church is in total chaos
right now.
Total chaos.
Hundreds of people hurt.
From 200 to 300 in attendance to 35.
And they've written us.
My wife's a founder member.
Cannot really expect we can promise to continue
to support you regularly as our missionaries.
Later on, through prayer and faith, they did
continue to send a little support.
So it's not a total loss yet.
And I'd appreciate prayer for my wife and
for that church.
The faithfulness of God should be matched by
great faithfulness on our part.
Think of the few who stayed with the
railway mission when there were only a few
coming together.
That was the time to quit.
If they had quit at that moment, I
probably would have been in the quit camp.
If they had quit at that moment, this
particular church with its great possibilities for witnessing
for world missions and reality in Christ might
not be here.
The third word I want to leave is
linked with that.
It's the word faith.
In fact, I wrestled with just speaking about
faith.
That's why I read that passage in Hebrews
11.
Faith.
Believing God.
Trusting God.
Taking steps of faith.
This is not a time to slow down
because you've been in a crisis or are
going through a difficult period in some ways.
This is a time for great faith.
This is a time to get alone with
God and ask if there's some steps of
faith you should be taking.
It's exciting to take steps of faith.
It's also scary.
I used to lead Operation Mobilization.
I thank God I don't have that responsibility
anymore.
I'm one of the leaders, but I tend
to think I'm just a follower following all
these visionaries all over the world and generally
gasping for breath.
Our co-leaders around the world seem to
be launching a new major project every month.
We can't even keep up with it now
that we're in 40 countries in a full
-time, long-term way, ministering in another 60
countries through short-term visits of the ships
and evangelists and others.
Humanly speaking, at times it seems almost out
of control.
So much is happening in Brazil that it
seemingly for a while has gone out of
control.
Next month, at the end of this month,
we're flying in our two Brazilian leaders to
see if we can make peace at one
of our main leadership meetings.
Yet it's exciting.
It's exciting to see young people taking steps
of faith.
It's exciting to see them take risks.
If we're not willing to take risks, let's
forget it.
We're not going to evangelize the world.
It's not easy for me to think of
a close friend, perhaps murdered along that Pakistan
-Afghan border.
In fact, I had a fight off my
imagination a few hours ago when I visualized
him being stabbed probably many times.
Two other friends of mine that went to
Afghanistan, mainly as a result of OM's ministry,
were butchered and cut into pieces in their
own home in Kabul some years ago.
They're children.
They come into the room and see that
terrible scene.
I can't even handle such things.
I try to block them out of my
mind.
I was the slowest person, perhaps in OM
International, to agree to go ahead with a
second ship, which is now a reality but
has not yet sailed.
It's not easy to watch television as I
did this week and see another major leading
passenger vessel of a top country plow into
a container ship outside of a German port.
Having put one ship on the rocks, do
you think we cannot have a worse accident
next time?
No one died through this accident we had.
It all ended up favorable publicity for Operation
Mobilization.
The next accident may not come out so
grand.
In myself, I'm scared.
I just thought I'd especially throw that in
since we have the chairman of the company
who owns the ship sitting in the audience.
I'm sure he will have another nightmare tonight,
but we will not accept his resignation.
There'll be no gain without pain.
We're not going to reach the unreached people
listed on that map of the world unless
we're willing to take risks.
C.T. Studd, one of the founders of
an unusual mission society that has reached millions
and millions for God, known today as WECC,
said, let's not be nibblers of the possible
but grabbers of the impossible.
I have to preach that message to myself
because I'm at that age where you begin
to get a little cynical, where you begin
to have too many answers, where you begin
to know too much.
Sometimes I feel I've read too much about
ships.
I don't want any more ships.
Let's get into bicycles.
Let's get into hiking for Christ or trekkers
for Jesus.
But God has led us to take the
risky road because those first two ships have
given us the privilege of facing over 50
million souls with the Word of God.
I could give you thousands of stories of
what God has done through those two ocean
-going ships which, when they go from port
to port, are like catalyst explosives and bring
many people to Jesus Christ.
I've just come from Canada and I was
in Saskatchewan.
They have as much space in Saskatchewan as
Texas and only a million people.
It's very crowded in England.
Did you ever notice that?
You could throw many Englands in Saskatchewan.
They only have a million people.
But they got some great theological colleges and
Bible colleges and Canada has a very amazing
per capita missionary thrust.
People's Church in Toronto, a million five hundred
thousand dollars for world missions.
One church and the church is still growing.
They're knocking the building down, putting up another
one.
Quite amazing.
But a man told me a story and
it reminds me somewhat of our approach to
world evangelism.
No, not completely.
This man kept going fishing out in a
big Saskatchewan lake and every time he came
back he had a giant bag of fish.
And the game warden, the man in charge
of keeping the rules in these great sporting
areas, lakes, he kept watching this man wondering
how he was getting a full bag of
huge fish every time he went out.
So he asked if he could go along.
The old fisherman said, sure.
You want to go fish?
Come along with me.
He went out in the boat in the
middle of the lake.
The old fisherman took a bag full of
dynamite, took up a big stick of dynamite,
lit it, threw it in the water.
All the fish jumped out, put them in
the bag.
The game warden said, hey, you're not allowed
to do that.
There are regulations against that.
That's extreme.
This is not possible.
The old fisherman looked at the game warden,
took out a piece of dynamite, lit it,
handed it to the game warden.
He said, tell me, have you come to
fish or have you come to talk?
Well, if you were Canadians, you might laugh
harder at that story.
It always reminds me of how difficult it
is for an American to tell a joke
in Britain.
They bring the best comedians over.
They stand on the stage for 25 minutes
in London.
They tell every joke they can think of.
Nobody laughs.
Amazing.
He's discouraged as he walks off the stage.
He falls, breaks his arm.
Everybody cracks up laughing.
The unique British sense of humor.
We saw how God could use it when
we lost our ship and the support for
the ship ministry greatly increased among God's people
in the British Isles.
Now people think I'm going to go around
and try to sink something else in order
to get us out of perpetual financial trouble.
Faith.
There's no way we can reach the world.
There's no way you're going to continue a
hundred years or even one year without steps
of faith.
Yes, we need to count the cost.
God doesn't honor foolishness.
And I'm still learning how to find a
balance, but I want to take some steps
of faith in my life in the next
few months and in this final decade.
And I'd appreciate your prayers for that.
The fourth word perhaps is even greater than
all the other words.
It would be a big debate.
It's the word grace.
You ever read much about the East African
revival that took place in the You ever
had the privilege of meeting people like Festo
Kavandre before he died?
William Nakanda?
Some of those men like Joe Church, Roy
Hessian?
They've been a great influence in my life.
And last time I was here, I think
we sold every copy of Calvary Road we
had.
I talked to Roy, not to Roy, but
his wife on the phone the other day.
He's had a terrible stroke.
He's not able to speak, but his books
speak.
And they emphasized the message of grace.
I just feel that's such a great need.
As we go into a new decade, as
we face a world filled with suffering and
pain, as we discover that many of the
people who come to Jesus Christ in the
20th century have wounded emotions.
They've experienced incest, as I spoke about last
night, or they've experienced other very traumatic, difficult
experiences.
Many of the people signing up to be
missionaries are people who have gone through serious
emotional difficulties.
And we have to spend many years often
helping them emotionally and mentally to become strong
in God and balanced psychologically and emotionally.
William MacDonald, who wrote that powerful book, True
Discipleship, once said, grace, and he spelled it
out on the blackboard, G-R-A-C
-E, God's riches at Christ's expense.
It's the grace of God that keeps us
going.
The grace of God.
That's why it's so wrong to become judgmental.
The greatest sin in our movement in years
gone by, at certain times, was the sin
of judgmentalism.
We were so committed to using all of
our money for God.
We were so desirous of getting more Bibles
and more literature and more accomplished, that we
easily judged people who had a different lifestyle
or spent money in different ways than we
did.
It was an ugly thing.
Many ugly things happened in our world.
So, if you've had some ugly things happen
in your fellowship, wherever, whenever, join the club.
The church is not some kind of fraternity
for super saints.
It's a clinic for sinners.
We make mistakes.
We fail.
We get into legalism.
We get into bondage.
We get into hero worship.
And when we do, our hearts get broken,
because all God's heroes are sinners.
We need to understand God's grace to weak
people.
I've always been opposed, almost since my conversion,
to the ability of the church to constantly
treat divorced people as second-class citizens.
In our movement, we took a big gamble,
especially considering our conservative background.
And we allowed divorced people and divorced remarried
people into our movement.
And my 33 years of observation and research
shows that these people have been mightily used
of God.
We were warned as a movement not to
do this, because they said, that will lead
to compromise in your own movement.
Yet, we have been able to run a
parallel track, emphasizing grace and forgiveness and restoration,
and God's program to use Plan B, together
with an emphasis on discipline, holiness, purity, integrity,
and honesty.
We can have both.
But it's hard.
And that's why legalism, in all of its
subtle tentacles, is one of the main things
strangling not only old churches, but some of
the new movements are into neo-legalism that
can bypass what they saw in the churches
they came out of.
The devil knows how to attack an old
church.
The devil knows how to attack a new
church.
You have to have at least one really
unpleasant word.
Guess what the unpleasant word for tonight is.
If anybody can guess it, you can have
five free books.
Who would like to guess tonight's unpleasant word?
Raise your hand.
Anybody.
Tonight's unpleasant word.
I can see you're really a bunch of
risk-takers.
Sacrifice.
Years ago, someone told me, you're not allowed
to use the word sacrifice anymore in the
church.
Some kind of a deeper life message.
We can't use the word sacrifice, because in
the light of all the sacrifice that Christ
gave for us, including his whole life, how
can we talk about sacrifice?
And so, as Christians, we decided not to
talk about sacrifice.
And we also decided not to sacrifice.
Great logic.
Since Jesus did so much for us, he
sacrificed so much for us, we can't possibly
match that, so let's sit back and do
nothing.
Real in-depth theological thinking.
Would you bring the word sacrifice back into
your vocabulary?
Not in a superfluous or superficial way, but
understand that even in the business world, people
make great sacrifices for their companies.
In the sports world, people make incredible sacrifices
for their nation, or for their team, maybe
for money.
In the military, and this is Remembrance Sunday,
it's all sacrifice, whatever the motivation.
And as we pointed out this morning, that
is not something we should forget on Remembrance
Day.
And if we are to evangelize the world,
if we are to keep this fellowship going
when it's under fire, and in the battle,
it's going to take sacrifice.
The Apostle Paul said in Acts chapter 20,
another passage I wanted to read tonight, that
for the space of three years, night and
day with tears, he warned people.
Does that sound like the average evangelical?
Again and again, those words from Acts 20
have brought me back to the cross, and
have caused me to present my body afresh
as a living sacrifice, as we read in
Romans 12.1. As a lover of this
country, I spent a lot of time studying
British history, 80% of which I eventually
was not able to remember.
I even tried to memorize all the kings.
Talk about a difficult thing for someone with
my kind of brain.
But I especially remember the last war, and
all the sacrifice that people made, especially those
in the RAF, but in other places, in
other parts as well.
I remember being at a home in Norfolk.
I think it was a place called Bury
St. Edmunds.
Maybe it was Suffolk.
And a man said that during the war,
they actually came and took his iron fence.
I mean, really?
Take away an iron fence of an Englishman?
I've told this story over in America.
It really breaks them up.
Sacrifice was absolutely part and parcel of life
in that war.
And as soldiers of Jesus Christ, attempting to
take the gospel to every nation, every people's
group, surely sacrifice must be a part of
it.
And as we approach the Christmas season, when
so much money gets thrown around for every
kind of cockeyed gift, including many things that
no one ever uses, it seems to me
it would be a good time to examine
our hearts and see how much we're sacrificing
that the gospel may go to the ends
of the earth.
Let us not deceive ourselves.
The greatest problem right now is not volunteers
for missionary service.
The greatest problem is to find the finance
to get them out there and to keep
them out there.
In our own work every year, some of
our best people leave.
Some of them to take up secular jobs,
to support the people they've seen on the
field.
And when they've lived in financial difficulty for
two or three years, some people can handle
it, but other people say, and sometimes it's
God's will, I'm going back and make money.
A few weeks ago, I was with a
friend in the United States who was with
our work in the early days in India.
OM India was not his thing.
He was a Minnesota businessman.
He developed an ulcer through being on OM,
living in India, the hot food.
He came into my office in Bombay when
I lived there.
I gave a message about commitment, and somehow
God spoke to him about giving a lot
of the money.
I don't even know how he had this
money on the OM team.
A lot of other things that he had
with him for the cause of the gospel.
We then made a big mistake.
We went into business together in Bangkok because
there was such financial pressure, and we thought
selling Vietnam war surplus would help finance the
work of God.
OM sometimes is only learned by our mistakes.
We learned then to stay out of business
for God.
I think to this day we still have
some sleeping bags and stopwatches from the Vietnam
troops that we were not able to sell.
He was a good businessman in Minnesota, but
he didn't know how to handle the Chinese
businessmen of Bangkok, Thailand, and he went back
to the United States with a great burden
to support sacrificially the work of God.
He could be a millionaire today, drives an
old car, lives in a small house.
His two sons love Jesus, and they're getting
involved as well, and he has poured hundreds
of thousands into world evangelism.
Many, many different people, I'm sure many different
groups.
So few people seem to have that vision.
My businessman friend, it is tougher to be
a businessman for Jesus Christ in this day
and age than it is to serve God
in operation mobilization.
My counterparts in the business world, and I
have many, have a tougher job than I
do.
Mine is an awesome privilege, extra time for
prayer, extra time in the Word.
All my co-workers born-again Christians, but
the man who's out there in the business
world today, especially a cutthroat, difficult world to
live in, committed to resourcing the work of
God, and if it wasn't for such men,
Lausanne 2 Congress would not even have taken
place.
Most of the things happening in the Christian
world, the big things that God has used
in a mighty way, would not have taken
place if it wasn't for men and women
in the business world, the professional world, the
farming world, wherever, who had a vision for
sacrificing time, money, effort, that the gospel may
go out to the ends of the earth.
Someone said some time ago, the greatest hindrance
to world evangelism is frozen assets.
So few are willing to take the risk
of reducing their assets.
The pressure of our day from a hundred
insurance agencies banging on our doors is to
build up as much as possible for that
difficult day that lies ahead.
Basically, when you look at the way a
Christian lives, and you look at the way
an unconverted man lives, you won't really find
much difference, not when it comes to economy
and money.
Tozer said that.
Maybe he was wrong.
You can tell him when you see him
in heaven, but I believe personally it's true.
Nothing is more scandalous in Great Britain among
God's people, in some ways, than the lack
of sacrificial giving to the great cause of
getting the Word of God out to the
ends of the earth.
I'm not talking about giving to OM.
That's not my first burden.
I'm talking about giving to God.
I was talking to a wealthy Irish businessman
a week ago, and I said, you've got
20% unemployment here in Ireland.
I said, do you have many Irish people
that have any money?
He laughed at me, because he's an accountant.
He knows a lot.
He said, we have so many Christians with
so much money in Ireland, you would never
even imagine.
Millions and millions and millions upon millions.
And he said, most of it is locked
into banks, insurance companies, savings and loans.
And he said, in fact, I've talked to
some people, they have money, they sense they
perhaps should give it, but with their way
of thinking, they don't know who to give
it to.
They don't really trust people that much anymore.
That happens when you get older.
And so they decide, 15% interest, better
just to leave it in the bank.
Praise God for every dynamic exception to that.
Praise God for a little group of Christians
down in Surrey who decided to launch an
auction program for auctioning antiques.
Antiques and valuable possessions for the kingdom.
And according to their last report, Wellington's missionary
auctions have put over two million pounds or
more into world evangelize.
How much of that is sacrifice?
Only God knows.
That's where the score is being taken.
And I'm not interested in getting into judgmentalism,
which leads into Phariseeism in this world, but
I want to be committed to do whatever
I can.
And that, I believe, at times calls for
sacrifice.
I would not even be here tonight if
it wasn't for the sacrifice again and again
of my own wife.
First, giving her whole inheritance to the kingdom
of God, which was a major sum of
money when this work was being born.
And secondly, going again and again the extra
mile with my philosophy of expenditure and lifestyle
now for almost 30 years.
And the final word, you probably guessed it,
perseverance.
I guess that's why I entitled my book,
I don't know if I have a copy
of that up here, No Turning Back.
I really wanted to call it The Human
Factor because it's so much about struggle and
failure and God's grace to weak people.
But Graham Greene pinched my title, so we
called it No Turning Back.
And I leave you with that exhortation on
this final message of this great anniversary.
Let's determine, whatever happens, whatever victory, whatever failure,
whatever heartache, whether this church has to knock
the walls down as it grows so big
or has to meet into the church vestry
because under enemy attack it becomes very small,
whatever may happen, let us determine that we
are going to persevere.
We are going to persevere.
I'm very hesitant to pat myself on the
back even with my finger about what I've
seen happen in my life because my greatest
burden is not how I have started.
My greatest burden is how I finish because
I've seen too many old, bitter, ugly men
of God and I don't want to finish
that way.
When things were going well and their family
was going on for God and the money
was there and people loved them and they
had a great ministry, they seemed to be
rejoicing.
But when things went wrong, the bottom fell
through, some of their children backslid, disappointments came,
doubts came in, unbelief came in, cynicism came
in, and they died bitter old people backslidden
and away from God.
How can it be?
It happens more often than the church will
report because most of us, if we're honest,
are not that interested in our elderly people
and these neglected people are tempted to feel
forgotten and if they aren't very spiritually minded
strong people, they will become bitter in those
final years.
I don't want that.
So I don't look back over my 33
years of service.
I look forward to the next five or
one or ten and I hope you will
do the same.
Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of
our faith.
Mercy, faithfulness, faith, grace, sacrifice, perseverance, not just
in those two passages we've read, but written
across the whole of the Bible.
Let us pray.
Our God and Father, we thank you for
your word.
We thank you for these mega words to
our own hearts and to our own lives
and we want to respond in faith and
obedience to be your men and to be
your women, to go where you want us
to go and to do what you want
us to do.
We look to you and we praise you
and we worship you.
Minister to our hearts in these moments of
meditation.
In Jesus name, amen.