Successful because anybody who gets my five points
one year later if they write me or
email me they get five books free.
All you have to do is write down
five words tuck it away in your diary
till a year from today and you get
five books and by the way books are
going up in price that'll be probably 30
pounds worth of books.
It's amazing how many people when I make
this announcement don't hear one year from now
and I just had another email I was
looking at it on the train from Malaysia
giving me the five points and wanting the
five books and he didn't hear it's one
year from now that you can get the
five books of course you can write to
me anytime you want.
Turn to Galatians for our Bible reading.
Galatians chapter 2 verse 15.
We who are Jews by birth and not
Gentile sinners know that a man is not
justified by observing the law but by faith
in Jesus Christ.
So we too have put our faith in
Christ Jesus that we may be justified by
faith in Christ and not by observing the
law because by observing the law no one
will be justified.
If while we seek to be justified in
Christ it becomes evident that we ourselves are
sinners does that mean that Christ promotes sin?
Absolutely not.
If I rebuild what I destroy I prove
that I am a lawbreaker.
For though the law I died to the
law so that I might live for God.
And here's our key verse for tonight.
I have been crucified with Christ and no
longer live but Christ lives in me.
The life I live in the body I
live by faith in the Son of God
who loved me and gave himself for me.
I do not set aside the grace of
God for if righteousness could be gained through
the law Christ died for nothing.
I believe in many ways Galatians Galatians 2
20 is the missing message at Easter.
I'm sure you're aware of the enormous problem
of nominalism in the church throughout the world.
Nominalism is not only the perhaps one of
the biggest problems in the church within the
UK and in the United States and countries
of that kind but nominalism is probably the
greatest problem in Sri Lanka, the greatest problem
in India.
I was talking to a woman just before
I left the ship, isn't this providential, who
comes from a high Anglican church in the
other part of East Malaysia known as Sarawak.
She is the first, almost the first person
ever from a very high Anglican church to
ever go into missions.
And in my meeting the night before she
made a commitment to move from short term
to longer term missions and she doesn't know
what she is going to say to her
church when she goes back because they do
generally not comprehend what this is all about.
Do not think that this is a church,
you know, with a few dozen people sitting
there on Sunday morning.
This particular church in Sarawak is absolutely packed
on Sunday.
This is their religion.
Many of them would not know what salvation
is.
They would not necessarily believe the Bible, though
they'd certainly believe part of it.
But generally they're people who are nominally Christian.
It doesn't actually impact their lives that much,
though it's not for me to judge, only
God can be the judge.
I come from a nominal Christian background.
I think it's the easiest background in which
you can lose your way.
I was religious.
I was the assistant to the pastor in
what's called the Reformed Church of America, whose
roots go back to the nation where my
father was born, the Netherlands.
It was called the Dutch Reformed Church, but
of course as things went on they didn't
want to call it the Dutch Reformed Church,
so it's called the Reformed Church of America.
And it was a totally nominal church.
It was like a social club.
And many of the ministers in that church
did not even believe some of the basics.
I don't know if you've heard what's happened
in Canada recently.
In the United Church in Canada, one of
the new main leaders of the whole church
is boasting how he doesn't believe in these
basic doctrines, you know, that Jesus is the
Son of God.
And another main leader thinks it's so wonderful
that he's so free to express, you know,
what he believes.
No wonder tens of thousands have left the
United Church of Canada.
Disillusioned and confused that a church could sink
to such a depth of confusion and heresy
and whatever else you want to call it.
In nominalism there is no place for the
message of Galatians 2.20. I'm sure there
are some exceptions as people play various semantic
games and give different interpretations to verses that
they often take out of context.
Easter is a time when some people go
to church the only time in the whole
year.
The only time in the year.
That's why wherever we can, we need to
preach the gospel.
Television, in the church, in the street.
He is risen.
What's that all about?
And I believe part of the Easter message
is Galatians 2.20. It may be the
harder part.
I think of it in the light of
what it says in 1 John chapter 3,
verse 16.
We all know John 3.16, but 1
John 3.16's never got that much attention.
But the message is clear.
This is how we know what love is.
Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
This Friday, all over the world, millions and
tens of millions will especially focus on the
death of our Lord Jesus Christ, known in
many parts of the world as Good Friday.
This is the message he heard from the
beginning.
We should love one another.
It says in verse 11, but back to
verse 16, this is how we know what
love is.
Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
That's what happened that Friday, almost 2,000
years ago.
He laid down his life voluntarily as a
sacrifice for sin.
And we ought to lay down our lives
for our brothers.
That is the missing part of the Easter
message.
So often the Easter message is thought of
in terms of what Jesus has done for
us.
He died on the cross for us.
He rose again for our justification, and praise
God for that aspect of the message, which
probably you'll be hearing again this weekend.
But there's that missing part of the Easter
message, that we now are to live a
crucified life.
We now are to die to self.
Not a very popular expression anymore.
The whole great Keswick Convention, where I'm going
to have the joy of being back again
the year 2000.
Always seems to take 10 years for them
to recover from one of my offensive messages,
and then I get back.
Though I'm going to be back again at
Keswick the year 2000.
But the Keswick Convention really was built on
the concept of the crucified life.
Paul said, I am crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me.
And I think Easter time, and when we
have special meetings like this, it's a good
time to examine our hearts.
I was examining my heart as I sailed
on this ship from Dubai to Bahrain, just
literally a couple days ago.
Especially because a lot of the new recruits
were coming to get their little half hour
with George Verwer.
They put up a little sign-up sheet,
and anybody who wants can come and have
a go at me, ask me questions.
It's so good to have that experience, because
a lot of my time has to be
given over to the leaders of our movement.
Training leaders, working with leaders.
Some of the people that I'm involved with
in OM have been in OM over 30
years.
And we of course know each other, and
we have to spend time together.
And we have board meetings, and we have
leaders meetings.
We just had our leaders meetings in South
Africa, 180 from all over the world.
But I feel for people like us to
stay on the cutting edge, we've got to
listen to what these new recruits are saying.
We've got to be willing to see some
of the things within OM that need to
be changed, so that we can stay on
the cutting edge of this generation.
And as I had those couple of days
on the ship, and mingled with these people,
I thought to myself this group on this
ship is just as good, and has just
as much potential, as the group on the
original ship that I sailed on in 1971,
when we sailed out of London around Africa,
toward the land of India.
I got to know those people perhaps better,
because we lived together on a long voyage.
We had a prayer night a couple of
nights ago, when we headed out to sea.
It was very calm in the Arabian Gulf,
and people always appreciate that.
We got quite a few landlubbers on our
ship.
And I walked into the main auditorium of
the ship, and saw the largest prayer gathering
I've ever seen on that ship.
And I've been visiting the ship almost every
year.
This ship, by the way, we've only had
since 77, so that's about 21 years.
Before that, we had Lagos.
Then after 17 years, we lost Lagos.
Now we have Lagos II.
That ship's in Mexico.
I had never seen so many people at
one of our prayer nights.
Not everybody goes.
Sometimes people are ill.
Plus, some have to be on bridge.
Some have to be on duty.
Others are in the engine room.
The auditorium, which is about the size of
this church, was absolutely packed, and most of
them stay there for many hours in prayer.
In a so-called generation, where many people
are speaking about prayerlessness, where many churches don't
have any really good prayer meetings anymore, with
anybody actually attending them.
And yet, here's hundreds, 300 live on the
ship, by the way, who come out after
a hard day's work in the engine room,
or painting, or doing something else, to spend
a night in prayer.
God really ministered to my heart.
These young people, every one of them, have
as a commitment to learn the crucified life.
You know, when we know the crucified life,
ego will be put in its place.
And until we have our ego put in
our place, God can never use us fully
the way He wants to.
And many of the problems among God's people,
in our homes, in our churches, are because
our ego, the self-life, has never really
been broken by the power of Christ.
And I know in my own life, when
I've caused grief in my home as a
father, or as a husband, it's because I
wasn't broken at that moment.
I was locked into my verveur temperament, aggressive,
loudmouth, Dutch on one side, the other side,
Scottish, English, and Irish combinations, basically toxic.
What hope is there for someone like me?
Praise God, there's hope through Jesus Christ.
What are these five words that I want
to leave with you this Easter?
Well, the first word is grace.
This is a message of grace.
Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
We have heard that message so much, most
of us here tonight, that we have become
accustomed to the terminology, and in some cases
we have become lukewarm concerning what God has
done for us.
In our leaders meeting in South Africa, an
African woman gave the message named Judy.
And Judy spoke to this 180 OM leaders,
most of them men, from all over the
world.
We have many women in leadership, but not
always the top job.
This conference is for the field leader, one
per country, one per field.
OM is in 80 countries.
We're trying to keep this conference small, we're
trying to keep it under 100 or so,
and it got up to 180 with people
sneaking in.
We always, of course, have different representative groups,
a number of key women were there.
But really the outstanding message of that time
was from this woman, this African from Kenya,
on how to maintain that fire, how to
maintain that spiritual glow, that reality.
Grace, to me, next to the very name
of Jesus, grace is the greatest word in
the Bible.
I thank God that in the last few
years, every few months there has been a
new book on the subject of grace.
Chuck Smith wrote a book about grace.
Philip Yancey has written, one of the great
authors of our day, a book about grace.
Swindle, of course, had his book about grace.
The Navigators, a great Christian discipleship movement, they've
turned out a book, I believe, called Grace
and Discipline.
And I'd encourage you to make sure that
it's grace, not the law, that's keeping you
going.
The message of grace is the message of
Easter.
Vertical grace, God so loved the world, he
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes
in him should never perish, but have everlasting
life.
If that vertical grace has never yet exploded
in your heart, even though you may be
religious, you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus made it very clear, except you be
born again, you'll never enter the kingdom of
heaven.
One of the most exciting things we have
in our fellowship, and I'm sure many of
you have it as well, is we're just
constantly seeing people come to Christ.
We're constantly seeing people radically changed by the
power of God.
Hindus, Muslims, nominal Christians, all kinds of people,
sports people, famous people, people who are totally
unknown, poor, rich.
When a movement gets this big and it's
moving with this momentum, every day, every day,
people are coming to Christ.
And we have so many stories, not just
of people coming to Christ, because we don't
put a lot of emphasis on just, you
know, raising your hand and making a decision.
That can be the beginning, but we put
a lot of emphasis on follow-up and
trying to make sure whether there has been
a real work of grace in that person's
heart.
And we believe that when there's a real
work of grace, something happens.
Now different people respond in different ways.
I remember five years ago, that dates me
a bit, this character Lane Adams speaking, he
wrote that book, Why is it taking so
long to get better?
That was something that always perplexed me in
my Christian life.
Why is it taking so long for George
Furwer to become a little more holy on
the practical level and all these other goals
and aims?
And Lane Adams spoke.
I remember because David Watson was speaking at
the same time and pointed out that depending
on a person's background, when they come to
Christ, they grow in the Lord at different
speeds.
That's not the only factor, but their background
is a factor.
And if someone has spent 20 years in
prison and they come to Christ in prison,
and hallelujah, many are coming to Christ in
prison, probably, especially when they come out of
prison or even if they remain in prison,
they will wrestle with certain struggles and problems
that some young person converted at 13 in
a Sunday school may not face.
So beware of getting discouraged about your spiritual
progress and understand God's grace to weak people.
His grace is sufficient.
His strength is made perfect in weakness.
I think one of the reasons when I
go to the ship, I see such a
huge response, because when I go to the
ship, one-third of the people there now,
with the way OM is so big, one
-third of the people have never heard me
speak before.
I only go once a year.
They may have heard me on video or
audio cassette.
But when I stand in front of these
young people as I did actually yesterday morning
on the ship in Bahrain and share some
of my struggles and some of my weaknesses
and some of my failures and how I
discovered God's grace in the midst of my
struggles, doubts, and failures, I will tell you
the response is overwhelming.
They realize afresh God can use them.
And brothers and sisters, God has brought us
together tonight, I believe, because He wants to
say to us, my son, my daughter, I
want to use you.
I want to use you.
In 1998, I want to use you in
the last remaining months of this millennium.
Let us now talk about retirement in the
kingdom of God.
You may retire from the bank.
You may retire even from being a vicar.
You may retire from being a captain.
We have a man who's a captain here
of the super tankers traveling around the Persian
Gulf, the Arabian Gulf, and I hope he
does retire soon and comes on our ship.
But we're going to talk about that after
the meeting.
So, you know, I'm not against people retiring.
We're part of this world.
This world has a system.
But as far as the kingdom of God,
if we love Jesus, if we're products of
His grace, we want to run the race
right to the end.
We may be more tired.
We may even be, like my dad, 92
years of age.
He's now in an old folks home, the
Christian Holland home there in New Jersey.
He really loves it.
There's a hundred and some women, only 20
men.
This is his fulfillment of his dream.
And he's still praying.
He's still reading Operation World.
He's still, in his feeble condition, interested and
attempting to do his little bit for the
kingdom right to the end.
Of course, we can't do the same thing
as when we got in an OM van
at 21 years of age and drove all
the way to New Delhi and gave out,
you know, 25,000 tracks in the streets
of Delhi in a few days.
But if we're going to obey the Lord
Jesus, if we're going to declare this Easter
message to the whole world, we need every
believer on board.
Forgive my ship terminology.
One of the amazing things about a ship
is that everybody's working, at least on the
OM ship.
I went down to the engine room.
I tell you, they got so much work
in that engine room, they're just crying out
for mercy.
Then I went up to the old bridge.
It's the oldest bridge almost of any passenger
ship in the world.
They got a lot of new equipment up
there.
Sophisticated satellite and added navigation.
Don't even need a radio officer on a
ship anymore.
That's Noah's Ark.
The captain can do it all or the
first mate.
Then I went down to the laundry.
Takes an army to keep all the clothes
clean on the ship.
Then I went down to the carpenter's place.
Then I went down to the electrician's place.
Then I went through the galley and through
the bakery.
300 people are working on that ship.
That includes lineup people, shore people, preachers, teachers,
trainers.
I hope every one of you, Val, I'm
sure you could arrange this, could go and
spend some time on one of our ships.
Have a little cruise.
Cruises, by the way, are very popular now.
They can't build cruise ships fast enough.
It's funny.
We never had many people banging on our
door to go on a cruise on one
of our ships.
I think the word is out that you
might only get a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich for lunch.
The fact is we have a fantastic cook
and he is providing mighty good food because
a Navy runs on its stomach and we're
part of God's Navy.
It's all grace.
It's all grace that God could take a
character like me, that God could take a
group like ours and keep this ministry going.
O.M. now is 40 years old.
It started when three of us, some teenagers,
got in a beat-up old van that
blew up 200 miles down the road.
We put another rebuilt engine in.
That's a whole story in itself.
And went to Mexico and worked with Wycliffe
and worked with other missionaries and national churches
to learn the language and to share our
faith.
It's all of grace.
My second word is discipline.
I wonder how many of you expected that
as a second word.
Because one of my favorite expressions is that
grace without discipline will lead to disgrace.
One of the reasons many people are not
effective in their prayer ministry, in their evangelism,
in outreach, in other aspects of God's work,
they never develop a disciplined life.
And if some of you young people here,
maybe some who are not so young, you
feel you want to learn a little bit
more about the disciplined life, we want to
invite you to join O.M. We'd like
to invite you to join one of our
ships.
Not that automatically you will learn discipline because
we cannot force the true biblical discipline on
people.
But I believe most of the people who
spend two years on one of our ships
or one of our programs develop the discipline
of prayer.
And we've been able to measure that over
40 years.
They develop the discipline of sharing their faith.
We often, like anybody else, don't feel like
sharing our faith.
But we learn it as a discipline because
we love Jesus.
Because we believe the Bible.
We believe that Jesus is the way, the
truth, and the life.
Personally, I believe in Britain.
It's getting harder at times to share your
faith.
There's an anti-Christian wave going through Britain,
especially in universities.
But the fact is, even with that anti
-Christian wave, and people sometimes get upset even
if you mention the name of Jesus, there
are still many open doors, many opportunities.
So don't worry about the nine doors are
closed.
Go to the tenth door and it'll probably
open.
Try to understand new methods of reaching people
with the gospel.
One of the new buzzwords in evangelism today
is understanding felt need.
Understanding felt need.
Find out what a person's need is, try
to help them, and soon they'll be asking
you what makes you tick.
And you'll have an opportunity to share about
Jesus.
In the Gulf where we are right now,
our evangelism has to be as low-profile
as any place in the world.
Some would probably think OM has departed from
its original vision, if you were with us,
because we have to use a very low
-profile approach.
And we, I was telling young people yesterday,
we need to learn to listen.
Don't worry if you can't share the plan
of salvation when you just meet someone.
Listen to them, see what their need is,
and you'll find often they'll be asking you,
they'll be asking you about Jesus or about
God.
Can you imagine the difficulty of our captain,
two nights ago, that we have a grand
opening, all top government people come to the
ship.
These are mainly not Christians.
Do you know anything about those countries?
And our captain speaks, and then our director
speaks.
I was listening on the loudspeaker in one
of the offices.
I felt they did such a brilliant job
in what some people would call a very
general approach and maybe a pre-evangelistic approach.
It's that pre-evangelistic approach and that low
-profile approach that's enabled us to bring the
ship back again and again and again to
some of these semi-closed countries.
Not easy.
God's grace, but grace must also have discipline.
Most of us around Easter, we get some
time off.
My people in my office in London, they
sort of tell me, we're closing on Friday.
For me, we close at all.
We want everybody going seven days a week,
but you know, we've got to compromise.
We've got to keep the Saints happy.
So we're closing Friday.
I think we're closing Monday.
You know, Easter Monday.
Holidays are wonderful because they are days of
opportunity.
Of course, if you're totally exhausted and you're
about to have a nervous breakdown, then you
need to take a rest.
You need to go to Blackpool and go
on the roller coaster or something.
But probably on Easter Monday or on Good
Friday, you'll have some time free.
Wouldn't it be wonderful maybe to visit an
old folks home, maybe to make a phone
call just to thank someone, to encourage someone.
Today, often, the kind of evangelism where we
affirm people, thank people, express our love to
people, do something for people, is more effective
than, you know, just immediately sock it right
to them in the name of Jesus.
God uses that as well.
Grace without discipline will be disgrace.
What's the third word?
The third word I want to leave with
you tonight, I'm sure any of you know
O.M. and know me, this word has
got to come.
Vision.
Now my helper, Tim Richardson, every time I
preach is supposed to blow up my large
globe.
But it has been developing leaks and probably
was not able to find a woman's hairdryer
that we use to blow up this giant
globe.
But Tim, will we be able to have
that tomorrow night, you think?
Will we have that by tomorrow night or
is it back in London?
Okay, tomorrow night, Tim has made a recommitment
to blowing up the globe.
He actually can blow it up with his
own lungs as well, but then his eyes
start to pop and he starts rolling on
the floor.
So tomorrow night we'll have the globe, but
tonight you've got my global jacket.
This is the entire map of the world,
and this is very practical.
I was in a British Airways jumbo jet
once, went up to the cockpit to talk
to the captain.
We were flying from Brazil right here to
Argentina.
They started discussing where they were.
The co-pilot said we're flying over Ecuador.
That's way up here.
They used this jacket to see where they
were flying.
They were flying over Uruguay.
Now, it doesn't look very good on me.
If someone is a little, you know, fat,
this jacket looks, you know, much better because
they're more global in their ethos.
But, you know, we're not asking you to
become as extreme as some of us.
You know, I even have global underwear, but
we believe every Christian should have a vision
for the people of the world.
Shortly after the resurrection, we have the Lord
Jesus described in Acts 1, verse 8, just
before the Ascension.
What did he say, his final word before
the Ascension?
He shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea,
Samaria, the uttermost part of the earth.
I'd encourage you not to think that mission
vision is for a select few who, you
know, go on ships to other parts of
the world.
I had a tremendous mission vision before I
ever left my own country.
We have books like Operation World and some
of the other books we have there tonight.
We have videos.
We have audiotapes.
We have so much material today to help
envision us.
And this whole challenge of giving the gospel
to everyone in the world, it can become
real to ordinary Christians who may never travel
that much.
Do you know many of the great intercessors
of OM, and I correspond with many of
them, they're older folk who have never left
Britain.
Some of them, I can tell you, don't
have enough money to go on a holiday
outside of Britain, especially when they've been sending
it to us every week for 30-some
years.
Vision is for everyone.
Vision, what we can do locally.
In fact, one of the greatest visions is
a combination vision in which we realize that
local action produces global results.
Local action produces global results.
One ordinary man from this church, Norman Alexander,
helped us produce global results and launch what
eventually became one of the largest mission societies
in the world.
Of European-based mission societies, it is probably
the largest.
One ordinary man had a vision.
The vision, of course, was to become part
of the team.
Missions is not a long-ranger operation for
George Verwoer or anybody else.
World missions, in every aspect of world missions,
just like the church and the local church,
we're going to talk more about that tomorrow
night, is teamwork.
We need to have a vision of how
even our small part on the team can
be so important.
A lot of the work on our ships
is very boring and very ordinary.
Imagine a university graduate working in the laundry
for several months, huh?
I remember Lindsey Brown, honors graduate of a
place called Oxford, I think now it's heard
of Oxford.
And when he graduated from Oxford University, he
went on the ship Lagos.
I don't think he told them who they
were, who he was.
I don't think we communicated that well about
those kind of things.
He was given a job packing books in
the hold of the ship, and he loved
it.
He later said it was one of the
greatest character-building programs in his Christian life.
He became a main traveling secretary for UCCF
in the UK.
He became the European leader of IFES.
He is now the international leader of the
entire movement, Lindsey Brown.
Local action brings global results.
We need a vision, and I hope this
Easter we could take a little more time
to especially increase our vision of the Lord
Himself.
There's nothing more important than increasing our vision
of the Lord Himself, and of our great
God.
And I think we know those powerful words
in Isaiah, chapter 6, where it speaks about
the Lord of glory.
It talks about the seraphs.
It talks about the holiness of God, verse
3.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty.
The whole earth is full of His glory.
And at the sound of their voice, the
doorposts and the thresholds shook.
The temple was filled with smoke.
Woe to me, I cried, I'm ruined!
For I am a man of unclean lips.
I live among a people of unclean lips.
My eyes have seen the King, the Lord
Almighty.
That's the priority vision, to see the King
high and lifted up.
One of my favorite Easter messages is by
a great black American preacher.
Forgive me, I forgotten his name.
But it ends with that little sort of
slogan that Tony Campala later picked up and
preached on.
And he gave that thundering climax to his
message.
It's Friday, but Sunday is coming.
Have you ever heard that sermon?
And sometimes in our own personal lives, it
feels a bit like Friday.
Things aren't going well.
The nails are going in, sometimes even by
our own friends, sometimes even by our own
children.
And many of God's people are going through
Friday experiences, difficult experiences, spat on, maybe spiritually
speaking experiences.
And they need to remember, though it's Friday,
and they're feeling the pain of Friday, Sunday
is coming.
I remember when Richard Wurmbrau spoke about how
to endure prison.
He came right out of prison, almost to
speak at the OM conference, in that center
that is now OM's international coordinating base in
Forest Hill.
And one of the reasons he said you
can endure such suffering in prison, is that
you believe in your heart, it's going to
change.
It's not going to continue.
The hands of the clock are going to
change.
The hands of history are going to change.
I want to believe that for Algeria.
I want to believe that for Southern Sudan.
I want to believe that for Northern Ireland.
I want to believe that for Sri Lanka
and for Afghanistan.
I want to believe that for people who
are in prison, perhaps without having committed a
crime, because of someone's mistake.
That though they're in a Friday experience, Sunday
is coming.
We need a vision of the Lord, and
Easter time is one of the best times
to focus on that, and to develop it.
Extra time in the Word, maybe a great
book about God's grace and God's power.
Vision is such an important word.
I was climbing a mountain in Scotland, listening
to a cassette tape by John Stott on
leadership, and he pointed out that every person,
he was talking about Wilberforce, every person who's
ever been a leader has been a person
of vision.
I want to ask you, do you have
a vision?
If not, will you cultivate a vision through
what you read, through steps of faith, through
obedience to the Lord, through a Galatians 2
.20 experience?
I am crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ.
My fourth word, just quickly, is the word
harvest.
I was in that Anglican church, that great
cathedral in Saba, and on the back of
the cathedral, and it was literally the cathedral,
there was harvest 2000.
I tell you, those people are refusing to
sit back and play church, like so many
of us are doing here in the UK.
They are out to bring in the harvest,
and I believe it's harvest time.
Maybe it's not as easy as 1959 or
1979, but it's still harvest time.
And across the world, when we look at
the global picture, more people are coming to
Christ than ever before.
More people are coming to Jesus than ever
before.
It greatly varies from country to country, and
Europe, in some ways, is being left behind.
And the situation in Italy, in France, in
Austria, in Belgium, it breaks our heart, but
we at OM are as committed to those
countries as we are committed to Asia.
And we are not going to give up
in our effort to see a harvest in
Belgium, and a harvest in France, and a
harvest in some of those difficult places, even
like Switzerland, where more and more Bible-believing
Christians are being persecuted.
I was talking to our Swiss leader on
the ship, as he's there visiting as well,
and he said, you can't understand how good
you have it in Britain, with the size
of the church, and the amount of activity,
and other factors, when in places like Switzerland,
more and more Bible-believing people are considered
totally on the periphery of society, and are
being persecuted.
Yes, a country that was once considered somewhat
Christian, the land of Switzerland.
It's harvest time.
We believe also in the Muslim world.
We'll talk about that maybe tomorrow night a
little more.
My final word is actually two words, but
it sounds like one.
It's a new word.
It's a business term.
I hope it won't offend you.
It's proactive.
How many of you use that word in
your vocabulary?
I know quite a few of you look
like you're a little down the track, and
you're not into new words too much.
They frighten you.
But this is a new word that came
into my life.
It came into my life, and then I
read it in a book.
This word is being overused, and should be
phased out of our vocabulary.
I guess I was a little slow.
But if you want to read the hottest
business book of this century, you go pick
up Stephen Covey's book, Seven Habits of the
Effective Person.
I think that's the title.
It's unbelievable the quantity of books that have
been sold, that one book.
And in that book, he's got a lot
of interesting ideas.
Though he's not a most of that indirectly
comes from the Bible.
That's sad in one way.
It's good in another way.
I won't get into it.
But one of his buzzwords, I think he
must have got it from someone else, is
proactive.
Talks about win-win.
Talks about synergy.
Talks about principle-centered leadership.
There are tremendous changes taking place in the
business world.
Not every company, but many companies are facing
this truth.
If they don't take better care of their
people, and become more people focused in their
business, they're probably not going to be able
to compete in the competitive world we now
live in.
And it is exciting to see some changes
in some companies and some businesses.
And in OM, a movement that has to
operate some ways like a business.
We took a survey from our people around
the world.
Guess what they said?
They wanted more people care.
They wanted more pastoral care.
They're out in the field.
They're out reaching people.
They're in teams.
They want proper pastoral care.
And that's one of the things we're trying
to do in our work.
My final word is proactive.
It simply means no matter how many problems
you have, no matter how many doubts you're
struggling with, no matter how many unanswered prayers,
no matter how many times you've fallen on
your nose, you're going to keep on keeping
on.
That's what Jesus did.
He went all the way to the cross.
And if our Lord went all the way
to the cross, who was a son of
God, dare we hold back, or allow discouragement
to slow us down, or to push us
into a sidetrack or a tangent.
Let's keep on keeping on.
Corinthians says, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in
the work of the Lord, knowing that your
labor is never in vain in the Lord.
And I tell you, if a verse like
that doesn't motivate you, then you need help.
You better give your pastor a phone call
this weekend.
Go in there for a little counseling session.
Maybe you lay hands on your head and
give you a kickstart back into reality.
Be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the
work of the Lord.
And I say this, if a character like
me with all my struggles and all my
weaknesses and all my doubts can know the
reality of that verse every single day since
my conversion 43 years ago, then my dear
British friends, I'm afraid you don't have any
excuse.
Let's pray.
Our God and Father, we thank you for
your Word.
And we thank you for these five words
from your Word that can motivate us and
inspire us and enable us to be more
committed and more focused as we attempt to
run this great spiritual marathon that you have
put us into.
You know everything about us and you love
us still.
You know the times when ego, instead of
being crucified, has locked into its old ways
and caused grief in the factory floor or
in our home or wherever, even in ministry.
And so we would want to say with
all of our hearts, from Galatians 220, O
Lord Jesus, we are crucified with your Son,
Jesus Christ.
Nevertheless, we live, yet not us, but he
who lives in us.
We thank you for the power of your
Holy Word and enable us, God, not to
just be hearers of the Word only, but
doers this Easter season.
And Lord, especially for people that find themselves
in a Friday ethos, may they understand in
the depth of their heart, Sunday is coming.
Glory to your name.
Amen.