Living God, You know all about us, and
You love us still.
You know how phony we can sometimes be.
You know the problems, the burdens, that especially
will come back upon us on Monday, and
Tuesday, and Wednesday, as we go away from
the fellowship, from this tremendous challenge, ministry, worship,
praise, music.
God, we ask that You speak to us
from Your Word.
You already have today.
Speak again, O God, for Thy servants listen.
Give us hearts to obey.
Give us feet to follow Your Son, the
Lord Jesus.
We thank You for the power of Your
Holy Spirit.
We thank You for the reality of this
life we have in Jesus Christ.
Lord, we feel weak, but we know You
are strong.
Lord, we know that Your Word says, You
do not want hearers of the Word, but
doers.
And that tonight, You are looking for men
and women of action.
We know Your Holy Ghost brings a holy
go.
And that if the Holy Ghost is moving
in our lives, we will be going places,
and we will be doing things for You
and for Your glory.
Deliver us from the spiritual myopia of the
present day.
Deliver us from just being some evangelical fish
floating downstream for fear that we may get
hurt in the warfare of the soul.
Open our eyes.
Fill our hearts.
For we ask in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
I want you to open your Bibles with
me.
I don't know if they can turn the
lights on out there a little bit.
They may be able to.
Some of you may have x-ray vision,
night vision.
But I want you to turn in your
Bibles to the book of Isaiah.
The book of Isaiah.
Isaiah chapter 6.
One of the reasons I'm so thankful to
God.
Praise the Lord.
What a blessing to be able to see
you.
I knew there was somebody out there because
we're told here to go by faith.
Let's look into our Bibles.
How many of you have your Bible?
Hold it up.
It's good to see a few thousand Bibles.
Hallelujah for God's Word.
How many are thankful for God's Word?
Say, thank you, Jesus.
Thank you, Jesus.
Amen.
Isaiah chapter 6.
The Word of God.
One of the things, as I was saying,
that I appreciate about the men who organized
this great meeting, this great festival, this great
holy convocation, this great hallelujah session, whatever you
want to call it.
Jesus said in the age.
One of the things that impresses me is
their esteem of the Word of God.
And I believe that's one of the reasons
the blessing of God has been upon these
gatherings.
The esteem of the Word of God.
We have a thing like this in England.
Last year it was a disaster.
Because it was all music.
Music.
God uses music.
Some of that music went a bit astray.
The Word of God was kept in the
sidelines.
The ministry of the Word of God was
put in the sidelines.
And this is a wonderful thing that we're
taking this prime time.
You see, this is prime time.
To look into the Word of God.
Let's look at Isaiah chapter 6.
In the year that King Uzziah died, I
saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne,
high and lifted up, and His train filled
the temple.
Above it stood the seraphim.
Each one had six wings.
And with two he covered his face.
And with two he covered his feet.
And with two he did fly.
And one cried unto another and said, Holy,
holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
The whole earth is full of His glory.
And the posts of the door moved at
the voice of Him who cried.
And the house was filled with smoke.
Then said I, Woe is me, for I
am undone, because I am a man of
unclean lips.
And I dwell in the midst of a
people of unclean lips.
For mine eyes have seen the King, the
Lord of hosts.
Then flew one of the seraphim unto me,
having a live coal in his hand, which
he had taken with the tongues from off
the altar.
And he laid it upon my mouth and
said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and
that iniquity is taken away, and thy sin
is purged.
Also I heard the voice of the Lord
saying, Whom shall I send?
And whom will I go?
For whom will go for us?
Then said I, Here am I, send me.
Reality.
Isaiah, this great prophet, had an experience with
God.
And in these days as we gather together,
we can have an experience with God Himself.
It's not just a matter of more teaching.
Praise God for all the teaching.
It's not just a matter of lifting our
hearts in praise.
Praise Him for every opportunity to do that.
But I believe God wants to meet with
us.
And I know you agree.
It's good to see what a biblical experience
of God involves.
First of all, we see Isaiah getting a
fresh glimpse of the Lord.
I saw also the Lord.
Our goal must be God.
I don't know how much you know about
Operation Mobilization.
I'm not going to be speaking much about
that.
But it's a training work.
Our burden is to take young people, not
necessarily seminary graduates or Bible college graduates, we
have many from that category as well, but
ordinary young people, and to give them an
experience with the living God.
To put them into situations where they will
have to learn to trust God more.
Whether it be in India or Spain or
Turkey, the Muslim world, the communist world.
And we have decided as a movement, as
we have reached our 20th birthday this month,
two decades of learning at the feet of
Jesus.
But we decided many years ago, our goal
must be God Himself.
It's not God plus success, God plus this
or God plus that, but God Himself.
We read in the book of Colossians that
we are complete in Jesus Christ.
We read that in Christ dwelleth all the
fullness of the Godhead bodily.
That's powerful.
In Christ dwelleth all the fullness of the
Godhead bodily.
So Isaiah saw the Lord.
You know sometimes when you get in a
series of meetings like this, you can become
very introspective.
You can begin looking in yourself, and you
see all the ugliness and all the weakness,
and the sin and all whatever else.
There was a great man of God from
Scotland who said this, I'll never forget it.
He said, for every one look at self,
take ten looks at Jesus.
Isaiah said, I saw the Lord.
Are you seeing the Lord in these days?
What an experience that can be.
I've made it the habit of my life
for the last twenty years, every month or
every other month, to go out into the
woods or a mountain or a cave, and
to spend a half day or a day
alone with God.
The last time I did this was in
the mountains of Scotland, just to get away
from people, to get away from the telegrams
and the phone calls which are part of
this kind of work.
This summer we'll have two and a half
thousand people moving out in some thirty nations.
Those ships, three hundred vehicles, reaching probably fifteen
million people with the word of God.
That's not because we're anything.
That's because God answers prayer.
But I find in the midst of this
kind of work, it's necessary to pull away
into the woods, into the basin, and spend
a day with God.
And it's been in those days, alone with
God.
I started this when I was about seventeen,
shortly after my conversion to Jesus Christ.
It's there that I've had a similar time,
as I read here, after Isaiah saw the
Lord, he saw the holiness of God.
Young people, I believe today, we need a
greater understanding of the holiness of God.
It's not some superficial, light thing to be
a follower of Jesus Christ.
There is the joy.
There is the fun of being a believer.
The adventure, the challenge.
But our God is a holy God.
He hates sin.
He hates nonsense.
He says in His word that we will
have to account for every idle word that
comes from our mouths.
I don't understand that.
But I know this.
One of the things God wants to do
in these days together, and it's what I'll
be speaking on mostly tomorrow, is to teach
us what spiritual balance is.
The balance of freedom and authority.
The balance of liberty and discipline.
The balance of the local church and world
evangelism.
The balance of being concerned for people's personal
physical needs.
And the balance of reaching the whole world
with the word of God.
The balance that comes and that's needed when
we teach and preach the reality, the indwelling
Holy Spirit, without which we can do nothing.
Spiritual balance.
One of the reasons I do anything to
get people to read the writings of A
.W. Tozer, I think I'd be willing to
come to Jesus 78 just to give book
reviews.
They said, well, George, you know, we really
can't have you again, but you can come
and give book reviews.
Hallelujah!
Because if I can get you into the
writings of Tozer, into the writings of Eugenia
Price, into the writings of Roy Hesschen, I
tell you, you'll never be the same in
most cases.
Isaiah saw the holiness of God.
Have you had a vision of the holiness
of God?
Then what happened?
He said, verse 5, Woe is me, for
I am undone, because I am a man
of unclean lips, and dwell in the midst
of a people of unclean lips, for mine
eyes have seen the King, the Lord of
hosts.
Oh, what an experience, praise God.
Mine eyes have seen the King.
I want to ask you, have you ever
had personal contact with a living Christ?
I know there's some tonight.
You may have just come with a friend.
You've never come to experience salvation in Jesus
Christ.
And I'd like to briefly share, especially with
you, my own story.
I'm not from a Christian home.
My parents did not know Christ, though they
were good parents in many ways.
My grandfather from the Netherlands was an atheist.
My other grandfather from Glasgow, Scotland was a
drunk.
By the age of 16, I had become
a materialist.
I had a little bit of religion, because
there seemed to be some nice girls in
the church, just like in the nightclubs.
So I came back from the nightclubs in
New York City on Saturday night, and I
was in church on Sunday morning.
God was working in my heart.
An elderly lady began to pray for me.
She had prayed for the high school that
I was attending for 14 years.
I want to tell you, prayer is the
greatest force you and I have available to
us, together with love.
Prayer and love.
That's God's method, built on faith, based on
the truth.
That lady prayed for 14 years for that
high school.
How many of you are going to go
back from here with a burden to see
revival in your high school?
In your college?
In your town?
She travailed, she persevered in prayer 14 years.
She not only prayed that people would be
converted, she prayed that they would be converted
and go forth as servants.
You see, we are saved to worship, and
we are saved to serve, not to sleep.
When I went to that school, I got
in a bit of trouble.
She heard about me.
She didn't condemn me.
Isn't that wonderful?
But she prayed.
She prayed for me for three years, and
every year I got worse.
I don't want to go into detail about
my sin.
There's no purpose in that.
She kept praying.
She sent me a Gospel of John through
the post, through the mail.
And if you don't know Jesus Christ personally,
if you've never experienced a radical life-changing
experience with Christ, I recommend the Gospel of
John.
You can get one.
The fourth book in the New Testament.
I read this, even when I came home
from the clubs.
Even when I came home from dancing all
night, perhaps my greatest infatuation next to women,
sports, and, well, my own selfish ego.
She prayed for me for three years.
I read this Gospel.
And then Billy Graham came to New York
City.
People always say, ah, that's a lot of
emotion, Billy Graham.
I didn't know much about it.
No one had ever witnessed to me about
Jesus Christ.
I didn't know anything like this existed.
And do you know there are friends back
in your school who are in the state
today that I was in then.
They know nothing about Jesus Christ.
And a friend invited me to that one
night, it wasn't a crusade, one night meeting
in New York City, Madison Square Garden.
Twenty thousand people there.
I stood well as far away as I
could get, watched with my binoculars, heard he
was a hypnotist, see what he was going
to do.
I can't remember much about that night, but
I remember him showing from the Word of
God, he kept saying, he spoke with authority,
and it went like an arrow to my
soul.
And he said, if God washes away your
sin, he will remember them no more.
And I was convicted about my lying, because
I was a liar.
About my lust, because I was in heavy
to pornography.
I was convicted about my pride, about my
double life.
And when he gave an invitation, I had
never seen anything like that in my whole
life.
An invitation, told people to get out of
their seats, what are they going to go
crazy?
The Holy Spirit convinced me that this is
what I needed to do.
And I went forward that night, tears of
repentance, and I trusted Jesus Christ as my
Savior, as my Lord.
Have you ever done that?
May some decide even tonight, this is the
hour for you to make that commitment.
There's hundreds, hundreds who are here willing to
talk to you, show you from the Word
of God.
This is not our philosophy.
We are here from many different churches, many
different backgrounds, many different nationalities, but we have
found the truth in the Word of God
and in the experience of salvation.
The Bible says, so great salvation.
A man came to Jesus, a religious man.
He came in the night, just like this.
Didn't even have a flashlight.
They didn't have those in Jesus' day.
And he said, spoke to Jesus, said, you're
a teacher.
And Jesus spoke to him and said, accept
the man, be born again, be born again.
He can never enter the kingdom of God.
Have you been born again?
Well, that happened in my life.
And I went back to that high school
and that lady kept praying.
And I remember when God opened the door
when I was 17 or 18 to speak
to many of my fellow students.
Many had been praying.
This lady had been praying.
And in that one meeting, about 125, 150
from that school where a third of the
students were off and drunk every weekend, about
150 of them came into the cafeteria to
pray for salvation and to seek the Lord.
I believe God can do that in your
high school.
You'll learn how to pray.
I believe one of the greatest challenges God
can bring to our hearts tonight is to
learn how to pray.
There are books like Destined for the Throne
and other outstanding books that you can get
that will teach you about prayer.
The problems of prayer, the obstacles of prayer,
like pride, unbelief, unwillingness to step out by
faith.
So Isaiah had a great experience with God.
He saw God's holiness.
He experienced God's cleansing.
After conversion, we can have other experiences with
God.
Billy Graham, in speaking about the great reality
and the experience of the Holy Spirit, said
this, I don't care how you get it,
just get it.
And I believe it's God's will that His
people are filled with the Holy Spirit.
Ephesians 5 says, Be filled with the Holy
Spirit.
Some people think this is a spectacular thing.
And God sometimes works in spectacular ways.
Praise His name.
And I want to tell you, God often
also works in ordinary ways.
And I am convinced the world is going
to be evangelized by ordinary people.
Some people feel, I don't believe many here,
and I know the organizers of this great
Jesus festival don't believe this way, but some
people feel, they do in England, that this
kind of great gathering is not a place
for presenting the challenge of world missions.
You know, if we believe that way, we
got some pages to tear out of the
book.
Maybe you can meet me after the meeting,
and we'll tear the pages out.
Now, I don't preach much about world missions,
and I'm not preaching that tonight.
My favorite message that I speak on is
the all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ, the Lordship
of Jesus Christ, spiritual reality, worship.
I love to speak about accepting yourself, and
how to handle your strong emotions.
Perhaps that's because I'm such an emotional case.
And if you don't think that's true, go
ask my wife.
My wife, she's sitting right there.
Eighteen years, she's had to live with me.
You can imagine.
You know, I thought I was really getting
sanctified.
I was really getting close to Jesus, and
I was learning how to be patient, and
I was learning more about gentleness, which is
the last thing to come into my type
of person.
And control, self-control.
Because I had this problem, my tongue went
faster than my brain.
It's always saying stupid things, unkind things.
Then my brain, a few seconds later, chugs
along.
Hey, hey, hey, hey.
You shouldn't have said that.
I already said it.
Now, before I was a Christian, this led
to many fights, fist fights.
And I was often beat.
As you can see, I'm not the world's
greatest, the largest character.
I got in a fight once in grammar
school with a girl, and I lost.
I tell you.
There was one humble man.
And I had a lot of difficulty in
accepting myself, because I was so thin.
And I saw this advertisement in the papers,
this beautiful girl, this thin fellow on the
beach.
And the big thing before I was converted
was girls.
The big thing after I was converted was,
if I'm honest, still girls.
And Jesus.
And slowly he won.
You know, some people think when you're saved,
everything just changes overnight.
You know, wings start growing out of your
back.
Well, you know, I don't know if it's
that way with you.
But a lot of my problems only started
after I was saved.
Any of you encounter that after you got
saved, you had more problems?
Anybody?
Then somebody comes along, you know, this little
bow tie, blue eyes, crew cut.
If you accept Jesus, it'll be all wonderful
the rest of your life.
You want to know what happened to me
when I walked out of Madison Square Garden
the night I was converted?
I very seldom tell this.
I had a blonde with me, because I
thought she needed religion.
And arm in arm, we walked out of
Madison Square Garden, and some real tough New
York, I think we called them Ted's back
then.
Anybody from New York City?
Ooh.
What about Detroit?
That's the same as New York.
Okay.
And I walked out into the street, and
this fellow said something really filthy about this
girl I was with.
And I thought, boy, this is the time
to demonstrate my newfound faith.
And I said, well, excuse me, you shouldn't
say that.
Boom.
I was flat on the cement.
That was my first blessing in my newfound
Christian life.
Now, you maybe haven't, you perhaps didn't get
that same literal experience.
Most of you weren't saved in New York.
Toronto is such a city of brotherly love.
Depends who your brother is.
But I'll tell you, though when you accept
Christ, you may not get laid out on
a pavement in New York City, the devil
will attack and counterattack and do everything to
drag you back to Egypt, to drag you
back to the world.
And that's why it's so good when young
Christians and older Christians can come to something
like this and be further grounded in the
Word of God.
And I thank God that after I was
converted, that I got into some books, and
that I was shown how to study the
Bible, and how to mark my Bible, and
how to read it right through.
I wonder how many of you, some of
you are quite a few years in Christ,
have never yet read the Bible through even
once.
Raise your hand.
Come on, be honest.
Ooh.
Some I know are tired.
They can't get their hand up.
And I would give you this challenge.
I would ask you to promise the Lord
to read His Word.
You say you believe it's the Word of
God.
You haven't even read it yet.
And I would ask you to read the
Word of God right through.
Memorize some of the best verses that speak
to your heart, but read the Word of
God right through.
And I'd be willing to help you do
that.
You can write me a note.
Dear George, give it in at the book
table, or give it to me.
Say, I promise to read God's Word right
through in one year, by His grace, not
by your strength.
You won't make it.
And in one year, I will write you
a letter, and I'll say, Dear Susie, or
Joe, or Luigi, did you get through the
Word of God?
Muslims memorize the entire Koran, but Christians don't
even read the Bible through.
Something has gone wrong somewhere.
And I got into God's Word.
Now, I had a lot of problems as
a young Christian.
I shared some of these today in the
other session.
The battle with lust.
The battle with impatience.
The battle with self-acceptance.
I was telling you about that little advertisement.
When I saw that advertisement of the skinny
guy next to this girl, and then a
big, strong, good-looking fellow came along.
And he punched this skinny fellow, and he
ran away.
And the big fellow took the girl.
I thought, uh-oh, that is going to
be my life.
There's no hope for me.
And it said in the bottom of the
page, right in today, for Charles Atlas, muscle
building, weight gaining, guaranteed.
Dear sir, please send me your apparatus.
For months, I was lifting weights.
I was eating extra food.
After about five months, I gained half a
pound.
Now, you can laugh.
That wasn't funny.
How do you do when you look in
the mirror?
And it was after I became a simple
believer in Jesus Christ that I realized God
accepted me.
God made me.
Why?
And I began to really accept myself.
I believe many of our hang-ups, even
the lust problem, bitterness, jealousy, resentment, fear, worry,
I believe these things are linked with lack
of self-acceptance and also very much with
having too low an image of ourself and
also insecurity that often comes in the pressurized
culture that you and I live in today.
The Bible says over nine times, love your
neighbor as you love yourself.
That's basic.
If God says it nine times, you know,
He knows that some things don't go in
our thick heads one time.
And so He repeats in His Word.
It started in the Old Testament.
Love thy neighbor as thyself.
But you see, if you don't have a
healthy respect for yourself, accept yourself, you may
have a disability, you may have a problem,
but if you don't have a healthy respect
and acceptance of yourself, a biblical acceptance of
yourself, then you will have difficulty relating to
other people.
I want to speak something tomorrow on this
whole area of communication.
How to communicate.
How to give and receive love.
How to forgive.
How to experience forgiveness on a deeper emotional
level that can reach down into where the
problems really are.
Because you see, so many of our problems
are in the unconscious or the subconscious.
That's why we end up doing things that
we promise not to do.
We come to Jesus 77, say, Lord Jesus,
I promise never to do that again.
We go home two weeks later, we do
it.
And it's because the battle is real.
George Duncan, that great preacher from Scotland, said
this is why we have to memorize the
Word of God.
This is why we have to get the
Word of God deep into our subconscious.
Jesus calls it the heart.
He says, from the heart of man come
the problems.
And as a young Christian, I began to
memorize the Word of God.
And it began to clean my mind.
I had so many impure thoughts.
Even after I was a Christian.
I thought, can God ever clean my mind
up?
I could burn the pornography, that was easy.
But can God clean my mind up?
Then I had these horrible dreams.
All kinds of dreams.
All kinds of women coming through the windows,
coming down the chimneys.
Most of them didn't have any clothes on.
Terrible dreams.
Of course, none of you have these problems.
And I thought, God, can you ever, ever
change me?
And I saw from His Word, I have
hid Thy Word in my heart, the psalmist
said, that I may not sin against You.
And so I began meditating on all the
passages about purity.
And I repented whenever lust came into my
mind.
I repented immediately.
I also began to share this with others.
Tremendous value in sharing.
Praying together, one with another, that we may
be healed.
Slowly, slowly.
Oh, there were the crises as well.
The recommitments.
Times when God poured His Spirit upon my
heart and into my life.
But there was the process.
You know, Jesus said, if any man come
after me, any man, any woman, let him
deny himself.
Deny himself, that's the key.
Take up the cross, daily, follow me.
And if you're not willing to do that,
you're going to end up in another evangelical
casualty statistic somewhere.
And I remember how even my dreams began
to change.
I tell you, I woke up one morning
so excited, praising God.
I can remember this dream, this most incredible
woman came into my room.
In the dream, don't get the story confused,
please.
And the moment I saw that there was
this incredible temptation, I jumped out of my
bed, dove out the window, and ran away.
I thought, hallelujah, something's happening to me.
And I believe that some of you are
going to face the greatest battles in your
spiritual life in this area of lust.
And I want to say there is victory,
there is power, there is reality, there is
cleansing in the blood of Jesus Christ.
The way will not be easy.
I had a lot of other hang-ups
as a Christian, especially this impatience.
As I was saying before, before I thought
I was getting somewhat sanctified and growing in
grace and becoming more patient, then I got
married.
Yeah.
My wife's here, so I have to be
careful.
But then I saw what an impatient wretch
I was.
And in some ways, I felt my wife
wasn't so spiritual.
She wouldn't get up with me and do
my exercise program in the morning.
And then, she seemed to be a little
slower than me.
I felt everything in this world was going
too slow.
And, you know, we need people in God's
work to get going.
God had to break me.
God had to humble me.
And God had to teach me what it
is to repent.
My wife and I read that little book
Calvary Road together early after our marriage.
God had worked a very deep and real
work into her life.
But in our first days in Mexico, the
first country we went to, we read that
little book and we read that chapter, Revival
in the Home.
And if there's anywhere where we need revival
today, it's in the home.
God can give it.
We learn to repent.
And I came to see that it wasn't
a matter of her being slow or this
or that, but that we were different by
His mercy.
Because this is reality.
We're talking about reality tonight.
We've experienced His grace and forgiveness and love
that has kept us together these 18 years.
And I'll let you in on a secret.
It's getting better.
Jesus Christ is the one that can put
your marriage together.
Jesus Christ is the one that can keep
your marriage together.
And if you're going to be getting married
in the coming years, make sure you're building
on a solid foundation.
Unselfishness.
Love.
Discipline.
Brokenness.
Revival.
Oh, young people, it's not a game to
get married.
The Word of God speaks much about this.
Isaiah had an experience.
He saw the holiness of God.
He experienced the cleansing of God and the
purging of God.
And then what?
Notice those words in verse 8.
Then said I, Here am I.
Send me.
This is part of the whole Gospel.
It's part of the full Gospel.
The challenge to go into all the world
and preach the Gospel to every creature.
Acts 1.8. There are verses in Matthew,
Mark, Luke, John, many of them in the
book of Acts.
They all point the same direction.
You know what Paul said?
Even in the first century, he said, I
want to preach Jesus Christ where He's not
been named yet.
That's Paul.
And then he said, I want to go
to the regions beyond.
And in Acts 1.8, a verse that
I believe we should read again and again
until we have memorized it.
It says, But ye shall receive power after
the Holy Spirit has come upon you and
you shall be witnesses unto me both in
Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the uttermost
part of the earth I have in my
pocket two things actually.
One is a tape recording that was to
remind you that there are many, many cassette
tapes available in the tent.
Many of them at the price of the
blank cassette that you can take and send
to other people.
Look at them.
If you don't like the message, it's easy.
Just record some of this great music over
the top of it.
You can't lose.
I mention this because cassette tapes have been
such a blessing to me.
When I'm in the car, when I'm in
the bathtub.
I had Brother Andrew in the bathtub the
other day.
It's a tremendous experience.
I mean, I was in the bathtub listening
to Brother Andrew on the tape.
And I find this is a tremendous way
to redeem the time.
I hate to shave.
I want to grow a beard down to
my toes someday.
I'm waiting for the first hair to appear.
No, it's there.
Some countries I work in, if you've got
a beard, they don't think you're saved.
I've got enough problems without running into that
one.
But oh, how I've been challenged through these
tapes.
And when I shave, I love to listen
to a tape.
Just carry a little $35 cassette recorder with
me wherever I go.
I hope you'll get in on doing that.
But I also have in my pocket this
little package of cards.
I pray cards.
And I hope you'll at least take a
look at these because in this packet of
cards we have made a card for 52
different nations in the world with prayer requests
for God's people in those nations.
You may never go to the mission field.
You may never go to Afghanistan or Albania
or Russia.
That's one of the first places I started.
We mentioned God's smuggler.
You're looking at God's bungler right here.
Second day I was arrested by the Soviet
secret police for my own stupid mistake.
Many of you have had many failures in
your life?
I tell you if I listed all mine
you'd fill the first volume in an encyclopedia.
For one thing I know, God loves failures.
And failure is open the back door to
success.
And after the Soviet secret police got me
in 1960 and gave me a little submachine
gun escort back to the free world, I
went for a day of prayer in the
mountains of Germany.
I was in the top of the tree
praising Jesus and worshiping Jesus.
It's one of the safest places with my
voice, I can assure you.
And it was there in that tree that
God brought these words to my mind, Operation
Mobilization.
And I thought of God mobilizing Germans and
English and French who had killed and destroyed
each other 20 years before.
Bringing them together and reaching out to millions
of people in Europe.
I went back to Spain.
We went up for two more days of
prayer with a group of Spaniards and I
said, look, I believe this is a burden
from God.
I don't have any money.
I don't have much support.
But I believe God's in it.
Will you join me?
And 10 Spaniards joined.
And we asked God for 300 men in
obedience to that verse of Scripture that says,
Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that
he will send forth labors into the harvest.
And guess what you think happened next summer
in Europe?
300 men.
And we asked God for 2,000.
What do you think happened next summer?
A little group of unknown nobodies who had
discovered that God answers prayer.
And God gave us 2,000 men.
And it's been going ever since.
And we've got young people.
We've got young people who were here last
year and caught the vision last year who
are on their way now.
Now I know someone says, well, aren't they
too young?
Aren't they ready?
Would you restudy the book of Acts?
Would you figure out how old David was
when he slew Goliath?
Would you figure out how many years the
Thessalonian believers have been grounded in the faith
before their reputation was known all over that
area?
Their love, their witness, their power?
I believe under the right supervision with discipline
and careful training, working with the churches, working
with missionaries, that young people your age can
be mightily used of God.
We need the normal missionaries, the families.
Many of them are used.
But why cannot we have an army of
young people, especially single people, who can supplement
their work?
They want us.
The Mormons have 24,000 men.
They've just won 100,000 in the past
years in Great Britain to the Mormon faith.
100,000 converts, even though they preach one
of the toughest messages in Britain, the forsaking
of tea drinking.
Incredible.
And these Mormon young men, they go door
to door, door to door.
How can it be that the Mormons have
more men on the field than all the
Bible-believing, and all the Pentecostal, non-Pentecostal,
Bible-believing churches all put together?
I want to tell you that's something we've
got to think about.
And I believe that God wants to raise
up from this North American continent an army
of 100,000 men and women who love
Jesus and who'll give two years of their
life in overseas service where millions have no
Bible, no tract.
In fact, half the world is waiting for
its first gospel tract.
Look at all the Christian books.
Look at our Bibles.
Yet half the world is waiting for one
little gospel tract that cost a tenth of
a penny to print.
Then, some of those will return to Canada,
to the States.
There's much to be done here.
And others will take their place.
Others out of that group will see that
they have the gift and the ability to
be effective in a foreign land.
I don't think you'll ever know unless you
give it a chance.
Many misunderstandings about the great task of world
evangelism.
I would beg of you in the name
of Jesus to take these cards and to
pray through them.
You'll notice countries that have not one single
church.
Countries that have not one single believer.
Imagine if I assigned two of you to
evangelize the whole of Ontario.
How would those four there in the front
bench will give you?
All of Ontario you evangelize.
With no other Christian in Ontario.
Can you imagine that?
And yet, this is what we're doing.
The Bible says, the harvest is plenteous, the
laborers are few.
Isaiah said, Here am I.
Send me.
Not here am I like a lot of
young men around Canada.
Send my sister.
Uh-uh.
Praise God for the girls, the sisters, the
women who are going.
And there's a great need for women.
But all for men and women who will
say, Lord, here am I.
Send me.
I would ask you to restudy this chapter
in Isaiah.
I would ask you to read some of
these missionary books.
Books by Michael Griffiths like Give Up Your
Small Ambitions or Take My Life.
Books by this man, Mr. Hillis, about Jesus
Christ being the only way, the only truth,
the only life.
If you don't have money to buy that
book, you write me a letter and say,
I want that book, I'll send it to
you free.
But I believe the Spirit of God wants
to move in our hearts to worship Him,
yes, to fellowship with one another, hallelujah, but
also to obey Him in world evangelization.
India has one-seventh of the world's population,
600 million.
In India alone, 12 million more every year.
And Canadians are one of the few groups
that can go to India without a visa
and you can stay there.
The number of missionaries in India has dropped
50%.
If we don't count OM, has dropped 50
% in the past 30 years.
Who will go?
It says in the book of Ezekiel that
God was looking, God was seeking for a
man that would stand in the gap and
make up the edge and He found none.
Tonight I believe across this great field, God
is seeking, God is looking for men, for
women who will stand in the gap here
and overseas in prayer, in going, in being,
Isaias in the 20th century.
Men and women with a vision of God,
the holiness of God.
Men and women with a reality of repentance.
Men and women who will say, Lord, here
am I.
I'm weak.
I'm scared.
I got problems yet.
I want to tell you if we wait
till you get all your problems cleared up
before you go to the mission field, nobody
will go and all the missionaries in the
field have to come back.
I believe the devil is a liar and
he keeps telling you you can't do it.
It's too big a challenge.
You're not smart enough.
You haven't got enough education.
You're not emotionally stable enough.
Look at me.
Emotional stability is necessary to be effective overseas.
I have to give my resignation.
Of course, God does change us.
The Holy Spirit brings fruit and power and
gifts and we grow but we can't sit
away expecting some kind of evangelical computer program
to force us into action.
Beloved, the decision is yours.
God bless you as you make it.
Let's just pray.
Lord, we thank you for your word.
Don't let us run away like Jonah.
Don't let us hide.
Cause us to obey.
You know our needs.
You know the hang-ups that some are
wrestling with.
The defeat.
The sin.
Lust.
Jealousy.
Bitterness.
Fear.
Shyness.
God, fill us with your Holy Spirit.
That these things will be driven from our
lives and that we will be able to
move forward as a mighty army for your
glory.
Oh God, we thank you for what you
have done.
Not through Operation Mobilization but through all the
various groups you have raised up.
Oh Lord, we give you the praise.
And we know in these last days you're
on the move wanting to do even greater
things for your glory.
We want to just pray.
Here am I.
Send me.
Will you pray that prayer?
He may never send you overseas but he
may.
Will you pray that prayer?
Here am I.
Send me.
Even me.
May God's Spirit make it real.
In Jesus' name, amen.