Father, we love your word, we love your
word, and we're here to feed on your
word, to be challenged, to be taught, to
run the race.
Help us now, in Jesus' name, amen.
Hebrews chapter 12 is one of the great
chapters as we think of spiritual leadership.
You know, I wish we had more time
to share some of the great things God
is doing.
I'd like to say that tomorrow night is
our night of prayer here on the ship,
and though this is largely for the crew
and the staff of the ship, you know,
if a few of you showed up, I'm
sure we would find a place.
We may have to spread to the lounge.
We do a lot of our praying in
small groups, but we believe that the victories
in the spiritual life are won upon our
knees in intercessory prayer, and that's one of
the marks of a spiritual leader.
He's a man of prayer.
He's a man that knows how to wait
upon God.
He's a man who knows how to engage
in the whole sphere of prayer, praise, worship,
thanksgiving, thanksgiving, contrition, adoration, worship.
You know, if we don't know some of
that reality, whatever other things we may learn
about leadership, sooner or later it gets a
little bit hollow, and it doesn't stand the
test of time.
Hebrews chapter 12, Wherefore, seeing we also are
compassed about, verse 1, with so great a
cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every
weight, and the sin which doth so easily
beset us, and let us run with patience
the race that is set before us.
Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of
our faith, who for the joy that was
set before him endured the cross, despising the
shame, and is set down at the right
hand of the throne of God.
For consider him that endured such contradiction of
sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and
faint in your minds.
Ye have not yet resisted unto blood striving
against sin, and ye have forgotten the exhortation
which speaketh unto you as unto sons, My
son, despise not thou the chastening of the
Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of
him.
For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and
scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
If you endure chastening, God dealeth with you
as with sons.
For what son is he whom the Father
chasteneth not?
But if ye be without chastisement, of which
all are partakers, then are ye bastards and
not sons.
Furthermore, we had our fathers of our flesh
who corrected us, we gave them reverence.
Shall we not much rather be in subjection
unto the Father of spirits and live?
For they verily for a few days chastened
us after their own pleasure, but he for
our profit, that we might be partakers of
his holiness.
Now no chastening for the present seemeth to
be joyous, but grievous nevertheless afterward it yielded
the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them who
are exercised by it.
Wherefore, lift up your hands which hang down,
and the feeble knees, and make straight paths
for your feet, lest that which is lame
be turned out of the way, but let
it rather be healed.
Follow peace with all men in holiness, without
which no man shall see the Lord.
Looking diligently, lest any man fail of the
grace of God, lest any root of bitterness
springing up trouble you, and by it many
be defiled.
Spiritual leadership is like running in a race.
In London they had a marathon recently.
They had 20,000 people enter that marathon.
Something like that.
To run 26 miles.
One man was 60 some years age.
Running.
In order to run that kind of distance,
you have to train your body for a
long time.
One thing I've noticed here in your beautiful
island is that quite a few people are
running.
I go out quite early in the morning,
5.30, and people are running all over
the place.
So this exercise program has come here to
your island.
Well, I'm not here to talk about running,
but it's interesting that the Holy Spirit uses
this to drive home a truth to our
minds.
That we're running in a race.
We have the same thing in 1 Corinthians
chapter 9.
Paul said, I therefore so run.
I so run.
He, in the same chapter, speaks about buffeting
his body.
Bringing it into subjection.
So that after preaching to others, he does
not become a castaway.
In some countries, the moment a man can
preach, they make him a Christian leader.
He can't pray.
He can't discipline his life.
His marriage is a mess.
He can't discipline his children, but he can
preach, make him a Christian leader.
I hope you don't do that here.
Because preaching without reality in the heart can
add or can end up in a very,
very disastrous situation.
People may be carried away with our oratory,
with our illustrations, with our ability to speak.
Sooner or later, they're going to find out
there's nothing in the heart.
It's just words.
Just words.
God has called us to run a race.
And our great goal in that race is
to become more and more like Jesus Christ.
God's race is a race, spiritually speaking, in
which our goal is to become more Christlike.
And that's, to me, the greatest goal in
our whole life.
You know, it's so easy to get Christian
service ahead of Christian character.
We want to do this.
We want to accomplish that.
And God is trying to impress upon His
people the need for Christian character.
What should be the great mark of a
Christian leader?
It's simple.
It's so simple.
Galatians chapter 5, verse 22.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace, long-suffering, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control.
Against such there is no law.
And they that are Christ have crucified the
flesh with the affections and lusts.
That's a strong statement.
This is not just for leaders.
This is for all believers.
They that are Christ have crucified the flesh
with the affections and lusts.
And you know why many people are defeated?
They're defeated in their spiritual life.
They're not experiencing reality in prayer, reality in
worship, reality in witness.
Because they don't want to see self crucified.
Self wants to live.
It wants its own way.
They that are Christ have crucified the flesh
with the affections and lusts.
And if we live in the Spirit, let
us also walk in the Spirit.
Let us not be desirous of vain glory,
provoking one another, envying one another.
So the spiritual leader is the man running
in God's race, bringing forth God's fruit in
his life.
Now we just have this session together this
evening.
And there's a danger that in sharing this
burden which is so much upon my heart
with you, we'll just get into too many
areas.
And we'll say things that you've already heard.
So I wanted to target in, especially, I've
said some very basic things, and you probably
already believe those things, about the crucified life,
about the fruit of the Spirit, about character
first and gifts second.
Reality, not just words.
And now I'd like to focus in on
a basic area that I feel is greatly
neglected.
I realize what I share in your life
tonight is just a small amount of truth
you're receiving.
You're reading books.
You're studying the Word.
You may be listening to some great Bible
ministry cassettes.
This morning when I was running, I was
listening to the memorial service of one of
the most anointed men we've had in Great
Britain in the past ten years, a man
named David Watson.
And in a very mysterious way, as a
young middle-aged man, David died last year
of cancer.
This year, actually.
And he wrote 15 books.
His book on discipleship is destined to be
one of the greatest Christian books of all
times.
That's my conviction.
Whenever I take it on my book table,
they're all gone.
I don't even think the ship has any
of that book.
Do they?
Sold out.
But all how my heart was ministered to
by that tape this morning.
But I want to focus in on something
that I know was on David Watson's heart.
We spoke about it together.
And it may be an area where perhaps
you haven't heard so much.
Maybe you have.
That's a risk I have to take.
I want to speak to you about maintaining
spiritual balance in your leadership.
That's the key word.
Maybe it's already an important word in your
vocabulary.
Good.
John Stott wrote a brilliant book, Balanced Christianity.
Do we have that one on the ship?
Sold out too.
Very significant book.
I also wrote a book on that subject.
Not so significant.
But it's called Revolution of Love and Balance.
You see, it seems that Satan's first strategy
is to keep us from total commitment, the
crucified life, and the fullness of the Holy
Spirit.
That's basic for spiritual reality and leadership.
Total commitment.
Fullness of the Spirit.
The Lordship of Christ.
There are many ways you can express it.
You know what I'm talking about.
And it seems that Satan will do anything
to get people from getting into that mainstream
of Holy Ghost blessing.
But when people begin to experience that kind
of life and begin to understand the fullness
and the glory of God, the power of
praise and of worship, then Satan changes his
strategy.
And the second strategy is to get that
Christian leader into extremism.
Get him off balance.
Get him to neglect one truth as he
gets caught up about another truth.
There was a great man of God.
I only met him once or twice.
His name was Mr. Maxwell.
He was the founder of the Prairie Bible
Institute.
The Bible Institute that has put more missionaries
on the field than any other Bible Institute
in history.
I preached there a number of times.
I'm going back there again in 1985.
What a great place.
And Maxwell would always emphasize spiritual balance.
In fact, they would say, Maxwell won one.
In all things, balance.
Billy Graham, the same thing.
Spiritual balance.
There's a great Bible college in the United
States called Columbia Bible College.
A great man of God leads that college.
Named Robertson McQuilkin.
Great leader in the Keswick movement.
And he had the same emphasis.
I wrote something in my Bible that has
really helped me when I thought about this
whole area of spiritual balance.
It's from Robertson McQuilkin, who pointed out that
it's very easy, very easy to go into
extremes.
This is what he said.
It is easier to go into extremes than
to stay at the center of Biblical tension.
Now, balance does not mean compromise.
For some Christians, the word compromise, jump, some
probably won't come to this ship because they
think, oh, this is compromise.
Whatever, they might think some little thing they've
heard.
This is compromise.
We can't go to the ship.
They're not 100% for Jesus.
Whatever, some little thing they may have heard
of.
The word compromise means different things to different
people.
I don't believe in compromising with the devil,
but I do believe in compromising with my
wife.
Forgive me.
If she says, we're going to do it
this way, and I say, I feel we
should do it that way, we sit down
and we negotiate.
I don't just hit her on the head
and drag her down my road.
We sit down, and maybe we say, all
right, today we go your way, and tomorrow
we go my way.
Or some other.
Compromise, in that sense, is simply an agreement.
And your church is not going to go
very far if sometimes you're not willing to
compromise.
Because God's people can get very stubborn.
One church recently announced in London, we will
have no clapping in the Sunday evening meeting.
You know, the British, a lot of the
churches, they like to be very quiet.
People don't want to be wakened as they're
falling asleep.
And so this church, they announced, no clapping
in the evening meeting.
And of course, many of the young people
now are really upset.
They like to clap a little bit with
a few of the songs.
It's ridiculous.
They should sit down and discuss how they
can, you know, maybe you could have one
or two quiet hymns with no clapping, and
then maybe you could have one or two
choruses with clapping.
That's a compromise.
There's nothing wrong with that.
So we're not compromising with the devil.
We may be compromising with our own human
stubbornness and giving in a little bit.
So spiritual balance is not compromise.
It's not being less dedicated.
It's not being less on fire.
Spiritual balance is combining the great truths of
the Bible.
Love, very important.
Truth.
Let me point out some of the areas
where as a Christian leader, and our burden
for this meeting was to get some potential
leaders, young men and women.
And I see we got a few.
Because you're the leaders tomorrow, five years from
now, ten years from now.
Why do we wait?
In some countries they wait until you grow
a beard before they allow you to be
a leader in the church.
They think the word elders means old people.
And we know that wisdom sometimes comes with
age, but not always.
Sometimes age is just a readjusting of your
prejudices that you had when you were young.
Not necessarily the wisdom that comes from God
and that comes from God's word.
So we want to find spiritual balance in
our ministry, in our preaching, in our teaching.
I was once sharing at a breaking of
bread meeting of 200 Christian leaders.
And I was finding it very difficult.
It was a meeting of brethren elders of
the brethren assemblies in Great Britain, a very
strong group in Britain.
They like, often, certain kinds of messages at
the breaking of bread.
And I didn't have that kind of message.
But I opened my heart and I gave
a plea from God for spiritual balance in
our ministry, in what we say.
Because we can say things.
We can say things to people that are
hurtful.
They hurt people.
Hurt the young people.
We get all excited about something.
We just blurt out.
And everybody feels terrible.
Everybody feels guilty.
Not because of the conviction of the Holy
Spirit, but because the whole thing is just
a heavy human guilt trip.
And you know, the Holy Spirit moved in
that meeting.
When I spoke on this subject of developing
balance and sensitivity in all that we say,
and revival came to many hearts, that article
actually was printed up in one of the
main brethren magazines.
It went throughout the world.
And I mention that because I believe a
lot of people, a lot of Christian leaders,
they really do want more balance in their
ministry.
They really do want that fruit of the
Spirit to be predominant, preeminent in their ministry.
They really do want Jesus Christ to be
lifted up and exalted.
Well, here are a few areas.
I hope this will be practical, where you
have to work for balance in your leadership.
Number one, maintaining the balance between life in
the church and life in the family.
I had a woman come to me broken.
She was completely broken.
And she shared how her husband left her.
He never came back.
She was very dedicated to the church.
She was a very gifted woman, very extrovert,
and her husband was a little quiet.
A very interesting combination.
Mine is the reverse.
I have a very quiet wife, except in
certain circumstances, and I'm a bit of an
extrovert.
Anyway, this lady was in church Sunday morning,
afternoon, and evening.
She had choir on Tuesday night, prayer meeting
Wednesday night, Bible study Thursday night, door-to
-door visitation Friday night.
The husband, he hardly ever saw her.
He wanted to talk to her.
I mean, is that wrong, that the husband
wanted to talk to his wife?
And because he was very quiet, after about
a year, he just put a note on
her bed.
Ten reasons why he was leaving.
He left.
He never came back.
Now, none of you want to have that
kind of note.
Any of you who are married?
I believe this is an area where Satan
really attacks Christian leaders.
You say, well, I'm young.
I'm not married.
Look, learn the things now.
You don't learn them afterward.
Learn them now, before you're married, that there
must be a balance between our work at
church, church life, prayer, all these things, and
the family, Christian leaders who neglect their children.
They never have time to play with their
children.
I saw a film where a girl was
getting more and more worldly.
Her daddy was the preacher, and he was
getting really upset.
His daughter was getting more and more worldly,
chasing all the crazy music.
And one night, she wanted to talk to
him.
She was struggling.
She knew she was in trouble.
She wanted to talk to him.
But he was busy preparing a sermon.
He had no time to talk to his
daughter, I tell you.
I hope with all my heart that you
men and women will work for balance in
that area.
My own practice, because I had the privilege
of learning something about this before I was
married and after I was married, that I
gave my children large chunks of my time.
In fact, I would even take them with
me, all traveling different parts of the world.
I'd take them even when they were three
years old.
I used to have my son in one
arm, running up the gangway of an airplane
to go off to preach.
And I had some interesting experiences, changing the
nappies in the airport, trying to get things.
The plane was going to leave, and I'm
in the bathroom with the baby.
And I thank God that he helped me
find the balance in this area.
I only wish I could have been even
more balanced.
The second area where we have to work
for balance is between fellowship, worship, fellowship
and worship, work and recreation.
Now, there are four basic ingredients in our
lives and in our churches.
We need times for fellowship.
Church should not be just one sermon after
the other.
They all line up in rows like little
ducks, and we give them a sermon.
As if everybody in town wants to come
and listen to us preach our great sermons.
We need preaching.
We need teaching.
Amen.
But it's good when God's people can fellowship.
Maybe they'd like to say something.
Maybe they'd like to share a verse or
a testimony.
And the importance of the time after the
church service when people can remain and fellowship
together.
And in most places in the world where
the church is growing, and I've observed about
50 countries, they are putting into practice the
small group concept.
You may already have this.
But if you don't have it, and the
only thing you get from the visit of
this ship to your town is the importance
of the small fellowship group concept, it will
be well worth our time.
That's how the church has grown in Korea.
That's how the church has grown in England.
That's how many of the big churches have
grown in the United States.
It doesn't mean you don't have your main
church service.
You do.
But you also have house groups.
You teach house group leaders how to teach
the Word of God to groups of five
or six.
Many people who may not come into your
church would be willing to go into somebody's
home.
Again, maybe your country is the exception.
You have to decide that.
But all over the world, God is using
the house group.
There's a church in London right now that
I'm linked with, and it's amazing the growth
that they have had.
A number of West Indians are going to
that church.
And I believe one of the reasons these
small house groups are growing and helping the
church to grow...
You know the one church in Korea has
a quarter of a million members.
A quarter of a million members.
One church.
The secret of the growth of that church
has been the small group.
You can have groups out in little towns.
You can have groups in parts of the
city that may be a long way from
your own church.
And then, once on a Sunday, they can
come together in a larger meeting.
One of the reasons that these groups are
so helpful, it gives people an opportunity to
share, to fellowship, to meet one another, rather
than just sit in rows.
Show me one Scripture that says God's people
must sit only in rows.
One Scripture.
I'd be happy to examine it together with
you.
And it's a beautiful thing when we can
sit in our homes, study the Word of
God, pray together, worship together, fellowship together.
On the other hand, your fellowship must be
brought into balance with worship.
Fellowship, we're ministering to one another in the
presence of God.
Worship, we turn away from one another and
we look to God and we worship Him.
Now, you can do that in rows.
You can do it in circles.
You can do it sitting.
You can do it standing.
You can do it running.
Hallelujah, you can even do it in the
bathtub.
But God is looking for worshipers.
And those two things have to be kept
in balance.
And then, work.
Now, in some countries I go to, work
is a dirty word.
People don't even know how to spell it
anymore.
Some spell it O-R-K, or S
-I-T, or S-L-E-E-P.
But God is calling us into a labor.
Do you know that word?
A labor of love.
And work has to be brought into balance
by rest and by recreation.
The Bible says, you all know the verse,
that our body is a temple of the
Holy Spirit.
And I've seen many ministers, many ministers, great
men, they push their body and their mind,
that's part of the body, they push it
to breaking point.
Now, some of you men, if you have
a job where you have to earn some
of the bread to put on the table,
and then you also have a church responsibility,
I tell you, I want to pray for
you.
You write me a letter and tell me
about it.
Because I know that's not easy.
And I feel that it's good for Christian
leaders to have some legitimate areas of recreation.
Maybe running, maybe swimming, maybe music, maybe some
other sport.
It may be a hobby, collecting stamps, standing
on your head.
That's a big thing in some places I've
heard.
But something that relaxes you, something that you
enjoy on the human level, I find young
people who become very dedicated to OM, to
the Lord, we get them in OM.
Most of the young people on this ship,
they're very committed, they're very zealous.
But you know what they do?
They try to deny the human factor.
You write that down.
The human factor.
I was going to call my book The
Human Factor.
Because there's a lot of human factors in
this book.
And then a great British writer, Graham Greene,
an unconverted writer, he wrote a book and
he called it The Human Factor.
I saw it in Smith's bookshop and I
thought, beat me to the title.
So I called it No Turning Back.
But there's a lot in this book of
similar material to what I'm trying to share
with you this evening.
How to maintain the balance.
How to keep your sanity when everybody else
is losing theirs.
That's leadership.
Everybody in the church is crawling up the
walls, jumping out the windows, yelling, screaming, and
you're thinking, praying, organizing, trying to calm down
the situation.
So we've got to find the balance in
that area.
Fellowship and worship, work, rest, recreation, recreating.
Of course, there's nothing like sleep.
The Bible says, Our God giveth His beloved
sleep.
And this is God's provision.
And you get some people, they're trying to
burn the candle at both ends.
They're staying up late at night, preparing their
sermons.
They're trying to get up early in the
morning.
And I've seen them, even in our very
work, Operation Mobilization, I've seen them come right
apart.
Right apart.
I don't know about your situation here, but
in some countries, many ministers are having nervous
breakdowns.
Others are suffering from intensive depression.
Physical depression.
Not just spiritual depression.
And it's a great concern to me.
You're going to find the balance in that
area?
If you do, there's a better chance you're
going to be running the race 10, 20,
30 years down the road.
A few more areas.
The balance between discipline and liberty.
Discipline and liberty.
Or organization and freedom.
How are you doing in that area?
If you overemphasize discipline, without the balance of
freedom, you go into legalism.
We get it right on the ship.
We need both.
Galatians says, God has called us unto freedom.
But, the same chapter, don't use the freedom
as an occasion to the flesh.
Have you ever been in a situation where
the pastor tries to get everybody to come
to church by threatening them?
I was in a meeting where the pastor
more or less told them if they weren't
regular church attenders, they'd go to hell.
I would have called that a little bit
of dangerous legalism.
Sometimes if we can't attract the sheep, we
like to scare the sheep.
But it's not God's way.
And I believe that people need more of
a biblical emphasis that we are free in
Jesus Christ.
And we need to beware that we don't
get into the extreme of constantly judging people.
Constantly judging people.
Why did he spend this money and buy
this thing?
Or, why was she there that night?
She should have been in church.
Or, did you see him?
He was down going.
He went in that place there where I
think maybe they sell liquor in there and
I saw him walk out of there.
For all you know, he might have been
in there selling Christian books.
And people easily get into judgmentalism.
And God wants us to find the balance.
If we have something against a brother, we
don't just lay a judgment trip on him.
We go and talk to him.
Fellowship with him and say, well look brother,
I think I saw you the other night
punching your wife.
And I thought maybe God's given you some
new truth you'd like to share with me.
And you may find out that he wasn't
even home that night.
That was some other man was in there
punching his wife.
Finding the balance.
We get some people on our ship that
are very strong on discipline.
They not only get up early, they make
sure everybody else finds out they get up
early.
And then the guy who doesn't get up
at 5.30, he feels he's a second
class citizen.
He gets up at 6.30. I'll tell
you, I'd rather get up at 8 o
'clock filled with the love of God than
at 5.30, a judgmental, hyper-disciplined, legalistic
Pharisee.
I believe we need discipline.
But we're all different.
My wife never went along with my get
-up-early exercise program.
I believed, you know, when I got married,
we're going to get up early and we're
going to have exercises, push-ups and jumping
jacks and jogging.
And my wife didn't go along with that.
She said, I'm staying in bed.
You get up, and when you're done doing
your exercises, you bring me a cup of
tea.
Took many, many years before I could handle
that theology.
Many years indeed.
But I discovered my wife's whole metabolism is
very different from mine.
Her physical makeup, the way she wakes up.
More than that, my wife sleeps very lightly,
especially after having children.
She wakes up three or four times in
the night.
So she wakes up tired.
I wake up often just ready to whoosh
like a rocket right out of the bed.
Feel great.
Sleep like a brick.
Nothing disturbs me.
Baby screaming.
Wife getting up and out of bed.
Noise, lights, nothing.
I don't hear anything.
I'm dreaming away.
World evangelism.
Ships.
Second ship.
And if only we'd understand how God's unity
comes in the midst of diversity.
We're all not going to be the same.
That's why God has allowed different churches.
You get noisy churches.
Some people like to praise the Lord with
a lot of noise.
You get other churches where people prefer things
a little more quiet.
You get preachers that give good Bible exposition.
You get other preachers that give good exhortation,
topical messages.
God is working in different people in different
ways.
And we need to find that balance between
discipline and liberty.
It's not easy.
You study Romans 12.1. You study James
3.17 about that wisdom that comes from
above.
That's led me into my next subject.
The next area to find balance.
Zeal and wisdom.
You know what zeal is?
William MacDonald, in his amazing book True Discipleship,
I think it's back there, he says, we're
without excuse if we don't have zeal.
I had zeal from the moment of my
conversion.
You don't need to go to college.
You don't even need to go on OM.
Zeal is just basic.
All you need is Jesus in your heart
and you're going to have some zeal.
That's why I cannot understand how so many
of God's people lack enthusiasm, lack zeal for
soul winning and for prayer and for loving
the brothers and sisters and for working in
the church.
I still can't understand that.
I've been trying to for 30 years.
I must be slow.
Because zeal is so easy to have zeal.
Now wisdom, that's something else.
And our movement, when we were born as
a spiritual movement, we were heavy on zeal
and we were weak on wisdom.
And so we made mistakes.
And God, from His Word, passages like James
3.17, I talk about that in this
whole book.
This book incorporates an earlier book that went
all over the world, which is a very
small book, called Revolution of Love.
And I talk about James 3.17, the
wisdom that comes from above.
Some people, they misunderstand this ship project.
They think, oh, the miracle ship.
I remember when we came into Indonesia, where
they've had some amazing miracles.
And when the ship came in and somebody
said, the miracle ship is in town.
And they expected us just, miracles, raising the
dead, new houses constructed in mid-air.
And I went to a big meeting.
I was preaching to about a thousand people
in this big meeting.
And people thought, he's the leader.
He must just be a miracle worker.
And they brought some of the most difficult
cases.
They brought a crippled man.
His body was completely crippled.
And the greatest healers in Indonesia had prayed
for this man, and nothing happened.
Sometimes we don't like to face that reality
that sometimes we pray and nothing happens.
And there's a dishonesty that gets into the
church in this area of healing.
And you know, in the United States, because
of extreme teaching about healing, in one church,
brothers and sisters, there are 52 people dead.
52 people dead.
Because somebody says, we don't believe in doctors.
That's all of the devil.
So they got 52 dead people in one
church.
And all the extreme things that I've seen.
I believe Jesus heals.
I have seen people heal.
I'm willing to pray with you.
If you need some healing, we'll go in
a corner and pray.
But I believe God has given us electricity.
Otherwise, we're going to all be sitting in
the dark here.
I believe God has given the gift of
modern medicine.
God uses many different things.
We get people in the United States, they
still won't drive an automobile.
No, that's of the devil, an automobile.
They're driving in cars.
And they're fighting.
They're fighting different groups.
One believe in carts with rubber tires.
The others are opposed to rubber tires.
They believe only in carts with steel and
wooden tires.
And they've split into different groups.
And you go in a big city, and
here's a man driving a Mercedes-Benz.
He's in another group.
And here's a man driving a Ford.
And right behind him, a man is coming
along, hitting his horse with the rubber tires.
And the man behind him with his wooden
tires.
And when people see this, you wonder why
they say, religion, I've had enough.
You know, I'm going down to the bar
where people are a little bit more sane.
That's what some people say in some of
these countries.
You know, when religion, when religion has lost
its savor, you know that passage in the
Gospels, when the salt has lost its savor,
it's worthless.
When our religion has lost its savor, it
stinks.
It's just Phariseeism.
It's just words.
It's just religious practices.
It's taboos and superstition.
It's judgmentalism.
It's words without love and reality and joy
and compassion.
That's why we so strongly believe that we
need revival.
We need revival.
And while we pray for revival, we need
balanced, biblical Christian leadership.
Yes, zeal, but wisdom.
Wisdom.
As I shared with you yesterday, A.W.
Tozer, I know many of his books were
on the ship.
How are we doing on Mr. Tozer's books?
Lots of them.
Get some of those books.
The best of A.W. Tozer.
Gems from Tozer.
And A.W. Tozer said the greatest gift
needed in the church today was the gift
of discernment.
That's why it's good to read some of
these books.
That's why it's good to listen to other
people.
I'm glad you took a chance and you
came to the ship.
You weren't sure, well, you know, what is
this?
But you came.
You have a mind.
God has given you a mind.
You can listen to what I say.
If you don't see it in the Word
of God, as you study, as you pray,
you just throw it away.
I can't force anything on you.
But sometimes as Christians, we're afraid.
And what do we do?
We get our little sheep and we get
them in our little pen, our little denominational
pen, and we say, now don't talk to
those sheep down the road.
And don't go to that interdenominational meeting.
There's black sheep there and there's spotted sheep
and there's sheep with cavities in their teeth
or whatever other kind of thing.
And then, of course, I don't know if
you have this problem here, but in England
we have a lot of a lot of
fighting over the sheep.
And sometimes the brethren, they get the sheep
by the tail and the Pentecostals get the
sheep by the neck and the Baptists get
the sheep around the bellies and some other
group tries to get the sheep by the
ear and they're pulling the poor sheep all
different directions.
Then they wonder why the sheep gets tired
and just drops down.
I don't know if you have that problem
here.
But you know, there's thousands of people around
here.
They're still goats.
They're not even saved.
They don't know Jesus at all.
And rather than just grab other people's sheep
from other churches, why don't we go out
and get some new sheep and see people
saved?
And it's interesting, sometimes when somebody gets a
vision to plant a church, they plant the
church right behind a church that's already there.
Why don't they go down the road where
there's no church?
I'm speaking of a Bible-believing place where
Jesus Christ is preached.
I'm not talking about, you know, some heretical
cult or group.
So there's an area where we have to,
I believe, find wisdom and balance.
Another area, this is similar, especially for leaders,
the balance between faith, dynamic, reckless, our God
is a God of the impossible faith, and
common sense.
So easy for young, zealous Christians to get...
they want to do miracles.
There was a young man in Chicago and
he read this passage about Jesus walking on
the water.
He's just a young Christian.
He said, Hallelujah, Jesus is the same today.
And he was jumping up and down.
And he went out to Lake Michigan and
he got on a boat and he went
out in the lake and he said, in
the name of Jesus, stepped out of the
boat, going to walk on the water.
Down he went.
And you know, when he got to shore,
instead of being honest, you know what he
said?
He said, you know, I went down because
in unbelief, I was wearing my bathing suit
underneath my trousers.
I couldn't believe it.
You know, we read in the Old Testament
that Elijah was translated, right?
He was lifted up.
God did a miracle.
But that's not the normal way that God
works.
God generally works within the basic laws of
the universe.
So, you know, after the meeting, we don't
want you climbing up to the bridge and
saying, in the name of Jesus, I'm going
home.
We've got a gangway there.
You walk out to the gangway.
Many people have done it and you just
walk down.
That's common sense.
So, praise God, we need faith and we
want to see the Lord do great things,
but we need to use our minds.
God has given us minds.
We can create.
We can write beautiful songs.
We can write Christian poetry.
Think of Fanny Crosby.
I hope you get to see that new
film about the life of Fanny Crosby.
We don't have it yet.
It's just been made.
But I found a real problem in this
area.
I have so eased.
So, way, way on the faith.
This is where my wife, my three children,
they help me come down to earth with
a real bump.
And I thank the Lord.
I'm still learning in that area.
Then another area, the balance between the anointing,
this is especially for preachers, the anointing of
the Holy Spirit and basic training.
I remember hearing a preacher on the radio.
He didn't have much education.
He believed education was from the devil.
Do you have any of those down here?
Education from the devil.
We had another preacher on the radio.
He believed that the main thing that happened
to you when you were saved is you
started shouting.
He was shouting so loud on the radio
that the speaker in my radio was moving.
And I couldn't even hear what the man
was saying.
But he was saying something along the line,
if you don't shout, you're not saved.
If you don't shout, you're not saved.
And I've been looking for a long time
for that New Testament reference.
Thank God for some quiet people.
I'm glad that my wife is fairly quiet
for two noisy people and one family is
just one too many.
God wants us to find balance.
You see, that man that said education is
from the devil and you're not saved if
you don't shout, he believed it was all
anointing, just the Holy Ghost coming down in
power.
I believe it's both.
I believe training, getting into the Word, understanding
biblical theology, understanding these false cults, reading great
books, building yourself up and the anointing.
Not one or the other.
Both.
That's spiritual balance.
And I could share many, many other areas.
Evangelism and church planting.
You get some people, they always want to
go on to another town, another place.
Win a few souls.
Have a campaign.
Go to another place.
Win a few souls.
You get somebody else, they say we're not
going anywhere.
We're going to plant a church right here.
We're not going to think about leaving the
island.
We're not going to go down the other
side of the island.
We're just going to plant a church here.
We need both.
We don't want fights between these two groups.
We need both.
In Operation Mobilization, God has called us to
take the Gospel to the Soviet Union, to
India, to Sudan, to Turkey.
But we know that unless there are strong
biblical local churches that believe in world missions,
then to some degree, we're not going anywhere.
We need each other.
The local church and missionary agencies that act
as an arm of the church reaching out
to touch the unreached people around the world,
as we were talking about the other day.
So that's another area where we have to
work for balance.
Another area is full-time workers versus laymen.
Full-time workers versus laymen.
Do you use that term, laymen?
That means the man who basically is working
eight hours a day in a job, and
yet he's in the church.
He loves Jesus.
In some countries, they call him a layman.
Again, the devil has been very subtle getting
these two groups fighting.
And some people say, we need more full
-time workers.
We've got to find money to support them.
That's biblical.
There's nothing wrong with that.
I say, amen.
We need full-time missionaries in India and
in many of these countries.
God led me to sell my three businesses
when I was a young man, put the
money into Bibles, and that led to the
birth of Operation Mobilization.
But some of my other best friends, they
were led to work in the bank, to
work in the post office, to work in
the factory, to work on the farm.
And they are able to support me and
to support this work.
We need both.
We can't afford that controversy.
We can't afford that division.
And if you're a layman, you have a
job, you're making your own living, don't allow
pride to come in.
I'm better than the full-time workers.
I am paying these salaries.
And we get some full-time workers, they're
manipulated by the church treasurer, who's the local
businessman, paying the pastor's salary.
And I've seen some little poor pastors, they
were scared of their shadows.
They were such little knights, and they wondered
why they couldn't see power in the pulpit
and the pouring out of God's Spirit.
The Bible says, the laborer is worthy of
it.
And that man who's preaching the gospel, if
God has called him, he needs to live
by the gospel.
And he should have some kind of sensible
place to live.
That would be a good testimony.
In the church, the devil has caused much
grief, much grief, through super-spirituality, foolishness, that
brings difficulty in that area.
Well, I think I've spoken long enough.
There are many other areas.
And as you study your Bible, I have
many Scripture references.
I'm afraid I left some of them out
because I just wanted to get to as
many areas as possible.
But I have Scripture references for every single
one of these areas.
And I've compared Scripture with Scripture, the Gospel
of John with the Epistle of John, Romans
with Matthew, John with the Book of Revelation.
I've spent hours, weeks, months, years, 30 years
searching the Scripture to bring together these things.
For lack of time tonight, I'm going to
have to leave it now in your hands.
As you study the Bible in the coming
months, let one truth bring another truth into
balance.