Is the sound of the wind like a
victory song?
Listen now, let it rest on your heart.
Is the sound that I heard from the
heavenly king?
Is the sound of the clash of swords?
Is the sound of his victory song?
But my
creator, create in me That river of
water, that flows full and free.
Let it bring life to the dead in
stagnancy.
Spring up o'er and flow on out
of me.
Oh God, my creator, create in
me.
He calls to the throne.
Creator, create in me.
Just gently and sensitively and honestly as a
prayer.
Creator, create in me.
Let it bring life to the dead in
stagnancy.
Spring up o'er and flow on out
of me.
Let it
bring life, spring up o'er.
And just to finish our time of worship,
let's turn to number 38.
My tongue will be the pen of a
ready writer, God looking for a people who
are there to speak for him.
In every situation, not with a formula, but
as from him to share his compassion with
the world.
So let's stand up and sing number 38.
In the silver rustling leaf of the leaves
of the tree, The spirit of the Lord
has come down from the earth.
Church and city suffer as the winds of
poverty sweep.
Time for time is spent in faith, but
faith is hard to find.
This is not a time for decoration.
The Word of God's the world and everywhere.
The church is here for healing and creation.
We love the name of Jesus for his
name.
My tongue will be the pen of a
ready writer.
God looking for a people who are there
to speak for him.
Let's now just pray and ask the Lord
to help us with these three messages.
Living God, I just praise you tonight for
the privilege of being here.
I thank you for all the people you
have brought together.
I thank you, Lord, that you use ordinary
people.
I pray for any that may feel a
special problem or burden or feel lonely or
confused.
Minister to them, Lord, and speak to us
from your word that we may obey you.
We thank you for all these books that
we can take and give to others.
One of the greatest privileges for investment we
can ever have.
And we believe that through what you have
done here and are doing, the ends of
the earth will feel the impact.
We really believe that.
Help our unbelief, O God, that we may
not be nibblers of the possible, but grabbers
of the impossible.
That we may go where you want us
to go and do what you want us
to do.
Speak to us, O Lord, from your word,
we pray now in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Turn with me to the book of Mark,
chapter 1.
Any translation except the Jehovah Witness version.
We find the Lord Jesus in verse 16.
Now as he walked by the Sea of
Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, his brother,
casting a net into the sea, for they
were fishermen.
And Jesus said unto them, Come after me,
and I will make you become fishers of
men.
And straightway they forsook their nets and followed
him.
Notice that.
In your translation it may say immediately.
At once they forsook their nets, their work,
and followed him.
And when he had gone a little farther,
he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and
John, his brother, who also was in the
boat, mending their nets.
And straightway he called them, and they left
their father Zebedee in the boat with the
hired servants, and they went after him.
This actually happened.
It actually happened in history, just like the
crucifixion, just like the resurrection.
Then over in chapter 2, again the Lord
Jesus went forth again by the seaside.
And all the multitude came unto him, and
he taught them.
Jesus was a teacher.
That's why I've appreciated the ministry of teaching.
And I've appreciated the fact that the teaching
in this harvest week has been given priority.
I think it's wonderful.
I think the music is wonderful, but I
think the teaching of the Word of God
is a priority, and it has been given
priority.
And I believe it's a great victory.
Praise God for it.
Jesus was a teacher, and he taught them.
And he passed by, he saw Levi, the
son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax office,
and he said unto him, follow me.
And he arose and followed him.
We often sing Jesus Christ the same today,
yesterday, and forevermore.
And it's true.
It's from the book of Hebrews.
And Jesus is in our midst.
And as believers, it's even more wonderful.
Jesus is in our hearts.
And I believe Jesus is moving among us
tonight.
And he's wanting to speak to us, some
of us, because he will speak in different
ways to different people.
But he's wanting to speak to some of
us in the exact way he spoke to
these fishermen.
He's wanting to say, follow me, and you
will become fishers of men.
And he's wanting some to respond tonight and
determined to leave their nets.
Even your lovely job, your lovely career, and
to follow Christ and become, as some people
put it, a full-time fisher of men.
I don't like the term full-time, because
I believe every Christian is full-time.
But I think you know what I mean.
Let us get it very clear in our
minds that some people down through these 2
,000 years, from this very day that Jesus
called these disciples, have been called out, or
led out, or guided out, in some cases
kicked out, to follow Jesus in whole-time
evangelism, or church planting, or ministry of helps.
And today there is, especially overseas, an unbelievable
lack of people who are willing to follow
in this road.
Unbelievable.
And the number of missionaries from Britain has
dropped in the last few years, again, about
2,000.
Now that isn't as negative as it may
sound, because it's a miracle that we have
kept so many going out to follow in
the steps of those who have gone on
in previous generations.
And then there are some who are going
out, especially some short-term and with smaller
groups, that may not be in those statistics.
Statistics generally are not accurate.
But, oh, beloved, and I can't go into
this in detail, that's why I've mentioned some
of these books.
The harvest is plenteous, the laborers are few.
They are the words of Jesus.
In Turkey, among 40 million, there are only
80 laborers.
There are areas of north India where there
are no laborers.
There are no laborers.
The city of Calcutta would have 1%, 1%,
beloved brethren, and that's not a very good
comparison, of the witness of London, and I
consider London an unbelievably needy city, and hope
some of you will catch the vision to
go there.
And if we say that of London, how
do we talk about Calcutta with 9 million
souls, or Bombay with 5 million souls, or
Kathmandu, or Bangkok, or Paris, where there's more
students in the university alone than all the
colleges and universities in England.
Just in Paris, and the Christian Union there
is smaller than some little, small Christian Union
in some college.
It's unbelievable, isn't it?
And France is your Samaria.
The Word of God says, Acts 1A, Ye
shall be my witnesses, when the Holy Spirit
comes upon you, ye shall be my witnesses,
in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts
of the earth.
So many people share with me how they
experience the fullness of the Holy Spirit in
their life.
And we need a reminder from God's Word
that the Holy Ghost will bring a holy
go.
And you can see that clearly in the
book of Acts.
Every one of us, I believe tonight, as
we plan to go home soon, I believe
we will go home and we will be
either evangelizing or fossilizing.
Stephen Elford said this, It is characteristic of
our natural sluggishness and laziness to put off
the work of evangelism.
By cunning calculations and clever rationalizations, we talk
ourselves out of the urgency of the task
and the demand upon our time, talents, and
tithes.
How we need to ask the Holy Spirit
to rid us of the prejudice, the indifference,
the unbelief, and the hard-heartedness.
And I'm concerned.
I'm concerned.
I listened to a cassette tape about two
years ago from a particular man in which
he belittled mission organizations, in which he made
missionaries sound like embezzlers, and said the most
negative things.
And he was a man of God.
Now God has a definite way for us
when we get upset and we feel another
brother has really gone astray.
We get out a letter or we pick
up the telephone.
We don't start gossiping against him.
We don't start backbiting him.
We phone him or we call him or
write him or make contact.
And so I phoned this brother up and
I had a wonderful conversation.
He said he was sorry that tape was
distributed around.
It was a message for his own fellowship.
His own thinking was actually changing.
Meanwhile, I think that tape did a lot
of harm.
And I find everywhere, young people especially, with
the most crazy ideas about missions, what missionaries
are, whether they're even needed anymore, and what
kind of people are needed as missionaries.
Other people, and this is unfortunate, attack different
aspects of missionary work.
Some attack short-term work.
Others attack this.
Others attack that.
I believe there is a danger, as Billy
Graham once said to a group of ministers
in Chicago, there is a danger that we
are taking the sword of the Spirit, and
instead of launching a great offensive to reach
the world for Christ, we are taking the
sword and we are turning on one another
and we're carving one another up.
We need each other.
I really believe that OM needs Youth for
Christ.
I believe YWAM needs OM.
I believe Campus Crusade needs InterVarsity.
I believe the house churches need the more
established churches, and the more established churches need
the house churches.
I believe John Stott needs David Paulson, and
David Paulson needs John Stott.
We need one another.
And as I listened to Roger Foster last
night, and he spoke about those strangers in
our midst, my own heart was greatly warmed,
because I'm a stranger.
I have tried to be British for 18
years.
Utter disaster, like many other areas of my
life.
The greatest thing that could ever happen to
me is if I could be accepted just
as being English.
I tried it when I first came here.
I had a rather razzle-dazzled suit.
I looked very American.
And a very English fellow came and he
said, You can't possibly wear that suit, young
man.
And he put on a black suit.
It was way too big.
I had to wear suspenders, which you call
braces.
And the first conference I ever went to,
there was Bill Bathman and Tony Stone.
Now it goes around Dr. Tony Stone.
And some of them were dressed like clowns.
Lindsay Glegg was there.
Of course, he's very English.
He's with the Lord now.
And of course, I discovered the hard way
certain things.
Don't generalize about British people.
Don't generalize.
There are all kinds.
Believe me.
And I think just here this week, the
range of people that I've met, just as
they say in some places, almost blows your
mind.
I'm a stranger, still a stranger in your
midst.
And one of my greatest burdens, one of
my greatest burdens is that somehow we may
have a greater love and appreciation and respect
for one another and may not make generalizations
about one another or quote one another out
of context or put one Christian organization up
against one other or put foreign missions up
against home missions or Bible memory work against
Bible meditation or any other thing.
But we will see the greatness of our
God, how he works through different people in
different ways.
Two men that I've received some teaching from,
one is Bhaktsingh, one is Dr. Francis Schaeffer.
The more I studied, the further they seemed
to be apart.
I thought these men are in two totally
different worlds.
And I always longed to get them together.
And we got them together in Lausanne at
the World Congress on Evangelism.
And I think somebody actually took a picture
of Dr. Schaeffer and Bhaktsingh.
Dr. Schaeffer, just one of 30 differences they
have, is very strong in apologetics.
You know his great apologetic teaching.
Bhaktsingh does not believe in apologetics.
He just preaches the simple, basic gospel and
lets the Holy Spirit handle everything else.
And he's planted about 400 churches.
And as I've studied so many men of
God, about 300 of them, there are many
apparent contradictions.
There are also real differences of opinion.
That's normal.
Don't be confused or overwhelmed or discouraged by
different men saying different things.
We are human beings.
God brings great unity often in the midst
of diversity.
And as I studied more and prayed more
and sought God often in prayer and fasting
about this, I saw how God was actually
working through these different men in different ways.
And there was not as much contradiction as
I thought.
That has so helped me.
Because I became so confused through different voices.
I read many different magazines, many different books.
And I just hope you will understand.
And I just pray with all my heart
that the work of Youth for Christ and
BUZZ and these other great movements in Britain
will go from strength to strength.
I've now made this my home.
I long for revival.
I long for the gospel to go to
the ghettos and to every level of society.
And yet I pray at the same time
we would not forget the word of the
Lord to go into all the world and
preach the gospel, Jesus said it, not me,
to every creature.
The Apostle Paul had this vision.
He had this burden.
It's expressed in Romans 15-20.
Look at Romans 15-20.
These are important verses.
Yea, Paul is speaking.
So have I strived to preach the gospel,
not where Christ was named, lest I should
build upon another man's foundation.
That's 2,000 years ago.
And then look at 1 Corinthians 10-16.
1 Corinthians 10-16.
Paul expresses his great burden in the first
century to preach the gospel in the regions
beyond.
Did you see that?
To preach the gospel in the regions beyond
you and not to boast in another man's
line of things made ready to our hand.
It is the will of God that the
gospel go to the whole world.
Now, when we hear that, we tend to
think, well, we've heard about Korea and church
growth in Korea.
Two million people come for a conference.
Wow, we don't have that in England.
Here we are, a measly couple of thousand.
Six and a half thousand.
Six and a half thousand people in two
weeks have been in this tent.
Or we may talk about Brazil, a church
in Brazil with 30,000.
Yes, there are other countries, maybe about 15,
that have a much greater witness than Britain.
Not necessarily a stronger church on a per
capita basis, but certainly a much bigger witness.
Brazil, Korea, the Philippines.
One or two sections like Andhra Pradesh in
India where Bakhshin is, which makes very little
impact on other parts of India.
Because India is 700 million people, 20 different
states, 15 different major languages.
It's like a continent.
People only realize that.
So there are the Brazils.
There are the Koreas.
Hallelujah for what God has done in those
places.
But there are the Turkeys, the Afghanistans, the
Italys, the Spains.
Lands like that, that you can read about
in that book, or at least on those
cards, which is almost the first time ever
I've given those away free.
And you will discover that these places have
a fraction of the witness that we are
privileged to have.
I was amazed, as David Paulson said, there
were 100,000 cells.
Did he say 100,000?
100,000 cells of believers.
Even if it were half of that, it's
overwhelming.
I was amazed as I read that program.
And what a valuable thing that is.
What a valuable thing that little booklet is.
I've read right through it, not every word,
but page after page.
And I was reading this article by Eddie
Gibbs.
Church growth.
God is working in Britain.
The tide is changing.
And we pray that the tide will not
stop, beloved, at the English Channel, but will
go out across the world.
And I give this challenge out to pray,
every one of you to pray, about giving
two years of your life in some other
nation.
I believe it has been proven that this
kind of short-term work is sensible and
biblical and practical and realistic in the light
of the world in which we live in
today.
When we started out in short-term work
23 years ago, it was almost unheard of.
We were attacked.
We were criticized.
We were mocked.
That was one of the greatest blessings God
ever gave us.
You learn so much from that.
Today, almost every mission society has short-term
work.
That's amazing because now there's so many different
places you can go, so many different groups
you can join.
Youth with a mission has come along.
They're bigger than Operation Mobilization.
And yet we still get all the people
we need, 450 from Great Britain alone, the
largest number of any nation in the world,
even more by far than the Americans and
the Summer Crusade, 450 from this country.
You don't have to tell me the tides
turn, but it's only a beginning.
And as you and I go out of
here, Satan is going to counterattack.
Those of you who will volunteer to be
leaders, Satan is going to counterattack you.
That's why I want to get that book
into your hands.
Those of you who have made new commitments
of your life, those of you who have
been filled with the Holy Spirit, Satan is
going to launch an attack.
And one of the reasons we invite people
to come with our particular fellowship for a
year or two is not because we think
they're great apostolic missionaries, but it's to give
them an on-the-field intensive training program.
And that's true of a number of the
other groups as well.
Would you pray about that?
You say, well, isn't that for special spiritual
people?
Isn't that for those that, well, they must
have at least read through the whole Bible
before they can go on that?
Man, we'd really be in trouble.
Or they must have led at least one
soul to Christ in their hometown.
Look, even Jesus didn't get anywhere in his
hometown.
People say, you shouldn't witness in France until
you witness in your hometown.
That's not necessarily true.
That's one more generalization to put people into
a guilt trip.
And if there's any area where we have
adults, where we as adults have failed, is
our gift to put young people in a
guilt trip.
Especially when they want to do something.
Every one of us who's an adult and
who's been in God's work has made plenty
of mistakes.
Plenty of mistakes.
And as adults, believe it or not, we're
still making them.
And I pray that you will not be
paralyzed by fear of failure.
Paralyzed by the sense of inadequacy.
Or because you failed the first time you
tried to evangelize your own neighborhood.
Or you failed the first time you tried
to share anything in your local assembly.
And all you got were buckets of cold
water at the door.
Or eyes, which is worse.
But that somehow you will go into the
Word of the Lord.
And you will take hold of verses.
Like that verse in Philippians, I can do
all things through Christ who strengthens me.
The Mormons have 30,000 men on their
two-year program.
30,000.
They've won 100,000 souls in Britain to
Mormonism.
100,000.
They're growing.
And they have one of the toughest messages
to preach in all of England.
They even preach the forsaking of tea drinking.
Can you imagine going around preaching this?
It's a miracle.
Thousands of them have been killed.
That one little false cult is trying to
mobilize 100,000 men by the turn of
the century.
They want 100,000 short-term men.
I don't know what they do with their
women.
I've never figured that out.
On the field.
When we think of the size of the
Christian church, whether you call yourself a believer,
an evangelical, a brethren, a Baptist, whatever you
call yourself, I feel ashamed.
I think it's good sometimes to feel ashamed.
And yet there's a joy in my heart
that the tide is turning.
There's a joy in my heart that there
are many, many Christian leaders now across Britain.
There are many right here on this platform
that have a world vision.
And they're praying and they're believing God.
And that will be the main thrust of
our prayer meeting again tomorrow morning.
And praise God for the increased attendance we've
had.
And for the strongholds of the enemy that
are being torn down, both in individual lives
and in nations that we're claiming for Christ.
And I believe the tide is turning and
we are going to see this army of
workers go.
First of all, many out for training, for
exposure, for learning about cross-cultural communication.
Out of that, God will lead some to
make a life work out of missionary endeavor.
Others will go back into the local church.
Pastors, leaders, elders, many men who have been
trained in OM in those early days, 17
years ago, are leaders in house fellowships and
local churches today in Britain.
Most people who go in our work don't
go overseas.
Because God isn't leading that many all of
a sudden just to run out.
Not everybody has God's guidance or gift, whatever
you want to call it, to spend their
whole life in the middle of Saudi Arabia
or India.
But most people, especially when they're young, they
can, on a team, under supervision, working with
the local churches, be effective helpers and learners
to forward the job.
People so mocked at our work in France
in those early days.
25 million tracts.
Oh, what a joke!
Who knows?
God isn't going to use all that literature.
15 churches were planted in the wake of
that tract distribution.
15 living indigenous French assemblies.
And we hope to see many more.
That's only one country.
Young people, that which may appear to be
superficial, may in fact be the beginning of
great things.
And I pray that we may see this
army raised up and sent forth.
I pray there may be many who sense
the Lord Jesus standing in front of them
tonight, saying, follow me, I will make you
a fisher of men.
And I pray if he speaks, that you
at least will seek counsel.
There's a special counseling area in the disco,
just for people who want counsel about Christian
service.
The other counseling area is more for spiritual
problems, recommitments, having someone to pray with to
seal something that the Spirit of God has
done in your life in these days.
Would you pray about that?
You say, well, I'm not the missionary type.
Forget it.
I've been preaching up and down Britain for
18 years.
I have found very few British people that
love this country as much as I do.
Very few.
If that's a false post, well, mark it
off as one of my dumb statements.
But I cannot tell you how much I
love this country.
It's history.
It's heritage.
What God has done here.
Your people from the Isle of Lewis, where
I've had wonderful times preaching to the most
southern part.
And I believe God is going to do
something very special and real here in the
coming days.
I really, really believe that.
But as I've gone on all these journeys,
I have not found many missionary types.
I've been on the mission field supposedly for
23 years.
A lot of my time when I'm not
in England, in India, the Middle East, or
on one of the ships out there, do
I appear like the missionary type?
I probably would have been rejected by a
mission society as unstable.
They send these long missionary forms out.
I've looked at some of them.
They're scary.
That's why you need to go on OM
first.
We can get you in the back door.
We've got a lot of connections.
But really, some of these psychological tests that
some of the missions are giving, not all
of them.
It's more of an American thing.
I've got a few problems over there.
But several pages.
How do you sleep at night?
Do you cut your toenails?
And all these different questions.
I get nervous just looking at some of
these forms.
That is not the only route to the
mission field.
God has many different ways.
But I pray, I pray with all my
heart, you'll study some of these books.
You'll ask God to take away some of
these prejudices.
You'll realize that this idea that you're not
a missionary type is just rubbish.
God will make you.
God will mold you.
God will grow or work through you that
you will grow.
And many times you'll never know until after
a period of time.
Now as we move forth as a mighty
army, whether it's in Britain or whether it's
overseas, Satan will counterattack.
And in closing, I want to very quickly
share with you some of the tactics that
I've seen Satan trying to use to stop
people.
My third message, which I'm not going to
get to at all, is how to persevere.
It's called survivalship.
Have you ever heard that word?
It's a new word.
I just made it up some time ago.
Survivalship.
You see, when I first launched out, I
had the idea that a Christian, a spirit
-filled man, a victorious man, were always living
up here.
I cannot explain to you how extreme I
was about 18 years ago.
And I just, you know, God had to
humble me and break me.
That's a long story.
But over the years, as I studied God's
word, as I fellowshiped with many people, I
realized that there are soaring days.
There are those days when we're soaring on
the wings of eagles.
We're just caught up with praise and power.
I have many days like that, from 6
in the morning to 1 in the morning,
nonstop, every minute, filled with power and love,
just going through.
And I discovered, after some years, that there
are other days when you're not way up
there.
You're in a valley, and the enemy is
moving in.
And there's doubts and fears, struggles, questions, difficulties.
And on those days, you need to remember
William Carey, who said, Give us plotters.
There are plotting days.
And through studying that and reading the men
of God, and their problems, their weaknesses, their
failures, and every man of God has had
failures, I developed a teaching called survivalship.
How to survive anything that Satan can throw
at you.
I'd love someday to share that with you.
Do you know where you can find it?
It's all in the New Testament.
Basic principles of survivalship.
How to stand against the enemy.
Allow me in closing to share just specifically
some of the fiery darts that Satan will
use at you the moment you walk out
of here.
Because it is a real warfare.
It says in Corinthians, The weapons of our
warfare are not carnal, but mighty unto God
to the pulling down of strongholds.
Do you believe God's word?
Then you must believe that command.
And we're told in Ephesians chapter 6, memorize
the chapter, that with the shield of faith,
we can stop the fiery darts of Satan.
We're told in Peter that Satan is a
roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
We're told in Corinthians, very clearly, be not
ignorant of Satan's devices.
Be not ignorant.
That's why I share these things.
Number one, I warn you to beware of
the fiery dart of impurity.
Lust.
Impurity.
And if you haven't got that area of
your life sorted out, if you don't know
the way of victory over lust, whether it's
the lust of the mind, the lust of
the eyes, whatever, it's not time to go
into detail.
I think it's been covered well in one
of the seminars.
But if you haven't got victory in that
area, you're confused, you're defeated, I pray that
tonight, you may determine to put on the
whole armor of God.
You may go into that counseling room and
perhaps share with someone an area where perhaps
you've been beaten down or confused and pray
through and believe God for the victory.
That doesn't mean everything will be easy.
That doesn't mean you won't have some difficulties,
but it will mean that you at least
know what direction to walk in.
We can't accomplish the whole journey in one
week, just like when the ship Lagos sailed
from Swansea over to North America.
That took a long time, but at least
the captain could get the ship going in
the right direction.
You can't accomplish everything this week, but you
can make sure your vessel, your life, your
body, is headed in the right direction.
That's why we have counselors.
And there is a way of victory over
lust.
There's a way of power.
This was the greatest single battle in my
Christian life as a young Christian.
My pornography went up in flames very easy,
but what about my mind saturated for 10
years with lust trips?
That has been a never-ending battle, but
I learned the way of victory through the
blood of Christ, through forgiveness, through meditation on
God's Word, through discipline, through the power of
the Holy Spirit, through all the means of
grace.
And when you're in an intensive battle in
your Christian life, it's not one means of
grace.
It's all of them.
Praise, worship, the Word, prayer, the blood of
Christ, the cross, the fullness of the Holy
Spirit, sharing with others.
Oh, how I'd love to talk for an
hour on every one of those things, because
so many Christians are ignorant of the armor
and the weapons they have as a believer
to stand against the fiery darts of lust
or whatever else may be attacking you.
It may be bitterness.
It may be jealousy.
It may be fear.
It may be fear, sister, worry.
Beloved, the Word of God says, this is
the victory that overcomes the world even our
faith.
I love to sing that great song.
Faith is the victory.
And victory, and please understand this, or you
could become very confused and even more extreme.
Victory includes knowing what to do when you
sin.
Praise God for that, or I wouldn't be
here.
Because I'll share something in great honesty.
Since I became about 35 years of age
a few years ago, the battle has gotten
unbelievably, unbelievably difficult.
Then I picked up a book called The
Middle Life Crisis.
I found it really hard to think that
I was now in the middle years that
just about shorted all my circuits.
I kept looking at the mirror.
Help!
And I picked up this book, Middle Years
Crisis, and what a crisis that was.
I put it down.
I'm going to wait another 10 years.
And so I decided to take up golf.
I've been over on this golf course while
all you running around, see, getting the spiritual
balance.
I managed to get in some golf.
People can't believe it.
I've had letters.
Stuart Briscoe wrote me a letter.
You know Stuart Briscoe.
He thinks one of the greatest things George
Forever has ever done is playing golf.
Lindsay Glegg tried to persuade me to play
golf 17 years ago when I first came
here.
It took 17 years to get in.
And I want to tell you, those of
you who are zealous, those of you who
are intensive, those of you who want to
evangelize the world, if you don't learn to
relax, if you don't learn to take it
easy at times, if you don't learn to
just unwind a little bit, whether it's golf
or rock climbing or yodeling or banjo breaking
or whatever, you sooner or later, you are
going to be, you're going to be popping.
And as I studied the Lord Jesus, and
I've been speaking on this in my seminar,
I saw this balance.
I saw the Lord Jesus giving food.
I, for a while, thought eating was unspiritual.
I ate very, very little.
That's not why I'm thin.
This is because I have a high-octane,
high-combustion engine.
But I really thought, you know, eating, you
can't believe what I fed my wife the
first two weeks of our marriage.
You wouldn't believe it, so I'm not going
to tell you.
And I never gave her any money, all
money for Bibles, all money for Gospels.
I'm not going to give any money, a
little Max, a little rice, you know, a
few other things.
Students save cereals in the university and send
them down to us.
Then I came into balance.
Praise God, I gave my wife 50 pence.
I said, spend it however you want.
Feel free.
Satan is going to attack you and he's
going to try to get you into extremes.
He's going to try to get you off
balance.
A.W. Tozer said, the more zealous Christians
more easily get led astray.
I beg of you in these closing moments
to think about this spiritual balance and work
toward it in your life.
Because if you don't, four or five or
six years from now, you will be one
more extremist or one more casualty.
And if you're a leader, it means you'll
lead a whole group of people into extremism,
which is one of the greatest hindrances to
world evangelism in Great Britain today.
Beloved, we are in a warfare.
The enemy will counter-attack through impurity, through
unbelief, through extremism, through materialism, which has already
been spoken to, and through other things that
I'm sure you've heard about this week and
you've read in the Word of God.
Beloved, I believe with all my heart that
God has brought us together here for a
divine purpose.
And I believe it's a moment of decision
for many of us to put our hands
on the plow and to say to Jesus,
I shall never, by your grace, ever turn
back.
To say, Lord Jesus, I'm willing.
At least we must say that.
I'm willing to go where you want me
to go.
For others, you've already said that.
Tonight will be a moment in which you
begin, by faith, to take some initiative, sanctified
initiative.
Because without faith, it's impossible to please Him.
And to begin pushing doors toward Christian service
or toward overseas service, by faith, because you
love Him and you want His will.
And as you do that, holding high the
shield of faith, you'll be able to stop
those fiery darts.
And if I, and I know I can
speak for most of the leaders, can ever
be a help to any of you, you
have our address.
We're part of the body.
And we believe that God wants to use
every one of you for His glory.
We really believe that.
Let's pray.
I'd like to take a moment for silent
prayer.
For us to pray prayers of commitment in
our hearts.
Some about overseas service.
Some are very young.
Maybe it's just God's broken your will and
now you're at least willing.
You're at least willing and you're ready to
move and push some doors.
For others, it's simply to decide by faith,
as we spoke about two nights ago, to
be filled with the Spirit.
Somehow you still miss that and you need
to pray a prayer of faith.
Oh God, fill me with your Holy Spirit.
That Holy Ghost, that will bring a holy
go and holiness at the same time.
For others, it may be just a simple
renewal of a commitment made already.
For others, it may be a determination to
turn away from extremism and spiritual off-balance
-ness in your own life.
We're all different.
So just pray your own private, personal prayer.
Please, don't waste this moment.
Time is so valuable.
Pray your prayer.
Oh God, I believe you have spoken tonight
and I really feel in so many ways
this was a poor presentation of these divine
truths that your word is so filled with.
Forgive me, Lord, if anything has got into
this message that just should have been left
out.
Lord, this treasure is in earthen vessels and
maybe some of the earth has got in
the way tonight.
But oh Lord, we pray together now that
we may see you and that we may
surrender our lives to you in a deeper
way and that also we come into greater
freedom and greater balance and greater liberty.
Deliver us from introspection.
Deliver us from some of these guilt trips
we so easily put ourselves into.
Deliver us, Lord, from any area of extremism
that we may walk a balanced, peaceful, and
restful life through your Son, the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Lord, we believe that truly we are crucified
with you and the life we now live,
we must live by faith.
Minister, Lord, to anyone who feels lonely, anyone
who feels confused, anyone who feels this is
just too much for them.
Just personally bless them.
Lead them into the counseling room or somewhere
where they can get help and prayer.
And may your Holy Spirit move through this
camp in a mighty way that many may
come into newness of life, the fullness of
power, and that place of rest and balance
and love.
Oh, God, we thank you.
You have met us in this hour.
We praise you and we worship you through
Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
Amen.