I think of all the great missionary speakers
and the great organizations here in America, I
become even more convinced that I do belong
there in Europe.
You know, God has been using Americans in
our own work, and our vision for the
next decade is to see a little more
happen in O-M-U-S-A.
We're even relocating out of sleepy New Jersey
to some place where there's a little more
action in terms of world missions.
You could be praying because we need a
lot of wisdom about that relocation, the biggest
decision perhaps in 27 or really 30 years
of O-M's history here in the States.
And so much I would love to share
with you, but there's not going to be
a lot of time for that.
As you leave, at the end of the
meeting, you'll be given this little bookazine.
We produce books in magazine form, and this
is a bookazine about the Ministry of Operation
Mobilization, the Muslim world, India, the ships, how
you can get involved for two months in
Europe.
We used to have a lot of young
people come on O-M from this church,
but I think some of our more enthusiastic
recruiters have gone to other places.
So we're praying that somehow there may be
a revival of interest in the ship ministry,
where we're desperate for personnel right now, and
some of the other aspects of O-M.
Please do take that with you.
I know you feel over-informationized, but if
you could take that one leaflet, magazine book,
I would be so grateful.
I remember the great book displays we had
during the conference, and once again we're back
with our special World's Most Unusual Bargain Book
Displays.
We are offering several special packets of missionary
books, some of which never have been hardly
seen in the United States.
One of the bargain packets, all of them
are free books for five dollars, includes Charles
Marsh, his book, Streams in the Sahara.
45 years, this man in the Muslim world,
when I was in London a few weeks
ago, he came into my meeting just to
hear the challenge.
Though he's almost 80, he is actually dying,
and he was there.
What a moving experience for me to be
with that man of God.
You will want to read his book, Streams
in the Sahara.
This other book goes with it free, and
my book, No Turning Back, sort of a
survival on how to stay sane on planet
earth as a Christian, what I've tried to
learn over the last 30 years.
Those three books, about 10 to 15 dollars
worth of books for five dollars.
That's pack number one.
Isn't that exciting?
Pack number two is My Big Father, a
challenge about the land of Turkey, where we've
been involved in church planting for 25 years.
Absolute dynamite.
The life story of one of our first
converts in Turkey is now in heaven.
Another Charles Marsh book written for young people,
Into Action.
He wrote that for young people when he
was 70.
And then my slowest selling book, Literature Evangelism.
Now there are a number of other books.
There's not time to really tell you about
them.
There's even a special Christmas pack for you
to give books away.
Fifty dollars worth of books for nine dollars
and ninety-nine cents.
Isn't that the way you say it over
here?
Something like that.
We've discovered in our work, we made a
lot of mistakes, and a lot of our
mistakes have been in the area of communication.
Misunderstandings come in.
I think many of God's people are professionals
at creating misunderstandings, and I just am trying
to get the people in OM to read
this book on communication.
How to communicate to each other the truth.
And believe it or not, it's written by
a psychiatrist, psychologist from Minneapolis.
It's like bringing oranges to Israel.
Telling each other the truth.
Challenging book.
And also, I would just commend to you
that great story, Through Gates of Splendor.
If you're the new generation, some of you
young people may not even know the greatest
classic of my generation, you still need to
read it.
Story of the Martyrs of Ecuador.
There it is, the anniversary edition, with a
little update on what happened in the lives
of the wives who were left behind.
And then finally, if you don't like books,
maybe you like cassette tapes.
You cannot believe how frustrating it is for
a character like me to come here and
speak to you for 35 minutes.
I'd rather climb the Alps, you know, with
water skis.
And yet, that's the way life is in
America.
And my only hope is the book table
and the tapes.
Because with these tapes, I can get six,
seven, eight hours with you.
In your car, in your bathtub, anywhere.
I'm sure you all have the Walkman's greatest
invention since the printing press.
And you can listen to these as you're
jogging in the morning.
And then you can write me a letter.
And if you don't get challenged, or hurt,
or upset, or angry by these tapes, I
will send you, as an apology, 25 free,
powerful Christian books, none of them written by
myself.
So, there they are.
And that enables me to now share with
you my little, little mini message.
I want you to turn in your Bibles
to James chapter 1.
There's, by the way, all kinds of other
free material on the tape.
There's a new book on Christian rock.
There's all kinds of contemporary wildcat music.
Don't miss that literature table, because it only
comes about once every seven or eight years.
James chapter 1.
Probably read this last time I was here.
Tonight we're going to be giving an invitation,
not only for people who feel a need
to begin moving in terms of world missions,
but we may, if the Lord confirms, give
an invitation for just general, all-out, wholehearted
commitment to Jesus Christ.
Because I just feel so often, so many
of God's people are not really wholehearted for
him.
We're told in James chapter 1, these important
words, verse 22, "...but be ye doers of
the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your
own selves.
For if any be a hearer of the
word, and not a doer, he's like a
man beholding his natural face in a mirror.
For he looks at himself, and goes his
way, and immediately forgets what manner of man
he was, what kind of character he was."
God wants us, as a result of this
mission's festival, to be doers of the word.
Some of you know one of my favorite
quotes.
I can't resist giving it, from C.S.
Lewis.
He said, we have the tendency to think,
but not to act.
We have the tendency to feel, but not
to act.
And if we go on thinking and feeling
without acting, someday we will be unable to
act.
And you know, I feel that that kind
of spiritual schizophrenia, that he referred to, is
absolutely rampant in the evangelical and biblical church
of our day.
And it's frightening.
Another great man of God said, we are
not able to take that which we hear,
and convert it into action in our lives,
because the cost is too great.
True.
In every walk of life, we seem to
be willing for total commitment.
We seem to be willing for people who
will go the extra mile.
That means suffering.
We seem to almost greatly respect people in
the business world who go the extra mile,
especially if they're honest.
That one businessman from the automobile industry has
become so famous because he went the extra
mile, because he suffered, because he resurrected a
dying automobile company, that now many people want
him to run as President of the United
States.
And his biography is one of the fastest
-selling books in the nation.
When I was in Chicago, or passing through
Chicago, I think it was before I got
there, I turned on the television just for
a few minutes, and there was a Chicago
marathon.
I think it was last weekend.
Maybe some of you were down there running.
This has become just a phenomenon all over
the world.
In England, we have the London Marathon.
20,000 runners, 26 miles.
Do you know what it is to train
to run 26 miles?
I'm a runner, you know, nine miles, enough
for me.
My old skinny legs, my age, you know,
somehow.
I don't like pain.
Maybe you're infatuated with pain, but it's never
been a big favorite of mine.
26 miles, some of them are 60 years
of age.
What are they running for?
No one has been able to answer that
yet.
They're writing whole books about it.
The whole world of sports is basically committed
to fanatical people.
There's no way you can explain sports in
America.
Baseball, football, just think of what happened again
in New York, walked away with a big
baseball prize, the ticker tape parade.
People go bananas, they go crazy, and they're
considered completely normal.
I know because I was in that world.
That's where I was at 16, a New
York Yankee fan, that dates me.
And I was just so fanatical about sports,
so fanatical about this and about that, and
I was considered perfectly normal.
I was elected as president of my student
body in this big high school outside New
York City.
We look into the world of politics, whether
we like particular politicians or not.
These men, many of them on an international
level, they have literally laid their lives on
the line.
I remember when they tried to blow up
Margaret Thatcher, the country where I now live,
in the hotel down in Bristol.
A week later, she got on a plane
to go to the funeral of Indira Gandhi,
who had just been assassinated.
She was risking her life to go to
India at that time.
The newspaper people were pushing the mic in
her face.
Why are you going there?
Don't you realize the danger?
And she just so quick, as she often
does, says, you know, we just learned to
live with this.
In sports, in politics, in business, the extra
mile, total commitment, extremism, fanaticism, dedication.
And what about music?
I just spoke at Oberlin College, one of
the leading music schools.
One of my closest friends is one of
the leading Christian violinists in the nation.
He's actually the son of the woman who
prayed me into the kingdom.
If you know the OM story, the dear
elderly lady who prayed for this wildcat high
school kid that he would become a missionary,
she just put me on her hit list
and that was the end of me.
Well, all of her children are going on
for God, even though she was fanatically committed,
speaking in a good sense, to world missions.
And not only did she pray for me,
she prayed for the whole high school for
15 years.
And you know, it's just amazing what God
has done through some of those students.
In fact, I just talked to a young
man from the high school I've had almost
no contact for 28 years.
He was a little shy, quiet guy, touched
in that revival through the prayers of that
elderly lady.
I just talked to him for the first
time, I think the second time in 28
years.
And he's just gone down life's road through
the prayers of that woman.
He is now an absolutely committed follower of
Jesus Christ.
And on top of that, a brigadier general
in the Pentagon.
One woman dared to believe God.
One woman put her life on the line.
One woman took missionary work seriously, giving her
time, her money, her talents.
That's why I'm here.
That's how OM got born.
And praise God, that dear lady, pushing way
past 80, is still praying for me tonight.
And if she's praying for me tonight, and
you're not absolutely right with the King of
Kings and Lord of Lords, you may be
in serious trouble if you don't make the
right decision in this meeting tonight.
And I was referring to the world of
music and what it is to be trained
in music.
You know, these music trainers, these people who
teach people to become great violinists or great
opera singers or whatever, I can tell you
they are rough.
They are very hard on their students, and
they push and they push.
And for music, a friend of mine just
got accepted after 20 years of working and
praying, just got accepted into the Metropolitan Opera.
Just was with her in New York City
a few days ago, I tell you.
And even with all of our criticism of
Hollywood, the fact is, my dear friends, that
many of those people who learn those scripts
to enter in some of those silly films,
they work harder and they are more dedicated
to the film ministry or the film industry
than most of the average evangelical fish I
have ever met in the last 30 years.
I hope I can say present company excluded.
Now, I'm sure someone is saying right now,
this fellow sounds like he's a hostility problem.
I do.
But I will tell you, I come here
only with a heart of love.
I don't come here to put anybody in
a double-decker straitjacket of guilt.
And I believe whom the Lord loveth, he's
chasing it.
And sometimes, if you're going to gain, there's
got to be some pain.
And I believe as God's people, we need
to face up to the reality of God's
claims upon our lives, the reality of the
spiritual warfare in which we are involved.
I've watched this ministry from a distance of
your great church for many years.
I told Christian leaders here some years ago,
this is a tremendous ministry.
And I said, beware of one thing, Satan
will attack your ministry.
Any ministry that begins to move, begins to
send out missionaries, begins to start thinking in
terms of hundreds of thousands of dollars for
world missions, I will tell you, Satan will
have a special hell-bent committee meeting and
he will do everything possible to stop you
in your tracks.
One of the leading Christian leaders in our
country referred to one of our denominations in
which over 2,000 ministers have dropped out
of the ministry in the past one or
two years.
L.E. Maxwell, the great founder of the
Prairie Bible Institute, wrote a book.
The title of that book was World Missions,
Total War.
And as we think of this task of
world missions that lies ahead of us, first
of all, we praise God for all that
has been done before coming here.
I visited every single exhibit, wherever there's anything
free, I go.
My mother taught me that.
So I went around to all these exhibits
and got my literature and I read most
of it and I pray through it and
I'll probably write at least 10 missionaries and
other people as a result of what I
gathered up as I listened to the children
singing in the background.
And I'm just so excited about each one
of these groups.
And when I see other groups, I actually
get a desire to close down Operation Mobilization.
Because the last thing I'm interested in doing
is competing with anybody.
That's why one of our strongest principles in
OM was to become a unique new missionary
international fellowship based in Europe.
Because when I was being converted and came
to know Jesus, there was already so many
great things.
Yet those great things that were existing at
that time when I was a student did
not have the burden and the vision God
had put on my heart for Afghanistan, for
Turkey, for Sudan, for the Soviet bloc, for
the closed countries, and for reaching the masses.
Not a million or 10 million, but to
reach hundreds of millions with the Word of
God and in answer to prayer, the Lord
has enabled us now to give the Word
of God face to face, not including television
and radio, to 400 million people on planet
Earth.
Some people have said to me, especially years
ago, why another mission society?
Because there are many unreached people.
And because God wanted to raise up a
mission society that was completely international, where other
people would work as equals with Americans.
Or in other cases, the Americans would work
under the national leaders.
And that would open new doors.
As you have seen, those of you who
follow our ship ministry, has gone beyond our
wildest imagination.
And right now, interracial international teams are invading,
probably today, invaded a dozen or two dozen
churches throughout South Africa, declaring the international and
glorious message of salvation through Jesus Christ.
I want to ask you, my dear friend,
my dear brother and sister, is world missions
with you token commitment or total commitment?
Are you a hearer or are you a
doer?
Perhaps Romans 12, 1 and 2 could be
considered one of the most important passages of
scripture when we think of this great challenge.
And as we search our hearts about where
we really are spiritually.
Romans 12, 1 and 2.
I've probably read it hundreds of times, but
I read it again.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, that includes the
sisters, you can write that in if that
will help you, by the mercies of God,
that you present your bodies a living sacrifice
wholly acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable
service.
And be not conformed to this world, but
be transformed by the renewing of your mind
that you may prove what is that good
and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Have you ever presented your whole life, your
mind, your talent, your energy, your money, everything
to God as a living sacrifice?
I believe there are times when we need
to stand up and we need to make
deeper commitments to Jesus Christ.
I remember when Oswald J.
Smith came to Moody Bible Institute when I
was a student.
I was just with him a year ago,
shortly before he died, 96 years of age.
What an example.
He was the man that founded the Faith
Promise Program that you people so wonderfully believe
in, and that the Holy Spirit of God
has used so mightily.
Many people don't understand it.
They think it's a matter of sitting down
and calculating, well, you know, this and that
and that.
How much can I give, you know, in
my own little strength and my own little
two horsepower engine and my own little business,
and maybe I can sell, you know, some.
I met a man recently in Australia selling
budgies to raise money for missions.
I don't know if you know what a
budgie is.
When I come back to America, I don't
know whether I've got New Zealand words or
Australian words or English words.
Anyway, it's a bird.
He was selling these birds to give more
money for missions.
But, you know, it isn't a matter as
we pray about faith promise, you know, what
can I do?
It's what can God do?
When I started praying for money, we tried
to out Mueller, George Mueller, in O.M.
We tried to go past Hudson Taylor.
Absolute silence about money.
We just started to pray.
We only changed that policy one or two
years ago because of extreme criticism from churches
about our silence conspiracy.
When our work got so big and so
internationalized, it just became chaotic.
People thought we were rich sailing around with
two ships.
All kinds of stories got going.
One lady wanted to give some money to
Operation Mobilization.
When we were, we were, you know, hundreds
of thousands in the hole, fasting and praying,
she wanted to give a gift.
She heard it was a faith ministry, didn't
want to interfere.
I can tell you when I heard that
story, even though I'm highly stubborn, I started
to change my thinking.
And I thank God for this, this challenge
of, of believing him.
And as we learn, we learn, I've written
a whole article on this, I'll be happy
to send it to you, how to release
finance through prayer.
And I was a young 19-year-old
wanting to go to Mexico.
I had no money.
So, I started to sell Christian books.
I sold my other businesses and started selling
Christian, Christian books door to door.
And then I got a job teaching Spanish
to give money to missions.
That was fantastic.
I couldn't even speak Spanish.
And I got good money teaching Spanish.
And I remember once driving home from my
Spanish class, one night praying for finance.
And I saw a fox cross the road.
This was in New Jersey, stepped on the
gas, boom, hit this fox and collected a
$25 bounty.
Forgive me for that.
I'm sure that's not, that's not a good
thing to do.
And I believe that as we allow our
hearts to be filled with faith, as we
realize that our God can supply, we will
go into our faith promise program, not thinking
in terms of what we can do, but
what God can do through us.
We know there'll be the human factor.
I talked to People's Church on the phone
last night to one of the pastors.
They're having difficulties because a lot of the
people who made faith promises haven't been able
to come up with the cash.
So, they're praying and they're battling.
That's life, the human factor.
This is a personal thing between you and
God.
It's a goal.
It's something you aim at.
No one is going to come to you
and bang you on the head with a
Bible or a book on Christian giving.
It's somehow, a year from now, you've been
unable to do all that you wanted to
do.
The whole story of my life is always
unable to do what I've wanted to do.
People think O.M. is a great success
story, George Verver, great man of faith, combination
George Mueller, Hudson Taylor, E.T. and Clint
Eastwood down to the beach, you know, looks
out at the ocean and, you know, this
great vision for a ship, looks out at
the ocean in the name of Jesus and
the ship.
That's not the way it is.
O.M. has grown very slow.
It's been very small and there's been more
disappointments in my life than there have been
successes because my burden is people and if
you start locking in on people, an in
-depth relationship with people, whatever nationality, and with
me, it's been about 25 different nationalities, you're
going to have your heart broken many, many
times.
Sometimes I go to a church and they've
just been through some kind of crisis, this
has gone wrong, that has gone wrong, and
people are sitting there, they're soaking.
Life, Billy Graham said, at its best is
filled with sadness.
Things do go wrong in the past.
Mistakes are made.
There are misunderstandings.
We are all so weak, so human.
I could write a book about O.M.'s
mistakes, the problems we sometimes have on that
ship, disunity, confusion, gossip, backfighting, misunderstandings.
Almost once a fight between the chief engineer
and the captain.
That was in the early days when I
was responsive.
But, but, God, God overruled.
God, Romans 8 28, turning bad situations into
stepping stones, showing that disappointment is God's appointment
for a new day, for a new thing.
And I believe God is taking your ministry
and your church into a new day.
And it's going to be rough, and it's
going to be tough, and we need, and
I think this is so important when a
church is in a time of transition.
I don't know much about your church really,
but I know that you're in somewhat of
a time of transition.
That can be one of the greatest opportunities
for reality, for reconciliation, for laymen to get
more with their hands on the plow, for
different gifts given to different men to become
more operative in the work of the Lord.
My life has been a long series of
disappointments, but I've discovered they are God's appointments.
And I wonder, I wonder how many of
us really, right now, we know we're in
God's place for our life.
He's Lord and we're filled with the Holy
Spirit.
That's just the normal Christian life.
That's not something weird.
You know, some of us characters like me
graduate at Moody Bible Institute, very little conservative,
you know.
Boy, do I get in trouble when I
go there.
But we, we, we, we, we're always worried
about somebody getting the extreme in the things
of the Holy Spirit.
We're always worried somebody may come into the
church with a drum, and somebody may, you
know, praise the Lord or raise their hands,
and, and in our worry about, perhaps some
things are extreme, but in our worry about
that, we overreact into the deep breeze of
dead orthodoxy.
I will tell you, my brothers and sisters,
we need to be filled with the Holy
Spirit.
Billy Graham speaking once to a great crowd
of people about the Spirit-filled life, the
life of joy and reality in which God
is control.
He said, I don't care how you get
it, just get it.
And I would say that tonight.
But, you know, sometimes we don't have that
joy of God because we're unwilling to repent,
because pride is so subtle.
It must have a hundred different forms, and
especially as our institutions get older, and as
our churches get older, and we're already feeling
some spiritual rigor mortis coming into Operation Mobilization.
And God's had to break us.
God's had to humble us.
Then the rivers of blessing have flown again.
Are you filled with the Holy Spirit?
Is Jesus Christ absolute Lord of your life,
your time, your talent, your money?
What about your prayer life?
Romans 10 says, how can they be preachers?
How can they go as missionaries unless they
be sent?
Do not think, that's why I give a
double invitation when I speak, do not think
the big thing in a missions conference are
those who come to say they will go.
I have been giving that kind of invitation
in 50 nations for 30 years.
I believe in it.
I've seen thousands and thousands and thousands come
or stand up to say they will go.
But let me tell you something I've learned
a hard way, just bear with me a
little more, that many of those young people
who want to go, never go, not even
20% ever go, because we don't have
senders, because we have not put enough importance
on the ministry of sending.
Acts chapter 13 tells us who the sender
is.
Do you know who it is?
The Holy Spirit.
You read the first three verses, the Holy
Spirit said, the Holy Spirit sent.
It also says the church sent, so it's
both, it's cooperation.
And in this missions conference, we don't just
want a few people to come forward and
say as young people or whatever age they're
willing to go, I praise God for that.
We need the whole body of Christ to
put their hands on the plow and say,
I will not turn back.
I will be a sender.
The first thing according to Matthew chapter 9
in being a sender is to pray.
How is your prayer?
Do you have an hour of power in
your life each day?
Do you have a half an hour of
power?
Do you have 10 minutes in which you're
engaged in serious intercession through those missionary prayer
letters, through those prayer cards or those maps
you can pick up on the table?
The new edition of Operation World will be
off the press in two weeks.
Get a copy.
It is the most phenomenal book for prayer
that I have ever seen.
The British edition 20,000 already sold out.
Four weeks you get the American one off
the press.
And it's going into German and French and
Spanish and many other languages.
If you want an exciting ministry in which
you can be involved in nations across the
world, that's the ministry of intercessory prayer.
I'm tired of people coming up to me
and giving me the idea that anybody staying
at home is some kind of second-class
citizen.
No!
God's burden is not geography.
It's reality.
And as we experience His reality, as we're
walking in the power of the Holy Spirit,
as we're living in brokenness and love and
with the fruit of the Spirit just manifest,
Christ as Lord can lead us.
Some of you have never been thinking about
going.
You're going to go.
Some of you who want to go, you're
going to stay.
God is going to surprise us.
Brothers and sisters, we've come to the end
of this great festival.
We cannot go from here with poking commitments.
We cannot let sportsmen be more dedicated to
sports than we are to God and His
kingdom.
We can't let a violinist or an opera
star be more intensively trained for their career
than we are to be soldiers of Jesus
Christ wearing the whole armor.
We cannot be made to look small and
weak by politicians or other great people committed
to every kind of wild, crazy cause and
some good causes that exist in the world
today.
We are God's people.
We are kings and priests.
We must be the most committed people who
walk in the world today in love, in
balance, in humility.
Without that kind of revolutionary commitment, without that
kind of extra-mild mentality and disciplined living,
as Paul said, I buffet my body.
Is that your brand of Christianity?
What about food?
What about money?
What about time?
What about TV?
You know what it is to say no
to this thing and that thing that's pulling
you this way and yes to the Word,
yes to the call of prayer, yes to
the call to witness, yes to reaching out
to the poor, the elderly, those in prison,
the suffering, beaten-down drug addicts of our
nation torn apart by every evil man has
ever imagined.
Brothers and sisters, without total commitment, it doesn't
work.
And I'm aware that's an ongoing process.
I have so much to learn.
I still fail.
When I fail, I know what to do.
D.L. Moody used to emphasize the need
to be filled with the Spirit again and
again.
You remember that old story?
He was preaching being filled again.
You may have a crisis ten years ago,
but if that crisis is not followed by
a process, it will be an abscess.
I don't want to know what great experience
you had ten years ago.
Fine, where are you tonight?
Are you filled with the Spirit tonight?
Are you walking on God's road tonight in
joy and power, forgiveness and reality?
You know, a little old lady said to
Mr. Moody, Mr. Moody, why do you keep
going on and on about being filled again
and again with the Holy Spirit?
And he looked her in the eye and
he said, lady, because I leak.
You're looking at a very weak, leaky Christian
leader tonight, but I know where the refills
are and you do as well.
Let's come back to the cross.
Let's not defend ourselves, but let's come back
to the cross and recommit in brokenness and
be filled again with the Holy Spirit of
God.
And then whether he leads us to Edina
or to the ends of the earth, we
will know we are in his place in
his time.
Let us pray.
Let us bow our heads, our hearts before
God across this great auditorium.
Let us search our own hearts.
I first, in the first part of my
invitation, is not to come forward, but to
simply stand where you are.
If God has dealt with you, if God
has spoken to you, and you want to
make a deeper commitment to Jesus Christ in
all seriousness, you want to experience a deeper
crucifixion of the self-life and to be
filled afresh with the Holy Spirit, to be
God's man or woman of prayer, be God's
man or woman of witness, be it here
or around the world.
I know time goes by quickly.
I think many of you have been thinking
about this throughout the week.
Many of God's people that have been writing
to me, and I've had 14,000 letters
from one of my books over the years,
many of them have confessed that their great
hindrance in their life was lack of forgiveness,
root of bitterness.
This has gone wrong, maybe in the marriage,
maybe in the home, maybe in the church,
misunderstanding, difficulty, and a root of bitterness has
got in it.
It's just, it's been a log jam to
Holy Spirit reality.
I don't know if there's anyone here, you've
been stepped on, things have gone wrong, you've
been hurt, whatever.
Maybe you feel people don't consult you enough,
maybe you feel your children don't understand you,
your husband doesn't understand you, your wife doesn't
understand you.
Somehow, some little thing that's happened in your
life, and maybe a big thing, has created
a log jam of grief, and the Holy
Spirit is not in control, and God is
not really in control.
That is my first burden, not mission, reality,
Holy Spirit, biblical reality.
If you will pray that prayer of faith,
take that step of faith, to believe God
for a new thing in your life, to
trust Him, to be totally committed, Romans 12,
1, presenting your body as a living sacrifice.
If you mean that with all your heart,
then I want you just to quietly stand
up, wherever you are, just remain where you
are, and I want to pray for you,
and later I want to get your address
only for my private use, to pray for
you again.
Given this invitation all over the world, whether
it's few or many, I've seen so many
lives change, because you know Jesus gave His
all, and there are times in the lives
of us as His children, that we need
to make these recommitments.
It's what I did when Oswald J.
Smith came to Chicago, when I was a
student.
God was already using me, I was already
a leader, I was already winning people, but
that night God zeroed in on me, and
when He gave that invitation, strange as it
was, among 2,000 people, I was the
only one who responded, and my life was
never the same.
There may only be a few.
I know that today, in America, so many
hearts are cold, unable to almost even respond.
I know others maybe have made a similar
commitment like this in the past weeks and
months, and you don't feel the need to
stand.
Fine, there are some you know in your
heart, you need to take a step of
faith, you need to recommit your life to
Jesus Christ and present your body once again
to Him, and be filled afresh with His
Holy Spirit.
Just for these few moments, if God has
spoken to you, just stand up so I
can see you, and remain standing.
God bless you, God bless you, and you,
and you, God bless you and the rest
of you, young people.
Between you and God, it's very real, I
would never give this invitation, I'm a coward
by heart, if it wasn't for people praying
for me, and so many people writing me,
and saying it was when you gave that
invitation, my life was changed.
One of the leading missionary-minded leaders over
at the other church in Richfield told me
in the car today, it was when O
.M. was here years ago, he was not
interested in missions at that time, his life
was turned around, and now he's involved a
hundred percent.
Just wrestle with God for a moment, this
isn't an invitation to perfection, you're still going
to fail, you're still going to have your
struggles, but you're going to be on new
fighting ground, and you're going to know what
to do when you fail, and you're going
to learn that failure is the backdoor, not
to discouragement, but to success and victory through
the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ.
We need, first of all, a great movement
of world Christians who will be senders, and
that starts by being filled with the Holy
Spirit of God.
He's in you, happens at conversion, but he
wants to control every part of your life.
God bless you, I wish I could go
and talk an hour with each person standing.
The Holy Spirit will give you unlimited time.
He is the great teacher, the great comforter.
I want to pray, just a moment of
prayer, of dedication for those who are standing.
Let us all be in prayer, just for
a moment more.
Tens of thousands around the world are praying
for this meeting.
I'm one of the most prayed for persons
that I've ever heard about, because I've been
in all these countries and spoken to hundreds
of thousands, and so many of them, they
sign up to be a prayer partner, and
this is God doing this in your heart
tonight.
It's not me, I'm just a voice, but
God getting through to you.
Respond, say yes, even if it be in
fear and trembling, as it has so often
been in my life.
God bless you.
Praise the Lord.
Young people, older people.
I've had people tell me when I gave
this invitation, they felt someone was putting glue
on the pew, couldn't get up.
It's amazing what people will do for sports,
what people will do for politics, what people,
my friends today, will do for Satan, dedicated
to Satan.
Cannot we stand up and be counted as
a soldier of Jesus Christ?
The Bible says God has not given us
a spirit of fear, but of love, and
of power, and of sound mind.
I just want to pray.
Lord, I pray for any spirit of fear
gripping someone right now, that it may be
broken, and that they will respond to what
you're saying to them.
I ask this right now.
Anyone else?
God bless you.
Praise the Lord.
May he be filled with his grace, his
forgiveness, his love.
Just one few more seconds more.
Praise the Lord.
Father, you see each person standing before you.
We believe you have taken this meeting out
of our hands some time ago.
And your Holy Spirit, your indwelling Holy Spirit,
has prided people to do business with you
tonight.
And by your grace, they will never be
the same.
We know there will be battles.
We know it will be rough.
It will be tough.
For your Son, the Lord Jesus, said that
if anyone come after you, they must deny
self, take up the cross every day, and
follow you.
And yet, there will be that comforting power
of your Holy Spirit.
Thank you, Lord.
We praise you, and we worship you.
Fill us afresh through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
Let us all stand.
Can we just sing as a chorus of
commitment?
He is Lord, he is Lord.
He is risen from the dead, he is
Lord.
Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess, he
is Lord.
Do you know that?