I have a real burden for this session
that somehow this could be very, very practical.
I know you've had a lot of ministry
and you'll continue to have ministry.
I hope that last session was also somewhat
practical.
But I just believe that if we could
capture what it is to be a visionary
and missions mobilizer, the potential of even a
small number of us like this is without
limit.
Because God's method is multiplication.
At the same time, we must not be
naive that multiplication is just going to happen
automatically with the general kind of half-hearted
action we get these days so often.
I'd like you to turn with me in
your Bible to 2 Timothy, chapter 2.
I always appreciate getting cards.
And I hope that if you have a
card, a prayer card or a card with
your address on it, you could pass it
on to me.
It would have been worth coming here just
to meet my brother Franca from Serbia.
Apparently, we did meet or he heard me
preach in Chicago at Moody many, many years
ago.
And now he's there in that tremendous mission
field.
I hope you meet him and pray for
Serbia.
So many people in the world reject Serbia
because of the war.
As God's people, we're not into that.
We're into the love Serbian movement.
We're into the love all people movement.
And it's just exciting to have a conference
like this with people here from these other
countries.
And I think if God's people had a
little more discernment, we'd have a lot more
here to meet these people.
But let's move with what God has given
and then he'll give more in due course,
right?
2 Timothy chapter 2.
I know this is familiar, Graham, but I'm
going to read it anyway.
Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the
grace that is in Christ Jesus.
And the things thou hast heard from me
among many witnesses, the same commit thou to
faithful men who shall be able to teach
others also.
Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier
of Jesus.
It's powerful, isn't it?
Of Jesus Christ.
No man that woreth and dangleth himself for
the affairs of this life, that he may
please him who hath chosen him to be
a soldier.
God has called us to be soldiers of
Jesus Christ.
I know that terminology is no longer popular.
Actually, I think it was the last time
I was preaching at Cambridge University.
I spoke in that famous round church on
a Sunday morning and a lady was upset
with my message.
I think I got a little bit loud
and some of the Anglicans don't like volume.
I got this note, thank you very much
for ministering here, but you don't need to
shout.
We Anglicans are not deaf.
It actually said that, the note.
In my experience of 32 years ministering among
Anglicans, quite a few of them do at
least behave as if they're deaf, especially when
it comes to world missions.
Then I had another note from that meeting.
I have this natural ability to offend people.
The other note was, why are you using
military terminology?
This is not acceptable in the church.
What am I going to do with my
Bible?
We are soldiers of Jesus Christ.
That doesn't mean we carry guns and shoot
people.
It means we're disciplined.
It means we're committed.
It means we're on the attack.
The Bible talks about spiritual warfare.
The Bible, in Ephesians 6, talks about armor,
put on the whole armor of God.
Every comparison like that, of course, has its
limitations.
We're not like secular soldiers in every way.
We're not going to put you in tanks
after the meeting and send you in the
first tank through the tunnel to Europe.
But the part of this passage that I
wanted to emphasize to launch this sort of
practical training session about how we respond to
this challenge is verse 2.
Things that thou hast heard from me among
many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful
men, who shall be able to teach others
also.
Now we're going to learn at the end
of this week, and a lot of work
has gone into this conference, a lot of
work.
I haven't done anything hardly until this morning.
I've announced it and prayed.
And a lot of work has gone into
this.
But we're going to learn, I think we've
learned through this, the average Christian does not
go to missions conferences.
So if we're going to see this vision
explode, we've got to take it to them.
We've got to take it to them.
Now we've said the same thing in terms
of evangelism.
The average British person is not queuing up
to get into church on Sunday morning to
be saved.
Believe it or not, they are queuing up
to get on the golf courses.
I took up golf.
I mean, it really shocked people when I
took up golf because I used to make
all these remarks about golfers.
That was bad because my spiritual father, Billy
Graham, was a golfer.
Anyway, I was told that I was going
to come into a midlife crisis.
There was this book, Midlife Crisis.
I was feeling great until I started to
read this book.
All the terrible things that were going to
happen to me.
And so I took up this midlife sport,
golf.
And I'm amazed at the number of people
in this country who play golf and worship
this sport.
It's amazing.
The number of golf courses within 25 miles
of here is just unbelievable.
This is one of the only countries in
Europe where the poor man, by the way,
can play golf.
If you go at 3 in the afternoon,
you get a twilight fee.
That's what I like to go, 3 or
4, twilight fee.
It's just getting dark and jog from hole
to hole, which is upsetting to other golfers.
But at least you can get the whole
thing done in less than an hour.
It's sort of a new kind of a
sport.
So if we're going to reach people with
the gospel, we've got to take it to
them.
We've got to take it to them.
The streets, the highways, the hedges, and modern
communication.
Television.
Some of you right now are on television.
We need to cry out to God for
more of the gospel to get into television,
to get into radio.
Good, quality, contextualized material.
Not just some American banging his American Texas
drum to a tune that nobody else in
the rest of the world can understand what
the tune is, much less dance to it.
Speaking figuratively.
And as we think about world missions, this
vision we have to reach all of Europe
with the gospel, we have got to realize
we have to take the message to them.
So this is my plea, that we will
respond to the challenge of this morning and
other challenges by becoming committed missions mobilizers.
Now some of you already are, and I
know I'm preaching to the converted.
But let me give my own testimony.
I found that God, in the last couple
of years, has wanted to improve me, change
me, and improve me on the points where
other people rated me very highly.
I'm not good at rating myself.
And I always emphasize I've got to work
on my weak points, because I've got plenty
of them.
So that's full time, working on my weak
points.
But in the recent years, I guess I
didn't totally abandon it, but in recent years,
I felt the burden to work on my
strong points to improve every area, every area
of my life, by the grace of God.
Sometimes it's a very slow process.
And in our own fellowship, we are in
the midst, we're just coming to the end
of it, of one year of what's called
strategic thinking, strategic planning, to attempt to improve
every aspect of our ministry across the world.
It's a very hard process.
Some of the old timers, they especially don't
like it.
You and I know one of the things
that's hindering what the Holy Spirit is wanting
to do in the churches so often.
Tradition.
One of my favorite non-Christian films is
Fiddle Around the Roof.
Tradition!
I can't quite sing like that guy.
But oh, how our hearts break.
How our hearts break when we see so
many people unable to move forward because they
got some little tradition in their church.
They've always done it like that before.
You know the funniest thing now?
The New Church Movement, which I've been involved
with for 20 years, they've got their traditions.
They are worse than some of the churches
they came out of.
They've got their tradition, and you can't get
in there even to talk with them, much
less break the tradition.
It took the other ones 200 years.
The new churches, it only took some of
them 10 years.
We've got to be willing for change.
This isn't 84, it isn't 74.
This is 1994.
This is a day where your little son
can go onto his computer, punch a few
buttons, and pull pornography out of that computer
that you couldn't get for 25 pound in
London 20 years ago.
And little mommy and daddy don't even know
what's going on.
We've got to be ready for change, and
that means there has to be a commitment
to growth, to change, to excellency, to attempting
to improve every area of our ministry.
Now that's why I'm convinced this little book
we have on the table, Grace Awakening, is
so important.
Because if we try to bring change in
an ungraceful, non-grace-awakened way, we will
make a mess.
People get upset with each other.
They start arguing.
It's interesting that in missionary work, most of
the people on the field, places like Pakistan,
India, all these places where I've been involved,
most of them are fairly strong-minded.
To get to the outermost part, to get
to the hard places in the regions beyond,
and we know it can be also hard
right here, takes fairly strong-minded people.
You've got to get through a lot of
minefields, a lot of opposition, and get out
there.
Guess what happens on the mission field when
all these strong-minded people get out there
together, try to work?
They fight among themselves.
You know, as you pray for missionaries, you're
praying for ordinary people.
And there are ugly missionaries.
People who are very narrow-minded, very strong
-minded, that's a deadly combination, narrow-minded and
strong-minded, oh my land, that's fusion.
Anyway, very narrow-minded, very strong-minded, they
get to the field, they have their own
ideas, they've read their particular books, they believe
it's got to happen this way.
We touched about that in the earlier session.
Unwillingness to take advice from the people there,
or take the time, because different people in
the country you go to will give you
different advice.
So you can sort of choose what you
like and not listen to what you don't
like.
Because in some cultures also, they will try
to say things that are courteous and pleasing.
And we hear some of those things initially
and misunderstand.
We don't listen a little more and give
the person, by being approachable, give the person
to share some of the things that are
bothering them about the way we're going on
about something.
I don't want to get back into that,
but it does concern me, and I can
assure you it concerns me when I think
of my own fellowship and some of the
mistakes we have made and continue to make
around the world.
Taking this message to others, that should be
our response.
Therefore it is completely logical for any serious
missions mobilizer who is here to arm themselves
with some of these tools, like these video
cassettes.
I've already ordered some of them.
Imagine, if every one of us took a
few of these videos, we can share, we
can then even choose which ones we want
to share.
If you come here, you have to take
the good and the bad.
We trust it's all good.
But with a video or a book or
an audio tape, you can have a different
tape for different audiences.
We have been trying to make massive use
of video cassette.
It's been uphill all the way, because the
Christian tradition, which is 30 years old, we
don't use video cassette.
We don't use video cassette.
Do you know what modern advertising companies are
doing now?
You know what they've just discovered?
In some places, there's more results sending a
video cassette to a potential client than running
advert prime-time television.
And so instead of a big company spending
$100,000 on an advert, they put $50
,000 in video cassettes, send them to particular
people, and they're seeing phenomenal results.
How many of you have ever heard of
the Jesus Film?
The Jesus Film.
It's an amazing story.
I was just with Paul Eichelman, the head
of the Jesus Film Ministry, part of Campus
Crusade for Christ, and just talking to him
is an inspiration.
They are producing tens of thousands of Jesus
Film videos.
They only cost $5, $10, 5, 6, 7
pounds.
We used to pay $1,000 in the
60s to get a film.
We were big into films from our earliest
days.
$1,000, $2,000 for the projector, $1
,000 for the film.
As you show it so many times, it's
history.
Now we've got the video cassette.
We still use film, though the big screen
video will replace 16mm film in many parts
of the world in the near future.
And now we've got CD-ROM and what
they call the big mega-information highway that's
going to be plowing communication into our homes
like never before in history.
As God's people, we've got to get with
it.
If we want to spread the vision for
world missions, we've got to use video.
This happens to be OM World News No.
5.
A professional video team from Australia take you
to France, take you to Germany, take you
to Berlin, Turkey, and up into the hills
among the Kurdish refugees.
We have hundreds in Britain who subscribe to
this.
Now we're talking here not evangelism.
Give a whole similar message about evangelism.
Right now we're talking missions.
We're talking missions mobilization.
And you and I need to make use
of the tools.
A great mistake to think somebody else is
doing this.
George Verwer is doing this, or OM is
doing this, or YOM is doing it.
Those of us who are in full-time
ministry, and yes, we are doing some of
these things, we are only scratching the surface.
We are only scratching the surface.
Unless there is a grassroots movement in the
church among ordinary people who don't think this
is their thing.
Most of you are here because missions to
one degree or other is already your thing,
especially on a morning meeting.
In the evening, probably we'll pick up a
broader base, and there'll be people who are
on the periphery of missions.
There may be a few here this morning.
Fine.
We've got to not think about this in
the context of those who already have missions
as their thing.
We've got to think, where is the average
Christian?
Now take for example this book Operation World.
The publisher, which just happens to be OM,
though it's a united effort with OM and
WEC, and in America they sold the rights
to Zondervan, a big publisher which was taken
over by the secular people, but it's still
a Christian publishing house.
They are so excited because in America they
produced an edition of 330,000 copies of
Operation World, unheard of almost for missionary books.
I told them the other day, talking to
the director, we're only scratching the surface.
Those copies are largely going to people who
already, already are interested in missions to some
degree.
That's good.
I believe in that.
How do we get that book into the
hands of people on the periphery?
What about pastors?
Many American pastors, it's true of British pastors,
and pastors in general, they are on the
periphery in terms of world missions.
They have too many other things on their
plate.
Survival, preaching, theology, divisions, pastoral counseling, divorce,
abortion, 100 things the average pastor is supposed
to be doing.
And I'll tell you one of the reasons
increasing numbers of pastors are having nervous breakdowns
is they can't live up to the expectations,
especially of a few of the people in
their church or some people in their church.
We need to pray for our pastors.
And if we go to attempt to bring
a greater missions vision to our pastor, read
the book Grace Awakening first, or try 1
Corinthians 13 if you want something shorter.
That's absolutely atomic, 1 Corinthians 13.
It's got to be a grace-awakened approach.
I wonder how many of you have already
thought of the idea of maybe taking this
morning's session, or last night's session, or tonight
is going to be really powerful, and giving
that video to your pastor.
People on the periphery are not going to
give their hard-earned money to buy these
things.
You and I will.
We've got to give it to them.
Let me share my little vision.
You ready for a little vision?
My vision is to see 100 million pieces
of missions mobilization literature go out in the
next few years.
100 million.
It's going to cost somewhere around $100 million
or £700,000.
This is a little contribution I'm making to
the AD2000 movement.
I brought this vision in.
Ralph Winter is excited about it.
He's already in this kind of thing.
He's going to publish an article I wrote
on this, which was just produced in Evangelism
Today.
He's going to publish it in this little
paper that goes out to 90,000 people.
You say, well, who's going to do this?
This is not something I'm going to do.
I'm going to be part of it.
Whatever part God wants, maybe it's, I hope
several million, OM can be involved, maybe 5
million, 10 million.
We've got these ships.
We've got a lot of people.
We're constantly distributing missions material.
But this is a burden for the whole
body of Christ.
Again, we're not going to be able to
measure it in detail.
We're praying that every Christian who loves Jesus
will get involved in the fulfillment of the
Great Commission.
Everybody who loves Jesus Christ is going to
take ownership of world evangelism.
I don't need to give a message at
a conference like this on the biblical basis
of missions.
We know this is biblical.
We know Jesus taught this.
We know this is what we read about
in the Book of Acts.
We're on down the road from there.
And now we want to get the church
to obey.
Sending.
Can you imagine the potential of the British
church to send missionaries?
Do you know one false cult in the
United States has 50,000?
50,000 on their two-year program.
I don't want to mention their name.
They're from Utah.
50,000.
Do you think that's superficial?
A great mistake some Christian leaders made was
to condemn short-term work as all being
superficial.
That cult had already proved that in two
years, when you're committed, you can do a
lot.
And they don't have the Holy Spirit.
From our churches in Britain, we should be
able to launch 100,000 short-term workers
if we count summer workers.
I like short-term to think minimum of
a year.
But many people short-term, they think a
summer.
Well, anything.
I was with Colin Dye of Kensington Temple.
He was sharing and he said to me
that he found people going out from his
church even one week when they came back.
They were different people.
We should be able to get tens of
thousands, yes, even this summer, tens of thousands
out for a few weeks in France or
Belgium.
Now, it may seem like a lot of
people, those nations are big.
There are many churches in some of those
countries.
They're small, but what I'm saying is that
there is scope for short-term teams if
they go through the right training to be
a help and to be a blessing.
It's not the answer, but it can be
part of the answer in many of these
lands.
And with the open doors in Eastern Europe,
even places like Albania, it is staggering to
the imagination.
But that is not going to happen unless
there's a grassroots movement.
And there's not going to be a grassroots
movement unless you and I not only become
missions mobilizers in our minds and say we
believe in this, this is good, but we
actually do it.
My prayer is that we may go from
here actually doing these things.
Distributing missionary videos, distributing missionary books, writing letters
and putting mission material with it.
Having prayer meetings in which we focus on
world missions.
Talking to the leaders of our church in
a grace and waking way how we can
improve the missionary thrust of our church.
Maybe giving them serving as senders first to
prepare the way.
If you have any clout in your church
trying to put together a fund to get
your pastor on the field.
Pastors need to get on the field.
They need to see that helps them to
somehow take the blinders off that keep them
from looking beyond their own church.
There are phenomenal examples of this in this
country.
I think of Tony Sargent of Worthing Tab
his new book about Dr. Lloyd-Jones is
just out.
Worthing Tab is one of the greatest missionary
sending churches in all of Europe.
They're not boasting about it I can assure
you.
Tony Sargent the pastor has averaged 4 to
10 missionary trips a year for the last
15 years.
And the church has not suffered.
They have other people who can preach.
If you're in a church and only one
guy can preach you're probably in trouble.
He's not training anybody.
He's not mentoring anybody.
So Tony launches.
He's just been on Lagos II in Latin
America.
Now he's back in the church.
And the money that they see released from
that church the workers they see released is
quite amazing.
Now there are other churches like that.
Quite a few actually.
But they're still a small group relatively speaking
of real sending churches.
And this is where we need to multiply
what God is giving us here.
Through video, through personal sharing, through serving, through
the distribution of missionary materials.
That means that we may have to invest
some of our own finance.
One of the things that amazes me and
I know I have a tendency toward extreme
and I'd ask you to forgive me if
I say things that are over the top
but I cannot understand why people aren't giving
more money to build the kingdom of God.
I cannot understand that.
That vision gripped me when I was only
17.
And I had an opposing struggle.
I didn't want to spend anything.
I wanted it all to go for world
evangelism.
And that got me in trouble.
It was extreme.
Now if that's your problem, you and I
need to have personal contact.
If you're one of these persons, you never
spend any money on your wife, never money
any money on your children.
By the way, if you have that kind
of viewpoint as I had, you should never
get married.
You stay single.
You can pull it off if you stay
single.
Just live in a tent on the nearest
beach and put all your money into Bibles
and tracts.
That's the way I thought.
In fact, when I met the girl who
was going to become my wife, see, no
matter how spiritual you are, you are incredibly
human.
And this incredibly human guy saw this beautiful
looking girl at the desk when I got
out of a lift, an elevator, at Moody
Bible Institute.
She blew all my...
I'd been two years on a fast, not
dating because that was one of my struggles.
I thought, cold turkey.
And I saw this...
I saw this beautiful girl and I fell
in love with her.
I thought, well, this can't be from God
because it feels too nice.
I was a little bit into asceticism.
And then I walked right up to her.
I think the first conversation, I said, you're
probably not going to the mission field, are
you?
Because, you know, I wouldn't even talk to
you if you weren't going to the mission
field.
And, you know, she was very surprised, very
shy, quiet girl.
You know, why do you say that?
I said, well, none of the really good
looking chicks around here are going to the
mission field.
Anyway, we ended up a year later getting
married.
Just had our 34th wedding anniversary.
But I wouldn't spend any money during that...
What do you call that period when you're
trying to win her over?
Courtship.
No money.
I wouldn't even put a coin in a
vending machine.
In fact, word got around that I was
teaching her to spend money on these sweets
was from the devil.
I actually never said that.
I inferred it, but I never said it.
And I was big.
I was extreme into God's supplying.
Let me just say, there's nothing that's beautiful
in the Bible that you can't go extreme
on and make it ugly.
Anything beautiful, you can make it ugly.
And that's one of the specializations of Satan.
Get people into tangents.
Get people into dead-end streets.
And I was moving that way, but somehow
I had the influence of that Bible college.
I had the influence of the Word and
of men like Alan Redpath, who happened to
be a preacher in Chicago.
That time, that great British preacher.
And so I was constantly repenting and trying
to sort things out.
But I remember sitting by the beach one
day, and since our meals were already provided
at the Institute, we weren't there for lunch,
but I thought, we're not going to spend
any money because the meals were already paid
for.
They're gone.
And yet, as I was sitting with my
fiancée, I think we were engaged by then,
she wasn't staying at the Institute.
She was somewhere else.
She was hungry.
I was so extreme, I would not buy
her lunch.
I instead prayed, Lord, miraculous provision.
Some people came behind us and had a
picnic.
When they left, they threw their brown bag
in the rubbish bin.
And I went, I don't think I said
in the name of Jesus, but I went
into the rubbish bin and got the bag
and opened it for my fiancée.
And there was a sandwich that was unwrapped.
Never touched.
And she had her lunch.
Now, was I extreme or not extreme?
How many say I was extreme?
Raise your hand.
Guillotino didn't put his hand up.
Thank you very much.
After the wedding, I didn't even believe in
weddings.
We got married after the Sunday morning service.
Sermon.
Boom.
Didn't believe in honeymoons.
We headed for Mexico.
Evangelism.
I decided I wasn't going to spend any
money to get to Mexico.
I had this beat up old van.
Broken window, I didn't repair it.
It was sub-zero, the window was broken.
This was our first night after our marriage.
I can assure you, my wife told me
later she was having some struggles.
I did break down, freezing in the night.
We had to drive through the first night,
which is now illegal in O.M. because
of a number of factors.
Because I didn't want to spend any money
to stay anywhere.
And we couldn't stop in this beat up
van with a broken heater.
We had to get to Texas in the
heat as quick as possible.
But I broke down and bought her a
cup of hot chocolate.
Balance was beginning to come.
It's beginning to come.
The next night, we had to get a
place to stay.
I went to the telephone book.
I'm not exaggerating this.
I went to the section where there was
pastors.
It was a small town.
Random chose a pastor, went to his house,
knocked on the door.
I said, we're missionaries going to Mexico.
We need a bed for the night.
He gave us the master bedroom.
And he gave me a dollar the next
morning, which I was praying to get my
money back from the hot chocolate.
Of course, to get to Mexico, to get
to Mexico in a van, you need petrol,
right?
You need petrol.
I took the wedding cake.
There were two wedding cakes.
And praise God, people didn't eat too much.
I took, this is the truth, in Wheaton,
Illinois, I took the wedding cake to the
first petrol station.
And I said, hey, I'm trying to get
to Mexico.
You give me some petrol.
I'll give you this cake.
It blew his mind.
He never had that experience.
He gave me a free tank of petrol.
I did the same thing the next morning.
It was a Christian, a brethren guy.
I'll never forget it.
He gave me oil and gas and didn't
take the cake.
400 miles more down the road, next petrol
station.
This guy was not a believer, but he
was a cake lover.
He took the cake.
We got to Mexico 2,000 miles without
spending any money.
Just selling my wife's possessions and other things
along the way.
Well, somebody once said to me, when a
movement is being birthed, when a movement is
being birthed, this was the birth of OM.
We didn't even know what God was doing.
I didn't have all this in my head.
I was going one step at a time.
But when something is being birthed, often there
has to be extreme things that God allows
to birth it.
When it's birthed, of course it has to
become more biblical, more balanced.
And that's what's happened in Operation Mobilization.
Of course, we had some people leave us.
Some people felt, you know, we turned away
from the original preaching when I started to
become a little more sane, a little more
balanced.
Of course, living in Mexico those first days,
I didn't want to spend any money on
food.
But we weren't at Bible college anymore with
all the meals paid.
So I had to give some of the
first money for food.
This was wild.
I went down to the bazaar, my broken
Spanish, and tried to trade gospel books for
these tough, bizarre market Mexicans.
And they didn't want any of my books.
So I wasn't getting much food.
And I remember once actually giving my wife
chicken bones.
I said, look, if you boil these up,
we can get some soup out of these
bones.
And my wife was so submissive.
Anything I told her to do, she did.
I mean, that's another story.
I gave her Ephesians 5 from the first
time we met.
Not even the whole chapter.
You know, just submit, submit.
Boy, and she was so committed to that.
And that worked.
That was beautiful for several weeks.
Then she started to read these other verses.
You know, love your wife as Christ loved
the church.
Help!
It's very difficult for my type of person.
Those days, those early days in Mexico, it
was God's anvil.
As He broke me, I shared about that
experience with a Mexican lad.
And God had to break me.
And I found myself apologizing to my wife.
I found myself starting to spend money.
To this day, I find it hard to
spend money on anything but that which is
for world evangelism.
But God, many years ago now, showed me
that I was off.
I had a wrong view of culture.
I didn't understand the human factor.
I certainly didn't understand women.
And I learned to joyfully spend some money
even on myself and, of course, my wife,
my family.
I eventually had three children.
I'm now a grandfather.
But it was a hard road for me.
I almost didn't make it.
My marriage could have broke.
We've got to keep changing.
Now, maybe your problem's not the same as
mine.
Maybe your problem is that you tend to
spend a little more money on yourself and
on things that four weeks later, you look
at that little thing sitting on the shelf,
and you think, Now, what is that actually
for?
That little bit of junk is not only
not going to help world evangelism, as you
look at it, you're trying to figure out
how it's even going to help you.
Again, I want to bring that into balance
because I believe that as human beings, we
will waste.
We will sometimes waste.
And how wrong it was of me after
I learned how to spend to then be
so cautious with my wife on what she
did purchase.
And when I discovered she wanted to purchase
a few knick-knacks.
Do you have that word in England?
Knick-knacks.
That's ultimate junk.
And yet there are shops everywhere.
Shops everywhere trying to sell you.
My wife got into purchasing spoons.
Little spoons.
Have you ever tried to eat your cereal
on these little spoons that they sell?
It says, you know, Cornwall or Stratford-on
-Avon.
And soon, then she wanted to buy this
board with these little, you know, hanging all
the spoons.
So there in my house, a disciple's house,
were these little spoons that nobody could eat
with.
Finally, I said to her, Honey, buy a
spoon.
In fact, I broke down and I bought
her one of those spoons.
Praise the Lord.
Several weeks later, the Lord delivered her from
that.
If any of you would like to buy
some small spoons, could you see me after
the meeting?
The Word of God says it's good you
can laugh because in missions, it's a lot
of laughing or a lot of crying.
There's no middle road in missions.
But the fact of the matter is the
Word of God says it is more blessed
to give than receive.
The fact is that in Acts chapter 2
when the Holy Spirit was moving in power,
people started to sell their own possessions for
the kingdom.
The fact of the matter is a man
in chapter 4 gave his own house to
sell for the sake of the kingdom.
And the fact of the matter is that
we have passages like Luke 14, 33 that
we read before.
Except you forsake all that you have, you
can't be My disciple.
I went naturally extreme on that until I
hit Philippians.
My God will supply all your needs according
to His glories and riches in Christ Jesus.
Of course God prospers His people oftentimes.
That's such a major controversy I'm surely not
going to get into it this morning.
But sometimes we are playing a game of
words.
Has God prospered operation mobilization or has He
not?
With two ships and two and a half
thousand people and properties and houses all over
the world.
Not that many private houses but headquarters and
coordination bases like our big base in India.
But if God prospers you, first of all
I don't believe it's just a blanket rule.
You just throw out for everybody like some
kind of formula.
But as God does prosper individual believers, it's
for the advancement of His kingdom.
It's not for you to build up your
big home and your fat bank account that
you can live comfortably the rest of your
life.
And I'm not speaking against comfort.
But God is calling us to build the
kingdom.
And when hundreds of millions are without food
and without the gospel as we sit here
this morning, how can we not become a
little extreme at times?
I remember being with Brother Andrew in the
Netherlands.
Sorry I missed being with him this weekend.
We've been linked for 30 some years.
But I remember being with him in the
Netherlands.
Corrie ten Boom spoke first.
I spoke in the afternoon.
He was the main speaker in the evening.
We had a little cup of tea together.
And he asked me, he said, George, did
you give an invitation?
And I said, well, no, actually I didn't
give an invitation.
I'll leave that with you tonight.
He said, sure thing.
I've learned it's easier to cool down a
fanatic than warm up a corpse.
It's true, isn't it?
Don't worry about a little extremism among some
of your young people.
You get too excited for Jesus and missions.
Is this a big problem in the average
church?
Too much prayer?
Too much love?
Too much zeal?
Too much gospel or literature distribution?
Too many people pushing Operation World and all
excited about missions?
Do you know what A.W. Tozer, that
great prophet, said?
To think that too much enthusiasm like this
was the greatest problem in the average church
was like sending a squadron of policemen to
the nearby cemetery to stop a demonstration among
the residents at midnight.
It's not the biggest problem in town, is
it?
And I don't think it's the biggest problem
for most of us here.
And I dare to say, this morning it
would be in the will and the plan
and purpose of King Jesus that we be
filled afresh with His Holy Spirit.
Filled afresh with His Holy Spirit.
D.O. Moody used to emphasize the need
to be filled again and again.
Get a lot of people these days telling
you about, they had this great crisis with
the Holy Spirit ten years ago.
They had this great crisis five years ago.
God did this three years ago.
I want to know, where are you right
now, brother?
This is 1994.
We're in the middle of February, day after
Valentine's Day.
My wife gave me a big card.
The first thing I thought, boy, what did
that cost her?
I told her I was going to sell
it.
But I brought her something as well.
I was, you know, this is the age
of the mobile phone.
A businessman gave me one free.
He pays all the calls.
So I thought I'd do my wife a
good, I never go shopping, hardly ever.
Supermarkets, well, that's her job.
But I thought, I was on the way
home, I was walking, I'm going into Sainsbury's
and buy something my wife needs.
How do I know what she needs?
I'm standing at the door of Sainsbury's on
the phone.
Honey, what do you need?
But I didn't write it down.
Anyway, as my Valentine's present, I brought my
wife some things from Sainsbury's.
Small onions.
I thought, sure, she said small onions.
She said big onions.
What is the difference between a big and
a small onion?
Did I hear for a woman?
I said, big thing.
Would you pray for me in my marriage?
I really appreciate that.
God's grace.
It's more blessed to give than receive.
Lay not up treasure on earth, but lay
up treasure in heaven.
Yes, we've got to be balanced.
We need to bloom where we are.
We need to acknowledge our human factor.
That means we have to spend money for
survival, for flowers, for cutting the grass, all
kinds of things that some of us don't
sort of like to do.
But I don't think the average person is
having these problems.
We are a materialistic age.
People are thinking about themselves.
They're planning.
They're scheming.
No one can tell us what is enough
pension?
How much is enough insurance?
And so little money.
Brothers and sisters, let's be honest here this
morning.
So little money is going into world evangelism.
And even when people stood up to give
money, they usually give to people's physical needs.
They see some little baby on television all
crippled up and dying.
Ah!
They feel so guilty.
They send money into the organization.
They don't even know anything about the organization.
Send money in anyway.
They feel a little better after that.
So we have God's people giving money to
non-Christian organizations.
Some of them are even humanistic and anti
-Christian.
But at least their conscience feels better.
Praise God for Tear Fund, an evangelical movement
raised up with a double-barreled evangelistic and
holistic and caring for the physical need type
of ministry.
And other similar ministries and most mission agencies,
even groups like OM that are known for
aggressive evangelism.
We're helping the refugees.
We're working among the poor.
But we've discovered through that that people more
easily give money to projects that help people's
physical needs than they will give to world
evangelism.
So that message needs to be brought into
balance.
And those who have vision for evangelism, those
who have vision for church planting, those who
have vision for reaching the unreached people through
many different methods, I believe as much as
possible the little money they may have, they
should channel it more carefully and discerningly to
things that are going to bring men and
women to Jesus Christ.
In fact, it was Luis Palau who said,
the greatest way to bring about social change
is to see a man born again.
And I say amen.
Though OM hasn't had this as our priority
all these years.
In fact, thousands, literally thousands of people who've
been on OM are involved today in holistic
ministry through their own church or in other
ways.
It's exciting.
How are we going to see this vision
accomplished?
How are we going to reach all of
Europe with the gospel?
We've got to see a massive grassroots missions
movement.
And that is going to take money.
If we're going to distribute a hundred million
pieces of missions, mobilization, literature.
We're not speaking Europe here, but the whole
world.
That's going to take at least a hundred
million dollars.
Now right away people get really upset.
Certain Christians, especially those who specialize in small
mindedness, which is a majority group, they feel
very upset.
I just had a negative letter about my
article.
It's unspiritual.
It's too businesslike.
Boom, boom, boom.
You know.
And I love that person.
I understand to some degree where he's coming
from.
That article only represents one burden on my
heart.
That is not more important than the Lordship
of Christ.
That's not more important than the fullness of
the Holy Spirit.
But we've got to declare the whole counsel
of God.
And that particular vision is built on those
other foundational truths.
People say, well that's so much money.
Do you know what the World Vision Budget
is in the United States?
That's a Christian organization.
Do you know what their budget is?
Three hundred million.
Now I know over in Europe these big
American figures sort of short-circuit our thinking.
But let me tell you, there is big
money in the hands of God's people here
in this country.
I could tell you some things about money
in Britain you wouldn't believe.
How much money does our born-again tremendous
wonderful brother Cliff Richards have?
He's worth over 30 million.
And he's probably the most generous giver in
the nation among wealthy people.
Brothers and sisters, we can trust God for
millions.
In myself, I don't want it in myself.
It's more work.
Every pound you get given in a Christian
charity today like OM, you have to carefully
account for.
Every pound.
And we're in subject to boards of directors
and we're in subject to one another.
People who are set free from the drives
of materialism, they in themselves, they don't want
more money.
It's more work.
It's got to be carefully spent.
Life gets complicated.
People make false accusations.
It's easier in some ways to be poor,
even in Christian ministry.
Would you ask God for even 500 pounds
by faith that you can buy missions mobilization
material and start the multiplication effect?
Realizing that when you distribute some of this
kind of material, someone else who may have
a little more money will get some and
he will get more.
Have you ever discovered what's called network marketing?
It's very much on the increase in this
country.
My son has just gone into it.
He's a builder.
He loves Jesus.
But he's started to distribute herbal life.
This is a drink of herbs and it
makes people feel better, look better, I don't
know, dance better.
Whatever.
I remember when Amway, ever heard of Amway?
That was born and American people laughed.
What a joke.
And of course, Christians, they're always good.
Oh, it's from the devil.
Anything they don't understand, from the devil.
That was a bit of a problem because
a lot of Christians got into it.
The founder of the whole thing just happened
to love Jesus.
Gets all complicated, doesn't it?
Especially when we've got a big mouth like
me.
Amway, network marketing, which is a grassroots, it's
grassroots whether you're for or against it.
That's not the issue now.
It's grassroots.
It's now one of the largest companies in
the world.
All those men in the early days are
multi, multi, multi millionaires.
Not so easy anymore.
And they put a lot of money into
missions, into God's work, usually within their own
country.
We haven't seen any of it yet.
I do have one Amway man who's made
a pledge that gives a certain percentage of
all of his sales in Canada coming to
me.
I get every second month a check for
about two pounds so far.
He's not, sales haven't exploded yet.
That's the truth.
But I'm praying for him.
We need, within the body of Christ, a
massive network biblical, holy ghost network marketing movement
to convince people that they need to be
involved.
To take the product, the word of God
and Christian literature for evangelism, books like some
of the materials we have here for mobilization,
for spreading the vision.
I will tell you this kind of thing
captures even 50 of you this morning.
And you begin to put it in practice,
it will multiply right across the whole of
Europe.
I could give you story after story.
Our time is almost gone.
Of how we planted just little seeds.
The story, for example, of Operation World.
It was out of print.
It didn't sell.
It was a dead book.
When in Bromley, Kent, where I've lived for
so many years, I found that old copy
laying on the bottom shelf.
I pushed it through to my publication director.
I said, let's reprint it.
Let's publish it.
Let's put a good cover on it.
Today, it's the largest missionary distribution selling book
in the world.
Again, I feel we've just scratched the surface.
But it has been a fairly large surface
in many languages.
No one who knows anything about missiology would
not say that Operation World has been a
major tool.
It's all it is that God has used.
Then the prayer cards came out.
Then globes and maps and all kinds of
other tools.
And it spread eventually to millions of people.
That's why right now, Korea, they published Operation
World in Korea.
The ripple effect went to Korea years ago.
Not just from OM, from many agencies.
And Korea is gearing up to send tens
of thousands of missionaries.
Did you know that?
The fastest-growing group of missionaries in OM,
fastest-growing, they're not the biggest, fastest-growing
Koreans.
We had 140 Koreans at our September conference
for new recruits.
They were the largest group.
So we shifted from translation from the main
pulpit into German or Dutch.
They were the languages we usually used from
the English.
We shifted to Korean.
Here we are in the Netherlands preaching English
and Korean.
Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, there are many new
missionary sending agencies.
It's one of the most exciting new things
that's happening in the world today in connection
with foreign missions.
It's just amazing.
Absolutely amazing.
But as we say these things, this is
a great danger.
We in Europe now develop an inferiority complex
when it comes to missions and think we
can take the back seat.
Don't make that mistake.
These nations have phenomenal obstacles to overcome.
The Koreans take three years to learn English
before they can really get seriously started in
career missions.
We have, OM now has our own English
language school in northern Wales mainly to teach
Koreans English.
This is a mountain that has to be
moved.
Brazilians and Argentinians up to now their churches
are not willing to put up the big
airfares at all that's needed to get them
out in decent numbers.
Some are coming.
It's exciting.
But Britain is still, still way out front.
You already know this trade language of the
world.
You've got churches.
You've got resources.
I know it's not always in your hands.
From Heathrow and Gatwick we can touch any
nation in the world in a matter of
hours or less than a day.
We've got this missionary heritage.
We, in this nation, must remain on the
cutting edge of world evangelism.
But it won't happen unless people like you
and me are missionary mobilizers through every possible
method.
A prayer movement must go parallel with this.
And ourselves demonstrating this reality by being involved
with these ethnic minorities that are right here
at our doorstep.
How dare we turn our backs on Hindus
and Muslims that are right at our doorstep.
How dare we communicate any form of racial
superiority in the 20th and 21st century.
We must humble ourselves.
We must acknowledge the mistakes we made, even
things like the Crusades, as here we are
in the midst of Ramadan.
And Muslims, once again, think often concerning the
Crusades and Christians killing Muslims and Muslims killing
Christians.
We are not in some kind of crusade
anymore.
Ours is a revolution of love.
And we must open our homes and open
our hearts and reach out to these minorities.
At least try.
It's better to try and fail than have
never tried.
Talk to one Muslim about Jesus.
One Hindu about Jesus.
Or maybe just an old-fashioned cockney atheist
who'd like to punch you in the nose
the moment you mention the name of Jesus
Christ.
World Missions starts here.
This is tunnel vision, but it starts on
this side of the tunnel.
And as we grow and as we receive
God's guidance, we go through the tunnel and
to the ends of the earth.
And let's face it, for everyone that goes,
we need a hundred.
At least a hundred that will stand behind.
Now that hundred will only be doing that.
They'll be living their life here.
They'll be God's salt and light here.
It's not an either-or.
We can't put reaching Britain against reaching Turkey.
We're one body.
Different people will be led to emphasize different
things, but we'll all, by faith, buy in
to the basic concept.
The whole world reached with the gospel.
It can be done.
It's doable.
I'm not saying it can be done by
the year 2000, Jan 1st, but it can
be done.
And the decision you and I make this
week is a determining factor.
Let's be practical.
Let's examine what we're doing with our time,
with our money.
Let's examine our communication methods.
Let's examine the practical areas of our life.
Lest we continue to spread a brand of
spiritual schizophrenia that I believe eventually leaves people
in a backslidden and spiritually dead situation.
Let us pray.
If there is any time left, we can
have questions.
I can't remember.
I'm supposed to finish at half past or
at one o'clock, but we'll pray first.
Lord, I just thank you for this opportunity
to share this burden that burns in my
heart like a fire.
It's been there all these 38, 39 years
in varying ways.
And Lord, I know there are people here
that have a greater love for you than
I do, that have a closer walk with
you than I do.
But Lord, we can learn from one another.
And we believe as we see spiritual fusion
that the result will be much greater than
the combined sections of that fusion that some
people call synergy.
And we long for that kind of atomic
spiritual synergy to somehow take place for your
kingdom.
And we're trusting you.
We're looking to you.
And we may never be the same.
We want that commitment, but we want that
grace-awakened balance.
Lest we play the fool and discredit your
holy work.
In Jesus' name, Amen.