Hey, you guys, is this the right place?
I think it's George Veller.
Give him a round of applause, please.
He needs some help here.
Hi!
I'm the leader.
You see my hat?
What does that say?
Which way did they go?
I'm the leader.
Which way did they go?
Isn't that the greatest hat that George Veller
could ever wear?
Now we know you're new recruits from all
over the world.
And we know you hear so many messages.
And a lot of what you hear you
forget, right?
And I believe in visual aids.
Do you believe in visual aids?
Yes, I do.
Well, you're a beautiful one yourself.
Are you married?
Yes, I do.
Oh, good.
Okay.
So I hope that you new recruits are
going to remember some of these things that
I brought with me in my gospel flak
jacket.
First of all, of course, there is the
shaving cream.
That's the shaving cream.
Do you want me to help you?
No, I don't think I'll shave now.
But we would advise our new recruits to
shave because a lot of the beard growing
is quite ugly.
But this is even more important.
How many of you highly educated university graduates
know what this is?
This is deodorant.
And I can tell you some of you
are not using it.
It even works in the Arab world.
It's amazing how much you can carry in
your pockets.
But we don't need pockets so much anymore.
This is the new generation.
We've got body bags.
You can carry so much in the body
bag.
Let me just see a few of the
things that I got because the new revolutionary
O.M.R. is well equipped.
First of all, very heavy-duty tape.
No cheap tape.
Heavy-duty aluminum foil tape.
When you put this over the mouth of
the team member who talks too much, it
works and it sticks.
I've even heard of team leaders put out
a commission for days with this kind of
tape.
But I'm not going to use it tonight
even though many of you would like me
to.
One of the messages of O.M.R.
is to redeem the time.
Now as the winter comes on, it gets
darker and darker, earlier and earlier, right?
You notice that.
So you've got to have a flashlight.
You've got to have a torch.
You've got to have plenty of batteries.
Also, you've got to have a battery charger.
No O.M.R. goes out without a
battery charger because you've also got rechargeables and
you never know whether they're charged or not
charged unless you have a battery charger.
Made in China.
It's a good one.
And you've got to have, of course, a
torch because in the night, stuck in the
back of the O.M. van, broken down,
you want to read your discipleship manuals.
God gave me these brilliant glasses to read,
you know, in the dark, so I'm holding
the book at the same time.
The only problem is the batteries.
They don't work anymore.
Isn't that terrific?
I don't know.
I think it's made in Korea, actually.
I don't think so.
Maybe it's made in China.
Made in Korea!
Now, another thing that you need to realize
is the importance of washing.
And a lot of O.M.R.'s, they
lose their soap.
So this is a handy soap.
You just hang it right over your neck
and it's there you can wash with whenever
you need it.
Of course, this is the modern era.
Every O.M.R. is challenged to make
phone calls, especially to call his donors and
to, you know, ask him to send in
some support.
So we hope in the future that every
O.M.R. will have his handy cellular
telephone.
Now, some of you are not into modern
technology, so you need this kind of instruction,
how these work.
You see, when you go in a tunnel,
like in England where I live, it doesn't
work.
What if you get a phone call in
the tunnel from a major donor wanting to
give you a couple of grand?
I mean, you don't want to miss that
phone call, right?
So every O.M.R. has got to
have a beeper.
When I hear that little sound, I know
a donor is calling.
When I get out of the tunnel, I
punch a couple of numbers and I get
into my electronic mailbox and there the message
is stored, Hello, George Fairweather, where do I
send my 3,000 pounds?
Hallelujah.
Some of you are not enough advance guard,
advance guard in your thinking.
So you don't have some of this equipment.
Some of you have this old-fashioned phone
number book.
It's good.
It's better than nothing.
Some of you ain't got nothing.
Phone numbers are as valuable as gold.
We get some people, they say, Hey, I
just led that guy to Christ.
Boy, that was the greatest thing that ever
happened to me.
He accepted Jesus.
They were witnessing and he accepted Jesus.
Later on, you meet that fellow and you
say, Hey, I'm so thrilled you led that
guy to Christ.
Praise God.
Praise the Lord.
That's wonderful.
What was his name?
Oh, his name.
Gee, a new babe in Christ.
No, I didn't get his name, really.
So it's good to have a notebook.
And when he accepts Jesus, put his name,
put his phone number, put his address, and
write him a love letter as soon as
possible.
Little things count when you become a missionary.
Sometimes you find a young missionary recruit, he's
reading all these big, gigantic books about sanctification.
188 ways how to be totally sanctified in
one week.
Big, giant books.
Sometimes we need to be a little practical.
I had this little, tiny, tiny computer, and
I can put in here all my little
phone numbers.
If you accept Jesus, I put you in.
You may want to pray about getting one
of those for Christmas.
Very cheap, from Radio Shack.
Really handy.
We know the average O.M.er lacks
vision.
We talked about vision last night.
Some of you might find it helpful, therefore,
to get some binoculars to increase your vision.
Especially when you're looking for the dynamic, hard
-working, spirit-filled new recruit.
You can find one or two if you
have your binoculars with you.
No, we hope that's not true.
We hope every one of you is a
spirit-filled recruit.
Even if you're filled with a spirit, you
need aspirins.
You know M, you need aspirins.
Don't feel it is unspiritual to carry aspirin
or nisprin, or, you know, laxatives.
Or special other pills that you take when
you're feeling in a certain way.
You haven't been to, you know, the loo,
the toilet, for several weeks.
I don't think you should just pray and
fast.
I think you should find the right pill.
But the aspirins are very, very helpful.
And it's easy to forget some things.
Especially your toothbrush.
I mean, you laugh.
You think this is a small thing.
I want to tell you, bad breath is
on the increase in Operation Mobilization.
And we need to brush our teeth several
times a day.
You can also get electronic toothbrush.
There's the batteries, I guess, for that.
And there's all kinds of sprays.
I don't know if you're into sprays.
You want to make sure that they're ozone
friendly.
Announcements.
Excuse me, George, we have an announcement.
Can you just, uh, a word of testimony
that's got to take place here?
Okay, yeah, I think I'm being part of
our ceremony.
I only have a short time, so I
just want to share a few things with
you.
I have been around for three years now
in OM.
And I really believe that we need people
to follow.
It's great to have role models which we
can come behind and see up ahead.
Starting off in my OM life, I wasn't
quite sure about deodorant and toothpaste.
I remember the toothpaste.
But I still haven't quite worked on the
deodorant yet.
I'm sorry.
But I want to encourage you to keep
on keeping on.
And follow great advice.
Thank you.
This was not George Boer's son.
Well, we're rushing for time now.
And we just got to show a few
other things.
It's amazing the number of pockets you get.
This is aspirin gum in case you can't
handle, you know, real aspirin.
You just chew on that.
This is the New Testament.
Very basic.
Because you'll probably lose your Bible.
This is a Walkman.
You've got to have a Walkman.
Every spirit-filled Christian has a Walkman with
Bill Drake tapes.
I like to carry a backup radio in
case the tapes, you know, get all messed
up and they're laying on the path when
you're jogging and you get really upset.
You can switch over to the radio and
listen to the news and try to calm
down.
Actually, in coming here, I forgot my Bible.
I wonder if this Arab by the door,
you'll find my Bible with a special backup
escape kit on top of it.
You need a camera.
How many of you have a camera?
Don't be ashamed that you have a camera.
O.M. believes in camera.
There's no policy against camera.
Everybody, take your camera out if you have
a camera.
If you have it with you, take it
out right now.
I want to take a picture of you
taking a picture of me.
Take your camera out.
You don't even bring your camera.
You're a bunch of lazy, good for no...
I'm sorry.
Yes.
Anyway, if you have a camera, take a
picture right now.
Now.
Okay, praise the Lord.
Another big...
Another big thing we're into in O.M.,
we want you to learn this.
Freebies.
We take anything that's free.
It's amazing what you can get.
Old underwear along the side of the road.
You can get it.
You can wash it and pray over it
and use it again.
How many of you are going to have
the airplane experience in the coming weeks?
Probably you're going to do lots, going to
Lagos, going to India, going, going, going.
Airplane experience.
Raise your hand.
Whoa.
You can even be bumped up to first
class.
Don't hesitate to ask the little friendly little
girl at the desk.
Can I be bumped up to first class?
Generally, she will always say the same thing.
No, you cannot be bumped up to...
I was amazed the other day on an
airplane when they gave me this free of
charge, this entire kit.
Look at this.
Just look at this.
Even instructions on how to use it.
Have you ever seen this?
Look at this.
In that one little thing, you have everything.
Everything.
I mean, you don't need all this stuff
anymore.
What is it?
I'm going to explain it in a minute.
I'm impatient.
You have shaving foam right there.
You push that button.
You have a toothbrush.
It's impossible to get it out, but it's
there.
You have a nail file.
It's nothing worse than an old emmer with
these long nails.
And, you know, it goes, praise the Lord.
Jesus Christ for life.
You have a little razor.
Look at how handy that...
Look at that.
Do you shave?
No, I mean...
My husband does.
Oh, yeah.
I'm not sure I'll ever get that back
in there.
Toothpaste, shaving foam, toothbrush.
There's other things in there, but it's hard
to figure out.
Isn't that amazing?
Young people, we are living in exciting days.
People are giving things away free.
This is one of the ways that God
can supply.
Some of you have been sleeping on a
hard floor.
You can go to any city, walk through
the streets at the right time, and you
can pick up mattresses free.
They're out in these big old containers in
various parts of the streets.
Isn't it exciting what you can get free?
How many of you...
How many of you clever people know what
that is in that little tube?
How many?
How many know what that is?
The top comes off.
Now, what do you think that is?
That is a spray, isn't it?
That is ozone-friendly bad breath killer.
Ah!
Here, try it.
Just try it.
It's good.
Oh, well, not in the eye.
I'm sorry.
Okay.
But good smell.
This is my name and address sticker.
These are amazing.
These are especially made for the Arab countries,
high security zones.
Give that man your address, and after several
days, you can look at it and memorize
it.
After several days, it completely disappears.
Do you have some of those?
No, I don't have.
Address labels.
No, I don't have.
Okay.
Well, I've got some more things, but I
think...
How many think that's enough training on equipment
for one night?
Thank you very much.
I want you to turn now in your
Bibles.
I'm ashamed to take this off because my
hair is a mess.
My wife always yelling me, Your hair is
a mess!
Your hair is a mess!
Comb your hair!
Yes, I'll comb my hair!
And all this equipment, I forgot my comb!
I lost everything here.
I lost my comb.
Okay, let's somehow now get into this confessions
of a weak, needy missionary.
Turn with me in your Bibles to Corinthians.
Just be a little patient because I don't
know whether it's first and second.
I've been struggling with that for many years.
It's about God's sufficient grace, 2 Corinthians chapter
12.
And it's verse 7.
Let's look at verse 7.
This is a very unusual verse.
And then, verse 8.
The Lord said unto me, verse 9.
He is made perfect in weakness.
Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in
my infirmities that the power of Christ may
rest upon me.
Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities and reproaches
and necessities and persecutions and distresses for Christ's
sake for when I am weak, then am
I strong.
Let's just unite our hearts just again, please,
in prayer.
Oh God, your word is powerful.
Lord, we thank you for your word.
We thank you, Lord, for your grace.
We thank you, as Charles Swindoll said in
his book, we can laugh again.
It is your command that we be whole
people.
Not some kind of religious robots, but grace
awakened, praising, laughing, whole people gripped by your
Holy Spirit.
Lord, when we see some of our weaknesses,
we really do have to laugh.
Lord, I thank you for grace every single
day for 38 years.
I thank you, you have not asked me
to try to be somebody else.
I thank you, I've not had to forsake
even my weak sense of humor.
And Lord, I just worship you.
I worship you together with all these young
people.
We long to be even fools for you,
Lord Jesus.
In communicating the vision and in communicating the
gospel to this generation.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
I sometimes ask myself why I've tried so
hard to keep some kind of sense of
humor.
As I look back at my life, I
realize that one of my problems was so
often I was too serious.
Now we want you to be serious.
This is an incredibly serious conference.
But we don't want you to be too
serious.
We want you to find that balance.
It's not so easy to share this particular
message.
I was speaking in a big church in
Chicago.
Sometimes my reputation goes ahead of me.
They expected a powerful challenge on missions and
discipleship and forsake all this about 20 years
ago.
Sunday morning, they're all sitting there.
I just couldn't do it.
I decided to tell them another side of
myself and of the message.
I just shared my struggles, my weaknesses.
Absolute candid honesty.
I didn't even have the strength to give
much of an invitation after I preached.
But I did.
And many people, including some very dignified and
wealthy people, surrendered to Jesus Christ that morning.
God is calling us to reality.
God is calling us to honesty.
That doesn't mean you'll express things the same
way that I do.
We're all different.
Balance for you would be maybe backsliding for
me.
Balance for me might be extremism for you.
My favorite chapter, I think, in the book
Grace Awakening is the chapter about just accepting
people.
And I want to tell you, we in
OM, whether we accept you for a particular
field or not, we accept you and we
love you and are committed to you in
Jesus Christ.
That's why we're here.
It doesn't matter if you accept us or
not.
We accept you, we love you, and we
want you.
Some of you are struggling with various weaknesses
and failures.
We've had some people come to our OM
conferences.
Straight from immorality into the OM conference.
That's pretty heavy.
We've seen them, through forgiveness and grace and
counseling, come through and become dynamic disciples of
Jesus Christ.
I want to share some of the struggles
that I've been wrestling with for over 35
years.
That's a pretty long-term wrestling match.
Now I can testify because of God's Word.
Because of God's grace, in most of these
areas, the Lord has given more and more
strength to handle the situations.
But some situations, it's actually more difficult today
than it was 20 years ago.
So let me start with that one first.
I confess to you, enormous struggle with doubts
most of my whole Christian life.
Is there really such a place as hell?
Very difficult for me.
Is the Bible really fully inspired by God,
Genesis to Revelation?
Some of these things are very difficult for
me to grasp.
And sometimes, in some churches I go to,
Christianity doesn't seem to be working.
And I get angry, and I feel doubts,
and I sometimes think, I don't want any
part of this anymore.
This isn't working.
Oh, and I've read so many books.
And I can testify, many of those books
have really, really helped me with my doubts,
because there are honest answers to honest questions.
Many of us were helped by Dr. Schaefer
when he came to a conference just like
this years ago.
65.
Many of us have been helped by books
by C.S. Lewis, books by Josh McDowell,
great books that give the reasons for our
faith.
So I'm very strong in my faith.
And I've loved to preach to atheists and
agnostics and see them come to Jesus.
But the fiery darts of doubts still sometimes
assail my soul like a tornado out of
hell.
I've read a message from a theologian from
Scotland.
He said, great faith, great faith is not
in the absence of doubt.
Great faith is as we wrestle through continually
in the midst often of doubt.
There's not time to go into details and
some of it would be too depressing anyway.
And I'm aware that this message has to
be kept in balance by many other messages
and great statements and songs and all kinds
of things that you will receive.
This is just a little bit of some
basic truths.
Let me share my second struggle.
It's plagued me all my life.
I've prayed for it, I've prayed for it
over 10,000 times.
Greater patience and deliverance from a bad temper.
I can be so calm even for days.
And things begin to mount up.
Under that pressure.
Even though I had a great quiet time
for breakfast, even instead of breakfast.
I lose my cool.
I have mouth opens like some kind of
drunken alligator and some crazy thing gets spewed
out and somebody gets hurt.
Any of you, any of you have any
trouble with your temper?
Would you raise your hand?
We're not taking pictures.
Is it just me?
Am I all alone?
A few other people have this problem.
Like about 70%.
You're just so minister to me.
God bless all of you bad tempered people.
But I know you're learning how to be
more victorious.
And don't let someone give you the idea
that there's some spiritual miracle pop pill you
just take.
And then you'll never ever lose your temper
again.
Now some people do have a deliverance experience.
I'm not against that.
But for many people there is the deliverance
plus the ongoing battle with a fair number
of failures thrown in.
Let's be realistic.
Now isn't it wonderful to share pre-conversion
sin stories?
Boy, I tell you that really gets the
audience doesn't it?
Pre-conversion stories of your sinfulness in your
testimony.
When you tell that people get all excited.
Is that what you said?
Yeah, I'm just saying some people like to
tell their testimony and incorporate a lot of
stories of sin before they were saved.
It's easy to do.
What about telling about your sins after you
became a Christian?
That's a little more difficult.
You see I could tell you about some
of my sins when I was a baby
Christian.
And I could give you the impression that
I'm beyond that now.
I'm so much more mature because I've been
through the OM training program.
And I've arrived a man of God.
So just to keep the balance I'll give
you a recent story that I'm ashamed to
tell.
I'm embarrassed to tell.
Only a couple years ago I was in
my home with my wife.
I have one of the most wonderful women
anybody could ever dream of marrying.
And she is definitely more methodical.
She's more meticulous about many things in life
than I am.
We are very, very different actually.
We once thought that we were so different
that perhaps we actually came from different planets.
And my wife was meticulously recording some videos
for the ship.
My wife is the main supplier of the
videos for the ship.
And in the next two years some of
you will be watching the videos that she
has made in our living room with this
high tech timing device video recorder.
One of the easiest things for many of
us husbands is to be so proud and
so egotistical.
We don't like our wife to tell us
that we are wrong.
We don't like that.
On this particular day I was under pressure.
A lot of things were being repressed.
I was not in a very good state
of mind.
I don't know if you've ever had that
problem.
And I was trying to just turn on
the video recorder.
I don't even know why.
I was just trying to operate the video
recorder.
And my wife came in the door.
And she bawled me out for tampering with
her timing device on her video recorder.
Very gently bawling me out.
Me, the International Director of Operation Mobilization.
I don't know why to this day.
Sixteen fuses blew in my head all at
the same time.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
And I went out of control.
But as a good Christian leader I know
I am not allowed to hit my wife.
I wanted to kick something and I saw
a box and with all the passion of
my old soccer foot, I kicked that box
with a mighty blow.
Unfortunately, the box was filled with heavy notebooks.
The pain of God's special practical purgatory shot
up my leg right through my neck.
Instead of immediate repentance, I became more angry.
This was the end of the road.
I knew I had to get away from
my wife.
And like it says in the books on
marriage, you run out the door.
And that's what I was planning to do
as I head out the door.
The idea is you go out the door
and you leave for a couple of hours
until she comes with a car searching, looking,
crying, Come back!
Come back!
But it didn't happen.
And I, as I went through the door,
because I had read too many times Calvary
Road, I started to repent.
And I went around to the back of
the house and came in the back door
a very broken, humble, needy Christian leader.
Over the years my wife responds to these
things in different ways at different times.
As I came in the kitchen to ask
for her forgiveness and to give her a
hug, she just burst out laughing.
It's good to be able to laugh.
Being committed to honesty, however, the next morning
at team devotions, it was a little difficult
to explain the limp.
I wanted to say, as Jacob of old,
you know, I've been wrestling with God and
I've got this limp.
But I had to confess that what I
had done.
It was a little bit humiliating.
And then to go to the hospital for
x-rays on my leg.
Now I know some of you are new.
Some of you are new.
And you're wondering what is the lesson behind
this story.
I'll explain it to you more carefully.
You must, in your home, be sure if
you have a problem like me to place
some empty boxes.
Actually, there are more lessons than that, but
I'll let you figure them out.
It's not really funny.
I've wept many times over my sins.
I've given my resignation enough times to the
OM leaders for I am truly unworthy of
leading such a group of people as you.
But I discovered the grace of God.
God's grace in the midst of our struggles
and our failures and our difficulties.
I'm sure you know my third struggle and
so many struggles with extreme, the natural tendency
to go extreme.
I could tell you so many stories.
Especially in my commitment to use all the
money for world evangelism and Bibles and the
work of God.
And when I met the woman who later
became my wife as a student at Moody
Bible Institute, I told her immediately, I'm not
spending any money on you.
Can you imagine?
I would, I hardly ever in my life
at Bible college even walked into the coffee
shop, the sweet shop.
I thought it was controlled, really, by the
enemy.
Some of the so-called verbal disciples in
those days went even further.
They watched people who went to the candy,
the sweet machine, and they prayed for them
in the name of Jesus.
I would go to the shower without any
soap.
I claimed the soap.
The Lord always provided.
Even if sometimes you had to scrape it
off the floor, the Lord provided some soap.
There's not more time to tell about extremism.
But even to this day, I have that
tendency, when I see something and I feel
something, to just want to grab it and
go for it in such an extreme way.
And often it's ugly, it's unhelpful, it's wrong,
it doesn't come from above.
It comes from the enemy or from our
deceptive hearts.
And then another one of my big struggles
is so much struggle with discouragement.
Have any of you battled with discouragement today?
I mean, do you leave all that back
home?
How many have a little discouragement battle?
You know, a little one today.
Raise your hand.
Maybe I'm the only one.
Hey, that's pretty good.
That's less than a third.
We better turn up the heat on the
training program.
How many of you do, however, battle discouragement
at times?
Raise your hand.
Normal.
Don't be intimidated by it.
I've battled it most of my life.
Not so much in those early years.
I was too naive going at it too
fast to the speed almost to be discouraged
and I thought I had most of the
answers.
I was going too fast and I thought
I had most of the answers.
So in the early days, I didn't get
discouraged much.
But when some of those prayers weren't answered,
when faithful nationals just left me, just like
that, stranded, cold, I just went.
Faithful national worker just left me.
Prayers weren't answered.
Even prayer with fasting sometimes wasn't answered.
And a lot of the things that I
prayed for, a lot of the things I
dreamed of, it didn't happen.
Discouragement came in like a dark cloud.
Again, I just want to shout from the
housetops, great faith is often in the midst,
in the midst of intensive struggle with discouragement.
Another one of my great areas of weakness
and struggle, which I've already talked about, the
other day, is the battle with lust and
my own sexuality.
I shared with you before how, when I
was a young Christian, I thought because I
didn't have total victory in this area, how
could God ever use me?
There were times when I didn't want to
worship God.
I wanted to worship women.
They were so beautiful.
And it didn't go away as I grew
older.
The temptations and the problems even came into
the prayer meetings.
I shouldn't say that, but I never got
a prayer meeting tonight.
I'll never forget one time in Switzerland.
Oh, I love Switzerland.
We were having an extended prayer meeting.
I'm the kind of person that likes to
look around and see what's going on occasionally
in the prayer meeting.
Anyway, Juan Carlos Ortiz exhorted us in a
book to pray with your eyes open.
That's great.
Anyway, I was praying, trying to see some
kind of breakthrough.
I'd learned a long time ago, you can
keep an eye on things through prayer by
holding your hands over your eyes and then
looking out through this section right here.
It's called spiritual peeking.
The door opened at the prayer meeting and
I peeked.
There was one of the most beautiful Swiss
women I had ever seen, all dressed in
white.
It was bizarre.
I immediately felt guilty and closed my fingers.
I started praying.
Turkey for Jesus!
China for Jesus!
I wasn't getting anywhere.
I had to just take one more look.
Just one more look.
It was a terrible experience.
How could I pray with this beautiful woman
sitting in the prayer meeting?
Lord, take her.
In the name of Jesus, take her!
You know, we can laugh now.
But when this is going on, this isn't
funny.
And I wondered, will I ever change?
I'm a grandfather now.
I'm not supposed to be looking at the
women anymore.
I'm supposed to be looking at my grandchildren.
And yet, these things don't disappear as we
get older.
Some of you know, at 16, I not
only was in pornography, I started to sell
mild pornography to my school friends.
I stopped it very quickly, but I started.
It was an evil thing.
Pornography.
I started to sell it in my high
school, she said.
Give me that face.
And as a young 17-year-old struggling
with pornography as a Christian, and having actually
only occasional failures, because in fact, I was
growing.
Anybody who knew me in those days knew
that I was growing in Christ, almost like
a weed in the woods.
But even through small times of failure or
loss, Satan would try to completely condemn me
and accuse me of not even being a
Christian.
And I learned how to stand on the
promises of God.
I learned how to memorize Scripture, which is
so powerful in this battle.
I learned how to share this with other
brothers in Christ.
It was hard to share this, but I
did it, and it was like a weight
being lifted from my back.
And I developed a strategy for standing against
this particular temptation in my life.
And God gave the victory again and again.
But then after a period of time, sometimes
in an airport, or somewhere where there wasn't
time to think I would fail, I'm talking
about in my mind.
And maybe 10 years ago, I was walking
in the woods in England, I think 15
years ago, and there was a pornographic 10
-pound sterling magazine hanging in the tree.
I was in a prayer walk in the
woods.
This was not the Soho, this was the
woods.
And it so caught me by surprise how
I would like to testify about the great
victory that day in the woods.
Boy, you would write and tell your grandmother
about my victory.
What a wonderful testimony that would be.
A laser beam of spiritual Holy Ghost power,
zap!
In the name of Jesus!
And the magazine disintegrated in miracle power.
But the truth is, I disintegrated.
I just collapsed in lust with that magazine.
And a few minutes later, crawled my way
a broken missionary back to the cross for
the blood of Christ.
God's grace to weak people.
God's constantly giving us another chance.
1 John 2, verse 1, Sin not, second
part of the verse, if you sin you
have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ,
the righteous.
Learn it and draw upon it day by
day and week by week.
I wish that was all the struggles I
had, I'd be doing really great.
I have many more.
But I want to go to prayer.
Talk enough about my weaknesses.
Probably only have to listen to that once
in your entire lifetime so you can relax.
But it wouldn't be right to close without
saying that I've also had terrible struggles with
fear and with worry.
Even last night I woke up maybe 3
in the morning, unable to sleep, with worries
running through my mind about the future, about
different things that I have to face in
the days to come.
Still after all these years, it's an embarrassment.
I was going to get up and read
a book.
I sleep in the back of an old
bus in the parking lot.
It makes another room free inside.
I was going to get up and read
a book, but then I thought I'd wake
my wife up.
She doesn't particularly like this old 10 pound
sterling Salvation Army bed we sleep on in
the bus.
An old bed that's not very good that
we sleep on in our old bus.
She doesn't like the bed.
My wife, it's the only one I sleep
with, I can assure you.
But as I started to pray and I...
You're wonderful, you're one of the best Korean
small girl interpreters I've ever had.
Excuse me, women.
Thank you Lord, I did it again.
I started to intercede and I started to
pray and soon I was back to sleep
again.
Don't be surprised by your fears.
But remember, fear and especially worry are not
going to accomplish much.
So the sooner you even ruthlessly deal with
it by faith, the better off you will
be in your pursuit of holiness and of
God.
There are many verses you can meditate on
in connection with fear and worry.
God has not given us a spirit of
fear but of love and of power and
of a sound mind.
Take that promise and make it your own
even tonight.
And then casting every care upon Him because
He careth for you.
Isn't that exciting?
God's Word.
Applying in a practical way God's Word to
our lives.
You will hear many, many messages.
You'll read many books on how to live
a more victorious and disciplined life.
I hope you'll remember, in a moment of
failure and difficulty, being a full disciple of
Jesus Christ is a lifetime of learning and
growing in God.
It's a lifetime.
So watch your impatience factor.
I have a little book called No Turning
Back.
I share a lot of these things in
this book.
Maybe you want to pick one up.
It's not the greatest book on these subjects,
I can assure you.
It's not the greatest book on these subjects.
Or my earlier book, Hunger for Reality.
It's not very good at all, really.
But it's brought me 22,000 personal letters
of people that have been blessed through those
feeble messages.
God uses weak people.
Because as weak people, we in fact are
strong.
We're not wimps.
We're strong in Jesus Christ.
And we're ready to go forward in the
battle.
Whatever comes.
Not in our own strength.
Not because we never sin or never fail.
But because Christ lives in us.
Christ lives in me.
Relations 220.
I am crucified with Christ.
Yet I live.
I continue to live.
Not I, but Christ.
Let's pray.
Oh Lord, I thank you for your grace.
I thank you for your mercy.
I thank you for the courage to even
just share this tonight.
A lot of other messages would be much
easier to share.
And Lord, I know there'll be some misunderstandings
from this message.
But we believe it's worth the risk.
To get one of the most important messages
in the whole Bible through to our hearts.
And so we collapse at the foot of
the cross.
And we worship you.
And we receive your forgiveness.
We receive your grace.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.