Multitudes are pushing their way through the streets
to get here.
I think we should we should start and
commit this time to God and I think
it would be quite ridiculous to have a
seminar on the subject of prayer and not
do a little bit of praying even though
our time is very limited.
Let's pray together.
Our Father we thank and praise you for
the privilege of being involved at this great
event.
We pray for the various seminars that are
taking place.
Some of us have struggles with these seminar
programs because we prefer to be sending people
off to other people's seminars rather than taking
one ourself.
But we learn submission through these things.
We believe that this is an important subject
and we believe that we need to face
up to the reality of the intercessory ministry,
the importance of it and what it is
to be involved in frontline world missions through
prayer.
We just give you all the glory because
we have been seeing answers to prayer since
that day of Pentecost and before then.
As we know you are a prayer-answering
God and you can do exceeding abundant above
all we ask or expect.
Just guide us now in this time together
in Jesus' name.
Amen.
I would like
to share just a couple of prayer burdens
and just have a short time of prayer
as we continue to wait for people to
arrive.
I think we need special prayer at this
time for the families connected with the great
oil rig crisis in the North Sea.
This is a lot very much on my
heart.
Let's touch that situation through prayer right in
a few minutes time.
I would like to also commend to you
or urge you to intercede for the continuing
crisis in Afghanistan.
I'm sure you have followed to some degree
in your newspapers.
Yesterday another 150 or maybe in the day
before were slaughtered and killed in the fighting
there as the Soviets slowly withdraw and leave
everything in the hands of their government forces.
Apart from divine intervention many authorities in Afghanistan
believe that there will be a gigantic bloodbath
involving hundreds of thousands in the coming months.
Maybe you feel this is too big a
thing to pray for.
Sometimes in our church prayer meetings we pray
for rather small things.
I'm not against praying for small things but
if our God is concerned about small things
like someone who has a headache then I
think God will be interested in what's going
on in Afghanistan.
So we want to pray for that situation.
I'd like to also urge you to pray
as we go to prayer for the situation
in Iran and Iraq.
We know the awesome tragedy of the shooting
down of that passenger plane.
We know also that the number of people
who were killed there is just less than
get killed in a few hours on the
front lines.
Probably a half a million have gone out
into eternity through the Iran-Iraq crisis.
This is not something abstract.
This is happening here in our global village.
This is affecting us more than we will
admit.
We want to pray for the few believers
in Iran.
There are more believers in Iran than Iraq.
I know a few nations in the world
that have less believers than the nation of
Iraq.
One of the first countries God ever put
on my heart as a young Christian, the
land of Iraq.
I know in Operation Mobilization, the fellowship I'm
involved with, we have done a considerable amount
of work in many nations including many Muslim
nations.
We have been very limited in what we've
been able to do in Iraq.
So we would like to pray for Iraq
and Iran, leaders of those countries.
We'd like to add our prayers to the
prayers of others that that war may end,
peace may come, the gospel may be proclaimed
in a greater way.
We know God is overruling much of some
of the folly and the sinfulness of man
as demonstrated in this war.
In recent months the Iranians have been sending
children into the front lines to detonate the
mines, little 12-year-olds.
They can't afford to give the 17-year
-olds because they're doing a lot of the
fighting.
They are now mobilizing the greatest women's army
perhaps of this decade, though they haven't sent
them yet into the front lines.
They're training for the protection of the cities.
So this is an awesome situation.
I always feel, I've been to Keswick many
times, that when you get to a place
like this you enter into a little bit
of unreality.
It all looks so peaceful and so calm.
The world isn't like this.
And I can tell you behind the scenes,
Keswick isn't like this.
It's a very needy town with lost people,
just like London, where I live, where Brussels,
where maybe you come from.
So as we pray for Afghanistan in that
situation, as we pray for Iran in Iraq,
as we pray for some of these other
crises, like the oil rig crises, and perhaps
other things God puts on your heart, let's
pray for the town of Keswick.
Next week, again, the Keswick Convention begins, which
has gone on here for over 100 years.
And these people, many of the town people,
are quite hardened to this convention.
Some of them don't even like it, being
here.
I hope they're a minority.
So let's pray for Keswick.
Nice, quiet little country, wet place at this
time.
I've been here when it hasn't been wet.
And to do this kind of praying, and
we want to pray also for the meetings
going on now, the meeting tonight, I'd like
you just to form little prayer groups.
We can have two types of groups.
Those that would like to stand, you can
come out into the aisles.
These churches are built for standing prayer groups.
Just form a little prayer group, a little
cluster of three or four people, and those
who rather pray remaining where you are.
Fine, all you have to do is turn
it around a little bit.
These pews are not built for small group
prayer, but you are.
You just turn it around.
Now, I don't know, is this new to
anybody, praying in small groups in a big
place?
Is this new to anybody?
When I first started this kind of thing
25 years ago, it was very new.
Now it's quite accepted.
So let's pray.
This is a seminar on prayer in world
missions, and the best way to engage in
such a seminar is to pray.
That's one of the reasons I accepted it.
So form small groups and just pray.
We'll turn the cassette recorder off for a
few minutes, and we'll just pray.
Lord, bless us as we pray in these
small groups for these horrendous crises around the
world, for the meetings going on here, for
other things that we believe by your Holy
Spirit you can put upon our hearts.
We are not here playing games.
We're not here to fill our head with
sort of biblical tidbits that we never really
put into practice in our own lives, but
we are here in the name of your
Son, Jesus.
We are here because world missions is total
war.
We are here because your Holy Spirit lives
within us, and we sense that we are
being sent, that we are being compelled into
frontline intercession, into heavy artillery spiritual warfare.
Help us, for we always feel so weak
and so inadequate when we pray.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Let's go to it with all of our
hearts.
Amen.
Others have arrived.
I'd like to just again give a word
of welcome.
My name is George Verwer.
This is a seminary on prayer in connection
with world missions, and we felt that the
best way to start the seminar was in
prayer for some of the crises situations around
the world.
I hope that you will take this seminar
seriously, and that you will write down perhaps
at least a few things as a result
of what you hear.
And one of our goals in Mission 2000
is, as outlined in Timothy, 2 Timothy chapter
2, that which we commit you, commit to
you, you can commit to faithful men who
will be able to teach others also.
I believe one of the greatest needs in
the entire Church today, whether we think of
world missions, church growth, renewal, I believe one
of the greatest needs without question is a
movement, grassroots movement, toward reality and unction in
intercession.
Next to the doctrine of love, there is
no other doctrine where the Church pays greater
lip service than the doctrine in connection with
prayer.
I have had 33 years of experiencing inconsistency
and hypocrisy beyond all imagination in seeing so
many people talk about prayer and so few
who are willing to pray.
I've seen it in the Christian unions.
I've seen it in the churches.
I've seen it in my own feeble fellowship
of Operation Mobilization.
It is one of the number one cons
and tricks of Satan himself.
People who are not praying surely are people
who are straying, and if they're straying from
God, they're in trouble.
They may feel good, they may eat good,
but they're in trouble with God.
So many young people that write to me
share that their prayer life is either in
a shambles or it doesn't exist.
I've had even my own leaders in my
own movement confess that their prayer life is
in shambles.
So burdened was I about this some years
ago, I wrote a letter to all the
leaders of OM and asked for immediate resignations
of anybody who did not have a prayer
life.
As you can imagine, a few people decided
to repent rather quick and try to get
their prayer life in order.
Satan, the Bible says, don't worry about what
I say, that's not so important, but the
Bible says Satan as a roaring lion seeketh
whom he may devour.
And prayerlessness is one of the subtle methods
that Satan uses.
Before I go any further, let me mention
a few books on prayer that you can
pick up at the special book display over
in the main tent.
I recommend very much the writings of A
.W. Tozer.
He's a man who was known by his
friends and by his enemies as a man
of prayer.
If you don't have any enemies, that's also
an indication you don't have much of a
prayer life.
This is one of Tozer's most powerful books,
Man, the Dwelling Place of God.
Isn't that exciting?
Just the cover will send you for a
spiritual loop.
Man, the Dwelling Place of God.
The Holy Spirit lives in us.
And as it teaches in Romans 8, in
ourselves we hardly know what to say as
we pray.
But the Holy Spirit, dronings, utterances can pray
through us.
And that's a book that moves in that
line of thinking.
A relatively new book on the subject of
prayer, written by one of the first missionaries
I ever met when I arrived in India
as a young missionary about 25 years ago.
His name was Wesley Duell.
I've watched this man from a distance for
25 years.
And that's why when he asked me to
write a little word or a foreword for
his book on the will of God, I
was willing to do that.
But I feel his book on prayer, his
book on the will of God is so
new I don't think it's in Britain, but
his book on prayer has been out for
a couple of years and I want to
commend it to you.
How many already have this book?
Touch the World Through Prayer.
This is your chance.
I can tell you if I mention this
in my main meeting tomorrow night, there won't
be any copies left.
So I'll give you advance word and if
there's no copies left then I won't mention
it.
But it's a dynamic book on prayer for
missions.
This man should be giving the seminar, not
me.
I'm just, you know, I have a lot
to learn yet next to this character.
He was the leader of OMS, Oriental Mission
Society, for many years.
Wesley Duell, Touch the World Through Prayer.
Write it down.
Try to get a copy of that great
book.
Mountain Rain is a book that comes out
of the great OMF movement.
What a privilege we have here to have
James Taylor with us.
We'll be speaking tomorrow night.
This is a book about James O.
Fraser, that man who made such an impact
among the Lisu people.
Mountain Rain.
Write it down if you want your faith
encouraged.
If you want to be challenged about spiritual
warfare, that's a book that you will want
to get.
I'm sure this book has already been mentioned.
Operation World.
Surely the most practical book for intercessors that
has ever been published.
Presenting information on almost every nation in the
world.
Facts about the political system, what's happening with
the church, what mission societies are there, what's
being done, what's not being done.
There may actually be a few of these
available at the back of the church.
Otherwise, they're over at the official literature display.
We need to, with a book like this,
not just have a copy, but if we
are visionary, missionary-minded, spiritual revolutionaries, we are
going to be distributing this book.
If there's anything that competes with our prayerlessness,
it's our lack of sanctified imagination, our lack
of divine holy ghost enthusiasm.
It is a scandal in the church.
It's beyond a scandal.
We should be arrested and put in prison
if God was doing his part.
He's too merciful.
He lets us press on.
And I pray that you will not just
read this book, but that you will become
a distributor and get quantities.
As many a Christian leader, many a pastor
will never buy this book.
They would never take their own money to
spend four pounds on a book like this.
But if you give them a copy, they
probably accept it.
Most of them are trained in at least
basic manners.
And so they probably will accept a copy
and it might revolutionize their ministry.
I think you actually get a free map
of the world with that book.
I noticed they're going into European maps as
well, but I still like a map of
the whole world.
And you get that free of charge with
the book Operation World.
You also can get free of charge somewhere
around here.
I haven't put everything together yet.
I've just come through the night.
I don't know where everything is, but I
believe you can find a copy of this
bookazine, magazine called Islam.
This should challenge our prayer batteries as much
as anything.
One out of every six people in the
world today is a Muslim.
There is up to now, excuse me, only
a tiny response among Muslims.
Here's a map showing the Muslim world.
I discovered a mistake.
They don't have Malaysia as a Muslim area,
but it certainly is.
Christians are even being persecuted in Malaysia to
some small degree.
Islam, you can get it free.
Little magazines like this are all tools you
can use in spreading this vision for intercession
and in your own ministry of intercessory prayer.
There are a number of other books connected
with the prayer life, and I'm sure as
you go over to the literature table, you
will discover some of them.
Praise the Lord.
Now turn with me to the book of
Acts.
The book of Acts.
I'm in the wrong book here.
Be patient with me.
Book of Acts chapter 12.
I'd like to get a time for questions
at the end, but I don't promise because
sometimes I make a promise like that, and
then I don't keep it.
I feel convicted, but that's my goal to
give this material and give you a chance
to ask questions.
I don't want to pretend that the whole
area of prayer in connection with world missions
is, you know, some simple little thing.
There's no problems.
You just get the little Verwerth seminar package,
and away you are.
A little Miss Intercessor, a little Mr. Intercessor
to shake the whole world for Christ.
Some of you have trouble just shaking yourself
to get out of bed in the morning,
much less shake the entire world for Christ.
So we want to give an opportunity for
questions.
Here in the 12th chapter of the book
of Acts, we have Peter in prison, and
he is well guarded.
Look at the situation in which he finds
himself.
Verse 4.
When he had apprehended him, put him in
prison and delivered him to four quaternions of
soldiers to keep him, intending after Easter to
bring him forth to the people.
Peter, therefore, was kept in prison, but prayer
was made without ceasing by the church unto
God for him.
We won't take time to read the whole
chapter.
It is a very exciting chapter, like almost
all the chapters in the book of Acts,
and every Christian should read the book of
Acts every year and memorize part of it,
and of course put it into practice.
That's the hard part.
It's the book of Action, the Acts of
the Holy Spirit, more than the Acts of
the Apostles.
We find that God answered their prayers.
I don't know if they were only praying
concerning Peter's situation, but God heard their prayers,
and we find Peter miraculously delivered.
And look at verse 12.
And when he had considered the thing, he
came to the house of Mary, the mother
of John, whose surname was Mark, where many
were gathered together praying.
I want you to mark that.
How many of you have learned to mark
your Bibles?
Do you ever mark your Bible with a
pen or a colored something?
You've got all these wonderful marking systems.
When I discovered that as a baby Christian,
it revolutionized my Bible study, that I could
mark my Bible.
And that helped me also to memorize certain
passages of Scripture.
Many were gathered together praying.
And as Peter knocked at the door of
the gate, a maid came to hearken named
Rhoda.
And when she knew Peter's voice, she opened
up the gate for gladness, but ran in
and told how Peter stood before the gate.
And they said unto her, I'm not mad.
But she constantly affirmed that it was even
so.
Then said they, it is his angel.
Peter continued knocking.
When he had opened the door and saw
him, they were astonished.
But he beckoned unto them with a hand
to hold their peace, declaring unto them how
the Lord had brought him out of the
prison.
And he said, go show these things unto
James and to the brethren.
And he departed and went to another place.
Now as soon as it was day, there
was no small stir.
The old authorized version English.
No small stir among the soldiers concerning what
was become of Peter.
When Herod had sought for him, found him
not, examined the keepers, commanded them, should be
put to death.
And he went down from Judea to Caesarea
and there abode.
Here we find an emergency.
Here we find one of God's chosen anointed
instruments put in prison.
And we find God's people responding to a
specific challenge and engaging in prayer at a
prayer meeting.
As we think of the task of world
missions, if we are going to see the
gospel penetrating every part of the world, then
there must be a resurrection of the prayer
meeting.
We've even heard people give the idea that,
you know, they have their own personal prayer
time and they don't really believe it's necessary
to have a prayer meeting.
A man from California wrote in a very
somewhat famous book some years ago, that any
meeting in your church that you have to
push, it's better to drop it.
As a pastor, you really can't afford that
energy to push things that people are not
interested in.
Thousands of pastors in America in the past
decade have dropped all prayer meetings from their
church.
Some have dropped the main prayer meetings, but
keep some kind of token prayer meeting at
some weird hour of the morning when hardly
anyone goes, but at least you can say
you have a prayer meeting.
I'm sure some of them are sincere in
having that prayer meeting at six o'clock
Saturday morning, and I am in favor of
such meetings.
Anything is better than nothing.
But I cannot understand how so many churches
today no longer have a real prayer meeting.
Unfortunately, some churches that do maintain their sort
of old-fashioned prayer meeting, it is a
rather dull, dry, introspective session in which people
are often praying the same prayer week after
week, and very seldom do young people go.
I'm sure you are aware of the great
gulf gap fixed in this country and many
countries between the older people and the younger
people.
You, of course, can tell me of wonderful
exceptions.
Fine, I love exceptions.
But the fact of the matter is that
a very huge percentage of young people in
Britain are going one way, and a huge
percentage of the adult population of which I
am part of seems to be going the
other way.
The wall is getting broken down in some
places, praise the Lord, but it is getting
rebuilt in other places.
What a wonderful thing it is to go
to a church where the young and the
old are praying together, interceding together, getting to
understand one another better, engaging in prayer.
The amazing thing is also when there is
a prayer meeting, there is often very little
prayer for world missions.
Again, there are beautiful exceptions.
The prayer meeting usually consists of a Bible
study.
I'm not against that if they extend the
meeting to an hour and a half, but
to try to have a one-hour prayer
meeting in which you cram in a half
-an-hour Bible study, 15 minutes of prayer
requests, leaves a rather tokenish form of prayer
that I do not find in the book
of Acts.
I do not find in the history of
the church.
I do not find among godly men and
women who have shaken the world for Jesus
Christ.
And since I don't find it, I don't
believe it.
I don't accept it.
We need to have in our prayer meetings
a minimum of 45 minutes to an hour
before God to seek his face.
Part of that time may be confession.
It may be a little bit of worship
and then moving in to intercession.
There can be another hour at another occasion
which could be all worship.
I'm not against that.
We have lots of that.
That's on the increase.
We know the great emphasis in praise in
some nations over the past decade.
I think it's beautiful, but I believe that
praise that does not lead to agonizing, hard
work intercession often leads to an introspective, self
-centered brand of Christianity in which people are
basically looking for a nice feeling.
And in the long run, we produce a
kind of Christianity that A.W. Tozer said
you would not find in the New Testament.
He was one of the strongest voices against
spreading a degenerate effete brand of Christianity to
pagan lands.
I remember getting in trouble with that Tozer
quote at the famous Urbana Convention 20 years
ago when I was somehow able to speak.
I still feel to this day that A
.W. Tozer had something to say that we
should have listened to.
It's not enough to send out people to
other lands.
They must be people of quality.
They must be people who know how to
pray.
They must be people who understand spiritual warfare.
They must be people who will not fall
apart with their brother in Christ the first
time there's a misunderstanding, first time to discover
their brother in Christ is a sinner.
But they will know how to pray through
that situation in love and brokenness.
We have a massive amount of disunity on
the mission field at this present time.
We have a lot of prayerlessness on the
mission field.
We don't need another generation of prayerless spiritual
midgets.
We need men and women who know how
to pray.
We need men and women who know how
to fast and pray.
I remember when Alan Redpath, who I must
confess was one of my spiritual gurus, came
to Moody Church in Chicago and tried to
call God's supposedly chosen, generally frozen people to
prayer and fasting.
I will tell you, he didn't last long
after that.
You cannot believe the resistance there is in
our churches to such things as prayer and
fasting.
You cannot believe how many elders in our
churches refuse to go to prayer meetings and
yet are the elders in the church and
will put heavy pressure on a pastor or
leader who tries to take the church into
any kind of extremism or make any changes.
Brothers and sisters, if we are not committed
to change, we are committed to death.
I repeat that, if we are not committed
to change, we are committed to death because
the Holy Spirit is moving.
He is changing.
He is transforming.
He is stirring.
He is shaking.
He is doing a new thing.
That doesn't mean we change our doctrines, God
forbid, for if we did that we would
be anathema.
But it does mean we can make some
other changes that may bring more life into
the prayer meeting, that may allow a little
more freedom, that may begin to focus on,
for example, unreached people's groups, as there has
been this new emphasis through men like Ralph
Winner and other missionary leaders that we must
focus on the unreached people.
Ninety percent of the missionary work is in
areas where there is already a church, there
is already response.
Praise the Lord, we want to continue that.
But only ten percent approximately would be among
the unreached people, the Kurdish people, the Baluch
people, the Uyghur people.
How many of you pray regularly, say once
a week, once a month?
I like to be big-hearted, we don't
want anybody to go out of here feeling
too guilty.
How many of you pray at least once
a month for the Kurdish people?
Warm my heart and raise your hand at
this time in this honesty survey.
Maybe you got in the wrong seminar.
No, hallelujah, maybe you're in the right seminar.
I want you to put the Kurdish people
on your prayer list.
There are twenty million souls.
We know why there's so few people at
Mission 2000.
There's a number of reasons, but one of
the reasons is that world missions is not
a priority in the British Church.
Anybody who doesn't know that doesn't know anything
about Britain.
Now admittedly, I can't be an expert, I've
only lived here for 27 years and preached
up and down in almost every single part
of the British Isles for 27 years, so
I'm sure someone else can bring me into
correction.
There is a token interest in world missions.
Nobody's opposed to it, but there is not
a major interest in world missions and the
unreached people at this present time.
So therefore, anything we do like Mission 2000
will basically get token response.
Of course, they'll eventually blame it on the
organizers.
They didn't publicize enough or they didn't send
out enough gospel blimps with an advertising banner
hanging on the back of it, but you
know, listen, if we are hungry for God,
if we believe in world missions, if we
believe the Bible and we even heard, if
we even heard that there was such a
conference as this going on, it would go
to the top of our list.
One man from the United States just heard
about this conference.
He's a man of vision.
He's a man who believes in the Bible,
believes in world...
He just heard about it.
Guess what?
I just met him walking down the street.
He came from Chicago, but we can't get
people to come here from Carlisle, from Preston,
from Manchester.
Don't think I have an axe to grind.
If I communicated that, that's wrong.
I don't have an axe to grind.
I have a message to declare.
My pre-Mission 2000 message is the same
as my post-Mission 2000 message.
The church needs a shaking.
The church needs revival.
The church needs to get on her knees
in repentance, in brokenness.
There's no purpose to have one more seminar
and fill our heads with biblical tidbits if
we are not going to obey, if we
are not going to repent, if we are
not going to get up out of our
beds in the morning and get upon our
knees, if we are not going to reinstate
the Book of Acts prayer meeting into the
church, if we are not going to turn
from sham, parade, and spiritual death, as A
.W. Tozer called it, and come into light
and unction and reality.
There's no purpose.
So when we walk out the door of
this church, we will be accountable.
We will be accountable for what we have
received here.
You say, by what authority do you speak
these things?
By the authority of the Word of God.
Hundreds of verses, hundreds of verses.
We are having fights in some of our
groups on subjects where people have two or
three disjointed scriptures.
Here's a subject in which there are hundreds
of verses.
It is a subject we can unite on.
In fact, most men of God and leaders
do unite on this subject, at least in
terms of their verbal commitment.
It's when it comes to actual praying that
the difficulty comes in.
You then get what you call the excuses,
the many excuses, why we can't be there.
I spent 26 years trying to get people
to go to nights of prayer in Great
Britain.
It's lucky I didn't die a premature death
in the process, because you just can hardly
get people to pray beyond one hour.
Now there is a movement.
They got a better name than OM had.
We just called it Night of Prayer.
Just come from one last night.
With this generation, they're also getting shorter and
shorter, but we still at least have them.
But there is a movement led by a
man named David Bryant, who will be the
main guest speaker at the OM conference in
the Netherlands this year, who the Holy Spirit
has used to start a movement called the
World Concert of Prayer Movement.
They put a new name, more with this
generation, and they're starting prayer concerts, and they
are spreading.
And thousands have gone to some of these
prayer concerts that may start at 7 and
8 in the evening and go on to
11 or to midnight.
We're having a little mini prayer concert here,
which is patterned after the concept that David
Bryant launched and talked about in his amazing
book, World Concerts of Prayer.
We can't go very long, because apparently there's
some kind of curfew here at Keswick.
But it's amazing in these prayer concerts that
I've been in around the world, how when
the actual time comes to pray, sometimes people
feel a little nervous about me.
I don't know why.
I guess they know what I stand for.
They come and share their excuse why they're
not able to be there.
I don't have a bad attitude toward those
people.
I don't have the problem much of bad
attitude for people.
If I ever have a bad attitude, it's
toward myself, my wretched self.
I got enough other problems without having an
attitude problem toward God's people.
But I want to see a movement of
prayer in the British Isles.
I want to see people on their faces
together.
I heard something incredibly exciting about a great
prayer meeting that took place in Birmingham, with
some 15,000 gathering together for praise, for
celebration.
That's exciting.
And may it spread all over the country.
The tendency, however, in Britain is to mainly
think about Britain.
50,000 recently marched through the streets of
London in a praise, prayer, celebration march.
What an amazing event.
Wish I had been there.
Hallelujah!
Things are happening.
God is answering prayer.
There's a staring in the mulberry bushes.
But when it comes to world missions, to
some degree we are left out in the
cold.
Missionaries are considered specialists that you only bring
in on occasion when there's a missions conference.
So we have Mission 2000 and we're overrun
with missionary speakers.
When I saw the number of the speakers
here, I called up and said, I don't
want to go there.
I don't want to take up the time
that James Hudson-Taylor could be using.
Let him speak for two hours.
But somehow some other people got on the
phone and they bent my arm and here
I am.
I prefer to go into situations where missionaries
don't often speak.
I've just come from Chicago.
Largest Christian rock festival in the world.
Petra, you name the band, they're there.
Five days of hard gospel rock.
God, you wouldn't believe it.
Anybody over 30 would have a nervous breakdown
within a mile.
The Holy Spirit was there and I had
the joy after Petra closed down, because the
police don't let them play after 10 o
'clock at night, to speak to 2,000
and 3,000 of these jumping, leaping young
people about world missions.
A lot of copies of Operation World went
out.
Every time I go there, I've been there
almost four years in a row, we see
people decide that world missions is a priority.
Do you believe that?
How many of you believe that world missions,
reaching those Uyghurs, reaching those Baluch, reaching those
Kurdish people, 20 million of them, reaching out
to Turkey where all the believers could sit
in the first couple of rows of this
church, reaching out to even beyond that into
the unreached people of the Soviet Union, the
unreached people in certain sections of China?
How many of you believe this is absolute
top priority for God's people today?
Raise your hand.
Well, that's encouraging.
Of course, one would expect that at Mission
2000.
What is our hope if we are going
to see a grassroots movement for intercessory prayer
for world missions?
One of our hopes lies in what you
do with this seminar material.
If you are willing to allow me to
appoint you as a recruiter, as a mobilizer
for world missions, so that you will go
out from here convinced that you should not
just believe what you've heard and act upon
it, but that you should recruit others.
You can mobilize a prayer meeting in your
own place of residence.
Don't do it on the same night as
a church prayer meeting.
Don't necessarily blow a big trumpet about it.
Just start it in a small, quiet way.
A small group who want to intercede for
world missions.
Not for just one group, but as the
Holy Spirit leads world missions.
If you're linked in with a church, make
the missionaries from that church one of the
main targets.
Might be good for you to share with
the leader in your church that you want
to do this just in an informal way,
in your own place.
He might even decide to come, or he
might say, well, look, why don't we do
this in the church instead?
If we are going to go forward, we've
got to develop Holy Ghost stubbornness.
Got to develop stickability.
We've got to realize if people like us,
a tiny number of us who choose a
seminar on the subject of intercession, if we
don't do something about this, who will?
Who will?
Peter was in prison, but the church without
ceasing prayed for him.
Tomorrow night when I share, we may look
at how this is practiced in Acts 13,
where they prayed and commended those first missionaries
out into the harvest field.
I also hope to share in the main
meeting before our concert of prayer something about
the obstacles of prayer, the fiery darts of
Satan against your prayer life, hindrances to your
prayer life, so I won't get into that
at this time.
I want to, before opening for questions, just
move on and share just a few other
practical pointers about maintaining your own prayer life
and being involved in group and corporate prayer.
Number one, and I hope to re-emphasize
this again, you've got to determine from the
beginning that you're not going to get discouraged.
You have to realize from the beginning that
Satan is going to try to discourage you.
You're not going to see all of your
prayers answered immediately, no matter how filled you
are with the Holy Spirit, and that is
a vital part of intercessory ministry.
You are still very, very, very human, and
I want to just testify so that the
record is straight that I have been a
great struggler all my life in the area
of prayer.
At 17 years of age, I prayed that
only one thing I would learn in life.
I was not interested in starting any kind
of movement.
I was just a young Christian hungry for
God, and I said in the quiet of
my room at 17, I may have been
18, I said, God, I only want one
thing in life.
I want to learn how to pray.
That's all.
You see, I was converted to Jesus Christ
through a woman who prayed for me for
three years.
I was then converted in an actual meeting
where Billy Graham spoke, and in my research
about Billy Graham, I discovered that the secret
of his ministry was prayer and not his
prayers, but a group of people in various
parts of the world, intercessors, men and women,
especially women, who knew how to intercede.
One of those women was so powerful in
intercessory ministry, Billy Graham would fly her to
the campaign city and have her interceding behind
the scenes.
It was Billy Graham's challenge to me as
a baby Christian.
Converted in a one-night meeting of Billy
Graham, it was his challenge that first got
me organizing nights of prayer when I was
still a teenager.
I organized it in an Anglican church across
the street from my high school, where revival
had begun through the prayers of this elderly
lady who had been praying for 15 years
for that school.
Through her prayers, I was converted.
A few other people came to Christ.
I organized prayer meetings, short ones, long ones,
and then this night of prayer in connection
with the Billy Graham crusade, which took place
two years after my conversion.
God had saved me and prepared me to
mobilize prayer for the big New York City
campaign in 57.
It was after that campaign, three of us
got in an old van and went to
Mexico, where O.M. really was born.
So it was as a teenager that I
started this movement of intercessory prayer.
Admitted myself to prayer, regularly spent whole days
alone, totally alone with God in the mountains,
in caves, in trees, fasting, seeking God.
Do you think a movement like O.M.
is born in a seminar?
Do you think it's born in a weekend?
Do you think it's born in some missiological
course?
It is born when men and women will
seek God, when men and women are so
hungry they'd rather die than not see the
world reach for Jesus Christ.
I spoke with this intensity as a young
teenager.
The Holy Spirit poured himself out and a
movement was born.
Satan has proceeded to attack us every month,
every year, so that some of us stand,
semi-old men, wounded, wounded all over the
place.
I am one of those men, but still
alive, still fighting, still believing that God's work
done in God's way will get God's blessing.
Still believing that men like Carrie and Hudson
Taylor, men like David Brainerd, praying hard, John
Wesley, George Whitfield, that these men still should
be our example, even in this day of
hyper-contextualized, semi-pagan brands of Christianity and
evangelicalism.
You realize that?
I've always known about the Elijah passage.
He was praying and the fire came down,
but I realized that Solomon prayed.
I just read that this morning.
Solomon prayed and the fire came down.
I want to ask you, bring this to
a close.
Are you on fire for Christ?
Is God burning in your heart?
I'm not saying you're always gonna feel that.
You think a character like me always feels
it?
I can backslide quicker than you can blink.
If God doesn't meet me every day, if
somehow I don't get something from the Word
or a book or a brother in the
Lord or something else, you know, so easily
I can begin to grow cold.
I can pass people on the street, pay
more attention to a new car or a
new dictaphone than a lost soul on the
road to hell.
I'm no different than the rest of you.
So I have to seek his face every
day.
I have to buffet my body.
Is that one of your favorite passages?
First Corinthians chapter 9.
I buffet my body, bring it into subjection,
lest after preaching to others I become a
reprobate.
So when I don't feel like praying, I
pray more.
When I don't feel like memorizing the Word
or reading, I read more.
When I don't feel like witnessing, I often
force myself, by God's grace, to witness.
Isn't this the missing link in so many
places that leads to the prayerlessness, isn't it?
The lack of discipline, the lack of being
able to buffet that body and say to
the body, with all of its needs, all
of its cravings, ever get any cravings?
Praise the Lord, some of them are innocent.
Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote this book, which
in my view is the greatest English book
that has ever been written.
Far better than Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, in my
feeble opinion, though I have to confess I
haven't finished Pilgrim's Progress.
It's a great book, but this one is
better.
Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, Its Cause
and Cure.
It's one of the missing books in our
thinking and in much of our action in
the church today.
Get a copy of it.
Of course, it is in no way in
comparison to this book.
This is God's Word.
These are just sermons in print.
You find something here that you don't find
there, you can pitch it out.
I haven't found anything yet myself.
And in this book, he talks about discipline.
He talks about prayer.
He talks about the fact that our spirituality
is our responsibility.
We can't blame it on God.
We can't say, well, I prayed to be
filled with this Holy Spirit, but the Lord
didn't do it.
I asked God to deliver me from my
lack of discipline, but the Lord didn't do
it.
Oh Lord, you failed me again.
You big failure you.
No, your spiritual state of affairs is your
own problem.
God lives in you by the Holy Spirit.
He is more than willing to work through
you.
He is more than willing to change your
life.
He is more than willing to make you
a man or woman of prayer, but you
have to take the steps of faith.
You have to deal the death blow to
the self-life.
You have to deny self, take up the
cross, and follow Jesus, as he said three
or four times.
You have to buffet your body and bring
it into subjection.
You have to, as Lloyd-Jones points out
in this book, put on the whole armor
of God.
Put on the whole armor of God.
Did you do that this morning?
Don't go out into this wild world anymore
without that whole armor, that shield of faith.
That's the key to intercessory ministry.
So when those fiery darts of discouragement come
your way, stand firm.
Stand fast.
Realize it takes a lifetime, a lifetime to
learn to be the kind of man and
woman of prayer that you want to be.
You probably, like me, will never reach your
goals.
I think my goals, I'm reaching them less
now than I did when I was 22.
Maybe I've had enough brains to adjust them
and to let other great biblical truths be
blended in with this biblical truth that we're
emphasizing in this seminar of intercession for world
missions.
Also, as we move forward in this ministry,
we need to realize that God is working
in different people in different ways and beware
of judgmentalism.
There's a great difference between making a proclamation
as I am at this time and sort
of judging individuals and making accusations or getting
caught up in the super spirituality or extremism.
In fact, some of the people I have
seen drop along the side of the road
in the area of prayer, it is because
they got into extremism.
I've seen people get into extremism in the
area of fasting and go off balance.
They want to accomplish what it took Hudson
Taylor in a lifetime, they want to accomplish
it in one year.
No, they want to accomplish it in a
one-month summer campaign.
And I tell you, if there's any movement
at times that has got into extremism, it's
operation mobilization.
That's why after giving some strong messages on
prayer and revival, I decided I need some
strong messages on the human factor, on spiritual
balance, on love, on many, many other biblical
principles.
And they asked me what seminar I wanted
at this big conference and music festival in
Chicago.
I said, why don't you give my seminar
the title, it was five sessions, consistent Christianity.
Then I can declare something of the whole
counsel of God.
In a sense, it's not my choice to
just talk to you about prayer because it
has to fit in with all the rest
of the great truth being shared here in
these days.
Otherwise you can become extreme, you can become
lopsided, you can become pharisaical, judgmental, and even
just ill.
Many more things I'd like to say, but
I really think it would be good to
pray and open for a few minutes of
questions.
Lord, we thank you that we've had this
little time together.
Lord, you know how heavy my heart has
been for over 30 years on this whole
area.
You know how many hundreds of times, yay,
thousands it has been broken because of the
prayerlessness among your people, because of Operation Excuse,
which spreads like cancer across the Christian world,
because of the inconsistency.
We don't like to admit defeat.
We've got all kinds of little cliches trying
to cover up for our failures.
But we know, Lord, in this area of
prayer and intercession and all that goes with
it, we have failed.
I know, Father, I have failed.
And I seek your face for a greater
move of your Holy Spirit in my prayer
life, in the prayer life with my dear
wife, and with my co-workers.
And I ask for spiritual balance in the
midst of that.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Let's take some moments for questions.
Anything that you would like to ask at
this time.
Don't feel your question is too small or
insignificant, because whenever I communicate, there's always at
least a little bit of miscommunication.
Something that just needs a little bit of
fine-tuning.
I give a general thrust, now we need
to fine-tune that.
You can help me do that.
Right here, good and loud.
Just for the sake of our cassette tape,
we have an excellent question that when we're
praying through a lot of prayer letters, I
tend to be almost extreme in this area,
how do we keep it from becoming mechanical?
I must confess, I am still battling that.
And so often I stop in the middle
of praying through, I spend a lot of
time praying through prayer letters and correspondence.
Pray, read, pray, read, pray.
I wrote an article about that.
I don't know if you read it, but
I think you just have to continue to
lubricate yourself with praise, thanksgiving, confession, expressions like,
Lord you know all about me and you
love me still.
Lord you know I'm not really totally excited
about what I'm reading here at this moment,
but I pray and I might give a
shout.
I may give an internal shout so I
don't frighten someone who's with me, but I
believe that you're going to have to battle
that.
Don't let the pendulum swing where you say,
well this has been mechanical, I'm not going
to do this anymore.
Now I also engage in prayer walking.
I engage in different practical changes in the
way I pray to help, you know, face
this particular problem.
Sometimes I pray with music in the background,
often praise choruses.
Also to mix it with reading the Word,
singing the Psalms.
That can help you to battle on.
Also maybe having a chapter in a good
book on prayer as part of your prayer
time, that's perfectly.
I do a lot with pictures.
I pray over people's photos, something about praying
over a person's photo.
I pray over atlases.
I pray through encyclopedias.
I pray over anything that helps me associate
my praying with something specific.
I prayed through the entire book Operation World
last year.
I needed a few months this year to
complete it.
Almost every line, a lot of that did
get a little mechanical.
There will be the straw factor in what
you do.
Don't let the straw factor discourage you.
God is operating with you on the basis
of mercy.
He's not demanding a prayer performance out of
you.
Some of you are not good performers.
You may be a little bit of a
spiritual wimp.
God still loves you.
He can set you ablaze.
He can use you as you pray, even
over lists of people.
I think it's important, however, to seek the
mind of God.
Have times of prayer when you don't have
things around and you're seeking the mind of
God concerning what you should be praying about.
Someone else, yes.
Your second.
The question is how would we break down,
how would we sort out actually praying for
the Kurdish people?
Now, we all have different capacities.
And if you're a two-talent person, don't
try to be a ten-talent person.
If you're a Volkswagen, don't try to be
a Mercedes Benz.
And it's something that we've seen really goes
out of control.
People who are not, you know, they have
so much capacity in various areas, emotionally, mentally,
physically, spiritually.
And they try to be someone else.
And it gets bizarre.
That's why I emphasize the whole counsel of
God.
At the same time, it would be good
if you're interested in a particular people's group
to do some research on that people's group.
Maybe even do some correspondence with people who
may have more information.
You've got to be an information seeker.
You've got to be looking for information that
can enable you to have ongoing prayer life.
God put Turkey on my heart when I
was a young student.
I went into the library.
I researched Turkey.
Then I got more and more involved until
I realized this was one of the main
countries that I was to give my energy
to the rest of my life.
Then I went out to see Dale Roton,
who was planning to go to South America.
And I challenged him about the land of
Turkey.
And his whole life was changed through that
challenge.
He went to Turkey, pioneered OM in Turkey,
and many others followed him.
And that has been one of OM's key
target fields.
That was all born out of research and
prayer in a library in Chicago.
So you can push, you can read, you
can write others, and the Lord will take
you.
It's often one step at a time.
You're not going out the door praying Hyde.
You're going out the door praying John or
praying Mary or Susie or Sam.
You're still you.
And the prayer road for most people is
going to be a long road.
And these great men of prayer, they all
had their failures.
Many of them had struggles in their marriages.
That's a great mystery.
Many men of prayer have had struggle in
their marriages.
Tozer had difficulty in his marriage.
Wesley, unbelievable problem.
And you know, that's why I'm very slow
to throw out a little simple formula.
This is it.
It's going to be a battle.
It takes the whole counsel of God.
It takes spiritual balance, many other things.
This lady was next.
Thank you for that question.
Better to pray on your own or pray
in a small group?
I only touched on it in the beginning,
so let me reinforce it that I believe
there must be emphasis on both.
I especially try to emphasize the group prayer
from Acts because I find that most Christians
acknowledge that they must have a personal prayer
life.
I've hardly found anybody that doesn't acknowledge that.
Where there is a growing set of vibrations
that's around, that group prayer is not necessary.
Whereas we must understand both are clearly in
the Scriptures.
Jesus went off alone also and prayed through
the night.
You find that in the Gospel of Luke.
So I would say you need both.
In my own life, I battle.
There are periods in my life where I
had a lot more group prayer.
I'm in a period of my life now
because OM prayer meetings are getting a bit
shorter and probably also other factors that I
lean more toward extensive hours in personal private
intercession, which people may not know about.
But I'm trying to find a balance.
Yeah.
No, I would just say again, it's both.
In other words, in the morning you might
want to have some prayer for Afghanistan in
your quiet time, but then during the daytime,
if you get in any kind of group,
share with them what God has given you
in that quiet time or what you discovered
in a book and pray again.
We also have a great debate.
Do we just pray once with all of
our heart and then simply believe and after
that sort of stand on the promise?
Or do we persevere?
The Scriptures teach there's a need for both.
There is a time when you stand, you
believe, something's going to happen.
But in prayer later on, imagine many of
my prayers, some of which many of which
have not yet been answered, I've been praying
a similar prayer for 30 years.
Now you want to talk about something that
can get a little difficult and I've not
seen the breakthroughs.
So I think there's a time when you
stand on God's promise and you say, this
is it.
And there's a time when you persevere again.
You just ask again.
That's not a problem with God.
And we have a number of passages that
talk about importunate persevering prayer.
We're gonna have to close now or maybe
just watch this a little fast.
What time is it?
Five more minutes.
This one does gain five minutes each two
hours.
Helpful for my kind of person.
Yes.
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
The title is a little misleading.
It's basically an encyclopedia on discipleship and spirituality.
One of the books that's most similar to
it in some ways coming out of someone
more of this generation is David Watson's book,
Discipleship.
How this man with all that he was
doing, all the other books he wrote, managed
to put that thing together before he died
is quite amazing.
It's brilliant.
So there's, you know, last generation, this generation,
two great books on discipleship, discipline, spiritual life.
Technically the title is called Spiritual Depression, Its
Causes and Cure.
Yes, one
of the things that's been the most meaningful,
I think, in our situation is that my
wife and I have hardly missed an OM
night of prayer for 28 years or more.
I've never, I don't think, put a lot
of pressure on her to be there and
sometimes someone that doesn't always feel physically as
well as I do, it was much more
difficult for her to come.
But I know even often, so often when
I'm away, she makes her way up.
She's been doing it for, we've been married
28 years and gets involved in the OM
night of prayer and in other prayer gatherings.
Up to some years ago, we were always
often together in the, some of the morning
prayer time.
Some changes took place that made it difficult
for her to get to all of those.
So, as a couple, we've been involved with
the whole body in praying.
Looking back, I feel that my wife and
I have not been systematic enough in perhaps
tackling all, you know, nations together.
And I have a weakness that I tend
to go off on my own thing.
You know, my wife is over here.
Of course, she reared three children.
I'm out in the woods having her, you
know, a red-hot prayer time and she's
wrestling with the problems at home.
And I wish that I could turn the
clock back and do some things over again.
At the same time, those times of prayer
and intercession, especially often for your own family,
are just, you know, absolutely essential even for
survival.
I'm the kind of person and sometimes I'm
in an attack position.
I'm ready to just take on the enemy,
so to speak, spiritually speaking.
But other times I'm in a survival position.
I'm under pressure, I'm wrestling with my old
enemy of doubt, or I'm wrestling with one
of my other old enemies, and I'm feeling
a lot of pressure.
So I pull into a survival position where
I'd emphasize more praise.
I would make use of Christian music more
at that moment.
I'd emphasize the need for meditation, just getting
out.
I need, you know, to get out in
the woods, get out of the mountains, just
be away from the clutter and the clamor
and somehow seek God.
I have a whole 50-point program, most
of it in one form or the other,
written in the back of my Bible for
personal spiritual survival.
I am NOT a naturally spiritual person.
I'm a natural backslider.
Books say my temperament caused the greatest scandals
in the church.
I'm the kind that there's, you know, it
should have happened according to statistics.
I should have been one of these characters
that, you know, ran off and committed immorality
like we're reading about, you know, so often
these days.
Yet somehow, because I think of what I
was taught as a young Christian, all the
people praying for me, God's sheer mercy and
grace, you know, he has kept me out
of those scandalous and mind-bending situations that
seem to be so common in these days.
I think prayer, by the way, is definitely
tied into that.
Not just my personal prayer life, but so
many others.
Once there's a movement of prayer, can you
imagine just the fringe benefits of the movement
of prayer?
You know, revival could almost come as a
fringe benefit of a mighty prayer movement for
world missions, because God is sovereign.
So I think that's important and something to
keep in mind.
Time is up now.
It's a great encouragement to have a dear
man of God who I know knows much
about prayer, and that's something, no matter how
much we know, we feel we know little.
But I'd like to ask Colin Peckham to
just close this meeting in prayer, if you
would, at this time.
He's got a good loud voice as well.
If you ever think I can speak loud,
go take in a Colin Peckham seminar.
We had him on our ship ministering.
Could you close the meeting in prayer for
us?