And I'm calling it 20 Years of Family
Life.
This is not only the 20th anniversary of
OM in Europe, it's the 20th anniversary of
family life in OM, which is interesting because
one of the things I said when I
took the first teams to Mexico, and this
goes way back, was I really feel this
should just be for men.
And some of the women, especially Jean Hall,
now Jean Davey, immediately confronted me at Moody
Bible Institute, where the second Summer Crusade was
launched from, and they said, look, there are
women who want to get involved in this.
And I think even within a few days
that just seemed to be such a sensible
thing.
And in those early prayer meetings there were
always men and women together, and as some
of you may remember, my mother actually ended
up taking care of the office for, I
think, some 10 years.
It took a couple of people to take
her place when she gave up that position.
So we look back over 20 years of
family life.
In those very earliest days we had people
who were married.
I remember Mike McKinley at Moody Bible Institute.
He was already married, and he went to
Mexico.
Mike is still today a missionary in Spain,
23 years later.
And as we look back over these 20
years and realize that we've had about 22
,000 people who have gone through the OM
training program, we have really given praise to
God that hardly any who have been trained
in OM and met in OM their life
partner have ever come apart.
I've heard of one, and there may be
another one that is in the midst of
a very difficult situation right now.
I'm sure there are perhaps a couple of
others that I haven't heard about.
I believe that's a miracle because one out
of three of all marriages now, or four,
it varies from country to country, ends in
divorce.
And what about separation?
And even among Christians, some people have heard
about a few people who have been on
OM and then have had difficulty, and they've
been surprised by this.
In one or two cases even blamed OM.
But the fact is there is hardly a
church that is not plagued with a divorce
problem.
Pastor after pastor that I speak to, one
of the biggest problems they have is divorce
and separation.
And that's among people who want to stay
within the church, much less the great numbers
that, after this happens, they don't want to
bother with the church anymore.
There, sometimes we don't have the figures or
the statistics.
So divorce and separation and all the problems
of family life take place among believers.
And you will be surprised to discover that
sometimes among the very spiritually minded, as Tozer
said, the more keen Christian is more easily
led astray, I would say that among the
married couples that are so keen for God,
often divorce and separation and heartbreak in the
marriage seemingly is more possible because they get
caught into extremes or they get their priorities
wrong and other things that we're going to
talk about during this hour.
So we praise God.
And this morning, because I just got this
message from the Lord this morning, I hope
it was from Him, I don't believe that
when I get a message from the Lord
it is in terms of total, you know,
whatever I get from the Lord gets verwarized,
but the time you get it, it's got
the clay in it, so you've got to
sort out with the Word of God what
came from the Lord, what got stained by
verwar.
It's not, you know, I got this message
and put it on you and if you
don't obey it, you'll be unhappy forevermore or
something like that.
But I believe there are specific reasons, at
least some reasons, apart from the grace and
the mercy of God, which is always the
foundation of everything, why we have seen so
much blessing and so much victory in our
family life.
With Innoem, that is the people who are
long-term with Innoem, there has been almost
nothing in terms of divorce or separation.
There was about 15 years ago one couple
who were just moving into leadership.
They'd already been married and were having a
rough time when they came to us and
they had children and somehow this brother got
waylaid by the devil, fell in love with
a very attractive girl on his team and
it blew their relationship with O.M. apart.
Their marriage started to disintegrate and I've heard
now just 15 years later they divorced.
I think most of those years he was
living in impurity and an incredibly patient loving
wife, but it ended.
Even that, of course, as Christians, is not
necessarily the end of the line.
If you think that's the total end of
the line, then your God is too small
because even though that's wrong and cannot be
justified, God does not slam the door and
break off fellowship.
And I was surprised recently that some gifts
were coming in from this particular man or
a man with the exact same name.
We've been tracing, trying to trace him down
to see what that's all about.
That experience in the very early days in
Europe really alerted us to the wiles of
the devil and we have been accused of
being overcautious because of rules like we have.
They're not really rules, but general goals that
our leaders don't get caught up just in
the same room all the time with some
other single woman even if it's his secretary.
And some of us prefer male secretaries for
that reason just to avoid the appearance of
evil.
And some people have really accused us of
being legalistic or unrealistic, but we have felt
that in this day in which so many
Christian leaders have been knocked out by their
attractive little secretary or because they were living
too much of a closed life in terms
of God's community with no rules because we're
an anti-rule day.
We live in a day in which, though
there are those who are legalistic and have
too many rules, the general population is over
here rebelling against rules.
Almost all your schools in America have thrown
the majority of their rules out and that's
the new liberation.
And this is because they're mature.
I remember the big thing we were demanding
at Moody when I was a student is
that people respect that.
We are now adults.
Of course, we didn't behave like adults, but
we wanted to be respected as adults.
And it's interesting where the new liberty has
led us.
I think there's some good in that, breaking
from legalism, but as usual it's so easy
for the pendulum to swing.
What are some of the reasons why we
have seen this particular area, such an area
of blessing?
I put first of all, and I hope
you will take a few notes, because our
burden whenever we have a session like this
is for you to take this to others.
It's not just for you.
You're in training and you're not trained.
You don't know these things until you can
share them with others better than I'm sharing
them with you.
And I'm sure that people can improve on
my poor presentation of things, especially in your
own language.
But I put that as number one.
It is priority.
We have seen victory in this area because
from the earliest days of the work, and
I think it was a great advantage that
I was married before I ever came to
Europe, and so family was already a priority
in my thinking.
Family, family life, marriage was priority.
From the beginning, divorce has never been an
option in the ranks of Operation Mobilization, and
therefore we've never had it.
The only case we had was the one
I shared with you in which the divorce
came some 15 years after the person left
OM.
But we still sense a responsibility toward them.
There are people that we, of course, fail
to reach.
Do not think that because people are on
OM, especially if they have come already married,
that they are necessarily living what we teach
and what we believe, even to a 50
% mark.
This is a very important thing to understand.
A movement of this size, where we don't
force people or manipulate people, you can have
people who are not paying any attention to
any great degree to even basic principles.
An illustration of this is the whole thing
about physical exercise.
I stand almost fanatic that everybody should have
a physical exercise program, either jogging or something
definite, every day, not hit and miss.
Of course, to me, this isn't a major
doctrine.
But you don't have 50% of the
people in OM that have such a program.
Now, I could say, if I wanted to
be very legalistic, well, if you come into
OM, you don't have an exercise program, we
don't guarantee anything else in the program will
work.
Therefore, anything that happens to you after you
leave, it's totally your own fault because you
didn't follow the program.
Now, that's the way some of the universities
and some training programs work.
You either follow the program or, number one,
you don't graduate, or if you're in the
Marine Corps, you'll probably get shot for putting
your head up at the wrong time, if
you're in training, or something else.
But in OM, there is freedom.
There is freedom to fail.
And we want that freedom to fail because
this is the way we believe the Holy
Spirit works.
I would have loved, years ago, to legalize
and regiment the exercise program, but I saw
this would be absolutely ridiculous.
I know a group that has done that,
and it caused just grief and pseudo-spirituality.
So, the method of OM, and again, that
is a minor point.
I'm using that really in the way of
illustration.
But there are many other areas where you
can't put your finger on things as easy
as the exercise program, like certain things that
we have encouraged married couples to do, to
be disciplined in their sex life.
That is not as easy to put your
finger on as the exercise program.
You don't just barge in, even to your
best friend's house, and say, now look, how
are things going in this area this week?
Somebody might try that.
I've done it with a few very close
friends, usually who I've had a very special
relationship with.
And so, in marriage, of course, there are
many areas where we can't even ask questions.
We have a strong teaching about families sending
out prayer letters and mobilizing prayer partners.
I'll get to that in a minute.
I found out some time ago about a
family that decided not to send out any
prayer letters.
And within a short time, they had left
OM.
And within a short time after that, their
marriage was in serious difficulty.
Now, you may say, you think that's a
coincidence.
And the last point in my whole lecture
this morning is no total answer.
And you might want to run that right
through everything that I'm saying.
Because whatever I say, I'm not giving you
some total answer.
I'm giving you different parts of the puzzle.
You then have to take pieces and put
it together in your situation, because we're all
different.
But I want to emphasize that being on
OM and being in OM doesn't mean you're
following these policies or basic principles.
And, in a sense, my plea this morning
is that you would give some of these
principles at least a fair chance in your
own situation and before you write off OM.
I think it's easier for families who come
into OM already as families, already married, I
think it's easier for them to fall out
with OM or to write off OM at
least to some degree.
And I'll get into that a little bit
later on.
So, number one, it's priority.
This is the series of lectures I gave
at a conference, September conference, about 11 or
12 years ago.
I've been always lecturing on this subject.
In fact, I got so involved with this
that if I left OM, I could spend
my entire life just taking marriage seminars.
And I hardly feel qualified for that.
And I just came across this outline.
I was going to produce a book, but
then decided it would be better to produce
a family that loved God and let someone
else write the books.
The title was going to be The Revolutionary
Family.
It was Chapter 1, Working Together.
Chapter 2, Spiritual Life.
Chapter 3, Communication.
Chapter 4, Community Life.
Chapter 5, Sex.
Chapter 6, More Sex.
No.
When the Baby Comes.
Chapter 7, Children.
Chapter 8, The Family Witness.
Chapter 9, Family Finance.
Let's see.
Chapter 10, Recreation and Relations.
Chapter 11, When Separated.
Chapter 12, In the Time of Crisis.
And if you want to look at that
outline, you're more than welcome.
Then you can write your own book.
I think we need some more writers in
Operation Mobilization.
Number 2, the emphasis in OM on the
subject of discipline.
I think this has been our, quote, salvation,
unquote.
Because it's so important in marriage, isn't it,
discipline?
It touches every area of marriage.
I think of a particular couple who probably
would have tremendous difficulty in the area of
sex, except the wife is disciplined.
For her, sex is not a big thing.
She likes to be embraced.
She likes the romantic side of life.
She's very different in temperament from her husband.
She's happy just with kisses and braces, back
rubs and a few other things.
But because she believes in discipline and other
things we're going to mention, she gives herself
to her husband, at least at a fair
interval, in a normal way.
This meets some of his deepest needs.
It also gives her, at least to some
degree, a sense of fulfillment, though she is
not experiencing in sex the same traumatic thing
that he is experiencing every time this famous
event takes place.
But she's disciplined.
She doesn't see it as something she just
does when she feels like it.
She doesn't see it as something she just
does when she's not tired, because that's very
difficult in our day when all the women
seem to be tired once they're married the
rest of their life.
And this can be very difficult for the
man who, whether he's tired or not, feels
that this particular event, like having a good
steak, is something that shouldn't be missed if
the opportunity is there.
Now, I don't want to get into great
controversy on the subject, but I hope you
get the point.
That marriage is held together because of the
discipline of the wife.
On the other hand, I've dealt with cases
where the wife perhaps was not as disciplined
as this particular woman, and she just was
no longer able to give herself in this
way.
It was causing great tension, but because the
husband had discipline, and he was willing to
die to self and battle on and realize
that this problem in his family would not
justify extramarital relationships, the marriage still held together.
Marriage is not each person coming 50%
of the way.
And for you engaged couples, boy, get that
out of your head.
Marriage is each one goes 90%, and there's
a great overlap.
You can allow perhaps for 10%.
Each one goes 90%.
That's what's going to hold a marriage together,
not each person coming 50%.
So the disciplined life that touches every area
of marriage with our children, especially in terms
of the discipline of our tongue, which can
so hurt our children, and the Word of
God says, provoke not your children to anger.
There was a generation not so long ago
that went around with great banners about how
they spanked their children, and how they believed
in discipline.
But unless the parents know self-discipline, disciplining
the child is of relatively short value.
It may help for a while.
The great need today, beloved, I believe, is
parental discipline, because we're an undisciplined generation of
parents.
We're trying to get our children to do
what we have not done.
We always think, of course, that in our
childhood things were different.
Most of us are not that good at
remembering our childhood anyway, plus there's such a
wide range of situations.
Number three, the emphasis on real love.
The kind of message we've given in the
last two nights, as basic and as simple
as it may be to some of you
who have studied the Bible a lot.
You see, the importance of the message isn't
whether it's simple or deep.
The essence of the message is whether you're
living that way, long-suffering, gentle, well-mannered,
tender-hearted.
And this emphasis in Operation Mobilization, this emphasis
in Operation Mobilization to the whole body, including
the married couples, has been very, very important.
Is there a book, Al, Love is a
Feeling to be Learned?
Something along that line, how true it is.
We have always emphasized that love is an
act of the will.
God so loved us, He gave His Son.
We so love our wives, we give ourselves.
We so love our husbands, we give ourselves.
It's an act of the will.
For me, there is never the option that
I don't love my wife.
It's not even within the realm of debate.
Anymore, there's an option that I don't love
the Savior.
Now, many times I don't feel like I
love the Savior.
And my love for the Savior, I don't
think, at times, is as strong as my
love for my wife.
But you see, it's ridiculous even to talk
that way.
Well, Jesus, today I love you, tomorrow I
don't love you.
You're basing it on feelings.
We are committed to the Savior.
We have been bought with a price.
We are now one with Jesus Christ, and
we do love Him.
We want our love to improve.
We want it to grow.
We will have struggles.
We will have times of defeat and failure.
But the basic relationship is there.
So in marriage, we're dealing with a basic
relationship.
We are committed to one another.
One of the greatest mistakes people make in
marriage is after maybe some weeks or months
of not feeling the same amount of emotional
vibration toward their marriage partner, they come up
with a statement like, I don't really feel
I love you anymore.
Imagine what an encouragement this is to the
partner.
It's better to sit down and talk about
your struggles with feelings.
Years ago, I explained to my wife that
I didn't always have the same kind of
hallucinations and vibrations that I had in the
pre-married days when I was completely in
love, as they say, and couldn't get her
out of my mind, and used to run
through parks, jump over benches to get back
on time at the Moody Bible Institute when
I always had the last minute with her
for the last final handshake before I got
back to where I was going.
You know, I'm glad that I don't have
this hyper-emotion all the time because I
wouldn't be very useful in other ministries.
But it is good that it does come
from time to time, especially when I return
from journeys and other occasions.
So we do change emotionally, but that doesn't
mean the end of the road.
It may, in fact, mean the beginning of
a whole new aspect, a whole new dimension
of your marriage where your loyalty to one
another and your closeness and all that kind
of thing becomes stronger and your commitment to
one another becomes stronger.
To me, this is a very important word
in marriage, commitment.
I am committed to the Lord Jesus Christ.
I am committed to my wife.
Regardless of what level of commitment she may
have toward me, I am committed to her.
I am committed to the leaders in OM.
That's another important relationship in my life.
Regardless of what their attitude or problem may
be with me, I am committed to them.
Life is commitments.
Billy Graham says life is habits.
And as new believers growing in Christ, we
have to change our habits.
This is why it's harder for families and
couples to come into OM because OM is
a community, it's a fellowship, it's quite a
strong movement, and it has its ways and
its patterns, some good, some bad, some neutral.
And into it comes an already existing family
with their children and their lifestyle and their
habits, and there can be collision.
That is as normal as having a collision
if a train is trying to pass a
Rolls Royce on a railway track, each going
in the opposite direction.
So if you have some collision with OM
as you sort of amalgamate into this difficult
to define mongrel movement, that is quite normal.
I am still having collisions with the movement,
and I was even involved in helping to
start it.
At times I've fallen down to God and
to others, and I've said, Wow, it's out
of control.
OM has become a machine, a monster, and
it's out of control.
It's easy to think that way in a
depressed moment when there's lots of problems.
Every time I've thought about it in prayer,
I realize that it wasn't out of control.
It was a normal spiritual movement that was
growing, and a movement with real people who
have freedom, and freedom to fail, freedom to
disagree, freedom to say, George Verwer is all
wet on this point, especially if they can
share it with me first, but even if
they don't, there's still freedom.
The emphasis on real love, commitment, that has
saved us from hundreds of pitfalls.
Number four, the war against extremism.
We are a bit conservative, and couples, for
example, who come from a strong charismatic background,
and oh, what a blessing.
Charismatic people have been in OM, and there
are plenty of them, even in the leadership,
and charismatic people should not feel, even if
somebody says something dumb, that happens in any
work, that they are not welcomed, but how
important it is to realize that a movement
of this wide range of people has to
be a little bit conservative in some areas
if we are going to survive.
We've had to sacrifice, perhaps, some freedom in
the area of gifts, at least the way
some people say it, gifts of the Spirit,
in order that we may have basic survival.
For instance, I've had people say to me,
why don't we have more freedom in the
area of prophecy?
There are many that feel that prophecy is
far more important, for example, than speaking in
tongues, and they felt inhibited in OM because
there wasn't more prophecy.
We've studied this a lot.
I could write a book on the subject.
It's a difficult area because we can't even
get the Christians to agree what prophecy is.
There is a strong group of Christians, we
have plenty of them in OM, who do
not agree with the concept of prophecy where
someone pops up and says they got some
total thing from God and this is what
we must do.
Every time I have researched where this kind
of thing is going on, unless there is
a really very unusual, strong man over the
congregation with very good eyes on them most
of the time, there is trouble.
For example, one Christian union recently in England
started to allow prophecy, and the Christian union
just went more and more and more emotional,
more and more and more divided.
And one day some girl, because usually the
girls that get into this is very much
linked with the emotion, and she gave some
great prophecy at the Christian union meeting, and
everybody must be at a certain prayer meeting
at 7 o'clock in the morning, or
they weren't really flowing with the Spirit.
One of the favorite words in this generation
is flowing.
Well, a lot of people didn't feel like
flowing into that prayer meeting at 7 o
'clock in the morning, and it just blew
the roof off.
Now that Christian union handled this in a
very wise way.
I think they decided to get a prophecy
committee.
And now every prophecy is recorded on tape.
I don't know what they did back in
the New Testament to poor souls without a
cassette recorder.
They didn't have videotape either.
They now have a prophecy committee, and I
think they use this for handling the tongues
problem as well, and they listen to these
prophecies, and then they decide whether they are
from God or not from God.
It's a difficult area, and in O.M.
we are not ready to move down that
road.
There was another case of someone recently that
had a prophecy in London that he had
the wrong wife, and so he divorced his
present wife and got one who was more
flowing with what the Lord was doing in
his life at this time, what he felt
the Lord was doing at this time.
Even David Wilkerson, who I respect and love,
I listen to his tapes, got himself in
an enormous amount of trouble, and he never
got out of it, when he gave this
vision.
This is years ago now, and if that
vision took place, an awful lot of things
should have happened before now.
Now, later on, he adjusted it.
I heard his tapes defending it, and he
said, well, he had the timing wrong.
But you see, when you first heard the
vision, when I first heard the tape, I
mean, this was God.
This was not man.
This was God speaking.
This was what was going to happen.
Thus saith the Lord.
And, of course, half the people in the
charismatic movement turned against him because they didn't
agree with him.
Because they were moving closer to the Catholic
Church.
Some of them had become Catholics.
And Wilkerson said, it's the Catholic Church that's
going to persecute, in an unbelievable way, all
the charismatics.
It didn't come true.
Now, of course, you can always postpone the
date, but this is what the cults do.
The cults tell us Jesus is coming on
a particular date on a particular mountain.
When he doesn't come, they say, oh, well,
somehow, we just, we did get the date
wrong.
It is, you know, they give you another
date.
And, we can't go for that.
I mention this because, as married couples and
families, you are probably more set in your
theology than the average young person.
We get families and couples even offended.
Why doesn't O.M. give a greater open
door to couples?
But often, beloved, it's their own fault because
they are already set in their ways.
They don't need a training program.
And, we're not about to train people.
We're all set in our ways.
They get all the theological answers.
And, that coupled with pride makes it almost
impossible for them to submit to the kind
of program and leadership we have in O
.M. And, there's no one begging couples to
come into O.M. because that would bring
in a far greater number of couples and
many of them would be disappointed.
So, the fact that we give out a
little bit of a warning, and it's a
little bit harder for couples, is not discrimination.
It's just facing the reality that in this
kind of training, it's better if we can
get people before they are all set in
their ways.
And, they have all the theological answers and
they will not be afraid to cross the
leader, even in a public meeting.
We've had them stand up and just tell
the leader he was completely wrong in his
theology and this is why the blessing wasn't
on the team and start to preach and
exhort and even call down whatever, in the
name of the Lord.
Oh yes, we've had an interesting history these
twenty years.
And, some of our leaders have been wounded.
And so, if when you come for your
interview as a married couple, they don't embrace
you totally, it's because they love you.
And, they want you to have the best
possible program and for some it may be
that the best possible program is not to
come on Operation Mobilization.
Go join something that's more in line with
your total answer or your mentality.
So, the war against extremism has been important.
If you've studied religion and the Christian religion
in a broad sense, you will know that
the religious emotion and the sex emotion easily
get mixed up.
This is an unbelievable study.
It's one, again, that I could write a
book on and it would be incredibly depressing
and I have no plans to write it.
But, others have.
A funny little man over here, no, over
in England, wrote a book called Queer Christians.
Now, the word queer in that country, in
that context, is not the same as in
other countries.
Some countries, I think queer refers to somebody
with a homosexual problem.
But, this book was just about odd Christians
and that was an unbelievable book.
It's gone out of print.
I have a copy.
And, he just went in religious community after
religious community and showing how adultery and immorality
invaded the community in the name of Jesus.
It's as old as the Old Testament.
Even out in India, the whole thing of
temple prostitutes, the fact that so many great
religious leaders who have become cultic have been
immoral.
Religious extremism is deadly in family life.
If you've seen the Jim Jones film, the
heartbreak is when he betrayed his wife upon
the advice of Father Divine, who must have
brought a lot of children into this world.
And, how Jim Jones' wife was so crushed
when he started to go and commit adultery
with some of the other girls that he
had helped spiritually.
And, I want to tell you, if God
has given any of you men a dynamic
ministry in which single women are also greatly
blessed and therefore come to you for counsel,
you are vulnerable.
Keith Miller said it's hardly ever when you
get involved in a long-term counseling situation
with a woman, with someone of the opposite
sex, is what he said, it's hardly ever
that immorality does not take place.
And, Keith Miller was a very liberated person
when he stated that.
He wasn't some kind of a legalist.
His own marriage, shortly after that, blew into
pieces and his faith with it.
And, it was later on through another woman
who had been attacked by a pastor and
almost raped, I think, by him.
And, who had gone through other ugly experiences
in the church.
And, when Keith Miller saw that she came
out of that to love the Lord Jesus,
he was touched and came back to Christ
and wrote a book about it.
Oh, if only we could learn some of
these lessons earlier.
This has been the advantage in O.M.,
that many of these lessons had been learned
before the tragedy, before the crisis.
Because we read widely, we've been able to
gleam from others.
And, we've been sharing this for the last
twenty-some years.
And, it has been an enormous help.
They're all linked together, aren't they?
Extremism, discipline, real love.
And, then number five, the emphasis on prayer
and prayer partners.
Before I ever went out to Mexico in
1957, I was still single and the foundation
in my life was laid before I was
married.
And, that's probably another reason we feel that
we can often go further with single people.
Though, we have seen some wonderful successes with
people who have come already married.
Though, it is a much, much, much tougher
road.
And, before I ever went to Mexico, I
had about 200 prayer partners.
Now, that may sound like a small thing.
Do you realize the protection, the covering I
had?
Now, I could have so easily fallen into
immorality.
I tell you, some of those little Mexican
girls.
And, when a hot-blooded North American meets
a hot-blooded Mexican, you have population explosion.
And, that's what you have all along the
border.
And, I blame the Americans more than the
Mexicans myself.
But, you see, I had 200 people praying
for me.
You know, I had some weird temptations.
I sensed constantly, I was just being guarded
by the Lord.
Prayer partners, getting prayer partners, which we're talking
about later today, is not some minor thing.
We need that protection.
We need not only prayer partners, we need
a prayer board if we can get it,
a group of people back home.
If our church is not functioning in a
strong way to oversee us, then we ought
to get a group of laymen who will
be our overseers, who we can be responsible
to, back in our home country.
I did this before I ever went to
Mexico.
Those same men are still standing with me
today.
Never ceased to pray for me.
Edward Gallencamp, one of the men who helped
pay for the bus that took me to
the Billy Graham meeting, became one of the
first members of our board, and has been
with me to this day.
The protection I've had because of my prayer
partners has been a very major thing, and
also linked with the next point, submission.
The emphasis on prayer, of course, is important
because we are not in a carnal warfare,
we are in a spiritual warfare.
You think the problems in your marriage are
your wife, or your husband, or his background,
or her background.
No, they are often Satan's attempts to destroy
your family.
Try to see these things not as your
husband's kink, or your kink, but as the
devil's strategy to destroy you, and to destroy
your family.
So the emphasis on prayer, getting prayer partners,
staying linked with the local church, has all
been an important factor in keeping this testimony.
Then number six, submission.
Owen had a, I believe, a healthy emphasis
on submission, without even knowing there was such
a teaching.
Lately there's been big emphasis on submission.
That is a reaction from the church not
teaching anything about submission.
Don't be too hard on some of the
local churches that overemphasize submission, because they are
just reacting to the no submission that has
existed for years, when the pastor and the
elders in the church could care less what
the people do.
You just come and tell them what you're
doing.
Nobody asks any questions.
Now the pendulum has swung.
This is always the problem.
When we find the truth, we take it
too far.
And the chaos this extreme teaching on submission
has brought is just unbelievable.
Even men telling other men they should leave
their wife.
One of the things I'm scared of the
most in church life is accusation.
You know in some local churches they have
accusation sessions.
How frightening.
To me there should be questions.
One of the things that marks the Scientology
cult, and if they get a copy of
this tape they may take me to court
just for what I say right now.
But one of the subtle things about the
Scientology cult is the control over the people.
I read a book about a man who
tried to get out of this movement and
how they used his marriage partners to keep
him in the movement.
To keep him gripped with fear.
The children of God, the family of love
it's now called, use the same manipulation.
Even threatening people.
If you leave your marriage will fall apart.
If you leave your babies will be born
mongoloid.
If you leave all kinds of threats.
Threatening is as basic to cults as the
Bible is to a believer.
They live by threat, by manipulation.
And it's so deadly.
And as you know one of the ways
some of the people come out of the
cult is when one of the marriage partners
doesn't go along with it.
That's why it is valuable to listen to
one another.
It is valuable.
If your wife is one type of theology
and you're another type of theology that doesn't
necessarily mean great division in the home.
That may bring protection.
You launch something in your side of the
theological camp that you just got off the
latest cassette tape and your wife says, well
you know that's interesting but what about John
down the other side of that and he
ended up divorcing his wife and marrying this
woman who, well I think, oh yeah she
did, she made this cassette.
You know so often the wife, we often
say, especially the male chauvinist, that you know
the men were more logical and more intellectual
and you know all that funk.
And the men, the women, they're more emotional.
Of course this is a generalization because there
are cases where it's just the opposite in
a family where the man is more emotional,
less logical and the wife is more logical
and less emotional.
There is such a wide range of people
there are today.
There may be an element of truth in
that.
What am I trying to say?
The need to submit to one another.
Submission in marriage is not the woman just
submitting to the man like some little duck
on the end of a rope being pulled
across the duck pond.
The wife should know basic submission and respect
the headship of her husband as Christ is
head of the church, but as far as
the practical working there is a submission to
one another.
There's a recognition of one another's gifts, a
recognition of various abilities that our partner has.
I think the hardest thing for a man
is when he picks up a rumor that
he's being bossed by his wife.
Why he's not able to overreact to that
and never come back from a major neurosis.
But I don't think it's possible to have
a really loving family where you're sharing and
speaking and where you don't run rough shot
over each other without being eventually accused of
being run by your wife.
There's all kinds of little jokes, you know,
like she's the neck that turns the head
and all this kind of thing.
Well, whatever people are saying it's a great
mistake to overreact.
And you decide when you pick up this
rumor you're going to tighten up on your
wife or you're going to prove to others
that your wife is in submission to you.
And some of you do some really dumb
things.
And your wife, bless her heart, she's so
loving, she decides to go along with it
for the sake of peace or the sake
of the children and you go around and
show this as a credential that you have
a submissive wife.
What does this prove?
I don't know.
It may prove that you're dumber than the
other guy down the road.
I don't know.
Learning to submit to one another, to respect
one another, to love one another.
It's interesting that in OM we don't expect
dictatorial leadership.
There's no one that's going to take any
dictation even from me, I can assure you.
I have a lot of respect and loyalty
but people don't want dictators.
And you don't want dictators.
And yet the man who doesn't want a
dictator turns around and becomes a dictator in
the house.
It's not God's way.
So this emphasis on submission and balance and
the emphasis on protection is very important.
We ought to protect our wives as men
as much as possible.
If the financial policy, not functioning right on
your team, is hurting your wife then you
run defense.
Certainly you tall, good looking, strong men are
not afraid of some little team.
Certainly you're not afraid of a team leader.
Most of our team leaders are incredibly cooperative.
They knew you wanted an extra five dollars
or five, they'd give you ten.
But you know the mistakes the married couples
make?
They don't share.
The team leader does something offensive or the
team treasurer goes home offensive and they go
home and they have roast team leader for
supper.
Or they have broiled treasurer for supper.
That's not God's way.
Of course if we have an advantage of
families we can share with one another confidentially.
Our moans and our groans.
But even in this we must be careful.
Because if we just share the negative things
about our team leader or about some other
person on our team, even in the intimacy
of our family, we don't bring the positive,
we have stained the minds of our marriage
partner against that person.
And I think that as couples we have
got to learn to be positive and when
we share the negative things we try to
share the positive and we talk it out
and I have found it very helpful that
if my wife is negative on something I
should try to be positive.
And if I'm negative on something she often
tries to be positive.
In fact the thing that really hits her
is when she's in a depression and I
have no way, I don't seem to be
getting her out of it, I go to
her and I say I am really depressed.
And she can't handle it.
No you can't be depressed.
I am depressed.
So we suddenly end up some kind of
a discussion and usually some result comes from
that.
I can't remember exactly how that's all worked
out.
But we can balance one another off.
Now if your marriage partner is a real
negative, no matter what he sees a black
side, he has a long face, you try
to kiss him and his face is so
long your head bumps into his teeth.
But I've been to a
lot
of places and I've been to a lot
of places and I've been to a
lot
of places
and
I've
been to a lot of places and I've
been to a lot of places and
I've been to a lot of places and
I've been to and I've been to a
lot
of
places and I've been to a lot of
places and
I've been to a lot of
places and I've been to a lot of
places and
I've
been to a lot of places and I've
been to and I've been to a lot
of places and I've been to have a
little more freedom.
But I think when people engage in this
during the first year it really brings confusion
and I've had even a single people complain
about.
Well I must move on quickly but let's
remember that flexibility and that adaptability is there.
There is no one way that we expect
families to behave within OMS. There's no one
way where we in terms of where we
expect you to live.
Some of us for many many years lived
in very very small accommodations, often one room,
often two rooms including the kitchen and everything
else.
We're the family but there is no policy
about that.
If you can get a little bigger place
and you're trusting God for the rent which
is one of the privileges of the married
couple included in your support, praise the Lord.
There's no one way we're telling people to
live.
We believe in a simple lifestyle but you
are the one to define that which is
simple.
If we think you've gone really overboard and
generally we don't go around pecking at people
in their in their family lifestyle.
We think you've really gone overboard you go
out and buy a Rolls Royce and come
tooting in to the morning quiet time we'll
have a little private chat with you about
that.
So you know we're not about to give
up the principles God has given us but
we want that flexibility and the adaptability and
your spiritual life and family life is more
important for us than many of our principles
because our key principle is people.
You.
But if we don't know what's on your
heart, if you don't share, if you're afraid
of your leader or you give up after
the first miscommunication because it's bound to be
miscommunication if you ever had any with your
wife, so why are you so amazed if
you have one with your team leader?
And as we're mature and go back and
talk things out we can find that middle
road of love and spiritual life.
Number eight, I've already mentioned when people are
already married it's harder so we are a
little fussier in terms of families.
We do throw up a smokescreen and just
to make sure that it's really the Lord
who's sending them and because we've been conservative
I think we've had a pretty good average
with the families the Lord has brought us.
Of course there has been some failures.
Some families after a time on OM they
they're convinced that they they're not ready for
the foreign mission field.
I feel that in itself is a ministry.
Some families in the United States they will
never be happy and settle down there until
they get a year overseas and discover that's
not their thing.
Then they'll return home and they'll be a
lot happier and a lot more peaceful.
And I have a burden for such people
who they want to come with us we
say look we don't think it's worth it.
They write again, they phone, they come to
the conference, they go to the interview.
I generally at that point say look I
think you should come.
Now I have leaders who don't agree with
me on this and I'm sort of a
liberal family recruiter and I've undergone a little
bit of criticism for that which is which
is great.
But I'm out for bringing families after they
persevere and they pray it through and they
pass some of the tests go to the
conference see money come in all these different
things because there's an awful lot of barriers.
Some of you have been going over barriers
for the last year and you're still wondering
what next thing OM is going to throw
up that you're supposed to go over to
prove that you're stable or that you aren't
going to destroy the movement or some other
thing speaking of course in exaggeration.
So that's been a great help.
And then number nine, number eight is the
fact that we are cautious about people who
are already married and especially if they already
have children.
Okay number nine just being on OM is
not enough.
Just being on OM is not enough.
We want to see fruitful lives and we
realize in God's training program OM can only
play a small part.
Nothing we teach you this year or anything
we teach you this year does not guarantee
future success in your marriage.
Life isn't like that.
And to blame someone's divorce or separation without
examining the facts on OM which some people
I've heard recently have done is so naive
and so childish.
It proves that people do not understand much
of what life is about.
When you're in OM you are subject to
the circumstances of this kind of life therefore
they will be perhaps one of the factors
that could bring difficulty in your marriage.
But if you were not in OM there
would be other circumstances and from the people
I talk to they say the circumstances get
rougher when they leave OM.
So in a sense we can't prove anything
by finding one couple who when they came
on OM they found it rough and they
had marriage problems.
We can't prove unless we had a thousand
case histories at least on each side those
who never came on OM from similar backgrounds
with those who came on OM and made
a heavy research we cannot prove much by
such things.
So to me it's not that relevant.
Also of course in the future we are
going to have some marital bust-ups maybe
even within OM.
I hope not.
Over 1,500 people and as people move
into the 40s and as the devil continues
to hack away history shows that some will
collapse in the midst of the battle.
And that will not prove that we've been
going in the wrong direction all along because
probably you'll discover that some of these basic
principles have been dropped along the way which
are so biblical and because life is incredibly
complex.
That's why I've always had a compassionate view
toward the divorced and I feel that these
people need a lot of understanding.
Some of them got divorced and separated when
they were young Christians when they had very
little teaching very little help.
Life gets incredibly complex and I just believe
that whatever policy we have through the divorce
and separated and all that it must be
just so compassionate and we must see the
grace of God and the forgiveness of Jesus
Christ.
OM was one of the first main interdenominational
movements to accept divorced people.
When we started that it was a no
-no.
We kept it very quiet but it was
our conviction especially if the divorce was before
they became a Christian that they should have
an opportunity for training.
That's how we helped some people who were
against it said well look OM is a
training program.
We're not taking these people necessarily as a
main apostolic missionary to Central Africa.
And we have seen that this was God's
course.
We are conservative.
We interview people.
We have even accepted, what do they call
it, single-parent families.
And we've seen the Lord work.
It's a revolutionary road we've chosen.
Many of the new generation they don't even
understand how revolutionary some of these things are
in missionary work.
Even today a vast percentage of missionary societies
the moment they hear you're divorced that's it.
They won't correspond with it anymore.
And now the pendulum swings and of course
we we get people who don't feel you
know that OM is totally fair simply because
we ask a few questions.
We want to try to find out what's
happening, what the situation is.
It's a hard thing to please people in
these areas.
That's why our main goal is to please
God.
And then number 10 openness about sex.
We were also criticized for this.
You can imagine 20 years ago speaking openly
about sex.
And in previous September conferences I have given
lectures on sex.
If they ever got out to public listening
back in those days I don't know what
would happen.
I was openly answering questions like what is
the biblical basis for oral sex and every
kind of wild question you can think of.
That's ten years ago.
And we have no fixed plan for such
sessions.
But I can tell you many many people
have written telling me how much these open
talks about sex have helped them.
Because it seems the last thing that spiritual
people want to talk about.
And it seems that there is teaching among
Christians that certain things within marriage it's lust.
And people go around with a guilt trip
that they're they're in lust in their marriage.
I believe lust is difficult within marriage with
your own marriage partner.
I'm sure it's possible but I wouldn't want
to be the one to draw the line
as to where it begins and ends.
And of course there's a wide range of
thinking on this.
But the very fact that we talk about
it, we're open about it, many have sought
counsel about it, has helped a lot of
people.
I will tell you hundreds of marriages have
been healed through the teaching and the emphasis
of OM.
I'm not speaking now about within OM but
in our marriage teaching, in our seminars, on
the all over the world.
And number 11, the influence of books.
Books on marriage and family have gone through
OM for over, for about 20 years at
an unbelievable rate.
You won't agree with everything but it at
least causes you to think.
Some of the cobwebs are knocked, knocked out.
Again and again books have brought me to
repentance in regard to my own marriage.
Number 12, the emphasis on sharing and fellowship
and honesty.
How important this is.
Number 13, the war against hyper-idealism because
hyper-idealism is one of the most destructive
elements in marriage.
The husband is expecting his wife to be
this, the wife is expecting her husband to
be that, and eventually it breaks down.
But in OM, the constant chopping away at
total answerism, hyper-idealism has brought many a
marriage racked down to earth.
And then the emphasis on brokenness and on
maintaining a realistic view of life and of
suffering.
True spirituality with the love and the balance
has been a major factor that I believe
has helped us to be able to really
praise God after these 20 years of family
life that so many have run so well.
Oh yes, problems there have been and they
will become greater.
And the whole area of rearing children is
probably the greatest challenge we're faced with.
But even there, these basic principles will be
major factors, I believe, in keeping us in
the right direction.
Let's pray.
I will have a question and answer session
with you next year, next week, when I
speak on survival in marriage.
And for people hearing the tape, I'd be
happy to correspond if you have some burden
on this subject.
Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can
just openly share these expectations, these thoughts.
Help us to really appropriate this, to talk
about it among ourselves, in our families, and
to pray, and to really believe you that
we're going to have a healthy and a
happy, growing experience within this spiritual army that
you have raised up.
And we thank you that OM is for
families.
It is for all who want to serve
you with all their heart and are willing
for the biblical principles of marriage and spiritual
life.
We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.