This message was given at a conference where
a number of people were present who could
not understand English.
Translation took place therefore step by step into
six languages by means of interpreters.
This interpretation has now been extracted, but it
has resulted in there being a few places
where unexpected changes of tone occur in the
speaker's voice.
Nothing has been added to or taken from
the original message.
Well, time passes very quickly.
I know some must be tired, especially the
interpreters, but I want to think for the
next moments on one thing, not a thing,
but a person.
I want us to think on the Lord
himself.
We can give you principle upon principle, challenge
upon challenge.
We can take you through the New Testament
many times.
We can pound home the Sermon on the
Mount, the Ten Commandments, the revolutionary principles of
the New Testament.
What will it mean?
When I was at Urbana, where quite a
few of you were in December, I spoke
on this thing that I call the dichotomy,
the fact that our religious lives are over
here and our practical life is over here.
A great number of people at that massive
gathering realized that this was true in their
own lives.
I believe this religious dichotomy is almost as
serious, or it is as serious, as any
other disease that can come on a man.
Many of us here, I'm sure, sense that
this dichotomy exists in our own experience.
On one hand, the hymns that we sing,
the doctrines that we defend, the confessions that
we sign, and then on the other hand,
what we really are, what we do with
our time, our money, our education, and everything
else.
I'm not going to go into that.
I think most of us are conscious of
this.
We have it on O.M. It's everywhere.
I know I see it in my own
life.
It's like a spiritual schizophrenia in which we
become almost two people.
I've counseled young men involved in Christian work.
On one hand, giving their testimony, going to
church, involved in Christian work, even on O
.M. But on the other hand, sin, moral
sin, lies, deception, many things.
With some people, it's very extreme.
A young man once came up to me,
a Bible school student, and every other weekend
after his Christian service, he was in gross
immorality in Bible school.
Don't try to guess who that is because
most of you do not know him.
No one in O.M. But it's everywhere.
I've counseled, at times, believe it or not,
even older missionaries on the field.
Again, I would say this is certainly the
exception.
But oh, how deep and serious this double
life can get.
It's the greatest disease in the church.
I believe the answer to this disease, this
hypocrisy, is the answer is Jesus, the Lord
Jesus Christ.
It's not any set of principles.
It's not some new spiritual gymnastics that we're
going to go gyrating through.
It doesn't lie in a new movement.
O.M. is not the answer.
It doesn't lie in a new book.
None of these things, all these things are
secondary.
The secret is found in the Lord Jesus
Christ.
And as we look in the Bible, we
see that the main theme of the Bible
is Christ.
You know, for the average person in normal
conversation, I have discovered it's difficult to talk
about Jesus Christ.
You know where we can measure our spirituality?
Sitting around a table and having something to
eat.
Just met some new friends.
What do we talk about?
Do we ever talk about Jesus?
In the normal flow of our life, do
we talk about Jesus?
Do we think about Jesus?
When you woke up this morning, did you
realize he was right there?
As you went to wash, he was there.
As you went to the breakfast queue, he
was there.
As you walked to that first session, he
was there.
You became tired, he was there.
As you didn't understand something that was said,
he was there.
How many of us can say today we've
experienced his presence?
It's not a religious game.
He's here.
He's living.
He walks with us.
He talks with us.
He understands us.
You know, I find this very strange, even
talking this way to most people.
Was Bishop Robinson right?
And for most of us, our God is
just a man way out.
You know, that book made no impact upon
me.
That outstanding, unbelieving book called Honest to God.
Because it's obvious that this poor soul didn't
know God.
He had never walked with Jesus.
If he had walked with Jesus, he could
have never written those things.
Our God is not a man way out
there.
Our God is he that hath tabernacled in
our midst.
We're not just going to some heaven the
other side of space.
God has begun a heaven within our own
lives.
There's been a lot of emphasis on cultivating
friendship here at the conference.
You want to get to meet people, take
the mask off, get to know people.
There's one friendship that I want to cultivate,
and it's really the only friendship that's going
to break that dichotomy, and that's with Jesus.
Is that a name found often on your
lips, or does it sound almost a little
strange?
Yes, yes, in church it sounds all right.
In a prayer meeting it sounds all right,
but not in just routine living.
You know one of the greatest sins?
A great man of God was speaking some
time ago.
You know what he said the greatest sin
of youth was?
Immorality?
No.
Lying?
No.
He went on and listed some other sins.
He said the greatest sin of modern youth
is wasting time.
Wasting time is wasting life, and the average
young person you meet today, they're drifting.
Even many people that I interview, they have
no goals in their life.
They have nothing that they're really aiming at.
They're just drifting along.
We even get them in on their way,
and they just drift in.
They don't even know why they've come.
They just sort of drifted in like a
piece of wood.
This is the thing philosophers will tell us
that marks western young people in comparison to
eastern young people in the 20th century.
We have nothing to live for, and this
goes to such an extreme that soon young
people are sucked into the new philosophies that
so surround us.
The philosophy of despair.
It's everywhere.
You'll face it in France.
You'll face it in Italy.
You'll face it in Vienna.
People who not only have nothing to live
for, they don't think there's anything worth living
for.
Some of these people have tried everything.
I witnessed to a young boy in New
York City some time ago.
He was 13 years of age.
He had experienced everything.
Sex?
Completely meaningless.
He had done everything at 13 years of
age.
It gave him nothing any longer.
Money?
Fun?
Drugs?
He had tried everything.
Every time you can snap your fingers, someone
in this world commits suicide.
Oh, they could only see Jesus.
They could only understand the Lord Jesus.
The only one who can break this double
life.
The only one who can deliver us from
this spiritual schizophrenia that is creeping upon us
as terribly as any physical disease.
You see, when you get to know the
Lord Jesus, and you have a deep knowledge
of his presence, then wherever you go, at
any time you can speak immediately to him
about your problem.
I know that the dichotomy exists in my
own life, but I know some degree of
victory over it, because daily, hour by hour,
Jesus is with me telling me all about
it.
His word has been hidden in my heart.
The Jesus that we know is the Jesus
of the Word.
He's the historical Christ.
He's not a symbol.
He's not a mystical feeling.
He is a historical person who rose from
the dead, and who sent his Holy Spirit,
who is also a definite historical person, who
abides in us, and who gives us that
witness, and that sense, and deep knowledge that
Jesus is here.
I'm so, so miserable at communicating this.
Please try to understand.
Jesus is here.
Maybe if we say it a hundred times,
we'll believe it.
When you lie in bed at night, many
people I meet have problems in the area
of sleep.
A man who can't get proper sleep will
soon become an ill man in almost every
case.
I meet people tormented by dreams.
I meet people who scream in the night,
people who can't sleep, and all kinds of
other problems related to sleep, which is a
very important part of one's life.
But I believe with all my heart, if
when we lie down, wherever we go to
sleep, we have the conscious presence of the
living Christ, most of our sleep problems will
disappear.
This might not come easy.
In some cases it will be a crisis.
In other cases it will be a process.
And as you've heard me say many times,
any crisis not followed by a process will
always end up in absence.
Over these past years, God has linked Operation
Mobilization together in a spiritual fellowship with LaBrie
Fellowship and Dr. Schaefer.
Many people say, well, what is Dr. Schaefer
trying to say?
You spend 20 hours going through his tapes
and you still wonder exactly perhaps what he's
trying to say, especially if you're, you know,
a little thick between the ears like I
am.
But basically what this man is trying to
say to our generation is this, Jesus Christ
is here.
Jesus Christ was there at the cross, a
historical person, so real as he says it,
that if you were there and ran your
finger down the cross, you'd get a real
splinter.
And of course this concept in philosophy is
completely, absolutely opposed to the modern theology and
modern philosophy that moves in from this other
direction.
That makes all the things that you and
I love the most basically symbols.
That tells us that things are mainly all
relative.
And the world today and the modern so
-called intellectual has swallowed this relativity pill hook,
line, and sinker.
God has raised up men like Dr. Schaefer
and others who have studied under him to
call us back once again to the fact
that we have a historical Jesus Christ.
He died on that cross some 2,000
years ago.
That's the only reason, only reason I'm here
tonight, or the main reason.
And if that is true, everything else will
fall into order.
My basic theology is simple as that.
If Jesus Christ died for me on that
cross, then everything else has to work itself
out.
Isn't that what Romans 8 says?
If he spared not his own son on
the cross, will he not give us all
things with him?
Will he not solve our problems as well?
Will he not give grace to live the
life as well?
Will he not give us our financial needs
as well?
Will he not clothe us and feed us
as well?
You see what I'm trying to say?
If there is a historical Christ, and we
believe there is, and he has died for
you, he shed his blood for you, then
everything else is minor compared to that.
How quickly we get inverted into our problems.
And there are probably some here that think
you have the greatest number of problems of
anybody in the conference.
And I pray you'll realize that this is
operation mobilization, not operation introspection.
Because as we look into ourselves, we start
delving around in our mind.
Then maybe we pick up a psychology book
so that we can get longer words than
the Bible words to put on our problems.
So many have been deceived by psychology simply
because they put a bigger word on something.
We're sure they've proved that what we believe
about it is not true.
I call this water.
That's water.
At this point, George held up the beaker
of water which was provided for the speaker.
Along came, comes an intellectual.
Scum, freonies, zerdialia, not going to drink any
more of that anymore.
That's just what has happened with psychology.
God calls something sin.
The Bible speaks about being guilty of sin.
Along comes Mr. Psychiatrist, and he calls it
inferiority complex or guilt complex.
You know thousands of young people have turned
away from the faith simply because psychiatry has
made some attempt to explain what actually happened
to them in conversion.
That's so ridiculous.
What's the difference what you call it?
What's the difference how it happened?
If Jesus is the historical Christ, whatever he
might use to bring us to himself, inferiority
sense, anything doesn't matter because he's a historical
Christ, and he actually lived, and now he's
living, and you and I can know him.
We can walk with him.
We can talk with him.
My favorite book in the Bible is still
the Gospel of John.
I praise God that over these years we've
been able to distribute tons and tons and
tons and tons and tons of this one
book, the Gospel of John, all over the
world.
Every page of the Gospel of John, you
see the same thing.
Jesus walking with men, calling them to faith,
ministering to them.
We see him as the light of the
world, and he wants to be your light
in these dark days that we live in.
We see him as the bread of life,
and he says those who take of this
bread will never hunger again.
We see him as the water.
We see him as the way.
We see him as the truth.
On every page we see the living Christ.
You want to break the dichotomy?
Some of you have been looking at OM.
You've been looking at principles.
You've been looking at people.
You've been looking at new methods.
So many methods there are.
I want to invite you tonight.
As it was said to the Greeks, sir,
we would see Jesus.
We would see Jesus.
I want to ask you with all my
heart to cultivate the practice of the presence
of the living Christ.
When you wake up tomorrow morning, you might
sense his presence.
When you go out for the exercises, you
might sense his presence.
Now some think this exercise is sort of
a joke.
It's not a joke, and there's men down
through history that have died on the mission
field because their bodies were not in physical
condition.
And I could be wrong, but I believe
I can say that Billy Graham today would
be out of the ministry if it were
not for his systematic daily exercises.
And I've heard recently that he's mainly cured
himself of pneumonia, which he was constantly getting
basically through running and developing stronger lungs.
You see, this is so typical of a
dichotomy.
We say we want to be dedicated.
We say we want to burn out for
Christ.
We say we want to accomplish great things
for God.
But if we're told that we actually are
going to have to touch our toes and
hurt our back six times to do it,
we'll immediately drop the plan and do something
else.
Many of the young men we take to
India, within five months they're knocked out.
Not because they didn't love the Lord Jesus,
but because their physical bodies were not ready
for a rough and tough and difficult life
in the back deserts of Bihar or Rajasthan.
And I believe with all my heart, we're
not ready to do the little things, getting
up on time, getting a proper diet, getting
a proper exercise, if we're not faithful in
those little things.
And all of our great powerful prayers for
all kinds of worldwide miracles will just be
like a lot of hot air coming out
of a tube.
I hate getting out of bed.
I hate it with a passion.
I hate doing exercise.
I like the first three or four hours
of the day as a completely do-as
-you-feel-like-it project.
The first four hours after that I'm willing
to move a little bit.
I want to tell you, as God has
by his grace enabled me to be faithful
in those little things, it has revolutionized my
life.
You know what will help us most of
all?
He is there.
Wherever you go.
I love to walk with Jesus.
Wherever I go.
I like to get up in the morning.
He is there.
I like to get up in the morning
and walk down the street with Jesus.
He's the only one who enjoys my singing.
And that's all that counts.
So the whole day goes wrong.
As long as the day goes wrong, as
long as your projects blow into the air,
it doesn't matter.
Jesus is there.
You know, it's like when you first fall
in love.
It doesn't matter what happens.
It doesn't matter what happens as long as
she's there.
And it's the same way in our relationship
with God.
Many of us have misconceptions, terrible misconceptions about
this work of OM and about discipleship.
And we develop a terrific negative type of
thinking.
Oh, it's so hard bearing our cross, knocking
on doors.
Oh, I've got to witness.
Think of that.
I've got to go out on Wednesday in
Brussels and have yogurts all summer.
And I've got to do this and I've
got to do that.
You want to know something?
You don't have to do anything.
And secondly, discipleship is easy.
When Jesus is with us, it's easy.
If you pull it alone in your own
strength, memorizing the manual, setting your alarm clock
with triple bells, and doing all kinds of
other things, that might not be any harm.
But if Jesus isn't there, you don't know
his presence.
You don't experience his closeness.
It's all worthless.
Jesus said, except you forsake all that you
have, you can't be my disciple.
But that was the same Jesus who said,
come unto me, all ye who labor and
heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
For 12 years, I've been living this way.
For eight years, my wife and I have
been living this way.
We can't say it's hard, not when Jesus
is there.
But when we forget him, and we do,
then it's hard.
Then it's hard on the mind and on
the body as well.
Jesus is there.
That's what counts this summer.
If you're on a floor, or you're on
a luxury bed, if you're having filet mignon,
or fish and chips, or if you're having
peanut butter and jam, if you're traveling in
a Mercedes 1968, or if you're traveling in
a Bedford 1958, it doesn't matter.
The thing that really counts is Jesus there,
is Jesus there.
Oh, may we see this.
May we see the Lord Jesus Christ wanting
to be our friend, wanting to take our
hand, wanting to love us, wanting to walk
with us, wanting to encourage us, wanting to
forgive us, wanting to do so much for
us.
We'll only let him.
I ask you with all of my heart,
make Jesus your leader this summer.
Take him wherever you go.
Talk with him.
Share all your problems.
Cry with him.
Sigh with him.
Die with him.
But whatever you do, see Jesus.
He is all we need, all we need.
Let us pray.
Lord, we know that many of us have
a spiritual schizophrenia.
We have a double life in the church,
in the OM conference, in the prayer meeting,
in the Bible study.
We're one thing.
We know your name.
We talk of you.
We argue of you.
We tell about us.
But oh, God, out in the streets, in
the restaurant, in the vehicle, in our bedroom,
in the dark of the night, we're far
from you.
We forget about you.
Your name is not heard.
Your footsteps are not there.
We're like Jekyll and Hyde.
Oh, God, we pray tonight, all of us
of one heart, bring a spiritual revolution upon
us, that, Lord, we might see you.
We might see Jesus.
Tomorrow, oh, God, when we arise from our
bed, we might acknowledge his presence.
Though we may not feel it, though we
may not have any tingle within us, help
us to acknowledge your presence and to live
in the light of it.
Lord, I pray this for my own life.
I've run miles ahead of you.
I've gone hours without thinking about you.
Forgive me, Lord.
Change my life tonight, that from this day
on, there may be more of Jesus and
less of George, more of Jesus, less of
Operation Mobilization, more of Jesus, less of trucks
and literature, more of Jesus, less of principles
and rules.
Hear this prayer, God.
This is the need of this work.
This is the need of our heart.
Lord Jesus Christ, your son, we ask in
his name.