Romans 8, 18, put your finger in that
while we pray.
Dear Father in heaven, we are utterly cast
on you that as we read your word
and just think through these few verses that
you would encourage us, teach us, touch us.
We know that you're with us.
Open our eyes now to something more of
the glory of yourself in the word.
We pray for Peter as he travels back
home or at least towards that funeral he
must go to in England.
Lord would you help him, travelling through the
night and then on through the day and
up home later on this evening.
Encourage and refresh and use him we pray
this day.
Thank you for all that he means to
us, his steadiness, his wisdom, his love of
your word.
Lord you know how we wish that he
were here to share with us on this
last morning.
We would want to generously pray.
Lord touch us again we pray through these
scriptures.
Verse 18, for I reckon that the sufferings
of this present time, I haven't even got
my new international version, I'm reading from the
old revised version of 1881 which I normally
use for study.
I reckon that the sufferings of this present
time are not worthy to be compared with
the glory which shall be revealed to us.
For the earnest expectation of the creation waited
for the revealing of the sons of God.
For the creation was subjected to vanity, not
of its own will, but by reason of
him who subjected it, in hope that the
creation itself also shall be delivered from the
bondage of corruption unto the liberty of the
glory of the children of God.
For we know that the whole creation groaneth
and travaileth in pain together until now, and
not only so, but ourselves also, which have
the first fruits of the spirit, even we
ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption,
to wit, the redemption of our body.
For by hope were we saved, but hope
that is seen is not hope.
For who hopeth for that which is seen?
But if we hope for that which we
see not, then do we with patience wait
for it.
And in like manner the spirit also helpeth
our infirmity.
For we know not how to pray as
we ought, but the spirit himself maketh intercession
for us, with groanings which cannot be uttered.
And he that searcheth for hearts knoweth what
is the mind of the spirit, because he
maketh intercession for the saints according to the
will of God.
And we know that to them that love
God all things work together for good, even
to them that are called according to his
purpose.
For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to
be conformed to the image of his Son,
so that he might be the firstborn among
many brethren.
And whom he foreordained, them he also called.
Whom he called, them he also justified.
And whom he justified, them he also glorified.
We'll stop there.
It's a chapter of tremendous encouragement, Romans chapter
8.
It's come after Paul's wrestling with the reality
of sin in chapter 7.
And now in chapter 8 the Holy Spirit
comes to the rescue.
And he helps us deal with our flesh
there in the early verses of chapter 8.
The Holy Spirit assures us of our salvation
as children of God.
Chapter of great encouragement.
He assures us of coming glory.
And in the verses that we've read, the
Holy Spirit helps us with our praying.
Now it's good to step back from all
that you're involved with and just think, what
are God's ultimate objectives for my life?
We're coming to the end of the conference.
People are beginning to think that perhaps they
might be, maybe a little bit weary of
meetings.
The thought does sometimes, you know.
They have eaten just about enough cornflakes for
this September 1985.
If they have to eat any more slabs
of Belgian brown bread.
Some people, you know, after a conference, they
stand up tall and they look down and
they've lost sight of their feet.
As the outer man has far from wasting
away, as Scripture said it would, been increasing.
And they wonder whether it's the inner man
that's been wasting away.
And yet within a few weeks you'll be
launching out on your teams, not seeing very
far ahead.
Putting your hand in the hand of God
and going in faith.
I remember as if it were yesterday, my
beginning on the year program.
I was an odd case as usual.
And I set off at six in the
morning.
I went to George Verwer's house.
I picked up his five-year-old son
to take him from Bromley in South London
to Lahore in Pakistan.
Where I would meet with George who would
relieve me of him.
Peter Conlon was travelling the same trip with
Benjamin Verwer who was seven.
We had the most extraordinary adventures on the
way.
We lost both boys in a petrol station
in Afghanistan.
We were trying to cross a border.
Truck loaded up with stuff that we didn't
know what was in it.
There was a huge chest.
We never looked inside it.
We were simply driving it out to India.
We came to a border post.
I forget now whether it was...
The customs officer said, what is it?
He said, what is it really?
Personal stuff?
So he said, open it.
There we were, Peter Conlon, myself and two
others and these two little boys, one five
and one seven.
When we opened this great box up at
his inquiry, absolutely full of ladies' underwear.
This was Charlie clothes being sent out to
equip half the teams in India.
And the customs officer looked at me and
said, personal clothes?
And I gave him my last Mars bar
and he waved us through the customs post.
I've been saving these Mars bars for the
next two years.
Lost them all getting ladies' Charlie into India.
You know, you don't know what...
I don't know how I got on to
that story.
But this is the crisis.
You don't know what you're getting into.
And I want to just remind you of
some of the assurances that we have here
in this chapter.
The first is this.
That God's great goal, the outside frame of
the jigsaw puzzle.
Do you remember that from the first day?
Is in verse twenty-nine, to make you
be conformed to the image of his son.
His goal for you this year, he could
just as well accomplish if you stayed back
home, working as a porter in a hospital.
Or if you were back in college, or
if you were in Bible school, or if
you were working in a factory.
He could just as well accomplish it, as
if you go.
It's his goal.
His goal for you is not mass evangelism.
It's not missionary exposure alone.
It's not just travel.
Through it all, he wants to, with your
cooperation, deeply change your character.
He wants us to be sons and daughters
like him.
When the Queen of England, as she now
is, in 1952, was out in Africa.
She was not yet Queen.
Her father, George VI, had gone through the
war.
And then, he was always ill with cancer.
And in 1952, he died.
And the Princess Elizabeth was out in Kenya,
or Tanzania, somewhere.
In a game park, by a watering hole.
And there were elephants and hippopotamuses.
And there was mud.
And there were monkeys.
It was a real muddy, ordinary human, down
-to-earth scene.
And someone arrived, who'd come from London.
And they went up to the Princess, and
they knelt down.
And they said, Your Majesty.
And she knew at the moment that she
was addressed, Your Majesty.
She knew that her dear father had died.
And that she was now the Queen.
Now, humanly, she was dressed in gumboots.
Safari clothes.
Mosquitoes were biting her.
She probably had a bit of diarrhoea.
She was out on one of these tours.
And yet, she was Majesty.
She had a long way to go from
that muddy hole in Africa.
Until she eventually sat on the throne in
Westminster Abbey.
We have got a long way to go.
We've been promised that if we are faithful,
we will one day reign with Him.
God's goal for us is exceedingly high and
glorious.
And yet, He addresses us now with the
status of being Prince, Princess, if you like,
sons and daughters of the Living God.
But His goal is that we become like
Him in character.
And then we read of the help of
the Holy Spirit, verses 26 and 27.
And I like this because, you know, you
may, in going home, really wonder about how
many prayer partners you have.
You read in these verses of two people
who have signed up as your prayer partner
already.
There is Jesus in heaven who is praying
for you.
And there is the Holy Spirit within you
who is praying for you.
So your list, at least, has two great
prayer partners on it.
And these two prayer partners are rather unlike
the rest of your prayer partners.
They are certainly faithful, they know exactly how
to pray for you.
In like manner, the Spirit helps us in
our infirmity.
You've got two problems.
And the Holy Spirit will help you in
both.
You are weak and you are ignorant.
We have infirmity and we don't know how
to pray as we ought.
The filling and the inspiration and the leading
of the Holy Spirit is as essential to
our salvation as Christ's death on the cross.
Salvation in the ultimate sense of bringing us
right through to glory, prepared to be with
God for eternity.
We have a weakness in our prayer.
Isn't that true?
Don't you sometimes feel, you know, you wish
that you knew more of prayer?
You were more faithful in prayer?
You knew more how to pray?
There was more discipline?
And yet how many of you have known
what it is to get a hold of
yourself and to go and pray and as
you begin to pray, somehow God...
And that which was, you know, a cold
start of a vehicle in the morning, suddenly,
the engine begins to go.
Have you known that?
You bring your unruly heart, it runs around
like a puppy dog, you bring it with
discipline before God and you set yourself to
pray and then the Holy Spirit begins to
ignite the afterburners.
I've mixed my metaphors but you understand what
I'm talking about.
He helps us in our weakness.
He seems to pick up the heavy end
of the load but also he helps us
in our ignorance.
We don't know how to pray, do we,
so often?
Even for ourselves.
We're so like children.
I remember it was yesterday, my oldest girl's
birthday.
She was 11 back in England.
I can remember when she was a kid
and she would call out in the night
and I remember going through one night and
she was sitting up about 2 o'clock
in the morning, this little girl, Alison, and,
Daddy, I want an apple.
It's the middle of the night, you can't
have an apple.
I want you to read me a story
then.
A nice story about Jesus.
Right round the little thing.
I said, look, it's not time for stories
in the middle of the night.
You should be sleeping.
Well, I want a fizzy drink then.
I said, I'm not giving you a fizzy
drink.
You'll have to get up later in the
night, won't you?
Well, let's go for a walk in the
park then.
She didn't know what she wanted except company.
She'd woken up, she wanted Dad around doing
the kind of things that little girls get
dads to do.
We're like that in our prayers too, aren't
we?
As you pray for yourself.
Most of us don't really know how we
ought to pray for ourselves.
We perhaps don't fully recognise, even at the
end of this conference, what our real needs
are.
Maybe, you know, we're battling with problems of
spiritual dryness or disillusion or difficulty and we
half recognise it and then we don't.
The vision is not clear.
And the Holy Spirit within knows exactly how
you should be prayed for.
And however you may pray for yourself, He
is also praying as your best prayer partner
for you according to your real need.
It's remarkable, isn't it?
The Lord will pray Himself for us.
In Luke chapter 10, the disciples were sent
out on campaign.
They were sent out in pairs.
They were sent out to preach the Gospel.
They were sent out in simplicity, with very
little in the way of food, clothing.
They were sent out with authority over the
forces of the evil one.
But they were not, in Luke 10, told
anything of the Holy Spirit going with them.
But now the Lord commissions us, sends us
out with the Holy Spirit dwelling within us
to pray for us, working in each of
us.
And He prays for accuracy, with accuracy for
us.
How do you feel with this idea?
That God knows exactly your life, the needs
of your life, how vulnerable you may be
at the moment to certain pressures.
He knows precisely what's coming up.
Some of you may be going home, those
of you Europeans, and maybe you're going to
walk into a real buzzing hornet's swarm at
home.
People are going to say things that are
going to really hurt you or upset you.
There may be troubles coming in your church
and you're going to find that very difficult
to cope with.
Maybe there are going to be disappointments, even
bereavements, that you're going to have to face
in the weeks ahead.
And the Lord Himself knows and He prays
for you before you get there.
The non-Christian, the person who doesn't know
God at all, they are frightened by the
idea that God knows them.
You can see that in an evangelistic meeting,
when you tell people and you enforce it
that God knows their heart, He knows their
lusts and their jealousies.
He knows the way they seek to hurt
people.
He knows the critical spirit that they have.
People will go white at the thought that
God knows them.
But for the Christian, that same truth is
immensely encouraging.
That God knows us.
He accepts us.
We are accepted in His beloved Son.
And He prays for us with absolute accuracy.
And He prays for us according to God's
will.
I wonder what problems you're going to face
in the year ahead.
When I finally got out to India, managed
to get the boy to his father and
then left him and carried on, the single
biggest thing I think that I faced over
those three years was loneliness.
I would never have anticipated it.
I'm not normally a lonely person.
I was the only Westerner on a team.
The only white face I ever saw was
my own in the shaving mirror in the
morning.
And then when my shaving mirror broke, I
didn't have anybody.
Some of the chaps couldn't speak much English.
I come straight from a college where my
mind, I suppose, was as tuned as it
ever will be.
I was deeply lonely at times.
Lonely for people I could joke with, with
my own kind of humour.
Lonely for people who could understand me.
Letters weren't getting through.
I was sick as well, dysentery on and
off for two years.
Deeply lonely.
And yet I tell you, it was at
that time, looking back now, I am so
grateful to God, because it was at that
time that He drew near.
God the Holy Spirit, praying for me day
by day, knowing about my weakness, knowing that
I didn't even know how to pray for
myself, He drew near.
Made Himself more real.
He prayed for me through all that.
For some it may be loss of privacy
this coming year.
I guess you won't be too lonely on
the ships, there's people everywhere you turn.
Maybe you just get fed up with living
in a tiny little cabin, four people squashed
into a shoebox, and you can't get off
the ship.
I mean, it's water.
Loss of privacy.
And that may be a real pressure.
Cultural shock and adaptation involved in that.
Or maybe you're going to be on a
team with a difficult person.
What Joyce Landorff calls an irregular person.
It's a kind phrase, isn't it?
Irregular person.
And maybe you're going to have to be
in a cabin or on a team for
the coming year with an irregular person.
Now, the Lord knows.
And He's already been speaking to you and
preparing you.
Have you been listening to His word as
He's been preparing you for this?
Or maybe there will be denominational pressures for
you.
You know, you come from a particular background
and you find that everyone else is rather
different.
And you find yourself under a subtle kind
of intimidation.
I remember watching a girl from the Hebrides,
who come from the wee free kirk of
Scotland, sitting in a meeting at an August
conference some years ago.
Now, the August conference is often very British
in flavour.
Much more so than the June conference.
Being British and nowadays, it tends to be
much more charismatic in flavour.
And there were people around who were expressing
themselves in worship in ways that she was,
I could see, utterly unused to.
There were arms aloft and people were swaying
and moving.
It was almost like the back of the
Manchester United football.
And she was sort of sitting on her
hands, lest they, you know, do anything naughty.
And the pressure on her, of that.
Some folk really feel that.
And whatever it may be, God knows our
hearts.
And we read here that He makes intercession
for the saints according to the will of
God.
He that searches the hearts knoweth what is
the mind of the spirit.
He knows.
Knows what you're going to go through on
your own.
You saw that film, Chariots of Fire.
Many of you.
That brilliant athlete who played rugby for Scotland
and then ran for Britain in the Olympics
in 1924, eventually died in a Japanese prison
of war camp in China.
But he...
The secret of his power on the athletics
track or the sports field were those long,
lonely, training runs on the hills of his
native Scotland.
When nobody saw him, when the rain was
pouring down and he was just pounding on
them.
God will know about those kind of lonely
disciplines that you may go through.
He prays for you.
He draws near.
You have a prayer partner that is better
than any other possibly could be.
And I want you to draw near to
such a God during this year.
Some of you may even already in your
opening months in OM have started to think
about certain emotional involvements.
Allow your soul to be drawn closer to
God this year.
Because that's God's great goal that you may
be conformed to His image.
The Lord had prayed for Peter.
I've said this before here.
It's one of the things that struck me
very deeply.
Peter and Paul were different, weren't they?
Psychologically.
Paul was the kind of character who would
stand up in front of Nero, that vicious
Roman Emperor, and chained though he was, say,
Nero, I wish with all my heart that
you were as I am, apart from these
chains.
That you are a converted man.
And he would say that without any disciples
around, egging him on and clapping, I'll give
it to him, Paul.
Peter was different.
You stood Peter up in front of a
hostile crowd and Peter's particular psychological makeup tended
to crumble.
Even a little girl could blow him over.
They were different.
We find Peter crumbling in Galatians 2.
We find him, same in the Gospels.
Same Peter, different psychological makeup.
And the Lord said to Peter, I've prayed
for you, that your faith fail not.
You're going to come under great temptation this
night.
Tomorrow before the cock crows you will have
denied me three times, Peter.
Not true.
I've already seen it coming.
I've seen this chink in your armour.
Peter, I'm telling you this, out of love,
not critically.
I've already been praying for you.
The Lord took time out to pray for
his friends because he saw their weakness.
Prayed for them before the crisis came.
I imagine that when it did come and
Peter was out in the streets weeping bitterly,
having let the Lord down, eventually when he
began to come to his senses, he remembered
that the Lord had in fact spoken.
Had assured him of prayer.
That his faith was not doomed to failure.
That he'd even been offered before the crisis
that ministry of strengthening his brethren.
That out of weakness would come that strength.
So that Peter, perhaps more than any of
the other apostles in the early church, was
able to draw alongside those who felt themselves
to be failures.
John Mark also quit and ran away when
he'd been called out on a missionary journey.
Chapter 13 of Acts, you remember, he only
lasted five verses.
Ran off back home.
And yet it was Peter, we understand, who
ministered to him.
He strengthened his brethren.
The Lord was using Peter.
Had prayed for Peter.
Watched over Peter.
Understood his psychological needs.
Ministered to him at that point of need.
What a great prayer partner the Lord was.
Then we read in verse 28 that the
Spirit helps us in all our circumstances.
We know that to them that love God
all things work together for good.
To those that are called according to his
purpose.
Sometimes we imagine that with the guidance of
the Lord things will automatically go more smoothly.
If only God guides us, then everything will
be well.
Friends, that is not true.
It's not biblical.
It's a silly idea.
It's not worthy of you as a Christian.
The Bible doesn't bear that out.
God's people were led in the wilderness sometimes
into war.
Into the Amalekites attacking them.
In following the guidance of God they came
into some greater difficulties than they would otherwise
have been in.
The Apostle Paul was guided all around the
Mediterranean.
Guided into riots, into imprisonments, into arrest and
trouble of one sort and another.
Difficulty in your life is not necessarily a
sign that you've somehow got away from the
guidance of God.
God may well have led you into difficulties
but his purpose is that these things will
work together for good.
Think of Daniel chapter 3.
Daniel's three prayer partners, if you like.
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
And they told Nebuchadnezzar, no we will not
worship this idol that you've set up.
And you may heat the furnace up as
high as you like.
We will not bow down and worship your
great golden monster.
And Nebuchadnezzar said, I will throw you into
the furnace.
And they said, well you do what you
feel you have to.
And so the three men were tossed into
the furnace, bound, says Daniel chapter 3.
They bound them hand and foot and threw
them like rag dolls into this blazing furnace.
And then Nebuchadnezzar watched.
He saw four men in there.
There'd been a man in there already, waiting
for them to arrive.
He met them.
And the four of them walked up and
down inside that furnace and had fellowship together.
And the only thing that the flames did
was to make those three bound men a
bit more like the one man who was
free.
The flames burnt off that which was tying
them and holding them.
They met the Lord there, in the fire.
Nebuchadnezzar was utterly astonished.
In fact, seeing that process of change was
one major step on the road to Nebuchadnezzar's
own conversion.
Eventually he seems to have become a God
-fearing believer.
Now you may well feel that you've been
thrown into some pretty fiery situations.
You'll meet the Lord there.
He's there waiting.
And his purpose is that you might become
like him.
Freer.
Able to have fellowship with him.
That's the way God is.
All these things will work together for the
good.
For those that love him.
God's great majestic purpose for you is that
you become like him.
No longer are you like prisoners trudging around
in a prison yard, head down, you know.
Ephesians chapter 2, you walked according to the
course of the prince of this age, imprisoned
in death.
But you have been made alive.
You've been set free.
God has called you up out of that
prison, foreordained you to be sons and daughters,
to live like him, to love like him,
to care like him.
And just like the Lord, you need to
concentrate, I think perhaps in these early months,
so important for you, on how, with all
the pressures and the crowds, did the Lord
stay fresh and alive in spirit?
Yes, we know he's God, but he also
will tell us some of the secrets of
his own service of the Father.
Look in John chapter 4 for one good
one.
We need to learn in these early days
how to walk with him.
Sure he may lead us into difficulties, unexpected
pressures.
He assures us from the outset that we're
his children.
He's going to pray for us.
We need to learn how to drink that
living water, to draw it up from the
wells of salvation, as Isaiah 12 says.
As we go, as we go with him,
as he meets us, we become like him.
He has set his heart on it.
He's paid a mighty big price for you.
He's not going to let you be damaged,
broken on the way.
In fact, the problems that the Lord will
have to deal with in this coming year
in your life are nothing compared with the
problem he has already dealt with in dying
for you on the cross.
If you want to think of cycling over
a great hill to a village on the
other side, the difficult bit is going up
the hill, isn't it?
Then you can coast down.
In seeing you won into his kingdom and
transformed so that you're ready for glory, Christ
has already done the hard part in dying
for you on the cross, knowing what you
were like, giving himself in order that you
might be his.
Dealing with you now, encouraging you, training you,
teaching you, that's the easy part.
That's cycling down the other side of the
hill for him.
He's committed himself to you.
What great verses.
Let's just read again from verse 26 and
then we'll close.
In like manner, the Spirit also helps our
infirmity.
We know not how to pray as we
ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for
us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
That's the third groaning that we've looked at
in these verses.
The creation groans, and then we groan, and
now the Spirit groans, groanings which cannot be
uttered.
And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what
is the mind of the Spirit, because he
makes intercession for the saints according to the
will of God.
And we know that to them that love
God all things work together for good, even
to them that are called according to his
purpose, for whom he foreknew he also foreordained
to be conformed to the image of his
Son, that he might be the firstborn among
many brethren, great family likenesses, is going to
appear.
And whom he foreordained, them he also called.
And whom he called, them he also justified.
And whom he justified, them he also glorified.
What then shall we say to these things?
If God is for us, who is against
us?
He that spared not his own Son but
delivered him up for us all, how shall
he not also with him freely give us
all things?
God has given you Christ, his own Son,
is he going to now hold anything back
from you?
Who shall lay anything to the charge of
God's elect?
It is God that justifies.
The judge himself has determined that you be
justified.
What counsel for the prosecution is going to
get past him?
Who is he that shall condemn?
Why the judge himself has already declared you
not guilty.
Who then has the right to condemn?
Is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather that
was raised from the dead, who is at
the right hand of God who also makes
intercession for us?
There you have it again.
Who shall separate us from the love of
Christ?
All three persons of the Godhead combining in
order to bring you through to glory, made
ready for heaven.
Who is going to prevent that great purpose?
Who shall separate us from the love of
Christ?
Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, these things
are not being mentioned friends as some sort
of trivial theory that well you merely read
about them in Christian books.
This may well be your present experience within
a few months.
Tribulation, anguish, persecution, famine, nakedness, or peril, or
sword even as it is written for thy
sake we are killed all day long, we
are counted as sheep for the slaughter.
Nay in all these things we are more
than conquerors through him that loved us.
For I am persuaded that neither death nor
life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present,
nor things to come, nor powers, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other creature shall be
able to separate us from the love of
God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Oh God your word is unbreakable, stronger than
the strongest granite, lasting for eternity.
Governments may change, movements may come and go,
churches may even fade, certainly vehicles, bodies may
break down.
We thank you for your unbreakable word of
assurance of your love and your care and
your prayer.
Lord we are glad at the end of
this conference not to commit ourselves but to
know that we are already committed into the
hands of such a God, such a shepherd.
We do thank you together now.