Father in heaven, we do love you.
Lord, we thank you for what you're doing
through George and thank you, Lord, for his
sacrifice, for Drina.
Lord, the family, we ask your blessing on
them.
Lord, we want to hear what you have
to say to us this evening.
We ask especially for George, Lord, that your
word should go forth through him from here,
from Zion, from Israel, to the ends of
the earth.
Bless him, make him a blessing in Jesus'
name.
Amen.
Thank you.
I'm so happy to see these young, young
lads, we say in England, sitting here in
the front row, because a lot of the
churches I go to, just before I preach,
the people that age walk out.
Isn't that an irritation?
And I understand that because so many of
the speakers, you know, are boring and they
want to get the kids out so they
don't have to suffer, but I just want
to say a little word to you in
the front row here, that following Jesus is
not the same as going to church.
Going to church is good, sometimes it's boring,
but following Jesus is the most exciting thing
you can ever do.
And here's my testimony.
I started this when I was only 16.
I've never had a boring day.
I'm an old man now, I have grandchildren
your age.
I've never had a boring day.
Here's another thing.
It's a lot of fun.
Don't think, if I become a radical disciple
of Jesus and really start to get serious
about my faith, then I'm no longer having
any fun.
And I don't understand the fun thing, because
underneath it all, I'm a very serious person,
and I want to reach the world with
the gospel, and it's life and death, it's
heaven or hell, but there's a fruit of
the Spirit, which is love and joy.
The joy must be tied in with what
God does.
And I don't know if you'll understand this
phrase, but for a while, as a Christian
in the early days, I didn't understand what
it was to be fully human.
And when you're fully human, you'll have fun,
because you'll laugh at yourself, you'll laugh at
others.
I mean, I think of some of the
people here, I mean, it's really just to
look at them, you know, you could just
start laughing.
And God has a sense of humor.
You read the Bible carefully, God has a
sense of humor.
So, I've had all these years, all over
the world, I've been in 80 countries, I've
had fun.
I've cried as well.
Another thing, it's a great adventure.
And I'm finding the younger generation, quite a
few of them, they're more interested in adventure
than their parents.
A lot of the parents were really quite
boring, never did much.
And we don't want to judge them for
that, you know, God saves all kinds.
But following Jesus is an adventure.
And so, I hope that I get some
of you on our ship, and I hope
you'll all follow Jesus.
Because there's so few, I promise, as long
as I'm alive, every time you email me,
I'll send you a free book, a music
CD, who knows?
If you go into missions, I'll send each
one of you hundreds of dollars, just got
to tell me where to send it.
So, we're glad you're here, all the rest
of you are excluded from those offers.
But we're glad for these young lads.
I don't know where the young girls are
in this movement, but maybe this is what
happens here in Israel.
I'm so excited about tonight.
The thing that gets me excited next to
Jesus is seeing old friends, really.
And to see so many, one at a
time is enough.
I had Victor Samaja yesterday afternoon, I had
Roger Elbel for lunch, very tasty.
I had George Khalil from Nazareth, and I
remember when I first met him, carpenter from
Nazareth, and his wife.
Yesterday, we had supper together in the YMCA.
A couple of days ago, a man took
me to have a meal in the King
David Hotel.
I had bream, that's a fish, 100 of
these Israeli shekels.
Wow, the King David Hotel.
This has been a very special trip, and
I hope I can be a better ambassador
of Israel.
When I go from here, I know Nathan
will be.
And we're just excited about this little opportunity
to be with you.
I want to read Psalm 67.
I've been at a business person's conference of
business people from all over Europe.
Most of the speakers were Israeli people.
And I was the foreign speaker.
And it was, I think it was quite
a balance, because they all talked about Israel,
and I talked about all the rest of
the world, and we got the balance.
Then we had a lady from the Knesset
come, a Jewish lady last night, and pay
tribute to us, and told us about this
new department of the Knesset, which their whole
thing is to build partnership with Christians.
So you'll want to meet her and have
a time of prayer over there with her
in the Knesset, or wherever they have their
prayer.
And it's exciting.
These are difficult days for planet Earth.
If you think things are heating up here
with what the Hamas becoming the political leaders
over there, believe me, globally, it's heating up
more than here.
And don't just be aware of what's happening
here.
I wonder how many of you are following
the Darfur, the Darfur crisis of the Sudan.
Raise your hand.
It's the largest single genocide going on in
the world in these past few years.
There have been other genocides, the Tutsi and
the Hutu.
That was 700,000.
And I know people here, especially Palestinian people,
and I sympathize with them.
I try to sympathize with all who think
they're suffering.
But people who think they're suffering here, they
often don't know what's going on in the
rest of the world.
There's almost no comparison to all the suffering
you've gone through here, which is a lot.
To me, every bomb is one bomb too
much.
Every death is one death.
The Darfur have had two and a half
million people displaced in one year and there's
nowhere to go.
They're starving.
They've had 200,000 slaughtered and before.
And this is Muslim killing Muslim.
Just so you understand, this is in southern
Sudan.
They have peace there, you know, after two
million dead.
They have peace.
This is Arab background Muslim killing black African
Muslim, second class citizens, 200,000 dead.
This is on the news again today.
But the UN, the USA, all the great
nations, we should all be humbled.
The whole world should be humbled that we
cannot do better with these global crises.
And the fact that Muslims who I love
are not that concerned about 200,000 Muslims
who got slaughtered in Darfur.
And it's going on tonight.
Most of the women get raped first.
They also this particular militia.
There are many militias they like to behead.
So many are beheaded first.
That is just one of probably 10 major
hotspots on planet Earth right now.
And I believe as believers, as believers in
Jesus, you have to be different than the
rest of the people in Israel.
The rest of the people in Israel, they
will mainly be concerned about Israel.
They'll be concerned about their family, about their
little turf, about their economic situation.
And true of Palestinians as well.
And just human beings, if they don't know
the spiritual revolution of first Corinthians 13, the
whole message of love, which there are seeds
of in the Old Testament, like, hey, Old
Testament verse, love your neighbor as you love
yourself.
And if I ever got into a synagogue,
that's that's when I preach on right out
of the Old Testament.
But the average person has not experienced this
revolution of love.
It's also true of the average Christian.
So we're not lifting up Christians, saying they're
always better than Jews or better than Muslims.
It's not that simple, is it?
But people who know this revolution of love,
they are different and they are concerned about
other people and other nations are concerned about
the issue of human rights.
Some of you got my business card on
the back of my business card are seven
areas that I'm giving a time to children
at risk, abused women, extreme poor, 20 percent
live in extreme poverty.
You know very little of that in West
Bank or in Israel.
Proper extreme poverty.
You know a lot about poverty, but the
kind of poverty I've seen in Kenya, one
million people living in a total slum where
in Britain you'd be in trouble if you
kept your dog there.
Children at risk, abused women, the extreme poor,
the HIV AIDS patient, 42 million infected.
When will God's people start to get a
little concerned about this HIV thing?
Does it have to be like your brother,
your sister, your child die?
This is not a homosexual thing.
That's 20 years out of date.
This is going among people of all different
so-called sexual orientation.
And it really is moving fast.
A lot of people have HIV.
They don't even know it because there's denial.
There's denial on the part of the church,
part of the government.
And so it spreads.
It's horrendous.
People who can't get water.
That's a surprise.
Praise God.
The church is beginning to give drinking water
as well as the water of life.
The unborn, the whole crisis of the slaughtering
of the unborn.
And then Mr. Planet, who I brought with
me, the environment.
And I would appreciate your prayers as I
got very involved in these issues and the
opportunity to speak on radio and television in
some very large churches, 5,000 people last
weekend alone.
The priority for me is still the whole
counsel of God.
It's winning people to the Lord.
It's seeing the church built up and transformed.
But I believe these areas that I just
touched on, it's all part of building the
kingdom.
And one of the things I'd ask you
to do, you're probably already doing it, is
affirm believers, affirm them as first class citizens,
no matter what job they do.
Do not allow this divide between those of
us who are called missionaries or full time
pastors.
We praise God for such people.
That's my calling.
But I know now that the business people
have supported me all these years, that they're
together.
We're together.
They're just as much part of the kingdom.
And I'm just so convinced we need to
honor business and professional people.
And if you're in that category, many of
you are, I honor you.
Your job is important to God.
It may be much harder to see than
my job.
My job is easy to see that it's
important.
I've never liked that.
I've never liked that hardly for a day.
But other jobs.
But, you know, if it wasn't for those
people in the other jobs, characters like me,
we wouldn't be doing much because they're supplying
the prayer, they're supplying the finance, they're holding
the rope.
Now, that's not the only thing they're doing.
That's a great mistake.
If we think business people, professional people, the
main thing they do is work so they
can give their money to characters like us.
That is the old paradigm that's out.
Their work as well as part of the
kingdom.
And we can dream dreams, we can pray
prayers, and we can see how people in
the political world, people in the business world,
people in the sports world, people in the
world of arts.
That was a real transformation.
And I'm indebted to Dr. Schaeffer for helping
me understand the place of the arts, the
place of music in the kingdom, not just
Christian music, all kinds of music, part of
the kingdom.
And I think in some ways, in your
powerful culture here in Israel, that you can
experience these things quicker than some people in
other parts of the world.
There's so many gifted people, so many intelligent,
wonderful, exciting people from all over the world.
And Israel is such a miracle, such a
miracle.
And it doesn't mean there's not a lot
of pain and that the road ahead will
be easy.
Here's my psalm, Psalm 67, missionary psalm.
May God be merciful and bless us.
And let's just say, you know, I haven't
primarily come here tonight to get a blessing.
I'm not here primarily recruiting for OM or
trying to get your money or something.
I'm here just as God's servant.
And I do apologize for not coming here
before now.
I don't know why.
I don't understand it.
OM got so big, I had to give
so much of my time to finding the
finance and the recruits.
I think previous visits here were discouraging for
me for whatever reason.
But the truth is, I don't know why
I haven't come here more often.
I think the fact that I am overwhelmingly
committed to this whole giant part of the
world, from Morocco all the way to Indonesia
and those special people, that probably was a
factor.
But I think it's too complicated for me
to understand.
But he brought me here now, and he's
always forgiving me for my stupid mistakes.
So I believe he wants to bless us
tonight.
He wants to bless you.
I know it's not easy to sit through
maybe a long meeting.
I'll try to be short and maybe reward
you at the end.
I don't know, we can go get an
ice cream or something.
But he wants to bless us.
He wants to bless you in your marriage.
He wants to bless you in your business.
That blessing sometimes comes only after a time
of suffering and testing.
But I believe God wants to bless.
May his face shine with favor upon us.
Whoa, that's beautiful, isn't it?
May your ways be known throughout the earth.
You're saving power among people everywhere.
I wonder—you may be a Jewish friend here,
and many of you have a Jewish background—how
do they handle that psalm?
You're saving power among people everywhere.
Maybe I'll ask one of you after the
meeting, do the really dedicated Jews have full
assurance of salvation that they'll be with God
in heaven the moment they die?
From what I've studied, they don't seem to
have that.
So I don't know what keeps them going.
I don't know what they do with this
psalm.
You're saving power among people everywhere.
May the nations praise you, O God.
Yes, may all the nations praise you.
How glad the nations will be, singing for
joy, because you govern them with justice and
direct the actions of the whole world.
May the nations praise you, O God.
Yes, may all the nations praise you.
Then the earth will yield its harvest, and
God, our God, will richly bless us.
Yes, God will bless us, and people all
over the world will fear him.
Now, you may feel that the church here
in Israel is growing a little slow, or
maybe you're a hyper-optimist, you think it's
growing fast.
But I think it's important to realize we
are part of the whole church throughout the
whole world.
So we rejoice with those that rejoice.
The fact that 20% of all the
people in Brazil are praising and worshiping Jesus,
we rejoice in that.
And with a little more action, we could
get a lot more Brazilians to Israel, unless
maybe they're passported.
Are there any Brazilians here?
They're one of the greatest missionary forces in
the world today.
I just spoke to 1,000 Brazilian leaders.
This message that I just read on the
back of the card, only the message takes
40 minutes.
90% stood up to say, I want
to be a good Samaritan.
I want to be a good Samaritan.
It was based on Luke 10, the Good
Samaritan.
And I just believe with all my heart,
though, your priority is Israel.
And some of you may be prioritizing on
Arab people, some on Jewish people, some on
hippies and new age Jews, which I heard
about, never even hardly knew they existed until
Janice parachuted into London and took over one
of our prayer meetings.
I never thought I'd get back, but that
was a joke.
And now she's going to Thailand.
And we got a lot of amazing people
in OM.
Other people don't even know about them.
They're like the hidden heroes.
They know about George Verro.
Look, I'm boring next to some of these
new ones that are coming along.
And it's exciting.
And I believe, though, you have your priority.
We honor you for that.
In your prayer life, in your conversation, in
your heart, you can take in other nations.
I took in Iraq in a major way
before I ever went to this part of
the world.
Iraq was almost number one in my life
at 20 years of age and then Afghanistan
and then Turkey.
And though at that time I studied Israel,
it seemed to me even at that time,
you know, there was something happening here compared
to countries where the church did not even
exist.
It didn't exist in Afghanistan.
It barely existed in Turkey.
Turkey, by the way, has a good relationship
with Israel, which is quite amazing.
And now after all these years of working
in Turkey, there are maybe 2000 believers in
the nation.
There are believers also among the minority groups,
but I'm talking about the majority people.
So I'd like you tonight as hard as
it is, as you're all so focused on
your own work and vision and country, I'd
like you to travel with me in my
globe.
You can choose either this globe or my
global jacket.
This is brand new.
I want to have this morning.
I sold this one is for sale after
the meeting.
It doesn't look very good on me.
It's sort of sort of hangs and we
know the world's not flat.
It really looks a lot better on, I
mean, global people.
And we do, we sell quite a few
of our extra, extra large ones.
And those people look so beautiful.
When I get to heaven, I want to
put one on.
I want to put one on D.L.
Moody.
Have you ever heard of D.L. Moody?
You know what a secular encyclopedia said about
D.L. Moody?
Overweight American evangelist who depopulated hell by two
million souls.
That's not bad.
So don't worry too much about the weight
thing.
Get on with the soul winning.
So we want to visit some of the
countries and I want to share with you
my top 10.
I'm a big into music.
I listen to the top 10 classics and
the top 10 pop songs sometimes.
And so I got my own top 10.
The top most impossible, difficult nations in the
world.
Now, I know in missiological circles, and they
do run in circles sometimes, the missiologists, we're
supposed to now talk about people's groups.
But as I'm ministering to ordinary churches, ordinary
people, I find they don't relate to the
people's group thing.
They're reading in their newspaper about Israel.
They're reading about Afghanistan.
They're reading about Turkey.
They're reading about nations.
So I'm back talking about nations.
But I want to honor the people's group
concept and the push downs and the various
types of people.
I think the Druze who are all around
us here, they're a special people's group.
My wife's sister was going to marry a
Druze, but really, their his parents weren't really
too keen on marrying this little gal from
Texas.
And so anyway, she married another Muslim instead.
You can pray for her.
People said, well, where's that?
It's Texas.
American women, they're looking for Omar Sharif.
Yeah.
And every time they see anybody who even
looks near Omar Sharif, boom, they marry him.
Most of the marriages don't go too well.
But some of you thought your husband was
Omar Sharif and you're married and going on
happily.
Praise the Lord.
Top ten.
Number one, North Korea.
North Korea is one of the most impossible,
difficult nations in the world.
Now, North Korea.
With the microphone.
But North Korea, where is it?
Dear me, I got it caught in the
wire here.
OK, there's North Korea.
North Korea is a little different than the
other nine because it does have a fair
number of Christians in comparison, but it's still
a small number of Christians.
Some are in prison.
There's very little freedom of expression.
There are other fanatical elements about North Korea
that put it on my list.
But I want you to pray for North
Korea.
We know all the Koreans here pray for
North Korea, but we want the rest of
the world to join in prayer.
There are some slight rays of hope.
People are getting in there.
People getting in there on business.
Some believers are getting in there, but it's
a tough challenge.
Second country is Tibet.
I used to live in Nepal.
I haven't been there in a long time
either, maybe 20 years.
I used to live there in Nepal, and
just north and thousands and tens of thousands,
couple hundred thousand now follow Jesus in Nepal.
When I lived there, it was a few
tens of thousands, if that.
But north of Nepal is Tibet.
And let me just take my survey.
See if you're doing better in Israel than
the average country.
How many of you are already praying for
Tibet?
You're people of prayer.
You've read Operation World or something similar.
You're praying for Tibet.
All those who are praying for Tibet, raise
your hand.
Okay, that wasn't too encouraging.
Let's try something else, lest we get depressed.
How many are willing?
You're willing to pray for Tibet.
Raise your hand.
This is always the way it is with
God's people.
They're so much better at being willing than
they are at ever doing anything.
That's so encouraging.
So God bless you.
But I would ask you to pray for
Tibet.
How can you compare Tibet with a place
like Israel?
There is no church in Tibet.
I heard of one Catholic church in a
village left over from decades ago.
I've heard of some believers now.
We've been pushing Tibet now a lot for
the last few years.
I met a girl at Moody Bible Institute
just 10 days ago.
She said she's going to live in Tibet
this summer with some nomads.
God is answering prayer for Tibet.
Now is the hour for Tibet.
And I believe, maybe this is why the
Lord didn't bring me here all these years
or I made a mistake, but I believe
the hour has come when the church in
Israel needs to send out more missionaries.
If the passport is a problem, there's groups
here, not far from here, they just print
their own passports.
But somehow, you know, that might not be
the best way.
But I want to encourage you to be
creative.
And when we do, maybe you can't go
because you don't have the right passport, but
maybe God will lead you to someone who
does have the right passport, and you can
be the sender.
But wouldn't it be wonderful if the Israeli
church could send a missionary or two to
Tibet to see the church born in that
country?
The third nation is a tough one, but
this isn't a message just for tonight.
It's a message I share all over the
world.
But the third nation is Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is probably the strongest nation almost
in the world against the gospel, against the
Bible, against Christians.
They even throw foreigners, just showing a Jesus
film, throw them in jail.
We have Koreans there.
I think he had to flee the country
for a while.
He's back.
We know there are Saudi believers, but they
got to keep a low profile if they
want to stay alive.
So let's love these people, and let's make
sure that with the environment you live in
here, that no hatred comes into your heart
toward people who are thought of as enemies
of Israel.
This is not where we are as God's
people.
You can have your little political section of
your head, and you keep that stored up
there, and that's all right.
You have your little private thoughts in the
bathtub.
But as far as reality, we need to
love our enemies.
We need to love our enemies.
That's so basic.
That's not something like radical.
I was fanatic anti-communist already at 17
years of age.
I almost joined the anti-communist league in
America.
They tried to recruit me.
I spoke avidly against communism.
So did Billy Graham, my spiritual father.
But as a baby Christian, I loved communists.
I couldn't wait to meet the first communists,
and love them, and share about Jesus.
And so soon as I got to Europe,
what do you think I did?
What do you kids think I did?
I smuggled Bibles into the Soviet Union.
I was so young.
I didn't know.
How many of you ever heard of God's
smuggler, Brother Andrew, God's smuggler?
Have you read that comic?
Yeah, tonight you've got Brother George, God's bungler.
I tried the same thing, but due to
my own stupidity.
Do you ever do anything stupid?
You need to work on that.
Due to my own stupidity, I got arrested
by the Soviet secret police on the third
day in Rovno, Ukraine.
At front page Pravda coverage, American spy arrested
in Rovno.
This really wasn't what we had planned.
I can tell you those very men that
interrogated me, the love of Christ, just flowed
out toward those men.
One of them ended up singing hymns with
us.
One of our captors ended up singing hymns.
And we launched at that time, though I
failed, the largest single smuggling operation in the
history of Eastern Europe, not Russia.
Brother Andrew was handling more Russia, but our
guys based out of Vienna were handling all
the rest of Eastern Europe.
We're talking about millions of pieces of literature
during those Cold War days, smuggled in, brought
in.
We had people beat up.
We had vehicles confiscated, but God's hand was
on it.
But the first effort was a failure.
And I think that's one of the things
that helped me the most in my life
to understand that though I was a failure,
God could use me.
Yeah.
In fact, later on, a book came out
called Failure, the Back Door to Success.
Have you seen that one?
That's been such a blessing to me, that
book.
I sent a lot of books, by the
way, for these meetings, but they didn't arrive.
What's new?
But when you get them, you give everybody
a free book.
Probably sent them to the wrong person.
But this wonderful book, the truth is, I
never read the book, and the cover just
really touched my heart.
The failure, Failure, the Back Door to Success.
So what am I saying tonight?
I'm asking you, I'm asking you to love
even Hamas.
I'm asking you to pray for those people.
And we know terrorism is never acceptable.
There's a lot of things that aren't acceptable.
But as believers, hatred is not acceptable.
Now, for a believer to be in the
army and have to fight, that is one
of the most difficult things.
But I've never become a pacifist.
And I believe defending one's nation and being
in the army to defend that nation, that
is possible for a Christian to do.
Some Christians don't believe in that.
I honor them as well.
But I believe with all my heart, we
are in a revolution of love, and there's
no exception except Satan himself and all his
angels.
And I believe much more that's happening here
is linked with principalities and powers than is
linked with little people running around the streets
with guns and bombs.
And the Word of God says, you know,
in Ephesians 6, we are battling principalities and
powers.
And we need to reread that chapter and
pray in the light of it.
So, Saudi Arabia, love them, pray for them.
There are believers there sharing their faith.
Tentmakers can get into Saudi Arabia with most
passports, not all passports.
It's a walk in the park to get
in.
It's not a walk in the park to
get anything done.
And so you can get really discouraged there.
The fourth nation is Libya.
Where is it?
Way over here in Libya.
We've had quite a few people there over
the years, including prison.
Did you know that Libya has less than
twelve believers?
You think you got a small church, huh?
Less than twelve believers in the nation.
Did you know that through prayer, Gaddafi and
his son have changed?
Did you know that?
No, they're not born again running down the
street waving a gospel banner.
You know, it takes time for these heavyweights.
But they've changed their viewpoint, and they're welcoming
even Americans back in big numbers, who not
that many long ago were dropping bombs.
And they repaid these giant sums of money
in regard to that Pan Am crash.
These things are not a coincidence.
These things are not accidents that are born
out of the secular mind.
These are God and His sovereignty working in
His mysterious ways among kings and those in
authority.
Are we not told to pray for those
people?
And so today we have a new open
door in Libya, and it's in my top
ten.
Tunisia is number five.
Tunisia is a much more liberal place.
Let us pray that it doesn't tip the
scale and go the other way in the
present.
You know, twelve were killed two days ago
in Libya in the riots in connection with
the cartoons.
Tunisia I don't think has had that.
Used to be considered Paris, Tunis, the Paris
of North Africa.
Tunisians are coming to Jesus.
There now may be even a hundred believers.
Not many, huh?
See, in Israel you ought to be able
to pray better for these places, because at
times you feel a little bit outnumbered, right?
But these countries are really, really forgotten.
And then my sixth country is Turkmenistan.
Central Asia basically is wide open.
Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, you know, you've got to
be careful.
There's one exception.
Turkmenistan is totally different than all the other
states.
Fanatically anti-Christian, no missionaries even, even they're
watching even to let tent makers in.
There are a few there.
Turkmenistan, the leader of the country, is like
a megalomaniac.
Think he thinks he's God.
Turkmenistan is in my top 10.
No other Central Asian nation is in that
10.
By the way, I have a runner-up
10.
I have another runner-up 10.
I have 40 nations in my notebook all
trying to get into the top 10.
Every one of those 40 nations would have
less than 5% of the witness that
Israel has for our Lord Jesus.
You know you have a long way to
go here.
What are you going to say of those
other 40 nations that would have less than
5%?
I think of how many Christian agencies here,
how many gospel people come here to give
their testimonies.
One of the biggest television networks in the
world beams up out of Jerusalem, the God
Channel.
You may not know much about that channel.
That is huge.
Joyce Meyer on the God Channel, she's no
more in India than Billy Graham, much less
some of the other superstars of that very
unique ministry.
And so I tell you, Israel has had
a lot of witness.
Of course, that doesn't mean they respond easily,
does it?
You ever pray for Japan?
Japan is not in my top 10.
Japan has less than 1%.
Japanese people do not respond.
There's lots of missionaries in Japan, lots of
churches, most of them are small.
They've tried every strategy on planet Earth.
Even David Young E.
Cho, I had time with him a couple
years ago when I preached in his little
church in Korea, 700,000.
They don't all come at once.
But his prophecies concerning Japan have not come
true, which is true of most of these
different prophecies.
And forgive my negativism, I got to work
on that.
But in Japan, it would be a little
bit like Israel.
There's quite a lot of witness.
There are churches, but the people, just the
prejudice, the complexity just doesn't happen.
I wonder how many Israeli missionaries you've sent
to Japan.
That would be a tremendous change.
How many of you at least pray for
Japan?
Big country, you pray for Japan.
That's a lot better than that Tibet thing.
The seventh country is Afghanistan.
Afghanistan was put on my heart reading Oswald
J.
Smith's book as a baby Christian.
Afghanistan tucked away between Iran and Pakistan.
There's Afghanistan.
There's still no functioning church there.
That's why I feel my life is just
loaded with failure.
People can say great things about OM and
write great stories, and I'm thankful.
I don't want to be unthankful.
But this is not what I've been aiming
at.
So I'm hoping, I'm praying that in my
senior years with my co-workers and the
whole body of Christ, I may see the
dreams that I've never seen.
We have a lot of people in Afghanistan
now.
There's no lack of people there.
But they're all in humanitarian work in order
to even stay in the country.
They are seeing a little response, but it's
a really tough place.
And there are Afghan believers now.
Some of them are dead.
They meet in secret.
They study the word of God.
I've heard different numbers, somebody even saying maybe
more than a thousand throughout the whole nation.
I find it hard to believe, but I
hope so.
But Afghanistan is still in my top 10.
And Iraq is still in my top 10.
It may fall out because so many are
coming to Jesus in Iraq and his new
churches, his Christian bookstores.
There's whole containers of books and Bibles getting
in there.
It's wide open right now, but dangerous, wide
open, but dangerous.
So not many want to go.
And we pulled our O.M. teams out
of Iraq.
It just got too dangerous.
We get the parents on the phone.
We got the churches on the phone.
It's easier for independent people to go.
We're in Kurdistan.
We're in the Kurdish part of Iraq that's
safer.
And the Kurds of my people's groups, if
I were into the people's group thing, the
Kurds would be my top 10.
Kurds are coming to Jesus.
There are now new Kurdish churches.
Of course, there are Kurds in Turkey and
Iran as well.
Not much happening among them.
I'm speaking about Iraq.
So my seventh nation.
By the way, if a year from now
you send me this list, these 10 nations,
you get 10 free books.
Just tell me where to send them.
So it's good to see some of you
writing it down.
It proves that you at least got the
spiritual kindergarten in terms of the disciplined life.
So the seventh nation is Iraq.
The eighth nation.
That was the eighth.
Sorry.
The ninth nation.
I always need someone like that in the
meeting because I don't have it written out.
Yeah.
Iraq is the eighth.
The ninth nation is Somalia.
It was Sudan.
Sudan has slipped into my next group because
the number of believers in southern Sudan has
gone from 7 percent to 70 percent.
Now, talk about the sovereignty of God.
I find it hard to fellowship with believers
who are not into mystery.
So that's OK.
We'll still have a chat.
These guys and and people that have the
answer to everything.
It's just it's just it's just ridiculous to
me.
How can you explain southern Sudan?
Two million dead.
I don't want to see one person dead.
Two million dead suffering beyond comprehension.
And yet through that, the greatest one of
the greatest single church growth explosions in the
world at the time from 77 percent to
70 percent.
Now, they're not all born again believers, but
a lot of them are.
And it's there's so many believers there now.
Many believers have no Bibles.
Many believers have no Christian books.
Of course, there's a lot of illiteracy.
Do you think a lot of missionaries are
rushing into southern Sudan even though they have
peace?
Forget it.
It's a tough place to live.
So Sudan is in my second 10 group
and in its place.
Number nine, Somalia.
Somalia is barely functioning as a nation.
It has almost no believers.
There are Somalis now all over the world.
Some of them are being reached.
Just a few weeks ago, one of the
leading Christians was assassinated.
The Muslim fanatic who said assassinated him said
all Christians in Somalia must die.
That's a great place to live.
You know, if you think like getting your
church burned down, getting beat up or punched
is bad, it is bad.
I don't want that.
What do you say about assassination?
Maybe some of you are depressed and you
don't like it here.
You prefer that, but it's not your decisions.
So Somalia is a nation I want you
to pray for.
I know of hardly anybody who wants to
work there for Jesus.
There it is right down here.
Remember when the Americans went in there in
a big charitable operation?
Have you seen that film?
What was the name of that film?
The Hollywood film.
What was that called?
Yeah, Black Hawk Down.
Just watching it, I almost got ill.
Somalia is just an unbelievable challenging situation.
And number 10 is Yemen down here.
Now, Yemen only got into my list because
of Socotra.
How many have prayed for Socotra?
That's one of your favorite spots, right?
Socotra.
Let's be honest.
How many, to be honest, you never actually
heard of Socotra?
Raise your hand.
It's great, isn't it?
You got so much more left to learn
in your lives.
There's no scope to be bored.
There's no scope to stop reading.
You guys all knew about Socotra, didn't you?
Here in the first row.
Here it is.
It's not that far away.
You can go there by boat.
Right there, Socotra.
I discovered, see, so I'm in the ignorance
club too.
Socotra is now part of Yemen.
So Yemen got on my list because of
Socotra.
Socotra has no church, not one known believer.
There's no missionaries.
There are some short-termers spying out the
land.
Maybe by now there's somebody there because I'm
sure getting a lot of people embarrassed around
the world about Socotra.
And they come up to my globe afterward.
And please, don't come up here and pin
missionary pictures to their location, you know, as
they do on some of these maps.
And this globe is very sensitive.
But pray, pray for Yemen.
Let's all stand.
Different people lead out in prayer until we
cover all 10 countries.
I won't close.
So some of you want to go home?
Pray quick.
We want to cover every one of these
10 countries.
You are allowed to pray only for one.
Some of you just want to pray for
all 10.
You're just so anointed.
You're just about levitating out of your shoes.
But you've got to just pray for one
country.
So let's pray and cover these 10 most
needy, impossible nations in the world.
This is the George Verwer list.
You can have your own list.
You can disagree with me.
That's no problem.
You can even put Israel as number one,
do your own thing in your ignorance.
But you've got the top 10, according to
me.
And that's and I'm in the pulpit right
now.
So you'll have your day.
Let's cover every one of those countries.
Praise the Lord.
Amen.
Thank you, Lord.
Father, help us now as we just spend
a little more time looking into your word
and then go from this place to bless
others in Jesus name.
Amen.
Please be seated.
I just would like to read from Hebrews
12.
Therefore, since we're surrounded by such a huge
crowd of witnesses to the life of faith,
let us strip off every weight, every weight
that slows us down, especially that sin that
so easily hinders our progress.
And let us run.
Let us run with endurance the race that
God has set before us.
We do this by keeping our eyes on
Jesus, on whom our faith depends from start
to finish.
A lot of people around the world these
days are watching the Winter Olympics.
I've watched just a little bit on the
news just enough to challenge me that the
training these people go through to to win
these these human races.
They have this new skeleton race where you
lay on the sled head down.
I never used to have this.
It's like extreme sport.
People easily can get killed.
And there they are, all these people after
this intensive training and focus and discipline and
just a few of them get gold medals.
The whole place is mainly filled now with
losers.
Yeah, it must be very depressing.
That's why they send evangelistic teams there, because,
you know, these people, after they lose, they're
open to hearing about Jesus and praise God
for sports ministry.
OML has a sports ministry.
I think some of you are networked into
that.
But I believe I'm one of God's marathon
runners.
That's not saying anything special because we're all
in this marathon race.
Some of us have been in it longer.
I just celebrated my last March 50th spiritual
birthday.
For any of you who are new, I
wasn't from a Christian family.
My grandfather was an atheist from the Netherlands
who went to America with my father, also
born in born in the Netherlands.
My other grandfather was Irish, Scottish and English
blood mixed, which is, you know, basically toxic.
He was an alcoholic and a drunkard.
My grandmother divorced him, so I didn't have
much of a background.
And into my life came this lady that
Harrell referred to Israel.
Sometimes I get your names reversed, but I
know it's Israel Harrell that Israel referred to.
And she she heard about me.
I was a little trouble to the police.
I was sort of a radical student leader
about to be elected as president of this
big student body of 1200 students all over
the school was my picture.
Let George do it.
And I gave my little speech and got
the football players on my side and I
won the election.
And she wasn't too interested in all of
that.
She prayed that I'd become a Christian, a
believer, and that I would become a missionary.
She didn't even discuss this with me.
Be nice if we could talk over right
what's going to happen with our own lives.
If your parents are praying that you're going
to be a missionary, you might want to
have a talk with them, see if you
can make a deal or something.
And then she sent me a Gospel of
John through the post.
And I began to read God's word.
I was a seeker with all my confusion.
I was moving into the world of pornography
at that time.
I was I had such a foul mouth.
I was going to produce a little dictionary
of curses, dirty stories and blasphemes.
I had a giant ego.
And, you know, I meet these people that
never had a lot of confidence as kids.
Shy people, people put down that was not
my world.
I was always confident.
My parents were just tremendous people on that
side of things.
And so my problems were different.
I was also very happy.
We hear of people converted when they're miserable.
I was incredibly happy the night I was
converted until I heard Billy Graham speak and
then realized I was probably a sinner and
probably not going to heaven and that good
works wasn't enough.
To finish that story, this lady prayed and
sent me this Gospel, and that prepared my
heart for a one night meeting with Billy
Graham.
It's interesting, Victor Simaj told me the other
day that when he went to publish his
first book in Hebrew, Billy Graham, some people
here, judgmental, pharisaical, extremist type said, ah, Billy
Graham, I don't need to publish his books.
And it's amazing how many enemies Billy Graham
has had.
And I try to encourage people, you know,
narrow is the way narrow is the way.
Why do we work so hard, certain people
to make it narrower than it is?
It's already narrow.
You don't need to make it narrower.
You know, I use the King James Bible
only.
I do this only.
I wear neckties in church, and I don't
fellowship with these kind of people.
And I think that's really a stumbling block.
It's a really a stumbling block to non
-Christians.
Our narrowness, our judgmental is they see us
fighting among ourselves.
I hope you don't have so much of
that in Israel, but most countries do.
But anyway, that night I was born again.
I didn't understand it all, but I knew
that Jesus loved me.
He forgave me.
I went back to that ungodly high school
where I had now a lot of clout
as a student leader.
It happened around the same time.
I got the principal to give me permission
to distribute the gospel of John in the
high school.
And we had a lot of drunkenness in
our high school, a lot of fornication.
A thousand students promised to read God's word.
I found out around that time that lady
had prayed for that school for 15 years.
The power of prayer.
This story is now copyrighted.
You tell it wherever you want because it
encourages people in their ministry of prayer.
And though you're sort of locked in this
country and your passport is not the golden
ticket to every other nation in the world,
I doubt if we're going to see you
evangelizing Saudi Arabia next year.
By prayer and by the Internet, you can
touch people anywhere.
And I'd ask you to check out my
own website, George Verwood dot com.
That's pretty simple.
You can just about fall into that if
you're a cyberspace person.
George Verwood dot com.
Then you can go from there into 40
audio messages and MP3 format.
And you you can have all of you
want to have your own website and get
into using the Internet for sharing your faith
around the globe.
So I was saved that night.
I went back to that high school.
People started to come to Jesus.
I went off to university and I came
back at Christmas break and six hundred people
came to hear me speak.
I was 18 years old and one hundred
and twenty five stood in that meeting, this
ungodly high school and believed in Jesus and
among them my own father who followed Jesus,
son of an atheist until 94 years of
age.
That's my testimony.
And what I want to share with you
in closing is just certain things that God
taught me before I was 21 that had
held me all my life.
And I want all of you to be
marathon runners.
You probably already are.
You probably already know these things.
So it's good to hear things again just
to reaffirm.
But I just want to share a few
of the things I call these biblical realities
that have helped me stay in the race.
I've never had a day away from Jesus.
I've had my moments.
I've had maybe up to an hour.
Bad attitudes, impatience certainly have had lots of
struggles.
A great Scottish theologian said, Great faith is
not in the absence of struggles.
Great strength.
Faith is often in the midst of it,
even in the midst of doubt.
I've had lots of doubts.
I can't walk into a place like the
Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem two days ago and
not be just overwhelmed with my doubts about
the whole thing and how it all fits
together.
So great faith is not in the absence
of doubts.
Great faith is often in the midst of
doubts.
And I praise God that there are some
new churches today where people are more free
to talk about their doubts, because that was
a no-no in churches many churches years
ago.
And I think this younger generation, with what
we're bombarded with, the constant bombarding through the
media of things that produce doubts, need to
be able to talk about it, pray about
it, read books like C.S. Lewis' books
and other books that can help us.
The writings of Dr. Schaffer helped me build
up our intellectual convictions and knowledge.
So I want to just share these realities,
very basic, that have kept me running all
these years.
Number one, the reality of the crucified life.
We have to be able to say as
Paul, I'm crucified with Christ.
This happened to me as a very young
Christian because I was exposed to such phenomenal
books.
The writings of Roy Heshin, Calvary Road.
Wow.
The ministry of the Keswick Convention.
The writings of Andrew Murray.
The writings of L.E. Maxwell, founder of
Prairie Bible Institute.
Born crucified.
And I'm convinced much of the immorality that
gets into the church, among all kinds of
church people, is because they never understood the
reality of the crucified life.
I am crucified with Christ.
And I've had a high level of sexual
temptation.
I've never fallen except with the eye gate,
and I'm not excusing that.
And it's because self, most mornings, got crucified.
And then at noon, and whenever the temptation
came, not I, but Christ.
When we fall into these sexual sins, it
is a testimony of self-centeredness.
And our society is trying to tell us
nobody can live without sex.
Do you know that in Africa right now,
people staying free from AIDS because of abstinence
are being mocked by their own African peers
in high school because they're not having sex.
I hope you folks are living in the
real world about what's going on in terms
of sex outside of marriage.
And at almost any age, starting from 12
on, it's absolutely mind-bending.
And Christians are falling all over the place.
Surveys among Christian young people, even those that
make a commitment to abstinence, show they break
the promise.
A commitment to abstinence is not enough.
Without the crucified life, I am crucified with
Christ.
Nevertheless, I live, yet not I.
Ego is crucified.
That doesn't mean we're perfect.
It doesn't mean we won't have wild temptations
and some falls on certain levels, especially the
battle for total control of our minds.
But I'm convinced this message needs to be
preached.
And I've been doing my surveys, and let
me tell you, a lot of these churches
in America that are so superficial and the
pastors are just wiped out all over the
place.
Thousands and thousands, thousands of American pastors have
fallen into adultery, including top television people.
My surveys show they do not have this
emphasis.
They do not preach the crucified life.
And so that's one of the reasons I'm
still here.
And that's one of the reasons OM, who
celebrates their 50th year next year, has had
very little immorality.
We have 130,000 graduates.
Of course, we've had some.
We've even had people live in victory over
incredible homosexual temptation.
Live in victory.
One of my close friends with that struggle
married with two dynamic young men as children.
There's victory in Jesus, but it's not an
easy road.
You've got to deny self.
This is the word from Jesus himself.
Deny self.
Take up a cross every day.
Follow me.
And who said that?
Jesus.
How many times?
Three times.
We've got to make sure we got this.
And our churches, a lot of our problems
in our churches, the arguments, the pettiness, the
Pharisees and the judgmentalism, these are men and
women that have never understood the crucified life.
They would never say these things.
They would never do these things if they
knew the reality of the cross in the
depth of the ego.
You could never do these things.
I have never had a day when I
could go to bed at night after saying
anything angry or unpleasant to my wife or
an OM board or an OM leader.
Sure, I've done it, but you can't get
away with it because immediately the conviction of
the Holy Spirit is so great.
And you repent and you break and you
ask forgiveness and revival comes.
This is how OM for 50 years has
had very little disunity with an army of
strong-minded people from many churches and many
denominations from pretty straight shooting Pentecostals to deep
-fisted Plymouth brethren.
We've had 50 years of running the race
together, and we believe it's because of this
great message.
The second reality is the reality of the
Holy Spirit.
I lived in a day when the Holy
Spirit at places like Moody Bible Institute was
neglected.
It doesn't mean he wasn't present.
The Holy Spirit is God himself.
The Holy Spirit has a way of working
whether we have the vocabulary or not.
There's been a great emphasis on vocabulary, but
not enough emphasis on the reality, the daily
reality of the Holy Spirit, the fruit, the
gifts.
And it has to be connected with the
crucified life.
We can't put these things in boxes.
Oh, this is a crucified life guy over
here.
Here's a spirit-filled guy over here.
Well, this guy over here, he doesn't seem
to know anything about it, but I guess
he loves Jesus.
It flows together as we become mature in
God.
It doesn't all happen the first year of
our conversion.
And as I discovered more of the reality
of the Holy Spirit among different people, and
I read different books and prayed different prayers,
and when we were young, you know, I
remember praying a prayer after reading Torrey's book
about the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
I was a baby Christian that somehow had
experienced the baptism, the fullness, the reality of
the Holy Spirit.
Billy Graham says, I don't care how you
get it, just get it.
And I don't see how you can be
effective without the reality of the Holy Spirit.
It doesn't mean we all become Pentecostals, we
all become this, we all become that.
Don't let those prejudices we may have against
this group or that group or extremism that
we certainly see a lot of on television
keep us from the reality, the basic reality
of the Holy Spirit working through our lives.
And that has been so powerful.
And I minister in Pentecostal and charismatic churches
all over the world, and they receive me
and accept me, and they know I have
the anointing of the Holy Spirit, though I
don't have all the gifts.
And I probably have more of a charismatic
heart and an evangelical head, and I hope
somehow it connects on a daily basis.
The third reality, which is tied into both
of the other realities, is the reality of
the discipline life.
Again, I believe this is one of the
things that God honored in OM.
We did get extreme at times on the
discipline thing.
We did have some legalism.
There's no way you can walk for Jesus
and not have some of these problems at
times.
You remember A.W. Tozer, he said about
enthusiasm, I guess in OM at times we
were too zealous and too enthusiastic and didn't
have enough common sense.
One of the first missionaries I ever met
when I went to Mexico, he just spotted
me right away.
He got me in the car and he
said, well, what do you think of this
common sense thing, George?
Huh, why did he ask me that?
No one had ever asked me that before.
And I realized common sense is really important
in God's kingdom.
And we had to grow in that area.
But I believe without the discipline life, these
other things somehow, it doesn't work.
Because those other things are linked with your
will.
You may know the crucified life, but someday
you will.
You will to do your own thing.
You'll do it.
You may know the fullness of the Holy
Spirit on a particular day.
You decide you're going to grieve the Spirit.
You're going to do your own thing.
You've just got infatuated with the woman who
you think is the most beautiful woman on
the planet.
It happened to me after marriage.
I thought I was going to go right
out of my mind.
But because I had this message, nothing ever
happened.
And I am so thankful for that because
that infatuation could have destroyed me as a
young Christian.
I'm just dealing with an infatuation situation in
Texas where two Christians, these sort of people
I don't believe understand this.
This man got infatuated, churchgoer, Bible believer, murdered
his own wife and denied it until he
got in court.
The woman he was infatuated with, he was
so stupid.
He had told her, I love you so
much I murdered my wife.
I tell you, she had her circuits pwned
for her immorality.
She gave the tape to the police.
He was convicted of murder after he was
convicted in the court.
She, by the way, is the sister of
a close friend who I was just with.
So this isn't something I've just read about.
He stood up in front of the court
and confessed that he had murdered his own
wife.
How can it be?
Somehow just professing Jesus is not enough.
It will definitely, hopefully in most cases, get
you to heaven.
If it's a true confession, true faith, you'll
be there in glory.
But boy, I tell you, I wouldn't want
to risk.
I wouldn't want to be that guy sitting
in prison wondering whether I'm going to heaven
or hell or just what exactly happened.
I believe with all my heart in the
words of Paul.
I'm not going to go much longer.
Paul said, I buffet my body.
So much of my problem has been my
body, which is linked with my mind.
My theology is solid.
My thinking is pretty good.
But the body, and especially the whole area
of sexuality, which, of course, in many churches
in the 50s and 60s, we never talked
about, never talked about.
Five hundred verses in the Bible about sex
we can't talk about.
You know, we get these guys in America,
especially both.
They expound on the whole Bible.
They start in Genesis.
A lot of times it's boring.
They start in Genesis.
They go right through the Revolution.
And I've always wanted to go up to
these guys and say, what did you do
with this verse?
Did you expound this one?
Well, what verse are you talking about?
Right here.
Be thou satisfied with the breasts of the
wife of thy youth.
How many of you preachers here, you've preached
on that one?
I have.
I just did right now.
And the Song of Solomon.
We've done everything we can to spiritualize the
Song of Solomon.
The whole thing is just way too sexy.
None of us can handle the Song of
Solomon.
We got to get the sex issue sorted
out in our life.
That takes the crucified life, takes the reality
of the Holy Spirit, and it takes daily
discipline.
And if Paul, in case you think I'm
unbiblical here, if Paul said, I buffet my
body, I bring it into subjection, less after
preaching to others, I become a castaway.
How many Christian leaders have that verse as
a major motto?
I haven't met many.
Maybe I need to continue my survey.
We're living in the feel-good society.
We want to feel good.
We want to feel nice.
We want to be happy.
And I'm not saying there's no place for
those things.
In fact, I'm big, I'm big on accepting
our humanness.
No matter how filled we are, this is
one of my favorite Verwer original statements.
Hey, get ready.
No matter how filled we are with the
Holy Spirit, we're incredibly human, totally spirit-filled
people who have had seventh heaven experiences, they
still go to the toilet.
Did you know that?
So does the Queen of England, huh?
Denying your humanity, denying your humanness will lead
to extremism.
And OM got into it for a couple
of years, and we hurt a lot of
people.
And I've tried to go around apologizing to
some of these people.
And I never realized how people of different
temperaments, they hear completely different things.
When I'm speaking back there in the 60s
with messages that have very little humanness, very
little humor, my kind of temperament, I've always
been able to take things with a grain
of salt.
I've always been a bit of a clown.
I got voted class clown in the freshman
class of my high school.
But when I'm out there coming across with
this somewhat lopsided message, other temperaments, people that
have had a totally different background are hearing
completely different things.
I remember a friend from Finland.
Anybody here from Finland?
You are a very serious people.
You're very serious people, and you have a
very serious suicide rate.
And living in the dark for seven months
up there in Finland could depress even a
gospel rabbit.
But I love Finland, and I try to
go there regularly.
But a lot of Finns who came in
OM in the early days, they had no
humor.
They didn't understand grace.
And though grace was in OM's message at
the time, it wasn't enough.
They would just hear this discipline thing and
then mix into it legalism, mix discipline with
legalism, and you come out with a really
weird cocktail.
And believe me, in OM for a while,
we could serve that drink with great ability.
But I will tell you, OM, by God's
grace, became a grace-awakened movement.
And that's my third reason why I'm still
here.
I experienced a deeper work of grace, understanding
God's love for me when I fail with
that pornographic magazine and Satan telling me I'm
a scumbag in order to chuck Christianity down
the tube.
Satan, I mean, God ministering to me and
showing that some of my convictions—remember in those
early days, any of you around then, we
had convictions about so many issues.
And God sent an amazing man to one
of the first conferences in Spain.
Very few people know this.
His name was Doug Coe.
He might be today classified as being a
little wishy-washy in his theology, but he's
one of the great leaders of the global
prayer movement.
The prayer breakfast that just took place—4,000
people in Washington—with Bono preaching from the heart.
Doug Coe is one of the behind-the
-scenes persons you never see.
And Doug Coe and God's Providence spoke at
the Madrid conference in 1962.
After the big 62 campaign, we went back
to Madrid, and he could see that OM
had a lot of different agendas.
And he got in front of us, and
he said, I want to beg of you
to mainly focus on the Lord Jesus.
Never forget it.
And I realized I had too many convictions—strong
convictions—about smaller issues, especially in the area of
money.
And I hurt a lot of people with
my teaching about money, and I hurt my
wife.
And I just thank God that grace came
in, and I saw that in a greater
way, God could supply even money that you
could just spend however you want.
So I gave my wife a dollar and
said, look, just feel free.
You don't have to account for this to
me.
Just go for it.
And then I increased it to five dollars,
and then I turned all money over to
her.
Oh, my God is so merciful.
God is so merciful.
Crucified life, spirit-filled life, disciplined life, yes,
but it's got to be grace awakened.
It's got to be saturated with forgiveness.
Isn't that a great word?
I've never gone to bed at night not
knowing I was forgiven.
Never gone to bed at night not having
forgiven anyone who hurt me.
It doesn't mean it was total emotional victory.
And I would recommend you get Charles Swindoll's
book, Grace Awakening.
I recommend you get Philip Yancey's book, What's
So Amazing About Grace.
I would ask you to search your own
heart to see if there are not some
remnants of self-condemnation and legalism still there
from your childhood, from your family, that are
not from God.
Some of those things in your heart from
your family background may be good, but the
whole idea that as a Christian we can
always trust our conscience is wrong.
Our consciences are stained by legalism, by false
teaching, by judgmentalism, by Phariseeism, by some of
our own cuckoo ideas, and we all have
them.
And I tell you, when you can learn
to have the final authority as the Holy
Spirit, the grace awakened message of the New
Testament with all that emphasis on forgiveness and
mercy and acceptance, and allow that to bring
things in your conscience into balance, knowing you,
of course, will never be perfect.
We're all growing.
We're all learning.
And you will.
As you discover the grace awakening, you become
more free, as I did in my life.
The pendulum will start to go the other
way, and then you'll have to grab it
and, you know, those other emphases and bring
it back to balance.
But that's God's way, and I'm excited.
I'm excited that there are churches now that
welcome divorced people and don't treat them as
second-class citizens.
We were the first missions movement of any
major kind that recruited divorced people and saw
that it could be used just as much
and more than someone who had it all
together in their marriage from the very beginning.
It's amazing how, in the Christian world in
which we so condemned divorce in the 50s,
we had so many miserable marriages that went
on and on, often with mistresses and pastors
sleeping with their secretaries, and frowned so heavily
upon divorce.
We know divorce is not God's plan A,
but we know a God who gives people
a second chance.
And if any of you have made a
lot of mistakes in your life, and you're
on plan H, whoa, that's serious.
Missed plan A, B.
You're the best ones here to get plan
A.
The rest of us, probably not much hope.
But you got good chance to get plan
A.
But if you have a failure and you're
on plan B, praise God.
What about this guy on plan H?
You know what I say to him?
Praise God for the big alphabet.
Press on.
Bounce back.
Keep going.
I shared with this group of business people
from all over Europe some of my failures.
And one person after another came up to
me after.
You know what they said?
Thank you for sharing your failures.
Why?
Because it gives broken people, it gives broken
people hope.
It gives discouraged people hope that through their
failure, they can find new, a new day
and new ministry and new blessing.
Praise God for these four great realities.
Of course, there's so many more.
You don't want to be here all night.
So let's pray.
Four, I gave you four.
Oh, the fifth one.
The fifth one is just keep repenting.
Yeah, I've got, you know, I've got 20.
So five, just keep repenting, repenting, repenting, repenting.
Let's pray.
Lord, I just thank you for so many
receptive, wonderful people, even taking notes.
So maybe some of them are just writing
to their boyfriends.
And we thank you for grace.
We thank you for forgiveness.
We thank you for humor.
And we thank you for seriousness.
We thank you.
We can weep with those that weep and
rejoice with those that rejoice.
We thank you that even this crisis hour
in Israel, with all that's taking place, that
we can trust you and your sovereign purposes.
That doesn't mean we'll be lazy.
That doesn't mean we won't be as active
as possible to do what is right.
But it does mean we'll have solid sleep
at night and we'll be set free from
worry and fear.
And we can live a wholesome and a
fulfilled and a grace-awakened life.
Protect us, Lord.
Help us every day to take the shield
of faith which is tied with the discipline
life.
We have to take the shield of faith.
It doesn't drop down out of the ceiling.
We have to take the shield of faith
in which we can stop these fiery darts.
And Lord, I know there's still going to
come some more on me.
And I just thank you for this whole
armor.
I thank you for your holy word that
gives us this tremendous teaching.
And we want to take this teaching through
sermons, through books, through websites, through preaching, through
teaching.
We want to take it in DVDs and
videos.
We want to take it through the arts
and plays and films and spread it throughout
the whole Christian world that we can see
greater reality among your people, that we can
see more marathon runners that are running the
race right to the end.
Oh, Jesus, we ask this in your precious
name.
Amen.
Could we stand and sing a song in
English?
I don't know if you still know this
song.
We sang it all over the O.M.
teams around the globe.
He is Lord.
He's risen from the dead.
He is Lord.
Can we sing that?
Do you have that song in Hebrew as
well?
Let's sing it first in English, and then
I'd like to hear you sing it in
Hebrew.
He is Lord.
Every knee shall bow.
Every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord.
Now in Hebrew.
Hallelujah.
Amen.
Thank you very much.
Israel, you come up and stand with me.
We have a few CDs left from our
display that we brought in our suitcase.
So take a look at our CDs.
They're just on a donation basis.
And if you'd like one of those books
that haven't shown up yet, just keep contact
with Jonathan.
And the first book you can have free
after that will be a donation.
So God bless you.
And just thank you for all your love
and mercy and kindness.
And thank you.
All the fruit of the spirit is just
oozing out of all of you.