I'm so grateful for the form of that
introduction.
Somebody yesterday said, He has been, he has
been, he has been.
He has been.
And I concluded that I was a has
-been.
I'm not sure that's appropriate.
Oh, let's bow our hearts in prayer.
Father, we're here, and Thou art here, and
we're here to meet with Thee, to hear
from Thee, and make this a special time.
Let everyone here sense that there's just two
people here, you and he or she, here
to hear from Thee, to meet Thee, to
find out Thy mind and Thy will and
Thy plan, and to where our place is
in all that Thou art doing.
And we'll give these thanks in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Now we begin with the fact that everyone
who names the name of Jesus Christ as
Savior and Lord, Lord and Savior, is by
very definition committed to follow Him.
I hear a lot of missionaries speak about
a call.
I've used the term many times, always regretfully
when I began to understand what the Scripture
teaches us about a call.
I've had young people come and say, I
believe God has called me to so-and
-so, to such-and-such, usually to a
place or to a special kind of work.
The only call I find taught in the
Bible is the call to a person.
He said, come, follow me, and I will
make you fisher's men.
But I don't find any other biblical evidence
for a call.
They say, well, don't you have people call?
Paul didn't call.
Paul say he was called to be in
a...
Yes, he did.
Didn't he say he was?
Yes, he did.
In the...
Looking back at it, in retrospect, it's correct.
But in terms of the future, I think
it's questionable.
Somebody comes to you and says, you know,
God has called me to so-and-so.
You'd do well, if you know the person
well enough, to be honest and frank, to
say, you know, it might be a little
wiser if you were to say, based on
what I now sense and feel and know,
it seems that possibly the Lord may be
leading me to such-and-such a place
and such-and-such a ministry, but I
would like to hold it before others for
prayer and for leaders for counsel.
So many times, we went to our mission
society as applicants, and the next morning after
we arrived, the first day of a month,
we were to spend with them.
They had a session for the candidates, and
one of the chaps got up and he
said, I've felt unrest in my spirit.
I asked the Lord to speak to me.
During the night, I had a vision of
it where two rivers came together.
I went to the map and looked for
those rivers, and I found it was where
the Blue Nile and the White Nile joined
at Khartoum.
God has called us to the Anglo-Egyptian
Sudan.
I didn't know where the Sudan was.
I turned to Marjorie and I said, if
that's what they're looking for, we can leave
this afternoon because we've not had anything like
that.
All we had was a burden and a
desire that our lives be used for.
He wanted them.
I always thought it was kind of unfair
to have ten of the strongest men on
the light end of the log and the
one weaker man or woman on the heavy
end of the log.
It didn't seem quite fair to me that
that was the way God wanted the log
toted.
If the log is getting the gospel out,
then we've got ten men in the homeland
for one woman out in the mission field
or one lonely man somewhere.
And I didn't think that was fair.
We put our lives in the Lord's hands
and he seemed to be leading us toward
Africa.
Well, we stayed there for a month.
During the course of the time, I learned
where the Sudan was because Earl Lewis was
there and he'd been in the Sudan.
He told us what it was.
But all I found out about it, enough
to make me say, well, Lord, if you've
got a second choice, I'll take it.
We went before the board and we were
accepted and they said, would you be willing
to go to the Sudan?
And I looked at Marjorie and she looked
at me and we said we'd love to
go to the Sudan.
Right then we decided that if that's where
the Lord wanted us, that's where we wanted
to be.
The other family weren't accepted.
The one that had the call to go
where the rivers joined.
And when it was over, he said, well,
I gave it a good try.
Now I can go back to the pastor
and be at peace.
Listen, a little bit of gentle humility is
appropriate.
As best I can see now, it does
look as though possibly the Lord is leading
me to such and such a field.
But I want to explore it and pray
about it and find his mind and have
it confirmed because I don't want to be
anyplace he doesn't want me to be.
You see, just because he doesn't lead you
to some distant place doesn't mean that he
intends for you to be a spectator in
this task of missions.
There are no spectators except those that are
in the church that have never been born
of God.
The kind that I talk about in the
book.
The ones that are there, they have everything
but life.
Now they're spectators to everything.
They're even going to be seated in a
bleachers in hell spectators of those that have
gone to heaven.
It's a terrible thing, isn't it, to come
up to Matthew 7.
Many will say unto me in that day,
didn't we cast out devils in your name
and do miracles in your name?
And I will say unto them, away with
you.
I never knew you.
I never ask anybody anymore.
When did they come to know the Lord?
I don't think that's important.
The question I ask is, when did you
come to know that the Lord knows you
as His?
You see, a lot of folks know Him,
He doesn't seem to know.
Now if you know Him and He knows
you, then you're involved in missions.
Because He said, come follow me.
And then in that verse that we love
to misquote, Mark 16 and it says, go
in all the world and preach the gospel
to every creature.
Literally what it says is, as you are
going into all the world, preach the gospel,
the imperative is in preach.
And as you are going, you see if
He said go, when He said follow, it
would be a contradiction.
And He doesn't contradict Himself.
He said as you are following me, preach.
So wherever you go, whatever you do, is
just as much service for the Lord as
though you were going to some distant area
supported by the local congregation.
Now unless you see that, the purpose of
this conference has been missed as far as
you're concerned.
You're involved.
There are no spectators.
Why do you live in that house where
you live?
You say, well we got a good buy
on it.
I don't think so.
I think you live there because God wanted
to put you next to somebody as a
sample of His grace.
Why do you work where you work?
Well I got a good offer.
I don't think that's the whole reason.
I think you work there because God wanted
you there as a sample of His grace
to someone whom He'd like to see brought
out of death into life.
You ought to pray just as much about
where you live and where you work as
the missionary prays about where he's going to
settle and what he's going to do when
he settles there.
Because you're just as much involved as he
is.
Old washerwoman Sophie in New York at the
Gospel Tabernacle.
When I got there the fragrance of her
memory was still very, very real.
And started a missionary conference.
Now Sophie had the right idea.
She got involved.
First she said, Lord send me to China.
And he didn't do that.
Then she said, Send me to Africa.
And he didn't do that.
And she went around a few other countries.
And he finally, she said, Why is this
Lord?
I keep asking you to send me.
Why don't you send me?
He said, Sophie why should I do that?
I'd be wasting money.
You have a Chinese family living in the
next apartment building to yours.
You've never gone to them.
And there's an African family living on the
floor below you.
You've never gone to them.
And there's a Philippine family living right next
door to you.
And you've never talked to them about me.
Sophie it'd be a waste of money for
me to send you anywhere.
I put the whole world right at your
door and you're not talking to him.
So if you're not going to be a
missionary for me here it won't do me
any good to send you anywhere else.
And Sophie saw that she could be a
missionary.
First she saw that she could give.
Now she didn't make a pledge.
She didn't believe in pledging.
She believed in giving.
So she took the thousand dollars that she'd
saved out of the bank and she gave
that to the first missionary conference A.B.
Simpson had at the Tabernacle.
And that was the first missionary conference ever
held anywhere in the world.
And that year she went ahead and took
an extra job.
She was a charwoman.
She swept offices and she laundered clothes and
she took two or three extra jobs working
about 18 hours a day.
And the first day of the second annual
missionary conference when the pledge time was given
Sophie got up in the place that she
usually sat in her quarters the end seat
in the back row and danced down the
aisle and brought a bag full of money
and put it in Dr. Simpson's hand.
A little over a thousand dollars.
And the year 1882.
Do you know how much money that'd be
today?
That'd be a whole pile.
Just a big whole pile.
Somewhere around $10,000.
Because you could buy a tailor-made suit
of imported Scotch woolens in New York City
for $7.50. Then a maid worked in
a home for $2.50 a month.
Board and room, of course.
Dr. Simpson died 1919.
Same day after Dr. Simpson died, Sophie died.
Tabernacle was filled.
Seated a thousand people.
Tabernacle was filled for Dr. Simpson.
They had a beautiful display of flowers and
preachers came from every place they could to
be there to honor this man that had
such a ministry.
They left the flowers up because Sophie's funeral
was the next day and they didn't want
to have the church empty of flowers for
the washroom.
They didn't know about what Sophie had done.
The front of the church was filled.
They put racks along the wall on both
sides.
Every seat was taken.
The fire marshal gave up trying to keep
the place because they were crowding in and
there were nearly half as many outside as
there were inside, waiting and couldn't get in.
You see, Sophie had gone up and down
the streets of New York witnessing to drunks
and to derelicts and to the poor, gone
into homes where mother was sick and she
scrubbed and washed and cooked and fed the
children and won them to the Lord.
Some had become politicians.
Some had gone back to their practices.
They'd been alcoholics and God had delivered them.
Limousines brought some to the door of the
tabernacle.
She was a missionary in New York City.
Now, if you're not a missionary in Omaha
or wherever you live, it'd be a waste
of God's money and your time to go
anywhere else.
If you can't be concerned about the people
you know, there isn't a ghost chance, a
snowball's chance, in a hot stove of your
money to anything for God if He gets
you 10,000 miles away.
You've just got to realize that.
And he said, after that the Holy Ghost
has come upon you, you shall be witnesses
unto me, both in Jerusalem and in Judea
and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part
of the earth.
But every believer can have a worldwide ministry
for Christ, not just in their Samaria, but
elsewhere.
Harold B.
Street was the deputation secretary for the Sudan
Interior Mission.
And when I was assigned to do that
work, they asked me to spend a few
weeks with him.
And I heard Harold Street tell several times
of an experience he had in a missionary
conference in a little Baptist church over here
in George, Iowa.
He'd gone into the church for a missionary
conference, and that meant Sunday through Sunday.
We had Bible teaching during the mornings, and
missionary ministry at night.
And people didn't have television, and they came
out to see pictures missionaries took.
Took a lot of grace, but they came
anyway.
I know the worst of it.
I asked me, when I got to be
his deputation secretary, to review the pictures of
the missionaries before they went to the churches.
And they'd gotten, some of them gotten motion
picture cameras.
Now to them that meant keep the camera
moving all the time.
And I'd get seasick looking at these pictures.
Cars flying up in the air.
Houses swinging across, you know.
Well, Harold had some good pictures.
In that congregation that week was a family.
They grew corn.
They fed their corn to hogs.
And they worked real hard.
But nothing seemed to come out just right.
If there were sickness, it got to their
hogs first.
And if there was drought, their ground got
to least water.
And they always were just at the edge.
Everybody felt a little bit sorry for him,
especially because he had a very serious handicap.
He stammered so badly, it'd take him two
minutes to say his name.
A real handicap speaking.
The last Sunday night, Harold was putting away
the curios and folding up the screen and
getting everything down to leave the next morning.
And when he got done, he looked and
there were still his family sitting in the
back of the church.
Came back and the man's wife said, my
husband has something he wants to ask you.
And he insisted he do it.
So Harold just stood there and finally the
man got it out.
I want you to stop by my filling
station tomorrow.
See, he wasn't making it with just hogs
and corn.
He had a chance to get a filling
station and he was paying it off from
the sales.
So Harold filled the car up to the
brim and sloshing just, you know, just couldn't
get another tomato can full of gas in
when he left town.
Because he didn't want to take any of
this man's gas.
Figured that's what he wanted.
But he was wrong.
When he got there, the man was there
and his wife was there and he said,
God has been speaking to my heart this
week.
My wife has received an insurance policy from
one of her relatives who died for $1
,000.
And you said we could support a missionary
for $1,000 a year.
And we got the first $1,000 and
we want to support our missionary.
Well, Harold was desperate.
He didn't want to take, but he knew
badly they needed the money.
And he said, Lord, give me wisdom, you
know, under his breast.
He said, well, I couldn't do that.
The scripture says, without faith it's impossible to
please God.
And if you've got $1,000, you won't
have to trust God for a whole year.
I can't do that.
Why?
The only way we could do that, we'd
have to take that $1,000 for outfit
and passage and you'd have to start trusting
God from the first month.
And he said, stammering a little, Todd, I'll
have to think about that.
I'll write to you.
And Harold left and drove back to Minneapolis
hoping and praying that Christie would forget all
about it, that he'd cut that off right
soon.
Three weeks later he got a letter saying,
my wife and I have thought and prayed
about this and you send the missionary.
We'll give the $1,000 for outfit and
passage.
Missionary came down, they took her around, they
introduced her to friends, got prayer people, people
who promised to pray, and she went to
the field.
End of the first year, Hal got a
check.
Here's our $1,000 for next year.
God has blessed us.
Send us another missionary.
So, he just didn't have time to go
back, he just sent another missionary.
End of the second year, he got $2
,000.
God has blessed us.
Send us another missionary.
He said, I'd better go down there and
see what he's doing.
Maybe he's cooking his corn out in the
backyard or something.
I gotta see how he's getting this money.
And he went down there and God had
blessed.
They put on a grease rack and he
was greasing.
That brought in more money.
They put on a little store and he
was selling goods the way they're doing now,
bread, milk, and so on.
He was one of the first.
And he said, well, all right.
So, he got $2,000 for the two
that were on the field and $1,000
for the missionary that was just going.
Next year, he wrote back and gave a
little letter.
He said, Brother Street, God has blessed us.
I've been able to put two bays onto
the station and now we're doing repair work.
Send me another missionary.
Well, Hal wrote back and said, yes, but
this next year, your first missionary is coming
home on furlough.
We don't want you to take another missionary.
We want you to be with her.
Hal Furlow, on furlough.
So, the end of that furlough year, the
church back in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, that said
they couldn't afford to support their missionary, had
finally got around that they were going to
have a farewell service in Brooklyn for her
before she went to Africa.
And Hal was going out for a missionary
conference.
And he invited this family to go.
And when they got there, they came in.
They didn't get there from Sunday.
They got there about Thursday.
But it was Sunday afternoon and Hal was
getting ready for the last service.
And he was just working around.
Christy was helping him.
And Hal sort of matter-of-factly, out
of the corner of his mouth, said, by
the way, Christy, tonight I'm going to call
on you for a 10-minute testimony.
And Christy, he couldn't.
He said, that's all right, Christy.
If you can't talk, you just stand up
there.
Let him look at you.
But you'll talk.
He wasn't sure.
He didn't think so.
He didn't really think he could do it.
And Hal said, the man I'm calling on
to bring a testimony is supporting a former
missionary, Christy.
Christy came, stood there, raised himself to his
full height, took two deep breaths, opened his
mouth, and spoke for 10 minutes and didn't
stammer on a syllable.
Question.
If you were to die tonight and meet
the Lord in the morning, you've been singing,
oh, how I love Jesus.
Take my life and let it be consecrated,
Lord, to thee.
Would he be able to say to you,
you have done what you could?
You see?
Or would you be like Christy as he
began, stammering, unable to complete a sentence?
Because you've had such great benefits and blessings
and privileges and endowment and opportunity and resources.
Would he honestly say of you, you've done
what you could?
Well, perhaps it gets back to this.
Because we've never really quite understood what Christy
put into that.
Sure, he put in money.
But what is money?
Money is, now listen carefully, it's very important.
Money is fluid life.
Money is crystallized intelligence.
Money is solidified energy.
You have a job.
You work.
You bring your life, your education, your talent,
your time, and you put that into whatever
you've contracted to do.
And at the end of a week or
two weeks or months, as the case may
be, they give you what one period of
your life is worth.
Now don't call that filthy lucre.
There is such a thing as filthy lucre
obtained by filthy means.
There are filthy clothes and filthy words.
But that doesn't mean clothing in its essence
is filthy.
Or words, speech is filthy.
No, money is life.
It represents the time it took you to
get it.
And when someone puts into the hands of
a missionary the means for their going, God
in his wisdom counts that as a portion
of the life of the person who earned
it.
Let me read it to you.
You look skeptical.
You don't believe what I'm saying.
And I think I can prove it to
you.
Luke chapter 16, verse 9.
And I say to you, make to yourselves
friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when
ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting
habitations.
What's he saying?
He is saying that by means of that
which is known as the mammon of unrighteousness,
you can make friends that will receive you
into everlasting habitations.
Now, let me give you a scenario.
I've had missionary friends in New Guinea.
I've never been to New Guinea.
I've tried to give and support and pray.
You've given and supported and prayed for missionaries
in whatever field you're particularly burdened about.
Now, you die and you go to heaven,
and it isn't far, and you're going to
recognize people.
And someone's going to come to you and
say, oh, my brother, my sister, I'm here
because you cared.
Today the Lord sent word to me that
you were coming and that I was to
be here to receive you and that he
had put me down to your account.
Where were you from?
I don't think I ever saw you.
No, you never saw me in the flesh.
I was from New Guinea.
I was from the interior of Brazil.
I was from wherever.
But you sent a missionary.
You prayed for a missionary.
You gave to me to help that missionary
be there.
And through that one, that messenger, I learned
of Christ.
And he has just told me that he
put me down to your account.
You know, I'm one of the friends you
made by your life.
You say, well, that's not what that verse
means.
Well, my dear, I'm here and you're there,
and I'm just going to stand on the
fact that I got the floor for the
moment.
And that's what it means.
And if you don't think so, you just
prove it to somebody else.
Don't try to prove it to me.
Don't bother me with the facts.
My mind is made up.
Make to yourself friends with the mammon of
unrighteousness that when you fail, they'll receive you
into everlasting habitation.
So that means that you can have part
with him anywhere in the world.
And he counts it as, well, let's look
at it arithmetically.
When I went to school, I studied arithmetic.
When I went to high school, he had
math, but I missed it.
It didn't take.
Now my little grandchildren in the third grade
are studying math.
I tried to help my daughter, and she
said, Dad, my teacher says if you help
me once more, I'm going to fail.
But I still remember a little bit about
arithmetic, and you're in for it.
So I got to go back a long
way.
So bear with me, huh, bear with me.
Here's somebody that's got a job, and he
works and he earns $1 an hour, $40
a week.
Now don't tell me that that's illegal.
I know that, but just accept my arithmetic.
He's got $1 and $40 a week, and
he hears you are being said to the
Lord, and he comes to you and says,
I'm going to put in $1 a week
for your support.
Now what is he giving?
Well, he's only giving 100 pennies.
What's he giving?
He only earns $40 a week.
What's he giving?
He's giving one hour of that work week,
but he can only work 40 hours.
There's 168 hours in the week, so round
it off.
He's giving four hours of his life on
your field as a witness for Christ through
you.
Now here's another chap.
Man, he's got a great job.
This fellow is making $10 an hour.
Unheard of.
I quit hourly wage when I got up
to $0.27 an hour in the early
40s, and I've never worked for a wage
since.
And I thought $0.27 an hour was
going to put me on easy street for
life.
At any rate, he's got $10 an hour,
and he sees a missionary, and he says,
I'm going to give $1 a week for
your support.
Now how much time, witness time, does he
get through that?
Does the dollar help?
The dollar does as much for you as
the other dollar did, but it didn't do
anything for him, did it?
Very much.
Because $10 an hour means that he's getting
one-tenth of an hour, which I understand
is about six minutes, times four is 24
minutes.
Now do you see why the Scripture says,
to whom much is given, from them much
is required?
In order to get the same balance, you
have to give more.
Well now, what if he gave $10?
He'd only get an hour, but the missionary
would get help.
More tracks, more travel, more witness, and so
on.
It would go into the Word.
Now suppose this person were to come to
the place that they made, and this is
unheard of, of course, nobody does that, they
made $400 an hour.
You think they don't do it?
You just wait till you get your bill
from your surgeon and see what he tells
you, or from your lawyer.
Those boys know how to charge.
They had a graduate course in how to
charge.
That's all right, I don't mind.
If they can get it, that's good.
I'm going to come along right behind them
and say, now here's the collection plate, here's
your opportunity to have a witness and wherever.
I don't mind how much they make, I'm
only concerned about how much they keep, you
see.
See God, right now, if everyone here that
earns money were to say, now Heavenly Father,
I know how much I need to live,
and I'm living comfortably now, and I'm going
to go into partnership with you.
I'll never take more money for my life
than I presently take.
I'll only increase it by cost of living.
Nobody does that.
Oh, yes they do.
Kwame Ndarko did in Ghana.
Kwame loved the Lord.
He believed the Lord didn't want him to
be a pastor or missionary.
He wanted him to be a chicken farmer.
I met him just after he started on
his own.
He had $978.
He got five acres of land leased to
him with water and light on it.
He went out in the bush and cut
posts, went to dump and get some old
wire, built the houses out of mud blocks,
and started a chicken business.
And I came to him then, he said,
I need you as a counselor.
I said, I'll do it as long as
I find you're doing what I tell you.
Well, he said, what's the first thing?
I said, the first thing for you to
do, Kwame, is the first dollar you make,
you give God 10 cents of it.
And from that time on, every dollar you
cut comes in on your gross, not your
net.
You give God 10 cents of it.
And then you sit down and you put
10 cents into another savings account for the
government.
Taxes, legal fees, anything, but it's just you
pay 10% to the Lord.
And I said, Kwame, what I want you
to do is do that at the beginning
of the week, not at the end of
the week.
What you anticipate God is going to do
that week, you draw a check for God
on Monday morning.
First check you draw, you make it for
God for the 10% of what you
expect that week.
And then you take 10% of what
you expect and you put it in the
other savings account for your taxes and government
expenses.
See, that's what Joseph did.
That's the law, rule of Joseph.
He took 20%.
And when I last saw Kwame, I said,
how's it going?
Well, he said, according to you, the appraisal
I got, I didn't ask for it, but
they brought it.
They say that my hatcheries, feed out pens,
processing plant, feed mill, and my vertically integrated
marketing and producing has an American price of
over $5 million.
I said, what are you doing about stewardship?
He said, I hate to say this, but
last year I fully supported 95 national evangelists
in this country and the two neighboring countries.
I have provided all the material for 27
churches and the people did the erecting.
I have provided all the material for four
youth camps.
And I'm spending 10% of my time
going around preaching.
He said, thousands of believers have gone into
the chicken business and are feeding themselves and
their families.
I met a man in Washington.
I was asked to sit in on a
conference.
He wanted to start a nice business in
Kumasi, Ghana.
I said, I'm not interested in being involved
with you unless you get Kwame Ndarko on
your board.
He lives in a house he's lived in
for the last 25 years.
He put a porch on it and he
put in a couple of rooms on it
and he drives an old pickup truck.
Remember the bargain he made with God.
He wouldn't take any more for himself than
he had at that time.
And he kept the bargain.
God's looking for people he can trust and
he can honor and he can use.
There will be partners with him in getting
this message of the redeeming love manifest in
the death of his son out to those
for whom his son died.
Make to yourself friends by the famine of
unrighteousness.
And when you fail, they'll receive you into
everlasting abdication.
You're involved in missions.
You're not going to have to give an
account to me.
Isn't that marvelous?
And I don't have to give an account
to you and that's marvelous.
But I must stand before the judgment seat
of Christ and give an account to him
of the deeds that are done in the
body whether they're bad or good.
You have a missionary conference.
You're never going to be the same.
You're either going to go on the vision
God's given you through the ones that have
spoken and shared their hearts or something's going
to come in.
But you'll never be the same.
You can't be the same.
By the way, did you know you can
never unring a bell?
Think about it.
And you can never unsee what you've seen.
You may not obey it, but you can't
unsee it.
Heavenly Father, you know the potential of this
people as they sit before thee.
You know the possibilities there are in their
lives.
You know the Christi Vos of the Covenant
Archon that's here, the very treasure, the one
that's saying, I want my life to count
for the very most for the Lord Jesus
Christ.
And so we're asking it in a very
special, real way.
The Holy Spirit will speak to the hearts
of those who are here.
And may it be that because thou art
here and they're here, that there will be
a nucleus in this church who are 100
% for Christ and are going to live
their lives in total obedience to him.
We give thee thanks for answered prayer in
Jesus' name.
Amen.