In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of having a burden for the world that is without God. He encourages the audience to bear the burden and care for others, believing that there will be fruit and new life as a result. The speaker shares a personal story of being moved by the burden of a Chinese preacher for his country, highlighting the impact of their ministry in opening churches in Canton. The sermon concludes with a reading from Psalm 103, reminding the audience of God's forgiveness, healing, redemption, and satisfaction of their desires.

Here, the word of God is found in the one hundred and third psalm. Will you stand with me for the reading of the scripture? Praise the Lord, O my soul, all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel. Will you pray with me? And now, our Father, we come to hear your word. Thank you for the privilege of being in your presence. Give to us your Holy Spirit now to speak in the depths of our beings individually, that we may hear your word for us. And we will give you praise through Christ our Lord. Amen. My text tonight came to me this week while we've been together. I'm not sure who it was who quoted it to me. But when he or she, whoever it was, finished, there was something in my spirit that said, that's what you're supposed to speak about on Tuesday night. Because you know, I was not originally scheduled for this slot. So I was wondering what God wanted me to say. And the text is that last verse that was read a few moments ago, where the psalmist speaks, and he speaks about Moses, and he speaks about the people of Israel. And the psalmist says, the Lord made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel. Now, there is no question but that Israel, ancient Israel, was the people of God. And God loved them and did some remarkable things for them. You will remember that when they were in Egyptian bondage, God looked upon them and had compassion upon them. And though they did not merit it because of any goodness within them, out of the compassion and grace of his own heart, he decided to redeem them. And so he sent to them this man Moses. And then in a succession of incredibly miraculous acts, God delivered his people from Egyptian bondage. A miracle so great on one occasion that a whole sea parted for them to walk through on dry land. And as their enemies moved in to destroy them, the waters came back and covered them. If there was ever a group of people in all of human history who knew the mighty acts of God, this people knew it. The only people comparable would have been the twelve apostles who saw the mighty acts of Christ. But the psalmist said he did one thing for the people of Israel. He showed them his mighty acts. But he did something very different from Moses. He showed him his ways. Now, the thing I want to say to you tonight is that to see the mighty acts of God is not necessarily redemptive. Because you will remember that every one of those Hebrews who saw the mighty acts of God, with two exceptions, perished in the wilderness. And were never able to see the land of promise that God had for his own people. They had no question about God's power. They had seen it, living witnesses to his power. But in spite of the fact they had seen his powerful acts, they never knew his ways. And it was the two who knew his ways that were able to go into the land of promise. And because Moses, on occasion, did not work and operate according to the Lord's ways, that land of promise was closed even to him. Now, I don't know about you, but I've always wanted to see the mighty acts of God. Who wouldn't? I've always enjoyed circuses and a lot of other things. And you'll forgive me for that reference. And I almost feel a bit blasphemous in even using it. But I simply want to say that the scripture says you can see the mighty acts of God and not know his ways. Now, if you turn to the gospels of the New Testament, you will find that that was the problem with the disciples. You will remember that it was after almost three years where they had seen lepers cleansed, they had seen lame people restored, they had seen blind people receive their sight, they had even seen the dead raised. And Jesus turned to his disciples and said, You don't understand me. You can't think the way I think. You've got the mind of the flesh, and what you need is the mind of the spirit. And I don't know about you, but I've come to the place where I have found myself saying, Lord, I'd like to know your ways, because the future is not necessarily in your acts. The future is in your ways. Now, I think that you can find many illustrations in scripture and in your life and mine where we're more concerned about his acts and somebody acting than we are his ways. First passage that comes to my attention is in that garden on Thursday evening of Holy Week. And Jesus has been praying with his disciples, and a crew shows up that they hadn't expected. And there is a bunch of Jewish policemen and a big crowd of Roman soldiers. And they move in to arrest Jesus. And Jesus looks at them and says, Whom do you seek? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. And he said, I'm he. Take me, is what he was saying. And they fall back to the ground. Now, I don't know what you do with that text. A lot of scholars try to find some other way of explaining it. I just take it literally. I think at that moment the glory of the Lord broke through, and those guys with their swords staggered back and fell to the ground. And Jesus stepped forward and said, Whom is it that you seek? And they said, We seek Jesus of Nazareth. And he said, I'm he. Let them go. And at that point, Peter said, Somebody's got to do something. Always beware of the person who says, Somebody's got to do something. Because almost inevitably, unless we have the heart and mind and understand the ways of Christ and the ways of God, we will end up in the flesh just like Peter, who in a moment undid all of his witness as to what Jesus was all about. You will remember that Jesus turned to him and said, Peter, put it up. If I needed that kind of help, I'd have no problem getting it. I could just ask my father, and he could send 12 legions, 12,000 angels down here, and they'd take care of these guys. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't think he'd need 12,000. If one authentic angel showed up in my crowd, that'd be enough. But now Jesus says to Peter, Peter, put it up. That's not my way. I came to sacrifice myself. I am not looking for people to protect me and demand that I get my rights. I came to sacrifice myself. And Peter says, Lord, you've never understood, have you? And that's what we've said. Now, you know, what kind of person is it that God wants, and what does it mean to have the mind of Christ? I have located five passages in the Old Testament that I've never seen discussed together. But they're very interesting passages. We don't have time to go into all of them tonight, so I'm just going to tell you. You can, if you want to chase me down and you will not remember them, I can cite them for you and identify them. But let me tell you, in every single case, you have a situation where there is great tragedy. One of them is a passage where all of evil has broken out in the very city of God. Jerusalem is in such tragic, moral, spiritual shape that somebody says you need to light the lanterns at noon, because darkness reigns everywhere. And God says, I looked for one person, and if I could have found one person, I could have turned it all around. Now, that's the 59th chapter of Isaiah. If you read the 50th chapter, you'll find the same thing. If you read the 63rd chapter, you'll find the same thing. If you read the 5th chapter of Jeremiah, the first verse says, and God is speaking to the city of Jerusalem, the holy city, the central city of the church. He's speaking to the holy city, and He says, if I could find just one person who would do right, I could forgive this city of all its sins. Isn't that astounding? God says, if I could find one person, I could forgive this city of all of its sins. Now, the 5th passage is in Ezekiel 22, 30, which probably most of you know, where God is talking about the tragic evil of His own people. The princes are corrupt. The priests don't know the difference between the holy and the unholy. The political figures are looking for opportunities to fleece the people to their own advantage, and the ordinary people are no better than their leaders. And God says, I look for one person to make up the hedge, to stand in the gap so that my judgment would not roll over my own people. And I could not find one. Now, it's very interesting that in the 59th chapter of Isaiah, when he is discussing this, God says, I look for one person, and I was astounded. It's interesting when God gets shocked, isn't it? Do you know it takes people like you and me to shock God? Because He's acquainted with most things. But God says, I was astounded when I could not find one. Now, when I got those passages together and realized that God said, if I could find the right person, He would change my circumstances. It's interesting. I want God to change my circumstances. But God says, I'm looking for somebody who can change my circumstances, and I couldn't find one. Did you know that you have the potential in you to change God's circumstances? Do you know that every person made in the image of God has the potential in him or in her to change God's circumstances? And God said, I looked for one and couldn't find one. Now, when I got to that point, I was very interested that the next line in that 59th chapter of Isaiah says, and when I could not find one single person that was what I wanted, He said, my own arm brought me salvation. And I thought, ah, good. That was His power. His own mighty arm brought Him salvation. And suddenly I remembered something. That's the 59th chapter. In the 53rd chapter, He identified who His arm is. Do you remember how the 53rd chapter of Isaiah begins? Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? And then begins the greatest picture of Christ found anywhere in the 66 books of Scripture. So that when God in 59 says, so my own arm brought me salvation, the prophet says, you ought to know who that is because I told you six chapters ago. And who is it? It's interesting. He was one who was wounded for our transgression. He was bruised for our iniquities. And the chastisement of our peace was upon Him. You see, that's not what I think about when I think about the arm of the Lord and the power of God. That wasn't what Peter was thinking about when those soldiers moved in to arrest Jesus. He was ready to pull his sword and said, I'll show you a little power. And Jesus said, that's not what I'm after. Because, you see, my way is the way of self-sacrifice. And it's interesting, nobody was saved with Peter's sword. But the possibility of a world being redeemed came out of the self-sacrifice of Christ. So the prophet says, God said, my own arm will bring salvation. And then who is He? Now, with that in mind, and we could spend several hours on this, and we don't, so let me leapfrog through here, I began saying, what is there in that picture of Jesus in Isaiah 53 that lets me know the kind of person He's looking for? Well, it's interesting. He was a person who was remarkably like us. Did you know that salvation didn't come from heaven? I used to always think of salvation coming down this way. Do you know where salvation for us took place? It took place in a city whose name we know, and in the country in which it rests we know, and the section of the earth we know, and we even know pretty well the date, and we know whose body it was in which that salvation was worked out. We know the name of the one whose blood was shed and whose body was pierced for our redemption. And He looked remarkably like you and me. In fact, He was so much one of us that the most common name for Him in the Gospels is the Son of Man, which means really an ordinary mortal like you and me. He was one of us. Do you know I now am convinced that all salvation comes this way instead of this way? And if there's nobody to start with this way, then God needs somebody to change His circumstances. Now, I don't know about you, but that staggers me and frightens me. But as I look back across human history, I don't find many cases of God zapping people this way. I find going this way. And you say, well, now, wait a minute. Remember the Apostle Paul on the Damascus Road? The light shined down on him. But do you know what had been going on in his head and heart for the days? He remembered old Stephen as Stephen was dying, looking at him and saying, Father, forgive him. He doesn't know what he's doing. And as he stood over the execution of that man, that man forgave him. And that's the means that God had of getting to old Saul of Tarsus' heart. Now, what is the kind of person that we get pictured in Isaiah 53? It's interesting, the Hebrew word which is used in Isaiah 59, God says, I looked for amafgiah is the Hebrew word, and it means it's translated an intercessor. The word isn't used many times in the Old Testament, but significantly it's used twice in Isaiah 53. We could stay and dwell on this, but let me just shortcut things. You know where it is used most tellingly and most revealingly? It's in the sixth verse. Now, hear this. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to our own way. That's our sin. And the Lord, and our translation says, has laid on him the iniquity of us all. But the Hebrew literally says, and Yahweh, the God whose name we know, has caused to meet inside him the iniquities of us all. I hope you will remember that line. All we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to our own way. We've done what we wanted to do, and the Lord brought an answer. And what was it? One person. And who was he? And the Lord caused to meet in him the iniquities of us all. And so our redemption started in the heart of that person like us who was hanging on a cross. Now, hold on. See if you can hear what I say. At first it may seem very trite, but hold on. Do you know that I don't believe that anybody's salvation ever starts in his own heart? I don't believe that the redemption of anybody ever starts in himself. Now, we could go into a long disquisition on our sinfulness and our self-centeredness and original sin, but the bottom line is that you and I are so lost in our sins that we can't even wish salvation of ourselves. If it hadn't been for Christ, not one of us would have ever really known he was lost, nor would we have cared. It's when we found out about him that we began to get a picture of our need. But I want to take that a second step, which for years I didn't take. I know that the redemption of us all started in Christ, but that really isn't true, is it? Because before Christ, it started in the heart of the Father. Because you'll remember, Jesus wouldn't have been on that cross if it hadn't been for the heart of the Father. So it started in the heart of the Father, and then that love broke into the heart of the Son, and then that love that was in the heart of the Son, God put in somebody else's heart. And that's the only reason you're here tonight. There's not a one of us here who is here because he decided he wanted to be a Christian on his own. I think the case can be made that every person sitting under the sound of my voice, his spiritual life had its possibility, the origin of its possibility, started in somebody else's heart. And if we had the time, we could go around, and I could tell you in whose heart mine started. And some of you could tell me in whose heart yours started. Now, that shouldn't be shocking. Did you know there's not a person in here who decided to live on his own? There isn't a single person here who decided to be born. Every person here is here, has life, because somebody else decided to give it to him or her. Did you know that the only creature that has life in himself is the eternal God? And all the rest of us received it as a gift, and our physical life is parabolical of our spiritual life. The same way somebody else did something and decided, and you got physical existence, if you know Christ in spiritual existence tonight, it started in somebody else. Now, do you know what that means? That means that the key to somebody's redemption lies inside you. The key to your redemption lay in somebody else. And God has put within you the key to the possibilities of somebody else's redemption. And that's the way the gospel spreads. That's the way salvation goes. So my basic question to you tonight is, what are you doing with the key to somebody else's life? Because you've got it, and I've got it. Now, what is it that makes it possible what happens in one person's life that makes it possible for change in somebody else's life? Let me say, nobody changes on his own. Nobody changes on his own. Don't kick anybody if he's not changing. It may be that somebody else hasn't changed to make his change possible. That's the reason that we can't be judges, because if the key to one guy is in somebody else, don't kick the guy that hasn't changed if the other guy's got the key. And I want to know what we're doing about the keys that are in us to other people's redemption. God's been talking to me saying, Ken Law, what are you doing about the keys that are inside you to other people's redemption? Now, what is it that makes it possible, what happens in one heart so something can change in another person's heart? You'll forgive John Oswalt and I, but we're old Hebrew teachers, and he's not an old one, but I'm an old one and a former one. Do you know what Jesus was doing on the cross? He was forgiving our sins, wasn't he? Do you know what the Hebrew word, the most common Hebrew word for to forgive is? It's the Hebrew word nasah, and it means to bear. B-E-A-R. Surely He has borne our sicknesses and carried our sorrows, our diseases. He has taken our sins into Himself, and He has borne us in His own heart. Did you know I noticed that's the language that we use for birth? See, my mother bore me, and I wouldn't be here if she hadn't borne me for nine months. And you wouldn't be here if somebody hadn't borne you for nine months. And because she bore me, life became a possibility for me. What if she'd quit bearing me? You see, that's the sin of abortion, because when you quit bearing, you take somebody else's life away. So He bore us within His heart. Do you know that I think I'm right that biblically the Father bore the world in His heart? And the Son sent the heart of the Father, and the Son began to bear us in His heart. And as He bore us in His heart, He sacrificed Himself for us. Now, what does it mean to bear? I think it means to come to the place where somebody else's well-being is more important than your own. Do you know that a woman can't bear a child except at danger to her own personal existence? If you were to go across the earth tonight, you would find that there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of women that lose their lives in childbirth. To have a child is an expensive proposition. It interferes with your normal existence. All of you ladies who've been through that experience, you can remember some of that. The trauma, the discomfort, the inconvenience, at times the embarrassment, sometimes maybe even a bit of humiliation. A glory in it, but it's also the negative side. And if you've been through it, that other person is here because his or her well-being was more important than your good looks and your trim figure and more important than your comfort and more important than your ease, because the chances are you went through excruciating agony to give your child life. And that's what happened to Christ on the cross. And that's the only way anybody ever has the possibility of redemption, is when somebody else gets to the place where the other person's well-being is more important than his own. Now I want to ask you, who are the people in the world whose well-being is more important to you than your own? And if there is nobody in the world whose well-being is more important to you than your own, you are the most essential of all sinners, because, you see, that's the kind of God he is and what are his ways. The divine way is self-sacrifice, in which somebody else's well-being became more important to God than his own. And then Jesus, after the cross, on that Easter Sunday evening, showed them his hands and his side, and he said, as the Father has sent me and I have born you, now I am sending you. I'd like to ask what your burden is and for whom your burden is. Do you know, I've never known any great movement of the Spirit that did not come out of somebody's heart. Some of you have heard me tell of an experience that I had a number of years ago. Bill Ury was with me, and the two of us were in Macau. I was speaking in a pastor's conference there, that little tip of land on the coast of China controlled by Portugal. And we stayed in a Baptist missionary home, very gracious, loving people, wonderful people. One day, the man in the family turned to me and said, Kenloch, would you be interested in seeing Robert Morrison's grave? And I said, Robert Morrison's grave? And he said, yes, Robert Morrison's grave. I said, is Robert Morrison buried in Macau? And he said, oh yes, he lived his life here. I'd forgotten. So he took me into a Roman Catholic cemetery and took us to where the grave was. The water level is so high in Macau that many of them are buried above ground. And so his grave was above ground and it had the slabs of stone so that it was sitting like, you know, a stone box on the surface of the ground. And I stood there and looked down at the top slab that had his name and his birth date and his death date and the epitaph on it. It's very interesting. I've had the privilege of traveling a little bit, and I've visited a few so-called holy places, and some of them I was delighted and it was a privilege to be there. Some of them didn't mean a continental. I visited one or two holy places. It angered me. But I stood there side of that slab of stone and looked down at the inscription of Robert Morrison and found myself swept by an unbelievable tide of emotion, totally unexpectedly. And I began to think, Ken Loft, why that flood of emotion? And then I realized. You see, Robert Morrison was sort of the, he was an accountant, sort of the equivalent of a CPA in our day. He found Christ and God said, I have some work for you to do. And Robert Morrison said, what do you want me to do? And he said, I want to put China on your heart. And Robert Morrison said, all right. And you know, God won't put a burden on your heart if you don't want it. Robert Morrison said, all right. And God put the burden of China on his heart. So he went to China and they kicked him out. And when they kicked him out, he could have said, God, I tried. But he said, Lord, do you want me to continue to carry the burden? And God said, yes, I want you to continue to carry the burden. So he said, well, I don't want to go back to England then. So he got a job in Macau with the East India Company as an accountant. Periodically, he'd go into China and they'd boot him out again. He was looked upon as a foreign devil and told he was there. When he found he couldn't get into China, he decided he couldn't get China off his heart. And so he started translating the Bible at night. And he worked a full day. And then at night, he would learn Chinese and translate the scriptures. Periodically, he'd go into China and they'd boot him out. And then he'd work harder at translating the scriptures. Now, it was interesting, all his life, he was persona non grata because the East India Company didn't believe in missionaries. And furthermore, he was a Protestant. And Macau was pagan and Roman Catholic. So he was a person who was alone socially. The day came when he died. And when he died, there was no place to bury him. Because, you see, he was not a Chinese and he couldn't be buried in a Chinese cemetery. And he was not a Roman Catholic, so he couldn't be buried in the Roman Catholic cemetery. And so a man who had been rejected all his life couldn't even find a place to be buried when he died. And after a few weeks, one of his friends negotiated with the archbishop and they sold to his friends one lot in that Roman Catholic cemetery. You know, it's hard to believe some of the things that all of us have been guilty of in the past, isn't it? But there he was buried in that one plot of ground owned by his friend, just big enough to bury him in. And I knew that story of a lifetime of exclusion and discrimination against and rejection. But the burden in his heart for China was such that he couldn't let go and go home. Now, I think the reason that moved me so profoundly was Bill and I had been just recently into Canton. This was 1982. They had just opened up four churches in the city of Canton. And we sat in a church that night and listened to, I suppose, a 76-year-old Chinese preacher do a 45-minute Bible study. And a friend of mine, an OMS missionary who spoke fluent Cantonese, sat behind me and translated into my ears. So I heard the Bible study. It was a magnificent hour. I looked around at that church in a country solidly Marxist, you know, just recently opened churches, four in that massive city, and there must have been 250 to 300 people there. And at least 60 percent of them were under 30 years of age. And what's significant was that in 1982, it had been 31 years since Mao took over in China. So the great mass of that crowd had found Christ in a Marxist state hostile to Christianity. So afterwards, I had tea with the pastor, we had tea with the pastor, and I looked at him and said, Sir, am I right about so many of these people being young? And he said, Yes. I said, How did they find Christ? All he said was sort of a smile on his face. They're children of believers, or else they're friends of children of believers, or else they're friends of friends of children of believers. Because, you see, there was no church and there had been no church for 31 years. These people had been saved without a church. And do you know what was the heart of it? It was the family Bible that those families were built around. And as they read the scripture that Robert Morrison translated, the work of God went on. I don't know, one of the most moving moments of my life. And I thought, Yes, when God gives you a burden, you ought to be careful what you do about it. One, if you're a follower of Christ, He'll give you a burden. Two, if He's got one for you and He has, you ought to be very careful what you do with it. Because, you see, and this is the third thing I want to say, do you know what a burden is? It's like a pregnancy. Do you know what a pregnancy is? A pregnancy is a promise. Don't stop the pregnancy. Live it out and there'll be a new life. And the world will be different. Now, you know, I believe God has a burden for you. I don't know what your burden is. That's not my business. But there's supposed to be a part of God's work that's in your heart, that you've been impregnated with, and you're carrying it. It may be the salvation of your family. And if it's your family and you don't bear them, who will? It may be the salvation of your spouse, your husband or your wife. And if you don't bear that spouse, who will? It may be the salvation of your grandchildren. Because if grandparents don't care, who will? It may be your neighbor. It may be the person with whom you work. It may be the people within your church. It may be your community. It may be some remote place like Nepal or Tibet. I don't know what God's burden is for you, but God has a burden for you and God has a burden for me. And the incredible miracle is that when I say, Lord, put your burden in me and I bear it, then there is the possibility of eternal fruit. Because, you see, the reality is the reason eternal fruit is possible is because it's not your burden that you bear. It didn't originate with you because you and I didn't care that much. You see, we were locked in self-interest until Christ came, and it was Christ that broke the reign of self-interest in us so we could care. And when the burden comes, it comes straight out of the heart of Christ, and He says, I will let you share in what I feel. You know the story of Amy Carmichael, concerned about the temple girls that were given to prostitution, disease and all the rest. And she began to pull out some of those girls to educate them and train them and to get them back into normal life. And there was one that she had been working with, and the Hindu temple had taken her back and she had lost her. And so she went to the Hindu priest and she said to him, Now you're a man of God, you're a priest. I'm sure there's compassion in you. And if you'll give me that girl, I'll educate her, make her a respectable citizen in India where she can contribute to her country. And she said, I could tell by the gleam in his eye and the hard lines in his face that that girl meant money to him and his temple, and he had no inclination to turn her loose. Right at that point, Amy Carmichael was in trouble with everybody else, and so he was just the last straw. The Hindus didn't like her because she was fighting their religion. The British mercantile interest didn't like her because she was upsetting the Indians. And the missionary colony didn't like her because she was upsetting the rest of the British. And so she was excluded. And as she went home that day, she said, I've done everything God can ask me to do. I've done my best. It's not my problem. And she went to her room and got on her knees and said, Lord, it's not my problem. I've done what I can do. And she said, then I saw a vision. She said, I saw him kneeling. But he wasn't kneeling under olive trees. He was kneeling under Indian tamarind trees. And as I watched him praying the way he prayed in Gethsemane, the great tears were streaming down his cheeks. And as he prayed and wept, he looked at me and said, That's right, Amy. It's not your problem. It's mine. I'm just looking for somebody who'll help me bear it. And Amy said, Forgive me. Forgive me. I'll take the burden back, and I'll bear it as long as you bear it. And out of that came a stream of Christians and Christian workers, girls whose lives were transformed and touched the life of India. Now I want to know if you're bearing the burden Christ wants you to bear. I don't believe God brought you to Wilmore just to have a good time. It's been a blessed four days, hasn't it? But you see, his heart breaks for a world that's without him. I want to say there's promise in it. And if you take it, if we can meet this way next year, you'll come with stories of the fruit that has come out of that burden bearing. Because there'll be some births somewhere along the way out of this kind of bearing and caring. And do you know, that's one of the reasons I believe in the crucial importance of having a pure heart, because do you know what happens? If my heart isn't pure, I decide which burden I want to bear. And if it's my burden, that's sterility. The only burdens that are going to be fruitful are the ones that are his burdens that come out of his heart. And it's until you and I get cleansed from our self-interest that we can let him put the burdens in us that we're supposed to bear. Now, that's what I felt God wanted me to share with you tonight. I think I've done what I was told to do. I don't know if you're going to do what he's telling you to do. Let's take these closing moments and bow our heads together and build an altar where you are. Bow before him and say, God, tomorrow afternoon we're headed home. We've been on the mountain. We've sensed your glory. Now, what's the burden you want in my heart? Because there's new life that will never exist if I don't accept the burden that you have for me. With our heads bowed and eyes closed, let me share with you just one quick story. There was a Methodist young man who was 17 years of age and could barely read and write, almost illiterate. And God saved him. And after he saved him, he called him to preach. And he said, God, I can't preach. I'm too ignorant. And God said, I can help you get educated. And that young man became an evangelist. And one day he was riding on a train and God said to him, I have a burden for you. And he said, what's that? He said, I want you to start a college. And he said, Lord, I'm not even educated myself. How can I start a college? And God said, I want you to start it. And sitting in the train depot, the train station in Lexington, Kentucky, scared out of his wits as God laid the burden on him, he said, if that's your will and there's no other way, I'll accept it. He went home and went to his wife and knew that she would relieve him of his delusion. And he sat down with her and said, I have something to share with you. He said, I have this crazy burden to start a Christian college. And I'm sure it's a delusion. And she said, that's wonderful. I'm sure it's of God. And do you know that's the reason you're sitting in this chapel tonight? Because that was the origin of Asbury College and then Asbury Seminary. I want to know if you've got a burden. And Christ wants to know if you will accept his for you. So your life can bear fruit the way he wants it to. Now, Father, we stand in awe at the way you have us all hooked together. It was somebody else who bore me and made it possible for me to find Christ. And the key to other people rests in us. Lord, let us rejoice in that tonight and say, Lord, give me your burden, your concern. And then, Lord, make us faithful stewards of the burden that you give to us. Maybe something back in our hometowns, in our local church, in our families, in our businesses. It may be in the world at large, like we heard from Tom Hermes last night. But you have a burden for every one of us. Don't let one of us say no to the burden you have for us tonight. And we'll give you praise in Christ's name. Amen.