In this sermon, Gary Davies expresses his frustration and anger towards the lack of access to medicine for millions of children suffering from diarrhea. He contemplates various ways to address this issue, including reaching out to government agencies and opening an organization to provide aid. Despite facing opposition from some leaders, Davies emphasizes the importance of helping suffering children, particularly through education and providing simple health regulations. He also discusses the burden of inequality and the need for compassion and obedience to God's teachings. Additionally, Davies mentions the importance of prayer for upcoming conferences and highlights the simultaneous nature of different conference events.

Well, we've had some interesting news from the ship Lagos that certainly we pray about. Maybe you've heard it already on the grapevine. But they've had major engine room difficulty with one of the generators sort of exploding in the night. And it looks like this generator is now finished. I don't know how much you know about ships, but a ship's not even legally allowed to sail without that generator. Though, in fact, technically it can. So maybe we should just start with that little or big crisis and just pray for Lagos. I talked to Fritz Schuller. He spoke about nine times last weekend. And they're having a lot of encouragement in the ministry there in Germany. But they do now have this crisis. As you know, the Dulles already has mainly lame generators. Just really the trauma of the generators in the Dulles would get any but the most optimistic into depression. And yet somehow they're still going. But then all of a sudden Lagos to get into this camp is going to be quite a challenge for the ship. If you remember Mike Poynter who oversees all this, he's in the States on holiday. He got this news. And let's pray for Dave Thomas, chief engineer on the Lagos. And brother Jan, he's the chief engineer on the Dulles. He's a very dear brother from Singapore. Let's pray for the technical side. Often when we pray for the ships, we pray for the books and the evangelism and the street meetings. But let's pray for the technical side. I think it really helps me when I think of the Dulles. Here's a ship that if you went out to build or to buy today, you'd need about $30 million. So you just probably wouldn't do it. At least most of you on a weekend wouldn't get into that. And yet the Lord gave us this ship for less than a million dollars with all the certificates and sailing. So to have to put some other big money into it as we go along, and the same is true of Lagos, which we bought for $170,000 way back when. To put some other big money in it as we go along I think is just something we have to face. And it would be nice if the Lord could supply some big gifts specifically for the ship. So we wouldn't have this question, you know, do we send this to India or do we send this to the Muslim world? Do we just send this to the ships? Just a big gift for the ship, especially out of Germany or Switzerland. You know, it's so easy to handle. Let's pray for the technical side of the ship, the fuel. The propulsion ships are on the absolute minimum fuel. They can't go very far. In fact, the one ship is screaming for money for fuel and they're not getting it. That's interesting. We thought of a lot of things. Somebody in the meeting suggested nuclear power. Yeah. Somebody else in the meeting, I've got a letter with photographs of putting up a giant sail. I thought of all the LMers who don't see their finance come in sitting on the aft of the ship kicking their feet in the water. Okay, let's pray for the ships. We may pray for the ships more later on. But let's pray for this crisis of the generator. The Logos and the engineers, if you know any people by name in the engine room, fantastic time to lead in prayer for them. With Greg Livingston in route through to Cyprus, I thought it would be good to pray for Greg. Frontiers is now launched. This is a new mission that's grown out of the North Africa mission. And they have in preparation, I think, some 10, 15 or more teams, small teams to launch out to the Muslim world in the coming year. Let's pray for Greg as he's going to Egypt on this trip. Going to Bahrain, Cyprus, in connection with planning for these teams. Some of you are new, Greg Livingston is one of the really early members of OM, that was one of the first leaders of the work in the States, and then the leader of the work in Zabentem and Vienna, and the pioneer and beginning of OM in India. Then the Lord let him out to be the home director of the North African mission, and then to be the associate director in charge of NAM Associates, which has now ended, and there's been a sort of separation, friendly separation. NAM Associates has become Frontiers. So let's pray for the birth of this new mission that's already being born in Greg. Let's pray for this trip he's on right now, and we realize that there's so many people in the Muslim world whose needs are so overwhelming, so great, that certainly there's plenty of room for new ventures. But it's not easy, it wouldn't be easy for Greg, we want to really uphold him. So let's have several people, some of you know Greg. Sally, his wife, Evan, and what are the other children? Jean, do you know the children's names? David. David, Evan, and? Paul. Paul? Paul. Okay. They're all going on for the Lord. Three dynamic sons. Sally now has a degree in psychology and she's got a counseling ministry going on out there in California. All kinds of things happening with their very unique family. Well, for 18 months we prayed for God's man for Zabentem. And Norm Brinkley notified us this week he was willing to take it for the summer. We should have had the man. We went into an emergency situation over Zabentem many months ago. We should have had the man there before Ted left, but we didn't have the man. You can't just manufacture him. Norm Brinkley coming back from Sudan was willing to take it for the summer. We felt he made it very clear he couldn't take it. We thought I could stretch him at least through September. He made it clear he was leaving the end of August. He feels he must head back to Sudan and throw himself into the conference in connection with Sudan. He wrote me a very strong letter. In fact, the man he was after was Jack Rendell. He said, ICT, with all the leaders we have around ICT, can't we just basket somebody up and ship them over to Zabentem? And I had that letter in one hand and there was a lot of other letters. And there was a letter from a dear brother named Fred Perry. Fred Perry is supposed to be in Singapore, but he's not in Singapore because that job folded. And he's sitting in the United States wondering what in the world he's supposed to be doing. Now, Fred doesn't have much of a longing to remain in the United States. Even though Greg tried to recruit him into his California thing. I just got Fred on the phone. It was a long shot. He's very committed to the Muslim world. Zabentem, how does this fit into tent-making, Muslim world? Anyway, I called Fred on this gamble phone call. And he said that this is interesting because yesterday, the day before my call, he had actually been thinking into mentioning Zabentem to his daughters in Belgium. Fred is a person very loyal to O.N., very much believes, not only in O.N., believes in Zabentem. We talked on the phone. Of course, then I got Jonathan on the phone. Jonathan was, you can hear him almost dancing a jig in his heart. By the way, Greg Livingston said that Jonathan made a great impact when he spoke in California recently. About the U.S. Center for World Missions. And Fred was very, very open. Very open. And Jonathan talked to him. Then I got on the phone with Maiden. And then, of course, Hicks, Troper, Steve Hart, Edwin. The number of people you have to contact in O.N. just to begin to make a decision. It's still not final. And we want to pray because a big obstacle is the children's schooling. Julene is in 11th grade. She has to finish in the American system. She can't just suddenly pick up Flemish or French. Little Freddy, he's only eight, he wants to go to French school. Julene needs to go to American school. There are American schools in Brussels, but they're very hard to get into. And it's a little late. School starts soon. So they're working on that already in Zalminton today. The other daughter is Sabine. She's in 8th grade. So she would also really preferably need to get into an American. There is an international school also that I think has different systems. This is a great breakthrough. Again, it's not finalized because of this great education thing, which often has altered the very lives of families. In fact, Ted's leaving is linked somewhat with education. All that kind of thing. But let's pray because we need this man. Fred is willing to go this week. His furniture and goods are being shipped. He gets given quite a substantial money from his previous job. He has to shift then from tent making. He's been with OM all this time, but he's been in the tent making section. He has to shift back into, you know, straight from heaven support system. But his furniture and all of his things are all headed into Baltimore. And he just said, well, we'll just have to tell him to, you know, just put him on a different ship and send him to Antwerp. But it really was encouraging. Of course, I called him back and talked to him again. To see the Lord putting the pieces together in this unique puzzle. There are also, as you may know, many, many Muslims in Brussels. So it was a big opportunity for work among Muslims. I know they asked me in Zabentem, can they share this prayer? Of course, to the Zabentem group, I told them they could. So I think it's good to share it with you all here as well. Since many of you have been praying for a long time. For this, the right man for this particular slot. So let's have several people pray for Fred. His wife, Karen. And Sevim. Well, Juleen first, Sevim, and then Fred. I don't think they have the dog anymore. He had a very usual dog when he lived. He used to be on the ICT. But I don't know what happened to that dog. Oh, it was a cat. I do get those mixed up. Here's that in New Ashreen. If you haven't visited New Ashreen, you need to book into Neil Porter. He lives down in New Ashreen. Rolling countryside. Let's pray for Fred. And again, we need to see the Lord confirm this now. With some very real breakthroughs. Very real breakthroughs. So let's pray in that direction. Keep in mind this, at least at this stage, is a one year emergency measure. Just as it was when Dale Roton took that job. Mickey Walker took that job. And, you know, as it looks, Fred might be open to stay longer. But ideally, we would like to see a man raised up like Ted, who they put five or ten years into the gap. So keep praying. Again, the Lord may have a surprise. The Lord can lead us step by step. Another great prayer burden I have on my heart at this time is in connection with the coming conferences. And I thought it would be good if we could pray for these conferences. And if you have a pencil, if you like to keep track of things, you could write a few things down. Because I think it must be very difficult for new people to pray for these conferences. It must seem very confusing. You hear of coordinators conferences, field leaders conferences, new recruits, leadership training, seminars. You know, how do you put all this together? It's really quite simple if you get a few of the basics. One of the basics is that different conferences go on simultaneously. That's not, you know, that's nothing new. And it saves a lot of money if we can have all of our conferences at one time. A movement that's spread out throughout the entire world. We save a lot of money. And so we have a women's conference. We have a teenage conference. We have leadership training. And then we have leadership conferences which are geared toward fellowship and strategy and decisions and that kind of thing. Starting on the weekend, we have sort of a weekend of fellowship simultaneously with the field leaders meetings. The coordinators meetings, which are the main leaders of the work, that group got bigger and bigger and bigger. That's still where final decisions are made. It's now called the general council. General council meeting and the coordinators conference are the same. One is the old term, one is the new term. One is within the other. But because that group got bigger and bigger, there was a need for a lot of preparation for that. So there are many committees. Actually, I think there's only about nine official working groups. Peter Maiden likes to call them. They have meetings previous to this like the financial committee. And then we as field leaders, that's one person per field except when a field has specifically several countries in it. The Arab world field has Egypt. So they'll have Bertil for the Arab world and Clint Smith for Egypt. But this group starts meeting on Saturday afternoon through Monday. So that we want to target in our prayer. Then, right after that, the leadership training begins. This is for all kinds of people, both in and out of OM, who get three days, four days of intensive leadership training. There are all kinds of seminars. There are guest speakers. This year it's Mr. Goldsmith of all nations and his wife. She will be coming. And just as that conference sort of begins to end, the women's conference begins. And the teenage conference is in there somewhere. I don't have all the dates in my head. So we want to pray for all these conferences. And then as we go into the next weekend, so from this coming weekend, we have the main conference of all. It's sort of OM's parliament, sort of a modified democracy, tottering on a lot of other things. But we come together. Board members come in from different boards of directors. The field leaders are there. They're number one, number two. Men are there, number one and two women are there. And other longer-term responsible people. Some people are rotated. Some people are not necessarily in main leadership, but they're longer-term responsible people. They may go one year and not go another year. It's very difficult at times to know. You can't even be at these meetings. And, of course, a lot of people are just thrilled a bit so they don't have to be at them. It is, for many of us, it's sheer work. It's just work, work, work. There's some fellowship and blessings involved, of course. It's true. Every day, there's a lot of work. Because we're all very different. We draw leadership from 25 nations. And we're strong-minded, many of us. And we have, some of us, big mouths. And some of us say things that are not always the most edifying. And then somebody else tries to counter that, which is something they feel is more edifying, which may be even less edifying. And it can get intensive. We're only human. The leaders of any work of God are human. So we want the Holy Spirit to be in control. What happens in these meetings is felt through the whole of the land, one way or the other. There's no question about it. They're big decisions. The future of the ship ministry. The future of the ongoing push into the Muslim world. There'll be a lot of discussion about budgeting. How can we be more controlled in our spending and budgeting? This is Peter Maiden, who now coordinates this conference. The Coordinators' Conference and Field Leaders, coordinated by Peter Maiden. The program for most of the other conferences is under Nigel Case. But Peter's got about five or six major papers that have to be read. One of them alone is ten pages on budgeting. Jerry Davies has become a professional mental reader. He gets on a lot of committees. Pray for him. And all the other leaders will be there. Jonathan, of course, doesn't have the energy and the flexibility that he had. And yet he is very crucial in all of this. There'll also be meetings of the area leaders. The area leaders, it might be good to say a word about that. You can pray for them. Dennis Alexander over the Middle East. Alan Adams over the Far East. Myself over the subcontinent. Jonathan over Europe. The ships are treated as an area. George Miley over the ships. And the newest one we hope to bring into being during this conference is David Hicks as an area leader over Mexico, Canada, and the USA. A decision we've just about arrived to. And then the other thing that's going to be finalized in this line of things is Peter Maiden becoming the Associate International Director of OM. People have asked us for a job description. So we worked on that last night. We discussed it and I let him go write it. He's going to send it back to me and I'm going to sign it. Job description. Interesting. Words. We live in a world of words, don't we? We need the right words. So let's pray. I think we ought to pray in small groups for these conferences. Did I mention the Women's Conference? Let's pray for that. So oftentimes women are wrestling with their families on one side and the ministry on the other side and the husband on the other side and the children back here. They don't get as many opportunities for ministry as men. So let's really pray. This Women's Conference is a highlight. And Dr. Martin Goldsmith's wife, forgive me, I don't know her first name. Elizabeth. Outstanding woman is going to be sharing. I'm going to have a question and answer session. You better pray for me. And pray for Toast and Patricia Lee. Talk to Patricia Lee on the phone today. She's already over there. And other women who are holding that together. Really should pray for those who carry the practical burden of this conference. Case and Nigel and Hank the fighter in the stewardship. The galley. What do you call it? I'm laying in the kitchen. Okay, let's pray in small groups. Five or six. Let's be seated. You know, whenever we come into one of these meetings, there's so many things to pray about. One of the things really on my heart is to pray specifically for those of you who are leaving. Now, I know this may happen in other meetings as well. But at the terrific pace OM goes, we never get enough time and enough attention for each person. I noticed in a report from the ship I was praying over today that in the midst of all the fanfare, the captain's wife and her children just left the ship. Five, I don't know how many years of ministry. Would that be five years? No doubt they said goodbye somewhere. But her husband, the captain, had to sail it on to the next port. And then he went back to Finland to catch, to be with his family. So technically there's no longer term captain on the ship right now. Captain Krikov, who's on the German board of directors and has been captain, he's going to take it, I think, to the next port. When does it sail? Tomorrow. Tomorrow, wow. Did they go through the canal? No, they've been to the next port. Oh, right, okay. Is he taking it there as well? Okay. Well, what I want to do right now, I'd like those of you who are leaving within the next couple of weeks just to, one at a time, stand and just tell us, you know, one prayer request for your future. Where are you going? Of course, tell us where you're going. And one prayer request, and then I'm going to just ask one person to pray for you. It will take long, but I think it's really important. We'll start at this end. Do we have anybody leaving? Or, at this stage, I don't think we'll pray for people going into different teams. We know Ken Pruitt and his wife are probably going to go on the Lagos. We won't have a special prayer for that. People who are actually leaving, O.M., or going home on furlough. People like Mei Wei going home on furlough. Okay, who's the first to stand here? Good. I think it would be good at this time if we could just stand and sing a couple of... Remember, Lord Jesus, when he said, Suffer the little children to come unto me? What a beautiful passage of Scripture that is. I want us to have a session of prayer for the children of the world. I'll explain what I mean in a few minutes. I'd like Gareth to get ready, if you could, since I know you've been visiting teams in France, to give us some prayer requests for that. Belden. Belden, okay. That'll give you a little time to warm up or write down your requests or whatever you want while we're just looking at these verses and praying for the children of the world. First John, chapter 3. Where is John? He should be right after Peter here. There it is. At the communion service on Sunday night, I read verse 16. By this proceed we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us. We ought to lay down our lives. My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. By this we know that we are of the truth, shall assure our hearts before him. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart. It's an amazing verse. God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our hearts condemn us not, then we have confidence toward God. Whatever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. I believe it's pleasing to be gathered in his name tonight. This is his commandment that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as he gave us commandment. He that keepeth his commandment dwelleth in him and he in him. By this we know he abideth in us by the Spirit whom he hath given us. I was reading an article telling about the situation of the children in the world. It is really staggering to the imagination. Every year, millions and millions, tens of millions of children die from malnutrition and lack of medicine, lack of proper care. In fact, I think of diarrhea alone, dehydration through diarrhea, four million die. And this article explained that generally that diarrhea and dehydration could be solved very easily by a very simple mixture, I think, of I don't know, it's two or three things that are very easy to get. And it costs ten cents, five pence to treat. I guess that would be for a day. But in so many parts of the world, the refugee camps, the crisis areas, especially parts of Africa, they can't get that, not even ten cents. Or superstition keeps them from wanting that, or corruption keeps the things from getting through. There's endless problems. To try to blame one particular group of men, I think, is generalization because it usually is a cooperative effort on the part of humanity. It's interesting, I was reading another article on how people who just overly focus on themselves and always thinking about their own spiritual life and their own situation and how they can become more and more or whatever they're wanting to be, how oftentimes these kind of people become very separated from the real world. If you know anything about the history of Bible-believing Christians, you know that many, many Bible-believing Christians have been in that camp. Praise the Lord, many have not been. Right back to people like Wilberforce and before that. But it's a difficult area. If people would generalize about OAM, they would definitely lop us into the camp that might be concerned about people's souls but not too concerned about their body, which I'm sure at times is an area where we haven't had the balance. I think the Lord knows that oftentimes it's been our compassion over people's physical needs that have caused us to recommit our lives and want to reach them spiritually. Because we're more easily stirred, even those of us who may be somewhat spiritually minded, we're more easily stirred, many of us still to this day, by people's physical needs, just like this article, stirred me more than my quiet time on that particular day, and this was not in the Bible, this was in a news magazine. And I thought, well, what can we do about this? I find myself at times getting angry. I've got a new book on anger, it looks like this is what I need. Gary Davey said it to me. But I find that sometimes I feel so angry, I feel so frustrated. What can I do about four million children with diarrhea who need 10 cents worth of medicine? Who can I get a hold of? Can I phone government agencies? It's just not as simple as that. Should I go picket outside the United Nations? Should I open an organization to feed people? I sent out a memo about wanting to do more for the physical needs in Asia, and then several leaders shot me down completely. We couldn't get sidetracked into this. Though in the work among the refugees up on the Pakistan border, we are doing a very valuable relief work. We are helping suffering children. One of the keys is education. If people could learn how these simple health regulations, this simple little mixture, I wish I could remember it, that anybody could put together and give children, so their bodies will keep their liquids, and then give them a high chance to live. In one area, they put into practice, I think I was reading about a country in South America where they put in, we're talking about another illness now, they put into practice a particular health feature and they cut the deaths down from tens of thousands to less than a hundred. So much can be done. Now how can we pray about this? And we know prayer is practical. Prayer is not pie in the sky, it's practical. They're one of the great needs to reach these children of the world with their physical needs. And if these children die, of course you may say if they die before the age of accountability, we get into a very interesting controversy here. Do they go to heaven? Some of them die, of course, later on in childhood. Some do die young. But whatever the situation is, we want to minister to them, we want to help them physically and spiritually. And one of the great needs is manpower. So let's pray that the Lord will raise up people, even people in the secular world, who will go and help. Let's pray for government leaders, that there be more attention in governments for children and for these terrific health problems. Let's pray against the terrific corruption that keeps relief goods from getting through or keeps training programs from becoming a reality. Let's pray for doctors and nurses. Isn't it interesting that a high percentage of doctors seem to be largely motivated by money. Therefore they go to the countries where there's big money. Even many third world doctors are leaving the third world. They don't want to go out to one of these dirty little villages. They want to go to New York or London and make nice money and get in a nice house. And, you know, we're not going around judging individuals, but it is interesting, isn't it? So few are willing to go to the hard places. You know, one of my biggest fears for O.M.? Get real down to earth. One of my biggest fears for O.M. is that we'll lose our willingness to sacrifice. That really does torment me sometimes. In our effort to minister to people and take care of people and not have people having nervous breakdowns and show the love of Christ to the individual and be balanced and survive. My message on survivalship, I'm speaking to myself, that we'll lose our willingness to sacrifice. So here we are in a world where children can't get a proper diet, where there's still hundreds of thousands of efforts. Do you know that? I think there's millions of lepers here. A lot of people think leprosy is gone. Well, we had leprosy agencies for years. Certainly they got rid of all the leprosy by now. Leprosy is still a major worldwide plague. How would you feel if tomorrow you discover you're a leper? That'd probably ring a few bells in your little head. And yet, the fact that millions of others have lepers, barely can we get a prayer for lepers unless somebody gets up and gives a leper cheer, like I'm giving tonight, gives a special call, let's pray for the leper. We should be praying for these people without any prayer requests. We should not need to be wound up by challenges and prayer requests, films, slides. Though Praise the Lord uses that, we're not against that. But what about when you're on your own? You should be continually praying for these things. Yet people come here, I don't know what to pray about. But people say about our extended prayer meetings, what do you pray so long about? There's so much to be done. And prayer is work. And tonight we can release finance for these children across the world. We can send out workers. We can see government agencies brought into line in terms of organization and efficiency. And there are many other things that we can do. Relief goods that may be held up. And prayer tonight could release them. A lot of times they're held up if somebody's waiting for a bride. And they sit in a warehouse under unbelievable red tape and corruption, and the rats are eating the food. And we can pray against superstition. One of the big reasons now for illness among babies across the world is the women in many third world countries and African countries have turned away from breastfeeding because they've been sold baby milk formula by the big milk companies. Because there's big money in that. The major international scandal. And it's more or less proven that really in most countries, most situations, breastfeeding is the safest way to go. God knows what he's doing. And yet they can't get these ideas out of people's heads. And so a lot of children die because of that. You know, if it's been in our own family, just the death of one baby, I had to counsel a woman who had a number of children, and one of her own babies died. And I will tell you, this woman, she was bordering on total bitterness against God. She was going through traumatic things for several years. And I felt for her. That's one baby. In a country where she has other children, and where there's a lot of other things, like the fact that all the other children have a healthy diet, and all live, and many, many other blessings. And you know, in these countries, many women have nine out of ten of their babies die. It used to be worse. Let's pray for the children of the world. Let us not be found as the Bible-believing Christians who are concerned about world evangelism, but not concerned about people. There's got to be both. There's got to be both. And we can't do everything. I don't think we can become a major relief operation. We can train workers who will join relief groups, and we have many ex-womers in relief work. And maybe we can pray for those relief agencies. We all know relief agencies. Let's pray for them. They need tremendous wisdom. It's very difficult what direction to go. Certainly there's a strong need for more education, and less direct handouts. More education. Training people to train themselves. Training people to help themselves. Let's pray in that direction a little bit. And let's remember that God doesn't expect us to become ascetics, but it does say that if we have this world's good, and we see our brothers in need, and we know that some of these children are children of believers, many are not, we have this world's good, we see our brother in need, and we don't do something about it, we don't open our hearts to compassion, then how dwelleth the love of God in him? This is one of the reasons that I felt, as a young Christian, the only way I could, at least the way I lived before God, the only way I could survive and feel obedient to the New Testament was to forsake all. That didn't mean I took my trousers off, but it meant I gave everything to God, and after that I wanted to live on only what God wanted me to live on. And the Lord, of course, supplies. The Lord supplies so that we can minister to others. But it does seem that we have so much. So much, and others have so little. It's such a great burden, such a great burden. Maybe we just pray as one group.