In this sermon, the preacher discusses the encounter between Jesus and a rich young man as described in Mark chapter 10. The young man approaches Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus responds by reminding him of the commandments, which the young man claims to have kept since childhood. Jesus then tells him to sell all his possessions and give to the poor in order to have treasure in heaven. The preacher emphasizes the importance of fully surrendering to God and letting go of anything that may hinder one's relationship with Him, whether it be wealth or other attachments.

I had to go to prison because they believed in Jesus, so I knew that some people suffered for Christ. I didn't know about suffering with Christ, and I don't talk about this very often, but I think it's important that you understand this, because if you want to share in Christ's glory, this is the challenge which He's offering you, and you can live your life how you like. You can live your life knowing Christ, or knowing about Him, and it will be fairly ordinary. If you choose, if you deliberately choose to walk the path which He offers, which is to take up His cross daily, to lose your life, that you might gain His life, to die to yourself, that you might be raised with Him, to share His sufferings, then you will share His glory, and your life will never be ordinary. It will never be boring. You'll find you won't be full of sorrow for your own problems, but you will start to be interested in others. You will start to understand what it meant that Christ suffered. When He was on the cross, just imagine, just imagine what it felt like for a moment to be hanging there, and with an awful, awful cry of agony and loneliness, to call out to His Father, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And that was real, because His God had forsaken Him. He was alone. He was cut off from His Father, and He had chosen this. He chose it because He chose to bear suffering, He chose to bear our sin. But He knew before that it was coming. Look in Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 12. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus. He scorned the cross. He scorned the shame for the joy that was set before Him. Those are wonderful words, aren't they? For somebody who bore all the sorrow that you've ever felt in your whole life upon himself, and the rest of the world's sorrow too. For someone who bore all the pain that you've ever felt, multiplied by every person in the world, at one awful moment, for someone who was cut off from His Father God, in that searing moment of agony, to scorn the cross. That's nothing, that's nothing, that moment of agony, in comparison with the joy that was set before Him. For He knew that by taking this shame, this suffering and this pain upon Himself, He was thereby making the way for you and I to have life. He lost His, that we might have life. What an extraordinary story. Think of Jesus' life. Think what it must have been like. I mean, at one moment, there He is, with a woman who's bent double. And He speaks with her, and He says, Woman, be straight. And there she straightens up. Can you imagine what she felt like? After years of walking around, doubled up. My, I bet there was rejoicing, and clapping and dancing. She who was crooked has been made straight. And that one who'd been bleeding for years, their issue of blood was dried up. Can you imagine that woman who, sorrowing over her son who had died, and having no husband, had her son restored to life? The joy, the joy of that man who picked up his mattress and walked. The joy of those who were blind and were touched by one who cared about them. He didn't read them a sermon. But touched them, and He saw. It must have been extraordinary to have been around Jesus. What moments of joy. And yet on the other hand, we know that He had moments of great sorrow. There were times when He wept, and He cried, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I would have gathered you under my wings, like a hen would gather her chicks, but you would not. And He wept for those that He loved. Well, He knew He had an answer for all mankind. And it hurt Him to see those who would not come. If you ask Him, if you're prepared to give up feeling sorry for yourself, and the problems which you're involved in now, if you're prepared to give that up, to take up your cross, and to follow in the way of Christ, I believe that He'll begin to give you that kind of heart, that kind of heart that weeps more over the suffering of others, that kind of heart that is more concerned that others should know words of life than with your own problems. For Christ considered not Himself. He considered the will of His Father, scorning the shame. He endured the cross for the joy that was set before Him. And this is very much what St. Paul said too. He said, Whatever was to my profit, I now consider a loss for the sake of Christ. What's more, I count everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, but I may gain Christ and be found in Him, knowing the fellowship of His sufferings, and then to attain to resurrection. I remember the first time I went back to England. I'd been in Hong Kong about four years. It had been a very busy four years and many things had happened. Got intensely involved with people's problems there. And I went back and somebody said to me, What's the cost of doing something like that? What's the cost in your life? And without thinking, I said, There's no cost. It costs nothing. Nothing. What you give up is nothing in comparison with the joy that you have in serving the Lord. Me? I lost nothing. Was that difficult? No. Not for a moment was it difficult. Because when you look back at the hard times, well, I can't remember them that much. I mean, I know that there were some hard times. I imagine it's a bit like people having babies, you know. At least this is what my twin tells me. She had a couple some time ago. And she never talks about her birth pains. She just talks about her children. And I guess people are like that. They forget the birth pains or the joy that there is life in the world. And during all these years in Hong Kong, I've been there nearly 17 years now, there have been, I think there have been times of great pain. I think there have been, I know there have been nights of weeping. I know there has been agony and perplexity. I've wondered and not understood things. But you know, you forget those fairly soon when you see lives being changed for the joy that Christ changes lives. Who would remember the sorrow? Who would go around saying, what a cost to my life? No cost at all. It was nothing. A rich young man came to Jesus. His story is in Mark chapter 10, verse 17. As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and he fell on his knees before him. Good teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Why do you call me good? Jesus answered, no one is good except God alone. You know the commandments, don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't give false testimony, don't defraud, honor your father and your mother. Good teacher, he declared, all those things I've kept since I was a boy. And Jesus looked at him and he loved him. One thing you lack, he said, go and sell everything you have and give to the poor and then you'll have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me. At this the man's face fell. He went away sad because he had great wealth. And Jesus looked around and he said to his disciples, how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. For there was something between this man and God. He had tried to please God, I think, in the way that he lived his life. I'm sure he had. I'm sure he'd tried to keep the religious rules because it says Jesus looked at him and loved him. And I believe that man was trying to be honest when he said, yes, I've kept the commandments. But Jesus knew that there was something in between that man fully committing his life to him. In his case it was riches. And so he said, go and sell everything. And the man was sad, not prepared to go quite that far in serving the Lord. But all of you, you're invited to go that far. And if it's riches that's cutting you off from following Christ, then you should go and sell everything that you have, everything, and follow him. You'll feel awfully good when you do. You'll feel terribly free. And he'll give you back much, much, much more. That's not why you do it. But you will, incidentally, receive back many, many more times than you ever gave. And you wonder, what was it that kept me so long? What was it that made me hold on to that thing that I was keeping from giving up to the Lord? It may not be riches. It may be someone in your life. It may be a relationship, even, that you feel is good. But if it stops you from following the Lord with your whole heart, give it up. He gave up his life for you, no less. And that's what he's asking from anyone who wants to be his disciple. Peter said to Jesus, we've left everything to follow you. I tell you the truth, Jesus replied, no one who's left home, or brothers, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or fields for me and the gospel, will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age. Homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and fields. And with them, persecutions. And in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first. Fairly early on, when I got to Hong Kong, I was introduced to a place called the Walled City. And I didn't know where I was going. A missionary asked me if I'd visit there, and I thought it was a little tourist village, sort of quaint and poor. So it was a surprise when I got there to find that there was no wall, although it's called the Walled City. There isn't, in fact, a wall anymore. This is because formerly, most Chinese villages were walled. Rather like Jericho, they had houses built into the wall. And still in mainland China, you'll find little villages like this, fairly small, usually one family living, or one big clan living in each village. And this is what the Walled City had been. Last century, when China leased part of Hong Kong to Britain, you probably know that she's leased the new territories to Britain until 1997. When it should be returned. But right in the middle of this leased land was the Walled City. And they, at that time of the agreement, refused to come under British law. They said, we've always had our own governor, our own Mandarin, so we're not going to come under this new thing. So for some reason, they were allowed to retain their own Mandarin. Later on, he died, and China never replaced him. At this, this was about the end of last century, Britain said, after all, we think we'll have that bit put back into the treaty. And China said, what treaty? This is interesting for you to know. It's only Britain that says she has a treaty with China until 1997. China thought she was tricked into the whole thing. So she was not about to remove an exemptive clause about the Walled City. So from that time until now, it's been a place officially without law. Well, if you ask British lawyers out there, they say, actually, it's really, it's really British. And if you ask the Chinese, they say, actually, it's really Chinese. Meantime, it hasn't been officially governed, and it's meant that the government could not supply it with water or electricity or any of the things that most of the rest of Hong Kong has. So I was surprised upon arriving there to find, first of all, there was no wall because the Japanese took the wall down to build the runway for the airport. And the other surprising thing is that the street where I went in, where I was taken, is full of false teeth because they're all unlicensed dentists in that particular street. And they learned from a friend or something. And nobody's got a proper license. So they all practice in that particular street because it's outside the law. So as you walk past, the whole street is sort of smiling at you. Anyway, if you know how to get in between a couple of these false teeth shops, you can get into the Walled City. It's very strange when you find yourself in there because it's dark. From the outside, it just looks as if it's a tall, an old block of flats. But inside, you realize you're in a sort of underground city. And I was taken down this narrow lane. It was about two feet to three feet wide. And it got darker and darker and darker. And the person with me said, be careful where you walk because the sewers were open underfoot. And there is no proper sewage system. They've just got open ones running through the streets. Most of the streets are just two or three feet wide. And I think the widest is probably about five or so. So there are no cars or anything inside. It just feels like being in a honeycomb but not so sweet. And you can't see any light because they've built the buildings so close together that above the first floor, they're nearly touching. They're like card houses. One is holding up another and is holding up another and is holding up another. And they're so anxious to use up all the space that there is because Hong Kong is a terribly crowded place that you may have a space just 10 feet by 10 feet and they'll still put up a building sort of 16 stories high on that little space and just put it up. They can't pile in there properly. They can't lay proper foundations because they can't get machinery in. So they dig a few feet down and then stick up a concrete block sort of leaning onto the one next door. So the whole city is like that. It's really, really peculiar. Well, I was taken in there and the missionary said to me, will you come and teach in my school? So I said, yes. And she had a little primary school in there for very, very poor children and I began to teach them percussion band. And it was good fun because I played the accordion and I conducted with my feet. And the most important thing was to tell them how to stop. Once we got that in their heads, it was fine. It doesn't matter what language you do it in. But while I was in there, going in for these band sessions, I began to learn the streets and I began to get an idea of what was going on. And one really disturbing thing was that the place where we were having the band was just a very small room. I kept seeing men passing by and I knew that there were a couple of girls who lived upstairs in a kind of shack just next door to where the band was. And those girls you never saw unless they came out. They were always accompanied by two old women. And later on I found out that those were young prostitutes who'd been sold and they were kept up there as sort of prisoners and they never were allowed anywhere without those old women who were looking after them. And the old women were the ones who sat in the street and they'd sit on old orange boxes in the street and solicit. And they're not beautiful so they had to try to attract them in different ways. And as I began to learn Chinese I could hear what they were saying. They were saying 她好漂亮, 她好靚 She's very cheap and she's very beautiful. 她好好生, and she's very young. And they would wait till the men came out of the Blue Film Theater just down the road and then catch them. And that was the only way those poor women earned their living too because having been too old for the game themselves there was nothing else they could do except look after young ones. And so there they were sitting there miserably. There was the Blue Film Theater hardly like a theater it was just like a tin shack too. And some of the young boys from the school began to sell tickets in there and they were just 14 and 15. And then further down the road there were the gambling dens. And those had men sitting outside too. Most of these places had watchers or tin men which means a weatherman. And they were there to watch for strangers. And I discovered that there were 48 tin men all the way around the edge of the wall city too guarding who went up and down the streets. Because although the police didn't go in in those days except occasionally a very large party went in on raids the wall city was in fact governed by its own leaders who were called triads. And a triad is a sort of illegal society. It was historical in China. The old ones felt quite noble too. In fact if you're interested Sun Yat-sen was a triad. He actually began a branch of the triads in Hawaii. So there are some old triads that feel very noble about the whole thing. They feel they're there for the brotherhood of China and they band together to look after one another. And a kind of accurate description of the triads would be a kind of cross between the mafia and the masons. Not at all dissimilar. They have secret poems. They have secret hand signs. They're bound to secrecy. They're not supposed to tell whose members. Once you're a triad you're a triad forever and you've taken these oaths. In fact if you try to leave there are curses. They drink blood when they join. They mix their blood and they sacrifice cocks and various things. And once somebody has joined he follows somebody who's called his dailo, his big brother. And he becomes the silo, the little brother. And what the dailo tells the silo he will do. And so if the dailo asks the silo to go and fight he will do so without question. If the silo gets put in prison the dailo will make sure that he has protection inside and money and food and drugs and whatever else he needs. And if the dailo gets murdered the silo will make sure there's a collection taken and the widow is looked after. That's why they feel noble. Because to some extent they do look after one another. Well they employed these watchers outside the gambling den. They were not terribly effective, these watchers because they were usually so stoned on heroin that all they did was sort of hang their necks down. And then around the corner there were the opium dens. And when I first went there were 32 of them there. Which is quite a lot because the area of the walled city, I haven't told you is about six acres. I don't know whether you do acres in this country anymore but it's about a third of a square mile. And that's a rather small area for 32 opium dens. And when you think that the population of the city is 60,000 it's scarcely credible because there was only one lavatory in the whole place too and that had no running water. Everything else was put into the sewers where the children would empty the pots in the morning. Anyway, the opium dens, you could recognize them because of the sort of sweet smell. When you pass by it's very sweet. And once it gets up your nose it sticks there for several days. And later on I was to find the heroin dens. These things I learned about gradually and it grieved me that there were these young girls who were prisoners. And I used to work out ways that I could get to talk to them but the only way that I ended up that I could have seen them would be to have paid by the hour to talk to them. And I didn't actually have that much Chinese myself at that time. And many of these people and the young boys selling tickets in the Blue Film Theatres they'd never known any other life. They never played football or went swimming or anything like that. They lived in a dark city. And they thought that was life. And I thought it was no life for them. Especially when I went into a heroin den and saw on one occasion about a hundred people. Now to be invited into a heroin den you need to know somebody who is in the know inside. And I was invited in by somebody who's called a Peng Ju which means the lord of the hut. And he was sitting at a table and around it there were about ten men. And you brought your heroin outside the hut and you went in there and for 50 cents he'd give you a matchbox cover and some toilet paper and some silver paper. And you heat the heroin on the silver paper with the toilet paper as a spill underneath and then inhale the fumes through the matchbox cover. And I went in there and it was really strange to see. The whole thing looked like a kind of demonic feast. Just like a hundred devils sitting there all puffing away and sucking away at this terrible stuff. And as I looked around I knew that half of them were going to die. Many of them had to live off women in order to survive because they couldn't pay for their heroin otherwise. Others would rob their mothers of everything that their mothers had having already broken their hearts for things. And others would either have to work in protection rackets or go out and stick people with knives every day in order to get the daily supply. And I can remember seeing all this and saying Oh Lord, it would be worth my whole life if you'd use me to save just one. And I rented a little room in there because I thought that it would be good if we had a place where some of the young people could come and do something even neutral. Because there was nothing else except the brothels and the gambling dens and the opium dens. There was nothing even neutral. So I opened a little room and I used to ask them to come in. I had tried to tell people about Jesus, you know. But it hadn't worked. It hadn't worked at all. Because I knew that Jesus had died on the cross for me. I knew that he had forgiven my sins. I knew that he had forgiven me. And I knew that anyone who believed in him could have a new life. And I was longing to tell all these people down there stuck in that stinking hole, You know, you can have a real new life. You can start again with Jesus. I just didn't know how to get it over. Because, you know, I used to stop by the men outside the gambling dens and I used to say to them, You know, Jesus loves you. And they said, Why don't you run off? And so I thought, I'm going to do this with real feeling. And I found a little prostitute. And all she ever does is to squat over a sewer. And she squatted over the sewer, actually for years and years and years, waiting for people to come by. She was really miserable. And she couldn't read. And she didn't have a radio. So she just used to squat there and wait. And I thought, It would be wonderful if she could know about the Lord who loves prostitutes. You know, that one. That one who welcomed one in the middle of a dinner party. So I went up to her. And I said to her, Jesus loves you. And I put my arm around her so she'd understand the feeling behind it. Really, Jesus loves you. She was so frightened that she nearly fell into the sewer. She backed away from me. And she said, in return to me, She said, You don't know who I am. You made a mistake. Oh dear, you don't know who I am. Nobody told you. You made a mistake. And she said, I know you're one of those nice people, aren't you? You're one of those Christians. And nobody told you what I do. Nobody told you who I am. Oh, you shouldn't touch people like me. And I realized that she was not embarrassed because I touched her. She was embarrassed because she thought I'd made a mistake. I touched the wrong person. You see, she was prostitute and I was Christian. And Christians didn't go around touching people like her. And I found out that's what they all thought. I used to stop people in the street and I said, Well, do you know about Jesus? And they'd say, Oh, I'm sick, dear. I can't read. And what's that have to do with believing in Jesus? They said, You can't be a Christian if you can't read. Well, obviously not. Christians carry around a book. And so I'd ask somebody else, Do you believe in Jesus? And they'd say, I don't have time. And they weren't being rude. I said, What do you mean you don't have time? You know, you don't have to have time to believe in Jesus. They said, I have to work on Sundays. And no days off. Working right every day in the week, 12 or 14 hours a day. They probably do it in your takeaways here. They really work. And no time to go to church, so you can't be a Christian. And somebody else I would ask, Do you believe in Jesus? And they'd say, I don't have any beautiful clothes. And I found that very few people understood anything at all about Jesus Christ. A lot of them knew quite a lot about Christians. Christians could read. They carried around a big book. And they had Sundays off. And they had a pair of shoes that they wore to church. But who Jesus was, they had no idea. Well, I thought, you know, we got it all the wrong way around. There we were in our nice, sweet little churches, praying for the sinners to come in. And the poor sinners would have no idea what to do if they did come in. Well, why not do what Jesus did? Because he didn't sit in a sweet little church waiting for the sinners to come in. He went out into the streets. And he got criticized for it, too. In fact, I reckon he'd have been sitting on one of those orange boxes. You know, next to one of those women. And maybe he would have allowed them to wash his feet. That's what he did when he was on the earth. And it seemed that we had got it wrong. So when I opened my little room, this is what I tried to do, to go out and meet the people where they were instead of expecting them to come to my little church. And I arranged meetings. And we were always arranging meetings. And I remember the day I arranged a meeting and no one came. I mean, this frequently happens. And I was really disappointed. Nobody came to my meeting. Well, I thought, as I stood there. And the rain was falling down between the buildings. And it sort of was dripping on me. And you're never quite sure what is dripping on you in those streets. You know. And the place was stinking with those sewers. And there were more rats than people. And there was I in my little room going to have a meeting and no one had come. And I said, Well, Lord, I really don't have to stay here. I could go back to Kensington. Because in Kensington they have apologetic Bible study groups and dinner parties afterwards, you know. And I can believe in Jesus and go back to Kensington, you know. I don't have to stay down here in this filthy place having meetings that no one comes to. And at that time a Chinese girl who came to help appeared. And we prayed together. And as we prayed I had a message in tongues which is simply having a message from God in a language which I hadn't learned. And she had the interpretation. And the interpretation was this. I tell you the truth. No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age homes, brothers, sisters mothers, children and fields and with them persecutions and in the age to come eternal life. It was funny because I'd read that before. I knew the text. But I'd skipped out a bit of it. I knew perfectly well if you left your country and your mother and your father and your sisters and all of that I knew you had eternal life. I knew that. But through this interpretation of the message in tongues I heard that God was actually saying he would give me a hundred times in this life. Right, God, I said. Business. Then I think I'll have a hundred mothers and a hundred fathers and a hundred homes and a hundred sisters and a hundred brothers because that's what you promised. Persecutions too. And that's what's happened. He's given me all well well over a hundred brothers and sisters. We were getting a bit short on the mothers. But the fathers are coming up a bit now. We're lagging a bit. And the homes are just about beginning to open. But I'm expecting a hundred of those eventually because that's what he promised. You see? You give up nothing. Fancy. You leave yours and he promises you a hundred more. A hundred times more. What do you lose for following Jesus? Nothing. You lose a rotten life and you gain his wonderful life. So the cost? It's nothing. I remember having walked down one of those drug dens and seeing a man with bones sticking out of his body. And he was the thinnest, most miserable one that I'd ever seen. His name was Johnny and his eyes sort of popped out of his head. And I remember thinking, if that one gets saved, anyone can get saved. And I began to pray, Lord, please, will you help me so that I can start gaining these brothers and sisters and so on. Now, shortly before the time that I told you that I had a message in a language that I hadn't learned, I'd been to pray with a couple of Chinese people that I had met in a chapel one day. And it was very strange how this came about. It had happened because I very much wanted to be able to preach Jesus in a real way. You know, I was going around saying, Jesus will feed you, Jesus will clothe you, and he can heal you. But nothing happened. I was just saying the words. And I really wanted to lay hold of the power of the Holy Spirit like the disciples who, when they went out, touched the sick and they were raised up. And they saw miracles accompanying the word that they preached. I just had a problem finding people in Hong Kong who believed. There were thousands and thousands and thousands of Christians and millions of people who knew their Bible. But I just couldn't find people who believed, who actually believed that the things that Jesus said we would do in his name, we should be doing. And, you know, it seemed to me we were giving people poor exchange. We were told to go out and to heal the sick. We were told to free those who were oppressed. And instead of that, most of us were handing out tracts. Not a poor exchange to give people bits of paper instead of healing or instead of clothes or instead of food or instead of the love of the Lord Jesus. There we were, giving them Bible verses. Most of them couldn't read the Bible verse. They sort of looked puzzled, you know, as you leave them with a bit of paper. They had no idea what this was all about. And Jesus never left anybody with a bit of paper. He went and fed those who were hungry, even when there wasn't much food going. Five thousand of them ate full because he blessed what they had and broke it. So I was longing to see this happen and that's why I had, when I met this Chinese couple, asked them to pray with me. The reason I asked them to pray with me was that I'd taken one look at them and knew that they'd got whatever it was that made things happen. I couldn't explain it any better than that. You know, they just sort of looked shiny. Anyway, they prayed for me and they had laid their hands upon my head, somewhat reminiscent of my confirmation time. And they had encouraged me to speak in a new language. I thought this was terribly rude of them, actually, because they kept saying, now you speak, now you speak. And I thought, hmm, I'm not going to do that. If God's going to give this to me, God's going to do it. So I kept my mouth firmly shut. Actually, it was really silly of me because I was longing to have a new language from the Lord. I thought it would be wonderful if you didn't know how to pray, that he'd actually give you his words, that he'd give you his words to praise and his words to pray for people when you didn't know how. I just wasn't going to do it when they told me. So I sat there on the seat and this really annoying couple kept going on, now you speak, now you speak. And I thought, ooh, this is terrible. And the worst thing was that they had prepared two plates. And one was a plate of flannels. This was for me to weep into. And the other was a plate of oranges. This was Chinese celebration. This was for us to rejoice into after it happened. And all the time, you know, when they were praying for me, I was thinking, oh, how awful, how awful. They'll be so upset. We won't need either plate. And, you know, I was thinking, how can I get out of here? I was so embarrassed. Well, finally, I opened my mouth really because I wanted to say, help God. You know, this was a terribly embarrassing situation. I was sticking to the seat. And when I opened my mouth to say, help God, of course, he was able to give me a beautiful language. And that was quite interesting. But I was still very embarrassed. So I ran home and wondered when I got home what to do with it, you know. And it was sometime after that that I met some people who encouraged me to pray in it. And I was not too willing to do this, you know. I said, I don't really feel particularly good. I thought the whole thing was a washout really, you know, because I had read about some people who had this gift. And all the people I read about, you know, sat on mountaintops for weeks or, you know, flowed with love and joy and power, you know. And I didn't get any of that. You know, I just felt embarrassed. And, you know, it's quite an interesting language, but, you know, I don't feel very close to God when I pray in it. So they told me that I was very rude. And they said, it says in 1 Corinthians 14 that if you pray in the Spirit, if you pray in the words that the Spirit gives you, you will be built up. It doesn't say you're going to feel built up. So do it. And they had encouraged me to do this in private, of course, which is how this gift should mainly be used. And as I did this, I found that God gave other gifts when I was with other people. And such as the time when I was with that girl in the walled city and I had a message in tongues and she had the interpretation of the tongue, which was for my comfort, which was for my encouragement and upbuilding. And I found that when we met with other Christians, He was giving one a prophecy and another a word of knowledge and another a gift of healing. It was wonderful because these gifts He was giving us was to encourage us and to build us up in the service of God. And I also found that as I began to pray myself without telling anyone, it had an amazing effect on what happened as I walked around the streets.