This sermon emphasizes the importance of living a life committed to Jesus, inspired by those who risk their lives for their faith. It challenges listeners to prioritize prayer, fasting, and serving others, highlighting the urgency of sharing the Gospel with those who have never heard. The speaker shares personal stories and practical recommendations to encourage a deeper dedication to God and His mission.

We get the opportunity to have KP Yohannan with us. He is the head of Gospel for Asia. And like KP, in the next week, we're gonna have to be very careful on what we share about some of these pastors. In America, it's getting more and more difficult to stand on truth in this culture. We recognize that. But around the world, if the wrong thing is said here and then Facebooked out or multimedia out and the name is given, when people get home, they face death. Do you understand? That is the way it is. And so in the next week, you're gonna have an opportunity to hear and interact with people who have risked their life for Jesus. And that should do two things. First, that should inspire us. And secondly, that should motivate us to be like that. People who are committed to Jesus that much. KP has written 250 some books. We'll let you know a little bit about those books later on in the service. But his books, one of his books is the standard for missions across the world. And he is a friend and he is committed to the Lord Jesus Christ. And he has risked his life for Jesus. And we're gonna invite him out right now. KP, we're gonna pray for him. But I want you to know that KP does not mess around with immense words. So if you are a little bit, you know, soft, let me just say this, get over it. Let's pray. Thank you. Thank you, Lord, for KP, for Gospel for Asia, for the people that are here that are ministering around the world. Lord, I pray you'd wake Americans up to the truth. That we would be rocked out of our comfort zone and be committed to you in every way. Pray that the hearts of every person here today would be opened. Give KP the words to say in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, you must know Duck Dynasty hired me to promote their style. Good to be here. I really, really look forward for being here. Your senior pastor, Pastor Jim, someone that I came to know and love and value him and appreciate him so much. And so the little time we have, I don't pretend that we're gonna have a deep, some great teaching here. That's not it. If I could say, we just wanna have a dialogue and a conversation that might be more useful in some ways. You understand my English? Wow. When I first came to America in 1974, happened to be in Dallas, Texas. I was going to college there. And no matter what I said, those nice people would say, can you repeat what he said? What did he say? And in the end, this fellow student listening to all this, my turmoil, you know, he's a Pennsylvania. He said, oh, KP, just don't worry about it. You speak English and they speak Texan. That helped me a lot. How many Christian radio stations do you have here? Four, five? In Dallas, I don't know how many right now, but at least 15 years ago, there were some 14 full-time Christian radio stations. Now I imagine it must be a lot more than that. And one time I drove a car from California to Texas, a 2,000 miles trip. And from the start of the journey to the end, I could listen to Christian radio stations. No matter which way you go, you get something like, you know. Of course, you're all kind of preaching. Some real weirdo preachers are there. Send me your money, I'll send you oil to put on your head, bald head. Your hair will grow out. And then you have the most conservative, Chuck Smith or Chuck Sendall. I mean, so many conservative preachers are there. Music that blows your brains out, Christian rock, they call it. And soft music and contemporary Christian music. You cannot think about that's anything unusual. But think about this, think with me. A country like India, 1.2 billion people live in the country. What's the population of America, anybody know? 340, 350 million people. And that's three times more the number of people or more just in that country. Then you take Bangladesh, then you take Afghanistan and Pakistan and those regions and those Muslim countries with a billion people. Would you believe if I told you there's not one, not one Christian radio station in the entire country of India? How many of you have a Bible? Even if you didn't bring one here, would you raise your hand if you have a Bible? Everybody hand went up. Now, if you keep asking how many Bibles you have, you may have King James Bible, this, that, that. I mean, did you know that 99% of the Bible produced, it is an English language? But did you know also that half of the world have never seen one page of the Bible? Now, I'm not trying to put you on a guilt trip or make you feel bad or anything like that. I just want you to think with me who you really are. Who are you? You can say, I'm Polish, I'm German, I'm American or Indian or Albanian or Russian or American, whatever, or you know, whatever. Or you can say, I'm a follower of Christ. And that is your title, your designation. If that be the case, how we must live in our world. The world is not, you know, like what you see there, the world is people, for God so loved the world. And the little time we have in this life, how we must live knowing who we are. Now, if you went on a vacation to Mexico or Israel or India or, you know, Germany, I can assure you, you go there with the minimum things you need to carry and of course, you know, one suitcase or whatever, and when you're coming back, you're not carrying like 100 suitcases. And you've been there for two weeks and you're coming back because that's not, you're going to live. I mean, I look and see so many gray head. Some of you got black head, which means you may put more ink on your head. But nevertheless, the fact is that some of us are getting older. You know, there's a book back there you can pick up from my table. David will tell you later about that. Revolutionary World Missions, one of my books. And on the back of the book, there's two photographs. Both are my photographs. And one that was taken when I was 17 or 18. I mean, it's a movie star, handsome dude. I mean, but then next to that is another picture like who I am now. And I say to myself, 17 and 65, whatever happened to time, it just closed your eyes, it's just yesterday. When you go home, look at your high school book or the books you have from your childhood and pictures and see what happened. You can pretend whatever you want. You can get new nose and new hair and new ears and everything else, but that don't change nothing. We just got a brief time here on earth. And my brothers and sisters, how we must live, it is given to us by the one that we are going to meet very soon. Some of us sooner than others, but all of us will. And just like coming back from other country after vacation, we brought nothing into this world, nothing we take with us. If that be the case, what do we have now that impact eternity? And when we see the Lord Jesus Christ, we will have no regret for we lived as he lived on earth. And the best thing I can tell you in this pursuit and knowing the Lord is you read the four Gospels, which you do, but don't read it to study and explain theology. No, it just basically telling us his life on earth. And you'll find, for example, Matthew five, six, and seven, we call it what? The Sermon on the Mount. By the way, that is not true. When he saw the multitude, it says he called his disciples, come here, let's sit down and talk about something. And he talked about a different world living. But then after that, he takes them on this journey, chapter eight and nine, where they're actually running into, oh wow, that's my water from last night. They're running into lepers, blind, crippled people, and desperate people all around them. Then when you come to the end of chapter nine, you read this classic verse. When he saw the multitude, he was moved with compassion. That simple language he broke down must be weeping. He couldn't stand on his leg. And the disciples write about it 30 years later. In other words, he says, these are people lost. They're harassed and abused and helpless. No, we have 38 centers or ministry among the leper colonies. Millions of people affected by leprosy. And these sisters and brothers work among these people. And there is no caste, no religion, no creed, nothing. They are all forgotten, forsaken people. And you see Jesus seeing these people. And he was broken up emotionally, and he couldn't handle it. Am I like him? With the world that is so in front of my eyes in the living room? Have you ever seen that photograph in that magazine, Life Magazine, about a mother? She's skin and bones, her ribcages are sticking out. You can count them all. There's nothing she's wearing on the top of her body. She's basically just skin over the bones. And she's holding two babies. And those babies are naked, but tiny little babies. It's like they're dead babies, but they're not. They're skin and bones. And the caption reads, she is trying to make a decision which one she must allow to die. Because there's nothing left in her to take care of these two babies. Ultimately, they're all dying, obviously. Please listen to me. I have no agenda to get anything out of you today. But I'm so afraid you are living like any worldly people in the society for yourself, for your health and wealth and future and your dreams. And you don't even see the deep agony of God. You don't feel it. The news is just news. 200,000 people dying in Bangladesh overnight in a typhoon becomes another news. It is no more to make you fast for two, three days and cry out to God on the behalf of the suffering people. Or 1.5 million people homeless in Nepal after the earthquake. You are still thinking about buying your new car, the new dress, or planning how to buy new toys for your kids or grandkids. It's not wrong to have nice things in life. I'm not talking about that. But is there a place in our life where we can be human? Jesus, for a lost world, through our prayer and commitment and going and doing something. Why you want to go to Holy Land for a vacation? Why you can go among the poor, heap of suffering people in Mexico City and live on the streets and take your kids and help them to see the reality of flesh and blood and desperation and let you be and your kids become Christ again. Can't we do that anymore? Is the Christianity we have is real or it is a man-made religion which are all going to be burned up anyway? And the reason I'm here is to not condemn you because I know a day has come in this country, obedience is misunderstood as legalism. There's tons of books on grace, but you know how you know God? Jesus said, if you obey my word, my Father will love him and will make himself known to him. I cry out to you to think about a world out there, two billion people that don't have the Bibles, don't have the privileges. How can I explain this better? Maybe let me have you look at some pictures of brothers and sisters in some parts of the world reaching out and touching the lives of these people and how maybe you and I can pray and be part of it in this lifetime before it is too late. Can you have those pictures? Shimmering water, steamy jungles, and rustic huts, an amazing hidden paradise, at least at first glance. These are the Forgotten Islands. Although they look like an exotic vacation spot, there's no luxury here. The villagers will never go to a mall, taste an ice cube, or drive a car. Instead, they'll fish, bathe, and wash dishes in the same stagnant ponds. Even worse, they'll drink from them. There are no schools or medical clinics, and the people have never been taught how to keep clean, so there's a lot of sickness and death. Life seems hopeless, but a team of 18 Gospel for Asia missionaries is changing all that. Traveling on boats from island to island, these men are bringing the light of Christ into the darkness of these hidden waterways. Taj, the leader of the team, is determined to take this message of hope despite facing persecution and death threats. It is not we who have been doing ministry, but it is God who have been doing ministry through us. The islanders have formed a close-knit society, and foreigners aren't easily accepted, but through the missionaries, God has begun to lower social barriers. As a result, Taj and the others have developed personal relationships with hundreds of villagers, allowing them to share the Gospel openly. ♪ You're the one When our Benjamin brother holded her leg and when he began to offer the prayer, she was completely moved. And then she told, you know, you are my son, you are like my son. And then Benjamin replied, you are like my mother, you never worry about anything, Jesus will believe. Her family members only firstly, they came to believe in Jesus. Now she's around 100 years old. We began to pray, and then God opened the door for this Bridge of Hope Center. Then I began to pray, Lord, we start at least 20 Bridge of Hope Center in this island. In this coming generation, should be the generation of Lord Jesus Christ. I began to pray that they may have enough resources of water. God has answered the prayers for clean water. Instead of drawing water from stagnant ponds, fresh water now flows through Jesus wells. These island inhabitants have seen the true love that the missionaries have for them and are eager to learn more about Jesus. In less than two years, 44 islands have been reached and 66 thriving Christian fellowships have been planted. In fact, on one small island, every single villager has decided to follow Christ. The Lord is working through these missionaries in miraculous ways. Everywhere these brothers go, people are saved, even the boat drivers. Yet there are still many islands where the name of Jesus has never been uttered. These people are hungry to hear about the Savior and they need someone to tell them. As Taj and his team rejoice in what God has done so far, he and his team pray that more missionaries will hear the call to go to these hidden people. The question always is, thank you, thank you. You know, the amazing thing about this whole thing, those precious brothers that you see, you will meet them someday. Not only that, you will meet tens of thousands of people from all these nations that came to know the Lord. What an incredible joy it was for me to just read that email and see some pictures from our missionaries that left their homeland, Burma, and went to Laos and Cambodia, living there for years and leading people to Christ, having planted several churches. But I may never see those brothers in person, nor the believers, but I know someday when I get to see Jesus, there will be multitudes and no man can number around the throne. Why? Because today, wherever he may be, the Lord placed you here. Live the way the Lord would want you to live as aliens, strangers, and pilgrims. Don't belong to this earth and the culture or whatever that is destroying us from being like Christ. There are four recommendations I will give, hopefully practical applications you can take and do something with it. One, I don't know about this church, but wherever I go, I recommend more and more now, stop a lot of Bible studies, but convert that hour or hour and a half for prayer. We cannot know the Lord intimately, nor can we be used by him without understanding the meaning of time with God. Average Christians spend less than eight minutes a day in prayer. Can you imagine you spend eight minutes with your family a day and think that you can know them? No one. How can you know God without spending time with him? Add more time to your prayer life. Seek to take a day of the week for fasting and prayer. By the way, if you fast one day of the week and pray, you die, you please let me know. I can assure you the Lord give you the grace, but the reason I'm saying this to you, we are six boys in my family that I grew up back in India. My mother used to spend three, four hours a day, early morning hours alone in prayer, and she never revealed this to anyone. One of her prayer was that out of six boys, one of them would go and preach the gospel. Every Friday for three and a half years, she fasted and prayed specifically for that one prayer because although she never disclosed that to me or anyone, and I'm the result of her prayer. You are agonizing about your children, grandchildren, your family. Counseling is very good. Books are good, but nothing is going to take the place of being with God. And get a world map, and we have a world map on the table, and you can see there, pray for different countries of the world. And ask the Lord to give you grace to spend an hour or two and learn what it means to be alone with God. Turn off everything. Have some silence and solitude. And the world is going to be one, not just with the money. That's one of the tools we can use, but through prayer. You read the book of Acts, you'll find that. Number two, when half of the world go to bed with empty stomach and naked bodies, my brothers and sisters, you don't need to buy a lot of new things that you're dreaming about. I'm not trying to tell you what you should buy or live with your car, that's none of my business, but I can tell you something. When life is over, you will have no regret. When my mother died at the age of 84, we boys thought she must have left huge amount of money in the bank, but we found out there was not a penny. But we found out in her notebook, month after month, all the money she was sending to dozens of Bible school students and missionaries, and at last will, she said, when I'm dead and gone, the only thing I will leave behind, it is my earrings, my wedding ring, and the gold chain my husband gave me when he married me at the age of 19. Sell these items and give the money to preach the gospel among people that never heard my Jesus name. I want to meet them also in heaven. I was one of those sons who was angry at her many times, for not buying new clothes, but she saw something beyond impressing people, her friends, and love of materialism, and today I don't think she's sitting in heaven with Jesus saying, I wish I bought new things for myself. I ask you to be sober and be responsible as Jesus lived. Number three, if the Lord calls you to go somewhere, give your life to serve here or anywhere, don't be afraid, life is very brief, and before you know it, and some of you are saying, like George Burns in his song, I wish I was 18 again. You will never be 18 again, I will never be. Time is flying by, don't waste it, and give your life to him. There are people who do not know Jesus, I tell you, you already heard about that, don't wait and serve him. Number four, the reason I show those pictures to you, we got thousands of brothers and sisters being trained and sent out, and when you look at that, how are they able to do this? I tell you how, someone like you here, somewhere who heard these stories and said, I want to give my prayer and my resource to support those brothers to go and preach the gospel, and when you go to the table back there, you will find a little card like this on our table. I'm not forcing you to do this thing, the Lord speaks to your heart, you do that. Oh yeah, you can see that picture. You know the guy like that, I know him. He came from a Sikh family, that's a Turban man, and when he came to Christ, his family kicked him out. With the clothes on his back, he left home, never, never to be accepted by his family. But what happened, he went to a Bible school and got training, today he planted five churches. But how did he get the training? How did he go out to the missionary field? I'll tell you how it happened. It is because someone like you said, I will pray for a missionary. I cannot go there and live there. I cannot be in Vietnam maybe, or in Afghanistan, or Pakistan, but I can help them with as little as $30 a month. You can join in helping one of those missionaries, and when you sign this up and bring to the table, they actually give you the real missionary, their testimony stories, and frequently you hear from the mission field what they're doing, how to pray for them, all that. And when they plant a church, being self-supporting, you don't need to give them money anymore. You can support other missionaries. There are people who support five, 10, 20 missionaries. There's a medical doctor I know who said, I'm a surgeon, and I think he has 50 some missionaries he supports, he said, I'm so glad I go to the hospital, I make money, and the money is going to help 50 people preach the gospel from Fort Wayne, Indiana. That's not from here. So I encourage you to take this card, take a minute, and on the back of this, you don't have to give any money to get these missionaries today. You can send that on later, and every money, every penny you give, actually go to support the missionaries. And my mother, not only her prayer got answered in calling me to serve him, but also I wonder now how much she realized of the tons of people that have come to Christ through the young people, missionaries that she was giving money to without telling any human being. And I pray that whatever the Lord give you to do, that you will do it as unto him because you love him. Life is too short to waste. May the Lord help us. Thank you.