In this sermon, the speaker shares his thoughts and reflections on various topics. He mentions that he was asked to ramble and share his thoughts instead of doing a Bible study. He discusses five points that he has learned in Pakistan, including the importance of inner contentment and recognizing that people are more important than programs or things. He also warns against stereotyping people and emphasizes the need to understand and appreciate each person's unique gifts and abilities. The speaker concludes by cautioning against a mechanical approach to spreading the gospel and reminds listeners to consider the feelings and hearts of the people they are trying to reach.

Thank you for the richness of these days together and we thank you for the possibility to have face-to-face contact with old friends and people who are very dear and important to us. We thank you Lord for many privileges you confirm upon us as your people. We pray that these remaining hours, the remaining minutes for me and the remaining hours and days for the majority will be filled with good things and that you will accomplish your work here which you could only do here. So we commit now these few minutes we have together to you we pray that you'll use this time also for benefit for all of us in Jesus Christ's name. Amen. Amen. I'm sorry that during these during these last days you know and always these times are too short to have the kind of fellowship that we would like to have. I'm sorry that I haven't made it with Rudy and and many others who would have been good to have a fellowship with and I guess we meet again here next year and we'll try and do better next time. Now George sort of sprung this meeting on me this morning and he didn't want me to do a bible study because we just had a bible study. He wanted me to sort of ramble which is what it more or less what I intend to do for the next half hour or so and end up with some prayer requests for Pakistan and here are a few rambling thoughts that I have on things that that I have been thinking about not just in the last few weeks or months some of them for years but I have five points it might turn into six or even more on the things that God has been teaching me or things that I've found important and have been learning in Pakistan and since this isn't a bible study we're actually not going to refer too much to the bible though I hope that most of this is biblical that we want to think about and these thoughts are in no way connected but I hope they might be helpful for some and I'm going to begin with one thing which sort of has been growing on us in Pakistan in these last few years and that is the importance that we find increasing importance that we find of knowing where we are going that's not a new thought much of most of these things are not new thoughts but nevertheless are important thoughts and this is increasingly important to us the things the importance of knowing what we're doing and where we're going of knowing why we're in Pakistan for you of knowing why you're in India or in the particular state you're working in and so forth because we have we find it with us over there too an increasing tendency just to sort of carry on doing the next thing which has to be done and kind of making our way through the day trying to get a little bit of work done in between the many interruptions and that's how many of our lives seem to be conducted and it sort of grows on us I think that we can survive a whole year or we can survive maybe for some of us several years just surviving just sort of getting through without really knowing what we're trying to accomplish or what we're trying to aim for in Pakistan being a smaller work than you are in India we have the privilege of having our all Pakistan conference every three months you have to wait every year for have your all India conference but we get together every three months for our study retreats which in fact is as good as an all Pakistan conference and we are trying to introduce into those times together some thinking about what we're really trying to achieve we just had one of these study retreats last week or two weeks ago and we had a couple of sessions of goal setting when the teams got together and sat down and really tried to work through what are they trying to aim for in the next six months after six months they all wrote it down after six months we will get together with those sheets look back on those six months and see have we really accomplished what we were aiming to accomplish now of course I'm sure that we won't all accomplish the things that we are have been aiming to accomplish but at least we will have set our sights on something and hopefully we'll have accomplished something in our Lahore team I think Viv mentioned this the other day or mentioned this the other day we sat down to try and set some goals we actually ended up with almost no goals at all but we had a nice time of fellowship which I hope was helpful and hope that we will get together to set a few more goals I think our time my time and our time together in Kathmandu has been helpful to think through a little bit more clearly what we're really trying to aim at I have a quotation I have a number of quotations this morning actually from a book that I'm reading by Richard Nixon Peter told me that I should never say it's by Richard Nixon because people won't listen to me just by a former president of the United States perhaps more acceptable he wrote a book on leaders and Richard Nixon says a number of interesting things in this which I think are helpful and here's one quotation from him and he contrasts managers management those who are in management with those who are in leadership and we here are some of us are in management but some of us here are in leadership and there is a difference he says this managers have as their managers is actually not the quotation I was thinking of but he says this managers have as their goal to do things right leaders have as their goal to do the right thing you have to think that through it's a sort of neat snappy quotation but it's there's some very helpful things in that managers have as their goal to do things right that's the objective of management to do things right but leaders have as their goal to do the right thing and if we're in a position of leadership we've got to determine what is the right thing to do and then we've got to get our management personnel or whatever our management gifts to work to make sure that we do the right thing in the right way managers have as their goal to do things right leaders have as their goal to do the right thing another quotation also from the same book the manager thinks of today and tomorrow the leader must think of the day after tomorrow I don't know how that applies to Nixon's own career but nevertheless I think is a very helpful thought the manager thinks of today and tomorrow the leader must think of the day after tomorrow in other words the leader must have a clear sighted view of where he is headed he mustn't just muddle through otherwise he's not exactly setting an example or leading in any sensible kind of way well that's one thing one thought which is increasingly helpful to us and I hope may be helpful to some of you second thought that I have here and this is an old one been working on me for a long time I still think it's true and very valuable and that is to learn the secret of contentment for all of us to learn the secret of contentment and this is my secret of contentment and it is biblical though it uh this actual phrase never got into the bible and that is that the grass is not greener on the other side of the hill or the hedge or the fence the grass is not green of course the common saying that you've heard is that the grass is green on the other side of the hill of course the grass is not green on the other side of the hill and the more that when I think about that the more valuable I think it is to recognize that the greenest grass if we're in the will of god the greenest grass that exists is the green is the green grass at our feet and not the green grass on the other side of the of the hill we think of the people of israel as they went through the uh through the desert and they were dreaming of the leeks and the garlics and the onions in is it numbers in chapter 11 and they were dreaming of of of egypt of going back to egypt all the stupid things to do they'd just been delivered by a mighty miracle and what did they do they got into the desert and they were headed fully for the promised land and a good hand of god was upon them and so on and what did they do they sat down and they dreamed of the leeks and the garlics and the onions they forgot about the bricks and the mortar but they remembered the leeks and the garlics and the onions of egypt and some of us some of us spend a lot of time doing exactly that same thing thinking of the leeks and the garlics and the onions back in kerala or back in england or wherever you go leeks garlics and onions and forgetting that the green grass is right there at our feet where we are in the center of the will of god we're guilty of that also um you know it's not especially coming to a gathering like that i think of the the green grass of calcutta you know i used to live in calcutta many years ago and some of you now living in calcutta you realize the grass actually isn't so green in calcutta you're probably dreaming of the green grass somewhere else and it is the most stupid thing to do and uh you may not believe it but the greenest grass in the world is in pakistan and and that is a discovery that i'm increasingly making i tried to pay a visit to some of you last year in india and uh last july july the 14th that's the day the french celebrate the storming i tried to storm the bastion the gates of new delhi and rediscovered once again that the greenest grass is in pakistan and uh was returned there the compliments of the government of india and um and it's a lesson that we have to continue to teach ourselves and not to try to dream of how much nicer things would be if only we were somewhere else or if only we were somewhere else it's terrifically a terrific temptation for us uh just these last few days listening to phil bushell um you know phil bushell is is is uh there's been a lot of emphasis on phil bushell in his work in bangladesh these last few days and god is blessing phil's work and the work in bangladesh um in a in a rather unique sort of way but i think it is an enormous mistake for us to think that we can transplant god's blessing from from that country into our own countries or into our own situations and um we should look for god's blessing in our own situations as and where we are rather than trying to sort of you know drag over a bit of blessing from from enough from somewhere else i read a book on korea some of you might have read it it's written by someone who lived in bombay for many years about the church young he chose church in in seoul this huge church which now has what is it 100 150 000 members and it's called god can do it here and the whole emphasis of that book is if god can bring blessing and can cause the church to grow in that way over in korea all we need to do is transplant those same principles to our country or our situation or wherever we are then we will have a church of 100 000 members and that is absolute nonsense and i don't believe that it's true now we what we need to be doing is recognizing that god is working here in our situation in a special and unique and special and special way that he wants to work in our situation and it is wrong for us to look at other people we can learn from them there's a lot of things we can learn from from other countries from other works from from uh what the lord is doing in other places but it's wrong for us to then try to imitate what god is doing somewhere else to try and bring the indonesian indonesian revival or the or the or the welsh revival or the uganda revival or any other kind of revival uh into our country and think that we just have to follow the principles and we'll get the same results it's not true we have to work on our own revival and god is going to work in india in a special way and god is going to work in pakistan in a special way and we have much to learn from each other we have much it's been great just these last few days learning a great deal from from what is the lord is doing in different ways in india different ways in bangladesh and i hope that that will benefit our work in pakistan but it would be wrong for us to try to imitate what you're doing would be wrong for us to have go 83 in the sin it wouldn't work it might work in the other way in some other uh some other catastrophic way and uh you know it is some of us spend a lot of time being jealous feeling jealous about what god is doing in other places or feeling jealous about those who are in the center of god's blessing in another place rather than being content with the blessing the measure of blessing and looking for more of the measure of blessing from god in the situation where he has put each of us in our own with our own different gifts with our own different abilities our own different circumstances and cultures and customs and religion and and all of the rest that we have and you can be sure that god is going to work in kanaka in a different way from what he's ever going to work in biha and so he should because you've got different people you've got different kinds of needs and opportunities and in pakistan likewise well it's an enormous subject but i think that the important thing is to recognize that that we with we're in the will of god if you're in the will of god wherever that happens to be that is where the grass is going to be the greenest let's try and pick some pretty flowers from other areas but not try and think that somehow those other areas are more blessed or we would be better off if we were in different circumstances in different place it's better to be in the will of god sitting in a prison cell than it is to be out of the will of god sitting in some green pasture elsewhere and i think that that is a very valuable lesson the apostle paul learnt that the secret of contentment in philippians you remember i have learned in whatsoever state and there was to be content what was his circumstance that time he was sitting in a prison cell wasn't he and um he was he had learned to to to whether he was in abundance or in he was in whether he was in want he had learned to be content he had learned that the grass in that prison cell where he was sitting in chains was as green as he could possibly hope for it to be because he had learned the secret of inner contentment that is a great and important thing for us to learn and uh we're trying to learn it our part of the world as well third miscellaneous thought people are more important than programs people are more important than things and um the thought came to me this morning you know the old the old riddle which came first the chicken or the egg and it occurred to me this morning that the answer to that is the chicken uh i'm sure you can shoot this down because i only thought of it this morning but uh it seems to me that the chicken produced the egg the person produces the program it's not the program producing the person though a program maybe will produce other people or will produce people but you have to start with the person the people are more important than the programs and the chicken is more important than the egg that it produces and um you can see i can see my way i mean i can shoot that one down myself but what i'm trying to say is that uh all of us tend to become program centered we tend to be dreaming dreaming up new projects or a new program or um and and and it is a terrific temptation and danger for us to become so involved with programs that we forget that the people uh that are going to be involved in those programs are more important it's better for the program to collapse than for the people to collapse we face uh as i'm sure you face the constant problem of being interrupted by people very often needy people but not always needy people who come and um get in our way and prevent us from doing our work in our lahore base we have a doorbell which people constantly are ringing and um you know a day you can go through a day and the day is just a series of interruptions i'm sure it's even more so in bombay and some of the other bases as well and the temptation is to be annoyed with these people who are interrupting our work and i think that that is an enormous danger those people are our work they're more important than half the much of the work that many of us are engaged in and um you see someone come to the lord that person is more important than any number of big programs or big letters you have to write or or other things that meetings that we have to take and so on and so forth and we have got to constantly come back to the fact that it's more important to sit down and spend time with one needy person if we can really help them than it is to be involved in a whole host of other busy activities we need to beware of the gospel machine i remember still very vividly because it's a helpful illustration on my first overland journey to india in 1967 and we were driving through a town in yugoslavia i was driving one truck and there was another truck ahead of just ahead of us ahead of me and it was early in the morning six o'clock in the morning and a little cat ran out from from from a house just by the left hand side of the road ran out of the road straight into the wheel of that big gospel truck in front of me and the little cats have spun over and laid that on the road and the gospel trucks carried on in their on their journey and uh you know you can't blame the om trucks for the death of that little cat exactly but it gave provided me with an illustration sometimes we come thundering through with our gospel machinery and we don't worry about the feelings of people we tend to steamroller people's feelings sometimes and forget that those people are the whole of the other of the heart and the most important thing in the whole of the work that we're trying to do and our gospel you know what i mean by gospel machinery our big programs and our big campaigns and our busyness and uh all of the other things that we're engaged in the things that we have to do sometimes can steamroller over people's feelings and we love our programs more than we love our people and um you know we sometimes that little cat who knows who that little cat belonged to i've often meditated on that you know some little boy's little pet uh he doesn't know that it was a christian who was driving the truck that ran over his little pet but nevertheless um uh forget the illustration but get the message that uh we've got to remember that people and people's feelings and people's needs are more important than all of the programs that sometimes become so huge and obsess us so much well next point here that i've got is that god is a god of great variety god is a god of great variety we've touched on this a little bit already but it's it's a it's a dawning truth a very simple truth most of these truths are very simple that um people are different everyone you talk to is different from anyone else and um it is wrong it is a mistake for us to try to stereotype our approach to people everyone is different i am different from you you're different from me mercifully and um we've got to recognize that every one of us has got different gifts different abilities different capacity some people have the capacity to to to work longer hours than others some people have a nine hours every night and without sleeping long hours they can't uh be sensible through the day somebody else may be able to get away with four hours i've always been terribly jealous of the people who managed to get up at four o'clock in the morning for you know two hours quiet time and an hour writing letters before the day begins for most of us and um and i have always found it very difficult uh not to wish that i was like those people um there's a great deal to learn from them we can try i've tried and tried you know get up early in the morning doesn't work usually um because i'm different from some of those people and we've got to recognize that all of us here are different we've got different capacities now we need to stretch our capacity all of us need to stretch our capacity to try to uh to to to stretch higher to be better to uh accomplish more and so on and so forth and not to rest content with ourselves as we are but at the same time we mustn't think that we can ever be anyone else and uh we mustn't treat other people as though they were in some way the same as ourselves or the same as someone else and um small simple truth but it's uh very profound and very important at least uh i have found it so in these last weeks one more thing god delights to keep us simple god delights to keep us simple as you go on in the christian life you tend to bump more and more into the deeper truths and the complexities of christian living and i think that it is still true that god's deepest greatest truths are the simplest and we can become much too complex many of us in our thinking many of us are planning many of us in our own spiritual lives have become much too complex and much too complicated and god still delights to to to to be simple and to reveal little simple truths then we discover how profound some of those simple truths are um here's a quotation i quoted it the other day but i'm going to give you a word for word quotation about again from richard nixon about his some of you were here when we talked about about uh his reflections on uh having been a friend of uh charles de gaulle and it's sort of relevant to this point he says i have noted through the years that great leaders do not try to impress their visitors with huge offices whether it is a leader in government business or the professions more often the rule is the smaller the man the bigger the office he insists on and um you can say think what you like about that but i think that there's a lot of profound truth in that what he's trying to say is that the bigger the man the greater his ability to keep simple and the smaller the man the more he desires to have a big impressive organization a big impressive office and so on and so forth and that i find very appealing now that may be my personality that finds that appealing and it may be some deep hidden secret inside me that wishes i had a big office then i have a little hole and uh but nevertheless i think that there's a very important truth i think if jesus was here and i think jesus had an office in in bombay it wouldn't be a great great big luxury apartment it would be a fairly simple place and i think jesus lifestyle would be a fairly simple lifestyle and i think that the things that he went out and taught among the people would be fairly simple truths and um i think some of us uh lusting after more complexity when we should be longing after more simplicity and that is a great great truth that it's very very easy for all of us to get away from here's one final thing and then i've got to think of some prayer requests for pakistan giving a message in our study seminar last week a couple of weeks ago and this was based on first chronicles chapters 28 and 29 and i was going to give this this morning till george said don't give a bible study at the last point i found very helpful it was about praise and worship the importance of praise and worship and i returned to the new bible dictionary to find the definitions of praise and worship and then i just pass this on because it's helpful at least it was helpful to me this is how the new bible dictionary defines praise we are a people of praise the people who should be characterized by praise we all recognize that at least in theory new bible dictionary says this about praise in the old testament the words for praise mainly used are halal the root meaning of which is connected with making a noise unfortunately it's not really possible freely and properly to praise the lord in our circumstances in katmandu so you can remember this for when you get back home but one of the root meaning first root meaning of the word is connected with making a noise yada which was another word which was originally associated with the bodily actions and gestures which accompany praising so if you have anyone in your team who bounces up and down a little bit or dances we have in our team in lahore someone who delights to bounce and other things like that and very easy to look on those people critically for some of us but there it is it's part of the root meaning of the word to praise bodily gestures and actions maybe that will give some of us a bit more liberty to bounce and um some of us actually would much prefer not to have that liberty and thirdly zamar which is associated with a with the playing and singing of music singing songs which are not permitted here are very much a part of praise in the new testament the word eucharisten which literally means to give thanks is the favorite word for praise so there you have uh making a noise making a loud noise whether singing a bit of uh even uh bouncing about that is all related with praise now there is a difference between praise and worship and um you can find this in the scriptures i doubt if i'll find it now but they've been going through the old testament recently i've noticed this in a number of places that there is a significant difference made between praise and worship this is how new bible dictionary defines worship the essential concept in both old testament and new testament is service in order to offer this worship or service to god his servants must prostrate themselves and there are two the hebrew and a greek word and thus manifest reverential fear and adoring awe and worship it used to worry me for a long time because i used to think that this was a temperamental thing some people when uh when they get a great answer to prayer they want to get up and put their arms in the air and bounce about a bit and make a loud noise and some people when they see some god do something great their natural reaction is to get on their knees with their face to the ground and both of those are right one is a gesture and an action of praise the other is a gesture and an action of worship and both of them we should be engaged in we should be both on our feet praising making a loud noise at times to god and uh just acknowledging him in an attitude of thanksgiving and then there are times when we need to recognize his holiness and bow down with our faces to the ground in reverence and awe and that is worship see if i can find here's here's oh here's a very helpful verse on this comes from the second chronicles chapter 20 there are many such verses once you get this thinking in your mind you will find it coming out over and over again especially in the old testament two chronicles chapter 20 verse 18 jehoshaphat bowed with his face to the ground and all the people of judah and jerusalem fell down in worship before the lord then some levites from the koathites and the korahites stood up and praised the lord the god of israel with a very loud voice and we need this kind of variety within our own times of prayer the variety of praise and worship together of course with intercession and confession all the other aspects of prayer but i thought it was worth putting that in because that was just another touching thought which i found helpful when i discovered it a couple of weeks ago well i hope those two random thoughts are in some way helpful and um as they have been helpful to me or to us in these last few weeks and months now pakistan uh we'd appreciate your prayers for uh for us let me just mention a few uh requests for pakistan then you can have a short time of prayer um i'm flying to uh direct to karachi today and um just write down one or two prayer requests for the team in karachi we have two teams in karachi one is led by tom hawksley from from uh england and one is led by annie tua from east malaysia and um they of course are working pretty much separately though they do join together uh to work to some extent with some of the youth fellowships in karachi and we would appreciate your prayer especially for the growing fellowship known as the logos fellowship which um it is a fellowship which first came into being when the logos visited pakistan before there was an om in pakistan at the beginning of 1979 and uh one young man whom we'd appreciate prayer for especially by the name of ashley neumes um continue to pray for him he's the leader of that fellowship and his assistant by the name of joseph and um that fellowship in the last year since last we met here in katmandu has really grown and uh now they are averaging 50 or 60 people every week they meet on a friday evening and then on saturday evening they have an extended time of prayer and they get about 30 young people 20 to 30 young people for that time of prayer and we really appreciate your prayers for these young people most of them are still in their 20s most of them are converted from catholic backgrounds last summer 12 of them were baptized ashley baptized them the whole thing has become uh uh within the you know politics of the churches has become quite sensitive people don't aren't happy when they see people getting baptized in other fellowships especially non-church it's like that and um seven more were baptized two weeks ago and we just really would appreciate prayer for god's direction for ashley and for joseph and for other leaders of this fellowship as to where they should go next and um how they should continue to grow we really need more teaching and um it's been a real joy and real privilege to see god working in his among these young people there are a handful of muslims who come to the meeting regularly just a few and well some of them are converted uh some of them are not um that's one prayer request standing prayer request for for the karachi team um second prayer request um i think that it would be it is important if you could remember to pray for the work among the afghans in new delhi it's strange that our pakistan has this extension arm in new delhi you've got to get used to that fact um but the afghan community in delhi is very is much more responsive and much more friendly and much more open than the afghan community in peshawar right on the afghan border and the very small team there has just run into visa difficulties and it seems that the women's team has had six women on that team for the last few months and now has to leave within less than a month and um there is a bmf missionary who speaks fluent dali and will carry on that work but there is a small group of afghans that are meeting together to worship the lord and study the bible and um very small it's only four five six people but it is a very unique and a very special little group and i think we should pray very much for them uh the three men who are on team also will have to leave in two or three months time they're all foreigners uh wouldn't it be terrific if there were some indians who could take over that work and didn't have to leave but i don't know what their plans are in that regard but it is an important work in that you're perfect there are many afghans in islamabad islamabad is sort of in between peshawar and lahore and they will be moving to islamabad to start and work among the afghan refugees in islamabad so that's the second prayer request um third prayer request our men's traveling team is right now heading towards the sindh the sindh is a southern province of pakistan you would call it a state we call it a province and um many people in india don't realize that most of punjab is in pakistan pakistan uh got half of punjab india got the punjab punjab is our largest province just below punjab is the province of sindh and um our traveling team is right heading towards the south of punjab right now and then they go into sindh province next month they come back for steven margaret's wedding pray for steven margaret 17th of march they're getting married and they have a week's honeymoon and then they go back to to work and um the leader of the traveling team some of you know thomas tan because he was with you for go 83 and um pray for that team they are 50 foreign and 50 pakistani in that team i think one of our great requests for this coming year is to see more pakistanis join the work on a longer term with a proper foundation that's of course the condition we have for pakistan is joining the work they must have a church behind them and regular financial support um without which we have to say that we're very sorry you might come for a month or two months but you cannot join them for a longer period unless there's a church behind you to which you're answerable and uh and which is supporting you and we really want to make it as one of our goals in this coming year to see more pakistanis with that proper kind of support coming into the world value your prayers for that on that traveling team we tend to have numbers of young people who join the team for two or three months and um of course they learn a great deal and they go back to their homes and um we have an increasing number of ex-pakistanis up and down the country that we're in contact with and we do everything we can to encourage and help team is going to be working in sin sin has been a responsive province um it's been also politically uh in up in turmoil this last year as you probably know and um but it has been a very responsive area there are not so many christians in sindh the number of sindhi converts there's number of sindhi muslim converts uh you could count on one hand and most of the christians living in the sindh are actually punjabis there are thousands lakhs of punjabi christians nominal christians and other christians but very very few sindhi christians there are many sindhi hindu converts baptizing two or three hundred hindus in the sindh every year but very very few muslims are being converted and we'd appreciate prayer for that and yet there seems to be since there isn't an established very much of an established church in the sindh unlike punjab uh for that reason perhaps there is a greater response in many of the places where the team has been in the past years and so we value your prayer for that we will be working together with the conservative baptists in the southern part of sindh beginning in the city of hyderabad hyderabad is pakistan's fifth city we have a hyderabad you have a hyderabad our hyderabad is about 100 miles east of karachi it is the fifth largest city in pakistan and they already have a quite an extensive time in hyderabad value your prayers for that i think another thing let's mention this finally that we should pray for is the relationship between india and pakistan at this time because it is not in the interest of any of us for these relationships for this relationship to get any worse it is totally ridiculous from the common man's point of view that those countries cannot get on better together and yet it is in the interest of the politicians somehow to stir up this trouble from time to time it was on the news again today that um uh the russian defense minister is visiting mrs gandhi he is accusing america of rearming pakistan and the whole talk of rearmament and and and war clouds and so on is total nonsense you can imagine the chaos that that is going to cause if the if the situation gets worse and some kind of conflict comes again i think we should really pray for general muhammad zia ul haq who is heading for elections within the next few months of some kind or other mrs gandhi who's also heading for elections in the next few months and uh both of them you know have special interests when they head for elections and it could be in their interests to do something which is not in the interests of the rest of us let's pray for those two people and pray for the relationship between these two countries will improve rather than get any worse in the coming months and i think that's enough we should have a time of prayer together for pakistan just have a number of people please lead us in prayer and i guess our time is done