In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of taking inventory of our spiritual lives. He encourages listeners to reflect on their motivation, discipline, and commitment to running the race of faith. The speaker shares a testimony of a small group of young people who applied the principles discussed and saw God's work in their lives. He also highlights the significance of Christian literature and the need for believers to be involved in its distribution. Overall, the sermon urges believers to examine their spiritual lives and strive for greater dedication and impact in their walk with God.

Living God, these have been precious days together. It is our prayer that the spiritual weather within our hearts may be equal to the weather you have given us outside. And yet at the same time, may we know that when it rains, actually it's just as much a blessing as when the sun shines. Because that water, that rain, is the greatest thing many parts of this earth need. And oh Lord, may we not have the human viewpoint of things, but may we have the divine viewpoint. Speak to us in this final time together from your word, we ask in Jesus' name, amen. It's an awesome thing when God begins to pour truth into our hearts, because we are then responsible for living out these truths and for aiming in this direction. And I want us to look at verse 2 in Hebrews 4. Of course, most people, many people believe Paul wrote Hebrews. Some say he didn't. It's still the truth of God. Paul was only a channel, he was only a pipe. You know, there's a great danger sometimes among Christians that they begin to admire the tap, and admire the pipe. No doubt you have a tap in your kitchen, water comes out of a tap. When you're thirsty after doing something, you go in there, what do you do? Polish the tap? Admire the tap? Isn't this a lovely tap? Now generally, a wise man wants the water. And I'm just a tap. Paul was a tap, a pipe, a channel, whatever word you want to use. So it doesn't matter whether he wrote Hebrews or not, it's from God. Verse 2, For unto us was the gospel preached as well as unto them, but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we who have believed to enter into rest, as he said, as I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest, although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. Then he goes on to speak about this rest of faith. Verse 9, There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. Verse 10, For he that is entered into his rest is also seeked from his own works, as God did from his. Verse 11, Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. The word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing ascender of soul and spirit, the joints and marrow, and is a discerner in the thoughts and the intents of the heart. Now keeping this in view, let's just realize that all that you hear this week, whether it's from me or Eric Hutchings or an angel, unless it is mixed with faith, it is of no value. And as we come toward the end of this first week, and we have much ministry in our hearts and in our heads, we must realize there comes a time when we must mix it with faith. If we're speaking about the victorious life, there comes a time when we have to stop speaking and stop listening, and appropriate by faith. And I was wrestling with this, thinking about the meeting, and realized that I was not really believing God for you. I was not really believing that something is going to happen as a result of these few days together. Usually speaking, perhaps some of my leaders and members of the board of directors say, you waste your time in some of these small meetings. The other summer I went up to Dingwall, Scotland, and I was out having some time with the president of our board, Mr. Val Greve from Manchester, who is a lawyer up there. He said, what are you doing going up to Dingwall? He said, you got to preach in the strategic centers. And I said, well that's okay. I'll just go where the Lord leads me. Thank you very much. I went to Dingwall, Scotland, and you know, we have one of the strongest prayer groups in our whole work worldwide, right there in Dingwall. They may not be many. They gather regularly for intercession and nights of prayer. And they committed this little meeting out nowhere in the middle of August, the worst time of the year. And you know, hundreds came to that little meeting out in Dingwall, Scotland, including pastors from the We Free Church all over Scotland. People drove in from the Isle of Skye, people came in from other parts, and God moved in that little out-of-the-way meeting. It wasn't that many. Someone may say, well, you know, what are you doing a week down in battle with this little group of saints? Not many university students, not many potential Hudson Taylors in the crowd. Of course, you never know. But you know, I believe God sent me here and God put me here. And I don't believe it's in numbers. And I believe he has something very real and very special for many of you. And I trust that you'll take the word preached and mix it with faith. If you want to try to understand Operation Mobilization, let me just say this. Operation Mobilization is a movement. It started very small. It stayed quite small for many, many years. People see it today. They don't see it in years and years and years and years. Of just being a bunch of nobodies battling the evil one and pressing forward. But it's a movement of people who want to live what I have been talking about this week, and of course much more. And I thought before going on expanding, I would just pick up a little where I left off. Just to tell you what happened to this little group of young people who went to Mexico. There were only three of us on that first trip. Five of us on the second trip. As they began to mix the word, these principles we've been talking about in these days, we're going to review them again in a minute. But as they began to mix it with faith, this is what God did. Let me give you in a few minutes a history of what happened from those early days. The word spread to several different colleges. Nights of prayer began to spread from one college to another. People were converted. People came back to the Lord. Skeptics who were about to overthrow the Christian faith in universities came to realize through seeing God answer prayer that he was alive. You know, if I had to believe that all the answers to prayer I had seen in 20 years, thousands, thousands, that this was coincidence, I would need more faith, more faith than simply to believe that God is alive and answers prayer. I don't have that much faith. Maybe somebody does, but I don't have that much faith to believe that I had seen 20 years of coincidence. Any more than I have faith that I can go to Switzerland and find some little bits of steel and copper, what have you, and put it into a bucket and shake it a few thousand times, and I'm going to bring out a Swiss watch. I don't have that kind of faith. It's easier for me to believe that a Swiss watch was built by a Swiss watchmaker. You don't need so much faith for that, do you? As we look at the wonders of this universe and the galaxies and the intricacies of the human body, and when we think of all the answers to prayer, it's all just a great shout that God is God, and He is not dead, and He is answering prayer. So God answered our prayers. We prayed for labors. He gave us labors. We prayed for bookshops. We opened six in two years in Mexico, and we only did it in our holiday period as we had to get back to college. We asked for faithful Mexicans, and He gave them to us. Then we started to claim faithful Spaniards, and after six months in Mexico, after I graduated from Moody Bible Institute, I went over to Spain. Within six months, He gave us these faithful Spaniards. It was these Spaniards of all places, because Spain was closed back then, that launched Operation Mobilization in Europe. I remember we were having a couple of days of prayer and some fasting in the mountains of Madrid when God gave us the go-ahead for Operation Mobilization. Before that, we never had that name. In fact, the name came to me when I was coming back from Russia in 1961, where I made a number of rather interesting goofs and got myself arrested. As I came back, I went up into the mountains of Bavaria, and I was spending some time on the top of a tree singing and praising God. It's one of the few places you can go without disturbing anybody. It was there, as I thought of these great armies of Europe clashing and murdering and butchering one another, and this name, Mobilization, somewhere had been in my mind. It was basically originally a World War II, or before that term, Mobilization. I thought, what if God could mobilize an army to move across this country, hundreds of young people, thousands, and then it could spill over into the closed countries in an unorganized way. I went back to Spain and shared this with these Spanish brothers. We'd been meeting in the nights of prayer there. They'd already sent out secretly gospel literature to almost everybody in all the telephone directories in the nation, and they had many, many other ways of getting the Word of God out in Spain. We opened a Catholic New Testament shop in the center of Madrid when the land was closed. People couldn't believe it. Christians were stirred by this, and people would come and they'd see Catholic New Testaments and Catholic Bibles, and this would really speak to their hearts, and then if we knew that they could be trusted, we would give them a little card and they'd go down the road and up a few blocks, a few flights of stairs, through two or three doors. There was the hottest load of Spanish Christian Protestant literature that Spain had ever known, and yet through that literature brought in secretly to Spain, tremendous things took place. I think of Daniel Gonzalez, the young Spaniard whose life was turned upside down through the book Calvary Road. Daniel became the leader of our work until it became completely nationalized and we turned it over completely into Spain, and you know what God has used him to plant? Three churches. That one brother whose life was originally turned upside down through that one little copy of Calvary Road. You know, it's amazing how God uses the printed page. Well, that summer in 62, these Spaniards really set the pace, and because they took over the work in Spain, I was able to come to Britain. I came to Britain in February of 1962. The first place I spoke, that was a network conference organization, I don't think, I'm not sure if it exists anymore, but not long after being here, I sensed that this was a place God wanted me to make as my home base, and apart from Spanish, I didn't know any other language than English. God uses sometimes this kind of providence, but we saw God work, and within a few months, we had 90 English young people join with the others around the continent, and that summer, which was largely mass distribution, that's why we've been stuck with that literature image, because that first summer, we had such a short time, everybody was so new, our burden was to flood out 25 million pieces of literature in seven weeks, which had never happened in the history of missions, and God did it. God did it. For the next summer, we asked God to do 10 times as much. We asked God for 2,000 people. People said we were crazy. Hardly anyone ever knew about us. Everything was against us in so many ways. We had no money. We had no financial resources. Contrary to public opinion, there has never been any big money behind this work. Even people who know about this work, who have big money, have hardly ever given. God has not worked that way. No, he may in the future. I think it's some of the biggest gifts we've got. It looks like a really large sum of money from a German youth fellowship. It involves hundreds of young people who caught the vision and just give their little bit, and it adds up. That German youth fellowship has been one of the biggest contributors to the ship project, and the widow's might is still God's method. I don't know how quickly we seem to forget that. We saw miracle after miracle in God providing funds for that 25 million pieces of literature, most of which we paid for ourselves. People don't give this stuff to you. People think, oh, the Bible Society. The Bible Society? You have to buy from the Bible Society, and we lose our discount if we don't pay in 30 days. And we see the Lord bring in the funds to buy these tons and tons of literature. In 1963, God gave us this larger army and 200 tons of Christian literature, and we just praise God for all that happened. This began to spread then into the Middle East and 64 into India. People said, Indians will never do this. All we'll get is unemployed. It very good jobs and good salaries to come and to live and to walk by faith in this spiritual warfare, and I can't begin to tell you what has happened in India. Those that have been converted, churches that have been stirred, so many things I could not go into. Again and again, our backs against the wall. I remember times we had no money. We didn't know where any money could come from. Once we were up meeting in Bolton or Atherton up in Lancashire. It was the end of the summer. We had not yet paid for all of our literature bills. We had this policy that we'll not move out in the spring, I mean in the fall, in September, that's when the OMU starts, if all our bills aren't paid. We don't borrow money. We don't take loans, any of this kind of thing. We will buy literature in 30 days, just like any other business, and so we decide we're not going to buy any more food. Those who feel mature enough will fast, and the others will eat what's left until there's nothing left. We're going to believe God for the breakthrough, and we had bills at that time for 25,000 pounds, and that was an amount of money. Think about it. You've heard of movements that operate on a shoestring. Well, I can tell you this movement doesn't operate on a shoestring. Half the time we can't even find the shoestring. But we went to prayer and fasting and waiting upon God, and I remember in the night of prayer, around midnight, that God filled our hearts with faith that he would provide us money. He would launch us out. This was the year we launched the first teams into India and the main thrust into the Middle East, and even for that conference, we had the most horrible accommodation. We were just jammed in the same room. We lectured in and ate in and slept in. It was just very wild, very difficult days, and I remember around midnight, we decided to sing a song of praise and thanksgiving and adoration because we knew God was going to bring the victory. A letter had come around five o'clock from Holland to our Dutch director. The Dutch were up in another room praying in Dutch, and that letter had gone around the special delivery, I don't know, but until midnight, it didn't get open. Around midnight, this letter got to the Dutch director. I decided to go up to the Dutch and tell them that the Lord had filled us with faith that this money was coming. People didn't know about this need. Prayer partners didn't know about this need, and as I went up to go up to the Dutch prayer meeting, Huey came down the stairs with this letter, the biggest gift we'd ever had from the Netherlands, over 9,000 Dutch guilders, a couple thousand pounds. That was the break in the dam, and after that, God brought in the funds. Many of the young people sold their possessions. This is one of the things that has brought the greatest criticism to our work, especially in the early days, because we have sold our possessions, our lands, anything we could get our hands on. We even sell used postage stands because we saw this in Acts 2, we saw this in Acts 4, and we said, why doesn't this happen in 1975? Why are our homes so clogged with junk, half of what we don't even need? When missionaries don't have Gospels, they don't have Bibles, they don't have even the basic tools to do the job. Remember World War II, when Winston Churchill said, give us the tools and we'll finish the job. In so many places, the national workers around the world want to do the job, and they're crying unto us, give us the tools. Every week, we have to write nationals who are begging us for tracts and say, there are no tracts. Print them on leaves. Christians have all the furniture they want in their homes, and Christians have so many things that they don't need. Let them print their Gospel tracts on leaves. 19 years ago, God spoke to me and said, you're never going to buy a piece of clothing again. I said, what? You're never going to buy a piece of clothing again. You're going to trust me. Others can, you cannot. You know what a little tract is? Others can, you cannot. I don't have that policy for the other people in the world. It's something a little similar. And for 19 years, of course now it doesn't mean much because people have heard it, and of course I have more clothing and I know what to do with it. So that's past now. But in those days, the early days, no one knew about this, and yet God provided. And in OM worldwide, with 900 people on a full-time year program, almost 2,000 in the summer, we hardly ever buy clothing. Because God brings it in. Admittedly, it's easier to pray for that in an affluent country where there's extra clothing around. But of course, a lot of young people don't want to wear second-hand clothing. To me, it's a good energy to wear second-hand clothing that may not fit. I've never had anything that fit. Where do you find anything that fits someone my size? I'm so out of proportion. I can't even find shoes that fit my feet. So I couldn't play tennis much. Playing one game in Rhode Island, my toes were bleeding. But it's just so thrilling to see God work. People have said, well, this fellow's a fanatic. My early days, I was a little more, perhaps slightly more extreme than now. I wouldn't buy soap. I used to go to the shower in the YMCA, Lord, I'm trusting you, there's got to be some soap. Somebody's left some soap. Lead me to the right shower stall, oh Lord. For one year, every time I went, someone left me a bar of soap. God works like that. I was listening to Corrie Ten Boom this morning. You didn't know that she was here. You missed her, sorry. But I was listening to Corrie Ten Boom this morning on tape, and she was sharing how she tends to worry, and she was sharing how she's learned how prayer can combat worry. And she was with her sister in the concentration camp, and she had a cold, and she said, I don't have a handkerchief. And her sister said, well, let's pray for a handkerchief. Corrie Ten Boom was like, how silly, how can we pray for a handkerchief? Nope. Sister said we're going to pray for a handkerchief. Daughter had a prayer for a handkerchief. Corrie was sort of, you know, half smiling, praying for a handkerchief. Suddenly there's a shout outside the window in the concentration camp, and there's a lady outside the window. Corrie, I've got something for you. What? Yeah, look, it's a gift, a handkerchief. This lady in the concentration camp had found an old sheet and cut up in pieces and felt burdened to give them to her friends, and as she was doing it, the Lord spoke to her heart, give one to Corrie Ten Boom. Meanwhile, Corrie's sister, Lord Jesus, you know how they say it in Dutch, provide the handkerchief in some such way. God is concerned, and I could tell you hundreds of stories, call it fanaticism, call it whatever you want. I did it because I believe that God wanted me to put the little money I had into Gospels, into Bibles, into literature, because I believe men are lost, because I believe the book of Acts, because I believe the words of the Lord Jesus, except you forsake all that you have, how can you be my disciples? I remember once, one of the very first dates with my wife. She wasn't my wife then, and I never thought I'd ever find a girl that would marry me with all my crazy ideas, but I told her in the very beginning of meeting, as we were studying the book of Acts together, giving out tracts and going house to house, I did everything I could to scare her away. This was my method with women. I told her she'd probably end up being cooked in New Guinea in a cannibal's pot. She wasn't interested in me in the beginning, that was pretty wild for her, but she was a bit challenged by the whole thing. I said, I'm not going to spend any money on you until we're married. Then of course I had the obligation, because I'm getting my food at school, you're getting your food at this, she was staying in a hostel, so no need to spend any other money. Food and raising, content. Of course there were times when this became a little complicated, once we were sitting on the beach in Chicago, and we were talking and sharing, and lunchtime came, and I often skipped lunch. I'd done a lot of fasting in those days, and I thought, well this may not be right to inflict this upon her. Maybe she doesn't want to miss lunch. So I committed to the Lord. Lord, you know I don't want to spend any money. Every ten pence is fifty more of gospel tracts, and I don't want to spend any money. We'll get a good meal when we get back home tonight. It's not that we're not eating, but Lord, your will. Maybe she should have a sandwich or two. Committed to the Lord. There we sat. Some young people came behind us, had lunch, munching away, sandwiches, apples. Stomachs began going, Lord! I cried out. Then they left, and they threw a big bag, a big American paper sack, into the dustbin. And I don't remember what I said to Drina, but I went over the dustbin with great courage, and I took out the bag, and there were sandwiches that had not been unwrapped. There was fruit that had not been touched, and she had her lunch. Now if I only saw this once every alternate week here, you know, it's a coincidence. I have seen God's hand for twenty years working this way. Whether it's fifty thousand pounds to purchase an ocean-rowing ship from the Danish government who thought we were crazy because we weren't a reputable shipping company. When I signed the contract, we hadn't even organized the company. We had no company. When they saw this money come in from all over the world right the day it was due, the day before it was due in Denmark, they knew that God was God. We were dealing maybe with atheists, or whether we're praying for toothpaste. Of course, I'm sure that when most people die often, generally needs them to buy it. But at least we should pray before we spend the Lord's money. We're to be faithful stewards of God's money. And Jesus Christ and the apostles and the word of God talks more about some of these things than most of us dare to admit, because the Bible is a very practical book. Anyway, this kind of lifestyle, this vision, this emphasis began to spread, especially amongst students, thinking people. They realized that Jesus Christ in many, many ways was a revolutionary. And God gave us those Indians, and then God gave us some Turks, and then God gave us some Arabs. And the work just continued to explode every summer, every holiday. And then, of course, the year program began to grow from 200 to 400, and now some 800 or 900 young people. Many failures, many setbacks, many mistakes, and yet a demonstration in the 20th century that these principles we have been talking about do not, in fact, work. It's not evangelical talk. It's not something we let go through our heads at a conference and put into our notebook and say, well, isn't it wonderful? The Christian faith is certainly true, but it's something that gets into our spiritual bloodstream, and we begin to live lives that are different for his honor and for his glory. Well, there's a lot more I'd love to say. Some of the things that have happened with the ship. You just can hardly believe the answers to prayer. Some of the things that have happened in the Muslim world, some of the things that have happened in countries where I can't even give you the name of the country. I don't know if you knew that the ship had actually visited the Maldive Islands, 99% Muslim, no Maldive Christian. Closed country, island. The Ministry of Education sponsored the visit of the ship. 700 New Testaments went out among these people. The young people started to read English 15 years ago just in preparation for our visit, and oh, what God did right there in this most closed, forgotten, there is no Christian literature or scriptures in the Maldive language. Most people don't even know where it is. Actually, it's just southwest off the corner of India. By keeping these things in mind, all the principles we've seen in the life of Paul, all that we've been talking about all week, keeping this in mind, what should we do? I've discovered that this tape is shorter than I thought, and I wonder if anybody has another tape. Do you have another tape? Thank you. We've got one here. It's a demonstration cassette. Thank you. With these things in mind, all that we've talked about all week, and just as using OM in the way of illustration, and there are many other illustrations we could give from other movements, other people, other spiritual works, other men of God, I think we're now at the stage, and this is my last opportunity to speak with you, where we need to take an inventory. We need to really get personal now in these closing moments and take inventory. We perhaps have been doing this all week. Then let's just do it in the way of review. Let's ask ourselves some basic questions, based on what we've heard from the life of Paul and from the teaching of Paul, which of course we've only touched on considering all that he's given to us. Number one, you may want to make a list of these. You may want to review this list from time to time. Number two, how is my motivation? How is my motivation? A. W. Poser said, your Christian life can get no higher than the motive that drives it. Your Christian life can get no higher than the motive that drives it. And we see Paul saying, the love of Christ, we have to pay more attention to motivation. It's so easy, as we mentioned, as we saw, to do things for the praise of men, to be seen by others. We come into a spiritual environment, and so of course we tend to be more spiritual. We get into another environment, and we tend to be pushed by that environment. In these days, the man who lives for Christ has to be a little bit stubborn. He has to put his foot down and say, here I stand, when it rains, when it blows, when the sun is melting and I'm burning up, here I stand on God's word. Now, I know the devil, of course, can use our stubbornness, and I don't think we should be stubborn on minor points. I don't think we should be stubborn in dividing one against the other as Christians. I'm not talking about that so often, and this so confuses me. Christians have so little contact with the world, in reaching out into the world, that they always caught up among themselves, dividing and subdividing and arguing and splitting hairs over every peripheral issue one could ever think of. The same person who's found blabbing so much at times among Christians, he barely opens his mouth out with people in the world. The fact is, he's scared. We get very secure among the saints, but emotionally we're still the same insecure babe in Christ we were ten years ago, and there's a danger of becoming spiritual monastics. And you know, when you get involved with people in the world, you know, just get down. If you have a chance on your way home, most of you going north, would you go through Blackwall Tunnel and spend one half an hour and drive around the east end of London? Because I want to tell you, that is a different world, and we need to be conscious of that world. There are areas there where there are tens of thousands of immigrants, and don't look down on these immigrants because it wasn't so many years ago when British people were living in the same flats and they were living lives just as low and lower. Don't make the mistake of thinking everything is so bad now, oh if only everything would be like it used to be in Britain. If you say that, obviously you've never studied any history of your country, certainly not Charles Dickens or any other famous historian. Sin has always been in this country. Hypocrisy has always been in this country. Now the great problem is it's all becoming more legal and more open, and it seems to be just bursting out. So of course in some ways it is getting worse. I would argue against that. When you go back into the white slavery that took place not so many years ago in London, and child labor, and oh, if you've read any of the history of London, history is my favorite subject, it's the word of God. Now we have these masses of immigrants, and the way they live, they're chained into little rooms, and many of these people are very emotional, and so every family has desperate needs, every single family has desperate needs. Recently a young girl was made pregnant by her boyfriend, which of course is just a normal course of events these days, and the mother, these were probably Greeks, very emotional, the mother insisted that the boy marry the girl and he wouldn't do it. She just exploded. They were in a chip shop, and she reached and took the fine pan filled with boiling oil and poured it on this young man's head. Can you imagine? He ran around in utter screaming and agony for an hour, two hours before he was taken to the hospital and died. Little family domestic problem. Many of the murders and killings in London, and they're happening all the time, in Detroit where I had my conference in North America recently, happen within the families. Now when you start getting involved with people, drunkards, alcoholics, think of people's domestic problems. You know, some of the problems you think you have are going to become mighty small, and when Christians are not involved in reaching out into the lives of others, I don't know why, maybe because of an emotional need, then they tend to get involved more in picking other Christians apart. Oh, look at this speck in Sam's eye. Oh, look at this green and pink and purple speck in Susie's eye. Oh, look at this church down the road here. Do you know what happened at the breaking of bed last Sunday? And oh, do you know what the deacon's wife has done over there? And did you see that girl, she was there at the breaking of bed and she didn't have a hat on. And Christians get all caught up in all kinds of periphery, secondary things, and some man down the road, five doors down, has just pulled a gun out of the dresser drawer and shot his wife. And if that Christian had done a little door-to-door work and had a little concern for their neighbors, it would have never happened. It's been our privilege to see in our work many people saved from suicide. Murders have been prevented. You know, when you come on the MD Logos, it's not a group of semi-school graduates. These are rough, tough, Satan. Our chief electrician was only converted at 46 years of age. He lived in such perversion and such sin, such sodom before that, that he cannot talk about it in public. He's also been mentally ill. And God saved him at 46, and he has one of the most beautiful, solid testimonies on that ship. He was just sitting in a meeting I took in Southport just a year ago. Nice job, he left the sea, no more of that. Nice job, factory, good pay. He walked into my meeting in Southport, and God hit him. Now he's on the ship. Always had battles. It hasn't been easy. Electrics is the biggest problem we have on the ship, on the technical side. And you know, he's just one of the souls to Christ, and God has so used him, right from the beginning. Many of these young men have tattoos up and down their arms. You can't take those off. Our first captain, sailing captain, Bjorn Christensen, he was an alcoholic for 15 years. He was lying in a hospital bed in Norway. He was dead. His heart was enlarged, all kinds of problems because of alcohol. He'd already been separated from his first wife. Some little nurse said, you know, have faith in God. He's able to work. And he did. He was saved. He was raised up through healing and through surgery. And he became the first sailing captain on the Embry-Lagos. God is working. God is doing great things in our day. And in the midst of it all, we need to search our hearts and search our motives and move into action. The second question, how is our love and compassion? Actually, I've already got into that. How is our love and compassion? How important it is to realize this is the crux of the issue. 1 Corinthians 13, penned by the Apostle Paul. I believe as we have love for these people around us, we're going to move. You may say, look, I have to be honest. I don't have love for people. Okay. You and I can join the same club. I don't either. In myself, oftentimes people put me off. Trees, birds, squirrels, wonderful. Stars, tremendous. Dogs, lovely. Cats, fine. People, my only problem is with people. Animals, never had any trouble getting on with animals. I don't know if any of you are in that category. People who say one thing and do another. People who seem to live in their own little selfish world. And yet I can tell you born again, something came into me that is supernatural. The Holy Spirit of the living God, the third person of the Trinity. And the Bible says that he, the Holy Spirit produces fruit, love, joy, peace. And the most unusual thing I've not been able to explain in my wretched life is that all these 20 years, I have never found a person yet I could not love by God's grace, did not love and like. Some people say to me, well, I love, but I don't like him. What do you mean by that kind of schizophrenic remark? If you love someone, you must be learning to like them. Sure, there may be things that bother you about them. But love covers a multitude of things. And so I understand basically what they're saying when they say, well, I don't like that person. There are initially things that sort of put them off. But as you love them by faith, taking a stand on God's word and denying your silly emotions, you will begin to like them. I have a lecture, some of you may have heard the tape, 18 ways how to learn to love someone. Too many people think that in the Christian life, everything is like putting a funnel in your ear. You just put a big funnel in your ear and tap that into a deeper life convention. And then you get a deeper life. And after that, you live for Christ. My Bible and Martin Lloyd Jones stands on this front, many of the greatest men of God I've ever read stand on this front. Many of the basic Christian principles must be learned. That is not a denial of supernatural power. God gives supernatural power to learn some of these lessons. Otherwise we're robots. And we can learn to love people by the power of the Holy Spirit. Some victories come instantaneous in our lives. We've all had that. Deliverance. Praise God, I believe in deliverance. But other lessons are learned through the rough and tumble of life. And the Holy Spirit, one of his greatest works is to make us humble, loving learners. One man once said, you know, any fool can learn by experience, but it takes a wise man to learn by instruction. That's why we have such a big book. It was just a matter of memorizing one deeper life phrase or getting some special formula. And after that, everything would be automatic. All God would have had to given us was two pop cards, one with John 3, 16, and the other one was Romans 8, 1, or whatever other favorite verse about the victorious life you like. But he didn't. He gave us a whole book of instruction. And Paul said, I give you the whole counsel of God. And I believe though the Holy Spirit gives us love and produces love at the same time, it is not a contradiction. It is a paradox to say we must learn to love one another. I wish I had more time to go into that. The third question I want to ask myself, as I reflect back on Paul and his teaching and his life, how is my worship and praise? How is my worship and praise? I'm never impressed if people have great public praise meetings with all the guitars and all the emotion. If when I talk to them, I discover they would not learn this in their own private devotions and in their own private life. I believe they're being deceived. I know young people that'll come together, man, you get some guitars and you get some of this amplifying equipment, and man, you get the devil to praise Jesus in such means. Don't think he doesn't. Try to deceive us because he comes as an angel of light. And every ugly thing in this world is being done in the name of Jesus. Did you know that? There are men and women committing adultery in the name of Jesus. There have been murders committed in the name of Jesus. There are people that say the name of Jesus repeatedly, over and over again, Jesus, Jesus, go on and on and on, until they go into hallucinations and hysterics, and boy, then they really get wiped out. And I've seen things in the religious world that I'm afraid I've been too involved in for 20 years. A test of whether a man knows worship or praise is his private life. His private quiet time. What he does is he drives down the road in his car. What he does is he spends hours in that kitchen, hours cleaning the crazy house, picking up after all the children. That's when we praise him. Do you know there's praise in your life? When everything's going wrong, to praise him. There may be sorrow outwardly, but in the heart there's the anchor of rejoicing. There's nothing wrong with sorrow. There's nothing wrong with tears. I praise God that somehow in his mercy, he has taught me to cry. I always have great sympathy for people who don't know how to weep. I don't point a judging finger at them, because I know emotionally people have had experiences in the past that they no longer can weep. I've had people fall down in counseling and say, I cannot cry. I haven't cried for 15 years. Doctors will tell you that people who don't know how to cry and don't know how to express their emotions, they tend to bottle it up and make them develop well. There's about 50 illnesses they can bring on themselves. Why is it that we're so slow in expressing ourselves, so slow in opening up, so slow in real fellowship? How many days have gone by here and I wonder if there aren't some of you right now, you know very well you haven't had any real fellowship yet this week. Really when you open your heart and you share the things that are bothering you and you really have, as they say in the States, a gut level conversation with somebody. You can't do this with that many. I think one of the biggest problems today among Christians are links where the minds are basically psychological that they've never learned to share. I've found it so helpful to let my life be an open book. I refuse to bottle things up. I know that I will become a sick man sooner or later. Yet we're so slow to learn this. How is our praise? How is our worship? How is our fellowship? How is our fellowship? The next question, how is our discipline or how is my discipline? This seems to be the last thing that people want in our day. Discipline. This has been one of the main principles of our whole movement and if it wasn't for this discipline no matter what other experiences young people have. And you know in OM we have young people about every brand of crisis experience ever described. Some of you may be somewhat charismatic in your orientation. I haven't tried to figure out who you are. It doesn't interest me that much. Some of you may be somewhat charismatic in your orientation. Maybe you believe part of the answer is to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. I was listening to a lecture on this yesterday. We have many, many, many young people. Maybe 40% of all the young people on OM have had such an experience. And some of them maybe have spoken in tongues after. That's of course another major controversy still going on. We have more on OM. You know what? When the chips are down, when the trumpet is blown, when the call to battle comes, you hardly can tell the difference between one deeper life group and the other deeper life group because so often we all fall flat on our face. And we've been 20 years watching it. And it's those charismatic young people of that background and those of the other backgrounds, you know, at least in our work, we all have come to agree, you know, we've got to walk daily with Jesus. Any crisis that does not lead to a process becomes an absence. What good is that going to do? That's poison. God may have given you a double-triple blessing three years ago. He may have healed you of being cross-eyed. I don't know what has happened in your life. But that is no guarantee that today you are going to live in victory. And this is why people have had, and listen, I don't say this lightly, people have had emotional experiences and allow that to lead them into a more emotional type of faith, 75% of the time end up in immorality. And I could give you facts along that line you'd drop from your chairs. We saw in the Indonesian revival, we've seen in Mexico, the whole church in Latin America is one string of immorality from one end of it coming to the other. Because you see, if you don't learn discipline, you've had it. Paul said, I buffeted my body and bring it into subjection, lest after preaching to others I become a reprobate. Paul said that, and he had a few crisis experiences, went into the heavens. There must be discipline. There must be the buffeting of the body. There must be some rules in the game. 2 Timothy chapter 2 says we've got to run the race according to the rules. Keith Miller, who wrote the book Taste of New Life, who's considered being rather free, you'd hardly call him a regimented man of the 18th century. You know what he said? Keith Miller said, in a situation where a man and a woman, apart from the husband and wife, are together with one another over a long period of time, it is very seldom that immorality does not come in. That's after a man has been many, many, many, many years in the church, who is very, very open-minded. We end up being considered old-fashioned because we have a few rules over the boys and the girls and where we sleep and where we go and the dating and all this jazz. And probably the discipline we've had along this line has freed us from being destroyed, because young people get very emotional. I don't know if any of you have read the book The Devil and Mr. Smith. There's a young Mr. Smith there, I'm sorry about that. There's a few million other Mr. Smiths, so don't get a neurosis on that. But this is a true story. It's written by a friend of mine who's a very, very honest and ethical man. And this is a young man in the southern part of the United States who was the son of a pastor. He saw so much hypocrisy in his church. He was in one of these more emotional-style churches, always looking for the next vision or the next dream and who knows what. He saw so much immorality. Almost every visiting evangelist left two or three girls pregnant in the church. And I've heard reports like that from many circles. In this country, not so far from here, there was a group not so long ago in which women were giving themselves to the men in sex and it was quote, ministry to the body. Sounds nice. In Germany, things more wild than that are going on. Anyway, Mr. Smith saw so much immorality in the church. In the guise of this and that. He became a follower of Satan. He left his father, he left the church, and he became a worshipper of Satan. He joined the Satanist society of California. He saw young girls put their fingers off and offer them up as offerings to the devil. I don't even recommend reading this book. The third chapter in this book, I started to get ill. I flipped to the end and read the more positive part. He was walking down the beaches of California. He had soaked his body in petrol, or kerosene I think, and he was deciding the final sacrifice to Satan. He was about to strike the match when somehow a group of people had been interceding for years, crying for this young man's soul, and there on the beach of California he was saved and is a preacher of the gospel today. But how many others have been switched off some brand of Christianity because it wasn't consistent, because it may have had experience but no discipline. It may have had nothing but no responsibility. And because Christians can be deceived, like the man who got the prophecy that he had the wrong wife, we in the church of Jesus Christ must go back to the discipline of the New Testament. And that first is self-discipline. Controlling our eyes, controlling our minds, taking a stand, realizing we are weak and linking with that adversity, to avoid all appearance of evil. All appearance of evil. You know we had a racket in California, do you know what a racket is? A group of gangsters working together on a tennis racket. And this gangster group in California, they worked on clergymen. That was their specialty, clergymen. This just shows how subtle and vicious Satan is. And they would send beautiful girls to these clergymen for counseling. You know, when the beautiful girls, the knockouts, come to me for counseling I say, excuse me very much, yes, here's a copy of my book, and this is my wife, you can talk to her. I'm not taking any girls into some room and counseling publicly, I may spend a few minutes talking to them. And these girls would go into the pastor's house and study. It was all set up. They knew when the wife wasn't home. And they seduced the pastor into sex. And when they got the pastor in bed, their co-worker came in with a camera and got pictures in the bedroom. They blackmailed pastors all over California. Because these pastors would lose their job, they'd lose everything. And they paid thousands and thousands of dollars to keep those pictures from being released. You say the devil's not clever? You're in Christianity's game? And I tell you, if you go out of this place determined to be a soldier of Jesus Christ, you may get more opposition in your Christian life than you've ever had before. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty unto God. Alan Redplant, speaking to a group of Christians some time ago, said our greatest problem in Great Britain is blanket victory. How are you doing that? Blanket victory. You know what that is? Getting the blanket off in the morning and getting up out of bed early. I love sleep. I fell asleep once standing up. I love sleep. And if you're not careful, at the end of your life, you will have slept one-third or more of your entire life away. Down. Spent it laying down with your eyes shut, doing nothing. Most of us get too much sleep. And I believe with all my heart, this is the area where we need this. We're all different. I don't judge people. Some people need eight hours. Some people can do with But to get up early in the morning and to get into God's word and memorize God's word is to me the crux of the spiritual warfare. Oswald J. Smith speaking to our conference just a couple of years ago, sharing how he hardly missed his quiet time, but a few times since he was a teenager. He's now 80-some years of age. He believes that quiet time is the most important thing for feeding your spiritual life. It's not an automatic remedy. There are many, many other things, but it's basic. It's basic. I find that I'm naturally lazy. This is why I get people to help me get up. Oh, I find it terrifically hard. At the end of the morning, I was actually praying. You know, when you're half asleep, you're not normal. I was praying at a semi-sleep stage that this guy would not come to the door that morning and knock. No, no, that prayer didn't get answered because he knocked and I had to get up. You don't like to leave two people standing outside the door waiting for you. For an hour, they're liable to come in and drag you out. You know, it's amazing what the false cults do. You ever read the life of Herbert W. Armstrong, one of the biggest false prophets in the world today? Producer of Plain Truth, I call it Crooked Truth magazine. I gave a sample to a brother this morning. Their organization is now paying the news stands in London to give him away. They believe in literature. They put a rack of them free of charge in front of the newsstand. For everyone this newsstand man can give away, he gets paid. Their subscription is now three million. Three million copies of Plain Truth. And this false prophet was so determined to get victory over sleep that he paid a man a dollar if he did an effective job of waking him up every morning. And he hired a big bruiser, a big guard, come to the door and come in and get him out of bed. And stay in there until he was completely clothed. And if in any way Herbert W. Armstrong got back in the bed, God didn't get his dollar. Well, I can tell you, he never got in the bed. And that man collected a dollar every morning. The world does that. The false cults do that. But Christians, you can't even get them out of bed any more than a cup of tea, unless it's after 7.30. And I believe that every morning, when it's time to get up and get in God's word, you are saying, whether you admit it or not, Jesus, I love you or I don't love you. Because he says, if you love me, keep my commands. And how many commands do we have about getting into God's word, about disciplining our bodies? I find the best thing in the morning is a little exercise. Even more than a cup of tea. Get your whole body moving, your blood circulating, your organs going. You go out and walk. Those of you who are older, we have had people come and tell us that their health was deteriorating, they never took on any kind of exercise program, you know, there's no time for that, until the doctor said, you either exercise or you're going to be dead within two years. Boy, that thing really went into orbit. What they wouldn't do for Jesus, they'd do to stay alive a few more years in this crazy mixed up planet. God has given you a physical body, and it's linked with your spiritual life, it's linked all together, and this is an area where we need discipline. And one of the great sins, Billy Graham is one of the few who dares to speak about it, is the sin of gluttony. The sin of gluttony. Now at a conference like this, generally, you know, we're a little bit constrained, you know, people are watching, and of course I don't know how much is going into the silver plate, I've never seen that kind of a system, I think it's quite good. So, you know, we're all a bit constrained, but I believe with all my heart, and each one has to stand personally before God, it has nothing to do necessarily with weight, you can be a skinny little glutton, that's right, I've seen them. Some people have, well the doctor told me what I have is a high octane combustion engine, anything you put in it will burn it up, it's a tremendous cover up for gluttony. And I believe the sin of gluttony is to be equated with the sin of alcoholism, I believe it's equal with many other sins. On the other hand, I believe it's just as simple to become neurotic about food, and to judge others, and to develop tremendous guilt feelings. That's just as bad. And I'm a natural for that. Once you get high principles in your life, you can follow it up with the biggest overdose of guilt you could ever think of. That's where we need the spiritual balance. How is your discipline? Are you running the race? Paul said, I so run. I so run. When I think of these athletes who train to go into the Olympics, and recently I was reading a women's sports magazine. I tell you, I pick this thing up in an airplane, I don't buy such magazines. Women's sports, and there was a summary of Billie Jean King's latest exercise program. Now as far as I'm concerned, I've read a little about her, she's already won everything you can think of in tennis, but after winning all that, this was just a few months ago, she went into a 17 day exercise program. You wouldn't believe what she did. For 10 hours a day, she knocked herself silly. She got on a bicycle, when you change the various levers, it changes the bike, so it's just like pedaling uphill, and even she fell off the bike. And three girls with her disciplined themselves for 17 days, their whole bodies right with pain. Why? A corruptible crown. And Paul said, I so run for that incorruptible crown. Why aren't we running? Spirits, men, running the race. Quickly, how is your boldness and witness? We saw that in the life of the apostle Paul. And it would be easy to forget it. To me, finding Christians without Christian literature, without tracts, and without gospels, is worse than finding them without clothing. Maybe I'm an extremist on that point. And all the need is so great. Some of you know I wrote a book on literature evangelism, I don't even have copies here. And I'd be happy to send that to you as a gift, pointing out dozens of ways that you can be involved with literature distribution without becoming high pressure, you know, and becoming unnatural. And I'd be happy to send that to you. Then how is your attitude toward suffering and hardship? We saw how real this was in the life of the apostle Paul. And God is so concerned about our attitudes. Very, very concerned. And God is concerned about sins of the disposition. See, sometimes outwardly there can be a great big smile and a big evangelical handshake, but inwardly there are the snakes and the crocodiles and there's the bitterness and the resentment. And it just surprises me when Christians can go around with bitterness toward anybody. You're just hurting yourself. Maybe somebody's walked on you, maybe somebody's mistreated you, maybe you feel you're neglected, maybe you feel a dozen things, but when you maintain even a root of bitterness, you are hurting yourself. Not just spiritually, beloved, physically. Doctors tell us. Bitterness creates all kinds of tensions in the body and other illnesses called psychosomatic illnesses, but they're real, they're not just in the head. A psychosomatic illness doesn't mean it's going away. How are you doing in dealing with dispositional sins? Lastly, I just wanted to bring this out. As we think about these things and as we want to press on in this kind of life, I think basically I can set up how it's done in three words. I wrote that little formula and I've worked with different people in different ways, but these three words have to be involved somewhere, even if you don't pronounce them. First, the cross. We've got to be willing to embrace the cross. You all know Romans 6.6, but let's, as we come to the close of our time together, just read that. Romans 6.6. We know Romans 6.7 and 8, how important it is in understanding the victorious life. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him and that the body of sin might be destroyed and henceforth we should not serve sin. The cross. You can have a whole message on it. I don't think there's anyone here that hasn't heard a message on the cross. You know where you've been if you haven't, but are you appropriate? One of the reasons at times I feel the burden to preach so strongly what I feel the Bible says in every aspect, rather than taking the whole message on the subject of the cross, is because I believe until we have higher goals in the things of the Spirit, I believe until we see ourselves as we really are, and Billy Graham says that's the greatest obstacle to our sanctification, until that happens we will not go back to the cross the way we should. We'll only go back for a look. I don't want you to go back for a look. I want you to go back to appropriate your death sentence. I am crucified with Jesus Christ. Secondly, resurrection. The Christian is not left at the cross, even though his whole life is a crucified life, but there's resurrection. We are seated with Jesus Christ in the heavens. He is our all. He is our everything. We, according to Colossians, are complete in him. I wish I had time to give my wife's testimony, but before we were married, she was raped, her body and her mind and her head with four major psychosomatic illnesses. She was taking pills. She was going this doctor, that doctor. She came from a very bad background. Her father was killed. Her second father didn't like her, threw her out of the home. She was beaten, all kinds of wild things. She was emotionally a really mixed up girl, even though she knew Christ. Migraine headaches, back trouble, heart trouble, heart murmurs, man. It came to the point where I knew we couldn't get married. I would never minister enough to her needs, unloving wretch that I was. In the quiet of her own room, after months of soul agony, she came to the place where she knew she was complete in Jesus Christ. It wasn't Jesus plus George, Jesus plus a husband, Jesus plus success, Jesus plus this, that. So many Christians that way. It was Jesus plus this, Jesus plus acceptance, Jesus plus doing this, Jesus plus husband, Jesus plus wife. And so often, we won't experience the victory that God wants us to experience until it's just Jesus. Not that he doesn't add many of those things. He does. But it's water above the glass. And in the quiet of her own room, in a sense, she fell in love in a deeper way with the Lord Jesus and experienced his resurrection power, his completeness. And she woke up the next morning completely healed of those four sicknesses, went back to the doctor for confirmation, cardiograph, and all the rest. The rest of faith, the sufficiency of Christ, the resurrection power that is available as we come to the cross. And thirdly, the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Paul was the one who wrote. You see, this is why we got to keep it in balance. The one who wrote all this about discipline, all this about the warfare, all of this about prayer, he's the main one who gives us a command in Scripture about the Holy Spirit. One of the few commands in all of Scripture about the Holy Spirit. Be ye filled with the Spirit. The book of Ephesians. Be not drunk with wine, be filled with the Spirit. And of course, this is a very controversial thing. I haven't met anyone in the Christian Church that hasn't read at least two books on the Holy Spirit. So I will just leave those words of Billy Graham with you. I don't care how you get it, but get it. Be ye filled with the Spirit. It's not the end, but it's the beginning. Just as the cross and the resurrection life, it's all the beginning of the Christian warfare. It doesn't mean everything's going to be easier, it may in fact be harder. The crucified life, the resurrected life, the life of the fullness of the Holy Spirit is the normal Christian life. Forever believe it. Whatever gifts may follow, whatever way God believes you, this is the normal Christian life. And it's this that gives us the power and the strength to be soldiers and disciples and intercessors and witnesses. Not automatically, not because we become robots, but because we have a power beyond ourselves. The word preached was of no value, because it was not mixed with faith. Will it be said the word was preached in battle the last week of July, 1975. But for some, it was of no value, because it was not mixed with faith. I have done my part. I've shared what God put on my heart. Now my part, the second part, is the same as yours. I must believe. I must believe that God is going to make this more real in me. I must ask God the specific things he wants me to do in the days to come, and we need to be very specific, even in making lists, and then believe God is going to do it. And if we fail, we get up, we believe again. Every failure will be a springboard to success. And in this way, we'll be Book of Acts Christians. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, you know each one of our hearts, you know each one of our lives. Just guide us now as we wait upon you. Can we spend a few moments in silent prayer?