In this sermon, the speaker shares about their recent meetings and experiences in South Asia. They mention a gathering of leaders from the South Asia area, which was a time of sharing, prayer, and unity. They also talk about the responsibility of the 450 full-time workers, including the work among the Afghans. The speaker reflects on the challenges and doubts they faced in the early days of their work, but also the faithfulness of God in bringing them to where they are now. They emphasize the importance of understanding the weakness of humanity and the need for grace and forgiveness in our relationships with one another.

We want to turn to the Word of God and just share a few thoughts from Peter and James. God has really met with us here during this last week. We've been here over a week. We had, first of all, the meeting connected with the leaders of the whole South Asia area, including the surrounding countries. It was a time of sharing, of prayer, of unity. There are now 450 full-time people, including the work among the Afghans. It's an enormous responsibility. We really sense God very much working in our midst. The last couple of days, we've been meeting with the All India Coordinating Team, and there's been a great sense of encouragement, unity, even in the midst of a diversity of opinions. So that's great. Thank you for praying for us. And I hope that you, even though your time here is short, as you know, there are many, many other people that wanted to come here. I'm afraid that I had to be a little hard this year and ask them not to come, partly because of the finance, partly because they only get disappointed, because I cannot meet with all these people personally. And I do want to get personal time with everyone who comes up here. I am not the focus of these meetings. I am part of the problem because I'm not able to go into India, but the focus of these meetings is the Lord himself. And let's get time with the Lord Jesus. We've come to a different environment. Actually, I've found this place, compared to Bromley, somewhat restful. I have different varieties of fast lane operations, but this has been a lower variety. Good, quiet time in the morning, not having to rush off. Of course, I have jet lag. Little bit of time in the evening to do letters, go for an occasional walk, and spend lots of time or some time in prayer. So I'm grateful for these days, even though greatly miss my wife. James chapter one, verse two, my brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials. What are some other words used for that in modern translations? Testings. Knowing this, that the testing of your faith worketh patience. God allowed our faith to be tested when we lost Lagos after 17 years. I don't think we ever dreamed in the beginning of that project. We'd have that old ship for 17 years. I used to cry out to God just for one thing at times, it would just get to India. Such struggles with fear and doubt during those early days of Lagos, as we had never done anything like that before, and as there was criticism, there was division. You can read about it in the Lagos story, quite an honest history. Though, of course, it's not really history, it's just snapshots of some of things in 17 years. By the way, if you can't sell that book around India, let me just announce to you that you don't know how to sell books, so you might want to learn. Maybe AIC will have a good session on how to sell a book. There is a difference between collecting a donation for a gospel packet, which a clone could do, and selling a book. Maybe this is why the Lord is keeping me out of India. I would go down there and make you all feel so miserable, as I go around to your bases and see how neat and tidy and organized everything is. I just saw one box of literature in front of one house here in Kathmandu. I don't go around snooping anymore, it's too depressing. One box of literature in front of one house here, and you know, I wanted to weep. Just books thrown into a box, dust, dirt, garbage. Of course, they're used books, but I tell you, one of them was a New Testament, and that is often an offense to people. It certainly is to a Muslim to see the Word of God treated as if it were some kind of... Right underneath it was an old crummy novel that fell out of some newsstand in the Western world. Anyway, I don't want to get excited about these things. Brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various testings, knowing this, that the testing of your faith worketh patience. That's my greatest need still. How can that be? Thirty-four years after my conversion. It's quite amazing. I wrote something down in my diary the other night. I was just... I've been saved and living for Jesus 12,410 days, approximately. And the way I've done that is just one day at a time. And some of you have been going on for thousands of days, you've never realized it. I've actually been alive for 18,500 days. I got started in this when I was washing my hands and realized how many times a day here in Kathmandu I wash my hands. And I figured I probably washed my hands over the years a quarter of a million times. And what is the lesson in that? I don't know. Knowing this, that the testing of your faith worketh patience, but let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking nothing. Perhaps the lesson in that is that I find it difficult to even wash my hands because it seems like such a waste of time. I like to move, but it's a wise thing for your health to wash your hands. Oh, look at that. There's lessons every where. Then it talks about if you lack wisdom, and one of the reasons we're here in Kathmandu these days is that we may increase in wisdom as we listen to one another, as we wrestle with the problems, as we determine to develop policies and principles, strategy and programs so that we can be more effective. I believe you are effective in your work. I highly esteem your work. I thank you for your reports. I read them. I stand amazed at your perseverance, especially during the hot time of the year. I have difficulty thinking about India in May. I remember being in New Delhi in May. I broke all records for bathing. I think I had six showers in one day battling New Delhi in May and was happy to leave and go back to London after that. I know some of you, of course, just revel in the heat. You like to pedal your cycle down the street in May at noon. Not too many probably in that camp. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to all men. Liberally upbraideth not shall be given him. Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man to think he shall receive anything from the Lord. And it talks about a double-minded man. It talks about the rich, very unpleasant verses for many people. Then verse 12, blessed is the man that endureth testing, temptation. They have a difference. There is a difference. For when he has tried, he shall receive the crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. And then it clearly shows that being tempted does not come from God. God allows it. Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man. Important little bit of theology often neglected. But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. You know, even today in some places there is a tendency, watch out for it, to think that the problem is always some evil spirit. And people blame their behavior on evil spirits. I am sure there is an element of truth in some cases in that. But here it is very clear that, you know, it does not take a special work of an evil spirit to get you and I in a big mess. We are drawn away of our own lust. It is in our own hearts. And we see that clearly in Scripture. When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. And sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Do not err, my beloved brethren. And it goes on to that section of James 1 that is talked about in my book, Revolution of Love, which I think most of you have read. Turn now to Peter. Even if these things are not new to many of you, they are worth feeding upon. When you have been living for the Lord thirty-four years, there are very few new Scriptures. But it is still God's Word and it still does something for us, I believe, even on a subconscious level. Verse 5, who are kept by the power of God. 1 Peter, chapter 1, sorry. 1 Peter 1, 5. Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. Ready to be revealed in the last time. I certainly hope everyone feels in the early morning in the English weather, not everybody feels like, you know, standing on top of a cassette quarter and doing a gospel jig. But it seems to me we ought to rejoice in the Lord and that we should have a time of praise and prayer before we come to our early morning devotions. And probably eight o'clock out here is hardly considered early. But there it is. This isn't just talking about joy, is it? Ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Another thing that's very painful for me and O.M. is the lack of participation in our prayer meetings. I've been personally confronting people about that lately, especially some of the women. Women are to be treated as equal, therefore they must have equal, straightforward confrontation. So I will tell you, I've been developing my boldness. We also have a policy. I don't know how this works in India, but in the West we have a policy that as leaders we must deal directly with the women. The old policy was an unbiblical policy supposedly that I started. I thought I found it in Ephesians 5 and other verses that I would always go through the men. I remember in the early days once going to a woman about something and a man really, really, really really coming on me, you know, this is my wife and if you've got anything to say to my wife then you come to me. And I think we got into false practice through that. There are certainly certain things I'm sure that you should go through the husband, but apparently in the West, the way people are thinking, that certain things you should sit down with a wife, especially if she's working in your office. And many of our women are really married women going the extra mile to help out in the office. But it's amazing how few women pray in an enthusiastic way in the prayer meetings often in certain countries. If you put a new ruling, we'll take it to the general council, women no longer are, we've seen a scripture, we can find a scripture for anything we want, we've seen women are no longer allowed to pray in the meetings. I will tell you, George Verwer would be voted out of power at the next general council. But we take our freedom as an occasion to the flesh. I can understand a first year person, a little shy, first year baby Christian woman being silent, I can understand that. That's why she's joined OM, to learn how to get her mouth open, get her tongue to move so that, you know, thank you, Jesus, can come out from her little feminine vocal cords. But someone who's been in the work 10 years sitting there like a stone through several hours of prayer is extremely difficult. And I know my own wife is very shy, very quiet, very reticent to pray in public, but she does it. Maybe not as often as she should, she never listens to my tapes. So that is tied in, that is tied in with our joy, that is tied in with the reality of what God is doing in our life. What if sometimes the OM prayer meeting is a little bit of a trial? Not every prayer meeting is a great, overwhelming, emotional jamboree of blessing where you just come in and feel so oozy for God and go out ready to take the entire nation for Christ. Some of the OM prayer meetings that I've been in are a trial. Things go wrong, the leader, you know, seems to be on a rather dull note, the guest speaker goes on too long, then there's a tea break, that goes on too long, the end of the night, you look back and think, how much time have we actually prayed? It's a trial. But I believe trials can come to us in many, many different ways. Don't try to tell God how he is to test you, because he'll do it in a different way. And it is often a great surprise. I believe, as we go forward in this work here in the subcontinent, we are going to continue to experience great testings and trials. We want blessing, we want breakthroughs, we long to see greater answers to prayer, we sometimes search our heart to great depth, but we are going to be tested. My mind goes back to the book of Philippians, chapter 2. Just look at that for a moment. As I want to just touch on a couple of specific areas where we probably are going to be tested personally. And the first area I'm thinking of is our attitude. And even as we come here, let's examine our hearts this morning about our attitudes toward one another, toward God, people do develop a bad attitude toward God. That's often a deeply psychological thing. Our attitude toward the work we are involved. I develop at times a very bad attitude toward operationalization. It's inevitable when a movement is so big. None of us are happy with everything that's going on. Nobody even knows everything that's going on. We are committed to a pluralistic moving together. We operate under the guidance of the Holy Spirit by consensus in that we don't have one dictator making decisions, but we come to decisions through prayer and discussion. And they had Jerusalem meetings back in the New Testament, just as we have Kathmandu meetings today. And we are part of the same church, the same Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever more. But as we think about attitude and how we will be tested in our attitude, let's look at Philippians 2, where we're told in verse 5, one of the greatest verses on attitude in the New Testament, Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. He was equal with God. We believe in the Trinity, and extreme Jesus-only, Trinity-denying movements are growing in some parts of Asia. I'm sure you must have some in India. But made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. Being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. One of the great influences on OM from its early days, not its earliest days, but after we got started, were the writings of A.W. Tozer. And Tozer was a person who greatly emphasized attitude, having the right attitude. He emphasized motivation. Brothers and sisters, in this work we are doing, we must constantly check our motivation. You can be in this room as a leader and be largely propelled by ego, the praise of men, Christian work, various and sundry ego trips. And some of the casualties we've seen in OM India prove that even after many years, those people who left bitter and who did not recover from that, were not being motivated properly in their work. Because if we are motivated properly in our work, if the Holy Spirit is dominating us in our work, we will not leave any Christian work with a bitter or wrong attitude, even if the work is at fault. We have been at fault in some situations. And we stand before God, but we have generally always repented of that. And within some days, usually days, maybe weeks, our attitudes have been put right and there has been a great sense of peace and joy in the work, even toward the person that may have backbitten us and gossiped us and lied and all kinds of things. So our heart is clean, our conscience is clean, though we have failed and we have sinned. How sad it is to meet a man two years after he's been on OM and he's still groaning, he's still backbiting, he's still gossiping. This poor soul has not graduated from even spiritual infancy. We have men in the pulpits of America, we have men in the pulpits of Europe, who have proven that their ministry has been to some degree an ego trip. And so when the real testing comes, they don't stand. Now there's a difference between an ego trip, by that I mean we are dominated by pride and by ego, by our desire for recognition, by the praise of men and all that kind of thing, rather than by the love of Christ, love for people, desire for Jesus and the cross, crucifying self. And of course, no wonder not many people are buying anymore the books of Andrew Murray, F.B. Meyer, even A.W. Tozer is not read today by a majority of Christians. And of course, I, in reading some Tozer, lately I've been listening to Tozer's tapes, which are hard to find. And I seldom get through one of those tapes without being just shot, having to fall wounded at the foot of the cross for resurrection and for healing. The Keswick Convention, born over a hundred years ago, had as its main purpose seeing people come into a victorious and crucified life. I wrote here in my Bible, the main thrust of the Keswick Convention, Peter Maiden, by the way, is speaking there this summer. One of the main emphasis, the believer's union with Christ in his death and resurrection, the perfect cleansing available in the precious blood of Christ, and the freedom from sins and guilt, and the power with results through faith. And over that week at Keswick, there's generally not always a theme which covers those main points of the victory we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. We've got to be willing to deal with the mind. We've got to be willing to deal with wrong attitudes, with the wrong disposition. Some of you know one of my favorite Tozer quotes. Let me read two of them. They're dynamite. Some of you have heard them. Listen again. The danger is that we assume that we have been delivered from our sins when we have in reality only exchanged one kind of sin for another. We must, for instance, be careful that our repentance is not simply a change of location. And joining Christian work can be just that, only a change of location. Whereas we once sinned in the far country among the swine herds and the pigs, we are now chumming with religious persons considerably cleaner, much more respectable in appearance, to be sure, but no nearer to the true heart purity than they were before. Let's go to that next quote. We've got to move on. It requires great care. This is absolutely dynamite. Let it go to the soul of your need. It requires great care and a true knowledge of ourselves to distinguish a spiritual burden from a religious irritation. And a lot of our teams, and sometimes even in our discussion here, I know it's true of me, we get strong and it may be a spiritual burden. I think often it is, but there are other times when it is a religious irritation. Something is bugging us, something is bothering us about O.M. or about our brother next to us or about someone else. He goes on to say, often acts done in a spirit of religious irritation have consequences far beyond anything we could have guessed. Always it is more important that we retain a right spirit toward others than that we bring them to our way of thinking, even if our way is right. Satan cares little whether we go astray after false doctrine or merely turn sour. Brothers and sisters, our hearts grieve when we meet people who have turned sour and how we need to pray for them and show love to them. The Holy Spirit worked in a mighty way at the XOMers reunion last summer when some XOMers who had, you know, some sour experiences about O.M. came together and there was prayer, there was repentance. One brother from even 24 years back acknowledged that in those days he had been extreme in his thinking. It was a very strong Pentecostal that felt O.M. wasn't really moving with what it should be and he went off and joined that movement in Holland which was a counter movement to O.M. called Operation Pentecostal Fire that was going to have the real gifts and the power, a movement that fizzled within a few years. We know today it is one thing to talk about the Holy Spirit, that's easy. We've got a lot of backslidden televangelists talking big about the Holy Spirit. It's another thing to live in the power with the fruit and the gifts of the Holy Spirit operating and we all know we have a long way to go. How will your attitude be tested? What are some of the things that God may allow to come down life's road to test you in your attitude that you may be refined, that you may be purer than gold, that you may become more mature and godly in Christ's light? I've just written a few things. You're going to be tested when you are rejected. How are you doing in handling rejection? You can feel rejection even when you're in O.M. You might be, I hope there's no one here feels rejected because you're staying in a house down the road and there's a few of us staying in this hotel. Just for your information you're looking at one of the few Christian leaders that I know of that hardly ever stays in a hotel and I often am booked into beautiful expensive hotels and I phone them up and I say as I just did at mandate can you please book me out of the hotel. This is the Lord's money. I don't have to pay for it and I usually have a lot of people with me and they don't book them into the hotel and what a blessing this last time I booked out of this hotel and so the whole group, Paul Troper and my nephew George Cooper, Ray's brother, we all ended up in the pastor's house. The pastors are usually hospitable and they have, you know, in America their house is a room and what a blessing we had. Through that we got a heart linking with him, ministered at his church, they gave a $500 gift and we have another permanent long-term relationship with a very dynamic church. But we are dealing here in Kathmandu with a security situation. It is a great answer to prayer that we can be here. This hotel knows us. We've never had any difficulty here but it is getting more expensive so the more people that can just stay somewhere else even though we eat here, it just saves a lot of money and sometimes we have almost canceled this. We now are doing it every other year. I think we need to remember for a long time we've been up here every year but now it's every other year largely linked with expense. We bring less people often from the west dealing with expense. Anyway, that might be a poor illustration but it is possible in little things to feel rejected, to feel someone else is being treated better than you. There is a teaching in the word, the labor is worthy of its hire. I hope you listened to that tape. Some people certainly take that to extreme which we don't want. As we've dealt with the allowance system, we have done something that is very, very seldom done in the church, east or west, that basically everybody at OM who is in long-term staff will be receiving a similar. It can't all be the same, especially when it comes to health, children, living in the city, living in the village. Basically, we will be living. Everyone involved on a similar allowance, a similar amount of money. People say this doesn't work. It's not going to be easy. Of course, if we consider what it costs to finance even our single people on the teams, there is not so much difference between the way they live and the way some longer-term personnel live, some of whom are on those teams. But needless to say, in Christian work, you will at times feel rejected. You will go to a church and feel rejected. Definitely, at times, we have bad attitudes in OM toward particular local churches, as if they're making mistakes, and they're unloving, and they're carnal, but we're spiritual. We're not making those mistakes. We've got to have a revolution in our attitude toward local churches. Of course, if we see sin, we grieve. But I know myself, I've said things at times, being a natural motor mouth, God cleanse it, that were really uncalled for and indicated a wrong attitude. And sometimes, of course, I have apologized. Secondly, you're going to be tested when you discover that you are being gossiped about. Again, I am amazed at people who are getting all uptight and all worried because they're being gossiped about. Where are you living? I mean, you people are not 22 anymore. You're growing older. I'm not the only one here that's getting 365 days added on to my life every year. Surely, you know you're not going to live in this world without being gossiped about. Do you think there's anybody in this room that has never been gossiped about? No one's ever spoken behind your back? We fight against gossip with everything we have. We need to increase that fight. It is sin. But man is not perfect. He does not arrive at perfection in this world. I know that might upset one or two people, I can think, down in India who are deceived. But we therefore, at times, will say things that should not be said. It will be classified as gossip. Unfortunately, the other brother will eventually hear a twisted form of it. He won't hear a straight form of it. It's amazing some of the things I hear quoted that I've said, even in magazines now. I have more and more people that want to write things and me to sign the end of it. I just have one from a major publisher. They already wrote a whole six page forward to a new book by Billy Graham and somebody else. They want to put a short chapter in the middle of it, the beginning of it. So he's taken some material off a tape of mine, mixed it with his own thinking and impressions of what he feels that I believe. And he's asked me to sign this, and this will go into a book. Well, I had Vera, I hope she's done it, phone him and say that that's, you know, I'm not playing that kind of cricket. And I need to, you know, if he wants it forward, I have to write it myself. And I'm sorry even for some of the things, a couple of things in some of my older books that through translation don't exactly come out right. Who knows what verve comes out like in Malayalam, what people are believing in Kerala on the basis of some message I gave in Bolton, Lancashire in 1965. If we are to be God's men and God's women, we have to be ready to handle gossip. Doesn't mean we never do anything about it, because at times we must try to put it right. But we want to put it right from a position of spiritual rest, not a position of anger, anxiety, tension and all the rest. It is good to put things right for the sake of the work. And I don't think we want to take some super spiritual view and pretend we're Christ on the cross and we utter not a word. I read a little poem like that, that sounded beautiful, but it wasn't true. It wasn't biblical. We're not Christ on the cross. We got too many people with a persecution complex as it is. Plus, Jesus did speak some words from the cross. It wasn't many, but I dare to say a few words from the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ are equal to any thousand sentences you and I can put together. Paul definitely defended his ministry and his doctrine, and sometimes we have to do that. I wish I had the privilege of setting the record straight with a few people who are gossiping against us in India and in other places as well. But let's learn to receive that testing. Let's not be overprotective of our reputation, nor let us become neurotic about O.M.'s reputation. Our goal in O.M. India is not the maintenance of our reputation. Our goal is to live in the power of the Holy Spirit at the foot of the cross and demonstrate God on a day-by-day basis. Ultimately, very few Christian groups come out with a good reputation. Everybody seems to be saying something negative about everybody. Billy Graham's reputation has been tarnished and stained in a great degree in some circles. In other circles, in our circle, it would be the way we would think without blemish. But it's a difficult area, so we're going to be tested. And it is easy to have a wrong attitude toward a brother for years because we've heard that he said something against us. And if there's no one in Kathmandu right here that doesn't have an area, a need of improvement in your attitude toward a brother and sister in this room, then you certainly are the most godly group that has ever come. Maybe you'd like me to take your picture. Let us search our hearts and let us not play games with the Holy Spirit when he tries to convict us. Thirdly, when we feel someone has used us, we have a word in English, you know, this, we've been conned, you know, we've been tricked, the big sting. Generally, it doesn't go that far in Christian work. But sometimes we can feel used. All of us will struggle with this. We feel that when we're really doing something for someone, we're their friend. They appreciate us. But when we're no longer doing much for them, we never hear from them. It just seems to be a different world. This is where we are naive at times about human weakness. I think the next time someone says to me on radio or television, they ask me all these interesting questions. What do you feel is the greatest surprise you had as you went along life's road in Christian work, missionary work? I think I will say I never realized how weak all of God's people were, including my spiritual hero, Billy Graham. There's a book that thick pointing out some of his weaknesses. Most of them aren't too valid. Some of them were valid. And I got depressed in the middle of the book and decided I'd rather not continue reading. Maybe that's unreality or escapism. We are all weak. We should not be surprised when we see men fall. So we know that our great goal in our own life is not to fall and we believe in holiness. So if you understand more of the human factor and the weakness of man, you'll be less surprised, probably less bitter along life's road. You'll not be hurt when someone doesn't write you for a year. I struggled great hurt when my father, my mother died and I heard from so few. My own father, relatively speaking, didn't hear from that many people. In fact, in some cases, the unconverted people around him, the senior citizens around him, seemed to be more present at the funeral than God's people. Now, on the other side, we were just so encouraged by the people who did come. In America, funeral is a two-day event, usually. It's a great variety in a country of immigrants. But the first day, you stand for four or five hours in front of an open coffin and you welcome people. I tell you, if you've ever seen me emotional, you should have been there on that day. And that is awesome. Many countries like England seldom have an open casket. I lived in England for 25 years. I'm a little out of it. New Jersey, Dutch, open casket culture. And my father, to see what he was going through, and then all these people come and everybody's weeping. I mean, it's not quite Italian style. I mean, Italians, you jump in the grave, it goes on for days. But that was a heavy, heavy event. And as I've wrestled through this over the months, I realized that as human beings, we cannot relate to the death of other people's parents to any great degree, especially if none of our own parents have died yet. Now, somehow in my own life, because of the death of John and Keith Beckwith, John Watts and Keith Beckwith back in around 65, I learned to relate to parents who just had people die. I go the extra mile to go to funerals and try to send a word of condolence. And Ray has been a great example in that as well, I've noticed from various letters. But the average person cannot feel to any great degree the loss of someone else's loved one. How wrong it would be for me to develop a wrong attitude. You know, people that never said anything to me, people don't know how to say anything to me. They probably would be afraid that I'd break down and weep. No one here, hardly at all, has said anything about my mother or father since coming here eight days ago. We are human. I don't hold that against people. I wrestle with it because that's the biggest thing in my life. And my own father may soon die. And I tell you, if I'm even functioning, if I'm even functioning after that, it'll be only the grace of God. I'm a weak person. I went into the woods after my mother's death and I wept and wept and wept for two days and almost two weeks. There was continuous weeping and it has not stopped. Who understands these things? We are human beings. We have doubts. We have fears. And my father did a wise thing. He immediately got rid of the house with all the memories. Got rid of all the furniture and the clothing. We all, my children have some of it and some of it's gone to Waynesboro. And he's functioning. He's battling on. He often just sits down and begins to cry and people wonder why he's crying. But this is what life is about. And we've got to somehow understand how weak we are and how we will fail one another. We all have four times more to do than we are able to do because we are committed to this vision and to this work. It's incredibly difficult that I've had only a couple of days with my father since the funeral. And we've tried to change and bend my schedule and you know wrestled with this how it could work out. And all of us here probably have had very little time with our parents since committing ourselves to missionary work. And it's difficult. So I just share that with you that we are weak. We will fail one another. We cannot possibly keep up with all the goals and aims that we have. We have too many goals and we're up here creating more goals. Very few people can understand the pressure of trying to pray and to find the money we need to keep all this going on. By the way, my father set up a memorial to my mother rather than people bringing flowers. Though now you cannot mention it in the newspapers in America. They used to put, no flowers, memorial gifts to Operation Mobilization. The florists have protested. The flower sellers have protested. So now you can't say that in the newspapers. So it was circulated by word of mouth and you mentioned both. So there were some flowers and I found a great struggle to see them throw them away at the end of this event. And I was trying to figure out what I could do with them. I took some of them and gave them away. But quite a lot of money has come in in memory of my mother, who, by the way, was an ex-OMer. Carried the OM office for eight years on her own. When she left, three people had to take her place. So we will, especially during times of struggle and difficulty, we will at times feel used. We will at times feel that everybody wants us when we're about to be their main speaker at Urbana with 18,000 people all waiting for you to speak. But we will feel other times how we are just used. And we will go through enormous struggle. Don't let me exaggerate this because this has not been a huge struggle for me. I'm using this to communicate truth. But I believe it is valid. And then we will be tested. When someone reminds us of someone else who has hurt us. Do you know you make subconscious evaluations of people? Do you have the problem of seeing someone and instantly liking them and seeing someone else and instantly not particularly liking them? I'll just give you a little advice. I recommend that you repent. Whenever that initial meeting of a person causes you to initially not like them, just repent gently. It doesn't have to be a big thing. Don't fall down on your face in front of the person and say, I don't like you. Forgive me. A sure mark of spiritual immaturity. But repent and deal with it and realize that we are not called to particularly like everyone. What does the word even mean? I actually do like people. That's probably got me in far more difficulty than not liking people. And I get involved with people. People don't easily turn me off, an expression some people use. Maybe it's God's grace. Maybe it's some things from my background. There are exceptions. I especially had a struggle with Orthodox Jews to this day. The Orthodox Jews, just saw them again, the curls, the black hats. And I know these people persecute believers in Israel. And just the sight of them, I find that a struggle. So my old hostility comes out. I really like to have a go at one of these types. Fortunately, I saw a film that brought some of that into balance. My love for the extreme Orthodox Jews has increased. What about the extreme Orthodox fanatic Muslims who would like to hang you up by your beard in the back of the mosque together with a dog? Not easy to keep your right attitude. We must not give up the battle to reach out in love and to develop relationships. How can it be in OM that you have people that are not really on great speaking terms? If I find someone that I feel I'm having difficulty communicating with, I will probably do what I can to work it out to talk to him more than the one that I can easily communicate with. Because it's obvious that we've got something to work on. And it won't be easy. Even when we first sit down and talk, that person may say something that upsets us. We upset each other here when we talk. And we need to work for balance in that area. And then lastly, it's not always easy to maintain that right attitude when we are corrected, when we are rebuked, when we are exhorted. I was so encouraged. I really lit into Alfie Franks here at the meeting the other day. And I told him, boy, I was really energized. Alfie, you are stubborn. I thought surely I could have got a carnal reaction from that. That was a arrow. And he just looked at me and smiled. And later I repented. And there was no need for repentance. He acknowledged his stubbornness. And I acknowledged mine, both born on the same day. I can just imagine when God was making this decision in the glory. And perhaps he made a mistake in that this one should have been born in New Jersey, and I should have been born in Carolina. But here we are, and we're pressing on. Well, let's pray. Lord, we thank you that though none of us like to be tested, nor do we like the trials, the problems, the things going wrong. And we haven't even begun on the list. We've only got started. All the practical problems, the testings, the breakdowns of the vehicles, the money that doesn't come, the recruit that backslides, the pastor that punches us in the nose or steals our Scofield Bible. Endless range of trials, difficulties, losing a ship, having a whole warehouse burned to the ground. We can list hundreds, thousands of testings and trials we've had over the years. Lord, we do want to learn from these things. We do want to turn them into stepping stones, our failures toward one another, the exoemer that we hurt as we may have mishandled a complex social policy situation or mishandled a situation when he stole money out of the base treasury or jumped over the fence and made love to the girl on the other side. All these different things that over the years, not much, we've had to face. And sometimes when we've tried to deal with them, when we've tried to solve it and resolve it, we made a mess and people left with a wrong attitude. Oh God, give them the grace to see that this is your training program, not ours. They can leave OM, but they can't leave your gymnasium. They can't leave your school of chastisement. And those of you who love, you will chase it and help them to return to a place of peace and rest and to cast that hurt, that wrong attitude, that bad disposition or that anxiety. Help them to cast it upon you and help us to cast these things upon you. Now, truly, we would be motivated from within and from above by your Holy Spirit, rather than human ego, and yet help us to live with ourselves in our moments of difficulty and suffering, times when all we can do is weep and fall at your feet. When we at that moment may feel that we cannot go even one more day, as the pressure is so great, the problems seem insurmountable, the task seems to be a triple Everest on the moon, and help us at that moment to draw upon those resources from above and from your Spirit within and to obey and to live that one day, that one moment by moment, with our eyes fixed upon you. In Jesus' name, Amen.