In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding and applying the teachings of Colossians 3 in our lives. He encourages the audience to not only hear the message, but to also pass it on to others, especially new members of their teams. The speaker highlights the need to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to express our worship through songs and hymns. He also emphasizes the importance of gratitude and submission to one another in the fear of God. The speaker acknowledges the challenges that can arise during conferences and encourages individuals to seek fellowship and understanding with one another.

I think one of the beautiful things in the work the Lord has called us into is our emphasis on open sharing. And every leader should have at least some other leader that he can openly share with. Now that doesn't mean there are no pitfalls when you openly share. And we found that in everything we attempt in our Christian life, the enemy has his booby traps, he has his minefields. I shared part of this message when I had the privilege of speaking just about a year ago at the Canadian Revival Convention. In fact, it is almost a year ago to the day. The movement in Canada that doesn't invite in too many outside speakers. They experienced revival in the churches in Canada about ten or eleven years ago, and what was once a river has become many streams. The main revival, in a sense, has not continued in its intensity. Whole churches being turned upside down, people coming into newness of life. But now there are many streams. The two men that the Holy Spirit has especially used in this revival are the Setera twins. They're twins, very unique men, Italian background. And they go into church, not for a couple of nights, they go in for weeks at a time. It takes them one week just to get the people ready, just to get them off their TV addiction, because most people go home at night and watch TV. Their meetings go on two and three hours. You can imagine attempting that kind of thing in Canadian and American culture. It is quite an amazing movement. There's a man, Mr. MacLeod, some of you may have read some of his writings. He's praying about spending some time on OM. He travels more overseas, whereas the Setera twins feel really burdened for Canada. So I worked a lot and prayed a lot and brought forth a message, which I called Maintaining Balance in the Midst of a Revival. If you study the history of revival, you'll discover that very quickly revivals go into extremism. It's been our burden from the earliest days of OM that we would experience revival. It at times becomes a neglected emphasis. And rather than thinking in terms of the quality of spiritual life and living in revival and communion with the Lord and the power of the Holy Spirit, we become merely a form of Christian work. People join the Lord's work, so they join Operation Mobilization. As I shared yesterday, my burden in sharing these things with you is that you can go back and share them with your own team. It's God's purpose for our teams to be functioning in revival, and I want to talk about what that means. And I believe by functioning in revival, we discover the best way to maintain our own spiritual life. Let's look at a very basic scripture that we've all ministered on, Ephesians chapter 5. Ephesians 5, verse 19. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord. It's a text I often preach on, and I hope it's a text that you share as well. Compare that with Colossians 3. 16. If you can keep both places in your Bible, it'll be helpful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another. It's beautiful, isn't it? Teaching and admonishing one another. It's one of the things that we want to do here, to be able to admonish, to be able to teach one another. Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. And then it goes into those very, very basic instructions for the family, about wives submitting themselves to their husbands. Most of you men don't. Probably lack that emphasis. But what about verse 19? How are you handling that one? Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. Maintaining spiritual life, in a way, means maintaining family life. You cannot separate one from the other. And there's a passage where all of this, the reality of the fullness of God in a man's life, this is revival, this is revival. Don't think of revival as some special thing that comes every once in a decade, which everybody starts jumping up and down in the church, or feel that the Lord has touched them. There are more backs than people that once felt the Lord touched them than you'll ever be able to count. But revival is Christ living in us, controlling us, working through us. There may be the times of special blessing. Amen. There may be the times when you feel like jumping up in the air. Be careful on the doulos, very low roof. But revival is a seven-day-a-week reality, not an alternate leap year spiritual jamboree. And there's no purpose in having a great revival at the next AIC if the river is not going to be carried out into the team life, seven days a week. I think there's a lot of confusion about revival. Revival, I think, is tremendous confusion about the fullness of the Holy Spirit. And I feel as much as we have to urge people to walk in this reality, we have to be able to point out from the Scriptures the dangers. I think most of you know enough of the Word of God to know that most of the epistles were written to correct the church. You get people dissatisfied with O.M. and the O.M. team, and sometimes we don't blame them. And they think that the reason is that this is not the local church. And if they get in the local church, then that's really where the blessing is. But if you have fellowship with as many local churches as some of us, you will know that many local churches are experiencing the same problems we experience on our teams. And that often it's no different. Sometimes it's better and sometimes it's worse. Maintaining spiritual life, revival. As it says in Galatians, walking in the Spirit so you don't fulfill the lust of the flesh is difficult in any circumstance. Now it's interesting that in Ephesians, I'm going to need that glass of water, Rudy. In Ephesians, it says be filled with the Spirit, and then it follows it. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord. Very similar to Colossians 3. Some of you have heard me speak about this before, so I won't tarry here, but I hope you're showing your team members this. At this conference, I'm not interested in whether you've heard this before. I'm not interested in even whether you're hearing it now. I'm interested in knowing whether you're getting some of this basic material firstly through your own life down to your team members. It's the greatest challenge we have to get this down to the newest recruit on the team. Be not drunk with wine in which is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord. And then what we emphasized yesterday, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. You know, many of you are preachers. And you go out and you take meetings. And you teach and you preach. And I hope in the midst of your teaching and your preaching that you are also receiving. I'd love to know from some of you when you write, who's feeding you? Who's challenging you? Maybe I'm someone who listens to too many tapes. And I've been accused of being a tapeworm, as you have bookworms. But we'd rather not mention that here in Nepal. But I have received so much spiritual help from these tapes. Of course, they're not a total answer. Just before leaving, I've been imbibing an Italian wildcat preacher that I've never hardly heard of before named Tony Compello from the streets of Pennsylvania. I just can't tell you what a blessing that man was to me in my time of making transition from Mexico, packing, changing my suitcase and whatever else, and coming here. We have a tremendous tape library in Bombay. God has spared it in the fire. I wonder how many of us really make use of that. Different men have such different insight into some of these truths. And I don't see one man necessarily contradicting another, though there are some contradictions. But I see how God works in different people in different ways. So important. So beautiful. And we have that portrayed here so beautifully because Ephesians talks about being filled with the Holy Spirit. The book of Colossians hardly mentions the Holy Spirit. Yet the results in Ephesians and Colossians are the same. And it ends up on that same practical note, Ephesians verse 20, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. We have some extremist movements in the West that overemphasize submission, and submission becomes manipulation. And I always have a fear of this sort of heavy-handed leadership that sometimes gets into our teams, where the team leader is doing just the opposite of what the Bible says. The Bible says, Lord it not over God's heritage. In other words, you don't rule God's heritage with an iron hand, with a big stick, with some kind of heavy pressure. But you esteem it and you work with them in love and you encourage them with your own life. I was saying to Ray Eicher this morning, it would be tremendous if every leader, including every main coordinator, would spend one week a year out on the teams. I'm sure some of you are. And I would tell you some of you are visiting teams. It is no good just going in there one day and leaving the next. You'll never accomplish really what God would have you accomplish with a team through that type of team visiting. Now, Ray Eicher, the overall coordinator of the work, visits the team and goes in one day and leaves the next. Maybe that could be accepted. But if your responsibility is the cultivation of spiritual life on those teams, you need to go out there at least once in a while and live with them. And go out on the streets with them. And get to talk to those men heart to heart. And you will learn something. That's very, very important. See, verse 21 talks about submitting to one another. There is a sense where we as leaders are submitting ourselves even to the youngest new recruit. We can learn from him. We can receive exhortation from him. He should share in all humility what's on his heart. But we can often learn from a man out on the team. And we can learn from one another. And we can learn in our cross-fellowship that we have here during the tea break or during the free time. For me, the hardest part of these conferences are always the intensive sessions where we discover at times we don't agree on certain things. We even at times get upset with each other on certain things. Sometimes it gets pretty intense. That is always the hardest part of a conference like this. God is always wonderful. Whenever you're in a situation where certain things are hard, other things are a blessing. And often the greatest blessing is just to get with individuals and get to know them better and go for a walk and see where the cheapest tea shop is or whatever else in the process. I think most of you know, and I believe by God's mercy I've proven this these twenty-some years of the work in India, that in no way am I interested in lording over the work here or anywhere else. I've had to constantly change through what I've learned from other people. I had to acknowledge the gangrene of extremism in my own life. In some of those early tapes, there are things that are extreme and need to be brought into balance by other things. I believe if some of you developed a message and were able to communicate on this thing of spiritual balance and maintaining spiritual life, that you would become such demand in the churches that you'd find it hard to know how to continue and live. Because I've found all over the world enormous response to this kind of message. So many of God's people have been crushed by extremism. They have been worked over by unbelievable, uncontrollable local church situations and by manipulative leaders who often are very insecure people. Leaders are often very insecure people trying to build their own little empire which helps them in turn remain more secure. And when criticism comes and disunity comes and problems come, they crumble. Keep that in balance. I would love to share with you, I don't think I'll have time, a message that I've been working on, on how to understand Christian leaders. This has been one of the messages I've been working on the most lately. By the way, I find that every year the Lord gives me at least ten or twenty major, totally new messages. We cannot just keep preaching the same thing. Now, of course, when we preach, some of the old basics will creep into almost every message. There's nothing wrong with that. Have you ever heard Billy Graham? I've heard it probably more than most of you, I'm sure. And some of it is incredibly basic. And yet, most of Billy Graham's messages, some new little avenue of light comes in. I believe that Billy Graham's ministry of exhortation and teaching to the church will in eternity prove to be of greater significance than his evangelistic preaching. Because through that, he's influenced so many Christian leaders who have gone out across the world and have become mighty harvesting instruments for Christ. This may sound strange to you, but it's been one of my prayers that God would raise up within O.M. Moore anointed preacher. I'd rather have one anointed preacher in some of your states. In some ways, don't misunderstand that all your team's put together. There's no substitute for the anointing of God, brothers and sisters. All the energy, all the activity, all the promotion, and all the book sales will never be a substitute for the anointing, the Holy Ghost anointing of God upon a man who's walking with Jesus. One of the leaders here felt yesterday if he didn't have enough team members, his base would not be justified. He must have been jolted by my rather quick reaction to that, which may or may have not been in the spirit. When I get to heaven, I will no doubt get a fair number of spankings at the throne of grace. I said to him, that base is justified if only you are there. Yes, there are the numbers of the people that justify, whatever that word means, O.M.'s bases. One anointed man, one anointed man with a ministry demands secretarial help, demands other practical help. And if we have some anointed men in India, then let's rally around them, loving them, exhorting them, working with them. We do have some anointed men. Some are right here in this room. We know they will be a primary target for the enemy. Often anointed men are subject to experiences and depths of struggle that others don't know so much about. Many of the anointed preachers I have read about are subject to depression. Spurgeon, perhaps the greatest preacher of all times, was subject to depression. Some say it was because of the gout, a disease that I never understood. Mary Machine was subject to depression. And this is why it is important for an anointed man to also know how to maintain the spiritual life in the midst of the battle. And I believe some of the keys are found here in Ephesians and Colossians. Being filled with the Holy Spirit cannot be just a once and for all experience. I have a note in my Bible that says this is in continuous tense in the Greek. I don't know whether that's true or not because I don't know Greek. But it's wonderful that those of us who don't know Greek can still study at the feet of Greek scholars. We can still read commentaries by men who do know Greek. Probably that's how I got that note in there. So continuous tense. We go on keeping on being filled with the Holy Spirit. It's a daily experience. I want to ask you, is that your daily experience? I'm not interested in knowing whether you were baptized in the Holy Spirit, terminology some people use, or filled with the Holy Spirit, terminology some other people use, five years ago or ten years ago. I'd like to know whether today you're going on being filled with the Holy Spirit. Is this just spiritual jargon? Is this just terminology we use so that we have a spiritual message that sounds good? Or is it a practical reality? I think if I had to choose any one group of people to work with in the world today, I would choose Indians. I would choose Indians. I've worked with many people. Mexicans would perhaps run a close second. Maybe the Spanish and the Italians would run third. Maybe the British would run fourth. In one sense, it doesn't matter because life isn't that way. But generally speaking, there is a spiritual appetite here in India. I don't know what it is. People are willing to talk about spiritual things. People respond in the churches. I've never had a church in India where I went and didn't see some response. Probably there's one that I'm so bad I've repressed it, gotten about it. Of course, Indian brothers always brought me into balance. I went down to Kerala. People seemed to be coming out of the trees for Jesus. These conventions were just people responding. Then someone told me this was a habit. Finally feels that the anointing of God has settled upon his ministry. Out of a habit rather than because the Holy Spirit was convicting them. The awakening that any evangelist and any preacher has when he begins to discover the deceptive heart of man can be so great he may never recover from it. They say that one of the hardest ministries to maintain is a ministry of evangelism. It truly is amazing that Billy Graham has gone on for so many years and many others, as will J. Smith now of over 80 years of age. But seeing, regardless of things we may not agree with and the extremism that has caused much grief within that work certainly is still a tremendous testimony of the grace of God. 80 years of age. Only recently is hell beginning to go to hell. There are many, many others. Being filled with the Spirit is a normal Christian life. When we teach on this subject I think we need to teach the brothers and sisters not only what this is, but what it is not. Being filled with the Spirit, you may want to note a few of the things that it's not. It does not mean you always feel wonderful. It does not mean that you always feel wonderful. The Spirit-filled man is still very human. In my mind I've been working very, very much on a new book. I'll probably write it in my retirement, which means I probably won't write it. But I was going to title the book, The Human Fact. I wanted to borrow some of your testimonies. The Human Fact. One of the things that has caused much grief in O.M., and O.M. India especially, is the failure to recognize the human factor. That every leader, every anointed man, is a human being subject to the human factors, the weaknesses. Legalism, as I said yesterday, has paid a heavy toll on the Church in India. The idea that you're not spiritual if your hair is not cut at a certain length. You can be sure I didn't want to take any chances with any of you, and so I got a Nepali haircut before coming down to Bhutan. It was a beautiful experience, because it was so cheap. You know, you can't realize the blessing of working in India where everything is so cheap, if this is the only place you work. Because I'm sure you see how the prices in India are going up, up, up. But you know, if you go in Germany and you're in a railway station and you just happen to crave a cup of tea, you'll never get a decent one, I'm going to tell you that, it's going to cost you about nine rupees, Indian, for a cup of tea. And when you come out here to India and you discover how inexpensively a lot of things can be done, it really does challenge you to try to emphasize India a little more. Some people feel that for years George Burwell has had the rest of the movement bite throat in order that India may go forward. And to this day, finance for India gets absolute number one priority in all of OM worldwide. If ten groups all need money, India will always generally get it first, if we know that the need is there. Sometimes people like Alfie are a little hesitant to let us know. Other times there's a lot of confusion as to what the situation is. We count this a great privilege because we highly esteem what you're doing. Do not think because I come out with some negative things that we are not just in the total picture just so wonderfully thrilled about what you're doing in the midst of the struggles and the failures and the problems. We believe this is an anointed work. We believe the Holy Spirit is bringing to pass an important and historic work. But of course, we long to go on. And my greatest burden really is your own spiritual walk. I wonder if some of you are being driven a little bit into extremes at times because of the failure to understand the human factor, to understand your own humanity, to understand your own limitations. Bill Graham said that if he had to do things all over again, he would pace himself more. It's incredibly hard at OM in some places to pace yourself because people look down spiritually on people who are just trying to relax or just trying to get a little bit of a break. It's interesting that one of our main sisters has not had a break or a holiday in I don't know for how long, a year or two. We somehow seem to have it in our minds that a holiday must mean we've run out of steam or we're going through a hard time. We don't take a holiday when we're feeling great. We're committed to the work. We're highly motivated. We're filled with the Spirit. We don't take a holiday or a break at that time. What an absolute mistake that is. Some of you are going to wait until you have a nervous breakdown then you're going to ask for a holiday and for some of you that will be the end. You'll never recover. You're afraid to talk to your leader. I hear this often in the room. I don't feel my leader is approachable. When you say that, you're demonstrating your own immaturity together with perhaps his unapproachability. Two wrongs never make a right. Some people outwardly never will be very approachable. History shows us that many great, great Christian leaders were not very approachable, at least to certain types of people. But the man who knows the Word of God and loves the Lord Jesus Christ will approach it anyway. And if he senses rejection in the first effort, just like a boxing match, he will go back for round two. Building relationships is not easy. And it deeply grieves me that so many people give up trying to build a relationship with this brother or that brother because in round one it didn't work out. I have people who totally reject me on the simple basis that I've only had twenty-three thousand people in Operation Mobilization. You know, often we get false ideas about Christian leaders. Some people, because in an unusual way I remember their names, they gossip that I have a tremendous memory, which only hinders further progress because then when I don't remember, I don't have that great a memory. I have a mediocre memory. I remember some and I don't remember others. If you want to go into a very nerve-bending place, especially someone in my position, visit the doulos. One Mexican girl shared with me that she told a friend that she just couldn't consider me as a friend since I had never even shaken her hand. Do you know what it's like to go on a ship and try to shake hands with three hundred people? Until right with the first fifty. After that you can't remember which ones you have shaken hands with and especially as they appear from all different parts of the ship at different times. And so you're going back to some saying, oh, praise the Lord, it's woo! On sort of a tour, I dodged around the corner and into a tiny room and for some reason I shook her hand. Just a few hours before, she was more or less assuming that she would never even meet me, certainly she would never shake my hand, therefore I would never be her friend. And you can imagine how it just about blew her away. She must have thought someone was talking. I didn't know anything about her. I wouldn't even be able to tell you who she was today. But somehow the spirit or the coincidence or the providence or whatever you want to call it led me to shake her hand. Of course that was a victory. That just about, you know the big term in America, blew her away. Not literally for those of you who are learning English. But in this kind of work you seem to lose some. And so many of us as leaders live under the cloud that we are unapproachable. You have as many women confessing to you over the years that they're afraid of you. I had my secretaries at times finally acknowledge that they were afraid of me. I accept that. I must at times be very, very frightening. Sometimes my visit to my own office consists of about five minutes. I come in from one series of whatever I've been into wanting to do more than five minutes than any three people would want to do in several hours. Including getting my proper cup of tea which really needs the right amount of milk, the right amount of sugar. You know not even one out of ten in O.M. can make a decent cup of tea. Now we know this is of the flesh. Another hassle. I've had to really repent. I've had to take extra time with people and just allow them to get to know me better in more calm situations so that in turn I became more approachable. And I hope you will do that as well. If people are not coming to you in your area, opening their hearts, sharing with you, not everybody but some, it is a sign that perhaps you are unapproachable. You have an air about you that sets you apart from ordinary folk who would like to talk to you and like to share with you. Fellowship should be as much a vital part of the work in India as evangelism. Evangelism should spring from a team that is in fellowship one with another. Being filled with the Holy Spirit will bring fellowship. It will bring approachability because with it comes humility. The human factor will still be there. Failure at times will still be there. One of the men who was touched in that Canadian revival has written a book, Failure, the Back Door to Success. Don't be afraid to acknowledge failure to your team. I can't believe it when I meet with people who have never heard their leader acknowledge real failure. Don't be afraid to acknowledge failure and to share some of the struggles you are having. If you just try to maintain this air of spirituality that you don't have these struggles, you don't have these problems, you're way up here. Some of the team members for a while, they may be captivated by it. But ultimately, it's going to cave in. And we want long-term relationships with people. We want reality at any cost. So the spirit-filled life does not destroy your humanity, but slowly, continuously, brings it into control. It's a long-term program. Don't be surprised when some of these team members do something completely stupid. See, there's a great danger in O.M. that for a short time, we forced people into a spiritual capsule. I think this is especially true of women because some of the things in O.M. are so contrary to the cultural lifestyle of a woman in India. And so for a period of time, we forced them into a particular lifestyle. We don't mean to do that. It just so easily happens. And we need to ask ourselves what's happening to these women when they leave the team. That's why I believe that discipling women in Category 2, in the context of their own culture, is as important as bringing them onto the team and discipling them. And I think if we cut down on the number of women, we'll be able to increase our input into Category 2, discipling and encouraging women where they are, in the culture where they are. Not just single women, but married women. And I just pray that many of our women will develop an anointed women's ministry, teaching in small groups, sharing. In O.M. worldwide, there is an enormous need for more women who will have a public ministry. An enormous need. One sister wrote me a note on the two lines, just saying how much she was praying open at some of the married women. She was thinking of one in particular, but I'll use it in general terms. You know, would develop a public ministry. There are things that women can say that men cannot say. Things that women understand that men will barely understand. There are open doors that women will have that we will never have. Let us never, men, fall to the pit of thinking the women's work is safe. The reason we would like less women is not because they are less effective. It's simply because the women's work is more complex, and it's the women's leaders trying to cope with all this that would prefer less women. So that a more in-depth training can take place. We think of being filled with the Spirit when we're ministering the Word of God. But in contemporary society, we need to emphasize being filled with the Spirit in rearing your children. Some of the mistakes I made as a father in moments when I was not walking in the Spirit, I think really hurt my own children. Spirit-controlled discipline in the home is not easy. Under the pressure of home life, the pressure that OM creates, it's so easy to get into the flesh. I find, especially in certain cultures, men very unwilling to really share about the sins they have committed in their own home. They have Operation Cover-Up. If Watergate is a tragedy, it's just as much a tragedy when we're trying to cover up our sins, afraid to really walk in the light, even end up telling lies. Yes, Christians tell lies because there's a fear of the truth being known and what may come as a result of that. We can be filled with the Spirit and weep. We can be filled with the Spirit and laugh. We can be filled with the Spirit and be hurt. Being filled with the Spirit does not liquidate normal emotion, struggle, heartache. Being filled with the Spirit is not an arrival point. It's a continuous journey. It is not an arrival point. I'm here now. The main thing now is to get other people to come up and be with me. We're constantly growing. No matter how filled we are, we need to be filled more. Somebody came on D.L. Moody who emphasized being filled with the Spirit and said, Look, Moody, why are you always saying that we need to be filled again and again with the Holy Spirit? And Moody said, Because I leak. I leak. Like the little barrel you pulled off the truck yesterday. The leak. All of us have leaks. I have leaks. I have to be filled again and again. I've heard testimonies of some that say they have a good quiet time and it carries them through the rest of the day. I'm not one of those fortunate souls because I have the ability to go directly from my quiet time into the kitchen and say something totally in the flesh to my dear wife. Now, those of you who are on a higher plateau of spiritual reality than me in that area, you know, praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Our quiet time is not some kind of a Christian Ouija board. It's not a matter of just feeding certain cliches and Bible verses into your mind in the morning and therefore, like some kind of programmed computer, the rest of the day it all just ticks out in neat, orderly fashion. There has to be the moment-by-moment crucifixion. Going into that kitchen after your quiet time and whatever happens, whatever your wife says, to somehow be able to take the lower road, to somehow respond in love and to have a sensitivity toward her and where she is. She missed her quiet time trying to get you your perfectly patterned cup of tea or perfectly brewed cup of tea. We all have a bit of our fathers within us. You ought to understand yourself and I've had real struggle in that. Understanding myself. Understand your own father. Some of you may not even know who your father is. The one that gave you the very genes that are in your body. But I can remember my father grousing at my mother because the egg was not boiled the exact amount of hardness. We have in the western world and I'm sure you do in India a soft-boiled egg, medium soft-boiled, hard-boiled, you know, in many different eggs. And we are a family into soft-boiled eggs. And yet the man who likes a soft-boiled egg hates a runny egg. I'll never forget Buck Singh, the only man in the world who forced me to eat a raw egg. He's a raw egg neurotic. He pops raw eggs into his mouth like a squirrel would eat acorns. And he felt this was one of the keys to taking me further in the things of the spirit. And he insisted on me eating a raw egg. It's a miracle that my entire stomach content did not come up on his plate at just a certain temperature. And I eat my eggs in a very special way. I put them in a little cup. The cup has to be the exact right size so that the egg does not drop into the cup so you cannot get it. But it sits in the cup like a Nepali hat on the top of a Nepali hat. The toast into well-arranged strips. And I dip the toast into the yolk of the egg. Now if the egg is hard, the toast does not go down. And everything must be just according to timing. It's usually three and one-fourth minute on the egg timer. You have to have an egg timer. But if the egg has come from the refrigerator, a fourth of a minute extra will have to be added. Otherwise, the yolk will not be in the right place. And so I dip the toast. Then of course, when you put it in your mouth naturally after that. See, we eat with our hands in the West, this particular meal. Then of course, with a spoon. The spoon must be the right size. In the Western world, we have over ten different sized spoons. In O.M., you go to an O.M. conference, every spoon is different. And you have to especially beware of the plastic spoons because in going down into the egg at the final moment of challenge, the spoon breaks. And then the bottom of the spoon is caught under the egg and you're carrying it trying to get it in your mouth. You may think that's an exaggeration but I have discovered in the spiritual life that the littlest things, the littlest things can cause the greatest crisis. And my father used to you know, yell at my mother for not making his egg right. I'll never forget him saying when she was probably about 45 years of age. I'm sure he was half kidding, half joking but he said, if you're not going to do better than that, then I'll trade you in for two younger ones. Remember as a young man hearing that over the kitchen table and wondering exactly whether he was serious about that or not. God wants the spirit filled life to penetrate the routine, the ordinary, the loading of the truck, the preparing of the meals, every aspect of our life. I remember once counseling a couple that were about to divide in their marriage. And you may think it's big things that destroy marriages. Often it's little things, little habits that men pick up that just drive their wives crazy. This fellow had the non-bath habit. Somebody told me the Tibetans only bathe four times a year. I don't know, that's probably an exaggeration. But most of you are not Tibetans as far as I know. And you may during your single days on OM get away without too many baths. In England, baths. But when you're married, you know, bathing and having a clean presentation is often very, very important. Some of you think we want you in OM to prepare you for a great evangelistic ministry. We want you in OM to prepare you for life work, for marriage, for employment, for whatever God leads you into. Let's not put a guilt trip on these brothers in the work who don't feel led to go into what's classified as Christian work. Let's have a kind of balanced program that will prepare people for evangelism as well as life in the whole. A little research into the marriage of ex-OMers in India would be interesting. Have they learned the spirit-filled life in the whole? Next, I would say that spirit-filled living is not extremism. And beware of biographies of great men of God that don't always give you the total picture. It was the custom. It was the custom not so many years ago that when you write a biography, you don't include anything negative. A lot of young people, for example, are very guilty about their sex problems. A little research would probably show you that most of your men on your teams, I don't know about the women, you could teach me, most of the men have guilt problems in connection with sex, especially masturbation. So often, so often in my counseling, when I got involved in in-depth counseling, I found out the young man here in India, I've spent many, many hours in counseling Indians, and it's similar in the West, they have a lot of difficulty with this thing, masturbation. Tremendous guilt. They don't know what to do. Some of them go for months and they don't have any problem and then it hits them. Some have even believed this was the seventh deadly sin. Some have felt this meant they'd never win any souls to Christ. Some felt this meant they'd never be happily married. There's a strong judgment concept in many Christians in India. They believe they're going to be judged and when the next day something bad happens, they think that's a result of the previous day's sin. There's a lot of superstition among God's people. A lot of paganism has crept back in. A lot of Hinduism has crept back in. All kinds of things. I don't know how we can possibly continue the work without leaders having a counseling ministry. Every leader should have almost a course, at least a mini course in counseling. And I don't think importing Western courses, I don't believe that's the answer. I think some of you studying counseling, people like Joseph in the training program, and then putting that into an Indian cup. I know some of you have a burden in this area already. Maybe the Lord wants to lead some of you out of OM to get further training and then to be able to minister to the Indian church in this difficult area. I know, of course, it can become extreme. I've been preaching on that lately. But if nothing's going on, it's not going to go extreme. I can't believe it when I find out a team member has never had a real conversation with his team leader. And some of you leaders, team leaders, you need to understand, you are the key to this. It's not Alfie and Ray and Mattai and Joseph D'Souza. It's the team leader that's the key to Operation Mobilization. And if you aren't doing your job, we might as well retire. Because this work is so big, there's so many problems, that it's impossible to any great degree, it can be done to some degree, for Alfie and Ray and the country coordinator or the state coordinator to get down on any long-term basis to the new recruit or the team member. I don't think there's anything wrong with having a little notebook in which you keep a record of the times you're spending with the team members and determine that in the course of one month, you will have a personal hour-long time with every team member as a minimum. Jack Rendell leads my team. I wouldn't be foolish enough to think at my stage and in my ministry I could lead a team. He spends time with almost every team member every month or two and his team member, his team is three times the size of your team. If you only have eight or nine men on your team, there's no excuse. There's no excuse. It doesn't have to be a heavy sharing session. You don't have to try to fish for their sins. I'm not talking about that. We fellowship, please get this, we're talking about some very basic things that even people who have been in the work ten years are making mistakes on. But our fellowship is different with different team members. With some, you may mainly listen. With others, you may have to do more talking. And I think we want to, as God gives the grace, ask brothers how are they doing in their basic spiritual life? Do they have any particular problem? And maybe in the second or third time you can share maybe your own struggles. Sometimes in the first time some of your own struggles which may enable them to feel freer or to feel free about sharing some of their struggle. We have to emphasize forgiveness. We must emphasize forgiveness. And that many battles in the Christian life are not won in one encounter. It's many battles. Battles with lust. For most people, even most men of God, and I've had contact with a lot of men of God in 25 nations for 27 years. I still have much to learn. The battle is continuous. With some, it's temper or irritability. Long after you're going to get victory over temper, you may have a struggle with irritability. With others, it's jealousy. With others, it's bitterness. With others, it's shyness. With others, it's some sexual thing. Lust of the eyes. I would be very foolish to tell you that I have 100% victory over the lust of the eyes. It's a continual battle. The last couple of months have been great. I've been absent from the tougher areas of conflict. Traveling in a bus is much easier than traveling in a train in Europe. If you travel in a train in Europe, you are going to have head-on collisions with some of the most seductive literature that the mind can ever face. I know of very few men that go through London without some moments of failure. And the far greater danger, not the moments of failure, but the extremism that makes it impossible for that young man to regain that ground, appropriate that forgiveness, have his mind cleansed, and be able to move on. He may do it for a while, but if the sin and the lust reoccurs, he begins to doubt everything he has ever experienced in Christ. And he begins to blame God, especially if he's had a deliverance experience. Now, one of the extremes we have got into in India in years gone by is the deliverance extreme. The conviction or the teaching that the fullness of the Holy Spirit means total deliverance. And, of course, we get people who, when they counsel and they find the brother has a lust problem, they feel he has a demon of lust. You ever run across this teaching? And so, we get one or two together and we cast out the demon of lust. I've hardly ever known a case where someone was totally delivered through that kind of thing. And I've just dealt with it again. A brother in O.M. had a lot of problems. He was undergoing counsel. He was not coming into victory. So he went back to an extremist teacher who he knew. They cast 23 demons out of him. Those of us who know him know that after that he wasn't much different. So many other different forms of help were going on at the same time, plus discipline being put upon him. Sometimes you do have to discipline people. There was some improvement. Very difficult to know. But the people that get into this casting out of demons, they have this little trick in their bag. When they cast out the demons and everything still goes wrong, they say, we missed one. No, really. I've heard casting out up to 30 demons. The one demon that remained caused more grief than the 30 that went out. How in the world can we cast out 30 demons and nothing happen? What were the demons doing in this man's sleeping? And untold harm has been done to people on O.M. when they have got into this kind of extremism. Untold harm. And I know there was a lady in my audience once when I shared a weakness. She wanted to have a go at me. She felt, you know, they're usually polite and don't say demon possession. That's too hot. You know, we can really, if they say demon possession and the person is a believer, we can really nail them down quickly. So they change the terminology and they talk about demon obsession or being under the control or being in bondage or, you know, it's all different terminologies. If you start reading all the books on this subject, you'll start leaping in your bed in your sleep. That's right. The demons will be coming right out of the, right out of the mosquito net. And personally, I steer clear of a lot of these books. I've read a few. I've counseled a lot of people. I believe there are legitimate cases of demon possession. And I believe, of course, that the enemy can get a hold on our lives. But it's not a simple little black and white thing. They have books that tell you point by point exactly what to do. I've had people, when they were casting out the demon, using the books, reading literally from the books, reading the text. I've noticed that most of the men that were heavy in this in the church have come out with new books on the spiritual warfare and have retreated from making this the major part of their ministry. Isn't that interesting? Can't we learn a little something from this? That this is a difficult area. And that generally today, the strategy of Satan is a little more sophisticated. And I just believe that especially in a work like ours, we need to teach spiritual balance in this area. I try to emphasize the need for daily deliverance. The need for daily deliverance. We can pray for a brother without making him feel, please get this, without making him feel he is a special case. Without making the whole thing into a very high peak emotional situation. We have had people in O.M. fake demon possession. Because in O.M., in some cases, if you fake demon possession, you will get more attention from the leaders in one week than you had in the previous one year. Really, it becomes big. They'll be flying in from the nearest headquarters. They'll be calling in special help. At once, in one of our offices in England, we had a case of fake demon possession. And sometimes a person's emotions can trick him into saying things that are not true because all of the attention he gets through that experience. And you know, we crave attention. People on our team are craving a little attention. When's the last time you paid them a compliment? When's the last time you told them something that was complimentary? In our emphasis to increase book sales and to face the reality of hard work, let us not make the mistake of making the book sales the big thing on the team. Book sales is still a small thing. We have to pay attention to it because it's reality. It's the bread and butter. It's part of life. Most people in India spend 10 to 15 hours a day just surviving. Just surviving. Just getting food in their stomach. So if we have a little bit of pressure on the tent-making side, it's going to prepare them for their life's work. But it's not the biggest theme on the team. And when a brother has low book sales, you need to encourage him. You need to spend time with him and say, well, look, praise the Lord for the tracks you were able to give out. Acknowledge your own failures in book selling. The time you went out and sold nothing. George Burwell has had such experiences. And there's always a better day next week. And no one is going to be asked immediately to leave a team or be disciplined because they don't sell books. That is not planned. If they spend a whole year and don't learn anything, I guess we will have to search our hearts. Because I don't believe in India there are going to be many who can't sell gospel packets and books over a period of a year. But we're far more interested in spiritual life. We're far more interested in that person learning to accept himself. To be a little more relaxed about himself. To be able to bounce back after sin and failure. To be able to walk seven days a week in the Holy Spirit. Maintaining balance in the midst of revival. In the midst of blessing. It's not easy. It's not easy. Beware of those extremes. Beware of the total answer. The easy answer. This brother has a really heavy problem. Let's lay hands on him and cast out the problem. Before you do that spend time with him. Counsel him. Try to get the total picture. When you're done you can pray. Don't misunderstand me. I have meetings in England when people come forward after the meeting and I take them one at a time and I pray that the Lord will deliver them. The Lord will give them strength. But then with it I counsel them. It's going to be a battle. There still may be some failure. And they need to grow in the Word. And they need to learn to repent. And they need to learn to accept their humanity and not think that spiritual life means that wings are going to grow out their back and they're going to be flying on this high level of blessing the rest of their life. Let me in the latter part of this hour I'm controlled by this tape which may be more than an hour I think it is. Let me just share a few of the other points that I shared up there in Canada and then bring this to a close. One of the some of the other areas of difficulty that come when there's blessing there's revival there's the fullness of the Holy Spirit. I put here confession. Some of the revivals have led people to confess things publicly that shouldn't be mentioned publicly. It's not good in a mixed company for a brother to get up and testify about victory over masturbation or fornication. I've been amazed some testimonies in India how people are so blunt about their sexual life. It's not the normal thing but a few people seem to get into that. It can be a great embarrassment and it causes confusion. Public sin perhaps at times needs public confession not always. Private sin just generally private confession is enough. We are not Roman Catholics who do not have freedom until we've gone to mother confessor. The team leader is not the father confessor. His total forgiveness through going through Jesus Christ alone even restitution which is emphasized and which was part of that revival in Canada easily becomes extreme. People trying to repay somebody that they stole candy off sweets off 20 years ago they're going through the streets of that town trying to figure out what sweet shop it is and going in the shop has already changed management a new man is there and this man comes in I stole some chocolate from your shop 20 years ago I want to return it. The Lord may lead some people to do that kind of thing but it's so easy to get into bondage. OM for some can be operation bondage all these different rules all these different things we're supposed to do. Get up early in the morning don't eat too much don't have too much tea don't spend too much money don't you know the list is endless endless and if you get one of these heavy handed leaders who is trying to make out the right report about each leader it really is operation bondage. We know for other people OM can be a picnic with some team leaders you can get away with murder you have cases where the team leader doesn't have a clue what's going on little Johnny and little Joe they like to sleep together they like to go down the streets holding hands it's all part of the culture like you're naive you're very naive because homosexuality is everywhere in this country it's everywhere we know some people who go down the street holding hands it's absolutely innocent it's an Indian custom in some places but other people especially when they're not only holding hands or holding legs and they're sleeping together and then you find them on top of each other they are not playing some kind of new gospel game that they learn they are engaging in that which is clearly condemned in the scriptures and I will tell you it will not take long to turn OM into a movement whose reputation will not be worth an American quarter in a Russian slot machine we must avoid all appearance of evil and I think that because we are international and cross cultural we have westerners here because we have westerners we have to try to understand Indians some of their thinking and what can just completely blow their minds they in turn must submit even more they must submit even more to your thinking but we agreed years ago in this work we would avoid appearance of evil we would not have brothers sleeping together in the same sleeping bag we will trust God for the money and we'll not have the sisters sleeping together in the same sleeping bag because homosexuality among women is as rampant as among men and OM has had this we have had it definitely had it we had to remove one westerner some of the ugliest situations we had in India were with homosexual westerners who had a real infatuation with Indians one after he left OM India was living with men in different parts of the country after he also stole money and when he got to India he was in prison now praise God we haven't had much and so this kind of thing I probably wouldn't say that much if this were an all India conference but you're leaders you've got to have a little sabe a little entendimiento decimos en espanol and no one is putting you into any kind of guilt trip about anything that's happened in the past we believe the best we believe the best we're not judging but for the future with this work so under the attack of Satan and that fire in Bombay will create far less problems than one of our leaders getting accused of immorality and a great mass of people believing it'll spread like wildfire right across the country Billy Graham a man of God and many many following his steps he avoids appearance of evil he won't go anywhere alone with another woman he has his wife with him one of the reasons I like to take my wife everywhere I go my wife is now with me 90% of my journey this is the exception this year is it just helps in terms of the image people see my wife with me people know I love my wife I have a good marriage I have a happy life and then when one of my secretaries is with me my wife is with me as well the enemy as a roaring lion seeketh whom he may devour we need to be very wise in this area and we need to lovingly tenderly counsel people and teach them how to live in a cross cultural international team the fact of the matter is each state in India is like a nation India is a country of many nations and some of the southern Indian culture is offensive to north Indians some of the north Indian culture is offensive to south Indians and so even without westerners we have a cross cultural situation and Indian culture is in a state of enormous upheaval city culture is not village culture Bombay is not the same as a little village down the road here it's complex and I don't have any total answers but isn't it better to in a movement like this lean a little toward to the safer side of the road isn't that safer if you're driving on a mountain road if you can isn't it better to lean a little bit away from a thousand foot precipice and I'm convinced that this is an area of great importance but when it comes to confession we don't necessarily jump up in the meeting and confess some of these things which the word of God in Ephesians says we need to be careful even speaking publicly about even in our testimonies we don't want to go into gory details about our past life we get people even making up stories about their past life if your testimony is relatively dull alright just mention it you might even say look my you know my testimony is very spectacular but on the other hand Christ saved me and that in itself is spectacular and then go on and tell some of the things that have happened to you since then quickly I would say that another danger in the midst of revival is super spirituality people who feel that they're one up from the others it may be true they have a deeper experience with God but that should lead them into new dimensions of humility not super spirituality that's why the total deliverance concept is just to me it's just out because after you have deliverance from one thing you got some new thing to battle with probably super spirituality because you feel you're now delivered from all sin even though you may not say it that way beware of super spirituality thirdly naiveness by the way when I gave this message to the people in that revival group thousand more of them the response was overwhelming overwhelming just overwhelming because you know when there's great blessing we can really get naive when your team is on a high they're seeing people converted literature is going out finances coming in there's good unity and there are teams like that praise God beware of thinking all is well all is well because it's at that moment of spiritual high that the enemy can come in just so quick and then I've already mentioned the fourth thing total answerism thinking there's some total answer to this problem or that problem praise the Lord there are answers isn't that wonderful and we have the word of God and that's a lot of answers a lot of answers here but there's no total one easy answer to some of the complexities of life and the deep emotional wounds I'm reading a book about the healing of emotions by Dr. Siemens his tapes are around India they're tremendous tapes he's a man who loves India and how true it is many of the brothers and sisters who come onto our teams westerners westerners and foreigners many of these western brothers are emotionally wounded people and we have Indian leaders who presume on these westerners and some of the westerners right now down there in India they're crying they're just crying on the inside they want to go home they don't know how they got into this they feel misunderstood they're not handling the food they're not handling some of the weird things that happen on our team and yet often they don't know how to share this because they'll be thought unspiritual they'll be thought as not being a soldier and I we pick them up back there when they come back and we never see them again and there are people in different parts of the world very bitter very bitter about their experience now we know on one hand I've already said this there's no total answer we're not going to make it through with everybody some of these people shouldn't have come it's not easy back there to discern who should come and who isn't coming and your people from here are the ones who go back there and make the decision not us so it is complex and I just believe there has to be more personal attention to these people more counseling more love more sympathy in some cases a little more money our cutting back in the area of finance should not affect our the diet and the basic needs of the team which God has promised it isn't right that we pour money into Indian vehicles a program I have never been totally happy about but I have allowed it is not right that we pour 25,000 or 50,000 into an Indian vehicle and don't give a team a proper diet it's not right there are those individuals and their physical health and mental and emotional health is more important than whether you and I have a nice vehicle to go to the next town because most of the Christians in India don't have vehicles at all do they and they have to live and they have to get to work and they have to get on those terrible buses and when you leave L.A. you're not going to have a car and I feel though I'm still willing to go ahead with a few Indian vehicles we already have a few so don't misunderstand that we got to keep this other thing in priority the health and spiritual life of the team is absolute priority it means some fruit it means some vegetables it means a balanced diet and most Westerners cannot live on an Indian diet they cannot do it if I come to your team I'll tell you right now I wouldn't be able to live I don't eat much I would be ill my biggest problem in India is getting ill I have a permanent incurable disease because I ate pork at an off moment unaware and I will develop a form of epilepsy simply because I wasn't careful in my eating now the other side of this is that the doctors have declared this disease as dead it's alive but it can't multiply and if it was going to go to my brain it would have been there several years ago so I'm now safe as far as I know as far as I know and when I come to East am I going to pick up this time and sometimes we get very very careless very very careless about health about food we go into some restaurants that really you wouldn't want to take a goat in there to eat and I just know I'm going killed again there's no total answer ultimately we have to pray lord bless the food and kill the microbes but you know we need wisdom we need discernment and we need to beware of some of the dangers then there's spiritual impatience we get a blessing we get a blessing so we become impatient with others who don't seem to have that blessing different people grow in different ways understand different people grow in different ways that I've written here neglect of the family we get so caught up with the word so caught up with the blessing we have so many invitations to preach we neglect our family the enemy moves in like a roaring lion those of you who have children may want to read a book called parents in pain it should be required reading for all parents reality therapy and then I have here stereotypism in other words we develop an OM vocabulary we develop a spiritual vocabulary we develop stereotypes set ways of doing things we need change in OM India we need change different ways of doing at times the same thing different ways of phrasing expressing ourselves we don't want to get in a rut and then emotionalism revival brings with it a certain degree of emotion and so we get into emotionalism and we get the impression you're not experiencing revival unless you're jumping dancing or clapping or twitching or developing a new spiritual voice I've heard people when they pray they have a different voice from normal talking it's a spiritual voice it goes up some chords and it really is weird especially when the women start moving in this area