In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of constant preparation for preaching the word of God. He mentions that his whole life is dedicated to preparing for his next message, as he ministers almost every day. He shares that he gathers information from various sources such as tapes, books, and magazines, and uses them to feed and bless others. The speaker also mentions the importance of persevering prayer and tearing down the strongholds of the enemy, as mentioned in 2 Corinthians.

Well, I'm sure it was a risk inviting me to this meeting. So many things I'd love to share with you, but I will try to control myself and let other important things speak. I'd like to, you know, normally I take a meeting, I start with the book reviews. Since you're all into books, I'm going to have cassette reviews. I finally, after a long time, have all the cassettes back from the 1978 summer conferences. Some conferences, the cassettes have gone to certain people, I need to mention names, and they have sat for up to a decade, they've never been reproduced, they just really haven't got cassettes. But somehow I got a hold of these, and got some of them reproduced, mainly for distribution in the States, where they don't have nearly as many cassettes as here. And if you aren't into listening to tapes, maybe you could just pray about that possible way of receiving the Word of God. Even as I was coming here, I'm listening to Peter Brandon on the reality, great truths in the book of Romans. This morning I had Ted Rendell on the warfare. Every week different men minister to me in this way. People always ask me, when do I prepare for my sermon? Somebody put me on the spot, actually one of the board members, and asked me what I was speaking on Sunday night at Oxford University, an evangelistic message, and I didn't know actually, I can't find the letter that tells me what I'm speaking on, but it doesn't matter, I can find out when I get there. I know what I'm speaking on Saturday night, and that would need a little more preparation. But my whole life is my preparation for my next message, since I'm ministering almost every day. And from these tapes, and from the books, and from the magazines, I go through about 50 different magazines, and I have about 10 people cutting out things and sending them to me from magazines. I'm just always feeding and receiving blessing, and so then I can give out whenever the opportunity comes. And so I brought these cassettes, I put them here, and these are world's most inexpensive cassettes. I've heard sometimes the quality isn't good on the reproduction, perhaps it's because he's one of the biggest cassette reproducers in the entire world, with 50 slave units working, and at times his quality hasn't been so good. He's trying to improve that, John Wright, a man with a heart as big as the Grand Canyon. But if any of these you find the quality bad, unless you know it's the echo from the OM Conference Center, because these weren't recorded in what was the best situation, let me know. You can just take these, and if you really feel you have a permanent ministry with one of these cassettes, just keep it, use it, pass it on. If it's just going to go into your box, which is understandable, return it to me, just stick it in an envelope, put my name on it. There's George Miley on personality conflicts. Peter Maiden, a message he gave that doesn't have a title, a couple of his Bible studies. There's George Miley on the attributes of God. There's Frank Dietz on forsaking all, that looks exciting. Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, the message he gave on the ship, which I think you have in your library Bible study by Nigel Lee. Perils of Spiritual Leadership by Chua Wee Han, that was actually given to the coordinators, but there's nothing that can't be listened to by the general public. Marriage by Dr. and Mrs. Payne, Gideon by Don Hammond, that was a hot one. Witnessing to Skeptics by Winky Prattney, and The Church by Homer Payne. That's just a few of them, there are more. There are about four or five of each, so I'd suggest you not take more than, say, two or three, unless you wait to the end of the period, and you see that others haven't taken advantage. It can happen by the end of this meeting, you may forget. They're there. We have lots more cassettes. I long for us to be able to do more with cassettes, and I hope you'll just perhaps pray about that more, that these cassettes can be used all over the world, especially the third world. The great answer to prayer today in that shipment we purchased in Singapore, 22 Super 8 projectors, 55 cassette recorders, some other equipment, and a third of what we pay for it, a third less, which was stuck in customs in Southampton, got through today, and one of your men, temporary man David, drove it up here, including our personal belongings, so that was a rather encouraging thing for today. Before I share about finance, which I'm not going to take a lot of time on, it's not my primary burden, I thought I would just share some other thoughts that I shared with my own team this morning, that are linked, because the greatest need in OM now, I can assure you, is not financial survival, it's spiritual survival. We are battling for our lives spiritually. I am. Maybe you are. Maybe you just sail along spiritually. No heavy temptations. If so, it may be that you're in a state of lukewarmness, that's even worse. Or it may be that the devil just is giving you a little time to increase your giftedness, or put you on the map a little more, and then he'll zero in on you. But the great struggle in OM is spiritual survival, or spiritual victory, or whatever terminology you want to use. Some people on our teams this year have had things happen to them that you couldn't explain any other way than the powers of the evil one, to attempt to destroy people's lives. It happens with every Christian. Sunday night Eldridge Cleaver gave a nationwide testimony on ITV, and I know that he's been going through struggles, a former leader of the Black Panthers, one of the most radical Americans in this last decade. I knew he had come to Christ, then I heard a rumor that he was going with the Moonies, which I found out from my friend in California wasn't true. So after this thing on TV, which we recorded and hope to be able to show you one of these days, I phoned through to my friend in California to see if he knew how Eldridge was doing, because you know when a man gets known, the devil targets in, zeroes in. And then I talked to Eldridge's mother, I couldn't get through to him, his phone number is a little hard to get. And I already had a letter today from my friend in California that Eldridge is in really serious spiritual difficulties going on, but the enemy is just trying to destroy him. It's the same story again and again. You don't have to be an Eldridge Cleaver or whoever to have the enemy at your heels, and I'm sure that far more than the need for finance in O.M. today is the need for revival. The need for a fresh touch from God. I hesitate to even use that terminology because I meet too many people in England sitting around waiting for God to touch them, when he's actually already indwelling them by his Holy Spirit. And as we say in tennis, the ball really is in our court, and we need to act and not sit around and wait for something that maybe God is not going to give us the way we want it to give. And I think one of the most subtle tactics to hinder revival and hinder spiritual growth is the devil's efforts to bring disunity. I don't know if you follow the Christian scene in England, and I think I follow it probably as much as most, certainly not as much as some. But there are enormous tensions and things going on in the church right now in Britain, and polarizations, disunity, men that have worked together for years, close association, evangelism, split, attacking each other, even publicly. Of course, usually over here, more gentle in their approach than we are on the other side of the water, but needless to say, tremendous tensions. I had the English Congress on evangelism. Only 1,500 people showed up, many didn't even stay. Various preachers dropped bombs, which instead of uniting everybody together, almost blew the thing into two or three. And I've seen this in many other places as well. And I'm sure the tactic for any mighty work of God is to divide and destroy. Divide and destroy. Whenever we're in a financial crisis, and we are to some degree right now, the problem is generally not the money. The problem is the devil's ability to use a pressurized situation to divide and destroy. Different people have different answers to the problem. Or things that are repressed, that people don't like about OM, come to the surface, usually in the form of, this is why the money is not in. Things that you may not even hear for one or two years otherwise, but because the pressure's on, and because sometimes one strong statement is made in another way, then another strong statement counters it, and pretty soon the devil is giving three cheers in hell. And I think one of the most important things during this time of enormous expansion, one of the reasons we're in this struggle is because of the tremendous expansion. I thought we had about a thousand people in OM. Crosstie insists, and he's better at counting than I am, with Steve Hart, that there's 1,300 to 400 people in operation, mobilization. Stretched across 35 nations where we're working permanently and have bases of operation, and involved in another 70 nations through the ships. If all the United States government, with all the money in the world, and all the superpower they can get their hands on, can't manage to get to Tehran, much less do anything when they got there, I'm glad they didn't get there because I'm convinced it would never work, but I'm not going to get into that tonight. But I just finished reading about all the things that went wrong. I mean, it's difficult to see how many things could go wrong. And probably will continue to go wrong. And that's only one little incident in world history this year where things have gone wrong. Things are always going wrong on this planet. And we in Christian work, sometimes things go wrong. And when we panic in the time of financial crisis, especially when God has so often delivered us in the past, and I'm not saying this because I sense anybody panicking, but when we do, we indicate why God allowed the crisis. Because he wants to teach us not to panic. And so my bigger concern is that during this time and in the months to come, the intensive summer crusade, we may be really united. And I just list a couple of things that I just want to throw out in the way of exhortation that will help us work toward unity. I shared this with my own team this morning. It has nothing to do really with SDL. I didn't even know I was going to speak here until 20 minutes ago. Because I'd set tonight to be with my children, but my daughter got sick. My son booked a date with another friend of his, a young man, to go off somewhere. My other son is in the big weekend down at the Baptist church, so dad's home alone, so I decided to come up here. And I won't stay for the whole meeting because I do have a few other things to do. But there's nothing here that I'm sharing that I'm saying because of this or that in SDL. Of course, if I thought, I'm sure I could find something, but I don't have time to do that. I just want to give the message and blow out of here and let you... I'll give time for questions, of course. Very, very quickly, the first source of disunity, I believe, is often selfishness. Again, I don't want to elaborate on each one of these points. We don't have time. But I've seen so often how the enemy uses the little uncrucified areas in our own lives. And I would just long for you not to be perfect. Of course, I long for that, but I don't expect that. But I would long for all of us to just give a little heavier blow to the self-life in the coming weeks. I believe, ultimately, this will do more to get us out of this crisis than anything else I can think of. You know, self will do anything as long as it can live. It'll go to a Rajasthan desert. It'll pack books in STL for 10 years. It'll go out to the jungles and live with the cockroaches and the snakes. It will suffer in southern Spain in a summer crusade, sleeping on the floor, living in a tent, sleeping out in the rain. Self will do anything as long as it can live. And self-life knows how to live in religious environments. Self-life knows how to live within the context of a movement and a fellowship like STL's. I've had plenty of experience in this. So I would just ask you to just try to make a little greater effort against the self-life. And then the second thing, the failure to really learn how to repent. How could someone come into OM, be involved in distributing thousands of copies of Calvary Road and other books that emphasize the message of the cross, and not learn how to repent? If you haven't had the opportunity where you live to ever go to anybody in the house where you live and just repent, and say, look brother, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frown your hamsters in the bathtub the other night. I'm really sorry about that. My austerity came out. I just, you know, grabbed it by the neck and held it underneath. Just really forgive me. Or whatever else, you know, whatever else. If you don't learn to repent in OM, you haven't even gotten to step one. And it's God's way. It's God's way of blessing. If you've said something ugly to someone, a leader, a follower, a visitor, to be able to go to that person and say, look, you know what I said, it really wasn't kind. I don't believe you have to go around and confess all your thought life. That can be incredibly unedifying. If you have a private sin against a person in your own mind, just get that right with God. If it keeps coming up, then have some fellowship with that person. Starting, hopefully, from a positive point. But if you've openly sinned against a brother or sister, then you need to put it right. If you've gossiped against someone, suppose I gossiped against Jerry to Dave. If God deals with me, I don't go back to Jerry and say, hey man, I've gossiped against you, I really dug you into the ground. But Dave did that. No, I go to Dave and I say, hey look, what I said about Jerry, it really wasn't edifying. I thought, now this is a little more the other side of the picture. This is the total picture. Maybe we could pray about it. That's how you beat the devil at his own game. Of course, there are times if you've been doing something against a brother, especially when you know the brother knows about it, you need to go back to him as well. Again, I haven't got time to go into detail and I have a study program coming up, one is around May 10th, so I'll unload all my 48 barrels at that time if you're still surviving. But the failure to repent, I tell you, will do more to stop OM than any lack of finance. In fact, you may discover it's a bit related. On the other hand, it's always important to realize that our first calling is to deal with our own self-life and our own spiritual life before God, not the other brother. We've got a clear teaching about this from Jesus, don't we? Why do you get the speck in the brother's eye when the big beam, to make a sense of humor, gigantic piece of wood is sticking out of your own eye? And Billy Graham said the greatest obstacle to our sanctification is our unwillingness to see ourselves as we really are. That's really hard. And I'm so thankful for my children and my wife who in the last years have helped me see myself a little more as I really am. And then the third thing, the just plain old lack of love. There's nothing more important in OM than this. I was just listening to someone else on tape this afternoon, I think it's a pastor's wife of a famous pastor in California. And she shared that Martin Luther renewed the whole emphasis on faith. And then she brought out how some years ago, she referred to Schofield and the people that emphasized the second coming of Christ. They renewed the emphasis on hope. You know 1 Corinthians 13, last verse. And she said she believes today the Spirit of God is trying to renew the emphasis on love. That really rang bells with me. Because I think there is an increased desire among men to have a greater emphasis on love, relationships, fellowship. And I believe this is really one of God's things for this day. And then the next thing, the fourth thing of course is prayerlessness. The life of prayer isn't going to be one in a night, it's not going to be one in a week. But if each week we can make a little greater effort in our prayer life, even just a little bit. I tell you, it would really have its effect over the years. And I just pray if there are any of you discouraged in prayer that you'll just tell the devil to beat it. I don't know if you know the terminology, so many of you. I know English is your second language, it must be difficult surviving here in England. But just tell the devil to go, simplified English. And not to allow him to discourage you in your prayer life. We have seen finance in the past 48 hours since there's been an increase of prayer. Or should I say really the past 60 hours. Just pouring in. Lagos has enough money to buy her own fuel. That is no small thing. We used to sit under Lagos fuel bills like a great cloud. From Taiwan she sent 6,000 pounds which hit some of our most urgent bills in Brahma. Then all of a sudden within 28 hours $35,000 poured in in the New Jersey office from all over. I couldn't figure out where it all came from. She sure had lots of fun spending it. Then suddenly we get word that Duas is sending in. Instead of saving for dry docking sending in 32,000. She's only sending 16,000. Then we hear Manchester's had the best day in a week. And the money started coming in. Now we're about one fourth of what we need. We needed really about 100,000 pounds to round figure to get up to date. We hit May 1st so new statistics will come out soon. So we're still in trouble. But I will tell you the Lord has encouraged our hearts. And I just feel that they've increased buying the prayer. The prayer meeting we had a week ago Tuesday where I heard there was a good breakthrough. And other prayer, I know the ships are dead serious about their expenditures. Duas is out of the red in field credit. Lagos doesn't have much. And I heard that they weren't buying food in Japan very much. They were eating but they were getting a big priority on getting that fuel paid. Book sales have already rocketed over 50,000 dollars in Japan which isn't a notorious place for selling English and Japanese books. Other things, I won't take time but it's just the old message God is trying to drive into our heads. He answers prayer. If we feel for example that money is not coming in because we're wasting a little or because we're doing this or because we're doing that or because OM's got problems or because we got a few leaders that twits or whatever other thing. You know, we just turn God into some kind of a midget. I see God blessing movements that have far more nonsense than I ever dreamed of. If I had some in OM, I think I'd just resign. And yet, I've still seen God blessing their work. He's working with us on the basis of mercy and love and grace. And just because there may be some things that are wrong in any spiritual movement there are always some things that are wrong. And there are always some leaders that may be having a hard time or be in some kind of trouble. But when we go to prayer even though it's in weakness, even though there may be things that very day that we could have done better for the glory of God, when we go to prayer we come on the basis of Jesus. Not on the basis of how much you're taking from the storage room over here. It's not on the basis of whether you don't really take sugar in your tea or not or whether you're driving an old piece of junk or driving something new. No, it's on the basis of grace and mercy and faith. And O.M.'s had it's nose bumped in when some man comes along and doesn't live the lifestyle we live and lives rather extravagantly in a big home and drives a big car and he prays a prayer and WHOO! He walks away with a bundle and we think ooooh, that isn't fair. But God said the first shall be last and the last shall be first. We don't live the way we live in order to bend God's arm to give us money because you try to bend his arm and he'll break yours. We live this way because we feel God has led us this way. We see this in the scriptures and we acknowledge with this teaching we believe God leads other people in other ways and we don't believe all of God's people have all the light and it's a long journey to true spirituality. And then moving on from there the next point is of course one we always have to mention when we speak of revival the sins of the tongue. Gossip, excessive publicity, all that can happen through the tongue has killed more revival and more spiritual life than we'll ever know. And in this area I would just plea with myself and all of us just to make a little bit of extra effort to control the tongue. To control especially what we put on paper. To control what we say on the telephone. To control what we say when we're depressed, upset, confused. What we say when we're talked on by somebody else or hurt. Because the devil is just a specialist in using the sins of the tongue. And I just know the enemy is so subtle. You know our own work is suffering from the gossip against us. Somebody shared with me about six things he had against O.M. when I was in Swansea last Saturday night. Fifty percent of them were complete lies. Complete lies. Others had elements of truth. One thing was true. He said that Spurgeon preached against Arminianism and why doesn't O.M. preach against Arminianism and why does O.M. have so many Arminians. Of course I had to acknowledge that's true. In fact it's the greatest miracle in the movement that we had so many Arminians and so many Calvinists and so many in-betweens who don't know where they are all working together worshipping Jesus loving one another even marrying each other and that's really interesting. My wife still doesn't know what she is. I prefer wives who stay out of theology at least to any great degree. I want to expose some of my errors. And then just a few other points. There are going to be differences natural differences in strategy. The way we different ones of us see the job can be done. That is perfectly normal and not to allow that to bring disharmony and unity. The devil however will try to use the differences in strategies. A lot of polarization. People say personal evangelism only. Others say mass evangelism. You read some of these attacks against Billy Graham in the Christian press. People making extreme statements. Our literature work has been hurt by some of you who stated that no literature should be given out unless a person is with the literature. I can tell you I've spent 25 years seeing people saved through literature in which no personal evangelism was involved. Literature found in trees, sidewalks, gospel signs. I believe it's better when it can be with a personal worker if he's a pleasant spirit filled personal worker. But the likes of some of God's people today I think it's better they leave the literature I speak quite often on these things. Our God is too small. He'll use Billy Graham. He'll use this Calvinistic preacher. He'll use this Mormonian preacher. He'll use the Martin Lloyd Jones's. He'll use the Leonard Ravenhill's. He'll use the personal evangelism and film and cassette. Why attack? Why polarize when there's so few of us? Only 7% of us in all of Britain even go to church. We're going to divide that into 20 different camps? It's heartbreaking. And one of the things we stand for in this work is that it's pleasing to God for the brethren to dwell together in unity. And I will tell you if we have this unity among us next year, the whole town of Bromley will find it out. Because they're not dumb. In our testimony in Bromley, it's always hard to be a prophet in your own town. It's one of the greatest challenges we have. And it's one we've got to work at. I'm sure of that. And then there'll be troubles and difficulties, temptations for disunity because we come from so many different standards and backgrounds. And we're influenced by so many different things. And do not think there's no such thing as politics in OM. It's impossible to be non-political. It's almost impossible. We live in a world, there are governments, there are people, there are things happening. It's not possible to be non-political. You may be low profile. You may be ignorant. You may be whatever. There are right-wing people in OM of all different backgrounds. There are some that have come from more left or moderate left. There's all kinds of people. I think it was in this very building years ago when some extreme right-wing American just said something horrible against Martin Luther King when he died. And a couple of the Europeans just about fell off their chairs that anybody could make such an obnoxious statement about a man who, regardless of what some Americans may have thought, was recognized as a great man and a great leader who, of course, as you know, was murdered. So I believe it does take a lot of patience. Try to listen to George Miley's tape on living together with people of other cultures. We must have 15 nations in this room tonight. It's no small thing to live together in love and unity. And it's a challenge that I believe we need to go into with greater effort. We have some people that come from working class backgrounds that have been reared in very small, poor homes. Their father maybe never had a car. They sometimes think that, oh, it is very extravagant. You get somebody else that comes from the other side of the tracks and, you know, they think, you know, we're living in squalor, we're driving junk and we don't eat well enough, our clothing is a bad testimony. I hear it from all different sides. Sometimes I think I'm going right out of my mind. And when I read left, I lean left. When I read right, I read right. I lean right. And when I'm finished, I get more mixed up than when I started. And I thank God I'm called to preach Christ and Christ crucified, even though I may have a few thoughts and opinions on other subjects. In fact, isn't that one of our biggest problems as Christians? We have too many opinions. And I would beg of you, this is going to really sound weird. Don't read too many books, huh? If you're the kind of person that takes everything, you know, right in it, ooh, this is it. Somebody sending a pamphlet around that the Russians are invading England and I don't know if it's this year or next year. And of course, that's a possibility. It's also a possibility that people from outer space are going to invade England. I would say it's a better possibility the Russians will come. The Americans may even come. But, I'm not against reading these things. You can read whatever you want, you're perfectly free. But if you're the kind of person, you know, every time you read a new book on prophecy, that declares in chapter two that so-and-so is the anti-Christ, you know, why don't you listen a little more Beethoven or, you know, you could even try Abba, something that would bring you into spiritual balance. I think it's very, very important. And oftentimes we have so many opinions, and this thought came to me when I was in Canada, opinions and convictions without patience and love and balance turn to bitterness, cynicism, and even hatred. That's an original statement. I don't have too many, but I've been so convinced about that. It's good to be convinced about something. But it's so true, we can become so opinionated and it's not the plan of God. And then the tremendous struggles we will fight because, of course, there are tremendous differences in personality and temperament. And the things that people can divide over, it isn't all arrived at by objective truth. Very few of us are totally objective. Often it's partly a result of our temperament, our background, our parents, the things that have hurt us. And so we often are subjected in our evaluations and in our evaluations about people. I have never met a man or a woman in OM in 23 years that after getting to know them a little bit, I couldn't appreciate them. Not one that I can remember in 23 years. And I've worked with drunks, drug addicts, and some pretty wild people. And I'm just convinced that as we develop love and spiritual balance and as we just get some of this basic New Testament fruit of the spirit in our lives, that we're going to come together. In the places we live and even through the problems, the misunderstandings, the hurts, we're going to dwell together in love and in unity. I think of just the differences in approach even today to food. In the United States people are literally dividing over the sugar crisis, whether you should eat white sugar or not. Others are dividing over the vitamin crisis. Churches split over the vitamin crisis. You have people that have about eight different jars of vitamins on their breakfast table. And if you dare share that you don't take vitamins, they look at you and wonder whether you really have had an experience with the Lord or not. People love to take their periphery convictions and bring them into the heart of the gospel. If you don't believe this, ultimately you're probably not saved. It's far more extreme over there than it is here. But it's spreading. And it can devastate a movement like O.M. And linked with this is the horrible thing of belittling people. If you don't know that word, you look it up. Belittling people. Putting them down by insinuation. By making fun of them or their nationality. Or their education. Or anything. Now we'll all probably do it one time or the other. So we better get ready. You know we are living in planet earth where people have a long way to go. And it's easy to see when someone's belittling you. You may not see when you're belittling them. But it's never God to belittle people. To put them down. For race, nationality, for mistakes they've made. Sometimes people live in a constant awareness of their mistakes. There are people who are caught in a failure syndrome. And then others come along and through belittling them they put them down even more. And I tell you I've seen people go down so low in the failure syndrome that they just never came up again. And that's something we want to declare war against. And then last of all and that's all tied in is this enemy of pride. The Bible says pride comes before a fall. The Bible says that pride brings contention. Some of us especially I think myself are incredibly aware of some of the mistakes and failures and weaknesses in the O.M. Fellowship. One of the things that perhaps keeps me in balance is that I try to continue researching and asking questions and gathering information on at least 100 other groups. That is really a reality therapy for me. 50% of my life is lived outside of O.M. Because I'm a guest speaker all over the world. What insights I got four days at the Prairie Bible Institute, one of the greatest schools in the world, has incredible strong points. A lot of problems and great weaknesses like every other Christian institution. And I just think it's so important to be able to keep things in the perspective and realize that even though we have our weaknesses and failures and we're open to discussing them and answering questions about them, the Lord is with us. And if I didn't believe that, man, I'm getting out. Because I'd rather be in a rowboat with Jesus than the envy doulas without the Holy Spirit or STL or whatever. And as we objectively see our weaknesses and our problems and our needs without becoming cynical or judgmental or negative, we move together in the power of the Holy Spirit, we can see tremendous improvement. If those who have keen insight to see some of the weaknesses immediately abandon the ship because they feel that somehow God has departed, then how are we ever going to get some of the weaknesses resolved? We'll end up somehow putting the cook on the bridge to keep the ship going. And that could be rather interesting especially on a real ship. Well, there are just my thoughts. And in that I shared with you that we've seen some breakthroughs in finance, maybe a third or a fourth of the way. Don't get upset when we can't give you an exact total picture of the worldwide O.M. finance. It changes literally every day. And I just cannot give all of my time to taking pictures of the O.M. finance thing. I get the basics. I know when there's demands for funds. India, I talked to this morning, needs $12,000 right now plus the $9,000 that's stuck in the bank. Other fields need money. You've got some bills, of course. We've got some bills, perhaps 75,000 pounds in the next few days would put us back in a good position. Meanwhile, I don't want you to live in a state of guilt and get trapped into some corner by the enemy. And I wanted to say this, especially for those of you in STL. You are in the only, truly, money making, tent making work within O.M. Not that's the main reason for STL. The main reason is the ministry. Because I tell you, we can pray in money any day faster than you can make it. But I think one of the reasons at times we can pray it in is because there are people also willing to work. And God honors that. But I especially feel, even those of you who haven't seen your support come in, the labor is worthy of this hire. And we don't want to sit muzzly ox that's treading out corn. I feel we have the two goals in O.M. The one is to see people by God's grace, learning the way of faith, seeing answers to prayers, seeing people touch, seeing the financial support come. We know there's an enormous battle in our day, and it's not always the person's fault who's praying for it to come. And also God teaches us perseverance, patience, many things. I think of an Englishman who didn't see his support for years. We just felt so burdened he should be in the work because the financial support is not the main way we decide whether people stay with us or don't stay. It's one of ten factors. And with him, though his finances was very, very bad, we felt he should stay in the work. And at the end of about five years, he saw about 20,000 pounds committing one shot. It's more exciting that way, isn't it? And we cannot, even though O.M. has its policies and its goals, we cannot force God into a box. We have our goals, we have our aims, but ultimately we have to say, Lord, we are your servants. And he may want to put O.M. through some very big tests. He may want someday to reduce certain aspects of the work, to sell one of his ships, to do this or do that. We cannot try to dictate to God. Think of all the people who were in the China intermission in those early days. Most of the way they were praying. Completely flipped around. Completely turned around. And then, on the other side, we have this teaching and burden that we are a community. One man's lack is another man's blessing. There are many in the land who pray six times their support. They count it a great joy that another brother can keep going another day, another week through the extra that he has trusted the Lord for. And it's more blessed to give and receive. But I tell you, you learn more humility when you're receiving. And many of us, the problem we find it difficult at times to receive or to feel that we're living through, maybe someone else has prayed, if you really search your heart, you may discover it's pride. You may discover it's not what you think it is, but it's pride. And maybe only after God destroys a little more of that pride, you're going to, the table will turn and you'll be supporting someone to keep going in the work. Now we could do this by putting everybody on private funds, give everybody a checkbook, everybody give money, I mean can you imagine the confusion and the chaos and the extra work for everybody in the movement to do this. So it just happens. If one is going to lack, we're all going to lack to some degree. You can never have that perfectly in a movement this size. And as Willem was blessed, we're all blessed. And so I just hope those few comments will help you. We cannot guarantee what's ahead. Last week if things had gone to the worst, boy I tell you this week would be very, very interesting. But somehow the Lord has turned the tide and we hope that we're on our way out. We've taken some very big steps to go into Pakistan to expand the work in India probably 30 percent in the last couple of years. 350 people full time there. And we're just trying to send them everything we can. Films, projectors, vehicles, money, literature projects. Probably this year the India budget will go over $400,000. And I believe that's the will of God. But there's not going to be any gain without pain. And we're not just going to see all the bills paid right on the day because we've got to battle in prayer. And Ted Randall was sharing in this tape on the warfare that the soldier will receive his needs. Very interesting teaching as a soldier will receive his needs. And God is supplying our needs. The basic food, basic clothing, that's our needs. But most of our bills don't deal with that. That's part of it. They deal more with the incredible advance against the enemy. Twenty million more pieces of literature. A thousand people in Belgium. Recruiting 2,000 more for the summer. Three to 400 vehicles on the road. Two ships. A film ministry that's just gone almost bonanza. And it's this advancement against the enemy that he is fiercely counterattacking. And we can't just come and claim the promises for basic needs. We've got to drive into the enemy territory in persevering prayer as it speaks about in 2 Corinthians. Tearing down the strongholds of the enemy. And with the likes of us, let's be honest, this is going to take a little time. Because, you know, we just haven't got an overabundance of Hudson Taylor watching these, Andrew Murray's, Amy Carmichael's. But, you know, they're coming. 20, 30 years, they'll be here. Well, let's pray. And then we'll have a few questions. Lord, I just thank you for this little opportunity for fellowship. Just to think on your word. We think of Paul going around to the churches in much exhortation. And we know that the Bible teaching you give us enables us to build and to bring things into remembrance. And Lord, we just believe this month of May is going to be a great month as you give us renewed zeal. Lord, I thank you that this whole month I can be here in England, throw myself into this side of the world. Just thank you for many answers to prayer. We thank you that every day, as far as we can see, someone is coming to Christ. Somewhere in this feeble work through literature or testimony or film. Usually many every day. And we believe God it's worth it to battle through some of the muck and some of the garbage that the devil is trying to put in our way. Oh Lord, we just look to you. We praise you that for every one look at self we can take ten looks at your son, Jesus Christ, and walk in the glorious light of his power. Bless all the families who have a double battle in a sense. Maintaining their family, keeping their work in its right priority. Bless every family, every own child, every new baby as they seem to be coming along at regular pace. We just give you the praise and ask you also to unite us with the whole body, churches and Bromley, other movements and fellowships that together we may be edified and built up. In Jesus name, amen.