In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of consistently meditating on the Word of God throughout our daily lives. They highlight the power of Christianity and the weapons of spiritual warfare, such as resisting temptation, rejoicing, prayer, love, and meditation. The speaker encourages the audience to find excitement and fulfillment in Christianity rather than seeking it from the world. They also discuss the effectiveness of evangelizing those who have wronged us or those we have wronged in the past, as they may be the easiest to win to Christ. The sermon concludes with a story about forgiveness and redemption, illustrating the transformative power of God's love.

I just want to point out again where these stories took place here in Irian Jaya, in this jungle swampland here where these cannibals and headhunters live, in that tropical island there above Australia. Now this morning we are on the weapon, the spiritual weapon, love. Can you imagine using love or calling it one of the spiritual weapons of our warfare that are used? In 2 Corinthians 10, 4, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but spiritual. And we've done some of the others, and this morning we look at this one here. Look at the scripture there in Matthew. I want to read a few verses in Matthew here. Matthew 5, starting with 38. You have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you that ye resist not evil. But whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would pour of thee turn thou away. Ye have heard that it had been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that spitefully use you, and persecute you. And that last verse is the one we have on the chart here, on the weapon of love. Now, I want to share not only that verse with you, which is more that powerful verse which helps us in reaching people and evangelism, but also the one that more deals with our relationship with each other, and that's of course John 13, 34 and 35, a new commandment I given to you that you love one another. That verse goes on to say, By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. And that's a fantastic verse, because for all people around us, the whole town, to know that we are his disciples is the testimony that we're really all after. And when we can capture that in a town and in a church, we have a weapon on our hands that is unreal. So it works in two ways, loving our enemies, those that despitefully use us, and then to love one to another. We were walking along there in the jungle, Nottoway and myself. Nottoway, that old chief, that former headhunter chief who had not been converted to Christ, he was the one that said in my testimony message to him, Why didn't your father come to tell my father about Jesus? He would have believed him. Unreal what he said. And he was the same one, he was the man that said in yesterday's message, that prayed on the trail for the rain not to fall on the missionary so he wouldn't get wet. And his faith was much greater than mine was. He was the man that had this ugly nose, just a loose hanging nose. He apparently had a nose bone, he must have won the record in having the biggest nose bone, because he had ripped the part of his nose out, and he could lift that nose of his right up like this. Ugly fellow. You know, I told you the other day, oh, how afraid I was of him that first trip when he grabbed me by the arm and took me to his village. I was looking for the big pot where he was going to get cooked. I mean, I was scared to death of this guy. But he turned out to be my first Christian in that village. And you know, the other day I told you about how they think, rubbing their nose. Well, this fellow had a real problem with this loose hanging nose. He'd have to hold it with one hand and rub it with the other. Oh, it's unreal. I got to share this one. I was in a candidate school one time where I was teaching these things to new missionary candidates and telling them about them rubbing their nose. That time up in the balcony there, there was a great commotion. And I wondered what I'd said wrong. And later one came up and said, Mr. Koenig, nothing you said was wrong. It's just when you were telling about them rubbing their nose, one guy in the back row there let out this loud sneeze. And somebody else said he blew his mind. And that caused a commotion back there. But you never know how people are going to react. But this was the Nottaway that now said to me, or I said to him first of all, I said, Nottaway, see this village of Haibu that we're coming through now? Will you help me pray that these people be converted, that I can reach these people? There's a few older men starting to listen to my message. But other than that, nothing. I said, will you pray that they too might accept the gospel? He says, no, Tuan, I can't do that. He says, Tuan, let them all go to the fire. What he was really saying, let them go to hell. Let them, they're not worth saying, Tuan, I'll pray for all the other villages, but not for Haibu. I said, Nottaway, you've got to pray for them too. You've got to love your enemies. He says, Tuan, they kill. He says, Tuan, before you came, you should have seen the fighting here. They killed my people. They killed my forefathers. And he says, Tuan, we ate some of them. They ate some of our people. And he says, Tuan, never. I'll pray for Amahatsu and Yahatsu and Sohebe and those villages down towards the south, but not Haibu. I said, Nottaway, you'll never be a good Christian. You'll never really amount to anything from God until you also learn to love your enemies. And he says, Tuan, is that part of it? I said, yeah, that's part of the gospel. That's what Jesus said in his book. I said, and I quoted the verse, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. I said, that's what Jesus said. He says, Tuan, then your gospel is too hard for us. I can't do that. And he was saddened. And I said, Nottaway, that's Christianity. And he left me then. And when we came to the village of Haibu, he went back home. And he let me walk the rest of the way home to my village alone. My heart was heavy. That was one of my choice people, that man of prayer. And I wondered what to do. But a few weeks later, he stood at my house, he'd come. And he said, Tuan, I did what you told me to do. And I'd forgotten. I said, what? He says, I prayed for Haibu village that they also would become Christians. And I couldn't believe the words I heard. Can you believe it here? An hardened headhunter who had the scars on him from the fighting and the warfare and now converted. He had prayed for his enemies. Hey, that's real Christianity. You know, what do you think God does now? If you were God, what would you do if you saw that fellow praying for his first bitter enemies? Isn't that about time for a miracle? Isn't that about time for God to do something big and say, man, that's more than I can take. Watch, I'm going to answer that one. And that's exactly what he did. Oh, there was room for a miracle. He went to Haibu and sat with his old men in the house. They listened to me. But all those younger men that were now appointed the chiefs, how bitter they were, how they hated me, how they cursed me, how they threatened me time after time in those homes. And see, the government appointed the younger men that knew a bit of Indonesian to be the new chiefs. And the older chiefs were put down while they were kind of family chiefs and still heads of the village. But these young men that knew their Indonesian became the chiefs. Hardened guys. The government in our area was stirred up by another religious group. And they controlled the government. The religious group even brought in the supplies for the government. So they controlled these policemen. They would always beat our Protestant people as they came through. And all these guys were turned against us in a way, possessed fellows. And I sat one day in the home trying to teach and preach. And these guys, two of them came in. One was Soho. He was the chief of the Haibu village. The other was Ketoho. He was the assistant chief. And they come in and yell at me, you know, tell me to get out, threaten me. The Ketoho, he'd hold that large machete right to my neck, you know. And he says, Tuana, if you don't get out of here, do you want to get cut? You know, I didn't know whether you're serious or not. I mean, you don't want to take chances. And yet you don't want to cower out. They said, that religious teacher with them, they said, we're going to smash your boat. You'll never be able to come back here again. And this kind of thing. I was there with my young son one time. He was about 10 years old, young Otto. And he had gone with me to Ashima. We had preached there and we coming back through and had a service at Haibu with these people that a few people that wanted us. And that was the day when they were unterribly hostile in front of my little son. And my little son sat there in tears, said, Daddy, let's go home. Don't ever go back there again. They're going to kill you. They're never that impressed on that young mind of that boy. I maybe shouldn't have taken him there. I never expected it would be that bad. He still remembers that. And that's the boy that is now 19, finished his first year of Bible college and going back to be a missionary. He can't get away from it, the need. And I'm just thrilled. But, you know, that day he got a drum, that chief, and banged the drum and stood dancing in that house and the whole floor would shake. And I was trying to speak to those people, just making it impossible. They'd curse, they'd yell, oh, very, very ugly talk. And finally I said to him, Soho, quit beating that drum. I said, You remember what happened to Membu in the village of Aboin? I told you about that in the other message yesterday. Remember what happened to Membu? God just cut him off like that. I said, God can't take much more of this. I said, You're going to die one of these days. God's going to cut you off. And he kept on drumming. He says, Tuan, I'm not afraid of the big fire. I'm not afraid of the big fire. I'm not afraid of God. And I said, Oh, brother, you know, when you talk like that, there isn't much hope. And it wasn't long after this, God did exactly that. There was a runner came over the trail. I was fixing a power mower, which I'd gotten. And it was late at night, about quarter after five, five thirties, getting almost going on to dark. And a runner came, a fellow named Bernard. He came. He'd been one of our boys that I sent to Bible school. He says, Tuan, guess what? They've had a big fight over at Haibu. The two clans have fought. Your two enemies, Ketoho and Soho, are dying. They've been shot so bad. They're hurt so bad. They're going to die. Isn't that great? And I felt like, Yeah. Hey, I can't say that's great. Those guys are going straight to hell. They're lost. No, I remember. But I almost felt like praising the Lord. Man, he's removing my enemies out of the way. Isn't that neat? But should we praise the Lord over the death of people like that? I got convicted about that. I thought, well, God's removing them, like he did with Permanus and Hashimon. Remember what at Aboy, he's taking these two guys out of the road, so I'll have free course in preaching the gospel. But I didn't want to help them, but the Holy Spirit seemed to impress this on me. Love your enemies, go help them. Give them penicillin, bind up their sores, see if you can save them. I thought, man, it's nighttime. You can't go on that river at night, all those stumps in that river. And I'd never taken a boat out at night. And I thought, I'll go first thing in the morning, Lord. I thought by the morning they'll be dead anyway. It'd be neat to have them out of the way. I thought, God's doing it again. He knows what he's doing. He's taking care of me, removing these guys. But the more I thought of going in the morning, the more convicted I got. The Lord says, hey, love your enemies. Get out there and do something for them. And then I thought, yeah, God, you can even let them die even though I give them penicillin and medicine. I mean, if God wants to let them die, he can let them die. So I thought, okay. And I told my wife to get the penicillin ready and the medicine. And I got new flashlight batteries and a couple of my flashlights and I said, Bernard, let's go. Let's help them. He says, you are going to help those guys? Do not let them die. I said, well, that's what I feel like doing, but I don't think God'd be happy that way. Come on, let's go. So we walked out through the trail. By the time we got to the river, the village of Menda, it was dark. There we picked up a literacy teacher and I said, hey, can you come? He says, yes, I want to come. And those two guys sat in front of my boat and we got the motor on and we got things. And we went down this river at night and they held the flashlights and we got to that village. All right. And I stood in front of the home of that chief, both of them. I said, where are they? They were both in this home of the main chief. Further down the village on the other end was another fella, E.K., badly wounded. And so I went to these guys first and there stood that religious guru. These gurus are half religion and half demon controlled. They're a combination, awkward guys. I said to this fella, I said, do they want my help in here? I said, go in there and see if they want my help. I've come to bring medicine. I've come to help them. If they want it, I'm ready. If they don't, I'll go home. He went in and he says, Tuan, go on in. They're calling for you. And there in the darkness of this hut, they stoked the fire and got a bit more light in there. And I saw Soho lay in there by the fire. And I talked to him. His eyes were turned back, only wide in their eyes. I said, Soho, can you hear me? He said, yeah, Tuan. I said, Soho, do you want my help? And there he was, shot through the neck, shot through the arm, right through the outset of his arm and into his chest. I mean, he had shots, he had been riddled with all kinds of shot wounds in his legs, arms and so on. I said, Soho, do you want my help? He says, yeah, Tuan, help me, help me. He's getting scared, afraid of these demons. I felt like saying to him, I thought you weren't afraid of the fire, Soho, but I didn't say it. I don't think that was necessary. And I started to help him and bound up, I put bandage around his neck. I didn't know how to bind up these different things, but I gave him penicillin, a good amount of it, and gave him aspirin to kill the pain a bit. And whatever I could do, bandage them up and put salve on, drawing out salve on his wounds and so on. And I said, Soho, do you want me to pray to God for you? Yeah. He said, yeah, Tuan. He all of a sudden, hey, when you're at the end of your rope, you need God, don't you? And then I went over to Ketoho, and there he laid on his stomach with his back cut open with this machete wound, a long, ugly wound where somebody just slashed him with a machete. And I said, Oh, goodness. Now I had this tape with me, and we don't sew them up anymore. I quit doing that. We use butterfly bandages. I don't know if any of you nurses know what I'm talking about there. And you tie that thing together and tape his back together. And I put the salve on and gave him penicillin for infections. Oh, what bad shame. I talked to him a while, and then down the village, I went to E.K. E.K. was the man that liked us. He had worked on our airstrip. He was not hostile towards us. That clan was a little bit more friendly. And here was E.K., the guy that I really, you know, thought a lot more of than these other two rascals. And they had stabbed him. They had beat him or something and got him. And he was, he said, they told me he was sitting on his knees. And they took a spear, a big spear. They wanted to just drive it right through his skull. And they missed, hit him right in the shoulder. And they had cut this main blood artery, whatever, that had gone into his head here. And he was bleeding profusely. And it had stopped now. They had pushed it together. And I tied him so that he couldn't move it. I tied him with bandages and gave him penicillin. And I said, E.K., you can't move. That thing's got to heal. It's going to take days. You're going to have to sit still, lay still, not walking or anything, see, to get that thing. And I had stopped bleeding now, but that thing could open right up again, you know. And I prayed with him and went home. The next morning we went back again and gave him more penicillin and did what we could. And then I trained that teacher and so he could do it. And you know what happened? Those guys pulled through. I thought, Lord, you missed it. You know, you should have let them die. You know, I mean, the work of Haibu was at stake, the whole village, all those souls of those people. And those rascals both lived. And then the government called them and they said, come to K.P., the government post. In two days' walk they have to go. These guys are going to be imprisoned for, you know, fighting, especially the chiefs when they fight. And so they called this E.K. And I sat with him and I said, E.K., you can't go. I said, I can write a letter for you and tell the government this man cannot come because that exertion of two days' walk through that swamp break that thing open. He'll die for sure. I said, I will write a letter. You can't go. You stay here. And if they're down on you for not coming, I will explain to them. But he went anyway. And on that trail, he broke that thing back open and died on the trail. He was bled to death. And I lost my man. And I said, Lord, what are you doing? You know, the guy that was friendly towards me. And here the other rascals are still alive. But because he died, they had four years in jail. In jail they had to lay hard labor. They taught them to cut wood and so on with their long pit saws. I don't know if you people know. You possibly have seen the long pit saws. One guy stands under the log in a hole. The log's here. Another guy stands on top of the long pit saws. And they do that. And they learned that by hand there. And two years later, I met those guys. They had a parole. They could be free for a week to see their families and their people. And then they had to come back to prison. And I came through the village and these two guys, they had both had shirts on now and army shorts. And they'd been in prison and they'd learned to cut wood and so on. And I said, So, Keto, you're back again. Amazing to see you. And they stood there and looked at me. And they stood there and looked at me more. And they said, Tuan, what made you do it? Why did you save our lives? And I said, Honestly, and they have no word for thank you in their language, but they had the Indonesian word and they used it. And they said, Tuan, we can't understand. I said, Well, look, don't thank me. You thank Jesus, my God, because I didn't want to come that night and save your lives. I wanted you to die. I didn't hate you, but the way you've been treating me around here and the gospel, I figured that God's going to let you die like Membu and Abo and Permanis and Hashima. All that brought thoughts to them. And he says, Tuan, what made you come? I said, God compelled me. I couldn't have slept that night. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God in my heart delved in me, says, Go, love your enemies, because the book says, my Bible says, love your enemies, bless them that hate you, do good to them that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you. And I said, You thank Jesus, because I had no desire to help you at all. I must confess. They said, We can understand that. That's the way we would be. And I said, Hey, I want to take your shirt off, Kato. I want to see how that thing healed. And he took his shirt off, and there was that thing, and it was all pulled together, the way I'd pull it together, a big scar right across his back. I said, Amazing. I can't believe it. And Soho showed me, brought his collar down, showed me the hole in his neck, and the scars had healed. And I said, It's amazing that you're alive. He says, Tuan, when we get out of jail, our children will all attend your school. We will see to it that this whole village will attend your school and your Christian teachers. We're through with the other religion. We're through with that. And then we will start listening to you, Church. Ah, I thought, Unreal. I thought, You know, God removed Membu and one Abwe, and now he's, he didn't remove these guys, but we're still going to get the village. God can do it any way he pleases, can't he? Ah, it was unreal. I think God's teaching me lessons in all these different ways of doing things. So I would learn, because he can reach any village he wants, any way he wants. And that's what happened. Two years later, they came back out. They were such strong-leadered guys that they became heads of the village again, even though they weren't a chief now, yet they had the influence of the place. And they said, kick that teacher out. And they finally, you know, did, and brought our teacher in, started our school. Now we were free to preach there and to teach there in the open in that school. And I thought, It's unreal. God turned my enemies into my servants. You know, it was then that we moved our mission station. Don Richardson was coming over and his wife and family, they were going to do the translating of the language. We needed more room. We built a new airstrip. We built a house for Don Richardson, then a house for myself. And then a large clinic and office building. All this building had to be done. And there had to be storage sheds and national worker houses. And I had all this. I needed so much wood. Where do you think I got the wood? These three, these two guys taught my people how to pit saw. They said, Tuan, you buy us, get us some of those pit saws. I went to the Chinese merchants, got the pit saws. They taught my people to cut wood. That was the only village in the jungle that knew how to cut wood well, because I got them the saws. They taught my people and all this building to be done. And these guys that had experience, and they became my carpenters. I had four young men that I trained to be carpenters. They could drive a nail. They could use the square and cut a board straight. And those guys, and whenever I had something to do and all this didn't want to work, I'd say, Soho, I need some wood. I need some posts. I need this kind of wood. I need that kind of wood. And they would get it for me. They became my slaves. If nobody else wanted to work, they couldn't say no. They owed their life to me. Ah, God can turn your bitterest enemies into your servants, literally. That's what happens. That's how powerful the weapon of love is. It's unreal. The Bible says love never fails, doesn't it? I tell you. And then, you know what else happened? Then we were going to make Richardson's house out of the fancy mahogany wood which was cut by our sawmill at another mission station. And I had the other wood for the clinic and for the other buildings. And the sawmill broke down and we had to wait for a year or so to get a new diesel engine for the sawmill. So the whole building program and the whole mission was come to a halt. Now they had some real professional carpenters, native fellas from the coast that the mission had hired for all the building of the hospital and all the big jobs, you know. But these guys had nothing to do. And they didn't know what to do with them. So I said, hey, do you suppose these fellas of yours can come to my station and help me? Yeah, it'd be great if we could use them somewhere. We had wood because we had men to cut wood locally. And we could build and we had the professional carpenter to help us. And I didn't even have to do it after a while. And we were building and everything was going because of the two men. I'm glad they didn't die. And I said, God, you made a mistake. You took the wrong one. You should have knocked him out of here so we could preach the village. We got the village anyway, but we got workers. Oh, I tell you, you know, you kick yourself. You say, man, if God had listened to my prayer in that one, I would have lost out so big. Love works in, somebody said, we had this at a text on the wall. Love works in ways that are wondrous and strange and there's nothing in life that love cannot change. What a statement. Love is a powerful weapon. Another quote that I once heard, love in your heart was not put there to stay. Love is not love until you give it away. That's something. Love is not something that remains with you. It only works when you give it away. I'm reminded of that soldier in the Scottish army. I heard this once, read it once, how he was a man of prayer and he knelt down beside his bunk in those barracks and how they would laugh and jeer at him and how this big burly soldier in his cabin couldn't stand it any longer. He says, if you don't quit your praying around here, I'm going to beat you up, beat the tar out of you, you know. And he would every night as the others getting ready for bed, he would be there kneeling by his bed and praying. And one time this fellow just so angry, took his big muddy army boot and just threw it at him, hit him on the face on one side with it. And the guy didn't stop praying, he just went on praying. So he took his other boot and beat him on the head with the other muddy boot and said, that'll teach you to pray. But the guy didn't pray, he just went on praying, though he was hurting, he was praying. And the lights went out and they all went to bed. And the next morning, that rough burly soldier that had hit the man with his boots, got out of his bed. And what was standing beside his bed but his own army boots, cleaned and polished, beautifully shined up. You know what happened? It broke the guy down. That big fella went into tears and said, hey, what makes you do a thing like that? I want what you got. And that soldier let that big fella to Christ, because he loved him after he got beat by the same boots. And that night he was up cleaning them and polishing them for him, sit him there. Love is a powerful thing. You know, it was worth him getting hurt a little bit there to have that man, the biggest fella in the cabin on his side. And now the two of them pray. And the same thing happened down in Virginia coal mine, where a miner was always living for God, serving God, praying before he ate his lunch down there in the mines, singing the gospel songs, a beautiful Christian. And how another miner just couldn't stand it. And after a while he got so sick and tired, he said, one of these days I'm just going to hit you right in the mouth. I'm He says, well, if it make you feel good, why don't you just get it over with and do it right now? And the guy couldn't take that. He beat him in the mouth and beat him again and hit him until the guy fell to the ground. And he stood over him, laughed, but the guy wiping the blood off his face, the best he could talk with his sore mouth and face said, but I still love you. And I'm still going to pray for you. And the guy walked away, couldn't get away from that all night. It haunted him. And the next morning, next day he was back and he says, I can't sleep. What is it? And he led him to Christ down there in that mine. Hey, sometimes we get hurt, but sometimes it makes our lives easier. Love works in a powerful way. Love is contagious. Love is irresistible. Love is reciprocal. That means it demands a response in Romans 5, 8. It says God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, he died for us. God loved us when we were ugly. And now us understanding that demands a response from us. What do we do now in return? A preacher I once heard, Paul Valentine, from Akron, Ohio, said this, and it's such a unique statement. If husbands loved their wives the way they should, the wives wouldn't go out and buy all the things they don't need. They would be content by pleasing him. Now this is a very true statement. A lot of men work their heads out trying to make enough money to get a go, only to see their wives going back and forth to the store for more curtains or more rugs or more dresses. And they wonder, the wives have to be satisfied. They have to have satisfaction. And if the men don't love their wives the way they should, then the wives have to find satisfaction or somewhere else. And they're thinking about things and not pleasing their husbands. So men, we can save maybe quite a bit of money if we did what God told us. You know, you can never do what God tells you to do and lose. You found that out. You can't be obedient and come out on the short end anywhere. And then that statement in the Bible, perfect love casts out fear. We can actually overcome fear problems, even fear of spiders, by perfect love casts out fear. There was a book I once read, probably the most stirring story I've ever read. Maybe some of you have read about the war stories on the River Quay. I read on the books there, there's a book, Bridges on the River Quay, but the miracles on the River Quay, that river there in Thailand, I believe it is, up there somewhere, where the Japanese were making bridges across this river and a highway to take over India and more of the Far East there. And how they had these captured English soldiers in that place there, prisoners of war, who were working there to install those bridges and those paths along that river. Very difficult country. And these people were on very poor rations, starving to death. They were very cruel to them, and many of them starved. They were very sickly. They didn't have proper medicine, didn't have proper nourishment for that heavy physical labor. The story goes how this one English soldier was a Christian, and how he talked to his men in the cabins at night. Men, why don't you turn to Christ? There's nothing else. As long as you're bitter and curse these Japanese and hate them, it'll destroy you even faster. And he says, look, we're dying. And because they were having funerals every day, you know, people start to think, where are you going when we bury you one of these days? Why don't you receive God? It's the only way you can have joy. You can have happiness even in this miserable circumstance. This guy learned the secret of rejoicing in the midst of tribulation. That's why he was growing. Remember the message on Tuesday morning, the weapon of rejoicing? The more tribulation, the more he rejoiced, the stronger he got, the more his faith grew. And he became a giant and prayed for them. And it's contagious, we just said. And he loved this man. And he would, the sick man among them, he would take his rations, though meager they were, give them to the guy that was sick or that needed it more, giving his lunch, his food away about every other day, and God sustaining him. He just, his love is contagious. And those men, by just one after the other, turned to the Lord, started praying with him, started rejoicing with him. Can you imagine how the whole platoon getting up early in the morning, Japanese with their whips and guns, and there they go off singing together, rejoicing in the Lord, and that make them, Japanese all the more angry, and they'd make them work harder and all this. And they'd go on, they start to minister one to another, to share with each other. They were always giving their food away to the other guys. Everybody did it, and they were doing, helping each other, and just became a beautiful example of how Christianity really should be working, but it works best under persecution in a situation like that. And finally, the day came up when the guards suspected that somebody had stolen one of their shovels, or, you know, had run off with them, and they really going to let them, and they had them all lined up in the main place there, and they said, now one of you guys have been running off with shovels, or you stole one, because the count wasn't right last night, and whoever did it, whoever is guilty, step out here, and we're going to shoot him as an example. Well, they said, and if nobody stepped out, and they're all realizing that the whole rest of them are going to die. Now, this Christian was there among them, and he thought, some of these men aren't saved yet. If they die, they'll be lost forever. And he stepped out of line, and he stepped forward, and he says, no, I didn't steal the shovel, but blame me, I take the guilt, shoot me, and they shot him, right there, this Christian man. And the others stood in awe and amazement, but you know what the others do now, he gives his life for them, he died in their place, and that brought about the conversion of the rest of them, and later those guards found the shovel that was lost, see, and they saw this guy died, and that had a profound effect even on those Japanese guards, this guy gave his life for his men. And you know, then the war was over, and those prisoners were set free, and the end of that book goes how that those prisoners now were given food rations by those that set them free, and they now had food, and for the first time, and they carried some lunches with them, some food with them, and now they saw the trains, and the yard there, all the Japanese prisoners of war, and they saw the men that had beat them and guarded them. What did they do? They took their lunches, and they gave it to the Japanese on the train. The guy said, hey, now that is love. That is how you're going to win people, isn't it? That's irresistible. Love is such a weapon that people can't stand against. Have any of you ever read the stories of Wurmbrand in the Romanian prisons, the book Tortured for Christ? Anybody familiar with that? How, if there's ever been a pure prayer group, it was there, where those people were persecuted by the communists in those prisons and dying and tortured in unusual ways, and how those men prayed. These were the Christians, the pastors, and how those men learned to pray and learned to trust God. You know, when you might meet God any day, you learn to prayer right. I mean, there's no more hypocrisy. There's no more covering of sin. It's clean. It's pure, and that was a pure prayer group. When you have a group like that, two or three gathered together in a whole room full of them, all praying one prayer in one accord with full faith, ready to go to meet, then you've got power at work. I don't know if we can ever gain that kind of a prayer group in America and the situation we've got now. I think we need harder times before we can ever get to that point. We need to have churches that share together and love one another and practice the one another's scriptures. But they had this pure prayer group, and one would die, another would die, and they'd just rejoice when God took them home because he'd be happier than they were down here. And then they would pray for the guards. He actually said the guards that were lucky were the ones that were assigned to beat us, because they would get next priority on the prayer list, you see. And he says inevitably these guards would either get converted and end up in the cell with him, or they would die very soon. In other words, the Holy Spirit of God would deal so powerfully with them that they either would be saved or they would be cut off. They would just resist the Spirit of God. And they would die of some other means. They said it was unreal how some of them died not long after we put them on our list and prayed for them. And he says how we prayed for our communist leader in Romania and how that man became a Christian. And he ended up with them in the cell as a Christian in that prison. And they asked him, are you angry with us for praying for you? And he said, no, I'd rather die for Jesus than be up there ruling the country or the communist party. And he told them how they used to sit together with Khrushchev and the others in the Kremlin and how they talked of strategy. He said, we aren't, in the Kremlin, we're not afraid of America, we're not afraid of the West. He says, what we can't handle is the Christians. The more we beat them, the stronger they get. The more we kill, the more they are. The more we send to Siberia, the stronger the church is. The more we persecute, and that's exactly what happened. Our team missionaries were driven out of China 30 years ago. And now, just recently, with the relationship between the United States and communist China opening up, the two older men that were missionaries from our mission went back, who worked there over 30 years ago. And they didn't find churches, but they found underground Christians. They met them at the railway station. They recognized some of them. And they said, we will come to your hotel at night. And at night, they came to his hotel during the dark. They said, don't come to our homes. We will come to talk to you. They sat with them during the night hours and said, you know, when there was, there had been about 40,000 Christians, and now there was many, many more. There was, I think, 10 times, or it was 4,000 before, now there's 40,000, 10 times more Christians now than 30 years ago when they left. And the persecution, that church thrived. And that communist party there in the Kremlin said this very thing. They said, we can't handle the Christians. The more we persecute them, the stronger they are. You see? And that's how they discussed that in that cell there by Wurmbrand. And about that time, after that, you remember when Khrushchev mysteriously disappeared from office in Russia? I wouldn't be surprised if it was their work. People like this, praying for him. No explanation was ever given why he was put out of office. Nobody heard what happened to him, where he was. And there's only about one explanation. I've heard one rumor from one man that said that they heard that he'd become a Christian. I wouldn't be surprised at all. If he had become a Christian, you could see why the communist government would keep it quiet. Right? They wouldn't tell the world, hey, our communist leader became a Christian. They didn't tell them. If he died, they would have told us. If he's sick, they would have told us. If he had misused his office or something else, they would have told us. But there's quiet on that one. And it's very possible that that's what's happening to some of these men, that groups like this are zeroing in on them, loving their enemies, praying for their enemies. I'd encourage you, strongly, to start using this weapon of love. Friends, you remember in my story, how when I had turned off the man whose pot I didn't want to fix, I didn't have time to fix his pot. I laid up late that night and couldn't sleep. And I prayed, Lord, help. You know, how can somebody else win him? The preacher boys aren't along very far. Nobody else winning souls. And I could visualize that man forever lost in hell. You know, I'm the only one who can beat him. And I turned him off. And that's what happens here at home. We turn people off. We hope somebody else reaches him. And whenever you're tempted to pray, Lord, may somebody else reach him. I know I can't. Hey, that should give you the clue right there. You're the person to reach him. Because you've turned him off, and it's got to be the right way, restitution. Make it right, ask his forgiveness, pay back, do whatever necessary, do what Zacchaeus did, pay him back fourfold, whatever it takes. And then he will see Christianity in action. He will see Christianity in its right form, and we'll be able to reach him. Friends, the target of our evangelism is the ones we've wronged in the past. Or the people that wrong us for other reasons, like the man with the boots in the Scottish Army. The people that wrong us are the easiest to win to Christ. And all our own thinking, and you know, Satan would say to us, and the world would say to us, hey, the guy you've turned off, you'll never win him. And that's what many of us think. And they're the very ones we can win the easiest. As a matter of fact, we can get excited about this weapon again, like we did about the other ones. Lord, have somebody wrong me, have somebody hurt me, so I can win him. Hey, Christianity gets exciting when you look forward to somebody actually doing you harm, persecuting you, or something. It's like the man that says, Lord, I can't wait for the next problem so I can start rejoicing. Excitement in Christianity. Lord, I can't wait for the next time Satan tempts me so I can resist him. Excitement in Christianity. And here it is again. Lord, let somebody wrong me, and I will love them in return, and win them, because they can't handle love when we do it, because that's unnatural. You've got to be Spirit-filled Christian we had here, and one of the results was the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, those things are results of the Spirit-filled life. Down at the prayer forum, they're there if you're a Spirit-filled person. And I've started to use this on my neighbors. I couldn't get next to one neighbor across the street. I mean, he hardly ever stood, wave at him, say hello, nothing. Till one morning there in Mansfield, Ohio, in that huge snow drift one morning, my son and I took our shovels and said, let's help Bell. He, look, he can't get his car out. He's got to, let's, and we went over there and dug out his driver. He was digging. He stood there, looked at us. He says, hey, I didn't hire you. I said, we're just helping you, man. You don't have to pay us. We're just getting our exercise out here. And we did that, and after that, he would always wave. Huh? I mean, he all, hey, it made all the difference in the world. Now he's approachable. Now we can talk to him, you see. And now we can learn his name and find out what's up. And then the light was on in his car one night, and I called him up, and he thanked me so much that I, you know, kept his battery from draining, and so on. Friends, in the olden days, you know what we used to do? We used to go to our neighbors and borrow a cup of sugar, right? But now we all have too many cars, right? We run to the store and buy sugar. But we used to do that, and we used to buy and borrow maybe an egg or say, hey, can you help me out? I'll bring it back tomorrow. I'm grocery shopping. An egg for my cake, or I need, you know, something like, we used to do that. We don't do that anymore. At the same time, we're praying for those neighbors around us and hoping to win them to Christ. But you know something? I think we ought to do it again. I sometimes wonder if we shouldn't on purpose run out of sugar, or out of eggs, so we can go to the neighbor lady and say, hey, I'm stuck. I need, could you just, you know, could you just let me have a cup of sugar, and I'll bring it back to you just as soon as I can. And I, what do you think most neighbors would say? They'd almost fall over. That isn't done anymore. Yeah. Well, most neighbors say, sure, I'd be glad. Hey, no, don't bother bringing it back. Just keep it. It's fine. I'd be glad to do it. Most neighbors are that way. You'll find once in a while one that say, get out of here. Depends on how much witnessing and, and, you know, nagging you've done about the gospel. If you've done that, they'll probably say, hey, get out of here. Because if you haven't nagged yet, if you're new in a neighborhood, maybe you should move so you start all fresh, you know, and, and start off and say, will you, will you, will you borrow that cup of sugar? And she says, no, don't. Hey, I was glad to do it. And you say, and you thank her, you know, and then you purposely run out of eggs or something else and you go again. Are you men, you could say, hey, I need to borrow a certain wrench. Make sure you don't have everything. So you let me buy everything. And we're so independent. We can't work this. You see, that's why if we have too many pineapple gardens, we're hurting. We're, we're in trouble. So make sure you don't have anything. So you go to them. Can I, can I have your wrench or something? Oh, sure. Be glad. And then, you know what happens between your neighbors? You find that when they're across the fence, they wave at you in the morning. Say, good morning, neighbor. What, what's gotten into them? What's changed? Well, they know that you like them. And everybody is desperate to be loved and liked. You see? And how they know it, they know you like them. Well, they've already done some thinking. I loaned him a cup of sugar. I loaned him a wrench. I loaned him an egg. Hey, he's kind of like me. I'm such a nice guy. You see? And they start thinking that. You start waving back at them. You see? And, and you start, hey, you're building a relationship over the back fence, right? Now, you haven't witnessed yet. That comes way, way down the road, okay? So here you, uh, you do something else. You, you say, hey, can you help me? Just a favor. Uh, you need a ride to the dentist. Your husband's got the car. Uh, you know, if you're only in one car family, sometimes it's good to be only one car. You can work this thing. Or you pray that yours would break down so that you can say, hey, could you take me to the dentist? My husband can pick me up on the way home from work. And please, oh, sure. I'd be glad to. Now you ride with her. You see, you don't witness that. You just ride with her. And now you're in debt, not in debt, she's done you several favors. And finally you go to her one morning and you say, hey neighbor, what can I do for you? I, I want so much to do something for you. You've done all these favors for me. You've loaned me a shirt. You make sure you list the whole list because she remembers everything. So you list the whole thing, all these things. Can I wash your car? Can I cut your, what can I do for you? Uh, please let me do a favor for you. Oh, no, no, no, neighbor. I'd be so happy to do it. Why doesn't, why does she say no, no, no, that's all right. That's, that's, why did I say that? Because it feels so good. They've been bagging all over the neighborhood. That's the nicest neighbor I got. Now, why are you so nice? You haven't done a thing for her. You're in debt to her. And they say, hey, you're the nicest neighbor I've ever had. And it's unreal how this thing works. And then you keep doing this. And finally you're, well, you should do them a favor and maybe she'll start coming to you when she runs out of here. You're doing this. And then after a while, then you could say, hey, you know, neighbor, there's something that would really make me happy if you did for me. And she's ready, you know, she's enjoyed the relationship. She says, sure. We have these special meetings and there's a prize for the guy that brings the most visitors. And it's a Bible. And I'd always wanted a Bible like that. And you could help me win it by coming. Would you help me? Just sit there, you know. Or you could say, neighbor, I'd really make me happy if you went to church and why don't you come with me? We've got this special beautiful music on tonight. Or something else. Or you could just say, you know what would make me really happy if you'd let me show you a few verses from the Bible, how you could really be a Christian. I so enjoyed being a Christian. And I so enjoyed you. And you're almost like a Christian even without going to church, the way you've helped me and all that. And you know, now this neighbor has to make a decision. You know what the decision is? Either she cut off this beautiful relationship with you by saying no to you or going with you. You see? And most everybody will come because they've been bragging about their nice neighbor. And suppose they cut off relationship with you because they said no. Then, hey, they love to be loved. People love to be liked. People do anything to have people love them and like them in this world. People are lonely today. And so they will likely come and your Christianity will be contagious. We are not, we are not asked by God to defend the gospel. We're asked to demonstrate the gospel. Then, of course, the other way of evangelism, and that is by doing things for them like the coal miner did by, you know, them, you know, we're doing favors for them. And they finally come to you and say, man, you know, I had a missionary in New Guinea, two missionaries in one station. One missionary was always baking something extra, something and something, taking it over to the other lady, just love all the time. And that other gal just couldn't stand it. She was tight with her money and she didn't want to give and she didn't want to share. And every time the other lady gave, she felt that she should do something back, but she didn't want to in her heart. She must have been touched. And finally she said, hey, quit giving me your cakes, quit bringing me your cookies, just leave me alone. This kind of thing. Love is a powerful thing. And you know, friends, the tragedy was that missionary said, I won't, we won't come back to the field that we're stationed with the other missionaries. What happened? They said, put her somewhere else, but not with them. And oh, there's this love thing. And, you know, breaking them down, and I'm sure God would get to her before long. And so it works in both ways. People doing favors towards you, you'll win them. And you're doing favors towards them, you'll win them. In Bandung, Java, we had the Chinese merchants. And the Chinese merchants, they're the Jews of the Orient. They work this way. They always want to keep, especially the white man is customers. They'll do anything. They'll give you better deals to keep you coming, because you've got the money to spend. Now at Christmas time, my wife is good at making apple pie and she made these apple pies and I delivered them to all these Chinese merchants we'd been dealing with at different stores. And here's an American pie for Christmas time. And they didn't want to take it. Hey, that means that they were indebted to me. And a Chinese man can't be in debt. They've got to have everybody indebted to them, you see, so that they have their customers. So they couldn't, they didn't know what to do. And I said, look, this is for you. This is Christmas time. God gave his son, we give the pie. It's just an indication. It's a token. Give us a chance to give. Now, come on, you eat it. You try our pie. Don't you want to try our American food? My wife made it. Well, I shamed them into eating it, you see. But there came, there came the cakes, layered cakes, like you have in wedding cakes, professionally done with layer after layer, delivered from the Chinese merchants to our house. They wanted to outgive us. They didn't want to be indebted to us. They wanted to give something far greater than what we, a measly little pie. It was unreal. Well, when, hey, we had to keep, you know, that's how they buy their business, by loving, by kindness, by that kind of, they use the principle in business. That's why they're rich. They control the economy of Indonesia, because they ran, they knew how to, how to win customers. And friends, it's a, it's a truth, and we can use it either way. So ask God to set you up. Find, now think of your person that has wronged you, and if you don't have anybody, ask God to bring somebody along that will wrong you, and, and, and start working this thing. And if you can't find anybody wrong you, go work to your neighbor, run out of stuff, ask favors, then learn how to do favors for them, and win your neighbors. It says, you know, we are to love our neighbors. That's the specific command in our Bible. It says, love your wife, love your enemies, love your neighbors. Some men say it's harder to love my wife than my enemies. Well, depends on what your situation is at your house, but love your neighbor is a specific command. A pastor said to me, oh, he says there was a rich man in his town, and oh, he was always cutting him down. He adds in the paper, slamming this gospel church in that small town. I mean, he just hit that preacher and did everything, you know, to slander him and whatever. And then his wife had an accident one day, and guess who she hit? That rich fellow with his big Lincoln Continental, you know. And she put a dent in the guy's bumper. It wasn't a whole lot, but it didn't hit him very hard, but in the bumper was a dent. Now, you know, there's great big bumpers of Lincoln Continentals. I mean, they're worth something. So the guy made a big fuss, you've got to, hey, your wife ran into my car, I'm going to sue you, take you to court. And the pastor, I was there, and he says, what do I do, brother? He's wanting $150 for a new bumper. That was some years ago. I think they're probably twice as much now. He's wanting $150. He says, what do I do? I says, go to the, get wherever you got your money. He says, I don't got my money. I said, don't pay me for the means, give him that bumper. Don't you let him talk the rest of his life, that the rest of his days, that pastor won't make it right. I said, do it. You shouldn't, I mean, it's only a small dent. But he, and he went, bought this bumper. The guy, it shut him up. This preacher didn't say anything. He just said, forgive us. We've given you the money for a new bumper. Go and put it on the car, get it put on. Hey, that took all this. And I said, now pray that God will set you up to win him. Pray that that big car will stop on some rainy back road and that his flat tire, spare tire's flat too or something. Pray that God will put him in a situation where he has nobody turned up but you, and that you'll come right by there and say nothing about anything else and love the guy and help him out and change his tire, do whatever it takes. God can set you up with situations. God can put a man in a place where you can love him. You can help him out. And return good for evil and you'll win him. I don't know if he ever did. I should ask him, wonder what happened to him, but I haven't asked him yet. But this, this is the way we can use the weapon of love. By this shall all men know to win the time. It's a powerful truth that we can only latch onto it. If a church could go with it and say, we're going to use that. And then the loving one another in the church. Do you know that most of the New Testament commandments are on this area, one another's, our relationship to each other. I've written them down. I'm going to read them to you. You'll be amazed. I've only written them down once and some of these are told over and over again in the Bible. Love one another many, many times. Confess your faults one to another. These are commandments that we are to do. Pray one for another. Bury one another's burdens. Minister one to another. Exhorting one another. Teaching and admonishing one another. Forgiving one another. Be subject one to another. Speak no evil one of another. Comfort one another. Submit one to another. We are members one of another. Now this year when I don't know, greet one another with a holy kiss. I guess we don't do that today. Carry one for another. Receive ye one another. Edify one another. Fellowship one with another. Use hospitality one for another. Consider one another. Forbearing and forgiving one another. Be kind one to another. By love serve one another. Have care one for another. Admonish one another. Be of the same mind one to another. In honor preferring one another. What a list! That is to us Christians. If we did it, we'd see miracles. We would see miracles in reaching the unsaved. So again, the two verses that I said, by this shall all men know that you're my disciple, the one for the Christians to live the Christian life, and the other one, love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. Love, a powerful weapon of our spiritual warfare. And we'll put this up again. Let us learn to use these weapons together. Of course you pray for the people and you love them. They go together. You rejoice in your circumstances and you pray for answers. You resist Satan and you pray to God. And then this here one, we haven't said anything around. And really, I don't have enough on this one to give a message. That's why I don't do it. The verses, the word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword. And that really makes it a message right there. There's only about, oh, four or five places in the Bible on meditation. And I can read them to you in closing here. Of course, there's one in Psalm 1, and that is, he that meditates on the word of God, everything he does shall prosper. Fantastic, isn't it? Wouldn't that be nice, men? Everything we did, everything we put our hand to would prosper. Isn't that really what we're all wishing for? Joshua 1.8, he that meditates on the word of God will have good success. The only time success is mentioned in the Bible. We will be successful. Psalm 63, 8 says, meditate on thee in the night watches. That's a wonderful thing. But you've got to surrender everything you've got so you don't have anything to worry about in the night watches. That's when we do a lot of our worrying when we're awake. And then Hebrew 4.12 is this verse, that the word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword. And then the Old Testament says there were four times they were to meditate on the law of God. When thou walkest by the way, we don't walk anymore, so when we drive our cars or travel. When thou sittest in thy house, you really can't do it too much when you're watching that TV. They had an advantage, didn't they? They didn't have TVs back there, so they could meditate on the word of God when they sat in their house. When thou liest down and when thou risest up. Those four times, and that's just about all the time. When you're going somewhere, when you're sitting at home, when you're getting up, that's when we're to meditate on the word of God. Can you now see and begin to see the power of Christianity as we learn to resist, as we learn to rejoice, as we learn the proper use of prayer, the weapon of love, and of meditation? Friends, there's nothing that can stop us. Christianity's got to be exciting, and there's no need for us to go to the world for our excitement. There is plenty of it if we learn to use the weapons of our spiritual warfare. And that's my prayer for you, that each one of us will learn to use these. I trust that you will come back tonight. Tonight we will do the hitchhiking story. It's on one of the tapes. People have often said, well, you're talking about all these experiences back in the mission field. The pineapple story took place five, ten years ago. God doing anything for you today. And I wondered about that. I said, Lord, I've got to have a message that applies today. So God gave me another pineapple story, which was a modern American situation. In this culture, it's the hitchhiking story. And we will do that tonight. And it will be an encouragement to everyone. So let's pray. O Heavenly Father, we are thrilled what you've done for us. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual and mighty to the pulling down of strongholds and taking into captivity every power that raises up against you. O Lord, we thank you. We see now the possibility of victorious Christianity, of exciting Christianity. O God, I pray for these pastors here in their churches that there might be a new excitement as they go back, teaching their people these powerful weapons and getting their church to appropriate them and seeing a whole new joy and excitement in Christianity, winning our towns, winning our neighbors. And then Father, help us as Christians to remember that we must love one another and to minister to one another. Give us the courage to share, to put our reputations on the altar and to let you have your way and to help one another by sharing. Thank you now for this day. Give us a wonderful day. Give us safety today. Give safety to the men and the sports here, the young men. And Father, bring us back again together tonight. Give us a wonderful evening. Come down on us with your power tonight, by your spirit, that your name might be glorified this week here in this place. In Jesus' name, amen.