George Verwer emphasizes five key words for Easter, focusing on grace, discipline, vision, harvest, and being proactive in our faith. He highlights Galatians 2:20 as a central message, urging believers to live a crucified life where Christ lives in them. Verwer addresses the issue of nominalism in the church, stressing the importance of genuine faith and the transformative power of grace. He encourages the congregation to actively engage in sharing the gospel and to maintain a vision for global missions, reminding them that Easter is not just about what Jesus has done for us, but also about how we are called to live for Him. The sermon concludes with a call to action, urging believers to remain steadfast in their faith and to remember that even in difficult times, 'Sunday is coming.'

Successful because anybody who gets my five points one year later if they write me or email me they get five books free. All you have to do is write down five words tuck it away in your diary till a year from today and you get five books and by the way books are going up in price that'll be probably 30 pounds worth of books. It's amazing how many people when I make this announcement don't hear one year from now and I just had another email I was looking at it on the train from Malaysia giving me the five points and wanting the five books and he didn't hear it's one year from now that you can get the five books of course you can write to me anytime you want. Turn to Galatians for our Bible reading. Galatians chapter 2 verse 15. We who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners know that a man is not justified by observing the law but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law because by observing the law no one will be justified. If while we seek to be justified in Christ it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not. If I rebuild what I destroy I prove that I am a lawbreaker. For though the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. And here's our key verse for tonight. I have been crucified with Christ and no longer live but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God for if righteousness could be gained through the law Christ died for nothing. I believe in many ways Galatians Galatians 2 20 is the missing message at Easter. I'm sure you're aware of the enormous problem of nominalism in the church throughout the world. Nominalism is not only the perhaps one of the biggest problems in the church within the UK and in the United States and countries of that kind but nominalism is probably the greatest problem in Sri Lanka, the greatest problem in India. I was talking to a woman just before I left the ship, isn't this providential, who comes from a high Anglican church in the other part of East Malaysia known as Sarawak. She is the first, almost the first person ever from a very high Anglican church to ever go into missions. And in my meeting the night before she made a commitment to move from short term to longer term missions and she doesn't know what she is going to say to her church when she goes back because they do generally not comprehend what this is all about. Do not think that this is a church, you know, with a few dozen people sitting there on Sunday morning. This particular church in Sarawak is absolutely packed on Sunday. This is their religion. Many of them would not know what salvation is. They would not necessarily believe the Bible, though they'd certainly believe part of it. But generally they're people who are nominally Christian. It doesn't actually impact their lives that much, though it's not for me to judge, only God can be the judge. I come from a nominal Christian background. I think it's the easiest background in which you can lose your way. I was religious. I was the assistant to the pastor in what's called the Reformed Church of America, whose roots go back to the nation where my father was born, the Netherlands. It was called the Dutch Reformed Church, but of course as things went on they didn't want to call it the Dutch Reformed Church, so it's called the Reformed Church of America. And it was a totally nominal church. It was like a social club. And many of the ministers in that church did not even believe some of the basics. I don't know if you've heard what's happened in Canada recently. In the United Church in Canada, one of the new main leaders of the whole church is boasting how he doesn't believe in these basic doctrines, you know, that Jesus is the Son of God. And another main leader thinks it's so wonderful that he's so free to express, you know, what he believes. No wonder tens of thousands have left the United Church of Canada. Disillusioned and confused that a church could sink to such a depth of confusion and heresy and whatever else you want to call it. In nominalism there is no place for the message of Galatians 2.20. I'm sure there are some exceptions as people play various semantic games and give different interpretations to verses that they often take out of context. Easter is a time when some people go to church the only time in the whole year. The only time in the year. That's why wherever we can, we need to preach the gospel. Television, in the church, in the street. He is risen. What's that all about? And I believe part of the Easter message is Galatians 2.20. It may be the harder part. I think of it in the light of what it says in 1 John chapter 3, verse 16. We all know John 3.16, but 1 John 3.16's never got that much attention. But the message is clear. This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. This Friday, all over the world, millions and tens of millions will especially focus on the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, known in many parts of the world as Good Friday. This is the message he heard from the beginning. We should love one another. It says in verse 11, but back to verse 16, this is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. That's what happened that Friday, almost 2,000 years ago. He laid down his life voluntarily as a sacrifice for sin. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. That is the missing part of the Easter message. So often the Easter message is thought of in terms of what Jesus has done for us. He died on the cross for us. He rose again for our justification, and praise God for that aspect of the message, which probably you'll be hearing again this weekend. But there's that missing part of the Easter message, that we now are to live a crucified life. We now are to die to self. Not a very popular expression anymore. The whole great Keswick Convention, where I'm going to have the joy of being back again the year 2000. Always seems to take 10 years for them to recover from one of my offensive messages, and then I get back. Though I'm going to be back again at Keswick the year 2000. But the Keswick Convention really was built on the concept of the crucified life. Paul said, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And I think Easter time, and when we have special meetings like this, it's a good time to examine our hearts. I was examining my heart as I sailed on this ship from Dubai to Bahrain, just literally a couple days ago. Especially because a lot of the new recruits were coming to get their little half hour with George Verwer. They put up a little sign-up sheet, and anybody who wants can come and have a go at me, ask me questions. It's so good to have that experience, because a lot of my time has to be given over to the leaders of our movement. Training leaders, working with leaders. Some of the people that I'm involved with in OM have been in OM over 30 years. And we of course know each other, and we have to spend time together. And we have board meetings, and we have leaders meetings. We just had our leaders meetings in South Africa, 180 from all over the world. But I feel for people like us to stay on the cutting edge, we've got to listen to what these new recruits are saying. We've got to be willing to see some of the things within OM that need to be changed, so that we can stay on the cutting edge of this generation. And as I had those couple of days on the ship, and mingled with these people, I thought to myself this group on this ship is just as good, and has just as much potential, as the group on the original ship that I sailed on in 1971, when we sailed out of London around Africa, toward the land of India. I got to know those people perhaps better, because we lived together on a long voyage. We had a prayer night a couple of nights ago, when we headed out to sea. It was very calm in the Arabian Gulf, and people always appreciate that. We got quite a few landlubbers on our ship. And I walked into the main auditorium of the ship, and saw the largest prayer gathering I've ever seen on that ship. And I've been visiting the ship almost every year. This ship, by the way, we've only had since 77, so that's about 21 years. Before that, we had Lagos. Then after 17 years, we lost Lagos. Now we have Lagos II. That ship's in Mexico. I had never seen so many people at one of our prayer nights. Not everybody goes. Sometimes people are ill. Plus, some have to be on bridge. Some have to be on duty. Others are in the engine room. The auditorium, which is about the size of this church, was absolutely packed, and most of them stay there for many hours in prayer. In a so-called generation, where many people are speaking about prayerlessness, where many churches don't have any really good prayer meetings anymore, with anybody actually attending them. And yet, here's hundreds, 300 live on the ship, by the way, who come out after a hard day's work in the engine room, or painting, or doing something else, to spend a night in prayer. God really ministered to my heart. These young people, every one of them, have as a commitment to learn the crucified life. You know, when we know the crucified life, ego will be put in its place. And until we have our ego put in our place, God can never use us fully the way He wants to. And many of the problems among God's people, in our homes, in our churches, are because our ego, the self-life, has never really been broken by the power of Christ. And I know in my own life, when I've caused grief in my home as a father, or as a husband, it's because I wasn't broken at that moment. I was locked into my verveur temperament, aggressive, loudmouth, Dutch on one side, the other side, Scottish, English, and Irish combinations, basically toxic. What hope is there for someone like me? Praise God, there's hope through Jesus Christ. What are these five words that I want to leave with you this Easter? Well, the first word is grace. This is a message of grace. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. We have heard that message so much, most of us here tonight, that we have become accustomed to the terminology, and in some cases we have become lukewarm concerning what God has done for us. In our leaders meeting in South Africa, an African woman gave the message named Judy. And Judy spoke to this 180 OM leaders, most of them men, from all over the world. We have many women in leadership, but not always the top job. This conference is for the field leader, one per country, one per field. OM is in 80 countries. We're trying to keep this conference small, we're trying to keep it under 100 or so, and it got up to 180 with people sneaking in. We always, of course, have different representative groups, a number of key women were there. But really the outstanding message of that time was from this woman, this African from Kenya, on how to maintain that fire, how to maintain that spiritual glow, that reality. Grace, to me, next to the very name of Jesus, grace is the greatest word in the Bible. I thank God that in the last few years, every few months there has been a new book on the subject of grace. Chuck Smith wrote a book about grace. Philip Yancey has written, one of the great authors of our day, a book about grace. Swindle, of course, had his book about grace. The Navigators, a great Christian discipleship movement, they've turned out a book, I believe, called Grace and Discipline. And I'd encourage you to make sure that it's grace, not the law, that's keeping you going. The message of grace is the message of Easter. Vertical grace, God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should never perish, but have everlasting life. If that vertical grace has never yet exploded in your heart, even though you may be religious, you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus made it very clear, except you be born again, you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven. One of the most exciting things we have in our fellowship, and I'm sure many of you have it as well, is we're just constantly seeing people come to Christ. We're constantly seeing people radically changed by the power of God. Hindus, Muslims, nominal Christians, all kinds of people, sports people, famous people, people who are totally unknown, poor, rich. When a movement gets this big and it's moving with this momentum, every day, every day, people are coming to Christ. And we have so many stories, not just of people coming to Christ, because we don't put a lot of emphasis on just, you know, raising your hand and making a decision. That can be the beginning, but we put a lot of emphasis on follow-up and trying to make sure whether there has been a real work of grace in that person's heart. And we believe that when there's a real work of grace, something happens. Now different people respond in different ways. I remember five years ago, that dates me a bit, this character Lane Adams speaking, he wrote that book, Why is it taking so long to get better? That was something that always perplexed me in my Christian life. Why is it taking so long for George Furwer to become a little more holy on the practical level and all these other goals and aims? And Lane Adams spoke. I remember because David Watson was speaking at the same time and pointed out that depending on a person's background, when they come to Christ, they grow in the Lord at different speeds. That's not the only factor, but their background is a factor. And if someone has spent 20 years in prison and they come to Christ in prison, and hallelujah, many are coming to Christ in prison, probably, especially when they come out of prison or even if they remain in prison, they will wrestle with certain struggles and problems that some young person converted at 13 in a Sunday school may not face. So beware of getting discouraged about your spiritual progress and understand God's grace to weak people. His grace is sufficient. His strength is made perfect in weakness. I think one of the reasons when I go to the ship, I see such a huge response, because when I go to the ship, one-third of the people there now, with the way OM is so big, one-third of the people have never heard me speak before. I only go once a year. They may have heard me on video or audio cassette. But when I stand in front of these young people as I did actually yesterday morning on the ship in Bahrain and share some of my struggles and some of my weaknesses and some of my failures and how I discovered God's grace in the midst of my struggles, doubts, and failures, I will tell you the response is overwhelming. They realize afresh God can use them. And brothers and sisters, God has brought us together tonight, I believe, because He wants to say to us, my son, my daughter, I want to use you. I want to use you. In 1998, I want to use you in the last remaining months of this millennium. Let us now talk about retirement in the kingdom of God. You may retire from the bank. You may retire even from being a vicar. You may retire from being a captain. We have a man who's a captain here of the super tankers traveling around the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Gulf, and I hope he does retire soon and comes on our ship. But we're going to talk about that after the meeting. So, you know, I'm not against people retiring. We're part of this world. This world has a system. But as far as the kingdom of God, if we love Jesus, if we're products of His grace, we want to run the race right to the end. We may be more tired. We may even be, like my dad, 92 years of age. He's now in an old folks home, the Christian Holland home there in New Jersey. He really loves it. There's a hundred and some women, only 20 men. This is his fulfillment of his dream. And he's still praying. He's still reading Operation World. He's still, in his feeble condition, interested and attempting to do his little bit for the kingdom right to the end. Of course, we can't do the same thing as when we got in an OM van at 21 years of age and drove all the way to New Delhi and gave out, you know, 25,000 tracks in the streets of Delhi in a few days. But if we're going to obey the Lord Jesus, if we're going to declare this Easter message to the whole world, we need every believer on board. Forgive my ship terminology. One of the amazing things about a ship is that everybody's working, at least on the OM ship. I went down to the engine room. I tell you, they got so much work in that engine room, they're just crying out for mercy. Then I went up to the old bridge. It's the oldest bridge almost of any passenger ship in the world. They got a lot of new equipment up there. Sophisticated satellite and added navigation. Don't even need a radio officer on a ship anymore. That's Noah's Ark. The captain can do it all or the first mate. Then I went down to the laundry. Takes an army to keep all the clothes clean on the ship. Then I went down to the carpenter's place. Then I went down to the electrician's place. Then I went through the galley and through the bakery. 300 people are working on that ship. That includes lineup people, shore people, preachers, teachers, trainers. I hope every one of you, Val, I'm sure you could arrange this, could go and spend some time on one of our ships. Have a little cruise. Cruises, by the way, are very popular now. They can't build cruise ships fast enough. It's funny. We never had many people banging on our door to go on a cruise on one of our ships. I think the word is out that you might only get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. The fact is we have a fantastic cook and he is providing mighty good food because a Navy runs on its stomach and we're part of God's Navy. It's all grace. It's all grace that God could take a character like me, that God could take a group like ours and keep this ministry going. O.M. now is 40 years old. It started when three of us, some teenagers, got in a beat-up old van that blew up 200 miles down the road. We put another rebuilt engine in. That's a whole story in itself. And went to Mexico and worked with Wycliffe and worked with other missionaries and national churches to learn the language and to share our faith. It's all of grace. My second word is discipline. I wonder how many of you expected that as a second word. Because one of my favorite expressions is that grace without discipline will lead to disgrace. One of the reasons many people are not effective in their prayer ministry, in their evangelism, in outreach, in other aspects of God's work, they never develop a disciplined life. And if some of you young people here, maybe some who are not so young, you feel you want to learn a little bit more about the disciplined life, we want to invite you to join O.M. We'd like to invite you to join one of our ships. Not that automatically you will learn discipline because we cannot force the true biblical discipline on people. But I believe most of the people who spend two years on one of our ships or one of our programs develop the discipline of prayer. And we've been able to measure that over 40 years. They develop the discipline of sharing their faith. We often, like anybody else, don't feel like sharing our faith. But we learn it as a discipline because we love Jesus. Because we believe the Bible. We believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Personally, I believe in Britain. It's getting harder at times to share your faith. There's an anti-Christian wave going through Britain, especially in universities. But the fact is, even with that anti-Christian wave, and people sometimes get upset even if you mention the name of Jesus, there are still many open doors, many opportunities. So don't worry about the nine doors are closed. Go to the tenth door and it'll probably open. Try to understand new methods of reaching people with the gospel. One of the new buzzwords in evangelism today is understanding felt need. Understanding felt need. Find out what a person's need is, try to help them, and soon they'll be asking you what makes you tick. And you'll have an opportunity to share about Jesus. In the Gulf where we are right now, our evangelism has to be as low-profile as any place in the world. Some would probably think OM has departed from its original vision, if you were with us, because we have to use a very low-profile approach. And we, I was telling young people yesterday, we need to learn to listen. Don't worry if you can't share the plan of salvation when you just meet someone. Listen to them, see what their need is, and you'll find often they'll be asking you, they'll be asking you about Jesus or about God. Can you imagine the difficulty of our captain, two nights ago, that we have a grand opening, all top government people come to the ship. These are mainly not Christians. Do you know anything about those countries? And our captain speaks, and then our director speaks. I was listening on the loudspeaker in one of the offices. I felt they did such a brilliant job in what some people would call a very general approach and maybe a pre-evangelistic approach. It's that pre-evangelistic approach and that low-profile approach that's enabled us to bring the ship back again and again and again to some of these semi-closed countries. Not easy. God's grace, but grace must also have discipline. Most of us around Easter, we get some time off. My people in my office in London, they sort of tell me, we're closing on Friday. For me, we close at all. We want everybody going seven days a week, but you know, we've got to compromise. We've got to keep the Saints happy. So we're closing Friday. I think we're closing Monday. You know, Easter Monday. Holidays are wonderful because they are days of opportunity. Of course, if you're totally exhausted and you're about to have a nervous breakdown, then you need to take a rest. You need to go to Blackpool and go on the roller coaster or something. But probably on Easter Monday or on Good Friday, you'll have some time free. Wouldn't it be wonderful maybe to visit an old folks home, maybe to make a phone call just to thank someone, to encourage someone. Today, often, the kind of evangelism where we affirm people, thank people, express our love to people, do something for people, is more effective than, you know, just immediately sock it right to them in the name of Jesus. God uses that as well. Grace without discipline will be disgrace. What's the third word? The third word I want to leave with you tonight, I'm sure any of you know O.M. and know me, this word has got to come. Vision. Vision. Now my helper, Tim Richardson, every time I preach is supposed to blow up my large globe. But it has been developing leaks and probably was not able to find a woman's hairdryer that we use to blow up this giant globe. But Tim, will we be able to have that tomorrow night, you think? Will we have that by tomorrow night or is it back in London? Okay, tomorrow night, Tim has made a recommitment to blowing up the globe. He actually can blow it up with his own lungs as well, but then his eyes start to pop and he starts rolling on the floor. So tomorrow night we'll have the globe, but tonight you've got my global jacket. This is the entire map of the world, and this is very practical. I was in a British Airways jumbo jet once, went up to the cockpit to talk to the captain. We were flying from Brazil right here to Argentina. They started discussing where they were. The co-pilot said we're flying over Ecuador. That's way up here. They used this jacket to see where they were flying. They were flying over Uruguay. Now, it doesn't look very good on me. If someone is a little, you know, fat, this jacket looks, you know, much better because they're more global in their ethos. But, you know, we're not asking you to become as extreme as some of us. You know, I even have global underwear, but we believe every Christian should have a vision for the people of the world. Shortly after the resurrection, we have the Lord Jesus described in Acts 1, verse 8, just before the Ascension. What did he say, his final word before the Ascension? He shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost part of the earth. I'd encourage you not to think that mission vision is for a select few who, you know, go on ships to other parts of the world. I had a tremendous mission vision before I ever left my own country. We have books like Operation World and some of the other books we have there tonight. We have videos. We have audiotapes. We have so much material today to help envision us. And this whole challenge of giving the gospel to everyone in the world, it can become real to ordinary Christians who may never travel that much. Do you know many of the great intercessors of OM, and I correspond with many of them, they're older folk who have never left Britain. Some of them, I can tell you, don't have enough money to go on a holiday outside of Britain, especially when they've been sending it to us every week for 30-some years. Vision is for everyone. Vision, what we can do locally. In fact, one of the greatest visions is a combination vision in which we realize that local action produces global results. Local action produces global results. One ordinary man from this church, Norman Alexander, helped us produce global results and launch what eventually became one of the largest mission societies in the world. Of European-based mission societies, it is probably the largest. One ordinary man had a vision. The vision, of course, was to become part of the team. Missions is not a long-ranger operation for George Verwoer or anybody else. World missions, in every aspect of world missions, just like the church and the local church, we're going to talk more about that tomorrow night, is teamwork. We need to have a vision of how even our small part on the team can be so important. A lot of the work on our ships is very boring and very ordinary. Imagine a university graduate working in the laundry for several months, huh? I remember Lindsey Brown, honors graduate of a place called Oxford, I think now it's heard of Oxford. And when he graduated from Oxford University, he went on the ship Lagos. I don't think he told them who they were, who he was. I don't think we communicated that well about those kind of things. He was given a job packing books in the hold of the ship, and he loved it. He later said it was one of the greatest character-building programs in his Christian life. He became a main traveling secretary for UCCF in the UK. He became the European leader of IFES. He is now the international leader of the entire movement, Lindsey Brown. Local action brings global results. We need a vision, and I hope this Easter we could take a little more time to especially increase our vision of the Lord Himself. There's nothing more important than increasing our vision of the Lord Himself, and of our great God. And I think we know those powerful words in Isaiah, chapter 6, where it speaks about the Lord of glory. It talks about the seraphs. It talks about the holiness of God, verse 3. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of His glory. And at the sound of their voice, the doorposts and the thresholds shook. The temple was filled with smoke. Woe to me, I cried, I'm ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips. I live among a people of unclean lips. My eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. That's the priority vision, to see the King high and lifted up. One of my favorite Easter messages is by a great black American preacher. Forgive me, I forgotten his name. But it ends with that little sort of slogan that Tony Campala later picked up and preached on. And he gave that thundering climax to his message. It's Friday, but Sunday is coming. Have you ever heard that sermon? And sometimes in our own personal lives, it feels a bit like Friday. Things aren't going well. The nails are going in, sometimes even by our own friends, sometimes even by our own children. And many of God's people are going through Friday experiences, difficult experiences, spat on, maybe spiritually speaking experiences. And they need to remember, though it's Friday, and they're feeling the pain of Friday, Sunday is coming. I remember when Richard Wurmbrau spoke about how to endure prison. He came right out of prison, almost to speak at the OM conference, in that center that is now OM's international coordinating base in Forest Hill. And one of the reasons he said you can endure such suffering in prison, is that you believe in your heart, it's going to change. It's not going to continue. The hands of the clock are going to change. The hands of history are going to change. I want to believe that for Algeria. I want to believe that for Southern Sudan. I want to believe that for Northern Ireland. I want to believe that for Sri Lanka and for Afghanistan. I want to believe that for people who are in prison, perhaps without having committed a crime, because of someone's mistake. That though they're in a Friday experience, Sunday is coming. We need a vision of the Lord, and Easter time is one of the best times to focus on that, and to develop it. Extra time in the Word, maybe a great book about God's grace and God's power. Vision is such an important word. I was climbing a mountain in Scotland, listening to a cassette tape by John Stott on leadership, and he pointed out that every person, he was talking about Wilberforce, every person who's ever been a leader has been a person of vision. I want to ask you, do you have a vision? If not, will you cultivate a vision through what you read, through steps of faith, through obedience to the Lord, through a Galatians 2.20 experience? I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ. My fourth word, just quickly, is the word harvest. I was in that Anglican church, that great cathedral in Saba, and on the back of the cathedral, and it was literally the cathedral, there was harvest 2000. I tell you, those people are refusing to sit back and play church, like so many of us are doing here in the UK. They are out to bring in the harvest, and I believe it's harvest time. Maybe it's not as easy as 1959 or 1979, but it's still harvest time. And across the world, when we look at the global picture, more people are coming to Christ than ever before. More people are coming to Jesus than ever before. It greatly varies from country to country, and Europe, in some ways, is being left behind. And the situation in Italy, in France, in Austria, in Belgium, it breaks our heart, but we at OM are as committed to those countries as we are committed to Asia. And we are not going to give up in our effort to see a harvest in Belgium, and a harvest in France, and a harvest in some of those difficult places, even like Switzerland, where more and more Bible-believing Christians are being persecuted. I was talking to our Swiss leader on the ship, as he's there visiting as well, and he said, you can't understand how good you have it in Britain, with the size of the church, and the amount of activity, and other factors, when in places like Switzerland, more and more Bible-believing people are considered totally on the periphery of society, and are being persecuted. Yes, a country that was once considered somewhat Christian, the land of Switzerland. It's harvest time. We believe also in the Muslim world. We'll talk about that maybe tomorrow night a little more. My final word is actually two words, but it sounds like one. It's a new word. It's a business term. I hope it won't offend you. It's proactive. How many of you use that word in your vocabulary? I know quite a few of you look like you're a little down the track, and you're not into new words too much. They frighten you. But this is a new word that came into my life. It came into my life, and then I read it in a book. This word is being overused, and should be phased out of our vocabulary. I guess I was a little slow. But if you want to read the hottest business book of this century, you go pick up Stephen Covey's book, Seven Habits of the Effective Person. I think that's the title. It's unbelievable the quantity of books that have been sold, that one book. And in that book, he's got a lot of interesting ideas. Though he's not a most of that indirectly comes from the Bible. That's sad in one way. It's good in another way. I won't get into it. But one of his buzzwords, I think he must have got it from someone else, is proactive. Talks about win-win. Talks about synergy. Talks about principle-centered leadership. There are tremendous changes taking place in the business world. Not every company, but many companies are facing this truth. If they don't take better care of their people, and become more people focused in their business, they're probably not going to be able to compete in the competitive world we now live in. And it is exciting to see some changes in some companies and some businesses. And in OM, a movement that has to operate some ways like a business. We took a survey from our people around the world. Guess what they said? They wanted more people care. They wanted more pastoral care. They're out in the field. They're out reaching people. They're in teams. They want proper pastoral care. And that's one of the things we're trying to do in our work. My final word is proactive. It simply means no matter how many problems you have, no matter how many doubts you're struggling with, no matter how many unanswered prayers, no matter how many times you've fallen on your nose, you're going to keep on keeping on. That's what Jesus did. He went all the way to the cross. And if our Lord went all the way to the cross, who was a son of God, dare we hold back, or allow discouragement to slow us down, or to push us into a sidetrack or a tangent. Let's keep on keeping on. Corinthians says, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is never in vain in the Lord. And I tell you, if a verse like that doesn't motivate you, then you need help. You better give your pastor a phone call this weekend. Go in there for a little counseling session. Maybe you lay hands on your head and give you a kickstart back into reality. Be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. And I say this, if a character like me with all my struggles and all my weaknesses and all my doubts can know the reality of that verse every single day since my conversion 43 years ago, then my dear British friends, I'm afraid you don't have any excuse. Let's pray. Our God and Father, we thank you for your Word. And we thank you for these five words from your Word that can motivate us and inspire us and enable us to be more committed and more focused as we attempt to run this great spiritual marathon that you have put us into. You know everything about us and you love us still. You know the times when ego, instead of being crucified, has locked into its old ways and caused grief in the factory floor or in our home or wherever, even in ministry. And so we would want to say with all of our hearts, from Galatians 220, O Lord Jesus, we are crucified with your Son, Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, we live, yet not us, but he who lives in us. We thank you for the power of your Holy Word and enable us, God, not to just be hearers of the Word only, but doers this Easter season. And Lord, especially for people that find themselves in a Friday ethos, may they understand in the depth of their heart, Sunday is coming. Glory to your name. Amen.