In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of personal evangelism and encourages the audience to observe Jesus as an example. The speaker mentions that although there are many reasons to be involved in evangelism, he wants to focus on watching Jesus in action. He refers to the story in John 4 where Jesus encounters a woman at a well in Samaria. The speaker highlights the need for genuine and heartfelt evangelism, rather than simply reciting a message. He also emphasizes the importance of being satisfied with God and His work in our lives, and encourages obedience to the Lord's will. The speaker concludes by reminding the audience to be aware of the opportunities for evangelism around them and to rejoice in the collective efforts of sowing and reaping.

Can you remember? Hands up if you remember your conversion. Some of you don't. And that's quite encouraging too. Now of those that remember their conversion, how many came to Christ through the work of an evangelist? A preacher or someone sat beside you and just led you clearly to Christ. Now thirdly, how many of you would really like to be like that evangelist? Numbers are dwindling, aren't they? Jesus trained evangelists. As a result of Christ's training program, some evangelists were born. Those apostles touched the lives of thousands. It's estimated that in Rome alone, in the years following Christ, millions of Christians were killed, have been buried, many of them in the catacombs. People whose lives were deeply changed by the work of evangelists. Those early Christians were men and women of limited, simple objectives. They didn't live overcrowded, over busy lives. They didn't have a complicated message. And yet they turned the world upside down. Now I have a notebook upstairs in my office, and listed in there are at least a dozen reasons why each of us from scripture should be involved in personal evangelism ourselves. But I've left the book up in the office. Because although I want to talk about evangelism tonight, I don't simply want to list reasons why you should get involved. That might make you feel very discouraged before you went to bed. Instead I want to ask you to turn to John chapter four. And I want to ask you to watch Jesus as he is engaged in evangelism. Just watch him. See him at work. And I believe it will affect each one of you in different ways. According to your own spiritual gifts and tendencies. Whatever our spiritual gifts, we need Christ as our example. And he motivates you in the particular areas that God has gifted you. It was Schweitzer, Albert Schweitzer who said this. Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing. And I want you to watch Christ's example. Because the normal everyday life of Jesus Christ was actively resulting in world evangelism. Even when you watch Christ on the cross, you see him there in prayer. You see that continuing marks of absolute self-control and discipline. But you see him too involved in evangelism while his two hands have been nailed with rusty Roman spikes to that rough wood. And I want to ask you a question that isn't always asked very often, strangely in OM. Will your normal life from now on help to win people to Christ? I have a number of reasons why I want to speak about this tonight. The first is that it takes real courage, I believe, to get regularly involved in evangelism. To actually look people in the eye and so speak to them that you're going to come to a point in the conversation where you ask them, do they want to give their lives over to Christ? It takes courage to stand in the streets on the street corner and ask people to turn their lives to Christ. I can tell you it takes courage in a meeting like this to ask people publicly respond to the call of Christ. Because if you become a fisherman and you pull the net in and there's nothing there, then not only you know it but everyone else knows it as well. And it's very easy to try and get yourself, even in OM, into a position where you actually avoid anything which requires courage. I get nervous going door to door to this day. Is there anybody who really doesn't get nervous going door to door? Maybe we could have a show of the non-nervous door to door goers union. One brother has lost his nerves. I remember a fellow called Ray Lynch, he's been around at some conferences of OM over many years. Almost every day he goes out in open air evangelism. When I first met Ray I heard the horrific stories about him. That he preaches on the top of London double-decker buses. That he preaches in the underground trains, the tubes as we call them, the subway trains in London. Everybody gets in, they all squash up to each other. And then he begins and they can't get out until the next day. He has a whole series of short messages sufficient for the London underground system. And I made a resolution early in my OM life that I would travel neither. Because he was reputed to preach between two stops of the train. And then when the train started up after a station to the next one he would say, quiet everybody now my friend here is going to say a few words. There's a man who is a courageous man. I have another reason why I want to speak on this tonight. Not just that it's easy to avoid the difficult situations, the challenge to your faith sometimes in this movement. But I sometimes wonder whether OM isn't producing too few real evangelists. Men and women with a cutting edge, men and women who see others coming to Christ month by month. People willing and able to stand in public and call the world to repent. Maybe we need a new movement. George Verwer is away this weekend. Peter Maiden has also gone back for a board meeting in England. Let's start a new evangelist movement. A secret squad of unstoppable evangelists in the very heart of OM. Another reason why I want to talk on this. I can't think, I don't, I don't think I can imagine any greater thrill in life than seeing people coming to Christ. Now we're all different. We have very different kinds of personality. Some of you have got the gift of talking in public and some of you not so much. And yet I believe that God wants to take us all a step further in this. Why do I say that? Because God himself is an evangelist. Do you believe that? Have you read through the gospels and not seen that? Jesus used to sit beside people and through the conversation they would be reconciled to God. Jesus would preach and people would be brought back to God in the very depths of their being. You and I, we are to grow up to be like God. We've had quite a number of OM teens around this past couple of weeks. It's very interesting to look at these growing teenage offsprings of OM leaders. I'm looking around very carefully to see if Daniel Verwer is here tonight. He's gone home, amen. Let me tell you about Daniel Verwer. I know Daniel very well. We travelled out to India together. I was 22, he was 5. Petrol station in Afghanistan. Until he got out and he was living in Kathmandu and I was there as well. And he went to the little local school in Kathmandu. And eventually there was a message sent home by the headmistress of that school. Please would we stop Daniel Verwer buying and selling things in the school. He was selling books as a 5 year old. He was taking things from his brother and his sister and selling them as well. There was a brief moment in the history of our team in Kathmandu when Daniel Verwer possessed more money than the rest of the team put together. Actually my son came to me after he'd been at school for 10 days. And he said, Daddy, you know I can get everybody in my class to laugh except one. You see he takes after his mother exactly. Character in desires, in abilities to be more and more like Jesus Christ. John chapter 4, open the bible, I'm going to refer to a number of different verses through the chapter without reading it all through. You remember the story. Jesus Christ has come into Samaria. He's been walking for miles. And he flops down beside a well where some fresh water was bubbling up. And a woman came out of the village. A Samaritan woman. And Jesus said, could you give me a drink please. And that began a conversation. No one else around. Just the pair of them chatting together beside the well. Jesus must have told this story later on to the disciples, otherwise it would never have got into John's gospel. He must have related the details of the conversation. Because he knew that disciples of his could learn something from it. And eventually that woman has an experience of God. Which leads to the conversion of a whole number of people in her village. And Christ spends time there in his own personal follow up training program. And then he leaves. Read verse 4. It says that Jesus had to go through Samaria. He must needs pass through Samaria. What does that mean? There was no geographical necessity for him to go through? Traditionally Jews went all the way around. Why does it say Jesus must pass through Samaria? Because he wanted. Because love moved. Because in his heart was a love for people like this Samaritan woman and all her friends and relatives in the village. There is a sense in which this chapter is just as much about the thirst of God as the thirst of the woman. We read just at the end of the previous chapter about Christ as the heavenly bride groom. Here he is drawing his bride together. Even from amongst folk like this. A woman who is dissatisfied with her life. A woman who has had a number of different husbands and now hasn't bothered to marry the one she is living with at present. And yet Jesus must go to her. Because he loves her. What do you imagine she was like? She is middle aged. She is going to seed. I am sorry about that phrase. I imagine her as a woman, grey, in her forties, fed up with her life, not very much to live for. Jesus is wanting people like that to be part of his worshipping, bride in glory. Now you say, oh, but it was easy for Christ because he was God. There were three obstacles that Christ had to cross. Three parts to the apathy barrier, let's call it that. First of all there was the racial and class barrier. Jews and Samaritans had nothing to do with each other. Verse 9, the end of verse 9 tells you that. Jews have no dealings with Samaritans, said the woman. Jesus was, as a Jew, going to have to cross that barrier to reach this woman. You are going to reach anybody with the gospel, there are going to have to be barriers to cross. You are already learning that here at this conference. You are constantly being asked to do things that you don't really want to do. You have to adapt to a new culture. How are you getting on with the OM conference culture? Do you ever reach the stage here at OM conferences where you think if you see another bowl of cornflakes and dry brown bread you will scream? I remember going out to India in 1968 with the teams. There was this bowl of rice and bananas put in front of me. And sort of gravy stuff poured all over it. And you know when you squeeze rice it squirts out between your fingers. And the gravy dribbles down your arse. And I knew I was going to have to spend two years doing this. Other Indians eating around me. I had to learn a certain amount about. Jesus had to do that. Jews and Samaritans hated each other. To call a Jew a Samaritan was about the worst term of abuse that there could be. Jesus was going to someone who was naturally an enemy. Often when a Jew walked through Samaritan villages the children used to run out and throw stones. And the dogs were set on the traveller. And then another part of his apathy barrier is sheer tiredness. Jesus was wearied with his journey and so he sat down by the well. He just didn't feel like it. Jesus understands tiredness. He knows what it feels like. You can find in Mark chapter 6 the most interesting story. The disciples have been out on a campaign. And they come back full of what has been happening. And verses 30 and 31 of Mark 6. Jesus wants to take them away into a desert place that they might have rest. He knows that they need it. Because he was the one who was sometimes so exhausted he would collapse asleep on a boat as it crossed the lake. And when he took the disciples away into a lonely place they were met with an enormous crowd. More demands on you. More people. More problems. I sit down in my room upstairs sometimes in the morning to have my quiet time. The other morning I was reading a chapter of Isaiah. And I had five interruptions before I had read four verses. You too know what it is not to sleep too well. Feel that you're not getting enough of what you need just to survive. You begin to feel weary and worn down. You don't really feel like doing anything extra. You don't feel like talking to someone about their need of eternal salvation. Because you're just too tired. I remember an OM speaker. Years ago, Greg Livingston it was. He came up to start one of these meetings at the September conference. And he fell asleep while he was opening the meeting in prayer. And he fell asleep while he was opening the meeting in prayer. Kneeling and bowing. Take him away and sit him down in the seat kindly. This is not new. God brings people through it. Christ understands tiredness and you can see him crossing that tiredness barrier. And Jesus understands our tiredness and we see him crossing that barrier. And the third part of that apathy barrier was that this was simply a woman. A peasant woman, an illiterate woman. The Jew believed that a man should not even greet his wife in public. If you saw your wife coming home from the supermarket carrying the shopping, you didn't stop to say hello or how are you my dear. Jesus was radical. Because he loved people. He was willing to get into conversation. Even though he didn't always feel like it. He was learning to cross the apathy barrier. And then we see him crossing the communication barrier. The disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Lord is just chatting privately with this person. Privacy is very important. The Lord taught his disciples both to do evangelism in large groups and right down in little small groups. Do we see evangelism in a context of eating food? So many people are one to the Lord around the meal table. God works in those kind of occasions. He starts to build bridges to her. By asking for help. You know there are two ways to someone else's harm. Either you can do them a favor. Or you can ask them to do you a favor. Christ started to relate personally to this woman. Would you give me a drink? And then before long he was talking of the gospel. In completely positive ways. He said do you know about the gift that God wants to give? Verse 10. Jesus answered and said unto her if you knew the gift of God and who it is that says to you give me a drink. You would have asked him and he would have given you living water. People usually misunderstand religion. They think it's something that you have to give to God. I'm giving God my service. I'm giving God my worship. Maybe there are folk here that still think like that. I'm giving God a couple of years. I'm giving God the energy of my young life. This is what it means for me to be a Christian. To give my life to God. You missed the point. The very core of being a Christian is what God gives to you. He wants to give this woman a clean conscience and a satisfied heart. God wants us to receive from himself that knowledge of him that lasts for all eternity. And so Christ is sitting beside this woman talking about what God wants to give her. And as they talk God gradually opens up her mind and makes her hungry. This is the greatest thing about evangelism. To see God working. You can do your little bit. And God does his bit. There's part of the work of evangelism that you can never do. And you need to keep the two quite separate in your own mind. You are to preach. You are to witness. You are to pray. You are to distribute books. You are to proclaim the gospel. And that's where your job stops. And when you've done that you've done your job. You cannot convict anybody of sin. You never will. No matter how long you live, if you outdo Methuselah, you will never ever, even once in your life, ever convict anybody of sin. So it takes away the responsibility of convicting other people of sin. That's God's work. It's God that opens people's eyes. You can't. He does it all by himself without very much help from you. You imagine how dangerous you would be if you could convict people of sin. Supposing you could decide to convict somebody of sin. You had it in your power to go and convict them of sin. If you make somebody feel dreadful inside you could convict them of sin. Because you would hurt people. You couldn't be trusted to do it wisely and with right judgement. You never know the heart of the other person. You don't know why they are behaving as they are. You don't know what lies in their background. You would almost always get it wrong. And so God, when he divides up the work of evangelism between us and him, he keeps the convicting of sin part to himself. And that way we're all safe. I'm safe in his hands. But how marvellous it is to see God convicting people of sin. As you explain the gospel to people you see light suddenly beginning to dawn. You know that the timing of a person's spiritual growth is entirely in God's hands. I'm going to tell you one or two stories. I was at Nottingham University not so long ago. There are some here tonight who were there at that same university mission in England. There was one particular girl who came along to meeting after meeting. She took a copy of John's Gospel. She took a little booklet about how to become a Christian. And she couldn't and she wouldn't and it just wasn't going to be for her. She wouldn't become a Christian. The reason was we discovered because she had a boyfriend down in London and she was afraid that if she became a Christian she would lose him. And the week of the meetings ended and she still hadn't asked Christ to become her Saviour and I thought no more about her because I had moved on to somewhere else. But God hadn't forgotten her and she was reading John's Gospel and all her defences inside were beginning to crumble and finally last spring she decided that boyfriend or no she was going to have to open her life to Christ. God had been doing the work inside her and so she became a Christian all by herself in her home and then she went and picked up the telephone to phone him. She discovered an amazing thing her boyfriend picked up the phone just ten minutes before that he had come back from a Louis Palau meeting where he'd gone forward and accepted Christ into his life. God's timing is exact. God knows exactly to the moment what he's doing. I remember being in a meeting in a university in the north of England and I'd been invited to have supper with some students and it was a sort of bowl of spaghetti bolognese and they knew that I was the evangelist so they were determined to keep me out of the conversation so they were determined to keep me out of the conversation and talked and talked and talked about engineering about motorbikes about Kawasaki's and Hondas and all kinds of things overhead, underhead, camshafts and I don't know what and this went on for two hours and I just listened to this thing I couldn't get into the conversation anyway I was praying Lord do something finally they ran out of things to say and there was a pause just big enough for me to get in and I smiled around at the group Do you believe in God? and I smiled around at the group and they all laughed and they gave up then they knew that they were beaten and then we spent the next two hours just talking about the Lord a bunch of dirty handed engineers it was one of these groups of modern languages students you know French and German and so on it was one of those parties where you stand up and eat little sausages on sticks and is to get somebody in a corner and talk to him but quite loud a spiritist medium and his parents and his grandparents had been the same before him but I just began to talk a little bit loudly you see and started trying to explain the gospel to him and I don't know what happened but I suddenly said something that exactly fitted the points in the conversations that were going on around the room between the other Christians and their friends and an African student said quiet everybody I wanted to listen to what that fellow was saying over there and everybody went quiet and I had the room and could share the gospel with a lot of them and everybody went quiet and I could share the gospel when we trust him and pray to him he does the most amazing things and we should never is there somebody on a weekend team I couldn't think of any way of getting out of it quick enough we expect God to work and we play our part in the different stages of people's spiritual journey not everybody you speak to becomes a Christian but we believe in a God who is alive we believe in a God who speaks we expect God to do his work if we are doing ours and he began to talk to this woman and her eyes began to open so we talked about the apathy barrier that we have to cross and the communication barrier that God helps us to cross and I could keep you going for hours with stories of God working when we begin to go out and expect him to do it let me tell you one more I may have told it before but forgive me we were in a village with a team in India and there was the crowd listening now just a few of you have been out to India and you know what this is like open air meetings in India are fun because they are crowded I remember coming back after three years out there and preaching in Bromley High Street in London three years after I came back after three years in India and preached in Bromley High Street an open air meeting in Bromley where OM exists I breached my heart out for twenty minutes to two children a policeman and a cat none of them got converted but in India the crowds gather and they gaze and they listen and they watch and the street gets blocked and the traffic has to stop and so the bus is empty and people come and more people listen just occasionally it goes wrong just sometimes it goes wrong and one or two people will start to shout out remarks and then there is a rumbling and a complaining around the back and then you see people picking up stones and then you know what's going to happen you are about to have the apostolic blessing and on a number of occasions from those kind of meetings we just used to run I remember the whole team was fleeing from one very healthy riot in a village in India they were burning our gospels the smell of a burning gospel packet bag is very distinct and they were throwing cow dung at us and chasing us with sticks we drove away we went about a mile down the road and we stopped in a tea shop I was the leader of the team and felt the need for tea we were sitting around very discouraged and after a while a fellow walked into the tea shop he said are you the ones that were in that village down there we said ah yeah all getting ready to run he said I think I need to become a Christian three months before his brother had bought a little packet of gospels from us in the north Indian town of Gorakhpur he read all the stuff in this packet and wasn't interested very generously he gave one item to each member of his family and this young fellow had read this little booklet again and again and again almost every day and then he saw us selling the same packets he heard us preaching the same message he saw us getting beaten up and he followed us down the road and one of the team members took him round the back of the tea shop and led him to Christ God knows what he's doing God convicts of sin God draws people to himself it's the sovereign work of God God makes the difference in crossing that communication barrier but first we have to face the sin barrier the Lord knew this woman's heart and between 16 and 19 we see the Lord crossing that sin barrier in her life you know how can a person ever truly know God without their sins being forgiven how could we ever have a satisfied heart if there was any slight risk that our sins would not be forgiven how would you live if you thought that God was going to turn nasty on you and forsake you sin breaks people down inside it destroys them and the woman hears the Lord saying you go and call your husband and she said I haven't got a husband and Jesus said you said well that's right, well done true, good learn the art of being kind to people when they're facing the most difficult questions of their lives the Lord is getting under her natural psychological barriers you've said well and then a verse later the end of verse 18 you've said truly that's right you're facing up to the truth well done you've got to do this you have had five husbands and the one whom you're now living with is not your husband and immediately the Lord goes on to offer the grace of God you know it's people like you who fail whom God is specifically looking for I'll tell you a secret God isn't looking for the righteous he's come to call sinners to repentance repentance isn't the price you have to pay for somehow getting back to God repentance is the description of what coming back to God actually is you face sin and repent be honest don't hide let it be exposed because God is the God of grace God loves to forgive people who are prepared to be honest with him you know sometimes at an OM conference we can let messages roll over us and we never ever feel any conviction of sin ourselves we need that convicting work of the Holy Spirit we need God's revelation to our own hearts of how much further we have to go you and I need to continue to learn to repent so that as we share the Gospel with others it is not as someone elevated to a pedestal but an ordinary forgiven sinner at street level God the Father is seeking for you to be one of his worshippers you know I long for a new spirit to spread amongst us a real closeness to God a real hunger to hear him a deeper desire to see others drawn to the Saviour I pray God that you go out from this conference to win men and women one after another in the days ahead some of you will work in offices some of you will have practical jobs doesn't matter pray that God will give you people that you can win to himself are you praying already for those that you are going to meet in your early days on the team people don't come into the kingdom the first time you share the Gospel with them you go into a field to chop down a harvest you can only chop it down if the corn has actually grown up already I want to challenge you to be praying already now at this conference that there will be people coming to ripeness in their spiritual experience on the field to which you are going we might see people drawn to Christ you know when this little incident is over woman has found that God is thirsty God can be her father you know maybe she never had a decent relationship with her father ever why does a woman behave like this maybe her own father treated her badly maybe none of her relationships with men were ever right maybe she felt misunderstood and badly treated from the very beginning maybe the very idea of God as a father was difficult for her maybe she had been treated as many women in this part of the world have been treated just as something to be kicked about and used even in our so called liberated western world women are still basically treated as second class citizens and it makes me angry I don't mind confessing anger sometimes I get angry at some of the things I see around the world I get angry at some of the racism I see in some countries I get angry at the way in which people can treat each other God speaks to this woman of the father who wants a relationship with her not a physical relationship he wants you to relate to him to worship him in spirit and in truth no more pretense no more wearing a spiritual mask in spirit and in truth will you come and relate to God like that says Jesus the woman begins to believe I don't know how much a person has to believe to become a Christian I imagine it's not very much she understood that Jesus was the friend of sinners and she goes back into her own village hey she says come and see somebody this man told me everything I ever did isn't that an amazing remark all that Jesus has done is put his finger gently on her immorality she says that was all I ever did my life was a narrowing circle of short term physical sensations and he put his finger on it and he told me of a God who would give me something better a God who would accept me and she got the fellow she was living with and she got a few other friends and they came out to see Christ and they discovered that he was the saviour of the world that was the beginnings of what came to be eventually in Acts chapter 8 the church in Samaria seeds being planted God doing his work and then the disciples bustled back in they'd been down to McDonald's and they'd collected you know a few bags big macs and things and they come in and uh uh he's at it again Jesus talking to a woman and uh let's read from verse 31 in the meanwhile the disciples prayed him asked him saying Rabbi eat but he said unto them I have food to eat that you know not the disciples therefore said one to another has anybody brought him anything to eat Jesus said to them my food my meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to accomplish his work don't say there are yet four months and then comes the harvest behold I say unto you lift up your eyes and look on the fields that they are white already unto harvest he that reaps receives wages and gathers fruit into life eternal that he that sows and he that reaps may rejoice together for herein is the saying true one sows and another reaps I sent you to reap that whereon you have not laboured others have laboured and you are entered into their labour follow it through again as we read it in German from verse 31 in the meanwhile the disciples prayed him asked him saying Rabbi eat but he said unto them I have food to eat that you know not the disciples therefore said one to another has anybody brought him anything to eat Jesus said to them I have food to eat that you know not has anybody brought him anything to eat Jesus said to them I have food to eat the disciples therefore said one to another has anybody brought him anything to eat Jesus said to them I have food to eat that you know not the disciples therefore said one to another has anybody brought him anything to eat the disciples therefore said one to another has anybody brought him anything to eat Jesus said to them I have food to eat that you know not the disciples therefore said one to another Jesus said to them the disciples therefore said one to another has anybody brought him anything to eat Jesus said to them group of trainee evangelists three lessons let me pass them on quickly to you and then we'll close first is this real satisfaction lies in doing God's will my meat what satisfies what fills me is to do the will of him that sent me you know if you're going to go out and offer living water to other people if you're going to talk about the joys of being a Christian you need to have your own heart satisfied and your own heart full of joy let's not become just little evangelistic tape recorders when we go to somebody's door and we go click out comes the gospel let what you say be true from the heart are you really satisfied with God anybody here not satisfied with God anybody not satisfied with what God has been revealing to you anybody here think the gospel isn't quite good enough there's just bits and pieces you wish had been added in that have been somehow accidentally left out are you satisfied with what the Holy Spirit has been doing in your life maybe not whose fault is it God's fault are you a little bit dissatisfied with the forgiveness that comes to you in the gospel what satisfies me is to be doing God's will says Jesus I want you to understand this key you future evangelists obey the Lord feed on him live the kind of life that overflows into other people and secondly there are needy people everywhere don't say that it's a long time before the harvest the harvest is all around you all the time God has needy people coming to the point of salvation all the time everywhere only we will go out and trust him pray you play your part in the processes of people's salvation and thirdly another rule it's a law of spiritual agriculture one person sows and another person reaps Jesus said it that's not the gospel according to the discipleship manual one person sows the seed another person reaps now you may be meeting people tomorrow and the next day where there's been no sowing what's your job? sow get the seed in you may be meeting people where there has been some sowing of the good seed of scripture already bring people to a conclusion do some reaping two people are needed in anybody's conversion the Lord seems to be suggesting that evangelism involves a process start to pray I pray God raises up some preaching evangelists from this crowd and also some personal evangelists I pray God whatever you do in this coming OM year you have a heart to reach out to people because God is doing that have goals there was a man who was a Christian in England he actually was a major in the army and he told me once about a dream that he had a few of you from England may have heard of him his name is Major Bat and he said I had this vision once I was standing on the parade ground of eternity and the whole congregation was assembled and the Lord said stand up all those who have been led into the kingdom by Major Bat I realized he said that nobody would stand up he said I resolved there and then that by God's grace I would lead one person to Christ every month until the day I died I was absolutely amazed I said has it happened he said well it was a close call one month I nearly didn't one month he said it was the 31st of the month 11 o'clock at night nobody yet converted and I went out onto the street nobody in sight eventually at about 20 past 11 I saw a drunk man by half past 11 I had persuaded him into my house by 20 to 12 we had him sober I then explained the gospel to him and by 10 minutes to 12 he was under glorious conviction and at 5 minutes to midnight he entered the kingdom now you see if that man hadn't had goals he would never have been the evangelist that he has been hundreds of people have come into the kingdom because that man began to ask God do that for me oh God I want to see people come to Christ you know we stood at the beginning of this meeting tonight and we sang some tremendous hymns can you imagine what it's going to be like in heaven an enormous crowd of millions Jesus standing in the midst of heaven our savior we can see him some of you will be pushing to get near the front row and we will sing enormous wave upon wave of singing of praise to Jesus and lead to lead and many in outer darkness is that right friends of yours people you meet regularly how many people that you know will go into outer darkness and you never even prayed for them once oh may God raise up evangelists yes but may God also cause each one of us to begin to seek out 1, 2, 3 folk in the coming year and draw them into the kingdom of God let God do his work as you do yours let us pray forgive us oh God that we don't pray as we should that we don't always witness with that freshness of heart that comes from time spent with you that we can look for the soft option and the place where we actually avoid meeting people oh God whether you take us to work under the vehicles in Zaventem or into ICT or out to India or anywhere else oh God may we have that hunger to see folk come into the kingdom Lord maybe there are many here tonight that need to take that new step of faith to ask you oh God to do that new work in their lives this coming year might be a year of tremendous evangelistic reaping Lord with all our systems and all our travel and all our computers and everything else oh God if people are not being redeemed by the blood of the Lamb it's all useless oh God we pray that there may be in these meetings this coming weekend that still hush that grip of the presence of the Spirit of God let's folk go out into the villages of Pakistan let's folk go out in Turkey and Sudan in Austria and France and Belgium Lord you be working now with your knowledge of right timing that we meet people when they are ready to turn to you that you might be glorified that crowd in heaven might sing with even louder voice because you are a great God in Jesus name Amen