In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding and embracing the concept of being crucified with Christ. He highlights that it is not just Jesus who was crucified, but as followers of Jesus, we are called to identify with His death and live a crucified life. The lack of emphasis on this truth can lead to difficulties in our spiritual journey. The speaker also encourages the audience to actively apply their faith by sharing the message of Jesus and considering going on missions trips. He challenges the notion of being spiritual gluttons who consume messages without taking practical action in their lives. The speaker expresses a hunger for reality and a desire to continually learn and grow in the Christian life.

This church, in this part of the country, is one of the birthplaces, really, of Operation Mobilization as it's known today. There's my little globe I'm famous for. Everywhere I go, people want these, and you no longer can buy them. It's amazing. A company in Germany was selling these. They no longer sell them. They gave us a manufacturer. They're no longer manufacturing them. I could have sold a hundred of these globes. I need one myself soon. This one sprung a leak, I think, in the ozone layer down there. But anyway, whenever I have this globe, I'm reminded of the fact that there are so many nations in the world. And I am involved in praying for almost every nation in the world. When I go through the book Operation World, many of you have that book, I end up praying for every nation in the world. I've done that three or four times. I correspond with people in almost half the nations in the world. And in the age of email, it's getting a lot easier and a lot cheaper. And we have literature projects between the ships and STL and the other teams of OM around the globe. We have literature projects or literature distribution in almost every nation in the entire world. In dozens, well, way over 100 different languages. Operation Mobilization isn't just two ships. You may not even feel that our ship ministry is that strategic. Most people who have been on the ship, of course, the chairman of the board that owns the ship just happens to be sitting here tonight, Mr. Val Gris, he's an expert at answering questions. He has his book, A Lawyer Answers Your Questions, about the ship ministry. Well, he hasn't written that yet, but he's thinking about it. And he often travels on the ship. But in fact, the ship represents about 500 people, the two ships, Lagos II, which replaced Lagos. Lagos II is in Mexico right now. I'll join her in Miami in a few weeks for one of my normal brief visits. And Duas, that I've just come from, is over here in the Gulf, in Bahrain. And we'll be in the Gulf and then down to places like Yemen and probably then down African coasts over the months to come. Duas is the oldest passenger ship still sailing in the world, listed in the Guinness Book of Records, built around the time of the building of the Titanic. We've had a little better fortune, by God's grace, than the Titanic. So there's about 500 people connected with the ship ministry. It's getting harder and harder to keep the two ships going. We need engineers, we need finance, we need prayer. But the response is as great as ever. And the ship has given the gospel to tens of millions of people. It's a combination of ten different ministries that all go on simultaneously. But there's 2,800 people on OM plus 1,000 children. What are the rest of them doing? Many of them, about 1,000, are working in what is known as the 10-40 window. This is the much-talked-about window of missiologists across the world. It's 10 degrees north of the equator to 40 degrees north of the equator. The span of my hand just about covers it. Starting in North Africa, going across places like Libya and Egypt, right through places like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran and Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, right on over to China. That's the 10-40 window, emphasized simply in an effort to point out the more unreached peoples of the world. We know there are unreached people everywhere, including across the street. But this is where the largest block of more unreached people in the world are. Many people's groups, listen, where the church does not exist. You may feel there's a tremendous need here in Manchester, and there is. But the church exists, relatively speaking, quite strongly here in the greater Manchester area. And where I live, in Bromley and Forest Hill area, we have hundreds of churches in the southeast that are proclaiming the gospel. We need more. And many of them are very inward-looking and have various forms of spiritual myopia, so are not actually leading many people to Christ. But they're there, and there's some kind of light shining out. Whereas as we go across some of these countries, and we'd love to send you more information about any of them, the church often does not exist. Libya has maybe six believers, apart from expatriates who might be there. What can we say of places like Saudi Arabia? Afghanistan, where the church doesn't yet exist. So a good number of people, about a thousand, are in that 1040 window. 700 of those are in India, but we wouldn't sort of count all those being in the 1040 window. I guess many of them are. And as many of you know, India has been one of the primary focuses of the whole movement from almost the earliest days. And we now have 700 workers in India, a result of those early teams. Most of which went out from Britain in the 60s and the 70s. The ship vision grew out of the India vision. And yet today we're finding it hard to get people to pray for India. India and Britain is old hat. So to get people to pray for India, get people to finance their work in India, is quite difficult. And we would appreciate your prayers. And if any of you have a special interest in India, we'd love to send you our special India prayer letters. And many different prayer letters in O.M. I know it may seem a little confusing. But that's how we get specific prayer for specific places. Then another large number of O.M. people are laboring a little north of the 1040 window in what is called Central Asia. This is the fastest growing new area of the world that's still considered part of the Muslim world. Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan. Some people thought these were new pizzas. But these are new countries. These are countries. And there's open doors, especially for tent makers. And it's quite amazing that in these countries right now, dozens, dozens of Muslims are coming to Jesus. The hundreds. It's adding up to hundreds over a period of years. So Central Asia is a major target area. We still consider Western Europe, much less Eastern Europe, where we also have many hundreds of people, as still a very challenging mission field. We still have our summer campaigns. Norman Alexander's wife, his first wife before she died, was one of the first persons to ever come on an O.M. summer campaign. It was considered very unusual then for someone of her age to come over on a short-term summer campaign. Do you know today, many of the largest churches in the world, do you know what they have as their goal? Every member is to go on a summer mission. I was in an Anglican church in Singapore a couple of years ago. Their goal is everybody in the church goes on a missions trip. That's the new term for the short-term campaigns that we started in 1962. Another church, one of the largest churches in Singapore, has 1,000 people preparing to go on a missions trip. And some of you, perhaps as a result of our two days together, might consider going on a missions trip. I have this feeling, I hope I'm incorrect, that often people who go to meetings like this in the middle of the week, there's nothing wrong with it, it's wonderful, but I often feel they're what I call spiritual gluttons. They are always taking in more and more messages. Next week it's going to be, imagine, four days in a row with Roy Clements. That'll blow all your circuits. But how much of this ever becomes a practical reality in our lives so that we actually begin to do something, whether it's leading someone to Christ across the street, or whether it's signing up to go on a missions trip, which previously might have frightened us right out of our shoes. The Lord says in James chapter 1, we're not to be ears, but we're to be doers of the Word. And I'd like that to be our focus this evening. There's much more I'd like to say about OM, but I think we'll have to leave that to the literature, to the books, to Val Grieve and to some of the others here who know about OM. How many of you have ever been on an OM missions trip, short-term, long-term? Raise your hand. Wow, quite a few people. Great to see you. Some of your faces look very familiar. Last night I shared five words, and if you got the five words last night and you write me a year from last night, you get five dynamic, life-changing books. If you don't read, mention that in the letter to me a year from now, and we'll send you five videos or even CDs instead. And I was really wrestling with what I should share this evening. We also last night tried to emphasize the missing part of the Easter message, the message of Galatians 2.20, I am crucified with Christ. It's not just the Lord Jesus who was crucified 2,000 years ago. We, as followers of Jesus, are now to somehow be identified in his death with all the mystery that involves and know something of the crucified life. And we tried to emphasize that the lack of emphasis on the crucified life leads many people into difficulty in their spiritual pilgrimage. I decided after some thought and wrestling and praying that I would share tonight five more words. Completely different words, but again, if a year from now you can share these five words, you can have five free books. Of course, my reason for doing that is to get you to at least pay enough attention to write down the five words. My scripture, however, is an unusual scripture, not really for Easter, but perhaps unusual in that it's not so often read. And it's found in Mark's Gospel, Chapter 15. It's an appropriate scripture as we come and are now in those days preceding Good Friday. We'll pick up the story in Mark's Gospel, Chapter 15, Verse 6. Now it was the custom at the feast to release a prisoner whom the people requested. A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did. Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews, asked Pilate, knowing it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead. What shall I do then with the one you call the king of the Jews, Pilate asked them. Crucify him, they shouted. Why, what crime has he committed, asked Pilate. Yet they shouted all the louder, crucify him. Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged and handed him over to be crucified. The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace, that is the praetorium, and called together the whole company of soldiers. They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. They began to call out to him, hail king of the Jews. Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and they spat on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him. May God cause his word to burn like a fire in our hearts. Let's pray. Our God and Father, we thank you for your holy word. We thank you for the Lord Jesus who went all the way to the cross, who was mocked, who was spat upon, and then was crucified for our sin. Oh, what great mystery this is, oh God. Even those of us who have lived for you for decades cannot fathom the mystery of it all. We worship you in the midst of that mystery. And acknowledge this as our faith. That he has been crucified for our sin and he has risen again for our justification. Help us now to receive this message tonight. As we know, you do want to bless us. You do want to encourage us. You do want us to be more revolutionary and more radical and more dynamic in our walk with you. Whatever our temperament. We pray this now in Jesus' name. Amen. Five more revolutionary resurrection words for Easter 1998. Some of you know I'm part of a movement, an international movement, called the 82,000 and Beyond Movement. That has mobilized literally millions and tens of millions of believers, especially in prayer. It's more of a network than an organization. It doesn't actually exist as a structure in the British Isles. More active in two-thirds world countries like Korea and Brazil. And many other places where, by the way, OM is receiving many of our new recruits. Though we still need as many British people also as possible as the task is still so great. Especially in some of the parts of the world that we have already referred to. Remember those words in Acts where it describes the team that traveled with the Apostle Paul. I think it's Acts 17. As these who have turned the world upside down have come here also. Early Christianity was a radical, revolutionary, dynamic, explosive force that swept thousands and hundreds of thousands into the kingdom and has continued to varying degrees burn for close to 2,000 years. Our goal in the 82,000 movement is the gospel for every person and the church for every peoples by the year 2,000. And if you would like to get more information about 82,000 or some of the missiological material that comes out from the amazing U.S. Center on World Missions where Ralph Winter prayed for his wife who's battling cancer, has stirred so many to become more radical in their missiology and to make very important changes in our missionary strategy so that the unreached people of the world can be reached. As 90% of all missionaries as of 10 years ago were laboring where the church already existed. And less than 10% were working in pioneer situations among the more unreached people of the world. Five revolutionary resurrection words. Words, of course, to those of you who have been Christians for a long time, will not be new. And so, what I share for some can only be in the way of remembrance and I can only have a heart cry that somehow the Spirit of the Lord will quicken some of these thoughts to take us further down this highway of spiritual reality. The first word is a word that may surprise some people, but it's the word history. I seldom speak on the subject of history. No, I was a history major at university before I left and went to Bible college. And I've always had a passion for history. I remember a period of my life when I was living on the ship and I was completely infatuated with British history. I tried to memorize the name of every single king and queen. And I eventually gave up. Now, I was trying also to attach with it a bit of history during their particular period. And I used to just go to every film I could about the history of Britain. A great film, very controversial, about Oliver Cromwell or that film, The Man of All Seasons. I thought that was quite good. I wish, as I look back at my life, that I had a better memory. But I put the word history among my five choice words for tonight because I want us to just remember once again that Jesus Christ lived in history. He died in history. And as old Dr. Schaefer used to say, if you were there and ran your hand down the cross, you would have got a splinter. We're not engaged in some kind of mythological existential pilgrimage. We are engaged in following a historic Christ. And we believe that Jesus actually rose from the grave. I know to speak to a group of evangelical Christians along these lines is like taking coal to Newcastle. But I think in the day and age in which we live, in which everything is being questioned in the press, on the telly, and even in Christian books, we must acknowledge before God at this Easter season that we believe this happened in history. And if the Church departs from this, then that Church really should not claim to be a Christian Church. Let it be called Unitarian. Let it be called a religious center for stories and homilies or mythology. But if it's a Christian Church, it must be committed to the facts of our faith. He was crucified. He did raise again from the dead. I had a great struggle with this, actually, as a young Christian. I think I've been a borderline agnostic most of my life. I hope that doesn't surprise you. I've been assailed many, many times with doubts. I remember books like Who Rolled the Stone? I remember other books similar to that, including one written by Val Grieve about the resurrection. That encouraged me as a Christian when I was in times of struggle and doubt. When I lived in India, I found it difficult to spend days, weeks, months out on the streets sharing my faith with Hindus and somehow believing that these people were lost. One of the things that I find difficult in the day and age in which we live is we seem to have so few people of passion. I know I am categorized as being extreme, and I would acknowledge that part of my passion is not necessarily spiritual. Therefore, I do not look for George Verwerker passion in my co-workers. But I would hope that some kind of passion would be gripping people who actually believe that Jesus was the Son of God and that he died on the cross and that he rose again, much less the great theological implication of that, that we are saved by his great atoning work on the cross. I must confess that as a Christian, I often have to look for passion in other places. I find it in the world of business and have contact with both Christian and non-Christian business people who are people of tremendous commitment and passion. Some of them would be considered extreme. I must confess that I find people in the political world are very passionate. They may sometimes be crooked. They certainly get criticized in the press. But I find them quite passionate. One of my persons, it's always controversial when I mention her name, is Margaret Thatcher. I guess as an American, to be caught up as a sort of observer of Margaret Thatcher might be considered interesting. I thought what she did the other day was rather dumb when she covered the tail of the new British Airways jumbo jet because she didn't like the fancy colors. She definitely quickly dated herself. But it was amazing to follow her year after year. Even when people seemingly were trying to kill her in the Great Brighton Bombing, she was, whatever you may think of her politics, a person of passion. I find people in the arts world very passionate. Like that producer of that amazing film, The Long Kiss Goodbye. I'm sure you're not showing that in the local Sunday school. But the producer of that film happened to be married to the woman who was the leading actress. And to make that one scene more vivid, he made her break through the ice out of a frozen lake as they made the film. I would call that extreme, would you not? People in the arts, from the person trying to learn the violin to someone who's memorizing some huge script in order to participate in a play week after week, night after night. One of my heroes is a man named Cliff Richards, who I find extremely passionate about what he's doing. Again, it doesn't matter whether you agree with them or not. That's not my point. Or whether you, you know, went to Heathfield or not. These are people of passion. And the truth is, history shows that people who don't have passion hardly ever amount to anything. And if you and I are to really build this kingdom that we are commanded to build, then we must acknowledge history. And we must let history confront us. And we must even allow history to bring us to our knees that we are not walking often in the steps of those passionate men and women we read about in the book of Acts. They had clay feet just as us. They had struggles and difficulties and doubts just as us. What can we say of people like Peter? If you live in the home of bad grief, you'll be confronted by an avalanche of books. And as I got up early this morning and went down for a cup of tea, the book that grabbed me in this huge shelf of books was Alan Redpath's book on David. And as I opened the book, it fell open to the chapter about David when he sinned with Bathsheba. What a mess! And yet he was restored. A lot of the Bible is history. And yet we're told in the New Testament we are supposed to be learning from that history. And so one of my words for this Easter season when maybe some of us will have a little extra time to read is that history. Not just what Jesus Christ did on the cross and in the resurrection, but what comes before that right back to Genesis. What comes after that right to the book of Revelation. In some of my meetings I take a survey. How many people, I say, I don't think I'll do it tonight, have never even read the book once? Generally 50% of the audience, often I have young audiences, have never read the book once. I think I read the Bible once and got a group to read it once before I was even a Christian. I was searching at that time. I was a president of my youth fellowship in a very liberal church. And I got the idea, why don't we as a youth fellowship read the whole Bible through together? Twenty-four hours. We'll just go on and on and on. And it ended up getting into the newspaper, especially this church. They hardly know what Bible reading was. And I think we as a youth group, nonstop, out loud, read the whole Bible through around the clock. And I think it took about 60 hours. Would you give 60 hours in 1998 to King Jesus and try reading the Bible through? I recommend a modern translation. And it's so good. When I come across from the country of my birth and I land at Heathrow, I always feel things are just a little, slightly more sane. Because over in America, there are still people that are insisting that the King James, the authorized version, is the only true version. We actually, in America, have books on this subject. And I've gotten significant difficulty pushing modern translations. And if you want something really bizarre, just pick up the new street language translation for America called The Message. I saw one on Val's shelf. No doubt there will be a British edition of that as well. The second word for tonight is the word reality. I guess I'm a little bit known for that word as my first book, or the second book I ever wrote, was called Hunger for Reality. I never wanted to write a book and I only wrote it really because two of our leaders of the work in the UK, John Watts and Keith Beckwith, were both killed in a terrible motor accident in Poland in the mid-60s. And John Watts had urged me to write a book. And so I dedicated that book to those two men. It only came after I ministered at the Urbana Conference, the big student convention in the United States, around 1968, on the subject of spiritual schizophrenia. And the book grew out of that message in which 4,000 people stood to repent and make a radical commitment to the Lord Jesus. I love the word reality. Though I have assurance of my salvation and I know that I'm on the way to heaven and I have a daily walk with God, I can say I'm still hungry for the whole thing to be more real. I'm absolutely amazed that a character like me, with all my weaknesses, with my kind of temperament, is still following Jesus. I'm absolutely amazed. One of the reasons I'm amazed is because so many other people tell me they're amazed. And if hundreds of people are amazed that George Verwer, 43 years since his conversion in a Billy Graham meeting, is still going on for God, then I better be amazed as well. Though sometimes I say, well, what is the big deal? Isn't this what's supposed to happen? You get converted and then you go on for Jesus. And you're forgiven when you fail and you bounce back and you keep running the race. I'm still hungry for reality. I'm still listening to cassette tapes of other people, men and women, to learn more about the Christian life, to get other people's viewpoints. I want to have a learning curve until I'm with Jesus. I thank God for the Walkman, an amazing little device. My wife and I, this is one of 30 or 40 areas where we're not in agreement. She refuses to put one of these things over her ears. It's amazing. But I think these Walkmans are great. I remember when my wife and I were sleeping on the floor in the airport in New Delhi in the transit lounge going from Kathmandu to Lahore. And a bunch of smugglers and loudmouths came into the same place. There was no hope for sleep. But I had my Walkman. My wife, of course, I would have been happy to give it to her, but she doesn't use them. I put my Walkman on. I put a little, I don't know whether it was Beethoven or Petra, it's very similar. I put it on, turned the volume up and fell right asleep. I couldn't hear any of the noise. My wife, of course, hardly slept a wink. And as usual, was very tired the next day. I really wish my wife were speaking here instead of me. I'm sure it would make a much greater impact. We've just celebrated our 38th wedding anniversary. And humanly speaking, we were a misfit. It's not funny, is it? We were a Bible college marriage. She agreed with my theology. She thought I was a man of God. What else is there? I gave her Ephesians 5, not even the whole chapter. Submit. Boom. We got married and away we went. Talk about, somebody mentioned my honeymoon. We didn't exactly have a honeymoon. We traveled to Mexico. As I sold her possessions to pay for the petrol. But the marriage really, it went really well for several weeks. But then she started to read these other verses about, you know, husbands loving their wives like Christ loved the church. I'm sure that that verse has to be reinterpreted. But anyway, we discovered that we were incredibly different. Very, very different from one another. There came a period in our lives we thought we had come in from other planets. So we were not surprised when the leading book on marriage came out some years ago entitled, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. But we've experienced reality in our marriage every day for 38 years. Reality in the home is one of the keys to living for God. Reality in the church. Reality in the marketplace. Our Christian faith is a complete marriage of everything that we are involved in. And one of the things that I like about some of the preachers in the 90s is that they have been able to somehow destroy this dichotomy in which we have our spiritual world here and we have our religious world or our non-religious world, secular world over here and the two don't really join. Praise God for that brilliant book by the former CEO of ServiceMaster, a little company that started by some Christians in Chicago, became one of the largest service companies in the world, built on Christian principles. And now that same man is the chairman of the board and has written the book called The Soul of the Firm on ethics in the marketplace and I'd be thrilled to send you a copy. Reality. We're hungry for reality in every dimension of our life. Therefore, we're open to learn. Therefore, we're willing to listen to other people. Therefore, we avoid generalizations about different kinds of people of different races. And we're willing to acknowledge the horrendous mistakes that the Church made concerning women and allow women to get into ministry in a more dynamic and proactive way that will enable us to take the Gospel to the remaining unreached peoples of the world because the truth is that women have always been ahead in the race when it comes to world missions. How we can have one policy on the mission field for women and another policy back in the local church is as bizarre as dancing with a dinosaur on a skateboard going down Mount Everest. May the Lord forgive us. My third word is another one of my favorite words but it might be boring to you. It's the word light. In fact, the first name of our fellowship before we got the name Operation Mobilization was send the light. I got it from a hymn book. It took me a while to realize how boring that hymn was but meanwhile we had that as the name of OM and later on it became the name of our literature work here in Britain which we now just call STL. Regardless of that, when we think of the resurrection we think of light. We think of the light sort of coming out of the tomb. We've seen it in various films. I remember that great film called Ben-Hur. I guess when you first see it it's more of an impact than when you see it the second time sort of like Star Wars. But the whole message of the resurrection when it's brought forth on a film like the Jesus film by the way that has now been seen by one billion people across the world one thousand million. Isn't that amazing? The goal of the Jesus project that was just at one of their meetings is that everybody in the world nothing like having hymn everybody in the world might see the Jesus film in the next few years. Part of me says they're crazy. That's completely impossible. But anyway I guess it's better to have die of high aim than die of low aim. Many of God's people seem to be highly professional at aiming at nothing. Jesus is the light of the world. Isn't that tremendous? He rose again that darkness may be conquered that light may be explode in our hearts and that we may be forgiven. I wrestled on whether to include the word forgiveness in my five words. I even thought of increasing it to seven words. But in the light of the time maybe I'll just put that word forgiveness there next to the word light. To me forgiveness is the great ultimate theme of the Bible. That Jesus Christ has forgiven me that God has forgiven me because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross. He is risen for our justification and today I'm convinced many people do not understand what justification by faith really is. We even have young people sign up to come on OM as missionaries and when we take them through our counseling and we share with them we find they do not understand justification by faith. We've even had people acknowledge a completely wrong view of God and that they're actually going to the mission field because they thought this would please God more and they might possibly get accepted by God through being a missionary. No. We are accepted in the beloved because of Jesus. We are forgiven and therefore one of the most practical dynamic realities in our own life is that we forgive people. Even those who trespass against us to use some old-fashioned lingo or put the knife in the back. I'm convinced many people are ill because they don't know how. They don't know how to forgive people. They don't know how to just let go of things. They have an axe to grind. They have something in their heart. We're warned in the book of Hebrews not to have even a root of bitterness. Let the light shine in. Let the forgiveness shine in and flow out. That is part of the Easter message. And my fourth word is the word freedom. I guess one of the first books that started to free me up during my time when I was more legalistic and more uptight and more extreme. Doesn't mean I resent those early days as a young Christian. We all make mistakes. Life is full of progression. But one of the first books that really started to free me up was a book by Eugenia Price, a brilliant women professional writer who wrote that book where God chose his freedom. Eugenia Price just died a few years ago. It was always my dream to meet her but I never did. She lived on a little island off the coast of South Carolina. I never did get to the place until after she died. She then wrote a book Make Love Your Aim. And other books came into my life, books similar to Grace Awakening but long before Grace Awakening was ever written that showed me the freedom we have in Jesus Christ and that made me an enemy of legalism. I'm convinced to this day many who bear the name evangelical are basically legalistic in their basic view of Christianity and of life. I'm not saying obedience is not important. I'm not saying there isn't such things as the Ten Commandments. But I am saying that Grace Awakening means that the reality flows from within going out rather than attempting to be manipulated by outside things pushing us to try to change on the inside. Grace Awakening is one of my favorite words. We are free to choose what movie you want to go to. When I was a student at Moody I had to sign a document that I would not go to any movies because Hollywood was all from the devil. Then what was I supposed to do when I arrived in Britain and found out there was a born-again rock star going around one minute singing about Jesus and the next minute it's dancing around the stage with a bunch of not very well-clad women. I was indeed confused in my faith as an American when I came to Europe. But the more I studied, the more I read, the more I realized how God works in different people in different ways. We're not to try to produce stereotypes. God ultimately must be the judge. Who can stand among us and throw the first stone because we're so clever, we're so perfect, we're so sanctified or whatever other terminology we may want to use. We are free in Christ. No, not to punch other people in the nose. We're not free to become racist. We're not free to rob banks or devour tons of pornography. We are free to live on the highway of holiness but we must have the discernment to be able to tell the difference between clear-cut sin and that which may be just cultural baggage or cultural distinctives. One of my cassette series that I gave at an American university is there on the book table and if you'd like to hear more of my thoughts about this, which you probably don't, you can pick up that cassette. And then my final word is the word power. We could never leave that out of a resurrection message. Ye shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. The final words of Jesus before he ascended into heaven. So easy to talk about power. So much emphasis on power. We're talking spiritual power. We're talking the flow of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. And if we're honest, there's tremendous confusion about this word. Is this power to raise the dead? Some people believe. Someone write me recently said they'll never be satisfied ever in their ministry again until they're involved in major ministry of raising the dead. It's a bit of a mystery, isn't it? Because we have heard of seemingly cases where people have been raised from the dead. I guess I studied too much under A.W. Tozer who said you need a lot of reverent skepticism to survive the present day Christian world. There are different manifestations of God's power. But surely one of the most basic is that we have the power to live a godly life. The fruit of the Spirit. We have the power to be able to share our faith and see people convicted of their sin and come to Jesus. We have the power by the Holy Spirit to deal with areas of darkness in our own life and somehow come into more freedom. So many people today seem to be unwilling to really share where they are in their spiritual pilgrimage. I know the Promise Keepers movement has been highly criticized. And of course, a movement that gets so huge so quick is just loaded with clay. It's loaded with clay. But when I was there in Washington with my big globe walking around those one million men who spent half of the time praying and on their faces in the grass, I felt there was a holiness about the place that I had not experienced before in my many visits to Washington, D.C. The great miracle of the Promise Keepers movement with all of its complexity is that it sets up small groups of men who make a commitment to walk in the light with one another to share their struggles and their problems. A high degree of men are struggling with pornography even though so few are willing to talk about it. Many, many of them, their marriages are coming unglued. As 50% of all Christian marriages in America end in a divorce court. Certain kinds of Christian surveys have shown recently more legalistic, fundamentalistic types has a higher marital breakdown rate than even the average non-Christian. So let's face it. We need help. We need help. And I'm willing to look for help, help from many different sources. Let's understand more from God's Word about history, about reality, about God's great light, about freedom, and about the power of Christ, which must include the power to take the gospel to every single person in this world. That is not an option. That is not a message that should be separated from the main thrust of Christian doctrine. Just as tonight, I have primarily not talked about mission, but have talked about very basic Christian attitudes and radical and revolutionary principles. And one of them, of course, is that everybody in the world needs to hear about what Jesus has done. That He has died for them and that He has risen again. This is an enormous offense to our Muslim friends. They believe last minute He was stolen from the cross because how could God ever allow a great prophet? And they acknowledge Him as a great prophet, which gives us many opportunities to talk to them about Jesus and the Holy Angel. But the thought of Him dying on the cross, no. And one Muslim group believes He was taken down and ended up in Kashmir and they started a cult based on that particular teaching. He has risen. That is not a defeat, as the Muslims would think. It is the greatest victory in the history of this planet. Let us pray. Our God and Father, we believe that You have called us into all the world to preach the Gospel to every person. This is not optional. This is not for those taking a missionary course at the local theological college. But this is for every believer on the basis of Acts 1A, on the basis of many other biblical teaching. And so we ask, O Lord, that You would enable us to fulfill the Great Commission in the years to come. And that these great five mega-principles from Your Word may be a burning practical reality in our lives. For we pray, in Jesus' name, Amen.