In this sermon, the speaker shares a powerful testimony of how a movement was born from a single woman's prayer. He emphasizes the need for revival in the church and criticizes the lack of passion and fire in many churches. The speaker also mentions the importance of living for the glory of God and not for personal gain. He calls for prayer for the Lord to send workers into the harvest and shares the goal of uniting 2,000 to 2,500 men and women for mobilization around the world. The speaker also expresses the desire to bring the Logos ship to Durban and reach out to Muslims and Indians living there.

Let's just pray together. Father, you know all about us. You know our hearts. You know why we're here. And we pray, O God, that by your Spirit you would speak. High the speaker behind the cross, is also your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. Perhaps we could turn again to the Scripture that was read to us this evening from Romans chapter 12. I'm very grateful for this privilege of being here in South Africa, this opportunity to share with you something of the ministry of the ship Logos, and something of the burden that's on my heart for other countries. I don't want to go too long, but there is much that I would like to share. I would be greatly encouraged if I saw even a few people taking a few notes. I'm not here to appeal to your emotions. I'll let someone else do that. I'm not here to appeal to your sentiments, but I'm here to appeal to your will. I believe only those who will to follow Christ with all their heart, in the long run, will keep on following Christ. Many begin. I don't know much about South Africa, but in England and in America, many other parts of the world where I've lived, although I'm an American, I left, immigrated to Europe some 16 years ago. That's somewhat of a reversal, to say the least, and have settled in Europe, though I've spent about half my time in Asia, mainly in India and Nepal. In all these countries, I've found that many make a profession of faith in Christ. Go to church for a while. Then when things get rough, problems come. The way of suffering and the Lordship of Christ is presented. Many of them dwindle away. We saw tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands in America get on the Jesus bandwagon. When it hit its first bumps, they fell off. Praise God, some stayed on. That's encouraging. God is working in the world today, in the universities, among professional people, among laymen. I think in most places, we're finally, finally getting to the place where we realize the world is going to be evangelized, not by ministers and full-time workers, though we need those people, but the world is going to be reached by Mr. and Mrs. Joe Ordinary. What some churches call the layman. And I believe that is something that God wants to keep on our hearts tonight. I also want to appeal to your intellect. I like Christians that think. Perhaps this is why I spend a lot of my time ministering in the universities throughout Europe. I love the hard questions. I love to see the agnostics coming to Jesus. I love to see the atheists taking up the cross and experiencing the new birth. Perhaps that's because my own grandfather from the Netherlands was an atheist. And I was somewhat of an agnostic myself, though I was more just a normal, good old American pagan. Romans chapter 12. We've read it. I won't read it again. This chapter has spoken to me many times. It speaks to me above all else. The simple biblical fact that Christ demands all. Christ demands all. But I sometimes wonder if we even know what that means anymore. Tozer said, we have measured ourselves by ourselves for so long that we no longer have higher plateaus in the things of the Spirit. Could this not be true? We seem to be quite content thinking that at least I'm as dedicated as the rest. That's not a very safe way to live. Just looking at other people and saying, well, I'm as dedicated as they are. The burden of Operation Mobilization and the ship Logos is to present the message of discipleship and spiritual reality. If Logos comes to Durban, they do not come as a great group of super victorious missionaries. But they come as a school. Logos in a real way is a school. Everybody on Tuesday night gathers for classes. Every morning there's Bible teaching and prayer. Almost everybody is reading and studying books. We have one of the largest cassette libraries in the world on the ship. Some young people go through 200 cassettes taking notes and studying messages from some 20 to 50 different men of God from all over the world. We are training young people who after a year or two will leave Logos and go back to their churches or back out to some mission field to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. About 600 graduates of Logos and OM are now working with almost every major mission in the world. I never go anywhere without meeting some ex-OMers who receive some training and challenge and inspiration from OM and during their time on OM. Right now we are again praying for laborers for our summer crusade. The ship is only a small part of this worldwide outreach that has grown up over the past decade and a half. We go back to the earliest roots to Mexico almost two decades. This summer, this is an item of prayer that you may want to write down. Our main target are the 6 million Muslims of Western Europe. I wonder if you knew that Western Europe had so many Muslims. Germany has half a million to a million Turks. Germany is so prosperous there's no one to do any of their work. They have to bring in the Turks and the Italians and people from other parts of the world. This is causing no small amount of difficulties especially with unemployment going up in Germany. So now they're sending the Turks home. It's interesting how all these things take place. But there's still a half a million Turks in Germany. What a challenge that is considering that there are 37 million people in Turkey and only about 50 believers among the real Turks. Some of you had the opportunity about an hour or two ago to see the Turkish film strip and I believe your eyes were open and you saw what a difficult and impossible situation that is. Our great prayer right now throughout the whole OM world is that the Lord of the Harvest will send forth neighbors into the harvest. Will you join us in that prayer? We believe that between 2,000 and 2,500 men and women need to unite together this summer in our various mobilizations around the world. As this great campaign is taking place in Europe Logos will come into Cape Town and then, Lord willing, into Durban. It's our prayer and this is why I'm here to pray and to seek God about the ship coming to Durban. And if a large enough number of churches believers feel this is God's will and we believe it will be His plan to come in mid-July for launching out among those Muslims We'd like to launch out among these 400,000 Indians who seem to be living here. One man said to me, there's less than that but an Indian told me today there must be more than that. So I don't know. It doesn't matter. And we believe that if God brought the ship here it could be a great challenge to the believers as well as a great outreach to those who don't yet know the Lord Jesus Christ. I think to give you a greater understanding of all this I should give my own personal testimony. I think that will help you why I feel so strongly about some things. Also, there may be someone here tonight who doesn't yet know the Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps my own testimony of how I came to Christ would be of some help to you. I wasn't reared in a true Christian home. My grandfather, as I mentioned, was an atheist from the Netherlands. My father was also born in Holland then immigrated to New York City just outside the city. My other grandfather was a more tame fellow. He was a drunkard from Glasgow. So I had an interesting background. My father was just sort of a typical middle class somewhat hardworking materialist who injected me with a great passion for money. A great passion for pleasure. For sports and for women. This was my life. You cannot imagine how fast life goes in New York City. What people are involved in even at 14. By 16 most of my weekends were in the nightclubs of New York. I started to peddle pornography in my high school. And I had two or actually three small businesses. I had this great capitalistic dream of making money and not working. Into this situation came a gospel of John. An elderly lady who wasn't really that old but everything over 25 when I was 16 looked like an antique began to pray for me. She prayed for me for three years. She had been praying for that high school for 15 years. Persevering in prayer. She really had the life and she really had the love. And she coupled life and love with prayer and I can assure you that's an unstoppable combination. 15 years she persevered in prayer not only that people would be converted to Christ in that school but she prayed that people would go from that school that there would be a movement of God in that school that would cause people to go all over the world presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ. Operation Mobilization is a direct result of the prayers of that one woman. She sent me a gospel of John through the post. This began to melt my heart though it took three years. She kept praying for me those three years every year I got worse. She kept praying. The teachers who taught me many of them gave up on me and they blacklisted me from getting on the Honor Society even though I had high grades. So this little blacklisted nobody in this high school became more and more of a radical and I became the president of a rather radical student body one third of which was drunk every weekend. She kept praying and in a miraculous way I ended up going to an evangelistic meeting in New York City where Billy Graham was speaking. I did not even know what evangelism was. No one in my family knew Jesus Christ. I did go to a very good church like many Dutchmen, a good reformed church but in this particular church no gospel was ever preached. I can't say that's true about every reformed church because my parents now because they also got converted shortly after I did joined a different church of the same denomination that preaches the gospel. What a difference it is. In fact, that church partially supports my wife and I. It was there that night in that huge meeting in Madison Square Garden that I came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal savior as my master my friend and if there's any of you that have never had that experience I would beseech you to trust Christ tonight. Give Him your heart. Let His love fill your life. It's not some kind of a religious trip. It couldn't have lasted 23 years if it was just that. It's a real experience with God. Jesus said you must you must be born again. You may be religious. You may go to church. Maybe a good reformed one. I've heard they had a few of these here in South Africa. In fact, I spoke in one of the biggest ones in the nation in Cape Town. But if you're not born again you're lost. Your father may be a preacher. But if you're not born again you're lost. You may have been baptized. In America we baptize some people two times over backward. You're not born again. You're still lost. I was religious. During that period of time in the midst of all the other crazy activities I decided to get involved in church. Pastor, he didn't know Christ either made me his assistant. And the Boy Scouts gave me the highest award religious award the Boy Scouts can ever give. I tried to get in the Girl Scouts but didn't quite make it. And I was still lost. So you see you can be very religious and lost. That's a scary position to be in. You can even pray or try to pray for Logos and be lost. You must be born again. And if Logos comes to Durban that will be our message. You must be born again. To Muslims I was interviewed for television yesterday a very interesting interviewer. His sixth question was loaded. But I got him so caught up in the first five we had to cut the time. And he didn't get to number six. It was, you know, how can we possibly think that a good moral Muslim needs Jesus Christ. So we didn't get to that question for the television. But I handled that with him personally afterward and gave him my testimony of why I believe that Jesus Christ is the only way the only truth and the only life. The problem with us sophisticated modern men is we like to be so proud of ourselves that we can understand everything. We will never understand everything. There are many things in this life we must take by faith. Whoever met these agnostics who say they only believe what they see. We are so inconsistent. The same man goes out to the airport gets on an airplane he doesn't know anything about flown under a pilot that he's never met and even the pilot still doesn't fully understand all the laws of aerodynamics any more than the electrician can fully explain electricity. They can't, I believe. The only way to live on this planet is by faith. You can try every other road. Now the big thing in Europe is the philosophy of despair. This is the latest, biggest way of life in Europe. If you want to understand it study the writings of Dr. Francis Schaeffer. Under the teachings of philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre a great mass of Europeans now believe despair is the only answer. They sit in little circles sometimes without clothes sometimes in other ways. They just sit in total despair. Sartre said there is no exit. Men like Jaspers came along after Sartre and said the only exit is a final experience. This is why people are going into the drug experience. This is why people can even murder someone in an attempt to get the final experience to find meaning in life. We have entered into a whole new era and words that once had meaning today have no meaning. And I believe just as in the world of philosophy it is necessary to define terms and there is this whole emphasis on relative thinking relative morals. So if we are not careful into the church comes this relativistic thinking so that the great biblical terms no longer mean what they used to mean. We can talk to people about dedication sacrifice the love of God and all these things and it had no meaning. God saved me that night sent me back to my ungodly high school and taught me to pray. First thing that it seems God taught me next to witnessing was to pray. And there in that ungodly school that that lady had prayed for for so many years we started prayer meetings. We started half nights of prayer. Can you imagine teenagers football players coming and spending half nights in prayer? How many young people go to your prayer meetings? The one major effort with young people is to keep them from understanding the power and the way of prayer. He gets young people to think that prayer is for elderly ladies. It is. It's for everybody. But it was young men and women I was only 17 myself that started these prayer meetings that today have spread all over the world. There are several of them right here in South Africa that some of you are involved in. They can be traced back 22 years and then back another 15 years through the life of that one lady. The church looks for better methods. South Africa has had quite a gift in copying America on a number of points. I hope you won't be offended by that. I'm sure most of your things are original. But everybody has copied America. We have been the mass exporters of every kind of gimmick especially religious gimmick the world has ever dreamed of. May God help us. Now fortunately in the midst of it we've exported a few good things as well. A few men of God. A few dedicated missionaries. And it is exciting because I just believe if God can change an American like me He can change anybody. Anybody. So there's plenty of scope for you. Church looks for better methods. This has been the emphasis of the American brand of evangelicalism exported in the past hundred years. But God looks for men. That's the message of E.M. Bounds. The message of many men. Praise God even a few Americans. For God is no respecter of persons. I am convinced as Samuel Chadwick once said that the greatest single effort of Satan will be to destroy your prayer life. If he gets your prayer life if he gets your quiet time if he drives up your church prayer meeting he's got you. Everything else is just a matter of time. I want this time as short as it is here in South Africa to be a call to prayer. The need in Durban is not logos. The need in Durban is men and women anointed of God. Men and women seeking the face of God. Men and women who will present their bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God which is their reasonable service. With such men and women logos will never need come. If it comes it will only be to get a blessing from you. Of course often times God draws people together to work together. This is what we envision if the ship comes here. Did God answer her prayers? Did God work through those prayer meetings in the ungodly high school? I'll never forget a meeting just like this. Six hundred students. I'd been out of the school six months by a miracle. Even the principal allowed me to come back. We had seen God work somewhat before I left. Some had been converted. The prayer meetings took place. The work of the Spirit continued in a greater way when I left. So they invited me back. I'll never forget this meeting. It was in an auditorium about twice the size of this. There in the school. Six hundred were in the meeting. I didn't know how to preach. I gave my testimony. I shared some Bible verses from the little track Four Things God Wants You To Know. And I asked how many students wanted to repent of their drunkenness, their immorality, their pride, their middle class sophistication. A hundred and twenty-five students left their seats and went into the school cafeteria. Many of them with tears running down their face to repent and take Christ as their Savior. One woman. Fifteen years. The school is brought to its knees. And a movement is born that in turn in two decades has reached two hundred and forty million. Not thousand. Two hundred and forty million people face to face around the world. A hundred and forty million of them alone in the subcontinent of India where we now have an army of two hundred men and women. One woman prayed. God began to move. We often sing that chorus in the West. It only takes a spark to get a fire going. And I want to tell you the chilly atmosphere we provide in some of our churches even sparks can't seem to get going. Oh, may God revive the church. May God revive our clergymen. Far too many of them who carry on their ministry for the sake of money instead of living for the glory of God in a humble Christ-like way as is demonstrated by the man of Galilee. The best revival can come to the clergymen. Perhaps I speak more for Europe than South Africa. You'll have to judge your own nation. Then I don't believe we'll see revival and renewal in the church of Jesus Christ. Every kind of crazy sin has invaded the church. You don't need to go to the world to become worldly. You only need to go to the church. The love of money, the love of ease, the praise of men, lawfulness, sleepiness, and even impurity that has put hundreds of our pastors in North America and Europe into every kind of crazy situation. Divorce is now the order of the day. I know pastors that face even evangelical congregations that have no more than 20, no less than 10, 20 or 30 divorces in their own church. Now even many of our Christian leaders, or to correct that I should say some, are having divorces. We have one man in the United States who got divorced on the West Coast, went to the East Coast, remarried, divorced on the East Coast, went to the West Coast, remarried. Of course, it's a big country. There's plenty of scope. Praise God for Roy Hesschen, who has now written this book called Forgotten Factors, speaking about the problem of immorality in the church of Jesus Christ. My burden is renewal among God's people first, and then evangelism second, though I believe most of the time they go hand in hand. God moved in the high school, then God began to move in the college that I was attending in the southern part of the United States. There were just a few of us. We met regularly in prayer. We went out in practical evangelism. Though later on I spent two years in Bible college, I learned more from the Word and about the Christian life in that secular college than I learned in Bible college. Not against Bible college, and we sent many, many hundreds of our young people into Bible college, but nothing, neither Bible college nor OM, produces instant spirituality, and there is no substitute for on-the-job training, getting out with people. I worked with alcoholics. What lessons I learned. I visited the prison every week, working among prisoners. I was only 18. I was scared. I didn't know what to say, but boy, did I learn something in that jail. First a jail and then a prison. Some of my prisoners graduated after they accepted Christ, went into the state penitentiary, and here I was at 19, preaching to 500 convicts in the state penitentiary in the state of Tennessee, and I saw God working among these prisoners. Then I went and worked in the poorer section. You know, in America, we have many, many poor people. You may not believe that. Certainly did back in the 50s. I haven't been there so much in the past 15 years. We went down into the poor areas where many of the children didn't even know who their fathers were. What lessons I learned working with people of a totally different cultural strata. Then I had the blessing of working with people of other races and backgrounds and nationalities. Then God took three of us into Mexico. This led to another life-changing experience. For in Mexico, I met people that were poorer beyond anything I even thought existed on this planet. I remember going out to a garbage dump. I don't know what you call it here. A rubbish tip, I think we call it in England. And there out in this garbage dump, with all the garbage and a smell that could have knocked you over, people were living. I picked up a little baby. She had no less than 60 or 70 flies crawling across her little body. Her mother sat inside a little hut made of garbage and string and tin cans as she gave milk to another baby. I talked to another little girl because I learned Spanish. I asked her what she had for lunch and she said, garbage soup. Perhaps the next time you complain about one of your meals, you may remember the little girl in Mexico with her garbage soup. I couldn't believe it. I remember vividly walking away from that garbage dump, looking at the sunset and recommitting my life again to Jesus Christ. I knew I never could be the same after that experience in Mexico. I knew I never could return to my middle-class way of life. But I had to go wherever God wanted me to go, especially among the poor, the masses, who don't have the opportunity to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. I said, leave after me. Lord, come upon them now and give them a great heart of love. Give them a great courage. Give them the fullness of thy Holy Spirit so that they can't help talking about me. Maybe to the neighbor's next door. Maybe to the neighbors at work. Maybe to other people they meet in other walks of life. Everybody can know that we have such a wonderful life. And my prayer today, in these past days, is that Lord would give me here in Durban people who long for Christ, people who are dissatisfied without him, and who know that only Jesus can satisfy the longing soul and fill the hungry with goodness. I will pour water on him. I will pour floods upon the dry blood. Is there the slightest bit of thirst? In Mexico, when we went there, 50% of the people had never had a Scripture portion. And as we sit here tonight in this beautiful church, in this incredibly prosperous country, half the people in the world have never had a Gospel tract that cost one South African cent to print. Half the people in the world have never received the Gospel. And we don't believe this is right. We believe this is the crime of the century. So as we came back from Mexico, came back with a new vision, little did we realize, because the name Operation Mobilization didn't even exist, little did we realize what God was doing. That this was the birth, to some degree, of what today is known all over the world as short-term missionary work. And though this was considered rather wild, and we were widely criticized, today, almost every major mission and denomination has started their own short-term work. Many of it, in many cases, can be traced back to OM and to this work in Mexico. We saw that we could help the missionaries during the summer. We saw there was a job to be done. Literature could be given out. Records, Gospel records could be played. Physical work could be done. And in the process, we could at least begin to learn the language. We went back, I went back to this very interesting college, and I knew I could not continue with my studies. We don't challenge young people to leave their studies. Most people on OM, if they're studying, finish their studies. But I could not. I could not go on and get a university degree. God would not let me. And I transferred out, and I did something that my parents thought was completely insane. Though they had already just become believers themselves, and were beginning to understand, you know, it takes time for Dutchmen to get the message. My father was beginning to understand the way that the Holy Spirit works. So I transferred to Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. Didn't know anything about the place, but it was in Chicago, and my one main burden was to get into a big, ugly city with lots of drunks. And Chicago seemed to have more drunks than people, at least where I was living. So I spent two years working among alcoholics in Chicago. And did some studying on the side. I also went door-to-door among the Spanish-speaking people. I found that what I was getting in class was becoming real in my life. Because I was constantly using it. Winning people to Christ. In the summertime, going back to Mexico. Through this, a whole unique system or method has been developed of training people. Letting them go to Bible school, but taking them in the summer in evangelism. So what they hear, what they study, what they learn becomes a functional, practical reality in their life. This was the birth of OM. Practical terms. A somewhat new way. First, not accepted by mission leaders. Today, accepted by almost all. Because it works. Because teams doing this kind of work in France with the missionaries have planted 13 churches. Because these same teams have pioneered unreached areas in more than 20 nations. And have seen even churches born in some of those nations. As believers, or people are brought to Christ and trained and discipled and brought together in a local worshipping community. Once again, this summer, in Europe, an army will move to reach a continent for Christ. I've actually more or less just come back from Mexico. When we first went to Mexico, of course, we were told this was fly-by-night. How could teenagers and people 20 years of age establish a proper work for God? Well, if it's fly-by-night, you can judge. But we just finished our 18th Christmas crusade. There are young men, Mexicans, who were converted and who worked together in the early days are still going on. The Christian bookshops we opened are still going on. And the radio broadcasts are still going on. Today, God has opened the door in most of the churches in Mexico to work together in evangelism. Mexicans have even launched out to work in places like Nepal, India. From the very beginning of our work, we took a very unusual step that was not accepted 19 years ago. Total internationalization. Any national from any country coming with us worked on an equal level with us. This now has been accepted in the past decade by almost every major mission society. Because we cannot continue to evangelize India, to evangelize various parts of the Middle East, if we from the United States go out on one level and expect the man from the Middle East or the Indian to be on another level. We have to work with them and treat them as brothers. Not only that, the only way our work can continue in a place like India is now, 12 years after the work was born, we have to work under them. They have to be the leaders in their own country. And God has blessed this and has raised up an army of leaders all over the world, most of them nationals, in their own country. They know their own culture. They know their own language. They know how to face the problems in their own society. And this has led to tremendous blessing. And thousands and thousands have come to profess the Lord Jesus Christ. The work quickly crossed from Mexico to Spain. And to abbreviate what happened, I can only say that in those days we had two main visions. One was the Muslim world. The other was the communist world. As soon as I arrived in Spain with my wife, who always manages to hide somewhere in the back row, but she is with me. When we arrived in Spain, a missionary told us, just before we got there, he said, if you hear anything big is happening in Spain, you know it's a lie. Real encouragement. Within two years, God broke that country wide open. Within four years, we had taken the gospel to every town, village, crack and corner of the entire nation. Churches were being born. A land that was closed, opened. So for the two years we were there, when it was closed, it didn't matter. We sent 900,000 pieces of literature through the post. Soon, Spaniards were taking over the leadership. My wife and I were looking for another place to go. I thought in those days that this would be the Soviet Union. I had studied Russian. I had learned to type in Russian. So in 1961, I went on my first trip into the Soviet Union. We went into Yugoslavia first, distributing the word of God secretly. Then into Czechoslovakia, flooding out the word of God in the night. In the Soviet Union, due to my own error, I was arrested by the Soviet secret police. This was a very important and significant experience in my life. Because I had to humble myself, realize I had made a mistake. Secondly, realize I wasn't ready for that work. Thirdly, on the way back from that Soviet Union experience, with a lovely submachine gun escort, God brought into view this name, Operation Mobilization. Up to that time, it was unheard of. It didn't exist. We were working under an old name called Send the Light. It was in a day of prayer in southern Germany, on the way back to Madrid, Spain, that I realized that first of all, we must make an impact in Western Europe. First of all, the church in Western Europe must be revived and renewed to some degree. And that as we were trained in Western Europe in a more easy environment, then if it be God's will, it could flow over more carefully into these communist areas. This is exactly what has happened in the past decade. So all that happens in these communist areas is not officially called Operation Mobilization. When people ask me if we work there, of course I tell them, unofficially we don't. God's Spirit is. The Word of God is going out by a number of different groups. Some groups allow publicity. Other groups say nothing. But I can tell you sometimes the ones that are seeing more done. But the Word of God is going out into all the Soviet bloc. And I believe as we pray that we can see even more take place. By the next summer the vision had exploded. 300 young people joined in Western Europe to go through our training program. This is when a young girl named Heather Wiles found out about OM. After receiving her wonderful university education in one of your great universities, she turned her back on it all and went to France. Spent part of her life there working among prostitutes. She joined OM in 1963. And that's when we had 2,000 young people unite together and move out across France, Italy, Austria, Belgium and many other countries. It was Heather who eventually got some of us in OM aware of South Africa. And really if it wasn't for her and then her mother, I wouldn't be here. Heather was with us in Lagos when we sailed around Africa and then labored with us in the land of India and later in Nepal. How we praise God for one girl who was willing to turn her back on this all too comfortable country. No misunderstanding that I do believe that comfort is a great enemy of spiritual reality. Not that God never wants us to be comfortable. We in OM have incredible comfortable situations. And usually after we're in them for a while we get kicked out of them again. God is not calling you into asceticism. He is calling you into a warfare. The good is the enemy of the best. So often times God's people are involved in good things instead of the best. This is a very nice church. Makes me think I'm back in the United States. Cleaning the windows is good. Cleaning the carpet is good. But if the church was burning down I wonder how wise it would be to bring in the vacuum cleaner or start cleaning the windows. And beloved, the world is burning up. A.W. Tozer said the whole world is a disaster area. Nothing is right, nor will be right until put right by the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. When is the church going to rise up and march as we sung about before we had this message tonight? A.W. Tozer, a man with tremendous insight, said this. He said if any secular company needed so much raw material to get so little finished product as the church of Jesus Christ, it would go bankrupt in six months. You are an industrial nation. If your industries ran the way the church runs, they would no longer be in business. I believe we've got to go back to this book which teaches that every man and woman in the church is active for God. Every man and woman who loves Christ is in the prayer meeting every week unless they're sick or out in some kind of special work. Every man and woman in the church filled with the Spirit and moving forward in the power of God. Many of our young people cannot get their church to stand behind them when they go out. Their church is not interested. They're usually building a new building or paying for another electronic organ or raising the pastor's salary or doing something else. They're not interested in sending missionaries out to the uttermost parts of the earth except maybe a few. But they go anyway because ultimately we must obey God rather than men. Ultimately, if Jesus tells us to evangelize the world, we will go. There's always a few people in the church who will pray if the whole church won't. So, for 20 years we've been going. Now it's a lot easier because men that we've trained are pastoring churches all over the world. They're a little more cooperative. It's a wonderful thing when the pastors go out for a few years. We have quite a few who come on OM now. And I tell you, things happen. We just had an American Baptist pastor. One of the fastest growing churches in the Chicago area. Everything a pastor could dream of. You know pastors dream. Big homes, car, nice congregation, you know, good middle class set, lots of money. Then he went on OM for a summer. What a dangerous thing for a pastor to do. He just gave in his resignation. Now the elders are learning to preach. They should have learned to preach anyway. It's what the Bible says. This pastor is launching out to join us with his family of five on the second ship. Other pastors have received the burden to stay in their church. I think of one from one of the biggest churches in the whole of Memphis, Tennessee. First, much to his own dismay, his daughter got recruited. Then his son got recruited. Then his wife got recruited. Poor stubborn guy ended up coming himself. He got so turned upside down working in France, sleeping on the floor a little bit, that he went back to his gigantic multimillion dollar congregation that was just putting up a two million dollar building. And I want to tell you, those people were in for a life changing experience. They ended up having the whole OM North American conference in their church. Four hundred people sleeping in the church. About time they put these places to good use. And things really began to happen. God is moving in the world today. God is moving in the church among pastors, among laymen. Many, many are getting tired of the game of words. They're getting tired of playing church. They want God. They want revival. They want world evangelism. They want to learn what it is to obey Jesus as he said in Luke 14, 33. Except you forsake all that you have, you cannot be my disciple. When's the last time you heard a message on that? Rather interesting verse. I believe that right here in South Africa God wants to do a new thing. God has blessed many of you. If you're saved there's no greater blessing than that. And now your responsibility is to take this great salvation and spread it all over the world. There are many countries that South Africans can go to. No need for this complex about the fact that with your passport you can't get in many places. Let's start thinking about the places you can go to. Israel is wide open. We would like to see some from this country helping us in Israel. We have work among the Jews. We have work among the Arabs. The door is wide open. Iran is an open door. France is an open door. There are many, many countries where you can go with your little passport. You shouldn't feel people don't like us. I want to tell you can you tell me what country they like Americans? Maybe South Africa. Maybe I finally found a place. I ought to settle here. In most countries we are not wanted. In India I will tell you we are hated. In India when things were getting difficult, you know what the Canadians did so that they wouldn't be mistaken for being Americans? They had big signs on their cars. I am a Canadian. That makes all the Americans feel really great. But you know as we go out to evangelize the world in obedience to Jesus Christ we cannot say I will go if they like me. I will go if they think my country is wonderful. I don't care what people think about my country. My real country is heaven. I am an ambassador of Jesus Christ. This crazy planet with all of its suffering and all of its misery and all of its problems is not my home. And if it's your home, you better go back to your Bible. We are pilgrims just passing through and our citizenship is in heaven. And oh that God would take some from this little part of the world where you've had so much of the gospel relatively speaking and send you to places like Iran and France and Israel and 20 or 30 other countries that are wide open. Beloved, I bring this message to a close. As I bring it to close I beg of you, do not take this in as just another sermon. God has not brought me here to deliver a sermon. Realize that as you hear this message you must determine to be not a hearer but a doer of the word. C.S. Lewis, that brilliant theologian said we have the tendency to think but not to act. And we have the tendency sometimes to feel but not to act. If we go on thinking and feeling without acting, someday we will not be able to act. This is the spiritual schizophrenia I have described in my book which on Sunday we are one person singing our choruses and our hymns arguing about our doctrines but on Monday through Saturday night something quite different. Many people cannot even tell the difference between the saved and the unsaved. In the office and in the factory and in the street. Oh may God cause us to go from this meeting tonight not picking apart perhaps some little thing that I didn't say quite as nicely as I should have said it. I acknowledge every time I speak some of this old earthen vessel even though it's only 126 pounds gets in the way. Don't worry about that but listen to the voice of God. Don't worry about some little phrase that maybe I didn't say the proper way or something that may be misunderstood but listen to the voice of God and go from here and pray Lord what do you want me to do? Where do you want me to go? Sometimes wonder at least back in England where we have such an incredible immigrant community we can't love these people and win them to Christ hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis, Bradford even has a Pakistani mayor. Can't win some of them. Do wonder what we will do in India. You have a mission field on your doorstep pray you'll take on the challenge reach them for Christ. And I see some of you here who are Indians you got a mission field among your own people though non-Indians may try and God can use them they'll never have the uniqueness that you have. Take advantage of it. Mission field right here in Durban. Cosmopolitan city if there ever was one. Let's unite our hearts in a moment of silent prayer. Let us search our hearts. Have you ever told God you'd go anywhere? Then you can't really say that Jesus is Lord of your life. Because if Jesus is Lord of your life you'll go anywhere. That may mean he'll keep you right here. Some may have even an itch to travel. The Lord will say you stay here a while. Work with your own church. I want to give this moment for some to make an outward decision of an inward transaction. Right now some are praying. In a moment I'm going to ask those who have made a commitment in their heart to go anywhere for Jesus Christ whatever the cost to be a disciple to be a soldier to present your body as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God. If you'll make that decision or renew that decision or that commitment and whatever your age I'm going to ask you after you pray silently to just stand up. Stand up where you are as an outward expression of an inward transaction. Stand up and I want to pray for you. You may not fully understand. You may be fearful. That's why faith is necessary. That's why God says that we must live by faith. With every head bowed right now you've come to that very serious part of this meeting. You have heard. You have listened. You have thought. You have felt. Now you must act. And though standing is only a small act it can be very hard. And it can be the beginning of the big standing up for Christ that will have to take place seven days a week. In the midst of many different situations. So right now as anyone there may only be a few I know I'd like you to stand up where you are act of commitment praise God. Praise God. Many are praying for this meeting. Many are praying. Believe God has spoken. Praise God. He sees you. I remember so many faces. God can. Isn't that wonderful? You never feel alone and no one cares much about you. I tell you the cure for that is the knowledge of God himself. If you hunger for him he will bless you. He will meet your needs. Is Christ really Lord of your life? There may be businessmen here. God would lead you to a business in a country where you could witness at the same time. We know a number of people in that. There may be teachers. God may lead you into some difficult area in your own country. Not everybody is booming with prosperity. Anywhere. Whatever the cost. Scary, isn't it? And it's wonderful. Mystery of God's will. Go where he wants you to go. Do what he wants you to do. One woman prayed. Movement is born. Do you have a ministry of prayer? Maybe some should stand to say, Lord I recommit my life for prayer. I can't go. I don't sense that I should go. I'm willing to go. I'm sure many are in that category. But I want to recommit my life to be an intercessor. To be involved in the prayer life of my church. To be involved in other missionary prayer groups. To be like that dear lady. To be like those high school young people. Maybe there's someone in that category who needs to come back to God. Honesty. Maybe there's someone that doesn't know Christ. Maybe there's someone that isn't walking with Jesus at all. And this moment you can settle this thing with God. You can say, Lord I will follow you. There's problems in my home. There's problems in my life. But by your grace I will follow you. I will go where you want me to go and do what you want me to do. Stand up. An act of surrender and commitment to Jesus Christ. I believe he will honor your step of faith. As you take one step toward God he takes ten to you. Lift you up. Bless you. Lead you where you should go. It's not going to take much longer. Just a moment. Anyone else. Praise God. Praise God. It's only the beginning. God knows for all of us it takes years to bring us into spiritual maturity. But we've got to begin and even if we've already begun at times we've got to take new steps of faith. What this will be I'm sure for some may have already made a similar commitment to this before but tonight God is urging you to take a greater step of faith. Give you a vision of the world. Deliver you from the slipperiness of selfishness that so drains us of spiritual reality and love without which we cannot function. Oh may God grant it. God grant it. Anyone else in this closing moment please stand. Praise God. God bless each one. Anyone else. Praise God. Victory in Jesus. Do you believe that? Say it in your heart. Victory in Jesus. He is Lord. I'm going to sing that chorus in a minute. First let us have this prayer of dedication. Lord you know each one. You know our burdens. You know our lives. And you love us. You accept us. You're not trying to hit us on the head. You're not wanting us to go away with a double fold guilt complex. You're reaching your arms out around us tonight and despite our weakness, our failures, our selfishness, our mistakes, our sins you love us with an everlasting love and God we just breathe in that love and we say thank you God. Thank you for this acceptance. Thank you for this joy, this reality. We do rededicate our hearts to you tonight. We present our bodies as a living sacrifice and we say oh God by your grace we'll go where you want us to go and we'll be what you want us to be. We want to as your son the Lord Jesus be moved with compassion. We want to know brokenness, humility.