This sermon emphasizes the importance of truly seeing others and having compassion, drawing inspiration from the parable of the Good Samaritan. It encourages individuals to open their eyes to the needs around them, to act with love and kindness towards those they encounter, and to understand that serving others is serving God. The speaker shares personal stories and reflections on how simple acts of compassion can lead to profound impacts and transformation in people's lives.

I don't know whether you've noticed, but so far everything this evening has been about seeing. And we sang, Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord. We sang about catching a glimpse of His glory. We've seen a bunch of people and a special lady who saw something that God revealed, the plight of the unborn and those who'd parented the unborn. And we heard about some university students who saw. I want to talk about seeing, and I want to pray for eyes. Jesus said, Seek first my kingdom and my righteousness, and everything else will be added to you. Sometimes people would ask me how I can get through difficult times. They always ask me what I would do in the middle, and I always think that's the wrong question. It's really how you start, not what you do in the middle. It's what you see. It's what you see when you start, because if you don't see the end from the beginning, you will get upset in the middle. When I was very small, I had the very, very unhappy impression that God was watching me. Now this was very unhappy because I didn't like Him. And I had looked around, and it seemed to me quite clear that other children were doing wrong things and getting away with it. And so I sort of worked this out. I was about five, I can remember doing it. And I thought, Well, God, if people get away with it, is it worth being good? And came to this distressing conclusion that He got you in the end. And that was why I decided to be a missionary. So I thought it would count in my favor. And that was long before I liked Him. I just had this unhappy understanding that He was counting things up, and one day I would meet Him, and I would have to answer for my life. But now, no, it's not like that. It's not like that at all. For the moment I understood, and you can only understand by revelation, by faith, the moment I understood that the Maker of heaven and earth in mercy sent His Son to fetch me and to put me and my shortcomings and my pain and everything that would stop me being acceptable to Him. That He put all this upon Himself when He died on the cross. Then I saw differently a glimpse of heaven, and this time so different, so different, so different. It is, if I'm going to spend eternity with a lover who loved me so much that He would risk His Son to fetch me forever, I really can't wait to be with Him. I saw a glimpse of heaven. Whom have I in heaven but You? And being with You, I desire nothing on earth. The fact is, if you know Him, that is true. Because when this Psalm says, Whom have I in heaven but You? And being with You, I desire nothing on earth. This is actually a fact, it's not a feeling. Being with You, I desire nothing on earth. But most of us think we desire everything else on earth, which is why we have a trouble concentrating on where we're going, because we're distracted by where we are. The fact is, if we ever have understood by faith and by revelation a little bit of His love and His glory and His sweetness and His forgiveness for us, which is forever, of course we can get through anything on this earth, can't we? It is but for a second. And when we, for eternity, live and dwell with Him, will we not look back and say, I was so worried for that time, but it was so short. Or maybe we won't even remember, I don't know. Maybe we'll be too busy singing, and in that wonderful place in heaven, where there's a door standing open, and the voices come up here, and I'll show you. I will show you. I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and in this holy city there's no more pain, there's no more crying, and God dwells with man. This is where we will be, and I always wonder. Well, I have many thoughts about what it will be like, but first of all, when I meet Him, I don't know whether I'm going to fall on my face or whether I'm going to run into His arms. I'm torn. I don't know which. I suppose I will know when the time comes, whether to prostrate myself in front of the King of Glory or whether to run into the arms of my Father. And the other thought I have about that place is that as there's no more pain and crying, as there's no more death, as there's no more sickness, we are all perfect because of Him, and we wash clean because of Him. The only one scarred in the whole of heaven is Him, for that book called Revelation tells us that there's a lamb looking as if he's been stained. How strange that for eternity we are perfected in the presence of a scarred lamb, and we sing these songs of glory. You, me, we have to have a glimpse of this glory before we can proceed with our feet on this earth. And I know that this week David and Philippa have been talking about Abraham, and I'll read some verses about him from Hebrews 11. By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, he obeyed, and he went even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise, for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. And from him, from one man, and him as good as dead, were born as many as the stars in the sky in multitude, innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore. All these people were living by faith when they died. They didn't receive the things promised, they only saw them, and they welcomed them from a distance, and they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they're looking for a country of their own. Somebody asked me today how I got to Hong Kong, and I really don't want to share that story, but part of the journey was when I went to see, he was a vicar in London, and God had been telling me to go, and he'd spoken to me through a dream and through a prophecy which was unusual in the mid-60s, and through a vision which people weren't talking about. And every time he just said go, and I finally went to see this vicar in Shoreditch in London, and I said, well, God is not being very helpful because he keeps saying go, and when I ask him where, he says go. And when I say, yes, God, I got that, where, he says go and I'll show you, and I will lead you. And I said, well, that really isn't very helpful. I've applied for missionary societies and they failed me because I wasn't 25. And so I said, well, to this vicar, I think I'll stay here in Shoreditch and help you, and he said no. No, if God's telling you to go, you must go. And I said, well, I can't go because he hasn't shown me where to go. And he said, well, if he gave you an airplane ticket and a pension and a sick fund and a house and a salary, you really wouldn't need to trust him. So why don't you go out, find the cheapest ship you can, calling in the greatest number of countries, get on it, and pray that God will tell you where to get off. Well, it really was like a bell going off in my heart, and I thought, oh, that's wonderful. But immediately the religious bit sort of got in, and I said, well, you know, I'd love to do that, but it must be cheating because I thought missionaries had to suffer, and I'd like that. And he said, no, it's quite scriptural. Abraham was told to leave his country and go to the country that God showed him, and he spent most of his life not getting there, but he went because he trusted. And he was a very wise man, very wise man, who shared this with me. I mean, he later went to Rygate, by the way, in Surrey. He's not at all what you'd imagine. He's a very sort of stiff, correct, God's type of man. Uh, so it must have been God. And, uh, he didn't give me the understanding that I had to do anything. And I think sometimes when people talk about visions, um, it's what they've decided would be a very good idea and huge. It's always huge. But what God shows you is what God has decided. And you probably don't share it for a long time. In fact, it's not too smart, you know, look what happened to Joseph. Uh, you keep quiet about some things like Mary did too. And, uh, he said, well, maybe you just get on this ship and you go all the way around the world and you stop off at Singapore and you play the piano for a week for youth meetings and come back. Or you go all the way around the world just to talk to one sailor about Jesus. And into my mind came shipwreck. And I thought, great, maybe I'm going to be shipwrecked. And there'll be, I will land on an Island where one person is waiting to hear about Jesus. Like I can't lose really. You know, if, if you, if you let God lead you and you go, cause he can't lead you if you don't move, understand that, right? Uh, then you can't lose. And so in God's mercy, I was spared from having to think when I got somewhere I had got to do anything. And I was also in God's mercy spared from having to, uh, cause I didn't have a group behind me. I mean, this guy prayed, he never sent money or anything, but I didn't have a group behind me. So I didn't have to achieve anything in my newsletters. I didn't, I didn't have to feel ashamed that there were no converts, you know, or write moving stories in order to get cash or anything like that. You know, this really in God's mercy, I was spared and it was a journey and it still is. And the journey is, it's just telling people about Jesus along the way. That's all. That's all ministry is. It's terribly simple. It's not difficult. It's not about starting groups or this or that. It's just about seeing where you're going and then seeing whom you meet along the way and seeing by revelation who they may become and seeing by revelation, sometimes those you haven't yet met, but you should be. It's about seeing. And when I got to Hong Kong, I went to, uh, many, many different places and I was very young and very bumptious and I found all these missionaries, you know, and I said, I'm here. And they weren't thrilled. Uh, I can see why now. Uh, cause you know, there are heaps of Christian travelers that travel around the world expecting to stay with us. So I can see that. And so, but once they saw that I could support myself, they all said, well, maybe you could do this job or that job or that job till I got about 30 part-time jobs. And, um, I said, but God, I've got one life and I would like to use it. Well, would you please show me, um, where I should be by the way, while you're waiting for him to show you, you have to get on with it. You understand? I, I, I'm always having to pray for people who say, where should I be? And I say, doesn't really matter. It matters what you're doing now, because what you're doing now gets you to where you should be. That's how you get to where you should be. But if you stop and say, I'm waiting on the Lord for a year, he can't use you anyway, and you'll never get there. When people write to me and say, can I come and help your poor in Hong Kong? I write back and say, are you helping your poor where you live? Why would you love mine if you don't love yours? So this, where should I be really depends entirely on what you're starting to get involved in here. Because if you cannot see Jesus next door to you, what use are you going to be wherever you go next? And it's all about seeing him wherever he may be about seeing them, about seeing heaven. And people, I've been in Hong Kong for 38 years now, and people say, I suppose it's your home. And I say, no, who chews there? Not me. It's dirty, polluted, and crowded. I love the people, but it's not a good place. Yesterday when the sun was shining, Norfolk looked a bit more like it, but no, Hong Kong, not my home. Hong Kong was not my destination. I really am a pilgrim. I've just stopped off there for 30 something years, but it's not my destination. I've always got another one, and that's really where my home is. But a strange, strange, strange thing happened. When I was doing all this part-time stuff, a missionary took me to the walled city. And in the natural, it's a terrible, terrible place. There were about 100,000 people in about six or seven acres. And that's probably smaller than this showground for 100,000 people to live in. And when I was first there, there was no electricity. One toilet which had no water, it was standing. And just open gutters where everybody else emptied their pots. So you had to be careful walking through the streets, because sometimes things came out of the window. And anyway, the sewers were so open that when it rained, they would overflow. And there were more rats than people, so you had to be very careful. That was just physically awful. Of course, in other ways, much more awful. Because I soon saw that there were little girls who were sold. One of them I can remember, I watched, and she was visited on average once every 30 minutes. She was a forced prostitute. And she had a guard, but she wouldn't need one after a year. She would have had nowhere to run to if she was still alive. And I saw the old ladies who looked after the young girls. And you wouldn't be angry with them, would you? For they were the young girls themselves, you see. And they would need someone to live off. In that old age, they had needle marks on the back of their hands, the old ones. And I saw the old men drug pushers, the old men who guarded the gambling dens, and the kids. And that was what I saw in the natural. But a strange thing. After the second time I was there, I came out with my heart singing. And I didn't understand what it was to begin with. Just no idea. And you know, it's like when it's your birthday, or somebody said how beautiful you are, you sort of go, hmm, hmm. You know, you can go, hmm, for the whole day. And I was going, hmm, for the whole day. And I thought, well, nobody said I look beautiful, and it's not my birthday. What's this? And every time I went in Wall City, it was like that. It was like, I love to be there. And people say, you know, how brave and how dramatic. Well, that's rubbish. No, no, I liked it. And, you know, I couldn't understand. Other people used to appear in Hong Kong and say, Jack, I'm praying about my future. And I thought, why would you need to? Haven't you seen the Wall City? Don't you want to spend your life here? You know, I thought everybody did. Because I saw another city. I always saw another city where aliens and strangers on earth, people who say such things show that they're looking for a country of their own. If they'd been thinking of the country they'd left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. And I saw the other city. I saw the other city. I saw, it's a bit like it describes in Zachariah, a city with streets where children could play and all men could sit. I saw the kids who were abandoned, and many were locked up all day because their parents had to go out to work, locked in one room. I saw them in families. I saw those old prostitutes holding up their heads. And I saw the little girls who'd been sold, having a proper childhood in safety, with good men. I saw the lame jumping and the blind seeing. Everywhere, I walked down the street and I thought, hmm, what would he do if he were here? Now, it happened that way around, you see, because I had tried the other way around. I tried the booklet, you know, but the booklet didn't work because they couldn't read. I tried the questions like, would you like to come to a meeting? Well, that's a silly thing to say. If you're watching a brothel, why would you want to go to a Christian meeting? I asked some people, do you know Jesus? And they said, I can't read. Oh, of course you can't be a Christian if you can't read. Or I have no shoes. What they meant was they wore flip-flops, and they knew that Christians didn't go to church in flip-flops, did not. Or I don't have Sunday off. Of course you can't be a Christian if you don't have Sunday off. And some of them said, well, I smoke or I gamble. And I realized when I saw these people, they knew nothing at all about Jesus. All they knew was about Christians. Carried a big book, had Sundays off, had shoes, and didn't smoke. And I thought, that's pathetic. They've never met him. And that was when I started to look at the scripture and I thought, what would he do? And I saw him. Jesus goes up to a blind man, and he spits in his eye, and he sees. And Jesus goes to a high-class dinner party, and this prostitute has the gall to gate-crash and publicly wash his feet with her tears and dry them with her hair. Why? Why? How could she dare to do that? She saw something. And I thought, God, I'm spending my life trying to get people to meetings. And by the way, if you don't yet know Jesus and you've come, well done. You know, we woo them with...never mind. Anyway, I thought, when Jesus was on earth, all the right people ran after him. The poor and the hungry, I thought they've seen something. How would they know? How would she know? How would she know? Do you think it was that on the way to the dinner party, she looked at him, do you think, and somehow understood, he knows me, and he still loves me. For he said, she loves much, for she has been forgiven much. She seemed to know that. While she was washing his feet, not after, is why she washed his feet. How could she know? And I thought, God, I'd really like to do it like Jesus. You know, instead of organizing events and asking people to meetings, I'd like to walk down the streets and have people see Jesus. I'd like to lay my hands on the sick and see them healed. I'd like to see those who are demonized freed. Dear Jesus, would you teach me to do it like you did? And I've shared a little bit over the last few days, some of the stories of how this happened. But you see, I always saw another city. And this morning, I shared about one young man called Winson, and how he was sent to guard me. I started a youth club in the wall city. And when the power of God fell upon him, how he came to know Jesus, he spoke in tongues, and he prayed himself off opium. And I thought, great, I always thought it would be like this. I mean, why believe in God if you're not expecting him to do this stuff? I mean, don't, by the way. I mean, go completely off God. It would be better to go completely off him than not to expect signs and wonders. Not to expect him to intervene in a sick and hurting world. Expect. He wants to do this so much. Expect. And so when I saw this guy get off drugs miraculously, I was very thrilled, but not surprised. After all, the moment I believed in Jesus, he was going to be God or not. So not half. But I didn't understand what was going to happen next. So as I said this morning, I said, God bless you. My son, be fed, be clothed, be warmed, go and stay with the nice guys, you know. And of course, he didn't know any nice guys except me. And he was a tribe leader. And we had no believers at this point. And so later on, I took him into my home, and that's when all the troubles began. Because I found that when he believed in Jesus, all his friends queued up and said, well, if Jesus has changed him, I'll believe in Jesus, and I'll come and live in your house too. And because they always went together. And when I said that this morning, and when I said tonight, see if you can catch what I mean. Because they do go together. I'll believe in Jesus, and I'll live in your house. They do go together. They do go together. It isn't I'll come to your meeting. That's not at all the same as I'll come and live in your house. And most of the poor and the sick and the delinquent and the limping need a house. However, that house works out to live in. They need a family on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. Not a cell group once a week. They're coming into a family, not an organization, a body. And so all the troubles came because all his friends queued up. And then I learned. It isn't. They come to Christ. And then because I'm an evangelist, I move on, let someone else disciple him and find the next. Not at all. How can you abandon those who are born? You can't. So I trapped myself. And instead of being an evangelist in the streets, became a very reluctant and not very good house mother. I don't think I was cut out to be. I love it when I get Valentine's cards from our brothers. I hate it when I get Mother's Day cards. I just don't think of myself like that. You see, I don't think of myself as a mother in the Lord at all. You know, I don't know what I am, but I really did not enjoy staying in the house looking after all these guys. I wanted to be out in the street preaching, but I haven't got anyone else. This is why, by the way, I'm completely unsympathetic to people who talk about this is my ministry. Until you're ready to do everything on every single occasion, you don't deserve something called by ministry. They're not useful. People who are specialists before you're willing to do everything. And of course, it's not my ministry, being a house mother. But if I'd led people to the Lord, who else was going to look after them? So my house got full up. Oh, so many difficulties. This is just to encourage you, you guys. You know, because if you win these kind of people to the Lord, they don't grow up in a day. Your children need 18 years with two parents. And these people need as long as they need, which may be long. And they don't need us to be disappointed because they're not next year's youth leader. By the way, don't do that to them. They need security and safety, not prominence. And at one time, I got four men in my house and three of them ran away. And then sometime later, two came back and then two more. And then I made the mistake of thinking that one might be a leader and they all ran away. You know, this goes on for years. It goes on for years. This is just to encourage you because when you start taking these people in and you're praying them off drugs and you see miracles and you see them turn back, you'll think, oh, it wasn't like that for Jackie. Well, it's like that for everyone. We're telling you the truth now. Just so you know, you can keep going because you see something else. You see, if Jesus died for me before I said, thank you, of course, I can keep going. And if he still loves me when I mess up, I can still love them when they mess up. Why would we be angry with them for not changing at the pace that we think they should? We can still hope. Hope is a great word. Hopes is something that God gives. And he says, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be open, may have light in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you. And we need our eyes open. There's always hope. God hasn't finished with anyone. Why should we? And I can't quite tell you where it happened. But for a number of years, it was like that. We won them. We saw them go. And we laughed as much as we cried, or we cried as much as we laughed. It's always like that. We just don't have a normal Christian life, you know. Or maybe we have the normal Christian life. And then one day, some stayed, and a few more, and a few more. And then a whole lot of what I call rich people came in. Because they saw what God had done in the poor, and they were jealous. For we have got so much that most people haven't. We understand his grace more than most because we need it. We understand his forgiveness more than most because we've received it. We understand his power more than most because we're so weak. We understand his heart because we feel it every day. We're so rich in these things. And we're rich because we have to live it. It's not because we've read it in a book, because many of us can't read. And then one day, it was different. One day, it was different. Some stayed, some more stayed. The rich came in. We worshipped together. The sitting room got too big. The government gave us some tin huts to live in. We put a roof over the tin huts. It wasn't like this, except it did leak. In the summer, we had umbrellas inside to keep the glare off. And in the winter, umbrellas inside to keep the rain off. But suddenly, we'd grown and grown and grown. And suddenly, we became the largest, what other people call, church in Hong Kong. And all these pastors came. They used to come in secret, by the way. They wore proper clothes in the morning, and in the afternoon, they dressed down. That was our meeting. And they came to us in disguise. And then they came and they said, Jackie, how did you get this? And I said, how did you get all these people? I said, well, I don't really know. I'm not a church planter. I know people use that word. I just can't find it's biblical. But you know, they just sort of grew. And nobody liked the way they'd grown. But they wanted our kids. They wanted our people. And what happened to the city? Some years on, this city began to be a place, this walled city. Our big meetings were in somewhere else. But in walled city was when the addicts used to come. They used to come for something called an addicts meeting. And there was a little lady that I used to pass down the streets. Her name was Alfreda. And she used to pull me by my sleeve. And she'd say, Punzute, Punzute, please, please, can I live in your house? And I thought, well, no. Because my house, which was now growing quite big, was full of men. And that's not where you put a 60-year-old prostitute who's still practicing. She had to still practice. She sat on a step in the walled city, and she poked a stick into the sewer to make it run, because it got clogged up, either with sewage or rats. So I began to walk another path, because I didn't want to pass her by. You see, one of the things I hate doing, I hate telling people about Jesus and not doing it. I hate it. I didn't want to say, Jesus loves you, and walk past her. I couldn't do it. And because I didn't know where to put her, because I'd used up all my friends, I thought, I'd better not walk that street anymore. I know that shocks you. You see, I don't want to leave prostitutes to Jesus and leave them in the streets. I know that shocks you. But one day, we couldn't resist it, and I walked past her, and I said, we'll take you. And we found a cupboard, but she's very small, so she could fit in. She's only four foot something. And we prayed for her, just like we pray for our other guys. The Holy Spirit came upon her, and we saw her back. She had three large bruises on her back, and that was where she was injected with heroin. That was her payment for her work. Three bowls of rice, three injections of heroin a day. This lady had no identity card. She didn't exist. Her mother hanged herself when she was young. She watched her father having sex with various relations, male and female, through a keyhole. She got engaged when she was about 18, and she slept with her boyfriend, and her father, such a hypocrite, threw her out. And then she became a prostitute. She was born in Macau, and then she came to Hong Kong. That's how she had no identity, and had to sell her body from the age of 18 to 60. Pretty awful. She'd seen two murders in her brothel, and she was so frightened. That's why she wanted to live in my house, because they were unreported. One of the other prostitutes who was slightly pregnant didn't want to sleep with a customer, so the owners put a pipe down her throat and filled it with water, and she died. They made this lady take her to hospital. Fancy dying before you exist. Anyway, we prayed with her, and she came to know Jesus. We prayed in tongues, and she prayed in tongues. When we say we see this miracle all the time, but it's a working miracle. It isn't you lay hands, the power comes, they fall down, and that's it. We work the miracle, if you like. We have four-hour duties, six people a day for 10 days. That's 60 duties. Imagine if we're doing 10 people a week, which we are at the minute. That's 600 people involved. It's as much a miracle that people will do this as it is that God does for healing. It's equal. She came off drugs and started a new life. Very funny, later on she got a suitor. Were you there? Another old man who'd come off drugs, and he wooed her. She was so funny, because she got married in this beautiful tin hut that we had. She walked down the aisle in virginal white, so proud of herself. Later on, another older couple decided they would get married. One of them said to this lady whose name was Elfrida, please, can I borrow your wedding dress? Elfrida said, yes. Then she came to me and she said, I said, yes, but of course she can't. I said, why can't she? Well, she said, it's a white wedding dress, and that lady's been married before. We have a real picture of heaven. Here's Jesus with his bride in virginal white, made pure, and a new life. We began to see, actually see, what I'd seen. Another time, we began to have teams that go into the streets, and they pray before they go into the streets. God, show us. Show us the people who are there. They usually take rice boxes with them. We find these people that sleep under the flyovers. They found a couple with a young son who was three or four years old. They shared about Jesus with this couple. They were both on Heron. A few days later, the couple came to the walled city where we had meetings. We worshipped. We love worshipping. We do more of worship than anything else. We were worshipping in this meeting. Suddenly, the Spirit came on two other people. These two other people began to laugh. This couple were looking at them. I said, yeah, enjoy. In a minute, the Spirit's going to come on you. You can have a look and see what Jesus is doing. A few minutes later, the lady of this couple, she was flat on the ground, and she was weeping. After the meeting, I asked her, what did you see? What did you see? She said, well, we were worshipping. She said, I suddenly saw a picture of Jesus on the cross. I knew I put Him there. I could not stand before Him anymore. I had to lie prostrate before Him. By revelation, she understood that the Lord of Heaven, the One who made the heavens and the earth, died for her, the one that others despise. Her husband fell into a puddle the next day and died. In fact, he's gone to heaven. She came to live with us, and so did her son, of course. That's why we got so many people in our house. She saw heaven. She saw a Lord who loved her and gave her a new life. So many people began to queue up to live with us that we ran out of spaces. We have now, not that that means we will stop, but we just have to look for more space. There was a young guy called B.B. once who I'd known. I visited him in prison for something he hadn't done. When he came out of prison, I said, now, would you like to come and get your life straight and you can come and live in one of our houses? But he went back to heroin. He used to make his living putting his fingers through the sewer to see what things he could pick up that someone had dropped. And one day I had enough of this. So we went for noodles and I said to him, this is enough. I cannot eat noodles with somebody who's going to hell. I love you very much and I will not eat with you anymore. You know now that Jesus loves you. You know now that I love you. So I will not meet you anymore because it hurts me to do that. When you're ready to come to Jesus, give me a call. He could only handle three days. There's a right time to do this, but they need to know you love them. And he said, now I've decided I'm ready to follow Jesus and I'm going to live in your house. And I said, well, just let me telephone the house and see. And they replied, sorry, no space. And anyway, the house is all in a muddle, you know, and we can't receive new people. This always happens with people in Christian houses. You know, we're upset. You know, we've got to get things calm before we have any more. I'm always fighting with them. And one more, please, one more, please, one more, please, one more. And anyway, I had to go back to him and I said, Bibi, I'm so sorry. Our house is full. You'll have to wait. He was furious. I don't want to heroin your fault. Arrest your fault. Christians don't love you. And I said, lay off, Bibi, just for a minute. I want you to do something else. Shut your eyes and look at heaven. I know the Hong Kong sky is very dirty, but if you would look there to heaven and see the one who made you so beautiful, so bright, so sweet, so warm, so loving, so uncondemning, would you just look at him? And I went off and he was sitting at the noodle store. And I came back half an hour later and he was still looking at heaven with his eyes shut, smiling. And I said, Bibi, no reply. And then I said, Bibi, no reply. Bibi, and he reluctantly opened his eyes. And I said, what did you see? And he said, oh, so beautiful. There's a mountain. And there was, the Lord was walking on the mountain. And there were sweet flowers and they smelled so nice. And he held up his hand and I took his hand and he led me up the mountain. And he said, it was so beautiful. And then you called me. I didn't want to come back. He caught a glimpse of heaven. And you must catch a glimpse of heaven and the Lord of glory, even the scarred Lord of glory. Then you can live on earth. If we make heaven our home and we're just passing through earth, we can handle whatever happens on earth. If we insist on earth being it, we're going to be dissatisfied the entire time because we're going to try and build things on earth, even churches, you know, and it didn't go the way I thought and I'm disappointed. Well, how can you ever be disappointed if your hope is in heaven? It doesn't matter if everything goes wrong. Everything goes wrong as long as you've loved in his name, you won't be disappointed. People who are disappointed are disappointed because their hope was in men. They didn't change. I'm disappointed. Well, why should you hope in them? I don't hope in people. I hope in God. And I know what he can do in men. And I will not give up on them because I know what God can do. If they feel my disappointment, they can't live up to my expectation. I'm being a bad parent all again. I'll lift them anyway. Well, once he caught a glimpse of heaven. Of course, the other happened. We found a place for him that day. And he came to us and he had such a good time getting off heroin. He could eat immediately. And people visiting us thought he's not on drugs at all. He's just a boy in pajamas. But he was a boy who'd seen another country. Let us go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. And what would be the disgrace that he bore? Our Lord Jesus. Well, for those of you who are hoping for great ministries, his apparently failed. Imagine, he'd had huge tent meetings and seen people healed, food multiplied, multitudes. And when the crunch came, no one. All abandoned him. And his original cell group hadn't even multiplied once. Failed ministry. And if you are counting in numbers, you are going to be disappointed. If you're counting on his heart, you never will be. And that's all that counts in whatever service we do. And that's all that lasts in whatever ministry we do. It'll last forever. And he said, whatever you do in my name will not be in vain. So why would you ever be disappointed? So he says, look for another country and look for another city. And the most strange thing has happened. The reason I'm telling you this story is that I'm calling this year the year I have seen twice. It is the strangest thing. You see, they pulled the walled city down when Britain returned Hong Kong to China. At last, they could do something about this strange illegal place and they decided to pull it down and they resettled the people. And we thought it was going to be a bus station or something. It's not a very big area, but they built the most beautiful park. It is the most beautiful place you have ever seen. And the extraordinary thing is they've got the same street names. So the prostitute street, which used to be called Gongling Gai, which means street of light, now is a street of light. There are the most beautiful streets and there are waterfalls. There are seats for old men to sit on. There are streets for children to play in. And the government had an opening ceremony and they invited me to go. Now, the whole thing was government officials. I looked around for anyone who'd lived there, only me. And throughout all this ceremony, I was weeping and weeping and weeping and weeping. I thought, God, I've spent half my life in this city and I'm the only one who knows. You see, I'm actually sitting in what I saw. I saw this. I saw this 30 years before and I'm sitting in what I saw. God, you've let me see twice. I saw it in the spirit and for your own good purpose, you let me live long enough to see it. In fact, a city rebuilt with beautiful streets and fountains. Everything that I saw in the spirit, I've seen him do. Oh God, thank you. I've seen it in the lives of the people who lived here. I've seen prostitutes lift their heads, get married in white. I've seen children come into families. I've seen drug lords change and the leader of the walled city is the gang boss is so changed. I hope you'll be impressed that he will never get on a platform and testify. He will not use his old job to glorify his faith in Jesus. He says, I just want to get on quietly somewhere. I do not choose for anyone to know what I was. I just want to serve Jesus quietly and I like that. He walks around the walled city three times every night and if you come to Hong Kong, I won't show you who he is. I promised him. I'll just say he walks around the city praising God now instead of teaching people how to fight and kill and steal. I've seen another city. I've seen it twice and the people that we have talked about before we began here, they've seen something else in the spirit that God has shown them and whether or not things go well because they've seen they can go on and just to help you. I want to share a parable quickly because I want to suggest to you how this might work out just in your own life and this was the parable of the good Samaritan because when a young man came to Jesus, he said, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And it's interesting that this is in Luke 10. Jesus didn't say, well, you don't have to do anything. And nearly all of us would say, no, you don't have to do anything. You just believe in the Lord, believe he's the son of God and forgives your sins and you'll have eternal life. But in this parable, Jesus talked about doing. Very interesting. Well, what are the commandments? The young man answered, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said, do this and you will live. Believing is doing. And if we believe in the Lord Jesus who has rescued us from slavery and fitted us for eternity, we will do something. And if we don't do something, we didn't know him. That's just what scripture says. The doing is the outworking in gratitude of the relationship. And the young man then turned to Jesus and he said, well, what do you mean? Who is my neighbor? If I've got to love God and love my neighbor as myself, well, who is my neighbor? And Jesus told him the parable of the good Samaritan, which is about seeing. And he talks about this man who has been waylaid by thieves and is cast in the street, his clothes torn and he's wounded. And it talks about people who passed by him. It begins in verse 30 of Luke 10, and it talks about a Pharisee, a priest in verse 31, who saw the man. And this is the problem. The priest saw him, but he didn't see him. And I don't know why he passed by. I don't know why he passed by. Maybe he was on his way to a, how shall we help the poor ministry meeting? I'm absolutely serious. You see, we've got 300 people living with us and I do not think that's wonderful. I just don't think it's wonderful. I think it's an aberration. It should be that each one of these people that lives with us is in a Christian family or with the rest of the church who's got the resources we haven't. It's pretty sick to have all delinquents living together when the rest of the church has got families and a few normal people. We're all not normal. That's why last year I ran an alpha course to win some normal people to look after our poor. I'm absolutely serious. And when we got, if you know what alpha is, when we got to the Holy Spirit weekend, I said, this is what the Holy Spirit's for. It's for the poor. They all received the Holy Spirit. And instead of the next alpha, we had how to minister to the poor. 100% of them who've come to Christ and are involved with the poor. Yeah, you could do that with your alpha. We had to win some people to Christ to minister to the poor. That's why I got Gong Jai to testify. A few years ago, we thought, now we've got all these old addicts. We've got, you know, we've got 15 or 16 who are between 50 and over 70 with one leg because the other one's been sawed off after injections. Well, wonderful, but they're hardly going to be our new missionaries in India, Cambodia, Vietnam, which is where we're going because, you know, our job isn't Hong Kong. It's the lost wherever they are. We can't send these old men with one leg. So we thought, well, we better get some of the next generation in. And that's why we got a dancing team that dances in schools and wins normal school kids, just like Gong Jai. When they've won normal school kids, we say it's the poor and they come with us and their hearts are hooked forever. Get them involved quick. No, we don't just go after the poor, but we got too many poor. You see, we got too many poor and too many delinquent. So we had to win some normal people in order to work it out a bit better. So now we've got more normal people. Of course, we've got more poor people again now. So I'm going to have to do another alpha. I did tell Nicky Gumbel, but for whatever reason, the priest passed by. And just now, one of the people who was talking about this super work with the unwed ladies in crisis said, somehow the churches didn't see. And for whatever reason, the priest passed by and he was the one that would have had the resources. He would have had the money, the tithes, the offerings and the buildings. And then the Levite. I don't know why he passed by, but maybe he said, well, my ministry is with young boys and I'm going to help them not become delinquent so we don't have people falling down in the street. It's not my problem. This is why I'm not sympathetic to people who separate themselves into ministries, because what this story is about, it's about normal people of God helping the person they see. That's all. It's not about sending him off to another ministry. It's about the one you see. And you know, there are so many evangelism programs about reaching the world by the year. Well, I went to some which said, reach the world by the year 2000. And clearly we didn't. Because people are trying to find another method, which is quicker than love God and love your neighbor as yourself. And if everybody looked after the one they saw, I think we'd reach the world very quickly, probably a few weeks. Very simple. But the Samaritan in verse 33 saw him, he had compassion on him, and he went to him. We can pray for you for compassion in a minute, but I don't think you'll get it here. A doctor asked me to pray for him once and said, Jackie, I don't have compassion. Could you please pray for me? And I said, well, I don't think it really works in church. I don't think you get compassion for the lost in church. I think you get compassion as you go. You go to find the lost and the poor because the Lord said, go and find the lost and the poor. So I think you'll get it when you need it. But anyway, I will pray for you. And I prayed in the authorized version. I'll read the authorized version. This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. We ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone sees his brother in need and has no compassion on him, actually, the authorized version says, does not open the bowels of compassion. How can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongues, but with actions and in truth. So I laid my hands on this doctor and I said, Dear Lord, open his bowels. It's a very good word because compassion is gutsy. It's not, she likes the poor. It's not. It's gut-wrenching. Jesus' gut was wrenched when he saw the lost, when he saw the leper. And compassion is not an emotion. It's a gut-wrench and an action. He had compassion on Jerusalem and died on a cross. It isn't pity from us who have, or those who haven't. It's feeling it with them. So I prayed for the doctor, open his bowels, and he got diarrhea the next day. Quite right. Too many constipated Christians. One more meeting, Lord. Fill me, fill me, fill me. You know, you need a little bowel action. I'm serious. It's what the scripture says. The Samaritan had compassion on him. He went to him. And that's all I'm asking you to do. Just that. The next person you see, and we're going to pray for eyes to see, I want you to do something. Now, if it's a frightening person, you don't have to go up and lead them to Jesus. But I don't want you to pass by. I'd like you to go to him somehow. It may just be looking at him and saying, good morning, I see you. You don't have to tell him about Jesus. Or it may be you just look and you say in your heart, God, please reach him. Just pray. Just that. That's all. That's all I did, you see. I did one thing and then the next. And then it led to the next. And it led to the next. He bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. We have the Holy Spirit. We have the blood of Jesus. We Christians have got what no one else has got to heal this world's wounds. He put the man on his own donkey. Note this, please. He put the man on his own donkey, not the church donkey. Your church's ministry to the poor will not substitute for you reaching your neighbor. We have outreach teams. We've got eight. They're mostly people who've come off drugs. We don't pay them. We don't finance them. We share what we've got, but they have to feed the poor out of their own lunch. And their own lunch will bring the love of Christ better than the church lunch. You see, that's why Christian aid doesn't bring people to Christ. It saves their life for today, physically only. When the people of God give their own blanket, their own home, and their own lunch, something happens because the Son of God gave his own life. He didn't send aid from heaven. He came and gave himself. He took him to an inn. He took care of him. He made provision for him. And I always think about this Samaritan. I think maybe he was a traveling salesman. At least I've got that in my head, that he got an interrupted journey. Having seen this man, look where it led him. And I don't know where this is going to lead you, but do something for the next poor person you meet. I'll just tell you one story about how this worked out, and then I know we're late. Then we're going to pray. We were in India and sharing on doing something for the person you see. Just a little act of kindness. And this lovely Indian pastor, he was such a sweet man. He had a church in his home, which was only about 400 square feet. And he had me staying in his home when I went. But he had another job as well. He worked in a dockyard. And in order to get to the dockyard, he had to take two trains. Well, everyone in his church was thinking about what kind thing can I do to the next poor person I see. And in Mumbai, there are a lot of poor people. One lady was saying, I'm giving ice cream to prostitute. So sweet. Another one says, I'm giving bolt of cloth to children. So nice. Not John's gospel, but a bolt of cloth. You understand better. And so this pastor was thinking, well, what can I do? And he had to change trains. He just had five minutes, and he started talking to some people who slept on the platform. And this lady kept saying to him, will you come and see my husband? Because he's very sick. He's very sick. And he said, I'm really sorry, but my train's coming. I don't have time. And one day he thought, well, I will this time. I'll catch another train. And I'll go to her, and I'll go visit her husband. And so he came to her, and he said, well, I'm going to come and visit your husband now. And she said, you're too late. He's just died. And this Indian pastor sat down, and he put his hands in his head, and he wept, and he wept, and he cried for half an hour. Too late. When he opened his eyes, there was a circle of men sitting around him, and they were all weeping. That's all he did. He wept for those who weep. Nobody had ever wept with them before. That's all he did. And from that day onwards, that man could do anything for those people. Many came to believe in his Jesus. He visited the people that lived behind the platform. He took medicine to a child every day, even Sunday, to a child who couldn't sit 18 months, couldn't even sit two weeks. He took vitamins and medicine every day in case, if he took a week's supply, it crumbled. He prayed for the child, and after a few weeks, the child could sit and now can walk. So many wonderful miracles, and he asked us to come. And our guys came, our guys who speak no English, and they worshipped on the platform. And as our guys worshipped on the platform with their guitar, some Hindu men walked by. They were addicts. And as they walked by and our guys were worshipping, those two Hindu men had a vision of Jesus, came to Christ, came to live with the pastor, and came off drugs. You think, didn't our guys do great? No. It was easy. We just went in what the pastor had done. All he'd done was to weep. You can do something for the next one you see, but maybe we need to ask God to open our eyes that we might see, for it would be awful to pass by. And on that day, when he comes back, and we have to answer for our lives, and he says, well done, you fed me and you clothed me. And the sheep say, when did we see you naked? When did we visit you? We didn't see you. And he says, when you did it for the least, you did it for me. See, Jesus might be outside in one of the tents, or Jesus might be in the gents crying. You don't know. You see, you better not pass by because it might be him. And he said to the goats, depart. I'm afraid, he said, depart to a terrible place, because when I was hungry, you didn't feed me. When I was thirsty, you didn't give me to drink. You didn't visit me in prison. We didn't see you, Lord. If we'd known you were in prison, we'd have visited you, Jesus. And he says, depart. I never knew you. What you didn't do to the least, you didn't do to me. I'm just repeating scripture. So, shall we pray that we could do something for the next one we see? Please stand. Worship leader, we're going to pray for eyes. We actually don't need the whole band, and this is how we're going to start the praying. We'll start it in the worship. Lord, open our eyes, because the Lord said in Revelation, if we claim to see, but we're blind, what a shame. And he said, ask therefore, that he might put eye ointment, eye salve, that we may see. It would be better to say, Lord, I have been blind. Many of us in the church have been blind. We haven't seen you. We haven't seen our neighbor. We haven't seen the lost. We've had our eyes in the wrong place. Please open our eyes. And in the first instance, it's eyes to see him, eyes to see heaven, eyes to see a better country, another city.