In this sermon, the speaker addresses the issue of being exposed to negative influences, such as inappropriate content on television. He emphasizes the importance of being mindful of what we watch and the impact it can have on our minds. The speaker also mentions a personal experience of being persuaded to watch a movie that contained violent scenes. He encourages Christians to respond to challenges by staying true to their beliefs and values, and to communicate their faith through various means, such as literature and personal example. The sermon concludes with the reminder that as believers, we have the power of Jesus Christ within us to overcome any obstacles and fulfill our goals and aims.

Thank you. Rodney, could you just come up and... It's just to show that I'm not the only one getting this vision to use these globes. Somebody sent me this postcard. I thought we could, you know, pass it around. You know, it just shows the vision is catching on in some unexpected places. And that'll be an encouragement to some of you, you know, who are a little slow and need encouragement. Also, Stuart McAllister is such an extra distributor. I wonder if you could distribute this. We gave this out in an envelope to many of you, but if you didn't get a copy of our little international coordinating team newsletter, just a plain vanilla newsletter, we'd like you to have that. Just raise your hand. Most people have this if you're leaders, but if you don't, perhaps raise your hand or just pass it around. Because I think sometimes we forget that the priority purpose of a prayer letter, whether it's full color, that's one of the most brilliant things we produced this year, the India Department. There's hardly any of these left, by the way. I've got a few private copies in case you missed it. Thirty years in OM India with these terrific photos. I mean, anyone who ever throws that away, I would have thought really needed some counseling. But it's such an encouragement. But the purpose of a prayer letter is still to mobilize prayer. And so though this is a simple letter, it's got some urgent prayer requests. And I'd like to just for a moment just focus on some things that really are my heart for prayer, not in order of importance, but one of them is Bill Drake. Bill Drake and his wife coming into OM is a miracle. In 35 years, we've had hardly any professional musicians ever attracted to our movement and stay more than a summer. Now, Bill has not the kind of guy that's running around with a big head, if you know his background. And he and I are bonded like cement because we're both such needy, struggling, doubting characters. And we've been ministering now for a year and a half or two. And he's come back. It's a bigger step for his wife and him to come back to a house that was in the middle of major repairs. And he soon launches out to Belgium, to Denmark, South Africa, Northern Ireland. They have two children. And I believe Bill is going to be one of our really key ordeas recruiters in the years to come. For us not to be just overjoyed with this answer to prayer would indicate some brand of schizophrenia, which I'm hoping is disappearing. But he needs our prayers. You know, if someone came to me next year by a slip of the tongue and said, boy, isn't it great Bill Drake is just doing so much better at recruiting than you are. I tell you, that would bring such joy to my heart. Because number one, my first burden in the next few years is not firstly my own personal recruiting agenda. And the little I can accomplish through that is to work through a network of recruiters. And between Perry and I and others, we hope to build up literally a list, a functional list, of thousands of missionary mobilizers and recruiters. Some of you are about to sign up. An item of praise is this magazine. I've studied Time Magazine since I was 14 years old in high school and took a course in which I had to read this. Don't always agree with everything. And they did publish one of my comments some time ago. Tony Campala then wrote me and asked if I'd work together with him in New Jersey because my article to Time may have been Newsweek. I get both. But I was so thrilled to see Time featuring Billy Graham. Unfortunately, the European edition didn't have him on the cover. It had the blood crisis in Germany on the cover. But the inside was a phenomenal full picture of Billy Graham and a huge article. There's the photo. And I just praise God that the man that helped bring me to Christ has stayed out of the cesspool of immorality, has stayed out of the nuthouse of financial fooling around, and is still married to the same woman and has been an example of godliness all of my life since I started studying about him two years before my conversion. Billy Graham, 75. There are a few of these hard to get souvenir issues. I bought them extra that are available. That's an item of praise. I wanted to give some other prayer requests, but I'm very conscious of time. So let me move on and touch those perhaps as I go. I wanted to just introduce a relatively new magazine and tell you about this group that we are networking with. It's Ted Bear and this is his movie guide. Now we need to realize, I know all of you already do actually, the power of the media through cinema and movie. This is going to increase through CD-ROM. The type of pornography now that's coming over a PC is worse than you can pick up on a video. Video moved pornography in Europe, I believe, at least 50% more than what it was. And I'm in constant regular contact with people hooked on pornography. It's awesome. And I know some of you are battling with pornography, as I do. And I hope that you'll not be in the dark about it. It's so easy to be watching even a newscast on television. Suddenly you switch a channel and there it is. And if you're like me, sometimes you just don't get it turned off in the first few seconds as you should. You may think it's harmless, but it creates a rut in your mind. And the more that water trickles through that rut or that sludge, the deeper the ditch. Well, that's not the main burden of this magazine. This magazine is to show good movies that we as Christians can recommend. Ted, only by a miracle of God, will last another year. He's just lost his biggest donor. People don't subscribe to this because it's $2 an issue. Christians are not that interested in the media. And I'd ask you to pray for him because it may all go under. He is in touch with the top producers in Hollywood. And there are things happening in answer to prayer in Hollywood and in the cinema world, both in England and other places. And I hope that, again, we can do much more in film and video. Just like this little skit tonight was so powerful. Five years from now, four years from now, you won't remember a lot of the other things said here. But probably something from that skit will stick. And I just praise God for the increase of mime and drama. I'm a Mr. Bean fan and loaned one of those out to Fritz the other night. I heard some tremendous laughter coming from the upper chamber of the house I'm living in. But I estimate with some of you, a little development and, you know, we wouldn't need Mr. Bean. But you'd have to, you know, look at that to see what that means. I'm excited about what we're into in these days. And I know all of us, as we go from here, our burden is how do we implement this? Where do we go from here? I want to make sure I didn't lose my notes, my keynotes. I've got lots of notes, but these are the final ones. So I put them in my pocket. Because I really believe God has put this burden on my heart. I know you're on information overload. And it's not easy to speak tonight. I think I do know why you're in OM. I think most of you, if not all of you, are in OM because you love Jesus and you believe in his word. It's not an ego trip. And what I've read about power and about ego, about leaders going astray, it just makes me just shrivel inside and say, Lord, I just want to stay a million miles away from all of it. I believe real leadership is a daily crucifying experience. We're constantly having to do things we don't want to do. We constantly have to go to places we don't want to go. And we will be often misunderstood. Some of it, of course, will be our own fault. Other times, it'll be other factors. One of the latest books I've just started to read is called Don't Let the Jerks Get the Best of You. These books are not available yet because, you know, I'm censoring them first. Don't believe that. But some of you remember years ago, Joyce Landorf came out with a brilliant book called Irregular People. Unfortunately, she was shot down by adultery shortly after that and left the ministry for a couple of years. She is back, by the way, in ministry. God is using her. This is a similar book about irregular people. The wording may be too strong for Europe, though this is a British edition. But it's basically advice for dealing with difficult people. Our experience as an OM is that one difficult person can cause you more grief and more problems than 40 other people all put together. And you may feel that you've got some jerks in your life or some irregular people. I think as you read the book further, you will discover that you may be the jerk in somebody else's life. So it looks like an exciting book, new leadership book. We've suddenly been deluged with leadership books. I still read them because I find so much gold in other people's material. Developing the Leader Within You. Wonderful, meaningful help for everyone at every rung of the leadership ladder. I don't even like the term, but it has a good intro by Ted Engstrom and it looks to me like a very strategic book. How do we respond to this challenge of this week? This is awesome. How do we respond to these decisions we've made as we go from here? Some of us within the next few weeks will be alone in different places. We won't be with a crowd. Fort won't be playing the music. Rodney won't be chairing the meeting. You'll be alone. And I know if you're single, that's probably a bigger battle than most of us face who are married. Some of the people I've come to esteem the most in this world are single people. From William McDonald in California to John Stott in London to other people that are not famous at all, but who have been my close friends and who battle singleness from the female side or the male side. Some of you know I also have very close friends, probably get in trouble for saying this, who are basically struggling with homosexuality. And I consider homosexuality one of the greatest challenges facing the Church of Jesus Christ today. To sort of pretend or to lay the homosexuality problem to one side is to be out of contact with reality, with what's happening, with churches splitting, with all kinds of things that are happening, just in connection with that one thing, which is just one of a hundred things we're wrestling with in the Church of Jesus Christ, trying to be on the cutting edge and building the kingdom. I wanted to take a moment to thank every one of you for your commitment. Maybe you don't need a word of thanks from me. I've written to most of you this year, and I certainly do appreciate you. I don't have to fake that. I don't have to act. Just being here and being with you is very challenging to me and to my wife. It's frustrating here, but I've learned to live with frustration. I hope you will as well, because I believe the frustration level in O.M. will actually increase in the next few years. And I remember a great Asian preacher pointing out that when we're relational, his name was Ajit Fernando from Sri Lanka, speaking at WEF in Manila, when we're relational, it gets very messy, and there's bound to be a lot of frustration. And you think of what our brother, who may at one minute be the great star preacher at Urbana, has gone through in Sri Lanka. Very few people actually know what he has had to go through in Sri Lanka in the past couple of years. The anti-Christian drive in Sri Lanka right now is greater than it has ever been before in history. It is very ugly. They are comparing Christians, putting them on the level of the Tamil Tigers, and say these two scourges, the Sinhala people, not the Tamils, these two scourges are destroying our Buddhist culture. And it's in the newspapers, and it's very heavy. This is happening in other parts of the world. Somebody just gave me this article about 300 Afghans who are now Christians. This is in the Peshawar newspapers just recently. If you've seen the article, you probably gave it to me. But when you read that, you think what a pack of lies so much of this is. But to be a newspaper reporter in many of these places and to write stories, you don't actually have to be very committed to the truth. And that's not a shot against journalists because there are many great journalists who are committed to the truth. Some of them die for it out in the front lines in Bosnia. But a lot of journalists are looking for a story. They may be anti-Christian. And that article I just read about Christian work there among the Afghans is quite scary. And I'm sure when some of you out in your fields start reading what's hitting the press, in Western Europe we have a different kind of attack from Satan through the media, but it can be very unnerving. When you're no longer a big group with great primitives, you're just on your own somewhere and you can feel that it's just too much. There is a danger that we could go from here really overwhelmed. That's a danger for me. To get back to England and get on the golf course and try to forget the whole thing. Fritz and I were both sharing after we played tennis this morning that it's probably the only two hours we just played once in the beginning of the week and once in the end. I lost both times, bless the Lord. But it was probably the only time this week, except when we were dead asleep, that we weren't thinking, thinking on something or reacting to something. You should be at the breakfast table at Fritz's house with Tony Kirk and me and Bertil comes in. I thought we were going to launch some kind of a missile, but it was actually wonderful. I'm sure a lot of the great times here were the times behind the scenes, over lunch. Walking alone together, it's exciting. But we could possibly go from here sensing, especially for our particular field, a sense of being overwhelmed. How am I going to make this happen in my field? I sat in the first part of the European regional meeting here yesterday and we could feel the awkwardness of it, couldn't we? That's so normal. Don't be intimidated if occasionally you have meetings in which you feel awkward, you feel intimidated, you feel you're not getting anywhere. We are human beings. No one can take this kind of information overload challenge and not at times feel awkward and intimidated. But as we press on, reacting biblically, compassionately in a Christlike way and making strong use of the Word of God, I believe we can make it through victoriously this great adventure in which we are now involved. I wanted to especially also just incorporate here a word of thanks to all the members and especially the leaders. One of the few teams in the world that has more leaders than I think we have recruits and followers, including long-term people who aren't necessarily in leadership, though they have leadership gifts, and we're not intimidated by that. But God has given us a fighting team. I do not think in any way this team is somehow some bureaucratic, fat, organizational thing. This is a fighting task force, strike force operation. Not easy to understand, and I think you'll discover in the future as you begin to read about massive changes in management that in some ways we're already there. That's the latest business week, the Horizontal Corporation. And as I was reading through that, it would take a lot of study just to understand it. You've got seven pages and incredible diagrams and charts in here on the Horizontal Corporation. You will, I think, discover that in some ways we are already there. Let me just show that one little chart, the Horizontal Corporation. We're not going to be intimidated by such things to just copy the world and the companies of the world, but we can learn something. One thing I learned from reading a lot of business material is just what my business and professional people are up against. And believe me, brothers and sisters, our people in secular jobs who are providing the money for us, supporting us, their job is often tougher than ours. We should not have any problem esteeming these people if we really have our heads screwed on. Some of these men and women that I'm in touch with would pay big money to be here this week and be in on this. Gordon Stanley, a businessman who's on the board in the States, was just sharing with me before the meeting just, you know, the privilege and the joy, forget how he expressed it, of being here and wishing more of our USA board members could be here. And that's one of the goals of Network 94. Now, to become a little more focused, I want to urge that we respond by using the Scriptures. As we think of different things, struggles, visions, goals, aims, I think it would be good in the weeks to come to find Scriptures in our Bible study that are linked with these things. We haven't actually done that so much during these seven days. Most of us haven't sat here with our Bibles open, quoting Scriptures that Peter made and we're reading Scriptures. I'm not saying that's wrong, because everything we're doing at OIM, I believe, is built on the Scriptures. But I think as now you have time to go from here, you may want to open your Bibles and respond using the Scriptures to the things that come to your heart and to your mind. So I was doing this in preparation for this message tonight. And I want to just share what God has given me from the Scriptures as I struggle and battle and attempt to do God's will in my life and in my family. The first Scripture that came to my mind as I feel overwhelmed and weak is found in 2 Corinthians. You already know my struggle sometimes to find Scriptures. I'm going to ask your forgiveness that I'm using my old Bible that I got the day Greg Livingston and I got off the ship in Bombay, or I got shortly after that because that's when I lost my Bible. In other words, this is the King James or authorized version. Most of you have modern translations, which I generally preach from. But just to help me be a little more relaxed and for a number of other reasons, I'm going to read from this particular famous old Bible. And I want to start with that passage in 2 Corinthians about His grace being sufficient that all of you have preached on so many times. Twelfth chapter, ninth verse. He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee. This is after Paul prayed for the thorn in the flesh to go three times. An amazing passage. One of the things that thrills me, and I'm going to inject a lot of little things, but they'll be brief. I'm not going to go as long as the other night, so please relax. I've got a two-hour car journey after here to get ready for a church meeting in the morning. But I'm going to inject things. I was so encouraged by all the notes that you all took the other night. I'll be using that as an illustration all over the world. It did cost me a lot, but it's worth it. And I've discovered quite a few people didn't take those notes because, you know, we made that little offer. They just take notes all the time. And I find that so encouraging because I think a lot that we receive this week, from all sides, not me, it needs review. And I certainly will be reviewing again and again the material that I have received here. And I, of course, am still listening to the tapes from Hyderabad. I'm about halfway through. And I wish I could talk to each one of you who gave messages because it seems to me some of you got a few bugs in your bonnet, but that's normal for preachers, including me. But what a blessing to listen to those cassette tapes. So I just wanted to inject that I think one of the beautiful things in OM is how we keep together people who have different views on this whole healing issue. I mean, we really do have a wide range of views. And how we work together, it's beautiful. It's going to continue to be a difficulty because it's an area where the Church has never agreed. Almost every other month we have a book on each camp coming out, shooting up the other camp to some degree. And one of the things I like about OM, including OM 1994, is people are reading a wide range of books. It really is quite amazing. He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee. My strength is made perfect in weakness. Do you believe that? We do feel weak as we face these challenges. I mean, I certainly do. I mean, the area leaders could call an emergency meeting tonight and I'd be out with joy. There'd be some pain. But I am ready to turn over the mantle of the international leadership of this movement. I think the early 60s is a normal retirement time. India being 59 doesn't mean you leave the ministry, but it means you turn the mantle of your particular job over to others. And I don't think it's wrong for us to be praying and thinking concerning that, even though it may be some years down the road, the years pass very, very quickly. And I feel God has already been preparing me for that. Meanwhile, let me say this. I believe it is a mistake to go around continuing to parrot that OM is field-led because it is basically a nonsense statement now within OM. It has left its original meaning. The original meaning came from Hudson Taylor and OMF, that OMF was field-led. It meant they led the work from within China. Hudson Taylor, if you know anything about OMF, very strong mandate on the general director to this day. OMF is still field-led because it's led by a man named Pickard, David Pickard, and he leads it from Singapore, which is the field. Not led from England, where they all came from in the beginning. That was the very beginning. Then they came from many other countries. And we had this concept, and wherever I was, that's where I was leading the work and then we were leading the work. From the very beginning, I don't think, and you can research OM's history, there was any dictatorship going on. It was a consensus thing, hyper-pragmatic, where I generally consult with the person who was closest to the particular action on a particular area. So if it was France, you can be sure back in those days I was talking with Mike Evans and probably he had two votes for every one that I had. It was leadership by persuasion. Needless to say, it was leadership. I'm a little concerned about the poor fellow, or bless his heart, who has to step into my shoes because it is a little easier for the founding director than it is for the next person. And I feel it is important to understand that OM still has dynamic leadership from myself and Peter Maiden as a team, and then from our area leaders, and then from our field leaders. Now some years ago, people grabbed on this field-led thing to talk about their own field, and of course it was partly true. We want a high percentage. This is why some things always need definition. We want a high percentage of the leadership and the action and everything to come from within the different countries. But it doesn't mean that it's just totally field-led in an isolated way, so that in a sense that guy, when something comes internationally, can have a take-it-or-leave-it sort of attitude, which brings arrogance and confusion and disunity. And if we're going to put one of our core values up as glorifying God, then the last thing we want is a breakdown of this unity God has given us, with different fields going in different directions, backbiting and gossiping against other fields, proud that they do it so differently. They're not going to be pushed around by anybody. I've actually heard people even say that, praise God, not much. It's partnership. Those of us on an international level, even more than those days when we were more extreme and more gung-ho than today, we just want to serve. We even wanted to change the name of our coordinating team to International Service Team. It would sound like a petrol station. But we want to serve. And OM's ethos of leadership is servant leadership. But that doesn't mean we're wimps. That doesn't mean we won't come down hard on somebody when we see immorality and sin or wives being mistreated or any of that kind of thing. OM in the future will need leadership as much as today. Boards will become more active. The history of Christian organizations is that in some cases whole boards have gone astray and have come unglued because it is spiritual warfare. It's the counterbalance, the field leader, the board, the recruits, together with the area leaders and Peter and I, I believe, and who follows in our steps, that can somehow find that balance. So when we come out with our one-liners, and I know we love them, I think we should give definitions so that we don't confuse people or so that the enemy cannot get in through that. Needless to say, in all of this, it's not going to be easy. I personally believe in the 90s it is going to be more difficult to maintain the relationships. I've been trying to get a little time with at least 50% of the people here. I have a rather funny way of seeing people. Maybe I should plan it more ahead. Maybe I should have people arrange appointments. One or two did that. I can tell you some of the people I've wanted to see the most here for personal sharing I have not seen. That is one of the hardest things for me to live with, if you know my background. And I've so enjoyed personal fellowship. Even to get away from the crowd, not because of the food, because that is not my big thing at OM conferences in either direction, but in a couple cases I went down with an individual brother to a little restaurant, a little fish place I found, just to get away from the crowd and the noise and be alone. And that might be the only half an hour I have this year with that brother. If you think that's easy to live with, well, maybe we ought to have a chat where you can write me a letter. But I believe his grace is sufficient. These complexities of being so large, the difficulty of getting time to maintain those relationships at a level that we want. Have you ever found that the way things are going, the size of OM, the fast lane of OM, the idealism of OM, that you're with someone and you'd like an hour with them and all you have is five minutes, and you're trying to say in the five minutes what you need an hour for. I must confess I have hurt people and miscommunicated to people because that's sometimes the way my mind works. I'm trying to condense and share, and I've been amazed to find out later it was a miscommunication, especially sometimes when it's on the phone. On the phone we really try to condense, right? Because we're watching these unit machines. They should all blow up and go into the ocean. I only made one call on this unit machine. It was an urgent call, a crisis situation with a church. It was at 150 units. I don't know what they're worth, but it didn't sound too good. They looked too good. This is why I believe one of the next major passages we need to go to is 1 Corinthians 13. But before we turn there, let me just read the rest of the verse. Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Let your heart feed on that verse. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses. For Christ's sake, when I am weak, then I am strong. How many of us are willing to stand on that passage of Scripture? We talk about core values. Boy, I tell you, probably several of them are in that one passage. And this is the heartthrob of O.M. The heartthrob of O.M. is an extraordinary, almost, in the minds of others, fanatic commitment to Scripture. And, of course, this is going to be laughed at through the media, through religious people, more than ever. You know, it's been very exciting for me the last three years to meet every year with one of my mentors, John Stott. We somehow have got a linking, though we're so different. I mean, I must amuse him beyond imagination. He certainly doesn't need a Mr. Bean video with me coming in on him. But this is an amazing man, also 75 years of age. And he is an Anglican, a very committed Anglican. And he sees the unbelief that comes into the Anglican system, people denying basic truths, and he actually sits down face-to-face with some of these people, like the Jenkins, is it Jenkins, from the North. He's had personal time confronting this man some time ago. And I just thank God for those men and women who have been faithful to the Scriptures. Because my faith, without them, I wouldn't have made it. I thank God that there's no necessity for intellectual suicide to be a Bible-believing, evangelical follower of Jesus Christ. We're all different. We all have different struggles. Brothers and sisters, those of you who study theology, as I have now since I was 16, I don't say that jokingly. There are some tough issues. John Stott now would like to be known on this annihilation issue that he has been so clobbered because of, that he has moved into an agnostic position. He is not an annihilationist, so he doesn't want to be called that. He doesn't want to be known as that. But in that difficult area, this godly man at present told me that his position on that issue is one of agnosticism. He doesn't know. It's a tough issue. I wanted to actually speak to some degree this evening on the subject of hell. I'm not going to do that, but I believe it is part of O.M.'s strong conviction and doctrinal belief that heaven is for those only saved through the blood of Jesus Christ and personally believe in him, and that all outside of Christ will spend eternity in hell. Billy Graham always described it as outer darkness. I don't think God has given us too many of the details, and surely it's an element of mystery, and we, as it says in the 11th chapter of Romans, are not God's advisors. So I wouldn't recommend getting into that counseling God business. Do not confuse that with counseling people. So the next passage I want to respond with is 1 Corinthians 13. Again, we don't have time to read that whole passage, but we know it is a Mount Everest passage, and what really irks me is that we tend to just presume on this passage. I don't hear that much preaching on it. I've heard Peter Maiden preach on it. But I don't think you can preach too much on 1 Corinthians 13. And it's commitment to 1 Corinthians 13 that's going to keep us together as a body and a fighting force more than our own ingenuity or our own chemistry. That's the big thing today. Because often the key thing is not the situation between a person that you naturally have a chemistry with. Peter Maiden and I have a gift from God in the unity and the chemistry. Whatever words you want to use doesn't mean we always agree, but there is something there. I mean, we've only had a few disagreements over what? It's about 10 years now. I thought we were going to get in a big one over Proverbs. I think my view of inspiration on Proverbs was a little weak once, and you had to jolt me up. Or maybe it was vice versa. No, that's unlikely with you. It is a far greater challenge when you have to work with someone in which there is not the natural rapport. And in my own life, I've had many such privileges. And in God's timing, the chemistry, the ease of relationship often does come. And I believe we've got to work extra hard on the relationships with people that we don't naturally gravitate to. We don't naturally run off and have a supper together. We don't naturally go off and see a movie together. I was working away in my bus at this amazing Christian artist festival. I think it was there. Maybe it was something else. Yeah, it was there. Bill Drake was there and somebody else. Jan van Outen. And they came, hey, let's go to a movie tonight. I wasn't in a movie mood. I like movies, but I wasn't in a movie mood. They came again. You've got to go to a movie. I'd been in the bus all week except I was going through this political course. I don't want to go into that story, but I got into a political course at this arts festival with politicians from different parts of Europe and Eastern Europe, and it was amazing. So a lot of my time when I wasn't speaking or doing that, I was in the bus coach dictating letters. Anyway, they persuaded me to go to this movie. We saw a cliffhanger with Sylvester and this girl dropping to her death in this new computer type of media creation. It's just really, really wild. You don't generally go to a movie with people that you don't particularly get off with. And I would urge you to have social relationship and friendly non-OM strategy talking fellowship with people that you wouldn't normally pick for your social life. We had a fellow leave ICT some years ago. He told me he didn't feel the social life was any good. I think what he meant was that I didn't find him a wife. But anyway, he left. He went to another team, and he didn't last there very long as well, but he is a dear brother. Oh, he is. And ICT probably is weak on social life, surrounded by all these married people and all of their children. 1 Corinthians 13, I believe, is absolute priority for what we want to do in the next few years. I would recommend you meditate and memorize those verses. Let me just read a few, because these verses have clipped my wings and humbled me to the foot of the cross a thousand times over these 38 years, if it's happened once. Love, verse 4, suffereth long. It so concerns me, especially when long-term OMers are impatient with new recruits. We have no authority to just get upset and impatient with these young people because they don't know this principle, they don't know that principle. And I just, when I fail in the area of impatience and I think of this verse, which comes to my mind very quickly, I just have to immediately repent and often apologize. Praise God. It's been less and less over the years because we do grow in grace, but it's not easy for characters like me. Love suffereth long and is kind. Love envieth not. Love vaunteth not itself. It's not puffed up. It doesn't behave itself unseemingly or discourteously. It doesn't seek its own. It's not easily provoked. It is not irritable, is a way of saying that. Thinketh no evil. Rejoiceth not in iniquity. Doesn't rejoice when another man falls, but rejoiceth in the truth. Bears all things. Believeth all things. Hopeth all things. Endureth all things. Love never faileth. That's the kind of response we need to give to all we've heard this week. The response of love. Go back to our teens. Some of them may come on us strong. I read another strong letter that is on our way from one of your lieutenants out there. I believe some of our people will react negatively to some of the things happening because we don't take enough time to sit down and communicate with them because we are human beings and we will often have a lopsided view. I have a two-page heavy letter from one of our prayer partners, major donor against his field director. Pulled one little sentence out of a letter, and he's just got it completely wrong. The sentence is just saying that the office team's first priority isn't evangelism. It's supporting OM. It's sitting in the office, all the things that are happening. That team isn't an evangelistic team. It's just referring to that team. The man must have read the letter quickly. He thinks this guy is saying that evangelism and OM is no longer a priority. He's very upset. Two handwritten pages that I need to sort out. That's what we do, Peter, Mandy, and I, for recreation. Read Proverbs 18 where there's a clear warning against speaking out before you actually know what is being done or what is being said. I will tell you if I had practiced more of that over these years, you'd have a lot more sanctified, sensible, healthy international leader. 1 Corinthians 13 is the kind of response we want. Another response that I want to give is from 1 Peter 5, 7. These responses, by the way, are not just to be spiritual. Nothing wrong with being spiritual. It's good we were told that. But these are responses that we want to have in order to implement and carry out what we have decided to do and will continue to decide. Now, let me be very honest that I do have some fears. I think I wouldn't rate myself as a highly fearful person, but I struggle with fear. Somebody mentioned fear from the pulpit. I almost jumped up and said I'm founding a new subgroup within OM for those who are fearful. And I praise God that His Word has an answer to those of us who struggle with fear. One of the passages, 1 Peter 5, 7, where it says, casting every care upon Him because He careth for you. Don't you love that passage? Is it wrong of me to use certain passages a lot? Am I overusing the Scriptures? Do I have a need in that area? I like to read it in its context because it talks about submission, verse 5, talks about submitting to one another, talks about being clothed with humility. I would love to talk about that for an hour. I don't know if I'm qualified, but I get nervous about some of the things I hear in this movement, really. I don't think people realize it, but we do have a tendency at times to boast about OM. Don't misunderstand me, but I don't believe it's on. Why don't we boast about what God's doing through Youth With A Mission? Why don't we boast about what God has done through Billy Graham, or Luis Palau? Brothers and sisters, OM is just one little tiny part of what our great God is doing. And maybe you want to make OM your focus. Maybe you want to go around boasting about OM. I don't think this is a big thing, so don't misunderstand me. But I tell you, I don't want to get in that league. I can present OM. I can be happy about OM. And I'm sure I've failed and have said things that have sounded like a boast. Apostle Paul had a big struggle in that area. I've been reading something about that lately. God knows our heart. I'm not judging anybody. But our words are the only thing that people sometimes hear. If they don't know all the ethos behind it, they just hear it on a tape. And we need to just walk humbly before God. If He has blessed our work in a particular area, and I speak even of ICT, we just should be so humble about that. We should esteem others better than ourselves. We should talk about what other people are doing, and yet maintain the kind of biblical balance. And I tried to touch on the other night when I dealt with the other problem of people underestimating themselves, not having confidence in God, what He is doing in their lives, and all of that kind of thing, which is so, so important. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God. He will exalt you in due time. It would be good to expand that one. Casting every or all your cares upon Him, He cares for you. The Moffat translation says, it matters for Him about you. I studied just enough astronomy to scare me right out of my mind. And yet the moment I sort of pushed myself back to the Lord, astronomy encourages my faith. I was watching, I hired a video of the latest Star Wars thing. Not Star Wars, Star Trek. And I know we're not allowed to watch this. New age, danger, demons coming out of the television. I believe some of that's exaggerated rubbish. But anyway, I was watching Star Trek, and of course it shows the galaxies and the black holes and what they're seeing. Isn't it amazing these guys have gone up there and fixed that telescope? Do you ever get challenged by secular people? Do you only get challenged by Christians? If that's the case, you must be ill. Because I tell you, some of these people, what they do, it challenges me. And I love to write letters to them and say, hey, that was great. And here's a book that might help you understand what it's all about. I tell you, if you want any money to send books to VIPs, astronauts, presidents, King Tut or Elizabeth Taylor or whatever her name is now, boy, I'll be happy to supply the finance. First Peter 5-7, casting every care upon him. He careth for you. We've got to go out of here not mainly drawing upon the high energy of OM, because we're operating in this place at a high octane level during this week. We've got to go out of here ready to draw on the energy of the Lord himself. And that is miraculous. And it's sad that sometimes we as evangelicals, and I consider myself sort of an evangelical with a strong charismatic twitch, we don't speak enough about the Holy Spirit. It's just so weird. We can talk about world missions and not talk about the Holy Spirit. Look at 1 Corinthians, I mean Acts 13. Look at Acts 12. I mean, every other page of the book of Acts, it's the Holy Spirit. And I think OM is, by God's grace, going to be able to maintain the balance between what we get from the consultants and what we get from the Holy Ghost. And if that sounds a little Pentecostal, that's too bad for you. And I personally feel more relaxed preaching in the Pentecostal churches than I do with a lot of frozen evangelical fighting fundamentalists who are trying to hit me on the head with the Bible every time I tell a joke. And I love the fundamentalists as well. Casting every care upon Him because He cares for you. God's love, God's grace. In Him is all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, the Alpha and Omega, the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings. Not just when we're worshiping with our hands in the air and the music, but in those moments when we're down, we feel alone, we feel rejected, we're broke, and whatever else can go wrong within our families, within our team, somehow our spirituality as leaders will no longer be dependent on circumstances, but will be dependent on Christ Himself, who is the same today, yesterday, and forevermore. He is not blown about by circumstances. And many of our teams and our offices are struggling these days, if we're really honest. And I think the message we ought to take to all of them, I shared this message at one office some months ago, there was tremendous response, people just in that hour were just set free from things that were just dragging them down. And it's the message that circumstances must not dictate our spirituality. Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, that's what dictates our spirituality and our walk with Him. And when I think of some of the frontline people, we're all on the frontline in one sense, when I pick up the phone and talk to Craig Shugart out there in Pakistan, still battling cancer to some degree, when I receive letters from some of the people like Clint in Alexandria, people out on the Afghan border, people out in Bangladesh, I must say I don't have any problem esteeming those people better than myself. And I think those of us in the home fields, we must be willing to lay down our lives for those that are out in the trenches. Yes, we're already in the trenches, but we don't need that message right now. Because generally speaking, humanly speaking, it is a lot tougher in many of those situations. Most of us in our home fields, we have more creature comforts, to say that that is irrelevant is ridiculous. We are human beings. And those creature comforts and the facilities we have, they do help us. They enable us somehow to survive. And we hear stories from the field of people who are in difficult cross-cultural situations, facing difficult health questions, having their joints broken, driving into potholes in Mozambique. I don't think it's wrong to realize that these people do have, humanly speaking, and maybe spiritually, but that is very pan or global. You can have a spiritual warfare intensive in Bromley as well as Bombay. But humanly speaking, and we don't want to be super spiritual, so we have to at times speak that way, some of these people are really out there against all odds. They're not walking out their front door and leading someone to Jesus Christ in some of these countries, as we can do in some of our countries. They've been out there some of them for years and haven't seen a real convert go on. Let's esteem these people. Let us count it. I know many of some of you are from those situations, but I'm speaking a little bit from where I am right now. Let us count it a privilege to be involved in this fellowship, despite its warts and its weaknesses. And let us count it a privilege to serve these brothers and sisters. Let's meet them at the airport when they come back. And let's take them out for pizza or ice cream. And let's just demonstrate red carpet treatment for our missionaries, including the guy who may be only in the work a year or two. I know that's hard. I know we'll fail. Let's do like Avis and compete, I think, with Hertz Reniker, or maybe they've changed their slogan, but it used to be, we try harder. I guess one of the things that really people like to wind me up, and they found that I just said praise the Lord, is when they say, you know, YWAM has got better hospitality than Operation Mobilization. I said, yeah, I experienced that too. But let's try harder. We're all on the same team. We're all on the same team. And if YWAM is doing better than us in the hospitality area, praise God. If Campus Crusade is winning more people to Jesus Christ than we are, let's not react with something, oh, we know those decisions are real. You know, they're not real. What, you think all your decisions are real? All these things we hear reported about up here? I believe it's such a healthy thing when we can respond that way. Another response is from the book of Corinthians, where it says this treasure is in earthen vessels. Is that in 1 Corinthians 7 or 2 Corinthians 7? Who's going to find it first? It's not in either one of those, right? Ah, verse 7. See, there was a connection. What a blessing this verse has been to me. I know this is in the way of remembrance for you because, again, you probably preached on this text. But it's so important, 2 Corinthians 4, 7, we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. Now, if you listen to only one Burworth series of tapes this year, because I know you certainly don't want to listen to too many of my tapes, but if you listen to some, get the Northwestern series, which, by the way, first time in O.M.'s history in the States, is going to go out through the commercial network, high-quality recordings, fancy albums, picture of me on the album, standing in front of the ship. Some of the facts are a bit wrong. We hope Mike Strachur is going to correct that. Not his fault, but he's going to correct it before it all goes out. But I just gave these messages a few months ago at Northwestern, and for the first time really felt happy. Probably when I listen, I won't be happy, but I felt happy at the time. I was being ministered to by Elizabeth Elliot through some of her tapes during my morning run, and she brought in the importance of humor, and something clicked. Something that's been there for 20 years clicked about how you put culture and discipleship together, how you put ballet and track distribution together. No, I don't mean dancing around giving out tracks. The Northwestern, a thousand students, they just responded in a massive way, and I got this on tape. It's actually four messages. That was just one of them, and I feel somehow the Holy Spirit wants to use that because I feel that it's still a troublesome area within OM. Where does culture fit in? Part of culture is pleasure. Where does pleasure fit into discipleship? Peter Main's message on this at the general council is a historic watershed. I am 98% with him. The other 2% is not important because he's smarter than me, but it's not saying God is not using the book True Discipleship. His message drove me into True Discipleship. I was again recommitting my life reading this book, and I'm inspired to distribute more copies because most of the books we distribute, quite a few of them have cuckoo things, and we still distribute them. But I believe at the same time that what Peter said is very important, very relevant for our movement, but there are a lot of semantic problems, and especially when it's a bit emotional when people have been in OM for 25 years. So you might try those tapes. You might continue to study on your own the whole subject of your own humanity. What does that mean? Tie into that, what does it actually mean to become Christlike? That gets thrown on us, especially at Bible College. We come out of Bible College with our heads swimming at what it is to be Christlike. I don't think any of us think we're Christlike. If you meet anyone at Bible College, at the end who thinks he's Christlike, he's probably got a problem because we're just so aware of our weaknesses and our sins. Christlikeness must include human weakness. It must include personality quirks. I go to preach at this big church in Bristol, and I meet this friend. I'll just call him Fernandez. They use a pseudonym. I don't want to offend him. He came on OM. I think he's the one where the church contacted the office and said, you know, we really didn't know what to do with this guy. I mean, really. So we sent him on OM. So sincere, but his communication skills would be rather low, to be gracious. He went back, and he got turned down. When he applied for the year program, he was turned down. You see, characters like me that go back to these churches, we meet these people every time we go back. He doesn't have a job. He doesn't have a wife. But he's got Jesus. And I will tell you, the one-talent guy, in some ways has got less problems in life than some of you people with your five and seven and ten talents. And when you stand before God, if you've got ten talents, he's not going to ask you about the one. He's going to ask you about the tenth or the seventh or the ninth. That's scary. And I tell you, I have such a love for the losers. And I hope OM will never get to the place where we're sort of one-up on disabled people. We're one-up on people who can't communicate. We don't have time for people that maybe aren't strategic thinkers and strategic planners. There are prayer partners, brothers and sisters, that will not make head nor tails of what we've been doing here this week. You go back to your local church with this big blue book. Peter can try there at his church just to test it out. And I will tell you, you will get yourself in a communication jungle that may take a considerable time to get out. So contextualization is a key word, even in what we're into right now. What a challenge those words are. This treasure is in earthen vessels. Tied in with this, I give this plea. As we're attempting to improve in every area, as our idealism is flowing as much as ever in the history of the movement, let us not at the end of the day come out with many words in which we will promise people that which in the end we can't come up with. Whether it's counseling or evangelism or training, all of these things we talk about, because my experience with the Church of Jesus Christ, try not to misunderstand this, is a lot of disillusionment and a lot of disappointment. And several new books have just been published, I've just started reading, just of the testimonies of people who have left the church totally disappointed, expecting all this, and maybe they were told by the evangelist or the visiting healer, and it didn't happen. They wouldn't be writing all these books packed with testimonies. One of them is headed for a bestseller if this wasn't happening. The last thing we want is for that to happen in O.M. We know it's already happened. We hope only to a small degree. I want to then also respond with Ephesians 6. I'm not going to turn to it because you've memorized it or you know it. Put on the whole armor of God, the sword of the Spirit, the shield of faith. Surely as we go from here, that is so simple, that is so basic. I want to go on record that I do believe today a lot of the teaching that comes under the name of spiritual warfare is often off-balance and doesn't give the full picture. Spiritual warfare is not just a particular aspect of praying in particular situations. Spiritual warfare, to me, starts the moment you are born again and covers all the aspects of living for Jesus Christ. Again, we sometimes use such powerful rhetoric that the average person, the average church, does not understand what we're going on about. We've got to contextualize some of our missiological ideas, spiritual warfare ideas. Otherwise we will start something or propagate something that will look cultic to quite a few people. I have been asked to give seminars on spiritual warfare in audiences with 85% of the people charismatic and my other speaker, I remember specifically, was Dean Sherman, YWAM's expert on spiritual warfare. At the end they gave a standing ovation and expressed how what we were saying completely dovetailed together to give them what they felt was a sensible seminar on spiritual warfare. I almost fell over because we, of course, were very different in our approach. But we in OM are committed to spiritual warfare from the moment of a man's conversion. We want to teach them how to wear that armor. We want to teach them defensive prayer, offensive prayer. We want to teach them praise warfare. Now we have prayer walking. There's just so much. The Christian life is just so much. That's why I believe we need each other more than we imagine because I don't believe God gives anybody everything. It is teamwork, biblically, in every possible way. One of the things I would especially urge you to put your armor on in regard to standing against the fiery darts of the evil one is the fiery dart of unforgiveness and bitterness. I want to ask you tonight, are you keeping score of evil things done against you? Things spoken against you, gossip against you, whatever. Are you keeping score of that? I don't believe that's right. If you feel that's right, you can write and send me the scripture. Don't keep score. Don't keep score of the hurts that O.M. has inflicted. You know one of my greatest concerns as we go from here and I really wish some of you had, more of you had brought your wives. I know that's a problem. I'm not judging anybody. But I want to tell you, those of you who are here without your wife, if you don't go in a sensible, contextualized way to share carefully with her what you sense God is doing, listening to her, then you're playing the fool. And I fear that some of our wives, if we're not careful, are going to go on strike. They're going to say, yeah, you can stay in O.M. but I'm not in this thing. I don't understand it. Or maybe they've been hurt by it. You must minister to your own wife. I remember years ago my wife in her effort to be honest with me, a husband not easy to be honest and open with because I'm so reactionary. It's ridiculous. She said, and it's a long time ago, you seem to be ministering to everybody else. Do you think you could minister to me a little bit? And she wasn't talking at that stage of a back rub. She was talking about spiritual ministry. When you go from here and minister to your wife, it's not going to be a one-hour process, my friend. It's going to take a day, two days. It's going to take an ongoing process. I believe that in Operation Mobilization, we still don't have it together in connection with the women's issue and how to esteem women, how to bring them more into leadership, develop their giftedness. And I want to thank you women for your tremendous patience. These things aren't easy. We have top leaders writing books. You know, leadership is male. These are theological issues. I had a phone call from somebody from another ministry two nights ago that this guy is in a rage because he's in a ministry where the woman is the leader, and he feels she's a dictator. I'm not that many women dictators, but I guess, and I don't think that woman is actually. It's a tough issue. We have made some real gains, but we got a long way to go. Are we going to go from here and patiently enable our women, wives, single women, and of course all the others to really take ownership of this? It's not going to be easy. It's not easy. It's going to take listening. It's going to take time. And I just beg of you to make sure that as you go that in your own heart there's no root of bitterness that's going to come out in the midst of the challenging situations you'll face. And that you have forgiven those who have sinned against you even as Jesus Christ has forgiven us. Is that not the scripture? It's a hilarious thing. It's a joyful thing not to have things against people. And I believe that's the way we want to go. I believe our core values paint that out. That of course is tied in to the next way that I want to respond. I want to respond in unity. That was one of the strongest emphases in the early days of the work. Do you remember those old orientation tapes? Boy someday they will really be relics. Those things will sell for 200 quid a cent. But those orientation tapes are worth listening to if you can find them because there's so much scripture. And you will find that that emphasis on unity, which was one of the most extreme strong emphasis that no one ever sort of later complained about. Some of the other emphases like on warfare you know we complained some complained on. But that hell, that principle God gave me way back before I went to Bible college in my physics class. I was bored with physics and I went through the physics book writing all these scriptures. Then I got that big old piece of paper which I had for 25 years and then lost with all the synonyms of love and all the verses connected with love and love and unity on that big paper that completely set the course of my life before I went to Bible college. Unity. Don't we realize how valuable that is? Can you imagine what we've been able to get through during this week? Do you know how strong minded some of the people are in this room? And to see some of these people including myself just willing to quiet down and say well let's go for it. It's a miracle. What we have here is a miracle. If you don't think that's a miracle then I don't know how you can go around talking about the Holy Spirit as supernatural because it's clear in the scripture that one of the greatest works of the Holy Spirit is to bring God's people together in unity. Even the Old Testament, how good it is when the brethren, which includes all the sisters dwell together in unity. Exciting. We want to respond in unity. Many other scriptures I could share. I was picking up an issue of Moody Monthly. I had so many things I wanted to bring up here. There it is. Look at that. I've been getting this magazine a long time as well. Judge not. Judge not. Why do we enjoy finding fault with others? I don't need to read the article. I thank God I actually don't enjoy it but I think there was a period in my life that I may have and I think I still fall. But I believe we by our very ethos and Satan's involved our old nature, whatever you want to call it is involved, we do easily and O.M. develop a critical spirit. If I'm wrong, fine. I know that I at times had a critical spirit. Connected with other organizations. Other people. Less than O.M. and God has just broken me that I must constantly set free from any kind of judgmental or critical spirit. Can you imagine a new recruit coming because he doesn't quite fit our chemistry, our ethos. Within a couple of days, the guy gets bad vibrations. You don't think there are such things in O.M.? Come on. These young people that come to us, they need that love. They need that acceptance. They should not hear leaders, men and women of God criticizing other leaders. That shouldn't be what a new recruit has to listen to. And I've had them share with me. They couldn't believe the conversation they heard between two leaders who are managing to pretty well put another leader in a very bad light. It's not from God. And we can talk about all kinds of high sounding plans and goals and wonderful things and I'm in favor of it. But we've got to be willing to deal with the little foxes that spoil the vine. You know that verse? I guess it gets used out of context, but I like it. It's little things that can make a movement like O.M. sour. And every one of us is responsible. Unity is going to be costly because there's four times as many as there were of us a decade or two ago. We can't have all those lunches, all those relationships, all those walks. Peter Kahneman and I had more time together in the first two years than the previous 25. And even our wives don't get time with us because of the constant pressure of the people of God. And I don't think we should be blown away by that because the Apostle Paul was so overwhelmed by the pressure, the struggles, the things going wrong at one point, and we have it in the Scriptures, he despaired of his own life. So I don't think when we're going through these struggles and we're not able to always get here or get there to resolve them that we should allow Satan to condemn us. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Then I believe we should respond with a commitment to the truth. We often speak from 1 John, especially chapter 3, I pretty well wore it out, but if you look at 2 John, you'll see some neglected verses. 2 John, the neglected part of Scripture, which is, I guess you realize this Bible is falling apart. Don Valboom has often offered to bind this up. Maybe I should give it to Don because all the pages are coming out, falling apart. The elders unto the elect lady and her children whom I love in the truth. Ever heard any sermons on this verse? Not I only, but also all they that have known the truth. For the truth sake which dwelleth in us and shall be with us forever. Grace be with you. Mercy and peace from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father in the truth and love. Isn't it amazing how in OM we have certain ones that seem to emphasize the truth a little more. Nigel Lee used to be one of those. Oh, I praise God for that brother. I just had lunch with him. Now in charge of all student ministries for the whole UCCF in Great Britain. He's got an OM heart as big as the Grand Canyon. But he was stronger than the truth. I think he was in the doctrine committee. That committee actually didn't do too well, but they... As I look at the area leaders, I'll let you a little inside secret. As I look at the area leaders, I tend to, you probably think, I think Peter Maiden is Mr. Truth. But I think more of Dennis Wright. Dennis Wright in the recent years, he's got that Dr. Gooding teaching and got a hold for the truth. And I think of Bertil Moore as Mr. Spirit. At least he looks more Mr. Spirit. just watch these people in the area leaders meetings. I think it's beautiful. Praise God for some in the ministry who are known charismatics or they seem charismatic. Praise God! Others seem to be, you know, Mr. Evangelical. Some may even be borderline moderate fundamentalists. At least some new recruits. It usually takes a couple years to, you know, repackage. But that will surely get me in trouble if this tape is played at Bob Jones University. That possibility is about as equal to me going out to repair the next space telescope. We are committed to truth. We are committed to balance, to have the fullness of the Holy Spirit and yet not compromise the truth. And one of the favorite words in OM in 94 is the word integrity. I think that's great. This is going to take work. Especially as we get our little news desk. Because that means not only can we push a button and spread truth bingo across the world, we can push the same cotton picking button and send error throughout the whole world. And we'll be reading it, who knows, the next day in the daily mail. This is a big step that we are involved in and I plea with you especially when things are controversial or spectacular which the news media wants or hurtful or complicated in connection with statistics we continue to be conservative. We continue to not call people converts if it's just a profession of faith after an exciting movie and that we try to substantiate things by sending in researchers to see if churches have actually been established. To see if converts have resulted from that particular event who are going on for God even though they may be struggling and they may not have been baptized yet. It may look like a glorified bible study but that's still wonderful. That's wonderful. We don't have to call that something else so that it sells better on the international marketplace or it brings more you know, more bucks because that's not God's way. And I praise God for the person who shared that some of the news that goes out in our news line might be stories of failure and of struggle and of difficulty and of no fruit. I think we're going to get and keep the balance on that and it is very, very exciting. And then lastly, I just want to, since I've always seemingly had trouble finding Timothy, I thought I would just share from Leviticus. laughter You see, Peter, I wasn't in the meeting but my wife was. laughter And you can be sure there is absolutely no offense in telling such stories. You don't have to worry about that. But 2 Timothy chapter 2 one of our old favorites Dale used to just about hit us every week with it. Talks about enduring hardship, but just before that, verse 2, the things that thou hast heard from me, among many witnesses the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also. We got a big job ahead of us. And it's going to take a lot of work. I don't think overwork is the biggest problem in O.M. I think it is probably a big problem for some of you. But on an average I don't think overwork, hard work is healthy. It's worry that destroys. It's bitterness that destroys. Anxiety, and many other things, but hard work followed by good recreation, good sleep, decent diet, hard work is healthy. And we shouldn't be afraid of some of that. And our work can be our worship. Because surely if people can worship with all their heart on a Tuesday night, and on Wednesday they're slouching around the office and cannot get a decent day's work done, or the evangelistic team, where sometimes it's even more difficult, then something has gone wrong in my mind with the worship from the way I read the Bible. We have a lot of work as we go from here and it includes this 2 Timothy 2.2 challenge to give what we've got here to others. And teach them how to give it to others. Don't just give it to others, teach them how to give it to others. And make sure when they teach those how to give it to others, that they teach them how to give it to others. It's got to keep going down, down, down, down, down, right to our little children. It's wonderful to be in Christian homes and seeing little kids memorize Scripture or get excited about Jesus. And I just believe through literature, through your life, which is the strongest message you have, through every means of communication we can, we can communicate this vision. We can communicate this passion. We are people not only of vision, we are people of passion. We can communicate these principles, these core values, this vision statement, this mission statement. If some little new recruit gives you a rough time and says, I don't like that, just tell him to write his own. No problem. The Lord Jesus Christ has been with us. The Lord Jesus Christ lives in us. And I believe through His strength, the power of His Holy Spirit, using His promises that we can see these goals and aims become a reality to modifying