In this sermon, the speaker addresses the question of what women can do in the context of spreading the gospel. They emphasize the importance of believing in the work of raising awareness for the gospel and the impact it can have on the lives of millions of women in India. The speaker also discusses the societal challenges that women face, including the destruction of feminism and the suppression of women's feelings. They encourage studying revolution and balance, as well as understanding the diverse range of women that God has created. The sermon concludes by highlighting the need for women to overcome obstacles and not rely solely on male leadership.

The title of the message, Major Misunderstandings at the Girls' House. Larkiyon mein jo mukhiyan galakpahamiyan hain. Especially about the work here in India. Aur dikhej karke Hindustan mein humare kaam ke baare nahin. And of course, I don't blame them. I can see good reasons for misunderstandings. Aur main unhe dost nahin deta hoon. Main kuch karad paata hoon ki kyon yahan galakpahamiyan hain. The first misunderstanding I'd like to speak about. Pehli galakpahamiyan jiske baare bolna chahunga. Is something I often hear from the girls. Wah jo hai, main larkiyon se akshar suna karta hoon. Is that the leaders don't believe in the girls' work. Ki neta log jo hai, larkiyon ke kaam mein bishwas nahin karakte. I don't know if you've ever heard that. Aur ho sakta hai ki aapne aksha ho, na puna ho. Maybe that's from years gone by. Aur ho sakta hai ki yeh leete huye taalo ki baat ho. But I can understand how at times you'd wonder if you were in the girls' side of OM India whether in fact these so-called leaders really believed in what we were doing. Aur yeh di aap larkiyon ki taraf se hain toh aapko lagega ki yeh guwa log waqtah mein larkiyon ke kaam mein bishwas karte hai ya nahin. Perhaps I can give you the very beginning of how girls got into OM in the first place. Aur main aapko patlaa sakta ho ki larkiyon jo hai kis tarah OM mein pehle number par chali gayi. The first team in Mexico, you can be sure it was an all-male team. Aur Mexico mein jo pehla dal tha wa toh nishe hi pura aadmiyon ka dal tha. By that time I'd become a 19-year-old confirmed bachelor. Aur usse ho mein jo hai, unnais saal ka kumara tha. Never even entered my mind that there would be a girl coming on in each team. Aur usse ho mein mere dimaag ke bhi nahin tha ki koi narki koi dal mein aayegi. The second team was an all-man team. Aur doosra dal jo hai buthe log ka dal tha. In fact, one of the hindrances to that team was a girl. Aur us dal mein jo sabse bada roth tha wa ek jo hai larkiyon thi. Was one of the men on the team fell in love with a Mexican girl. Which I didn't believe in. Aur kyon ki ek larka jo hai Mexico ki ek narki ki prem mein padh gaya aur main usse bishwas nahin karta tha. Main usse pasand nahin karta tha. Nicknamed me Hitler. Aur usse jo hai mujhe Hitler naal gaya hai. During that time I transferred from college, normal college, to Moody Bible Institute. Aur usse mein jo hai main ek vidyalaya se Moody Bible Institute mein chala gaya. Moody Bible Institute had a fair share of zealous women. Aur Moody Bible Institute mein arto ke pratik bishwas irsha hai. And I remember we were planning to go to Mexico again. Aur mujhe yaad hai ki hum phir Mexico jaane ke baare mein yojana bana rahe the. In fact we were planning to go down for Christmas. Which was a new idea. Formerly it was supposed to be summer but we decided to go down Christmas. Aur pehne toh do baar hum keval garmiyon mein gaya the paranto ith baar hum ne socha ki hum Christmas par bhi jaayenge. And a group of girls heard about this. Aur narkiyon ki ek dal ne iske baare mein suna. And they had a secret meeting. Aur unki ek group toh suna hui. And how to approach George Rohwer about girls going to Mexico. So the birth of the women's work cannot be blamed on me. These girls came to me and one of them was a very strong minded woman. And they were almost ready to tell me that I was out of the will of God if I didn't take girls with him. And I don't even remember if I prayed about it. I must confess I don't pray about everything. But as far as these girls were concerned it wouldn't have mattered much anyway if I prayed about it. And so the first girls united with us to go to Mexico. One of those girls is still with us today. She's married now. Name is Jean Davis. She was Jean Hall. She was also one of the first ones to go to Spain only a few months after my wife and I went there. The most aggressive of those girls is with the Lord Jesus today. She died a few years later as a nurse in the snow of northern Minnesota. She died in Minnesota. Hey! Not Mexico. And ever since then girls have been going on these crusades. And there's not time to give a history of that. But from the very beginning of this work without question girls have played a vital role and O.M. would not be where it is today if anywhere if it wasn't for the ministry of women in this work. From the very first trip to Mexico it was seen that girls could do door to door work as good as men. Sometimes better because men tended to be away at home whereas the women tended to be there in the house. It was not until quite some time later that O.M. developed and we began to see also the role of girls in the offices and that kind of thing. When we first started our big campaigns in Europe one of the first teams that I ever led was a team of almost all girls and that in Italy and I saw how girls could be used to reach the masses women with the word of God. I'll never forget that team they were more disciplined and more zealous than men's teams I remember that. Of course long before that I went back to the very days in Mexico I had seen the need to have women reaching people with the word of God. From the very beginning of this work we had a great burden to reach children. We had a great burden. That has waned at times I think over the years but when I was first in evangelism I was very much involved in children's evangelism and we saw how the women the girls could be so used of God in reaching children and young people with the word of God. Now when we came to think about sending girls to India we again had a great wave of doubt. A few of the leading missionaries in this country were very opposed to having women teams. There was one girl way back in the very first team who almost insisted on going out of here. We let her go the other girl who was supposed to be with her somehow sort of dropped out and ended up in a very bad situation because this girl ended up on her own. She was a high society girl from the British Isles and sorry to say that she got away from the Lord was really a casualty of our work and is away from the Lord to this day. That could have easily discouraged us from having any more girls in India. At that point a very major decision had to be made. Somehow the Lord led us to try again with a proper team or at least a proper number of girls. You know whenever we evaluate a situation such as the girls' work here in India we must evaluate the situation in the light of the problem and the obstacle. That's why it's ridiculous comparing reaching Muslims in Indonesia to reaching Muslims in Saudi Arabia. Such comparisons are almost irrelevant. And to some degree comparing women's work in India with women's work in England is almost also irrelevant. I just finished reading last night Donald MacGavern's paper that he's going to give at the World Congress on Evangelism. He explains the tremendous complexity of trying to evangelize certain societies. Basically the complexity of reaching people in totally foreign cultures. And of course the moment an Indian Christian girl moves across the cultural border she is in foreign territory almost as much as a foreigner. The average Christian girl whether Indian or foreigner understands very little of the mentality of the Muslim women of India. No one understands much about the mentality of Muslim women in India. That is only one example of 50 cousins. So the work is complex. I think of Eugenia Price's latest book No Pat Answer and if you can get a hold of copies it's worth six of a lot of the other books I see girls reading. No pat answer means no simplified easy answers to the difficult questions of life. We do believe in this girl's work. Some of us have fought pretty hard myself for about 17 years to maintain it. We acknowledge our failures. There are many and when a leader is overwhelmed with a dozen problems often the girl's problem is the last one he gets through. Another factor is that most men leaders are not as ease as they should be even in speaking with girls much less trying to solve all their problems. Doesn't always help the leader when he's told quite often that all the girls are afraid of him anyway. But they can't seem to understand however that he's also scared of them and would prefer to avoid them. There are many other complexities. If our time is limited then we must go to another point. Let it be understood that we really believe in what you're doing and it's one of the reasons for this conference. If we didn't believe in it then what question or what answer would we give to India's 300 million women who need desperately the gospel of Jesus Christ? And all the mountains may be greater and our God is greater and we must press on. The second point is this idea that the psychosphere destroys femininity. You've probably already discussed this. But I can just throw in a few points. I believe that is fire. I don't know how much you've read about women. I read quite a bit about women. It's easier to read about them than it is to deal with them. So my wife and I have also had many, many tremendous conversations with girls from all over the world. Now there's two major problems and we need all of us to cover them. Fourth idea of what discipleship is. Second, fourth idea of what femininity is. First of all, I recommend you study Revolution of Balance. I feel that it's especially important for girls. There's a wide, wide range of types of girls that God has managed to create and put on the earth. There are fat girls. There are skinny girls. There are tall girls. There are short girls. There are girls with black hair, girls with blonde hair, girls with no hair. Don't laugh for your information. Every baby girl born into this world has no hair. So there's a wide range of girls. Doctors and psychologists also tell us that girls have a wide range of degrees of masculinity and femininity in their makeup. Now I had a sister who was called a tomboy. That means a girl who was, you know, she's more like a boy, she's rough and tough, sport, you know, that kind of girl. I learned a lot from her. She was a great pace center. She was four years older than I was. She was always taller. And we used to fight. We used to fight all the time. I remember coming home one day absolutely crying because I wouldn't let her on the boys' football team. So our whole life as a young girl really was a boy's world in many ways. And she wasn't very interested in boys. Just played football with them. And then she went off to college. And during that period she became very, very much a woman. And she's now married with how many children? Four out of five children. I lose count. Of all children after three, I lose count. She's married? She's now married, yes. No, no, she's now married and she has four children. And her problem is not lack of femininity. She still plays sports. But she's very domestic. Most OEMers that have gone to the OEM have always been very impressed with that family. And there's many, many other examples I could give. Of many girls in OEM. Who were team leaders. And they were out sleeping in the fields of Italy in town. Sleeping in the tents of Spain. And they really threw themselves into this discipleship. But it didn't destroy their femininity. Of course, when they were married. They had to make it that. That will be true of anybody getting married. You see, there's a danger that we think the adaptations we have to make are because we are disciples. As if if we were not disciples, we'd have less adaptations to make before we get married. One of the great things about women is their ability to adapt to many different situations. And this has been proven by women whose first husband died, they married another man who was completely different, and yet they adapted to him and made him happy. We sometimes get the wrong end of discipleship. And we think of discipleship as discipline, and substitution, and moving out down the road, and all the same. But this is only a small part of discipleship. A perfect example of this is the image most people, especially girls, project onto the Apostle Paul. But if you will turn to Thessalonians, you will get a more balanced picture of the Apostle Paul. And you will see something that is very, very important in verse 7, chapter 2. Here is Paul and his band of red hot disciplined disciples. But we were gentle among you. Even as a nurse, and in the Greek it's a nursing mother, cherishes her children. That sounds feminine, even though it's the description of the Apostle Paul. Notice verse 8. We were willing to have imparted unto you not only the gospel, only but our own soul because you were dear unto us. The key is found in Paul's words, which refer to women as well. All things were meant to win something. The disciple is gentle. And the women should easily be ahead of the men in that area. The disciple is compassionate, loving, tender, affectionate. All these principles that are needed in discipleship are the same thing you need when you get married and you run a home. One of the most important things in discipleship is the tender, loving care of the new babe in Jesus Christ. To do this now is to protect the new babe. To do this now as a disciple on an OM team should be a great preparation for that day when God will give you your own baby who you will have to love with tender, affectionate care and nourishment. It is very wrong to judge a girl as not being feminine simply because she has certain things that she does that men also do. You don't consider eating as being masculine yet men all eat and you do as well. I believe there is a wide range of things in the Christian life that both men and women can legitimately engage in without either one becoming masculine or feminine. One of the most dynamic women who has ever lived was the Mara Shah, the daughter of General William Booth. She could outpreach practically every man who lived in her territory apart from maybe three. She drew some of the largest crowds in Europe to her evangelistic meetings even greater than her own father who threw her out of the Salvation Army. But in the process she reared eight children. Maybe more because my counting pad has to freeze. I know of her daughter and she doesn't seem to have suffered much through it. She is also a beautiful follower of the Lord Jesus. I don't think she dominates her husband either because he is one of the largest men I have ever met. Actually he is the closest thing to a giant that I have ever met. That's why all his hands are about that big. I think it's wrong to judge a girl who is aggressive and outgoing and got ideas and imagination as being not feminine. Or to judge a woman who likes to talk things out with her husband and get her two fits in once in a while as being not submissive. This is a wrong idea. Even though they may say differently most men don't want to marry dumb robots. For just do everything you are told like a machine. Praise God that women have the freedom to give their husband the peace of their mind if they think the guy has gone off the rails. Many men have been saved by that I'm sure. I don't know how many times my wife has been a help to me by just reminding me that what I had just said was really rather stupid. I don't know how many times my wife has been a help to me by just reminding me that what I had just said was really rather stupid. Speaking to your husband once in a while in this way is not to be equated with nagging and something else. The key word is adaptation. Not underestimating the problem. In many parts of the world today in fact about 75 percent the women have to work. Many of them in the field because we still live in an agricultural world. I think it's pretty well proven that farm girls make very good wives in fact 70 percent. My wife is weird on the farm. The third point is there's not much the girls can do in India. There's not much we can do here. There's so many obstacles. We don't speak the language. We can't evangelize the boys. The women don't know how to read. So many problems. And I think there's two words that need to be injected into the women's work here in India. Initiative and imagination. Initiative and imagination. There is a danger in O.M. with the men dominating things a bit. It's the girls that switch off the brains. So we're always looking for some boy leader to send us instructions and tell us what to do and tell us this and that. And of course some of these guys have even less imagination than the women. If I were a girls leader in this country my leader would be getting a weekly letter and it would only be little bits and pieces about what we're doing. Just in a minute I listed a few things that women can do. It's an enormous joke to me. So the question really is how can we possibly do all these things. First of all there are women everywhere. There are women everywhere. And they need the gospel. God has told us to take from the gospel. So if that's God's will then he will give us ways to do it as we seek him and as we pray and as we use our minds. There are children's works. Unlimited opportunities. Many of them lead including the girls children. And there's just so much that can be done. Little initiatives. Getting a little bit of visual aid material you can make it yourself have that with you to use with these children. Even the slowest thinking most uneducated dull girl can reach children effectively with a little visual aid and a tiny bit of initiative and imagination. Then there's Sunday school work. Girls working in the offices. The offices don't function on Sunday mornings. They get involved in Sunday school work. And a good Sunday school teacher visits her children sometimes on Sundays. She writes to the children. She plays them into the kingdom. And she's still corresponding with them. And of course there's the nurses work. There are hundreds of thousands of nurses in India. We haven't even finished evangelizing the nurses much less the rest of the population. There is an enormous increase of professional women in this country. Even in the larger towns. Teachers. Secretaries. These are intelligent people, some of whom know English who you, the girls in this room, could be winning to Jesus Christ if you really want to. It's good to have strategy. It's good to have organization. It's good to have a plan. It's good to have good leadership. But none of it can substitute for spiritual reality and compassion in your life. If we get everything better organized and a much better strategy and there's no compassion and reality in our hearts, where will that get us? There's also unlimited scope for women's needs. Everywhere I go in India they want me to take women's needs. And the scope for this we haven't even begun to touch. Now I'm going to say something maybe you think is spiritual. But I believe the problem is that many of us are not filled with the problem. Because we're not filled with the spirit. We find speaking just the most frightening thing we ever saw. Now I'm not saying every spiritual woman has to become a preacher. But certainly as we're filled with the spirit there will be a lot more women who will be given the spiritual gift to minister the word of God, especially to women and sometimes to men. Only eternity will show how such a high degree of outstanding missionary work that has ever been done has been done by an only spiritual woman. And though some of those were single and there's a real place for women to be called in a single life. Many of them were also married. I think of the ministry that Roy Hession's wife had. They used to minister in the field. And many, many other examples for science to give. And of course there is the door to door. I know it's hard especially when you don't know the language. But don't despise the small things. Just even get a piece of literature and get at home. It's a valuable thing. There is a whole movement in India. Every home crusade that has just basically that one thing. They take a track and put it in all. And I don't think they have women. Do they have girls? I don't think they have any girls in them. Girls could be doing that and we need hundreds of men to be out preaching in the open air where the men are because the women are in the halls and the men are in the streets. I think there's a lot we can do when there's a language barrier. There's no reason girls can't memorize their testimonies in the language of the women in the area where they're working. There's no reason it should take a little bit of authenticity and first step. That's the surface of what we can do with gospel recordings for illiterate people. But again, it takes a little initiative. It takes a little bit of extra work. And it takes a heavier shoulder bag which most girls don't like to carry. There are many other areas where women can play such a vital role. But again, without initiative, without imagination, it won't work. And then no one can underestimate the role of women behind the scenes in the office. Anyone who thinks that working in the office is sort of second best, they aren't twisted. Someone wants to get them by the neck and twist them back into the right direction. We are living in a complex world that demands communication. Demands organization. Demands proper use of finance and handling of finance. In many of these things, women are better than men. And the role of women in this area of world evangelism is phenomenal. And of course, it's a great help when you get married as well. I praise God that I have a wife who is a secretary, even after marriage we can work together. And I have this belief that married couples are going to work as a team. If it wasn't for airfare and children and the children is a bigger factor, I would take my wife everywhere I go. Then the fourth point, the O.M. girl's work is not effective. Of course, all this kind of statements have to be defined in a certain way. But it's foolish to say that we're not effective. There are so many proofs of what God has done in this area over the past years. A very high percentage of all girls who have worked with O.M. India are going on for Jesus Christ somewhere today. And O.M. and their time in India played a very important part in that. The very fact that O.M. India is loaded with all kinds of thorny, unpredictable ridiculous problems is a beautiful train and preparation for getting married someday to a such predictable man. You think your O.M. leader is inconsistent? Wait till you get a husband. Then you really got to go on a rollercoaster. Someone took a survey some time ago and I think it came out that 80% of all women didn't marry what they expected they would marry. When we first followed up with a woman, when a man first falls in love with a girl, boy he really puts on the act. Of course, women don't do that. And we're all actors and actresses. Even subconsciously we start acting without even having to consciously do it. Marriage is filled with disappointments with problems and if you're in O.M. India and a girl is seen with disappointments and problems that's good preparation for marriage. You are going to face a lot greater problems in life. I do too a lot of close friends. Both with sign of victory babies born with serious birth defects. If they were born in a village in India they'd be safe. But in the west they keep them alive. And those couples go through suffering that we can never match no matter what we arrange for your team to go into. We can never match that. And I'm reminded of Billy Graham's words. Life at its best filled with sadness. And how important it is to remember that. So the fact that when you go out and meet teens and I'm not excusing any of our blunders that's another matter. Nor am I excusing my own failures. I know that God is great. And I know he can take that worst situation. With all the frustrations. With everything going wrong. With the most ridiculous leader you could ever get. With the weakest team members you could ever work with. I know that my God is so great he can take that situation and use it to make you more like Jesus Christ and to prepare you for the big battle that's right ahead. God gave us and on him a strategy. It involves moving fast. It involves training quickly a lot of people quick turnovers. Most Christian organizations don't want to touch people at the stage they are in when we take them. But we have many organizations all over India asking us for those who have been with us for two years. When we work with young ladies in conflict in this complex situation there are going to be problems. Avoid generalization. You can say avoid pendulums example we see we are making mistakes going too far in this direction. Maybe spend too much time going door to door and we are not seeing so much maybe food. So we swing the handle we don't go door to door anymore. Usually the truth is somewhere in the middle not on either extreme. Beware as I said of making just sweeping statements and generalizations two plus two equals ten. I hear a lot of people speak about the terrible weak study program in OM India. people who have read so many Christian books as these OMers here in India. It is true we are weak on systematic studies and we need a lot more. But there are many aspects to the picture. I myself have been much more helped in my Christian life by reading outstanding Christian books than I did through sitting in Bible school for two years memorizing the genealogy and the things and getting more and more systematic theology. If I had to choose between Jeanne Price and A.W. Tozer those two and Bible school you know what my choice would be. But everybody is different and everybody is getting money at that point. And if you don't like Jeanne Price and A.W. Tozer you can still stay in the work. You know as we go these are the days to come. As men or women I believe we must prepare to fight. The role of women in this fight is tough. If you bring a child into the world there is only one way you better come. But there are many other forms of suffering. A very important thing is that women generally are more sensitive than men. They feel things generally in a deeper way. And remember most men are all much much more sensitive than they ever could have been. Such false ideas we get about men. You've all seen the George Borlaug speech in your home. All of us must be tough. Thick skin. Challenging everybody. You don't see me sitting in my room weeping like a baby. We're all more sensitive. We all are many fighters. And we as Christians both men and women so easily make false judgements about one another. I can convince people that I have a real sincere deep interest in birds. We birds. They just think that's nonsense. And I get very hurt by it. To me God's creation and creation of these winged birds 400 species in southern India alone is a beautiful thing. It's a fantastic thing. And people who just draw on that and think it's feminine or I don't understand themselves. Though I appear to be a big talk hard-moving impressive evangelist. One of my greatest joys in life is to just read non-Christian books listening to Berlioz or Lalo or Mozart or Beethoven or some other music of that type. And I love to spend hours in total silence with no disturbance reading encyclopedias two or three hours a day just alone reading encyclopedias. We are all very complex. Don't make generalizations about people. Learn to understand people and their temperaments and when they become born again they get even more complicated. This is why a woman's work will never be easy. There are so many different kinds of women and they are sensitive and they are easily hurt. But don't think men aren't in some of the same battles because you can be sure they aren't. I believe the girls work in India has been effective to fight many failures because God has mercy. And you know that's my hope for all of Christian work because there's so many messes everywhere and even in the most organized groups it's not to depress anything. God is working in you and even when things go wrong God doesn't let you go. Even when you go down the wrong road in the wrong vehicle in the wrong direction speaking the wrong language God doesn't let you go. That's no excuse for sheer stupidity God is very good. And in closing I thought I would just give some of the real hindrances the real enemies to the work we are doing as we go forth. First of course the real enemy is Satan Tozer said that we all live in a critical emergency Nothing is right and nothing will be right. Satan of course uses many things with girls and to a great degree with men as well. Guys, the youth are bad guys. Some of us have had rough times We didn't have a good relationship with our father That will create many problems We didn't have a good relationship with our mother That can create even more problems And of course the devil is subtle He tries to use his background to defeat us and detract us and confuse us and destroy us. And this is where we have to learn the sufficiency of Jesus Christ We do not believe in the deterministic philosophy of Sigmund Freud Which is very similar to the Satanistic philosophy of the Bible