In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding and balancing different perspectives. He encourages the audience not to give up and reminds them of God's promise to be with them. The speaker also discusses the need to consider whether a decision will glorify Christ and the practical aspects involved. He highlights the value of manpower in Christian work and challenges the idea of equality. The sermon concludes with a reminder to appreciate any glimpse of Jesus in others and to have hope.

Decision-making, and of course, the decisions we make here as we go down from here to India create a whole range of other decisions. One decision here could actually result in hundreds of decisions because we have 300 people. And it is quite frightening when you think of how what we do affects people's lives. And this is why we cannot enter into this whole thing lightly and this is why we also need a lot of balance. Because if we're too sensitive in worrying about how we affect people's lives sometimes it makes it even more difficult to make a decision and we start functioning in continuous indecision because we're afraid that if we decide this the person does it, they're going to get hurt or this is going to happen or that's going to happen. We have to, of course, be courageous. And I thought it would be good just to read those words from Joshua that really helped me at times of making some pretty heavy decisions. I found this at times such a struggle that I didn't think I could even preach anymore because I'll tell you, the decisions people make in our meetings when we are calling people to discipleship and world evangelism affect their lives, practical lives more than a decision to follow Christ. Because let's face it, a lot of people when they make a decision to follow Christ very little change takes place. That is very unfortunate. Others, there are greater changes and people often stay in the same house and life goes on the same. Yet when they come and they respond to the challenge we give it often means uprooting themselves from their job, from their culture. I mean, especially so many people have left their jobs, very good jobs to get involved in world evangelism. And it can be really frightening. I just wrote a letter this morning to our friends over at Last Days Ministry and I think of the number of people through the Keith Green Memorial Concerts who with really not much forethought just boom, signed on the dotted line to head to the mission field. We're dealing with a range of problems in this recruiting operation that very few people can understand. You know, one of the dangers when we see a lot of problems and we see, for example, we're not making a great breakthrough is we come up with generalizations. First of all, we make generalizations about our existing problems so that if we deal with this we're not going to have those problems anymore. And in OM, especially today we have a lot of outside advisory activity going on often from people who are classified as experts. This is very helpful but in it doesn't lie the total answer because very few people can grasp the nature of OM and especially OM India. If you know some people who are experts in grasping OM India maybe you could please let me know as soon as possible so that I can put them on the India Oversight Committee because many people if they only get a partial picture their advice is actually counterproductive. You actually spend one or two hours trying to bring them into balance and helping them to understand Indian culture and understand why in India the work isn't the same as France and why we do this or why we do that. And of course when we see the problems of challenging people out to the mission field it can be difficult. We're having a lot of interesting collisions with the experts from California these days. Recently Clint Smith who's been out in the Muslim world for what, 10, 15 years wrote an epistle to one of them. It should have been framed. It was brilliant. And his viewpoint as someone out there who's been in it in comparison to someone who's sitting back there taking a course in Islamics church growth. They have a special course at Fuller just on miracles that everybody's excited about. And you're in two different worlds. But we can learn of course from all of this and we want to keep our learning hats on. That's why as especially men in your position and women you've got to be reading. You can't come up against some of these different philosophies armed with rubber bands. I don't know if when you were in school you shot rubber bands at people. It's important to understand what other people are saying and thinking and therefore when you find people getting into an extreme or a pendulum is coming in you can bring it into balance with facts not just with hot air. So we're all learning. We're all reading. And sometimes of course when we really look at the real situation it can be quite frightening. Quite frightening. So I've been greatly helped at times from Joshua. You've all read it probably 50 times. Sound effects for the recording makes it much better. Therefore shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life as I was with Moses. We're on verse 5. As I was with Moses so I will be with thee. I will not fail thee nor forsake thee. Be strong and of good courage for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swore unto their fathers to give them. Only be thou strong and very courageous that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded thee. Turn not from it to the right hand or to the left that thou mayest prosper wherever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth but thou shalt meditate therein day and night that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous and then thou shalt have good success. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage. Be not afraid. Neither be thou dismayed for the Lord thy God is with thee wherever thou goest. This is what we need in the very inner fiber of our being. Be not afraid. This tendency to become afraid of the future is from the pit. Brothers and sisters, it's from the pit. Once you get into that syndrome there's no end. There's no end. You'll never resolve it through man-made methodology. Fear of the future is a powerful force. If I start going down just my fear of death syndrome I'll be paralyzed. I'll be absolutely paralyzed. No purpose in going down that road. I must be courageous. Death is in God's hands. I'm in God's hands. I don't understand it. I don't understand how heaven functions. But I'm God's and I leave that with Him. Just getting down that road or the fear of cancer road or the fear that someday nobody's going to hold my hand road or whatever other road it may be. It's paralyzing. And you know in years gone by people lived and it's still true in certain countries they lived every day with death right at their door. Our culture in many countries today is relatively easy at least until the next world war breaks out. That'll change it. Then we're going to know real testing which will make some of our testing now you know, look small. And you can imagine some of the people in Beirut who hold their little babies not sick with diarrhea in their hands in seven pieces in their hands and carry them off to their grave. There is a little difference in that one trial than the other. Now I know that even a baby ill is a trial. And isn't it wonderful God can be concerned about our small trials. We don't have to all get uptight. God's not concerned about my small trial. I'll tell you, I'm a baby. I have to acknowledge it. If I get a headache I can feel that more than I can feel probably a bullet going through the head of a baby in Beirut. That's part of the human factor. And you know I don't have the total answer to that. If I get a toothache I don't just run around praising Jesus, you know. I try to find a dentist as quickly as possible and say in the name of Jesus anoint this dentist and let him pull the tooth out. So, you know God knows we can only live with a certain amount of Campuchia and refugee camps and Salvador and Lebanon on our hearts. God doesn't mean for us to carry all this around. But God does mean for us to be realistic and to know what's going on. And when we see the problems and the difficulties and the struggles to be courageous and to stand and to not be dismayed. That's an old English word. Dismayed, you know. Overwhelmed. Fearful. Frightened. Blown away if you like that terminology. For the Lord thy God is with thee wherever thou goest. That's the whole basis of our walk. It says Enoch walked with God and God took him. So simple. So beautiful. It doesn't say Enoch walked with God and he was successful. Enoch walked with God and he founded a new missionary organization that took the world for Christ. Enoch walked with God and had this or his children became highly educated or that or he had gold. Enoch walked with God and God took him. And one of the dangers in contemporary society is everything becomes so complicated. And, you know, we say, oh yeah, we're going to walk with God. And then we have another conference in six days discussing, you know, something that is rather sometimes periphery. It's amazing the things that Christians are studying now. I never forget William McDonald speaking twenty years ago. And, you know, he has a way of shooting down higher education. I think it's good. A few people shoot it down. Schaeffer also has a gift in that area. Because higher education in the West is God. It's God. And often as money is in some country and materialism in the West, education becomes God. And William McDonald shared how he met somebody, he must have made this up, who was studying and doing a research paper on the browning effect of the potato chip. Surely you've heard that tape, you know. And it is amazing the things that people are researching. We are now told by the experts that this is a world of information. This is the main thing now in the world today. The industrial age is passing. This is a world of information. Of course, you know, if you've been around the Pakistani villages that I have in the past one month, you're not sure of the full impact of this philosophy yet of Pakistan. But there are certainly elements of truth in it. And you can find in smaller towns in Pakistan people sitting in front of the television. But I can tell you most of those people if they don't turn that television off and get back to their fields, you know, they're not going to eat. And so, you know, though I believe information is very important, I also still tend to think that food is quite important on planet Earth. For quite a while, people will still be eating, not feeding off computer readouts, some type of new intellectual chop suey. It's amazing, even the generalizations that top intellectuals make. For instance, the world is spellbound with the writings of V.S. Naipaul. He's a great writer. He's just written Among the Brethren, which I'm reading, this, you know, this really attack at Islam. He starts in Iran. Of course, he's already devastated India and moved on to other grounds. How easy it is to destroy. Of course, a gifted writer, he gets people to read because he's a gifted writer. But often, what they're saying is trivia. He tells about sitting on a Pakistani train. He meets and talks to a missionary for a couple of minutes. A couple of minutes, and he makes a generalization. I couldn't believe it, this great writer. He's probably an agent. Now, of course, the devil uses that when people read that in books. Probably a CIA agent. Most people, I think, who have researched this thing pretty thoroughly can tell you that very few missionaries have ever been agents. There are, you know, with 50,000, 60,000 missionaries around the world, no doubt, some of them have done things without knowing it. Maybe fed information into the wrong source or something like that. But it is interesting to see how people in our day often specialize in trivia and do endless research into things that are of unbelievable little consequence in terms of eternity and are granted PhDs for this and become the gurus of modern society. These are the people who we bow down. When they arrive, we spread out the red carpet. You know, if a group of disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ arrive, servants of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, they might get a chapati and, of course, be given a bill to pay for it. But if you have a degree, wow, now we have new institutions in America you can buy degrees. I could get a doctor's degree, no problem. I could get a doctor's degree and just submit one of my books and $300. I heard of a missionary in India, I think he was from a country in the east who got a doctor's degree from one of these bogus schools in America that have no proper real accreditation but they have enough to be able to send out these degrees. People print them on their letterheads. And it's quite amazing. Well, I don't want to go down that road. We'll get to that maybe a week from now. But the world is, isn't it a complex place? It's frightening at times. And fear, I think, in the coming years will be one of the greatest problems many of us face and our people will face. And we just need a lot of wisdom in this area. I remember a woman from the States years ago, 20 years ago, living actually in Iran. She just could not continue there. The fear of the communist takeover, amazing, her fear came true. It wasn't the communists but it was something actually worse than communism has taken over in Iran. And this fear just ate at her day and night. She had to go home. She just couldn't handle it. And I don't know if she has victory yet today. So when it comes to decision making, one of the problems we live with is fear. Fear of the consequences. And here's where we need tremendous balance. What if you make a decision and someone is killed as a result of that? Is that the end of the world? Men in leadership make decisions and people are killed all the time. Now life for us isn't cheap. As Christians, life is a very premium thing and I think we all do anything to rescue one person. But when we made that decision that Chris Begg and his crowd should go back by vehicle rather than by air, I had it in my mind that they should go back by air. I was stuck on the ship off the coast of Dubai when this, you know, I read the correspondence and this was in my mind. These people need to go by air. I flew to Shiraz. I thought I'd left a message with somebody in Dubai, phone Bombay and tell these people to go by air. Whatever, I don't know all the facts. The message didn't get to them. I think they were already on their way and of course as a result of the decisions, it was a corporate decision, I think it was largely their own decision in that case, but we're all involved. Jay Sonaday who was killed, he was there as a result of one of my challenges. I had the letter. He was planning to go somewhere else and he got in one of these heavy challenges for a certain university in India. I sent him to his grade. There's no way that I can just cast that off on somebody else. We pioneered the work in Poland. We sent John Watts and Keith Beck with to Poland. They were both killed. As leaders in your position now, your decisions will send some people to heaven. So you might as well just decide now that heaven's a good place and if you put some people there prematurely, that's not the end of the world. If you're going to be a leader and if you're going to have courage, just look at the Old Testament. People are being killed all over the place. Some people say, we must not read this book. It has, what's the word I want? Violence. You must not look at this film. It has violence. I have been thoroughly rereading the whole Old Testament again in the last month. It's a book of violence. It's a book of what their life is. The world, of course, is so complex today that certain areas are ripped apart by violence and other people seem to be living almost in a utopia. But there are other things, of course, that enter that utopia which I think we all learn about as we go on in life. So we need courage. We have to make decisions. You know, some people never get married simply because they can't make the decision. Don't think it's that they can't always find a husband or a wife. I've counseled people. They cannot make the decision. They're too afraid of it. The babies are going to be born. One is mongoloid. What if the wife decides two years later she doesn't like him? Don't think all men that are bachelors are bachelors because they're courageous crusading knights in armor standing against the wiles and lust. Often they're scared. Scared of marriage. Scared of responsibility. Scared of the thought of raising a little crop of hens, I mean children. There are plenty of exceptions. Praise God for them. So making decisions is difficult. And it gets more difficult when you become a leader in your own family because you can make a decision and send one of your own children, you know, into eternity or into some difficult situation. I find in counseling that many mothers are gripped with fear. They're continually worrying about their children. They're going to get ill. This is going to happen. That's going to happen. It can absolutely destroy them. Among other things, fear and worry can create about 52, you know, different psychosomatic illnesses at least. This is why leadership, one of the reasons, leadership is difficult. Think of these little Bible school students. They'll be rushing into OM's National Leadership Conference. The day I get back, 300 are sitting there all wanting to be leaders in the work of God. They're as naive as little baby chicks that have just been hatched. They all want to be leaders. Leadership is rough. It's tough. It's agonizing. It means tears. It means trials. Of course, when you first launch into it, it may be exciting. But when you get on into the 35, 40, 45 age group, and you see some of the people you disciple shot down, and you discover this person who really thought was God's dynamite. He was going to move out his discoveries of practicing homosexual. And when you discover this other thing is going on, your head just begins to spin. And people like Alfie, in the middle of OM India, it is a miracle he's still sane. One of the reasons we may want to contemplate restructuring Bombay and cutting it down in size, because who is going to lead that thing in the next decade? As the complications occur, and as when people don't get their way, they turn against you. They turn against you, just like suddenly you're walking your dog down the street, and you've trained him, and he's a lovely little dog, and suddenly he turns on you, eats your egg, and your leg goes, hey man, I needed that leg. And people do turn. People do turn. Why? They're gripped with fear. They're afraid of the future. They feel threatened. Other problems come in. Gossip comes around. Misunderstandings. And they just go. Some of them go actually berserk. We've seen people in OIM go berserk. We've had people, I remember one on the ships years ago, pitching his Christian books out the porthole, grabbed me by the neck. We had to put him in a mental institution. He stripped down dude and went right through plate glass window and ran down the streets of Glasgow. Welcome to Christian leadership. Did they know could be put in mental institutions? The only way to stop them from messing other people up. And that's the truth. That's the truth. One extremist in one church in the United States with extreme teaching on demons and healing in that church, 52 dead. Little babies could have been cured by an aspirin or an Alfie Franks remedy. Dead. Dead. Because they believed only through prayer. And people who others had thought were demon possessed, there was a case in Switzerland years ago, beat to death because of the teaching of beating demons out. And a lot of the things that get into the church are not balanced biblical things. They're superstition because superstition is a big thing in life. What's one of the biggest things here in Kathmandu? Just go down the street on the holiday you see more having their palms read. This is big business in Asia. Astrology. Why? People are superstitious. What's one of the big businesses in Washington, D.C.? All kinds of things along this line. And superstition is in the church. It's in the church and we create our own brand of it. I better get on to give you my list. This is why it's good I have at least a little list here. I ran out of blank space in the back of my Bible so I've been writing over the maps lately. And this one is just found on top of the sea of Arabo. The salt sea. Is that the Dead Sea? I think so. It changed the name. And this message is really written in the desert. I think it's what's today modern southern Jordan. There's Petra there anyway. We won't get into that. It's a good place to visit. What are some things when we make a decision, apart from of course having this courage and being ready to make the decision and face the consequences. What are some things we should do? Of course number one, wait on God. I don't want this message to be hyper spiritual and just talk about prayer, waiting upon God, fasting, reading Bible verses, all that I will take as a foundation that you already know. Nothing will ever be a substitute for waiting on God, being filled with the Spirit, knowing something of the mind of Christ. But after all that is there, the beautiful foundation of spiritual reality, we're still human beings. Some great spiritual men, as you and I have noticed in India, I could give you names, have made some fantastic mistakes. Sometimes we as leaders in trying to bring a brother into balance, sometimes we've had to talk about other groups. It's always very difficult. I think I've made some mistakes in this area in an effort to try to bring somebody into balance. He's all caught up about one little movement, one little, he thinks this is the way and this is YOM, it's not really all it should be. We just got down here and you have to try to point out some of the problems. They also have problems and actually they had a suicide last one. I meet people, for example, who have read Reese Howell's Intercessor and all of a sudden they get this is the way. I've been involved with those people for 24 years, a very close friend Samuel Howells and I love those people but you cannot believe the assaults of the enemy upon that place. They actually had a suicide among a long term staff member just recently and they are down to only 15 students and you can read that book and you're reading about one thing and then if you go to that Bible school at present you're in something absolutely different world not that God isn't working there today because God is very merciful. He's still working there. In fact all the students came to the ship when I was in Swansea. I sat down and had lunch with them. But I've been involved with that group which of course when I was young and I read some of these things this is one of the greatest things we've ever read about. This is what we need. But as you get involved in depth with people you find out reality. You know one of our big problems in the early days in India people got buxingitis. I would introduce these people to buxing. He was a close friend. I was working with him. I'd introduce him. Within a year they were going to leave O.M. We had it happen again and again. They found the real New Testament church. They had no understanding of church growth in Andhra which is the big factor behind that whole movement. They had no understanding of buxing because he's not actually a Sikh. He was a Hindu. His mother decided to raise him as a Sikh by giving him a Sikh name. That doesn't exactly always make you a Sikh if you understand Sikhism. Very few Sikhs are coming to Jesus Christ. And of course I'm not saying that buxing is not a man of God. He is. But men of God are union. And that movement is just loaded with union. Now they've set up the six pillars. Buxing is getting ready for heaven. He's appointed six men. I'm in correspondence with some of these men. If it's kept in balance it can be powerful. You know praise the Lord. That one brother who went that way has just come back to Christ. Jeff. Remember Jeff? Dan has just got a letter from him and he's come back to the Lord. Anyway let me try to stick a little bit closer to my text here. So you're waiting on the word prayer, the word, the spiritual foundation. Amen. A hundred times. But even after all that is laid we're still human beings. We have to use our heads. So here are a few other things. Ask the question how long is it going to take? Have you read the report on all the nuclear energy plants in the United States? This is a fiasco of a generation. You can't believe it. They had a quote, it's going to cost one million. Now new quotation, full cost, seven million, ten million, of course they're talking more than billions. It's just unbelievable fiasco. And these are the giant intellects of the world. These are the Harvard Business School graduates. These are the people that have got it. They're making blunders all over the place and people are going to be killed by these blunders because nuclear leaks do tend to bring a few difficulties especially when you have children. And it's just so important when we make a decision, when we decide on a project, how long is this going to actually take because the longer it takes the more money that's invested the more you have to keep paying for the workers who are building it. And a lot of times they say we're going to do this, we'll finish this in ten days. Thirty days later you haven't even got the rough draft. Sometimes we launch out on projects. Bangladesh they were telling me about their new slide thing. John Stedman comes through, pictures all over the place and it all goes back to Bromley and it gets into the machinery. They're in despair over this in Bangladesh. I had to try to encourage them. I said don't give up yet. It's not the turn of the century. It's only last year. And I think of all the things we've started in the area of slide sets and audio visuals that we said this will be done by the summer. Praise the Lord we'll be showing it at the September conference. Twelve questions you're going to ask. We'll pass on to something else. Number two, will this really glorify Christ? That's a tough question and it could lead to idealism, super spirituality, but it is ultimately the question we want to ask. A whole list of things involved in that. That's not just a super spiritual question. It is also a practical question. Will this really glorify Christ? Number three, of course, is it biblical? This is another tough question because some of the things we have to do are not biblical. Let's face reality. The Bible has not told us how to repair diesel and petrol engines. It hasn't even told us whether we should be using diesel or petrol. There are endless decisions you have to make that you're not going to find answers in the Bible. And this method of thinking you're going to get all your wisdom and guidance from the Bible, it's a cover-up. It's often a cover-up for just unwillingness to face the real reality of what you've got to do. You need practical wisdom. You need study and understanding of mechanics if you're going to be a mechanic. It's not walking around with a book of Genesis and a prayer wheel. What the answer is to all this in our generation, I'm still studying. But certainly when you're about to do something, like for example pay a bribe so that we can get an engine at half price or whatever, immediately the lights go on. This is not biblical. The engine, whether it's petrol or diesel, all that is not found in the Bible. But if there's going to be corruption and deceit and lying in order to do something, then of course we know it's not biblical. Then number four, what are previous cases and examples? Now here again we need a lot of wisdom because we can prove anything by case histories. You know, we have this extremist brother Alexander Seibel crusading sort of mildly against him, though he's still, you know, supposed to be friends. One of my personal letters to him turns up in Singapore, ends up, I was told yesterday as a study in a Bible class, one of my personal letters to Alexander Seibel, a letter in which he's trying to mildly defend the charismatic movement. Of course, people don't understand it in context, so they try to write me off as a raving charismatic. Of course, this is a group that's anti-charismatic who are studying and distributing the letter. But Alexander, of course, who believes a lot of people who speak in tongues are demon-possessed, has his case histories. They have tapes of people speaking in tongues and doing other crazy things and then prayed for, delivered from tongues and after that they're happy, they feel better. Of course, they go around proving things by this. You can prove anything by case history. JWs do it, Mormons do it, Scientologists do it. All groups have miraculous healings. Miraculous healings to a person who in a sense understands what's going on in the world don't confirm that much because so many people are into miraculous healing. We're not living in the same day that Jesus Christ lived. I believe God heals. I've been praying for the ill in my meetings in Pakistan. You don't take meetings in Pakistan without praying for the ill. There's so many ill people over there. It's just unbelievable. Pakistanis, many of them seem to be quite balanced. They pray and they go to the doctor. If they don't see an answer to prayer, they don't seem to all get depressed and feel they have to write a book about it. But life sort of somehow goes on. One lady talked to me or one son and just died in just a few days. Her other son was dying at that moment. Of course, we pray. We know that God can heal, but we know also from 2,000 years of history and many other facts that there are many mysteries in the area of healing that no one has ever been able to explain. I've been researching this for only 29 years. Admittedly, I haven't written my major thesis on it yet, but I can tell you it's a vast, unique subject. So we have to beware of just using proof cases as a total reason, but it is a factor. Now, the more wide you are in your reading, the more wide you are in your study and your understanding and your relationship with people, the greater chance that you're going to get absolute contradictory proof cases. That's good, and it'll help you keep in balance, and I think that helps you make a sane, more logical decision. But it is important when we're making decisions to talk a little bit about previous cases, previous examples. That's why a leader has to also be a student all of his life. Number five, how much is it going to cost? You know, Luke 14, 33, we've all had that chapter stuffed down our throats. But it's not just monetary cost. Manpower. I feel sometimes in Christian work we put a very low value on manpower. And of course, we have false teaching about equality. You know, we're all equal. That's a nice theory. That's a nice theory. You show me where in culture and society and anywhere in the world that's actually working. Do you think it's working in communism? And you know, some people just, they have more at five years of age, if they happen to be the son of a Saudi prince, than some people are going to have, you know, whatever they do. Life is not that way. Life is just loaded with inequalities. You've all read books on this. Ida Schaffer's book, Affliction, is a good classic to dig your teeth into. And I just feel that we have to put an esteem on people's time. Some people's time is worth more than other people's time. One of the great struggles in O.M. is the amalgamation of a full-fledged business operation with the amalgamation of a full-fledged spiritual revolution. Both are going on together. And I, of course, live with this continually. We'll probably be judged for staying in a little better hotel. I haven't been to the best hotel in the world. I haven't I haven't been the best hotel in the I haven't been to the best hotel in the world. I haven't been the best hotel in the world. I haven't been the best hotel in I haven't been the best hotel hotel in the I haven't been the hotel the world. I haven't the in the world. I been the best hotel in the world. I haven't been the best in I haven't been the best hotel in the world. I been the best hotel in I haven't been the best hotel in the world. I haven't been the best I best hotel I been the best hotel the in I haven't been I haven't been the best The consul's got a new bike, and look at mine, it's got a puncture. And it gets all hyper-emotional and theological. Pretty soon, memos are flying around with six carbon copies, and people are calling for an extra day at the coordinators' conference. We've got so many things to discuss, so many problems. We should change. We have a month at the coordinators' conference and other conferences, and 11 months working. We spent 11 months discussing and one month working. And we still weren't finished. Because we're human, and because we're in a very, very complicated world, as some say now, is, what do they call it, a global village. So who will be involved? In some cases, the less people involved, the better. That's more the exception. But we need a lot of wisdom, I feel, for these coming days. We need some of the greatest wisdom. On what level are we going to involve this whole host of people that are coming up here? I still haven't seen a list, actually. I'm sure it's around. But it seems to me, for some of the heavy issues, unless a small group get unity first, before we just throw the thing out to the parliament, with all the emotional factors involved, especially if some of those people are less mature than others, it gets very interesting. So we need a lot of wisdom. Who's to be involved? And when you launch the project, who's going to be involved? And then number seven, what are the possible dangers? Life is filled with dangers. Now, I think at this level, we need to all know that as far as our research has told us, we were responsible for the Bombay fire. Not Alfie Franks, not any one person. It was a corporate effort. And it's a human factor. You can correct me, but I think ultimately we discovered there was a giant slug in the fuse box. Isn't that right? So that the electricity would keep going. Now, who doesn't practice these things at the occasional moment? And of course, that mistake and other combined mistakes, it did cost us. And praise the Lord, praise the Lord for His overruling of that fire. Far worse than that fire is the lack of fire in the hearts of God's people. That's always the thing that devastates me, ultimately. And I have to spend most of my year ministering to God's people. You know, sometimes OM looks like the most apostolic band that has ever been born since Acts. When you fellowship with the people I have to fellowship with. People who don't witness to anybody. They don't give that literature to anybody. They don't open their home to anybody. They don't do anything, except sit in church twice a week and shake the pastor's hand and say, God bless you, I really appreciated that message. Not even a... You know, by 2 o'clock in the afternoon when their stomach is bloated from an oversized meal, they could not tell you one thing of that message, much less any change they're going to make in their life as a result of the message. And when you're enmeshed, as many of you I'm sure are, with God's frozen people, you either develop a greater love as the Savior for people, or you're just going to go down. And you just learn to thank God for anything you see of Jesus in anybody. Anything you see of Jesus in anybody, even a twitch, even in Jesus' twitch in their eyes. Praise the Lord, there's hope, something's happening. Get your camera, let me take a photo of that twitch. Well, that's probably an exaggeration. I think you got the point. So we need to face the dangers. What are the dangers of some of the things we do? Maybe some journeys in OM shouldn't even be taken. Considering the dangers on the highways, tremendous dangers on the highways, some of the trips maybe they don't need to be taken. I had a strong letter from a brother, one of my outside OM counselors, businessman, good man. He says, you know, he just can't figure out why we're traveling so much. And he says, you know, isn't there any way to plan that, you know, you can travel a little bit less and maybe stay in a place longer? And it is true that as OMers we seem to be roving the entire earth. People are flying 6,000 miles to attend a wedding. People, people go, you know. It is a global village, but you know, the air agencies have not yet accepted the global village factor. They're still treating it as a big place. And OM, you know, we just hop around, jump in the OM van, jump in the train. And I praise God that in the last couple of years there's been a cutback on a lot of this travel. I tell you, the ships. They just. And they had just cut back. Imagine line-up men on a bus. You know. A line-up man. And this is, this is something of course that, you know, you're never going to find the total answer. We don't want to get into judgmentalism. But it is good to count the cost when we're making a decision about the dangers involved, the problems involved, and all the other things. And then number eight, what are the possible misunderstandings? And one of the persons you don't want misunderstandings with is your wife. So, you know, before you launch something, why don't you chat it over with your wife? Don't commit your wife, as I have too often done. And don't presume you have a wife as flexible and as cooperative and as gentle and all the rest. As my wife, you know, who's been in this now for 24 years, never did she dream that it was going to be like this. I had tried to warn her. The first day I said, look, there is a definite possibility of both of us within a few years being actually cooked and eaten in New Guinea in a pot. What I should have said is that there is a possibility that you and I are going to be roaming the earth for the next 24 years. Because, you know, as far as her concern is, the New Guinea option would have been a better deal. And so, you know, to presume, to presume... By the way, Alfie, she's been much more ill since she took your medicine, but no doubt, it's a slow-acting medicine. She's been to the john about 15 times. This tape, by the way, is an exclusive tape. Private listening only. What are the possible misunderstandings? Even with your children. As your children get older, you better talk some things out with them. Don't commit them to some weekend, once they're teenagers, and you just presume they're going to go with you. They have their own mom. They have their own weekends. Now, I know Western children are probably more renegade, more, you know, individualistic, than at least some Indian families. But city families, a lot of Western influence. And you just better count the costs. What are the complications with the wife, with the misunderstandings? Children, talk it out. You, as a leader, have to be an arch persuader. You must learn how to lovingly persuade people. That's what partly leadership is. And it means compromise. There's no way ahead in life without some compromise. Compromise with the children. We had a big thing about the summer, and suddenly we had made this plan for North American meetings, and discovered we were going to miss my son's graduation at university. Wow, I tell you, I didn't know what to do. And we negotiated, and we talked, and we thought, well, Daniel's not spent much time in the United States, and I said, Daniel, would you rather have us come back to the university, or would you rather join us in the States? You can pay part of the way, see some money come in, I get promised by somebody. And we had the solution. Later on, of his own free will, he rejected both plans, and has just written in for applications for Operation Mobilization, and is sitting down right now going through orientation tapes, and his last letter said he's about to launch out in some door-to-door work in Southampton. And you've got to negotiate with your children, you've got to negotiate with your team members, you cannot just order people around. It does take time, this is why less people, better chance that, you know, we might actually get something accomplished. When people first come in, they're very young, they're very obedient, and they'll do, in a sense, what you've told. My friend, Dirk, is working with me on a very special basis. Anything, anywhere, anytime. He knew that before he joined. So he's on a special basis. And my son is not with me on that basis. Anything, anywhere, anytime. And actually, Dirk isn't either, because you have to talk things out. I've just challenged him about going off for a couple of days, trekking, because he's on a training program, not just a program to help me survive. But it all takes negotiation, and I know it is very demanding. And this is where we need a lot of wisdom. What are the possible misunderstandings? Number nine, what are the possible complications? You know, I think of how in the early days we just mobilized all these brothers to join the ship. This just seemed so fantastic. You know, 15 guys, send them all off on the ship. We didn't really count the cost of what was involved, that in terms of long term, in terms of complications, problems, especially when we sent this great army off to Europe. Now we've got quite a major misunderstanding between us and the ship leaders. Because on the phone last night, I just touched on this with Gary Dean. He says, neither one of these brothers is planning to come back here. At least for a while, and maybe that's another miscommunication. But anyway, Dale's working on that today. But people, they'll read into that, you know. One group says, well, don't they respect us? Don't they understand the struggles we're having? Don't they know this? You know, they present their case. We're back here, we got our case. Don't they understand what we're trying to do? He made a commitment. It gets crazy, doesn't it? And this is why we need to, as much as possible, count the costs, see what the misunderstandings are, and number nine, see what the complications are. Have you ever noticed in God's work how everything gets three times as complicated as you thought? It's just amazing. You actually go to resolve a problem, by the time you're back in the room that night, you've got six problems. When you launched out, you only had one. And, you know, some of these people who've come in from the outside to help solve problems in OM, actually they've created a whole army of new problems. And some of them are good, and we're happy for this, because actually some of these problems we need to save. We need to save. But resolving problems is not as easy as some people would put out. Not even the top management boys. Because in OM we are committed in a deeper level. I've been thinking about what Joseph said last night. And I was praying, I got up early, I'm trying to get in the Asian system, got up very early this morning. Maybe this associate OMer has some possibilities. I think we ought to continue to pray in our effort to do away with the paid workers thing and find a better term and a better way forward in that area. Perhaps this is a time to develop an associate OMer's situation because of the way India is. We'll talk about that. But I think as we make decisions, we have to try to see what are the complications. And of course, one of our goals is to simplify. It is possible for a work to get so complicated that no human being will be able to lead it. Or even group of human beings. We sometimes think the answer, one brother can't handle it, let's get five on it. You know what those five people will spend a lot of their time doing? Just keeping their own relationship. Don't think it's any easier now that this work is led by trustees. There's no easy way. You guys have to continually now work on your own relationship. And what about those who were not chosen to be trustees? Some of them are still wrestling with this emotionally. Why was he chosen and I not chosen? The things in the church, and we've all seen these things, when it comes to the election of people are staggering. Staggering. Church history shows this is a big problem and often very great among Christians. Complications. Number ten, what are some other alternatives? What are other alternatives to this particular route? Would it be better to send that group instead by train? Would it be better to let some other group publish that book rather than we publish it? Is this better done outside of OM? You know, one of the great answers we found for many things in our work, let some other group do it. All kinds of movements have been born and are going on far more realistically because when they're outside of OM they really, they really face the reality of their problems. In OM, they let us face the realities. We have a little motto in OM, let the leaders do it. Let the leaders do it. But when it's your own little organization, I tell you, you will really often battle much harder. This is why, of course, second generation people, when you train your successor, it'll be harder for him than it is for you. You still, many of you, are pioneers. You're the first generation of this work. And there's more motivation. It's often do or die. Like, you know, when three of us went to Mexico, especially the second year when five of us went to actually start a work, it was do or die. I was so hyper-motivated, I didn't even know what the word discouragement was. You know. The second generation, Baldy Maher, following up on what I left behind. He couldn't keep going. Eventually left the work, especially he had six or seven children. He's now out on a farm. Praise the Lord, he still loves Jesus. And with my new theology, that's great. My goals aren't as high as they used to be. You know, if a man loves Jesus, I think that's good. Even if the next step he falls into a trough. You know, he loves Jesus. That counts. Because salvation is by faith. Of course, God has changed his life too, and that's encouraging. And then number eleven. Ten was, what are the alternatives? What are the thoughts of others? What do other people think? You know, this is why we're here. One of the reasons we're bouncing our ideas off other people. Now, with every solution comes problems. The more people you bounce your ideas off, the more things you have to reabsorb and discuss and bounce off. And of course, if somewhere there's no leadership in God's work, there's no authority, there's no decision-making authoritative body, of course, you can spend the rest of your life just discussing, bouncing, conferencing, committee-izing, probably fossilizing at the same time. What do other people thought, think? It's good even to get outside opinions, though a lot of things you have to learn to take with a grain of salt. We've had outsiders sometimes come in and talk to somebody for an hour and give them God's plan for their life. They accepted it! You know, as if this, I have people come to me actually thinking I'm going to give them God's plan for their life. It's a cop-out. It's a cop-out from the difficult task of finding the will of God, being a responsible person. And if you make the decision and you've fallen and are ditched, it's your fault. And we cannot play the Holy Spirit for a great army of people. And then number 12, ultimately, there have to be great steps of faith. Great, courageous, risky steps of faith. I tell you, when we decided to buy the first ship and the second ship, it was a big risk. It's easy for our decisions to become too subjective. We need to watch this here in Kathmandu. There's an area where you've been hurt. If you got hurt, that is going to creep into the discussions. Well, God knows, we're all human. You've got to watch that. You've got to watch that. Those of us who are more emotional, we especially have to watch it. Because we want to make objective, spirit-led decisions. And we need, of course, sometimes, and this you could put as number 13 or put it as number 1A, we need to do more research. I thought of our Gorakhpur plan. What do we need? Somebody go to Gorakhpur as soon as possible to do a feasibility study. Or at least a group to sit down and examine the pros and the cons, which I think we're going to want to do. I'm only using that as an example right now. Research is important. It's not, again, the total answer. We can be more objective, less subjective.