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George Verwer

George Verwer (1938 - 2023). American evangelist and founder of Operation Mobilisation (OM), born in Ramsey, New Jersey, to Dutch immigrant parents. At 14, Dorothea Clapp gave him a Gospel of John and prayed for his conversion, which occurred at 16 during a 1955 Billy Graham rally in New York. As student council president, he distributed 1,000 Gospels, leading 200 classmates to faith. In 1957, while at Maryville College, he and two friends sold possessions to fund a Mexico mission trip, distributing 20,000 Spanish tracts. At Moody Bible Institute, he met Drena Knecht, marrying her in 1960; they had three children. In 1961, after smuggling Bibles into the USSR and being deported, he founded OM in Spain, growing it to 6,100 workers across 110 nations by 2003, with ships like Logos distributing 70 million Scriptures. Verwer authored books like Out of the Comfort Zone, spoke globally, and pioneered short-term missions. He led OM until 2003, then focused on special projects in England. His world-map jacket and inflatable globe symbolized his passion for unreached peoples.
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Sermon Summary
In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of focusing on the all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ. He encourages university students to prioritize their studies and their relationship with God simultaneously. The speaker shares personal experiences of busyness and challenges in life, highlighting the need for growth and maturity in the Christian faith. He also emphasizes that making a decision for Christ is just the beginning and that true discipleship requires a deep love for Jesus and a commitment to living according to biblical principles.
Sermon Transcription
Matthew chapter 6, verse 25. Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body more than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought or worrying can add one cubit unto his stature? And why worry or take ye thought for raiment or clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Therefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the pagans or Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. One great psychiatrist said that if you took our books on psychology, took away the straw and the excess, you'd have something inferior when finished to the Sermon on the Mount. And I believe it. I believe that Jesus Christ had a greater understanding of men's minds than Freud or Jung or Adler or any other man in the field of psychology could begin to reveal. In our century, Sigmund Freud comes up with a statement that men are absolutely illogical and impossible, that they will not act logically, whether they're a university student with a PhD or a man emptying the dustbins. Man is illogical and people applaud him and study him until they're blue in the face. Over two thousand years ago, Isaiah said the same thing. All we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his own way. The average man today hasn't ever read a chapter in Isaiah. The Bible has the answer. The outstanding book, None of These Diseases, which for some reason we don't have tonight, they've been selling so many copies, shows how the Bible has predated in many ways even modern medicine. Tonight I come to you with a conviction with all my heart. The Bible is the Word of God. I'd almost lost this conviction when I was at university. I was always a skeptic. I always asked more questions in any class at university than everyone else in the class combined. And before I knew Christ, it was equal. No professor got away without a bombardment if he dared open up for questions, and many wouldn't when they knew I was around. And I was a skeptic. I didn't believe the Old Testament, or at least I fought battles and could understand how this could possibly be the Word of God. It didn't fit into the way I thought things should be. And I fought some vicious battles my first two years at college and came out with a conclusion that the Bible is the Word of God. And I challenge any man anywhere at any university at any time to come forth. Some are coming forth, but evangelicals are coming forth to answer them. And I think we should be praying as Dr. Francis Schaefer, a man who believes the Bible is fully inspired from Genesis 1 to the very end, faces in Chicago this Christmas, Bishop Pike, one of the leading unbelievers in the United States from the guise of a minister. And I'm convinced with all my heart tonight the Bible is the Word of God, and I welcome correspondence from any student. And I'll be happy to correspond with you the rest of your life on this subject, because we know it is the Word of God. And a group of us at college, an unbelieving college with unbelieving professors, including the Bible professors, determined that if the Bible is the Word of God, we could take it literally. If we can't take it literally, at least the basic teachings of Jesus Christ, then how can we take it? If we can spiritualize the message of discipleship and the commands at times that seem hard, then we also must spiritualize John 3, 16, and therefore how do we know we're even going to heaven? If we can't take the commands of Jesus Christ when he talks about witnessing, when he talks about prayer, when he talks about evangelism, when he talks about discipleship, then how can we take the commands of Jesus Christ or the promises of Jesus Christ when he talks about heaven? But many of us go through the Bible in a very interesting way, sort of forming a dichotomy, putting everything we don't like in one category in an airtight compartment and accepting that which we do like. And it would be far better for 20th century Bible students to use scissors rather than pens, that they might cut out all the Bible verses that they're just not going to obey. And I'm sure that some, even tonight, perhaps have come with a preconceived idea about discipleship. People that have heard about OM, they come to our meetings absolutely sure, no matter what, they're not going to sell any of their possessions for Jesus Christ. And then quite amazed when I don't even speak on that subject but talk about the all-sufficiency of Jesus. Because this is really the message that's on our heart. And as I was telling a group of Cambridge students recently, they know a little more about us down there, and they all expected me to come in, I think with a wheelbarrow to carry away their transistors. And I said, you know, I don't think any of you should sell any of your possessions. I don't think any of you should give anything away. I think it'd be very foolish, unless you can't help it. But you know, when you fall in love, you might start giving. I know as someone who fell in love, I fell in love, puppy love, that's what Billy Graham calls it. He also says it's real to the puppy, and it was. And about 32 times. We do things a little bit different over in the States. And it started with me when I was about 11. And each time I thought this was it. This was the end of the world. This was my future. And I started to give, because love always gives. And finally, when I found the right one, which is quite an amazing story, we won't go in tonight, we're already past our time. I discovered that when you love, you want to give. And so I'm not here to tell people to forsake all the possessions and run out to the ends of the earth, because you could do this, and get out there and be just as frustrated as you were in the beginning. But I'm here tonight to challenge you to fall in love with the Lord Jesus Christ. To challenge you to come to the marriage altar of our great God of heaven, and say, I do, to Jesus Christ. I think all the testimony tonight sum up one thing. Your decision for Christ is not enough. Almost everyone who testified tonight had made a decision for Christ, and therefore in the evangelical context was saved, but at the same time were not living the kind of life that they knew the Bible talked about. And a great majority of people seemingly think that the evangelical faith is a cheap fire escape. We accept Christ, we're saved, we're on our way to heaven, we sing a few wonderful hymns, we go to church twice a week, we say a few prayers, read our Bible from time to time, and look forward to our eternal city. And throw away 90% of the message of the New Testament, which talks about the kind of life we're to live after we make that initial decision to accept Christ and are born again. I believe ye must be born again. If you haven't been born again, you haven't been converted, you haven't come to that place where you definitely crossed from life to death, everything else I say will be meaningless, and discipleship will be meaningless. But if you made that decision for Christ, you have been born again. You must realize that's just the beginning. When God gave my wife and I our first son down in Spain, we didn't a few days after he came home from the hospital take him out to the streets and say, well, now on your way, sonny. And you make your own way, we brought you into the world, it's been a hard struggle, and we've done our part, and you go on your way. Drop him in the street at three weeks, and let him find his way around Madrid. Well, that would have been ridiculous. And yet somehow we think a man makes a decision for Christ and on the way he goes. I hope some of you will read this book we have out there on follow-up, the missing link in our evangelism. And many of us get the idea we've made our decision for Christ, we read our Bible verses, and this is it. But this is only the beginning. And I'm glad my son has grown. I'm glad now that he's seven years old. I was happy when he was a child, and I'm glad he's grown. Because, you know, a man who gets older but doesn't grow is a dwarf, a midget. And you know what they do with those? Many of them are in the circuses. They make good money, people just go around and look at them, because they're so strange. And I believe the Church today is filled with spiritual midgets. People who are 10, 15, 20 years old in Christ, give you the date of their conversion, don't know what it is to win men to Christ, never reproduced spiritually, have not come into a balanced Christian life, a victorious Christian life, and are literally hobbling along on some kind of crutches, spiritually speaking. And the amazing thing is that many of us grow intellectually and not spiritually. How can you be a university and not grow intellectually? And when you come to university, and I know I experienced it, you're open to this whole world of study and knowledge. You walk into the library and you know which section should you go to. And I know that I was almost overwhelmed by it. And I too received a terrific knowledge or hunger to know and to study. And so while we're at university, our knowledge increases. After two years at university, I changed and went to the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and in my summertime went back to university in Mexico. And again was exposed to all of this. And we can be growing intellectually and spiritually be midgets. We can graduate and receive our degree and yet never have seen God use us in prayer, use us in winning men to Christ, use us in spreading this revolution of love, which I believe is what Christianity really is. And what a sad thing it is when we find all kinds of intellectuals and students coming out of college who are still spiritually babes. And I can tell you many university students from Britain that have come across that OM have had to make that confession. Two OMers from Cambridge University were doing so well in maths that Cambridge refused to do graduate work with two of them at the same time. They were the highest in their class or whatever you call it in maths. And when they got their degree and they were going on for research, they had to divide them, sent one off to Bristol and handled only one at a time at Cambridge. And these two young men, like many who have come from Cambridge and Oxford, brilliant fellows, some of them speak three, four languages, and they know engineering backward and forward, have had to admit that spiritually they were babes in Christ. Spiritually they hadn't got through their any levels and they were at point zero. You know, I just love Great Britain. Some British people find it very difficult. I don't know why. But I'm always trying to find out about this great little island. And recently I came across this thing called the 11 plus examination. And this really fascinates me. And if my son continues getting six months education here and six months in India, he might end up coming against this. And I saw his school teacher last week and I'm very happy that at least he's progressing. But he's got a few more years. And I just saw how these young people here in Britain study. We call it cram. You call it what? Swat or what? Yes. And we have another meaning for that word. But to get this one exam, they just throw everything they have into it. This is life and death. This 11 plus exam, which divides the sheep from the goats. And some go off to grammar school, which has a certain status, and others go off to secondary. Uh, uh, antique school, a modern school. And, uh, and probably most of you here since you're now in university did very well in your 11 plus exam. And you're probably still wondering why, but you're here. But how have we done in our first exams for Christ? How have we done in our exam in evangelism, in prayer life, in loving people, and all the other things that are so basic to the Bible? Now, I'm convinced most of us just haven't got to the 11 plus yet. And this is the great tragedy. And it's not any better in Bible college. We've had some of the so-called cream of Bible college students from all over the world come on these OM campaigns. They've all basically had the same testimony. They thought they were here and they discovered they were here. When it actually came to putting their Christianity in practice, loving people from another country and another race, working together with people of a different denomination, putting in eight hours of hard work, and other just basic things of life that came up on the short end of the string. And I'm sure that some of you here tonight, you know that's true of you. Intellectually, you're maturing. Physically, you're maturing. But spiritually, you're the same as you were five years ago. No fruit, little reality, prayer, witnessing, doesn't mean much. And this is the way, really, most of us who are on OM today were when the Lord found us, usually using someone else in our lives to show us that we weren't real. And I know in my own life that that first year at college, I met some real people. I met Dale Roton. I was hungry. I was hungry. But I was young. And I met Dale, who wrote this book. And I watched his life. The moment I got into college, I was warned about him. He had a terrible reputation. And they said that he was baptizing in the showers. And that was extremely unusual because he was a Presbyterian. And I was told to steer very clear of these boys because they were meeting in prayer during the dances and praying for the poor sinners on the dance floor. They were extremely criticized, called super spiritual in every other name. And beware, if you witness for Jesus Christ, if you open your mouth for Christ here at this university, you'll be called super spiritual. You'll be called every name in the book. And remember, everyone else who's walked for Christ has done the same thing. And sometimes because of their own mistakes. And that's the biggest thing that discourages us, doesn't it? When we make a mistake, and then we're criticized for it, and then we draw back into our little old ways. For fear, we're going to make some more mistakes. And you know what we need to do? We need to reread the life of Churchill in Montgomery and a few other generals from Great Britain. Men who I have studied to some depth. Men who made seemingly a mistake a day. It was Winston Churchill who once said, there's only two sure things in warfare. Discouragement and mistakes. And if you sit back, afraid to launch out in the University of Birmingham, afraid to witness, afraid to do anything that's a little different because you're going to make some mistakes, well, you're never going to do anything. And it's been the men through history that have launched out fearlessly, knowing that mistakes would be made, but knowing that they could be overruled, that have won the wars. And if you've ever read the book, The Longest Day, the story of the invasion of Normandy, you can't get any more mistakes, seemingly, in the pages of any one book. It seemed that everything was going wrong in Normandy. The weather was against them, mistakes were made, things were dropped in the wrong places, in the swamps instead of on the dry land, millions, billions of dollars were wasted because of the blunders of man, but, but, they won. And you and I have to realize, as we go forth in this invasion for Jesus Christ of the world, mistakes will be made, misunderstandings will come, problems will come, but in the long run, we will win because He has won on the cross. And because the sovereignty of God is not a doctrine way up there, but a reality right down here. And I'm convinced tonight that God wants us to invade these universities for Jesus Christ. That we must get off the defensive and get on the offensive. We must stop sitting back in the corner, worried that if we're going to upset somebody, worried that we're going to bring out that testimony of the Christian Union, worried that we're going to do this or do that, and launch an invasion for Jesus Christ in these universities, because time is short. And if we don't reach these students here, when will we reach them? When will we reach them? And I'm convinced with all my heart that God wants to shake universities in Great Britain. Some of our best men on the mission field now were saved in Cambridge three years ago. And I'm convinced that God wants to get some of His best men, not from within the ranks of church, but from within the ranks of the humanist society. From within the ranks of the other clubs and the other groups who wouldn't walk in the entrance of a church, and they will become Apostle Pauls. Apostle Paul, enemy of God, an enemy of Christ. Apostle Paul out killing people, literally, who stood by and watched the stoning of Stephen, later became the greatest dynamo the church has ever known. And I believe God wants to take some of these students around, some of them who perhaps laugh at you if you talk about Jesus Christ, who stand with a beer glass in one hand and a fag in the other, and call you all kinds of interesting names. I believe God wants to take some of these people and turn them upside down and make them flaming witnesses for Jesus Christ. And if you have the faith to believe it, it will happen. But if you continue on the evangelical retreat, if you continue taking the defensive, as if we only had a bit of the truth and not all the truth, it'll never happen. It'll never happen. Praise God for what He has been doing in many parts of the world through people who have been willing to step out by faith, who have been willing to believe that God was alive in the 20th century, and that He could change lives, and that He could bring men to Himself. And this brings me to this verse that's burning on my heart tonight. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. This is the foundation stone for spiritual growth. If you're not progressing spiritually, if you're not seeing fruit in your life, if you don't know the reality that you've seen expressed before you tonight by people from all over the world, then I believe this is the foundation stone that perhaps is missing. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. You can grow for Christ in college. I grew as much for Jesus when I was in university as I did when I was in Bible college. I left university because the career I was going into, that university was unable to meet my needs. I was in a Spanish language course. All the degree graduates in Spanish at that college couldn't even speak Spanish. And if I was going to spend four years and not come out speaking Spanish, well, that wasn't for me. I wanted education, but I didn't want it that way. And so I left and went into Bible college to get that end of the knowledge which I needed for the work I was going into. I got my Spanish in three months speaking it in Mexico. And I'm convinced that you can grow spiritually in college. You'll have to redeem the time. You'll have to cut the chit-chat and get into the Bible more. You'll have to maybe cut out a few of the things that you think are nice and proper and all the rest and give the things to the best because, you know, the good has always been enemy of the best. And many of us fill our days with good things and never get to the best, knowing God. You might at times have to lay aside a little bit of Shakespeare and pick up a little bit of Tozer. And you might have to lay aside at times a little bit of some of these other people and engage a little bit in Watchman Nee and in this book, The Word of God. I never forget how I used to sit in physics class. I hated physics. And I wasn't a science student, but they all shoved a little science down our throat. And this teacher, of course, he helped you to hate it because he talked about physics half the time and his mother-in-law and friends and uncles and aunts and the rest of the time. And so as I sat there, it was in one of these cage-type things. We're here and everybody's sort of looking down on this professor who thought he was a great gymnastic. And I remember sitting in that class and I thought, now what am I going to do every time he gets carried away and talks about something that's not relevant? So I looked at my physics book in front of me, all the different formulas. I decided that that was a good place to memorize The Word of God. And when I was done with that physics course, I didn't very well in the course and I blame it on the professor, of course. But I had a physics book filled with The Word of God. Every blank space in that physics book had a Bible verse in that. Even in those one year of college, more than 200 verses from God's Word went into my heart and my mind. And that enabled me to grow spiritually, even at university. Dale Roton, he memorized four verses for every one I memorized. When he left that university to go into a Christian college to get a better course, he had been at the top of his class and at the same time had maintained a very deep spiritual life with God. You can grow spiritually here at college. You can become a mighty force for God here at college if you'll seek first the Kingdom of God. And all these other things will be added on to you. I believe there's two kinds of people at university, that to some extent, those that should be there and those that shouldn't be there. Those that are there because God has put them in university, praise God for that. And those that are there for some other reason, maybe intellectual status, maybe because their parents put the pressure on them. Maybe because this is the thing to do in our culture. And if you're in university and out of the will of God, you need to do some deep heart searching. And if you're in the university in the will of God, you need to thrust everything you have into your studies and into knowing God. And it can happen simultaneously by His grace. It's not easy. When I was at college, I thought I'll never get such a busier life. Impossible. I couldn't give up with a schedule. Schedule, bells, lectures, extra studies, extra meetings, committees and all the rest. How could life be so busy? I can tell you my life now is about six times as busy as when I was in university. So you better start practicing. And this is true. University life is basically easy. And if you're having a hard time here maintaining the schedule, you wait till you get married, girls, and you get the three little kiddies and they all get sick at once and you get a night's sleep for four nights, you'll wish you were in university. And I'm convinced that because we don't develop discipline in our lives today, because we're not building up our spiritual resources, because we're not becoming strong in Jesus Christ, we're not only not fit for missionary work, many of us are not fit for marriage. And our divorce courts are proving it as one out of every four marriages approximately in the British Isles ends in a divorce court. And one out of every nine women spends part of her life in a mental institution, including a very high number of college graduates. This is a time not to just prepare for your intellectual life. This is a time to prepare for a whole life. You're not going to go out of here an intellectual in terms of just being an intellectual person who thinks and does things in the intellectual realm. You will have to go out of here and faith life the domestic realm, the intellectual realm, the social realm, and all the other areas of life. And the only way to do this is to seek first the kingdom of God. To seek first reality in the spiritual realm. To seek first spiritual development. To seek first spiritual growth and fruitfulness in your spiritual life. If you can't win a man to Jesus Christ before you graduate from the University of Birmingham, then when do you think you'll lead them to Christ? And may God put such a burden, such a hunger on our hearts for reality. The road will not be easy. If there's anything that grieves my heart in this day, are people that come along with some kind of a spiritual pet pill. And here we are. And I can tell you, I've traced this down and in many universities this happens just before exam period. That's right. Someone comes along with a spiritual pet pill. And they say, now look, you're frustrated, you're not growing in your Christian life. Take this pill, take that pill, do this. And you take it and somehow something happens for a while. Then after it wears off, you're right back where you started from. But I come with no shortcut tonight. If you want to know reality in your life, if you want to know spiritual power and victory, you must be hungry for God. You must be determined to know Him. You must determine to deny self, take up the cross and follow Him. There is no shortcut to holiness. There can be crisis experiences. But any crisis not followed by a process will soon be an abscess. And there's far more abscesses going around today than there are processes of spiritual development. And may God put such a hunger in our heart tonight for spiritual reality and for victory that will never be the same again. I meet people from every walk of life, from every background, from so many different colleges and Bible schools who have taken this simple advice, seek ye first the Kingdom of God. And all these things should be added unto you. And I'm not just speaking to the men here tonight. You know, in many places they say, well, the mission field is too filled with women. Well, I can tell you, not O.M. We've got far more men than women. And we need women. But we need women who are sold out for Christ. And I can tell you for every one girl in O.M. that's really sold out, really dead to the security, the materialism, that so grips 20th century women and eventually puts them in the mental institutions. For every one like that, really committed, I believe we've got five men. Somehow it's easier for men. Somehow I don't understand it. Women are more ready for religion, but men are more ready for discipleship. And we're desperate in our work for spiritual women who women will throw the kitchen sink and all the rest of the things that women seem to grab onto to the wind and follow Christ. And they'll discover he'll give them back a sink as well as little knick-knacks they need to stay alive. And oh, I just pray that some of you girls will pray and seek God's face and commit your lives 100% to Him. And you know, I believe without this full surrender, there is no reality in Christianity. And I could give, I know there's 25 people here tonight would stand up and give that testimony. Reality is found only in a full surrender to Jesus Christ. This is why many of you are not experiencing the reality. You've got one foot in the world and one foot on Jesus. And you're not experiencing this joy. And some of you, I'm sure there's a deep skepticism in your heart. You're probably positive that I'm all for just another phony. Because you've met so many speakers and you've met so many people who can talk it and can't walk it. And I believe this way. I tell you, I got so skeptical I didn't want to ever hear a message again. But then I met people who are real. And I want to tell you in the 40 nations that I've been around the world, and you know, that's no boast because travel means nothing. Any complete idiot can travel in our day if he has money. So I don't say that for travel. I say it for the sake of driving home a spiritual point. In those countries, I found people who are real. And it's so tremendous. From every walk of life, communists, atheists, from all walks of life, who are real people. I met some of the most real people behind the iron curtain. Christians, who make some of us look like we're just walking on our knees. I met some of these people in India, humble Indian brothers. And when we went into India, we were told even by some missionaries, we'll never get a man of integrity in India. Missions have been so skeptical over the years. In some places, they don't believe there's a man of integrity among the Indians. A leading missionary stood up at the biggest convention in India recently and stated he doubted there was a man of integrity in the whole nation. And Indians listened to it. And we found in India that there's men of integrity beyond what we found in many places in the West. We found in India that under the right atmosphere and the right response, this reality that's in every Christian comes forth. You know, sometimes it didn't exactly come forth when the missionaries went out and lived at this level. And the Indians at that level. And the missionaries were the teachers, university graduates, who looked down their noses and said, now we're going to have lesson two today, boys and girls, treating these people as if they were some kind of inferior being. And if you have wrong concepts about India, may God blast them out of your head. If you think this is a backward, undeveloped, stupid nation, you'd better get them out of your head because, you know, the only reason India perhaps is undeveloped is because they've got ten times more people to work with than the UK. And you put 500 million people in the UK and you see what happens to the government. And you see what happens in the nation. You're already seeing what's happened with 50 million. But some of the most brilliant men in the world today are Indians. There are six in the nation in atomic, six in the world in atomic research. And these men will be as much missionaries around the world as any Anglo-Saxon will ever be. And I believe the reason that God has used little O.M. out in India to raise up more than 60 full-time nationals and to launch an invasion, the likes of which have never been seen in that nation. And I'm not saying that other missionaries haven't done good work because there have been many. They're not the rule. They're always the exception everywhere in the world have done marvelous work. And we are building on that work and other nationals as well. But I believe one of the reasons is because these young people have gone out on O.M. on an equal level with these Indians, experiencing something of the revolution of love, ready to eat as they would, ready to spend the same amount of money as they would, ready to dress as they would, and ready to go anywhere that they would go. And they see that this is real. And they forsake all. And you know, when you speak about forsaking all, the first thing you think of shouldn't be possessions. If you forsake your possessions, and God does teach that. There's about 50 verses on the subject. But if you forsake your possessions and don't forsake your pride, you're in an impossible situation. If you forsake your possessions and don't forsake your jealousy, don't forsake your envy, don't forsake other more subtle sins, especially the sins of selfishness, that's worthless. And I could forsake all my goods. But as you know, in 13th of Corinthians, if I have not love, I'm nothing. Then we have a blackboard up here, and I love to use blackboards. I want to just give you one little formula. And I hope you'll never forget it. If you forget me, and you forget what I've said, you remember this formula. This is God's mathematics. Algebra almost took me to a loop. And this isn't quite algebra, but it's just as important. And this is the mathematics. Anything, any quantity, anything in your spiritual life, anything in your ability, your gift, your preaching, your literature distribution, anything, subtract. That's minus love equals nothing. That's right. Orthodoxy, evangelism, preaching, intellectual power, anything you have any ability you have, anything you can contribute, minus love equals nothing. That's the whole message of the New Testament. And this, you and I know, is the disease in the 20th century church. And until God can find men and women who are ready to be revolutionists in this revolution of love, we'll never make an impact on the world. We'll never make an impact on the universe. Because this is the message of Christ. He said, in this you will know, they will know that you are my disciple. In that you what? Carry your Bible? Go to Christian union? Have meetings? Preach? No. In that you love one another. And yet, if you watch any college, if you watch any Christian union, you'll see that Satan's subtle strategy to divide us, subtle strategy to get us one against the other. And we can always find dozens of differences. And the world looks back. And so, yes, this is the church. Well, here's the first 45 reasons why I believe it's phony. Oh, may God give us a revolution at Birmingham University. A revolution of love. May people in this university see that we love one another. Though we're all different. Though we have different ideas. Though we come from different churches, different backgrounds. We have different little theological twists and sidetracks. We have little banners that we put up for our favorite little doctrine or truth. But may they see that we love one another. May they see that we are loyal to one another. May they see that we're esteeming the other as better than themselves. You know, it's funny how people get on little doctrinal hobby horses. It's amazing. But I never find many people on certain doctrinal hobby horses. You know what they are? Love. You ever seen anybody riding the love hobby horse? I want to, when I get to heaven, I want to run off to the corner where the people are who love too much. That's the section of heaven I want to find where all those are gathered together who love their neighbor too much while they were down on the earth. That's going to be a very interesting place. And after I visit that place in heaven, I want to go to the place where there are a group of believers who esteem their brother better than themself too often. You know, these doctrines aren't emphasized in the church today. We emphasize the doctrines that basically don't need to bring much change in our life. That we're able to spiritualize and we're able to put them off in the high clouds. But the doctrine of loving neighbor as self, the doctrine of loving enemy, the doctrine of esteeming brother than better than self, the doctrine of love in all of its aspects, kindness, courtesy, meekness, gentleness, this isn't hardly mentioned in many places. And so what has happened? A dichotomy is formed. And over here, our evangelical life, fantastic hymns, the most amazing hymns that have ever been penned. Take my life and let it be was sung tonight. Take my silver and my gold. Different hymns about being soldiers, onward Christian soldiers. Then hymns that mention martyrs. Who will follow in their train? Yes, we will follow in their train. Tremendous hymnology and creeds, fantastic creeds. I believe in the Father and the Son. I believe in hell. I believe in this and that. It's just tremendous. And meetings, gigantic meetings, thousands gather together and we sing fantastic hymns and praise God at the top of our voices. And it's all over here in a nice little airtight compartment. That's our evangelical life, our religious life. And over here is another completely separate compartment, our social life. I wish I had an hour to talk to you on the subject of sex tonight. Completely divorced so often from our spiritual life and our economical life and our domestic life and our intellectual life. And we can sing, we can pray, we can rededicate our lives we can pump the hand to the preacher and say it was a tremendous message. We can go out actually thinking we believe it and no impact at all will be made on this other segment of our life. And this is the truth. And until this revolution of love comes just bashing through to break down these barriers and to bring these two things together to make a unity, a oneness, so that what we sing and what we say and what we pray and what we confess is actually the same as what we are, we will never make an impact on the world. And tonight through universities, tonight through some churches, tonight in places perhaps we wouldn't expect, God through His Spirit breaking the dichotomy. And people are coming into reality when they're one. As long as you're two, you're literally a spiritual schizophrenic. And I believe that's true. And some older people, it's so severe that you can never break it. And I would classify them in some ways as being mentally ill. When a man can sit in church for 20 years and sing hymns of dedication and break bread and go through all these other things and never affect his economic life and social life, I would say that man is ill. And I pray that none of us will go in that direction. But now while we're young, while we're able, we'll allow God by His Spirit through the power of the cross and the power of the blood to break the dichotomy and bring us into one reality, whole living testimony for Jesus Christ. And if you want that tonight, if you're sick of the status quo, you know that dichotomy exists in your life and you want it, you will receive it. For blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. They shall be filled. God has never left a hungry man on the side of the road. And if you're hungry tonight for reality, you're hungry tonight to really have a living faith, you'll have it. And we'd love to correspond. We'd love to speak. We'd love to see you on OM, that that would help. Because to me, it's worth almost anything for even one man to know this reality. Let us pray.
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George Verwer (1938 - 2023). American evangelist and founder of Operation Mobilisation (OM), born in Ramsey, New Jersey, to Dutch immigrant parents. At 14, Dorothea Clapp gave him a Gospel of John and prayed for his conversion, which occurred at 16 during a 1955 Billy Graham rally in New York. As student council president, he distributed 1,000 Gospels, leading 200 classmates to faith. In 1957, while at Maryville College, he and two friends sold possessions to fund a Mexico mission trip, distributing 20,000 Spanish tracts. At Moody Bible Institute, he met Drena Knecht, marrying her in 1960; they had three children. In 1961, after smuggling Bibles into the USSR and being deported, he founded OM in Spain, growing it to 6,100 workers across 110 nations by 2003, with ships like Logos distributing 70 million Scriptures. Verwer authored books like Out of the Comfort Zone, spoke globally, and pioneered short-term missions. He led OM until 2003, then focused on special projects in England. His world-map jacket and inflatable globe symbolized his passion for unreached peoples.