In this sermon, the speaker discusses the power of films in spreading the gospel and mentions a significant Christian film that he believes is the most important of all time. He shares how a film about Jesus produced by non-Christians in India has had a great impact on the Indian audience due to its dramatic nature. The speaker also reflects on the film "Chariots of Fire" and how it inspired him to recommit himself to running in God's race. He emphasizes the importance of discipline and setting goals, drawing inspiration from the apostle Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 9.

I really believe the kind of cooperation and working together that we have, OM and Bethany and WECC, another group that we feel very close to, is something that really brings glory to God. I think in working with OM, if I were not able to esteem others and put a lot of my effort into what others are doing, then I would just be compelled to leave Operation Mobilization, because there's only one body, the body of Christ. These are tactical divisions God has given in order that the work may be accomplished. Just before coming here, I had the joy of speaking to the whole staff in Britain of Youth with a Mission. It's more exciting than speaking to my own staff, I can assure you. About 250, I must have given about four hours straight of teaching, and what a blessing it was. I never did find out whatever happened to the book table. I just left it behind. I have a spirit of expectation concerning this weekend. I think what we're doing here is incredibly important. I can't emphasize that enough. I know people are busy. America is a very busy place. I hope that tomorrow morning you might take some time to just encourage people to give this weekend, to being with us and considering this task. Many great churches now no longer have any missions conference. It is actually considered an old-fashioned, out-of-date thing in quite a few churches. I was at a very large church in Iowa some time ago, a couple years ago. I don't take so many missions conferences anymore because I find the people I want to preach to often don't go. That's right, my greatest burden is to speak to young people between the age of 15 and 23, and to speak to those who are not yet committed to world missions. OM has been called a missionary group, missionary agency for non-missionaries. A lot of the people that are full-time with us are long-term people, never dreamed of being a missionary. They just drifted into a meeting where I happened to be, or someone else happened to be, and they heard the challenge. I had a series of meetings in England a couple of years ago with Sheila Walsh, the great Christian singer. She brought them in, and I preached them out. No man spread the vision of world missions in the United States as much as Keith Green, both before he died, even more after he died. Some of his tapes are there on my little book table. Through his memorial concerts, thousands made commitments to go to the mission field. Last year I took a series of memorial concerts in Great Britain, and even there we had 3,000 young people make a commitment to world missions through those concerts. And some came to the meetings, they didn't even know what it is, they thought it was a rock concert. And we showed this video cassette of Keith, and then we preached and gave an invitation. But I was going to this missions conference in Iowa, and the meeting started, I think, maybe on Thursday. And it's a church with thousands of members, and on Thursday night maybe there were 100 or 200. Sunday, of course, we had three morning services. It was packed out, you couldn't even get in the door, the traditional American Sunday morning church service. And I said to the pastor, I think it was Sunday evening, I said, you know, why don't your people come out for the missions conference on for the Thursday and Friday night? He sent something to me I'll never forget. He said, you know, they don't see what's in it for themselves. They don't see what's in it for themselves. And I believe this is really the crux of the issue in the great struggle to get interest and involvement in world missions today. You know, a lot of the books we have are books that minister to us. I visited your printing house and a little bit, your publishing house, and placed a big order, what I think is a big order anyway, for a few hundred books. And I noticed in going through the catalog how many of those books are to minister to us. There's nothing wrong with that. And tremendous books. And some of the books I have brought with me are books that minister to us. One of the distinctives of a missions conference is that we are here to consider others. I know you have needs. Someone once said everybody in the audience in the church is a missionary or a mission field. And I'm sure God is going to minister to some of your needs. I've already had feedback that that's been happening this morning. But I believe one of the distinctives of this kind of conference is that we are here to consider others. We are here to forget about ourselves a little bit. Many of us in the present-day evangelical world go mountain climbing over mole hills. You see someone out in Iowa with rock climbing gear and helmets and ropes and carabiners and all that. And you ask him what he's doing and he says he's going mountain climbing out in this field. You might want to call a doctor. But sometimes we as believers are like that. We have our little problems. We have our struggles. We have our frustrations. I know I do. And somehow we allow them to become bigger and bigger and bigger. And if we were more involved in the real world in reaching the lost, you know a lot of our own problems would become small. I don't know how students even stay sane when they're not reaching the lost during Bible school. There's only going out in the streets three, four, five times a week in Chicago as a Bible school student that kept me sane. The very environment was just so stuffy I could hardly breathe with endless, endless jargon and cliches, most of which these people never lived. And to go out and work with drunkards and prostitutes and go down to the jail. And fortunately there was no room for me at the Institute. They stuck me in the YMCA with homosexuals and perverts and weirdos. And I ended up as the chaplain of the YMCA. And I learned more, I think, in the street than I did sometimes in the classroom. Not against classrooms. But you know, unless you can convert what you receive in the head into your feet, the Word of God says not blessed are the heads of those who preach the gospel, blessed are the feet of those who preach the gospel. My wife's had a lot of trouble with that doctrine actually in the practical realm. Because whenever I take my shoes off, there seems to be a pretty heavy aroma. I learned years ago to carry plastic bags with me or you get in the airplanes, they give you these free bags, you can use those for your socks. Save your wife a lot of difficulty. Blessed are the feet of those who preach the gospel, putting into practice that which we hear, that which we learn. And I wanted to, before I get to my main message, just share a few prayer burdens that I've gleaned from places that I've been to recently. And you may want to write some of these things down. I thought the prayer meeting, because I always like to hear the announcements about the prayer meetings, to me that's where the action is. I thought the prayer meeting was going to be in here. And I discovered the prayer meeting was in a little tiny room in the back. And there weren't very many people there. I thought it was in the wrong place. I thought maybe we were divided into groups. And then I just got in one of the subgroups, but I didn't particularly care who I was praying with. So I came to talk with God. So I checked up later on and found out that was the prayer meeting. Now probably you're all having other spontaneous revival and prayer meetings around the campus. But if you can get free from your other prayer meetings or don't have other appointments, maybe you could consider praying. Because really if we don't wait upon God, and I know people are praying privately and don't misunderstand what I'm saying, but if we don't wait upon God, then we're only going to get a small portion of what God wants to give us in these days. Is that a long prayer meeting? People are afraid of me in some places. They would never invite me to come to their cemetery or seminary or college. They're afraid I might start a night of prayer. I'm known for dragging people into nights of prayer. Usually they're chasing you into nights of prayer. This is a little short, little mini prayer meeting. You barely get started and the choir is walking in and you're going out because they use the same room for dressing, I think. Not dressing, rehearsing or whatever they're doing. But I'm getting in trouble here. Oh, where did they go? But do come to the prayer meeting because that's where they have, they've probably gone back to pray. That's where the action is and that's the blessing we want to see upon these meetings. But let me share a few prayer burdens. Burden number one is for China. I've been reading a lot lately about China. I had the joy of a very mini visit to China. God opened the door and answered a prayer for the ship Lagos to go to China. Chinese government officials came to the ship, saw people from 30 nationalities living together in community and harmony and love. It just blew their circuits. They just couldn't figure it out. What was causing these people to live together and share and work together there on the ship? They even gave us permission to put a book exhibition in Peking. God is working in China. I don't think we'll go back to China with the ship. I don't think China needs the ship. China has millions of believers, more believers than North India. It's more evangelized in some ways than North India. There'd be more mass evangelism in North India, but there'd be more personal evangelism and spontaneous evangelism by believers in China. I just heard another report from a lady, a Chinese woman, and she believes that the number of believers is over 50 million. I feel it's probably an exaggeration because she's just seen so much, but there are just millions and millions of believers in China. But there are unreached, very, very unreached sections of China. Don't be deceived. We have many believers in Andhra Pradesh, India, but that does not affect Rajasthan or Uttar Pradesh or Bihar because you have such a great, huge nation of 700 million. In China, you have the Uyghur people. You have several million Uyghur people in China with almost no witness. They're Muslims. And we need to be praying about these unreached, massive people groups within China. Tibet is slowly opening. One of our workers has just done a survey. She actually went there with a WEC worker, dear elderly soldier of Jesus. Wanted to go back to Tibet. My friend thought she was going to die there. She got ill, but they had this survey trip. And Tibet is now open to tourists, a land just north of Nepal. So let's pray for China in the coming days. The second burden is for the Soviet Union. A couple of years ago, I was again back in the Soviet Union, little house meeting up in the northern part where things are a little more open. I was amazed what God's people are willing to risk. You know, I just feel, and I may touch on this in the message, but I just feel there's just such a lack of willingness and desire to sacrifice for the sake of the Gospel and the work of God in our present American Christianity and British Christianity. And the word sacrifice is almost dropped from our vocabulary. And someone once said, well, compared to Christ, we can make no sacrifice, which is true. So then we decide to drop the whole thought, which is a cop-out. The job is not going to be done. The world is not going to be reached unless we are willing to sacrifice. I'm not talking about asceticism. I'm talking about going the extra mile. I'm talking about obedience. I'm talking about sensible use of our resources. And as I visited and met with these Soviet believers who were risking imprisonment even to have me into the meeting, I sensed that I was very, very small in some areas. They share with me some of the recent happenings in some of the underground presses. I'd like to know, is Fred Rennick here, Mr. Printing Press? Are you here? Are students allowed to tour this press? How can they tour the press? Do they have to pay $5, $10? What, CU, is it possible to have a tour? I mean, I got a special tour. It's possible. How many students have not yet toured that tremendous printing press? Raise your hand. You've not yet toured the printing press. Don't be shy. Just raise your hand. They've all toured it. Well, that's good. Because, you know, it's so easy to take something like that for granted. That is solid gold. That's gold plate. And I'm not talking of the tent making ministry, but just the spiritual ministry. You know, in the Soviet Union, they have little printing presses. They're in the ground. They are literally underground. People drop out of society. They disappear for seven months, and they go underground. They live in a way that's not humane. And when I was in the Soviet Union sometime back, I received a report of another dear woman who died underground because of the intensive fumes and the lack of ventilation. To get one more, you know, set of Bibles or one more package of gospel tracts, and in attempting to distribute this literature, they all risk imprisonment. Informers are everywhere. You never know. In that very meeting I was in, there could have been informers. When I went to leave the country, I was raked over the coals. Everything was taken off me, every paper, every pen, every thing I had on me. And I thought, just earlier, 20 years ago, I'd been arrested in the Soviet Union. I thought I was going to have another possible longer term visit. Somehow they let me go. Amazing. Pray for the Soviet Union. Pray for those that are trying to accomplish work in that land. We've had a work in that part of the world for 24 years. Only a few years ago, the people who were doing this work in OM had a change of policy and allowed me, who started it in the first place, to at least tell people that we have that work. That's about all we tell about OM's work in Eastern Europe. We at least can say that it exists and we need workers. There are tremendous literature projects right now. There's an awesome lack of literature in Czechoslovakian languages and in Hungarian language and some of the other languages. And Satan has fought that work into Eastern Europe, not just OM, but other groups. So that's a great prayer request. And it's something that's very much on my heart. I'll be in again this summer. Very distinct from those other countries. Very open. Almost anti-communist. I'll be having an official invitation, Lord willing, from the Lutheran Church, and I'm told I can expect an audience of 3,000 Polish young people. So I'd appreciate prayer. I was there not so long ago and the response was quite overwhelming. Pray for this little town. It's called Atheist Town. It was the model town for atheism and communism, supposedly, in southern Poland. I was there recently. The Holy Spirit's been working overtime. He's very good at responding to a challenge. And there's some very aggressive believers there. They got a gospel tent and pitched it in a field and started evangelistic campaigns there in Atheist Town. They started distributing books in the streets and in the supermarket. Some town drunks got saved. Some town communists got saved. There's a church that's flourishing and we now have legal permission to take truckloads of books into Poland. You don't need to take it any legally there any longer. We function both ways. We prefer the legal, of course. And God, though the other ministry leads to a lot more of in-depth prison work, and it's just amazing what God is doing in that one town, little Atheist Town, southern Poland. Just literally 17 days ago, I was in East Berlin. Pray for East Berlin. Germany, East Germany, also has far more freedom than, say, Romania or Albania. Albania, of course, is the world's most unbelieving, most atheistic, most anti-Christian state. I wonder how many of us pray for that country. There's a little book on the book table. It's out of print. We are rescuing copies, you know, copies that got stuck in somebody's closet. Bethany Press is going to print the new edition of this book, which is going to be one of the most significant contributions to world missionary literature in all history. But it's taking a long time. It's on the computer being typeset in England right now. Just getting this for six months or a year before the other edition is worth getting it. It's available at a special price. It happens to be a hardback edition. But you'll read about some of these countries. In fact, every nation in the world is mentioned in this book. Operation World. You can get this together with a map of the world. Operation World, an OM map of the world, for a special price. But Albania claims to have no believers. Maybe we ought to pray a little more for that country. People say, you know, what do you do during one of your nights of prayer? We never have enough time to pray for all that's on our heart. There's just so many burdens, so many needs, so many crises, so much suffering. And we are an information pool. I never have less than a few thousand prayer requests in my mind and in my heart from my experiences and travels and ministry in 50 nations across the world. So pray for the communist bloc. Then I'd like you to pray for the land of Turkey. I've been to Turkey about 25 times. If I'm honest, I must say that every time I go there, I get mildly depressed. We have battled so hard in Turkey. We have put a lot of manpower into Turkey. And in 23 years of working there, we have not seen significant breakthroughs. In fact, the whole church we were involved in planting in Adana, I don't know how many months ago, the whole church, five or six people, they were all arrested and thrown into jail. They won their case in court, but they're so devastated by their relatives that they have not regathered. The persecution has just been so great. You know, we get a false idea about believers in other countries. Believers in other countries aren't generally so different than believers here. There are the exceptions. There are the remnant. But just as in our country, it's a minority. We're carrying the load, a minority, you know, Holy Ghost discipline reality in their life. So in many of these countries, it's also a minority. And when we hear some of the great stories, it's often about a minority of the people. I read something about Poland recently, made all American Christians look like materialists and all Polish Christians look like dedicated, committed soldiers of Christ. The fact of the matter is a large percentage of Christians in Poland are in the grip of materialism right now. And there's a lot of corruption going on because of a lot of things being given to the country during the time when they were going through a period of suffering. Satan is not a fool. Whether he's attacking a Polish Christian or an American Christian, or whether he's attacking a Baptist or a Lutheran or Pentecostal or a Watacostal or whatever else, you know, he's not a fool. He's not an idiot. He knows how to get people in their weak spot. But I'd like you to pray for Turkey. I was visiting our team in Berlin. We have teams in Berlin working among Turks in preparation for going to Turkey so they can get something of a language before they go to Turkey. We've been laboring there over 10 years. We don't have one single adult male really committed leader among the Turkish believers. Not one. Cannot grasp what these unreached people's groups, what it's really like. Very difficult to grasp. Pray for Turkey. There are many other prayer burdens on my heart. Spain, which when I lived there, it's the first country I went to apart from Mexico. It was under Franco. It was closed. Everything we did was in secret. Today, Spain is wide open. It's one of the most open, unreached lands in the world. Yet some of the provinces in Spain have almost no witness, I would have thought, with your vision for South America. Has Bethany missions arrived in Spain yet? Not yet. Anyway, you can put that on your prayer chart because with your Spanish books, you're now, you must be one of the largest publishers of Spanish books. You even published my book in Spanish. No, I guess they just ran out of things to publish for a while. But certainly Spain would be a tremendous place for Bethany missions to consider opening up and sending a few dozen workers. Let's just pray together about these places and a few other places. I appreciate so much the freedom you give in speaking. So many places you go, you know, they say, well, brother, you know, we're glad you're here. We've allotted 25 minutes for you to speak. And I just appreciate the extra time you've given. Let's pray. Lord, my heart is just so full, I can't even express it properly. Think of these countries, China, the Soviet Union, the Muslim world. Think of obnoxious atheistic states spitting in the face of Jesus Christ, mocking him, calling him the son of a prostitute. We sit back and hardly seem to care. Oh God, shake us out of our lethargy, out of our spiritual paralysis, out of this materialistic brand of evangelical Christianity that we so easily adopt in this country that puts us out of step with a book of Acts. Shake us up, oh God, as we meet you in these days together. May we be willing to search our hearts, keep us from the argues as we attempt to argue our case and defend the status quo, try to write off spiritual lukewarmness as spiritual balance. Father, forgive us if we've traded in our backbone for a wishbone and abandoned the biblical radical principles of New Testament Christian living. We want the blessings but without the responsibility. We want fulfillment and have substituted the great fulfillment for the great commission. And we pray, Lord, you move upon our hearts in these days together. Bring in others who the last thing they want to do this weekend is go to a missions conference. Father, we pray for the Soviet Union, for revival, for strength, for believers that keep going the extra mile, for those in prison, for that great Christian rock singer who suffered so much. We pray for China, Lord, for greater mobilization of the believers, for the literature needs, for the complicated church situations, the divisions, the complex tension between the house churches and the more established official churches. Oh, God, give wisdom to the workers, those that are carrying literature in, those that are helping in other ways and radio ministries. Father, we pray for Turkey, these half a dozen churches among the Muslim converts in the whole nation, never more than a dozen believers in most of them, impossible beyond the impossible. We pray for Turkey, raise up workers. We thank you for Weck's work there. Thank you for David Hunter and his wife that are joining Weck after years with OM and going back to Turkey. Lord, there are other lands, Iran and Iraq, locked in that horrific war, Afghanistan being torn apart week after week, Sudan and Egypt, North Africa, Libya, the heartland of terrorism. Jesus, raise up workers, raise up men and women who will give to this ministry as most of this ministry in the Muslim world is underfinanced, understaffed. Lord, we believe you've called us to pray together in these days, break through in these different prayer meetings we're involved in, in our rooms, small groups, spontaneous groups. May the very snow melt around us through the heat of our prayer life. Grant this, we pray through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Let me just say that I have no message. I only have a heart broken for souls. I haven't come here to perform. I know if I say something funny or I behave in a way that people are not accustomed to, they think there's some kind of performance going on. I can assure you I'm not performing. This is the way I have lived for 30 years. I am a little different. We're all different. Some are more different than others. God showed me a long time ago that I was not Andrew Murray or F.B. Myers or Mr. Gordon, you know, that old Saint Mr. Gordon who wrote all these books on quiet talks. If you read too many Bethany books, you'll get overdosed on Andrew Murray. I was, as a young Christian, and I thought that all dedicated Christians were silent and quiet and had a lot of hang-ups about my big mouth and used to pray, Lord, help me to be more quiet. I ended up praying, oh God, help me be more quiet. That was more like it. I never have been quiet. You know, when you're saved by the grace of God, you don't lose your temperament. Your blue eyes don't turn sort of a halo color. This treasure is in an earthen vessel, but I'm not here to perform, though anything I do will have the earth dirt factor. Just let that slide and try to get what God is saying. I don't like to have any difference between the way I live and the way I preach. It's all the same. People often, if they find me dictating letters, they're on the phone to England three minutes before the meeting, say, when do you prepare for your messages, Mr. Verwer? I prefer to be called George. I say every step in my life, everything I read, everything I do, every soul I win to Christ, is preparation for the next message. I'm not against people who are more homiletical and more hermeneutical, that sounds musical, but I'm just not that way myself. I don't rate myself among the top 10 preachers. I don't even rate myself as a preacher. I'm just a broken vessel that God invaded 31 years ago, and what God puts in has to come out, and it comes out sometimes in funny ways. So don't get put off. If I turn you off, God can turn you on. Nothing's impossible for Him. It's good to be back in America. I'm a poor missionary, and I always feel I'm a refugee until I get back to my own hometown, which is a little village in New Jersey, and as far as I'm concerned, Minnesota could be the regions beyond. But I hope you will listen. It's easy to sit propped up in a nice soft chair like this and think about your last five girlfriends or your next five girlfriends or the fact that you've never had a girlfriend and probably never will. But I hope that you will listen to what I have to say. If I seem a little humorous, it's because by spiritual nature, the new nature, and what God has done in my life, I am hyper serious. And basically, as far as I know, every day since my conversion, I have lived with seriousness of purpose, with one main goal that has never left me, not a single day in 31 years, to make Christ known and to know Him better myself. I thank God that doesn't mean the liquidation of the human side of my personality and me, whoever and whatever that means. I want you to turn with me in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 12. One of my greatest struggles is in connection with my pushing books. I was in a little church out in California. What's the name of it? Grace Community Church, Pastor John MacArthur. Yeah, little church out there, a few thousand. And they really gave it to me strong. We don't want any book pushes. Sunday night service, one or two minutes. And so I was feeling a little nervous and I just took about three minutes for pushing books and weaved about six other major book reviews into the message. But I will tell you, when they finished that church service, I had never seen such a mob storm the OM book table. I thought people were going to be injured. I left a lot of books behind in the church and they have completely disappeared. They were in boxes. Anyway, that's a mystery. But you know, John Wesley was constantly criticized for pushing books. He believed in books. He said you'd never be a Christian leader without reading. He recommended five hours a day. He even read on his horse. Contemporary, even jellyfish tell me they can't even read in their car. They get sick reading in their car. Imagine John Wesley reading on the back of his horse. Amazing. And I hope that you will become an avid reader. Certainly going here, you ought to read all of your own Bethany Press books. That's only one new book a week. Some of them are pretty heavy. And I brought some books just to keep the balance. We wouldn't want you to just read Bethany books, though they are very balanced. I'm sure some of your authors wouldn't even agree with each other. But I brought a few other books that just to, you know, just to keep things exciting here for this weekend. The greatest book in the English language in this century. Next, nothing gets near it in my view. Well, it gets near it, you know, don't want to exaggerate. It's written by Dr. Lloyd Jones. Even Karl Barth said Lloyd Jones was the greatest preacher in Europe. He's now in heaven. His book on the Holy Spirit recently has upset a few people. He's a man that was just so balanced in a number of areas. And this is his outstanding book, Spiritual Depression, Its Cause and Its Cure. I never bring enough. I lack faith when I order books. Probably after tonight, there won't be a single copy left of this book. It's published by Eerdmans. It's one of the most popular Christian books in all of England. But since Americans mainly read American books, they don't even know who Dr. Lloyd Jones is. His two volumes on the Sermon on the Mount are classics. This is better than those two volumes. The title puts people off. It's not about depression. It's about spiritual warfare. It's about discipline. It's about suffering. It's about God. It's about the kind of victory that we need to know in our Christian lives. It's 300 pages equal to any seminary course. And I commend it to you. Spiritual Depression, Its Cause and Cure. One of the quantities last. The book I've been pushing the most lately in my top 10, and I push books almost every day of the year because I'm preaching almost every day of the year, is Healing for Damaged Emotions. We found about 50% of all the young people coming on, and even out of Bible colleges, have serious damaged emotions. Some of them even got their emotions damaged when they were at Bible college. And this is a greatly needed book. It's in line with the tremendous books you are publishing that I referred to this morning about Misbelief Therapy. And I just again remind you that you have now four books on that tremendous teaching, and I hope you'll get all of them. I ordered a few hundred of them today. But this is a book of a similar strain. Comes from the pastor of the church at Asbury where the great revival hit back in 1971. A Methodist. Spirit-filled Methodist. David Siemens. My favorite author, who was introduced into Britain by Dr. Lloyd-Jones, is none other than A. W. Tozer. How many of you read Tozer? Raise your hand. I want to find out where I'm going here. That's mildly depressing, but anyway, we'll get over it. The most powerful American author of all times, in my feeble opinion. I've only examined a thousand books. I'm still a learner. But if you can read this book and not find some spiritual dynamite to blow some of the unbelievable cobwebs out of your lukewarm head, you write to me and I will send you as a gift 20 free books. I've only had one person ever claim that. Recently, a Canadian. The best of A. W. Tozer. These are chapters, 52 chapters from his writings. Again, equivalent to at least one year at seminary. A. W. Tozer's The Best. A powerful book. Take My Life is the best book I know on discipleship. Written by an Englishman, the president of London Bible College, former director of OMF, one of the great mission societies, Michael Griffiths. Now be honest, how many of you have never heard of Michael Griffiths? This shows the cultural barrier between Britain and America. No British Christian would not have heard of Michael Griffiths, one of the great leaders of our nation. Isn't it good that once in a while you bring in a foreigner to speak? Michael Griffiths, Take My Life, a book on discipleship and commitment that is hot. Talks about prejudice or conviction. Talks about failure. Talks about spectators or players. Some of you know William Macdonald's book on discipleship, also on the table. This carries twice the blow and it's twice as big. Gems from Tozer. A book on growth by Ralph Shallis, a man used in revival in North Africa, another Englishman. Lived in France most of his life. Dying right now of cancer. He's written 10 books in French. This one is translated, though he's an Englishman, from French back into English. Amazing. One of the best books on spiritual growth you can ever read from now on. So you can understand this is International Book Weekend. Sell what you have and get some of these great books. Maps of the world. Even have music cassettes. Tomorrow I'm going to be interviewed. I always like to be interviewed. It's a good way to get another sermon across without people knowing it. By a woman who's going to write a book on Christian music and Christian rock music. Boy, this is hot. I mean, I smuggled a few Resurrection band records with me back into the country. They actually came from here in the first place, but I didn't have the faith to, you know, put them on my book table yet. I'll wait till after the interview tomorrow. But I am very happy that Bethany is considering publishing a balanced, of course all Bethany books are balanced, book on Christian music. Praise the Lord. Maybe we should have some more prayer. Some of you are getting worried. Let's turn to Hebrews chapter 12. You're already there. Some of you are now worried that this is going to be a long meeting. Bible says cast every care upon him he careth for you. Some of you know my favorite story because you've heard me before. And I was in Germany, the land of hyper punctuality. And I was going on rather long in the meeting, an hour and a half or two or so. I don't remember. I'm always despised clocks. And the young people were listening and taking notes. But one elderly gentleman was sitting in the back and I guess he wanted to go home and watch the tube or something. So he held up his watch to try to get me to stop. And I was preaching on discipleship and world missions, forsaking all. And I saw this watch. I said, praise the Lord. Look at this, my friends, this man's already donating his watch for world missions. You know, that's a great advantage of being an itinerant preacher. You can use the same old story again and again and again. There's always new young people there willing to listen. Hebrews 12, this is the word of the Lord. Wherefore, seeing we also are surrounded or compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him, and we want to do that tonight, consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood striving against sin. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto sons, my son despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him. For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons. For what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, of which are all partakers, then you are bastards and not sons. Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh who corrected us. We gave them reverence, shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the father of spirits and live? For they barely for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure, but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Something this school has always stood for, his holiness. Now no chastisement for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous nevertheless afterward yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them who are exercised by it. Wherefore, lift up the hands which hang down, the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way, but let it rather be healed. Follow peace with all men and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. Looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and by many be defiled. May God give us the spirit of obedience to the reading of his word. This is a great chapter to challenge us to gain greater victory over discouragement, and I'm tempted to minister to you on the subject of discouragement. From my one feeble little book, Hunger for Reality, I've had over 14,000 personal letters, and many of those letters come from people who are discouraged. But I'm going to hold my message on discouragement until Sunday, and if you know anybody that's discouraged between here and wherever people are coming from, Oregon, tell them to come on Sunday, because I believe God wants to bring victory into discouraged hearts. I believe one of Satan's most subtle strategies is discouragement, and I believe there is provision in God's word to never let the sun go down upon your discouragement. The Bible says don't let the sun go down upon your anger. Discouragement causes more difficulty than anger. So don't let the sun go down upon your discouragement. Now, that's a lot more difficult in the winter. Praise God for the summers. That's why I've just been in Australia. Get a few extra hours to handle some of these things each day. But I believe there is provision in the word of God for his people, you and me, to live in personal revival. I may share about that tomorrow. Personal revival. We often pray for revival. Send us a 1904 Welsh-type revival. Send us a Whitfield-type revival. And I pray for that kind of revival, but when it comes to myself, I believe I'm on biblical grounds to claim revival, to live in personal revival. So that's what I've been doing for about 30 years. It's a privilege for all believers. And I believe you're on a wrong foundation if you're just praying, Lord, you know, give me revival. You can pray that, but then you've got to appropriate all that you have in Jesus Christ, and all that you have to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which includes the fullness of the Holy Spirit in your life. What a cockeyed idea that the fullness of the Holy Spirit is for a few super spiritual characters who wait up late or who somehow feel they need it because they're going to the mission field or going to be a preacher. A spirit-filled life is for every believer. You need it as much to wash dishes as you do to preach. We get the idea that God specializes in the spectacular. I believe history would prove that God specializes in the ordinary. That's how you got saved. Some of you are so boring, you're hard to look at, but God saved you anyway. God saved you anyway. He saves lots of boring people. We got lots of them in OM. It's hard to carry on a conversation with them, but we do it because we believe in denying self. Serious. That's why I don't believe you should just read Christian books. I believe you ought to read secular books. That's why I don't believe you should just listen to Christian music. You ought to listen to secular music, at least find out what they're saying, because there's some atheistic, unbelieving, humanistic garbage that's coming out that your little kiddies are going to have to listen to, and you ought to at least know some of it. You can learn by reading Bethany books, but sometimes you might want to just listen. You can't live in this world without hearing some of it. If you work in some factories, it'll be played at you all day. Stop trying to live the Christian life in some kind of cocoon. That's an interesting film, by the way, or Christian ghetto. But let's get back to the first verse in Hebrews chapter 12. We're foreseen we are also surrounded about with this great cloud of witnesses. We've just come out of Hebrews 11, that's a normal place to be before Hebrews 12. It's good not to play games like the Jehovah Witnesses, scripture twisting and context leaping, but to try to read a passage in context. And we have a description of men like Isaac and Joseph and Moses. We have these women, verse 35, hardly the example of the contemporary prosperity movement. Women received their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance. They might obtain a better resurrection. Others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea moreover of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tested, were slain with a sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented. Can you find more unpleasant verses in the Bible than that? What in the world are these extremist prosperity people going to do with those verses? They cut them right out of the Bible. They believe in cafeteria Christianity, pick and choose, take the blessings and leave the problems. Praise God that Bethany Press had the boldness to print that lion-like book. God wants you rich in other enticing doctrines. If you have to drop out of school to read it, do it. Because I'll tell you, unless the church gets what's written in that little book, we're going to have one perpetual nightmare after the other. Because it seems that Satan has two strategies. First, he keeps you from real commitment. And when you begin to know real commitment and you're filled with the Spirit or baptized with the Spirit, different people seem to put different names on some of these things. I love what Billy Graham said. He said, I don't care how you get it in speaking about the reality and the power and the fullness of the Spirit, just get it. And I just believe that Satan, after you become more committed and you begin to know something of reality, he changes the strategy and tries to get you into extremism. That's what that book is about. So we see that God allowed these people to suffer. We see that this suffering was the mark of faith. There is the faith that delivers and there is a faith that perseveres through the trial. Both kinds of faith are important. Perhaps the best book shooting down extreme ideas about faith is a book entitled From the Pinnacle to the Temple. An assembly of God minister in Malaysia a few weeks ago gave me a copy of the As I read it on the plane between Singapore and Australia, I could hardly believe it. It's published by Lagos, a publishing house that went bankrupt, but I just located a hundred copies and I believe it somehow is back in print. Surely it's in your library. From the Pinnacle to the Temple by Charles Farrow, who's a theologian at Oral Roberts University. So it's a very interesting book. Faith that perseveres, faith that can go through suffering and hardship and trial and difficulty, faith that can take you out to Turkey and enable you to labor there maybe 10 years without fruit, faith that can get you through difficult complicated languages which you have to be willing for if you're going to be the kind of missionary that is needed in church planting and ministry around the world in the 20th century. We're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. How many have seen Chariots of Fire? Oh, you're doing a little better on that one. I've only seen it four times. I'm trying to buy another hundred copies of the videocassette. I believe it is the most significant Christian film of all times and it was produced of course by non-Christians. God has such an interesting way of working, doesn't he? You got all these great Christian film makers trying to produce the great film and praise the Lord there are a lot of other great films as well. I believe in films just as much as I believe in literature. It's one of the best methods to spread the gospel across the world today, the videocassette 16 millimeter film. You know what happened in India? The unsaved people have just produced a film about Jesus that makes the other Jesus film we use which is very good, the Campus Crusade Genesis Jesus film, you know seem like something rather boring at least for the Indian mind because the Indians like drama. They are the largest film producing nation in the world next to the states and so unconverted people put together a film about Jesus. A Hindu played Jesus. He got saved in the process. This film has been released in the secular cinema for the past couple of years and millions have been reached through that film. They come out mainly Hindus of the cinema weeping and often were there with our literature or our preaching teams to meet them. Now a Christian man has got a hold of permission to reproduce copies so that we can get our own copies of this and show it out in villages and places where it's not well known. It's also going into many other Indian languages. We have 15 or 20 major Indian languages. When I find out about something like this I know it's an answer to prayer. We've been praying for this kind of thing to happen in India for 20 years ever since we started working there. So all those people lined up or queued up at the cinemas or movie houses. Forgive me I don't know English from American, Australian or New Zealand. I'm generally mixed up in a number of ways but I hope you can understand what I'm saying. But seeing all these people lined up outside the movie houses in India just gave us this vision to use films 8mm, 16mm. It's been very fruitful. I saw the film Chariots of Fire again on the airplane the other day I think somewhere over the Pacific. I just wept. I don't know just something about the kind of commitment I see in sportsmen that somehow just reduces me to a place where I'm ready to recommit myself again to run in God's race. You know after Eric Little won the Olympics and broke that record it was 30 years before anyone broke that record again. Meanwhile Eric Little went out as a missionary to China and gave his life in a prison camp. Japanese intern prison camp. Paul said I therefore so run. First Corinthians chapter 9. I want to ask you a question, a spiritual question. Are you a runner? Are you a runner? Now if you know something about physical running you can make some comparisons. If you've read about physical running or you watch the Olympics you can make some comparisons. One thing you know that if you're a runner then you are in training. You are in training and you have learned to discipline your life. I started exercising when I was about four years of age and I've never stopped hardly a day in my exercise program and it's helped me a great deal. And so I do a little bit of running. I like variety so if I can I swim. If I can't do that I just jump around the room for 15 minutes or do push-ups or whatever. I'm not here to sell you on some very exercise program but I do I do believe that it's good to keep your body in good physical condition as much as possible. We're all different because for instance if you're going to go out to Nepal and reach people a lot of them are at 20,000 feet. Some of you couldn't even climb 5,000 feet. You'd be out of breath. And I believe it's good to keep the body in good physical condition. But I'm of course speaking about spiritual running. Isn't it amazing how people are going into these marathons. 26 miles. Old folk. People 60 years of age. Anyone here run the marathon? There must be at least one. Great. One, two. It's a good thing if you're trained and can memorize scripture as you go. I find running can be a waste of time but now with these walkmans you can redeem it listening to Bethany dramatized bible readings. By the way I'm not getting any commission. Just any wrong ideas. But I used to only run one or two miles because of the time. I didn't have enough time in the morning. But when they got the bible reading on tape sometimes now I go seven, eight miles and have part of my bible study as I'm running. I'm a kind of character that needs variety and I find that an enormous encouragement. Paul said, I therefore so run. Paul believed that the Christian should be a trained person. A disciplined person. He said, I fight not as one that beateth the air. That was my new year's message. Wherever you go people want to give you early January a new year's message. So my new year's message was Paul's words, I therefore so fight not as one that beateth the air. And it was a challenge to get some definite goals for the new year. How many of you already have set out some definite goals for 1986? Raise your hand. Good. I hope you don't mind me asking you to raise your hand. I saw a lot of you had them raised when you were singing so I thought you were into this. I just love to have people raise their hands during my surveys. Find out where you are. So easy to drift in our Christian lives. So easy. We need goals. Goals in bible study. Goals in relationship. Goals in our witnessing. Goals in our reading. Goals in our relationship with our parents. How many of you haven't written your parents in the last week? Raise your hand. Let's see if your hands are there. What about the last two weeks you haven't written your parents? Shame on you. Undisciplined. Unrespectful. Whatever. Now if your parents are in heaven, okay, you're forgiven. If you phone them instead, okay, compromise. You know it really grieves my heart that many Christian young people have a wrong attitude toward their parents. Many seem to harbor bitterness toward their parents. It shouldn't exist in bible school but it certainly exists in general. Why don't you set some goals to build a better relationship with your own parents or relatives or grandmother? What about your little brother, the little pest? Why don't you set some definite goals in regard to building a better relationship with your little brother or your little sister? What about the dog? God's interested in every part of your life. Ah, don't laugh. For almost 18 years I wouldn't have a dog in my house. One renegade dog snuck in when we lived in Nepal and I couldn't get him out. But in general we never had any dogs because I wasn't going to give any food to any dog because I was a bit extreme and felt of course that, you know, with me it's lucky my family had any food much less the dog. But my daughter had this boyfriend who was an interesting character and that broke up and then she decided to get a dog and I felt we were going uphill and agreed to it. But I had some pretty traumatic, pretty traumatic events with that dog. It's a London dog. I live in London and it's a mixture of various varieties and despite 20 weeks of training courses at 50 pence a course the dog's a complete idiot. But I will tell you I learned some precious spiritual lessons. Especially in my relationship with my daughter about the dog. Definite goals in 1986. Why don't you write some out tonight? Write them in your Bible. I remember when I lived in Nepal I thought I was lagging in my Bible reading and so I wrote my Bible. I want to read you through in one year. How many of you have never read the Bible through even if you've started in several different places you've read the whole Bible? How many have never done that? Be honest. You've never quite made it. About 20 percent. That's the best response I've had on that survey in the last couple of months. I mean we should you know get somewhere in Bible school right? Especially Bible reading you know it could it could become the end thing. Why don't you write in your Bible that you'll read the whole Bible through in 1986. This is a book about Bible reading and about 20 other subjects. Definite goals. I fight not as one that beat at the air. Now that doesn't mean you're not going to have any failure. Praise God for that book written by Erwin Lutzer. Failure the back door to success. I tell you that's my kind of book. I didn't even need to read the book. The cover brought me right to my knees because that's the story of my life. You know I was going to be this great Bible smuggler into the Soviet Union. This was one of my 25 or 100 goals when I got to Europe. I was living in Spain smuggling literature and I had this secret book stall. You went to my I had a philatelic agency and a Catholic Bible shop in Madrid. You'd go there and we'd we'd check you out and see if who you were and if you passed the test we'd give you a little card. You go down the street and up the stairs and through three or four doors and there you found the hottest display of contraband Christian books in all of Spain. We had a lot of success in Spain distributing the Word of God in very clandestine ways and I thought I could do the same thing in the Soviet Union. I was learning Russian and in the summer of 1961 I went into the Soviet Union. Some of you know my good friend brother Andrew, God's smuggler. Tonight you've got brother George, God's bungler. It's not funny really. The second day in the Soviet Union I was arrested by the Soviet secret police and accused of being an American spy. I mean really I don't do you think I look like a spy? They decided after several days of interrogation a rather interesting experience that we were religious fanatics. Gave us a submachine gun escort back to the Austrian border with the help of the Czechoslovakian police and it was there in Austria. OM was not born as it's known today. The movement before OM was born was called Send the Light. STL is still our literature trade name. But I went for a day of prayer in the mountains of Austria or Germany I'm not sure and it was there on the top of a tree when I was praying that God gave me these two words and gave me a vision. The two words were operation mobilization. The vision was to see Europeans reaching Europe. Europeans serving the church. Europeans working with the church to evangelize Europe. I went back to Spain where I was living and I took the few full-time workers who were with Send the Light at that time out for a weekend of prayer in the mountains of Madrid and should have shared this burden to see if they felt it was from God and I asked the Spaniards to be the leaders of OM and they felt after prayer and fasting that this was from God. I would tell you it was a daring move for Spaniards in a closed country. Amazing. It's not time to tell but by the next summer God gave us 200 men and women. By the summer after that God gave us 2,000 and 125 old lorries from London to carry 25 million pieces of literature throughout the length and breadth of Europe. Out of that a whole new movement was born to spearhead into the Muslim world where we have now almost 200 workers many of them career missionaries to spearhead another thrust into the communist countries and that in many ways was born out of that failure in the Soviet Union and a vision in a sense died at least for a while and another vision was born. Never be afraid of failure. I believe in God's providence and God's sovereignty plan B can be more exciting in plan A because with God reality's first geography second. You say what in the world do you mean by that? Now I don't like to frighten little Bible school students who have everything neatly organized in your little theological head though in fact I do specialize in that. There are some things that we will never understand until we get to heaven. How God reaches into a prison and takes murderers and thrusts them out and uses them as missionaries is something I can't quite figure out. Moses wasn't exactly a Sunday school teacher when God got a hold of him. Many of you have probably already missed plan A in your life. Stop worrying about it. It's too late. Regret is one of the most subtle forms of self-love. Some of you probably miss plan B. Some of you probably miss plan C. What happens if you miss plan D? Well you've got a big alphabet. Personally with all my heart I would aim at plan A. In other words you aim for plan A. You aim for God's best. You stay clear as much as lieth within you as you grow in grace and a knowledge of him of all sin, all dead-end streets, all pride trips. But if somehow Satan pulls a fast one, if somehow in the midst of the spiritual warfare you lose a battle, you realize you're not going to lose the war. And you bounce back and realize God can overrule. It's never an excuse to sin. It's never an excuse to sluggishness. I've never had that problem. I don't believe committed people have that problem. Committed people have more problems with false guilt, putting himself down, getting discouraged, feeling they're not spiritual enough. Oh that was a nightmare in my life. I always wanted to feel spiritual. And there was a time when I wanted to look spiritual. That is really a dead end, I'll tell you. But I have met people. I met a man in Poland, a converted Jew. He looked spiritual. Really, praise the Lord. Some people may have a spiritual look. If you're downright ugly, you're not going to have a spiritual look. I'm not necessarily in that camp, but I'm not in the other camp either. Now you can have a smile. And God doesn't make any mistakes, so stop worrying about your face. Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. Failure is the back door to success. Study hard for those coming exams. But if you fail, remember God doesn't die when you receive your results. Broken relationships often are part of God's learning program. Barnabas and Paul seemed to have a bit of difficulty and didn't end up in depression because of it. Years ago, people told me, as I had a rather interesting view about divorce, and we allowed divorced people into OM from the earliest days. Can you imagine, in the 50s, having divorced people in a missionary movement? There was hardly a single mission society that accepted divorced people. And people said, if you accept divorced people into OM, and we handle each one individually, because we're not interested firstly in whether they're divorced or not, that is an important thing, but we want to know where they are spiritually right now. Because a lot of people are divorced before they're 19. And if they're saved at 22, how in the world are you going to hold that against them? And people said, you know, if you allow divorced people into OM, then you're going to encourage divorce. Not necessarily so. We haven't had hardly any divorce in OM in 30 years. But we have people in the work who are divorced. I don't believe that mercy is in conflict with obedience. I believe that I can be merciful in regard to somebody else's sin and problem, and yet not in any way tolerate that in my own life, even in terms of a first-time experience. You know, there's a lot of sins I don't want to experience on a first time. Not even once, you know. I don't want to get into one-time terrorism. I don't know if any of you are tempted into terrorism. That doesn't seem to be a big temptation in the average Bible school, or some of you have a bit of a bit of a twinkle in that area. Perhaps the kind of terrorism I could engage in is what the great Santini did, if you ever saw that film. I don't know if you're into films. It's part of our culture. I don't know if you have a Moody Bible Institute rule here. You know, we signed a dotted line at Moody, thou shall not go to films. Do you have that rule here? Hallelujah. Praise God. I sensed there was an air of freedom here as I came on the campus. But we all go home and watch every kind of garbage on television, but we sign a thing that we're not going to go to the cinema. It's absurd. But anyway, praise the Lord. But there's a wild film, I mean it's wild, you shouldn't go to it really, the language is bad, called The Great Santini, and he was an Air Force jokester jet pilot. The film devastated me because he's choleric by temperament. He was a poor father, and his son had the same name as my son. I'm choleric by temperament. I was a poor father, and my older son is named Benjamin, and I made a lot of mistakes in my marriage. But I've just celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary, so don't panic. But boy, he performed some very rude things. I don't know if he ever did those things, but it was in that film. No, I don't think most of you are tempted to be terrorists, or tempted to do some of the things we see on television. But subtle temptations are there all the time, aren't they? And we do fail, we do sin, and we have to go to God, and he cleanses, and he forgives us. And we have to forgive sin, and others. One of the greatest books you publish is a book called Love Covers. It should be required reading, because I'll tell you, whatever you get at Bethany, if you don't get love, you don't have anything when you finish. That's right. There are not that many books about love, so any book about love, get it, and read it, because that's what the Christian life is made of. No, obedience, and commitment, and reality, and running the race, and the disciplined life is not in conflict with forgiveness, mercy, love, grace, tenderness, sensitivity, the second chance, the third chance, the plan D, the plan E, the plan F. Hallelujah. That's why sinners like me get saved in the first place. Some of you, I think, know my testimony. I was saved out of New York City. My parents weren't Christians. At eight, I was going to produce a dictionary of curses and blasphemies. At 16, I had three businesses. I was a liar and a cheat. New York City life is a bit fast, and then what came into my life? You probably think a dynamic, spirit-filled blonde. No. There was an unsaved blonde. It's causing me no due amount of migraine, but a dear, elderly, dynamic, praying woman. If there's anything I'd like to do in one of my sidetracks tonight is encourage any of you who believe in prayer to pray more, and if you go to prayer meetings, go to more, and if you're in nights of prayer, make them longer and more intensive. This lady was a woman of prayer. She prayed for me for three years. Every year, I got worse. I was the school loudmouth, the class clown. I was dragged down to the principal's office for bad behavior, blacklisted by the Honor Society, a pornoholic. Most of my weekends in the nightclubs in New York, no big deal. I wasn't in the mafia, even though I'm from Jersey or anything like that. Just beginning stage sin, but you know what the Bible says? He who commits sin becomes a slave to sin. At 16, I was a slave to sin. So ashamed of things I was into, especially in the sexual area. Oh no, not jumping into bed. This was the age of romance, but by 16, about 32 different women had blown every circuit in my head, started at age four. I thought I, for a while, I thought I was a sexaholic, until I found out every other guy I counseled had the same problem. Isn't it funny how little we talk about sex in the church? Do you have a good course here on sexology or something similar? I hope so. You certainly have some dynamic, way out books on the subject. It's over 500 verses in the Bible on the subject of sex, so I don't think it should be a hush-hush thing in the church. You ever go to those churches where they're so proud in their expository teaching? It's amazing all the different varieties of pride. You have expository Bible preaching pride. We believe in expounding the Word. We don't believe in any of these topical messages, any of these exhortation messages. We expound the Word of God verse by verse. I say, tell me, what did you do when you got to that verse? Be thou satisfied with the breasts of the wife of thine youth. I've never got a proper answer to that question. And I will tell you, if you don't get a balanced biblical view on this whole subject of sex, you're probably going to be plagued with some difficulties the rest of your life. Many young people who think they have special problems or who think they're homosexual or who think they're perverted or who think something, in many, many cases, don't have any of those problems. They're going through late adolescence. They may be tempted in various ways through curiosity, through hormone collisions or volcanic eruptions in their growth pattern, but they're probably quite capable of being at least fairly normal. You don't want to be totally normal because that's impossible because no one can quite figure out what that means. God, by His grace, brought this praying lady into my life. She prayed for me for three years, sent me a Gospel of John. She had been praying for this high school that I was attending for 15 years, that people would be saved and sent, and that school eventually became the birthplace of OM. I got saved through Billy Graham and the Gospel of John. I went back to the school. Meanwhile, I'd become the president of the student body. You know what that means here in the States. Lots of opportunities to open your mouth, preach the Gospel to the whole school. One meeting alone, 125 came into the cafeteria for counseling to receive Christ as their Savior. One woman believed in prayer. You wonder why I believe prayer is where the action is. I fight not as one that beateth the air. My brother, my sister, if you're not experiencing reality in prayer, you are beating the air. And if you're not functioning in the area of witness and in compassion, because witness is the fruit of compassion and it's linked with obedience. Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. The Word of God says, go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. Many other related verses. And if you're not experiencing some degree of growing reality and witness, you are beating the air. To run in God's race means discipline. To run in God's race means training. To run in God's race, as it points out in verse two, means keeping our eyes upon the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the great mistakes we're making in England in many places right now is we're asking God to do something that he wants us to do. There are two other brilliant books that you publish, which I've distributed all over the world, written by a man named Taylor. Jack Taylor, I believe. On the discipline life and how to bring a balance between discipline and sanctification. It's not easy, is it? Because when we're talking about sanctification, we're often talking about what God has done. Through the Holy Spirit, through the crucified life, through the kind of ministry that many of you have heard so often, through your founder, his tapes, and others, and books. And how do you bring that into balance with training programs, with discipline, with bodily exercise, with memorizing the Word, with means of grace, with a lot of other things. And that book, On the Discipline Life, by Mr. Taylor, is a great message on that subject. But so many young people today, you hear them pray, Lord touch me. Do you pray that? Are you into the touch me prayers? Lord touch me. He's already died for you. He is now in you. If Christ is in you, if the Holy Spirit is in you, you're just praying for a touch. Let's believe for a total takeover, not a touch. And let's realize that going on and on praying that can become a vicious circle. And what we need is more obedience. What we need is more discipline to do what we know we should do. Because we are not some kind of computer where you just feed in the right program and then everything is automatic after that. Jesus said, if any man come after me, let him deny himself, take up the cross, and follow me. And if you're not willing to do that, as hard as you may find it, and I find it hard in some areas, then you're not going to be a disciple. I don't care if you study here for 20 years. You're not going to be a disciple. And I believe as we think of the great task of world missions, as we think of preparing for missionary work, whether it's to be a goer or a sender, we need a renewed emphasis on the cross and on the discipline life.