In this sermon, the speaker shares the story of Caleb from the Bible and encourages the audience to run the race of faith in order to reach the prize. He emphasizes the importance of expressing faith through love and taking action to help those in need. The speaker challenges the audience to not become desensitized to the suffering of others and to actively engage in acts of compassion and service. He reminds them that everyone has different needs and reasons for their circumstances, and it is their responsibility to see and respond to those needs.

The following is a presentation of Broadway Church in Vancouver, British Columbia. For additional media, visit BroadwayChurch.com. The heart of God, which was not untouched by the plight of man, and not unmoved by the injustice on this earth, moved His Son from heaven to earth. And when we're talking about being moved, it's always with action. And I want to look on this action that He asks us to take as a race. 1 Corinthians 9.24 says, Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Run in such a way as to get the prize. Now, first of all, I want to make sure you're running at whatever speed. On Friday night, I shared with the teens the story about their race with particular reference to the story of Caleb. Twelve representatives were sent from Moses when they were in the desert to spy out the Promised Land. And they return, and they've got with them what I call sample fruit. And I've brought with me from Hong Kong this morning what I call sample fruit. They've got stories in their own lives, and they've got stories of how God's touched other lives through them that will and should make you quite jealous. All our people pray for the sick and see them healed. Of course they do. How else are we going to reach the world? All our people expect to see miracles. They also expect to do the ordinary most days. But it's beautiful fruit. And ours is a very hard one, which is how Jesus won us. Not with words, but with deeds, with actions, with truth. The beautiful fruit that was on a pole. They showed Moses, and they said, There's lots more. You can go and get it. And in Joshua 14, Caleb remembers this story as he spoke to Moses. My brothers made the people's hearts melt with fear. I, however, followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly. And the Lord said, The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever. Just as the Lord promised, he's kept me alive for 45 years since that time. And Caleb, 45 years after he first saw the part of the land that was for him, returns to claim it. And here I am, 85 years old, just as vigorous to go out to battle as I was then. Now then, give me this hill country that the Lord promised. He had said at that time, and you find it in Numbers 13.30, We can take the land now. We can certainly do it. But the others said we can't. The people are stronger and the land eats up the people. All the people of a great size, they're like giants. And then they said something which I call projection. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes. And we looked the same to them. It's not true. It's just what they thought about themselves and how they thought the enemy saw them. And I wanted to start this morning by speaking to some of you who have not begun your race through fear. And you may be 85 years old, but it's not too late. And it is not too late. Because if there is a race for every man on this earth, to reach every man on this earth, you need to run yours. Because I can't run yours. And there are people for you to meet. There are children for you to sing to. There are old ladies for you to cuddle, that no one else will. And if you don't do your part, I don't think God has a substitute. So should you be 85 or 45, or, by the way, I'm really sorry you mentioned my age. Now I can't tell you how long I've been in Hong Kong. But it doesn't matter. You see, people always talk to young people as if the future is in their hands. And I don't believe that at all. Because I'm very sorry to be standing here before you today. I thought Jesus would have been back. I mean that. I really had expected him back. So when we're investing the future in our young people, I'm not entirely there. I'm expecting that you here, whatever age you are, you should be the young people as Caleb. For he had the spirit which believed it was not too late. And that portion which the Lord had for him was kept for him. And it was. It was his inheritance. No one else's. But of course he had to go and claim it. Some years ago, I was just south of here in a place called San Jose. And we were doing a missions talk. And it was a wonderful day because as we drove into the meeting, they were just starting a marathon. And I watched this and past our car sped this most beautiful African. I think he must have been Ethiopian. He had beautiful long legs and he ran like a gazelle. Then there were other people running very nicely. And then 10 minutes later was a middle-aged lady who I just, I mean, I have high admiration. She dared to wear shorts, but she was running. I mean, not like the gazelle, but she was running. Well, I went in, you know, I'm on a time limit today. But on that day I wasn't. So it was a nice long service. And then we came out and went to lunch and we were just by the finishing line. And I, to this day, it makes me cry to think of it because the race for the number one had been over, oh, an hour or more before. But they were still cheering in the others. And at the finish post, they were shouting out number 1,828. And everybody's cheers went up and the tears started rolling down my cheeks. And we watched this for another hour and a half. People ran in, they limped in. Then there was somebody who could hardly walk and his friend was holding him up and they crossed the line together. I thought, yay, he finished. And then there was a whole bunch of them. I think they were probably working in an office together. That's what they looked like. And they must have decided, we'll finish together. And some of them could barely walk. They were so tired, but they had linked arms. And, you know, I think some of them could have run an hour or so earlier. But the strong held up the weak until you might not know which was which. And they finished. And the cheers were still going up. The cheers of the saints for those who had completed the race. And that's what Jesus said when he died. It is finished. They tried to persuade him, the Lord Jesus, to skip it. In Luke 13, 31, some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you. And I have to tell you that when you run your race, and you will all decide to do that today, there will be people along the way that will try to persuade you that when it gets difficult, you can stop or you're in the wrong race. We are living in strange times. We are living in times where things get difficult. People turn back or they look for another ministry. I've never understood this. For did not Jesus say, if they persecuted me, they will persecute you? Of course it's going to come. He said, take up your cross and follow me. Now this is nothing to do with once a week church, small group, or whatever other groups you belong to. It's to do with a lifelong journey following Jesus and reaching those who don't know him and then looking after them. Because it's to do with the way you run the race. Run in such a way as to get the prize. How do we run this race? I was impressed by those that limped in that were helping others to run the race. You see, it says only one gets the prize in this scripture. And the prize is for finishing. This is not a number one, two, three, four. This is not a competition where you are against other Christians. This is not when you see all their ministries got thousands of people and over there, there's great revival and wonderful healings. I'm going to switch churches. It's nothing to do with that. It's nothing to do with numbers. It's nothing to do with feel good, look good, how many. It's to do with what he's called you to and the people you meet along the way. And of course, there will be trials. If there were for him, so there will be for us. And Jesus said, go tell that fox. He was talking about Herod. I will drive out demons and I will heal people today and tomorrow. And on the third day, I will reach my goal. In any case, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day. For surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem. Jesus knew exactly where he was going. First of all, he knew he was going to heaven. But that's the joy set before him. And he could run his race on this earth. The goal was to die, of course. That was the goal. But the joy was who he would have in heaven. It wasn't just going back to his father. It was having us with him. And that's why he could move from heaven to earth. That we could move from earth to heaven. But in the company of so many. And then Jesus, strangely, having died, I never understand quite how he did it. He must have trusted the Holy Spirit. He then turns to his disciples, which is you and me, and he says, The things I've been doing, you're going to do. Now you go and reach the rest of the world. Well, if I were him, I wouldn't have done that. I mean, fancy leaving the world to us. With the Holy Spirit, of course. But, I mean, he must have trusted the Holy Spirit. What have we done with it? So often we keep going to more church services. And this is what we say. I've been in them. More, Lord. And we even sing songs. By the way, I've talked with the person who wrote it. And he does agree with me. Let your glory fall in this place. Let it go forth from here to the nations. Well, it doesn't. We go forth to the nations. And we don't get enough power of the Holy Spirit here to do it. We get enough power of the Holy Spirit when we walk. And we find we haven't got enough. And then we say, More. And he says, Yup. I promised I would. And we say, There's somebody there that I can't love well enough. And he says, That's all right. I give you my heart. That's how it works. It's moving. It's not being moved and doing nothing. For there was a word called compassion. And when they translated the New Testament, You probably know this. There was no word for compassion. There was no word in English. They had to make one up. In the Old Testament, you'll find words which are similar to compassion. Talking about the heart of God. His mercy and His kindness. Which is His heart. But when Jesus was on the earth, This word is used several times. One time was when He saw the crowds. And when He saw the crowds, In Matthew 9, It said He had compassion on them. Because there were crowds of them. And they were harassed and helpless like sheep. And He said, The harvest is ready. Pray then to send men into the harvest. And then He sent His twelve disciples. Whenever you find the word compassion, It isn't pity for the lost. It isn't how sad there are people suffering today. The word compassion, In the New Testament, Is to do with the bowels. And it's gut-wrenching. Sometimes the word is like a mother, Who has a child in her womb. And that is moving. And she is bound with love and nurture, For this life that is within her. And when Jesus saw the crowds, When He saw the leper, When He looked on Jerusalem, He was filled with compassion. Which is not a, I'm up here and they are for them down there. It was gut-wrenching. The word is being turned upside down in your bowels. And if we go back to the scripture I started with, Which is in 1 John 3, If anyone has material possessions, And sees his brother in need, And has no compassion on him, We might translate it like this, If anyone has material possessions, By the way, that's everyone. We're not talking about, If anyone has a lot of material possessions. If anyone has material possessions, And sees his brother in need, And the scripture says, Does not open the bowels of his compassion. This is gut-wrenching. How can the love of God be in him? This is what scripture says. Except that we live in an age, Where we've got so used to seeing people in need, That we simply turn the page in the magazine. Now you have many booths, Missionary booths today. I try to walk past them, Deliberately. In case I get used to seeing those in need, And doing nothing. Do you understand me? We are not supposed to see them, And do nothing. But we have practiced it, And we've been taught it. Ever since I've been here in Vancouver, I've heard it over and over. We have heard that those people, They say, Who are queuing for the food, Don't really need it, Or don't want to change, Or duh, or duh, or duh, or duh. Well, don't listen to them. Look at the people if you pass. Everyone is a different one. Everyone has a different need. Everyone has a different reason that they got there. There was a doctor in England, And he was in Hong Kong. And he asked me once, Could you pray for me? I don't have compassion for the poor. And he said, Will you do that? And I said, Well, I'm not sure if I can. I don't think it quite works like that. I don't think I can pray and you get compassion. Never mind, I'll do it anyway. So, I remember laying my hands on him, And I said, Dear Lord, Open the bowels of his compassion. And he got diarrhea for three days. Quite right. The church is constipated. More, Lord, we say. More, more, more. You see, we get stuffed up. And he says, Whatever you have received, Take it out to those who've never tasted once. Just near us, In a country just over the border, We had a group that looks after the children on the streets. Now, in that country, Officially, there are no children on the streets. We've housed them several times. We pick them up in the station. Most of them have got AIDS, of course. For many reasons. For the little boys, We'll sell their bodies. And we'll take drugs. And they've had to move every month. We get telephone calls every month. They've had to move again. It's quite hard to have children in your home when you move every month. Or at least they're moving. And in another city, we have a group that visits. And there are children there that sell flowers. Except they don't get the money, of course. The slave owner gets them. Did you know, If you've listened to Jamie McIntosh this weekend, You may know that there are more slaves today than in history combined. Women sold into prostitution. Children stolen into prostitution. Sometimes sold by their parents. And these children, I don't know how they got to that city, But they became slaves. They sold flowers. And our group used to go in. And for a while, the kindly McDonald's manager let them meet in there. That was their church. They prayed for one another. And yes, they knew Jesus. They knew how to pray for the sick. But they still didn't have a home. And it's quite hard to take a slave from a slave owner. One of them had a little baby. She was given a deformed baby to hold. To move the tourists. And when the police came by, she hid the baby. That was how she made money for someone. And what we try to do when these children come to know Jesus, I think they all come to know Jesus, actually. So we can't say some don't. We try to take them home. And sometimes their families have received them home. If not, we will try to find another home. It means traveling several days to find their family, if we can. And then whole villages believe in Jesus. And on this occasion, my friend went to a slave owner. And to plead for the release of the child. And told the slave owner. For Jesus died for him as well, of course. A slave owner would be a prisoner as much as those he kept. And this friend of mine spoke to the slave owner. And told him about a God who cared so much for those in distress. And those without life. That he sent his son to rescue us. To die and to set us free. And the Holy Spirit came on the slave owner. And he believed. And he would free the child. We have stories of those who go like this. These kids are not going to read pamphlets. They're not going to go to evangelistic meetings. Nor are the slave owners. But they might hear if you go. We have many stories of gangsters in Hong Kong. I want to tell you two stories about two women. One became my kai ma. That's my Chinese mother. Her son was a drug addict. And although over the years we've seen actually thousands of drug addicts live with us. And come off drugs with no pain. They all speak in tongues. Which is what we started with by the way. And as they pray in tongues and we pray in tongues. They have no physical withdrawal. And they have no medicine either. That's the very simple sounding bit of the story. Of course we sit with them. For ten days. Every minute of the day. That's six shifts a day. That's 60 shifts for one person. And seeing as we take about four to six people off a week. Then you can see how many people we need. And why most of us are pretty tired. Because we sit up with them all night, all day for ten days. And they sleep. But this lady, her son never wanted to change. And I was concerned about his mother. And I used to say to him, can I visit your mother? And he said, no, no. She worships idols. She won't listen to you. Of course he just touched his mother for money. She sold herbs in the market. And she would have got about half of one of your dollars a day. But most of that went in bribes to the people who controlled the market. And one day her son got arrested. So I found out where she lived. And I went to visit her. She was living in the walled city, which is a place I'd met a lot of these gangsters. It was completely dark. And she lived in this tiny little house. Now, this one was built in layers. Not properly built. Just one floor upon another and dark. And she lived on about the seventh floor. And all there was in her room was a bed. And she was in it dying. She just decided, if I have no son, I have no life. And that is so all over Asia. Where women have no son, they have no life. They have no future. No pension. No hope. Their hope is in their son. And so she just decided, as she was destitute, to lie in bed until she died. So I said, Mrs. Chan, may I pray for you? And she said, what do I have to do? And I said, you don't have to do anything. Jesus will come. So she's a bit interested. And I said, just close your eyes. And she had a bad chest complaint. And I just said to the Lord, Holy Spirit, you do this. By the way, we very rarely preach. We don't tell people about Jesus. We expect him to come. With us. And through us. So, you know, we do it that way because we think he's better at introducing himself. As I prayed, the Holy Spirit came on her. And I said, you know, Mrs. Chan, God really understands how you feel because he lost his son. He sent his son to earth because he understands how your heart hurts and how your chest hurts. Will you believe that Jesus is the son of God? Yes. Will you believe that he died for you? Well, what was happening was that as I prayed, her chest complaint went away. And she said, it feels really clear. And I said, that's because he put your chest complaint on the cross when he died. Oh, yes, I believe. Okay. Will you believe he rose again? Of course. And she said, I've been praying to idols all my life. They never helped my son. And so she was healed of her chest complaint. Now sitting up, believing in Jesus. And so then we boiled soup. For if you want to see the miraculous, you need to do the ordinary. And her life was saved that day. A few days later, I came back to see her. And she said to me, I have to be baptized. And I hadn't mentioned it. We don't have classes, by the way. And she said, so I said, how do you know about baptism? She said, well, I was watching the TV last night. Now she had this huge TV, but it didn't work. It was about 30 inches wide. But so she was watching the TV. And she said, I was watching. And across the screen walked this most beautiful man. He was weighing a long white rope. And he was walking up a mountain. There were beautiful flowers. And he held out his hand to me. And he said, Mrs. Chan, will you follow me? And I said, yes, Lord. And he said, be baptized. So she threw away all her idols without us asking. And there's another lady who was a very dear friend of mine. Her name was Elfrida. And she was nearly 60. And she was still selling her body. Well, you would have to if you have nothing else to live on. And she used to pull my sleeve when I passed by. And say, please can I live in your house? Please can I live in your house? Please can I live in your house? And I was thinking, no. I've got, you know, my place, I've got 24 gangsters coming off drugs. This is not where you put a just converted prostitute. But I didn't know anyone else with a home. Of course, it might have been different if you were living in Hong Kong. But you see, all the people I knew who had rooms, I'd use them once. Some people don't want to be used twice. We'd run out of rooms. And in the end, I couldn't resist it. You know, I used to try and walk another way in case, in case I led her to Jesus. And I know you think that's awful. But you see, how can you lead somebody to Jesus when she's injecting, having injections? By the way, her payment for prostitution was being injected in her back three times a day. One bowl of rice and three injections, that was her payment. I didn't want to lead her to Jesus in case she believed and I had to leave her there. I found out that two people in her brothel had died. One was pregnant and refused to sleep with the customers. So the owners of the brothel put a pipe down her and filled it with water until she died. And another one was an old one who just slept. And so Alfreda said to me, I don't want to die without anybody knowing who I am. Well, of course, in the end, how could we resist it? You couldn't have left her there, could you? Well, the only thing you could have done would be never to have walked past her again, which is what, of course, most of us try not to do. So we found a cupboard for her. It was a tiny cupboard. She was very tiny. And put her in it and prayed her off. And the miracle came just the same as she believed in Jesus. She came off drugs painlessly. Of course, that was only the beginning of the story. Fifty years of horror. And believe me, there was horror in her life. You think about her. You think about my Mrs. Chan. What was it that saved their lives? Was it the miracle of the Lord reaching down and touching their hearts, healing their bodies? Or was it the fact that somebody went or recovered? Or ten days of night duties? The way we run the race. Run in such a way as to get the prize. Galatians 5.9. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love. And we have a world to reach. And if you will not go into the world, it shall come. To Vancouver. Would you please stand? First of all, some of you haven't run at all. Now, remember, this is not a race for the swiftest. Just as long as you're in the race. It's how you're going to run the race. But you must be in it. And there is one for you all. You're not competing against anyone else. And you don't have to do what I've done. You can't anyway. The wall city is gone. So you can't have that one. But there are people here that God may call you to. There are people in the whole world that you should get to. And if you don't, will they? What do you think about that slave owner or those kids? They're not going to watch a video about Jesus. They would only know if someone went. Which is why Jesus moved from heaven to earth. And touched people. Really touched them. Not with a Bible, but with his hands.