How Will I Respond Tv

I have a real burden for this session that somehow this could be very, very practical. I know you've had a lot of ministry and you'll continue to have ministry. I hope that last session was also somewhat practical.

But I just believe that if we could capture what it is to be a visionary and missions mobilizer, the potential of even a small number of us like this is without limit. Because God's method is multiplication. At the same time, we must not be naive that multiplication is just going to happen automatically with the general kind of half-hearted action we get these days so often.

I'd like you to turn with me in your Bible to 2 Timothy, chapter 2. I always appreciate getting cards. And I hope that if you have a card, a prayer card or a card with your address on it, you could pass it on to me. It would have been worth coming here just to meet my brother Franca from Serbia.

Apparently, we did meet or he heard me preach in Chicago at Moody many, many years ago. And now he's there in that tremendous mission field. I hope you meet him and pray for Serbia.

So many people in the world reject Serbia because of the war. As God's people, we're not into that. We're into the love Serbian movement.

We're into the love all people movement. And it's just exciting to have a conference like this with people here from these other countries. And I think if God's people had a little more discernment, we'd have a lot more here to meet these people.

But let's move with what God has given and then he'll give more in due course, right? 2 Timothy chapter 2. I know this is familiar, Graham, but I'm going to read it anyway. Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also.

Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus. It's powerful, isn't it? Of Jesus Christ. No man that woreth and dangleth himself for the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.

God has called us to be soldiers of Jesus Christ. I know that terminology is no longer popular. Actually, I think it was the last time I was preaching at Cambridge University.

I spoke in that famous round church on a Sunday morning and a lady was upset with my message. I think I got a little bit loud and some of the Anglicans don't like volume. I got this note, thank you very much for ministering here, but you don't need to shout.

We Anglicans are not deaf. It actually said that, the note. In my experience of 32 years ministering among Anglicans, quite a few of them do at least behave as if they're deaf, especially when it comes to world missions.

Then I had another note from that meeting. I have this natural ability to offend people. The other note was, why are you using military terminology? This is not acceptable in the church.

What am I going to do with my Bible? We are soldiers of Jesus Christ. That doesn't mean we carry guns and shoot people. It means we're disciplined.

It means we're committed. It means we're on the attack. The Bible talks about spiritual warfare.

The Bible, in Ephesians 6, talks about armor, put on the whole armor of God. Every comparison like that, of course, has its limitations. We're not like secular soldiers in every way.

We're not going to put you in tanks after the meeting and send you in the first tank through the tunnel to Europe. But the part of this passage that I wanted to emphasize to launch this sort of practical training session about how we respond to this challenge is verse 2. Things that thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. Now we're going to learn at the end of this week, and a lot of work has gone into this conference, a lot of work.

I haven't done anything hardly until this morning. I've announced it and prayed. And a lot of work has gone into this.

But we're going to learn, I think we've learned through this, the average Christian does not go to missions conferences. So if we're going to see this vision explode, we've got to take it to them. We've got to take it to them.

Now we've said the same thing in terms of evangelism. The average British person is not queuing up to get into church on Sunday morning to be saved. Believe it or not, they are queuing up to get on the golf courses.

I took up golf. I mean, it really shocked people when I took up golf because I used to make all these remarks about golfers. That was bad because my spiritual father, Billy Graham, was a golfer.

Anyway, I was told that I was going to come into a midlife crisis. There was this book, Midlife Crisis. I was feeling great until I started to read this book.

All the terrible things that were going to happen to me. And so I took up this midlife sport, golf. And I'm amazed at the number of people in this country who play golf and worship this sport.

It's amazing. The number of golf courses within 25 miles of here is just unbelievable. This is one of the only countries in Europe where the poor man, by the way, can play golf.

If you go at 3 in the afternoon, you get a twilight fee. That's what I like to go, 3 or 4, twilight fee. It's just getting dark and jog from hole to hole, which is upsetting to other golfers.

But at least you can get the whole thing done in less than an hour. It's sort of a new kind of a sport. So if we're going to reach people with the gospel, we've got to take it to them.

We've got to take it to them. The streets, the highways, the hedges, and modern communication. Television.

Some of you right now are on television. We need to cry out to God for more of the gospel to get into television, to get into radio. Good, quality, contextualized material.

Not just some American banging his American Texas drum to a tune that nobody else in the rest of the world can understand what the tune is, much less dance to it. Speaking figuratively. And as we think about world missions, this vision we have to reach all of Europe with the gospel, we have got to realize we have to take the message to them.

So this is my plea, that we will respond to the challenge of this morning and other challenges by becoming committed missions mobilizers. Now some of you already are, and I know I'm preaching to the converted. But let me give my own testimony.

I found that God, in the last couple of years, has wanted to improve me, change me, and improve me on the points where other people rated me very highly. I'm not good at rating myself. And I always emphasize I've got to work on my weak points, because I've got plenty of them.

So that's full time, working on my weak points. But in the recent years, I guess I didn't totally abandon it, but in recent years, I felt the burden to work on my strong points to improve every area, every area of my life, by the grace of God. Sometimes it's a very slow process.

And in our own fellowship, we are in the midst, we're just coming to the end of it, of one year of what's called strategic thinking, strategic planning, to attempt to improve every aspect of our ministry across the world. It's a very hard process. Some of the old timers, they especially don't like it.

You and I know one of the things that's hindering what the Holy Spirit is wanting to do in the churches so often. Tradition. One of my favorite non-Christian films is Fiddle Around the Roof.

Tradition! Tradition! I can't quite sing like that guy. But oh, how our hearts break. How our hearts break when we see so many people unable to move forward because they got some little tradition in their church.

They've always done it like that before. You know the funniest thing now? The New Church Movement, which I've been involved with for 20 years, they've got their traditions. They are worse than some of the churches they came out of.

They've got their tradition, and you can't get in there even to talk with them, much less break the tradition. It took the other ones 200 years. The new churches, it only took some of them 10 years.

We've got to be willing for change. This isn't 84, it isn't 74. This is 1994.

This is a day where your little son can go onto his computer, punch a few buttons, and pull pornography out of that computer that you couldn't get for 25 pound in London 20 years ago. And little mommy and daddy don't even know what's going on. We've got to be ready for change, and that means there has to be a commitment to growth, to change, to excellency, to attempting to improve every area of our ministry.

Now that's why I'm convinced this little book we have on the table, Grace Awakening, is so important. Because if we try to bring change in an ungraceful, non-grace-awakened way, we will make a mess. People get upset with each other.

They start arguing. It's interesting that in missionary work, most of the people on the field, places like Pakistan, India, all these places where I've been involved, most of them are fairly strong-minded. To get to the outermost part, to get to the hard places in the regions beyond, and we know it can be also hard right here, takes fairly strong-minded people.

You've got to get through a lot of minefields, a lot of opposition, and get out there. Guess what happens on the mission field when all these strong-minded people get out there together, try to work? They fight among themselves. You know, as you pray for missionaries, you're praying for ordinary people.

And there are ugly missionaries. People who are very narrow-minded, very strong-minded, that's a deadly combination, narrow-minded and strong-minded, oh my land, that's fusion. Anyway, very narrow-minded, very strong-minded, they get to the field, they have their own ideas, they've read their particular books, they believe it's got to happen this way.

We touched about that in the earlier session. Unwillingness to take advice from the people there, or take the time, because different people in the country you go to will give you different advice. So you can sort of choose what you like and not listen to what you don't like.

Because in some cultures also, they will try to say things that are courteous and pleasing. And we hear some of those things initially and misunderstand. We don't listen a little more and give the person, by being approachable, give the person to share some of the things that are bothering them about the way we're going on about something.

I don't want to get back into that, but it does concern me, and I can assure you it concerns me when I think of my own fellowship and some of the mistakes we have made and continue to make around the world. Taking this message to others, that should be our response. Therefore it is completely logical for any serious missions mobilizer who is here to arm themselves with some of these tools, like these video cassettes.

I've already ordered some of them. Imagine, if every one of us took a few of these videos, we can share, we can then even choose which ones we want to share. If you come here, you have to take the good and the bad.

We trust it's all good. But with a video or a book or an audio tape, you can have a different tape for different audiences. We have been trying to make massive use of video cassette.

It's been uphill all the way, because the Christian tradition, which is 30 years old, we don't use video cassette. We don't use video cassette. Do you know what modern advertising companies are doing now? You know what they've just discovered? In some places, there's more results sending a video cassette to a potential client than running advert prime-time television.

And so instead of a big company spending $100,000 on an advert, they put $50,000 in video cassettes, send them to particular people, and they're seeing phenomenal results. How many of you have ever heard of the Jesus Film? The Jesus Film. It's an amazing story.

I was just with Paul Eichelman, the head of the Jesus Film Ministry, part of Campus Crusade for Christ, and just talking to him is an inspiration. They are producing tens of thousands of Jesus Film videos. They only cost $5, $10, 5, 6, 7 pounds.

We used to pay $1,000 in the 60s to get a film. We were big into films from our earliest days. $1,000, $2,000 for the projector, $1,000 for the film.

As you show it so many times, it's history. Now we've got the video cassette. We still use film, though the big screen video will replace 16mm film in many parts of the world in the near future.

And now we've got CD-ROM and what they call the big mega-information highway that's going to be plowing communication into our homes like never before in history. As God's people, we've got to get with it. If we want to spread the vision for world missions, we've got to use video.

This happens to be OM World News No. 5. A professional video team from Australia take you to France, take you to Germany, take you to Berlin, Turkey, and up into the hills among the Kurdish refugees. We have hundreds in Britain who subscribe to this.

Now we're talking here not evangelism. Give a whole similar message about evangelism. Right now we're talking missions.

We're talking missions mobilization. And you and I need to make use of the tools. A great mistake to think somebody else is doing this.

George Verwer is doing this, or OM is doing this, or YOM is doing it. Those of us who are in full-time ministry, and yes, we are doing some of these things, we are only scratching the surface. We are only scratching the surface.

Unless there is a grassroots movement in the church among ordinary people who don't think this is their thing. Most of you are here because missions to one degree or other is already your thing, especially on a morning meeting. In the evening, probably we'll pick up a broader base, and there'll be people who are on the periphery of missions.

There may be a few here this morning. Fine. We've got to not think about this in the context of those who already have missions as their thing.

We've got to think, where is the average Christian? Now take for example this book Operation World. The publisher, which just happens to be OM, though it's a united effort with OM and WEC, and in America they sold the rights to Zondervan, a big publisher which was taken over by the secular people, but it's still a Christian publishing house. They are so excited because in America they produced an edition of 330,000 copies of Operation World, unheard of almost for missionary books.

I told them the other day, talking to the director, we're only scratching the surface. Those copies are largely going to people who already, already are interested in missions to some degree. That's good.

I believe in that. How do we get that book into the hands of people on the periphery? What about pastors? Many American pastors, it's true of British pastors, and pastors in general, they are on the periphery in terms of world missions. They have too many other things on their plate.

Survival, preaching, theology, divisions, pastoral counseling, divorce, abortion, 100 things the average pastor is supposed to be doing. And I'll tell you one of the reasons increasing numbers of pastors are having nervous breakdowns is they can't live up to the expectations, especially of a few of the people in their church or some people in their church. We need to pray for our pastors.

And if we go to attempt to bring a greater missions vision to our pastor, read the book Grace Awakening first, or try 1 Corinthians 13 if you want something shorter. That's absolutely atomic, 1 Corinthians 13. It's got to be a grace-awakened approach.

I wonder how many of you have already thought of the idea of maybe taking this morning's session, or last night's session, or tonight is going to be really powerful, and giving that video to your pastor. People on the periphery are not going to give their hard-earned money to buy these things. You and I will.

We've got to give it to them. Let me share my little vision. You ready for a little vision? My vision is to see 100 million pieces of missions mobilization literature go out in the next few years.

100 million. It's going to cost somewhere around $100 million or £700,000. This is a little contribution I'm making to the AD2000 movement.

I brought this vision in. Ralph Winter is excited about it. He's already in this kind of thing.

He's going to publish an article I wrote on this, which was just produced in Evangelism Today. He's going to publish it in this little paper that goes out to 90,000 people. You say, well, who's going to do this? This is not something I'm going to do.

I'm going to be part of it. Whatever part God wants, maybe it's, I hope several million, OM can be involved, maybe 5 million, 10 million. We've got these ships.

We've got a lot of people. We're constantly distributing missions material. But this is a burden for the whole body of Christ.

Again, we're not going to be able to measure it in detail. We're praying that every Christian who loves Jesus will get involved in the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Everybody who loves Jesus Christ is going to take ownership of world evangelism.

I don't need to give a message at a conference like this on the biblical basis of missions. We know this is biblical. We know Jesus taught this.

We know this is what we read about in the Book of Acts. We're on down the road from there. And now we want to get the church to obey.

Sending. Can you imagine the potential of the British church to send missionaries? Do you know one false cult in the United States has 50,000? 50,000 on their two-year program. I don't want to mention their name.

They're from Utah. 50,000. Do you think that's superficial? A great mistake some Christian leaders made was to condemn short-term work as all being superficial.

That cult had already proved that in two years, when you're committed, you can do a lot. And they don't have the Holy Spirit. From our churches in Britain, we should be able to launch 100,000 short-term workers if we count summer workers.

I like short-term to think minimum of a year. But many people short-term, they think a summer. Well, anything.

I was with Colin Dye of Kensington Temple. He was sharing and he said to me that he found people going out from his church even one week when they came back. They were different people.

We should be able to get tens of thousands, yes, even this summer, tens of thousands out for a few weeks in France or Belgium. Now, it may seem like a lot of people, those nations are big. There are many churches in some of those countries.

They're small, but what I'm saying is that there is scope for short-term teams if they go through the right training to be a help and to be a blessing. It's not the answer, but it can be part of the answer in many of these lands. And with the open doors in Eastern Europe, even places like Albania, it is staggering to the imagination.

But that is not going to happen unless there's a grassroots movement. And there's not going to be a grassroots movement unless you and I not only become missions mobilizers in our minds and say we believe in this, this is good, but we actually do it. My prayer is that we may go from here actually doing these things.

Distributing missionary videos, distributing missionary books, writing letters and putting mission material with it. Having prayer meetings in which we focus on world missions. Talking to the leaders of our church in a grace and waking way how we can improve the missionary thrust of our church.

Maybe giving them serving as senders first to prepare the way. If you have any clout in your church trying to put together a fund to get your pastor on the field. Pastors need to get on the field.

They need to see that helps them to somehow take the blinders off that keep them from looking beyond their own church. There are phenomenal examples of this in this country. I think of Tony Sargent of Worthing Tab his new book about Dr. Lloyd-Jones is just out.

Worthing Tab is one of the greatest missionary sending churches in all of Europe. They're not boasting about it I can assure you. Tony Sargent the pastor has averaged 4 to 10 missionary trips a year for the last 15 years.

And the church has not suffered. They have other people who can preach. If you're in a church and only one guy can preach you're probably in trouble.

He's not training anybody. He's not mentoring anybody. So Tony launches.

He's just been on Lagos II in Latin America. Now he's back in the church. And the money that they see released from that church the workers they see released is quite amazing.

Now there are other churches like that. Quite a few actually. But they're still a small group relatively speaking of real sending churches.

And this is where we need to multiply what God is giving us here. Through video, through personal sharing, through serving, through the distribution of missionary materials. That means that we may have to invest some of our own finance.

One of the things that amazes me and I know I have a tendency toward extreme and I'd ask you to forgive me if I say things that are over the top but I cannot understand why people aren't giving more money to build the kingdom of God. I cannot understand that. That vision gripped me when I was only 17.

And I had an opposing struggle. I didn't want to spend anything. I wanted it all to go for world evangelism.

And that got me in trouble. It was extreme. Now if that's your problem, you and I need to have personal contact.

If you're one of these persons, you never spend any money on your wife, never money any money on your children. By the way, if you have that kind of viewpoint as I had, you should never get married. You stay single.

You can pull it off if you stay single. Just live in a tent on the nearest beach and put all your money into Bibles and tracts. That's the way I thought.

In fact, when I met the girl who was going to become my wife, see, no matter how spiritual you are, you are incredibly human. And this incredibly human guy saw this beautiful looking girl at the desk when I got out of a lift, an elevator, at Moody Bible Institute. She blew all my... I'd been two years on a fast, not dating because that was one of my struggles.

I thought, cold turkey. And I saw this... I saw this beautiful girl and I fell in love with her. I thought, well, this can't be from God because it feels too nice.

I was a little bit into asceticism. And then I walked right up to her. I think the first conversation, I said, you're probably not going to the mission field, are you? Because, you know, I wouldn't even talk to you if you weren't going to the mission field.

And, you know, she was very surprised, very shy, quiet girl. You know, why do you say that? I said, well, none of the really good looking chicks around here are going to the mission field. Anyway, we ended up a year later getting married.

Just had our 34th wedding anniversary. But I wouldn't spend any money during that... What do you call that period when you're trying to win her over? Courtship. No money.

I wouldn't even put a coin in a vending machine. In fact, word got around that I was teaching her to spend money on these sweets was from the devil. I actually never said that.

I inferred it, but I never said it. And I was big. I was extreme into God's supplying.

Let me just say, there's nothing that's beautiful in the Bible that you can't go extreme on and make it ugly. Anything beautiful, you can make it ugly. And that's one of the specializations of Satan.

Get people into tangents. Get people into dead-end streets. And I was moving that way, but somehow I had the influence of that Bible college.

I had the influence of the Word and of men like Alan Redpath, who happened to be a preacher in Chicago. That time, that great British preacher. And so I was constantly repenting and trying to sort things out.

But I remember sitting by the beach one day, and since our meals were already provided at the Institute, we weren't there for lunch, but I thought, we're not going to spend any money because the meals were already paid for. They're gone. And yet, as I was sitting with my fiancée, I think we were engaged by then, she wasn't staying at the Institute.

She was somewhere else. She was hungry. I was so extreme, I would not buy her lunch.

I instead prayed, Lord, miraculous provision. Some people came behind us and had a picnic. When they left, they threw their brown bag in the rubbish bin.

And I went, I don't think I said in the name of Jesus, but I went into the rubbish bin and got the bag and opened it for my fiancée. And there was a sandwich that was unwrapped. Never touched.

And she had her lunch. Now, was I extreme or not extreme? How many say I was extreme? Raise your hand. Guillotino didn't put his hand up.

Thank you very much. After the wedding, I didn't even believe in weddings. We got married after the Sunday morning service.

Sermon. Boom. Didn't believe in honeymoons.

We headed for Mexico. Evangelism. I decided I wasn't going to spend any money to get to Mexico.

I had this beat up old van. Broken window, I didn't repair it. It was sub-zero, the window was broken.

This was our first night after our marriage. I can assure you, my wife told me later she was having some struggles. I did break down, freezing in the night.

We had to drive through the first night, which is now illegal in O.M. because of a number of factors. Because I didn't want to spend any money to stay anywhere. And we couldn't stop in this beat up van with a broken heater.

We had to get to Texas in the heat as quick as possible. But I broke down and bought her a cup of hot chocolate. Balance was beginning to come.

It's beginning to come. The next night, we had to get a place to stay. I went to the telephone book.

I'm not exaggerating this. I went to the section where there was pastors. It was a small town.

Random chose a pastor, went to his house, knocked on the door. I said, we're missionaries going to Mexico. We need a bed for the night.

He gave us the master bedroom. And he gave me a dollar the next morning, which I was praying to get my money back from the hot chocolate. Of course, to get to Mexico, to get to Mexico in a van, you need petrol, right? You need petrol.

I took the wedding cake. There were two wedding cakes. And praise God, people didn't eat too much.

I took, this is the truth, in Wheaton, Illinois, I took the wedding cake to the first petrol station. And I said, hey, I'm trying to get to Mexico. You give me some petrol.

I'll give you this cake. It blew his mind. He never had that experience.

He gave me a free tank of petrol. I did the same thing the next morning. It was a Christian, a brethren guy.

I'll never forget it. He gave me oil and gas and didn't take the cake. 400 miles more down the road, next petrol station.

This guy was not a believer, but he was a cake lover. He took the cake. He took the cake.

We got to Mexico 2,000 miles without spending any money. Just selling my wife's possessions and other things along the way. Well, somebody once said to me, when a movement is being birthed, when a movement is being birthed, this was the birth of OM.

We didn't even know what God was doing. I didn't have all this in my head. I was going one step at a time.

But when something is being birthed, often there has to be extreme things that God allows to birth it. When it's birthed, of course it has to become more biblical, more balanced. And that's what's happened in Operation Mobilization.

Of course, we had some people leave us. Some people felt, you know, we turned away from the original preaching when I started to become a little more sane, a little more balanced. Of course, living in Mexico those first days, I didn't want to spend any money on food.

But we weren't at Bible college anymore with all the meals paid. So I had to give some of the first money for food. This was wild.

I went down to the bazaar, my broken Spanish, and tried to trade gospel books for these tough, bizarre market Mexicans. And they didn't want any of my books. So I wasn't getting much food.

And I remember once actually giving my wife chicken bones. I said, look, if you boil these up, we can get some soup out of these bones. And my wife was so submissive.

Anything I told her to do, she did. I mean, that's another story. I gave her Ephesians 5 from the first time we met.

Not even the whole chapter. You know, just submit, submit. Boy, and she was so committed to that.

And that worked. That was beautiful for several weeks. Then she started to read these other verses.

You know, love your wife as Christ loved the church. Help! It's very difficult for my type of person. Those days, those early days in Mexico, it was God's anvil.

As He broke me, I shared about that experience with a Mexican lad. And God had to break me. And I found myself apologizing to my wife.

I found myself starting to spend money. To this day, I find it hard to spend money on anything but that which is for world evangelism. But God, many years ago now, showed me that I was off.

I had a wrong view of culture. I didn't understand the human factor. I certainly didn't understand women.

And I learned to joyfully spend some money even on myself and, of course, my wife, my family. I eventually had three children. I'm now a grandfather.

But it was a hard road for me. I almost didn't make it. My marriage could have broke.

We've got to keep changing. Now, maybe your problem's not the same as mine. Maybe your problem is that you tend to spend a little more money on yourself and on things that four weeks later, you look at that little thing sitting on the shelf, and you think, Now, what is that actually for? That little bit of junk is not only not going to help world evangelism, as you look at it, you're trying to figure out how it's even going to help you.

Again, I want to bring that into balance because I believe that as human beings, we will waste. We will sometimes waste. And how wrong it was of me after I learned how to spend to then be so cautious with my wife on what she did purchase.

And when I discovered she wanted to purchase a few knick-knacks. Do you have that word in England? Knick-knacks. That's ultimate junk.

And yet there are shops everywhere. Shops everywhere trying to sell you. My wife got into purchasing spoons.

Little spoons. Have you ever tried to eat your cereal on these little spoons that they sell? It says, you know, Cornwall or Stratford-on-Avon. And soon, then she wanted to buy this board with these little, you know, hanging all the spoons.

So there in my house, a disciple's house, were these little spoons that nobody could eat with. Finally, I said to her, Honey, buy a spoon. In fact, I broke down and I bought her one of those spoons.

Praise the Lord. Several weeks later, the Lord delivered her from that. If any of you would like to buy some small spoons, could you see me after the meeting? The Word of God says it's good you can laugh because in missions, it's a lot of laughing or a lot of crying.

There's no middle road in missions. But the fact of the matter is the Word of God says it is more blessed to give than receive. The fact is that in Acts chapter 2 when the Holy Spirit was moving in power, people started to sell their own possessions for the kingdom.

The fact of the matter is a man in chapter 4 gave his own house to sell for the sake of the kingdom. And the fact of the matter is that we have passages like Luke 14, 33 that we read before. Except you forsake all that you have, you can't be My disciple.

I went naturally extreme on that until I hit Philippians. My God will supply all your needs according to His glories and riches in Christ Jesus. Of course God prospers His people oftentimes.

That's such a major controversy I'm surely not going to get into it this morning. But sometimes we are playing a game of words. Has God prospered operation mobilization or has He not? With two ships and two and a half thousand people and properties and houses all over the world.

Not that many private houses but headquarters and coordination bases like our big base in India. But if God prospers you, first of all I don't believe it's just a blanket rule. You just throw out for everybody like some kind of formula.

But as God does prosper individual believers, it's for the advancement of His kingdom. It's not for you to build up your big home and your fat bank account that you can live comfortably the rest of your life. And I'm not speaking against comfort.

But God is calling us to build the kingdom. And when hundreds of millions are without food and without the gospel as we sit here this morning, how can we not become a little extreme at times? I remember being with Brother Andrew in the Netherlands. Sorry I missed being with him this weekend.

We've been linked for 30 some years. But I remember being with him in the Netherlands. Corrie ten Boom spoke first.

I spoke in the afternoon. He was the main speaker in the evening. We had a little cup of tea together.

And he asked me, he said, George, did you give an invitation? And I said, well, no, actually I didn't give an invitation. I'll leave that with you tonight. He said, sure thing.

I've learned it's easier to cool down a fanatic than warm up a corpse. It's true, isn't it? Don't worry about a little extremism among some of your young people. You get too excited for Jesus and missions.

Is this a big problem in the average church? Too much prayer? Too much love? Too much zeal? Too much gospel or literature distribution? Too many people pushing Operation World and all excited about missions? Do you know what A.W. Tozer, that great prophet, said? To think that too much enthusiasm like this was the greatest problem in the average church was like sending a squadron of policemen to the nearby cemetery to stop a demonstration among the residents at midnight. It's not the biggest problem in town, is it? And I don't think it's the biggest problem for most of us here. And I dare to say, this morning it would be in the will and the plan and purpose of King Jesus that we be filled afresh with His Holy Spirit.

Filled afresh with His Holy Spirit. D.O. Moody used to emphasize the need to be filled again and again. Get a lot of people these days telling you about, they had this great crisis with the Holy Spirit ten years ago.

They had this great crisis five years ago. God did this three years ago. I want to know, where are you right now, brother? This is 1994.

We're in the middle of February, day after Valentine's Day. My wife gave me a big card. The first thing I thought, boy, what did that cost her? I told her I was going to sell it.

But I brought her something as well. I was, you know, this is the age of the mobile phone. A businessman gave me one free.

He pays all the calls. So I thought I'd do my wife a good, I never go shopping, hardly ever. Supermarkets, well, that's her job.

But I thought, I was on the way home, I was walking, I'm going into Sainsbury's and buy something my wife needs. How do I know what she needs? I'm standing at the door of Sainsbury's on the phone. Honey, what do you need? But I didn't write it down.

Anyway, as my Valentine's present, I brought my wife some things from Sainsbury's. Small onions. I thought, sure, she said small onions.

She said big onions. What is the difference between a big and a small onion? Did I hear for a woman? I said, big thing. I said, big thing.

Would you pray for me in my marriage? I really appreciate that. God's grace. God's grace.

It's more blessed to give than receive. Lay not up treasure on earth, but lay up treasure in heaven. Yes, we've got to be balanced.

We need to bloom where we are. We need to acknowledge our human factor. That means we have to spend money for survival, for flowers, for cutting the grass, all kinds of things that some of us don't sort of like to do.

But I don't think the average person is having these problems. We are a materialistic age. People are thinking about themselves.

They're planning. They're scheming. No one can tell us what is enough pension? How much is enough insurance? And so little money.

Brothers and sisters, let's be honest here this morning. So little money is going into world evangelism. And even when people stood up to give money, they usually give to people's physical needs.

They see some little baby on television all crippled up and dying. Ah! They feel so guilty. They send money into the organization.

They don't even know anything about the organization. Send money in anyway. They feel a little better after that.

So we have God's people giving money to non-Christian organizations. Some of them are even humanistic and anti-Christian. But at least their conscience feels better.

Praise God for Tear Fund, an evangelical movement raised up with a double-barreled evangelistic and holistic and caring for the physical need type of ministry. And other similar ministries and most mission agencies, even groups like OM that are known for aggressive evangelism. We're helping the refugees.

We're working among the poor. But we've discovered through that that people more easily give money to projects that help people's physical needs than they will give to world evangelism. So that message needs to be brought into balance.

And those who have vision for evangelism, those who have vision for church planting, those who have vision for reaching the unreached people through many different methods, I believe as much as possible the little money they may have, they should channel it more carefully and discerningly to things that are going to bring men and women to Jesus Christ. In fact, it was Luis Palau who said, the greatest way to bring about social change is to see a man born again. And I say amen.

Though OM hasn't had this as our priority all these years. In fact, thousands, literally thousands of people who've been on OM are involved today in holistic ministry through their own church or in other ways. It's exciting.

How are we going to see this vision accomplished? How are we going to reach all of Europe with the gospel? We've got to see a massive grassroots missions movement. And that is going to take money. If we're going to distribute a hundred million pieces of missions, mobilization, literature.

We're not speaking Europe here, but the whole world. That's going to take at least a hundred million dollars. Now right away people get really upset.

Certain Christians, especially those who specialize in small mindedness, which is a majority group, they feel very upset. I just had a negative letter about my article. It's unspiritual.

It's too businesslike. Boom, boom, boom. You know.

And I love that person. I understand to some degree where he's coming from. That article only represents one burden on my heart.

That is not more important than the Lordship of Christ. That's not more important than the fullness of the Holy Spirit. But we've got to declare the whole counsel of God.

And that particular vision is built on those other foundational truths. People say, well that's so much money. Do you know what the World Vision Budget is in the United States? That's a Christian organization.

Do you know what their budget is? Three hundred million. Now I know over in Europe these big American figures sort of short-circuit our thinking. But let me tell you, there is big money in the hands of God's people here in this country.

I could tell you some things about money in Britain you wouldn't believe. How much money does our born-again tremendous wonderful brother Cliff Richards have? He's worth over 30 million. And he's probably the most generous giver in the nation among wealthy people.

Brothers and sisters, we can trust God for millions. In myself, I don't want it in myself. It's more work.

Every pound you get given in a Christian charity today like OM, you have to carefully account for. Every pound. And we're in subject to boards of directors and we're in subject to one another.

People who are set free from the drives of materialism, they in themselves, they don't want more money. It's more work. It's got to be carefully spent.

Life gets complicated. People make false accusations. It's easier in some ways to be poor, even in Christian ministry.

Would you ask God for even 500 pounds by faith that you can buy missions mobilization material and start the multiplication effect? Realizing that when you distribute some of this kind of material, someone else who may have a little more money will get some and he will get more. Have you ever discovered what's called network marketing? It's very much on the increase in this country. My son has just gone into it.

He's a builder. He loves Jesus. But he's started to distribute herbal life.

This is a drink of herbs and it makes people feel better, look better, I don't know, dance better. Whatever. I remember when Amway, ever heard of Amway? That was born and American people laughed.

What a joke. And of course, Christians, they're always good. Oh, it's from the devil.

Anything they don't understand, from the devil. That was a bit of a problem because a lot of Christians got into it. The founder of the whole thing just happened to love Jesus.

Gets all complicated, doesn't it? Especially when we've got a big mouth like me. Amway, network marketing, which is a grassroots, it's grassroots whether you're for or against it. That's not the issue now.

It's grassroots. It's now one of the largest companies in the world. All those men in the early days are multi, multi, multi millionaires.

Not so easy anymore. And they put a lot of money into missions, into God's work, usually within their own country. We haven't seen any of it yet.

I do have one Amway man who's made a pledge that gives a certain percentage of all of his sales in Canada coming to me. I get every second month a check for about two pounds so far. He's not, sales haven't exploded yet.

That's the truth. But I'm praying for him. We need, within the body of Christ, a massive network biblical, holy ghost network marketing movement to convince people that they need to be involved.

To take the product, the word of God and Christian literature for evangelism, books like some of the materials we have here for mobilization, for spreading the vision. I will tell you this kind of thing captures even 50 of you this morning. And you begin to put it in practice, it will multiply right across the whole of Europe.

I could give you story after story. Our time is almost gone. Of how we planted just little seeds.

The story, for example, of Operation World. It was out of print. It didn't sell.

It was a dead book. When in Bromley, Kent, where I've lived for so many years, I found that old copy laying on the bottom shelf. I pushed it through to my publication director.

I said, let's reprint it. Let's publish it. Let's put a good cover on it.

Today, it's the largest missionary distribution selling book in the world. Again, I feel we've just scratched the surface. But it has been a fairly large surface in many languages.

No one who knows anything about missiology would not say that Operation World has been a major tool. It's all it is that God has used. Then the prayer cards came out.

Then globes and maps and all kinds of other tools. And it spread eventually to millions of people. That's why right now, Korea, they published Operation World in Korea.

The ripple effect went to Korea years ago. Not just from OM, from many agencies. And Korea is gearing up to send tens of thousands of missionaries.

Did you know that? The fastest-growing group of missionaries in OM, fastest-growing, they're not the biggest, fastest-growing Koreans. We had 140 Koreans at our September conference for new recruits. They were the largest group.

So we shifted from translation from the main pulpit into German or Dutch. They were the languages we usually used from the English. We shifted to Korean.

Here we are in the Netherlands preaching English and Korean. Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, there are many new missionary sending agencies. It's one of the most exciting new things that's happening in the world today in connection with foreign missions.

It's just amazing. Absolutely amazing. But as we say these things, this is a great danger.

We in Europe now develop an inferiority complex when it comes to missions and think we can take the back seat. Don't make that mistake. These nations have phenomenal obstacles to overcome.

The Koreans take three years to learn English before they can really get seriously started in career missions. We have, OM now has our own English language school in northern Wales mainly to teach Koreans English. This is a mountain that has to be moved.

Brazilians and Argentinians up to now their churches are not willing to put up the big airfares at all that's needed to get them out in decent numbers. Some are coming. It's exciting.

But Britain is still, still way out front. You already know this trade language of the world. You've got churches.

You've got resources. I know it's not always in your hands. From Heathrow and Gatwick we can touch any nation in the world in a matter of hours or less than a day.

We've got this missionary heritage. We, in this nation, must remain on the cutting edge of world evangelism. But it won't happen unless people like you and me are missionary mobilizers through every possible method.

A prayer movement must go parallel with this. And ourselves demonstrating this reality by being involved with these ethnic minorities that are right here at our doorstep. How dare we turn our backs on Hindus and Muslims that are right at our doorstep.

How dare we communicate any form of racial superiority in the 20th and 21st century. We must humble ourselves. We must acknowledge the mistakes we made, even things like the Crusades, as here we are in the midst of Ramadan.

And Muslims, once again, think often concerning the Crusades and Christians killing Muslims and Muslims killing Christians. We are not in some kind of crusade anymore. Ours is a revolution of love.

And we must open our homes and open our hearts and reach out to these minorities. At least try. It's better to try and fail than have never tried.

Talk to one Muslim about Jesus. One Hindu about Jesus. Or maybe just an old-fashioned cockney atheist who'd like to punch you in the nose the moment you mention the name of Jesus Christ.

World Missions starts here. This is tunnel vision, but it starts on this side of the tunnel. And as we grow and as we receive God's guidance, we go through the tunnel and to the ends of the earth.

And let's face it, for everyone that goes, we need a hundred. At least a hundred that will stand behind. Now that hundred will only be doing that.

They'll be living their life here. They'll be God's salt and light here. It's not an either-or.

We can't put reaching Britain against reaching Turkey. We're one body. Different people will be led to emphasize different things, but we'll all, by faith, buy in to the basic concept.

The whole world reached with the gospel. It can be done. It can be done.

It's doable. I'm not saying it can be done by the year 2000, Jan 1st, but it can be done. And the decision you and I make this week is a determining factor.

Let's be practical. Let's examine what we're doing with our time, with our money. Let's examine our communication methods.

Let's examine the practical areas of our life. Lest we continue to spread a brand of spiritual schizophrenia that I believe eventually leaves people in a backslidden and spiritually dead situation. Let us pray.

If there is any time left, we can have questions. I can't remember. I'm supposed to finish at half past or at one o'clock, but we'll pray first.

Lord, I just thank you for this opportunity to share this burden that burns in my heart like a fire. It's been there all these 38, 39 years in varying ways. And Lord, I know there are people here that have a greater love for you than I do, that have a closer walk with you than I do.

But Lord, we can learn from one another. And we believe as we see spiritual fusion that the result will be much greater than the combined sections of that fusion that some people call synergy. And we long for that kind of atomic spiritual synergy to somehow take place for your kingdom.

And we're trusting you. We're looking to you. And we may never be the same.

We want that commitment, but we want that grace-awakened balance. Lest we play the fool and discredit your holy work. In Jesus' name, Amen.