Challenge to Students - Part 2

Let's just pray. This has been a God encounter this past hour. As I've worshipped, as I've listened to these testimonies and worshipped together, it really has spoken to my own heart. Such a privilege to be a small part of what the Holy Spirit is doing here in Africa. And I just thank God for this beat the drum movement and film. I believe it's just such a strategic ministry and hope many of you catch a vision to get involved. I want to pray for them and for you and for myself, the ongoing crisis in Beirut and Israel. Some of my friends have been spending a lot of time in bomb shelters. Others have gone over to Syria and Jordan and left. Others are there. Praise God, he answers prayer. God taught me how to pray when I was 17, when he was turning my life upside down. I praise God for this challenge about abstinence. It is possible. I was a hyper, highly sexed person. But the only person I've ever had sex with is my wife. And that was after a number of years committed single abstainer. And one of the ways you can do that is to know a deeper experience of the cross. Another way, of course, is saturating yourself with the word of God. Another way is to have something bigger. In my vision for world missions, in my vision for reaching my high school, my vision of God, just so much bigger than the sex thing. We can't say the sex thing is not big. The Bible has over 500 verses about sex. Sex is a beautiful thing. We're created in the image of God. We have this ability to create. But it's to be done in God's way, in God's timing. And I just praise God that he gives grace to be a Holy Ghost abstainer. In some ways, I don't like the term because the whole thing is far more positive, that we're committed to something so much bigger, so much greater, so much more positive, that these other things, like the sexual challenge, get in their right place. Therefore, it's not so difficult to handle. On the other hand, if you're not willing to be a real disciple of Jesus, not just one more decision, but as was brought out by the team, a disciple, there's a chance you're not gonna make it. Jesus said, if any person come after me, let's remember, Jesus, not me, Jesus said, if any person come after me, let him deny self. That's the core. Of course, when the sex pull is there, you've gotta go right to the core, except you deny self. Take up the cross and follow me. You cannot be my disciple. Paul said, I am crucified with Christ. I find that in some places today, they don't seem to understand what the crucified life is all about. It's all happy clapping and feel great and prosper for Jesus and get a blessing. And I'm not saying there isn't an element of that in following Jesus, but let's go back to the scriptures. Let's go back to Paul. Paul said, I buffet my body and bring it into subjection, lest after preaching to others, I become a reprobate. What's one of the number one ways leaders that become reprobate, including South African leaders? They failed to buffet the body when the sexual temptation was there, even married people and they committed adultery and many of them were wiped out, others recovered. And it's a global phenomena because we got a lot of people playing church, but not so many willing to be disciples, to deny self, to take up the cross, to follow Jesus on a daily basis. Paul said, I buffet my body, I bring it into subjection, lest after preaching to others, I become a castaway. Let's pray. Oh, Father, we thank you for this challenge we've had here tonight. We thank you for this tremendous beat the drum ministry. Pray that you'll give them the finance they need, the literature they need, enough copies of that DVD, the people they need, lesson in their phenomenal ministry in this country and surrounding countries. And Lord, we just believe that we can battle together to help stem the time of HIV and AIDS. Lord, every life we save is worth it. Every life we save, at least even for a while until they can be reached with the gospel and spend eternity with you is worth it. And so, oh God, we will go where you want us to go. We will do what you want us to do. Enable us to take those steps of faith that will count for eternity, even tonight in Jesus' name, amen. And Lord, we would also once again reach out and pray for that crisis there in the Middle East and in Israel and Lebanon and those surrounding countries. And Lord, we just believe with all of our hearts it's gonna be somehow a greater harvest in Iraq and Turkey, in Syria, in Jordan, Lord Jesus, and even the most impossible place, Saudi Arabia, because of the prayer that's being mobilized across the world. And even at this time, at this event, at this event, in Jesus' name, shower the blessing down, we pray, amen. I really pray after the meeting tonight we'll sort of all go into that area where those displays are. I've always been big into freebies, anything free. I like to get it. And they've got these free magazines. If I made a mistake, please come to me. I'll be happy to pay for them. But I got three of these last night and gave those away, and so I got three more tonight. But I'm a Christian magazineaholic. I have been for my earliest days in Jesus. And I've never seen this magazine until I came on this trip. Truth, I love the title. There's one of my heroes, Bono. And I just urge you to subscribe to this. I know it costs money and some of you are broke and in debt. Send me an email and maybe I could somehow work it out to get you a free subscription. But I'm excited about this magazine. I like the presentation. It's cutting edge. And I hope you'll pick up copies. On the way by the book table, you can pick up another free book. Last night it was the HIV AIDS book, they're gone. Tonight it's a book you can read in 20 minutes. It's especially for the visual generation. It's all pictures, even a picture of my wife, though the text next to it has nothing to do with her. I guess they just thought she was a beautiful woman. They should put her in there. But it's all quotations from the scriptures, from characters like me, from people who have gone to heaven. Here's C.T. Studd, if Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him. Here's John Stott, our God is a missionary God. There's some statistics in here, 1.8 billion people have little chance of hearing the gospel. Here's Jim Elliott, wherever you are, be all there. Live life to the hilt, every situation you believe to be the will of God. Soon to South Africa will come that new film, a $20 million production of the five martyrs in Ecuador, done from the Indian viewpoint. There's already a documentary about those missionaries, but now a film that really broke into the cinema, it brought in 11 million in the box office and millions more through the sale of the DVD. It's gonna come to South Africa, keep an eye out for it. It's a very violent film, it is in for kiddies, and it's really better for really violent, unsaved characters than it is for Christians. It's called The End of the Spear. I saw a preview of it in the office of the man who produced it. And it's exciting to see so many new dynamic Christian films. Well, this book's a little bit like a film, you just flip through it, and like I say, in 20 minutes, it's all history. The first 20 or 30 people that buy any book whatsoever, even one of my books from the book table, can get that little book, God's Great Ambition. And take a look at it. We've got copies of Purpose Driven Life, 40 million copies in print, perhaps one of the most highly distributed Christian books in history. I've always struggled a lot with the whole thing of suffering. And this book, and this writer, Philip Yancey has become one of my favorite writers. His book What's So Amazing About Grace is totally off the charts. But here's a special edition was done, I think in connection with the tsunami. Where is God when it hurts? A comforting healing guide for coping with hard times. And it's being sold at about half price. And then lastly, if you buy one of my own books tonight, either Out of the Comfort Zone or No Turning Back, which is a great follow up on what I'm trying to share here, or one of my first books, Hunger for Reality, if you buy one, you get one of the other ones free. So go over there, visit all those exhibits, meet those people, and start thinking about what you wanna do in the months to come. To put into action what you've learned here. And one of the hottest things that some of the folk here are organizing, and you can easily find out about it at the water table, is this relief work in Lebanon. We're praying that by this time, Lebanon will once again be open and be quiet. This is December 2006. Be sure to find out something about this challenging, needy, once known as the Paris of the Middle East, and try to get involved, because it's a great challenge. Now I was assigned different topics for each night. Sometimes when I'm in that kind of situation, I'm assigned a topic, I'm not always jumping for joy about it. And so I phone up and say, usually last minute, and say, look, I'm really happy about speaking on that topic, I wanna speak about something else. But I am excited about the topic that I've been asked to share about tonight. Our first night, we talked about God, and we looked at Isaiah 6, and especially that experience that Isaiah had. Encouraging everyone to have experiences with God during these days, and I believe that's happening. We're gonna give an open invitation on Thursday night for people to pray a prayer in connection with world missions. Either your own prayer, or that prayer from Isaiah 6, here am I, send me, so keep thinking about that. Last night, we shared about people, we talked about individuals. Individuals laying by the side of the road. All different kinds of people, with all different levels of suffering. One student that was here last night sent me a powerful email that moved me this morning, as it was forwarded to me by my PA in London. And I thank God that people were stirred, somehow, by what we shared last night. Tonight, we're talking about community. Community. The passage of scripture I've chosen is in the book of Acts, chapter two. If you have your Bible, you can turn. I know it's a little hard to read, I don't know if we could get some lights in the auditorium for a few minutes for the reading of the scriptures. But in Acts, chapter two, we have this amazing picture of community. There in the last part of the chapter. All the believers were together, and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, started at verse 44, selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone and everyone as he had need. Every day, they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes, they ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. Now, this is a picture of early community. This is a picture of the early church. It's clear from other scriptures that this isn't the only way that God's people can gather. They were responding to a particular crisis. The church has argued for hundreds of years about this passage of scripture. Some even tried to say it teaches communism. I got very extreme on this passage of scripture as a young Christian, trying to get everybody to sell their possessions. And I sold most of mine to put the money into world missions. That got interesting, especially when I got married and didn't wanna spend any money. But other passages of scripture, like Philippians, where it says God will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus, helped bring this into balance. But even though this may not be the only way to practice community and church and reality and relationship, isn't that a beautiful word? And your generation is actually more interested, it seems, then in relationship than other generations. Maybe I'm wrong. We're seeing a lot of new churches born in various parts of the world that are very relational. We're seeing the rapid growth of small groups, all kinds of small groups where people can be in relationship. In my own fellowship back in London, OM Southeast London that I'm involved with, tonight they're meeting, instead of their big weekly prayer meeting, they're meeting in smaller groups and they have supper. My wife's at one of them. And then they share their personal prayer requests and they pray together. Relationship, community, reality, fellowship. These are powerful words. These are important words. These are important words for those of us committed to global missions because most effective global mission work is not done by individuals. There are some unusual long-ranger individuals that God uses, that's wonderful. But generally it's teamwork. It's a team of people that put together this great event. It's one of them that especially chased me. I was not planning to come here. I do not accept all the invitations I receive. I accept about 20%. But they felt that I should be here. And after prayer, God worked it out to be here. And I just thank him because he's ministering to me. And I'm having fellowship with individuals like Benny Mostar. I don't know if you know this man who's so committed to intercession and prayer who lives not that far from here. What a precious time of prayer we had today. Many, many times I've read this passage of scripture. We see a number of things that are very basic to dynamic community, reality, and fellowship. We notice even in verse 42, which I failed to read, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. I remember a great Indian evangelist who led thousands to Jesus Christ, a man named Bhakt Singh. His biography is now out. I'd love to send you a copy. He's not well-known in South Africa. But when he died, I heard that almost 400,000 people came to his funeral over a period of days. He had made such a great impact on India in a dynamic Indian indigenous ministry. And he said of that verse, verse 42, that these were four pillars of the church. And if you had these four pillars, just like four legs on a table or on a chair, then the church would stand and it would grow. Number one was teaching, biblical apostolic teaching. Number two was fellowship, which we're speaking especially about this evening. Number three was the breaking of bread, which of course incorporates worship. And number four was prayer. And then it goes on. With that foundation, it goes on to give this picture of this unique community of God's people. You see them doing amazing, amazing things. We see them also sharing, experiencing what I like to call the revolution of unselfishness, which is so basic to biblical faith. We find them getting caught up so much in love and concern for one another that they even sold their possessions and goods and gave them to everyone who has need. Don't think that's not going on today. Our whole movement in Operation Mobilization was born out of a sort of a revival. But in our whole movement for years, even to this day, people are continually selling their possessions in order to put money into the work of God. One of these jackets was put up on auction. I left it on one of our ships in Ireland. And a lady who had sold a house was praying about what to do. Her husband had died. She had been to a meeting in which we had shared a vision of the new ship. And then she ended up joining on OM, even as an older woman, and she was there in Ireland. And our rather wild Irish leader took this jacket that I left behind, this simple global jacket, and said, let's auction this. This is George Verwer's jacket. I don't know what he said. I wasn't there. This lady bid 90,000 American dollars for this jacket. 90,000 American dollars times, I believe, seven, you might come up with a Rand statistic, because she sold her house and laid the money at the work of God. When the picture of suffering in Africa hit me in my first year at university, I just decided I'm gonna sell everything I have and give the money for Africa, give the money for the poor, give the money to print scriptures. I already had three small businesses at that time. So it wasn't a small step in my life to lay those businesses and lay my money on the altar. I don't believe God always leads everyone that way. I actually today believe more in biblical stewardship than I do in just selling possessions, because I believe the scripture teaches stewardship. And if it wasn't for business people and good churches that were stewards of God's money, then the cause of missions would be in great difficulty. And we see that in many other scriptures. But we were a new movement, we were extreme. And so we, I guess, had to learn some lessons the hard way. I had been on a two-year fast because of all my complexity with women. Even after I became a Christian, I would lead one to Christ and then neck with her for the next two or three hours, or kiss her, whatever term you're using here in Pretoria. And I couldn't find this in the follow-up books and felt this really wasn't the best approach to evangelism. And so I decided to go on a fast, no more dating, no more kissing, no nothing, at least for a while. It ended up two years because I went to Mexico, God turned my life upside down. I could have easily fallen into immorality with these beautiful Mexican women, but God had done a transforming work of grace in my life. That's when I left university, went to Moody Bible Training Institute in Chicago to prepare to be a missionary. When I arrived at Moody, I saw all these born-again missionary girls, at least some of them were thinking about becoming missionaries. It blew my romantic circuits. I was in love with about seven in the first week. You know, I thought they're all spirit-filled girls, they're all safe. If I try to kiss them, they'll probably hit me with a big King James Bible. And so, you know, I sort of just continued my fast. I was looking around and my heart was pounding, my head was zipping about, but I just kept pressing on. And then one day I went to rent a film. Moody had a dynamic film ministry and I went up to the eighth floor. I'll never forget it. I stepped out of the elevator and I saw this beautiful girl sitting there. Apparently she was in charge of the films. It was love at first sight. I broke my fast, moved in on the target. A year and a half later, she became my wife. We've just had 46 Holy Ghost out-of-the-box years with just lots of strength and grace from the Lord. At the same time, our so-called courtship period actually was a little complex because with her, it was not love at first sight. And she actually thought I was a little strange. Ha, ha, ha, ha, especially after the first date. On the first date, I said to her, such arrogance, I can't believe it. I said to her, look, probably nothing gonna, she's a little quiet country girl from a farm in Iowa. I'm a loud mouth, New Jersey city, son of a Dutch immigrant with a big mouth. Ha, first date. She's just sort of wondering what she's got herself into. I say, probably nothing gonna happen between you and me. Well, let's lay the cards on the table. I'm gonna be a missionary. And if you marry me, you'll probably be eaten by cannibals in New Guinea. That's the absolute truth. For her, it was definitely not love at first sight. She was wondering what the sight was. The next week, and this is truth, I thought, this whole thing is too good to be true. I gotta test, you know, I gotta have a Gideon's fleece. So I gave her a bag of, I wasn't big into washing in those days, I used to sleep in my clothes to redeem the time. So I gave her a bag of my vile laundry, and I said, would you wash this as unto the Lord? She was still not in love. But I mobilized a lot of prayer. I had a lot of intercessors. And we prayed that God would move her heart. And eventually, she fell in love with me. She partly just thought I was a man of God. She loved Jesus. She had made somewhat of a commitment to missions. She was in the Moody night school working day on the waiting list to get in the day school. She had been thrown out of her home by her stepfather. That's why she was in Chicago. If she hadn't had that terrible abusive experience, she would have never been in Chicago like Joseph in Egypt. And that's how I met this amazing woman. Because she thought I was a man of God, she also thought I was a Bible teacher. And so I started a teacher from the word of God. We went to Ephesians in preparation for the marriage. I just gave her that key verse. Submit unto your husband as unto the Lord. You're laughing, but she accepted it. Yeah, she just. And then she heard me preach on this forsaking all things. She gave me all of her money. She'd be a millionaire today. She had inherited a lot of money because her father was killed in the war. We sent that money off to Mexico and somehow we got married. I didn't wanna spend any money. We started selling more of our possessions to get to Mexico and we had two wedding cakes. So I took the one wedding cake and took it to the petrol station and said, look, I need petrol. I'm trying to go to Mexico. I'll give you this cake. Just blew his mind. He says, keep the cake here, have some petrol. And I'm telling you the truth. The next morning we drove through the night to save money on a place to stay. It was freezing cold. And the next morning we went to another petrol station in America, they call it a gas station. And this guy was a believer. Gave me free petrol. He gave me, changed my oil or gave me some oil, sent me on the way. The third station, hundreds of miles down toward Mexico, this guy was not so thoughtful, but he loved cake. I finally got the cake and we got another tank of gas. We made it all the way to Mexico City without hardly spending a single rand, thousands of miles just bartering and trading her possessions and whatever else I could get my hands on. And hallelujah, she just did everything I said. We had wonderful times. Great sex life launched, hallelujah. And we just had a wonderful marriage for several weeks. Then she read the other verses. Oh my, oh my, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. Oh, yeah. We need to bring that one into balance with other verses. We had picked up a little book by Roy Hessian that came out of the East African Revival called Calvary Road. If you can't find a copy, email me. I'll send you as many as you want, up to 100. Because when Roy Hessian died, he left all of his money in the Roy Hessian Trust and put a few of us in charge to use that money to keep Calvary Road, which is in 80 languages. It once even came out in Afrikaans, and God used it. But we read that little book, Calvary Road, in the midst of considerable marital complexity, living on the floor in the back of a bookshop because I wasn't about to spend any money on a flat or a place to live. And I began to see areas of the self life that were not quite crucified, really. Before I got married, God was using me. I was into Watchman Nee, Andrew Murray. People thought I was a spiritual leader. I'd won many people to Christ. I was preaching all over the place. I really thought I'm becoming more sanctified and experienced reality in the Holy Spirit. And then I got married. Whole PhD program in sanctification, in brokenness. And God used marriage to really expose hidden areas of the self life, especially in patience and bad attitudes. And I just thank God for marriage. I've never had a day that I regretted taking that great step to marry this wonderful woman. But we had to learn sometimes through our own mistakes, and I hope that some of you can learn from my mistakes and not make the same stupid mistakes. God have mercy on every one of you. So we read this little book, and we learned how to repent. We learned how to apologize. We learned how to share. God has given us these 46 tremendous years. The marital relationship is one of the most important aspects of community. If you don't have balance in your bigger community, it can actually impact your marriage and lead to immorality. Quite a few groups that got extreme on community got infiltrated by immorality because men became so close with so many other women without some basic wisdom and some basic restraint that soon they were sleeping with two or three women in the community. One group called the Children of God back in the 60s became an extreme cult, and the women actually ended up going out into the streets as flirty fishes, they would call them, and have sex with men in the street to win them to Jesus. Maybe you've never heard of that cult, but it was very big for about 20 years. The founder, David Moses Berg, died years ago, and many left the cult wounded, marriages broken, and hurt for life. So when we think about community, we've got to incorporate all the other aspects of biblical reality, all the other challenges of 1 Corinthians 13, all the challenges about the disciplined life, and also understand, of course, not for single people, but for married people, there has to be protection for their family. There has to be a degree of privacy. We know because we've run a ship ministry for 36 years, which is a floating community, and it's a very different kind of situation, but we've discovered that for most people, our ship ministry is not long-term, especially families, because families, as the children get older, they need a little more privacy, and the protection that privacy brings than they can have on our amazing ships. Community, for a specific purpose of evangelism, is a far safer environment than community for community's sake, to sort of prove a point, or to get into sort of hyper-relationships, which sometimes can grow sour or become extreme. We believe that the biblical model and the importance of the local church must be given priority when we think about community and relationship. Turn with me to Acts chapter 13, and we see this tremendous emphasis on the local church. I know that many of you are committed to local churches. I don't see that in conflict with being involved in dynamic evangelism and student ministry. They fit together, especially churches that really are big-hearted in Grace Awakened, rather than legalistic, judgmental, pharisaical. Here's a picture of a local church. Acts 13, I talk about this in my book, Out of the Comfort Zone, in which the main theme is grace, and a lot of emphasis on relationship. In the church at Antioch, there were prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius and Sharan, Menard, Manan, who was brought up with Herod the Tetrarch and Saul. They were worshiping the Lord and fasting. The Holy Spirit said, set apart from Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. So after they fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them, and they sent them off. The two of them sent on their way. Holy Spirit went to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus. When they arrived at Selemus, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogue, and John was with them as their helper. It's a picture of God. It's not the ship Lagos, which is a short-term event. Let's just pray. This has been. Next week. унк ッ go go that 응 Coach Essentially. See ya.