Message 01

This is a special week for me, and a challenge to bring 12 messages to you and to be in the same place for 6 days. I have brought with me about 1,000 letters to answer. I've done about 50 already this morning.

I have three telephones. Two of them don't work here. And I was crying out to God that at least one of my mobile phones would work, and it does.

And so I've been talking to people in many parts of the world. But I'm really excited about this week. What a tremendous place.

I've been at similar places, Forest Home in California, Gull Lake, Maranatha, and places in other countries similar to this. And I've always believed that it's wonderful for God's people to come together for a conference, for a week, whatever you want to call it. Buck Singh, a friend of mine in India, now with the Lord, who led a few tens of thousands to Christ, he had what would be a holy convocation for a week.

And thousands would come together. When I lived in India, and I'd had the privilege of sharing at these great holy convocations. By the way, when Buck Singh died a couple years ago, 400,000 came to his funeral.

Such was the influence of this unusual man from India who became such a close friend. When you came in, you probably wondered why we have so many books. Even Roy, my friend, described this as overkill.

And so I had to give him some counseling. But one of the reasons we have so many books is that we are not into selling books, we are into book explosions. And you can take any book on this table completely free of charge.

There's three or four that we want you to take, I'll explain that in a minute, for yourself. But any book that you will give or send to anyone else anywhere in the world, that is a gift to you. That's a partnership, because I don't know the people you know.

And I'm getting older, and I want to reach more people with the Word of God. We have in OM, given the Word of God, so far, to about one billion. And that's an understatement.

We stopped counting ten years ago. So this book explosion, it really works. And you're now part of that.

So as you look at those books, if there's a book that you will give away to someone, and we'll be referring to different books each night, you can just take that. You're doing us a favor, because postage and shipping is out of sight. And I've already paid for them to get up here from our warehouse in Waynesboro, Georgia.

So if there's a book there you'd like to give, maybe to a teenager, maybe to a missionary, just take it as a gift. And then we would like every one of you to take one of our introductory packets also as a gift. My latest book is in this packet, called Out of the Comfort Zone.

We'll be referring to a little of that throughout the week. And this will give you an introduction to our ship ministry and to Operation Mobilization, because I won't be saying so much about that during the week. So please take that, even this morning, as an introductory packet.

It wasn't my idea to put this photograph on the cover. It comes out of our USA office in Atlanta. We have a powerful book on the subject of abortion by a close friend, Randy Alcorn.

We would like you to take that book as a gift, if you'll read it or give it away, because this is still a major issue for the body of Christ. And this book is written really for the non-Christian. And there are many, many non-Christians now that are convinced that abortion, at least most of it, is wrong.

And we have seen major answers to prayer in our nation on this issue. And so that is one of the gifts. We also have a book on the subject of HIV and AIDS, the global AIDS crisis.

One million Americans are now infected, 400,000 dead, and we're nothing next to Africa. As God's people, with any compassion in our hearts, we have to be concerned about this. Again, there won't be that much time to speak about it, but that book is one of the finest books written for a Western audience on the global HIV crisis.

That is a gift to you. And then the book in the packet is a gift. The fourth book that's free is my other book, which is tied in with my overall theme for this week of perseverance.

I'll explain that in a moment. So in a sense, No Turning Back is like a handbook for these six days together. And so we'd like you to take that and maybe read one chapter a day in preparation for the ministry.

And that would be a great encouragement to me. So that is also a gift. So there's four books.

We really beg you to slow down as you rush to lunch and take those as a gift. There's no strings attached. It's part of our ministry.

And the other books, if it's for yourself, it's just any donation that you want to give. There's a series I gave at Maranatha. I prayed about giving that here, a series of 11 lectures on the Book of Acts, and the Lord gave me something else for Romney.

And so there's that Maranatha conference. I think that must be on a CD. There's some of the writings of A.W. Tozer, one of my favorite authors.

There's Randy Alcorn's brilliant book on grace and truth. We're going to be touching on that a bit. There's this dynamite book for men, Six Battles Every Man Must Win.

And then another series of CDs, a ministry I shared at a huge Christian music festival when I was asked to take a seminar on the subject of sexuality. And somehow God has used those messages all over the world. Let's remember the Lord Jesus, his word.

Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every person. You know one of the reasons I'm excited about being here is because generally I don't get invited to these kind of events because I've been put by God's people. It's not really where I am, but God's people have put me in the missionary box.

He's a missionary. He's a missionary speaker. He's bound to make people feel guilty and offend others.

And so many doors close. But in fact, my passion this week is not firstly missions. My passion is Jesus.

And I'm committed to his whole counsel. And so I come to you to teach the word of God. At the same time, I believe those words of Jesus.

He shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth. I remember going back to the Maranatha Conference Center in Michigan a number of times and telling some of the people there that my favorite thing at Maranatha was the prayer meeting. Almost the first place I went to when I came here was your little prayer building.

And to realize prayer has been going on there for about a hundred years. It just spoke to me. And by God's grace, I will be with you every morning at those prayer gatherings.

Because we know the word of God says, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty unto God to the pulling down of strongholds. We don't want people to feel guilty if they don't get there. This is a time of vacation.

You may be sleeping in. You may want to be alone praying in the woods or doing whatever you sense you should be doing. God is so merciful to us, isn't he? But if you want to pray, I certainly look forward to being with some of you there in the morning.

During these six days together, morning and evening, I'm going to share with you 12 of the most powerful passages that God has given me in his word. I have preached since my conversion in a Billy Graham meeting in New York City, and I'll talk about that tonight. A Jack Worsten anniversary rally.

Billy Graham was the guest speaker. And I, an unlikely character, son of a Dutch immigrant. My grandfather was an atheist.

My other grandfather was a drunk. In God's mercy, I went to this one-night meeting in Madison Square Garden, and I was born again in the spirit of God. That was just 50 years ago in March.

And I've experienced his grace and biblical reality every single day for over 50 years. And so I, as an older man, I'm now a grandfather. Do any of you have grandchildren? Aren't they wonderful? We've just been with three of our grandchildren in Idaho.

The main reason my wife isn't here now, she's with the other two who are just getting out of school in London, England. And they get priority over me. Grandchildren are wonderful.

Tony Campalo says, Grandchildren are God's prize to you for not killing your own kids. So here I am. I just had another physical birthday.

We had, by the way, a spiritual birthday party. In Britain, the average Christian doesn't go to missionary events. And so we have anniversaries, we have birthday parties, and they come.

And then we preach and give them books and take offerings. So I had about 170 at my 50th spiritual birthday party there in London. I have a way a lot of exciting things happen.

I can even send that to you on CD. We had three times that many at our 45th or 40th wedding anniversary a few years ago. And so now that I'm an older person, I feel more free to talk about perseverance.

Some of my friends are in their 90s. Dr. Homer Payne of Dallas Seminary, 90 plus, is on a short-term campaign in Bolivia right now. I was with my friend Barney Van Dyke for supper in New Jersey.

I'm from New Jersey, born in Patterson. As I said, a son of a Dutch immigrant. And Barney Van Dyke, who came to supper with me the other night, he's 98 years old and still moving for God.

Now, of course, many people go long before that. I've had friends that were gone in their 20s. We had a 17-year-old lad on our team in London die of cancer at 17.

It's a mystery, isn't it? But this week, I want to share these 12 passages that have motivated me all of these years. And I know that many of you know the Word of God already. Some of you probably know the Word of God better than me.

But it's my prayer that even old passages will be a challenge to our hearts. Because we are discovering in research that as people get older, sometimes cynicism comes in. Sometimes discouragement comes in.

Most of us who are older have experienced what we feel is unanswered prayer, even if we don't like to talk about it. And, of course, for those of you who are younger and probably have many more years ahead of you, I pray that these biblical principles from these passages of Scripture will be a foundation for you to be a spiritual marathon runner. And one of those passages we'll look at later is sort of the Mount Everest passage of the week in Hebrews 12, where we are called to run that race with our eyes fixed on Jesus.

But this morning, our passage is Matthew chapter 9. Turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 9. Picking up the story at verse 35. Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest. Let us pray.

Living God, we thank you for your word. I thank you for reaching down in your mercy and grace and saving me those 50 years ago there in Madison Square Garden. I thank you, God, for what you did again there a couple of weeks ago through your servant Billy Graham.

As night after night, tens of thousands came to that stadium and thousands made decisions for you. We thank you for this man who's been such an example some 86 years and for his son Franklin, who now carries this huge load of leadership for the Billy Graham Organization in Samaritan's Purse. Lord, as we look into the word, morning and evening, enable us to receive your word in a spirit of reality, in a spirit of vision, in a spirit of obedience, that we may be your men, that we may be your women, that we may go where you want us to go and do what you want us to go.

We pray for those young people out on the ranch, that there be a mighty move of your Holy Spirit. Lord, I sense you're moving among young people. I think of the thousands of young people I just spoke to in Germany with 80% of them responding to the invitation.

And Lord, I know if you can do that in Germany, you can do that around the globe. And so we pray for what's happening among the young people there at the ranch. We pray for our fellowship, one with another.

We pray, Lord Jesus, for our use of the free time for relaxation and refreshment and refueling. Lord, we commit to you the times of prayer and our own personal seeking of your face in these beautiful mountains. For we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen. Amen. What a beautiful picture of our Lord Jesus.

I'm reminded of the book of James, where we're told not to be hearers of the word, but doers, doers, powerful. And here in the word of God, again and again, we see Jesus doing things. There's no way that we can profess faith in Jesus or profess to be disciples without being doers of the word of God.

Those of us who have the privilege of so much Bible ministry, both like this, alive, or through CD or cassette, or in our own churches, we have an awesome responsibility. Because to whom much is given, much will be expected. I had the privilege of studying at Moody Bible Institute for two years.

I'd been in university in Tennessee and transferred as a baby Christian after going to Mexico to Moody Bible Institute, where I had the privilege of sitting at the feet of men like Dr. William Culberson or of Alan Redpath at Moody Church down the road. Some of you who are older will know some of these names. Younger people may not.

I've been back to Moody many times, and I thank God for that school. I plan to become part of the board of directors of the Alumni Association as just a testimony of my commitment to Moody Bible Institute and their commitment to the word of God. And I know here at Alumni Bible Conference that your bottom line commitment is to the word of God.

Never take that lightly. In an age of confusion and compromise, where people are sometimes called evangelicals, but when you get to meet them and speak with them, you discover they don't actually believe that the Bible is fully inspired by God. It's got somehow a few errors, a few contradictions there.

And I stand before you as a bond slave of Jesus Christ, desiring that this week be a learning experience for me. And I don't come to you really as someone special. You will hear my story.

It is an unusual story, believe me. But it's because God is great. It's because God answers prayer.

It's not because I am someone special. And as I look back on my life, 50 years, every day experiencing God's grace, I think of words like grace, mercy, forgiveness. I think of other words like ragamuffin, because so often I feel that I'm a spiritual ragamuffin, just functioning because of the grace of God.

Be doers of the word. So we look at the Lord Jesus here in this passage, and we see him going out to the towns and villages. When I first read about the towns and villages of New England in some studies I did years ago, I discovered that New England had almost less biblical, evangelical churches than any other part of the United States.

I'm sure you've all heard that. I'm sort of a defender of New England. I was doing it on the phone again the other day, because people go to extremes in their thinking, and they have the idea that everybody up here is some environmentalist nutcase liberal.

And I said, you know, that's not true about New England. There are people there as well. I mean, there are Christians, committed Christians, who love the Lord Jesus.

By the way, I hope I don't upset any of you conservatives, but you can be a born-again liberal and end up in heaven. We have quite a few of them in England. They're not exactly the same variety you perhaps have in Boston, one of my favorite cities.

At least it's in my top 100 cities group. By the way, a lot more is going on in Boston for Jesus than we ever realized until some people some years ago, Doug Hall and his friends, did that research in Boston and showed all that God was doing in that great city. And so, as we think of the towns and we think of the villages, here we are 2,000 years later.

Here we are in New England. There's work to be done. And I'd encourage you, perhaps when you go back home, and we know some of you come from outside New England, that's fine, like me, a foreigner.

I was just so happy I didn't need a visa to come here from New Jersey. And hallelujah, wherever you're from, consider some of the towns and villages around you and maybe do a little research to see if there's a Bible-believing group of people in that village, in that place. And if there isn't, perhaps making it a matter of prayer.

Or if there's a small, struggling church, perhaps go out and fellowship with them. Many churches in America, not just in New England, are very small. Our megachurches, Saddleback and Willow Creek and other similar churches all over the nation, they get a lot of publicity.

But 90% of the churches in America are small. And surveys show that many of the pastors of these churches are really struggling. Some are discouraged because they've been praying for church growth in 20 years.

They've tried five different theories. And none of it has really worked. And it's often because their situation is much tougher and more difficult than somebody else's situation in Los Angeles or Chicago.

And they shouldn't put themselves down or be too harsh on themselves because they haven't seen a miracle of church growth in their particular church. Church growth is important, but it's not God's only agenda. He's also concerned with church strengthening.

He's also concerned about small numbers of believers who are getting older, maybe getting discouraged, are not able, because of our divided culture, to attract young people to their church. And yet they are God's children. And they need encouragement or ministry.

I have a number of pastor friends in New York State. What a giant place that is. It must be a little intimidating for those from Vermont and New Hampshire to have this jumbo giant next door.

But I'm sure you have all good answers about it. But many churches in New York State are incredibly small. And my friends there are pastoring little, small, struggling churches.

How important it is to understand our God is not in just big things. Our God is in little things. And he says where two or three are gathered in his name, he is in the midst.

Many of our churches in Great Britain, where I live, and have been more or less off and on for 40 years, are very small. Yet we have a great work of God in Britain. We have thousands of missionaries going out.

We have one Bible convention that attracts 70,000 people for a week. 70,000 people for a week in two or three locations because it's gotten so big. If New England is misunderstood by the average evangelical fish in other parts of America, what about England? People think the whole nation is just sold out to paganism and socialism.

When we have thousands of dynamic churches in Great Britain, we have thousands of spirit-filled biblical pastors preaching the word of God. There are 60 million people in the British Isles. 1.5 million or more are Muslim.

And so we have one of the greatest Muslim mission fields in the world. And we're all aware of what just happened in my home city of London, England, with those bombs just a few weeks ago. And I hope in our prayer time we can be praying for some of these global crises around the world.

And as we do, we will discover how exciting prayer can be as we touch people and we touch nations through prayer. And so we see the Lord Jesus going out to the towns, going out to the villages, preaching to people, sharing the good news, healing. Jesus led not just by word but by example.

Normally I have another young man traveling with me. He's been with me for a year. He's in a mentoring program.

This year he's a Taylor University graduate. His name is Michael Casper. But instead of being here, Roy has stepped into his shoes.

Michael is on a summer field trip. I just talked to him on the phone as his airplane arrived safely in Lebanon there in the Middle East. Maybe you'd pray for this dynamic young man.

For over 40 years, I've had young men, usually graduates, not only Americans, people from other nationalities, Sri Lankans, British, Canadians, come with me as my helper. We'll look at that some other day from Acts 13, where Mark was the helper to Paul and Barnabas. And they have to read certain materials.

They handle the books. They drive so that I can talk on the phone. They send thousands of emails and just help me in many other ways.

And as I look back over these, and I'm in touch with all these men, about 45, as I look back, every one of those men is going on for God. I think of David Bile in Istanbul, Turkey. I think of George Miley, the president of the Antioch Network.

I think of Russ DeVos, a pastor of a church in Oregon. I think of Kevin Pippert, an African-American out of Chicago headed with a wife that he met on one of our ships out to be a missionary in Africa. I think of Peter Conlon, a long-term leader in OM, one of our finest communicators and speakers.

I learned this method from the Word of God. I learned that I should give time to individuals. I saw Jesus giving time to 12.

And then I saw Jesus especially giving time to Peter, James, and John. Later they were referred to as pillars. And I'm excited.

I'm excited for you about the people that you are giving time to, people that you are mentoring. There are many ways that you can mentor. It doesn't have to be as I'm doing with my traveling helper.

You may not have that kind of situation. But anything you can do to give some of your time to other people, including young people. Do not presume that young people do not want to talk to you.

I have found, and I just turned 67 last week, that I can talk to young people today just as well as I spoke to them when I started preaching at 17 years of age. I have to be different. It's not in the same situation.

I recently spoke to 5,000 young people in Germany. 4,000 stood at the end of the meeting to recommit their lives to Jesus Christ. That's in Germany.

I find that often I have to take the initiative. They're a little shy to walk up, especially in terms of personal contact, to walk up to me and say, Hey, old geezer, that's a British word, you want to over have a cup of coffee with me? But if you invite them into your home for a cup of coffee, or a Coke, or show interest in what they're doing, rather than just talking about what you're into, you may find, not all of them, that there are young people that you never dreamed of will be blessed through your ministry, even as an older person. Jesus gave us the example.

We are to be involved in evangelism. We are to be involved in helping people. We are to open our hearts and open our homes to sharing with others.

And of course, if they are ill, we especially need to be praying for them. One of the ministries God has given me on the telephone, and I have about ten different telephone ministries, but one of them is praying for the sick. I never felt I was very effective at this.

In fact, it's quite discouraging. I pray for somebody, the next day I find out they're worse. I met this new friend in Florida, Charlie.

Ever since he's met me, he's been getting more ill. I mean, that can be a little bit intimidating. Now some of you surely don't want to meet me during these days together.

But I've decided to persevere and at least demonstrate to people that I am concerned. Now some of you, we call this a holiday, by the way, in England, but I'll change words. Some of you on vacation probably don't want to make phone calls.

That's okay. But when I'm on a vacation, one of my favorite things is to make phone calls. Last year, after dreaming about it for 25 years, I went on the vacation of a lifetime.

I hiked 115 miles in 20 national parks in southern Utah and northern Arizona, including Grand Canyon and Bryce and Zion, all those little places, and it was the most greatest vacation of my lifetime. But whenever I got back from my hike, I just loved to pick up the phone, tell my friends where I am, make them all feel jealous and miserable, and then maybe ask them to send some money for world missions. So, you know, we're all different.

We're all different. My wife says some are a little more different than others. My wife, by the way, and I'll be sharing our testimony of how we met at Moody because it's wild.

Can you imagine the first date with my wife? Do you know what I said to her? I said, nothing's going to happen between you and me, but let's lay the cards on the table. She's a little quiet girl from Iowa and Wisconsin. She never met a loudmouth from New Jersey.

So I said, you know, nothing's going to happen between you and me, but let's lay the cards on the table. I'm going to be a missionary, and if you marry me, you'll probably end up being eaten by cannibals in New Guinea. Come this evening for the rest of the story.

Jesus is not calling us to lip service. Jesus is calling us to action. It may be on the telephone.

It may be walking through the streets. It may be individual personal evangelism. It may be small Bible studies.

It may be within the beautiful evangelistic ethos of our own church. It may be in the office, in the marketplace, because in the Christian world, we are seeing a revolution in the marketplace. A dozen new books have come out about marketplace ministry, what it is to be in the world of sports, what it is to be in the world of politics, what it is to be in the business world.

I think of people like Don Soderquist of Walmart, not with them anymore, retired, teaching these leadership principles, often in secular companies in different parts of the United States. I was just with him a few weeks ago. Quite staggering what's going on in the business world.

Only I've been called into ministry, to be a pastor. Oh, if only God had led me to be a missionary. I really wanted to be a missionary.

Well, I blew it as a teenager and it never happened. No. We're all going first class on God's Holy Ghost train.

And your work, and even your technical retirement, your work is important with God. And as a believer, what you do is part of building God's kingdom, however small it may be. And I'm here, and OM grew from three people, three of us who went to Mexico in 57, to 4,000 staff in 110 countries this morning, not just because of those of us who went, but because of business people, and ordinary people, and of course churches that supported us from there in New Jersey, from the very earliest days.

I don't know if you remember the name of Larry McGill. He pastored in Boston for a while as well. Only went to be with the Lord a couple of years ago.

You might be thrilled to know that his son, who wandered away from Jesus for his lifetime, his son Larry Jr., I heard two days ago, has come to Jesus. After all those years of praying. God uses different people in different ways.

We are one body, given different gifts, and different talents. And all of us, I believe all of us, we have our struggles, we have our doubts, we have our discouragement. This week I'll be talking about a number of major themes.

Let me just mention a few of them. I'll be talking a lot about grace. And we'll be referring to books like Swindoll's Grace Awakening.

I'll be talking a lot about suffering, and what's happening in that area around the globe. I'll be talking a lot about forgiveness. I'll be talking a lot about dealing with discouragement.

And I'll be talking of course a lot about God's great plan for our town, our church, our village, and for this globe in which we live. But we need to move on quickly, because I want us to look at those other verses. What motivated the Lord Jesus? Verse 36, He was moved with compassion.

In another translation, I think it says pity. I think it's a combination of those things, with a lot of vision and a lot of love thrown into it. I'm constantly searching my own heart to make sure it's love that's motivating me.

I think that will be the biggest theme of the week. As we look through these 12 passages of Scripture, one of them will be 1 Corinthians 13. And we will see that truly our Christian faith is a revolution of love.

He was concerned about the helpless. He was concerned about the harassed. When I speak to you later in the week on the Good Samaritan from Luke 10, we'll be talking about seven people.

Seven peoples laying by the side of the road. This is the most significant, powerful message I've given around the world in the past two years. It's gone out on DVD and CD and it's brought an overwhelming response as we've talked about things like the abuse of women and HIV and AIDS and abortion and children at risk.

Jesus saw these people. He was moved with compassion. And then He said something that is absolutely revolutionary.

He looked to His disciples and He said, The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Now this is not true everywhere. This is no longer true in Los Angeles with thousands and thousands of churches and workers.

That doesn't mean there are not needs in Los Angeles or we don't need any more workers, but we can't say the workers are few. We can't say that about Kenya. We can't say that about South Korea.

We can't say that about Brazil. But during this week and in our prayer times, we're going to be talking about places where there are almost no workers whatsoever. We're going to be talking about Turkmenistan and Tibet.

We're going to talk about Socotra and the Maldives. We're going to talk about Saudi Arabia and Libya. We're going to talk about Mauritania.

Very briefly, you won't get bored. In fact, some of you, by the end of the week, you're going to want to pick up two of the most important books on this book table. One is Operation World, with prayer requests on every nation in the world, and the other is the children's edition, probably one of the greatest children's books in the history of the church.

And suddenly we're going to discover, many of you already have, that praying for people and praying for nations and corresponding with people and getting involved with missionaries and sending out missionaries is something really fulfilling and really exciting. And so Jesus said, The harvest is plenteous, the workers are few. And then He said, Ask the Lord of the harvest therefore to send out workers into His harvest field.

The harvest field is across the street. Maybe some people you even meet this week. And the harvest field is across the world.

And I believe with all my heart, as we become serious about this passage, that I have preached from hundreds of times, that has motivated me even more than that, I believe we're going to catch a greater vision of Jesus. His love, His passion, His action. And so we're going to start praying more.

We're going to start having a bigger vision. Even if we have a big vision, we're going to get a bigger vision. And that is going to multiply from this conference.

And I believe with all my heart, impact tens of thousands of people. From this conference, this week, there will go out a tidal wave. I have a hundred thousand people who follow me in prayer.

That's an understatement. And I believe that from this conference, through the literature, through prayer, there will go out a Holy Ghost tidal wave that will affect many of the nations of the world. God bless you.

Let us pray. Our God and Father, we thank You for this powerful, out-of-the-box, mind-bending, motivating, challenging, stretching, inspiring passage of Scripture. And by Your grace, we will not be hearers of the Word, but we will be doers, to go where You want us to go, and to do what You want us to do.

Lord of the harvest, in obedience to You, we pray right now. Send forth workers into the harvest fields, across the towns and villages in New England, where there's little or no witness, and across the world, especially to the more unreached nations, where in some cases the church does not even exist. And minister to us in our own personal situations, our own families, our own needs.

For we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. For more information, visit www.fema.org