Lifting Up Our Eyes - Part 2

But that is not the way Christ is. The way Christ is, when he saw the multitude, he was broken up with such pain. In John's Gospel chapter 4, he lost his very appetite by the confrontation he had with one woman that is lost without the Father.

And that woman's life became the window for him to see the multitudes that are perishing. And then he cries out, saying, Lift up your eyes, disciples, and see what I see. Because they are worried about hamburger and french fries and food and all kind of stuff.

They are worried about eating their food. They are worried about Christ eating his food. But he said, I lost my appetite.

Think about it. When was the last time your wife or your husband or your children said to you, What happened to you? You are hungry? You are eating? I mean, you've been missing meals so many times. Something wrong? Then you respond.

Well, the truth of the matter is, remember, a few days ago we were watching what happened in Bangladesh. 100,000 people died overnight. And thousands of kids on the streets.

And millions displaced. And it just breaks my heart. I made a decision to fast for 3 or 4 days and pray for these people.

And experience the pain Christ experienced for the lost and dying millions. Please, for kindness sake, understand me, I am not here to get anything from you or put you on any kind of guilt trip. We have come to the place in church that obedience has come to the place of being misunderstood as legalism.

But Jesus said, Unless you love me more than father, son, daughter, even your very life, you cannot be mine. These are verses we don't want to talk about. I don't want to talk about it.

But when the Lord dealt with my heart, I realized He was asking me for surgery with an anesthesia. He said, You raised the dragon, you got a slave, I will enforce you. You can choose.

And I tell you, it was not easy. My brothers and sisters, what the Lord did in my own, this brief walk, I remember sitting in my study, writing in my notebook, a pen. Who wants to spend $350 for a stupid little fountain pen? Because I was in Germany, that was my great joy because I always loved fountain pens.

I remember writing something and the Lord just spoke to me. I said, Son, 100 years from now, who is going to use this pen? I said, What? I just asked you a question. Then He let me think about everything I was living for.

And I added 100 years to my age and found out I'm dead! I'm gone! Nothing I take with me. It just carried me to death. And I realized I better commit my life and every fiber of my being so radical that nothing in the world should hold me back from giving all to Him and loving Him and living for the cause.

And I won't recommend you to sell your house and car and wife and kids and all those stuff. I'm not promoting any of that stuff. But this is what I'm telling you.

We've got a problem of information becoming godliness. Information will never make you godly. As a matter of fact, I tell you what, Christ died on the cross not to forgive our sin alone and take us to heaven but to set us free from our own self-centeredness because only then we can see Christ using our ethern vessels to change this lost world.

And I so badly wanted to do my own way of things for God. And the Lord said to me, Listen. Why don't you become a servant? A slave? So that instead of you just going to some mission field on your own, trying to do something, let your life become the reason for thousands of my servants to go to the mission field.

It was a whole new revelation, new understanding. You say, What are you talking about? You see, countries like India with over a million people, they will not allow Americans to come or Europeans to be missionaries there to preach, baptize and plant churches. As a matter of fact, the 1040 window region, restricted, mostly closed.

We take people overseas, by the way. We do. We challenge them to do that for a few months or whatever.

But I'm talking about, how do you reach half of the country that never heard the name Jesus? I remember the early days, we go from village to village and ask people if they heard the name Jesus, the most common answer, very polite, nice people, they said, You know, I've been living here for 20, 30, 40 years, no one by that name lives here. You go to the next village, you may find him there. Literally.

This is actually true. And, how do you reach these people? This is where the Lord began to show us, the very beginning, or the beginning of Gospel for Asia, that the body of Christ here, we can link our lives with brothers and sisters on the mission field. Indians and Nepalis and Bhutanese and Burmese and Thailand people and Chinese, and pray for them and help them to get the job done.

As a matter of fact, today we have 16,000 full-time, well-trained missionaries on the field. Over these years, we have seen 24,000 churches planted among people that didn't have a church before. Every day, close to 60 new fellowships, churches born on the mission field.

You say, that's unbelievable. You better believe it. You want to go with me? Please, we'll buy a ticket and go.

And you'll be surprised to see what God is doing. Such as this man brought from Nepal, listened to a radio broadcast. Sir, I hear if I believe in your Jesus, my sins can be forgiven.

Then can we all join you? Twelve people signed their name under that. A missionary was sent. A beautiful church now in the community.

From the end of Bhutan, a place that is not even on the map. Literally, we looked for it. This guy wrote, I heard about Jesus over the radio.

And I was laying on my mat in my hut, I was paralyzed for years. I prayed to Jesus. I don't know what happened.

I got up. This book you talk about, I don't know what this is. Can you give me a book? Two missionaries walked seven days to get to the community.

Now there's a church. We can't build churches in Bhutan, but houses we build and inside they worship. This is unbelievable what is happening today.

Did you know in India, nearly 300 million people of the population, the untouchables, the Dalits, you've heard about them? The worst slavery in human history. It's not what was in America or England. It is in India.

162 million child laborers, little kids, 4, 5, 6 year old kids starting to work from morning till night making 8, 9 cents for the whole day's labor. Do you have kids? I have two. Think about your little boy and girl half naked working to make a few cents.

You know who are these kids? The children of the untouchables. You see, what is it that I'm so consumed about my children, their welfare, their health and wealth and education? Is God so partial that He has no feeling for 100,000 children wandering on the streets of Bombay not knowing who their parents are? He cares. He weeps.

But the problem is not His. The problem is mine. That I cannot become like Him because I'm consumed with my own affair, even in spiritual things.

And I remember the Lord speaking in my heart, Son, seven expensive leather bound Bible sitting on your shelf when half of the world have never seen one page of the Bible. What is it all about? And I began to weep. Is this not radical?