Focussing on Jesus No.6 Jesus 'rejects' a volunteer

One of the things I've just been looking at on this report that I got out of North India is some account of how these basically young people, two young married couples, and as I mentioned one just about to get married, have been so courageous in setting off into the villages north of Ahmedabad, Ahmedabad is a big city, something like Manchester, I suppose. And here's the report that Raju, the leader, sends me. In the evening, he says, we went for our first get together amongst the community.

They asked us to put on a meeting in their property, which backs alongside the temple. With much fear and trembling, we started singing. As we sat in front of the temple, 74 attended from beginning to end.

And amongst these, there were 17 men, 12 women, and 45 children. India's a land that just teems with children, I guess 50%, 60% of the population are under 25. We had a 10 minute gospel message, and in the end of the program, we asked if anyone wanted to visit us, wanted us to visit his home and talk.

All 17 men responded and gave their addresses. We told them that we will visit them next week and have a similar get together in their community in the not too distant future. He goes on to say, team spirits, the teams are in very good spirit, and all the fellows and girls are doing well.

I think that makes you almost envious, doesn't it? In some ways, when you think of a crowd of Indian youngsters not much different from our own youngsters doing this type of evangelism. But I mean, you're paid to do it, aren't you really? I mean, that's the reason why you're a youth pastor. You've sussed me out, haven't you? Yeah.

Well, no, not really. It's not just because I'm paid to do it. Is that the right answer? You came up through a Christian background, then? That's right, yeah.

My parents used to drag me along to church, and I've never seen sort of 10-year-olds do it in this church, but I used to take a book to church and just lie down on the back and fall asleep. So, sort of growing up, I didn't particularly enjoy church, but around the age of 12, I started to realize that maybe there was something in regards to this Christianity. My sisters were both Christians.

I remember my sister being baptized, and my other sister in fits of tears, and I couldn't quite figure out what was going on. I didn't think it was such an upsetting sort of occasion. But all these things sort of digest in your mind.

And I know that Billy Graham was in town. This was Mission 1994. I think that was when he was around.

And my dad recorded Billy Graham on tape, so I thought, well, great, if I listen to Billy Graham on tape, I'll become a Christian. So I sat there one evening after watching the football with some headphones on and listened to Billy Graham speak. And at the end of it, I didn't quite sort of get this bubbly feeling.

I didn't sort of feel a Christian. So I was still wondering what all this business was about. Well, we went to QPR Stadium.

It wasn't to watch the footballers listen to Billy Graham this time. We went as a youth group. And I think it was there for the first time that I realized that I needed to have a personal relationship with Jesus.

At least that was where it all began. Life didn't quite go as smoothly as perhaps it would have been nice to, as far as my Christian faith. But that's where it began.

That's where I realized that I needed to sort of like somehow give my life over to a God who I knew that cared for me. And how old were you at that point? I was 13, 13 then. Yeah, and then just take us through the next few years.

You left school at 16 or 18? I always say to the young people, they've heard me say this and they've heard this story plenty of times, so don't go to sleep yet. Nobody's flecked out on the back row yet? Not yet. What was I saying? Oh dear, too many late nights.

You were filling us in between 13, 16, 18. That's right, that's right, yeah. I always say to the young people, I say little things.

How you got expelled from school and you know. That's right. I always say to the young people, I kind of wasted my Christian life at school.

I was very much a follower as opposed to someone who sort of led, if you like. And I used to want to be in crowd and therefore my Christian faith was kept to my home life in front of my parents and it was kept to my Sunday and it was kept to my summer camps. And that was kind of where my faith started and stopped.

As far as school, it was kind of wasted. When did you get into top gear then? Top gear, well I'm waiting for that. I think it all started when a particular person, I went on a camp and I worked on that camp for many years, attended as a camper and then went on as staff.

I think it's when I started to look up to an individual. He was probably about five or six years older than me and it was then that I kind of wanted to aspire to be like this man. And he took an interest in me.

He used to take me out to McDonald's and all those great places, you know. And we just used to talk. He used to talk with me.

He used to be very open with me. He used to share his life. He used to tell me where he struggled, where he failed, places where he succeeded.

And I used to watch him very carefully to see if what he said up front when he preached and what he said to me on one-on-one actually measured up in his own life. And I think that was where I really started to get to grips with my Christian faith as well as having a group of friends who were supporting me as well. I found that very, very important that a group of friends who were Christian, I enjoyed being with them and they supported me and prayed with me and we also worked together on this camp as well.

But to add to that, I think it also helped when I started to get involved with a ministry, when I started to actually use the gifts that God had given me and used it in a particular situation. By ministry, you mean Bible college and becoming a professional as you are now? Not particularly, no. I spent probably the first five or six years working in a youth club, going to work during the day, coming home, going out in the evening, working.

Where was this? This was back at my hometown in Wantage near Oxford. That's where I was brought up. And so I was involved in youth work in a club kind of style with kids coming off the street and also in a Bible study with just a handful of young people.

But you described that as ministry. I described that as ministry, yeah. So what's on my vestry door is actually wrong, isn't it? Because it has the title minister's vestry as though all the ministry that spins around the local church just goes around one person, which isn't really accurate.

No, I mean, that's not accurate at all. I always think the people that are, Steve Chalk has said this, the people that are on the front line are not the ministers within the church, the full-timers, but they're the people that are going out to their workplaces, the people that are working in the church and out of the church as well. And it's the jobs of you and myself and other full-time workers to equip Christians to do that work and to see them being effective.

So in effect, you haven't moved into the ministry. You've moved into a different sphere of ministry, but you were in the ministry even back in your home church. That's right, yeah.

It's just now I've been released, if you like, to be able to be involved in a more full-time capacity as well as being involved in schools, which is very difficult if you're in a full-time occupation elsewhere. Now, these youngsters I refer to in India, who I know not as well as I know you, but I know them fairly well. I mean, they're not particularly special.

I mean, they have gifting, but it's not exceptional. They just go out and they evangelize and so forth. They could stay in Ahmedabad and earn a reasonable salary.

I had a letter from a girl not from North India, at least not from Northwest India, from Northeast India just this last week. Her name, she doesn't sound Indian, her name is Rita, but she is as bucker Indian as they come. She's working amongst the slums in Calcutta.

And like your wifey, she gave her husband a lovely little present not that long ago, only several months before Joshua came on the scene. And she writes to me, dear uncle, if you get a little bit of gray hair and you're in India, then you're nailed as uncle good and proper. It's kinder than saying dear old man.

Dear uncle, she said. She said, we're working on the edge of this slum. And I see the house in which she lives.

My garage, my car has a better house than where she's living with this kid. She says, it's so hot, so hot out here. She says, the heat is just coming through the corrugated roof.

And she said, it's just as though we're in an oven. And this is just a little aside. I've been able to email Calcutta and tell Vijan Pavamani, who was with us a couple of weeks ago to get one of his team to buy this family a water cooler, which is a sort of unsophisticated air conditioning unit just to lower the temperature and make life a little easier.

But I mean, it seems a bit extreme, doesn't it? That somebody would be living on the edge of a slum with a little child. And when I said to her husband, Rita's husband, I said, why is it that you live here? And he said to me, pastor, God has melted my heart. Have you had a similar sort of experience in terms of heart melting? I'm not talking about Calcutta and the poverty, but I am talking about what keeps you here because you could have an easier lifestyle than the one you've got here, couldn't you? Yeah, well, perhaps.

That's modest. Yeah. Yeah, I think discipleship or Christianity, the true test is when God calls you to somewhere and you need to obey him.

It's interesting that we tend to think that God's gonna call us to somewhere that we don't wanna go. All my life, I've always wanted to work with young people, and so I believe God's given me that desire. I'm sure that the couple you're talking about don't find it any obligation to work in the slums.

When we were out in Pakistan and spending time with the Hansons, and young people are witness to this as well, we thought that they were giving up this great sacrifice, and it's such a burden to be in Pakistan, yet it was just like each of us going to work each day. That's where God had called us to, whether working in a bank or an old people's home or in the town hall or whatever. For Dave and Irene, they were in Pakistan working amongst the slums there as well.

Obviously, there are other sacrifices they're making, but they just had this, this is what God's called us to do, so we're here. That's what keeps me in my jobs, too. That's where God's called me.

I'm excited to do it. It's not an obligation at all. I love it to death.

I wouldn't wanna be doing anything else, and I think that's when we know God's called us to whatever line of work that we do, whether full-time or in what I call a normal job. You're taking some folk to Eastern Europe in a little while. That's right.

This is more than you took to Pakistan last year? Yeah, we're taking, many of you may know, we're taking 20 young people to Romania this year to sweat it out on a playground, painting, digging, and anything else we can get involved with. I see that as perhaps the most effective discipleship kind of course that you can do for anyone, whether young or old, when you give them an opportunity to step outside their normal sphere of conditions, working, living conditions, and expose them to hard work, expose them to another culture, expose them to how other Christians live and worship in another country, and helping them to see that hands-on and visually as well. So combined with that and Bible studies and one-on-one stuff, you're hoping to sort of put a whole package together, not just for them, but for myself and the other leaders that are also involved with this whole venture.

Good, last question, and off the track of the former questions, just the first one, twixt you and me with all these folks listening in. Have you always found it easy to be a public speaker? No. How did you then acquire the facility that you've got? I think it, I don't know if this is the right answer, but I think it's when people took some, the minister of my church recognized the gift that I had with upfront speaking, and he took some risks and allowed me to take those, you know, do some stuff up front, maybe do some preaching, do small parts of public speaking, what have you.

I don't find it easy. No, so someone had confidence in you. Someone had to take a risk on me and the confidence to keep me through it.

I didn't have the confidence, and I still don't have the confidence. If anyone personally knows me, they know I don't find it very easy to stand up and preach, especially in this church with 500 people, when I know there's many people here that spent many years on the mission field, some many years pastoring a church, and who am I, you know, to stand up and try to expound God's word to them? I feel very unconfident in that particular position sometimes. Why I wanted to leave it there was because I think it's possible for folk to make the conclusion that because you're up front, you never had butterflies in your stomach, you're always naturally extrovert, and speaking just personally for myself, that was not the case.

When I was 16, I used to be terrified if I was in a group of my peers, the same age group, they're more than 10 or 12 together, and I was always hoping that when discussion time came around that nobody would sort of single me out and try and get my views, because I was always so sure that whatever I had to say would be so inferior. I had the problem of following an older brother who was far more talented, always felt intimidated by him. He was a good brother.

I mean, the problems were mine, they were not his. But I just wanted to finish there because it may well be that in this area of discipleship and evangelism, there's some people who say, well, I can't be a temple or a sergeant, I don't have that gifting. And yet, you've said, and this hasn't been a rehearsed conversation, but more or less, your experience was mine.

There's an Irish pastor who took me under his wing. That explains a lot. And encouraged me.

Thanks very much, Nick. Will you lead us with a few more songs, please? I can certainly identify with the butterflies in the stomach. You know, one of the mysteries about the Christian faith is that we worship the God who is the creator of the universe and the world.

And we worship Jesus, his son, who was sent to die for us, us as individuals, and through identifying with that crucifixion that he went through to him, receiving that salvation, we are actually one with him inasmuch as we have been adopted into God's family and we are joint heirs with Christ, God's son, who is on an equal with God the father. And so we worship the God the creator. We also worship Jesus, who is our brother and our friend and our counsellor.

And it's quite a mind-blowing concept to really consider. We're going to sing For We See Jesus Enthroned on High. It's in a supplement number 42.

Jesus, our friend and our brother, who is enthroned in the highest heaven. Would you like to stand for this 42 supplement? For we see Jesus enthroned on high. We worship him.

Glory and honour we give unto you. We see you in all. Jesus, our friend and our brother.

We see Jesus enthroned on high. Glory and honour we give unto you. We see you in all.

Jesus, our friend and our brother. So that man was the talk of the town. That is the man to whom references made in the scriptures that Nick read to us earlier from the Gospel of Mark and from the fifth chapter, where in our little series focusing on Jesus we're highlighting this individual because he did become a disciple.

And yet there was a sense in which Jesus rejected him, at least rejected the sphere of first attraction. Some years ago I was in Israel. I had a conference and most unusually I had two days spare.

And so I set off to a place called Tiberias, which is just on the seashore of the Lake of Galilee, the Sea of Galilee. And I wanted to get around the lake, but there was no way to get around at all. I didn't know the local bus services, wasn't too sure of the current political situation.

That was fairly dangerous in any case whether any bus drivers were going the whole detour around the lake, which is around 15 miles long and at the widest point eight miles across. So coming from Yorkshire where a trait is stubbornness, I felt that I couldn't get all that way and not go around the lake and so I had a bike. The problem was that if you'd have been a 15-year-old, about five foot four, you would have been very comfortable.

But I was in my forties and somewhat taller than five foot four and to try to negotiate the perimeter of the Lake of Galilee was to say the least rather a difficult performance. Not added to in terms of comfort by the fact that the saddle wasn't secure and so it had a sort of horse riding effect. On top of that it was terribly, terribly hot and it wasn't easy to get water so I was dehydrating.

And I passed a monastery and I thought I could probably convince these fellows that their calling and my calling had so much in common that they might let me spend the night there. But my evangelistic gift, obviously, if I had one, was not in operation on that particular time and they wouldn't buy it. However, there was a man who had a... Can you believe it? On the Sea of Galilee, at least the edge of the Sea of Galilee, this is going to ruin any romanticism that you may have in terms of imagining what it's like.

There was a man who ran a Pepsi-Cola depot just on the western flank of the sea and I started to talk to him. He was a half-Jew and said, did you know something about Jesus who used to live in this area and so on and so forth? And he got some stories that were right and there's quite a lot of legend all wrapped up in his beliefs. And so I tried to just explain to him in terms of my understanding of the gospel just who Jesus was and what he'd done in that particular area.

And we got on like a house on fire and it was very, very late at that point and he realized that I had nowhere to stay so he said, would you like to stay here? So I actually spent the night just off the Sea of Galilee sleeping on top of the Pepsi-Cola depot where there was just a little bit of room on the eaves in a sort of attic. I didn't like the noise of his dogs outside. He didn't tell me about the dogs and they sounded very, very ferocious.

It seemed to me that they'd sniffed the blood of an Englishman and I didn't sleep very much that night. And so I got out fairly quickly at 4 o'clock back on my bicycle and continued this sergeant tour to which no one else would ever come along having heard this, I'm sure, if I was to lead a party. I continued my trip round the lake but by the time we got to 8 o'clock I was absolutely worn out.

I'd been dehydrated and I hadn't slept much that night and so as the sun had come up and it seemed fairly safe I stopped my bike and I got off and found a stretch of land where it was semi-private and went to sleep. When I woke up, I realized where I was. I was in Decapolis just at the edge of the rather tall hills that sweep away northwards and towards Syria.

It was the place where the demoniac from Gadara had actually met up with our lord and I was thinking that maybe I got something in common with this guy too because the sort of escapade I'd been involved in didn't seem to give the impression when I reflected upon it that I was acting very wisely at all. But it was there. Some 2,000 years ago coming out from the hillside pockmarked by caves that this demoniac encountered Jesus who with his disciples remember what I shared last week had actually crossed the Sea of Galilee and come to Decapolis because Jesus wanted a bit of a break.

He'd had a fairly rough passage in terms of an intense schedule in his preaching. Now let's just stop there a moment because I've used a word that you probably have not understood and that is the word Decapolis. It actually translates from the Greek because it's two words and it translates as ten cities and just north of the Sea of Galilee were these ten Greek cities which had been established by Alexander the Great and they had a Grecian way of life.

There was an amphitheater there. There was a Colosseum. They spoke the Greek language.

When a great military man by the name of Judas Maccabeus had come to power he'd actually conquered these ten Greek cities and for a while they came under Jewish rule. But when one of the Caesars came through he granted independence to these ten cities. The last of the ten cities was Damascus which of course you will have heard of and therefore you've got the lie of the land.

Just north of the Sea of Galilee moving towards Syria a little Greek community well perhaps not so little and from that community this demoniac came. As reading last week the fairly lengthy autobiography of Billy Graham runs to about 700 pages so if you want a long enjoyable read then that's the book to get. Now Billy Graham he has this to say a consistent theme throughout the whole of his ministry you can easily ask questions and put up your doubts about the Christian faith when someone like Graham or a lesser mortal like myself is preaching.

But Graham says this there is no argument at all apart from admitting something genuine has occurred that will explain how a man was once like that and now has become like this has become a new person in Christ Jesus. His old way of life has been completely revolutionized. It seems to me that there is hardly an illustration in the Bible of a more dramatic conversion than this one which is recounted in Mark 5. Someone has said that when the man who was lame in the temple area of Jerusalem was converted and as a result he jumped and leapt around and because of his joy he obviously joined the Pentecostal church.

They said that this man who actually was a madman when he became converted he must have joined the Presbyterians because we're told in the 15th verse that eventually he was seated, clothed and in his right mind. There was a fundamental distinction between this man at the point of encounter with Jesus and what he was like when Jesus had finished with him. He was a sensation.

The talk of the town because everybody knew him. You see he'd come out from this Greek culture the madman. His condition really was quite pathetic.

He wasn't comfortable in the circumstance in which he found himself and no one at the human level was able to help him. Even more nobody was able to restrain him. This man lived in the tombs and no one could bind him anymore not even with a chain for he'd often been chained hand and foot but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet.

No one was strong enough to subdue him. A demoniac a demonized man. There is a sense in which everyone outside of Jesus is in some measure under the influence of Satan.

That's a strong comment but it's justified for me to make it from recourse to Scripture. When the Lord Jesus comes into the life of a person he breaks the chains that bind him or her to the old past life. Now some lives spent outside of Jesus are not as dramatic as this one but all lives represent a need in terms of those who've never trusted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

I've sometimes watched so-called holy men in the temples in Kathmandu looked into their eyes seen sometimes their disfigured faces. I've watched dropout Americans who hit the hippie trail from Afghanistan and gone into Nepal. I've seen them naked with their hair shown off from their heads and seen something of the emptiness in their eyes as having torn up their passports and having given away their senses as a result of taking in too many drugs.

They have slumped into a brand of paganism and wretchedness equal to this man. I mention this by way of illustration because what you find in the New Testament is comparable also to life in the 20th century. There are degrees of being away from Jesus.

There are degrees of satanic influence. But one thing that is sure as a conclusion you draw from the New Testament and sensitive people from knowledge of contemporary way of life is that everybody needs the relief and the ministry that Jesus can bring. I've got a friend by the name of Solon Kartak.

He is, I think, from North India though he spent most of his life in Nepal. Twenty years ago Solon said to me my vision is to reach every village in Nepal with the gospel. Twenty years have gone by and last year he wrote me a letter and said that I and my evangelistic team working with every home with a Bible crusade has actually achieved that.

And if you asked Solon Kartak why it was that he hazarded his life because it didn't used to be easy to preach the gospel in Nepal. It used to be something that would bring you almost daily into conflict with the police. If you asked him why he would point to the Americans and he would point to those who were under the influence of Hinduism and other even more primitive religions and he would say it is necessary for them to hear the gospel of Christ.

And that same motivation that causes a band of young people to leave Ahmedabad, to leave Bombay and to spend years of their lives in the backwoods of Gujarat. It's that same sort of recognition that Indians need the gospel. And it doesn't really matter where you go around the world.

There is a need for men and women who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior to move into the caves of unbelief and superstition where men and women have primitive understanding of God and to declare to them the freedom and the emancipation that there is in Christ. You see this guy in the caves of Decapolis who comes to see Jesus. He has had no peace of mind for a long time.

He is schizophrenic. Read his language. He moves from the singular to the plural pronoun.

Listen to his testimony in terms of what is ailing him. He says it's just as though I had 6,000 people, 6,000 beings within me. What's your name? says Jesus.

My name is Legion for we're many. Ron Wayland was one of the elders here at the tab for quite a long time and also our Sunday school superintendent. He had a remarkable gift of talking to our boys and girls and would often take the children's talk here on a Sunday morning.

He and Daphne were one of the first couples who went across to Maybridge and helped us in the rescue work to ensure that a witness, a gospel witness was maintained in that area of our town. And I remember on one occasion, some of you oldies might recall it too because when Ron spoke it made an impression upon your memory. I remember him describing a migraine.

He must have suffered from them himself. He said it was just like a hundred men with a pickaxe inside his head trying to get out at the same time. This demoniac says his name is Legion.

And the Roman legions sometimes would use one of the ten Greek cities as their base. And there were 6,000 men often packed into the Legion. And when Jesus asks this man his name he tells him my name is Legion.

I'm not just schizophrenic. I'm a fragment of the power of the evil one. And when he recognizes who Jesus is the phenomenon occurs which is repeated on several occasions in Mark's gospel.

The demons within him give him an accurate assessment of the person to whom he is talking. What do you want with me Jesus son of the most high God? Swear to God that you won't torture me. For Jesus had said to him come out of this man you evil spirit.

Just in the Decapolis area there was then and probably is still today a lot of farming. Then the farming was pig farming. And although the citizens of Decapolis were basically Greeks there were also some Jews amongst them.

Whether they should have been farming pigs because of the Jewish meat laws I don't really know. But one thing is evident in the method of our Lord in treating this man is that there must be some dramatic sign to indicate that the powers within him have been evacuated from his body. There must not only be the audible command of Jesus there must be a visual response to that command.

And our Lord who will always put the saving of a soul as a priority speaks to the demons within the man and he allows them to indwell a number of pigs who too manifest the signs of demonism and rush recklessly down the precipice and their lives are snuffed out as they are drowned in the Galilean sea. The man is left with his mind healed. He puts clothes on himself his rationality is restored and men and women come out from Decapolis and they recognize what has happened and sometimes the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit can create an even greater problem to men than the evident power of Satan.

And having seen what Jesus has done and the way that he has disturbed their livelihood by the drowning of these pigs they ask Jesus to get out of the area because not every place is responsive to the gospel of Christ. Not every culture not every generation and sometimes the message of the gospel is received with a sort of brick wall reaction. Now here is this man like my friend Solon before he was converted like so many of you here this evening who acknowledges that his dramatic improvement his rebirth is as a result of the dynamic intervention of Jesus.

He asks Jesus for something that is so natural on the human level but so inadmissible on the divine. Lord let me come with you. Let me spend the rest of the months and the years of my life in your company or in the company of those who love you.

Do you know why it is that there has been such research done in modern times by the Christian church into what are known as unreached people's groups? It is because Jesus has said that his return will be correlated to will be linked to the educating of masses of people throughout this world. The sharing of the gospel amongst all recognizable people groups has to take place before he will return. It would be so easy for my colleagues to go back to Bombay or to go back to Ahmedabad or those who have come up from South India to go to Kerala or to Karnataka and the easier climate and the easier social conditions of Southern India, but they don't.

Why not? Why is it that a beautiful girl, Rita, to whom I make reference, why is it that she ekes out her life on the edge of a slum and 60% of Calcutta is in slum condition? Why is it that she lives there with her husband and others like her? Why is it that the Pavamanis who you heard from the other Sunday moved in from South India having come from high caste to work in the most awful conditions in the heart of Calcutta? And the answer is they recognize that these people's groups need to be reached with the gospel. You see, this man, he's so different. When before Jesus came to him his life was awful.

There was no contentment. He wounded himself. He had no peace with himself, no peace with his fellows, no peace with the demons, no peace with God.

But Jesus has come to break the power of sin in his life. And the authority of Jesus on this occasion will be underlined and enforced by the death that Jesus will die in just a matter of months as he hangs on the cross for the sins of this man and for the sins of all believing men and women. And if the death of Jesus Christ and his resurrection releases the power of forgiveness and redemption into this world, making it possible for men and women to move out of the bondage of sin, then is it not incumbent upon those who have had the freedom experience to commit themselves physically, prayerfully, and financially to the advance of the gospel.

Now, Jesus will not have this man in his immediate company. Why not? Because, you see, embedded in the gospels, even at the beginning of the proclamation of the good news, is this commitment on the part of Jesus in terms of the unreached people. Later on, he will spell it out to his disciples.

On the day of Pentecost, they will be gathered together and they will know, sooner rather than later, that they are to begin in Jerusalem and go to Judea and Samaria and move to the uttermost parts of the earth and, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to preach the message of freedom and emancipation. But all that is wrapped up in this incident in the fifth chapter of Mark's gospel before the day of Pentecost. No, says Jesus to this man, you're not to come with me.

Decapolis, those ten cities, and Syria, and all that lies beyond to the northeast, they need to hear. Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you. So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him.

And he became the talk of the town. I hardly need to say any more. The application is obvious.

You need to trust Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and to know the same freedoms as this man had, even though the influence of the evil one perhaps has not been so pronounced on your life. And having had an experience of sins forgiven, you need to be committed to the proclamation of the gospel. Therefore, you will make practical input into the prayer meetings in the TAB or any other local church.

You will be behind such ventures as reaching and helping men and women in Romania. You will be behind backing our missionaries wherever they are in the various continents of the world. You will be behind the evangelical ministries of the Doulos and the Logos and the Anastasis.

You will be behind Bianto and CPO and AWM and AIM and FIBA. You'll be behind everything that has as its goal the informing of people in the decapolises of this world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Army suggested that one village for two years had unnecessarily been without the services of its idiot.

There are no idiots serving our Lord Jesus. Only men and women and youngsters who love Him and who have a degree of commitment. And I'm asking that this evening that whatever not your commitment level is at, lift it a little higher.

More prayer. More evangelism. More giving.

More trying to see Him more clearly. Love Him more dearly. Follow Him more nearly.

All that and more is encased within this lovely incident.