Gv4339 Gv Total Surrender — George Verwer

The Paradoxical Commandment: Loving and Serving Despite Opposition

I've appreciated very much the feedback that various people have given to me, notes and letters and words of encouragement. I hope you'll be in much prayer for those people who made outward commitments last night.

We know there are those, of course, who make commitments in their own seats. And that's fine with me. The Lord works in different people, in different ways. Many times I don't even give an outward invitation.

I would like to give to those who stood last night a little booklet. If you bought one last night, you can perhaps go to the book table and use what you paid for on this little booklet. You didn't pay much for something else.

But I decided to give this free because I think it will be so helpful to those who made commitments. I prayed with about 25 people personally and read their commitment papers. And you know, some of these people have some really fierce spiritual battles going on and how we need to be praying for one another.

Some of you know this book by Erwin Lutzer, Flames of Freedom. The story of the revival that took place in some parts of Canada back in the early 70s. And some of you may know the Soterra Twins. They've written a little booklet on making my Christian commitments stick.

And I think this book will really help those of you who made a deeper commitment to Jesus Christ last night. And as long as the copies last, you can pick one up at the table. I'll ask my literature men to keep that in mind.

This is the last evening for our book table. It's been a challenge to be here. We're looking forward to tomorrow. The privilege to speak to you in the morning and the afternoon before I go for meetings tomorrow evening in Edmonton.

Appreciate prayer, especially for a pastor's luncheon I'll be having in Edmonton on Tuesday. I wanted to just read another quotation from my quotation section from a man named Howard Ferguson. There's a tremendous book.

I had the joy of visiting the book shop today. Bookstore. What a tremendous thing. There's two things you're going to want to do before you leave here. One is to visit the missionary exhibits. And the other is to visit the bookstore.

And that means tonight. But they've got a lot of great books there. I ordered a few hundred to send to London, mainly of books published by Prairie. Books by L .E. Maxwell and books by Brother Rendell on their way over to London.

So I hope they'll be there when I get there. From there they'll go to many other parts of the world, especially L .E. Maxwell's book, World Missions, Total War. There's a new edition available in the book shop.

And I don't understand how people can be connected with this dynamic institution and not read that book and be involved in distributing it. But maybe this paradoxical commandment of leadership will help us understand.

Many people, whenever I've read this, they rush up and they want photocopies. That's not so easy tonight, so I don't think they're going to be available. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.

Love them anyway. Number two, if you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Do good anyway. Ever had that experience? If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty, number five, honesty and frankness will make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway. Six, the biggest man with the biggest idea can be shot down by the smallest man with the smallest mind.

That's strong. Think big anyway. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway. And eight, what you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. Number nine, people really need help but may attack you if you help them.

Help them anyway. And ten, give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked straight in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway. Well, that's just a little warm-up exercise. And I do hope you students will start saving quotations.

If you get some hot ones, send them to me. I send free books for the ten outstanding quotations of the year that are sent to me. And one of them might get in my Bible and you get a bonus of an extra book.

Christian Literature as a Means of Gospel Ministry

I'm so excited about books and Christian literature. I cannot tell you how many letters I receive every single week. They follow me all over the world. My post arrived here. Came in by special priority post from England.

About that high. I haven't read it yet. I don't have time here to do anything but talk to people and pray, preach. But every time I go through my post, my mail, there are letters of people touched through the printed page.

And I hope that somehow God will give you a vision to be involved as a distributor of Christian literature. Maybe low profile, but God will so use that. A lot of the literature on our special table, the table behind the book table, is completely free.

And will be, I think, available tomorrow. Let me mention some of it. There is literature there about Operation Mobilization. About places like Pakistan. About the way to work short term in India. About the seven major emphasis of OM.

But other literature is just literature I gather along the way. This is brokenness. A little track that does well for people to read again and again. How many have ever read this little track? This is brokenness.

You know, if we knew a little more about brokenness in the church and in missionary work, we'd be going a long way. And there's a little leaflet I picked up. Originally published by Good News Publishers.

Called, Living Above Our Circumstances. So down to earth. I love to put these in my letters. I hardly ever send a letter without a minimum of three enclosures. Usually I send a book and a tape by separate posts.

But I put little enclosures like this with my letters. You got to pay the postage anyway. And I've had people write me and even tell me once that it was something I said or enclosed that kept them from committing suicide on that very day.

God uses the printed page. All the material on that table is free. And I hope you'll just take it and share it with others. I wrote a tribute to a young man killed at Christmas time. Who was with the United Nations.

He was with OM first. Then he was with the Swedish Diplomatic Corps. Then the United Nations. Then he came back on OM. Met a woman he met on one of the OM ships. And in a very unusual way he was killed this Christmas.

And I've written a tribute to this young Swedish diplomat. And I believe God wants to touch people's hearts. About this man who gave so much to the work of the Kingdom. I wrote this when I was in Nepal last year.

And it's just been printed. It's a picture of his wife. Who was one of the main leaders of OM. And I'd appreciate your prayers for her. Because she has not found it easy. They were so young. They were only married a couple of years.

And he was killed in a car crash in Sweden. Of course there's a lot of books that are still for sale this evening. There's never enough time to mention them all. I would like to mention this little booklet.

Your Muslim Guest. Published by the Fellowship of Faith for Muslims. A low profile movement that should get a lot more attention in Canada. And I hope you'll get this. To understand Muslims. It's just been reprinted again.

Ten thousand copies. Not so long ago. Your Muslim Guest. Doesn't cost much. Go over and get a copy. Operation World. I want to try to emphasize this tonight. It's a book presenting prayer requests on almost every nation of the world.

There's 320 pages. How many already have this book? Operation World. That is amazing. So that is... How many have found this book profitable in your prayer missionary vision ministry? Raise your hand.

Many. The prayer cards that we presented on other evenings were taken from this book. By Patrick Johnson of WECC. And I hope that you'll get a copy and use it for prayer. It's not 100 accurate. It's going to be redone in about a year.

And Patrick Johnson with his computer has done an enormous job. But it will be a while before the revision is out. Because we publish it. So, get a copy of this even though a few things are out of date.

The prayer requests. You know, God can put it together if one or two things are inaccurate. But it's a brilliant book. And tonight, if you buy that book, I think it's six Canadian dollars. Let's knock it down to five tonight, my literature people.

Take note. Down to five dollars. No refunds from other nights. This four dollar book. A tremendous book on the costly harvest. By David Howard in South America. Free of charge. For the first 20 or 30 people that get over there.

Your Muslim guest. Free of charge with that. And, I don't know, maybe Bert will give you something else when you go over there. I think most of you know Bert is still the part-time, very part-time rep for OM in Western Canada.

You can't be the director of OM Canada for 18 years. Not director for 18 years because he was overseas part of that time. And just, you know, slip out that quick. Of course, you know that David Lundy, the director of North African Mission, without any pressure on our part, was led of God's Spirit to take on Bert's job.

He is the present director, as of two weeks ago, of Operation Mobilization Canada. Started with us way out in India. We thought he was going to be one of the leaders of the work in India. Came back here.

Was recruited by another ex-OMer, Greg Livingston, of North African Mission, who's now founded Frontiers. I tell you, it gets wild, doesn't it? Let me just tell you, when the Holy Spirit's in control, you never know what's going to happen next to anybody.

And it's exciting. I remember this pastor in Chicago. He told his assistant pastor, Let's bring George Verver in here and challenge the high school students. All the high school students need a challenge.

Where are the high school students? Do you need a challenge? Somebody just choked him. But anyway, anyway, I went to that church, very fast-growing church in the Chicago area. And I met the pastor. He sat in on a couple of the meetings for the high school young people, praying for them.

And lo and behold, two years later, the pastor joined Operation Mobilization. The high school young people stayed in the church. And he's been ministering with us for about ten years, and literally all over the world.

We have a God of surprises. Hallelujah. When you read some of these books, Elizabeth Elliot's Love Has a Price Tag. When you read books like this unbelievable book by Jack Van Empy, Heart Disease in Christ's Body, every hyper-fundamentalist, you probably don't, after all the emphasis on balance at Prairie, have any double-decker hyper-fundies left here.

But every hyper-fundamentalist needs to read what happened to Jack Van Empy when he discovered a movement of hate within certain aspects of what was called fundamentalism. This is the most significant book for fundamentalism in this decade, without question.

And though it's not maybe your style, it's not my style of writing, quite funny in some places, it's basically a message on love. It's linked with what I'm going to share with you tonight. And I went and had the privilege of fellowshiping with Jack Van Empy, who apologized to the Moody Bible Institute, who apologized to Billy Graham, who apologized to many other people because of the things he said when he was caught up in this kind of judgmentalism.

And hundreds of thousands of copies are going out. And I hope the bookstore will get some more. Some of the best books are now sold out, but you can order them from the bookstore. This bookstore has fingers in all the publishers all over the place.

Operation Mobilization and Partnership in World Missions

So exciting to be involved in the work of God. I want you to turn with me now in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12. Permit me just to say a word about Operation Mobilization. I haven't said anything about the fellowship that I'm a part of.

You can almost believe that I was ashamed to speak about it. One of the greatest commitments of Operation Mobilization is to recruit and train people for other mission organizations. Maybe 25 years ago some people thought we were joking about this.

Nobody thinks that anymore. Because there are XOMers in almost every single major mission society in the entire world. Less in some American societies than European societies as we are much larger in Europe than we are in America.

Five to one. Five, six, seven to one. And I just believe that God has raised up this fellowship of XOM with all of its needs and weaknesses, especially its leader, to help prepare young people to be higher quality missionaries.

Now there are already others doing this. And many societies have their own internship program and they don't need XOM, especially American societies. In Europe it's not quite so easy, though it's changed a lot since we started out 25 years ago.

Almost every other mission now has its own short-term work. When we started out, almost no one had short-term. We did not start as short-term. I never went short-term. God led me from almost my conversion to launch out in overseas work, though I wasn't sure exactly where.

I learned Spanish in Mexico, then went to Spain, went to the Soviet Union, and ended up in India and Nepal, and then half the time in Asia and half the time in Europe. Our first vision was actually to train nationals and to stand with nationals in practical support and other ways so they could do the job.

And we internationalized very quickly so that in XOM the nationals and the internationals work on an equal basis to varying degrees, of course. And it's only in India now, only in India, where we still support financially in various ways a force of national workers, about 300 working with internationals.

Because of the internationalization of XOM over 20 years ago, most of the nationals, Sudanese, Jordanese, of course, Europeans, who rapidly became the leaders of XOM in all of these countries, came in trusting God for their own support just like the rest of us, and often sent out by their own churches.

So XOM is a short-term training ministry, though the short-term work in itself is valid. It is not just preparatory. It is valid. XOM has helped with short-term workers plant 17 churches in France alone, working with usually national church planters, some cases committed missionaries.

No wonder when Billy Graham went to France or his organization, they asked Mike Evans, our leader, to be the executive director of this huge Paris campaign with Billy Graham next summer. So short-term work is not just training, because Satan doesn't just allow just training.

He attacks you from the moment of your conversion. It's on-the-job training, and I believe it's short-term work done the right way, under supervised, trained leadership, men who know the culture and know the language and who will correct you.

There must be correction in short-term work, because there'll be too many blunders. And there must be a large number of people, as we have in XOM, committed to short-term work. We have over 200 longer-term leaders in XOM.

Most of them speak 2, 3, 4 languages, committed to the training of the short-term people, because short-term is 60 of everything we do. That's 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, anywhere up to 5, 6 years is short-term.

But over the years, of course, XOM also became a longer-term fellowship, because we have certain countries that 20 years ago not many people were interested in. Turkey was the leading country where God led us to go long-term.

God gave us such a unique role in the Muslim world. We have 250 committed to Muslim evangelism, most of them longer-term people, that we became a longer-term missionary fellowship for the Muslim world, even though we still channel many people into the other Muslim world agencies.

We especially began to play a very vital role in the subcontinent, India, then Bangladesh, then Pakistan. And with our nationals, most of them committed for life. Of course, XOM immediately became a longer-term missionary fellowship for that part of the world.

It was impossible to stop it in other parts of the world. The whole Communist World Trust, men who knew Russian, men who knew these other languages, they felt they wanted to remain in the fellowship as what they were doing was somewhat unique.

So today, especially as God has now added the two ships in order to spread this message, spread this vision, and help, and we only go generally with the invitation of churches and other mission agencies with our ships to these countries, the ships making up about one-third of XOM's task force.

We now, of course, are reaching out to most countries in the world. We are unbelievably aware in XOM of how tiny our part is. But you know, it's wonderful to have a tiny part in what God is doing. And I just appreciate over 100 mission agencies that God has given us a relationship with.

And over 1 ,000 national churches in 50 nations God has given us an in-depth relationship with. And the story of XOM is a story of partnership. It's not our great faith, our great commitment, our zeal, our love, certainly not just ver-wer, dynamism, I can't even pronounce the word.

It's partnership, it's Jesus, it's God using many different people, it's failure the backdoor to success, it's the national church. Our greater linkings are often with the national church, sometimes quicker than with even foreign missionaries, because our leaders, like for example in Sudan, is a national, he's a Sudanese.

But usually we have both. And I hope that some of you will consider, because XOM doesn't have that much input here in Prairie in terms of you know, just really sharing and we're hesitant to almost come here because so many other great mission societies are counting on Prairie students.

And we, really, I would rather go back to Europe and not return again in my cell. Only on your invitation and continual invitation do I come here. And it was Briarcrest, really, that got me here this time.

They grabbed me four years ago. They said, you've not been here. We'd like you to come. And they wrote and they wrote. And I finally agreed. And then, of course, I already had somewhat of an open invitation from you.

And then you wrote. And Ted Rendell came and ministered with us. Paul Maxwell ministered. And so God has now given us a special relationship. But the last thing we would want is to take any candidate from any other mission.

But I'll tell you, a lot of missions are now sending young people our way and giving them to us for two years. And then we try to give them back. And we believe this is our place in this great task. There's a lot of literature about all this.

There's a whole leaflet. We don't produce much literature, but lately we got this printed free of charge. So there's a little more about OM and some of the things we believe in this very complicated work of some 1 ,600 people.

I was at the OM conference just before coming here. About 1 ,000 went through that conference. And one of the meetings, I know about 500 were in that meeting because the conference is in different sections, different kinds of training and different emphases during different weeks.

All takes place there in Belgium. I said, how many of you young people, 400 of them were new recruits on a one or two year program, how many of you are planning toward career missionary work? 80 raised their hand.

And they're Germans, Swedes, British, and of course Canadians and Americans. 80%. That's why right now there are hundreds of ex-OMers, hundreds in Bible school right now. Many people do not feel ready for Bible school.

They come on something like OM First because we've won them to Christ. We're evangelists. We've discipled them. We've helped them through their hang-ups. So they come with us, maybe in our packing department in England, maybe in our warehouse in Waynesboro, maybe in some other job.

And it's there meeting characters like me who went through Bible college and many other OM leaders, they catch a vision for Bible college. Others don't. Others go in other directions. God leads different people in different ways.

I think that's exciting. I think that's exciting. And I hope we can continue to labor together. Bible colleges, longer term, reputable missionary agencies, operation mobilization, together for Jesus. Romans 12, verse 1 and verse 2.

Total Surrender and the Renewal of the Mind

I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice wholly acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Isn't that strong? Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Perhaps that's the Mount Everest of all Scripture for me. I guess I preached on Romans 12, 1 and 2 more than any other verses in the Bible. We have 11 great chapters of theology in Romans. When we get to the end of Romans 11, we almost have a crescendo of the greatness of God.

Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His judgments, His ways, paths finding out. Isn't that beautiful? For who hath known the mind of the Lord who hath been His counselor?

Who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto Him again? For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things to whom be glory forever. Amen. Then we have this shift to this great chapter of personal exhortation.

When I was a young babe in Christ, I mentioned this to you already, one of the things that helped revolutionize my life and it's still doing it, still learning, still stumbling, is memorizing Scripture.

How many of you regularly memorize Scripture? Even one verse a week. Raise your hand. That's about one third, maybe 25%. I want to give this practical challenge. Would you commit yourself to memorize one verse a week for God?

The psalmist said, I've hid thy word in my heart that I may not sin against you. Young person, if you make a commitment like many of you did last night, and don't follow through by increased feeding on the Word of God, you know, you might as well not have stood up.

Now, I am no great Bible scholar. Sometimes when I go into the Word of God in the morning, I find it dry. That's when I read it more. Sometimes I read four different parts of the Bible at once. I'm a variety man.

I always get something from the Psalms, always get something from the Proverbs, usually something then from another place in the Old Testament, something in the New, and then my memorization. Never get enough time, but you battle on.

And I tell you, that method, especially with memorization, has kept the Bible alive for me for 31 years. I've never had a period in my life when the Bible was not alive. I've had dry days, but usually you come through that.

I don't understand how we can be so negligent of the Scriptures, especially, you know, in a place like this. You can write Scripture verses. I remember when I was at college, before I ever went to Bible college, when I was at liberal arts college with my faith being attacked every week, I wrote Scripture verses on a card, and I kept them with me.

I remember sitting in my physics class. This physics teacher used to talk about his grandmother and his uncle, and he was a real rambling, unbelievable character. I hated physics. So, I used to write Scripture references all over the physics book, and Bible verses, and work on my memory.

You know, I'll tell you right now, when I'm preaching, you know, I'll submit to Ted on this, because he doesn't want me to disturb others. But, you know, if you memorize Scripture instead of listening to me quietly without disturbing others, no problem.

No problem. Now you are clean through the Word of God which I have spoken unto you. When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was challenged by Satan, was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, what did He do? Quote Shakespeare?

He quoted the Word of God. And if you and I don't get into the Word of God and get more of the Word of God into us in meditating, in memorizing, not just superficial reading, in-depth meditation, then the enemy, one of these days, is going to zero in.

I had these struggles with lust. It's interesting. One-third of all the feedback last night, people were wrestling with lust. Perversion. Difficulties of that nature. All the books living with a passion.

They're gone. We need another hundred. Why? Why? Are people just buying these for their friends? They all like to believe the best, don't they? The fact is, Billy Graham once said, speaking at Urbana, way back in the 60's, young man, young woman, if you don't win the battle against lust and against impurity, you lose the most important battle in the Christian life.

And unless you learn to meditate and memorize the Word of God, unless you have a practical strategy for spiritual growth, for buffeting the body and bringing it into subjection, as it says in 1 Corinthians 9, unless you know something of what Paul wrote to Timothy when he said, endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, you're not going to go very far for God.

I believe that meditating and memorizing Scripture is one of the great ingredients. And I'd be happy to send you a book on this subject. I didn't bring it with me. I left them all in London. Printed it in India.

Success, God's Way by Norm Lewis. You write me a letter that you're committing yourself to Scripture memory and I'll send you a copy of that book as a gift. It'll take a while to get here, but I'll do it.

And I hope one of the passages you remember and you memorize is Romans 12, 1. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice wholly acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service.

Christ's Lordship Over Every Area of Life

I want to ask you a question, really. And I may give an invitation again tonight. Because some people needed to think about it last night. But let me just ask you this question. Are you really totally committed to Jesus Christ?

What about a high school young person? We don't want to pick on you, but you are at that ripe age. You cannot afford to go through high school without total commitment to Jesus Christ. What does that mean?

It means Jesus Christ is Lord of your life. He's Lord of your emotions. He's Lord of your intellect. He's Lord of your time. He's Lord of your romantic feelings. He's Lord of all. I want to ask you that question that Alan Redpath asked me when I was a student at Moody and he was the pastor of Moody Church.

He asked that simple question, When is Jesus Christ King? King. We have a constitutional monarchy in England. I'm an immigrant to England. My children are now British citizens. I'm a second class citizen in my own house.

My little dinky American passport. My children running around speaking proper English. I've been trying to learn proper English for 22 years. It's a disaster. But in England we have a constitutional monarchy.

We all come to appreciate the Queen. And we all come to appreciate Princess Diana. I sent her a book. You know, it's amazing what books can do. I read somewhere in the newspaper a couple of years ago Princess Diana was going to have a baby.

Of course, that's no big deal. She'll only be the King of England someday. So I sent her a book. I found a Christian book on how to have a baby. And I got a lovely letter back thanking me. She didn't ask me to come for any personal visit or anything like that.

So last year I sent one to Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister. She's dynamite. I sent her No Turning Back, my own book. And Charles Colson's book Love Covers. And I got a tremendous letter from 10 Downing Street.

I was carrying it around in my Bible for a while but I think it's floated away. It's amazing. A little turkey like me sending a book off to a princess or to a prime minister. Let me just tell you, with our two ships, these people come to our ships, you know, you just can't believe it.

Admirals, generals. President Marco's been on the ship. President Marco said, as long as there's ships like Lagos, there's still hope for the world. He bought about $5 ,000 worth of books too. That wasn't bad.

They're heavy into books. I think they give them away or pave the streets with them. But I feel this conviction very, very deeply. That for many, many people today who name the name of Christ and who love the Word of God, there is a shallowness in their commitment.

There is a superficiality in the way that they are following Jesus. And today we justify it. We justify it with psychology. We justify it with philosophy. We justify it with academics. The great God of America.

Academics. And I am for spirit-controlled academics. So don't misunderstand me. But I want to tell you, if you graduate from here with a degree and you don't have Holy Ghost power and love and commitment, for God, you don't have anything, you might as well take your little degree and drop it in the wastebasket.

You may get a better job. You may feel that you are now as good as Wheaton College or whoever else you may feel you are competing with. But before God, you don't have anything. For God's mathematics is anything without love and without the Lordship of Jesus Christ is nothing.

Does that upset some of you? Good. Good. Anything is better than indifference. Anything is better than the average sleepy time, drowsy evangelical who is used to about one meeting per week. Not true here.

But it's true in general in the church of Jesus Christ. One meeting per week. What's happened to the prayer meeting in Canada? Would you tell me? Don't we have enough commitment to show up to one or two prayer meetings a week?

Don't we have enough commitment to tarry a few hours? Most of our prayer meetings are shows so short you barely start to get through to God and everybody's walking out the door having pizza. We're an overweight nation.

We're a gluttonous nation. And we justify it. And it is an abomination to God. And I believe unless there is repentance among God's people, we're never going to see those missionary candidates. Most of these recruiters are going to die of nervous exhaustion.

Jesus said, The harvest is plenteous, but the labors are few. Pray ye therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that He'll send forth labors. That's Jesus. That's not me. You can forget me when I leave here tomorrow, but I pray you'll not forget Jesus.

Jesus said, Pray ye, pray ye. How many labors have you prayed out into the harvest from your church? How many of your churches haven't sent a single missionary this year out into the harvest field? Let me be very honest.

From my viewpoint in Europe, and some degree in the United States, I don't see the number one problem as candidates. And I tell you, when Brother Keith Green went to be with Jesus Christ and left behind that piece of dynamite tape, Jesus commands you to go.

And that unbelievable video, he never even allowed videotapes. This man walked very close with God. He might have been extreme. He might have been misunderstood. He upset the charismatics by calling them charismaniacs.

In one charismatic meeting, they removed him from the platform. And when Keith and I fellowshiped together, I will tell you, it was a heavy experience. He had doubts about me. When he introduced me at last day's ministry, he sort of covered for me in case he had to undo what I did.

But I'll tell you, at the end of that meeting, Keith Green and George Verwer were in each other's arms. And he showed me around this last day's ministry, which I didn't understand much of, though I'd been reading some of this powerful Phinney material, some of these Keith Green tracks.

And so I went around. I wasn't that much into his music. And he asked me, he threw a tape into my hand, and he said, Do you know this tape? I've had very little trouble in my Christian life with lying, and a lot of that before I was a Christian.

But after I became a Christian, very little trouble with lying. I've been caught for a lot of things, but not much for lying. Do you know that night with Keith Green, I told a small lie. He said, What do you think of that tape?

I said, It's great. Now, you know how these things happen instantly in your mind. I had heard one of his tapes and I thought it was great. And so I just said, It's great. I hadn't heard that tape. It was on my conscience.

Because I've always tried to keep short accounts with God. The next morning, I was meeting in prayer with Leonard Ravenhill. We had an hour of prayer together. It was his 75th birthday, and we celebrated it.

Whoever was a wild man, loose for God, it's Leonard Ravenhill. His book, Why Revival Tarries, is the most nerve-breaking, mind-bending, laser-beam book I've ever read almost. You wear asbestos gloves when you pick it up.

So I went there for Leonard Ravenhill's 75th birthday, and we spent an hour in prayer. And as we were praying, old bombastic extreme, Keith Green comes bombing in. And I thought, Uh-oh. We're going to have to pray here together.

And so we prayed. I started to weep. Jesus taught me to weep. In my culture, when I was a kid, you weren't allowed to weep. I was so ashamed of tears. I'd hide. I wanted to be tough. When Jesus came into my heart, he taught me to weep, and I've wept hundreds and hundreds of times since Jesus came into my heart.

Don't be afraid to weep. Young men don't think weeping is just for women. Weeping is for anyone who follows Jesus Christ. I said, Keith, I want to talk to you. And I went into the other room, and I was weeping.

I said, Keith, this isn't easy. Because we Christian leaders like to impress other Christian leaders, don't we? I said, this is not easy to tell you, but last night, I told you a lie when I said that I appreciated that tape.