To Live Is Christ - Full Length — K.P. Yohannan

Gospel for Asia presents To Live is Christ with K .P. Yohannan, president and founder of Gospel for Asia, international speaker and author of over 150 books. We now join K .P. as he shares the Word of God with a local congregation.

I want us to read a Bible verse from 1 John, chapter 1, verse 6. Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. And that scripture in the living Bible reads like this. Anyone who says he's a Christian should live as Christ did.

Isn't that simple? If I say, and I know I say this, I believe in Jesus, I am his follower. Then I am told, okay, wonderful, you are saying that, but would you make this decision, choose to live as my son lived?

It says in 1 John 4, as he was in the world, so are we now in this world. You know, there's a lot of talk about predestination. The only predestination that I can find is in Romans 8. It says, we are predestined that we may be conformed to the image of his son.

That is true predestination. So next time somebody fights about it, you tell them that. I heard a little chorus long ago. Now when I say long ago, don't think I'm an old, old man, although I'm old. I was 18 or 19 years old.

That is a long time ago. Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me. All his wonders, compassion and purity, O thou the spirit divine, all my nature refine. Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me. All that sounds very nice and simple, but it is not spiritual.

I ask the question, how am I going to become like Jesus? What is Jesus like? I think it's very plain and simple. Jesus lived his life constantly, always perpetually with eternal perspective in mind. He said, I'm not trying to be the king here.

This is not my kingdom. This is not what I'm about. I'm here for a short time, and I'm here for a purpose. That is to accomplish the plan of my father. And he had always that on his mind. A friend of mine, when he was a young Christian, seeing the carnality in the older Christians, preachers and Bible teachers who were loving money and position, power and jealousy and strife and unforgiveness and living for the things of the world, and he went to God and cried out, said, Father, why is it that people that know the Bible so much, they memorize it, they can quote the scripture, they know all the doctrines.

Father, why is it that life is so like this, full of strife and jealousy and all these other things? He says, the Lord spoke to his heart and said, Son, they spend time with the Bible. They don't spend time with me.

Then he made a statement to me, an older brother. He said, my brother, I have an advice for you. If you want to know God, you love Jesus and study him and imitate him. And if you want to be smart and famous and so full of knowledge, then you study the Bible.

Weird, huh? Yet how true it is. Yes, the Bible, the learning, the knowledge should help me to love him more intimately and follow him with all my heart, but often it don't happen. So what is Jesus like?

The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and give his life as a ransom for others. I came, he said, not to seek nothing for myself. Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.

Christ's life was always continually a life that lived out for others and not for himself. So all day working, but then night, in so sleeping he will pray all night because next day he must touch the lepers and heal the sick and preach the gospel and help those who are lost and find them.

So he said, as the Father sent me, I am sending you also. Some of you may remember the name Keith Green. Anyone remember his name? He was a strange character, some people think. A dear friend who went to be with the Lord, he wrote many songs and he sang and I don't do that.

But in one of his songs, these words are very powerful. Do you see, do you see all the people singing down? Don't you care? Don't you care? Are you going to let them drown? How can you be so numb not to care if they come?

You close your eyes and pretend the job is done. Oh bless me Lord, bless me Lord, you know it is all I ever hear. No one hurt, no one ache, no one even sheds one tear. It is bless me, bless me, bless me.

In one of my meetings some years ago, somewhere in the United States, a lady came to me after the meeting and said, would you please pray for me? I said, may I know madam what you want me to pray about?

She said, I got a demon of smoke. Would you lay your hand on me and cast out the demon of smoke? I mean that is the first time in my life I ever heard anything like that. So I kind of got shocked. So I said, madam, demons yes you can cast out but not the flesh.

You crucify the flesh and the desires of the flesh. She got confused. We blame the devil for all kinds of things. The devil is bad, okay, I understand that. But the poor devil gets blamed for everything under the sun.

The church is so totally disobedient in picking up the cross and willing to lay down their life like Amy Carmichael Jetson and thousands who march the way of the cross and were martyred. Instead of committing a life for sacrifice and death, we blame the devil for the whole world going to hell.

Devil is bad, I admit. But I am telling you something, your enemy, my enemy, more than you realize is not the devil, it is our own self-centeredness. And Jesus came not only to save me from my sin and hell but during my life in this pilgrimage to set me free from my own self-centeredness.

But in the measure in which I allow him, he can do the job. And there is a world out there that Jesus is saying, as the father sent me, you go and you be my hands, my ears, my nose, my heart, my feelings, my tears, you be the one to call them to the father.

But do we listen to that? No. We say, I have to take care of myself, I want to be blessed, and after this, that, that, and we kind of shove it off, not taking the pain, the anguish of the cross to touch the lost world.

A letter came to me some years ago from the mission field, and my wife brought it to me and said, would you please read this, and I was sitting in my office in Dallas, in a comfortable chair. I finished reading the letter, I was weeping on my knees.

The letter came from a dear brother, a native missionary, the work in Hardwar, by river Ganges. During that couple of weeks time, 35 million Hindus walked and traveled by train, and bullock carts, and buses from all over the country to go in this dirty, polluted waters of river Ganges, washing themselves for the forgiveness of sins.

This one missionary, working among these people, telling about Jesus, one evening he was coming home, and now in the letter, he writes the experience of what happened that evening. He said, I saw this young woman, sitting by the bank of the river, weeping uncontrollably and pounding upon her chest.

Knowing something so terrible happened, I went to her and asked, why are you weeping? What happened? She replied, my husband is sick, he cannot work anymore. My sins are so many that nobody knows about.

To find forgiveness for my sins, and solution to the problems of my home, I have given the best offering I can give to Goddess Ganges. My only son, my six month old baby boy, I just threw him into the river.

Next paragraph, I sat beside her, explained her the gospel. Her sins are forgiven, two thousand years ago I explained to her, that God is not angry with her, God didn't make me poor. He writes, as I explained the gospel to her, all of a sudden she wiped her tears, and looked straight into my eyes, and said these words, didn't you come to me half hour sooner?

I didn't have to kill my child. I never heard this before, but why didn't you come to me half hour sooner? She went back crying again. Now I was on my knees saying Jesus, I surrender every drop of my blood, every fiber of my being, my wife, my children, all that I am, for two billion people like her crying out, why, why, why, why, why and Lord, till the last second of my journey, I will want to give myself to see those people reached with the gospel.

I find my own self-centeredness becoming the hindrance from doing what Jesus asked me to do and to be like him. One of the first places I went to serve God when I was a youngster was a place called Boondi in the northwest of India.

Hard, stoned, difficult Hindus, seven brothers and myself with Bibles and tracts and Gospels with our old beat up vehicle, we went to this place. We got beaten up very bad. Without mercy we were beaten.

One brother, blood began to ooze down from the beating. We had to leave the place. Some years went by, a young brother from one of the Bible schools, a 19-year-old young brother, after finishing his studies said to our leaders, Jesus wants me to go to Boondi.

They said, you, you are a little fellow, you are only 19 years old, Boondi is a dangerous place, you don't go. He said, but I prayed the whole year, Jesus wants me to go to Boondi. The senior brother said, son, are you sure Jesus told you to go to Boondi?

He said, yes. Then you please go. He went to Boondi, rented a place for about five dollars a month. After a few nights, in the middle of the night, someone came and busted the door open and he found himself surrounded by 6 -7 men.

One tall Rajput with a turban on his head pulled this brother up by his leg, the skinny brother, and said, you young fellow, tomorrow you leave this place. If you stay here, we can tear you apart like we do with a chicken.

We don't want your God. We got plenty of Gods and Goddesses here. Tonight we will not kill you, but tomorrow you leave this place. He got scared, and I would too, and you would too. Next morning he took the first bus and train and ran back to the mission station and told the brothers, trembling with fear, they came last night.

They said they will kill me. And it was easy to believe because some years prior to that, another brother who went to the region for preaching the gospel, he was martyred. So they said, what are you going to do?

I don't know what to do. They are going to kill me. Again the senior most brother said, son, I want to ask you one question. Did Jesus ask you to go to go to Boondi? He said, I know He told me to go to Boondi.

That is only a burden I have. Are you sure? He said, I know, but they are going to kill me. He said, son, you go back to Boondi. Most probably they will come back to you again. Yes, maybe there is a possibility you may get killed, but remember heaven is a much better place than Boondi anyway.

You wait there for us and we will come later. And the senior most brother who told him that has a scar on his forehead as Paul said, the mark of the cross, persecution that he faced for preaching the gospel.

The young brother knelt down and they laid hand on him, prayed for him and sent him back to Boondi. He got in the bus weeping, believing that he will never see them again alive. He reached Boondi. Sure enough, after a few days the same people came back and said, why are you now going to make us murderers?

Didn't we tell you not to come here? He listened to all their mighty speech and very calm, sober, he said, you know what? The sooner you do your job, it is better for me. Heaven is a much better place than Boondi anyway.

What do you do with a fellow who want to get killed? Yes, he faced some persecution, some problems. Some years goes by. I get a telephone call in the middle of the night. Hello, I said, yes, brother KP speaking.

Brother, we want you to come to Boondi. I want to put the phone down. He said, no, no brother, we want you to inaugurate the church that is in Boondi. The story changes. Next month I flew to Delhi, took a train and went to Boondi.

You want to see faces glow with love of Jesus? Come to Boondi and see the first generation converts, 150 some adults and wives and children worshipping Jesus. So intense, not for two hours, but goes on three, four, five hours.

And I sat there weeping through the whole service and taught God's word. When it was over, this brother said, this is a man who said he will tear me like a chicken. How is it possible? Paul, please, Paul, you are the best teacher, theologian, pastor, leader we have.

Don't you go there and get killed. Please Paul, don't. You read Acts, Paul said, ah, thank you. I know you are telling the truth. The Holy Spirit spoke clearly, that's true. But I do not regard my life dear unto myself.

All I want is to give it away. Jesus, I want to be like you. Hey, my wife, my children, my brother, my sister, I am not here to put you on a guilt trip, intimidate you, get something out of you and run to the next place.

That's not my purpose here. But I want to ask you one simple question. When you heard over 100 ,000 people died in Rwanda in a few days time. When you heard in a week over 100 ,000 swept away from Bangladesh into the oceans and millions left homeless.

When you heard every church in Afghanistan was demolished, not one Christian living in the country. Where were you? What happened to you the following day? Did your son ask you, Mama, why are you not eating today?

After three days, your son said, Daddy, it seems that you are not eating any food. What happened? Are you sick? Can you say, my son, you remember we watched the news and saw what happened? Yes, Daddy.

Son, I am so broken hearted over the millions that are perishing that I decided to fast and pray and stand in the gap on the behalf of the world that is going to hell and forever without Jesus. That's the only reason.

When was the last time you as a family sat down and said, let's talk about it. Half of the world go to bed with empty stomach and naked bodies. Some 80 ,000 die every day and slip into hell. You and your wife and kids and as a family, when was the last time you made a pact, a discussion and say, we will live as strangers and pilgrims on this earth with sacrifice and commitment and tears and fasting and touch the lost world with our lifestyle.

Two brothers we trained in one of our schools and sent them out to work among the Muslims, the people of Islam, Hussain and Salsal, their names. Hussain was married with two little kids. Salsal was not married.

During the day they preach the gospel in this community and lead people to Christ and quite a few came to know the Lord. During the night they teach the Bible for these new believers. One morning as they were going about their ministry, a group of men met them.

They greeted them with kindness and said, Namaste. Oh, so you are Hussain and you are Salsal. You came to tell us about your Jesus. Our brothers thought they were very friendly, nice people and said, yes, we are so happy to be here to tell you about Jesus.

No more exchange, no more conversation. The leader pulled out a dragger and stabbed into the heart of brother Hussain. He fell in a pool of blood while Salsal grabbing hold of him, weeping. They stabbed him six times.

Believing that both are dead, these men fled. Salsal, it took months to recover, but Hussain died on the spot, leaving his wife and two young kids behind. Hearing about the news, after a few weeks, her father, a Muslim, who is not a Christian, traveling from his distant village came to see his daughter.

And this is what he said, my daughter, thank God the devil is dead. Now you come home with me with my grandchildren. Now you, my wonderful sisters, wives, young girls, you listen to the answer. This young wife, in a strange place, no relatives, no one to show any kindness, replied to her father, said, my father, you don't understand.

The Jesus my husband loved, I love him dearly. The people that he loved, I love them. I cannot come home. I have to stay here and continue the ministry my husband started and died for. Loving Jesus more than life itself.

A man had hundred sheep. Remember that parable? How many got awake? One. And what did the shepherd do? Did he say, ah, one. I got ninety nine. Oh, that one is a stupid one. It is really crazy all the time.

Anyway, let it go. Go and jump and die. Okay, go. I'm going to have a nice, wonderful sleep. You know, my wife says I snore. But I tell my wife I never snore. She says, how do you know? I never heard me snore.

So the shepherd gave up that one sheep. Did he? He left the ninety nine and went after the one until he found it and took it up. Today, the story is not one outside the fold, one inside and ninety nine out there.

One billion people in the land of India, half of them never heard the name Jesus even one time in their life. Forget about redemption, sanctification and all the doctrines we fight and squabble about.

Twenty-two million people in northern Bihar without one church, one missionary, among that many people. Seventeen million in Afghanistan without one known Christian. Who must begin to feel the burden and commit our life to touch these people.

People ask me, Brother KP, where do you come from? I said, can't you see on my face? India. But where in India? Oh, you want to know where in India? I come from the extreme southern part of India, the state of Kerala.

That is where Christ's disciple Thomas came in AD 52. Believe it or not, it's true. I gave my life to the Lord when I was eight years old through my mother's influence. The place I come from, you want to know?

Go and find the oldest Tarzan movie you can find. Oh, black and white. That's the kind of place I grew up. You know, these clothes you see I'm wearing? This is not mine. We don't wear these kind of things.

We have a wraparound, you know, barefooted, and my wraparound clothes and all this stuff. I do it for you. And I have five brothers. I'm the youngest in our family. And my mother, a devout follower of Christ.

My father died in 74. He knew the Lord just before he died. But my mother, all her life, I remember, she followed him very close. The memory of my mother, every morning about four o 'clock she would get up and read her Bible and pray for a couple of hours.

Then she'd wake up the whole family for family prayer. I didn't want to wake up, but I had to. And after she finished the cooking and washing and everything, she would take her Bible and go from house to house and tell people about Jesus in my village.

When I was just after 16 years of age, I felt the Lord was calling me to do my life of mission work. So I came home one afternoon and told my mother and father, if you allow me, I want to be a missionary.

Before I could finish my sentence, my mother said, you please go. I said, uh-oh. Now I know she never liked me. So I took off. Went to North India for two years, working with Operation Mobilization, and came back to see my parents, skin and bones, tired, worn out.

The first time she saw me, she began to weep. The following day, nobody in the house. She was cooking in the kitchen with the firewood, you know, the typical, the old way we do things. She said, son, come and sit here and I want to tell you something that you did not know about.

And I sat beside her, this five feet, two inches tall, skin and bones, little, fragile village woman, with a glow on her face, the love of Jesus. In her own native language, she began to tell me the story.

She said, son, I have six boys and you are the youngest. I said, mother, obviously that is true. She said, all my life, my dream was one of my sons to become a missionary. And I prayed for all my sons, but one by one they went to business and farming and all these different things.

And when you are born and growing up, I lost all my hope. You were shy and timid and I thought God will never answer my prayer. But then I decided as a last attempt, I would fast and pray. And my son, for three and a half years, every Friday, I only drank water and fasted all three meals, crying out to God, Jesus, call one of my sons to become a missionary.

And the day you came and said you want to go as a missionary, I knew God answered my prayer. In 1990, I was flying from the United States to South Korea to speak in a mission conference and when I reached Bombay, India, I got the message my mother was sick.

At the age of 84, she had never been sick like that, with a heart problem, taken to the hospital. I canceled my trip, went to the hospital, spent a week with her. That weekend, my mother died. Funeral took place.

Now I must go back to America. My oldest brother called the younger brothers including me to talk about our mother. One of my brothers had a question, how much money did our mother leave in the bank? All her sons would give her money every month to do whatever she wanted to do and so we imagined she must have a huge amount of money sitting somewhere in the bank.

Answering the question, my brother pulled out his old worn out booklet or piece of papers and he said, there's nothing in the bank. He said, what happened to all the money? He said, I found this under the pillow of our mother's bed.

In it, she had scribblings of names of dozens of young people, some studying in the Bible school to go to the mission field, some already on the mission field and against their names, 200 rupees, 500 rupees and all the different money she was sending every month without telling one human being on earth.

I began to weep. The reason being, I remember one time when I was back home visiting my people and I saw my mother wearing blouse with stitches from here to here, you know the needle stitch and I was so angry.

I said, mother, what is wrong with you? What happened to your head? Don't you have any feeling for your sons? The whole world will think that we don't take care of you. You are putting cow dung on our face.

You put shame upon our head. Mother, don't you have any feelings about us? You can buy a new dress every month if you want. Why you do this to us? She smiled and said, you little fellow don't understand nothing.

Someday you will understand. And now I sit in the room as though my mother speaking to me again. My son, all my life I lived for the eternal purposes of God. Yes, I could have purchased a new dress every month, but I chose to wear old clothes and stitch it when it's torn.

I never told anyone what I was doing. But son, now you understand. The house, the dreams, the dresses, approval of men, opinions of other people. My son, it means all nothing. It's nothing. Now you understand.

How many times did I hear my mother just during the day saying that Bible verse again and again and again and again. Her favorite Bible verse, Psalm 73 verse 25. Whom have I in heaven but you and on earth I desire no one beside you.

After having spent a little time in Europe before coming to America, I picked up a habit using a certain brand name deodorant soap from England that I love. You can buy it in America, $1 .50 per bar. And that I did for the first several years of my life in America.

A bookworm, any book that he find on any subject if I could buy it, I will buy it. It was impressive somebody came to my house and saw all the translations and books I had. And I didn't read half of them but kind of made a good impression.

After a few years of living like that, one day the Lord said to me, son, half of the world have never seen one page of the Bible. What are you doing with your life? And I cried out to God on my knees and said, Lord, take eternity and stamp on my eyes for I cannot change myself.

I'm so self-centered. In his mercy and grace and compassion and love, he began to change my heart. Next time he went to the store, I didn't buy the $1 .50 deodorant soap. I switched to ivory, $0 .35.

And I don't like ivory either. I'm not promoting that soap. Some of our brothers are working in northwest of India on the street preaching the gospel. A Hindu Brahmin, a landlord came by and got a gospel tract in Hindi language.

He was running away from his home to commit suicide having cancer in his body. First time in his life, in the late 50s, an older man read with his own eyes, God came to this world for you. Jesus died on the cross to save you from sin and hell and he want to save you if you call upon him.

And there's a prayer he can pray to Jesus on the street. That afternoon, this man knelt down in his own native language, crying out to a God he never prayed to ever in his life, asking him to come into his life and forgive his sin and save him.

He got up. Something happened. Peace came into his heart. And he didn't commit suicide. He ran home and went to the same hospital and told the doctors, Doctor, I feel so good. Can you check me? What we can do?

You are sick. We did everything we can. No, no, no, doctor, you please one more time. So he persisted. They checked him up, down, everywhere, inside out. He said, what did you take? There's no trace of cancer in your body.

You're completely cured. And the man pulled out the booklet in his pocket that he was reading and said, Doctor, this healed me. They thought he went cuckoos. With the address on the booklet, he went to a mission station, told our brothers what happened to him.

They began to explain to him the gospel more about Jesus. The man began to weep out loud and said, Oh, now I know this Jesus is my God. Then he said, you know what? I'm a landlord. Can you come and make all my people Christians?

How literally understand how this thing work? Two of our brothers went with him, began to preach the gospel. And to date, they got at least 150 or more people saved and baptized. And the man gave the land, the money, the whole thing to build the first church in the community.

But the question, how did that all happen? One gospel tract that costs less money than what I pay for chewing gum. And I like chewing gum. I'm not saying don't chew gum. If you want, no problem. But I'm telling you, I was crazy enough to think in those terms saying, Lord, everything I do now in my life, I want to evaluate in the light of eternity.

I must conclude with some applications. Those who claim to be followers of Christ must live like him. And I am convinced the saddest thing Christ feels, he weeps over. So when you look upon the land of India, Bhutan, Burma, the Muslim countries, they are all people that do not know the gospel, don't know his name.

They're dying in darkness like the woman at River Ganges. And I want him to break my heart with the things that break his heart. So what do I do? I recommend that if the Lord give you the grace, take one day of the week to fast and pray for people that never heard the gospel.

Ask God to give you the countries, the name of the people, groups, information. We can help you with tremendous information to pray for just one day of the week. And if you're trying to lose a few more pounds, add one more day.

My second recommendation to you is that you will ask the Lord, Jesus, how do you want me to live my life? In the light of the fact that half of the world never heard this gospel and they are hungry and destitute, ask him to give you understanding how to live your life.

I cannot tell you the car, the house and what you should do. That's none of my business. Nobody's business as a matter of fact. But let him tell you how you can simplify your life so that others can hear the gospel.

And you know my sister, you don't need another diamond ring. He loves you anyway. You see my brother, this tie here? Kind of broad, huh? If you got one like this, you keep it and it will go narrow and it will come back again.

That is the world of fashion. You can hold a car, lay your hand on it in Jesus name, it will run again. But let the Lord guide you. I wrote the whole book about it by the way. Thirdly, most of you, 99 of you will not go to India, China, Bhutan, Burma, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan.

You will not go there to live. Please go if you can. But tonight I want to ask you something. My mother, she never left my village in her entire life. But she had missionaries all over India, winning people to Christ.

People that she would never meet in her lifetime on earth, never touched them. But she knew someday she will meet them in heaven. Would you please, I fold my hand before you tonight and ask, would you ask the Lord what you will do as he guides you to link your life with missionaries on the field.

We got 11 ,000 missionaries in India and China and Bhutan and Burma and Bangladesh, all these places. Native missionaries living like the people, talking their language, suffering and paying the price of preaching the gospel.

We got thousands now in the schools getting ready to go to the mission field. But they cannot go. No one to help them to go. You say, brother KP, why not? The sad thing is, they have no one to help them, even with the train ticket.

It takes about as little as $30 a month. You can help one of those missionaries get to the place where no one ever went before and preach the gospel and plant a church. When they plant a church and become self-supporting, you don't need to help them anymore.

They can keep on preaching and doing the work of the Lord and expand the work. My wife and I with our two children began to support four native missionaries when they were going to school in Dallas. My kids used to go to the streets and pick up beer cans and Coca-Cola cans, aluminum cans and sell them and bring the money so we can support four missionaries, $30 a month.

And all those four missionaries began to plant local churches in India, Bhutan, India, Bangladesh, all those places. And today my kids are in India serving God. Would you and your family, if the Lord is speaking in your heart, decide to do that?

You say, brother KP, how do I do that? The answer is this. On the tables back there, we have a card with a blue stripe on the top. In this card, there is a place for you to say, starting now, I will help prayerfully sponsor.

Help sponsor one missionary or two, whatever number of missionaries you want to support, $30 a month. Then you write your name and address and you give it to the people manning the table and they will give you your missionary to take home.