The Impact One Life Can Have, Part Two — K.P. Yohannan

Hey hun, tell me a secret. That depends. OK, what do you want for Christmas? Do you really want to know? Yeah. I think I'd like a water buffalo. What? Yes, you can give a beautiful gift this Christmas, a water buffalo.

For a poor Dalit family in India, just one water buffalo can provide rich milk, cheese, and dairy products, enough to sustain the whole family. Not only that, but one water buffalo is great for transportation, work in the fields, and extra dairy products for the family to sell for income.

Gospel for Asia is reaching out to the poor throughout Asia with practical gifts, like a water buffalo and the good news of Jesus Christ. Give a gift that gives and opens the door to the greatest gift of all, the good news of Jesus.

Gospel for Asia takes care of it all. All they need is your help. Visit us at gfa .org. That's gfa .org.

How one life can make a difference, next on The Road to Reality with Brother K .P. Yohannan. The United States is prospering in an amazing way. Every other nation in the world recognizes this, but prosperity is not an end in itself.

Knowing and sharing the truth and love of God is what the Christian is called to do, and that takes a total surrender to Christ. Now, welcome to The Road to Reality with Brother K .P. Yohannan, founder and director of Gospel for Asia.

Today, we bring you the second portion of a message Brother K .P. delivered at a conference in Canada. It is direct and challenging, but very refreshing. Before we go to Brother K .P., I'd like to encourage you to stop by our website, gospelforasia .org, and look through our Christmas catalog.

You'll find some unique ways to make this Christmas especially meaningful for a poor family in India. Again, our web address is gospelforasia .org. And I'll give you the contact information again, but now, let's listen in to Brother K .P. Yohannan.

Some places, they invite me to preach. They never invite me back again. Why? For your sake that you will have kindness toward me, I will tell you, for 30 years, I've been speaking to God's people like this in North American Europe, and I am not a stranger to this country, nor our church here.

I am part of you. And my heart, I break, I weep, I agonize before my God for the shallowness, the carnality, and the lack of authentic Christian life that now we have at large among us. We don't lack books.

Dallas, Texas, where we have our headquarters, the United States, there are 14 Christian radio stations, 24 hours blaring out every kind of teaching you want to hear on planet Earth. Some conservative, some radical, some balanced, some totally off the wall.

There's one guy one time said literally, he said, send me $25 and I will send you the secret formula and the oil that'll help to grow hair on your bald head. What a racket. When in India with over a billion people, not one Christian radio station, how much more information, my brothers and sisters, do you need before you come clean and totally all His and His alone?

That's a question. In the book of Ezekiel, chapter 22, God speaks with much burden. I sought for a man, may I add a woman, one person to stand in the gap, to make up the hedge and stand on the behalf of the land so that the land will not be destroyed, but I found none.

We are a people that are consumed with making big shows and noise. We rather have one million people march to Washington for picketing and hold up our placards or write books about what's going wrong, but how difficult it is to find just one person who will say, I'm taking 20 days to fast and wait before God to stop the flood of darkness upon this nation or from this lost world plunge further into darkness.

Again, let me say the same thing again and again. I'm not talking about a crowd. I'm talking about you, my dear brother, my dear sister. Why am I saying it? Last 25 years of, that's my brief journey with our mission.

One Faithful Person Making a Difference

I have seen it again and again. In some places, just one individual, one sister, one brother that makes a difference. Two young people finished their training, went to a community to preach the gospel.

Thank God, their damsel came out of Muslim families, radically committed to Christ. These coworkers began to preach the gospel. They baptized two dozen people in a very short time, Muslims. One morning, these two brothers, Hussein and Salsal, their names, were on the way to their ministry and on the way, a group of men met them.

The leader stepped forward and said, oh, so you are Hussein and you are Salsal. Oh, you came to tell us about your Jesus. They were smiling and our brothers thought they are friends and Hussein responded, yes.

Would you like to hear? No more words exchanged. The leader pulled out a dagger, a long knife and stabbed in the heart of brother Hussein. He fell in a pool of blood. Salsal grabbing hold of him, weeping, they stabbed him six times, believing they both are dead.

These men fled. Hussein, the senior brother, died on the spot. Salsal was taken to the hospital, he recovered. But here's the problem. Hussein was married, two tiny babies, little children. Hearing about the news, her father, who is a radical Muslim, traveled from distant village to meet his daughter and this is what the father said, my daughter, thank God the devil is dead, talking about her husband who got killed.

Now you come home with me with my grandchildren. Now, sisters, wives, college girls, listen to me. If you are in her place, a 24, 25 year old young girl in a hostile community, no relatives, no friends, a strange land, if you are told that by your unbelieving father, what would you say?

How would you respond? See, this is where Christianity becomes intensely practical, not shouting words, but radical commitment to something worth living for and worth dying for. This young girl, between tears and pain, said, my father, you don't understand.

The Jesus my husband loved, I love him so much. The people that he loved, I love them. Father, I cannot come home with you. I must raise my children here so they can preach the gospel to these people.

This is my home. That shocked the father. He couldn't figure this out. He stayed on with her and she led him to the Lord Jesus Christ and he was baptized. Hallelujah, hallelujah. Again, let me come back to this.

Dying to Self and Resisting the Powers of Darkness

It is about you I'm talking. It is about you I'm talking. Watchman made this fantastic statement in his book, Character of a Christian Worker or a Believer, let me say. In the chapter, A Mind to Suffer, he describes the powers of darkness, satanic forces will manipulate, will influence, will use everything in his power and control to cause you to respond to external stimuli, the inconveniences, the rejection, the misunderstanding, the loss of money and health and reputation and all things, even the feeling that you are going to be killed.

He will use all that. But once a believer has made the decision, that is okay. I am already dead. I am not my own. Blood was a prize. He paid to purchase me. And he says, no sin, no devil can hold you back.

You will become that individual that conquer the world. You know what humanization is, humanizing? Not to get smallpox, they give you a little smallpox. Am I right? See, I am a doctor, but not this doctor.

There are people who handle cobra, king cobra, big cobra. They strike you one time, you are finished. But there are people who handle this huge, monstrous cobras on the streets of India and they bite them, but they never die.

You wonder what happened. Well, they had little of this poison on a long period of years. No poison can affect them anymore. You understand? Let me explain. Do you know some of the richest people in America and Canada in our community right now are Christian preachers?

If the light in you becomes darkness, how great is darkness? I am least impressed, moved by the preachers today we have, we have no prophets. This world is crying out for some prophet, some man like Jeremiah, who will weep his eyes out and call people repentants.

Deep down, we know that repentance and walking in total surrender to the Lord is what every Christian is called to do. But we can't let life crowd out that prophet. We have a priority, can't we? We have another segment coming in just a moment.

You're listening to The Road to Reality with Brother K .P. Yohannan, founder and director of Gospel for Asia. If you're not familiar with the missions work the Lord is doing through Gospel for Asia, please stop by our website.

It's found at gospelforasia .org. You'll find resources to inspire you in your walk with the Lord, like K .P.'s personal story. It's a free book called Revolution in World Missions. And with the Christian season here, please look through the Christmas catalog.

It's filled with practical gift ideas, things like toolkits, chickens, or blankets. As I said, practical items that you and your family can give to bless a Dalit family with a tangible expression of Christ's love.

Again, our web address is gospelforasia .org. Or, to reach us by phone, call toll free 800-WIN-ASIA. And now, we return to Brother K .P. with a challenge and the impact one life can have on the world for Christ.

Confronting Pastoral Compromise

I mentioned this afternoon,.

Speaking at a large pastor's conference over a thousand people some time ago. Along with me, another man was speaking. He said, it is reported in many cities of the United States if there's a pastor's conference in a city, that week they will have rendered maximum number of X-rated movies than any other time in the whole year.

Why I'm saying that to you, I'm a pastor also. I've been one for five years in Dallas, Texas. I'm not angry with the pastors. If that is the pulpit, if that is the shepherds, where are we going? Don't be deceived by the noise of the TV preachers.

Now you know why they will not invite me back in some places. Here, they will invite me back. Oh, my brothers and sisters, I am not a professional preacher. You ask my colleagues, I don't sell books to make money and have secret bank accounts and none of those things.

I say this to you because there's too many things that are going wrong in our world. I'm calling you as an individual to face the reality of the radical Jesus of the New Testament, who still says, if anyone want to come after me, he or she must deny himself and pick up his cross and daily come after me.

Loving Christ Above Family and Self

If you love your father, your mother, your sister, your brother, your son, your daughter, I wish he stopped there. I would be happy. Too bad, he's not the Christ I can create for me. He's the Lord, not my servant.

Then he went on to say, unless you love me more than your own life, you cannot be mine. Where are the preachers? That preachers be saying, do not love yourself. Don't you think this is a clear indication when we spend one cent of the dollar for two billion people that never heard the gospel and spend all the rest on ourselves, don't you think something wrong with us?

When average believer pray less than six minutes a day, don't you think something wrong with us? In one church some time ago, some 14 ,000 members, I was preaching and I told them, I challenge you to take one day of the week to fast before God, which I do myself, which is the least one can do.

Then I made a joke out of it. If you're trying to lose one more pound, add one more day. Do you know what? They almost murdered me. They drove me out of town. Legalism, bondage, putting us on a guilt trip.

Breaking Free From Besetting Sin

Hey, listen to me, you read, you read, you read, I beg of you, without TV, television preachers help the New Testament and the epistles and see Jesus and his followers and their lifestyle. No wonder in Acts 17, it says, these, those who turn the world upside down, they have come here also.

In Philip's translation, these world revolutionaries have come here also. What was it? Picketing? Money power? Buildings? No, it was the way of life. I want to ask you, how long it take before you break from that besetting sin that nobody knows about that you're grappling with?

Internet, porno, books, magazine, music, friendship, loving money, this, that. How long, I ask you, before you say no to that and break free from it? How much more information you need before you will watch the tsunami, the Bangladesh, the Eastern Europe, the Albania, and you start weeping and your children ask, mommy, what happened to daddy?

You're watching television, he just start crying. You go and ask daddy. The following week, the kid come to the mommy and say, mommy, is daddy angry with us? Why you say that? Mommy, he has not been eating with us for last four or five days.

He used to be with us for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but he's not, he's, what happened to him? You really want to know? Yes, mommy, you remember we talked about in our family prayer time, but what happened in China?

What happened in Bangladesh, 100 ,000 people died overnight and millions displaced and lost? Yes, mommy, you see, daddy decided to fast and you know my child, many hours of the night, he's not sleeping with mommy in the bed.

He's in the other room praying and sometime mommy joined him and the child says nothing, not a word, but 15 years later, that young man testifies, I remember my father, I remember my mother. If you think you're superficial preachers and your books, your novels and your cheap worship and the noise is going to make you to have your children grow up, to change Canada and this generation, you're fooling yourself.

The Deep Influence of a Parent's Prayer Life

It is going to be life, bigoting life. Psalm 42 verse seven, the deep calls unto deep. The ministry I'm part of right now is recognized as possibly the largest church planting ministry in the 1040 window and the things that God is doing is unbelievable.

92 languages daily in 11 nations, millions hear the gospel and on and on, I can go on and tell you all night long stuff's going on. Say wow, brother KP, oh, Dr. KP, you are such a fantastic Christian leader, nonsense.

I'm a poor, struggling missionary, repenting million times a day just like anybody else, but I tell you what, somebody is responsible for all this, it's not me. Hardly five feet tall, a skinny, fragile little woman that never left her village, but she loved Jesus so much.

She would wake up no later than four in the morning and spend two, three hours on her knees in prayer. She never read any book except her Bible, that's all she had. She would tell her sons or the six boys about Jesus and lead them to the master.

She prayed, oh Lord, out of six boys, at least one call to be a missionary. One by one, her older sons went to business and farming and all these different things and she began to lose hope and then her youngest son was born, that is me.

As I was growing up, she later said, you were so shy and timid and withdrawn and skinny also. You don't believe it, but it's true. I ate too many hamburgers. She kind of lost her hope completely. This last one, he will not do one thing for God.

There's nothing in him make him do anything. That is when she decided to fast every Friday, special day of fasting and three and a half years, she fasted without telling one human being the same thing, Lord, before I die, please call one of my son.

She was not even thinking about me. When I finished my high school, I remember as of today, I came home one day and said to my parents, father and mother, if you allow me, I'd like to go and serve Jesus in North India.

Before I could finish my statement, my mother jumped up and said, please go. I thought she hated me, I was unwanted. You must know, I did not know her prayer. She never told me. I went off to North India.

After two years, I will come back. That is when she will tell the story. I was stunned. I recognized it was her prayer and commitment.

The Lord used one person's prayer and desire to see Asia reached for Christ. What will he do if we're equally committed? You're listening to The Road to Reality with Brother K .P. O 'Hanlon. There are other stories like the one you've heard today, and you can find them at our website or receive an updated story from the mission field by email.

The web address is gospelforasia .org. And with the Christmas season here, please look through the Christmas catalog. It's filled with practical gift ideas, things like toolkits, chickens, blankets. As I said, practical items that you and your family can give to bless a Dalit family with a tangible expression of Christ's love.

But there are also some items you can get for yourself, things like a genuine Indian shoulder bag for just $10 or the 2007 Gospel for Asia calendar. It's filled with incredible full-color pictures that serve as reminders to pray for the GFA missionaries.

It's all found on our website, gospelforasia .org, or you can call us toll-free to find out more. The number 800-WIN-ASIA. That's 800-WIN-ASIA. We look forward to hearing from you. The Road to Reality is sponsored by Gospel for Asia.

Please join us next time for more updates and Bible studies. Till then, may the Lord richly bless you.