Make Your Life Count 1 — George Verwer

One woman persevered for my high school 14 years, prevailing, prevailing, passionate prayer. All work was born as a result of that woman. There's two and a half thousand of us this summer, reaching into about a hundred nations.

The Whole Armor of God in Spiritual Warfare

Not all of them this summer. One woman prayed spiritual warfare. We want to be in much prayer during these days. Wherefore take unto you, verse 13, the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, having done all to stand.

Stand therefore, having your loins girded about with truth, having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Above all, taking the shield of faith, with which ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

Honesty, Weakness, and Spiritual Reality

The importance of the Word of God. I wonder how many here, let's be honest, one of my themes these days is going to be honesty. And I'm going to share some of my own struggles, some of my own failures.

You know, sometimes we meet a Christian leader, especially if we hear he's supposed to be a missionary or missionary leader, whatever you call it, however you pronounce it. Canada always seems to be somewhere in between England and the States.

Sometimes we meet Christian leaders, we hear about them, and we think, boy, they've got it all together, boy. Evangelizing the world, thousands of people coming to Christ. I tell you, you're looking at a very weak, feeble instrument, who even comes here in fear and trembling, and in a great sense of inadequacy.

Some of, later I'm going to share some of that struggle. You know, it's always wonderful to testify, oh, when I was a young Christian, I had tremendous problems. I had the lust problem, I had the fear problem, and I had this hang-up and that hang-up.

When I was a young Christian, 23 years later, to testify about your lust problem, ooh, how did he get into the speaker's book? And I believe that one of the great ways that God works among his people is to get them to take off the mask.

It's to get them to be real. I can't say that I'm as real as I want to be. That is one of my greatest goals. Satan is very subtle. Out of ten or eleven thousand people have written me as a result of my book, so many have said the same thing.

I go to church. I go to Jesus festivals. I read my Bible sometimes, but it's not real. Prayer is not real. Witnessing is not real. I believe in many ways, the theme that God wants to burn into our hearts in these days is reality.

Reality. Whatever it costs, reality. Real with one another. Real with God. Real with our parents. Real with the ones we love. Real with the ones we don't love. Oh, may God burn it in to our hearts. If you'll be honest, I'd like to ask you, how many have never yet read the Word of God through once?

You've not yet finished. I know you've started. You haven't read the Bible through once. Raise your hand. About half. I want to just give this challenge to you that the Lord, I believe, has asked me to give you.

Could be the only thing maybe you'll get from me. Would you promise Jesus to read your Bible through once this year? You come at Jesus 79, if he tarries, you'll have read God's Word. I think God is concerned about this.

Confidence in Scripture and the Danger of False Cults

Some places people are always going on. This is the Word of God, and I believe it's worth going on about that. Greatest, one of the greatest attacks of the enemy in America today is to reduce confidence in the Word of God.

Where will we be? Where is David Moses III after he reduced confidence in the Word of God and produced 100 mo letters? And the young people involved with this false cult, the cogs, so-called children of God, have moved further and further from the truth so that now the Moses letters are teaching the girls to go out in the streets and give their body and sex to the men to win them to the truth.

That is happening all over Europe, all over Europe. I am not exaggerating. God hates exaggeration. I've been in first-hand contact for a long time with that one false cult. You remember last year, I was asked to speak here in this tent, in the side tent, on the cults.

Many people expressed to me that this was a message that helped them so much. I didn't give great lucid descriptions about all the false cults, but I spoke on how to mark a false cult, how to know a false cult, and how to know an extremist situation so that you can avoid it.

That tape has been reproduced and has gone all over the world because many, even Christians, are being deceived into these extremist groups and into false cults. They don't understand. And the Bible says that Satan comes often as an angel of light.

He comes with a religious garb. Many are deceived, so we have to put on the whole armor of God. We have to use the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. Verse 18, Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.

Prayer as the Foundation of Spiritual Life

The emphasis of prayer. It was when I was 17, I was converted through the prayers of this elderly lady, the reading of a Gospel of John. I was wondering, what is the true nature of spiritual life? What should I emphasize as I went off to college, in the quiet of my room, through the Scriptures, through other literature, at 17, I said, I want to learn how to pray.

I want to learn how to pray. I want to learn how to worship. I want to get a degree in prayer. Ever found a seminary that gives a degree in prayer, in intercession, in worship? Imagine somebody get a PhD in worship, praise, prayer, intercession, thanksgiving, and yet they are the basics of spiritual life.

This is a challenge that I believe God wants to lay upon us in these days. We're going to be speaking a little bit about the crisis and the process. In many ways, these days together here will be a crisis.

Hours praising God, hours fellowshipping with God's people, meeting all kinds of Christians from all over the world. And we'll go away from here, many of us just on a new level of joy and praise and reality, but then we go back into the deserts, back into the front lines of spiritual warfare.

I go to Spain where we got thousands of towns and villages with not a single Christian witness. We've got provinces without a single church. Imagine if I assign you, just you, to evangelize all of Canada.

Twenty-some million people. I meet you after the meeting. I say, look, I've just done a survey. There's no other Christians in Canada. Just you. Just you. I want you to evangelize Canada because I got to go somewhere else.

The Global Need for Evangelism

We distributed a little set of prayer cards. I happen to have them in my pocket. I carry them wherever I go. 52 of the most needy nations in the world. Some of these countries do not have a single believer that's alive.

Mauritania is one of them. Imagine, send you to Mauritania. You're the only believer, evangelize Mauritania. There are other nations where there are ten believers. Afghanistan, we've been laboring there for 15 years in that most impossible land.

There are now maybe 50 believers in Afghanistan among 18 million. Turkey has maybe 50 believers. There are more believers in this tent than the entire land of Turkey among 38 million people. You know, there are some people that do not want this message at this kind of gathering.

You know why? They say it makes people upset. People, people want a blessing and we don't want to bring anything in that's unpleasant. We don't want to tell the people of God that others are lost and that we need to be doing something about it.

And presently the North American manpower force is 99 .9 point point point, if you have a computer, is committed to North America and less than one-tenth of 1 is committed to the rest of the world.

And then people wonder why my wife and I haven't taken our first furlough after 18 years on the field. 99 .9 of God's people remain here and continue to go for the blessings summer after summer and year after year.

Don't misunderstand me. I believe in blessing and if God didn't pour a blessing into me every day, I'd blow away with the first wind from the smallest demon the devil's got. But blessing and praise and worship will lead to commitment.

It will lead to dedication. The Holy Ghost brings a holy go and if you're not going somewhere for God, you know nothing of the Holy Spirit in your life. You've been deceived into an ego trip that's greater even than the children of God because it's more subtle.

We're so boastful in the United States, especially. Canadians are a little more sane. But those of us down in America were so boastful. We've got the biggest churches in all the world. We've got the biggest Sunday schools in all the world.

We've got more Sunday school buses than anybody in all the world and we go around patting ourselves on the back till we break a bone. I want to tell you I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed of the church in North America.

The Cost of Discipleship and Self-Denial

There are many, many people who shuttle into the sanctuary on Sunday morning that have never once denied self, taken up a cross to follow Christ in true spiritual life. What is Ephesians 5 about? What is 2nd Corinthians 6 about?

What is 1st Corinthians 4 about? What is Hebrews 11 about? As I read through my New Testament, and I've been through it a few dozen times, the hard part of it has been through me like a knife cutting into areas of the self-life, exposing me for the selfish person I sometimes am.

And when that New Testament goes through you, you've got to come out realizing that we have nothing to boast about. Yes, God is working. Praise His name. The Holy Spirit is moving. Praise His name. Some of the things I say, if you don't listen carefully, I may sound a bit pessimistic.

Actually, I am an absolute neurotic optimist. Otherwise, I would have been wiped out. If you live in India for six years as I have, without being an optimist, you're through. As you watch millions and millions of Hindus and Muslims, as you stand in the streets year after year to reach men for Christ, you've got to know what it is, as it says in Philippians chapter 4, to think on that which is pure, and that which is lovely, and that which is of good report.

And as we keep our eyes on the Lord, that we can battle through the impossibilities of the Muslim world, we can pray through a set of cards like this, in which we discover one out of every seven people in the world is a Muslim.

Perseverance and a Firm Intellectual Foundation

Now, maybe there are some here that have never had any great intellectual difficulties. As a foundation for our thinking in these days, I wanted to share with you briefly some of the intellectual reasons why I have walked with Jesus 23 years, despite many temptations and many doubts.

You know, a lot of people are afraid of doubts. So, I've never gone to somebody with a question, you know, about the Old Testament or about this or that, and they say, well, no, no, it's the Word of God, brother.

We shouldn't be asking these questions. Just trust the Lord. And we wonder why quite a few thinking people end up throwing the whole thing overboard. I have a fear that there may be some of us here today that our Christian faith is just a late adolescence ego trip.

It's something nice to do now, but God's not just concerned about now, next year, five years from now, ten years from now, that we may be going on from victory to victory, resisting temptation, worshiping the Lord the rest of our life.

That's our burden. I'm sure that's your burden. 1 Corinthians 15 58 Be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.

And one of the most important things we want to emphasize in these days is perseverance, going on for God, through trials, through difficulties, through all kinds of things that sometimes come. And I believe our faith must be built on a firm intellectual foundation.

I began to doubt the faith, especially when I met a lot of Christians. I was converted from a non-christian background. I'll tell about that tonight. I didn't know many Christians. The few I met my first year at a secular college, they were on fire for Christ.

Their lives rang with reality, prayer, love. That's how they'll know that we're Christians. Not because we carry huge Bibles, or not because we got a Jesus saves pinned on our forehead or hanging on our toes.

Because we love one another, even though we're all different. We love one another. We even love those that switch us off. I'm sure even as I speak, I must switch some people off. I've learned to accept myself.

I've learned to know that when I speak, some get switched on, some get switched off. So we're all different. One of my greatest problems as a Christian was I switched myself off. One look in the mirror and I thought, oh dear.

And I had this tremendous hassle accepting myself. And I'm going to speak tomorrow, Lord willing, on accepting yourself. That is a very, very ABC foundation truth. To know God and to persevere. Accept yourself.

You say, what's the biblical basis for that? We're going to look at that. Because it's there and it's very clear. So I had many doubts when I started to meet God's people. Especially I went to Bible school.

I'm not against Bible schools. I believe God uses Bible schools. But when I went to Bible school and found there were so many people who said so much and did so little, I thought this, this can't be true.

When I was at this liberal college, it was very consistent. They believed nothing. They did nothing. Beautiful consistency. I had no intellectual troubles with that. They denied the virgin birth. They denied the Bible.

They believed nothing and they did nothing. Then I went to a nice good Bible college. And there they believed everything and did nothing. And I found somewhat of an inconsistency with my friends. And I thought, how can Christianity be true?

The Book of Acts Pattern of Christian Reality

Where are Book of Acts Christians? There are now 200 books about the Apostle Paul. There are hundreds of men across America expounding the life of the Apostle Paul, writing more books about the Apostle Paul.

And as a young Christian, admittedly, I was a little bit of a rebel and God had to do a lot in my life. Because my tongue went faster than my brain and all the rest. And I had a question as a young Christian.

After going through these books and sitting to lectures on the Apostle Paul and the epistles of Paul, I had one little question. Where are the pearls of the men who live with this kind of passion and reality?

Reality and fervency and balance. Because we see Paul, not only a dynamic person over the wall and basket, in jail in the middle of the night, praising and worshiping Jesus. You know, it's one thing to be here, beautiful atmosphere.

I spent most of my life living in crummy, smelly, stinking cities. Bangkok, Bombay, Brussels, London. About 20 others. I hate cities. Whenever I pray, I look for the nearest woods. Climb the nearest tree.

I love to get out where things are green. And there were not too many people. I get overexposed to God's people and I begin to shrivel. I don't know if any of you have that unspiritual problem. But oh, what a blessing to be out in the woods and to praise God.

Yes, we have to get back into the palace. Back into the city. Back to do the will of God. I pray today to know the kind of balance that the Apostle Paul knew. Over the wall in the basket, midnight in prison.

Yes, praising the Lord here. That's wonderful. What will you do if you end up in one of our teams in Turkey next summer and you're in prison for the whole summer. Prison with a rat nibbling at the seat.

That often happens in prison. It's a waste of time. Oh, beloved. The Apostle Paul had balance. And so I had a lot of intellectual questions. I wondered, is it really true? And I thank God for that. I thank God for this little book, Evidence, that demands a verdict.

That answers dozens and dozens of questions. And there's another one called More Evidence that demands a verdict. I praise God for books that give us tremendous truths about prophecy. That's one of the reasons we know the Bible is the Word of God.

Prophecy. I praise God for the books about the resurrection. That's another reason we know the Bible is the Word of God. The resurrection. A man like Morrison went to write a book against the resurrection ended up getting converted and he wrote Who Roled the Stone?

To prove the resurrection. Another man named Lew Wallace. He went to write a book to prove that this Jesus thing was a myth. The English said, look Wallace, we've got to expose this Jesus myth. So he went to write a book against Jesus.

You know how I met Lew Wallace, don't you? Famous General Lew Wallace. He knelt by the side of his bed after his resurrection, said Jesus Christ is his savior. And he wrote Ben-Hur as a testimony that he believed in the historicity of the New Testament.

Evidence for the Bible's Truth

The resurrection proved that the Bible is the Word of God. The moral teaching of Jesus proved that the Bible is the Word of God. The unity of the Bible written by so many different men over hundreds and hundreds of years and yet one beautiful picture of the blood of salvation of God is a proof that the Bible is the Word of God.

Every Christian that has ever had his life transformed by the power of the Holy Ghost is a proof that the Bible is the Word of God. Every answer to prayer. Think of George Mueller. His book is over there as well.

It's an incredible biography. The end of his life 30 ,000 answers to prayer still going strong at 80 years of age. 30 ,000 answers to prayer. He never took an offering but he prayed in what would be equivalent today to $15 ,000 ,000.

Not bad. How are you doing? Still doing any records? Answers to prayer? Men like George Mueller? Hudson Taylor? I've had the privilege of studying reading a book on a proof that God is real. The Bible is the Word.

It is the Word. Prayer is real. God answers prayer. Sure there are problems. I remember I was beat up one day going through the Red Street listening to Dr. Schaefer's tapes on the five problems of a man who doesn't believe the Bible.

You see there are problems for a man who believes the Bible, most of us. There are some problems, let's be honest. One expects a finite mind, understand the infinite mind of God is what we need. But God is real.

And I was listening to this tape by Dr. Schaefer only a few minutes more and I was so challenged by that. I remember telling you about this unbeliever in Scotland who wrote a book against the Book of Romans and Time Magazine reported this and you know, unbelievers.

Time Magazine said a book has been written showing that the Book of Romans was not written by Paul and how can we believe in the Bible as the Word of God? This may not be a problem for you now, but many of you in the future will face struggles along this way.

That's why it's good to lay a foundation now intellectually as well as emotionally and in every other way because God demands a total man. The Bible says love God with all your heart, hallelujah. Soul, the will, the mind, the mind God wants our mind.

That's why men like Dr. Schaefer have been used to bring out of him the Jesus, you know, in intellect and he told about this man who wrote the Book of Romans. He did it through a computer and wrote a book against the Book of Romans.

He did it through a computer and showed it to Romans for 15 authors. He could do it. And so another man in New York took this man's book against the Book of Romans and used the same computer program method which was a problem, it was a fork method and he showed that this man's book was not written by this fellow at half, it was written by several people and I believe I believe there are hundreds of thousands of agnostics and unbelievers in our nation, in our universe who would come to Christ if they were presented the basic facts about the resurrection the Book of Acts without infallible proof infallible proof men and women, brothers and sisters we are building on a firm foundation.

Christianity as a Whole-Life Commitment

This is not a religious system. This is not an emotional joy ride. No hallelujah there's emotion. So many people are afraid of a little emotion. Joseph said, this is like sending a squadron out to the cemetery to guard against a midnight demonstration by the residents.

I don't think that's really a great problem. In most cases when I fell in love there was emotion. When you fall in love with Jesus. I know most of you are there will be emotion now after 18 years of marriage with three pumpkin teenagers I've discovered that emotion didn't provide me with all the answers.

It takes a mind it takes the will. It's the crisis, the worry. How do I get out of this? How do I stop pinching myself to keep from crying at my own wedding. I don't have to pinch myself anymore. Marriage is a reality.

I believe the Christian life is the parent's life the intellectual the emotional the discipline, the blessing the joy, the struggle the suffering, the victory. God, I believe in these words. Can't you fix any of this paradox apparent contradiction.

Can't you get our minds, God wants to put it together that when we go from here it will be a success. It will be following in the steps of one like Paul who had the bachelor's degree and the pig in the street but who also was as a nursing mother a lady's dream and was pregnant in 1913.

Perfect timing. Two persons going on for God turned out the other side in these days. Let us pray, our God and Father. We thank you for your word. We thank you for the balance of your word. We thank you for the way you can put these things together.

We thank you for the many intellectual reasons why we know your word is true. Why we know that Jesus Christ died and rose again has never surrendered to your will that has never really been born again of your spirit.

May they come to you in humility and repentance this morning. We thank you our God for the reality of walking with you for the power of your Holy Spirit. We thank you for all the different beautiful people you have brought here from all over the world.

And as we learn to relate with each other and love one another and share one another may we in turn go away from here for six of years and every month and every year a lifetime for our blessed Lord Jesus Christ in whose name we pray.

Amen.