Doing the Revealed Things — Jackie Pullinger

Jesus’ Goal of Faithful Obedience

What the disciples said to Jesus. Verse 31, some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you. This is man's logic. Your ministry will affect many more people if you could just conserve your energy a bit and not die.

Because so far you can get around so many people, so if you just look after yourself carefully, you could reach so many more. You don't want to die. They were always trying to get Jesus not to die. And he says in verse 32, go tell that fox, I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.

In any case, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day, for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem. This is what I call, it may not be your understanding, but this is what I call the difference between visions and goals.

You don't go for visions, you go for goals. That's it. You aim for the goal. And Jesus aimed for the goal because he saw the vision. And the vision's up there and the goal is down here. And the goal is always to die.

And he said, in any case, I've got to keep going, I've got to heal people today and cast out demons, and I must keep going today and tomorrow, because no prophet can die outside Jerusalem. He was heading for death.

And that's how that Hebrews 12 scripture works. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross and scorned its shame. He spent his life on earth heading for death, because he saw the joy ahead. And that's how he made it possible for us to join him in that.

Doing the Revealed Things

So this is why I have a trouble. This is just me. You probably don't have this trouble at all about half of the Renewal songs. I really have a problem, because half of the Renewal songs seem to me that we're asking God to do what he's asked us to do.

Oh God, if you would only do this over there, the whole world would come to know you. And I think, you know, if we, the people of God, did the revealed things, I think the rest of the world would come to know him in a few weeks.

It would be such a miracle. If the church started doing the revealed things. I mean, we don't even have to prophesy. If we just fed people and clothed them and were kind to them, and if all Christians did that, I think the rest of the world would believe very quickly, because it might be the greatest miracle they'd ever seen.

And you know, most of these things, I know this will shock you, but we don't even need to pray about most of these things. They're revealed. I mean, if somebody's hungry, you don't need to say, Dear Lord, shall I feed him?

It's revealed. In fact, rather more awfully, seems to be almost a measure of whether we're saved or not. Because he says, in Matthew 25, when I was hungry, you didn't feed me. He says this to the goats.

And the goats say, Lord, we didn't feed you. We'd have fed you. Because most of us goats will feed deserving cases. The problem with the poor, we have to make sure whether they're deserving, don't we?

Now people, this is not our business to find out who's deserving or not. And I shall share some more about this tonight and tomorrow. The whole problem about giving is to do with us. And if we wait and guard our hearts and say, is he going to use it well or not?

If we ever shut up our hearts with that as an excuse, we're the losers. Because we've lost his heart. He's never been like that about us. Never. He always, Jesus, always gave indiscriminately. He gave us forgiveness, whether we received it or not.

He gave his blood, whether we wanted to be washed in it or not. He gave us his forgiveness. And it wasn't for deserving cases. It was for all undeserving. It wasn't for those that would use it well. He gave anyway.

And so I believe that the revealed thing, we are to do the revealed thing. Unless it really is true that there are some parts of the world or the church that have not yet read these words of the law, that have not yet read scripture.

And that could be possible. It certainly does appear to be that we are blind to some things which were revealed to our fathers. So dream. So prophesy. So see visions. God will show you what you can share at the right time.

Visions, Discernment, and Patient Obedience

But be careful about the words. I saw for years and years and years. I saw. I mean I saw. Every time I walked through the walled city, I saw another city. I saw the other city. But I didn't know what I was seeing.

And I think one doesn't. I think it's a backwards thing. You think backwards and you think, oh yes, he did show me. I did see that. But sometimes, like dreams, they're a bit vague. They don't define that quickly.

And you don't share them that quick either. But I always saw the other city. I saw as I was walking through the streets of the walled city. I saw a city filled with light where instead of darkness, I saw orphans in homes.

And I saw the old prostitute ladies starting again, which is a great thing to do when you're still prostituting at 70. If you can't go to retire. And I saw heroin addicts with their arms clean. And I just didn't know how you made it happen.

No idea. But this was a long time ago. Nobody was talking about having a vision at that time. So I didn't know the language. I just saw. And that was enough to keep me going. I had not the remotest idea how to make the terrible conditions I saw on Earth turn into the other thing.

I didn't know how it happened. And I don't know how we're supposed to work that out. But I do know we're supposed to do the revealed thing. Heal the sick today and tomorrow. Cast out demons today. In any case, I must keep going.

And take in the homeless that we see and clothe the naked that we see and find out the wounded that we see. So pray about seeing in a day or two. So the word that we had there about painting the picture, I think some of us may already have tried to work out how we think we will do it or what we will do.

I think the Lord was saying lay that down. And when we lay something down, there are some of us it's not me because I'm not a great planner but there are some of us that love to plan. And don't lay something down today and have the whole blueprint for tomorrow worked out.

You fall into the same trap. I don't know how God will work this out for you. I don't know who those words were for specifically. But it's not that hard. Because all we have to do today is heal the sick and cast out demons and do the ordinary things.

The Ordinary Work of the Gospel

You know, I mean basic gospel. Share your rice bowl with somebody who has none. Invite somebody into your house. Give a cup of cold water to somebody. That's basic gospel, normal stuff. And most of the normal stuff is annoying.

It's easier to minister in an hour's ministry time during a church service and people can get the shakies and the feelies and the bounces and you too. It's easier to do that maybe even go out of your way on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday.

This is basic gospel. I like the bounces and the feelies and the shakies but they really will not do instead. And they will not take the gospel to the end of you. We heard, you know. We did. About the laughing and the shaking.

And we loved what we heard. But on behalf of the little girls who in Nepal they are given as gambling debts to their fathers or their brothers. It's a poor country. The men are out of work and they gamble.

They already have hardly anything to give. When they lose they give their sisters. One little girl, you might have seen her. She was on, it was either 20, 20 or 60 minutes past. Something like that. And she'd been given to a man who beat her.

Of course you can't run away. But she did. She got beaten again. And I think she went through four men. Or eight. She ended up in a brothel in Bombay. This is where many of the Nepalese girls are housed.

And they've all got AIDS. She's back in Nepal now. And her village where it's taught. They give her food with a pole. So they don't have to go near her. So in our part of the world maybe it's like the people not too far from here.

Say, God, how will they hear the laughter that's going on in the places they say revival is happening. We do still hope it's true. We do still hope it's true. We do still hope that that laughing translates.

Because we won't hear the laughter from Asia. Even the Christians in Asia, they take planes to America and Canada to get whatever it is. We have yet to see the feet coming the other way. I love the Holy Spirit's work.

But it will not do instead of feet. And the Holy Spirit will not do what the Lord has told us to do. We do that anyway, and the Holy Spirit gives us grace through it and strength and power. But he doesn't do it instead of us.

Bringing the Gospel Through Presence and Compassion

God, the Lord has committed to work his gospel with us. And he will not do it without us. I've tried taking my Bible to him and reading to him in the streets, but he doesn't want to read the Bible. And so how do I lead him to Jesus?

And I said to him, that's very rude of you. How could you do such an awful thing? You have a house. Your brother doesn't. You don't let your brother know where you live. And you dare to read him the Bible in the streets.

That's awful. I tell you what we'll do. We'll take him to tea instead. So we chose the best teahouse. I always like to shock the waiters. So we chose the teahouse with a beautiful white tablecloth. So my friend brought his brother in, and his brother is called Lau Leung, and he's an unsuccessful street sleeper.

You know, most street sleepers get quite wise about certain things, like where to keep your bag, or how to make your cardboard into something that's windproof. And most of them have got a bag, a plastic bag somewhere, with something in it.

Well, he was always getting his bag stolen, and he'd got sores all over his body that were wet and pussy. And he came in, and he was very thin, and I was sitting with another uncle. And this uncle was a fat uncle, very fat.

And he was very, very fat because he'd got off heroin not long before. And so the thin uncle came in, and he saw me sitting there with the fat uncle. And the fat uncle and the thin uncle looked at one another, and they recognized one another, and they both said, It's you!

And so thin uncle Lau Leung comes up to fat uncle sitting by me, and he said, Why are you so fat? And the fat uncle by me says, Jesus. And the thin uncle said, I'll have him. And so we prayed with him over the teapot, and we said, Would you believe that Jesus is the son of God?

Of course, I want to be fat. And, oh really? Because they had known each other, these two, in prison, because the fat uncle used to be a police sergeant. And when they arrested people for heroin, he started taking the heroin that they'd taken off people, so that's how he got off drugs.

And so he'd met thin uncle in prison. Thin uncle knew that you can't get fat apart from Jesus. You know, because they spent all their money on drugs, and they don't have any money for food or any appetite.

They can't eat after a while. So he accepted Jesus, and we always pray with them for a prayer language at this time. It's thought out a whole lot of theological things if you do it at this time. Because at this time, they are expecting Jesus to be miraculous.

In our group, we don't have any, haven't received yet, or not yet, or can't, because everybody has. So for us, it's not a problem. Later on, when we take our guys on outreach, about two years later, we'd say, by the way, some people in the church have still got a problem about this, but we don't tell them this at the beginning.

So Lalon speaks in tongues over the teapot. And then I said to him, OK, Lalon, how many convictions have you had? And he says, ta-ta-ba, hearty, ta-ta-ba, which is 78, and he said, next time it'll be 79.

And I said, well, how many did you do? And he said, oh, about half. Because most of our people get arrested for things they haven't done much of the time. And if you look like Lalon, it's really easy to get arrested for things you haven't done.

Because you look so awful. And so all they have to do is put a syringe in his hand, and he's a good arrest. And so Lalon came to live with us. And he's such a sweet man. But he had very long toenails, I mean extremely long, several inches.

And he liked worship, and he was good at that. And I said to him one day, Lalon, why have you got such long toenails? And he said, they're to gouge people with in the night. And, of course, that makes complete sense.

Because, you know, if people are going to steal your bag in the night, you have to scratch them with your toenails. So, you know, he really did trust Jesus. And he really did trust me. But he did not yet trust the brethren, all the partly saved, well, they are, but, you know, brothers that were living around him.

He thought they might steal his things in the night so he kept his long toenails. And it took him, it was about a year and a half, I think, before he cut them. And when I saw them cut, I was so moved.

And I thought, well, I think you've come farther than I have. I'm not sure if I've cut my toenails yet. You know, he, and there are several like him, they thought so far back. And I'm so proud of what God does in them.

Because, I think they, they come further than I. They do more with what they perceive than I. Much more. This sweet man, he used to love worship, and he was always the first. We worshipped every day, lots and lots and lots and lots.

He got cancer. And he used to jog around the neighboring playground. Every day he jogged. And still when we worshipped, he was still always the first to stand. He always stood. And he came to see me and he said, since your day, he said, the doctors can't do anything for me.

They say they can't, cannot cure my cancer. So he said, I'm putting all my trust in my Jesus. And then he said, you know, sometimes at night I can't sleep. And he said, when I can't sleep, Jesus comes into my room.

We talk about you. Oh, I don't know anyone as rich as I. I mean, I fancy having a personal intercessor like him. I fancy having somebody who talks to Jesus about you. And use his sick time. They didn't talk to Jesus about him.

They talked to Jesus about me. And he's gone home now. I'm so glad for him. And I'm not surprised that the, that the Lord would want him. But I miss him. God's chosen to despise things, to nullify the things that are.

Ministry to the Unloved and Despised

We're very rich in men like him. And then there's Elfride. We have to tell you about Elfride. She sort of gets into all the stories. I used to pass her down the street in Wall City. And I didn't want to tell her about Jesus.

Now this might shock you. Maybe by Friday you'll understand why I didn't want to. The reason I didn't want to tell her about Jesus was in case she believed. I know this shocks you. Because she's the, if she believed, how can you leave her in the street?

She was at this time in her 60s. She'd been a prostitute since she was 17. She had no more arms in her, no more veins in her arms and legs. She was still working as a prostitute. She was being paid by having three injections a day in her back.

That was her payment. Now she didn't exist with no identity card. And she used to, if I couldn't avoid walking down that street, she used to pull my sleeve and say, please can I live in your house? I'll do the earning.

I'll do anything. Just let me live in your house. And I couldn't put her in. I mean that, you can't put, you can't, can you? I mean, you know, I've got 20-something just recovering gangsters. You can't put a not yet saved prostitute who's still active in amongst them.

And I didn't know anyone else, you see. Maybe you've had this problem, but you see, the problem with our group being as unhealthy as we are, none of us have got homes. We haven't got homes, we haven't got transport, we haven't got mothers, we haven't got fathers, we haven't got anything normal.

And all my friends who had these things, you know, who'd got an apartment or a spare room or a mother or a father, most of them didn't want their place to be. Or at least only once. And so there was nowhere to put her and that's why I didn't want to tell her about Jesus.

It's, I know you're shocked, but you see, for me it's really hard to say the words of the gospel and not do them. I'm not, it's very hard to say that Jesus will give you eternal life goodbye. And so I tried not to.

But anyway, couldn't resist it one day. And she came to stay with us and of course it was simple. Or as simple as it always is. Somebody once stayed with me and saw how we prayed through people off drugs.

And she was really angry with me and she said, you wrote in your book, all you had to do was pray in tongues and the power of the Holy Spirit would get them off. And I said, I'm so sorry, I need to repent.

I gave a wrong impression. That's but part of it. Most of our people are as moved by the fact that somebody sits with them non-stop for ten days. We have six people a day sitting with one man or one woman in four hour shifts.

And they pray in tongues non-stop. That's six in one day, that means in ten days you need 60. Of course the same person may reoccur. That means if we take ten people off drugs in a month we need 600 Christians to help.

And most people would prefer to bake a cake. That's why we're always tired, you see. Because we want to do this job properly. We will sit with them. And we sat with her ten days and ten nights. In a room that was five feet long and two and a half feet wide.

It was fine for her because she's only five feet. And she just about fitted. It wasn't so easy for the person sitting with her. And was it the power of God or was it the people who sat with her? I don't know.

I think it's both. She received Jesus and the power of the Spirit. Spoke in tongues and got off drugs. With very little pain or cramps. And no vomiting. And I'm talking about a 50-year habit. This is heroin, 50 years.

We're not talking about occasional grass or something. This is a long-term habit. Just to set free. Oh, that was just the beginning. I mean, there's a lot of jobs to do after that. And you know, it was funny with her because every time we worship, and we worship a lot, she used to, and I was having questions about praying for inner healing at this time.

I mean, I'm always having questions about praying for inner healing. I swing from one to the other, you know. And every time we worship, she cried. And she has got the most horrific life story that you can imagine.

Her mother committed suicide when she was five. But her father lied about it. And so she didn't find out until later. And her father was having an affair with her mother's sister and her father's brother and all kinds of people simultaneously.

And she watched it while she was growing up through the peel. Every kind of relationship that you can imagine, she saw. And she got engaged when she was 16. And she slept with her fiancé and her father threw her out of the house.

And that's why she was a prostitute from then on. And she ended up in Hong Kong with no identity. And eventually she got onto drugs and then she got captured by this brothel in the walled city. And in this brothel, she'd seen two people murdered.

One was an old lady that they'd beaten and she fell down and died. And they made her take her to the hospital. And the other was a pregnant prostitute and they wanted to serve a customer. And she didn't want to, so they put a hosepipe.

That might be me one day, because I don't exist. I don't exist. And I don't want to die when nobody misses me. But now she had a new life. Then a lot of problems we have to get her an identity card. To get healed is a whole lot easier than taking them to social services.

And the shame that you suffer in social services and the looks that you get. And think, if you get it, it's much worse for them when they go without you. It's worth sitting with them so that they are not shamed and abused by little officials.

So we went through all of that. It took a long time. And still she cried in worship. And I was thinking, God, how long? This went on for some years. If she's had 50 years of abuse, do we need to have 50 years of ministry?

I'm always asking this question. How long? I mean, she's the most unhealed lady I have ever seen. And, you know, I've known some people who I didn't think were that abused, who had already 10 years of prayer about it.

And I'm thinking, boy, if they're having 10 years of prayer about that little incident, how many years has she got? We'll never get to the end of this. And is the cross the cross? You know, I'm always asking these questions.

But still we continue to pray for her every time there's worship. And every time she wept. Until one day we took her to a neighboring old people's home. And she came back really angry. And she said, it's really rotten there.

It's cold, Christian. But nobody washes their hair. Nobody prays for them like that. She was saint. I mean, she had her off days. But she used to go then every week. And she would wash their hair. And she would pray.

And then she would go to see where the other old prostitutes used to live. And one of them was so senile she'd stuck to the bed. And she would wash her hair and take out the bag and pray with her. She did pray for her.

That's mainly how she got healed. Later on she got married. It was very funny. She wore this white wedding dress. She married a guy of 70. And it was very funny. Because we've got this great wedding photo of Elfride in white.

You know, after this extraordinary life she walks up the aisle as a virgin. And later on another old lady was going to get married. The other old lady had been a widow. And she asked Elfride, can I borrow your wedding dress?

And Elfride said yes. And she came to me and she said, I've told her she can't. Because she can't wear white. She's been married. We've got a few blocks in theology, you know. Told her she can but she can't.

God Uses the Weak to Reach the World

Ah, God has chosen the things that are not, nullify the things that are. And she didn't exist. But it's people like her and people like Lau Leung that have become treasures to me. And not only treasures but ministries.

And God's chosen them, you see, really because apart from Him they haven't got anything else. And you'll find that with our people, at least at the beginning, unless they're in Christ, they can't function at all.

I mean at all. Apart from Him, they aren't anyone. They have to start growing up. They can't function at all. They're so hurt and so far behind. And I think that's why when they're in Christ they draw people to Him.

Because there's more room for Him to shine in people who aren't good-looking or influential or of good report or who have anything else to recommend them. And this, of course, is what Paul said, meant when he said in Philippians 3, he had reason to be confident in the flesh.

Circumcised the eighth day from the right family, the right tribe, the right part of the church. As to zeal, persecuting the church, as to legalistic righteousness, Paul said everything that could recommend him to men, he had.

And he meant it. And then he said, what was to my prophet I now consider lost for the sake of Christ. What more I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I've lost all things.

I consider them rubbish that I may gain in Christ and be found in Him. And the word rubbish in Scripture is actually not rubbish. It's a much ruder word. It's a fairly soiled, filthy garment. Paul said that the things that the world counts are not what he counts at all.

He says despite those things he's used by the Lord. And I believe that if we will learn how to reach the poor, we will reach the ends of the world much quicker through them than through any other way.

Much quicker. I know of hardly any gospel program that targets the hopeless, the unlovely and the delinquent. Most of them will target those who can think, those who can work out a Tuesday program from then onwards.

And the Lord came for the poor, those who have nothing else but Him. Therefore they shine. And this is His plan, I believe, for reaching the world through the poor. And what we have found is that strangely we've gone for the poorest of the poor.

The Poor and Rich Meeting in Christ

You know what's happened? The rich have come in. All by themselves. And one man in Hong Kong that comes from a very good Christian family, he had a very good business. He came in and he said, I wish I had been a drug addict.

And he actually said that. And you know, he runs the same businessman's Bible study every Friday, you know, for executives, and lives the moral life. And he says, I wish I had been a drug addict because your people know more of the love and grace of Jesus.

How amazing. And that was what opened him to the Holy Spirit. That was what opened him to healing. And you'll find him on the streets of Vancouver now. Still a top businessman. But he's on foot giving out food to the poor and praying to the poor.

His life's been changed through them. And their understanding of Jesus has drawn him to a Jesus that he longs for and hasn't known. And we've found with unbelieving rich, they've come along because they've seen how God has changed those who are despised, lonely, or who were not.

And they have said, they have something that we don't. We are poor. We want their riches. So we've found that this just happens. We never targeted the rich. We targeted the poor and the rich came running to a Jesus who turned all things round by the cross and made the poor rich and the rich realize their poverty.

And they met in Jesus. And so week after week they worshipped together. And we had the police chief sitting next to the guy who'd been on heroin for 50 years. And nobody cared. And it wasn't a big thing.

And they respected each other. And they learned from one another. And they worshipped together. Half the time they don't speak the same language even. We found that this mixture of rich and poor brought health to church.